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Oral history interview with Paul Monka

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0088.42 | RG Number: RG-50.002.0042

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    Oral history interview with Paul Monka
    Transcript
    Good afternoon.
    I'm Bernard Weinstein, director of the Kean College
    oral testimonies project on the Holocaust.
    I am Paul Monka, survivor of the Holocaust.
    I was born in Bedzin, Poland, which was about 12 kilometers
    from the German border.
    The presence of Jews in Bedzin was about 45,000
    against a population of 60,000.
    Jews lived in Bedzin for about 500 to 600 years.
    It was one of the oldest cities in Poland.
    They were invited by the King Kazimierz
    the Great, who brought the Jews in
    to improve the commerce and economy of Poland.
    And he promised and delivered full autonomy to the Jews
    at that time.
    And the Jewish people lived very comfortably
    in this city for this period until Hitler came to power.
    I remember in 1933, I was a young boy,
    and I used to go with my father to Germany.
    We had a trolley car which went from us to Germany.
    It was like an open border.
    And I remember that the people there were very friendly to me.
    As a matter of fact, they used to give me toys
    when I came with my father.
    They liked to deal with him.
    He was in textile business, wholesale.
    And he had customers in Silesia, and also in Germany.
    But later on, when Hitler took over
    and he started a propaganda against the Jews,
    things really changed dramatically.
    How old were you when Hitler invaded Poland?
    When Hitler invaded Poland, I was going 18 years old.
    What do you remember?
    What are some of your memories of your early life in Bedzin?
    Well, Bedzin, as I said before, was a city where the presence--
    I mean, they lived for so many years,
    they had highly good school systems.
    And being that we had autonomy, we had our own mayor,
    we had our own police, and our own courts.
    And when I was a young boy, about 3 and 1/2 years old going
    to 4, I was sent to cheder.
    It means that I attended a kindergarten-type school
    where pre-school kids go.
    And as a matter of fact, by the age of five,
    we knew how to read the Hebrew letters,
    and we knew exactly how to daven, pray in the shuls.
    And it was almost like a Jewish town.
    Friday afternoon, the town completely was empty.
    Everybody was preparing for Shabbos.
    And everybody ran around to make the last preparations
    for that Sabbath.
    The Sabbath was very holy in our town.
    The people who could afford to buy food had to share it with
    the ones who couldn't.
    So it was a charitable way of saying
    there won't be any hungry people going around.
    The schools were fantastic.
    We all had enough education by just finishing public school.
    But if somebody went to high school, it was even greater.
    And very few had to go to colleges.
    All these things naturally changed
    when Hitler invaded Poland.
    I will go back even to the time when I finished.
    I went to public school, which was Mizrahi,
    it was a Hebrew school.
    Then I went from there to junior high school.
    And to finish up high school, I went to a technical lyceum,
    which was in Piotrków Trybunalski.
    It was about maybe 400 kilometers up north.
    And later on, after I finished that school,
    I was accepted to the Polytechnic of Warsaw.
    Actually, the name was [NON-ENGLISH] of two prominent
    Jews, German Jews who wanted to educate the Polish Jewish youth
    in technical matters.
    And I went to this school just maybe for a few months.
    We had an incident in the school where
    we were studying calculus.
    And Professor-- his name is [? Jalenski-- ?]
    was laying out for some problems.
    And then he asked the class, do you
    understand what I have taught you here?
    So if somebody knows, please raise your hand?
    So I was sitting in the back, and I raised my hand.
    So Professor [? Jalenski ?] said to me,
    we don't need any Jewish answers.
    Well, maybe you don't know that, but because of the influence
    of Hitler, in the time when he came
    to power, till 1938 and '39, Poland became anti-Semitic.
    As a matter of fact, they tried to bring all kinds of rules
    against the Jewish people--
    economic rules, no violent rules.
    Usually, the Polish people were more liberal people.
    They were not gangsters, like the Germans were.
    But later on, things changed.
    A new fascistic party came about, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And they were anti-Semitic, and they
    wanted to do violent things against the Jewish people.
    Now at that particular time in the school, when a Jew came,
    he had to sit in the last rows.
    It means there was numerus clausus in Latin.
    It didn't allow a Jew to be an equal citizen
    with the Polish people.
    This was against the rules and regulations
    of the Polish government, but it still was adopted.
    So when I got up, I was very upset when he told me,
    I don't need any Jewish answers.
    And I said to him, Professor [? Jalenski, ?] if you
    don't need any Jewish answers, how come you use a book written
    by my uncle, Professor Monka from the [? Stefan ?]
    [? Batory ?] University in Vilna?
    When he heard this, he was very embarrassed.
    He got red in his face and he started shouting things.
    And I thought that this is not good for me
    already that the professor can express himself
    with hating the Jews in front of a whole class.
    It was very upsetting.
    So as soon as the class finished,
    I tried to run out from the class fast.
    And as I ran down the steps, I was
    approached by about 15 hooligans, university students
    who attacked me so brutally, knocked me down, hitting me
    all over the face and the stomach and the back.
    And a policeman was standing not far
    that didn't pay any attention to that.
    Was this directed just to you, or was it
    directed to all Jewish students?
    It was directed to me particularly,
    because I confronted the professor,
    and I told him that--
    I embarrassed him, really.
    Prior to this, nothing--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Prior to this, there were incidents in the university
    that they beat up some Jewish students.
    There weren't too many Jewish students.
    In the class of engineering that I was accepted,
    there was only five Jews, and we had a class of 250, maybe.
    So when I was beaten up and blood was coming out
    from my mouth, from all over, the policeman
    saw that I'm about to be killed.
    So he came up and he says to me like this,
    do you need some help?
    So as much as I was hurt and as much as I felt bad, I said,
    I don't want no help.
    And I slowly got up and I walked home.
    I lived with my uncle and aunt in Warsaw.
    And when I came in, they didn't recognize me.
    I was black and blue.
    I was completely shook up.
    They called immediately a doctor,
    and they called my parents.
    When you think about it now, why did you refuse the help?
    From the policeman?
    Yes.
    Because this is my nature.
    When I come with my story, you will see exactly how
    I acted later in my life.
    I felt so humiliated that they did it to me.
    And I really loved Poland.
    I thought that this is a beautiful country,
    that I have all the privileges.
    I was accepted to school.
    I had no problem.
    Very few incidents of calling me dirty Jew or anything
    like that.
    So I felt that Poland is my country.
    And I felt very insulted that something like this
    could happen.
    So the next day, the doctor came in.
    He examined me.
    Nothing was broken, really.
    So he said, I would like to take you to the hospital,
    but if you can stand all kinds of pains, I'll leave you home.
    The next day, my parents came to Warsaw.
    And I decided right away that I don't want
    to go to a school like that.
    And they took me out from school.
    This incident I'm telling is just to show you
    what the influence of Hitler was on Poland
    at that particular time.
    I took a crash course in French, and I was accepted in Belgium,
    Liége, the University of Montefiore.
    Unfortunately, it was not for me to go to a foreign university,
    because the war broke out.
    I remember before the war broke out,
    my parents and my brothers and sisters went to the mountains.
    We always went a month in summertime.
    And I packed myself up, and I was ready to go to Belgium.
    It was a week before Hitler started the war.
    And I was stopped on the border, and I was turned back.
    A week later, the war started.
    It was September 1st, 1939.
    Being that we are so close to the German border,
    we felt the impact right away.
    Now Friday morning, we got up in the morning,
    we heard bombardment, not in the city itself,
    but around the cities.
    And then we walk, we take a look outside,
    and we hear that people are screaming that a war broke out.
    We look up in the skies, there are
    hundreds of planes flying east, and the explosions around us.
    Two days later, the German troops marched into my town.
    This was exactly September 3rd, a Sunday morning.
    They were highly technical.
    You couldn't see a German soldier walk.
    Mostly were on motorcycles, on half tracks, and other means.
    The people of Bedzin came out to see them marching in.
    Nobody felt that this is going to be a catastrophe
    for the Jewish people.
    They all felt that it will be another occupation.
    We were used to occupations.
    I had never experienced it, but we were used to occupations,
    because during the history, there
    were many occupations of our town by the Germans,
    then by the Austrians, then by the Russians.
    But this was a very sad moment to see [GERMAN],,
    the German troops marching into this beautiful city of Bedzin,
    where the Jews enjoyed such a beautiful life with
    their neighbors, where people received an education--
    maybe more of a Jewish education than a Polish--
    but the Polish education was equal to the Jewish.
    We had very beautiful youth, and we
    had dreams, dreams that maybe one day,
    we will all go to Israel.
    We were Zionist.
    We were brought up Zionistic in our town.
    We all belonged to different organizations.
    I personally belonged to organization
    HaNoar HaTzioni which was a middle ground,
    not left and not right.
    And we lived with a dream, and we met on the streets.
    Every day in the evenings, we walked,
    and we said hello to each other.
    It was good to live there.
    It was a prosperous region in Poland.
    We lived on coal and steel ore.
    And Silesia was one of the most industrial areas in Poland.
    It combined with many cities other than Bedzin,
    Sosnowiec, Katowice.
    This was a region which is like a metropolis area.
    It was almost like a very tremendous big town
    connected with a trolley car back and forth,
    even into Germany, as I said before.
    A few days later, when the Germans occupied our town,
    they came every day with different orders.
    A curfew 6:00 to 6:00.
    We had to wear yellow armbands with a Star of David in black.
    Later on, it was changed to a yellow patch
    with a J inside, Juden.
    In German, Juden means Jew.
    And we had to walk in the middle of the street.
    We were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks.
    German visitors used to come from the neighboring
    towns from Germany, and we were a laughing stock to them.
    They spit at us.
    They did all kinds of things.
    We couldn't understand that we are
    different than other people.
    We could not understand that the Jewish people
    are different than the German people or the Polish people.
    So to us, it was a tremendous humiliation.
    The feeling of not being able to run in the street,
    and having fun with your friends and enjoying life
    like we used to do was something which we could not comprehend.
    Then later on, they used to start taking elderly people
    to forced labor.
    That means they took them out.
    They took them from the street.
    They gave them shovels and picks and all kinds of instruments.
    And they told them to work in the gardens,
    in all kind of streets, by cleaning the street,
    by picking up the garbage, all kinds of things
    that some of them were not used to doing.
    I remember my father was taking one of these labor movements.
    And I ran after him, and I wanted
    to see what they're going to do to him.
    And he worked in a garden.
    And he was beaten by a German guard.
    And I was so upset that I wanted to run over the fence,
    and I wanted to take revenge right away.
    But some of my friends say, you're not going anyplace,
    because they'll shoot you.
    Eight days later, in the evening--
    this was Saturday prayers--
    they surrounded the synagogue with troops.
    They throw fire flames-- what do you call that?--
    on the synagogue, and on eight blocks
    surrounding the synagogue.
    They didn't let anybody out from the synagogue.
    While the synagogue was burning, some Jews
    tried to take out the Torahs.
    And they caught one guy with a Torah,
    and they shot him right away.
    In that incident-- when this happened,
    we lived about 10 blocks away from the synagogue.
    And we got scared that maybe the fire will also
    be thrown on our building.
    I grabbed my whole family and I said, let's go up on the attic.
    We went up on the attic and then on the roof
    because when I was a child, I used to go through that attic,
    we used to go through another building.
    And there was a garden down below,
    and we used to have a hiding place.
    And it was just for fun.
    So I thought that just in case, if the Germans will throw
    the flamethrowers on our building,
    then we will go down to the other building,
    and we'll go down to the garden and we'll hide there.
    But where we saw the flames and we
    saw the shouting and the screaming of the people,
    it's just undescribable how we felt.
    We all got completely like shocked.
    Because all of a sudden, in a peaceful town,
    you see people being killed and burned.
    And I started screaming.
    I was so, so upset, that the whole family jumped at me,
    and they say, don't scream.
    Because if the Germans will hear your voice,
    they will definitely kill us all.
    Later on, when our house was not meant to be destroyed,
    we were all down to our apartments.
    And we were watching all night to see what happened there.
    The screams started to subside.
    We thought that we did not know the damage
    as much as it happened, because we couldn't see the whole area.
    Next day, the charred bodies of 800 people
    were taken away to a mass grave out of the town,
    and among them, a friend of mine.
    His name was [? Vivek ?] [? Strier. ?] I loved this
    friend so much that he was like a brother to me.
    He got killed when he ran out of his burning house,
    and he climbed up the church wall,
    and a bullet hit him in the head, and he fell down.
    I missed him very much.
    As a matter of fact, many, many years,
    even today when I think of him, he's
    vividly the nice-looking guy who had so much income
    and belonged to the same organization with me.
    And I missed him.
    How old was he when he died?
    He was about 17 and 1/2 or 18 years old.
    He lost all his family.
    The whole family got killed in this onslaught.
    I understand that in the neighboring towns,
    there were similar incidents, but not as brutal as this one.
    This gave me an idea that Hitler came here
    to destroy all the Jewish people.
    In 1939, a week into the war, I knew deep in my heart
    that we are all going eventually to be killed.
    However, you live with the feeling and with hope
    that things like this are not going to happen anymore.
    They came later on, confiscated all the businesses,
    threw all the inhabitants from better neighborhoods out.
    And we lived in a mediocre neighborhood,
    so they gave us another two families to live with us.
    Because we had an apartment of five rooms,
    so we got another two families.
    It was crowded, but we accepted the will
    of God, whatever has to be.
    Excuse me, was the town already a ghetto by this time?
    At that time, the town was-- being that we had 45,000 Jews,
    the whole town, except for the better neighborhoods
    which I mentioned before, was an open ghetto.
    The Gentile people lived around the town and some in town.
    As a matter of fact, across the street from us
    was a Gentile family.
    Their name was [? Ujawick. ?] One of his sons
    was a good friend of mine.
    And he lived there with all of his family,
    plus he had tenants too.
    Were the Gentiles allowed inside?
    The Gentiles at that time were allowed to come inside, yes.
    But you were not allowed to go out?
    We were not allowed to go out anymore.
    But it was like an open ghetto.
    You just took a bicycle, and maybe you
    drove out to get some food.
    Because food started to become very scarce.
    There were bread lines getting bigger all the time.
    There were punishments coming later on,
    when we had already the patch with Star
    of David on, one in front on the left side and one in the back.
    So we identified from the back and from the front.
    Everyone.
    It was a pity seeing the young children who didn't understand
    what Judaism means or what a Jew is running in the street,
    not knowing that they are not allowed
    to walk on the sidewalks, with their parents running
    after them, trying to tell them something.
    It was impossible to understand the feeling of all the people.
    But later on, when things got worse,
    when they wanted to punish people for--
    let's say, somebody went out from the town
    and brought some food in and wanted
    to sell it to the Jewish people, and he was caught.
    The punishment was to hang that person on a tree
    and bring in thousands of people to watch the punishment
    so nobody would do such things.
    There was absolute control of the German might
    to not allow Jews to live decently.
    Later on, when they confiscated my father's business,
    the director of that new business-- a German--
    took him in, because he wanted to familiarize himself
    with the articles of what he had, the textile stuff.
    And he took him to work, and he also
    took in my younger brother.
    And I again wanted to go to work.
    So I met a friend of mine.
    His name is Ludwig Ehrlich, who lives now
    in Brooklyn, New York.
    And his father had an factory.
    He used to make from tin all kinds of things
    for the kitchen, like to bake.
    So he came, and he said, look, Paul,
    you went to a technical school.
    Being that we all have to have work, maybe
    we can form a little bit of like a little workshop,
    and we'll take in a German director.
    And so this way, we'll have work,
    and the Germans won't be able to take us to forced labor.
    And we did so.
    And we found a fellow, his name was [? Dukstultski. ?]
    I don't know how much he loved the Jewish people,
    but he was a decent fellow.
    So we proposed to give him a directorship
    and to go with him.
    The work what we have done there was
    on machines which were very old, so we
    had to do everything with our strength.
    It was like slave labor.
    We invited ourselves to slave labor,
    but being that we will be in our hometown.
    And he liked the idea.
    He was drinking every day.
    He was happy that we worked, and he could
    sell the stuff in Germany.
    And he made good money.
    And we had about 10 kids working for us.
    My brother worked there--
    the youngest one-- his friends.
    And so they were all happy, and we all got green cards.
    It was stating that we worked for this and this.
    Employer and director is [? Dukstultski. ?]
    He was like--
    I don't know-- like a lieutenant or anything in the S - NSDAP,
    like the brown uniforms.
    One day, when they start to take the young people to a labor
    camp, the Germans had an idea to fool the Jewish people
    that they mean well for them to train them
    into special professions, and they will make sure
    that the young people will go to work so the older people can
    be fed by them and get enough help from them to support them
    with the standard of living what they need.
    So in the beginning, that was the idea.
    They took young people, and they took them to labor camps,
    to Germany, and to Silesia.
    By the way, our area was integrated
    into Germany, annexed.
    Because we were so close to the border,
    and they had a claim always that Upper Silesia is German land.
    It's like Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
    So the young people were caught in the middle of the street,
    taken to labor camps.
    In the beginning, they were writing letters.
    Later on, letters stopped.
    They never had a chance to come back from that.
    Later on, again they started with forced labor camp,
    where they formed a Jewish Militz police.
    And they made them do the dirty work what
    the Germans didn't want to do.
    That means that if they would need 1,000 young people to go
    to a camp, the Jewish police will come,
    and they will surrender them, or take them to arrest them,
    or take them to a special dulag, they call it, a transit camp.
    And from there, they would be sent to Germany,
    to different camps which were spread all over Germany.
    I personally did not--
    I was not happy with a Jew going and helping the Germans.
    But it was not for me to say who wants to serve,
    who doesn't want.
    Everybody thought that if you will
    become a Jewish policeman-- by the way, they had no guns.
    They had only rubber sticks.
    Because they wouldn't allow them to have any guns, the Germans.
    So we were afraid to go in the streets, really.
    Because every time somebody went out and was not prepared,
    a policeman or a German came.
    There was always a German policeman
    with a few others who came and arrested these people.
    I was lucky, because I had the green card.
    And in the beginning, it helped.
    But later on, somehow, being that we were three brothers
    and no one went to a labor camp, and they needed a quota,
    and they couldn't-- people were watching themselves.
    They did not go out in the street so easily.
    They tried to not be caught.
    So they came with an idea that they
    have to go from house to house and tell
    that one of the children should go to a labor camp.
    And in my case, it was that they came to my house,
    and they asked my mother, where are the boys?
    So she told him that they are working.
    Then when I came home, my mother said that the Jewish police was
    here, and they said that you have to come to us
    to sign something, identify yourself if you're working
    or not.
    So I wasn't afraid, being that I knew
    that I am working for that [? Dukstultski, ?]
    I one day decided to go over.
    And when I went over, the chief of the Jewish police
    was sitting on a desk, imitating some of the Germans
    with his feet on the desk.
    And he said, what is your name?
    And I told him.
    He said, you're going to go to a labor camp.
    You're not going to go home anymore.
    We're going to send you to a dulag
    in another town, Sosnowiec, and you are
    going to go to that labor camp.
    I got very upset, and I said to him, well,
    if I have to go to the labor camp,
    I have to ask my director first if he's going
    to relieve me from my work.
    And then I will go home, pack up my things, and if I have to go,
    I'll go.
    So he had a little stick, and he threatened me with the stick.
    I got very upset.
    And when he hit me, I grabbed him by the tie,
    threw him over the desk.
    I don't know how much strength I had then,
    but I must have been strong to be able to do it.
    I cannot even tell the name of this person,
    because the person right now is a survivor himself who is
    in the hospital, dying.
    It wouldn't be proper for me to mention the name.
    But in telling the story, I'm not
    favoring because he was Jewish.
    I must say that we have plenty of Jewish people
    who did not behave well during the occupation.
    The policemen-- maybe three or four policemen-- jumped at me,
    beat me up.
    We had a fight.
    Somehow, I managed to escape from the police station.
    And I was running in the street towards the work,
    towards my shop.
    And people looked at me like I would be crazy.
    My coat-- it was wintertime-- so my coat was torn,
    and I was bleeding.
    And when I came to the shop, I fell on the floor
    and I lost my conscious.
    And three of the policemen were after me.
    While I was laying, I was beaten by them.
    When my brothers and the people who worked in that shop
    saw what's happening, they attacked the three policemen
    brutally, and they beat them up.
    Later on, when I came to myself, and they--
    Were these policemen known to you--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Yes.
    --through your living in the town?
    Yeah.
    I knew the names of the--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    They were people you were familiar with?
    As a matter of fact, one went to school with me.
    Yeah.
    But because he was a policeman, he
    thought that he's a big person.
    When I came back to conscience, and they told me
    that they notified the [? Dukstultski, ?]
    the director, and that he was drunk, and they woke him up,
    and that they told him the story.
    In the meantime, the Jewish police
    felt that they were a laughing stock,
    that they felt very insulted.
    They ran to the police station, which was not the Gestapo.
    It was just a regular Schupo police station in [PLACE NAME]..
    And all of a sudden, two policemen
    came with three of the Jewish police,
    and they arrested me and Ludwig Ehrlich.
    This was my partner through this thing where we worked together.
    When we were arrested, the people all ran to my parents
    to tell them what happened.
    And they thought that we will never come back.
    Because once you arrested a Jew, usually, they never came back.
    Anyhow, we were beaten up down in the police station horribly.
    But in the same time, [? Dukstultski ?] came,
    the director.
    And he was very upset that we were arrested.
    And he compared us as good workers--
    he showed to the commander there, look at their hands,
    how hard they work.
    And look at the policemen, they have soft hands.
    They don't do nothing.
    And there he really insulted them.
    So they let us go.
    This was the first miracle.
    My wife used to talk about miracles happened to me.
    It was the first miracle.
    When we came home, we went back to work.
    The police did not like us anymore.
    We knew that we will be always picked to any selection
    or anything like that.
    When you say the police didn't like you,
    do you mean the Jewish police?
    No, the Jewish police, because the German police
    didn't know us.
    Yeah.
    It was a big town.
    There was only very few German police.
    There was mostly Jewish police who worked in cahoots
    with the Germans.
    As a matter of fact, I forgot to mention that we have
    a Jewish committee in our town.
    You know that every town--
    when the Germans came in at the beginning in 1939--
    this did not happen in the places where my wife lived.
    Because over there in '41, when they came in,
    they had the Sonderkommando already.
    They came to kill.
    And here, being that Silesia and Zaglebie were annexed,
    they had to behave themselves a little more decent,
    because they were afraid a little bit
    that the German population should not
    notice the real killings, what they really meant to do.
    It was politics, in a way.
    Later on, the situation became stronger.
    Especially in the early morning, they surrounded the buildings.
    They pulled out any Jewish people they can,
    mostly younger people, and they send them to labor camps.
    That purpose was to make slaves out of the younger people.
    And then later on, they'll have only children and grownups
    and adults or older people, and they'll
    be able to decimate them much easier.
    In one of these--
    they called it the [NON-ENGLISH]..
    That means it was not a selection yet.
    It was like coming and surrounding the area,
    and taking out the people.
    My brother was caught in one of these things,
    and he was sent to a labor camp in Germany.
    We felt terribly when he was taken away,
    because it was the first casualty, really, that we had.
    And we thought that this is something that is terrible.
    But we had to go on with our lives somehow.
    They were talking about a closed ghetto.
    They were talking that they're going
    to open up shops for people, that they're
    going to be employed and make uniforms for the army.
    We had in our area probably the biggest working shops
    in Poland for military equipment and military uniforms
    in the whole of Poland.
    Maybe Lodz was another center like that.
    And people went to work on small wages.
    They couldn't even buy too much bread with it.
    Hunger started to inflict the population.
    There was less and less food in the area.
    Anything which came in, came in through some Poles
    who managed to come into the city who still lived
    in that open ghetto, and managed to hand it over
    to the Jewish people.
    Then I decided that I have to take a job,
    so I approached a friend of mine, who--
    by the way, I forgot to mention that [? Dukstultski ?] was
    taken to the front.
    When Germany attacked Russia, [? Dukstultski ?]
    got taken to the front, and the small shop was--
    Dissolved?
    --dissolved.
    I was then forced to take another job in order
    to have a card.
    So I approached a friend of mine.
    His name is [? Feyerman. ?] And his parents had a big factory.
    They make bolts and nuts and nails, all kind of things.
    And it was run by a big German director.
    His name was Fred [? Pishniak. ?] And
    [? Pishniak ?] came from Berlin, some area.
    And he accepted me to work, because I had the--
    They got me to work there.
    And there was about 800 people working there.
    There were very few Jews.
    And I was very happy that I got this job, because this way,
    I could show that I'm making money to help my family out.
    I worked there for a few months, and I did a pretty good job.
    Two engineers came from Germany, and they came from Bavaria,
    from very prominent families.
    I remember the names.
    One was Dietrich and one was Kohl.
    And when the director came to introduce them
    that they're going to work with us,
    I by mistake wanted to shake hands with them.
    And they pulled me out, said they don't shake hands
    with dirty Jews.
    This form.
    But the director said I should show them around,
    show them the machines that we run.
    And being that I made special tools for certain machines,
    I went there, and I start showing them.
    They did not like me, but I didn't care.
    I thought, who am I to worry if they like me or not?
    I know that none of the Germans like me.
    One day, when the night shift came--
    and I was not working on the night shift that time--
    the two engineers came in and told
    the operator of that machine to run
    the machine a little faster.
    Because they wanted to show the director how good they are.
    So naturally, that machine broke down.
    Next day, in the morning, when I came in,
    I was blamed that the machine was destroyed.
    I told the director who was mad at me,
    and I explained it that I wasn't here.
    They must have sped up the machine.
    And the operator told him that I was right,
    that they take came at night to tell
    him to speed up the machine.
    Because he was afraid himself, although he was Polish, so
    it wasn't so bad.
    I fixed the machine little by little,
    with the help of other people, naturally.
    And the machine was running slower, but it was fixed.
    They were so mad at me that one day, when the director left,
    they called the Gestapo to tell them that--
    my name is Pavel Monka in Polish--
    that Pavel Monka broke the machine.
    That means it's a sabotage against the Third Reich.
    One day, I was standing and working around.
    The Polish foreman who liked me very much came over to me,
    he says, Pavel, run.
    Run, because Gestapo is there.
    So I froze.
    My legs became like lead.
    I couldn't move, because I knew that something is funny,
    and I knew that I am involved here.
    It's a good thing maybe that I didn't run.
    Because had I run through the fields,
    maybe they would shoot me dead.
    But this way, they came in, four big guys
    in black uniforms, taller than me, much taller than me.
    And they start beating me that I didn't know where I am.
    I really-- from all the sides.
    And the Poles-- everybody stopped working, you know?
    They're always scared.
    They could not believe that people can come in and beat up
    a guy like that.
    And then later on, they took me into the car,
    and they took me to the Gestapo in Katowice.
    Katowice was the main city of Silesia.
    When I came, they brought me in front of an officer who
    was sitting at a big desk.
    And they made a column, like four and four Gestapo.
    And I walked through that little thing towards the desk,
    and they beat me tremendously with sticks, with clubs.
    When I came to the desk, I really didn't know what I am
    and who I am.
    And this guy gets up and shouts at me,
    you made a sabotage against the Third Reich.
    You are a traitor.
    You know what we do with people like you.
    What do you have to say to that?
    So I said, I'm not guilty.
    I didn't do any sabotage.
    I tried to explain little by little.
    With the words coming out of my mouth,
    that I didn't recognize my voice, even.
    I said to the Gestapo chief--
    I said to him, I didn't do.
    I knew very well that if I say yes,
    they'll kill me immediately.
    If I say no, it's no good either.
    They couldn't get out of me a confession.
    They wanted me to sign a confession.
    They had printed a confession already for me.
    I did not want to sign it.
    So after a while, they put me into a cell.
    It was like you call it a solitary confinement.
    Isolation.
    Isolation.
    The water was about an inch high.
    [WHISPERING]
    I was so miserable.
    I was beaten up.
    I was swollen.
    I didn't feel my arms.
    I didn't feel my legs.
    I couldn't open up my mouth.
    And I said to myself, what am I going to do?
    I was thinking-- and my family didn't even
    know at that time what happened to me.
    But later on, when I came back from work,
    I understand my sister, who died in Italy after the war,
    she was sitting there for three days
    and nights waiting for my director
    to come back from Berlin.
    Seven days.
    After that, I signed a confession.
    I couldn't take the punishment.
    I couldn't take the treatment.
    I couldn't eat.
    Even they gave me a little food, I
    couldn't eat, because my mouth was swollen.
    I couldn't close my mouth.
    And I was wet.
    Really, it was a torture like medieval times,
    probably, maybe worse.
    After seven days, the door opens up, and I thought--
    when I signed a confession, I thought
    that they going to take me out and shoot me.
    And I resigned to my fate.
    I said goodbye to my parents.
    I said goodbye to my brothers and sisters.
    I was in a state that I really didn't know actually
    what happened to me.
    All of a sudden, the door opens up.
    They take me out from the cell.
    Instead of taking me to the court to shoot me--
    because I heard from time to time some shots there,
    and they probably executed plenty of the prisoners--
    I was brought to a hospital.
    I couldn't believe my luck.
    I was in a hospital.
    They put me in a bed.
    A doctor comes over, examines me.
    He said, you'll be all right.
    Nothing serious, nothing happened to you.
    By the way, where did you fall in?
    He just joked with me, like.
    He thought I was in an accident.
    Maybe he knew, but he thought I don't, that to make
    believe that they're humane.
    I was there for a couple weeks, actually, almost three weeks.
    There were 30 beds in the room where I was.
    One day, a guy comes over to me.
    His name was Yanek.
    He introduced himself to me.
    And he said, what is your name?
    So I said, Pavel Monka.
    So he said to me, are you Jewish?
    I said yes.
    He says, you're a lucky guy as a Jew.
    We never saw a Jew here.
    He said, if you're Jewish and you
    survived this solitary confinement,
    then you will be a good man for us.
    We'll stop at this point.
    We're going to change the tapes.
    When Yanek came over to me and he interrogated me,
    and he found out, he said, I'm proud of you.
    We will be happy to have you as a part of our organization.
    I found out that he is a man who was arrested and was
    in the hospital for political activities,
    and that he is a part of the Polish underground, [PPS] Armia
    Krajowa, Armia Ludowa, I'm sorry.
    There was AK and there was AL.
    Was AL anti-Semitic too?
    Yes, but not in a form like I found out later.
    Not as much as the AK was.
    However, I understand also that the Armia Krajowa
    had some Jews among them too.
    So there are always some talented people
    who will probably accept.
    And he said, look, if you by any chance will get out of here,
    I want you to go to Siemkowice, to a town not far from Bedzin,
    where I lived.
    And there's a fellow, his name is Staszek.
    And he will accept you to the underground
    and you will fight with us.
    However, I thought perhaps the guy is just luring me
    in to say something or to make a mistake later on, because I
    heard many times that the Gestapo had tactics, had spies
    around to tell a guy, look here, I want to do this
    and this with you, later on, they catch him, you know?
    It's like that he's a spy for the Gestapo
    and wants to get me too involved.
    Entrap you.
    Entrap you.
    So I was just listening to him.
    But his face-- the manner he spoke to me was like an angel,
    like a person who shows compassion and love.
    And I was thinking all the time about him.
    And all the time when I was in there in the hospital,
    he was with me talking to me about other things,
    about Poland, about the way of life,
    and what kind of barbarism is happening now
    with the Nazis which came in, and the occupation of Poland.
    And he talked about poets and all kinds of things.
    After I was healed up from all my wounds,
    I was good to go home.
    My director came to pick me up.
    And when he took me out from the hospital--
    before he took that from the hospital--
    I was interrogated by Gestapo again,
    by the chief of the Gestapo especially.
    And he told me, look Monka, don't you ever say a word
    to your friends, or to your parents,
    or to your brothers or sisters, nobody.
    Nobody has to know what happened here.
    Because if we found out that you talked about this incident
    here, you will be immediately killed,
    and your whole family will go with you.
    The incident being the beating?
    Beating, yeah.
    I came home with that [? Pishniak ?] director.
    He took me by car home.
    I don't remember being in car for a long time--
    in a private car like that.
    He had tears in his eyes, that German.
    He felt very bad for me, and he was very happy
    that I am coming back.
    But he told me one thing.
    Don't you ever run away from me.
    You stay with me.
    As long I'll have this factory, you'll be safe.
    He didn't elaborate.
    He told me, though, that he had to use great influence
    to get me out.
    And he said too that you're probably
    one of the very few in the whole area that ever got out
    of a prison.
    So I was grateful to him.
    I was happy that I'm going to see my family.
    The reunion was very dramatic, tears, anguish.
    They really didn't know.
    They thought that maybe I went to a labor camp,
    and nothing happened to me.
    It took me many, many months and years
    until I told them that story, when I was good and safe.
    Because I was really afraid that if one of them
    will just open their mouth and say something
    what happened to me and how I got out, it will be--
    The end.
    --the end.
    This was very bad times.
    We're coming to times where the young people were
    almost all out of the city.
    The city didn't have any more 45,000,
    but had maybe like 25,000.
    All the young girls, all the young boys were sent to camps.
    Some went, some were shot, some were in prison, some ran away.
    But from 45,000 remained 25,000, and they're
    talking about a closed ghetto.
    And they picked Srodula and Kamienice as a closed ghetto.
    Later on, we got all cards that we have to appear in front of--
    it's actually like a ball field, you know?
    One was called Sarmacja and one was called Hakoach.
    Hakoach was because we had our own team.
    We had a soccer club, and we had all kind of clubs.
    Because in a big town like this, you
    have all kinds of activities, sports especially.
    I went to Sarmacja, because I went immediately
    from work to Sarmacja, not knowing my parents
    went to Hakoach.
    I went up to Sarmacja together with my younger brother,
    because my other brother was already away in camp.
    And maybe 20,000 people showed up, or maybe 22,000.
    The whole city was there, older people, younger people,
    children, babies.
    And we thought that this was just another registration.
    There were so many registrations going on.
    But somehow, when we came there, it
    was like 8:00 in the morning.
    When the time starts going, like it's 10:00-11:00 and no
    movement.
    I didn't like that.
    And then I look out through the gates,
    and I see German police around.
    Before, there was only Jewish police.
    And the Jewish police actually helped the population
    to go to the ball fields.
    So let's say in our ball field it was, let's say,
    10,000 or 12,000, and the other ones were 12,000.
    So it was two fields like that.
    Towards the evening-- a whole day no food, nothing--
    towards the evening, Gestapo men came,
    in uniforms and in civilian.
    Relatively young people.
    I would say in the 30s, maybe early 40s.
    And they pushed the whole group of the people
    towards one corner.
    And we saw already it doesn't look good.
    And then they put some podiums like this,
    like these kind of situations.
    And they start pushing people front
    ways towards these stands.
    And there were several stands like this.
    And they start selecting people.
    This was the selection.
    This was a real selection.
    They fooled the people with registration,
    but there was a selection to be taken to concentration camps
    already.
    And one group of people--
    was about three or four groups--
    one group of people was composed of people who
    were young, had no children.
    They pushed to one side.
    Then there were the young ones, very young like 16, 17.
    Pushed to another group.
    And later on, we found out this was
    designed to go to labor camp.
    And the third and fourth group was invalids, older people,
    and mothers and children.
    Later on, when mothers were taken
    in the first group with the children,
    some other mothers left the children on the grass
    and they went by themselves, because they wanted
    to save themselves first.
    I went through, and I was put to the group of the young people,
    and my brother also.
    When we were sent out, me and my brother
    managed to push ourselves to the group of women and men
    who didn't have any children.
    So it means these are working people,
    and they will be free to go back home.
    In this selection, 5,000 people--
    excuse me.
    5,000 or 6,000 people were sent back home,
    and the rest remained there.
    I understand later on--
    when we went home, it was evening--
    the whole group remained.
    The group who remained stayed at night.
    And next day, they were again selected and sent
    by trains away to Auschwitz.
    I went ahead a little bit.
    When I came home and I didn't find my parents,
    somebody mentioned to me that they are on Hakoach.
    So I went to Hakoach.
    My mother went through and my sister went through.
    My father was pushed to the group to be sent to Auschwitz.
    When I heard this, my heart dropped.
    I loved my father dearly.
    I had not only respect for him, but the love
    to have a father with such good heart,
    with such compassion for the children.
    I said to myself, I have to do something
    to save the life of my father.
    I said, I'm planning something to do,
    and here if they'll take me away my father, I'll be lost.
    I couldn't get into the Hakoach field in the evening.
    It was night.
    I heard shots going around already.
    I went home and I said, in the morning,
    I'll come back and see what to do.
    That night, it's like God was punishing
    the Jewish people even worse.
    A rain fell down, a big rain.
    And the Germans played around.
    They told them all to lay down.
    And if somebody couldn't lay down because it was wet
    and he got up his head, they shot him.
    On both fields, this one and that one.
    That night, I didn't sleep the whole night.
    I was dreaming what to do.
    I just didn't know.
    In the morning, I got up early.
    I ran to Hakoach.
    I saw the whole field was surrounded
    with the German police and the Jewish police.
    I somehow managed to get an armband for male nurses.
    And I saw some guys wearing it and going back and forth,
    and taking out people, and taking out dead people,
    and live, and stuff like that.
    I ran in and I said, let it be what it's going to be.
    I'm going to try to save my father.
    If not, I go with him, whatever's going to happen.
    I ran into the field with a band like that.
    The first thing I saw is a girl who I know.
    She was a neighbor of ours.
    And her name was Róśka, too, and I said Róśka-- she was a nurse.
    I say, I came here to take my father out, and tell him
    whenever I go for him, he should get up,
    and with all his strength--
    he wasn't feeling good anymore, because after all
    the incidents, he lost all his appetite to live.
    Everything was not the same.
    He was not the same [? Hiram ?] Monka.
    And she probably told him that.
    And the people from the Jewish committee saw me,
    and some say, hey, you have a nerve to come in here.
    They'll shoot you.
    You don't belong to this group.
    I said to them, look here, you don't
    dare to open up your big mouth.
    I have a gun on me, and I didn't have nothing.
    I said, I will shoot you first, and you all
    will go together with me.
    Don't say a word.
    I came here to save my father.
    So they became pale and stood.
    I ran over to my father, and I told him,
    I'm going to do something.
    I don't know yet what.
    But when I give you a sign, you come running towards me,
    and you get out with me.
    If not, it will be the end of both of us.
    I go over to the Gestapo man--
    a rough type-- and I told him, look, there's a mistake.
    I work here as a nurse.
    My father is there.
    He's a young man.
    Somehow, he got in there by mistake,
    and I want to take him home.
    He says, who is your father?
    So I say, you want me to call him in?
    He said yes.
    So I ran over there and I waved to him to come.
    And he with all his strength ran towards the Gestapo man,
    towards where I stood.
    And he looked at my father--
    and I really don't know if he really
    believed that I told him the truth or not,
    but he says like this to me.
    He says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Jude to me.
    That means, you dirty Jew.
    Take your father.
    When I heard the words, I thought that God was with me.
    This was miracle number two.
    I took my father out, and I was crying.
    (CRYING) I was crying bitterly.
    But I was so happy.
    I saved a life.
    And I ran out.
    When I saw the selection, when I saw the young children being
    taken away and driven to the trains,
    not to come back anymore, I said to myself, if I have
    the strength and I have the opportunity,
    why don't you take this opportunity in your hand?
    Are you going to allow your father
    and mother, the whole family, to get killed?
    Aren't you a man enough?
    I told them myself.
    I said, how can I live with it?
    And I decided at that time that I have to go to that Staszek
    to Siemkowice.
    A few days later, I was going to work.
    And the weekend came.
    On Sunday morning, I got up early in the morning.
    I ripped the Star of David.
    And I walked 12 kilometers from my town through fields--
    always through fields.
    I did not touch the town.
    And I knew the area.
    And I came with my heart pumping like--
    And I knocked the door.
    I was not sure.
    I didn't tell anything to my parents.
    If it's a trap, then I can't help it.
    I told my younger brother.
    I said, look, whatever it's going to be,
    whatever the time is going to come that you have
    to go in a ghetto, don't allow to take your parents
    to the closed ghetto.
    By the way, we had also my grandma with us.
    I then later-- when I knocked at the door,
    I didn't hear an answer fast enough.
    Later on, somebody comes to the door, and he says,
    who is this in Polish?
    So I say, this is Paveł Monka.
    I was sent by Yanek.
    Immediately, the word Yanek opened up the doors for me.
    I walked into this room, and he embraced me.
    And he said to me, in small words like this is Pavełku
    Instead of Paveł, he said in a nice--
    Pavełku, we were waiting for you.
    We got news.
    They must have had contact with the prison
    and with the hospital.
    And he embraced me, and he asked me all kinds of questions.
    He brought in a couple other guys.
    And I said, I would like to join the underground.
    I cannot take it.
    But under one condition.
    If you will save my family, my father, my mother, my brothers
    and sisters.
    I say, none of them look Jewish.
    They were really all blond, blue eyes.
    They all had the Irish look what Hitler
    wanted that all the Germans look like this.
    But unfortunately, a lot of Germans
    looked a million times worse than the Jews--
    what they portrayed the prototype of a Jew.
    Or stereotype, I'm sorry.
    I was accepted with the idea that they were
    going to find a place for me.
    And they said they have safe places.
    However, they gave me a function.
    Not a military function.
    They gave me a recruiting function.
    I was supposed to recruit people to the underground, but only
    good people, people who want to work and fight
    against the tyranny.
    They told me, however, that I must go back
    to work and work in that place.
    Because this is a place where it's better for me
    to be able to recruit people.
    Otherwise, I am completely gone.
    Naturally, nobody knew about it, not my family, nobody.
    I came home.
    I told my father and mother that they are not
    going to go to a ghetto, that it will
    be criminal to go to ghetto, because they'll
    be killed there.
    Eventually, they'll take the ghetto.
    They'll surround the ghetto and then destroy everyone.
    And I have a place for them, and we will manage
    to save the rest of the family.
    I cannot explain to you how difficult it was for me
    to bring my father, who suddenly,
    after the incident what happened,
    couldn't walk anymore.
    He just couldn't walk.
    He was so much [INAUDIBLE] with fright
    and with things what happened that he couldn't walk,
    and he was not a well person anymore.
    My brother, myself, and four people from the underground
    walked with us through the woods and through the fields,
    and carried my father most of the time.
    We actually changed around, and we carried
    our father, who couldn't walk.
    And we had to be careful nobody should see us too.
    Because you couldn't take any transportation.
    If we would take a trolley car--
    as a Jew, you were not permitted to go with a trolley car.
    You had to walk.
    When we arrived to the farmer's, which
    was not far from Siemkowice.
    It was about 15 kilometers away from our hometown.
    It wasn't too far away, but it was
    in an area which only farmers live.
    One house here, one house one kilometer further.
    So one couldn't see what's in another's house.
    And immediately, we built a bunker under the bedrooms.
    The farmhouses in Poland were one house.
    One big room consisted of everything, the sleeping
    quarters, and where you ate, and the kitchen and everything.
    And also, was a stable near.
    We dug a bunker underneath the house from the bedroom itself
    by removing some boards from the floor,
    and covered it up with a bed.
    That means in case of danger, you
    could see a kilometer far away.
    If Germans come, they will all run into the bunker,
    and the farmer will push the bed over it.
    The bunker wasn't big, but it was good enough
    to take in maybe 10 people.
    Because we thought that we'd get the rest of the family
    there too.
    So we were prepared.
    I again was running around trying to recruit people.
    I succeeded to recruit my friend the Pole,
    [? Slusaweck, ?] who lived across the street from us
    [INAUDIBLE],, and also another fellow
    who used to be a boyfriend of my sister, who died in Italy.
    It wasn't an easy thing to recruit Jews,
    because there weren't too many young people anymore
    in the town.
    The only young people who were in town were the Jewish Militz.
    And as God is a witness, I would never approach one of them,
    regardless if they were friends of mine or not.
    Because I really hated them.
    I thought that a Jew should not lower himself
    down to the point of helping an enemy.
    Because he may be saved.
    This was my crazy thing, but that's how I felt.
    I worked for a couple months in Silesia,
    in the factory where I worked there.
    And I recruited there another few guys, and they were Poles.
    Tough, tough guys.
    They were fed up with the whole thing what they saw.
    I know what my wife was telling, that some
    of the Poles over there were not some sympathetic
    with the plight of the Jewish people in the Russian side.
    But in our side, I'm not sure that they were not--
    maybe they were happy that things like this happened.
    But they didn't like what was going on.
    They were scared themselves too.
    Because rumors were going around,
    and they and they used to say, that first will come the Jews.
    Then will come the slaves.
    The Slavs, I'm sorry.
    I made a mistake.
    I apologize for that.
    And I believed that.
    I believed that the Slavs would be--
    if they would have won the war, the Slavs
    probably would have been the second to go.
    Because they took a lot of Polish people
    in labor camps in Germany [INAUDIBLE]..
    I went back to the ghetto to get my aunt and the two girls,
    and two little children.
    And I wanted to take also my grandma.
    But my grandma broke her hip, and she could not walk.
    And it was a tremendous job to be able to carry a woman out
    of the closed ghetto to safety.
    The first time, I took my little niece.
    The older one didn't want to go without the mother.
    And we located them together with the parents.
    But after a few weeks--
    or I think she was there months or something like that--
    she longed for her mother, and she wanted to go back.
    And I told my parents that Minna is not
    to be allowed to go back, no matter how she cries,
    no matter what she is doing.
    I think she was about six years old then.
    And the other girl was about nine years old.
    My aunt lost her husband.
    He escaped to Russia.
    And I understand he was a communist.
    And the communists didn't like him there,
    and I understand they got rid of him.
    So we found out this after the war.
    But my aunt was living with us during the war
    from the beginning.
    And I loved my aunt very much, and so I
    loved Eva, what this name would be in English.
    And also, I had a girlfriend in the closed ghetto.
    It was a girlfriend--
    she was an accomplished pianist.
    And I used to go there, because I myself
    liked to play the piano, and I learned a lot from her,
    you know?
    It was not anything of a love story like I had with my wife.
    But it was something that I felt very good in her company.
    We had something in common.
    Naturally, the piano was confiscated.
    And later on, she was sent to the closed ghetto.
    And I tried to give her a chance to survive.
    I walked into the ghetto, and I come to her house first.
    And I begged her to come with me.
    And she had an aunt.
    I said, I'll take your aunt too, and a little brother.
    But this was an unfortunate night.
    I come into the ghetto, and here I
    have all these things arranged with my parents.
    And I myself are joining the underground.
    And here that night, I came in this ghetto
    to take my aunt and the other girl with me,
    and the girlfriend, Bronya, and her aunt and the brother.
    They surrounded the ghetto, and they broke everything,
    all the houses open.
    And I jumped together with them into a bunker like this.
    They had a big wardrobe, and they opened up one little part.
    They pushed it away, and you walked into a bunker.
    And we all were there in this house with maybe 20 people.
    So all the 20 people found themselves in a bunker.
    But unfortunately, that bunker was ripped open,
    and they start taking out.
    In the meantime, I screamed to Bronya--
    I said, let's jump back into the house.
    Let's see, maybe somehow, we save ourselves--
    and to her brother.
    But it was too late.
    I jumped first.
    Because I opened up the door, and I jumped first in,
    and I found myself in the house.
    And a baby is crying in a crib.
    They left a little baby maybe six months old.
    And I didn't know what to do.
    And they took away all that rest of the people out of the bunker
    from the other side.
    So I jumped behind a big commode.
    There was another commode standing.
    And I covered myself up with pillows.
    And I said to myself, that's the end.
    And somehow, the baby was crying.
    They took the people away.
    They were maybe so satisfied with taking 20 people away
    that they forgot about going into the house
    and checking it out.
    And I slowly got out from under the wardrobe,
    and I saw a big line of Jewish people standing--
    relatively young.
    And I watched them through the window,
    and then I sneaked out to the veranda.
    It was like a porch.
    And I pushed myself into that line.
    I knew that this line must be--
    they make a selection either way.
    Later on, Bronya came back with her aunt and with her brother,
    and another child of the aunt was taken away.
    And I said to her, look, if we can get out
    of the whole thing-- because we didn't
    know how long it would take till they will put
    all the people in the train.
    And that day, they shot the former mayor
    of the city of Bedzin, which was Bendsburg in German.
    His name was [? Migrot. ?] He was the mayor there
    for at least 20 years.
    And they shot several other people.
    They put in the train another few thousand people.
    The rest remained in the ghetto.
    Luckily, at that time, my aunt and my grandma
    were spared, because they were hiding someplace there
    in their bunker, and they survived.
    It bothered me very much.
    I couldn't get away.
    I couldn't do anything.
    I said to myself, it's bad.
    And meanwhile, my little cousin, Minna,
    cried so much that my parents--
    we had a woman who worked for us since her teenage years.
    She brought us all up when we were growing up.
    And she was the contact for us.
    When we were supposed to leave this town,
    she took a small apartment someplace.
    And she went to visit my parents,
    because she was like a part of our family.
    And her name is [? Vanya. ?]
    And when I came to my parents, and my mother said, look,
    Minna is crying so horribly, we have to do something about it.
    I don't know what to do.
    She wants her mother.
    And she's afraid, in case the Germans will come in.
    So [? Vanya ?] said, I'll take her to my house,
    and I'll bring her to the ghetto and I will take her back,
    let her see the mother.
    The second time-- meanwhile, let's talk about what happened.
    In the meantime, things were getting worse.
    Trains are going.
    Every week, they decimate the people.
    They take them out from the shops
    where they work with the uniforms.
    And they were talking about Judenrein.
    Judenrein in German means clean of Jews.
    And one night, due with all respect to Mr. [? Pishniak, ?]
    I asked to be transferred for a night shift.
    I felt very uncomfortable to be working yet
    and to know that the ghetto is surrounded at nighttime most
    of the time.
    And I wanted to do something in the factories themselves.
    I worked one night in the office,
    because the offices were closed at night.
    And nobody searched me.
    The offices were inside the factory, which
    was surrounded by [INAUDIBLE].
    And I stole 500 documents, cards and the stamp, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    That a person-- let's say, [? Jiswaf ?] [? Yachinsky ?]
    works in Silesia for the Wehrmacht, for the Third Reich,
    and he should be helped in any occasion to go to his work.
    When I had the 500 documents, in the morning,
    I took them with me and the thing.
    My heart was going out, just in case,
    if the God would decide to check me.
    But I knew that I am carrying a treasure with me.
    Because 500 documents meant 500 lives.
    I managed to take these, and I gave it for safekeeping to
    [? Vanya, ?] to our girl.
    She became like a--
    Courier?
    Courier.
    And I said to her, the first thing, you go to the parents,
    bring it to them.
    And I went into the ghetto.
    At that time, I already had received a gun.
    I had a German Mauser with 50 bullets to spare.
    And I was already a mensch.
    I said to myself, now if I go against a patrol
    of German soldiers, I can defend myself.
    I'll be able to defend myself.
    And I walked into the ghetto for the last time,
    begging my aunts.
    And I see that Minna is there, and I didn't believe my eyes.
    I said, who gave anybody permission
    to remove her from the safe place?
    So my aunt jumped at me.
    She said, you are crazy.
    You want to kill us all.
    We don't want to go no place.
    Our place is here.
    We somehow will survive or not.
    And I begged her, trying to tell her
    that this the last chance you have,
    that it's better to die in a battle
    than be killed like that.
    I went.
    She didn't want to go.
    I said goodbye, and I said, I cannot stay.
    I cannot stay a night in the ghetto.
    I feared it.
    I went over to my girlfriend, Bronya,
    and begged her and her aunt to go with me.
    I said, let somebody want to go with me.
    She noticed my gun.
    Somehow, I must have moved my jacket.
    This was not a jacket like this.
    We wore different clothes.
    And she chased me out of the house.
    I know she did not survive.
    I know that her aunt didn't survive.
    They must have been taken to Auschwitz eventually and been
    killed.
    I always felt that for many years that I couldn't save her.
    Because it's a pity.
    This would have been something important, [INAUDIBLE]
    the people to have such a person.
    You never found out what happened to them?
    She never came back.
    Never found out.
    I inquired after the war.
    She didn't.
    I cannot find her cousin-- who, I know is alive-- from Warsaw.
    And she is in Australia.
    And I was in Australia, I still I couldn't find her,
    and I don't know where she is.
    It's so difficult, they changed their names.
    But I know that Bronya did not survive.
    And other of my friends did not survive.
    I went further on to do all I could.
    I was defeated, in a way.
    And I did certain things in the underground
    which were important for us.
    We wanted an underground to praise tremendously, you know?
    We could not even attack trains in this matter,
    but we tried to do damage.
    We tried to attack some police stations.
    We tried to do sabotage.
    In one of these actions, well, we went to Udetfeld.
    What time?
    25 to 9.
    We went to Udetfeld in a air force base for the Germans,
    and we wanted to mine the whole air force base.
    We went in as workers with old carts.
    We had artists to do the kind of work.
    And my sister went with us, Róśka And consequently,
    one of the Poles thought that he knows her and that
    she's Jewish.
    He told the Gestapo.
    And the Gestapo beat her up tremendously,
    collapsed a lung on her.
    Somehow, we all escaped, but we came back with two people
    with a bicycle, and she lay down.
    When the chief of the Gestapo came in,
    he did not believe that she is Jewish.
    He let her stay there under house arrest.
    And she escaped on the bicycle.
    Her lung was no good.
    She contracted TB from this lung, somehow.
    It went to the other lung.
    And she died in Italy in '46.
    And of course--
    I will make this a little bit shorter
    now to cover up that story.
    In short, my father got very sick.
    And he was saying the Psalms of Solomon, the tillim.
    And he says he would like to see my son,
    [? Oisa. ?] [? Oisa ?] was Alexander Alek.
    That was the oldest brother?
    Yeah.
    We decided to send a group of guys in German uniforms
    to Markstadt.
    He was in a camp.
    We knew that he's Markstadt, because in the beginning,
    he was letting us know.
    It was not a concentration camp.
    It was a heavy labor camp.
    After we got him out of there, it
    was changed into [INAUDIBLE].
    We sent four uniformed guys, and they came in
    with a recommendation to take out
    Aleksander Monka for interrogation,
    because his brother's in the underground.
    And the stupid commander, instead of calling up Katowice,
    believed them, because they looked real.
    They spoke German beautifully, the same like Germans do.
    By the way, we spoke German and Polish in our area.
    They looked Nordic?
    Nordic.
    My brother is still very blonde and blue eyes.
    And the brother who was in camp was also Nordic-looking.
    And they got permission to take him.
    They said they're going to bring him back.
    They want to find out.
    When they came close to him, they hit him.
    The four Gestapo men, the ones who we sent, hit my brother
    and let blood come out a little bit, you know?
    He was shocked.
    He did not recognize my brother.
    He did not recognize anybody.
    The others, he didn't know.
    When they got out, my brother says
    to him, don't you know that I'm your brother, [? Mark? ?]
    And he couldn't believe it.
    He was in shock.
    When they brought him back, it was just two days
    before my father died.
    He got gangrene in his leg, and it traveled all around.
    We couldn't get him to a doctor.
    We didn't have any doctors.
    And the only thing we had sulfa, it didn't help.
    He died in my arms on a Sunday--
    a Saturday, actually.
    Before he died, he said the prayer of the death.
    They call it Vidui in Hebrew.
    He knew he was dying.
    Many times, he wanted a cigarette before he died.
    We had to bury him Sunday at 12:00 at night,
    because we were afraid that no one should, God forbid,
    see from far away.
    We took him from the house to a wooded area,
    and we marked a tree.
    We dug the grave, and we put him in there, and we say a few--
    whatever I knew to say by heart.
    After the war, we brought him back to the cemetery in Bedzin.
    And later on, when my mother died in the United States,
    we brought him to the cemetery here
    in Woodbridge, New Jersey--
    his remains.
    There's so much to tell.
    I know that your time is--
    Do you want stop now, and we'll continue another time?
    You want me to finish later?
    OK.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    OK.
    OK.
    Then we're going to stop now.
    Continue, please.
    OK.
    I was just talking about my father's death.
    And it was a bitter pill to swallow.
    Because it was just a few months before the liberation.
    The situation at that time started changing dramatically.
    The German troops were retreating
    towards the German border.
    And we saw in our area they dug trenches all around.
    And we were very afraid that they shouldn't dig in the area
    where we buried my father.
    However, the trenches they dug were not even used.
    Because the Russian troops broke through near Lublin,
    and they started an advance toward the German borders.
    As soon as the movement of the Russian troops started,
    we got out of our area, and we moved closer.
    We moved east, so we should be on the side of the liberation,
    the Russian troops.
    We left my mother and my sister and the rest of the family
    in the area near Siemkowice.
    The trenches were dug not far from the house
    where my family was.
    I was very concerned about it.
    However, I couldn't do anything about it.
    The peasant friends, well, the sons fought with us,
    decided that it's too dangerous for my mother and my sister
    to be close to the trenches.
    They told them that the best thing
    is if they can start moving towards the city.
    Because over there, at least the war won't affect them as much.
    And they left to Dabrowa Górnicza,
    which was a nearby town where we used to live.
    It was the worst week.
    Because the fright of being caught
    the week before the liberation was enormous.
    You knew the liberation was coming?
    Yeah, we knew, because you heard the artillery already
    from far away coming closer and closer.
    So I was liberated a few weeks before my family was liberated.
    And I went up in Lublin.
    Lublin was a provisional Polish government set up.
    Because with the Russian troops, the Polish troops came too.
    And they set up a provisional government,
    because Warsaw was not liberated then.
    The front was uneven.
    Later on, when Warsaw was liberated,
    the Polish government moved from Lublin to Warsaw.
    In Lublin, I met many future leaders
    of the Polish government, military and political.
    And they greeted us with great respect and love.
    We all really didn't know what we're going to do now.
    We all were really like not in an army, you know?
    We were was just unwanted.
    However, when for the first time,
    I met General Zawadzki's wife, who was a friend of my family.
    She was a daughter of a watchmaker who lived
    in our building in Bedzin.
    And she recognized me from before the war.
    Because she escaped to Russia, and she met this fellow,
    General Zawadzki, who comes from Dabrowa Górnicza also,
    a neighboring town.
    And he became political general of the [? Kościuszko ?] Army,
    one of the foremost people in the Polish liberation movement.
    And when she recognized me, she was so happy, she was crying.
    And she was asking about her father,
    and her father was not there anymore.
    And she was asking about Bedzin.
    And I told her what happened.
    And I said, I am away from Bedzin for several years,
    and I'm away also from this area.
    So she introduced me to General Zawadzki,
    and he said to me, well, we need guys like you.
    And I was at that time given a position
    that soon, the liberation of Silesia would take place,
    and Zaglebie Dabrowskie.
    I will be working for the security office.
    What position, I didn't know at that time.
    I was very happy, and I also was very
    anxious to know what happened to the rest of my family.
    Perhaps they are still in the village.
    Perhaps they went to another town.
    I really lost contact, you know?
    Well, finally, when the Russian troops broke through completely
    and they started entering the German territory,
    Silesia and Zaglebie was liberated.
    We ran immediately towards my city of Bedzin.
    And as I came to my city, I found out that my family is
    in Dabrowa Górnicza with Polish people,
    and they are doing very well, and everything is OK.
    I was very happy.
    The reunion was very emotional.
    You can imagine.
    Being in a war, and all of a sudden, you are liberated.
    The feeling is just undescribable.
    You could sit here for hours and describe the feeling,
    the tears, the stories.
    That we survived the Holocaust, that we survived the worst
    catastrophe in the world--
    Both your sisters were with your mother?
    Both of your sisters?
    Yeah, both my sisters.
    Yes.
    Two sisters.
    One sister was in the United States.
    I don't know if I mentioned that before.
    But when I entered Bedzin, and I saw the city,
    I couldn't recognize it.
    Before the war, this was a bustling city
    of people, 60,000 population, and 45,000 Jewish people,
    as I explained in beginning.
    And when I came in, there was empty streets.
    It was sad to go into a town like that,
    knowing what a town it was.
    No businesses, everything was closed.
    It was a frightening experience to go to a city
    where you were born, and to see the devastation of people.
    No Jewish people.
    Finally, the next day, I found one family who
    survived with Polish people.
    Excuse me, that neighborhood that you went through--
    was that entirely a Jewish area?
    The neighborhood?
    Yeah, it was--
    The part that you went through?
    No, mostly, the whole city was like a Jewish area.
    And very few Polish people lived there.
    But combined with the whole area of Bedzin,
    mostly, the Jews lived in the town.
    Out of town lived the Polish people.
    Because they had farms, and all kinds of houses that they had.
    I met a lot of Poles I knew.
    And some were very happy to see me,
    and they embraced me and the cried with me.
    And some asked me, do you still live?
    The question was not proper.
    But when I brought my family a few days later to the city
    of Bedzin, we could not go back to our apartment
    anymore, because somebody else lived there.
    The better apartments were confiscated by the Germans
    when the Jewish people were moved
    into the ghetto of Srodula.
    And the other apartments were taken over by Poles.
    So being that we had a choice, we found an apartment
    in the blocks like this, a beautiful area, with furniture.
    We just moved in, because the Germans just vacated it
    maybe a week before.
    And we established a residence.
    Once I established a residence, I
    was waiting for further instructions
    to what is my function to do, what am I supposed to do.
    There was no Jewish life anymore in the city.
    I was not used anymore to anything else
    but fighting, and trying to establish
    a little feeling of victory.
    And I used that time to go to the city hall
    and find out what happened at the day
    when they burned the synagogue and the surrounding area.
    And documents were showing that some conspirators--
    people who worked with the German Nazis--
    conspired at that time to burn all the houses
    around the church so the church will be more
    exposed to the beautiful area.
    And they suggest at the time to say
    that it's enough with a Jewish presence
    that they have to burn this area and destroy so many people.
    And this story I told right in the beginning.
    We found the conspirators.
    They were Polish citizens of German descent.
    And actually, they were very happy, probably,
    to do this thing to become heroes.
    And when I became security chief of Silesia,
    my first action was to notify the Russian authorities
    that we have collaborators in our town
    who are guilty of murder.
    And they were arrested.
    They were brought to a trial.
    It was a short trial.
    And they got death penalty, and rightfully so,
    because people who without mercy can take the life of 800 people
    and make the rest of the town as miserable as possible
    deserve not to live.
    I'm not an advocate of capital punishment.
    But in those times, I think that was the proper way of doing it.
    And they were executed exactly in the area
    where the burning took place, in front of many people.
    The Russians were not very lovable people
    one way or the other.
    They had very strict orders.
    And they had strict orders to destroy collaborators,
    and especially any SS men they could put a hand on.
    This was almost like the first function I had.
    I arrived in Katowice, which was the capital of Silesia,
    January 20th.
    The liberation of Auschwitz took place, I think,
    three days later.
    Because the front wasn't going even.
    The southern front was going a little slower,
    and the western front was going a little bit faster.
    It was not an easy task for me to take over
    a position like this.
    I had no idea.
    I had no experience how to run that.
    The experience of my fighting during the war
    was minimal, as far as securities are concerned.
    We had only one way.
    We can kill the enemy, or we can fight them,
    or we can run away and try to hide in order
    to plan other actions.
    But they say that experience is a mother's teacher, right?
    That you learn on the job a lot.
    And I have learned a lot.
    The instructions came from General Zawadzki
    to know that Silesia is an area where a lot of Volksdeutsche
    lived.
    Volksdeutsche were actually Germans who lived in Poland
    and were citizens of Poland during the time
    when Poland was free.
    But after, you had a lot of collaborators, people
    who were Nazis, and you had a lot of Germans or Volksdeutsche
    who were not Nazis.
    So you had to be very careful in dividing
    your work in such a way not to try
    to hurt somebody who is innocent.
    My entrance to Katowice--
    as to describe-- it was not a very pleasant one,
    because you saw the city was somehow
    not completely destroyed, but destroyed in certain areas.
    You saw tanks which were not functioning.
    You saw broken up vehicles.
    You saw a lot of bodies in the street.
    And they were already not bodies of Jews,
    but they were mostly bodies of German soldiers.
    This had to be cleaned up.
    And special units came in.
    The cooperation between the Russian government
    and the Russian troops and the Polish troops and the HIAS
    was very good at that particular time.
    And I introduced myself to the Russian general.
    And I said that I'm going to be a Polish [? functioneer ?]
    to do the work.
    And I would need their help, because we have nothing
    to work with.
    Soon, when Auschwitz was liberated, I went there.
    I saw with my own eyes what a destruction machine
    was built in order to destroy the Jewish people.
    My heart was bleeding.
    I was crying.
    My eyes were red a whole day from seeing
    the bones and the ashes and the broken up crematoriums.
    Because they bombed them, they dynamited.
    And the burnt cabins there where people lived.
    And you had a pretty good picture.
    And I saw people who wandered around
    without knowing what happened to them.
    Some Jews survived Auschwitz all the way till January 23rd.
    And you saw some of the people who looked like half people,
    you know?
    Skin, skeletons walking, and their eyes bulged out.
    The whole form of a person, you couldn't even look at them.
    Were these Muselmann?
    Muselmann, right, yeah, exactly.
    I forgot the name already.
    Muselmann.
    And I really didn't meet anybody.
    I didn't see anybody of my friends,
    because it was such a [? callous. ?]
    And I at that time understood that the march took place.
    And some of them who came back a week or two or three weeks
    later told us that there was a death march, that 80% or 90%
    of the people in Auschwitz were taken out in the last moment
    before the Russian troops came in,
    and they were walking hundreds of miles towards Germany.
    And in the march, many of them were shot, or just dropped dead
    because it was winter.
    And Poland has a very severe winter.
    And that winter was a severe winter in '45.
    So I hadn't been there.
    I didn't see what happened with the march.
    But the first witnesses came to me.
    And whoever came to Katowice--
    and I invited a lot of people.
    I said, if you get a little better
    and you get a little bit stronger, you come to me,
    and I'll give you jobs.
    I had enough jobs for everybody.
    And it so happened that a lot of people who came back,
    I gave positions in the security forces, or in other positions,
    like in commerce, or whatever they could handle.
    It took many, many months for people
    to come back to reality that they're alive,
    and to eat a little bit more decent in order
    to gain some strength and weight.
    And among them, I had a friend of mine, a woman.
    I'd like to mention that, because there's
    an article about it written in a magazine in California,
    where they describe this woman--
    her name is Lola Potok.
    This woman received a position from me
    as a warden of a prison in Gleiwitz.
    Gliwice was also a neighboring town in Silesia.
    It was already a part of Germany before the war.
    But it was incorporated in our area.
    And this Lola Potok had 10 brothers and one sister,
    or nine brothers and one sister.
    There were 11 kids at home.
    And she was a survivor of Auschwitz.
    And she was in the death march, and she came back.
    She escaped from the death march.
    And she came back through all little towns,
    and she wound up in Katowice maybe a month after.
    And when she came to me and she wanted revenge, I said,
    the best revenge is I make you a warden of a prison.
    And mostly, what we sent to the prison is SS or others,
    so you'll all the opportunities to do whatever you want.
    We really were not concerned about the lives
    of the German people.
    We felt that they deserved the worst treatment in the world.
    But unfortunately-- and I have to say that--
    unfortunately, they were treated much, much better
    than we were treated.
    Because they were guilty of murder.
    We were not guilty of murder.
    We were guilty only that we are Jews, that we were Jews.
    But there were guilty of premeditated murder.
    So life in Katowice in Silesia--
    in a way, we started to see the influx of the Jewish people
    coming from Russia back home, coming from concentration
    camps, coming from hiding, or from other survival.
    But you didn't see too many of them.
    You didn't see that influx like you would expect.
    Most of the people who were liberated later
    on by the American British, and French forces
    remained in Germany.
    I tried at that time to somehow straighten my life.
    I was not sure what I really wanted from my life.
    I really didn't know exactly.
    I had the problem bothered me that my father is
    buried in the woods there.
    And it also bothered me too that my sister got very, very sick
    from the beatings she received in Udetfeld at that time.
    And there weren't too many doctors around.
    First, I decided to move the body of my father
    to the Jewish cemetery in Bedzin, which
    still was existing at the time.
    And I took a squad of soldiers, and I went to the area,
    already in a uniform.
    And I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden,
    when we came with trucks--
    we had two trucks--
    and with the soldiers, the villages around all of a sudden
    find out that somebody is coming,
    and the rumors came out that the Jews came
    to take out the gold from the--
    they buried gold there.
    And I said to the fellows there, let's dig.
    Naturally, my two brothers were with me at that time too.
    So we start digging for the body.
    And it was only maybe six months or seven months when he died,
    so it was no problem to take out the box from the earth.
    And all of a sudden, we see hundreds of peasants
    surrounding that wood and with all kind of knives,
    with all kinds of instruments.
    The Jews came to take out gold.
    How many of you were there?
    We were about a dozen.
    So I said to the soldiers, set up the machine guns.
    And if they want to go close, then we
    will have to teach them a lesson.
    But don't shoot at them first.
    And we tried to call them from far away,
    that this is not gold, that this is a body we're taking out
    of here.
    But they came closer and closer, so I gave the order
    to shoot in the air.
    As soon as we start shooting in the air, they start running.
    So I mention the incident because the influence of Hitler
    was so spread that even after the war, when they knew
    that there were no Jews alive, they still
    were trying to have--
    they thought that the gold--
    that they collected gold with Jews all the time,
    which was a terrible thing to say, but a terrible feeling.
    We took the body out, and we left in peace.
    We were happy that nobody got hurt.
    We were happy that this incident was not really a bloody one.
    But we were ready, we were ready.
    And we buried our father in the cemetery.
    At that particular time already, we had 10 men for a minyan.
    That means that it was a great honor for my father
    to be buried with a minyan.
    And this was like memories came again.
    We went through the same feeling that we went through when
    we first time did this.
    And life was going on.
    I did not like the behavior of a lot of people in Silesia--
    the politics around.
    Right after the war were all kind of politics.
    And the politics came from a lot of Polish different political
    groups, like the Armia Krajowa, who
    was much against the Russians.
    And they were also against the Jews.
    And the temporary governor of Silesia
    was a colonel who was not a very liked person.
    So at that particular time, I called Warsaw,
    and I said that the situation is Silesia
    is very difficult to handle, that we
    need special instructions what to do.
    I suggested that it would be a good idea
    to bring General Zawadzki to Silesia,
    being that he has the experience of handling cases like that.
    And as young as I was, and as little power I had,
    I convinced the government of Poland
    to bring General Zawadzki, who became the governor of Silesia.
    And being that I was instrumental in that,
    and I knew them from Lublin, he accepted it.
    And he came to Katowice.
    And the first thing what he said is,
    I'll accept this job if you will be my advisor.
    I accepted it.
    I said, with great pleasure.
    This will be my pleasure to do.
    As a matter of fact, I designated the nicest mansion
    left in Katowice untouched--
    the chief of the Gestapo lived there during the war--
    to become his residence.
    And naturally, he took over the job, which
    was much easier for me then.
    Because he brought with him a lot of experience,
    and he was the commander-in-chief
    of the armed forces of Poland.
    And he knew how to do the job.
    And he did the job of cleaning up political rivals, made sure
    that everything is in order.
    And my job was to make sure that the area was peaceful,
    and that the people have food, and that nobody
    is looting and robbing.
    And I will help the commander of the police and the other police
    to do the job as best as they can.
    Then naturally, I got involved with Major [? Yokovski, ?] who
    was the chief of the [? Ubear. ?] [? Ubear ?] is
    the organization who handles criminals,
    and political criminals especially.
    And I tried to situate a lot of survivors,
    who came home without families, without brothers,
    without sisters, single people mostly, and tried to give them
    positions, whether in the Polish milic, or was it in the police,
    or in the [? Ubear, ?] and in different other locations,
    like commerce and schools, whatever was available.
    And then I became very involved--
    how am I going to save my sister?
    My sister was to me like a part of my life,
    like a part of my body.
    I loved her dearly.
    I knew she's not well.
    I knew she suffered a lot, maybe because of me, in a way,
    that if I would not get involved in this work
    in the underground organization, maybe this wouldn't happen.
    So I had a feeling of guilt. I tried
    to get advice of some doctors who
    came from all kind of Poland to our area.
    And they told me that Poland has no facilities right now
    to save anybody with a situation like this.
    What was her specific illness?
    When the Gestapo beat her up, they collapsed one lung.
    And because of all the situation,
    she got TB in both lungs.
    How it came about--
    is it from the beating or not?
    And she was at that time in a hospital.
    Actually, it was a hospital for TB.
    And she was in bed.
    She was bedridden most of the time.
    And all the doctors advised me that the best thing
    would be to send her to Sweden, or maybe
    to Italy or Switzerland.
    Switzerland wouldn't extend a visa.
    It was very difficult at that time to get any visas.
    And it was very difficult to get any place at that time.
    It was chaos in Europe yet.
    The German troops were still fighting to the end.
    And it's very little I could do, so we
    tried to do the best we could at that particular time.
    When I straightened out the area and things
    were getting a little bit better organized
    with General Zawadzki I was thinking about other things,
    saving my sister, go back to school, do things like--
    what am I going to be, a military man?
    Am I going to wind up to work for the Russians?
    The Russians particularly were not my favorite people.
    I was not a communist.
    I wanted to do something different.
    And before the war, I wanted to become engineer,
    and I couldn't.
    Here I am young and with a lot of experience,
    but still lacking certain education,
    which I would have to get.
    And I have contacted the Ministry
    of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw to try to do something
    for my sister, and they promised that they will do their best.
    I went to the American embassy in Warsaw, pleading the case,
    telling them that I have a sister who is very sick--
    consequences of the war.
    I would like her to be able to go to the United States
    to save her life.
    And we promise that we will sign an affidavit
    that as soon as she gets better, she'll come back to Poland.
    Being that I have a sister in the United States--
    and at that particular time, I didn't even
    know where my sister lived, because we lost contact
    with her when she left Europe.
    And they told me that they will discuss this
    and they will let me know.
    A few weeks later, we get their reply that they cannot accept
    her to come for medical treatments.
    Although we signed everything, and we feel that we are not
    going to be a burden in the United States,
    they still cannot approve that.
    Did they offer a reason?
    They didn't offer a reason.
    They said that they don't accept any TB people in America.
    I was a little bit upset, but I thought that maybe this is
    the law, and that you cannot press it very hard.
    I met many people after the war who survived,
    who were luckily here.
    I offered many positions again.
    I met a friend of mine, a daughter of my father's
    good friends, who lived in the neighboring town of Sosnoweic.
    And her name was [? Lusha ?] [? Frankel. ?] Her uncle worked
    for me.
    And he was the chief of the police in Katowice.
    His name was [? Paternovski. ?] And we went out for a while.
    We had not-- it was difficult for people
    to meet other people at that time.
    The only thing which binds me with her
    was the fact that I took her to a party
    that we had of survivors, people survived the war.
    And on the way back driving the car,
    I was hit by a Russian truck.
    He was supposed to drive on the right side,
    and he drove on the left side.
    He thought he's in England at the time.
    And unfortunately, we both wound up in the hospital in Katowice.
    And she was almost--
    I found her about 50 feet away from the car,
    so the impact was tremendous.
    And I must have lost my conscious a little
    bit at that time too, because as I understand and I
    remember that I stood--
    when they found us and they brought us to the hospital,
    I told the surgeon to operate first on her,
    to do anything to save her life.
    Because she had a cut across the face, and I
    thought that she lost an eye.
    But luckily, they saved the eye and they sewed her
    up a little bit.
    And then one leg was broken, so she was badly hurt.
    And at that time, I understand that I lost my conscious then
    after the operation, and they put
    me-- and I was about two weeks in the hospital.
    And I came back to myself little by little,
    and the consequences are here, all beaten up.
    This is an episode which maybe don't mean anything
    with survival, which I had, but it's also part of--
    I could have gotten killed right there.
    After all you did.
    After all what I did.
    Understand too that I had about two bodyguards all the time
    in the hospital.
    They must have thought very highly
    about me, if they decided to put special police.
    And I came out.
    I'm telling the story, because this woman--
    and her name is Feiner now--
    she married her fiancee, who she went out--
    he also survived the war.
    And she finished medicine in Germany.
    After the liberation, she went back to Germany.
    It seems that this accident wasn't very good [LAUGHS]
    going out business.
    And she lives in Great Neck, Long Island now.
    I tell this story because after I came out of the hospital,
    I had a tremendous desire to leave that whole business
    of being such an important member of the Polish government
    with such a position.
    I thought that I have to devote a little more time
    to my family.
    And at that time, I went to Warsaw.
    And I spoke to General Zawadzki, who gave me
    all kinds of instructions, and whom shall I meet
    and whom shall I talk to.
    And they gave me permission to leave Poland with my sister.
    There were two choices, to go to Sweden--
    they accepted that my sister should
    come to Sweden for medical treatment-- or Italy.
    Italy had no choice in that, but Sweden
    had a choice to accept or not.
    Because Italy was a conquered country at that time.
    This is already December 1945.
    I got the permit to go to the zones.
    Because the occupation of Europe took place,
    you had to have a permit to go to the Russian zone.
    You had to have a permit to go to the English zone,
    the American zone, and through the Italian border.
    I decided at the beginning that I will take a car
    and drive all the way through.
    But everybody told me that it's not a very good idea,
    because in case something breaks down, you will never get parts.
    All Europe was devastated, everything
    was impossible to get.
    So being that they talked me out of it,
    I decided to go by train.
    I got a passport for myself, for my mother, and for my sister.
    I was the first, probably, Jew after the war
    who got diplomatic passports for my family,
    with permits of the Americans to go through their American zone,
    with permits of the Russian zone,
    and with permits of the French and British.
    And being that I was a little bit scared to go by myself,
    with my mother and my sister, being she
    was bedridden and difficult, I got permissions
    from my brother--
    not a passport, but a permit--
    to go with me to Vienna, to Austria and back.
    And he decided to go with me.
    And that's the brother who was chief of the police in Bielsko
    at that time.
    And just before-- two weeks or three weeks,
    I don't remember exactly, but it would be about three weeks
    before Christmas--
    December-- we left Katowice to go by train
    to Chechen, Czechoslovakia, Moravska
    Ostrava towards Bratislava.
    The first crossing of the border with all my documents was easy.
    A little search.
    Then we went to Bratislava by train.
    It took about, I think, two days or three days
    to get there, which normally takes only a few hours.
    In Bratislava, there was no communication to go to Vienna.
    So somebody told me that if I contact a few Russian soldiers,
    truck drivers, there's always on the market
    Russian troops who go to Vienna.
    Vienna at that time was occupied by the Russians,
    and also by the Americans.
    It was divided the same like Berlin.
    I went to that market, and I offered the Russians
    vodka, which I took with me.
    And I say, I have a sick sister.
    I have to take her to Vienna to a hospital,
    and I need their help.
    So they agreed.
    But as smart as I was, I wasn't smart enough
    to know that it was very unsafe to go with Russian trucks
    without the authority to know about it.
    And they put my sister in the first truck,
    and then they put me and my brother--
    no, my sister was with a truck driver,
    and my mother was on the top of the truck,
    and me and my brother on the other truck
    on the top of the truck.
    And we were driving towards Vienna.
    All of a sudden, the first truck went a little bit faster.
    And the second truck approached the first truck,
    and we see my sister, who couldn't walk,
    standing in the middle of the road.
    And we see a few of the soldiers with the guns in hand, shooting
    at animals, or whatever.
    It was like wooded area.
    And I said to my brother, I don't
    like what's happened here.
    I said, first of all, she does not have to walk,
    and she was pale.
    And I said to Oleg, you know what?
    There's something we have to do.
    We jumped off the truck.
    My mother was on the top of the truck.
    And we pulled our guns.
    We didn't separate with our guns.
    And we took the driver from the second truck.
    We pulled the guns in back of them.
    We told them ruki vverkh.
    You know ruki vverkh in Russian means hand up.
    We had pretty good experience in doing things like this,
    but we were afraid.
    And the other guys didn't know what to do.
    And everything took a minute, because right
    at that scene, a car with Russian officers
    came down that road and stopped, and came running with the guns,
    and said what's happening here?
    And I told him we felt that something is wrong.
    We told him the story about how we got to go to Vienna,
    and that they wanted to attack us.
    Because the way they were carrying the guns
    against us was proof that they wanted to do something.
    Naturally, they disarmed them.
    And they told us that they are going
    to go ahead of the convoy, and that way we came.
    We found out later in Vienna that a lot of people
    got killed in the woods between Bratislava and Vienna
    right after the war, because soldiers
    were robbing these innocent travelers and killing them.
    So this was--
    It didn't matter who they were?
    No matter who you were.
    They didn't ask you if you were yevrey, Jew or not.
    It was not a matter of me being Jewish or not.
    They couldn't even believe that we were Jews.
    But the idea was that they did things like this.
    So when we came to Vienna, the officers
    asked me where we would like to go.
    So I told him we would like to go to the Red Cross
    or to any hospital, because my sister is very sick.
    So they brought us to the American zone,
    where the Red Cross was.
    I was so happy.
    It was another miracle of survival.
    This is almost a year after the liberation,
    and we already were exposed to brutality and stuff like that.
    And in Vienna, because of the incident what happened,
    we stood about a week, because she was taken to a hospital.
    And from there, we traveled again by train
    to Innsbruck, Austria, through different zones.
    In Innsbruck, we stood a couple of days.
    There was no trains going to Italy.
    And there was no transportation.
    I couldn't get any trucks.
    I was afraid already with trucks.
    And there was a train going halfway into the Alps,
    into the mountains.
    I don't know if you know Italy or Brenner Pass?
    We're going towards Brenner Pass.
    Can you imagine a situation that we
    stopped for the night in a lodge like this, and in the morning,
    we hired sleighs.
    And we had to push sleighs up the road towards Brenner Pass.
    We're talking about a lot of height to make.
    And we put my sister on the sleigh, and we pushed.
    And this was a sleigh with a horse, you know?
    But the horse had difficulties to make that mountain.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    So me, my mother, and my brother,
    who luckily went with us always towards Italy,
    pushed that sleigh up to the Brenner Pass.
    And soon we came to the Brenner Pass,
    and we saw that Italy's on the other side already.
    We were surrounded by Polish military, who
    were the Poles who were in England, on the other army, who
    fought together with the Allies.
    But they were people who didn't want that the Russians should
    liberate Poland.
    They wanted to be the one to liberate it.
    So when we showed the passports, they
    arrested us, saying that they don't recognize
    the present Polish government, and that they have
    to bring us to the authorities.
    Excuse me, we have to stop for a few minutes,
    because we have to change the tape.
    Oh, I'm sorry.
    OK.
    I urged the Polish officers on the border
    to let me go through.
    Because I explained the story of my sister's sickness.
    And they thought that they caught a big fish, because we
    had diplomatic passports.
    And I told him that I have done my work in the underground,
    that I have fought to liberate Poland,
    that I am not in politics.
    And whatever government will be in Poland,
    I'll obey the orders.
    And they have no right to detain me here in any way.
    And somehow, in the course of pushing back and stuff
    like that, I managed to see a couple officers
    in different uniforms.
    And I pushed myself through.
    And luckily, for the first time in my life,
    I met American soldiers.
    And he was an officer, by the way.
    And I told him with my broken English.
    I tried to tell him who I am, and what happened here.
    And they understood me.
    And they started to ask all kinds of questions.
    And I said to them, that I came here
    with my sister, and with my mother, and my brother,
    and we are going to Italy to save her life.
    And they felt a little bit caught in a surprise.
    Why would the Poles not let us through.
    And they went over and they gave orders to the Polish officers,
    that they have to release us immediately.
    And they didn't do it gladly.
    They didn't willingly.
    But they somehow had to do it.
    They let us through.
    And immediately, they started giving us some food.
    I remember that they called in the Italians.
    And the Italian soldiers where they
    saw that my sister who was blind,
    they felt obliged to be gentlemen.
    And they brought oranges, and they
    brought all kinds of things.
    And they say that the to Murano will go at four o'clock.
    And this was about afternoon.
    So we were brought to the train.
    And there weren't too many people traveling.
    I can tell you that.
    And we went up in Murano that same evening,
    because it took about three hours,
    I guess, three and a half hours to go from the border
    to Murano.
    So this episode finished for me.
    And my brother decided to return back home,
    because he didn't have a passport.
    And he promised his girlfriend who we met,
    that he's going to come back.
    So I guess that I was a little disappointed.
    But he went back to Poland, and we said goodbye to him.
    And we went up in Murano in a strange city in Italy
    for the first time in my life.
    For the first time also in many, many years,
    I saw a different country, a more free country
    than Poland was.
    My feelings were torn, you know.
    I didn't know here I am in also an occupied country
    like Poland, but somehow, the people are so nice, so helpful.
    And I located my sister.
    I stayed with them over the New Year.
    And the doctors gave us hope.
    And back in January, I returned back to Poland.
    I had a responsibility towards my job.
    I had a responsibility towards the people I worked with.
    And I hoped that that would be a good location for my sister.
    By the way, I would like to mention
    that the Polish government gave me
    the equivalent of 500 dollars to locate my sister in Italy.
    I thought that the gesture of the government was great.
    And I told them, I promised that I give back the money to them,
    and everything will be all right.
    But not too many good things are being told about Poland.
    But somehow, I have to say, that after the war
    I was treated very good by them.
    I went back to my work.
    I was assigned to go at that time,
    to Hungary and to Germany, and to France.
    Because there were situations and rumors that a lot of SS,
    big shots like this, were hiding under different names.
    And we have to find out things about them.
    Why they decided to send me is maybe
    to give me a chance maybe to stop and see
    my family at the same time.
    I remember I went to Budapest at the time.
    It was for the first time in my life
    that I was in Budapest, and to look for criminals.
    I spent a week.
    I met some people I knew that were still trying to find out
    about their relatives.
    We had accomplished our mission in Budapest,
    and then we went to Germany, and from Germany to France.
    The whole trip was not a tremendous success,
    because there were rumors and very different points,
    how do you say to--
    we search for clues, different clues.
    But we tried to help each other.
    I mean, all the governments like France,
    Germany, whatever, was looking for these criminals,
    tried to help each other.
    But it was not a great success as far as I'm concerned.
    And from there, I went to Italy.
    As a matter of fact, I remember going to Italy
    through to the French Riviera, and meeting
    for the first time in my life with my Uncle [? Nind ?] who
    survived the war in France.
    Leon was an experience for me.
    I'm talking about 1946.
    I went back back to Italy to see how my sister is doing.
    And I found out that she is not improving too much.
    I spoke to the doctor.
    He gave me hope.
    So I went back to Poland.
    In Poland at that particular time,
    I was invited by the Polish government
    to change my position from Silesia to Warsaw,
    to go to Warsaw, and get a position of higher level yet.
    I accepted it.
    But I told them, frankly, that it would be a good idea
    that they should rather send me to a school
    that I can receive my education.
    I was longing for an education, for more than I had then.
    And somehow, life stayed in such a way that I could not do it.
    And later on, when I was all ready to go to Warsaw
    and take my position in the foreign ministry, which they
    gave me, I got a telegram from my mother
    that my sister is sinking, that the situation is getting worse.
    I should come as soon as possible.
    Naturally, I went as fast as I could to go to Italy.
    That time took much longer than the normal times.
    But I arrived there.
    And it was already summer time 1946.
    And my sister was getting worse and worse.
    At that time, I had decided being
    that I've been to other countries
    before, I decided that to continue my career in Poland
    would be not proper for me, that I'm still too young to give
    everything up in life to work with the government whom I was
    not really in love too much.
    Because communism was far fetched from my feeling.
    I was not I was not happy with a lot of things
    which happened later, arresting people, and sending them
    to prisons.
    And you yourself were still only in your 20s, weren't you?
    I was in my 20s, yeah.
    At that time, I was already 24 years old.
    And I was thinking while I was in Italy,
    I was thinking what to do.
    And I couldn't make the decision, because a career like
    I could make in Poland, or had at that time,
    was very difficult to achieve.
    It's not easy to become a big shot, you know,
    just because you deserve it.
    The circumstances, the war, everything
    that I've done to fight for survival of my people,
    it took a tremendous toll on me, you know.
    And I wasn't sure what to do with myself.
    I remember I stood there, and it was a little improvement
    in my sister's health.
    And I couldn't take off so much.
    So I ran back to Poland.
    And in September, beginning of September,
    I got another telegram that it's getting worse.
    So I took again, the train.
    I was going again to Italy.
    I was experience already how to go to Italy.
    And that time, things were better already, was traveling.
    Trains were going through all the way.
    And I arrived in Italy just before the holidays,
    the Jewish holidays.
    And the situation was--
    I did not believe that she is going to die.
    I didn't.
    No matter how bad it was from the medical point of view,
    I believed that perhaps, that God will help,
    that there's some hope that the whole thing would change.
    And I went to pray Saturday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom
    Kippur.
    And there was just at that particular time,
    they opened up a sanatorium, Joint Distribution Committee
    opened up a sanatorium in Murano Italy for survivors
    who contracted TB.
    And my sister was supposed to be the first patient
    to be transferred.
    And they had already--
    they renewed the little shul they had there.
    So we went there to pray.
    And I went there and I prayed, and I cried,
    and I thought that maybe God will help,
    that things will be different, and that my sister will
    survive.
    And on the way back home, a nurse was running towards me.
    And she says in Italian, she says, Paulo--
    they called me Paulo.
    [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
    You understand?
    I took it very hard.
    I couldn't believe that there's all this struggle of my life
    I couldn't save a person who survive the Holocaust.
    And this was Saturday.
    We buried her Sunday morning in Murano.
    In the cemetery were very great people, of poets and writers
    who died on consumption, because Murano was famous for the lungs
    to be healed.
    It was the alps, beautiful air.
    And I remember that being that we didn't have too many people,
    that I had to sit with a person, one Jewish fellow lived there.
    He sat with her until 11 o'clock at night.
    And I had to come at 11 o'clock at night until the morning.
    I had to sit there the body of my sister.
    I was not afraid.
    I've seen this.
    The death of my sister changed the character of my life
    completely.
    Although I could have been a big man in Poland
    and maybe a chief, the status higher than I thought.
    But I decided at that time that I'm going back to Poland,
    and I'm going to resign from all my functions.
    I had done that after I said Shema.
    And I quieted down a little bit.
    I went back, and I told the authorities that I cannot
    function anymore, that I took the tragedy of the Jewish
    people too much to heart, that I wouldn't be any more good.
    They offered me a position as counsel general in Italy.
    And I refused to take it.
    I wanted to break everything with the past.
    I felt that to live in the country where I was born,
    and I went through so much would be unbearable for a long time.
    The time of my reign was just to forget, just
    to forget what really happened.
    And after all, I had my mother in Italy.
    What am I going to do with her?
    And I discussed this with my brothers.
    And they all decided the best thing
    would be that we should all leave Poland.
    How did your mother take your sister's death?
    My mother took it very hard.
    We all did.
    She knew that we went through the war.
    She knew that a lot of people got killed.
    And that we were lucky that we survive.
    But to lose somebody after the war,
    and not be permitted to get medical treatment
    in any countries, and countries who could help her.
    So a matter of fact, at a time when my sister came to Italy,
    they discovered these medicines here in the United States,
    and they saved a lot of people.
    And if they would only permit my sister
    to go to the United States, she would have been alive today.
    She could have.
    However, I decided at that time to leave Poland,
    and I went back to Italy.
    They didn't accept my resignation.
    They gave me a way out that any time I want my position
    and come back, it will be ready for me.
    I cannot say anything about that government after the war
    in Poland, because I would be a traitor to say something.
    I think that they had dealt with me in an honorable way.
    When I came back to Italy, I decided
    to do something for the survivors,
    for the Jewish people who lived there.
    I got the position with the Joint Distribution Committee,
    and also with the UNRRA.
    This was the refugee organization.
    As a social worker at the beginning,
    I had made contacts with a lot of Italian officers
    on the border, being that I was traveling from Italy to Austria
    trying to make some connections for myself.
    I had no idea what it was going to be with me, where
    I'm going to go.
    I wanted to go to Israel, but it was closed for me.
    So first, I wanted to establish a situation, what
    to do with my mother, being that my sister was lucky enough
    to leave Poland in 1939, when the Germans were there
    already for a few months, her husband
    had decided to try to get out of Poland.
    And he had money.
    So he bought something out there,
    and he went to Italy, from Italy to Algiers, from Tangier
    to Portugal, and then to the United States.
    So she was here in the United States since 1941.
    And literally, we were in touch with my sister
    by writing letters.
    And I was lucky to meet a lot of Italian high ranking officers
    on the border, and in the area there.
    And they liked me.
    I conquered the Italian language.
    And I was very helpful in creating
    a situation that being that I was working for the refugee
    status, and supplies of food, and to all kinds of camps
    that they formed.
    At that time the Jewish people who
    lived in Germany in DP camps and in Austria,
    wanted to go to Israel.
    They wanted to cross the border to Italy,
    because they said that it was an illegal [? allie ?] to Israel.
    Certain boats were going from south of Italy to Israel.
    So they were going through the mountains, through the Alps.
    And a lot of them got hurt.
    Some got heart attacks going to the Alps, through the snow.
    So I had an idea with the Americans and Italians
    to get some people through to Italy
    with convoys, military convoys.
    And believe me, that worked.
    I was in touch at that time with the Bricha,
    which was the illegal organization for transporting
    Jews from Europe to Israel.
    And I spoke to an American captain that
    was in charge of the convoy.
    And he said, there is no problem.
    We go back and forth from Austria to Italy.
    Let them prepare the people.
    And we put them on the food trucks.
    So be arranged like that, being that England
    was very against letting the Jews through to Italy
    in order to go to Israel.
    We arranged it in such a way that we
    put let's say, like eight or 10 people in a truck.
    And around them, we put food cans, stuff like this,
    all around.
    And they were sitting there, and they just
    had to go through the border.
    Once they went through the border,
    we had already our transportation
    arranged to bring them to camps near Murano,
    from Murano to Milano, and so far.
    And I was instrumental in organizing that in Italy
    for a while.
    And it was going good.
    So I was so busy with doing these things
    that I forgot about Poland.
    I forgot about my lost career.
    And I decided at that time, I was
    very ambitious to go to school.
    So I entered the University of Padua.
    And for examination, it was like six hours, seven hours,
    by car to go back and forth.
    And I went there.
    And I explained to the professors,
    I say, I don't know Italian very to the extent
    to be able to study, but I'll try.
    So they gave me an examination.
    I deeply believe today that they just let me go through.
    They gave me a test [LAUGHS] because they felt sorry for me.
    And they felt also happy that I wanted to do things.
    They were wonderful people, the Italian people.
    So I was traveling twice a week for college for instructions,
    and taking home, working for the UNRRA
    and for the Joint Distribution Committee, study.
    And I was lucky at that particular time
    to do all these things.
    I slept very little, four hours a night was enough for me.
    And at the same time, my mother got a visa
    to go to the United States.
    And I took her to Genova, which was the deport.
    And she went with the first immigration boat in 1947
    to go to the United States.
    And I remained in Italy by myself with my work.
    I had plenty of work, and I was not afraid to be there.
    My feeling was to go to Israel.
    I wanted to go to Israel very badly.
    Because I believed that Israel leaded me.
    You know, I was Zionistic.
    I felt that this eventually, will be our country, where
    Jews will be able to live.
    And I approached-- I went to the consulate in Rome,
    and spoke to the Jewish leaders.
    At that time, the war broke out, and I said,
    I must go to Israel.
    So they said, no, you're not going to Israel.
    First of all, you are not experienced
    in Middle East affairs.
    You're not experienced in fighting in Palestine.
    We need you here.
    I was important to them in Italy to be
    able to continue this mass immigration, or whatever.
    And I left beautiful memories in Italy, and bad memories.
    But it was a country gave me the first touch of freedom.
    In 1949, I went to the United States.
    I had a visa and I wanted to see my mother and my sister,
    and my nephew who was born in 42.
    I didn't see though.
    I was separated from my sister about 10 years.
    And this idea to go to Israel, I really wanted.
    So when I came to this country in November 21, 1949,
    and I remember Marine Jumper was the boat.
    And the Marine Jumper boat was a boat
    who looked like it sinking every minute.
    But exactly, I made it.
    And in this country, I met my wife.
    And we got married.
    We both had ideas to go to Israel with different feelings.
    But it took a year or two to consolidate all these things.
    So we decided to get married.
    We were married in 1952, April 6.
    I love this country very much.
    The United States has been good to me.
    I have certain feelings about this country that at that time
    when we needed them, they weren't there to help us.
    And it comes back to [? episode ?] that we tried
    to our organization, and the [? government ?] organization
    to notify England to bomb the concentration camps,
    and relieve the suffering of the Jewish people.
    And we got back and then said that for humanitarian purposes,
    they cannot bomb the camps.
    I was very disappointed years later.
    Then when I found out that Roosevelt was not
    very willing to help the Jewish people.
    That they did do that because of politics, or because
    of the congress.
    I am not in a position to be a judge of that.
    But I still believe that they could
    have done a little bit more in order
    to help us people at the time.
    I love this country.
    Because it is a unique country in the world,
    especially in the last 30 years, or 40 years, where freedom
    is giving the people the opportunity
    to become what you want is a priority, to help
    the extent to many countries the burden they have with it.
    And the freedom of expression, of expressing yourself.
    You can say anything you want.
    You can contradict the government,
    as long you are not sabotaging them.
    You are a person.
    You are a human being.
    Look what's happening in the world around us.
    Unless you have any questions to ask me what to say,
    I would like to say that having three children here
    in this country, whom we educated.
    They know about all of your experiences.
    And they know all about our experiences.
    I remember years ago, when I became
    the president of the [? Lakhour ?] Jewish Center,
    and I started expressing myself about the Holocaust,
    and about my life.
    And they were in the audience.
    They were sitting there.
    And I saw the tears in their eyes.
    We did not talk to them when they were very young.
    But we started when they started going to school.
    We started telling them what we went through.
    And the I only can say one thing, that I hope
    and pray that they will be good human beings,
    and that they will treat their families the way
    we treated them.
    And that they will take advantage
    of this beautiful life here in this United States of America.
    Paul, thank you very much.
    Thank you very much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Paul Monka, born in 1920 in Bedzin, Poland, describes his childhood in Bedzin; his father's textile business; his time studying in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland; his memories of antisemitism in Piotrków Trybunalski and throughout Poland before, during, and after the World War II; his family's involvement in Zionism; his memories of a curfew and other anti-Jewish laws in Bedzin after 1939; his recollections of demeaning forced labor in Bedzin after 1939; his recollections of the Bedzin ghetto; his encounter with the Gestapo while working in a factory in Silesia; his subsequent arrest and time in solitary confinement in a Gestapo prison in Katowice, Poland; his time in the hospital after surviving solitary confinement and meeting Yanek; his acceptance into the Armia Ludowa resistance group by Yanek; his memories of selections from the Bedzin ghetto; his escape from Bedzin to the Armia Ludowa headquarters in the woods; his recollections of the formation of a Judenrat in Bedzin; his sabotage actions as part of the underground movement; his sister's illness and death from tuberculosis; his liberation by Russians; his memories of Zavatsky, the Polish General; his time as Security Chief of Silesia after the war; his memories of the Muselmänner who survived Auschwitz concentration camp; his recollections of the death marches from the camps at the end of the war; his feelings of bitterness toward the United States for refusing to accept his sister for immigration and for the lack of response in general; his time in Italy from 1945 to 1946; his work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; his move to the United States on November 21, 1949; and his life in the United States after 1949.
    Interviewee
    Paul Monka
    Interviewer
    Bernard Weinstein
    Date
    interview:  1989 May 17-1989 June 09
    interview:  1989 June 09
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Copyright Holder
    The Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Monka, Paul, 1920-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum along with other interviews between 1993 - 1997 by the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean College (now Kean University).
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 07:56:30
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505554

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    Time Coded Notes (5)

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    Oral history interview with Rose Kramer

    Oral History

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    Oral history interview with Rae Kushner

    Oral History

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    Oral history interview with Mayer Lief

    Oral History

    Mayer Lief, born August 18, 1908 in Lemberg, Galicia (Lʹviv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his schooling in Lemberg; experiencing antisemitism; his experiences in the Polish Army; his family's attempts to emigrate from Poland to the United States in 1939; the Russian occupation of Lemberg and Eastern Poland in 1939; the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and Mayer's capture that same day; digging mass graves for the Germans; the issuing of armbands and the establishment of the ghetto in Lemberg by the Germans; living in the ghetto beginning in November 1941; his move to and stay at German Army facilities until June 1943 due to his skills as a locksmith and safe cracker; his imprisonment in Janowska concentration camp in Ukraine in June 1943 and his eventual escape from the camp; his purchase of false papers in August 1943 in order to avoid capture by the Germans; his life in a suburb of Lemberg until the liberation by the Russians in 1944; traveling to Poland in 1946; his time in a displaced persons camp in Germany around 1946; immigrating to the United States in 1949; his time in Boston, MA and New York; arriving in Elizabeth, NJ and reuniting with his mother; his marriage in 1954; and his work since his arrival in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Isak Levenstein

    Oral history interview with Isak Levenstein

    Oral History

    Isak Levenstein discusses his childhood in a town near Lublin, Poland; moving to Kraków, Poland to live with his uncle after his parents' deaths; his education in Kraków; his work as the owner of a pots and pans factory; getting married on December 29, 1931; the size and professions of the Jewish population in Kraków; his membership in Mizrachi and Hechalutz Zionist organizations; antisemitism in Kraków in the mid-1930s; the banning of ritual slaughter in Kraków; Polish collaboration with the Nazis; the murdering of 1.2 million children by the Nazis during the Holocaust; the saving of Jews by very few Poles; the hiding of his wife's family in a bunker near Kraków and their eventual murder; his and his wife's move into the Kraków ghetto in 1941; his memories of the instructions given to the Judenrat by the Nazis; the deportation of Jews from Kraków to Treblinka and Auschwitz concentration camps; his memories of Jewish religious observances in the ghetto; his time in hiding in order to escape selections; a comprehensive round-up that took place in the ghetto in 1943 and the hiding of his family in a bunker during the roundup; his imprisonment in Płaszów concentration camp; his effort to save his family by bribing a German commander; the hiding of his children in the bunks of Płaszów concentration camp for 14 months; his inability to save his children; his qualifications as a metal worker; his time in Oskar Schindler's Gross-Rosen and Brünnlitz factories; his memories of Oskar Schindler; his wife's time in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps; his and his wife's search for relatives after the war; his thoughts on the differences between the Poles and the Czechs after the war; his and his wife's visit to Theresienstadt concentration camp; his separation from his wife between October of 1944 and August of 1945; their immigration to the United States after World War II; visiting Israel 25 times; and starting of a construction company with two other Schindler Jews in New Jersey.

    Oral history interview with Sally Levenstein

    Oral history interview with Sally Levenstein

    Oral History

    Sally Levenstein, born in 1909, discusses her childhood in Kazimierza Wielka, Poland; the Jewish community in Kazimierza Wielka; the death of her father in 1918; her education in Kazimierza Wielka and in Kraków, Poland; the relationship between the Gentiles and the Jews in Kazimierza Wielka; getting married to Isak Levenstein in 1931 and moving to Kraków; the size and level of religious observance of the Jewish community in Kraków; her social life in Kraków; her involvement with the Jewish National Fund; the birth of her two children in 1932 and in 1937; the start of World War II in 1939; the betrayal of her sister by a Polish neighbor; the arrival of Jews in Poland, deported from Germany; the establishment of the Kraków ghetto; her work in a factory making stockings for German soldiers; her memories of selections that took place in the ghetto; the Judenrat and the Jewish police in the ghetto; the establishment of Płaszów concentration camp in 1942; the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in 1943; hiding in a bunker with her children for 70 days near Kraków; her husband's imprisonment at Płaszów concentration camp; her memories of searching for food for her children while in hiding; her husband's smuggling of the children into Płaszów to be with him; her time hiding in the factory where she worked; her voluntary movement to Płaszów concentration camp to be with her family; the help that she received for her children from Mrs. Rosner; the roundup of all the children in Płaszów; her and her husband's inability to save their own children; the move of her husband and other family members by Oskar Schindler to his Brünnlitz factory in Czechoslovakia; her deportation to and time in Birkenau concentration camp; her memories of selections by Dr. Josef Mengele for the gas chamber; her aimless work while she was imprisoned in Birkenau; Dr. Menegle's experiments on inmates in Auschwitz; her transfer from Birkenau to Auschwitz; being in a death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the shooting of those prisoners who stopped marching; her experiences in Bergen-Belsen and her bout with typhus while in the camp; her time in a hospital during the time of liberation; the death of inmates from over-eating after liberation; an invitation to the survivors by the Queen of Portugal to come to Portugal after World War II; her search for her family after the war; her reunion with her husband in Kraków and their return to their apartment there; the help that they received from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; their time in Vienna, Austria and in Bindermichl displaced persons camp; the birth of her daughter in Bindermichl; her family's immigration to the United States in 1949; their life in New York and their move to New Jersey where her husband started a construction company; and her reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Manya Mandelbaum

    Oral history interview with Manya Mandelbaum

    Oral History

    Manya Mandelbaum, on August 16, 1919, discusses her childhood in Debica and Kraków, Poland; the Jews' relationship with the Poles inside and outside of Kraków; antisemitism in Poland in the late 1930s; the start of World War II in 1939 and her memories of radio announcements urging the Jews to flee from Poland; her attempted escape east to Russia in 1939; the German bombings that forced her to return to Kraków; the anti-Jewish laws and Nazi proclamations in Kraków; her time in the Kraków ghetto; her marriage to Simon Mandelbaum in 1940; the deportation of her parents in 1940; her movement to Płaszów concentration camp; the gassing of children in Auschwitz concentration camp; her work for the Madritsch firm making blouses (Julius Madritsch’s factory in Płaszów); the deportation of Jews to Mauthausen and Auschwitz concentration camps; the shooting of her brother in 1945; her deportation to Auschwitz and the conditions there; her transport to Hamburg, Germany, in January 1945 to work in a plastic factory and a beating she received from a German guard there; her observance of Passover in the camp; her escape from the factory with four other girls and the help that they received from some Poles; the arrival of British and American soldiers in April 1945; her time in Bitterfeld, Germany and in Prague, Czech Republic after the war; her travel to a hospital in Wels, Austria to find her husband; her reunion with her husband in Poland; the help that they received from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their life after the war in Brooklyn, NY and Elizabeth and Hillside, NJ; her ability to talk about the Holocaust with her children and grandchildren; and her love for the United States and Israel.

    Oral history interview with Allen Moskowitz

    Oral history interview with Allen Moskowitz

    Oral History

    Allen Moskowitz, born on March 27, 1923, discusses his childhood in Brusnica, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); his family's move to Svidnicka, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1937; his time in Yeshiva in Šurany, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1939; his move back to Svidnicka at the outbreak of World War II in 1939; his parents' distrust of the Germans; antisemitism in Czechoslovakia; his family's obtaining false papers and hiding in Czechoslovakia; the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1944; his mother's hiding with a Gentile family who subsequently forced her to leave; his capture by the Gestapo in 1944; his imprisonment in Sered concentration camp as a Mischlinge; his interaction with Nazi Commandant Alois Brunner; his mother's work as a cook at an inn; his transport to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943 and his subsequent march to Heinkel concentration camp; his march to Siemensstadt concentration camp; his transfer to Ohrdruf concentration camp; a beating he received in Ohrdruf; his ongoing belief in God and religion; the morning roll calls in Ohrdruf; the Kapos in Ohrdruf; his march to Crawinkel concentration camp; the shooting of prisoners on their way from Crawinkel to Buchenwald concentration camp; falling ill with typhus; the liberation of Buchenwald by the Americans; his return to his home town and his reunion with surviving members of his family; his discovery of the fate of his father and 14 year old brother; his family's immigration to France and then to Palestine at the end of World War II; his later immigration to the United States via France after World War II; the role of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, his rabbi and “hero of the Holocaust”; the fate of his extended family members during the Holocaust; his life in Brooklyn, NY; his marriage and his life in Elizabeth, NJ; his decision not to talk about the Holocaust with his family; his feelings towards the Germans in World War II; and his thoughts on what can be learned from the Holocaust. Also contains a photograph of Allen in 1946 and a photograph of him in 1993.

    Oral history interview with Sonya Oshman

    Oral history interview with Sonya Oshman

    Oral History

    Sonya Oshman, born on December 17, 1922, discusses her childhood in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus); growing up in a wealthy family; her family's near deportation to Serbia by the Russians; her Polish neighbors being sometimes helpful and sometimes antisemitic; her sister's death in a German bombing raid; the elderly and the very young being murdered first; young people being used in forced labor; her memories of her father before his death in a concentration camp; her family's escape from a ghetto through a tunnel; the "Aktion" in the ghetto following their escape; her brother's immigration to Israel following liberation; her five years in a displaced persons camp in Italy; and her move to the United States with her husband in 1950. Also contains two photographs of Sonya (one is dated June 1988 and the other is undated).

    Oral history interview with Liesel Mayerfeld

    Oral history interview with Liesel Mayerfeld

    Oral History

    Liesel Mayerfeld, born in 1933, discusses her early childhood in Frankfurt, Germany; her memories of pre-war life in Frankfurt; her memories of Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's deportation to Buchenwald concentration camp during Kristallnacht; her move to the Netherlands with her sister following Kristallnacht; her life in the Netherlands with her uncle; her mother's work to get her father released from Buchenwald; her father's release from Buchenwald; her father's travel to England in July 1939; her mother's travel with an infant son to England in August 1939; moving to England in January of 1940; her family's move to Detroit, MI in 1940; her reaction to American culture and the English language; her brother's move to Israel; and her current life in Elizabeth, NJ.

    Oral history interview with Lisa Reibel

    Oral history interview with Lisa Reibel

    Oral History

    Lisa Reibel, born in 1930, discusses her childhood in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus); her memories of her siblings, specifically her sister, Rae Kushner; her memories of the Russian occupation in 1939; the German occupation of 1941; the thriving Jewish community in Novogrudok; her reaction to her sister's murder; the murder of 5,000 Jews in December 1941; her plan to dig an escape tunnel out of the Novogrudok ghetto; crawling through the tunnel at night; hiding in bushes, barns, and underground bunkers; Tuvia Bielski's partisans; liberation by the Russians in 1945; her time in a displaced persons camp in Italy; her move to the United States in 1949; and her life in Brooklyn, NY, and in Elizabeth, NJ. Also contains photographs of Lisa Reibel in 1994 and one of her at an earlier date.

    Oral history interview with Paul Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Paul Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Paul Schmelzer, born September 3, 1916 in Gwoździec, Poland (Hvizdets', Ukraine), discusses his life before World War II; antisemitism in Poland; his time serving in the Polish Army from 1937 until 1939; being a prisoner of war in 1939; living in the Gwoździec ghetto; his time in the ghetto in Kolomyya (Kolomyia), Ukraine; being in numerous slave labor camps in Ukraine; his numerous escapes from the Germans throughout the war years; meeting his wife, Susan, in Tolstoye (Tovste), Ukraine, in 1941; hiding in the homes of many different Polish farmers; moving to Chernivtsi, Ukraine before liberation; his time in various displaced persons camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany and Czechoslovakia; moving to the United States with his wife and son in 1949; living in Bronx, NY from 1949 until 1970; and moving to Elizabeth, NJ in 1970. Also contains a photograph of Paul Schmelzer in 1988.

    Oral history interview with Susan Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Susan Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Susan Schmelzer, born on February 23, 1923, discusses her childhood in Zaleshchiki, Poland (Ukraine); antisemitism in Zaleshchiki; the Russian occupation of Zaleshchiki from 1939 until 1942; the German occupation of Zaleshchiki in 1942; the mass murder of 2,000 Jews from Zaleshchiki in November 1942; her secular, public school education; moving from Zaleshchiki in order to continue her education; her move with her family to the ghetto in Tolstoye (Tovste), Ukraine; performing slave labor in the fields outside of the Tolstoye ghetto in March 1943; meeting her future husband, Paul Schmelzer; the murder of her parents and sister along with 3,000 other Jews from the Tolstoye ghetto; her time hiding with her future husband and a girlfriend until they were liberated by Russians in March; moving with her future husband to Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), Ukraine after liberation; getting married to Paul Schmelzer in Czernowitz; moving to Germany; immigrating with her husband and son to the United States in 1949; and her life in the United States after 1949. Also contains a photograph of Susan Schmelzer in 1987.

    Oral history interview with Adela Sommer

    Oral history interview with Adela Sommer

    Oral History

    Adela Sommer, born in 1923 in Tluste, Poland (now Tovste, Ukraine), discusses her early life in Tluste; her education at Hebrew school; antisemitism in Tluste; relations between Gentiles and Jews in the Tluste area; the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941; the attacks against Jews before the Germans arrived in Tluste; the protests against anti-Jewish activities by two local priests; the setting up of a ghetto in Tluste; the restrictions on the movement of the town's Jewish population; the German Aktion of May 27, 1943, during which 3,000 people were killed; the family's construction of a bunker in an old attic; the help of Hungarian soldiers in disguising the crying of a baby hidden in the attic from the Germans; the deliberate introduction of typhus into the Jewish population in order to label them as contaminated and the effects of typhus; her work as a knitter in a neighboring village; the efforts of one German to protect Jews from an Aktion; her work with the sick; the death of her mother on February 17, 1944; the shooting of her sister and her sister's family; her liberation by the Soviets in March of 1944; her work as a bookkeeper in a Romanian brewery; her invitation to a displaced persons camp in Ulm, Germany, by her cousin, the camp's director; going to the displaced persons camp in Ebensee, Austria; going to Föhrenwald displaced persons camp in Germany; the birth of her twins in 1947; her immigration to the United States on March 13, 1951 with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; and her life in Elizabeth, NJ, and the need for survivors to speak about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jack Spiegel

    Oral history interview with Jack Spiegel

    Oral History

    Jack Spiegel, born on March 17, 1918, discusses his childhood in Łódź, Poland; his reaction to being the only surviving family member after the Holocaust; his family's life in the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland; smuggling food into the Warsaw ghetto; traveling secretly to Brzeziny, Koluszki, and Opatów, Poland; his reunion with family in the Warsaw ghetto; his deportation to Minsk and then Babruisk (Bobruysk) in Belarus; the Bobruisk concentration camp; the regular Sunday murders at Bobruisk; working in the camp kitchen; his work at Flossenbürg concentration camp; transports between camps; the walk to Dachau concentration camp; working in a V-2 rocket testing tunnel; being liberated by Americans on April 29, 1945; his convalescence in Lyon, France, for eight months; moving to Israel in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1960; and his life on Staten Island, NY. Also contains a photograph of Jack Speigel and his family in the 1920s.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Zuckerman

    Oral history interview with Abraham Zuckerman

    Oral History

    Abraham Zuckerman discusses his childhood in Kraków, Poland; his memories of Jewish and Gentile relations before World War II; his memories of forced labor in Kraków after the Nazis took over; the establishment of the Kraków ghetto; his memories of rationing in Kraków; his move, with his family, to Dukla, Poland; his transport, with his family, to Biala Podlaska, Poland; his memories of forced labor in Biala Podlaska; his return, with his family, to Dukla; his family's transport to and subsequent dissapearance from Dukla; his transport to the Rzeszów ghetto in Poland; his transport to Plaszów, Poland; his transport to and time in Julag concentration camp in Plaszów, Poland; his work in Schindler's enamel factory, for a year, until Aug. 1944; his memories of Oskar Schindler; his transport from Schindler's factory to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; his memories of forced labor in Mauthausen; his transport to and time in Gusen concentration camp in Austria; his liberation by Americans from Gusen on May 5, 1945; his move to Linz, Austria, after liberation; his life in Bindermichl displaced persons camp in Austria from May 1945 until May 1949; his memories of meeting and marrying his wife, Mina, in Bindermichl; his move, with his wife and the first of their three children, to the United States on May 29, 1949; and his life in New Jersey after 1949. Also contains a photograph of Abraham Zuckerman in 1935 and one of him in 1991

    Oral history interview with Paul Gast

    Oral history interview with Paul Gast

    Oral History

    Paul Gast, born in Łódź, Poland on November 16, 1926, discusses his childhood in Łódź; his reaction to being the only survivor in his family after the Holocaust; his father's murder in the 1939 Aktion in Łódź; his move to the Łódź ghetto in 1940; his work in a factory in Łódź; his memories of primitive ghetto conditions; his transport to Auschwitz; his separation from his mother at selection in Auschwitz; his transport to Braunschwieg concentration camp; his memories of Ravensbrück concentration camp; his memories of Watenstedt, a labor camp in Germany; his description of horrible conditions at Ludwigslust concentration camp; seeing Russian soldiers cook human flesh at Ludwigslust; his liberation by American soldiers in May 1945 from Ludwigslust; his move to England in 1945; his education in British schools and universities; moving to New York in 1952; his military service in Korea; his move to Oklahoma; and his life in Verona, NJ.

    Oral history interview with Mina Zuckerman

    Oral history interview with Mina Zuckerman

    Oral History

    Millie (Mina) Zuckerman, born in September 1925, discusses her childhood in Humniska, Poland; the German occupation of Humniska in 1939; the air bombings of local refineries in 1939; her work, from 1939 to 1942, in nearby Brzozów, Poland, carrying stones for roads; being forced to move, along with the rest of the Jewish population from Humniska to Brzozów in 1942; life in Brzozów; her school friend, Helena Kerda; hiding with her father, mother, and older sister in the home of Michalina Kerda, Helena's mother, in Brzozów from 1942 until 1944; her father's secret trade of goods for money with a Polish man named Krekovsky; the liberation of Brzozów in August 1944 by the Russians; moving to Budapest, Hungary with her family in the fall of 1944; receiving food and clothing from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and the Red Cross while in Budapest; her time, with her family, in Bindermichl displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria from May 1945 until 1949; meeting her husband, Abraham Zuckerman, in Bindermichl in 1947. At the conclusion of the interview, Mina Zuckerman invited her friend, Helena Kedra Bocon, to share her memories of Mina's time in hiding in Helena's mother's home in Brzozów, Poland. Also contains a photograph of Mina Zuckerman at age 8 and one of her at the time of the interview.

    Oral History interview with Henry Butensky

    Oral History interview with Henry Butensky

    Oral History

    Henry Butensky, born on August 12, 1922 in Harlem, NY, discusses his childhood in Bronx, NY; how his parents and siblings emigrating from Palestine; his Jewish home; his enlistment in the 71st U.S. Infantry in 1942; his memories of wanting to help his fellow Jews in Europe by fighting in the U.S. Army; his memories of traveling to Europe for battle; his memories of occupying the I.G. Farben factory following the German evacuation; his memories of General Patton's order to capture young Nazi resisters; his memories of Wels II concentration camp; his memories of emaciated prisoners in Wels II; his memories of communicating with a Wels II prisoner in Yiddish; his memories of Straubing labor camp in Germany; his memories of corpses in ditches at Straubing; his time in Gunskirchen concentration camp after liberation; his memories of the bodies of prisoners, who attempted to flee, in the woods around Gunskirchen; and his recollections learning of Auschwitz through a friend after World War II.

    Oral history interview with David Dorfman

    Oral history interview with David Dorfman

    Oral History

    David Dorfman, born on January 22, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his childhood in Brussels; crossing the English Channel enroot to Liverpool, England from Antwerp, Belgium; his move to the United States with his father in 1939; his parents' marriage of convenience; his mother's and his siblings' experiences in Gurs concentration camp in 1942; his mother becoming pregnant by a guard in Gurs; his mother receiving permission to leave the camp to give birth to his sister Claudine; his mother escaping along with the newborn Claudine; his mother joining the Maquis French underground group in 1943; his mother's second marriage to an Auschwitz survivor; growing up in New York, NY; his sister's move to the United States from Switzerland in 1947; expressing his Holocaust memories through his art; his mother's death being an inspiration for his art; his artwork of Bergen-Belsen, Chelmno, Nordhausen, Majdanek, and Ravensbrück concentration camps; expressing the human extremes of tenderness and cruelty in his artwork; and his life in Mine Hill, N.J. Also contains photographs of David Dorfman in March 1956 and in 1993.

    Oral history interview with Max Findling

    Oral history interview with Max Findling

    Oral History

    Max Findling, born in Zmigród, Poland on July 28, 1923, discusses his childhood in Zmigród; antisemitism in Zmigród; the formation of a Judenrat in Zmigród in 1940; performing forced labor during the winter of 1941; the Gestapo in Zmigród; his transport from Zmigród to Jaslo, Poland in 1942; his time in prison in Jaslo; being sent to Płaszów concentration camp in July 1942; escaping from Płaszów after two weeks; hiding in Poland; returning to Zmigród and hiding; performing forced labor in Jaslo; his sister's murder with 40 or 50 other prisoners in the forest outside of Warzyce, Poland; being transported from Jaslo to Julag I concentration camp in Płaszów, Poland; his bout with typhus in 1943 while in Julag I; his transport to and time in Jerozolimska concentration camp (most likely part of Płaszów); his brother's death from pneumonia in Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp in 1944; his transport to and time in Hasag concentration camp in Czestochowa, Poland; Georg Bartenschlager, a S.S. officer who was in charge of Hasag; being liberated from Hasag by Russians; returning to Zmigród; his time in Bucharest, Romania; his time in Padua, Italy; his time in Israel; his marriage in 1949; immigrating to the United States in 1955; his testimony in a trial in 1972 at the request of the American Jewish Congress in Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, against Germans accused of killing Jews; and his life in the United States. Also contains a photograph of Max Findling in 1949 and a photograph of him in 1976.

    Oral History interview with Lilly Gottlieb

    Oral History interview with Lilly Gottlieb

    Oral History

    Lilly Gottlieb, born in 1925 in in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood in Vienna; her recollections of antisemitism in Vienna; Kristallnacht in 1938; her mother's wool and yarn business; her uncle's deportation to Dachau concentration camp and the return of his ashes in an urn; getting a United States visa; her parents' money in banks in the US; her father's journey to Belgium and going to Belgium later with her mother; living in Antwerp, Belgium and experiencing antisemitism; the German invasion of Belgium; her father's time in St. Cyprien, Les Milles, and Gurs concentration camps; thinking that their escape was an adventure; leaving France for Casablanca, Morocco in 1942; traveling to Cuba via Jamaica in 1942; living in Cuba from 1942 to 1948; marching in solidarity with other Jews in Havana; moving to the United States in 1948; returning to Cuba in 1952; leaving Cuba in 1961 to escape Castro's regime; her recent visits to Vienna; and her life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Zygmunt Gottlieb

    Oral history interview with Zygmunt Gottlieb

    Oral History

    Zygmunt Gottlieb, born on December 9, 1923 in Kopychyntsi, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Kopychyntsi; his orthodox upbringing; the poor conditions before World War II in Kopychyntsi; his memories of antisemitism in Ukraine; his memories of the Russian occupation from 1939 to 1941; his memories of the German occupation from 1941 to 1944; his recollections of the Kopychyntsi ghetto; his transport to the Kamionki labor camp; his recollections of 65 survivors of the original 5,000 to 6,000 Jews of Kopychyntsi; his memories of Aktions in Kamionki; his memories of the Ternopol labor camp; his escape during an Aktion; his memories of hiding in the barn of a Polish officer; his memories of hiding with his father and other relatives in an underground bunker; his liberation by the Russians in March 1944; his enlistment in the Soviet Army; his release from the army due to the fact he claimed to be a teacher before the war; his memories of testifying at a Mannheim war crimes trial; his travels to Vienna, Austria and Munich, Germany after the war; and his life in the United States after May 1951.

    Oral history interview with Alice Lefkovic

    Oral history interview with Alice Lefkovic

    Oral History

    Alice Lefkovic, born July 8, 1926, describes her childhood in Brezova Pod Bradlom, Slovakia; the antisemitism that followed Slovakian independence in 1940; her father's deportation to Majdanek concentration camp in 1941; attempting to flee to Hungary, her arrest, and her subsequent release due to the intervention of a mysterious benefactor; eventually arriving in Hungary with the help of a family member; reuniting with family members in Budapest, Hungary; deportations of Jews from Hungary in May 1944; being deported to Sered concentration camp in Czechoslovakia; her subsequent transport to Therensienstadt concentration camp; participating in forced labor while in Theresienstadt; her liberation by the Red Army; her life in Prague, Czech Republic following the war; her immigration to Israel after World War II; and her immigration to the United States in 1967. Includes photographs of Alice Lefkovic in 1947 and 1989.

    Oral history interview with Charles Levine

    Oral history interview with Charles Levine

    Oral History

    Charles Levine, born June 15, 1915 in Augustów, Poland, discusses his childhood; the immigration of his brother to the United States in 1923; being drafted into the Polish Army in 1939 and his wagon trip to the Soviet Union while in the army; his return to Augustów after his military service; his memories of Augustów under Soviet rule; the German invasion of Augustów on June 22, 1941; his time in the Augustów ghetto; his memories of Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski; being deported to Bogusze concentration camp on November 2, 1942 and his memories of the atrocities that took place in Bogusze; the transport of 6,000 Jews to Treblinka concentration camp and their murder there; being sent to Birkenau concentration camp in January 1943; building the crematoria; the killing of 24,000 Jews in the crematoria in Birkenau; the gassing of his sister and parents in Birkenau; receiving a tattooed number 85719 while he was in Birkenau; the extraction of gold from the teeth of dead prisoners; being sent to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in January 1945; a Romani camp in Gross-Rosen; the hanging of an escapee in front of the inmates in Gross-Rosen; being transported to Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1945; doing forced labor in Weimar, Germany; digging graves for German soldiers; being liberated by American soldiers April 13, 1945, and his memories of General Dwight Eisenhower's visit to Buchenwald shortly after liberation; traveling through Europe after liberation; the shooting of one of his friends by a member of the Armia Krajowa; his time in a displaced persons camp in Italy; his marriage in 1947 and his immigration to the United States in 1949; his life in New Jersey; and his personal reflections on the Holocaust. Photographs of Charles Levine in Italy in 1945 and in 1992 accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Eva Laks

    Oral history interview with Eva Laks

    Oral History

    Eva Laks, born in Ryki, Poland, on March 10, 1922, describes her family's move to Jankowiec nad Wisla, Poland, after a fire; antisemitism in Janowiec nad Wisla, Poland; the arrival of German troops in Janowiec nad Wisla in 1939 and the evacuation of the Jews from the city; living with her family in Zwoleń, Poland; being deported with her father to a concentration camp; her imprisonment at Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp and her work in an ammunition factory; the evacuation of the prisoners of Skarzysko-Kamienna and their forced march to Leipzig, Germany; being liberated by the Russian Army during the march; traveling to Kraków, Poland and staying in a house for concentration camp victims; her marriage and move to Prague, Czech Republic; moving to Landsberg am Lech, Germany; the birth and death of her first child; immigrating to New Orleans, LA in 1950; moving to New Jersey; and the death of her first husband and her second marriage. Photographs of Eva Laks accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Naftali Laks

    Oral history interview with Naftali Laks

    Oral History

    Naftali Laks, born on June 1, 1922 in Zmigród, Poland, discusses his childhood and his family in Zmigród; walking 60 miles towards the Russian border before being captured by the Germans; laying railroad tracks; the Germans burning and destroying synagogues and houses of study; the summer of 1942 when 60 percent of Zmigród's population was liquidated in a pogrom; the liquidation of the Zmigród ghetto in 1943; his sister's sexual assault by a policeman in Tarnów, Poland; his deportation to Płaszów concentration camp and subsequently contracting typhus; the Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp and staying alive with the help of his sisters; being transported between several concentration camps, among them Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, and Mauthausen; the terrible conditions at Mauthausen; his reaction to seeing American bomber planes; Passover in 1945 at Mauthausen; British Spitfires firing on transport trains; American troops liberating Mauthausen; his search for his sisters in Czechoslovakia; his journey to Israel with his sisters and his life there from 1952 to 1959; moving to the United States in 1959; his marriage in 1961 and his wife's death in 1969; and his remarriage in 1972 and his life with his new wife, also a Holocaust survivor. Also contains four photographs; one of Naftali Laks' family in 1938, one of his home in Zmigród, Poland, and 2 of Naftali at a mass grave site in August 1993.

    Oral history interview with Leonard Linton

    Oral history interview with Leonard Linton

    Oral History

    Leonard Linton, born on January 1, 1922, discusses his training in the Military Government of the United States Army; his language abilities; his service with the 82nd Airborne Division during the occupation of Ludwigslust, Germany; his memories of the Nazi mayor of Ludwigslust; his experience during and after the liberation of Wöbbelin concentration camp; helping nurse concentration camp survivors at a railway station; and his opinion that General James M. Gavin's crossing of the Elbe River saved the lives of the Wöbbelin prisoners. Photographs of Leonard Linton in the mid-1940s and 1993 accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Henry Lowenbraun

    Oral history interview with Henry Lowenbraun

    Oral History

    Henry Lowenbraun, born on August 1, 1922 in Lancut, Poland, discusses his childhood in Lancut; his imprisonment in the Rzeszów ghetto in 1942; the killings and Aktions that took place in Rzeszów; his illness with stomach typhus; his selection in the ghetto for labor; escaping from the ghetto to the forest near Lácut and his time hiding there; his voluntary return to the ghetto in the spring of 1942 to be with his sister; being transported to Szebnie concentration camp in the spring of 1943; the shooting and hanging of inmates by the commandant in Szebnie; the Appel in Szebnie, during which every tenth prisoner was executed; the commandant's receiving of a death sentence after World War II; his movement to Mordarka, Poland to a train station in 1943; the murder of a large group of Kraków Jews in Mordarka; the train ride to Auschwitz concentration camp in the fall of 1943; his interaction with Dr. Josef Mengele; a beating that he received in Auschwitz for not picking up a stone; his movement to Monowitz concentration camp, a subcamp of Auschwitz, to work in the I.G. Farben Buna factory; the bombing of the Farben factory; the hanging of two inmates at the Appel at Monowitz; a death march in January of 1945 to Glebowice, Poland; his 12 day cattle train ride to Nordhausen concentration camp, a sub camp of Dora concentration camp; his illness with pneumonic pleurisy; the liberation of the camp by troops led by General Dwight Eisenhower while he was in the hospital; his time in Degerloch displaced persons camp near Stuttgart, Germany from 1945 to 1949; his marriage to his wife in 1946; the fate of his family during the Holocaust; his immigration to the United States on April 6, 1949; his life after World War II in Brooklyn, NY and Newark, NJ; and his general reflections on the Holocaust. Also contains a photocopy of a document that certifies Henry as a concentration camp prisoner, a photocopy of a photograph of Henry in his concentration camp uniform dated 1946, and four additional undated photocopies of photographs.

    Oral history interview with Walter Nachtigall

    Oral history interview with Walter Nachtigall

    Oral History

    Walter Nachtigall, born in 1931 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the jubilation in Austria during the Anschluss on March 13, 1938 and the overt antisemitism that followed; his experiences during Kristallnacht in Austria on November 9, 1938; his father's imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp during Kristallnacht; going to England and Scotland along with his sister in order to avoid Nazi persecution; staying in Dysart, Scotland with a Christian family (James and Isa Salmond) during the summer of 1939; the release of his father from Dachau and his parent's immigration to Edinburgh, Scotland; his Jewish education by a Christian clergyman; reuniting with his parents and their immigration to the United States in 1939; and visiting Scotland in the late 1950s.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Judah Nadich, born on May 13, 1912, discusses his role as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's adviser on Jewish affairs and displaced persons camps in 1945; his role as senior Jewish chaplain in the European Theater; the plan for non-Jewish and Jewish displaced persons after the World War II; President Harry S. Truman's designation of Earl G. Harrison, Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, and a Commission to Europe to investigate the living conditions for displaced persons; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise's recommendation to General Eisenhower to appoint a Jewish adviser; visiting Dachau concentration camp in Germany shortly after its liberation in 1945; his time in Frankfurt, Germany, and his memories of meeting the only surviving rabbi of Frankfurt; visiting Feldafing displaced persons camp; General George S. Patton's feelings towards the Jews; General Patton's jurisdiction over displaced persons camps in Bavaria, Germany, and his demotion; the recommendations he made for improving the conditions in the displaced persons camps; visiting Landsberg displaced persons camp and the workshops that were set up in Landsberg for Jews; meeting with David Ben Gurion in Paris, France, and travelling with him to Zeilsheim displaced persons camp; Ben Gurion's emotional speech to the survivors in Zeilsheim; the singing of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem by the survivors; his book entitled, Eisenhower and the Jews; the percentage of displaced persons who wanted to go to Israel versus the percentage of those who wanted to go to other places; a tour of a hospital for children at St. Ottilien, Germany; the "religious problems" he experienced after his time in Germany; his departure from the rabbinate to become the Jewish Displaced Persons Director for Germany; working on a United Jewish Appeal campaign; returning to the rabbinate in 1947; and his reflections on the Holocaust and displaced persons camps. Also includes a photograph of Judah Nadich when he was the guest of honor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Dinner accompanies the interview.

    Oral history interview with Herma Rappaport

    Oral history interview with Herma Rappaport

    Oral History

    Herma Rappaport, born in Vienna, Austria in 1924, discusses her childhood in Vienna; Kristallnacht; her family being put on house arrest for five days; a Gentile neighbor helping her family; moving with her mother to the Jewish section of Vienna after Kristallnacht; the release of her father and the physical abuse he suffered at the hands of the Germans; her father's stroke; being sent to England on a Kindertransport; arriving in London, England, and her life in the Woolwich section of the city living with a Jewish doctor and his wife; being in Wales at the outbreak of World War II; being in London during the German bombing raids; her mother's death in Theresienstadt in April 1944; her father's imprisonment in Auschwitz in May 1944 and learning of his death in the camp; and her immigration to the United States in 1948. Two photographs of Herma, one in 1939 and one in 1990 accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Robert Rothschild

    Oral history interview with Robert Rothschild

    Oral History

    Robert Rothschild, born on January 9, 1924 in Mellrichstadt, Germany, discusses his childhood in Mellrichstadt; his education in a Catholic high school; the increase in antisemitism after the Nazis took power in 1933; his forced resignation from the Catholic school and the completion of his education in a Jewish day school; his apprenticeship to his uncle as a tailor and his arrival at his uncle's residence on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938; being arrested and sent to Buchenwald; being released and taking a train to France; boarding a ship bound for the United States and the diversion of the ship to the Isle of Man off the coast of Great Britain; his time in a camp on the island and his eventual release; working as the foreman in a bakery; moving to England; the immigration of his parents and brother to the United States in 1941; his immigration to the United States in March 1947; and his reflections on the Holocaust. Two photographs of Robert Rothschild, one at age 15and one at age 6, accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rubell

    Oral history interview with Morris Rubell

    Oral History

    Morris Rubell, born on January 16, 1930 in Barycz, Poland (near Krosno, Poland), describes his childhood and the small community of Jews in Barycz; his father's work as an innkeeper; the beginning of World War II; being transported with his mother to the Rzeszow ghetto and escaping from the ghetto with his mother; his transport to Płaszów concentration camp in 1942; his preoccupation with survival and sorrow in the camps; his time in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1943; his time in Melk concentration camp in 1944; being sent to Ebensee concentration camp in March 1945 and his liberation from Ebensee by American soldiers shortly thereafter; his memories of reuniting with his sisters in Italy; meeting his brother Mark, who survived the war in Russia, in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria; his life in France in 1947 when the Polish immigrations quota to the United States was exhausted; his eventual move to the United States in February 1948; and his life since then in Vienna, NJ.

    Oral history interview with Aaron Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Aaron Schwarz

    Oral History

    Aaron Schwarz discusses his childhood in Zarowka, Poland; escaping deportation by jumping from a train and returning home to Zarowka; his arrest in Tarnów, Poland; his time in the Radomysl Wilki and Kraków ghettos; participating in forced labor in several forced labor camps in Poland; escaping a deportation train on the way to Treblinka concentration camp in 1944; his liberation by the Russians in 1944; traveling throughout Poland after liberation and experiencing antisemitism at that time; and his time in to Heidelberg, Germany, just before his immigration to the United States in 1949. Two photographs of Aaron Schwarz accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Ida Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Ida Schwarz

    Oral History

    Ida Schwarz, born on May 20, 1925, discusses her early life in Tarnów, Poland; the arrival of the Germans in Tarnów on September 4, 1939; the creation of a ghetto in Tarnów by the Germans in the summer of 1942; hiding in the ghetto in August 1942, first in a sewer and later in a cellar; her participation in labor for the Germans while in the ghetto; escaping from a deportation train in November 1942; returning to the ghetto with the help of a Polish peasant; the liquidation of the ghetto in September 1943 and her deportation to Płaszów concentration camp; being transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1943; her participation in labor while in Auschwitz; the closing of Auschwitz and the death march of the inmates to a train taking them to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in January 1945; her experiences in Bergen-Belsen; being transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp and her liberation by American troops in 1945; returning to Tarnów and her subsequent travel to Heidelberg, Germany, in 1945; the birth of her son; and her immigration to the United States with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Sonnenberg

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Sonnenberg

    Oral History

    Gertrude Sonnenberg, born on February 1, 1919 in Hausberge (Hausberge an der Porta), Germany, begins the interview by showing a photograph of herself at age 19 and photographs of her and her father taken by the police; two rings made for her while she was in the Riga ghetto and a piece of paper given to her by a Jewish policeman as her parents were taken away. She continues by discussing her childhood in Hausberge; the changes that took place in Hausberge when Hitler came to power in 1933; antisemitism in Germany before 1933; her family's move to Hesse, Germany; the closing of high schools, universities, and professions to Jews in the late 1930s; her time in Dortmund, Germany, working as a dressmaker; Kristallnacht; the conversion of her house to a bank in 1939; the establishment of new laws in Hannover pertaining to Jews; the activities of the Kulterbund Deutscher Juden (Jüdischer Kulturbund); the bombing of Germany by the British; her family's time in hiding in an attic in Hannover before their deportation; her family's three day train ride to Riga, Latvia; participating in forced labor in Riga; the gassing and shooting of Jews who couldn't work by the Latvian SS; the establishment of a ghetto and an Appel in Riga; the atrocities that took place in Riga; the uprising in Riga on October 30, 1942, and the execution of the participants of the uprising; her memories of her parents' deportation from Riga; her attempted suicide; her sister's work as a nurse in a hospital and the abortions that were performed in the hospital in Riga; babies being sent away for experiments; the liquidation of the Riga ghetto; her and her sister's time in Kiel-Hassee concentration camp and their liberation from the camp by the Red Cross; their move to and time in Sweden after the World War II; their life in the United States after their emigration in 1948; and her feelings on speaking about the Holocaust. Includes two photographs of Gertrude, one as a young woman and one more recent, accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Weinbuch

    Oral history interview with Joseph Weinbuch

    Oral History

    Joseph Weinbuch, born in 1924 in Kurów, Poland, describes the antisemitism in Kurów; his memories of Kurów burning in 1939; living in the Kurów ghetto from 1939 until 1941; being in Majdanek concentration camp; being in Janowska concentration camp for four months in 1941; the Janowska Judenrat; escaping the camp and returning to Kurów where his mother secretly nursed him to health from typhus; his family's removal from their house in 1941; hiding in the woods and fields near Kurów from 1941 until 1944; Jews hiding in private homes in exchange for money; his memories of the Witkowskis, a Polish couple who helped him hide and find a job; a near-fatal encounter with SS officers; his father's murder by the Armia Krajowa after the war; his thoughts on Jewish-Christian relations in Poland and in general; his liberation in 1944; his time in the Polish Army after liberation; his time in Austria after leaving the Polish Army; and immigrating to the United States February 1949.

    Oral history interview with Sol Urbach

    Oral history interview with Sol Urbach

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Luba Zeidel

    Oral history interview with Luba Zeidel

    Oral History

    Luba Zeidel, born in 1914 in Vishkovo, Poland (possibly Vyshkovo, Ukraine), discusses her childhood; growing up in a religious family with nine children; her father's work as a locksmith; experiencing antisemitism in school and in town; the bombing and general confusion during the German takeover; the synagogue in Vishkovo burning to the ground; her family fleeing to Sarny, Ukraine; her family's murder by the Germans; escaping with her sister to ZHadova, Ukraine; meeting her husband in ZHadova; liberation by the Russians; life in the Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp in Germany; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Teddy Zweig

    Oral history interview with Teddy Zweig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Lederman

    Oral history interview with Susan Lederman

    Oral History

    Susan Lederman, born on May 28, 1937, discusses her childhood in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); her mother's and father's education; the help that she received from Gentiles; her conversion by a priest for her protection; her uncle and his family who were shot as partisans; her time in Trnava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); the movement of two Jewish families into her home; her time with a family in Budapest, Hungary; the murder of the Hungarian family; her time with her godmother's family; her parents' hiding in a bombed-out factory; her time living with another Hungarian family in Bratislava; the family's willingness to take a chance in hiding her because she had blond hair, blue eyes, and could speak Hungarian; the way she needed to act as not to "blow the cover;" her parents' hiding in a rented room with her mother's aunt; her knowledge of the deportations of Jews; her father's exemption from the deportations because of his printing skills; the end of their hiding in 1944; their time living in an apartment before emigration; their immigration to the United States in 1948; her parents' decision to stop keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath; her education in the United States; her family's settlement in Queens, NY; her political sophistication during the Eisenhower era; the help her family received from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America; her father's work for a Czech newspaper in NY and then for the United Nations Postal Administration; her encouragement to her friends to read the Diary of Anne Frank; and her belief that America is an open, accepting society.

    Oral history interview with David Altholz

    Oral history interview with David Altholz

    Oral History

    David Altholz, born in Krosno, Poland on May 26, 1928, discusses his childhood in Krosno and Chorzów, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism, especially stone throwing; his family's vacation in Poland in 1939; seeing the Jews of Chorzów evacuating around the time of the German invasion of Poland; the Germans executing educated and professional men; being rounded up with his family for a work detail; being imprisoned in Szebnie concentration camp; being transferred to Płaszów concentration camp where he reunited with his father and learned the fate of his mother and sister; the numerous prisoners who were sent to Auschwitz; the atrocities in Płaszów; his claims of being a watchmaker as a means of survival; his memories of the "Appel" in Płaszów, during which every tenth prisoner was shot; his transfer to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943; working in a factory in Ludwigslust, Germany; being liberated by American troops; going to Berlin, Germany; reuniting with his father in Lübeck, Germany; immigrating to the United States with his father and the aid they received from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America; being drafted into the US Army for service during the Korean War; his life in Maplewood, NJ; reflecting on his survival as being pure accident; and his thoughts on Germans and Poles.

    Oral history interview with Ann Schatz

    Oral history interview with Ann Schatz

    Oral History

    Ann Schatz, born in Brody, Poland (now in Ukraine) on March 3, 1922, discusses her family's move from their home to an apartment after the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland; her capture by a German soldier; her forced labor at the hands of the Germans and her eventual release from German custody; her father's arrest by the Germans and his return from captivity severely beaten and with his beard shaved; the establishment of a ghetto in Brody by the Germans in 1942; her father's bout with typhus fever; her brother's attempted escape from the Brody ghetto and his subsequent capture and death in Vilnius, Lithuania; the Germans killing her father in 1943; the deportation of her mother to Majdanek concentration camp; hiding from the Germans in a cellar and her discovery by a Polish fireman; her deportation to a labor camp; her liberation by the Soviets in 1944 and her marriage the same year; her time in a displaced persons camp in Frankfurt, Germany; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Aron Grynwald

    Oral history interview with Aron Grynwald

    Oral History

    Aron Grynwald, born on June 21, 1904 in Bedzin, Poland, discusses his pre-war life in Bedzin; attending a technical school in Wroclaw, Poland; his marriage, in 1939, to Gitla Grynwald; numerous cases of antisemitism in Poland; hiding in 1939 on a farm in Poland; his time in the Kraków ghetto; prominent members of the Kraków Judenrat; anti-Jewish laws imposed in 1939; having to wear a Jewish star; the confiscation of his Kraków factory by a Viennese man in 1949; his time working in this factory from 1940 until October 8, 1942 on a special work permit from the German Labor Department; his contact with family members in the Warsaw ghetto; escaping the June 3, 1942 selection of 6,000 Jews in the Kraków ghetto because of his special work permit; hiding with his wife, Gitla, to escape another selection, of 7,000 Jews from the Kraków ghetto on October 28, 1942; working in the Kraków ghetto from October 8, 1942 until March 13, 1943 after his special work permit expired; being transported to Płaszów concentration camp on March 13, 1942; his memories of Amon Goeth, the Commandant of Płaszów concentration camp; being transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in August 1944; forced labor in Mauthausen; the SS and the Gestapo officers in Mauthausen; being transported to Ebensee concentration camp in Austria in April 13, 1945; his liberation by American troops from Ebensee on May 6, 1945; returning to Kraków after liberation; his wife's time in Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp; the communist leadership of Wladyslaw Gomulka in Poland after World War II; and his time in the United States after 1961. Also contains a photograph of Aron Grynwald in 1940, one of him recent to the time of the interview, and one of him and his wife, Gitla, recent to the time of the interview.

    Oral history interview with Gitla Grynwald

    Oral history interview with Gitla Grynwald

    Oral History

    Gitla Grynwald, born on October 23, 1902 in Zawiercie, Poland, discusses her childhood in Zawiercie; her education; her work in a library until 1932; her marriage to Aron Grynwald on March 8, 1933; her time in Kraków, Poland after her marriage; the German invasion of Kraków on September 6, 1939; the subsequent establishment of a ghetto in Kraków; the Kraków Judenrat; her husband's work for the Gestapo in Kraków; her transport, with her husband, to Płaszów concentration camp in March 1943; conditions in Płaszów; being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944; forced labor in Auschwitz; being transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany after three weeks in Auschwitz; conditions in Bergen-Belsen; her time in Raguhn, Germany from January 1945 until April 1945; being transported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in April 1945; her time in a hospital from May 1945 until July 1945; returning to Kraków in July 1945; and her life in the United States after 1961. Also contains a photograph of Gitla Grynwald in 1940 and a photograph of her, with her husband Aron, recent to the time of the interview.

    Oral history interview with Sally Chase

    Oral history interview with Sally Chase

    Oral History

    Sally Chase, born on November 28, 1928, discusses her childhood in Radom, Poland; being sent to the Radom ghetto; the murder of intellectual Jews by the Germans; how the Germans forced the Jews to wear the yellow Star of David; volunteering to work at the Wehrmacht Alpha A labor camp as a means of protection from persecution; the attempted liquidation of the Radom ghetto by the Germans and the deportation of Radom's Jews to Treblinka concentration camp, including her parents; the gassing of Radom's Jews at Treblinka; the liquidation of the labor camps and her deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp; selections of prisoners by Dr. Josef Mengele; her move after six months to an aircraft factory in Gebhardsdorf, Germany; marching from Gebhardsdorf to another work camp; her unsuccessful escape attempt from a work camp; being liberated by Soviet troops; returning to Poland and subsequently traveling to Czechoslovakia after World War II; and her immigration to the United States in 1947. Also contains three black and white photographs of Sally Chase. One dated 1946, one dated 1948, and one dated 1978.

    Oral history interview with Renee Cantor

    Oral history interview with Renee Cantor

    Oral History

    Renee Cantor discusses her early childhood in Brussels, Belgium; her move to a Sephardic orphanage in England at age 4; not remembering her own family; her experiences in the Sephardic orphanage; her memories of life in a British "evacuation town" with a Christian family; her memories of antisemitism in British schools and communities; her high school graduation at age 16; applying to go to Palestine; meeting her husband on the day he arrived in England to go to Manchester Union college; and her life in the United States after 1946.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Baum

    Oral history interview with Lotte Baum

    Oral History

    Lotte Baum, born in Essen, Germany on August 9, 1915, discusses her childhood and adolescent life in Essen; her parents' deaths prior to the Holocaust; the destruction of synagogues, businesses, and homes during Kristallnacht; moving to the Netherlands in 1941; the confiscation of her husband's factory by the Germans; being transported to Westerbork concentration camp; working in the Westerbork laundry facility; paying in gold money in order to remain at Westerbork; being transported to Auschwitz in 1944; learning of her husband's death in Auschwitz; her work in a munitions factory in the Sudetenland; her liberation by the Russians in March 1945; her second marriage to a member of the German underground; and moving to the United States in 1947. Also contains photographs of Lotte Baum in 1947 and in May 1991.

    Oral history interview with Aba Prawer

    Oral history interview with Aba Prawer

    Oral History

    Aba Prawer, born on January 1, 1922, discusses his childhood in Miechów Lubelski, Poland; his visits to Landsberg am Lech and Feldafing displaced persons camps in Germany in 1945; his father's imprisonment in Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp in Poland; antisemitism in Miechów after German occupation; the curfew and other anti-Jewish laws in Miechów after German occupation; performing forced labor under SS supervision on a railroad near Miechów; the financial and emotional support he received from a Volksdeutsche family friend; his time in a forced labor camp near Kraków, Poland; being transported to Rabka, Poland, and doing forced labor; returning to the Kraków ghetto in 1943; the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in 1943; his numerous forced labor assignments while in Kraków; working in the Buna synthetic-rubber works factory at Monowitz (Monowice) concentration camp, a subcamp of Auschwitz; the crematoria at Auschwitz; being transported to Buchenwald concentration camp; prisoners falling ill from typhus in Buchenwald; his recollections of Ilse Koch, the wife of Buchenwald's Commandant, Karl Koch; his liberation from Buchenwald in 1945; his life after liberation and his move to the United States in 1951; receiving help from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America; and his life in New Jersey after 1956.

    Oral history interview with Dina Weinreb Jacoud

    Oral history interview with Dina Weinreb Jacoud

    Oral History

    Dina Weinreb Jacoud, born on June 7, 1925 in Lavochne, Ukraine, discusses her childhood; the limited educational opportunities in Lavochne public schools; going to school in Stryi, Ukraine; the 1939 partition of Poland; a Volksdeutsche friend who took her from Stryi to be reunited with her family in Lavochne; her time hiding in the woods near Lavochne with her father in August 1944; moving with her father to Hungary in August 1944; hiding in Hungary; receiving false papers and her false identity as Stephany Warge, a Mischlinge; moving to Budapest, Hungary and her time working illegally there; her arrest as a political prisoner and her time as a political prisoner in Békéscsaba, Hungary, prison in 1944; the horrors of life in the Békéscsaba prison; her belief in the existence of extrasensory perception and memories of two incidents, one as a child in Lavochne and one as an adult in the United States in 1967, when she believes she possessed extrasensory perception; the SS and the Gestapo; being transported from Debrecen, Hungary to Auschwitz concentration camp and the conditions during the transport; being sanitized upon entering Auschwitz and receiving a red triangle, the marking of a Christian prisoner; performing forced labor at Auschwitz; performing slave labor at a bulb factory in Plauen, Germany, and her liberation from Plauen; life in Feldafing displaced persons camp in Germany, where she met her first husband, and her marriage there; moving her husband to Munich, Germany, and their later move to New Orleans, LA, on August 8, 1949; living in Miami, Florida, New York City, and Newark, New Jersey; her recollections of segregation while living in Florida; her memories of receiving assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee while living in New York City; and her life in Newark. Also contains a photograph of Dina Weinreb Jacoud in 1947 and one of her in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Margie Appel

    Oral history interview with Margie Appel

    Oral History

    Margie Appel, born August 13, 1928, discusses her childhood in Klečenov, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); her experiences in public school; her father's service in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I; the Hungarian occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938; her brothers being sent to forced labor; photographs of one of her brothers; her youngest brother's deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; the gassing of her father at Auschwitz; her reunion with her brothers after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; her family's removal from their home; their placement in the ghetto in Munkács, Hungary (now Mukacheve, Ukraine); the atrocities that took place in the Munkács ghetto; the torturing of her brother for breaking curfew; the beatings of her five brothers in the ghetto; the train ride to Auschwitz; the disappearance of her mother; the "selection" of her and her sister for forced labor by Dr. Josef Mengele; the beating she received from the Kapos; her "close calls" with the gas chambers; her and her sister's transfer to Gelsenkirchen concentration camp in Germany to work on barges; the beating of Hungarian girls; their transfer to Essen concentration camp in Germany, to work in the Krupp factories; the bombing of the factory and the camp; her fasting on Yom Kippur; the mental state of her sister; the problems that she had with her sister and her desire for relief from the burden she caused; the train ride to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; the liberation of the camp by British troops; the atmosphere after liberation; the aid that they received from the Red Cross; her arrival at Celle, Germany, near Bergen-Belsen; the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt to the camp; the discovery of her brother's fate; the meeting of her future husband in Most, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); her marriage on Aug. 27, 1946; her time spent in the Gabersee displaced persons camp in Germany; her pregnancy and birth to twins and the death of one of the twins; her arrival in the United States in 1949; the help she received from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society; her life in Lakewood, N.J.; the death of her husband in 1970; her marriage to her second husband; her trip to Israel; and her belief that people survived the Holocaust so that Judaism could grow again. Also contains a photograph of Margie in 1945 and a photograph of her in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Victor Wegard

    Oral history interview with Victor Wegard

    Oral History

    Victor Wegard, born in New York, discusses his enlistment into the United States Army after graduating from high school; his job as a reporter for the Army War College in Trinidad; his time in Sicily, Italy; volunteering for the paratroopers; his placement in the War Crimes Commission; being trained for entry into concentration camps at Cumberland University in Tennessee; his return to Europe in 1944, first to England, then to Holland, and finally to France; his placement into the War Crimes Commission, unit number 6832; his orders to secure the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany; his order to attach his unit to the 91st Infantry Division going to Flossenbürg concentration camp; his arrival at Flossenbürg; his learning of the fate of certain members of the SS; the investigation in a neighboring town called Namering; the claims of the townspeople of seeing or hearing nothing; the discovery of the bodies of recently executed people in Namering and the proper burial of the victims; his memories of the United States Army forcing the townspeople to look closely at the victims' corpses; the claim by the Germans that Flossenbürg had the most "efficient" gas chamber; the atrocities that took place in Flossenbürg; his discovery of a cousin at the camp; the discovery of Yugoslavs, Greeks, and German political prisoners including members of the White Rose resistance group; his thoughts that the prisoners in Flossenbürg were carrying diseases; the capturing of SS and Ukrainian guards; the interrogation of the SS and Ukrainian guards; the interrogation of SS Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Peiper; his experiences during the Nuremberg trials; the Dachau War Crime Trials; his memories of having to defend the criminals; the trial of Dr. Klaus Schilling; frustrations that occurred with the trials; the case against German commandant Andreas Müller; his reflections on his role as a Holocaust educator; and his reflections on Revisionists and deniers. Also contains a black-and-white photograph of Wegard in his army uniform in 1940.

    Oral history interview with Edith Farben

    Oral history interview with Edith Farben

    Oral History

    Edith Farben, born in Velká Polana, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) on April 9, 1925, discusses her childhood; her short stay in Munkás, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine); the changes that took place when World War II broke out and the Hungarians occupied the area; the Jews being forced to wear yellow stars and other anti-Jewish laws; an incident that occurred where two Hungarian soldiers tried to help her family; her grandfather's inability to find papers to avoid deportation; the movement of her family into the ghetto in Munkás in 1944; her grandfather's beard being shaved off; her grandfather's death; her family's deportation by train to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz; the separation of her brother and father; working in the "Kanada" commando sorting clothes; her relatively "easy" life in the camp; the beating of her aunt in Auschwitz; the entrance of inmates into the crematorium; an uprising in Auschwitz in October 1944; the forced labor of the inmates, especially on Jewish holidays; "blood-taking" on Tisha Ba'av; the gas chambers in Auschwitz; her mother's and sister's deportations to Bergen-Belsen, where her sister died; being deported to the Sudetenland (German-occupied Czechoslovakia) where she worked in a factory named Waisswasser (Mittelsteine concentration camp); her belief that her survival is due to the fact that she was nimble fingered; incidents where she helped her friends survive; the help that she received from Czech forced laborers; the long train ride to Bratislava, Slovakia, where she encountered Russian soldiers; reuniting with her mother, brother, and two sisters in Bratislava; finding out the fate of her father and sisters; moving back to Velká Polana where she found her house was occupied by neighbors; the shelters provided by the United Jewish Appeal; her marriage in October 1945; visiting her brother in Czechoslovakia; moving to Wasserburg, Germany in the spring of 1946; arriving in the United States in July 1947; her life in the United States with her family; her mother's experiences during the Holocaust; and her reflections on why she survived and not forgetting what happened in the Holocaust. Also contains a photograph of Edith at age seventeen and a photograph of her at age sixty.

    Oral history interview with Robert Mansfeld

    Oral history interview with Robert Mansfeld

    Oral History

    Robert Mansfeld, born in 1927 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his childhood in Amsterdam; his father's career as a high-fashion manufacturer; his family's stay in Berlin, Germany between the years of 1930 and 1935; his time as a neighbor of Hermann Göring; moving back to Amsterdam in 1935; his parents' divorce; the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940; the posting of the Nuremberg laws; the protest of the occupation by the Dutch people; the disappearance of students from his school, probably to Westerbork, a Dutch concentration camp; the imprisonment of community and national leaders; his life while his father was incarcerated; the underground's destruction of files that the Germans had on Amsterdam residents; his inclusion in a roundup in Amsterdam; his inclusion in a selection at a gymnasium in Amsterdam; his uncle's "lease on life" as a member of the Jewish council; his family's contacts with the underground; his family's separation to different hiding places; his time hiding with a plumber and his family; his time in Friesland, Netherlands with a Dutch Reformed family of farmers; his falsification of his identity; his sister's hiding situation; Allied raids in the Netherlands; his interactions with Germans who were not suspicious of him; the roundup of school children for labor; his fear of being hit by V-2 rockets or Spitfire attacks; the Canadian liberation of the Netherlands; his father's stay in Amsterdam during the war; reuniting with his family after the war; the disappearance of aunts, uncles, and grandparents during the war; a request by Ferdinand aus der Fünten to his father to testify on his behalf and his father's subsequent refusal to testify; his life after the war; his immigration to Canada in 1952 and his later immigration to the United States in 1958; and his perspectives on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Henry Yungst

    Oral history interview with Henry Yungst

    Oral History

    Henry Yungst, born on October 7, 1920, discusses his childhood in Ozorków, Poland; the change in attitude of the Poles towards the Jews at the beginning of 1939; the looting of his father's factory; his family's move and their experience living in a single room with no toilet facilities; the roundup of Jews in Łódź, Poland, on April 1, 1940; their movement into a movie house in Ozorków, Poland; the death of his father and older brother by starvation in a camp in Poznan, Poland; the gassing of his mother, sister, and younger brother in Chelmno concentration camp; his time in a forced labor camp in Danzig (Gdansk, Poland); his memories of being whipped by an officer; the help that he received from a foreman; his transport to Palemonas concentration camp in Lithuania; his memories of the transport of children to Paneriai, Lithuania, to be killed; his memories of the atrocities committed by "Peter the Terrible" and other Ukrainians; his transport to Kaiserwald concentration camp in Riga, Latvia; a plane that crashed into Kaiserwald on a suicide mission; his transport to Stutthof concentration camp; his memories of criminals being unleashed by their captors on Jewish prisoners; his memories of a beating he received in Stutthof; his transport to Buchenwald concentration camp where he was reunited with his cousin and uncle; his transport to Bochumer Verein concentration camp; his memories of finding out the fate of his mother, sister, and younger brother; his return to Buchenwald concentration camp; his short time in Flossenbürg; his transport to Dachau concentration camp and on the way, his liberation by the United States Army; suffering from typhus; his time spent in two hospitals after liberation; his work for the U.S. Army in Straubing, Germany; meeting his future wife in Straubing; his unsuccessful search for his sister in Israel; his immigration to the United States in 1954; his life in New Jersey; his children learning about his experiences; and his warning to be "watchful." Also contains a photograph of Henry as a young man in Poland, a photograph of him at middle age, a photograph of a memorial with the names of his family on it, and a photograph of a memorial with the town Ozorków written on it in Hebrew.

    Oral history interview with Zelda Peters

    Oral history interview with Zelda Peters

    Oral History

    Zelda Peters, born on May 29, 1921, discusses her childhood in Sighet (Sighetu Marmației), Romania; her father's work as a butcher; attending Catholic school; working for an import-export business, a lawyer, and an architectural firm; the Hungarian occupation of Romania from 1940 to 1944; antisemitism in Hungary; the German occupation of Romania beginning in 1944; German antisemitism; Germany establishing ghettos and deporting Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp; receiving a bogus postcard from her parents enticing her to go to Auschwitz; life in Auschwitz; being in Ravensbrück concentration camp; developing tuberculosis while in Ravensbrück; liberation from the camp by the Russians; life at Gabersee displaced persons camp in Germany; meeting and marrying her husband; the birth of her daughter; immigration to the United States in 1951 with the help of the Society of Friends (Quakers); and her life in Highland Park, NJ, after 1951. Also contains two photographs of Zelda Peters in 1944 and 1992.

    Oral history interview with David Rosenblum

    Oral history interview with David Rosenblum

    Oral History

    David Rosenblum, born on May 13, 1925, describes his memories of his father purchasing forged documents for him; the creation of the ghetto in Kraków, Poland, in 1941 and his family's move to Szydlowiec, Poland, as a result; his stay in a Capuchin monastery in order to avoid capture by the Germans; his memories of being denounced as a Jew by a former classmate and his escape from the monastery to return to Szydlowiec; his memories of his brother's capture and deportation to a forced labor camp and his unsuccessful efforts to free his brother; his family's imprisonment in Treblinka concentration camp; the deportation and the killings on trains bound for Treblinka; his period of homelessness from 1942 to 1943; his escape from forced labor in Radom, Poland; his capture and torture by the Gestapo; his imprisonment in Jerozolimska camp and Montelupich prison in Kraków; his experiences in Auschwitz concentration camp; a death march to Kutno, Poland; his time in Mühldorf concentration camp; being placed on a forced labor detail building a forest camp (Waldlager VI camp); his liberation by the United States Army in April 1945 while on a train in the Bavarian Alps; and his life in the United States after World War II. A photograph of David Rosenblum in 1955 and a photograph of the Rosenblum family in 1939 accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Mila Bachner

    Oral history interview with Mila Bachner

    Oral History

    Mila Bachner, born on March 15, 1927, discusses her childhood in Chrzanów, Poland; antisemitism in Poland; the attacks on her father and grandfather by Poles in Chrzanów; the death of her grandfather from a beating; the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939; her family's attempted escape; living in the Chrzanów ghetto; the confiscation of her parents' business; the death of her brother in Gross Masselwitz concentration camp in Germany; her other brother's time in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; her mother and aunt's inclusion in a roundup; her knowledge of the crematorium at Auschwitz concentration camp; her sister's transport to Auschwitz; her work making coats for the Germans; being transported to transit camp Dulag in Germany; her selection by Dr. Franz Novak to live; her time in Nova Sol concentration camp in Neusalz, Germany (Nowa Sól, Poland); forced labor in Nova Sol and the cruelty that she was forced to endure there; a death march to Flossenbürg concentration camp; passing through Potsdam, Germany, where Hitler Youth threw rocks at her; the help that she and a friend received from a German woman near Flossenbürg; wondering if there was a God; holding on to her pictures despite being beaten; her work taking clothes off of the dead; marching to a railroad station; being on a cattle car for eight days; arriving in Hanover, Germany, near Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; her work pulling dead bodies to the crematorium at Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British; possible reasons for her survival; her time shortly after liberation with a German family near Bergen-Belsen; reuniting with her brother; her secret crossing of the border to Austria; her time in a hospital in Austria; and her and her brother's immigration to the United States in 1947. Also contains two identical photographs of Mila in late 1939 or early 1940.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Bokor

    Oral history interview with Ernest Bokor

    Oral History

    Ernest Bokor, born on August 21, 1920, discusses his early life in Debrad, Slovakia; his childhood in Dubovec, Slovakia; the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Hungary in 1938; the antisemitism of the Hungarians; moving to Budapest, Hungary, in 1943; his use of green-dyed shirts to pose as a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, or Nyialskereszets Párt; the altering of his identification papers from "Jewish" to "Catholic;" saving Jewish children in Budapest in November 1944; his encounter with a friend posing as a member of the Arrow Cross; his joining of a group headed by Raoul Wallenberg; the group's successful efforts to save Jews in Budapest; his chance meeting with his brother and his leaving Wallenberg's group; his realization that his mother had died at the hands of the Nazis, probably in Auschwitz concentration camp; his arrest by the Nazis and his deportation to Mauthausen concentration camp with his brother; their liberation by the United States Army; his brother's death; his return home and meeting with his sister; his marriage; and his immigration with his wife to Israel in 1949. Also contains photographs of Ernest in 1945 and the current day.

    Oral history interview with Jola Hoffman

    Oral history interview with Jola Hoffman

    Oral History

    Jola Hoffman, born in Leipzig, Germany on June 13, 1931, discusses her childhood in Leipzig; the establishment of the Nuremberg laws in 1936; her aunt and uncle's departure from Germany prior to the start of the World War II; the Gestapo forcing her family and others to leave their homes; their train ride headed for the Polish border in 1938; the family's ability to enter Poland because they had family in Łódź; her father's experiences traveling between England and Poland prior to World War II; her father's move to Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), under the advice of the mayor of Warsaw; the invasion of Warsaw by the Germans; her and her mother's trip to Lwów to join her father; the emigration of some of her family members; the deportation of the Jews from Germany between the years of 1938 and 1939; volunteers who were given the opportunity during the Russian occupation to leave for German-occupied Poland; her father's move to the Warsaw ghetto; her and her mother's dangerous trip to join her father in the ghetto; starvation and death in the ghetto and the deportation of Jews to Treblinka concentration camp; the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto; the help that her family received from friends and a priest in the Polish underground; her mother's ability to get false identification papers; her mother being taken to the Umschlagplatz (transport center); the help that her father received from a factory official from the ghetto to save her mother; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; being hit by a car while leaving the ghetto in 1943 and needing to be hospitalized; hearing of her grandfather's suicide; her release from the hospital; her time with her family living in a peasant cottage; the last time she saw her father before his departure in the summer of 1943 and her memories of him; her time in an apartment near Warsaw with a landlady who was working for the Polish underground; her involvement with the underground delivering news from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); working in a hospital when Warsaw was bombed; being deported to a work camp in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her job in a factory in the city of Breslau; her mother's job as a French translator in Breslau; the liberation of the camp in 1945; seeing "ghosts in the street" from Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; her and her mother's experiences in Germany and Poland after the war; the punishment of Poles who helped Jews during World War II; the help that she received from Gentiles during World War II; her immigration to England as part of Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld's mission to get children out of Poland; her immigration to the United States in 1949; her education at Kean College in New Jersey; her role as an anti-Vietnam activist; visiting Poland after the war and seeing a sculpture of Janusz Korczak; and her inability to talk about the Holocaust with her children. Also contains a photograph of Jola at age six vacationing in Yugoslavia, a photograph of her in the spring of 1944 in Warsaw, Poland, and a photograph of her in April of 1993.

    Oral history interview with Leon Bass

    Oral history interview with Leon Bass

    Oral History

    Leon Bass, born in 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, discusses his childhood in Philadelphia; his experiences with racism in the 1930s; his experience as a soldier in an African-American unit during World War II; his time in England in 1943 with General Patton's Third Army, 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion; his participation in the Battle of Bulge; his interaction with white soldiers during World War II; his unit's work putting up bridges and removing land mines in Belgium; his unit's move into Germany; his inability to assess the nature or character of the Germans; his memories of entering Buchenwald concentration camp and seeing "walking dead people"; his memories of entering the crematorium where the bodies were piled up and recollections that the ashes were used for fertilizer; his learning that there were many concentration camps like Buchenwald; his time in the Pacific War Theatre; his enrollment in West Chester State College and his desire to become a history teacher; his experiences with racism after World War II; his involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s; his experiences as a principal of two different African-American schools and one all white school; a visit to his school by a Holocaust survivor that led him to talk about the Holocaust publicly; and his reflections on the Holocaust as being a human problem. Also contains a photograph of Leon and another soldier in their army uniforms.

    Oral history interview with Michael Hersh

    Oral history interview with Michael Hersh

    Oral History

    Michael Hersh, born in Rakosin, Czechoslovakia in 1929, discusses his early life in Velikije Lucki, Czechoslovakia (Velyki Luchky, Ukraine); the confiscation of his father's grocery store by Nazis at the outbreak of World War II; his family's deportation to the ghetto in Munkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine) in April 1944; the family's subsequent deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp; the "appel" in Auschwitz; being transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp; being sent to Ebensee concentration camp and his experiences there; working in the aircraft factory in Schwechat, Austria; his participation in a death march; his transfer to Wels concentration camp in Austria; the liberation of Wels by American soldiers in May 1945; his bout with typhus after liberation; his return to Czechoslovakia after the war; his chance meeting with his brother, Albert, on a train and learning that his brother, Avaraham, also survived; immigrating to the United States along with his brothers; his enlistment and training in the United States Army; his career in the field of interior design; and the birth of his three children. Also contains three black and white photographs of Michael Hersch and others dating from late 1945 to 1983.

    Oral history interview with Jack Ring

    Oral history interview with Jack Ring

    Oral History

    Rabbi Jack Ring, born on September 14, 1916 in Pultusk, Poland, begins his interview by discussing and displaying Talmudic commentaries published in Shanghai, China, by Mirrer Yeshiva. He continues his interview by discussing his early life in Pultusk; the immigration of several family members to the United States; the movement of his mother and sister to Wyszków, Poland; the ordering of the town's Jews to meet in the village square by the Germans, who were assisted by an antisemitic school teacher; his family's deportation to East Prussia; a German officer's direction of his family back to Pultusk; his family's subsequent direction to the Russian-occupied area of Poland; his decision to go to Vilnius, Lithuania to avoid persecution; his re-entry into the Mirrer Yeshiva which had relocated to Vilnius; the death of his sister, her husband, and his mother at the hands of the Germans in 1942; the killing of his brother, Chaim and two of Chaim's sons by the Germans and the death of his brothers, Yuda Elizer and Moshe, along with their wives in the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland; his early education including his studies in yeshivas in Naveredok, Lomza, and Mir, Poland; the move of his Yeshiva to Deidanov, Lithuania (near Vilnius) in early 1940; the occupation of the Baltic States by the Russians; the splitting of the Yeshiva into four parts and his move to Krakes, Lithuania, with his portion of the Yeshiva; their need for transit visas and the provision of visas by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania; the provision of exit visas by the NKVD; his travel with his portion of the Yeshiva to Vladivostok, Russia, and on to Tsuruga, Japan; the provision of funds for the trip by Rabbis Abraham Kalmanowitz and Aharon Kotler of the Vaad Hatzala; the arrival of his group of students in Kobe, Japan; the subsequent removal of all foreigners from Japan; the Yeshiva's relocation to Shanghai, China; the beginnings of World War II in the Pacific; the origins of the Yeshiva's financial support in the United States; the German Government's influence in setting up a Shanghai ghetto in July 1943 and its subsequent dissolution is September 1945; the German's inability to get a European-style killing program established in Shanghai; the post-war immigration of students to the United States, Palestine, and Canada; the immigration of Rabbis Levenstien and Shmerelevitz of the Yeshiva to Palestine and their subsequent effect on Yeshiva education in Israel; his marriage to an American and the birth of his four daughters and ten grandchildren; his reflections on his belief that he was saved by divine guidance; his discussions of the Holocaust with his daughters; and the effect of Holocaust survival upon him.

    Oral history interview with Lee Merel

    Oral history interview with Lee Merel

    Oral History

    Lee Merel, born in Berlin, Germany on April 7, 1924, discusses his current life in Westfield, NJ; his childhood in Berlin; his education at an Orthodox Hebrew day school; his immigration to Palestine via Switzerland in 1935; his arrival in the United States in 1937; his relatives who remained in Germany and perished in the Holocaust; the Arab boycott that led his family to move to the United States; his time in Washington Heights,NY; his education at Adat Israel Day School; his time in New Brunswick, NJ, and his enrollment at Rutgers University; volunteering for service in the United States Army in 1941; the antisemitism that he encountered as an observant Jew in the military; his transfer from combat engineers to military intelligence; his time in various training camps before going to Europe; his time in England in 1942; his name change from Merel to Brewster in case of German capture; his time in Paris, France, in June of 1944; his blowing of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah services in Aachen, Germany, in 1944; his role as an interpreter at the investigation of the chief engineer of the Krupp Armaments factory in Germany; the things that he learned about the nature of the Germans; his time at Gardelegen concentration camp in Germany and photographs he has of the camp; his discovery in Gardelegen of a cousin who was one of the inmates near death and the cousin's later immigration to the United States; the condition of the surviving inmates at Gardelegen; his questioning of God during his time at Gardelegen and his struggle with his religious beliefs; and his feelings on teaching the Holocaust. Also contains two photographs of Lee in 1944, one of him in Paris, France, relaxing and one of him in his army uniform; a photograph of him in 1945 with three other soldiers; a photograph of him as a middle aged man; and a photograph of him with his wife and grandchild in 1996.

    Oral history interview with Harold Zelmanovics

    Oral history interview with Harold Zelmanovics

    Oral History

    Harold Zelmanovics, born June 11, 1921 in Svaliava, Ukraine, begins the interview by showing pictures he obtained in 1945 at Dachau concentration camp from the United States Army. He discusses his childhood in Svaliava; his father's imprisonment in a forced labor camp; the cremation of his mother, two brothers and one sister in Auschwitz; his memories of anti-Jewish laws and lack of food after Hungarian occupation; his work as an electrician; his time performing forced labor under the Hungarians; his transport by cattle car to a forced labor camp in Komárom, Hungary; his work in a tunnel; the food that he received each day; claiming to be an electrician as a means of survival; his transport to Budapest, Hungary for forced labor; his eighteen-day cattle car ride to Buchenwald concentration camp; his work repairing cattle cars; his march from Buchenwald to Dachau in April 1945; his liberation by the Americans; his travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); spending 2 to 3 weeks in a hospital; his travel to Sudetenland to live with his uncle; reuniting with his two sisters and one brother; his travel to Bavaria in the American zone; his work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; his marriage in 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1949; his life in New Jersey; his willingness to talk about the Holocaust; and the effect that the Holocaust has had on his faith.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Lichtenfeld

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Lichtenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Regina Faigenbaum

    Oral History

    Regina Faigenbaum, born in Rzeszów, Poland on January 22, 1926, discusses her childhood and family in Rzeszów; her family's move to Sosnowiec, Poland in 1933 as advised by the Pinchever Rebbi; antisemitism in Poland; the school she attended, strictly for Jewish children; her membership in Gordonyah - Makabi ha-tsa'ir, a Zionist youth organization; the move of some of her family to Rzeszów; the Germans arrival in Sosnowiec in 1939; the murder of the most prominent Jews in the town and the transport of others in the town to Auschwitz concentration camp; her father's beard being shaved off during the invasion; her sister being taken for work by the Germans in 1940; a Polish family reporting her to the Germans; her transport to Parschnitz forced labor camp in Czechoslovakia along with her sister; the Appel and the sleeping conditions in Parschnitz; her selection for transfer to Auschwitz; a situation that caused her not to be shipped to Auschwitz; her work in a textile factory and then on a railroad; the dropping of leaflets by American planes just prior to liberation in 1945; staying in the camp until its liberation by the Russians on May 8, 1945; the help that she and her sister received from a Czech mechanic on their way back to Poland after liberation; returning to Sosnowiec after the war and the antisemitism that she experienced there; meeting her future husband in Sosnowiec in 1945; moving to Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp in the American Zone of Germany; the atrocities committed against the Jews after World War II; a visit by David Ben Gurion to the Landsberg camp to try to bring people to Palestine; her marriage to her husband in 1946; her immigration to the United States in 1949; the welcome she received from the United Jewish Appeal; her life in Newark, NJ; her two children; her current residence in Union, NJ; and her feelings on the lessons to be learned from the Holocaust. Also contains a photograph of Regina in March of 1994 and photocopies of two additional undated photographs.

    Oral history interview with Enock Trencher

    Oral history interview with Enock Trencher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Lazarus

    Oral history interview with Rose Lazarus

    Oral History

    Rose Lazarus, born on February 15, 1922, discusses her childhood in Yzsina, Czechoslovakia (possibly in Slovakia); her secular and Jewish education in Yzsina; the Jews' relationship with the Gentiles in Yzsina; the unexpected effects that the "German problem" had on her town; the Hungarian occupation of Czechoslovakia; the forcing of all the Jews of Yzsina to leave their homes and gather in a field in 1943 and their subsequent transport to a ghetto in Mátészalka, Hungary; the beating of her mother by a member of the Gestapo; being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp with her family three weeks later; her experience during a selection where she survived, but her mother and younger siblings went to the crematorium; her work in Auschwitz picking up dead bodies; the nightmares that she still has about her time in Auschwitz; her time in Gelsenkirchen, Germany with six hundred other prisoners working in a munitions factory in 1945; the deaths of four hundred prisoners of Auschwitz from American bombs in 1945; going on a death march to Sömmerda, Germany in 1945; her liberation by American troops in April 1945 in Wallertheim, Germany; searching for her brother after liberation in Budapest, Hungary, and learning that he had already immigrated to Switzerland and then to Israel; the reactions of Budapest citizens to survivors after World War II; reuniting with her younger brother in Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in 1946; her time in Gabersee displaced persons camp in Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1948; the help that she received from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America; her constant questioning of her faith due to her Holocaust experiences; and her decision to talk about the Holocaust with her children and others. Four photographs of Rose Lazarus accompany the interview.

    Oral history interview with Leonard Woloski

    Oral history interview with Leonard Woloski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hugo Princz

    Oral history interview with Hugo Princz

    Oral History

    Hugo Princz, born on November 20, 1922, discusses his childhood in Slivnik, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); antisemitism and the anti-Jewish laws in Slivnik; his memories of the Hlinkova Guard; his father's unsuccessful struggle to prove his American citizenship and emigrate from Czechoslovakia; the brutality of the SS; his transport with his family to Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland; his parents' transport from Majdanek to Treblinka concentration camp in Poland; his transport from Majdanek and time in Auschwitz concentration camp; his brother's selection due to a foot injury while in the Buna factory in Auschwitz III concentration camp; his work for I.G. Farben at Auschwitz; life in the Birkenau concentration camp; his work in the crematoriums at Birkenau; his memories of the gassings; his older brother's escape to Hungary with false papers; the lack of response of the Red Cross; his time in Waldlager concentration camp in Germany near the end of World War II; his liberation from Waldlager in April 1945; his time in Feldafing displaced persons camp in Germany; and his efforts to receive reparations from Germany since his move to the United States in 1946. Also contains a photograph of Hugo Princz as a young teenager and one of him at the time of the interview.

    Oral history interview with Roney Haliczer

    Oral history interview with Roney Haliczer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Halina Kleiner

    Oral history interview with Halina Kleiner

    Oral History

    Halina Kleiner, born on February 7, 1929 in Częstochowa, Poland, discusses her childhood in Częstochowa; her move, with her mother, to her maternal grandmother's house in Będzin, Poland, at the start of World War II in 1939; her return to Częstochowa; her memories of anti-Jewish laws enforced after 1939; her recollections of the Częstochowa ghetto; her memories of the Częstochowa Judenrat; the liquidation of the Częstochowa ghetto in 1942; her time hiding near Częstochowa; her recollections of obtaining false papers by trading a fur coat; her escape from Częstochowa to Będzin; her time in the Będzin ghetto; her memories of frequent selections; her memories of SS men harassing Jews, including her grandfather; her time in Bolkenhain work camp in Poland; her time in a weaving factory in Landshut, Germany; her time in Grünberg in Schlesien concentration camp in Germany; her memories of SS men abusing prisoners; the death march from Grünberg through Dresden, Germany, and into Czechoslovakia during the winter of 1944; her liberation by American troops in 1945; her time in a hospital in Czechoslovakia after liberation; her memories of American soldiers; and her time in Salzburg displaced persons camp. Also contains a photograph of Sala Parasol, Halina Kleiner's maternal aunt, before the war; a photograph of Itschak Silberschatz, Halina Kleiner's maternal uncle, before the war; a photograph of Hana Silberschatz, Halina Kleiner's maternal grandmother, before the war; a photograph of Bejrisch Silberschatz, Halina Kleiner's maternal grandfather, before the war; a photograph of Sarah and Leibel Silberschatz, Halina Kleiner's maternal uncle and his wife, in the early 1930s; a photograph of Halina Kleiner in 1938; a photograph of Halina Kleiner and her mother in 1939; a photograph of Halina Kleiner and an American soldier, one of her liberators, in 1945; and a photograph of Halina Kleiner, her husband, and her two daughters in 1993.

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

    Norman Salsitz (né Naftali Salsitz), born in 1920 in Kolbuszowa, Poland, describes his childhood; antisemitism in secular school; his religious education in Tarnów, Poland; his involvement in a Zionist youth organization; the turning point for Jews in Poland with the death of premier Jósef Piludski in 1935; his feelings of sympathy for his country despite the persecution of the Jews; the German invasion and destruction of Kolbuszowa; his father's role as a supplier of coffee to the Germans occupying Kolbuszowa; his escape to the Russian front when threatened with arrest; his move from the Russian front to Lʹviv, Ukraine; the establishment of a Judenrat in Kolbuszowa; his work for Dr. Leon Anderman, the president of the first Judenrat; working for Twardon, the Gestapo County Leader in Kolbuszowa; his successful efforts to keep his family in Kolbuszowa when Twardon ordered 50 percent of the town's Jews to be moved to Rzeszów, Poland in June 1941; his memories of the establishment of the ghetto in Kolbuszowa; the deportation of the Kolbuszowa Judenrat to Auschwitz concentration camp and their subsequent extermination; the establishment of a second Judenrat, headed by Pashek Rappaport; being transported to a camp in the woods in Pustków, Poland; his memories of V-1 and V-2 rocket experimentation near Pustków; his work for the second Judenrat; his trip from Kolbuszowa to Rzeszów to Kraków to receive an operation from Dr. Rabinowicz for an inner ear infection; his father's murder; Gestapo orders to the Kolbuszowa Judenrat to collect ransoms, back taxes, and debts from the Jews; the deportation of the Kolbuszowa Jews to the Rzeszów ghetto; his work with his brother, Leibush, in Kolbuszowa, for Twardon; his escape from being shot by promising Twardon 25 kilos of coffee; his relationship with and work for Twardon; the daughter of Halberstam, a Hungarian Rabbi, who helped to save Jews by producing falsified documents; the liquidation of the Rzeszów ghetto on November 18, 1942; escaping from the liquidation with Leiser Spielman; living in hiding; participating and leading underground Jewish partisan groups; participating in the Armia Krajowa; the Armia Krajowa leader, Stashek Augustin; his alias as a Christian Pole named Tadeus "Tadek" Jadach which he used to gain entrance into the Armia Krajowa; the liberation by Russians in September 1944; Jews being murdered even after liberation; his service to Poland as an officer in the 59th Army under Marshall Konieff; meeting his future wife, Amalie, in Kraków; the communist regime after World War II; moving to Germany, where he worked for Brichah; immigrating to the United States; his trip to Israel during the 6 Day War to see the liberation of the Western Wall in Jerusalem; his involvement in Jewish organizations; and his numerous trips to Israel between 1949 and 1987.

    Oral history interview with Amalie Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Salsitz

    Oral History

    Amalie Salsitz, born in Munich, Germany in 1922, discusses her childhood in Stanislawów, Poland (now Ivano-Frankivs'ka, Ukraine); her family's move to Poland; her parents' political activity; life in Stanislawów under Soviet control from September 1939 until June 1941; being indoctrinated into Marxism; her time as a physics and math teacher; the Hungarian invasion of Stanislawów after June 22, 1941; life in Stanislawów under the Hungarians; the mass murder of 12,000 Jews in Stanislawów on October 12, 1941; her mother's and sister's transport from Stanislawów; her life in the Stanislawów ghetto, established in 1941; the Stanislawów Judenrat; her friendship with a Karaite Jew named Mundek; her father's transport to Belzec concentration camp in Poland; her move with Mundek to Halitz (Halych, Ukraine) three weeks after her father's transport; her time in L'vov, Poland (now L'viv, Ukraine); her time in Kraków, Poland from Christmas Eve 1942 onward; meeting up with her father's former boss, Kasimir Jerzenicki, in Kraków; her work in a German household in Kraków; her time in a Kraków hospital for treatment for an inflammation; her time at an office job for the German company, Wilhelm Langert, near Płaszów concentration camp in Poland; a Gestapo man named Müller; obtaining false papers and the adopted name Felicia Milaszewska; her memories of Hans Frank, the Governor-General of Poland; her rise to a position of authority in the company in November 1944; meeting her future husband, Norman Salsitz, while in this job position; and her life, with her husband, in the United States after 1947.

    Oral history interview with Hans Fisher

    Oral history interview with Hans Fisher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Goldberger

    Oral history interview with Mike Goldberger

    Oral History

    Mike Goldberger, born on February 13, 1921 in Nova Mesto (probably Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia), discusses being the oldest of five children; his father dying young; going to live with relatives; going to Yeshiva for three years; how antisemitism was a part of life even before the war; being drafted in 1942 at age 21; life in the barracks in Kőszeg in western Hungary; working for the Third Battalion Second company which was actually a labor camp where they built railroads, mines, and bunkers as part of an engineering troop; hardships in the Carpathian Mountains, including no food and no shoes; seeing signs in 1944 that the German army was having problems; deciding to escape with three friends; moving to different villages, ending up in Varmohog [PH] and then Monache [PH] where he made money selling glass to replace all broken windows; spending a few days in a Russian jail before heading home, not really knowing any news about his family; getting married to his wife in March 1946 (they had known each other since they were both seven years old); running a vineyard; paying officers to take them across the border from Hungary to Vienna, Austria to a displaced persons camp; wanting to go to Sweden to see his sister who went there from Bergen-Belsen, but needing to know a trade; going to the Relief Organization in Mannheim, Germany to learn tool making and about blueprints; going to Sweden and then immigrating to the United States once his relatives sent an affidavit; his son who went to the University of Chicago; and his daughter who attend Harvard.

    Oral history interview with John Farinella

    Oral history interview with John Farinella

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Herb Carlson

    Oral history interview with Herb Carlson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Coulston

    Oral history interview with John Coulston

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gladys Helfgott

    Oral history interview with Gladys Helfgott

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martha Eckstein

    Oral history interview with Martha Eckstein

    Oral History

    Martha Eckstein, born in 1937 in Kazimierz, Poland (near Warsaw), discusses her father who had a lumber yard; her mother (originally from Czestochowa) who was a pharmacist; living comfortably until 1939, when her family began planning their escape; leaving with their what possessions would fit in their car; being fearful of bombings as they traveled; traveling by train until they reached Siberia in 1940; living in a camp with other Jews in Siberia; the labor camps nearby that people feared; her mother being able to work as a pharmacist while her father stayed at home with Martha; leaving by train and ending up in Bukhara, Uzbekistan; living in one room of a house occupied by other families; attending school and taking piano lessons; her father working as a truck driver for the government until he was caught transporting people from Bukhara to Tashkent and was put in jail; her mother’s work for two years to free him; going to Poland and then Germany circa 1945-1946; receiving help from HIAS; living for a short period of time in Munich while gathering paperwork; going to a displaced persons camp in Bremen; leaving by ship, the “Maria Perch” from Bremerhaven, Germany; arriving at Ellis Island in 1947; staying with her father’s uncle in the Bronx until they were able to get their own apartment on St. John Ave; her father’s work at a sheet metal factory and as a truck driver; her parents later buying a small grocery store; attending Shalom Aleichem Yiddish School; and getting married to a fellow survivor.

    Oral history interview with Dora Schoen

    Oral history interview with Dora Schoen

    Oral History

    Dora Schoen (née Basch), born on July 10, 1919 in Sighet, Romania, describes her family and childhood; being one of six children, including Abraham (b. 1906), Kalman (b. 1909), Roze (b. 1910), brother (b. 1913), and Zelda (b. 1921); her father who was a butcher, and her mother who helped in the butcher shop; helping to deliver meats; working at a lawyer’s office; the Hungarian occupation of Transylvania at the end of August 1930; Jewish lawyers no longer being allowed to practice; the German invasion on March 19, 1944; Germans placing all Jews in ghettos within Sighet in April 1944; the confiscation of all their jewelry; how the Jews were put in groups and told they were being taken to Hungary to work on farms; being put in cattle trains and arriving in Auschwitz on May 14, 1922; being separated from her family and never seeing all but one sister again; going through the selection process; being given a tattoo of the number 87606 and placed in a working barrack; spending two months in Beendorf working in an ammunition factory; being liberated by the Red Cross at the Danish border where she was quarantined and fed; being transported to Landskrona, Sweden; Swedish people being very kind and bringing them clothes; her aunt in the United States sending her money and her surviving brother’s address (he had been in Paris at the time of the German occupation); how her brother and sister Zelda were both back home in Sighet; remaining in Sweden for three years and working as a house mother for 40 people at a clothing factory; receiving letter in 1946 from a relative in Palestine; getting married at the end of April 1948, five days before Israel’s Independence; living in Israel for eight years (1948-1956); not being able to have children; and immigrating to the United States to live near her sister and brother.

    Oral history interview with Elsie Brunstein

    Oral history interview with Elsie Brunstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Erlich

    Oral history interview with Henry Erlich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Ahrend

    Oral history interview with Bernard Ahrend

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Popper

    Oral history interview with George Popper

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Rose Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Libby Feit

    Oral history interview with Libby Feit

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hella Bailen

    Oral history interview with Hella Bailen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shlomo Biezunski

    Oral history interview with Shlomo Biezunski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ida Borenstein

    Oral history interview with Ida Borenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helena Bokor

    Oral history interview with Helena Bokor

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lisbeth Brodie

    Oral history interview with Lisbeth Brodie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Buchner

    Oral history interview with Irene Buchner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Einhorn

    Oral history interview with Sol Einhorn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Fried

    Oral history interview with Frieda Fried

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Goldberger

    Oral history interview with Lilly Goldberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Reubin Weitzman and Milton Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Reubin Weitzman and Milton Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pearl Gruenberg

    Oral history interview with Pearl Gruenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eddie Harvit

    Oral history interview with Eddie Harvit

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Yomtov Herman

    Oral history interview with Helen Yomtov Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lucie Jacobson

    Oral history interview with Lucie Jacobson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Jeremias

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Jeremias

    Oral History

    Marguerite Jeremias, born in 1926 in Heidelberg, Germany, describes her family and childhood in Hoffenheim, Germany; the history of the Jewish community of Hoffenheim; her family’s ownership of a dry goods store adjoined to their home; her father’s store which was shuttered for months; their family dog which was shot by the SS in 1933; the store being allowed to reopen in 1935, but no customers would shop; her family’s discussion of immigrating to Palestine; a non-Jewish family that moved into the space above the dry goods store in 1936; commuting to a Jewish day school in Heidelberg by train in 1937; her older sister leaving for the United States after her uncle said he would sponsor her in 1938; Kristallnacht in Heidelberg; the burning of the synagogue in Hoffenheim; the arrest of six Jewish men, including Marguerite’s father; her father’s release from Dachau after five weeks; the violence against Hoffenheim Jews; the antisemitism from children; many Hoffenheim Jews being taken to Gurs concentration camp in 1940; the transfer of people with children from Gurs concentration camp to Rivesaltes concentration camp in April 1941; her father being sent to a men’s work camp; remaining with her mother; being allowed to leave Rivesaltes and live in a Jewish scout home in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in April of 1942; officials at Rivesaltes calling for children to return; the Jewish scout leadership keeping the children in the woods in summer of 1942; receiving letters from parents in Rivesaltes; the children being held at a French convent for a month; being transferred to a new convent in Ussel, France; receiving monthly ration cards from the scout leaders; living with a French family and working as their maid; tending to six children; teaching herself French using the children’s school materials; the Nazi’s looking for Jews but Marguerite not being found; liberation in August 1944; receiving new papers; moving to a scout home in October 1944; contacting her sister in the United States; immigrating to the United States in 1946; living in New York City; working in the Garment District; and meeting her husband.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Pollack

    Oral history interview with Ernest Pollack

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Ricklis

    Oral history interview with Henry Ricklis

    Oral History

    Henry Ricklis, born in New Jersey, discusses his brief observations of the liberation of Dachau; being drafted into the US Army; going to basic training at Fort Knox; doing Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP); going overseas and arriving in Le Havre, France in the winter; moving eastward through France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany; arriving in Dachau in 1945; seeing emaciated people; speaking to a few former prisoners who spoke in Yiddish and Polish; seeing primarily men who were gaunt-looking and incoherent; and his feelings of revulsion, disbelief at the camp.

    Oral history interview with Justin Rothschild

    Oral history interview with Justin Rothschild

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mala Sperling

    Oral history interview with Mala Sperling

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Adam Spiro

    Oral history interview with Adam Spiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cyla Stal

    Oral history interview with Cyla Stal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Stern-Szollosi

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Stern-Szollosi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lee Weinberg

    Oral history interview with Lee Weinberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Werdiger

    Oral history interview with David Werdiger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilona Werdiger

    Oral history interview with Ilona Werdiger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosalyn Rueff

    Oral history interview with Rosalyn Rueff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Ettinger

    Oral history interview with Lillian Ettinger

    Oral History

    Lillian Ettinger, born in Przemysl, Poland on April 11, 1929, discusses her early family life and schooling; German occupation; her family being moved into the ghetto; working outside the ghetto weeding and digging; taking her sister and mother from the ghetto to Boryslav, Ukraine; traveling with a cousin to Drohobycz, Ukraine; hitchhiking back to Boryslav to stay with the Hirsch family; hiding in a chicken house, attic, and cellar; pretending to be a niece from Kraków, Poland of a gentile woman; Russians recapturing Boryslav, Ukraine; working in a refinery; doing office work; traveling back to Przemysl; meeting the man that became her husband; reuniting with her sister; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jeanette Ehrlich

    Oral history interview with Jeanette Ehrlich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Winarsky

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Winarsky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Francis Weisman

    Oral history interview with Francis Weisman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dora Roth

    Oral history interview with Dora Roth

    Oral History

    Dora Lampell Roth, born in 1918 in Kraków, Poland, discusses her early life in Kraków; studying history in school and wanting to be pharmacist; getting married in 1937; the beginning of the war; the shooting of her grandmother; the Jewish section of Kraków, which became the ghetto; life in the ghetto; being sent to the Tarnow ghetto; getting food in the ghettos; receiving help from her family’s Gentile maid, who brought them food into the ghetto; the death of her son at the hands of German soldiers; the loss of her husband; being transported to Auschwitz; her arrival at the camp, receiving a tattoo and a striped uniform; life in the camp; conditions in Birkenau; an incident of cruelty in Auschwitz; the attitudes of female guards towards the inmates; giving birth to her son in Munich, Germany; her husband; still experiencing fear because of her experiences during the Holocaust; telling her story to her children; her daughter’s experience when she was hidden as a young child; and her mental state during the Holocaust and her determination to survive.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Friedman

    Oral history interview with Ruth Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cecile Seiden

    Oral history interview with Cecile Seiden

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Kamilla Ehre

    Oral history interview with Kamilla Ehre

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Monka

    Oral history interview with Ann Monka

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with Edith Kornbluth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with William Kornbluth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Lasky

    Oral history interview with Solomon Lasky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Gerenstein

    Oral history interview with Irving Gerenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zygmunt Lehman

    Oral history interview with Zygmunt Lehman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with A. Kevin Quinn

    Oral history interview with A. Kevin Quinn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aaron Rosenblum

    Oral history interview with Aaron Rosenblum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joan Bonder

    Oral history interview with Joan Bonder

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ada Abrahamer

    Oral history interview with Ada Abrahamer

    Oral History

    Ada Abrahamer, born in Kraków, Poland, recalls the increased restrictions and frightening conditions for Jews until March 1941; her family being moved to the Kraków ghetto was put into forced labor; the liquidation in March 1943 of the ghetto and being taken to the Płaszów camp; continuing to work in the ammunition factory; the brutality of Amon Goeth, the commandant of the camp; the diary she managed to keep throughout these experiences, which she reads from and notes that it was taken from her three times; being sent in October 1943 to Auschwitz; the terrible conditions in Auschwitz and her lasting fear of "lists"; being in the camp for three weeks and then taken to Lichterwerden in Sudetenland for six months; being liberated by the Russians; travelling to Austria and ending up at the Linz displaced persons camp; and going to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Leo Laufer

    Oral history interview with Leo Laufer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Karolyn Freud

    Oral history interview with Karolyn Freud

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michel Thomas

    Oral history interview with Michel Thomas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pearl Shames

    Oral history interview with Pearl Shames

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elbridge Holland

    Oral history interview with Elbridge Holland

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arnold Herzberg

    Oral history interview with Arnold Herzberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Morris Bergen

    Oral history interview with Morris Bergen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pearl Davis

    Oral history interview with Pearl Davis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Ross

    Oral history interview with Lillian Ross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Schwarcz

    Oral history interview with Nathan Schwarcz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susanne Prager

    Oral history interview with Susanne Prager

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lien Con

    Oral history interview with Lien Con

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lauryann Friedman

    Oral history interview with Lauryann Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Glass

    Oral history interview with Nathan Glass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Katzwer

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Katzwer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sarah Osak

    Oral history interview with Sarah Osak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julia Altholz

    Oral history interview with Julia Altholz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alter Pekier

    Oral history interview with Alter Pekier

    Oral History

    Rabbi Alter Pekier, born in October 1917 in Slutsk, Belarus, discusses being the oldest of five children; attending yeshiva led by Rabbi Aaron Kotler with his brother Berel in Kletsk, Belarus; moving with the yeshiva to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) at the direction of Rabbi Kotler after the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland; Rabbi Kotler splitting the yeshiva into three smaller yeshivas in March 1940 and dispersing them to smaller towns; Alter and Berel going to Salakas, Lithuania near the Latvian border; the Nazi Germany invasion of Eastern Poland and the USSR in June 1941; Alter’s parents and three siblings being murdered in killing actions in Slutsk; the Soviets deporting Alter and Berel together with other yeshiva students to Reshoti in Siberia; their work clearing forests and building railroads; the Soviets releasing prisoners in October 1941; Alter and Berel moving to Kazakhstan and staying there for five years; receiving care packages from the American Jewish community; getting married in Kazakhstan and returning with his wife to Poland; going to Lodz and organizing a yeshiva for survivors there; fleeing Poland after the Kielce pogrom; going to France; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Bennett Silberstein

    Oral history interview with Bennett Silberstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Albert Marzurkiewicz

    Oral history interview with Albert Marzurkiewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joel Frisch

    Oral history interview with Joel Frisch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Stahl

    Oral history interview with Leo Stahl

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Herta Erreich

    Oral history interview with Herta Erreich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freida Yeager

    Oral history interview with Freida Yeager

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Shlomowitz

    Oral history interview with Abraham Shlomowitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Eisner

    Oral history interview with Fred Eisner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aida Brydbord

    Oral history interview with Aida Brydbord

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martha Klein

    Oral history interview with Martha Klein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Saul Weinberger

    Oral history interview with Saul Weinberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eliasz Glanz

    Oral history interview with Eliasz Glanz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Wirtzbaum

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Wirtzbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Philip Lederman

    Oral history interview with Philip Lederman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Stella Rabner

    Oral history interview with Stella Rabner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shlomo Weinglas

    Oral history interview with Shlomo Weinglas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Katz

    Oral history interview with David Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Laiter

    Oral history interview with Rose Laiter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Rauchweld

    Oral history interview with Maurice Rauchweld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Raff

    Oral history interview with Helen Raff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Musia Luttenger-Gross

    Oral history interview with Musia Luttenger-Gross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Chevlin

    Oral history interview with Jack Chevlin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jerry Miron

    Oral history interview with Jerry Miron

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Richard Tisch

    Oral history interview with Richard Tisch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nella Bergen

    Oral history interview with Nella Bergen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Stimler

    Oral history interview with Sam Stimler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugene Fried

    Oral history interview with Eugene Fried

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosalie Klein

    Oral history interview with Rosalie Klein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alvin Weinstein

    Oral history interview with Alvin Weinstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Landsberg

    Oral history interview with Henry Landsberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Herschel Schacter

    Oral history interview with Herschel Schacter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celina Rosenblum

    Oral history interview with Celina Rosenblum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Idek Rosenblum

    Oral history interview with Idek Rosenblum

    Oral History

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