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Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1994.A.0447.29 | RG Number: RG-50.042.0029

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    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford
    Transcript
    Mrs. Waterford, can you describe for me
    how rescue efforts worked in Holland, and in general,
    how that differed from other countries
    in Europe, if you can address that.
    I know only after the war what had been.
    During the war, you practically knew nothing.
    Because if you went to the places
    who we are supposed to know, you heard only
    you should do what you are told.
    We don't know what happened.
    We do not know what you should do.
    We cannot give you any answer because we do not know.
    This was the official.
    What private was, I don't know when that did start.
    But I do know that very close friends of ours
    came to us in 1942, in July, that they had a few people who
    offered to help.
    And this was a small church of blue collar workers
    who made it their goal to help Jewish people who
    needed it to take in their homes as far as possible.
    And we naturally said we do.
    Because by that time, we were already
    ordered to come to the train on the 15th of July, 1942 at
    night.
    And we brought-- would be brought east--
    that was on this letter--
    to work.
    So this didn't-- we didn't like this sort of expression it was
    supplied.
    And the Jewish-- the Jewish people
    who were in charge of that didn't help us at all.
    So we were very happy to accept the help of this group.
    And they did help us.
    We have-- the first thing go to those people.
    What did you and your husband decide to do?
    Explain to me about how big your family was,
    and how much you knew of what was going on,
    what fear you had, and then what you
    decided to do with your child.
    Now, we had no idea.
    And like everybody else, we only knew since we came originally
    from Germany, that practically all the people who
    had left in Germany, Jewish people, were not there anymore.
    They were taken-- they were taken by train, or whatever,
    and nobody had ever heard anything from them
    when they were gone.
    And nobody knew where they were.
    So this was already enough for us
    to decide that we would do anything, and take any help.
    The first thing we did was that my husband discussed it
    with a doctor if he could get his--
    now, I don't know the word anymore--
    removed.
    Appendix.
    Yes, his appendix removed, even the appendix was fine.
    And when he woke up in the hospital,
    there were more lost appendixes.
    So this would-- since we had to be at the 15th
    at the station, that was a few days before.
    So we had time with the doctor thing at--
    doctors telling what he had done to get two weeks time,
    and then we should come again.
    So with this two weeks, we were using
    because I had heard that the Jewish council was hiring
    people for all kinds of work.
    And all those people were on a piece of paper at that moment
    free of deportation.
    Our family was my husband, our little girl,
    which was at that time four years old, and me.
    So we decided to do all that.
    And I went around and I got a job, which
    made us all available not to go, and we could stay
    the time-- there was no limit.
    So my husband came home and we thought maybe with a job I have
    that we would be helped at the time.
    I worked at old people's home in the kitchen.
    And I worked every day.
    And I cooked for 40 people.
    I liked it.
    I liked the work, and it seemed to be safe.
    And one morning after about six weeks of working,
    I came at 7:00 and the doors were open,
    and all the people in there were gone.
    It was a terrible, terrible frightening.
    Rooms-- every room was looked for probably
    for valuable things.
    I don't know.
    When I saw what had happened that most of the people who
    couldn't walk and were taken and must
    have been taken in stretchers, I didn't believe any word
    any more.
    I ran out and ran home, and I knew what we had was not safe,
    the piece of paper.
    Describe to me what you and your husband
    decided to do with your daughter.
    This same man who came just--
    I talked about before, which came just after that
    has happened to us, he told us that our friends,
    and our friends told us, also.
    They had a daughter.
    She was about five, six months older than ours.
    And we were-- the mother of the child,
    we were friends from school in Germany.
    So we all knew each other very well.
    And they had told us that they had made the decision
    and the child is already gone.
    And he and she and his mother who lived with them was gone.
    They won't be going that one of the leader
    into wherever they were safe, where they're supposed to be.
    We never-- we didn't hear anything.
    And that was the right way.
    And this man said, we will try that for you,
    too, if you want to give up your child.
    Because three of you cannot be in one part.
    You have to give your child somebody.
    And the leader, he said he had somebody
    as we found out much, much later, that was
    his sister, this man's sister.
    That was Joe Fisch.
    He's still alive.
    And that's where they took our child.
    And there was very, very helpful.
    They got the bed and the toys and clothes and everything
    there already, that when she would come,
    it wasn't all foreigners, strangers.
    And then he was trying to look for us for a place,
    and that took a little longer, maybe a month,
    until we found the first place to go so-called underground.
    It was never underground.
    It was always in an attic.
    Describe what your daughter knew about hiding,
    and how difficult it was for you to part with her.
    My daughter didn't know she was hiding.
    As I said, she was not five yet.
    And we-- my husband and I had more than a year ago decided
    since we knew of children transports from Germany
    to England, maybe that would be one day possible.
    So we would give away our child any
    place we knew where she would be welcome.
    And why should she maybe has to die
    when she can live a good life.
    We have family in the United States
    who were only too happy to take her.
    So we decided that we-- that to make it to her-- for her heart
    not to kiss her anymore, not to have her too close physically.
    Both of us did that.
    And that has helped her.
    Because when we had the time that she had to leave,
    and we told her--
    she was an outgoing child.
    She would go and visit a couple and they have no children,
    and they would so much like to see her.
    And she was-- she always like to visit people.
    So when those other people came to talk to her, they had--
    when they came on a Sunday afternoon,
    and we didn't know their name.
    We didn't know where they lived.
    And she saw them and we told her this was
    the friends who would like you to see where they're living.
    See, they have no children.
    And she went with-- we took-- we went with her to the streetcar
    and we said goodbye like that.
    No kissing, nothing.
    That comes afterwards.
    And this is very personal, and it's
    ridiculous to say that it's difficult
    because it never changes.
    It never changes for all those years.
    Because it was '45 before we saw her--
    before I saw her.
    But you rescued her.
    In that way, I rescued her, yes.
    We rescued her-- my husband and I, we did so.
    There was no arguing about it.
    This was just one way to do if we want her to live.
    I'd like you to describe for me what
    it was like to live in hiding.
    How restricted you were, how you felt, were you afraid.
    To be in hiding?
    I don't think that anybody can be trained for that.
    Because every situation, since you are in people's homes,
    is different.
    So the first place where we were was a bungalow.
    We had downstairs, a young couple with two small children
    was living.
    And on the second floor, the mother of one of them.
    And she was alone and she cooked for us.
    And we had to bring beds, metal beds.
    We had to bring them there because they
    didn't have beds for us, and we were in the attic.
    This was the situation.
    We came, and they were kind of primitive people,
    but they meant well.
    And since they got some money, that was helping them, too.
    But we would have stayed.
    There was really no connection to talk about
    with this is old--
    now, I say old lady.
    She wasn't as old as I am now.
    And she wasn't-- she wasn't interested that we were there.
    But it came then, though, [INAUDIBLE]
    that when there was a holiday and there
    was a little special meat or so available,
    that we didn't even get it.
    But that was not important.
    Important was that all of a sudden,
    they said to Joe Fisch that they cannot stand it anymore to have
    those two people around, and he has to get us out the same day
    and not the next.
    So Joe-- that was--
    Joe was a hard working man.
    He did this.
    He found places sometimes.
    Not the right ones, and we only could stay there
    a day or two because the people who were hiding us got scared.
    Because there were so openly in the newspapers,
    he who hides Jews will be treated like the Jews.
    It didn't say a word about killing or anything.
    Because at that time, we did not know what was happening.
    We did not know.
    It was known to the British and the American governments,
    but we, the people, did not know.
    And we came to places where we were very short, some of them
    maybe was four weeks, and then they got scared.
    And some of them was very, very lovely people.
    But they couldn't work anymore they were so much afraid.
    Until we got to Harlem.
    And we were there in a bungalow where
    there was a mother with three teenage daughters.
    It was nice and roomy building, and we
    had in the attic a small room.
    We were there for a long time till the end,
    until we were found.
    And we were very--
    you could be alone in our room.
    And my husband for the time we lived there, more than a year,
    he was writing 19 books all with a pencil.
    And in school-- this was blue school--
    blue school papers.
    I have all those things, but there is not too much
    interest in there because he wrote only
    about what he would wish for the country, Holland.
    He felt very close to Holland.
    And the whole world, and the human--
    the humans, what they would do when the war was--
    when the war would be over.
    And he was sure already for years that Germany would lose.
    And even when it looked uncertain times
    that it was impossible because they were, practically,
    in all of Germany, in all of Europe,
    every country besides two or three,
    we are not under the Germans.
    But he said the Germans will lose.
    And from this view out, he had articles about economics,
    about religions, about anything you can think of-- philosophy,
    form of philosophy.
    And how it was that the people who were helping us
    to get to the place that every two weeks, one came and he
    had a whole list of books he wanted for his writings.
    And they all came every two weeks
    when we also got our food slips.
    How much the food was for any person in Holland.
    How much they could have.
    And all the people who were underground
    were supported and were helped with those coupons.
    Because every month, the places where there were--
    where the people could pick it up themselves,
    they broke in and then took out what they needed.
    And it was every month another place.
    And they never found who did this for more than two years.
    That's really remarkable.
    And the woman who had us there, she needed it.
    Otherwise, she couldn't have fed us at all.
    Because everything which was edible,
    everything, needed a piece of paper and a coupon.
    At that time, I was still smoking.
    And I was making from one cigarette,
    I think, three new ones.
    And so-- and I--
    we got a package, I think--
    my husband didn't smoke so it wasn't very nice of me
    that I was smoking in that little room.
    But I thought at that time, I couldn't live without smoking.
    And he was writing, and on the second floor
    was a woman who lived there with her mother.
    She was a seamstress, a very nice, very nice person.
    And I sat very often downstairs with her
    because she very seldom had clients.
    And when she knew when they would be coming.
    And I learned how to make, I think, seamless.
    But that was about all.
    She didn't let me do so much.
    What were the rescuers like, and why do you think they did it?
    What do you mean?
    People who hid you, what were they like?
    Were they all different kinds of people, and why
    do you think they did it?
    No, the others who were before we were in Harlem
    did not know where we were, naturally.
    They were glad to be rid of us.
    The people in Harlem, this was a woman who told anybody.
    And I heard from the top floor always
    when people came with anything to do in the house
    that she told them that her husband had left her when
    her youngest child was a baby.
    The baby was in the meantime 15 years.
    But she told various, she had a hard life.
    I'm sure she did.
    She did it probably to get some money,
    but we didn't have to pay, I mean, outlandish amounts.
    But we paid about what she's spending a little bit more.
    So it was-- it was a very decent.
    But she-- but she needed it.
    Was she afraid-- what was she risking by doing this?
    And was she afraid--
    No.
    Everybody thought-- everybody-- and you can read about
    that the people who were hiding the Jews
    would be treated like the Jews.
    So they were scared.
    And the more things got bad for the Germans,
    the more they got against who were to take people in.
    Political, we didn't talk much with--
    with this woman.
    There was not much interest.
    And then it was that she was a poor woman,
    and she had that house and she didn't belong to her.
    It was rented.
    But she made something on the rent from the people upstairs,
    and she got our money.
    And so she could get her children to--
    at least to high school.
    Did you know about persecutions in this period of time
    while you were hiding?
    No.
    We heard one story, and that was the saddest of all this.
    Joe Fisch, who had at that time, I think,
    three children and his wife was pregnant,
    he took people into his house when he had no other place
    anymore, and they wouldn't have--
    they wouldn't know where to go.
    And he had a man at that time--
    I think that must have been in July 1943, late
    '43, that he had a man in his house
    with all the other people and the children
    that he was from the Spanish war on the black list
    of the Germans.
    And he had for a few days no place to go.
    He was from Holland, originally.
    And so he took him in.
    And that night they came and emptied the whole house.
    The neighbors took the children.
    But everybody else who was there,
    there was two people I knew very well.
    I had sent to Joe Fisch, if he would help them.
    They were there because they had no-- he had no other places.
    And that man and he and his wife,
    and they were brought to--
    I don't know, they were brought to a person, I know.
    But when they found out that his wife was pregnant,
    they sent her home.
    And the others, Joe came to the house and said from that,
    he lifts--
    OK.
    Paint me a portrait of this man, Joe.
    Joe Fisch was like very many people are in Holland--
    white, blond hair, tall, husky guy.
    And this part of Holland where we found the friends,
    and we found most of the places where we could hide,
    and where he brought some of his people,
    and that was the churches.
    He was-- he was a carpenter starting out.
    But when I met him, he was already in connection
    with childrens--
    all kinds of difficulties with childrens and the children.
    And he was-- he had some-- a completely different job
    above his way what he originally went in schooling.
    And so he was--
    this church was quite liberal.
    And-- but they were not very rich.
    And he was not very rich.
    But he was a friend.
    He and his wife came very many times at night
    when you're not allowed to be on the street,
    and took things which were needed for our daughter,
    or which we would need when we can
    go to the first place, beds and linen, and all those things.
    We couldn't carry anything when we were going.
    When we were going, we had to take off the star
    and go by train.
    And that's a very obvious, very difficult
    because they were obviously looking for a younger
    man, that my husband was never asked for any identification
    because we had none.
    And everybody had to have identification.
    Joe was, for the people he helped, more than a father--
    more than a father.
    Because really, he had the best things in his mind
    what should be done.
    And when he was arrested, his best friend
    took over like nothing.
    In this best friend was the gardener of the City
    of Zan--Zandarn.
    And he had a library, and he brought--
    what we found out afterwards-- the books my husband wanted.
    He all had them at home.
    He had a tremendous library, and a very, very highly intelligent
    man.
    As I said, he came every two weeks.
    And we were looking forward when he came, because he
    brought with him his--
    what he thought about what was going on.
    And he was also listening to the British BBC,
    which was forbidden, because they would kill you.
    And then you'd know that you have
    left the radio on that station.
    And he told us everything-- everything--
    what he heard.
    And he was the first one who told us in July 1944,
    that by that time 1 and 1/2 or 2 million Jews
    had been killed in Auschwitz.
    We had no idea.
    We had never heard the name of Auschwitz.
    And I think practically all the people
    who had nothing to do with the Nazis or whatever didn't know.
    So-- but he told us that.
    That helped us later on to get a better
    picture when we were arrested where we would be going.
    How many people did Joe rescue, do you think?
    I don't-- you see, only the ones I know.
    I'm sure he had many, many more.
    How many?
    It's Doris and it's me and it is the friends in--
    I introduced him to who had three daughters,
    all three daughters-- no.
    Yeah.
    The third-- the oldest daughter was in his house
    when they were all arrested there.
    So the oldest daughter up to that point, she was--
    she was with him, and she was taken to Bergen-Belsen
    where she found her mother.
    And the mother and this daughter came along at least six months
    before the war was over and a changing of prisoners
    of Germany and Jews.
    Why do you think Joe was a rescuer?
    Now, he-- at first, he made us open the place to go and hide.
    We wouldn't have known anybody.
    Why do you think he did it?
    Oh, I know why, because he loved people.
    He was basically very, very good man.
    There was nothing wrong in any way to complain ever.
    He was a fantastic, hardworking man and loving man.
    Was he risking not only his own--
    Oh, sure.
    --but his family?
    His family, too.
    But he's not the only one who did that for us.
    The family would have suffered already in the first days
    when they were arrested.
    But nothing would have happened to his wife and nothing did.
    But he would-- you don't know when you do that.
    But I think he didn't even think about.
    We have other friends who risked everything.
    We did not come from this place, from him.
    They didn't know each other.
    We brought them together, and the two of them
    really did get more groups and different kind of people.
    The other man had all our belongings.
    The most important thing were our books.
    And he had clothes.
    The first thing you would need if you have nothing.
    That's why my husband said, if he takes it, it will be right.
    Into so he had--
    he went and-- went when Joe was--
    Joe was arrested and was gone, he came in by himself
    to go every two weeks to my daughter, too.
    And in some way, he made our daughter his--
    a wonderful man.
    Did you have-- did you get news about your daughter
    while you were in hiding?
    Not personally.
    But everybody was there at least every two weeks sometimes.
    Yeah.
    Yes, we know.
    We got those pictures they had made.
    But we did not want any other contact.
    We had no contact only really before she was gone.
    And we did not want her ever to feel that she's
    homesick for her parents.
    She should forget it.
    And she did.
    That-- this is maybe one-- some of the reasons
    that she maybe forgot it for a long time, our relationship.
    And this is what we did.
    Because she would not call it that
    we saved her life at that time and much later.
    But what she called it abandoned.
    And she's not the only one.
    There's a very big literature about children
    who were brought by their parents to other people.
    They always said that they were abandoned.
    Tell me about getting arrested.
    Oh, that came very suddenly and unexpected.
    Because the-- more than a year we were in that house,
    I was only one time out to get a tooth pulled at night.
    And the dentist was more excited than I was.
    He was shaking until he gets it.
    I don't know what he thought what he had to do with it.
    But anyway, we didn't get out, and we could hardly
    look out of the window.
    It was on a Friday morning, and it was the 25th of August,
    the same day that Paris was liberated by the Allies.
    We didn't know.
    But that was the day we were arrested.
    And we-- as I said, we lived on the top floor.
    And we heard a knock on the door--
    not a kick, a knock.
    And here were two men--
    not in uniform.
    I found out later on that there were two men downstairs
    on each side of the house.
    Those two men said that we were under arrest.
    They knew our names.
    Nobody in that house knew our names.
    And they would come in and they looked around.
    And then saw a picture of the last picture we got
    from our daughter on the wall.
    And one of them said, if this is your child,
    if you have other children in hiding,
    we suggest you take them with you, because you are brought--
    you will be brought to work and to take care of the children
    while the parents are working.
    And then we were both found out if we had any money on us.
    and we had money on us, but they didn't even find it.
    And they also said-- they looked in the drawers.
    We had very little clothes, just absolutely necessary.
    And they said, take cold--
    take winter clothes with you.
    Where you are going, it's very cold.
    Now, that was true.
    The other thing of the children were [? bad life. ?]
    Were you-- OK.
    [BEEP]
    Explain to me what happened to the people who were hiding you
    when you were arrested.
    Now, the woman whose house this was
    was not seen after the man must have been downstairs.
    I did not see her.
    She and her children were not there.
    She never said goodbye or anything.
    The only one who came was the seamstress.
    And I had a pin, a coral pin I was very much attached to.
    And I put it in her hand when we said goodbye.
    So she was gone.
    But I went to her with my daughter after the war--
    was one of my first visits to go there with the train and visit.
    And the first thing she said, I'm sorry,
    but the Germans told me I could use all your things--
    that means bedding and blankets and everything
    we left there, because we went without anything.
    We knew we would be killed.
    So why should we take something with us we would not need?
    And maybe one day we could get--
    some way escape, and this would be just not necessary.
    So we went without anything.
    So she-- that's what she said to me.
    And at that moment I was so--
    it was so upsetting to see the house and all again.
    I forgot that she said--
    I said, forget about it.
    I had no bed.
    We had-- my daughter and I, we had nothing.
    But I said, it's OK.
    Afterwards I thought, why would the Germans
    say that she could take all that?
    The only reason could be that she told them,
    and that she got money for it.
    Because that's why [INAUDIBLE] take all your children
    because they got the money for each head.
    But I don't have any proof.
    I only didn't go any more there, not ever.
    But that I think that they would give it to her.
    Sometimes I think maybe it wasn't even true.
    Maybe she used it and it was gone in the meantime,
    or she stole it.
    I don't know.
    But I didn't go there anymore.
    OK.
    Now, describe for me the transport to Auschwitz,
    and also the things that you and your husband did,
    the cutting up of the money, the little bits of resistance
    that you did.
    I like to talk about this experience with the students.
    Because I most--
    I always go to universities, and sometimes
    to schools who are just next year going to the University.
    I don't know.
    And I tell them that, I say that very, very clear,
    and maybe it seems not absolutely necessary,
    but you should know, because hardly ever anybody
    has talked about it or has written about.
    We were arrested, and we were brought to Amsterdam.
    That's where we originally lived.
    And we were brought to the Gestapo, which is
    the-- was the police of the SS.
    And we were separate, taken into another room,
    and we were asked.
    We found both-- after we found-- both of us did--
    what I wanted to know the most.
    Who brought us coupons?
    Because I just had got new coupons for the food.
    And it was-- must have been lying there.
    They did never find the people who did every month,
    enough for the nearly 20,000 Jewish people
    who were in Holland underground, who had to be--
    had to have it.
    Otherwise, they couldn't have lived.
    So [? that's what they ?] asked both of us,
    and we didn't even answer.
    And who brought us--
    who brought us the coupons, and who looked after us,
    and who brought us to where we are?
    Those were the questions first.
    And we didn't answer.
    So this took a few hours, and then we
    were brought to the regular jail in Amsterdam,
    which doesn't exist anymore.
    We found it.
    I found it looking afterwards that it was a very nice place.
    I could have stayed during the whole war.
    It was clean and nice.
    But we were only there about two nights,
    and then we went to the camp, which did all the train--
    the trains all going to the East went to--
    how could I ever forget that name?
    Westerbork?
    Westerbork.
    Thank you.
    Westerbork.
    The train took us to Westerbork.
    Westerbork, when I saw it, it was,
    as I said, in August of '44, was not what I had expected.
    It was huge.
    It was huge.
    And I saw the Jewish police for the first time.
    I didn't know that something like this existed,
    and the women in greenish uniforms, Jewish women.
    And we were there only three nights,
    when at the same time in Holland,
    they know that the Allies were trying
    to come into the southern part of Holland
    to get the Germans out.
    That was known.
    We didn't know sure, took a long time
    until I understood what it all was.
    And the men working on the trains
    had arranged with whoever that they
    would start to put the work down the moment
    they were knowing that the Allies were coming.
    So the Germans knew that there would be no trains going,
    [INAUDIBLE] did in three days empty, practically, all of--
    say that again.
    Westerbork.
    Westerbork.
    Gee, I have a block.
    In three days, there were only about 400 people
    left from the thousands and thousands.
    So we were in the first train which went, as we found out,
    not when we came there, but maybe a day or two later,
    that we were in Auschwitz.
    So the trains were the regular, as I understand,
    the regular cattle cars.
    There were no seating in there, nothing.
    It was naked.
    And the only thing was a little thing
    like this for maybe 175 people to use.
    And otherwise people had a tremendous amount of luggage.
    They took anything with them what
    they thought-- because they had been
    quite some time in this camp.
    And they-- they took sewing machines with them--
    everything.
    And there was-- well, really couldn't-- you could not sit
    on the floor.
    You had to stand.
    And we had to stand three days and four nights.
    And that little basket where you-- for the--
    whatever had to be used couldn't be used anymore.
    You couldn't even get to it.
    So after a few hours, it was very, very bad already.
    But it didn't change, and we were going and going.
    And two or three times, they opened the doors,
    and the people all yelled for water.
    And they didn't understand the situation.
    They thought they would be brought water.
    Soldiers came in and took our whatever--
    if we had rings on or something.
    And then they wanted money.
    The second time I know they wanted money,
    and we didn't give them money.
    We give them just some change or whatever.
    We didn't.
    And we arrived after all that time
    probably in physical and in other kind of ways changed.
    We had changed into another person.
    And when we arrived, there was a little something
    which looked like a station.
    And there was a name of--
    not Auschwitz.
    It starts with a B.
    Birkenau.
    That's right.
    Birkenau.
    B-I-R. Birkenau-- never heard, never seen.
    Birkenau is German, and it's the name of a tree.
    Not "A" "U" but "Birke."
    And when we got out, jumping down,
    the people wanted to keep their luggage.
    And then there started the first fighting
    between Jewish prisoners, who had
    blue and white striped uniforms, who took all that that they
    brought away fast-- had to go very fast, because it
    was a very long train.
    It's impossible to think how many people were there.
    We asked one time one of those prisoners who didn't even
    answer when we asked, where are we?
    Because we had never heard Birkenau.
    All right.
    Wait.
    We have to reload.
    [BEEP]
    Just tell me the incident on the train, why you did it.
    We had money in a money belt, both of us.
    We always carried it.
    Since we went underground, we had both half.
    You never knew.
    So we took that out at night, and we cut bill after bill.
    I don't know anymore how much it was,
    but it was all the money we had.
    And I don't know.
    So we tried to put it into very small pieces.
    I don't know why we bothered, because the floor was not good.
    So we did that all.
    It was the hardest job.
    I guess it was harder to make the money
    with working than to get rid of that weight, because it hurts.
    But we thought they shouldn't get it.
    Because the soldiers, they kept the money.
    This was the thing they could be allowed to keep.
    Because afterwards, the luggage--
    that was a big thing.
    That was the biggest.
    The whole camp waited for that for each train,
    that they got food, and they got clothes,
    and they got jewelry and anything.
    And the people who worked in that department, they were--
    after a few months, they were changed and killed.
    And when they were found selling those things, and they did.
    I don't know how they did it, but they
    could change it with anything, which was some place available.
    I never knew how much was available in Auschwitz.
    If you had something--
    I found it only out by the reading,
    by all the books I have in German and in English.
    Tell me how you asked them where you were.
    Yeah.
    I asked one of those blue and white striped, where are we?
    He didn't answer-- didn't answer.
    They were glad that the food came,
    but they did-- they were Jewish, just like us.
    And they came one day like that, too.
    But in the meantime, they had a very good job.
    Everybody would have given his right hand to have such a job.
    OK, tell me about the selections.
    Why did you-- are the shoes making
    too much noise, [INAUDIBLE]?
    Her shoes?
    Mine?
    Yeah.
    Oh.
    Yeah.
    That's fine.
    OK.
    Tell me about the selection.
    It was-- when we came out, we were separated, men and women.
    And so I was--
    in the train, there was a woman standing next to me
    the whole time.
    And she had a child, like our child.
    And she said, when we were arrested,
    somebody said we should take our children.
    And we took our children out of the places
    where they were hiding.
    And gee, I thought that could have happened maybe to us.
    But we didn't even consider that.
    So this woman and her little girl and I,
    we were in one row walking up when
    we saw the end, which was very, very
    long, because the whole train are long.
    We had to go, and we saw at the end a man,
    an extremely well-looking man--
    this I have never forgotten--
    in his uniform, very elegant.
    And when we came, the three of us, and he asked me,
    is this your child?
    And I said no.
    He made a move to the mother and the child to go this way,
    and to me this way.
    That was all.
    And I was with other people finding out after a while
    that they were the ones who were supposed
    to go to work eventually, and that
    was the reason they looked comparatively young.
    I wasn't young at all.
    I was in my middle 30s.
    I was one of the oldest, because they were very young.
    And we came to a place where there had been some trees.
    There were no trees in Auschwitz anymore.
    There were just some leftovers.
    I don't know.
    So there, we were told to wait.
    And then there I saw my husband, and my husband
    was also on this good side.
    And we talked for a long time.
    We always thinking that we would be together.
    Then they called the women into a large building.
    We were very close to this building.
    And we-- and that was the last time I saw my husband ever.
    And I do not know when or where he died.
    There is a chance now to find out.
    That's new.
    Because the government kept all those things,
    I don't know for whom, where it is known.
    I don't know-- thousands and thousands of names,
    or millions of names are in there,
    and the Red Cross will take care of it.
    It will take maybe 10 years.
    So I told my daughter she should do that.
    I would not be living any more until this answer would come.
    So we were in there, and the first thing
    was that we were lined up, and long tables.
    And behind there there were girls, young girls,
    all had black hair, looked very, very nice.
    Their hair was just perfect.
    And all of them were wearing black silk dresses, but not
    the same.
    They were obviously handmade the way they liked it.
    And I thought those were German.
    They were not.
    They were prisoners.
    And they put the name in a book, and maybe those books
    are now open to us, and they gave you the tattoo.
    And then you went to another part in this huge building,
    and there were more of those women, the same type.
    And they said we had-- fast, very fast.
    It was always fast, fast, fast. fast.
    We had to undress completely.
    And with that undressing, I had a wedding band--
    somebody overlooked it there.
    And she just put it with her hand out, and it was gone.
    I still thought they were Germans.
    They were not.
    They were prisoners like we.
    They were only younger and probably and longer there,
    long experience.
    They knew.
    So I had very good shoes on, walking shoes.
    I must have kept them for that day.
    And with us in the train was Anne Frank, her mother,
    her father, and her sister.
    And when I saw them again in this hall,
    there was a mother and the two girls.
    Now, I knew the Franks very well.
    I didn't-- I did not know that they were still alive.
    When they were disappearing, at the time when we all
    were invited to come to the train, they had prepared,
    and they had this well-known house ready for them to go in.
    We didn't know that that was.
    They were all of sudden were not there anymore,
    and we only knew two things.
    Maybe they had gone to Switzerland.
    Some people had a chance, or they were underground.
    And here, I saw them then for the first time.
    Mrs. Frank had very--
    shoes like mine, too.
    And one of the girls said to her,
    I would like to have your shoes.
    I heard it.
    And she said, no, no.
    I need my shoes.
    And she said, I give you mine--
    was a funny way.
    And she said, no, no.
    She said, I bring you every day soup for your two girls.
    Let's change shoes, and she did.
    She never got any soup.
    So another girl came to me and wanted my shoes,
    and I didn't want any soup.
    I said, no, no.
    I don't give up the shoes.
    I should have thought by that time
    that there must have been prisoners.
    Otherwise, they would have just taken them away
    from the [INAUDIBLE].
    But they leave me alone.
    And I had those shoes, oh, at least half the winter.
    They were still--
    I mean, I could wear them, but they were not so good anymore.
    But yeah, the next half of the winter I had no shoes.
    But we were then been-- when we were naked, and we got shaved--
    our hair and body and on the head.
    And then we were brought into the shower,
    which was a regular shower.
    We didn't know about other showers.
    And then we were outside.
    It was September.
    It was about the 8th of September, something like that.
    And we were wet.
    We had nothing-- towel or anything.
    And then they threw each of us a dress.
    They didn't look for the size, and they
    didn't look for if it was wool or if it was a thin, summer
    material.
    You got one dress.
    And then you had to try to find somebody who
    wanted to change with you and--
    the size and with material, maybe.
    And by that time, we had never been
    allowed to go to the toilet--
    latrine, it was called.
    We were not allowed to go to the latrine or anything.
    So we were brought into a--
    Let's reload.
    It gets faster [? in ?] [? this. ?] [? Yes. ?]
    [BEEP]
    I want to ask you some general questions about your sense
    while you were in various camps.
    It doesn't-- you don't have to be camp-specific.
    Did you ever catch a glimpse of your reflection?
    Of my what?
    Reflection.
    Did you ever see what you looked like?
    No.
    There were no-- was no mirror.
    No.
    We looked at each other, and the ones without hair,
    so you know you looked like them, and that was all.
    Can you tell me what sensory things you remember, like
    sounds or smells or the things that made
    the biggest impression on you?
    The biggest impression was the chimney,
    which was very close to the barrack where we were.
    And that was spewing fire, fire, 24 hours.
    In the daytime, you only saw the smoke.
    At night it was fire.
    And about the third or fourth day, I started to walk around.
    We didn't work.
    We couldn't stay in our barrack.
    We had to be out.
    So I just started to walk around.
    And why I approached a man, the only man I saw, to tell me
    where we are, I don't know.
    He was well-dressed, comparatively.
    He was a prisoner, and he spoke Polish.
    And I couldn't speak Polish.
    And I asked him where we were, and he said, Auschwitz.
    He knew that.
    And I say, what is this?
    And he said, you see, you cannot get out of Auschwitz any other
    way but through this chimney.
    This is our trip to heaven.
    And I thought, I don't know what kind of a man this is.
    I thought about it later much more,
    because there was no man walking around.
    It must have been a prisoner who was quite a high rank.
    Prisoners had very high ranks.
    This you don't know when you are there
    because they don't come to you.
    But the-- he must have been there to look for a girl.
    This is the only way that-- the only interest
    they had to walk through a woman's camp,
    and there was a new group just had come,
    and there were certain ages anyway.
    But this was very clear when he told me what--
    I understood it, but I didn't tell my--
    the people I was with.
    It wasn't necessary.
    It was enough I knew it, and we were not even sure.
    But this was not changing.
    The roughest time was the two daily--
    that we had to be counted at about 5 o'clock
    or so in the morning.
    We don't know.
    Our watches were long gone.
    And when we were awakened, we [INAUDIBLE]..
    The way we are, we didn't have to wash,
    or we didn't have to change clothes or shoes or whatever.
    We had to come to roll call in the morning and in the evening.
    And that roll call never, ever-- and I
    guess if you have talked to other people, never,
    ever functioned.
    If they had 976 on their book, there were maybe
    850, or the other way around.
    And then the girl who had to do that, she was
    the older, the elder, of the--
    she was a prisoner of this barrack,
    she got more and more nervous.
    Because very short, short of that, one of the officers
    or so--
    I don't know what they were.
    I don't know anything-- difference in uniforms.
    I never learned it before or after the war.
    I was never interested.
    But he was something higher.
    And he got very angry that it never came out right.
    So then they had to search the whole barrack.
    And as I said, in every barrack were about 1,000 people.
    So some people were hiding.
    At that time we had straw mattresses, which was luxury.
    So they were hiding under that in the corner,
    and if you are-- it's on the third floor up there,
    it's very difficult to climb up there and to find the people.
    Some people had died.
    But I know that one time I knew I had scarlet fever because it
    was in the camp in Holland.
    So I knew looking at my stomach it was scarlet fever.
    And I was afraid that somebody would see me,
    that they would do something with me,
    which I wouldn't probably like.
    Still have not exactly taken it that everybody who was sick
    would be killed.
    I think that took a little longer
    that it goes into one's brains.
    But I stayed always in the corner in the third part
    under a mattress.
    And I saw them searching, but they never came up there.
    It was the first illness I had there.
    There's no-- there was no so-called clinic or whatever.
    What acts of resistance did you see in the camp of any sort?
    Nothing.
    Nothing.
    What about mental resistance?
    How do you assist mentally in such a case?
    The only way to live, to be--
    don't even [? say live ?].
    The only way to be is to do what is asked from you.
    And it is stupid as a one person to do something.
    That is-- because the woman who is in charge of the barrack is
    the first one who will punish--
    be punished.
    So she will do something that you don't do,
    because she's afraid also.
    No, I thought it would be--
    I don't know, and I've never read that anything like this
    happened in the barracks or anything like that.
    Never.
    I haven't read any.
    And I have all those, besides the ones I have read
    and [INAUDIBLE].
    What about religious or spiritual resistance?
    There's no resistance.
    This is not a resistance, but I saw on Jewish holidays
    some women who knew, who kept the dates, to pray.
    That's not a resistance.
    This is for people who are very religious natural.
    I did not see any resistance in that camp and later
    on where we were in the factory.
    One time in the factory, but that was--
    it was not person-to-person.
    What was that?
    A woman walked out at night, New Year's night.
    And the guys-- we had four soldiers for the whole camp
    and four women soldiers.
    That was all.
    And I guess they were drunk also.
    And she thought it was snowing so much she could go out,
    and she went out.
    And she thought-- she knocks on a house
    and says when she comes from.
    She was-- they would take her in,
    they called that she was there.
    That was all.
    That was all I saw.
    So she escaped, and then got recaptured?
    Mm-hmm.
    Was she punished?
    She was sent-- officially, it was
    said she was going to a larger camp than that in the factory.
    But I know she was alive afterwards.
    So she didn't do anything anymore.
    They couldn't send them any more to Auschwitz.
    There was no burning or anything anymore after November the 1st,
    1944.
    What do you think keeps you alive?
    What choices do you make while you're in the camp?
    Now, at first, I think the greatest and the most important
    choice if you want to live, that you do want to live,
    that you do anything which makes it possible to live.
    And I was not in doubt I was--
    that I wouldn't live.
    I thought I will, which is stupid.
    But I was convinced.
    So at first, if you are in a large group of people--
    I was always short.
    I make myself shorter to be in the middle, not in the front,
    not in the back.
    I stand so that the others are taller.
    I haven't had experience in that,
    but I thought there is something because people in some way who
    stand in the first row or on the last row,
    they were picked for things which
    maybe were not very pleasant that you don't know of.
    This is instinctively.
    That's all I can say-- not smartness.
    Instinctively, you say I don't want to be seen.
    They don't [INAUDIBLE] see me.
    What other choices do you think helped you?
    I think that the most important thing
    was my child, that I wanted to come back to my child.
    So what I did for it, I cannot take any credit.
    I did as little as possible to--
    that somebody would say, oh, that woman, and everybody
    knows.
    That was not--
    I didn't.
    But this was important.
    I was always thinking of my child, of my husband, where
    he would be.
    May I tell a little story?
    A Sunday afternoon--
    Wait.
    Let's reload because we're-- we only have 10 seconds.
    OK.
    OK, you were about to tell me a story.
    Yeah.
    We were working in the factory 12 hours, night or day.
    And since they promised us they would give us
    one extra portion for night work,
    I had nothing better to do at night, so I was working nights.
    But the Sunday afternoon was free for everybody
    as far as you can.
    You sit on your mattress as long as there was a mattress.
    By the end, then there were not anymore.
    So a group of Dutch women, because that's how I came
    was in this, those were my friends,
    we sat together and talked about lots of things.
    So one day I have never forgotten.
    We were thinking, when we come home--
    we didn't say if any more because we knew in the factory
    there was no gas and we would not be gassed.
    If we would get sick, that's another story.
    So we thought we would come home.
    What would be more difficult, to find
    your children or your husband?
    Now, everybody was very frank.
    You didn't tell stories in such situation.
    And we were maybe 12 or 13 women.
    Most of them had children in hiding, not all,
    but most of them.
    And obviously-- I think it was 13--
    when we were finished telling what would be harder,
    I think you the answer.
    Because only one woman said, I love my little boy
    and if I don't see him again, it's very difficult,
    but if my husband is not there I will lose my mind.
    She was the only one.
    She did, after the war, she did.
    But all the others said--
    they had more than one child, very often.
    So they said it's a piece of--
    you lose your husband, is terrible.
    That's your best friend.
    It's the closest person you have.
    But losing a child is physically in every way very, very
    painful.
    Now let's go back--
    Yeah.
    --to the selection.
    What did you notice about the selection, the age groups,
    and tell me a little more about that.
    At first the age groups--
    you see, you don't have a long chance
    to look what's going on there.
    It's not right in front of you.
    You have to walk a little.
    But you are stopping before--
    you're stopped before you come closer.
    You don't know what's going on.
    But it is a little older-- older people.
    I would think-- we had one old lady.
    She was 10 years older than I was.
    So, she was in her middle 40s.
    An extremely good looking woman.
    And there was no question, she came with us.
    And she came out at the end.
    But the women with children, when they had children,
    there was no help.
    They had to go, both.
    But you are so short in contact, what's happening.
    You go to the other side, and you only
    think, oh, they are with the children,
    they will be taken care of.
    That's what we thought, all of us.
    So, when we got away from this place
    where we lost practically everything, practically,
    and when we came to, at night, then to a barrack, we--
    there was hardly any room.
    We were 10 people in one six-people bed, bank,
    whatever you call it.
    And we all had to lie one side.
    And we all were deadly tired from the trip and all that.
    So, we all did sleep, but it wasn't long, maybe
    three or four hours when the light went on
    and we had to go to the famous roll cars.
    And they were every day.
    And they were every day as painful.
    That didn't change.
    But after a few weeks we got some work to do.
    But it was not the work that they kept us for.
    We found that out later.
    We had stupid things to do.
    We had to go to the so-called woods and cut out some grass
    and put the grass in front of the soldiers' houses
    that they could have flowers in front of their houses,
    things like that.
    It had nothing to do with what we thought.
    And then after--
    What did they have in mind for you?
    But then one day we--
    while we were in this first--
    Birkenau.
    No, no.
    No, no, in the first--
    Work camp.
    Not the camp, but the--
    Registration area.
    No, where the barracks were, in a barrack,
    two times afterwards what we knew by then who shall live
    and who shall die.
    And two of those-- they were just--
    the whole barrack, every barrack,
    was for a day, a lot of times, you
    couldn't get out because something was
    happening in the other barrack.
    We didn't know what.
    So we were all locked in.
    So when we were asked to get out and all the others were inside,
    then we knew what was happening.
    And Mengele was always there.
    I don't know why he came always to us.
    Because there were at least 24 doctors who did the same thing.
    So, we had to take our dress off,
    put it over our arm, outstretched arm.
    And in the nude, we had to walk in front of Mengele.
    And Mengele said, this or this, also.
    The one place you had to go back into the barrack,
    into a certain room, and the other you go to another place.
    The other place was always--
    once in the barrack, they were picked up very soon.
    And they were killed that same day.
    So this was how they cleaned it out.
    People who, after a week, or two weeks, or three weeks,
    started to get very thin and very down,
    very down, they took those.
    So the third time when they did it, he counted out 300 people.
    And those 300-- and Mrs. Frank was with me at that time.
    She wasn't in the same barrack, but I mean she was in the 300,
    with Anne--
    with Anne-- but the other daughter, I didn't see.
    So we came in to another place, barrack.
    And we spent the night there.
    And the next morning, Mrs. Frank and her younger daughter
    were gone.
    And somebody told me that she did not
    go without Margaret, her older daughter.
    So she thought the same way we thought, we are going to work,
    around amount of 300.
    So she disappeared.
    And she must have gone into any other big barrack.
    And nobody knew who she was and nobody cared.
    And by that time, we all already had
    all kinds of lice and things, so it made no difference.
    So we were going this same day then
    by train to Czechoslovakia.
    That was a factory who had asked for 300 people.
    This is the way it was.
    I mean, we didn't know, but many books about the system
    that the German took into their factories people,
    because they had no men anymore.
    So they took women.
    And there had to be a place ready
    where those people could stay.
    And a lot of factories were given--
    taken away from their owners in Czechoslovakia and around.
    And some German trustees come.
    And they take over the factory.
    And they get all those people to work.
    And they pay so much.
    They have to pay for the food of those people.
    It was about $0.50 a day.
    So they had workers.
    But certainly, I don't think that the workers
    were worth one cent.
    But that's beside the point.
    And so we worked.
    And I got my night shift.
    And we were working 12 hours without food in between.
    We have only a tiny bit.
    Define for me kapo.
    The kapo is a prisoner.
    And he's in charge of a group of people.
    I knew what the first K was.
    The apo is from police.
    I know what the K was, but I have forgotten that.
    But they had to keep the--
    the men-- there was were men--
    really under, because the man had sometimes hard work.
    Impossible work for them because they were so weak.
    OK, we have to reload.
    Mrs. Waterford, when you were in the work camp, in the factory,
    there was an incident where an SS came up and asked you
    about your crimes.
    Not an SS.
    No?
    No.
    Just tell me that story as though I don't know it.
    Yeah.
    We had all kinds of different work.
    That was still in Auschwitz.
    Was it?
    Yeah, I think so.
    No, I don't no.
    It doesn't matter.
    Yeah, that was, yeah.
    The point is--
    Yeah, we had to do-- we had something with the two wheels.
    How do you call those?
    A cart.
    A cart?
    OK.
    And we had to collect in there stones or something.
    And so we walked by one of the German women, whatever
    they were, in uniform.
    And any time you had to bring this in, and come back,
    and you walked by.
    So I thought she looked very nice and young.
    And I said to her, this is good work we are learning here.
    We can use it when the war is over.
    And she looked-- and because I spoke German.
    And she said, yeah, that's right, that's right.
    So, I came back the next time.
    And she said--
    I said, how do you like your work?
    Oh, it's OK.
    It's OK.
    They hated it in the village.
    There was nothing going on for the young girls.
    And then she came back.
    And she said, don't you like it?
    I said, I wasn't asked.
    She said, what do you mean, you were not asked?
    You were a criminal.
    Look at your clothes.
    I never thought of that.
    I said, those are not my clothes.
    And I was not a criminal.
    I'm a Jew.
    So she went-- she took about two steps back.
    And this was all.
    She didn't know.
    That's what they knew, that we were criminals.
    And we looked it and we smelled it.
    I don't-- what this.
    I said one more thing the next time I came by.
    A friend of mine, she came with her little cart.
    And I said, look at this lady.
    Her father is one of the richest men in Amsterdam.
    And she has an MD.
    Oh, she said, don't tell me such stories.
    So, they didn't want to know it was true.
    Tell me-- there was a time after liberation when you were hungry
    and you walked up to a Russian soldier, tell me that story.
    The war was over at the place where I was on the 9th of May.
    That was the last say could be, because the Germans were still
    doing something.
    So, the gate was open.
    And the eight Germans who were in there for 1,200 women--
    by that time we had maybe lost 150, who died.
    And we buried them with our hands.
    There was nothing.
    And I opened-- I walked out.
    The place itself was terribly, terribly dirty.
    And there was nothing functioning anymore.
    There was no food for days.
    And I mean full days, no food.
    And everybody had diarrhea and never made it.
    So, it was very, very dirty.
    And so when I walked out, the first thing I saw were the--
    the flower, the little white flower, in May.
    Under a tree, there are little white flowers.
    They are here in the United States too.
    May flowers.
    Not may flowers--
    May flowers?
    Yeah?
    And I hadn't seen that.
    So I threw myself in them, and I smelled them,
    and they were wonderful, fresh.
    It was wonderful.
    So I went into town.
    Because we were always, every day, going through town.
    And the people there knew us.
    And I went into a sausage store I had seen every day.
    And I always wanted some of his sausage.
    So I walked in, dirty, and all I was, and smelling.
    And I said I would like--
    I said in German too, I would like to have some sausage,
    I wonder if you could give me one.
    He said, no.
    So I walked back into town, really into town.
    And here was a Russian.
    And he had a piece of black bread in his own hand
    and he had a chicken leg in his other.
    And he was a very tall guy.
    And I said something like that.
    And he looked at me.
    And I said, here?
    He gave it to me.
    He understood me perfect.
    Oh, it made me so sick.
    The next night, I was terribly sick.
    Shouldn't have done that, naturally.
    But who can say he wouldn't do it,
    would think of that what could come later.
    But I didn't stay long.
    The director of the factory came without his pin
    that he belonged to the Nazis, in a blue suit--
    blue elegant suit.
    And he thanked us for all our work.
    And he told us we had to wait until the International Red
    Cross would come, and pick us up, and bring us
    to our countries.
    Now, the International Red Cross had been there just
    before Christmas.
    And the rumors, what they had in their trains,
    what they came with was tremendous.
    Everybody knew all the things were for eating in their train.
    And we got-- the first day we got some sugar, loose sugar.
    But we had nothing to put it in.
    So we had it in our filthy, smelling hands.
    And we ate it.
    And the thing that came right after that
    was a can of sardines.
    And it was one can.
    And it was opened.
    It was for two people.
    This was it.
    The next Sunday we got peas in some kind of a so-called soup,
    I don't know.
    But there were four women who came
    with that in green uniforms.
    And they marched with the woman who was in charge.
    But we had to stand in fives, as always.
    And I was in front.
    I wanted to be in front.
    And they were telling the--
    the woman who was in charge was telling her,
    you look at those people, they are so filthy.
    And they don't want to take showers.
    We showed you the beautiful new showers we have.
    You saw how clean it was.
    They don't go in.
    She forgot to say that they don't--
    it wasn't open.
    They couldn't go in.
    And that's what you have when you have Jews.
    They don't want to wash themselves.
    They are filthy dirty.
    And that woman did not come-- the woman
    who walked by did not come up and ask
    why don't you wash yourself.
    They believed everything.
    So this is the International Red Cross, who has now all that--
    where my husband died and all that.
    I don't know when I will ever get it.
    How does your experience make you feel about humankind?
    Oh, I believe, like Anne Frank said, if you--
    I don't know if you remember when you read it.
    I believe that people are basically good, I do, honestly.
    People are basically good.
    If they do those things, there are stronger--
    stronger things come up in their life
    which makes it more important to be a good Nazi,
    because they have a good time.
    And as a man, you can have any woman you want.
    And you get beautiful uniforms and everything.
    So, a lot of people fall under that and fall with it.
    No, I think basically we are good.
    I believe in it.
    Do you see survival as an achievement?
    No, I don't, no.
    I don't think that I did anything
    more than any awake and sincere person would do.
    I try not to fall into the eye of the enemy.
    And I don't do dumb things maybe I
    think I have to do because it's so bad here.
    But that wouldn't make any sense.
    What is one life?
    When they kill them, 24,000 in 24 hours,
    every day, what is one life?
    Nothing.
    So, no, I thought afterwards when I have my child,
    I am needed.
    I've asked-- I think I've asked just about everything.
    Did I--
    OK, Mrs. Waterford what were your losses
    and what were the things you gained from this?
    Naturally, the losses is that I lost my husband.
    And it took me 13 years to get married again.
    And even after that time, every night
    I had nightmares that he maybe would come back
    and what I would do in this case.
    I never told him.
    But it was terrible, this thought.
    I hadn't thought so much about that
    before I was really married.
    But this is the great loss.
    And I have learned what people like me, like you, like anybody
    can do to each other.
    And there is nothing they cannot do.
    They'll do anything.
    This I have learned.
    But it isn't-- basically, they are not--
    they don't come into the world covered with sin.
    I hope that nobody's religion is in any way against what I say.
    But I believe that we are good and only want to be good.
    A lot of things prevented that we are not good.
    And if there are things involved to other people,
    this is the greatest--
    the greatest terror I can think of.
    Because we were really degraded in every way, even--
    even lying that we don't want to wash ourselves,
    we love to go around stinking like that.
    All those things, nobody would--
    with a normal way of thinking would do that.
    But all the people who worked for the fascism,
    they did it wonderfully.
    They just-- they don't have to be belonging to them,
    but it was wonderful to know that there
    is a group or a large element of people who are
    lower than I am, than we are.
    That's wonderful.
    Don't help them to get up.
    No, this I have learned.
    And it makes me very unhappy.
    But one person alone cannot do that.
    And people who have gone through exactly the same things I
    have, and they talk about--
    I guess you know better than I do,
    because I'm never together with any people who
    have the same experience.
    The thing is that they are crying, crying,
    look what's done to me, look what is done to us.
    That's terrible.
    I know it.
    I know everything.
    I know it.
    And when I speak to the students,
    I never talk about violence.
    They can see enough violence on TV.
    They don't need me.
    I do not say that.
    I say what Anne Frank says, that I believe that.
    And I think it has helped me through my whole long life
    afterward.
    And I find it absolutely wrong only
    to talk what happened to me.
    And I lost my father, my mother, my 16 cousins, or whatever.
    It is terrible.
    But it's terrible to listen to it also.
    Can't we make peace with ourself?
    Can't we?
    That we accept that it has existed.
    And it has.
    But you cannot carry it with you all your life.
    You have to say, yes, it has existed.
    And I will, every time when necessary,
    when I see it's necessary, talk about it,
    but now I have a new life.
    And I want to make the best in my new life.
    This is what I tell the students, the women.
    Now, just tell me, seeing the patch of Lilies of the Valley,
    as though you didn't tell me before.
    OK.
    When I walked out of the gate, the gate was open.
    And our people have--
    the German people have left and left their uniforms all there.
    And I was not interested in taking a uniform home.
    But the people really wanted it.
    And very close to the entrance was
    a big tree, which I never had seen.
    And under this tree were the Lilies of the Valley,
    so beautiful, so white.
    I had forgotten that something like this existed.
    There was no way of bending down and rip them off.
    I wouldn't do that.
    So I put myself into them.
    And I still feel this feeling, wonderful.
    And one other thing, describe for me Dr. Mengele.
    Now, I talked about Mengele.
    And I didn't know that he was the head of the people,
    the head of the doctors, and that he
    had fantastic ideas, what he thought
    he could solve medically, and he would be a big man,
    the greatest man ever.
    Because he had so much material.
    He said it himself, how much material
    he had to find out what's wrong with twins,
    and how can you maybe change the color of the eye from one color
    to another of a twin.
    I mean, those were very important.
    But he really thought this would be, what he was doing
    was really searching for help.
    But there's nothing, not one thing--
    and for many people he killed because absolutely on the--
    cutting this out and cutting that out,
    there's nothing in that he found anything new.
    What did he look like?
    I said before, and I will always say, excellent looking
    man, very friendly looking.
    And I mean, he didn't talk, or loud.
    He used just the only question, asking me if that was my child,
    and that was all.
    But if you don't know what he is,
    and it takes you about 20 years until you really
    know who he was and who all the others were.
    There are a lot of books in there about the doctors.
    And they all go to the museum.
    And then I learned.
    I learned a lot of things afterward, so much.
    Thank you.
    We have to do one other thing.
    Yeah.
    We have to record just the sound of this room.
    So you just have to sit very quietly and not move.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Helen Waterford discusses her family's time in hiding in the Netherlands and how she and her husband decided to hide their daughter with another family; her family's relationship with Joe Fisch, a rescuer of many Jews in the Netherlands; her and her husband's arrest and deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp via Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences during a selection upon her arrival in Auschwitz; her thoughts on the lack of resistance in Auschwitz; how at one time she was in a barracks with Anne Frank and Anne Frank's mother; her memories of Josef Mengele in Auschwitz; her move from Auschwitz to work in a factory in Czechoslovakia; and her opinions on humankind in light of her Holocaust experiences and how she does not consider survival to be an achievement.
    Interviewee
    Helen H. Waterford
    Interviewer
    Sandra Bradley
    Date
    interview:  1992 March 12

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 film reels : color ; 16 mm.
    5 sound tape reels : analog, mono ; 7 in..
    2 videocassette (D2) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Helen Waterford on March 12, 1992, in Chula Vista, California, in preparation for the making of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibition film, "Testimony." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received the films and tapes of the interview in August 1994. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the films and tapes of the interview via transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:50
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    Time Coded Notes (3)

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    Also in Testimony oral history collection

    Contains oral histories interviews with 32 Holocaust survivors from the United States

    Date: 1992

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

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    Gerda Weissmann Klein discusses her memories of the German invasion of Poland; her time in the Bielsko ghetto; her deportation to a transit camp in Sosnowiec, Poland; her time working in slave labor as a weaver and loom operator; her friendship with Susie Kuhn and the bet they made together while on board a transport train on their way to Bolkenhain concentration camp; her memories of Frau Kligler, a guard in Bolkenhain; how she and a friend wrote and performed a play in their barrack at Bolkenhain; her memories of crafting a menorah from potatoes and celebration of the Jewish holidays in the camp; how she used her imagination as a defense against her captors; her move from Bolkenhain to Maerzdorf concentration camp where she worked harvesting flax from a swamp for linen production; how she celebrated her 18 birthday; her experiences on a death march through Germany; the death of her friend Susie Kuhn, shortly before liberation; and her memories of her liberation by American troops at a camp near Volary, Czechoslovakia.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Mandl Adachi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Mandl Adachi

    Oral History

    Agnes Mandl Adachi discusses her time spent in Switzerland shortly before the start of World War II; her memories of the takeover by the Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt); how she obtained Swedish citizenship through the Swedish embassy in Budapest; the mistreatment of mixed-marriage couples in Hungary, and how many committed suicide instead of divorcing; her baptism by the Protestant Bishop of Hungary; her work with Raoul Wallenberg and his many heroic efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews, his work with children and orphans in Budapest, and his successful attempt to persuade Adolf Eichmann to call off a massacre of 70,000 Jews in the Budapest ghetto; Wallenberg's disappearance in 1945 and subsequent searches for him in Russia; her reflections on the honors given to Raoul Wallenberg since World War II; and her personal thoughts on her role as a rescuer working with Wallenberg.

    Oral history interview with Edward Adler

    Oral history interview with Edward Adler

    Oral History

    Edward Adler, born in 1910, discusses his memories of the early days of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and his involvement in anti-Nazi activities in Hamburg, Germany; his memories of anti-Jewish boycotts; his memories of joining a military training camp and one experience when he was assigned to a guard detail for Adolf Hitler; his discharge from the military camp when it was discovered that he was Jewish; his arrest by the Gestapo for having a relationship with a Gentile girl; his imprisonment in Oranienburg concentration camp from June 1938 and his release from the camp the following September; his memories of Kristallnacht in Hamburg, Germany in 1938; his flight to the Netherlands with his family shortly after Kristallnacht and their subsequent immigration to the United States; his reflections on how Jews were unable to "fight back" and defend themselves against the Nazis; his memories of antisemitism in Germany in the 1930s; his recollections of the fate of his parents during the Holocaust and how his mother died in Treblinka concentration camp; and his memories of a visit to Hamburg, Germany in 1982 and the emotions he experienced during his stay there.

    Oral history interview with Harry Alexander

    Oral history interview with Harry Alexander

    Oral History

    Harry Alexander discusses his memories of persecutions suffered by Jews in his hometown of Leipzig, Germany, and the events of Kristallnacht in 1938; his flight to Milan, Italy after Kristallnacht and his experiences there with other Jewish refugees; his memories of receiving a one-day visa through the French embassy in Milan and his attempt to escape to France by train; his memories of the "St. Vemo incident" when fisherman from the village of San Remo, Italy attempted to ferry the refugees around a blockade that stopped the train he was on from entering France; his arrest in France and time in prison; his time in Antibes concentration camp in France, and later in a Marseille prison; his escape from a transport between concentration camps; hiding in a forest and his arrest there; being in Di Agilis concentration camp and his transport from there to "Jaffa" (Djelfa) concentration camp in Algeria, where he and other prisoners worked to build a railroad passage across the Sahara Desert; the types of torture in Djelfa; his memories of the various acts of defiance by prisoners in Djelfa and the role that humor played in surviving the camp; his liberation from Djelfa by British troops and his time in British military intelligence after liberation; his reflections on the cruelty of camp and prison guards that he encountered; the role that his mother played in his survival; the loss of his entire family in the concentration camps; his thoughts on survival as a form of heroism; and his thoughts on why more Jews didn't "fight back" and defend themselves against the Nazis.

    Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

    Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

    Oral History

    Sam Bankhalter discusses his memories of antisemitism in Poland in the 1930s and the activities of "Endeks" or Polish Nazis; the various types of persecutions suffered by Jews in Poland; the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his time living in the ghetto in Łódź, Poland; his transport to Auschwitz in 1940 where he participated in the construction of the camp; his recollections of various aspects at Auschwitz including the gas chambers, the crematoria, and selections by Josef Mengele and other doctors in the camp; the mistreatment of rabbis and priests in Auschwitz; the gassing of Romanies infected with typhus; the suicide of his brother, Chaim, and his own attempt at suicide; his memories of the arrival of his parents and sister in Auschwitz in 1944 and seeing them just before they went to the gas chambers; his death march from Auschwitz through Germany to Buchenwald concentration camp; his thoughts on the systematic nature of extermination in Auschwitz; the massacre of many camp prisoners at Buchenwald shortly before liberation; his thoughts on Holocaust survival as a type of heroism; his thoughts on humor as a way of coping in the concentration camp; his memories of the Sonderkommandos in the ghettos and in Auschwitz; and his time working in the crematoria at Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Frank Blaichman

    Oral history interview with Frank Blaichman

    Oral History

    Frank Blaichman discusses his memories of hard labor and various persecutions suffered by Jews when Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of World War II; his time in a ghetto in Poland; his escape to and time in hiding in a forest in Poland; his involvement with a group of Jewish partisan fighters in the forests of Poland where he was a key figure in acquiring firearms and organizing acts of sabotage against the Germans; avoiding capture by Germans and Polish collaborators; his memories of a visit by General Rolojemerski, head of the Polish Partisan Support; and his reflections on the choices Jews faced during the Holocaust and how those choices impacted survival.

    Oral history interview with Shony Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Braun

    Oral History

    Shony Braun discusses his transport by train to Auschwitz concentration camp and his encounter with camp doctor, Josef Mengele, during a selection; the death of his mother and younger sister, Golda, in the gas chamber at Auschwitz; his selection to work on a Sonderkommando; his transport to a camp in France with his father and his brother, Zolton, where they worked in an ammunition factory and his work to sabotage bullets in the factory by mixing sand with gun powder; his transfer to Kochendorf concentration camp, a subcamp of Natzweiller concentration camp in France, where he labored in a salt mine; the death of his father in Kochendorf after a severe beating from SS guards and Kapos; his transport to Dachau concentration camp; volunteering to play the violin for camp personnel in exchange for food; how he was shot in the chest during the confusion of Dachau's liberation; how mental and spiritual strength played a role in his survival; his thoughts on his acts of sabotage as a form of heroism; and his "Symphony of the Holocaust," and how composing it helped him cope while in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

    Leo Bretholz discusses the underground resistance movement in France and its two parts, the Forces Françaises de l'intérieur (FFI) and the Francs-tireurs et partisans français (FTPF); his involvement in the Armee Juive; his various arrests and escapes from prison during his time in the Jewish resistance movement in France; his use of false identification documents to avoid deportation; his time in Rivesaltes concentration camp; his time in hiding in various locations including the attic of a cousin's home; his reflections on being transported by cattle car and the horrors endured by people on the transport; his memories of the Anschluss in Austria in 1938; his witness to the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in June 1944; his memories of Kristallnacht in 1938; and the fate of his immediate family during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

    Chaim Engel discusses his transport by train to Sobibór concentration camp; his time on a work detail to sort the clothing of gassed prisoners in Sobibór; his job cutting the hair of female prisoners in Sobibór before gassing; his thoughts on the differences between concentration camps and death camps; his experiences with the extreme cruelty of the Sobibór guards; his acts of sabotage while on the clothes sorting work detail; the massacre of an entire transport of prisoners from Belzec concentration camp; his participation in the murder of a German Kapo; the prisoner revolt in Sobibór in October 1943; his escape after the prisoner revolt and his time in hiding with other Sobibór escapees; his relationship with his girlfriend, Selma Engel, also a prisoner from Sobibór, and their time in hiding on the farm of a Polish farmer; his thoughts on the choices made by Jews in order to survive during the Holocaust; and his thoughts on heroism as part of the prisoner revolt in Sobibór.

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel discusses her arrival in Westerbork concentration camp; her transport from Westerbork to Sobibór concentration camp; her participation in a work detail sorting the clothing of gassed prisoners in Sobibór; her first meeting with her future husband, Chaim Engel; her recollections of the three separate camp areas in Sobibór; the mistreatment of Dutch prisoners in Sobibór; the extreme cruelty of the SS guards in Sobibór; her acts of sabotage while sorting the clothing of the gassed prisoners; the prisoner revolt in Sobibór in Oct. 1943; her escape from Sobibór during the prisoner revolt; her time in hiding with Chaim Engel, her future husband, on the farm of a Polish farmer; her reliance on Chaim for survival; and her reflections on the German and Ukrainian guards in Sobibór and the choices they made to be cruel to the prisoners there.

    Oral history interview with Paulette Fink

    Oral history interview with Paulette Fink

    Oral History

    Paulette Fink discusses her involvement in the resistance movement in France during World War II and her sabotage activities; the French Jewish Scout movement in France (Eclaireurs de France); the saving of many Jewish children by a French Huegenot pastor and other citizens in the town of La Chambon-sur-Lignon, France; the amount of risk and fear that she lived with during World War II; getting fake ID cards made; her marriage in 1934 and the death of her husband, a member of the French resistance, in 1944; her thoughts on her resistance activity as a form of heroism; her involvement in the illegal immigration of thousands of Jewish displaced persons to Israel after World War II; and her continued dedication to and support of the State of Israel since World War II.

    Oral history interview with Sam Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Goldberg

    Oral History

    Sam Goldberg discusses his use of the false name Sigmund Kamkowsky in order to avoid persecution; his time working with the underground movement in and around Warsaw, Poland; his time living and working in the Warsaw ghetto; his escape from the Warsaw ghetto to the Pietkov ghetto in order to locate family members; his acts of smuggling and encounters with the SS; the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and his subsequent transport by train to Birkenau concentration camp and his eventual move to Auschwitz; hearing about Josef Mengele's medical experiments in Auschwitz; working in the "Canada" commando, sorting the clothing and valuables of prisoners near the gas chambers in Auschwitz; working in the commando assisting prisoners upon arrival at the Auschwitz train platform; his experiences with Kapos and Blockälteste in Auschwitz; the prisoner revolt in the Auschwitz crematoria in October 1944; his evacuation from Auschwitz by train; his participation on a death march; his friendship with a young boy named Herbie; his time in Flossenbürg concentration camp after a death march and his memories of the various colored triangle badges he saw there; his transport to Mittendorf concentration camp near Munich, Germany via Prague, Czech Republic; his experiences during Allied bombing raids on Mittendorf; his memories of the liquidation of the Romani camp in Auschwitz; his acts of sabotage while working on airplanes; his thoughts on spiritual resistance; his liberation by American troops during a transport; how telling jokes and singing songs helped to lift the spirits of fellow camp inmates; his memories of the meeting between Josef Mengele and Chaim Rumkowski, head of the ghetto in Łódź, Poland upon Rumkowski's arrival in Auschwitz; his thoughts on the choice of German Kapos and soldiers to be killers; his reflections on the nature of humanity considering his Holocaust experiences; and the selection process that took place upon the arrival of new transports in Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Siegfried Halbreich

    Oral history interview with Siegfried Halbreich

    Oral History

    Siegfried Halbreich discusses his desertion from the Polish Army in October 1939 and his brief time working as a pharmacist in Oświęcim, Poland; his imprisonment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the cruel treatment of prisoners that he witnessed there; his time in Gross-Rosen concentration camp and his work in a stone quarry near the camp; his experiences with Blockälteste in Gross-Rosen; his time in Auschwitz concentration camp and his work as a nurse in the camp hospital; his role as Blockälteste at one time in Auschwitz; his participation in a death march after the evacuation of Auschwitz; the camp personnel hierarchy in Auschwitz from the SS guards down to the Kapos; his thoughts on the role of mental resistance as a part of survival; the support he received from friends and family while in the concentration camps; his memories of religious practice and celebration in Sachsenhausen; his role as teacher and leader of young Jews for religious education in Auschwitz; the various types of torture he witnessed in Sachsenhausen; and his thoughts on taking revenge on Germans after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Isadore Helfing

    Oral history interview with Isadore Helfing

    Oral History

    Isadore Helfing discusses his arrival in Treblinka concentration camp and his work burying the bodies of persons who died during the transports in mass graves in the camp; his recollections of the physical layout of Treblinka and how prisoners were led through the gassing process; his recollections of many people dying inside the railroad cars while waiting to unload in Treblinka; his experiences with Kapos in the camp; his participation in the prisoner revolt in Treblinka and his escape to a nearby forest; his time in hiding after his escape from Treblinka; his witnessing the murder of a German camp guard by a fellow prisoner and his thoughts on the murder as an act of revenge; how German and Ukrainian guards in the camp made choices to follow orders; the attempts of some prisoners to pray in the camp; participating in soccer games on Sundays, a free day in the camp; the suicides of several persons from his barracks; the orchestra in the camp and a boxing match that took place one day; and the fate of his parents in Treblinka the day before his arrival in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral History

    Kurt Klein discusses the political situation in Germany during the early 1930s and how Jews did not take the Nazi rise to power seriously; his thoughts on why the Nazi party gained power so easily; the persecutions suffered by Jews and the boycott against Jewish businesses in the early 1930s; his withdrawal from school and his apprenticeship in the printing business; his immigration to the United States in 1937; how he learned of Kristallnacht events through newspaper reports in the United States; his service with the Fifth US Infantry Division of the Third Army during World War II and his assistance to Jewish women abandoned by their German guards in a factory building in Volary, Czechoslovakia; his first meeting with his future wife, Gerda Weissmann Klein, in the factory and the development of their relationship after World War II; and his participation in the interrogation of Erich Kempka, a former chauffeur for Adolf Hitler.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John (Jan) Komski discusses the German invasion of Poland; his involvement in the resistance movement in and around Kraków, Poland; his imprisonment at Auschwitz concentration camp in June 1940; the different types of prisoners in Auschwitz and the various identification badges and triangles used to mark the prisoners; the museum and orchestra in Auschwitz; how he planned and prepared a successful escape from Auschwitz by disguising himself as an SS guard and using false identification documents; the types of mental and spiritual resistance used to survive in Auschwitz; his thoughts on how some Auschwitz prisoners utilized special talents and skills to survive in the camp; the gassing of children and their mothers immediately upon arrival in Auschwitz; his memories of Palietsch, the official executor in Auschwitz; the tattoos used to identify prisoners in Auschwitz and the tattoo he received when he entered Birkenau concentration camp; and how families were treated differently from individuals upon arrival in Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Stefa Kupfer

    Oral history interview with Stefa Kupfer

    Oral History

    Stefa Kupfer discusses the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and the persecutions suffered by Jews during the German occupation; being 10 years old when the war started; her memories of the Gestapo and their dogs; how the Germans used citizens from her town for forced labor; the confiscation of Jewish property by the Germans; her mother's refusal to register the family with the German authorities, thereby saving them from a round up; her family's time in hiding in the attic and basement of an apartment building in Krosno, Poland, and how she and her family were protected and ultimately saved by Penny Olefska, a Christian woman; the various ways she and her family occupied themselves while in hiding; her thoughts on living in constant fear while in hiding; the assistance her family received from Mr. Vishbitsky, a Polish farmer; her thoughts on those who risked their lives to rescue and hide Jews during World War II; her recollections of the many possessions she and her family lost during the war; and the responsibility of each Holocaust survivor to tell his or her story in order prevent another Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

    Cecilie Klein-Pollack discusses the deportation of her family from the ghetto in Hust, Hungary (now Khust, Ukraine) to Auschwitz concentration camp; her and her family's experiences upon arrival at Auschwitz, encountering Josef Mengele, and the death of her mother and young nephew in the gas chambers shortly thereafter; her experiences with Kapos and Blockälteste in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her sister's desire to commit suicide and her attempts to keep her sister alive; her memories of a young ballerina in her block who was forced to dance for the SS camp guards; her witness to the beating death of the ballerina and a poem that she wrote to memorialize the young dancer; her many delousing experiences in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her transport to Nuremberg where she and other female prisoners worked in a munitions factory; her time in Holleischen concentration camp in Czechoslovakia; the types of spiritual and religious resistance that she experienced in the camps; the cruel beatings that she and other prisoners received from SS guards in the camps; her time in Budapest, Hungary after World War II; and her memories of her mother as she was before her death in the Auschwitz gas chamber. During the interview, Cecilie Klein-Pollack recites her poem, "Ballerina," and reads a letter she wrote to her mother (a copy of the letter is located in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives).

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Abraham Malnik discusses the German invasion of Lithuania; his family's life in the Kovno ghetto; how his father, Josef Malnik, rescued him and his mother from a selection of elderly, children, and handicapped persons, thereby saving them from the massacre at the Ninth Fort near the ghetto in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania; his time hiding in a cellar in the Kovno ghetto to avoid capture during a "Kinder aktion" by the Germans; the liquidation of the Kovno ghetto during which many of the remaining Jews were massacred by Lithuanian collaborators; his family's transport to Stutthof concentration camp and subsequently to Dachau, Flossenbürg, and Leitmeritz (Litomerice) concentration camps; how he and his father participated in forced labor in a mine in Leitmeritz; the yellow star and number insignia the Germans assigned to him in Leitmeritz; his experience with Polish Kapos in Leitmeritz; his time spent in the Leitmeritz hospital with typhoid fever; his "walk" to Theresienstadt concentration camp in April 1945 and his liberation there by the Soviet Army; his thoughts on taking revenge against the Germans for their brutality during the Holocaust; and the special bond he and his father shared throughout their Holocaust ordeal.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

    Lilly Appelbaum Malnik discusses her time in hiding in Belgium; her forced labor in a factory; her neighbors in her apartment building who denounced her and her aunt and uncle to the Germans; her family's arrest and their time in the Malines detention camp in Mechelen, Belgium; her family's transport from Belgium to Birkenau concentration camp and her encounter with Josef Mengele upon arrival; the tattoo number she received on her arm; volunteering for work in Birkenau; her transfer to Auschwitz concentration camp and her work in the kitchen there; the transports of new prisoners into Auschwitz and how many prisoners were sent immediately to the gas chambers; contemplating suicide while in Auschwitz; how some prisoners in Auschwitz prayed as a form of resistance; her time on a death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; her friendship with a young girl named Christian while in Bergen-Belsen; Christian’s death from typhus; and her thoughts about how the young had a better chance of survival in concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Ludmilla Page

    Oral history interview with Ludmilla Page

    Oral History

    Ludmilla Page discusses being arrested with her mother and members of the Polish intelligentsia in November 1939; their transport to Kraków, Poland, where they spent time in a fortress prison; her thoughts on the similarities and differences between the Kraków and Warsaw ghettos; her relationship with Oskar Schindler and how he protected the Jews working in his factory; how Schindler compiled his list of names of prisoners from the Płaszów concentration camp; Schindler’s attempt to persuade a fellow factory owner, Julius Madrich, to save the Jews working in his own factory; how Jewish workers in Schindler's Bruennlitz concentration camp factory sabotaged bomb shell casings; an incident in which she and other female Schindler Jews were transported to Birkenau by mistake instead of going directly to Bruennlitz; how some of the Schindler Jews used gold fillings to fashion a gold ring for Schindler on his birthday in April 1945; Schindler’s friendships with the Jews he rescued; and his designation as Righteous Among the Nations.

    Oral history interview with Leopold Page

    Oral history interview with Leopold Page

    Oral History

    Leopold Page discusses his first meeting with Oskar Schindler and Schindler's physical appearance; how Schindler rescued several female prisoners from Auschwitz (Birkenau) concentration camp and male prisoners from Gross-Rosen concentration camp after they were misrouted on the way to Bruennlitz concentration camp; the establishment of the Kraków ghetto and resistance activities he witnessed there; how he and his wife, Ludmilla Page, escaped from the Kraków ghetto during the liquidation action; how he and other prisoners kept statistics on the number of prisoners killed each day in Plaszów concentration camp; his memories of Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszów concentration camp; how the prisoners of Plaszów prayed as a form of resistance; how friendships among the prisoners helped them survive; how the Schindler Jews sabotaged bomb shell casing while working in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz concentration camp; Schindler helping the Jews disarm and imprison their German captors in Bruennlitz; how Schindler attempted to persuade Julius Madrich to save the Jews working in his own factory; Russian soldiers liberating the Schindler Jews in Bruennlitz; Oskar Schindler receiving the award of Righteous Gentile for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust; his memories of Kristallnacht in November 1938; and how some prisoners in Bruennlitz fashioned a ring from gold fillings as a birthday gift for Schindler in April 1945.

    Oral history interview with Esther Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Raab

    Oral History

    Esther Raab discusses her transfer from a forced labor camp to Sobibór concentration camp; how Sobibór commandant Wagner selected her and other girls to work sorting the belongings of people gassed in the camp; how the SS camp guards processed arrivals of new prisoners in the camp; the extreme cruelty of two camp guards, Frenzel and Wagner; how she and other workers found notes among the belongings of prisoners from Treblinka and Belzec concentration camps and how the notes mentioned revenge against the Germans; how she and other Sobibór inmates planned and executed the revolt in the camp; escaping into the woods near the camp during the revolt and receiving a gunshot wound during the escape; how the Sobibór camp guards punished prisoners who attempted to escape; her thoughts on the differences between a concentration camp and a death camp; how she and other Sobibór escapees received food and shelter from a Polish farmer; her memories of life in Poland before World War II; her time in "Stafnovushulke" forced labor camp; her thoughts on her actions during the Sobibór revolt as being actions of heroism; the types of spiritual resistance that occurred in Sobibór; and how her mother prepared her for World War II by telling her stories of life in Poland during World War I.

    Oral history interview with Agi Rubin

    Oral history interview with Agi Rubin

    Oral History

    Agi Rubin discusses being age 14 when she and her family were deported to Auschwitz; her family's arrival in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and her separation from her mother during a selection; being registered and tattooed in Auschwitz; her work on a special commando sorting the belongings of recently gassed prisoners; how she and others in the commando sabotaged the clothing they sorted and tied into bundles; how the camp guards in Auschwitz singled out certain commandos for certain tasks; her observation of the gassing and cremation processes in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her experiences with a Kapo in Auschwitz; her memories of the "Garnerlager" or so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz; her observations of the selection process conducted by Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz train platform; her thoughts on how the crematoria in Auschwitz affected her senses; how some prisoners recited prayers on their way to the gas chambers; her experiences with lice; her time in Ravensbrück concentration camp; being sent on a death march in January 1945; and her thoughts on heroism as a part of survival. At the end of the interview, Rubin displays and discusses photographs from a family photo album.

    Oral history interview with Bart Stern

    Oral history interview with Bart Stern

    Oral History

    Bart Stern discusses his experiences on a cattle car transport from Hungary to Birkenau concentration camp with his brothers; his subsequent move to Auschwitz concentration camp; his time working in a coal mine near Auschwitz; how religious celebrations became a form of resistance in Auschwitz; how he and other prisoners told jokes as a way of coping; his experiences with Kapos in Auschwitz; his thoughts on humanity in light of his Holocaust experiences; his thoughts on revenge; and how many Jews resisted and did not go willingly to their deaths.

    Oral history interview with Tina Strobos

    Oral history interview with Tina Strobos

    Oral History

    Tina Strobos discusses her experiences during the German invasion of the Netherlands and how life changed for the citizens of Rotterdam; the role of Arthur Seyss-Inquart in the Nazi-occupation government of the Netherlands; the role of the Gestapo during the German occupation of the Netherlands; her involvement in an underground resistance group in the Netherlands lead by Johann Brower; her time in hiding and the hiding place she used inside her own home; the underground work of the "Lomlok Organization" to help Jews find hiding places; how she and her family rescued other Jews by letting them hide in their Rotterdam home; and how some Nazi sympathizers in the Netherlands denounced and betrayed their Jewish neighbors.

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Tanay

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Tanay

    Oral History

    Emanuel Tanay discusses how life changed for the Jews in Miechów, Poland, after the German invasion in 1939; how the Germans increased persecutions against Jews with collaboration by Ukrainians and Lithuanians; his thoughts on the differences between Polish Jews and Jews from Western Europe; his family's time in the ghetto in Miechów, Poland; hiding in a monastery in Mogila, Poland, where he posed as a novice for the priesthood; the assistance he received from the monastery's prior, Father Kuhar; his flight from the monastery when the Gestapo raided his cell; how the Germans imprisoned Father Kuhar and other priests from the Mogila monastery in Auschwitz concentration camp for giving assistance to people in the underground resistance; his thoughts on how being a teenager helped him to survive; how he and his family fled to Hungary in 1943 using false identification papers; his time in a prison in Budapest, Hungary, and subsequent escape; volunteering to the Gestapo to be executed and how the Gestapo failed to carry out the execution; his brief time in the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, just before the uprising; and his thoughts on what special qualities a person needed to be a survivor.

    Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

    Oral History

    Bella Tovey discusses how life changed in Sosnowiec, Poland, and persecutions increased for Jews after the German invasion; how the Germans established a ghetto in Sosnowiec; how members of the intelligentsia started to disappear and how others went to work camps; being taken to a work camp and her parents gained her release by having her younger sister, Pina, replace her in the camp; the liquidation of the Sosnowiec ghetto and her family's move to a smaller ghetto called Srodula; her time in Gräben (a.k.a. Gräen) concentration camp near Striegel, Germany, where the prisoners worked in a flax mill; her experiences with a Kapo in Gräben labor camp; how the Germans incorporated Gräben into the camp system of Gross-Rosen concentration camp; her time on a death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and her bouts with typhus and typhoid while in the camp; the various friendships that she had with other girls during her time in the camps; her thoughts on spiritual resistance in the camp; her reaction to hearing about what happened to Jews in Auschwitz; the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British troops in 1945; and her loss of faith in God during the Holocaust and how she regained her faith and began her Jewish and religious studies later in life.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Webber

    Oral history interview with Ruth Webber

    Oral History

    Ruth Webber discusses her memories of the Germans invading Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland, in 1939; her time in Botsohov (Bodzechów) work camp with her parents; moving to the ghetto in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland with her mother; their escape from the ghetto and return to the Botshohov work camp; her time in Austrowiec (Ostrowiec) concentration camp; her time in Starachowice concentration camp; her transport to Auschwitz concentration camp; her arrival in Auschwitz and her memories of the registration process; her time in the Auschwitz infirmary suffering from measles; her memories of the Auschwitz crematoria and her realization of what was happening to the prisoners there; what it was like to be a child among mostly adults in Auschwitz; her move to the "children's block" in Auschwitz after her mother moved to another camp; the special care and protection she received from her mother while in Auschwitz; how she considers her mother to be a hero; and her thoughts on humanity in light of her Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Weihs

    Oral history interview with Ernest Weihs

    Oral History

    Ernest Weihs, born in Vienna, Austria in November 1908, discusses his conversion from Judaism to Lutheranism at age eleven; the changing situation for Jews in Vienna, Austria in 1938; the aid that he and his future wife received from Swedish missionaries in Austria; his imprisonment in Theresienstadt in 1942; his marriage while in Theresienstadt; his escape from a death march on the way to Dachau concentration camp; his experiences with Kapos; the religious practices that took place in Theresienstadt; his brief time in Auschwitz concentration camp; and his witness to a suicide while in Kaufering concentration camp.

    Oral history interview with Norbert Wollheim

    Oral history interview with Norbert Wollheim

    Oral History

    Norbert Wollheim discusses his parents' deportation from Berlin, Germany in 1943 and his deportation with his wife and son to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943; how some prisoners prayed and celebrated Sabbath while on the transport to Auschwitz; his arrival in Auschwitz and his separation from his wife and child; his registration and tattoo; the role of the SS in Auschwitz; his time working in the Buna factory near the camp; his work as a welder in Auschwitz; his friend Fritz Schaeffer who committed suicide while in Auschwitz; his experiences with Kapos; his thoughts on spiritual resistance in the camp; his memories of Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938; his involvement in a Kindertransport of children from Berlin to England shortly after Kristallnacht; his memories of life in Berlin before 1933 and how conditions changed for Jews after the Nazis came to power; his memories of the voyage of the St. Louis; his thoughts on revenge; his feelings at the time of liberation; his thoughts on the different types of concentration camps; his thoughts on forced labor and work camps used during the Holocaust; the choices he made in order to survive; how he relied on the friendships with other inmates for support and how he befriended British prisoners of war while in Auschwitz; how age and gender played a role in who survived the Holocaust; and his memories of the "Appel" in Auschwitz.

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