Oral history interview with Paulette Fink

Oral history interview with Henry Abramowicz

Oral History

Henry Abramowicz, born in Łódź, Poland in 1929, describes his parents; his family’s shoe store; his brother; being nine years old when the war began; being the youngest child and his three sisters; the burning of the synagogue; his father being mobilized into the army; his family’s religious practices and involvement with the Jewish community; his interactions with non-Jews; his education; his memories of the beginning of the war; his parents’ decision to flee and staying in Łódź with his sisters; traveling through Praga (suburb of Warsaw, Poland) with his sister and 20 other Jews in December 1939; the fates of his extended family members; going to Bialstok, Poland; being sent to Siberia in the summer of 1940; the conditions in Siberia; living in a camp with other Jews; being allowed to leave in 1941; going to Ulyannas, Russia; staying in Vyanaska oblast; attending school; his father’s mobilization in the Russian Army; returning to Poland after the war and living in Klatsko; going to Germany; studying veterinarian science at the university in Giessen, Germany; studying medicine in Munich, Germany; going to the United States in the early 1950s; moving to Minnesota; his wife and children; and his thoughts on sharing his story.

Oral history interview with Sam Ackos

Oral History

Sam Ackos (Semanto Menachem Ackos), born November 10, 1931 in Breveza (possibly Preveza), Greece, describes his parents; his family’s religious practices; being friends with Gentiles; his four sisters; the Italian take over of Greece; the lack of food and people dying of starvation; listening to the BBC in Greek; the high level of involvement in the underground movement and participating in sabotage; his father going to fight with partisans; the poor living conditions and struggling to find food; moving to Athens, Greece when he was five years old; getting false IDs; hiding in the basement of a house off and on between 1943 and 1944; selling cigarettes on the black market; witnessing a roundup; the camp for Jews in Chaidari (Haidari); his father being taken away and never learning what happened to him; the black market in Athens; getting food in the villages outside the city; life immediately after the war; his mother’s decision for them to go to the United States; going to the US before his mother and sisters in January 1951; receiving aid from the United Jewish Appeal; going to St. Paul, MN; being a taxi driver; his interactions with other Holocaust survivors; his love for life; and his love for the US.

Oral history interview with Sam Ackos

Oral History

Sam Ackos (Semanto Menachem Ackos), born November 10, 1931 in Breveza (possibly Preveza), Greece to Menachem Semanto and Rebecca (Chaim Vitalis), discusses his family’s move to Athens circa 1936; his father, who was a merchant buying and selling anything and everything, and later became a taxi driver; his mother, who worked as a seamstress; having four sisters; his family only speaking Greek; having limited education; attending synagogue on holidays, but not on Shabbat; the good relations with non-Jewish Greeks, except during Pesach/Easter when Greek children were told that Jews put them over barrels on pins and needles and used the blood to make matzah; his father’s care for various aunts and uncles who later died in Auschwitz; the Italian invasion of Greece; the German occupation of Greece; the food scarcity during the occupation; hiding with his family in various basements around Athens; the dismantling and hiding of his father’s taxi (it was reassembled and driven after the war); living on beans and bread and other food bought on black market in villages outside of Athens using gold his father had accumulated; his father’s activities as a partisan; the roundup of Jews on March 25, 1944 and detainment in camp Chaidari; the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz; not being taken during the roundup; participating in acts of sabotage with other teens; being unsure of the fate of his father, but hearing a rumor that he was involved in a plot to destroy a crematoria in a camp; life after the war; his family’s desire to immigrate to Israel, and their decision to go to the United States; arriving in New York in January 1951 with the help of the United Jewish Appeal; settling in St. Paul MN where they lived in a Jewish neighborhood; living near two other Greek families, Nathan Asher and Ira Rosenbaum; getting married, but not having children; and not being active in the Jewish community.

Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

Oral History

Sam Bankhalter (Jewish name, Saja), born in Łódź, Poland in 1926, describes his parents and grandparents; his father’s lumber and construction business; their interactions with non-Jews; antisemitism in Poland; his education; his family’s religious activities; the anti-Jewish propaganda in Poland; the German invasion; going to Warsaw, Poland with his brothers; the bombardment in Warsaw; returing to Łódź; the Littmanstadt Ghetto; his grandmother living with his family and dying later in the ghetto; being picked up on February 28, 1940 during the “Bloody Thursday” (also called “Blitigah Donestik”) roundup and being deported to Auschwitz; being forced to build the Auschwitz camp; escaping the camp and getting back to Łódź; being rounded up again and sent to Krakow, Poland then Auschwitz; being sent to several different camps between 1940 and 1945, including Buchenwald, Netzbachtahl, Krevinkl, and Ohrdruf; his experiences in the Warsaw ghetto; daily life in Auschwitz and working in the crematorium for 11 months; the typhus epidemic in the camp; his methods for survival; selections in the camp; his parents coming to Auschwitz and dying; the Poles, Romanies, and political prisoners in the camp; his limited interactions with other inmates; being evacuated from Auschwitz and sent on a death march to Buchenwald; being liberated; being sent to a hospital in Marseille, France; how his older brother committed suicide in Auschwitz; receiving help from HIAS; living in a displaced persons camp in Frankfurt, Germany; getting married in Germany to another Holocaust survivor; living in Israel and helping to smuggle people in to Israel; immigrating to the United States; speaking to his children about his experiences during the Holocaust; ethnic relations in the US; and his personal philosophies.

Oral history interview with Fred Baron

Oral History

Fred Baron, born in Vienna, Austria, describes being 15 years old when the Germans marched into Vienna; his life before the war and his family’s religious practices; his education; experiencing overt and subtle antisemitism; being imprisoned temporarily on Kristallnacht; his father’s death in 1939; his sister getting on a transport to England; wearing the yellow star and the restrictions placed on Jews; going to Hungary, where he was considered a legal resident; his mother being placed in a camp in Budapest; being deported with local Jews to Auschwitz in June 1944; the selection; being sent to Dörnhau (now Kolce, Poland), where there was a subcamp of Gross-Rosen (Riese camp); building roads; a Jewish Kapo who gave him advice on surviving the camp; suicides in Auschwitz; the abuse of prisoners; working with Germans while he was in Gross-Rosen; being marched to Czechoslovakia then taken by train through Germany; being taken to Bergen-Belsen; being sent to Stettin (Szczecin, Poland) to build fortifications against the Russians at one point (possibly Pölitz concentration camp); being liberated by the British from Bergen-Belsen; being taken to Sweden to recover; staying in Stockholm until 1947; deciding to go to the United States; receiving help from HIAS and going to Minneapolis, MN; his sister living in Israel; and his thoughts on why he survived.

Oral history interview with Felicia Broh

Oral History

Faigel Broh (nee Pinchas), born May 13, 1904 in Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland), describes her parents; her family’s religious practices as Conservative Jews; her family moving to Berlin, Germany when she was an infant; her education; the rise of Nazism; the birth of her son in 1930; conditions getting worse for Jews in 1935; her husband’s work in the metal business; the destruction of stores and synagogues on Kristallnacht; the fate of her parents and in-laws; leaving for Shanghai, China on April 20, 1939 with her husband, son, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law; receiving help from a Jewish organization in Shanghai; the Russian Jews in Shanghai; receiving letters from family in Europe; Jewish life in Shanghai; her son attending the Kadoorie School; the bombings by the Americans; not being affected by the Japanese occupation; going to the United States in July 1947; settling in Minnesota; her views of books and films on the Holocaust; the diseases in Shanghai during the war, including malaria and diphtheria; and receiving help from the organization Hitzim.

Oral history interview with Mary Ackos Calof and Evelyn Ackos Ettinger

Oral History

Evelyn Ettinger (born February 21, 1937) and Mary Calof (born in 1939) describe their lives in Greece before and during World War II; their father being taken; their brother Sam Ackos (RG-50.156*0002) going to live in a suburb of Athens, Greece (Nea Smyrni) and hiding with a woman, Mrs. Sayianou; pretending to be Christians and attending church on Sundays; living near the Germans; visiting Mrs. Sayianou in 1956; antisemitism in Greece; their Jewish educations; being ages 14 and 12 when they immigrated to the United States; adjusting to life in the US; getting English lessons from the International Institute and the American Jewish Service; staying in an orphanage (“Herzl Camp”) immediately after the war in Greece; their mother; building their lives in Minnesota; and how their Holocaust experiences influenced their Jewish identities and practices.

Oral history interview with Richard Darr

Oral History

Professor Richard Darr describes being a sergeant and infantry squad leader in the 65th Infantry Division, 260th Infantry Regiment; going into the service on September 2, 1942 and discharged on April 4, 1946; landing in Le Havre, France and going to Holland, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria; experiencing hostilities in Linz, Austria; seeing combat in Metz, France in March 1945; going east and seeing German prisoners; participating in the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp; the behavior and condition of the surviving concentration inmates; the layout of the camp; only being at the camp for a day; being on a three-man economic advisory team for General Clay in Frankfurt, Germany; being transferred and being the Deputy Military Governor of Kreiss Viblingen; serving as Military Governor of County Vachnon, where there was a small Jewish displaced persons camp; his title changing to “Resident Officer” in 1949; the choice to wear civilian clothes as part of re-educating the German populace; the politics in the area and the difficulty of allocating space for displaced persons; going to the Nuremburg trials in 1949; and receiving recognition by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council for his service.

Oral history interview with Donald Dean

Oral History

Donald J. Dean, born in 1911 in Ashby, Minnesota, describes finishing high school and moving to Minneapolis, MN in 1929; sailing to Scotland on the Queen Mary in 1944 as warrant officer in the US Army; seeing Churchill on the ship during the voyage; going to France; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; his battalion being in charge of ammunition and his job handling replacement parts with Bennett Gordon (a Jewish soldier from Des Moines, IA); going close to Dusseldorf, Germany and going to Linz, Austria; hearing of a camp nearby and driving to it with Bennett Gordon; the physical condition of the surviving inmates; being led around the camp by a Russian survivor; his commanding officer issuing a proclamation that the civilians in Mauthausen and Gusen would work in the camp to dispose of the bodies; the revenge taken on the camp guards by the camp survivors; the Nazi’s filing system at the camp; taking pictures of the camp; his Jewish friends in the army; hearing stories from the surviving camp inmates; being in the camp for one day; a Jewish friend of his who survived a concentration camp and settled in Minneapolis; returning to Europe to commemorate D-Day; sharing his experiences with his kids; and living in Willmar, MN.

Oral history interview with Reidar Dittman

Oral History

Dr. Reidar Dittmann, born in 1922 in Norway, describes his involvement in the resistance movement in Norway; his press activities and listening illegally to the radio; being raised Lutheran; being a clerk in a shipyard and making sure the work went slowly in order to undermine the German war effort; getting caught for his sabotage activities when a ship sank during its launch; demonstrating against the Germans in his hometown and being arrested twice before his final arrest in 1942; arriving in Buchenwald on November 29, 1942; meeting a German prisoner in the camp who had been there since 1933; life in the camp; the crematorium; his views of the Nazi reverence for authority and authority within Christianity; his thoughts on Germans; the lack of response from the United States during the first few years of the war; revisionist views and Holocaust denial; his liberation from the camp; believing he would die in the camp; being rounded up with the other Norwegian inmates and sent to Sweden; being in Stockholm for V-E Day; how the Swedish government orchestrated their release; and his thoughts on an event like the Holocaust occurring again.

Oral history interview with David Eiger

Oral History

David Eiger (Schmuel David Eiger), born November 5, 1922 in Radom, Poland, discusses his father Isaiah (Szaja), who was an accountant and identified as a Zionist, and his mother Hannah Shoshana (Rose) Frydman, who was a homemaker and Orthodox; speaking Yiddish at home; his father spending the year of 1935 in Palestine; his father’s role as the president of Kerem Kayamet L’Yisroel, a Zionist organization; attending a Jewish day school and a Catholic high school; experiencing some antisemitism, including antisemitism from a teacher; not being allowed to attend university or join the military as a Jew; joining his uncle’s family in Lubicz, Poland at the beginning of the war; Jewish men being taken for forced labor, while others were put in two ghettos, one large and one small; the small ghetto which was liquidated; his sister avoiding deportation because she was working in the fields; being taken along with his mother to a central square where a selection was taking place; having a work pass and being let go along with his mother; 3000 Jews remaining in Radom by January 1943; being assigned the task of count loot from Jewish houses; Purim 1943 when the intelligentsia were rounded up and massacred; his mother and sister surviving a round up and massacre; living in a small room with his uncle and his brother-in-law, Jules Zaidenweber (from Lublin); being sent to a camp on Szkolna Street where they lived in barracks; being marched with his family and other prisoners in July 1944 to Tomaszów Mazowiecki; the shooting of his uncle on the journey; being detained three days before being sent to Auschwitz where men and women were separated; reuniting with his father in the camp; the deportation of his mother and sister to Buchenwald; being sent to camp Vaihingen (Wiesengrund), where he remained until April 1945; being sent to Dachau; the numerous deaths from typhoid; staying in Dachau for one day before being sent to Scharnitz, Austria and then back to the German-Austrian border; prisoners being shot by SS officers; the disappearance of the guards; marching with 50 others toward Munich, Germany; being liberated on May 1, 1945 by American troops; working in US Army kitchens for several months; going to Diepholz displaced persons camp to retrieve his mother and sister; his father reuniting with them as well; questioning his Jewish identity; spending four years in Garmisch, Germany working as an accountant; immigrating to the US and arriving in Minneapolis, MN in June 1949 as a displaced person with the help of the International Refugee Organization and HIAS; being very active in the Jewish community; being on the board of the Minnesota Federation of JCCs; his thoughts on Germany; and his wife who was born in the US.

Oral history interview with Robert Fisch

Oral History

Robert O. Fisch, M.D. (né Moshe Bear ben Shlomo Fisch), born on June 12, 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his Polish father, Zoltan; his mother Irene Mannheim; his grandfather, who was a poultry wholesaler and the builder/founder of a synagogue; being raised observant, but not keeping kosher; his Jewish and non-Jewish friends; his nanny, Anna, who was an important person in his life and his mother during the war; his brother who studied in Switzerland during the war; the German takeover of Hungary in early 1944; having to wear a yellow star and knowing that Jews from the countryside were being deported; being sent to a work camp on June 5, 1944; his parents and other Jews being put in a ghetto in Budapest; being taken to another camp in January 1945 on the Austrian border, where he dug ditches until a typhoid epidemic struck; the shooting of 20 people who had been in the camp’s hospital; being forced to march to Graz with other inmates, some of whom were shot along the way; going to Mauthausen, where he lived in a tent; being moved to Gunskirchen; staying in overcrowded barracks, where many died of suffocation; standing in formation six hours a day; being liberated by the US Army in early May 1945; being taken to a US Army hospital; returning to Budapest and reuniting with his mother; his father’s death during the war; attending medical school in Communist Hungary; the immigration of his mother and brother to Israel; leaving Hungary after the 1956 Revolution; going to New York, NY with the help of HIAS in Austria; and settling in Minneapolis, MN.

Oral history interview with Henry Freier

Oral History

Henry Freier, born Tzvi Hersch on July 22, 1914 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his father David, who was born in Kutno; his mother Rachel, who was born in Sgersh, Poland; his mother’s death in 1917; his eight siblings; being raised observant Jews; attending services on Fridays; attending cheder and two years of Yeshiva; experiencing antisemitism as a child; leaving Poland at age 17 and traveling around Europe for two years with four friends; staying with grand rabbi Professor Liebig in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); going to Germany and hearing Hitler speak in Munich; going to Austria and Italy; being arrested and imprisoned in Trieste for seven days; going to Paris, France; returning to Poland in 1934; competing as a boxer along with Mushka Lieberman; the beginning of the war; Jews being forced to live in a ghetto, including his family except for one brother; the deportation of his family to Majdanek, where they all perished; being in the ghetto until 1944 with his wife Ann and their child; his work digging ditches and preparing potatoes for winter storage; Chaim Rumkowski who ran the ghetto; opening a store on the corner of Melinarskaa and Zgierska Streets selling smuggled goods; being caught and lashed by the Kriminalpolizei; being rescued from custody by David Gertler, a friend of his who had connections with the Gestapo; living in one room with his wife, baby, and three others; women and children, including his wife, being taken to Chelmno and killed; witnessing the Chief of the Gestapo, Alfred Stromberg, murder of a woman and her daughter; being taken to Auschwitz; the selection process; being taken to the Ziegenlager (the Romani barrack) until most of the Romanies were killed; being sent to Gross-Rosen; being given the number 18091; his numerous jobs at the camp, including one job stopping suicidal inmates from running into the electrified fence; being selected to be a butcher; being beaten frequently by Jewish Lagereldester (“blockälteste”) Schmiel Radig who worked in the kitchen; being marched with 600 other inmates in 1945 to Germany; bribing the Stubeneldster with a platinum dental plate to give him and Benno Latarus dishwashing jobs; his additional job going through clothes for valuables; other Jews calling them Verfluchte Juden, “rotten Jews”; the guards fleeing in April 1945; suffering from typhoid fever; hiding with others in a barn in Lebenau; being liberated by Americans; killing seven SS guards along with several others; working for the American government apprehending war criminals and smugglers; his work setting up a Jewish Committee and establishing a Jewish cemetery; helping Jews in DP camps in Ainring and Liebenau in Germany until 1949 when he immigrated to the United States; settling in Minneapolis, MN; his second marriage and his two children; and his Jewish life in the US.

Oral history interview with Peter Gersch

Oral History

Peter Gersch (né Pinchas Gerszonowicz), born on January 21, 1921 in Miechów, Poland, discusses his Father Yutka, who was a machine shop owner; his mother Chana Midlich (died 1975); speaking Yiddish and Polish at home; growing up in a religious home; attending cheder and having a bar mitzvah; the antisemitism in Poland; the boycotts of his father’s business; having seven uncles (all perished in 1942); the beginning of the war; attempting to escape to Russia with his brother and failing to do so; the occupation of Miechów; his father’s shop remaining open as the Germans needed vehicle repairs; the creation of a ghetto in 1941; the deportation of several hundred people in boxcars to Bergen-Belsen in 1942; being on one of the last transports with his father; his mother and sister being hidden by a German friend in Krakow, Poland; being sent with his father to work at an airport in Krakow, where they worked as machinists; attempting to get false papers for his mother and sister, being caught, and being badly beaten; being sent to camp Plaszow in March 1943; life in the camp; his work shoeing horses; being in the camp with his father and brother; being taken by horse and buggy in January 1945 to Auschwitz for two weeks; being sent to Buchenwald and later to Flossenbürg; marching to Dachau; escaping one night and hiding on top of grain in a silo for four days until the US Army arrived; being put in homes with other former prisoners in Floss, Germany; his father’s death in Gross Rosen; the liberation of his brother from Valdenburg work camp; reuniting with his brother in June 1945; riding a motorcycle towards Krakow; his motorcycle being taken by the Russians in Czechoslovakia; being imprisoned for 48 hours before being released by a Jewish Russian officer; returning to Krakow and finding his mother and sister; the death of his older brother in Plaszow; traveling by boxcar to Munich, Germany; living in a displaced persons camp in Feldafing, Germany until early 1946; moving to Münchberg and starting a small steel business with a friend, Kobert; getting married; immigrating to the United States and settling in St. Paul, MN; and his thoughts on why he survived.

Oral history interview with Edith Goodman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Goodman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Grosblat

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edward Grossman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Wayne Hanson

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Harvey

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charlotte Hirsch

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Jagoda

Oral History

Oral history interview with Arthur Johnson

Oral History

Arthur L. Johnson, born and raised in Hudson, Wisconsin, describes his education and graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN in 1941; being drafted in October 1941; going to England in January 1944; being an officer in an ammunitions supply company; landing in Normandy, France on D plus 12 (June 18, 1944); crossing through northern Europe with General Bradley; the Battle of the Bulge; going up into the Rhine area; visiting to Buchenwald concentration camp after it had already been liberated; his shock when he first saw the camp; going to the camp to provide medical and food supplies; the reporting they had read in the Stars and Stripes newspaper; the conditions of the former prisoners; going on a tour in the camp commandant’s house; the non-Jewish former prisoners he met; the African American soldiers in his unit and the effects of the 1943 Detroit Race Riot had on their training and landing date at Normandy; having an interest in the civil rights movement and studying sociology in graduate school after the war; joining the Army Reserve in 1953 and being in the Active Reserve for 17 years associated with East Germany; being called back on active duty during the Berlin crisis in 1961-62 and spending a year at the Pentagon; being treated like a traitor and a spy by many of his colleagues and graduate students in the 1970s; his feelings on war; visiting the war memorials in Washington, DC; the conversations he had with German civilians immediately after the war; attitudes towards race within the army during the war; his experiences during the Battle of the Bulge when they were supplying ammunition to the 82nd Airborne; and the displaced persons who worked with them after liberation.

Oral history interview with Herbert Jonas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Felix Kaminsky

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Kamman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hinda Kibort

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manfred Klein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gisela Konopka

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Landgren

Oral History

Oral history interview with Berek Latarus

Oral History

Oral history interview with James Loewenson

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kurt Loewenthal

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mark Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Allen Mastbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen Mastbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Matteson

Oral History

Oral history interview with William McConahey

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rose Meyerhoff

Oral History

Oral history interview with Victor Mintz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edmund Motzko

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kay Bonner Nee

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jeanette Noble

Oral History

Oral history interview with Donald Nost

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Oertelt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leonard Parker

Oral History

Leonard Parker, born circa 1925 in Poland, discusses his family’s move to Milwaukee, WI when Leonard was two months old; being raised Jewish; speaking Yiddish; the beginning of the war; entering the US Army in 1943; serving in the 44th Infantry Division; landing in southern France 1944; moving north and experiencing combat through France and the Vosges Mountains; crossing the Siegfried Line; going to Dachau, which looked like a permanent military camp; being sent into the camp with another soldier; seeing prisoners who looked like sticks in rags; being overwhelmed by the smell in the camp; seeing 20-30 flatcars piled with dead bodies; the crematorium; speaking Yiddish to the prisoners, which surprised them; seeing people dying in the barracks; the roundup of the medical people who had earlier performed medical experiments on the prisoners; and still being horrified by his memories of the furnaces with ash and body parts.

Oral history interview with Faye Porter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ben Rosenzweig

Oral History

Oral history interview with Libby Rosenzweig

Oral History

Oral history interview with Siva Scheer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Schwartz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lucy Smith

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maria Speiwak and Danuta Trybus

Oral History

Oral history interview with Glenn Stranberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Felicia Weingarten

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Wildauer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dora Zaidenweber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jules Zaidenweber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sabina Zimering

Oral History