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Oral history interview with Arthur Menke

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0125.89 | RG Number: RG-50.233.0089

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    Oral history interview with Arthur Menke
    Transcript
    OK.
    You can just give me your--
    All right.
    --all over again.
    OK.
    My name is Arthur R. Menke.
    I was born in Hamburg, Germany of the year 1927,
    February the 23rd.
    Why don't we start off by telling me
    a little bit about your childhood and your parents?
    I had a father, whose age was at that time 55,
    and my mother at the time was 46.
    And I had a sister the age of 17.
    So you had one sister?
    Yes.
    And that was the only sibling?
    Yes.
    And we lived in a very nice neighborhood
    in Hamburg, Germany.
    And we had to leave that neighborhood and apartment
    we lived in because the Jews were no longer allowed
    in that part of town.
    It was too good for them.
    What time frame are we talking about?
    That was, I would say, in about '38.
    In '38, OK.
    1938.
    Before that time--
    I know this is going to be hard to try to remember, especially
    because you were that young, but--
    do you remember any of the time around the time
    that Hitler came to power?
    Oh, yes.
    Of course, I was born in '27, but I vividly remember,
    let's say, around '35.
    And that's when the Jews were starting to suffer.
    And it was maybe around '38 where the Jews, like I said,
    were resettled in another part of town
    and they were not allowed to shop at the regular stores.
    There was stores especially assigned to Jews,
    with the merchandise was higher.
    We were also-- of course, there were benches
    that said, no Jews allowed.
    And you couldn't go to a movie, and there
    were severe restrictions.
    I am sure you recall Crystal Night.
    And I don't think we have to get into that.
    No, I'm quite sure you know that.
    Do you remember things?
    I'm sorry.
    At that time-- you know, they arrested for--
    when the German official was killed in France, and that
    was supposedly a punishment, to punish the Jews for that.
    And that's how the Crystal Night originated.
    And at that time, my father was taken to a concentration
    camp near Berlin for six weeks.
    They came to the house to arrest my father,
    and he was at the place of business.
    And ordered my mother not to contact him.
    And they went and arrested him.
    And he came back after six weeks a broken man.
    He was hardly recognizable.
    And at that time, the Nazis taken
    over all German-owned businesses.
    And they were government-run.
    So my father's business-- he had a small factory
    producing rubber stamps and signs, et cetera.
    And that business was taken over by the government.
    And his bank account was taken.
    And we were only allowed to draw a small amount of our own money
    at the time.
    And my father was forced to work as a laborer,
    packing shoes in a factory.
    Do you remember, when you were a small child about this time,
    was there a lot of antisemitic overtones?
    By the children, especially.
    The antisemitism, I really--
    it was a lot worse in smaller towns first.
    Small villages.
    As a matter of fact, they were so bad
    that the people lived in smaller towns went to the bigger cities
    because there was less antisemitism.
    And now, the German Jew was, if you
    want to use the term integrated, he
    was not like the Polish Jew, who was discriminated by the Poles
    many, many years before the German Jew was.
    And so the German Jew was a proud German.
    Like my father fought for Germany in 1914/18
    and was discharged as a proud German soldier
    defending his country.
    And the German Jews were dumb enough
    to believe that what's happened to the Polish Jews--
    because the Polish Jews suffered sooner
    than the German Jews were-- they go, oh, this will never
    happen to us, we are German first before we are Jewish.
    But I recall being taken out of the school.
    And I was enrolled into a German high school.
    It was called Talmud Torah, which is still standing today.
    Was that a public school or a Jewish school?
    That was a Jewish school.
    Jewish school, OK.
    And they also had a girl's school where my sister went.
    There was a highly--
    a real fine school.
    And we were well-educated.
    Of course, that was too good for the Jews again,
    and the building was taken over by the Germans.
    And we were all forced into a small school with the girls.
    Of course, there was a lot of emigration at the time.
    And I might add this.
    My mother saw the handwriting on the wall
    and wanted to get out of Germany.
    But I recall saying to my father, you don't have a trade,
    it'd be difficult to start over again.
    So they procrastinated until it was too late.
    And we did apply to leave Germany in the late '30s
    but I was too late at the time.
    Sure.
    You said something earlier about being moved within Hamburg.
    Was that a ghetto that was set up in Hamburg?
    No, not really.
    It was a neighborhood where more Jewish people lived, really.
    Already?
    Already.
    Before the Nazis, OK.
    Yes.
    The neighborhood I lived in was on the other side
    of the river, which was a much nicer neighborhood.
    And they moved you into the--
    Yes.
    And I was not welcome at school either anymore.
    I was going to public school there.
    Do you remember when you moved what kind of feelings
    you had at that time?
    Well, as a child, it didn't bother us at all.
    But of course, it was a terrible thing
    for my parents to go through.
    Matter of fact, we had a real nice home at that part of town.
    And at first, we all lived in--
    the whole family-- in a rented room, you know.
    It was a trauma at that time already.
    OK.
    Let's see.
    You talked a little bit about Kristallnacht.
    Do you remember anything specific
    about that night that happened to you or your family?
    Well, I know that the all-Jewish businesses
    were totally destroyed, including huge department
    stores, like Hecht Company.
    Karstadt is the name.
    They're all over Germany today.
    And they'd taken furs and threw them in the river.
    Right.
    And you know, the Jewish cars the people owned,
    the automobiles were destroyed.
    The strange part is my father's business
    was not destroyed because people didn't realize
    that my father was a Jew.
    So his business was not destroyed.
    Is any reason for that they might not think he was a Jew?
    Or did they not just not know?
    Is that?
    They didn't realize that he was a Jew.
    And like I said earlier, the Jew, the German Jew,
    was first German, you know.
    And I want to show you a little incident where
    there was a Nazi holiday.
    Of course, the Jews would not display their flag.
    And my sister and I would make a flag out of a sheet
    and hang out, which my parents naturally reeled back in again.
    But just to give you a sample, like
    there was no different at the time.
    Right, OK.
    Do you remember much about any friends in school
    that you had at that time in your neighborhood?
    Especially from the children that I'm kind of interested in,
    about if there were any antisemitic.
    Yes, because they were agitated by their parents.
    And we had to wear a star of David,
    with the name Jew written in it.
    And there with the letters were made in such a way
    that it looked like Hebrew.
    You know, it says in German Jew in there.
    And it had to be worn on the outer clothes.
    From what time did this?
    That started also in the late '30s.
    Late '30s.
    I would say '38, maybe.
    And kids would throw stones.
    You know, kids are cruel.
    And not being allowed to go many places.
    It was a hardship on the kids.
    Do you remember what the life was like in--
    we're not talking about a ghetto here--
    but the neighborhood that you spoke
    of that you were moved to?
    Was it guarded by the Nazis?
    Was it free going back and forth?
    Oh, yes, yes it was.
    And even at that time, there were plenty of Germans
    who were not Nazis.
    But they were scared not to be Nazis.
    I remember as a little boy, I worked in a little stall.
    They were selling health food.
    And I did the deliveries for him.
    And beautiful people.
    But I also remember taking the packages to the post office,
    that other kids would tear the labels off,
    you know, them being Jewish.
    And you know, causing problems and things.
    How long did you work at this store?
    Well, it was a little part-time job
    that after school, I worked there.
    But there were Germans that my family knew, who befriended us,
    who were strictly against the system.
    I'll tell you how bad it was.
    One child remarked in school--
    he overheard his parents the night
    before saying that some law that Hitler made was ridiculous,
    or I can't get the detail.
    Anyway, this man, this Christian man, Gentile man,
    was arrested by the German Gestapo.
    And eight weeks later, his wife received the urn of ashes,
    you know, where they killed him.
    So the kids were scared of their parents.
    You were not allowed to listen to foreign broadcasts.
    So like England or America, et cetera.
    So neighbors would turn other neighbors
    in that they were listening to foreign broadcasts
    and they were severely punished.
    So people who did--
    turn this off a minute.
    OK, sure.
    You inquired of what type of neighborhood it was.
    Well, the neighborhood was not a bad neighborhood.
    The living quarters were difficult to find.
    And we didn't live as nice as we did before.
    And we didn't starve.
    It was just a different type of living.
    We were under pressure all the time
    that we were like to the enemy of your own country.
    And like I said earlier, a lot of people started to deport,
    they had enough sense to get out of there.
    Right.
    Did a lot of people--
    were they able to get out?
    Was it more restricted as time went on?
    Well, there was a point where Hitler
    wanted the people to get out.
    Of course, they had to have visas.
    In order to come to this country,
    they had to be sponsored.
    So that sometimes created a problem.
    So you had to have someone there.
    Of course, they had Jewish organizations,
    one was named HIAS, and others that
    assisted the Jews from leaving.
    And then, of course, it came--
    you had to have a certain amount of money to leave.
    And since my own bank account, my father's bank account,
    was taken over, at that time, it was almost impossible to leave.
    So when we wanted to leave in the late '30s,
    we couldn't leave anymore.
    My father wanted to go to Australia.
    That's what his hoped to do.
    But it didn't work out that way.
    You talked about freezing your bank accounts.
    Were you allowed an allowance?
    Was that how it worked?
    Yes.
    To the best of my knowledge, he was allowed a certain amount.
    A certain amount a month or a week?
    Yes, but it wasn't enough so my father had to work.
    Sure.
    And you said, you stated before that there was no real--
    there was no hunger in this neighborhood that you were in?
    No.
    No, I don't think so.
    Food and everything was available.
    And there was food on the table.
    And there was no real hardship.
    Like I said earlier, there was only certain stores
    that the Jews could do their shopping.
    Right.
    They did it.
    They were state-operated, excuse me.
    All stores they could go to or just certain stores
    at certain hours?
    Certain stores at certain hours.
    Certain hours they could shop.
    They were operated by the state.
    Why don't we move on here to your deportation?
    And tell me a little bit about that.
    You know, how it happened.
    It happened-- you received a letter through the mail.
    Matter of fact, the postman knew of these letters,
    and he normally would ring the doorbell
    when he had mail for us.
    He didn't do it at the time because he was a decent guy.
    And the contents of a letter would give us
    an order to vacate our apartment within so many hours.
    And we were allowed so many pounds per person
    to take with us.
    And then we were told in that same letter
    that we had to take our own key to our apartment
    to the local police station.
    Also may want to add this--
    the gold and furs and other things,
    we had to turn in earlier already.
    Anything of value.
    They seized your valuables.
    See, and of course some people didn't give it all up.
    But there was a drive for that.
    So when we received our notice, we
    bought warm socks you could get.
    And I think we were allowed 100 pounds per person.
    What did you bring, do you remember?
    There was, you know, the backpack at the time,
    with sweaters, warm underwear, clothing.
    Extra shoes.
    And we had to report to a Masonic temple.
    Now, might want to add that the Masonic temple was also
    against the law to exist.
    And my father was a Mason.
    And he went to secret meetings, even.
    A Freemason?
    Yes.
    And we went to this temple, which
    the inside was all marble and completely destroyed
    on the inside.
    And they laid on the floor for the night.
    And the Germans ordered us any cash money, we had to turn in.
    Any rings and so on.
    They made the last little pitch to get the stuff off.
    And that was the first time we were guarded.
    We were loaded on open trucks, and taken
    to the railroad station, and loaded into a regular railroad
    cars.
    Not cattle cars, railroad cars.
    They had seats and everything?
    They had seats and everything in it.
    And they were old cars, but most had seats.
    Some of them had to lay on the floor.
    And we traveled, I believe it was three days and three
    nights, to Russia.
    To Russia.
    OK, let me backtrack just a little bit.
    When the letter came, did they give you any indication
    as to where you might be going?
    What you would be doing?
    I think they were told we were going to the east to work.
    To work.
    Yeah.
    OK, go ahead.
    Now, I may have mentioned earlier
    that many transports that arrived in Minsk
    were killed right on the spot.
    And that's where you arrived, in Minsk?
    Yeah, Minsk, this was White Russia,
    German occupation of Russia.
    Most people don't understand that.
    What time frame, what kind of, what are we talking about here?
    What year?
    '40, 1940.
    This is 1940.
    And that's when you were deported?
    Yes.
    OK.
    OK, back to Minks, sorry.
    And in Minsk, we were marched.
    It was very cold.
    We were marched into an area, which appeared to be--
    which was at one time a Russian school.
    Now, we were a transport of 1,000 people.
    That Russian school was, at that time, occupied by Russian Jews.
    And they had to vacate that building
    to put us into that building.
    It appeared at one time it was a fairly modern school.
    Had running water.
    Of course, this didn't work.
    The toilets didn't work.
    But you could tell it was like a regular high school, like we
    almost had in this country.
    And we already saw a lot of dead people
    on the ground at that time, Russian Jews that
    were killed by the Germans that didn't evacuate
    the building fast enough.
    They were in the building or around the grounds?
    They were in the building, they occupied the building.
    It was part of a ghetto then.
    And this is in the wintertime, right?
    It was in the wintertime.
    And we then gathered old mattresses and stuff.
    And all 1,000 of us, I believe, stayed in that building
    and there was another building or other small outbuildings.
    That's where we were housed at the time.
    Did you go out and work from there?
    Is that what they did?
    The first couple of days, I don't think we did.
    But then we were put to work.
    Matter of fact, we had to build our own fences
    to go around there.
    You said at the beginning, when you arrived in Minsk,
    some people were shot immediately.
    Was there a rationale for that?
    I mean did they have?
    No.
    They just picked certain people out of the crowd.
    No.
    Now, at the time--
    now, we didn't even know that.
    I found out later because there were hundreds and hundreds
    of suitcases that were taken to what
    used to be an office building in Minsk,
    which we had to sort out.
    And the goodies were sent back to Germany.
    And the people who did the sorting found
    pictures of their own loved ones in there that never made it.
    But I think I'm getting off track a little bit.
    No, no, that's fine.
    I mean, you know, I just was trying to figure out
    if you knew at the time that people
    were being killed immediately.
    Or if it's, like you said, there was something that came later.
    Yes.
    People lost their lives almost immediately, some of them.
    But no mass killing at that time.
    OK in this, I guess we could call it a camp.
    That was a ghetto, really.
    OK.
    You started to say something about working and building
    your own fences.
    Was that how it was guarded?
    The fences were then set up and then the Nazis guarded it?
    That's right.
    OK.
    Did you go out after that and work?
    Yes.
    What kind of work did you do?
    Various things.
    I was detailed to work at one of the sources of heating
    their homes, they used turf, like peat moss.
    And we loaded the railroad cars with peat moss
    to go to some other places.
    And shoveled snow.
    You know, it snows a lot in Russia.
    And I was detailed to an army base
    like we have here, like Fort [? Meade ?],, and small.
    And I was detailed to cut wood--
    everything was fiber-- wood for the kitchen and cleanup.
    Now, these were not the SS, these were the regular army.
    Regular troops.
    The regular troops, which did not mistreat us that terribly.
    Did you have basically enough food to eat at this time?
    How was that worked out?
    Food was very scarce already.
    And whenever you had a chance to steal something, you would.
    You steal a potato here and a little piece of bread.
    So yeah, food was already very much rationed.
    And you started to feel hungry most all the time.
    So the troops seemed to treat you a little bit better.
    Yes.
    The army, the straight army troops, not the SS.
    Yes.
    I recall a little incident.
    The first thing I had to do when I got there in that army camp
    was bring water for washing to a sergeant who worked there.
    And I recall him closing the shades,
    and whispering, and saying to me that things are being
    done to the Jewish people.
    God will punish them.
    But he whispered that because he would
    have been overheard by his colleague,
    his career would have been over.
    Sure.
    Was there a lot of that, do you think?
    Did you encounter very much of that kind
    of feeling in the army?
    Not a lot, but some.
    Some people reacted that way.
    OK.
    Turn this off a while.
    Oh, sure.
    There was another little interesting little story
    I want to tell you.
    After I was transported from Minsk to other camps,
    I worked temporarily in an airplane factory.
    And they were trying to build the Henkel airplane, which
    by the way, is in the Smithsonian.
    And the people that were trying to teach us
    were German civilians who had their uniforms and rifles
    in the lockers at the factory.
    And they were really decent fellows.
    For instance, at that time, I was really not a human anymore.
    I was very dirty.
    I had lice.
    And these men would try to get close to us.
    In my instance, trying to teach me how to weld.
    And I would talk to him freely sometime,
    would tell him about this, I look like an animal
    now, but didn't always.
    I mean, they were--
    some of the people were human beings.
    And on one Sunday when it snowed heavy,
    we were detailed to clear the streets
    where these people lived.
    And one of those German instructors,
    if you want to call them that, called two of us in.
    There was another young kid and I.
    And they actually fed us.
    And I'll never forget this in my life, even to this day, yes.
    One of them said us, says, you've been here all this time
    and not once have you tried to clean yourself.
    So it just tells you what an animal you became.
    But there were a few instances where
    there were some Germans who were against this.
    But not too many, unfortunately.
    Sure.
    This was in Russia, you said?
    Now, this was in Poland now.
    This is in Poland.
    You know, after the Russian advanced,
    you know, they pulled back.
    Well, of course, every pull back, they
    pulled back fewer and fewer.
    They only pulled back the people they were young and healthy,
    forced labor they could make use of.
    Right.
    Was this job or workforce in the plane factory-- was that a--
    I don't want to say privileged-- but was it a more,
    did younger people work there?
    Well, yes.
    At that camp, we were detailed in the morning from the camp
    to the factory.
    And that was very terrible times because we
    were guarded by the Ukrainians and Latvians, who
    enjoyed killing people.
    And they carried whips.
    And while we were marching from the concentration
    camp, labor camp, to the factories,
    it was a terrible ordeal.
    Maybe people were killed.
    For instance, Polish civilians would come by on a bicycle.
    Hundreds of us had to jump into a water-filled ditch
    to make room for that civilian to arrive.
    But once we were in the factories, we were in a--
    building was heated.
    And the treatment was not the best in the world,
    but it was tolerable.
    So that was a privilege of, at least then, maybe
    10 hours a day under a condition that was half-humane.
    Right.
    When I said pro--
    I didn't really mean privileged or whatever.
    But I guess what I meant was were you chosen in some way
    to do this over other people?
    Or was it just a regular detail?
    No, I tell you, they made a selection in the mornings.
    Every morning, you had to fall out to be counted.
    And that happened maybe two or three times a day,
    we were counted.
    And every time when they make a selection,
    they usually meant a selection for death.
    You know, when they pulled you out, that means,
    well, your number's up.
    And I was trying to hide behind someone else.
    And this guy who did the selection got his whip,
    and smacked me one, and called me out.
    And I assumed that my number was up.
    But they made up a detail of young men, young boys,
    teenagers, to try to teach them to work in an airplane factory.
    Which turned out-- I think it didn't, it was a big flop.
    But there were times where you were treated a little better
    than other times, yes.
    OK.
    How about let's move back a little bit to Minsk
    so we can come back circle back around to the factory.
    You're in Minsk now and you're in this ghetto,
    as we've established.
    What happens to you?
    Where do you move to?
    Why do you move?
    Do you know?
    When do you move?
    From camp to camp?
    Well, actually, how long are you in Minsk?
    Two years.
    You're in Minsk for two years.
    Now, they had a mass killings of thousands of people, of us.
    Actually, an order would come down from Berlin
    to destroy so many Jews.
    And that was done.
    I think in June of '42, that's when I lost my father.
    The way he was killed was that after I
    think 5,000 people got killed on one
    other section of that ghetto, which was divided by highway,
    they wanted to get these bodies off the ground.
    And he was-- they would install the armband on them not
    to kill those.
    And they put these bodies in mass graves by horse carts.
    Of course, they had no horses.
    And you see, for days, you would see these bodies being
    hauled to the graves.
    And sometimes, the little kids sitting,
    it looked like they were alive, you know,
    the way they threw them on the wagons.
    And the third night, I overheard my father
    telling my mother that he has been through quite a bit
    in World War I. But what he went through he was just horrible.
    And that day-- they were put in those gas vans and killed.
    That's how my father was killed.
    These were the mobile vans that they brought around?
    Yes, yes.
    Into the Russians, OK.
    And the strange part is that I had no feeling whatsoever.
    My father's death didn't affect me at all.
    Not at all?
    No, I was already not normal anymore,
    if you want to use that term.
    And I recall the incident where my mother was killed.
    She was killed in a hospital that was
    emptied while we were at work.
    So the ones that could walk were put in gas vans.
    And the ones that couldn't walk were shot right in the bed.
    And my mother's body was put out by friends,
    former friends, friends wrapped her in paper,
    was taken to the cemetery, it was with a mass grave.
    I forced myself to cry because I had no feeling whatsoever.
    I don't know why I threw that in there.
    But it tells you what this type of life did to a human being.
    And that's how I lost my mother.
    Now, my sister was killed at the age of 17.
    A handful of us were taken from Minsk into Poland
    when the Germans were retreating.
    And the people remaining were all killed.
    I don't know what method they used, but probably gassed.
    And that's how I lost my father, my mother, and sister.
    I think I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.
    That's OK.
    What I was going to ask you is if you could tell me,
    you know, while you're in this ghetto here,
    what the daily routine might be.
    Like a day in the life would be for you in the ghetto,
    due to the work detail and everything that you might do.
    Well, like I said earlier, everybody wanted to work.
    If you did not get out of the camp to work,
    you never knew when you were going to be killed.
    So naturally, everybody volunteered
    to be slave labor just to get out.
    And most of us who did go to work benefited to some extent.
    Stealing a little bit of wood for the fire
    or stealing, like I said earlier,
    some potatoes, or anything.
    But if you were stealing these things,
    were people caught doing that?
    Oh, yes.
    If you were caught, you were severely punished.
    But you'd take that chance.
    I recall the incident I was picked up by a German soldier.
    Not a Nazi.
    He was a farmer who was drafted.
    And I used to-- while he was guarding us, taking us to work,
    I used to push his bicycle.
    And one day, he locked me in the potato cellar,
    and I stole potatoes for him, and he let me steal potatoes
    from myself.
    You know, and a lot of times I would transport these things
    on his bicycle.
    Because at the gates going to the camp,
    his bicycle was not searched.
    And so that's how we survived, you know?
    Yeah, these things happen.
    What kind of-- you stayed a little bit
    about the peat moss and things.
    Were there any other actual work details while you were in Minsk
    that you were assigned to other than digging
    peat moss, or the peat, or whatever?
    Well it's labor.
    You know, common labor.
    But a lot of my time was spent on the military base,
    working there.
    Just cleaning up.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    So we move-- you say you're there two years.
    And so we get up to about 1942.
    Yes.
    1942, OK.
    What happens to you in 1942 when you leave this camp?
    In 1942, we were--
    a handful of us were transported to a Polish--
    we were loaded on cattle cars.
    And they were about 80 people per cattle car
    with no water, no food, no toilet facilities.
    And when people died, which a lot of them did,
    we would sit on them for more room.
    And I was-- you couldn't go relieve yourself.
    It was severe conditions.
    And we came to a camp that was called Lublin.
    It was in Poland.
    And that was a selection camp.
    At that time, I was with my brother-in-law,
    who was married to my sister very briefly.
    And they called out people who had trades.
    Electricians, or brush makers, or mechanics, and some
    thought that everybody wanted to save their life,
    so they run for a trade in order to save their life already.
    So I followed him and we were selected
    as workers that could perhaps show
    some benefit to the Germans.
    Do you remember what actual--
    what profession you told them you were?
    I think it was electrician, I believe it was.
    Electrician.
    But he was one, so I followed around with him.
    But at that particular camp, my brother-in-law was saying,
    I says, it looks like you're not going to see your sister again.
    That he had the feeling we were going to get killed.
    And the first thing I did--
    Tony had a little piece of bread left.
    So I ate that.
    You know?
    You think different.
    But from there, the so-called laborers who had no profession
    were eliminated in that camp.
    And then we were loaded again on another cattle car
    and went through the same ordeal again.
    And we arrived at another labor camp.
    I think it was--
    you know, I can't recall the name right now of the camp.
    Mielec, I think it was.
    This is in Poland, by the way.
    In Poland.
    But I have that recorded.
    I think we can pick that out later.
    Sure.
    And again, that was a camp where we worked every day.
    And that's where the camp I was assigned,
    they were trying to teach us to build airplanes.
    I mentioned that earlier.
    After the Russian advanced further,
    we were transported to another camp.
    And that camp was also an airplane factory.
    And again, I was recognized by some of the Germans.
    And I was picked out to work in the factory.
    You were recognized by some of the--
    The Germans.
    --soldiers?
    Yeah, the soldiers.
    They act as instructors, you know.
    And they knew you had worked in the factory before.
    Yes.
    And I was picked out.
    And that was what really kept me alive, really.
    What kind of-- well, let's stop a little bit in the factory,
    the plane factory.
    And how were you different, let's
    say, than the rest of the prisoners in the camp?
    Was the camp divided between people
    who may have worked in the factory and others?
    Or were you all in the same kind of deal?
    No, not all of us worked in our camp.
    Other worked, did labor work, building roads and so on.
    Did you have a sense that you were better off than them?
    Oh, yes.
    OK.
    Yes.
    Why don't you describe a little bit about that?
    Like how you may have been different.
    At that particular camp, we were assigned to a barrack
    with specialized workers.
    In that particular barrack, we had a blanket,
    which was unheard of.
    And we had straw to sleep on.
    And while the others were driven out of the barracks
    during the night for special counting and whatnot,
    there were times they didn't bother us.
    And the treatment was a little bit better there at the time.
    Did you get-- did they feed you better also?
    Or could you tell?
    Well, yes, we did.
    Our main diet was bread.
    I think it was five men a loaf of bread,
    sliced maybe two, 2 and 1/2 inches thick.
    Which by the way, had some sawdust in it.
    It was really horrible bread.
    But it was tasty like cake to us.
    And soup that was made out of water and potatoes
    with peelings.
    You know, real garbage.
    I think when they ran out of soup,
    they stuck the hose in it to replenish the meal.
    But I did welding, aluminum welding
    for this particular airplane.
    And the fumes are quite harmful.
    Now, they do with [INAUDIBLE],, but at the time, they didn't.
    And the Poles, the Polish civilians who worked right
    alongside, received milk.
    And I remember, I would receive a cup of bouillon
    that was, you know, like in a cube bouillon with water.
    And that's the extra treatment, extra food I got.
    That was the extra food.
    What other-- you said that there were basically just laborers,
    manual laborers, who were in the rest of the camp.
    How big was this camp?
    What are we talking about here?
    Oh, I would say maybe a couple thousand.
    And do you have a sense of where in Poland you may have been?
    Well, I was in Mielec.
    I have to actually look at my notes now.
    There were around four or five different camps I was in.
    I was shifted around several times in Poland.
    Sure.
    And then you said that you moved to another camp that
    also had the plane factory.
    Right, right.
    Was that camp any different?
    Or basically the same?
    Well, that camp already was called a concentration camp.
    And we were tattooed on our right front arm above the wrist
    by the letter of KL.
    In the event we escaped, they have a way of identifying us.
    What did KL stand for?
    K stands for our concentration.
    Spelled with a K instead of C. And L counts for Lager.
    L-A-G-E-R, like lager beer, you know, Lager is a camp.
    Konzentrationslager.
    And there are very few of us who have this.
    Most of them are dead today.
    I think there are, out of about 2,000 or 3,000,
    maybe today, maybe seven, eight of us
    are alive today, maybe nine.
    OK.
    After you've worked in the plane factory for a while--
    and you started to talk about a little bit earlier
    about the Russians coming in-- what
    happens at this period when you're starting to move back?
    Do you do you have a sense, do the people in the camp
    have a sense that the war may be going south for the Germans?
    Oh, yes.
    We had feelings that things were going bad for the Germans, yes.
    How did you know these things?
    How did you?
    Well, we didn't know anything for a true fact.
    But it was common knowledge that the war
    is going bad for the Germans.
    OK.
    What was going on when you're-- did you move to any more camps
    after this?
    What happens here?
    We moved to another camp called Wieliczka.
    I think you've heard of that camp.
    And of course, that was a death camp.
    Interested about the camp was the Germans
    were trying to produce airplanes in the salt mines, I think,
    which didn't work for them.
    We were three days.
    After a terrible, terrible railroad trip,
    we were dumped out in that camp.
    Can you describe to the railroad trip a little bit?
    Well, you were just worse than cattle.
    You were forced in these cars.
    You sat one inside the other.
    And you couldn't, like I said earlier,
    couldn't relieve yourself, had nothing to eat, and no water.
    And you'd be in these cattle cars for days.
    And a lot of us didn't survive the trip.
    And each time you unloaded, you know, you had to run.
    And it was just hard, really hard for me
    to give you all the detail.
    It was just horrible.
    We went to Wieliczka, and for some reason, a few of us
    were loaded up again.
    And I arrived in the very last camp, which was Flossenbürg,
    it was in Bavaria.
    I know you've heard of it.
    And that was a camp that had criminals, German criminals,
    queers, political prisoners, and a handful of Jews,
    which were identified differently
    on the uniform with their little marker than the rest of them.
    The food was a little better in that camp.
    Our immediate bosses were the German criminals.
    They had the right to--
    they carried a club.
    So they differentiated e
    Yes.
    --the groups--
    Yes.
    --in the camp.
    What was interesting about that camp is that we had facilities
    we could wash ourself.
    And I wanted to clean myself again.
    And in fact, I took my clothes off
    and I lay it on them and all of it so they'd be straight.
    So I became a human being, if you want to call it,
    a little bit human again.
    And the food was a little bit better.
    But they had the ovens there, too, you know,
    where the people got hung and cooked, and so on.
    And from that camp came the death march.
    But before the death march, the Germans
    didn't want to give up the Jews.
    And the handful of Jews who were in that Flossenbürg had
    a report and were moved by the railroad further into Germany.
    And I was hidden by a German man who's been in the concentration
    for years.
    He was a communist.
    And he looked out for me.
    And he was a large man.
    And he more or less took care of me.
    And I stayed in that camp.
    He hid you in a train.
    No, behind.
    I stayed behind him at roll call.
    Oh, I see.
    You know, when they called us out.
    Oh, and he hid you, OK.
    Yeah.
    For calling out.
    How long did this go on that he was kind of protecting you?
    About three days or so.
    Three days.
    I may I want to add--
    something interesting happened to us.
    A lot of the Germans retreated further back into Germany
    not to be captured by the Russians.
    And they were a little scared of us already in this camp.
    And they'd taken all the German criminals now,
    and gave them German uniforms and rifles,
    and they were in the guard towers to watch us.
    And they quickly forgot that they were prisoners an hour
    ago.
    And they themselves did a lot of killing.
    So the troops kind of disappeared, the real troops.
    Well, they kept a skeleton crew on hand.
    That's-- we were put on death march for three days and three
    nights.
    And anybody who couldn't walk anymore
    was killed right on the spot.
    Did you know where you're going?
    Did they tell you?
    No, we didn't know.
    It turned out later, we were on the way to Dachau.
    But we marched.
    A few of us escaped during the death march.
    But it was difficult.
    What time of year was this, the death march?
    That was in the fall, I believe it was.
    Fall of what year are we talking about?
    '44.
    '44.
    '44, close to '45, maybe.
    You said a couple of people escaped.
    Did they catch anyone who had escaped?
    Or did you see these people fleeing?
    Or did you know they were leaving?
    They were not there the next time you-- you know,
    they were gone.
    You know, the reason so many people got
    killed on the death marches--
    they'd transport us in increments of 1,000.
    And if you don't march in step, the rear end
    always has to run and catch up.
    And they're the ones that died the quickest.
    So when we did stop for a rest, no one
    wanted to be on the rear end.
    So several people had to get killed in order
    just to get us lined up.
    And on the third day, we woke up at night--
    in the morning-- and we noticed that the Germans
    ran into the woods.
    Just left.
    They left and left us behind.
    Did you ever think about during those three days
    trying to escape?
    The thought was there but there was just too many guards.
    Too many people around, yeah.
    OK.
    What did you do, what did you think when they left?
    Well, we were totally confused.
    And we would hear the cannon power.
    You know, we would hear that someone was coming.
    We didn't know who.
    And the first night spent in the barn at the farmers.
    And we would just run from house to house.
    We were going which we thought was talk to the Americans.
    And I recall on the highways, we saw
    Germans who were at that time waiting to be captured.
    And they were armed.
    Of course, we didn't know if they were going to kill us
    or not.
    Sure.
    How did the people in the countryside, the farmers--
    how did they react to you?
    Some farmers would ask us in and fed us.
    And others didn't.
    But there were a handful were trying to help us.
    And at that time, you see a lot of farmers
    with the horses and wagons picking up bodies
    with pitchforks so the Americans would not see them,
    and there were so many of them.
    Sure.
    Go ahead.
    And that was when I walked towards the American line.
    Did you have people with you?
    Or was it just you by yourself?
    No, there were maybe a group of 10 of us.
    And you stuck together?
    Yes.
    What happened when you finally ran into--
    or how did you get liberated?
    Well, we went into a small city called Champ, C-H-A-M-P.
    The Second Army.
    They took care of us, and we--
    The Second American Army?
    Yeah.
    I recall the one building, the mayor's building,
    they threw the mayors out, and there, they
    gave us a building to stay in.
    Now, this is, again, the fall of '44?
    '45.
    '45.
    No, that's spring of '45.
    Spring of '45.
    Because I was liberated in April of '45.
    So you were roaming around in Germany from I think--
    I may have gotten this wrong.
    You said you were on the death march in the fall of '44.
    It was spring.
    OK.
    It was spring.
    It was spring, my fault. I got it wrong.
    You know, I was also shot in the back, which--
    while we were all starting to run after we were liberated,
    after the Germans left, I was shot in the back
    by a German officer with a small caliber at my back.
    To try to stop you from running?
    Yeah.
    And so you had this wound when you were--
    Yes.
    --going around?
    That's awful.
    So in the spring of '45, you were liberated.
    OK.
    How did the Americans react to you all?
    Oh, they were wonderful to us.
    Describe a little bit about what they did for you.
    Well, they fed us, clothed us, and you know,
    they treated us like we're children.
    Did they have facilities and things
    to take care of-- were there a lot of around, you know,
    people who had been liberated?
    You know, people from all around.
    There were probably maybe 20, 30 of us
    in that little city, you know, who were then free.
    Matter of fact, I worked in the mess hall.
    And they wanted-- as the troops were leaving,
    they wanted us to--
    wanted me to go with them.
    To go with them.
    Yeah.
    And they took me to the headquarters.
    But the officer in charge wouldn't go for it, you know.
    They liked your cooking so much.
    Well, I wasn't, no, I was just a laborer there
    washing pots and pans or something like that.
    How, then-- to pick up the story a little bit more.
    What did you do after that when the Americans leave?
    What did you?
    We stayed there in order to gain our strength, really.
    And then people went back to their hometowns.
    And I traveled by bicycle back to Hamburg some time
    on top of railroad cars.
    What was that like going back through, you
    know, a country that was obviously hostile to you
    as a Jew before?
    How was it?
    Was it different?
    Well, yes, it was different.
    You know, freedom after four years was different, of course.
    And we were skeptical of people.
    How long did you stay in Hamburg?
    Stayed in Hamburg about six months or so.
    Then I found out that my grandmother was alive.
    She survived Theresienstadt.
    And I went to-- she was there.
    She, at the time, lived in Marburg, Germany,
    and I stayed with her.
    And I worked for the American--
    for the GIs at that time.
    How did you get to the US?
    When did you emigrate?
    I came here in '46.
    Labor Day, '46.
    Labor Day.
    Yeah.
    And you've been here ever since?
    Right.
    OK.
    Let me get back a little bit to--
    you talked about, I think it was,
    when you laid down when the first time you got to wash.
    I think it was in Flossenbürg.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Am I right there?
    Yes.
    Was that the first time that you'd
    been able to wash since you'd been in the camps.
    Yes, that's where we had running water, you know,
    and we were able to clean ourselves.
    So this was unusual for the camps.
    This was running water and things like that.
    Was this camp different than most of the ones you'd been in?
    Yes, this was not a slave labor camp or a ghetto.
    That was a concentration camp.
    Is there any reason that you can think of that it
    might have-- why this was?
    That they had water and running water and things like that?
    Well, they had very few prisoners when they were Jews.
    That was a concentration camp for their own Germans
    and all nationalities you can think about.
    Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
    Sure there is, but I can't think of it right now.
    OK.
    All right, that's great.
    I think we're done.
    I've asked most of the questions I have.
    Take this off.
    Sure.
    Now.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Arthur Menke, born on February 23, 1927 in Hamburg, Germany, describes how Jews were starting to suffer from persecution around 1935, and had severe restrictions after 1938; being forced with his family, like other Jews, to move from their nice neighborhood; being forced to wear the Jewish Star of David; being prohibited from sitting on benches, going to movies, or shopping in regular stores; events during Kristallnacht and how his father’s small factory (which made rubber signs) was not destroyed because the Germans did not realize he was Jewish; the arrest of his father, who was a World War I veteran, and his imprisonment in a concentration camp near Berlin for six weeks; the return of his father who was hardly recognizable after his time in the camp; the Nazi takeover of the family’s factory and bank account; working as a laborer, packing shoes in a factory; his mother, who wanted the family to leave Germany and how they waited too late in the 1930s to leave; being deported in 1940 with about 1,000 other Jews to Minsk, Belarus; his memories of the journey; being forced to walk in the snow to a school in the Minsk ghetto; seeing dead bodies inside the building; the murders of his mother, father, and sister; and daily life in the ghetto. [There is a break in the audio for around 15 seconds at 31:30]
    Interviewee
    Arthur Menke
    Date
    interview:  1992 February 28

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 sound cassette (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Menke, Arthur, 1927-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Card Project conducted the interview with Arthur Menke on February 28, 1992.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:23:59
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    Oral history interview with Paula Dash

    Oral History

    Paula Dash (née Garfinkel), born in 1920 in Łódź, Poland, describes life in Łódź; the beginning of the war and the German invasion; the roundup of Jews and deportations; having to turn in their valuables and wear the star of David; being moved into the ghetto and living in one room with her family; rations in the ghetto; the death of her father from starvation in 1942; the deportation of her sister and brother; the atrocities in the ghetto; learning of the mass killings; a Kinder Aktion in the camp when the Nazis rounded up and killed all the children they could find; being sent with her mother and youngest brother in August 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being shaved upon entering the camp but not receiving a tattoo; the emotional torture the guards subjected the inmates to; the heavy bombardment to the camp and being crammed into a barrack with hundreds of other people; life in Bergen-Belsen; seeing piles of corpses and the mass graves; being sent briefly to work cleaning bombed out houses in Bremen, Germany, where she found a towel that she managed to keep in the camp; witnessing cannibalism; contracting typhus; receiving help from her friends in the camp; being liberated by the British in April 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Ani Davidovics

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Juliusz Deczkowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aron Derman

    Oral History

    Aron Derman (né Dereczynski), born on May 5, 1922 in Slonim, Poland (Belarus), describes his life before the war; his parents who were shopkeepers; his experiences with antisemitism before the war; his involvement in the Zionist movement and membership in the Hashomer Hatzair; the boycott of local Jewish businesses towards the end of the 1930s; being on a date in Oftryn when the war began; the arrival of Russian soldiers; his journey to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) in hopes of immigrating to Palestine that came to no avail; the ghettoization of Slonim; the liquidation of half the ghetto and his escape from the round-up; his escape from a German “Aktion”; his decision to leave the ghetto and travel to Grodno; being sent to Auschwitz, escaping the train, getting caught, and being sent back to the ghetto; hiding in the Grodno ghetto and hopping a train headed to Vilna with several friends (including his future wife Lisa Nussbaum); joining the FPO; leaving the ghetto and going to the Narocz forest; joining the Nakamah partisan group, which was disbanded; being in the Kalininski partisans and his activities; being liberated by the Russians; getting married in Rome, Italy in 1947; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his life after the war in Chicago, IL.

    Oral history interview with Henry Drobiarz

    Oral History

    Henry Drobiarz, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes growing up in Kozlow, Poland; attending public school and cheder; his siblings; his family’s religious practices as Orthodox Jews; apprenticing as a tinsmith with his uncle in Sosnowiec; the German invasion and continuing to work as a tinsmith; being sent to Krakow, Poland in 1940; staying in town to work as a tinsmith as other Jews were sent to Slomniki in 1942; hiding with his parents in Kozlow during roundups; the separation of his family to various places; working in Krakow-Jerozolimska (Płaszów) concentration camp; being sent to Mielec concentration camp; his work making airplane parts in the camp; working in Sandomierz concentration camp; being taken to Wieliczka concentration camp in June 22, 1944; being sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp and the terror experienced by the inmates when they thought they were going to be gassed; working in a quarry; being transferred to Leitwezil, Czechoslovakia (possibly Litomerice, Czech Republic) to a carbide mine for six weeks; being sent to Dachau concentration camp for three days then Augsburg to work in a Messerschmitt factory; daily life in Augsburg; being transferred in December 1944 to Leonberg concentration camp; being taken to Kaufering concentration camp for three weeks; being taken to Allach concentration camp; being liberated on May 1, 1945; going to the nearby town; going to Munich, Germany; working for the US Army for a few months; meeting his future wife; going to the United States in December 1949; living in New York, NY; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Maria Efes

    Oral History

    Maria Efes, born on July 15, 1909 in Kopys', Belarus, describes living in Orsha, Belarus; going to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) in 1924; graduating from the Gertson institute in 1933; working as a speech therapist in a Russian-occupied area of Finland; her parents’ backgrounds; her siblings; being a child psychologist in the 1930s; her studies on school children in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Russia; going to Crimea, Ukraine in 1936; being a graduate student, studying foreign languages; the German invasion in 1941; her sister’s experience during the German invasion; the bombings; the experiences of her siblings during the war; taking a group of children to Siberia in September 1942; working at a children’s house in Siberia for two years; returning to Leningrad when the war ended; and her husband. [Note that the interviewee describes her early life approximately half-way through the interview.]

    Oral history interview concerning Abraham Ellenbogen and Hanna Ellenbogen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel discusses her early childhood and family life in Zwolle, Holland; her three older brothers; attending Dutch public school and Hebrew afternoon school; how her parents ran a kosher hotel; the death of her father in 1941; how in 1942, the Germans threw the family out of their hotel and placed them in a small house with no electricity or bathroom; saying goodbye to her mother and brothers and going into hiding in July 1942; being sent to Sobibor the following year when her mother was sent to Poland; two of her brothers being sent to a work camp, while the third remained in hiding; how at the beginning of the war and in 1945 their hotel was used as a place to hide German Jews who were smuggled to Belgium; her observation that all small towns in Holland have memorials to the Jews who were killed during the war.

    Oral history interview with Lonia Fishman

    Oral History

    Lonia Fishman (née Goldman, born on May 3, 1920 in Wegrow, Poland) and her husband, Sevek Fishman, discuss Lonia’s childhood and her family; attending public school and a Hebrew school; making and selling quilts in Warsaw, Poland with her sister; her family’s move to Warsaw; getting married; the German invasion; how some Jews committed suicide; Sevek’s experience getting shot in the ghetto; stocking up on supplies with the family; the resolve of the family to remain together and not separate; Sevek’s mother; the Jewish police in the ghetto; Sevek witnessing his father being shot to death; and her sister Edith Goldman.

    Oral history interview with Sevek Fishman

    Oral History

    Sevek Fishman, born on July 14, 1918 in Kaluszyn, Poland, describes his childhood and attending a Jewish school; religious observations in his family; apprenticing as a tailor; the Jewish community; the German invasion; antisemitic propaganda; the roundups; going to the Warsaw ghetto with his whole family; smuggling in food for his family; his work removing corpses from the ghetto streets; his work for Organisation Todt; being sent briefly to a small camp; hiding with his wife during another roundup in the neighboring suburb Wegrów, Poland; escaping from the ghetto; people hiding out in the woods outside Warsaw; hiding in a hole in the floor of a house with his wife for 18 months; being liberated by Jewish soldiers and sent to a field hospital; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jack Frenkel and Henry Frenkel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Freund

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Friedmann

    Oral History

    John Friedmann, born on born October 19, 1913 in Vrbove, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes growing up in Vienna, Austria; his apprenticeship as a salesman in a linoleum business; the German annexation of Austria; being arrested and sent to a jail in Linz, Austria in August 1938; being taken by cattle car to Dachau concentration camp; the work and various prisoners in the camp; being sent to Weimar before being transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp; his work in the camp; hangings in the camp; his mother’s attempts to write to the camp officials and get John out; being released and returning to Vienna; Kristallnacht in November 1938; going to Shanghai, China in December 1938; his mother joining him in Shanghai; working as a supervisor for the trash dumps; working for the Shanghai Bus Company; having to live in the ghetto; working for Citroën Motors; getting a job in the Toyota Company, which allowed him a pass to leave the ghetto; the arrival of American troops and being hired as a foreman in the ATC (Air Transport Command); flying to Alaska with a Jewish organization in 1949; going to Vancouver then Toronto; working for Austin Motor Company; getting married in 1950; and moving to California in December 1950.

    Oral history interview with Irene Frisch

    Oral History

    Irene Frisch (b. Bienstock), born in 1931 in Dohobyz, Poland (Drohobych, Ukraine), describes her life in pre-war Poland; her parents; her father’s occupation as a businessman; her family’s housekeeper, Frania Osobokowa, who helped save her life; the beginning of the war and ghettoization of Dohobyz; the harsh conditions her family endured while in the ghetto; Frania’s willingness to house and feed her, her mother, and her sister during the war; the murder and persecution of Jews after the liquidation of the ghetto; her survival in hiding and liberation by the Russian Army; antisemitism in Poland after the war; her miraculous reunion with her father on a train; her experience with antisemitism in high school and her struggles with her principal; her family’s decision to immigrate to Israel and the painful goodbye with Frania; her emigration from Israel to the United States in 1961; her life in the United States; and her lasting relationship with Frania.

    Oral history interview with Andrzej Garczynski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bozenna Gilbride

    Oral History

    Bozenna Gilbride, née Urbonowicz, discusses her childhood in Wolyn, Poland (present day Volhynia, Ukraine); her Christian farming parents; how her father hid Jews in a shed on his farm early in World War II; escaping after Ukrainians burned her family’s farm and their village; immigrating to Germany, unaware of what was happening there; working in a factory making leather goods for German soldiers; working in a slave labor camp in Chemnitz; contracting TB; how her mother was suspected of being in the Polish underground and was sent to Ravensbrück, where she was sterilized; how her mother was sent to Gross-Rosen; her feelings about being separated from her mother; the arrival of American troops; the behavior of German citizens; living in a displaced persons camp in Leipzig from 1945 until the beginning of 1947; immigrating to the United States; and her mother’s difficulty in obtaining a visa to join the family in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Marian Gnyp

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alma Goldberg

    Oral History

    Alma Goldberg (née Bressler), born on March 22, 1930 in Czernowitz, Bukovina (Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes her younger sister (Lydia Bressler Goldring); her father’s import business; her religiously traditional family; attending soccer games with her father; attending a Romanian school and learning Hebrew from a private teacher at home; experiencing antisemitism from other children; living in an integrated neighborhood; hiding during the pogroms committed by Romanians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks; going with her family to Bucharest, Romania; the bombardments in Bucharest; having to leave a cinema once because of the bombing; attending school in Bucharest; sending family heirlooms to relatives in Israel and hiding other possessions; going to Switzerland with her family then Milan, Italy; going with her family to Cuba in 1948; attending business school and being a secretary, using six languages; living in Havana; moving to the United States; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Charles Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Goldkind discusses her grandmother, who was 80 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz; her childhood in Volosyanka (Ukraine); her extended family, most of whom were deported to Auschwitz; growing up as one of seven children; the Hungarian occupation of her town in 1939; her limited access to education; speaking Czech and Yiddish; restrictions under Hungarian rule; how her parents were forced to close their store; her brothers’ deportation to a Hungarian labor camp; the arrival of German forces in her town between 1942 and 1943; the establishment of a ghetto in a brick factory in Uhzgorod; being forced to move into the ghetto in 1943, where she lived for a few months; her deportation to Auschwitz; the commotion and confusion she experienced during her arrival at Auschwitz; the deaths of family members; staying together with her sister in the camps; being sent to Bergen-Belsen with her sister; and how her sister aided in her survival.

    Oral history interview with Philip Goldstein

    Oral History

    Philip Goldstein, born in 1922, discusses his childhood in Radom, Poland; his secular and religious education in Poland; joining the youth Zionist movement; participating in Hashomer Hatzair in Radom; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and his family’s house arrest; forced labor; being marched to many towns in Poland including Belzec, Lublin, Annapol, and Krasnik; seeing his family for the last time in 1942; his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his brother; life in the camp; contracting typhus; walking from Auschwitz to Birkenau; living conditions in Birkenau; mass killings in Birkenau; building the gas chambers and crematoriums; the uprising in Birkenau in October 1944; returning to Auschwitz; evacuating Auschwitz-Birkenau; being forced to march to Gross-Rosen; rumors about war’s end; being liberated by U.S. troops; his relatives who survived; living in a displaced persons camp; immigrating to New York in 1945; and his family and life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sally Goldstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Monique Goodrich

    Oral History

    Monique Goodrich (née Jackson), born on October 29, 1937 in Paris, France, describes her Russian father and Polish mother, who were both orphans of World War I; spending most of the war years in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste, France; her family’s escape to the Pyrenees at the beginning of the war; receiving help from people in the town; speaking Basque; her brother’s birth in 1941; Germans coming into the town and rounding up people; sensing the danger but not understanding it fully as a child; instinctively knowing as a hidden child that she shouldn’t call attention to herself; living for a while in an orphanage in a convent when she was four; the regimented life in the orphanage; the severe rationing; living on a farm apart from her family; her mother getting false identity papers from the policeman who was helping her; her father’s garden; her father going to Spain and living in Miranda de Ebro concentration camp; smugglers in the area; the resistance in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste; her mother’s despair when she learned of her sister’s deportation; being in Paris during the liberation; her father coming back from Spain; being sent to the countryside; living in Paris for six years before going to the United States; attending school in the US; feeling that she knew more about the Catholic religion than Judaism; making more time for Judaism in her life; and her appreciation for all the things the people in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste did for Jews during the war.

    Radio broadcast about Karl Gorath

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edit Gredinger

    Oral History

    Edit Gredinger (née Grinsphun), born on March 2, 1922 in Kishinev (Chisinau, Moldova), describes her parents and little brother; living well on their own land; her father farming and working for the railroad; being sent at the age of 11 to Tigina (Bender, Moldova) for gymnasium; graduating in 1940; not being allowed to discuss the war nor read newspapers while she was at school; the rise of fascism in 1938 and the subsequent pogroms; not being affected by the pogroms; studying at the Teacher Institute in Kishinev; the Russian occupation; going to Bulboka to get her parents so they could evacuate together; traveling east with her parents and brother; going to Pervomaysk, Ukraine; being caught by the Germans and assembled in a church in Bogopol (Bohopil); being separated from her family and taken with other people to work; the murder of her mother, father, and brother; escaping with a friend across the frozen river; hiding in pigpens; passing as a Romanian Christian; being sent to a ghetto camp in Otmechatka; the hard labor she performed in the camp; getting married in 1942 to Matvey Gredinger (RG-50.233*0042); working on a farm with her husband; her husband being sent to other places for two years; her husband’s return in 1944; having her daughter in the camp; returning to Moldova; and the communal grave at Pervomaysk.

    Oral history interview with Matvey Gredinger

    Oral History

    Matvey Gredinger, born June 2, 1921 in Moldavia, discusses his prewar family life; his home town in which 500 Jewish families lived; studying Hebrew and the Jewish religion; antisemitic groups at school; visiting in parents in Versoka, Romania in 1940; the murder of his parents in Versoka by the Germans; being shot in the neck in his home along with his father; marching through Moldova until reaching Soroka a week later; being marched to a concentration camp in Vertajan (Vertiujeni, Moldova)at the end of September 1941 with over 20,000 prisoners; how mostly Romanians guarded the prison with some Germans; being forced to carry rocks to build a road; his fellow prisoners who were Romanian, Moravian, and Ukrainian Jews and political prisoners; his liberation by the Russians in April 1944; his arrest by the Russians in 1947 and his time in Siberia; and his arrival in the United States in March 1990.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Green

    Oral History

    Bernard Green, born March 6, 1911 in Rozwadow, Poland, discusses his family members, several of whom survived the Holocaust with false papers; attending a private Jewish school and completing three years of college for engineering; his awareness of antisemitism when he was unable to finish his education; working for Germans in a factory; being recruited into the Polish Army from 1934 to 1937; being stationed in Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine); attending school in the army; running the canteen in the army for two years; the head of his outfit who was a Jewish mayor; events following the German occupation of Rozwadow; the camp in Pisznica, Poland; and his return to Rozwadow after the war.

    Oral history interview with Sabina Green

    Oral History

    Sabina Green (née Low), born on March 23, 1922 in Ulanow, Poland, describes her childhood; her parents; her two brothers and sister; her parents taking in a young Jewish boy from Frankfurt, Germany; attending public school and Jewish school; the Jewish organizations in Ulanow; the German invasion in 1939; doing forced labor; the looting committed by local non-Jews; the Judenrat (Jewish council) choosing people for work details; her brother’s deportation to a work camp in 1941; visiting her brother at the camp and bringing him food; her brother’s release from the camp; the murder of her uncle and his family; being ordered to go to Saklikov; getting false papers with the name Zofya Jamowa; going with her future husband to Stryj, Poland (now Stryĭ, Ukraine); the death of her sister and younger brother; passing as a non-Jew and attending mass; witnessing the destruction of the whole Jewish community in Stryj in 1943; the massacre of the Jews in Stryj; how the Polish people in Stryj helped the Jews; visiting Ulanow after the war and finding no survivors in her family; leaving Poland in 1957 and going to Israel; going to the United States in 1960; and living in Brooklyn, NY.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Blanka Gross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elias Grossman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerald Grossman

    Oral History

    Gerald Grossman, born on December 20, 1923 in Rovno, Poland (Rivne, Ukraine), describes his Jewish parents; his three brothers and one sister; his father’s work as a tailor; attending public school and cheder; attending a specialized ORT school in 1936; speaking Yiddish at home and Ukrainian and Polish elsewhere; the relations between Jews and non-Jews in Rovno; belonging to a religious Zionist organization; discussions in the 1930s about Hitler and the Nazis in Germany; the beginning of the war and the Russian occupation in 1939; living with his family in the nearby town of Abarro; continuing his education in a Russian-controlled school; going to a railroad school in Zdolbunów (Zdolbuniv, Ukraine); graduating in 1941 and working as a locomotive engineer in Kamionka Strumilowa (Kam'ianka Buz'ka, Ukraine); the German invasion in June 1941; traveling by train east during the bombardment; returning to Rovno; being sent to Russia as part of a special reserve transport group for the military; going to Harkov (Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 1941; living in Zagorsk (Sergiev Posad), Russia circa 1942, working on the railroad near Moscow; deserting his railroad job with four Ukrainian men and going to east; the harsh winter and his experiences in Gorki (Nizhniĭ Novgorod), Russia; going through Kuibyshev (Samara), Russia to Tashkent, Uzbekistan; being afflicted with lice and typhoid; living in Tashkent for about nine months working as a machinist; throwing away all his documents and pictures that would identify his real name for fear of being discovered as a deserter; going to Cuzar with his uncle to sign up with the Polish Army to fight the Germans from the English side; being rejected because he was Jewish; going by the name Grisorus; returning to Poland and going to Krakow; not knowing what happened to any of his family; and his efforts to help other survivors find family members.

    Oral history interview with Robert Gruber

    Oral History

    Robert Gruber, born on December 6, 1933 in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes having few memories before 1938; the Hungarian occupation and watching the Hungarian victory parade; his parents and their backgrounds; going to his mother’s hometown, Michalovce, Slovakia; the anti-Jewish laws; attending a Jewish school; the views of his relatives on Zionism; the deportations beginning in 1942; the Jewish council; how luck and chance influenced one’s survival; his parents hiring a smuggler to get them to Uzhhorod, Ukraine; being detained in a prison in Uzhhorod for a week with his family; being returned to Slovakia; going into hiding; the prevalence of false conversion papers; passing as Christians; living in a boarding school in Miskolc, Hungary for a year; going to Budapest, Hungary with his sister when she needed a tonsillectomy; his mother removing he and his sister from the boarding school soon before all the students were deported; hiding in a pigsty with his family for a few days; moving west to Nitra, Slovakia; the hiding place close to their apartment; avoiding a roundup; getting sick and having a severe fever; liberation of the town; the family members who perished and those who survived; attending gymnasium after the war; the communists' coup d’état in 1948; and going to the United States with his family in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Grudzinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laura Gruenbaum

    Oral History

    Laura Gruenbaum (née Ellenbogen), born in 1911 in Rozwadów, Poland, discusses her brother Abraham Ellenbogen and her sister Hanna Ellenbogen; the family’s six-room house built outside of Rozwadów about two years before World War I; Abraham’s education in Czechowice and Krakow; his move to Prague to attend medical school; his return to Poland to attend law school in Krakow; his thriving general law practice at the family home outside of Rozwadów for two years before the Germans invaded Poland; Hanna and Abraham’s travel to Russian-controlled Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) after the German invasion of Poland; her family’s eviction from their house by the Germans; finding her siblings in Lvov where they lived together until she and her parents were sent to Russia; being separated from Abraham and Hanna; and her attempt after the war to find out what happened to Abraham.

    Oral history interview with Lutz Haase

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Hass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margot Heuman

    Oral History

    Margot Heuman, born on February 17, 1928 in Hellenthal, Germany, describes her pleasant childhood in Lippstadt, Germany, where her family moved in 1932; her family’s large home; attending public school and Hebrew school; her family’s religious observations; living briefly with her grandparents in Euskirchen, Germany; moving with her family to Bielefeld, Germany around 1937; her memories of the day Jews were no longer allowed to attend school in 1938; having to wear a Jewish star; the restrictions placed on Jews; the deportations of other Jews, including many of her friends; her grandfather’s death from starvation; being deported with her family to Theresienstadt on June 29, 1942; life in the ghetto/camp; the theatrical and musical performances; the Zionists in Theresienstadt; meeting her very good friend Dita in Theresienstadt; her father’s work for the post office in Theresienstadt; being deported with her family to Auschwitz in May 1944 after her father was caught stealing; the journey to Auschwitz; witnessing the murder of an infant when they arrived at the camp; being placed with her family in Birkenau; being tattooed with a number; her friend Dita arriving after a month; the death of her grandmother; the pain of hunger in the camp; roll calls, during which the prisoners stood naked outside; being sent to a labor camp in Hamburg, Germany with Dita; living in a warehouse on the harbor (probably Hamburg-Geilenberg); digging ditches; her friendship with Dita in the camp and sharing everything with her; the bombings at the camp; being sent to Neugraben concentration camp and the conditions there; a German soldier who gave her his lunch every day because she reminded him of his daughter; being physically abused a few times in the camps; being transferred in February 1945 to Tiefstack and the terrible conditions there; their mixed feelings about the bombings; being sent to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; being very ill upon liberation and her will to live; going to Sweden, while Dita went to England; living with Marta Dandenell in Stockholm for over a year; attending private schools; corresponding with Dita; the loss of most of her family; going to the United States, where she had uncles; her dislike for New York when she arrived; working in an advertising agency as a systems analyst; getting married; and feeling obligated to have many children to replace her lost family.

    Oral history interview with William Himmelfarb

    Oral History

    William Himmelfarb, born on July 19, 1927 in Koprzywnica, Poland, describes his siblings; his parents; speaking Yiddish at home; attending school; the German invasion in 1939; living with three other families in their house; doing forced labor; the Judenrat (Jewish council); the restrictions placed on Jews; the formation of ghettos; being taken with others to Skarzysko-Kamienna; his work in the camp; hearing that the Jews in Koprzywnica were annihilated; suffering from typhoid; his kind supervisor; the dangers of working with ammunition; being taken by cattle train to Czestochowa; being placed on trains soon after and sent through Leipzeig, Germany to Buchenwald; arriving in the camp on July 18, 1944; the processing of prisoners; the Kapos; working in a quarry; being sent to Schlieben; working in a factory for anti-tank grenades; an explosion in the factory and how he still doesn’t know if it was due to sabotage or an accident; rebuilding the factory that had been destroyed; the difficult conditions in the camp; being sent out of the camp by cattle cars in April 1945 towards Theresienstadt; being abandoned by the guards during an air raid of their train; getting to Theresienstadt, where he received medical care in the hospital; being liberated by the Russians; going to Prague, Czech Republic then Windermere, England; being sent by the British government with other Jewish youths from city to city; staying in a boys’ home with 15 other boys in Winchester; living in England for five years; going to the United States in 1950; serving during the Korean War; getting married in 1951; and never returning to Poland.

    Oral history interview with Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin

    Oral History

    Twins, Rene Slotkin (born Rene Guttman [Gutman]) and Irene Hizme (born Renatta [Renate] Guttman), describe their stories and memories, starting from their birth on December 21, 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia (Teplice, Czech Republic), and continuing through their early lives in Prague; their father, Herbert Guttman, who was arrested as a political prisoner in December 1941 and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he died; being deported with their mother, Ita, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and then later to Auschwitz, where the family was separated and where their mother perished; their experiences in Auschwitz, where they were kept separate and subjected to Mengele’s medical experiments on twins; their reunion several years after liberation, thanks in part to an article in Life Magazine that contained a profile of Irene; Operation Rescue Children which brought Irene to the United States; her adoption by the Slotkins; the Slotkins’ search for Rene, eventually finding him living in Czechoslovakia; and Rene’s adoption by the Slotkin family who brought him to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Irving Horn

    Oral History

    Irving Horn (né Isachar Herszenhorn), born in February 1927 in Radom, Poland, describes experiencing significant antisemitism as a child; the integration of schools when he was seven years old; how he and the only other Jewish boy at his new school were severely beaten by some of their schoolmates; the war breaking out and his father losing his job; his brother being accused of spying and temporarily jailed; attending a secret Jewish school for two years until Radom became a ghetto; the ghetto in Glinice; how upon the liquidation of the Radom ghetto, he and his father volunteered to work on the Waschnik estate; surviving encounters with the SS; working in a weapons factory, where he encountered Jacob Holz, a ruthless security guard against whom Irving later testified; how around July 25, 1944 he marched to Tomaszów because the Russians were approaching Radom; being deported by train to Auschwitz; being chosen with his father and two brothers to do work in Vaihingen an der Enz near Stuttgart; being sent by a guard to work on the Nazi Secretary of State’s sister-in-law’s estate for two weeks, where he received food and regained his strength; being sent to Camp Unterriexingen, Kochendorf, and finally to Dachau; being in Tyrol, Austria at the end of the war but being taken back to Germany and almost shot into a ravine; how before the killing was to take place, the SS men changed into civilian clothes and left; ending up in a military hospital in Mittenwald, Germany due to severe hunger; spending several years in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and being in the US Army between 1950 and 1952.

    Oral history interview with Molly Ingster

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Katalin Karpati

    Oral History

    Katalin Karpati, born in 1912 in Újpest, Hungary, discusses growing up in a large, modern house in a gentile neighborhood; her father Izidor Dicker, who was the director of a lumber factory in Újpest, and her mother, who was well-educated and helped her husband with his business; how her family was not religious; marrying her first husband Lajos Nagy, a wealthy businessman who owned a store and mines; how Lajos received a degree in diplomacy from the University of the East in the late 1920s but was unable to find work due to anti-Jewish laws; how in 1940, all Jewish men in the village were sent to a labor camp, but Lajos received a medical exemption and was permitted to relocate to a family villa in Újpest; the birth of their first child Shandor Michael in January 1944; how on April 23, 1944, Lajos was taken to forced labor in Felsőgalla, where he died in an air raid; being sent with her son to live in the ghetto; their deportation to Auschwitz; how six-month old Shandor Michael was killed immediately upon arrival; her second husband, Joseph Karpati; how in May 1944, 25 members of the Karpati family were taken from Buj to Auschwitz, where they were killed; how her current husband Joseph and his brother spent four years in forced labor, but survived the war; and how two of her nieces survived and settled in Israel.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kirzhner

    Oral History

    Joseph Kirzhner, born January 7, 1916 in Odessa, Ukraine, discusses his four brothers; his father who was killed fighting in war; his mother who also perished; his experience driving tanks in the Russian Army; being captured after fighting in Nikolaiev (Mykolayiv), Ukraine and becoming a prisoner of war in 1942; being sent to a concentration camp; his transfer to three or four concentration camps, partly because he tried to escape several times (twice from Auschwitz); how, after being caught, Kapos used sticks to beat his bare feet, and then made him walk until his feet bled; undergoing surgical experiments in Auschwitz; his memory of constant beatings, wire all around, and German soldiers trying to shoot inmates as the liberating Russian Army approached; his liberation in April 1945; his hospitalization and surgery following liberation; his return to service in the Russian Army; his immigration with his wife to the United States in 1978; and persistent health problems in the years following the war.

    Oral history interview with Michael Kishel

    Oral History

    Michael Kishel (né Majlech Kisielnicki), born in Kaluszyn, Poland, describes his family; his childhood; growing up Orthodox; his great-grandparents who had a bakery; completing grade school at age 14 and attending trade school in Warsaw, Poland for six months; working in the family business and saw his friends in the evening; attending camp in the summers with other teenagers; going to the Russian border for a short time and the German occupation of Poland shortly after his return; the formation of a Judenrat (Jewish council), which his father was part of; living in an open ghetto; being on the sanitary committee to prevent typhus; getting papers, along with his brother, to live on the Aryan side of Warsaw; moving in with their cousins in the ghetto; being deported on a cattle car to Treblinka; jumping out of the train and returning to their cousins; hiding in a basemenrt when the Germans came; being deported to Majdanek; going to a hospital and recuperating after being sick; being deported to Auschwitz, where he remained for two years; being beaten numerous times; being transferred to various subcamps, including the coal mines (Waldenburg subcamp); being evacuated on January 18, 1945; being on the road until they were liberated in May 1945; returning to Kaluszyn; immigrating to the United States in 1948; getting married in 1949; settling in Queens, NY; working in the export business with his brother until they retired in 1988; and his belief that his father helped him survive.

    Oral history interview with Ingrid Kisliuk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Kupfer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Walter Lachman

    Oral History

    Walter Lachman (b. Wolfgang Louis Lachman), born May 26, 1928, discusses his family background and comfortable childhood in Berlin, Germany; his grandfather’s service in WWI as a master sergeant; his father’s service in the German army and participation in the Spartacus movement; his early school days during which he would sing the German anthem and National Socialist anthem; changes in Germany in 1935 and 1936; the banning of Jewish children from public schools; attending Jewish school in the backyard of an old synagogue; Jewish doctors and attorneys who were no longer allowed to practice their professions; broader restrictions placed on Jews in Germany; his father’s gentile customers who stopped shopping at the family’s business; his experiences with antisemitism and daily harassment from non-Jewish children; his memory of Kristallnacht, during which his father’s business was vandalized; his small Bar Mitzvah in an orthodox synagogue in 1941; his mother’s death from Leukemia; his father’s death from tuberculosis; his last memories of Berlin; being taken by open truck to a railroad yard; his journey east by freight car which took seven to eight days; the conditions in the freight car; his arrival in Riga, Latvia in several feet of snow; his relocation to the Riga ghetto with his grandmother; daily conditions in the ghetto; the murder of his grandmother who was gassed along with other older people inside a truck; the formation of the Council of Elders; the ghetto’s hospital where abortions were performed; the ghetto’s small synagogue; becoming a messenger for the Council of Elders; being sent to Pleskau (Pskov), Russia to cut down trees; the liquidation of the ghetto and his relocation to Kaiserwald concentration camp; working in a factory in Riga where he repaired uniforms for the German Army; harassment from the factory’s guards; conditions in the factory from which there were several failed escape attempts and subsequent hangings; being punished after he was caught attempting to steal shoes; pro-German and anti-Russian sentiment among Latvians; being forced to work 12 hour shifts while unloading ammunition at Riga harbor without protection from the elements or Russian air raids; being taken to Libau (now called Liepaja), a port on the Baltic Sea, to load and unload ships and dismantle tin roofs to send back to Germany; bombings from the Russians; evacuating Liepaja and being taken back to Germany in a freight boat; his confinement in a crowded jail in Hamburg, Germany for three to four weeks with little food; being forced to collect shell fragments from A.A. guns; his relocation to Bergen-Belsen; contracting typhus; the abandonment of Bergen-Belsen by German guards as British forces approached; his liberation by the British on April 15, 1945; how the British used German guards to bury the dead and then burned down the camp; medical care from the British Red Cross; working for the British Red Cross as an interpreter until late 1945; working for the United Nations in Munich, Germany; sailing to the United States on the S.S. Marlin; living in New York and Massachusetts; working as a stock boy; advancing in sales and becoming the president of several successful department stores before his retirement; and returning to Bergen-Belsen in the 1990s and seeing young German citizens who were interested in what happened there.

    Oral history interview with Aaron Laro

    Oral History

    Aaron Laro, born March 23, 1919 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dziatlava, Belarus), describes the prevalence of antisemitism in Poland; the signs posted in 1937 demanding a boycott of Jewish-owned shops; the beginning of the war; the confiscation of Jewish property, including the Laro’s six-room house; working with others to hid weapons in the woods; the creation of a ghetto in January 1942 in Novogrudek (Navahrudak, Belarus), and Jews being forced to move there and wear the yellow Star of David; two massacres in Navahrudak, including one in April 1942 when 800 people were killed; escaping from the ghetto and joining partisans in the woods; being a machinist and repairing tanks and other vehicles they found; finding Jewish families hiding in the woods; the attitude of the Russian Army towards Jews; making a detonator that derailed a train going to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) and helping to derail three more trains; being incorporated into the Russian Army; fighting in numerous battles; being wounded and still having a bullet near his heart, a piece of shrapnel in his head, and a leg injury; spending a month in a hospital recuperating from a bullet wound; being made a sergeant; deserting from the Russian Army in the autumn of 1944; immigrating to the United States in June 1947 with the woman who had been with him throughout their time in the woods; getting married; and his thoughts on the actions he took during the war.

    Oral history interview with Anthony Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Lazar

    Oral History

    Lillian Lazar (née Guzenfiter), born in Warsaw, Poland on June 16, 1924, discusses her family life in Poland prior to World War II; rebelling against wearing the yellow star and being beaten by Polish children; being sent with her parents to a small ghetto in Prosta; her father’s acquisition of papers listing him as Aryan; working in the ghetto’s factory that made German military uniforms; working 12 hour days for one bowl of soup, which she shared with her mother; her mother’s weak health from starvation and subsequent death from German gunfire; how most of her family died in the ghetto from starvation; memories of her grandfather when the Germans surrounded the ghetto; witnessing a German soldier shoot a mother with a baby in her arms; her attempt to defend herself when the Germans surrounded the factory; being sent with the remaining few hundred factory workers in cattle cars to Majdanek; being beaten at Majdanek; escaping by hiding in a large sewage pipe; boarding a train going to Skarzysko (Skarzysko Kamienna), where she worked making bullets for rifles; performing sabotage by approving several bushels of bad bullets; her liberation by Russian forces in January 1945; Russian soldiers’ harsh treatment of women, including sexual assault; marrying a man she had known in the ghetto, traveling to Italy; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Fanny Lebovits

    Oral History

    Fanny Lebovits (born circa 1923) describes the backgrounds of her father (Herman Judelowitz born in Aizpute, Latvia) and her mother (Sarah Gamper Elterman born circa 1899); her father’s efforts as a liberation fighter for Latvia and his capture by the Germans during WWI; growing up in Liepāja, Latvia; speaking German, Yiddish, and Latvian at home; antisemitism in Latvia; attending a Jewish school; being raised by her parents as a Zionist; attending school in Riga, Latvia when the Russians came in 1940; the deportations of wealthy Latvians to Siberia before the Germans arrived in 1941; working in a hospital; the death of her father in the forest with other Jews; the Latvians who collaborated with the Germans; the creation of the ghetto in 1942; conditions in the ghetto; being send with her family to Riga-Kaiserwald camp in October 1943; and being separated from her younger sister and mother [note that the remainder of the interview concerns the interviewee’s family’s background].

    Oral history interview with Emmi Lehner

    Oral History

    Emmi Lehner, an Austrian-born Catholic born March 7, 1913, discusses her childhood in Vienna before the war; her sister Helene who became mentally ill in her late teenage years and spent most of her time in different hospitals until she was most likely killed by the Nazis after the Anschluss; her family’s experiences during World War I; leaving Austria with her Jewish husband for England in April 1940; and settling in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Isabella Leitner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Levinson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Johanna Liebmann

    Oral History

    Hanna Liebmann (née Hirsh), born November 28, 1924, discusses her childhood in Karlsruhe, Germany; attending public school, where Jews were harassed; being forced in 1936 to transfer to the Jewish school which was shared with mentally-challenged students; the damage to her home and burning of her synagogue on Kristallnacht; her arrest in 1940 along with her mother, three aunts, and grandmother at the home they shared; spending three days on a train and arriving at Oloron Sainte-Marie, France; being sent with her family to the Gurs camp; the tremendous cultural life at Gurs despite knee-deep mud and raging dysentery; working in the camp’s office, where she met her future husband; food from the Swiss Red Cross; being sent in September 1941 by a social worker to the village Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where young people were helped to survive; hiding with villagers when Germans came to Le Chambon; escaping, alone, to Switzerland; living with an aunt’s the family; nearly having a nervous breakdown; traveling to Geneva where she reconnected with her future husband and worked as a maid; having a daughter and remaining in Switzerland until 1948 when the Swiss declined to let them stay; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

    Max Liebmann, born on September 3, 1921 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a comfortable household that was not particularly religious; beginning to play the cello when he was eight years old and having hopes of going to a conservatory in Zurich or Jerusalem; attending public school until 1937 when he left due to the harassment he experienced as a Jew; attending a private school from early 1938 until Kristallnacht; his mother, who was trained as a concert pianist, and his father, who was in the textile business; how his father was forced to give up his business in 1938 and moved to Greece to build a business there; moving with his mother to live with his grandmother; his father’s illegal move to Nice, France, where he remained until the end of the war; the outbreak of the war and being called to perform harvesting work in East Germany; returning to Mannheim in late autumn 1939; volunteering for emigration offices in Berlin and working there until his deportation on October 22, 1940 to Gurs internment camp; being separated from his mother at the camp; remaining in Gurs for 20 months, working in the office of the camp block; being given a pass that allowed him to move about the camp more easily because he played the cello; seeing his mother and his new girlfriend daily; the closing of his block and moving into the camp hospital, where he ran the office; being removed from the camp at the end of June 1942 by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants to a farm outside of Lyon run by the Boy Scouts of France; saying goodbye to his mother before he left; being dispersed from the farm when they learned that a raid was planned; being hidden on another farm for about three and a half weeks with the help of Mireille Philip; being given false papers and trekking with others over the mountains into Switzerland; being arrested by the Swiss patrol and told that they would be escorted back to France; escaping capture with another man and returning to Switzerland; being interned in Switzerland; and remaining in Switzerland for five and a half years until he was able to immigrate to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lipton

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

    Arlette de Long, born in 1937 in Brocourt in Picardy, France, describes living under the German occupation; her mother’s Russian immigrant status; receiving a baptismal certificate from a priest; being raised as Christian but also being vaguely aware of her true Jewish identity; how the house was taken and the family moved in with a widow until the end of the war; her memories of Americans arriving with two tanks and Germans immediately being made prisoners; moving to Paris, France around age 11; becoming a practicing Jew; her memories of driving to Brittany, France before the German invasion and hiding from bombings with her grandmother; living for a year in London, England and working as an interpreter after the war; moving to the United States; her daughter; experiencing survivor guilt and nightmares; her Jewish identity and lack of faith in God; and her thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Alexandra Lorenz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lubell

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Lubell, born December 9, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Budapest, where she was not aware of antisemitism; Hitler’s rise to power; the large Jewish community in Budapest; being forced to wear the Star of David; her deportation to Poland in 1941; her father’s background as a military officer for which he earned the Iron Cross; the murder of 40,000 Jews in Kamieniec Padolski; living in the ghetto of Kolomjya, Poland; escaping from the ghetto and returning to Budapest; hiding in the woods from the Germans; using Catholic documents to pass through the area safely; her capture and transfer to the camp at Sarvar; being saved by Raoul Wallenberg who placed her under Swiss protection; liberation by the Russians; continued attacks by Germans after liberation; traveling to Israel to visit her brother; and immigrating to the United States on the RMS Mauretania.

    Oral history interview with Henry Lubell

    Oral History

    Henry Lubell, born in 1911 in Dombrova, Gornicza (Dabrowa Gornicza), Poland, describes his family of eight; his family’s move in 1916 to Rawicz and later to Katowice; his father, who worked as a hazan (cantor) and shochet (mohel or kosher butcher); how his family kept kosher, but was not religious; not experiencing antisemitism before World War II; how on the first day of the war, the family sent the mother and two sisters to Kielce, farther from the German border; walking with his father eastward with other refugees until a Jewish peasant gave them a ride in his horse-drawn buggy; living with his wife and his parents in a ghetto (unclear which one) with about 25,000 inhabitants; the clearing of the ghetto of all but a few hundred people after inhabitants were marched to a train station for deportation; seeing a Jewish woman hand her baby to a Polish woman as they left the ghetto; his memories of 70 to 100 people being shoved and beaten into cattle cars; how he loosened a wooden bar from the window, and he and several others jumped from the train; hiding with about 20 men and women in the woods with partisans; being sent by the partisans on sabotage missions, including putting bombs under train tracks; “liberating himself”; and going to Budapest, Hungary to look for his wife, whom he found and rejoined.

    Oral history interview with Trude Ludwig

    Oral History

    Trude Ludwig (nee Gertrud Grunbaum), born on March 26, 1917 in Vienna, Austria, describes her Catholic mother and Jewish father; being baptized and reared as a Protestant; the high level of antisemitism in Vienna even before the rise of Hitler; attending a children’s conservator in Vienna along with her younger brother Otto; dancing and acting in the theater by the age of seven; her stage name which was Trude Hermann; how her career took her to Italy in September 1937 and her mother’s warnings immediately after the Anschluss to remain in Italy; her mother, who managed to get to Prague, then to Paris, and eventually to the United States; her father, who was in Switzerland on business, and later went to Paris; helping her brother get a transit visa by writing him a letter saying she was very sick and needed him to visit her; her brother, who eventually to Paris, where he studied under pianist Claudio Arrau; Otto receiving help from the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who got Otto a student visa for the U.S. in 1939; Otto’s studies in New York City with Arthur Schnabel, until he joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and served in Germany; being visited by her brother in post-war 1945, and his death a month later in an accident; her life during the war; the expiration of her Austrian passport and managing to get a German passport without the “J” mark that would have officially identified her as Jewish (she credits a “nice guy” officer in Germany’s consulate in Rome for granting a non-Jewish passport despite her Jewish last name); how she did not see antisemitism in Italy, and did not think she was in danger; going into hiding in 1944, just ten days before American troops arrived on June 4, 1944; returning to theater work, and then becoming an interpreter for the Americans until 1948; immigrating to Argentina with her non-Jewish German husband, who had been a POW of the Americans, and their child; and receiving a visa in 1951 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Magier

    Oral History

    Nathan Magier, born in Bedzin, Poland on May 4, 1925, describes living with his mother, father, and two brothers when the Germans invaded; the several days of bombings; his brother being sent to a camp and never seeing him again; being put to work on various labor projects before being sent to the nearby Komyunki ghetto; being separated from his father in the ghetto and never seeing him again; hiding during the deportations in a wall with his mother; being sent in 1943 first to Birkenau and then to Auschwitz; working as a tailor in Birkenau; being put to work outside the camp while he was imprisoned in Auschwitz; escaping from Auschwitz and joining the underground resistance; being wounded; joining the Russian Army, but deserting and being arrested for his desertion; getting married in Italy, and going to Montreal, Canada in 1951; going to the United States in 1955; and living in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helena Manaster

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Judith Mandel

    Oral History

    Judith Kalman Mandel describes growing up in Hatvan, Hungary, where her family identified as Hungarians who happened to be Jewish; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944; Jews having to wear the Jewish star; being spit on by other children; being moved with other Jews into a ghetto; being forced to march with 50 other Jews in the middle of a gutter, kissing the ground filled with horse-dung, while civilians in the town watched and cheered; being beaten by Hungarian police; destroying their valuables before they could be confiscated; her mother’s refusal to be separated from her child; being sent to Auschwitz and arriving on June 15, 1944; being separated from her mother; conditions in the barrack; never stealing from fellow inmates; being sent after three weeks to Płaszów concentration camp in Krakow, Poland, where she worked moving large gravestones; the Gestapo constantly beating and torturing people; the use of dogs to punish people; seeing children burned alive; surviving typhoid fever and being helped by a friend who sneaked her out of the hospital; surviving blood poisoning and pleurisy; being beaten so many times that she often thought about killing herself; one of her friends who grabbed the fence and electrocuted herself; reciting poetry and singing for food; being sent back to Auschwitz on a three day journey with no water; being under 50 pounds when American troops liberated her train on May 1, 1945 at Seeshaupt, Germany; being taken to Munich, then to Dachau; being found by a friend, Dr. Gatheish Gabol, and taken to Partenkirchen, Germany to a hospital for a week; being in an UNRA camp until September 1945; finding out that her mother, grandmother, and cousins perished; returning to Hungary and finding her father, who had been liberated in January; getting married and immigrating to the United States; and her belief that her survival was due to luck.

    Oral history interview with Lily Margules

    Oral History

    Lily Margules discusses her family’s experiences during the Holocaust; the three layers of Jewish society in her village of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); learning Yiddish in the ghetto; her mother's death from cancer in 1939; moving from Vilna to Soły (Salos), Lithuania; the 1943 liquidation of the ghetto in Soły; being sent with her sister to the labor camp Dünawerke; her father’s deportation to the Kaiserwald concentration camp; surviving the labor camp with her sister and staying at a displaced persons camp in Italy after the war; how her uncle secured papers for Lily and her sister that stated they were Protestants; immigrating to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1948; marrying and raising two sons; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Manon Marliac

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Margit Meissner, born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1922, discusses her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); her mother’s wish to have her children baptized; her parents’ differing views about being Jewish and the difficulties it caused the family; how, before World War II began, her mother often invited impoverished refugees from Germany and Poland or Russia to their house for lunch; her father’s job as a banker; living in a large house with many servants and a governesses; her father’s death of natural causes before World War II; being sent in 1938 to the outskirts of Paris, France to live with a French family; being baptized in France as a Lutheran, but always identifying as a Jew; attending dress design school; how her mother eventually joined her in France; her mother’s arrest and deportation to Gurs; living in Paris when the Germans advanced; how, as an Austrian citizen, she was declared an enemy alien and was forbidden to leave Paris; defying this order and riding a bicycle to Étampes, north of Lyon; spending the night with fellow refugees at a school, which was bombed two hours after she left; obtaining a train ticket to Brittany to join friends; how her train was diverted to Bordeaux, near Gurs, and she was reunited with her mother; getting arrested as she walked with her mother over a mountain to get to Spain; how friends in Barcelona helped get them out of jail and into Portugal; becoming a dressmaker to refugees in Portugal; immigrating to the United States with her mother in April 1941; how she, her mother, and all three brothers survived the war; working two jobs in the U.S., dressmaking and assisting the U.S. Office of War Information; and being part of the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Mendel

    Oral History

    Ellen Mendel, born in Essen, Germany in 1935, discusses her comfortable childhood with her parents, Ernst and Jella Hocher Mendel; how her grandfather, great-uncle, and father were all physicians; her father’s preparations for her family’s immigration to the United States; living in Brussels, Belgium from 1939 to 1940 while they waited for visas for the United States; how the boat on which they emigrated, the Van Dank, was torpedoed and sunk on its return trip; how her maternal grandparents, Eva and Ferdinand Holchherr, were killed at Sobibor; how other family members were killed at Auschwitz and Theresianstadt; her aunt Ella Holchherr, who survived the Holocaust; her aunt and uncle, Erica and Franz Josef, who fled Holland by disguising themselves as French peasants; and her occupation as a teacher and then a guidance counselor in the New York City schools for 32 years.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Menyuk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abe Morgenstern

    Oral History

    Abraham Morgenstern, born in 1923, discusses his Russian Jewish parents and family life in Lublin, Poland; attending Polish public school and a Jewish school; graduating from business school at 16 years old, just before war broke out in 1939; the Russian invasion of Poland and feeling that they were protected under the occupation; the German invasion of Poland; how German forces shot 99 percent of Lublin’s best educated, professional Jews; how two ghettos were established in April 1942 during which he and his family moved into one of them; the lack of food in the ghetto; the death of his father and sister during the first of four actions; how no Jews from his town were taken to concentration camps, but instead, shot in the woods and buried in mass graves; reporting to the Judenrat for work assignments but eventually just staying home; digging a hole with eight other ghetto residents and hiding there until Russian troops liberated the area; immigrating to Italy with his mother after the war; planning to go to Palestine where relatives lived, but ultimately immigrating to the United States; and how only about 200 of Lublin’s estimated 10,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Betty Migdol

    Oral History

    Betty Migdol, born December 19, 1927, describes her childhood in Ruscova, Romania; her large family’s Hasidic orthodox life; her memories of the Hungarian invasion; her brother’s conscription into forced labor; how her life changed with the 1943 German invasion; her sister’s experiences passing as non-Jewish in Budapest; her deportation to a nearby town where she was put in a ghetto; Jewish relations with Ukrainian neighbors; wearing the Star of David badge; her deportation and life in Auschwitz; her separation from her family; her memories of fasting in Auschwitz during Yom Kippur; her deportation to the Weisswasser labor camp in Czechoslovakia in October 1944; conditions in the work camp run by the Wermacht; liberation by Russian forces on May 9, 1944; her experiences being smuggled into the American zone in Germany; life in displaced persons camp; and her return to Ruscova in 1984.

    Oral history interview with Israel Milkow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Munzer

    Oral History

    Emanuel Munzer, born February 26, 1920 in Berlin, Germany; discusses living in a neighborhood of mixed population in the district of Schöneberg; his memories of Hitler’s rise to power; living under an assumed name in a sublet in Berlin; being placed with his grandmother in 1934 when his parents fled to France; living in a Jewish orphanage from 1934 until early 1937; never having to wear the yellow Star of David badge; joining his father and stepmother in France in 1937; attending a training institute for mechanics in Paris; working for Hispano-Suiza in Paris in 1938; being classified as an enemy alien in 1939 and taken to harvest sugar beets in the Touraine; conditions of work; joining the French Foreign Legion in 1940; the disbanding of the Legion by the Germans in 1941; forced work on a German railroad project; his father’s payment to free him from labor; living in Nice where there was a large Jewish population; being sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars on Convey 69 from Drancy in March 1944; the death of his parents in the gas chambers in Auschwitz; working for Siemans Works as a mechanic and living on site; his transfer to the Siemans Arbeitslager in Berlin, the location of the main factory; his relocation to Buchenwald after Russians forces were close to Auschwitz; Allied bombing raids; his relocation to Oranienburg when the labor camp was destroyed by bombing; being treated well by Russians who discovered him and other forced laborers in the forest when they were marched from the camp; recovering in a hospital in the British zone; returning to France; and immigrating to the United States in 1947 after his uncle furnished an affidavit.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Murawski

    Oral History

    Sylvia Murawski, born July 10, 1928, describes growing up in Warsaw, Poland with her well-known and well-to-do, assimilated parents; the bombardment of Warsaw in September 1939; the beginning of deportations to the ghetto; moving with her family into the ghetto; the term “szmugiel” (smuggling between the Aryan population of Warsaw and the Jews in the ghetto); leaving the ghetto on August 16, 1942; living in hiding with her parents for two years in Milanowek with the Sokolowski family; the emotional effect of living in hiding for so long; and how she eventual finished school, completed a law degree, and got married.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pola Nirenska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Offen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miki Pear

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Peker

    Oral History

    Eva Peker, born March 18, 1921, discusses her childhood and family life in prewar Vertuzhaniye, Saroka district, Romania (now Vertiujeni, Moldova); her large town in which there were about 500 families, including Jews and Russians; moving with her family in 1936 to Visoka, where there were fewer Jews; learning to become a seamstress; marrying in 1940; the presence of Russians before the war began; witnessing some of the richer townspeople being sent to Siberia; her husband being taken to the front in 1941 when she was pregnant; Romanians coming to her village and taking her family to the Village Council from which they never returned home; walking three days with her family of eight with no food or water to a ghetto in Soroka; leaving there with about 1,000 others who were marched from village to village; how those who could not walk were shot; reaching the forest Kosauts and staying there for six weeks; the living conditions in the tents in the forest; the death of her newborn; being marched to a work camp in Torkanivka, Ukraine, where they worked on a beet farm; being taken out of the camp by friends of her parents; liberation by the Russians in 1945; going back to Soroka after liberation; taking courses in bookkeeping and being employed in government work; never finding out what happened to her husband; working for 30 years in a textile factory in Chernovitz; and immigrating to the United States in 1980.

    Oral history interview with Catherine Polak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Polak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janina Prot

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Raymes

    Oral History

    Fred Raymes, born February 6, 1929 in Hoffenheim, Germany, describes experiencing serious antisemitism in school and in the neighborhood; changes after war broke out; his forced exodus from Germany and eventual arrival in Vichy France, in Gurs; being taken by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, Children’s Aid Society (OSE) in December 1941 to an orphanage in Aspet, France, run by Swedish Quakers; being sent during the winter of 1943, first to a school in Toulouse and then to a children’s home in Montsec, France; and going to the United States in December 1946.

    Oral history interview with Moses Rechnitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zofia Reginiewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

    Liane Reif-Lehrer, born in 1934, describes living in Vienna, Austria after her Polish father’s medical training was completed; her father’s home-based dentistry practice and their well-to-do life in a 14-room apartment; her mother, Klara Gottfried, who was born in Poland; political changes that began in 1933, resulting in her father having to close his practice in 1938; her father’s suicide; her memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to France with her mother and brother, and living with other refugees in Limoges, including two girls who were her closest friends: Ruth Isner Kissinger and Bella Isner Uhlfelder; her mother’s deteriorating personality and eventual diagnosis with Alzheimer’s; and the voyage to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Reiser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berta Rivkina

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Robertson

    Oral History

    Henry Roberston (né Heinz Rosenberg), born September 15, 1921, in Gottingen, Germany, describes his prewar life in Germany; the devastation that occurred during Kristallnacht; his brother’s transport to Sachsenhausen; his family’s deportation in November 1941 to the Minsk ghetto; the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto and his last time seeing his wife and parents; his transfer to a series of camps, including Treblinka, Płaszów, Wielicza, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, and Bremen from which he was liberated on April 15, 1945; numerous postwar ailments from which he suffered; his transport to Sweden to recuperate; and his immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Coenraad Rood

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Izy Rosenblat

    Oral History

    Izy Rosenblat, born January 8, 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his family life before the Holocaust; his two brothers Eli and Herschel; his family’s move to Radom; at nine years old becoming a tailor apprentice to his future father-in-law, Yanka Fishman; courting his wife Hanna Taube, born in Radom in 1917, for 13 years; being forced to pay for protection against antisemitism in school; opening his own shop and becoming registered as a master tailor; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Mengele did the selection; being transferred to another camp where he worked as a tailor; his memories of German disorganization; his liberation by the French on April 5, 1945; living for a short period on a farm; being taken to Dusseldorf and then to Stuttgart to a displaced persons camp; and arriving in the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Pal Rozsa

    Oral History

    Pal Rozsa, January 20, 1925, discusses his memories of early pre-war life in Budapest, Hungary; his family life; his father who was a freemason and language teacher; how his family celebrated high holidays and Sabbath despite being non-religious; his oldest sister’s activities in the Communist movement, which led to her arrest; his sister’s contraction death from TB; his inability to attend university in 1943 because of laws restricting enrollment; his memories of the German invasion on March 19, 1944; his memories of forced labor beginning in June 1944 in Northern Transylvania; his work on a railroad with other Jews, Romanians, and Serbs in the camp; liberation by Romanian and Russian forces on October 19, 1944; his return to Budapest; the Arrow Cross takeover; the death of family members during and after the Holocaust; and his time in university after the war.

    Oral history interview with Eva Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marsha Rozenblit

    Oral History

    Marsha Rozenblit discusses her father Mendel Rozenblit (born November 3, 1907 in Lukow, Poland): his life in prewar Poland; his father Avraham Rozenblit, mother Masha Markusfeld Rozenblit, and five brothers and one sister; his family’s religious observances; his two children with his first two wives; his time in the Warsaw ghetto from which he escaped during the uprising in April 1943; his arrest and internment in Auschwitz; his experience on a death march from Auschwitz to Dachau from which he was liberated in April 1945 by American forces; his work for the UN Relief and Restitution Agency; his immigration to the United States in December 1947; his marriage and birth of his daughter Marsha Rozenblit; his trauma from losing his first two children and the atrocities he experienced during the Holocaust; and his emotional struggles post-war.

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozsa

    Oral History

    Eva Rozsa (née Muhlrad), born October 13, 1924 in Ujpest, then a suburb of Budapest, Hungary, describes her pleasant family life until anti-Jewish laws and restrictions were in place in 1939; the German occupation of Hungary; drastic changes in living conditions and being deported on the last transport to Auschwitz; the revolt of the Sonderkommando, the crematoria workmen; her mother being sent to Bergen-Belsen then to work in a light bulb factory; being assigned to work in potato fields where she became very ill; remaining at the camp when the forced march began and subsequently being liberated by the Russians on October 27; being ill with tuberculosis and being taken to Cracow, Poland, where she spent ten months recovering; enormous difficulties in getting home to Hungary because she had neither money nor official papers; and finishing university in Hungary in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Sophie Salerno

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Charlene Perlmutter Schiff

    Oral History

    Charlene Schiff (née Sulamit Perlmutter), born December 16, 1929 in Horochow, Poland (now Horokhiv, Ukraine), describes a secure and happy prewar life in a large Jewish community governed by the kehillah (Kehilla); her family members who were town leaders; the Russian occupation of Eastern Poland; the German invasion in June 1941; the ghettoization of her town and the desperate living conditions therein; her mother’s arrangement for her and her sister to escape the ghetto and hide in farm houses across the river; the disappearance of her mother; the rejection of an agreement by the farmer, leaving her abandoned and alone; her attempts to find her mother while hiding in the woods; her eventual discovery by Russian troops; her hospitalization; her time in various displaced persons camps in Germany; her education at the University of Heidelberg; her immigration to the United States in 1948; living with her aunt in Columbus, OH; and her life post-war.

    Oral history interview with Michael Scislowski

    Oral History

    Michael M. Scislowski, born September 30, 1922, in Siedlce, Poland, describes his life in prewar Poland; his school years in Siedlce and in Wilaka (now in Lithuania) until September 1, 1939 when the war began; his attempts to escape the Soviets; learning English; his membership in the ZWZ (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej), the underground group that preceded the AK (Armia Krajowa); his arrest on March 19, 1943; his time in the Poliak prison; his transport by cattle car to Auschwitz; his forced march to Dachau after time in Flossenbürg; his liberation on April 24, 1945 by Patton’s Third Army on the third day of the march; witnessing medical experiments that were conducted in Block 10 of Auschwitz; working for the US Army from 1945 to 1950 serving the Labor Service Company; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Ida Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rubin Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lewis Shabasson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Shapiro

    Oral History

    Irene Shapiro (née Hass), born in 1925 in Berezhany, Ukraine, describes her life in Gludjan until 1938 when her family moved to Bialystok; Russian propaganda; her strong Zionist beliefs; the Russian occupation of Bialystok, which became part of Soviet Byelorussia; the ghettoization of Bialystok during the second German occupation; her involvement with the Jewish underground; her time in Treblinka, Lublin, Majdanek (where her father was killed), Blitzen, and in May 1944, Auschwitz Birkenau; how she survived in the camps; her liberation; her immigration to the United States in 1946; and her work with American and British forces after the war.

    Oral history interview with Flora Mendelowitz Singer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dr. Laszlo Sokoly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Somogyi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Spear

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vera Sprecher and Robert Sprecher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Morris Steiman

    Oral History

    Morris Steiman, born August 5, 1918 in Bodzanow, Poland, describes being the youngest of 14 children in an Orthodox family; fighting with Polish boys on his way to school; antisemitism in Poland; speaking Yiddish and Polish at home; attending Yeshiva in Tutusk for two years; being in Tutusk during the German invasion; being taken out of school to dig ditches; not being allowed in the street; being forced to wear a yellow Star of David badge in the fall of 1939; working in a tailor shop for a German until being relocated to a ghetto with approximately 1,200 people; receiving help from some Poles while in the ghetto; deportations but no killing during the first year in the ghetto; being taken to Dzaldowo, and the brutality of a camp there (Soldau concentration camp); and then to a ghetto in Chestochowa; reuniting with his family in Yaldodov, where there was another ghetto; getting married in 1941; being in the ghetto synagogue when the ghetto was liquidated on Yom Kippur of 1941; his transfer to a smaller ghetto; an unsuccessful escape attempt; the ghetto’s liquidation and being taken to work in an ammunition factory in 1943 with his wife; being taken to waiting trains just before liberation; arriving in the United States on March 3, 1947 with his wife; his post-war life including the birth of his daughter and grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Matylda Szymaniak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Florence Tabrys

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Tabrys

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Walter Taranowicz

    Oral History

    Walter Taranowicz, born July 22, 1918 in New York City discusses his parents who were Polish-born Catholics; his father’s American citizenship; how during the Great Depression his father took the family to a ranch they owned in Lublin, Poland; his father’s return to the United States for work and subsequent inability to return to Poland; attending Polish schools in the 1930s; planning to get an European education then returning to the US to become an engineer; the outbreak of war in Poland; the arrival of the Russians and loss of the family farm; the family’s attempt to reach the American Consulate in Warsaw, Poland; staying on the German side of the border; his mother and sister’s deportation to Siberia in 1941; his arrest on January 13, 1940 because the Nazis thought he was an American spy; his brutal treatment by the Nazis; being taken with 5,000 Polish men on trucks to Auschwitz; building Birkenau; working as a cabinet maker, making soldier beds, rifle racks, tables, and benches for German army supplies; volunteering in 1942 to transfer with 4,000 others to Mauthausen, where he worked as a cabinet maker with the camp architect; his liberation on May 5th, 1945 by American forces; being taken to Regensburg, Germany to recover; becoming an interpreter in Italy and being stationed in Verona then Milan for seven months; his transfer to the US in the fall of 1945 on the Marine Falcon; the liberation of his mother and sister from a work camp in Siberia; working as a cabinet maker in New York; marrying his wife Sabina; and details about her life.

    Oral history interview with George Topas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Trompettor

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edward Unkiewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Urbach

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Moishe Weiner

    Oral History

    Moise Weiner, born in May 24, 1927 in Vakhnivka, Ukraine, discusses his prewar life in Vakhnivka; attending Ukrainian school instead of the Jewish school; his memories of people’s reaction when Molotov announced war with Germany; escaping on a train with his sister; managing to escape when the Germans attacked the train; making their way to Orsk in the Urals; working different jobs until he was called into the army in 1945; the Russian Civil War and pogroms of that time; how his brothers and sister became Communists during the war; becoming a writer after the war; translating novels by Jewish authors from Yiddish into Russian; and living as a Refusenik for ten years.

    Oral history interview with Paul Wos

    Oral History

    Paul Wos, born December 22, 1920 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his life in prewar Starowka; his Catholic family; his membership in the Polish Army; his experience helping Jewish families hide during the German occupation; his membership in the resistance movement; the Warsaw ghetto uprising; his family’s deportation as political prisoners; the family’s relocation to several concentration camps until they were finally taken to Flossenbürg; conditions at Flossenbürg; his feelings that he owes his survival to his friend Jan Shienitski and to the power of prayer; and his immigration to the United States in 1961 with his wife and two children.

    Oral history interview with David Yegher

    Oral History

    David Yegher (né Jegher), born in December 22, 1920 in Rona de Jos, Romania, describes his life in Romania before World War II; early institutionalized antisemitism throughout Europe; his displacement in a ghetto in Slotyna, Czechoslovakia (now Solotvyno, Ukraine); transporting goods from nearby towns to Jewish families in the ghetto; his experiences in Auschwitz and Gleiwitz and subsequent hardships in the labor camps; being liberated by the British Army; his post-war hospitalization; immigrating to the United States; his encounter with the American Nazi Party; and the importance of trying to overcome contemporary antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with Eva Young

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frances Zatz

    Oral History

    Frances Zatz, born in May 4, 1932 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her early childhood in Poland before World War II; the siege of Warsaw by German troops; the outbreak of the war; the building of the Warsaw ghetto and subsequent hardships there; her mother smuggling ammunitions into the ghetto; plans for the Jewish uprising; being smuggled out of the ghetto and living with a Christian family; her reunion with her mother and sister after the Warsaw uprising; working in the factories making uniforms for German soldiers; her time in a German detention camp; being liberated by the Russians; moving to Berlin, Germany after the war; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Trude Ludwig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Rein Cox

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Zoberman Kupfer

    Oral History

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