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Oral history interview with Helen Feig

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.68 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0068

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    Oral history interview with Helen Feig
    Transcript

    There is no transcript available for this track

    I'm Lee Rosenberg.
    Today we are interviewing Helen Feig, a Holocaust survivor.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Helen, let's go back now to the labor camp where you said
    you were sent from Auschwitz.
    You were about to describe the living conditions there.
    Would you do that now?
    Right.
    Well, when we arrived to this labor camp,
    we were 500 young women.
    There was maybe two or three mothers, which they were not
    picked until the gas chamber.
    And they put us to work.
    Some of them they picked to work in a munition factory, where
    they were making bombs.
    Some of them were put to work in the kitchen, like the mothers,
    like cooking.
    Some of them were made to work outside.
    And it was made to do Schützengrabens.
    You know what that is?
    No.
    OK, Schützengrabens is where you hide yourself
    when the bombs come down.
    You make like a--
    how shall I call that?
    That's one thing I don't remember
    how to say in English, Schützengrabens.
    It's where you hide yourself.
    Like a ditch in the ground?
    Like a ditch, when the bombs come.
    Now, Lübberstedt, where I happened to be,
    was right near Bremerhaven.
    Now Bremerhaven, it's what the boats are picking up.
    It's a port.
    Hafen is a port.
    And it was always day and night they
    were bombing the city of Bremen, the Hafen, the port.
    And the most of our time, we were in the bunkers sleeping.
    Now Schützengraben means the bunker, OK?
    I couldn't catch it before.
    We were sleeping on the bunkers the most of our time,
    not in the room because the bombs were coming so fast
    that the minute we just put our head down,
    or sometimes we didn't even go to bed.
    We used to get one piece of bread.
    That bread had to last us for two days, sometimes
    for three days.
    It was called an [HUNGARIAN].
    An [HUNGARIAN] means, in Hungarian, a portion.
    If you left that piece of bread, if you went to sleep,
    you put it under the pillow.
    This you probably heard already.
    If you did not carry it with you under your arm,
    you didn't have it.
    That was like losing God knows.
    If you have a diamond, if you lose it, you're not so touched.
    OK?
    And we used to get the black coffee real early
    in the morning, before we went out to work.
    We were also, before we used to go to work,
    we had a Zahlappell.
    They counted us.
    And we used to go to work hungry.
    We had to sing.
    And I didn't sing because I couldn't sing.
    I knew-- I don't have my parents.
    I lost my parents.
    I don't have nobody.
    Why shall I sing?
    So I used to do with my lips, pretending I'm singing.
    One day, one of the SS ladies, her name was Mary.
    She saw me.
    She started hitting me because I'm not singing.
    I'm supposed to sing, and I'm not singing.
    She misliked me.
    She hated me so much because I happened to be afraid for her,
    that she shouldn't kill me.
    So then we would go to work.
    So I happened to work a few days in a munition factory.
    And I realized that one--
    the girls are getting-- their hair is getting to be red.
    And some of them really got tuberculosis also
    from working there because it was so strong it went in
    on their lungs.
    So somehow, somewhere, I looked out for myself.
    And I figured I'm much better off
    to work outside at the bunkers, even if it's
    cold outside because it was going on the fall of the year,
    then working inside.
    Because I'm just going to have my hair red,
    and I'm going to get sick.
    So somehow, somewhere, I pushed myself in
    that I didn't show up in the factory to work.
    And I worked outside by the bunkers.
    So as I worked by the bunkers, we
    happened to have a Jewish girl.
    She was a kapo.
    You know what that is?
    OK.
    They were under the supervision, under the SS.
    And they were Jewish girls, just like me and anybody else.
    But they were doing their rules.
    They didn't-- I mean, they didn't care.
    So this Jewish girl, who happens to be a Hungarian Jewish girl
    from near Budapest, she happens to be a real religious girl.
    And she was really mean to us.
    I'm talking to the other Jewish girls.
    So that-- we had to give her part of our margarine, which
    it's a very small amount you get two times a week
    to put on your bread.
    We had to take that margarine and give it to her.
    She had more food than we had because she would get food even
    from the SS people.
    They would give her food, that they should make her mean
    and cruel to us.
    You know?
    So anyway, after our day's work, and we had a lunch, OK?
    They gave us breakfast.
    We had black coffee.
    Lunch, we had a soup.
    In that soup was all kind of a stones and vegetables,
    and maybe sometimes a few pieces of horse meat.
    And I'm not talking pieces to bite.
    I'm just talking which it was cooked in the soup.
    OK?
    We didn't know what it was, and we
    didn't care as long as we had something in our stomach.
    At night we would have a piece of that bread, which
    we used to get for two days or three days.
    And we used to get the black coffee also.
    So everybody, I mean, got skinny and skinny.
    Every day you lose another pound and another pound.
    And that's how you keep on living.
    By that time, we reached a middle of the winter
    already because--
    they had nothing to give us to eat anymore, the Germans,
    because they were going down, not up.
    They know already they lost the war.
    We didn't know, but they knew.
    And they had no way--
    I mean, there was no way for them
    how to supply us with food.
    Well, one story which I didn't tell--
    I'm coming to this story.
    It was right before Christmas.
    And we are walking to work.
    We had a big walk to work.
    I don't remember how many hours we were walking.
    They had no more gas for the trucks
    to pull the munition for them.
    The munition was pulled in in another bunker,
    where they put it away.
    So they took eight girls, and I happened
    to be one of those eight girls.
    And we had our rope on our shoulder.
    And we would pull the truck like an animal, like a horse.
    And we had no shoes.
    I happened to have a pair of shoes from--
    which I took along to Auschwitz.
    And when I arrived to that labor camp,
    I think they took them away from me.
    So we had those wooden shoes.
    I don't know the name of them.
    Clogs.
    Clogs, whatever they are called.
    You know, when they came out in style in this country,
    I wouldn't allow my kids to buy.
    I fell under this truck.
    It was snowing outside, and I fell down.
    And I hurt my back.
    And I'm suffering as of today from that fall.
    And the German came over, and he said
    like this in German, [GERMAN].
    They were expecting me to be dead.
    You know what that means, [GERMAN]??
    You are not dead yet.
    I'm not dead yet.
    I had to pick myself up.
    There was no excuse, if I can or I
    can't, and put my rope on and just
    pull that truck again and again.
    And if you were sick, you were afraid to tell them you're sick
    because they could have sent you to the gas chamber.
    I mean, you just didn't tell them you're sick.
    It was very, very cold in the month of December,
    the month of January.
    It's just as cold like it's right here in Cleveland.
    They had big snows, you know.
    We had no gloves on our hands.
    We had a dress.
    And we had those Clark's shoes.
    And I don't remember what for as socks or stocking, whatever,
    something we had.
    I don't remember what.
    And I mean, there was no place to get a rag
    or to get anything.
    My hair was still very, very short.
    And I happened to take along a nightgown from Auschwitz,
    which was my own nightgown.
    And it was very, very bitter cold.
    So I took that nightgown and I sort of made--
    I had like a babushka on my head, you know?
    And one day, they noticed that I have on my head a gown.
    And I'll never forget it.
    It was on a Thursday morning.
    And I used to fast Monday morning and Thursday
    morning because I didn't have what to eat anyway.
    So I figured if I'm going to fast,
    at least I'm going to pray to God because in Europe,
    if you're used to fast Monday or Thursday, a half a day,
    religious people thought that that was something in me yet.
    They took me, three SS ladies and one SS man.
    They kicked me down three or four steps,
    and they hit me in my head, in my eyes--
    I was black and blue--
    in my back, with their feet they kicked me.
    They hit me.
    They didn't even know where, but all the four of them on me
    because I had that little nightgown in my head,
    made as a babushka.
    I folded it as a babushka.
    And they took it away from me.
    And after that, I said, God, I'm not going to fast no more.
    I didn't do anything wrong.
    Why am I punished?
    Why am I punished to be hit yet.
    It's not enough it's cold, I'm hungry.
    I gotta be punished yet, to be hit.
    And again, they noticed me.
    Wherever I went, I was afraid for them.
    They always had such a look on me, like they hated me.
    And I was afraid that they shouldn't kill me.
    I mean, you know, so I always tried to avoid them,
    not to see me or not to do this to me or not to do that to me.
    Now, we had some girls from my block,
    which I happened to be in my room.
    They came, and they used to sneak out at night
    and take in some potato shells from the potatoes.
    The dirty shells, and bring them in in the room
    and eat them because we were very hungry.
    OK, I did not go out at night.
    I was afraid.
    I didn't.
    Sometimes they got a potato or two.
    Between the garbage, which we picked up.
    And one day, the SS came in to inspect the rooms
    because they had to be cleaned.
    The rooms were clean.
    We cleaned it ourselves.
    And she happened to walk in.
    And the girls happened to have that potato
    shells and a few potatoes on the table.
    She took the two girls, and she shaved their heads
    as much as he hair they had already grown from Auschwitz.
    She broke their bones they got punished because she
    found that in the room.
    And that's all a true, true story.
    See, I guess I didn't have to write no notes because if I
    would have write a note, I would have mixed myself up
    because I remember everything.
    Those two girls happen to live in New York City.
    They are both alive, which had happened to them.
    That.
    And they came also, not from the same hometown,
    just about two kilometer from where I come.
    Now, what else would you like to know about the labor camp?
    About this Labor camp.
    Were-- tell me who ran the labor camp.
    You keep mentioning the SS.
    Yes.
    Who ran the labor camp?
    There was a leader.
    He was an SS.
    And there was one SS lady.
    But she was also-- they used to call him the commander fuhrer.
    That was the name of it in German.
    And then was the ladies.
    The ladies-- we had no men in that camp.
    There were only women in this camp.
    No, no, no. they had Wehrmacht.
    They had-- while I'm talking, just women
    were in that Labor Camp.
    Yes.
    But they had men also, which they were Wehrmacht.
    They were like around the camp that somebody
    shouldn't run away.
    Guards.
    Guards, like yes.
    Yes.
    And they used to get delicious food, cooked food.
    And you know.
    And this camp was located--
    In Lübberstedt, that is near Bremerhaven, the port,
    the port of Bremen.
    Is it a city, though?
    Bremen?
    No, the city where the camp was.
    No.
    I really don't know what it was because we
    were in the mountains.
    And after the-- before the liberation,
    they took us away in trains.
    Well, they put us out because we were
    supposed to be taken away before they saw already that the--
    I mean, there was nothing to do for them anymore.
    They couldn't make the munitions anymore.
    They had enough put away.
    So like they would take us, a bunch of girls,
    and tell us to go in-- and that was
    in the spring of the year of 1945.
    We should clean pick up sticks from the branches, which
    they were falling down from the trees.
    Like, I could eat.
    It's impossible to believe it.
    Like, you kids are eating chewing gum,
    and you're chewing on gum.
    I would take a piece of--
    I don't remember what's the name of this, from a tree--
    something grows on a tree.
    And take this piece from the tree and chew on it
    and think it's food.
    For a whole day, chew on that piece from that tree.
    It had some kind of a--
    I got a feeling of the taste while I'm talking to you.
    I don't know what it was, absolutely no.
    I know one thing, after the liberation I was 80 pounds.
    And that's very-- I looked like an 80 90-year-old woman.
    That's how I looked.
    Were you aware of any civilians near the camp?
    No.
    I never saw any civilians out around or near the camp.
    No, no.
    We were not allowed in town.
    That was all the way out from the city.
    I never saw the city.
    No I don't know--
    And there were no civilians that worked in the factories
    with you?
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Well, excuse me.
    In the factory, they were working.
    civilians.
    But they were also Ukrainian, and Poland,
    the ones that were also taken away from the homes.
    They were there too.
    But they did not live in the same camp, where you live.
    No, they did not live in the same camp.
    In that camp, nobody lived just us.
    Now, which I did mention to you, I
    did mention that to you before.
    We had to change the sleeves.
    But I don't think that that was taped,
    when we were talking about it.
    Yes, about the sleeves.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Now, aside from the times that you fasted,
    you said that this was a religious observance
    that you used to do at home.
    Were there any other religious observances
    that you had, any holidays or any services,
    anything at all that you--
    No.
    No.
    Even on Yom Kippur, we went to work.
    We knew when Yom Kippur happens to be.
    Or Tisha B'Av, I happened to be already in Tisha B'Av, in camp.
    No.
    No, we didn't know anything.
    We just knew one thing, when Christmas
    came we had to sing the Christmas songs.
    And many, many times it comes to me,
    when I hear the Christmas songs in television,
    and the same melody goes in in the German Christmas
    songs, which it goes in the American,
    comes to me back sometimes the memories.
    All right, now how long were you in this camp, Helen.
    In this labor camp?
    Well, I'll tell you exactly how long.
    I was three months in Auschwitz.
    The whole time I was in the camp was one whole year.
    So it happened that I happened to arrive there--
    I left, I think--
    I left sometimes in July, end of July I think I left this camp,
    or maybe in the beginning of August.
    It's very hard to remember dates.
    It's impossible to remember dates.
    That's when you arrived in Lübberstedt.
    And I stayed there--
    I should say, until a month before the liberation.
    Because before the liberation, when they already
    saw that the war's being finished,
    the war is being taken over.
    They had no more food to give us.
    They didn't have no more work to give us.
    I mean, they saw already.
    There was nothing for us to do there.
    Everything was arranged by the Germans.
    I mean, they had tremendous good heads to do it.
    They didn't need nobody's help.
    They arranged it for other camps too, not just
    for this particular camp, that they're
    going to take us by train.
    And they were going with us by train
    back and forth, back and forth.
    Because wherever they wanted to go, there was no more place.
    So first, they picked out the sick-- excuse me.
    They picked out all the sick people first.
    And they took them down to Feldafing.
    You know about Feldafing?
    OK.
    They all took them down to Feldafing.
    Excuse me for a minute.
    Now, I don't happen to be sick dear.
    I don't know.
    God just gave me enough strength that I happen not to be sick.
    But my hands got frozen.
    My fingers got frozen.
    I still cannot pick up something hot.
    If I have to touch something hot in the house, it's terrible.
    And I did make myself mittens in the camp.
    I don't know where I got ribbon.
    And I made myself two needles from wood.
    And I made my own gloves.
    Somehow, somewhere, I don't remember where I got it,
    but I got it.
    But my hands are still frozen.
    And my back is never going to be good because I heard that.
    I mean, I damaged it in camp there.
    And I never got any money, like I told you,
    because I took out $360, and I didn't have the right lawyer,
    so I don't get paid for it-- nothing.
    After that, they took us to a--
    You said they took all of the sick people.
    Yeah.
    They took all of the sick people out.
    They took them to Feldafing.
    Then they took us, the healthier people.
    And they took us.
    They took us, and they went with us back and forth,
    back and forth.
    The train started to be bombed from the Americans,
    from the English people.
    And there's another very interesting story,
    which I have to tell you, which it happened to me,
    but how good God was to me.
    We were going in this wagon, And the same wagon where
    I happened to be was bombed.
    Excuse me.
    We are 50 girls in one wagon.
    We were 500.
    And I just recall and remember that our wagon got bombed
    and there is a few girls, which they
    happen to be friends of mine.
    Like one girl got bombed, and she got right on her head.
    And she couldn't work.
    So I ran for a blanket to get for her,
    that I should take her out from the wagon
    because there was some other girls.
    Some of them were dead.
    Some of them were wounded.
    And some of them, the hands, some of them the legs,
    which I have two friends of mine.
    They live in New York City.
    They don't have just half of their arms.
    Half of their arms were bombed.
    I have another girl, which she happens to be with me.
    She's in Israel.
    She has one foot, one foot.
    It happened to her the same train.
    I happened to be in that train.
    I had a big piece of fire on my heart.
    And I took that big piece of fire, with my own hands
    off my heart, and I throwed it down.
    And as I saw, my best friend, which
    she happens to live in New York, is wounded in her hat.
    And she said, well I cannot walk.
    It's my legs.
    But it was not her legs.
    She was wounded in the head.
    And because of the head, her blood was running.
    And I was running to get a blanket.
    And it was getting already pretty late at night.
    And I mean the SS died too there.
    There was, I mean, it was no picnic for nobody.
    One of the Wehrmacht, as I took the blanket, and I said,
    well, I got to take off my friend.
    And he said to me--
    I'm going to say it in German because it's much better--
    he said [GERMAN].
    And he gave me a--
    how do you say that?
    A slap?
    A slap on my face and on my head.
    And I grabbed the blanket.
    I did not leave him the blanket.
    And I took her out from that wagon.
    I carried her out, and I did not leave him
    the blanket because I needed that blanket for her
    for at night and outside.
    And as I carried her out, I found a Wehrmacht.
    And he happens to be an American.
    He was born in Germany, and he was an American citizen.
    And he went home before the war, and he couldn't return anymore.
    And he had all the equipment.
    He took out the scissors, and he cut out her hair.
    He cleaned out.
    He bandaged her.
    So at least she-- you know what I mean?
    At least he saved her life.
    And we stayed in that field overnight.
    And then they said that the ones that are wounded,
    they should stay there.
    And the ones that are not wounded,
    they're going to take them with them.
    And they are going to-- you know.
    So I did not want to leave that girl there because the ones
    they left them there overnight, they died at night.
    It was still cold outside And they were wounded,
    and nobody was there.
    There is a whole grave--
    graves of them people.
    I don't remember the place where it happened.
    But some of the girls know what happened,
    that they buried those people.
    Not we buried them, the Germans buried them.
    And there were still German officers
    who were still in command?
    Yes, there were still German officers
    because the ones they died, they died.
    Some of them died too.
    And the train took us.
    The train took us, and we went-- we were supposed to go
    to Hamburg--
    excuse me-- Hamburg, Germany.
    And we were going back and forth, back and forth,
    back and forth.
    But we didn't know anything what's going on.
    I mean, nobody told us.
    But we were just seeing that ourselves
    already, that we are going, coming and going
    in the same place.
    So anyway, then we found out that the biggest two boats
    were drowned, German boats.
    I don't remember the names.
    I did remember the names.
    And they put in not just Jewish people in those boats.
    They put in Polish people.
    I'm talking Ukrainians, some of those which they were also
    taken away from home.
    And they drowned the boats with people.
    Now, we missed the boat.
    When we arrived there, we missed the boat.
    The boats were gone.
    Where were the boats going to?
    The boats were going underground.
    They drowned the boats with the people.
    Where were the boats headed?
    Oh, they headed?
    I'll tell you where they headed.
    I found that out after the liberation.
    They headed to the Mare Baltica.
    Mare Baltica is the--
    I'm trying to think how do you call this in English.
    The mer-- it gets like--
    the light is-- at night you have light too.
    How do you call that water?
    I can't remember.
    It's called Mare Baltica.
    I remember it in school when I learned about it.
    And well, I don't know how to say it.
    OK, somebody will pick out the word by the tape.
    And there where those two boats were drowned.
    I found that out after our liberation already.
    We lived in that place.
    And the people were still coming out from the water.
    The water was throwing out the dead people.
    So the boats were headed--
    The boats were headed, and we were late.
    We missed the boats.
    If we wouldn't have missed the boats, none of us girls
    would be alive.
    This is another country, or still in Germany?
    No, everything was in Germany.
    Then they decided-- oh, yes, then--
    before that was already before the liberation.
    So they saw already that the train cannot go because they
    are bombing the train.
    So after that, they took us and we had to walk.
    They did not put us on the train.
    After the train was bombed, they did not put us on the train
    no more.
    So the train was bombed.
    And they started going with us, walking.
    You know, walking, walking--
    as you walk, you find Ukrainian, Russian.
    You talk to them because at that time,
    we still knew a lot of languages.
    They tell us, why do you go-- still going with the Germans?
    The war is almost over.
    Oh, when we heard this, we figured somewhere,
    someplace they're going to stop with us.
    And wherever they're going to stop--
    we were talking to each other.
    We are not going to go with them no more.
    We are just going to tell them that the war is over,
    and we do not want to go with them.
    That's what happened.
    They took us in in someplace in the woods.
    And we had to sleep there because it came at night.
    It was very cold, and it was raining.
    And I remember we had some blankets, which we took along
    from the labor camp.
    And we took the blankets.
    And we slept outside, and we made a fire outside
    to warm ourselves up.
    And I don't-- I don't know how we were able to do all that.
    And they came next morning, a SS woman.
    And they were already dressed, not with SS clothes.
    They were dressed with civil clothes.
    I mean, they must have carried around
    with them the regular clothes.
    And they told us that they would love
    us to come with them in this and this place
    in this and this mountain.
    And they got so much food there and so much clothes,
    they're going to give us food, and they're
    going to give us clothes.
    And we were already split in two parts.
    Because-- I don't know-- one part went this way,
    and one part was this way.
    So we told them like this.
    We are not going no place out of those woods.
    And we told them, the war is over.
    We do not have to go with you no more.
    And you have no right to do anything with us anymore.
    I don't know how the hell we were not afraid to tell them.
    We didn't know-- I mean, we didn't
    see if they have any guns with them anymore.
    And they were begging us we should still
    go with them because they're going
    to give us all the goodies.
    And believe me, I'm telling every word
    I'm saying is the truth, the honest, honest truth.
    We did not want to go out from those mountains no more.
    And we said, well, we're going to stay here
    until we're going to find out 100% that the Germans put
    down already the rifles, that they are not anymore under--
    we are not anymore under their supervision.
    That's what we did.
    We stayed there about three days in those woods.
    And they kept on coming and going.
    And then they ran away.
    And then they ran away already.
    We didn't know anything about them.
    OK, we had to eat something.
    I mean, we were hungry.
    And we had no food.
    OK?
    So what we did, we started going out.
    That was not in Lübberstedt.
    That was someplace-- I don't even know what it was, OK?--
    where we were put down.
    We started going out to the farmers, to the German farmers.
    And then like I told you, one sleeve
    is different than the other sleeve.
    But the Mogen Dovid, they know who we are.
    They gave us to eat.
    They made us sandwiches.
    They gave us milk.
    And we took it back to the other girls
    because we lived there with sharing.
    Was not existing that I have to eat but you do not have to eat.
    If you had a few girls--
    I mean, not for everybody.
    I mean, you made yourself like a sister,
    like everybody had a sister, or just close people.
    And I did that with another girl, like two of us.
    The other girl lives in New York.
    And we needed matches very badly because we were outside,
    and we didn't have no matches to make a fire.
    And it was very cold at night.
    And to make something to eat for ourselves.
    So I saw a station, some--
    I got liberated by the English people,
    not by the American people.
    So I saw-- someplace I saw an English soldier standing guard
    in the front of a building.
    And I walked over to this English soldier.
    And I spoke at that time, five or six languages, maybe more.
    And I tried to show him with my hands.
    And I used every language.
    I didn't know English.
    He didn't know what match.
    I couldn't say matches.
    And I couldn't tell him that we are a bunch.
    I'm with Lady so and so.
    So I told him, Jew, Jew, Jew--
    So he understood.
    So he made us we should wait.
    He was on guard.
    He couldn't move.
    So we waited.
    He called out, one of the-- after he was over,
    he called out a Jewish boy.
    This Jewish boy was speaking Jewish already.
    And we happened to tell him--
    I asked him for matches.
    So he knew.
    And he said, where are you?
    Where are you girls from?
    What are you coming?
    And so and so in Jewish.
    So I told him, we are living already
    for three days in this and this mountain,
    hiding from the Germans.
    And we have nowhere, no place where to go.
    And there were-- we are 360 ladies because we
    lost the rest of them.
    They died.
    We lost the rest of them.
    140 were gone.
    And there is nobody to take us over.
    And there is nobody to do with us something.
    So he told us to wait.
    So we were afraid to wait for him to go with him in the Jeep.
    We were afraid.
    So we started walking back.
    As we walked back, it didn't take too long, he came out,
    and he found us, all of those girls there in those woods.
    And he took us in.
    He called up, and they came with a big truck.
    And they put us in in some kind of a school for overnight
    already.
    And they even gave us their care packages, which
    they would get from the army.
    And we stayed overnight there.
    And then they arranged-- there was a summer resort place,
    and it was near Neustadt.
    Neustadt was also--
    I don't know if you know about it.
    It was also in Germany, and it was also a camp.
    But they put us in in little summer homes.
    And they were giving us so much, very little to eat.
    OK.
    But they had already fields there,
    like we were able to go out and pick peas or beans.
    It was from the Germans, but we didn't steal it.
    But we were allowed to go out and do it.
    And we start sewing in the--
    after the war I'm talking.
    That was not in the war yet.
    OK?
    And so we would sew something for girls,
    which they had like--
    they had boys, which they knew, and they gave us food.
    By hand we were sewing.
    We had no machines to sew.
    And we had no clothes what to put on.
    We had nothing.
    So as we were walking, one day we were walking,
    we saw a big place with sheets.
    So we took a few sheets.
    From those sheets we made dresses.
    And I even came home.
    I had a beautiful suit.
    It was a linen suit.
    It was made from sheets.
    And it was all sewed by hand together.
    And then we stayed there until September.
    I'm talking after the liberation.
    Yes.
    You stayed in this--
    In this summer place.
    And after that, end of August the beginning of September,
    something like that, after this, they
    picked out all the [? sick ?] girls right after the war.
    This I didn't mention.
    They took them to Switzerland.
    I mean that you all know.
    After that, they told us, if we want to stay in Germany
    or we want to go home, wherever we want to do.
    And this is the English were in control of that place.
    This was the English-- of control.
    Well, I happen to know I have no sisters, I have no brothers,
    I have-- my mother and father is not alive.
    I mean, I'm going to think, but nobody is around.
    So I didn't know what to do.
    So those two girls were with me.
    They were much older than me, but they are friends of mine.
    They decided that I should go home with them.
    So I did go home, and I stayed six months.
    And I came back to Germany.
    And I met my husband in--
    I mean, if this is necessary to say.
    Sure.
    I met my husband.
    I did know his whole family.
    OK?
    But I never met my husband.
    I met my husband, and we got engaged.
    And I came over to Germany in 1946.
    I came back.
    I was just for a few months in back home.
    I came over, and I lived in Germany.
    But when you went back home--
    Right.
    --and you realized nobody had come back--
    Yes, I realized that.
    --what was the last had heard from your father
    or about your father?
    I didn't hear nothing about my father.
    I just heard so much about my father,
    that one of my cousins, my father's first cousin
    happens to be in a labor camp in Kasho.
    He found him in the ghetto.
    And he would take him food.
    Then I found two other people, which
    they came from the same place where we came.
    They climbed out through a window,
    and they ran away from the ghetto for someplace.
    And they caught them, and they brought them in also
    to Kasho in the ghetto.
    And they saw my father.
    And I don't know up till today- I know my father is killed.
    He's not alive.
    He probably was killed in Auschwitz.
    They took him to Auschwitz like they took anybody else.
    I keep the same yahrtzeit.
    I keep my father and my mother's the same day
    because I don't have another date.
    I mean, I never--
    You don't know.
    Who would give me the date?
    Who would I ask for the date?
    Yeah.
    I mean.
    All right.
    So now the summer that you spent then in Germany,
    before you went back home, you had
    mentioned that you weighed only 80 pounds.
    Right.
    That was right after the liberation.
    I had no hair yet.
    I had a little, little, very short hair.
    And as we walked with those coats and those funny dresses,
    and you could have swear I'm 80, 90 years old.
    And I was very young yet.
    Otherwise, physically how did you feel?
    I was OK.
    I mean, I was weak.
    I was hungry.
    But I was not sick, except that I hurt my back.
    And I'm still suffering from that.
    Did they give you any kind of medical treatments
    while you were there?
    No.
    I didn't ask for it because I didn't want
    to make a big issue out of it.
    No, I didn't get no medical treatment.
    So you just regained your health, your strength.
    I regain my health, and I came back.
    And I went through plenty when I went back
    to Germany because things were very rough,
    things were very bad.
    I had family in America.
    I had an uncle here.
    And I asked him for help, so he would send me a few dollars.
    I'm talking after the war already.
    But when you-- now, when you left Germany and you went back
    to your hometown, how did you travel to go there?
    By train?
    OK.
    I traveled like this.
    We went by train.
    We arrived in Czechoslovakia.
    We were in Prague.
    They put us up for overnight.
    We were in Pressburg for overnight.
    We were in Budapest.
    And as being remembering Budapest,
    I was never in Budapest before.
    And I remember that my mother had a sister in Budapest.
    And I remember the school.
    She used to be a supervisor in that school.
    And so I went there to the school.
    I remembered the address.
    And I left the girls.
    And I started going along, a young kid and with subways,
    and Budapest, very big city.
    And I found the school.
    And the school was all burned down.
    It was all bombed.
    But somebody told me that my aunt lives there and there.
    So I went all day.
    I came back in the middle of the night.
    I did find my mother's aunt.
    And I saw her.
    And then I stayed in Budapest.
    The school, which we all stayed in, was called [NON-ENGLISH]..
    There where everybody was staying,
    whoever came back from the war.
    And they had names.
    You know Harold Foyer?
    You know him.
    I happened to stay in the line for food.
    And guess who I saw?
    Harold Foyer.
    And I was able to tell him about his sisters, that his sisters--
    I found his sisters in Neustadt, in camp.
    I found them in a list, that they are all alive.
    I was able to tell him.
    And then I went-- we stayed there until we got home.
    Somebody from my hometown saw me,
    also walking in one of the streets.
    And he took me home.
    He paid my fee, and he took me home from Budapest.
    And when I arrived to my hometown, I'll never forget it.
    That was on a Friday noon.
    And I came home, and I went to take a bath.
    And in our house a gentile was living.
    It was one of the worst feelings a person could ever have.
    And one of my neighbors across the street, one of the girls,
    she came home way before I did.
    And she called me in.
    And she gave me to eat lunch.
    She had baked fresh challahs.
    And she had a delicious paprikash, chicken for Friday
    for lunch.
    And it was so delicious.
    And it had such a taste.
    And I figured, gosh, I never ate this since I left my mother,
    you know, and all that stuff.
    And then I had my cousins, which the cousin,
    which I happened to be in Auschwitz with,
    she was home already too.
    And her brother was home, and my father's another cousin.
    And everybody made like they called it a kolkhoz.
    There are like 16, 17, 20 people lived in the same house
    because they were afraid to live alone,
    that the gentiles should not kill them.
    I'm talking after the war.
    And so they said, well, I'm a cousin, I mean.
    And they wouldn't even let me go to live with no--
    I was planning I'll live with some of my friends.
    I couldn't have lived in my house
    because the gentile picked up--
    took a big broom to me.
    I walked in the house just to see the house.
    Then I went back, and I had a beautiful coat
    with a mink collar, which my uncle brought this
    for me in 1937.
    He paid at that time, was brand new, $150.
    I also had a raincoat.
    They used to call them a trench coat.
    That was a very big thing to have in those days in Europe.
    And I went back to the guy where we left the clothes and the cow
    and so on.
    And he took a shovel.
    And he said to me, get out of here.
    If not, I'll chop you up.
    And I didn't get nothing.
    Then I went in my house.
    I asked the guy where my parents used to live,
    I'd like to go in.
    And the whole basement was all chopped up.
    We had put away, stored there, silver and linen,
    you know, in our basement and all covered up.
    Then I had the jewelry.
    My mother had written the jewelry
    in our backyard, her jewelry and her girlfriend's jewelry.
    Then another lady came and she said,
    no, take it out from there--
    I wish she would have never taken it out--
    and give it to this and this lady.
    This and this lady is going to hold it.
    And if you'll come back, she'll give it back to you.
    I went to get my jewelry to this and this lady.
    She said, well, I got nothing.
    The Russian took everything away from me.
    But she found my father's watch from Russia.
    He brought us from Russia, from the First World War.
    She gave me that back.
    And I don't have it.
    My husband gave that watch to a friend of his,
    and I don't have it.
    One day, she came in, and my husband and my cousins
    had a big grocery store back home in Bechkef.
    And they had a bar.
    And she came in for a drink.
    And she had my mother's ring on her finger.
    And the minute she saw me, she ran out.
    And I got so stiff that I couldn't grab her hand
    and take off that ring and then go back to her
    with one of my cousins and take away-- she
    had jewelry, which I happen to know,
    from three Jewish families.
    And I never saw her after that.
    If I ever would go back home, I would
    walk in in her house, if she is still alive,
    and I would have searched for that jewelry.
    So you never got anything back.
    I never got anything back.
    I never got anything from my parents.
    The only thing which I got from my parents, somebody
    found in our house two little pictures, one picture of me
    and one picture of my mother.
    And I never have any of my father.
    I don't even have a picture.
    Because there was a picture in this country,
    and they put me in $5 in a letter,
    and somebody took the picture with the money.
    So I don't have another picture of my parents.
    So then you lived in the house across the street
    from your own house.
    No, I didn't live.
    I just walked in there to have lunch.
    I did live in--
    after the war, I did live in Bechkef with my cousin.
    So you left the town then.
    Yeah.
    I left the small town.
    It was just two kilometers.
    I used to go by it almost every day.
    But I never walked in in the house anymore.
    After that.
    No.
    And then you went to Bechkef.
    And how long did you live there now?
    Oh, just a few months.
    And who did you live with?
    With my cousins, with my Cousins.
    That they came from that town?
    Yeah.
    So you lived in their house then.
    We lived about 16, 17 people.
    I don't even remember.
    And then what were your plans?
    What were you thinking at the time?
    Well, my plans were like that.
    I had no business to go back.
    I hated it.
    Every time I had to go by my parents' house,
    I used to turn my head and cry.
    And I had made up my mind that as soon as spring of the year
    will come, I'm leaving.
    And that's what I did.
    Spring of the year, we left, 17 young people.
    We left.
    We went over the borders, from Hungary
    to Vienna and so and so.
    We just left.
    And I arrived to Germany.
    And Germany, I lived in a small town first.
    And after that, I got married.
    And I lived in Wolfratshausen after--
    I got married in Wolfratshausen.
    After that, I lived in Frankfurt,
    in Frankfurt am Main in Germany.
    With your husband.
    With my husband-- and I came out from Frankfurt.
    And did you know that you wanted to come to the United States?
    Oh, yes.
    Because I had my--
    my mother's brother was alive.
    And I had my cousins.
    And that's the only family really I had.
    I had no any other family.
    And I did get married in Germany in 1948.
    I got married, and I came out to 1949.
    September the 17th I came out to this country.
    Did you have any help from--
    No, no.
    -- from the Joint Distribution.
    We didn't have no help from the Joint Distribution
    because my husband had family in Cleveland.
    And they sent us the papers.
    And they sent us the tickets.
    And we came out.
    And I went to work.
    And my husband was working for his family for a while.
    And then he became very, very ill.
    And he had to go in a sanatorium, what
    also came from him from camp.
    He was in a sanatorium in Colorado, in Denver, Colorado.
    And I got pregnant.
    And I happened to know that he is sick,
    but I didn't know he was that sick.
    So I gave birth to my son.
    And after the bris, he had to leave.
    And he went in a sanatorium.
    For two years he was there.
    And I was left here with a child.
    And I did not take no help from nobody
    because I happened to work, and I had a few dollars.
    And I would refuse to take any help.
    I did not want to have a black ticket on my record.
    So I lived six months in Cleveland with the baby.
    And then I lived with my family for almost two years
    in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
    And then I came back here.
    And we started from the beginning, like newcomers.
    So when you arrived first in the United States, in New York?
    Right.
    And how long did you live in New York?
    Just a short time?
    No.
    I didn't live in New York.
    I lived in Cleveland.
    You came directly to Cleveland.
    I came directly to Cleveland.
    But then my husband got sick.
    I lived in Cleveland for after that, after my son was born.
    And then I lived in Allentown for about two years
    because I wasn't able to support myself.
    And I didn't want to take no support from nobody.
    And you had relatives then in Allentown?
    Yes, I had the relatives there.
    Uncle and cousin?
    Yes.
    And cousins, right.
    So they helped you get settled at that time.
    Right.
    Right.
    And then you came back to Cleveland
    after your husband was released?
    Yes.
    We came back after my husband was released.
    We came back.
    And we even had a business before he left,
    before he left to Colorado.
    And they took us with money.
    We had nothing.
    We just started again.
    He started working on a job.
    And somehow we-- somehow we had luck.
    OK?
    Were there any agencies here who helped you get started?
    Nobody helped us.
    I did not go to no agencies.
    I don't even like to talk about it because I did not
    want to get help.
    And there was no agencies.
    You know what they used to do?
    When my husband left, that made me very mad.
    My baby used to cry all night.
    And they would--
    8 o'clock in the morning, they would come call me.
    They're going to come and see me.
    And I had to sleep in the morning
    because my baby was crying all night.
    And I refused them to see them.
    And I didn't take any help.
    And I didn't want any help.
    And I had family, and I had my own money, which I saved up.
    I was working until the last minute
    I gave birth to my child.
    And we are not that kind of a people.
    I mean, you know.
    And then we just went in, worked ourselves up,
    and we went into business.
    Did you talk to anybody about what you had gone
    through those years in Europe?
    No.
    I did not talk to nobody.
    I'm going to be very honest with you.
    In fact, one of my cousins told me
    that she never heard me talking until I was not
    at the Holocaust in Jerusalem.
    In 1981.
    Then after that, I start talking about concentration camp.
    My own children-- to my son, I did talk once.
    And to my daughter, I didn't even
    talk because I couldn't talk.
    For years it was in my heart, and I couldn't talk.
    It's the first time I really and truly gave out my story.
    Did you join a synagogue after you
    were living here in Cleveland?
    I joined the synagogue for 34 years right away.
    As soon as you came here.
    Right.
    How did you feel then about being
    a Jew in the United States, not knowing the language?
    Well, it was very rough, and it was very hard.
    In the beginning right after liberation,
    I didn't believe in God.
    And I said there is no God if he did what he did.
    But slowly, as I came back to this country--
    in Germany, I didn't write in the Sabbath.
    I didn't cook in Sabbath, which I still don't do.
    I mean, I do write.
    I don't cook.
    It came back to me.
    Somehow, somewhere it came back to me.
    Yes, I did belong to the synagogue right away.
    And did you become active then in the Jewish community
    right away?
    Yes, I became active in the synagogue.
    And I was active in the synagogue.
    Then I got sick with my back, and I just
    couldn't do things for other people.
    I was lucky that I did things for my own family.
    And I do have--
    I am a member, a Hadassah member.
    But there was times which I couldn't even
    get up in the morning.
    So I couldn't take big jobs, big responsibilities.
    I did do-- I did help for--
    with money all the time, never refused, never, never.
    You know what?
    I found a bill, which you're not going to believe me.
    I was going through papers when my children moved out,
    and I'm going through papers.
    I found a bill from 1960, when the Kol Israel became
    an organization-- from $10.
    More I have, but that one is-- and that
    was a lot of money in 1960, $10.
    That was-- a Jaeger happens to be in my house.
    He was hanging drapes, something he did.
    He asked me.
    And after that anniversary, the 25th anniversary,
    I brought it downstairs to show my husband.
    I have more than one.
    I'm just telling you.
    So you became active with the community--
    Yeah, I became active.
    Right.
    --right away.
    Right.
    Right.
    All right.
    We're going to take a short break now.
    And then we'll come back and talk some more.
    Fine.
    Fine.
    I'm Lee Rosenberg.
    Today we are interviewing Helen Feig, a Holocaust survivor.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Helen, we're back now to the story.
    You have now been in this country for 36 years.
    You had mentioned you have grown children already.
    How do you feel that your Holocaust experiences
    have affected you today?
    You mean just today or all the time?
    All the time.
    Well, I'll tell you how it did.
    First of all, I happen to be very nervous.
    It did affect my nerves.
    Like, I'm very touchy, like now it's
    getting a little better because I'm a little older.
    But as I was younger, I was very--
    I was very hurt, for any little thing.
    Because I happen to know I have nobody.
    And until I got married, I mean I had really nobody.
    All of a sudden, I saw myself, one person alone
    in a big, big world.
    And then even now, it affects me many, many times.
    There is sometimes things you want to talk,
    they have to somebody close.
    You don't have them.
    They are gone.
    And especially, when it comes to holiday, any holiday.
    It doesn't have to be a particular holiday.
    Excuse me, your memories are coming back from that home.
    I am still talking.
    I know that my home, Craciunesti, is existing.
    But in a way it's not existing.
    Nobody is there.
    The houses are not there.
    Our house happens to be still there,
    because we built it a brand new home in 1935.
    And some friends of mine were there last year.
    And they took pictures.
    And it's still there.
    But they tell me that the whole place doesn't look the same.
    The people are not there.
    The homes are not there.
    It looks like an entirely world.
    And I am still talking I like to go home.
    I want to see it once more.
    I don't know what it's going to do for me,
    if I will or I won't.
    Then I was ill an awful lot from concentration camp.
    I had a very nervous stomach.
    I still have to eat five times a day,
    because I cannot have an empty stomach.
    You should excuse me, I throw up if I have an empty stomach.
    Then from that fall, which I fell down in labor camp,
    and I was so young.
    And I didn't take care on it right away.
    I had three back surgeries.
    I was in and out in the hospital since after the war,
    and attacked me when I was very, very young.
    And like I told you in the car, before I
    was pregnant with my first child,
    I used to get complete crippled.
    I couldn't walk.
    And when I gave birth to him already, many,
    many times I couldn't even pick him up from the crib.
    And I got married and I used to be in and out in the hospital,
    or in surgery, or in traction, or in traction, or in surgery.
    And I still suffer from it.
    I have to have help.
    There's certainly things I love to do
    and I can't do them by myself.
    I have all my hands are frozen.
    My bones are hurting me.
    I got arthritis in my whole body.
    I got arthritis.
    I live on medication.
    And so my health is not good, OK?
    And everything came from there.
    Because we didn't have the proper food.
    We didn't have the proper clothes.
    A prisoner has it better than we have it,
    not just in this country, even in Europe.
    Because we were treated, animals you treat better than we
    were treated.
    And the other way, we have to live.
    And we have to keep on going because God left us.
    And we had to make another generation because we
    want that Jews should exist.
    We want them to live.
    We do not want them that they should
    disappear from this world.
    And so this is it.
    You have to keep on going.
    Yes, you have to keep on going.
    Do you think about the Holocaust a lot?
    I tell you the honest truth.
    After I happened to be in 1981 in Jerusalem with my husband,
    suddenly things came back to me.
    In all those years, I never talked from Auschwitz.
    I couldn't talk.
    It was impossible.
    I have a cousin that she just died about three months ago.
    And she told me last year.
    She said, in all the years I never heard you
    talking about the Holocaust.
    And recently you started giving out your secret.
    I couldn't talk.
    The minute I start talking.
    I would feel that I would get in a big, big--
    it's not called a dream.
    I don't know how to call it.
    It's there.
    I know I was there.
    I know it's not the story.
    I have nothing written.
    Whatever I said, it's all by heart, remembered.
    It's not put on notes.
    Because if I would have put it on notes,
    I would have felt guilty that maybe I
    put something in there which didn't happen to me.
    So I didn't want to make notes.
    My husband told me someday make notes.
    I said, no.
    Maybe I won't remember a place, the name of the place.
    But I did remember.
    For many, many years I couldn't remember Lübberstedt.
    At one time, I was trying to think the name
    where I happened to be.
    And I couldn't remember it.
    But it came back to me.
    And a big, how shall I say, depressed.
    I would get very depressed.
    I used to be very close with my mother,
    even closer than with my father.
    And the love which I had with her
    was a sort of a sisters and mother love.
    Because I had no sisters.
    And she tried to give me both love.
    She had a very good personality.
    And she happens to be a very smart lady,
    not because she was my mother.
    But it was in her, OK?
    And people, which they knew her, they would tell you this.
    She was a self-made person.
    And so am I. I am very much a self-made person.
    I learned one thing when I came over to this country.
    That when I took a job, I mean I had quite a few jobs.
    I did work.
    That you never look what another person has
    or what another person does.
    You just do what you want to do.
    And if you could do somebody good, you do it.
    If you can't do somebody good, don't do bad.
    And that's the way I live since I came over to this country.
    And I also was raised in a very good home.
    So now it's--
    You got to help for other people.
    That's one of the most important things.
    The memories are dear.
    But you cannot live in them forever.
    You have to live with them, but you got to hide them.
    Somehow somewhere you must hide them in your heart,
    because if you're going to take them out every day,
    it's not going to work.
    So that's the way it is.
    I think so.
    I could be wrong.
    I don't know.
    But it works for you.
    It works for me.
    That's what the important thing is.
    So now since you went to Jerusalem,
    you were talking more and more about--
    I start talking more and more about my experience
    because that night, I mean I happened
    to be there when we were all there in Yad Vashem.
    And that night, I'll never forgive and never for
    forget in my whole life.
    But at that moment of scenery, just to believe it,
    that I'm going to be there.
    I couldn't believe it that I'm there.
    And then the closing night of Jerusalem
    when Menachem Begin was there.
    We were 22,000 people from all over the world.
    There was never that many people,
    and the soldiers were all climbing
    on the top of the roofs and all over the places to watch us.
    We were afraid.
    I mean, there's no question that something
    shouldn't happen to us, I mean some bomb or something.
    And it was an impossible, an unbelievable thing.
    And then everything came back to me.
    And I want that the world should know about it.
    That's why I came.
    You asked me that or you didn't.
    You want to ask me that?
    Yeah.
    You feel that it's important.
    It's very important that this Holocaust thing
    shouldn't happen.
    I'm not going to say it's going to happen
    to the next generation.
    But in another generation and another generation,
    so those tapes are very important
    and it's very important that the children in school
    should learn all about that.
    It shouldn't be forgotten.
    And people don't have to have hate
    because one of them is Jewish, and one of them is Protestant,
    and one of them is Catholic or one of them is Christian.
    We are all people.
    I mean, we just have a different religion.
    But we are people.
    And every person is a person.
    Do you think that what you went through in the Holocaust
    has contributed to the feelings that you have today
    that people are all people?
    Positive.
    Positive.
    But I'm going to tell you now something.
    And I don't care if it's going to be on tape.
    And it's written in the Torah too.
    I mean I'm not going to change the world.
    And antisemitism is going to exist forever.
    And nobody's going to be able to change that.
    But we have to watch out that the people should
    know what happened to us.
    It shouldn't happen to them.
    God forbid again and again.
    Helen, what do you think it was?
    Was there any one particular thing
    that helped you get through those years?
    Yes.
    What was it?
    I happened to be only one child and I was brought up
    in a very good manner.
    I had everything.
    I was raised and born in Europe.
    I had everything just like my children have,
    except I didn't have a television because television
    didn't exist at that time.
    I did not miss nothing in this world.
    I did miss after the war was over.
    And I think, excuse me I slipped here.
    What was the question?
    About what had happened to make you survive this,
    gave you your strength.
    Yeah.
    Well, I think that God left from one family,
    not from all the families, he left somebody
    that I mean I was just one.
    My parents didn't have no more children.
    I was the only one child.
    So I guess that God gave me the strength, the energy,
    the willing.
    I had the will.
    I had a willing too.
    Because if I wouldn't have had the willing,
    I wouldn't be here today.
    I would have been probably burnt like the rest of them are.
    And so I was a survivor.
    That this generation shouldn't be destroyed.
    That I mean, I have two children, which they I hope
    are going to have children, and so it's
    going to be another generation.
    And so God did it.
    In the beginning, I didn't believe
    that there was a God because my parents were very good people,
    and so was other parents, and other people.
    They were honest people.
    And God shouldn't have done what he did.
    I mean tiny little children, my young cousins,
    tiny kids which they used to live across the street.
    They were killed.
    They were burned.
    What did they do?
    They didn't do anything wrong.
    But in the other way that God had,
    I guess he had some people which he wanted
    they should live, and not to destroy the whole family
    or the whole generation.
    So that's all I could say.
    And what do you think would be an appropriate way
    to commemorate those people who didn't live?
    Appropriate way?
    Appropriate way would be that like you kids
    belong to the second generation, which I think it's a good way
    to remember those people, because any other way they
    are not going to be remembered by nobody.
    Let's say that we all are going to die out.
    I mean we are not too many left.
    And who's going to remember them people?
    Who will?
    Nobody.
    I mean, my kids are not even going
    to say, well, my mother had an aunt or an uncle or a cousin
    or whatever.
    I mean they're not going to say it.
    But if you kids are going to keep it up,
    and then maybe your children are going to keep it up,
    I see that's the only reason I could see
    that it would be remembered.
    There is not any other way it should be remembered.
    Now, OK, they are saying an [NON-ENGLISH] after the 6
    million Jews in my temple.
    They're not saying it in all the temples.
    It happened in our temple in Green Road Synagogue
    they are saying it.
    Because all those people come from the same place.
    OK?
    So they are remembered.
    Now, that's the only way those people could be remembered.
    You have another solution, you could say it.
    I'm interested in hearing what your opinions are.
    Well, that's what my opinion is.
    I mean that's the way I feel about it.
    All right.
    And then what do you think out of everything that you've
    gone through, what made you decide that you wanted
    to share this experience today?
    What?
    OK.
    First of all, I'm coming back to that story which I just said.
    I didn't want that the Holocaust should be forgotten.
    That's the first subject.
    The second subject is that I read and I heard it
    in the news that a few years ago, if you remember correct,
    they said it didn't exist, the Holocaust.
    It's not true.
    It was written in books, in big colleges.
    So it's a lie.
    They are liars.
    They killed 6 million.
    They killed our parents.
    They killed our cousins, our uncles, our aunts,
    our little tiny kids.
    It's a lie.
    So I want them to know that it wasn't
    a lie that those people are existing here.
    And they're telling the truth.
    Everything they are saying is the truth.
    So that should not be forgotten.
    If anybody is going to say from now in 20 years,
    maybe we are not going to be around or in 50 years,
    it's not true, it was a story put together,
    there is going to be tapes or books
    that you're going to be able to take out and prove it.
    There was a Holocaust.
    And so this is what made me come and say too.
    And I feel that I owe this.
    That if God was good enough to leave me alive,
    and I should be a survivor what I went through.
    After all, I just saw myself one person alone in the world,
    with not having nobody.
    And God gave me all to be.
    I wasn't smart enough to run away from the camp.
    I wasn't smart enough from the labor camp
    not to stay where they put me to work,
    that I shouldn't get tuberculosis in my lungs.
    God gave me all that in my mind to do it.
    And with my will, I did it.
    But he encouraged me.
    He told me.
    So all that will be on tape, and some day somebody
    is going to take out that tape and prove this to the world.
    And that's what made me come.
    Helen, do you have a personal message
    that you'd like to share with us regarding the Holocaust?
    A personal message, let me see.
    Yes, I do have a personal message.
    I wish that the younger generation,
    like you and maybe your children,
    I mean you don't have a third generation yet.
    But there is a second generation,
    and I hope there is going to be more than in Cleveland.
    I hope there is all over a second generation
    that you kids should not forget that your grandparents, some
    of your grandparents and relatives,
    were those which they were killed between the 6 million
    Jews.
    Which it's a true story.
    It's not a put up story.
    To be remembered, and that should not happen never, never,
    never, again to no generation.
    And not just no Jews, to nobody, to no human beings
    should that happen what happened to us.
    And that's my message to the world.
    Is there anything else you'd like to share with us
    today, Helen?
    Yeah, what would you like me to share with you today?
    I want to thank for everybody who did that.
    That they decide to do tapes from Holocaust people.
    And to the younger generation, I have
    a message they should work very hard,
    and they shouldn't neglect it.
    Because we people are going to be gone pretty soon.
    And I'm going to try and encourage
    my children to try and be active and work, and to the world
    I'm going to send a big message.
    It was a Holocaust.
    People are trying to say it wasn't.
    It's not true.
    There was a Holocaust.
    6 million Jews were killed for no reason, honest people,
    nice people, good people.
    And that should never, never, never happen again
    to no people.
    And I want to thank you for doing
    all the work, whoever started the Holocaust and everything.
    And that's my name is Helen Feig.
    And that's all.
    What else shall I say?
    Thank you, Helen, very much for sharing
    all of your experiences with us today.
    This is Lee Rosenberg.
    Our Holocaust survivor today has been Helen Feig.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    That's it.
    OK.
    That's very good.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Helen Feig
    Interviewer
    Lee Rosenberg
    Date
    interview:  1984 December 11
    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
    Feig, Helen.

    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 08:11:22
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505009

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    Summary (English)

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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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    Jennie Alpert, born in Czechoslovakia, describes being the second of three daughters; her mother dying when she was three; her father remarrying and going to live with her stepmother's sister; becoming a dressmaker and having a small business, which employed several young girls; being sent with her aunt to a ghetto in Ungvar (Uzhhorod), Ukraine in 1941; her father, stepmother, and eight brothers and sisters being sent elsewhere; being sent with her aunt to Auschwitz and wearing red arm-bands since they were barracks workers; the mass killings in the camp, and the death of her aunt; being selected for death but being forced to wait three days and then selected for work; being given a piece of bread and a dress, and then being transported to Traxenberg; their work digging trenches in the woods and being forced to sing as they walked to work; becoming a favorite of the camp commander, who was not a member of the SS, but of the Wehrmacht; the camp being evacuated in November and being forced to march for three weeks; the emotional state of one of the guards; being taken to Bergen-Belsen, where she remained until the liberation in April; being very sick at the end of the war and taken to a hospital in Juttaborg, Sweden (possibly Goteborg, Sweden); immigrating to the United States along with her brother and two sisters; meeting and marrying a Polish man who had moved to the US in the 1920s; and having a daughter and living in Cleveland Heights, OH.

    Oral history interview with Emerson Batdorff

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    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

    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

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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

    Oral History

    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

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    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.

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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.

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    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    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

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral History

    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 Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral History

    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.

    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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