Oral history interview with Isadore Helfing

Oral history interview with Edgar Aftergood

Oral History

Edgar Aftergood, born in Berlin, Germany in 1923, describes his memories of the day Hitler came to power; his parents; studying music as a child; experiencing antisemitism; his parents moving the family back to Warsaw, Poland in 1934; life in Warsaw; the bombardment of Warsaw in 1939; his father being hit by a soldier; the creation of the ghetto and conditions there; living in a hospital with his family and seeing Dr. Janusz Korczak; his outspoken aunt, Dr. Anna Heller; having to report to work camps in 1942; playing music and being in a study group; concerts in the ghetto; going through a selection; his sister’s death; his father’s connections to people outside the ghetto; hiding out in an apartment on the other side of Warsaw in Bielany district; his father having a stroke; the Warsaw Uprising; fleeing the city and walking to Bioney (possibly Błonie); their interactions with the Germans; the Russians arriving in 1945; going to Lublin, Poland and then Łódź, Poland; attending a conservatory; his father’s death; going to Paris, France illegally; meeting his future wife; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Marianna Birnbaum

Oral History

Mariana, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1934, describes feeling that her experience during the Holocaust has affected her whole life; her parents; attending a Jewish school; life changing in 1944; losing her Gentile governess; a family story regarding the Russian massacre of Armenians; her father and uncle hiding separately from her and her mother; returning to their house; what it felt like to wear the Jewish Star; her family refusing to live in the ghetto; her father and uncle hiding in a German building but being betrayed; her father escaping from a camp; her mother being taken but saved by a Hungarian Nazi; being alone in hiding for a time during the war; obtaining false papers later when she was reunited with her mother; one of their hiding places, which was a small space in her uncle's building; her escape from the massacre of Jews at the Danube during the time when she was in hiding alone; how she’s been affected by her Holocaust experience; her view of Hungarians; and Hungarian Jewry.

Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

Oral History

Thomas Blatt, born in Izbica Lubelska, Poland, describes the Jewish community; hearing about Kristallnacht; the German invasion; the restrictions placed on Jews and the ghetto; his town becoming a collection point for other Polish Jews; the Judenrat ordering people to work; the roundup and deportation of Jews; receiving false papers and heading towards Hungary; being caught and escaping; going to a hospital and surviving a massacre of the Jewish patients; traveling home with false papers given to him by a doctor; being taken to Sobibór with his family in April 1943; the selections and meeting the German SS officer Karl Frenzel; his methods for surviving psychologically; the organized revolt in the camp and escaping; hiding out and receiving help from farmers; going to Izbica Lubelska but returning to the forest to hide; being taken care of by a farmer; the famer killing some of the people hiding with him and trying to kill him; his various hiding places; liberation but still being under threat; going to Lublin, Poland; not wanting to escape his memories; and teaching people about the revolt in Sobibór.

Oral history interview with Stanley Bronner

Oral History

Stanley Bronner, born on March 19, 1923 in Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Poland, describes his good childhood; experiencing antisemitism and fighting back; leaving home to learn the jewelry trade when he was 14 years old; the war starting; his work laying train tracks when the concentration camp was being built; almost getting shot; the Appels (roll calls); running away from the camp; witnessing the hanging of three men; his father being taken to the camp and being a translator; being beaten daily; building Auschwitz; being transported to Oberlober, which was a few miles away on a small farm; working in a sugar factory; hiding in a tank for a day before the evacuation of the camp; seeing a Russian crossing over the river Oder; and the importance of never forgetting the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Barry Bruk

Oral History

Barry Bruk, born in Łódź, Poland in 1924, describes his Orthodox family; finishing school before the war started; reading the Jewish and Polish newspapers before the ghetto was blocked in; his encounters with antisemitism; life in the ghetto and how it deteriorated after the ghetto was closed in; becoming a sewing machine mechanic; the daily transports from the ghetto; hearing rumors about the war and the German treatment of the deported Jews; the liquidation of the ghetto hospital; being deported from the ghetto with his family; being separated from his mother at Birkenau; being sent to Dresden, Germany, where he worked in a mill; the bombings and not being allowed in the shelters; being transferred to another factory, where he was an electrician; stealing a pot of soup from the kitchen and sharing it with the people in the camp hospital; running from the camp on May 8, 1945 after the SS guards had disappeared; returning to Łódź, where he stayed in a Jewish community house; his desire to leave Europe; and going to Canada.

Oral history interview with Selene Bruk

Oral History

Selene Bruk, born in Bialystok, Poland, describes her family and living with her mother, two brothers, grandparents, and her aunt and uncle; being in the 5th grade when the war began; the German invasion and the killing of many Jews; having to wear yellow stars and the formation of the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; hiding during a roundup of Jews; being forced to work and her brother getting her onto his construction crew; her grandmother being shot in the street; hiding in the ghetto with her brother and meeting up with partisans; being sent to Stutthoff for a short time until they were sent to Birkenau; making sure that her mother was selected for work and not killed; working in the IG Farben factory, building bombs; sabotaging the bombs; her mother falling and breaking her arm; being taken to Auschwitz; being next to Block 10; her aunt being experimented on; being taken to Ravensbrück and then Neustadt; she and her mother surviving; her mother becoming ill; working for the Russian Army; going to Łódź and then Bialystok; getting a letter from her father, who was living in the United States; going to the US and attending school; returning to Poland years later with her husband and children; how she met her husband, Barry, on a train; living in Canada with her husband; living in California; and speaking to school children about her Holocaust experience.

Oral history interview with Marion Chervin

Oral History

Marion Chevrin, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920, describes his father dying when he was 12; graduating from an industrial school two months before the outbreak of the war; his parents' financial situation worsening in 1929; experiencing antisemitism; the German invasion; wanting to enlist but not being accepted; leaving his mother to travel to the Russian zone of Poland; his mother's death; staying in Warsaw on the German side; being a welfare officer; getting married in 1941 and living in the ghetto; wife being a volunteer while he worked at the Jewish Center; conditions in the ghetto, including the scarcity of food and the prevalence of typhoid; the division of the ghetto into two sections; children smuggling food into the ghetto; the forced deportations in July 1942; cultural activities in the ghetto; being helped by a Polish policeman who was working with the underground; hiding during deportations; being deported to Majdanek in April 1943; his aunt committing suicide; being taken to Budzyn; one of the cruel guards, who killed many people; working on a railroad; Jewish commandants; going to a school where they taught him to build parts for airplanes; walking daily to a labor factory; their meager rations; being transferred to another camp; receiving a letter from the Polish policeman he knew in Warsaw; how he attributes his survival to luck; being sent to the concentration camp in Flossenbürg, Germany; daily life in the camp; being liberated by American troops; not wanting to speak about his experience for many years; and the importance of sharing Holocaust experiences.

Oral history interview with Fred Diament

Oral History

Fred Diament, born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, describes his Orthodox parents, who were Polish Jews and moved to Germany in 1919; the distinct differences between the strong Eastern Jewish community and the German Jewish community; how after Kristallnacht, all Jewish students were expelled from German schools; his parents sending each of their six kids to live with gentiles for two weeks; being arrested with one of his brothers and his father and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; life in the camp; being attracted to the Zionist movement; his family’s store, which sold linens; his family’s attempts to emigrate; his work in Sachsenhausen; befriending the camp’s cook; an uprising in Sachsenhausen; being disinfected before being transferred to Auschwitz in 1942; two of his brothers joining a Zionist group in Poland and receiving fake certificates to enter Palestine; going to Auschwitz with one of his brothers and his father; the fate of the intellectuals; the social hierarchy within the camp based on the number of years one survived in the camps; working in Buna, where they produced synthetic fuel and rubber; his father’s death; the strong underground in Auschwitz and he and his brother joining them; the communal atmosphere in the camp; the new camp leader; some acts of sabotage but nothing serious; the death of his brother, Leo, during an escape attempt; being transferred to Gleiwitz; his successful escape during a death march in January 1945; being liberated; discovering that his family was dead; and finding a group going to Israel and helping to found a kibbutz in Israel.

Oral history interview with Ilse Diament

Oral History

Ilse Diament, born in Krefeld, Germany in 1928, describes being one of five children; her family’s supermarket; attending a Jewish school in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland); two of her sisters going to Israel before the war; her father being arrested during Kristallnacht and sent to Buchenwald; being deported in February 1940; the journey to a ghetto near Lublin, Poland; selections in the ghetto; a brutal action in the hospital barracks; being selected for a mass killing in a ditch; surviving and going to an Arbeitslager (labor camp) in the forest for a year and a half; being evacuated and walking to Madjanek; being sent to Krasnik, Poland; being taken to Auschwitz; finding a friend; hiding under dead people to save herself; how her hair was shaved and she was given her number, a dress, and some food; working with a Dutch group, cleaning out latrines in the crematoriums; a big evacuation; how the Lagerkommandant, Josef Kramer, liked the orchestra; being sent to Bergen-Belsen; working with parachutes and meeting a woman (Emily Zinger) who knew her father; contracting typhus and the orchestra protecting her; her happiness upon seeing a British soldier wearing the Star of David; the sexual assault and murders in the camps; what it was like for her after liberation; how the testimony of the survivors is crucial; going to Israel via France; meeting Fred Diament on a Kibbutz; her children; her religious feelings; and the importance of not forgetting the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Joseph Fenton

Oral History

Joseph Fenton, born May 6, 1919, describes working in Łódź ghetto; arriving home after work one day to find his immediate family gone; never seeing his two brothers, three sisters, and parents again; witnessing deportations and hearing about the massacres outside the city; the evacuation of the ghetto in 1944; being deported to Auschwitz; working in a coal mine, where many people died; being marched to Czechoslovakia; Czechs helping some of the prisoners escape; being sent to Mauthausen; going through a selection; having to carry huge stones up stairs to build factories; being taken to Ebensee on trucks and working there until he was liberated; meeting a civilian who told them that the Americans were getting closer and that they shouldn't lose hope; speaking to an American in Polish; receiving help from the Americans; Eisenhower and his staff coming and ordering the townspeople to bury the dead instead of burning them; meeting his wife; not wanting to stay in Poland; immigrating to Canada in 1949; how it’s helped him to speak with other survivors; sharing his story with his daughter; taking an American club to Mauthausen in 1977 to show them the camp; and the importance of fighting for a free country.

Oral history interview with Ruth Fenton

Oral History

Ruth Fenton, born in a suburb of Łódź, Poland, describes having two brothers; her grandfather being a successful manufacturer of men's clothes; hearing of the humiliation of Jews beginning in 1933; the German invasion in 1939; her brother being drafted; the ghetto laws; public hangings; the synagogue being burned down; her father being deported and never seeing him again; being deported with her mother in August 1944 to Auschwitz; the selection and being separated from her mother; being in Birkenau in a barracks with doctors and nurses from the ghetto; contracting scarlet fever; being sent to the so-called "Gypsy" camp; stealing and taking pills in an attempt to get better; being sent to a work camp in Auschwitz; going to Linz, Austria then Lansing, where they manufactured clothes for the Nazis; conditions in the camp; prisoners walking to work while civilians just watched; being liberated by the Americans; the American Red Cross taking over; meeting her husband at a refugee camp; being reunited with her brother; going to Italy after she and her husband decided not to go to Israel; and living in a hotel in a German city near Munich.

Oral history interview with Henriette From-Cohen

Oral History

Henriette From, born in Holland in 1923, describes living comfortably as an Orthodox Jew in Amsterdam until the age of 17; the German invasion of Holland in 1940; going into hiding in 1942; staying in hiding for nearly two years, during which time she got married; being betrayed by the foster daughter of the family that was hiding them; being five months pregnant and taken by the Germans by cattle car to Birkenau; her work building a new railroad; being beaten; her large dress hiding her pregnancy; having her daughter born prematurely at eight months; her baby being taken one night and dying; surviving the starvation, the hard labor, and the illnesses at the camp until the Russian troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau; staying in the Russian zone for six months before returning to her family home in Amsterdam; marrying her second husband and having a child; realizing that she could no longer live in the country that held so many terrible memories for her; and moving to Los Angeles, CA, where she established new roots.

Oral history interview with Georgia Gabor

Oral History

Georgia Gabor, born Budapest, Hungary in 1930, describes being the only survivor in her family besides one cousin; growing up in a prominent family; becoming aware that she was different from other Hungarians because she was Jewish in 1942; hearing what was going on in Poland with the Jews; the Germans arriving in March 1944; the formation of a Judenrat (Jewish council), which her father was part of; the book she wrote (My Destiny: Survivor of the Holocaust); restrictions on the Jews; the bombings in Budapest; keeping a notebook of her experiences during that time; the roundups and deportations; receiving a Swiss affidavit; not wearing the star; getting her mother released from the brick factory with the help of a Nazi, who was a former client of her father; witnessing the brutal beatings and torture of Hungarian Jews; hiding out; and her view of American Jews during the war.

Oral history interview with Barbara Gerson

Oral History

Barbara Gerson (née Branka Nomberg), born May 30, 1924 in Warsaw, Poland, describes growing up in Łódź, Poland; being the youngest of three children; losing a brother on July 8, 1932; her strictly orthodox family; attending a private school; the war beginning; being required to wear a yellow star of David; her family's textile business being taken away; her father being beaten; going to live with a family in Czestochowa, Poland and never seeing her mother again; passing as Polish while she was aboard the train; going to Warsaw before going to Czestochowa; having to wear arm bands and moving to the ghetto; falling in love with a man originally from Krakow, Poland; Aktions in 1942; being taken to a small ghetto and getting married to Bolek; being chosen to clean the big ghetto; working in a fabric factory; her husband smuggling out furs from the ghetto; getting hepatitis and going to the hospital; going to the factory, which became a guarded camp; her husband’s work making bullets for guns; being transferred to a part of the factory that was involved with calibrating machinery; experiencing starvation and no longer menstruating; Bolek getting typhoid; being transferred to her husband's factory; having an abortion; her husband smuggling bullets to the underground; hiding during the evacuation of the camp; being liberated and returning to Łódź; reuniting with her brother; she and her husband staying at the displaced persons camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany; telling her children about her experiences; and hoping that talking to people about the Holocaust will prevent it from happening again.

Oral history interview with Gertrude Goetz

Oral History

Gertrude Goetz, born in Vienna, Austria September 7, 1931, describes being the only child of a middle class family; her parents’ store; her parents not being religious and not being exposed to much Jewish culture; antisemitism in Austria; Austria being annexed by the German Reich; Jews being deported; her mother being outspoken and getting into an argument with a Nazi and being arrested; her mother’s release; not being allowed to attend school; her father being sent to Dachau; synagogues being burned; her family getting passes to Italy and her father’ release; her parents working for Jews, cleaning houses, in Milan, Italy; her father being imprisoned when Italy joined the war; being sent to a small village and spending two years there; her mother falling ill; being treated kindly by the locals; being converted in order to attend school; listening to the radio; leaving the village and going to a farm; being liberated in June 1944; living at a refugee camp for six years; her father’s depression; and meeting her husband, Sam, at a refugee camp in Italy.

Oral history interview with Samuel Goetz

Oral History

Samuel Goetz describes living in Tarnow, Poland; his Jewish family being assimilated into Polish society; Jews not being able to attend school; being 11 years old when the war began; the Germans rounding up the Jews on the one year anniversary of Kristallnacht; the family breaking apart; living in the ghetto and the restrictions placed on Jews; his family selling belongings on the black market; preparing for his bar mitzvah; events in the ghetto and his parents being deported to Belzec, where they died; briefly escaping the ghetto and hiding in a small room; returning to work in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto and being sent to Cracow-Płaszów concentration camp then to Gross-Rosen; being marched to Mauthausen; his last week in the camp; and liberation.

Oral history interview with Sam Goldberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Zelda Gordon

Oral History

Oral history group interview with Barbara Gerson, Barry Bruk, Marion Chervin, Sophie Weinstein, and Fred Diament

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bertha Haberfeld

Oral History

Oral history interview with Felicia Haberfeld

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ruth Halbreich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Siegfried Halbreich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alice Hemar

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Hess and Max Hess

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henia Weit

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erika Jacoby and Malvina Engel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elly Kam

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ben Kam

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanka Kent

Oral History

Oral history interview with Cesia Kingston

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Klipp

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Kushynski

Oral History

Leon Kushynski, born in Sulmierzyce, Poland, describes his life growing up in Poland and receiving a good public and private education until he was 14 or 15; going to work in the leather business belonging to his uncle in Chanclerhoff (Częstochowa), Poland; the increasing antisemitism before the war; the intolerable conditions when the Germans came; the shooting of people in the plaza during “Bloody Monday”; how young men were sent to labor camps; the Judenrat (Jewish council); his home becoming part of the Jewish ghetto; being sent to a camp in Ukraine and running away several weeks later with several people; getting back to Chanclerhoff and living in the ghetto; deportations from the ghetto; his work in several different factories; how the Germans recruited "new Germans" from groups of Lithuanians and Latvians to help them; joining an underground group and digging a tunnel; surviving much of the war because of his skill in leather working; bribing a German to help him during the war; and starting a leather goods business after moving to the United States.

Oral history interview with Sophie Lazar

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henryk Leman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Beba Leventhal

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Levis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rudolph Yerahmiel Loebel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maurice Markheim

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jay Markoff

Oral History

Jay Markoff discusses his life growing up in Bialystok, Poland and witnessing the September 1939 German occupation of Poland; the arrival of the Russian “liberation” and occupation forces; going to school but living in tough conditions under the Russian occupation; how the Russians sent many people to Siberia and shut down businesses; the return of the Germans in June of 1941; the round-up of 2,000 Jewish men into a temple that was then burned down; his experiences during ghetto round-ups and escaping them; the German “Action” and how approximately 10,000 people were killed; joining the Jewish partisan forces in 1941 and creating schemes to destroy German railcars; various experiences during the war like keeping his hair long, so people would not suspect him of being a Russian soldier and working as a photographer for the SS photography department; spending two and a half months, from August 17 to November 3, 1943 hiding in the attic of a building; eventually joining the Russian Army and becoming a Russian artillery commander; returning to Poland where he found his old mother and sister in Bavaria; and getting his exit visa in December 1946.

Oral history interview with Samuel Michaels

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ralph Miles

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Nusbaum

Oral History

Henry Nusbaum, born in Żyrardów, Poland, describes moving to Warsaw, where he was raised and attended school; his father's job in the wholesale food business and his attempts to care for his family; his naivety about the events taking place in Europe; the daily bombardments of Warsaw and the scarcity of food and water; the German invasion of Warsaw; leaving Warsaw with one of his brothers and a friend to live and work in Byelorussia (Belarus); returning to Warsaw when the ghetto walls were going up; being involved in smuggling food and goods from the outside of the ghetto with his father and brother and then being arrested; the typhus epidemic in the ghetto; escaping the ghetto and living with peasants in the countryside; his sisters and parents later joining him; his flight and capture when the Germans came looking for boys to fight in the army; being sent to Janiszów labor camp with other Jews; being transferred to Budzyn work camp in 1942; being sent to Tomaszów then Auschwitz; avoiding hard labor because of his mechanical abilities; being sent to another camp, where he was a cook; being transferred to several other camps via cattle cars towards the end of the war; being liberated by the Swiss Red Cross; managing to piece together an existence, find food and shelter, and begin a search for family; his pessimistic attitude after the war; and his hope that along with others he will be able to help the world from experiencing another Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Leopold Page

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ludmila Page

Oral History

Ludmilla Page, born in July of 1920 in Kishinev, Romania (Chisinau, Moldova), describes her life growing up in Poland; how her parents practiced medicine in Poland and inspired her to also pursue a medical career; the death of her father when she was 14 years old; the German occupation of Vienna, Austria when she was studying medicine at the University of Vienna; the arrest of her mother in November 1939; being taken to Krakow, Poland with her mother, 3,000 Poles, and 1,700 Jews; the formation of the Krakow Ghetto in March 1941 and her work in a factory; her mother’s transfer to Warsaw, Poland, where she worked as a doctor; being sent to the Płaszów concentration camp and never seeing her mother again; working in the factory run by Schindler during the day at the camp; her husband working as welder; being sent with all of the other factory workers to Birkenau, where she spent three weeks; returning to Schindler’s factory where he gave them guns to defend themselves against the Germans; her and her husband’s liberation on May 8, 1945; living in Germany from December 1945 to 1947; and immigrating to New York, NY where she and her husband had one daughter.

Oral history interview with Israel Rosenwald

Oral History

Israel Rosenwald, born in 1924 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland, discusses his family; his father’s grocery store; the beginning of the war; being moved with his family to the Łódź ghetto; working at a factory that manufactured glass plates; his father being injured at the factory; life in the ghetto; a hiding place his parents made in their attic and staying there during the liquidation of the ghetto; being discovered and sent to the smaller ghetto; the Jewish police and the Gestapo; being herded into the big synagogue surrounded by Ukrainian guards and his parents sneaking out; being evacuated to Czestochowa in September 1944; doing forced labor in a factory manufacturing goods for the army; being liberated by the Russians in January 1945; returning home and reuniting with his mother; going with his future wife to Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, where they stayed until 1951; immigrating to the United States; the fates of his brothers; his two children; and experiencing nightmares for many years after the war.

Oral history interview with Jack Salzberg

Oral History

Jack Salzberg, born May 25, 1923, describes his life growing up in Yanov (Janów), Poland (known as Potok Złoty) in an observant, Zionist family; his family moving to Bedzin, Poland in 1938; entering the Bedzin Ghetto and dealing with the Judenrat (Jewish council) and Moses Meryn; being deported to Auschwitz and selected to an elite program designed to train top Jews to be supervisors in the Krupp armaments factory; being taken to Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Flossenbürg; ending up in a French convent hospital after he gorged on the food given to him by the American GIs during liberation; being treated for pneumonia; going to Weiden, Germany; hitchhiking home in July 1945; his wife’s experience escaping from a death march; getting married in February 1946; living in Germany for four years; and immigrating to the United States and moving to San Jose, CA.

Oral history interview with Frances Simon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frederick Spiegler

Oral History

Oral history staff interview with Janet Hatter, Peter Prayder, Ora Band, Florabel Kinsler, Ion Russ, and Sam Gates

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bart Stern

Oral History

Oral history interview with Emilia Stern

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sarna Stoger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rose Toren

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Wasser

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sara Wasser

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Weinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sophie Weinstein

Oral History