- Well, you won't be able--
- that's light-- and the light is on.
- Good morning, Mrs. Lebovitz.
- Good morning.
- I will start with you--
- talk about the Holocaust, about what you went through,
- your children, your whole family.
- First, I would like you to ask you
- your name, your maiden name, when you were born,
- and your father's name, and your mother's, and so on.
- OK, I was born in a small town.
- It's called Sasau.
- It was called Sasau.
- I was born in 1908, April 8.
- And my name was then Shari Klein.
- My maiden name was Shari Klein.
- After I got married, I moved to Kralovo nad Tisou,
- and my name changed to Shari Weisberger.
- Was this in--
- This was my married name.
- Which country?
- In Czechoslovakia.
- Oh, Czechoslovakia.
- Yeah.
- Although, I was born in Hungary, and after the First World War
- it changed to Czechoslovakia.
- And we were, for 20 years, under the Czechoslovakian government,
- which was very nice.
- It was just like the United States.
- We were free to practice our religion.
- We were free-- free, like here in the United States.
- We called it "Little America."
- And after I got married, I moved to,
- like I said, to Kralovo nad Tisou.
- That's a Czech name, Kralovo nad Tisou.
- And you wanted to know my parents' name.
- Yes.
- My mother's name was Gitel Goldenberg.
- My father's name was Isidor Klein.
- And I had three sisters and two brothers.
- What were their names?
- My older sister was Sarah.
- The second one was Pearl, and one was Blanche.
- And my two brothers, one was David--
- David, the older one, and the younger one was Adolf.
- And they were all Kleins, you know.
- Sarah, came to the United States when I was five years old,
- with my father.
- My father was, through the First World War,
- in the United States.
- And we couldn't even get a letter from him.
- We weren't in touch with him for about seven years.
- And my mother raised us.
- And my mother had a little business where she traded--
- she traded groceries for grain, for eggs, you know,
- bartered like.
- No money-- it was a little village, and the Goyim
- didn't have any money, just grain, wheat, corn, eggs,
- chickens.
- And we bartered for that.
- And that's how my mother raised us through the war,
- through the First World War.
- When the war was over, my father wrote a letter to my mother
- that she should get ready and come to the United States.
- She didn't want to come.
- She said she's not going to a country
- where she won't be able to keep her Jewishness.
- She was very religious.
- So my father picked himself up, and came home, and left Sarah
- here in the United States.
- First, he married her off.
- He married her of, and he came home
- with $4,000, which was a lot of money at that time.
- But he didn't change the money right away.
- He was hesitating.
- He wanted more money.
- And the value went down of the dollars, and he exchanged it.
- And he bought 10 acres of land.
- And he worked that land.
- And then he died-- let me see, he died of tuberculosis.
- And I don't remember the time.
- Before World War II, he died?
- Yeah.
- He died of tuberculosis.
- And also, my youngest brother, drowned in the Tisza River
- just before they took us to the concentration camps.
- Wait a minute, before you go about the concentration camp,
- let's start about the--
- when the war broke out, what happened
- when the Germans came in?
- Yeah, well, in 1939, everything changed.
- We lived very nicely up till 1939.
- In 1939, Hitler had the Hungarians come back
- to our part of the country.
- And the Hungarians were terrible.
- They were even worse than the Germans.
- In 1939, they took away the license from the Jewish people.
- They closed up stores.
- I had a little grocery store in a butcher shop.
- My first husband was a butcher.
- This was right when the war started.
- Yeah.
- But how about the Hungarian people or Czechoslovakians, how
- were they before the war?
- Were they friendly?
- Well, before the First World War, when we were Hungary,
- we were all--
- I mean before Second--
- World War II.
- Before Germany invaded your country, how was the living--
- Yeah, we were friendly.
- Friendly.
- Friendly, yeah.
- But they changed when--
- After--
- As soon as they--
- The Hitler--
- --occupied
- Yeah.
- --by Germany, they changed.
- They changed for the worse.
- They didn't want to know us, and they weren't friendly anymore.
- And then, so they took away my little business
- and took away the butcher shop.
- But they took away my husband first.
- The Germans, when they came in.
- Yeah, the Hungarians, and, you know,
- Hitler's-- through Hitler, you know.
- Let me see.
- They took your husband away, right away.
- They took my-- they took my husband away.
- They started taking away about 19--
- 1936, every year, for 10 months, into labor camps.
- His name was Solomon Weisberger.
- In 1936.
- Yeah.
- The war started in 1939.
- It didn't start in--
- well, Hitler was already working in 1933 now towards this.
- But the war started--
- wait a minute.
- I'm wrong.
- They took him away about three years before they took us away,
- and that was in '44-- in '40-- in '40 already, after 1939.
- They took him every year for 10 months into labor camps.
- After 10 months, he came home, ragged, like an old man,
- very tired.
- And he rested up a little bit, and they took him again for 10
- months, for $0.20 a day to work, before the--
- before the-- I don't know how you call it-- before the front.
- Oh, before the front.
- Digging ditches and things like that.
- Yeah, labor.
- Labor, yeah.
- Hard labor.
- Yeah.
- That was--
- When they took your husband away for hard labor,
- you already had a family, don't you?
- Well, sure, I had--
- How many children did you have?
- I had three girls.
- Three girls. what were their names?
- Their name was Lillian, Magda.
- Magda was the first.
- Magda and then Pearl, and Lillian.
- They took your husband away.
- He worked in the camp behind the front.
- How did you support that family?
- Well, I had-- for a while, I had the store and the butcher shop.
- And I worked the best I can with it.
- But when they took away already the store
- from me and the butcher shop, I was doing black marketing,
- with soap, first with soap.
- I used to go over to Romania.
- The border was open that time.
- It was a mish-mash.
- And I used to go over to Romania,
- and pack a big suitcase with soap,
- and bring it home, and sell it to my customers, who
- were my customers in our store.
- And that's how I supported my children.
- And I had a little money.
- When I closed up the store, I sold everything out.
- So I had a little money from that.
- But that didn't last long, so I had to start black marketing.
- And then later on, I found out with the black marketing,
- somebody told to the police about it.
- And they arrested me once.
- They came to my house, and they ransacked
- the house, found the money, found soap.
- They took me to the police station.
- That was already Hungarian police-- gendarmes
- they called them, with feathers in their hats,
- and bayonets they were wearing, and big, big feathers
- in their hat.
- I don't know if you ever saw a Hungarian.
- They took me there, and they were beating me up, calling me
- all kinds of names--
- you dirty Jew, you--
- all kinds.
- And they beat me up.
- Where did I buy the soap?
- And I didn't want to tell them where I bought it.
- I told them I bought it on the open market.
- I bought it from a Jewish man really, who I knew.
- So finally, about two hours of torturing me there,
- they let me go home.
- When I went home, we were all crying.
- My mother-in-law took care of the children while I was away.
- So I couldn't do that anymore.
- And then I found out that I can buy cotton and silk in a bigger
- town in Romania, in Szatmár, it's called--
- Szatmár.
- I would dress up very elegantly, and take a nice suitcase,
- and go and buy 30, 40 yards of material, and bring it home.
- And a woman from another town used
- to come and buy it from me.
- Once I had a terrible mishap.
- When I was coming home with a suitcase,
- and it was very heavy.
- I was going on the train, and a gendarme was right behind me.
- And he took the suitcase and helped me up.
- I never looked Jewish.
- I was blonde, and I was dressed very nice.
- He couldn't know that I'm Jewish, you know.
- So he helped me up to the train, and sat right next to me.
- And you know how I felt. So we come back, and we talk.
- He says, oh, that suitcase is very heavy.
- That was soap yet.
- I forgot about it.
- That was soap, and it was heavy.
- I says, yes, I visited my mother, and she packed--
- she always packs up a suitcase full of cakes and things
- for the kids to bring home.
- And he believed me, probably, because he didn't do nothing.
- And I had a nice conversation with him.
- And he left the train about two stations before I had to leave.
- And he shook my hand and kissed my hand.
- And I went home, [NON-ENGLISH].
- Was he a German gendarme or--
- No, a Hungarian.
- And we talked Hungarian all the way.
- He was sitting next to me and had a conversation.
- But my heart was going like this, you know.
- But I got home.
- And that woman came once or twice.
- And the third time, somebody did me in again.
- Although, I told her--
- I told this woman how she should take the material--
- the next time, I didn't take it in a suitcase, the third time.
- I wound it-- wound it around--
- it was winter, and I wound it around
- on my body, 30 or 40 yards of material, and put on the coat.
- And I told her to do the same thing,
- but they caught her in her--
- in her town, when she got off the train.
- And she told them right away where she bought it
- and how much she paid for it.
- And she even told them where I put the money in my house.
- Was she Jewish too?
- No, she was a Hungarian woman.
- So naturally, the next day, I was arrested again.
- And I had--
- I was sick.
- I had a gallbladder attack.
- I was in bed.
- They schlepped me out of bed.
- And they took away all the material they found.
- They took away the money.
- Schlepped me into the station again.
- And there was-- one of the--
- I don't know how to call them--
- the gendarmes had one officer who was above them.
- A high officer.
- A high officer-- that high officer
- used to shop in my store.
- And I used to give it to him on charge from month to month.
- And when they took me, and he was there,
- and he wouldn't help me.
- And they beat me up.
- I came home with black eye and beaten up again.
- He would not help me, although he still owed me money.
- So that wasn't good.
- It was--
- How long did they keep you there?
- For hours.
- For hours.
- And then let you go.
- And they let me go, yeah.
- I never wanted to say where I bought it.
- I always said on the open market.
- I didn't want to get the other guy in trouble, you know.
- But after two, three hours of--
- Torture.
- Yeah, torturing me, they let me home.
- And that was going on like that until 1944,
- when they took us away.
- Now in Hungary, where you were at, when the Germans came in,
- did you have to wear Jewish star?
- Oh, yes.
- We started wearing the star before 1939.
- My husband used to come home from the labor camp,
- and when he was returning always--
- the third time, he didn't want us
- to come because we were wearing the yellow star.
- And that was very demeaning to him and to us.
- And when it all started, you still
- went traveling and selling that stuff, the silk or soap,
- with the star or you took it off?
- No, no, no, no, I had to stop doing that.
- After the second time they tortured me,
- I couldn't do it anymore.
- But I mean you--
- when you were selling stuff, did you
- wear the star while you were traveling, the Jewish star?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- Didn't they punish you for not wearing it?
- Well, I was not wearing the star till later.
- I don't know.
- I don't know exactly what year we started wearing those.
- But in 1939, that was the end of everything.
- From '99 to '43 probably, I was doing the black marketing.
- Now when you stopped with the black marketing,
- how did you support the children?
- Well, I had a little money, and my mother-in-law helped me.
- And I didn't have to pay rent anymore
- because I lived in my brother-in-law's place.
- I didn't have to pay the rent, and I managed.
- Now how about the food situation?
- Did you have to stay in the line to get food?
- Or you can go buy in the market?
- Yeah, we were able to get food.
- There was no rationing of the food?
- No, not--
- Till you went out from that city, there was no rationing?
- No.
- Well, it wasn't-- it wasn't in abundance, everything,
- but you can-- you were able to get it, yeah.
- So it was going on.
- In 1944, they took us away, in 1944, April,
- right-- a day after Pesach.
- First, I didn't think they will take me.
- I'm a poor woman with children.
- I thought only the rich Jews they are taking.
- That's what we were seeing.
- But in 1944, April 16, we heard the drummer, drumming--
- how was it called--
- a town crier-- the news.
- You know, he beats the drum and goes on the street.
- And I hear the town crier, the drum.
- And I opened the window to listen
- to him, what he has to say.
- And he says, no Jew is allowed to go out of the house today.
- They all have to be in the house.
- So I thought to myself, what is this?
- It was terrible.
- It was a terrible scare.
- We can't go out of our house?
- Then I go out to my gate.
- I wanted to see more about what's going on.
- And two soldiers with bayonets standing at my gate,
- and they wouldn't let me out.
- So I saw this big trouble.
- Then I always looked through the window, what's going on.
- Then I see a family, The Schreibers,
- who were living about three houses away
- from me, the whole family goes with two gendarmes behind them,
- going with packages in their hands, with very sad faces.
- I says, my God, they are taking him away.
- Where are they taking them?
- I didn't know nothing.
- So I thought maybe just the rich Jews they are going to take.
- But no, when the afternoon came, they came to me.
- First, they picked up the rich ones, that's for sure.
- And they took them all to the temple, which
- was in the middle of town.
- And they took me too.
- They came to the door and said, we give you 10 minutes,
- take whatever food you can, and two changes of clothes,
- and come.
- That was the day after Pesach.
- There was no bread in the house.
- There was just matzos.
- Did they ever tell you where they are going to take you?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- Just 10 minutes, get ready.
- Not even-- I was running like a chicken without a head.
- I picked up some matzos, and I picked up some jam
- that I had in the house, and that's it.
- And took my baby in my arm, and we went.
- In one hand, a suitcase, and in one hand, the baby--
- march.
- And they pushed, you know.
- You had the other children with you too?
- Sure, Magda and-- yeah.
- Well, this was a baby, only two years old.
- So it was hard walking all the way to the temple.
- It was kind of far.
- We got there, and they put us in the temple.
- The temple was already full, with Jewish people sitting
- on the floors and all over.
- They brought all the Jews in.
- There were 700 families in Kralovo nad Tisou.
- So don't ask what a night we had there.
- That was horrible.
- Children crying, old people moaning,
- sick people sitting on that floor.
- And they locked the doors on the temple.
- And outside were guards with bayonets-- you know, gendarmes,
- all night long.
- Finally, when the morning came, they opened the door, and said,
- 10 people at a time can line up and go out to the outhouse.
- We didn't have toilets there-- outhouses, you know--
- yeah.
- You know how it was in--
- Yeah, I know.
- So 10 people, or 10 persons at a time
- they let out to the outhouse.
- And that's how it was.
- Children hungry-- everybody's hungry.
- No food, no nothing.
- No water, nothing.
- Then a Catholic priest--
- [NON-ENGLISH],, but how you say that in English?
- He will mercy for you.
- Yeah, had mercy on us.
- And he preached in the church that they
- should bring in some food for the Jewish people.
- So some neighbors started bringing in something.
- I had a gypsy woman who used to work for me.
- She was doing my laundry and cleaning.
- She brought in-- she brought in bread and hard boiled eggs
- so the children had something to eat.
- And by the afternoon, they loaded us up
- on wagons, horse and oxen wagons.
- And they take us.
- We don't know where.
- It was terrible.
- The wagons were full with people and children,
- and children cried.
- And they were shooting to stop the crying.
- And the Goyim looked through, through the curtains,
- through the windows--
- You mean the Gentiles.
- --to see this caravan.
- The Gentiles were looking.
- Yeah, the Gentiles were looking.
- And it was like a gypsy caravan, these wagons.
- We go, and they took us to a city,
- which was about 10 miles away.
- It was called Nagyszolos, or in Czechoslovakian,
- Vel'ka Sevljus.
- And there, too, they put us first in a temple.
- And they had already about 10,000 people
- from the surrounding area in there.
- And the next day, there was a ghetto, surrounded--
- I don't know how many miles of streets and houses
- they surrounded with a big fence.
- And they put us in those ghettos.
- And no food-- well, there were houses, some empty houses,
- that we could have a little water or something
- to drink, but no food.
- Then, a couple of days later, they started bringing in--
- from our town, from our houses, they collected food, grain.
- I don't know, like corn, and wheat, and potatoes,
- whatever they found, they brought it into the ghetto
- and started giving it to the people.
- It was chaos.
- It was terrible.
- It wasn't enough.
- And we were able to cook it.
- Like if I had a little corn, I cooked it in water,
- and we ate it like, you know--
- like it was.
- Or a potato, or even wheat, we cooked in water and ate it.
- That was going on for five weeks.
- We had no way of cleaning ourselves.
- We had-- we had no soap, no way of cleaning ourselves.
- And we were full of lice, with so many people together.
- So after five or six weeks in that ghetto,
- we were already weak.
- We were already emaciated.
- Dehydrated.
- Dehydrated, everything.
- So then they took us to the train.
- From there, we had to march, I don't know, a couple miles,
- to the train.
- And they loaded us in into cattle train, 80 people--
- 80 or 90 people into one cabin.
- Also, we were sitting on the floor, on the bare floor.
- They locked up the trains on us.
- No water, no food, traveling like that.
- And, you know, my children-- the two-year-old one,
- in that train, she never--
- she never opened her mouth to cry.
- That child felt already that something is very wrong--
- a two-year-old one and a seven-year-old one.
- They never asked for anything.
- They were sitting quietly in my lap.
- And the grandmother slept, the other one--
- nothing.
- There was no way to relieve yourself.
- Some people took off their shoes,
- and urinated in the shoe, and threw it out
- through the little window on top.
- They had a little window, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Did you have any idea where you're going?
- No.
- No.
- We were said in the beginning that we
- are going to a work camp.
- That's what we were hoping for.
- But when we saw what they do to us in that train,
- and I didn't think so anymore.
- How long you were traveling in the train?
- Two days and two nights.
- And no--
- And--
- No facilities or anything.
- Nothing, nothing.
- And there were sick people in there, crying.
- They were-- people were stepping on each other.
- It was no room where to move.
- And a couple of times the train stopped,
- and we would go to that little window, which was high up,
- and cry for water.
- They would shoot in the air to scare us,
- and they didn't give us any water.
- So the second or the third day, I think,
- we stopped in Auschwitz.
- When you stopped, did you know right away that's Auschwitz?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- We stopped--
- What happened when the train stopped?
- What happened?
- What happened when it stopped, they opened the doors--
- heraus, heraus-- you know, the Germans--
- heraus.
- So what can you think that time?
- We were in trouble.
- It was already visible that we are not going to a work camp.
- So we got heraus, and a Polish prisoner, a Jewish man,
- in striped clothes, who were ordered to select.
- Well, the Germans were standing there, and this man selected--
- to the left, to the right.
- When he came to me, my mother-in-law
- and my sister-in-law were standing behind me.
- My mother-in-law was 73 years old.
- And he asks who she is.
- I said, she is my mother-in-law, in Yiddish.
- So that's how I knew that he was Jewish.
- And he says-- he didn't say nothing.
- He took the baby out of my hand and gave it to her.
- He took the seven-year-old, the one
- who was holding on to my coat, and gave it to her.
- Then he comes and asks how old Magda is.
- Magda was the oldest.
- How old was she then?
- She was 16 years old--
- 16.
- I said she's 16.
- He says, don't say she's 16.
- Say she's 18.
- And he left her with me.
- They loaded up my mother-in-law and the children on a military
- truck--
- not only her, all of them.
- They filled up I don't know how many military trucks.
- And the ones who put to the left--
- we were-- Magda and I were to the left.
- When they all left, they put us in lines, like five in a line,
- and we started marching.
- We marched, and we come to a place
- where we saw a lot of barracks, and high fences, and people
- with--
- women with shaven heads, looked like idiots.
- And they were starting to give us
- a piece of bread, if you have--
- they started asking.
- I don't remember, I think in German or in Yiddish.
- So we saw already.
- And we saw-- then we saw the gate--
- arbeit macht frei, and it says Auschwitz.
- So that's when we found out.
- And they put us in barracks.
- Those barracks were for horses made-- made for the horses.
- Before they put into the barracks,
- didn't they took you to take a shower?
- Yeah.
- First-- that's right.
- I told you, I forget things.
- That's all right.
- That's all right.
- Yeah--
- When you marched in, they took you in--
- First, when we got-- when we marched into Auschwitz,
- they took us to a place where they first shaved us, and then
- took us the shower.
- And that shaving was terribly demeaning.
- For women to get undressed in front of men.
- The men were the ones who shaved.
- Yeah.
- That was the most terrible thing, I'll tell you.
- I'll never forget that.
- We were shaved by a man, all over, you know.
- And then they put us into a shower.
- We had to leave the clothes there, right
- where they shaved us.
- We had to throw down the clothes on the floor
- and leave it there.
- Then we went to the showers.
- After the shower, then they gave us a panty, and some shirt,
- and a dress.
- Like an assembly line was there.
- And one gave us a shirt, and one gives us a panty,
- and one gives us a dress.
- But not--
- They didn't care if it fits or doesn't fit you.
- No.
- Take it.
- Take it.
- So I had a long dress down to the floor.
- Magda had a shorter dress.
- You know what?
- We didn't recognize each other after afterwards.
- We looked terrible with those shaved heads.
- You really have to look and recognize your own children.
- And that wasn't enough yet.
- They gave us clothes that we looked terrible in them.
- By the door, when we're leaving the door,
- there was standing a man with a bucket of red paint.
- Took a brush and--
- and our backs, all of the way down, like this,
- painted our backs.
- Why did he do this?
- What's the reason?
- What the reason?
- We should be recognized if we run away.
- Oh, I see.
- For recognition-- you know, for recognizing us--
- a red stripe over the back.
- And that was cold.
- It was terrible.
- It was in what year?
- 1944.
- Was it in the-- in what month?
- In May.
- In May.
- May 1944, yeah.
- And then they took us into barrack C. 10 C or something
- like that.
- How many of you were in a barrack?
- Thousands or more.
- Was there bunk beds or just--
- Bunk beds.
- Bunk beds.
- Bunk beds, from the floor to the ceiling.
- And they put in in each bunk, about 10, 12 women.
- And we were like herring, pushed together--
- like sardines, pushed together, no blanket, no nothing.
- And also, they closed--
- they closed in the barrack.
- We couldn't go out for days.
- And to go out to a toilet or anything--
- no, they had two big pots in a corner--
- in both corners of the building, and there you have to go.
- And that was smelling.
- We were there, and that was smelling terrible.
- But we had to go every morning at 5:00 for appell.
- Appell, that's meaning they count--
- Counting.
- --how many people.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That nobody's missing.
- Yeah, every morning, and they would
- give us black coffee, and a piece of bread, like a brick,
- hard.
- And go back in the barracks and stay in bed
- for a couple of days like that.
- Then we were-- then we were allowed to go-- they--
- When they gave you the coffee and the bread,
- that's the only food you got during the day,
- or did they give you--
- No, at night, we got a bowl of so-called soup, a vegetable
- soup, with a potato in it and with a lot of sand.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Did you have that soup?
- I had that too.
- Yeah.
- Was it in Birkenau?
- Auschwitz-Birkenau?
- Yeah, but we weren't in Birkenau.
- We were in the-- on the Auschwitz side.
- Birkenau was a little aside from there.
- But there was a lot of people in Birkenau.
- That was even worse, I heard.
- So for five weeks-- we stayed only five weeks
- in Auschwitz, thank God.
- Did they assign you any kind of work?
- Yeah.
- Like I said, after a few days, they assigned us to go to work.
- And we had to get in line, five in a line, and march.
- They took us out of the ghetto and taking us
- to a forest, where there were underground factories.
- It was so camouflaged that you couldn't
- see that that was a factory.
- And they-- I was working inside a factory, where they were
- loading ammunition in bags.
- Those bags were silky, like outside it looked like silk.
- And inside, it was rubberized.
- And Magda was working outside with another girl,
- taking 50 bags of ammunition from that factory
- to another factory, all winter long, just
- in one striped dress, no stockings on their feet, just
- wooden shoes.
- She worked all winter long outside.
- And I was working inside.
- I was at least warm.
- That was going on for a long time.
- And the food was miserable.
- Oh, the best thing--
- I forgot.
- In Auschwitz, soon-- or was this not in-- no,
- it wasn't in Auschwitz, where they selected me for a cook.
- It was not in Auschwitz.
- It was in Stutthof.
- We will get to it.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- So I was working inside the factory,
- and she was working outside.
- And sometimes one of those Germans, who were watching us,
- put a piece of bread in their wagon, for those two girls,
- once in a while.
- And the food was terrible.
- And there was some Russian girls too working, not Jewish.
- And so I was working in those factories.
- And I stole bags.
- I stole a bag.
- Went into the bathroom, and I wounded under my dress
- onto my body and brought it to the barrack.
- And at night, by candlelight, I would make that bag wet, peel
- off the rubber.
- And that was a nylon.
- And I was able to, from that material, pick thread--
- Thread, yeah.
- --thread out of it.
- And I went to the kitchen, where they
- were cooking for all the people in the kitchen.
- And I said, if you can get me a needle in a scissor,
- I'll make you a brassiere.
- I'll make you anything for a little food.
- So those women had contact with outside people, who
- brought in the food from the--
- the city or from wherever.
- So yes, they got a needle, and they got a scissor for me,
- but not a thimble.
- So I used to sew at night by candlelight,
- make for the girls a brassiere.
- For the other cook-- you know, for the cooks,
- and take it to them.
- And they gave me potatoes, cooked potatoes,
- a piece of bread.
- And that's how Magda and I survived.
- And then after five weeks, they took us from there someplace.
- We didn't know where.
- They took 1,000 women, five in a row.
- They made a group of 1,000 to take away for work,
- but they didn't tell us where or what.
- And the thousands were standing and waiting,
- what's going to happen.
- You and Magda were in the 1,000 women.
- No.
- No, Magda-- Magda--
- they picked Magda and put her on the side to the weak ones
- to send back.
- This was all ready--
- to send to the gas chambers.
- And I thought to myself, if I lose her--
- I lost two.
- If I lose her, I don't want to live myself anyway.
- And I ran, and grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her in.
- Then they came, and they saw there is an extra girl.
- They took out one from the back, instead of Magda.
- This happened twice.
- I had the same experience.
- Yeah?
- So, thank God I did it, and they didn't shoot me.
- I thought they're going to shoot me, but maybe they didn't see
- or God wanted it that way.
- I don't know.
- It happened.
- So then they took us again to a train, the 1,000 women.
- Loaded us into trains.
- And we go two nights and a day or two days.
- I don't remember exactly how much time we spent.
- And then they say, up steigen--
- und steigen-- again.
- To get out.
- To get out.
- And so we got out.
- And they lined us up again, five in a row--
- [GERMAN]
- We go, we go.
- We march, and on both sides, the SS men watching nobody
- should run away.
- And we see we are coming up to a forest.
- And it's called Stuthoffer Wald.
- That'd be forest.
- A forest, yes.
- Wald is forest.
- Stuthoffer Wald-- forest, yeah.
- So they took us through the forest.
- And we got to lager 15, it was called.
- Barracks, again, but different--
- better types, bunk beds.
- But only 22 women in a room.
- So we thought we are in [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Like in heaven.
- Yeah, like in heaven.
- Well, I'm using some Jewish words.
- That's all right.
- They'll know--
- That's all right.
- They'll know what it is.
- So 22 women, and then, again, we had to shower, to clean us up.
- And they gave us nice blankets for the beds, for the bunks.
- And it was a little bit better.
- The food-- the food almost the same.
- Now on the bunk beds, did they have any mattresses, or straw,
- or something?
- Straw.
- Straw.
- Straw.
- And over the straw, a blanket.
- And then we had to-- we had one blanket to cover ourselves.
- And we were working there again.
- In fact--
- How was the food over there in this camp?
- Well, when we got off the train, they gave us--
- they gave us some bread and slices
- of salami, which we didn't see that for--
- never seen before.
- But in the barracks, that was like that-- in the morning,
- coffee and bread.
- And sometimes that Limburger cheese, that I--
- I was hungry, but I couldn't eat it.
- Could you eat that Limburger cheese?
- No.
- No, see?
- That was-- the food was the same.
- We were always hungry, but I--
- over there I was selected to the SS kitchen with another woman.
- The officer who selected us asked us if we--
- he knew we were Hungarians because the Hungarians came
- to the last.
- We were almost in the last transport.
- So he knew that Hungarians make a good goulash.
- So he took us to that kitchen, we
- should cook for 40 officers, myself and another woman.
- And they gave us pork.
- And they gave us everything that we needed.
- And we made a goulash for them.
- And they licked their chops.
- They liked what we cooked.
- But also, we had a big Kassler or [NON-ENGLISH]----
- I don't know how they call it--
- to cook for hundred people in the revier,
- for the sick people.
- And I cooked that too.
- And that one, they gave a little bit more meat to put in,
- cut up in tiny little pieces, about--
- maybe in that big whole thing, five pounds of beef,
- and potatoes, so that was a little bit better.
- And what I did--
- yeah, and we were not supposed to eat from that food
- that we cooked for them.
- We were supposed to go and eat in the Haftlinge kitchen.
- Did they watch you while you were cooking?
- No, not always.
- Yeah, then you always can eat something.
- We did it.
- We did-- we did steal and eat.
- Not only that, but from that big amount
- that I cooked for 100 people in the hospital-- the hospital--
- a revier, they called it.
- They called it a revier.
- Yeah.
- I would steal-- fill up two pails of food
- and hide it in the pantry.
- And when it dark-- when it got dark a little bit, I smuggled
- those two pails of food in my barrack and feeding
- the 22 women who were living in my barrack,
- gave everybody a little bit, you know.
- That was such a risk.
- If they catch me, they shoot me right away.
- But I did it.
- And not only that, I even stole from--
- pudding from the other one and took it in the back for Magda,
- and two sisters, who were Magda's age, who
- were from our part of the country,
- but not from the same town.
- And I took pity on those kids.
- Because they were very young, and they didn't have anybody.
- So I took care of those two also, as much as I could.
- But sadly enough, that lasted only five weeks
- that I was in that kitchen.
- Because I stole some onions and gave out to these people who
- came to the door, you know.
- And once we were cleaning cabbage to cook
- in that kitchen, and the Oberführer came in,
- and I was chewing cabbage.
- He gave me two big punches on both sides of my--
- He slapped your face.
- Slapped my face on both sides and kicked me out
- of the kitchen.
- And from then on, I was never able to get anything
- in that camp.
- Sometimes they got in some underwear they were giving out.
- Sometimes some shoes came in.
- I was never able to get anything.
- I was punished all the way because of that.
- And that wasn't enough punishment
- that he threw me out from there.
- He put me on a bunker with two pails of water in my arms.
- And it was winter--
- windy, cold.
- I was standing there all day long, high on that bunker.
- I thought I'll die there.
- Then a Jewish-- he had a Jewish secretary working
- for him in the office.
- And she took pity on me.
- And she begged them to let me down from that bunker.
- Magda and other children came home from their work,
- and Magda saw me standing there.
- She started crying, but she couldn't do nothing for me.
- So finally, at night they let me down from that bunker.
- I couldn't walk when I came down from there.
- My arms were-- something terrible.
- And so then I worked again in a factory after that.
- Yeah, he also had me clean latrines.
- As a punishment.
- For the punishment, yeah.
- So you can imagine how I felt. It was terrible.
- So then I worked again in a factory.
- And I-- I continued.
- Keep talking.
- I continued doing-- is it OK?
- I continued stealing again bags and making
- brassieres for the cooks.
- And I always-- after they threw me out of the kitchen,
- I had to do something to get a little food.
- And I continued that.
- Thank God they never caught me with that.
- And I made them not only brassieres,
- but a holder for the stocking--
- stockings-- garters, they call it.
- I made them garters.
- I made brassieres.
- And I always got a little bit of potatoes or a piece of bread.
- And that's how I supported myself and the three
- girls, the three young girls.
- That was terrible.
- People were stealing from each other.
- And even a father from his son stole,
- I heard, or mothers from daughters.
- I always gave Magda more than for myself, always.
- If I had three bites, I gave her two, and I left me one.
- That's how I was with Magda.
- Did they have selections at that camp too?
- Oh, yeah, every day, they--
- A gas chamber there?
- No, they didn't have a gas chamber in this camp.
- What?
- A gas chamber, did they have a gas chamber in this camp?
- In-- no.
- No.
- From there, they had to send them back to Auschwitz.
- In Auschwitz-- while five weeks in Auschwitz,
- we smelled the gas chambers day and night.
- The flesh burning, we smelled it day and night.
- But in the other camp, who did they select?
- The people who were unable to work?
- Yeah, every day, we have to stay appell in the morning
- and at night.
- And they always selected out the weak ones
- and send them back to Auschwitz.
- Send them back.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That was going on for a long time.
- Then, let me see, by January, the Russians
- were coming closer and closer.
- And we-- we used to hear from the cooks,
- who they had a little contact with the people who were
- bringing in food, and they used to tell them something,
- that the Russians are not far, and they're going to--
- they're going to get free, you know.
- I can't tell you everything in detail.
- It was a very long story.
- I have it all written down.
- But I can't even remember what I wrote down.
- My memory is not as good as it used to be.
- So in 1985, January--
- You mean 1945.
- 1945, excuse me-- in 1945, when the Russians were closing in,
- one morning they say, get ready to go.
- Take your blankets, and line-- and line up by the gate,
- and we're going to march.
- That's what we did.
- And the food-- towards the end, the food
- was less, and less, and less all the time.
- No food, no nothing, we started marching.
- And it was snow up to here.
- And with the wooden shoes, we marched in the snow.
- And we see people running.
- The Germans are running.
- Wagons, loaded with everything--
- people are running away.
- We saw something is going on.
- And we were marching and marching all day long.
- And towards the evening, the Germans who were watching us,
- who made us march, started leaving us too.
- And I says to Magda and to the other girls, the bunch
- of girls, I says, I'm not--
- I'm not marching any further.
- Now, wait a minute-- no.
- Yes, we marched all the way, till night,
- and they locked us in, into a big barn for the night.
- I says, children, this is it.
- They are going to burn us down in this--
- in this barn.
- It was a big barn with straw in it.
- It was horrible.
- I don't know how many thousands of us.
- It was from all--
- from all the other barracks too, not
- from the only one that we were.
- And all night long we stepped on each other, with people crying.
- Oh, you're urinating on me.
- Oh, you know-- things like that.
- And when we cry, and we make noise,
- they were shooting outside to quieten us down.
- I said, they will never open this gate for us again.
- They will burn us down here.
- But they didn't.
- In the morning, they opened the gate, and we walked out.
- And we marched again.
- It was the second night that I said
- to Magda, when they were starting
- to leave us, the second day, after marching a whole day--
- and it was chaos.
- People were running away from the city--
- from cities, from villages, from all over-- running, running.
- Because the war was coming closer.
- The front was coming closer.
- From one side, the Germans are shooting.
- From another side, the Russians, you know.
- So it was walking all day long in the snow,
- I saw a little house, far away on a field, with light in it.
- I says, Magda, I am not going-- we are not going any further.
- We are going down to that house.
- The snow was high, and it was on a field.
- It was on a farm.
- We walked through the snow, in ditches,
- and we walked to that house.
- We came to that house, about--
- let me see, about eight of us.
- And an old woman opens the door.
- And she lets us in.
- And we come in, and Germans are sitting by her table.
- But they didn't do nothing to us anymore.
- They were running, themselves, and they came
- to warm up or something there.
- And we stayed in that--
- the woman-- I says to the woman, we'll
- give you some blankets if you give us some bread or tea.
- And she agreed.
- She gave us tea, hot tea and bread,
- and we gave her a blanket.
- And she let us stay there.
- We were sleeping on the floor by her.
- That was a woman-- a widow with three daughters.
- The next day, the shooting was so close, it was terrible.
- The house was shaking already.
- So the woman picked herself up, with her three daughters,
- and she asked us to go with her to the forest and hide--
- to hide, because the front was coming so close.
- Machine guns, grenades, everything was firing,
- you know.
- And so I says, we are not going no place.
- We were freezing all winter long.
- It's warm in this house.
- Please, let us stay here.
- She says, OK, if you want to stay.
- If you're not afraid, stay.
- And she said here are potatoes, here are cabbage.
- Cook for yourself and eat.
- And they went away.
- And sure enough, a couple of days
- later, the Russians came in.
- But it wasn't easy.
- They burned down her barn.
- And several of our girls burned in there, who was hiding there.
- They burned in there--
- the cattle.
- And the house, with us, remained staying, in tact.
- It shook, but I says, I'm not afraid.
- I'm going to stay in this house.
- And when this was all over, the woman
- came back with her three daughters.
- She hugged us and kissed us.
- She says in our honor, her house was saved,
- because we were in there.
- And it was really a miracle that they didn't burn down the house
- too.
- The Russians burned down the houses?
- No, no-- the Germans--
- The Germans, before they leave.
- Yeah, before they were leaving they burned down.
- And, oh, then we found out how many
- girls got killed from grenades and from shooting.
- A lot from our group of girls got
- killed in that fire, when the Russians and the Germans
- come through over there, yeah.
- That was horrible.
- I don't know what else to tell you.
- I skipped--
- Now what happened-- when you were you in that house,
- did the Russians came in that city, in that place?
- Yeah, the Russians came in.
- What happened when the Russians came in?
- When the Russians came in, we went out,
- and we were shaking white--
- they freed us.
- And they gave us some bread.
- And then we decided to march into the city, to Bromberg--
- Bydgoszcz.
- And as we were marching back to Bydgoszcz--
- it was about 30 kilometers from there,
- where we were, from that farm, still
- dead people, dead soldiers laying all over, and civilians
- too.
- And we went, and we pulled off shoes from dead soldiers,
- and put them on.
- Because we had only wooden shoes.
- Oh, I can't talk about it.
- It's-- yeah, we pulled--
- we pulled their shoes off, and put on the shoes,
- and went into the--
- went into Bromberg, into the city.
- The city was more than half destroyed.
- It was chaos all over.
- And a lot of our people were milling around in the city,
- looking for things, for food.
- And the Russians told us to go and occupy
- the German-- the German's homes, which were empty.
- They ran away from them.
- So we got into a nice German home, where a German officer
- was living there.
- And the maid was still there, a German woman.
- She didn't want to let us, but the Russians
- made her let us go in there.
- And that was already heaven in there.
- There was-- we were able to cook for ourselves.
- We found food.
- We found a pantry full of jam, and potatoes, and--
- and we were cooking.
- And one day, she offered us that she's
- going to bring us some goulash, the woman.
- And she did, but we were afraid to eat it,
- that maybe she put in poison.
- So we didn't eat it.
- Because she was very mean.
- She wanted us out of there.
- We did not eat it.
- But then we also went looking around in town.
- Some women-- some of our women found a lot of gold in houses
- and all kinds of clothes they picked.
- I, too, found a beautiful chain, which I'm still wearing today.
- This is not it.
- I have a nice gold chain that I found in a drawer.
- And we took some shirts, the officer's shirts.
- I took off curtains from the windows
- and packed it in our backpack so that we can--
- when we leave, we can buy some food for that.
- And about seven other girls were coming with us.
- So I packed myself up with everything.
- And we wanted to go--
- we wanted to go to Kraków.
- And there was no trains, no nothing.
- Everything was in ruins.
- So we walked from village to village.
- And sometimes went into to the mayor
- and asked for information, or you know.
- So finally, we got to a place where
- there would be a coal train which
- was taking in coals to Kraków.
- So we went on that coal--
- no, no, no, this was later on.
- No, we hired a man in one village
- to take us through a forest.
- After that forest, we would get to a place
- where we get some kind of a freight train.
- And I gave him I don't know how many shirts.
- And he took-- he says, it's very dangerous
- to go through this forest.
- It's full of mines.
- But he says, I know where the mines are.
- And we trusted him.
- We wanted to go desperately.
- We wanted to go home.
- So he took us through that forest.
- That was a long, long walk, till we got out of that forest.
- Thank God we wasn't-- we weren't killed by a mine.
- And from there, we somehow got to Kraków, on a coal train.
- On the top of the coal, we were sitting, and we got to Kraków.
- And there, already-- there was already a lot of other people
- who got freed, Holocaust people.
- And they had a kitchen there already.
- And we got some food and got some information, how and what,
- where to go.
- But a room they didn't have.
- We were sleeping there, too, on the floors.
- And we got, again, full of lice there, in that big building.
- And from there, also, somehow by freight trains,
- we got to Czechoslovakia.
- We got to-- not Prague.
- I don't remember what city we got into.
- And there, also, they gave us some information,
- and they gave us some food.
- And then we got home.
- We come home, we didn't have no home.
- My home was-- windows and doors were taken off,
- no furniture, no nothing.
- It's night when we got there.
- It was March already when we got to Kralovo nad Tisou--
- midnight, snow.
- Where shall we go?
- My mother-in-law used to have a hotel right
- by the train station.
- This was a big train station.
- Trains were coming from all over through our town--
- through our town, from Romania, from Hungary, from all over.
- It was a big train station.
- And she had a hotel there by the train station.
- I know there is nobody in there.
- We went to the door there and knocked the door.
- Nobody answers.
- So we start crying, where shall we go?
- I walked to my house, which was just a block away--
- no doors, no windows, empty.
- And there was a little house about a block away,
- where a Russian woman was living.
- She had a Jewish husband.
- And they were taking him too to the concentration camp.
- And she was still living in that little house
- and the lights were on.
- So we went to Mrs. Fixler's--
- house.
- And I opened the door.
- I knocked in the door, and she opens the door.
- And Russian soldiers are sitting in her--
- in her house, around the table.
- And she says, who are you?
- She didn't recognize us.
- We were very good friends.
- I says, I'm Mrs. Weisberger, and this is my daughter, Magda.
- Then she comes and gives me a big hug and kisses me.
- And oh, my God, she said, come on in.
- Please, come on in.
- She took us in.
- She made us right away hot tea, and she gave us bread,
- and we ate.
- And she said, you're going to sleep here.
- I says, yeah, we are going to sleep here on the floor.
- No, she says, you're going to sleep in my beds.
- I says, Mrs. Fixler, we are full of lice.
- We don't want to contaminate your bed.
- She says, no you're going to--
- Mrs. Weisberger, you're going to sleep in my bed with Magda.
- And she says, Joe Kraus is here and two other young men
- who returned from the concentration camp.
- And Joe Kraus is a nephew of mine.
- I says, where is he?
- She says, he lives in your mother-in-law's hotel.
- I says, we were there.
- We knocked in the door and nobody answered.
- She says, he was afraid to answer,
- because the Russian soldiers, when they get drunk,
- it's hard to--
- so he was afraid to answer the door.
- Early in the morning, Mrs. Fixler went up.
- We were still asleep, and she went over
- there to announce that his aunt and his cousin, Magda, is here,
- and some other girls.
- He came running.
- He didn't know what to do.
- He was there already a month or so, he returned.
- And he already established himself as a tailor.
- He had a machine.
- He was sewing already.
- And he took us over there.
- And over there, we had to boil our clothes
- to get rid of the lice.
- Well, finally, we got rid of everything.
- We got cleaned, and we were eating good.
- He was always-- for the sewing, he got a little money,
- and he got meat.
- So, it was OK.
- When we rested up, he had a friend with him.
- Tibor Weiss was his name.
- Joseph Kraus and Tibor Weiss, the two of them
- were living together in that place.
- And the Russians were returning from the war on that--
- like I said, we had a very big train station there.
- Trains and trains all day long, Russians returning.
- And come down, and look for food, and hungry.
- There is nothing to be gotten.
- We opened up a restaurant, myself,
- and Joe Kraus, and Tibor, in their own building.
- They had a building just across from my mother-in-law's hotel,
- a big building, where it used to be a restaurant.
- We opened the restaurant.
- One of the boys always went in villages to get food,
- to get meat, to get wine, whatever he could.
- And the Russians would come in to us.
- And I was cooking a big pot of potato soup,
- or whatever there was, a bean soup.
- And for a plate of beans soup or potato soup,
- they would give us dollars.
- They would give us gold.
- They would give us material, fabric.
- We got so much money, but we couldn't stay too long
- in there.
- The boys used to bring from the villages wine,
- getting from the people who were making it,
- and they would get drunk.
- And they would want to rape the girls, my daughter, and Magda,
- you know.
- So we saw it's no good.
- We'll have to discontinue this.
- We were probably in this business
- for about three months.
- And we assumed so much.
- But we weren't happy with it.
- We didn't want the money.
- We didn't need the jewelry.
- We just wanted to go to a place where
- we can live in more comfort.
- A normal life.
- A new life, yeah.
- Now, before you go farther, what happened to your husband?
- My husband never returned from-- the last time they took him,
- he never returned home.
- From the labor camp, they put him in the concentration camp.
- I never saw him, never heard from him-- never.
- We didn't know what happened to him.
- Now, after we got home, and Joe Kraus, and Tibor,
- and other young men were already in town, one of them
- said that he was in a hospital in Wels, Austria.
- Herrsching.
- Huh?
- Herrsching-- the hospital, it was in Herrsching.
- In Herrsching, no--
- Wels.
- Yeah, Wels-- Herrsching.
- Yeah.
- I was in this hospital.
- You were in that hospital?
- How did I found that out?
- This young man said he was there in the hospital, my husband,
- with typhoid fever, and he died.
- I says, do you know where he's buried?
- He says, no.
- A lot of people died there, and they
- put them on a military truck and took them out of town to bury.
- He says he didn't know where.
- So when I found--
- I was still waiting--
- we were hoping and waiting that he'll return.
- And when I heard that, that was terrible.
- In other words, he survived the war--
- He survived--
- --but he died in there after the war.
- Yeah, died in that hospital.
- And he also said-- he says, he was
- sitting one day outside the hospital by the wall, sitting.
- And he says, I haven't got where to whom to return.
- My wife had a small baby, had small children,
- she didn't survive.
- My mother didn't survive, because she was 73.
- He says, I haven't got nobody to go home to.
- He lost faith, and he died.
- If he would have had just so much knowledge
- that someone is alive from his family,
- maybe he would have survived.
- But he lost-- he lost hope.
- So we know already that he's buried someplace there.
- But five years ago, I went to Austria,
- and I went to Germany, which I shouldn't have gone,
- but I went with a group of people.
- And when I was in Vienna, when we came back to Vienna,
- I asked the guard, who was coming with the bus with us--
- he was German--
- I says, would you do me a favor?
- Give a give a call to Wels, to a hospital.
- I don't know what the name of the hospital is.
- And find out if they know about Solomon Weisberger.
- He called up, and they said, yes, they have a record of him,
- but we will have to wait two hours to go down
- in the archives and dig up the records,
- so we should call back in about two hours.
- Two hours later, they found his records,
- and they gave us the grave number, the cemetery,
- everything written down for me.
- Was he buried there in Wels?
- No, the cemetery was called--
- it was close to the--
- to the airport, a cemetery, which these Holocaust people
- were buried.
- You don't know the city, the name of it?
- No, but I have it all written down.
- So whatever he said, I says, type it down for me,
- so I have it in type, so I can read it.
- And the grave number, 4--
- well, everything was written down.
- But I didn't ask if it's a single grave or a mass grave.
- I didn't ask for that.
- So I didn't know.
- A year later, we were going to go back to Austria
- and visit the grave, but before we go,
- we want to find out if it's a single grave
- or it's a mass grave.
- So we wrote to Wels, and we never got an answer.
- Then my son-in-law got in touch with Senator McCain, And.
- He told him this story.
- And he asked him to find for us out if that's
- a single grave or a mass grave.
- So he did find out that it's a mass grave.
- A lot of people are buried in it.
- But we're going. we are going in May.
- We're going anyway.
- We want to see that grave.
- Yeah, and we didn't go because-- we
- didn't go that year because a lot of terrorism was going on.
- So we were afraid to go anywhere.
- And now we were--
- you were talking about when--
- about you had the restaurant, and then you
- start to leave because it was bad.
- Yeah.
- What did you do?
- Where did you go?
- Wait a minute.
- Yeah, we were continuing-- we had an awful lot of money
- collected-- dollars, German money, Russian money,
- all kinds of things--
- fabrics, gold.
- But it didn't interest me.
- I wasn't happy with it.
- And they weren't happy with it.
- And one of the boys, Tibi Weiss, he was very ambitious.
- He says, I'm going to go down to Solotvyno,
- and I'm going to buy a trainload of salt.
- And I'm going to ship it down to Hungary
- and make a lot of money, and then I'll follow you.
- We left him.
- I sent Magda and Olga, her cousin,
- who lives now in New York--
- Magda and Olga went to Budapest-- through Budapest
- to Czechoslovakia.
- I send them in advance.
- I had plenty of money to give them-- go--
- go away from here.
- Because it was dangerous.
- One night, they surrounded our building, the Russians,
- and started shooting.
- They were drunk, started shooting,
- and we never reopened that place.
- In fact-- I forget a lot of things, I'll tell you.
- This Joe Kraus, who is a nephew of mine-- he lives in Chicago--
- when they started shooting, he went out the back door,
- and he wanted to go to the railroad station
- for the police, for protection.
- And he was going-- he was not going the regular--
- the regular way.
- He was going through backyards and, you know.
- And he fell into--
- into an outhouse, which was into the--
- Yeah.
- Gosh, he came back full of it.
- And he had on a new suit he just made.
- He's a tailor.
- He made himself a new suit from the fabrics the Russians gave
- us, and he fell into that--
- into that hole.
- So all night long--
- we went to a--
- a [NON-ENGLISH]---- to say it in English.
- I don't know.
- Where the water is, [INAUDIBLE] water.
- They put pails of water on him to wash him off--
- finally, to wash him off clean.
- And then he dried off that suit and took it to the cleaners
- later on.
- But I don't think he was ever able to wear it.
- It shrunk or something.
- And so Magda and Olga went away to Budapest, to Czechoslovakia.
- And she was waiting for me and Joe Kraus to come.
- In the meantime, they closed the borders.
- From here to Hungary, we had to go through a border.
- To Czechoslovakia, we had to go through a border.
- This was under the Russians.
- And Czechoslovakia was Czechoslovakia.
- So I had a very good friend, who was a train conductor, who
- was going through Czechoslovakia, taking
- a trainload of coal.
- We gave him 10,000 crowns, he should put me--
- he should take me and Joe Kraus through the border.
- He did that.
- He hid us.
- I can't-- I can't remember the words.
- In the engine, there is a place where
- he was able to put us and make very high steam,
- they shouldn't see us.
- Until we go through the border, he was hiding us there.
- And that was terrible too.
- We were steamed up, you know.
- But when we got through the border--
- at the border he had to stop, and they were examining
- the train, what he was taking.
- And they didn't see us, thank God.
- Took us through the border.
- And then he says, now-- he stopped,
- he says now you can come out.
- And that's how we got to Czechoslovakia.
- That's how you got you reunited with him Magda.
- With Magda, and Olga, and my second husband--
- who became my second husband.
- He was there already too.
- You mean you married--
- I married--
- --after the war.
- I married after the war, but not there.
- Oh, not there.
- I met the man there who was going to be my husband.
- That's the way I should have put it.
- OK.
- He wanted to marry me right there and then.
- I says, no, I'm going to the United States.
- And he was going too.
- He had a brother and sister in Chicago.
- And I had a sister in Chicago and one in Philadelphia.
- And the one in Philadelphia sent us all the papers.
- And that's a nice story too, how I got in touch with her,
- because everything was destroyed.
- One night, I couldn't sleep, and I remembered her address.
- And I wrote a letter, that we are alive, we are here,
- and we are going to Czechoslovakia.
- And even the mail was disturbed.
- It was chaos all over.
- So there was a soldier, a Jewish young man,
- who was in the English League or something.
- And he took my letter to Czechoslovakia.
- And from there, he mailed it to America.
- And when they got that letter, they right away
- took action to get visas and everything else,
- to take us out from there.
- And so in Czechoslovakia, we were all right.
- That was rationing there, though.
- We had everything on rations.
- But for a while, we--
- we weren't free there either.
- It was chaos.
- And they stopped us, asking who we were, and, you know,
- it was--
- but in 1946, we left Czechoslovakia by train
- to France.
- And in France, we got on an airplane, TWA, to America.
- What year was this?
- 1946-- June.
- In June '46.
- What happened when you came to America?
- How did you adjust to America?
- What did you do?
- We came to Philadelphia, to my sister.
- We were there for two months.
- In Philadelphia, we had a lot of relatives,
- and people were coming.
- A miracle happened.
- The Holocaust people they came.
- And asked, did you see this?
- Did you see that?
- Then, where were you?
- How was it?
- People were driving us crazy.
- And they wanted us on radio, to go talk.
- We didn't want-- we were afraid.
- We were tired, and afraid, and scared of everything, you know.
- And the relatives-- I had an uncle who gave us clothing.
- He gave us money.
- And after two months--
- yeah, as soon as I got to Philadelphia,
- a letter was already waiting from Lebovitz, who was supposed
- to be my second husband.
- A letter was waiting already that he's in Chicago.
- And I didn't like the man.
- I really didn't want to marry him.
- But my relatives in Philadelphia--
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- He's a tailor.
- He's going to make you a good living.
- Living is very hard in America.
- You will have to work in factories.
- And marry him, you'll be better off.
- I says, but I don't like the man.
- Eh, you'll get used to him.
- So the same year, in 1946, in December,
- I married him in Chicago.
- We went to a rabbi, you know, and got married.
- And in 1948, I had a boy with him, at age 40.
- I had-- yeah, from second marriage, I had a boy.
- Magda has a brother, a half brother.
- You know about it.
- No?
- She didn't tell you.
- Well, she left out a lot.
- I saw her tape.
- She left out an awful-- and I left out too.
- You can't-- you can't tell it the way.
- But in my book, it's written down to the T, you know.
- And I took out the book, and I was amazed.
- Well, I read the book again a little bit,
- I couldn't remember it.
- Anyway, so you married and you had your son.
- In-- three years later--
- although, we weren't planning to have a child anymore, you know.
- But that was the best thing that happened to me.
- That boy brought such a happiness in our life
- that I can't tell you how happy we were with him.
- He lost his two boys.
- He had two boys, the same age as Magda, one.
- They were going to school together.
- And his wife, and he lost 26 people out of his family--
- 26 people.
- And so he was very happy it was a boy.
- And he was weighing 9 pounds and 6 ounces.
- And it was just a joy.
- And, thank God, he grew up.
- And your husband still was in the tailoring business, right?
- No, not in the beginning.
- In the beginning, he worked in a ladies garment factory
- in Chicago.
- And I was raising the boy.
- When the boy was about six years old,
- and he went to school, then we--
- then he bought a cleaning store, first.
- And I couldn't work full time, so Magda worked with him
- in the cleaning store for a while.
- And then he sold that store.
- Magda got married, so he didn't want
- to keep the store by himself.
- And I couldn't work full time.
- I was sick too.
- I was very sick after the boy was born.
- I was sick before already, with gallbladder trouble.
- When I came back-- in the concentration camp,
- I didn't feel it.
- When I came back, I had a lot of trouble with gallbladder.
- So then he worked again in a garment factory,
- until we decided to get our own business.
- So we bought a business on Clark Street in Chicago.
- Clark and where?
- Clark, between Morris Avenue and--
- between Morris and--
- I forgot the other street.
- Anyway, you know Chicago?
- 6900 Clark Street, it was, our business.
- And we were there for 10 years, and I worked with him.
- It was cleaning and tailoring.
- He was a very good tailor, my husband.
- And I'm a dressmaker.
- We both worked.
- So we worked ourselves up.
- But Magda and Ernie moved away from Chicago.
- And I was heartbroken.
- I couldn't live without Magda.
- We were so close.
- And also the boy grew up, thank God.
- And he wanted to be a doctor.
- Since he was a little boy, he wanted to be a doctor.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- So I says, all right.
- I says, that's going to cost a lot of money,
- and I don't know if we'll be able to fund it.
- But thank God, we moved away to Phoenix.
- And in Phoenix, we did a lot better than-- in Chicago, we
- did good too.
- But in Phoenix, we had a very nice business in Tower Plaza,
- in a shopping center.
- That was built that time, when we rented it.
- Three months later, they finished it.
- And we moved in there and opened a brand new one.
- Cleaning and tailoring.
- No, not cleaning, just tailoring--
- tailoring and custom made clothes.
- Oh, I see.
- We made men's clothes, and we also made some ladies clothes,
- but alterations both, ladies and men's.
- And the alteration was very lucrative
- because that pays good.
- And we did new clothes.
- And also, we took in ready-made sports clothes for men.
- And we were there for 10 years, in that shopping center.
- And we had customers from all over-- from Scottsdale,
- from all over.
- It was a very, very good place.
- Then after 10 years, I says to my husband, let's sell it.
- Let's retire.
- I says, the boy is already a doctor.
- Thank God we don't have to--
- it did cost us a lot of money, about $9,000, $10,000 a year
- for him to become a doctor.
- And he promised us when he'll finish,
- when he'll become a doctor, he'll
- return to Phoenix to practice, and it never happened.
- And that broke our hearts, mainly his father's heart.
- Because he didn't have any children--
- he lost his children.
- And this boy was to him his apples in his eyes.
- So what happened, in the middle of going to medical school,
- he got married in the middle of it.
- He married a girl from Philadelphia.
- And she promised him that she will follow him to Phoenix,
- but it never happened.
- After she married him, no, she didn't want to come.
- So he remained there.
- He's still in Philadelphia?
- Sure.
- Not in Philadelphia, he's in a suburb now.
- What kind doctor is he, internist?
- No, he's a general practitioner.
- Oh, a general practitioner.
- Yeah, he's doing very well, thank God.
- So he married this girl, and she was a--
- she was an art teacher.
- And she worked too.
- So she helped a little bit to support him.
- So we didn't have to put out all the money
- ourselves for-- two years.
- But any time Sheldon writes--
- mom or dad, I need snow tires, the money would go.
- Mom, I need this--
- we always send them money.
- So he was here recently, visiting me.
- He's a wonderful, wonderful son.
- So what happened to your husband?
- Yeah, after we sold our business, I says, let's retire.
- That's enough.
- Thank God, we had money saved up.
- And I says-- he was already almost 74, and I was 69.
- I said, let's retire.
- You don't want to--
- we don't want to die in the store.
- So finally, after two years, we were able to sell the store.
- It wasn't easy to sell it.
- And after we retired, we came to Philadelphia
- to visit our son, both of us.
- But when we moved away from Chicago,
- our friends and neighbors told us,
- why are you moving to Phoenix?
- You're going to dry up there, like prunes.
- It's very hot there.
- Who needs a tailor there?
- I'm telling you, we had more tailoring
- there than in Chicago.
- And when we returned to--
- back, two weeks later, from Philadelphia, visiting our son,
- we stopped in Chicago and visited our friends.
- And they couldn't get over how good we looked.
- We didn't dry up.
- And we looked-- both--
- we both looked very good.
- Came home, and we were planning in the fall to go to Israel.
- We were making passports and visas.
- It didn't happen.
- My husband died five months after retiring.
- He dropped dead of a heart attack.
- After he retired-- five months after he retired.
- Yeah.
- So you were on your own.
- So he never came--
- a day after he was buried, his passport arrived.
- Who?
- A day after he was buried, the passports
- arrived to go to Israel.
- So I didn't feel like going to Israel,
- but Magda and Ernie were going, and they talked me
- into going with them.
- And that was the best thing too, that I did.
- I went to Israel.
- And we were there for six weeks.
- And after we came back, I said to the children--
- I stayed with Magda and Ernie for two months.
- And after that, I said, everything is wonderful here.
- They wanted me to live with them.
- And I says, no.
- As long as I can take care of myself, I want to be on my own.
- I'm a [INAUDIBLE] for 50 years.
- I said, I can't stay with anybody else.
- So they agreed.
- I says, I have to go home, and I have
- to get used to living by myself.
- And I went back.
- I couldn't stay in that house.
- I lived in--
- I lived on 68th Street and Thomas Road,
- but not on Thomas Road, the second row of townhouses,
- in the back.
- I lived there in a beautiful townhouse.
- But I was afraid--
- I wasn't afraid in the concentration camp
- so much as I was afraid staying there alone in that house.
- Every little thing woke me up.
- I was-- so I thought to myself, I'm going to sell it,
- and I'm going to buy myself a condo at the Executive Towers.
- And that's what I did, a year later.
- I didn't have to advertise anything.
- That was a beautiful place.
- A friend of mine told another friend
- that I want to sell my townhouse.
- They came over one Sunday, and they fell in love with it.
- And they wanted to buy it right away.
- I says, I can't sell it to you right away.
- I have to first see where I can move from here.
- So she says, you can take your time, as long as you want,
- but this place is ours.
- And I sold it.
- I sold it to them for $59,000 that time.
- We bought it for $49,000.
- I sold it for--
- and I made $10,000 on it.
- And lived only two years there.
- My husband lived only one year in it.
- And I left too.
- So that's the end.
- Yeah, now, how do people react to your background today?
- Oh, you see, I forgot that.
- When I returned home, the neighbors
- didn't want to know us.
- I mean today, how do people react to you today?
- Now, how do people, when you tell them about the Holocaust--
- not Gentiles-- if you talk about the Holocaust, how do they--
- Now?
- --react?
- Yeah.
- Well, I'll tell you, a lot of Gentile people read my book,
- and some of them liked it so much that they bought it
- from me, bought copies from me.
- But there are some who still don't believe it.
- But I forgot to tell you, when we
- returned from the concentration camp, to our town,
- how wild I was.
- I was walking on the street one day, on the sidewalk,
- and a girl was coming against me.
- And I recognized my dress on her,
- that I made with my own hand.
- She comes, and I stop her.
- I says, where did you get this dress?
- She says, I bought it.
- I says, don't tell me.
- This dress is mine.
- You stole it.
- And tore it down, on the street from her.
- See, I forgot this.
- Now, do you think Holocaust could happen again?
- Yes.
- Yes, it could happen.
- It could.
- I'm sorry to say that, but--
- Do you see anything in our world today
- that makes you think that, that it will happen?
- Yes.
- It's because anti-Semitism is still very free, all over,
- all over the world.
- I'm sorry to say it, but--
- not in our lifetime, I don't I don't think so.
- But in the future sometimes, that could happen again.
- Maybe not this-- not this bad.
- Maybe a little different, but it will happen.
- You see, Mrs. Lebovitz, that's the reason why
- we do those videotapes too.
- Yeah.
- To show-- that will be in the museum,
- in the Holocaust Museum in Washington,
- and to show people who will visit,
- who will watch those tapes--
- Yeah.
- --that that's true.
- That's an eyewitness.
- They will see the eyewitness speaking.
- That's so important to let know the world really what happened.
- Maybe that will prevent from happening ever again.
- Well, I hope so, but--
- That's why I'm so thankful for you that you took your time.
- I know it's hard for you to go back to the bad time,
- to bad memories.
- I know it's very hard for you.
- It's very hard.
- And I'm very thankful for you that you took your time
- and come--
- You're welcome.
- --to make this tape.
- I am glad now too.
- And I really-- I appreciate very much.
- You know why I say that it could happen again?
- Look at the skinheads.
- The Pamyat in Russia.
- They call them Pamyat, something similar to the skinheads.
- And the Nazis in Germany, they still--
- that is still going on.
- Anti-Semitism is still going on all over the world.
- They don't like us, that's all.
- They never liked the Jewish people,
- and I don't think there'll ever be complete peace.
- Well, I hope you're wrong.
- I hope everything will be--
- Yeah, I hope so, that I'm wrong.
- All right, so thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Shirley Lebovitz
- Date
-
interview:
1990 March 20
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Lebovitz, Shirley.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
Phoenix Holocaust Survivors Association
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Shirley Lebovitz was conducted on March 20, 1990 by the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association in affiliation with the Cline Library of Northern Arizona University as part of a project to document the testimonies of Holocaust survivors in the Phoenix, AZ area. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in 1991.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:09:55
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn512551
Additional Resources
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Oral History
Meyer Dragon discusses his family; his childhood experiences; moving with his family to Warsaw, Poland; working for the Jewish Committee in Warsaw; the German occupation; life in the Warsaw ghetto; escaping from the ghetto; his life in other ghettos before being sent to Auschwitz; being sent to other camps including Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, and Theresienstadt; liberation; and immigrating to the United States.
Oral history interview with Sally Dragon
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Oral history interview with Rae Freisinger
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Oral history interview with Anna Geslewitz
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Anna Geslewitz (née Charoltte Gersten), born on September 17, 1923 in Lwow, Poland (now L’viv, Ukraine), discusses her childhood experiences; the Russian occupation of her town; the German occupation in 1941; life in a ghetto; working in tailoring shop for the army in the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto with her sister; registering to go to Germany for work; passing as Christians; never seeing her father again; traveling through Krakow, Poland and going to an employment agency in Regnitz, Poland; working in homes while her sister worked on a farm; being taken to dig ditches in a forced labor camp; working in an office because she could speak German; being liberated by the Russians; going east to Jarosław, Poland; finding her sister and moving to a town on the Baltic Sea; opening a store; continuing to pass as Christian; going to West Germany; getting married in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1950; living in Brooklyn (NY), Pennsylvania, and Newark (NJ); her feelings on antisemitism; and her current views on American Judaism.
Oral history interview with Daniel Geslewitz
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Daniel Geslewitz (né Gedoliah Geslewitz), born on August 14, 1924, in Lódz, Poland, discusses his siblings and parents; his childhood; the beginning of the war when he was 15 years old; the restrictions placed on Jews; life in the Lódz ghetto; starvation in the ghetto; his father’s death from starvation; the deportations; being deported with his family to Auschwitz in August 1944; the murder of his family except for himself and his three brothers because they were chosen for work; conditions in the camp, including the meager food and beatings; being sent after a week to Germany to do forced labor as a metalworker in camp Braunschweig; working in a village in a small factory that was making parts for trucks; being marched to the main camp; his brother Myer’s death from being forced to drink overly salted soup; being transported to Ravensbrück concentration camp; being sent to camp Wöbbelin, where they were liberated by American troops; recuperating in a German house with his brothers for many weeks; staying in a German town in the British zone for five years; immigrating to the United States in 1950; his life in the US; living in New York, NY and Phoenix, AZ; and his thoughts on Germans and Poles.
Oral history interview with Adele Goldberg
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Adele Goldberg, born in July 1921, discusses her childhood experiences; life in Lódz, Poland; her father’s diabetes; her father going into a diabetic coma and dying on December 31, 1939; life in the Lódz ghetto; being forced to work in German factory in Lódz; being deported with her mother to Auschwitz in 1944; the train journey with her mother; being separated from her mother when they arrived at the camp; working in a munitions factory; being sent to work in numerous camps; liberation; finding her brother in Italy; getting married; visiting Israel; and her immigration to the United States.
Oral history interview with Hyman Goldberg
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Oral history interview with Irving Goldstein
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Oral history interview with Helen Handler
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Helen Handler discusses her childhood experiences in Hungary; life in the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz; the train journey and arriving at the camp; being sent to Stutthof concentration camp; seeing numerous dead bodies in the camp; being sent on a forced march; being liberated by Russian soldiers; recuperating in a Polish hospital and then a hospital in Budapest, Hungary; going to Prague, Czech Republic and then France; having tuberculosis; going to tuberculosis hospitals in France and Switzerland; her four-year recovery from bone tuberculosis; receiving assistance from various Jewish organizations; immigrating to Canada; getting married; her son; getting divorced from her husband; immigrating to the United States; and giving talks about her experiences during the war.
Oral history interview with Sam Hilton
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Sam Hilton, born on September 23, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his childhood experiences; his mother’s death when he was 5 years old; his father’s remarriage; the bombardment of Warsaw and the German occupation; being forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; the birth of his sister in 1942; deportations from the ghetto; the song in the ghetto about Treblinka; hiding in a basement bunker during one round up; the loss of his stepmother and sister; the ghetto uprising in 1943; being deported to Majdanek with his father; the selection process and lying about his age (he claimed to be 16 when he was only 12); being in Majdanek for three weeks; being sent to Buchenwald in June 1944; being sent to a work camp in November 1944; the liquidation of the camp in March 1945; being sent on a march; going to Theresienstadt; liberation; going to Prague, Czech Republic; going to Rotterdam, Netherlands and then Windermere, England to recuperate; going to Los Angeles, CA; and studying accounting at UCLA.
Oral history interview with Rose Jaloviec
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Oral history interview with Pauline Killough
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Oral history interview with Gertrude Klinger
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Oral history interview with Anna Koenig
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Oral history interview with William Koenig
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Oral history interview with William Koenig
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Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec
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Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec
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Oral history interview with Berga Lechowitz
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Oral history interview with Judith Lederman
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Oral history interview with Leon Lederman
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Oral history interview with Stephen Lerman
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Oral history interview with Lena Levine
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Oral history interview with Sarah Marwick
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Oral history interview with Marion Migdal
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Oral history interview with Abe Morgenstern
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Oral history interview with Leon Nelson
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Oral history interview with Mollie Nelson
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Oral history interview with Carl Ofisher
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Oral history interview with Jacques Rajchgod
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Oral history interview with Hy Roitman
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Oral history interview with Robert Ronay
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Oral history interview with Esther Rosen
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Oral history interview with Samuel Rosen
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Oral history interview with George Schiffman
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Oral history interview with Wella Schiffman
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Oral history interview with Fanny Schlomowitz
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Oral history interview with Samuel Soldinger
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Oral history interview with Henry Sontag
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Oral history interview with Anna Spitz
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Oral history interview with Arthur Spitz
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Oral history interview with Harry Spitz
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Oral history interview with Heddy Spitz
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Heddy Spitz, born in 1920 in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her family’s business running a grocery, a dance hall, and a restaurant; being driven out of their homes with 30,000 other Jews to a ghetto area for three weeks in May 1943; being sent to Auschwitz, where her mother and two of her sisters were immediately gassed; marching with her sisters to the East where they were able to separate themselves from Nazi marchers by hiding in a barn; being saved by Russian workers who allowed them to stay in their homes and because they had no numbers on their arms and could speak Russian; working in the fields until the Russians liberated them; registering in Germany to go to the United States after the war; opening a business in Phoenix, AZ; and having four children.
Oral history interview with Agnes Tennenbaum
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Oral history interview with Larry Weidenbaum
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Oral history interview with Magda Willinger
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Oral history interview with Al Wulc
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Oral history interview with Bertha Wulc
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Oral history interview with Blanch Robin
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Oral history interview with Gertie Blau
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Oral history interview with Lillian Feigen
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Oral history interview with Nancy Fordonski
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Oral history interview with Gisella Fry
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Oral history interview with Marion Katzman
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Oral history interview with Frieda Radasky
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Oral history interview with Solomon Radasky
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Oral history interview with Maria Segal
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Oral history interview with David Silver
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Oral history interview with Leo Smilovic
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Oral history interview with Risa Stillman
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Oral history interview with Adele Weisman
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Oral history interview with Paul Weisman
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