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Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.67 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0067

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    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum
    Transcript

    There is no transcript available for this track

    There is no transcript available for this track

    I'm back with Leon Faigenbaum.
    We're talking about the camp Ebensee.
    Ebensee, yeah.
    So Ebensee was a big just destroy camp, destroy just
    to kill people, destroy people.
    Like I told you before, this was made for 10,000 people.
    And they bring in a lot of people
    in the end of the war, 1945.
    And the people was working over there.
    And there was killing, over there, going on every day.
    One day, they take me to work on a station, a railroad station.
    We come over there maybe about 300 people
    to work on this railroad station.
    I work over there on this railroad station.
    I look.
    Was railroad cars was bombed.
    Americans, they was bombed the station.
    So the railroad cars were turned over.
    The roof was on the ground, and the wheels was on the top.
    So I went in, in one railroad car.
    And I look.
    I saw sugar, sacks with sugar, you know?
    Oh, I look, sugar?
    I open one bag sugar, and I start to eat sugar.
    And I bind my pants, here, around.
    And I put sugar in the pants, here.
    And I start to holler to the guys, oh, is sugar here.
    Everybody was hungry.
    We went in.
    Everybody take sugar.
    Well, we come over there to work.
    We come with a little railroad, a little railroad
    not a big railroad station, little railroad cars.
    We came to the work.
    After we finished the work, we have to go back to the camp.
    We have to go to the railroad.
    When I come to the railroad cars,
    and I want to go up on the railroad car,
    I was not able to pick up my legs.
    I put in sugar in here.
    And it was very heavy.
    I not figured out that.
    I cannot pick up the legs to jump in, in the railroad car.
    The Germans start to beat, with the rifles, the people.
    They want fast, schnell schnell, schnell,
    to go in the railroad car.
    I was not able to pick up my leg.
    So they beat me up, very bad.
    I was not able to go in, in the railroad car.
    So the people dropped me in, in the railroad car.
    So when I come back to the camp, I
    was not able to walk on my legs.
    Was beaten.
    I was, anyway, skin and bones, already, at that time.
    So they decided they put me-- they
    say this in a Schonungsblock.
    Schonungsblock, that mean a barrack,
    before the people died, they put them in this block
    before death.
    Because they have a lot dead.
    Was laying in the dead in the thousands.
    People died on the street.
    They no had time to burn them up.
    The crematorium was working day and night.
    Was so many dead bodies laying, but they beat them
    up to death, plus they hang them, and they shoot them.
    Because they bringing all the camps over there.
    And they was not able to burn up everything, together.
    So they bury a lot in the grave.
    And they put me in.
    They put in, in this barrack, maybe
    about more than 100 people.
    We was waiting to die, over there, in this barrack.
    I was not able to walk already.
    The other people was hungry.
    So they cut one.
    One cut, from the other one, the meat.
    The people died over there.
    And this where I was laying, the people died.
    The dead people, the other people go and they cut pieces.
    They eat the meat.
    From dead people?
    From the dead people, they cut.
    I look.
    They cut.
    They eat the meat.
    The Germans they come in.
    They see, the bodies, they cut off the pieces.
    They ask, who did that?
    They start to beat everybody.
    Nobody say.
    Because if you tell them, he cut a piece off,
    they going to kill him.
    And not say nothing.
    Nobody say.
    We know care.
    Beat.
    Do what you want.
    Oh, they beat up.
    I no feel nothing, already, bones and skin and bones.
    I cannot walk.
    I'm laying around just to die.
    OK.
    May 4, 1945, the Germans come in.
    And he say-- he walked, like this, on the bodies.
    It was so cold over there.
    The door was open.
    And this is in the Alps.
    And Ebensee, in Austria, this is in the Alps,
    in the hills around.
    It was cold.
    And he walked on the bodies, on the live bodies, the German,
    with the boots.
    And he said to us, tomorrow morning, 10 o'clock
    and 11 minute, you going to Himmel kommando--
    to the people who are still alive.
    Himmel kommando, this mean, when they burn you up,
    your body go through the chimney.
    In German, Himmel kommando, this means the smoke
    go to Himmel, to the sky.
    It is in German, Himmel kommando, you know, Himmel.
    So he say, tomorrow morning, 10 o'clock and 11 minutes,
    you going to be in the Himmel kommando.
    Tomorrow morning, we are ready.
    We won't go to die.
    We won't go die.
    We cannot leave.
    I cannot walk anyway.
    I understood everything.
    My eyes-- I looked everything.
    I see.
    All the night, we hear noise, noise, like things, noise.
    The road was away from the camp maybe
    about two miles-- the road.
    Was all the night, noise.
    We don't know what's going on.
    We don't know nothing.
    However, in the morning, we saw a white flag
    on the crematorium, on the chimney.
    We don't know what this mean.
    Because all the Germans were still around,
    and the crematorium was working, and the gas chamber
    was working.
    And the Germans were still around with the machine guns
    all over.
    We don't know nothing what's going on.
    They was maked up in the mines.
    They put dynamite around, to put all the people in,
    to kill them, over there, in the mines, in the stone mines.
    They were going to take the people
    and put them in the mines, and then blow them up.
    They already put in dynamite over there.
    What happened?
    The big shots, the Germans, they run away.
    The Americans was already around over there by the camp.
    And the big shots ran away.
    And just the soldiers, they was in the camp watching us.
    And they now have an order to put us in to die over there.
    However, the chimney was working.
    They put people to the gas chamber and to the crematorium
    till the last second.
    They kept killing till the very last minute.
    Yes, this was going on till the last second.
    We was laying, waiting to go, to go to die, already.
    We looked.
    I cannot walk, nothing.
    I understood.
    My eyes looked.
    My mind was-- mind good, the mind.
    However, I was not able to stay up on my leg.
    Anyway, we look.
    We see tanks coming in.
    Tanks but we don't know what kind of tanks this is.
    Who knows?
    We think maybe, German tanks, because the Germans were still
    there with the machine gun.
    Americans coming in.
    They come in.
    They open the door, Americans.
    They look.
    They're looking at all this.
    Terrible.
    They see us, like this, they never.
    Who will see, yes, people skin and bone, like this, you know?
    Oh, come in, I don't know, was a big major come in,
    American soldier.
    He had some back here.
    He take out a towel, a clean towel.
    And he start to clean up the faces.
    He cannot walk in.
    We was laying inside.
    He walked, and he just washed up the faces a little bit.
    He had little bottle.
    I give to smell.
    Ah.
    Everybody, oh, this was so good, the smell, something.
    Did you realize what was happening at that point?
    I didn't know.
    I see.
    They say, America, American.
    I don't understand English.
    They say, we Americans, American.
    Oh, we looked.
    We see the tanks.
    The Germans were still there with the machine guns.
    They take away the machine guns from them.
    And they pile it up.
    It was piled up high, this ammunition.
    And they take away the Germans.
    There was people in the camp, strong people still,
    from our people, concentration camp people.
    They want to kill the Germans.
    They, right away, they start to jump on the Germans,
    just take a machine gun to kill them.
    They not let them do this, the American.
    They not let them do that.
    What happened?
    When just they come in, the Americans,
    exactly to the second that we have to go to the gas chamber.
    Exactly to the second, 10 o'clock in the morning.
    I never, never forget that.
    Since my eyes could be open, I never forget.
    Exactly 10 o'clock, they come, the Americans in.
    We was laying.
    We cannot move nothing.
    Nobody was able to move from us, where we was there.
    Everybody was 95% dead.
    So anyway, I was laying for two days, maybe more,
    maybe three days in this place.
    Lots of boys died.
    They not take us away, the American.
    Were you happy when you realized that the Americans were there
    and you were going to be liberated?
    Or were you too sick to know?
    I didn't know.
    I think I going die.
    I going to die.
    What happen?
    The Americans come in.
    From the beginning, they no had time, you know?
    Soldiers, you know?
    So anyway, we was laying, like this.
    And they give us in some food and drink.
    We cannot eat.
    I cannot.
    So was a hospital in Ebensee, a big hospital.
    In this hospital was German soldiers.
    SS was laying over there.
    And the Americans, they not take us to the hospital.
    They no had time.
    I tell you the truth, they was busy.
    They was still going to fight.
    However, they was not fighting.
    In Austria, they opened, for him, the borders.
    They let them in, the Americans.
    They was keeping back the Russians, over there.
    And the Americans, they let in.
    The Germans, they let in the American.
    So anyway, in the concentration camp, the people, our people,
    what they was there, they went in the hospital.
    They drop out the Germans from the windows.
    They kick them out.
    And they put us on trucks.
    Their people-- our people in the concentration camp.
    They put us on truck.
    And they carry us out, on the hand,
    and take us in, in the hospital.
    Now, we come in the hospital, everybody clean up.
    Were there doctors there?
    Was doctors.
    We know one of the doctors, a German doctor.
    We was afraid for the German, they should kill.
    We had doctors, our doctor.
    In concentration camp was doctors, too.
    We ask, could they come over there?
    They take care for us, and we kick
    out these doctors, the Germans.
    They kick out, the people what they was able.
    They was able to work, to do something They kick them out.
    And they bring our doctors.
    And our doctors come.
    They take us, everybody, put in the bed.
    And they say, the first thing, what they say,
    don't eat nothing.
    Don't touch food.
    What we going to give to you, then that you got to eat.
    If you going eat, you going to be dead.
    No stomach, nothing.
    So that was true.
    When there come the sisters, they work in there.
    They bring some food.
    They eat for themselves.
    Or these guys, they was able, already,
    to walk from the bed down.
    And they go to steal some food.
    They eat.
    They die.
    They die.
    They put me in shot, the food with shot in my body.
    I were for six months in the hospital.
    After six months, I go out from the hospital.
    Where'd you go after you left the hospital?
    After I leave the hospital?
    After I leave the hospital, I went in the camp.
    This were, in the hospital, I went in the camp.
    Was a DP, DP camp, they called it, DP camp.
    DP?
    You know, DP?
    They call us DP.
    Oh, DP.
    DP, all of the people, they was in the camp.
    They call us DP.
    And they make campfires over there.
    And they give us food, everything.
    In the same place where the concentration camp had been
    or a new place?
    No, in another place.
    New place.
    Another place.
    We had everything over there-- drink and eat
    and food and everything.
    And who was running this DP?
    DP, they was run, the American Army,
    I think the Joint something was together, already.
    And you finished recuperating at the DP camp?
    Yeah.
    Finished up recuperating.
    And after this, after I feel good, I--
    How long did that take?
    I don't know.
    I cannot remember, exactly, how long I was there.
    I want to just tell you.
    I just want to tell you, after this, I
    decided I go to Poland, to look with my eyes, with my hands,
    if somebody survive.
    I go look where I am born, in my country,
    in my city, where I drink the water.
    I want to go see over there.
    So I go over there.
    I go to Poland.
    I come in a city, Radom, was a couple
    of Jewish people over there, not many,
    maybe 10 people over there.
    I no had money.
    I no had nothing.
    I come in this [NON-ENGLISH] over there.
    And they tell me.
    I no have money.
    They give me money.
    They give me food, the Jewish community.
    They are maybe about 10 people I find.
    They ask me, where are you going?
    I tell them, I'm going to Gniewoszow, to my city.
    Oh, they say, don't go over there.
    They going to kill you over there.
    This was after the war.
    Don't go.
    They going to kill you, the Christian, the Polish people.
    I say, why are they going to kill me?
    Because you're Jewish.
    The Jewish people told me.
    I no listen to them, anyway.
    I sit down on the railroad, on the train, and I go.
    I know every place over there, already, in Poland.
    I'm born there.
    I go.
    I come middle of the night to a station.
    The railroad no go through to our city,
    because it was a little place.
    It go.
    It stop, before, maybe about 10 kilometers.
    So already on the railroad, where
    I travel, from Radom to our city,
    was already Polish people sitting over there.
    And they know me.
    They know my parents, my father, my mother, all of my family.
    I know them, too.
    They come to us, because we was working for them.
    They say, ho, you still alive?
    Like this.
    Oh, you're still alive?
    They wondered why I survived.
    This the way they talked to me.
    It was so bad for me, I no say nothing.
    I ask them, somebody live in the city?
    I ask them, somebody alive over there?
    Oh, yes, they said, maybe about five, six Jewish people.
    I ask them where they are, who are their name?
    They not tell me exactly.
    They tell me but not exactly the name.
    I cut my hair.
    I had no head hair on the head.
    They were stay, like this, on my head.
    In the night, I come.
    And I ask them, where they are, these people,
    the Jewish people.
    And they told me where they are.
    I go over there in the city.
    Was about 3 o'clock in the night.
    And I come.
    I knock on the door.
    They was afraid to open the door.
    They was not afraid for German.
    Was not German there.
    They was afraid for the Polish people.
    So I knock on the door, I say--
    I recognize, right away, a voice from a woman.
    I recognize.
    I say, oy, Sarah.
    And she recognized me, too.
    And they opened the door.
    I come in.
    Was crying all the night.
    We take off the shoes, you know?
    Jewish people, they praying.
    They sitting shiva.
    We sitting shiva all the night.
    We crying all the night.
    Now, Sarah was a friend?
    She was a friend.
    No.
    From your town?
    Everybody in this small city was like one family.
    And she know my--
    And I ask, who is alive from my family?
    Nobody.
    He say, one cousin, my cousin, he survived the war.
    And after the war, the Polish people, they kill him.
    They chop his head off with a ax after the war.
    Polish people, they kill him.
    He survived by the Polish people, other Polish people.
    He survived.
    And other people, they kill him.
    I was in this city one day.
    In this city, I look around, I see everything is destroyed.
    I see the whole city was living.
    Christian living over there, Polish.
    I was afraid to go over there.
    I was afraid if I go there, they kill me.
    They think maybe I want to take the house away.
    I was afraid to go.
    I just looked everything.
    One Polish guy, he was a good friend of me before the war.
    He was like a brother to me.
    He come to me.
    He say, come to my house.
    I go to his house.
    And he give me to eat, to drink.
    He show me he got a gun.
    And he say to me, he is the AK.
    AK, this was an organization, they hate Jews and communists.
    They killed Jews and communists.
    That was this organization, AK.
    That's what they was hating the Jewish people and killing.
    And he tell me, this guy, he said, go away from here
    and tell the other Jewish people, too,
    the five, six of them over there,
    should they go away, too, because we going to kill them.
    He told me.
    Like a brother he was to me, you know.
    And I was sitting and talking to him and crying all the time.
    Because he know my brother.
    He was working for us.
    He was also a shoemaker.
    He was working for us-- with us, together, before the war.
    In our house, he grew up.
    He eat and drink with us, together.
    And now he hates Jews, that much,
    that he's in this organization.
    However, he was in the organization, AK.
    And he's in this organization?
    He was in the organization.
    He showed me a gun.
    I was sitting with him.
    He show me ammunition, everything.
    He told me, we work against.
    And he asked me what I going to do.
    I told him.
    I no want to tell him, I go away.
    But I say, I come here.
    And I go make with you a business, together.
    We go run a business.
    And we going make.
    We going to be good.
    And we going to build up something.
    I say, you know, we run a business.
    You know what to do.
    Oh, he says, it's a good idea.
    He say, I go put my brothers in, too.
    I thought just, don't worry.
    I fix up everything.
    However, anyway, he told me, tell the other people,
    should they go away.
    I go over there.
    And I told these people, go away from here.
    One lady, she had a passport to go to America.
    She was married to a guy before the war.
    He went to America.
    But she had no time.
    The war come out, and she no come to America.
    And she was survived by Polish people in the war.
    All of these six people were survived by Polish people.
    You mean, Polish people had helped hide them.
    Hide them, and they survived.
    Was good people, too, like I tell you.
    Was 36 million people, Polish people,
    and it was 3 and 1/2 million Jews in Poland.
    Was maybe, I will say, 90% good one, 10% was no good,
    antisemites.
    All over you got.
    So anyway, I told these people.
    I told them, go away, where you can.
    They going kill you here.
    And I say, goodbye.
    I go.
    I have to go to sleep, in the same day, to this guy.
    I was already afraid to sleep with these people over there,
    my Jewish people.
    I was already afraid.
    And I just told them, run away where you can.
    And they no listen to me.
    They give me money.
    They give me to eat.
    And I go back to this guy, to sleep by him.
    I safer by him.
    I was afraid, too.
    I see I'm safe.
    I sleep on the roof, on hay, where the horses, the pigs are,
    you know?
    He put me.
    He was afraid, should not bring in the house,
    if the other guys come in.
    They have maybe a meeting, the AK.
    They come together.
    He no want should they see me in his house.
    He'd say, you sleep over there, on the roof, you know,
    where the hay is, where the pigs, the cows.
    I sleep over there, but I cannot sleep.
    I was-- I think, what shall I do?
    I'm afraid.
    I survive.
    Now I going die here.
    3 o'clock in the night, I went down.
    And I go away.
    I go away to the railroad station, 10 kilometers.
    I was lucky.
    Right away come the railroad, and I go away.
    I go away to Lódz.
    Lódz, that's a big city in Poland.
    I stay over there, and I run away.
    I run away back to Austria.
    Right away back to Austria.
    And I married over there.
    And I stay.
    Where in Austria did you go?
    I was staying, in Linz, in a DP camp.
    I was staying over there in DP camp.
    DP, you know what this is?
    Right.
    I was staying over there.
    I came back.
    I was-- I tell you, right away, I just wanted to figure out,
    to see.
    I figured out, maybe I go away someplace in the world.
    And I know what I have on my mind--
    that I want to be sure I no find nobody.
    I want to be sure.
    You see, always could be in my mind,
    maybe somebody live, somebody alive, maybe
    somebody, over there, where I grow up.
    And I go there to make sure.
    To make my body clean, I looked over there, with my hands,
    and I look everything.
    And I go back to Austria.
    And I was in--
    and I stay in Austria.
    I went to-- and later, I could go to America, in 1945, right
    after the war.
    So I decided, I go to Palestine.
    Had met your wife, yet, when you went to Palestine?
    Oh, yeah, we was married already.
    You met her where?
    We married.
    I met her in Poland.
    We met.
    We know already, before, each other.
    Oh, you knew her before the war?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And then you found her?
    Yeah, find her.
    And we was together in Austria.
    We had two kids in Austria, 1947.
    And end of 1947, we went away to Palestine.
    Was it difficult going to Palestine
    or did someone help you?
    Oh, was very difficult then to go.
    You no go to Palestine like you go today, by plane or by ship.
    You have to go, from Austria, to the mountains, to the hills.
    And you do not go with papers.
    You go not legal.
    You have to go through the mountains, on your stomach,
    to go down, should nobody see you.
    Was the working from Israel, the Haganah, the Bricha,
    and the Jewish Joint, they was running this business,
    to hide, to take the people out from Europe to Palestine.
    And we come from Austria, through the mountains,
    through the hills.
    I carry one baby, here.
    My wife carry another baby on her shoulder.
    We come to Italy.
    Italy was waiting a bus, already, a truck.
    We go on the truck.
    The truck take us to Geneva, Geneva to the--
    this was the ships over there.
    Was already waiting a ship, a little ship,
    not like a big ship.
    And on this ship, maybe, can go maybe--
    was a boat ship, what they catch fish.
    And on this ship, maybe, can go, maybe,
    I don't know, maybe 40 people.
    We put in maybe 200 on this boat, babies
    and old and young people.
    And the England, that they was in Palestine then,
    they not let the Jewish in.
    And they catch the Jews, they put them to Cyprus--
    when they catch them.
    But this guy, he runs this boat.
    He was a Greece.
    He already take Jewish people to Palestine.
    So he had a telephone.
    He talked all the time, with the Haganah from Israel,
    with the underground in Israel.
    They tell him where to go and where to stay
    and where to wait.
    He cannot go straight to Palestine.
    He have to wait maybe about 20 kilometers away on the ocean.
    And they come over there.
    He go away.
    You know, the England, they no catch him.
    They no catch him.
    We come to the underground in Israel.
    They take us with little boats.
    And they take me, right away, away, in the underground.
    I was like a soldier.
    Take my wife and two babies.
    They put them in a camp, outside, in a camp.
    Was very bad.
    Was no food.
    Was nothing then.
    Nothing-- was very bad.
    Why did you decide to go to Israel, rather than
    to the United States, when it was
    easy to go to the United States and hard to go to Israel?
    I tell you why.
    Because, first of all, I saw, already,
    what they did with the Jewish people.
    And now I say, myself, if I survive, am I Jew?
    My father was a big patriot, you know, Zionist.
    And I say, I survived already.
    Why should I no go help?
    Shall we have a country, like everybody have a country?
    If we had a country before, this tragedy, Holocaust
    happen-- it would not happen to the Jewish people like this.
    I say, like this, I said to my wife,
    I say, now I no want nothing.
    I no want to be a millionaire.
    I no want to go to no place.
    And they told me--
    Americans, they told me, you can go.
    You no need any papers.
    We liberated you.
    You can go.
    I say, thank you.
    I appreciate, you liberated me.
    But I'm a Jew.
    My body Jewish, everything.
    I want to go help, over there, the people.
    That's what happened.
    I go over there.
    I was in the army, 3 and 1/2 years in the Israeli army.
    What was life like in Israel?
    In the beginning, it was very bad.
    Because we had to fight with the Arabs and with the England.
    And then we had become a Jewish nation, the Arabs attack.
    The Jewish people was about 600,000 Jewish.
    And all the millions of Arabs-- seven Arab countries attack us.
    We no had nothing, just with the hand to fight.
    And we fight them.
    So things got-- you see?
    We have a country.
    And I was.
    I'm very happy.
    I was in the army.
    And I survived.
    And I did my part.
    And I'm very proud of this.
    I did.
    I stay with the rifle.
    I stay with the machine gun.
    And I fight.
    And I did what I could.
    So I stay.
    I was in Israel.
    Later, after I come out from the army, I work.
    I was very good.
    What kind of work did you do?
    I was a shoemaker in Israel.
    I work.
    And then you decided to come to the United States.
    How did you decide?
    No.
    I'll tell you what happened.
    I never decided to go to the United.
    I like Israel very much, too.
    My wife, she have a brother and a sister in America.
    And she cried all the time.
    I no have nobody.
    Everybody is dead, too.
    They kill all the family, just she
    have a brother and a sister in the United States.
    And she say, she want to go to the United States,
    because she have a brother.
    I understand it.
    Your wife is also a survivor.
    Yeah, she also was a survivor.
    She was also survived the same thing what I survived, maybe
    not like this, different way.
    But I thought that I had to do.
    Or divorce with the wife or go to America.
    So I said, there's nothing wrong with America.
    I go.
    I did my part already for Israel.
    I was a soldier.
    I fight.
    I was in the army so many time.
    And I think, I did my part.
    And I go to America.
    We come to America in 1959.
    And thanks God, I'm very happy, here, in this country.
    I have three daughters.
    And they happy, too.
    Were her relatives located in Cleveland?
    Whose?
    Your wife's.
    Yeah, they live in Cleveland.
    Yeah.
    Did any agency help you when you got into to Cleveland?
    Nothing.
    Nothing.
    When I came to Cleveland, I no had nothing.
    I had $10 in my pocket.
    When I came to Cleveland, you see, in Israel,
    I already had my own house, a [NON-ENGLISH]..
    They have like a condominium, here.
    I had over there two rooms, a kitchen.
    This was my own paid.
    However, when I have to go to America,
    I no had money for the ship.
    I came with a ship to America not by plane.
    I no had money.
    I have to sell this house.
    I sell the house just to pay for the ship.
    And I also paid for the plane, in Israel,
    to come, from New York, to Cleveland, by the plane.
    So when I come to Cleveland, I had $10 in my pocket.
    I no had money, nothing.
    I have three kids, one was five years old.
    And the other girl, my Henia, she was already
    finished the public school in Israel.
    And the other one was in the school, Hanna, however,
    didn't understand English, nothing.
    Was very bad with the language.
    And for me, I went to my brother-in-law.
    He take me to the Jewish Welfare,
    from the beginning, should they help me, something.
    Should they help me with work, with a job.
    So I went with him to the Jewish Welfare, Jewish Family Service,
    how you called it.
    I come over there.
    They ask me questions.
    I told them.
    I come from Israel.
    I have three kids.
    They say to me this way, if you come from Israel, here,
    to America, you never no come here to us no more.
    You no walk in here for help.
    We no going to help you nothing.
    We help Israel.
    And we not going to help you, because you leave Israel.
    You are-- how you say this?
    Like I am a--
    Traitor?
    Like I am a traitor.
    You know, like I leave Israel.
    So I tried to explain to them.
    I said, look, I did my part.
    I was in the army.
    And I married.
    I'm not so young.
    So I did my part.
    I come to the United States.
    What is wrong with it?
    We no going to help you, nothing.
    They no help me.
    You know, but that is worth it.
    See, what that is worth?
    And I never no go over there, today.
    Never ever went to them, should they help.
    I say, maybe they are right.
    I said to myself, maybe they're right.
    Why I left Israel?
    Why I should stay there?
    Did you join a synagogue here?
    Yes.
    I'm joining.
    I'm a member in Heights Jewish center.
    And I'm a member of the Yeshivath Adath
    to the synagogue.
    And I am a member of Kol Israel organization.
    So anyway, I no go no more to them.
    But I went to a Jewish, what they give the jobs?
    What they call that?
    Jewish Vocational Service.
    Jewish Vocational Service.
    I don't know.
    I no go myself.
    I find one man, an old man, Mr Rosenberg.
    He is already not here no more.
    And I talked to him.
    I told him the whole story.
    I cannot talk English.
    And I speak Yiddish.
    He speak Yiddish.
    He say to me this way, first thing,
    you need a Social Security card.
    I don't know nothing about Social Security card.
    He said to me, I take you.
    So he take me in downtown.
    He fill out the papers.
    They give me a Social Security card.
    After the card, he go with me in the Jewish Vocation Service.
    It was in downtown on Ontario Street.
    I remember something like this.
    He went with me over there to the Jewish Vocation.
    I come in over there.
    The name was Mr. Cohen, his name.
    I come to him.
    He talked to me.
    No one talked to me Jewish.
    He understand Jewish.
    He no want to talk, just English.
    I no understand English one word.
    He said to me should I go to school to learn English.
    I say, you're right.
    I will go to school.
    I need a job.
    I got kids.
    I need a room.
    I have to-- give me a job, any job you give me, I take.
    He say, you go to school to learn English,
    then I go talk to you about a job.
    I
    Say Mr. Cohen, I talk Yiddish, he talk English.
    The other guy, Mr. Rosenberg, he explained to me.
    I feel so bad, I tell you.
    Like he take a hammer, he give me with the head.
    That was better for me.
    Anyway, what can I do?
    I go home.
    I sit down with my wife and the kids.
    We cry like babies.
    If I had money, big, in my pocket to go back to Israel,
    I would go, right away, back.
    What shall I do?
    What shall I do?
    Terrible.
    Somebody told me, Cleveland Coin Machine on Prospect.
    He no need people they can speak English.
    Go over there.
    Maybe you can get a job.
    Mr Rosenberg, he go with me over there.
    I don't know how to go.
    He go with me.
    I go over there.
    I come in.
    The boss, he eating lunch.
    I go straight to him.
    And I talk to him Yiddish.
    And he talk very good Yiddish to me.
    He was a very nice man, Mr. Gieser.
    He say to me, who are you?
    I say, my name is Leon Faigenbaum.
    I come from Israel.
    I have three kids.
    I have a wife.
    I want a job.
    Give me a job.
    He say, you don't know English, nothing?
    I say, no, I don't know English.
    He say, you don't need to know any English.
    All the refugees here, from Hungary, from Poland,
    they talking all the different language.
    Just the one guy, he was talking English.
    He was electrician.
    Gay, he was.
    He's an American born here.
    He say, OK.
    He asked me, you come from Israel.
    You work on Shabbos, Saturday?
    I say, never in my life.
    Up to today, I never work Saturday,
    just in the concentration camp, what I were.
    However, otherwise, in Poland, yo no work Saturday.
    My father was an Orthodox Jew.
    In Israel, I no work, never, Saturday.
    He say, I'm sorry.
    I cannot hire you.
    Because, in my place, everybody work on Saturday.
    We work four hours, he say, from 8:00 to 12 o'clock.
    If you not going to work Saturday,
    the other people going go home.
    I cannot.
    I say, Mr. Gieser, should I say, if that's the case,
    I say, somebody swim in the ocean, if he got something,
    if he know he could save his life.
    He know if he cut his hand, he could catch.
    He cut his hand.
    He go catch anyway.
    He think could save the life.
    If you no give me the job because this the reason,
    then I have to work Shabbos.
    What can I do?
    I take the job, because I was so.
    I take the job.
    So, OK, he say, I hire you at $1 an hour.
    I no say nothing.
    I say, OK.
    But all I know, I got hired.
    Work overtime, he say.
    You can work overtime, work over.
    So I work over there.
    I work Mr. Gieser, meet him.
    My wife became a job, too.
    She worked for Majestic.
    She was making, I don't know, $0.80 or $0.90 an hour, too.
    This was good.
    The kids go to school.
    And right away-- I had a golden watch,
    from Israel, what I bring with me.
    And I want to sell the watch to pay $100.
    This guy, Mr Rosenberg, he went away to Florida for six months,
    exactly when I came.
    And I no had where to go to live.
    He say, I give you the rooms.
    I give you the beds, everything.
    I see, he say to me, you very nice people.
    And I going away with my wife to Florida.
    You stay in my house.
    You pay me $100 a month, everything.
    Was very good for me.
    See, for me, it was good.
    Maybe no good, maybe good.
    It was good, because I never had nothing.
    But $100 I have to pay.
    And I no have the money.
    I was not at the job yet--
    before I catch the job.
    I take the golden watch I had.
    And I go.
    I want to sell to people.
    I say give me $100.
    Was armband gold, everything.
    And the one guy take the watch, he say, here,
    give me back to watch.
    He already bring me back.
    He say this gold is red gold.
    If this is yellow gold, I will buy from you.
    What can I do?
    Meantime, I start to work by Mr. Gieser.
    So I was still living by my brother-in-law.
    It's just one week I was in the country.
    So I come to work.
    I show to the guy the watch.
    I show it to Mr. Gieser, to the boss.
    Oh, he said, that's red gold.
    I cannot buy.
    If it's yellow, I will buy.
    One guy, a refugee, he take the watch.
    He bring me $100.
    I take the $100.
    I paid Mr Rosenberg for the rooms.
    Next morning, they went away to Florida, and I start to work.
    My wife start to work.
    For $1 an hour, I start to work.
    Every time I go, Mr. Gieser give me a raise.
    And the supervisor was very mad to me.
    Andre was his name.
    He said, why you go to the boss every time when he eat?
    I go lunchtime, because, if I go in the time from work,
    he going to be mad at me.
    He going to say, why you leave the job,
    you come to me to talk?
    So I went on my time, lunchtime.
    And he was eating lunch, too.
    I went in.
    I say, Mr. Gieser, give me a raise.
    Oh, he said to me, the business is bad, like this and that.
    Sometime, he give me a nickel.
    I work for two years over there, maybe I make $1.20.
    I looked in the papers.
    Meantime, I went to school.
    I was living on Pennington.
    And I went to school to John Hay High School.
    You know, on Kinsman, over there, John Hay School.
    In the night, I went over there.
    I start to learn a little bit English.
    I start to be a human being, understand a little bit.
    And the guy, where I was working over there,
    by Cleveland Coin Machine, the American guy,
    he talk to me English.
    The other guy, they not talk English.
    And I not talk with them.
    And she say to me, Mr. Gay, who was very nice to me, so nice.
    He say, learn.
    Just talk.
    Don't be ashamed if it's no good.
    Just talk, talk English.
    If it's good, if it's not good, just keep talking.
    He talk to me, all the time, English.
    If it's not perfect, he say it going to be perfect.
    Talk.
    That I talk.
    And I went to school at night.
    And I learned.
    The meantime, I start to look for another job.
    I look in The Plain Dealer, every day.
    I understood a little bit.
    I looked.
    One time, I look in the paper, in The Plain Dealer,
    I see Lyman Steel, they looking for--
    no, that was before this.
    Yeah, I had another job, by Bobbie Brooks.
    I went to Bobbie Brooks.
    They was looking for people.
    I went over there.
    They need a sweeper to sweep the floor.
    I say, OK, I take the job.
    They give me $1.35 an hour.
    I make over there $1.20.
    And $1.35 is more money, so I start to work here.
    I start at 6 o'clock in the morning to work.
    I buy me.
    I had a car, a Plymouth.
    So life was improving here.
    Life improving.
    I buy me a car.
    I make my license till I am driving.
    I buy me a car for $50, a Plymouth.
    Were holes around, all over.
    The guys, they was making jokes on me.
    They say, oh, you got an air conditioned car.
    The air coming in and going out.
    I say, so good.
    It's perfect for me.
    Anyway, my wife started to work.
    And the kids, they start to talk English in the school,
    pick up a little bit.
    And was coming back to the life.
    And I worked for Bobbie Brooks.
    Same thing, I go over there, to Mr Rosenberg,
    who was my manager by Bobbie Brooks.
    And I go to Mr Rosenberg.
    I said, Mr Rosenberg, give me a raise.
    I have three kids.
    He told me like this, Mr Rosenberg.
    You are a Jew.
    How much money you going make not going be enough for you.
    That's the way he talked to me.
    One time, I take the table.
    He was sitting.
    I turn over the table on him.
    It make me so mad, you know?
    He tell me like this.
    You are a Jew.
    And you make--
    Oh, he go mad.
    They go mad.
    They come to me.
    Everybody do like I say.
    Look, if somebody going to do to you, how you going to feel?
    I work over there, by Bobbie Brooks, till 1966.
    And then you went?
    1966 Bobbie Brooks, I sweep the floor.
    And I maked, over there, when I leave the place,
    by Bobbie Brooks, maybe I make $1.50 an hour, $1.45, $1.50,
    something like that.
    I was working overtime.
    If they give me, I was happy.
    And I never take vacation.
    Always ask to work for the vacation.
    I want to work, so they give me the money.
    But I start to save little bit money.
    And from this money, what we make,
    I used to go on the market to buy food, everything.
    We no go in the restaurants, never.
    Never, just my wife cook in the house.
    And just we buy food and we cook and we eat, the kids.
    We never no go to restaurants, no.
    So anyway, I work over there.
    And we saved some money.
    And in the rent?
    So meantime, Mr Rosenberg come back from Florida.
    I have to give him back the rooms, or we look apartment.
    We go rent rooms.
    They no want to rent me rooms, because I
    have kids, three kids.
    Nobody want to rent me.
    Finally, [PLACE NAME] Boulevard, in apartment,
    fine apartment over there.
    They give the rooms-- very good man, very good man.
    He was very good to us.
    He say you got to pay him $100.
    The other people pay him $130.
    He say, you pay me $100.
    And we start to save a little bit money.
    I live over there at first 1966.
    I live over there.
    And the guy, the Jewish guy, he sold the house, the building.
    And a German guy, he buy the building from him.
    So he no want Jewish people, over there, in the building.
    So what he do?
    He no say he no want Jewish people.
    He cannot say that.
    What he did?
    He sent me in, he went to $250 a month
    should I pay him-- more than double what I pay.
    I cannot.
    I cannot pay so much.
    What to do?
    We go look for rooms?
    We come on Glenmont.
    You know, Glenmont, Mayfield and Coventry,
    Mayfield and Superior.
    I find a two-family over there.
    The guy lived downstairs.
    And upstairs, they rent me the room.
    And they tell me, they give us a day
    where to wash the clothes in the basement, to wash the clothes.
    I used to wash the clothes in the basement.
    My wife was tired.
    She come home with the kids, you know, and to cook.
    So I washed the clothes.
    I used to do that--
    not today.
    So anyway, these people, they make us miserable the life.
    If you walk, no good.
    If you stay, no good.
    I woke up every day, 5:30 in the morning.
    I start to work 6 o'clock.
    I walk with no shoes, so they no listen.
    Anything you do was no good.
    OK.
    And then they let me wash the clothes in the basement.
    They make miserable, the [INAUDIBLE]..
    I say to my wife, we have to buy a house.
    We cannot live.
    Other people no want to give us rent a house.
    We was already saved, in this time, about $4,000.
    We have in the bank about $4,000 saved.
    Every penny we could, we saved.
    So we started to look for a house.
    Take about six months.
    We looked.
    We looked.
    Too much money, all over.
    Find out, we come on Bushnell.
    I looked at a house.
    It said $21,000 they want for the house.
    And make out the papers.
    He say, you have to pay $1,000.
    Not a down payment, just when you make the papers?
    A deposit.
    Deposit.
    I had to go in the bank.
    And I had nothing--
    checking, nothing, I didn't know nothing about this.
    I go in the bank, make a check, and give him $1,000.
    He go to the man from the house.
    The man was in an old home, already, an old man.
    And I give an offer, $18,000.
    They want $21,000, and I $18,000.
    We go over there.
    The guy want-- he go down to $20,000.
    He come back to me.
    And I think they no want.
    The lawyer already had the house.
    The old man, he give to the lawyer.
    And the lawyer say, that's it, $20,000.
    You cannot buy less.
    So OK, no, buy the house.
    I go to the bank.
    The bank no want to give me the money.
    I go to Cleveland Ross.
    I go to Shaker Savings.
    I go Ohio Savings.
    Of course, I no had credit, because I never bought nothing.
    I no had credit.
    And I no had-- and they say, how much money I make in
    that time is not enough.
    I will not be able to pay, because I have three kids.
    He go with me, the guy, Mr Levine.
    The real estate, he go with me to Central National Bank,
    on Coventry, I believe.
    He go with me to the manager.
    He was a very good guy.
    He say.
    He explained to him.
    He say, look, he paying rent where he live.
    He going pay you, too.
    Why he no going to pay?
    He asked me how much money I can pay?
    I say, I got $4,000.
    He say, you need $5,000 to make a down payment.
    And you can get a mortgage, $15,000, for 20 years.
    $4,000?
    What to do?
    I need $1,000.
    I explained to one good friend of mine.
    I told him.
    I tell him.
    I now go to my one friend.
    Never going to forget him.
    And I tell him the story.
    I want buy a house.
    And the bank say, I have to pay $5,000.
    And I no got.
    I got $4,000.
    Next morning, he bring me $1,000 cash in the house, his wife.
    No papers, no nothing.
    No ask me nothing.
    He give me the $1,000.
    I make the down payment for the house.
    And I moved in the house.
    Yes.
    And it's a lovely house.
    You see, I moved in the house.
    But I want to tell you, nobody helped me, nothing.
    I had help from nobody just this man what he--
    This friend.
    But I pay him back the money.
    I paying debts, you Know I don't make him a favor,
    I pay him back.
    He make me a favor.
    He give me the money.
    But he was good for me.
    The other way, nobody helped me nothing.
    No one helped you?
    Nobody, no family, no Jewish Welfare, not one cent, nothing,
    myself, my hands, but I was working.
    That's are the hand, my hand.
    Do you ever talk about the Holocaust, now, to people?
    Do you find that you tell them your experiences?
    I tell you the true, I no got the who to talk about this.
    And people, they no want to listen about this.
    If I come together, they're survivors, too.
    Sometime, if I come together--
    I have, in Cleveland, people, we was together in the camp.
    We come.
    In this week, one guy come to my house.
    We start to mention.
    We were sitting over there.
    And we looked.
    The guy was die.
    He was talking over there.
    And other people were dying, sit and die.
    Sit and die.
    And the graves was open.
    We was dropping the bodies in the graves,
    like this, every time.
    That's what we talking, when we come together, like this.
    We still talking like this, the survivors.
    We still talking about it.
    Did you talk to your family about it?
    I talk all the time to my family.
    All the time, I talk.
    When I come together with my kids, I talking all the time.
    I mention.
    I never going forget one minute.
    I cannot sleep in the night.
    And I have one night since I survive, from the labor camp,
    from the concentration camp, so I can sleep through the night.
    Every night, I'm fighting with the Germans.
    Every night, I see that the machine guns from my eyes.
    I seeing how they killing the people, how
    the people fall in the graves, how they shoot them
    in the head.
    I got from my eye.
    And when I go eat or when I go sleep or when I go to a wedding
    or when I go to party, all the time I got this in my eyes,
    from my mind.
    It's never going away from my mind.
    And when I sleep or when I eat or when I talk to you
    or when I talk to my wife, to my kids, that's, all the time,
    in my mind.
    Never going away from my mind.
    You will never know how I could be alive.
    How can you forget it?
    Can you forget what I saw, in all of those years,
    in all of this time, what they did to people, to babies, just
    because they were Jewish people?
    Just one reason why-- they was Jews.
    And I am a Jew.
    What I saw, who can you tell?
    Nobody going to believe you.
    And see lots of people, today, they say,
    no happen, never, no happen.
    Is that why you've decided to tell your story?
    That's what I try.
    I will be happy to tell more in other places.
    If people want to listen, I'll go all over to say,
    should people know what happened.
    If I not going be here, should people know what
    happened to our Jewish people.
    Why they kill them?
    Why?
    Because they were Jews.
    That's the one reason.
    Not other reason, no other reason, just
    they going to liquidate all the Jewish people.
    That was the reason.
    That's the reason why I'm ready to go
    to tell any place, all over the world, no matter different.
    Should people know what happened.
    Plenty graves that I saw, where they buried.
    Nobody survived.
    I know.
    How do you feel, as a Jew, in this country?
    I feel very good.
    I'm very happy in this country as a Jew.
    It's a free country.
    You can go in any temple you want.
    You can send your kids and any Jew.
    My kids, they was in Jewish school.
    They grow up in the Hebrew Academy
    and other Jewish school.
    My kids, there are Jewish teachers,
    there are English teacher.
    My daughter finished John Kennedy University.
    She finished the Orthodox Hebrew Academy, Yavne teacher
    seminar--
    no matter.
    In this country, not like Russia.
    Russia, you cannot send your kids in a Jewish school.
    Here, in America, you are a free man.
    A Jew is free, can go anywhere you want.
    You can send your kids.
    They can grow up.
    They can be rabbis.
    They can be doctors.
    They can be engineers, professors, everything.
    I feel very happy, here, in this country.
    I like this country.
    I'm very proud of this country.
    I thank, every day, this country,
    what they give me my life, they liberated me,
    and all the Jewish people what they liberated
    from the concentration camp.
    But this America, should God bless this country.
    And Israel, should God bless them.
    I want to thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
    I know it's not an easy thing to talk about.
    And we really appreciate it.
    I have to.
    It's not easy for me.
    I go home.
    I going lay down all day.
    I mean, I have a headache.
    But I have to say this, for the future,
    so people know what happened.
    Somebody have to say this.
    Thank you.
    And everybody, all the people what they survived,
    they should say what happened.
    It's not easy.
    It's very, very difficult. That's
    what I told you, just like one drop in the ocean.
    It's nothing yeah.
    Thank you.
    We've been talking with Mr Leon Faigenbaum
    I thank you very much, that you listen to me
    and that you ask me the question.
    I'm very happy that you listen to me.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Leon Faigenbaum, born in Gniewoszow, Poland in 1917 describes his life before the war; being taken to a labor camp near Radom; his father being buried alive when he was too ill to work; running away to rejoin his family in the Gniewoszow ghetto; being forced out of the ghetto in early 1942 and going to Zwoleń; being sent to labor camps in Deblin and Stawisk; getting caught while attempting to run away; being taken to Budzyn labor camp, run by SS Feix and a Jewish leader, Stockman; being saved by Stockman when Feix was about to kill him; being sent to Majdanek; being saved in December 1943 by the person overseeing the shoe makers when other Jews were gunned down at the edge of an open grave; being taken to Płaszów concentration camp, led by Göth; receiving daily beatings by non-Jewish Kapos; being sent towards Auschwitz in August 1944 but the train was sent onward to Mauthausen, a journey of eight days without food; surviving another selection and being put to work mining stones; volunteering to work as a toolmaker in St. Valentin, Austria, where an Austrian manager saved him by teaching him the skills he lacked; being moved to Ebensee in 1945 after US bombers destroyed the factory; being beaten so badly he could no longer work and then placed in a barrack with men waiting to die; witnessing cannibalism; being rescued by US forces in May 1945; spending six months in a nearby hospital; living in a displaced persons camp before returning to his hometown to search for relatives; fleeing to Łódź, Poland after being warned by an old friend that Poles would kill any Jews who remained; returning to Austria where he stayed at a DP camp in Linz, Austria; marrying his wife, a woman he knew from before the war; going to Palestine in 1947 with the help of the Haganah; serving in the Israeli Army and then working as a shoemaker; and immigrating to the US in 1959 so that his wife could be reunited with a brother and sister living in Cleveland, OH.
    Interviewee
    Leon Faigenbaum
    Interviewer
    Marilyn Goodman
    Date
    interview:  1984 August 02
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 videocassettes (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Faigenbaum, Leon.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview was acquired by the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 from the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:11:21
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505008

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    Also in Oral history interviews of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section Holocaust Archive Project

    The interviews document the experiences of 136 Holocaust survivors, Righteous Gentiles, and former concentration camp liberators from the Cleveland, Ohio, area.

    Date: 1984-1985

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    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

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    Oral history interview with Emerson Batdorff

    Oral History

    Emerson Batdorff describes being drafted into the American Army on May 18, 1942; being classified as “limited service” due to his health problems, but eventually being accepted to Officer Candidate's School; being sent overseas in 1943 as a member of the 103rd Division, 41st Infantry Regiment; being assigned to Casablanca, Morocco, where he became an instructor in a leadership and battle training school; experiencing battle for the first time in 1944 when his unit landed at Naples, Italy; being shot in the leg and spending a short time in a hospital; rejoining his unit in time to enter southern France one hour after the main Allied invasion; his unit going through Alsace and Strasbourg, and then into Germany; not actively participating in battle; being assigned to the 15th Corps' historical section; arriving at Dachau one day after it was liberated and staying for four hours; seeing a transport train filled with dead concentration camp inmates; his current life and retiring from his position as entertainment editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer; living in Cleveland Heights, OH; and his son, stepson, and stepdaughter.

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

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    Estelle Beder, born in Lutsk, Poland (Ukraine), describes her father, who was a tailor, and her mother, who sold hand-made clothes from a covered wagon; her two brothers and one sister; her family struggling financially; the German invasion and the restrictions imposed including curfews and mandatory armbands; the sexual abuse and fear during that time; the creation of a ghetto in 1942 and her family suffering terribly; her father being very ill and still sewing; helping her family by delivering clothes and procuring food; acts of great cruelty to the Jews while in the ghetto; her father being beaten and her brother being killed in public; she and her sister being separated from the family and sent to the Łódź ghetto, where they were treated very poorly; remaining in Łódź until 1944 when they were transported to Auschwitz; the great physical and mental cruelty at Auschwitz; being selected with her sister for death in the gas chambers, but the Germans ran out of their supply of gas; being sent with her sister to work in an ammunition factory for a short period, where they received better treatment; being moved from place to place without reason; passing through Bergen-Belsen and walking on thousands of skeletons, wondering if her family was among them; being selected with her sister to be exchanged for German soldiers in Sweden; enduring a perilous trip to Sweden and being nursed back to some normalcy; her entire family, except her sister, dying during the war; her cousin in the United States arranging for she and her sister to live in New York City; marrying another survivor, Sam Beder; having three sons and moving to Cleveland, OH, where she has enjoyed a peaceful life in a community of other survivors; still suffering from the physical and emotional effects of the Holocaust; and being thankful for her family and her community.

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral History

    Adam Beer, born in Liptovsky Mikulas, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes his conservative Jewish family; his older sister, Gabriela, and his younger brother, Otto; his mother dying when he was very young and his father remarrying within a year of her death; his father owning a business in electrical contracting; the cultural amenities in Liptovsky Mikulas; the active Jewish community; the Slovaks separating from the Czechs in 1938; Tiso coming to power in 1939; finishing school in 1940 and problems for Jews beginning soon after; the restrictions placed on Jews; his grandmother being deported to Poland on April 2, 1942; his father losing his business in 1940 and preparing an emergency bunker in the mountains outside the town; partisans attacking the town and killing several Germans on August 28, 1944; his family and other families escaping to the bunker in the mountains; the Gestapo finding the bunker on December 15, 1944 and destroying it; his younger brother running away; building a second bunker; Russians finding them and taking them back to Liptovsky Mikulas; his family finding his brother hidden with a family; going to Bratislava, Slovakia to begin medical school; communists taking over the country in 1948; deciding to leave rather than finish his studies; going to Cleveland, OH with his fiancée; finishing medical school; opening a medical practice in Cleveland; and his wife and two children.

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral History

    Susan Beer, born on May 14, 1924 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in Topolčany, Slovakia, describes being an only child of a physician; the family being very comfortable and Orthodox; the good relations between the Jews and the Gentile community; attending a Jewish public school and a gymnasium, hoping eventually to become a doctor; her studies being interrupted when the civil war broke out; Slovakia becoming independent and allied to Germany; the restrictions placed on Jews; her father being forbidden to practice medicine; her father arranging for her to be smuggled into Hungary, where she stayed with relatives; her parents later joining her; her father passing as a Gentile and being caught by the police; her father escaping the police and making plans for the family to Partisan-held Czechoslovakia; the family being arrested and held in a jail for three weeks; being deported to Auschwitz, and classified as political prisoners; her father working in the camp hospital; being sent with her mother to the "model camp," which was organized for the Red Cross inspectors who occasionally toured the camp; the evacuation of Auschwitz and being sent on a death march; being taken with her mother to Ravensbrück, where she worked as a camp translator; Ravensbrück being evacuated and being sent to a camp deeper in Germany, attached to a camp filled with French prisoners-of-war; the German guards running away and the French prisoners cutting the wires enclosing the camp; the prisoners discovered stockpiles of food; going to the nearby town; going with her mother to Bratislava, Slovakia, where a man recognized them in the street and told them that Susan's father was in Budapest; remaining in Budapest for a year; finishing her studies at the gymnasium; returning to Topolcany; beginning medical school in Bratislava; her family being anxious to leave Europe; going to Williamsburg, New York with her fiancé; moving to Cleveland, OH; her husband’s podiatry office; and their two children.

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

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    Sidonia Benedek, born in 1924 in Caraseu, Rumania in the region of Transylvania, describes her large, religious family; her father’s role as the spiritual leader of the community; her happy childhood, having many friends, and doing well in school; her family supporting themselves through a small family farm and being very well-respected by both Jews and gentiles; first seeing antisemitism when Jews in Bucharest, Romania, were killed in 1937; the lack of physically-threatening antisemitism in Caraseu; her teachers having to fight for her status as class valedictorian; the fear and sadness in the Caraseu Jewish community; Germany's influence in the region growing and the Jews suffering the loss of rights and privileges; her family being split up and deported in 1944; the deportation of her brother and brother-in-law to work camps (her brother-in-law survived and her brother did not); the deportation of others to a ghetto in Szatmar (Satu Mare, Romania); her family being transported after five weeks to Auschwitz; her parents, two sisters, and her sisters’ children being killed immediately; surviving the camps along with her younger sister and younger brother; another brother dying in a forced labor camp in Russia; being sent to work in Stutthof, and then to Prost to build an airport; being evacuated in a two-week march during January 1945; escaping with her sister and being liberated by the Russian Army; returning home and reuniting with her brother; reuniting with a childhood friend, Les Benedek, whom she married in September 1945; her brother-in-law (who survived the forced labor camp) moving to New York; her younger brother, Martin Lax, who left Romania in 1946 and lived in Austria for several years before moving to the United States (Cleveland, Ohio) in 1949; leaving Romania in 1965 with her husband and three children (Aliz Benedek, Michael Benedek, and Vera Benedek); and settling in Cleveland.

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

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    Alice Ben-Hurin, born in Hungary (along the Danube between Budapest and Vienna, Austria), describes being the youngest of three children; her father working in the import-export business and her mother assisting him with the bookkeeping; her prosperous family; how education was very important to the family and several cousins stayed with them while attending school in the city; finishing high school in 1939; the German takeover and her father being temporarily arrested; working for the local Jewish committee with her older sister; her brother joining the army and disappearing in 1942; trying to persuade her family to escape from Hungary; being sent to the ghetto with her family the day after her brother returned; being sent to an old army post with Jews from the city and the surrounding countryside; her brother returning to the army and being the only survivor of the massacre of his unit; being deported to Auschwitz; the immediate killing of her family except for herself, her cousin, and her sister; being sent to Dresden, Germany, where she worked in a munitions factory; being evacuated in a march to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by American and British troops along the way; working for the Red Cross for a short time; going to Austria with a friend's brother who worked for the US Army; working as a high school teacher in Philadelphia, PA after coming to the US; living in Cleveland, OH; and her three children and three grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

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    Joseph Benson, born in Strasin in the Northern Bohemian section of Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes his German mother and Czech father; having a happy life on a farm with his family and receiving a strong Catholic education; acquiring a love for aviation early in life; being a teenager when the Germans occupied the Sudentenland; being loyal to the Czech ideals and people at that time; becoming involved in anti-German activities; joining the underground movement when he turned 18; being smuggled to England to join the Czech Army in exile; eagerly volunteering for intensive combat flight training and mastering all facets in a short time; his plane being shot down over Germany during an early combat mission; being discovered by the Gestapo and imprisoned for interrogation; suffering torture and imprisonment in Nuremberg, Selenstrausse, and Stadelheim prisons; being in isolation for a great deal of the time; refusing to divulge any information; being transferred first to Dachau and then to Buchenwald; performing labor in aircraft component factories; being transferred to Schoenbeck and escaping with a friend to the American lines; his methods for survival; being a strong believer in personal freedoms; and lecturing to youths about the dangers of totalitarian governments.

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral History

    Jack Biegelman, born in Łódź, Poland in 1930, describes being part of a large family, where music was the major vocational and recreational focus; being a young boy when the Germans invaded Poland; the turmoil and the powerful images of the German military force; life in the ghetto; doing forced labor; being transported with his family to Auschwitz in 1944; the death of his mother and younger brother; his father surviving several months, but dying from illness; enduring the horrors, starvation, and work at Auschwitz; being transferred to Glechamberg camp, where he was liberated by the Russians; returning to Łódź; living with an uncle in Germany; going to the United States and, with the aid of Jewish organization, being placed in the home of a retired school teacher; his studies in music; enlisting in the Air Force during the Korean War; getting married and having three children; his life in Cleveland, OH; and his commitment to Jewish organizations, especially those dealing with education and commemoration of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

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    Leah Binstock, born in Jaroslaw, Poland, describes the prevalence of antisemitism before the war; the large and active Jewish community; her parents’ candy factory; her sister; her family being very religious; attending a private Jewish school; belonging to a Zionist organization and hoping to someday go to Palestine; being 14 years old when the Germans invaded; the anti-Jewish measures; all the Jews in Jaroslaw being forced to move to Krakow, Poland; escaping with her sister and going to a work camp for Polish women; assuming the identity of two Ukrainian girls they befriended on a train; living as Christians in Terezin, Poland, where they worked for the telephone company; her sister learning to speak German and getting a better job; being denounced to the Gestapo by their co-workers; being deported to Auschwitz in February 1943; being evacuated on foot with the other prisoners; escaping on the second night with four others; being hidden by a priest for several days until the war officially ended in May 1945; returning to Jaroslaw with her sister; learning that their parents died in the Krakow ghetto; moving to Germany, where they opened a grocery business; meeting her husband through a girl she knew in Auschwitz; registering with a Zionist organization that helped refugees immigrate to the United States; settling in St. Louis, MO; moving to Cleveland, OH after experiencing antisemitism in St. Louis; living in Mayfield Heights, OH; working for her husband's business; and her three children and four grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

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    Oral History

    Elias Cala, born in Dobrzyn (Golub-Dobrzyń), Poland, describes the Jewish population in the area; being the third of five children in a close, loving family; his father being extremely religious; the lack of anti-Semitism in Dobrzyn prior to 1934; working at a cousin’s shoe store in Łódź, Poland in 1936 when he was 16 years old; his father’s death in 1938; being drafted into the army in 1939; his unit being on the German boarder when Germany invaded; a fierce battle lasting several days; his unit being taken prisoner by the Germans; the Jews being immediately separated from the rest of the unit and pretending he was a gentile with the help of his fellow soldiers; the non-Jewish prisoners being released soon after their capture; staying with his cousin in Łódź; going to Dobrzyn, where the Germans were persecuting Jews; being expelled from Dobrzyn; settling in a town near the Russian border with his aunt and uncle and their children; getting married; being deported to a camp at Dzialdowo, and then sent to a ghetto in Piotrkov; escaping with his wife and going to Warsaw, Poland; going to Nalewaj, where they found his wife's family; working on a road crew, but getting sick and being hospitalized; being badly burned during a fire; his wife giving birth to a daughter; being deported to Auschwitz; being separated from his wife and baby; being sent to an I.G. Farben factory; the bombing of the factory; being evacuated and forced to move from camp to camp; going to Mauthausen and Oranienburg; being left at Flossenbürg; being transferred to a work-camp near Stuttgart, Germany; being evacuated from Stuttgart and traveling again from camp to camp; hiding in a haystack with 21 others; being discovered and many of them being shot; surviving and being taken in by villagers and given food and clothing; being liberated by the Americans on May 1, 1945; remaining in Germany, where he got married again; moving to the US in March 1949; living in Beachwood, Ohio; and his five children.

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral History

    Vincent Cochrane, born in 1919 in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, describes enlisting in the US Army in 1937 and serving until 1950; serving in Germany from 1944 to 1945; being a captain and commanding a medium tank company; being present at the liberation of three concentration camps in Ahlen near Hannover, Gardelegen, and Salzwedel; his unit only staying about an hour until back-up units and medical units arrived; how it took a while for the liberators to realize what they were seeing; becoming an operating engineer after his service; being the on the security staff of Cuyahoga County, OH; feeling that his experience in the war may have helped him become more sensitive person; and wanting to be interviewed to help make sure the Holocaust is never forgotten.

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral History

    W. Louis Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes having a younger sister, born in 1927 as well as an older brother; his father, Waldemar, who was an attorney with the German government; his father working from 1925 to 1931 in the German embassy in Nice, France; his mother, Lottie Epstein, who came from a prosperous family; his family moving to the outskirts of Berlin in 1937; being assimilated into German life and belonging to a Reform congregation; attending elementary school from 1931 to 1935 without problems and attending gymnasium from 1935 to 1938; being kicked out of school in November 1938 and attending an improvised Jewish school; antisemitism increasing; the deportation of men to concentration camps; his brother going to the US; being sent on December 10, 1938 with his 11-year-old sister and his ten-year-old cousin on a train to Holland, where his cousin's grandmother lived; missing the train and being sent to a refugee camp for two to three months, then a children’s home, and then to a camp near Utrecht; his mother finding then in May 1939 and taking them to Brussels, Belgium; attending school in Brussels for a year; being arrested by Belgian police in 1940; being sent to Paris, France then moved from camp to camp; finding his father in Gurs concentration camp; working in the censorship office at Gurs and being able to smuggle news out; getting caught smuggling letters; being deported to Mauthausen and escaping with some other young men in August 1942; going through France to Spain; being sent from Barcelona to Africa for basic training; going to England where he was trained in counter-espionage by the Office of Strategic Services; being assigned him to parachute into France and blow up wheels in a German motor pool; completing his task and searching for his sister and parents; finding his sister in a convent under the false name Elise Carpentier; returning to England and receiving further training from the US Army 82nd Airborne Division; parachuting into France on D-Day and being wounded on the beachhead; staying in a hospital for three days; fighting with the Allies in Northern France, Holland, and accompanying them into Berlin; going to his family's apartment building, which had been bombed and finding his family’s possessions, which were buried in the yard; losing all his family except his sister and his uncle’s family; going to Palestine, where he worked on a kibbutz and helped train the Haganah; having special status because he was a captain in the US Army and becoming a US citizen; going to Cleveland, OH in 1947 and attending college to become an engineer; marrying Lottie Wolff in 1951; believing he survived because he worked hard and took care of himself; receiving help from Quakers in Spain and counseling from Catholic chaplains during the war; and missing out on his youth but feeling that perhaps he learned something from the experience.

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral History

    Peppi Dekker (née Chajes), born in Apeldoorn, Holland, describes having a twin sister; her parents’ successful textile business; attending public school until the war began; Germany invading Holland and being forced one year later to attend the local Jewish school; her family escaping the first roundup of Jews in May 1942; her family being deported the following September; being sent with her sister, mother, and grandfather to Westerbork, where they found her father; her father becoming a "law and order officer" at Westerbork and the family acquiring special status; being sent in 1944 to Bergen-Belsen with a transport of Dutch orphans; staying at Bergen-Belsen for two years; being sick often; her mother’s strength and determination to survive and maintain the family's dignity; her mother’s cleaning job outside the camp; her mother being beaten and sexually assaulted; being evacuated from the camp and sent by train to Elba; being liberated by the Russian Army; her family being given a home which had been occupied by a German officer; moving to the American zone after several incidents with Russian soldiers; returning to Holland; receiving reparations from the Dutch government; her father sending she and her sister in 1957 to the United States, where they stayed with her father's brother and his wife; getting married and moving with her husband to Chicago, New Jersey, and then to Cleveland; living in Strongsville, Ohio; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

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    Maury Feren describes being a member of the 2nd Infantry Division, 5th Division, Medical Detachment from 1943 until 1945; his unit being located near Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in early May 1945 when they suddenly came upon 75 emaciated, dying women between the ages of 20 and 35; how these women had been among a group of 500 who had started on a death march from Auschwitz and most had died along the way; the horror and pain of discovering human beings in such a state of suffering; how the army tried to help these women medically and emotionally in their struggle for recovery; being moved and disturbed by his role as liberator; and feeling heartened by the courage and devotion of those who tried to help the survivors.

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral History

    Simon Fixler describes being one of 16 children, born to a prosperous family in Kelca, Czechoslovakia; his happy childhood, with religious freedom and no sense of antisemitism; the introduction of antisemitism with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Hungarians; the anti-Jewish atmosphere escalating; the Jews being forced to perform menial work in labor camps; evading conscription to the labor camps for a year and a half; being discovered by the government and sent to a parachute factory; getting married in 1943 and being able to see his wife after the work days; being sent in November 1944 to a more severe forced labor camp in one of Eichmannfs last transports; enduring terrible working conditions and witnessing mass murders and atrocities at the labor camp; being transferred to the concentration camp at Mauthausen in April 1945; he and his brother supporting each other physically and emotionally throughout this horrible ordeal; being liberated by the Americans in May 1945; wandering through the countryside with his brother; seeking the aid of the Jewish Federation in Prague, Czech Republic; moving to Budapest, Hungary, where they reunited with the six other surviving family members; moving with his wife to Germany, where they remained for three years; being selected for sponsorship to Cleveland, OH by a knitting mill; having several knitting jobs and building his life in the US; becoming interested in Jewish fund raising and Holocaust memorial activities; enjoying the freedoms of the US; believing that it is his duty to share his experiences; and believing the best investment in the future of Judaism is education.

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral History

    Herman Frank, born in Łódź, Poland, describes being the only child of a well-to-do family in the textile and fur business; having an active and happy childhood, attending concerts and the theater and vacationing abroad; the antisemitism in Łódź; his father’s death before the war and deciding not to emigrate; the German invasion; his mother’s preparations for the war; being moved to the ghetto; his mother’s death in 1942 when he was 17 years old; attending a textile engineering school in the ghetto; his various jobs in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto and the deportations to Auschwitz; being transferred to Gleiwitz; being evacuated in January 1945; escaping but being captured and sent to Gross-Rosen; being propositioned sexually by the camp commander; being evacuated to Buchenwald; being moved a few weeks later to Berga-an-Elste; being assigned to work in the kitchen because of an injury and getting more food; the evacuation of the camp and escaping with his friends; convincing SS that they were Polish civilians; how after liberation he went to the American zone in Weiden, Germany, and worked for the US Army; marrying another Polish survivor in Germany; the birth of their first son in Germany; his wife’s aunt sponsoring their entry into the US in 1949; the difficultly of adjusting to life in the US; owning his own carpet cleaning business; living in Pepper Pike, Ohio; and his two sons and two grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral History

    Helen Fried (born circa 1926) describes being the third of ten children in a large, orthodox family in Hust, Czechoslovakia (Khust, Ukraine); the Jewish community of Hust; her mother supporting the family by running a leather store, while her father was a Torah schlar; her grandparents living in an adjoining house and helping to raise the children; her family having good relations with their gentile neighbors; the start of the war and her family losing their store; the Hungarian invasion of Hust; the store being returned to her family under the Hungarian occupation and living a relatively good life; anti-Jewish measures being imposed when the Germans were in control again; the creation of the ghetto in 1943 and the deportation soon after to Auschwitz; her parents, four brothers, and one of her sisters being killed immediately; remaining in Auschwitz with her four sisters until late 1944 when they were sent to work on a farm; being evacuated and forced to march; escaping with her sisters and taking the identity of Polish maids who had worked for the German army; maintaining their identities until liberation but being separated; going to work in a factory with 60 Russian women; being liberated before the official end of the war by Russian soldiers; reuniting with several cousins and her sister in Dobrzyn, Poland; going to Prague, Czech Republic; living in a displaced persons camp in Leipheim, Germany to wait for a visa to the United States; marrying a man she met in Budapest, Hungary; going to the US in 1949; settling in New York, NY; the Joint Distribution Committee helping them find a place to live and a job for her husband; moving to Cleveland, OH; not telling her son about her Holocaust experiences; her feelings about Judaism; the effects of the Holocaust on her life; and her thoughts on why she survived.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral History

    Marcel Friedman describes having a comfortable childhood with his family in Presov, Slovakia; his numerous non-Jewish friends; having a religious home life; his educational and recreational interests; being denied admission to the University of Bratislava in 1939 due to a Jewish quota; deciding to go to Palestine, as he had been an active Zionist; beginning his journey to Israel in 1940 and encountering political problems, a shipwreck, and bombings; being interned on the island of Rhodes in a tent camp; being moved to a camp in Southern Italy; being treated fairly well during his internment; being liberated by the British in 1943; joining the Czech Army and being part of the weather department; being transferred back to Czechoslovakia, where he was reunited with his brother and sister in 1945; his parents' fate in the concentration camps; being recruited for Palestine in 1948; joining the Israeli Army and serving in the weather service; determining that life was too difficult in Israel in 1953 and moving to the United States; his American family members sponsoring and financially aiding he and his wife and child; working in a travel agency in the US; joining a synagogue and becoming active in Jewish activities; believing his luck, personality, and religion contributed to his survival; his belief that survivors have a responsibility to make others aware of their experiences; still feeling some bitterness; and his interests in learning more about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral History

    Ann Frum, born in 1925 in Zdunska Vola, Poland, describes her Orthodox Jewish family; experiencing antisemitism before the war, but enjoying a fairly stable, carefree childhood; the German invasion and fleeing for safety; being forced to live in a ghetto in her small town; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and being sent to the large ghetto in Łódź, Poland; the terrible living conditions during her transport and her internment in the ghetto; being sent to work in a munitions factory in Czestochowa, where she met the man she later married; being transferred to a concentration camp in Ravensburg, Germany, where she was forced to dig trenches for the burial of other Jews; being sent to Bergau (Burgau) and Turkine (Türkheim), smaller concentration camps, where she again was forced to work amid horrible conditions; being liberated at Allach, near Dachau, by the Americans on May 1, 1945; reuniting with her future husband and getting married in 1946; going to the US in 1951 and settling in New Jersey; moving to Cleveland, OH; having three children, and creating an extended family of close friends in the Cleveland Jewish community; and her belief that it is essential that survivors tell others of their experiences.

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral History

    Jack Gildar, born in Tarnowa, Poland, describes his the strong Jewish community in his town; his close, loving family; his father’s death; going at the age of nine to attend school in Lomza; becoming an apprentice carpenter; antisemitism in Tarnowa; working in a town near the German border when the war began; returning home and discovering that Tarnowa had been bombed; the Russian occupation; the German occupation beginning in 1941; being sent to a ghetto in 1942 in Lomza; being sent to a camp in Zembrov (Zambrów); being sent with his family to Auschwitz; being separated in Auschwitz and never seeing his family again; being sent to Birkenau, then to another section of Auschwitz, where he worked in an SS hospital; being able to trade for extra food, medicine, and items such as soap and razor blades because of his work; sharing much of his good fortune with others, sending food and medicine to friends and cousins in other parts of the camp; remaining relatively strong and healthy; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and being walked for four days to the Czech border, where they boarded trains for transport to Mauthausen; volunteering for a transfer to Ebensee; being liberated by the American Army; spending June through November after liberation in an abandoned lake house in Austria; going to Germany, where he lived on a kibbutz in Landsburg; the closing of the kibbutz in 1949 and discovering relatives in Cleveland, OH; going to Cleveland in June 1949; living in Beachwood, OH and his work as a butcher; his wife Sara, who is also a Holocaust survivor; and their two children, Rochelle and David.

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral History

    Ileen Koslov Green (née Chaia Koslovsky), born on September 23, 1926 in Holsczaly, Poland (near Vilnius, Lithuania), describes being the middle child of three daughters in an orthodox Jewish family; her father owning a dry goods store and the family living in 13 rooms located behind the store; living with her parents, sisters, grandmother, aunt, and cousin; her father leaving in 1938 to live with his brother in Cleveland, OH; the family planning to follow her father later but their plans being interrupted by the war; the Russian occupation, during which the family's store was closed; surviving by trading merchandise for food with local farmers; the German occupation in 1941; being sent with her mother and sisters to a ghetto; Gentile friends supplying Jews in the ghetto with food; being sent to a labor camp in Lithuania soon after her sister was sent there; her work building streets; her mother and other sister arriving in the camp a year later; being sent to Dunjeje in Estonia, and then to Kaiserwald in Lithuania in 1943; going to Stutthof and life there; being beaten for stealing food; volunteering for farm work; being sent to Dresden, Germany, where she and her older sister worked in an ammunition factory; the bombing of the factory and being forced to march to Prague, Czech Republic; being liberated by French and Russian soldiers; returning home; going to Fahrenwart displaced persons camp and contacting her father in the US; immigrating to the US in 1948; living in South Euclid, OH; and her son, daughter, and five grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral History

    Philip Green describes his Orthodox family; his older sister and younger sister; the vandalizaton and boycotts of his family’s dried-goods store; being 14 years old when his family moved from their small Polish town to Łódź, Poland; the creation of the ghetto in 1939 and moving there soon after with his family; he and his sisters being forced to work in factories; his father dying after being attacked by the Gestapo in his home; surviving in the ghetto with his mother and sisters until 1944; returning home from a food search one day to find a note saying that his family was taken; surrendering himself and being taken to Auschwitz; being transferred to Braunschweig, a truck factory, where he worked under deplorable conditions and near-starvation for over eight months; being moved to the Hermann Goehringwerke airplane factory for a month's work; being transferred to Ravensbrück; being moved around until the Russians liberated Philip and his group of near-dying men on May 5, 1945 near Ludwigslust, Germany; being taken to a hospital for treatment and slowly began to recover their health and their lives; trying to locate his family in Łódź and finding no one; going to Munich, Germany, where he joined a displaced persons camp, and later worked in the office of an American aid organization; meeting his future wife, also a survivor, and going to the United States in 1948; getting married in 1951; working for a plumbing supply company; his daughter and son; and how he is a strong supporter of Israel.

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral History

    Ervin Heksh, born in a village 60 km northwest of Budapest, Hungary, describes how there were few Jewish families in his village; having a happy and active childhood; not being able to attend a university and going to yeshiva instead; entering his father’s grain business; the rise in antisemitism after 1935; his father being forced to take on a partner; the deportation of many Jews and his near deportation because he bought a house that a Hungarian gendarme wanted to buy; being sent to a forced labor camp in Crimea, Ukraine in 1942; witnessing many instances of brutality; being transferred to Belopolye, Ukraine in October 1942; working through a harsh winter, which few of the men survived; the cruel commander; a group of Italian prisoners joining his unit in Belopolye and the kindness they showed to Jewish prisoners; working at a hospital in the Bryansk forest; returning home that summer, where he found his family and his son, who had been born while he was in Russia; working for a while as a traveling salesman; the creation of the ghetto in Budapest, where his parents, wife, and son were confined; working in a mine; he and some friends being arrested and placed in the ghetto when they were caught sneaking in to visit their families; being taken out of the ghetto to work; being arrested and sent to a labor camp, which he escaped; finding his wife and child in a Red Cross community; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; hearing rumors that they would be sent to Switzerland as part of a special exchange; being evacuated to Theresienstadt in April 1945; their train being stopped between stations and the SS guards abandoning them; being liberated the next day; spending time in Hildenheim, Germany; returning to Budapest; learning that his parents died at Auschwitz and his wife died at Bergen-Belsen after liberation; finding his son in Budapest, living with his wife's parents; his son dying from illness when he was two years old; secretly crossing the border into Germany and living in several refugee camps; working for the UNRRA; eventually remarrying; going to the US in 1948; working at a plumbing supply company; his son and daughter; and his reasons for sharing his story.

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral History

    Karel Hoffman describes being 21 years old when he was ordered to report to Terezin, Czechoslovakia to help in the construction of a model prison camp; how Terezin was originally a fortress town from the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the many ironies and falsehoods of this model camp; how the Nazis touted Terezin as having many services, such as a bank, but money was totally worthless within the town; the outward appearance of Terezin versus the actual treatment of inmates within the concentration camp; the poor living conditions; the food rations and overcrowding; the inmates suffering beatings, physical abuse, and intimidation from the Nazis; remaining at Terezin for three years; being one of 5,000 taken to Auschwitz; the horrors of induction at Auschwitz, especially in the later years of the war; being transferred to Gleiwitz, where he participated in the construction of platforms for cannons and machine guns; being liberated at Gleiwitz in 1945; wandering through the woods, witnessing the chaos and confusion; returning to his home to search for family members and being unsuccessful in his search; moving to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where he remained until 1949; being sponsored for immigration to the United States by his aunts in 1949; pursuing furniture and carpentry work in the US; and getting married and having one son.

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral History

    Al Horwitz, born in Ohio, describes being part of an American Army division that liberated Nordhausen concentration camp; being drafted into the army in 1941; serving as a staff sergeant in the 104th Infantry Division, 387th Field Artillery; being stationed at Camp Adam, Oregon, went on maneuvers in the California and Arizona deserts, and spent time in Washington state; being sent with his unit in June 1944; landing in France and being part of the battle to free the port of Antwerp, Belgium; being active in Holland; moving into Germany through Aachen, as part of the drive to Koln (Cologne); going to Nordhausen, in the Hartz Mountains; how Nordhausen was attached to a German bomb factory, and the inmates were Jews and political prisoners; being there while Generals Eisenhower and Bradley toured the camp; moving on to Leipzig, Germany, where he helped set up the "Lucky Strike" displaced persons (DP) camp; being in Leipzig when the famous conference was held to divide post-war Germany; returning to the US in June 1945 and being discharged from the army shortly after; living in Cleveland, Ohio; working in the life insurance business; and his wife and three children.

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral History

    Rose Ickowicz, born in Vicovu de Jos, Romania, describes enjoying a pleasant family and community life as a child before World War II; being the oldest of seven children and raised in an atmosphere of strong devotion to family and pride in country; the invasions of Hungary in 1944 and life changed drastically for her family; being taken to a ghetto for three weeks and then sent to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz near the end of the war; suffering the atrocities of the Nazi regime and also the cruelty and jealousy of other Jews who had been imprisoned much longer; believing she survived because of her strong faith, clear values, and what she calls "miracles"; doing manual labor; being transferred to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated a year after she entered the camp; trying to immigrate to the United States and going to Canada with her husband; life in Canada; encountering difficulties; moving to the US; building an economic and social foundation; and retaining great pride in America and being grateful for the opportunity to start over in this country.

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral History

    Munci Adler Katz, born in Rakov, Czechoslovakia, describes her hometown, which had 60,000 people, was near the Polish border, and was later part of the Soviet Union; the large Jewish community in Rakov; belonging to Mizrahi, a Zionist youth organization; her very orthodox family; her father working in a factory and being financially stable; her mother dying when she was 13 and her father remarrying; her three sisters; attending a Czech public school for eight years; learning the trade of dressmaking; the increase in antisemitism in Rakov after the German invasion; the Jews of Rakov being ghettoized briefly; being were sent to the crowded ghetto in Matejovce (possibly Matejovce nad Hornádom, Slovakia); being deported four weeks later to Auschwitz; the death of her father, stepmother, and two sisters; being selected with her sister to go to a work camp in Geistlingersteiger, Germany; being the camp seamstress and receiving extra food and better treatment; being evacuated to Dachau then Allach; being the seamstress under the same commander from Geistlingersteiger; staying behind at the camp with her sister while most of the women were evacuated to the Tyrol mountains; being liberated on May 9, 1945 by a unit of black American soldiers; finding her father's brothers in Tsiget; being forced to get engaged to her uncle’s friend; returning to Rakov and finding a farmer neighbor living in their house; returning to Tsiget and going to Bucharest, Romania to escape her fiancé; getting engaged to Harry Katz; losing touch with her sister; received permission to emigrate in 1964; going to Cleveland, OH, where Harry had an aunt; working as a dressmaker; and their two children.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral History

    Joseph Klein, born in Strabyczowa, Czechoslovakia (a small town in the Carpathian Mountains that was later part of the Soviet Union), describes being part of a large, orthodox family; his three brothers and three sisters; his father working in the lumber, sand, and gravel trade; his youngest sister dying in childhood and his father dying of liver cancer in 1943, one year before the family was sent to Auschwitz; how the Jews of Strabyczowa were among the last to be deported; being sent to the ghetto at Munkacs (Mukacheve, Ukraine); being sent to Auschwitz; the death of his mother and sister; being sent to work camps with his other sister; spending ten days in Buchenwald, then going to a work camp near Leipzig, Germany, where he repaired a bomb-damaged petroleum refinery; being evacuated by train and escaping the train with another prisoner; being recaptured several days later and returned to their unit; being marched back and his friend being shot by their Gestapo guards; being forced to march to Theresienstadt; remaining in Theresienstadt for one month; being liberated by the Russian Army on May 8, 1945; becoming gravely ill with typhus; obtaining a train ticket to Czechoslovakia when he was well enough to travel; returning to Strabyczowa and finding his brothers, uncle, and sister in Chop; crossing the border into Czechoslovakia before it was permanently closed; going to England in May 1946 through an orphan-refugee program; immigrating to the United States three years later; his surviving siblings settling in the US; serving in the American Army for 19 months during the Korean War; working as a printer at the Cleveland Press; travelling to Israel for the country's tenth anniversary and meeting his wife, Bela, there; living in South Euclid, OH and working as a property manager; and his two daughters, Audrey and Mona.

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral History

    Paul Kuper, born on December 31, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, describes being the youngest of three children; having a sister who was four years older and a brother who was six years older; his mother, who came from a White Russian family; his Polish father; living in a small apartment with no running water; his father working long hours as a baker; the German invasion in 1940; hiding in a basement with his mother when the Germans bombed the city; the Germans establishing their headquarters in a school on their street; being required to wear the yellow star; Jews being banned from theaters, movies, and hospitals; the deportation of his brother and sister; being taken by his mother to the Tuberculosis Society, where the underground was active; being placed in a sanatorium in a suburb, under a non-Jewish name, and staying there in 1941 and 1942; his parents being sent first to Malines and then to Germany; staying with a non-Jewish family friend, Seline Sinn, in his old neighborhood; attending a Catholic school; living with Seline’s sister in a different neighborhood; being discovered by the Germans in 1943 and sent to a village near Brussels, which was controlled by Jewish youth; being sent to another camp in Aix-la-Chapelle, where he lived in an old castle; the liberation of Belgium and being told by underground members from nearby Peruwelz to run into the woods so the Germans would not use them as hostages; the children being taken to stay with families in Peruwelz; going back to Brussels; attending Catholic school and living with his godparents; immigrating to the United States on his 21st birthday; living with his godmother's cousins and becoming a truck helper for Dean Supply; settling in Cleveland, OH and being in the military; living in South Euclid, OH; and being married with four daughters.

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral History

    Bertha Lautman (née Berkovitch), born in Banska Stiavnica, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes her religious family; her Hasidic father; attending school in Swidnica; being taken by train to Auschwitz on March 23, 1942; her mother taking her out of hiding to send her to Auschwitz instead of her father; her parents, along with her youngest brother, being taken to Majdanek three months after her; the death of her parents and her brother’s survival; being a teenager and put to work digging ditches in Auschwitz; being moved to Birkenau in August 1942; working as part of the Leichencommando, taking care of the dead bodies; being taken from Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen on October 31, 1944; being liberated by American soldiers in April 1945; reuniting with her sister and brother; getting married another survivor; going to the United States in 1949; and visiting the concentration camps she was in three times over the years as well as Majdanek, where her parents were killed.

    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

    Oral History

    Dina Leiser, born in Paris, France, describes her parents, who had immigrated to France from Poland to escape antisemitism and worked as tailors; her younger brother; her family not being religious; experiencing antisemitism from her schoolmates; wanting to be identified more as French than as a Jew; staying with her brother for several months on a farm in Souillé as part of a school-sponsored program; the war beginning in 1939 when she was 12 years old; her father enlisting; joining her brother on the farm; her mother obtaining false papers and joining them on the farm; the villagers in Souillé being very protective of them; remaining in Souillé for the duration of the war; finding out her father had been deported and learning only recently that he had been sent to Auschwitz; studying shorthand and typing; experiencing antisemitism at work and going to work for a Jewish firm; immigrating with her brother to the United States in 1947; her mother going to Canada and then the US five years later; teaching herself English by listening to the radio and reading; her brother being drafted into the US Army; getting married to one of her brother’s soldier friends in 1952; her son and grandson; living in University Heights, OH; and working for the Jewish France.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Sylvia Malchmacher, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1926, describes the Jewish community in Vilna, including the many synagogues, Hebrew schools and universities, and the many Zionist organizations; her older and younger sisters; her father, who was a printer, and her mother, who kept house; experiencing antisemitism after 1939; living in the Russian zone of Poland; food rationing and being forced to work for the government; the German invasion in 1941; the collaborators in Vilna; the creation of the ghetto; her sister’s work in a fur factory; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being ordered to report with all the children under 18 and old people and going with her younger sister; being sent home because she was 18 and her sister never coming home; being deported on May 16, 1944 on trains to a camp in the Kaiserwald, where they remained for three weeks; being sent in August 1944 to Stutthof; remaining in Stutthof for two weeks under horrible conditions; selections for work and being sent to Milldorf, a camp near Mannheim; clearing the debris as tunnels were blasted into a mountain; washing clothes for the German camp staff; being liberated by American troops on May 2, 1945; going to a displaced persons camp; learning that her father, mother and sister had died; attending a training school and marrying Israel Malchmacher in 1946; going to Cleveland, OH in 1949, sponsored by the Jewish Family Service; and her two grown daughters.

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral History

    Marguerite Morris, born in Paris, France, describes her parents, who had emigrated from Poland; enjoying a comfortable childhood; keeping kosher, but not being orthodox; living in a predominantly gentile neighborhood; her father enlisting in the French Army and returning to Paris in October 1940; her father being sent to Beaune-la-Rolande concentration camp in 1941 and never seeing him again; fleeing with her mother to unoccupied France; going first to Limoges then Oradour; living on their savings; returning with a Gentile friend to Paris to retrieve family valuables they had left with a neighbor; staying with 20 other Jewish families in Oradour until liberation in August 1944; going to Limoges and returning to Paris after the war ended officially; her mother receiving government assistance to reopen the family business; attending an accelerated school; being depressed and deciding to move to the United States to live with cousins in Akron, OH; studying accounting and working for Firestone; getting married to an American, who had been stationed at Normandy during the war; her two sons; and becoming certified public accountant.

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral History

    Anna Felsn Moses, born in Milicz, Poland, describes her large, traditional, religious family; her family moving in 1933 to Krakow, Poland, where her father was a businessman; acts of antisemitism carried out by the Poles of Krakow before the war; the boycotts of Jewish businesses; the German invasion and life rapidly becoming more difficult for the Jews; "Black Monday," when Torahs were desecrated and synagogues were burned; her family being among the 10,000 Jews enclosed in a ghetto; living in the ghetto from 1940 until the end of 1942, when she became separated from her family and was sent to Płaszów concentration camp; remaining there for nine months; being sent to Skarszysko, where she worked in a munitions factory; being sent to Buchenwald, where she remained for nine months, working at making grenade timers; being marched for three weeks; escaping with eight others and being liberated by the Russian army several days later; returning to Krakow; meeting her husband in 1946; arriving in the United States in 1948; and living in Cleveland, OH, where her husband is a rabbi in Menorah Park.

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral History

    Mimi Ormond describes growing up in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia (Mariánské Lázne, Czech Reublic); the German community in Marienbad; switching from a German school to a Czech school; her family deciding to flee after Kristallnacht; the Jewish population of Marienbad; her brother, who was away at college when her family fled Marienbad; belonging to a Zionist organization; her parents’ lack of interest in Zionism; feeling isolated from other students during the Nazi salute and Catholic prayers; fleeing to an apartment in a small town called Kolín, Czech Republic; the German invasion; her father being a socialist and on a Nazi arrest list; leaving on a children’s transport to Palestine via England; living on a farm in England; being moved with the other children to unoccupied castles in 1940; learning Hebrew and receiving agricultural training; receiving a notice that her parents were going to Palestine; the British authorities declaring Jewish refugees over the age of 17 to be enemy aliens; being left alone in the castle; night bombing near the castle; moving to another castle and joining an Orthodox Mizrahi labor group when she was 15 years old; going to live with an uncle in London; studying early education at a university; meeting her future husband, who was an American soldier; having a temple wedding; visiting her parents in Palestine; living in Ann Arbor, MI then Indianapolis, IN; feeling isolated from other Europeans; moving to Cleveland, OH and meeting survivors from her hometown; having survivors guilt; and her feelings about Israel.

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral History

    Dan Pavlovitch, born in 1928, describes being the oldest of three children in a fairly unconventional family in Ploesti, Rumania; his parents and their attitude toward Judaism was one of respect for tradition rather than of religious belief; his grandfather, who was a rabbi; living in an enlightened household, which valued music and literature and open discussion with the children; his father working as an engineer for an American oil company and his mother owning a dress shop; the Iron Guard, a fascist organization, becoming powerful in the late 1930s and Jews beginning to suffer; his father being forced to resign from his job and the family being forced to go to Yugoslavia; being sent to Belgrade (Serbia); living safely in Belgrade until the German takeover; his father being sent to a labor camp and never hearing from him again; being put in a camp across the river from Belgrade in December 1941 with his mother and two sisters; conditions in the camp; his mother getting false identities for them and being released from the camp; going to Bulgaria and then Turkey; living as Christians in Turkey from 1943 until 1948; his mother working as a translator for the US consulate in Turkey; working at a YMCA hospital as a translator for the US War Information Office; working for a German film company in Yugoslavia; leaving Turkey and returning to school; attending Roosevelt College in Chicago, IL; his mother and sisters eventually settling in the US; going to the Cleveland area with his wife and two sons in 1963; and living in Cleveland Heights and working as a paint distributor and with wood and stained glass.

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral History

    Hilda Prooth, born in Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) in 1904, describes her father, who was a painter and chose to become a Czech citizen after WWI; having three brothers and two sisters; the fates of her siblings, some of whom died in concentration camps; going to Prague, Czech Republic to earn a living as a governess; teaching German to Czech children; becoming a seamstress after the German occupation; meeting her husband, Mike, in 1939 in the Jewish community and getting married in 1940; coming under the protection of the Swedish government after she was married to Mike, who was Russian; being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943; being considered a Russian internee; being sent to Prague in 1944 then by train through Austria to an internment camp in Vittel, France; being liberated by the French in March 1945; being evacuated with a group of about 100 internees to the French Alps, to a former resort for asthmatic children; returning to Paris, France in August 1946 to get permission to return to Prague to find her husband; being sent to Epernay, France and traveling for three weeks in cattle cars back to Prague; reuniting with husband in Prague; working in an old printing house while her husband taught at the university; crossing into Germany in 1947; her husband working as an interpreter between the Jews and the Americans in Munich, Germany; waiting for passage to the US in displaced person camps in Bremen and Hamburg; going to Cleveland, OH in 1948; life in Cleveland and her husband’s death in 1960; working in the needle trades at Keller-Kohn and being very active in the ILGWU (International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union); and her reasons for volunteering to be interviewed for the Holocaust Archives Project of the Council of Jewish Women.

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral History

    Isidor Reisman, born in 1920 in Bilka, Hungary (Bilky, Zakarpats'ka oblast', Ukraine), describes being the oldest of nine children; his father, who was a monument engraver and a good provider; the active Zionist movement in Bilka; being inducted into the army in 1941; the uniforms having yellow badges to identify the Jews; doing hard labor, building railroads, for two years; receiving word from his parents that they were moved about 37 kilometers from Bilka and visiting them in 1944 in the barracks where they were living; his division being walked in January 1945 toward Germany and told to go to a synagogue which was controlled by the Germans; living in a ghetto and working as an emergency volunteer for several weeks; being freed by the Russian Army; deciding to go to the United States; going to New York, NY, where he worked as a monument engraver for about two years; going to Cleveland, OH in 1952; living in Mayfield Heights, OH; teaching Hebrew at the Bureau of Jewish Education and consulting on religious education; getting married to Ann (née Zaremsky) and having two children; and rebuilding his life after the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral History

    Sally Rettman, born in 1923, describes growing up in Bedzin, Poland; being 16 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939; her father, who was in the textile business and died suddenly in 1942; being sent to the ghetto in 1939; her mother being taken to Auschwitz and killed in 1943; being forced into another ghetto on the outskirts of Bedzin; getting married to Yakov (Jack) Rettman in the ghetto; her aunt being sent to Auschwitz; being moved to the Greenberg labor camp and being assigned to textile factory; her husband being sent to the camp also but not being allowed to see or talk to one another; being evacuated and marched to the Czech border at the end of 1944; their numbers dwindling from 1,500 female prisoners to 120; escaping from the transport with her sisters and two friends; being housed and taken care of by a Mrs. Schmidt living in Langesdorf; being liberated by American soldiers; finding her husband back in Bedzin; living in Hungary for five years then Germany; and going to New York, NY in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral History

    Ursula Rosow (née Braatz), born in Berlin, Germany in 1919, describes growing up in a middle-class, gentile family; her parents being active socialists; her father, who was part Hungarian and was a laboratory technician; her mother, who was part Polish; the Nazis coming to power and street fights beginning all over Berlin; the SS shooting at her father in 1934 for making anti-Nazi comments in a local pub; her father’s imprisonment that same year for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda; her family belonging to an organization that helped Jews escape Germany with false identity papers; helping to obtain ration cards for Jews in hiding; hiding a Jewish dancer; leaving the city with her mother when the Allies beginning to bomb Berlin; going to Wurzburg while her mother went to Bad Kissingen; marrying a Jewish American soldier after the war; going to the US in 1948 with her husband; settling in Cleveland Heights, OH; being divorced; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral History

    Leo Rzepka, born in 1913 in Ruckzyn, Poland, describes the Jewish community in his hometown; being one of nine children (five girls and four boys); his father, who was a wagon-wheel maker; working with his father after finishing school at age 13; the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and his family fleeing to Russia, where they lived for several years; attending chauffeur's school, from which he graduated two days before the Germans invaded Russia; life becoming difficult for Jews in Russia; trying with one of his brothers and one sister to return to the home of one of his sisters in Poland; living for many months in the woods and staying with farmers in exchange for work; going to a small concentration camp in Zembrov in late 1942 with his sister, brother, and brother-in-law; remaining there for three weeks until January 1943 when they were deported to Auschwitz; working as a carpenter; spending time in Birkenau; being evacuated in January 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Ebensee, Austria, where he worked in the stone quarries; being liberated by the Americans on May 5, 1945; going to Israel illegally; being intercepted by the British and spending 21 months in Cyprus; being able to go to Israel, where he spent five months in the army; getting married; going to the United State in 1956; living in Cleveland, OH; having a wife, a son, a daughter, and one grandchild; and being retired.

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral History

    Eva Sands, born in 1940 in a Jewish ghetto, describes her parents, who came from Piotrkov, Poland; her father, Zev Wolfe, who was in the wood veneer business and was also a Talmudic scholar; her mother, Hannah, who died when Eva was seven months old; her father remarrying shortly after her mother’s death; her aunt Esther obtaining false papers and escaping the ghetto with two-year-old Eva and Eva's cousin, Naomi; Esther finding refuge for Naomi in a convent and leaving Eva on the doorstep of a woman named Maria Zaider; her parents remaining in the ghetto, having another child against ghetto rules, and being shot when this was discovered; living with the Zaiders throughout the war in Pustelnik, Poland (possibly the Pustelnik in Łódź Voivodeship) and not being aware of her Jewish identity; her Aunt Esther passing as a Polish Aryan until the war ended, and then reclaiming Eva from the Zaiders; being hysterical for several days after the separation from Maria Zaider and not wanting to be in the same room with her aunt; living first in a displaced persons camp in Germany, where her aunt was married; settling in Frankfurt, Germany; antisemitism in Frankfurt; attending a Hebrew school in Salzheim, Germany; growing up in Germany; moving to the United States in 1952 and spending a year in New York, NY; attending an Orthodox Jewish boarding school in England at age 14 and attending a finishing school in Switzerland; attending college at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, and meeting her husband, Barry Sands; going to Poland to find Maria Zaider in 1976 and her painful visit with her; living in University Heights, OH; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral History

    George Sapin, born in 1924, describes entering into the army in 1943; being a member of the 67th Signal Battalion, the 82nd Airborne, and the 1286th Engineer Combat Battalion; going to England and arriving before the Battle of the Bulge; antisemitism in the army; his life after the war, becoming an electrical engineer then a technical writer; being originally from New York, NY; moving south with his unit along the Rhine as the war drew to a close; his emotions during the war and not having developed a Jewish identity; being Jewish in the army; not being present at the actual liberation of any camps; having many experiences with German citizens and seeing physical evidence of Nazi atrocities, including pictures of torture and rapes; his experiences having a strong influence on his political and social philosophy; and his attempts to live according to his belief that one should be committed and active.

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral History

    Werner Sauer, born in 1918 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, describes the Jewish population of Gelsenkirchen; his family considering themselves German and being financially well-to-do; his father’s meat-packing plant; attending a Jewish Volkschule (an elementary school) for four years and then a gymnasium until he was forced to leave in 1933 at age 15; having to relinquish his license in 1938; becoming a bricklayer with the help of his father's friend; the ruin of his father’s business; the gradual changes under the Nazis; Kristallnacht and being arrested; deportations in 1940; being deported with his parents to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia in the winter of 1941 along with 500 Jews from Gelsenkirchen and 500 from Dortmund; conditions in the ghetto; his family being taken to Stutthof concentration camp; going to a section called Lent a where the Nazis had gathered all the artisans and skilled laborers; living and working in the factory, which he was ordered to rebuild with virtually no materials; being transferred with his father to Buchgarten, a section of Stutthof where people were exterminated; escaping with a friend and being caught briefly and passing as marine deserters; escaping the deserters’ camp and hiding on farms; being caught by Russians and having to prove they were German Jews; obtaining identity papers; his parents’ deaths; walking toward Germany; working in a Russian-occupied hospital after the liberation; living in Berlin, Germany until he received his emigration papers in May 1949; flying out of Berlin in an empty cargo plane and then taking a boat to New York, NY; getting a job in Cleveland, OH, where he had an aunt and uncle who sponsored him; working for Carling Brewing Co. for three years; his work installing boilers for the Ira E. Baker Co. until the company liquidated and he retired at age 60; and living with his wife in Middlefield, OH.

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Freda Schmelzer, born in a small Romanian town in the region of Transylvania, describes her parents, who ran a small general store; being one of seven children; the beautiful Jewish traditions and the peaceful life among the gentiles during her childhood; her home life and learning homemaking by assisting her mother; the arrival of the Hungarians; the restrictions placed on Jews; her family’s last time together at their Passover meal in 1944; the great psychological distress of not knowing what was happening elsewhere or of what was going to become of her family; the Jews of her town being taken to a ghetto in Soluge (possibly Vynohradiv, Ukraine), where they remained for four weeks; being transported to Auschwitz and being separated from her family; the conditions in the camp; being selected to work in a grenade factory, where conditions were slightly better; being marched to an unknown location and detained for four weeks in a horse barn; being liberated by the Russians; and returning home.

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral History

    Max Solomon (ne Slomovitz), born in Drahova, Czechoslovakia (Drahovo, Ukraine), a small town in the Carpathian mountains; being the oldest of four boys and having six sisters; his father’s saloon and restaurant; being raised religious and being part of a relatively small Jewish community; being affected by the war in June 1941 when the Germans invaded; Jews being deported from his town and the remaining Jews being forced to work; being taken with his family to Kolomyja, Poland (Ukraine) and then to Horodenka, Ukraine; his family’s attempted escape and the women being successful while the men were captured and killed; escaping the massacre; passing as a Christian and going to Russia, where he lived as an adopted son on a communist co-op; a flood causing a famine in the area; meeting people who were looking for food and reported that many Jews were still living in Drahova; returning home and finding his mother and sisters; being sent to a Hungarian forced labor camp while his mother and sisters were sent to Auschwitz; escaping and joining the Yugoslavian underground; fighting until the war ended; returning home and finding two of his sisters; going to a displaced persons camp in Egenfelder, Germany where he married in 1945; going to the US in 1949 with his wife; living in Beachwood, OH; and being an active member of Green Road Synagogue.

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral History

    Helen Stone (née Kahan), born in Napszolok, Czechoslovakia, describes her life in Cleveland, OH with her husband and her son, daughter, and grandchild; growing up in Nagydobryn, near the large city of Ungvar (Uzhhorod, Ukraine); the Jewish population in Nagydobryn; being very close to her mother, but having a bad relationship with her stepfather; her five brothers and sisters; her stepfather sending her to an orphanage, but returning home at her mother’s request; antisemitism increasing in 1939; getting typhoid; being deported with all the Jews in her town shortly after Passover in 1944; being sent to Auschwitz and separated from her mother; conditions in the camp; witnessing medical experimentation on the inmates; being sent to work in a factory in either Altenburg or Waldenburg (Mrs. Stone is not certain); being forced to march with her fellow prisoners for many days; being liberated by American soldiers, but having to go to a Russian refugee camp since she was a resident of the Russian-occupied zone; returning to Nagydobryn; escaping with a friend over the border and getting married to him shortly after; going to the United States in 1948; her husband working in a meat market in Cleveland, OH; and feeling proud to be Jewish.

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral History

    Inge Weiss, born in 1923 in Hannover, Germany, describes her father, who was born in Warta, Poland and became a men's clothing manufacturer in Germany; her mother, who was born in Germany but lost her citizenship when she married; her younger sister; her family being active in the Jewish community and keeping kosher; attending public school and having a Jewish education; attending business school for a short time; her family’s plan to immigrate to the United States; antisemitism increasing as the Nazis rose to power; being ostracized in school; the vandalism of her father’s store; her family being deported to Poland in October 1938; staying in crowded stables in Spoczynek; living with relatives in Kalisz, Poland; not being able to speak Polish nor Yiddish; the war starting and her family being deported to Krakow where they lived under very poor conditions until 1941; escaping to Warta; the atrocities in Warta; the gathering of the Jews in the town square and being separated from her family; being sent with her father to the ghetto in Łódź, Poland, where they stayed from 1942 to 1944; being deported to Auschwitz and sent to Bergen-Belsen in September 1944; her job distributing bread, which she got because she spoke German; getting typhoid; being liberated by the British and living in the German officers' quarters until she recovered; returning to Hannover in 1946 and working for the Jewish community; getting married in 1947; getting half of her father’s business and running a notions business there; going to the US in September 1949; her son’s birth in 1948; going to Cleveland, OH; and receiving help from the Ratner family.

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral History

    Jack Wieder, born in Bozkov, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes being the fourth of 11 children in a happy, religious family; his father, who was a wood processor; the existence of some antisemitism but his family being treated well because of his father’s good reputation; the Ukrainians taking over in 1939; the situation improving temporarily when the Hungarians came to power in 1941; the deportation of some Jews; the Nazis arriving in Bozkov in 1943; his sisters fleeing to Budapest, Hungary and Belgium; his father and older brother being sent to a work brigade; his father returning in 1944; being deported with his remaining family to a ghetto in Matejovice (possibly Matejovce nad Hornádom, Slovakia), where they stayed from five weeks; being taken to Auschwitz and the death of his mother and six younger siblings; being sent with his father to Warsaw, Poland to work at clearing the remains of the Warsaw ghetto; being sent to Dachau to work the camps in Kaufering and Landshut; being sent back to Dachau; his father dying at Dachau four days before liberation; being evacuated from Dachau to Garmisch-Partenkirchen; being liberated by American soldiers; returning to Bozkov and discovering that his brother, Hermann, and sisters, Julia and Toni, had also survived the war; being inducted into the Russian army; serving in the army for one year and escaping to Hungary; working for a refugee assistance organization and meeting his future wife, Eva; going to Vienna, Austria; immigrating to the United States; and living in Cleveland, OH, as do Toni, Julia and Hermann.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Billys, Sophie Billys, and Millie Korman

    Oral history interview with Henry Billys, Sophie Billys, and Millie Korman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral History

    Madeline Dautartus, born in Strasbourg, France, discusses her parents, two sisters, and one brother; being raised Catholic; attending a Catholic high school; the evacuation of the entire town to Perigueux in Dordogne 1939; her father and brother being drafted into the army; the German occupation; her family’s return to Strasbourg; the Aryanization of Alsace-Lorraine; the burning of books; participating in the resistance; refusing a job in Germany; working at the social security office and being given a pass to enter the POW camp; bring food, clothes, and information to the prisoners; her desire to join the French army in Africa; being caught in 1942 while attempting to escape from Strasbourg with two young men; swallowing the message she was carrying; being detained in prisons for a month; being interrogated; being taken by train to Schirmeck camp (near Struthof extermination camp); her work in the laundry and cutting trees; a rosary that was shared amongst inmates; contracting diphtheria and pneumonia; the doctor who visited the isolation unit regularly to see who should be sent for extermination; being released after a year; being required to sign a statement saying she would never reveal anything about the camp; returning to Strasbourg and her job; being warned that she was being watched; being arrested twice more and questioned about her resistance activities; being prepared to commit suicide when she arrested two months before liberation; the Gestapo building being burned by US bombers; her family hiding two wounded US soldiers and two Arab soldiers from the French army in their basement until liberation; her brother’s experiences during the war; the liberation of Strasbourg in November 1944; serving as civilian in the Bureau Militaire; enlisting in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in France; being posted in Stuttgart, Germany and then Freiburg, Germany for five years; her encounter with a former SS guard; preparing the papers for a Lithuanian scout, who later became her husband; serving as a secretary to General Jean de Lattre; and working as a civilian in the military until 1950 when she immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral History

    Eugene Davidovits, born in 1930 in Satu Mare (Satmar), Romania, discusses being raised in an Orthodox family consisting of his parents, five brothers, and one sister; working at forced labor two days a week after the Hungarians occupied the county; being beaten by a teacher and others as antisemitism rose; Rabbi Teitlebaum influencing Jews against going to Israel; living in the closed ghetto for before being taken by cattle car to Auschwitz; going through selection; being separated from his father and his two older brothers; being taken to Krakow-Płaszów where he worked for four months; the Germans killing the leaders of a resistance attempt; being transferred to Gross-Rosen death camp where he witnessed a rabbi being beaten to death; being taken to a subcamp in Gorlitz where he did chores for the doctor who treated him decently, gave him food, and later arranged for him to work in the kitchen; getting caught giving food to other prisoner; being sent to work in the tank factory that was run by German civilians; being treated relatively well by civilians within the factory until a Gross-Rosen inspector enforced limitations on food; being sent to make bunkers for German soldiers in March 1945 as the Russians approached; witnessing weaker workers being shot and sometimes buried while still alive; returning to Gorlitz in May 1945; leaving camp with a friend when the guards were away; being given food and civilian clothes by a policeman; staying in a well-supplied former Gestapo building; returning to Satmar in hopes of finding his family; realizing that he was the only member of his family who survived; living in a Jewish hospital for one month; living with the son of the Cantor until he was placed in a Joint-supported orphanage where he stayed from 1945-1947; getting married; and moving to Cleveland, OH at age 36.

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral History

    Helen Feig, born in 1925 in Craciunesti, Romania, describes being the only child of Orthodox parents; the roundup of 500 Jews in 1941 who were taken to Galicia and killed; Hungarian soldiers chasing Jews out of synagogue on Rosh Hashanah; never seeing her father again after he was taken to the Kasho ghetto while he was out of town on business; being sent to the ghetto in Selo Slatina (Solotvyno, Ukraine) along with her mother and other women and children; being taken by cattle car to Auschwitz in 1944; being separated from her mother; running away from Block C-8 to be with her cousins; being transferred to Lübberstedt labor camp, near Bremenhof, Germany; being required to sew a different color sleeve on the left side of her dress; building bunkers to stay safe from bombing that was occurring at Bremenhof; being transported from place to place by train as the Germans were facing defeat; just missing a boat going to Mare Baltica and then being forced to walk until Ukrainians and Russians told them the war was over; being liberated by English soldiers who housed them in a summer resort near Neustadt; returning to her hometown where she stayed with family in a nearby town; neighbors who refused to return her family’s home or belongings; going to Frankfurt, Germany; getting married in 1948 and immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1949; living in Cleveland, OH until her husband became ill; living in Allentown, PA for two years while her husband was in a sanitarium in Colorado; and returning to build a life in Cleveland.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral History

    Leslie Robicsek, born in 1924 in Oradea, Romania, describes being the son of a kosher butcher; singing in the synagogue with a famous cantor; the destruction of a synagogue in 1933 during an Iron Guard riot; becoming an apprentice in in a plastics factory owned by Glick in 1937; the repressive measures against Jews being put in place after the Hungarians entered in 1940-1941; his brother and other Jews being removed from the army and sent as forced labor to Nagybánya (now Baia Mare, Romania); being sent to the ghetto in May 1944; being taken daily to a cadet training camp to do maintenance work; his father’s non-Jewish friend sending word to him that he’d help the family get out of the ghetto, but his father refusing; being transported to Birkenau where they went through selection; claiming he was a tool and die maker when volunteers were sought; his father being taken to work in the stone quarries at Melk where he died; being moved to Auschwitz where he was sent each day to work at Union Machine Works, an ammunition plant; watching famous actors and musicians perform at night; witnessing hangings after Sonderkommandos blew up a crematorium; beginning a death march on January 18, 1945; arriving at Gross-Rosen where he was selected to work as a Sonderkommando for three weeks; moving on to Flossenberg at the end of February and then to Pocking where he was put to work constructing an airport; being liberated by American troops on May 6, 1945; his wife who had also survived Auschwitz; his reluctance to dicuss the camps; and his thoughts on his Jewish identity and faith.

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral History

    Rena Rubinow, born in Kraków, Poland, describes being the oldest of three sisters; her mother dying when she was a child; one sister moving to Palestine in 1937; being a married mother of a two year old child when the war began in 1939; being forced into an open ghetto; fleeing to a small town 20 miles from Kraków in 1940 when the ghetto was closed; running away from the town and being hidden by a peasant in October 1942 when they were warned that Jews in the area were being killed; walking back to the ghetto in Kraków three weeks later as they believed it offered their best chance for survival; working in Madritch’s uniform factory outside of the ghetto and sewing bras in her spare time which she sold to female guards; arranging for her former maid to hide her young daughter; being taken to Płaszów concentration camp on March 13, 1943, her maid and child also being sent to the camp where her daughter was killed; being transported via cattle care to Birkenau with her sister, Rose, in 1944; her husband being transported to Mauthausen where he was killed; being sent to Lichtenburg at the end of the year; remaining there for five months before being liberated by Russians on May 5, 1945; receiving no assistance and walking to Kraków where they learned that none of their other relatives survived; supporting herself by sewing; remarrying in 1946 to a man who had served in the underground; moving to Sweden, then Montreal and finally to Canton, Ohio, where husband had two brothers; struggling financially and eventually moving in 1958 to Cleveland, where she had a grocery store; supporting herself and three children after her husband killed himself; remarrying and putting her two sons through college; and her daughter dying while she was a student at Boston College.

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral History

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