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Oral history interview with Peter Phillips

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0420 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0069

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    Oral history interview with Peter Phillips
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Peter Phillips, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on June 16, 1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    This is tape number one, side A. Could
    you give us your full name?
    It's actually Ernest Peter Phillips,
    but I generally use only Peter or whenever possible,
    Pete Phillips.
    And what name were you norm?
    I was born Ernst Pieter Phillips.
    Where were you born, and when were you born?
    In Essen, Germany, December 5th, 1931.
    Let's talk about your family.
    Who were the members of your immediate family?
    My father, Bruno, my mother, Lily, and I have twin brothers,
    who are about four years younger than I am, Ervin,
    spelled E-R-V-I-N, and George.
    Where were your parents from?
    My father was born in a little town called Oberhausen,
    and my mother was born in an even smaller town called
    [PLACE NAME.] And my brothers were born in Mulheim an der
    Ruhr.
    So when did your family--
    or what brought your family to Essen?
    My mother was working in a dress shop,
    which was a very fancy store that
    catered to the elite of Essen.
    The wives of the steel magnets would get their dresses
    made to order in that shop.
    She was an apprentice to her aunt.
    And my father was, as well, a apprentice
    in a international hide and skin export trading firm.
    And my parents met there, actually,
    during an opera performance.
    How much education did your family have?
    Incredibly little.
    My mother admitted that she hated school,
    and I think she probably had the equivalent of the sixth grade
    in this country.
    My father, likewise, never went to what
    you would call junior high school in this country.
    [INAUDIBLE] was a very well educated, self-educated man.
    He read voluminously, was a great lover of art and music,
    taught himself to play the violin and the piano.
    And did so well enough to be able to play
    chamber music with friends.
    In his own way, I think he was a genius.
    Did your mother have other interests, or once you
    were born did she stay at home?
    My mother was--
    I can say without fear of being contradicted,
    a genius with her fingers.
    She designed clothes.
    She could go into a store, look at a dress on a mannequin,
    go home, and duplicate it.
    She made men's neckties during the war.
    That will come up later.
    She even made-- assembled cigarette lighters
    during the war for the army.
    She could take a set of curtains and make a dress,
    or she could take a dress and make another dress out of it.
    She just was fantastic.
    She never used a pattern.
    She knitted, crocheted, she made her own clothes,
    she made clothes for other people.
    She was really very gifted with her hands.
    Did she make your clothes?
    No, but she would have if she could--
    if I had been a girl she certainly would have done so.
    How religious was your family?
    That's a difficult question.
    My mother was very anti-religious.
    She could not reconcile the hypocrisy she saw in the world
    with the religious aspect of it.
    I may not be too articulate on that,
    but she only went into a synagogue under duress,
    such as my bar mitzvah, my brother's bar mitzvahs,
    and that's about it.
    She never went even on the Jewish holidays.
    She always made a big fuss about not
    wanting to have Seder and things like that.
    She just was intolerant of any kind of organized religion.
    Whereas my father grew up very devout, and even
    wanted me to later fill in when I
    was 12 and 13, which I did once or twice and rebelled
    and didn't do it.
    And it was a constant source of friction between my parents.
    Which I, of course, suffered from, if you will.
    And as a consequence I went through various religious
    phases myself in my 65 years.
    We will talk about your childhood,
    but obviously, as you said, there are stages.
    And my next questions are going to be really the first stage,
    the first part of your life.
    And so whatever you can remember,
    or what was told to you would be very helpful,
    because you were so young.
    Was your father a Zionist?
    Not that I'm aware of, no.
    No.
    Was he interested in political matters?
    Oh, yes, very much so.
    Very much so.
    As I said, he read the New York Times, I grew up with that.
    He read Business Week Magazine.
    Not that he had much time to read,
    but yes, he was very much politically aware.
    As was, indeed, my mother, too.
    What language did you speak at home?
    In the early years in the United States
    we spoke, of course, German.
    But my parents were very keen to learn English.
    And my brothers and I, being young,
    we very quickly picked it up.
    But I'm talking as a child--
    We spoke--
    In your early childhood, you spoke German?
    Yes, in Germany certainly we did.
    But in this country then we spoke English.
    Yeah.
    But in Germany, did you speak any other languages, or just
    German?
    Just German.
    What was your relationship as a young child with your parents?
    Were they very outgoing type of people?
    Or was it a more reserved type of relationship?
    I would say reserved.
    Europeans of that generation tended to be reserved.
    They were not touchy feely, huggy type--
    it wasn't done.
    I mean, I never hugged my father the way kids do nowadays.
    We never expressed love in so many words.
    It wasn't done.
    It wasn't the custom.
    What is one of your earliest memories?
    The earliest memory I have--
    oh, I have quite a few, actually.
    That I had a very strict father, and very controlling
    I guess would be the term one would use today.
    So that even when I had my own money from my meager allowance,
    I was not able to do with it what I wanted.
    Other early memory, I may be skipping ahead here,
    but I certainly remember the Germans marching into Prague
    when we lived there.
    Playing with the German soldiers who
    were bivouacked in the playground across the street
    from our apartment house.
    Yeah, we'll get to Prague in a minute.
    But let's stay in Essen for a moment.
    Do you know where your parents--
    where your home was?
    Was it in the town?
    Was it on the outskirts?
    Did your parents tell you?
    It was in the city proper.
    But I don't have any recollections of Essen as such,
    and didn't go to school there.
    Right.
    And you were how old when you left Essen?
    I was about five or six.
    So as you say, you don't have any recollections of playing
    with children or any sense?
    No.
    OK, do you have any--
    probably not, but do you have any recollections
    of your parents talking very early on after Hitler
    came into power?
    Again, you were very young up to 1935, '36.
    Did you sense any tension in the household?
    Yes, I did certainly.
    I don't remember any conversations,
    but the tenseness, the tension, was always there.
    There was no way for my parents to hide it.
    The vigils they kept listening to the radio.
    I remember the gas masks on the wardrobe, things like that.
    There was all-- and jumping ahead to Prague for a stop,
    I certainly remember air raid drills and things like that.
    You said they had gas masks in Essen?
    No, I'm sorry, the gas masks were in Prague.
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    OK, do you know why or what precipitated,
    or what went into your father's-- your parents
    thinking about moving?
    I happen to know that, yes.
    First, my mother's side of it is that she worked, as I
    said, in this fancy dress shop.
    And when Hitler came to power the customers
    stayed away, because the store was owned by her aunt who
    was, of course, Jewish.
    They just stayed away.
    She was snubbed by the family doctor and by friends.
    So the ascension of Hitler was immediately manifest
    in her life, and she couldn't make a living.
    She was one of the early feminists,
    I guess, by working full time from the very beginning.
    So your parents had non-Jewish friends in Essen
    and mixed with non-Jews?
    Yes, they did.
    My father, I remember very clearly,
    telling me that he was on his way
    to the home of a good non-Jewish friend to play some music.
    I think the friend was a pianist.
    My father must have been carrying his violin that day.
    And when my father went into the living room,
    he saw a big portrait of Hitler on the concert grand-- no,
    it wasn't a concert grand, but it was a baby grand, I guess,
    piano.
    And that was the signal for my father that this thing--
    this Hitler thing-- was not going to blow over.
    That it was serious.
    Because this was a man, this pianist,
    who was an amateur pianist of course,
    but evidently some sort of intellectual.
    And my father realized if people of erudition and education
    took this madman Hitler seriously,
    then it was time to leave.
    That was for him the signal.
    Do you remember leaving Essen?
    Is that part in your memory?
    No, I don't, no.
    I imagine we went by train.
    Now, your brothers were already born?
    Yes, they were.
    Do you remember your brothers--
    do you remember becoming a big brother?
    Not really, no.
    I was three years, eight months, I think, when they were born.
    So your family then went to?
    To Prague, Czechoslovakia-- what was then Czechoslovakia.
    And why did they decide to go to Prague?
    The firm my father worked for, which
    was headquartered interestingly enough in Argentina,
    an opening appeared in the Prague office.
    The man who-- it was a one man office, I think.
    The man who held the job was Italian.
    He wanted to go back to Italy, and the firm
    offered this post to my father.
    So we moved to Prague.
    In later years, my father would say we left Germany,
    but we first went in the wrong direction.
    What month in 1936, do you know?
    I don't know, no.
    I don't remember.
    Or a season, or time of year-- beginning, middle?
    No, I have no recollection of that.
    OK.
    Now you're living in Prague.
    Where did your family live, again,
    in relation to the center of the city?
    We lived in the center.
    It was an apartment house.
    I think we lived on the ground floor.
    And we may have, in fact, lived in more than one place
    in the approximately three years we lived there.
    I certainly remember that one of those apartment houses
    was across the street from a park, which
    had a sandbox and kind of a playground
    for kids where I played.
    Were your parents able to bring everything with them?
    Not a thing.
    Nothing.
    What did they bring?
    Just the clothes on their backs-- on our backs.
    That was about it.
    We had a gigantic duffel bag, which
    is bigger than any duffel bag that you would find today.
    It was given to us by a woman by the name of Molly.
    I don't remember the connection.
    She was not a relative, I don't think.
    And it was referred to for years in the family as Molly's sack.
    And we stuffed a whole lot of stuff in that.
    Did you have any favorite game or toy at that time?
    I liked to play with flashlight batteries and a little flash
    light bulbs, and made little theater prosceniums
    and that sort of thing.
    But it was difficult, because I never
    had any money to buy anything.
    Would you describe your parents as middle class, upper middle?
    I would say middle, probably-- yes, middle class.
    Yes.
    So now you're living in Prague, and your father's working.
    It's sometime in 1936.
    And what is your mother doing?
    My mother was working at getting us out.
    I guess in the beginning she worked at home.
    I mean, she was a housewife.
    But she evidently carried the brunt
    of trying to get us papers to leave.
    And she struck up a friendship with some Nazi.
    My mother, I might interject at this point,
    was a rather beautiful woman.
    She did not look at all Jewish.
    No one believed she was Jewish.
    And my brothers, I don't think we've
    established that they were twins, my brother.
    They were not just blonde, they were white blonde.
    So the assumption was that my mother
    had married a Jewish man, and was not herself Jewish.
    That helped us enormously evidently in those years.
    And she played on that, and worked
    hard at getting the exit visas and whatever other papers were
    required to get us out.
    How did she do that?
    Do you know?
    She-- I think it was a matter of standing
    in line at the consulate day in, day out, from early morning til
    early evening.
    My mother was fearless.
    She was aggressive.
    She was a tiny woman.
    She had sharp elbows when she needed them.
    And she didn't take any guff from anyone, not even
    the Gestapo.
    And the Jews needed a red J in their passport,
    which my parents didn't have when they left Germany.
    And that was object number one to get
    that while they were in Prague.
    A Gestapo guy that my mother was referred to
    promised to take care of that for them for 4,000 kroner.
    I don't know what that would be in today's dollars,
    but I know the amount was 4,000 kroner.
    In other words, a bribe.
    My parents scraped together this money.
    I don't know what it represented in terms of their annual income
    in those days.
    But my mother did sell her jewelry
    in order to raise that money.
    And this man disappeared.
    My mother then kept a vigil at the window.
    She went without sleep, evidently, for a long time,
    for some weeks.
    I mean, she didn't deprive herself of sleep for weeks,
    but she must have taken catnaps.
    But she did spot the guy one day and charged out,
    and told him that she was the friend
    or relative of some high muckety muck in the government.
    It's a pure cock and bull story.
    But the guy believed it.
    And my mother threatened him, and he took it seriously.
    And the next day they had their passports.
    Why did they want the J, the red J and the passport?
    The red J was a requirement.
    It stood for Jew, and it was a requirement of the--
    I guess the German government.
    Every German passport had to have
    that, as well as the Israeli--
    the Hebrew name Sara and Israel.
    Those my parents also did not have.
    So your parents wanted to be known as Jews rather than
    as Gentiles?
    Yes, absolutely.
    My mother just did not correct people when--
    particularly not government types
    who assumed that she was Gentile.
    Because it was going to stand her in good stead.
    And in fact, it did.
    Did you go to school in Prague?
    I went to school in Prague.
    I went to a Jewish school.
    And I had my first love affair in the first grade.
    Because I was the smallest kid in the class,
    and sat in the first row.
    And I fell in love with my teacher,
    whose name was Fraulein Baga.
    Somehow, I was as impulsive at that age as I am today,
    and unable to restrain myself one day.
    I jumped on my desk and threw my arms around Fraulein Baga,
    and hugged and kissed her.
    This somehow led to a meeting with Fraulein Baga
    with my parents in the school.
    And, of course, after all these years
    I can't explain what happened, but a friendship
    developed between this young teacher and my parents.
    And she got married.
    And I do remember going to her wedding
    and crying bitterly that she was marrying somebody else.
    I would love to know whether she survived.
    I don't know.
    This was a Jewish wedding?
    This was a Jewish wedding, yes.
    And there was no problem with that at the time?
    You don't remember any difficulty with the wedding?
    I don't know.
    I just-- I was too young to--
    I was-- I would not have noticed anything, no.
    When did you first hear, or when were you first aware of a man
    named Hitler?
    I'm not sure I know the answer to that.
    I think my parents tried to shield us
    as much as possible from what was going on.
    Whether they spoke of Hitler in the home, I don't know.
    I don't remember.
    Certainly, there was always a great sense of agitation
    and anxiety in the home.
    How did you know that?
    Well, when your parents are anxious,
    I think kids pick up on that.
    Hushed conversations with friends, just looking worried,
    I think.
    You can't hide that thing from kids.
    Did you talk this over with your parents, your concerns?
    No, I don't think I did.
    No.
    I think to the extent that it's possible at that age
    and in those circumstances, I had a fairly happy childhood.
    I think my parents did their best
    to protect us from the anxiety that they were enduring.
    You said you went to a Jewish school?
    Did you have any non-Jewish friends in Prague?
    I only remember one.
    His name was Herbert.
    And that's all I remember about him.
    We were pals, we did things together.
    But beyond that, I don't remember, no.
    What did you do besides going to school in Prague?
    I think the same thing that anybody in those days did.
    We went to the park in the afternoons,
    or I should say afternoon weekends with my parents.
    We had picnics.
    I think we did a lot of walking in the city.
    I remember crossing the bridge across the Danube on walks.
    One of the family stories is that my brothers--
    who were devils, particularly my brother George--
    they were not much older than six or seven
    when they had their first brush with the police, in fact.
    They used to urinate off the bridge into the Danube,
    and making a spectacle of themselves
    just for the fun of it.
    Were you a very physically active child?
    Did you like sports?
    No, I didn't, and I don't like sports to this day, not even
    spectator sports.
    What about music?
    You said that's part of your heritage.
    Yes, I'm a great music lover.
    I think music is my one and only passion.
    I think because I grew up hearing my father
    playing with his friends and by himself, violin and piano,
    and the radio was always on to classical music.
    So I knew all the major classical works,
    probably before I was in--
    before I was bar mitzvah, certainly.
    Did you take music lessons?
    I took more music lessons than most people.
    I took violin lessons on three separate occasions in my life.
    I took piano lessons on two separate occasions.
    The last time I took music lessons was as a 40-year-old I
    took piano lessons.
    The first time I took piano lessons
    I even was taking them with a private teacher in Juilliard,
    in New York.
    I never could get the hang of it.
    I cannot play any musical instrument.
    I cannot read music.
    It is one of the great--
    tragedies is overstating it-- but I'm
    sorry that I just don't have that facility.
    But when you were in Prague, you didn't--
    as a little child, you didn't take--
    did you take lessons?
    No, the first time I took music lessons was in New York.
    Now, you said your mother was not religious.
    Did you have anything in the home?
    Did you celebrate the Sabbath?
    Was there anything done in the home when you were very young?
    We celebrated the high holy days--
    Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and that sort of thing.
    But my mother always rebelled against it.
    She did not see any point to it.
    She was very Jewish in her feeling.
    She was very pro-Israel, but anti organized religion.
    Did you know you were Jewish in a strong sense?
    Yes, I did.
    There was no question about that.
    And there was no denying that I was Jewish.
    In fact, one of the stories they tell
    about me was riding with my mother in a streetcar
    in Prague, I offered a seat to what seemed
    to me then a lovely lady.
    And she said, what a nice boy you are.
    And I babbled, yes, and I'm Jewish.
    And I have twin brothers.
    When did you notice difficult circumstances in Prague?
    When did things start to get more tense?
    I think the air raids in Prague, which
    seemed like the actual war for me, were very frightening.
    We did have gas masks.
    I don't remember ever seeing the masks themselves.
    They were in canisters on top of my parents clothes closet--
    the wardrobe.
    And there was always a lot of talk among my parents
    and their friends about getting visas and affidavits.
    So you picked up the pieces of conversation here and there.
    You became aware that there was some kind of a threat,
    that we were in danger.
    Now, the Germans occupied Prague in March of '30.
    So you are talking about air raids when?
    I said air raids, I didn't mean air raids.
    I meant air raid drills--
    excuse me-- practice air raids.
    But they were very realistic, for some reason.
    Because in addition to sirens and such, they were--
    if I remember correctly-- there were explosions--
    simulated explosions.
    How did your parents explain this to you?
    You're only seven or eight years old.
    I don't remember what they told us, I really don't.
    I do remember seeing the sky lit up with what one
    could describe as fireworks.
    And I do remember the anxiety I felt.
    But beyond that, I don't remember.
    Did you stay in your apartment during these drills?
    I believe we had a terrace, and we stood on the terrace
    looking out over the scene, yes.
    There were searchlights, of course, piercing the sky.
    And did you wear the gas masks?
    If memory serves, the children did not have gas masks.
    There were just two of these canisters for the adults.
    I don't know why.
    And I'm not sure I remember that correctly, but I think I do.
    Did you have any--
    were you the butt of than any antisemitic experiences
    while you were in Prague?
    I probably did, but I don't remember them, no.
    The first ones I remember vividly
    came later, but not in Prague.
    There well were from school age kids on the streets,
    but that's speculation.
    That's conjecture on my part.
    So life went on for you in Prague?
    And you went through the drills, and then what happened?
    Well, we finally got those the necessary papers to get out.
    And Italy was one place we went.
    I don't know why it was Italy.
    One went where one could.
    I guess it seemed like a safe haven at the time.
    We lived in a place called Nervi, N-E-R-V-I ,
    which was on the outskirts of Genoa.
    I understand nowadays it may not exist any longer.
    I think it has been incorporated into Genoa Proper.
    Let's back up a little bit before we get to Italy.
    You hear that you're going to be leaving.
    Your parents tell you.
    What were your thoughts about having to leave?
    Here you've left one home already.
    You left Essen to come to Prague.
    Now your parents are telling you you have to leave again.
    As a young child, what did that mean to you?
    I'm blessed or cursed, whichever way
    you want to look at it, with a memory that
    doesn't remember that far back.
    You also were very young, right?
    Yes, I was young.
    But I do remember the train ride from Prague to Genoa.
    Because the train was stopped in the middle of nowhere.
    And several Gestapo came aboard and took all our passports.
    And--
    Did you know what the Gestapo was?
    I think by that time my parents must have told us.
    Because my parents were frightened.
    You couldn't be anything but paralyzed with fright.
    I don't remember there being a station.
    I think there was just a shack that they disappeared to.
    And for a long, long time, a couple of hours maybe, and then
    they reappeared and gave back the passports.
    And we went out on our way.
    You stayed on the train during this time?
    Were you in a compartment, or just in a seating car?
    I think in a compartment.
    I think most European trains in those days
    had compartments, yes.
    Did you take anything special with you on that trip,
    knowing that you were moving to a new city--
    a child's?
    I don't think so.
    I don't-- if I had any toys, I sure don't remember them.
    Toys we're always a scarcity in my life.
    I don't remember having had anything that I recall
    before I was nine years old.
    And that was years--
    that was in New York already.
    Did you feel bad about not having a lot of toys?
    Oh, I think yes.
    I think these deprivations, if you will,
    is something that you feel all your life.
    It has a psychological impact on you.
    It tends to make you either covetous of other people's
    material belongings, or happy with little that you have
    as you get older.
    You're on the train ride to Italy.
    Any other stops that you made besides the one time
    that the Gestapo stopped you?
    No, I don't think so.
    It was-- and I don't know how long that trip was.
    A few hours, I imagine.
    And then you arrived in Italy?
    Yes.
    You are still only speaking German at this point?
    Yes.
    To back up, did you have any religious training?
    Did you have any--
    when you were in Prague, did you have
    any extra religious training besides the Jewish school
    that you went to?
    I went to synagogue with my father in Prague.
    I believe there was one seemed class
    Torah, when we arrived and all the candy for the kids
    had been given out.
    And my father was furious.
    I do remember that.
    But you went on a regular basis with your father
    to the synagogue?
    I don't think we went every week, no.
    But I guess we went with some regularity.
    Did you understand any Hebrew?
    No.
    So when you get to Italy your only language now
    is still German?
    That's right.
    OK, now you're in Italy.
    And you-- what were your first impressions?
    It was a nice climate.
    It was warm, and my parents had no work and no money.
    I don't know, frankly, how they lived--
    how we lived, what we lived on.
    All I know is that I was in charge of my brothers,
    and took them to a park every day,
    which seemed like the rational thing for my parents
    to do while they went scrounging for work,
    as well as for the next exit visa to the next way station.
    But the park was a daily misery for us, because we were Jewish
    and we spoke German.
    That is to say we did not speak Italian.
    So the kids not only taunted us, but actually beat us.
    Actually beat us with chains and things like that.
    We never had any money.
    There were concessions in that park, little pedal
    cars, but whatever it was that they
    cost we never had the money.
    We never had a cent or the Italian equivalent of cent.
    So we would hang around this little amusement park.
    And when kids were finished with a ride
    we would try to push the cars to their parking place
    and arrange them before the owner caught up with us.
    So we would maybe ride the car a couple of feet for free.
    But that was a rare occurrence and a rare luxury for us.
    But the longing to have the money
    to ride one of those things was always there.
    And to run away from these toughs
    who were always after us.
    Did you understand what they were saying?
    No, I don't.
    But when you are chased with chains and sticks and fists
    and so forth, that's sort of a universal language.
    So you are an eight-year-old in charge of two four-year-olds?
    What were your thoughts about having to move to Italy?
    I don't know that I had a particular thought.
    It just seemed my parents moved there, you
    don't do a lot of questioning when you are eight years old,
    and that's where we went.
    I imagined that my parents explained to at least me
    why we were moving.
    I think they instilled in me a sense of responsibility
    for my brothers, which in a way made me grow up very fast.
    And I might add, my brothers have never really forgiven me
    for.
    You said you left Prague in 1939.
    What month in 1939?
    I don't know.
    I think it was the summer.
    It was certainly after the Germans marched in.
    But it was before the war had started?
    Before September invasion of Poland?
    Yes.
    What did the Germans look like to you in Prague?
    Were they frightening?
    Were they overwhelming?
    What impressions as a young boy did you have?
    They were soldiers.
    I remember what the uniforms looked like.
    What did they look like?
    They looked big, but not menacing.
    They played with us.
    That is to say, they patted us on the cheek,
    and watched us we--
    by we I mean my brothers and other kids--
    played in the sandlot, and whatever other equipment
    was in that playground.
    And they just-- I think they were bivouacked in that park.
    And they were just--
    the kids there were a distraction for these soldiers.
    They were something to be amused by.
    And they had no idea that we were Jewish, of course.
    They just left us alone.
    So you didn't have any particularly frightening
    experience with German soldiers?
    Not at all.
    They seemed to be friendly.
    Did you think of them as your enemy?
    No, I don't think so.
    No, certainly not that I think of it.
    Because I don't think my parents questioned us
    about any fraternization, for lack of a better word,
    with them.
    No, I think they just went about their business, more or less,
    and we went about our business of playing in the playground.
    This is tape one, side B, and we were
    talking about the year 1939.
    And you have arrived in Italy, and you
    were in charge of your two little brothers in the park.
    What other memories do you have from that time in Italy?
    The weekends, or at least Sundays,
    were spent with my parents and their small circle
    of friends who were all like us, refugees from Germany.
    Let's talk a little bit about that.
    When you left Essen to come to Prague,
    did your parents come with other relatives in a bigger group?
    Or were you just the five of you?
    It was just the five of us.
    There was only one grandparent still alive.
    She was my father's mother.
    She lived with an uncle in Amsterdam.
    And she later perished in Auschwitz.
    And then when you were in Prague,
    were there other relatives around?
    No.
    Did you have friends from Essen in Prague?
    No, I don't think so.
    I think we were basically by ourselves.
    And then you went to Italy by yourself?
    But you said once you got into Italy
    there were German friends?
    There were others like us.
    And the people-- refugees-- have a way of congregating,
    of finding each other out--
    people who are in the same situation.
    It was a comfort, a moral support.
    It was a way of exchanging information.
    It was a way of having some kind of a tie to there
    being no community any longer.
    That was what constituted, the closest thing to a community
    was a small group of similarly situated friends.
    Was this also true in Prague?
    Did your parents congregate and mix with other German refugees?
    Yes, yes.
    Not many, I don't think.
    There were two bachelor brothers who were, I think,
    living in the same apartment house whom they befriended.
    It was a very small circle.
    We were basically alone.
    What did you do besides go in the park?
    That was about it.
    Looking forward to Saturdays and Sundays
    and being with my parents.
    And I seem to remember there was a water-- not waterfront,
    but a beach.
    Maybe it was--
    I guess Genoa was close enough to the ocean, yes.
    Sort of a Mediterranean setting, and walking
    along the strand with my parents and their friends.
    As I said earlier, I don't know how my parents bought food,
    but I do remember that it was scarce.
    I know when my mother came home with cherries or grapes
    and things like that, they were carefully
    counted out and divided equally among all of us.
    What about clothes?
    Did you have enough good clothes to wear?
    Clothes were always a problem, even in later years.
    I don't think we had a heck of a lot.
    But I just had a thought--
    going back to the previous question--
    I think, but I'm not sure, that my father's company,
    although he did not work for the company
    during the stay in Italy, I think that may have helped.
    Because otherwise I don't know how
    my parents could have survived.
    Did your mother do any kind of work in Italy?
    No, there was no opportunity at all.
    If for no other reason than that there was no--
    she didn't know the language.
    Did you pick up any of the language?
    I don't think so.
    Maybe a smattering of words.
    But I don't think so, no.
    What are your memories of this time?
    Was it a very difficult time?
    And for how long were you there?
    We were in this little town of Nervi about six months.
    It was difficult only because every morning
    was the same routine of being sent to the park
    and being in fear of going.
    Did you tell your mother you were afraid of going?
    I don't remember.
    Probably not.
    Why not?
    I felt a sense of responsibility,
    and so I think I kept my mouth shut.
    This is at eight years old you felt
    the sense of responsibility?
    I think so, yes.
    It was a, I think, a heavy burden.
    And that, too, has left its scars.
    Any other memories of your time in Italy?
    No, I do remember one particularly amusing man,
    one of my parents' friends.
    He was a women's fashion designer,
    and I remember that he wore a monocle.
    And he had a big mustache that he used to twirl.
    He was very engaging, and highly educated,
    and always told amusing stories.
    And my parents, I think, doted on his company
    because he had a way of making them feel--
    he was kind of an entertainment for them, if you will.
    Because there sure were no theater or movies or things
    like that for them.
    He you had a way of helping them get their minds off the crisis
    that they were living in.
    Now, there were restrictions, racial laws
    enacted in 1938 in Italy.
    Were you aware of them?
    Did you feel any restrictions?
    No, I was not.
    I was not.
    But that may also explain why my parents couldn't get any work.
    Were you limited to where you could be,
    or times of day or evening?
    Not that I'm aware of.
    I think our role was very circumscribed from apartment
    house to the park to the beach.
    That was about it.
    Did you feel comfortable near the water?
    Yes, I think I did.
    It was nice strolling there.
    Did you go swimming?
    I don't remember that.
    I don't think so.
    That may explain why I'm still a bad swimmer.
    Now, what did you know about this man named Hitler, now
    that you're eight years old?
    Strange as it may sound, I don't know.
    I don't know that--
    I don't remember him being talked about.
    Whether it was probably because of my age.
    That's the only thing I can explain.
    The first time he actually came into a conversation,
    that I recall, was later on when we were living in our next way
    station.
    Now, what month did you say you came to Italy,
    or what time of the year?
    I think it was during the summer of '39.
    And then the war started, World War
    Two, and when Germany invaded Poland in September,
    does that bring back any memories for you?
    It does not.
    But I can't imagine not hearing about it at the time.
    Certainly, my parents and their friends
    must have talked about it.
    It's inconceivable that we didn't hear about it.
    But to actually remember it, no.
    Do you have any memories-- just going back a year--
    of Kristallnacht at all?
    Of people talking about it, of knowing about it,
    of hearing about?
    No, I didn't.
    I really didn't.
    Now, your mother, your parents are trying desperately
    to leave Italy.
    And where were they talking about going to?
    They were willing to go anywhere that was possible.
    My details are very, very sketchy,
    but I do know that ultimately at the choice of Ecuador
    or Australia they chose Ecuador.
    I don't know why.
    I think Ecuador, certainly, was one of the few countries
    in the world that let Jews in.
    Why they chose Ecuador, I don't know.
    How did your family arrange for you to leave?
    Again, the long process of standing in line
    at the consulates, getting the exit
    visas, the passports, the affidavits.
    Somebody in Ecuador must have provided an affidavit,
    I would think.
    But who that was, I don't know.
    Again, it may have been my father's company that helped.
    The company probably paid for our passage.
    Did you notice any change in your father's demeanor
    during this time as the situation got more tense?
    No, I don't remember that.
    No, I don't.
    There was never time for horseplay or lightheartedness.
    There was always tension somehow that a young kid senses.
    And certainly there never was any money for entertainment
    or doing anything that was fun.
    I'm not saying this in a complaining way.
    It was not a--
    obviously, not a carefree childhood.
    You must have felt much older than your years?
    Yes, I still do.
    Someone said to me recently that I never had a childhood.
    I don't know that I agree with that,
    but I certainly had more careers and responsibilities
    than a kid born in this country at the same age.
    Did you say anything to your brothers
    as they got a little older?
    Of course, obviously in 1939 they
    were, what, four years old?
    So did you try to explain anything to them?
    No, I think all I did was try to encourage them to behave.
    Not to be rambunctious and things like that.
    But they never cooperated.
    They always gave me a hard time--
    still do.
    And now your parents were able to get papers to leave.
    What were your thoughts then, on the next move?
    We're now going to Quito, Ecuador.
    Had you ever heard of that place?
    Certainly not, no.
    And it must have been a traumatic decision
    for my parents.
    I mean, my father then was approaching 40.
    My mother was a year older.
    The thought of going to a Latin American country where
    they had no facility with the language,
    and no way to earn a living.
    But at least they had the foresight to get out of Europe.
    And I'm forever grateful for that.
    And you packed your bags to go to Ecuador?
    And again, by that time, did you have anything special
    to take with you?
    No, I didn't.
    And you say bags, it again was Molly's sack,
    that great big duffel bag.
    I think the whole family's belongings fit into that thing.
    No, I didn't have any toys or anything like that--
    notebooks, nothing.
    Did you like to read?
    Yes, I did.
    Unfortunately, I think because of the many languages
    that I had to learn, I vocalize to this day.
    And although I read constantly, I'm a very slow reader.
    I have actually tried to rid myself of this habit.
    I've gone to reading school, but to no avail.
    I enjoy reading.
    I love reading.
    But I can't read as much as I would love to.
    You said your father was very musical.
    Did he or your mother ever sing songs to you?
    I don't remember that, no.
    No.
    European parents had, at that time,
    had a different relationship with their kids
    than is the case nowadays.
    Kids were to be seen and not heard,
    and whatever the expression is.
    They were expected to live by a series--
    by the set of decorous standards that certainly
    wouldn't obtain nowadays anymore.
    And there were severe punishments
    for stepping out of line, including being
    sent to bed without dinner.
    Which nowadays would be considered child abuse,
    probably.
    If I can backtrack for a moment, my father
    tried to the best of his ability to teach me
    a few things that I would have been learning
    if I'd gone to school in Italy.
    He taught me the multiplication tables and things like that.
    He was very strict about it.
    It was not a good pedagogue, but it
    was a lot of browbeating and learning by memorization.
    But it was the closest thing I had
    to his schooling during that time.
    You say your family has packed the bag-- packed Molly's bag,
    and now you are told you're going to Quito.
    We went on an Italian steamer.
    The name was the Conte Grande.
    And I have two memories of that trip.
    A constant seasickness, a lot of throwing up,
    and a lot of smells of oils and other fats emanating
    from the kitchen.
    Were there many other refugees on the boat with you?
    I don't recall.
    I don't recall.
    I had the sense that we were always by ourselves,
    but I could be wrong.
    What did you do on the boat?
    Besides throwing up, what one usually
    does on a boat as a kid, I guess.
    Just walking around, trying to get fresh air,
    nothing memorable.
    Nothing that I really remember.
    Watching the ocean, got of an aversion
    to the smell of the sea from that point on.
    Did it make any stops?
    I don't think so.
    [CLEARS THROAT] Excuse me.
    Well, we went through the Panama Canal.
    And I do remember that.
    The ship was towed by mules in those days rather than--
    I think they were drawn by mules.
    I could be wrong.
    But it was--
    I do remember the sight of being pulled through the Panama
    Canal.
    Of course, it was the first of two trips.
    We ultimately went back through the canal
    in the other direction.
    This is summer of 1939?
    As far as I recall.
    You asked me earlier if we made a stop.
    I think we stopped on the Canary Islands for a few hours,
    but insignificant.
    What did the canal look like to you as an eight-year-old?
    It looked like a fascinating spectacle,
    which I don't think I understood how it worked.
    I'm not sure I understand it now.
    But it was a great sight to see the ship going
    into the locks, the locks closing, the water rising--
    that is to say the lock filling with water and the ship
    rising, moving onto the next one.
    It was fascinating to see that.
    It took many hours, as I recall.
    And I think I watched the whole thing.
    Was there now a difference in your parent's demeanor?
    Were they a little more relaxed now that they hadn't gotten out
    of Europe?
    Did you sense any difference?
    I think so.
    I think by nature the ocean voyage
    must have been a tonic effect on them.
    But I don't remember any particulars.
    My mother was, what you would call nowadays--
    I don't think the term even existed
    in those days-- a manic depressive,
    or at least she had those tendencies.
    And while I remember her being mostly depressed,
    there were moments when she was in the opposite phase.
    And she would laugh hysterically and tell hysterical stories,
    the same stories over and over again.
    But she would laugh at a pitch that attracted attention.
    I do remember that.
    And she was fun to be with then.
    But you did notice a relaxation on the part of your parents?
    I think so, yes, yes.
    At this time, did you talk to them
    at any greater length about what was going on in Europe?
    What was your perception of what was--
    what was an eight year old's perception
    of what was going on?
    Strange as it may sound, I don't really recall.
    I imagine that my parents told me why we were going.
    The Nazis were bad guys.
    That they were going to do bad things to us.
    Obviously, a kid of that age is going to ask questions.
    I'm sure I did.
    I'm sure I got some answers.
    But I do not remember specifics, no.
    And so did you mix with any non-Jews on the passage?
    I vaguely remember other people sitting at the table for meals.
    But I don't have any concrete recollections
    of any specific person, no.
    Did you tell them why you were leaving Europe,
    or what your story was?
    I don't know.
    I don't remember.
    And were there are other children on the boat?
    There must have been.
    It was a pretty big ship for those days.
    A two-stacker I think it was, but no concrete memories.
    And you had a private room with your family?
    I think we all had--
    we shared-- the five of us shared one cabin, yes.
    Very cramped.
    And now you've landed in Quito?
    Actually, the ship stops in Guayaquil, of course, Quito
    being up in the mountains.
    Yes.
    And I do remember the pilot both coming out,
    and the customs, and again, the uniforms
    creating anxiety that was palpable, even though that
    wasn't necessary at that point.
    But it's just one of those things
    that you live with, you can't shake it.
    And I believe the process of health examinations,
    the immigration papers, and all that took forever and ever.
    The long lines-- on the ship we had
    to stand in line until it came our turn to disembark.
    I'm not positive, but I think we had
    to leave the ship on a tender.
    I don't think the ship docked at a wharf.
    I could be wrong.
    And that was scary for me, because I do have this tendency
    to get seasick.
    I get carsick as well to this day.
    And again, you said seeing uniforms or whatever upset you.
    Did you verbally express this to your parents?
    No, I don't think so.
    I think the fear was--
    the anxiety was not only mine.
    I think it was my parents.
    I think it rubbed off on me.
    I don't know that my parents ever said anything
    to assuage our anxiety.
    I think that they were just so anxious that they perhaps
    didn't know how to do that or didn't think of doing it.
    You just felt it through them, even
    if you didn't feel it directly.
    Do you think your little brothers experienced that also?
    No, they were blissfully out of it, I think.
    Now you're in Ecuador, and where did you settle?
    We moved to Quito right away.
    A long, long train ride, and Quito is up in the mountains.
    And the train ride, in those days at least,
    was interminable.
    The train would go forward and backwards.
    It was sort of a stepped kind of railway line.
    It didn't make the trip in one continuous path.
    So it took a long, long time.
    I got sick on the train.
    I remember standing between two cars, my father holding me,
    and throwing up.
    But yes, we then ultimately settled in Quito.
    And--
    What's it like for a child to land in a country
    and hear language that he's not familiar with?
    Is it very confusing?
    It sure is, it sure is.
    And in this case, of course, my parents
    didn't know the language either.
    So I imagine that the first months, at least,
    were very difficult. Finding a place to live,
    finding a place to purchase goods, getting money somehow.
    I'm not sure how that worked in the beginning.
    But somehow my parents managed.
    How did they know what to do when they got on dry land?
    You said we did this, we took a train.
    How did they know?
    Did someone meet them?
    In Ecuador, I don't know.
    I think there were other German refugees who had preceded us
    and helped us.
    I think there was sort of a community of people
    who helped one another.
    The later arrivals then subsequently turned around
    and helped those who came after them.
    It was a very small German Jewish community, I believe.
    Not enough for a synagogue.
    I don't recall ever going to a religious service in Ecuador.
    So whatever religious observance we had was at home.
    And of course, it's a Catholic country.
    We stood out not only as Jews.
    We stood out as speaking German.
    But I went to school.
    I was-- I went to a private school, in fact.
    But when I say private school, it
    doesn't mean what it might mean in this country.
    It was really the only decent school.
    It's where the diplomats and the wealthier people of Quito,
    and perhaps other cities of Ecuador, would send their kids.
    It was very strict, very demanding.
    The standards were incredibly high
    compared to the United States.
    I remember learning things in the United States
    in junior high school that I had learned years ago in Ecuador.
    So it was a fantastic school.
    The classes were taught in Spanish?
    The classes were taught in Spanish.
    I was called Ernesto then by the teacher.
    And if you did something that displeased him,
    he would pick up by your side burns--
    very painful.
    Was it difficult for you to pick up Spanish?
    No, actually Spanish is one of those languages
    that is, relatively speaking, easy to pick up.
    And for a kid it was quite easy.
    So although I don't speak it any longer,
    I learned it fluently very quickly.
    And was quite good in school, to my great surprise.
    But always stood out.
    My clothes were different.
    In what way?
    Well, we lived from hand-me-downs.
    I don't know incidentally how my parents
    got the money for the tuition.
    Again, I think my father may have gotten money
    from the company that employed him.
    My father had started with this company,
    by the way, when he was 13.
    And he may have received loans from them.
    He never told me about those.
    I don't know.
    What was the name of the company?
    It was Kaufman.
    They were well known, they still exist today,
    although on a much smaller scale.
    It was a hide and skin exporting company.
    And I think at one time, or various times
    during our sojourn in Quito, my father did some freelance work
    for the company.
    In that he went to slaughter houses
    and bought hides, and made arrangements
    to have them sold and exported to other countries.
    But early on, he teamed up with a Czech engineer,
    who in fact lived with us in a two family house.
    The name was [? Rovichek, ?] it just came to me.
    And they made margarine in an abandoned garage,
    margarine out of vegetable oils, I think.
    Very primitive.
    They employed a few Indios, which
    is the native Indians are called Indios.
    And the water out of the margarine
    was squeezed out by hand, made into balls of margarine.
    That was our first--
    that was my parents' first income.
    They as well got the idea--
    I don't know how it originated-- to make thermos boxes, very
    primitive thermos boxes.
    Two layers of wood with--
    what do you call that packing material, excelsior--
    in between as insulation.
    This goes years before Styrofoam and all that, and plastic.
    And they made these food storage containers which they sold.
    And he was also a Jewish refugee, Mr. [? Rovichek? ?]
    Yes, he was.
    He was-- it was someone that your father met in Prague?
    You said he was Czech.
    I think they met in Quito.
    Again there was this network of people.
    You didn't need a telephone, which didn't exist.
    People knew about you in the small German Jewish refugee
    community.
    They clung to one another, actually.
    And it was this network of helping people out.
    I think that's how it came about.
    Were you aware that World War II had started?
    Yes, I do remember my mother telling me
    that Hitler and Stalin had signed this agreement.
    I don't remember what--
    I don't remember what she said about it, or what it--
    what the implication of it was.
    But I do remember her telling me that.
    And the invasion of Poland?
    I do not remember that, no.
    We had no radio, of course.
    My parents couldn't read the newspaper,
    so there were no newspapers in the house.
    Whatever news there was came from word of mouth.
    Can you describe the living conditions?
    Relatively primitive, the buildings were made of clay,
    I guess it is.
    And once there was a--
    well, of course, Ecuador has a lot of tropical rains.
    And once we actually had to leave our house and move
    to another house because the roof just
    caved in from the weight of the water.
    But it was very primitive.
    The-- strange as it may sound, our next door neighbor
    lived in a cave.
    He was a tin smith, or some metal worker,
    may have been an ironmonger.
    But it was a cave.
    And our house was--
    the house that we lived in before we had to abandon it--
    was right next to that.
    The streets were not--
    where we lived, we lived on the outskirts of Quito--
    were not paved.
    There were a muddy mess when it rained.
    And much of the shopping was done
    by Indios coming to the house with their trays
    of fresh fruits and vegetables.
    Which incidentally had to be very thoroughly washed
    in some pink stuff that my mother got that would disinfect
    it-- disinfectant it was.
    How secure did you feel?
    I never felt secure.
    I had one friend, also the son of a refugee family,
    I seem to think his name was Klaus,
    but I cannot say that with any security.
    And there were no, again, no spending money,
    no toys to play with.
    This fellow, Klaus, or whatever his name was,
    we would go after school to a local canning factory
    and play with the scraps of metal.
    Which was, by the way, kind of dangerous
    because it was easy to cut yourself with.
    But we made soldier uniforms.
    We made a belt and Sam Brown belt kind of thing
    out for this scrap metal, hats and such, and swords.
    That was our playtime.
    Did you consider yourself German at that time?
    German as a nationalistic German, or--
    no, I don't think so.
    No, we wanted to assimilate.
    That is to say we wanted to be--
    live in peace, and be left alone.
    So we did what had to be done.
    My parents learned Spanish--
    learned quite well, in fact.
    And we tried to live with our neighbors.
    The second house we lived in then was one of a--
    we lived in a compound.
    A rich family that had this guesthouse,
    we then moved to this guesthouse.
    And one of the things I remember the great excitement
    when they were going to show a movie, to which we
    were invited.
    Black and white, of course, and it was the Story of Jesus.
    Which I didn't quite understand.
    And I asked one of the daughters--
    I think that two daughters, this family--
    some question about what this was all about.
    Some question about the movie I didn't understand.
    And she said to me-- and that was not the first time
    in my life I heard that--
    well, you killed Jesus, and you should know all about this.
    That was the first experience of antisemitism--
    not that I experienced, but certainly the first one
    that I vividly recall.
    I was very upset.
    I went to my parents to ask them what
    this girl, who was I guess my age or a little older,
    was talking about it.
    I don't remember what they responded,
    but I remember being very upset by this incident.
    Were you frightened after what you had left in Europe?
    I think I was always frightened.
    I think I was always--
    if not frightened, at least uneasy.
    Because my clothes were different from my classmates.
    The food I ate was different.
    My Spanish, I'm sure, was with an accent.
    So I always stood out, little Ernesto.
    And that was always a sense of discomfort
    and never feeling quite at home.
    Never feeling quite one of the boys.
    It was an all boys school, incidentally, no girls.
    Were there many other refugee children in your school?
    No, I was the only one.
    I don't know why.
    I was the only Jew.
    I still have my report cards, by the way, from that school.
    And I have a picture of me with the teacher.
    There were probably about 15 or 20 kids to this class.
    It was very rigorous.
    Did the teacher ask you about your past history?
    I don't think so.
    If he did, I don't remember.
    This was, I think, the other kids
    were probably from elite families.
    So I guess there was a certain amount of discretion
    on the part of the administration.
    It was not the school where ordinary kids would go.
    And I guess I was lucky to be able to go there.
    Now, things are tightening up in Europe even more and more so.
    Were your parents aware of that?
    And if so, how did they get the information?
    Again, the network and I guess somebody had shortwave radio.
    And there was-- sure the news of Europe reached them.
    And again, the process of getting out and getting
    on the quota.
    Ecuador, of course, had a separate quota--
    I mean, the United States had a separate quota of Ecuador.
    And that helped.
    So we spent something like two-and-a-half years
    in Ecuador, '39 to '41.
    I went to two grades of school.
    And I don't know how difficult it was for my parents
    to get the affidavit and exit visa and all the other papers
    that were required.
    But they managed, once again, to do so.
    Did you want to leave?
    Yes, I'm sure there was--
    I don't think there was any fear of a concentration camp
    or anything like that in Ecuador.
    Surely not.
    But it was not--
    it was just such a primitive country to live in.
    And I think my father felt that he
    could do better economically.
    And the United States was the Mecca, if you will,
    that all the refugees there wanted to go to.
    All aspired to go to America.
    Were you taunted at all for being Jewish?
    Oh, yes, that was always--
    always being chased and beaten and pummeled.
    And it was a never ending thing.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Peter Philipps, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on June 16, 1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    This is tape number two, side A. You
    had said you had a little story about Quito
    that you wanted to talk about.
    About six years ago, we redid our kitchen,
    and that included buying a new refrigerator.
    It was a more expensive thing.
    It cost about $1,800.
    And a few weeks later, it broke.
    It was a GE.
    We called for a service man to come.
    And he had a Spanish accent, Latin accent.
    I asked him where he was from.
    He said South.
    America I, said I can hear.
    That where in South America?
    He said Ecuador.
    Where in Ecuador?
    Quito.
    Oh, said I. I lived in Quito for years and went to school there.
    He asked me, did you go to the [? Empresa ?] School?
    I said I don't know.
    I don't recognize the name.
    But let me go look for my report card, which I still have.
    Brought him upstairs.
    He looked.
    Indeed, it was at that school.
    And he was about two years younger than I am.
    He had gone to the same school.
    We had the same teacher, the same principal.
    And it was just such a funny coincidence.
    Here we had gone to the same school.
    He was a repairman for GE now, and I
    was a semi retired as a freelance writer
    and was just a nice coincidence.
    We had a nice chat about that.
    I didn't remember as much about the school
    as he did, other than that it was very strict
    and the standards were very high.
    And the demands on the kids were a lot greater
    than they are in this country, even
    in that primitive country at that time.
    Before we leave Quito, you had previously
    talked about some unpleasant experiences,
    anti-Semitic or fearful times on the other tape.
    Are there anything else you want to talk about how you
    dealt with that as a young boy?
    How did you handle this fearful experience?
    I became a good runner.
    I am not now, nor was I then, confrontational.
    And when there was a confrontation
    or a potential fist fight, I didn't escape them all,
    but I would turn and run.
    And I became quite fast.
    And I did that.
    Unfortunately, I had to do that many times.
    What were some of these situations like?
    What did the kid say to you?
    There were taunts.
    I don't remember the Spanish word for Jew.
    But we were certainly called that and gringo,
    which is [INAUDIBLE], German.
    So we had three strikes against us.
    We were immigrants.
    We were Jewish.
    And we were German.
    And so they were always taunting us and not leaving us in peace.
    And they also referred to my brothers and me.
    My brothers, luckily for them, have much better
    coping skills than I do.
    They did then, and they do now.
    And actually they protected me a few times.
    They're tough guys.
    I'm not.
    Also, there were two of them, too.
    There are two of them, and they're twins.
    And they are fraternal twins, incidentally.
    But they're very close They'd always stick together.
    And they were totally fearless as well.
    They would never run away from a fight the way I did.
    What kind of advice did your parents
    give you in how to cope with these frightening situations?
    To try to avoid in any way possible.
    If it meant running away, that was the way to do it,
    just stay out of trouble.
    And I don't think my parents were fully aware of everything.
    We didn't tell them everything.
    Well, we felt sorry for them.
    We didn't-- we sensed, or at least I sensed,
    that they had other things on their minds.
    I shielded them from some of this unpleasantness
    that we had to endure.
    That's a very mature reaction for a child.
    Well, I guess it comes from--
    with the mother's milk.
    You sort of drink in the anxiety that you
    sense your parents have.
    You either overreact, which I think I did--
    I'm, today, a terrible worrier.
    And I'm sure it comes from those years.
    My brothers are totally opposite, which is good.
    Good for them.
    People should be different.
    Did your parents express concern about friends and relatives
    that they had left behind?
    Did they talk to you about that?
    I don't think so.
    It wasn't until we got to New York many years
    later that my father found out his mother had been killed.
    There was correspondence between my father
    and his brother Hugo in Amsterdam.
    And there were years when he sent him money
    because, as you probably know, there
    were years of hunger in Holland, even after the war.
    My parents-- I say my parents.
    My mother did not like this uncle.
    And she did not want to help him.
    But my father, I think, did some of that and perhaps
    behind her back.
    Now, this is your Uncle Hugo from Essen?
    Was he born in Essen?
    I think so.
    But he lived in Amsterdam at the time.
    What brought him to Amsterdam, I don't know.
    I think it was job related.
    And he married Christina?
    Yes, he married a non-Jewish woman.
    And they had one son by the name of Herbert.
    I think I met him once maybe 60 years ago
    and have no contact with him.
    I don't even know whether he's alive.
    He is, of course--
    if he is alive, he is one of the few Philipps who
    are Jewish who's got a name, as we do, with one L and two Ps
    at the end.
    Any other stories about Ecuador that you wanted to talk about?
    As an overall description, it was a very difficult time
    of life for you.
    It was a meager existence.
    We had enough to eat.
    But there was never any indulgence of any kind.
    Dessert did not exist.
    Movies did not exist for us.
    There was no real entertainment or leisure.
    It was you made do with what you had.
    And you made up your games.
    And I guess the equivalent of cowboys and Indians we played.
    But nothing pleasant to look back on.
    Did you make any close non-Jewish friends?
    No.
    No, I think the Jewish community stuck together.
    It was-- they heavily depended on one another if for nothing
    else, then moral support.
    And I think the Gentiles, who, then, of course,
    would have been Ecuadorians, just
    didn't fit in anyway if for no other reason
    then the language barrier.
    Did the Jewish community get together on special occasions?
    Or was it just by chance?
    I think just by chance.
    I don't remember attending any religious services in Ecuador
    at all.
    I'd like to think we had Seder at home.
    But I don't know.
    I cannot say with any certainty that we did,
    in part because my mother did not put a lot of stock in that.
    And so there was no religiously, no Jewishly oriented education
    in Ecuador?
    None whatever, no.
    I think my father tried his best to instill
    Jewish sense of belonging.
    But I think he may have done his own davening or praying himself
    at home, but nothing formal.
    And now they come to you and tell you
    you're going to be moving again.
    Yes, so I guess that was the dream that they all had,
    and that sounded very exciting, something to look forward to.
    And I think I was able to finish my second year of school
    before leaving for the United States.
    And what time--
    1941 we're talking about.
    And is it summertime?
    It was May.
    We arrived here in May 1941, a scant six months
    before Pearl Harbor.
    We were met--
    Your boat ride?
    Yes, oh, it was a Chilean steamer by the name of Copiapó
    back through the Panama Canal in the other direction--
    a lot of seasickness on my part again.
    If memory serves, when we pulled into New York Harbor,
    I was in the men's room throwing up into a big urinal,
    as I recall it.
    My parents, I think, and brother stayed on deck
    to watch the sights.
    They abandoned me to be sick by myself.
    And we were met at the pier by a colleague of my father's
    from days in Germany.
    And he had preceded us to New York
    and worked for the same company, the Kaufman firm.
    He was a bookkeeper or something of that type.
    His name was Paul Jonas, and he saw us through the immigration
    process, and whatever.
    What was your first sights, your first impression
    when the boat docked, when you came out of the men's room?
    I don't remember that so much, but I
    do remember my first impression when we were
    in a taxi riding in Manhattan.
    I saw the fire escape on the apartment buildings.
    And never having seen fire escapes,
    I thought they were the stairways.
    And I was immediately alarmed that one
    would have to walk up and down stairs
    on the outside of the building.
    And this Mr Jonas laughed, I remember,
    and explained to me that they were fire escapes
    and explained to me what they were for.
    And we went to the HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,
    down on the Lower East Side.
    And we stayed there for two weeks.
    Had a lot of black bread and herring and sort
    of primitive entertainment, including
    one motion picture, which was sponsored
    by Chesterfield cigarettes--
    very entertaining at the time, very insidious,
    now that I look back on it.
    Did you understand what it meant to come to America then?
    Did you feel more free, more open, more relaxed?
    Did it make a difference to you as a youngster?
    I think it did.
    I think my parents were less anxious in terms
    of being persecuted.
    But the anxiety was then replaced
    by the anxiety of finding work, finding a place to live,
    finding money.
    I believe that immigrants were entitled to stay at the HIAS
    only one week, other things being equal.
    And we, because we had no place to live,
    were allowed to stay an extra week until my parents found
    a place to live.
    Did you have any knowledge of English at that point?
    Not a word.
    But I immediately began teaching myself,
    not with books, but by reading signs and making connections
    between, oh, say, a sign Local, on the L. That
    was the Third Avenue L, I think, which
    still existed in those days.
    And that had made frequent stops,
    as opposed to the express, which skipped many stations.
    Signs in stores--
    I made the connection with what the sign said outside
    and the merchandise that was sold inside.
    So I started teaching myself, actually,
    a little bit of English like that.
    Again, my parents were gone, looking for work
    during the day.
    And I was in charge of my brothers.
    And then where did you go after you left the hotel?
    My parents rented a one-room apartment in a brownstone
    somewhere in the 70s, in the West 70s,
    right by the railroad tracks.
    Again, they were looking for work.
    My father actually started working for the Kaufman firm
    then, I think, at $10 a week, as a bookkeeper.
    I don't know what my mother did, actually.
    But again, I remember we were alone during the day.
    And one of my first memories was--
    and it must have been a detective living
    in that building, who came out of the building one day,
    while I was sitting on the stoop.
    And he showed me his gun, thinking that all kids must
    be fascinated by guns.
    Of course, I didn't speak any English,
    so I couldn't communicate with him.
    So it was kind of a--
    I wasn't frightened, or anything like that.
    There was no reason to be.
    He just wanted to engage me in a conversation.
    But I couldn't respond to him, because I
    didn't know any English.
    From there, we moved to 34th and Hillside Avenue,
    in the Washington Heights section of--
    excuse me, I am ahead of myself.
    No, we moved to 188th Street, again, a brownstone.
    We were on the second floor of a three-story brown house,
    brownstone house.
    I believe, in those days, they were not called brownstones,
    but railroad flats.
    I went to school there, PS 189.
    I was sent to the third grade.
    Can I back up here?
    And I just remembered something.
    While we were in the HIAS--
    I think we were there longer than two weeks.
    I must be wrong about that, because I
    was sent to a daycare.
    I was sent to a daycare.
    And by then, I was 9 and 1/2 years old and much older
    than the other kids, of course, spoke no English.
    But the teacher understood the situation.
    And I was allowed to keep my head up and read,
    when the other kids had their rest period, when
    they had to put an arm on the desk
    and cradle their head in their arm.
    I was allowed to read.
    But of course, I couldn't read, because I
    didn't know any English.
    So literally, I was the old man in this playschool, a daycare
    center, what it would be called today.
    What thoughts went through your head, hearing these sounds
    and not knowing what they meant?
    What is it like for a child to be surrounded by sounds
    that have no meaning to them?
    Well, kids pick up language.
    Young kids, particularly, pick it up rather quickly.
    But you never felt comfortable, of course.
    You never knew what was going on.
    And even years later, there were words
    that I had read and pronounced in my mind,
    but totally incorrectly.
    I always put the accent on the wrong syllable.
    I remember, for example, once screwing up my courage enough
    to ask a classmate, what does emergency me?
    And he didn't know what I was talking about.
    So I told him it's on the red truck.
    Oh, emergency, you mean, he said--
    things like that.
    It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned
    that the word that I thought was pronounced anemone was anemone,
    things like that.
    Until I heard the word, I had read it.
    I knew what it meant, but I didn't
    know how to pronounce it.
    Learning stickball, learning curve ball,
    learning marble games--
    we'd play with marbles on the street, baseball, of course.
    That all took a long time to assimilate and grasp and learn
    the rules and learn the physical part of it, which I never
    became very good at.
    And your parents now are following,
    of course, what's going on around them, in Europe.
    And you're a little bit older now.
    Did they talk that over with you at this point?
    Yes, now the conversations are constantly about the war.
    We did have a radio, a little Emerson.
    And I do remember once being in our living
    room at 188th Street, having the radio on.
    And there was an announcement that there
    would be an air raid.
    It was in the middle of my favorite serial,
    [? Hal Paragon ?].
    And our windows were taped up in those days with masking tape,
    to prevent shattering.
    Because we thought that there would be--
    I mean, it wasn't we.
    It was America thought that we would be directly affected
    by the war.
    And the radio announcer said, you should lie on the floor.
    I was home alone.
    I don't know why.
    And I remember lying on the floor,
    and my program was interrupted.
    And that was sort of my first real sense of the war,
    until the all clear sounded.
    And of course, there were many visits
    among my parents and their friends.
    And that was always the prime topic of conversation.
    These are refugee friends?
    Yes, indeed.
    Yes, indeed.
    Some of these friends--
    well, I shouldn't say some.
    One lady, who is now 92, still survives from those days.
    She's now a widow.
    They have no children.
    She lives in Santa Barbara.
    And my wife and I just came back from there to--
    we went actually to visit her.
    Because I've known her since I was nine years old.
    What was December 7, 1941 like for you?
    There are times when you don't remember
    whether an event of such significance,
    whether you are actually remembering the event,
    or you remember talking about the event.
    And that is one of those instances.
    It was a Sunday.
    I do believe we had the radio on when the first reports came
    through.
    Inevitably, you are going to wonder
    how we reacted, how my parents reacted, what they said.
    I don't remember.
    I'm sure it was scary, but I don't remember specifically.
    Did you ever have the feeling of it being hopeless,
    that you could never escape the war here?
    You left one city after another and country after another.
    Did that feeling of hopelessness ever get to you?
    It sure seemed that way.
    And when the war broke out in December of 1941,
    one had no idea that America would actually escape the war,
    in the sense of, I mean, we were in the war.
    But the war didn't come to America--
    quite the opposite.
    And you didn't have to be a refugee from Germany
    to be scared.
    And a kid, in particular, would be
    scared of the bombing attacks and invasion,
    and that sort of thing.
    And of course, you heard the adults
    talking about that, which only fed into that fear.
    And of course, you brothers still were too young for you
    to--
    Yes.
    Was there anybody that you could talk over your fears with?
    I had one friend.
    I have him to this day.
    His name is also Peter.
    He's 11 years old-- excuse me, 11 months older than I am.
    We met in Hebrew school.
    We've been friends ever since.
    And we were inseparable.
    He is more of a brother to me than my actual brother is.
    And yes, we talked about the war and what we would do
    and what we could do.
    And like all kids in those days, we
    saved tin foil and aluminum foil, whatever,
    and the newspapers, and things like that.
    Peter and I went briefly to the same school, PS 189.
    He then went on to high school of music and art.
    But we would meet.
    He was in a higher grade than I. But we
    would meet at intermission-- excuse me, lunch hour,
    and stand in front of this pushcart, which was just loaded
    with candies of all kinds.
    And we would have one penny to spend.
    And the amount of candy you could
    buy for one penny, the choices, you
    could not describe that to a kid growing up nowadays.
    It was an incredibly hard decision
    to decide what to spend our penny on.
    Was he a refugee child?
    Yes, Peter was a refugee child.
    His mother was a widow.
    He came here with an older brother.
    His father died of a heart attack.
    They had come via London.
    And as I said, we are very good friends to this day.
    Did you experience any anti-Semitism during the war?
    Did people mistake you for being German?
    Constantly.
    It was a never-ending struggle, first of all,
    because we were German, I think--
    so that was exacerbated after Pearl Harbor--
    then because we were Jewish.
    So we got it constantly.
    The kids on our street--
    in those days, of course, kids didn't carry guns.
    But there were fistfights with rocks thrown.
    There were chunks of ice thrown at us
    from the roof of the building.
    I managed to save up, still in 188th Street, enough money
    to buy a pair of roller skates--
    not in-line skates, but roller skates that you
    strapped onto your shoes.
    And the first day was a Saturday.
    And I tried them out in front of the street.
    These two toughs came over and asked to borrow the key.
    And they fled with it.
    I can still remember the face of one of those.
    I could still kill him.
    My skates were useless without that key.
    But that's the kind of thing that we had to endure.
    If we had a toy, it was usually given to us
    from a Jewish agency or some charity.
    If we showed up on the street with a toy,
    it was taken away from us.
    We were never safe.
    Peter Adler, my friend that I mentioned,
    he lived about three blocks from us,
    had to go through a little forest, believe it or not.
    This is upper Manhattan.
    There was a little forest.
    Now, of course, there are 30-story apartment buildings
    there.
    And there were always these guys waiting in wait for me.
    And it made the friendship with Peter very difficult for us
    to visit one another, because we always
    had to go through this gauntlet of tough guys
    who were waiting for us.
    Any religious training at this point?
    Yes.
    I went to Hebrew school.
    Peter and I met, actually, in the rabbi's apartment.
    That was our first religious school in this country.
    His name was Dr. [PERSONAL NAME]..
    He was a former rabbi of the congregation in Munich.
    I've recently learned that the Munich synagogue--
    and this is hearsay; I do not know whether it is historically
    accurate--
    the Munich synagogue was the first one
    that the Nazis destroyed.
    And when no one rose up in protest,
    the Nazis had a signal that they could
    go on and keep doing this.
    So we had lessons in Dr. [PERSONAL NAME] apartment.
    That's how I met Peter.
    There were maybe three or four other students
    in the class sitting around his dining room table.
    Subsequently, my parents joined the congregation
    by the name Beth Hallel.
    They used a basement in a dance hall
    on 183rd Street and Wadsworth Avenue--
    very, very primitive.
    The Ark was an old clothes closet.
    And on high holy days, they rented the actual two dance
    halls on a couple of floors above, the same building.
    It was a German Jewish--
    excuse me-- it was a German congregated refugee
    congregation, I meant to say.
    And the sermons were in German.
    The rest of the service was in Hebrew.
    It was not easy for a kid to follow.
    Were you speaking German to your parents still?
    Yes.
    We spoke German at home.
    My parents worked assiduously at learning English.
    They went to night school at George Washington High School.
    And they never lost the accents, but they became
    quite proficient in English.
    Did you study and become a bar mitzvah?
    Yes, I did.
    The bar mitzvah was in this basement room.
    And the party, if you can call it that,
    was in our one-bedroom apartment.
    And I then was living on Hillside Avenue.
    My mother made some canapes and a punch,
    and there were a few adult friends.
    It was very, very homey and simple.
    If I got any presents, I don't remember them.
    Did you think a lot about Europe during those years of the war?
    No, I don't think so.
    That quickly became a very blurred memory.
    And I just wanted desperately to become an American
    and to lose my accent and to look like the other kids
    and to wear penny loafers, which I couldn't
    afford for years and years.
    In fact, the first pair of shoes I wore in the United States
    were girls shoes, because my father's company, the Kaufman
    firm, got a shipment of shoes.
    There was something wrong with them.
    They landed on the doorstep of the company, which
    was supposed to be something entirely different.
    So he brought home these girls shoes,
    and my parents couldn't understand why I
    hated wearing these girl shoes.
    They looked like loafers, but they had higher heels.
    And it made me very self-conscious.
    So the first pair of actual penny loafers that I had
    was a great day in my life.
    [CHUCKLING] All right, so you tried to become an American.
    And then the war continues.
    And I guess, anything else during the war
    that you can remember that stays in your mind?
    The rationing, being sent to the store with the ration coupons;
    gasoline, we didn't have to worry about,
    because my parents didn't have a car.
    And I hated to go shopping.
    My mother always made me go shopping.
    It's hard for anyone growing up nowadays
    to remember that the first supermarkets, which
    were relatively tiny things, self-service places, men
    did not like to be seen shopping,
    let alone pushing a shopping cart.
    My mother made me do it.
    It also added to the many complexes
    that I've acquired over a lifetime.
    But I do remember the shortages and going
    from one store to another to get the things that we
    needed for our daily living.
    And now it's the end of the war.
    What were your feelings about that?
    End of the war in 1945 coincided, I guess,
    going to junior high school.
    My English was pretty good by then.
    I hadn't lost my accent, but I certainly
    could keep up with the work in the classrooms.
    And that was a good feeling.
    And it wasn't long after the war that my father's firm
    started sending him abroad.
    I didn't mention to you--
    I said earlier, my father started working at $10
    a week as a bookkeeper.
    But he had started with the firm at the age of 13.
    By the age of 18, he was already traveling
    in Europe for the company.
    He was a junior executive, actually.
    So working as a bookkeeper was an awful come-down for him.
    So after the war, he had an opportunity
    to go back to where he was, in the sense
    of the company's hierarchy.
    And he traveled a lot, first to Mexico and Cuba, And.
    then starting in about 1949, to Europe again.
    When the war was over, did you feel a sense of relief
    and a sense of more security?
    Did it make a tremendous difference to?
    On V J Day, the day the war ended with Japan,
    there was great jubilation, of course.
    And the kids on the street, as part of this celebration,
    threw stones at the streetlights and broke the bulbs.
    Well, [PERSONAL NAME] mother went out in the street
    and scolded them.
    And they yelled back at her, go back where you came from,
    you dirty ref--
    which was, of course, a phrase that we
    heard countless, countless times in all those years.
    Tough for a kid to see his mother treated that way.
    Another experience, my mother had a tomato thrown at her;
    you dirty ref, go back where you came from;
    very hard to see that--
    not to be compared with other kids
    my age saw in concentration camp, who
    weren't nearly so lucky.
    But nonetheless, these things leave a mark.
    What else did people call you?
    Dirty ref.
    Dirty ref was interspersed with dirty Jew.
    I mean, that was synonymous.
    I'm not sure that the kids even knew what they were saying.
    But that didn't make it any better.
    So now it's the end of the war, and you're
    in junior high school?
    Yes.
    And then what happened?
    My father started, as I said, making these trips.
    They were frequent.
    They were long.
    It added to my--
    or revived, if you will, my anxiety.
    His leaving was always difficult for me.
    Plane travel wasn't as commonplace and natural as it
    is today.
    Nowadays, it's like getting on a Greyhound bus.
    It was a big deal.
    And I cried a lot.
    I felt very insecure without him.
    I was very attached to my father.
    So--
    Were you closer to your father than to your mother?
    Yes, I was.
    My mother was incapable of showing love.
    I'm sure she loved us, but she wasn't capable of showing it.
    And so that was tough.
    By the time I went to high school in 1950--
    no, wait a minute, excuse me.
    I graduated in 1950 from high school.
    But anyway, by then, my parents had moved back to Europe.
    My father's firm in Rotterdam had invited him
    to a post as a director of the firm.
    And my mother got sick and tired of all the
    traveling that he did.
    So she went back to Holland with him in either 1949 or 1950.
    So they lived in Rotterdam.
    And my brothers moved to Holland as well
    and went to a school, a boarding school, in Holland.
    And I lived by myself during the high school and college years.
    Where did you live in high school?
    In high school, I lived in Hillside Avenue.
    I said I lived alone.
    That wasn't quite accurate.
    A cousin of my father's, an Auschwitz survivor,
    who married a German woman, came to the United States,
    had no place to live.
    And by coincidence, my parents were just
    leaving for Europe then.
    So they struck up a deal where they would have the living
    room as their bedroom, and I had the bedroom as my bedroom
    and living room.
    And the woman, Mrs. Hirsch, did the cooking for me.
    And so they took care of me, took care of my material
    needs, but certainly not my emotional needs.
    They didn't speak English, for one thing.
    They had, God knows, a lot of scars from the war.
    My parents did not come back for my high school graduation.
    I went to Brooklyn Technical High School,
    hoping I would become an engineer, which
    was a terrible mistake.
    And in 1950, my parents bought an attached house
    in the Rego Park section of Queens.
    And immediately, after moving into this house,
    they moved to Rotterdam.
    So I lived in that house by myself for five years.
    It took me five years to get through college,
    because I dropped out of engineering school.
    And so I had to start over again--
    a lot of loneliness during those years.
    I had to take care of the house and myself and go to college.
    Luckily, my good friend Peter also moved to Queens
    with his mother.
    And we lived within walking distance of one another.
    So we spent a lot of time together listening
    to classical music and going to dances
    and going on blind dates, and that sort of thing.
    This is tape two, side B, in an interview of Peter Phillips.
    And you had wanted to say something about the work
    that your mother had done.
    Between the time we came to the United States
    in 1941 and middle of 1950, when my parents moved to Rotterdam,
    my mother worked all the time to help support my father,
    because he wasn't making enough money to sustain the family.
    She did alterations.
    She knitted neckties.
    She made or assembled cigarette lighters for the army.
    These were flameless cigarette lighters.
    The whole family pitched in, by the way.
    She made cloth-covered buttons, at which
    she was very, very fast.
    And it was piecework.
    It paid pennies a button.
    She made powder puffs.
    I don't know if that even exists anymore.
    She made gloves that contained soaps, so that when
    a woman-- a mitten, actually.
    It went into the shower.
    The glove gotten wet.
    She could soap herself.
    Eventually, she actually did so well,
    that she opened a little factory about 162nd Street
    in an abandoned store, bought some sewing machines--
    on credit, of course--
    employed maybe a dozen women, so sold these powder plants
    and these gloves.
    For a brief time, my father gave up his job and joined her.
    But it didn't last.
    They were cheated by a man who had promised
    to be a silent partner.
    He did them out of their share of the proceeds.
    And my mother tried to patent--
    no, excuse me.
    She tried to interest--
    I won't mention any names-- a chain
    of stores, which is, to this day, a household
    word, household name, in this glove,
    this mitten, the soap mitten, hoping she could sell it
    to those chain of stores.
    They turned her down, but they copied the idea
    and immediately sold it.
    So my mother went back to working at home.
    Her desk, or workstation, was the lid
    of the stove in the kitchen.
    Because in those days, there were
    inspectors that came into the house
    to make sure there was no child labor, and such.
    So she was able, whenever the doorbell rang,
    she was able to stuff all her stuff into the stove
    and close it.
    She actually worked at night when we were asleep.
    She would fill the bathtub with cold water
    and sit at the edge of the tub and continue
    her piecework, her buttons, and things like that,
    while we were asleep.
    We were totally unaware of that until years later,
    when she told us about it.
    So she worked incredibly hard.
    And I have to give her a lot of credit for that.
    When the war was over--
    oh, no, let me back up.
    You said you helped make the cigarette lighters.
    What was your task?
    It consisted of various components,
    including a wick, an orange-colored wick,
    that was about a foot long.
    And you had to stuff it into a little cylinder.
    You had to assemble the wheel, the flint, and a spring.
    Everybody got involved with that.
    We all got involved with the buttons,
    as well, because the material had to be cut,
    the little round circles of cloth.
    And we got involved with the packing, the delivery.
    When my mother had an order for buttons,
    I had to take them on the subway to deliver them
    to the customer in the city.
    So we all pitched in.
    We had a drying rack in the kitchen.
    All the kitchens in those days had a drying rack for laundry.
    It pulled up on a pulley and then hung against the ceiling.
    And then it had clothespins.
    And that became part of the factory.
    My father hung the ribbons on there for the powder puffs.
    And it was rolled down, and we cut it into the various strips.
    We were always busy, always busy.
    When the war was over and news came out
    about the terrible death camps, and so forth,
    what did that do for you and your family?
    I'm not sure that we found out right after the war.
    I don't seem to recall anyone talking about it.
    Maybe we were shielded.
    I just don't remember.
    But again, there are things one remembers 50, 60 years,
    and there are things one doesn't.
    So I really don't know.
    I wish I could remember, but I don't.
    You went on to college.
    Your parents and your brothers were abroad.
    And then what happened with you?
    Did you go over to visit them?
    Yes.
    In June 1950, it was my graduation
    present to visit them in Europe.
    And I flew--
    KLM Lockheed Constellation.
    It was a grand experience.
    If you can imagine, you got a program, a seating arrangement.
    So you knew the names of your other passengers.
    You got a menu of this gourmet meal that they served you.
    I wanted to feel very grown-up, so I decided to take a pipe.
    I had no idea you couldn't smoke a pipe on a plane.
    And I was quickly admonished by the stewardess.
    They were called stewardesses in those days.
    The plane refueled in [PLACE NAME] and [PLACE NAME],,
    in that order.
    And it wasn't long after I--
    well, no, that's not true.
    The Korean War had broken out when I made that trip.
    But once I arrived in Holland, then I stayed the whole summer.
    It was a wonderful visit.
    My parents had a very nice apartment near the zoo,
    overlooking a canal, a picturesque canal.
    But the Korean War was on, and we were obsessed with that.
    And we got the International Herald Tribune.
    And I read that every day, listened to the news every hour
    of the day.
    My main concern, of course, was being drafted.
    And I stayed till, I guess, September, when
    it was time to go to college.
    And luckily, I was deferred.
    So I did not have to serve in the army.
    While you were in Europe, did you
    have any desire to travel, to go back to Genoa or Essen?
    No.
    I didn't.
    I made a number of side trips, weekend trips with my parents.
    My father was then director of the company.
    He had a chauffeur-driven Mercedes company car.
    And so we went to very nice places in Holland, in Belgium.
    Yes, we did go to Germany.
    Yes, we did, but not to Essen, not to Essen.
    What was it like to go back to Germany?
    It was a wonderful feeling to be an American in those days.
    You sat on top of the world.
    The dollar was almighty.
    People knew you were American just from looking at you,
    because we dressed differently.
    Did your parents feel German?
    No, my parents felt very American.
    They refused to speak German.
    My mother was the most chauvinistic American
    I have ever met--
    very, very proud to be American, yes, indeed.
    But my brothers had bicycles with a little rack in the front
    on the handlebar that had five or six little American flags.
    That attracted so much attention in Rotterdam,
    it made the front page of the newspaper.
    It was glorious to be an American.
    What were your thoughts and feelings about Germany then?
    I never felt comfortable among Germans.
    I don't do today.
    I try to bury that sense of unease.
    But particularly when I meet Germans of my generation,
    the first thought that flashes through my mind
    is, what did you do during the war?
    Can't get away from it.
    In fact, today we belong to a Swim and Tennis Club
    in Carderock Springs, about a mile from here.
    Many, many Germans belong to it, because it's
    near the German school.
    So there are many German diplomats
    who are members there.
    And although we belonged to [? this stuff ?] for 25 years,
    we've never spoken a word of German, Evelyn and I.
    We understand their conversations,
    are amused by them, but we have never
    let on that we are indeed conversant in German.
    You came back to college.
    And then can you summarize what your career took
    and how it went?
    I went to City College of New York.
    It took me five years.
    During the summers, I worked for the Kaufman firm.
    I became an instant hide inspector, in the fact,
    There were a lot of slaughterhouses
    in New York in those days, some on 10th Avenue.
    There's a composition slaughter on 10th Avenue, Richard
    Rodgers.
    There were a lot of kosher butchers in Brooklyn. .
    So I became a hide inspector and did some paper work
    for the company, office work.
    That sustained me during the summers.
    I actually wanted to go into the hide business
    and follow my father's footsteps.
    He wouldn't hear of it.
    He saw it as a dying business.
    And he was right.
    For his time, he didn't know that every luxury
    car in Bethesda, [INAUDIBLE] would
    have leather seats nowadays.
    But I graduated from City College.
    I had no idea what I wanted to do
    with myself, which was a source of great unhappiness
    to my father.
    So I volunteered to go to the army.
    I was going to be drafted anyways,
    so I sped up the process by volunteering in March of 1955.
    I went into the army.
    And as luck would have it, I was sent to Germany.
    I was stationed in Mainz.
    And as you know, my parents were living in Rotterdam.
    So when I was able to get a pass,
    a weekend pass, I was actually able to go on a train
    and go home, in effect, home being Rotterdam then,
    and getting a good home-cooked meals.
    Were you stationed in Germany because
    of your knowledge of German--
    No.
    --and your background?
    No.
    I thought I was being sent to Germany.
    I'd hoped I would become an interpreter.
    It turned out there were so many German-speaking GIs,
    there was a surplus.
    It was one of those lucky things, I think.
    I've had so much luck in my life.
    I actually had advanced infantry training,
    which is most unusual.
    It was most unusual for any college graduate
    to go through so much infantry training.
    I didn't know how to finagle my way out of it.
    But in the end, I was lucky, because I was sent to Germany.
    The other piece of luck I had was that they made a mistake
    in my records, the army did.
    They listed my occupation as teacher,
    which I didn't correct.
    I thought it my stand me in good stead.
    And indeed it did.
    Because about six months after I arrived in Mainz.
    The army was looking for former teachers.
    And they found two, another fellow and me.
    And what they wanted was to set up
    a program for the kids of the American families stationed
    in Mainz, a recreation program.
    So this other chap and I did that.
    And we organized girls' softball teams, gymnastics, outings,
    and that sort of thing.
    I actually became a Boy Scout. leader.
    I'd never been a Boy Scout, and the reason
    I never was a Boy Scout was that my parents couldn't
    afford the dues.
    But I was a Boy Scout leader.
    And I actually went on a hiking trip with the Boy Scouts.
    But because of my German, I somehow hooked up
    with the German consulate in Meinz
    and persuaded them to let me set up a parallel program
    for German kids, which I did.
    In my off-duty time, had square dances for German kids.
    Taught them how to square dance, went on
    outings, and that sort of thing.
    I actually met a young lady that I thought I wanted to marry,
    and became engaged, a Christian girl.
    It had a devastating effect on my parents.
    And being the dutiful son that I was, I ended it.
    She made it easy.
    Her father had died in the war.
    Her mother forbade her to go out with me, because I was a Jew.
    so by mutual agreement, we ended that.
    And it was a good thing we did.
    But it was interesting to be a GI, a German-born GI.
    In 1957, the German Army came into being again.
    It started with an officer corps.
    And the American army was looking
    for German-speaking GIs.
    So I was selected, of course, for a one-week program
    to indoctrinate these new German officers, who
    were going to be the cadre of the reborn German army,
    to teach them and train them in the use of American weapons,
    from tanks to machine guns to M1 rifles.
    It was an interesting week.
    The way it worked was it was one German-speaking GI
    with an American officer and a group of about 20
    or 30 German officers.
    Those were the groupings.
    They had forgotten to tell us where we were going to eat.
    Part of the program included showing them an American army
    field kitchen.
    And so I guided my 20 or 30 German officers to their tent
    where they were going to be fed and shown how an American field
    kitchen works.
    But I stood there outside, not knowing
    where I was supposed to eat.
    They had forgotten to tell us that.
    Well, this German captain--
    he was either a captain or a major--
    came to me, clicked his heels--
    some habits are hard to give up--
    and said, that if I had no other plans,
    the colonel, who was the highest-ranking member
    of their group, would be honored to have me sit with him
    for lunch, which I accepted.
    And the first question, as you might imagine,
    was how did I learn to speak German?
    Well, I was born in America, I told him.
    But before the war, my father worked in the German embassy
    in Berlin.
    And I made many trips, and I learned speak German.
    I was not going to be let on.
    And whether they swallowed it or not,
    they certainly gave the impression
    that they believed it.
    And I ask, why were you not going to let them know?
    I did not admit that I was born in Germany until very recently,
    very recently.
    As you could hear, I have a bit of an accent or inflection.
    And up until quite recently, when I was asked,
    I would say New Zealand, which is what people thought.
    They never pinpointed Germany.
    I wanted to erase that part of my past.
    I wanted to be an American in the strongest possible way.
    Somehow, admitting that I was born in Germany
    made me seem inferior.
    I cannot rationalize it or explain it any better than
    that.
    It's actually only since I started
    working at the Holocaust Museum that I not only admit it,
    but I'm now proud to say it.
    And when I orient groups of kids, the first question I
    ask them, does everybody hear anything funny
    about the way I speak?
    And all these hands go up.
    And that's how I get them hooked into my little introductory
    talk.
    I want to talk a little bit about that later.
    And then you came home.
    And what did you do when you came back to the United States?
    My parents were still in Europe when I came home.
    Again, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
    But some-- actually, it was one of the wives of one
    of the executives of the Kaufman firm
    heard I was back from the army and asked
    what I was interested in doing.
    And not me personally, she asked somebody, my father, my mother,
    and was told that I'm interested in books and writing,
    or something.
    I thought I might become a short story writer.
    So she had a friend on Esquire magazine, also
    a Jewish gentleman, Bamberger, I think his name was.
    And he granted me an interview--
    I only got this interview, of course,
    because of this connection--
    a nice gentleman, who asked me what I wanted to do.
    And I said, well, I want to work for a magazine.
    And of course, I had no experience, no training.
    And he very kindly told me, that since I had no experience,
    they had no job for me.
    But he suggested that I go over to The New York Times.
    He said, and I quote, sometimes they hire copy boys.
    So I did that.
    I think the following day, I went to The New York Times--
    again, one of these extremely lucky things.
    They must have had resumes by the hundreds,
    I imagine, for people who wanted to work for The New York Times.
    The next day, this young woman who interviewed me
    in the personnel office, called me
    and asked if I was interested.
    They had an opening.
    I'm sure she thought I was--
    she took a liking to me--
    not in a--
    I don't want to give the wrong impression-- a sexual way.
    She was an older lady.
    She was married.
    She just thought I was--
    she just liked me, I guess.
    There's no other explanation for calling me the next day.
    And of course, I jumped at the chance
    to work for the great New York Times.
    I mean, ever since I took the subway to school
    to Brooklyn Tech for Manhattan, there
    were two kinds of people for me in the world in the subway--
    the good guys who read The New York Times and then
    The Herald Tribune, and the tabloids, which I frowned upon.
    So this was a great, great opportunity.
    And in those days, copy boys did everything but write or edit,
    of course.
    It was a glorified errand boy.
    And my very first job was in the so-called white tower--
    excuse me, ivory tower, where the editorial writers sat.
    And if you can picture this, my job
    was to take a shopping cart, a supermarket type shopping cart,
    and distribute the newspapers to all these writers
    who sat around this bank of offices--
    The Times, The Tribune, The Daily News,
    some foreign newspapers.
    Then when I did that, I did the same thing,
    again distributing the mail; then the galley proofs.
    I bought lunches for them, coffees.
    I ran all kinds of errands.
    In fact, one day, I had the most unusual
    among many unusual errands.
    One of the editorial writers had become
    infected with a tropical disease, during World War II,
    in the Pacific.
    And about once a month, he had to go
    to the medical department--
    The Times had its own medical department--
    to have a test tube of blood taken.
    And I had to rush out to a Park Avenue
    specialist on the subway, in a brown paper envelope.
    It was still warm, the blood.
    That's the kind of things copy boys had to do in those days.
    A few months later, I heard of an opening in the Sunday
    department, which sounded more interesting, because that's
    where the magazine is, the Sunday Book Review, the Travel
    section [INAUDIBLE].
    I did basically the same thing, but the work
    was more interesting.
    And just as I had taught myself English years earlier,
    I taught myself how to be a journalist
    by watching and observing what other people did,
    making the connection between the clips I had
    to get from the morgue, the subject of the clips,
    and the finished story in that Sunday's paper
    that the writer wrote.
    So I learned a great deal that way.
    But there was no way to move ahead.
    I actually spent a total of three years doing that
    and worked my way to an assistant picture
    editor on the magazine, replacing a woman who
    had gone on maternity leave.
    And she decided to come back, so I was out of a job,
    and I had to leave.
    I got a job then on a small paper in New England,
    in Danbury, Connecticut, as a reporter and then editor.
    Did that for two years.
    And again, one of those very incredibly lucky things that
    have happened so many times in my life, one day,
    I got a call from The New York Times,
    and they asked me if I wanted to come back.
    I don't know where they knew I was.
    I had no contact with them whatsoever.
    I don't know why this happened, but it happened.
    And I went back to The New York Times
    and moved back to New York and worked on the news of the Week
    in Review--
    it's now called Review of the Week--
    as a writer, as a staff writer, one
    of the group of eight staff writers, which I
    did for four years.
    And then there was a change of editors.
    The job became boring.
    And I decided to leave.
    I got a job at Business Week magazine.
    I was a copy editor, did that for five years.
    When, again, a change of editor at the magazine,
    a man who was very unhappy with The Washington
    Bureau and the quality of the writing in The Washington
    Bureau, and I was offered the job of assistant news editor
    in The Washington Bureau.
    So by then, we had two daughters.
    And the company paid for our trip
    to Washington, which was a wonderful thing,
    because New York was not a place to bring up kids.
    And here we are in Bethesda, Maryland.
    I spent altogether 21 years with Mcgraw-Hill--
    Mcgraw-Hill, of course, is the company that publishes Business
    Week--
    and retired just about 10 years ago at age 55.
    I've been freelancing ever since.
    Let's talk a little bit about your work
    at the Holocaust Museum.
    What prompted you to be involved there?
    I first read about that there were
    plans for a Holocaust Museum.
    I had no idea what it was going to be like.
    I had no idea it was going to be this grand building, that it
    was going to be a government project.
    For some reason or other, I thought
    it was going to be this small endeavor put together
    by a group of Jews.
    And I knew I just had to be involved with it.
    And I didn't get anywhere.
    I made numerous phone calls.
    I don't know how I got the number that I was calling.
    I guess it was on L Street.
    It must have been a friend or a friend of a friend.
    I don't think they took me seriously,
    because when they asked what I wanted to do, I said,
    in all sincerity, I'll do anything you want me to do.
    I will even clean the bathroom.
    And I meant it--
    again, thinking this was going to be
    a small thing in some rented store, or something like that.
    This is the image I had, for some reason.
    So they ignored me.
    And I just kept pestering them and pestering them,
    until I was called for an interview
    and was in the first group of trainees.
    You said you knew that you just had to get involved.
    Why?
    Because the Holocaust, although I was not
    in a concentration camp, the whole immigration
    is the seminal event of my life.
    I feel very grateful to be here, to be
    able to talk about it, to have escaped with so few scars--
    a few psychological scars, to be sure.
    But compared to what others suffered--
    I read a great deal about the Holocaust,
    Evelyn doesn't understand how I can read all these books
    or why I read them.
    But I do.
    There's one on my table right now.
    When I heard about the museum, even though I didn't
    know what it was going to be like,
    I just knew I had to be involved.
    And I have missed a very few Thursday afternoons.
    When I was interviewed by the first director of volunteers,
    Betsy [PERSONAL NAME],, she asked me what I want to do.
    I said, no brain work.
    I want to be on the floor with the public.
    I don't want to be behind the scenes.
    And I've been doing that now since the beginning.
    And I truly look forward to my four hours there every
    Thursday.
    I am not doing more, in part because, although I
    did retire 10 years ago, I am actually still working,
    for all practical purposes, full-time.
    I make up for the time I'm at the museum
    by working at least one night a week,
    and sometimes more, and quite a bit on weekends as well.
    Why did you want to be on the floor with people
    rather than behind the scenes?
    Behind the scenes-- well.
    Two reasons, I think.
    It seemed to be studious work.
    It seemed to be too much like a job that I had left behind--
    in other words, table work, research.
    I'm not good at that.
    I just wanted to be in the exhibits, to be with people.
    I just had the sense I had to be there.
    It was difficult in the beginning.
    But I don't mind being assigned to the permanent exhibit, which
    doesn't happen very often anymore.
    I don't mind being there.
    It refreshes my memory of where things are.
    It always reinforces a sense of thankfulness.
    I just can't get away from that.
    And as you see, I get emotional.
    What do you think you bring to the museum that someone who
    did not go through what you--
    as she did?
    What I bring to the museum?
    Yeah, so another volunteer talking
    to people, who was born in this country
    and didn't experience what you experience-- what do you
    bring because of your experience?
    Unfortunately, not a great deal.
    I wish there were more opportunity to do that.
    I wish the museum would make better use of people like me.
    In point of fact, they have changed
    the orientations to make them now
    content-free, which deprives someone
    like me of talking to groups of kids about our experiences.
    I'm very sorry about that.
    I think my fellow survivors are equally sorry.
    I know that it added another dimension to my involvement
    with the museum.
    I would like to think it added a dimension to the visitors.
    I certainly had a lot of people listening
    to my every word in a way that no longer happens.
    And of course, the volunteers who
    had much more interesting experiences than I
    did have much more to tell, had much more reason
    to be utilized in that fashion.
    It is no longer the case, except for the Fannie Mae program,
    which I am not involved with, because, as I said,
    I'm not retired, and I can't devote that much time yet.
    Those kids do get an orientation,
    but it's only the kids in that program from the DC
    and Baltimore schools.
    It's not the people who come in from all around the country.
    So what exactly are your duties?
    Very routine-- manning the information desk
    and tearing tickets and holding the elevators,
    patrolling the permanent exhibit, answering questions.
    Unfortunately, most of the questions
    are not very intellectually challenging.
    When you walk into the museum from the street,
    does it do something for you?
    I'm home.
    I belong here.
    It's an incredible feeling.
    I have never had such a sense of belonging to anything.
    I feel I own it.
    Excuse me.
    I always cry.
    I cry very easily.
    I've been asked questions.
    In the beginning-- this no longer happens with me--
    in the beginning, when the museum first opened,
    there were a lot of survivors.
    I did a lot of crying.
    I was better at hiding it than I am now.
    But i think most of those people have come.
    It was a pilgrimage for them.
    And unfortunately, majority of visitors
    now are quite ignorant of the Holocaust.
    I hope they learn something.
    But it's a wonderful place to be.
    Has it changed you in any way by working there?
    I don't think it has changed me.
    I think it has reconnected me more with my Jewishness.
    Some people say I'm religious.
    I don't think I really am.
    I'm not exactly observant, but I'm very connected to my past,
    to my German Jewish past.
    I'm actually proud to be a German Jew.
    It's a twin prime, the Jewishness and the German-ness.
    I'm even now grappling with the question
    of whether I should forgive.
    I haven't decided yet.
    I have to do more reading.
    But I'm very grateful, as I said, not only to have escaped,
    that our whole entire family escaped,
    but that this museum exists.
    It has also been a source of some unhappiness for me--
    hard to explain, hard to rationalize.
    I feel very hostile to some people
    who have absolutely no interest in the museum, who I think
    should have an interest in it.
    And I number among those people like my brothers,
    who have no interest.
    Parenthetically, one of my brothers,
    George, is an Episcopalian.
    He converted.
    And I think there is no question,
    but that the strange relationship
    I have with my brothers stems from this.
    So people who I think should visit the museum
    and don't, other than those who feel
    that it's too much of an emotional experience for them,
    I can understand that.
    But people who have no interest, I just can't grasp that.
    I think it's a pilgrimage that certainly, every Jew should
    make.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Peter Phillips conducted
    by Gayle Schwartz on June 16, 1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    This is Tape 3 Side A. Tell us about some of the experiences
    you've had working at the museum.
    One of the first ones I was on the third floor
    of the permanent exhibit, PE, when this wiry little man
    came up to me.
    I was standing just by the Auschwitz barracks.
    And he was shorter than I am, probably about 10 years older
    than I am.
    He looked at me and he said, I slept in one of those things.
    That was very emotional for me.
    Then all of a sudden he grabbed my arms,
    pinned them to the side, and pushed me away from the exhibit
    and said, I know I'm not supposed to take pictures,
    but I want to take a picture.
    Why don't you just go away?
    Which I did, of course.
    And in those days not only was there no photography
    allowed but they didn't allow flash,
    and this man took flash pictures.
    I could see them out of the corner of my eye
    from around the corner.
    Well, a couple of hours passed and I was somewhere else
    in the museum, I think downstairs by then,
    and he came out of the exhibit and he recognized me.
    He gave me such a hug, I thought he would crack my ribs.
    That's one extreme.
    The other extreme just this past week I was at the information
    desk and a man in his 40s I would say
    came and asked, what is this?
    I answered as best as I could.
    Well, why is this here, meaning the museum.
    I answered that as best I could.
    How did you answer these questions?
    Well, I'm not sure I remember it because I
    was very uptight by then already because he
    was obviously hostile.
    I told him the museum is here to tell
    the story of the Holocaust.
    It is in America because America had a leading
    role in ending World War II.
    The third question was, well, are we
    supposed to feel sorry for these people, he said with a sneer.
    Luckily, the telephone rang just then, and I said, excuse me,
    I have to answer this call.
    And there was a caller from outside
    wanting to know about the availability of tickets.
    And while I answered that question this man disappeared.
    I don't think I could have answered the question.
    It was all I could to keep from hitting him.
    He had a pugnacious face.
    Luckily, there are very few of those.
    I've only had one before--
    I don't even remember.
    I erased it from my memory-- somebody who was hostile.
    Most people who comment at all comment positively,
    and they are either survivors who
    have survived the death camps who
    want to share that with you, want to tell somebody
    that they lived through it.
    And then there are those who are mostly native-born Americans--
    I don't mean Indians, I mean people
    born in the United States--
    who may or may not have had any knowledge about the Holocaust
    but who will come up to you shaking their heads and say,
    this is incredible.
    Things like that.
    That is very heartwarming.
    It makes it all worthwhile.
    When people come up to you and say
    they lived through part of this, do you
    volunteer that you too were born in Germany?
    No, I don't want to take anything away from them.
    They've had a unique experience.
    I am in awe of their ability to survive,
    and this is a little moment of glory, if you will, for them.
    I didn't choose a good word, probably,
    but I don't want to in any way detract from the--
    I think if I say that I shared some of your experience
    it would diminish their need to tell me their psychological
    or whatever it is they get from telling me.
    So I have a hard enough time not showing any emotion
    at that point.
    I have at times actually broken out and cried.
    The exhibits, of course, are sort of
    dimly lit so they may not have noticed.
    I hope they haven't.
    Do the volunteers who are survivors
    get together as a group, or is it an informal type
    of relationship?
    I'm very fortunate to have a very nice group of people
    in the Thursday afternoon group.
    We have become quite friendly.
    We have only socialized once at someone's home.
    That was about a year ago.
    We haven't done that.
    We probably should.
    I should take the initiative, actually.
    We are a very caring group.
    When somebody is absent, we all call
    as soon as we get home to ask, why weren't you at the museum?
    Are you OK?
    We keep up with each other with family stories, family
    pictures, and things like that.
    We switch off among ourselves on our assigned posts
    if somebody is tired and doesn't want to stand
    or isn't feeling well.
    We keep an eye on each other.
    We help one another out with tickets.
    It's a nice group of people.
    These are people who also are survivors, or is it a mixture?
    It's a mixture.
    There's one couple who have a story similar to mine
    the others are all American-born.
    But my question was is the group of volunteers
    who are survivors themselves, do they get together,
    or do you get together?
    I'm not aware of any of that.
    The museum, of course, has an annual volunteer appreciation
    night where we all get together.
    But these survivors as such do not get together
    that I'm aware of, no.
    I just meant a more formal acknowledgment
    of a bond that you all share, that you experienced or share.
    I don't think so, no.
    I really, in fact, don't talk much about it.
    Why is that?
    I don't know. , I think I tend to be obsessed is probably too
    strong a word, with the Holocaust more than others,
    but I can't get enough reading of it.
    In fact, I don't know how many people
    saw Schindler's List twice.
    I did.
    The first time I was so upset I think I missed a lot
    and I wanted to see it again so we rented it and watched it
    at home.
    Evelyn can't understand how I can
    read all the books that I do.
    I think it's because no matter how much I read
    I still can't believe it all.
    So I do.
    And I want to enhance my knowledge as well.
    Meantime, ironically enough paradoxically if you will,
    the exhibits themselves don't upset me the way
    they did in the beginning.
    You become used to it.
    It's only when I see other people
    getting emotional in the exhibit that I in turn
    become emotional.
    But having gone through it now for four years
    and knowing where everything is, it doesn't
    have that impact any longer, which is good, which is good,
    I guess.
    The first time I went through it with Evelyn,
    she couldn't take it.
    And although she was born in New York
    and did not have these experiences,
    she couldn't take it.
    We had to leave.
    Where are her parents from?
    Evelyn's mother was born in Berlin.
    Her father was born in a tiny town called [? Zuterne. ?]
    I don't even know where it is, but in
    the Western part of Germany.
    He was a physician in Berlin and they met in Berlin
    and fell in love.
    She, my mother-in-law, they're both deceased,
    was then married and had two sons.
    It was a poor marriage, and to make a long story short,
    she fell in love with Evelyn's father.
    And he came to the United States in 1934
    because he was no longer permitted to operate
    as a doctor in Berlin.
    He came to the United States and she followed him.
    He was one of these people who thought
    that even though he had been deprived of his livelihood
    he thought it would blow over and he sent her back.
    He literally sent her back.
    And during her absence, her husband,
    realizing that the marriage could not work,
    said he was willing to give her a divorce,
    but he left for Brazil with the two sons.
    So Evelyn has two half-brothers living in Brazil.
    I'm wheezing.
    The relationship with them is not very good.
    But anyway my mother-in-law came back and obviously
    they got married.
    And they spoke only German to her when she was born--
    she is the only child--
    Because they knew there were grandparents
    and they might have survived and they
    wanted Evelyn to speak German if and when
    the grandparents came to the United
    States, which indeed happened.
    Her grandfather also had a second marriage,
    and he and his first and second wives came to the United States
    after the war, lived with the Cohen's in the same apartment.
    The grandparents were hidden during the war separately,
    did not know of each other's existence
    until they met again in New York quite by chance.
    You obviously lost your childhood in many ways.
    And given such responsibility as a young child,
    do you think you ever got it back?
    No, I don't think so.
    I still have a yearning to have an electric train
    and I think I'm too old now.
    No, I don't, and I think my lack of interest in sports
    has to do with it.
    Although I liked to play softball when I was a kid,
    I went to camp and all that, I have absolutely no interest
    in sports.
    There's something infantile to me about sports respectively.
    The excitement that the sports engender nowadays,
    I just don't relate to it.
    You said you have two children?
    Two daughters.
    Two daughters.
    When your children were very young,
    at the age that you were when you had to move, did that..
    At that time in their lives did that
    make you think of your childhood even more so?
    I don't think so.
    I think in part because they are girls.
    I was very enormously lucky to have two children.
    They are the first members of my family born on American soil.
    They are true Americans.
    They are very much aware of my history, my family history.
    They are very Jewish, which I'm enormously pleased about.
    Our older daughter just got engaged
    to a very nice Jewish boy and I'm just
    a very, very lucky man.
    I have a wonderful family.
    And they indulge my interest in the Holocaust.
    They have seen the tape of the survivors now twice
    and they'll probably see it a few more times with me.
    Did you talk about your experiences
    to them when they were younger?
    When they were old enough to understand,
    when they were teenagers, yes, I wanted them to know.
    I wanted to drill into them the idea that--
    and I hope I'm not saying anything offensive to anyone
    now--
    I wanted desperately for them to be Jewish and to marry Jews.
    I didn't want Hitler to win posthumously.
    So far so good.
    How did you convey that to them?
    I talked about it ad infinitum, probably more
    than a father should have, but I kept repeating that message
    over and over again.
    And I think it, again luckily, they
    didn't rebelled against it.
    I think they understood how I feel.
    I think they are better children than I was to my parents
    because I left the Jewish religion and religion
    altogether for a long period.
    I didn't go to synagogue.
    I even worked on the high holy days sometimes.
    The conflict about the subject between my parents
    was a terrible emotional drain on me,
    but my mother retreating from all her history made it easier.
    So I made my father very unhappy,
    but I am now back in the fold, as it were, and go to synagogue
    and all that.
    I wish I knew more.
    I wish I could read Hebrew better than I do.
    It's at a very infantile stage.
    Evelyn and I belong to a Catholic-Jewish dialogue group,
    have been members for about 20 years.
    It's been a very enriching experience.
    We've made some good friends.
    We also belong to a chavurah, which is rather new.
    So I'm trying to be a better Jew, trying to make up
    for the years of neglect.
    How often do you think of what you went through
    and the childhood you had and the moving, the constant moving
    through the years?
    Quite often.
    But as you get older, the memories recede and that's
    only healthy as it should be.
    But I have reactions to situations in everyday life
    that are totally unrelated to the Holocaust
    and to my experiences, but they upset me.
    Any kind of uncivil behavior, coarseness, meanness,
    it upsets me terribly, more than is normal I'm sure.
    Any unkindness, any bad behavior.
    I have a phobia about driving on the Beltway.
    It's different from other people's phobias in part,
    I think.
    I'm not afraid of something happening to me.
    I get very upset seeing the aggressiveness, any violence.
    I go to the movies once a year on Halloween.
    I cannot stand violence and the coarseness of the language
    and all that.
    And I'm sure that's all because of my background.
    It's not a normal reaction, I'm the first to admit it.
    You mean because of the overlay of violence in your childhood.
    Absolutely, yes.
    I'm a vegetarian.
    Have been for about 20 years.
    I think that somehow is related.
    Also irrational, inexplicable, but eating meat
    involves killing.
    I do wear leather shoes and I have a leather chair,
    and so there's some irrationality in that.
    But my first years growing up were
    paid for by the leather business, my father
    having sold hides and skins that were made into leather.
    So I rationalize it that way, but I
    don't eat any animals at all.
    Are there any sights or sounds today
    besides what you talked about, aggressiveness,
    but anything more concrete that triggers
    memories of your childhood?
    I can't think of anything off hand,
    but you used the word sights and sounds.
    I cannot stand the music of Wagner.
    It's to me background music to a pogrom.
    Hate it.
    I know there are great fans of Wagner's music.
    I am not one of them.
    One of the operas my father took me to was Meistersinger.
    And for many years I liked Meistersinger.
    The libretto was different.
    It didn't have the gods and goddesses and all
    that fairy tale quality.
    But I no longer do.
    What about seeing somebody in uniform?
    That doesn't bother me.
    After all, I wore the American Army uniform myself.
    I was very proud of being an American soldier, particularly
    in Germany.
    I do get a little uptight if I see a cop.
    I still think of cops as being friendly.
    I don't think of them as the enemy,
    that they represent law and order.
    So I feel safer on the street if I see police.
    However, if a policeman came behind my car
    I would immediately think, Oh, he's after me.
    It just happened the other day some police car in my rear-view
    mirror.
    I couldn't imagine why he was following me.
    He wasn't following me, but I assumed he was.
    Are there any smells the bring back memories?
    Smells?
    No, not really.
    Nothing I can think of.
    What kind of a person would you be, do you think,
    if you hadn't experienced what you have?
    I think I would be much more self-confident, assertive,
    and more successful.
    I grew up believing that if you did your job,
    did it well, and just generally did
    what you were supposed to do, you would move up in the world.
    But it doesn't work that way.
    You have to blow your own horn.
    You have to be assertive.
    You have to do something just to stand out.
    I never could do that.
    I wasn't brought up that way.
    I always shrunk back.
    It's a shrinking back from authority in a way, I think.
    Always afraid of my boss, always afraid of my teachers.
    Respected them, certainly.
    It's deferential to a fault. Still am to this day.
    I think that's all because of the way I grew up.
    When you say the way you grew up, because of the way
    your parents raised you or because
    of the wartime conditions?
    It's a combination of both.
    I think basically authority is no longer respected
    in this country since 1960s, but I have that extra overlay.
    Give me an example.
    For about 15 or 16 years, I was an usher at Washington Hebrew
    Congregation.
    I couldn't take it anymore.
    I couldn't take the behavior of the kids.
    On Saturday afternoons when I ushered at a borough bar
    mitzvah, I would come home so upset by the behavior,
    a lack of respect shown to the rabbi, that I
    had two stiff drinks and so I decided it wasn't worth it.
    I get upset about things that don't upset other people.
    I get upset about litter on the side of the road,
    people tossing beer cans out the car window.
    I can't laugh anything off.
    But that's my own hang up.
    Did your father ever get any or did anybody in your family
    ever get any reparations?
    Yes.
    I myself got 5,000 marks for the disruption of my schooling.
    My mother got nothing because there
    was no record of her having worked,
    so she got no restitution nor the equivalent of the Social
    Security.
    My father got a very small amount of money
    and then signed a release saying that he would not
    make future claims.
    So my parents did not get a so-called renta,
    monthly payments.
    How did you feel about getting those 5,000 marks?
    I think it was the equivalent of about $1,000.
    I don't remember what I did with it.
    I didn't do anything foolish with it,
    that I'm sure of, unless I bought a stock that
    didn't do any good.
    But I never had a choice.
    My parents, my father, actually, applied for this money
    in my behalf.
    And I signed the document and I didn't question my father
    and I just got the money and that was it.
    It's very possible that he invested the money for me,
    that I never even saw it.
    I don't remember.
    You don't remember any particular feelings
    you had about getting money from Germany.
    No, but looking back with hindsight I
    would again take that money.
    I would not mind taking it, yes.
    I think my schooling was interrupted.
    I spent a lot of years trying to catch up,
    learning English and all that.
    And so whether 5,000 marks or $1,000 to make up for it
    I don't think so, but it was a token,
    and yes, I would have accepted it and I would again today.
    Have you been back to Germany since the '50s?
    Well, I was a GI, of course.
    I was in Mainz for almost two years.
    Since that time.
    Since then, no.
    No.
    I am now in touch with the city of Essen.
    I wish my German were good enough to write some
    to them in German.
    So we correspond by my writing in English and they write back
    in German.
    They have just sent me two books about the city.
    I'm hoping that they will invite Evelyn and me to visit.
    I did see the synagogue where my parents, or at least my father
    and I, went in 1956, I think.
    My parents showed me it was then a burned-out, bombed-out hulk.
    It is now rebuilt. I would love to go back.
    I would gladly talk to German schoolchildren
    about my experience, if that were a quid pro quo,
    and I've written to them, written to the city
    to that effect.
    I think they consider me too old by about 10 years.
    I have about 200 former residents of Essen,
    and they're taking them in very small numbers by your birth,
    starting with the oldest, obviously.
    So I think I have a while to wait.
    So you're not too old, you're too young.
    Excuse me, too young, too young of course, yes.
    Anything else you wanted to add or any message
    to your daughters?
    Anything that you'd like to say?
    The kids know how I feel and what experiences I had.
    Unlike most kids, they don't say, Oh,
    I don't want to hear about that again,
    which pleases me and makes me very proud.
    They both went to the museum.
    Our younger daughter went twice of her own volition.
    And I hope that they will remember me as a survivor
    and tell their children about it.
    It's a story worth telling.
    That's it.
    Thank you very much for telling.
    Thank you very much.
    Thank you.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Peter Phillips.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Peter Phillips
    Interviewer
    Gail Schwartz
    Date
    interview:  1997 June 16
    Geography
    creation: Bethesda (Md.)

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Phillips, Peter.

    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 June 16, 1997, in Bethesda, MD. The interview was transferred to the Museum's Archives on June 16, 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​/irn507566

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    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (4)

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    Oral history interview with Ernest Kolben

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Wollner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Wacz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erwin Forley

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernie Marx

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doris Rauch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gerald Rosenstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ivan Becker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Romana Koplewicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koplewicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irving Schaffer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Klein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Pisik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rosicka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Salomon Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tibor Vince

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Piorko

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Hildesheim

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Wolke

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ionel Ghelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irimia Solomon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Salus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irena Kirkland

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hans Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ludwig Jacob

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Artman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritz Schonbach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tibor Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Robert Kertesz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sia Hertsberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chava Frajhof

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Israel Frajhof

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Novakoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Celia Feldschuh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicole Yancey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frances Hirshfeld

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Moris Gluckman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margie Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emma Mogilensky

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaiah Henig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ida Henig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Silberstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joan Schwab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erwin Deutscher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Simon Pasternak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marion Friedman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jadwiga Dziekonski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas B. Gardiner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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 Tania Rozmaryn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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