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Oral history interview with Moses Rechnitz

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0125.106 | RG Number: RG-50.233.0106

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    Oral history interview with Moses Rechnitz
    Transcript
    Today's day is--
    Today is July 12, 1992.
    And your name, please?
    And my name is Moses Rechnitz, R-E-C-H-N-I-T-Z.
    I was born in Poland on June 3, 1923,
    in a town called Katowice, K-A-T-O-W-I-C-E. Originally,
    my family lived in a town called Bedzin, B-E-D-Z-I-N,
    which was about 15 miles from Katowice,
    a major population of Jews and a smaller population of Poles.
    It was-- by Polish standards, it was a pretty good sized city.
    It had streetcars, it had stores, it had a main street.
    It had, I believe, a couple of movie houses.
    It had an old castle that belonged somewhere
    in the Polish history.
    Where is Bedzin near?
    Bedzin is in the southwestern part of Poland, not--
    about 10 miles from Katowice, K-A-T-O-W-I-C-E, in Silesia,
    which is predominantly the coal region of Poland--
    coal and steel works.
    It is also, I think, about 50 or 60 miles from Kraków,
    which is one of the oldest cities in Poland and is known
    as the University City of Poland.
    Did you live with your mother and father?
    I lived with my mother and father
    on the third or fourth floor of a building.
    And I remember the water system was on top of the building,
    and we were getting the water in our sinks or toilets
    by gravity.
    Seemed like it was pumped up into the cistern
    on the top of the building.
    When did you move from Bedzin?
    I moved from-- my family moved from Bedzin
    to Katowice where my father had a wholesale leather
    store in about 1930, I believe.
    And it was a relatively short trip
    between Bedzin and Katowice, which
    one could take a train to and from,
    which took about 20 minutes or 25 minutes of a ride.
    And the town in between Bedzin and Katowice
    was Sosnowiec, another town that was also
    populated by a lot of Jews.
    What was your father's name?
    My father's name was Bernard, and he--
    they used to call him Berek.
    And what was your father's--
    well, did your father's mother and father, your grandparents,
    live in Bedzin, as well?
    Yes.
    Yes, they did.
    And I remember visiting them almost every Saturday
    with the rest of my family.
    Do you remember their names?
    No, I do not remember their names.
    Do you remember the--
    your grandmother's on your father's side's maiden name?
    No, I do not.
    OK.
    On your mother's side, what was your mother's name?
    My mother's name was Rachel, R-A-C-H-E-L,
    and she was called Ruchla, R-U-C-H-L-A,
    and her maiden name was Lejzerowitz,
    L-E-J-Z-E-R-O-W-I-T-Z.
    And what about her parents?
    I only remember her father, which was my grandfather,
    and his name was Abraham Lejzerowitz.
    I don't remember my grandmother on that side,
    because I understand that originally my mother's mother
    died and he remarried again.
    And I do not remember her second--
    his second wife's name.
    Did your-- now, we're talking about your mother's side
    of the family.
    Right.
    Were there relatives of your mother's,
    also, in Bedzin or in that Bedzin area?
    Yes, there were relatives in Bedzin, in that area,
    on my mother's side.
    She had a brother, who had two children.
    I do not remember his name.
    And my grandfather on my mother's side,
    after he got remarried, had a child whose name was Fisiek,
    F-I-S-I-E-K, and he was about my age.
    And I always joked because everybody was telling me
    that Fisiek is my uncle, and he was really my own age.
    I could never accept the fact that he was my uncle.
    What about-- did your mother have sisters?
    She-- yes, my mother had a sister by the name of Pola,
    P-O-L-A. She was married to my uncle,
    whose name was Max Bolimowski, B-O-L-I-M-O-W-S-K-I.
    And I know they had two children--
    one boy and one girl.
    And the boy's name was Ziggy, and the girl's name was Lusia,
    L-U-S-I-A.
    Well did your mother have any other sisters?
    My mother, I do not remember whether she
    had any other sisters, no.
    So far, we know that your mother had one brother
    and a sister named Pola.
    Right.
    And you don't remember the brother's name.
    No, but if I remember, I may bring it up again.
    What-- so far as you know, what became
    of your mother's sister--
    sister and brother, and their children?
    As far as I remember, during the war--
    before the war, my uncle, who is my mother's brother,
    divorced or separated from his wife, and he had two sons.
    One son's name was Wowik.
    And the other's was Idek.
    Idek was the older of the sons.
    And before the war started, he was
    forced to join the Polish army.
    Wowik was a few years younger, and because
    of the problem within the family,
    Wowik came to live with us for a couple of years in Katowice,
    when we moved to Katowice about 1930.
    Now, Wowik's last name was Lejzerowitz, right?
    Wowik's last name was Lejzerowitz,
    and he was a couple of years older than I was.
    And we got very well--
    we got along very well when he was living with us in Katowice.
    What eventually became of Wowik to your knowledge?
    Wowik survived the Second World War,
    and I met him a couple of times after the World War.
    He lived in Konstanz, Germany when I became that he was--
    when I became aware that he was alive,
    and I made a point to go and visit him.
    He eventually emigrated to Australia,
    and he married a girl in Germany still,
    who also survived the war, and whose name--
    first name was Mirka.
    I don't remember the last name.
    Now, Wowik's brother, do you know what became of him?
    Wowik's brother never surfaced after the end
    of the Second World War.
    What was his name?
    Edek.
    And I believe that he must have--
    the rumor, or what people were saying,
    is that he died somewhere in Russia
    during the period of the Second World War,
    and nobody heard from him again.
    And the same goes for Fisiek.
    Fisiek ran away-- when the Germans were advancing,
    he ran away towards the Russian border.
    And we heard from him a couple of times through the mail
    during the early part of the Second World War,
    but then we never heard anything about him again.
    And I do not know what happened to him.
    OK.
    Let's talk about your--
    if that is the end of your mother's side of the family
    as best that you can remember, what about your father's
    side of the family?
    How many brothers and sisters did your father have?
    I don't remember how many brothers or sisters my father
    had, but I can think about one sister and one brother.
    One brother was a furrier in Bedzin.
    And the sister's name was Sala, and she was probably
    in her late 30s or early 40s when a matchmaker
    found a husband for her.
    And I remember as a child of 10 or 12
    that the wedding took place in our apartment in Katowice.
    I also remember that when the war broke out,
    she was pregnant, and she did have a baby.
    And after that, because of whatever
    happened during that period of time,
    she vanished and I never heard--
    and I don't know what happened to her.
    But I'm pretty sure that she died during the war,
    as did her husband.
    So her name was Sala Rechnitz, and you don't
    remember her married name.
    No, I do not.
    What about your father had a brother.
    You don't remember his name?
    I don't remember, no.
    And any other cousins and nephews and nieces and things
    from that side of the family?
    There was a-- there was a sis--
    OK.
    My father had this sister.
    I don't remember what her name was.
    She was married to an intelligent Jew who--
    and she lived in Sosnowiec.
    And her mai-- her married name was Wiederman,
    W-I-E-D-E-R-M-A-N. He was the director of a high school,
    which was attended--
    He?
    Who's he, her husband?
    Yes.
    What was his--
    Max.
    No, no, no, there was Max Bolimowski.
    Febek--
    Febek.
    F-E-B-E-K, Wiederman, was a director of a high school
    in Sosnowiec, which was predom--
    which was really attended only by Jewish children.
    They also had two children.
    One, whose name was Olek, and I don't remember the other one.
    And I know that all of them perished during the war,
    except my Uncle Febek, who wrote a book about the period
    during the war in Sosnowiec.
    He was hidden for a number of years in Sosnowiec
    by a janitor of the high school.
    And he survived the war, and then came to America
    and wrote the book.
    I understand that the book is in the Library of Congress
    in the United States.
    What about all the grandparents, do you
    know what happened to them?
    Did they die natural deaths?
    Did they die in the war or what?
    I do not remember much of the grandparents.
    I remem-- no, my mother's father died before the war.
    And my father's father lived with us at the beginning
    of the war in Kraków where we moved to at the--
    before the very beginning of the war.
    And he died a natural death.
    The rest of them, I have absolutely no idea.
    OK.
    Let's talk about your mother.
    Your mother's maiden name was Rachel Lejzerowitz.
    What was your mother like?
    My mother was very, very progressive woman,
    from what I could judge now, and even then.
    She was very active in Jewish organizations,
    like the Hadassah in Poland, and WIZO in Poland.
    She--
    --community--
    --she was very socially active.
    She belonged to a lot of philanthropic organizations
    and social organizations.
    And she was really, in my opinion,
    very advanced in her thinking for that age.
    Didn't you-- didn't you say something
    about your mother going to the World's Fair in 1939?
    Yes.
    In 1939, I believe, my mother went to the World's Fair
    in New York.
    And after the trip to New York, she came back to Poland,
    and we were making plans to emigrate
    to Israel at that time.
    My father was in the wholesale leather business in Katowice,
    and he was doing financially very well.
    And he was very respected in the community
    and contributed money.
    And here and there, he found himself
    in a position of having to help out some
    of the members of the family.
    I became aware a couple of times that when he was walking home
    from his business, he got accosted by some Polish youth.
    And on a couple of occasions, he either
    got beaten up or chased already, or something like that.
    And I believe that that experience prompted
    him to start making arrangements to leave Poland and emigrate
    to Israel.
    Do you have any brothers or sisters?
    I have one sister who has gone to Israel in 1936.
    She was five-- she is five years older than I am.
    And--
    Her name?
    --her name is Genia, G-E-N-I-A. And she was at the last stages
    of getting her musical education on piano,
    and she attended the Conservatory in Tel Aviv.
    And lucky that she did, because of the fact
    that she lived in Israel, she was really not caught up
    in the Second World War.
    And what was your childhood like?
    What-- where did you go to school and things like that?
    My childhood seemed like a very trouble-free childhood.
    I was a very normal, pretty strong kid
    who managed to survive by himself,
    although there was no big question of survival
    in the early years.
    But I mixed very well with everybody else.
    And after attending a Polish grammar school, and also
    a Jewish cheder in Katowice, I started
    attending a Polish high school in which there were only
    like three or five Jewish pupils.
    I became aware of antisemitism at the early stage
    when one of my teachers started making fun of me
    because I had the same last name as another man who was building
    a huge building in Katowice.
    And he was also always deriding me
    and trying to poke fun at me because of that relationship.
    I was really a rebel at heart, because I wouldn't
    take any pressure from anybody, and neither
    from the Polish kids.
    And I was involved in quite a few fights in school,
    but eventually, they started respecting me
    and I got along very well with them.
    Although, the teachers didn't like me
    and didn't like the idea that there
    was a Jewish boy who fended for himself.
    And I remember that at the end of the year,
    they called my mother in and told her
    that unless she makes sure that I go to another high school,
    they will not pass me to the next grade,
    and I would be forced to repeat the same grade
    in that high school in Katowice.
    Why do you think that they did that?
    Because of the fact that I was Jewish,
    and they were going to cause trouble.
    Well, tell me a little bit about the fact
    that you mentioned that you're basically
    taller and stronger and the business about your father
    letting you be an apprentice for mechanical things.
    OK.
    That's very interesting.
    Before I go to that, I just want to mention
    that as a result of the pressure being put on my mother
    to take me out of that high school,
    I ended up commuting to the high school in Sosnowiec
    where my uncle was the Director of the high school.
    And I did very well in that high school.
    My grades were good, and the only problem
    was that I had to commute by train to Sosnowiec
    and back, which of course, took quite a bit more time.
    During the summers, my father always made arrangements for us
    to go on a vacation somewhere in the southern part of Poland
    in the mountains.
    And till I was about 14 years old, or 13 years old,
    I did that, and I had a lot of fun because being on vacation,
    doing things in the countryside of the mountains
    that you couldn't do in the city,
    obviously, appealed to me.
    But when I got to be about 14 or 15, I kind of was--
    it didn't appeal to me anymore, and I talked my father
    into letting me work for a garage in Katowice,
    because I was always interested in mechanics.
    And he made the arrangement with a German
    who owned the garage in Katowice for me
    to work there as an apprentice.
    And my father had to pay the German owner money for me
    to be an apprentice.
    And I enjoyed it very much, and I didn't miss my vacations
    at all.
    And I felt that I'm doing something
    that I really liked doing.
    Among other things, I learned how
    to drive a car at a very early age,
    and I was very proud of myself when I was 15
    and could drive a car.
    So you grew up, essentially, in Katowice.
    What was it like there?
    Were you in the city?
    Did you live in the city?
    We lived in the city in a nice apartment
    house that had three bedrooms.
    And it was a stone building in the area
    of the town which was considered upper class, so to speak.
    Wasn't that Jordana Street?
    That was-- right, that--
    the street's name was Jordana, J-O-R-D-A-N-A.
    And I believe the number was 17.
    Right.
    And then how did you happen to--
    under what circumstances did you leave that location?
    Before the war started while my father was making arrangements
    to go to Israel, he sold his wholesale store and we moved
    to Kraków.
    Matter of fact, my mother and I already lived in Kraków while
    my father was still active in Katowice trying to wind up his
    business deals.
    He also-- we also packed all our belongings
    to be shipped to Israel.
    And when the war broke out on the 1st of September of 1939,
    most of our belongings were already
    at the railroad station in Katowice
    on the way to being shipped to Israel.
    Why did you move from Katowice to Kraków?
    I really do not know, except it was supposed
    to be a very short term move.
    And when the war started, we obviously
    were caught in Katowice--
    in the Kraków.
    I see.
    What was it like being in Kraków?
    So you didn't-- so when you lived in Kraków,
    you really didn't know anybody there.
    I didn't know Kraków at all because I lived there very
    shortly.
    Although, as a kid, I roamed around the city, and I thought
    it was a very interesting city from a lot of perspectives.
    And for a boy of 16, with all the castles and all the history
    and all the walls and everything, stone walls
    and everything else, I thought it was very interesting.
    I did not have any friends in Kraków because of the very
    short amount of time that I spent there.
    And of course, I never started school or anything else
    in Kraków because we were ready to move.
    And the war broke out in September,
    which was before the school year started.
    When the Germans moved in, and we lived in a pretty well-to-do
    section of Kraków, about two months or three months later,
    they took over the whole neighborhood for their military
    or military families, personnel, and forced us out
    of our apartment.
    And as a result of that, my father found a place for us
    in Wieliczka, W-I-E-L-I-C-Z-K-A, which was known all across
    Poland as the salt mine town of Poland.
    And we found an apartment in Wieliczka,
    which was just about 300 feet from the entrance
    to the salt mines.
    That's where I spent the first year, or first year and a half,
    of the war.
    At that stage already, we were forced
    to do forced labor for the Germans in many ways.
    And in order to keep out of the German control, so to speak,
    I joined a group of people that commuted to work near Kraków.
    And it was a project whereby the Germans were building
    a railroad spur to bypass Kraków itself.
    And the spur was bypassing Kraków heading towards
    the eastern front, towards the Russian border.
    I was taking the train to a place called Krakówianka which
    was just on the outskirts of Kraków.
    And it was forced labor, but I did it voluntarily
    because somehow, the arrangement was, as long as you worked
    for a German company, or for a German project,
    the Germans left you alone.
    My father and mother left the village
    because they had nothing to do, no work or anything else.
    And the way we survived, or tried to survive,
    is by selling off gradually everything
    that we had in order to be able to get
    cheese, and butter, and bread, or anything else like that.
    Of course, whatever we owned, it was very little
    and things were really getting pretty tight.
    At one point, the Germans decided
    that they don't need any more Jews in Wieliczka,
    or they don't want any more Jews in Wieliczka,
    and surrounded the town, and they
    were going to evacuate all the Jewish population in Wieliczka.
    Because of my work that I commuted to,
    and because I got along very well with one
    of the German foremen, I asked a Polish woman to go to him
    and tell him that the town was surrounded and would
    he please try to get me out of that town.
    As a result of that, he sent a truck to Wieliczka,
    and I managed to get my mother, and my father,
    and myself, and about 30 other people on the truck,
    and we drove out from Wieliczka, and we ended up
    on the working project itself.
    And somehow we made our home in a brick factory or a kiln.
    And I remember we spent the first few weeks, practically,
    in that kiln all on our own.
    There was no question about running away or doing anything
    else, because it was almost impossible because
    of the attitude of the Polish population
    that we would get any support at all, even
    if we tried to run away.
    In order to keep the Jews working on that spur project,
    the Germans started erecting barracks.
    And as a result, my father, my mother, and myself
    eventually moved to one of the barracks
    and were working for the Germans in different capacities.
    I, because of my mechanical background,
    got a job driving a narrow gauge locomotive
    with wagons that was bringing up dirt
    to build up the railroad spur.
    I don't remember what my mother or father were doing,
    but I know they were also doing physical work.
    At one point in that camp, I understand I got very sick,
    and I believe it was diphtheria.
    And my arm was very, very swollen, and I--
    I had drains in my arm, although, there
    was no medical care of any kind to speak of.
    Somehow, I had drains in my arm, and I
    was delirious for quite a few weeks
    before I started recuperating.
    I was very lucky in the sense that I grew up
    with both Polish and German, and I
    seemed to be liked by some of the German foremen, which made
    life a hell of a lot easier.
    And I attribute that to the fact that despite the fact that I
    was sick, somehow I survived that ordeal.
    For a period of time myself, there
    was a small quarters on the location where--
    on the location of the job.
    And I had the privilege of sleeping over in those quarters
    with my father and mother, unfortunately.
    And there were like another 40 people
    doing the same thing, which means
    we did not have to go back to camp every night
    and come back in the morning to do the job.
    However, there was an accident, and the barn
    where the locomotives were stored were kept overnight,
    it caught fire, and of course, everybody
    started running and doing whatever they could.
    And I jumped into one of the diesel locomotives
    and got it out of the barn before it burned down.
    But as a result of that in the morning, a contingent of SS men
    came, and they decided that it wasn't an accident,
    that it was sabotage.
    They lined up everybody, and they starting--
    they started pulling out people to be killed.
    I remember that when I got--
    when the SS men got to me, that the German foreman intervened
    and said, leave him alone.
    That's one of my best men.
    And that's really why I think, also,
    one of the few things during the war, that
    resulted in me surviving that war,
    because there were a lot of accidents or incidents
    that, for all practical reasons, I should have been dead.
    Where exactly was this?
    That was in Krakówianka on the job.
    They locked about 10 or 12 of us survivors in a shed overnight.
    And of course, before they locked us up,
    we watched the SS to shoot all the people that they pulled out
    of the lineup.
    And we were convinced that come morning,
    that we'll probably be shot just as well.
    In the morning, they made us load the bodies
    into the lorries that were used on the narrow railroad spur
    and bring them out to a location where they
    going to be bringing in fill.
    And we dumped those bodies in that location,
    and I can still remember that there
    must have been at least one person who was still alive
    because his hand was coming--
    was being raised out of the sand.
    But of course, there was nothing that anybody could have done.
    And we had to go back to the original work place.
    I'm sure that those bodies are still there,
    and nobody will ever know who those people were,
    or what those people were.
    The only incident that I vividly remember
    is there happened to be a couple of young children in that war
    camp that stayed overnight also with me, with their parents.
    And because the kids were relatively young, eight
    or 10 years old, they didn't have anything to do.
    So they were riding with me in the locomotive
    that I was driving.
    And during the lineup, the SS pulled those two children,
    and the father and the mother went absolutely crazy.
    And they were told by the SS men, if they don't keep quiet,
    he'll shoot them, too.
    And of course, they didn't, and as a result,
    the mother, the father and the two children
    were shot right in front of me.
    What happened next?
    Next, after the fire, of course, then there wasn't--
    there was nobody that could stay on the job, or on the premises
    where the job activity was taking place
    except by coming in the morning, going back
    at night to the barracks, to the barrack base.
    And just life went on from day to day,
    hoping that the Germans will start losing, eventually,
    and maybe that'll be the end of our misery there.
    But unfortunately, lasted and went on and on and on.
    Across the street, across the road going from Kraków
    to Wieliczka, there was another camp called Jerusalimska.
    And in that camp, there was another large group of Jews.
    It used-- Jerusalimska used to be
    a cemetery, a Jewish cemetery.
    And the function of those Jews living
    on the other side of the highway in the camp
    called Jerusalimska was to dig up the corpses
    and retrieve the gold, whether it's teeth, rings,
    or any other kind of jewelry, from the corpses that
    were buried there already for quite a long time.
    That's the only thing I remember about Jerusalimska.
    I have never been there.
    But you could see it from our camp
    because it was on a hill going up,
    and you could observe it at times
    as far as activity going there.
    After building the spur around Kraków, we,
    as a group of people forced to work,
    were moved to Skarzysko-Kamienne,
    S K A R Z Y S K O dash K A M I E N N E.
    It was a place where the Germans took over a munitions factory,
    and they were adding to the capacity of the munitions
    factory.
    When they unloaded us at Skarzysko-Kamienne,
    there were three camps already in existence--
    Camp A, Camp B, and Camp C.
    Camp C was considered, after a short time after they unloaded
    us from the train, we--
    I understood that Camp C was the worst
    camp of all the three of them.
    And it was the worst because that
    was the facility where the artillery shells were
    being filled with the powder.
    And it was a yellow powder, and somehow the people
    must have absorbed the powder through their skin,
    because at the beginning, it was really weird
    because their color was yellow.
    And of course, it was a chemical reaction that
    made those people look yellow.
    And I understood that their lifespan was really
    shortened by very much.
    And so when they lined us up after they
    unloaded us from the train, they started sorting us out,
    and they started asking for people who are electricians,
    people that are mechanics, and different professions.
    And the minute I heard anybody asking
    for an electrician or a mechanic, I raised my hand,
    and I was selected to be moved to the other camp.
    I didn't know which one, A or B, but it ended up being,
    I believe, A. My father and mother, unfortunately,
    got stuck in Camp C.
    And while we were being led out by a German guard from Camp
    C on the way to Camp A, which was only
    a couple of miles, or three miles away,
    the comment by the German guard was, well,
    you got yourself another extension of your life
    by leaving the Camp C. I arrived at Camp A,
    and I was-- we were get-- we are put into barracks,
    and our job was to help building a new facility
    where munitions are going to be produced.
    I lost track of my father and mother,
    with the exception that once a month, there
    was a delousing facility in our camp,
    and different groups of people were coming in to be deloused.
    And so once a month or so, my father, or my mother,
    came to our camp to be deloused.
    And because I knew when they're coming,
    I always made sure that I have the opportunity to see them.
    This experience kind of splits into two.
    Because of the fact that there wasn't
    enough food to satisfy the people's hunger,
    and because of the fact that we had
    the number of Polish employees working at the factory, also,
    there was already producing artillery shells, just
    the casings.
    I found that it gives me a good opportunity
    to put maybe a few extra hours for a Pole, and as a result,
    he'll give me bread or anything else to eat.
    And all of that worked fine till I realized
    that with all the additional food
    and working all those additional hours physically,
    I wasn't gaining anything, that matter of fact,
    I was getting weaker.
    And I came to the conclusion that that idea
    wasn't such a bright idea.
    So I gave up trying to work an evening shift besides working
    myself during the day.
    My job during the day was hooking up different cement
    machines to the electric wires.
    And I don't know how or why, but I became very proficient at it.
    And as a result at the later stages,
    I was getting extra food so there
    was no need for me to work for a Pole or anybody else
    to try to get extra food.
    The second part of it is that my mother and father were
    obviously stuck in Camp C, and suddenly, I
    realized that the people that I was friendly with kind of
    didn't communicate with me as they used to before.
    And before long, I realized that something happened.
    And I found out that my mother got
    hurt, because one of the people working in Camp C
    dropped a loaded artillery shell,
    and the shell exploded, and quite a number of people
    got injured, among them, my mother.
    Because there was absolutely no medical care at all,
    although, her injuries today would have not been considered
    very serious, or she would have had
    a very good chance of survival, because of no medical care
    or attention, she was having a very hard time.
    And my father, in order to be as helpful,
    or do whatever he could for my mother,
    went to the extreme of having his gold teeth extracted
    so he can sell the gold and buy my mother
    the proper nourishment.
    All of that did no good, and eventually, my mother died.
    And that location, again, was where?
    That location was Skarzysko-Kamienne.
    I know my mother died in Skarzysko-Kamienne.
    I have-- I know she was buried in a mass grave.
    I really have no idea where or what or how, but I
    guess she's one of the six million Jews that vanished
    and that died during the war, and nobody will ever
    know where she is.
    I am glad that I know as much as I know about it,
    because my father survived.
    And it's from him that I learned all the details
    about what my mother went through before she died.
    I don't remember precisely how long
    I have stayed in that camp.
    I know that, eventually, the Russians started advancing,
    and the Germans really got worried about it.
    So they shipped all of us out, which
    was quite a number of people, to the eastern part of Poland.
    And I know it was like early fall,
    or late summer, to dig ditches in a form of a V.
    They were quite deep in order to prevent the Russian tanks
    from being able to come across.
    We were living very primitively, and we had relatively very poor
    shelter for the climate.
    And I was lucky that it was late summer or early fall that
    were-- otherwise, it would have been horrible.
    We-- when they were happy having the kind of tank traps that we
    built, they moved us from there to Czestochowa,
    C-Z-E-S-T-O-C-H-O-W-A, which also--
    they also had a munitions factory in Czestochowa,
    and they also had two camps.
    And I ended up in one facility, and my father ended up
    at the second facility.
    By comparison to Skarzysko, Czestochowa
    wasn't that bad at all.
    I was active, and I was--
    I joined a group that was rebuilding the engines
    for the German Tiger tanks.
    And--
    Back from the eastern front that broke down
    or needed rebuilding.
    And I was assigned to a group of Germans that
    were in charge of testing the engines after they were being
    rebuilt. The system was that the whole engine was
    taken totally apart, and every part was measured.
    And only the good parts were going to go into the engine,
    or replace the new parts.
    The rest of it was thrown out.
    Because I was working with a couple of German soldiers,
    they were kind of taking care of me.
    I got along with them very good, and they
    were bringing me sandwiches.
    And I even enjoyed what I was doing.
    So as a result of that, I had absolutely no complaints
    about that period of time.
    And contrary to a lot of other people,
    I looked like a very well managed member of the camp.
    My father happened to be in an adjoining camp,
    also in Czestochowa, working also
    in some kind of a munitions factory.
    And occasionally, he had a chance to come over to the camp
    where I was living, and we had a chance to see each other.
    He seemed to be dealing pretty good with the overall situation
    at that time.
    Some time at the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945,
    the Russians were advancing from the east.
    And in January of 1945, they were
    getting pretty close to our area,
    and the Germans decided to evacuate us.
    And one day, they just made everybody walk out
    to the railroad spur and loaded us on the freight wagons,
    and we started moving west.
    They emptied completely the camp in Czestochowa.
    While we were traveling through the night towards the west
    from Czestochowa, it was almost ironic that at one point,
    I realized that we were passing the town of Katowice
    where I was born.
    And of course, that brought up an awful lot of emotions
    that I went through that period.
    We ended up in Buchenwald after a few days.
    And Buchenwald was a huge concentration camp
    that was in existence already, from what I understand,
    before the beginning of the Second World War.
    And there were rows and rows and rows of barracks,
    and we were marched into the camp
    and were allocated into a wooden structure of a barrack.
    And we lived on straw mattresses and two meals a day--
    in the morning and in the evening.
    And we realized that the war isn't going to last too long,
    so everybody's hope, obviously, was
    that the Germans will get conquered
    and we will be liberated.
    What did you eat?
    Well, we had the--
    mostly we ate soup and 1/4 of a European type
    bread, the German type of military bread.
    However, fortunately during that period,
    either the Americans or the British were--
    bombed Weimar, which is a city not too far from Buchenwald,
    and have done an awful lot of damage
    in the residential areas.
    So the Germans took us out to the town of Weimar,
    W-E-I-M-A-R, in order to help clean up the damage that was
    caused by the bombardment.
    We were also-- we were going to Weimar by train
    and coming back to the camp by train.
    But being outside the camp gave us
    an opportunity to get some extra food that traditionally
    the Germans were storing in the cellars, like potatoes,
    and jams, and some things, maybe even
    a piece of bacon, which obviously helped everybody
    to get more nourishment than they were getting in the camp.
    My father also ended up at Buchenwald
    in an adjoining barrack, which was
    separated from ours by a fence.
    And because I was getting enough food during the day
    while I was working in cleaning up the destruction,
    I was able to give him some of the food that was allocated
    to me in the evening when I came back from work, because not
    everybody was able to go to work in the city
    to try to clean it up.
    There were a lot of inmates of Buchenwald
    that did not have a chance to get extra food.
    And I was aware that there are a lot of times the stronger
    inmates were trying to take away the food from the weaker ones.
    And it was like a death sentence, because the weaker
    ones could not defend themselves,
    or could not have enough food in order to survive.
    I definitely was a witness to the fact
    that every day there were a number of corpses
    that were taken out of the area of people that did not
    have enough strength, or who could not survive
    under those circumstances.
    The Russians still kept advancing.
    And at one point, the Germans decided
    to evacuate all the Jews from Buchenwald.
    At that point, I decided that being a Jew
    will probably be more dangerous than not being a Jew.
    As a result, I managed to take an armband that
    belonged to a Frenchman who happened to be in Buchenwald
    who was dead.
    And I took his armband and put it on my arm,
    and I got rid of my armband which designated me as a Jew.
    And I tried to blend in with the rest
    of the different nationalities that
    were left in Buchenwald after the Jews were evacuated.
    Two days, or three days, after the Jews
    were evacuated from Buchenwald, the Germans
    decided to evacuate the whole camp again.
    They loaded us on freight cars, and they happened
    to be open freight cars.
    And on every freight car on top were sitting
    on each end a German soldier.
    I'm stressing this particular point,
    because three or four days out of Buchenwald
    going towards the Czech border, we
    were attacked by British airplanes on a huge railroad
    spur.
    And the train contained like 4,000 or 5,000 people
    from the Buchenwald camp.
    And I understood later that apparently the British pilots,
    seeing those soldiers sitting on top of those freight cars,
    thought that that was a convoy of German soldiers
    and they strafed us with machine guns and small bombs that
    also disrupted the railroad system at that point.
    A lot of the people that were in those trains
    got killed as a result of that incident.
    And after everything quieted down,
    we were forced to put the bodies of all the people
    that got killed into the last three or four railroad cars.
    And there was really just bodies piled one on top of another.
    And the rest of it-- the rest of us
    got into the rest of the railroad cars
    and we continued on our trip towards another camp
    in Czechoslovakia, I'm sure.
    I don't remember the name of that camp,
    but it was on the German Bavarian border.
    And we were there for a few weeks, and then again,
    just before the end of the war, which was the beginning of--
    the end of April, really, the Germans
    decided to march us out towards Dachau.
    We marched during the night, and we
    rested during the day hidden in the woods
    so we will not be spotted by any airplanes.
    It was spring, and the rain was pouring, and it was very cold.
    And a lot of people could not keep up with it.
    And every so often, I heard shots in the back
    and the Germans were killing the people that could not keep up,
    or fell down and could not walk anymore.
    I was determined that I'll do the best to survive.
    And I always as a result of that,
    tried to stay up front of the column.
    The column was a long column of the prisoners
    from the camp on the Czech border.
    How old were you by--
    At that time frame, I was 22 years old,
    and I could feel that the end of the war is near.
    I-- my father, who was in Buchenwald,
    and they had no choice, or didn't think of a better
    solution, was evacuated with the Jewish group
    a few days before myself, and the rest
    of the camp in Buchenwald was emptied out.
    On one of those nights on the march towards Buchenwald,
    we were supposed to rest during the day.
    But the Germans apparently knew that there was--
    that they were being advanced on,
    so they got us out of the woods and put us
    on the road to march towards Dachau during the day, which
    was totally out of style for the last few days.
    We were marching for about an hour and a half or two hours,
    and suddenly, I realized that there
    was some kind of a commotion in the back of the column.
    And I saw the column was kind of splitting
    and a tank appeared on the rise.
    And the tank had a star, white star on it.
    In the beginning, I thought it must be the Russians,
    but then I realized it was an American tank, and then
    the second, third, and so on.
    The guards that were walking alongside on both sides of us
    started taking off for the woods.
    And the tanks were shooting at them,
    and you could see the tracer bullets
    trying to get them before they managed
    to disappear in the woods.
    At that point, of course, everybody
    realized that this is the moment that we waited for years.
    And although there was not a spontaneous rejoicing,
    because everybody was really very weak.
    We were not fed during that march
    except getting a cup full of grain.
    Otherwise, there was no bread, and no drink except water.
    So when that finally happened, the only thing I can recall now
    is that a lot of the Russians and people that were really
    in good physical form took off after the Germans,
    and immediately the revenge for all that suffering
    and all those years of misery came to the surface.
    The first and second tank was shooting at the Germans.
    The third tank was taking pictures of what was happening.
    And then the rest of the tanks were throwing out
    army rations, K rations, or C rations, which
    were packages of food that were very well preserved
    and could last a long time.
    Obviously, everybody pounced on the rations
    that were being thrown out by the American crew of the tanks,
    because everybody was really starving at that point.
    And people were just sitting on the sides in the ditches,
    and most of them were totally exhausted-- a lot of them
    were crying.
    And of course, if you had the appetite
    to eat at this stage of the game,
    you started opening up the package
    and started eating some of the food that was
    contained in those packages.
    It was like scrambled eggs, little cans of scrambled eggs,
    little cans of Spam, some crackers.
    And I remember there was a package of four cigarettes
    as part of that whole package.
    I tried to light up one cigarette,
    and I almost fainted because I haven't smoked for a few years,
    and those cigarettes were very strong
    and they almost knocked me out.
    It was midday by the time everybody really realized
    that we are free, and we started looking around
    as to what to do with ourselves the first day of being free.
    We were not too far from a small village,
    so a number of guys, and myself, and a couple of other people
    that were kind of hanging on to me for survival
    during the last couple of weeks, we
    decided to occupy a German farmhouse.
    And we-- the German disappeared.
    There was nobody in the house.
    It was a farmhouse with animals--
    pigs, chickens, and stuff like that.
    So we organized ourselves and we decided
    that's what we're going to stay overnight, and decide what
    we're going to do after that.
    The-- and a few of the Polish people
    that joined us used to be cooks in the camp.
    And they said, don't worry, tomorrow we
    are going to eat sausages.
    And they caught a pig, and all I know is the next day,
    we were having sausages from the pig that they
    managed to kill overnight.
    And it seemed like we were going to have a feast.
    And one of the main things that I remember is that they put--
    took a pan, a frying pan, threw in a piece of lard or fat
    from the pig into the frying pan, and when it got hot,
    they started putting eggs into it.
    And the eggs, of course, were boiling in that fat,
    and everybody thought it's wonderful, including myself.
    And I-- of course, those eggs were really fat,
    because they were practically fried in fat.
    So I had-- I don't know how many I had,
    but I had a few of those eggs for breakfast.
    And as a result of that, I had the worst diarrhea in my life
    that lasted about five or six days because my stomach was not
    used to that kind of food at the time.
    We stayed at the farm house for about five or six days
    and tried to recoup some of our strength.
    And it was very nice to have finally a roof over your head
    and be free to do whatever we wanted to do.
    But then the decision came as to where do we go from here?
    Because obviously, we're not going to stay at the farm house
    forever.
    We started on a trek to a small town in Bavaria called
    Schwandorf, S-C-H-W-A-N-D-O-R-F. And in Schwandorf,
    because a lot of the Germans were either absent or ran away
    or whatever it was, we found also an empty house
    on the outskirts of that town.
    And we kind of organized ourselves
    and tried to shed our concentration camp closing
    by trying to find whatever we could
    find that would not identify us as a concentration camp
    inmates.
    We basically tried to join the civilian life,
    and tried to normalize our life.
    During-- in that town, in Schwandorf, the military police
    established a headquarters.
    And because I studied English in high school in Poland,
    I kind of struck up a conversation
    with some of the MPs.
    And also a unit of the Counter Intelligence Corps
    had headquarters in that City of Schwandorf.
    I eventually joined the CIC, because I spoke German, Polish
    and English.
    And they incorporated me into their group,
    gave me an army uniform, a PX card,
    and all kinds of identification that I was part of the group--
    that I was part of that group.
    The function of this unit was to try to find the Germans that
    were active in Poland during the war and were in charge
    of the concentration camps, or in charge of the forced labor
    camps, and particularly, the ones that were really abusing
    their power vis-a--
    the prisoners, or the people in the concentration camps.
    Because a lot of the construction companies that
    were working in Poland originated in Bavaria,
    we ended up going to the offices of the different companies
    and found the names and addresses
    of the particular people that were really taking advantage
    of the power that they had during the war
    in terms of persecuting and killing some of the prisoners.
    As a result of that activity, a number of them
    were found and were returned to Poland for trial.
    And I understood that quite a number of them
    were found guilty and were given the death sentence
    and executed in Poland during 1946 and '47.
    During my activity in Schwandorf,
    my father managed to realize that I was alive
    and I was in Schwandorf.
    And at the same time, I also realized
    that he survived the war.
    We-- a lot of lists were published all over Germany
    of the names of the survivors, and this
    is how I found him and he found me on one of the lists.
    We were reunited about two months, or three months,
    after the end of the war.
    And needless to say, it was a very, very joyous occasion.
    The only sad part of that whole period
    was that my mother did not survive the war.
    My sister which spent her time, which was in Israel during all
    of that period, obviously did not
    suffer as a result of the war, except she was mentally very
    distressed because she did not hear
    of her parents or her brother, being me,
    and she suffered terribly because of what she knew
    the people in Europe are suffering
    while she was living in Palestine during those years.
    After working with the CIC for close to a year,
    I was employed by the United Nations Rehabilitation
    Organization, which was very active in Germany.
    And I moved to Regensburg, R-E-G-E-N-S-B-U-R-G. And part--
    the unit that I was active at the United Nations
    Rehabilitation Organization was the part
    of the United Joint Appeal.
    And I was very active in Jewish causes
    going from displaced persons camp to displaced persons camp.
    I worked originally with a fellow from the States
    by the name of Joe Levine, who lives now
    in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is also very active
    getting all the facts during the war together.
    He's active in the Jewish Historical Society
    in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
    Eventually, towards the end of 1947,
    my father emigrated to Israel through an underground
    organization, and I followed, myself, at the end of 1948
    to Israel.
    And I lived in Israel five years before I came to the States.
    As far as I know, before the war,
    there were about 40 members of our immediate family.
    That means uncles, aunts, cousins, and the only ones
    that I am aware that survived was
    Max Bolimowski, my uncle on my mother's side,
    and Febek Wiederman, whom I mentioned before, who
    was my father's brother-in-law.
    To fill in some of the details, I
    belong to the HaNoar organization in Poland
    when I was a young kid.
    And that organization was active in all kinds
    of Zionist activities, including collections of money
    to buy land from the Arabs in Palestine at that time.
    There was also another organization called Betar
    to which I did not belong.
    During my growing up in Katowice, and the time that
    I attended the cheyder.
    I spoke Polish, German, I took English in high school,
    and I also spoke Yiddish.
    And of course, I learned to read and write Hebrew.
    You didn't mention much about your hobbies growing up.
    Why don't you--
    My hobbies when I was growing up was
    a lot of different types of sports,
    including ice skating, skiing, bicycling,
    and one of the other activities was boxing, which I ended up
    with a broken nose.
    You didn't mention-- you wanted to mention something
    about the UJA shipping packages.
    After the war while I joined the United Jewish Appeal
    organization, and I was working with a representative
    from the United States, Joe Levine and Abe Cohen
    from Detroit, who took Joe Levine's place, eventually,
    we used to receive an enormous amount of packages
    from the Jews in America.
    The packages included all kinds of clothing,
    which was definitely needed because the people that
    were liberated from camps had absolutely nothing that
    belonged to them in terms of clothing
    or any other possessions.
    The other thing that you wanted to make sure and fill in here
    was the whole connection of the musical talent in your family,
    where it began, and how it has--
    That's right.
    The musical talent in my family originated with my mother,
    who was also a pianist.
    And because of her, my sister was attending the Conservatory
    learning the piano in Poland.
    And that's why she ended up in Israel
    to finish her studies in the Conservatory of Tel Aviv.
    As a result of her background, her son now, whose name
    is Rami Bar-Niv.
    He's a famous pianist who travels around the world giving
    concerts in classical music.
    This is all that I have to say for now about my early life,
    and the years during the war.
    Even though it sounds very cut and dry during narration,
    I must admit it is a very unnerving, emotional experience
    to recount those days in detail.
    I hope this tape will be of good use to the Holocaust Museum.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Moses Rechnitz
    Date
    interview:  1992 July 12

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 sound cassette (90 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Card Project conducted the interview with Moses Rechnitz on July 12, 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 08:24:05
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    Oral history interview with George Brieger

    Oral History

    George Brieger describes his familly’s experience during the Holocaust; his father Anno Brieger, who was born in Nyathalas, Hungary in 1925; his mother and grandmother who came from Munkatch; his grandfather Adolph Brieger; his family’s prewar life in Nyiregyhaza; changes as Hungary took control of Nyireghaza in 1938; the ghettoization of their town; his father and grandfather’s deportation to Auschwitz; his grandfather’s liberation by the Russians and subsequent deportation to Siberia, where he perished; his father and uncle’s forced march to Bergen-Belsen from which they were eventually liberated by the British and then relocated to Sweden; his father’s arrival in the United States in 1977; and how his father remained the only survivor of his five siblings, his parents, and grandparents.

    Oral history interview with Maria Brieger

    Oral History

    Maria Brieger (née Deutsch), born December 19, 1931, discusses her childhood in Budapest, Hungary; her extended family; speaking German at home; studying Hebrew and English at school; attending an orthodox Jewish school and then gymnasium; antisemitism in Hungary; the start of the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944; her father’s store getting taken over by Prime Minister Miklos Kallay’s brother; Raoul Wallenberg organizing fake Red Cross homes in Budapest; caring for children in a home; recovering from an illness brought on by dirt and lice; the death of her mother and father; the liberation of Budapest by Russian forces on January 18, 1945; living with her maternal grandmother after the war; her husband, who was liberated from Bergen-Belsen; living in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary for 25 years; and the Communist government takeover of her family’s store in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Claude Brunswic

    Oral History

    Claude Brunswic (born Kurt Braunschweig), born ca. 1921 in Heidelberg, Germany, describes his life in Germany before the war; his father’s medical practice; the lack of antisemitism in Heidelberg before the war; the German army arriving in Heidelberg in January 1933 and the subsequent persecution of the Jews; his family’s decision to leave Germany and move to The Hague, Holland; his membership in the Hachshara in The Hague; his father’s acquisition of French nationality due to his French grandfather; the family’s move to France in 1936; working as a cabinetmaker at the piano factory, Pleyel; enlisting in the French Army in the fall of 1939; being transferred to the Maginot Line, where he was captured by Germans in 1940; being sent from Bacharach and to Trier as a prisoner of war; doing forced labor in Laufeld; experiencing forced marches until liberation in January of 1945; his demobilization and reunion with his parents after the war; being employed for the United States Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a messing officer; and his immigration with his wife to the United States in January 1946.

    Oral history interview with Rose Brunswic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renee Carasso

    Oral History

    Renee Carasso, born August 15, 1919 in Preveza, Greece, describes her happy childhood; her father’s textile store; attending school in Iōannina, Greece; the Jewish community in her town; her siblings; playing mandolin; the German invasion of Greece; the restrictions placed on Jews; Germans billeting in their home and bringing prostitutes with them; being deported with her family on March 25, 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her three brothers being selected to work in the crematorium; the uprising in Birkenau; her various jobs in the camp; being transferred to Ravensbrück and Malchow; having to work at night on parts for pistols; her friendships in the camps; religion in the camps; her physical condition in the camps; liberation; going with other Greek Jews to a displaced persons camp run by UNRRA; finding her sister; living in a city near Berlin, Germany; returning to Greece with her sister in 1945; getting married; going to the United States; and settling in Baltimore, MD.

    Oral history interview with Magda Cox

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacek Dabrowski

    Oral History

    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 Arthur Menke

    Oral History

    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]

    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 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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