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Oral history interview with Sol Messinger

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.338.69 | RG Number: RG-50.037.0069

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    Oral history interview with Sol Messinger
    Transcript
    Hello my name is Rich Newberg.
    And I have the privilege of talking
    with Dr. Sol Messinger who grew up in Berlin in the 1930s
    and was a passenger on the ship St. Louis, a journey that
    was later documented in a book, entitled Voyage of the Damned.
    Dr. Messinger, you were born in Berlin in 1932.
    Do you recall any joyful periods of childhood?
    Actually, most of the things that I recall
    were not so joyful.
    But yeah, I remember that my aunt, and uncle, and cousins
    lived in the same apartment house as we did.
    We used to play together, like all kids do.
    And I remember going on some picnics.
    And I think one year, we went for a vacation to a beach
    somewhere.
    And I have some vague memories of those things.
    You say, also, that some of the memories that are vivid
    are the memories of when you became scared.
    Yeah, well, I was born in June of '32,
    which was six months before Hitler came to power.
    Now, of course, I remember anything when I was a baby.
    But I guess, my first memories were very, very early,
    like maybe three or four years old.
    I remember being told by my parents to be careful
    when I walked on the street.
    And actually, they really didn't let me walk on the streets
    by myself.
    I think the fear that I had communicated itself
    from my parents to me.
    They were scared of what was happening.
    What was happening on the streets?
    Well, almost immediately when Hitler assumed power,
    the campaign against the Jews was started in earnest.
    And well, first of all, you were insulted on the streets.
    You were spat at.
    If anybody knew you were Jewish, in some ways,
    you took your life into your hands.
    People would throw stones at you.
    God only knows what they could do.
    Did this ever happen to you?
    No, but I saw.
    I may have been walking with my parents
    and I saw this happen to other people.
    It never happened to me.
    What do you remember?
    What did you see?
    Well, for instance, there were--
    this was, I guess, when I was a little older.
    I remember, probably in 1936-1937,
    the Germans began to break into Jewish stores, perhaps
    a year later than that.
    And they would simply take the goods out of the stores.
    And there'd be policemen standing around.
    And they, of course, didn't interfere.
    In fact, they would help themselves to the goods also.
    And in this way, eventually, most
    of the businesses that were owned by Jews
    simply became bankrupt.
    Well, you know, I watched this.
    And in fact, I remember standing at the window
    of our apartment looking down.
    There were some stores across the street,
    which were owned by Jews.
    And I remember actually watching this crowd of people taking
    stones, breaking into the stores,
    and just helping themselves to the goods.
    And it's just a horrible feeling.
    I mean, I understood that what they were doing
    was aimed against Jews, and consequently, aimed at me.
    I mean, I was young.
    But those things, you understand right away.
    What was going on inside your family,
    with your family at this point?
    Well, my father was working as a tailor
    with my uncle, who was a tailor as well.
    And at first, I think my parents,
    as well as most Jews in Germany, thought
    that this was a flash in the pan,
    that it would blow over and so on.
    But then soon after Hitler took power,
    legislation came out which was antisemitic,
    anti-Jewish, made it difficult for Jews to work,
    limited Jews in the professions, and so on.
    It became clear that there was little, if any, future
    for Jews in Germany.
    And so a lot of people began trying to find a way out,
    just wanted to get out of Germany.
    Well, I think those who decided to get out
    very early, like in 1933, '34 were
    able to manage it pretty well.
    But after a little period of time--
    '35, '36, '37-- it became progressively more difficult
    because those countries that had allowed Jews in
    felt that they had done their bit.
    Well, we let a few hundred in, we let a few thousand in.
    It's enough.
    We don't want any more.
    I think most Jews in Germany wanted
    to go either to the United States
    or to what was then Palestine.
    It was difficult to get to Palestine
    because the Arabs were making all sorts of protests
    against further immigration.
    And the British, in spite of the obvious danger
    that the Jewish community was in in Germany,
    simply gave in and severely restricted immigration
    to Palestine.
    As far as the United States was concerned,
    there were immigration quotas.
    I think the first immigration bill in the United States
    history started in 1924.
    And it was under that immigration bill
    that we labored.
    And it was a severe limitation.
    And consequently, it difficult for people of any number
    to get into the United States.
    So at this point, your family is looking for a way out.
    What happened?
    Well, my father began to try to get a visa to the United
    States.
    And well, you had to make all sorts of applications.
    And you had to have some relatives here
    who would vouch for you.
    And you had to have certificates and test--
    well, certificates saying that you wouldn't
    be a burden on the United States,
    that if you couldn't find a job, someone would take care of you,
    and so on.
    Well, you had to amass all that.
    And you had to have some money too.
    And then you could go to the consulate
    in Berlin or the embassy and try to get a visa.
    Well, there was a problem.
    As I mentioned before, it was difficult to get visas because
    of the immigration quota.
    So what the United States did was
    they didn't give you just a visa when they had one available.
    What they did was they sort of gave you a number
    so that you would know, since you knew how many immigrants
    were admitted each year, you could figure out
    in how many years you might get into the United States
    by whatever number you got.
    But once you got a number, you knew
    that you could get into the United States eventually.
    Now, did your parents have connections
    in the United States?
    Well, my parents-- we didn't have connections.
    The only connections that we had were we had some relatives.
    Actually, at first, we just had some very distant relatives
    in the United States.
    Then eventually, my uncle came to the United States.
    But that was in 1938.
    By that time, I believe--
    I mean, I don't remember those details.
    This is hearsay from my parents.
    I think by that time, we already had a visa number.
    But we knew that we couldn't get to the United States
    for several years.
    The number was a high one.
    So we looked for another place to go.
    And really, we were willing to go anywhere, just
    to get out of Germany.
    It was really getting to be--
    well, it was life-threatening.
    And so naturally, if we couldn't get into the United States,
    we wanted to get to some country that was close to the United
    States, as close as possible.
    And so there were South American, Central American
    countries, and so on.
    And they had taken some Jews.
    And we, I guess, heard that Cuba was admitting Jews.
    And so we tried to get permits to enter Cuba.
    And not only we did, but two of my aunts lived in Germany.
    They did get visas into Cuba.
    And they left in late 1938, early 1939.
    And they took ships.
    And they went.
    They were admitted to Cuba.
    My uncle, my father's brother, who also lived in Germany,
    he was very lucky.
    He got a visa to the United States.
    And they left in October 1938 and settled in New York.
    Now, how did the St. Louis come into play?
    Well, before I tell you that, just
    to show you how bad things were getting in Germany--
    and this is a terribly vivid memory for me--
    at the end of October of 1938, in the middle of the night
    one night, there was a knocking on the door.
    And when we opened it, it was the Gestapo.
    And they said, they had come for my father.
    My mother, of course, was hysterical.
    She wanted to know where they were taking him.
    And in their usual--
    well, they didn't treat Jews very well--
    they just said, it none of your business.
    And they just grabbed my father and took him away.
    Of course, my mother had no idea where he was going.
    The next day, she took me and went
    to the police station, which took a great deal of courage.
    It wasn't something that one just did.
    I mean, there was a certain danger associated with it.
    When we got to the police station, I remember--
    I actually remember this--
    there was a crowd milling in front of the police station.
    And it became clear that many men had been picked up
    the night before.
    But still, no information, there was no information as to what
    had happened to them.
    It was only a few days later that we learned
    that what the Germans had done was
    they picked up all the men who were
    Polish nationals, Jewish men who were Polish nationals,
    and simply deported them back to Poland.
    My parents had come to Germany a few years
    before I was born from Poland.
    They were born there.
    And they grew up in southern Poland.
    So my father was deported.
    And curiously enough, the episode
    of my father's deportation led up--
    the whole episode led up to one of the more horrible episodes
    of what happened in Germany before the war, which
    was Kristallnacht.
    One of the men who was also picked up that night
    was a guy by the name of Grynszpan.
    And he was also of Polish origin.
    And he was shipped back to Poland.
    He had a son who lived in Paris.
    I guess he was 19 or 20 years old.
    And he was so upset by what had happened that he
    decided he would get revenge.
    And he attempted to assassinate the German ambassador in Paris.
    This attempted assassination served as the pretext
    for Kristallnacht.
    Now, Kristallnacht took place on the night between November 9th
    and November 10, 1938.
    What the Germans did-- and it was an organized thing--
    actually, what the Nazis did was they
    broke into and burned down almost every synagogue
    in Germany that existed.
    I remember, I think, in 1935 or some time like
    that, it became a law that Jewish children couldn't
    go to regular schools, they had to go to Jewish schools.
    And of course, I was-- at that time,
    I was, I guess, in first grade.
    The school that I went to was a part of a complex.
    It was a Jewish complex.
    It was a school, then there was a courtyard,
    and then there was a synagogue in the back.
    After Kristallnacht, I didn't go to school for a couple of days.
    And then school resumed.
    And I remember, the first day I came back, in order
    to get to the courtyard in order to get to the synagogue,
    they had broken into the school, first of all.
    Then they had gotten into the synagogue, and broken into it,
    and burned it.
    Now, I was five-six years old, I guess.
    I remember so vividly going into the courtyard
    and seeing the synagogue burned down.
    You could smell it.
    You could still smell the smoke.
    It was such a terrible feeling.
    It's hard to describe.
    I mean, it wasn't just fear.
    It was such an empty feeling, as if somebody had--
    I mean, this was a synagogue that I had gone to
    with my father and my mother.
    And it wasn't there.
    Well, that was terrible.
    Anyway, by that time, my father was in Poland then.
    But by that time, we had already applied for some sort
    of entry permit into Cuba.
    And of course, my father had been
    running around to whatever offices he could go to
    and doing whatever he could to get us
    some papers to get us anywhere.
    Now, my mother had to do it.
    And again, it was just--
    sometimes, I think to myself, if I had been in her place
    or my father's place, would I have
    been able to do what they did?
    I mean, I guess you do it when you have to.
    But it boggles my mind now.
    Where had your father been taken?
    Oh, well, what happened to my father--
    they just put him across the Polish border.
    And he was fortunate.
    He just took a train and went to the town.
    He went to Kraków, which is--
    he had a married sister who was living there, my aunt.
    His parents, my grandparents, lived in a smaller town nearby.
    My uncle, who also was deported, was put
    in a Polish concentration camp.
    And I mean, the Poles also--
    I mean, the Poles didn't want these guys back either.
    I mean, they were, if anything, more
    antisemitic than the Germans.
    And so they provided--
    they set up these camps.
    So a lot of men stayed there.
    In the meantime, my mother did what
    she could to further whatever needed to be done to get us out
    of Germany, with the added complication
    now that my father wasn't in Germany, that even
    if we got papers that something would
    have to be done about that.
    And then about a month or two after my father was
    deported back to Poland, I developed diphtheria
    and I almost died.
    So I think of my mother and what she
    had to go through at that time, and I really
    don't know how she did it.
    In any case, finally, I guess, in April of 1939,
    we got word that we got an entry permit to Cuba.
    And we made arrangements to book passage on a ship.
    And the ship that we booked passage on was the St. Louis.
    And we somehow-- my mother, I don't
    know how it worked out-- they managed
    to arrange for my father to be allowed back into Germany
    for 48 hours so we could leave.
    I mean, we had to leave from Germany.
    If he weren't allowed into Germany, he couldn't leave.
    Well, I remember, it was two days before we were leaving.
    We were supposed to leave Berlin, and go to Hamburg,
    and get on the ship there.
    And my father wasn't home.
    And my mother was beside herself.
    And she thought that he wasn't going to be able to come.
    And we would have to leave by ourselves.
    And I remember, my aunt's mother-in-law, who
    was our neighbor, was in our apartment trying
    to console my mother.
    And there was a knock on the door.
    And my mother said that it was my father.
    She recognized his knock.
    She opened the door.
    And it was an incredible reunion.
    I mean, we hadn't seen him for six or seven months.
    We wouldn't know whether we would see him again
    because we didn't know whether he was going
    to be allowed back in Germany.
    Well, he was there.
    My mother had shipped whatever we could to the United States
    because we had this--
    remember, I told you before, we had this visa
    number to the United States.
    We shipped what we could to the United States.
    We took a train to Hamburg.
    And we boarded the St. Louis, which
    was a-- it was a luxury liner, actually.
    And it was May the 13th, 1939 that we sailed.
    As you're boarding the ship, what are you thinking about?
    Oh, I can't remember, personally, boarding the ship.
    But I know, I mean, I know that I boarded it
    because I have a picture of it.
    Some photographer must have been standing around
    and took pictures of everybody boarding,
    as if it were a real cruise.
    And then afterwards, he found the people.
    And he sold them the pictures.
    And we happened to have bought pictures.
    I also have some other pictures from the voyage itself taken
    by the same photographer.
    I don't know what I thought.
    I'm sure that my parents were tremendously relieved.
    But they also must have thought, god only
    knows when they would see their relatives again.
    And of course, as it turned out, they
    never did because all my relatives,
    their relatives who were--
    all of them were in Poland, all died
    in the concentration camps.
    You board the St. Louis, bound for--
    Yeah, well we were bound for Cuba.
    I don't remember getting on the ship,
    but I remember, as we were leaving, as we started sailing,
    and I don't remember what I felt,
    but I remember my parents sort of heaving this sigh of relief,
    as if this tremendous weight had been
    lifted from their shoulders-- and of course, it had.
    Anyway, the trip to Cuba took approximately two weeks,
    as a matter of fact.
    We got there on May the 27th.
    And I remember some of the things.
    There was a swimming pool there.
    I remember playing with kids and swimming in the pool.
    And we were treated beautifully.
    It was an amazing thing.
    The Germans in Germany treated us like dirt,
    and attacked us, spit on us.
    You couldn't go into a--
    I mean, they used to have signs on the stores, [GERMAN],,
    which means, Jews and dogs are requested not to come in.
    So it was horrible.
    And yet on the ships, which was manned by Germans,
    and had a German cabinet-- it was a German ship--
    we were treated as if we were just normal passengers.
    I mean, it was surrealistic.
    The reason, I think, was--
    and from the reading that I've done about this voyage--
    the reason was that the captain of the ship
    was, really, a decent guy.
    And he, apparently, ordered the crew, among which,
    there were, apparently, some Nazis--
    I guess they had some Nazis on every ship
    and so on, just to make sure that nothing untoward,
    as far as they were concerned, happened-- anyway,
    he ordered all the crew men to treat us as if we were just
    ordinary people.
    So it was wonderful.
    We were on a cruise.
    We ate, danced, there was music, there were movies.
    I mean, it was fantastic.
    And we got to Cuba on the 27th of May.
    I don't know, I think it was a Friday.
    And we got there in the late afternoon.
    And the boat didn't dock.
    It stayed in the harbor.
    And as soon as it stopped in the harbor,
    people began to be afraid.
    They felt that there was something wrong.
    And they were right because what had-- and of course,
    I didn't realize this.
    Nobody realized it at the time.
    But apparently, what had happened,
    even before the ship sailed, the entry
    permits that we had gotten, that we had actually bought,
    that the Cuban government had issued,
    I guess, the minister of immigration
    had issued these entry permits, were invalidated.
    The president of Cuba had gotten the legislature
    to pass a law that these permits were invalid
    and that, from now on, you could only enter Cuba
    if you had a valid visa which had to be issued by
    not only the Department of Immigration,
    but other departments.
    I don't know the details.
    And so there we were in the harbor.
    The next day, we just stood there.
    And of course, then the rumors really
    were rampant that we weren't going
    to be allowed to disembark and that we were going
    to have to go back to Germany.
    People were already, I mean, at this early stage,
    in a real panic.
    My two aunts, and uncles, and my cousin,
    who had lived in Berlin until a few months before,
    were already in Cuba.
    And of course, many of the passengers on the ship
    also had relatives in Cuba.
    What these relatives, including mine, did was
    they hired these little fishing boats so they could--
    excuse me-- so they could come close to the ship.
    And so there was this parade of fishing boats
    going around the ship.
    And there was this yelling.
    People would yell.
    They would spot their relatives.
    And they would yell to each other, hello.
    And I remember, once, we noticed that the ship
    that my aunts, and uncles, and my cousin were on
    was near our cabin.
    So we ran down to the cabin, we opened the porthole,
    and sure enough, they were right there.
    And we were able to actually talk to them.
    And we had brought some gifts for them.
    So my mother threw these gifts to them on the boat.
    And she said, god only knows if we'll
    be able to give them to you otherwise.
    I remember yelling.
    I remember spotting my cousin another day
    on one of these boats.
    And I was yelling to her.
    And I remember, some lady was standing next to me.
    And she said to me, why don't you shut up?
    I have more important things to tell to my relatives.
    This cousin, by the way, lives in Buffalo now.
    She's here.
    Well, anyway, what happened was that the Joint Distribution
    Committee of the United States sent a representative to Cuba.
    And there was some attempt to persuade the government to--
    I mean, the boat was already there.
    There were all these people there.
    It was clear that if we were sent back to Germany,
    we'd go to concentration camps.
    And that would be the end of us.
    And they tried to talk them into letting us land.
    They guaranteed a certain amount of money,
    that we wouldn't be a burden on the economy of Cuba,
    that they would house us, et cetera, et cetera.
    And for a variety of reasons, apparently, this
    was all to no avail.
    I still don't understand exactly why.
    One thing was that I think many of the Cuban officials expected
    to be paid off.
    And either it wasn't forthcoming or it wasn't large enough.
    And the other thing, I guess, there
    was a whole political battle going
    on between some of the ministers and the president.
    And anyway, we were docked in Havana Harbor for a week,
    a whole week.
    And you can imagine, here we were.
    It was the end of May.
    It was hot.
    It was just hot as hell.
    And everybody was scared to death.
    I mean, you can't imagine what--
    I mean, here we were, we finally got out of Germany,
    and we were on the shore of freedom.
    And they wouldn't let us get off.
    There was one guy who actually attempted suicide.
    There was another guy who--
    I think he-- there were a couple of people.
    I don't remember this exactly, but I think a couple of people
    jumped overboard and tried to swim to the harbor.
    But of course, the Cubans had their little police boats
    around.
    And they returned them to the ship.
    Anyway, since all the negotiations with the Joint
    Distribution Committee failed, we finally set sail, I think,
    on June 2nd.
    We were there a whole week.
    Now, the ship's captain was really a decent guy.
    And he tried to calm the passengers.
    I mean, you can't imagine the pandemonium
    that broke out when the ship started
    sailing because we were ostensibly going back
    to Germany.
    So he tried to calm us.
    He said, look, we're going to sail along the coast.
    We're going to sail in the waters of the Caribbean
    for a little while and along the coast of Florida.
    And we're going to--
    we knew that there were all kinds of appeals being made.
    And hopefully, something will happen.
    Well, the continued negotiations were held with the Cubans,
    hoping that perhaps they would change their minds.
    There was some plan to put all the passengers of the ship
    on the Isle of Pines, which is a little island off of Cuba.
    So we wouldn't even be on Cuba.
    I guess this was a deserted island or something--
    anything to get off.
    Then we sailed along the coast of Florida.
    And there were telegrams sent to President Roosevelt
    and to Mrs. Roosevelt. And of course, there
    was never any response.
    The only response that we had from the United States
    was a patrol boat, a couple of patrol boats
    came out to make sure that nobody jumped overboard
    and swam to the coast.
    Looking back on this particular episode,
    does this make you bitter toward the United States
    during this period?
    No.
    Look, I can't be bitter towards the United States.
    The United States eventually provided a haven
    for me and my family.
    But it is, I think, one of the really most
    shameful chapters in American history.
    Think about it-- the United States
    is made up of immigrants.
    Almost everybody in the United States was, at one time,
    an immigrant.
    And yet for 900 people, who were desperate,
    they couldn't-- and most of us were coming to the United
    States anyway, eventually.
    I mean, we all had these--
    or 700 of us had these numbers, visa numbers,
    for the United States.
    We were going to be allowed in eventually.
    I mean, how could the United States
    not have allowed us to come in?
    I just don't understand it.
    But you're now here.
    Well, I think, I'm bitter about that episode, I suppose.
    I can't be bitter about the United States.
    I think it's a fantastic country.
    But just like every country and like every person,
    they make mistakes.
    And I think this was a dreadful mistake.
    I looked up, I went to the library downtown,
    and I looked up the New York Times from 1939,
    when we were on the ship.
    And of course, there were editorials,
    and there were front page articles written in the Times
    about this.
    Of course, I was fascinated to read this.
    As a matter of fact, I made copies of these articles.
    And it's amazing.
    There were editorials in the Times saying how terrible it
    was what was happening in Germany
    and how terrible it was for Cuba not to let us in.
    But there wasn't one whisper in those editorials
    about the United States letting us in.
    I mean, it was incredible to read that, those articles.
    I remember, one night, I guess, it was one evening, my father
    and I were standing on the deck.
    And I saw lights in the distance.
    And I said to my father, what are those lights?
    And he said, oh, that's an American city called Miami.
    And I've been in Miami several times since then,
    since we came to the United States.
    I always get a weird feeling when I'm there because I always
    remember this episode.
    And you see, Miami then, when I was on the ship,
    was like the moon is to me now.
    For me to get the moon today was like for me to get to Miami
    from the ship at that time.
    Well, anyway, nothing worked.
    And finally, we set sail.
    I mean, we were sailing slowly along the coast of Florida.
    But finally, the captain couldn't keep this up.
    And we set sail for Germany.
    And then efforts were made to have
    some other countries take us.
    No Central American country, and the United States,
    and apparently, Canada--
    I'm sure that Canada was asked also,
    and they wouldn't let us in.
    Anyway, they made representations.
    I guess Jewish organizations, the Joint,
    and so on made representations to a lot
    of governments in Europe.
    And of course, these governments had the same line.
    They said, oh, my god, we've had so many refugees already,
    so many Jews, I mean, we can't take any more.
    But finally, imagine, I think, two days
    before we were going to have to land in Germany, in Hamburg, we
    got word that the passenger ships were going to split up
    among four countries--
    England, Belgium, Holland, and France.
    And of course, we were tremendously relieved.
    We weren't going back to Germany.
    OK.
    So my parents and I ended up in Belgium.
    All of us landed in Antwerp.
    And then those who went to England somehow got to England.
    I don't know how that was taken care of.
    We ended up in Brussels.
    Before we discuss Brussels, can you
    tell me a little bit about life on the ship
    before you landed in Cuba?
    Were people praying?
    Were they practicing Judaism on board ship?
    What kind of conversations, what kind of life
    was it when you set sail?
    You see, I can't--
    the things that I remember, I've already told you.
    I can't remember.
    I'm sure there was a synagogue.
    I mean, there were synagogue services there.
    I know, from what I read subsequently,
    and I vaguely remember that there
    were some obviously very religious Jews on the ship.
    What about these Nazis?
    Do you recall seeing them?
    Did you know who they were?
    No.
    No, nobody knew.
    I mean, they were just ostensibly part of the crew.
    You would never-- you couldn't recognize them
    unless they made themselves known.
    No, I don't.
    I really can't remember anything specific,
    except that it was a great relief,
    and that people were happy, and just, I mean,
    the contrast was so great between what
    we had left in Germany and what we had on the ship
    that it really was unreal.
    What happened in Brussels?
    Well, we were helped by Jewish organizations.
    I can't tell you the details because I really
    don't know them.
    My father was not allowed to work
    because that was one of the conditions under which we were
    allowed into the country, that he wouldn't work,
    because they were afraid that we would take jobs away
    from the inhabitants.
    But we managed.
    We were given subsistence by the Jewish organizations.
    And we just waited for our visa number
    to come to the United States.
    But you had another stop to make.
    Well, yes.
    What happened, we landed in Belgium
    on June 17th, which, by the way, was the day
    after my seventh birthday.
    I celebrated my seventh birthday on that ship.
    So we got there in June.
    And as you remember, in May of--
    well, the war, Second World War, started in September of 1939,
    when the Germans invaded Poland.
    And then France and England declared war on Germany right
    after that.
    But nothing happened on the Western front.
    War was declared, but nothing was going on.
    In May of 1940, the Germans invaded France.
    And they went through the same route
    that they had gone through in World War I, namely
    Holland and Belgium.
    And I remember that was the 10th of June.
    I remember, we had some friends.
    And we were walking home one night.
    And there was this air raid, everything became dark.
    And I mean, there were no shelters.
    We just ducked into a doorway.
    And you could hear the bombs falling.
    It was just awful.
    And then there was an all-clear.
    And it became clear from the news
    very rapidly that the Germans were advancing very,
    very quickly.
    And my father said, well, we've got to run away.
    It's unreal.
    I mean, you can't believe that this--
    I can't even believe that it happened,
    even though it happened to me.
    My father took a sheet and he put
    some of our most treasured possessions,
    like some pictures and so on, into it.
    And he made a bundle out of it and slung it over his shoulder,
    took my mother and me, and we started to walk to France.
    I mean, it's incredible, walk to France.
    It was ridiculous.
    But when you have no choice, you do these crazy things.
    But again, we were extremely fortunate because,
    as we started walking, we happened
    to walk past one of the railroad stations.
    Now, this was the 15th of June.
    And the Germans were, I think, maybe 15 miles outside
    of Brussels already.
    And there was this train standing there.
    And it must have come in to transport soldiers.
    But there were no soldiers there anymore.
    And somebody said, this train is going to France.
    And suddenly, there was this swarm
    of people getting on the train.
    I remember my father pushing us and trying
    to get us on the train.
    Everybody was trying to get on, fighting people,
    I mean, people were clawing at each other.
    And we got on the train.
    And we got to the French-Belgian border that evening.
    The train stopped.
    As soon as we got out of the train station,
    there was an air raid.
    And of course, they were bombing the railroads,
    the Germans were.
    And so there was an air raid shelter there.
    And we ran down into it.
    But there were so many people.
    There were thousands of people trying to escape from Belgium.
    There were thousands of people in that little air raid
    shelter.
    And we literally thought we were going to suffocate.
    I remember it.
    I mean, we couldn't breathe.
    And finally, the all-clear sounded.
    We climbed up.
    We were on the platform, on the train platform again.
    And the siren, the air raid siren
    started again, another air raid.
    And my father said to my mother--
    I remember it as--
    I mean, I can hear him saying it--
    said to my mother, we're not going back down there.
    If we're going to die, we're going to die up here.
    So there we were on the platform.
    It was dark, couldn't see the planes.
    But you could hear the bombs falling, that whistling sound.
    You could see them exploding.
    And occasionally, you could see a plane
    catching fire and zooming down.
    I'm sure you've seen this in movies.
    I want to assure you that when you see it and hear it
    in person, it's not the same thing.
    It's not amusing.
    It was horrible, horrible because when
    you heard that whistling sound of the bomb,
    you didn't know whether when the whistling stopped,
    you were going to be blown up.
    So we stayed there all night.
    And those air raids continued all night.
    And we were just lucky we weren't hit.
    The next morning, there was another train going.
    And we got on the train.
    And it was going to Paris.
    But as I told you, the Germans kept
    bombing the railroad lines.
    And every either few minutes or every hour, the train
    would stop.
    We would be told immediately to get out and lie flat
    on the fields.
    And we would look up.
    And there were these German planes flying overhead.
    And it was obvious that we were not soldiers,
    that that wasn't a troop train.
    But they could have mowed us down.
    They chose not to--
    again, just luck.
    And this happened several times.
    We arrived in Paris.
    And again, fortunately--
    I don't know how my parents made these decisions,
    or whether it was just luck, I really don't know--
    we decided that we weren't going to stay in Paris.
    We wanted to get as far away as we could from the Germans.
    There was a cattle car that was going south.
    We got on this cattle car.
    And I guess we traveled south for--
    we were on this cattle car for days,
    I don't know how many days.
    And we would stop somewhere.
    And people would bring us some water and maybe some food.
    And we finally ended up in Southern France,
    about 20 miles north of the Spanish border,
    in the Pyrenees.
    And there were all these refugees-- not just Jews,
    I mean, everybody was running away from the Germans.
    And so they split us up among little towns and villages.
    And we ended up in this little village of maybe 300
    people called Savignac.
    And there were four Jewish families that ended up there.
    And of course, these people, these French people
    lived in this village, the only thing they knew about Jews
    was what they read in the Bible.
    They had never seen a Jew in their lives.
    And here we were.
    But I must say, at first, anyway,
    they treated us very nicely.
    We were able to get quarters, and food, and so on.
    However, things didn't go that smoothly because what
    happened was that the Germans got to Paris,
    the French capitulated, and France was really
    split into the occupied zone, which
    was the northeastern part, which was occupied by the Germans,
    and into the southwestern part of France, which was called
    free France or Vichy France.
    And they formed a French government,
    which, of course, was fascistic, and sympathetic to the Germans,
    and so on.
    About three months after we got to France,
    the Jews in that whole area were picked up-- not only
    in that area, in I think most of what
    was called free France were picked up and taken
    to French concentration camps.
    And we were put in a French concentration
    camp on the Mediterranean, near Montpellier.
    It was near a town called Agde.
    And we were in this concentration camp.
    Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea.
    It wasn't like the concentration camps in Poland, where people--
    it wasn't a labor camp.
    Well, it was in a sense.
    But it wasn't an extermination camp.
    But it was a horrible, horrible-- you can't imagine.
    I mean, the men were separate, the women and children
    were separate.
    There were perhaps 300 people in this cabin--
    not cabin--
    Barracks?
    --barrack, right.
    And there was no furniture.
    We slept on hay.
    There were lice.
    The food was, I mean, to say minimal is gilding the lily.
    I mean, what we got, I remember, was some watery what
    they called soup.
    I mean, it was almost water, basically water.
    And what I really remember were the toilets.
    I mean, there was one huge toilet
    in the middle of the camp, where everybody went.
    And you really couldn't get near it.
    It was so horrible.
    And of course, people were on top of each other.
    And you were treated--
    I mean, remember, this was run by the French.
    You were treated not very well, not very well.
    I only found out later when I read about this-- in fact,
    a book was published recently about Vichy France
    and the Jews--
    that I always assumed that our being picked up
    and being put into a concentration camp
    was at the behest of the Germans.
    It turned out that wasn't so at all.
    There was a long history of antisemitism in France as well.
    And the people who took over Vichy France,
    the government, the new government
    was quite antisemitic.
    They promulgated this law that all Jewish refugees who
    were not French citizens were to be picked up and put
    in these concentration camps.
    So we got there in the concentration camp in November.
    My mother and I, the women, were allowed to see the men once
    a week across a barbed wire.
    And I can't say that I remember exactly what happened.
    But I know that some sort of underground
    was formed, not in the camp, outside of the camp
    by Jewish people.
    And they were set up to help us escape.
    And indeed, my mother-- well, my father and my mother one day
    talked.
    I don't remember it, but I know that it happened.
    And he told my mother that there was this possibility of escape.
    And she had to take it with me.
    She said, I'm not going without you.
    And he said to her that she would have my blood on her head
    if she didn't take me and get out.
    Well, she did.
    We did, my mother and I. And we escaped on Christmas Eve.
    The French soldiers were drunk.
    And we and several other people escaped.
    And that I remember so vividly because, you see, we had to--
    somehow, we got to the town.
    You see, we had to get to the town
    where there was a railroad station.
    The only place we could go was to the place
    where we had originally ended up in France,
    this little town of Savignac.
    So we got to this town.
    And there was a train leaving at noon.
    We got to the platform.
    And I looked around.
    And I recognized one of the gendarmes from the camp.
    And I was afraid.
    I said to my mother, I said, look,
    this guy is from the camp.
    She didn't recognize him.
    And we were afraid that we'd be recognized.
    So we ran out of the station.
    And we went into this little coffee place.
    And we sat in the back, scared to death
    that some gendarme would come in, and recognize us, and take
    us back to the camp.
    We sat there for six hours until the next train came.
    And we got on the platform, no soldiers were there.
    We got on the train.
    But that wasn't so easy.
    You see, during the war, you had to have a permit to travel.
    And you had to have identification papers,
    neither of which we had, because we had escaped
    from concentration camp.
    If anybody had asked us for those, we would have been--
    it would have been obvious who we were.
    And we would have been sent back.
    Fortunately, we weren't sent back.
    We managed to get back.
    Well, this little village didn't have a train station.
    There was a little town about a mile away
    that had a train station.
    But we were afraid to get off at that train station
    because there was a police station
    between that town and the little village where we were living.
    So we got off a station before that.
    And it was about five miles away from the village.
    We had to walk.
    Now, this was in December, the end of December,
    in the Pyrenees.
    It was cold, very cold.
    And the only shoes I had were these sabots, the wooden shoes.
    By the time we got to our little village,
    my toes were frostbitten.
    And fortunately, nothing happened.
    I mean, I recovered.
    But in the wintertime, especially when I go skiing,
    I still have--
    I really have pain in those toes.
    And it's strange.
    How about your dad?
    How did you meet after this?
    Right.
    Well, of course, again, we had no idea.
    My father said, he would try to escape too and meet us back
    in this little town.
    New Year's Day, he showed up.
    He escaped on New Year's Eve, same circumstances.
    And again, it was just a series of I say luck.
    Who knows?
    I mean, maybe God was watching over us.
    Anyway, we lived in this town for another year and a half.
    And finally, in May of--
    I guess before May, April of 1942,
    our visa number for the United States came up.
    Now, the luck was that we were living in free France.
    And the United States had relations,
    diplomatic relations, with free France.
    There was an embassy in Marseille.
    My father used to travel there all the time,
    begging the United States people to let us in.
    Finally, our number came up.
    Then we had a problem of getting to the United States.
    I mean, it wasn't only that we needed a visa.
    We had to find some way of getting there.
    Well, we found a ship.
    All of Europe was at war.
    The only neutral countries were Spain and Portugal.
    We found a Portuguese ship that was going to the United States.
    Then we had to get a transit permit
    through Spain and Portugal.
    I mean, all these things were tremendously difficult.
    I mean, I talk about it as if well, you just go to an office
    and you get a permit.
    It wasn't like that.
    It was you almost died before you
    could get any of these things.
    Well, we finally did.
    We got permits to go through Spain and through Portugal.
    And we got on this ship called the Serpa
    Pinto, my second ship.
    And we sailed.
    And we sailed for Casablanca, where
    we stayed for a couple of days.
    And then we sailed for the United States.
    And this was a very small ship.
    This was not a luxury liner.
    And I tell you that I was seasick
    from the moment I got on that ship till the moment I got off.
    And not only that, it was a very small ship.
    The men and boys slept in the hold,
    I mean, right near the engines.
    They had set up these bunk beds, slabs, actually.
    And of course, people were seasick.
    It was hot as hell.
    There was no ventilation on there.
    People vomited.
    It was incredible.
    Where did you get the money to travel?
    Fortunately, in this little town in France,
    even though my father was not allowed to work,
    when the people found out that he was a tailor,
    they begged him to work, because there was no tailor for miles
    around.
    In fact, somebody offered to give him a sewing machine.
    And so he worked.
    We managed to get a little money from some
    of the Jewish organizations in France.
    And then we had relatives here who sent us some money.
    What kind of man was your father?
    You wouldn't believe from what I've been telling you,
    he was a very quiet, unassuming person.
    He must have had an inner strength to pull you
    through these times--
    and your mother.
    I don't understand how they did it.
    I really don't.
    I mean, I know, I remember my father.
    He's been dead for 20 years now.
    I know my mother.
    I don't know.
    I don't know how they could do that.
    There must have been something in their character.
    Yes, I suppose.
    Either that or if you have to do it, you just do it.
    I mean, necessity makes you do these things.
    But you're right, they had a lot of guts.
    So you land in New York.
    Well, before that, we stopped in Bermuda for a week.
    And they interrogated all the passengers
    because they wanted to find-- they
    were interested in any kind of information about free France,
    the German lines, what the Germans were doing, and so on.
    So they interrogated every single passenger on that boat.
    Then after seven days in Bermuda, we set sail.
    And we landed in New York.
    My uncle, my father's brother, was
    living in New York at the time.
    And we had-- my father also had some aunts, and uncles,
    and cousins in New York who had come to the United
    States years and years before.
    And so anyway, we stayed in New York for a month.
    My father couldn't find work there.
    The two sisters of my father, who had been in Cuba,
    and before that, in Berlin-- we had all lived together, I mean,
    in the same city--
    by that time had come to Buffalo.
    So we got on a bus and we came to Buffalo.
    My father found a job.
    We found a little apartment.
    I mean, apartment-- it was really a tenement.
    I mean, in today's world, you would call it a slum apartment.
    But for us, it was heaven.
    I mean, it was such a-- we were free.
    We didn't have to worry about being picked up and sent
    to a concentration camp.
    And again, we had phenomenal luck because as I told you,
    we left France in May of 1942.
    In September, I believe, of '42, the Germans
    came to free France, including this little town,
    took all the Jews, and sent them to Auschwitz.
    And of course, they all were killed, including
    a very good friend of mine, who at that time
    was studying for his bar mitzvah.
    Where did you settle in Buffalo?
    We settled in the Humboldt section, on East Ferry Street.
    That was a very, very--
    that was the Jewish section at that time.
    How were you received?
    Well, in a way, I mean, here we were--
    and then this was the middle of the war, we arrived.
    We were sort of, in a way, celebrities.
    Of course, and we stayed with my aunt and uncle
    for a little while until we found our apartment.
    Everybody was very curious to talk to us.
    I think everybody tried to help us.
    And I started school.
    I didn't speak a word of English.
    And their idea, in those days--
    they put me in sixth grade, which
    was where I was supposed to be.
    And of course, I couldn't say anything.
    And I really didn't understand very much
    of what was going on, either.
    So they figured, well, the way to teach him
    the language is to--
    we'll put him in first grade.
    And then he'll go up rapidly.
    Well, that was a terrible thing to do because here I
    was in these little seats with these little kids,
    not speaking the language.
    I would have learned just as fast in sixth grade.
    But by January of that year, I spoke English fluently.
    And they put me up to the fifth grade.
    And then I stayed there and made a lot of friends.
    And then I became a regular American kid.
    And now you're a doctor.
    Now, I'm a doctor, yeah.
    It's 1983.
    You look back over the decades, do you
    understand what happened?
    Do you comprehend what happened to you and the world?
    Yeah, I guess the world went crazy.
    You see, the reason I think it's important to know about what
    happened to me, both on this ship and the fact
    that no country would take us, except finally,
    those four countries in Europe, and what
    happened to us in France, I think
    it's important because one might think
    that the whole Holocaust was just Germany,
    it was just Germans.
    Well, yes, the Germans were the ones
    who did the positive things.
    They did the killing.
    But there were a lot of other countries
    who inadvertently helped, in other words,
    they did negative things.
    They wouldn't let people into their countries.
    For instance, I can't understand it.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Sol Messinger, born in June 1932, discusses growing up Jewish in Berlin, Germany; his father, who was a tailor; his parents’ fear after Hitler started a campaign against Jews; the arrest of his father by the Gestapo in October 1938; his admiration for his mother’s courage in approaching the police station; the deportation of his father to Poland; seeing their synagogue burned; no longer being allowed to attend a Jewish school; his father escaping to Kraków; his family’s reunification on May 13, 1939; boarding the “MS St. Louis” with his family; heading towards Cuba; the two-week voyage; the 700 Jews not being allowed to disembark; the response from the United States; the return of the ship to Europe; disembarking in Belgium; fleeing to France; arriving in France when the Germans were bombing the railroad; nearly suffocating in an air raid shelter; being sent by cattle car transport to southern France; being sent to Agde labor camp; conditions in the camp; escaping with his mother; suffering from frostbite on his toes; reuniting with his father; immigrating to the US; setting in Buffalo, NY; and becoming a medical doctor.
    Interviewee
    Sol Messinger
    Interviewer
    Mrs. Toby Back
    Date
    interview:  1991 January 17

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Personal Name
    Messinger, Sol.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Toby Ticktin Back of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo conducted the interview with Sol Messinger on January 17, 1991 with the cooperation and support of WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received copies of interviews from the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo from 1990 - 1993. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection by transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:34
    This page:
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    Also in Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo oral history collection

    Contains interviews with 96 Holocaust survivors, liberators, resistance fighters, and Righteous Gentiles in the Buffalo, N.Y. area

    Date: 1988-1993

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    Oral history interview with George Bauer

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    Dr. George Bauer describes his parents and sister; growing up in Budapest, Hungary; his father’s occupation as a merchant; the slow changes in Hungary; restrictions being put into place in 1938; Jews struggling to find work and his father trying to help when he could; living in an apartment building; the fascist party torturing Jewish students; attending a Jewish school; the German occupation beginning in March 1944; the director at his school telling him not to return to school; being forced to go to Russia and Yugoslavia to work in copper mines, where the conditions were terrible, and many of them were gunned down; the Iron Cross putting Jews in big apartments and taking their wealth; working in a winery, which was a Jewish labor service; people being drafted into the army; digging trenches; Jews being put into ghettos; the scarcity of food; his father escaping back to the winery; his mother living in a Swiss protected house; being hidden with others by a major his father knew; the ghetto being liberated on January 21, 1945; the death of his brother-in-law; returning to their home; being sent to take the corpses to the cemetery and clean up; receiving packages from America; not wanting to believe the rumors about Auschwitz; and hoping that people will prevent this from ever happening again.

    Oral history interview with S. Edmund Berger

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    Oral history interview with Joseph Bolinsky

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    Oral History

    Professor Joseph Bolinsky, a sculptor at the State University College in Buffalo, NY, describes serving in the army from 1943 to 1946; being in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia for about a year and a half; meeting a group of Jewish refugees in Pilsen, Poland; being a combat engineer in the army; his duties included building or destroying bridges or digging up mine fields; knowing of concentration camps but not liberating any; finding distant relatives in one of the camps; being stationed in Ansbach, Germany in the fall of 1945 and helping in a nearby camp operated by the UNRRA; the camp providing medical and psychiatric help, food, and education for young Jews; learning the story of one juvenile refugee who fought with the partisans (Mr. Bolinsky also shows a number of photographs of the children and also of a synagogue in Ansbach); a trip to Nuremberg, Germany and a session of the trials when Goering was on the stand; going to Munich, Germany, where he tried to help people by directing them to appropriate assistance organizations; his shock over the destruction in Germany; his interactions with various German civilians; an incident at the UNRRA camp when one night a group of perhaps 50 refugee children arrived and were not admitted at first until the staff and soldiers wrested the key from the supervisors and opened the gate; returning to the United States; getting married and having four children; living in Rome, Italy from 1962 to 1964; visiting Israel several times and meeting people from his mother’s Polish village; learning more about the Holocaust from survivors in Israel; and wishing he could have done more.

    Oral history interview with Felix Brown

    Oral history interview with Felix Brown

    Oral History

    Felix Brown (né Braun), born in Vienna, Austria, describes his father’s apprenticeship in a Vienna law office; his mother, who was a WWI refugee from Eastern Europe; his cultural family; attending temple services; religious education in school; being in second grade when all the Jewish children were expelled after the Anschluss (March 1938); attending a Jewish school; antisemitism in Vienna; his father’s reluctance to leave Austria; Kristallnacht in November 1938; experiencing antisemitism from a former friend; Sudeten Germans arriving in Vienna and taking over the homes of Viennese Jews; his family living with his grandparents and his father losing his license to practice law; being sent with his brother and a group of other children to Northern Scotland just before the war started; being nine years old at the time and attending a small school for a year and a half; going with his parents to the United States in December 1939; the fates of his grandmother, cousin, and uncle; living in the Bronx and attending high school; his father becoming an accountant; the 1955 treaty and his parents eventually receiving a small pension from the Austrian government; his father changing their name from Braun to Brown; and his father making he and his brother read Nazi newspapers so that they would be aware of what was going on in Vienna.

    Oral history interview with Jutta Lewkowicz

    Oral history interview with Jutta Lewkowicz

    Oral History

    Jutta Lewkowicz, born in 1928 in Dortmund, Germany, describes her father, mother, and two sisters, Ruth and Renee (she was the oldest sibling); the survival of her immediate family during the Holocaust and their immigration to the United States in 1947; her paternal grandparents, who went to Argentina in 1941 following one of their daughters; her father, who was a textile merchant and well off; renting a comfortable house in a nice neighborhood and having a happy life until about 1938; being forced to move to a low-class area; her father having to close his business and become a street sweeper; her vivid memories of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, during which the Gestapo took her father for interrogation; how the lives of the Jews continued to deteriorate and become even more difficult; being afraid to walk on the street because they were harassed by their German neighbors; attending a Jewish school, which was closed in 1941; her two failed attempts to leave Germany by Kindertransport; being brutally attacked and beaten by neighborhood kids; the bombing of her street in 1941 and the destruction of their house; being registered as a German along with her mother and sisters and sent to Czechoslovakia; her father remaining in Dortmund; being suspected as Jews in Czechoslovakia and being sent back alone to Dortmund; being sent with her father in 1942 to forced labor camps until the end of the war in 1945; the poor conditions in the camp and getting very sick; being liberated and going to Czechoslovakia to find her mother and sisters with no success; returning to Dortmund and finding her family; her father and future husband, Bernard Lewkowicz, working for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; getting married in 1947; and settling in Buffalo, NY.

    Oral history interview with Patrick Costrine, Samuel Durfey, Stephen Hord, and Joseph Dietrich

    Oral history interview with Patrick Costrine, Samuel Durfey, Stephen Hord, and Joseph Dietrich

    Oral History

    Patrick Costrine, Stephen Hord, Joseph Dietrich, and Samuel Durfey were members of the 209th Buffalo Regiment, which had about 800 men. They describe participating in the campaigns in North Africa, Italy, Southern France, and Germany; arriving at Dachau concentration camp on May 6, 1945; their lack of awareness of what was going on in the camp; being ordered to wait two days before entering the camp so that the medical corps could clean up the area; conditions in the camp and seeing the remains of many dead bodies as well as the gas chambers and crematoriums; the surviving prisoners; finding several stacks of shoes and several bunkers where prisoners had been tortured; the six to eight weeks it took to remove the dead and take those still alive to hospitals; German civilians helping with the clean up and claiming they knew nothing of the activities in the camp; returning home in July and many people finding it hard to believe their stories; feeling bad that the United States sheltered so many Nazis; and their thoughts on the Allies bombing rail lines.

    Oral history interview with Sidney Cole

    Oral history interview with Sidney Cole

    Oral History

    Sidney Cole, born in New York, NY in 1914, describes enlisting in 1940 and wanting to become a pilot; going to Canada, where he passed and became a flight officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force; returning to the US after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and volunteering for the glides pilot training but not liking it because he was so used to engine noise; graduating in 1942; becoming an instructor for the liaison pilot, whose job is to observe artillery fire from the air; undergoing field artillery training; volunteering for overseas duty and beginning combat flying in the middle of 1944; being in the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944-1945; missions lasting only a few minutes and he thus accumulated 126 missions; his last mission in January 1945 when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he lost all engine power; his observing bailing out and landing inside the Allied lines; landing inside the German line; bleeding and experiencing unconsciousness intermittently; throwing his dog tags away since they identified him as a Jew; being picked up by a retreating German tank and handed over to a group of Hitler youth, who mistreated him; being locked up in a damp cellar for several days and then taken to a Red Cross tent by truck and subsequently transported to several camps; being seen by a British prisoner of war who was a physician and removed some shrapnel and administered a tetanus shot; ending up in Stalag IV F, where he got a non-removable German dog tag as a prisoner of war (he shows a photograph of the tag); passing as a protestant; the Swiss Red Cross visiting; his weight dropping 50 pounds in five months; being liberated by the Russians in May 1945; being treated well and staying for several months; going to a former concentration camp and encountering the malnourished former inmates; seeing thousands of bodies in a ditch and being very affected by his experiences; being sent to Paris, France for interrogation and then to a camp in France to recuperate; being released from the service in 1946 (he shows his prisoner-of-war medal and several other war decorations including a caterpillar pin which indicates that he was saved by a parachute); how he does not like to talk about his experiences but wants to help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive; and the importance of not letting the something like the Holocaust happen again.

    Oral history interview with Lucy Cripps

    Oral history interview with Lucy Cripps

    Oral History

    Lucy Cripps, born in 1922 in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes her close-knit Jewish family; her older brother and sister; her father, who was a salesman for leather goods; their grandparents living with them; attending public school, where the language was Polish; speaking Yiddish and Russian at home; the Russian occupation in 1939; the Germans declaring war on Russia in 1941 and the bombing in Vilna; the laws changing, the curfews, and having to wear a star; the roundups and deportation of Jews; the massacre of Jews and one woman’s escape; being forced into the ghetto and conditions there; working 12-hour days at the airport shoveling snow off the runways; he sister being a nurse in the ghetto; more pogroms; smuggling food into the ghetto; being taken in September 1943 to a working camp and staying with her sister when they were separated; being taken to Kaiserwald camp; working at the railroad in a group of about 250; witnessing a hanging; being evacuated at the beginning of 1944; going to a camp near the Baltic Sea; being moved between several camps; typhus in the camps; being on a ship that was bombed by the British and being injured but getting to shore with her sick sister; survivors being taken to a hospital; meeting an English soldier, Frank Cripps, who became her husband in 1953; finding her brother; going to France in July 1946; immigrating to the United States with Frank in 1954; and her reflections on her experiences in the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Donald Day and Morton Brooks

    Oral history interview with Donald Day and Morton Brooks

    Oral History

    Morton Brooks and Donald Day were both infantry men in the United States Army and reflect on their experiences as prisoners of war. Morton Brooks describes being captured in January 1945 near Strasbourg, France; being a prisoner first in a camp in Bad Orb, Germany (possibly Stalag IX B) and then in Stalag 7C (possibly Stalag Luft VII) in Eastern Germany; and being liberated by the US Army. Donald Day describes being captured in December 1944 and liberated by the British Army in 1945. Morton Brooks describes that the Germans found out that he was Jewish when the prisoners were processed and being separated from the others. Donald Day noted how their position became worse as they moved farther away from the front line; being in a "multinational" Stalag in Neubrandenburg, Germany, where Polish and particularly Russian prisoners were used daily for target practice; receiving occasional Red Cross packages; and forming friendships with the other prisoners. Morton Brooks describes working in mines; being marched for about one month away from the front line; the lack of food (he shows a photograph of him and another prisoner); only 10 percent of the prisoners surviving; and his liberation by the US 11th Army. Donald Day describes being forced to march to Schwerin, Germany (Skwierzyna, Poland), where he worked chopping wood; meeting a young German soldier, who gave him a map in exchange for a letter stating that he had befriended an American soldier; escaping with other prisoners; walking toward Hamburg, Germany and being found by a British tank group; commandeering a German car and traveling toward Paris, France; and their car being stolen. They describe their post-war lives and their thoughts on Germans.

    Oral history interview with Bronislaw Durewicz

    Oral history interview with Bronislaw Durewicz

    Oral History

    Bronislaw Durewicz, born in Kalisch (Kalisz), Poland in 1920, describes being on a high school vacation when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939; going to Warsaw, Poland; the occupation of Kalisch; working in the technical defense of Warsaw (Red Cross, hospitals, checking buildings); the capitulation of the city; returning to Kalisch and earning money on the black market; going to Zakopane, Poland, where there was a chance to get to Hungary; being arrested by the Hungarians and sent back to Poland in the Winter of 1939-1940; returning to Kalisch; the persecution of Jews; the ghettos and the deportation of Jews; joining the Polish underground in 1941; transporting forged papers from Warsaw to Western Poland; seeing a priest being taken for execution because some weapons had been found nearby; being arrested on a train in 1943 and jumping from the train before being caught again; being in a Gestapo prison for six weeks and being beaten and telling them the wrong information; being sent to Auschwitz, where he stayed in a compound with other Polish prisoners and was tattooed for identification; working in a vegetable garden; the gassing of prisoners; being taken to Peenemunde in the summer of 1944 to unload cars; dismantling machinery used to make the V1 and V2 weapons and taking it to Thuringen for hiding in the mountains; being taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen; seeing a partially sunken ship in Bremerhaven, Germany after liberation; being in a displaced persons camp in Germany and receiving training to become a welder; going to Buffalo, NY; being a lay-out inspector at Ford for many years; his thoughts on Germans and the SS; and his hope that knowledge of the Holocaust will prevent such events from ever happening again.

    Oral history interview with Sara Eisen

    Oral history interview with Sara Eisen

    Oral History

    Sara Eisen, born in 1923 in Charsznica, Poland, describes her family life with her parents, two brothers, and two sisters; the German occupation; the anti-Jewish laws; being taken with her sister in 1942 to a labor camp; her mother and oldest sister being taken away and never seeing them again; her father being shot by the Germans; her two brothers dying in a concentration camp; doing farm work then being assigned to the kitchen; trying to take care of the old and sick people in the camp; being transferred in October 1942 to another camp in Krakow; working in a mill making sweaters for the Germans; being hit by a German officer and being taken to the hospital and losing six teeth; visiting a second cousin who worked in a tailoring shop; being sent to Auschwitz in the summer of 1943 and the journey there; seeing the crematoriums; the lack of warm clothing; staying in Auschwitz for four weeks; avoiding being gassed and being sent with a group to Lichtewerden concentration camp; working in a spinning mill; the Czechs supervisors treating them well; being liberated by the Russians who were very nice to them and took them to German houses to take anything they needed; going to Sosnowitz (Sosnowiec), Poland; visiting her hometown but not finding any of her relatives alive; meeting her future husband Bill; going to Landsberg, Germany; going to Buffalo, NY in June 1947; and her thoughts on telling her story.

    Oral history interview with William Eisen

    Oral history interview with William Eisen

    Oral History

    William (Bill) Eisen, born in 1920, describes growing up in Miechow, Poland; surviving the war after being in camps in Kracow, Płaszów, Skarzysko, Czestochowa, and Buchenwald; his father’s occupation; his four brothers and sister; experiencing persecution and antisemitism before the war; participating in scouts, Zionist organizations, and sports; going to a trade school to learn tailoring; the antisemitic parties became very strong in Poland in the 1930s; Polish neighbors collaborating with the Nazis; the ghetto being formed in 1940; the deaths of all his brothers; life in the ghetto and working on the highways; being taken to the camp Płaszów, from which he twice tried to escape but was recaptured; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and his father’s fate; being taken to another camp, where he worked in a tailor shop; a typhus epidemic, during which the sick were killed, and being saved by his supervisor; food rations; being taken to Skarzysko; his work with ammunitions; becoming ill from the chemicals; avoiding execution as well as an accidental explosion; being taken to Czestochowa, where there was more food; working in a tailor shop; being taken to Buchenwald in January 1945; being given a pair of leather shoes which probably saved his life later; working in a coal mine until April 1945; marching towards Theresienstadt and the death of many on the way; being liberated by the Russians; returning to his hometown and not finding any family; and the importance of giving testimony about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jack Ellis

    Oral history interview with Jack Ellis

    Oral History

    Jack Ellis describes his two younger sisters, Rhoda and Gertrude; his father’s scrap metal business; his father dying when Jack was 10 years old; the restrictions on Jews beginning in 1938; being kicked out of gymnasium; Polish Jews being deported in October 1938; being sent to an area between Germany and Poland and being provided for by the Jewish community; going to Łódź, Poland, where he had family; receiving help and accommodations from the Jewish Federation; being forced into the ghetto and the conditions there; volunteering to go to Germany in 1940 in order to help his family; conditions in the camp; his work building super highways; learning that his mother had died; the liquidation of the camp in 1942; being sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars; arriving in the camp and being assigned to different commandos; seeing five inmates hanged; feeling lucky to work in a post office sorting mail; being evacuated in early 1945 and being marched then taken to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British; going to a displaced persons camp; his sister surviving and going to Holland; going to Buffalo, NY in 1949; the psychological effects of his experiences; and his hope that his testimony will convince people that the Holocaust did happen.

    Oral history interview with Vera Ellis

    Oral history interview with Vera Ellis

    Oral History

    Vera Baer Ellis, born in Beckum in Northwest Germany, describes being raised by her grandparents and having a happy childhood; being the only Jewish child in the school system; her parents’ dry goods store; her father and grandfather serving in the German Army in World War I (she shows a photograph of her father in uniform); beginning to understand that her family was deferent because of they were Jews; her parents keeping their store open in secret after 1935; Kristallnacht and her father and grandfather being taken away by the local police but released soon after; Nazis breaking the windows in their home; being 11 years old in March 1939 when she was sent to England with other children; never seeing her grandfather and father again; her mother getting to England and being interned on the Isle of Man for eight months; being evacuated during the Blitz to a boarding school in Cornwall, where she stayed until 1944; her various jobs after 1944; going to Buffalo, NY in March 1947; her grandfather, who felt German and not Jewish; her husband’s survival of Bergen-Belsen; telling her children about her experiences; visiting her hometown in 1979; and sharing her story.

    Oral history interview with Mitchell Falenski

    Oral history interview with Mitchell Falenski

    Oral History

    Mitchell Falenski, born in Warsaw, Poland, describes his close-knit, middle-class family; his parents, brother, and sister; his father’s dry goods store (he shows a 1939 high school photograph of himself); the German occupation and being forced to do useless busy work until 1941-1942 when the ghetto walls were built; conditions in the ghetto; being taken in 1942 to a concentration camp in Szamos and then Majdanek a year later; never seeing his parents again; being forced to do hard, senseless labor; witnessing infanticide; helping to remove dead bodies from Majdanek; the interactions between the inmates; being hit on the head by a supervisor and still having a scar from it; experiencing nightmares after the Holocaust; being transferred to a munitions factory in Czestochowa with some friends, whom he still sees in Buffalo, NY; the German guards leaving as the Russians approached; being liberated by the Russians (he shows a shirt that he made from rags in the camp and a photographs of himself in an American army coat supplied by UNRRA); getting a job as a reporter for a Polish Government newspaper in Lublin, Poland; getting married; being shot in the abdomen by an antisemite and being operated on in an army hospital; going to Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) then Sweden in 1947 with his wife and daughter; being trained as a machinist; moving to Buffalo, NY, where he worked as a machinist first for Curtis-Wright and later in maintenance for Roswell Park Memorial Hospital; only telling his daughter part of his story; and how it’s important for the younger generation to know and not to forget.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Falk

    Oral history interview with Ursula Falk

    Oral History

    Ursula Adler Falk, born in the small spa Bad Mergentheim in Wurttemberg, Germany, describes her early childhood; her parents’ shoe store; moving to Crailsheim, Germany because of the boycott of Jewish businesses; her father starting another shoe store but losing everything to looters; her younger brother; breaking her leg and not being treated because she was Jewish; being beaten in school by a Nazi teacher; being sent with other Jewish children were sent to a school in Niederstetten, Germany; running away from the school and returning home; Jews not receiving food stamps; her father getting an affidavit for one person to the United States and going there in 1938; her going to West Virginia and obtaining affidavits for the rest of the family through the Jewish community; the events on Kristallnacht; moving to Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland); being threatened by their landlady; a close friend being killed by the Nazis; being sexually assaulted by a Nazi; moving to Cologne, Germany, where they lived with an aunt; air raids and not being allowed in the shelters; taking a train on Yom Kippur in 1939 to Aachen, Germany; witnessing the murder of a man who could not find his ticket; being treated well in Belgium; going to Southampton, England, where they had to wait six weeks for a boat; staying with a Gentile woman; the journey on the S.S. Washington; living in West Virginia; everyone in the family working; being rejected by the community as foreigners, even by the Jewish community; encountering antisemitism; wining the spelling bee in 5th grade and doing well in school; wanting to attend college but not being allowed; her parents never acclimating to the US; her family moving to Cleveland, OH when the war started; working her way through college; getting married and having a family; gradually telling her story to her children; the fate of her extended family; visiting Germany and pretending to be American; and returning to Crailsheim and writing about the trip for the Buffalo News.

    Oral history interview with Raymond Federman

    Oral history interview with Raymond Federman

    Oral History

    Raymond Federman, born in 1928, describes his middle-class Jewish family; his two sisters, the eldest named Sara and the youngest named Jacqueline; his Polish father, who moved to Paris, France in 1918 to have more opportunity as a painter; his mother’s Palestinian family and how she lived in an orphanage in the 1910s for nine years; his parents’ arranged marriage; his father suffering from tuberculosis; the German occupation and having to register; the restrictions on Jews and having to wear Jewish stars; hiding when the Gestapo came to his house; the deportation of his parents and sisters to Auschwitz; going to a Jewish neighborhood, where his aunt lived; being taken on a train but jumping off during the journey; returning to Paris; going to Bonn, Germany with two Belgians; living on a farm for two years; immigrating to the United States and settling in Detroit, MI; working at Chrysler and attending Nordon High School; moving to New York, NY in 1951 and being drafted into the army; being sent to Korea and Japan; attending college at Columbia and getting his PhD from UCLA; becoming a French professor in 1963; and writing several books.

    Oral history interview with Judith Fenyavesi

    Oral history interview with Judith Fenyavesi

    Oral History

    Judith Fenyavesi, born June 8, 1923 in Salonta, Romania, describes being the middle child of three girls; her father, who was a pharmacist, and her mother, who taught piano and French; growing up in a loving Jewish family, where there was little practice of faith; attending grammar school and receiving a religious education (she also shows several photographs of her family); being sent with her sisters to a Catholic boarding school because of antisemitism in the public schools; being strongly attracted to the Catholic faith; her family’s plan to immigrate to Australia but her father being unable to sell the pharmacy; being baptized with her mother and sisters in 1938; her father’s conversion in 1940; wanting to become a physician but not being accepted because of the quota system against Jews; attending a school for social work operated by the Sisters for Social Work in Cluj, Romania in 1941; the area being taken over by Hungary; completing her training in 12 months and visiting Catholic people in small villages in Transylvania as social worker; her father dying in 1942; the German army arriving in March 1944; being considered Jewish; her town being too small for a ghetto, but having to stay home most of the day; the willingness of the convent to shelter her mother, sister, and herself but being afraid to go into hiding; being taken to the ghetto in Oradea, Romania on June 8, 1944; her two sisters and her grandmother being deported to Auschwitz on June 27, 1944; becoming a sister in the order of the Sisters of Social Service in 1945; being arrested by the Communists in 1951; spending 10 years in prison; leaving Romania in 1963 and joining the Sisters of Social Service in Buffalo, NY; and her hope that the memories of loved ones and their suffering was not in vain and that new life and peace will come out of the events of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ernst Freudenheim

    Oral history interview with Ernst Freudenheim

    Oral History

    Ernst Freudenheim, born in Berlin, Germany in 1904, describes never encountering antisemitism personally until Hitler came to power; living in an “integrated” apartment house, where the personal physician of the German Emperor and a leading Zionist also lived; meeting Jewish refugees from Russian-occupied Poland and becoming a Zionist; attending a public high school; Germany in the 1920s; attending universities in Freiburg, Germany and Berlin; the changes in the Jewish community when Hitler came to power; going into his parent's business importing rubber; getting married in Berlin (he shows a photograph of his daughter, who later died in Auschwitz); becoming a member of the Trustees of the Jewish Community of Berlin; establishing a school for sports teachers; helping to get young men out of jail on the condition that they would leave Germany within 24 hours; the confiscation of his business and living on savings; visiting Palestine for three months in 1936 and reporting on his visit to a large Jewish group closely monitored by the Nazis; planning to immigrate to Palestine and set up a rubber factory; feeling that he could do more for Zionism by going to the United States; going to Buffalo, NY, where he got a job in a jewelry store then opened his own firm; his wife and two sons joining him in Buffalo; saving people, particularly children, by giving or arranging affidavits that made it possible to enter the US; adopting three children (he shows a photograph of them with his own two sons); the loss of most of his and his wife’s extended family; and the importance of rescue efforts during the war.

    Oral history interview with Trudy Friedler

    Oral history interview with Trudy Friedler

    Oral History

    Trudy Friedler describes being born to a Jewish mother and a Gentile father in Austria; her parents divorcing when she was three or four years old; being very poor; her mother working as an actress-dancer to support the family; being sent to a Jewish orphanage when her mother toured with a performance group; conditions when Hitler marched into Austria in 1938; being hassled in school; staying in the orphanage as her mother went to live in the second district; the arrest and deportation of her uncle; the liquidation of the orphanage in 1940 and going to live with her mother; having to wear identity cards that were marked with a “J”; joining a Zionist youth organization and her mother not allowing her to go to Palestine; being ordered to work in the fields cutting asparagus when she was in eighth grade; being sent in 1941 with her family to Vienna, Austria, where they had to re-register as Jewish citizens; being issued a yellow star; working in a detergent factory; their ration cards for food; people going missing; working in lumber yards for two months; hiding out in July 1942 and the help they received; the Allied bombing of Vienna between 1943 and 1944; her aunt being caught in 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhoid; her grandfather being deported to Theresienstadt; going to Germany in 1945; and being liberated by the Americans.

    Oral history interview with Elza Friedman and Sofie Tihel

    Oral history interview with Elza Friedman and Sofie Tihel

    Oral History

    Sofie Tihel (born in 1911) is the mother of Elza Friedman (born in 1931 in Jassy [Iasi], Romania). Elza describes her happy childhood and studying piano, French, and Hebrew; her father’s small manufacturing business that made bottles and metal accessories; the war coming to Romania in 1941 and the subsequent pogrom by the local population aided by the Nazis, during which about one-half of the Jewish population was killed; her immediate family surviving; the deportation of most of her extended family; the looting of their home; being threatened by drunk soldiers; attending a Jewish school; her father’s business being operated by an appointed gentile and the factory producing goods for the army; being poisoned by a German soldier and being sick for months; conditions in the city; the murder of Jewish men; learning about events from friends with radios or from newspapers by reading between the lines; moving to Bucharest, Romania in 1944 when the Russians were approaching; life between 1945 and 1948; attending a Russian school; studying chemistry at a university; being on the blacklist because her father was considered a bourgeois; having to pay a high tuition and selling her personal belongings to get money; the Russians taking many people to work on a canal between the Danube and the Black Sea, where many died; her father’s death in 1949; her mother marrying a pharmacist in 1958; Elza working as a chemist; her mother and younger sister going to Buffalo, NY in 1966; Elza’s marriage to an engineer, who was not allowed to do proper work because of their planned emigration; her mother helping by sending packages from the United Stated; being helped to leave by an Englishman; arriving in Buffalo in 1971; finding a job at a chemical laboratory at a university; and how people should appreciate their freedom and their won struggles were worth it.

    Oral history interview with Fred Friedman

    Oral history interview with Fred Friedman

    Oral History

    Fred Friedman, born in 1926 in Salzburg, Austria, describes his parents and younger sister; attending school; the German take over in March 1938; the restrictions placed on Jews; his father getting a permit to go to Switzerland; being smuggled out with his sister and his mother being smuggled out later; living in central France for a year and attending school; experiencing antisemitism; war breaking out and the deportations to camps; leaving France in 1941 and going to Madrid, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal before traveling separately to the United States; his interest in history; wanting to enlist but having to wait until he was 18 years old; attending New York University after the war; attending law school; visiting Salzburg and learning that not many of his relatives survived; getting married in Buffalo; talking to his children about the Holocaust; and his belief that citizens must be active in their government.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Friedman

    Oral history interview with Samuel Friedman

    Oral History

    Samuel Friedman, born in 1920 in L'vov, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), describes being one of seven children; his parents having a wholesale paper products business; attending school and having private lessons for Jewish learning; leading a comfortable and cultural life; the businesses being nationalized and taken over by the Russians in 1939; staying in their home and trying to lead a normal life; the German invasion in 1941; being forced into the ghetto and the conditions there; his parents being deported and never seeing them again; working for the Germans doing odd jobs; being sent with many other young people in cattle cars to Auschwitz; being tattooed with a number; the various jobs in Auschwitz; inmates trying to help each other; psychological conditions of the inmates and strategies for survival, including having faith as well as singing and dancing; being evacuated from Auschwitz and taken to Germany near Munich; being liberated in May 1945; being sent to Switzerland with sick soldiers to recuperate; being brought back to Germany; one of his brothers surviving Auschwitz and immigrating to Israel; his sister surviving by working for a German family and immigrating to Australia; talking to his three children about their heritage; the effects of the war on him; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Edith Froelich

    Oral history interview with Edith Froelich

    Oral History

    Edith Froelich, born in 1923 in Rödelheim (a suburb of Frankfurt am Main), Germany, describes being an only child; her family’s two stores; attending a Jewish school; going in 1937 to a vocational school, where she learned how to cook and sew and studied languages; Kristallnacht in 1938 and the destruction to their stores; her father being taken away and her mother getting him out; applying for visas; being sent to Sweden with a group of about 60 children; cooking for farmers; her parents going to the United States in 1940; corresponding with her parents; going to the US in March 1940; going to Buffalo, NY; working as a timekeeper in a factory; meeting her husband through her aunt; tell her children about the Holocaust; traveling to Germany in 1979 with her oldest son; and her message to others to appreciate living in a free country.

    Oral history interview with Bercu Goldfain

    Oral history interview with Bercu Goldfain

    Oral History

    Bercu Goldfain, born in 1911 in lasi, Romania, describes his small town, where about one-half of the population was Jewish; his poor family; both his parents working as tailors; his three siblings; being raised very observant and speaking only Yiddish; the Jewish community, including the Yiddish theater; antisemitism increasing after the German occupation in 1941; a pogrom, during which many were shot and others were deported; many people dying on the train, including his father and brother; arriving in the camp and doing forced labor; being sent back to Iasi, where he had to wear a yellow star and suffer restrictions; the beatings and abuse of Jews; the confiscation of mail; the survival of his mother and a brother and his sister; the atrocities during the war; and the importance of not forgetting the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Chana Goldstein

    Oral history interview with Chana Goldstein

    Oral History

    Chana Goldstein, born in 1920 in Łódź, Poland, describes her happy childhood; her four brothers and two sisters; her father’s jewelry store and his death when she was seven; her mother moving to Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), where she had a grocery store and a catering business; getting married at 18 years old; moving to the ghetto when her daughter was an infant; her husband fleeing to Warsaw, Poland for a week; her work sewing shoes by hand for the German army; the Germans taking old people and the children, including her two-year-old baby and her mother, to be killed in 1942; working in a laundry; being moved in 1944 to another part of the ghetto to concentrate the Jews; the daily selections and her husband hiding because he was in poor health; being taken to Auschwitz by train in cattle cars; arriving and having her hair cut; the lack of food but never getting sick; her husband committing suicide; being transported after nine days to work in Bremen, Germany, where she had to clean up streets after air raids; having to walk to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945; being severely hurt by the rifle butt of an SS man; liberation and having difficulty eating; being the only survivor of her 100 relatives; marrying a survivor from the camp in 1946; her husband being a butcher and staying in Germany until 1949; going to Israel; her son being born in 1952 and contracting polio; immigrating to the United States in 1958 with her son and daughter who then were nine and five years old; and still getting very emotional when she talks about her experience but is thankful to be alive and to have her family.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Goldstein

    Oral history interview with Marianne Goldstein

    Oral History

    Marianne Goldstein, born January 8, 1927 in Hirschberg in the western region of Germany, describes going to the United States in 1939, two weeks before the start of World War II; her three older brothers; her family living in Pirmasens, Germany, where there was a Jewish community of about 300 families; her father, who was a rabbi (she shows a picture of him as well as the synagogue in Pirmasens); her family living in a large apartment; her father worrying about the future and sending one of her brothers to the United States; Kristallnacht in November 1938 and the destruction of the synagogue; the Jewish men being rounded up the next day and taken to Dachau; the release of the men a few weeks later; her brother’s experience in the US, where he was taken in by a family in Terre Haute, Indiana; attending public school until Kristallnacht, after which she was no longer allowed to attend; being sent to a sewing school operated by catholic sisters; her other relatives’ emigration stories and fates; immigrating with her family to the US; settling in Haverhill, MA; her education; moving later to Roxbury, MA, where her father officiated at various functions of the Immigrants Mutual Aid Society between 1939 and 1942; going in 1984 to Russia for a 6-week study seminar where she met someone with relatives in Buffalo, NY, and trying to help him leave; and the importance of providing sponsorship to immigrants.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Haber

    Oral history interview with Alfred Haber

    Oral History

    Alfred Haber, born in 1924 in Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Poland, describes his father, who served in the Austrian Army in World War I and was a grain dealer; his mother, who was a school teacher until she got married; his three sisters and one brother; their nice home and admiring German culture; attending public school and a Hebrew academy; living on the outskirts of the town near the barracks that later became part of the concentration camp; the German invasion in 1939; the destruction of the synagogue and the confiscation of their business; trying to go to Palestine with a group of Jews but being stopped by the German police; the evacuation of all the Jews to a ghetto in Sosnowiec, Poland; working in an oil depot; the roundup of Jews in 1942 and going through a tribunal; the selection process and being separated from his family (he shows photographs of two sisters); being taken to another camp near Gross Rosen, where he worked on highway construction; being taken to the camp at Bunzlau, where he was a laborer; the lack of food and stealing food to survive; the winter of 1943; the SS taking over the administration in early 1944 and the improvement to conditions; the selection of a group of skilled persons (tailors, shoemakers, etc); being hit in the head and his wound not healing; working in the laundry; the Russians approaching in February 1945 and being taken village to village; narrowly escaping being killed several times; going to camp Dora Nordhausen; many people dying from starvation; carrying dead bodies to the ovens; being a helper in the Bergen-Belsen kitchen when the US Army approached; almost being killed by the SS and Hungarian guards; being liberated by the British; hitchhiking home but being afraid of the people there; his sister surviving another camp; the five requirements for survival (luck, youth, experience with hardship, willingness to steal food, and having a useful skill); his reasons for giving his testimony; and the importance of being on guard against hatred.

    Oral history interview with Ronald Hauser

    Oral history interview with Ronald Hauser

    Oral History

    Ronald Hauser, born in 1927 in Stuttgart, Germany, describes being the son of a pediatrician; his brother and sister; his Jewish and non-Jewish friends; staying in public school, where he was the only Jew; antisemitic teachers; his brother winning a sports competition and being given a pin with a swastika; receiving religious instruction at a nearby synagogue; his family’s minimal religious observances at home; his family’s plan to go to Chile; his French-born parents filling the French quota; the fate of his extended family; his family settling in San Francisco, CA; being drafted into the army; trying to understand his psychological reactions to the Holocaust; visiting Germany many times; feeling very comfortable in the US immediately; his parents moving to Vallejo, CA; becoming enemy aliens when the war started; being made to move to Napa, CA and not being allowed to leave the area; making contact with cousins in France; his grandfather stressing the importance of keeping track of family members; and the consequences of families separating after the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Renee Joffe

    Oral history interview with Renee Joffe

    Oral History

    Renee Resler Joffe, born in Paris, France, describes her experiences in France during the German occupation while she still was a teenager; having a normal childhood with one younger sister; her father, who was a metallurgist; having to register after the German occupation and getting ID cards and ration cards; not feeling much antisemitism in school; her father being taken to a concentration camp in 1941 and not returning; the roundup of women and her mother arranged for them to go to Southern France for a substantial fee; the journey to the free zone; being 17 at the time and her sister being 12 years old; going to a farm, but living in a country hotel; a member of the French resistance helping them get there; going with her sister to Grenoble, France, which was occupied by the Italians; attending Catholic school; going to a smaller town with her sister during a roundup; her mother staying in Paris until liberation; and her relatives in Belgium.

    Oral history interview with Henry Joseph

    Oral history interview with Henry Joseph

    Oral History

    Henry Joseph, born in 1925 in Laufersweiler, Germany, describes the small farming village, which had a population of about 600 including 25 Jewish families; living with his parents, grandparents, and sister; his family operating a Matzah factory and selling feed, coal, and flour; his sister fleeing to Holland in April 1942 at the age of 21 and later being killed in Auschwitz (she shows photographs of his sister and of a group of children from his community); his father dying in 1934; the decline of the business with the Nuremberg laws; attending Catholic school; Kristallnacht in 1938; the roundup of Jewish males and the burning of the synagogue; the destruction during Kristallnacht; going to Luxembourg, where they had relatives; their visas for the United States being delayed; being sent with his relatives to October 1941 to the ghetto in Łódź, Poland; his last letter from his mother, who stayed in Laufersweiler; working in a metal factory until the end of 1944; conditions in the ghetto before the liquidation in 1944; being sent on a train to Auschwitz; being sent to Hannover, Germany to a small camp (possibly Hannover-Stöcken), where they marched daily to a tire factory; the abuse they endured; the allied bombings increasing and being taken to bunkers to work in the factory underground; marching to Bergen-Belsen; being forced to bury the dead in the camp; being liberated by the British; his hope that his story will be a lesson to the world ; and speaking with his sons about his experience.

    Oral history interview with Angela Keil

    Oral history interview with Angela Keil

    Oral History

    Angela Vellou Keil, born in 1936 in Salonika, Greece, describes being a Christian woman during the German occupation of Greece; being the oldest child to her merchant father; the German invasion and moving to a one-room place near the Jewish neighborhood; the curfew; the low survival rate of the Salonika Jews; one Jewish survivor helping her father after the war; Jewish tombstones being used to cover the sidewalks; the food shortages; the massacre of a neighboring village because Germans were killed during a partisan attack; not remembering the liberation very well; her father’s imprisonment by the communists; her family suffering after the war; having limited schooling; life during the war; going to the United States when she was 18 because she obtained a scholarship; the effects of the war on her; and the importance of empathy.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

    Oral History

    Gerda Weissmann Klein, born in 1924 in Bielitz (now Bielsko-Biala), Poland, describes her father, mother, older brother, and her future husband, Kurt Klein (she shows pictures of them from before the war and herself after liberation); her normal childhood and attending a Catholic school, where a rabbi gave Jewish instruction; the German invasion in September 1939; selling their possessions and knitting sweaters to survive; her brother escaping to Russia and disappearing; being forced to move into the ghetto; having to wear the yellow star; sewing uniforms in a German shop with her mother; her father’s illness; neighbors helping each other; her father being taken away in June 1942; being separated on June 29, 1942 from her mother, who was sent to Auschwitz; hiding photographs in her boots; being sent to a transit camp for girls in Sosnowiec, Poland; working at a weaving center; working for three years in quarries; ending up in a spinning mill, where there was a lot of dust and tuberculosis; the girl inmates being X-rayed every 6 to 7 weeks; working night shifts; being marched out of the camp in January 1945; getting to Czechoslovakia, where people urged them to flee and some actually helped them; her best friend dying a day before the war ended; being locked in a barn with the other girls by the guards with a time bomb, which did not exploded because of heavy rain; being released by Czech people; two Americans (including her future husband) arriving and looking for translators; Kurt Klein’s job to negotiate surrenders of towns; the horrible conditions of the camp survivors; being in the hospital for several months; how neither her parents nor other members of her family survived; Kurt being discharge in September 1945 and their marriage in France in 1946; making sure that her children knew about her experience; the importance of telling their story; how people in the camps helped each other to survive; and the expressions of love and friendship in the camps.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral History

    Kurt Klein, born in 1920 in Walldorf, Germany, discusses witnessing the rise in Nazi propaganda; experiencing antisemitism; the Nazi’s use of radio to spread hateful message; the pro-Nazi films of Leni Riefenstahl; hearing Nazi hate songs; Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”; seeing stormtroopers block Jewish homes, and warning townspeople to not buy from or interact with Jews; Jewish businesses being taken over by Aryans; realizing his schooling was over because his father could no longer afford tuition; the Nuremberg laws; his sister’s expulsion from nursing school, and her subsequent immigration to the United States; following his sister to the US one year later; the raid and pillage of his parents' home; his father’s arrest and release; the deportation of many men; the deportation of his parents after which they perished in Auschwitz; joining the US Army; being at Normandy; finding Jews on a death march in Volary, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); meeting Gerda Weissman among the survivors and eventually marrying her; meeting Oskar Schindler; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Eva Koepsell

    Oral history interview with Eva Koepsell

    Oral History

    Eva Koepsell, born in 1944 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her father, who was a physicist, and her mother, who was a social worker (she shows pictures of her family from 1906); how she doesn’t have many memories from the war but learned about her family’s experience later; her mother losing her job in 1941; her father working until he lost his job in 1943 and was taken to a forced-labor camp; her family living in cellars first in the Jewish ghetto; her aunt’s baby dying from lack of food; another aunt being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz, where she survived medical experiments but then could not have children; her mother converting to Catholicism and hiding; her mother leaving her at a Red Cross nursery where many babies were saved; going to the United States in 1947 when she was three and a half years old; her mother being very much affected by the events and her efforts to distance herself from her experience; her father escaping from the forced-labor camp after a few months; her father working as a physicist in the US; living in the Bronx and having relatives in Brooklyn and Queens; moving later on to Buffalo, NY; going to a Catholic school in the Bronx at age 12; learning about her own Jewish background, of which she is proud; her father dying and her mother returning to Hungary to stay with one of her sisters; the importance of telling her story; poems she wrote about the conditions during the war (which she reads); and the importance of recognizing what is going on and that more people should have acted during the war.

    Oral history interview with Frances Kornmehl

    Oral history interview with Frances Kornmehl

    Oral History

    Fances Leder Kornmehl, born in 1925 in Tarnow, Poland, describes growing up in a Chassidic home; being the youngest of three sisters and two brothers; being an outstanding student in a Polish school; her father’s business selling feed to farmers; the war starting and not being able to attend school; the restrictions on Jews and the random shootings in the streets; the black market; living on their savings; her brothers being shot; her mother being sick and dying; helping her sick father; the two ghettos; working for the Germans; seeing children being buried alive while some music was playing; people being from hospitals and shot; being taken to a very large camp, where she sewed and did other work for German soldiers; staying in the camp for over one year until November 1944; being taken to Treblinka; the selection process and being tattooed; being taken in a cattle car to the Sudeten part of Germany where things were better; conditions in the camp and working in a spinning mill; the Germans leaving one morning and being liberated by the Russians the next day; a Jewish Russian taking them into town and giving them clothes; walking in groups to Katowice, Poland; the Russians sending them by train to Kraków, Poland; returning to her hometown, where a non-Jewish woman took her in; writing poems; staying in Tarnow for a year and working in an office; the pogroms and people being killed; going to Germany and working in a post office, where she met her future husband who was head of the office; immigrating to the United States in 1947 and getting married; going to New York, NY and Buffalo, NY; never telling her experiences to her children because she did not want to take their innocence away; and her feelings that freedom and liberty for everybody are the most important things in life.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Kornmehl

    Oral history interview with Nathan Kornmehl

    Oral History

    Nathan Kornmehl, born 1923 in Cologne, Germany, describes his father being a Hebrew teacher and also selling linens and other household goods and his death in 1930; living with his mother and four sisters; his Polish parents planning to go to the United States and therefore never becoming German citizens; attending a public school and a Jewish school until 1937 when that was no longer possible; being sent with his mother and a sister to the Polish borders as non-citizens in 1938; getting an engineer of a coal train into taking him to Posen, Germany (Poznan, Poland); finding support from the Jewish community; being given a ticket to Kraków, Poland, where he had some relatives; getting a job and working until the beginning of the war in 1939; going into hiding and going alone to Riga, Latvia, mostly by walking; going to Ukraine and having all his spare clothes stolen on the way; arriving in L'viv, Ukraine, where he worked for a few months; being offered a passport to Russia but not taking it because he planned to return to Germany after the war; being sent to Siberia; wearing special winter clothing when the temperature dropped; not encountering antisemitism and everybody receiving the same food rations; having no contact with his family and not knowing what went on during the war; taking care of a horse and having to deliver water and wood to various people; being taught to bake bread by a Russian general; cooking for the prisoners in 1944; being shipped to Wroclaw, Poland, and smuggled by truck to Berlin, Germany; his mother and sister dying in Auschwitz; working in a post office in Berlin for almost two years; meeting his future wife; being a judge for a displaced persons camp for six months; immigrating to the United States where he had an uncle in Buffalo, NY and having two sister come to New York; his feelings about faith; and his belief that a person should not depend on others and people should be good to each other.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Leibovic

    Oral history interview with Marianne Leibovic

    Oral History

    Marianne Leibovic, born in 1924 in Cologne, Germany, describes being the only child of her family; having a nice and protected childhood until the Nazis took over; her father’s business declining because of the boycott of Jewish firms; attending a Catholic school until age 10 and then the Jewish high school; the school being destroyed after Kristallnacht; leaving for England with a children's transport under the auspices of B'nai B’rith and going to a Jewish foster home; attending a school in London; being evacuated to a boarding school; receiving brief messages from her parents once the war started; adapting to life in England; her parents leaving Germany in May 1940 and the ship with all their belongings being sunk; conditions in Germany when Hitler came to power; the man who later became her husband, who came from a family of dentists in Lithuania and studied at Cambridge University; meeting her future husband in 1943 and getting married the following year; having three sons; the Westinghouse Corporation in 1960 bringing them to Pittsburgh, PA; training in England to become a children's nurse and working in a children's camp while her parents were trapped in Holland; her parents hiding in Holland for two and a half years; receiving occasional messages under false names through the Red Cross; visiting her parents at Christmas in 1944; her parents receiving a pension from the Germans after the war; admiring the people of Holland who helped many Jews to survive; feeling accepted in the United States; and her belief that one must make the best of Iife and learn from the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Max Lendner

    Oral history interview with Max Lendner

    Oral History

    Max Lendner, born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria, describe being the only child of his father, a salesman, and mother, a housewife (he shows a photograph of his family); remembering only a little of the early Nazi period; his normal childhood until the German take over; transferring to a school that had only Jewish students; Jews being encourage to leave the country; Jews being arrested at random and sent to camps but many were soon released; Kristallnacht in November 1938; Nazis entering his grandfather's business and carrying everything away; his father being arrested but then released again; spending his days hiding at a neighbor’s and returning home only at night; antisemitic propaganda on the radio; experiencing antisemitism from Austrians; his father being arrested and taken to Buchenwald, where he died of unknown causes; leaving with his mother for the United States from Italy soon after the war started; his uncle surviving the war; receiving postcards from his father in Buchenwald until 1942; his mother working various jobs in New York, NY; receiving help from relatives and the HIAS; his mother remarrying in 1953; visiting Europe years after the war and how his old neighborhood was unchanged; feeling that his experience affected his personality; growing up without proper direction; being a social worker for Erie County; trying to receive restitution from Germany with the help of a lawyer and finally receiving a settlement; his feelings about Germans and the role of the US in the war; and the importance of keeping record of what happened during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Gerhard Levy

    Oral history interview with Gerhard Levy

    Oral History

    Dr. Gerhard Levy, born in 1928 in Wollin, Germany (Wolin, Poland), describes his father having a large clothing store and being a German veteran from World War I; the presence of only 20 to 30 Jews in town and being the only Jewish child in school; being transferred to a Jewish school in Caputh, Germany; his father selling his business after Kristallnacht in November 1938; his father being taken to a concentration camp but released after about six months (he shows a photograph of his family taken a few months later); the repair of some of the synagogues in Berlin after the war; spending a year in Berlin before going to Shanghai, China; most of their belongings being stolen by the customs people; traveling by train through Poland and Russia to get the Shanghai; being too young to remember many details about the trip; setting in the Chinese quarter that was occupied by the Japanese; the Jews being restricted to about four city blocks; his father having a number of different jobs and his mother cooking on a small outdoor hibachi; the food shortage; attending school and learning Chinese and improving his English; attending a plumbing school and working as an apprentice in a pharmacy; the Jewish community managing fairly well; receiving information from a Russian radio station; learning about the concentration camps after the war; the war ending; his family receiving help from the HIAS in 1948 to go to the United States; settling in San Francisco, CA, where his father became a janitor and his mother worked as household help; and his message that one must not forget.

    Oral history interview with Morris Lipson

    Oral history interview with Morris Lipson

    Oral History

    Morris Lipson, born in 1920 in Łódź, Poland, describes being the youngest of three children; attending public and religious school; his parents having a wholesale shoe business; going to Warsaw, Poland when Hitler invaded and going home after four weeks; the establishment of the ghetto in 1940 and conditions there; working in a factory of straw shoes; the ghetto being liquidated in 1944 and being taken on cattle trains to Auschwitz with his mother, sister, and brother; the men and women being separated; being sent to work in a rubber factory in Hanover, Germany; being sent to build barracks and work in mines 50 miles away; having an accident with his finger, which had to be cut off; people dying from starvation; being marched for several days to Bergen-Belsen; being freed by the British; being taken in an ambulance on a stretcher to a military hospital; being taken to Sweden to recuperate; meeting his future wife in Stockholm, Sweden; their daughter’s birth in Sweden in 1947; immigrating to the United States in 1954; and his sadness that his children didn't have grandparents, aunts, and uncles like all other children.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Lissek

    Oral history interview with Marcel Lissek

    Oral History

    Marcel Lissek, born in Paris, France in 1937, describes his father, who left Cologne, Germany around 1933 because of rising antisemitism; his mother, who moved from Poland to France; his father being sent to a detention camp then Auschwitz, where he died in 1942; his mother working as a tailor in Paris; not being able to remember much about the time before the war; his mother becoming sick with heart problems and high blood pressure around the beginning of the war; being taken with his older brother, Leon, to a safe district in Paris that was run by an organization for the safety of children; he and the other children being taken from one place to another; staying with Leon throughout the war and reuniting with his younger brother, Jacques, in 1947; life in hiding and only seeing his mother a few times during the war; having to wear a yellow star; narrowly escaping the Germans on several occasions; staying in the castle of Fontainebleau outside Paris from 1944 to 1947; seeing American and Canadian troops coming through after the war; his memories of staying in caves during the war; the deportation of Jews from France, and his mother being released by the German officers when she could prove that she had a baby at home; his mother hiding in a shack behind her home from the Germans; his mother marrying a former prisoner of war, who had relatives in Buffalo, NY; waiting five years for visas to the United States; arriving in New York in 1950 and seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island; arriving in Buffalo shortly before his bar mitzvah; his continued attempts to have French authorities find friends and relatives; his friends and relatives being unaware of his Holocaust experiences; and his belief that one should not be too materialistic and that the most important things are life, love, and family.

    Oral history interview with Rubin Literman

    Oral history interview with Rubin Literman

    Oral History

    Rubin Literman, born in Plock, Poland, describes attending a Jewish high school; his family (he shows a picture of them from 1930); belonging to a Zionist organization; Jews ignoring the local antisemitism; his father setting up an accounting office; the German invasion in 1939 and Jews losing all their rights immediately; having to live in the ghetto; being moved to the ghetto in Chmielnik, Poland; two of his brothers fleeing to the Russian zone, but were captured later and died in Auschwitz; he and a brother being taken to concentration camp Skarczisko in October 1942; his parents being taken to Treblinka and killed; staying in the camp for two years and working in a munition factory; the lack of medical care; selections and trying to make themselves look healthy; the men being shipped to Buchenwald while the women, including his future wife Luba, were sent to Leipzig; sending secret messages to Luba; working in a munitions factory in Buchenwald; surviving an explosion that killed his friends; being taken by train to Theresienstadt; being liberated on May 8, 1945; no one in his family surviving; being sent to Landsberg, Germany; working as a police sergeant and reuniting with Luba; marrying Luba; immigrating to the United States; their new life in Buffalo, NY; a gathering of survivors in Jerusalem in June 1981 (he shows a photograph of the event); still having nightmares; and contemporary antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with Gabor Markus

    Oral history interview with Gabor Markus

    Oral History

    Gabor Markus, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1922, describes his Jewish family that was very proud of their Jewish identity; his grandfather offering him money for every fight in school with a student who called him a dirty Jew; his family having a loose religious background; his bar mitzvah; Jewish life in Budapest; Hitler encroaching on neighboring countries and the feelings in the Jewish community; his father’s occupation as a director of the British-Hungarian Bank in Budapest; graduating from high school in 1939 but not being allowed to enter the medical school in Budapest because of the limited Jewish quota; working in the pathology department of the Jewish hospital and then entering the medical school in Szeged, Hungary; the Germans arriving in March 1944 and Jewish leaders being arrested, including his uncle who was a commercial leader; his father escaping arrest; restrictions placed on the Jews; getting a travel permit to go to Budapest; antisemitism in Hungary; Jew being taken to a concentration camp near Budapest; shootings in the camp; being marched to a large camp ground previously used by the boy scouts; finding his sister, who later disappeared along with his mother; being taken with his father to the Eastern front and had to dig ditches against the Russian tanks; conditions for the prisoners; a rabbi who held Friday night services; escaping with the help of a pediatrician friend; getting false papers under the name Arnold Hollander; meeting a courageous relative, who had false documents as a journalist for a Nazi paper and took him to the Convent of the Sisters of Social Service; finding his mother, two cousins, an aunt, and an uncle; Margit Slachta, who founded the Sisters of Social Service, and her efforts to help Jews; staying in the convent for several months; liberation; being arrested by the Russians but released as a "doctor"; searching for family members with his classmates from medical school; finding his parents, grandmother, and sister; living in Buffalo and learning that Margit Slachta moved there also; and not feeling any bitterness.

    Oral history interview with Rose Meyers

    Oral history interview with Rose Meyers

    Oral History

    Rose Lewkowitz Meyers, born 1921 in the small town Siemianowice, Silesia, Poland (Siemianowice Śląskie), describes her happy childhood with two brothers in a close-knit family; her father’s clothing store on Ulica Wandy street (now called Ulica Matejki street); the family moving to Pinczów, a small town in Poland; the German invasion in 1939 and the random shootings of people in the streets; her father losing a leg in WWI; her family having to leave; going to Sosnowietz (Sosnowiec), Poland; all the girls being collected in a school and sent by cattle car to a labor camp, where she worked in the kitchen; being there for a month before she had to walk several miles to another camp where her brother was located; her brother being sent to Auschwitz, where he died; her parents also perishing; being sent to a camp in Gross-Rosen, where she stayed from 1941 to 1943; witnessing the severe beatings; being taken to a camp in Schatzlar (Žacléř) just inside Czechoslovakia; working in a spinning mill together with some outside local people; the unsanitary conditions and inadequate food in the camp; being liberated by the Russians in 1945; being helped by a Czech woman she had worked with in the spinning mill; returning home and not finding any surviving family members; leaving for Germany, where she lived at first in Stuttgart; going to Munich, where the JOINT paid for her schooling; going to Buffalo, NY in 1949; receiving some money from Germany; getting married and experiencing difficulties having children; having two sons and a daughter; telling her stories to her children who found them hard to believe; and her hope that people will be smart enough to prevent a repeat of such events.

    Oral history interview with Irmgard Mueller

    Oral history interview with Irmgard Mueller

    Oral History

    Irmgard Mueller, born in Germany in 1920, describes having a very pleasant and privileged childhood; attending school; conditions changing when Hitler came to power; attending a training school in Berlin, Germany to learn bookkeeping, sewing, and fashion design; Kristallnacht in 1938 and the destruction of shops and synagogues; the closing of schools and returning home by train; the National Socialist (Nazi) Party forcing her family to sell their house for a minimum; having to live in one room; her time in labor camps from 1940 to 1941; being gathered at Hamburger Strasse near the cemetery and taken by train to Birkenau on Hitler's birthday in 1943; the selections and being processed into the camp; the emotional conditions of the inmates; sanitary conditions; being beaten severely; volunteering for additional Jobs to get a little more food; roll calls and standing for hours in the cold until prisoners were accounted for; an officer from Berlin, whom they knew, coming to Birkenau and sending them to better jobs and better accommodations; going to Auschwitz and working in an office as a bookkeeper; going to shelters when the Americans bombed in 1944; being taken to Ravensbrück in January 1945; escaping to a farmer who put them up and gave them food; the Red Cross helping the nationals get out of Germany to Sweden; arriving in the United States in 1947; and believing she survived because of luck.

    Oral history interview with Marvin Palanker

    Oral history interview with Marvin Palanker

    Oral History

    Marvin Palanker describes joining the US Army in 1943 when he was 18 years old; doing basic training and then being sent to England; participating in the Normandy invasion as member of the 438th Battalion under General Hodges; operating a 40-mm gun and a half track machine gun (he shows a picture of himself with the gun and a friend); advancing into Germany at Aachen; having a Jewish service, during which there was some shelling; hearing rumors about the concentration camps but could not believe them; advancing so rapidly until December that they ran out of supplies and had to retract; retreating after the Battle of the Bulge and regrouping; advancing again through Germany to Cologne; reaching the camp Nordhausen without resistance in the middle of April; finding bombed out barracks and about 2400 bodies of people who had been shot just before they arrived and how only one person was still alive; the town’s people denying any knowledge about the camp; how seeing the camp was the most horrible experience of the entire war (he shows pictures from the camp); proceeding on and encountering the Russians several days later; his unit staying in Grimma, Germany, where he found groups of Czech and Polish women who had been forced to walk between the American and Russian fronts (he shows a picture of a group of Polish girls); being the only Jew in his unit and speaking a little Yiddish tried to communicate with the Czech and Polish women; two of the women asking him to write to their cousin in Buffalo, NY, whom he happened to know from school; the two women eventually moving to the US; expecting to be shipped to the Pacific but the war ending and returning home; and catching polio later and being confined to a wheelchair.

    Oral history interview with Anna Post

    Oral history interview with Anna Post

    Oral History

    Anna Post, born in Poland, describes the war starting when she was 16 years old; not believing what would happen and thinking that Poland merely would be occupied; her happy childhood as the youngest of three sisters and three brothers; living ten people to a room after 1940; the scarcity of food and having to wear a star; people being deported to unknown destinations; reporting for forced labor one day and the city being empty when she returned; never seeing her parents again; being hid by two Polish men then moving to Krakow, Poland, where she obtained forged papers; being arrested by the Gestapo, beaten, and then taken to Auschwitz (she shows photographs with inmates); daily life in the camp; the roll calls; sleeping conditions; getting sick for a few weeks; witnessing the hanging of a friend who attempted escape; the electric electrified barbed wire and keeping each other from touching it; dreaming about meals and singing to keep themselves going; hearing about the Warsaw ghetto uprising; an uprising of the people who worked at the crematoria in Birkenau; being evacuated and marched out of the camp in January 1945; being sent to Ravensbrück; being assigned to work in a munitions factory and saved by a friend from the kitchen; being liberated and the feeling of freedom; returning to Poland by horse and buggy; going to her home town then Krakow and not finding any relatives; having nightmares; attending a university; getting married and having a son and a daughter; trying to leave but not getting a passport until after Stalin died; and the comparison of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Charles Sandler

    Oral history interview with Charles Sandler

    Oral History

    Charles R. Sandler describes volunteering in April 1941 for the US Army; joining as a private, advancing, and eventually passing through Officer's School; serving with the 11th Armored Division for the duration of the war; being involved in the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhineland Campaign, and the Central European Campaign; being a member of the team that liberated the Mauthausen and the nearby Gusen concentration camp in May 1945; his task force encountering a brief resistance from a few SS men who were guarding the camp; encountering a strong unexplained odor near the camp and discovering piles of dead bodies (he shows several photographs of bodies and prisoners); Gusen being worse that Mauthausen; how people in the surrounding communities denied knowing anything about the existence of the camp; the liberating army group trying to nurse the inmates back to health, starting with a 900 calorie diet; meeting one liberated man, Simon Wiesenthal, years later in Buffalo, NY; being looked on with suspicion by the inmates because of his uniform until he identified himself as an American Jew; a memo written by a non-Jewish German physician that describes the conditions in the Mauthausen camp; the groups who deride Jewish activities during the war and his views on how the Jews contributed to the war effort; the loss of men in his division; a memorial that was set up for the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen; returning home from the war and the importance of sharing his experiences; and his hope that such tragedies will never happen again.

    Oral history interview with Judy Schatz

    Oral history interview with Judy Schatz

    Oral History

    Judy Hellner Schatz, born in 1918 in Berlin, Germany, describes her parents, who had come from a part of Austria-Hungary that is now in Poland; her sister’s birth in 1923; attending a Jewish school; her father having a large wine and liquor store and the family being quite well off (she shows several photographs of her family); the restrictions placed on Jewish stores in 1933 and her father going out of business; her father being ordered to leave the country and a Jewish organization helping him to obtain a visa to Italy; her father going to Milan, Italy in 1937 and her sister going to the United States with a children’s transport; she and her mother waiting five months for nonrenewable passports (she shows pictures of her family); her mother trying to open a restaurant in Milan but being unable to because of anti-Jewish laws; working for an artist but not being able to earn enough money; receiving a work permit to go to Scotland as household help; going to Glasgow in 1939 and working as maid for a nice family; going to the United States in 1941; landing in St. John's, Newfoundland and going with a group to Montreal before going to Buffalo, NY; learning in 1944 that her parents had come to the US with a group of Italian refugees who had been given temporary asylum by President Roosevelt; her father’s death; her husband and daughter; her mother’s death in 1969; and the importance of remembering the past and remaining optimistic.

    Oral history interview with George Shershnevsky

    Oral history interview with George Shershnevsky

    Oral History

    Gregory Shershnevsky, born in April 1941 in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), discusses the German Army entering Vilna on June 22, 1941 and all Jews immediately being moved to a ghetto in downtown Vilna; his parents’ attempts to escape the Germans but being captured in White Russia (eastern Belarus) and forced to return to Vilna; his family being moved to a second ghetto; his parents receiving work permits, which allowed them to earn some money outside the ghetto under German supervision; his parents going into hiding and finding a Christian, Polish woman who was willing to take him in November 1941; his parents hiding him in a garbage can to smuggle him out of the ghetto; the Polish woman taking him to city hall, claiming to have found him, and adopting him; his Polish name, Stanislaw, by which he is still called by some of his friends; his fake birth certificate; his adopted mother, who took in 14 other Jewish and non-Jewish children and was a nurse; his memories of living in the basement of a building that was used as a German hospital; his adopted mother rescuing a wounded Russian general and later receiving a small pension from the Russian Government; his caretaker moving to live with some distant relatives in Poland and seeing her for the last time in 1967; his parents joining the resistance movement during the war and his mother’s death; the liberation of Vilna and his father picking him up from the woman who had saved him; his father remarrying a few years later and the birth of his half-brother in 1949; his uncle writing a book about his experiences; and the importance of not forgetting the atrocities of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Sol Sloan

    Oral history interview with Sol Sloan

    Oral History

    Sol Sloan, born June 15, 1914 in Ruscova, Romania (a small town with about 600 families), describes his two sisters and two brothers, one of whom recently died in Israel; his family being quite poor; experiencing persecution in school; leaving home at age 13 to go to Arad, Romania and peddling; having a market stand and, for a while, a store; getting married at age 17; serving in 1939 in the Romanian army for a few months; having to do forced labor for a year in Ukraine around 1943; returning to his family and having to live in a ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; being taken in 1944 with his family and parents to Auschwitz in a cattle car; conditions during the four day journey; being separated from his family, whom were killed; pretending to be a precision mechanic; being beaten; being taken after three weeks to France to work as a mechanic in a mine, where he got another man to help him fix a machine; being taken to Kochendorf concentration camp to work in a salt mine; losing weight because of the lack of food; being selected to go to Auschwitz to be gassed but because of some bombing they missed the train connection in Frankfurt; being taken to Allach, where he was supposed to work in a munitions factory; being too weak to work and surviving because of a more humane Nazi supervisor; volunteering to shovel snow; being caught stealing potatoes and receiving 25 lashes on his back and working to following day; being treated kindly by some of the Hitler youths who supervised them; getting a job taking food to another camp and working again as a mechanic; being taken by truck in March 1945 and liberated during the journey by Americans; a badge he had to wear when he was in Dachau; still being affected by his experiences, especially the loss of his daughter; people not believing his stories; and the importance of being careful because such things could happen again.

    Oral history interview with Frieda Sysman

    Oral history interview with Frieda Sysman

    Oral History

    Frieda Sysman, born in Cologne, Germany, describes her father, who had a textile business; she and her younger brother having a very happy childhood; her grandparents, who had left Poland because of the persecution of the Jews long before the Nazis came to power in Germany; her grandparents being sent back to Poland in 1938 and not surviving the war; being nine years old in 1939 when they were warned by a friendly non-Jewish neighbor that all the Jews would be killed; being sent with her seven-year-old brother to Brussels, Belgium, where the Red Cross helped to place them with Jewish families; her parents going into hiding and being smuggled to Belgium a few months later; the German occupation of Belgium and her family fleeing to France, but being caught by the Germans and sent back to Belgium; her father being deported in August 1942 and killed in Auschwitz; a priest taking her brother to an orphanage and her mother and herself to a convent; staying with a woman who did not feed her much food; being taken into the convent; being placed in charge of some younger children including her brother; the convent arranging for her to learn shorthand and typing; liberation and finding a job as secretary for the American Army; still being in touch with the convent, where she spent four years; meeting her future husband who had escaped from Poland and whose entire family had been killed; the antisemitism in Poland; getting married in 1947 and moving to Israel in 1949; her mother moving to Israel then the United States; immigrating in 1958 with her husband to the US and settling in Buffalo, NY; being affected by the memory of her experiences and finding it difficult to talk about it; and not telling her children but how they now know about the events.

    Oral history interview with George Tomashevich

    Oral history interview with George Tomashevich

    Oral History

    George Vid Tomashevick, born 1927 in Yugoslavia, describes his cosmopolitan Serbian family; the multilingual atmosphere of his home; the Serbs settling in the area in the 16th century and being orthodox while the Croatians are Roman Catholics and the tensions between these groups; his family living in Vocin, Croatia; attending high school in the nearby town, Virovitica, close to the Hungarian border; the German occupation beginning in 1941 and the division of the land into eleven parts; the persecution of the Jews, Serbs, and Romani; Jews having to wear a yellow star and the Serbs a red arm band; the government trying to force the Serbs to become Catholics, but most refused; a booklet he wrote about the Balkan Jews and their neighbors from 1940 to 1945; being arrested with his family in the fall of 1941 and spending six weeks in a concentration camp; being released and sent to Serbia; all of his immediate family surviving the war, but all but one of Jewish friends dying; antisemitism in Croatia; the Nazis establishing three concentration camps in Serbia; the atrocities that were committed; his views on the Nazi-collaborator Andrija Artukovic; receiving no schooling during the Nazi occupation of Serbia; working in a glass factory while his mother worked in a textile factory; his grandmother’s death from cancer in 1943; listening to the broadcasts by the BBC and the voice of America; being forced to steal food; his family moving to Belgrade, Serbia during the civil war; his brother (born in 1921) who was taken to Germany for forced labor, but fled in 1943 to the Allies and became a pilot; how his brother and sister also live in the United States; how no human group is immune to inhumanity; and the importance of not collectively blaming or praising of any group of people.

    Oral history interview with Peter Traub

    Oral history interview with Peter Traub

    Oral History

    Peter Traub, born in Krakow, Poland in September 1927, describes his father, who was one of very few Jewish officers in the Polish air force and his service during World War I; the antisemitism that developed in Poland and other countries during the second half of the 19th century; first encountering antisemitism when he was 5 or 6 years old; ethnic relations in Krakow; attending public school and being attacked by other students; the expulsion of Polish-born Jews from Germany in 1936 and begging his parents to leave; his father’s work as an architect; the Polish underground offering his father passage to England so he could be a pilot for the Allies, but he refused to leave his family; living on a farm with relatives until it was confiscated; volunteering for a forced labor camp; working in a Messerschmitt factory when he was 14 or 15 years old; being sent later to Auschwitz, where he was selected to work in a forced labor camp; volunteering to work in a coal mine, where the workers were antisemitic but accepted him; receiving special rations because of the heavy work and staying there for a year until the end of 1944; being moved to several other camps; ending up in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945; being comatose when the camp was liberated by the British; being in a hospital for several weeks and then joining a transport to Italy, where he stayed in a refugee camp; working in Rome; visiting Krakow in the summer of 1945 but not finding any friends or relatives; living in refugee camps for several years; immigrating to the United States in 1949 and going to Buffalo, NY; and knowing the inhumanity of man and the importance of watching the direction of history.

    Oral history interview with Carel Van Oss

    Oral history interview with Carel Van Oss

    Oral History

    Carel van Oss (born in 1923) describes growing up in Holland; the German occupation and not experiencing much change for about a year; his ID card, which had a “J” for Jew on it; his teachers giving two girls their Gentile ID cards to help them; finishing secondary school in 1941; becoming involved with forging identity cards and the forgery process; the Dutch view of the occupation; the rescue of Jews because of the underground movement; the underground organization forging papers to help people get food from the countryside; his mother’s death before the war and his father encouraging his activities; being a courier for the underground; some Dutch policemen helping; his estimate that he forged about 900 documents for Jews and some Allied pilots (he estimates that he saved 150 pilots); the railroad workers going on strike to interfere with the German war effort; Queen Beatrix creating the Resistance Cross (Verzetsherdenkingskruis) and being awarded this honor; obtaining a commission in the British Royal Air Force after the war; his duty screening Dutch recruits; returning to Holland; starting at the university and studying law then science; receiving a Ph.D. in Paris, France; going to Buffalo, NY, where he teaches at the medical school; being appointed Dutch Consul for Western New York; not knowing what happened to the people, for whom he forged documents; and the reasons why he participated in the resistance.

    Oral history interview with Leo Weinrieb

    Oral history interview with Leo Weinrieb

    Oral History

    Leo Weinrieb, born 1917 in Zagorza, Russia (possibly Zagorsk, Russia), describes his parents fleeing illegally to Germany to avoid service in the Red Army; his father working as a coal miner then opening a furniture store; being allowed to stay in Germany legally eventually; feeling threatened in 1933 during the rise of the Nazis; going illegally to the Netherlands; living in Amsterdam and obtaining papers to go to Brazil, where his father worked in a brick factory and he learned manufacturing of leather goods; attending a Catholic school in Germany for four years; having a Jewish upbringing; attending an art school to learn window dressing, but being kicked out because he was a Jew; life in Brazil and going back to Europe after eight months; returning to Holland in 1934; starting a successful factory for leather belts; his factory being confiscated when Hitler invaded in 1940; making plastic rain hoods in his home; young boys being deported to Mauthausen; he and his brother being involved with different groups in the underground movement; possessing documents that led the Germans to believe that he was a Brazilian citizen; hiding a Dutch family in his home; getting married in 1941; the underground helping them to hide on a farm with a couple and their three children; receiving false papers and staying on the farm for two years; listening to the BBC news; the story of how he saved his parents from deportation; his parents being caught later and deported to Bergen-Belsen; finding his parents after the war; his two brothers and his sisters surviving in hiding; adopting a young repatriated boy whose parents were found later; making small wooden shoes to be sold as souvenirs and moving back to Amsterdam; going to New York City in 1948; selling ties from a stand in front of Macy’s; moving to Buffalo, NY; his family in Poland not surviving; working at a paper company then as a money collector; moving San Diego, CA, where he worked for J.C. Penny’s and returning to Buffalo; not telling most of his stories to his children; and the importance of preventing the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Weinrieb

    Oral history interview with Ursula Weinrieb

    Oral History

    Ursula Nartelski Weinrieb, born in 1919 in Berlin, Germany, describes her happy childhood with her parents and sister; attending school; Hitler coming to power; being forced out of school and her father losing his business; her family moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands; the fate of her grandparents; the German invasion of the Netherlands; getting married to Leo Weinrieb; going into hiding on a farm, where they stayed from 1942 to 1945; having false papers; returning to Amsterdam and her husband restarting his factory; trying to trace her relatives through the Red Cross; only finding two surviving cousins, who now live in Flint, MI; telling her story to her children but not all the details; going to New York City in 1948; moving to Buffalo, NY; and revisiting the farm where they hid.

    Oral history interview with Judith Zucker

    Oral history interview with Judith Zucker

    Oral History

    Judith Balassa Zucker, born circa 1934 in the small town Krupina, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes having a normal childhood with her older sister; her father being one of seven physicians in town and also a dentist; her mother being trained as a pharmacist; her uncle, a physician in another village, being dismissed and coming to live with them in 1940; restrictions placed on Jews, including Jewish physicians; the jurisdiction changes in Czechoslovakia; never seeing German soldiers until near the end of the war but the local population treating them just as bad as the Nazis; men, including her uncle, being taken to the labor camp Nowaki (Novaky) in 1941; people trying to flee to Hungary; her uncle being taken to Birkenau and shot; the fates of her grandparents and another uncle; being kicked out of her school and attending a small Jewish school; being beaten up by a boy when she was six years old; belongings of value being confiscated in 1940; the development of an underground resistance movement, which was helped by four parachutists who were sent by the British from Palestine and had originally come from the area; the parachutists being caught and executed; the resistance being helped by some Russian parachutists; hiding with a small group that went into the Low Tatra mountains with her father as the leader; life in the mountains during the winter and struggling to find food; crossing the Russian front in 1945; returning home; going to Israel in 1949; and why she told her story to her boys.

    Oral history interview with Lola Lipson

    Oral history interview with Lola Lipson

    Oral History

    Lola Lipson, born December 1, 1919 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her prominent family of seven; moving to Warsaw, Poland; hearing antisemitic chants in street in the 1920s; the German invasion of Poland and the takeover of her family’s textile business; conditions during the occupation, including the food shortages; being forced to wear an arm patch and then a yellow star; being taken with her sister for forced labor; living in the Łódź ghetto with her sister and a family of four; conditions in the ghetto; the forced labor she did, sewing and embroidering; hiding from selection trucks; being sent with her sister in a cattle car to Auschwitz; conditions upon arriving in the camp; being sent with her sister to work in an ammunition factory; liberation and the on-going trauma she experienced after the war; all of her family dying during the war except her sister; experiencing survivor’s guilt and anxiety over having her own children in the future; immigrating to Sweden; getting married to a survivor; her admiration for Elie Wiesel; hers and her husband’s reticence to share their experiences with their children; her thoughts on the Bitburg controversy; and her concern over ongoing antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with David Dattner

    Oral history interview with David Dattner

    Oral History

    David Dattner, born November 1908 in Zywiec, Poland, discusses growing up in a family of eight children; his father’s death during WWI; his earliest memories of antisemitism; attending public school; his employment as an engineer, then as a photographer; becoming an entrepreneur in ski and skate shoes; getting married to Ella Rubenfeld in 1936; the German invasion; fleeing to Kraków, Poland; fleeing with his family on boxcar trains (standing room only) from Krakow to Jarosław; returning to Kraków and passing as a non-Jew; fleeing east again with his brother while his wife went to Zywiec; being interrogated by a Russian soldier for two hours; escaping the Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers; moving back and forth between Soviet Poland and German Poland; being denied shelter by a Jewish family that knew David was Jewish; going back to Kraków and being there in 1942; having to wear armbands; his family going into hiding in the rural area outside Zywiec; the deportation and deaths of his mother and sister, Hilde; the end of the war; going to Cuba, then New York, NY and Buffalo, NY; the survival of all of his siblings except Hilde; doing hard manual labor at a Plymouth car factory while studying English; opening a wholesale jewelry business in March 1949; returning to Zywiec after the war; and his appreciation for living in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lola Swede

    Oral history interview with Lola Swede

    Oral History

    Lola Lipszyc Swede, born in Chmielnik, Poland, discusses her family of nine; her father who was a rabbi; having a happy childhood; the German invasion in 1939; having to wear Jewish star armbands; their house becoming part of the ghetto; having to selling off their belongings; doing forced labor making shoes for German soldiers; her father, sister, and brother dying from starvation in 1942; working for Chaim Rumkowski as a page girl; sorting the gold delivered to his office; having to cross a bridge every day where Jews were frequently shot; her family hiding in an attic during roundups; her mother who was traumatized into being non-verbal; the being sent with her remaining family in 1944 to Auschwitz; hearing music being played; the selection process and never seeing her mother and one of her sisters again; being taken to the showers and paraded naked in front of male soldiers; standing hours in the freezing cold; surviving the selections; being sent with 200 starved and dehydrated girls in a cattle car to Bergen-Belsen; soldiers opening door and being surprised to find the girls alive; being assaulted by a soldier; doing forced labor in an ammunition factory at camp Salzwedel; enduring a work injury, and being taken to a hospital; being liberated by the US Army (units of the U.S. 84th Infantry Division); staying in a British displaced persons camp; immigrating to the US, and settling in Buffalo, NY; and how she never wanted to share experience with her children.

    Oral history interview with Jack Heisler

    Oral history interview with Jack Heisler

    Oral History

    Jack Heisler, born in 1924 in Bilky, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), discusses being one of nine children; the emigration of three of his siblings before war (they went to Buffalo, NY); the deaths of his siblings Bernard and Maria shortly after liberation; his brothers David and Edward surviving the war; the deaths of his parents; life in Bilky; the Hungarian takeover; Jewish men and boys being forced to do labor; the detainment of a 100 families in the synagogue; the release of his family; the town’s disbelief at the rumors of mass-execution; the deportation of his family from Bilky in the Spring of 1944; being in Beregszász (Berehove, Ukraine) for three weeks; being sent to Auschwitz; the selection process and being separated from his family members; being tattooed with the numbers 10122; seeing corpses stacked; the smell of the crematorium; the roll calls; working on a farm camp outside Birkenau run by Russian POWs; doing forced labor, picking cotton and feeding horses; the treatment from the guards; the German women who sometimes dropped off baskets of food; some Jews hanging themselves; experiencing frostbite and losing the tips of fingers and toes; staying in the hospital at the camp while the other prisoners were marched out; being liberated by Russian soldiers; getting sick when he over ate; finding his brother; walking to Krakow, Poland; being taken in by a Jewish family; walking towards Czechoslovakia; returning to Bilky; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Anna Post

    Oral history interview with Anna Post

    Oral History

    Anna Dulla Post (alias: Salome Czaplinska), born in 1923 in Bronocice, Poland, discusses growing up in a happy observant Jewish family of three daughters and three sons; her family’s move to Dzialoszyce, where her parents owned a flour mill; the German invasion in 1939; having to live in the ghetto; the anti-Jewish laws; doing forced labor digging ditches; the widespread starvation; the deportation of Jews in 1942; pretending to be non-Jewish and getting caught; being ordered to dig her own grave; being released after the Nazi was bribed; her brother and sister leaving their baby at a church and committing suicide after they were denounced to the Nazis; being in the Warsaw ghetto; seeing corpses in the streets; the music and poetry that helped people to cope; the rumors about concentration camps; being sheltered in a heap of hay with the help of two Polish men; fleeing to Kraków; being arrested and staying in a ghetto prison; being sent by cattle car to Auschwitz; arriving in the camp; standing for hours; being tattooed; the shaving of her head; feeling a sense of sisterhood with the fellow inmates; the change in her sense of identity; the conditions in the camp; doing unnecessary labor carrying stones; suffering from typhoid; doing kitchen labor; stealing food for friends; the selections; the smoke from the crematoria; being forced to watch someone hanged; the arrival of thousands more people; being sent on a death march; everyone repeating, “We will survive”; being taken by cattle car to Ravensbrück; being transferred to an airplane factory; doing forced labor painting planes; living off grass and tree bark; seeing American planes; liberation; going to her hometown; her struggle to find herself; the survival of her youngest brother and his death soon after the war from a heart attack; getting married in 1946 to another survivor named Jakob; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with William Zucker

    Oral history interview with William Zucker

    Oral History

    William (“Willy”) Zucker, born August 22, 1927 in Wlodzimierz, Poland (now Volodymyr-Volyns'kyi, Ukraine), discusses being reluctant to describe his family’s loss and hardships during the Holocaust; growing up on farm; the beginning of the war in 1939; being on the Russian side of Poland; the German occupation in 1941; the anti-Jewish measures; being sent with his family to the ghetto; sneaking out of the ghetto for food and being beaten because of it; doing forced labor in construction for the Germans; creating an attic space for hiding; drinking rain water to survive; returning to ghetto to find only tailors and watchmakers remaining; the shooting of his family members; bartering his family’s belongings to a Pole to hide in his cow stable for approximately seven months; the Nazis’ treatment of non-Jewish Ukrainians and Poles; the survival of his brother because of his dentistry skills; being found by a Russian partisan and accused of being German spy at first; being taken in by the Partisans; assisting the Russian partisans in breaking through a German barricade; getting lost in the woods; liberation; returning to Wlodzimierz and searching for his family; immigrating to the United States in 1949 and settling in Buffalo, NY; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Blake

    Oral history interview with Stanley Blake

    Oral History

    Stanley Blake, born in 1922 in Kielce, Poland, discusses growing up Catholic; growing up fatherless; the beginning of the war in 1939; joining Poland’s paramilitary against the German invasion; being captured; being sent on a transport to Darmstadt, Germany; doing forced labor on a farm in Eberstadt; escaping; being captured and imprisoned in Mannheim; being transferred to Bruchsal prison and staying there for several weeks; being sent to Welzheim concentration camp; taking a street car to work in the Stuttgart foundry; overhearing Czech/German intelligence (Stanley was able to speak and understand German) and sent a letter to the Polish underground; fleeing into the woods towards Poland and joining the Polish National resistance; his work with the underground movement; allowing himself to be captured again to obtain intelligence; doing forced labor on a farm and later as a mechanic in Hanover; hearing about the capture and hangings of his friends in the resistance; being referred to in the network as a “Lonesome Wolf”; escaping to Berlin; walking for seven days to Kraków, Poland; being sent back to Germany for intelligence in 1943; his job washing clothes for the German military; discovering containers that released smoke during air raids to obscure the ground; being caught with a pistol and being captured and tortured; being sent to Mauthausen concentration camp; conditions in the camp; having dysentery from turnip soup; doing forced labor on a railroad; Nazi’s constant counting; having an armband with a red triangle; the suicide attempts; escaping the camp with a friend to the mountain; seeing a tank; meeting up with American troops; spending three years in England; going to the United States in 1950; serving in the US Air Force in 1952; getting married in 1962; becoming a lithographer for Detroit News; visiting Poland; reuniting with his mother after 27 years apart; meeting his step-brother; and his thoughts on the loss of Jewish life during the war.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Lewkowicz

    Oral history interview with Bernard Lewkowicz

    Oral History

    Bernard Lewkowicz, born in 1921 in Germany, discusses his early childhood; his parents who were Orthodox and from Poland originally; baking matzos in his father’s bakery; attending a Hebrew school until antisemitism prompted their move back to Poland in 1937; receiving a weekly New York newspaper in Poland; the continuation of his education at home; the German invasion in 1939; the burning of the synagogues; the looting of Jewish homes by the Poles; the deportation of men to work in Germany; his work stringing wire to concentration camps, including Gross-Rosen; being paid to build their own camp before becoming inmates; building the Autobahn; conditions in the camp; volunteering for extra work to get extra food; being sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; being forced to pile corpses; the cremation of the bodies; losing a significant amount of bodyweight; suicidal prisoners; being sent by box car in the winter of 1944 to Gross-Rosen concentration camp; being taken to the Russian Front (near Stalingrad); surviving because a Russian soldier taught him to rub his bare feet with snow and stuffing empty cement bags in his boots to keep warm; marching into Mauthausen; doing forced labor as mechanic; being transferred to a camp in Breslau and doing forced labor on small locomotives; saving a child from going to Auschwitz by telling the guard he needed a child to crawl into the trains (the boy eventually became a railroad engineer in Israel); and his thoughts on Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Sysman

    Oral history interview with Samuel Sysman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernice Bogan

    Oral history interview with Bernice Bogan

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Krystyna Rybicka

    Oral history interview with Krystyna Rybicka

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilli Silbiger

    Oral history interview with Lilli Silbiger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jules Diamond

    Oral history interview with Jules Diamond

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Weissbart

    Oral history interview with Helen Weissbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wilma Iggers

    Oral history interview with Wilma Iggers

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wolf Tombak

    Oral history interview with Wolf Tombak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Milchberg

    Oral history interview with Irving Milchberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Silberstern

    Oral history interview with Henry Silberstern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Luba Literman

    Oral history interview with Luba Literman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sophia Chatov

    Oral history interview with Sophia Chatov

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edward Hilfstein

    Oral history interview with Edward Hilfstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Iggers

    Oral history interview with George Iggers

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Doris Sorensen

    Oral history interview with Doris Sorensen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Hadley

    Oral history interview with Peter Hadley

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Moritz Friedler

    Oral history interview with Moritz Friedler

    Oral History

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