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Oral history interview with Christine Cohen

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0411 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0057

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    Oral history interview with Christine Cohen
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Christine Cohen, conducted by Margaret Garrett
    on January 5th, 1997, in Bethesda, Maryland, tape
    1, side A. Mrs. Cohen, what was your name at birth?
    It was Rita Grabina.
    And what was the date of your birth?
    April 27, 1940.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Warsaw, Poland.
    Could you talk about the circumstances
    surrounding your birth?
    Well, I was born in the Warsaw ghetto
    with my family who, before the war, lived all over Warsaw,
    being brought into the ghetto, into a small confined area,
    the whole family, my grandparents, my parents,
    my aunt, my uncle, their spouses, and children,
    four cousins I had.
    We all lived in one little apartment,
    from what I understand.
    They were all brought from different parts of Warsaw.
    And I was born in the Warsaw ghetto in a Jewish hospital
    and I was in the ghetto until 1942.
    I was two years old when my mother escaped from the ghetto
    with me, leaving the family behind.
    Now, when you were born, had the ghetto been sealed?
    Yes it had.
    It had been sealed.
    And so you lived in the ghetto with your family
    until you were two years old.
    Two years old.
    And how was your mother able to escape from the ghetto?
    Well, it's kind of a long story.
    My father had-- all his business assets were signed over--
    before they were put in the ghetto,
    were signed over to one of his partner
    and very, very close friend, because the Jews were not
    allowed to own anything.
    And my father was taken, every day,
    by the Germans out of the ghetto,
    along with other men for hard labor.
    And he was able to make contact with people
    in the outside world and get some forged papers for us,
    stating that, of course, we are Christian
    and not Jewish for myself and my mother.
    And it was supposed to be paid for with, basically,
    his money that the friend had.
    And my mother didn't want to leave the ghetto,
    because the whole family was there.
    And even though they knew they were taking people away,
    no one really knew the extent of what was happening,
    unless you were there yourself.
    No one, I guess, wanted to believe
    that this was happening.
    So they felt, as long as they were together, somehow,
    they will survive.
    My grandfather was a jeweler.
    And they were able to stash some, I imagine,
    diamonds, whatever precious jewelry, for which they
    were able to, at least, for diamonds,
    you could buy a loaf of bread.
    You could make it to the hospital.
    That's why I was born in a hospital.
    So they were able to get by with whatever
    he had in the way of jewelry to bribe everybody.
    And they felt that they would survive.
    And my father kind of knew what was happening.
    And he wanted-- my mother was only 22 years old.
    But he knew, if anybody was capable,
    she was capable of doing something.
    So he wanted for her to take me.
    And basically, to save me, he made her--
    the way he made her escape is she didn't want to.
    And he said that if not, if she doesn't try it,
    he will give me to the Germans, which a lot of people did.
    Very few children were actually saved and sent
    to Germany or wherever, very, very few.
    The majority were killed as soon as they
    were given to the Germans for a sum of money.
    Did your mother and father know that?
    Yeah, they both knew it.
    And my father only said it to make my mother do something.
    Everybody knew it, after a while, in the ghetto.
    In '42, everybody knew it.
    At the beginning, people were hoping against hope
    that someone will save their children.
    But by then, they already knew.
    They would, as a matter of fact, people
    saw it where they would take the baby, that's
    what I hear from my mother, of course,
    I couldn't possibly remember that.
    They would take a baby.
    They would take the money.
    And then grab the baby by the legs
    and just hit the head against the wall.
    In front of the parents.
    In front of the parents, so after a while, of course,
    they didn't try it.
    So anyway, so my mother, a doctor in the ghetto
    gave me a tranquilizer, because I was only two years old.
    And of course, I could not be discovered during the escape.
    My mother dressed like a peasant woman from a village,
    put a big scarf around her and put me inside the scarf.
    So I wouldn't be seen, mainly, because I
    know it sounds strange, but because not everybody in Poland
    is blue eyed and blond.
    But that's one way they were judging people.
    My mother was a blue-eyed blonde.
    And I was dark.
    And for a child, I did-- not necessarily did I look Jewish,
    but I had dark, curly hair and dark eyes.
    And that was enough to identify me as being Jewish.
    So she didn't want me to be seen.
    And of course, they wanted me to sleep.
    So they gave me a tranquilizer.
    And she dressed in this big, big shawl.
    And she had a maid before the war who was called on
    to testify in court.
    And there was-- right outside of the ghetto walls,
    there was a courthouse.
    Now, the Germans didn't know how to read Polish.
    Plus, the date was actually 1938.
    Had they paid attention to it, they
    would have discovered that there was something
    wrong with the summons.
    She took that summons and walked straight
    to one of the guards at the wall,
    at the gate, or entrance, I don't
    know what it was at the wall and took him off guard,
    because they were used to people running away from them,
    not walking towards them.
    Everybody was afraid of them.
    And she told them, I think in German, my mother spoke German.
    I know she spoke German later, but I assume.
    She told him that, in Polish, and he understood a little.
    She told him that she is from some village.
    And she looked the part.
    And that she got summoned to the court.
    And she got lost.
    She came in here.
    And she doesn't know where she is.
    How does she get out?
    He was so surprised by her walking up
    to him, talking to him, that he pointed to the gate.
    And she, with real bravado, she said,
    I'm afraid I'll get lost again.
    Would you please walk me out?
    And he did.
    He walked her right outside of the wall.
    Then, she realized that she forgot.
    She still had the Star of David on her arm
    under that big shawl.
    So she went to the first bathroom
    and flushed it down, of course.
    And then, she wasn't out of danger,
    because if you were without papers,
    you assumed to be Jewish and shot.
    She had to get to this man who basically had all our assets.
    And he had money.
    I don't know what it was then.
    It was a lot of money for then, but say,
    it was $10,000 before the war.
    He was supposed to have it ready for her.
    So she could pay the forger, meet the forger,
    and get the papers.
    Before she went to his place, and of course, the danger
    was everywhere, because first of all, I could wake up and cry.
    Secondly, she had no papers.
    And people were stopped constantly.
    She made it to his place.
    And the men lived, and this is kind of significant,
    because he lived in a 12 story building, which
    was a high rise then.
    And he lived on top.
    And she went there and he opened the door.
    And she tells him she's here for the money.
    And of course, he knew very well what it was all
    set up with my father.
    And he said, what money?
    She said the money that is their money to begin with.
    And he said, I don't know you.
    This is a person who was a very close friend
    before the war, who went with them to dinner,
    and was invited to every party, and always said,
    if anything happens, you can always count on me.
    My father trusted him with all that.
    He said, I don't know you.
    She says, how can you say you don't know me
    after all the dinners you've had at my house?
    He says, well, what are you going to do about it?
    He had a fortune from my father.
    But he didn't want to spare the money just
    to save our life, just a little bit of whatever he had.
    My father was very wealthy.
    So my mother, the reason I said it's significant
    that there were 12 stories, my mother went to the window,
    and stood on the window, and said,
    if you don't give me the money, I will jump,
    with me, she said--
    they always called me Christine, anyway,
    because-- even before I got the papers, because they always
    loved that name.
    I will jump with Christine from the window.
    He gave her the money not because he
    was worried about her jumping.
    He didn't care.
    But had she jumped from his window,
    he would have been shot too, because that would
    have been harboring a Jew.
    They would never believe him that she just came in--
    they would kill him too.
    So he had to give her the money.
    And when I was older, my mother told me the story.
    I asked her, I said, had he said no,
    would you really have jumped?
    And she said, yes.
    She said, because I wouldn't have gone back to the ghetto.
    And I was as good as dead.
    And she really meant it.
    My mother was an incredible woman.
    Now, all of this happening, she's 22 or 23 years old.
    And someone who never had to lift a finger to do anything,
    from a loving family, everybody always took care of her,
    and all of a sudden, she fights for her life and mine
    every day.
    Then, she met with the forger.
    Again, until she had the papers, there was always the danger.
    She met with the forger, paid him.
    Got the papers.
    And then, of course, I don't know the details,
    how we got wherever we got.
    But we went to some small village.
    Do you remember the name of the village?
    Yes, I-- starts with a G. I'll think
    of it in a minute, Goroshkov, I think.
    And I mean, I don't remember, remember.
    I just remember from when my mother said.
    And she picked a place, there were farmers there.
    It was right by the forest.
    Because she felt if she ever needed to hide,
    that was a good place.
    The partisans were there.
    Although they were not helpful to Jews at all.
    But they were hiding there.
    It was a good place to hide.
    There was a woman and I don't exactly
    know whether there were three children, however
    many children, and I assume there were around 10, 8, 12,
    give or take a couple of years, and this couple of farmers.
    My mother had to pay them to live there.
    Oh, her story was that because people, Polish people
    didn't just leave Warsaw.
    Her cover story was that her husband was in the Polish army
    and was taken prisoner of war.
    And that's why she left Warsaw.
    The reason she left Warsaw, the main reason,
    is because between my grandfather and my father,
    they were very well known.
    And she could have been recognized
    by someone non-Jewish and they were only
    too happy to report you, most people.
    I'm not saying everybody.
    So that's why she took off.
    So her cover was that her husband is a prisoner of war.
    And she didn't want to stay there.
    Everybody believed her.
    And she had to work to support us.
    She never worked a day in her life.
    She would sell cigarettes and liquor
    on trains, which was illegal.
    You could get shot for that.
    But she made money.
    She would work in the fields, all kinds of odd jobs.
    The problem was she would have to leave in the morning
    and come back in the evening.
    And she paid these people to take care of me.
    And the man, I don't remember that part of it,
    because I guess I blocked it out.
    I don't want to remember.
    But somewhere in my subconscious,
    I know I was abused by all of them.
    Abused how?
    Physically, children, and the woman, not the husband.
    By hitting or sexual abuse?
    Oh, no, no, no hitting, hitting, hitting.
    They would-- the thing is I have pictures of German soldiers
    on a horse with me.
    I was very talkative.
    Well, I was more intelligent than the children
    in the village.
    And all the soldiers just loved me.
    They used to come bring me presents.
    And the kids were jealous, so they used to hit me.
    The mother was jealous.
    So she used to hit me.
    When the father was home, no one hit me,
    because he was a good man.
    But the mother and the kids used to, I mean, really abused me.
    You don't remember that did you say?
    Vaguely, vaguely.
    What is your memory?
    My memory is that I was afraid of them.
    And I was the youngest to begin with.
    I don't know how those kids were.
    To me, they were giants.
    But they probably were 8 and 10 years old.
    But I was the youngest.
    And like I said, the kids hit me.
    And the woman didn't care.
    Or she probably hit me too.
    I don't remember.
    And how old were you?
    Well, I was two when we got there.
    And we stayed until I was four.
    So between two and four, these vague memories of being afraid
    of them?
    Yes, unless the father was home.
    So it would be the mother and the older children?
    Actually, all the children.
    All the children.
    That would be boys and girls?
    Yeah, I think, I don't know if there was one boy,
    two girls, whatever.
    But I don't remember.
    That it's funny that I remember the second family, because they
    were wonderful to me, but not this one.
    But I do remember the father, because he was a good man.
    Anyway, the other thing, the other big thing was my mother,
    they thought--
    they didn't know for sure that I was Jewish, because had they
    known, my mother wouldn't have found me when she came home.
    But they were fishing.
    They were on a fishing expedition.
    They even went as far as churches, checking stuff.
    And we had baptism certificates.
    It was all forged, but we had it.
    So they didn't do anything.
    But they used to tell my mother--
    even the people in the village, even the woman
    we lived with, used to ask her how much money did you take
    to hide the Jewish bastard?
    Because they were convinced she was Polish.
    But I was Jewish.
    And of course, my mother had to act very brave and all that.
    And then they would say, well, you go on to work.
    When you get back, she won't be here.
    We're going to take her to the Gestapo.
    My mother had no choice.
    She had to.
    So this affected my whole life, because my mother,
    she never knew, when she came home, whether I would be there,
    whether they were just bluffing, or they would really take me,
    they would dig up something.
    So it was a horrible way to live,
    because my mother escaped only for me.
    Otherwise, she would have stayed with the family.
    And this affected me till the day she died.
    She worried-- mothers worry about children.
    But it was to the point, when I was younger,
    that it drove me crazy.
    She couldn't go to sleep unless I was in bed at night.
    Because she was so worried?
    So worried.
    I was 22 years old when I got married.
    Before I got married, I had a curfew,
    not because she didn't trust me, but because she could not
    sleep, unless I was safely in bed.
    How old were you when she told you what had happened?
    Over the years, many times.
    Was it something that you remember knowing from--
    Probably from the time I was 7, 8, 9, actually,
    somewhere around that age, because I
    didn't know I was Jewish, which I'll get into.
    Before you were seven, you think, she had not told you.
    No, no, no, no, no.
    One day, she just sat you down and told you?
    No, a lot of it came out gradually.
    But she had to tell me I was Jewish.
    And I was already nine years old.
    It was a few years after the war,
    which is another story again.
    So anyway, should I get back to the village?
    So we were there.
    And there was a German soldier there.
    An older man, at that time, he was, probably,
    he had a granddaughter my age.
    And there was-- my mother was a very beautiful woman.
    But there was nothing going on there.
    He loved me.
    He used to bring me whatever he could.
    He missed his granddaughter.
    He was just a simple soldier, not SS or anything,
    they send him there to fight.
    And he always seemed to warn my mother,
    because what the Germans did is, if they
    had a suspicion about something, mostly,
    they were looking for partisans, they
    would come in the middle of the night, take the rifle
    and hit the door of the house, and ask for vodka.
    They would bring the vodka.
    As a matter of fact, there's an interesting story
    about that with my mother.
    And have them drink with them, and search the house.
    One night, they came over there and did that
    in the middle of the night.
    And my mother never, maybe, she had
    a glass of champagne or wine before the war, but not
    straight vodka.
    They poured these big glasses of vodka.
    And they tell her to drink.
    And she can't, she's choking.
    So the woman that we're staying with
    said, she didn't mean anything bad, because had she known,
    we would be dead.
    Says, you know what, you drink like a Jew.
    Supposedly, Jews couldn't drink.
    That's all she had to say.
    My mother swallowed the vodka.
    And the man, she told me, the husband,
    was so nice that he kept pouring water in it for her.
    So it would look like she was drinking all that vodka.
    But that's what the Germans did.
    If you didn't drink with them, you were shot.
    Then they searched the house, then
    they searched someone escape, whatever was going on.
    Then this older German soldier kept warning my mother.
    He knew when they were coming to search for somebody.
    And he would say, why don't you take Christine and go
    visit somebody at some neighborhood village.
    And she says, why should I go?
    He says, well, your husband is a prisoner of war.
    You don't want to be here when they come searching.
    So she would do that.
    He did it several times.
    Then, he was transferred to the Russian front.
    And there was a woman in the village who
    worked with the underground.
    Like I said, the underground was not sympathetic to the Jews.
    As a rule, they did not help.
    They didn't care.
    They were fighting the Germans.
    But they didn't care about the Jews.
    They were probably just as likely to report Jews
    to somebody, but certainly not help them.
    This woman, she was a titled woman, aristocracy.
    They still had, what do you call it?
    Can't think of it.
    But anyway, she was she had a castle in the village.
    Nobility, she had a castle in the village.
    But she was helping the resistance.
    And this German man knew her.
    And he trusted her.
    And he went and talked to her about my mother.
    My mother didn't know that until after the war.
    And he told her--
    this German soldier knew my mother was Jewish.
    I don't know how he found out.
    The reason he didn't want to tell my mother that he knew
    is because he thought, he was such a wonderful man,
    he thought that if she finds out that he knows, she will run.
    She'll be scared.
    And he felt he could protect her.
    So he trusted that woman with the information.
    He said, don't ever let her know that she's Jewish,
    but help her.
    And that woman helped us several times
    out of a situation where they were coming.
    And she told my mother the same thing he said.
    And she didn't tell her until after the war.
    And of course, my mother searched for him everywhere.
    He probably died on the Russian front.
    She never could find him.
    But he saved our life many times.
    And through him, the woman.
    But that's basically it.
    I don't know if, in my tape, I mentioned,
    because that I found out, I think, after I did the tape.
    This is the tape that you loaned to me
    that was done 10 years ago.
    Yeah, I didn't, because I didn't know about it.
    My mother just wrote the article afterwards, about my mother,
    when she was going on these trains
    to sell liquor and cigarettes.
    They would stop the train if they suspected someone not
    Jewish and search for papers.
    And if someone didn't have papers, they were shot.
    So my mother, in fact, I have article
    my mother wrote, they stopped the train one time.
    That I didn't know until three, four years ago.
    And they got everybody off the train.
    And there was a young 18-year-old girl, no papers,
    she was Jewish.
    And the Germans said, they'll make an example of her
    and bury her alive.
    And they made everybody dig her grave, including her.
    And my mother wrote in it that she had a little red coat
    and a red purse.
    And even the Polish people were begging
    them to shoot her first, not to bury her alive.
    But they said, no, they had to show what they do with Jews.
    And they buried her alive.
    And they put the little red coat on the grave.
    My mother said she will never, ever forget
    it, and the little red purse.
    And so she witnessed that, along with other people.
    And even the, like I said, the Poles, as a rule,
    didn't care what happened to the Jews, everybody on the train
    wanted her killed first.
    I mean, they didn't want her dead, but that it was so cruel.
    So this is just some of the things
    that my mother witnessed.
    One time, the Germans caught her.
    And she was supposed to cook for the big police
    dogs, the dogs that were supposed to smell a Jew.
    And of course, the first time she was afraid,
    you hear about it, they can tell who's Jewish who's not.
    She was scared to death, but she had to.
    The dogs loved it.
    They didn't know who was Jewish, who was not.
    She fed them.
    All kinds of strange, digging potatoes in the fields,
    I mean, any kind of odd job to keep us alive.
    Then, I do not know why we ended up
    in another village towards the end of the war.
    That I don't know.
    And I guess I'll never know.
    I didn't ask my mother.
    But we ended up in another village
    with a couple of poor, poor farmers.
    They had two daughters, who were, I assume,
    they were teenagers.
    At that time, they looked grown up to me.
    They were teenagers.
    And they were wonderful, wonderful family.
    The parents, I called them grandma and grandpa.
    I didn't have anybody--
    I never had grandparents that I remembered.
    So they were my grandparents.
    And they were good to me.
    And the girls were wonderful.
    I was like their little sister.
    They were, like I said, they were very, very poor.
    Do you remember them?
    That I remember.
    That's when I started remembering.
    So you don't remember very much from the--
    Before, I think I don't want to.
    But from that time on, I remember everything.
    Like what?
    Well, I remember going with the girls,
    we were going to get bread.
    And like I said, they were very poor farmers.
    And they gave the girls money--
    the girls were maybe 14, 16, to go buy bread.
    And there was a carnival.
    And they took me to it.
    And I wanted a doll.
    I wanted a doll so badly.
    The girls took the bread money and bought me the doll.
    You wanted that doll?
    Did you not have any dolls?
    Probably not, because today, have
    I have a collection of stuffed animals.
    I'm a grown person.
    And I have a collection, incredible collection,
    of stuffed animals.
    It's something I always wonder why does it
    appeal to me so much?
    I mean, I'm not playing with them like a child.
    I just want to have them.
    I probably didn't.
    We were at this bizarre carnival.
    And I wanted, maybe, that particular doll or a doll,
    I don't know.
    But they took the bread money.
    And they brought me the doll.
    And when we got back, the parents
    were not upset with them at all, because they all loved me.
    So this was the beginning, for me,
    of having some semblance of a family.
    So when my mother went to work, I didn't-- first of all,
    my mother was a stranger to me.
    I knew it was this lady that loved me and hugged me
    every night and every morning.
    But she was never with me.
    So I really didn't miss her.
    It was a way of life for me.
    She didn't have a day off that she could spend with you?
    You can't have a day off in a situation like that.
    You scratch and claw wherever you can.
    I mean, you can have a day off, but you need the money.
    So she never spent any time with me.
    She was there at night, I knew, but that's it.
    Do you remember whether you slept with her?
    Probably.
    I'm sure I did, because--
    You don't remember that.
    But you think must have.
    I must have.
    The places were very, very small.
    And then, with the other people, again, my mother
    was someone who came and went.
    But they were my family.
    Because I would wait for the girls
    to come home from school, and the other people,
    I mean, they were my grandparents.
    Like I said, they were very poor.
    And when they did, they were so good,
    that when they didn't have money, something happened,
    my mother worked.
    And we all lived off of what my mother made.
    When my mother got sick, there was a time
    where, and it was all related to the war and everything,
    she, all of a sudden, lost her vision.
    I'm not saying it was psychosomatic,
    but it had to do--
    there was no physical reason for it.
    She lost her vision.
    She couldn't see.
    So the poor farmer went to work and supported us.
    And vise versa, then she had some other--
    then all of a sudden, she started seeing again.
    When she could not see and could not work,
    was she then home with you?
    Do you remember that?
    Not really, because it wasn't such a long time.
    I remember more all the times that she wasn't.
    Anyway, at the end of the war, what it was,
    whoever could worked and we were like family.
    When the war ended, my mother wanted
    to go find, see, if there's anybody left.
    So she wanted to go to Warsaw.
    And because they were like my family, she left me with them.
    Was no place for me to go.
    Do you remember that?
    Do you remember her leaving?
    Yeah, I wasn't upset or anything, because I loved them.
    Warsaw was in ruins.
    And she didn't want to take me.
    So she took-- she went.
    I don't remember for how long, whatever,
    she didn't find anybody.
    Then she found somebody in a small town
    that wasn't a relative, the relatives of her sister's
    husband.
    That's the closest to the relatives,
    her sister who died with the twins, that's--
    I'm sure you've got that, with the twins,
    was married to a man who had family, some of them survive,
    his sisters, her brother-in-law's family.
    And they lived in the little town close
    to the German border in the south.
    And she figured it better than no family at all.
    And she just--
    I think that's where we ended up.
    That's where we ended up.
    Well, she found a job.
    And she decided to stay there.
    Or maybe she did it in Warsaw.
    No, no, no, she went to Warsaw first.
    She found a job and decided to stay there.
    She went back for me.
    And I didn't want to go.
    Do you remember that?
    Yeah, I didn't want to go with her,
    because I had my grandpa, and grandma, and my sisters.
    And I didn't want to go.
    These people were good to me.
    They were always with me.
    They took care of me.
    I didn't want to leave them.
    And you were about five?
    I was five, depending on when-- officially, my birthday
    is April '45.
    So I don't even know, officially, when the war ended.
    But I was five.
    And I didn't want to go.
    And so they talked, and she left me for a couple of months.
    She came to visit.
    But she went.
    She worked.
    She got an apartment.
    No, at that time, she went to that little town
    where that family was.
    She got an apartment.
    She got help.
    She had a maid.
    Someone to take care of me, and then she came and got me,
    whether I wanted to or not.
    She came and got me and she had to work.
    But she had someone taking care of me.
    Do you remember leaving the farm?
    Not really.
    I know I left.
    But I don't remember, because again, it was probably
    something I didn't want to do.
    So I didn't want to remember.
    I really didn't want to go.
    Well, here's so-called family, so again, there
    was one older lady who was a grandmother
    to the other children.
    So she became my grandmother too.
    So that made it a little better.
    After a while, I had some sort of a family,
    even though we weren't really related,
    except through marriage.
    But it was the closest.
    There were three sisters.
    They all had children my age.
    And their mother was alive.
    So they call her grandma, I called her grandma.
    Needless to say, the people from the village came to visit us.
    And we went to see them.
    And we kept in touch.
    These were the farmers that you'd been living with?
    Yeah, and my mother, later on, helped them.
    Anyway, my mother had a maid, who was--
    this is a story in itself--
    Maybe we should turn the tape over.
    Yeah and I need to go to--
    Christine Cohen, tape 1, side B.
    Anyway, my mother had this maid who was basically Polish,
    but of German descent, because of Poland being the way it was.
    At times, parts of Poland belonged to Germany.
    At times, they were Poland.
    There were a lot of, in that particular town,
    in that part of Poland, there were a lot
    of people that were German.
    But they were there for generations.
    And it was Poland now.
    She had this maid her name was, I still remember, Irene,
    and she's lived in Poland all her life.
    But she had a sister who was married and lived in Germany.
    And the maid's brother-in-law was in the German army.
    They had a child, a little boy named
    Willy, who was exactly my age.
    And the parents got killed, or taken prisoners after the war,
    or whatever.
    And this Irene was left with her nephew.
    She was single.
    She was left with her nephew.
    So she lived with us.
    She was a live-in.
    But the child lived with us too.
    And she told him he was exactly the same age as I was.
    She told him, people are going to--
    again, shoe was sort of on the other foot.
    Not exactly, but they were hiding the fact
    that they were German.
    So she told this little boy, if anybody asks you,
    tell them you're not German.
    Don't tell anybody you're German,
    because of the repercussion after the war from the Poles,
    as a matter of fact.
    There weren't enough Jews left to do anything.
    But Germans were hated.
    And the little boy could have been really hurt.
    So he understood that.
    Children grow up very quickly, just
    like myself, when I was two years old
    and we went to the village.
    I had aunts, and uncles, and cousins, and grandparents,
    and all of a sudden, the next day, I don't have anybody.
    And I'm two years old, and my mother tells me,
    people will ask you questions.
    They'll ask you where is your grandma, where's your grandpa?
    You say to everything, I don't know.
    And I guess children grow up very fast
    under those circumstances, because from the age of two,
    whenever anybody asked me--
    I don't remember that, but my mother told me, about anybody
    in the family, my standard answer was I don't know.
    So you can tell children, when it comes to danger.
    Anyway this little Willy lived with us.
    And he was my companion.
    I used to-- we used to play board games
    and things like that.
    We were inseparable.
    One day, well, my mother was at work.
    And this Irene was talking to another maid in the building
    or something and left us.
    We were five years old.
    We were playing a board game.
    I don't even remember what.
    But I remember, I can see it in my mind,
    we're sitting at a table playing a board game.
    And I said, Willy, are you German?
    And he said no, ma'am.
    I'm not.
    I'm not.
    He was scared.
    So I said, well, do you understand such and such,
    and I made up a word that I thought was German.
    And he, being a child, said, forgot himself,
    that's not German at all, because he spoke German.
    And I said, aha, if you know that's not German,
    that means you speak German.
    And I was only five years old, right after the war.
    And if you speak German, then you are German.
    And the Germans killed my daddy.
    And now, I'm going to kill you.
    That's what I told the kid.
    And I went to the kitchen, and I remember that.
    I got a kitchen knife, that big.
    And we had a big dining room, I remember.
    I was chasing him around the dining room
    table with this big knife.
    And the maid was somewhere next door.
    I mean, she left us for a couple of minutes.
    I never give any indication of being violent towards him.
    He was my companion.
    We played together.
    We ate together.
    We did everything together.
    And I'm chasing him, I remember that,
    around the dining room table.
    And he's screaming that I'm going to kill him.
    And my mother happened to come home for something.
    She walked in and saw what was happening.
    Well, immediately, she let the woman go,
    because she knew what was happening with me.
    And you remember that?
    I remember that.
    Do you have any idea why it was then that you brought up--
    No, because we were completely--
    I mean, here he was, I don't know how long they
    were there, but for some time.
    We always played together.
    I do remember I was very bossy with him.
    He did what I wanted, always, because, I have to admit,
    that after the war, because I felt I was so mistreated,
    I went completely the other way.
    I was very selfish.
    And I wanted all the attention.
    My mother used to undress me when I was seven years old
    and put me to bed.
    You felt you were mistreated?
    And I wanted--
    Mistreated how?
    Physically, and I didn't have attention of my mother.
    And I wanted all of her attention.
    And so I always--
    I never did anything to the boy.
    I never, I just-- always, he knew
    that he had to defer to me.
    And I don't know if this was because his aunt worked
    for my mother, or because he was afraid of me.
    But I never did anything to him.
    We were friends, as long as he did what I told him.
    And then all of a sudden, out of the clear blue,
    we're sitting playing a board game.
    I don't know why.
    But you had been bossy with him.
    Yes, that I remember.
    Was he younger or smaller than you.
    No, I was very small.
    So he couldn't have been small.
    I was tiny.
    No, he wasn't.
    We were exactly the same age.
    He was wasn't smaller.
    He was probably bigger than I was.
    But you said that you did want a lot of attention
    from your mother?
    And I got a lot of attention from.
    And the more I got, the more I wanted.
    So she usually gave in to you?
    Yes, with everything.
    Everything, and until the day she died,
    my mother couldn't say no to me.
    And I have a brother.
    And she was a wonderful mother to him too,
    brother that was born after the war.
    But with me, it was just different.
    My mother, I guess, felt, not that she
    should have felt guilty, but in a sense,
    that I didn't have what I should have had.
    So she tried to make up for it all her life.
    And I took, until I--
    I was a selfish, bratty teenager, too,
    until I understood later on what really went on.
    That changed me.
    My mother remarried after the war.
    I don't know if we're ready for that part.
    Let's go back to that so you and your mother
    were living in the apartment.
    Yes and then, like I said, after that boy episode,
    she got someone else who was Polish.
    Were you going to--
    you weren't going to school a that point?
    No, I was five years old.
    And did you then start school?
    I started school around the age of six, I guess.
    No, it wasn't village.
    We were in a city.
    It was a city.
    City, it was after the war.
    But it wasn't Warsaw.
    We have not gone back to Warsaw yet,
    because eventually, we went back.
    And what was the name of the city?
    It was called Walbrzych I would have to spell it.
    W--
    Do you want to get that?
    Housekeeper.
    Stop for a minute.
    You were spelling the city,
    W-A-L-B-R-Z-Y-C-H.
    So you started school there.
    Do you remember that at all?
    Vaguely, I do.
    What do you remember?
    Well, what I remember the most, but that's
    sort of after the fact, because I didn't realize it
    until after it happened, that I didn't know I was Jewish.
    And throughout the war, I remember children telling me,
    I know I'm going back now, but just
    to give you a background how I felt about Jewish people.
    I disliked them as much as the children in the village did.
    Disliked them is not the word.
    We didn't think of them as human,
    because that's what I was taught.
    In the village, the kids used to say, you know what a Jew is?
    And I would say, what?
    I would say pig with a tail.
    So my early, formative years, I grew up
    believing that Jews were subhuman.
    So these were the little kids in the village where
    you were until you were five.
    But you didn't know any Jews that you knew of,
    the kids just talked about Jews.
    Talked about them, there weren't any to know.
    If they were to know, they would be dead.
    Not only that, my mother--
    we were not too far from one of the camps.
    I forget, which one, whether it was Treblinka or Majdanek, one
    of the two, where her family went, as it turned out.
    And the woman, the first village we were in, used to say,
    to my mother, and my mother's heart
    was breaking every day she looked at it,
    but she had to be very blase about it, because they were.
    See that smoke over there, and my mother said, yes.
    That's Jews burning.
    And how do you say that?
    Oh, they deserve to be burning.
    And my mother said, why would you say that?
    She couldn't protest too much, obviously.
    She says, oh, because they're sinners.
    They didn't go to church on Sunday.
    That was, I mean, that was the mentality there.
    They're different.
    They're something to fear, so let them burn.
    But that's how Jews, so little bits, I mean,
    I do remember the part about the Jews being a pig with the tail.
    But there were other things that were
    said that I knew, growing up I knew that a Jew was subhuman.
    And I mean, I didn't know anybody that was Jewish.
    And I certainly didn't know I was Jewish.
    So when you started school, the kids
    were still talking this way about Jews.
    Not as bad, but I'm sure, because the anti-Semitism
    is strong in Poland.
    With the communists, don't forget,
    I was growing up during communism,
    it was against the law to express anything against Jews.
    It really was, you could go to jail for it.
    But the kids, among themselves, talked.
    But I was one of them.
    I was Jewish, according to me.
    And my mother had a hard time telling me.
    So she waited for the right moment.
    First she waited she was married,
    I would be more settled.
    I would have two parents.
    Did she marry a Jew?
    Yes, she married-- that's an interesting story, too,
    she married--
    well, my father, the only father I know, in '46.
    So you were six.
    I was six.
    He was from Krakow.
    His whole family died, also, in a concentration camp,
    except for him and one sister.
    They ended up in Russia.
    He worked in a coal mine.
    They put him to work, the Russians.
    In fact, he lost half of his pinky in the coal mines.
    He was an electrical engineer, brilliant man,
    absolutely brilliant.
    As a matter of fact, we lived in Israel for a time.
    And he was in charge of the Negev irrigation
    of the whole Negev desert.
    Brilliant man, spoke seven languages, most wonderful man
    that you could possibly ask to meet, kind, gentle, sweet, just
    wonderful.
    And my mother, what my mother did
    was, before she married him, my mother married him,
    I hate to say it, I'm sure after many, many years,
    they lived together 30 years.
    They loved each other.
    But she married him to have a father for me.
    And I realize that now.
    How did you feel when you knew they were getting married?
    Oh, I loved him.
    I loved him, because--
    You didn't mind sharing your mother.
    No, because he was so wonderful, because then
    I had two people to spoil me.
    He spoiled me just as bad.
    I mean, there was nothing my father wouldn't do for me.
    So my mother--
    I had two people to just jump up and down
    and do whatever I wanted.
    So I thought that was great, until my brother came.
    That's another story.
    My mother left me with my dad, whose name was Leon,
    for a week, went out of town on business.
    She arranged it on purpose, because she wanted
    to see how he could handle me.
    And she was going to ask me.
    And she knew that I would tell her.
    Anybody that look at me the wrong way, I would tell her.
    Because like I told you, I went completely the other way.
    I wanted everything I wanted.
    I wanted attention.
    I wanted everything.
    Even then, without realizing it, I
    guess, I felt like the world had to make up
    to me for what I lost, even though I probably
    couldn't form that thought.
    So she left me with him.
    We had a great time.
    He bought me this.
    He bought me that.
    He took me skating.
    We fell through the ice.
    And of course, he saved me.
    But my mother almost didn't marry him,
    because he let me fall through the ice.
    Well, I remember.
    He fell through the ice too.
    Were you scared?
    No, because I was with him.
    And I knew he would save me.
    Was it deep?
    Yeah, it was deep.
    We went on a lake skating.
    He wanted to teach me how to skate.
    And we went on the lake.
    And the ice broke in the middle of the lake.
    But he got very sick after that.
    But of course, I wasn't scared at all.
    I thought it was a great adventure.
    My dad was very-- he used to ski.
    He used to rescue people when they-- he was very, very
    athletic.
    And he tried to teach me everything, skiing,
    skating, swimming.
    My mother wouldn't let him, because she
    was afraid something would happen to me.
    So I remember when he taught me swimming,
    I was seven years old.
    And he threw me in the pool.
    But he was right there.
    And my mother, who doesn't swim, ran around the pool and scream.
    And she was going to save me.
    And how did you feel when he threw you in the pool?
    I didn't mind he could do anything,
    because I knew he would never let anything happen to me.
    So you really trusted him.
    I trusted him.
    And I loved him.
    And my mother was very smart for leaving me with him,
    because when she came back, I told her
    in detail everything that happened.
    Of course, I told her we fell in the--
    but I loved the man.
    And I loved him till the day he died.
    And I could never ask for a better father.
    In fact, all my life, my brother was his natural son,
    all my life, my dad, as long as he lived,
    I was very special to him.
    He loved little girls.
    And I was very, very special.
    He had patience for me.
    He studied with me.
    He would stay up all night for a test, if I needed to.
    It was incredible.
    And then my mother would holler that he was keeping me awake.
    Actually, he had to go to work the next day.
    And he was awake.
    I was keeping him awake.
    But that's my mother.
    He was just the most wonderful man.
    He wanted to adopt me legally, but my mother
    didn't want to change my name.
    So in every other sense, he was my father.
    But she wouldn't let him change my name.
    Did you know about that at the time?
    About what?
    That he wanted to adopt you and change your name?
    No, not really.
    It was later that you found out.
    Later, I found out.
    And later, it didn't matter.
    He was my dad.
    I was his daughter.
    When he introduced me to someone, he was just beaming.
    This is my daughter.
    This is my--
    So you still didn't know you were Jewish.
    No, I didn't know I was Jewish.
    What had happened, all of a sudden, during the war,
    we had to go to church every Sunday.
    So I was basically brought up Catholic,
    knew all the rituals and everything.
    After the war, without an explanation,
    we weren't going to church anymore.
    So I knew, I don't know how I knew,
    but I knew it was something we didn't talk about
    for some reason.
    But I missed it.
    It was something I grew up with.
    So I started going myself, without telling my mother,
    when I was old enough to leave the apartment and go.
    Which would have been about how old?
    Probably eight, I mean, walk out, because it was safe--
    So that would have been three years since you
    went to Catholic church.
    At least.
    And you still missed it.
    I still missed it.
    And well, it gave me a sense of security,
    a sense of belonging somewhere.
    Because here, I was here, I was there, I was moved here.
    Everybody disappeared in my life.
    To me, that was a constant.
    So that's why I missed it.
    I didn't necessarily miss the rituals,
    but something familiar.
    And one day, I was-- maybe I was older
    than that when I went by myself, and the church
    was across the street.
    So it was not--
    I was 10 years old, I think, when I went to church one day
    and the kids told me, you don't belong here.
    I said, why not?
    Because you're Jewish.
    Well, I didn't believe them, of course.
    I went home.
    And I was just crushed.
    How could I be subhuman, less than a person?
    That's how I grew up knowing that's what Jews were.
    And then my mother had to tell me as much of the story
    as she felt I could understand.
    I did not accept it.
    What did she tell you?
    That I was Jewish.
    And she tried to explain.
    And I didn't want to be Jewish.
    I didn't want to be a piglet.
    Of course, at the age of 10, I knew
    that's not a pig with a tail, but it's
    someone less than human.
    And my mother tried to explain, in terms of child
    could understand, how the world, how the Germans, Poles,
    how the world felt about Jews, what happened
    without frightening me.
    I don't remember what she said, because I
    didn't want to hear it.
    And for the next few years, I hid the fact that I was Jewish.
    I wouldn't admit it to anyone.
    In fact, I probably did not admit it to anyone
    until I was 17 and we moved to Israel.
    So your parents were not observant.
    No one in Poland after the war--
    my mother didn't come from a very religious family,
    neither did my father.
    After the war, there was not a synagogue
    left in Warsaw, because we eventually
    moved back to Warsaw.
    Not a synagogue left in Warsaw.
    And they just weren't observant.
    So no one-- I mean, I remember-- oh, I
    forgot to say that until I found out I was Jewish,
    I had a Christmas tree every year and presents.
    So I guess my parents, instead of telling me right away,
    felt that, I don't know, they wanted to make me happy.
    They wanted to do anything.
    Were you expecting a Christmas tree and presents?
    Sure, during the war, I didn't get presents.
    But after the war, I expected presents,
    because they knew other kids got presents.
    So I wanted presents too.
    And I got it.
    Like I said, I was--
    they were both trying to make up to me and, as a child,
    I was very demanding.
    I wanted this.
    And I wanted that.
    And until I got married and actually had my own children,
    I didn't understand.
    I didn't understand.
    I resented my mother for making me
    come home early enough so she can go to sleep
    without worrying about me.
    And all these things, I thought she didn't respect my privacy.
    I know she would listen in on a phone conversation.
    Or open my letter, or whatever, all these things, as
    a teenager, used to drive me wild.
    But now I understand why.
    To her, there was a threat hanging over me, even
    in peacetime.
    And she had to protect me above all, at all costs,
    even if it meant making me mad, because she picked up
    the phone I was talking to somebody, that sort of thing.
    And I could always play them.
    I mean, if I got sick, all I had to do was sneeze.
    My parents were ready to give me the world, because my mother
    thought I was dying.
    Was your mother overprotective with--
    My brother?
    Yes, but not to the extent.
    Yes, my mother was always overprotective.
    I don't know if she would have been
    without the war, because she was with my brother, too.
    But not the same as with me.
    My brother went away to college.
    They didn't worry about him.
    Me, I couldn't leave for one night
    without them worrying about me.
    They never left me alone.
    They always-- and it wasn't a matter of trust, never.
    It was just a matter of she was so scared that I could
    go during the day somewhere.
    I am sure she never told me that she was uneasy
    until I came home and she saw me safe, till the day she died.
    She died a year and a half ago.
    She was in-- her last year of life,
    she was in a nursing home in San Antonio where I live.
    And she had no short-term memory.
    She had the long-term memory at that point.
    And of course, she was reliving the war.
    And no matter what I said, I realized
    that I'm not going to convince her
    that it's where we're at, that it's the '90s and whatever.
    So after a while, I started, because I
    knew I was upsetting her, I would come and visit her.
    And she would tell me, take off your glasses,
    put on your contacts, put this.
    I said, why?
    So they won't recognize you, and take a different route
    home, and that sort of thing.
    Here she was, she had congestive heart failure, which
    is what she died of, and beginning of Alzheimer,
    but still, even with that still, to the day she died,
    she worried about me.
    That must have been upsetting for you?
    It was.
    That's why I said, everything had changed for me.
    My mother lived in New York after I got married.
    And as much as I love my parents,
    it's a good thing, too, because I'd be completely helpless
    if she lived where I did, because my mother always
    did things for me, and I let her, because it was easier.
    Few years ago, my mother came to visit.
    My children are already grown.
    I've been married, now, 34 years.
    I'm cutting something in the kitchen.
    She came behind me, took the kitchen knife out of my hand,
    and she says, let me do it.
    You'll hurt yourself.
    So in a way, it was good that I wasn't near them, because that
    was the easy to let my mother do everything for me,
    decide for me.
    I couldn't make a decision.
    I'm amazed I made the decision to get married.
    And I had to be away to become independent.
    Did you decide to be away?
    Oh, no, no, no, no it was a complete coincidence.
    I have-- my natural father died on the way to Treblinka,
    I guess--
    we know for a fact, what happened to everybody
    in the family, because those same cousins,
    I mean, the family of my mother's sister
    that we lived near after the war, one of the sisters
    was in that transport with the whole family.
    So she knows what happened to everybody.
    Anyway, I forgot what I was going to say.
    What was I going to say?
    We're talking about something.
    I get off the subject and then I forget.
    I'm trying to think.
    We're talking about, oh, so anyway,
    my natural father's family, two aunts, and a couple of cousins,
    of course, some of the cousins weren't
    born till after the war, survived the war.
    One aunt and her family lived in Mexico from before the war.
    So they were there.
    But there was another aunt who was with her daughter
    in a concentration camp.
    They went, the daughter was 13, she had three boys, also.
    She had a older daughter who was in Mexico.
    But she had three boys.
    So the husband and the three little boys
    died, because they were younger than 10, I think.
    And she and her mother survived.
    And somehow, my mother found them.
    We lived in Paris for a while, my mother found out about them,
    found them.
    And they started writing.
    So when my parents moved to New York from Paris,
    my aunt wanted to meet me.
    And I wanted to meet my family.
    And they lived in San Antonio.
    And I went for a two week visit.
    And I met my husband.
    I wasn't planning on being there.
    So that's how I ended up in San Antonio.
    I didn't do it consciously, certainly not,
    trying to get away from her.
    But there were many times when I wanted to.
    Until, like I said, I started understanding, took me time.
    And I understood.
    Even though I knew all of that, but I still--
    I was very resentful of the being so protective, being--
    I felt like I was suffocating when I was growing up.
    Did your mother talk, as you were growing up,
    about the experiences during the war during the Holocaust?
    Only if I asked her.
    Only if you asked her.
    And when did you start asking her do you think?
    Probably in my teens-- actually, I don't know.
    I probably started asking after I got married.
    Until I got married, I probably didn't want to hear it.
    Because what I know is certainly more recent.
    And it had to be after I got married.
    When I got away from this situation, I wanted to know.
    Before that, all I knew, my parents were different,
    they suffocating me.
    But she didn't say what she had gone through for you.
    Oh never, never, never ever did my mother
    say look what I did for you.
    She use to play the guilt, but not with that.
    Never, but I know.
    She didn't have to tell me.
    I know that she did it for me.
    If I wasn't there, my mother wouldn't have gone.
    She would have stayed with the rest of the family.
    They were very family oriented.
    As a matter of fact, that's why what happened happened,
    because before the war, people were already kind of aware of--
    well, they never realized what would really happen.
    But they knew things weren't safe for the Jews.
    And my mother, and her brother, and his wife,
    and the sisters, and everybody, they wanted to leave Poland.
    But my grandfather didn't want to, because he didn't want to--
    the problem was the people that had something
    to lose didn't want to leave.
    They didn't want to leave their wealth.
    And my grandfather said, we'll survive.
    We'll have enough diamonds.
    We'll survive.
    He was convinced that if you have enough money,
    you'll survive.
    And the children didn't want to leave
    the parents, my grandparents.
    So no one left.
    And then finally, before the--
    in '39, I guess the war was on already, was September '39,
    so maybe it was shortly after that,
    my mother was pregnant with me.
    So it had to be '39, early '40.
    And they decided to finally leave, my mother's parents.
    The other children didn't want to,
    because my father, again, insisted,
    because my mother was pregnant.
    They were going to have a baby.
    They paid off some Russians to get them into Russia.
    They crossed the border.
    The Russians took whatever it is that they paid them,
    whether it was diamond, money, or whatever,
    and turned them over to the Gestapo.
    And they beat them, put them in some--
    that I know from my mother.
    They put them in some stalls for horses,
    or whatever, barn, and just beat them and send them back
    to Warsaw.
    So when they tried, it was too late.
    But at first, they didn't want to, because none of the kids
    wanted to leave the parents.
    And the parents didn't want to go.
    They didn't believe--
    You asked your mother about these things
    after you were married.
    Why do you think it was at that point
    that you started asking her?
    Because as I got older, and even now, I guess,
    when I was a teenager, family wasn't--
    or at least I didn't realize it was, extended family, wasn't as
    important to me as it is now.
    Each year I get older, it's all important to me.
    I feel like I lost out a lot.
    Lost out, I never knew my aunts, my uncles.
    Until my mother died, I didn't know
    what my grandparents looked like, because my mother was not
    allowed to take any pictures.
    Well, she couldn't take any pictures from the ghetto,
    because that could identify her.
    And she had gotten, probably a few years ago,
    from the family in Israel, a few pictures.
    And I had to, by process of elimination,
    figure out who was who.
    Even my mother's wedding picture to my natural father,
    I do have a picture of my natural father,
    because my cousin in San Antonio had it.
    And she had it made for me.
    But other than that, I never saw pictures of anybody else.
    When my mother died, I guess, she just got them.
    And then she got sick, she forgot--
    she didn't forget, she didn't tell me.
    When my brother brought her things,
    because she lived in Seattle before she went to the nursing
    home, we got her out of New York,
    because she was alone in New York.
    And he brought a bunch of boxes with papers.
    And I found some pictures.
    And to me, it was a treasure.
    And by process of elimination, I figured out who was who.
    And now I'm having them made for my brother, too,
    and restored, and all that.
    And there are about six pictures.
    But they're incredible.
    And I didn't find it until after my mother died.
    And so to me, at least, there's some link to the past,
    because--
    And I guess I want to know more and more now, because
    and I know I won't to know anymore.
    I'm sorry I didn't ask more questions,
    because my mother was the last link to the past, so to speak.
    And no one else knows.
    What are some of the questions that you would like to know?
    I don't know, just what the people were really like,
    about her sisters.
    Not that she was wonderful and beautiful,
    I know she was wonderful and beautiful, but some details.
    That I always thought I had time to ask.
    Let's stop here and turn over the tape.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Christine Cohen, conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on January 5, 1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    Tape two, side A. Mrs. Cohen, let's
    go back to you're talking about the kids at church
    knowing you were Jewish and saying bad things about you.
    What was it like in school?
    Did the children at school know you were Jewish
    and say anything about it?
    Yes, they did.
    They knew it, and they said things, all sorts of things.
    I remember the favorite thing was Christ killer,
    and despite that, I had a circle of friends
    who we never discussed--
    I mean, they knew I was Jewish.
    But we never discussed it.
    I never actually would admit to it.
    It was never a discussion.
    I had a lot of friends in spite of that.
    They were not Jewish?
    None of them were Jewish.
    There was not one Jewish child in my whole school
    left in Warsaw.
    There were very few Jews left.
    I was the only one, and like I said,
    I had a few close friends.
    And then when I got older, dating, and all that,
    I never had a problem.
    I was very popular.
    How did the teachers treat you?
    I'm sure their treatment was affected by how they felt,
    but I honestly don't remember.
    Because the thing is I was a very good student,
    so I never had a problem.
    I had straight A's, and I never had a problem.
    So it wasn't a situation, where they
    would give me a lesser grade, just because I was Jewish.
    But I'm sure it entered their minds,
    because the teachers weren't any different than the children.
    That's where the children got it far from,
    from parents, from adults.
    So I interrupted you.
    You said, when you started dating, that seemed to go OK.
    It went OK, because I was popular.
    And the people I dated didn't openly act anti-Semitic,
    but I believe, looking back, I don't
    know how they felt. But the majority of the children
    and teenagers, they were anti-Semitic,
    just like their parents.
    And they would say things, and when I was little, it hurt.
    When I was older, it hurt, too, but they were
    a little more subtle about it.
    How did you deal with it?
    Actually, I didn't.
    I didn't deal with it at all.
    I just was very unhappy and let it go.
    Did you talk to your mother about it?
    No, because at that point, I knew
    I was old enough to know that there was no way
    we could change anything.
    That's how Poland was.
    So you didn't talk to her, and what did that mean to you
    at that time being Jewish?
    Well, I desperately didn't want to be, even at that time.
    What did you think it meant to be Jewish?
    To be somehow less than someone else, to be less.
    I wasn't the same.
    I was trying to be the same, but I wasn't the same.
    I had, basically, less rights.
    I was just less.
    I wasn't a person.
    So it didn't have any other meaning for you,
    or did you have any other understanding of what--
    you mean as in I felt Jewish, or Jewish religion, or whatever,
    no.
    I desperately, even as a teenager,
    even as a 16-year-old, when I understood
    I can't change things, I desperately
    wanted to be Catholic and not Jewish, until we left Poland.
    Until the day we left Poland, I did not want to be Jewish.
    So you left Poland when?
    1957.
    And you were 17.
    Uh huh, and I went to Israel.
    And then I could be Jewish.
    That's not the reason we went to Israel,
    but this was the only place we could
    go in order to leave Poland.
    What had happened, my parents tried since '45
    to leave Poland.
    But my father being an electrical engineer
    was involved in a bunch of government projects,
    and they would let us go.
    But they wouldn't let my father go,
    so they tried to go to Sweden, to Australia.
    They tried to go everywhere just to leave Poland.
    They would not let him go, because they needed him.
    So they would give us a visa for the three of us,
    and, of course, we didn't want to leave without him.
    So finally, in '57, they still didn't want to let him go.
    I don't exactly remember.
    But they said that the only place
    you can go to leave Poland is to Israel, if you're Jewish,
    and that's it.
    My parents didn't want to go to Israel.
    They wanted to come to the United States anywhere,
    but out of Poland.
    But they said, that's where you can go, and my father--
    I don't know.
    They bribed somebody or something.
    My father got out too, and we moved to Israel.
    And we lived there for five years,
    and finally, I was the same as everybody else.
    And I got over that feeling of trying
    to hide the fact as if I'm not worthy of something,
    or I don't know, like I was less than a person.
    Going to Israel actually helped me.
    After that, after we moved out of Israel,
    I have no problem with being Jewish other than the fact
    that I feel deprived of my childhood, my family,
    and everything that everybody has.
    And even after the war, I feel that intense--
    my mother was very intense.
    She was so overprotective.
    Everything was so intense, so I even
    feel that my mother died early because of that.
    She still was a young woman.
    She had so many problems.
    She had a very high blood pressure,
    and that was since the war.
    She didn't take care of herself, and she
    developed congestive heart failure and died.
    And all of it was connected with the war,
    but the biggest tragedy with her is she couldn't hear.
    In the '50s, all of a sudden, she went to the theater
    and lost her hearing.
    And it was all, again, connected to the war
    as there were some nerves paralyzed or whatever.
    This was from the war, and she wore a hearing aid.
    She could hear, but not very well.
    And that affected my life, but I feel
    that's a direct result of the war.
    Everything that has happened to me
    is a direct result of the war.
    I tried not to be overprotective with my children.
    I tried very hard to stop myself.
    I'm beginning to be almost like my mother, so I stopped myself.
    Because I wasn't.
    Everything I do, everything is intense.
    With me, I'm never truly relaxed,
    even I could be somewhere having fun.
    But it's like someone--
    I'm standing outside of myself, observing myself.
    Like, oh, you're having fun.
    Something bad is going to happen, that sort of thing,
    and I'm never--
    people let themselves go.
    They truly enjoy life or enjoy something.
    I'm enjoying it, but observing myself enjoying it.
    I don't know how else to explain it.
    I've never truly, truly relaxed.
    A little thing, like I love dogs, a lot of people
    love dogs.
    But my feeling about dogs, a psychiatrist friend of ours
    told me one time that the reason I feel the way I do
    is because I identified with the dogs.
    And this is true.
    We can be driving down the street.
    I know my husband likes to joke of it.
    I see a dog on the side of the road,
    and I just go into hysterics.
    And my husband says, don't worry.
    It's a person.
    I mean, it's a joke, but, of course, [INAUDIBLE]..
    I see a homeless dog.
    My whole day, I can't stop thinking about it.
    A lot of people love dogs, but this is different.
    I really think I identify myself with them
    as helpless creatures that someone throws out,
    abuses, uses as property, and I guess that's really
    what I brought from the war.
    I really think that, and I think, if things go well,
    something's going to happen.
    And it's not that I walk around unhappy.
    I know how to have fun.
    I have a lot of friends, and I do fun things.
    What I do, I'm a travel agent.
    I enjoy it tremendously.
    I love traveling.
    I love dancing.
    I love all that.
    But I don't know why I can't just be myself without,
    every time, stepping outside of myself and looking at myself,
    like, what are you doing having fun?
    You're having fun now.
    Wait, that sort of thing.
    So you're always fearful that it won't last
    or that something will happen to you.
    Mhmm.
    My husband, when we first got married
    and he was five minutes late, I didn't think the traffic.
    I thought he's laying in a ditch somewhere.
    Same thing with my children.
    They were always very, very good about calling,
    if they were late, once they started driving,
    because they knew how I felt.
    I would never think they were irresponsible, or they forgot.
    Time got away from them.
    I would think they were dead.
    What about when they were little children?
    I was overprotective then, because then they allowed me.
    When they got older, they didn't.
    Were you able to stay home with them?
    Yes, I did.
    That's what I chose.
    So you didn't have to work?
    No, I didn't have--
    I don't have to work now either.
    But now, I want to.
    I didn't, and I don't want full time anyway.
    I didn't have to work, and I didn't want to.
    I wanted to be with them, and I was overprotective
    as I look back at it.
    My son who's actually-- you know, he was never
    a follower, even as a baby.
    He was more of a leader.
    He marches to his own drummer.
    If the whole world said, do such and such,
    if he feels it's not right for him, he won't do it.
    He was always an individual.
    I remember when he was a little boy,
    and I used to bring him to playgroups, or birthday
    parties, or whatever.
    All the children were playing together,
    and these could be kids he grew up with, he knew very well.
    He would go off and play by himself.
    He was happy.
    He amused himself, but I used to push.
    I would say, Steve, go with the other children,
    go with the other children, until he was much older.
    And a very close friend of mine told me.
    She says, leave him alone.
    He will do it when he's ready.
    Don't push him, but that's what I was doing.
    And I try to catch myself.
    Since then, I try to catch myself when I was doing that.
    He was perfectly happy to be by himself,
    but I didn't want him to be by myself.
    I wanted him to be with other children,
    and I was always-- when the kids first
    started playing on the street, when they were old enough,
    I was there.
    The other mothers weren't, which in turn made the kids
    the laughing stock.
    And that wasn't good.
    Little things like that.
    But every time I did something like that,
    I thought of what my mother did, and I tried not to do it.
    I said, I'll never do that.
    And I'm trying.
    How was your mother with your children?
    Oh, she adored them, but she was just as overprotective of them.
    I mean, if she didn't--
    she would be in the house.
    Let's see.
    They were two and three.
    They were playing in their room.
    She didn't see them.
    She went into panic.
    I remember I went to my brother's wedding.
    My daughter was 18.
    They had a wedding in Maine.
    His in-laws have a summer home there
    on a lake, and everybody rented houses around there.
    And that's where the wedding was, and one was in this house.
    One in this after the wedding.
    Let's see.
    We went across the lake to visit somebody,
    and my daughter went with us.
    She was 18, and my mother was with my brother somewhere.
    She kept running into the woods.
    She was panicked, because she couldn't find my daughter.
    She was with us.
    She was perfectly safe, and they tried to tell her.
    But she was just panicking, because she thought
    something happened to her.
    She was just with my children.
    Is your husband Jewish?
    Mhmm.
    And how does he deal with the children
    with your overprotectiveness?
    I guess he balances it, and he points it out to me gladly.
    How has the war affected you as far
    as the way you view national events or international events,
    such as Bosnia?
    Did you have any reactions to that?
    I do, but not the kind that you would expect, that even
    I would expect, like feeling some kind of bond with them.
    Whatever.
    I don't, and the thing is maybe it's not a very nice thing
    to say.
    But when things happen all over the world,
    and I realized, today, with the media and everything.
    Everybody knows about everything,
    but I'm also convinced the world knows that everybody knew--
    maybe not to what extent.
    But everybody knew the Jews were being killed in Europe,
    and no one lifted a hand.
    And it's terrible, and selfish, and cold as it sounds.
    Of course, I wouldn't want anything
    to happen to people anywhere.
    But I'm almost becoming one of those people,
    like they didn't help me.
    Why should I be concerned about someone else?
    Which is not the feeling I should have.
    I know, and I feel guilty about it.
    It's not that I'm with that sympathy, but not enough
    to do something about it.
    Because I feel we were betrayed.
    It's not going to--
    I feel so bitter about what happened.
    I have pictures of my family, the ones that I did find,
    in my bedroom.
    Every morning, I wake up, and I look at my family,
    the few pictures I have.
    And I feel like they took them away from me.
    I never got to know them, like I know
    there were millions of people in that situation.
    But I feel almost like I'm the only one, like my grief is
    more than anybody else's grief.
    And the strange thing is, again, when I was growing up,
    when I was a teenager, I didn't think about all these things.
    I really didn't.
    I knew that was my way of life.
    I didn't have family.
    So what?
    When you were five, you had pretty strong feelings
    about the little German boy.
    But I guess then I buried it.
    And does it come out now?
    That's funny you should ask.
    Isn't it?
    I used to-- and now, they're not close friends.
    Not because they're German.
    I used to have my closest friend for years since I got married.
    It was a girl from Germany, a German girl.
    The only problem we ever had--
    we lived next door to each other.
    The kids grew up together.
    In fact, she was the one that told me I was pushing my son.
    Did she have a German accent?
    Yes, oh yes, she came when I came
    from-- she came from Germany.
    She had a German accent.
    Her name is [? Broonie, ?] Brunhilde.
    She was married to an American GI.
    She came in '63, I guess, and we met in '64.
    Her baby was a few months old, and she was my next door
    neighbor in an apartment.
    I had no children.
    We met, and both of us were learning how to speak English.
    We were learning everything.
    We sort of hung together, and we became very good friends.
    And the fact that she was German didn't bother me at all.
    We could talk about anything.
    We tried to stay away from the war subject,
    although, she had told me.
    The one time that it really hit me was--
    a lot of times, we looked through pictures and things.
    And there was her father in an SS uniform.
    That really hit me.
    I know her mother.
    I knew her sister.
    I was very close.
    My children call her mother Alma, which
    is a grandmother in German.
    Because she's a lovely woman.
    My friend told me that her father
    was in the SS, that he was the meanest, most twisted person
    in the world.
    She said it's a terrible thing to say.
    She was a little girl when he died,
    but she said she was happy when he died.
    She had a sister with whom I was very, very close to.
    She since died of cancer.
    Her sister was-- although, her sister was maybe 10,
    she was eight.
    When their father died, he was in the Russian prison,
    and came back home, and died, whatever.
    She said that at the table, she just
    remembers from a child's point of view.
    She doesn't know what he did, what he didn't do.
    From a child's point of view, she
    said they would sit down at the table for dinner,
    and one of them would say, pass the salt.
    And the father would slap them, because children are not
    supposed to speak, unless spoken to.
    She used to say he ran that house, like an SS man.
    She hated him.
    She said, it's a terrible thing to say,
    but I'm glad my father is dead.
    So I knew her feelings about it, and lately, as a matter
    of fact, we talk about it more.
    Her mother was just a housewife who went along
    with the husband on whatever.
    But occasionally, things bothered me,
    like her mother is very wealthy now.
    I don't know if she was wealthy before the war.
    Very, very wealthy.
    She owns a lot of property.
    She has a restaurant.
    She has all kinds of things, and I'm thinking to myself.
    And her mother is innocent in all that.
    She doesn't know.
    She was a housewife.
    Her husband probably abused her.
    From what I gathered, her husband was just awful.
    Everybody was afraid of him.
    I wonder, if he gathered all that wealth,
    if he got it from the Jews.
    I couldn't help, but wonder about it.
    But still, I love my friend, and I love it till today.
    We're not as close for another reason now.
    We're still close.
    I mean, if I really needed something,
    she would be there for me, and I would be there for her.
    And her mother is wonderful.
    She comes to visit all the time, but there's
    this barrier between us that, just recently--
    the reason were not as close anymore is
    she divorced and married a man I really don't like to be around.
    So I see her during the day, but we're not as close
    as we used to be.
    And it has nothing to do with her being German.
    It has to do with her husband, and I love her daughters.
    They're like my daughters.
    They're always there for me.
    I'm there for them.
    I mean, the kids grew up together.
    When my mother died--
    well, first of all, my mother loved her too.
    Even my mother, because she was my best friend,
    my mother knew her well.
    She loved my mother.
    My mother loved her, and when we moved my mother to the nursing
    home, though, she came to see her.
    And my mother, she was one of the few people
    my mother remembered actually.
    My mother loved her without reservations, even
    with all of that.
    My mother really was a very fair person.
    When my mother died, more of it came out,
    because my brother wrote.
    Actually, he did it for the unveiling.
    My brother is a poet, so he wrote something
    about the Holocaust and all that.
    I remember, at the funeral, of course, she cried,
    because it was my mother.
    But when they went to the unveiling, she cried.
    And then afterwards, she told me,
    she realized the extent of what happened,
    but she never felt it so personally, until she heard.
    Because they read part of it, and, of course,
    I gave her the booklet.
    So she read it.
    She couldn't put it down, and this is the first time,
    I think, we talked about, actually, what happened.
    Because up until then, it was sort of taboo.
    And how was it talking with her about that?
    It was OK.
    It was OK, because I don't feel any different
    than my mother did.
    I love her.
    She's a wonderful, wonderful friend.
    The only reason we--
    you know, you change.
    You grow.
    You sort of grow apart, but it has nothing
    to do with her being German.
    If she needed anything, I would be there.
    So what about the country Germany?
    Do you have any feelings about that?
    Yes, I do, very strong.
    Years ago, we went to Israel with our kids.
    My son was 13.
    My daughter was 11, and again, this friend of mine,
    [? Broonie, ?] her kids were the same age.
    It was two girls, and they grew up, like brothers and sisters.
    They were going to visit her mother in Germany
    with her first husband, so they suggested
    her mother wanted us to come.
    So after Israel, we went to Germany for a week.
    I love her mother.
    I loved being there.
    They've got a restaurant.
    They've got a bowling alley.
    There was a lot of excitement.
    Everything was great, but we were driving.
    We rented a car, and her husband, who was in the army,
    knew his way around.
    Everywhere we stopped, people were so nice to us,
    asking directions or whatever.
    Well, she spoke German, so they were very nice, very friendly
    with the little flowers in the windows.
    And everything was perfect and clean.
    And I'm thinking, I wonder if this is the person who
    person who killed my father.
    I wonder if--
    I could wait.
    As much fun as we had, I couldn't
    wait for the week to be over.
    When I came home, I told my husband,
    I never ever want to go to Germany.
    Not that I blame everybody, not that I blame the country.
    But why should I wonder, this person walking around,
    what did he do to my family, that sort of thing?
    So I don't ever want to go there again.
    Now, something I cannot tell her.
    Have you gone back to Poland?
    Yes, one time, we went.
    It was just one day on a cruise with the kids,
    and we stopped for one day.
    Then I went.
    There was a travel agent trip for, I
    think, I went for about eight days, 10 days, and I went.
    There were 22 travel agents from around the country
    and was not for spouses, just the travel agents.
    And we went.
    We were in Warsaw.
    I went back to where I lived in Warsaw.
    My mother gave me the address, you know,
    where we lived after the war.
    We went to the one synagogue that was still there that
    was rebuilt. I mean, we.
    There was another lady that was Jewish in the whole group,
    but she was born in Houston.
    But she was the only one, you know,
    explained, that could, in some way, understand how I felt.
    So she went with me.
    We just got friendly.
    I didn't know her, until we got on the trip.
    Everybody else there were travel agents,
    but they all had ties to Poland.
    Because they were all descendants of Polish people,
    not Jewish Polish, and I am saying it for a reason.
    Anyway, we went to Warsaw.
    We went to Krakow, where my father was from,
    and, of course, I went to all the places that I went to.
    I have a picture of the hospital, where I was born,
    still standing.
    Not functioning as a hospital, but still standing.
    I knew there was only one, and I knew where the ghetto was.
    Well, they took us around the former ghetto
    to show us the monument and all that.
    Anyway, we went all over Poland.
    I love being in Poland, because after all,
    that's where I was born.
    I like being able to speak Polish fluently,
    and this was right after the changes occurred.
    And people were just, oh, they couldn't get enough Americans,
    and then I spoke Polish.
    So they are were telling me everything.
    We went to Auschwitz on one of the excursions,
    and I knew it would be very tough for me.
    But I needed to do it, even though my family
    wasn't in Auschwitz.
    They were in Treblinka, but there's no difference.
    Same thing.
    It was very difficult for me.
    After that, I felt like I had worked
    in the mines for 20 hours.
    I was physically, emotionally drained.
    I had to go through it.
    It was a dark, dingy, rainy day, and I
    remember one of the agents remarking,
    oh, it's so depressing with the rain.
    And I'm thinking to myself, and if it was sunny,
    would it be less depressing?
    But they couldn't feel the way I felt.
    I walked through the barracks, walked through everything.
    I tried to feel like--
    I try to be one of them, not me.
    Otherwise, I couldn't.
    I had to be detached.
    I wasn't even thinking.
    I couldn't think.
    I just went, just like all of them.
    Otherwise, I couldn't handle it.
    We went to the crematoria, and I guess maybe it
    was to ease the tension.
    Or maybe that's typical, even of Americans of Polish descent.
    They started joking there, and like I said,
    there was another Jewish lady.
    But she didn't go through all that,
    and she didn't say anything.
    One young man from Philadelphia, who was not Jewish, finally,
    spoke up, a very sensitive, young man and told them that--
    because they all knew about me.
    I told him, because on a bus going there,
    we almost had a fight with one agent, which
    is about the whole thing.
    So he told them that they were being
    very insensitive to whatever, because they were laughing.
    They were making jokes about the crematoria, about the ovens.
    Now, this is American agents, and they stopped.
    But on the way there, one of the agents from Miami--
    again, all these people have grandparents
    from Poland or whatever.
    They all had Polish ties on that trip.
    On the way there, we were talking.
    Oh, as soon as we left the Auschwitz and were on a bus
    going back to wherever we were going,
    I see on the side of an apartment building, graffiti.
    And there was a hangman's noose, and hang all the Jews.
    That's what I see when I leave in today's Poland.
    It kind of cured me of wanting to go back.
    Anyway, on the way there, one of the agents
    started to say that in Auschwitz, a lot of Poles died,
    and this, and that.
    And I said, yes, we got into a discussion.
    She says, well, they died.
    I don't remember.
    I had one, but I said something right or wrong.
    They died for a cause.
    They were political prisoners, which they were.
    They stood for something.
    I said it's all wrong.
    It's inhumane, but they stood for something.
    I said, what did the Jews stand for other than being Jewish?
    They died, because they were Jewish.
    And we really got into it.
    Finally, I figured I'm not going to enlighten her,
    so I gave it up.
    But that was the feeling, so I want to go back to Poland.
    Because I love the country, and I'm not
    going to make friends with everybody there anyway.
    So I don't care.
    But to Germany, I can't go, because everybody
    that's the right age-- and I'm not talking about the younger
    people.
    But I see someone in their 70s or older,
    and I think they killed my father.
    They killed my grandfather.
    Maybe they're the ones, and I can't handle it.
    What was it like for you going back to Israel?
    I lived there.
    What do you mean back?
    No, you said you went back.
    Oh, that's right.
    I went back to Israel.
    Fun.
    I thought of it.
    See, when I lived in Israel, I did not want to leave Israel.
    I was very happy there, but my parents always
    wanted to come to the United States.
    So the only way they could do it is go to France
    and wait for a visa or something.
    So we moved to Paris, and I didn't want to leave Israel.
    Well, when I was in Paris, I didn't want to leave.
    I had even more fun, and then we left.
    So in Israel, it was just kind of coming home, again,
    but I treated it more as fun and more showing my children
    their heritage.
    But I didn't have any special feelings,
    like I would want to go and live there.
    Because I wouldn't, but I like the country.
    I like going there.
    I guess getting back to this business
    of hiding that I was Jewish, I almost
    feel like Israel liberated me.
    I didn't have to be someone else,
    but it took me many, many years to feel comfortable, confident.
    There were times, and I'm talking when I was 18, 19, 20.
    I always felt comfortable with men,
    because I was very attractive.
    I was very popular.
    I walked into the room.
    Men looked, but I never felt comfortable.
    So I felt comfortable about my looks,
    but I never felt comfortable about anything else.
    Or confident rather, and there could be a group of people.
    They were talking about something as silly as a movie,
    and I always felt that I didn't measure up.
    I didn't know.
    What if I say something wrong?
    What if it doesn't come out right?
    That sort of thing, and it took me many years.
    Now, my husband says, I'm very opinionated, the other way.
    Now, I'm not afraid to speak in public.
    I enjoy talking, and I feel good about myself.
    But I still have that--
    I don't know.
    --anxiety in me.
    As much as I try, I tell myself, relax, relax, physically relax.
    I do biofeedback, because I have migraine headaches.
    So that's one of the treatments along with my medication.
    I do take a lot of medication for preventive,
    so I do biofeedback.
    So I relax myself, and I still have that anxiety.
    I can't get rid of it, and like I said,
    it took me many, many years to be confident enough.
    I mean, even 15, 20 years ago, I don't
    think I could talk to someone.
    I remember we were at a restaurant,
    waiting for a table, and a few years ago, someone
    asked if they could wait there.
    And they said then, two minutes later, we
    started talking about traveling, and they said
    they want to go to Germany.
    I take out my card.
    I handed it to him.
    I need, any trip arrangements?
    Call me.
    And he called me, needless to say, and the guy was laughing.
    He said, you know what?
    One hour with a psychiatrist would cure you of your shyness.
    He was being funny, but that's what I mean.
    I would never have done it years ago.
    I'd wait for someone.
    Now, I don't wait for someone.
    And do you think it's the years in Israel that
    helped with that?
    The helped with it.
    The Jewish was OK, and then once I came here,
    I really didn't see that much difference.
    And, of course, in France, they believe live,
    and everybody is equal.
    So once I left Poland, actually, I don't know, if it was Israel,
    if it was France, if it was America.
    All of it together, once I left Poland,
    I was just as good or better than a lot of people.
    That's how I felt, and I don't have those feelings anymore.
    But I don't have feelings of peace, luck.
    Everything is wonderful.
    Enjoy the moment.
    I don't know how to do that.
    So it sounds as though that's more worried about something
    happening to you rather than you're not good enough.
    Oh, no, no, I don't have that anymore.
    Just something happening, taking away
    what I love, because a lot of it was already taken away from me.
    That sort of thing.
    We have to turn over the tape.
    OK.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Christine Cohen.
    Tape two, side B. Mrs. Cohen, you said a little while ago
    that your mother told you more about the period during the war
    when you asked her, which was after you were married.
    What was that like for you, hearing about all of this?
    Well, I almost started reliving it for her.
    It was, like, at that point, I wasn't really thinking
    as much about me as about her, what she had gone through.
    After all, the grandparents, and the aunts,
    and uncles that I lost, I didn't know.
    But she grew up with them.
    She knew them.
    They were her family, what she had gone through,
    and I just kept feeling sorry for my mother at that point.
    That's really mostly what I thought about.
    Now that my mother is gone, I think about me.
    But all that time, what my mother had gone through,
    and it was almost I was obligated to do anything
    she wanted.
    Because she wouldn't have-- not that it was ever implied.
    My mother never ever made me feel, like, you know,
    the saying.
    I carried you, or I saved your life.
    So now, you have to do such and such.
    Never ever, but I felt that way.
    So if she told me to be home at 10:00 when everybody else was
    home at 1:00, I was home at 10:00
    because of what she went through.
    You loaned me a tape of a TV program, where your mother had
    a reunion with her cousin after 44 years of not seeing him.
    On the tape, I thought you seemed
    to be protective of your mother.
    Yes, as we got older, the roles were reversed,
    and I tried very hard, although, my mother
    was very capable almost till the day she died.
    Very capable of taking care of herself,
    but my father died in '77.
    She was left in New York, but, well, she had friends.
    But she had absolutely no family.
    Her hearing was bad, which affected her life greatly.
    And she had to cope with that, and I always felt bad.
    When my father died, I tried to get her to move to San Antonio
    and put deposits on countless apartments.
    And she wanted to, because she didn't want to be alone.
    But at the last minute, she was backed out.
    My husband couldn't understand it, but I did.
    After what she went through, she could not depend on anybody.
    To her, it was frightening, even if it meant depending on me.
    She didn't drive.
    In San Antonio, the only way you get around is driving.
    In New York City, she had friends.
    She could pick up.
    She could get on a bus, on the subway,
    go wherever she wanted to.
    She could take care of herself.
    She didn't have to depend.
    Had she moved, she would depend on me for everything,
    and she couldn't.
    To her, it was frightening, so I always
    felt bad that she was there all by herself.
    And there was nothing I could do.
    And I guess that's why I felt protective towards her,
    like I needed to protect her.
    Because, at that point, she had such horrible experiences.
    She needed someone to protect her, to take care of her.
    And I guess, as I grew more confident in myself,
    I felt like I could be protecting her,
    where before, I needed it.
    Was her English fluent?
    No, because of the--
    fluent enough to, where, if she read books,
    she could understand everything.
    My mother spoke six languages.
    But because of her hearing, it wasn't fluent,
    because she didn't hear the words clearly.
    But her hearing impairment started when?
    It showed up in the early '50s, but it really started,
    the damage started during the war.
    So when she came to New York, she already
    had difficulty with hearing, and that interfered.
    Yes, even in Israel.
    That interfered with--
    I'm sure after what my mother had gone through,
    she had that feeling of persecution.
    I understand it, and that's what made me feel always bad.
    Because when you came here and people around you
    are talking, first of all, she always
    thought someone was plotting against her,
    and it wasn't paranoia.
    I mean, that's how she lived, and then, all of a sudden,
    she can hear what people are saying.
    She could hear one on one, talking.
    But a whole group of people, she didn't hear,
    and it was very difficult for her.
    If the phone rang and someone talked on the phone,
    if they talked quickly, she couldn't hear or understand.
    So she felt threatened, and all of these things bothered me.
    And all of these things, I attribute to the war.
    It just hurt me to see my mother like that,
    and then to see her dying and going through the war
    all over, again, was just horrible.
    And I guess that's when my feelings really got intense,
    because she re-lived that war.
    She thought Hitler was there, and ever corner, the Germans.
    When I left her in the nursing home,
    it was a nice, Jewish nursing home.
    I was there almost every day.
    When I was leaving, she was afraid that the Germans--
    it broke my heart to leave her.
    But I couldn't do anything else.
    It's as if she-- you know, one time
    is more than enough to live through it.
    But she lived through it twice.
    And since she died, my feeling about the whole thing
    are more and more intense.
    I feel robbed of everything, robbed
    of family, even my mother.
    So you're here in Bethesda, visiting family.
    Yes, as a matter of fact, that's the cousin
    that they met on TV on the show.
    Yes.
    From Richmond.
    His granddaughter was batmitzvah,
    so we all met here for batmitzvah.
    And how was that for you?
    It's wonderful.
    I had gotten even closer to them since my mother
    died, because they're the last link to my mother.
    There's no one left.
    On my father's side, and I'm talking my natural father,
    I have family in San Antonio.
    Not large.
    Most of them died.
    I have cousins.
    My aunt's died since then.
    I'm close to them, but not as close to this family.
    Because my father is almost like a mythical figure to me.
    I never knew him when my mother is real to me.
    She was with me always.
    In fact, my father, Leon, that she married after the war
    had a sister in London.
    She just died a few months ago.
    I was very close to her.
    I used to go visit her.
    So you had another loss.
    Another loss.
    Just a few months ago, she was going on her way to Bridge,
    play Bridge, and fell, hit her head, and died.
    It was a freak accident, but what I'm trying to say,
    that's Leon's sister.
    And I felt much closer to them, because Leon, to me, was real.
    He was my father.
    The other one, as wonderful as he was as I hear,
    it's like reading a story.
    So I guess that's what--
    I mean, I love my family in San Antonio.
    But I don't have the same feeling, and this family,
    they're my mother's family.
    That's all that I have left, so like I said,
    I'm even closer to them than I was before.
    And not only that.
    Growing up, I must have.
    I tried not to, but I must have made my children feel
    like family was all important.
    Because they seem to-- without really saying too much,
    they seem to be missing not having extended
    family, especially my son.
    He's very family oriented, and he really feels the loss.
    My daughter doesn't talk about it, but I'm sure she does too.
    And it must have been the way I was that they picked up on,
    because I certainly didn't tell them, by the way,
    you don't have a great grandfather or something.
    You don't have whatever, but they picked up on that
    because of the way I feel.
    So you have told them?
    As a matter of fact, they were at the--
    when we were in the meeting with the cousin,
    they were in Hollywood, too, with me.
    They were in the audience.
    So they know everything.
    They know.
    They've seen the tape many times.
    They've read what my brother wrote.
    My mother never discussed it with them,
    but they know everything about it.
    In fact, my son is, right now, at the Holocaust Museum.
    Do you talk to other people about it?
    Yes, if they ask me.
    I mean, I don't walk around it, but if they ask me,
    I tell them.
    And is that hard for you, easy for you?
    It's not hard for me at all.
    I feel like, you know, people listen.
    It happened so many years ago.
    They weren't in that situation.
    No one they know was in that situation, so for most people,
    it's hard to imagine that it really happened.
    They know something happened, but I
    think I feel like, if I talk about it, at least, some of it,
    they will believe.
    Because I think the world doesn't want to believe it.
    It's still hard to believe, and as time goes on,
    there are less people to say it.
    So if I say, my mother saw a girl being buried alive,
    maybe they won't believe the whole thing.
    But they will believe that they pull a Jewish girl of the train
    and killed her.
    And it's not that I'm looking for sympathy.
    I just feel like people should know,
    and I have no qualms talking about that.
    Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?
    Well, we were talking about my brother.
    Even though he was born in '48, it affected him greatly,
    because my parents were what life made them.
    And he is a writer.
    He's very sensitive, very intuitive,
    and he feels that he felt it for them.
    He feels it for me that I went through it.
    He's a very, very kind, kind person,
    and he truly feels it almost as if he was there.
    He never had a grandfather, or a grandmother, or anybody either.
    And he feels that loss.
    When do you think he learned about it?
    You said that you asked after you were married.
    Well, he is eight years younger than I am.
    He lived with my parents in New York as a teenager,
    went to school.
    I measured in those years being inquisitive and being a writer.
    I'm sure he asked all the time and more
    questions than I ever did.
    So he probably learned in his teenage years,
    because then he went away to school.
    And after that, he never lived at home anymore,
    so I'm sure, most of it, he found out
    when he was a teenager.
    And it's something that affected him almost as deeply as it
    affected me, even though I lived through it, and he didn't.
    You showed me some poems that he wrote.
    Poems, and he wrote--
    he had a couple of short stories published.
    And now, it's like a booklet.
    It's a book.
    And it tells of the family before the war and the war
    experiences, actually, up until the time my mother died
    and just the family thing.
    And he wrote that, too, and I'm sure he's not finished writing.
    He'll write some more about it.
    Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?
    I can't think of anything, because I
    think I'll be repeating myself.
    It's just that, again, I will be repeating myself.
    It seems like with each day, I live it more and more.
    And it bothers me, because I have a good life.
    I have a wonderful husband, two children.
    I have a lot of friends.
    I live in a city I like.
    I do what I want, and I would like to just enjoy what I have
    and be happy.
    But I can never be completely happy,
    because I can't let go of this whatever
    it is inside that's either the threat that something
    will happen or the regret that something already happened.
    Regret is not maybe a good word, but the pain that something did
    happen.
    And there's no way for me to change it.
    There are times I think to myself, if I only
    had one wish, if I could change things,
    if I could just change that, this
    would be the only thing I'd want to change in my life.
    So it's always with you.
    Always, always.
    I have nightmares at night.
    I didn't, until my mother died.
    Now, I have a recurring nightmare that I'm somewhere,
    and it's not that frightening, like I'm
    in a forest lost with bears.
    I'm in a city somewhere.
    And whether I'm driving, or walking, or whatever,
    I lost my directions.
    And I don't know how to get whether it's
    to a home or the hotel, where I'm at,
    and I can't find my way back.
    Since my mother died, it's a recurring nightmare,
    and I'm always lost, nothing frightening,
    not monsters or anything.
    Just any city, USA, or anywhere else, Pick any city.
    I'm not in San Antonio.
    I'm somewhere else.
    I don't know where I am, and I'm walking to the hotel.
    I just left hotel, and I can't find my way back.
    And I forgot the name of the hotel, or I'm driving back.
    I can't find my way back, and I usually wake up.
    But this is just a recurring nightmare.
    And it's since your mother died?
    Yes.
    Before that?
    Before that, I didn't have it.
    Just since my mother died.
    And that was a year and a half ago?
    She died, this March, will be two years.
    So that's a long time.
    Mhmm, and my husband keeps saying
    I need some grief counseling.
    I probably do, but I keep trying to get myself better on my own.
    But I may have to give in, because it's always
    the city's different.
    The situation is different, but the same is the same.
    And the feeling is the same.
    The feeling is the same.
    How am I going to find my way home,
    but with nothing frightening?
    Like people after me with guns or something,
    nothing like that.
    But enough to wake you up.
    I always wake up, because I never find my way home.
    So I wake up, but I would say, without exaggeration,
    three or four times a week.
    Sometimes, I'm almost afraid to go to sleep,
    because what if I get lost, where there are
    people with guns or something?
    So far, the situation hasn't been threatening.
    I'm just lost, but I don't know.
    But that is really one of the ways
    in which it's coming out now.
    I don't know it.
    It's probably-- I don't know.
    We probably would need a psychiatrist
    to figure that one out, but my mother
    was the one that saved me from all the danger.
    And now, my mother is gone, so who's going to save me now?
    I also notice, over the years, and that's been always
    as long as I remember.
    And I don't remember when it started.
    I don't like loud noises.
    I hate dark rooms, like I hate this room, dark, narrow.
    When I hear a fire engine or an ambulance siren, I cringe.
    I don't know if it has to do with when they had they made
    you go in the cellar when they had grades
    or whatever and the noise.
    But I'm absolutely frightened of it.
    I can see it's an ambulance.
    I can see it's a police car, but I'm still frightened.
    The noise frightens me incredibly.
    Now, is that since your mother died?
    Oh no, that's always.
    Always.
    Always, as long as I remember.
    That has nothing to do with my mother,
    because it doesn't have to be an ambulance.
    It can be a police car chasing somebody.
    The siren is what just makes me panic,
    and I will not-- like I'm not claustrophobic or anything.
    But say, I go to a doctor's office,
    and they all have these little examining rooms.
    I make them leave the door open.
    An elevator doesn't bother me.
    I'm not claustrophobic, but I don't like anything dark,
    dingy, small.
    My house is practically, completely glassed in.
    It's very contemporary, so it goes.
    But that's how I like it, light.
    But even the darkness doesn't bother me as much
    as the sirens.
    Always, sirens, always, and it not just bothers me.
    It scares me.
    Like I said, ambulance, I can see being upset, fire.
    But if a policeman is chasing somebody,
    that shouldn't upset me, but it's the noise.
    Maybe that's what I heard as a little girl.
    Maybe before there was a raid, there were bombs that they had,
    these sirens, and everybody went.
    Because my mother taught me.
    We went to hide in the cellar or wherever
    you hide during that time.
    So I honestly think that has to do with it, you know?
    I don't like anything very loud.
    Like when my kids were growing up,
    you know, they liked the music loud.
    It drove me crazy.
    Not the usual mother crazy, but it really bothered me.
    It scared you.
    It scared me.
    Anything loud.
    I don't like arguments.
    I try to--
    I will do anything to avoid arguments, anything.
    I'll give in.
    You want this?
    Fine, just not to hear arguments, and not
    that I ever--
    I mean, other than, of course, when I said I was little,
    I think I was abused physically in the sense that I was hit.
    Because I have just tremendous fear.
    If someone ever-- no one ever slapped me.
    My parents never laid a hand on me, no one.
    But if someone did, I'd be petrified of any kind
    of physical violence.
    Did you ever spank your children?
    Yeah, but on the bottom.
    Yeah, you were able to do that.
    I was able to do that, but I am absolutely petrified.
    If I confronted someone, I had a fight with someone
    on the street.
    I'd be scared to death that they were going to hit me.
    I wouldn't die from it.
    They could maybe slap me, but I'd be scared to death.
    I'm afraid of any kind of physical pain.
    I was able to hit them on the bottom, but believe me,
    not very hard.
    And I felt worse.
    You know, the saying, I feel worse than you do, was true.
    But my parents never, no matter what I did, of course,
    they never punished me any way.
    My mother would promise me, oh, you're going to be grounded.
    You're going to do this, that.
    Half an hour later, she couldn't stand it,
    and I did what I wanted.
    So they were lucky that I was a good child,
    but they spoiled rotten.
    And I tried not to do that with the kids.
    I mean, once I said, you go to your room,
    I always stop myself from saying, I felt sorry for them.
    I felt that immediately as soon as I said it.
    I said, no.
    So it was hard for you, but you stuck to your guns.
    I did most of the time, we can only be so consistent,
    but it was very hard for me to follow through
    with any kind of-- and I'm not talking
    about spanking or beating, but taking away
    a privilege or whatever.
    Very, very hard, and I'm sure there
    were times when I gave in.
    But I tried very hard not to do what my mother did,
    because I was never disciplined after the war.
    I mean, if I was a bad kid, I could have killed somebody.
    There was no discipline, because I could do no wrong, according
    to both my parents.
    So I don't remember I was dating somebody they didn't approve,
    so I was taking piano lessons.
    And my mother-- it's a long story.
    But anyway, my mother told me I couldn't date him since they
    were going to piano lessons.
    I went out with him.
    I snuck out, and my mother was paying the piano
    teacher for half the year.
    And I never went for a lesson, and the piano teacher
    was taking the money.
    Of course, my mother caught me.
    The promise is I'll never see him, again, and this, and that.
    And I'll never leave the house, whatever.
    A week later, we went to the coast,
    because we always went every summer for three months.
    And he talked his father into bringing him there.
    There he was, and my mother gave in.
    And I forget why she didn't want me to see him.
    He wasn't a bad guy.
    I don't even remember, but my mother never, ever--
    she never went through with her promise
    of denying me something.
    She couldn't.
    And I don't know, if my dad couldn't either,
    or because of her, he didn't.
    But he didn't either.
    So you got pretty much what you wanted.
    Mhmm, and it's a good thing.
    Like I said, it's a good thing I never
    really took advantage of it, but I think
    I grew up a little mixed up.
    Well, it sounds as though this whole experience
    had many, many, many--
    Many.
    --different effects on you.
    Well, if I think, even that alone, you
    know, here, first part of the war,
    I don't know how I was mistreated,
    but I was mistreated.
    Then I go on doing whatever I want.
    There are no boundaries.
    There's none.
    No one tells me, you can do this or that.
    Because I can do anything I want.
    That alone doesn't fill you with confidence,
    and then add to that the noise, the bombs, the hiding,
    the running, family disappearing at the age of two.
    If you see your grandparents every day,
    you kind of know that there's someone there,
    and all of a sudden, they disappear.
    My father, until I was two, he was there.
    So very frightening, and I guess I never resolved any of it.
    And I feel like I never will.
    I never will, because as time goes on, rather than saying,
    OK, enjoy what you have now.
    You've lost the-- I try to tell myself, you've lost a lot.
    You've lost more than most people,
    because you start feeling sorry for myself.
    But then, right now, you have more than most people,
    which is true.
    I do.
    I never had to work.
    My husband is doing very, very well.
    I can have anything I want.
    I choose to be a travel agent, because I enjoy it.
    My children are good children.
    I mean, you know, never gave me trouble.
    I have a lot of friends.
    We have everything.
    I can leave town any time I want to, and I love to travel.
    And I can't fully enjoy it.
    So it's hard--
    It's very hard.
    --to fit all the pieces together.
    It's very hard, and I think part of my migraines.
    That's part of my migraines that I've been to.
    Everybody I go to, a headache clinic,
    they give me preventive medication.
    They tried the biofeedback, which is basically relaxation
    therapy, which helps anything.
    And I still get them.
    My mother had terrible migraines after the war, after the war,
    and I started having migraines when I went to Texas.
    I never had any, until I was 22 when I got married.
    And right before I got married, I had my first migraine,
    and that made me--
    I mean, there were times getting back
    to the friend that's German, she was next door to me.
    When my children were little, if I didn't have her help--
    I usually had help.
    But if I didn't have help, they were little.
    I would wake up, and I wasn't able to function.
    Because I couldn't even stand up.
    I couldn't stand or lie.
    Truly, truly sick, she would take the children for the day
    and take care of them.
    I never had to worry about it.
    She was always there for me, but that's how I used to be.
    Since I started going to the head ache clinic,
    they tried to prevent it as much as possible,
    and I'm able to at least work, do something.
    Because before, I couldn't plan for the next day,
    because I didn't know what was going to happen.
    And I'm firmly convinced it has to do with my being so tense
    all the time.
    Tension will bring on a migraine.
    Sure, so that's another.
    Another physical aspect of it.
    My neck, it's never relaxed.
    No matter what I do, I feel tense, and it hurts.
    I'm always tense.
    I drive.
    I don't like driving.
    Has that always been true that you haven't liked driving?
    Whenever I get a chance that someone else is driving,
    I let them drive.
    I'm always afraid something will happen.
    Not that I'm a bad driver.
    What about traveling?
    Do you worry that something will happen,
    like some people are afraid to fly?
    Oh, no, no, no.
    So you don't worry that something will happen?
    Not that, not when I fly.
    I the only thing I'm worried about is, if I go,
    when the children were younger, I left them at home.
    I worried about them.
    Now, I worry I have two dogs.
    I worry about them.
    Or whoever I leave, like, if I go by myself
    without my husband, a lot of times,
    there is a travel agent deal that I go on,
    and I worry about him too.
    I worry about everybody that's left.
    Not about me.
    I'm ready for an adventure, and nothing scares me really.
    I can go myself around the world.
    That wouldn't bother me, but I worry about the people
    I left behind, people and dogs.
    Is there anything else that you want to tell us?
    I can't think of anything right now.
    I keep harping on that, but it's just like everything
    is all mixed up.
    It sounds melodramatic, but it's like a cross to carry,
    so to speak.
    Everything is a result of what happened,
    and I have to live with it.
    I guess that's why I've been reluctant to go for counseling,
    which is not right.
    I should, because I feel like, what are they going to do?
    Are going to give me my family back?
    Are they going to give me my childhood back?
    They're not, and I realize that's not very bright.
    Because you learn to cope with it, because I'm
    not coping very well.
    On the outside, I am.
    Everybody thinks I'm a lot of fun.
    I go to parties.
    People like me.
    People like to be around me.
    I'm funny.
    I'm this.
    I'm that.
    But on the inside, I'm not that.
    I remember we were talking to someone at the office had
    a baby shower, and one of the girls
    said something about having positive thoughts.
    And she said, well, you know, when you're pregnant,
    how you feel, it will affect the baby if you're very tense
    or whatever.
    It will affect the baby.
    I said, that explains me, and these are people I work with.
    The lady at the [? dance ?] agency
    is a friend of mine for 30 years.
    We're close friends.
    She knows me well.
    She knows my whole history, and they all said--
    I said that explains why I'm the way I am.
    They said, oh, you're a happy person.
    I said, no, I'm not.
    I'm very intense, and I'm very--
    they couldn't believe it.
    Because I don't show it.
    It explains because of your mother's situation
    when she was pregnant with you.
    Well, that's what I related it to, but the people that know me
    well don't see me that way.
    So you hide it well.
    I hide it, which makes it even more difficult.
    It's like working at it.
    Because it's a strain.
    It's a strain for me, but that's what I do.
    Not that I couldn't, but everybody's happy.
    I don't want them not to be, so I hide it.
    And it's like almost leading a double life.
    Here, I am this person that everybody thinks, oh, she's
    got a great life, anything she wants.
    She travels.
    She's this.
    She's that.
    She's got friends, and everybody loves to be around me.
    And here, I'm this other person.
    It's really miserable, because I can't relax for one minute.
    And people don't know that that's what's going on.
    No, and I guess I'm afraid deep down that,
    if they did, that I'm never relaxed,
    people wouldn't want to be around me, like they do now.
    So I show another person to them.
    That is not to say I have a couple of very close friends.
    If I'm upset about something specific, I can talk about it,
    and they're always there for me.
    But they want to help me.
    They want to do something.
    They can't undo the past.
    They want me to be happy, so I'm happy to them.
    So people want to be around me.
    Otherwise, I feel like they never
    want to be around me, which I can understand.
    If I was around someone that's always unhappy,
    I wouldn't want to be around them either.
    I don't want to be around me sometimes.
    And what do you do then?
    Not much.
    I think I usually come up with a trip.
    That usually cures it for a while anyway.
    You can't escape from yourself, but I love trips.
    I love going with my husband, but I actually
    love going by myself.
    Because I guess for the first time in the last 10 years,
    I've sort of become more independent.
    I was always dependent on somebody.
    First, it was my mother.
    Then it was my husband, and then I became independent.
    And I feel adventurous that I can do this by myself,
    that by myself, and I'm not worried about anything.
    And I just get away from everything.
    I forget about worrying about anything when I'm by myself.
    So you feel sometimes more relaxed
    when you're by yourself.
    Yeah, I do when I'm by myself, because I'm myself.
    So I try to do stuff.
    My husband is a CPA.
    So between January-- as a matter of fact,
    that's why he left today.
    January and April 15, he doesn't go anymore.
    So I'll either go by myself, if it's a travel agent thing,
    or I have a very good friend who will go with me.
    We've gone to London, Paris, just to get away.
    Because he can't go.
    Like I said, he's very good.
    He doesn't mind at all, and then this
    is a very, very close friend.
    Another friend, not the German one.
    And if I feel like sulking, I can sulk.
    She doesn't.
    It's fine.
    So you can be yourself with her.
    I can be myself with her.
    That's why I like traveling with her.
    She's not Jewish.
    We spend all the holidays together.
    We go over there for Christmas.
    They come for the Jewish holidays.
    We're like one family, the kids and everything.
    She's really the only one that I can-- she will say--
    and you know what?
    In spite of myself, she usually cheers me up,
    even though I'm determined to be miserable.
    Sometimes, I am.
    How does she cheer you up?
    I don't know.
    She will just-- she's so positive.
    I guess that's what I love about her.
    She's much younger than I am.
    She has an eight-year-old child.
    She's 40 now.
    I call her, sometimes, Pollyanna.
    I don't mean to make fun of her, but she
    has such a positive outlook on everything.
    And she didn't grow up, you know, sheltered and spoiled.
    She had a very hard life.
    She's been married before, very, very hard life.
    But to her, people are wonderful.
    Everybody has some redeeming qualities.
    Every situation has something good in it,
    and it's not preaching.
    She truly believes it.
    Sometimes, I hate to bring her down, but she's incredible.
    In fact, when I get upset, my husband
    will tell me, go over to Elisha, and get some positive
    from her or whatever.
    Because she's just very positive, very devoted
    to her friends, her family.
    There's nothing she wouldn't do for me or I for her.
    But she is completely different than I am in that respect.
    She sees good in everything.
    I guess that's why I'm drawn--
    I'm actually drawn to people like that.
    And like I said, she didn't have an easy life either.
    I mean, nothing like what I had.
    But it wasn't like she grew up pampered,
    and she thinks the world is wonderful.
    She knows the world is not wonderful,
    but she's making it that way.
    And I'd like to be like that.
    We have to turn over the tape.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Christine Cohen conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on January 5, 1997
    in Bethesda, Maryland, tape 3, side A. Mrs. Cohen,
    on the videotape that you loaned to me,
    you were talking about watching war movies and the effect that
    has on you.
    Can you talk about that?
    Yes.
    When I say war movies, I don't mean the Hollywood--
    there are 10 American soldiers and 3,000 Germans,
    and they win.
    I don't mean that sort of Hollywood movie.
    I'm talking about the documentaries
    and the real movies, something like Schindler's List,
    which comes as close to being not Hollywood as can be.
    It all upsets me.
    Everything, I try to see everything on the war
    or read everything about the war.
    And I know I'll be very upset, but it's almost like I cannot
    stop.
    I have to do it.
    It's a very, very strange feeling.
    And then I'm sad for days, but I have to do it.
    How do you feel as you watch it?
    I relate everything to me, I guess.
    I see someone in a concentration camp.
    I think that could very well be my family, I guess.
    And I make it personal.
    I guess, every war film, I kind of make personal.
    And how do you feel after you watch it?
    Very, very badly.
    I try to do something fun, just forget about it,
    but you don't forget.
    But you continue to be drawn to watch--
    Yes, yes.
    --movies even though you know--
    Even though I know--
    --after.
    Uh-huh.
    It's almost like a drug.
    You're drawn to it.
    You know you shouldn't.
    And my husband keeps telling me, don't watch it.
    You will be upset.
    And I tell him I have to.
    And I don't know that he understands, but I have to,
    and I do.
    And it's not just movie, anything, written material.
    Anything, I feel like I need to know.
    So you also read about the war--
    Oh, yes.
    --and about the concentration camps and--
    Yes, yes.
    --about other people's experiences?
    Yes.
    Yes, I do.
    I feel like, the more I know--
    I guess, I think maybe--
    I think it will have a healing effect on me,
    but it doesn't really.
    But I keep thinking, the more I know, the better I'll feel.
    But I don't.
    Do you know any other survivors?
    Or do you talk to other survivors at all?
    Well, my cousin for one in San Antonio.
    But she's very difficult to talk to about it
    because she lives in the past.
    I at least try to make an attempt at being in the future
    or now.
    She lives in the past, and only her experience counts.
    So it's very difficult to talk to her about it.
    So you don't feel that you really have rapport with here?
    Not in that sense.
    In fact, I try to avoid that subject because she just
    falls to pieces.
    So that just makes it worse.
    Yes.
    So I can't talk to her.
    And in San Antonio, there are not that many survivors.
    There are some.
    There's a group out I'll bet you Once a year I see them
    when they have Yom HaShoah where you light the candles in April
    for the 6 million Jews, and you have the service.
    Once a year, I see them.
    They usually have the service at one of the synagogues.
    And I light the candle with the other people.
    And I would venture a guess that there may be,
    in the city of San Antonio, maybe 25 of them left
    at the most.
    So it's not that many people.
    And most of them are of my mother's generation.
    So I wouldn't know them well anyway.
    So is your family observant?
    My family, as in--
    Now.
    --me and--
    Yes.
    My husband-- it's not so much observant as traditional.
    My husband grew up in an orthodox home.
    He got away from it when he went to college.
    And, when I came, because we weren't observant,
    we ended up in a Reform temple with the Reform.
    And I felt I fitted in.
    He never felt he did.
    My children, so we sort of went the middle
    of the road conservative.
    My children were very comfortable there.
    And they grew up.
    My son was bar mitzvahed.
    My daughter didn't want to have a bat mitzvah,
    but she went to Hebrew school and all that.
    And now that they're grown, we're
    back at the orthodox, which doesn't mean a thing to me
    because I am not that--
    I'm observant in a sense, only because I know
    it's important to my family.
    The holidays, once a year, twice a year, I go to the synagogue.
    Your family, you mean your husband?
    My husband and my children and especially my son.
    My son is the one probably that--
    my husband does all that because he grew up with it.
    It's tradition.
    It's what's expected of him.
    I do it because of him because I still--
    the symbols don't mean anything to me.
    None of it means anything to me because I
    didn't grow up with it.
    But I wanted my children to have the Jewish education.
    And my daughter, I'm sure it means something to her.
    But, to my son, it's very, very important, very,
    very, very important.
    I don't mean he's religious and [INAUDIBLE]..
    He may go to the synagogue twice a year, but Jewish symbols,
    Jewish way of life, holidays, whatever means a lot to him.
    In fact, for the last three years, he's been--
    when he's out of school in the summer--
    he's still at the university-- he's
    been a counselor at Camp Young Judaea
    where they really observe the laws and all that.
    But we do it.
    And, like I said, I do it because of the children.
    My husband does it because it's expected of him.
    But you wanted your children to have the education?
    Absolutely.
    Why did you feel so strongly about it?
    Because all of this doesn't mean that much to me
    because I wasn't exposed to it, but I'm thinking,
    well, maybe if I was, it would.
    And also it doesn't mean that Judaism
    doesn't mean much to me.
    It means everything to me because I was Jewish.
    I come from Jews.
    And that's why they're dead.
    And I guess I feel none of the symbols
    are going to bring them--
    with me, it's like one-track mind.
    Everything goes back to the fact that my family is dead.
    We suffered along with everybody else that was Jewish.
    And lighting a candle on Friday night
    is not going to bring them back.
    It's not going to do anything for me.
    That's why it doesn't mean anything to me.
    But I don't want my children to feel that way.
    So you think maybe they will have something--
    They will have something--
    --that you don't.
    --that I don't.
    They should have the opportunity to have that.
    There's no reason for them not to have it
    because I'm bitter about it.
    I'm bitter to the point where I feel like, well,
    if they weren't Jewish, they would be alive.
    So why should I light that candle?
    But I do it because of the children.
    Is it hard for you to do?
    No, no, no, no.
    The traditions, some of them are nice.
    Some of them I think are ridiculous.
    Like, now that we belong to the orthodox synagogue
    with the women sitting here, men sitting
    here, that's ridiculous, but it doesn't bother me
    because I'm not doing it for me.
    I'd be happy never to go to the synagogue.
    I would be just as happy, but I like the tradition.
    I like having the kids come home and family and friends
    for dinner, all that.
    That part of it, I like.
    So it's not hard for me.
    But it's like my husband expects me to truly
    believe, to truly follow, like if we're in the synagogue--
    not that he is that--
    he does it-- my husband does things
    that are expected of him.
    So, when we're at the synagogue, I'm supposed to follow.
    I'm supposed to feel something.
    Well, I don't.
    The only redeeming quality there is is we
    have a wonderful rabbi.
    Even though he's orthodox, he's very, very flexible, I guess,
    for lack of a better word.
    And we can really talk about anything and everything.
    And he's a wonderful man.
    And even the Reform Jews belong to the orthodox
    because of the rabbi.
    So that part is OK.
    But, again, it's almost as if, sometimes, I
    think I wish I wasn't born Jewish,
    even though I'm not hiding the fact that I'm Jewish.
    But, if I wasn't Jewish, I wouldn't have
    had to go through all this.
    And I can't help it, and it kind of spills onto the religion.
    And if you don't grow up with--
    I suppose-- of course, I got away from the church thing,
    but I'll go to a wedding in a church.
    And those symbols still mean more to me.
    Because, in your childhood, you had--
    I don't feel uncomfortable in a church.
    When we belonged to the Reform synagogue,
    my husband didn't want to because there
    was an organ there.
    He says that's like a church.
    I said that's what made me feel comfortable.
    And so religion is another--
    it's almost like it's a casualty of all of that.
    And like I almost resent the whole religion because--
    I mean, when I think about it, you can't blame the religion.
    But it's like, why couldn't I be one of the others?
    And that's basically what I live with every day.
    I'm not saying I think about it 24 hours a day,
    but, when I do think about it, that's what I think.
    Well, you've told us quite a bit.
    Thank you.
    I hope so.
    Yes, you have.
    And it's very important.
    So thank you very much--
    Thank you.
    --for talking with us.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Christine Cohen.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Christine Cohen, born April 27, 1940 in the Warsaw ghetto, describes living in the ghetto until 1942 when they escaped; using forged papers showing that they were Christian; having one brother, born in 1948; being sent alone to live with a farm family; being helped and protected by an aristocratic woman, who had befriended an old German officer while she worked for the underground resistance; living with a series of families and caretakers; living in Walbrzych, Poland; not knowing she was Jewish until she was 10 years old and not admitting to it until she moved to Israel (seven years later) in 1957; visiting Germany and Poland after the war and going to Auschwitz, all of which was very difficult; wanting to stay in Israel but because of her parents, moving to the United States; the bitterness she still feels about having her entire extended family taken from her; the recurring nightmares and physical ailments that are all tension-related; and her current life in San Antonio, TX, where there are only a few survivors of her mother’s generation.
    Interviewee
    Christine Cohen
    Interviewer
    Margaret Garrett
    Date
    interview:  1997 January 05
    Geography
    creation: Bethesda (Md.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (74 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Cohen, Christine, 1940-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Margaret Garrett, a volunteer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch conducted this interview on January 5, 1997 in Bethesda, MD. The interview was transferred to the Archives on January 5, 1997.
    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 08:12:11
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507555

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    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (4)

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    Oral history interview with Ernest Kolben

    Oral History

    Ernest Kolben describes his early life in Vienna, Austria; feeling like an outcast at school; his brother’s arrest and imprisonment in Dachau on Kristallnacht; changing conditions for the Jewish community; being sent to Theresienstadt; living and work conditions in the camp; being moved to Auschwitz in September 1944; volunteering to move to Buchenwald; arriving instead at Kaufering, near Dachau; being force marched to Camp Allach; liberation by American soldiers; his 30 day hospitalization; working for the Counterintelligence Corps to find SS members; returning to Vienna; marrying; immigrating to Montreal; moving to Chicago; and splitting his time between Vienna and the US.

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral History

    Henry Kolber (b. Hirsch Kolber), born June 6, 1923 in Przysietnica, Poland, discusses his early life in Barcice, Poland; moving with his family to Nowy Sacz, Poland after the German invasion; how the Germans shot and killed 15 Jews and selected 100 other Jews, including his father, to be locked up overnight; working as a grave digger with his father after the Aktions; how he was selected by the Judenrat to go to Rabka, Poland; upon arrival he discovered it was a school to train Ukrainian volunteers to become SS; being assigned work to dig a shooting gallery in the mountains where the new recruits would learn to shoot; covering graves and filling them with dirt and antiseptic; the commander, Rosenbaum, whom he testified against in Hamburg, Germany in 1968; his parents’ deaths in Treblinka; being sent to Krakow to build Płaszów concentration camp; being transferred to Auschwitz; marching in December 1944 in the snow for two days then being taken to Buchenwald by train; living in the barracks with Elie Wiesel; being liberated by American troops; moving to Switzerland with the help of the Red Cross; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his marriage and children.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer

    Oral History

    Ruth Greifer (b. Ruth Dahl) discusses her childhood in Geilenkirchen, Germany, and Mastricht, Netherlands; her experiences during the German invasion of the Netherlands; her life in hiding during World War II; her reunion with her parents after World War II; and her life in the United States after 1948

    Oral history interview with Anna Wollner

    Oral History

    Anna Wollner (b. Jakab) discusses her early life in Nagy-Varad, Transylvania (Oradea, Romania); her fiance’s conscription into forced labor; his return and their marriage; being forced into a ghetto; her feelings about wearing the Jewish star; being sent to Auschwitz; being transferred to Stutthof; her friend Suzy, who taught her to sabotage the materials they were working on; being moved to Riga, Latvia by boat; building roads out of Jewish headstones; acts of violence by guards; being marched back to Germany (near Gdansk, Poland); liberation by Russian soldiers; witnessing rapes; returning to Budapest, Hungary; reuniting with her husband; leaving for Munich, Germany after the communists arrived; immigrating to the United States in 1949; divorcing and moving to Israel; returning to the United States; and her feelings about German reparations.

    Oral history interview with Kate Wacz

    Oral History

    Kate Wacz (née Katalin Kadelburger), born in 1932, discusses her childhood in Budapest, Hungary; her father’s death performing forced labor; going to the Jewish gymnasium; the Germans arriving in March 1944; the school closures; moving to the ghetto; anti-Jewish violence from members of the Arrow Cross Party; the Allied bombings in January 1945; living conditions in the ghetto; liberation; readjusting to life after the war; her mother becoming a Swedish citizen; getting passage to Sweden in 1951; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Erwin Forley

    Oral History

    Erwin Forley (b. Feuerstein) discusses his childhood in Košice, Czechoslovakia, (now Slovakia) and Munkacs, Hungary (now Mukacheve, Ukraine); his life in the Munkacs ghetto; his family's deportation to Auschwitz at the hands of Hungarian gendarmes; his work in Budy, a sub camp for farming near Auschwitz; his experiences with Kapos in Auschwitz, some of whom he describes as homosexuals; the evacuation of Auschwitz and liberation by Russian troops; his return to Mukacheve; his reunion with his mother and sister; and the family's life in the United States after 1946.

    Oral history interview with Ernie Marx

    Oral History

    Ernie Marx (né Ernest Ludwig), born in Gelnhausen, Germany on November 8, 1925, discusses his childhood in Gelnhausen and Speyer am Rhein, Germany; his experiences during Kristallnacht; his arrest by the Gestapo and imprisonment in Dachau along with his father in November 1938; his father's work to organize Kindertransports of Jewish children from the Rhein area to France; his travel to France on a Kindertransport; his imprisonment in Gurs concentration camp; his involvement in the Maquis resistance group in France; his reunion with his mother and brother after World War II; and his life in the United States after 1947.

    Oral history interview with Doris Rauch

    Oral History

    Doris Rauch, born August 26, 1920 in Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses her childhood in Brno; the death of her father in 1936; the German invasion of Czechoslovakia; being unable to attend a German-speaking university because she was a Jew; attending a textile school; working in a factory; buying goods on the black market; her deportation to Theresienstadt on a passenger train; volunteering to work planting trees in Bohemia with her mother; returning to Theresienstadt after six weeks; avoiding transports to the East; being put on a transport in September 1942 along with her mother and boyfriend; being taken to Raasiku, Estonia and separated from her mother; being taken to Tallinn, Estonia in December 1942 to clear rubble for the Holzmann construction firm; being taken to a camp in Ereda at the end of 1943; how she and other women stopped menstruating; working in the forest; a romantic relationship between a prisoner and an SS commander; being given a ring by male inmate; contracting hepatitis in Ereda; being taken to Stutthof; how she had written in a diary every day in Estonia; being very sick; arriving at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945; taking another prisoner’s place to work in a factory; finding fliers saying that the Allies were approaching; being taken to the Danish border at the end of April 1945 and turned over to the Danish Red Cross who provided food, care, and new clothing; living in Sweden for two years working as a secretary for the World Jewish Congress; living with two women she met in the camps; moving to the United States in May 1947 and experiencing culture shock; marrying and moving to Chicago, then Pittsburg, and then to Washington D.C.; the effect of her experiences on her religious beliefs; and reparations from Germany.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

    Oral History

    Joseph Elman, born February 5, 1922 in Pruzhany, Poland (present day Belarus), discusses the German and Russian occupations of Pruzhany; his memories of the murder of 11 Jews in Pruzhany by Nazis; being forced into slave labor; the relocation of his family into the ghetto; daily living conditions in the ghetto, which included starvation and crowding; his work in the ghetto’s food department; the liquidation of the ghetto starting in January 1943; his father’s membership in the Judenrat; his father’s suicide; how he and others built a bunker in the ghetto; his contact with a resistance group which was smuggling weapons into the ghetto; his escape from the ghetto with a large group of people during the liquidation; his experience living in the woods as part of a partisan group; forming family bonds with members of the group; liberation by the Russian Army; returning to his home in Pruzhany to find a family living there; living with this family for a period of time; moving to Bialystok, Poland to join his brother; settling in Łódź, Poland; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Gerald Rosenstein

    Oral History

    Gerald Rosenstein (b. Gerhard Rosenstein) describes his early life in Darmstadt, Germany; being attacked and beaten by a schoolmate’s father as a child; immigrating to Amsterdam with his family in May 1940; trying to leave for England after the German occupation; the persecutions Amsterdam’s Jewish community faced; being separated from his family in Westerbork; being sent to Theresienstadt; reuniting with his parents there; living conditions in Theresienstadt; partaking in propaganda for the Red Cross; being deported to Auschwitz with his father; being transferred to Gleiwitz; working conditions in camp; being marched to Blechhammer in January 1945; how he felt at liberation; traveling through Poland, Romania, and Odessa before boarding a Red Cross ship to Paris;

    Oral history interview with Ivan Becker

    Oral History

    Ivan Becker, born in 1929, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his memories of the "hanging priest of Budapest" who killed Jews for refusing conversion to Christianity; the Nazi invasion of Hungary; harsh restrictions on Jews; his father who was sent to Buchenwald; being sent on a death march with his mother from Budapest towards Austria; being separated from his mother and never seeing her again; his life in hiding; his experiences in an unnamed ghetto; his return to Budapest after liberation; his time in a displaced persons camp in Bad Gastein, Austria; his immigration to the United States as a "war orphan" in 1946; and his adjustment to life after the Holocaust and success in business.

    Oral history interview with Romana Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Romana Koplewicz (née Margitte), born April 26, 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her pre-war life in Poland; her parents and sister; her father’s dye factory; her education at a private Jewish school; her law school education at the University of Joseph Pilsudski in Warsaw; the antisemitism she experienced in law school; meeting her husband in 1936; her inability to complete law school due to anti-Jewish legislation; the beginning of the war and ghettoization in Warsaw; working in her father’s factory; her father’s arrest and return in the spring of 1940; the liquidation of the ghetto; her work sewing German uniforms; her escape with her family from numerous selections; the false papers she and her sister acquired in 1943; her work in the ghetto in a manufacturing factory; working as a housekeeper to survive; her time in Otwock Poland working as a chambermaid in summer 1944 at a convent; her escape to Grodzisko Mazovieckie, Poland because the Gestapo were looking for her; her time working for a German in Warsaw; the Warsaw ghetto uprising; the ghetto’s evacuation and her transfer to Piastów, Poland; her survival and return to Warsaw; her reunion with her husband and their marriage; leaving Warsaw for Germany with her husband; her time in Germany with her husband waiting for their visa to the United States; her immigration to the United States in May 1949; her master’s degree in social work; and her two children and her life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Joseph Koplewicz, born December 7, 1915 in Kielce, Poland, describes his pre-war life in Kielce; his parents and siblings; his father’s occupation as a businessman; his education in Kielce and law school education in Warsaw; his family’s religious attitudes; his experiences with antisemitism while attending law school; the beginning of the war; his arrest in Kielce for not wearing a Star of David badge; the ghettoization of Warsaw; performing forced labor in Warsaw; his father’s death due to health complications; his stay with his sister and her husband in a comfortable apartment; his marriage in 1942; being wounded in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; his transfer to Majdanek concentration camp; his transfer to Budzyn labor camp near Krasnik, Poland until February 1944; his transfer to Mielec, Poland where he worked as a draftsman until July 1944; his short time in Wieliczka, Flossenbürg, Litomerice, and Dachau; his transfer to Augsburg, Germany where he worked in airport construction; his time in Kaufering and Nuremburg; a forced march to Landshut, Germany where the SS guards in charge fled; the marchers subsequent scattering; his survival and return to Poland; his reunion with his wife; their decision to leave Poland and immigrate to the United States in 1949; and his post-war life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Irving Schaffer

    Oral History

    Irving Schaffer, born May 26, 1928 in Chust, Czechoslovakia (present day Khust, Ukraine), discusses growing up in an Orthodox family; his early education; a teacher beating him in front of the class in 1943; experiencing antisemitism before the war; his father’s arrest for receiving milk from a neighbor; the deportation of his father and brother to labor camps; his family’s eviction from their home and deportation to the Chust Ghetto; conditions of the ghetto, such as the Jewish leadership; his assignment as a messenger and pass to leave the ghetto; smuggling in bread from outside the ghetto; people being punished for being Hungarian; being transported by train from the ghetto after three weeks; how partisans blew up the train and told prisoners to jump off and escape; arriving at Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; his memories of Dr. Mengele; being separated from the rest of his family at Auschwitz; being sent to Warsaw, Poland after only three days at Auschwitz; working to clean out the Warsaw Ghetto; prisoners escaping from the Warsaw ghetto; being marched out of the ghetto in August 1944; arriving at Kutno on the German and Polish border; being transported by train to Dachau; living in Camp Seven and working in Mühldorf in an ammunition factory; stealing potatoes and bartering with other prisoners; being transported from Dachau; finding a train transporting sugar that had been bombed and eating the hot sugar; being transported to the Landshut camp; working in Landsberg, Germany; a bombing by American planes; being released by the Germans and then chased down and beaten into a coma; waking up in a German hospital; organizations that assisted in reconnecting families, such as UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee; being liberated in Feldmoching, Germany; finding his brother in Chust; how the Russians did not let him leave Chust; escaping across borders into Germany; attending school in Munich, Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with William Klein

    Oral History

    William Klein, born in 1924, discusses growing up in Užhorod, Czechoslovakia (present day Uzhhorod, Ukraine), in a large family; attending Jewish school until the sixth grade, then entering a public high school; the friendliness between Jews and non-Jews in Užhorod; his two older brothers leaving in 1940 for Yugoslavia and Russia with the army; Jews being made to wear the yellow Star of David badge and comply with a curfew beginning in 1942; hearing rumors about Jews being killed in Poland; being forced into the ghetto in January or February 1944; being taken by train to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; last seeing his parents and sister as they went through the selection process at Auschwitz; being advised by a kapo to volunteer for work outside the camp when he had the opportunity; being taken to what had been the Warsaw Ghetto along with his brother and brother-in-law to demolish buildings and clear debris; finding gold pieces in an abandoned house where he was working and hiding them in a belt; prisoners making up songs and singing as they worked; being forced to march to Dachau as the Russians advanced towards Warsaw; witnessing the death of a rabbi he and his brother had helped on the march; staying in Dachau for a few days; volunteering to work at a construction site; being seriously injured on the construction site and being helped by fellow prisoners, including one who was a doctor; escaping with his brother and brother-in-law from a train and hiding in a farmhouse as the Americans liberated the area; reuniting with his surviving family members in Bratislava and Užhorod; living in Sudetenland and then in a series of displaced persons camps in Germany (Wasserburg, Föhrenwald, and Bremerhaven) and applying to move to the United States; having his application delayed after being accused of being a communist; moving to Chicago in 1951; his pride in his Jewish identity; health problems caused by beatings he received during his time as a prisoner; telling his children about his experiences; and his response to the question of why he does not hate.

    Oral history interview with George Pisik

    Oral History

    George Pisik, born May 25, 1925, describes his experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s 15th armored division, 10th infantry battalion; entering Dachau in May 1945 without any prior knowledge of concentration camps; his battalion’s doctor trying to help the prisoners; searching a guard who was subsequently taken by prisoners and killed in the barracks; meeting a 19 year-old female prisoner in Dachau and giving her the mezuzah his grandmother had given him to wear; receiving almost 100 mezuzahs from his family and friends after writing them; giving these mezuzahs to chaplains to distribute and to his fellow soldiers, telling them they were good luck charms; entering Munich and seeing the giant swastika on Munich Stadium, which his commander ordered to be destroyed by tank fire; seeing Germans surrender; conflicts with German civilians; suffering from trench foot and impetigo; returning to the United States expecting to be sent to Japan but staying after the bombing of Hiroshima; after his homecoming, using a swastika flag as a doormat, which drew the attention of the neighborhood and the police when his mother washed it and hung it out to dry; bringing home pistols which his mother took to the army depot to be deactivated; returning to college; his frustration with Holocaust deniers, including a Catholic priest he met in 1950 in Louisiana; the failings of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust; his feelings towards the Germans; his belief that a holocaust could happen again; his level of religious involvement; and the importance of education in preventing another holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rosicka

    Oral History

    Ruth Rosicka, born August 13, 1919 in Nowice, Czechoslovakia (present day Poland), describes her Polish father who was actively pro-Zion; escaping bombing in Bielsko, Poland; escaping through Krakow, Poland and being found by the Russian army; being deported to a camp in Siberia from which she was amnestied in 1941; being drafted by the Czechoslovakian army and working in the medical brigade, where in 1944 she met her husband; being taken to the Carpathian Mountains, to the war front, where they stayed until February 1945; being released from the Army in May 1945 because of her pregnancy; and living in Prague, Czech Republic after the war.

    Oral history interview with Salomon Cohen

    Oral History

    Salomon Cohen, born July 28, 1937 in Athens, Greece, discusses how his family escaped to the south of Greece in February 1943 with the help of partisans; hiding with his family in the mountains for six months; how the partisans obtained food from monasteries in the mountains for his family; using false names while in hiding; traveling to Izmir, Turkey then Syria; being captured by English troops; how the family was taken to British camps in the Gaza Strip; their escape with the help of a Jewish agency; traveling to Ted Aviv, Israel, where they lived from 1944 to 1952; going into the army as a tank fighter; going to Haifa, Israel after leaving the army; getting married and having children; and his visits to Greece.

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

    Suzanne Foldes (b. Zsuzsi Morvai) discusses her childhood in Miskolc, Hungary; her Jewish and Christian schooling; pre-war antisemitism; training as a gymnast but being denied entry into the Olympics because she was Jewish; her father’s conscription into Hungarian forced labor; getting married in 1942 to Paul Berkowitz; terminating a pregnancy; the German occupation of Hungary; being confined to a ghetto; being transported to Auschwitz by cattle car; learning of her mother’s death by gassing; moving to Buchenwald; how she was good at stealing coal; liberation; returning to Budapest after the war; reuniting with her father; learning of her husband’s death; marrying a friend from before the war; immigrating to the United States in 1956; and speaking about her wartime experiences beginning in the 1990s.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Vince

    Oral History

    Tibor Vince, born in 1910, describes his childhood near Budapest, Hungary; his medical studies in Italy; his escape to Cuba at the outbreak of World War II; his immigration to the United States; his work as a physician in the United States Army; his experiences at Dachau shortly after liberation; his medical treatment of Allied prisoners of war; and his life in New York, NY after 1945.

    Oral history interview with Elias Piorko

    Oral History

    Elias Piorko, born on May 15, 1919, discusses his childhood in Zambrów, Poland; his life in a kibbutz near Slonim, Poland (now Belarus); his experiences with forced labor in Russia; being in four different camps; his travels through Europe on the way to Italy after World War II; and his life in the United States after 1950.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Hildesheim

    Oral History

    Benjamin (Beniek) Hildesheim discusses his childhood in Sieradz, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism and Jewish persecution in Sieradz before the Holocaust; his time in the ghettos of Sieradz and Łódź, Poland; his adoption by Chaim Rumkowski; his imprisonment at Auschwitz, Babice/Babitz (a small agricultural camp west of Auschwitz), and Buchenwald concentration camps; his participation in a death march to Theresienstadt, where he remained until liberation; his time in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), immediately after liberation; his immigration to Palestine in the first Aliyah after World War II in 1945; his participation in the Israel-Arab War of 1948 to 1949; and his life in Brazil and the United States after 1962.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Peter Masters (né Peter Arany), born February 5, 1922, in Vienna, Austria, describes his prewar life in Vienna; his Viennese mother and Hungarian father; his escape to Britain after the Anschluss in 1938; his family’s internment as “friendly aliens;” his family’s reclassification as enemy aliens in Britain; his experiences volunteering for special hazardous duty in Britain and being assigned the 3rd Group, 10th Commando, an elite paratroop unit mostly consisting of Jewish or political refugees; his identity being anglicized for his protection; his work to petition for the recognition of Austrians who perished fighting the Nazis; his many family members who perished during the war; and his 1997 book, Striking back: A Jewish commando’s war against the Nazis, which he wrote as a counterpoint to the idea the Jews did not fight back during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Wolke

    Oral History

    Joseph Wolke (Wolkeovich), born July 14, 1919 in Tomashov (Tomaszów Mazowiecki), Poland, discusses his family background and religious upbringing; his father’s successful farm outside the city; the rise of Hitler and antisemitism; racial laws against Jews; being deported during Rosh Hashanah; arriving in Krakow, Poland on a cattle train; his disbelief that the war would last so long; escaping from the Germans and returning to Tomashov by bus; how the farm provided for the family; increases in the deportation of Jews; living in the Tomashov ghetto; smuggling food into the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto on November 1, 1942; the mass burial of Jews in the ghetto for which he was forced to dig graves; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; being transferred on a cattle train to Auschwitz; forced labor digging ditches outside the camp; being relocated to Gross-Rosen camp; the death march from Rosen, which lasted over a week; starvation during the march; liberation by Russian forces; returning home to Poland; meeting his wife and having a child; immigrating to the United States in August 1950; living in Baltimore, MD with his wife’s family; adjusting to American life; creating a business; and learning the fate of his family members in the years following the war.

    Oral history interview with Ionel Ghelman

    Oral History

    Ionel Ghelman, born on March 27, 1929 in Bucharest, Romania, discusses his mother’s death in 1938 and being raised by his maternal aunt; experiencing antisemitism; seeing boys in 1936 practicing to be in the Iron Guard in the future; the German occupation in 1940; the events in January 1941, including pogroms, stores being burned, and Jews being killed; ration cards and how Jews’ ration cards were half of Rumanians’ cards; the Allied bombardments of Bucharest from late 1943 to early 1944; seeing Russian tanks and troops in August 1944; leaving school in 1946 to work in a locomotive factory; rejecting the Communist Youth Party and feeling a connection to Zionist Hashomer Hatzair; going to Bukovina to prepare for kibbutz in Israel; the banning of Zionist organizations in 1949; being a draftsman for oil pipeline company from 1948 to 1950; marrying a Romanian woman in 1956; his children; being expelled from the Communist Party because parents went to Israel; getting visas for Hungary, France, and Germany in 1976; going to New York in April 21, 1977 with the help of HIAS; and settling in Washington and working for Bechtel.

    Oral history interview with Irimia Solomon

    Oral History

    Irimia Solomon, born on November 3, 1924 in Dorohoi, Romania, describes his parents, who were divorced; how he and his mother lived with his grandparents in Falticeni, Romania; his granfather’s farm; the Jewish community in the town and his family not being particularly religious; Jews in Moldovan cities; his education; playing soccer with non-Jewish children; hearing about antisemitism; wanting to go to Palestine; going to school in Bucharest, Romania to learn a trade; his relationship with his father; an uprising in Romania in September 1940; the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier); returning to Falticeni in December 1941; going to Dorohoi; his father being taken away in June 1942; being taken to forced work, unloading rail cards and sweeping; being deported with his mother to Transnistria and conditions during the journey there; having to trade in their Romanian money for Russian rubles; arriving in Sharhorod, Ukraine; being housed in a synagogue for several weeks; staying in a room in a house of a Christian family with other Jews; being in a ghetto, where there was religious life but no cultural life; building roads and sleeping overnight in rail cars outfitted with bunk bed; typhus in Sharhorod and helping to bury the dead; his mother not working and staying indoors; being helped by a cousin’s Christian husband; being taken back to Dorohoi in December 1943; moving from house to house until they could contact relatives; not feeling relief or happiness; his mother being treated as a war widow and being allowed to sell certain items, such as stamps, alcohol, and tobacco; returning to school and going to the polytechnic in 1945; waiting from 1958 to 1972 to get a passport; going to Israel, where his wife did not like the heat; going to Canada, where they settled in Toronto; working as an engineer; and moving to Montreal.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Salus

    Oral History

    Lotte Salus (b. Charlotte Helena Cohen) discusses her childhood living near the Dutch border in Germany; working for a Jewish family; being arrested and pressed into labor after Kristallnacht; being sent to Amsterdam, Netherlands by her father; living with other Jewish teenagers in The Hague, Netherlands; learning her family had been deported to Westerbork; moving to Amsterdam in May 1940; receiving orders to register with the police; being deported to Westerbork; reuniting with her family; daily life in Westerbork; volunteering to go to Theresienstadt with her parents in 1944; her experiences in the camps Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Praust; being taken on a death march in March 1945; liberation by the Russians; sexual violence perpetrated by the Russians; returning to Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949; and marrying and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Irena Kirkland

    Oral History

    Irena Neumann discusses her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); not having a Jewish identity or religious education; evacuating Prague before the Munich Agreement; returning to the city and learning she was Jewish; adapting to restrictions placed on Jews; her feelings about wearing the yellow star; being deported to Theresienstadt with her family; daily life in the camp; contracting encephalitis; being deported to Auschwitz; conditions in camps Auschwitz and Sachsen Chemnitz; returning to Theresienstadt in May 1945; reuniting with her parents; liberation by Russian soldiers; returning to Prague; beginning university; being arrested and released by communists; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Hans Hirsch

    Oral History

    Hans George Hirsch discusses his early life in Stuttgart, Germany; his father’s role as executive director of the German Jewish Community; graduating gymnasium in 1934; prewar antisemitism; the difficulties he experienced attending university and holding a job in Nazi Germany; visiting Palestine in 1937; receiving a visa to leave for the United States in 1937; working on farms in the U.S.; trying to get his parents out of Europe; teaching German prisoners of war farm management from 1943 to 1946; his career trajectory in food administration and policy; and his retirement from foreign agricultural service.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, born January 28, 1911 in the United States, describes his work with the Jewish Welfare Fund in Oklahoma City, OK in the early 1940s; his draft into the military and entering Officer’s Candidate School; being shipped overseas to England, where he worked in preparation for D-Day in June 1944; his recruitment by the Civil Affairs Unit of the Military Government to gather and identify medical supplies left behind on Omaha Beach, France; helping to provide food for the 15,000 survivors of Buchenwald and working with the Red Cross and Joint Distribution Committee; traveling to Bavaria, Germany to work has a health welfare officer; working to reopen schools, hospitals, banks, and other institutions in Germany; maintaining correspondence with his wife in America during the war; returning to the United States after the war and moving to Chicago as an assistant in health planning; and sharing what he had witnessed in Buchenwald after years of being unable to speak about it.

    Oral history interview with Ludwig Jacob

    Oral History

    Ludwig Jacob discusses his early life in Schmalkalden, Germany; being arrested with his parents on Kristallnacht; being imprisoned in Buchenwald for a month; leaving on a Kindertransport to Holland; living in a children’s home; the German invasion; moving to his brother’s home in Amsterdam; the arrest of his brother, who subsequently was imprisoned and died in Mauthausen; receiving a deportation notice; choosing to live under a false identity; moving to Paris, France and working with the underground; sabotaging the German defense organization where he worked; being denounced and arrested; spending time in Fresnes prison before being deported to Drancy; jumping off the train on the way to Buchenwald; rejoining the resistance; working for Americans in Paris; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his marriage and life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Artman

    Oral History

    Barbara Feuerstein Artman, born September 12, 1923 in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her parents Elizabeth and Henry Feuerstein and two younger brothers; her 14 aunts and uncles and 27 first cousins, who all perished in the Holocaust; her family’s move to Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), which in March 1939 was occupied by Hungry; the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944; being forced to live in a ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; her deportation with her family to Auschwitz; conditions in Auschwitz; the treatment of camp guards; being sent to a labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) with her mother; their liberation by the Russians while on a march; walking, at the end of the war, to Krakow; reuniting with one brother; attending medical school but changing her major to chemistry; contacting uncles in United States who arranged for visas and transportation to the US for her, her mother, and her brother; and settling in Forest Hills, NY, where she married another refugee and had one son.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Schonbach

    Oral History

    Fritz (né Frederic) Schonbach, born in 1920, discusses his middle-class childhood in Vienna, Austria; attending private school until Jewish restrictions began in 1938; how life changed with the Nazi annexation of Austria; antisemitism in Austria and the terror campaigns; fleeing to Italy then to England in 1939; his family fleeing to Argentina while he remained in England; his internment in England because of his Austrian background; volunteering for the Australian army; daily life in the army; being discharged in 1946; enrolling in art school after the war; meeting his wife; reuniting with family in Argentina; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and discovering what happened to various family members in the war.

    Oral history interview with Charles Barber

    Oral History

    Charles Barber, born in 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his father, who owned a liquor store; attending a public grade school, where some of the non-Jews wouldn't speak with him; his memories of the first bomb being dropped in Budapest in 1939; his father being drafted into the labor corps of the Hungarian army; his mother’s work as a tailor; being an only child; his father dying after two months in the labor corps; his mother being taken to a camp for eight months in 1943; living with several different people; his mother returning home; his memories of feeling guilty for telling his mother that he was hungry; the Jews being summoned to the courthouse in town and being separated from his mother by the officials; going to live in an orphanage with a Swedish flag out front; the Russian army and their activities in Budapest; his aunt sending him to the Red Cross then a Zionist orphanage in Sagat; returning to Budapest to work in a factory; attending law school but leaving when the revolution began; going to Austria and then the United States with the help of the Red Cross; living with an uncle in the US; becoming an accountant, attending Queensborough Community College and then Bernard Baruch College; working for ABC Transnational Transport; getting married to an Austrian Holocaust survivor; the effects of his Holocaust experience; losing his faith when he lost his parents; visiting Europe; antisemitism in Hungary; wanting to go to Israel; possessing a letter from his mother, which she wrote while she was in Bergen-Belsen, and a picture of his parents (which is in the USHMM Photo Archive); and his other family pictures.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Borsos

    Oral History

    Tibor Borsos, born on March 12, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his highly intellectual Catholic family; his family moving to Debrecen in 1936; having many Jewish friends; how he “looked Jewish” and was sometimes made fun of; his family’s possession of an American flag, National Geographic magazines, and a censored version of Time magazine; his family burning the American flag March 21, 1944 to be safe; his family storing carpets, silver, and jewelry for Jewish friends and hiding them in the university library; his mother being denounced, arrested, and released; his family leaving Debrecen in May 1944; witnessing Jews being rounded up; going to Budapest and living next door to a Swedish protected house; the closing of schools in the fall of 1944; his family going in December 1944 to Halle an der Saale, Germany, where his father taught in a medical school; being drafted into the Hungarian Army in March 1945 and riding on a train for two months to avoid finding his unit; finding his brother on May 8, 1945 in Mitterald; being rounded up by Patton’s troops and sent to Ludwigshafen, Germany; being sent to a POW camp in Heilbronn; going to Gottingen in the British Occupation Zone; sailing to the United States in December 1949 on the USS Harry Taylor; earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Johns Hopkins; researching cancer at NIH; marrying a survivor of Bergen-Belsen; and his feelings about not being officially Jewish.

    Oral history interview with Robert Kertesz

    Oral History

    Robert Kertesz, born in 1933, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; antisemitism in Budapest; his family; his religious upbringing; being stuck in Hungary due to travel restrictions; his father being conscripted into the Hungarian Army; the Hungarian Nazis and Arrow Cross Party members in his neighborhood; the increasing antisemitism and abuse; how the ghetto grew in 1943; finding safe houses for children; escaping from the ghetto after his parent’s deportation; hiding in his Christian aunt’s home; returning to Budapest to escape violence; returning to the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; liberation by the Soviets; looting by the Soviet Army in the city; working as a guide and interpreter for Russians; his parents’ return; living in a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and his life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

    Fred Kahn, born December 19, 1932 in Wiesbaden, Germany, describes being raised until he was six years old by an aunt (Rosa Nassauer) in Wehen, Germany; his older brother, Walter; his Christian friend, Walter Kaltwasser, who protected him from young Nazis; being raised religious by his aunt and uncle; his grandfather dying in 1938; being sent after the Munich Agreement to Aachen, Germany, where he crossed the border and joined his parents and brother in Verviers, Belgium; his father’s successful career as playing bridge; his aunt and uncle being sent to Łódź, Poland; starting school in Belgium; his parents and life in Verviers; going to Liege and Brussels in May 1940 with his family; returning to Verviers; Jews having to register; the small right-wing party, Rexiste, which collaborated with the Nazis; his father being interrogated; getting false identities with the last name Jejeune; being taught Catholic prayers; getting scarlet fever in the spring of 1942; leaving his school after getting in a fight; his principal helping him; going into hiding and the various ways he entertained himself; moving from village to village in 1943; getting a job in 1944, carrying milk; being liberated in September 1944 by the American Army; life when he was in hiding; his mother’s accused of being a German spy and arrested; the Battle of the Bulge; events he heard about involving the underground; factors that helped him survive; developing a sense of humor; and considering Verviers his hometown.

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger (née Hilsinrath), born in 1929, discusses her family and childhood in Bad Kreuznach, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to Paris, France; being homeless; fleeing to Versailles when the Germans invaded; going to Château des Morelles, a home for homeless children; her schooling; getting tickets to the United States from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; her life in the U.S.; her feelings about returning home to Europe; and her life since the war.

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

    Hans Arnold Wangesheim, born in Nuremberg, Germany on July 25, 1924, describes his parents divorcing in 1930; his mother placing him in a very strict Jewish orphanage in Furth; his encounters with Hitler youth; getting passage on a Kindertransport with help of Quakers in 1938; going to Chicago, IL then Milwaukee, WI; running away from a Jewish orphanage and being placed with a family in Janesville, WI; attending a watchmaker’s college; enlisting in 1942 in the Army Air Corps and being a B-17 tail gunner; his training plane crashing in Utah in 1943 and being severely injured; going to OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in Washington in 1944; going in late 1944 to Paris, France then Germany; crossing the Rhine with the 4th Division behind German lines picking up mail from agents; seeing Nuremberg bombed; going back to Furth; going in April 1945 to Dachau to get important political prisoners, including the former French Prime Minister Leon Blum; locating the prisoners in Innsbruck, Austria; his counterintelligence work for de-Nazification and working with Hugh Trevor-Roper to hunt down Wilhelm Zander; being assigned to trace enemy assets including Nazi treasures and Reichsbank gold; his work interrogating Germans, doing anti-Soviet intelligence, and being sent to Czechoslovakia as a contact for Hungarian agents; returning to the US, attending school, and working for the US Treasury; and working for a law firm.

    Oral history interview with Sia Hertsberg

    Oral History

    Sia Hertsberg (née Izrailewitsch), born June 8, 1927 in Riga, Latvia, describes her early family life and schooling; the Jewish community and the state of antisemitism in pre-war Riga; the 1940 Russian invasion; her family’s persecution at the hands of the Russian communists; the 1941 Nazi occupation and implementation of Nazi race laws; the burning of Riga’s synagogues; the help her family received from non-Jewish friends; the establishment and the later liquidation of the Riga ghetto; how a Latvian soldier attempted to rape her; avoiding the Rumbula massacre; working as a seamstress in a Reichskommissariat workshop; her family’s transport to the Kaiserwald concentration camp; how her father saved her sister several times by hiding her amidst the trash or in a pot of soup when the Nazis were looking for young children; the Nazis’ theft of her childhood; the normalcy of discussing death; her family’s transport via ship and cattle car to Stutthof; the typhus epidemic and her work carrying the dead to the crematorium; her mother’s death; her and her sister’s escape from a death march; seeking shelter and being turned away by Polish peasants; liberation by Russian soldiers on March 23, 1945; hospitalization and her sister’s death; her deep depression at losing her family; her hospitalization in Kolomna, Russia; her return to Riga and reunion with her father; falling in love with her future husband; their attempts to illegally immigrate to the United States and her father’s subsequent imprisonment by the Russians; the birth of her two sons; finishing her schooling; her husband’s death; her move to Chicago, Illinois and her post-war life in the United States; and her father’s death on the same day as her sister, thirty years later.

    Oral history interview with Chava Frajhof

    Oral History

    Chava Frajhof (née Geister), born September 20, 1923 in Belzyce, Poland, discusses her family; the German invasion of Poland in 1939; hiding from the Germans; paying the Judenrat to be assigned work in Będzin, Poland; working as a seamstress; being sent to Kraśnik, Poland in 1943; being liberated by the Soviets; fleeing to Lublin, Poland; having a family; going to Frankfurt, Germany then Berlin, Germany; and immigrating to Brazil in 1953 to join her family.

    Oral history interview with Israel Frajhof

    Oral History

    Israel Frajhof, born March 3, 1920 in Krasnik (near Lublin), Poland, describes experiencing violent antisemitism in 1933; the establishment of a ghetto in the fall of 1942; the typhus epidemic and conditions in the ghetto; working outside the ghetto; the deportation of old men, women and children deported to Majdanek and Treblinka in December 1942; trying to become a policeman but being declined permission; doing carpentry work for Germans making furniture; appels, beatings, and sleeping in the synagogue; meeting his future wife Chava Geister, who was in Krasnik camp; the Russians’ arrival in Lublin on July 22,1944; the death march to Germany and escaping into the forest for 10 days; meeting up with Chava and going to Krasnik; going to Lublin; getting married in January 1946; going to Berlin , Germany and being helped by the UNRRA; going to Frankfurt, Germany; going to Brazil in 1953; visiting Majdanek in 1986; and living for his wife and children.

    Oral history interview with Edward Novakoff

    Oral History

    Edward Novakoff, born in 1926 in Boston, Massachusetts, discusses his Ukrainian and Lithuanian immigrant parents; enlisting in the U.S. Army in December 1943; being shipped to Marseilles, France with the 90th Infantry Division; seeing his company wiped out in November 1944; fighting in southern Germany in January 1945; arriving at Flossenbürg in May 1945 and seeing the conditions and the survivors; his transfer to the 26th Regiment, 1st Infantry in August 1945; guarding prisoners for the Nuremburg Trials; having contact with Nuremburg prisoners; returning to the U.S. in December 1945; his life after the war; and helping to create the largest Jewish cemetery in the Boston area.

    Oral history interview with Celia Feldschuh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicole Yancey

    Oral History

    Nicole Yancey (née Guggenheim), born July 26, 1941 in Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, France, describes having one sister, Nanette, born November 1938; being separated from her family when she was two years old and sent to a farm to live in a safe and secure environment; still today calling the farmer and his wife her real grandparents; members of the French Resistance coming in for meals because the farm was close to the demarcation line and there was lots of Resistance activity; her daily routine of working, hiding, and eating; how her relationships were all very harmonious; being moved back to Orléans, France when she was five years old and starting school; the severe personality changes of her parents because of their experiences during the Holocaust; the torment her father experienced because he was not able to save his brothers from being murdered; being sponsored by a French/American agency to attend William and Mary College, where she met her husband; remaining in the Tidewater, VA area; converting to Catholicism because her husband is Catholic as are her children; her position now as Consul for the French Embassy in Norfolk, VA; and her assertion that tragedies like the Holocaust will continue as long as people do not learn to accept each other and their differences.

    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

    Oral History

    Jaffa Munk (née Noemi Donath), born April 10, 1931 IN Ónod, Hungary, describes her father Philippe, who was a Rabbi, and her mother Olga Shick Donath; having one brother, Joseph, and one sister, Esther Judith; living a very normal life with a family that was religious yet open-minded and encouraged academics; the many changes that began in 1942 and 1943; being moved in May 1944 to the ghetto, where her father was put in charge; being sent to Auschwitz; the brutal arrival and her father’s last words to her: “Wherever you go, continue to believe in God;” being marched to Birkenau, which was the very last time she saw her mother; being selected by Mengele in September 1944 to go to Bergen-Belsen and the grim living situation there; the forced evacuation in January 1945 and a subsequent six week death march; escaping to a forest and being liberated May 8, 1945 by Russian soldiers; eventually returning to Budapest, Hungary, where she lived at an Orthodox refugee orphanage facility, which was started by Esther Eckstein with education as the primary goal; going with a Zionist group with 1800 refugees to Palestine on a boat leaving from Bucharest, Romania and the refusal of the British to allow them entry, but finally being allowed to land at Haifa, Palestine; the break-out of war in 1947 and the desperate living conditions during the war; being taken to Tel Aviv, Israel, where there was less danger and where she attended teacher’s seminary; meeting her husband, who was in the Army; the birth of her first son, Gabriel, which was the highlight of her life because it meant continuation of her family; her teaching positions, starting with 1st grade, where students came from 30 different countries; and how her personal strengths are her sense of hope and having a positive outlook.

    Oral history interview with Frances Hirshfeld

    Oral History

    Frances Hirshfeld (née Frieda Miriam Rosenbloom), born in 1918, discusses her family and childhood in Opatów, Poland; moving to Zawiercie, Poland and its local Jewish population; the beginning of the war; her religious life; antisemitism; Kristallnacht; going into hiding in Ukraine and returning to Poland; the Judenrat; adjusting to anti-Jewish laws; moving into the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz in 1943; living conditions in Auschwitz; being moved to Birkenau; contracting typhoid fever and scabies; lack of medical care; bombings near the camp; returning to Auschwitz; hearing about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; working in a munitions factory; being on a death march to Ravensbrück; escaping into a forest; liberation by the Soviets; immigrating to the United States in October 1946; her husband immigrating to the U.S. in 1949; visiting Poland; her feelings about Holocaust deniers; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Moris Gluckman

    Oral History

    Moris Glukman, born in Suceava, Romania in 1924, discusses his childhood; the rise in antisemitism; deportation announcements; his arrival in Bessarabia (in Moldova and Ukraine) with his family and how the peasants took the belongings of the Romanian Jews; travel to Moravia, Czech Republic; living at the mercy of the Romanian Gendarmerie; the spread of typhus and diphtheria during the winter of 1941-1942; how the Ukranian police guarded the village in Moravia; the German entrance into Moravia; building bridges and excavating coal from open mines; his knowledge about events in Bessarabia and Russian positions and the approaching front; working in a Kolkhoz; being liberated by the Russians; his schooling in Bucharest, Romania; and immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Margie Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Margie Rosenthal (née Margit Mary Miedzwinski), born July 19, 1927 in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), describes her prewar childhood; her family’s immigration to the Philippines after the Nazi invasion so that her father could continue in the lumber business; her pleasant life in the Philippines until the Japanese bombing in December 1941 and subsequent invasion; severe changes in their lives in Pasay City as Americans began bombing nearby Manila; the delay in her family’s move to the United States in 1948 as a result of immigration quotas; her life in San Francisco; and her marriage to her husband, Ernie.

    Oral history interview with Emma Mogilensky

    Oral History

    Emma Mogilensky (née Hubert), born May 22, 1923 in Kronheim, Bavaria, describes living in the house that had been built by her great-grandfather; having one brother and one sister; living in a friendly and peaceful community until Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 when antisemitism became so violent that she was sent to Nuremberg, Germany; enrolling in a very strict, all Jewish high school; moving to Augsberg, Germany after her father was released from Dachau; the children’s transport, going to Munich, Germany and being transferred to a boat; finally arriving in London, England, where she and the other children were chosen for English homes such that not one of them would become a public charge; being sent to live with a couple, both physicians, who were extremely helpful; attending school again where English Literature became her best subject; being a Fire Watcher at St. Paul’s Cathedral and joining the British Army when she was 17; antisemitism in the Army; being a cook for 2,000 men; receiving her GED; subsequently attending college on the GI Bill; a trip to Israel with her children after her husband’s death; finding that the cemetery where her grandparents were buried was not desecrated and finding their graves; visiting her foster parents in England every year; and her serious commitment to speaking about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Isaiah Henig

    Oral History

    Isaiah Henig (né Yeshiah Henig), born in 1915, discusses his childhood in Szydlowiec, Poland; his family and the Jewish community; his religious upbringing; the absence of antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes after the German occupation; the outbreak of the war and changes in daily life; being conscripted for forced labor; the creation of the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; working as a laborer in Starachowice, Poland; diseases in the camp; working to build replacement parts for machines; not believing reports about Jewish deaths; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; working in a factory; being moved to other concentration camps, including Mauthausen and Hannover; Allied bombing of the area; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; living conditions in the camp; his job building cannons; liberation by the British; moving to a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1951; his life after the war; and his feelings about what happened.

    Oral history interview with Ida Henig

    Oral History

    Ida Henig (née Markowicz), born in 1924, discusses her family and childhood in Lódź, Poland; Łódź’s Jewish community and economy; not experiencing antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes when the Germans invaded; fleeing to Częstochowa, Poland; working in the ghetto; not believing stories of mass murder; the Jewish police; liberation by the Soviets in January 1945; going to Germany; coming to the United States in the 1950s; the fates of her family members; and her feelings about the Holocaust and war.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

    Marcel Drimer (b. Marceli Drimmer), born in 1934, discusses his childhood in Drohobych, Poland (present day Ukraine); his family; his religious upbringing; life before the war; the Russian occupation; the German invasion in 1941; the looting of Jewish property; the deportations in 1942; moving into the ghetto; the fates of his family members; Ukrainian and German police; the Judenrat; hiding in an attic for a week; escape plans being postponed due to the death of his father; how his female relatives were saved by a woman who was recognized as a righteous gentile; their living conditions while in hiding; liberation by the Soviets; adjusting to life after the war; his education; difficult living conditions in Poland; post-war anti-Semitism; immigrating to the United States in 1961; his family going to Israel; and his feelings about the war, Poland, and anti-Semitism.

    Oral history interview with Michael Silberstein

    Oral History

    Michael Silberstein (né Mieczyslaw Silberstein), born in 1930 in Grudziadz, Poland, discusses his family; life before the war; the arrival of the German Army when he was nine years old; moving to Łódź, Poland; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; being an errand boy and getting arrested in 1942; escaping arrest; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; being sent on a death march in January 1945; arriving in Mauthausen; conditions and life in Mauthausen; liberation by the Americans; reuniting with his family; meeting family in England; immigrating to the United States in1952; being drafted into the U.S. Army; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Joan Schwab

    Oral History

    Joan Schwab (née Nussbaum), born on March 24, 1926, describes living in the Tiergarten area of Berlin, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht and how two men came for her father; being placed on a Children’s Transport to England on May 21, 1939; staying with Norman and Elsie Denham and going to secondary school and Hebrew school; her brother joining her in August 1939; evacuating in September to Chichester; conditions in the home, where she shared a bed with four girls and showered every two weeks; graduating from high school in 1944 and going back to Denhams in London; sleeping in an air raid shelter when V2 rockets attacked; going after the war to the Joint Distribution Committee in Munich, Germany and finding out that her parents perished in Auschwitz and her grandfather died in Theresienstadt; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Erwin Deutscher

    Oral History

    Erwin Deutscher, born on January 28, 1923 in Vienna, Austria, describes being raised with thorough religious training; being in the Zionist Youth group, HaShomer HaDati; how his maternal grandfather had gone to the United States in 1898 to Oklahoma City, OK; his Bar Mitzvah in 1936; hearing about Hitler’s arrival on March 11, 1938; his father’s dairy business closing; his mother being arrested; getting notice that his youth group was going to go to Palestine and meeting Eichmann at the emigration office with his father; conditions getting worse in Vienna; traveling with 25 others by train to Trieste and by boat to Haifa and arriving October 24, 1938; going to Mikveh Israel agricultural school for two years then to Bnai Akiva yeshiva for another two years; working for Haganah and meeting his wife; fighting in the Israeli War of Independence; his father being taken to Dachau after Kristallnacht and then to Buchenwald from June 1939 to January 1940; his parents immigrating to the United States; his life after the war working for a life insurance company; and getting a Ph. D. in Hebrew letters at Hebrew Union College.

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

    George Pick, born in Budapest, Hungary on March 28, 1934, describes his very large extended family; his father losing his job in May 1939 and being sent on labor brigade in September 1940 for three months; seeing German tanks in the streets on March 9, 1944 and the subsequent anti-Jewish laws after including wearing the yellow star and not being allowed to attend school after April; his father having to leave again; being ordered to move to special Jewish houses in the summer of 1944; the air raids in Budapest and the massive bombings on July 2, 1944; his father’s return; he and his mother joining his father in hiding in a uniform factory building in November 1944; the factory being raided December 2, 1944 and bribing their way out; being taken to a Red Cross building and running away; going to the ghetto on December 14, 1944 and his father being in the ghetto police; the siege of Budapest; Wallenberg saving Jews from a massacre in January 1945; liberation; starting school; his Bar Mitzvah in 1947; attending university; going to Austria and then the United States, where his uncle lived; working for the Navy as mechanical engineer and retiring in 1996; his three marriages and not having children; and his commitment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

    Oral History

    Hedi Pope (née Politzer), born March 18, 1920 in Vienna, Austria, describes her prosperous family, which was neither religious nor political; wanting to be a dancer as a child; the increase in anti-Semitism in Vienna; her memories, day-by-day, of Hitler’s invasion of Austria in March 1938; rising fears to speak out about Hitler’s actions; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being sent to Dachau; the difficulty of getting all the documents to go to the United States; immigrating to the U.S. in January 1939; living in Newark, NJ; joining the Refugee Artist’s Group as a dancer; going to Miami University in Ohio and graduating in 1942; having two children; maintaining a dance studio in Alexandria, VA until 1980; and working with the volunteer corps at USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Bella Simon Pasternak

    Oral History

    Bella Simon Pasternak, born in 1928, discusses her liberation from Auschwitz by Russians; walking home to Hungary during the winter; being hospitalized with frostbite and starvation; living in a displaced persons camp in Innsbruck, Austria; immigrating to the United States in 1946; her first impressions of the U.S.; Americans’ disbelief at her experiences; meeting her husband, who was also a survivor; her religious views becoming more orthodox; desiring to immigrate to Israel; coping with the Holocaust many years after it occurred and still experiencing nightmares; and how important her grandchildren are to her.

    Oral history interview with Marion Friedman

    Oral History

    Marion Friedman (b. Traute Marion Julia Georgia Sulimas), born in 1922, discusses her childhood in Hamburg, Germany; being raised with her Christian mother and Jewish father; her parents’ upbringings; celebrating both Christian and Jewish holidays; her brothers’ immigrations to China and the United States; the Aryanization of her father’s bank; her mother’s resourcefulness; receiving a visa along with her mother to go to the U.S.; being sent to the U.S. on her own because her mother decided to stay with her father; learning of her parents’ arrest and deaths; adjusting to life in the U.S.; meeting her husband; returning to Germany long after the war; meeting her German family; and dealing with her losses on a daily basis.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Strassburger, born in 1938, discusses her childhood in a small town near Zakopane, Poland; her father’s arrest and imprisonment in Siberia; being forced into the Tarnow ghetto with her mother and grandmother; watching her grandmother being taken by the Germans; hiding under an assumed Christian identity; being drugged and hidden in a basement during dangerous times; the family who hid her and her mother; believing she was a Catholic; her Catholic schooling; liberation by the Russians; learning she was Jewish after the war; being smuggled out of Poland with her mother; living at a Jewish orphanage with her mother in Germany; learning her father was alive; moving to Italy to be with her father; immigrating to England with her family; immigrating to the United States; adjusting to life as a teenager in the U.S.; her marriage; studying social work in college; her volunteer work; and her family.

    Oral history interview with Jadwiga Dziekonski

    Oral History

    Jadwiga Dziekonski, born in 1919, discusses her family’s emigration from Kiev, Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland in 1921 because of the revolution; her Catholic upbringing; attending public school; following the political situation in Germany; meeting her husband; the German invasion and occupation; her father’s exile in London, England as a member of the Bank of Poland; moving to Warsaw with her husband; her husband’s role in the Home Army; her daughter’s birth in 1943; sheltering two Jewish women in her mother’s apartment; the Polish underground’s participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the Warsaw Uprising; her husband’s arrest and imprisonment in Bergen-Belsen and Gross-Rosen; liberation; readjusting to life after the war; escaping to London through Sweden in 1947; leaving her mother behind; reuniting with her father; immigrating to Detroit in 1951; visiting Poland in 1988 to see her husband’s family; her feelings about being Polish; how she feels about Jewish people and German people; and her two visits to Israel.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

    Oral History

    Ruth Harvey, born in 1928, describes growing up with mixed Jewish and Christian heritage; her childhood in Berlin, Germany; being expelled from public school in 1938; attending a private Jewish school; witnessing the burning of Berlin’s temple during Kristallnacht; hearing Hitler’s speeches over loudspeakers; leaving Germany in 1939 with her mother to meet her father in Cuba; immigrating to New York in 1940 with her parents; growing up in New York City; moving to Washington, DC for a job with the State Department; getting married and having children; having a sense of confusion about her religious identity; why she chose not to visit any concentration camps; and volunteering at the USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Thomas B. Gardiner

    Oral History

    Thomas Brown Gardiner, born on March 26, 1920 in St. Louis County, Missouri, describes being raised by his widowed mother; life during the Depression; working for a house painter as a teen in St. Louis; getting married in 1940; working for a manufacturer that made small parts for the M1 rifle; being drafted in 1944; training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas; being sent to England in the fall of 1944; going to France; being assigned to the 45th Infantry Division; seeing action in the Vosges Mountains and Alsace-Lorraine; participating in the capture of Schaffenburg; going through Nuremberg and Munich; liberating Dachau as a member of L Company in the 157th Infantry Regiment; guarding the camp while waiting for the military police to arrive; billeting in apartment buildings outside of the camp, where the Nazi officers had lived; typhus in the camp and the high death rate of the survivors; speaking with the survivors and being shown the camp by them; going to Munich then Augsburg for a month; being sent to Le Havre, France; returning to the US; working in military camps in Texas until his release; the effect seeing Dachau had on him; and how he feels stronger in his Christian faith.

    Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

    Oral History

    Roberta Jones, born October 15, 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri, discusses growing up during the Great Depression; enlisting as a nurse in the United States Army; being commissioned as a second lieutenant with the 3rd Army and assigned to the 121st Semi-Mobile Evacuation Hospital; traveling by ship to England and helping in a hospital there; traveling to Luxembourg and then into Germany under dangerous conditions; going to Buchenwald; seeing a crematorium, stacked bodies, and starved prisoners still in uniforms; being offered bread by the prisoners; seeing a lampshade made of human skin in the office of a Nazi official; visiting a smaller liberated concentration camp and watching as American soldiers distributed clothing to naked prisoners; traveling with her hospital to a concentration camp near Linz, Austria (possibly Mauthausen); female nurses being kept outside of the camp fence as men worked inside the camp; meeting newly-liberated English prisoners of war who had been captured at the Battle of Dunkirk; returning to the United States and working at McCormack General Hospital in Pasadena, California; the difficulties of severely disfigured patients integrating into the community in Pasadena; marrying her husband; working at Camp Swift in Texas and Camp Polk in Louisiana, and, during the Korean War, in a military hospital in Michigan; encountering Holocaust deniers; and her insistence that her children know everything about her experience so that they can continue to spread the truth about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Hugh Jenkins

    Oral History

    Hugh Jenkins, born December 29, 1914 in Lester, England, describes being the youngest of eight siblings, whose father was a Welsh minister; working before World War II with Quakers and being a conscientious objector even before the war; moving to London, England in 1944 to take part in training at a Quaker institute; being sent to Antwerp, Belgium after the training to do relief work; going to Belsen, Germany on April 22, 1944, soon after the camp had been discovered and the horrific scene; the various response processes at the camp; setting up a hospital, known as the “new camp,” maintaining a first aid station, and finding food; eventually being sent to Poland to be in charge of another camp; how even now he has a sense of desolation in how war is used to settle problems; working as the overseas secretary for the British Friends Relief Service until 1948, when he went to Philadelphia, PA to work with the American Friends Service Committee; and being sent to Washington, DC to be the director of the Foreign Student Service Center.

    Oral history interview with Rene Edgar Tressler

    Oral History

    Rene Edgar Tressler, born April 16, 1927 in Strakonice, Czech Republic, describes his childhood in Strakonice; his parents and brother; escaping to Prague, Czech Republic to live with his grandparents; his brother’s selection to be on the Board of Elders at Theresienstadt; how Theresienstadt was used as a showcase for the Red Cross; his deportation to Auschwitz; his camp number; being moved to Birkenau; his movement to Blechhammer camp; his experiences on a death march in February 1945; his arrival at Buchenwald; reuniting with his parents and brother after the liberation; escaping Czechoslovakia in 1956; immigrating to the United States; and authoring several books.

    Oral history interview with Stefan Wohl

    Oral History

    Stefan Wohl, born February 4, 1934 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the Anschluss in 1938; leaving Vienna through Switzerland to Kraków, Poland; traveling with 14 family members in September 1939 to Jaroslav, Zloczow, and Kolomyja; being captured with his father in November 1939 while trying to cross the border; being released and going to Zloczow; being on a transport for six weeks with his mother, sister, and other relatives in July 1940; arriving in the Yakutsk, Siberia labor camp settlement; leaving in May 1941 by train through Moscow to Lvov where they were reunited with their father; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; going with his sister to a farm in Jaroslav; going to Budapest, Hungary via Monkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine) in the fall 1942; changing their name to Wolinski and pretending to be Catholic; going to Leanyfalu in 1943 and staying for a year; the family going to Seged (Szeged), Hungary; being captured and jailed; being released and staying with an uncle in Budapest; his father’s illness; being liberated by Russians in January 1945; going back to Poland in the spring 1945; going to Sweden in the summer 1946; sailing to Brazil in October 1946; attending school and a university in the United States; and being a film producer in Brazil.

    Oral history interview with Yehuda Adam

    Oral History

    Yehuda Adam (né George Strn), born on July 3, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses being raised in a reform Jewish household; being put into forced labor in Budapest; receiving a Schutzpasse and his family working for Raoul Wallenberg; being liberated by the Soviets in January 15, 1945; going to Palestine in 1949; going to the United States in 1962; and living in both Israel and the US.

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

    Arlette de Long, born June 15, 1937 in Brocourt, Somme, France; describes her parents’ medical practice; her early love of the church and uncertainly whether her family was Jewish; villagers’ willingness to maintain friendship with the family because her father was the only physician in the village; having no memory of life before the war; the liberation of France; moving to a suburb of Paris, where she attended Protestant churches rather than synagogue; father’s unwillingness to discuss the Holocaust; her own reluctance to discuss the Holocaust until her sixteen year old daughter insisted that she talk about it; moving to the United States; her work as a psychotherapist for underprivileged children; and her feeling that her story is one of hope, compassion, and gratitude.

    Oral history interview with Eva Adam

    Oral History

    Eva Adam, born September 3, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her Orthodox Jewish family; her family’s awareness of what was happening to European Jews; their reluctance to leave Hungary; her father and brother’s membership in the Jewish Legion; serving as adjunct personnel to the Hungarian Army; changes in their lives in the late 1930s and early 1940s; her family’s unawareness of concentration camps before 1944; the Arrow Cross Party taking over the Hungarian police; deteriorating conditions for Jews; the murder of Jews at the Danube River; conditions in the ghetto; her post-liberation search for family members; finding that only three of her thirty-six family members survived Auschwitz; leaving Budapest in 1949; living in Israel and then the United States in 1961; her plans to return to Israel in the future; her pride in being a Jew and a Hungarian; the value in caring about others; and her strong work ethic as an explanation of why she was able to survive.

    Oral history interview with Herbert Bitter

    Oral History

    Herbert Jerome Bitter, born August 4, 1919 in New York City, discusses his parents who were Romanian immigrants; growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan; becoming more religious during his service in the United Sates Army from 1943 to 1945; his experiences at Ohrdruf in 1945 soon after the Germans evacuated the camp; seeing three U.S. generals, Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton, at the camp on April 5, 1945; the generals’ return visit on April 12, 1945 with photographers; how the freed inmates at Ohrdruf were eager to tell their stories to the American liberators; the effect of witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust had on his Jewish identity; and his reluctance to talk about his experiences during the war, especially to children.

    Oral history interview with Rachel Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Rachel Goldfarb, born December 2, 1930 in Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her life following her liberation by the Russians and her time living in the forests near Bialystok, Poland with her mother; working and living on Russian trains; traveling to Prussia to find shelter provided by various Jewish organizations and the Red Cross; traveling to Italy’s southern coast; attempting to board a ship to Palestine but being blockaded by British authorities; eventually getting to New York City in November 1947 after two and a half years in Italy; visiting Washington, DC after graduation from high school; taking a job with the District Court; attending George Washington University at night; meeting her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, and marrying in 1952; raising two children, both of whom are architects; finally visiting Israel; her good life in the United States; and her advice about valuing what you have in life.

    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

    Oral History

    Tania Rozmaryn, born on June 16, 1928 in Vilnius, Poland (present day Lithuania), discusses her family as strong Zionists; the changes that took place after the German occupation; family’s escape towards the eastern Russian border; working in the house of an SS officer and being offered guidance on survival; frightening years in the Kovno ghetto; going into hiding until 1944 when the ghetto was liquidated; her deportation with her mother to Stutthof; her mother’s struggles and strategies, trying to make her look less like a child so that she would be chosen for work; being sent to various work camps until March 1945 when they were liberated by the Russians and taken to Central Poland to a displaced persons camp; being sent to Germany with false documents to a kibbutz in Munich; going to the American Zone and teaching at a school in Bergen-Belsen in 1947; getting married in 1949; immigrating to the United States in 1950; graduating summa cum laude from the Teacher’s Institute and receiving an M.A. from Queens College in 1960; moving to Maryland in 1990 where she received an M.S. in Marriage and Family Counseling; nightmares about her Holocaust experiences; and her feelings about her Jewish faith.

    Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim

    Oral History

    Franz Gunter Ephraim, born February 19, 1931 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, Germany, describes his family and being raised Jewish but not Orthodox; living an integrated life in the community until 1937 and his participation in the 1936 Olympics events; how Kristallnacht was the impetus for his family immigrating to the Philippines; attending a Hebrew school in Manila before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the politics in Manila; experiencing an open Jewish life; their favorite playing areas, holidays, their several living spaces, and the daily routine in Manila; the attack on Pearl Harbor and his memories of the alarms, airplanes, gas masks, and lack of school for about a year; how after the US declared war there were more air raids and an exodus from the Philippines began; how the US was closed to Jews who still had family in Germany and Europe and his family could not go to the US; the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the many wartime restrictions, including food shortages, looting, changes in currency, and a new governmental organization; how 1944 was the year when things were really deteriorated and the people were starving; the daily air raids from B24 bombers; the Japanese systematically burning down the city of Manila; how February 1945 brought total chaos and there was no food for several weeks; the liberation of Manila by US forces; leaving the Philippines on November 19, 1946; arriving in San Francisco, CA where relatives were waiting for them, along with HIAF; the closeness of the Manila Jewish community in San Francisco; attending UC Berkeley until the Korean War when he was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe as an interpreter; becoming a US citizen in 1952; his philosophy that the importance of Jews as a nation is far more important than Jews as a religion and that self-reliance is the most important quality to have; graduating from UC Berkeley in 1957; and working for a naval architect specializing in submarines, United Airlines, and the Maritime Administration in Washington, DC.

    Oral history interview with Peter Phillips

    Oral History

    Ernst Pieter Philipps, born December 5, 1931 in Essen, Germany, describes his twin brothers, who were three years younger; moving to Prague, Czech Republic in 1936 because of his father’s position with his company; life in Prague, which was normal until the Germans occupied Prague beginning April 1939; moving to Genoa, Italy and spending six months there; relocating by an Italian steamer to Quito, Ecuador, where living conditions were rather primitive and where at their second address they experienced antisemitism for the first time; spending two years in Ecuador; relocating to New York City, NY, where the instances of antisemitism directed at him were violent and ugly; his parents moving back to Rotterdam by 1950 while he remained behind in the house his parents had bought in Queens; attending City College of New York for five years and in 1955 joining the US Army and being sent to Germany where, among other duties, he worked as a teacher and Boy Scout leader for American and German boys; after leaving the Army, working first for the New York Times, a newspaper in Danbury, CT, and Business Week magazine; going to Washington, DC to work for McGraw Hill for 20 years; his experiences as a volunteer at the USHMM; and how he believes his experiences as a Jew have affected his outlook.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Ichiuji

    Oral History

    Joseph Ichiuji describes his parents as having immigrated to the US in the early 1900s; his father being a truck farmer and then owning a shoe repair business; working in a fish cannery and living in Fresno, CA until Executive Order 9066, which required that all Japanese Americans be evacuated to internment camps; being sent by train and truck to Flagstaff, Arizona, where they were assigned to barracks number three of the internment camp at Poston, AZ; conditions at the camp, which was run like an army installation with strict regimentation; volunteering for the 442 Combat Team, formed in 1943 and consisting solely of Japanese American soldiers who had families living in internment camps; fighting in Italy at the front lines north of Rome; liberating Livorno, Italy; helping liberate a subcamp of Dachau; conditions of prisoners still alive at the camp; helping two Lithuanian prisoners reconnect with important people in their lives; going home in December 1945 to find his parents released from the internment camp; helping his father with his business until May 1946 when he went to Washington, DC, where he worked in government service for 37 years; and the reunion of Japanese American soldiers in Los Angeles, CA, which a few of the survivors of Dachau attended.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Horowitz

    Oral History

    Ruth Horowitz (née Salzburg), born March 23, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, describes her Polish parents Isaac Salzberg and Rose R. Kleinert and her sister; life in Hamburg, where they lived until November 1938; leaving Hamburg two days before Kristallnacht; how Hamburg was very open to Jews until Hitler’s regime, though she experienced many instances of antisemitism; being fascinated with the 1936 Olympics; how her father’s efforts to leave Germany began in 1936 and finally succeeded when he dramatically threatened to commit suicide at the US Consul if the visas were not granted; how crossing the Atlantic was very difficult, with cold and seasickness, but they arrived and went to Detroit, MI for a short while, then to New York City, NY, and finally to Washington, DC; learning to speak English by going to lots of movies; her father’s death at age 54; her mother’s transformation from being a housewife to running her husband’s jewelry business after he died; the wartime antisemitism, the problem of quotas, the Nuremburg trials, and the State of Israel; getting married in 1950; traveling to Germany in 1995; and her views on present day Germany.

    Oral history interview with Hermann Kosak

    Oral History

    Hermann Kosak, born May 2, 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes his younger sister, Margaret; how antisemitism was pervasive and being involved in instances of physical violence as early as kindergarten; the growth of the Nazi movement in Austria; the Anschluss in March 1938; seeing Hitler arriving in Vienna in his car; how quickly the Jews were affected by the Nazi’s changes; Kristallnacht and being arrested the next morning; trying to get out of Vienna at age 14 and finally getting to Brussels, Belgium with his mother; the Germans attack on Belgium; how enrolling in art school after the invasion was the most important thing he did; learning survival, watchfulness, and self-reliance at age 16; beginning a diary on May 9, 1940, describing daily life, and keeping the diary until three weeks before liberation; how out of 50 family members, 43 were killed in camps; finally getting visas for him and his sister in November 1947 by forcing his way into the US Embassy and leaving for the United States; arriving in New York City, NY; being a painting instructor; being drafted, released to Reserves, working for a while, and being called back for the Korean War; being married and eventually getting a job with Boeing as an illustrator; and his views on the effects of the Holocaust on humanity.

    Oral history interview with Dolly Bestandig

    Oral History

    Dolly Bestandig (née Hirsch), born July 24, 1939 in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, discusses her family, which had been in Lithuania for 11 generations; her father, who was a mathematical engineer, and her mother, who was a concert pianist; how her parents were both very religious and wealthy; being sent to the Vilna ghetto, the hardship of which marked the beginning of her mother’s psychological changes; the presence of 90 members of her mother’s family in the ghetto; how at age five, after living in the Minsk ghetto, she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz, where her mother managed to save her life by hiding her in a garbage can during the day while her mother worked; being moved to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and father after four months, where she was again hidden in a garbage can every day until liberation on April 15, 1945 by English soldiers; being sent to Sweden for medical care; being hospitalized in Gothenburg and then in Stockholm, where surgery on her palate was performed; leaving Sweden in 1947 and going to New York, where an uncle met her family; going to Mexico City, where two uncles were waiting; how her mother’s psychological state was deteriorating and she died in 1958; having flashbacks to her life in the camps; going to the Margaret Sanger Institute in New York City in 1967, where she received counseling help and tuberculosis was found throughout her body; recovering and adopting two children; being the Sub-Director of Hebrew instruction at the Yeshiva in Mexico City; and her feelings about her survival.

    Oral history interview with Goldie Gendelman

    Oral History

    Goldie Gendelman, born November 17, 1933 in Lechowichi (possibly Lyakhavichy, Belarus), Poland near Baranowichi (possibly Baranovichi, Belarus), discusses her parents, Chaim and Chana Wolochiwianski; growing up in an extremely Orthodox family; being raised to speak Polish and Yiddish; her family’s attempt to immigrate to the United States; how she and her family made it to Cuba and stayed there for 11 years; living in Regla, Cuba; her struggles to communicate in Spanish; being run over by a bus in Cuba; how she and her family finally were able to immigrate to the United States in 1948; her paternal uncle in the United States who assisted with the immigration process; her experience with antisemitism in Poland and Cuba; graduating from high school in the United States; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and her feelings about leaving Poland, living in Cuba, and starting a new life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rhoda Kuflik

    Oral History

    Rhoda Kuflik (née Ruzenka Husen), born in October 1937 in Kitev, Poland (now Kuty, Ukraine), describes living in the Kuty ghetto; escaping to Romania and hiding there; being liberated by the Soviets; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with William Hess

    Oral History

    William Hess was born William Verna on August 8, 1921 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was an only child and lived a pleasant life there. Despite the Nuremberg laws, he was permitted to continue his schooling as his father served during World War I. Nevertheless, they lost the service of their maid. William experienced little anti-Semitism in Germany but knew that Hitler made anti-Semitic speeches and had newspaper articles written against the Jews. His father's business suffered little from the boycotting but he sold it in 1938. Anti-Semitism was more severe in the outlying towns than in Stuttgart. William studied English for two years before immigrating to Danville, Illinois with his uncle's assistance in 1937. He had difficulty adjusting to the US so had an English tutor. Additionally, he had difficulty living on his wages of $12.50 as $9 went toward room and board and he also had to cover tutoring and transportation expenses. Kristallnacht and his father's internment in Dachau influenced his parents to leave Germany in 1939 for Danville.

    Oral history interview with Jutta Levy

    Oral History

    Jutta Levy, born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany, describes growing up in a pleasant upper middle class family in a large Jewish community; listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio and seeing him on a school field trip; witnessing Nazi book burning; learning of the death of Hindenburg; drastic changes in Germany after 1933; living in fear as children were taken from school and acquaintances disappeared; father’s dramatic pleading for visas to leave Germany; obtaining passage on the last train from Hamburg on November 6, 1938; traveling to Paris, France and then to Cherbourg, France, from which her family sailed to New York on the Queen Mary; arriving on November 11, 1938; learning about life in concentration camps from family members who survived the Holocaust; and her return to Hamburg and visit to Bergen-Belsen as an adult.

    Oral history interview with Wolfgang Mueller

    Oral History

    Wolfgang Mueller, born in Hanover, Germany on March 10, 1919, discusses his father’s role as a leader in the Jewish community and being head of B’nai B’rith; being aware of the Nazis at an early stage and seeing posters on kiosks denouncing Jews; refusing to say “Heil Hitler” in school and being advised by the principal to leave the country; going to London, England the summer after his Bar Mitzvah (1932); attending Ewell School and going back to Germany on vacations, pretending he was English; attending Cranbrook School with funding from a relative, Max Nordhaus, in the United States; receiving an affidavit from Nordhaus and getting a visa to the US; arriving in the US July 26, 1936 and moving to New Mexico; his mother and sister emigrating; hearing about Kristallnacht; being drafted in September 1941 and being sent to Florida; being in the Signal Corps; applying to officer’s candidate school and being in a group that called themselves the fighting 614s; being made into an MP after his superiors found out he was from Germany; being stationed in Tampa, FL and Jacksonville, FL; getting his American citizenship; volunteering to go overseas; being stationed in England as a technical supply sergeant and a liaison with the RAF; working after V-E Day in the Air Technical Intelligence Office; interrogating prisoners in Czechoslovakia and Austria and engineers at Zeiss works; being in Nordhausen for an hour; translating V-2 documents; being discharged on January 11, 1947; getting married; working in the meat business, real estate, and as a wholesale fish company; being proud to be Jewish; and his dedication to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Klari Rudnai

    Oral History

    Klari Rudnai (née Takacs), born May 19, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her well-to-do family that was not at all religious; her older sister; her father, who was her hero, and her strict mother; how their cook was instrumental in saving their lives by getting counterfeit papers with non-Jewish names for them and by bringing them food as they hid in a one-room apartment in 1944; moving to a nice hotel and having to go to the hotel’s underground bunkers during all the bombing for almost nine months; her father’s seven siblings, who were all sent to Auschwitz; going back to the hotel, the Vadasqur, until it too was bombed; moving to a new villa in 1946; how when she was 19 years she was picked up by Russian soldiers in a jeep and had to fight her way out of an attack by them and was saved by American soldiers who took her to the hospital for a few days; marrying an American soldier and wanting to go to the United States; finishing high school; how the solitary military life and moving a lot to odd places didn’t suit her; divorcing her husband and moving back to Washington, DC; getting married in 1960 to a Jewish doctor, who had been in many concentration camps and was instrumental in getting her interested in her Jewish religion; volunteering at the USHMM in the Archives and Volunteer Services; enjoying all parts of talking to people and the volunteers in her job; and reading a lot of books and newspapers about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jill Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly, born May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, describes her large, very well-to-do country family; the efforts of her grandmother and uncle to get money to Holland and make arrangements for the family to get to Kenya, where they bought two cattle farms that eventually were very successful; wanting a more orthodox Jewish life after the war; moving to New York City then moving to Vineland, NJ; her family buying a chicken farm, which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1952; the death of her father when he was 66 years old; her mother being her guiding light in terms of religious practice; attending the Pierce School of Business in Philadelphia, PA; working for the Quakers and then for a synagogue; getting her real estate license at the University of Maryland; her two adopted children; retiring in December 1993 from real estate; volunteering at the USHMM in Visitors’ Services and in the Office of Survivor Relations; having very strong feelings about people having access to the Museum; and some of the artifacts that she’s donated to the Museum.

    Oral history interview with Jack Reuben

    Oral History

    Jack Ruben was born Yaakov Ruben on December 8, 1921 in Cincinnati, Ohio and after six months the family moved to LA. He was the only child to Joseph and Sarah Basha Ruben who came from Russia and were not religious. His mother was a garment worker and his father sold fruits and vegetables in a horse and cart in the local area. Due to an eye condition, Jack went to a health camp for a year. Jack's father left the family in 1927 and since lost track of him. Jack was placed in foster homes until the 11th grade and would visit his mother on the weekends. He graduated from high school and worked his way through UCLA by working part-time. In summer of '43 Jack volunteered for the Air Corps and was sent to Pomona College for nine months to study meteorology. He was not picked to be a meteorology officer so joined the infantry and was selected to be a coding clerk. He went to several camps and was shipped to Le Havre. His division had little information of the overall war and no details of concentration camps. From there he was part of the effort to form a bridge over the Moselle and next in a major assault at the Rhine River. Jack was in the Division furthest east in Germany which took many German prisoners as they quickly drove east. His company going east and meeting a surrendering German battalion who were permitted to march on their own. His company formed perimeters around villages and often stayed overnight in a civilian's home. They went through a rural area and saw dead prisoners and dead horses along the road without understanding the situation. They reached Ohrdruf Concentration Camp and saw a few emaciated prisoners leaving and many dead bodies piled up or laying on the ground. Jack did not realize it was a concentration camp at the time or that others existed until later when he returned to the US. The Army newspaper did not publish such information. From there, they went to the Czech border for 3 months which they guarded until VE Day. Then Jack was relocated to a relocation camp near Paris until Christmas '45 when he was shipped home and arrived in NY on New Year's Day '46. He was discharged and married a second time as his first wife was killed in an auto accident. Subsequently, he received a BA in economics, MA in family counseling and PhD in psychology and has practiced 10 years in the field. He has four children. Jack still does not understand how the crimes in the concentration camps could have been performed by fellow human beings.

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tilda Finzi Cohen

    Oral History

    Tilda Finzi Cohen (née Mazel Tov “Tilda” Finzi) born in Split, Yugoslavia on July 11, 1933, discusses Germans passing through their city in early 1941; her father getting called into the army and returning after one month; the Italians occupying Split, closing businesses and setting a curfew; not being permitted to go to school and the formation of community Jewish schools in different locations around city; her uncle being imprisoned and bringing him food; the Italian capitulation in September 1943; her family joining other people fleeing to partisans in the mountains; going with her mother to Brac Island, to Vis Island; sailing to Bari two days before Yom Kippur; living in a camp then a private house; the Germans dropping gas bombs on ships on December 2, 1943; her family moving to a village near Bari and attending school; attending a Seder arranged by the Jewish Brigade in Bitonto, Italy in the spring of 1944; how after the war their relatives told them of the camps and atrocities and advised them not to return to Split; her family moving to Milan, Italy in 1948; her family immigrating to the United States in 1950; finishing high school and attending college; getting married; and feeling that she is not a part of any country and that she lost her childhood.

    Oral history interview with Zwi Golombek

    Oral History

    Zwi Golombek, born in Warsaw, Poland on September 15, 1934, describes his father’s large construction business; the formation of the Warsaw ghetto and his family moving into one room on Nowolipki Street; his father’s ability to exit and enter the ghetto because he possessed building permits; being aware of danger and seeing beatings; his father striking a German guard in early 1942 and being taken to a ghetto prison then Treblinka; his Uncle Mietek placing him with the Abramzuc family in Jozefow, Poland and his mother and sister disappearing from the ghetto two weeks later; staying hidden for three years and his uncle visiting often and playing the family to hide him; being called Henyek; his uncle placing him in a kibbutzim in Poland and Germany after the war; going to Israel on October 6, 1948; working in Tel Aviv and joining the Israeli army in 1952; fighting war in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982; getting married; and his two sons.

    Oral history interview with Samuel B. Hagner

    Oral History

    Samuel Hagner, born November 1, 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, discusses his Quaker parents; becoming a Quaker member at age 14; going to a Quaker work camp; being told about antisemitic events in Europe by a Jewish friend named Doris Weil and not believing her; his brother being a conscientious objector and working in a forestry camp during war; attending Oberlin College; being inducted into the army in January 1944 as a 1-A-O; training as a medical corpsman; sailing to Europe in December 1944; joining 7th Army in Germany and moving as the front moved; being made an armed guard at a billet even though he refused to carry a gun; going by truck to help liberate Dachau; the overwhelming experiences of seeing Dachau and feeling anger towards the SS guards; staying in the camp for one week; wavering about being a conscientious objector and writing to Doris to tell her she was right; going to a German hospital with nuns; going to France and the war ending before he was deployed to the Philippines; becoming a scrub nurse during plastic surgery on war victims in Indiana; being discharged and returning to college in the fall of 1946; practicing psychiatry for adults; living with his Dachau experience but not being at peace with it; and his continued abhorrence of war.

    Oral history interview with Werner E. Michel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guta Jacobson

    Oral History

    Guta Jacobson (née Rogowitz), born on April 23, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her early life in Łódź; relations between Jews and Christians; her activity in a Zionist organization; various holiday celebrations; the German invasion of Poland and the implementation of Nazi race laws; food shortages; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; her family’s indecision on whether or not to flee; life in the ghetto; losing her faith in God after seeing her parents give up their children; her father’s disappearance; the typhus epidemic; hearing rumors of Chelmno and Auschwitz; hiding from the liquidation of the ghetto and their eventual deportation to Auschwitz in August of 1944; her immediate understanding of what was happening in the camp; Dr. Josef Mengele taking her mother away; being transported to a camp in Birnbäumel, Germany (now Gruszeczka, Poland), to work digging anti-tank trenches; the differing conditions of various camps; hiding in the woods during a death march; her return to a liberated Łódź; marrying her husband; her reunion with her sister who had been recuperating in Sweden after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen; immigrating to the United States; the birth of her children; the death of her husband; her avoidance of discussing her experiences with her children when they were young; her motivations for sharing her story now; and her hopes that the world will never forget.

    Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Luksenburg

    Oral History

    William Luksenburg describes going on a death march from Regensburg, Germany to Lebenau, Germany; a German farmer picking him up from the road, where he fell; being brought by the farmer to American troops stationed in the nearby town of Laufen, where he was treated for malnutrition; his cousin coming to the same camp a few months later; returning with his cousin to Bayreuth, Germany, where there were other family members; reuniting in Prague with his future wife, Helen, whom he met in the Blechhammer work camp; getting married in 1947; receiving money and support from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; attending a technical school organized by the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training; immigrating to the United States in September 1949 with Helen; and becoming a mechanic and starting his own business. [Note: This interview focuses on the interviewee’s post-Holocaust experiences. There is an earlier interview focusing on the interviewee’s Holocaust experience. This interview can be accessed by requesting RG-50.030*140.]

    Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld

    Oral History

    Rose Weisfeld (née Friedman), born on March 28, 1914 in Radom, Poland, discusses her early life and schooling; social integration between Jews and Christians at home and at school; keeping Jewish customs and traditions at home; her religious education; her brothers’ conscription in the Polish army; being badly injured and hospitalized for a year; her family’s forced relocation to the Radom ghetto; her father’s death; the liquidation of the ghetto; doing factory work; being transported to Auschwitz via cattle car; the process of selections; being transported to Ravensbrück in 1944; being liberated by Swedish soldiers and their compassion; weighing 32 pounds at liberation; her hospitalization in Denmark and Sweden; finding work in a factory and regaining her humanity; her marriage in Sweden to another survivor; the birth of her children; finding her brother through the Red Cross after four years; immigrating to the United States to be with her brother; the difficulties of adjusting to life in the US; and the importance of raising her children with Jewish traditions.

    Oral history interview with Ruth E. Greifer

    Oral History

    Ruth Greifer (née Dahl), born May 30, 1922 in Geilenkirchen (near Aachen), Germany, discusses her father, who was a cattle dealer, and her Dutch mother; attending a private Catholic school and experiencing antisemitism but being treated well by the nuns; how the plaque on father’s business was shattered in 1938; moving to Valkenburg, Holland in the spring of 1938; Germans occupying the city on May 10, 1940 and her family hiding in catacombs during the bombing; having to wear the yellow star and obey curfew; her father’s business being taken away; the Germans ordering them to leave in June 1942, but she was allowed to stay because she was sick; her brother and two aunts being taken to Auschwitz; how a Mr. Jansen from the underground arranged for she and her parents to go into hiding; going to a coal miner’s house, while her parents went to another; being thought of as a risk and being relocated to a doctor’s house to be a maid; going into hiding at the Robertson’s house near Treebeek and Hoensbroek with another Jewish woman; getting money from the underground organization; hearing about the June 1944 invasion; going to a house in Treebeek; the heavy bombing in the city and hiding in a potato bin for three days; being liberated September 17, 1944; returning to her parents in Valkenburg; the loss of all of her mother’s Dutch family; sailing to the United states in the spring of 1948; settling with her sister in Pittsburgh, PA; getting married April 8, 1951 and having three daughters; moving to Washington, DC in 1957; and her feelings about Germany.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin), born on March 28, 1928 in Siaulai, Lithuania, discusses her life after the war; being liberated by the Russians in Chynowie (known as Chinow in German) near Wejherowo, Poland on March 10, 1945; suffering from typhoid and dysentery and weighing 65 pounds; joining her mother and brother in Feldafing DP camp; going to ORT and UNRRA sponsored classes; getting married to Jack Godin, who had escaped from the Vilna Ghetto and whose family was killed in Ponary; having her first child in Munich, Germany; immigrating to United States in 1950 and settling in Washington, DC; becoming a citizen in 1955 and working as a dressmaker for 26 years; raising her children; sharing her Holocaust experience; working with the UJA, Jewish Community Council and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the US Holocaust Memorial Council; working on projects at USHMM, including the “Remember the Children” exhibit, the ID project, and within the education and development departments; and her thoughts on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Maryla Korn

    Oral History

    Maryla Korn (née Orgel), born on June 10, 1938 in Kraków, Poland, discusses going with her mother first to Wieliczka and then to Bochnia between late 1940 and early 1941; hiding with a peasant family but crying so much that she was returned to her mother; going to a ghetto in Bochnia at the end of 1941; her mother working outside the ghetto in a factory; taking messages outside the ghetto and bringing back food; leaving the ghetto in June 1943 and separating from her mother; carrying diamonds and money, but no luggage and bribing Germans and the Judenrat; traveling by truck to the border then by foot at night; being guided by paid partisans; her grandfather being shot at Bochnia cemetery, her grandmother being taken to Auschwitz, and her uncle being taken to Belzec in the summer of 1942; being by Czech collaborators in Kosice, Slovakia; being released and proceeding to Hungary with help from the Joint; being caught and sent to a prison in Budapest and the Joint getting her out; going to Usod, Hungary in the fall of 1943 and staying there until April 1944 under name of Orglowska; living as a Christian; being treated for gangrene in her leg; the roundup of Hungarian Jews in April 1944; her mother stealing passes and going to Budapest; staying with a Jewish Polish friend and then going to Bucharest, Romania with help from the Joint; almost boarding two different ships in Constanta, Romania going to Palestine, one of which (the Merkur) sank and the other ended up in Cyprus; being liberated by the Russians in the spring of 1945; going to Budapest and staying in a children’s home while her mother went back to Poland to check on family; her mother setting up a business in Vienna, Austria with an uncle; her father returning traumatized from the war; going to Brussels, Belgium in the winter of 1946-1947; going to Israel in 1951; living in both Israel and Brussels until immigrating to the United states in May 1961; getting married in June 1961 to David Korn, who is also a survivor; visiting her parents in Germany; and her work translating for USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born in Brussels, Belgium on September 2, 1928, discusses immigrating to the United States in 1943; being taken in by father’s cousin in Brooklyn, then to foster home; his parents coming to the US in 1946; graduating from high school in 1947; graduating with honors from Brooklyn College in 1951; enlisting in the army and being sent to Germany as an interpreter but requesting to be transferred; becoming a medic near Verdun; feeling very American, but did not speak about his childhood with other soldiers; his feeling about Germany; working at USHMM with the Speakers Bureau and translating materials; speaking about his past; and being featured in the book “The Triumphant Spirit” by Nicholas del Calzo.

    Oral history interview with Lena Jurand

    Oral History

    Lena Jurand (Salzberg), born in Przemysl, Poland on September 13, 1917, discusses being an only child, educated in a Catholic school then at a music conservatory; meeting her husband Julian Jurand in 1931 and getting married in May 1940; living in the Russian part of town; her father being chosen for the Judenrat when the Germans took over; Jews having to give up jewelry and wear a star; the ghetto being formed in July 1942; moving with parents and in-laws from Lvov; working in a factory disinfecting uniforms; her father being taken away and how she went to the Gestapo headquarters and saved him from deportation to Auschwitz; meeting a Polish woman in the factory who offered to hide her and Julian; hiding for 22 months in room off of kitchen in a woman’s apartment; being liberated by Russians in August 1944; living in an apartment with her husband and cousins; living in Munich, Germany with UNRRA staff of the Neu Freimann DP Camp; teaching music to child survivors in camp for one year; moving to Genoa, Italy, where Julian practiced medicine; visiting her uncle for six months in New York, NY; going to the United States in 1951; living in New Jersey, where Julian worked in state hospital as a psychiatrist; and Julian becoming the clinical director at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Wallace Witkowski

    Oral History

    Wallace A. Witkowski, born January 12, 1928 in Kielce, Poland, discusses his escape from Poland on a ship to Goteborg, Sweden in 1948; going to the United States; how his sister was caught by the communists and imprisoned; his struggle to find his father who had immigrated to the United States earlier; settling in Detroit, Michigan and adjusting to American life; how his mother and sister arrived in the U.S. later; attending high school and then Wayne State University; getting married in 1951; working as a radio disc jockey using the on-air name Jan Alexander; earning a law degree; working in Washington, DC and traveling between the United States and Poland; working for the Federal Trade Commission; living and working in Micronesia; his thoughts on religion and how the Holocaust affected him; his identity as a Catholic; his work as a translator; and his work with the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lena Gitter

    Oral History

    Lena Gitter (née Lieba Rosenblatt), born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her life after the Holocaust; immigrating to the US in July 1938 with her husband and small daughter; her husband who worked as a physician; feeling guilty for many years about having escaped Vienna before the Holocaust; her long involvement with the Montessori schools both in Vienna and the United States; the Montessori method; working with people in Mississippi under Johnson’s War on Poverty program; the death of her husband in 1974; her plan to donate her collection of early childhood education materials to a library in Vienna; working under several Presidents of the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Wiener

    Oral History

    Jacob Wiener (né Koppel G. Zwienicki), born March 25, 1917 in Bremen, Germany, discusses his experiences in the United States after World War II; the reaction to the war by the American media; his wife’s experience on the Kindertransport; his memories of watching Nazi war crime trials on television; his thoughts on Israel and Palestine; the Eichmann trial; how he was involved with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from its founding; Holocaust education in American schools; antisemitism in the United States; and how he founded a school for mentally disabled children in the 1950s.

    Oral history interview with Noah Roitman

    Oral History

    Noah Roitman, born in Baranowicze, Poland (Baranavichy, Belarus) on January 10, 1923, discusses his religious upbringing and schooling; being very athletic; receiving warnings from his Christian friends in November 1938; his town being under Soviet rule in 1939; people being deported and his house being burned down; the German invasion on June 27, 1941; the formation of a ghetto on December 12, 1941; wearing the yellow star and working in arms factory; joining the resistance group of Mome Kopelovitz; the first action in the ghetto in March 1942; joining the partisans led by Pougatchov in the forest in August 1942; his activities sabotaging trains and bringing others out of ghetto (saving approximately 80 people); being sent to Pinsk, Belarus in late 1943; joining a group led by Major Igor, attacking trains; being ordered into Russian Army in Slutsk, Belarus in December 1943; fighting Germans and seeing Warsaw destroyed; being wounded by a sniper outside of Berlin, Germany; running a canteen for the Russian Army at the end of the war; returning to Poland; helping Jews get to Czechoslovakia; being captured and jailed, but escaping to Łódź, Poland; meeting his wife; traveling through Germany and France to get to Israel; being detained in Cyprus for 3 to 4 months; having a construction business in Israel; and immigrating to the United States in October 1963.

    Oral history interview with Richard W. Peterson

    Oral History

    Richard W. Peterson, born September 29, 1925 in Iowa, discusses his family’s Danish background; growing up in a Baptist family; first learning about the war in Europe and his family’s concern for Denmark; antisemitism in Iowa; hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor; his involvement with ROTC and Boy Scouts; attending Drake University; joining the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP); reporting to Fort Crook for the reserve program and then to Camp Dodge in Iowa; being sworn into the U.S. Army; training at Camp Livingston in Louisiana with the 86th Blackhawk division; being assigned to A Company, 342nd Infantry; being sent to Le Havre, France; traveling through France, the Netherlands, and Germany; fighting in a battle in Attendorn, Germany; entering what appeared to be a factory in Attendorn and seeing starving people there; the reaction of his comrades to seeing the prisoners; the liberation of Auschwitz; being sent to the Philippines from September 1945 to March 1946; finishing his degree at the University of Iowa; graduating from law school in 1951; getting married; his father’s appointment to the Iowa Supreme Court; how he was a United States Magistrate Judge; his three children; and how he feels about American current events, politics, and world news.

    Oral history interview with Riane Gruss

    Oral History

    Riane Gruss (née Wohl), born on August 18, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, describes her father, who was a banker in Kraków, Poland and an industrialist in Vienna, and how her parents lived half a year in each place; she and her siblings being raised by a governess in Vienna; being in Kraków on September 1, 1939; going to Jaroslav, where there was bombing, then to Zloczow and to Kolomyja; her father and brother being captured at the border and her brother’s release; returning to Zloczow; being sent to Siberia by the Russians in July 1940; her younger brother getting scarlet fever; arriving in August 1940 near Yakutsk and Aldan and going to a labor camp; conditions in the camp; the hard physical labor for adults; how in April 1941 the NKVD said mothers and children could leave; their New York relatives getting them Bolivian passports; leaving in May and meeting her father in Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine); going to a farm in country for four months after the German invasion on June 22, 1941; her family following her uncle Joseph Stieglitz to Munkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine); getting Polish Christian papers; going to Budapest, Hungary; going to Szeged, Hungary, where her father had to be hospitalized; the children being hidden in the fall of 1944 in a caretaker’s house in Buda, Hungary; escaping when the Russians arrived and reuniting with her parents; going with her family to Mako, Hungary for four weeks then to Vienna; her parents returning to Kraków; going with a smuggler to Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and then joining her parents in Kraków; going with her family to Stockholm, Sweden; going to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in October 1946; going to New York, in February 1951; and getting married in December 195 and having two children.

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

    Oral History

    Regina Spiegel, (née Gutman) born May 12, 1926 in Radom, Poland, discusses her post-war experiences starting with her liberation; traveling with 3,000 other female prisoners by train from Elsnig, Germany to Dachau, Germany; how the train stopped on the way to Dachau because the railway line had been bombed; how the train itself was bombed by the Allies while stopped on the tracks; being able to escape during the bombing; traveling with 15 other women by horse and buggy to Poland; sleeping in German homes while traveling to Poland; avoiding large groups of Russian soldiers; promising her mother and her boyfriend that if they were separated during the war, they would meet in Radom, Poland; how she and her friends boarded a train in Poznań, Poland without any money; meeting a man on the train with whom she had been imprisoned in Pionki, Poland; returning to Radom where she was told that returning Jews were being killed; returning to the Radom Ghetto, where many displaced persons were gathering; writing her name on a list of displaced persons in the Radom Ghetto; traveling from Radom to Kozienice to reunite with her boyfriend, Sam; leaving Poland with Sam and traveling by train to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); traveling with the Joint Distribution Committee from Prague to Pilsen, Czech Republic and then to Germany; staying with Sam in the displaced persons camp Föhrenwald; her marriage to Sam in 1946; moving to Stuttgart, Germany, where she learned to be a seamstress through ORT classes; her involvement with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York; her religious beliefs and how they changed throughout the war; moving to Washington, DC; how she and Sam learned to speak English; working as a seamstress before giving birth to a daughter in August 1951; her thoughts on the Yugoslavian conflict; her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during its early development; her activity with the Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Greater Washington; returning with Sam to Auschwitz in 1975; speaking publically about the Holocaust; receiving an award from the United Jewish Appeal; and how she and Sam take groups of 16 to 18 year olds to Poland and Israel through the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization.

    Oral history interview with Charles Stein

    Oral History

    Charles Stein (né Karl Robert Stein), born in Vienna, Austria, on November 28, 1919, describes his childhood; attending medical school at the University of Vienna; immigrating to the United States and arriving on December 18, 1939; his draft into the army on October 7, 1941; discovering that his parents had gone into the Łódź ghetto; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; going to Normandy, France with the 9th Infantry Division as the commander of a prisoner-of-war interrogation team; helping to liberate Nordhausen and interrogating its Ukrainian guards; becoming an Army captain and then the chief of the translation section in the Office of Military History at the Pentagon; serving in Korea and Tokyo for five years; marrying an Air Force lieutenant in Tokyo; returning to the US and settling in Washington, DC; working for the Air Force Intelligence and for the State Department until his retirement in 1978; serving as a foreign service officer and being responsible for the resettlement of refugees in Europe; and writing about his experiences during the war.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Hannah Kalman (née Hannah Finer Kalmanowicz), born in 1912 in Opoczno, Poland and describes her family; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was 12 and joining a Zionist organization; meeting her husband in the Zionist organization and getting married in 1937; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1939; living with her son, sister, and nephew in a small room with bad conditions; being deported with her family on one of the last transports out of the Łódź ghetto; never seeing her son and nephew again after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transport to Waldeslust, Germany, where she did hard labor; going on a death march to Bergen-Belsen; conditions in the camp; being liberated with her sister on April 15, 1945; the death of her sister two months after liberation; traveling around Poland looking for relatives; reuniting with her husband later in Poland; moving to Germany and having a son; immigrating to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; having a daughter; and living in Israel for a short time but ultimately settling in the United States for medical treatment.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral History

    Morris Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Częstochowa, Poland, describes his family; being forced to paint rooms for German troops during the war; his deportation to Theresienstadt; being forced on a death march to Buchenwald; receiving help from the Red Cross after the war; traveling around Poland and Germany trying to find his sister; his time spent in displaced persons camps; his memories of the Nuremberg Trials; immigrating to the United States and settling in New York; the mental stress with which he dealt after the war; attending the international law program at Columbia; moving to Baltimore, Maryland in November, 1949; getting married in 1953; collecting items from the World War Two era; and his reflections on the state of antisemitism in today’s world.

    Oral history interview with Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Sam Spiegel, born in Kozienice, Poland on August 23, 1922, describes his family and childhood; being forced into a ghetto; his father’s involvement in the underground movement; working for the Judenrat and getting papers to leave the ghetto and get extra food; his deportation to Auschwitz in 1942; meeting his future wife in the camp; the Ukrainian camp guards; conditions in the camp and how inmates helped each other; going on a death march as the Allies neared Auschwitz; returning home and experiencing antisemitism; spending time in displaced persons camps; working for the United Nations Relief Organization and the Joint Distribution Committee after the war; getting married; immigrating to the United States; and returning to Europe to visit the concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Fred Gutter

    Oral History

    Fred Gutter, born on December 25, 1926 in Sanok, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of celebrating the Jewish holidays and Sabbath services; attending a high school and experiencing antisemitism; increasing persecution against Jews in the 1930s; moving to Lwów because of the difficulties his family faced; his family’s capture by Russian troops and living under Russian control; being released by the Russians at the end of the war and briefly returning to Sanok; staying in several displaced persons camps; reuniting with his father after the war; receiving aid from the Joint Distribution Committee; spending some time in Palestine and fighting in the 1948 war; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and his feelings about American politics.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Henry Greenbaum, born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of his family celebrating the Jewish holidays; being too young to understand the persecution that was happening around him; his family deciding that one of his sisters should immigrate to the United States in 1937; the establishment of a ghetto in Starachowice; his deportation to a labor camp in October 1942; attempting to escape but getting severely wounded and having to stay in the camp; his transfers to Auschwitz and then Flossenbürg; going on a death march from Flossenbürg; his liberation by the U.S. Army on April 25, 1945; spending time in a displaced persons camp after the war until his sister in America could send papers for him and his brother; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; adjusting to life in America and finding a job at a department store; settling in the Washington metro area; and interacting with other Holocaust survivors who live in his community.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Alper

    Oral History

    Ruth Alper, born on February 18, 1932 in Germany, describes her family and childhood; experiencing little antisemitism as a child; her memories of Kristallnacht; receiving an affidavit from family in Detroit, MI in 1939 to immigrate to the United States; arriving in Cuba and staying there until 1941, when she and her family moved to Miami, FL; the small Jewish community in Havana, Cuba; listening to the progress of the war on the radio; experiencing antisemitism in Miami; her recollections of the response of the American Jewish community experiencing the war from abroad; and creating a new life for herself in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Michael Lin

    Oral History

    Michael Lin, born in Riga, Latvia on September 14, 1936, describes his family and childhood; the Jewish community of Riga; the beginning of the war in 1941 and his family being forced to leave their home to settle in Yaroslavl (IAroslavl' ), Russia; catching malaria and developing pneumonia in 1941 but not being able to get medication; moving to another small village in Russia, where he remained until 1944 when his family moved farther east; having to shave his head to avoid getting lice; his father’s draft into the Russian Army; the end of the war and preparing to return to Riga; his experiences with antisemitism in Russia; beginning school after the war in Latvia; his draft into the Russian Army in September 1955; attending school in Moscow after he left the army; immigrating to Israel in 1969 with his wife and children; immigrating to the United States a few years later; and his reflections on sharing his memories of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Chana Kalman, born on January 20, 1912 in Opoczno, Poland, describes her family and childhood; her experiences with antisemitism; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was eighteen years old; participating in a Zionist organization with several other young people; working during the day and attending a Hebrew school at night; getting married shortly before the death of her father in 1937; giving birth to a child on January 25, 1939; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1940 and struggling to find food for herself and her son; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz with her sister and being forced around by SS men; her transfer to Bergen-Belsen shortly before her liberation; finding out about the death of her husband and child; getting remarried in 1946 and having a son and a daughter; remaining in Germany as a displaced person until 1950, when she immigrated to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; spending some time in Israel once her children had grown up; and her reflections on life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dorrit L. Ostberg

    Oral History

    Dorrit Liane Ostberg, born in Vienna, Austria on September 29, 1929, describes her family; her father fleeing to Paris, France after the Germans entered Austria; escaping to Paris with her mother and sister but discovering that her father had fled to Yugoslavia; arriving in Yugoslavia several months later; obtaining Yugoslavian citizenship and living in Slavonski-Brod and Zagreb (both in present day Croatia); fleeing to Crikvenica, Croatia after Croatian guards arrested her father; her family’s deportation to an Italian internment camp on Rab; attending school until she contracted hepatitis and had to stay in a hospital for four months; her liberation in September 1943; her family fleeing on a fishing boat to Italy and living openly as Jews in Bari, Italy with two Italian women; immigrating to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York in July 1944; attending junior high school; moving to New York City after the war ended; attending university and becoming a math teacher; getting married three times and having one son; and her religious feelings.

    Oral history interview with Alice Eberstarkova Masters

    Oral History

    Alice Eberstarkova Masters, born in Trstená, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1925, describes her youth; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; immigrating to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport; working as a secretary for the Czech government-in-exile in London during the war; following the BBC broadcasts of the war’s progress; the end of the war and discovering that her parents had died in Auschwitz; her reflections on the Nuremberg Trials; participating in Zionist and Jewish organizations while in England; immigrating to the United States in March 1948; working for the International Monetary Fund; losing her religious faith; getting married and starting a family after the war; and telling her children and grandchildren about her experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia) on January 28, 1929, describes his post-war experiences living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; receiving papers to immigrate to the United States in 1946 and living with a distant cousin; working at a butcher’s shop, so he could support himself; opening his own meat store later in life; eventually deciding to volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and not participating much in his faith anymore.

    Oral history interview with Leonard Gordon

    Oral History

    Leonard Gordon, born on June 8, 1925 in Tilsit, Germany (Sovetsk, Russia), describes growing up in Siauliai, Lithuania; his family; attending Jewish grade school and high school; the German invasion of Lithuania in 1941; trying to escape to Russia but instead having to return home and go into the Siauliai ghetto; his family’s transport to Stutthof in 1944; being transported with his father and brother to Dachau, where they worked at Mühldorf; building the German underground airport, Messerschmitt; his father’s proposal that the three of them commit suicide; hearing about the invasion of Normandy; the liberation of Dachau in May 1945; staying in a displaced persons camp in Feldafing and planning to move to Israel; traveling to Italy and studying to be a radio technician; immigrating to the United States; becoming an electrical engineer and serving in the United States Navy; and rediscovering religion after the death of his wife.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Fritz Gluckstein, born January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes the end of the war in Berlin; the food and housing shortages; cleaning up rubble from bombings with his father; the difficulties of re-starting his education after the war; immigrating to the United States in January 1948 and settling in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area; becoming a veterinarian; and volunteering for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Brigitte Freidin

    Oral History

    Brigitte Freidin, born in Augsburg, Germany on June 3, 1930, describes her family and childhood; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her father’s release and her parents’ decision to try to immigrate to the United States; traveling to England while waiting for permission to go to the U.S.; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; staying with relatives who were taking in refugees in Washington, DC; losing touch with much of her family left in Europe and then discovering that many had died; participating in American student clubs during the war; working as a salesgirl when she was fourteen years old to help support her family; getting married and starting a family; and speaking about her personal experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Eva Kristine Belfoure

    Oral History

    Eva Kristine Belfoure, born on October 1, 1924 in Kraków, Poland, describes growing up in a Roman Catholic home; having many Orthodox Jewish friends in her childhood; teaching Catholic prayers to an elderly Jewish lady who was hidden in her home during the war; exchanging goods and delivering messages in the ghetto; being arrested in January 1942 and being taken to the Nordhausen concentration camp, where she worked in various labor camps; her deportation to the Rathsfeld firm, where she worked as a kitchen aide and remained until liberation; doing translation work in a field hospital in Nordhausen after the war; going to the displaced persons camps in Dora, Heilbronn, and Darmstadt; attending the university in Frankfurt after receiving aid from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; immigrating to the United States in June 1950 and marrying a sailor in 1953; teaching languages in Baltimore County for twenty-five years; and translating for the Red Cross and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard

    Oral History

    George Leonard, a concentration camp liberator born on December 24, 1921 in Malden, Massachusetts, describes his childhood; his training in Alabama and California before he and his unit went to England; becoming the company runner, staying close to the captain and lieutenants; translating codes and delivering messages while at war; his memories of the fights at the Siegfried Line; receiving the Bronze Star after being wounded; traveling through parts of Germany along the Czech border and getting ordered to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; helping to give the victims a proper burial; staying in the Mauthausen area for about six weeks until he went to Spital am Pyhrn, Austria in late July; leaving for America on December 15, 1945; getting married; and teaching at Harvard University after the war.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Roberg

    Oral History

    Kurt Roberg, born May 16, 1924 in Celle, Germany, discusses his childhood; attending a German school where he was the only Jewish student; his father Victor Roberg’s profession as a merchant for the firm Gebrüder Freidberg; his family’s religious practices; Kristallnacht; antisemitism in his hometown; details of German politics of the time; the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933; how a retired teacher, Hal Lotheim, taught local Jewish students; the Hitler Youth in his community; his Bar Mitzvah; how his brother, Harry, immigrated in 1936 to Holland, the Netherlands to live with their maternal uncle, Wilhelm Marx; how his father had to close his business in 1937; his mother’s 1938 trip to Hamburg, Germany to visit the American consulate; how his father was sent to Oranienburg after Kristallnacht; his father’s release and experiences in Oranienburg; his journey to Holland to join his brother and uncle; how his mother and father used American visa applications to travel to Holland; how his mother, father, and brother immigrated to the United States from Holland in 1940; German attacks on Rotterdam, the Netherlands; being interned in Holland for his status as a German citizen; being sent out of Rotterdam to Gouda, the Netherlands; how a woman organized transports of children from Holland and Belgium to reunite with their parents; receiving his American visa in January 1941; leaving Holland in March 1941; traveling from Germany to Spain and then to Lisbon, Portugal by train with other children; traveling by American ship from Lisbon, Portugal to the United States; being held on Ellis Island for a month because of visa complications; living in New Rochelle, New York with his family; learning about Pearl Harbor; how he and his brother joined the army in 1943; experiencing antisemitism in the army; his experience in the Pacific during World War II; and his life with his family after the war.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Schnog

    Oral History

    Alfred Schnog, born January 25, 1931, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany; growing up in a relatively secular Jewish family on Universität Straße; his relationship with his grandparents who lived in Deutz, a suburb of Cologne; seeing Nazi parades and looking on with interest but feeling unwelcome; being harassed by Nazi Youth on his way home from school with his twin brother, Norbert; seeing signs in businesses barring Jews and learning that few business owners enforced this policy; spending Passover in a Catholic hospital after being injured in a car wreck and being provided with kosher food by the nuns; watching his father throw pieces of a gun into the Rhine when guns were banned for Jews; his father’s metal trade business being taken over by non-Jews; hearing about concentration camps but believing they would primarily affect immigrants (particularly Poles) and seeing Polish children taken out of his classes by the Gestapo; his parents’ search for a way out of Germany and eventual escape to the Netherlands in the summer of 1938; his family’s return to Germany in November 1938 to retrieve belongings; witnessing Kristallnacht from an upper-floor window of the Dome Hotel; his family being taken to jail as they tried to return to the Netherlands after the German borders were sealed, but eventually being allowed to go; attending Jewish school in Amsterdam and learning Dutch; applying to move to the United States and first going by plane to England in Jan 1940, then by ship (the Britannic) from Liverpool to New York City in April 1940; attending school in the United States; speaking Dutch with his brother because they did not want to be associated with Germans; experiencing discrimination in school when his third grade teacher admonished him and his brother for wearing an American flag pin on a holiday when they were not born in America; having his Bar Mitzvah and attending Hebrew school at the synagogue in Regal Park; experiencing antisemitism as his family vacationed in the Adirondacks, finding many signs restricting Jews from staying at hotels; learning that his grandparents had been killed in a concentration camp; graduating from Forest Hill High School and then receiving a degree in engineering from Cornell; going to Korea in 1954 to serve two years in the U.S. Army; starting and running a company; learning that a pair of his father’s cufflinks were given to his father in recognition of his Bar Mitzvah by Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who later led an assassination attempt against Hitler; his reflections on the way those who did not experience the Holocaust and WWII view it; his children’s knowledge of his and his parents’ experiences and how it has affected them; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Fred Taucher

    Oral History

    Fred Taucher, born on January 29, 1933 in Berlin, Germany, describes his half-brother’s suicide to avoid Nazi concentration camps; the destruction of his father’s store during Kristallnacht; moving to a ghetto in 1938; his father’s inability to leave Germany despite his United State’s citizenship; his family’s relationship with a high ranking Nazi member; his father going into slave labor and then being sent to Auschwitz in 1943; his family’s escape from arrest; living in subway stations to avoid Allied bombings; getting arrested, tortured, and sent to Dachau in April 1945; escaping from the Nazis with some Russian soldiers; his mother’s death during a crossfire between the Germans and the Russians; his 1946 Bar Mitzvah in Berlin; life in Berlin after the Holocaust; his 1946 arrival in America; his decision to join the U.S. Army; his experiences trying to obtain United States citizenship; his life in America as a citizen and his activism in Holocaust survivor networks.

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Goldkind, born in Czechoslovakia (near Volosyanka, Ukraine) on July 9, 1928, describes her early childhood; experiencing antisemitism as a child; her recollections of the Nazi occupation of her town in 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz; how her grandfather was beaten to death for not relinquishing a Torah scroll; being sent to work at a munitions factory in Germany; being with her sister when they were liberated by British troops in 1945; spending time in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp to recover; receiving help from the Swedish Red Cross and traveling to Sweden to recover; immigrating to the United States in 1946 with her sister; finding a job as a secretary in New York City; getting married and moving to Baltimore; the death of her sister and raising her children; and her reflections on the current state of the world.

    Oral history interview with Inge Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Inge Katzenstein (née Berg), born March 27, 1929 in Cologne, Germany, describes her family; having to move in with some of her extended family in Cologne after Kristallnacht; attempting to illegally cross into Holland; getting into Holland but immediately being captured and imprisoned; immigrating to Kenya but not being able to leave their home their without permission; attending stenography school to become a secretary; immigrating to the United States in 1951 and settling in Vineland, New Jersey; getting married and raising her children as Orthodox Jews; and returning to Germany twice and getting treated well.

    Oral history interview with Werner Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Werner Katzenstein, born in Wallensen, Germany on April 29, 1922, describes his childhood; having to leave school in 1933 after Hitler came to power in 1933; his father going to prison because he was Jewish but getting released after about a week; his father being forced to close down his business; buying property in Holland and immigrating there in 1937; immigrating to the United States in 1939 and settling in Somerville, New Jersey; being considered an enemy alien; registering for the draft and being called to service in March 1944; being sent for basic training to Camp Blanding in Florida; being classified for intelligence and reconnaissance work; joining the 100th Infantry Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina; his deployment to Europe; going through southern France and the Vosges Mountains; and getting wounded in combat; returning to his platoon in January 1945 and going through Germany; being in combat in Heidelberg; working for the military government; visiting family who had been in Theresienstadt; returning for New Jersey on April 30,1946; and getting married and settling in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Fred Goldman

    Oral History

    Fred Goldman, born in Fürth, Germany on September 6, 1915, describes his childhood; his memories of Hitler coming to power; finishing high school and moving to Berlin to train to be a cantor and teacher at a Jewish Teacher’s College; returning to Fürth after three years and moving back in with his mother and sister; immigrating to the United States in January 1939 because a distant cousin vouched for him; arriving in the U.S. with twelve dollars and taking a job as a busboy at a department store in New York; marrying Ruth Schuster, a Jewish women also from Fürth; working in a uniform factory until he was drafted into the army in March 1943; becoming a member of the medical corps but then being transferred into the military intelligence unit when the army learned he was fluent in German; going to Camp Ritchie in Maryland; interrogating prisoners in Europe; staying with the army until March 1946, when he returned to the United States and became a diamond setter; and settling in Silver Spring, Maryland after the war.

    Oral history interview with Paulette Stessin

    Oral History

    Paulette Stessin, born in Metz, France, discusses her family and childhood in France; her parents, who sold clothing in the market; keeping kosher; her understanding of events in Germany in 1938 when she was 17 or 18; her family’s move to Angouleme, France where they thought they would be safe; daily life in Angouleme; her work as a hairdresser in Brive la Gaillarde, France, where there was one Jewish family; being arrested near Brive in April 1944; being transferred to Drancy and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her memories of Auschwitz; working on a road hauling stones; “Pitchipoi,” a term referring to the imaginary place they would be sent to and used by the prisoners in Drancy; the addition of a chemical to the women’s soup to suppress their menstrual cycles, which did not work on her; deciding to join her “camp sister”, a Dutch woman in another barrack, who was being deported; arriving at Bergen-Belsen; her memories of the camp; being liberated in April 1945; traveling to Paris; her reintegration at the Hotel Lutetia; and her decision to return to Angouleme.

    Oral history interview with Margitta Cooper

    Oral History

    Margitta Cooper, born on June 10, 1929 in Speyer, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her family’s arrest in 1940 and being taken to the Gurs concentration camp; gathering with about 20 other children and being told they were to be sent to the United States; separating from her parents and seeing them for the last time; spending time in a small French town before her immigration; finally travelling to the United States by boat in 1941; taking a train to Baltimore, MD to recover with the other immigrant children; meeting an uncle in New York City; finding out about the fate of her family; settling into life in Baltimore and receiving a job at the Johns Hopkins hospital; and her reflections on what the world knew about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Erika Eckstut

    Oral History

    Erica Eckstut, born June 12, 1928 in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her family; staying with her sister and brother-in-law at the end of the war; marrying a member of the Czech Army, Robert Kauder, on August 28, 1945; living in Freiwaldau (Jeseník), Czech Republic; how her husband was the big boss (Velitel) in the city, removing Germans from the Sudetenland area; moving to Prague, Czech Republic; having two children over the next few years; how her husband testified at the Nuremberg Trials; the death of her husband in 1957; immigrating to the United States; finally arriving in the United States with her children on April 11, 1960 and being greeted by a swarm of reporters because she was among the first to be allowed to leave Communist Czechoslovakia; attending technology school; living with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their children for a year before getting her own apartment; meeting her current husband in 1962; her diagnosis of lung cancer in 1989; participating in a cancer research study and being one of two survivors of the seventy-five person study; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Tole Johannes Madna

    Oral History

    Tolé Johannes Hendricus Madna, born June 8, 1931 in The Hague, the Netherlands, describes his Indonesian father and his Dutch Protestant mother; living in Holland during the war; the divorce of his parents in 1936; living with his father and a nanny; hiding the infant son, Alfred Munzer, of family friends; the child staying with his family for three and a half years and calling him Bobby; moving to Belgium after the war; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Henri Dupuy

    Oral History

    Henri Dupuy, born June 5, 1920 in Thiviers, France and designated Righteous Among Nations, discusses his anger at the French government and Germany; his decision to join the Resistance; Constantin, nom de guerre Jambard, leader of the Armée Secrète (AS) who formed the Maquis in 1942 in Perigueux, France; how his mother, Helene, hid Maquis members in her home and procured ration cards; joining the police to avoid the draft; guarding the Perigueux Gestapo headquarters and stealing letters stamped “Dordogne,” denouncing French citizens; the November 10, 1943 Maquis attack in Perigueux and roundup and deportation of 350 Jews to Auschwitz; the arrest of the Gruska family and escape of their children; how his mother placed two Gruska sons with rural families and the daughter in a convent; how his mother secured forged identity papers with the complicity of Secretary-General Lafont, joining the Messignac Maquis; Maquis attacks from the woods; the supply of small arms by the Riberac police and by parachute drops; how the Maquis were denounced and attacked by Germans; hiding in Coursac, Dordogne, France and joining the Roland Maquis; a Maquis attack on the Neuvic-Bordeaux train carrying French francs to Germany in July or August 1944; and how the Maquis offloaded the francs in a truck to Saint-Alvere, a resistance center in the Dordogne, to support Maquis families and resistance activities.

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

    Halina Peabody (née Halina Janna Litman), born in Kraków, Poland on December 12, 1932, describes her childhood; taking on a false identity (Halina Litinska) during the war and pretending to be Catholic; hiding in Jaroslaw with her mother and younger sister; being injured on the day of liberation by a hand grenade; being liberated by the Russian Army; living in group homes with her sister after the war; traveling to Italy with her family and staying at a displaced persons camp; traveling to England and then going to Israel in 1957; taking a job at the American embassy in Tel Aviv; marrying a Bulgarian Jew who worked for the U.S. Information Agency; leaving Israel in 1968 with her husband and five year old son; immigrating to Palo Alto, California, where her husband could get a job at the Hoover Institute; moving to Washington, D.C., where Halina’s husband got a job working for “The Voice of America”; getting a divorce from her husband in 1972 and then marrying Richard Peabody; volunteering at the Holocaust Museum; and getting involved with survivor groups such as the Association of Child Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Bercau

    Oral History

    Marcel Bercau, born October 17, 1920 in Paris, France, describes his Romanian family; restrictions placed on Jews during German occupation; his deportation to Drancy in 1941; working in a locksmith's workshop and remaining in Drancy with his father and brother for a year before they were deported; going to Auschwitz, where he worked as an earth-worker and then as a bricklayer; working in the schlosser-electriker division, which allowed him to find a little bit of extra food; the evacuation of Auschwitz on January 17, 1945; going on a death march with 60,000 other prisoners and traveling through the snow and the cold with no food; arriving in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), where they were put in open cattle cars and transported to Oranienburg; how while they passed through Prague, Czech Republic people threw them bread and water containers; how four out of five people died during the transport; the German abandonment of Landsberg, where he was being held; being rescued and taken to Augsburg, where there was a repatriation camp; and returning to Paris to start a family.

    Oral history interview with Rolph Hammel

    Oral History

    Rolph Hammel, born on September 11, 1912, in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes his family; his involvement with a Zionist youth movement; being forced to do military service in 1933 in Dijon; getting scarlet fever; moving to Strasbourg, France and working in a hardware store before starting his own faucet and fixtures business in 1937; being allowed to remain in France because he had inherited citizenship from his mother who was French; working in the DCA during the war; helping to save 70 Jews in Périgueux, France; going to the ORT school; and his reflections on the treatment of Jews during the war.

    Oral history interview with Norbert V. Hilsberg

    Oral History

    Norbert Hilsberg, born on September 3, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; graduating college and serving in the Austrian military for three months; starting the forms to immigrate to the United States after the Anschluss; his parents’ immigration to Cuba, where they stayed until April 1941, when they attained visas for the United States; receiving his visa in June 1938 and traveling to the United States; living with his uncle in Philadelphia, PA when he arrived; learning about the invasion of Poland; working in the advertising department of the Litz department store in Philadelphia; volunteering for the US Army in February 1941; getting sent to an engineering camp, where he made maps; the attachment of his outfit to the general headquarters in DC; being forced to remain in the US when his unit went abroad because he was not yet eligible for his American citizenship; receiving his citizenship in April 1943 and working on plans for the invasion of southern France and Austria; living in North Africa for nearly a year; being sent to Hawaii; leaving the army in 1945; accepting a job with the war department; and settling in Washington, DC with his family.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

    Alfred Munzer, born in The Hague, Netherlands on November 23, 1941, describes his family; how his parents debated over having him circumcised; his family going into hiding in May 1942; his father being admitted into a psychiatric hospital and his mother working at the psychiatric hospital as a nurse’s aide; his two older sisters being taken in by a Catholic family; going into hiding with a family friend and neighbor, Tolé Madna; how he played in the backyard and was called Bobby; his parents being sent to a concentration camp on December 26, 1942; his mother surviving the war, working first as a seamstress and later as an electrician; how his father died soon after liberation; the death of his sisters in Auschwitz; immigrating to Brussels, Belgium in 1952 and to the United States in 1958 with his mother; settling in New York where he attended Brooklyn College; going on to attend medical school at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn; becoming a lung specialist and interning at several well known-hospitals before doing military service at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, D.C.; and settling in D.C. with his partner Joel Wind.

    Oral history interview with Maria Mandel

    Oral History

    Maria Myriam Mandel, born 1938 in Czerwinsk, Poland, discusses the assembly of the town's citizens in a square and their deportation; her family's escape through a bakery door; hiding from the Gestapo in granaries, cemeteries, and the woods; her parents’ execution by the Gestapo in 1942; her placement by her parents in a neighbor's home from 1942 to 1947; her new name, Katia Gortak; the kindness of her foster mother and brother; her Catholic education; her antisemitic feelings; the painful loss of her brother and sister who were placed in other families and abandoned; the arrival of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) at the end of the war; reuniting with her uncles in America and France; her shock at learning she was Jewish; her transfer to a Jewish orphanage in Czerwinsk, where she received a Jewish education; her recollections of antisemitism at the war's end; her life in the orphanage from 1947 to 1949; visits by her foster mother; her bitterness when visits ceased; how the JDC changed her birth date from 1938 to 1937 to allow her to travel alone from Poland to France; her arrival in Paris, France; her refusal to join her uncle in America; and her life in Perigueux, France with her paternal uncle and his family.

    Oral history interview with Yvonne Mignot de Royere

    Oral History

    Yvonne Mignot de Royere (née Roux), born in Clermont d’Excideuil, France on February, 22, 1925, describes how she and her father, Joseph Roux, saved 21 Jews during World War II; the evacuation of Jews in Strasbourg in 1939; working with her father, who was the mayor; taking in French Jewish refugees; how her work as a municipal clerk gave her access to forms and papers, which she used to provide the Jews with forged identity papers and ration cards; hiding Jews in the village rectory; one of the Jewish women giving birth to her daughter, Arlette Veil, in 1943; she and her father saving several families (last names: Robertso, Schwab, Wertz, and Veil); how three of the families were hidden in the caretaker’s house at the Chateau du Noyer and she helped them secure food; how she occasionally left the mayor’s office unlocked so that the families could secure additional ration cards; living in Excideuil from 1942 to 1944, after which the Jews returned to Alsace to rebuild their lives; staying in touch with the people she helped; and being honored with her father by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations in 1982.

    Oral history interview with Susan Berlin

    Oral History

    Susan Berlin (née Suzanna Reichman), born on June 22, 1926 in Rožňava, Czechoslovakia (present day Slovakia), describes her family; her childhood in Rožňava; her memories of the rise of Nazi power; immigrating to the United States on August 3, 1939; settling in New York City, where she went to Julia Richmond High School; graduating in 1942 and attending Brooklyn College for her undergraduate degree and the University of Pennsylvania for her master’s degree; graduating in 1947 and moving to Washington D.C., where she got a job in the Army Intelligence Map Service as an Army Intelligence Research Analyst; marrying in 1950 and having three daughters; retiring from the Army Intelligence Map Service to raise her daughters; becoming an art teacher when her children got older; and volunteering at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Education Department.

    Oral history interview with John Bucur

    Oral History

    John Bucur, born in Youngstown, Ohio on March 5, 1925, describes his childhood; his Romanian-American parents; the multiracial community he grew up in; graduating high school in 1943 as the valedictorian of his class and receiving a scholarship to Ohio University; enlisting in the Army and being sent to Fort Sill, where he received training to be in Battery B of the 17th Observation Battalion; his first assignment watching a ship off the shore of Omaha Beach in France on D-Day; his unit’s move through England, France, and Germany and then going on a tour of Buchenwald at the end of the war; taking college courses at an American School in Biarritz, France after the war; returning home on December 7, 1945 and being discharged from the army; finishing his degree at Ohio University and graduating in 1948; going on to medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon; having five children with two wives; and moving to Arlington, Virginia to found Fairfax Hospital, Northern Virginia Doctor’s Hospital, and the National Orthopedic Hospital.

    Oral history interview with Lore Schneider

    Oral History

    Lore Schneider (née Heti Lore Koppel), born on October 10, 1924 in Bochum, Germany, describes her family; seeing the Nazi youth in her neighborhood; observing the Nazi parades from her home on the main street; immigrating to the United States in June 1934; settling in Washington, D.C. and attending public school; obtaining U.S. citizenship in 1939, five years after her family’s arrival; attending college at night and working as a stenographer at the Interior Department during the war; and marrying in 1946 and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Frank Nathan Liebermann (né Franz Natan Liebermann), born in Gleiwitz (Gliwice), Poland on January 19, 1929, describes his family; celebrating Jewish holidays; immigrating to the United States in October 1938 and moving to Dayton, Ohio, where his father set up his medical practice; his family’s involvement in the Jewish community and helping many European Jews to immigrate to the United States; attending Western Reserve University; meeting his wife during his sophomore year and marrying her soon after he graduated; working for a textile converting firm for many years before retiring and moving to Washington, D.C., where his two daughters had already settled; finding a job at a travel firm; and beginning to volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum after September 11th, 2001.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Liebermann

    Oral History

    Marianne Liebermann, born in Vienna, Austria on October 29, 1929, describes her family and childhood; her education; her father searching for ways to leave Vienna and immigrating to the United States after the Anschluss; her father’s efforts to convince a gentile American family, with whom he had previously done business, to vouch for his family; boarding a train to Cherbourg, France in September 1938 and transferring to the Europa ship, which took them to the U.S.; arriving in New York on October 3, 1938 and living there when the war broke out in 1939; graduating from Barnard University and later going on to get her master’s degree at Adelphi University; marrying Frank Liebermann on November 23, 1950; settling down in Great Neck, New York and having three children; becoming a teacher and spending many years teaching English as a second language; and settling in Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Thea S. Rips

    Oral History

    Thea S. Rips, born in Trieste, Italy on February 24, 1922, describes her childhood; her family moving to Rijeka, Croatia when she was five years old; growing up in a Catholic family but having many Jewish friends; witnessing the persecution of nearby Jewish families; aiding several families in their attempts to escape Italy; wanting to become a doctor and working in a shipyard infirmary in Rijeka; getting a job working on the Marshall Plan after the war in Rome, Italy; being offered a chance to move to the United States and work as an interpreter in 1955; meeting her husband, who she was engaged to for eighteen years before they married in February 1976; going to the United States and living in New York; moving to Washington, D.C.; and the death of her husband in September of 1994.

    Oral history interview with Andrew Glass

    Oral History

    Andrew (né Andrej) James Glass, born November 30, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his early childhood; spending time in his wealthy grandfather's house because of his mother's illness; his grandfather, Jacob, repatriating millions of dollars which had been deposited in Switzerland, New York, and London, back into zlotys in Poland because of a 1939 government decree; hearing planes and bombs exploding in September 1939; his father being forced to clear rubble and fill sandbags; supplying gas to a gentile taxi driver and two families driving east on September 13; going by horse and cart and then by train and on foot to Vilnius, Lithuania; his father getting picked up by a Lithuanian patrol but being released when he agreed with them that President Roosevelt was Jewish; his family receiving three Japanese visas from Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul; paying 600 dollars to get Soviet transit visas; traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway and arriving in Japan in December 1940; getting three residence visas to the Dominican Republic and a one week transit visa from the American Consul in Tokyo, Japan; sailing on the Kama Kumakara in April 1941 to San Francisco, CA; taking the train to New York, NY and staying there until 1943; immigrating to Canada; re-entering the U.S. under the Polish quota; his father working in a defense plant and his mother working as a seamstress in New York; how he determined to not feel different; working for the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, Senators Javits and Percy, and Cox newspapers from 1974 to 2001; becoming a Fellow at Harvard and the managing editor of The Hill newspaper; and feeling that he is living on borrowed time, that life is precious, and that there is a randomness to who survives.

    Oral history interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff

    Oral History

    Renate Fischer Chernoff, born on June 25, 1929 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), describes her early childhood; moving to Racibórz, Poland with her family in 1934; being sent to Berlin, Germany to stay with her grandmother in 1937; her family choosing to immigrate to Canada since her father was a physician; arriving in 1938 and settling in Montreal; moving to New Brunswick; her parents adopting Saul Silvershein, a sixteen year old Polish boy from a displaced persons camp; attending college at Dalhousie University; meeting her husband while in graduate school at the University of Chicago; marrying in New Brunswick in 1953 and moving to Saint Louis, MO where her husband finished his residency and their first child was born; moving to Durham, NC, where they had two more children; and settling in the Washington, DC area in 1980.

    Oral history interview with Eli Dortort

    Oral History

    Eli Dortort (né Klemfner), born on August 30, 1920 in Zdachov, Galicia, Poland, describes his family and childhood; escaping his hometown a few hours before the Germans invaded; traveling with some Russian soldiers to Kiev, Ukraine and then to Starobielsk (Starobil's'k), Ukraine, where he volunteered for the Polish Army; his unit being sent to Israel, where he deserted and worked in a kibbutz; staying in the kibbutz for a year before he joined the British Army and was sent to Italy; later being stationed in Teheran, Iran and Egypt; returning to Israel after the war and fighting in the War of Independence; staying in Israel until the late 1950s, when he immigrated to the United States; and settling in New York City, where he met his wife and had a daughter.

    Oral history interview with Hilda Seftor

    Oral History

    Hilda Seftor (née Cohen), born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 21, 1923, describes her family and childhood; finding out about the Nazi invasion of Poland; helping her local Jewish community and finding homes for thirty-five Jewish refugee children; her parents founding the Whittingehame Farm School; teaching the school’s Jewish children how to farm and giving them a traditional education; attending the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science and graduating with a degree in household and institutional management in 1943; working in the Edinburgh school system and later at a wartime nursery preparing meals for children; marrying after the war and immigrating to the United States; having four sons; moving to Washington, DC in 1994; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Felix Nicinski

    Oral History

    Felix Nicinski (né Fievish Nicinski), born December 7, 1925 in Lochów, Poland near Lódź, Poland, discusses his early childhood; moving in to the fenced-in ghetto in early 1940; how the Germans bombed their city before entering it; being taken to a work camp in Lienzingen (Mühlacker, Germany) in late 1940 with the other 14 to 18 year old boys to dig ditches; slipping away on a march in the summer of 1941 to work and escape to the fenced-in ghetto in Kalisz, Poland; receiving the false identity of an escaped 27 year old; Kalisz Jews being sent to the Lódź ghetto in 1941; being forced to wear the yellow star and beaten by the German guards; working at an ammunitions plants in Skarżysko-Kamienna for 10 months in 1942; being sent to Dora in 1943 and then to Buchenwald in 1944 for six months; his transfer to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; living in Bamberg, Germany between 1945 to 1948 and learning how to be a barber; immigrating to Australia in 1948 and living there for ten years; immigrating to the United States in 1958; and marrying another survivor of Bergen-Belsen.

    Oral history interview with David Brombart

    Oral History

    David Brombart, born on August 3, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his childhood; the German invasion in May 1940 and being able to attend school until mid-1941; the deportation of his sister, Sarah, and his mother in August 1942; running away from a boarding school in Ikla (possibly Uccle in Brussels) and his father placing him in the home of business clients; going into hiding in Hornu, Belgium but visiting his father, who was in hiding in another city; his liberation in September 1944 and returning to Brussels with his father; finding out that his grandfather was a member of the Jewish Committee which made up lists for the Germans; returning to school at age 11 and learning how to write; serving in the Belgian Army from 1952 to 1954 and becoming the head of the Socialist Democratic Youth until 1958; having a full time job with the Young Socialist Guard and attending international conferences as the Labor Secretary from 1958 to 1964; living in Paris, France from 1958 to 1959; getting married in 1961; being offered a job to direct the African Labor Institute of the American organization AFL-CIO; moving to New York and advising labor movements in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia; becoming Deputy Director of the International Department of the AFL-CIO under Lane Kirkland; and being honored for his international labor work by the governments of Dahomey, Togo, and Senegal.

    Oral history interview with Gunter Haimann

    Oral History

    Gunter Haimann, born on January 26, 1922 in Koblenz, Germany, describes his childhood and family; his parents deciding that it was time to leave Germany in the beginning of 1937, when Jewish children were banned from public schools; immigrating to the United States and living with his aunt in Queens, New York; attending high school and night school to learn English; graduating in June 1941 and finding a job at an auto shop; his draft into the army at the beginning of the war and being trained as an interrogator; teaching interrogating techniques at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; his transfer into the 101st Airborne; going to England and jumping on D-Day and landing in Carentan, France; serving with the 101st for the remainder of the war; receiving a Purple Heart after being wounded in Bastogne, Belgium; not taking religion in to account while he was fighting; jumping onto Holland on Rosh Hashonah in 1944; going into Düsseldorf, Germany; finding Hitler’s stationary and using it to write letters; going to Austria and finding Mr. and Mrs. Goering and speaking with Mrs. Goering; seeing Holocaust survivors walking home; returning to the United States and starting a luncheonette business; and meeting his wife and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Lakritz

    Oral History

    Alfred Julian Lakritz, born on June 1, 1934 in Kiel, Germany, describes his family; narrowly escaping deportation to Poland in 1939 and moving to Antwerp, Belgium and then Marmande, France with his family; experiencing antisemitism from his peers in Marmande; how his father was arrested; speaking with the men who arrested his father many years later, and their regret; being sent with his brother to a Jewish summer camp in Creuse, France in July 1942; going into hiding in various safe houses for two and a half years after leaving the camp; ending up at a convent in Lourdes, France, where they met a Jewish French woman who took them in for the remainder of the war; being placed in a Catholic home in Tarbes with his brother after the war; reuniting with their mother in Marmande and applying for visas to the United States; immigrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Oakland, CA; attending the University of California at Berkeley; completing his law degree; moving to Los Angeles, CA with his wife, whom he had met in law school; and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Romania, describes her family and early childhood; her father’s draft into the Russian Army; going into hiding in Transnistria, Ukraine in September 1941; her liberation by Russian troops in April 1944; returning to their home in Romania and discovering that her father had died during the war; attending school for the first time and learning Russian and Ukrainian; traveling to Munich, Germany and posing as a Greek refugee; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp for some time; developing tuberculosis in 1947 and having to go to a sanitarium in Augsburg, Germany; immigrating to the United States with her mother in September 1949 and settling in New York, NY; and getting married in 1959 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Anita Etzyon

    Oral History

    Anita Etzyon, born on October 4, 1941 in Boryslav, Poland (present day Ukraine), describes her family and childhood; being one year old when her mother died from tuberculosis; having few direct memories of the war but being told about her family’s life during that time; being taken away to live with a Christian family and getting baptized to better fit into her surroundings; returning to live with her father, who had remarried, after the war; living in a Jewish neighborhood and attending a Jewish school; moving to various cities around Poland with her father and step-mother; being the only Jew in her school in Swidnica, Poland; adjusting to life as a Jew after she had spent four years as a Christian; immigrating to Israel in 1951; learning Hebrew and adjusting to life in Israel; getting married to avoid serving in the Israeli Army; having a daughter; immigrating to the United States with her husband and daughter 1963; settling in Washington, DC and working for a Jewish Day School; and her reflections on being a Jew in the modern world.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Galun

    Oral History

    Melvin Galun, born on May 10, 1940 in Kowal, Poland, describes his parents’ participation in the Zionist movement; his mother’s stories about Jews being sent away to the camps; going into hiding in the nearby forests; his memory of his family’s liberation by Russian troops; staying in several German displaced persons camps after the war; his early education in the displaced persons camps; participating in Zionist youth movements in the camps; immigrating to the United States in November 1949; his studies in the United States at a Yeshiva school; traveling to Israel after graduating school and working in a kibbutz for a year; and getting married in 1963 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Magdalena Farkas Berkovics

    Oral History

    Magdalena Farkas Berkovics, born on July 15, 1919 in Cluj, Romania, discusses her childhood, schooling and musical training in a conservatory; experiencing low level antisemitism; getting married in 1939; living in her house in the Cluj ghetto with other women after the city’s Jewish men had been taken away for forced labor; conditions in the ghetto, including food scarcity and the black market; providing piano lessons to Christian children; being deported in June 1944; terrible conditions in the train car; her arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from her family except for one 25-year-old cousin; how her clothes were taken away and her hair removed; going to Stutthof in August 1944 and then digging ditches in Steinort (Sztynort, Poland), Elbing (Elbląg, Poland), and Groudentz; speaking about freedom with the other women and singing Hungarian songs; being liberated and traveling to Satu Mare, Romania, where Jewish volunteers helped her return to Cluj; how she found Christians living in her house and learned that she was the only survivor in her family; marrying, Zoltan Berkovics, in 1946; the birth of their son, Tiberius, who later changed his name to John Sylvanis because of antisemitism in Romania; how Communists nationalized her house and forced her to pay rent; teaching in the Romanian conservatory for 30 years; immigrating with her husband to the United States in the 1980s; and feeling very grateful for American liberty and democracy.

    Oral history interview with Sol Mackler

    Oral History

    Sol Mackler, born on January 15,1921 in Poland, discusses his childhood in a small village; visiting relatives in nearby Radom; being forced to live in a ghetto in 1939 with sixteen people in one house; wearing a yellow star; in late 1941 walking seven miles to Pionki labor camp, being given a striped uniform and the number 1058; working in a munitions factory, then laying railway tracks in a tunnel; escaping with four other prisoners to the forest and joining Polish Jewish partisans; being captured by Germans and being sent by train to Sachsenhausen; seeing his sister and her baby there; smuggling his one year old nephew into Pionki to the child’s father, a tailor who made Nazi uniforms; waiting for Russians at liberation; going back to his village and being severely beaten; living in Bad Nauheim displaced persons camp in Germany; working on the black market selling diamonds from Belgium; arriving in the United States in December 1949 after being sponsored by two Jewish Californian wine makers; moving to New York to work and getting married in 1956; working for his brother-in-law; and finding out his parents were executed in Treblinka.

    Oral history interview with Theresia Bauer

    Oral History

    Theresia Bauer discusses her involvement with the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), which paralleled the boys’ Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend); the Soviet occupation of Austria, a time period in which she was constantly hiding from soldiers; and her husband's experience as a prisoner of war in Russia.

    Oral history interview with Carolina Taitz

    Oral History

    Carolina Taitz (née Lena Knoch), born on February 24, 1929 in Russia on a train, discusses her childhood in Viesite, Latvia; having friendly relations with schoolmates in her Latvian public school; how her father, a tree doctor, lost his business and the family house and was temporarily imprisoned as a capitalist when the Russian Communists occupied the town; experiencing a lot of antisemitism; seeing Jews being shot on the street when the Germans came in 1941; being forced to live in the ghetto in Riga, Latvia with five people to a room and little food; getting hit in the eye when a German soldier caught her with a cooked potato; being forced to work in a shoe polish factory from 5 AM to 5 PM; going on a forced march with 30,000 people guarded by German soldiers; seeing and hearing people being shot in a ditch in the Rumbula forest; walking with her mother, sister, and 200 other women to Termini prison; staying on the roof in the cold for two weeks in November 1942 and the birth of a baby, named Termina; going back to the ghetto; dressing as a boy going to work and escaping during a second Aktion when she was 14 years old; taking off her yellow star; being sheltered by a Russian Evangelist priest, Vladimir Michko, and his sister for two and a half years; living in their cellar; going back to Riga at liberation; her mother returning from Auschwitz but dying soon after; attending acting school; getting married and having a daughter; trying for 10 years to go to the United States, and finally getting a visa with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt; arriving in New York in March 1966; working at the New York City Opera for 19 years in charge of costumes, wigs, and makeup for the productions; being widowed twice and moving to Washington, DC in 2008; and still seeing her mother and little brother in her dreams and herself running away from German soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Helen Schwartz

    Oral History

    Helen Schwartz (b. Hela Kirschner), born in 1925, discusses living in the Łódź ghetto in Poland from 1939 to August 1944; working in a laundry in the ghetto; being taken with her family to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944; being marched from Auschwitz to Stutthof; her liberation by the Russians near Gdansk, Poland; contracting typhus in an outbreak that hit a group of female survivors following liberation; returning to Łódź and reuniting with her sister; reuniting with her brother at the displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating in 1949 to Portland, Maine, where her husband worked in a clothing factory; opening a tailor’s shop in 1954; raising a family; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and speaking at schools in Silver Spring, Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Irene Silver

    Oral History

    Irene Silver, born Irena Dynkewicz in Łódź, Poland on January 30, 1933, discusses raising her children in the Jewish tradition, being comfortable with friends who understand the Holocaust experience; her anger with people who ask why victims did not fight back during the Holocaust; being tolerant of strangers after having lived with strangers in the Warsaw Ghetto; her work as a social worker and how it was influenced by her wartime experiences; her sympathy with the civil rights movement; her membership in the Hidden Children group in New York where she feels a common ground; receiving Holocaust reparations which she used to help her children; her view that the world has not learned any lessons from the Holocaust; and her emotion at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, feeling that the rain at the opening ceremony was the heavens crying.

    Oral history interview with Herman Taube

    Oral History

    Herman Taube (né Herschel Taube), born February 2, 1918 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family; being orphaned by age nine; living with grandparents and later moving to Piyotrkov; attending a yeshiva; being encouraged by a Polish doctor to become a medic; returning to his grandparents in Łódź in 1935 and seeing antisemitic incidents; writing poetry; belonging to a literary society and meeting the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber; working in a military hospital in Alexandrov (possibly Aleksandrów Łódźki, Poland), arranged by Father Jagla, a Catholic priest; joining the Polish Army in August 1939; serving in a medical group that marched to the Bug River where the Soviet Army ordered the group to go to Volodymyr-Volyns'kyĭ, Ukraine to get educated so as to lose their capitalist mentality; accompanying a wounded soldier to Poltawa (Poltava), Ukraine, where an Ukrainian militia man arranged for him to take a new name, Grigori Arionowicz Taube, and live with a Jewish family; going to Samarra (Koibashov or possibly Kuybyshev) and getting more medical training; being sent to Tyumen (Tiumen') in Siberia and working in hospitals and in gulags; in November 1941 going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and then to Andizhan, Uzbekistan; working in a malaria clinic; leaving the clinic after reporting that people were stealing food from the hospital; going to Seratov, Russia to the Polish Army; being assigned to the Kotsk offensive in June 1944; being badly injured by a mine explosion while riding in a truck; recovering enough by December 1944 and going to Lublin, Poland to the Polish Army headquarters in Majdanek; being assigned to Platte and opening a Red Cross repatriation station where he treated people with typhus; going to Keslin in Bessarabia in June 1945 to acquire more medicine from a CIBA warehouse; meeting a young woman, Susan Strauss, a survivor from Germany and traveling together to Potsdam, Germany; staying in a displaced persons camp in Halle-Merseburg, Germany, where he opened a Red Cross station; meeting a young Auschwitz survivor, Henry Rothfogel; traveling with Susan back to Platte, and getting civilly married and later religiously married; traveling with Susan and Henry in the summer of 1946 to Berlin, Germany with help from the Bricha; adopting a two year old child survivor, Mark; having first child in the Zingenheim displaced persons camp in September 1946; arriving in the United Sates on April 18, 1947 and being interviewed at the pier by the Jewish Daily Forward; going to Baltimore, MD to join Susan's father; writing for the Jewish Daily Forward; traveling to New York, NY to edit a Histadrut yearbook; returning to Baltimore and helping Susan run a grocery store; working for various Jewish organizations; obtaining accreditation as a journalist at the White House and in Congress; and continuing to write poetry, stories, and essays about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Regine Ginsberg

    Oral History

    Regine Ginsberg, born on November 19, 1925, discusses her childhood in Brussels, Belgium; her father’s work in the leather industry; religious observances in the household; speaking Yiddish at home and French in school; how her father wired money to Chase Bank in New York in the 1930s; her family abandoning their home in Brussels to travel by train to France; staying with a farmer in St. Gaudens, France; the family’s arrest in St. Gaudens; how her brother and father were sent to a prison near Toulouse, France and then released seven weeks later; how her mother returned to Brussels and brought back Sabbath candlesticks, prayer shawls, tefillin, and diamond jewelry which she used to bribe guards; how her father contacted a cousin in Pennsylvania; being on the last boat out of France from Marseilles; arriving in New York in June 1942; staying with cousins in Pittsburgh, PA and then settling in McKeesport, PA; her mother and father’s work in the leather industry; moving to Texas where she met her future husband Reuben Ginsberg in Athens, TX; her brother enlisting in the army and being sent to Belgium where he did intelligence work acting as a French interpreter; studying along with her husband at Columbia University in New York; becoming an art dealer and opening up a gallery in the 1970s; her emotional state after the war; and how her wartime experiences affected her life, her marriage, and the way she raised her children.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney

    Oral History

    Ursula Guttstadt McKinney, born November 17, 1925 in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, discusses her family’s professional and religious background; her childhood and the troubles she faced obtaining schooling due to being half-Jewish; the difficulties her Jewish father and cousins faced; worrying about her father getting arrested; being able to say goodbye to her father when he was taken to prison and subsequently transported to Mauthausen in October 1942; receiving news that her father died; the Third Reich taking ownership of her family’s house; getting expelled from school in October 1942; moving to Berlin, Germany with her mother and sister; the psychological effects of the war, especially the bombings; her limited contact with the underground; working at a convent where there were some hidden Jewish children; her difficulties resuming a normal life after the war; her education after the war; feeling like an outcast because of being half-Jewish; immigrating, along with her sister, to the United States; not wanting to identify as German; her feelings on being a “mischling,” or having a mixed background; not identifying with one religion and being wed in an Unitarian church; and her work as a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rappaport

    Oral History

    Ruth Rappaport, born May 27, 1923 in Leipzig, Germany, discusses her parents, Mendel Rappaport, a Romanian subject, and Helene Rubinstein, who was born in Poland; how her mother’s cousin, also named Helene Rubinstein, was a well-known cosmetics businesswoman, attending an Orthodox Jewish school and an English language school in Leipzig, Germany; her membership in the Zionist youth group, Habonim; her Romanian passport, which did not identify her as a Jew; moving to Switzerland with her family shortly after Kristallnacht; staying in Zurich, Switzerland as a nanny for the Herzog family after her parents returned to Germany; selling nail polish, which her parents sent because they could not send money; being sponsored by her uncle, Carl Rubinstein, who lived in Seattle, Washington to come to the United States; leaving Europe in December 1939 on the Holland American Line boat, the Veendam; her parents’ attempt to leave Germany with Cuban visas; how her father died in Buchenwald and her mother in Ravensbrück, both in 1943; attending high school in Seattle, then the University of Washington, and finishing at Berkeley, majoring in sociology; working after graduation for a Jewish newspaper in Seattle and for the Zionist Emergency Council; working with Bartley Crum for UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) in San Francisco, CA; working in Israel during the War of Independence in 1948, where she exchanged gunfire with Palestinians; working with Golda Meir; helping establish the Israel Photographic Archives; returning to the United States and working for the Department of Defense as a librarian; living overseas in Okinawa, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; and Vietnam; and retiring from the government after 19 years.

    Oral history interview with Edith Langer

    Oral History

    Edith Langer, born October 4, 1932 in Hamm, Germany, discusses living on a farm; her devout Lutheran mother; memories of the prewar Jewish community in her town; her early approval of Hitler because his support of public works; meeting Hitler as a member of her scout troop; attending a one-room school with 30 children, 10 of whom were Jewish; her father’s offer to hide the families of two of his Jewish customers in her family’s farm house; her mother’s feeling that hiding Jews was the right thing to do as a Christian; her father's murder by the Nazis for hiding Jews; being sent away from her family to work on a farm, where she stayed from 1941 to 1945 and had no contact with her family; being afraid of German soldiers; seeing murdered Jews in the streets; giving food to the Russian prisoners, who were living on the farm; emigrating from Germany to the United States in 1956; becoming an American citizen in 1961; her hope that more Nazis would be tried, including the one who shot her father; her membership in the Methodist Church; and taking part in protests against the American Nazi Party.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Milkman

    Oral History

    Marianne Friedenthal Milkman, born May 13, 1931 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Germany; being baptized and raised as Christian to have more opportunities; changing schools and apartments in 1938 because of anti-Jewish laws; her aunt Lotte Friedenthal, who worked with Pastor Martin Niemӧller; her father’s deportation to Sachsenhausen in 1938; traveling to Switzerland in January 1939 and then flying with her sister to England on a Kindertransport in May 1939; living with relatives in Cambridge, England; the arrival of her parents in England and her father’s internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien; joining her father on the Isle of Man in May 1940; returning to Cambridge in May 1941, where she remained throughout the war; graduating from high school and Cambridge University; coming to the United States in 1957 to study biology; getting married and living in Iowa for 30 years; settling in Washington, DC; her Jewish identity; and her feeling that her experience during the war made her a stronger person.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Cohen

    Oral History

    Ruth Friedman Cohen, born April 26, 1930 in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (present day Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her life after the Holocaust; her prewar life in Czechoslovakia; her family’s religious beliefs; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; her mother and brother’s death immediately after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transfer to Nuremberg, Germany and then Holachov; the painful effects of tuberculosis that she contracted in Holachov; her survival and liberation by the Russian Army; her and her sister’s return to Mukachevo, where they reunited with their father; her time in Budapest, Hungary and Prague, Czech Republic, where she recuperated from tuberculosis; her immigration to the United States in 1948; the various jobs she had to support herself; her marriage in 1952; her education at the New School for Social Research; and her struggle to recover from the damaging emotional and mental effects of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Phillip Abraham

    Oral History

    Phillip Abraham, born August 10, 1931 in Podului-Turkului (Podu Turcului), Romania, describes his prewar life in Romania; his family’s religious beliefs; his childhood in a close-knit Jewish community; his family’s move to Tecuci, Romania in 1940; his father being taken away and then released in 1942; the lack of food available to the population; his education in a Jewish school; his town’s liberation by the Russian Army; his post-war Romanian education; his membership in Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth organization; his time in Israel; his education at Hebrew University and Weizmann Institute, where he studied physics; his immigration to the United States in 1959; his careers at Raytheon and the Office of Naval Research; his marriage in 1964; and his two children.

    Oral history interview with George Arnstein

    Oral History

    George Ernest Arnstein, born September 20, 1924 in Stuttgart, Germany, describes his prewar life in Germany; the repercussions of the Nuremberg laws; his experiences with antisemitism; his father’s arrest on Kristallnacht; his father’s time in Dachau; his family’s decision to leave Germany and go to Geneva, Switzerland; his family’s immigration to the United States in 1938; the anti-German sentiment in America during World War II and its effects on him; his service for the United States Army beginning in 1943 and his duties as a crypto-analyst; his work in Germany helping to perform interrogations, monitoring anti-American efforts, and denazification; his return to Wisconsin after the war; his education at Berkeley and Geneva; and his life post-war.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Scarlett Epstein

    Oral History

    Gertrude Scarlett Epstein, born July 13, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, describes her early life growing up in Vienna; her Czech father’s belief in free thinking; how her family was not religious; her parents’ and older brothers’ experiences during World War I; her Uncle Willie, who became wealthy as a textile factory owner; how she began to notice antisemitism in Vienna when her family moved to a non-Jewish part of town in the 1930s; her father’s and oldest brother’s activities in the socialist movement; her memories of a strike in Vienna in 1934; her memories of the Anschluss; her brothers’ immigration to England; her experience securing visas for Czechoslovakia on the day Hitler entered Vienna; her feelings that her moral code shifted as it became necessary to lie; her father’s arrest and later release from jail in Czechoslovakia; the family’s move to Albania by train; help provided to the family by her Uncle Willie; how she smuggled money out of Austria and Czechoslovakia; her family’s life in Albania from November 1938 to April 1939; the reaction of native Albanians towards Austrian refugees; how the Joint Distribution Committee helped refugees in Albania; her experiences teaching German to Albanians and the Italian consulate; problems she and her mother had in securing passage from Albania to England; brutal treatment she and her mother received from German police at a fuel stop in Germany; her memories of learning about concentration camps in 1943 or 1944; and how she tracked down an Albanian family to whom she taught German.

    Oral history interview with Matilde Neuwirt

    Oral History

    Matilde Neuwirt, born December 26, 1930 in Belgrade, Serbia, describes her early life in Belgrade; how her parents spoke Serbo-Croatian and Ladino at home; her family’s upper-middle class lifestyle; her schooling at both a public and a Jewish school; the lack of apprehension she felt in the pre-war years; her mother’s decision that the family leave Yugoslavia in the summer of 1940; her family’s escape westward through Dubrovnik, Croatia and then to Italy; how her parents smuggled money out of Yugoslavia; her family’s arrival in Italy without visas; living in Vicenza, Italy; how her family was moved to a detention camp in Sandrigo by the Italian authorities; the unofficial schooling that families set up for the children in Sandrigo; how the Italian authorities encouraged families to leave Sandrigo when Italy capitulated to the Germans; the help Jewish families received from a government official to get false documents; her family’s experience traveling to Rome, Italy; her memories of German brutality on the streets; how she did not know what was happening to Jews elsewhere in the country nor the rest of Europe; her brother’s return to Yugoslavia to fight with Tito’s partisans; the anti-Jewish sentiment of the partisans; her brother’s disappearance and the lack of information about him from the Yugoslav government; her family’s decision to emigrate from Italy to the United States in 1949; her family’s arrival in New York, NY; her feelings about Americanization and leaving memories of Europe behind; her memories of the Eichmann trial; her experiences returning to Yugoslavia and Italy after the war; and her belief that her family was lucky in the way they lived through the war.

    Oral history interview with Susanne K. Bennet

    Oral History

    Susanne Klejman Bennet, born August 11, 1938 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her memories of entering the Warsaw ghetto; seeing the brick walls being built in the ghetto; living with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles all together in one apartment; beggars asking for food in her building; how her father, a successful art and antiquities dealer, arranged with a non-Jewish friend to have a Polish policeman take her out of the ghetto to a farm in the countryside; how, just before the destruction of the ghetto, her mother escaped from her work group and hid with nuns who gave her a habit and a new name; how the nuns were later rounded up, but were saved on the train platform by a Catholic commandant; how her father escaped from the ghetto through the sewers right before the uprising and went into hiding throughout Warsaw; how as a young child, she knew not to talk about her parents; seeing the red sky in the distance when Warsaw was burning in 1944; her reunion with her parents; the death of most of her relatives during the Holocaust; moving with her parents to Stockholm, Sweden in 1947; receiving visas in 1949 from the Swedish ambassador to Mexico where she and her family stayed for nine months; immigrating to the United States in 1950; living in New York where her father opened up a store off of Fifth Avenue and became a major art dealer with John and Robert Kennedy, the Rockefellers, the Fords, and Greta Garbo as his clients; attending Wellesley College, where she received a masters in library science; meeting her husband Douglas Bennet, who later worked for Hubert Humphrey, Senator Abe Ribicoff, and was an Assistant Secretary of State, head of US AID and NPR, and president of Wesleyan College; their eldest son, Michael, a United States senator from Colorado; their second son, James, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly; their daughter, Holly, a financial adviser; her feelings when visiting Germany with her husband; how her father never spoke about his wartime experience; and how she has only recently started talking about her childhood during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Roberts

    Oral History

    Marianne Roberts (née Marianne Cohn), born June 20, 1920 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Ludwigshafen; experiencing antisemitism; her father's death from tuberculosis in 1933; her expulsion from school with her sister, Lottie, because they were Jewish; her mother's death in 1936; being photographed at the City Hall to show her "Jewish left ear" and being given the name ‘Sarah’; living with her sister until Kristallnacht; hiding in a basement for three days with no food while their apartment was being destroyed; moving into her sister's fiancé’s family's house for a few months and never going outside; going to the American Consulate to get visas their mother had applied for three years previously; leaving Germany in early 1939 with 4 dollars, pots and pans, and a family ring; sailing on the Cunard White Star to New York, NY; working in a doctor's office in Brooklyn; getting married and having two children; and speaking for past 20 years in schools and colleges about her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Antwerp, Belgium; being hidden during the war with the Coons family in Brussels, Belgium, then in a children's home, and then in the Von der Linden's house under the name Henry Von der Linden; his parents who lived in hiding with another couple; how his father did not go outside for two years while in hiding; his brother, Mani, who was saved by Father Joseph Andre; how his mother found him after liberation; the removal of Allied flags at the time of the Battle of the Bulge because of fear that German forces would make their way to Brussels; arriving in the United States with his parents in March 1951; settling in Seattle, WA and going to high school and the University of Washington; traveling to Paris, France for a year for training as a French teacher; traveling to Israel to learn Hebrew; teaching French in Tacoma, WA; learning sign language and working at Gallaudet University for 29 years; feeling more comfortable among Holocaust survivors; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he feels a bond with the other volunteers.

    Oral history interview with Julie A. Keefer

    Oral History

    Julie Keefer (née Jula Weinstock Eisen), born on April 19, 1941 in Lvov, Poland (present day L'viv, Ukraine), discusses her family’s forced relocation into the Lvov ghetto; the escape of her grandfather, Aiski Eisen, from a camp in Janov; her grandfather finding help from Mr. Borecki, who told him in late 1943 that the ghetto was to be burned, and her grandfather’s rescue of her family from the ghetto; her memories of a tunnel or bunker in the forest, to which a few dozen people were smuggled out of the ghetto; her memories of her grandfather donning a Nazi uniform to smuggle people out of the ghetto; being taken out of the bunker because she and her baby sister, Tola, were endangering others by crying; being placed with Mrs. Szwarczynski, a Catholic woman; the arrival of the Russians in Lvov in June 1944; staying in three displaced persons camps in 1945; living in Camp Taylor in Linz, Austria; traveling alone at seven years old to the United States, where she lived in a series of Catholic orphanages, seeing relatives on weekends; being called a Nazi because she spoke German; being sent by the Joint Distribution Committee to the Bellefaire Jewish Children's Orphanage in Cleveland, OH; her adoption by Fred and Tea Klejstadt; attending Oberlin College; getting married and earning a graduate degree in education; feeling grateful to United States; and her desire to find out what happened to her hidden sister whose name became Antonina Noviska.

    Oral history interview with Erica Laufer

    Oral History

    Erica Laufer, born May 11, 1930 in Klagenfurt, Austria, discusses being the only Jewish child in her school, where she was taught by nuns; her mother denying her Jewish identity but her father being observant; an appearance by Hitler after the Anschluss; being forced to wear the yellow Star of David; being barred from attending school; moving into her grandfather's apartment in Vienna, Austria and living there in secret; SA attacks on Jewish homes; witnessing the events of Kristallnacht while hiding in a doorway; how her father obtained tickets to Trinidad; sailing on the Dutch ship Cotica with other refugees; establishing a life in Port of Spain, Trinidad; being forced, as refuges, to live in a detention center after England entered the war; going to a boarding school to be the companion to the daughter of the director; sailing to New York, NY with her parents in December 1940; moving to Washington, DC where she was discriminated against by other children because of her accent; her academic success; her work for the federal government; getting married and starting a family; not raising her children as Jews following an oath to her mother; the number of relatives she lost in Europe; and her attempts to suppress her feelings about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Goldberg

    Oral History

    Barbara Goldberg, born in 1943 in Wilmington, DE, discusses her parents, Emma and Erich, who received visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes to emigrate from France to Portugal; their journey over the Pyrenees to Spain and then to Portugal; their arrival in the United States; her uncle Paul Brennan (born Pavel Briess) who had been in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz; how other relatives made it to Palestine, Australia, and South Africa; speaking only German in the house; how her parents’ personalities were shaped by the war; never discussing the past or other relatives' stories; feeling a connection to refugees; living with the memory of the Holocaust; and her discovery later in life that Aristides de Sousa Mendes had helped her family.

    Oral history interview with Liselotte Epstein Ivry

    Oral History

    Liselotte Epstein Ivry, born July 21, 1925 in Lichtenstein, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Lichtenstein, Saxony, Germany), describes her family, including her father Victor Ivry, mother Elsa Sicher, and younger brother Hans; the large families on both her father’s and mother’s sides; having heard of Hitler at age 12; being taken by truck with soldiers to live with relatives in a nearby village and then by train to live in Prague, Czech Republic; the many changes after the Germans marched in on March 15, 1939; having been set to go to Great Britain in 1939 on the Kindertransport but instead being sent first to a children’s facility in Prague and then to a private home; being sent to Terezin September 9, 1942 to work as a nurse in the hospital; the transport and death of her mother and brother on March 8, 1944; being sent on December 15, 1943 in a cattle car to Auschwitz, to Block 11; being given number 70663; how the will to live was what kept you alive; being sent to Hamburg, Germany to work first in a sand pit, then as a train switcher, and finally as a brick-maker; how their camp was bombed and they were moved to Bergen-Belsen; the ensuing chaos and then the emotion and celebration after being liberated by the British; eventually going to Canada in 1949 to stay with her uncle; marrying in 1950 to a Lithuanian, Sydney; her children; her attitude about Germany now and forgiving but not forgetting; her book, I Am Their Voice, which is a collection of poems, letters, and anecdotes by children from her 25 years as a speaker; and how now she is doing research for a work about Madeleine Albright.

    Oral history interview with Hans Ziegler

    Oral History

    Hans Ziegler, born June 12, 1925 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, discusses being raised as a Christian with a Jewish father; his parents divorcing in 1934; his father’s factory going out of business in 1937; attending a German elementary school; his father’s deportation to Terezin (Theresienstadt concentration camp) in 1942; being transported to Berlin, Germany in 1943 for forced labor; being sent in September 1944 to Postelberg (Postoloprty), Czech Republic; escaping in April 1945 with two others to the woods; hiding in Brno until the Russians arrived; getting repatriated and going to university for three years; being expelled by the Soviets in 1949 because his father was a capitalist and a diplomat; being in the military for two years; being employed as a chemist in an armaments factory; working in Egypt and Afghanistan; escaping to Germany in 1970 and staying until 1983; going to the United States and working in Warren, Ohio until 1990; going back to Germany; feeling more Jewish than Christian; and how he thinks more about his father and his war-time experiences.

    Oral history interview with Vera Levine

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guenter Lewy

    Oral History

    Guenter Lewy, born August 22, 1923 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), discusses his childhood in a large extended assimilated family; his memory of seeing Hitler at the 1936 Olympics; belonging to a Jewish Zionist youth group; being attacked on a hiking trip by German storm troopers; his father’s three month imprisonment in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht; going with Youth Aliyah via Trieste to Palestine in March 1939; being met in Haifa by his uncle; living on Kibbutz Tzarad where he worked as a shepherd; his parents’ escape to the United States in late 1941; volunteering in early 1942 for the Palestine Regiment of the British Army; joining the Jewish Brigade and being stationed in Egypt; traveling to Italy with Montgomery's 8th Army in late 1944; traveling to Holland at the war’s end; his role in organizing illegal immigration to Palestine; interrogating German civilians in Berlin; returning to Palestine; traveling to the United States to see his parents in late 1946; graduating from college in 1951 and earning a Master's and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1957; teaching at Columbia, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts; teaching in Germany from 1961 to 1962; his feelings about German people today; the strong influence of his youth group on his resilience; his writings on the moral dimensions of history and the Nazi persecution of the Romani peoples; his current interest in writing about Holocaust perpetrators; reoccurring dreams about Nazis brutality; and feeling that some of the best Holocaust scholarship has being written by contemporary young German scholars.

    Oral history interview with Malvy Solomon

    Oral History

    Malvy Solomon (née Aizic), born in 1938 in Bacau, Romania, discusses pre-war violence against Jews; her father’s conscription into forced labor for the Romanian military in 1941; living with her mother and grandmother in the ghetto with little food; her father’s return in 1944; attending a Jewish primary school and learning Hebrew; surviving bombings; the Soviet arrival in Romania at war’s end; Soviet looting after the war; her school’s closure by Soviet authorities; post-war antisemitism and anti-Capitalist feelings; her father’s job working for the communist government after he was forced to close his store; finishing high school at 16; her medical schooling and career; her marriage; immigrating to Israel in 1961; attending medical school in Tel Aviv; getting divorced, treating soldiers and bombing victims; remarrying in 1971; immigrating to the United States; her education in the U.S.; working for the Department of Veterans Affairs; and her feelings about the war, communism, and her life.

    Oral history interview with Elia Miranski and Genia Miranski

    Oral History

    Elia Miranski, born on August 3, 1922 in Mir, Poland (present day Belarus), describes growing up in a poor, moderately religious family but experiencing no antisemitism until the German invasion in 1939; his parents’ deaths in the first few days of the occupation; escaping with his brother, Israel, from the ghetto which had been set up in a castle; joining Russian partisans in the forest; blowing up railroad tracks for two years; trains near Valozhyn, Belarus; planes dropping supplies; others taking the wounded away from the front lines; Russians mobilizing all partisans into the army; being wounded by the Germans; traveling back to Mir after the war; working on a dairy farm for seven years as a supervisor; moving to Minsk, Belarus and working as a house painter; getting married and having a daughter; going to Israel in 1972 and then to the United States in 1995; thinking day and night about his wartime experiences; and going back to Mir from Israel for a memorial ceremony in the cemetery. Genia Miranski, daughter of Elia Miranski, adds to her father’s interview by translating it into English and by describing Elia’s membership in the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair; Elia’s parents and two younger siblings being shot by Germans; Elia building bridges and roads; witnessing his friend being mauled to death by a dog; living in the castle ghetto; Elia’s experience escaping and hiding in a swamp for three days and at times breathing through a straw when German dogs were nearby; joining Russian partisans; his return to Minsk at the end of the war and experiencing a significant amount of antisemitism; the Six Day War in Israel; going to an underground bakery at night to get Passover matzo; arriving in Israel in 1972; living in underground bunkers in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War; and her own arrival in the U.S. in 1985 and her parents’ arrival in 1995.

    Oral history interview with Maria Kordalewski

    Oral History

    Maria Kordalewski, born April 13, 1924 in Poland, describes her Ukrainian parents and her two siblings, Nicolai and Nadja; going to school and her Jewish friends; the Russians coming in 1939 and the subsequent food shortages; how people were being sent away to Siberia; the absence of antisemitism in their small town until the German occupation in 1941; how her family hid two boys until the boys escaped; how her brother was arrested in 1942, along with other young men, as a means of preventing an uprising; the Russians coming in 1945 when the war was over; being sent with her sister to Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) to get away from the communists; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany and going to school to study pharmaceuticals; arriving in the United States in 1950 by herself; landing in New York City, NY; the various jobs she held at first; moving to Detroit, MI then to California, and finally to Miami, FL; and her feelings that the Holocaust should never be forgotten.

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