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Oral history interview with Georg Keleti

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.8.13 | RG Number: RG-50.063.0013

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    Oral history interview with Georg Keleti
    Transcript
    I have no pictures which I can show you.
    That's all right.
    OK, we'll get started.
    [BACKGROUND NOISES]
    They are only very handsome people which are dead,
    so this I can bring here.
    But these are very handsome people.
    And when they were alive, it was everything good on the picture.
    OK, we're all set.
    All set, Jack?
    Mhm.
    Good.
    Dr. Keleti, when were you born and where?
    I was born on May 30, 1925, in Czechoslovakia, east Slovakia.
    The name of the city is Michalovce.
    Could you spell that?
    M-I-C-H-A-L-O-V-C-E.
    Was it a large city?
    No.
    How about approximately a size?
    Maybe, at that time, maximum, 10,000, 11,000 inhabitants.
    Were there many Jewish people in the town?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Approximately how many Jews do you think--
    This I don't know, because when I was five years old
    we moved to Spisská Nová Ves, where I describe everything.
    There were 850 Jews in the other city.
    This I know.
    But I was too young, that I remember or something,
    how many Jews were in--
    much more.
    What was your father's name and his occupation?
    My father's name was, in English, Louis.
    But you know, Louis, so translated.
    His occupation?
    Pharmacist.
    Pharmacist.
    Where and when was he born?
    Just the year.
    I know even the day--
    March 1, 1886, Uzhorod.
    How do you spell that?
    U--
    S-H?
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --Z-H-O-R-O-D. It belongs now to the Russians.
    Before, it belonged to Czechoslovakia.
    What was your mother's maiden name?
    My mother's maiden name was Silberstein.
    Silberstein.
    And when and where was she born?
    She was born on 11th of February, 1900,
    in Betlanovce, county Spisská Nová Ves, where we lived.
    Betlanovce is a village.
    That was in eastern Czechoslovakia?
    Too in eastern--
    In Slovakia.
    --in Slovakia, yes.
    Right.
    A part of Czechoslovakia--
    and, before, a part of Austria-Hungary.
    What language was spoken at home?
    At home, first we spoke German, because, from the Sudetenland,
    from Czechs, we had maid-- not "maids," rather, with children,
    so Fraulein was the name.
    And they were German, so we spoke perfectly German.
    Later, we spoke Hungarian.
    Did you live in the Sudetenland?
    No.
    No.
    Is it [CROSS TALK].
    Sudetenland, we are going to the Czech--
    no no, part.
    It belongs to the Czech.
    It is Czech, Moravia, Slovakia.
    And around Czech and Moravia is the Sudetenland.
    Which is really, unfortunately, German.
    The majority was German.
    How many children were in the family?
    We had two.
    My parents had two children.
    A brother, a sister?
    My sister, she was killed in Oswiecim--
    I see.
    --in 1942
    In Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    Oswiecim.
    Yeah.
    What were their names?
    Well, my name is Georg.
    No, no, I mean and your sister's name.
    Well, sister, Lya--
    Lya-- L-Y-A.
    Dr. Keleti, describe if you can the amount of or extent
    of Jewish ritual and law which you observed in your home.
    TIll the second war, we practically kept everything.
    We had kosher at home, which was more expensive.
    We bought, there were two kosher butcheries in the city.
    And we even changed [NON-ENGLISH] for Pesach.
    Really--
    You observed all the--
    Yes, Friday in the evening--
    I described in my book--
    I went to the synagogue.
    I had a good voice.
    I was in the choir of the synagogue.
    But really, myself and my father, here outside we
    were very, very religious.
    But inside we were not very religious.
    But you observed the traditions.
    Yes.
    We were fasting, Yom Kippur, and so on,
    until-- this was very until they didn't kill
    so many people from our family.
    After the war, my parents survived.
    So we didn't keep anything.
    We were very angry, somehow, angry that God didn't help us.
    [LAUGHS]
    How about your education?
    Would you describe--
    Education?
    I finished four classes of high school, which was named
    "gymnasium" in our country.
    But here is gymnasium where they make exercises,
    but it's interesting--
    Gymnázium, then.
    Yes, yes, gymnázium.
    And I interrupted-- they interrupted,
    because Jews could not farther continue the studies.
    So I learned at a printer.
    I am a skilled printer.
    And within one year, I saw how hard
    is the life after the German lost the war.
    I made, within half year, all four high-school classes
    and finished my studies within one year.
    In Europe is a very difficult exam, after the high school,
    before you finish the so-called matura.
    It doesn't exist in the United States.
    But I made everything up.
    We were about 60 Jewish children, all who survived,
    in this class.
    And they were very tired from the camps and so on.
    Only four finished.
    And I was one of these four, because I thought
    that it's extremely important and the life
    is easier than to work hard.
    You went on to the university, then.
    Because I was already older than usual, I went--
    At that time, you were about 20 years old.
    Yes.
    In 1945.
    20 years old.
    So I really missed already.
    And then, 21 years old, I began as a pharmacist,
    because they thought the easiest is to finish pharmacy.
    So it was one year you had to work in a pharmacy and then
    three years university.
    After one year that you are accepted to the university,
    you have to make again a very difficult exam.
    So I finished pharmacist, but then later I
    continued and made a doctor degree, a PhD,
    from Microbiology.
    And later, in '61--
    which doesn't exist here--
    I had a further degree named "Candidate of Sciences."
    So I got a Candidate of Biological Sciences.
    What university in Czechoslovakia did you go to?
    It is named Comenius University, in Bratislava.
    Comenius.
    Comenius.
    In Bratislava.
    Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia.
    Right.
    Did your father and you belong to any political organizations?
    Not during-- no, never, but I belonged later
    to a very left-oriented Jewish organization, Hashomer Hatzair.
    Yeah.
    Which many, many of the Hatzair people went to Israel.
    Many people went to Israel, but we were not very happy.
    Nobody told us-- the leadership, part of the leadership,
    went in time out.
    And somehow they have the feeling
    that it will be very bad.
    And they didn't tell us.
    So we remained at home, and we were against that--
    So you really were not aware of this exodus.
    No, no-- that it will be so bad, no.
    Because he told us that we will go for work and even
    it was so funny-- that you can take with you 50 kilograms
    of your belongings, and so on.
    And even the Jewish physicians examined the people,
    whether they are healthy for work.
    And I describe everything.
    [LAUGHS]
    And one guy we never knew, a young guy,
    they found out that he had epilepsy.
    So the physician told, OK, you are not accepted for this work.
    Of course, later, as I describe, they deported everybody.
    But their whole game was that they
    are told we are going to work to help the German in the war
    effort.
    Yeah, but on the exodus to Israel, you really were never--
    even though they had representatives of Israel
    there--
    It was--
    -- or Palestine, at that time--
    It was interesting.
    In the Slovak uprising, I was not there.
    I describe this too.
    Even Israelis participated and on the--
    You cover in that--
    Yes, I will not read so much.
    I will read four pages.
    That's fine.
    Well, not now.
    All these deportations.
    No, no, no, no.
    I will answer all your questions,
    when we will have time.
    Did you and your family experience
    any antisemitism before the Nazi--
    Yes.
    This I describe from my young age.
    We were extremely depressed.
    In my book, I repeat all the verses
    and all the speech of Christian children
    when we went to the Jewish school.
    It was terrible.
    When we came out, the same, in the street--
    during the so-called democratic first Czechoslovak Republic.
    The same was antisemitism was mainly amongst the Slovaks
    was always--
    At the time of the Munich Pact, in September 1938,
    did your father and mother consider
    leaving the country then?
    Yes.
    Mainly my sister got the first an affidavit,
    as I described too, from Kansas City,
    where my mother had a cousin.
    They owned a very big butchery.
    They were very rich.
    But the quota was so bad that my sister was already
    dead a long, long time--
    in '46 came that she can go to America.
    Oh, my.
    And then she got really in '40--
    we tried to beg our family.
    They were afraid that they were right when I see,
    now it was not so easy then to care about so many people,
    but it was interesting.
    They sent for my late sister only an affidavit, in '40
    already.
    And the quota was, in '46 she could go.
    Even when they know that it was--
    the what happened with the Jews and what will happen and so on.
    The chapter you want to read really covers this period,
    doesn't it?
    No, not the whole--
    I would cover--
    Does it cover from '38--
    Oh, no, I-- no, because this would be the whole book.
    It will cover the deportation in our city--
    Right.
    --only-- because I don't want-- you
    will see how terrible this was a party.
    I want to see--
    to tell you a little how it was.
    Were you familiar with the--
    1943-- with the underground called the Working Group,
    under Rabbi Weissmandel?
    Have you heard of Rabbi Weissmandel?
    No, but we heard--
    never.
    Because he was a famous rabbi who
    told to send to Switzerland the news what happened
    with the Jews from Slovakia.
    This is very interesting.
    I never heard this name.
    We heard only what happened because two Jews escaped
    from Oswiecim.
    And they--
    And that's in '44.
    And they went everywhere and told what happened
    and what is happening.
    So we really know, I--
    because I, in my book--
    You really were not aware of that, were you?
    I criticize the Jewish people, too,
    because we are not angels too.
    We are good people and bad people, like they.
    And so in-- there were a little concentration camp,
    I will tell, in Zilina, where a Jew was a very important person
    for them.
    And he was terrible-- this, we heard.
    He slept with young woman and with young Jewish girl,
    and he got them pregnant.
    When they were pregnant, he sent them
    out where no chance was to survive.
    Yes?
    Then when, after the uprising in '44, they deported all Jews.
    There were no exception.
    I describe what was the exception.
    So they killed in seconds in Oswiecim
    when we arrived, the Jews themselves.
    The Einsatzgruppen of the Nazis was in Slovakia.
    And they killed thousands and the Slovak uprising.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And the Slovaks, and the so-called Hlinka Guards,
    who killed, too.
    In 1940, there was an agent of Eichmann who came to Slovakia.
    And there was a Judenrat.
    Were you familiar with the--
    Yes.
    --Judenrat, with Heinrich Schwartz?
    I don't know Heinrich Schwartz.
    Does that name mean anything to you?
    This Judenrat is still--
    And Sebestyen.
    Yes, his name I heard.
    I described, too-- this Judenrat is not very--
    we don't know till today whether they helped the Jews
    or they played in the-- they helped the German.
    We don't know, because it was very hard.
    See, what is 100%--
    they saved their life till the uprising.
    Yes?
    All the members of the Judenrat, saved their life.
    They helped because they deported all Jews
    from the capital.
    Jews could not live in the capital-- in important cities.
    And then they opened kitchens.
    Yes?
    And they financed that the Jews have what to eat.
    Yes?
    So in this direction, they were good.
    But I guess so-- mainly with the registration, the names,
    and so on, addresses, they helped a little.
    [LAUGHS]
    And the Slovakia had a Nazi government, under Jozef Tiso.
    Yes.
    This, I describe.
    And you describe that, too.
    No, that is I will not read.
    I tell only one, what today, they are is terrible.
    That's what I write this book, because they
    are telling Tiso is such a good man and such a good man.
    I remember during the first--
    He was a Nazi agent!
    --the first Czechoslovakia, so-called Hlinka
    was a priest too.
    So he had a party, yes, a Slovak party.
    And he had always the meetings in the park before the church.
    So to catch the people was first a mass, so they were very
    religious, everybody-- after the mass,
    he began to have a speech.
    And Tiso had a speech, and Sidor,
    and the speech were always a terrible-- against Jews
    and against Czechs.
    So they were not so good people, already,
    during the first Czechoslovakia.
    Tiso was a Nazi satellite.
    Yeah.
    A Nazi agent.
    Tiso signed-- Tiso signed that Slovakia is--
    will be a free vassal state.
    And the first was when the war against Poland began,
    the Slovaks fought against Poland--
    with the Germans.
    And I remember NON-ENGLISH] from our airport they bombed.
    Hundred and hundred planes bombed Poland
    directly from our-- which was very close to Poland.
    In 1940, when Eichmann's agent came to Slovakia,
    and they worked with the Judenrat,
    but people were sent to labor camps.
    Were you and your father sent to a labor camp?
    No.
    No.
    This was very important.
    This, I will read [INAUDIBLE],, first came Jews who were
    politically--
    they were in the Communist Party or the Social Democratic Party.
    Such people they, put into camp-- into labor camps.
    Yes.
    But they built these labor camps-- but not
    people who were employed.
    There is a city or a town in eastern Slovakia
    called Saris Zemplín.
    No, Saris Zemplín are rather--
    we can compare to this so-called small states,
    it would be in the United States, is so called
    areas, where the Saris is.
    A lot of Jews-- many, many Jews lived there.
    Yes, in Zemplín--
    Michalovce is in Zemplín.
    Yes.
    In east Slovakia were a lot of Jews.
    Yeah.
    And for example all of Slovakia, in 1930 had 136,000 Jews--
    136,000 in Slovakia--
    Yes, but--
    --in 1930.
    But--
    A part, in '38, when the German took the Sudetenland,
    the Hungarian took a part, too, from Slovakia.
    Hugarians took that--
    And there were a lot of Jews too from east Slovakia.
    They had a lot of Hungarians who were living in that.
    Yes.
    Still now, it's again a very, very important problem,
    the Hungarian and--
    Mhm.
    They-- in 1943, there was a Jewish underground
    that smuggled Jews from Poland through Slovakia to Hungary.
    Were you aware that--
    No, I was familiar only that the Jews
    were smuggled to Hungary, because
    in Hungary began the deportation only in '44.
    Right.
    Correct.
    So in our country, in March '42, so they,
    when they could escape to Hungary they saved their life.
    Yeah.
    In February, March, 20,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia.
    In March began the deportation.
    This, I describe everything.
    You describe.
    This, I want to read you.
    And from March to October, 60,000 Jews
    were deported to Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    From March to October.
    Yes.
    Of '42.
    And then allegedly the pope stopped the deportation.
    They agreed with Tiso.
    And then, because there were certain exceptions, which
    maybe I will read too, with who has not to.
    And then in '44, when the uprising was when was--
    Who started the uprising in Slovakia?
    In Slovakia, we can tell that really it was--
    Spontaneous?
    --a cooperation-- it is not true what
    they are-- between the communists and London, really.
    But, because it was very interesting,
    this was a Catholic country.
    Everybody was Roman Catholic.
    But there are Slovak Lutherans too.
    And the Lutherans helped us.
    The Lutherans were always against the regime--
    the Slovak Lutherans.
    Against the Tiso regime.
    Yes.
    And everybody, they mainly.
    So mainly the generals who were in the leadership
    of the uprising were Slovak Lutherans.
    What--
    Were you aware of that uprising, at the time?
    We saw it.
    This, I describe in a other chapter.
    Well, maybe at this point you ought to read the chapter.
    And then I'll come back, for example, and--
    I will read, because it's not the whole--
    I will read because it will be too long.
    If it is the sad, maybe I will--
    Before [CROSS TALK].
    I cried myself, [LAUGHS] when I read,
    but, "The Slovaks first concentrated the Jews--
    the name is final solution of the Jewish problem
    in Slovakia--
    deportation of the Jews into the death camps."
    There will be errors.
    I am not so good in English, but you will understand.
    "The Slovaks first concentrated the Jews
    and deported the political--
    Read it a little slower than that.
    Yes.
    "The Slovaks first concentrated the Jews
    and deported the political, not reliable persons.
    The representatives"--
    This is 1942.
    1942.
    "And the officials of the Communist Party and the Social
    Democratic Party.
    In this group left also the country
    the manager of the big sawmill of Mr. Kurták,
    who were married, had two children,
    whose only surviving son was one time the mayor of the capital
    of Slovakia, Bratislava.
    The people were, in the beginning,
    transported into concentration camps in Slovakia,
    in the cities Poprad, Zilina, Sered, [NON-ENGLISH],, Nováky,
    Patrónka, Bratislava, and then into the worst starvation
    camps-- mainly in Poland--
    Oswiecim, Lublin, Majdanek, and so on.
    The second group of Jews who were deported
    were single girls of Jewish origin, age 16
    through 50 years.
    Now had to be deported also my late sister,
    who was my only sibling, four years older than I was.
    According to the official news, all the Jews had to go to work,
    and everybody can take with them 50 kilogram
    of personal baggage.
    My late sister was tall.
    She was a little rounder than thin.
    She had natural blonde hair and was quite pretty.
    She was smart."
    Take it easy.
    Just stop for a moment.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER] Want some water, Georg?
    No.
    We can go.
    "And she liked, like all young pretty girls, handsome men.
    That time, she had a boyfriend whose name was Judis Bum,
    and he had a very rich aunt named Mrs. Polack.
    Mrs. Polack was terrible against her nephew,
    that he wanted to marry my late sister,
    because that he was allegedly very young for marriage.
    He was at that time 23 years old.
    When he would marry my sister, he could save her life,
    because in the second group of Jews who were transported"--
    the first were the political-- you know, this what they marry,
    "transported" to the concentration camp in Poland.
    They didn't take, in the first round, married Jewish women.
    Judis survived the Holocaust, finished his studies
    as a physician, and he works as a physician somewhere
    in Slovakia.
    My mother sent my sister to hide in Michalovce,
    to the late sister of my father, Rene Galfalvy.
    She was the wife of a Hungarian gentry, a Christian, whose
    profession was veterinarian.
    Veterinarian.
    "I don't know why, but my father's sister
    sent my late sister after about two weeks back
    to Spisská Nová Ves, to our parents.
    My mother tried to fell on her knees
    and ask that the teacher's son Szekeres marry my sister
    and save her life--
    temporarily.
    It had to be only a marriage on paper.
    Szekeres son was about 37 years old and suffered
    from multiple sclerosis.
    Szekeres son rejected the proposal,
    but later he was also deported to a concentration camp, where
    he most probably was killed.
    And so on the end of March '42 came to our apartment members
    of the FS," which was the German Staffel--
    Germans in Slovakia-- "and the Hlinka guard and one official
    gendarme to pick up my sister.
    The county office had an accurate register
    about all Jews in the county, their date of birth,
    and addresses, who lived in the county of Spisská Nová Ves.
    The girls for deportation slept the first night
    in an old military barracks close
    to the railway station in Spisská Nová Ves.
    And on the next day, Saturday afternoon, they
    were in personal trains transported to the closed
    city of Poprad, under the beautiful Tatra mountains,
    24 kilometers from Spisská Nová Ves.
    In Poprad was a local concentration camp
    for girls from east Slovakia.
    I saw my sister the last time in my life
    on the yard in front of the railway station.
    She was not even 21 years old.
    Whether she survived her birthday,
    June 25, we don't know.
    She was deported then from Poprad to Oswiecim.
    She kissed me the last time and told me
    that I have to be a good boy and also good to my parents.
    I was not a very obedient child.
    It was the last time that our family talked to her.
    And I can tell only one thing.
    We gave her up.
    We presented her directly into the worst death which
    the history of mankind knows.
    She wrote once more a beautiful letter
    from the military barracks in Poprad,
    where the concentration camp was located in Slovakia.
    We could not visit her in Poprad,
    even that it is very close, because
    at that time was already a law that
    said Jews could not travel.
    Her last letter was kept by my late mother
    till her death as a greatest treasure.
    About after one week, the girls were deported from Poprad
    to the death camps in Oswiecim.
    We tried to write her letters, postcards, little parcels,
    but she never gave us an answer.
    I don't know when and how she passed away.
    Or in 1943 appeared in the newspaper of the official
    government of Slovakia, Slovenská Pravda,
    an article with photographs-- a camouflage--
    that the Jews have a good life, how they work,
    and nurses in white robes--
    Jewish girls that were smiling on the photograph.
    After the article appeared, my father
    told me that my poor sister is not anymore alive,
    because our beautiful cousin Erzika
    Silberstein, who survived the Holocaust, wrote a letter--
    they put flowers onto the grave of [PERSONAL NAME],, which
    meant indirectly that my sister died in the death mill
    in Oswiecim.
    It happened later that the teachers"--
    "a daughter of a tailor of Spisská Nová
    saw my sister on the Polish-Slovak border,
    which was, of course, not true.
    Only after the war, after the victory of the Allies,
    told my mother, also my late mother,
    that my sister is already dead.
    We don't know whether she died from typhus,
    from exhaustion, hunger, or from another disease.
    I was, my whole life, not interested or better
    telling afraid to ask the survivors how she passed away.
    I wish that her ashes are resting in peace.
    I wish further for her to dream about the beautiful life which
    she liked so much.
    My sister, as a matter of fact, had a valid affidavit
    to the USA.
    She got the affidavit in 1940, from our late aunt Lepri
    in Kansas City.
    She was an owner of a big butchery
    and slaughterhouse there.
    But the immigration quota for Europe
    was so low that officially she could emigrate in only 1946,
    when she was unfortunately already long dead.
    There were no exceptions for Jews.
    What I will write now, I don't think that any censorship will
    allow to publish, whether in a communist, socialist, liberal,
    or fascist regime or in a democratic state,
    for the cruelty was to the members of the Slovak Hlinka
    guard, the Hlinka Youth, the members of the Slovak
    [INAUDIBLE] Hlinka Party, has done against the Jews,
    with the fact that they participated and approved
    the deportation of Jews into the death camp,
    including also into the lists the Slovak policemen
    and gendarmes who didn't protect the Jews
    but in opposite they tried to help to murder
    and deportate the Jews.
    Actually I include further to the list
    the members of the Deutsche Partei,
    German party in Slovakia.
    I hate the idea of a free Slovak state whose fathers, uncles,
    and grandfathers made the great sin against all laws
    of the humanity.
    I feel further that I am, in my feelings, still a Slovak,
    and I love Slovakia as no other country in the world,
    but I hate the scoundrels-- which I don't know
    what kind of mother created.
    When there is a God and there is somewhere a heaven, then
    Hlinka who thought inciting against the Jews, Tiso
    and the others, who are guilty for the death of my sister
    and further 70,000 innocent Jews,
    they all will burn for the eternity in the hell.
    After the liberation, by the Russians, of Spisská Nová Ves,
    on January 26, '45, when our family found already
    out about the terrible death of my sister,
    one Sunday evening came to our apartment, which was very poor.
    At that time, this was rented for Mr. Ritzinger, who
    was before a Hungarian, later a German,
    but he was a fat man who didn't come to us--
    who didn't come to us, a schoolmate from my late sister,
    named Truda Les, who was married to George Dubinsky--
    also a Hungarian who changed it to German
    and who participated enthusiastically
    on the deportation and beating of the Jews
    in Spisská Nová Ves.
    My father was in bed, because, when
    we returned from our hiding, it was very cold outside,
    in the middle of the winter, and my late father
    got a frozen thumb on his foot.
    And half of the thumb fell from the sole down.
    This is very interesting.
    Trudi came with a Russian officer of the NKVD--
    Russian secret police-- and the officer
    asked my father whether he can tell a good word for Trudi's
    father, was also a German.
    Mr. Les was a member of the German party,
    and the Russian secret police wanted to put him into jail
    and deported into Siberia.
    My father mourned still for my late sister,
    and therefore he began to cry.
    I saw-- I saw something which I will never forget in my life.
    The rough secret police Russian officer began also crying
    [CRYING] and pat the head of my late father's--
    namely, my father show him the wound on his leg.
    I think that Mr. Les was never deported.
    To our greatest surprise, a Russian officer
    brought, the same night, a Jewish military physician,
    a radiologist who brought my father a sulfonamide powder.
    And the wound of his frozen thumb healed very well.
    I wish that these two Russian officers
    have always a good life.
    The husband George, of Trudi Les,
    escaped to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia,
    where the police caught him, and the so-called national court
    sentenced him to seven years in prison.
    He was released after five years and is alive most probably,
    with his family, till today.
    George's parents, his father was an excellent judge who
    was retired but were deported after the liberation of Spisská
    Nová Ves to Spisská Huta, where was temporary concentration
    camp established for Germans and Hungarians,
    swear at his son on his deathbed.
    He died in Huta for the son's sins against humanity.
    Now came the time for deportation of myself,
    Georg Keleti, a 17-years-old laborer in a printery.
    And the next day came that the time of a single deportation,
    young men into concentration camp, or all men from 16
    til 50 years-old-men and also childless couples
    at the same age.
    I went the same day, calmly, to work into the printery.
    And the bosses sent me the day to deliver printed forms
    into a co-op named "Future."
    What year was that?
    '42.
    '42.
    "On the way to the co-op, I was caught
    by a very handsome man named Martanczyk"
    I remember all names.
    "Martanczyks were farmers.
    They owned 25 hectars of land in the same village
    of Betlanovce where my late grandmother owned
    an estate which was managed by my late uncle, who
    was childless, and his name was [PERSONAL NAME]..
    The Martanczyks family was jealous
    and wanted to own a part of the estate from my grandparents"--
    "from my grandparents.
    Martanczyk was catching young"--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    No, I have--
    I will tell it by heart.
    Martanczyk was catching young Jewish boys,
    and he got for each boy $0.01--
    one crown.
    One crown.
    He took me home where, in my house,
    were expecting me already a gendarme, a German FS,
    and a Hlinka Guard member.
    And my mother tried something which was unbelievable.
    She ran to my boss, who was a Lutheran Slovak--
    into the printer.
    The boss went to the head of the county, a county head.
    And the county head decided--
    because he told that he needs me-- it was not true--
    that I can go.
    So I was released, and I won the first round.
    To tell the truth, the Slovak state
    had to pay for each deported Jew 5,000 crowns, which
    is about 500 DM.
    No, I will finish a little--
    Who did they pay that to-- to the Nazis?
    For the Nazis.
    Yes.
    And the end is--
    in June came the deportation of all people.
    Then we saw what happened, because there
    were all invalids.
    There were a man seen who had no legs, who sold newspaper
    on the street.
    He was deported.
    So everybody was deported who had no exception.
    The exception-- the exception was the following.
    You're still in '42?
    Or are you in '44?
    Still '42.
    Still '42.
    '42.
    And the exception was the following, mixed marriages,
    Jews and Christian.
    Each spouse, when they were Jewish.
    Oh, can I have a little--
    Water?
    --no, no, paper-- a towel or something.
    Oh, sure.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Both when they were Jewish.
    "All Jews who were baptized before the year '37.
    Further was a so-called highest presidential exception
    before the deportation.
    This exception was signed by the president of the Slovak
    Republic, the priest Dr. Tiso.
    The big presidential exception was
    given for a person who had great merits for the Slovak state
    or was a world-famous professional.
    But in the majority, this exception
    was provided to very rich Jews who
    bribed the echelon politics with much money, expensive furs,
    and jewels.
    My uncle, Desider, who was a physician,
    had also this exemption.
    He was the family physician of many high politicians
    also during the Slovak state.
    So my uncle was therefore saved.
    He got the exemption therefore.
    A few Jews saved their life before the deportation
    so that they got identification cards,
    or both fake identification cards from Christians,
    and behaved and lived like not-Jews.
    They named but they so-called Aryan papers.
    In the-- and this is the last part--
    "into the concentration camps"--
    "into the concentration camps abroad were also not
    deported three classes of Jewish soldiers,
    who were on mandatory military services
    but as Jews served only in labor military units.
    They built irrigation facilities in the western part
    of Slovakia, named Záhorie.
    They were not deported until the Slovak uprising.
    They can be thankful namely to the Lieutenant Colonel
    Dr. [PERSONAL NAME],, who was later the general procurator
    of the Czechoslovak Republic, a general of the justice service,
    and later law professor.
    Unfortunately, during the communism,
    he was accused of bourgeois nationalism
    and sentenced into prison and later released as innocent.
    Beside this were the so-called little exception
    provided by various ministers of the government of the Slovak
    state.
    They called them "white" exceptions.
    The Jews with the little exception
    were wearing only a small yellow-blue David star
    with a name economical Jews.
    OK, so that is what--
    it was a transport in [PLACE NAME],, this area.
    But this I have--
    I understand, from the end of July
    to the middle of September, the transports stopped, because
    of worldwide condemnation.
    They told us that--
    Let me get you some Kleenex.
    And then were usual, like you tell October transport, weekly,
    when they caught somewhere on the street and so Jews,
    without exception.
    And this lasted then from October till '44, till the--
    October, till the uprising.
    And after the uprising, they deported all Jews
    when they caught them.
    And they shot a lot of Jews.
    They shot so many Jews before the capital of the uprising--
    was a village, Kremnicka.
    They shot so many that the river, named Hron,
    was 10 days red from the blood of the Jews
    who were in the river.
    It was about 2,000 Jews were shot--
    children and [CROSS TALK]--
    Were you aware of the underground?
    There was an underground--
    There was an underground--
    --called the Working Group.
    What, Jewish underground?
    Yes.
    In Spisská Nová Ves remained so few Jews,
    most probably it was not there.
    And my boss, who saved my life, he
    was in the other underground who prepared the uprising.
    Now, you went into hiding, at some point, didn't you?
    Yes, we--
    When did that happen?
    This, I described too, but I will not read.
    Is too long.
    We were very, very poor.
    My father was hiding that, so they took our
    all furniture away and so on.
    And when it came to the--
    when we saw that we will lose the uprising,
    we went into the hiding.
    And we were hidden on an attic of a little village, where
    we were from September 3 till December.
    September 3, 19--
    '44.
    --'44.
    My father, my mother, and myself.
    And it was a sheep--
    no, who prepares sheep cheese--
    Who were the people who hid you?
    He was, before, with my grandmother, the head--
    or the sheep pastor.
    I don't know in English--
    Sheep farmer?
    Sheep-- no, who takes a sheep outside, not to eat--
    To the, where the sheep are slaughtered, you mean?
    Not slaughtered.
    They were mainly for milk and cheese.
    Right, right, right.
    In our country, and for wool.
    So they were living in the--
    he was in the--
    half a year in the mountains, that the sheep get very good
    for grass and so on.
    And that they had such local.
    And then they were down.
    But we were in a village which was not
    connected with the main ways, so main route.
    So therefore there were no German soldiers.
    They fed us, but then they kicked us out in December.
    And--
    December of '44.
    And we committed suicide, and we were in coma
    for two days, three days.
    This, I describe.
    But--
    You mean the man who hid you committed suicide?
    No, we committed suicide.
    When we returned, yes, in the-- they gave us the big barrel.
    They kicked us out from the attic.
    And we committed suicide.
    And somehow, three days, we were in coma.
    Then we woke up.
    We didn't die.
    We took sleeping pills made fun of them.
    Oh!
    I see.
    And then-- it was very interesting.
    This I described, but it would be too long to read everything,
    because is a whole book.
    So we went.
    In this Spisská Nová Ves was an exception.
    The German, after the uprising, they left.
    They sent from the airport, where
    was a camp, concentration camp, all old people home who remain.
    They didn't kill them.
    And we had an old aunt, 93 years old, which we--
    she was 89, then-- which we didn't take with us.
    So she was in our apartment.
    But in the front room were three German--
    one Gestapo, one Lithuanian SS, and one German SS.
    They lived with her, and they didn't do her.
    And we came through a village where they didn't found out
    that we are there.
    And I had there a friend who told me
    which entrance in the city is not guarded by Germans.
    So I--
    So you lived-- your apartment was in the same building
    with some Nazi [CROSS TALK].
    Yes, so we went-- not directly from the main entrance
    but from the rear, we went into the apartment.
    And my old aunt was not afraid.
    So we were hidden in one room, and in--
    There was a kitchen.
    And in the big room were the three Germans.
    And they never found out that they lived together
    there one month and two days.
    There were extremely important philosophical discussion
    between my aunt, who was very smart, and the Germans.
    Once, she-- in the end was evacuation,
    before the-- the Russians were very close.
    So she asked him, have I to evacuate myself?
    Hold on, Mr. Keleti.
    OK.
    Have I to evacuate too with the other people, with the--
    "Have I to" what?
    To leave the city.
    To leave.
    Yes, evacuate with the other.
    Evacuate.
    Evacuate, too.
    And the German SS told me aunt, you have not to--
    we heard this-- evacuate, because you will have a better
    life with the Russians.
    [LAUGHS] You stay here.
    The second was very important discussion,
    which is, when I put to write something
    in a newspaper, very interesting--
    between the Lithuanian SS and my aunt.
    He began to talk about--
    Was one of the soldiers a Lithuanian SS?
    SS-- who lived in the--
    and he told, you know what, aunt?
    We had a good life when we were free.
    We had a good life.
    We have the bad life with the Russian,
    and we have a bad life with the Germans.
    I am extremely sad that I am in SS, because they will kill me
    after the war, because we will lose the war, the Germans.
    My brother is happy.
    He is in America.
    He is in the American army and fight against the Germans.
    This was the word what we heard.
    [LAUGHS]
    In other words, you were in the--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Did the Lithuanian know you were in the room?
    No, never.
    Once, she was so, she want to change the German his pants
    in my aunt's room.
    And she didn't allow to go him in.
    And we survived.
    We had not what to eat.
    My mother was so--
    Your aunt was a remarkable woman!
    Remarkable.
    She lived--
    Remarkable woman.
    Was a God give--
    [LAUGHS] I am not a very religious man, but God is-- he
    gave her a life of 93 years.
    She was absolutely not afraid when we come.
    She was calm--
    90 years old, absolutely calm.
    Well, what did she do for food?
    And how did she get food?
    My mother went out--
    At night.
    --went out, yes.
    And she took-- it's like a peasant, went out and went to--
    first of all, they left--
    I don't know-- the young other pharmacist,
    the German left alive.
    He was a pharmacist.
    He gave us all medicines what we needed for free.
    And then the Jesuit priests--
    we didn't know that the Jesuit priests are not anymore
    so bad Jesuits as it was during the medieval, when in Spain--
    The Jesuits.
    --they killed all Jews when they didn't baptize.
    But today the Jesuits are one of the most progressive.
    And so they helped us.
    They sent us a little food.
    They were--
    And she never told anybody that we are hiding.
    And then the German left, you know.
    They left one day.
    But we heard already the fight between the Russian
    and the German.
    And we were alone.
    So we went for the three days into the basement.
    There we had beans and all things.
    We cooked what we had, and we were
    three days in the basement.
    On 27 of January, I heard--
    In 1945.
    '45.
    I heard the drummers.
    You know, it was, before, a drummer told all news and so
    official things.
    And the drummer told, to my greatest surprise--
    and he was with two Russian officer together.
    And he told, the head of the Russian army give an order--
    that first here--
    It was very interesting, too.
    The Catholic [INAUDIBLE] mass someday will be as usual.
    And the second-- I remember, there were 12 points.
    The second were-- however, the shops and stores are empty.
    And all stores and all [INAUDIBLE]
    has to open everything and begin to work.
    These were very interesting two orders of the Russians,
    immediately when they come.
    I didn't do the right.
    I ran out, because I lost about 60 pounds.
    They ran out.
    And to my greatest surprise, in the opposite was staying
    an [NON-ENGLISH].
    [NON-ENGLISH] were people who took over Jewish--
    these are businesses, only therefore because they were not
    professionals-- because they were Christians.
    Yes?
    And they got the business, then.
    They were either Germans or Hungarians or--
    Well, how did the Russians treat the Jews?
    In that time very good--
    excellent.
    We got a little-- such a good feeling,
    because they were very close, about 40 kilometers,
    the front was stopping, you know?
    And they didn't go further, about--
    how long-- about four months.
    So they put into jail all Guardists who were so brave
    and remained-- they were thinking that nothing
    will happen-- and all Germans, who
    made so bad things to the Jews.
    And then they took them into Siberia--
    not to have an enemy yes, between traitors
    close to the front.
    But they didn't take any Jews, or they didn't
    do anything wrong to the Jews.
    But the Russians treated the Jews decently.
    Absolutely, absolutely decent.
    We cannot-- you can see that the NKVD is the same what was KGB.
    He was crying when he heard what happened with my sister and so.
    You stayed in this small town, then.
    No, in Spisská Nová Ves part.
    How do you spell that, Spisska?
    S-P-I-S-S-K-A N-O-V-A V-E-S.
    Right.
    Mhm.
    I will give you, when I will have
    it translated into English.
    So I will give you a copy of the book--
    Very good.
    Before--
    How long did you stay in Spisská when--
    Spisská Nová Ves, with really until I was 20 years old.
    And then I went to continue my studies,
    to try to make in one year all four years of the high school.
    Your parents stayed there too?
    My parents stayed there very long.
    And then they moved to the-- they bought a house.
    They moved to the same city where I was, in to the capital,
    where I was later an assistant and an associate professor
    at the university.
    In Bratislava?
    Yes.
    I described, too, they were beating the Jews too after
    and that's the same.
    I have a chapter that the beating and killing, murdering
    of the Jews is continuing after the liberation, too.
    How about the man who worked for your aunt?
    And he took care of you.
    Then he kicked you out, in December of 1944.
    No-- for me, no, no.
    For my grandma, before.
    No, so-- so-- we were good friends,
    but we went when they really would--
    we would give them a lot, but really they--
    they kicked us out.
    So really they didn't save--
    it was only a miracle, that we saved our lives,
    that we returned to our apartment,
    and they didn't catch us, yes?
    But--
    Right.
    For three and a half months, they helped us.
    But then they were not really--
    Did something happen that caused him to change his mind?
    No, no, they never found out, the Germans.
    And they came to our pharmacy, to buy.
    My father gave them free medicines.
    They were nice people.
    But nothing happened.
    Was your father able to work in Spisská Nová something?
    Spisská Nová Ves.
    Spisska.
    Nova.
    We got--
    In pharmacy?
    We got an order, that we have opened the pharmacy.
    Now our [NON-ENGLISH] was a German,
    and he took away with a truck all the expensive remedies
    and all expensive things.
    So it was practically empty.
    So you remember, in Europe you prepare
    yourself a lot of remedies.
    So we had no sugar.
    So there was a factory of starch.
    And so we prepared, instead of sugar, with starch sugar.
    We got a little alcohol.
    So alcohol is very often in the medicines, too.
    So--
    And I worked, really, because the printery was open, too.
    I got already a whole salary, a nice salary,
    so I worked so much that till 2 o'clock,
    I worked with my father, then in the printery.
    And it lasted till I didn't begin to study.
    How did you get to Spisska?
    How did you get--
    Yeah, so, because in Michalovce my father was afraid,
    and he made a very bad business.
    He bought-- he sold his pharmacy and bought
    for very, very expensive the Spisská Nová pharmacy, which
    was not so good.
    He bought the pharmacy there.
    Yes.
    Again, how was the home?
    My mother got from her father-- how you call this in English--
    money, when you get married now.
    A dowry.
    Yes, 150,000 crowns.
    So this was always the basis, how to--
    [LAUGHS] in the old time.
    So that was his capital?
    Yes, and from this he bought the pharmacy in Michalovce.
    How long did you stay in this town, Spisska Nova Ves?
    No, I was-- after the--
    I really didn't-- in '45, the fall,
    I left and began to study.
    And then I returned for one year again,
    because I worked in-- because for the study you needed
    to work one year in the pharmacy--
    Pharmacy.
    --my father's pharmacy.
    Right.
    You went to West Germany, for--
    I-- I--
    How long did you stay in Slovakia?
    In Slovakia?
    You were there--
    No, in West Germany, I went no therefore.
    I went only--
    1968.
    '68 therefore, because it was so very interesting.
    A lot of Jews, when the Russian occupied Czechoslovakia
    on August 21, 1968, were afraid and left again the country.
    But in my case, it was a little different.
    I was a very good microbiologist.
    And I got this Humboldt award, stipend, so and so,
    only I didn't know, before.
    So I had so and so to go to Germany, to work, the very--
    What year was this?
    It was in '68, by an accident.
    But what you did between '45--
    you went back to school?
    But--
    I went back to school.
    But when did you finish school?
    I finished so that in in '40--
    yes-- in '46, I finished the high school.
    And then you went to university?
    And then I had to work one year in my--
    went to Spisská Nová, one year.
    Then I returned.
    Bratislava.
    Returned to Bratislava, finished in '50 the pharmacy study.
    And then I got a position at the university.
    And during the work, I made my doctor degree, a PhD.
    But you-- then you stayed 18 years at the university.
    I was 18-- yes, I was at the university 18 years,
    practically 21.
    It was official.
    I told officially that I am really--
    will return, yes?
    From--
    You got your PhD at the university in Bratislava.
    Yes, and--
    In microbiology.
    Microbiology.
    Yes.
    And were you on the faculty there?
    Yes.
    Until '68.
    '63, I-- it is a little different, in--
    like here, that you get your associate professorship when
    you have a lot of work, and then it's a committee, [INAUDIBLE]..
    There, you have to defend one work
    before a certain committee.
    Right.
    And then they vote for you.
    You had to defend your thesis.
    Yes, yes, it is a different, [INAUDIBLE] thesis.
    So-called docent is the name.
    But you spent 18 years at--
    I was 18 years there fore, and I was extremely happy--
    first time to go to work in a very--
    into abroad, yes?
    Your wife, you married in 1956.
    I--
    She was not Jewish.
    No.
    I see.
    But we had no--
    no marriage, only before the judge of magistrate.
    Yeah, you were married by a judge.
    By a judge.
    You were not married in the synagogue.
    I was not married in a synagogue.
    It was not married in the Catholic--
    I was--
    Your wife is Catholic.
    She doesn't-- Slovak Catholic-- she doesn't belong to any--
    Because as you said before, after the war
    you and your father and mother were not very religious.
    Absolutely not, because--
    You had no affiliation.
    Yes, because we--
    You had no affiliation at all with a synagogue or anything.
    Oh, we gave money for Israel and so,
    because when Father had his--
    Did your parents live with you in Bratislava?
    Not with me.
    They bought a house.
    My mother and my father passed away in Bratislava My mother
    passed away only now in '89.
    I see.
    '88, you said.
    '88.
    Passed away in '88.
    Yes, '88.
    And--
    Now, what made you go to West Germany?
    I got the official-- as I told you--
    which was, again, an award--
    the Humboldt stipend--
    Humboldt associate professor stipend.
    And [LAUGHS] I never--
    Today, I see that she was right.
    I wanted always return to my faculty and so on.
    And she didn't want, my wife.
    So she pushed me, even when I had no position and so on.
    And then came a professor from Pittsburgh named Feingold.
    And he had a lecture in Freiburg.
    And we talked together--
    Feingold?
    What was his name?
    David Feingold.
    David Feingold.
    He's not a urologist.
    He's a--
    I know.
    --a PhD.
    He came to--
    He came to lecture there.
    In Hamburg.
    In Freiburg.
    Oh, Freiburg.
    And I invited him for a good European meal to our house.
    And we talk about the whole, and they needed something.
    And I didn't understand what does it mean,
    assistant research professor.
    That means much less without tenure.
    And I agreed to come.
    And we came there to Pittsburgh and stayed in Pittsburgh.
    There were a lot of up and downs.
    I was unemployed, two or three times.
    Today, it's very up.
    You stayed in Germany two years.
    You came to America in 1970, then.
    Yes.
    And we stayed two years and one month.
    In-- in--
    Freiburg.
    You were in Freiburg.
    Beautiful city on the border of--
    What university was there?
    We were not on the university.
    Oh, you were not.
    We were the Max Planck Institute.
    It's very famous.
    Oh!
    Right, the Max Planck Institute.
    I've heard of that.
    Right.
    Very famous institute for all--
    Oh, yes.
    Society for--
    Physics and microbiology.
    Physics, even, everything, they have--
    yes.
    I don't--
    Your children were born, then, in--
    My both children were born still in Slovakia.
    My daughter is in Denver.
    She's a physical therapist.
    And my son is here in Montefiore, a physician.
    Right.
    Well, you talk about the Jewish codex,
    of the so-called Slovak Republic, when--
    what is the Jewish codex?
    This, I describe.
    But I will not find-- it would be last very long.
    I will describe you very slow.
    This was in 272 laws.
    This was in 1942.
    Two-- it was the worst--
    '42.
    --anti-Jewish book with law--
    Regulation
    --regulation-- in the whole world.
    It was never where even the deportation was approved.
    The Slovak parliament-- this, I described-- had 63 members.
    And it was very interesting.
    From the 63 members, nobody protested against.
    Only two priests went out, purposely not to vote for this.
    The two priests are dead, but they got them,
    from Israel, the highest award what
    exists, that they didn't vote.
    Otherwise, from the 63, 61 voted for the codex.
    It is relatively described in the lexicon as the worst
    anti-Jewish laws.
    Worse than the Nazi Nuremberg laws.
    More.
    More.
    Were the worst.
    More so than the Nuremberg laws.
    Well, because that were, I guess that the Nuremberg were not
    approved the deportation of Jews.
    Well, the Slovaks really did not learn from the Nazis.
    They were equally as bad.
    They could teach the Nazis about Jewish relations.
    That's what that the world has to know what are the Slovaks.
    Not-- I tell-- 90% are good people, but this 10%
    makes up a lot.
    They are nature-- they are one of the worst antisemites.
    Well, what happened to Tiso when the Russians came?
    He ran away.
    And then the Americans-- which, of course, today it's
    extremely returned, to the justice.
    He did what?
    They caught him, I guess so, in Austria.
    I see.
    And the US Army returned him, and he was hanged.
    He was hanged.
    And this is make known today they are extremely against--
    The Slovak Nazis were really very good partners
    with the Nazis.
    It was so that they got only the autonomy in '38--
    not yet Slovakia-- and already I describe, too,
    they were staying before our pharmacy on that day,
    Saturday when the day of the market--
    once a week was a market, yes, in
    the middle-- and tell everyone, don't go to buy to the Jew
    and so on.
    Already during the--
    It is a little more that we have to know about the whole thing.
    Here in Pittsburgh was signed a Pittsburgh agreement,
    in 1918, where they told that the Slovaks will
    get a parliament.
    There were Slovak courts and everything,
    when the Czechoslovakia will be--
    In 1980.
    1918.
    '18, right.
    And Masaryk, the famous philosopher,
    signs this, with Czechs and Slovaks, here in Pittsburgh.
    Yeah I know.
    I know about that.
    And unfortunately-- what I write it--
    they didn't kept this, which was a great error.
    And this developed the whole Hlinka party
    and the whole Hlinka this.
    This was a bad thing for the Jews,
    too, that the Czechs made a great error,
    that they didn't kept.
    Well, the Czechs have been good people
    to the-- there was never any real bad antisemitism
    amongst the [CROSS TALK].
    Oh, like-- so Masaryk himself is famous.
    There were an anti-Jew so-called Hilsner, famous,
    during the Austria-Hungary, like Zola protected Dreyfus.
    He's kept it.
    Yeah, right, right.
    Masaryk as a professor of philosophy protected Hilsner.
    They told that he murdered a maid, this Hilsner,
    and the Jews are putting blood into matzahs.
    Yeah.
    We have to.
    And he protected, and he told the truth.
    Yes.
    So in opposites even.
    But like I write in the book, too, a very--
    very interesting thing.
    My grandfather, late grandfather, had the estate,
    and they were very good friends with a Christian owner
    of the estate.
    And they prepared alcohol, too, from the potatoes,
    and they sent in the refinery.
    And they both were members of the board of the refinery.
    And once they sit before the house, and they spoke together,
    and they spoke about a third board member.
    And my late grandfather told this Mr. [PERSONAL NAME],,
    who was a Gentile, this gentleman he was sitting,
    is a great antisemite, yes, a third member of the board.
    And Mr. [PERSONAL NAME],, the Gentile, his friend, answered,
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]?
    You don't speak German.
    Right?
    No.
    So I have to tell you.
    Do you know what, Mr. Silberstein?
    How many Christians, so many antisemites?
    [LAUGHS]
    Oh yeah.
    So this is a--
    this, I write too in this book.
    So it is not 100% so, but a little--
    we are strangers, for the Christian--
    mainly for the primitive people.
    Is your book going to be published in-- what?
    Slovak?
    I got a very good-- from I don't know where.
    In what language is it going to be?
    I will write it-- it is in Slovak.
    I will write it, nicely type it.
    I will--
    And then will translate it into English.
    And then I translate it into English,
    and some English will correct it, and then I will type it.
    Allegedly, it will-- both.
    I will send, to Los Angeles, a copy.
    When did your parents die?
    My father died in 1970.
    He was 84 and 1/2 years old.
    In Bratislava.
    Yes, and mother, 80--
    was 88 and 1/2 when she died, in '88.
    In Pittsburgh--
    In Bratislava.
    But--
    Did they come to Pittsburgh with you?
    My mother was, six times, to visit, visiting me.
    I see.
    But my father was not anymore alive.
    But she lived in Bratislava, though.
    But she lived in-- she wants to come.
    This was too--
    She died in 1988.
    My wife didn't want her.
    This was too a big fight between my wife and--
    she wanted to come to me, because she was totally alone,
    you know.
    This is always-- mother in-laws and so.
    [LAUGHS]
    So your mother really never approved of your marriage,
    did she?
    No.
    She approved.
    She liked her very much.
    No, no, no.
    She approved the opposite.
    Her mother didn't come to our wedding.
    I see.
    Are your children raised in the--
    raised as Jews, though.
    So they are not Jews, but they have a Jewish feeling.
    My son came to [INAUDIBLE] Jewish school, so he had--
    he bought a menorah, [LAUGHS] and he had--
    and he is a member, I guess, of the Holocaust center
    in Los Angeles.
    I am not, but he is--
    he was also literature.
    My daughter-- they had not--
    no troubles, that they were half-Jews, you know that,
    so they don't know what is the whole thing.
    Do your children know your history?
    Yes--
    Have you ever told them what you're--
    --yes--
    --talking about today?
    --not so much as I describe.
    Somehow, you know, when I saw this,
    that the Slovaks are again loud and makes this that everybody
    is sorry about them and so, I feared
    to have to my duty to describe.
    It was in my self, that it has to come out, the truth.
    There is not one lie.
    It's a truth.
    And I-- I'm reading now Slovak newspaper.
    They are lying about the whole thing.
    They are giving the hand to the Jews, yes, but they are lying.
    You know?
    And the world has to know the truth.
    I write that the book is a contribution to the history
    of Slovakia-- in parentheses, to the so-called Jewish question--
    the Jewish problem--
    part autobiography.
    Well, they were only-- out of the 136,000 Jews in Slovakia,
    only 25,000 survived.
    Yes.
    And to survive not there mainly, because they went in time--
    a lot went to the West--
    Sure.
    --and to Russia, for example.
    So they went to Siberia and so.
    It's a sad story.
    Very.
    But we had not-- we have not to--
    we have to remember, because slowly the everybody
    will lie, Yes?
    And the truth will not come out.
    Well, the Slovaks have-- as you say,
    and you're the one to write the history--
    but the Slovaks have a long history of antisemitism.
    It all--
    It's pretty bad.
    In the whole Slovak literature, you can read--
    this, I described too--
    in all-- there are so many Shylocks, like in Shakespeare,
    Shylocks, that it is unbelievable.
    In all literature--
    You mean, Slovak Shylocks?
    Slovak, Jewish Shylocks, yes?
    Oh, Jewish Shylocks?
    Yes.
    So there are, you know--
    mainly the bad man is the innkeeper in a village.
    This is a bad Jewish man who sells alcohol
    to the poor Slovaks, and then he charges more.
    And when he's drunk, he sells water with a drop of alcohol
    and put on to the account of the client.
    [LAUGHS]
    But this is not true, though.
    It is so-- I describe so.
    Not only the Jewish innkeeper made the same thing.
    The same thing is making the Slovak Christian innkeeper.
    Of course.
    Always.
    When someone is drunk, he gives him water a little few drops
    of alcohol, and then he charges him,
    and the same even the Communist state innkeeper.
    So this is not only the Jewish.
    This is a habit which is, in the whole world, very well known.
    Of course.
    Because I cannot tell that Jewish didn't do it, generally.
    They have done the same as everybody does today, too.
    Georg, what has it meant to you to be a survivor?
    First of all, we were extremely happy
    that we survived, because we committed two times suicide,
    and really this-- and we survived.
    With sleeping pills.
    Yes.
    Phantom.
    And generally the life is very nice.
    Life is nice.
    And we were once when we were the happiest
    when, in '67 and '48, the Jews or Jews,
    Israelis won the war, that we proved that we are not
    so cowards that we are letting us only to slaughter
    and to kill-- that it's not true.
    But we hope that we will survive.
    And they cheated us.
    And I guess so, it is a duty to remember.
    And the next and next generation have
    to know what happened with us.
    Because I write, we were not only my grandmother was killed.
    I have five aunts from one side, six uncles from the other side,
    a lot of cousins, and so on.
    So, from the closest family-- but we were only four--
    was one member killed-- my sister.
    But then were a lot of uncles and aunts and so on.
    And we have not to--
    We have always remember, because they
    were very diligent and working people who didn't steal money
    or-- like they describe us.
    Yes?
    And what has America meant to you?
    First I was very--
    I was not satisfied with America-- years and years.
    And the satisfaction with America-- that,
    how democratic America, how a good country--
    came really-- you will laugh when-- when
    they kicked out the communists.
    And I saw that the Slovaks are again the same--
    the grandchildren, the children, and nephews
    of the same Guardists are again on the power.
    Then I saw, this is really a good and a fair country.
    And I was so many times down.
    When I would be down in Europe, I would be a poor man
    and I would lose everything.
    But when you know a little more, and you know a little more
    than any other else, yes, you are again--
    you are again up.
    This is really a very, very good country,
    which I never believed--
    believed--
    You did not think that a country like America
    could exist in the world.
    Is that what you're saying?
    This, I see now.
    When you are a little more diligent
    and know a little more than other, you are--
    I am extremely happy.
    And I told, when I was now in Slovakia--
    I saw the whole thing, in March.
    Now I was.
    I thought, when I have to lick the street to survive,
    instead, I have no work, I would never return.
    Rather, I would lick in Pittsburgh the streets,
    like to return again to Europe.
    Today I-- the last three, four--
    Are you saying that America restored your faith in people?
    America restored--
    Your faith in people.
    In other words, coming out of your background
    during the Holocaust, you lost faith in people being good.
    You will-- the first round, it was--
    when I came to America, happened with me a very sad thing.
    I was in the party, the Communist Party, a member,
    because we thought, when the Russians saved our life,
    our duty is to be in the party.
    Yes?
    I see.
    And I wrote down that I was in the party, when
    I had the first interview in the consulate in Switzerland.
    I wrote the truth.
    Right.
    Then we sold everything.
    We had no apartment.
    It was so-- we had already the ticket to the plane.
    And had again an interview to fill out
    something in Frankfurt.
    And there was written, when you are a member of the Communist
    Party you cannot get immediately a visa.
    That's right.
    But we have to wait of the decision of Washington.
    So I lied.
    And I lied that I was not.
    That you were not a member of the party.
    Yes, not a member.
    Now-- but I made the great error.
    [LAUGHS] It again was.
    What happened?
    But I made the great error.
    I had, with a Polish lady-- was a Polish American lady--
    I thought that everybody is a philosemite.
    I had the interview here on the immigration office,
    and I told all the truth-- that I was and everything.
    So.
    So I had to be, three years, deported
    from here-- normal deported, like I was deported
    from there, because I lied.
    Yes.
    And then was an excellent lawyer who helped me-- a lady.
    And after many--
    So I really got only in the [INAUDIBLE]..
    So I was afraid for the whole family.
    You were never deported, though.
    I was-- because I--
    I-- I fought back.
    This lawyer--
    Helped us.
    So first my family got the so-called green card.
    And then, one year later, I got.
    When I had my last court case with the immigration judge,
    so he was so sure that I spoke about my patent--
    anti-cancer drug-- with him, not what I lied or not lied.
    She made a very bad this.
    So I thought that here are antisemites still.
    She made a very bad thing.
    So I got that I have to leave the country within, in '70--
    no, '71-- till October, I have to leave--
    even they wanted to pay my [LAUGHS] expenses
    and so on, to only-- to leave and leave.
    So I had the trouble.
    So--
    And then, when I was unemployed, you
    know, here, three times, so it was very hard to survive.
    I survived this row, too, to stay there with the people.
    Then I met various who read books and this.
    So I saw the life too.
    But somehow, when I got old, now the last four years,
    I am quite lucky.
    Financially, I am quite good.
    I have saved money.
    And at work I got again that I am not
    anymore an adjunct associate professor because I work good.
    I, even I am 65 and 1/2, I am again an associate professor.
    And so I am happy.
    Now I see, when I think, the whole thing,
    that this is really the best country what--
    But you never became religious again.
    But you really were never religious.
    After I went to Dor Hadash, they were very nice to me.
    Dor Hadash is a very progressive--
    Yes.
    And there I, when my father died, I one year
    I told Kaddish.
    You say Kaddish?
    Kaddish, and they didn't want from me anything.
    And I-- because they saw that I have not so much money,
    and they--
    I could eat, Shabbos was.
    So I went to this.
    But from the time I am--
    I am not-- I am not--
    this is a sin, too, but I tell the truth.
    I'm not a great believer.
    I am a Jew in my heart, that I am for the Jewish state.
    And I will never lose this.
    I am-- I have a rather a Jewish nationality--
    Right.
    --like a religion.
    Half-- 50% of the people in Israel are like you.
    This
    Secular Jews.
    Yes, but they are in their heart.
    And they will fight and die for Israel,
    but they are not religious.
    I was extremely wondering--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    --when I saw my street this, that American people
    can be so religious.
    Again I see, with the long beard and 12 kids and 14 kids and--
    and so, that this exists in America,
    which is one of the most progressive country
    of the world.
    And you see such--
    But America consists of every kind of person.
    This, I found out.
    You have these evangelists and these groups and so on.
    Are you hopeful for the future?
    Yes.
    I like this-- for the last four, five, years,
    I like this country very much as no country.
    Because this is really a free country
    where you can tell what you want and to make what you want.
    So I-- and that what I write the book not so much
    for money or something-- that the world
    has to know the truth.
    Because they lie again, that Tiso
    protected the Jews and so on.
    Do you feel that survivors of the Holocaust in the United
    States should make their influence felt, should work
    and speak and organize to tell the story of the Holocaust,
    so--
    Yes, and the history and everybody has to know.
    You feel that survivors should do that?
    I guess so.
    This was the first country where I heard that they told--
    even the Germans, I was two years over,
    didn't tell that gas chambers were not.
    But this was the first that you heard, that a big group of they
    told that this is not true, this on the--
    So we are in the same, like, like Streicher, in Sturmer
    told, that it is not true.
    It is-- it--
    we have to explain.
    And mainly I am afraid, when we will not be here anymore,
    what will happen.
    Would you be willing to speak in the schools?
    Why not?
    It is my duty.
    I told-- my wife is angry, that they will kill you,
    the Slovaks, or do something.
    But I thought, I don't care anymore.
    Slovaks will never hurt you in--
    I don't-- because see, I tell the truth, how this,
    what they are done.
    And--
    But it is--
    It is very important.
    It is my duty to tell everybody what happened, because that it
    never happens again.
    Because it can happen again.
    Exactly.
    We have a number of survivors who do speak--
    go to the schools and speak to the high-school students
    and so on.
    And this is-- we think this is very important.
    It's mainly the intelligentsia who made something
    already, yes, and who--
    it's very important to tell--
    Yes.
    --what happened.
    What does the state of Israel mean to you?
    It's extremely important that the state--
    I am very afraid what will happen-- what will be.
    You've never been there?
    I, well, never been there.
    I was visited with my friends, from my friends--
    they came to me.
    And I am proud that it is, but it is very, very, very hard,
    the whole story, because we still [LAUGHS] subsidies
    were to the food in the Communist country.
    We gave them subsidies from here, which is very difficult.
    How long will it last?
    [LAUGHS]
    Well, thank you Dr. Keleti.
    Oh, so-- I'm Georg.
    You can call me when you--
    Georg, it's been a wonderful interview.
    And your story is a very important story.
    And it's very important that this tape--
    which we hope will be used in the future
    by students and scholars who are working on papers and books
    on the Holocaust.
    But it is exceedingly important that your story be on tape
    and held available for future use.
    When I will have the English translation--
    everything will be together--
    I will bring a copy.
    And then, when it will be published,
    I will try to approach the people in Los Angeles what
    is their opinion.
    Because this is a part which we don't know so much.
    This is not directly Germany or Poland.
    Right.
    This is another country where the whole situation
    was very, very bad.
    Mainly, like you mentioned, this Jewish codex
    was the worst in the world.
    It was not the worst thing.
    And logically, that each lawyer and each gendarme
    and each policeman can follow the laws against the Jews.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Keleti.
    OK. so I'm sorry that I was so long.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Georg Keleti
    Date
    interview:  1991 April 29

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Keleti, Georg, 1925-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh conducted the interview with Georg Keleti on April 29, 1991. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tape of the interview from the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh on June 17, 1991.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:27
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508036

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    Also in Oral history collection of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh

    Consists of 35 interviews of Holocaust survivors and liberators in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area.

    Date: 1989-1991

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    Oral history interview with Marjorie Butterfield

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    Oral history interview with Thomas Detre

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    Thomas Detre, born May 17, 1924 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family; living in a small town outside of Budapest; learning German and Hungarian as a child; being taught in a strict Catholic order and receiving lessons from a local rabbi; his Bar Mitzvah; not experiencing discrimination until he was a teenager; how his family was protected by early antisemitic laws because his father fought in WWI; how people disregarded the German invasion of Poland and how he was unaware of the anti-Jewish laws being passed; not being able to register for certain classes because he was Jewish; auditing medical courses in Budapest; different expressions of Judaism that were practiced in Hungary; how his family was integrated into Hungarian society and disdained the more cloistered orthodox Jews; how in 1942 the Arrow Cross became more violent and destroyed more Jewish property; how his cousins were drafted into the forced labor battalions; working in a Jewish hospital in Budapest in 1943 and learning from Jewish refugees about the camps and atrocities occurring in Nazi-occupied areas; the loopholes in the antisemitic legislation; being only vaguely aware of the ghettoization of Hungarian Jews; being arrested in 1944 and sent to a work compound; escaping with 100 other inmates and being captured later; being detained and correctly diagnosing a guard, who fell ill; feigning suicide and being sent to a rehabilitation hospital as required by Hungarian law; escaping the hospital and being recaptured; being sent to a detainment hall in Óbuda, where people were either sent to a Swiss safe house or a death camp; sneaking into the group of people going to the Swiss safe house; obtaining legal papers from a cousin and living in a safe house in Budapest; living with hundreds of others in cramped conditions; how in May 1944 his entire family was deported to Auschwitz and only one uncle survived; his reflections on the reasons for decreased Nazi cruelty in the last months of the war; his contact with the Zionist underground during his months in the safe house (he mentions Raoul Wallenberg); a Yugoslav partisan he lived with in the safe house; coming down with typhoid fever in the safe house; being liberated by the Russian Army in February 1945; learning about his parents via the bulletins issued by the International Red Cross; retrieving family jewels that friends had safeguarded and selling them for food; beginning his medical training three weeks after liberation; going to Italy to get his medical degree; immigrating to the United States in 1953; not experiencing survivor’s guilt and how it was luck that kept him alive; his belief that many Americans participated in denial en masse during the war; his questions about the effectiveness of widespread education on the Holocaust; and his belief that there should be more study of the psychology and behavior of groups.

    Oral history interview with Bertram Dinman

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    Bertram Dinman, born August 9, 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, describes his Jewish family; being affected somewhat but not greatly by the Depression; entering the army in January 1944; how his company was sent to Liverpool, England around the time of the Battle of the Bulge; being sent across the channel in December 1944; experiencing some antisemitism among the U.S. troops; being hospitalized for pneumonia; going with the 4th Army Division of the 3rd Army as an engineer; going through Eisenach, Germany to a small town and smelling rotting flesh; going to a small holding camp (Ohrdruf); how the troops killed the remaining German army personnel they found in the camp; the anger of the soldiers; how the troops rounded up the people living in the small town and showed them the inside of the camp; digging hundreds of graves and burying each body individually; taking inmates for medical treatment and giving them food and cigarettes; being discharged in June 1946; and his belief in Holocaust education.

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    Oral history interview with Fanny Federman

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    Oral history interview with Samuel Gottesman

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    Oral history interview with Dora Iwler

    Oral History

    Dora Iwler (née Zuer), born in 1923 in Chodorów, Poland (Khodoriv, Ukraine), describes her family; being educated in a Catholic school; becoming aware of antisemitism in her adolescence; how her father’s fruit store was expropriated; learning Russian and going to work for the Russian government; how the Russians discriminated on wealth instead of religion; how the Nazis arrived in Chodorów in the summer of 1941 and persecuted the very religious Jews, homosexuals, and Romanies; how a large Ukrainian population of her town collaborated with the Nazis; how her father made a bunker under a kitchen cupboard for the family to hide in; the deportation of Jews, including her mother, in 1942; how her sister was shot and killed while running away from Nazi soldiers; how one of her brothers was taken away; working as a gardener for a Ukrainian family outside the city during this time; being sent to a concentration camp (Janowska) near Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine);being assigned to a wheat field; witnessing the murder of 1,000 people one day and 2,000 the next; escaping the camp and running to Lwów; working as a janitor for an elderly couple and pretending to be a Christian; being recognized and turned in by a classmate; successfully pleading with the officers not to harm the couple with whom she had been living; being taken to a jail in Lonzski; being sent to a ghetto and a 45 km death march; being helped by a train conductor during the death march and escaping; resuming her Christian alias; living with a Polish family for six months; going to Sanok, Poland after the Russians liberated Poland in January 1945; getting married in February 1945; the antisemitism in Poland after the war; fleeing to Italy with the help of Haganah representatives in Germany; staying in Italy four years; immigrating to the United States in 1949; settling in Pittsburgh, PA; how her children know her Holocaust story; still having nightmares about the Holocaust; leading a secular lifestyle; and her reflections on persecution.

    Oral history interview with Herbert Joseph

    Oral history interview with Herbert Joseph

    Oral History

    Herbert Joseph, born in January 1923, describes his Byelorussian parents, who both moved to the United States before they met; graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in business; his secular-Jewish parents; being in ROTC in college; being sent to basic training in 1943; arriving in Le Havre, France; being a Second Lieutenant with his own platoon in the 80th Division; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; how at the end of 1944 he got sick from being in foxholes and was in the hospital for three weeks; fighting in Germany; arriving in Chemnitz, Germany at a concentration camp (Sachsenburg), which they liberated; being in Austria when the war ended; receiving a battlefield promotion and a Bronze Star for heroic action; hearing antisemitic comments when he was in the military; being transferred to the military police in Starnberg, Germany in October 1945; being transferred to Landsberg, Germany; his duties at the Landsberg Prison, which involved escorting convicted SS troops to be executed; the riot in the Landsberg displaced persons camp; returning to the U.S. in July 1946; being sent to Fort Dix; the horrors of combat and dealing with his experiences; how the civilians in Landsberg claimed to be unaware of the atrocities that were going on during the war; not being able to forgive Germany; and his friends who were in camps during the war.

    Oral history interview with Sara Kohane

    Oral history interview with Sara Kohane

    Oral History

    Sara Kohane, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes her family; attending public school for Jewish children in Poland; her semi-religious parents; the violent antisemitism in her town; the invasion of Russians in 1939; how food become more scarce; how the Russians left in 1940; being 12 years old during this time; how her brother served in the Polish Army as a radio engineer; having to learn Lithuanian; hearing bombs in 1941; how her father disappeared after he was told he would be shot; how her Jewish friends began disappearing; the creation of two ghettos; being told to leave their apartment by German soldiers; how their apartment super had all her family’s paintings; getting food from the nuns, who worked at a nearby candle factory; conditions in the ghetto; hiding with her family in an attic during a roundup of Jews one night and how she was shot in the arm and left for dead; how her brother was part of the resistance; smuggling food into the ghetto; digging a tunnel out of the ghetto, which her brother used to get out and join the partisans; being marched out of the ghetto and experiencing a selection process; being taken to a cattle car and traveling to Latvia; being sent to a work camp in Riga, Latvia where she worked for a year; conditions in the camp and the psychological impact on her; working on a sugar beet farm; going back to Stutthof; being snet on a march and how her sister came down with typhus; waking up one day, seeing Russian soldiers, and being told that they were free; the beatings she remembers witnessing in the camps; and life in the camps.

    Oral history interview with Edward Kosewicz

    Oral history interview with Edward Kosewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack La Pietra

    Oral history interview with Jack La Pietra

    Oral History

    Jack La Pietra describes being sent to England as a part of the 9th Air Force, Tactical Air Command, supporting the 3rd Army; being a pilot for The Black Widow (Northrop P-61); being in the Battle of the Bulge during December 1944; getting to Buchenwald but having to wait for the Russians; visiting the camp with some of his squad members two days after the SS had fled; bringing his camera and being accompanied by a guide and translator, Reinhold; writing a detailed letter about the experience (which he reads and shows accompanying pictures from the camp); conditions in the camp; the crematoriums and nearby nooses; giving the inmates cigarettes and chocolate; details about Block 36, where prisoners underwent medical experimentation; the Commandant of Buchenwald, Karl Koch, and his wife, Ilse Koch; a monument made by carpenter inmates; the murder of Russian soldiers at Buchenwald; his personal philosophy and family history; how he is a liberal Catholic with sons who are Baptist ministers; his daughters, one of whom is married to the journalist, Bill Curtis; how the trip through Buchenwald had a lasting effect on his life; and using his letter as a teaching tool.

    Oral history interview with George Lauer

    Oral history interview with George Lauer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edward Levant

    Oral history interview with Edward Levant

    Oral History

    Edward Levant, born in June of 1915 in Pittsburgh, PA, describes his Russian father and Austria-Hungarian mother parents, who came to the United States in 1910; how his family was Jewish but they were not very religious; experiencing antisemitism when his family lived in Ambler, PA; graduating from dental school in 1939; seeing the changes in Europe and the migration of Jews to the U.S.; joining the army and being placed on limited service because of his eyesight; being sent to Carlisle Barracks near Harrisburg for a "basic training" program for medical personnel; going to Liverpool, England on the S.S. America; going to Le Havre, France; landing in Normandy, France on D-Day with the 474th anti-automatic weapons; going to Verviers, Belgium via box car in December 1944 and the retreat of his unit after encountering a German offensive; how his unit was at the Ludendorff-Brücke in Remagen, Germany; going to Nordhausen, Germany; going to Dora concentration camp; conditions in the camp and speaking to the inmates; how his commanding officer wanted German civilians to dig trenches in which the bodies could be buried; experiencing open and latent antisemitism within the army; continuing on to Mansfeld, Germany; being changed to another unit; returning to the U.S. in December 1945 as an independent replacement; the importance of sharing Holocaust stories; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Albert Lewin and Fritz Othenheimer

    Oral history interview with Albert Lewin and Fritz Othenheimer

    Oral History

    Fritz Othenheimer describes his long lineage of German ancestors; living in Constance (Konstanz), Germany; how his parents owned a small menswear store; the rise of Hitler; the anti-Jewish laws passed; how father had to sell his store; how his parents took in a Jewish family from Austria in 1938 and helped them cross the border into Switzerland; how his family helped more families and he and his siblings took the people across the border because as children they would be less suspicious; his father’s friendship with a lieutenant of the criminal department and how this man helped get more Jews across the border; how on Kristallnacht all the synagogues were blown up and the Jewish men were taken to concentration camps; how his father was arrested and taken to Dachau and released a month later; immigrating to the United States in May 1939; how his family did not cross the border into Switzerland because they were scared of being sent to work camps there; and how he did not find out about the gas chambers used by Nazis until he was in the U.S. Army and going through Germany after the liberation. Albert Lewin, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes how when he was 16 years old his private school was closed and he was sent to a forced labor camp in Berlin; being sent to Auschwitz when he was 18 years old; going through the selection process; working as a mechanic in the tailor shop that repaired German uniforms; getting a number and a triangle tattooed on his arm; finding out later that 26 of his relatives were killed in 1943, including his grandparents, parents, and brothers; being transferred to Warsaw, Poland in 1943, where he was a runner for the German government headquarters; having to pull the gold teeth from dead prisoners in the morning and managing to steal a few, which he later traded for food; helping a man escape so he could tell the Russians to stop bombarding the camp; how the Germans found out about his role in the escape and tortured him by hanging him from his ears to make him talk; how he did not give up any information and managed to stay alive; being transported to Dachau and being sent on a death march for three days; being sent to Mühldorf; escaping from a transport train that was bombed in May 1945 and staying in a farmer’s house for a few days; his memories of the captain from Columbus, Ohio who liberated him; spending time in a hospital; immigrating to the United States in 1947; not speaking about his experiences until recently; and a note he wrote about Kristallnacht.

    Oral history interview with James Lynch

    Oral history interview with James Lynch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Marinelli

    Oral history interview with Henry Marinelli

    Oral History

    Henry Marinelli, born February 9, 1923 in Pittsburgh, PA, describes his catholic family; doing odd jobs during the Depression; how in 1939 when he was 16 years old the only information he received was from the newsreels at theaters; his focus on his education; being drafted in 1942; being in the 12th Armored Division; teaching his Italian parents English; going to Bristol, England on October 1, 1944; how his division set up a make-shift camp near a glider base four months after D-Day; how the men in his division were excited to fight; how his division relieved the 4th Armored Division; how they fought in several German towns; not leaving the front line from November 1944 to April 1945; how he had dreams of combat for many years after; being in a tank with four other men with a 105 Howitzer; the purpose of the German 88 tank gun; not being aware of concentration camps before coming upon labor camps; his response to the conditions; a picture he has of the bodies the Germans had burned; visiting Dachau after the war; only being in Landsberg for a few hours; going through German towns such as Munich and Berchtesgaden as well as the Brenner Pass, Austria; how his experience gave him more compassion for people; his views on American youth; and his advice on life.

    Oral history interview with Robert Mendler

    Oral history interview with Robert Mendler

    Oral History

    Robert Mendler, born on July 6, 1925 in Novitar, Poland (60 km from Kraków, Poland), describes his Orthodox Jewish family; finishing seventh grade before the war started; his many non-Jewish friends; the numerous Zionist organizations in his town; how his father did not believe Jewish emigration from Poland was necessary at the time; the pogrom in his village in 1936 organized by Polish farmers; being segregated in the classroom and having to sit in the back; living in fear; how his father went to the Russian side without telling the family; the creation of a ghetto in Novitar; being forced to wear white armbands with the Star of David; working on a super highway and a lumberyard; how they paid gentiles to bring them food covertly during the night; how the Nazis turned their synagogue into a warehouse and later into a movie theater; conditions in the ghetto; how the killing of Jews started in 1940 and the process of murdering Jews; the spread of information in the ghetto via word of mouth; the Jewish police force in the ghetto, which did not work with the Nazis; the deportation of Jews from the ghetto; the deportation of his mother and sister and the murder of his father; being sent to a concentration camp in Czarny Dunajec, Poland, where he stayed for nine months; how he is the only person in his family who survived the Holocaust; the Czarny Dunajec camp’s commander, Miller, and his aggressive dogs; killing one of the dogs, burying its body, and exhuming it periodically to eat the meat; being moved to a camp in Krakow (Płaszów); the commander of the camp, Geth, who rode on a white horse around the camp, randomly shooting Jews standing at attention; being in good health; digging up skulls while working and removing the gold teeth, with which he would trade to the Ukrainian guards for bread; still having violent memories of the Holocaust at night; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; building roads and cleaning canals at Birkenau; wearing a red triangle with a yellow bar, indicating to everyone that he was a Polish Jew; staying at Auschwitz until January 18, 1945; being sent to Gleiwitz, then experiencing a 10 day journey to Berlin, Germany in an open boxcar; how Czechs threw them bread from bridges during the trip; reverting to cannibalism on the dead bodies with the other passengers because they lacked real food; being sent to a camp at Pocking (subcamp of Flossenbürg); being 75 pounds when he was liberated; immigrating to the United States; seeing a member of the Gestapo on the journey to the U.S. and the man’s arrest for pretending to be a displaced person; why he thinks he survived; not being a religious now; and his distrust of Germans.

    Oral history interview with William J. Moran

    Oral history interview with William J. Moran

    Oral History

    William J. Moran, born on September 5, 1917, describes his catholic family; his high school education; the poor conditions his family lived in during the Depression; moving to a home with a Jewish landlord, Abe Joseph, whom he liked very much; attending the University of Pittsburgh; being drafted into the army in October 1941 when he was 24 years old; training at Fort Bragg, CA; going to Casablanca, Morocco in 1942; the campaign in Kasserine (Qașrayn), Tunisia; being under the British Army; his experiences in combat; the conditions in Tunisia; being in North Africa from 1942 to 1943; their biggest battle in Trolina; being sent to England and only being 140 pounds; being in a secret outfit; how the troops had a difficult time in combat because they had to carry food and equipment and sleep outside in the cold; the many mines they encountered during their journey; his thoughts on Eisenhower as well as the German general Günther Blumentritt; the campaign outside of Germany and losing friends in battle; the Ardennes campaign; going to Hallstadt, Germany, and killing two deer on the way, which they gave to an escaped concentration camp refugee; going to Nordhausen, Germany and not knowing there was a concentration camp there; his disbelief that the local Germans did not know the camp was there; his shock at seeing the camp (he reads a letter he wrote in April 1945 to the United Jewish Federation concerning this experience); seeing the surviving inmates; making the civilians of Nordhausen remove the dead bodies from the camp; having anxiety attacks after the war; and his feelings towards antisemitism and Jews.

    Oral history interview with Arthur F. Peternel

    Oral history interview with Arthur F. Peternel

    Oral History

    Arthur Peternel, born in 1915, describes his Yugoslavian parents and nine siblings; being raised Roman Catholic; his father’s involvement with the coal miner’s union and the local government; attending public school in Wilcox, PA; being 24 when the war started and joining the army; being assigned duties with a construction battalion; being transferred to the Air Force as a construction engineer; designing and constructing airfields; volunteering in the ground force as a combat engineer; going to basic training in Louisiana, Air Force training in Santa Rosa and March Field, CA, and officers candidate school at Fort Belvoir, VA; getting information from the radio and newspapers; how his first cousins in Slovenia were executed for resisting the Nazis; landing in Europe in 1943; his unit’s daring activity in Cassino, Italy, which won them a presidential citation; his role as a combat engineer, serving the 5th and 7th Army; receiving amphibious invasion training south of Naples; being in charge of underwater demolition; the route the 7th Army took through France; landing in Saint-Raphaël, France, where they encountered resistance; arriving in Germany during the winter of 1944-1945; the Jewish sergeants in his unit and the Holocaust experiences of their family in Europe; coming across Dachau a day after it was liberated; photographs he has from when he entered the camp (he shows this images during the recording); conditions in the camp; seeing the prison guards who had been killed by the inmates; the crematorium; seeing piles of bodies and clothing as well as urns of ashes; speaking with a local German girl who thought the camp was for prisoners-of-war; his shock and horror at the concentration camp; and his view of the role of the U.S. in the world.

    Oral history interview with James Priest

    Oral history interview with James Priest

    Oral History

    James Priest, born in Steubenville, OH on August 16, 1920, describes his family; being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942; being sent to Fort Benning, GA; being sent to Scotland on July 1, 1944; being in a medical detachment in Europe; landing on Utah Beach, Normandy, France on August 13, 1944; driving an ambulance with the 104th Infantry Division; arriving at Nordhausen on April 13, 1945 as a part of the 114th Infantry Regiment; the other men in his unit, including Jacob Danish and David Kenny; the conditions in Nordhausen; not believing that Gerneral Patton visited Nordhausen; seeing deserted mental hospitals in Europe during the war; returning to the U.S. in December 1945; how he was in the medical detachment because he worked in a funeral home before the war; feeling that the US troops were not trained on how to react to being prisoners of war or other atrocities; and his regrets.

    Oral history interview with Fred Roth

    Oral history interview with Fred Roth

    Oral History

    Fred Roth, born in Jersey City, NJ on October 8, 1921, describes attending an Orthodox temple with his family; enlisting in the army in 1942; his altruistic Austrian parents; having a lot of non-Jewish friends as a child; attending a Jesuit university in New Jersey; his family’s efforts to send money to relatives in Berlin, Germany so they could leave and hosting relatives when they emigrated; his strong relationship with his father; joining the aviation cadets in California; qualifying as a twin engine bomber pilot and receiving his training on B-25s (Mitchell bombers) and B-26s (Marauder bombers); graduating in September 1943 from the Air Force; being sent to Europe in June 1944 a week after D-Day; flying supplies into France for Patton's troops; being shot down during Operation Market Garden in September 1944; his resentment toward Field Marshal Montgomery for his failure during the operation; being shot at while they attempted crossing the English Channel; his memories of the bullets hitting his place, which sounded like a typewriter; landing in the ocean with his engines cut off and at a very low speed; the survival of the all four men in his plane; escaping to their raft and being blown toward Holland, Netherlands; surrendering to the Germans; keeping a diary along with his crew on any pieces of paper they could find; being interrogated thoroughly by the Germans, but only giving his name, rank, and serial number; being sent to Dulog Lauf, where there was a school that had been converted into a camp; being separated by military rank; being sent in October 1944 with his crew to Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany, where he was put into the Jewish sector of the camp; being liberated by the Russians on May 1, 1945; celebrating with the Yiddish-speaking Russians; liberating a small nearby labor camp; conditions in the labor camp, where half the inmates had died; being discharged on October 28, 1945; his emaciated condition upon liberation; and his strong faith and belief in the state of Israel.

    Oral history interview with Abe Salem

    Oral history interview with Abe Salem

    Oral History

    Abe Salem, born in Warsaw, Poland on December 3, 1919, discusses being the oldest of seven siblings in a strictly Orthodox family; attending religious schools; his father’s leather accessories shop; the lack of socialization between Jews and non-Jews and the common antisemitism; daily life; how the Jewish community took care of their own; one instance of antisemitism, during which a Polish soldier thought him too arrogant and smacked him; being politically active in the Jewish community; following Vladimir Jabotinsky’s movement and later the Chalutz (HeHalutz) movement; hearing Jabotinsky speak to a crowd of some 8,000 Jews in Warsaw in 1938 and the response of the crowd; hearing a speech by Wolfgang Wiesel, who told the Jews in 1938 to buy guns and take up target practice; speaking to Wiesel in 1943; social conditions in Poland for the Jews; how after the war broke out the Chalutz leaders fled to the free city of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); keeping informed by listening to German radio; trying to leave Poland by registering for permission to emigrate; helping to organize young adults but experiencing resistance; conditions after the bombings; the Chevra Kaddisha; being thrown out of a building by a German soldier; fleeing to Vilna; going between Vilna and Warsaw three times; being captured by Russians; being sent to a labor camp until 1942; being released; getting a false birth certificate; being caught with false papers and escaping; going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan; stealing food from a woman on a train; getting a job in a bakery; learning about the fate of his family in 1946; going to Breslau (Wroclaw , Poland) after the war to find Jewish children for the Chalutz organization; smuggling the children to Palestine with help from the Jewish Joint and the Jewish Brigade; meeting his wife in 1945; staying in Germany from 1946 to 1949; being brought to the United States by the Joint; settling in Evansville, IN; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Jack Sittsamer

    Oral history interview with Jack Sittsamer

    Oral History

    Jack Sittsamer, born in Mielec, Poland in December 1924, describes his Orthodox Jewish family; attending Catholic School and Cheder; having many non-Jewish friends; the Nazi invasion, during which the synagogue was burned and there was a roundup of Jews who were then murdered in a slaughterhouse; being made to do forced labor with his family; a selection process in March 1942, during which the weak and old were killed and the others were marched to the airport; being selected to be a worker; the deportation of his mother and siblings and the murder of his father; suffering from typhoid fever for three weeks, which he cannot remember but being taken care of by an inmate; working in a factory until June 1944; being moved to Wieliczka for a week then shipped to Auschwitz; being classified as productive workers and refused by Auschwitz; being sent to Flossenbürg; seeing the piles of shoes upon arrival and realizing it was a death camp; being showered, deloused, and given numbers and suits; going through another selection and being sent to Leitmeritz (Litoměřice), where the Luftwaffe was in control; working on the tunnels for an underground factory; being sent with 400 other prisoners to Mauthausen; the guards in Leitmeritz versus those in Mauthausen; being sent to Gusen II after two weeks; working 12 hour shifts in a factory, going to work sick often; being liberated on May 5th, 1945, at which point he weighed 80 pounds; staying with a woman in Linz, Austria; being helped by Austrians; going to Salzburg, Austria; staying in a refugee camp for a month; staying in a tent city in Bologna, Italy; going to Germany; living with a friend in Eggenfelden, Germany until 1949; registering to go to Australia; immigrating to the United States in 1949 after deciding not to go to Australia; being the only survivor in his family; losing a lot of faith; and how he may have to give a testimony at the trial for a commandant from the Mielec camp.

    Oral history interview with Pauline Staman and Rose Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Pauline Staman and Rose Weingarten

    Oral History

    Rose Weingarten (née Berkowitz), born on September 27, 1918, in Velky-Bockov, Czechoslovakia (Velykyĭ Bychkiv, Ukraine), describes the Jewish population in her town; her father, who was a storekeeper, and her mother; speaking Yiddish at home and Hungarian and Russian outside the home; her nine siblings; being in an Orthodox Jewish family; the importance of education in her family; how they kept informed by reading newspapers from Prague, Czech Republic; the lack of antisemitism before the war; her non-Jewish friends; how at one point Ukrainians came in and began to foment antisemitism; her father’s belief that the war wouldn’t come; the beginning of deportations in 1939, starting with individuals without a long ancestry in Czechoslovakia; being scared, but her father’s insistence that they stay put; a neighbor who joined the SS; the economic downturn in 1943; the deportation and murder of family members who lived elsewhere; having to sell the family business in 1943; experiencing antisemitism; being sent to a ghetto in Mátészalka, Hungary in April 1944; conditions in the ghetto and remaining there only a few weeks; the torture of individuals who tried to escape; being sent on cattle cars in April 1944 to Auschwitz; conditions on the train; arriving at the camp and having their heads shaved; her parents and their two grandchildren being selected for the gas chamber; being with two sisters and a sister-in-law in barracks 14 section C, from which they could see people going to the gas chambers; digging ditches; being in Auschwitz until December 1944; her feeling that she wouldn't have survived without her sisters; at one point being told that their barracks was going to be sent to a new camp and hiding with her sisters to avoid this transport; daily life in the camp; being beaten by a female guard for bringing an abandoned bowl of soup to her barrack; the pain of roll calls; the atrocities in the camp, including infanticide and people being burned alive; being sent to Lenzing, Austria in December 1944; working in a munitions factory, sorting refuse; being liberated in May 1945 by the Americans; being sent to a youth home called Jugendheim; being sent to Prague; getting married in 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and the importance of family to her. Pauline Staman (née Berkowitz), born in 1929, describes working for the SS female guards in Lenzig in from 1944 to 1945; her efforts to bring the refuse of the SS women's meals to feed her sisters; how the SS women took her for treatment when she got a bad infection in her hand; and immigrating to Israel and later to the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Mark Stern

    Oral history interview with Mark Stern

    Oral History

    Mark Stern, born on June 5, 1923 in Gorlice, Poland, describes his family; moving to Kraków, Poland; being raised Orthodox, though they were partially assimilated and lived in the non-Jewish section of the city; his good Jewish education; first experiencing antisemitism in 1937; how his father sent his brother to Palestine for his university education; hosting two of his aunts after Germany began its expulsion of Jews; the family’s unsuccessful plan to leave in 1941; conditions in Kraków after September 1939; his father’s escape and never seeing him again; taking responsibility for his family; how their bank accounts were closed and all of their valuables were taken by the German Army; the Germans taking over their business; moving with his family to live with his grandmother in the Gorlice ghetto; forced labor in Gorlice; the death of his grandmother; being selected with his sister and mother to leave in 1942, but trading his stamp collection to spare their deportation; his mother’s deportation despite his efforts; the deportation of his girlfriend and sister on the next transport and never seeing them again; remaining and working in the Hobag (Holzbau A.G.) labor camp making pre-fabricated housing for the German Army; the brutal conditions in the camp and the violence from German shepherds; being sent to Mielec camp, making parts for German airplanes; getting sick but not being killed; being an inspector of parts and assisting the underground with sabotage; being caught once but saved by his supervisor; prisoners’ talk of escape and the hanging of the leaders when the plan was discovered; hearing the shooting from the front lines of the war; being sent to Płaszów; going through a selection after several weeks; the terrible conditions during the journey to Germany and how half the passengers died; arriving in Flossenbürg and being completely dehumanized; thinking of his grandmother in order to remain strong; witnessing inmates commit suicide on the electric fences; working in an airplane factory; the relations between the prisoners and how everyone took advantage of the Jews, who were in the minority; being approached by a homosexual Kapo; being evacuated via train in April 1945 and the bombing of the train by American forces; going on a death march to Schwandorf, Germany, which lasted 10 days; being liberated by Americans right before the prisoners were going to be executed; how the Americans kept going and threw them food; being confused about his origins when he went to an American Red Cross station; going to Hamburg, Germany and drinking all day; deciding to go to Palestine to see his brother; meeting his wife in a displaced persons camp; staying in Italy from 1945 to 1947; learning labor skills at a kibbutz; immigrating to the United States in 1947; experiencing survivor’s guilt; and being the President of the Survivors Organization of Pittsburgh, PA.

    Oral history interview with Irene Sulzman

    Oral history interview with Irene Sulzman

    Oral History

    Irene Sulzman, born in Łódź, Poland on July 13, 1928, describes her middle class, non-practicing Jewish family; her pre-war life; antisemitism in Polish literature; having no Jewish education until she went to the ghetto; her parents’ view of Hitler; the shortage of food; not being allowed to attend school; the German treatment of Jews in Łódź; the creation of the ghetto in 1940; her mother’s desire for the family to stay together; conditions in the ghetto; having her tonsils removed in the ghetto without anesthesia; learning English; growing vegetables in the ghetto; the Jewish policemen and her parents’ view of Chaim Rumkowski; the psychological breakdown of Jews in the ghetto; rumors, the threat of deportation, and the black market; being deported to Auschwitz; arriving at the camp and going through a selection process; the loss of one of her sisters; roll calls; being sent to Bergen-Belsen for several weeks; volunteering to go to Buchenwald; the female SS German guards in Buchenwald; being chosen with her mother and sister to maintain the barracks; being sent on a death march in April or May of 1945; being liberated by the Americans; her feelings about the Germans and Americans at that time; going to Frankfurt, Germany; working in General Eisenhower's headquarters as a translator; finding her father; being slightly ashamed of having an intact family; meeting Eleanor Roosevelt; immigrating to the United States; her first husband and getting divorced; her current husband, who is also Polish-American; being open with her children about her experience; her children and life after the war; and her thoughts on being Jewish in the US.

    Oral history interview with David Zimmerman

    Oral history interview with David Zimmerman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arnold Zweig

    Oral history interview with Arnold Zweig

    Oral History

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