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Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0418 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0067

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    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number one, side a.
    What is your full name?
    Tania Rozmaryn.
    And what is the name you were born with?
    Marcus, Tania Marcus.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Poland in a little town called Smorgon.
    Actually, I was born in Vilna, but my parents
    lived in Smorgon, so that's where I lived.
    And when were you born?
    June 16, 1928.
    How far is Smorgon from Vilna?
    I would say 40 miles approximately.
    I really wouldn't know exactly because, as a child,
    I didn't know how to measure distance.
    Let's talk about the members of your family.
    Who made up your immediate family?
    My father, Yaakov Marcus; my mother, Cyla Marcus,
    who, God bless her, is still alive,
    she is in the Hebrew Home; and my older sister,
    Rivka; myself; and my younger brother, Nathan.
    And how long had your family been in that area?
    For many generations?
    How far back did they go?
    Yes, they had lived there for many generations.
    I think there was an interruption during World War
    I. They went to Russia.
    But then they came back, and they had rebuilt their homes.
    Did you have a lot of extended family in the general area?
    Yes.
    Would you like me to be specific?
    Absolutely.
    Yes.
    In Smorgon, I had two aunts and uncles, my father's two
    sisters.
    The older one was Fruma, the younger one was Manya.
    She was married to Mayor Goldberg,
    and they had three daughters--
    Bella, Sarah, and Esther.
    In Vilna, we had the rest of our family.
    There was my mother's sister, Pola Fil, and Benjamin,
    and they had four children--
    Ida, Mira, Richa, and Dovidl.
    We also had relatives in Vilna on my grandfather's side,
    two sisters.
    And they are extended family.
    So most of our family lived in Vilna,
    and they all perished in Ponar.
    There were over 80 people.
    What kind of business did your father have?
    Actually, my father had two kinds of businesses.
    One business was a hardware store, where he used to sell--
    he was with two partners, with Mayor Goldberg,
    his brother-in-law, and a friend,
    Motel Majerski who both perished.
    He had a hardware.
    And he was selling gear, farming equipment, to the farmers
    in the area, because Smorgon was a small town surrounded
    by farmers.
    And he did very well.
    He also had another business, which was a--
    a place where the farmers used to bring their flax, which,
    of course, is made into linen.
    And that was a very large place with several hundred people
    working there, cleaning the flax,
    sorting them, and then pressing.
    And there was, I remember, in the back of the plant
    was a rail coming from the railroad station.
    And freight cars were there, and they would fill them up
    and ship the flax abroad.
    Did your mother work?
    No, my mother did not work.
    We had a big, beautiful house.
    It's still standing there.
    The Russians took it over.
    And my mother was busy with her children and charity work.
    And she had a housekeeper and life
    was very good before the war.
    How long did you stay in Vilna before you moved?
    You said you were born in Vilna, and then--
    but you grew up in Smorgon.
    How long did you stay in Vilna before you moved to Smorgon?
    You.
    Yes, no, actually, we lived all the time in Smorgon.
    But my mother just went to Vilna to give birth
    to me in a proper hospital.
    That's how-- I was just born there, and then back
    to Smorgon.
    You were talking about your home there,
    which you said was a lovely home.
    What kind of a neighborhood was it in?
    Was it in a mixed neighborhood of Jews and non-Jews?
    Yes, the neighborhood was really mixed.
    Across the street from us was the house of my uncle and aunt,
    my father's partner.
    But then I remember, to the left,
    it was a non-Jewish family who we got along very
    well with them until when the war broke out, and we left.
    And when we came back, they had cleaned out our house
    and wouldn't give us anything back.
    So it was a mixed neighborhood, yes.
    But this was a neighborhood of upper-middle class
    or upper class?
    Yes, upper-- upper-middle class, I would say.
    But actually, in this small town,
    there was no such a thing as a middle class
    or upper-middle class.
    You had a very large big, beautiful house.
    And next to it, there was a hovel or a--
    a small house, where poor people lived with the wooden floors
    and no plumbing.
    So the city was not divided specifically
    Jewish and non-Jewish neighborhoods,
    or wealthy or less wealthy.
    It was sort of the whole town was mixed.
    People lived just wherever they happened to be comfortable.
    So you lived right in the center of town?
    Yes, in the center of town.
    How religious was your family?
    Well, interesting-- very traditional.
    Because I know, of course, Shabbat and Kashrut
    was always observed.
    My father would learn when he had the chance.
    But he never wore a yarmulke except mealtime.
    And I remember after we had our meals and we said the prayer,
    he would take off his yarmulke and put it aside.
    Nobody at that point-- especially in Lithuania.
    And we considered ourselves more of Lithuanians than Polish,
    because Smorgon and Vilna were occupied by Poland since World
    War I. And basically, it was going from Lithuania
    to White Russia to Poland.
    So it was really--
    it was considered the culture.
    And the Jewish way of life was in Lithuania--
    very Zionistic, Jewish-oriented, a private Jewish school,
    which was called Tarbut.
    But we did not have Hasidim in town,
    or people that we call now Hasidim,
    with a beard and payots or shtreimel.
    There weren't any at all.
    Did you have any religious training as a young girl?
    The only religious training in school
    was that we had one hour of Bible.
    Most of the subjects were taught in Hebrew, even
    secular subjects.
    But no specific religious training, except what
    we absorbed in the house.
    So the school that you went to was a Jewish school.
    It was not a public school.
    No, it was a private Jewish school called a Tarbut.
    And these type of schools were very prevalent
    all over Lithuania.
    And my father was very instrumental of building
    that burgeoning school.
    Your family was very Zionistic?
    Very much.
    My father was very, very dedicated to Zionists.
    I remember people would come to our home,
    and there were all kinds of meetings about Palestine.
    And he wanted very much, before the war,
    to emigrate to Palestine.
    But at that time, you needed a special--
    a special-- they called it a certificate.
    But it was probably some kind of a visa or special permit, which
    he couldn't get unless the authorities in Israel
    would grant it.
    And it never came.
    Did you have any other interests as a child?
    Music or reading?
    Anything that you liked to do outside of school?
    Oh, well, I was in the fourth grade
    when the war broke out in 1939.
    So it was just that--
    I used to.
    I would read.
    And as far as musicals, my father had a mandolin,
    I remember.
    And he would play for us, especially,
    every time, the Jewish national anthem.
    And every summer, we used to go on vacation to a little village
    near the Viliya.
    That was a river that passed through not far from us.
    And it was rather very, very pleasant.
    Most of the Jews who could afford
    would go there in the summer.
    And there was a lot of swimming and boating
    and volleyball playing and lots of walks.
    My father would take me-- even though I
    remember-- as a little kid, he would take me to the forest.
    We used to go to gather wild strawberries or rare hazelnuts.
    And he would talk to me a lot.
    He used to tell me stories that, at this point I realize--
    and I said to myself, I was a little girl.
    And those are really philosophical questions
    and ideas.
    He probably had a premonition that he
    wouldn't be with me too long and conducted
    very serious and mature discussions with me.
    What kind of topics did he talk about?
    Well, he would talk about Israel and Jewish history
    and Jewish legacy and family relations and relatives.
    And it was rather--
    where I considered myself at that time
    mature, that he would share with me all kinds.
    But mostly, he always, when he came from his business,
    no matter how tired he was, he would always
    sit down with my sister and myself
    and ask us what we learned.
    Take us on his knee, what we learned, and review it with us.
    And when he had time, he would take us to the--
    to the stadium where they used to play soccer.
    But during the week, when they didn't, then he
    would teach us how to ride a bicycle or just--
    in the wintertime, he did beautiful things for us.
    First of all, we were going skiing and skating.
    And he bought me a pair of skates and skis,
    so we went cross-country skiing.
    And then since he knew many farmers,
    he would ask the farmers to come with a sleigh and horses
    during the wintertime.
    And we would all get into the sleigh
    and with the bells jingling, and we
    would go all over through the villages around town.
    It was just great, yes.
    How would you describe yourself at that time?
    Were you a very quiet child?
    Or more outgoing?
    Yeah, I was very quiet and very shy.
    And I think that it did haunt me.
    I did suffer, for many, many years,
    for an insecurity and inferiority complex.
    And I always thought--
    my mother was ready to give her life for me--
    for me, for my sister, for every-- she
    was a wonderful, wonderful mother as far as helping us
    with knowledge, with homework, and to make sure
    we are dressed and proper manners.
    But never, ever would she hug us or kiss us.
    And I feel now, when I come to visit her
    and I kiss her and I hug her and she kisses me back,
    I feel that she lets go.
    But I feel she was not the only one.
    I think that at that time, the Jewish parents
    felt that praise of showing love to children would spoil them.
    And they wanted the children to grow up wholesome.
    But what they didn't realize, what we
    know now, that by not doing so, by keeping a distance,
    the children grew up very insecure.
    But she was the most wonderful, selfless person in the world
    that I knew, even in comparison to other mothers.
    [CHUCKLES]
    You said that you did have some friends who were not
    Jewish in the neighborhood?
    Is that true?
    Did you play with any children?
    I'm talking about before the war, of course.
    Yes, of course.
    Actually, not friends, they were neighbors.
    But they always let us know that we were Jews.
    Like, for instance, in the summer, when we went down--
    our house was on a corner on the top of a hill.
    And down the hill, a block down, was a little brook, a river.
    And we liked to go swimming there
    in the summertime in-between going away
    to the big river for our summer vacation.
    So the non-Jewish kids, they always came.
    And they were throwing mud at us and chased us out of the water,
    and we would run.
    In the wintertime, the brook would freeze over,
    and we tried to go skating there.
    And they did the same thing.
    They would come and cause us trouble.
    And even in the house, I remember we had a metal roof.
    And every time they would pass by, they would throw rocks.
    And of course, the sound was--
    was horrific.
    Because when the rock hitting the metal, it was like--
    like, amplified terribly.
    And it was very frightened.
    We've never stayed home alone at night.
    We were always afraid to be there alone.
    When these type of things happened,
    did you talk it over with your parents or your sister?
    How did you handle this as a child?
    Oh, we talked about it.
    But it wasn't a surprise, because it was known.
    This is what the shkotzim used to do to the Jewish children.
    So we knew that there is nothing our parents could have done
    about it, because the kids would pass by and throw rocks
    on the roof.
    So there was nothing a Jew could do about it.
    What was the first big change that you noticed in your life?
    Of course, you were young.
    Was it September 1939 when the Russians came in?
    Yes, exactly.
    Well, the first change came in September in 1939
    when Germany divided Eastern Poland, and our--
    our town became under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
    Actually, the war broke out on Sunday.
    And somebody had told my father, because what the--
    what-- no, no, I am-- no, I'm jumping ahead--
    that happened in June 22, 1941, before the Germans
    occupied that.
    But when the Russians came, they took over the town,
    and they took away my father's businesses.
    And they made my father go to work in the forest.
    And I remember he used to come home
    with calluses on his hands.
    And immediately, they converted our school,
    that was the private Tarbut school,
    into a Russian public school.
    And they opened a non-kosher coffee shop there,
    which was shocking to me, even though we weren't so--
    we weren't so "very religious," quote, unquote,
    as you would perceive now.
    But the house was kosher and holidays
    were observed without question.
    And of course, the preparation for Passover and other holidays
    was tremendous.
    And there it was, a non-kosher coffee shop and the school.
    And we felt it.
    We still had food and clothes to wear,
    but everything else was taken away.
    My father and my grandfather had cars which was taken away.
    My grandfather was the first one, that he bought--
    I think it must have been in '36 or '37--
    a truck.
    It was a shining blue Chevrolet.
    And nobody knew how to drive.
    And there wasn't even a gasoline station.
    So he brought a chauffeur with his wife from Germany.
    Rex was his name.
    He gave him a house.
    And his job was to take care of that truck.
    And he was the chauffeur.
    And I remember my experience the first time,
    when he took me and my mother to Vilna to visit our relatives.
    I was in total shock to be in that car.
    So they, of course, they took everything.
    The Russians took everything away from us.
    How did your father explain this to you?
    You're 11 years old now.
    How did he-- what did he say to you
    when these terrible things began to happen?
    Actually, I really do not recall.
    The love, of course, at home was the same, and we had food.
    But I remember seeing my father very down, sometimes depressed.
    But there were no--
    I don't recall any discussions about the situation,
    none whatsoever.
    What kind of work was he forced to do?
    To go to the nearby forests with other people that were wealthy
    and to chop down trees.
    And to sort them up into certain logs
    or whatever it was required.
    He would come home on his bicycle, very tired,
    exhausted, and depressed.
    And what kind of contact did you have with your relatives
    in Vilna then?
    With the relatives in Vilna, very little contact.
    We didn't go there.
    When somebody used to come to visit,
    they would usually bring us regards
    from the other relatives.
    Otherwise, there was really not much of a contact.
    Did you talk about the changes with your other Jewish friends?
    I really don't recall.
    We sort of took the changes for granted.
    Because the Russians really did not torture us.
    As a matter of fact, because we had a big and beautiful house,
    the Russian Army had confiscated one of the rooms
    for a Russian lieutenant.
    He was a tank commander.
    And that was before they started the war with Finland.
    And he was in our--
    he was in our house.
    His name was [? Kutchov. ?] And he was a very, very nice man.
    He would sit with my parents and talk a lot.
    And he would bring us food from the army.
    And I recall, even in the morning,
    sometimes he would wake us up to go to school.
    He was really very nice.
    And we felt that, in a way, it was safer,
    because we did not suffer from the non-Jewish boys and girls'
    anti-Semitic outbreaks.
    So seeing people in Red Army uniforms
    was not frightening for you?
    No, not at all.
    As a matter of fact, they came to our school,
    and they organized--
    they organized the younger people into the Pioneers.
    This was the organization for the young Communist Party.
    And the older ones in Komsomol.
    And they didn't accept me, because I
    was a daughter of a bourgeois.
    And I was very upset.
    I was very jealous that all my friends were walking around
    in navy skirts, white blouses, and red scarfs
    and go to meetings and go to parades.
    And I was very jealous.
    And then my father found a relative
    who they used to be very poor.
    And of course, they were acceptable.
    So she became a leader in the Komsomols.
    I remember, he talked to her, and she persuaded somebody
    to take me into the Pioneers.
    And I was in seventh heaven at that time.
    So what kind of activities did you then do with them?
    Well, it was interesting.
    We used to have meetings.
    And of course, on special days, there were parades.
    They brainwashed us so immensely that we felt all of a sudden
    that we were proud of the Communist regime.
    We used to sing our praises to Stalin.
    And we were very happy to do that.
    And of course, at home, we never--
    my parents never discussed it with us.
    I imagine now, thinking back, they probably
    did not want to contradict, because there was nothing
    that could have been done.
    And they saw that we were happy, my sister and I,
    having been liberated from the anti-Semitic outbreak.
    So they just let it go, I suppose.
    So you did not experience any anti-Semitism
    in this Communist youth movement?
    Oh, no, no, no.
    In the Communist youth movement, on the contrary,
    everybody considered each other a brother and a loving sister.
    What languages did you speak at that time?
    The basic language at home was Yiddish.
    However, in the first year-- my father spoke Hebrew at home.
    Like I mentioned, he was a very dedicated Zionist.
    When the time of the [NON-ENGLISH] came,
    he was always very, very active.
    And so in school, in the Tarbut school,
    we were required to speak Hebrew,
    even outside in the street.
    And we were afraid if a teacher would
    catch us speak any other language,
    we would have been penalized.
    So at that time, I spoke Yiddish, and I spoke Hebrew.
    And interesting, even today--
    I am a teacher now, of course, I've been for so many years--
    and people think, even Israelis, they
    think that I was born and lived in Israel.
    Because even though my vocabulary
    was maybe 50 or 80 words, but my accent
    was absolutely typical of an Israeli, a sabra,
    which it remained with me.
    So we spoke Hebrew with the limited vocabulary, Yiddish,
    and Russian.
    In the two years that the Russians were in our town,
    we only spoke, in school, Russian.
    At home, still Yiddish.
    But Russian was spoken all over the place.
    Did you know Polish?
    Interesting, we were under the Polish regime.
    However, we only learned Polish one hour a week.
    And we had a Polish teacher.
    And only in the municipal offices, if one had to go,
    had to speak Polish.
    But for me, Polish was a foreign language.
    Now I speak Polish well, because two of my sister-in-laws
    are from Poland, and they always spoke Polish,
    and I learned Polish from them.
    [CHUCKLES] But at that time, no, I couldn't speak Polish at all.
    No.
    Did you have a favorite holiday?
    Favorite religious holiday?
    Well, the most favorite religious holiday was Passover.
    I remember, as it was a little town when
    my mother started preparing.
    First of all, it was--
    the preparations started in the winter.
    In the beginning of the winter, my mother started stuffing
    geese to have [them fat ?] for Passover.
    So on Hanukkah time, the geese were slaughtered.
    And in the house, they were plucking them
    and koshering them, and then rendering the fat for Passover.
    And that was a special--
    a special occasion.
    And then, like, six weeks before Passover, my mother
    would buy tons of raisins and start to make wine.
    Because everything was so difficult, when I think of it.
    Like, in the fall, everything had
    to be bought, like, all kinds of vegetables and fruit into the--
    put into the cellar for the winter.
    And then my mother would put up cabbage, sauerkraut,
    and pickled pickles for the winter.
    And in the fall, she would--
    we had a big garden with strawberries,
    and then and she would make all kinds of jams
    from strawberries and raspberries.
    And everything went to the cellar in big, big jugs
    in preparation for the winter.
    And then, of course, for every Thursday,
    my mother would send me to the shochet, my sister and I,
    with the chicken or a goose to slaughter for Shabbat.
    And then, of course, it was brought home,
    and it was plucked, and it was--
    it was cut opened and koshered.
    And every little thing was so complicated.
    The only things that my parents used to buy
    was, of course, butter, eggs, for everyday use.
    Otherwise, everything was bought in bulks--
    cheeses, [? heads ?], salamis.
    Lots and lots of long salamis were hanging in the--
    in the cellar.
    And so Passover was my most favorite holiday
    because, of course, the cleaning and the house and everything.
    But then we didn't have, at that time, even the wealthy people,
    special Passover dishes.
    Everything was being koshered.
    And I remember the big things my mother would--
    had a very big pot and a special--
    special oven outside, where she would
    boil the pots and everything.
    But with the silverware, we used to go, there was a public bath.
    And in the back of that bath, they had a big fire,
    and they had a big--
    a big cauldron, I would say, with boiling water and rocks.
    And everybody would bring their silverware or their dishes
    to kosher.
    But we had-- everything was meat.
    There was no dairy whatsoever for Passover.
    On the fingers of one hand, you could count the dishes
    that people would prepare.
    But then before Passover, my mother--
    we would get dressed and had new patent leather
    shoes and white socks and new dresses.
    And all the girls in the neighborhood,
    we used to go to the rabbi's house
    to wish him a happy Passover.
    And everyone had a little dish.
    And the rabbi would give us charosets
    that he prepared for the whole town.
    And that was just fantastic, yes.
    Did this continue after the Russians came into town?
    There were no restrictions?
    No, no, no, all this stopped.
    Everybody would make Pesach as best
    as they could in their own home and nothing
    was done on the outside.
    We still had the Seder, and my grandparents
    lived in the same town--
    my Zayde Berel and Bubbeh Chaya Basya.
    And they used to come.
    And then my grandfather used to sing nicely,
    and non-Jews would gather around the windows
    to listen to my grandfather sing all the songs for Passover.
    Which I carried on and transferred it to my children.
    We sing the same melodies at our Pesach Seder.
    Well, now it's, your father's working,
    and you and your sister are members of the Communist Youth
    group.
    And you're going to a regular school now, you said.
    So were there any other changes, restrictions,
    in your life at that point after September '39?
    Really no restrictions whatsoever, except, of course,
    there were less material things in the house.
    Which it really did not diminish from the enthusiasm,
    because we felt that to be a member of the Communist party,
    it's an honor, and we have to do without many things.
    And we just accepted it.
    And then the next change?
    Yes, the next change was the 22nd of June, 1941.
    Well, let's talk a little bit about--
    so your father continued to work in the forest all
    the way through the next year, year and a half,
    and life went on.
    OK, and now you said--
    And then the change was my grandmother
    was very sick in 1940.
    And she was taken to Vilna, because her other daughter,
    my mother's sister, Pola, was there, an older relative.
    But she had passed away.
    And my grandfather came back.
    And he had a big house.
    He didn't stay with the children.
    He was always a very successful businessman.
    And he was tremendous.
    When we grew up, I must--
    I must mention this.
    His name was Berel Danishevski.
    And he had a big business.
    He had a business of--
    in those days, they didn't have the plastic tubes
    for sausages or for salami.
    So he was contracted from the slaughterhouse
    that everything--
    whatever was slaughtered there, he
    had people that they would take over and clean
    all their intestines of their animals,
    and then salt it or blow it and dry it.
    But it was so much that he exported it to Germany.
    And this is actually why he bought the truck.
    And many times, he was away on business.
    And when he was away on business, one of us
    was asked to stay with my-- sleep with my grandmother.
    And I remember, I was always petrified,
    because their house was a big, beautiful, comfortable house,
    but it was near a Jewish cemetery.
    And I was always petrified.
    I couldn't sleep there, even though my grandmother
    would close the shutters.
    I was very frightened.
    But whenever he came, he always brought us
    all kinds of goodies and toys.
    And he would do it in an interesting way.
    Like, when we were home, all of a sudden
    we would hear a violin outside.
    And we would look out, oh, there is zayde, Zayde Berel,
    playing the violin.
    He brought us violin and all kinds of special toys.
    Let's talk a little bit about just some more
    changes before the summer of '41.
    You had to go to regular school.
    Did you experience any anti-Semitism
    from any of the teachers or any of the other children
    in your school?
    No, we didn't.
    Actually, they were now--
    there were no non-Jewish students.
    What they did was they took this Tarbut school
    which was going up to the eighth grade,
    and they converted it as it was to a Russian school.
    So essentially the same students were there.
    There were no outsiders.
    And the teachers were-- there were other teachers.
    Most of them Jewish, who were communists.
    And they were our teachers, of course.
    And I remember, we had a teacher,
    [? Zukerman, ?] in algebra and in Russian language.
    Interestingly enough, we were--
    we had one hour a week, we had a German teacher,
    and we had to learn German.
    Then she became an interpreter, of course, when the Nazis came.
    And there was one other thing that was very, very nice there.
    This Dr. [? Zukerman, ?] his wife had training in drama
    and in music.
    And she had organized and directed
    many plays and skits with us, and the choir.
    And it was just wonderful.
    I loved singing in the choir.
    I loved to participate in the plays and in the skits.
    Were there any restrictions on Jewish history or the Hebrew
    language at that point?
    Well, Hebrew language, it was finished.
    Jewish history and Hebrew language was finished.
    And they started teaching us Yiddish more.
    And even the plays and the skits were all in Yiddish.
    Because at that time in the Soviet Union,
    they were pushing their idea of Birobidzhan.
    And therefore, actually what they did
    was that our school was converted to a Yiddish school
    more than it was a public school.
    This is tape one, side b.
    And you were talking about the musical shows
    that you took part in in school.
    Anything else you wanted to say?
    You also had said that you couldn't study Hebrew anymore
    and Bible.
    We couldn't study Hebrew or Bible or Zionism,
    for that matter.
    It was all Yiddish or Russian.
    Did that upset you, those restrictions?
    I don't think it did, because I loved the school so much.
    I loved, especially, the teacher that would direct and conduct
    all the plays.
    And I was so happy, because she had a concertina.
    And many times, she would let me look at it
    and try it, and even let me carry it to her house, which
    was a tremendous honor.
    [CHUCKLES]
    No, I don't think so.
    It's sort of-- I don't know.
    I look at children at this point, at my age at their time,
    and they are so sophisticated, and they're so knowledgeable.
    And I think of myself of being so naive or stupid.
    But I think it's because we were not
    exposed to all the knowledge and bombarded with all media
    that the children have now, that it--
    I guess every child my age was that gullible, naive,
    and perhaps stupid in comparison to children
    this age in our time.
    Now, you're 13 years old.
    And it is June 1941.
    June 1941, it was a Sunday.
    And I remember that on a day before, on Saturday
    and a Friday, my mother--
    somebody came and told my father that we
    are on the list to being transported to Siberia,
    because my father was a wealthy man.
    And that's what they did, the rations.
    Little by little, they cleared out the town of the bourgeois,
    of the rich people, the business people,
    and they would ship them with their families to Siberia.
    So somebody told my father.
    And they said, be prepared because this
    was-- on Sunday morning, they are
    going to take you to the train.
    And there are freight cars there,
    and they'll ship you to Siberia with the family.
    So my mother prepared, first of all,
    whatever valuable things we had--
    gold pieces and jewelry.
    And she sewed it into the lining of our coats.
    And then she prepared a knapsack for everybody.
    She dried bread into, like, [INAUDIBLE]..
    And whatever could be prepared to take along as food,
    she had it all prepared in bags for each and every one,
    according to age, how much we could carry in our bags.
    So when the Russians will come Sunday morning
    to take us to the train and ship us to Siberia,
    we'd be prepared.
    But that never happened.
    Because 4 o'clock in the morning,
    the Germans started shooting and bombarding our town.
    And that was the end of the Russian regime.
    Had you, before that, heard of a man
    named Hitler, as a young girl?
    We did hear between '39 and '41.
    On the radio, we had a radio in our house.
    And sometimes my parents would sit and listen
    to the speeches of Hitler.
    And they would tell us that this is a dictator in Germany.
    But it never occurred to us that it might
    concern us, me, or my family.
    We really lived in such seclusion at that time,
    that all we were concerned was the daily existence
    in our town and our family.
    Your parents understood German?
    They understood German.
    I know that my parents were--
    they would discuss politics a lot.
    I even remember that at one point when I was there--
    I don't remember what time, but historically, I
    could pinpoint it, because my father read
    the Jewish newspaper every day.
    And then he was discussing politics with my mother.
    And his friends would come.
    And at one point, I remember we were on vacation, and he read--
    he read the paper.
    And he was talking about Franco and Addis Ababa.
    And I-- I just--
    the names sounded so peculiar to me that I--
    I knew they were somewhere in the world.
    But to give you a perception of the timidity and naivete, that
    when somebody would describe a place, that as--
    actually, if you say now to go to Mars or go to Venus,
    it's credible.
    But in those days, when somebody would
    say, so where are you going?
    Where do you think I'm going, to Honolulu?
    Honolulu was farther than any galaxy
    that we could perceive at this point.
    We didn't even know that a place like Honolulu
    existed, because it was sort of a paradox--
    oh, you're going to Honolulu.
    Although, I must recall, when I was in school
    when the Russians came, they did teach us
    a great deal of geography.
    And I loved geography and history.
    I loved it very much.
    And I remember that at one point I had to give,
    as a test, an oral test, a comparison
    between the Japanese islands and the British Isles.
    I don't know how well I did, but I had to do it.
    [CHUCKLES]
    So here it came.
    And the Germans came, and they started bombarding the town.
    And my father immediately said, let's run.
    Let's run towards the Russian border.
    Maybe we'll make it into Russia.
    And this is where we ran to the East.
    And my father still had his bicycle.
    He put most of the things on the bicycle.
    And we had our knapsacks ready for being shipped to Siberia.
    So we took it all with us, and we walked.
    And thousands of people were on the roads.
    When you say we, who are you including?
    My father, my mother, my sister, my brother, and myself.
    And everybody was going towards East,
    hoping that we could make it into Russia, to the Soviet
    Union.
    And as we were walking, and the roads were so
    filled with people, every now and then,
    a German plane would come down very low over the people
    and machine gun.
    And when we saw the planes coming,
    we would run into the high--
    to the fields.
    The wheat was already quite tall.
    And we would run in and hide until the plane passed.
    And then we would come out again.
    And we marched maybe 15 miles to that little town, Lebedev.
    What was it like for you to leave your house?
    It was very difficult. We looked around.
    We left the house.
    But we knew that there is a purpose,
    that we have to save our lives.
    And as a child, it really--
    because I never ever really had suffered hunger or loneliness
    or cold or not having a comfortable room, my own room,
    or beautiful clothes.
    So that it never dawned on me that it could be different.
    So I felt, well, let's go.
    We'll have it-- wherever we will go, we'll have it again.
    But, of course, it wasn't so.
    Did you take anything special as a 13-year-old girl?
    Anything personal?
    I think I took a little--
    a little book with photos in a scrapbook.
    Yes, I took that with me.
    Definitely.
    Anything else I can't recall.
    Probably maybe a favorite doll or something.
    But even that, it's just amazing.
    Now going back, before the war, my parents were so wealthy.
    But I remember having a few dolls,
    but nothing in particular.
    And there was one girl in my class
    that had relatives in the United States.
    And they had sent her a doll that when you--
    putting her down horizontally would close her eyes.
    And everybody was so fascinated.
    And everybody wanted to be friends with her.
    And when she invited me or other girls
    to our house to play with that doll, it was a special holiday.
    It's just amazing how things were
    and perceptions in those days.
    Do you want me to go on now?
    We're going to-- so we came to Lebedev.
    And in Lebedev, we had relatives.
    They were a sister of my grandmother.
    Her name was Golda.
    Her husband's name was Reuven.
    And they were very, very poor.
    I remember once when I was younger,
    my mother took me to visit them.
    And I just couldn't understand why
    they didn't have a nice home.
    And the floor was a wooden floor and no rugs.
    And he made magazines.
    And he would sell them in the market.
    Very pious people.
    And they had three children--
    Moshe Aaron, who was married; Michal, a young man;
    and Rivka, a young girl.
    I remember their names distinctly
    because I make it a point, whenever
    it's their Yizkor, the memorial service,
    I make it a point to mention each
    and every one of these relatives by name
    so that I remember their names.
    We came to their home, and they were very happy to see us.
    And they made us so comfortable.
    But by the time we got there, the German tanks
    were rambling already on the streets of this little village.
    And they took over the town in no time.
    The following day, we were still there.
    And then my mother and father were discussing what to do.
    And they said, look, we are here,
    strangers with relatives who are poor.
    They could hardly sustain themselves.
    And the Germans occupied us anyway.
    So that makes no difference whether we're
    here or in our town in Smorgon.
    Let's go back to Smorgon.
    So my parents discuss the matter,
    and then they decided that it wouldn't be safe for my father
    to walk with us, to go with us.
    Because mostly we would go by foot,
    unless a farmer would pass by with their cart
    and would take us.
    So they decided-- my father, they said, look,
    it's peaceful here, my father should stay there.
    And my brother-- who was very, very--
    he was born in 1935, so he was six years old--
    should stay there.
    And my mother, my sister, and myself
    should go back to our town.
    And my parents made up that when my mother will
    come home and see what the situation is,
    she would go back and bring my father and my brother home.
    So we started out.
    My mother, my sister, and I, walking.
    Just in the opposite directions where
    the German tanks were coming.
    They were moving East, and we were going West to Smorgon.
    We came back to our town.
    We walked into the house.
    And the house was empty.
    My grandfather was there in our house,
    because his house was burned down during a bombing raid.
    And in the meantime, he had remarried.
    He married my grandmother's sister
    who had two small children.
    And they were there on the floor.
    There was a table and chairs.
    And everything was gone.
    And he said that the next door neighbor, the Christian,
    took it all.
    My mother walked in to talk to him.
    And mercifully, he gave us back a bed with a mattress.
    This is the neighbor you're talking about.
    This is the neighbor, right.
    And I think we still found some food in the cellar,
    but it was--
    it was very scarce.
    But all my mother was concerned is about the situation in town,
    what was happening.
    And she looked around.
    She spoke with friends and with neighbors and relatives.
    And they said that, so far, the Jews are afraid,
    but everybody's sitting in their homes.
    The Germans have made decrees posted
    that every Jew should give up their furs and jewels and art
    and whatever valuables they have.
    They should bring in to a certain place.
    If not, they would be--
    if it would be found, they would be killed.
    So my mother decided that it was no different from what--
    from what it was there in Lebedev.
    And she went back to Lebedev to bring my father and my brother.
    Did you and your sister go back with her?
    No, my sister and myself stayed with my grandfather
    and his wife in our house.
    And then my mother came there to Lebedev,
    and she found that everything was finished.
    After we left, they gathered all able-bodied men--
    the Germans-- and they took them away.
    And we never saw our father since.
    There was some rumors somebody came,
    and they were telling us that they tried to--
    he tried to escape.
    And they didn't tell us exactly--
    I knew that they knew exactly what happened to him,
    but they didn't tell us.
    But they didn't touch my brother.
    So my mother took my brother, and she came home.
    And of course, I remember crying.
    I remember tearing my hair and my skin.
    I just could never--
    could not imagine that my father was gone.
    But it was the fact.
    And then they started asking all the Jews to come out to work.
    And it was mostly at that time, in the beginning,
    to humiliate, because there was really nothing
    to do except to sweep the streets.
    So whoever was in town, a rabbi or businessmen or--
    Balabatishe people would come out
    and had to sweep the streets.
    And something else, which was very humiliating.
    They didn't have-- it was a small town,
    and it wasn't paved.
    It was still like it was during World War I.
    And they had the cobblestones.
    And in between the cobblestones on the side street,
    there was weed growing.
    So they would make the people, men and women, sit on the road
    and, with knives, cut out the weeds from the cracks
    of their cobblestones.
    Then one night, Germans came to the house.
    And they started knocking at the door.
    And my mother was petrified.
    We had a German shepherd outside.
    And we had the fruit garden, a vegetable garden, a flower
    garden, and there was a dog house.
    And the dog started barking.
    And they came in.
    The first thing they did is they shot the dog.
    And then they started banging.
    So we quickly-- somehow, my grandfather
    managed to hide my mother.
    And they came into the house, and they looked around.
    And whatever they found that they-- that was still there
    that they liked, they just took it, and they walked out.
    I think there was still a fur coat of my mother
    that they took, and they walked out.
    And we were there for several months.
    Were you in hiding also when they came in?
    Or did you see these Germans?
    No, we saw that there were two Germans that came in,
    and they looked around.
    They didn't pay attention to me.
    And we was tiny little girls, my sister and I.
    I look now at a 13-year-old girl--
    tall, developed.
    I looked like an 8-year-old, 9-year-old girl.
    What did a German soldier look like to you?
    Well, very tall, impressive uniform,
    blond, strong, but didn't do anything to us.
    He didn't hit us or anything.
    Just looked all over to see what he can find to take with him.
    And that was it.
    And then they started--
    they announced that everybody has to-- they had fenced
    off a certain area, which was predominantly Jewish,
    it was the shul there.
    There were two shuls there.
    And most of the Jewish--
    the poorest Jews lived around there.
    They fenced it off, and they created the ghetto.
    And all the Jews from the town had to go in.
    Although, they had another ghetto.
    North of Smorgon was, after World War I, they tried--
    the Jewish people tried to organize a farm community.
    And they called it the Karka'i.
    Karka'i in Hebrew is land.
    And there were maybe 20 or 25 families who lived there.
    As a matter of fact, I had some friends
    who used to come to my school from that area in there,
    from that village.
    So they created one little ghetto
    there for those villagers and another one
    for the people in Smorgon.
    So we came to the ghetto with whatever possessions
    we could carry.
    And they assigned us in a house, in one room, that were, like,
    four families to one room.
    So it was my mother, my sister, my brother, myself,
    my grandfather, and there were three other families
    in the same room.
    My grandfather was very, very industrious.
    He knew how to--
    he was a survivor.
    So he decided he could do anything he wanted
    to-- very, very capable man.
    He decided to become--
    he figured, well, people would have to fix shoes.
    He decided he knows how to fix shoes.
    He announced to everybody he's a shoemaker.
    And I remember he was sitting there
    in the corner at a small table and fixing shoes.
    And people would bring a piece of bread or some vegetables.
    And this is how he sustained us.
    And then they started taking people to work,
    to work outside the ghetto with permission.
    And they took my mother and my sister.
    Every day, they had to go out to work.
    And what they did was, there was a high school in town.
    And they converted the high school into a lodging place.
    So the German soldiers, when they came--
    when they came from the West, pushing
    towards the Russian front to the East,
    they would stay there overnight.
    And they would have food there, and they had the Jewish girls
    there to wash their clothes and to darn their socks.
    And some of them were very nice.
    They didn't rape the girls or anything.
    There were boys working there, too, I remember.
    There was one boy.
    His name was Kapyl.
    And he came back, and he didn't understand.
    He said, a German soldier came over to him,
    and he took off-- nobody saw-- he took off his jacket,
    his uniform, and he put it on him.
    And he said, listen, Kapul, I know
    he says the war will be over and we'll lose.
    And he said, if you will survive,
    don't take your revenge on the soldiers,
    just kill the German officers.
    This is what he told the boy.
    And day after day, they went to work there.
    And then my mother was assigned another job.
    They had a soup kitchen in their synagogue.
    And my mother was assigned to cook there.
    And then people, of course, who were starving,
    came to the soup kitchen and she--
    we didn't have to.
    At that time, we still had food.
    And we still had food, and we still
    had the jewelry and the golden coins
    that my mother had sewed in.
    She was so brave.
    And we had to wear the yellow stars in front and in the back.
    She was so brave.
    Because my father used to deal with farmers,
    so she knew some of the farmers in the neighboring villages.
    So at night-- and there wasn't barbed wire around the ghetto.
    It was just a wooden fence.
    So at night, she would cover her yellow stars,
    and she would take a gold piece of something,
    and run out, and run to the neighboring villages,
    and she would exchange it.
    Then she would come still in the middle
    of the night with some flour or even some ham or whatever.
    At that time, Kashrut was forgotten.
    With ham or whatever they would give her, she would come back.
    And so we still, more or less, had food.
    We still had some things to exchange until 1943.
    So and then I was sent to work.
    Let's back up a little bit.
    What did you do in the beginning when your mother and sister
    first went out to work?
    I remember I would sit on my bed all day,
    or go out with friends in the ghetto to talk.
    But mostly, I had some books that I found in that house.
    And I would sit and read those books.
    It's interesting.
    I recall, it was worn, heavy anatomy book that I found.
    And I just sat there, day after day, on my bed,
    and I would read that book.
    Because I'd never-- we were never
    taught anatomy until then, so I was very fascinated by it.
    And I remember I would sit on the bed and read the book.
    What was the sleeping arrangement like?
    You said there were so many families in this one room.
    The sleeping arrangement was my mother, my sister,
    and I were sleeping in one bed.
    And then my grandfather and his wife in another.
    And my brother would curl up on the floor on some kind
    of a straw mattress.
    What were the sanitary facilities like?
    It was an outhouse.
    And there was usually, in those houses,
    they had a water pump outside.
    So we used to go outside to the pump
    and take water for washing or cooking
    or whatever we'd need it.
    Taking a shower, of course, was out of the question.
    We would just wash ourselves in the basin.
    Sometimes we had a curtain and closed it off
    so we could wash in privacy.
    Had you gotten your period by then?
    No, no, not until--
    not until I was 16 or 17 years old.
    You said you had to wear a star.
    What was that like for you?
    What did it mean to you?
    Well, everybody wore a star.
    And since I didn't go out of the ghetto, it sort of--
    it bothered me immensely that I was singled out.
    But still, I did not feel tremendous suffering.
    I don't know, again, maybe because I was optimistic.
    I was always optimistic by nature, and strong.
    Or I was stupid.
    But because I did not comprehend the immensity of the tragedy
    at that time.
    And it's interesting.
    Here I am speaking to children who are 11, 12, or high school
    kids, telling them my story.
    I do it, of course, on their level.
    And I say, look at these childrens' reactions.
    They understand.
    They cry with me.
    They know what I'm talking about.
    And I said, when I was their age,
    I really didn't know what was going on.
    Maybe because they were exposed to television and movies
    and all, so they have-- they have seen these kind of stories
    and movies.
    Anyway--
    Did you sew on your own star?
    Yes.
    Yes, we knew how.
    We had to cut out a yellow star and sew it on.
    What did you cut it out of?
    Oh, we had some cloth, or it was provided.
    And there was a Judenrat in the ghetto.
    And the Judenrat were very--
    former business people.
    They're aristocratic-- aristocracy,
    the rabbi of the town.
    And my uncle, the one that was my father's partner, he
    was also in the Judenrat
    And but it was interesting.
    Maybe, in many cases of the Judenrat,
    they were doing things for themselves
    first to save their own skin.
    Not in this Judenrat.
    When something came, when the Germans would come and ask
    for 500 people or 200 people, they would-- at least--
    and they would never, ever give a list.
    They said, because this is what the Bible--
    according to the Bible, that when
    in any kind of a catastrophic situation,
    when an enemy comes and asks you to give people to be hanged
    or to be punished, according to Jewish law,
    you're not allowed to.
    You can tell them, if you have to, you go out by yourself
    and take whoever you want, but we are not
    going to give you a list.
    Because the Bible felt that this is a personal matter of destiny
    and couldn't be helped.
    But for another Jew, to put somebody--
    another Jew on the list, that was absolutely
    against the Bible, and they never did it.
    And then one day, I was called to go to work.
    And I found myself in a very beautiful house
    that belonged to a landowner before the war, probably
    a Polish landowner.
    And I was brought there.
    And another boy my age from ghetto, [? Swierski ?]
    was his name.
    And there, we came in, and they--
    I remember, it smelled so delicious in that house.
    And there was a cook, a Polish woman.
    They took us into the kitchen.
    And the Polish woman told us that we are going to help her--
    that the boy was going to chop wood for the kitchen,
    and I would help her with the vegetables
    to peel and cut and wash dishes.
    And there, I felt comfortable, because it was warm.
    I don't remember them giving us any food,
    but this is where we worked.
    And then, of course, there was the living room
    and the bedrooms.
    And then in the evening, I saw a German officer came in.
    And he lived there.
    I had absolutely no comprehension who the man was.
    He was tall, dark hair, smoked a pipe, had a pleasant face,
    wore glasses.
    And I knew-- when I dusted the house,
    I noticed a letter on the table.
    Somehow, I looked at the letter.
    And it was a letter--
    his name was Heinrich [? Funke. ?]
    I looked at the letter, and I saw it was a letter probably
    from his wife.
    And I looked at the return address, and I remembered it.
    The name was Heinrich [? Funke, ?] Berlin,
    SO 36, Dresdener Strasse 18.
    And I memorized it--
    always had a good memory.
    And he was very nice to me.
    And when I looked at--
    there were letters and mail and envelopes come--
    came-- and I saw that he was a very important official.
    And only after the war, I realized how important.
    He was an Obersturmbannführer.
    Of course, he wore the black uniform of the SS
    with the swastika and all.
    And he was always very nice to me.
    He talked to me very gently.
    One day, he called me in.
    And he says, listen, Tania, I'm going to tell you something.
    I am over the whole--
    the [INAUDIBLE] of all-- he was all of White Russia.
    You know a Obersturmbannführer.
    He was a very, very important Nazi.
    He said to me, I want to tell you something,
    all the Jews in this region are going to be killed.
    However, he said, if you will have a chance,
    when they'll take people to a labor camp,
    he said, go, because that might save you.
    And that's all he said to me.
    And I remembered.
    And life went on in ghetto as it was.
    And I used to go to work there.
    Did you go home to go to sleep?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, I used to walk home.
    I had a special pass that I could walk the streets.
    They used to give out--
    people that came from-- went from the ghetto
    to work had a pass.
    And I came home, and everything was just as usual.
    Then one day we got up, and my uncle that
    was in the Judenrat, Mayor Goldberg--
    as a matter of fact, I have a picture of him
    here, I'll show you later.
    And he spoke with my mother, and he said, the Nazis,
    they want us to give them 300 men and women to a labor camp.
    And they don't want to go and pick.
    They want us to give a list.
    So he told my mother.
    He said, look, we had no choice.
    We had to give a list.
    But what we did, we put our own family members--
    each and every member of the Judenrat
    had to put a member of his family on the list.
    And this uncle of mine had a daughter.
    She was, at that time, maybe 20 or 21, Bailey Goldberg.
    And he put her on the list.
    And he also put my grandfather's wife on the list.
    And my mother, you know, we started discussing and talking,
    and they said, now, what's going to be?
    How could she?
    She has a little girl with her?
    How could she go?
    And then I got up, and I said, I'll go in her place.
    Apparently, you know what he told me, to go to a labor camp.
    I said, I'll go in her place.
    And they hesitated.
    But then my mother said, Bailey is going, too?
    My cousin who was already past 20.
    She said, she'll take care of me.
    And I remember, I still had, from before the war,
    a pair of beautiful red leather boots.
    I had a shearling coat, gray that was embroidered.
    And my mother-- it was winter-- she gave it to me,
    and she gave me food.
    And she got permission to walk with us to the train station.
    And she was walking next to me and crying
    and walking and crying.
    But I saw her, that she walked over--
    the people that came to take us were not SS.
    They were called T.O.D. They were the German soldiers
    in construction that was a--
    they had special groups, special brigades for construction.
    And I saw she was walking next to that-- the officer that
    was leading us.
    And I noticed that she pushed something in his hand,
    then she walked to the station with us.
    And we cried and we kissed and we hugged.
    And they pushed us into freight cars,
    like the one you have at the Holocaust museum.
    And my mother left.
    And I was there with Bailey and another--
    there were 300 people.
    And the train started out.
    They closed the cars.
    Train started out.
    And we didn't know where we were going.
    It was dark.
    There was only a little window for air on top, two windows.
    And then the next morning we came to a place.
    And the cars were opened.
    And we saw that there were SS people talking
    with the people from the construction,
    talking with each other.
    And they kept us there maybe for two hours, three hours,
    and we didn't know what was happening.
    At the end of the three hours, they closed the cars again,
    and we proceeded.
    What we found out later was that the [INAUDIBLE] Commissar
    of White Russia didn't want us to go anywhere.
    He told them to pull up to Ponary,
    where all the people, the Jews from Vilna,
    were killed in that forest.
    And this is when they opened the cars.
    And this is when the head of the construction company
    negotiated with the [INAUDIBLE] Commissar
    that he needs these people badly to build
    a road from Kovno to Vilna.
    And this is when he closed the cars,
    and he took us into Lithuania.
    We came to Lithuania in the morning.
    They opened the cars.
    We got out.
    And there were trucks, open trucks.
    And they told us to get in the trucks.
    Let's back up a little bit.
    Who also went on the train with you besides your cousin?
    My cousin, myself, and 300--
    298 other people from Smorgon.
    Which we knew each other, it was a small town-- men and women.
    So you knew the other people in your car?
    Yes, we knew.
    I knew most of them.
    Most of them I knew, yes.
    What was the atmosphere like in that car?
    Well, there was no atmosphere.
    Everybody was sitting in a corner crying, depressed,
    not talking, or talking what is going to happen
    and what will be.
    But it's interesting.
    We knew that we are going to work,
    but nobody ever heard or discussed
    liquidations, Jews being shot and killed,
    or concentration camps, or crematoriums.
    It was absolutely-- it was not known at all.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number two, side A. And we
    were talking about your journey in their train car,
    end of December, 1941, early January 1942.
    And I was asking about who else was in the car,
    and what the atmosphere was like.
    Yeah, they were-- the rest of the people
    were from my hometown.
    I knew most of them.
    And the atmosphere was very glum.
    Although we didn't know about crematoriums or concentration
    camps or a final solution, but we know we are going to work,
    and maybe that will save us until the end of the war.
    We came to a town in Lithuania called Žiežmariai.
    And they opened the cars, and we all stepped out,
    and there were trucks waiting for us.
    We got into the trucks, and they started
    moving through the streets.
    As we move through the streets, we knew that before the war
    it must have been an 80% Jewish town.
    Because wherever we passed the houses, we saw there--
    we saw the remnants.
    We saw the area where a mezuzahs used to be,
    and it was ripped off.
    So of course we surmised that those houses
    belonged to the Jewish people.
    After 15, 20 minutes, we got to the shul.
    It was the synagogue of the town.
    It was surrounded with barbed wire.
    And they took us in, into the synagogue.
    And already it was totally emptied
    from whatever it was before.
    And they had constructed three tier bunk beds.
    But not individual ones.
    It's like the one that I saw at the Holocaust Museum,
    where like 20, 30 people were next
    to each other like sardines.
    And they were three tiers.
    And there since I was very young as is my cousin,
    we went on the third tier of the bunk bed,
    and that's where we slept.
    And there was another house in the yard, also constructed
    inside with bunk beds for men.
    They gave us some food.
    And the next morning, they told us to line up.
    We lined up in the courtyard.
    And then the head of the camp came over,
    told us we are here in Žiežmariai,
    and we are going to build a road from Žiežmariai,
    which is going to run from Kovno to Vilna.
    And they are starting on both sides.
    We'll meet someplace in the middle.
    And then he said very nonchalantly,
    if anybody feels that they are too weak to work,
    or they want to go back home, by all MEANS we
    have more than enough people.
    So like 25 people stepped forward,
    and the rest went back to the shul
    or to the other building that was there.
    And they took them away.
    And then we found out the next day
    that they just took them like three miles away,
    and they killed them all and buried them there.
    And then we started going to work every morning.
    What was the age range of these 300 people?
    Oh, the age range, I would say, I
    must have been the youngest there,
    but they were from 16, 17, I would say, through 28, 30.
    Definitely not older.
    So you're 13 and 1/2 at this point.
    Yeah.
    And you said, were you very small physically?
    Right.
    I was very small physically.
    And I really think I was the only one, that I was small.
    Because later on, as I will mention to you, that because I
    was so tiny and small, I caught the eye
    of the head of the construction.
    And he was going to do me a special favor,
    but I will get to this later.
    Were you staying close by your cousin?
    Oh, we slept together, and we worked together.
    At night, we would cuddle up like sardines to stay warm.
    But still we did not feel that our life was threatened.
    Were you wearing that special coat
    that your mother gave you and the boots?
    Yes, I was wearing the red boots and that shearling,
    gray shearling coat.
    Yes.
    And I was very comfortable and very, very warm.
    And of course, my mother gave us some food in the beginning.
    I don't know even where she got it, some chicken
    and other things that we had to add to whatever we got there.
    What else did you bring with you?
    Nothing, really.
    Just what I wore, and maybe one more dress.
    That's it.
    Nothing else.
    You were wearing a dress?
    A dress and gloves.
    Yes, no-- nobody wore pants at that time.
    No women.
    No woman wore pants in those days.
    So the next day, they sent us to work.
    And he took us with the trucks again to an area where
    the highway was being built. And we got out,
    and there was like a Choo Choo train.
    And then we would get on that little train
    to get to the workplace as we progressed.
    And then they divided the jobs for what should be done.
    Now, there was one group where they were bringing-- of course,
    after it was all prepared and measured,
    they would put sand on their whole area of the highway.
    And it wasn't like with a highway that we know now.
    It must have been like a two-lane highway at most.
    And then rounded stones were brought in,
    and they were placed, one next to the other with the tips up.
    And we would have little shovels,
    put the stones in, and then fasten it in place.
    And this was-- the younger ones were doing that.
    And then the older people, the men
    were sitting on the roadside.
    And they would hammer-- special hammers,
    they were chopping up stones to make them into smaller ones,
    like not gravel but smaller stones.
    And then they would take those smaller stones
    with wheelbarrows, and they go on the freshly put stones,
    and sort of throw them off the wheelbarrow
    to fill in the holes in between the stones.
    After that was done, and of course
    let's say after 50 yards or 100 yards,
    then the next step was they were boiling tar.
    And they would cover it with tar,
    and then they had their steam roller.
    And that was the last--
    that was the last thing that they did.
    And every day, we used to go to work and go on
    to proceed further and further.
    And we were being watched, but not by SS,
    but by soldiers from the construction kommandos.
    But of course, we couldn't run away or go anywhere.
    We didn't even speak Lithuanian, so we were stuck there.
    What did they give you to eat in the morning before you left?
    In the morning, it was a bowl, sort of
    like black coffee, sort of imitation,
    with a slice of bread.
    It was like a small bread that was to be divided into four.
    And I remember we used to take-- and one person was in charge,
    so we would take a straw to measure that tiny bread.
    It was this size.
    How many inches?
    I don't know.
    6, 7 inches.
    And we would measure with the straw,
    and to divide it equally.
    And that was the bread for the whole day.
    And then when we came back, there was some kind--
    some kind of soup.
    What they did was, we used to take the peel
    from the potatoes from the German kitchens, and some grass
    that they would pick that wasn't poisonous to eat, and cook it
    together, and add some flour to it to thicken it.
    And that was the dinner when we came from work.
    Did they give you anything during the day?
    No, nothing.
    We had to save from the bread that they gave us
    in the morning for the day.
    Did they count you before you left?
    Naturally, they counted.
    But there was one other thing, what they did.
    And because really they were not--
    the Nazi commanders, the head of the-- a few weeks after we were
    there, the head of the construction,
    we didn't even know his name, but he was hoarse.
    So we called him the [INAUDIBLE] chef.
    And he told us that on and off he would take a truck,
    and take the head of the camp, which was a Jewish man.
    His name was [? Ring. ?] And he would
    take him and two other people, and he said,
    we'll go back to the ghetto, and ask your relative
    to send food for you.
    And we'll bring you the food, and you
    can write letters to them.
    So we did.
    Somebody who had a piece of paper or a pencil,
    they would share.
    And that's what he did, like once a month.
    He would take a truck and go there to the relatives,
    and bring food for us from the relatives.
    At that time, my mother wasn't any more in Smorgonie ghetto.
    At that time, they liquidated the Smorgonie ghetto,
    and they transferred my mother, my brother, my grandfather,
    and my sister.
    My oldest sister was--
    my oldest sister was in meantime, a few months
    after I came, he went back and he brought more people.
    But my sister wasn't staying with us.
    My sister was working in the office
    with 10 or 15 other girls near the workplace.
    And they had the special barrack there.
    So I really never saw my sister, but I knew she was there.
    Was that a help to you?
    No.
    No, not at all.
    Because she was in the labor camp just as I was,
    except that she had a better job.
    She was working in the office.
    Were you still wearing your yellow star?
    No, we didn't have to wear the yellow star there.
    We were just wearing what we did, but no yellow star.
    And then-- but they transferred all
    from Smorgonie and a few other ghettos
    into Oshmyany, which was a larger ghetto.
    So my father, my mother, my grandfather, his wife,
    and his daughter, and my brother,
    they all went to Oshmyany.
    Something interesting happened that my mother told me.
    When they came to the ghetto of Oshmyany,
    before they took them into the ghetto,
    they made a selection to get rid of the old people
    and the children.
    And it was someplace near where there was a synagogue.
    So they made a selection, and whoever was old,
    feeble, or children, they would send into the synagogue.
    And from the synagogue, they would take them immediately
    to the forest and kill them.
    So my mother, my brother, somehow I don't know why,
    and my grandfather's wife and his daughter,
    they let them go to the Oshmyany ghetto.
    They grabbed my grandfather and said, you're an old man.
    We have no use for you, and they put him into the synagogue.
    As he was in the synagogue, they were
    pushing people in, invalids and the sick people,
    and old people.
    And my grandfather was a healthy man.
    So he went to the door, because they would throw them in,
    and then everybody would step over the sick and the invalids.
    So he was standing by the door and picking up
    the invalids and the sick to put them in the corner,
    that nobody should trample them.
    The Nazis there at the door noticed it, and they said hey,
    you're still strong.
    We need you.
    And they took him out and sent him back to where my mother was
    and his wife.
    And they all went to the Oshhmyany ghetto.
    Now, going back to Žiežmariai, every day we would go to work,
    and then from--
    we were already farther away, we would get on those choo choo
    trains until we got to where the trucks were
    to get back to camp.
    One day I was on that choo choo train,
    wearing my red boots and my shearling,
    and the chef, the [INAUDIBLE] chef, he came over to me,
    sat down next to me, and he said,
    I know who are little girl.
    I met your mother on the way here.
    She walked to the train with you, right?
    I said yes.
    He said, you know-- and it was very cold.
    It must have been February, beginning of March.
    He said to me, next week, we'll be going with the truck
    to Oshmynany, to ghetto.
    And I know your mother is there.
    For food-- Because all the people from Smorgonie
    were in Oshmyany.
    And if you want, he said, you can come with me
    to see your mother.
    And apparently, he saw that I was frightened.
    And he said to me, don't be afraid,
    nothing will happen to you.
    Because the head of the camp is coming,
    and he was there with me before.
    And a few other people are coming.
    So I assure you that we are not going to kill you.
    You can come.
    I said OK.
    The morning, you know, the truck came.
    I got in the truck.
    I was so cold.
    It was freezing, and it took several hours.
    In the evening, we came to the Oshmyany ghetto.
    And we came in straight to the police station,
    to the Jewish police station.
    And he came in, and he told the policeman
    to go look for my mother and tell her to come,
    that I am here.
    My mother came, and of course we started kissing and hugging.
    And then she took me to the room where
    she had at that time a room.
    My mother, my grandfather, his wife, his daughter,
    and my brother, they had a room in somebody's house.
    And you hadn't seen her for about two months.
    I hadn't seen her, right, for two months.
    And I came.
    I came in, and we were there for two days.
    And then the following day, I got up.
    I was always suffering from probably strep throat a million
    times, because every time I had a sore throat,
    it was absolutely horrendous.
    I couldn't swallow.
    I couldn't speak.
    And I got up, and I had a high fever, and I was very sick.
    So my mother said--
    she said, I don't know what to do.
    How can I let you go?
    So she went to meet that chef, the head of the construction.
    And she told him that I'm very sick and I can't go back.
    And he said, but I cannot go back.
    I have to have the same amount of people.
    And then somebody said to my mother,
    you know, there is a girl, an orphan girl here in ghetto,
    from Smorgonie.
    And she has a sister that is in Žiežmariai,
    and she is starving here.
    You could do her a favor and yourself.
    Let her go instead of your daughter.
    And give her food, and give her whatever you can.
    And my mother, of course, was in seventh heaven.
    She went to meet the girl, and she gave her food.
    She gave her a few of my dresses.
    And she said, go and my first cousin will take care of her.
    And my mother said whenever they'll come for food,
    she'll send food for her, and maybe
    even my sister could help out.
    And the girl went.
    And I was there.
    And I got well, and I made some friends.
    And in the spring--
    What was that ghetto like?
    In the ghetto, really, there was no starvation.
    People looked well-fed, because somehow they
    would sneak out of the ghetto and barter things.
    And there was a soup kitchen always there.
    And it was a rather pleasant atmosphere.
    People weren't killed.
    People weren't dying.
    There was enough food.
    But it was a ghetto, and people were hoping that maybe we'll
    survive.
    The war will soon be over, and we'll manage to survive.
    Was it a walled-in ghetto?
    It was a walled-in ghetto, barbed wire.
    And I was in the ghetto.
    My mother, I don't think she worked.
    And I was in the ghetto.
    It was springtime already, like April, May.
    And I met some girls my age, and we were walking the streets.
    And it was rather-- we were teaching each other,
    and we were reading books together.
    And then one day, I was walking with my friends
    in the street near the entrance of the ghetto.
    And I saw the chef, the [INAUDIBLE] chef
    is there in a car.
    And he came over to me.
    And he says, "Kleine."
    Means in German "little girl."
    He said, who are you with?
    Where's your mother?
    I said, my mother is here.
    My grandfather, his wife, my brother.
    He says, listen closely what I'm telling you.
    Tell your mother-- go home, tell your mother
    to pack everything up.
    Tomorrow morning, I'm taking you all to where--
    to Žiežmariai, to where you were.
    He said, don't ask questions.
    Just do as I say.
    I went home to my mother.
    I said, mama, I saw the [INAUDIBLE] chef,
    and that's what he told me.
    He told me to tell you to pack up and come
    to the entrance of the ghetto in the morning.
    There will be horses with wagons,
    and he's taking us to Žiežmariai.
    My mother said, well, so far he was nice to us.
    We're going to do it.
    The next morning, my mother all packed up,
    and there were maybe another 20, 30 families.
    And in the entrance of the ghetto,
    there were farmers with horses and those large wagons
    that the farmers had.
    And they put the things on the wagons,
    and they said there is a train, which I saw is town here in--
    I forgot.
    I forgot the name of the little town.
    We go to that little town, and there is a train.
    And you will put all your stuff, your things
    into the freight cars.
    And you'll go to sleep over in the ghetto.
    And the next following morning, you'll come to the cars,
    and we will go to Žiežmariai.
    And we put-- my mother put everything.
    She had so many things in the wagon.
    And we got on top of it.
    My grandfather, his wife, her daughter, and my mother and I,
    my brother, we're all sitting and we're going.
    And on the way--
    maybe it was 15 miles.
    On the way, we passed by a village.
    Župrany.
    In Župrany, we saw the farmer let everybody go,
    all the wagon trains, and he pulled up to a side street.
    And all of a sudden, he pulled us up to his farm.
    And there it was his family came out with pitchforks
    and with neighbors, his neighbors.
    And they were ready to kill us and take everything we had.
    As I said, my mother, God bless her-- maybe
    that's why she lives a long life.
    Next March the 5th, she'll be 95.
    She jumped off the wagon.
    She ran to the street, and she saw two German officers.
    And with the Germans, if they had an order to kill,
    they didn't hesitate.
    But if they didn't have an order to kill,
    they behaved like civilized people.
    And they didn't like the white Russians much more
    because they were primitive in the eyes of the Germans.
    So my mother walked over to the Germans,
    and she said that we are about to go
    into a labor camp from Oshmyany to the other town.
    And the farmer, they took us, pulled us off to his farm,
    and he is about to kill us and take everything we had.
    They asked my mother where is it.
    And she takes them there, was in the next street.
    And they come in, and they saw what was happening.
    They took out their guns, and they told the farmers,
    you'd better get back into the house.
    And the person that the wagon belongs to,
    you get on the wagon, and take them to where they have to go,
    or we're going to kill you all right now.
    They all disappeared.
    He got back on his wagon, and he took us to the train station.
    We got to the train station, and we put everything
    in the freight cars.
    And he told us from there, it was not
    far to walk to the ghetto.
    And my father had relatives in that little town,
    so we figured they will probably be in the ghetto.
    What were you doing when the farmers started
    approaching with pitchforks?
    Well, we were sitting and crying,
    and then knew that that was the end of us,
    but there was nothing we can do about it.
    We couldn't fight back, and we couldn't do anything.
    What did you think when your mother walked away from you?
    I know that she was going to get help and to save us.
    That I knew.
    I knew my mother wasn't running from us.
    How did you know?
    No way.
    Not my mother.
    When she risked her life in the Smorgonie ghetto,
    in the Oshmyany ghetto to barter things
    and to bring food for us, and she wouldn't
    eat before everybody ate.
    I knew my mother wasn't going to run away from us.
    And in the later years, of course, even when she was 75,
    it was still her concern to take care
    of her children and her grandchildren.
    All her life, it was her concern.
    So we came to the ghetto, and we asked where the relatives
    lived, if they were there.
    And we were told yes, and they were quite wealthy people.
    And they were in the ghetto.
    Their house was in the ghetto, so they were essentially
    in their own home.
    What is the name of this town you're talking--
    If you will stop for a minute, I'll look up on the map
    if you want me to.
    It slipped my mind.
    Anyway, we found our relatives, my father's relatives.
    And they told us, well, come in.
    In the room we'll give you two beds.
    They said we have another room, but we
    can't give you the other room, because the chef is
    coming to sleep over.
    This was the nicest house in the ghetto.
    And he came to sleep over in that room.
    So I remember we were like four people on a bed, and we rested.
    And then I walked out into the hall.
    And I saw the chef.
    Again, he called me.
    He said, "Kleine, come with me."
    Takes me into his room, and he said,
    listen what I'll tell you.
    And tell it to your mother.
    He said, I found out that within two weeks,
    they are going to liquidate all the small ghettos
    and take them into Ponary and kill them.
    So I decided to save as many people as I can.
    So I went to the Gebietskommissar,
    and I told him that I need more workers
    to speed up the highway, and he should give me
    permission to go to the Oshmyany ghetto and bring more people.
    He said when I came to the Oshmyany ghetto,
    he said I felt that the first people that I need to save
    should be the relatives of those that are in Žiežmariai.
    And that's why, he said, I told your mother
    not to hesitate and not to ask questions and to come.
    And he said-- he opened his wallet,
    and he showed me a gold coin.
    And he said, some of the people there were trying to bribe me,
    that I should take other families.
    But he said, well, I took this one gold coin,
    because I'm taking people out of the ghetto,
    but my priority was their relatives from the people
    in Žiežmariai.
    And then he looked at me and said,
    if you have somebody here in ghetto that you
    want he should come with us, bring that person.
    Because in two weeks, that's what
    he showed me, that they were all going to be slaughtered.
    And in that ghetto, it so happened
    that I found the daughter--
    if you recall, when we first ran to Lebedev, to my Aunt Golda,
    that he was a shoemaker, and they had three children.
    So the daughter was there.
    Somehow she had a boyfriend, and they wind up in that ghetto.
    When she came, she told me that she's--
    I asked, what happened to your relatives, to your parents,
    to your brothers?
    She told me that a few months after we left,
    they gathered all the Jews into a barn,
    and they sprinkled the barn with gasoline,
    and they burned them all alive.
    And she was someplace at work, and she survived.
    And then she found a boyfriend, and that's
    why she was in that ghetto.
    Her name was Rivka.
    And I said, Rivka, come with us.
    Come with us, because we know for a fact
    that this ghetto will be liquidated.
    She said, no way.
    She says, I'm not going with you.
    I have a boyfriend here.
    I don't believe what you're saying.
    She didn't come.
    The next morning, we got up.
    We all went to the cars.
    And we got in.
    They closed the freight train, and they took us straight
    to Žiežmariai.
    And we came to Žiežmariai.
    And of course, all the relatives then found each other,
    and my sister was there, too.
    And we were also in seventh heaven,
    that we found each other.
    Why do you think this chief singled you out and talked
    to you and helped you?
    I think that first of all my mother
    had bribed him well on the way to the train, because he did it
    to us, especially, as you will hear later
    how he saved us again.
    And maybe by nature he was--
    he wasn't a young man.
    He was sort of in his 50s.
    Maybe he was a good person, and he
    wanted to do something decent for people.
    Did you feel singled out?
    Yes, because when he came and he asked
    me-- and I was the only one.
    He asked me if I want to go back to Oshmyany to see my mother,
    I knew he singled me out from everybody else.
    Because nobody else went except the head of the camp.
    Did you feel especially lucky?
    I felt lucky.
    I thought that because I looked clean and neat and my boots
    and my shearling, and I always had my hair,
    I felt that that made a difference, that that's why--
    I didn't let myself go and shlumpy and all this.
    I felt that made a difference.
    Here he brought us back to Žiežmariai,
    and he had the places prepared for my mother,
    and my grandfather, and his wife, and the little girl,
    and my brother.
    He all gave us, and he took my mother to work in the bakery,
    so we were sure that we would have bread enough to eat.
    And the rest of us went again to work.
    And we worked there until the spring of '43.
    What was your state of mind?
    You said you always were a very optimistic person.
    You are now 14, 15?
    My state of mind at that time was, it was one day at a time.
    I was composing songs and singing with my friends.
    We were talking about the events,
    but I remember something distinctly.
    On a Sunday, when we didn't work,
    and I was on top of that bunk bed,
    and I looked out the window, and I saw Christians
    all dressed up, with their children,
    the children wearing patent leather shoes, and white socks,
    and nice dresses, and hats going to church.
    And I looked out the window.
    And I would sit there all day and cry, why?
    Why is this happening to me?
    And I poured everything out in the songs that I had composed,
    all the misery and all the suffering.
    And then we would sit at night and sing the songs.
    There was one other thing that kept us occupied.
    We would sit in groups, and we would
    make believe it's Friday in our home.
    And we come home from school, and all the delicious aromas
    of fish, and challah, and chicken soup, and chicken
    is there in the kitchen.
    And the mother is there, and the white table cloth,
    and the candles, and we would sort of--
    everybody would add how their home looked on a Friday night,
    on a Shabbat.
    But of course, we woke up to reality,
    and it was very, very, very bad.
    Would you sing one of the songs that you wrote?
    [SIGHS]
    In Yiddish?
    Mm-hmm.
    I don't know if I--
    For just a little bit.
    Maybe a line.
    OK.
    [SINGING IN YIDDISH]
    I forgot.
    But the end is that I hope that this storm will stop,
    and just like the river is flowing peacefully by,
    maybe my life will start peacefully flowing again.
    Thank you for doing that.
    Thank you.
    This is a song that you composed?
    Yes.
    Thank you.
    Yes.
    Thank you.
    Then spring came, 1943.
    And there were rumors that the Russians are pushing back
    the Germans from the Ukraine, and there were
    heavy, heavy battles going on.
    And we were hoping maybe, maybe it will happen to us.
    But all that happened one day, we saw trucks come in.
    And people come out of the trucks, setting up stations,
    and called everybody to come out and to sign up.
    We didn't know what to do.
    We're standing there.
    And all of a sudden, the chef came to my mother.
    He said, go back.
    These people, this camp is going to be liquidated,
    because the war is getting-- the front is getting nearby.
    And this people came.
    I made arrangements, instead of you being sent
    to Ponary all to be killed.
    I found places near the Russian border,
    where they need to dig trenches and obstacles for tanks.
    So they took my advice, and they came
    to sign up the people to go there
    to [? Pleskow ?] was the name.
    But he said, don't go because there is something else coming.
    Let other people sign up.
    Go into the room, and stay back, and wait
    until I'll tell you when.
    So my mother took me, and my sister.
    We all went back, the whole family.
    We didn't sign up.
    They signed up most of the people, put them in trucks,
    and they went away.
    The next day, another group of trucks, a caravan came in,
    and they opened the trucks.
    And we saw men with armbands, blue and white on their arms.
    We walked out to look.
    We asked, who are you?
    Where do you come from?
    They said, we are Jewish policemen
    from the Kovno ghetto.
    And we came out, and then the chef came running to my mother.
    And he says, now I want you to sign up and go.
    So we signed up.
    We were all put on trucks, but not my sister.
    Because my sister was working in the office.
    And he said, don't worry.
    There are like 15 girls working in the office.
    One day I know where you are, I'll
    bring her to the Kovno ghetto.
    We got on the trucks, and he brought us to the Kovno ghetto.
    And with us, of course, was my Uncle [? Meyer, ?]
    that was in the Judenrat, that his daughter, my cousin,
    was with me.
    He and his wife, and the other two children,
    they were already--
    they came with us from Oshmyany and to Žiežmariai and then
    to the Kovno ghetto.
    This is tape two, side B. And you
    were talking about going to the Kovno ghetto.
    We came to the Kovno ghetto, and the Jews in the covenant ghetto
    looked very well dressed, very well-fed.
    And they were very nice to us.
    They divided us into two groups.
    This is June '43, we're talking.
    And so you are now 16-years-old.
    Did you ever have any marking of your birthdays up to this time,
    once the war started?
    None whatsoever.
    And I was just still as small as when I was 11 or 12-years-old.
    They divided us into two groups.
    One group they took into a synagogue, which
    they converted for lodging.
    And this is where they put us.
    We walked into the synagogue.
    There were mattresses wall-to-wall
    in the men's synagogue.
    And in the ladies section up there, there
    were also mattresses, and they put people there.
    And every family, we got one mattress.
    My mother, my brother, and myself.
    My sister still didn't come.
    And the rest of them they took to another building
    nearby, which used to be a movie house.
    And they had the same arrangements.
    They had mattresses there.
    And that's where my uncle, and my aunt, and their family
    went to that movie house.
    And when we had nothing to do there,
    we would go out of the synagogue and look around.
    And one day, two girls came over to me,
    one whose name was [? Sisa ?] Trotsky, and the other one
    was Batsheva.
    And they came over to me.
    And they looked much older, and they were dressed beautifully.
    And they asked me my name.
    And then they said to me, we lived all our life in Kovno.
    Now we're in the ghetto.
    And why don't you come with us and come visit our families?
    And I went with them, and they really
    lived in a beautiful house.
    One of them that I became very friendly, [? Sisa ?] a Trotsky,
    she lives now in New York.
    She's the one that I mentioned before.
    She would know much more about the Kovno ghetto.
    And they would give us food.
    And then they introduced us to other--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    What happened?
    I took the phone off--
    So they introduced me to many more boys than girls.
    And these boys and girls, they were much older than I am.
    And they had already an organization.
    They had an organization.
    They were in contact with partisans,
    and they knew exactly what was going on outside.
    And we used to have meetings and discuss
    even talk about Zionism.
    And it was really--
    the evenings we would spend there together
    with these young people from the Kovno ghetto.
    Did this group have a special name?
    No.
    No, they didn't have a--
    not that I know of, but we would all meet.
    And it was-- for me, it was for the first time in my life
    that I belonged to a group, because I was already
    a teenager, and to a group of teenagers.
    But it was only intellectual.
    Of course, people had sympathy, this boy likes that girl.
    You know how it is under normal circumstances.
    But there were no dating or anything.
    We are all concerned about the political situation
    and about Israel and Zionism.
    Was this the first time that you had heard
    about any form of resistance?
    Yes.
    This was actually the first time that we
    heard that there are partisans, they are resisting,
    and they are in the forests.
    But of course, it was so far away from us
    that we wouldn't even contemplate to run away
    or to look for them.
    It was an abstract thing that was happening at a time.
    And all of a sudden, I was aware of it.
    But in the other places that you had been up to that point,
    you had not heard of talk of resistance?
    Not at all.
    And we lived in small towns with forests all over,
    but there were no partisans in our area.
    In the Ukraine there were, but not in our area.
    And so we were in shul.
    And then my sister came.
    This [INAUDIBLE] chef brought my sister.
    And of course when we saw her, it
    was like she came from the other world.
    My mother had gotten a job, also in a soup kitchen.
    And of course, so we always had some soup
    with potatoes or whatever.
    Now somebody found out.
    Somebody came back from Žiežmariai after they found out
    that the chef took the girls to the Kovno together.
    They came to look for the girls.
    They wanted them back, somebody else.
    And we were afraid that they would come and immediately find
    my sister, they would take her back.
    One of the friends that we made, interesting, she was--
    she was-- all my other friends were very educated
    and sophisticated.
    Like this [? Sisa's ?] mother was a nurse.
    Her father was a doctor, and her uncles were all in medicine.
    Before the WAR they would travel to Paris, and Amsterdam,
    and to London.
    So they were all worldly people.
    But there was one girl that she came from a very plain family.
    Her brothers even I think they were like--
    they were like truckers or something.
    But once in a while, we would go to spend a few hours with her.
    And then I told the girls, I said, look what's happening.
    They want to grab my sister, maybe me, and take us back.
    So this girl of all people, she said,
    I have three strong brothers.
    And don't you worry.
    You come to us, we'll hide you.
    And they won't find you.
    And my sister and I stayed with them for several weeks
    until we knew that they probably had left.
    And then we went back to the synagogue to be with my mother.
    One day, as we were sitting in the synagogue--
    this is one of the miracles that I can't explain.
    We were sitting on that mattress,
    and everybody was sitting there on the mattresses.
    And to the west, there was still--
    the Holy Ark was there.
    There were no scrolls, but the Ark was there.
    And we were sitting there.
    And outside whoever had some potatoes or flour
    would make a little fire and cook something.
    And then they started--
    we didn't go to work yet.
    All of a sudden, a Jewish policeman
    comes into the synagogue, and he has a certain piece
    of paper in his hand.
    And he says, is there a family Marcus and Jablanovič here?
    My mother gets up.
    She says, yes, I'm Cyla Marcus.
    He says, and Jablanovič There were two sisters,
    and they got up.
    They said, we're Jablanovic.
    He said, come with me.
    I have a room for you in the ghetto, instead of being here.
    We were shocked.
    We didn't apply.
    We weren't pushy.
    We're just sitting wherever we were sent.
    We didn't go out of our way, because we didn't
    know what to do to save ourselves or what's bad
    or what's worse.
    Did you believe him?
    Yeah, a Jewish policeman?
    Certainly.
    He says come.
    And I said, but how did you know?
    We didn't apply for a room?
    How did you pick us out?
    He says, come with me.
    I have a room for you.
    There is an old lady with a son, and she
    has two rooms in the ghetto.
    And one room will be for you and the Jablanovičes.
    He took us there to that room, to that lady.
    We met her-- I can still see her face--
    with her son.
    And the second room, he gave to us and the two sisters
    Jablanovic.
    And we stayed there.
    And then they started sending us all to Žiežmariai.
    We had to go to work.
    First, it was very, very hard work.
    We had to go where they had the airport.
    But what they did was, in order to save--
    to protect the plains, they had built bunkers around it,
    like a double wall around the planes--
    around the hangars.
    And in between was filled with sand.
    So we had to stand there.
    They brought-- sand was brought.
    And then we had to--
    and then there was like a platform.
    And we would have to throw the sand on the platform.
    Then another group would take the sand from the platform
    and put it into the hollow in between the two walls
    to fill up as a protection for the hanger.
    Sand is heavy.
    How did you have the strength to do this?
    You had to do it.
    You took as much as you could, and you did.
    You said you were small, and obviously you
    weren't eating that.
    Right, right.
    So we did the utmost.
    But I don't remember anybody being hit
    or anybody being punished.
    So we did what we could.
    Did you do any work previous to that in the Kovno ghetto?
    No, no.
    This was really a short time after I we came, maybe
    three weeks or so.
    And then-- and we-- really, we worked very hard there.
    Then all of a sudden--
    and we had to line up at the entrance of the ghetto
    every morning.
    One day, they looked at us, the Jewish policemen,
    those that were assigning the work.
    And they said, oh, don't go there.
    We're sending you to a new place, a new job.
    My mother, my sister, myself, and my brother
    was at home always.
    If we had any food, he would prepare it for us.
    So we got in the truck, and they brought us to a place
    where they made galoshes and rubber boots.
    And it was warm, and it was clean, and it was nice.
    And we sat at a conveyor belt. And I remember my job,
    the galoshes would come on the wooden form.
    And I all I had to do is-- and I had a whole tray with soles.
    And all I had to do is put the sole over the galoshes
    and go over with the roller and put it back,
    and then it went another few operations,
    and then it went to a vulcanizing
    oven, where it was hardened.
    And that was beautiful sitting.
    And what they did, the people from the Kovno ghetto
    made arrangements for us that every day lunchtime,
    they made--
    they prepared a meal for us there at work.
    I don't know whether everybody had it.
    I think just for us, for the people who came from
    Žiežmariai.
    And we worked there, and it was really--
    it was just wonderful.
    And this is how-- so we went every day to work, my brother--
    Is this men and women?
    Men, yes.
    Men and women.
    Did you notice at this point any difference
    between men and women, or boys and girls in responding
    to what was happening?
    Really not.
    I think people kept to themselves,
    unless it was like a group of friends or relatives that came.
    Otherwise, people were so absorbed
    with survival and to have some food for today
    or for tomorrow, that nobody really discussed anything else.
    When you are hungry and your life hangs on a thread,
    you don't discuss philosophies, or histories,
    or any other topic that normal human beings would discuss.
    It was all "today I survive, and let's see
    what will be tomorrow."
    But I must say, the people in the Kovno ghetto
    were wonderful.
    I remember when we used to come to the gate,
    there were two Jewish policemen that they were in charge
    of the gate, the entrance gate.
    And people knew already.
    You know, people used to sew pockets into their coats,
    in the lining.
    And at work, Gentiles would come,
    and they would barter potatoes and carrots or bread
    or whatever, and they would stuff it in.
    When we came back to the ghetto in the gate, there was this--
    [? Lora ?] [? Aronofsky ?] was his name.
    And then there was the Lithuanian policemen.
    And they would start to frisk people.
    If they would find something, they
    would take everything away.
    Somehow this policeman-- and there was Yankel
    [? Leveblovski. ?] This Yankel [? Leveblovski ?] was even more
    than [? Lora ?] Aronofsky.
    Yankel [? Leveblovski ?] somehow had probably bribed
    the Lithuanians.
    So when the gate was opened, he would walk over
    to one side of the gate, sort of facing
    the Lithuanian with his back to us, and speaking to him,
    and with his hand, he would motion [HEBREW]..
    Which means in Hebrew like, "go, go, go, move on, move on."
    And this is how people would bring in food into the ghetto
    and survived.
    And this is how we went to work and we managed to survive.
    Did non-family members come to the aid of other people?
    Obviously, family members helped each other,
    but did you notice help between two different families?
    The people, the Jews in the Kovno ghetto were tremendous.
    They also had in the Kovno ghetto,
    they called it Werkstätten.
    It was like workshops that they produced shoes and clothing,
    all kinds of--
    I really don't know exactly, and many were employed there.
    And they managed to get food.
    It was really-- when I read about what
    happened in Lodz and in Warsaw, incredible.
    In the Kovno ghetto--
    And one other thing, the head of the ghetto, his name
    was Dr. Elkes.
    He was a very dedicated Jew.
    I remember him.
    He had a horse and a driver and a chariot.
    He would sit on his chariot and be
    driven all around the ghetto, and everything
    was under his control.
    He must have had some connections
    that made life in the ghetto easier for all the Jews.
    He was a tremendous man, respected by everybody.
    Were you thinking at all about your father all along,
    or at this time?
    All the time.
    All the time I was thinking, if my father was alive,
    he would have found a way to save us.
    He knew so many farmers.
    He knew so many peasants.
    If he was alive, he would have taken care of us,
    because we had so much trust in my father's ability
    to provide and to take care of us.
    Did your mother talk about your father?
    No, she did not.
    Did not talk.
    No, no.
    It was sort of a wound that didn't
    heal in everybody's hearts.
    One day, one morning we got up, and the ghetto was surrounded.
    And we heard rumors in the street
    that they came-- the Nazis came to take 6,000 people
    from the ghetto to labor camps.
    And again, they did not--
    they did not-- in the Kovno ghetto,
    they did not give out lists.
    So the first thing they did, they went to the synagogue,
    and they cleaned out all the Žiežmariai.
    they went to the movie house and take out all the Žiežmariai.
    Took them to the trains, took away all my younger cousins
    immediately to the concentration camp.
    Later we found out they took them to a labor camp in Riga.
    But before that, they took away the old people
    and the children.
    And then they spread out all through the streets
    of the Kovno ghetto to grab as many as they needed.
    And my mother prepared for us already
    a bag, a sack to take along.
    But the woman in the house says to us,
    she says, you know, we have a cellar here, and we can hide.
    And I'll describe to you that place.
    I'm sure you saw Schindler's List.
    Do you remember that the little girl with her family,
    they opened a door into a cellar,
    and they got into the cellar, closed the door
    and covered it with a rug.
    That's exactly what we did.
    We all got into the cellar, and there
    was a rug attached to the door.
    And once we got into the cellar, this lady pulled down the door,
    and she locked it.
    And as soon as you pulled down the door, it looked like a rug
    on top of it.
    And we were there in the basement,
    in the cellar sitting Quietly and then
    we heard the Germans coming into the room, looking for us.
    Where are the people?
    They saw bags, packed bags but no people.
    Where are the people?
    They looked around, but they didn't find us, and they left.
    A few hours later, when everything--
    we were told the coast was clear,
    so we came out of hiding, and then we found out that they
    took away all the people from Žiežmariai.
    The only two families that survived were us, the Marcuses,
    and the Jablanovičes that were in this house.
    Nobody else.
    Nobody else remained in the Kovno ghetto.
    How does a 15 and 1/2 year old young girl
    handle that kind of knowledge that you just said?
    Interesting.
    I-- I was sad.
    I was-- I was terrified.
    But I don't know.
    On one hand, I was resolved.
    Whatever will happen to me, will happen.
    My father was gone.
    All the relatives are dead.
    So dying?
    So we have to die, I'll die.
    On the other hand, I was very optimistic, like I said.
    And I always believed in dreams, even now.
    That if I have to make a certain decision,
    I know I will dream about it, and I will get
    an answer what to do, always.
    Sometimes my dreams frighten me, because once when
    I was already in the United States,
    I had a dream that a relative came, to an aunt from Israel.
    And it was maybe two months before Yom Kippur.
    And I dreamed that night that it was after the fast,
    and her brother came to our door and he knocked at the door.
    And I asked him, Moshe, what do you want?
    He said, you know, my sister doesn't cook much.
    I know you have a lot of food.
    Could you spare some food for us to break the fast?
    And I said, of course.
    I called him in.
    It was a few months before Yom Kippur.
    On the month of Yom Kippur, somebody knocks at the door.
    And I walk over, and I see this man is there.
    And he asks me, do you have enough food?
    I was petrified.
    For something, you know, to--
    but I always--
    I always believe in dreams, and my dreams give me messages.
    I know how to interpret them.
    When I went to school, I have a master's
    in counsel of education.
    I have a master's in marriage and family counseling,
    which I practice.
    So when I went to college for my master's
    in marriage and family counseling,
    there was many courses, of course, in psychology.
    And were discussed dreams and interpretation of dreams.
    And we always discussed my dreams.
    It was-- I am afraid, you know, to interpret
    the dream, because I always want it to be good.
    Let's go back to when you're in hiding in the cellar.
    In a minute.
    I just want to finish why I mentioned the dreams.
    That night, one night, I had a dream that I was on a lake,
    and it was a very stormy lake, and it was dark,
    and the water was black.
    And I was there with my mother, with my sister, and myself.
    My brother wasn't there.
    And I felt that I saw we are drowning.
    And we were drowning, and crying, and screaming.
    And then all of a sudden, I saw--
    I saw a log on the water.
    And I grabbed that log.
    And I made my mother hold onto it, my sister,
    and we swam to the shore.
    And I got up in the morning and I said, mama,
    we'll survive the war.
    I know it, we will.
    Because my dream told me that we will.
    You had asked me?
    Yeah, what did you do when you were in hiding in the cellar
    with the top covered over by the rug?
    Were you able to talk?
    Did your mother console you?
    What did you do?
    Just sitting.
    Everybody was petrified, shivering, and listening,
    and hoping that that door will never be pried open.
    We didn't talk, because of out of fear
    that we might be discovered.
    No, not at all.
    It was total silence there.
    Yes.
    So here we are, they took away all the people from Žiežmariai,
    and we continued.
    And we went on with life, and if we had enough food.
    Nobody-- I didn't see any dead people in the ghetto.
    Nobody died of starvation.
    And then it was in March 1944.
    The ghetto was surrounded.
    We got up in the morning, and we saw the Mercedeses
    and the top echelon Nazis with those leather coats,
    German shepherds, dobermans.
    And the ghetto was surrounded.
    And we got up, and we were told we should go
    to the entrance of the ghetto.
    And we have to go to work.
    Those that are going to work have to go to work.
    I had a terrible dream that night before we got up.
    I had a dream that we were in a big kitchen,
    and there were big pots of water boiling on the stove.
    And somebody grabbed my brother and threw him
    into a boiling pot.
    I got up, and I didn't--
    I didn't even want to--
    I didn't want to think about it.
    We went to work as usual, but we knew that something
    was going to happen.
    And we went there.
    We started working on the galoshes.
    And around midday, somebody came and told us
    that there was an Aktion, that the Germans went
    into the ghetto, and they took out the old people
    and the children.
    They took them to the Fortress #9, and they were all killed.
    We came in to our room.
    My brother wasn't there.
    We started crying and screaming and tearing our clothes.
    And the neighbors, they told us how
    he was begging for his life.
    And they took him away.
    The next day, we didn't go to work.
    At that time, we did not live anymore
    in that house with the woman.
    We lived-- they had two-story buildings there, brick
    buildings.
    We lived in a room with other two families
    in the Kovno ghetto.
    But this is-- at that time, I don't
    remember when we switched, but this is where we lived.
    And the next day, they told us not to go to work.
    We all gathered in one of the rooms that
    had the window to the front.
    My mother, my sister, and many of the neighbors that survived.
    What was your mother like after that?
    Oh, my mother was--
    my mother was very strong.
    We all cried.
    We all tore our clothes.
    But she knew that she has to be strong for us,
    for my sister and myself.
    And we sat there, and my mother immediately, she
    stuffed up, up my breasts.
    She took-- she found some red paper
    and made my lips red and my cheeks, and puffed up my hair,
    that I should look mature.
    And we sat there.
    And they were going from house to house
    to check, to double check if any children were left.
    In the next two doors down, they went in,
    and some children were hidden there in a bunker.
    And probably somebody-- the children cried.
    And they opened up, and they found several children there.
    And the children were screaming, and the mothers
    were following them.
    They grabbed the children by their legs,
    and they dragged them downstairs with their brains spilling
    all over the staircase.
    And they came down, and we looked out.
    There were trucks.
    And they were standing there with their bayonets
    and sticking into the babies and throwing them inside the truck,
    like you do with a fork with a piece of meat.
    And the mothers that cried and objected,
    they immediately shot them and threw them
    into the truck with them.
    And we sat there.
    We looked out the window, and we saw it all.
    The next day, they ordered us to go back to work.
    And we went back to work as usual.
    And we did the same work.
    We came home, and we continued until it was the month of July.
    In July, the ghetto was surrounded again.
    And they told us that the ghetto is going to be liquidated.
    And everybody should line up, and everybody
    should take whatever they want, and out of the ghetto.
    We walked out of the ghetto.
    And we walked to the river, to the Nemen.
    This is the river that crossed the city of Kovno.
    We came to the Nemen.
    There were barges, like coal barges or freight barges.
    And they pushed us all into the barges, again like sardines.
    And--
    After seeing what you just described,
    how did you have the will to go on after?
    Somehow I think it's the instinct in us,
    the instinct of survival.
    That as long as you live, you push on to survive.
    Because as we have noticed, especially later on, people
    that were in the same situation that we were, but they gave up
    and they said what's the point?
    As a matter of fact, one sister of the Jablanovič sisters said,
    what's the point?
    We are going to be killed.
    And she gave up.
    And she wouldn't eat, and she wouldn't wash,
    and then she died.
    So the instinct of survival as we all know in a human being is
    very strong of self-preservation, as long--
    and in any animal--
    of survival of self preservation.
    And this is how we functioned from day to day,
    on animal instinct of self-preservation,
    without thinking or discussing the current situation
    that we were in.
    None whatsoever.
    Only the animal instinct prevailed.
    If I can get some food, if we will survive.
    Well, we weren't even afraid of death.
    Just like animals.
    This is what they did.
    This is what they turned us into.
    Became like animals without any human reaction
    to what surrounded us, or what was,
    or what happened to our loved ones.
    We were absolutely stunned or petrified
    into like a four-legged animal, nothing else.
    And then it was in July they put us into the barges,
    on the river Nemen.
    And the barges were going West.
    For a few days, the sun was boiling,
    and our lips were parched, and we didn't have water.
    And then as I looked out of the barge,
    the water was so beautiful on both sides and both banks.
    And there were flowers, and grass, and trees,
    and everything was so beautiful.
    And here we where, being decimated in those barges
    under those conditions.
    A few days later, we came to a town
    which was called Elbing, a German town.
    They took us out of the barges, and they put us in a train.
    And we went into the train wherever it would take us.
    Did they give you anything to eat on the barge?
    They gave us some--
    they gave us some water, I remember.
    And no food, but we did have some food with us.
    We tried to stretch it out for as long as possible.
    Now you're with your mother and your sister?
    My mother and my sister, yes.
    How was your health at this point?
    Oh, my health was--
    I was strong.
    I was healthy.
    It so happened that obviously we have healthy genes.
    And we did not suffer hunger.
    Because until we came to Stutthof, to the concentration
    camp, we still had gold coins, jewelry.
    I remember the last thing my mother sold in the Kovno ghetto
    was a pocketwatch of my father, a 24-karat pocketwatch,
    diamond-studded.
    And she kept it.
    She held on to it, held on to it.
    And that was the last thing that she sold in the Kovno ghetto.
    Where did she keep all of these valuables?
    We would always sew it into a coat, in the pads,
    shoulder pads, or wherever it was possible.
    All sewn in.
    Nothing was anywhere loose.
    And one by one, you know, she would take it out and sell it
    for food.
    We came to a place which we didn't know where.
    They opened the freight cars, yelling "Alle aussteigen!"
    "Get out, line up into five."
    We walked out, and we saw barracks, lots of barracks,
    and a tall chimney, and smoke coming out of the chimney.
    And the whole place smelled like sometimes
    if you forget you cook meat, and you
    forget to take it off the stove, and it burns down
    to the bottom of the pot.
    This is how the place smelled.
    We still didn't know where we were.
    They took us to a very, very, very large room.
    And I remember we all had double dresses and double underwear
    on us, just because we saw that they were taking everything
    away from us.
    This is men?
    These are men and women?
    Men and women.
    And then the selected.
    Men separate, women separate.
    They did not give us tattooed numbers on the arms,
    but they did right down on the hand a number.
    And then they wrote it on a piece of cloth.
    And there was somebody sewing it on the jacket
    or whatever we had.
    And we saw that they were selecting men separate,
    separating families, women separate, children separate.
    And people realized already.
    And they said that they were going
    to send us to an Entlausung, that we should leave everything
    behind, because they are going to send us to a place,
    because they assumed that we had lice,
    that they are going to send us to a place
    to get rid of the lice.
    But people already realized what was happening.
    Did you know about concentration camps then?
    Not at all.
    But when we walked in, we saw the chimneys.
    Some people said to us, well, this is the concentration camp.
    But we still didn't know.
    I was in the gas chamber, and I didn't know I was there.
    I walked in there, in that next-- in that large place
    where all the people gathered, there was a latrine.
    And it was a big, deep hole.
    And then there was like a board stretched over maybe 20 feet.
    And whoever needed to take care of their personal needs
    went in there.
    And when I walked in, I went in there,
    and we saw people were dumping all kinds of jewelry and money
    and dumping.
    And then somebody said that several people
    had jumped in to die there, because they
    saw what was happening.
    They were desperate.
    As we were there, and they started selecting, selecting--
    and there were thousands of people-- selecting,
    all of a sudden, it came our turn.
    My mother, my sister, and myself, came our turn.
    And they told us to go in.
    There was a door, to go into that door.
    Well, it was a small room.
    It was maybe like--
    first it was like 3, 4, 5 people in a queue.
    And there-- I never saw it in my life.
    And I was so embarrassed.
    Because in those days, mothers, especially Jewish mothers,
    didn't discuss with daughters the period.
    I know my sister, when she started wearing a bra,
    my mother sewed her a bra, and nobody could see it.
    Or talk, discuss the period, it was unheard of.
    We walked into that room.
    There were two chairs, gynecological chairs.
    And they made the women--
    didn't touch me.
    He made the women get there, put their--
    spread their feet, legs, and disperse,
    and they would check their insides.
    And I was really surprised, because at that time
    I didn't know what was happening.
    And they would pull out little bundles,
    probably with jewelry or diamonds or what,
    and throw it in the corner, which was a big pile.
    And then, group by group, they sent us in.
    Who did this examining, men or women?
    Men.
    Men were there.
    The SS.
    SS.
    And then they sent us into a room
    that was a square room as big as this area.
    Maybe I would say 400 square feet.
    And I saw the walls.
    And they told us to strip before we
    got in there, to leave all the clothes behind
    before we went into that room, where they checked the women.
    What were the Germans saying when they were doing this exam?
    Oh, to them, they were just--
    "up, on, checked.
    Out, on, out."
    That's it.
    What did the women say?
    The women were petrified.
    They were hiding.
    They were holding.
    They were-- some of them were massaging their uterus.
    I guess they were hoping maybe it would go inside deeper
    and they wouldn't find it.
    This is now that I know what was happening.
    Then we got into that room.
    It was maybe 400 square feet.
    And of course, we were already all naked.
    And I looked around, and they said
    they are sending guys to the shower, to the Entlausung,
    to get rid of the lice.
    And I looked around, and I saw the walls were all
    covered with metal, sheets of metal, studded, and the roof.
    And then from the roof, there were several shower heads
    coming down.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number 3, Side A.
    So they kept on filling up that room.
    And we were standing there.
    And then, all of a sudden, there are a few sprinkles
    of water came down the shower heads.
    And we sort of, a little bit, washed ourselves.
    And another door opened.
    And they told us go out.
    And there were piles of shoes and piles of clothes.
    And they told us grab something to wear.
    So all of these were women who were all naked?
    What was that like for you to see your mother like that?
    It was, for the first time, it was
    so humiliating to see my mother and other women
    trying to the nakedness.
    And myself, even as a girl, my mother never saw me naked.
    Except when I was a little girl.
    When I became a teenager, I would always lock my door.
    And it was terrible.
    But again, they dehumanized us.
    And we were just acting, just existing, and just doing
    what we were told.
    And that was the most horrible thing.
    And this was their aim at the final solution,
    first to dehumanize, and then to kill.
    And they told us, here are piles of clothes and shoes, grab.
    And it was so pathetic.
    Like, a big woman would grab a small dress.
    Or a tiny girl would grab a big coat.
    And then, of course, we would switch.
    And they sent us into a barrack.
    And we had to lie down on the floor the first night, just
    like sardines.
    When one of-- my mother, my sister, and I,
    one fitted into the other with the knees.
    And holding each other, to keep each other where--
    the safety that we felt by being together.
    If you had to get up to go out, you
    were stepping on arms and legs.
    And in the morning, they would call Zahlappell.
    Everybody had to go out for roll call.
    We got up.
    And we would line up, five in a row.
    And my mother, usually, what she did from the first day,
    she would rake up with her hands, a pile of dirt
    and put me on top of it.
    So that my head should look even with all the other people
    in the row.
    And I would stand on this pile.
    And my head was as tall as everybody else's.
    And then we would just sit there in the barracks all day.
    They would give us a little watery coffee.
    And they would only take us out when they were punishing people
    or when they were hanging people.
    Once, I did not see it, but the people
    that were with us in the barracks
    told us, because they were so--
    Yeah, then we found out that the place where we went
    was not a shower room.
    It was actually the crematorium.
    But what happened was that there were
    so many people from the East and from the South
    being brought in to Stutthof that they couldn't
    fit in to gas everybody and to burn everybody
    in the crematorium.
    So they gave a few sprinkles of water
    and took us into barracks, thinking that in a while,
    in a few weeks or so, they will have us,
    they'll have time to kill us and to burn us.
    So some people in my barrack told us,
    because they were so overwhelmed with many Jews
    to kill, what they did, they would line up people.
    They would first line up a row of wooden logs,
    and then a row of people, and make the people walk and lie
    down on the logs, and then another row of logs,
    and then another row of people, and sprinkle with gasoline,
    and burn them alive.
    With us, we were sitting there, and we
    were waiting, essentially, until-- but we
    didn't know that, until they will loosen up
    in the crematorium.
    And it will come our turn.
    Were there other people there that you knew?
    Or was it just your mother and your sister?
    My mother and my sister.
    We didn't know many people, because they were all from
    the Kovno ghetto, and then they were from the other,
    from Kovno, from Shavli, --eh--
    Zosle, but we didn't we didn't know them.
    Did people talk to each other?
    No, people were walking around like zombies.
    Go out, go out, come back, come back.
    I was-- again, I was sitting there, one evening,
    and I was singing.
    I was singing.
    And in every barrack, in the back of the barrack,
    was a room where the Kapo, the Kapo that took care of that
    barracks, they had a bed.
    And that's where she lived.
    And I didn't know that.
    I was sitting.
    And I'm singing.
    All of a sudden, the door opens up.
    And the Kapo woman, she comes in,
    she goes, who was singing here?
    And I didn't want anybody to take the blame.
    I knew I was going to be punished.
    And I stand up.
    I said, I was singing.
    "Come with me."
    I went with her.
    She takes me into her room in the back of the barracks.
    And I she opens, she opens the cupboard,
    takes out a big chunk of bread and a big chunk of margarine,
    slaps it on the bread.
    She says, "go, share it with your mother."
    I went back.
    And again, my mother looked at me
    as if I came from the other world.
    What had you been singing?
    I was-- I don't think I was singing the same song that I
    sang before.
    I was singing, I think, a curse song that they-- but she didn't
    understand what I was singing.
    That they will be defeated.
    And they will die.
    And we'll survive and we'll still be liberated,
    like in the olden times when Jews
    were in desperation and in danger and liberated.
    But it was very sad tune.
    But how was it?
    I don't even remember.
    I remember [VOCALIZING].
    Something like this.
    Was this a song you had made up?
    Or was it a--
    I made that song up too.
    But that was a song that it was in anger.
    The other one was more philosophical.
    It was in the beginning that we came from home.
    And this was very, very anger.
    When you were singing in the barracks,
    were other women listening to you?
    They were all listening.
    I remember it the song was going that you should all go to hell,
    I will bury you nicely.
    But you are calling us, Mach us shnell, Mach us shnell, Appell,
    but you are calling us, in meantime, to roll call.
    But eventually, we will survive, something.
    Can you sing that part of it?
    [SINGING IN YIDDISH]
    And then there was another song we used to sing about,
    at night, it was one night.
    I was sitting in my bunk.
    And that was way before and looking out outside,
    looking at the moon.
    And saying and thinking that you are teasing me.
    You are so beautiful.
    And I am here all locked up.
    It was really, and again, hoping that would it be,
    would the day come that I'll be able to look at you
    and enjoy you and walk in the light of the moon?
    So here we were in Stutthof everyday,
    they say Appell, my mother raking up.
    One day, they came and they told us
    that they need 5,000 women to go to a labor camp
    to dig trenches for the army, because we
    knew that the Russians were advancing.
    Do you want to ask me something or you want me to go on?
    The Russians were advancing, they
    said 5,000 women to labor camp.
    And they told us to line up, five in a row,
    in front of the gate.
    And at the gate, they will check who goes and who doesn't.
    At the gate, when we got closer, we
    saw there was the head of the camp,
    with a doberman, club in his hand, a gun in his belt,
    and some of the Kapos surrounding him
    with their guns and their belts.
    And as people were passing the gate,
    he was pulling out children and old people.
    This is where they pulled out my grandfather's wife
    with her little girl.
    And they were pulling these people out and throwing them
    in a pile.
    And immediately, there were wagons and taking them,
    and we knew already, up there to the crematorium.
    How did you know what the crematorium was?
    Because when we were there, people that where there before,
    they told us, you see, this is what they are doing.
    This is what they'll take us.
    This is where they'll burn us.
    And here we are, we're lined up in five.
    It was my mother, my sister, myself,
    two friends of my mother's, Rita and Basia [? Shahor. ?]
    And the five of us are going.
    And I'm the youngest.
    And here again, now, this is something
    that I talked about it.
    I taught about it.
    I wrote about it.
    I can't explain it.
    Because the only thing is that if you
    believe in God and in an angel, this is what happened.
    Because there was no way that somebody could beg.
    And you are familiar with the stories,
    that somebody could beg for his life and be effective.
    There was no way.
    They would-- somebody would start talking or begging,
    they threw, they send the doberman,
    or either shoot the person, or send the doberman, ripped up
    to pieces.
    And I was very shy, very timid, very insecure little girl.
    And here we are, crossing the gate.
    And he grabs me out of the five.
    And he throws me on the pile with the children
    and the women, the old women and the young children.
    And here is the moment that I, well, I have to believe it
    was the hand of an angel or of God.
    I got up.
    And I walk over, straight to the head
    of the camp, the Lagerfuhrer, and I look at him.
    I was little.
    He was tall, red hair, freckles on his face, gray, watery eyes.
    And I look at him up.
    And I said in German, I said, "I am not a little girl.
    I am a teenager.
    I am very strong.
    And I worked already before.
    And I can work.
    And there is my mother and my sister."
    I didn't know what would happen to me.
    It's just that something, somebody took me
    and brought me in front of him.
    And I looked at his eyes up, and I see a flicker there.
    At that moment, he grabbed me by my neck,
    pushed me through the gate, yelling [SPEAKING GERMAN],, OK,
    little girl, run to your mother.
    When I came on the other side of the gate, my mother, everybody,
    my friends, they all grabbed me and hugged me
    and kissed me, literally, that I came from the dead.
    We marched.
    And then they took us with trucks to Poland,
    to a place called [? Dyrbek. ?] In [? Dyrbek, ?] they had
    barracks prepared for us.
    But not like for human beings, barracks like for horses.
    They were circular.
    And they were divided by poles, where every triangle was
    placed another to stand.
    And in the center, there was an iron stove.
    And they put-- there was straw on the floor.
    And they put us there.
    And, oh, no, no, no, first, we were.
    We went to [? Malchin, ?] but no, this
    was in the second labor camp.
    They had pitched tents for us.
    And in every tent, there were 10 women, 5 on each side.
    And every morning, we got up.
    And they took us to dig trenches,
    not for soldiers, but cylindrical trenches.
    And then they would camouflage it.
    And they were along the line from south
    to north, hoping that when the Russian tanks would come,
    they would plunge into those trenches.
    It was very hard work, because we
    had to work with picks and with shovels.
    And to dig those cylindrical trenches, I think,
    they started from five feet all the way down to, I would say,
    one foot at the bottom.
    Again, where did you get the strength?
    I don't know.
    I really don't know where the strength come.
    And nobody died of fatigue.
    There were many women that died there.
    It was a epidemic of, not typhus, at the time, but
    Diphtheria?
    Diphtheria, right, that many women died of diphtheria.
    Now, where is this that we're talking about it?
    It was a name called [? Dyrbek ?] in Poland.
    Near where?
    It was not far from Poznania, which is Poznan.
    And we worked there.
    In the beginning, it was OK.
    And we worked the trenches, and every day.
    And then it was, again, the latrine, it was like a board.
    And it was a hole.
    And anybody who needed, would go.
    And they would watch you.
    If you're sitting a little too long,
    they would come and clobber you.
    It would all open.
    And of course, there was no food.
    What kind of food did we have?
    During the morning, they gave us a brown bowl,
    like you have in the Holocaust Museum.
    And I looked at those bowls.
    I went with friends.
    I was telling them what we did with it.
    In the morning, they would give us a little coffee,
    or whatever it was.
    And again, a bread that we had to divide, a slice of bread.
    And then when we came back at night, again,
    they would cook some kind of a meal.
    Sometimes, they would throw in a piece of horse meat.
    And if you were lucky enough to find a little chunk of horse
    meat in your soup, you really felt that you'll live forever.
    How did you keep yourself clean?
    OK, here we go.
    Once in a while, they brought water.
    And we would go with the same bowl
    that we had our coffee and soup, they
    would give us water in the bowl.
    And we would wash our bodies in it.
    And we finished washing our bodies,
    we would wash up our panties in it.
    And then the next morning, we would have coffee in it
    again and have our coffee without thinking twice.
    At home, I remember my mother, let's say,
    she would make hot chocolate.
    And my sister would take a sip from my cup,
    I would not touch that cup again or the glass.
    She touched it with her mouth.
    And here I was washing my panties in a bowl
    that I was later eating from and drinking my coffee.
    And then it--
    How many changes of clothing did you have?
    Nothing, whatever we had on.
    That's what we wore.
    That was it.
    And at that time, they gave me--
    I had grabbed a pair of leather shoes
    when we came out of the gas chamber.
    But at that point, the shoes were already torn completely.
    So they gave me a pair of wooden clogs.
    And I just couldn't walk in them.
    And I would sprain my ankle, but I would still walk on.
    Then, winter was approaching.
    And they took us to another place,
    called [? Malchin. ?] In [? Malchin, ?] they had those
    plywood barracks for us that was meant for horses.
    And they are triangles.
    But the divider was, let's say, high as your head,
    because so the horses wouldn't.
    But all the way on the bottom, it was like one circular thing.
    And we got down, my mother, my sister on the straw.
    And this is-- and it started to get colder and colder.
    And we would get up in the morning.
    And then my mother would stuff in some straw
    in the coat that I was wearing, in the front and in the back,
    and with a little--
    with a string tie it at the waist line,
    so that it would keep us warm.
    And then my mother, when it was really cold,
    what my mother did for us, she would take us outside,
    when it was snow and make us strip.
    And with snow, she would rub our bodies, our hands, arms,
    and feet for circulation.
    And after that, when we got dressed, we felt so warm.
    We felt so good.
    And we started working again on the trenches there.
    And it was already very cold.
    It was November, December '44.
    The earth was frozen.
    And we kept on working until January the 18th, 1945.
    Did you get any kind of frostbite?
    No, no, miraculously we didn't.
    Because this is what my mother used to do always,
    rub our hands, our fingers, we didn't even
    have gloves, even nothing.
    Then January the 18th, it was already snowing.
    And it was winter.
    And it was below zero.
    And they told us to line up.
    And they gave everyone a loaf of bread.
    And they said that we're going to march north,
    back to Stutthof.
    And then we found out, we heard already,
    the Russian katyushas shooting.
    And so we knew already that the Russians are coming close.
    And they wanted us back to Stutthof.
    What we didn't know was that on the road, as we were walking,
    it was snowing.
    And then some days, we've marched for over a week.
    Some days, it was not snowing anymore.
    The sun was shining.
    And the snow was sparkling.
    But it was so frosty.
    And at that time, I always, every day, all day,
    I was thinking in those days when
    I would go cross-country skiing and come home with my breath
    would freeze my scarf, coming home to a warm meal,
    and the nights when my father would
    come with the horses and the sleighs.
    And we would go around, sleighing around the area.
    And here I was, walking, marching.
    And what happened was that if somebody stayed behind,
    they would immediately shoot them.
    And as we were marching, on both sides of the road,
    it was full of snow.
    But the snow wasn't white.
    There were bodies.
    And there was blood, human blood,
    on both sides of the road.
    And we were walking on the sides of the road,
    because in the middle of the road,
    the Germans, the civilians and the military, were retreating.
    So they were in the middle of the road.
    And we were walking in the snow on both sides.
    And we saw other groups marching, in front of us,
    ahead of us, everybody going north.
    And they pushed us all to go towards Stutthof, to go back
    to the concentration camp.
    Nights, they would put us up.
    Once, they put us up in a school.
    Once, they put us up in a barn.
    In the barn, it was so cold.
    When we slept in the barn, in the morning, we would get up.
    And people would be frozen there.
    And they would pull out frozen bodies from the barn.
    Once, I remember, we slept over in a barn.
    And we were so hungry.
    And saw that we were so near a village.
    I didn't tell my mother or my sister.
    We were so hungry.
    I ran out of camp into a farmer's house.
    And I told them that I am very, very hungry, if they
    could give me something.
    And they cut off two large slices of bread
    and put some fat on it.
    And I stuck it in the bosom of my coat.
    And I ran out of the house to run back to the camp.
    And all of a sudden, I saw a German soldier
    spotting a girl like me at another house,
    shooting her down dead in the snow.
    I waited a while.
    And I said, well, he'll probably kill me.
    But somehow, I managed to crawl back into camp
    and to share the bread with my mother and my sister.
    One night, we were very lucky.
    What was your mother's response to the fact
    you took such a chance?
    Well, she was very angry with me.
    And she made me and my sister eat most of the bread.
    She wouldn't touch it.
    And most of the time, when we got our portions of bread,
    she would cut off half of it and split it
    between my sister and me.
    Never ever eating her portion of bread that she had gotten.
    How was her health?
    Oh, she was healthy.
    She was strong.
    You could see.
    She is now 95.
    And physically, she is beautiful.
    No arthritis, no diabetes, she was never,
    not a day in the hospital, as long as I know her.
    But Alzheimer's disease caught up with her.
    So the night that they took us to a--
    oh, it was a stable.
    It wasn't a stable.
    It was a barn for cows.
    And it was warm because of the cows.
    And at night, we huddled up to the cows.
    And in the morning, we took some milk.
    Then, when they came, and [MUMBLING] nobody,
    I don't think, they caught anybody.
    And everybody was so happy.
    Nobody froze to death that night.
    And again, every night, my mother would, in the morning,
    or at night, she would wake us up, go outside,
    and she would rub our limbs with snow
    to improve the circulation.
    And we were so hungry.
    And as we walked, I remember, once, I looked up at the hill.
    And I saw a house there, a farmer, and the wife.
    And there was smoke coming out of the chimney.
    And the woman ran out of the house in short sleeves.
    I said, oh my God, she's not cold?
    It's below zero.
    It must be so warm inside that she ran out
    to get to throw out the refuse.
    And I visualized myself, what I would
    give to be in a little house like this with the fire
    going, and warm, and something to eat.
    Why?
    Why is it happening to us?
    And one day, as we walked past by villages,
    we would rummage through the garbage.
    And once, my mother found a marrow bone.
    And my sister was the weakest.
    And she gave it to my sister to suck on the marrow bone.
    And when she was through with it, she gave it to me.
    And then she didn't throw it away.
    She held it, maybe she could still scrape off something
    from the bone with her teeth the following day.
    And then one day, I remember, we found in the trash, we found--
    it looked like lungs.
    I don't know what it was from, an animal.
    And we were sucking on it.
    It was raw.
    And it was red.
    And we were sucking on it.
    We were so hungry.
    And we kept on marching.
    And we saw people die on both sides of the road.
    But my mother was pushing us ahead.
    We should never be at the end of-- then, I saw one girl.
    Her mother was so weak.
    And she put the string through the bowl,
    through the brown bowl that we would drink our coffee or eat.
    And she put the mother on the bowl.
    And with the string, she was pulling her.
    And the mother was sitting on that bowl.
    And she pulled her over the snow.
    I never know what happened to it.
    Then, one other peculiar thing happened to us,
    which I can't explain again.
    We were walking up a hill, in a forest,
    near the river of Visla.
    And it was so cold, maybe it was the fifth or sixth day.
    And my sister was always, she used to get hysterical.
    And after the war, you can imagine that, not only her,
    but even I, with all my being strong,
    I suffered very severe post--
    post-traumatic stress syndrome.
    And that, and there were anxiety attacks that I had.
    But my sister was worse.
    But I was strong, all the time, when we were marching.
    And the one day, we were marching.
    And my sister rested against a tree.
    And she says, I'm not going anymore.
    Let them kill me, because everybody who was left behind
    was shot to death.
    She said, no, let them kill me.
    I'm not going.
    And everybody's already in front.
    And here, the last, the Germans that
    were coming from behind to see who is left to kill.
    And we are begging.
    She says, you go.
    You go.
    I'm not going.
    Let them kill me.
    And my mother I said, no, we are not going.
    We will stay with you, whatever will happen.
    And the last German that came from the rear, he came over,
    and he said, what's going on here?
    And my sister said, well, I don't care.
    I can't go on anymore.
    She was very pretty, dark hair, beautiful eyes.
    I can't go on anymore.
    Kill me like you kill everybody else.
    I can't.
    That's enough.
    He looked at her, he says, oh no, you want to die?
    No way.
    He took out, from his pocket, a piece of cake and an apple.
    And he gave it to her.
    And he gave her a smack with the butt of the rifle.
    And he said, you better go.
    I'm not going to kill you.
    And we went on.
    And we went.
    And then, we came closer to a place
    where we saw there was a lot of blood.
    It was off the road.
    And they took us there.
    We didn't know where it was.
    And they took us in there to a big, big barn.
    And people were there and distraught.
    And they were dying.
    And then we realized, every morning, there was lots of lice
    there.
    And every morning, people would die.
    And they had a special group of people
    to pull out the cadavers there.
    And there was a big, open pit.
    And every day they would add to the dead people.
    My mother took one look.
    And there were around 600 or 800 people.
    And she said, oh no, we were still healthy.
    And my mother was exposed, when she was young,
    during World War 1 to typhus.
    And my sister had typhus in Żeżmor But I didn't.
    And the typhus, people were dying of typhus.
    And my mother-- so the lice were, of course,
    the lice were spreading the typhus.
    And my mother looked around, she said, no, no we cannot.
    Let's see if there is any other place here
    we could lay down our heads.
    And there was a little barrack there.
    And in the barrack, this must have been army barracks.
    And that barrack there was like a army washroom.
    They had long troughs.
    And they had long pipes overhead with faucets.
    So we assumed that this is probably
    where the army would go in to wash themselves.
    My mother, in the trough, there was no water.
    Anyway, she said the troughs was empty.
    She said this is where we're going to sleep.
    We're not going to sleep with the straw, and the lice,
    and the typhus.
    So we were there.
    And every day, they took out dead people.
    And they started sending us to work,
    those that were healthy, to dig trenches
    for soldiers at this point.
    We went every day.
    And we came back.
    And every day, the pit was getting fuller.
    They would put some disinfectant and keep
    the pit open for people for the next morning.
    And then, one of my friends, my mother's
    friends, the one that was with the five, she was a nurse.
    Somehow, there was a Krankenstube
    It was like a hospital.
    And they had one room there for the nurses.
    And she, somehow, she got in there.
    And she took all of us in there.
    And we had-- it was two-tier beds.
    And this is-- we used to go to work.
    But when we came back, we came to that place to sleep.
    And it was nice.
    The floor was, there were boards on the floor, and it was clean.
    And one day, as we were digging the ditches, the trenches,
    I felt feverish.
    And I came home, back to the place.
    And I was totally unconscious.
    And I didn't know what happened to me.
    What is the name of the location that you're at?
    Location was Prost.
    And the Russians called it the Toten Camp, the death camp.
    What happened was that everybody went to Stutthof.
    And Stutthof was overwhelmed.
    They didn't have enough room in the crematorium
    to burn the people.
    So the first thing they did, they had boats on the Baltic.
    So they filled up the boats with people.
    And they sank them.
    And then they had no more boats for the rest of the people.
    So they told everybody to divert them to this place, to Prost.
    In Prost, they had a marker airport.
    They had airplanes made of cardboard.
    So the Allies should think that if they
    would bombard the place, so they would think
    that this is a real airport.
    And then maybe, nearby, a real airport would be saved.
    And they were, of course, Nazis in the place,
    the German military were there are all over.
    And then I was unconscious.
    I didn't know, anymore, what happened to me.
    And then I woke up.
    At one point, I woke up.
    And my mother and my sister were dragging me.
    And I couldn't catch my breath.
    And then my mother covered me.
    And I saw boards flying all over the place.
    And I lost consciousness again.
    Until one day, I opened my eyes.
    And I saw I was in a bed, with a feather bed,
    white, linen, pillows, pillow cases.
    I touched my hair, my head, my hair was shaved off.
    I started to scream.
    And as I was screaming, my mother and my sister came in.
    And they started kissing, and hugging me, and telling me
    that we were liberated on March 23, 1945 by the Russians.
    And then they told me what had happened, what had transpired.
    That I became stricken with typhus, and in typhus,
    you have a crisis.
    You either make it, or you don't.
    And this is how many people died.
    And then, my sister and the friends
    were telling me that my mother would sneak out from the camp,
    from this Prost.
    And she would go to the roads, where the German army,
    they would rest overnight.
    And they had their kitchens.
    And they had the ambulances.
    She would go.
    She would cover herself up.
    And she would beg for something to eat or aspirin, something.
    And then she would sneak in back to the camp and try to save me.
    And then what happened, when the Germans saw
    that the Russians are advancing, they
    decided they put dynamite in the camp and around the camp
    to blow up, not to leave any remnants, not to leave
    traces of that death camp.
    There was one Hungarian woman, a girl,
    that worked for the head of the Nazis.
    And when she saw what happened, she went to him, she says,
    look, the war is over.
    The Russians are advancing.
    What will you gain by killing all these people?
    Do one good gesture.
    She said, 10 minutes before you're
    going to dynamite the place, open the gates.
    And let the people who can still walk, let them save themselves.
    So he said, OK.
    10 minutes before, she went in.
    And they announced, whoever can run,
    in 10 minutes they're going to explode the place, to dynamite.
    And this is when my mother and my sister grabbed me.
    And they dragged me.
    And this is when the explosion occurred that I woke up.
    And then I went back into unconsciousness.
    Not many were saved, because most of the people were sick,
    emaciated, or stricken with typhus.
    I think from the 800 people that were there, maybe
    around 30 saved themselves.
    And then, when the Russians came,
    they took everybody to a village.
    And they kicked out the peasants there.
    And they gave us to live in those houses, when
    they woke up, and I saw that we are liberated,
    and I survived the typhus.
    This is tape 3, side B. And I just
    wanted to ask you one small question before we continued.
    I think that you had said that when you were ill,
    your mother went to get some supplies for you
    and that you crossed the road to the Russian Army.
    Did you want to collect that?
    No, no it was a mistake.
    It was not the Russian army.
    These were the Germans that were retreating back to Germany
    from the Russian frontlines.
    OK, now, you're on this wonderful bed
    with the wonderful pillows and so forth.
    Yes, and I tried to get off the bed.
    And I couldn't.
    I must have weighed 40 pounds.
    My legs were spindly.
    My arms were thin.
    And I just couldn't move.
    But there was enough food in that place
    and that my mother and my sister nourished me.
    And we stayed there, probably, for another six weeks.
    After that, the Russians came.
    And they took us with trucks to a Polish city called Toruń.
    Toruń.
    It's in central Poland.
    But of course, at that point, it was
    under the Russian jurisdiction and occupation.
    And they took us to a DP camp.
    And they placed us there in primitive housing.
    And they told us this is a transit camp.
    They are going to take us back home, back to Smorgonie.
    And when we heard that, we were devastated,
    because we knew that there was nobody there, all
    the relatives.
    And there is nothing left.
    And there are gentiles living in our houses.
    And my father was dead and all the relatives were killed.
    And we didn't want to go there.
    But they had barbed wire surrounded.
    And they wouldn't let us out.
    There was once one positive thing, though,
    what happened there, that nobody died after the liberation,
    because they didn't have much food for us.
    So they gave us bread.
    They had potatoes for us.
    And little by little, we started eating normal food,
    whereas, under occupation, under the British or the United
    States Army, which they weren't aware at that time, they came,
    they liberated the people from the concentration camps
    in the Bergen-Belsen, and others, in Munich.
    And they gave them immediately food and chocolate.
    And they all started grabbing and eating.
    And they died.
    Like my grandfather, Zeyde [? Beryl, ?] he
    survived the war.
    The people told us that he survived
    the war acting as a shoemaker.
    And he was liberated.
    And after liberation, he started eating.
    He was liberated.
    He was in Dachau.
    He was liberated.
    People came and told us, we know your grandfather.
    He was liberated, look for him.
    And my mother went to Munich to look for him.
    And people told us that he started
    eating after the liberation.
    And he died there.
    But his name was [? Danishevski. ?]
    So they assumed that he was Polish.
    And they buried him in a Polish cemetery.
    So later on, a year later, my mother went.
    She found the rabbi in Munich.
    She went to the Polish cemetery.
    She dug him up.
    He was in a Polish cemetery with a cross over his grave.
    And she took him and buried him in the Jewish cemetery
    in Munich.
    So here we were.
    And the Russians had absolutely no excuses for us.
    We had to go to work.
    Here I was, two months after typhus, and we had to go.
    First, they took us to a lumber yard,
    where they were cutting boards.
    And I had to stand there all day and sawed those boards.
    And I was so weak, I would fall.
    And I couldn't catch my breath.
    And I was sure that I would die.
    And then, at other times, they sent us to a flour mill.
    And I had to drag those sacks of flours.
    Again, I was sure that I wouldn't make it.
    But somehow, I recuperated.
    And I survived.
    And then, at that time, people who survived
    would go from one DP camp to another to see,
    to check if there were relatives, if anybody survived.
    One day, a couple of Polish soldiers came into the DP camp.
    And they were Jewish in Polish uniforms.
    And they said they were in the Polish army.
    And they were together with the Russians
    helping liberate Poland.
    And that's why they were in the Polish army.
    And they were looking for relatives, if anybody
    heard, this one that one.
    And we didn't know.
    Then they said, what are you doing here?
    And we said, well, the Russians liberated us.
    And now, they want to send us back to Smorgonie
    So he said, what, are you crazy?
    Why would you let them take you back to Smorgonie.
    Why don't you come to Poland, to Lodz, or to Warsaw?
    Because they are not under the Russian jurisdiction.
    And they are representatives from the HIAS
    and from the American Joint Distribution Committee.
    And they help refugees there.
    And my mother said, how are we going to get out from here,
    barbed wire?
    They said, we'll help you.
    So my mother said to us, girls, what are we going to do?
    And my sister said, let's go.
    And I said, no, I don't think we should go.
    I want to go.
    We don't have-- our father is dead.
    We don't have any relatives.
    We don't have money.
    We don't have anything.
    How are we going to live?
    I want to go back to Russia.
    I want to get an education.
    And in Russia, education is free.
    I want to go back to Russia.
    And then, my mother and my sister
    started, they said, wow--
    what are you all alone--
    no, we're all going.
    And then we made up a time.
    The soldiers came.
    They cut the barbed wire.
    It was in the fall.
    It must have been October or November.
    It was freezing rain.
    So how long were you in this DP camp?
    In this DP camp, we were there from--
    we were liberated in March.
    And then we were two months in Prost.
    And then, March, April, May, and maybe,
    in June, we were in that from June until October or November,
    we were in the DP camp, in the Russian transit camp.
    They came.
    And it was a cold night, freezing rain.
    They cut the barbed wire.
    And they took us to the train station.
    And there were hundreds and hundreds
    of people waiting for a train, because it
    was right after the war, trains were irregular.
    And when they came, people were all over.
    You couldn't get in.
    So a train, we waited for hours, and a train finally came.
    And people were hanging from the steps,
    holding onto the banisters.
    How, where are going to go?
    He said, never mind, he says, hop up.
    We'll help you get on top of the roof off the wagon.
    We got on top of that freight--
    no it wasn't the freight, it was passenger train.
    And we got on top of the roof.
    And the roof was slanted.
    But there were several little chimneys for ventilation,
    because it was a passenger train.
    And it was snowing.
    And it was raining.
    And we had no choice.
    This was you, your mother, and your sister?
    My mother and my sister.
    And we lied down flat on our stomach.
    And we held on to those chimneys for dear life,
    all through the night, with snow and rain falling on us.
    And in the morning, we came to Lodz.
    We came to Lodz.
    And there was already many Jews.
    And there was a place for the refugees to come,
    a big place to sleep over.
    And they were feeding the people.
    And my mother looked around, and she
    saw there were already organizations
    organizing from religious and non-religious organizations.
    And she looked around.
    And they were like sort of, they initiated like kibbutzim,
    communal living and preparing the people,
    and preparing them for going to Israel and making Aliyah.
    And my mother looked around, and she said, well, I'm not going--
    she found a religious kibbutz.
    She said, I'm not going to let you
    go in a non-religious kibbutz, because people at this point
    are very demoralized.
    And there was a lot of--
    many girls were pregnant and all these.
    She said, you're not going there, took us
    to a religious kibbutz.
    And they took us in.
    And my mother went to work in the kitchen
    where all the refugees that came back from Russia and all over.
    And here is an interesting story.
    She was in the kitchen cooking, and baking, and serving
    the people wholeheartedly.
    And then I remember we didn't have food in the kibbutz.
    So she would come and bring us food, but not enough
    to share with the others.
    So she made us lie in bed and cover ourselves with a blanket
    and eat underneath the blanket, because there
    wasn't enough to share with everybody else.
    So she was there.
    And one day, people were coming and going.
    And then she sees a young man sitting there and crying.
    And she gave him a bowl of potatoes,
    of soup, whatever it was, she said, eat young man, eat.
    He said, I can't eat, this is Lodz, this was my hometown.
    My parents, my sisters, my brother,
    all my relatives lived here.
    He said, now I come back from Russia,
    he was in Russia during the war, there is nobody here.
    How can I eat?
    And he was crying.
    And my mother sat down next to him.
    And she was talking to him, and she was
    telling him, look, we all lost.
    And we all--
    Thank God we survived.
    And we have to start a new life.
    And she comforted him.
    And he ate.
    And here I, to make a long story short,
    two years later, he was a member of our kibbutz.
    And he married my older sister.
    And they live in Israel now.
    As a matter of fact, next week, they
    celebrate his 80th birthday.
    And so my mother would come to the kibbutz.
    And we really had no food.
    Absolutely, what we had was bread, and we had oil,
    and we had onions.
    And we would saute the onions with the oil
    and spread it on the bread.
    And this is what we ate.
    And everybody in the kibbutz had to go
    to work, to have an income.
    So they call this a kibbutz, even at Lodz?
    What is your brother-in-law's name?
    Moshe [? Yamnick. ?] And so we had to go to work.
    And everybody had to do something in order
    to sustain the kibbutz.
    Because at that time, yet, we didn't get any support
    from the American charity groups.
    When you say kibbutz, were you also staying in the same area?
    It was like an apartment, with several bedrooms.
    And they were two bedrooms for girls
    and two bedrooms for boys.
    And they put up bunk beds.
    And then we had like, let's say, the dining room.
    This is where we all ate.
    And we learned a lot, Jewish history, and Hebrew language,
    and Zionism, and Bible.
    And this is where they started teaching us Hebrew,
    the beginners, and I answer.
    They said, oh, I had a poor vocabulary.
    But like I said, my diction, my accent was terrific.
    So every day, I graduated to a different group.
    And then I became a teacher.
    What was that like for you to come back to studying?
    It was just wonderful.
    I wanted to absorb, to absorb as much as possible for the years
    that I missed.
    Because I always, always wanted to,
    that's why I wanted to go back to Russia.
    And then, we had to go to work.
    And one day, on a Friday, somebody came, a Jewish family,
    they needed someone to clean up the house for Shabbat.
    And they sent me.
    And I went to that house.
    And I cleaned the floors.
    And I wash the dishes.
    And I clean the toilet.
    And I was crying.
    I said, here I am liberated.
    If my father would see me doing this, but I have no choice,
    I have to do it.
    And then I found out, they ask anybody in the kibbutz,
    from the girls, who wants to do the laundry would
    get a extra special treat.
    Extra bread, and she could buy herself a herring.
    And I volunteered to do the laundry,
    because I wanted to have an extra piece of bread
    and an extra piece of herring.
    And we were there in Lodz.
    Was your mother staying with you in this little kibbutz area?
    No, no my mother was away.
    She slept where she was, in that transit camp for the refugees.
    She slept there.
    And she was cooking there for the people and serving there.
    And then--
    But you and your sister were in the kibbutz.
    And then something happened.
    And at that time, after liberation, you really
    don't think that you could die, because if somebody
    died of their appendix, I said, that's impossible.
    I mean that person survived the concentration camp.
    How could this person die?
    It's impossible.
    You felt invincible.
    You felt that they are going to live forever
    and nothing frightened you.
    And then, we were in the kibbutz.
    And somebody came, and they told us that way up, near Gdansk,
    there was a Russian compound.
    And they took girls there.
    And they keep them as concubines in that village.
    And the girls are miserable, if anybody could do something
    for these girls, volunteers.
    I volunteer.
    I go.
    And another boy, and that boy's sister lived near Gdansk.
    So we knew that we will get there.
    And we can stay overnight with her.
    And then we could take a train to get to the village.
    I went there with this boy.
    We met his sister.
    We stayed overnight.
    The next day, we took the train.
    We went to the village.
    We walked, from the train to the village,
    must have been around 8 miles.
    We came to the village towards evening.
    And we went into a farmer's house.
    And we told him we are hungry.
    And we told him that we heard that there
    are Russians in the compound.
    And they keep Jewish girls as slaves.
    Could you possibly-- could you steal yourselves, sneak in
    and have someone come here.
    We want to find out what's happening there.
    She went, the farmer's wife, she gave us food.
    She gave us two rooms to sleep separately.
    And she went.
    And she brought one of the girls.
    And we asked her what is happening.
    She says they are about 20 girls kept by the Russians.
    And one was pregnant.
    She was the daughter of a rabbi.
    One was pregnant.
    This was the sister of the girl that came to talk to us.
    And she said we need to get out of here.
    It's impossible.
    They are going to take us with them to Russia.
    See what you can do for us.
    We walked back to the train, like eight miles,
    we went back to the sister's house.
    And we stayed overnight.
    And then we took a train.
    It was a freight train and went back to Lodz.
    We came to Lodz.
    And we told him what happened.
    And we said we have to do something for them.
    And we made a meeting.
    And we decided that we were going to make
    fake documents for the girls.
    And I was going alone to deliver the documents.
    And it was already winter.
    It was snow.
    It was freezing.
    And at that time, I decided I will go by myself.
    It was a Thursday.
    And the boy that went with me the first time, there
    was some kind of a Zionist gathering taking
    place in Sosnowiec, not far from Lodz.
    And there were four volunteers, three boys and one girl.
    And this boy that was with me, he said,
    he was going with them.
    And that was Thursday.
    And I went.
    And I made a big muff.
    And I sewed in all the documents.
    And I went.
    And it was winter.
    It was snow drifts.
    It was terrible.
    But I'm going.
    And I took a freight train, again.
    I came to Gdansk.
    I found the house of his sister and her friend.
    His sister is now in Australia.
    The friend lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.
    You are 17 and 1/2 years old.
    I found the girls.
    I went to sleep.
    In the morning, I got up.
    And I went to the train.
    I took a train.
    And I went to the nearest village.
    And then I had to walk for eight miles.
    And I got there in the late afternoon.
    And it was a blizzard.
    The snow was drifting.
    And I'm walking.
    And the snow is coming to my knees and to my hips.
    And I'm walking, and walking, and walking.
    And out of breath, and I stop.
    And I'm breathing.
    And I stop.
    I didn't think I would die, because nobody, after you're
    liberated, how can you die?
    You don't die, especially, you have to help somebody, right?
    And all of a sudden, I saw the lights from the village
    from far.
    They were twinkling against white snow.
    And on the last leg, I made it with my last breath.
    And they came to that farmhouse.
    I slept.
    In the morning, I told the farmer's wife, again,
    to come and to ask one of the girls to come.
    She came.
    And I gave her the fake documents.
    And she was in seventh heaven.
    And that day, I walked back to the station,
    the blizzard already stopped.
    And it was like a path that they went with a sleigh,
    so you could go.
    And I came back.
    Maybe, I left on Wednesday, because I came back on Friday
    to the kibbutz.
    And I saw that everybody was in mourning.
    What happened was that these four people that were
    going on a bus, or a truck, they were going to the convention.
    They were stopped by Polish, they
    were called AK, were anti-semites.
    And they took them out to the forest.
    And they killed them, all four of them.
    And that Friday, they were brought back right away
    to the kibbutz.
    When I walked into the kibbutz, in one of the bedrooms,
    they had their coffins there open.
    And I walked in.
    And one of them was the boy that was with me.
    And I looked, and I said, if I wasn't going back
    with the documents, I probably would have
    volunteered to go with them.
    It was very tragic.
    And we were there for a few months.
    And then they told us that they have
    but people from the Bricha, this were Israelis,
    that they risked their life to take the people from Poland
    into Germany, and specifically, into the British
    or the American zone.
    And they told us to get ready, that one night we
    would be taken by the Bricha.
    They came to take us, and first, we went by trucks.
    And then, we went into-- they took us on the border
    into a little house.
    And they gave each and every one of us a fictitious name.
    And told us that we were--
    told us each and every one, where we were born.
    And of course, they told us that we were born in West Germany.
    So they would, the Germans, if we
    come on the Russian side of Germany,
    the East Germany, because first, we
    had to get into East Germany, to,
    if they would catch us, to tell them that we are citizens,
    because we were born--
    this one said in Munich, and this one said in Poking,
    wherever fake documents.
    What was your name?
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Frankfurt am Mein.
    And I don't know what my name was.
    And we started out.
    And we came to a little, as I said, on the border.
    And the border police were, of course, bought off.
    And then, in the middle of the night, we left that house.
    And we had to go across the Carpathian Mountains.
    The snow was devastating and climbing.
    And there were so many people that they fell.
    And they said, after the concentration camp,
    I cannot go on anymore.
    And everybody held everybody else through the night.
    And in the morning, We got to East Germany.
    When we came to East Germany, there were trucks.
    And they took us to Magdebourg first, and then to Halle.
    And then from Halle, they took us to Berlin.
    And in Berlin, we crossed the border
    to the American occupied zone.
    And from there, they took us to a small town
    near Munich called Poking.
    And this is-- they had already there, in one big barracks,
    they had already an existing group
    that was before us in Lodz, that they were in the kibbutz there.
    And they took us in there.
    And we joined the kibbutz there.
    But the tragedy, the Jewish tragedy doesn't end there.
    Because when we came, those people
    went to Israel illegally.
    And they went to Israel.
    And they shipped them all to a kibbutz which is infamous,
    Kfar Etzion was named.
    And they were there.
    And then when the war broke out, the Arabs slaughtered them all.
    The children, some of their sons survived.
    And I have met some of them, the children of these people
    that were in our kibbutz.
    When you got to the American zone,
    what did that mean to you?
    Well, it finally meant that we are free,
    free to be Jews, free to be Zionists, free to learn,
    free to have courses, free to have meetings,
    free to have conferences.
    And hope that eventually, the Americans
    would help us get to Israel.
    We didn't even think of going to America,
    because each and every one, we said,
    we survived the Holocaust to go to America?
    Who would want to go to America?
    We want to go back to Israel.
    And we stayed in the kibbutz.
    And then--
    Are you still with your mother and your sister?
    My mother| and my sister, we stayed in the kibbutz.
    And then, a cousin of mine, from Vilnius, arrived with his wife.
    And we found out that they are in a DP camp near Stuttgart,
    which was called Pocking which was called,
    it was near Stuttgart, and what was the name of it?
    It was between Stuttgart and Munich.
    And he urged us, he said, what are
    you going to be in the kibbutz?
    Come stay with us.
    Just two of us, we survived, you survived, come with us.
    And we came to his place, to that DP camp.
    And they had, there, they had big--
    they had plans there where the Germans were producing turbines
    for ships and for heavy industry.
    And they had a little settlement where--
    for the German workers.
    So when the Americans came, they kicked them out.
    And this settlement, it turned into a DP camp.
    So it was wonderful.
    It was houses, two-family houses.
    And everybody had an apartment there, where they lived.
    So we came.
    And our cousin got an apartment for us.
    And we were there.
    And at that time, we really had very little food,
    only care packages that we got.
    And one night, Friday night, I remember,
    we were sitting in our room, lit candles,
    and we were singing Shabbat songs, my mother, my sister,
    and myself.
    And somebody knocked on the door.
    A neighbor came in.
    And he says, my name is [? Friemerman. ?] And he says,
    I was a teacher in the Hebrew Tachkemoni in Krakow
    before the war.
    This was a very prestigious Jewish--
    it was like a yeshiva for boys.
    And he said, now, we are organizing--
    we have organized here a school, because there
    are many Jews from the concentration camp,
    no little children survived.
    But they are Jews that come from Russia,
    and they have small children.
    So we have a little school.
    He said, I heard you sing [? Smiris. ?] Who are you?
    Where do you come from?
    We told him.
    He said-- and my sister already had a job.
    She worked, already, there for the Jewish agency in that camp.
    It was the [? Forit ?] Seidlung, right,
    this DP camp was called the [? Forit ?] Seidlung,
    in Heidenheim.
    Right, the name of the place was Heidenheim.
    And the place was the [? Forit ?] Seidlung.
    And he said, you speak Hebrew so well.
    He said, why don't you come and be a teacher?
    I said, what are you talking about?
    I have fourth grade I finished.
    I can't be a teacher.
    What will I teach?
    He said, look, you'll teach--
    the first grade, you'll teach them what you know.
    And then, of course, he said, look,
    if you will be a teacher by us, you'll
    get an extra care package.
    I said, OK, if you want me, I'm going.
    The next day, I went there.
    And I was installed as the Hebrew teacher.
    And I found so--
    found it so fascinating.
    I always wanted to be a teacher.
    Whenever I was a little girl, we were playing something,
    and everybody said, let's play house, let's play store,
    I said, no, let's play school.
    I'll be the teacher.
    And I started teaching in that school.
    And I also helped organize a youth group
    for Bnei Akiva for the orthodox organization.
    And then somebody came to me.
    And they said, we want you to organize a youth group
    on the British zone in Bergen-Belsen.
    And if you will be there, you may
    be able to get a legal certificate for you
    and one for your mother, because the British promised us
    that they will give us 100,000 certificates for Jews
    to go into Israel legally after the war.
    So I said, well, I have to go.
    I went to Bergen-Belsen all by myself.
    I didn't know anybody there.
    But there was a kibbutz from Mizrachi.
    So I went there.
    They set me up with another girl.
    But I didn't-- I kept started organizing a kibbutz.
    And I didn't work with them.
    They were cleaning and doing there.
    And I didn't feel free to eat with them.
    So here I was starving again.
    And every Shabbat, the kids would come.
    And so I organized a group.
    And then, somebody heard that I have organized a group.
    And they came to me, they said, we have a school here.
    Would you like, you speak Hebrew, would you like--
    I tell the same thing.
    I said, the fourth grade.
    But I don't--
    I was teaching already, one year, first grade.
    If you want me, I'll come.
    And there, it was a sophisticated school.
    They had already a high school there.
    And the principal was the a real--
    He was a principal in a school before the war.
    When did you get to Bergen-Belsen?
    Bergen-Belsen was in the 1957.
    '47?
    '47, right, in 1947.
    Thanks for that correction.
    In '47, and I was there.
    And then, well, I was there.
    And I was teaching.
    And I was-- and then I met some girls.
    And they worked in a kitchen.
    They had a nice apartment.
    And they used to invite me for Shabbat.
    So I was already, I was teaching in the school.
    And I even made a play.
    And the principal there, the high school was Dr. Lubliner.
    And he saw that they wanted to learn.
    I wanted to know.
    He took me under his wing.
    And he started teaching me.
    He was teaching me.
    And I was absorbing.
    Every book he gave me, I would absorb.
    And then we were there.
    And then they said, well, soon, soon, you'll get certificates.
    And my mother came in 1947.
    And she was with me.
    And my sister, my sister, no, my sister didn't come.
    My sister was married in '47, because that's
    where she met her husband.
    And her husband had a brother that was in Israel
    from before the war.
    And he came to visit them.
    And then he put my sister on his passport,
    that he said the authorities that he found a minor daughter.
    And he took her to Israel legally.
    And then it took another year for my brother-in-law
    to get into Israel illegally.
    And here I was with my mother in Bergen-Belsen.
    And we were waiting.
    And then it was already '48.
    And then it was the exodus.
    It was so tragic.
    And then, it came '48.
    And we were already happy that we
    were going, now, after the war, we're going to go to Israel.
    And at that time, as I was going to these two girls that I met,
    one of them was getting married.
    And they fixed me up with somebody which I didn't like.
    I didn't like that person.
    And I came home, and the next Saturday,
    they made him sit with me on the bus or whatever.
    My mother took me.
    And my mother was my God.
    I would never contradict her.
    And we came.
    And my mother said to me, she said, you met someone,
    his name is Mandel Rozmaryn.
    You're going to marry him.
    And I said, no, I don't know him.
    And I don't want him.
    And he's not my type.
    And I want to study.
    And I want-- and she said, look, he's
    the only family that survived Auschwitz,
    the father, and the mother, three sisters, and a brother.
    And they were already in Bergen-Belsen.
    They started doing business.
    And they were ready--
    she said, look, we don't have anybody.
    And they have already business.
    And they have a home.
    And they have money.
    You'll be in a family.
    I said, no, I don't want him.
    She took me by the hand, Saturday afternoon.
    And she says, you are going to meet him.
    And if not, she said-- and she took me as we walked.
    And I said, no, I don't want to marry.
    She said, if you won't marry him.
    I'll go home and commit suicide.
    And I was frightened.
    Later on I learned that she whenever she wanted something
    for me, she threatened.
    And lo and behold, we got engaged.
    And I said, but I want to go to Israel.
    He says, we all want to go to Israel.
    But we decided to go to America first.
    And in 1949, January 4, I married this man.
    Then, I had, right away, a Son.
    And in 1950, we came to the United States
    without money, without a language,
    without relatives, without anybody.
    The HIAS took us in for a few weeks.
    My son was eight months old.
    I went out, I didn't know what to do.
    I got some cornflakes, which I started boiling for him.
    And then they gave us an apartment
    in Crown Heights on Lincoln Place.
    And they said for a few months, we'll pay rent.
    And you have to find a place to work and pay your own rent.
    And here we were, didn't speak a word of English.
    I didn't-- no many, no relatives.
    My husband got a job, somebody worked in a slaughterhouse
    as a shochet.
    So they took him in to be a supervisor there of the kosher
    meat, but paid very, very little.
    And I had to go to work, what should I do?
    So somebody was there, somebody that we
    knew that worked in a shop sewing patches for coats.
    He said, why don't you come?
    I'll teach you how to sew.
    And you'll still work in the shop.
    I went there.
    And he taught me how to sew.
    And I sat there.
    I sewed patches.
    And I made $35 a week.
    And my son was already over a year old.
    And I would leave him alone.
    And then my mother-in-law would come and pick him up.
    And he would stay with her.
    And it was so miserable.
    We had very little food.
    And the apartment was boiling.
    I remember the first time we weren't used to.
    And there was no balconies there.
    I laid in the bath with cold water all night.
    I though I would--
    we didn't even have money to buy a fan.
    And they worked in the shop for several years, until '57.
    And I was depressed.
    And I was suffering from post-traumatic stress
    syndromes.
    I was suffering from anxieties.
    But I didn't know what it was.
    All of a sudden, I felt I was dying, and sweats,
    and this, and dizziness.
    And I was afraid to walk out in the street.
    But I had to go on to shop and to cook for my son.
    And in '54, I gave birth to my other son,
    which I didn't plan on.
    But he came.
    Of course, in those days, you didn't make abortions.
    And I was crying.
    And I said, if my father would see me now,
    why did I survive the concentration camp?
    What am I?
    What is it?
    What am I here for?
    And I said, no way, I have to do something with my life.
    That's what I survived.
    I went to night school.
    I started learning English until '57, I knew already.
    And then, I said to my husband, and my mother had come already
    also from Germany.
    And she had remarried a cousin of my husband.
    Her name is [? Cilla ?] [? Altman. ?] And they had come
    also.
    I went through until they came in '56.
    And I said to my husband and to my mother, I said,
    my mother was helping me cooking, and cleaning,
    and doing everything.
    I said, I have to do something with my life.
    For three years, I was teaching.
    I want to become a teacher.
    They said, who is going to take you?
    I said, we'll see, maybe, maybe.
    I took a deep breath and they went to Yeshiva University
    Teacher's Institute.
    And I made an appointment with the principal,
    Rabbi [? Feigelson ?] And I come in.
    And I said, I want to become a teacher.
    And he says to me, you want to become a teacher,
    do you have a high school diploma?
    I said, no.
    Do you have a grade school diploma?
    I said, no.
    He said, so what do you want here?
    I said, look, I have two small children.
    And I work very hard.
    Give me a chance.
    If you will see that I am not doing, then I will bow out.
    Please give me a chance.
    He said, you are the first one.
    But I will give you a chance.
    Rabbi [? Feigelson ?] gave me a chance.
    And I started going three nights a week by subway
    from Crown Heights to Lexington and 34th Street
    to Teacher's Institute for Women.
    And I said day and night I didn't
    know how to read the Bible.
    I didn't know how to read commentaries.
    But I know how to read Yiddish.
    So I bought, I still have, a whole set of Bibles
    with the Yiddish translation, with Russia
    Yiddish translation.
    And I studied day and night.
    To make a long story short, I graduated summa cum laude
    after three years.
    But when I came in, all the girls
    came straight from high school.
    And where am I?
    What am I doing here?
    I graduated.
    And then he told me that I have to--
    we have to go to get nine credits in psychology
    in education in a regular university, otherwise,
    we wouldn't get our teacher's license.
    So at that time, in 1960, we moved to Queens.
    And I went to Queens College.
    And I got my bachelor's degree in education.
    And in 1960, I got my first job as a teacher.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number four, side A.
    So I came to Yeshiva University, and I graduated.
    And then I had to take courses in psychology and education
    in Queens College.
    At one point, I came, I took an art course, history of art.
    And I walk in, I see my son there.
    And I said, no, you and I are not
    going to be in the same class.
    That was later.
    That was when I worked on my master's.
    No, not at this point.
    At this point, I did my degree.
    And I started teaching at Yeshiva Forest Hills at Dov
    Revel in Forest Hills, Queens.
    We had moved to there to a house in Forest Hills.
    And life was getting a little bit better.
    My children attended the Yeshiva of Forrest Hills.
    And I loved being a teacher.
    I succeeded so well that a few years later I
    was voted as the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award
    by Yeshiva University.
    And I was teaching at Yeshiva University until '74.
    In '74, my principal took a position in Flatbush
    at the Yeshiva of Flatbush.
    And he asked me to join him.
    And I went to Flatbush.
    And of course, in Flatbush, I taught until 1990,
    when I came here to Maryland.
    But in meantime, in '85, I was already an adult,
    I decided I wanted to make a master's.
    And I went to Queens College.
    And I picked my master's.
    I decided to do a double master--
    one in the counselor of education
    and the other one in the marriage and family counselor,
    which I graduated, then I practiced
    marriage a family counseling.
    But my sons always tease me.
    They say, mom, you're the only person
    we know that went from the fourth grade
    straight to college.
    And I lived in New York until 1990.
    And I have two sons.
    My oldest son is an electrical engineer.
    And he moved to Silver Spring 15 years ago.
    And at this point, he designs telecommunications systems
    for Howard Hughes' company.
    And my youngest son studied medicine
    at Columbia University.
    And when he became a surgeon, he decided
    he wanted to move to this area.
    And he is now Dr. Leo Rozmaryn.
    He's quite known in the neighborhood.
    He is a microvascular hand surgeon and extremities.
    So 1990 I decided to move here and be near my children
    and my grandchildren.
    And immediately, I was offered the position
    at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School
    to continue teaching, which I have accepted.
    So at this point, I am very happy.
    I'm very content.
    And I feel that life has been good to me
    in spite of all the obstacles.
    When your mother came here, or when you got settled here,
    did you continue to talk about your wartime experiences
    with her or long distance with your sister?
    We always continued talking.
    And everything what we did and where we went, our food
    or whatever, we were always reminiscing about home.
    But most of that my husband and I
    used to talk with our children.
    Our children know all our experiences
    to the last detail to a point when my son went cross country
    and then to Vancouver, he went to a kosher butcher
    to buy some meat to barbecue, he detected in an accent.
    And then he asked the butcher where you are from.
    And my son was 18.
    And he said, well, I'm from Poland, a little town
    you wouldn't know.
    He said tell me.
    Tell me.
    And the butcher finally told him that he comes
    from a town called Sosnowiec.
    And then my son says to him, oh, you're from Sosnowiec.
    Do you know the Pilsudskiego Street?
    Do you remember the yellow roof color?
    Do you remember the bakeries?
    And that guy was absolutely astonished.
    It so happened that this was my husband's hometown.
    And my kids know everything.
    And they are so very much absorbed
    with the Holocaust in general and what
    happened to us, in particular, to a point when the Holocaust
    Museum opened up, I told my sons you have to go.
    I couldn't go for a year.
    You have to go see the Holocaust Museum.
    My son came back, and he said, mom, well, he said,
    I wasn't so very much impressed because what you told me
    and what daddy told us is much more that we see.
    Of course, it's a wonderful thing
    to have for people who don't know.
    But he says for us, you know, we are saturated with it.
    It's a matter of fact, when he went for an interview
    at Columbia, the interviewer said to him,
    you know, you act like a Holocaust survivor.
    What is your background?
    So thank God they're all settled.
    And I have wonderful grandchildren.
    And life is good at this point, all we should do is be healthy.
    Are there any sights today or sounds or smells
    that trigger your thoughts about the war?
    About the war?
    The war years.
    Not here.
    Three years ago, I went with a friend to Poland.
    I was a little girl in Vilnius [INAUDIBLE]..
    I heard about Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, you know?
    But never did I anticipate that I would go.
    I took a trip with a friend of mine
    with a tour to Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, and Vienna.
    And of course, when we went to Krakow,
    it was very interesting.
    I went to the Jewish theater there.
    And we met actors.
    They are not Jewish.
    And there's a Jewish community.
    And now they are waking up.
    We met people that didn't know they were Jewish,
    but the Gentiles that they were saved by,
    they started dying out.
    They were afraid they'll go to hell because they
    are very religious Catholics.
    So before they die, they told them
    that they were Jewish children.
    And now, all of a sudden in the Warsaw,
    in the Jewish organizations there,
    you have Polish Jews that are coming now.
    And they want to go into the fault.
    But when we went to Krakow, we went to Auschwitz.
    And I was never there, fortunately.
    We walked into Auschwitz.
    And I says to my friend, I said Malvin,
    do you smell anything here?
    She says no, vaguely.
    I said how many years is it after the war?
    That place smelled with burnt flesh, still does.
    I am very careful at home not to burn anything because I
    know I would go berserk.
    Otherwise, fortunately, here no, it doesn't, except nightmares.
    I wake up.
    And I'm being chased and all kinds
    of horrible, horrible nightmares.
    But I must say, I had help.
    But at this point, thank God, I got
    rid of my post-traumatic stress syndrome and off of the anxiety
    attacks.
    I know at this point how to control them.
    So actually, I feel at this point, I'm 68,
    I feel that if I would take a time in my life
    where my life was best, I would say this is it.
    When your boys were 11 years old,
    which was the age you were when the war began,
    was that hard for you?
    Did it bring back memories for you--
    No.
    --because they were your age?
    No, actually, it didn't.
    I felt that I did not, except for nightmares,
    no, I did not because the environment here,
    the social structure, the political structure,
    the democracy.
    In the United States, it's a system
    that does not remind me of anything that I experienced
    previously in Europe.
    I remember my relatives, like I said,
    every time there is any scare, I mention
    each and everyone's name because I don't want to forget them.
    But otherwise, I feel I was fortunate because, like I said,
    with all the symptoms that I had suffered,
    I felt that my life was not ruined by the concentration
    camp, by the war.
    My mother, people my mother's age,
    or people that came here my age and did not
    pursue an education.
    I know many people my age that they had
    married very wealthy husbands.
    And not anymore, but in the beginning,
    they started showing off their diamonds
    and their furs and this.
    And I said, I pity these women because they
    have to hold on to something, but it didn't do anything
    for themselves.
    So you see, these people are still in the Holocaust,
    like my mother and people younger than my mother
    that their life was broken that where,
    let's say, in high schools or universities.
    And they did not pursue.
    They did not rebuild their lives.
    They live every day with the Holocaust.
    I feel, to me the Holocaust it's the tragedy that I suffered,
    my family.
    My father was killed.
    My brother.
    And all the close relatives and all the Jewish people, that's
    why it was so difficult for me to go to the Holocaust Museum.
    And that's why I hesitated to become a volunteer.
    But at this point, I feel that I must because, essentially, I
    am one of the youngest survivors because all the other survivors
    that call themselves Holocaust survivors were either hidden,
    or they were children.
    Or they suffered in Russia.
    But to go through ghetto labor camps and concentration camps,
    I feel that there are not many left.
    And I feel it's my obligation to volunteer.
    And I feel that I could contribute to perpetuate
    the memory of the six million.
    So I personally myself, because I had rebuilt my life,
    I got my education, and it was so satisfying to me
    that I don't feel that I was totally
    demolished by the Holocaust, but I see many people who are.
    And I attribute it to the fact that I
    was so adamant about getting an education
    and fulfilling my life with being an educator.
    And I was very active in the organizations
    for Hapoel HaMizrachi, President and all kinds of functions.
    And I was giving lectures.
    And then, of course, whenever I was called to represent,
    to speak about my experiences, I always do.
    In my school, I do it every year.
    It's very difficult, but I, on Yom HaShoah,
    I feel I have to do it.
    In New York, I was invited to synagogues to speak and adult
    learning institutions.
    But personally, I think that I have picked up my pieces,
    and I have rehabilitated myself well.
    Is there anything you wanted to add to your children
    or grandchildren before we end?
    Well, my children, they are religious, modern religious.
    They live here in Camp Mill.
    My oldest son has to his credit, he
    started a synagogue, which is called the Camp Mills
    Synagogue.
    He did it single-handedly.
    And now, they have 250 families.
    And in the spring, they're going to start
    to build a real new temple, a real new shul.
    They are very, both my sons, hospitable.
    Their house is always open for company.
    If anybody moves into the neighborhood,
    they are how people know that they could call Dr. Leo
    Rozmaryn and Dr. Jack Rozmaryn.
    We have someone.
    We have a family.
    They are always welcome to eat and to sleep.
    Always there to cook meals.
    To take things to help out neighbors.
    They are oft, on a Friday night and a Saturday,
    they are always at least 15, 20 people in the house.
    So I am within walking distance.
    And I see all this.
    And I see my grandchildren.
    They study at the Hebrew Academy.
    And also modern religious.
    My older son went for a year with his graduating class
    in Israel.
    And he studies in a Yeshiva.
    And my children and my grandchildren, thank God,
    are going in the right path.
    But I want to mention one more thing.
    After the Holocaust, when people survived,
    most of the Holocaust survivors said
    if this could have happened to us, we don't want to be Jewish.
    Like Madeleine Albright's family,
    they have converted before to Catholicism.
    But after the war not everybody took such drastic steps.
    But people said, what for?
    I won't convert, but I don't have to.
    There is no God.
    I don't believe in God.
    I am not religious.
    And I don't want to be religious.
    I was religious at home with my brother and my father,
    with the shtreimel and with the kaputa and this.
    Now, what happened to them?
    I want nothing to do with religion.
    And these people, after the war, whether they
    had businesses or jobs, they started
    working on Shabbat and holidays and send the children
    in public school.
    And they said this is good.
    This is what we want.
    We don't need Yiddish guide.
    Because if that happened to us, we don't want anymore.
    I felt the same way when we came here to the United States.
    Of course, the whole house was kosher.
    There was no question about it.
    And I said, how could I be religious
    with my father or my family, everybody, where was God?
    And then I started going to the movies on the Shabbat.
    And then I came home one day from the movies on Shabbat,
    and I said to myself, this is wrong.
    I am not going to question at this point God.
    I will just analyze my life now and the future.
    What will I give the future generation?
    I will perpetuate posthumously Hitler's idea
    of the final solution because what he wanted to do
    is liquidate the Jewish nation and the Jewish people.
    If I will go on denying the Jewish existence, denying
    the Jewish religion, and give my sons
    a secular education in public schools
    and the second generation intermarries
    and the third generation, they are no more Jews.
    And that's why I said, I am not going to give Hitler
    a gift posthumously.
    I will become more religious, not modern, Orthodox
    and give my children a religious upbringing.
    And I have never regretted it because when I meet now
    with my friends, people that didn't
    do much for themselves who hardly speak English,
    their son is a big lawyer married
    the shiksa from the West.
    She has grandchildren, nothing in common.
    And the next generation is finished.
    And they all look at me and they said, we were wrong.
    You made the right choice.
    And I am very happy I did.
    Well, thank you very much for doing the interview.
    Thank you, Ms. Schwartz.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Tania Rozmaryn
    Interviewer
    Gail Schwartz
    Date
    interview:  1997 February 23
    Geography
    creation: Silver Spring (Md.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    4 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
    Rozmaryn, Tania, 1928-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Gail Schwartz, a volunteer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch conducted this interview on February 23, 1997, in Silver Spring, Md. The interview was transferred to the Museum's Archives on February 23, 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 08:12:15
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507564

    Additional Resources

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    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (5)

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    Also in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history volunteer collection

    Consists of interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators conducted by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Department volunteer staff. The interviewees, among them survivors from Hungary, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Poland, discuss their experiences of life before World War II, life in the ghettos, life in concentration camps, and life after the Holocaust.

    Date: 1993

    Oral history interview with Marie Schwartzman

    Oral History

    Marie Schwartzman discusses her early life in Paris, France; her large Polish family; her father’s arrest and imprisonment in Drancy; becoming the head of the family due to her mother’s illness; hiding house for three months; being arrested and sent to Drancy in October 1942; being deported to Auschwitz; living conditions in the camp; working in the crematorium sorting clothes; being marched to Ravensbrück in January 1945; living conditions in Prchin-Malkov camp; liberation by the Americans; turning in a German officer who was arrested; returning to Paris and Grenoble; immigrating to the United States in 1949; and marrying an American soldier.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Kalman

    Oral History

    Nathan Kalman (b. Natan Kalmonowitz) discusses his early life in Łódź, Poland; joining a Zionist organization in 1930; living on a kibbutz in Krakow for a year; marrying in 1939; the beginning of the German occupation; his mother’s work smuggling food; moving into the ghetto; the deaths of his mother, father, and son; being deported to Auschwitz in cattle cars; keeping a photo of his family in his shoe; conditions in Auschwitz; being moved to Gurlitz; working in an ammunition factory; liberation; remarrying; immigrating to the United States; and living in Israel from 1969-1989.

    Oral history interview with Esthy Adler

    Oral History

    Esthy Adler discusses not knowing her real name or when and where she was born, noting that many of her childhood memories are vague; her papers that say she was born in Kaliningrad, Russia, where she thinks her parents had a summer home; staying with her mother’s sister in a compound where there were frequent bombings; her mother’s death during their stay; her father’s remarriage, despite the family’s disapproval; how the Germans found her, her father, and stepmother; the last time she saw her father; how she, her aunt, cousins, and stepmother were relocated to another compound where they slept on cots in places similar to bunkers; seeing a man digging a ditch and holding a machine gun; being lined up and fired upon, but surviving; finding her way back to the barrack where she found her stepmother and another woman; being loaded onto a cattle car and taken to another location (possibly Treblinka); escaping into the forest with her stepmother via a hole and tunnel dug by another woman; living with a partisan group that consisted of Polish-Ukrainian prisoners of war and Russian deserters; the death of her stepmother by machine gun fire in the winter of 1942; being shot; becoming ill from drinking poisoned water and being nursed back to health by a peasant; living with a woman named Margot who got her a job in a factory sewing pants; leaving her job after a man paid for her to go to a private school; living with the Katz family; becoming legally independent after she turned 18; attending graduate school and being accepted into a program where she was trained as a paralegal; meeting her future husband Jim Adler at the University of Heidelberg in 1954; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Tana Gelfer

    Oral History

    Tana Gelfer, born October 7, 1939 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her parents Herman George Reichman and Johanna Kahn and her family background in Gelsenkirchen, Germany; how her father lost his banking job after the Nazi party came to power; her father’s arrest on December 27, 1942; never finding out what happened to her father; her deportation with her mother to Theresienstadt; living conditions in Theresienstadt; sharing a bunk with her mother; how her mother worked in the fields harvesting crops and sorted through prisoners’ belongings; being hospitalized frequently; how a woman in the camp, Minnie Simon, gave birth to a son in secret; how Minnie Simon, her husband Fritz, and their child all survived; being made to watch, along with other small children, the cruel treatment of men who were brought into the camp from trains; her and her mother’s liberation by Russian forces; living with her grandmother in Berlin; immigrating to the United States; marrying and raising a family; and how her mother helped sponsor several people emigrate from Germany to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Maria Devinki

    Oral History

    Maria Devinki, born June 1, 1920 in Hannover, Germany, discusses her family’s move to central Poland; her parents’ successful business there; the Nazi invasion of Poland; how Jews were forced to live in a ghetto; having to give up her large house; her father’s deportation to Treblinka where he perished; marrying her fiancé and being hidden with family members by a Polish farmer in small underground space; traveling with her husband to Regensburg, Germany to wait for U.S. visas; and settling in Kansas City, MO.

    Oral history interview with Jerome Stasson

    Oral History

    Jerome Stasson (b. Jerome Stashevsky) discusses his early life in Detroit, Michigan; coming from a family of Polish immigrants; being drafted into the U.S. army in 1943; following General Patton to Germany from England; liberating Buchenwald; his first impressions of the camp; speaking Yiddish to the survivors; destroying the letters he sent home to his family due to their distress; and his memories of the smell of the camp.

    Oral history interview with Adriana Pacifici

    Oral History

    Adriana Funaro, born in Rome, Italy on July 28, 1923, describes her early life in Rome, Italy; being expelled from public school in 1938 and afterward attending a Jewish school and a Catholic school; her father’s decision not to emigrate; a doctor’s efforts to help her father avoid a roundup in 1943; hiding with her sister in a Dominican convent; living under a false name; learning prayers while hiding; working in a partisan group while in hiding; the arrival of American soldiers; marrying a childhood friend; immigrating to the United States; and her nightmares about the war years.

    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 Christine Cohen

    Oral History

    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.

    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 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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