Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.110 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0110

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner
    Transcript
    OK, we're rolling.
    5, 4, 3.
    I'm Judy Levendula.
    And today, we are interviewing Alex Rabiner, a Holocaust
    survivor.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Alex, thank you for being here with us this morning.
    I'm going to ask you some questions about your life
    at the present time.
    First, tell me, where were you born?
    Poland.
    And what city?
    Bukaczowce.
    OK.
    How old are you?
    71.
    And do you work or are you retired?
    No, retired.
    What were you doing when you were working?
    A butcher.
    For how long would you say you were?
    I was working 18 years in store.
    And I was working in a factory.
    And I just come here on 93rd Street.
    I was working for Diamond Corporation by Windors.
    How long have you been retired?
    I am retired from 1969.
    OK.
    And are you married?
    Yes.
    Do you have children?
    No.
    Where do you live?
    South Euclid, Ohio.
    Well, we can bring things up to date again later.
    But now, let's go back.
    And let me find out something about your life before the war,
    if you can remember before 1939 what
    your family constellation was like
    and how life was for you then.
    I can.
    OK.
    We was a family from 12 children.
    When my father died, I was six months old.
    So I don't remember my father.
    My mother died 1937 in January.
    My oldest brother, he was born, I think--
    I'm not sure, I think 1885 because he got married, other--
    before the war.
    My youngest sister got a little boy.
    He was about six, seven years when she was killed.
    Where she was killed, I don't know either.
    And the rest brothers and sisters,
    I don't know because I was not with them.
    This was-- I'm talking before the war.
    1938, I come home from the Polish Army.
    1939, in August--
    September started the war Poland with Germany.
    They draft me in the Polish Army.
    And the Polish Army was two weeks--
    was Poland fighting with the Germans.
    Let me stop you for just a minute.
    In 1939, when you were drafted, you were what?
    I was drafted before.
    1939, they called me in in the army.
    When you were called in then, you
    were what, about 27 years old?
    About 27-28 years old or so.
    OK.
    And your mother had died two years previous?
    My mother died 1937.
    OK.
    What did she die of?
    She was an old lady.
    She was-- I don't know.
    She died.
    I don't know what she died.
    She died.
    OK.
    I see.
    I really cannot tell you what she died.
    There was a doctor.
    And she say--
    Dr. Palicki was-- he was an old doctor, a very good doctor.
    He says, no cure.
    She died.
    Do you remember anything more about your family
    life or the community--
    Oh, sure I remember.
    --before the age of 27?
    What you want-- what do you mean the community?
    How this was in the city?
    Did you have friends?
    What were your activities?
    What was school like for you?
    School, I usually went in a school.
    Was a school, they call it public school.
    In Poland, called this [POLISH].
    And we used to go in the school.
    And after the school, we used to go in the Hebrew school,
    in the Jewish school, the Jewish kids.
    I used to go in a Polish school.
    And then from the school, the kids used to playing around.
    I was younger, naturally.
    Do you remember it as a fairly good time of life?
    Well, we got not bad because I told you,
    my parents got a big farm.
    We got everything till the war.
    Naturally, when the war started, they took this away from us.
    So working the farm is how the family survived and made
    a living, in effect?
    Oh, sure.
    We had more than a living.
    We got by--
    I think, I don't remember exactly.
    I cannot tell you exactly.
    We got 120 more plant.
    We got about 20-30 cattles, horses, beans, an orchard.
    What can I tell you more?
    I cannot exactly remember how this was.
    But I know how this--
    I remember this because I was younger.
    But I remember this.
    Now, this belong to Russia.
    I cannot even claim nothing.
    If I would want claim now--
    if this be in Poland now, I can maybe claim something.
    But this belong to Russia.
    I cannot claim nothing.
    This is-- was everything before the war.
    Yeah.
    So you basically, then, must have worked on the farm until--
    I didn't work nothing of the farm.
    You didn't.
    Was too young.
    How can I work?
    Wasn't nothing funny.
    Was people was working on the farm.
    Oh, I see.
    I see.
    What were you doing before you went into the army?
    I was playing around.
    I was watching with the horses, playing by the horses,
    by the cows.
    I was not working in this time.
    OK.
    So let's pick it up from when you went into the army then.
    Then when I went into the army, so I come home.
    And then start the war, talking about the war.
    So people was excited.
    Be a war, be a war, be a war.
    Lots say, Hitler will not come to Poland.
    Lots say, he will come to Poland.
    You know how people is talking.
    The German will come to Poland.
    What they need Poland?
    What he want from Poland?
    But lots say, he will come.
    But then when he start talking, they want Danzig,
    and he want take away Pomorze--
    this was another part of Poland.
    Because he say, this belong to Germany a long time.
    He want this.
    And Rydz-Smigly say, we will not give him back.
    We will start fighting.
    And then start to mobilize an army.
    In September, started the war.
    And it was an army already.
    And Poland was a small country.
    And they didn't have what to fight against Germany,
    let's face it.
    But Poland got nothing to fight.
    Poland was not prepared to a war.
    And Czechoslovakia want to go with Poland in partnership,
    make a pact.
    Poland don't want.
    Poland say, we can protect ourselves.
    But this was not true.
    Germany was in this--
    if you remember-- I don't know if you remember, Poland--
    Germany went into Germany--
    to Czechoslovakia and took over all planes, and everything,
    the raw material, everything from Czechoslovakia.
    Poland got-- Poland was not so very situated to a war.
    And then when I was in the army, we hear from radio,
    this German make a pact with Russia.
    Don't know if you remember this, what was his name--
    Ribbentrop, who went to Russia and make a pact with Hitler--
    with Stalin.
    And they take Poland, half Poland
    to Russia and half Poland to Germany.
    So the Polish Army gave up right away.
    They don't want fight even.
    It was no-- they know this is no use to fight because they
    cannot--
    they can do nothing.
    They cannot fight Germany and Russia.
    So and right away, they take us--
    take away the army in prison.
    After how many weeks or months?
    I will tell you, I don't know how many weeks because I
    was over there just two weeks.
    And I got a friend, a Polish boy,
    he don't know this I'm Jewish.
    Because I was not to tell him I'm Jewish.
    I said, who need just to know?
    And he said to me one time, you know,
    Alex, if we will not run away, we will be killed here.
    They start to building an electric fence around.
    And if you touch electric fence with something,
    you'll be killed.
    Are you talking about the army prison or the?
    Prison.
    In Germany, they start to make a fence.
    So after two weeks of being in the army,
    you were taken to the prison.
    The Polish Army gave up.
    There was no Polish Army no more.
    There was-- this was capitulation of Poland.
    So the German took over Poland.
    What was that prison like?
    Very bad.
    An electric fence around it.
    They didn't give us food.
    They didn't give us food.
    They gave us 100 gram bread.
    And this bread was not as flour.
    I don't know what this was, even.
    And they gave us a pint milk, one bean, and a piece potato.
    When you start looking for the potato, you lost the bean.
    You start looking for the bean, you lost the potato.
    And I was a little fellow.
    And was lots of boys, 6'5", they need to eat.
    So they get swollen.
    And they died.
    And they was buried, 50-100 in one hole.
    They buried them.
    And they came out.
    And they buried them.
    They beat them.
    They go with [NON-ENGLISH] and [GERMAN]..
    You know what [GERMAN] mean?
    OK.
    And they beat them.
    You want a war with Hitler?
    You want a war with the Germans?
    And they beat it-- beat us.
    And they died.
    And they buried them.
    How long were you there?
    Two weeks.
    In the prison camp?
    Same time.
    OK.
    And then what?
    And then this boy--
    like I told you, this boy, we was friends.
    And he said, we need to run away before they start
    building the electric fence.
    And one night, it was raining, pouring like cat and dog.
    And he say, now, it's good to go.
    Come.
    And we started to go of the knees and of the hand,
    in water and mud.
    And they looking with the reflectors.
    When the reflectors of us, we lay down quiet, we don't move.
    If they move the reflector, we start
    moving little bit farther.
    And we move in bushes.
    And then we went into a farmer.
    And we give him our uniform.
    He gave us other clothes.
    And we take a bag with a shovel.
    And we started walking.
    So take us-- take me to walk to Lemberg about eight weeks, nine
    weeks.
    He went to his home.
    And then I went to Lemberg, to my big city--
    Lemberg was the biggest city in Galicia.
    And then over there was the Russians already.
    Then I went home to mine-- to my city, to Bukaczowce over there,
    I went there.
    What did you find there?
    They was over there, these people.
    My people was over there in this time
    when the Russians was over there.
    All right.
    So when I come home, so they say,
    the Russians starting working this.
    They start-- everybody was afraid, naturally.
    Who know?
    1941, the Germans started the war in 1941, in June--
    in June, the war started, Germany with Russia.
    So 1941, the Germans come in to us.
    And this was the end.
    Then they start to make camps.
    Well, what exactly happened in detail to you and your family
    in 1941?
    This is what I want bring you out.
    So they took me in 1942 in May.
    They took me in slavery camp.
    And the slavery came--
    you heard from a city Tarnopol?
    Close to Tarnopol was a city Brzezany, a big city.
    And over there, they start to make it
    for the Germans a sport place.
    Was over there, maybe-- when I come in over there,
    it was maybe over there 5,000 kids--
    people, say, I don't know kids, people.
    So they take me.
    From my city was about 60, they took us.
    They took us over there.
    So when I come over there, we used to take little--
    the roads, the buggies where they go, the rails,
    put the ground, and spread this, make a sport.
    But this was kids.
    They got swollen feet, swollen hands.
    They couldn't work.
    They couldn't schlep the buggies with the ground--
    kids 17 years, 18 years.
    Old people couldn't schlep because they was hungry.
    They didn't get food.
    I was over there not too long either.
    I was over there just a few days.
    What about your brothers and sisters?
    I don't know where they disappeared.
    I left them.
    I see.
    I really don't know to this day.
    I know, my brother, they took him off work
    in a big forum in the docks.
    They put docks of him-- and the docks turned them down.
    But the sisters, I don't know where they disappeared about.
    I don't know from not one of them.
    So when I come-- when I was over there,
    and I saw is they don't give food,
    and you go about 10-20 miles to work, for lunch, and this,
    and they don't give you nothing, just the dust and the mud.
    And it was impossible.
    So I thought, well, what--
    I need to go.
    I went to a farmer who was right over there.
    And the farmer say, why are you staying here?
    They will kill you out here.
    And this was in Ukraine, a farmer.
    So I say, what should I do?
    He say, you don't look like a Jew.
    Why you staying here?
    You talk good Ukrainian.
    Why are you staying here?
    These people what they can't talk Ukrainian,
    they don't know, so they're different.
    But you look-- you're healthy.
    Why you staying here?
    Go away.
    So I went from over there to a city, Trembowla,
    but not in the city, close to the city.
    And I went over there for food.
    And I went.
    He was the major from the city, from the village.
    And he say, why you need food?
    I say, because I need to eat.
    He say, stay and work by me.
    I couldn't stay right away, say, I will work by you.
    But I don't want to be suspicious If I will say,
    I will work, who work for nothing?
    A Jew work for nothing.
    And I say, how much you will pay me?
    And I start to bargain for the price.
    And I settled with him with the price.
    And he supposed to pay-- give me one uniform
    to work as camp is what they make by themself and one
    to go out in church.
    And I settled.
    And I worked.
    And I worked by the horses, by the cows.
    And I was beating the weeds.
    And I was working over there a whole summer.
    I was over there about nine months, not quite nine months.
    And later, he said to me, I should take beets--
    you know, what they make sugar with the beets--
    and take the beets to a station, give up
    for German contingent with a horse and buggy.
    And I say, OK.
    But he come before with few days.
    And he tell a story.
    They find-- they catch a Jew over there.
    And they kill him.
    People recognize, this a Jew, maybe the same thing like I.
    And they recognize him.
    And they right away, they shoot him.
    And I-- this follow me in my head.
    I say, I'm going over there.
    Somebody will recognize me too.
    Over there is in the thousands of people come.
    It's not such a thing you can hide.
    But everybody people, they know you, especially
    we got a bar, like a schenk, here,
    they say-- like here in Europe, used to say a schenk,
    here you say a bar.
    People used to come in.
    We got land.
    People used to work.
    Somebody will recognize me.
    And I think, what should I do now?
    Go or not to go?
    And I say, better is not to go.
    And I start this-- to bust to mine, just I say,
    I have a headache, I have this, I cannot go, this, and this.
    And he said to me, OK.
    I know where you need to go.
    You don't want to go, you right away got a headache.
    I don't know what is wrong with you.
    But you know, look for another job.
    I don't need you.
    So I say, OK.
    What is the difference?
    If I go over there, they will catch me.
    If I will not go, this is the same thing.
    So I say, OK.
    But I don't have nothing.
    I have two shirts, what they make their own shirts,
    the canvas shirts.
    They was old shirts, but I take the shirts.
    Meantime, his wife come in.
    And my name was in this time not Alex.
    My name was in this time Franek.
    Because in each place, I change the name.
    I don't have one name all over.
    And she said to me of Ukrainian, what is wrong, Franek?
    I say, I got a headache, and I got a stomachache, and this.
    And she say, you must catch a cold.
    If you catch a cold, she say, lay down, I will cover you.
    And I will give you a couple eggs and milk.
    And this will-- because it was not
    like here to go in a drugstore, buy pills, this.
    But she don't know he told me to go away, the husband.
    Meantime, he comes in.
    And he said to her, what are you doing what?
    I tell him to go.
    And she say, you crazy man, you-- in Ukrainian,
    this sound different.
    She say, he works a whole summer.
    Now, from winter, you chase him away because he is sick
    and he don't want to go with the horses?
    And they got one daughter.
    And the daughter, she say, I will take the beets
    to the station.
    And the girl take the beets to the station.
    And I lay down.
    And what is be the end?
    Still no good.
    And the other day, fall all the snow.
    This girl, the daughter, say, I should take her to the end,
    make--
    they make a flax, the cotton.
    I don't know how you call this here.
    They make like-- they make the cotton, they make it.
    For yarn.
    Do you know what I mean?
    So she say, take me to the aunt.
    I will stay over there a day.
    You will pick me up in there.
    And I say, OK.
    I take her in the morning.
    In the evening, I pick her up.
    I say, what the aunt said?
    And she say, the aunt say, maybe this is a Jew.
    Naturally, when she say, this may be a Jew,
    they will go to the police.
    And the police, they will come, they will check me.
    And they-- and this is the end.
    I'm still in dangerous.
    Now, I'm worse in dangerous than before.
    And I was so scared that I made wet of myself everything.
    I couldn't sleep in the house.
    I went sleep in stable.
    And I was so scared, I was wet.
    I don't know what to do now.
    So 12 o'clock nighttime, I went.
    He got a-- you say here had a locker, I don't know.
    And I went bread-- take bread, I take cheese and butter.
    And I was-- I don't have a-- it was cold.
    I take his overcoat and his cane.
    And I went away, 12 o'clock at night,
    because I know they will come and they will check me.
    And over there, they build big hay
    of in field, like hay they built.
    And then when they need, the farmers, they take this hay
    home.
    And I went in hay.
    And I make a hole.
    And I stay over there three days.
    I got bread.
    And I thought, this snow will melted.
    I don't want to make a bed.
    I mean, the snow a little bit melted, then I will go away.
    I got water not far.
    And I got onion, and garlic, and bread, and I got cheese.
    And I was over there a few-- two days, I think.
    Two or three days, I was over there.
    And I went away in my place.
    And I went away in my place.
    And I come to a man, what he knows me already.
    He was living in the woods.
    He used to come in [? Shahrbaraz. ?]
    He was born United States.
    But his parents took him home when he was a year old.
    His name was Florek.
    And I come to him-- to her first.
    And I come.
    But she was afraid, I don't know.
    And she say, oh, you a Jew, I'm afraid.
    They will come.
    And they will catch me.
    And they will do this, this.
    I'm afraid.
    Meantime, he comes in, and he said to her,
    don't you know who he is?
    My sister was a [YIDDISH],, they call in Jewish.
    We used to come and buy by him.
    Let him stay over the night.
    What is-- so let him stay over.
    And I stay over a night.
    In daytime, I went away in the woods.
    And this was a day after day after day.
    And I stay over there still a few months.
    And they was poor.
    He got an hectare, maybe two hectare land.
    He was a poor man, a very poor man.
    He got three kids.
    And I went.
    And I got cotton by a man.
    And I take his bag the cotton.
    And I give her the cotton, she should
    make shirts for the kids.
    And this was a big deal.
    OK.
    I used to come nighttime, she got docks.
    I go in one stable and sleep in the stable.
    And this was OK.
    But meantime, his mother don't know that he got a Jew.
    His sister don't know he got a Jew.
    A little boy from two years--
    you know of Christmas, when they come, the Catholics--
    how you say this--
    praying in the houses, how you say this?
    Don't you know?
    They come singing the Christmas, the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    what they call this.
    Christmas carols?
    Yeah.
    They come in the houses and they sing.
    I don't know how you call this.
    I know how you call this in Ukrainian.
    I never see this here.
    I never see this on the TV here.
    They used to come in the houses, and get us,
    and they sing, and they pray.
    I was laid down into a bed.
    And this bed was covered.
    And a little boy from two years was playing off
    in bed and the girls.
    They don't say one word.
    They don't say.
    They was an hour singing in house.
    I was cold.
    I thought I die over there.
    They went away and I went out from the bed.
    And this was OK.
    But in this time, was a village.
    And over there was a Jewish--
    I'm talking one in a second one.
    I'm still catching one and another one.
    I'm not talking about myself.
    I'm talking-- you ask me just how this was everything before.
    Was a Mr. Breitbart.
    The Mr. Breitbart was so rich over there, then
    you can say here--
    how should I try to give-- the Ratners, the Ratners here.
    You know them?
    You see the Ratners, they are rich people?
    He was rich over there than the Ratners here--
    lots of land.
    He used to send away in the army 25 horses every year.
    He was a very wealthy man.
    1928, he take in first match in Warsaw
    with a saw, very famous people, very famous.
    And she used to go in Tarnopol skating.
    The whole army would go out with her, a beautiful woman.
    Come a man to him.
    And the man said to him, Florek, I need to talk to you.
    And I am sitting like they stuck in house,
    and I'm sitting into the wall.
    But this man don't know he got a Jew.
    Do you understand what I'm talking?
    This man don't know nothing.
    And he say, you know who is living?
    Who-- Breitbart is living.
    This man got Mr. Breitbart over there by him.
    And this man got me.
    But one for another were not supposed to know.
    But he cannot keep Breitbart more because he is
    in a village.
    The Germans come in over there.
    And he cannot give him food.
    He is in a bunker in house, in a stable someplace.
    And he said to him, Breitbart is living.
    If he will live, we will live.
    If he will die, we will not live.
    We need to help him.
    But you see, in the first, he say, nobody should know.
    I'm telling you, don't say he's--
    to nobody.
    His wife and the kids went out someplace.
    But he say, I must ask his wife.
    How can I keep a man with a wife with a kid?
    So ask her.
    And he come to me and ask me, what should he do?
    I thought to myself, what I got to lose?
    If I will live, is good.
    If he will not live, so we all not live.
    He went.
    And he bring his girl, was about two years old maybe, maybe
    a year and a half.
    And he bring-- and they come from the back.
    And he put them--
    I still cannot explain you.
    You know where they put hay, the farmers, high?
    Hay, in a loft.
    In a loft.
    He put them in the top over there.
    And I, nighttime, used to put in water and go up there,
    wash myself.
    Because there was not water like here.
    And she said in Polish, oy, somebody is here.
    They waiting for us.
    I went.
    I introduce myself.
    And she said, he's crazy.
    He got one Jew and take other Jews?
    He is a crazy man.
    What is he doing?
    I say, no, he's not crazy.
    He just want help here.
    So the end was--
    he didn't got nothing what to feed.
    There's three people and I. And he got his own people.
    So we start to going in field and bringing food--
    and we bring corn, potatoes, beans.
    He got a cow.
    And the cow was a very good cow with milk so we should survive.
    But later, she comes to me.
    And she said to me, Franek, I'm sick.
    I was not a smart boy never.
    And I'm not smart now.
    I don't know the sixth sense.
    She is pregnant, she wouldn't go to a doctor.
    I never notice.
    She is sick.
    So I thought, she is sick, a person is sick.
    She won't go to a doctor.
    And the doctor was Komarianski-- and I saw him here
    in the United States, he lives in Parma, the same doctor,
    when I was working in Prospect, he come in in store.
    And I recognize him.
    I never was by him, but I recognize him.
    I say, why you won't go?
    I don't feel good, I this, this.
    I say, how can I go to Komarianski?
    Everybody will recognize me, take you out.
    She say, with whom will I leave a child?
    What can I do?
    I cannot go.
    So she said, then, Florek, he should take her from doctor.
    So the Florek said, I keep you to help you.
    And you want I should go give up to a Ukrainer?
    And they should kill me?
    You know what?
    Go in the woods.
    I don't want-- I cannot stand more.
    I this, I this, don't know.
    They went in the woods.
    And he said to me, you too.
    I said, OK.
    Later, he called me back.
    And he say, I don't want you should go out there.
    You can stay by me.
    But they let him.
    She got his baby.
    And they choke out his baby in the woods.
    And he went to a farm or some place for milk.
    And they catch him and they kill him
    two weeks before the Russian government.
    She is still alive someplace.
    I don't know where.
    This is one thing.
    Second thing, when I went away, like
    I was by this farmer what I told you because I was working,
    and he tell me with the--
    maybe he is a Jew, I must run away
    because I was afraid the police, the Ukrainer police will come.
    They will check me, especially a Jew or a man,
    they will check me.
    Then I am in trouble too.
    So I went away too.
    So and then I was in the woods and by another man.
    And so I survived when the Russian come in.
    I was in the Russian Army.
    They took me.
    And then when I come in the Russian Army, I was shot.
    And then I went in hospital.
    How did it happen you were shot?
    A soldier go and fight and he was shot.
    By?
    By the Germans.
    This was right-- I don't know if you
    will know-- between Czechoslovakia and Poland.
    [NON-ENGLISH],, over there, I was shot.
    When you first went into the army, shortly thereafter?
    No, this was 1943, end of '43.
    When did you go into the hospital?
    Right after this, when I was shot, they took me in hospital.
    And they-- when took me, is no place.
    They took me to Krosno, no place.
    They took me to Lemberg, no place.
    They took me to Kyiv, is no place.
    Then they took me to Kharkiv, is a place.
    And they put me in a--
    outside.
    They don't give you a little bit of water.
    Nobody ask you if you live, if you don't die.
    It was-- the room was full.
    And later, they take me, they take out
    the shrapnels from my legs.
    And I heal up.
    And this was OK.
    And then what?
    And then?
    And then.
    And then I went back in the army.
    And I went back in the army.
    And then I was in Czechoslovakia, 1945, May 9,
    the war was end.
    Germany gave up the war.
    Then they send me to Japan.
    From Czechoslovakia, I went to Japan.
    You were liberated in 1945 by the Russians?
    By the-- 1945, I was in the army.
    The Russian Army?
    In the Russian Army.
    All right.
    Who sent you to Japan?
    The Russians.
    All right, go ahead.
    You see, I was interpreter in the Russian Army.
    I see.
    Because when I come in in the Russian Army,
    the Russians are like night to day.
    They couldn't talk Polish.
    They couldn't talk German.
    They couldn't talk just Russian.
    When they catch a man, they see he know little
    bit more languages, they grab him around.
    And then when I was shot, I come back in the army.
    So they send me to Japan.
    And what did you do in Japan?
    Nothing.
    Nothing?
    Nothing.
    When I come to Japan, and then when Truman throw the atom
    bomb, the war was over.
    All right.
    Then tell me how you got to the States.
    OK.
    Now, I was in Japan.
    And I want go home back to Poland.
    So I must write a report to my commander battalion,
    to my officer.
    I say, I don't know if my family left, if not.
    I would like to go see if somebody is living.
    Can I have an outpost to go to--
    this was Lemberg.
    So he said, I don't know.
    And he take a map, and put the map, and look, and look.
    And he said to me, this is 10,000 kilometers.
    It's not so law we can give a boy 10,000 kilometers furlough.
    I can't do this.
    I will do this.
    I cannot do this.
    Meantime, most soldiers, they got the [NON-ENGLISH]..
    How call-- you call this?
    You fall down, you sick, you fall down,
    and they shake with it.
    Epilepsy?
    Epilepsy.
    So mine officer, another commander battalion
    the other side, they come out and say, listen, here
    is four soldiers.
    They got the sickness.
    And we must send a soldier with him in this where you live,
    the place over there.
    Take him home.
    And then do what you want.
    So I take him home.
    And then I do what I want.
    I don't go back.
    Who will go look for me?
    And then I went.
    I was in Poland in my city.
    My city was nothing, no city no more, was everything bomb.
    The city was just few homes.
    There was no people, especially Jewish people, well,
    I find just two families-- not families,
    just they live together.
    And the rest was people from Russia, from over there.
    I don't know these people.
    So I went to Poland.
    I don't know if you know, this belonged
    to Germany, then Poland--
    the German-- the Russia gave us to Poland Stettin,
    a port, Stettin.
    I was over there a few months.
    And from over there, I went to Berlin.
    And I was in Berlin living few years.
    And from Berlin, I come here, to United States.
    Someone here sponsored you?
    The HIAS.
    I see.
    When did you meet your wife?
    1951, I think.
    All right.
    You came to the United States when?
    In '51?
    '50.
    And that's-- and so you met her here?
    Yeah.
    You came directly to Cleveland?
    Directly to Cleveland.
    What kind of an impact do you think that these experiences
    have had on your life?
    How has this changed you or your outlook?
    I'll tell you.
    1943, when I was by this man over there,
    by us was a Polish village.
    And the Polish village name was Lidvikivka--
    Lidwikówka.
    Over there was living just Polish people.
    And these Polish people was just working people.
    The mostly they have a morg land, a morg and a half, two--
    very poor people.
    But they was all making the canvas.
    I don't know how you say this.
    You know what they make for the farmers, the canvas?
    And the farmers make shirts of this, everything.
    This is what this was the profession.
    1943, February 8, Ukraine people come and kill
    out the whole village--
    just people left what they take out the potatoes
    from the holes.
    When they-- they put them, potatoes in holes,
    I don't know if you know, of in winter, they shouldn't frozen.
    In winter, they cut the--
    take out the potatoes.
    And the hole left.
    Just these people left what they hide
    in the holes and the potatoes.
    And the rest people was all killed out.
    I never hear a word, somebody should say,
    this village was killed out.
    And mostly, Ukrainian people killed them out.
    Because Ukrainian people don't like the Polish people.
    OK.
    But tell me how that ties in with my question about how this
    whole experience that you went through in the early '40s--
    how you think that has affected your life.
    Would your life have been different?
    Sure, was different.
    How would it have been different?
    I can-- sometime, I cannot sleep.
    I'm always thinking about my sisters and brothers.
    And I am not very anxious to live and not to live.
    First, I even don't--
    what-- you cannot take your life, so you live.
    You married and you live.
    That's OK.
    A big success, I don't care.
    And I don't think so.
    I never think of something what happened.
    I was sleeping one winter by a farmer of an attic hay.
    It's nobody knows that I am.
    Even the owner don't know I'm sleeping over there.
    So how can this happen, the owner shouldn't know that you
    sleeping of an attic hay.
    What you eat?
    This is what they ask me.
    How can you?
    I told this to people.
    How you eat?
    I used to go out when the snow was melted, no pet.
    I used to go out to farm.
    I know to which farmer I'm going.
    But the farmer don't know who I am.
    When I know you, I go in to you.
    I know you, but you don't know me.
    And I knock by the window, I say, give me bread.
    Even you don't have, you give me what you have.
    Just go away-- I want you should go away.
    And you give me how much a bread.
    And I crawl up over there.
    And I sit over there other few days and eat some more bread.
    I can't-- I don't want go out.
    And I was over there about six months.
    Having to live like that, to just exist.
    I was alone.
    I don't have nobody this time.
    I was completely alone.
    You see, this life was so.
    Everybody was want live, tell how this was--
    not to live because I want make a success.
    I want live tell how people can do to people.
    Do you think that people did not believe your stories, like what
    you're telling me now?
    Oh, people believe my stories because these people
    what I tell them, they know this is true.
    Because they know this is true.
    This woman is today in Israel, a Jewish woman.
    She married-- she was very young.
    And she was very pretty.
    And she married a boy.
    He was much older than she.
    And she married right 1940, she married him.
    He was an old bachelor.
    And he was-- first, when he was married, he want money,
    he want this, he want this.
    Later, he married.
    She was a cousin to him.
    And they was hiding too.
    She was a very pretty girl.
    She lives in Israel.
    And he was in the woods.
    And when they make a fuss--
    how do you call this, an oblavy--
    you know what oblavy means?
    They attack us in the woods, one the men, an Ukrainer.
    A man, a Jewish man, know this man.
    He was in the woods.
    And he went to them--
    Skaliwski was he.
    And he say, give me a bread, he-- over there and over there,
    we need to eat.
    And he asked him, where's Jew, in which woods?
    He say, over there, over there, over there.
    And he went, and he passed to the police.
    A Friday about 3 o'clock, they come to the woods, maybe
    about 150 Ukrainian police and the Germans with a tank
    and take her out this woods.
    And he say like this is over there, the bunker.
    This man got a little gun--
    not a full gun, just a little gun, just in zamek
    written this.
    And when the Germans say in Polish--
    you don't understand Polish, just a little bit--
    in Polish, they said to him, don't be afraid.
    Come out.
    We will do nothing to you-- in Polish.
    This man, he was a Polish officer.
    With the first shot, he killed a German.
    He killed a German.
    Then the German yell in German, [GERMAN]..
    This you maybe understand.
    [GERMAN] mean, go back because this a [GERMAN]..
    And was three men, and three women, and two-three kids.
    This was the [GERMAN].
    Nobody went in in the woods.
    They was afraid.
    But each three was shot down.
    They shot so much, the woman with the kids crawl
    up, in February, of the trees.
    And they were shotting just down because they don't expect
    somebody is on the trees.
    And each tree was shot at.
    And then nighttime, I was with this man, what I told you,
    with this Breitbart over there.
    We thought we killed.
    And they was all alive.
    But this man was shot with a [NON-ENGLISH] bullets here.
    And the hand was bumpkin around, was broke up.
    His wife take a razor.
    And she cut him off the hand.
    And we went to this doctor what he is here in Parma.
    And he gave-- this is true.
    He gave all kind bandages and--
    but he say, I will not go in the woods.
    I'm afraid.
    But he gave everything.
    And he lived.
    And then they make another attack.
    And they catch him and they kill him.
    And this wife, what I want bring out,
    this wife got a baby in a field.
    And this baby was crying.
    And she moved in corn.
    In meantime, the Germans come in.
    And they hear, a baby is crying.
    So she moved away in another piece corn.
    They say, [GERMAN].
    They take out a handkerchief, take this baby by the foot,
    and throw it to the street, and that's it.
    In front of the mother?
    No, the mother don't see it.
    The mother went-- moved away in a little bit farther.
    If she will see it, they would kill her.
    She is today live in Israel.
    I saw her in Israel.
    So this is impossible to believe it
    that the Germans should do it.
    If somebody tells me the Russians will do it,
    I would maybe believe it.
    But the Germans should do this, I could never believe it.
    I don't know if it's fair to say that what I hear you saying
    is that this whole experience has sort of broken your spirit,
    that you feel, well, you go on.
    You must go on.
    What can I do?
    I can't do nothing.
    I try it.
    I was in Stettin.
    And I write the same thing what everything was.
    But I don't know whether disappeared.
    This was a committee with this, with Jewish writers,
    and writers, everything.
    Tell me, were you at one time a religious man?
    Or did that not play a part anymore?
    I was religious.
    But I was naturally-- we was a religious.
    That's right.
    My whole family is.
    What about now?
    I am and I am not.
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    I cannot see this.
    You see, this is in me.
    I must-- a person must believe in something.
    But I cannot believe.
    I cannot believe this should happen and God shouldn't do
    nothing.
    Something, something should be done, something.
    I saw of my-- because I was not in a concentration camp.
    I was free because I told you, I was working.
    I was working with farmers.
    And I-- they drive 200, 500 people into the trains like
    the cattles, and they beat them, and the kids--
    three, four kids.
    It's impossible to believe it.
    Stanislawów, you hear about city Stanislawów?
    This was a big city.
    In October or November, when this is the Jewish holiday,
    they take out 15,000 people--
    15,000.
    The holes was digged already.
    And they killed one by one, not of dead, [GERMAN],,
    and then hole, and then one choked the other one.
    People was what they was over there.
    This is impossible.
    This is impossible to believe this.
    If I read a book from something, so it's a book.
    I read it.
    But to me, this has happened yesterday.
    This has not happened 100 years ago.
    If I remember this, how can this happen so long?
    I'm not 100 years old.
    Do you talk about it often with people?
    Often.
    With other survivors?
    Often, where I come, we come together, just a few people,
    everybody talks his own story.
    People that you live near, neighbors?
    Yeah, neighbors, and then I come, and people what we--
    sometimes, we come and we start playing cards.
    So I always got to say my story.
    They say their story, I say my story.
    They say, they was in concentration camp,
    this was this, this was this.
    I always not go away of a moment for my story.
    Somebody told me a different story,
    somebody say, you know, this is no use talking.
    This is already--
    I cannot forget this.
    And I will not forget, I think, so long I live.
    Do you talk about it with your wife?
    Sure.
    But you see, my wife is American girl.
    When I-- I shouldn't say this.
    My wife is American girl.
    When I talk to her, she say, now, what can you do?
    You must forget this.
    But I cannot forget this.
    She can forget this because she don't see this.
    She read it.
    She saw on paper.
    She saw on TV.
    But I can never forget this.
    That's part of why we're doing this whole project,
    though, because we don't want people to forget.
    And in that sense, you have helped
    us fulfill our purpose by making this tape for the archives.
    Is this over?
    Well, I'm going to ask you if there's more
    that you would like to add.
    I can add more.
    But I saw this man come out.
    Yeah, we have about five minutes.
    Five minutes-- I can tell you another thing.
    I was in--
    I was going--
    1941 was by us a very hunger, very big hunger.
    What is the hunger?
    The water was all over.
    And the farmers even don't have what to eat.
    But the farmer still got something from his land.
    But a special people, like me, like other people,
    went of Podolia.
    I know you know where Podolia is.
    Podolia is between Russia and Poland.
    This was better land.
    And over there was nothing damaged, the water, the crop
    was everything.
    So I went over there.
    So when I come over there, naturally,
    I was not looking like a Jew.
    Nobody take me for a Jew.
    I went in church.
    I went to confession.
    And I was talking perfect Ukrainish.
    Now, I forget because I don't use the language.
    And nobody talked to me this, I am a Jew.
    Never.
    And this maybe helped me a little bit too
    because special Jews, they don't talk very good Ukrainish.
    They got a little bit big nose.
    My nose is a little bit shorter.
    I don't know.
    This is what they used to tell me.
    And never took me nobody for a Jew.
    And I went into him, he right away-- he don't even--
    he don't even think to tell me that I am a Jew.
    So as it turned out, that was one of the things
    that helped you survive.
    I think so.
    And another way, they say, this is our luck.
    Not this, but this is luck.
    Sometimes, you have luck, you live.
    You don't have luck, you die, this and this.
    So this was my luck, I think.
    I don't know.
    This is what I think.
    Well, again, I would like to thank you for sharing with us
    and giving your time.
    It's very nice to be-- meet you.
    And I'm glad I could do something.
    My name is Judy Levendula.
    Levendula, are you Italian?
    Hungarian.
    Hungarian?
    Yeah.
    And I've been interviewing Mr. Alex Rabiner for the Holocaust
    Archives Project sponsored by the Council of Jewish Women,
    the Cleveland section.
    And thank you again.
    You're welcome.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Alex Rabiner
    Interviewer
    Judy Levendula
    Date
    interview:  1984 September 12
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (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
    Rabiner, Alex.

    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 08:11:37
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505051

    Additional Resources

    Transcript (English) Summary (English)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    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

    Oral history interview with Molly Akst

    Oral history interview with Molly Akst

    Oral History

    Molly Akst, born in Bodzanow-Ktodzisko, Poland, describes being one of seven children born to Orthodox parents; her grandfather living with the family; her family owning a dry-goods store; the positive relations between Jews and Gentiles in her town; belonging to the Mizrachi youth group; how the only antisemitic acts in Bodzanow were perpetrated mostly by young boys; leading a quiet, studious life and planning to eventually go to Krakow to teach Hebrew; the German invasion; the many restrictions placed on Jews; most men, including her father, being forced to go to work camps; her father returning home shortly before they were deported in March 1941; being sent to Chasno, where Jews were still living in their own homes and moving freely through the city; the creation of a ghetto in Chasno; convincing four of her siblings to escape with her; hiding for two years with gentile families and fields; keeping the other children safe; her sisters being denounced by a former neighbor in 1944; the arrest of the girls and their release after two weeks, but never seeing their younger sister again; taking her brothers and her sister to live in the woods; remaining in hiding, living outdoors until their liberation in January 1945; returning to Bodzanow, where they lived in a cousin's empty house; several Jews returning to the town and learning that her parents had died at Treblinka; getting married and going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; becoming ill with chronic hiccups; going to Montreal, Canada in 1948 after the birth of her son; her brothers and sister eventually moving to Cleveland, OH and joining them in 1957; living in Cleveland with her husband; and her two children and three grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral History

    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

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral History

    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

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral History

    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

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    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 Helen Feig

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with 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

    View All 133 Items in the Collection