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Oral history interview with David Wolnerman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2016.107.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0876

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    Oral history interview with David Wolnerman
    Transcript
    OK.
    Can I speak?
    You got it?
    OK.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. David Wolnerman on May 9,
    2016 in Washington, DC.
    Mr. Wolnerman is the last surviving Auschwitz
    former prisoner in Iowa who has traveled
    from Iowa to be with us today and to share his story.
    So we're very, very grateful to you that you have done so.
    And thank you.
    Welcome to the museum.
    And thank you for agreeing to share your story with us today.
    I'm going to start with the most basic questions
    about your early life, and we'll take things from there.
    So can you tell me, what was the date of your birth?
    Modzhev, Modrzejów.
    That's the town you were born In
    Right.
    OK.
    Modrzejów.
    Modrzejów.
    We'll talk about that in a minute, Modrzejów.
    And tell me when were you born?
    May 9, 1927.
    May 9--
    May 9, 1927.
    1927.
    Right.
    OK.
    And you were born in Modrzejów you say?
    Right.
    And what country is Modrzejów in?
    Poland.
    In Poland.
    Close to the German border.
    Aha, so on the Western side.
    Right.
    OK.
    And what was your name at birth?
    When you were born, what was your name?
    David.
    The same as today?
    It's the same.
    Sometimes it's changed for some people?
    I didn't change.
    OK.
    So you were David Wolnerman when you were born?
    Right.
    In 1927?
    1927.
    OK.
    And can you tell me, did you have brothers and sisters?
    I have one brother.
    And once there were four, two brothers and two sisters,
    me and my brother and two sisters.
    And where were you?
    Were you the youngest, the oldest?
    I was the youngest.
    You were the youngest?
    So tell me the names of your brothers and your sisters?
    My brother's name was Abraham.
    Mm-hmm.
    And your sisters?
    And my sister's name was Gertrude.
    Gertrude.
    And another sister you say?
    Bluma.
    Bluma?
    Yes.
    So Abraham, David, Gertrude, and Bluma?
    Abraham, Gertrude, Bluma, and Dave.
    I was the youngest.
    All right.
    So Abraham was the oldest?
    Right.
    What year was he born?
    You know what, he was born, I think, Second World--
    the First World War or something like this.
    You know what I mean?
    OK.
    So in the 1918, 1919?
    Something like this.
    OK.
    And then your sisters were born in the '20s.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And what were the names of your parents?
    My father's name was Pinchas, Pinchas, Pinchas.
    Pinchas?
    And my mother's name was Chana.
    Chana, OK.
    And the town or the place you were born, tell me again?
    Modrzejów.
    Modrzejów?
    Modrzejów.
    What kind of a place was Modrzejów?
    Very small town, close to the bigger town was Sosnowiec.
    Or Będzin, Katowice, Kraków, you know what I mean?
    This was a very small town, two streets.
    Two streets?
    That's it.
    One policeman, one doctor, and one car.
    One car?
    That's it.
    You know something, that's a question that I often
    ask people from small towns, did they have cars?
    Were their cars in the--
    One car.
    Were the roads paved?
    Well, we had only one main street, that's all.
    OK.
    We had two streets in the whole town.
    Did you know everybody in town?
    Almost, yes.
    About how many people do you think lived in it?
    Well, maybe a thousand Jews and a thousand Christians.
    OK.
    Well, half and half.
    It was about half and half?
    Yes.
    Was there a synagogue?
    Pardon me?
    Was there a synagogue?
    A few.
    There were a few.
    A small stable.
    OK.
    And was your family religious?
    Yes.
    And what, very religious or just sort of?
    Religious.
    Religious?
    Never worked on Saturdays, you know what I mean?
    Mm-hmm.
    In this town, the Jewish stores were closed.
    Nothing was open and everything, you know what I mean?
    Did you go to synagogue every week?
    I used to go--
    you see my father died six months before the war.
    In 1939?
    In 19-- 1939, yes.
    So he died six months before the Germans took over.
    OK.
    We'll talk about that, but let's go back
    to when you're still young and a small child.
    How did your father and mother support the family?
    We were very poor, I mean poor.
    We didn't stay and beg on the street,
    you know what I mean, but we were poor,
    you know what I mean?
    So my father barely make a living.
    What was he doing?
    He was buying some bags, the bags from floured bags,
    and sell it.
    I see.
    So he would buy, and he would--
    was he a peddler?
    Could one say--
    A peddler, yes.
    Did he travel or did he--
    Walking, not traveling.
    Uh-huh.
    So he walked around the town?
    He walked out the town, too, the bakeries, the stores
    with some bags.
    That sounds like it was a hard living.
    Yes, yes, yes.
    Did he come from a large family?
    I think so.
    I think so.
    I didn't know too much because I was young,
    you know what I mean?
    Did you have grandmothers-- grandparents?
    One grandma and one grandpa.
    From your mother's?
    My mother's parents.
    OK.
    So you didn't know much about your grandfather
    on your father's side?
    No, no, no because he didn't live in the same town.
    Where had he come from?
    I mean, he came from not too far away from Kraków, a small town,
    too, you know what I mean?
    I see.
    Do you know how your parents met?
    No.
    OK.
    In Europe when you're 10 years old, 12 years old,
    you don't mix up.
    It's not like now in America.
    No.
    And then some people told stories and some people
    didn't tell stories to their children?
    Well, no, they didn't--
    no, they didn't talk too much stories.
    OK.
    Did your father fight in World War I?
    Was he in any army in World War I?
    I'll be honest with you, I don't know.
    OK, all right.
    I know the little town where we lived,
    my mother used to say it was always changing,
    one time Russian, one time German, one time Polish,
    the First World War or something like this.
    Yeah.
    Because my mother speaks fluent German, very little Polish,
    and Jewish.
    OK.
    So it was Yiddish and--
    Yiddish, right.
    --Yiddish and German, which are not so far from each other.
    And a little bit Russian, too.
    And a little bit-- well, yeah.
    Was this part, I think, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
    No.
    No.
    See, over there it was changing.
    One time it was Polish, one time it was German,
    one time it's Russian.
    Finally at the end, it was Polish, Poland.
    Got it.
    Got it.
    And tell me about your mother's family.
    Did she have brothers and sisters?
    Yes, she had two brothers and one more sister.
    OK, so also--
    There were two sisters and two brothers.
    Like yours?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And did they live in the same place?
    In the same town.
    Did you know them much?
    Because they live in the same house.
    You see, grandpa had a house.
    My grandpa was our mayor over there.
    Was he?
    Didn't know how to read, didn't know how to write,
    but he knew how to drink?
    [LAUGHING]
    Sometimes, that's the most important part of politics.
    What can we say?
    Did you--
    He was collecting taxes, not too much.
    [LAUGHING]
    So he was the mayor of--
    The little town, Modrzejów, yes.
    Modrzejów.
    And did you know him well, your grandfather?
    Well, as long as I lived, yes, I know him.
    And you were all in the same house?
    Not in the same house.
    In the same house was the family, my mother, my brother,
    and my uncle.
    Uh-huh.
    And he had a house himself with his wife.
    Oh, your grandfather?
    Right.
    I see.
    I see.
    And was he well-off?
    Was he well-to-do?
    No.
    No.
    Made a living, not--
    but no, no.
    OK but aside from knowing how to drink,
    I bet you he had some other qualities that
    made him the mayor?
    Well, a small town, you had to have a good name, that's it.
    OK.
    What was his name?
    Abraham.
    And his last name?
    Nyer.
    Nyer, Abraham Nyer.
    And how did he made his living, your mother's father?
    What do you mean?
    Well, he was a mayor.
    Yes.
    But is that how he had supported his family,
    or had he had a professional trade?
    No, not from this.
    He had a cow, milk.
    Got it.
    He made butter.
    I remember we were kids, we had to--
    You have to do that.
    The one, the old-fashioned way.
    Yep.
    He churned the butter.
    Yes.
    OK.
    He used to do that.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    I bet you it took a long time.
    Well, he worked around with his fingers, steal a little bit.
    You know.
    Yes.
    Your own family, tell me about your home.
    What did it look like, where you lived with your brothers,
    and sisters, and parents?
    We had two rooms--
    Two rooms, OK.
    And was it a single--
    --a kitchen, and our bedroom, and a living together.
    Living room, kitchen, everything.
    All right.
    And six people--
    Six people.
    --in two rooms?
    Yes.
    Was this part of an apartment building?
    No, it was grandpa's building.
    And he give us to live over there.
    OK.
    And were you next to other houses, or did you have--
    Yes, oh yeah.
    So you lived in the town?
    Yes.
    Did you have any animals?
    I mean a cow or anything like that?
    No?
    Did anybody keep any chickens or--
    No.
    Not really.
    Maybe-- I didn't--
    I don't-- I didn't see it.
    OK.
    OK.
    How did you heat the place?
    Very, very clean.
    OK.
    My mother worked all the time in the house--
    Yeah.
    --because we didn't have no electric stoves
    and all this kind of stuff, you know what I mean?
    What did you have?
    Oven, with wood or coal, cooked and everything.
    OK.
    So in the two rooms, no electricity and coal heating?
    And electricity we had maybe six months before the war.
    Really?
    One light bulb.
    Oh, this was something.
    Was this a big thing?
    Oh!
    This was something because you used to have the kerosene.
    Uh-huh.
    Well, tell us, how do you use kerosene?
    What do you have to do in order to make light from kerosene
    With kerosene, you just start it.
    It's like gasoline, like oil, you know what I mean,
    you had to fill it up.
    You poured kerosene into something,
    and then you light it like a candle?
    Right.
    Were there fires?
    Not too much because--
    they always had Christmas trees.
    We didn't have no fire department, nothing,
    but was no fires because everybody's into their room,
    you know what I mean?
    You didn't have no six rooms.
    So you [INAUDIBLE].
    So you would find it.
    If something starts, you find it very fast.
    Right.
    OK.
    Did you have plumbing?
    Pardon me?
    Did you have plumbing?
    No.
    OK.
    So where did you get water?
    We have to buy water.
    You'd have to buy it?
    Yes.
    So it wasn't like you had a well that you could go to?
    Well, no.
    We have to buy it.
    It was like two pennies a bucket of water.
    Really!
    This is the first time I heard that somebody had to buy water.
    Right.
    Wow!
    I used to go.
    I couldn't handle a whole one.
    I used to buy a half for one penny.
    OK.
    And would that be like a half a bucket?
    Right.
    And half a bucket would be about how many gallons do you think?
    Maybe three gallons and something like this.
    And how many buckets did you need
    for a family of six per day?
    First of all, you didn't took no showers
    because you didn't have no shower.
    You took a bath you know what I mean?
    And the men used to go to the city every Friday take a bath.
    Oh, so there was like a bath house?
    And when you don't need it, you'd--
    if you need it or not, you took our bath.
    And what did the women do, at home?
    No showers, no bath houses?
    No.
    No showers.
    OK.
    OK.
    How many rooms were in this building that you lived in?
    The rooms 2, 4, about 6.
    OK.
    Everybody, three families.
    Three families?
    Yes.
    One lived in the penthouse.
    So you couldn't straighten out.
    You have to go like this because it was too close.
    OK.
    And which one did you live in?
    The first floor.
    The first floor.
    That's all we had, two floors.
    OK, two floors and a penthouse.
    Two and one, one penthouse.
    The penthouse was-- when you do tall, you had to--
    Who lived there?
    Well.
    OK.
    Did anybody live there in the--
    it's the attic space then.
    Like an attic space.
    OK.
    My uncle was living over there.
    I see.
    OK.
    Can we cut?
    So we were talking about where you lived.
    Can you describe the house to me?
    Was it next to other houses?
    Yes.
    Was it wooden or of stone?
    Stone, but old.
    Old.
    So you think it was maybe built in the 19th century?
    Maybe before--
    Maybe before, OK.
    OK.
    --because when the time I remember.
    You used to put sand by the windows--
    Sand?
    --so they covered up for the snow,
    for the winter and everything.
    Oh, I see so that's how you--
    The house was not young but older.
    Do you remember it being cold inside?
    We had a stove, a round one for winter.
    Like a cold stove?
    Right.
    And was it in the corner of the house, or corner of a room,
    or in the middle of the room?
    In the house.
    I know.
    Where was it in the room?
    In the middle the house in the living room.
    Really, in the middle?
    And your mother cooked on a coal or a wood--
    A stove.
    --stove.
    OK.
    She didn't bake.
    She didn't have for baking.
    For baking we used to go every Friday or so to a bakery,
    you know what I mean, and bake in the bakery.
    So in other words, not only at a bakery could you buy bread,
    but you could bake your own bread?
    Bread, not too many made it.
    OK.
    We make challah, you know what I mean, for Friday.
    I see.
    And would she bake other things?
    And a cake sometimes.
    OK.
    Was there a particular food she made that you really liked?
    I liked everything, but she cooked for six people a pound
    and a have of beef.
    So if you get the bone, you don't get no meat.
    If you get the carrots, you don't get meat
    because my father got to get a little piece, my brother
    and my sister both, too.
    And we were the youngest, so we didn't have too much.
    Were you hungry?
    Bread we got plenty, you know what I mean?
    Mm-hmm
    A little bit sugar on top or something,
    you know I mean, not butter, once in a while.
    So butter you could churn for your grandfather,
    but you didn't get much of it at home?
    No because he sold it, you know I mean?
    And it was different.
    Like eggs, you wanted to the store
    to buy two eggs, one eggs, and something
    like this, not a dozen.
    Was there only one store you would go to?
    No, you had a few stores.
    Yeah?
    Little stores, you know what I mean.
    And who would do the shopping, the food shopping?
    I go with them my mother or something.
    Most the time for Friday we shopped,
    Thursday for Sabbath, you know I mean.
    Mm-hmm.
    So because you were the youngest,
    did you accompany her everywhere?
    Did you go with her when she went shopping?
    Yeah, sometimes.
    OK.
    And your sisters?
    You have the one sister, the older sister was working,
    you know I mean?
    What was she doing?
    She worked in a printing.
    And my brother was the foreman over there.
    The foreman made $25 a week.
    Well, it was in Polish money, was it?
    In Polish money, right.
    And so would it have been 25 zloty?
    25 zloty, right.
    OK.
    Was that considered a lot of money?
    He was a foreman already.
    And what about--
    Because it was, I think, cheap because you had no money.
    You didn't buy a dozen eggs or something,
    you know what I mean?
    Which of your siblings were you closest to?
    We were together.
    We were living close.
    All of you?
    Yes.
    OK.
    The mother and father was the tops.
    Really?
    That's it.
    Tell me about it.
    We didn't sit down at a table tell
    my father and mother was there.
    It sounds like you had a lot of respect.
    Nothing but respect.
    OK.
    Tell me a little bit about your parents' personalities.
    What kind of a person was your father?
    Let's start with your father.
    Very, very Yiddish, you know I mean.
    He had to have a paper every day.
    He reads.
    He would read the paper every day.
    The Jewish paper.
    Do you remember the name of the--
    The Forverts.
    The Forverts.
    Right.
    OK.
    Did it have a political leaning, The Forverts?
    This I don't--
    You don't know.
    I was too young to--
    Because there is a Forverts in New York City.
    Oh, yeah.
    And that's a different--
    that had a political leaning.
    And look, Michael get paper, Forverts, but in English.
    Yeah.
    You can get it in Yiddish, you can get it
    in English, the same thing.
    So he would read the paper, which
    meant that he went to school, and he knew how to read.
    Yes.
    Oh, especially Yiddish.
    OK.
    And your grandfather, the mayor, didn't.
    He didn't, no.
    Interesting, interesting.
    Did he like your father?
    My father was very, very--
    everything what he said had to be.
    OK.
    So he had a--
    Very good man, very good father, and the mother, too.
    Old-fashioned.
    Matter of fact, I am a little bit with my two boys
    the same thing almost.
    Really?
    Yes.
    So you learnt how to--
    Because my wife was Polish, too, a survivor, too.
    Oh, I see.
    She was five years in the concentration camp,
    too, but in different camps.
    Yeah.
    They wanted to write a book from her, too, but a difference.
    Yeah.
    She had a different story.
    But I didn't let her because she was sick.
    Yeah.
    I can understand that these are not easy.
    But they want it badly.
    This would be a tremendous book because she was difference.
    Do you know her story?
    Yes, a little.
    So maybe when we finish talking--
    Well--
    --about yours, you can tell us a little bit about her.
    --it's too much to talk about it.
    OK.
    Well, maybe a little bit private or something I
    can give you a little bit.
    OK.
    But I know that we're talking now
    about your family before the war.
    I want to get a sense of, what did you parents--
    how did they inspire this kind of respect?
    Were they warm people to you?
    We were brought up like this, respect.
    OK.
    My mother used to say, nobody looks
    in the stomach what do you eat, but you dressed up
    a little bit is difference.
    Ah.
    That's it.
    That you would be presentable?
    Yes.
    OK.
    You wanted to be representable, especially in a small town.
    If you neglect, nobody looked on you.
    It's different in America.
    You don't look who your mother was, who your grandpa,
    as long as you're both happy with each other,
    you know what I mean?
    Over there is difference.
    If they asked me, you don't see your name.
    I have to say, I'm the son from Pinchas.
    So you know it.
    Because in a little town, everybody
    knows each other, but not a little baby like me,
    you know what I mean?
    Yeah.
    I went to camp when I was 13 years old--
    Mm-hmm .
    --and I went by myself because they told him,
    if you go, your mother going to be saved.
    So I said, OK, I'm going.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    We'll come to that.
    We'll come to that.
    We're going to still talk about life prewar.
    So your mother kept a very clean house?
    It's majestic, again, you know what I mean?
    Of course, it's not easy.
    No, because we had wooden floors a little bit.
    You didn't have no carpets.
    But you had wooden floors?
    Wooden floors.
    Wooden floors.
    Pieces.
    Some of them we had to fix it, too.
    Yeah.
    Did you have cousins?
    Yes.
    Who did you play with the most when you were little?
    The cousins lived in the same house--
    Ah!
    --because it was the family.
    OK.
    Your mother's brother?
    Right.
    OK.
    So was it a happy time having so many kids?
    Yes, yes.
    OK.
    Did you go to school?
    Yes, was only one school.
    In the whole place?
    In the whole place.
    So was it both--
    For both.
    --for both Poles and Jews?
    Christian, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish.
    OK.
    So we had one hour a week Hebrew or Jewish, and one hour a week
    Catholic, and one hour Protestant.
    Oh.
    If you wanted, you could stay.
    If not, you don't walk out, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    Did you ever stay for the others?
    Sometime I stayed on the Catholic one.
    Did you?
    I just wanted to know.
    Sometime I know sometimes more than some Catholics
    in this country.
    [INTERVIEWER LAUGHS]
    Well, when you get an education like that, then--
    what stays with you?
    I just wanted to know, you know what I mean,
    not that I'm perfect, everything.
    But is there anything you remember
    from any of those lessons?
    Not too much because there was that I was
    12 years old, 11, 12 years old.
    OK.
    Did you ever go inside a church?
    After the war.
    OK.
    Before the war--
    No.
    --the anti-Semitic was a little bit in Poland.
    It was very, very strong.
    I want to talk about that.
    So you didn't go to the church then, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    So since you were all in school together--
    In school together, yes, girls and boys together, everything,
    you know what I mean.
    --did you ever have any of the Christian kids make fun of you
    or tease you?
    Well, I tell you one thing, I was lucky.
    OK.
    I had some friends, Gentiles, went to school together
    and everything.
    Mm-hmm.
    For the age, I was not bad.
    I wasn't fighting.
    But I act like a big fighter.
    I never fight.
    I never remember having a fight or something.
    OK.
    So are you saying that the kids that you knew who were Gentiles
    were friends?
    Oh yeah, yes.
    Not bad?
    Everything was OK?
    Till-- Hitler took over, it was a different story.
    Yeah, of course, of course.
    But did your parents or did anybody
    you knew experience any kind of discrimination?
    They didn't like a Jew.
    They like some of me, you know what I mean.
    Let's say like my wife, my mother, she had a neighbor,
    she loved her.
    That's it.
    Maybe second Jew, she didn't, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    So you're saying a neighbor lady who was Gentile--
    Some of them, right.
    But if your grandfather was mayor of the town--
    Yeah, but--
    It doesn't make a difference?
    You collect half a dollar tax.
    OK.
    Well, a tax collector is never popular no matter who they are.
    No money--
    Yeah.
    --a little town like this.
    What did the little town-- what was
    the main economy in this town?
    A coal mine.
    There was a coal mine.
    There was a coal mine over there,
    and owned by the French government.
    Really?
    Yes, this I remember.
    They were talking about this.
    But Jews didn't work in the coal mine at all.
    Why?
    Some of them was a shame.
    OK.
    So it was dirty work?
    See like us, example--
    Yeah.
    --we didn't stay outside and beg for a piece
    of bread or something.
    We were hungry, but I mean, not to stay on the street
    or something because my mother and father had too much shame,
    you know what I mean.
    They had too much pride to do something like that.
    Right.
    OK.
    So it was mostly--
    it was mostly the Gentiles who worked in the coal mine?
    Yes, maybe a few Jews and maybe in the office, maybe.
    In the war time, all the Jews worked in the coal mine.
    OK.
    I didn't work in the coal mine.
    I was lucky.
    OK.
    My sister, the older one, she was a tough girl,
    a good-looking girl.
    If you don't let her in from the front,
    she come through the windows.
    And she got a job for me.
    I was an engineer sweeping the street.
    This is during the war?
    This better than coal mine.
    You come out, you know what I mean?
    We'll talk about those things.
    So she got me the job.
    OK.
    So were there people who-- was it a farming area as well?
    Were there people who had farms?
    Farms, yes.
    But not so much as the coal mine?
    No.
    OK.
    You said that electricity, the first light bulb,
    was six months before the war started.
    What about a radio?
    Did anybody have a radio?
    In my town was one radio.
    One radio?
    Right.
    Because I remember we used to listen to the soccer game
    because in Europe, that's all you had.
    You didn't know about football, baseball, or something
    like this, nothing like this.
    OK.
    So who owned the radio?
    Some-- maybe he was a little bit richer than me.
    OK.
    So you open the window, and the whole town--
    Really?
    --listen to the game--
    OK.
    --the soccer game, football.
    Well, tell me, who was the richest person in town?
    Not too many, a few over there.
    If you need a few dollars, he borrowed you.
    But you have to have something, like a piece of silver
    or something, gold, for guarantee, you know I mean.
    OK.
    So it was a business.
    Was there a bank?
    In my town?
    No, no bank.
    No bank.
    We had a bank for the water.
    That kind of a bank.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That's a time V.I.P. call yourself [INAUDIBLE]
    So you used to play big shot.
    We used to say, oh, we used to own a bank.
    So after that, he say, yes, the bank for the water.
    So you had one policeman in the town.
    What did you say before, one doctor--
    One doctor, one policeman, and one car.
    --and one car.
    Who had the car?
    The doctor.
    The doctor.
    That's it.
    Was the doctor a Jewish doctor?
    No.
    Did everybody go to him?
    Yes.
    What was he like?
    Was he--
    Very good.
    Well, for over there, he was a good doctor,
    you know what I mean.
    When you had a headache, they used to put the one their back.
    Leeches?
    Not leeches.
    Oh, these little--
    Little--
    --cups.
    --cups, right.
    Now you know.
    OK.
    But you explain it because many people do not
    know what that means.
    This is when you had a cold or something.
    Yeah, like the flu--
    So this takes off--
    the darker they come out, you know I mean?
    This is what they said, you know what
    I mean, because no medication.
    My father passed away.
    He had asthma, no medication.
    He was 47 years old.
    He was young.
    He was young.
    That's it.
    Tell me about that.
    Tell me about your father's illness.
    When did he start getting sick?
    He got sick, he was in the hospital.
    Every time I come home from school,
    my mother used to give me a little bag,
    a little jar with soup.
    I used to walk four miles in and four miles back--
    Where was the hospital?
    --at the hospital.
    What town was it in?
    This was Sosnicowice, a little bigger town the next
    to Muenchen.
    And how long was your father in the hospital for?
    He was maybe six months in the hospital--
    That's a long time.
    --and no medication.
    No medication?
    He had asthma.
    Over here, asthma, if you watch yourself,
    you can live 120 years.
    And how did he get this?
    Was it because he was outside all the time in the--
    He smoked cigarettes.
    In Europe, you used to have different kind of cigarettes,
    over here, the same thing.
    You like Lucky, Camels, or something, you know I mean?
    Over there, you had to have two, three, different kind of price.
    And he used to buy the cheaper ones because he had no money.
    And he smoked.
    And we didn't know it, you know I mean.
    Yeah.
    So was he in the hospital when he died?
    Six months the last time.
    And is that where he died in the hospital?
    He died in there, yeah.
    Was anybody with him when that happened?
    No.
    But we had to bring him from this town to a little town
    to us.
    The same date was the burial.
    The funeral was the same night.
    That must have been very hard--
    He was laying in the living room on the floor all day
    till they wash him and everything,
    you know, the Jewish thing.
    And who did that?
    Explain to me what the process is
    when you have to bury somebody because many people won't know.
    How do you bury your father if you do it the proper way?
    They had people who worked for this.
    OK.
    They don't charge from the city, from this synagogue
    and everything, you know what I mean.
    So it wasn't the family that did this?
    It was somebody else?
    No, no.
    This was some people who donate this, you know what I mean.
    They did it as volunteers.
    They used to wash it and everything.
    And they put you in linen, and no suits, no nothing.
    OK.
    And the cof-- cof--
    Coffin?
    How you call?
    The coffin.
    Had to be made different with no nails.
    Really?
    Right.
    The real religious one, no nails, no nothing, cheap.
    Was your father's done that way as well?
    Yes.
    I was-- yes.
    He was buried.
    But I was there after the war--
    well, I'm going without question.
    I leave it to the question.
    Later on, I can tell you different things.
    What do you remember most about when that happened,
    when your father passed away?
    Where were you in the home?
    Who came and told you?
    How did you find out?
    It's a small town, you know what I mean.
    They heard it at some place because it was only
    on the post office, one radio, one telephone, that's all.
    OK.
    So somebody called from the hospital?
    Because somebody or somebody was there close or something,
    you know what I mean?
    Mm-hmm.
    And they brought him, not with a car--
    No, no.
    --with a-- they used to have a horse and a buggy.
    Like over here, you're going for sport to look.
    Over there, if you got a few pennies,
    you don't have to take the bus, you
    know what I mean, to go to the little town.
    Did your father have a--
    do you think he knew that he was not going to get better?
    You don't know.
    We didn't have no medication or nothing.
    When you visited him in the hospital,
    did he ever talk to you about anything?
    Yes, the foot, it's swollen.
    Every time before I come, he cover it up
    because my mother always ask him, how is the--
    How are the feet?
    --the swelling, you know what I mean?
    And I think the swelling go to the heart and that's it.
    Because when he died, the mouth was open.
    They had to put a handkerchief to close the mouth,
    you know what I mean.
    Oh, I see.
    What was the hospital like?
    What did it look like?
    A regular hospital, cheap, you know what I mean.
    It was nice.
    Was it a wooden building?
    Was it a stone building?
    No, it was a building.
    Did it have-- you see, hospitals in Europe
    are different than hospitals here, and certainly hospitals
    before the war.
    They didn't have no private rooms yet.
    As much rooms they have, bed they can put in.
    Was it a big place?
    For the town, it was nice size, you know what I mean?
    All right.
    Stone building?
    Stone building, yes.
    Two floors, three floors?
    No three floors, no.
    Maybe two floors because no elevators.
    OK.
    And did you visit him every day?
    You mean?
    To his father when, he was in the hospital and you brought
    soup --Right. or something--
    Every day.
    Every day I come up from school, my mother got,
    and I used to walk every day.
    Did they feed him there, or did it mean--
    Well, they feed you.
    But I mean, my mother.
    OK.
    Did any of the other children go with you?
    Because the two older ones was working,
    you know what I mean because they were the breadwinner,
    you know what I mean because we didn't have like over
    here food stamps and everything like this, nothing,
    no insurance, nothing.
    So when your father wasn't able to work, it went your brother?
    A little when he was OK.
    So he used to go and buy the bags
    and had to handle by himself, you know what I mean?
    How much can you do, you know what I mean?
    Of course.
    Some of them with a horse, with a wagon,
    so it's a little different, you know what I mean.
    This is just like a car, you know what I mean.
    So it was a tough life.
    It was a tough life it sounds like for your father.
    Yes, he had a tough life.
    I mean, I never knew how a hot dog could taste in my life
    ever.
    I never eat a banana, only for the kids, the richer
    people a little bit for the baby a banana.
    Matter of fact, it's true when us [INAUDIBLE] come to this
    country, they eat a banana with the--
    they didn't know how to--
    You eat it with the skin?
    That's right.
    Yeah.
    Now I go tell you a little bit story.
    Sure.
    I went to the doctor a few months ago for the cataracts
    or something in the morning, so the doctor
    was a head doctor, nice doctor, nice.
    And he said to me, you cannot take a shower for two or three
    days because--
    Of the-- mm-hmm.
    So I say, doctor, I didn't took a shower for five years.
    So he got scared to touch me, you know what I mean?
    Yeah.
    So finally, I told him the story, you know what I mean.
    Oh, it's different.
    And it's true.
    So I didn't took it for five years.
    I can't imagine--
    I didn't even know what a shower looks like.
    But some people, our people, they
    try to show off a little bit more
    than that because nobody knows, you know what I mean?
    To me, no, I like to eat steak.
    Now, you said that earlier that the men would
    go every week to a bath house.
    And what did that place look like?
    Was it like a sauna, like the old-fashioned saunas
    that you'd steam?
    You had the sauna on the steps.
    Uh-huh.
    From the leaves, you handle, you wash.
    So you would hit yourself with--
    Right.
    --a branch or something.
    And you had a shower a little bit, a little bit water coming.
    So as kids, we go walk in.
    And the end, he let us go in free, you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    That's it.
    Now--
    It's unbelievable, you know what I mean?
    Yeah.
    It's hard for people like me to imagine it
    because we grew up in a different way.
    But lots of people, our people, are.
    They like to show off a little bit because I could tell you
    I had a factory, you wouldn't believe it,
    you know what I mean?
    I don't like to do this.
    And I brought up the kids the same way, only the truth.
    For lying to me was like you would take a knife and hit me.
    Lying is stealing.
    Stealing is lying.
    If you do both, you can kill.
    And to me, this is the worst thing.
    Where did you get those values?
    Pardon me?
    Where did you get those values?
    What do you mean?
    These are very important to you, that you taught your children
    such a thing.
    You know what, I come to this country with--
    I don't have no education.
    I got three and 1/2--
    I didn't finish third grade regular school.
    I am very good with a pencil, very good, better than college.
    I don't have no computers.
    I could have lots of computers.
    The kids wanted to give me.
    I got two boys, one of the best in the world.
    Especially Michael, you cannot find better than this.
    That's wonderful.
    Especially for the mother.
    I just lost my wife four months ago.
    I'm so sorry.
    She was a-- she was really, really a good woman
    to everybody.
    We live that time in Gary, Indiana.
    Gary, Indiana was the first black mayor in America
    was Gary, Indiana.
    And my wife made it for him for the ladies
    to come in for the election and everything.
    He got elected.
    Every day, he used to call.
    Ma, you need something?
    Can I help you something?
    Can I bring you something?
    Every day, the mayor never forgot
    That means something.
    --because my wife didn't care.
    She didn't know color or something like this.
    She used to bake sponge cake, the real one, professional one.
    Everybody know it, the whole town because she always
    made for everybody.
    Even she don't know it.
    Somebody pass her way, she baked this.
    This how kind person she was.
    I was married 67 years.
    A lifetime.
    I married in 1949.
    Wow.
    Thank you for sharing that.
    I can't imagine how difficult it must
    be after so many years and such a life together.
    Yes.
    Old-fashioned mother.
    Let's go back to your town before the war
    in the late '30s.
    You don't mind a little bit louder.
    OK, I'll speak a little bit louder.
    I'd like to find out how much people
    knew in this town of what was going on in Poland politically.
    Did you know about Pilsudski, about his death in 1935?
    You mean about the concentration camps or just the people?
    I'm talking just about Poland before the war.
    Anti-Semitic.
    OK, in what way?
    Tell me in what way.
    Well, Jewish especially because they
    didn't have no black people--
    OK.
    --you know what I mean?
    If they were to have black people,
    maybe it would be different, you know what I mean, a little bit.
    Mm-hmm.
    So the only one is the Jews.
    I understand.
    But I'd like to find out how this showed up in your life,
    and how you see--
    In my life, I was too young, you know what I mean?
    OK.
    So I didn't--
    In my parents' lives, did they experience--
    I didn't-- I mean, having real close friends, Gentiles, no.
    Friendly from school, going together, you know what I mean?
    OK.
    But to say I come to his house, and he come to my house, no.
    In school, everything fine to some people,
    you know what I mean.
    What about teachers?
    How did teachers--
    The teachers, we didn't have no Jewish teachers.
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, if you're good, you're good.
    Were you good?
    They were nice, you know what I mean.
    Some of them, you know what I mean.
    I was lucky.
    I had a teacher, she used to like me.
    Do you remember her name?
    No.
    OK.
    In that small town, you don't have no name.
    In a small town, you have to tell you my father's name, this
    how they know.
    Oh, I am Pinchas' son, you know what I mean?
    That's it.
    Do you remember how many people came to his funeral?
    To this what?
    Your father, when he died, did many people
    come to the funeral?
    A couple hundred.
    Wow!
    Almost the whole-- because a small town, and my father
    was very likable, you know what I mean?
    He was religious, but not so crazy, you know what I mean?
    Not a big beard, no payos, nothing, a little bit.
    He didn't shave, you know what I mean.
    But I mean-- and he wore the Jewish hat, but I mean,
    he was modern.
    He was modern.
    Compared to over here, he was modern.
    Got it.
    Over here like this, he would have been big,
    you know what I mean, Jewish.
    I got a grandson a rabbi in Canada.
    Ah!
    So when you went--
    he read the newspaper, The Forverts,
    and you listened to the radio for the soccer games.
    Only soccer games.
    Only soccer games.
    That's all we had over there.
    You never had no--
    Did you ever hear of a person named Hitler
    when you were growing up?
    Person what?
    Named Hitler?
    Hitler?
    Yeah.
    We know of Hitler.
    But we didn't know about Auschwitz, about Birkenau.
    I lived five miles from Auschwitz.
    Nobody knew it.
    Nothing, nothing.
    Was there talk-- when your father was dying in 1939,
    it was the last year of peace.
    Was there talk in the town that things aren't very stable,
    there will be a war?
    The town was too poor.
    You didn't have money to go to Israel or someplace
    or to America.
    To America, if you had family, maybe.
    This why it took me almost five years
    till I could come over here because I
    didn't have no family.
    Maybe if you had, but I did not know, you know what I mean?
    OK.
    And my older brother and older sister,
    maybe they would know it, so they passed away.
    My sister died two weeks before in Auschwitz before liberation.
    Oh!
    Two weeks before.
    She had diarrhea and everything and that's it.
    Your older sister?
    Right.
    Gerta, was it?
    What was her name?
    Gertrude.
    Gertrude.
    Gutshe.
    She educate herself, intelligent, good looking,
    dressed up nice because my mother always say,
    food is not important.
    It's important, but this--
    I want my dress for, you know.
    Do you have pride--
    In a small town--
    Yeah.
    --they look a little bit different than a big town.
    Especially like in America, they don't
    care who you are as long as they love each other,
    you know what I mean?
    Yeah.
    Over there, it's different.
    Sometimes you get married, you don't know to who you marry.
    Was your parents' an arranged marriage?
    Was your mother and father's marriage an arranged marriage?
    I think so because that's all they had.
    OK.
    So let's go now, again, to 1939.
    You knew that there was someone named Hitler.
    Oh, yeah.
    How did you find out about him?
    Well, they were talking.
    Hitler was one of the best speakers in the world, the best
    one speaker in the world.
    Same thing like Dr. Mengele, one of the best doctors
    in the world, not just in Germany or something.
    But you see what he did.
    Mengele, 21 million people went to him dead
    because only six Jews, and the rest
    was Gentiles, not just Gentiles, Protestants,
    six different sections, different--
    all kind of people, different kind.
    You're talking about the experiments that he made?
    Right.
    But I'm talking beforehand.
    Did you ever hear Hitler's speeches over that radio?
    I saw him personally when I was in camp, the first camp.
    They was making the snow for the soccer game clean, clear.
    He was up sitting over there.
    I couldn't go close to him, you know what I mean, but far away.
    You saw Hitler?
    Yes--
    Wow.
    --because we cleaned up for the game.
    And what camp was this?
    This was not too far away, a small camp.
    What was it called?
    This was in Oberschlesien.
    Oberschlesien?
    Yes, a small camp.
    I was maybe in 10, 12 camps.
    Oh my goodness!
    I was all over.
    Oh my goodness.
    I was in Dachau, Birkenau, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt
    and lots of smaller ones.
    We'll come to these.
    And I will want to talk about them.
    I'd like to find out now, what was that time
    like before the war starts?
    And were there people in your town
    saying, we're going to leave, we're going to go to America,
    we're going to try to get away?
    Or was it pretty much nobody had the belief
    that there's anything that's going to change in 1939?
    No.
    I never believe I will be freed someday.
    In 1939, the war hadn't started.
    Did you ever-- was there talk going on of things happening?
    Nobody knew it about so bad, you know what I mean?
    Maybe the older people thought a little bit more,
    you know what I mean?
    But the young ones--
    OK.
    Do you remember where you were when you learned
    that the war is starting?
    It was September 1.
    Yes.
    I was home-- not home.
    We used to go in a different town, you know what I mean?
    They thought maybe over there it's going to be better,
    but it just--
    What, you had left your own home to go somewhere else?
    You left this town to go a different town,
    maybe it's going to get better or something.
    We didn't know, you know what I mean.
    Do you remember where you went to?
    It was in a small town, too.
    I don't remember even.
    And your whole family had left, that is, your mother--
    Yes.
    We want, you know.
    OK.
    What month did your father die?
    He died six months before.
    So he died in April?
    Something like this.
    This was-- this was after Yom Kippur, Sukkot,
    something like this, in that time--
    OK.
    --he died.
    So who was left?
    Your older brother, Abraham, your mother, Hannah--
    And Gutshe.
    They both worked there.
    And they give us the few dollars to live because we didn't
    have over there Medicare.
    You don't have nothing or something like this.
    Nothing, nothing, nothing.
    You could be brains like Einstein,
    but you wouldn't have no money to go to the college,
    you couldn't go.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    From my town, I remember one went to college.
    One person?
    One person because he had a little bit of money.
    My mother, my father, my brother, and my sister
    was very, very smart, very intelligent,
    but no money to go to college.
    OK.
    You could be Einstein, but if you don't have no money--
    You don't have possibilities.
    No.
    So, did you come back home from that town that you had run to
    or gone to?
    When the war started, you were not in your own town.
    You were someplace else.
    What do you mean?
    I mean, the war started on September 1, 1939.
    Right.
    And you said you were in another place.
    Later on we come back--
    To your own town?
    --because he come all over, you know what I mean?
    Mm-hmm.
    We thought he wouldn't come over here and not over there.
    OK.
    And what did you find when you came back?
    And I stayed over there at home till--
    Till when?
    --he come in and say, if you go to work,
    you're mother' going to be saved.
    Well, before that, I want to get a sense of,
    when was the first time you saw a German soldier?
    The first time I saw what?
    A German soldier.
    In 1939--
    OK.
    And--
    --on their motorcycles and everything.
    On the motorcycles, they drove through town?
    Did they stay?
    Some of them stayed over there, too.
    And they had a dog, too.
    They had a German shepherd.
    The German shepherd killed a dozen people right away.
    Really!
    Yes because Saturday you couldn't
    go to the synagogues, no churches, nothing.
    So the Jews went private, they found out.
    So they brought the dog, they took of the leash,
    and the dog killed all of them, all of them, all 12, 15 people.
    Who had gathered together?
    Right.
    And this was somebody who would become the administrator,
    the German administrator?
    The dog, with Kommando, with the soldier.
    I see.
    So that means there was a curfew established?
    I guess.
    Yes, yes.
    OK.
    Did you continue going to school?
    No.
    No school?
    The minute they come in, no school.
    OK.
    What else changed the minute they came in?
    You see, I left to concentration camp right after the war,
    not too far out long the war.
    After the war starts?
    In 1939, I was in camp already, in a small camp.
    So let me get a sense of this.
    The war starts, soldiers drive through on motorcycles,
    there are German shepherd dogs that are
    used to attack and kill people.
    And does your brother continue working in the printing office?
    Well, he worked for a while.
    OK.
    For a while.
    And he want to camp, too.
    So tell me about this, does something--
    it's something that's not very clear to me.
    The Germans come, they establish themselves,
    at least the army does and so on.
    What happens to most of the Jews in town?
    The ones who could go to work, I mean,
    older or something, they took them to work.
    He left home, took him to work.
    OK.
    In the coal mine?
    Sometimes to the coal mine.
    So you stayed home, and you went to the coal mine.
    Got it.
    My sister worked, but she worked in printing.
    And the Germans owned that.
    So she stayed over there, and she worked over there.
    But she was going home and back all the time,
    you know what I mean?
    She was lucky to have the job for a while,
    until it was Judenrein, take away,
    and everything was different.
    OK.
    I was the last one because they come down,
    they say, we need to so many people, hundred or something.
    If you go by yourself, your mother going to be saved.
    I said, OK, I am going.
    What happened with Bluma?
    Where was Bluma?
    Bluma was in camp already.
    I was the only one left at home.
    OK.
    So when you're at home, it's your mother--
    Right.
    --your sister is working in the printing place--
    Right.
    --Abraham is--
    In a camp already.
    --in a camp already.
    And Bluma just got to be in a camp, too.
    OK.
    And so why-- did they volunteer to go,
    or were they forced to go?
    How did this happen?
    Sometimes they went by themselves.
    They promise them, you know what I mean, if you go,
    your parents are going to be safe, and everything, and this
    and this.
    So you wanted to try to save the parents because we
    thought eventually we're going to come home.
    Got it.
    OK.
    So does this mean this was the last time--
    when you left to go to a camp, it
    was the last time you saw your mother?
    That's it.
    What about Abraham and Bluma?
    Did you ever see them again?
    I did not.
    With Abraham, with my brother, I couldn't find out at all.
    He died in camp.
    OK.
    Bluma, she made it through the camp.
    Gutshe, she died two weeks before the Russians
    took over Auschwitz.
    Got it.
    Auschwitz was occupied by Russian
    because Auschwitz was Poland, and the Russians come in.
    So she had diarrhea and everything.
    How did I find out?
    Some friend of hers could make it through.
    And I saw him, and he told me.
    And did you ever find out what happened to your mother?
    Pardon me?
    Did you ever find out what happened to your mother?
    My mother right away, want to take to the oven right away
    because she wasn't--
    they looked, and wouldn't go for work.
    She couldn't go to work, you know what I mean.
    She was 47, 48 years old.
    For them, she was too old for them, you know what I mean?
    Same thing with me, if I were to say I'm 13 years old,
    I would go right straight to the oven because--
    How old did you say you were?
    And I was 13, but I say I was 18.
    Mengele asks me, how old are you?
    So I lied to him, and I say 18.
    Why did I say 18?
    I don't know.
    God had to give me some brains to say
    it, that's all, because I wasn't so smart to think, to tell him,
    you know what I mean.
    So from your life, Abraham disappeared?
    Right.
    And you never really found out what happened to him?
    And your mother disappears?
    We found out right away she went to the gas chamber,
    you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    So when you left, where were you taken?
    At that time, I was in Auschwitz.
    The very first place you were taken?
    No, no, no.
    I was before in smaller camps.
    OK.
    I'd like to find out--
    do you remember what month you were taken to the camps?
    In 1939, end of the months, you know what I mean, maybe
    two months before.
    So, it would have been like November, October?
    Something like that.
    Something like that?
    Yes.
    I went early.
    OK.
    And so, which is the small camp?
    Do you remember the name of it?
    Oberschlesien in Germany, close, you know what I mean.
    Oberschlesien--
    Breslau, like this.
    OK.
    So it's further north.
    It's still between Germany and Poland, that area,
    but it's further north.
    Not too far away from Auschwitz.
    But Auschwitz, nobody knows.
    Of course.
    I didn't know it.
    Maybe some older people, maybe they
    were thinking or something, you know what I mean.
    Well, the first camp that you went to,
    do you remember how long you stayed there?
    In Auschwitz?
    No, no, no.
    The very first place in Oberschlesien?
    Maybe I stayed six months or something.
    It was 120 people, the whole camp.
    So not many.
    No.
    Not many.
    So later on, he didn't want it.
    So he put us in a different camp,
    a little bit bigger, you know what I mean.
    What did you do in the first camp?
    And finally, he put us to Auschwitz.
    OK.
    We'll get to Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    But in the first camp, what were you doing?
    Work, labor, make holes for protection
    for the soldiers or something, you know what I mean.
    You were digging trenches?
    Right.
    Some of them said I am a shoemaker or something,
    you know what I mean.
    So he could get a little bit different work.
    I didn't-- first of all, I didn't know how to lie,
    and I didn't know, you know what I mean?
    So--
    So I didn't say nothing.
    To Mengele, I lied.
    I wouldn't lie.
    But something God give me to lie because I
    wasn't so bright, so smart.
    In that first camp, how were you treated?
    In the very first camp in Oberschlesien,
    how were you treated?
    How many people?
    No.
    How were you treated?
    A little bit better than Auschwitz and big,
    you know what I mean.
    Not too much better, you know what I mean.
    Were you fed?
    You didn't get three meals a day, you know what I mean.
    You was getting the same thing almost, maybe
    a little piece of bread--
    a little bigger piece of bread or something, not too much, no.
    Did it feel like prison?
    Prison?
    Did it feel like a prison in that camp?
    It was, not like a regular prison, but barracks.
    Mm-hmm.
    Could you leave it if you wanted to?
    No.
    No, OK.
    OK.
    So it was guarded.
    Of course.
    All right.
    And you say from this camp, where
    they were about 120 people, you're
    then moved to another one.
    Not everybody moved.
    Some of them went right straight to Auschwitz to the crematorium
    or something because the small camps
    didn't have no crematoriums--
    OK.
    --you know what I mean.
    Were there older people in these first camps?
    Sometimes older, sometimes younger.
    They look.
    Mengele said if they like you, God have to be with you.
    This is the only thing.
    Right.
    Before we get to Auschwitz, in the small camp
    in Oberschlesien, were there are people
    who were dying in the camp?
    Of course.
    OK.
    Some people, a little bit richer people,
    they die like flies because they wasn't used to it like this.
    I didn't have too much soup in home.
    I didn't have too much that I can eat.
    Like I told you, I never know how a hot dog taste.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So these kind of people--
    like I was in camp with Italian Jews, French Jews, Holland
    Jews, they were not used to the cold weather and something,
    you know what I mean.
    So they sit in a little bed, and they died--
    Yeah.
    --not laying down, sitting like this.
    Well, the Polish ones, we always had winter time.
    We tried to work a little bit, and God, that's it.
    Got it.
    Got it.
    So from the first camp, you went to a second one, not Auschwitz.
    No.
    And where was this place?
    In Oberschlesien .
    Again, another place in Oberschlesien?
    Yes, yes.
    They had lots in small places.
    But later on, they make it a little bit together.
    And so when you went to the second camp,
    was the work different?
    Same thing.
    In Auschwitz I used to work by the oven.
    But we're not talking about Auschwitz.
    I'm talking about before Auschwitz.
    Labor, labor work, streets, something, give water,
    give sand, something, stones.
    So lifting, carrying stones, and bringing water.
    Right.
    Labor camp, nothing special, you know what I mean.
    You had to be no--
    you didn't have to be intelligent.
    But the manual labor is what you were doing?
    Right.
    And you were 13 years old?
    13, 14.
    OK.
    13 years old, yeah, before leaving.
    And from the second camp in Oberschlesien,
    where were you taken from there?
    I was in Breslau.
    This was already--
    German took over.
    Now it's Poland.
    What's it called in Polish?
    Breslau.
    Uh-huh.
    OK.
    Does it have a Polish name, too?
    Everybody know Breslau, that's all.
    OK.
    And in the city of Breslau or outside?
    A little outside.
    And how long did you stay there?
    Maybe a year or so, and later on again.
    And from Breslau, where were you taken?
    From Breslau I was taken to Oberammergau,
    a small town in Germany.
    OK.
    Oberammergau, I believe, is in Bavaria.
    Bavaria, yes.
    OK.
    Everything was in Bavaria.
    Later on, they took me to Theresienstadt.
    This was close to Czechoslovakia.
    Yeah, it's in Czechoslovakia.
    Right.
    And I was in lots of different camps.
    I don't even remember the names.
    I was at least 10, 12 camps different kind.
    That's amazing.
    Yes.
    That's amazing that you went so many.
    I had typhus.
    Where did you have typhus?
    In one camp.
    Do you remember which one?
    In Warsaw.
    Warsaw was uptight long, how you say, from Auschwitz.
    It was within--
    Auschwitz had like a part of its campus--
    Warsaw belonged to our Auschwitz,
    you know what I mean?
    Though it's very far away over Auschwitz.
    Over there, we had lice, from lice.
    You see, typhus, there's two kinds of typhus,
    high fever and stomach.
    OK.
    We had high fever from the lice.
    We had lice.
    We just throw it, not just one lice.
    OK.
    And was that in all of the camps, that they were lice?
    Even SS got sick, too, with lice because it was terrible camp.
    Not too much water to wash, a little bit.
    I don't mean a shower or something, just
    [INAUDIBLE] a little bit.
    No, no.
    This was after they bombed the ghetto.
    We were there to clean up.
    So this is after the uprising, the Warsaw uprising--
    Right.
    --ghetto uprising?
    Right.
    So that would have been 1940--
    '43, 42.
    Right, '43 I think it was.
    And later on from Auschwitz, they took us--
    from Warsaw, they took us back to Auschwitz.
    OK.
    But let's talk about this a little bit.
    And from Auschwitz, I went to Dachau, Germany, Munich.
    Yeah.
    And this was already '44, '45.
    OK.
    But you say that it was in Warsaw that you got typhus?
    Right.
    And is this after you were cleaning up the ghetto?
    This was after the cleanup the ghettos, the steel, stones,
    something like this.
    All right.
    Tell me when you were taken to Warsaw,
    and it was to clean up this ghetto--
    We didn't know nothing.
    OK.
    We going to Warsaw, we didn't know what kind of work.
    But it was a labor camp, that's all.
    So when you got to Warsaw and they put you to work, tell me,
    what did you see?
    Nothing too much.
    This was in the place where the ghetto had been?
    Right, everything, yes.
    Were there still buildings standing?
    Nothing, nothing, nothing.
    One building, the jail.
    That stood?
    Sent.
    They went over there to the jail once a week
    to clean up the lice, I remember.
    Used to put us some stuff, burning and everything,
    once a week.
    But it was to take the lice off of you?
    To kill the lice or something, but didn't
    help too much because it was so many, you know what I mean.
    You didn't have no one lice or something,
    you had pick it up, throw it away.
    And what were you supposed to do in this bombed-out ghetto?
    What was supposed to be done by the prisoners?
    This was after they bombed the ghetto.
    OK.
    And so afterwards, what were you supposed to do there?
    We cleaned up the buildings half way,
    you know what I mean, separate the stones,
    separate the steels, something like this.
    I see, the rubble.
    Basically you put the rubble in one pile and the steel
    in another pile.
    Right.
    Labor, real labor, you know what I mean.
    Did you see anything else?
    Were there furniture?
    Was there--
    We had a few people who was hiding.
    And it was cold.
    And the chimney was out.
    That's how they found out they were hiding over there.
    So they took him out from the hiding
    and hang him or something, or they send him away.
    Did you ever see anybody who had been--
    I saw them taking out, but I don't
    know what they did with the people, you know what I mean.
    Maybe they send them to Auschwitz,
    or maybe they killed him over there.
    OK.
    So whether or not these had been people hiding in the ghetto
    or they were other people who came into the ghetto
    we don't know.
    Well, this was the people who used to live in the ghetto.
    Oh, so it was Jews?
    Jews.
    It was Jews.
    Jews, Jews, only Jews.
    OK I worked with Pollacks.
    The Polish people, they used to come to work from home,
    you know what I mean.
    In Warsaw?
    In Warsaw.
    But they didn't give you nothing.
    I asked him to give me a piece of bread, they asked me,
    you've got blood?
    I say, what do you mean blood?
    You got gold?
    I didn't even know if I find a piece of gold the difference
    because I don't know nothing about gold or something
    like this, no.
    And I speak Polish because in Warsaw, they
    had Jews over there from all over the world--
    Italian Jews, French Jews, Holland Jews, because they
    didn't want the Polish Jews--
    some of them maybe hide or go another way or something.
    But they need a hundred people or more.
    And we went over there.
    OK.
    I didn't understand that part.
    They took the Polish just to make the--
    because they had to have a thousand, and they had 900.
    Ah, I see.
    And they were short 100 people, so they took--
    They took Polish Jews, even though they didn't want to.
    Right.
    Got it.
    Got it.
    So it was about a thousand people
    who were sent from Auschwitz--
    Oh yeah, this is nothing.
    --to clean up the ghetto.
    And Auschwitz had thousands of thousands
    of people, Birkenau and everything.
    OK.
    And as you were cleaning up the ghetto,
    about how long did you do this job of cleaning up?
    Till the Russians come closer to Warsaw.
    Yeah.
    So we worked three days back to Auschwitz.
    By foot?
    And we worked a few years in Auschwitz.
    Later, the Russians come and close it.
    We went back to Germany, Munich.
    We'll get there.
    Yes.
    Let me think more about the ghetto in Warsaw.
    Did you ever find dead people when you
    were cleaning up the ghetto?
    No.
    So all the bodies had been taken away?
    No skeletons?
    No, no, no.
    No goods in other words?
    No.
    Some people found maybe a piece of gold
    where they hide it in the basements or something,
    you know what I mean.
    To me, even if I saw it, I wouldn't know what it is--
    I see.
    --you know what I mean.
    The one thing, even if I see, I wouldn't know what to do,
    you know what I mean.
    OK So it's just hard for me to picture
    that when it's bombed out that all that is left
    is bricks and steel.
    Only the ghetto--
    OK.
    --not the rest, you know what I mean.
    And lucky to be the [INAUDIBLE],, the Auschwitz--
    I mean, in Warsaw is the jail, the big jail
    in the ghetto site.
    But they didn't bomb to ghetto.
    OK.
    They didn't bomb that jail.
    This jail, no.
    OK.
    But you got sick in Warsaw.
    Because of the lice.
    Because of the lice.
    And so what happened to you?
    Did you go to an infirmary?
    Well, they took us-- and that's supposed to be like a hospital.
    First of all, they took away the straws.
    We had straws, no mattresses.
    Because in the straws--
    There's the lice.
    --too much lice.
    And they had small--
    two in a bed, the small ones.
    If I had to turn, he had to turn.
    If he turned, I had to turn.
    That small.
    And he had typhus, I had typhus.
    No medication, no water, no medication, no bread, nothing,
    nothing at all.
    So it sounds like he was just left to die.
    Nothing at all.
    The only thing we had is God.
    Matter of fact, he was dead two weeks,
    I didn't know if he was sleeping or he
    thought because the Kommando, they throw him out
    through the window.
    When I come out, I couldn't walk.
    I was like a baby.
    Like a little step, I couldn't go.
    I had to just like a baby, I had to lay down and go to step.
    It's unbelievable.
    It's a miracle, that's it.
    Was this an infirmary?
    Pardon me?
    Was this an infirmary?
    Was this in Warsaw?
    This is in Warsaw.
    So, it wasn't in the ghetto, and it
    wasn't in the police station.
    Well, where were you?
    When you got sick--
    I was in the camp.
    They had a barrack only for the sick people, for dying.
    Yeah, for dying.
    They didn't want-- because the mayor from over there
    didn't allow them to kill nobody if they don't have to.
    If they die, they die, you know what I mean.
    Because they wanted to kill everybody, so he said,
    no, you can take them out.
    But don't kill him over here because he knows already
    that Russia was close, so he didn't want to be the bad man,
    you know what I mean.
    Was this in Germany?
    Later on, they found out.
    They didn't know right away.
    So nothing happened, but they die on the work.
    We had to work three days.
    Less than half died, you know what I mean, no water, nothing.
    I saw what I never believed it.
    What did you see?
    They were drinking their own urine for water because--
    There was none.
    Oh yey.
    Oh yey.
    It's unbelievable, you know what I mean.
    Oh yey.
    I want to pause here just for a second.
    OK.
    OK.
    You were all alone.
    Once you left home and you go to the first camp
    in Oberschlesien, and then the second one,
    and then after that, did you make any friends along the way?
    You see, we can talk about friends.
    OK, I give you the example.
    OK.
    Wiesenthal-- what's the name?
    Not Wiesenthal, the one who--
    I know who you mean.
    Blitz-- not I was with Blitzer, you know,
    John [=Wolf] Blitzer from the television?
    No.
    With his father I was in camp, too.
    Mm-hmm.
    No friends.
    Hello, hello, or something, but everybody
    got their own problem.
    Bread, bread, bread, that's it.
    By friend I mean something else.
    Never talked about being free someday, never, never.
    Really?
    The brains was like a cow.
    Your brain was like a cow?
    Nothing, nothing, no brains, nothing, nothing.
    Didn't talk about the father, and mother, politics.
    We didn't nothing, nothing.
    People said, well, we didn't know what day.
    We never saw a paper and never saw nothing,
    you know what I mean.
    So it was survival mode?
    That's it.
    Nobody thought everybody survived.
    When did you first get that sense
    that I may not survive, from the first camp or from before?
    We didn't see nothing, you know what I mean.
    We didn't see nothing.
    Same thing, get up, go, wait for the little piece of bread.
    Mm-hmm.
    You have to hide it so they don't steal it,
    too, your own people.
    It's difficult-- many times I've heard that the way a person
    survived in a camp was when they had someone close by, that is,
    either a brother, or a sister, or even a cousin,
    or somebody where you would watch out for one another.
    You'd help one another try and survive.
    Did you ever have someone like that?
    I tell you what, when you was in camp, you didn't have--
    you don't have nothing to help.
    Even if you wanted to help him, you didn't have nothing.
    If you wasn't some older smart one
    who was a little bit in camp before, jails or something
    so that you know a little bit how to run, how to hide,
    how to do, you couldn't help him.
    You didn't have nothing to help them.
    You had a little piece of bread.
    You couldn't give them--
    That's right.
    --your own.
    OK.
    So there was nothing.
    But it's amazing that you went through so many of them
    and you survived them.
    It's unbelievable.
    But we didn't think about nothing.
    He didn't think about the mother, about the father,
    about the brother, about this, nothing, nada, nothing,
    nothing, nothing, nothing.
    Never talk about ending the war or something.
    We didn't know what it was, nothing, nothing.
    OK.
    Did you speak German?
    Yeah.
    I had to speak.
    I speak fluent--
    OK.
    Bayerisch.
    I learned it because most of them--
    Muenchen close.
    And Frankfort the different dialect
    and Muenchen a different dialect.
    Yeah.
    Bavarian is a difficult dialect to understand.
    Well, you learn.
    Now you forget, you know what I mean, after so many years.
    Yeah.
    Were you in Oberammergau before you got to Auschwitz?
    Yes.
    Were you there before Auschwitz?
    Before, Oberammergau was Oberschlesien, very close.
    Uh-huh.
    A small camp.
    OK.
    And do you remember what that place looked like,
    that small camp?
    Was no good.
    I mean, they didn't kill you like in the big ones,
    you know what I mean.
    You didn't see no furnaces, no gas chambers, nothing,
    you know what I mean.
    You just watch yourself that you don't
    do nothing wrong to the watchers, the SS,
    they don't hit you, you know what I mean.
    And this what I was watching very close
    not to get hurt because if you get hurt, not too good.
    Three days later, you're dead.
    You die because you forget, you don't want to wash yourself,
    you didn't care.
    You could see, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    Three days.
    OK.
    Was the work different in Oberammergau?
    The work is everything labor.
    It was nothing, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    All right.
    This was the labor camp, you know what I mean.
    These are labor camps.
    Right.
    See, there's a difference between labor camps
    and concentration camps.
    Right.
    Because after labor camps were the concentration camp
    come in because they got bigger, no more
    the small ones and everything.
    OK.
    So at first you were sent to labor camps in Oberschlesien
    near Breslau, Oberammergau, and so on.
    But these aren't concentration camps.
    These are for work.
    This was all-- right, labor camp.
    Do you know was it for a particular industry
    that you were working in Oberammergau?
    No.
    People on the street outside, you know what I mean,
    loading the little train, loading the little thing,
    the small trains with the sand, or stones, or something,
    you know what I mean.
    Everything labor camp.
    Everything labor camp.
    OK.
    Now in the places before Auschwitz,
    did you meet Jews from different countries?
    Even in Auschwitz, yeah.
    All over I've met different people,
    homosexuals and everything, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],,
    mafias and everything, gypsies, Jehovah's Witness, everything,
    Catholic priests, rabbis, everything, everything,
    everything because you always had a different thing,
    you know what I mean, a little--
    You had a different label.
    Not a label, the name of something,
    but a little picture like this so you
    can see if he is a mafia, or he is a this, or he is this,
    you know what I mean.
    What did you have on yours?
    I think blue and white, something
    like Jewish or something because I was too--
    OK.
    Did you ever feel afraid of other prisoners?
    Afraid for other prisoners?
    No, of other prisoners.
    You mean the kapos, for the kapos?
    Well, for you.
    They're called the kapos?
    Yeah, tell me about them.
    The kapos, you see, you had to be a big man,
    first of all, strong.
    And if you took it, you had to be sometimes tough because they
    had to show it, you know what I mean.
    So they got a little bit more food and everything.
    But after the war, sometimes the kapos got killed.
    We killed him ourselves because they
    were no good because he thought the same thing,
    he will never be free.
    Now in the meantime, he got a little bit food to eat.
    So for that, he agrees to become a kapo.
    Did you ever feel danger from other normal prisoners, not
    kapos?
    No, because he was the same, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    He didn't have no business to do something,
    you know what I mean, if he didn't steal the piece of bread
    from somebody else.
    Stealing bread was death, your own death.
    I was there in a camp, the father
    stole from his son, the father from his son
    the piece of bread, and he found out.
    They killed him.
    You know how?
    You take a pieces from the shovel,
    they put it over here, one on this side, one on this side.
    And if you still alive, they do it one more time, our people.
    This was death because you take away the piece of bread, this,
    you know what I mean.
    Wow.
    This is unbelievable.
    Wow.
    How did things change when you went from a labor camp
    to a concentration camp?
    We didn't know too much before, you know what I mean.
    And was different.
    You come into Auschwitz in the music.
    Really?
    OK.
    You're going to want to work with the music.
    And to be in the music, you had a good job.
    You had a piece of bread more, you had a little soup more,
    you know what I mean.
    You was like a big shot, you know what I mean.
    If you play music?
    Yes.
    But you had to know how to play.
    Yes.
    So when you got to Auschwitz, did you already know
    what Auschwitz was?
    No, nothing at all, nothing at all.
    Did you know that people were being gassed there?
    No.
    When I was in Auschwitz, you didn't
    know how to hide a little bit of something, so I went to work.
    Where did I want to work?
    To Birkenau.
    This was a four-kilometer walk and everything.
    Birkenau was the biggest one, the ovens and everything.
    And I worked by the ovens.
    First of all, I had the wooden shoes, like Holland does.
    Yeah.
    I come over there to Birkenau, was a big pile of dead people.
    I took a jacket because we had the pajama stripes.
    It took a jacket, I took a pair of shoes from the dead.
    But it didn't take long till I come
    to the camp they took it away.
    I saw Russians cut pieces, meat from the dead,
    took it home to cook and eat.
    Being in Auschwitz, in Dachau--
    Birkenau, our group from number 10 walked out,
    was maybe a dozen boys, big ones.
    And one was my brother's friend.
    He recognized me.
    I wouldn't recognize him.
    He recognized me as a baby.
    So he told me they castrate me.
    I didn't know what it is.
    I didn't understand.
    He had to tell me the old fashioned way.
    Oh my goodness!
    He had been castrated?
    Yes.
    He made out no shots, no extra thing, everything.
    And he did the ladies the same thing.
    But you had to be beautiful, tall, and everything.
    Was this medical experimentation?
    Right.
    This was him, with Dr. Mengele experience, right.
    Oh my goodness.
    Well, this was in the papers, too, and everything,
    you know what I mean.
    But lots of time wasn't in the paper if they were, let's say,
    blonde and blue eyes, but he was Jewish.
    So there's lots of time you had to take off the pants
    because most the Jews were circumcised.
    But they don't see this in papers too much.
    Yeah.
    When you got to Auschwitz, what was the very first image
    you had of the place?
    What was the first thing that your eyes
    saw when the train opened?
    The first thing I saw, the big stack of dead people.
    It didn't bother me because you get used to it,
    you know what I mean.
    So I went over there, I picked up a jacket
    from the dead people, I pick up a pair of shoes
    from the people, and I walked.
    I thought I can get by.
    So when I came to Auschwitz from Birkenau, they took it away,
    you know what I mean.
    You cannot be different than somebody else.
    The train that takes you to Auschwitz
    stops when you're going there.
    It lets you out at Birkenau.
    You're at Birkenau, you see a pile of corpses,
    you take the jacket, you take the shoes, and you go--
    was there a selection taking place
    when you got off the train?
    At that time already I was in Auschwitz and Birkenau.
    OK, you had already been there.
    I had been there.
    So it was news for me to have been there because first I
    was there in Auschwitz when they put the number on.
    OK.
    I want to go from the very beginning.
    When you first get to Auschwitz before coming to Birkenau,
    what's the first thing that happens
    when you get off the train?
    When we get off, I told you, we were invited with music.
    Right.
    So this was something that I never saw it.
    I say--
    Of course.
    --it had to be good.
    So what happens-- the music is playing, you get off,
    what happens?
    So I was not lucky enough, I didn't know how to hide this.
    They took me to work to Birkenau.
    So in other words, you were in a selection.
    A selection had happened.
    The selection, I was already-- this was to the selection.
    OK.
    Before the selection--
    I had gone through Mengele.
    OK.
    So did you know it was Mengele?
    Because later on they told me this was Mengele
    because he was there, and he told you, left or right,
    you know what I mean.
    And who told you this was Mengele, in the camp?
    In the camp later on because I told
    them, the one who was there longer at the camp,
    so they know a little bit more.
    Oh, OK.
    I didn't know it--
    You didn't know who he was
    --the doctor came till after the selection, Dr. Mengele,
    you know what I mean.
    OK.
    After coming-- when after I got free,
    you know what I mean because we didn't think about it,
    you know what I mean.
    So at the selection, he asks you how old you are.
    Right.
    And that's when you say, I'm 18.
    Right.
    And you were really how old?
    Because I saw it going left was all the people, some of them
    a little bit not fast, nothing.
    So I saw everything goes straight to the oven.
    Did you know it was the oven?
    Well, we know it was no good.
    We didn't know exactly the oven.
    We didn't know.
    So finally he asked me, and I told him 18.
    And you were really--
    But why, I didn't think I was so smart to say it.
    So to me, it had to be God.
    And how old were you really?
    And I was that time 13 years old.
    My goodness!
    So this is early on.
    This is in 1940 that you were in Auschwitz is in 1940.
    And this was 1940?
    Yeah, yeah.
    OK.
    So the other camps you had been to,
    you hadn't stayed there for more than a year.
    This they didn't ask too much, you know what I mean--
    OK.
    --because it was small ones and everything,
    you know what I mean, you can get by a little bit.
    But this one?
    Did you look older than your years do you think?
    I don't know.
    OK.
    I think I was a little bit taller maybe,
    you know what I mean.
    Now I'm going down.
    So you got into the line of younger people.
    No between different kind.
    OK.
    Was different, all the--
    not all the girls, woman, everything together,
    everything together.
    And after you were in this line that got selected,
    what happened to you then?
    To dress went to work--
    Right away.
    --different places or something, you know what I mean.
    And you got sent to Birkenau?
    Right.
    And that's when you went to Birkenau?
    And what was your job in Birkenau?
    Job at the Birkenau was a tough one.
    What was it?
    I used to stay by the oven and one side and on the other side
    to push in.
    Oh my!
    The worst thing was that next to me on the other side
    was Konos' father and mother.
    And he had to do this to the father and mother.
    Oh my!
    This is the worst thing I saw.
    Plus when I met my brother's friend, when he told me
    about castrating, because I thought maybe
    they could do it everybody like this, something like this.
    Yeah.
    This was the shake-up a little bit.
    Of course.
    So your job in Birkenau was to take the corpses
    and shove them into the crematorium?
    This was the worst job I ever did.
    So by this point, you must realize that people are being
    killed, they're being gassed.
    So your sent to Birkenau as your first job in Auschwitz?
    This was the job, the worst one what I can say,
    you know what I mean, something to do something like this.
    Special when my next one labor on the other side, who
    works with me, his father and mother come.
    What did he do?
    The throw them in.
    He went through.
    He had to push everything--
    Did he say this is my father, this is my mother.
    No, he had to push them in.
    How did you know?
    Did he tell you?
    Because he told me.
    He talked.
    The same thing with my brother's friend who they castrate.
    I didn't know what it is.
    I didn't know it, you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    How long were you doing this?
    How long were you doing this in Birkenau?
    This was only medical stuff, you know what I mean.
    The did it to the women, too.
    No, I'm talking about your job, when you were pushing corpses
    into the ovens, was it for half a year, was it a year,
    was it for three years?
    No, no, no.
    This was sometimes it took a few days.
    It depends what you do, you know what I mean,
    what they tell you to do.
    So they switched you around?
    Right.
    So this wasn't the job that you did all the time.
    This wasn't all the time the job--
    OK.
    --a few weeks, a few months.
    But after a while, you don't mind.
    You don't think about it anymore.
    Something will bring you there.
    OK.
    What are some of the other jobs that you had at Auschwitz?
    In Auschwitz, same thing, streets, he was making stones.
    Streets?
    Oh, cobblestones for the streets?
    This is one time this, something,
    and loading trucks with cement.
    So you would-- like cement bags onto trucks?
    Right.
    This why I got a little bit--
    Uh-huh.
    --because I thought this was going to be easier.
    In the meantime, it wasn't so easy.
    It was easier a little bit then walking and going back.
    Yeah.
    But I couldn't straighten out.
    Yeah.
    Well, heavy bags all the time, that would do it.
    This kind of job I did lots of time.
    OK.
    So it was loading bags onto trucks?
    And loading--
    Unloading.
    --you have to put on top, somebody is working--
    OK.
    --because I thought maybe it going to be easier, but.
    Did you ever have any choice in any of the jobs that you did?
    Not too much.
    OK.
    What was your uniform?
    Describe to me how you got your uniform?
    The uniforms?
    Mm-hmm.
    You had to take off completely everything.
    And they give you a uniform.
    Sometimes they give a big tall men shorts, short men, tall.
    And you had to wear it.
    They give you a pajama with the head and everything.
    And I made one mistake.
    I should have saved it.
    Ah.
    Did you have the same uniform the whole time?
    It depends.
    But it's always something.
    Matter of fact, they used to put a stripe in the middle.
    A stripe?
    They shaved it.
    Really?
    You didn't have no hair, but I mean, life for me,
    they didn't had to.
    But, I mean, some of them in case you run away--
    OK.
    --you can see it, too.
    And did you get a number?
    I got a number.
    Do you know what your number is?
    Can we focus on this?
    Elie Wiesel got a number 18, and I got a number 18.
    Uh-huh.
    But there's more to your numbers.
    What is it?
    So it's-- let me see here.
    I see 1-6-0-3-4-4.
    Are we able to focus in on?
    7, 10, 14, 18.
    Well, your number has 1-6-0-3-4-4.
    I counted.
    1 and 6 is 7.
    You're right.
    7 and 3 is 10.
    10 and 4 is 14.
    14 and 4 is 18.
    That's how you to 18.
    For 47 years, I didn't know the number.
    I thought this is it.
    So everybody asks me, what is the number?
    I used to tell them this is my girlfriend's telephone number
    because I got tired to tell them everything,
    you know what I mean.
    I didn't know it for 47 years--
    So you didn't counted up that way before.
    --because I didn't have the brains to figure ti out.
    I wouldn't have thought it either.
    I would have just read the numbers as the numbers.
    Well, if I were to tell you twice, you would've found it.
    But at that time, you could've told me 10 times,
    I wouldn't think because the brains wasn't there.
    So Elie Wiesel's--
    Elie Wiesel, different number, but 18.
    It comes to 18.
    Only two numbers.
    I was in camp with him and his father.
    And did you know Elie Wiesel?
    Just we know each other, hello, something,
    you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    But I didn't know he was so smart and so
    intelligent and everything because I was nothing.
    Well, I think everybody there felt like they
    were nothing in those camps.
    Now, were your barracks segregated?
    Was it men segregated from women?
    Right.
    OK.
    We used to different camps, different barracks.
    Sometimes was maybe the wire everything
    separated from the women or something
    but you couldn't go close or something.
    First of all, it was electric wires.
    If you go close, you die, you know what I mean.
    In Auschwitz, Birkenau, it was electric wires.
    Yeah.
    Were there some people who committed suicide?
    Some of them did suicide, yes.
    When did you find out about what happened to your mother?
    Well, because everybody know this kind of people,
    like my mother and everything, if they come to the camp,
    they don't have a chance--
    OK.
    --because they were looking for younger
    ones to work and everything.
    OK.
    When you got to Auschwitz, did you
    realize that you were not so far away from your home?
    After.
    After I found out because I didn't
    think that this is all so close or something,
    you know what I mean.
    And did your sister help you get some kind of job?
    Earlier you mentioned to me that your sister was
    smart and forceful Gertrude.
    And you said that she helped you get a kind of job.
    And I'm not very clear about that.
    This was before she went to camps and everything.
    Oh, OK.
    I thought it was about--
    No.
    So you had started working in the printing--
    A few weeks or something on the street.
    And some of the work in the coal mine.
    But she got me a job.
    This was for the city--
    OK
    --to sweep the floors, I mean, the--
    To sweep the street or the floors?
    The streets.
    The streets.
    Oh, so I see.
    So this was still back in the hometown.
    This was the home not too long, you know what I mean.
    Now, had she been sent to Auschwitz?
    She was in the Auschwitz because when she come to Auschwitz,
    this was already Judenrein.
    This was the end already almost.
    OK.
    I mean, a few years, but the end.
    How many years were you in Auschwitz?
    I was in Auschwitz maybe a year and a half to two years.
    So till 1942 or '43?
    And later on, I got transferred to Dachau because--
    Was that your last camp?
    This was the last camp.
    And General Eisenhower liberated me.
    OK.
    We'll talk about that later after lunch.
    I got pictures, too.
    OK.
    Not with me, but I have some pictures.
    But did you ever know that your sister was in Auschwitz
    when you were-- did you ever meet her in Auschwitz?
    I knew she was in Auschwitz.
    And I thought she will make it sooner than anybody
    because she was different, stronger, speak
    perfect German, good looking.
    If she come into the door, you don't let her in,
    she come to the window.
    She has to, you know what I mean.
    She was a--
    That kind of person.
    --this kind of people.
    I thought if somebody's going to make it,
    she's going to make it for sure.
    But she got sick.
    I know.
    My question is, when you were in Auschwitz,
    did you know that she was in Auschwitz?
    No.
    OK.
    Did you--
    OK.
    All right, we are rolling.
    Yeah?
    Mm-hmm.
    OK.
    Mr. Wolnerman, before the break, we
    were talking about your various experiences in the labor camps
    and in also Auschwitz as a concentration camp.
    There were a couple of things that came up
    while we were off camera that I wanted
    to make sure we found out about and explored in more depth.
    One of them was that you mentioned
    that when you were in Warsaw, after the ghetto uprising
    and cleaning up the rubble, that part of your work
    took place in the Jewish cemetery.
    You want to know the street name?
    Yes.
    Gęsia.
    Gęsia?
    Gęsia.
    OK.
    Can you tell me what the cemetery
    looked like when you got there?
    Beat up, lots of thing.
    Were there headstones still?
    Headstones, some of them missing, lots of them missing.
    Lots of them missing.
    Lots of them missing.
    Were they bombed out or just taken away?
    They took it away because they made it
    more for storage, like stones, steel, flames, and so on.
    Does that mean that if you walked into the area
    you would be able to recognize it was a cemetery?
    Yes, yes, you still could have.
    OK.
    Could you still see stones with Hebraic writing on it?
    Some of them, yes.
    OK.
    And are you saying it was used as a place where
    people would store--
    where the authorities, the German authorities,
    were storing things?
    Well, I don't know what kind else
    they did, but this, the storage of the stones,
    and the steel things, and everything.
    So the cemetery plots weren't kept clean.
    And I guess what I wanted to get a sense
    of is, what did it look like when you walked into this--
    Like a warehouse.
    Like a warehouse.
    OK.
    And your job in the cemetery?
    Just to straighten out as much as I could,
    you know what I mean.
    Mm-hmm.
    Was it a large--
    was it a large area?
    Pretty good, pretty good, yeah because some of them
    still left stones the way they were.
    OK.
    In Auschwitz-- you also mentioned something off camera
    about where your barracks were located.
    You said that your barracks were located near a gallows.
    It was a house--
    OK.
    --right across in the same place where they were hanging people.
    Did that happen a lot?
    Well, it happened not every day, you know what I mean,
    because every day they had the fire going all the time,
    you know what I mean.
    The smoke was going all the time.
    But this sometimes they used to hang.
    Were you forced to watch these things?
    Yes because they didn't give us the breakfast--
    I mean, the black chicory coffee, you know what I mean,
    till you go over there first to see everything.
    And he was hanging at least 24 hours.
    I see.
    So that was the procedure?
    Yes.
    So before you get to eat--
    Some of them who tried to run away or something, they get
    caught or something, this how they do it.
    Did anyone you ever know end up being so unlucky?
    He wasn't kin with me.
    He was from Greek, from Greece, good-looking guy.
    And a Polish lady, Polish girl, fall in love with him.
    And she tried to get him out, and they caught him.
    So the best thing for them to show the rest of us
    if you would try what can happen to you.
    So they wanted everybody to see.
    They didn't serve you the food, the coffee, nothing.
    You have to get out and stay outside to watch
    and everything.
    Were they both hung?
    Pardon me?
    Were they both hung, the lady and the man?
    No.
    The lady was not caught.
    They didn't catch her.
    Oh, they didn't catch her?
    No.
    But they caught him?
    And was this within Auschwitz?
    This was in Warsaw, but--
    Ah, this was in Warsaw?
    This was in Warsaw after the ghetto.
    you know what I mean.
    After the ghetto.
    I see.
    I was in Auschwitz, I saw people hanging,
    but I didn't know the people, you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    But where you were housed in Warsaw
    was right next to it, huh?
    This was next to it.
    And I was housed next to the hanging in Auschwitz, too.
    Really?
    Just happened.
    What a charming location.
    Yeah.
    Tell me a little bit about what your barracks
    looked like in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz, very poor, you know what I mean--
    How many people would--
    --not like the rest of them.
    It was brick homes, you know what
    I mean, a little bit different, a little bit
    because I used to be in the big one, too, for the horses.
    It was two or four stages--
    Levels.
    --levels high.
    Most of the time, I used to live on the top.
    Which was the better location?
    Was it the top of the bottom location?
    Well, you didn't have nothing to say.
    OK.
    But was there a place that people--
    They tell you--
    Where to go.
    That's it.
    OK.
    They didn't ask you where you're wanted, you know what I mean.
    Was there a particular location that people
    would have preferred?
    Well, the top one was a little bit more secure,
    you know what I mean, with the stealing, your own people,
    the piece of bread, you know what I mean.
    Lots of time, you used to take the bread between the clothes,
    you know what I mean.
    And then they steel it, too, while sleeping,
    you know what I mean.
    You didn't feel it.
    Did anyone ever steal from you?
    I was lucky, no.
    OK.
    I was very, very careful not to get hurt.
    This was my only thing.
    I didn't try to steal, I didn't try to run away,
    I didn't try no little things.
    I was straight listening, you know what I mean.
    And I figured maybe I will get by, not live or something,
    but I get by, you know what I mean.
    What do you think--
    why do you think you survived?
    Only God want me to, this is the only one,
    because like I told you, no medication, no food, no water,
    high fever, nothing.
    You're talking when you had typhus?
    Right.
    So, did you get better being in that place?
    I had to get better.
    I am here.
    Yeah.
    The first when I got out, I was like a baby.
    I couldn't go on steps even.
    I couldn't walk on the steps.
    I had to crawl, you know what I mean, for a while.
    And they still kept you, that is, as a worker?
    Yes.
    I tried-- they away a little bit, the kapos, the foremen,
    because they couldn't make me die in an hour,
    you know what I mean.
    This was in the place in Warsaw where
    you said the mayor didn't want to have
    anybody outright killed?
    Right.
    The mayor didn't want nothing to happen
    to us because if we were dead then the Russian came closer--
    we were outside for three days, no food, no water,
    nothing to make us very tired, not to fight
    or something like this because they thought maybe
    we go fight because the Russians are coming closer,
    we might fight.
    So the mayor from the city knew it.
    He say, I will not allow nobody to do nothing to them, to shoot
    them, kill him, or something.
    Was this a Polish mayor?
    I don't know if he was Polish or not.
    OK.
    He could probably German--
    Yeah.
    --because a Pollack wouldn't take a chance
    because they could kill him, too, you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    And he was looking for the future a little bit.
    So actually you were there before the Polish uprising.
    He was there before, right.
    Yeah.
    The uprising was-- when we left, we heard it.
    The Pollacks made the uprising because the Russians
    were closer.
    That's right.
    But the Russians were very mad on the Pollacks
    because the Russians wanted to come
    before to go through Poland when they occupied Czechoslovakia.
    So the Pollacks say, no.
    So the Russians were very mad on them.
    So when they make the uprising, the Russians
    moved back a little bit.
    And the rumors were that maybe 100,000 Pollacks got killed.
    It was pretty brutal.
    It was pretty brutal.
    This is what I heard.
    We didn't see nothing, you know what
    I mean because we walked already a few ways.
    So when you left Warsaw, how did you get back
    to the actual Auschwitz camp?
    With the trains, a hundred people on the--
    In a cattle car?
    On the cattle cars, right.
    OK.
    This is the time when I saw people drinking their own urine
    because no water, nothing, hot.
    And when you die, you couldn't lay because everybody has
    to stand, you know what I mean.
    The more died, a little bit more room you have.
    They throw them out, you know what I mean.
    How long did it take?
    It took us maybe three days.
    The train goes slowly, it stops and everything.
    Were the doors open or closed?
    The doors, it was--
    nobody run away, that's the one thing.
    But to throw out a body?
    They throw it away, right.
    OK.
    And had it been only young men or men who were in the--
    Only men.
    Only men, OK.
    So when you get back to Auschwitz itself,
    it's already the late summer, early fall of '44
    because that's when the Warsaw uprising happened
    is early August of 1944.
    Well, we didn't know nothing about the day, the month,
    the year, or nothing, you know what I mean.
    You don't had no control because you never had a paper.
    You never saw a paper, nothing.
    Was there a very active rumor mill?
    How did you get information?
    Not too much information--
    OK.
    --because we didn't never talk to each other.
    We only talked between us.
    Like example, we were 10 kids, and one was the oldest one.
    He was maybe 10, 15 years older.
    So he was like the father.
    If he say, sit, sit, walk, walk.
    Everything, we listened to him.
    So we sit one together, if he talked.
    And one get up, and he say, what would you
    do if the SS come to you and give you
    all the bread he wanted and he shoots you?
    What do you think?
    What if you want it?
    Everybody say, give me the bread and he shoot me.
    Not bread and butter, or steak, or something, just bread,
    enough.
    Nobody, not even the one say no or something,
    you know what I mean, nothing.
    And this is true.
    And this is the one--
    I met him 47 years later.
    I didn't know where he was.
    He left.
    After we got liberated, a week later, he said,
    you know what, I'm going.
    I say, where you're going?
    Maybe I find my mother, my father, my brother, my sister
    because he was 15 years older, you know what I mean.
    I was afraid to walk out, you know what I mean.
    So he left.
    And I always used to tell my wife when
    we got married and everything, I wish
    I knew what happened to him.
    Two weeks later, a friend of ours
    made a luncheon in Florida, and I was invited.
    And one man comes in, a tall man with a yarmulke and everything,
    and he say--
    he shakes, hello, hello.
    I think your name is Dave.
    I say, yeah, my name is Dave.
    And he started to talk a little bit and everything.
    I say, it was nice to meet you.
    I wanted to go.
    He said, no, don't walk away because I want to talk to you.
    I say, yes, OK, we talked.
    He talked.
    Again, I tried to walk away.
    So he say, let me talk a little bit more.
    First of all, you got a number 18.
    I say, Mister, I got a number 16344.
    You got a mistake, you know what I mean.
    And this happened.
    You're going to have a mistake, you know what I mean.
    So I say, it was nice to meet you.
    He say, no stay right here.
    He started to talk to me and everything.
    And he explained to me the numbers
    because I didn't know it.
    I didn't have the brains to figure, you know what I mean.
    I always used to say after the deliberation to everybody who
    asked me, I say, this is my girlfriend's telephone number
    so I don't forget because I didn't--
    first of all, I didn't know the number.
    So he told me the number.
    So just when he told me the number,
    I tried to understand that this was him.
    And I didn't see him for 47 years.
    What was his name?
    Abraham.
    I don't remember the second name, you know what I mean.
    And he lived in Canada.
    And he had a kosher butcher shop because he
    wear a yarmulke and everything.
    And so then you finally recognized that he was--
    I asked him, how did you recognize me?
    The voice.
    Is it possible that the voice can make you?
    That's what he told me.
    It was your voice?
    Wow.
    Well, I don't know.
    I didn't recognize him at all.
    And he explained to you--
    But he explained me the number, and he explained me
    later on about the lady who we live on the attic
    when we got sick, and the Catholics nuns saved a life
    because they took us over because they got lots of food
    from the American soldiers, the beef and everything.
    And we got-- and this was the--
    and we were on the attic by farmer.
    And it was up and down.
    It was going all night.
    So we were laying in very bad.
    And we didn't have no hospital with that small town.
    So he had nuns big place, Catholic nuns.
    You're talking about Feldafing, or you're talking about Dachau?
    This was already Dissen am Ammersee.
    "Amadazay."
    This is already when I got liberated, the same day,
    the next day.
    OK.
    Later on we went to Feldafing to get married to get everything.
    So after liberation, you were in a place called "Amazay?"
    Dissen am Ammersee.
    This was--
    Dissen?
    Dissen.
    Dissen.
    Dissen am Ammersee.
    This was maybe 30 miles from Munich.
    Uh-huh.
    So we stayed over there.
    They took us in.
    They cleaned us up.
    These are Germans?
    In Germany, the nuns.
    The nuns, I see.
    So this was a monastery--
    A monastery, right
    --a convent, excuse me, a convent.
    Right, with the hat, very strong, very, very, very, very
    strong, the religion.
    OK.
    And they give us, the first day I remember,
    was five spoons of oatmeal.
    And I say, sister, how about a loaf of bread?
    No, no, nothing.
    The next day, one more spoon.
    Third day, another spoon.
    Finally they give us one slice of bread.
    So I say, give me at least a half a loaf of bread, sister.
    No.
    But later on, I got better and everything.
    I used to go over there every day.
    If I didn't go, they was looking for me--
    Really?
    --for Dave.
    First of all, I know a few young ones.
    They asked me for a few cigarettes,
    you know what I mean.
    And they trust me a little bit.
    And they were very strong.
    They told me, they cannot sleep.
    The hens have to be out.
    They cannot sleep with the hens underneath.
    So they were very strict in their habits.
    Very strict, but I mean, very good to me, very good.
    For five years, I used to go in every day
    sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for lunch, sometimes
    for dinner.
    When they saw me coming, oh, David is coming.
    The table was full with food, full,
    because they know me for so long.
    And I lived over there.
    Everybody know me.
    I got married over there.
    So Dissen am "Amazay?"
    Dissen am Ammersee.
    Do you know what kind of nuns they were,
    what order they belonged to?
    They always had the white hats and everything.
    Uh-huh.
    Very strict, very strict--
    OK.
    --because was a couple young ones,
    they were cheating a little bit, a couple of cigarettes,
    you know what I mean.
    So in other words, they nursed you back to health
    after you were liberated.
    They saved our life.
    OK.
    And I have now nuns who come in Florida.
    They come over.
    Oh, really?
    The Catholics used from Africa, but they speak English.
    And the head nurse from the hospice brought them over.
    It was three nuns.
    And we were so close.
    After a meal, everybody sat up and prayed
    for us and everything.
    Every Friday, they used to call me and wish me happy--
    Sabbath?
    Saturday, yeah, Shabbat.
    Shabbat, uh-huh.
    Right.
    And this is in Florida?
    Yes.
    Yes, in Florida.
    I still got the pictures.
    OK.
    So that means when your wife and yourself retired to Florida
    some time ago.
    Because I used to live in Des Moines.
    But it was cold, you're getting older, so I moved to Florida.
    And I live 20 years in Florida, a condominium.
    I just sold it not too long ago because Michael
    got us a condominium.
    He fixed up extra one bedroom for the nurse and everything
    because my wife--
    She needed some help.
    --for a while, I pushed it away.
    Now I realize.
    It took a couple of years.
    We used to walk.
    She used to walk four or five miles a day.
    Wow!
    Lately she walked a little bit.
    Let's sit down.
    She put my head on it, start to sleep.
    I say, Jennie-- in Polish, Yanka, Yanka--
    people go through, they go see, I'm ashamed.
    But she couldn't.
    She was tired.
    And I was pushing away the--
    You were pushing away that she was not well?
    --because I saw it going down, you know what I mean.
    How they call, not the Alzheimer's, before
    Alzheimer's?
    Dementia?
    Dementia, yeah.
    Dementia, yeah.
    Not easy, not easy for anybody.
    Yes, yes.
    Yes, I was six months in a home with her feeding her
    three meals a day.
    I was there three months all days from 7:00
    till 8:00 at night.
    Hard.
    I feed her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, three months.
    And finally, Michael said, no, come on.
    Yeah.
    It's hard.
    It's very hard.
    He took a plane, a private plane, he took us over there.
    He got fixed up the condominium special
    for the maid for night, a special room with a bed
    to take it outside from the wall.
    Yeah.
    No, only one Michael in the world.
    You're very proud of your son.
    Well, I give him hell, too, sometimes.
    Well, that's what children are for.
    [LAUGHTER]
    He giving me, too.
    That's also what parents are for.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So let's go back a little bit to Europe.
    OK.
    And in Auschwitz, when you will returned after the Warsaw
    uprising-- well, during the first days,
    you already noticed that the Russians are not so far away,
    and the uprising--
    We saw the airplanes, too, already.
    OK.
    So you all returned to Auschwitz.
    And that becomes-- even though you don't know the dates,
    it is the fall of 1944.
    And I remember reading at some point
    that sometime in November, there was
    a kind of a revolt in Auschwitz against--
    We left already.
    I heard it, that they burned down
    a little bit and everything.
    But they did it a little bit too early.
    They got killed.
    Lots of people got killed.
    All right.
    So when did you leave then?
    You left in the fall?
    Maybe a day or two before.
    Uh-huh.
    OK.
    We was walking for three days.
    So you were taken out and marched out.
    And after three days, we got on the trains and go over there.
    When the Russians come in closer, we went back to Munich.
    And over there, we got liberated by General Eisenhower.
    OK.
    But that still leaves half a year.
    You leave Auschwitz sometime in the fall, October, November,
    whenever, a few days before whatever this revolt was.
    Because I remember someone telling me
    they no longer stamped arms after
    that revolt. Whoever was then brought to Auschwitz
    no longer got a number because they stopped it.
    Well, maybe this is possible, yes.
    And lots of camps, they didn't give no numbers either.
    Like my wife, she didn't have no number.
    OK.
    But you did?
    I have.
    Yeah.
    You saw it.
    Yeah.
    You showed it.
    My telephone number.
    Your telephone number, which adds up to 18.
    18, right.
    Yeah.
    And you know it by heart.
    How about the book?
    Did you read the book?
    Yes.
    You have the book?
    Yes, I do.
    Yes, I do.
    The book is tremendous.
    When we were in Texas, we sold it right away,
    a few hundred or something books charging $16 a book.
    My goodness.
    My goodness.
    So you're taken out in the fall, and you're
    marched for three days, and then you're put on a train,
    and then you're taken to Dachau, which
    is where you spend the next several months, which
    would take us through the winter of 1945, when it's cold.
    We got liberated in April--
    OK.
    --27, 28.
    So tell me about before liberation in Dachau,
    how different was it from Auschwitz?
    Well, it was a little bit different
    because, first of all, it was not so big a crematorium
    like in Auschwitz and then Birkenau
    because Dachau was the first concentration
    camp in the world in Germany because this was made
    for Germans, for the mafia, for the rest of them, homosexuals,
    and so on.
    Also for people who were political prisoners, people
    who were different.
    Have to be not everything political,
    you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    Sometimes you had brown hair, black hair, or something
    like this, you was going to, you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    But was most of them for German.
    Dachau was the first one.
    Yeah.
    So when you got to the camp, were the conditions
    different than in Auschwitz?
    A little bit different.
    In what way?
    Because, first of all, you didn't have the ovens so big.
    You didn't have nothing like this.
    Did you have the same job to put--
    No, no.
    I didn't have no job.
    Any kind of job was for me.
    Because some of them said, they are shoemakers,
    or one is a sewing machines, or something,
    you know what I mean.
    Mm-hmm.
    I couldn't tell him I'm somebody because I don't know nothing,
    you know what I mean.
    I couldn't say I'm an electrician.
    Yeah.
    Maybe somebody who know a little bit, he could get by,
    you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    But for me, I couldn't do nothing.
    But what I meant is, were you put
    to work feeding corpses into a crematoria in Dachau
    like you were in Auschwitz?
    No, no.
    OK.
    In Dachau, I worked different jobs.
    What did you do?
    I worked a little bit farther from Dachau in Muehldorf.
    Muehldorf?
    So you were outside the camp?
    Muehldorf, not too far away.
    Muehldorf?
    Right.
    But we used to go to Dachau to sleep and everything.
    And we had sometime like bunkers.
    We lived in the down, you know what I mean.
    Oh, you lived in bunkers underground?
    In bunkers like this, too.
    Uh-huh.
    And the bunkers were within Dachau, within the camp?
    Around Dachau.
    Not in the camp itself?
    No, no, because in Dachau, the camps,
    we had big buildings and everything,
    you know what I mean.
    Yeah.
    So in Muehldorf, what were you doing there?
    Same thing, on the railroads, and sometimes working
    in the streets--
    Mm-hmm.
    --this kind of work.
    OK.
    No proficient, no special or something.
    Did you have a different kind of uniform on?
    Same thing, stripes.
    OK.
    Stripes and the same clothes that you
    had gotten in Auschwitz?
    Some of them.
    And if not, they give you another one,
    you know what I mean.
    OK.
    Still the wooden shoes?
    Still the wooden shoes, right.
    Well, they wooden shoes was not bad, especially in wintertime.
    Mm-hmm.
    OK.
    You get used to walking in them, huh?
    You get used to everything.
    Same like Russian, was cutting from their people pieces
    to cook, to eat.
    But I never thought in my life something like this,
    and I saw it myself, he was cutting.
    Did you ever have something like that?
    Pardon me?
    Did you ever do anything like that?
    No.
    No.
    This was something think--
    of course, this is unbelievable.
    I don't think they even wrote too much
    in the papers like this.
    Yeah.
    But this was.
    But only the Russian did it.
    I see.
    In Auschwitz, going back to Auschwitz,
    in the time that you were there--
    because you were there a couple of years, weren't you?
    Right, all together.
    All together a couple of years.
    That work that you did at the crematorium,
    did that happen until the time you left off and on?
    Off and on, right.
    OK.
    So it wasn't one time at the beginning and never again?
    No, no, no.
    Well, sometime how you used to work over there, people
    who used to work over there, the next day, they want by himself.
    They throw him, too.
    They don't want them to know too much, in case.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    There was that danger.
    Yes.
    By the time you're in Dachau, and it's winter, and it's cold,
    and it's a little bit different, you're in Muehldorf,
    and so, are people getting the sense of-- in the prison,
    in the camp, are they getting the sense
    that the end of the war is near?
    No.
    The only thing happened, when we saw it,
    the soldiers tried to run away a little bit.
    So we started to run away, too.
    But this was three days too early.
    So they had to catch us.
    We had to get back to the camp for three more days.
    So this is in April, close to liberation.
    Right, right.
    So German soldiers are running away--
    Because-- right.
    So we'd run away, too, you know what I mean.
    But we had to go back because they caught us back.
    And some of them there was a fight.
    They was afraid, so they went back.
    Like me, I had to go--
    I went back by myself because I was by myself,
    you know what I mean.
    I didn't know what to do.
    OK.
    Were you afraid that you might be
    hung just like the people in Auschwitz had been?
    Well, I thought maybe--
    we thought already different things.
    Maybe I could be free.
    I wanted to be free.
    I don't want to get killed, you know what I mean.
    Right.
    So later on, three days later, American soldiers
    took over and everything.
    And you were in the camp itself when they came?
    This was out of the camp on the trains
    going up and down, up and down, you know what I mean.
    Explain to me it.
    --because not too far away was like Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
    the skiing and everything.
    That's right, the Garmisch area.
    Yes.
    So you were outside the camp when you saw Americans
    for the first time?
    Right, right.
    Matter of fact, they were the first ones
    we saw coming into the little town.
    So they wasn't the--
    they had the Jeeps open.
    Yeah.
    And they had the cans stored up, everything.
    We didn't ask no question.
    We were just running over there.
    We took it out, and we took it and everything.
    So they stopped the whole thing, and they come over
    with guns and everything, and they took everything away.
    So everybody started to cuss in her language,
    Yiddish, and German, and Italian, French, everything.
    So finally was over there one Jewish captain.
    And he heard Jewish, Hebrew talking, a little bit.
    So I still got the Chai.
    I wear it, even.
    So he asked me--
    he took it out, and he say, you Jewish?
    Yes.
    So he read it.
    I told him, it's a Chai.
    What's a Chai?
    A Chai, this mean like--
    let me show you.
    You know you're going to ask him about that?
    OK, hold on.
    It's like a Jesus, something like this.
    But if we can, we can cut for a second.
    I see-- well, on the book you can--
    --[INAUDIBLE].
    Leave it out for right now.
    We're going to have to put it on record.
    Yeah.
    We're going to-- all right.
    Sorry.
    I'm glad we got to that.
    OK.
    We're rolling?
    Yes, we are.
    OK.
    So let's talk about this incident
    again because I didn't fully understand it.
    I'll repeat what I think I understood,
    and you tell me if I'm right.
    You are all former prisoners-- you're prisoners.
    Right.
    And the first Americans that you see--
    Right.
    --are riding on a Jeep through town, through the small town
    you're in.
    And that's close to the camp of Dachau but not in it.
    No, right, right.
    It's not in it.
    Right.
    And you see because they have open trucks--
    Because the Jeeps-- It was summer or April.
    Yeah, it's April.
    And we saw the cans.
    You saw cans of food?
    Food and everything.
    So we didn't ask no questions.
    We just went there, and grabbed it, and everything.
    OK.
    So they stopped the whole thing.
    The soldiers stopped?
    Stopped and they had over there a general and everything.
    And he come over to our group, soldiers,
    and they took everything away from us
    because they didn't know who we are.
    Right.
    So finally, the captain, the Jewish captain,
    explained it to the general and everything.
    So they brought everything back and more.
    OK.
    So before we get there, this Jewish captain
    hears you cursing in Yiddish?
    Right.
    Because everybody cursed in different languages
    because they took it away--
    Yeah.
    --you know what I mean.
    What did he do?
    After he heard you cursing, but before he spoke to you,
    what did he do?
    He didn't say nothing.
    He just went.
    He came back and he say, you are Jewish?
    I say, yeah.
    And so he took this out, and I say, read it.
    I say it's a Chai.
    So he say, I am coming from Austria.
    I never saw no Jews or nobody.
    You guys are the first ones that I see.
    And he went back to the general and he talked to them
    and told him.
    So the general come over.
    And with the soldiers, they brought all this stuff
    back and more to eat, you know what I mean.
    And did people start eating?
    And we start to eating.
    And I found out later maybe 100,000 of our people
    died from this food because we was not used to it.
    Yeah.
    We was getting diarrhea from the front and back.
    Yeah.
    All night we was vomiting and doing something else--
    Yeah.
    --because we got-- over there, it was curfew time.
    So we went to a farmer, and he give us
    the farm upstairs on the attic, you know what I mean.
    With the Chai, the straw was over there.
    So in other words, at that moment when the Jeeps come in,
    you realize that you're free--
    Right.
    --because the Germans are no longer in control?
    Right.
    OK.
    And so the first thing is is that you find this--
    that you have this contact with this soldier.
    And what you're showing me now, is that your
    own Chai, or is that from him?
    From him, this is from him.
    This is from him.
    This is from him?
    Right.
    So what did he do?
    He took it off his neck?
    From his neck and give it to me.
    Do you ever-- oh my goodness!
    And you've carried it around all this time?
    Since 1945.
    So you've worn in around your own neck for over 70 years?
    Right.
    Wow.
    Did you ever learn his name?
    Well, I tell you one thing, I didn't think about it.
    Later on, I worked for the soldiers
    after a few months liberation.
    I used to work for the soldiers.
    I used to go around and give the food, breakfast, lunch, water,
    extra water, water.
    So I got some pictures with their soldiers
    when they took it, you know what I mean.
    And they told me the name, but I didn't took that full name.
    I didn't take-- they told me they
    are from Indiana or something.
    OK.
    I didn't have no brain.
    I didn't think about it.
    OK.
    So at one point, you knew, but it didn't register with you.
    No, no.
    I didn't stay with you.
    No, it didn't register.
    But the Chai did?
    Right.
    The Chai did.
    Right.
    And for those of us who aren't Jewish,
    explain to me what is a Chai.
    A "Chai" means 18 to life.
    Ah, OK.
    And is it a symbol that men often wear?
    Right.
    And the ladies, too.
    And ladies, too.
    To life.
    To life.
    Yes.
    OK.
    In the book where they wrote it, it's the page,
    the first page is this, everything.
    Yeah.
    The number and telling everything what it is.
    The Chai is-- liberation, the whole explanation,
    you got in the book.
    Thank you for showing me.
    Thank you for sharing that.
    You still need that?
    Pardon?
    No, no.
    We can put it away.
    But thank you so much.
    I tell you one thing, I'll be honest with you,
    I don't show this not too many people
    because, well, it's too much.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    I believe in one thing now.
    Mm-hmm.
    Believe, but don't forget.
    Forgive, but don't forget.
    Because the SS who was, they are not alive anymore.
    They had to be older than me, at least a year or two older,
    you know what I mean.
    So, not too many live longer than that,
    you know what I mean.
    So my philosophy is forgive, but don't forget.
    Lots of them from my people would hate me
    for this saying because, how can you forget something like this?
    How can you forgive something like this?
    But I am different.
    Were you able to forgive?
    Pardon me?
    Were you able to forgive?
    I am thinking, because the people who was,
    they are not alive anymore.
    And the younger ones--
    you could see today, I bet you had lots of Germans
    over there so they're visiting and everything.
    And the Germans now, everything, Germany
    is very close friends with Israel, very close.
    So some I don't blame them if you don't believe it.
    I don't blame them if they believe it.
    You mean about what happened, or if they believe in what?
    I mean if they're forgiven.
    I see.
    I see.
    I say forgive, but don't forget.
    OK.
    It's a huge thing.
    Once a person has been injured to such a degree,
    once a people has been wiped out to such a degree,
    it's a huge challenge to be able to do this.
    Right, right.
    Like I told you, I bet you lots of from our people
    who may be alive now, they would hate me
    for saying this because I told you,
    with a religious, my brother's friend,
    he was one of the top believing in everything.
    Tell me about this incident again
    because when we spoke about it, it was off camera.
    So tell me, this was after the war?
    This was after the war in Munich.
    OK, what happened?
    Happened to be I was in Munich, and he was walking,
    and he lived in Munich or something.
    I didn't know about him at all.
    I just met him now.
    I knew him before the war that he
    was my older brother's friend.
    OK.
    So I was at that time 10, 12 years old.
    OK.
    I saw him.
    He recognized me, I recognized him a little bit.
    On the street?
    On the street.
    And he was dressed up with a nice suit,
    with a tie and everything.
    And at home, he was dressed up with the black thing,
    like the real Jewish rabbi or something.
    Like somebody who was Hasidic?
    Right.
    he was like a rabbi or something.
    And so I say to him, what's happened?
    He said, I don't believe in God.
    You don't believe in God?
    He was such a believer.
    He was like God to us and everything.
    He say, where was God when they throw in the kids?
    They throw my parents in, your parents in, maybe they can say,
    we was against Hitler, maybe it was a communist,
    maybe it was that, maybe it was that.
    How about the young kids?
    How about the two months, three months, one year, two years?
    What did they do wrong?
    Yeah.
    So he asked me, how about you?
    I said, I believe God more than I ever did.
    And did you tell him why?
    Because I had typhus with no medication, with no nothing,
    no medication, no food, no water, high fever,
    no water at all, and I am alive.
    So, who was it?
    Yeah.
    So your answer to him was, you believed in God because you
    got better from this typhus.
    Because this was a miracle.
    Yes, mm-hmm.
    And did you ever meet him again?
    No.
    So this was just on the street?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    All right.
    So I'm going to go back now a little bit chronologically.
    That first time that you see these American soldiers,
    when you get the food-- you get some food,
    but you didn't get sick from it, did you,
    from the food that they gave you?
    Well, we eat maybe too much and too fast.
    It's not normal.
    Of course not.
    But what happened to you when you ate it?
    I was sick like a dog.
    Ah.
    I didn't think we ever going to make it.
    And that evening, did you go back and sleep in the camp?
    No.
    Where did you go?
    I was free.
    I was over there by the nuns.
    I stayed over there a week in like a hospital or something
    until finally they let me go, and IO lived private.
    But I used to go everyday to them over there.
    You had mentioned when the Jeep was still there
    that there was some farmers that you went to,
    or did I misunderstand that, that the first night you spent
    with a farmer up in the attic?
    Because it was curfew time.
    Ah, OK.
    So we had to have something.
    And the farmers let you in?
    The farmers had to let you in because the soldiers--
    Forced them to?
    --told us, you cannot stay in the street because you have
    to go, you know.
    So they put us on the attic, you know what I mean.
    OK.
    And they knew who you were, these German farmers.
    Of course.
    And what was their manner like to you?
    No, they didn't say nothing.
    They were nice.
    They did it because they were afraid
    or something from the soldiers, and they had to do it.
    OK.
    And the second day is when you end up
    with the nuns in the convent?
    We stayed over there maybe a week in there--
    With this farmer?
    --till we got a little bit back to normal a little bit.
    OK.
    And then that's when you went to where the nuns convent was?
    Yes, I got very close with them.
    OK.
    They got very close with me.
    If I didn't come one day over there,
    they were looking for me.
    When you left the convent, where did you go live?
    When I left the country?
    No, no, no.
    The nuns, when you left the nuns,
    you said you lived nearby.
    So the government, the German government,
    give us an apartment.
    Ah, OK.
    So we stayed over there by ourselves.
    OK.
    And who did you live with?
    With a few boys from where we got liberated.
    OK.
    Also from Dachau?
    This was from Dachau, yes.
    And the apartment was in what town?
    In Dissen am Ammersee
    Ah-ha, close to the convent, Dissen am Ammersee.
    Close to Munich.
    Yeah.
    How long did you stay there?
    I stayed five years in this town.
    In that same apartment?
    In the same apartment, maybe four years.
    OK.
    And was the apartment part of the Feldafing camp?
    Well, they had rooms where they let us use it,
    you know what I mean.
    Maybe they got paid from the government,
    from the German government.
    I don't know.
    But my question to you is, did you ever end up in a DP camp,
    in a displaced persons camp?
    I used to come visit Feldafing.
    Ah, OK.
    But you were never living in the camp?
    No, I didn't live too much.
    My sister lived over there for a while,
    before I met because I didn't know her.
    OK.
    So tell me when is the first time you met your sister?
    I met my sister maybe after--
    maybe a year after liberation.
    And how did you get to know--
    how did you find each other?
    Because everybody's-- we either saw somebody.
    Did you see my sister?
    Did you this?
    Somebody saw her, and talked to her, and they told me.
    And I got a hold of her, and this how I know it.
    And where was she living when you found out about her?
    She was living in Feldafing.
    Oh, so, she wasn't that far away?
    But we did know it.
    Yeah, OK.
    It was a couple thousand people or more.
    And what camps had she gone through?
    She was in different from my camp.
    OK.
    Did she tell you much of what she had gone through?
    She had not too bad.
    Some of them, not too bad.
    Well, what does that mean, not too bad?
    She worked over there.
    They were treated a little bit nicer.
    And she worked in a factory who make the clothes--
    not clothes, the material, you know what I mean.
    Oh, textiles?
    Right.
    OK.
    And was she in Germany?
    This was in Germany.
    OK.
    And did she know what had happened to your older sister?
    No.
    Or your brother?
    No.
    Or your mother?
    No.
    OK.
    Did you think of going back to Poland at that time?
    No.
    Why not?
    Because, first of all, all the big concentration camps
    was in Poland, Auschwitz, Birkenau,
    all the big ones anyway.
    Lots of big ones was in Poland.
    And you didn't want to be anywhere near them.
    And I didn't want to go back.
    I didn't have nothing to lose over there.
    Yeah.
    Were you thinking about where you should go,
    where you should move to?
    Once you were free, where did you want to go from there?
    Well, when I got free, we were thinking
    to go to Israel, America, and Australia--
    OK.
    --them three.
    Those three places?
    Right.
    OK
    So Israel was coming late, Australia late,
    and America come before.
    So we went to America.
    So when you say they came late--
    Because you had to wait.
    With the Jewish Federation, you had to wait in the line.
    It's not like Mexico, come over.
    So tell me, what was the process?
    Explain to me what the process is.
    First of all, you had to be the true what you are--
    OK.
    --telling the truth what you are.
    Secondly, they thought maybe you've got relatives.
    So the relatives can be--
    they were afraid if you come to this country, you get sick.
    So the government have to pay because we didn't have nobody.
    So they were looking for something who will be for you.
    OK.
    So you had to find sponsors?
    Right.
    And I didn't find nothing because maybe we
    had some relatives because I was too young to know.
    OK.
    What about during those years when you were waiting,
    did you go to school?
    What do you mean, after?
    After the war?
    No.
    Because you say you finished three grades of schooling
    before the war.
    First of all, in Germany, took maybe a year
    before they opened up the schools.
    OK.
    You couldn't go to school.
    And secondly, you didn't think about it yet.
    OK.
    Well, your life-- these events all
    happened at very crucial parts of your life.
    The war started when you were 12 years old.
    You're not even a teenager.
    And six years later, you were already a young man.
    It starts out as a kid, and then when it ends,
    you're 18 or 19 years old.
    Well, I remember I was reading a paper after the war, doctors
    from all over the world come out,
    if anybody who was more than a year in concentration camp,
    had to be something wrong with him.
    You will never be the same like he was.
    And I think he was right.
    I am not the same like I was.
    How were you before, and what changed?
    Well, I give you the example.
    For 42 years, I never had a vacation.
    I didn't even know about the vacation, a day or something
    off.
    So you tell me I was normal?
    And did you eventually have a vacation?
    Not too much because my vacation was
    I wanted my boys to have education.
    Mm-hmm.
    I was the old-fashioned me.
    What kind of a person would-- what kind of a young child
    were you before the war started?
    How would you describe yourself?
    Well, I can tell you, I know we got respect for the mother
    and father all the way.
    OK.
    We never talked about the table something like over here, sex
    and this or this, nothing, nothing, nothing.
    Nothing happened.
    OK.
    By the way, did you learn about such things in the camps?
    No.
    No?
    We wasn't ready for this.
    And then afterwards, when it's all over, in 1945,
    how had this all changed you?
    Well, it took a little bit, a while.
    It took us time to get a little bit back to normal.
    OK.
    Can you explain that a bit?
    What does that mean?
    Did you have nightmares?
    Well, normal, we never be normal.
    But it's better, you know what I mean.
    How did you meet your wife?
    Pardon me?
    How did you meet your wife?
    I met her in the DP camp in Feldafing.
    OK.
    And in what way?
    Who brought you together?
    No, just we were there, something, together.
    We were young.
    And how long did you know each other before you--
    Six months.
    Six months?
    Can you tell me a little bit about what
    her experiences were?
    Hers?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, she was in camp.
    She got one place.
    The head German from the company, I mean,
    the real big one, she liked her.
    She loved my wife.
    She used to bring her everyday soup and a sandwich every day.
    She took her life in the end, you know what I mean.
    And she wanted her to take out from concentration camp.
    In Germany, you've been there, every second one
    has got a bike.
    Everything is bikes over there.
    And she brought a bike for her to take her out and everything.
    And she said, I don't want to go because I
    don't want to leave my friends.
    Your wife said that?
    He want to take her out from the concentration camp,
    take a chance.
    Mm-hmm.
    And she didn't go.
    Secondly, they were walking, too.
    So the soldier had like a bag to put the bread
    in for them and everything.
    So she say to the soldier, to the German,
    it's too heavy for you.
    Let me carry for you.
    So he give it to her.
    And they open up, and she eat with the friend
    the whole thing, the bread with the lunch, everything.
    And she give it back to him, he say,
    you finished up everything.
    You know I could shoot you, but I will not do it.
    If you've got guts and take a chance to do this,
    I let you go by.
    Wow!
    Wow!
    She would've been dead.
    So these are some of her experiences?
    She took a chance, and he took a chance, too.
    Did you talk much to one another about these things?
    Sometimes.
    Mm-hmm.
    Do you think she understood you better
    because she had been through these same things herself?
    Well, she understand.
    Yeah?
    What was your wife's name?
    What was your wife's name?
    Yanka in Polish.
    Yanka.
    Jennie in English.
    And what was her maiden name?
    Nyer.
    Nyer.
    And what town was she from in Poland?
    She is maybe eight kilometers from where I
    used to live in a bigger town.
    Really?
    So close.
    So close.
    What was the name of her town?
    Do you remember?
    Bingen.
    Bingen, she was from Bingen.
    Close to Oberschlesien, too.
    OK.
    So in these years after the war when you spent them in Germany,
    did you start working someplace?
    Did you do anything to earn some money?
    Or how were you supported?
    I worked.
    OK.
    What did you do?
    Work with the soldiers.
    And they pay me not with money, but they give me
    half the ration what the soldiers were getting.
    OK.
    And were you able to sell some of this to make some money?
    Right.
    OK.
    On the black market.
    I used to get a carton of cigarettes.
    They used to get two cartons, and I
    used to get the one carton.
    And a carton of cigarettes was lots of money.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Well, I mean, the black market was thriving after the war.
    And is this how you were able to support yourself?
    Right.
    Did you get any kind of financial support
    from UNWRA or from--
    No, no, no.
    Nothing?
    At that time, they didn't pay nothing yet.
    Huh.
    Uh-huh.
    But I worked, my wife worked.
    What year did you get married?
    In 1949, six months before I came to this country.
    OK.
    What's your wedding date?
    This was before Yom Kippur, October or something like this.
    You can ask me some questions.
    OK.
    A little bit louder
    I will try.
    Sometimes my voice is too soft.
    So I wanted to get a sense of what kind of training,
    what kind of work did you do in Germany
    while you were waiting to get permission to come either here,
    or to Australia, or wherever?
    I talked to coming to America to a tiny place.
    I have to have something to--
    I have to have something to do, you know what I mean.
    So I had a friend who took over from the big Germans a factory,
    a printing factory.
    And the printing factory was 2,500 people working,
    a little publishing company in Cleveland.
    Oh, this is in Cleveland.
    Right.
    I'm talking still in Germany.
    Oh, well, in Germany, was a big company, too--
    OK.
    --in printing, Hubert Printing Company.
    Hubert?
    Hubert, right.
    And this was my friend.
    He was the Treuhändler.
    He just took over because a Nazi used to own.
    I see.
    And he was liberated.
    And he used to speak English, speak very fluent English
    already at that time, a very intelligent man.
    So he took over.
    I go to him, and I say, listen, I wanted to be a pressman,
    but I mean, I want you-- in Europe, when you start to work,
    they let you take out the bucket first because the toilet,
    you don't have no toilet, you know what I mean.
    And I say, I don't want it.
    I want this.
    So he talked to the foreman over there.
    He say, Dave coming, teach him.
    Don't tell him to sweep the floor first or something.
    And I worked over there, and I learned this job.
    And the job was what kind of job?
    Printing.
    Printing?
    Yes, a little publishing company,
    one of the famous company.
    Is it's still in business now, do you think?
    I worked over there.
    OK
    And they paid a little bit.
    OK.
    So you learned how to be a pressman?
    A pressman, right.
    And when you came to the United States,
    and you lived in Cleveland at first,
    and you went and found a job there,
    was it the same technology?
    Well, this one over here was a little bit more modern.
    Ah, OK.
    They had bigger presses, bigger everything.
    But I had the experience already.
    OK.
    And I learned quick.
    OK.
    And so you already had something--
    And I had a good job.
    How was-- I want to talk about DP life a little bit.
    In this town where Feldafing was so close by,
    was it a very large camp?
    You mean in Dissen?
    In Dissen, yeah.
    A small town.
    A small town.
    But what about the Feldafing, was that close to Dissen?
    Feldafing?
    Yeah.
    Maybe 10, 12 miles.
    OK.
    And how long did that camp exist?
    The DP camp?
    Yeah.
    This was quite a few--
    No?
    OK.
    All right.
    He's tired of looking at me.
    No.
    [INTERVIEWER LAUGHING]
    All right.
    Was Feldafing basically a Jewish DP camp,
    or were there other nationalities there?
    In the DP camp?
    Yeah.
    Different nationalities too.
    OK.
    Most of them Jewish.
    Most of them Jewish.
    OK.
    And you're in Germany for quite a few years after the war.
    How did it feel right after the war
    being in a place that had been--
    was the place where, in a part of a country
    that was the aggressor country that had made war on the Jews?
    How did it feel being amongst Germans?
    Well, it goes both ways.
    OK.
    You have the same thing like being in the business.
    I took over business, I didn't have
    no knowledge from business.
    But I was kind to the customers.
    I treat them like they would be the top.
    OK.
    And this how I made it.
    OK.
    Same thing over there.
    I had good neighbors, they treat me nice,
    so I treat them nice, too.
    And we were friends for five years living over there.
    So in other words, you didn't hold it against all Germans.
    Not too much, no.
    OK.
    All right.
    That is also something that not everybody was able to do.
    I told you before, some people, my own people
    would hate this what I say.
    Yeah.
    Forgive, but don't forget--
    That's your motto.
    That's your motto
    --because how can you forget?
    Yeah.
    How can you forgive?
    But you have to do it.
    This is my opinion.
    Did you talk much after the war about all of the experiences
    that you had?
    No, not too much.
    As your children were growing up?
    Well, my children, they were too young to tell it.
    If I tell them something, they were laughing.
    Really?
    They couldn't believe.
    When did they start believing?
    When they got older a little bit they got to believe.
    Did you wait until they started asking questions?
    Well, not quite.
    No.
    You shared what you had known before that, huh?
    Right.
    OK.
    I mean, that's something also that people are different.
    And some people never told their children anything
    because they wanted to spare them the knowledge.
    And other people felt that it's important.
    Well, I think the kids should know because our people
    in 10 years, not even 10 years, you
    will have no Holocaust survivor anymore.
    Mm-hmm.
    So the second generation should remember more than this.
    If not, it's going to be finished completely.
    Tell me again how many children you have.
    Pardon me?
    How many children do you have?
    How many I have?
    Yes.
    I have two boys.
    And who is the older and who's the younger?
    The name of the older.
    The other one is Allen.
    Allen.
    And the younger son?
    Is Michael.
    OK.
    10 years younger than the older one.
    All right.
    And they were both born in the United States?
    Right.
    Have you ever been back to Poland with them?
    To Poland with them?
    No.
    Have you ever been back to Poland?
    I was back one time.
    OK.
    How many years after the war was that?
    Oh, at least maybe 20 years or more.
    OK.
    And this was already--
    I went only because of the neighbors and my wife--
    They wanted to go.
    --because they want a chaperone because they was never
    in Auschwitz and Birkenau.
    And they wanted to see it.
    So they took me.
    And so we stopped already in the town where I lived.
    It took us five minutes in the town.
    Now, your grandfather's name was Nyer, too,
    wasn't it, who was the mayor of your town?
    Wasn't his last name Nyer?
    Nyer, yes.
    And your wife's maiden name was Nyer.
    Right.
    And she was only eight kilometers away from your town
    in Bingen. Was there a relationship there?
    Was this a family relative of some kind?
    Maybe.
    OK.
    But you'd never were able to--
    No.
    --establish it?
    OK.
    Well, I've come to pretty much the end of our interview.
    Are there other things that you would
    want to add that you think people should know about,
    things that you've thought about,
    as well as the story that we have explored today,
    things you'd like to say?
    Well, I don't have nothing bad to say about this country.
    About the United States?
    Right.
    I only have good things to say because what's
    happened to me and my family, this could never
    happen no place in the world--
    OK.
    --to being good friends with the generals,
    good friend with the governors, good friends with senators.
    This can only happen in America in a town
    like I live in Des Moines, in Iowa.
    OK.
    Well, it's also very heartening to know
    that they find what you have to tell them important,
    that they need to know and want to know about your experiences.
    I understand you also go to school sometimes
    to talk to children?
    I do this.
    OK.
    What are the kinds of questions that they ask you?
    Sometimes yes, not quite like you,
    but yes, very good questions, too.
    What do you think--
    Their questions a little bit different.
    How was your food, and how was this, how was--
    a little bit more kids stuff.
    Well, kids are interested in that way.
    I mean, they have their own important things
    that they want to know.
    Right.
    OK.
    I went to churches, and they donate over $200
    to this Jewish thing, their money.
    They donate to which Jewish--
    a charity?
    To this.
    To this?
    Our museum?
    Right.
    Well, thank you very much for that, for the work on behalf
    of the museum.
    I have over 200 letters at home when
    my wife used to go to schools.
    I didn't go to schools before.
    My wife used to go more than me.
    When did you start going?
    I started going maybe a few years ago.
    Uh-huh.
    Was it difficult at first to talk about these things?
    Well, because I'm not a good speaker.
    Well, I think you've done wonderfully.
    But I am an honest figure is the only thing.
    Yeah.
    Well, Mr Wolnerman, I would like to thank you
    for speaking with us today, for sharing all of your stories
    with us today, for answering all my questions,
    and once more, for making the journey from Iowa to here
    in Washington, DC.
    And with that, I will say this concludes the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mr. David
    Wolnerman on May 9, 2016.
    Thank you again.
    I hope I have decent job.
    You did a wonderful job, a wonderful job.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    David Wolnerman, born on May 9, 1927 in a small town in southwestern Poland, discusses his family, including his older brother Abraham and his two older sisters Gertrude and Bluma; growing up poor and living in his grandfather’s apartment house with other relatives; living without electricity and buying water by the bucket; his older sister and brother working in a print shop; non-Jews working in the town’s coal mine; his father who had asthma and died at age 47 in 1939, six months before the German invasion; the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939; fleeing with his family to a nearby town and returning soon after; Bluma and Abraham being sent to a work camp; being sent to a camp at age 13 and being made to do manual labor since he was unskilled; lying about his age in Auschwitz; sometimes working near the ovens in Auschwitz; going to a camp near Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland) after six months; seeing prisoners being hanged and other atrocities in the camps; the death of his mother in Auschwitz; being sent to Oberammergau, Germany and then to Theresienstadt; being on a work detail to clean Warsaw after the bombings in 1943; contracting typhus and recovering before being sent back to Auschwitz; being sent to Dachau; being liberated by American troops; learning that Abraham and Gertrude died in the camps; getting sick after liberation from eating American Army food; being nursed back to health by nuns; a chai necklace that a Jewish army captain gave him 70 years ago; living in an apartment in Germany for four years; meeting his future wife Jennie in Feldafing displaced persons camp; finding Bluma a year after liberation in a DP camp; getting married in 1949; waiting five years to immigrate to the US because he could not find any relatives to sponsor him; learning the printing trade at a friend’s company in Cleveland, OH; his two children; the recent death of his wife; speaking to school children about his experiences; and writing a book about his experiences.
    Interviewee
    David Wolnerman
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2016 May 09
    Geography
    creation: Washington (D.C.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Personal Name
    Wolnerman, David, 1927-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Ina Navazelskis, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with David Wolnerman on May 9, 2016 in Washington, D.C.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:05:19
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn539328

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    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

    Oral History

    Yocheved Arie, born in Vilnius, Lithuania on February 15, 1928, discusses the German occupation of Lithuania; how her father and brother were taken away while she and her mother had to go to the ghetto; poor sanitation in the ghetto; aktions in the ghetto carried out by the Germans; the deportation of her mother to Estonia; reuniting with her mother in Estonia; being transported to Stutthof; going to Gdansk where she was forced to make railroad tracks; being liberated along with her mother and several others on the second day of a death march shortly before the end of the war; her postwar return to Vilnius where she and her mother found no survivors from their family; trying to immigrate to Palestine, but remaining in a displaced persons camp in Germany for three years; immigrating to Jerusalem; living with her mother for 40 years until her mother’s death; and her deep understanding about the heroism of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral History

    Leo Hanin, born in 1913 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes his family; his parents’ decision to escape increasing persecution in Europe and move to Harbin, China, where they had a relative, in 1916; the lively Jewish community but not having many relations with the native Chinese; attending a Russian school in Harbin until 1929; moving with his brother to Shanghai around 1934 to attend a British school; getting married in 1936 and moving to Kōbe-shi, Japan to do work for a textile firm; assisting the Joint Distribution Committee in New York to arrange for funds to be sent to Japan to support refugees coming over from Europe; his participation in a Zionist organization and moving to Israel in 1948; staying in Israel for two years and then moving back to Japan; his experiences with helping people adjust to life in Kōbe-shi and immigrate to the United States; and dealing with the rumors that the Jewish leadership of Kōbe-shi stole money donated to them to help refugees.

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral History

    Walter Schnell, born on April 16, 1904 in Strehlen, Germany (Strzelin, Poland), describes his family and childhood; going to study crystal and porcelain in Berlin, Germany in the early 1920s; having to sell his family’s porcelain and glass business in 1937 because anti-Jewish business laws were becoming too strict; moving to Wrocław after the business sold with his sister and parents; working for a family friend in a wholesale business in Wrocław; his arrest during Kristallnacht and being sent by train through Weimar and on to Buchenwald; being forced to watch the hangings of those prisoners who had escaped from the camp and been caught; being called into the camp’s main office on the second day of Hanukkah and told that his parents had booked him a passage for Panama; finally securing a passage on a ship from Wrocław to Genoa, Italy after jumping through much red tape with Gestapo officials in Wrocław; staying in Genoa for a short time until he traveled on a boat to Shanghai because he did not need official papers to get in; settling in Hongkou, the Jewish suburb of Shanghai; Allied planes accidentally bombing the Jewish quarter of Shanghai; the creation of a Jewish community with its own traditions in Shanghai, including establishing nine hundred yeshivas, keeping kosher, and maintaining a synagogue; discovering that his mother and two cousins had made it to New York; and joining his family in New York after the war.

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral History

    Erna Tebel Stern, born on October 28, 1901 in Krotoszyn, Poland, describes her childhood; her father’s experiences when he served in the German Army against Russia during World War I; moving to Wroclaw, Poland after the war; not experiencing much official discrimination when Hitler first came to power because her father had served in the German Army; her family’s decision to flee from their home in 1938 when they discovered that prison camps existed; her parents’ capture and deportation; managing to escape to Brussels, Belgium, where she, her first husband, and her brother boarded the S.S. St. Louis and fled for Cuba; her brother’s and first husband’s deportation to an internment camp in Gurs, France after the St. Louis had to return to Brussels; going into hiding from 1940 to 1942 in Brussels, where she met her second husband; attempting to flee in 1942 to Switzerland, where they were imprisoned for a short time and then released to the Salvation Army; moving to Bern, Switzerland, where she worked as a housemaid until the end of the War; returning to Belgium in 1945 with her second husband and opening a blouse manufactory; and marrying her second husband in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral History

    Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort, born on April 24, 1923 in Wrocław, Poland, describes her family and childhood; experiencing antisemitism and losing friends after Hitler came to power; her memories of the destruction of Kristallnacht; a cousin in Cuba attaining visas for her and her parents to immigrate to Havana, Cuba; booking a passage on the St. Louis and being forced to return to Europe after Cuba and the United States would not accept the ship; arriving in Antwerp, Belgium and signing papers that said they would not work and would accept their status as a refugee; living off a small budget from the United Jewish Appeal; crossing the Belgium border into France by foot but not finding a much better living situation; discovering a castle in the French countryside in which to stay for a few nights; returning to Belgium and moving back into their old apartment building, where they stayed for a couple of years; becoming a seamstress to make some money for her family; joining an underground group with her mother and crossing into France and then Switzerland; finding an apartment building in which to live; discovering that Hitler had died and that the war was coming to an end; and immigrating to the United States to create a new life for herself and her family.

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral History

    Gidon Arye, born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1928, describes growing up in an upper middle class family; moving into the Vilnius ghetto in 1941 and being separated from his family; living in the Vilnius ghetto throughout the war and sometimes hiding or working illegally; avoiding the early deportations; escaping roundups and going to the Kailis work camp; smuggling his way into the same work camp that his father; reuniting with his father at the Heeres-Kraftfahr-Park work camp, where they worked for an elderly German fixing automobile machinery; surviving in the camp for some time and avoiding Nazi Aktions and a transfer of inmates to Kaunas, Lithuania; Nazi soldiers retreating from the Allies throughout July 1944; going into hiding with a local carpenter who was an acquaintance of his father from before the war; leaving Vilnius through Poland, Germany, and then France in 1945 with his father and fiancée; and immigrating to Israel in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral History

    Carl Knuemann, born on November 15, 1922 in Bydgoszcz, Poland, describes his family and childhood; moving to Germany in 1932 because his father had German citizenship and was a businessman; his father not finding a job and contracting tuberculosis, which allowed him to get a pension from the government since he was a veteran of World War I; his father’s work with Doctor Goerdeler and Albert Einstein in plotting against Hitler; working as a courier in the underground movement; his memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to Hungary after the war broke out and then returning to Berlin once the Nazis invaded Hungary; meeting a Dane in a restaurant and joining the Danish resistance movement by running guns between locations; being drafted and sent to Denmark; his father being too ill to participate in the July 20 plot against Hitler; working in the German armament industry in 1943 and sneaking information out to Allied contacts; and his considerations on his participation in the resistance movement during the war.

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral History

    Michael Vogel, born on November 29, 1923 in Jacovce, Czechoslovakia, describes moving to and growing up in Topol'čany, Czechoslovakia; the takeover of Topol'čany by the Hlinka Guard in 1939; his deportation to the Slovak-run Novaky prison camp in 1942; his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1942; working in forced labor in camps around Auschwitz, first in the Buna works and then in the Birkenau "Kanada" detachment, where he unloaded incoming trains; his transfer by cattle car to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau as the Allies neared in late 1944; his final transfer to the Landsberg sub-camp of Dachau; escaping during a death march from Landsberg by hiding in the woods; his liberation by United States forces two weeks after escaping; following the 74th Tank Battalion on their tour through Germany and Czechoslovakia; swearing himself into the United States Army at a G.I. Camp Home Run in Le Havre, France in November 1945 and receiving American citizenship; taking a position doing laundry at Camp Home Run; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral History

    Nina Schuster Merrick, born in Rokitno, Poland in 1929, describes growing up in a religious family; attending Hebrew school as a child; hiding with her family in the woods during the 1939 bombing raids; her family’s forced move into a ghetto in Berezdiv, Ukraine when the Germans invaded Poland; forced labor, including peeling potatoes for German soldiers; the SS raid of her home in August 1942 and jumping out a window to avoid getting caught; hiding in the woods and eventually being taken in by a sympathetic Ukrainian general, who was involved with a partisan group; learning to be a nurse and working in the partisan group; the General sending her to Moscow, Russia on February 18, 1943, so she could attend technical school; working in a Moscow factory, where she remained until after the war; going to a Jewish collective farm in Germany; an aunt from Washington, DC contacting her in February 1947; and immigrating to the United States to live with her aunt in late 1947.

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral History

    Eva Rozencwajig Stock, born on January 15, 1919 in Kozienice, Poland, describes her family; the establishment of the Kozienice ghetto in 1939 and moving into it; bribing officials to have her family taken together to Skarżysko-Kamienna, a forced labor camp in Poland, during the liquidation of the ghetto; managing to move her family to Szydlowiec and then to Pionki, Poland, where they worked in an ammunition factory; the deportation of her father and brother to Mauthausen, where they both died; being deported to Auschwitz with her mother and sisters; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen and then to Elsnig, a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Germany; returning to Poland at the end of the war and then leaving in 1949 for Israel; and immigrating to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral History

    Ivo Herzer, born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Croatia) on February 5, 1925, describes his early childhood; the introduction of anti-Jewish, Serb, and Romani legislation in 1941 by the Croatian Ustaša government; his arrest at sixteen years of age by a Croatian official and going to a transit camp in the outskirts of Zagreb for a short period until an Ustaša officer told him to return home; escaping with his family in July 1941 to the Italian-Croatian border and ending up in Gospić, Yugoslavia (Croatia); being put onto a military train, returning them to Croatia; escaping the train with the help of smugglers; moving to Susak, Croatia, where they hid for one month; Italian authorities sending his family and about sixty other Jewish refugees to Crikvenica, Croatia, where they lived under Italian protection in the Italian zone in Yugoslavia; the Italian authorities placing the Jewish refugees in a camp in 1942 until 1943, when the Italians brought them and two thousand other Jewish refugees into one camp on the island of Arbe, Dalmatia (Croatia); the Italian surrender to the Germans in 1943 and fleeing to southern Italy to the Allied occupied part of Italy; traveling with his family to the Croatian island of Vis and getting picked up by a British military ship and taken to Bari, Italy; the British directing his family to Taranto, Italy, where they were placed in a camp under British control; leaving the British camp and traveling to Bari; working as a translator and typist for the British Army in Bari after he was liberated; moving to Rome, Italy to work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee from 1946 to 1948; and immigrating to the United States in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

    Boleslaw Brodecki, born in March 1921 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; the German invasion in September 1939; boarding a train with his sister and escaping to Rostov, Russia while she went to Prużana, Poland; rejoining his sister in Prużana after the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; entering the Prużana ghetto and staying there until he was deported to Birkenau in the winter of 1941 or 1942; being marched to Auschwitz I and then to Swietochlowice, Poland, where he worked in a machine factory making parts for airplanes; being sent on a forced march as the Russian army approached; arriving in Mauthausen and working in a nearby factory; being marched to various camps including Gräditz-Bareza, Flossenbürg, and Theresienstadt; his liberation in Theresienstadt by Soviet forces in 1945; going to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany in 1945 and getting a job as a policeman; meeting and marrying his wife, Sonia Brodecki, in the camp in December 1945; having a son and then immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

    Irene Weber, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes her family; attending a Polish school until she was about 10 years old, when the war began; the immediate effects of the war on her family, including the closing of her father’s business and the German raids on her home; her father and brother secretly educating her at home; receiving a work card and having to cut thread at a factory; being taken from the factory and sent to the Gliwice labor camp; discovering that her father had died of a heart attack shortly before her deportation; staying in Gliwice from March 1943 to May 1945, when she and others were evacuated from the camp because the Russians neared; being taken care of by some of the older female prisoners; her liberation by the International Red Cross in May 1945; being taken to a hospital to recuperate; having no desire to return to her hometown and see the destruction there; staying on a farm instead of going into a displaced persons camp; going to school in Munich, Germany with the help of the UNRRA; and meeting her husband and deciding to immigrate to the United States with him.

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

    Josef, born on June 25, 1915 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; moving to Przemyśl, Poland when he was a child; fleeing to Lwów, Poland after the war broke out in 1939; returning to Przemyśl, which came under Russian occupation when Poland was divided between the Russians and the Germans; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; German troops issuing decrees restricting the rights and opportunities of the town’s Jewish population; moving into a designated Jewish ghetto in Przemyśl; meeting his future wife Stefania Podgófrska, who helped his family by smuggling food and other supplies to them in the ghetto; losing both of his parents during a ghetto Aktion; his deportation from the ghetto on November 18, 1942; using pliers he had in his pocket to cut through the wires covering the small window in the train car and jumping out of the train; getting slightly injured but being able to walk to Lipowice, Poland, where a friend provided him with shelter for a night and smuggled him back into Przemyśl the next morning; immediately going to Stefania, who hid him in her apartment for several days until he could smuggle himself back into the ghetto to be with one of his brothers; Stefania obtaining false papers for him and a few of his friends in the ghetto and finding a small cottage where they could hide; leaving the ghetto to meet with Stefania and her younger sister and to construct hiding places; hiding in the cottage with thirteen people for almost two years; his liberation by Russian troops and marrying Stefania; moving to Kraków and then to Wrocław, Poland, where he graduated from dental school; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

    Stanislaw Soszynski, born on February 24, 1931 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his neighborhood in Warsaw on Swietojerska Street; the destruction of Warsaw and the Germans opening the Warsaw Ghetto; living in an apartment where the front part was on the Aryan side, and the back part was on the ghetto side, which helped smuggling operations later in the war; going out of the ghetto area to get milk and sell it to support his family; his memories of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; the massive destruction of the ghetto after the uprising; and the uprising in 1944.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

    Abraham Lewent, born in July 1924 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; entering the Warsaw ghetto after the German occupation; hiding in a crawl space during a 1942 German raid and witnessing the capture of his mother and sisters; being deployed for forced labor nearby but escaping to return to his father in the ghetto; remaining in the ghetto until the uprising; his and his father’s deportation in 1943 to Majdanek, where his father died; his transfers to Skarzysko-Kamienna, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and finally to Dachau; and his liberation by American troops.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

    Miriam Storch Lewent, born on June 26, 1926 in Zamość, Poland, describes her family and childhood; fleeing her home when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939; her family’s internment by Soviet forces and being deported to Siberia; cutting down trees to earn food rations near Tomsk, Russia; the Soviets releasing her and her family when the Soviet Union went to war with Germany in June 1941; her two brothers registering with the Russian Army and the rest of her family settling in Kazakhstan, where they lived for the rest of the war; her father teaching Hebrew to Jewish children in their new home; attempting to return to Poland after the war but encountering too much antisemitism; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

    Liane Reif-Lehrer, born in Vienna, Austria in November 1934, describes growing up in a middle-class family; obtaining a passport in 1938 to immigrate to the United States but not being able to go when her father, a dentist, killed himself because he had to close his practice; traveling with her brother and mother to Hamburg, Germany in 1939 to board the St. Louis, which was bound for Cuba; arriving in Cuba and having to return to Europe, where they ended up in France; getting a visa to immigrate to the United States after staying in France for two-and-a-half years; traveling through Spain and leaving Europe from Lisbon, Portugal on the S.S. Exeter and arriving in the United States on November 10, 1941; living with the sister of Liane's father and her children in New York; earning her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and working for many years as an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School; and now working as a consultant and a writer.

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

    Preben Munch-Nielsen, born in 1926 in Snekkersten, Denmark, describes growing up in a Protestant family; attending school in Copenhagen; the German invasion of Denmark in 1940; becoming a courier in the resistance and being one of the youngest resistance fighters; helping to hide refugees in houses near the shore and to get them on boats to Sweden once the Gestapo began hunting down Jews in Denmark in October 1943; taking refuge in Sweden in November 1943 and joining the Danish Brigade, in which he fought as a soldier for eighteen months; helping to smuggle arms into Denmark for resistance fighters; and settling in Denmark in May 1945 after the war.

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

    Anny Rubinstein Kast, born in Poland in 1926, describes moving to Belgium when she was two months old; her family and her childhood in Belgium; attending school in Antwerp before the war; the German invasion of Belgium on May 10, 1940; someone reporting to the Germans that her family was the only Jewish one left in their neighborhood and then being picked up a few days later; living with the aunt of a friend during her family’s deportation and taking on a false identity; studying German, English, and mathematics lessons during the war; her liberation in 1944 when the English troops entered her town; her uncle finding her and opening up a fur store in Antwerp to support her and other surviving family members; immigrating to Israel after the war; and getting married in 1967.

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

    Helen Waterford, born in Germany in April 14, 1909, discusses her 1933 marriage; her move to Amsterdam in 1934; working for many years to help Jews from Germany relocate to the Netherlands; going into hiding in October 1942 with her husband but without her daughter; the Germans discovering them on August 26, 1944 and interrogating them for two days about the network of people who assisted them in hiding; her deportation to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her husband’s death in Auschwitz; remaining in Birkenau until October 1944, when she was forced to work in the Kratzau factory in Czechoslovakia; going into a prisoner of war camp, where she remained until her liberation; traveling to a displaced persons camp at Plzen, Czechoslovakia; returning to the Netherlands, where she reunited with her daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

    Thomas Ward, born on August 10, 1921 in St. Louis, MO, describes joining the army when he was twenty years old; serving in General Patton's Third Army; working as a part of a three-person reconnaissance team in the Third Cavalry division; liberating 18,000 prisoners from the Ebensee concentration camp on May 5th, 1945; liberating a neighboring camp for women several days later; taking photographs in the camps (which he sent to the Supreme Allied Command); and his views on Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

    Fred R. Wohl, born in 1914 in Baden-Baden, Germany, describes growing up in Germany after World War I; leaving to work on a farm in Switzerland in 1932 for four months; working in Athens, Greece in 1935 and trying to get a Greek passport for fear of what the Germans were planning; moving to Nicosia, Cyprus in March 1939 with the help of the British Ambassador to Athens; the German invasion of Greece and being interned with refugees in a camp next to the Nicosia prison; being sent to a hotel-camp in the mountains with his father but soon being released; the Nazi invasion of Crete in 1941 and preparing for evacuation; traveling to Tel Aviv, Israel and then to Mwanza, Tanzania; working in a gold mine and contracting black water fever in Tanganyika, Tanzania; and immigrating to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

    Norbert Yasharoff, born in 1930 in Sofia, Bulgaria, describes the anti-Jewish measures enforced by the Nazis when World War II began; Bulgaria joining the Axis Alliance in March 1941, allowing German troops to pass through Sofia; the expulsion of some Jewish families to Poland in March 1943 and a bloody protest soon after; leaving with his family to Pleven, Bulgaria in May 1943 and staying with family members; attending a Gentile school while in Pleven, where his teacher did not force him to perform the Nazi salute; his liberation on September 9, 1944 and returning to Sofia with his family; immigrating to Israel in December 1948; joining the volunteer air force, where he trained as a radar technician; graduating with a degree from Tel Aviv University in Political Science and residing in Israel for twenty years; and working in an American Embassy for nine years until he immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

    Frank Meissner, born in Třešt̕, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in 1923, describes his family; joining a Zionist youth group and traveling to Prague, Czech Republic to live with other members of the group in 1937; the group’s fear of anti-Jewish Nazi policies and subsequently leaving Czechoslovakia to settle in Denmark; attending agricultural school at the University of Copenhagen; receiving a call in 1943 from his landlady, who warned him to not return home because the Gestapo had been looking for him; being smuggled onto a fishing boat to Sweden, where he finished his education; traveling to England in September 1944 and starting to contact his family but learning that they had all been taken to Theresienstadt (Terezin) and eventually to Auschwitz, where they perished; returning briefly to Prague and then going to Denmark in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

    Mina Perlberger, born on December 25, 1918 in Tyczyn, Poland, describes growing up in a strict Hasidic Jewish family; the German invasion of Poland while her family was in the process of moving to Kraków in 1939; her family’s assignment to do forced labor outside of Tyczyn; working as a black market trader until 1942, when her family's home was seized by the Gestapo; being forced into the ghetto in Rzeszów, Poland; the deportation of her parents to Auschwitz in late 1942; escaping the ghetto with her younger sister and hiding with a Polish farmer in exchange for a payment; hiding with the farmer for 21 months until the Soviet Army liberated them in 1944; meeting her future husband, a Soviet Jew, in Blażowa, Poland; marrying her husband and moving to Austria after the war with the help of a Jewish organization; and immigrating to the United States soon after arriving in Austria.

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

    David Klebanow, born in 1907 in Barysaŭ, Russia (now Belarus), describes his family and childhood; fleeing to Kiev, Ukraine in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and then to Białystok, Poland; becoming a doctor in 1937 and then being drafted into the Polish Army in 1939; returning to Białystok when he was released from the army and then marrying his wife; being taken to Kaunas, Lithuania and then to Riga, Latvia with his wife; performing abortions to save the lives of pregnant women and staying in Riga for two years; his deportation to Stutthof and then to Danzig, from where they were liberated on March 10, 1945; his wife dying of tuberculosis; working at the Munich University Hospital as an obstetrician after the war; noticing genital abnormalities, sterility problems, and a higher rate of miscarriages among women who had survived concentration camps; and immigrating in 1951 to the United States, where he joined the obstetrics department at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

    Franz Wohlfahrt, born in 1920 in Velden am Wörthersee, Austria, describes growing up in a family of Jehovah's Witnesses; the arrest of his father in 1936 for peddling in the street as part of his activities as a Jehovah’s Witness; the German annexation of Austria in 1938; refusing to go to a Hitler Youth meetings and say the “Heil Hitler” greeting, which resulted in German troops monitoring his activities; the execution of his father on December 7, 1939 and his brother soon after because they refused to participate in the war and fight for the German state; the general persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses during World War II since they would not worship Hitler; agreeing to do work for the German state but not participate in military exercises, which resulted in his imprisonment in a dungeon for thirty-three days in 1940; being transferred to the Gestapo office in Graz for further questioning; his deportation to a work camp at Allweiter Rodgau, in the Hessen-Nassau province, because he would not fight for the German state; being saved by a camp commandant’s wife because he painted wall paper for her; his liberation by Allied troops while he was still in the camp; and returning home to find that few people he knew had survived.

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

    Tove Schöbaum Bamberger, born on October 8, 1934 in Copenhagen, Denmark, describes growing up in a wealthy family; her father’s ownership of a men’s clothing business; attending first and second grade at a Jewish school before her family fled from Denmark on October 2, 1940; taking a train to the seaport in Snekkersten, Denmark and then traveling on a fishing boat until a Swedish ship intercepted them at sea and took them to Sweden, where they settled in Malmö; her father working in a chocolate factory and selling artificial teeth; her mother selling lingerie; attending school with her sister; returning to Copenhagen on May 28, 1945 to find her family home and store undisturbed; and immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

    Morris Gordon, born in Latvia, describes immigrating with his father to the United States; growing up in New York, NY; attending City College and Columbia University; being ordained as a rabbi in 1940; volunteering for the military in 1942; his participation in The Flying Tigers; going to India briefly then Burma; traveling through the jungles of Burma to get to different camps and getting lost three times; taking his Torah with him everywhere he went; arriving in Shanghai as a Jewish chaplain and being greeted by a large Jewish community; conducting a Bar Mitzvah with a boy; his memories of the Shanghai Jewish ghetto and its schools; and receiving a chalice from a Catholic chaplain during the war to help him perform his services.

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

    Raya Markon, born in 1911 in Vilnius, Lithuania, discusses her childhood; going to college for one year in Toulouse, France; getting married in Paris, France in 1936; her husband's mobilization into the French Army in 1938; her escape from Paris two days before the German invasion in 1940; returning to Toulouse to take refuge with friends and the birth of her son; getting a visa to the United States and difficulties in obtaining an exit visa from France; and her and her family's immigration to the United States in November 1942.

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

    Ernest G. Heppner, born in 1921 in Germany, describes his experiences with antisemitism in his youth; participating in a Jewish youth organization; his father’s positive experiences running a factory in the mid-1930s; being kicked out of school and learning how to weld; losing any sense of hope for German Jews after his experiences on Kristallnacht; his family being forced to sell their house and considering immigration; he and his mother getting a place on a steamship to Shanghai, China by giving the captain of the ship some of their Impressionist paintings; arriving in Shanghai in March 1939; his mother finding a job with a youth committee; communicating through letters with his father and sister back home a few times before never hearing from them again; participating in the British Boy Scout Association in Shanghai; seeing the Imperial Japanese Naval Landing Party come into Shanghai after Pearl Harbor and acting as a British spy; the Jews of Shanghai being forced into a ghetto-like area of the city in February 1943; finding a job in a bakery and meeting his future wife in the ghetto; getting married shortly before the end of the war and going to work for the American occupying forces; his memories of life in the ghetto; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

    Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his family; his father’s work as a cantor that led him to travel around and work in several synagogues in Europe; not understanding that he could not have or do certain things because he was Jewish; the German invasion of Budapest in early 1944; his deportation by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen with his mother; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; developing a sense of comic relief, like by calling a German troop “Popeye,” to survive; participating in a Red Cross inspection of Bergen-Belsen; in January 1945 being taken by German soldiers on a train towards the German-Swiss border and being released in Switzerland, where they were cleaned and fed; traveling to Saint Gallen and then to Caux, Switzerland to stay in a displaced persons center; reuniting with his father after the war; his mother’s decision to go to Heiden after the war to run a one-room school house for six- to fourteen-years olds to learn Hungarian; immigrating to Palestine by a British troop carrier in September 1945 and living in a kibbutz, where his mother took charge of the day shift cooking; and immigrating to the United States in March 1949.

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

    Leo Bretholz, born on March 6, 1921 in Vienna, Austria, describes his childhood; his father passing away in 1930 and becoming a father figure for his two younger sisters; long-standing antisemitic attitudes transforming into excessive violence after the Anschluss in 1938; the arrest of his friends and his mother encouraging him to flee to Luxembourg, where he had an aunt; being arrested three days after he arrived in Luxembourg, questioned for several hours, and released to a train station; returning to Luxembourg and staying with relatives until he had the opportunity to cross the border into Belgium on November 9, 1938 and go to Antwerp, where he found distant relatives and stayed until May of 1940; receiving an affidavit and visa from an aunt in Baltimore, MD to immigrate to the United States but being unable to leave because Pearl Harbor was bombed the day he was scheduled to go; obtaining the necessary documents to cross into Switzerland in October 1942, but getting arrested and taken to Rivesaltes; his deportation to Drancy, another French detention camp, where he stayed for a short time before he and other prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars for transport; escaping deportation by bending the bars covering one of the train’s windows and squeezing through and jumping out of the train; making his way to Paris, where he obtained a false identification card; his arrest in December and then being sent to prison for nine months until he went to a forced labor camp in Septfonds, France; escaping from the camp and contacting a friend who got him in touch with an underground resistance group in Saint-Vallier, France, which he joined in November 1943; helping children cross the border into Switzerland, making false ID cards, and relaying messages between various resistance organizations; working with the resistance after D-Day and helping the Allied forces; and receiving an affidavit from his aunt in Baltimore that allowed him to immigrate to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

    Paul Matasovski, born in Bacău, Moldavia (now Romania) in December 1933, describes his family and early childhood; his family getting a radio in 1933 to find out what Hitler was doing in Europe; the political situation with the Iron Guard and General Antonescu; the Jews having their radios taken from their homes but receiving news by passing around sheets of paper; attending a Jewish high school until the end of 1942, when he was sent to work in a textile factory; participating in sabotage activities until he was arrested in the spring of 1944; remaining in a prison near the Carpathian Mountains until Russian forces liberated him; his knowledge of transports and concentration camps during the war; the composition of the people in his underground group and their activities; and returning to his hometown to help clean up the mess after the war.

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

    Zelda Piekarska Brodecki (Americanized name, Sonia Brodecki), born on July 27, 1928 in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes her family; the German occupation of her town and her family having to close their business; entering the Sosnowiec ghetto and being forced to work in a factory; her deportation from the ghetto to a forced labor camp near Wrocław, Poland; her transfer in 1943 to another labor camp in Klettendorf, Germany (Klecina, Wrocław, Poland); Russian troops liberating her at an ammunition factory in Ludwigsdorf, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany; returning to Sosnowiec after the war and meeting her cousin there; moving to the Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp, where she met her husband, Boleslaw Brodecki; and living in Germany until 1949 when she and her husband immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

    Stefania Podgórska Burzminski, born in Lipa, Poland, describes her family and childhood; helping her parents run a farm until she decided to move with her sister to Przemyśl and work in a bakery; the Russian invasion and not noticing much of a change in life until the Germans ousted the Russians; living in an apartment near the ghetto and witnessing people being deported from it; developing a relationship with a young man named Josef, who was Jewish and lived in the ghetto; having to explain what a Jew was to her little sister; helping to smuggle food into the ghetto for Josef and his family; moving into a large apartment and taking Josef and twelve other Jews in with her; having an SS man insist upon taking a room in her apartment and always living in fear that he would kill the Jews living there; and her liberation by Russian forces.

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

    Rose Galek Brunswic, born in Sochocin, Poland in 1920, describes her family; learning Hebrew and participating in a Zionist organization in her youth; moving to Warsaw in the mid-1930s; being forced into the Warsaw ghetto and living with twelve other people; her parents being shot during a roundup; going into hiding with the underground in March 1941; leaving her hiding place and finding another one in the city with an old work friend of her father; being caught by the Germans during a raid and sent by cattle car to Berlin; using her false papers to get a job on a farm; pretending to be a Seventh Day Adventist and playing the organ for the church; getting in trouble for not having the proper identification and having to do translations for a judge as penance; her liberation by American soldiers in 1945 when she was still working on the farm; meeting a Jewish soldier and marrying him; staying in a displaced persons camp after the war until she immigrated to the United States to live with her uncle; and settling in Buffalo, New York, where she attended school.

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

    Renée Schwalb Fritz, born in 1937 in Vienna, Austria, describes her family; her father leaving for the United States in 1939 and fleeing with her mother to Belgium; the German occupation of Belgium in 1940 and going into hiding in a convent, where she remained for two years until the Germans became suspicious; the underground taking Renee to a Protestant family's farm and then to an orphanage; reuniting with her mother after the war and discovering that she had survived Auschwitz; joining her father in the United States five years later; going through high school in the US with much difficulty; attending Boston University; and marrying an American man soon after she graduated from college.

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

    Martin Spett, born on December 2, 1928 in Tarnów, Poland, describes his childhood; the German occupation of Tarnów in 1939; his family losing their apartment in 1940; hiding in an attic when the first massacre of Jews occurred; having to finally register as a Jew in May 1943 and go to Bergen-Belsen, where he was allegedly to be part of an exchange for German prisoners of war; being liberated on April 13, 1945 by Allied troops during his transport to Theresienstadt; spending some time in Belgium after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

    Niels Bamberger, born on October 21, 1928 in Würzburg, Germany, describes growing up in a religious family; fleeing from Germany to his mother's hometown of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1932; his family being warned of imminent danger on Rosh Hashanah of 1943; their local grocer helping them to escape to the port town of Snekkersten, Denmark (the closest point between Denmark and Sweden); receiving help from the local resistance forces and hiding in houses until their group of over two hundred could be transported in row boats; a Swedish military boat intercepting his family at sea and taking them to Sweden; attending school in Lund, Sweden while his parents opened a small restaurant; his family’s return to Denmark on May 28, 1945 to find their old home undisturbed; and getting back on his feet after the war.

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

    Ray Buch, born on September 18, 1920 in New York City, NY, describes his parents and their emigration from Ukraine; joining the US Army in November 1942 and going into training in Louisiana and Texas for a year; being shipped to England in September 1944; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and encountering fighting and violence; finding out about the concentration camps and death camps; his unit’s attempts to bury people who had died alongside the roads; arriving in Mauthausen on May 10, 1945 and the scenes of people and depravation he witnessed; forcing the German citizens to bury the dead; spending about thirty days in Mauthausen and then moving around to other camps, like Dachau and Ebensee; and the sacrifices his unit made for the sake of the freedom of Europe and the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

    Nina Kaleska, born on April 11, 1929 in Grodno, Poland (now Hrodna, Belarus), describes having a pleasant childhood; her family not being perceived of as Jewish because of their Aryan looks; experiencing antisemitism among her childhood friends in 1938; joining the Young Pioneers after the Russians invaded in 1939; her father’s imprisonment for three to four months for political reasons; the German invasion in 1941 and the formation of two ghettos in Grodno; the Germans selecting one of her cousins, who was considered an electronics genius, for forced labor but then killing him; peasant families offering to hide her and her sister but rejecting because she did not want to be separated from her family; being deported with her sister to Auschwitz in 1941; the death of her sister three months after they arrived; becoming sick in the camp several times and only being saved because of the help she received from a woman named Martha who worked there; being asked by Dr. Mengele if she was Jewish because she did not look Jewish; having to stand guard while the head of her lager had sex with some of the most beautiful women in the lager; going on a death march and being liberated by Allied forces on May 5, 1945; and her immigration to England and then to the United States with the help of the American Joint Distribution Committee.

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

    Judith Meisel, born on February 7, 1929 in Josvainiai, Lithuania, discusses her childhood; moving to Kaunas, Lithuania shortly after her father’s death; being forced into the Kaunas ghetto in 1941; her family’s deportation in 1944 to Stutthof, where her mother was killed; escaping with her sister from a death march out of Stutthof by hiding in a coal bin; receiving shelter in a Catholic nunnery; developing typhus and posing as a Christian in a hospital in Danzig, Poland to receive treatment; finding work on a farm with her sister; moving to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she was sent to school; her liberation on May 5, 1945; living with a Jewish family in Denmark for some time after the war; immigrating to Canada in 1948; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

    Thomas Buergenthal, born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia, describes his family; moving with his family to Žilina, Czechoslovakia in 1938 and facing persecution from the Hlinka Guard; moving to Katowice, Poland and registering with the British Consul; leaving for England on September 1, 1939 but being stopped near the Russian border when their train was bombed by Germans; having to march with a group of refugees to Kielce, Poland and go into its ghetto; the deportation of his grandparents and twenty thousand other ghetto inhabitants in August 1942 to Treblinka while he and his parents were sent to a forced labor camp in Kielce; surviving a massacre of Jewish children and then being transported with his parents to a factory where they made wooden carts for the Eastern Front; his deportation in August 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked in the laundry as an errand boy; getting separated from his father and never seeing him again; being forced on a death march to Gliwice, Poland and then to Heinkel concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany in January 1945; his transfer to a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; his liberation on April 27, 1945 by Russian soldiers; marching with the First Polish Division into Berlin, Germany and Siedlce, Poland and then being placed in a Jewish orphanage in Otwock, Poland; his mother finding him in 1946 and smuggling him into the British zone of Germany; living in Göttingen, Germany and attending high school there; immigrating by himself to the United States in 1951 to live with his uncle; his mother remarrying and staying in Europe; attending Harvard Law School and becoming a professor of International Law at the George Washington University Law School; and serving on the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s Committee on Conscience.

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

    Leif Donde, born in 1937 in Copenhagen, Denmark, describes his upbringing in a religious but not Orthodox Jewish family; the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940; seeing the German police begin to arrest Jews in early October 1943 and fleeing with his family by train to the Danish city of Nykøbing Falster, south of Sjælland island; being smuggled by a fishing boat to safety in Sweden; arriving in Trelleborg, Sweden after an eleven-hour nighttime boat ride in October 1943, during which they passed through a German mine field; attending school in Sweden while his parents worked in a garment factory in Uddevalla, Sweden; his family returning to Denmark after the end of the war; and settling in Denmark, where he serves as the Consul General.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig, born in Vienna, Austria on March 7, 1924, describes her family and childhood; enjoying the rich cultural life Vienna had to offer before the war; her father’s placement on the Nazi blacklist for being a liberal writer and journalist; attempting to leave Austria and go to France but getting arrested and sent to prison; escaping to Cologne, where her mother managed to attain three visas by giving up some of her jewelry; moving to Paris, where her father found a job as a reporter; attending art school in Paris and meeting her future husband; the deportation of her father and brother to concentration camps when Germany declared war on France; her father’s return home for a short period until he had to join the French Army; running away from Paris and going through several cities until she arrived in Blois, France and began to search for her father; getting separated from her family and asking about their whereabouts wherever she went; reuniting with her mother in Barcus, France; finding a teaching job in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France through a family friend who lived there; her family receiving special visas to move to the United States on December 7, 1941 because her father was an intellectual; attending college in the United States; and marrying Ernest, the man she had earlier met in Paris.

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

    Max Amichai Heppner, born on October 15, 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes growing up as an only child; his parents’ escape from Berlin, Germany in 1933; the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands and missing a boat to escape to Sweden; losing several of his family’s possessions to the Nazis; his mother getting captured during a street raid but then being released by a Nazi commander in August 1942; escaping into the countryside with his parents and finding various hiding places with another family; going into hiding with underground forces and then with a farming family; dealing with frequent Nazi raids; meeting several downed Allied pilots while in hiding; his liberation by Scottish soldiers on September 24, 1944; his mother’s attempts to shield him from much of the devastation of the war; and immigrating to the United States to live with his mother’s family.

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

    Charles Bruml, born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his family and the Prague Jewish community; being about 28 years old and working in an import-export firm in 1938 when German troops marched into Prague; his family’s deportation to Theresienstadt and finding a job in the camp’s Technical Department; making paintings during his internment that are displayed at the camps today; his deportation to Auschwitz on January 11, 1942 and getting tattooed; being transferred to Buna (Monowitz), where he worked as a painter for the SS men until January 18, 1945; being forced to walk to Gleiwitz, because the Russians neared, and then to Bergen-Belsen, where the Red Cross liberated him; and meeting his wife in Prague as they both tried to sort out the fates of their families.

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

    David Pollack, born in Prince Albert, Saskatechewan, Canada in 1922, describes growing up in a mildly Jewish family; enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 but not being accepted as a pilot because of his poor eyesight; being trained as a radar technician and stationed first in the Queen Charlotte Islands and then in England in 1943; joining a mobile radar unit outside of Weimar, Germany in 1945 and visiting Buchenwald, where he was shocked by the horrors of the camp; speaking, with the aid of a translator, to many prisoners, taking the names and the addresses of their relatives who were in other countries, and contacting these relatives to inform them that the prisoners would soon be arriving in displaced persons camps and contacting them for help; returning to Canada after the war; and keeping up correspondence with some of the survivors he had helped to reunite with their families.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

    Rabbi Eugene Lipman, born in Pittsburgh, PA on October 13, 1919, describes his family; graduating from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio; being sent overseas as an army chaplain in April 1945; after the war helping Jewish survivors at Buchenwald and Dachau before being sent to Plzen, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); joining the Haganah, a group that cared for Jewish survivors and refugees as well as secretly transporting Jews to Palestine; continuing his work with the Haganah in Regensburg, Germany; going home to the United States for a short time in April 1946 but returning in late 1946 with his wife to continue to aid Jews by providing many with false identity papers for them to leave Europe; and returning to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

    Hetty d’Ancona de Leeuwe, born on May 1, 1930 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her family and early childhood; her father losing his business after the German invasion; the deportation of several of her friends and family in 1942; her father’s participation in the Dutch underground newspaper; leaving Amsterdam in October 1943 and separating from her parents to live with a Dutch Gentile family for two years; her liberation by American and British forces and staying with her foster family for a few months until she reunited with her father; and marrying a Jewish man and immigrating to the United States with him after the war.

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

    Marty Glickman, born in 1917 in the Bronx, NY, describes growing up with parents who were immigrants from Romania; attending Syracuse University, where he was a track athlete chosen to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Germany; being one of two Jews on the United States Olympic track team; arriving in the Olympic Village and being told that he and Sam Stoller, the other Jewish runner, were to be replaced in the 400 meter relay by Ralph Metcalf and Jessie Owens; hearing from the head coach of the Olympic track team that the substitutions were made because the Germans were said to be hiding their best sprinters but believing that he was really replaced because Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, did not want to further embarrass the Nazis by having Jews run and win a race; serving in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II; going to the Marshall Islands; and his friendship with Jesse Owens.

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

    Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz, born in 1931 in Schlüchtern, Germany, describes her family; moving to Dinxperlo, a village located close to the German border in the Netherlands in 1933; the German invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940; Jews no longer being allowed to own businesses or to attend schools; going into hiding when they heard that the Jews would be rounded up for deportation in 1943; living with her mother in a barn attic that was barely big enough for them to both lie flat; beginning to write a cookbook-diary in 1944 to pass her time; becoming extremely ill because of a lack of ventilation in her living quarters; recovering from her illness but remaining weak; having to leave her hiding place toward the end of the war because of increased Nazi raids; her liberation on April 1, 1945 by Canadian troops; returning to their former village with food and money supplied to them by the farmers who had hidden them; returning to school as her family tried to re-build their lives; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

    Hessy Levinsons Taft, born on May 17, 1934 in Berlin, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her parents having her photo taken in 1934 and the photo ending up in a Nazi magazine labeled as a beautiful Berliner baby; her family’s decision to run away to Paris, France, where they were when it fell to the Germans; moving to the French coast near Bordeaux with her mother and sister while her father remained in Paris trying to find a way for the family to leave; her father securing visas for the family to travel to Cuba, where she and her sister began to attend a British school; immigrating to the United States in 1948 and settling in New York, NY; and eventually getting married and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

    Bella Jakubowicz Tovey, born on September 18, 1926, in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes growing up in a Jewish family; the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and losing her father’s factory and their family furniture; being forced to move into the Sosnowiec ghetto and to work in a factory there in 1941; her family’s deportation to the Bedzin ghetto in 1942; her deportation to the Graeben sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany in 1943 and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; her liberation in April 1945; and immigrating to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

    Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz, born June 23, 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, describes her childhood; facing intensifying antisemitic measures that resulted in the loss of her father's business and the closing of her school in the late 1930s; her family’s deportation in 1943 to Auschwitz, where her father was killed; her selection for forced labor and being assigned to work on road repairs; working in the "Kanada" unit sorting possessions brought into the camp; her transfer to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany in November 1944; being sent to Malchow, where she worked in a munitions factory making bullets; her liberation by American soldiers in May 1945 during a death march from the Malchow camp in Germany; traveling to Frankfurt with her mother in August 1945 with hopes of finding the rest of their family; and immigrating with her mother to the United States in early 1947.

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

    Peretz Milbauer, born in Brooklyn, New York in October 1915, discusses his life up to World War II; teaching history before he was drafted into the United States Army; being sent overseas in July 1944 and arriving to his station in Remse, Germany on December 5, 1944; liberating prisoners from a death march in Wałbrzych, Poland in December 1944; gathering a list of names of survivors from the death march and sending the list to American newspapers and magazines in an effort to help survivors contact their relatives; and also liberating prisoners at Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen in Austria, in May 1945.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Judah Nadich, born in 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland, describes his life until World War II and training to be a rabbi; enlisting in the army as a chaplain after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; serving as the senior Jewish chaplain with the United States Army in the United Kingdom and then in France during the war; having his first contact with survivors of Nazi oppression in France; helping Parisian Jews re-build their community; being ordered to Frankfurt, Germany as the Jewish affairs adviser to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and reporting on conditions in displaced persons camps; and returning to the United States in late 1945.

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

    Hana Bruml, born on May 30, 1922 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her family and childhood; attending a Zionist elementary school; meeting Rudolph Schiff and marrying him on November 14, 1939; the German invasion of Prague and her father losing his business, receiving ration tickets marked with a “J,” and only being allowed to do certain things at specific times; the deportation of her parents in July 1942 to Theresienstadt followed three weeks later by her and her husband’s deportation to the camp; working in the camp hospital as a nurse; the death of her husband and the development of a romance with Bruno, who worked as an internist in the camp; the special treatment of Danish Jews and a few prominent Austrian and German Jews in Theresienstadt; seeing doctors perform several abortions in the camp to save women; her transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944 and seeing Dr. Mengele; and remaining in Auschwitz until May 5, 1945, when she was liberated.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

    Benjamin Meed, born on February 19, 1922 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; traveling with a friend in 1939 to Russian territory to escape Nazi persecution; returning to Warsaw because they could not support themselves; joining an underground movement that provided a library and schooling for children; smuggling people to the Aryan side of Warsaw when the ghetto was established; helping his family escape to Praga Południe, Poland, where they hid in a cemetery; beginning to work with a woman named Vladka who was also involved in underground activities; posing as a Christian with Vladka during the war in order to facilitate their work in the underground; moving his hiding place to a bunker which he had built after the Warsaw uprising; jumping onto a Red Cross truck after his liberation to escape persecution by Germans and Poles after the war; reuniting with his parents after the war; and marrying Vladka in Warsaw ten days after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

    Johanna Neumann, born on December 12, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, describes her early childhood; her memories of Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938; her family’s decision to leave Germany as anti-Jewish measures intensified; obtaining visas for Albania and leaving Germany without many of her possessions; crossing into Italy and setting sail for Albania on March 1, 1939; remaining in Albania during the Italian and German occupations for a total of six and a half years; finally being liberated after a battle between the Germans and the Albanian partisans in December 1944; spending some time in an Italian displaced persons camp at the port of Tricase in the Lecce province of Apulia in southern Italy; immigrating to the United States in September 1946; and living briefly in Israel for three years from 1969 until 1971.

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

    Alice Lang Rosen, born in 1934 in Lambsheim, Germany, describes her early childhood; the deportation of her family to the Gurs camp in France and then to Rivesaltes when she was six years old; the French Red Cross taking her out of the camp and hiding her from the Germans by placing her in a children's home, then in a convent, and then with various Catholic families; being sent to a children's home near Paris after her liberation; having her name put on a list of Jewish children from all over France, which was being compiled by a Polish rabbi; her father tracing her from this list and reuniting with her in Germany in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

    Jay Ipson, born June 5, 1935, in Slobodka (Vilijampolė), Lithuania, describes growing up in religious, well-off family; his father's attempts to move his family to Russia but being turned back at the border; losing their home in the move and moving in with his grandmother, whose house was in the Kaunas ghetto; witnessing the deportations from the ghetto; escaping the ghetto with his mother and father in November 1943; hiding in a farmer's hay wagon and then in one room under the care of a poor, religious Polish Catholic family; his father's construction of a hiding place under the Polish family's potato patch; hiding with all of his extended family in the underground bunker; being liberated by the Russian army; moving back to Kaunas with his parents; attending Jewish school; being forced to run away from Kaunas after his father was declared an enemy of the Soviet Republic; changing his last name to Butremovitch and getting false papers; hiding with a Jewish family in White Russia; leaving Warsaw, Poland and traveling to Germany; receiving help from a German man to cross the border to the American occupied-zone of Germany; living with a German family in Prinz Regenten Strasse in Munich for nine months; immigrating to the United States to live with his aunt in Richmond, VA in June 1947; and joining the US military during the Korean War and becoming a colonel in command of an aviation unit.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

    Margaret Jastrow Klug, born on June 8, 1923 in Rogoźno, Poland, describes her family and childhood; her brother’s immigration to Scotland before the war; the beginning of the war and being arrested because someone had given them her name; jumping from a window of the jail to avoid deportation to Auschwitz but instead being injured and staying in a hospital for two months; being deported to Auschwitz, where she worked in a factory; getting married and having a daughter after the war; immigrating to Israel in 1949; returning to Germany soon after because the climate in Israel was too uncomfortable for her; and immigrating to the United States in the mid-1950s and settling in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

    Solomon Klug, born on July 9, 1923 in Krzepice, Poland, describes growing up in a religious family with one sister and three brothers; seeing his mother and brother shot in his backyard; his deportation in 1940 to Annaberg, Germany, where he worked building the Autobahn; being transferred in 1943 to Markstadt, Germany, where he built bridges, and then to Fuenfteichen, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, in March 23, 1944 to work in an ammunitions factory; his transport to Wolfsberg, another sub-camp of Gross-Rosen; being sent to Politz, Czechoslovakia, Bergen-Belsen, and finally to Barth-an-der-Ostee, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück; going on a three-day death march after his evacuation from Barth-an-der-Ostee; his liberation on April 30, 1945; going to Berlin, Germany after liberation and meeting his wife Margaret; immigrating to Israel, where they lived for four years, and then returning to Nuremberg to spend a year in a displaced persons camp; and immigrating to the United States in 1955 and settling in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

    Helene Baraf, born July 24, 1927 in Antwerp, Belgium, discusses her family and her childhood in Antwerp before World War II; her family's move to the United States in 1937; her return to Belgium with her mother and brother in 1940; traveling to France with her family by train and on foot after the Germans entered Belgium; her family's life in Lille, France; her brother's arrest by the Gestapo and eventual deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau for failing to properly display his Star of David on his coat; her and her mother's arrest by the Gestapo and their escape during a round up; their rescue from a small hiding place by the members of the underground resistance; her time spent hiding in a convent with other Jewish children in Lille; her attempts to conceal her identity with an assumed name and falsified identification documents; her move from the convent to a "Protestant community" in Roubaix, France, where she attended high school and remained with her mother until after World War II; her friendship with a girl from Roubaix whose family sheltered her and her mother for period of time during the war; the divorce of her parents shortly after the war; and her life in the United States after 1969.

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

    Morris Kornberg, born in Przedbórz, Poland on January 6, 1918, describes growing up as the youngest of seven children in a strict Orthodox family; the 1939 German invasion and being forced to work in a factory in the ghetto; his imprisonment in Końskie, a prison in Poland, and then in Radom, Poland and Jawischowitz, a sub-camp of Auschwitz; working in a coal mine and receiving special treatment by SS men because of his memory for numbers; his transfer to Troeglitz, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, in January 1945; the evacuation of Troeglitz on April 9, 1945 and escaping on a train with two others; getting caught and forced on a death march to Leitmeritz, a sub-camp of Flossenbürg, and then to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated; staying in a sanitarium outside of Stuttgart, where he met his wife; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

    Michael Diamond, born on July 10, 1919 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes his family; his draft into the Czech Army in 1939 but being forced to work in army camps clearing snow off roads and highways when the Slovak State was created; his transfer to Liptovský Mikuláš, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), where he repaired weapons and became a Slovak-German language interpreter; being moved to Vrútky, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), where he had to clean old uniforms; working as an electrician in eastern Slovakia; escaping into hiding in the forest but soon getting captured by the Gestapo; his transport to Sered, a "Sommerlager" in Slovakia; attempting to escape from a transport train and then being sent to Sachsenhausen, Heinkelwerke, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Neuengamme, and Mauthausen; working as an engineer and repairing railroad engines; ending up in Wurttemberg, Germany, where he was marched deeper into Germany as the Allied forces approached; and hiding in a peasant's empty house in Germany until he was liberated by Soviet soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

    Abraham Malach, born on May 12, 1935 in Zwoleń, Poland, describes his family; entering the ghetto in Radom, Poland in 1940 and remaining there until 1942; spending 1942 through 1943 at work camps in Poland, where he worked as a messenger boy; his deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; being removed from the group headed to the gas chambers at his first selection by a female Kapo, who molested him and bribed him to keep silent by giving him food for his family; running away to a monastery when Auschwitz was liberated; eventually being taken by nuns to a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency camp; reuniting with his parents in 1946 in Krakow, Poland; his parents sending him to Israel to finish his high school education; and immigrating to New York, NY after high school when he was admitted to Columbia University.

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

    Michael Bernath, born on February 14, 1923 in Szikszó, Hungary, describes growing up in a family with eleven older siblings; working in Budapest, Hungary as a furrier in 1943 and always getting harassed; joining the underground movement in Budapest and working for American and British intelligence services; the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 and Hungarian gendarmes rounding up five thousand Jewish people from his town and transporting them to Kassa, Czechoslovakia; being forced into a slave labor camp with about 35,000 other men; his deportation to the Schachendorf concentration camp in Austria in the winter of 1944 and being forced to dig trenches and train tracks in the Austrian Alps; Russian forces liberating him and returning to Budapest to live with his aunt and uncle; and his immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

    Kate Bernath, born in August 27, 1927 in Szikszó, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; living a decent life until March 1944 when the Germans occupied Hungary; dating a man to keep herself amused before the occupation; being rounded up and sent to a ghetto in Kassa (Košice, Slovakia); her deportation to Auschwitz in May 1944; her transfer to a factory in Augsburg, Germany to work in a Messerschmitt factory; hearing Allied bombings every night toward the end of the war; her transfer to Mühldorf, where she had to clean up debris from bombings; the guards disappearing one day and escaping to a farmhouse, where they were caught by an SS soldier; her liberation on May 1, 1946 and going to the Feldafing displaced persons camp; returning to Amsterdam and reuniting with her pre-war boyfriend; and getting married in Leipheim, Germany and then immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

    Paul Kovak, born on December 6, 1938 in Trenčín, Slovakia, describes being born a Jew but converting to Roman Catholicism with his parents; his father’s work as a professor at a small agricultural college; not having to wear the yellow star because of his father’s indispensable position at the school; going into hiding in the second home of a farming family in the mountains in late August 1944 at the time of the Slovak National Uprising; staying in hiding until April 1945, when they were liberated by Russian and Romanian troops; living in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia until 1981; and immigrating to the United States in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

    Abraham Kolski, born in 1917 in Izbica Lubelska, Poland, describes his family; the German occupation of Poland and going into the Czestochowa ghetto, where he did forced labor at a metal factory; his deportation on October 2, 1942 to Treblinka, Poland, where he performed forced labor searching for valuables in the clothing of gas chamber victims; participating in the Treblinka uprising on August 2, 1943 and escaping the concentration camp with nine other friends; hiding in a cellar of a home near Treblinka for the remainder of the war; eventually being liberated by the Russian Army; remaining in Poland until 1948, when he married and left for France; immigrating to the United States in 1954; and testifying as a witness to the events at Treblinka in the war crimes trials at Düsseldorf.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

    Sylvia Kolski, born on September 15, 1925 in Tarczyn, Poland, describes her family and childhood; moving with her aunt, uncle, cousins, and parents into the Warsaw ghetto; working for a tailor in the ghetto; hearing rumors that the Jews would be killed on July 22, 1942; hiding money in her clothing, so she could bribe people to save herself; seeing several major deportations from the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto and staying with a family in the countryside; her liberation on January 16, 1945 and returning to Tarczyn; moving to Łódź, Poland, where she met her husband, and then to Paris, France in 1947; and immigrating to the United States when the Vietnam War began.

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

    Steven Springfield, born in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, describes his experiences as a child; the German occupation of Riga in 1941 and having to go into the ghetto; the massacre of about 28,000 Jews from the ghetto in late 1941 at the Rumbula forest; being transferred with his brother to a small ghetto for able-bodied men; his deportation to a labor camp near Kaiserwald in 1943; being moved to Stutthof in 1944 and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm; surviving a death march in 1945 with his brother and being liberated by Soviet forces; accepting a position as an interpreter for the Russian Army; his incarceration by the Russians for allegedly supporting the Nazis but being released when the charges were disproven; locating his pre-war girlfriend and marrying her; moving to Berlin, Germany with his wife and brother; and applying for a visa and immigrating to the United States on March 10, 1947.

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

    Liny Pajgin Yollick, born in 1924 in Hague, Netherlands, describes growing up in a wealthy family; the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940; her mother’s plans to escape after her father died; spending six months with her mother and sister trying to escape through southern France by pretending to be Protestant, obtaining visas to travel through Spain and Portugal, and going on one of the last trains to cross into Spain after the Germans took over southern France; boarding a Portuguese ship bound for Dutch Guiana and being placed into a refugee camp; the exiled Dutch government’s arrangement for her to finish her education; and immigrating to the United States, where she worked for some time in the Dutch embassy in Washington, DC before settling in Texas.

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

    Fred Bachner was born on September 28, 1925 in Berlin, Germany and describes his family; his brother’s and father’s deportation to the Polish border after Kristallnacht; moving to Poland in 1939 to join the rest of his family; his brother being taken to a work camp in Poland in 1940; his deportation to Markstädt, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, and then to Groeditz and Faulbrueck before he was sent to Auschwitz; loading and unloading coal and cement for I.G. Farben, a German industrial company; going on a death march out of Auschwitz to a camp near Dachau, where he found his brother; being placed on another train that was ambushed by British fighter planes; jumping off the train with his brother and hiding in the surrounding area until they located the American soldiers; staying at the Feldafing displaced persons camp after the war; reuniting with his father and immigrating to the United States with his father and brother on January 3, 1947; and being drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War.

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

    Murray Pantirer was born on June 15, 1925 in Kraków, Poland and discusses his childhood; the German occupation of Kraków in 1939; separating from his family on several occasions in an attempt to find food and other necessities; finally being confined to the Kraków ghetto; his and his brother’s deportation to Płaszów, Poland to do forced labor; his transport to Auschwitz in May 1944, then to Gross-Rosen, and finally to Brünnlitz, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, to work for German industrialist Oskar Schindler; his liberation on May 10, 1945 and discovering that he was only one of nine family members to survive; returning to Poland after liberation but deciding to leave because of the lingering presence of antisemitism; moving to a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, where he met and married his wife; arranging to immigrate to America through the American consul in Salzburg, Austria; and immigrating to the United States on the S.S. Marine Fletcher in January 1949.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

    Barbara Marton Farkas, born on May 4, 1920 in Beliu, Romania, describes her family and childhood; living in Beliu until 1937, when her family sold their house and store and moved to Oradea, Romania; being refused entrance into the university in 1940 because of the anti-Jewish laws implemented by the Hungarian government, which then controlled the northern Transylvania area; training in a hospital laboratory and working there until the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944; leaving the hospital, which was occupied by the SS, and starting work at a photo company; first wearing the Star of David on April 1, 1944 and going into the Oradea ghetto in May 1944; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where she lost her parents; her transfer to Weisswasser, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany, where she worked in a chemistry lab and then in the Cathode Workshop; staying there from October 1944 through February 1945; her transport through several camps after March 1945 to avoid the approaching Soviet army; ending up on the German-Danish border at Padberg, Germany; the Red Cross assisting the survivors with food and shelter; being taken to Malmö, Sweden the next day and then spending some time in a hospital in Landskrona, Sweden; returning to Romania to study in Cluj from 1946 to 1951; graduating as an industrial pharmacist; immigrating to Israel in 1961; and immigrating to the United States in 1968.

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

    William Farkas, born in 1916 in Arad, Romania, describes growing up as an only child in a middle class family; attending the Arad Jewish school and studying business administration after high school; joining the Romanian Army after school; not experiencing antisemitism until 1940 when he was expelled from the army because he was Jewish; the Iron Guard coming to power in September 1940; being ordered to report for deportation to labor camps in July 1941 and going to a work camp in Sighişoara, Romania, where he worked as a miner demolishing mountains for a new railway line; being sent home until 1942, when he was transported to Valea Homorod, Romania and then to Kinapist, Romania to do railway work; claiming he was an electrician in 1943 and going to a camp with three friends in Timişoara, Romania, where they worked as auto mechanics in a military garage for one year; his transport in 1944 to Doaga, a labor camp in Romania, where inmates built cement fortresses; hearing that Soviet soldiers were approaching Doaga and being liberated on August 25, 1944; returning home via Bucharest and reuniting with his parents in Arad; finding a wife and immigrating to Israel with her in 1954; and immigrating to the United States in 1961.

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

    Sheila Etons Bernard (née Sala Perec), born on February 18, 1936 in Chełm, Poland, describes her family and early childhood; her father’s deportation to a labor camp after the war began and never seeing him again; hiding in the shack of a Polish policeman for almost two years with her mother; her mother dying because of a blood clot in her leg; going to a children’s home in Germany for two years; immigrating to Palestine to live with one of her uncles; joining the military, where she met her husband; immigrating to the United States in 1963 because her husband had family in the US; and her thoughts on how the war has affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

    Frima, born in 1936 in Volochys'k, Russia (now Ukraine), describes her family; trying to escape to White Russia with her family after the Nazi invasion but being forced back to live with some distant cousins; her father’s capture by the Germans to serve as an interpreter for them; her sister and mother being forced to work at labor camps during the days; entering the Volochys'k ghetto; getting caught by Germans and claiming that they were not Jewish, which resulted in them going to jail; escaping with her mother and sister to hide in the attic of a barn, where they were almost discovered but managed to escape; the intensifying pogroms against the Jews by Russian and Ukrainian collaborators; pretending to be Christian and going into hiding with an old family friend; eventually reuniting with her mother with the help of several generous Gentiles and staying with her until the end of the war; going into displaced persons camps in Bavaria; going to school in Germany for two and a half years and then moving to France; immigrating to the United States in the 1950s and meeting her husband there; and her considerations on how the war has affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

    Esther Terner Raab, born on June 11, 1922 in Chelm, Poland, describes growing up as one of two children; the Soviet occupation of her town in 1939; the German invasion of Chelm in 1941 and her family being forced into a ghetto; moving to Siedliszcze, Poland and eventually moving into the ghetto in Siedliszcze; her transport to the labor camp at Staw Noakowski, Poland for a short time before she and her brother were sent to Sobibór in December 1942; arriving at Sobibór three days before Christmas in 1942 and being forced to work in a knitting factory in the camp, knitting woolen socks; witnessing the gassing of Jews at Camp III of the Sobibór compound; participating in the camp uprising of October 14, 1943 but getting wounded during the escape; fleeing to the countryside and getting sheltered by a former customer of her father; reuniting with her brother, who had escaped during a previous transfer; remaining hidden until 1944, when the region in which she hid was freed by the Soviet Red Army; following the Red Army to Berlin, Germany and settling there for a short time after the war; marrying a man in Berlin and then immigrating to the United States shortly after the end of the war; and serving as a witness at the trials of Nazi criminals in the 1965-66 trials in Hagen, Germany.

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

    Guy Stern, born on January 14, 1922 in Hildesheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Jewish family; attending a German school, where he had many non-Jewish friends; losing several of his friends after 1933 when they joined the Hitler Youth; his family’s decision to move to the United States after they began to experience increased levels of antisemitism; leaving Germany with a group of children in November 1937 and arriving in New York, NY; moving to St. Louis, Missouri to live with distant relatives; graduating high school in June 1939 and trying to help his family immigrate to the United States; discovering that his parents had perished in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland; attempting to enlist in the US Army in 1941 but being turned away because of his German heritage; receiving a draft notice in 1942 and being trained in military intelligence because of his familiarity with the German language; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; working as an interrogator and uncovering the deeds of several war criminals; going to Buchenwald the day after it was liberated and seeing the horrible conditions there; returning to the United States after the war, attending Hofstra College, and then earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University in German Literature and Culture; and helping other survivors write about their Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

    Toby Stern, born on July 15, 1920 in Vișeu de Mijloc, Romania, describes growing up as the youngest of six children; marrying when she was seventeen or eighteen; going into hiding with her family shortly after the war began; having one child and miscarrying another while in hiding; her deportation to Auschwitz with her mother and her three-year-old son; giving her child to her mother to carry, since both were guaranteed to be killed, which allowed her to survive; having to do forced labor making uniforms in the camp's tailor shop; going on a death march in early 1945 from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and then to Malchow, where Russian forces liberated her; going to the New Bromberg displaced persons camp and then returning to Vișeu de Mijloc in search of her husband and family; finding all of her brothers but not her husband, who was rumored to have died in Russia; immigrating to Germany after the war and remarrying while there; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

    Ion Butnaru, born in 1918 in Huși, Moldavia (Romania), describes his family; working for a small newspaper before the war until he was drafted into the Romanian Army in November, 1939; being transferred to the military zone in northern Moldavia in the spring of 1940; his expulsion from the army in August 1940 because he was Jewish; being ordered to return to his regiment to work with the battalions in the Carpathian Mountains on September 1, 1940; being sent back to Huși to clean streets in the summer of 1941; his deportation to a concentration camp in Tîrgu Jiu, Romania, where he remained for four months; returning to Huși, where he was placed in a local camp in the courtyard of the Jewish community and had to wear yellow badges; witnessing the Iron Guard Rebellion in January 1941, during which many Jews were killed; his father being falsely accused of being a communist and getting badly beaten; being forced to clear the streets of snow until the summer of 1942, when he was sent to Bolgrad, Ukraine and then to several other villages in Bessarabia in a forced labor battalion; getting moved to another camp near Bîrlad, Romania in 1943; the Romanian Army surrendering to Soviet forces in August 1944; and immigrating to the United States in 1976.

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

    Jeanine Gutman Butnaru, born on June 25, 1925 in Bacău, Romania, describes her childhood and family; moving to Bucharest, Romania in 1938; her involvement in the underground resistance movement in Bucharest; working as a volunteer in Jewish hospitals; witnessing the Iron Guard Rebellion of January 21-23, 1941, when Legionaries killed Jews and burned downed their houses and stores; the 1944 American bombing of the railroads that cut the Germans off from Ploiești, Romania, which was rich with oil; hiding in her family’s cellar during the heavy bombardments because Ploiești was near Bucharest; Soviet troops entering Romania at the end of the war; meeting her husband in the Writer's Union; and immigrating to the United States in 1976.

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

    Cecilie Klein-Pollack, born on April 13, 1925 in Yasinya, Ukraine, describes growing up as the youngest of six children in a Jewish family; the death of her father when she was nine years old; her expulsion from high school after the Hungarians annexed Ruthenia; being threatened with deportation and subsequently going into hiding in Budapest, Hungary after her mother and sister were briefly imprisoned there; fleeing to Horinc, Ukraine, where they stayed for a year until her brother was taken for forced labor; moving with her mother to Nyíregyháza, Hungary, where arrangements had been made for her to apprentice in a dental laboratory; traveling to Budapest when she heard that her oldest sister had been arrested and finding out that she had been sent to a labor camp in Bačka Topola, Yugoslavia; traveling to Bačka Topola to arrange for her sister’s release and then returning to Budapest, where she became engaged to her future husband Joe Klein; the German invasion of Budapest in March 1944 and joining up with her and Joe’s families in Chust, Ukraine; being forced into a ghetto and then transported to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being sent to Birkenau with her sister; being sheltered by the Blockältester who liked her because she was a talented poet; her and her sister’s transport to Nuremberg and Holleischen; their liberation from Holleischen by Russian troops and returning to Czechoslovakia, where she reunited with her fiancé and married him in Budapest on August 21, 1945; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

    Fred Schwartz, born on October 30, 1928 in Kotaj, Hungary, describes his childhood; his father’s deportation to a labor camp in 1940; taking over his father’s job delivering seltzer water with his brother; knowing very little of what was happening in Europe from 1940 to 1944; the German invasion of Hungary; the organization of Jews into their town synagogues as the Germans prepared them for deportation; his deportation to Birkenau with his father, mother, and brother; discovering later after the war that his mother had died in Bergen-Belsen; his transfer to a work camp in Wolfsberg where he had to dig tunnels through mountains; being forced on a death march as the Russian forces neared; arriving in Mauthausen where he was liberated by American forces; staying a displaced persons camp for two years until he relocated to Paris, France; waiting to receive an American visa; going to the United States without legal papers and almost being sent back; and reconciling with his past.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Abraham Malnik, born on January 31, 1927 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes his childhood and family; the Russian invasion of Lithuania in 1940 and losing most of his family’s belongings; the brutal treatment of Jews by Lithuanians; the establishment of a ghetto in Kaunas that held about thirty thousand people; the Lithuanians beheading the local rabbis; being saved during a selection because his father knew the chief of police; his father’s work in the ghetto fire department; being forced to do several jobs like make toys for German children and clean dirty clothes from the front; the Germans and Lithuanians intensifying their battle against the Jews after the loss of the battle at Stalingrad; being on the last transport from the ghetto to Dachau, where he had to help build a factory for Messerschmitt and pick up dead bodies; his transfers with his father to Flossenbürg and then another camp; getting a German officer in trouble because he attempted to sexually abuse him; his transfer to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated by Russian troops on May 8, 1945; immigrating to the United States without knowing anyone or speaking English; and settling in Washington, DC with his wife, who was a Belgian Holocaust survivor.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

    Lilly Appelbaum Malnik, born in Belgium in 1928, describes her family and childhood; her father's move to the United States; waking up one morning in 1940 and discovering that the Germans had invaded; her sister who was taken into hiding by a farmer who later turned her in to the Germans because she would not have sexual relations with him; living with her aunt in the countryside after having her tonsils out; returning to find that her mother and brother had been deported; hiding her Jewish identity and doing odd jobs for the Germans; going into hiding with a Belgian girl with whom she had worked; being caught and deported on the second-to-last transport before the liberation of Belgium; arriving in Birkenau and receiving her identification number and work assignment to the kitchens in Auschwitz; a death march to Bergen-Belsen; the arrival of Allied soldiers at Bergen-Belsen; being taken away by the Red Cross to recover from typhus and physical injuries; returning to Belgium and reuniting with her aunt; and immigrating to United States to be with her father.

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

    Masha Loen, born in July 1930 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes growing up in a religious family with three sisters; her father hiding her family and other Kaunas Jews under the wooden floor planks in his home; being separated from her family in 1941 and taken to the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland; performing forced labor in Stutthof until 1945, when she was taken on a death march as Russian troops approached the camp; making it to a Russian hospital after the German soldiers abandoned the death march; traveling to Łódź, where she found her father who had been liberated from Dachau; taking a transport to Austria; and immigrating to New Orleans, LA in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

    Madeline Deutsch, born on April 29, 1930 in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), describes her childhood; Hungary taking over her town on November 9, 1938; living under the Hungarians until March 1944 when the Germans invaded; living in a ghetto for two weeks until her transport to Auschwitz, where she and her mother stayed in for one week; being moved near Wrocław, Poland to work at an ammunition factory; her and her mother’s liberation by Russian soldiers on May 8, 1945; discovering that both her father and brother had died; staying with her mother in a displaced persons camp for four years until March 9, 1949 when the two immigrated to the United States; and marrying and having two sons in America.

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

    Amalie Petranker Salsitz, born in 1922 in Munich, Germany, describes growing up in a Zionist family; moving to Stanislav, Poland (now Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine) when she was a young child; the Russian occupation of Poland in 1939 and the loss of her father’s business; seeing her sister move to Palestine with her new husband; her family’s arrest by the Gestapo in October 1941; moving into the ghetto until her father was deported in 1942; escaping to Kraków, Poland, where she passed as Aryan; working as a chambermaid and finally obtaining employment at a construction firm in Kraków, where she remained until January 1945; traveling to Munich and Palestine after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

    Norman Salsitz, born in 1920 in Kolbuszowa, Poland, describes growing up in a Zionist Hasidic family; making a failed attempt to immigrate to Palestine in 1938; unsuccessfully trying to join the Polish Army in September 1939; the occupation and destruction of his town; escaping to Russian-occupied Poland for a short period until he returned to Kolbuszowa; going into the Lipie labor camp in 1940; running away from the camp; working for the Germans, building garages for the Wehrmacht; his deportation to the Pustków concentration camp in late 1940; being beaten; escaping from Pustków and moving to the Czechowice ghetto; escaping from the ghetto in November 1942 and helping to establish a partisan unit in the forest near Kolbuszowa; obtaining false documentation with which he joined the Armia Krajowa; fleeing to Germany after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

    Frederic Bernard, born on August 7, 1912 in Chernivtsi, Romania (Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes his family; studying medicine at Karls University in Prague, Czechoslovakia; attempting to enter Hungary in 1941 but being turned away by the Hungarian gendarmerie and placed in a ghetto in Oleyëvo-Korolëvka, Ukraine with over 1,500 Jewish people; hiding during an Aktion in 1942 that exterminated most of the ghetto and then later escaping with his wife Gusti; finding a hiding place with a Polish man in a barn in the woods; the Polish man encouraging him to join a Polish resistance group; finding a new hiding place with Gusti in 1943 and joining a Russian resistance group; becoming a courier for the resistance because of his Romanian language ability; joining the Polish Army, where he practiced as a doctor; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

    Isaac Bitton, born on March 31, 1926 in Lisbon, Portugal, describes his family and childhood; the small Lisbon Jewish community in which he grew up that hosted thousands of Jewish refugees before and during the war; his family’s work running a soup kitchen to help the Jewish refugees; immigrating to Palestine with his brother aboard the ship Nisassa; being forced into an internment camp when he arrived in Haifa; joining the Palestine Police Railroad Division and then the Jewish Brigade; spending some time in Antwerp, Belgium for the Jewish Brigade but soon returning to Palestine to work for the British military; participating in a movement to encourage the illegal entry of European refugees into Palestine; working with the underground forces of the Haganah, a movement dedicated to preparing for Israeli independence; and his immigration to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

    Max Haber, born on December 31, 1904 in Essen, Germany, describes his family; attending an Orthodox Jewish school in Germany; moving to Hamburg, Germany and working as a businessman there until 1933, when he moved to Kolomyia, Poland to live with his brother and sister; moving to Katowice, Poland, where he was able to find work; joining the Revisionist party in 1939 and trying to immigrate to Palestine on an illegal transport through Romania; the British Ambassador to Romania telling the Romanians to withdraw his visa since the British were restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine; returning to Kolomyia and staying there until the Soviets invaded in 1939; trying to escape to Romania with his brother-in-law but getting caught and imprisoned; being moved to Kiev, Ukraine in March 1940; receiving a five-year prison sentence and getting transported to Yartsevo, Russia; his transfer to the Mostowits labor camp in Russia, where he was forced to cut trees; his liberation in March 1944 and taking a train to Kotel’nich, Russia with other prisoners; staying with several Russian Jewish families until he found a Ukrainian family who housed him for a short time in exchange for German lessons; traveling to the English zone in Germany; and reuniting with his brother in 1951 in Israel.

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

    Major General William P. Levine, born in Duluth, Minnesota on July 1, 1915, describes growing up as the oldest of four brothers; his draft into the United States Army in 1942 and completing Officer Training School in 1943; entering the Intelligence Unit as an Artillery Officer in 1944; being sent to England and later traveling with a unit that began in the Netherlands and worked its way south towards Dachau; moving into Dachau on April 29, 1945 and helping to give out food and medical care to the former prisoners at Dachau; and returning to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

    Leo Schneiderman, born on August 18, 1921 in Łódź, Poland, describes his family and childhood; the large Jewish population that had comfortably developed within Łódź before Hitler came to power; Poland preparing for war by drafting young men into the army and by digging trenches; the German invasion and fall of the Polish Army in September 1939; being tricked by the German government to head towards Warsaw with his younger brother and father; returning to Łódź and being forced into the ghetto with his whole family; the closing of the Łódź ghetto in 1940 and the realization that the community needed to organize its own services and methods of self-support; each of his family members taking a job in the ghetto, including his work as a tailor; illegally teaching Yiddish in the ghetto; not understanding why there had to be deportations from the ghetto without realizing the severity of the camps; his deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his transport to Kaltwasser, a labor camp in Silesia, to do construction work for a short period until he was transferred to Lärche and then to Wolfsberg, where he worked in a hospital; being forced onto an open cattle car for a deportation and being thrown food while passing through Stará Paka, Czechoslovakia; his liberation by Allied Forces; and speaking for the prosecution against Herr Krison in a 1978 trial in Bochum, West Germany.

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

    Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf, both born in 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, describe their childhoods and families; Pela’s decision to study at a Warsaw law school before the war; getting married in 1936 and having a daughter in 1941; entering the Warsaw ghetto in 1940; escaping from the ghetto in 1942 by drugging their daughter, so she seemed to be dead; pretending to go to the Jewish cemetery outside of the ghetto to bury their daughter but never returning; their daughter getting tuberculosis and her six week treatment in a hospital; being helped by non-Jews; hiding on the Aryan side as Catholics; their daughter’s discovery that she was Jewish after the war; immigrating to the United States in 1947 on a United States Navy transport; Adam taking various jobs until he opened sporting goods factory; and getting involved in the Penny Project, which began in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

    Carla Heijmans Lessing, born in 1929 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, describes her family and childhood; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 and experiencing harsh antisemitic measures; going into hiding with her mother and brother in August 1942 with the assistance of a Catholic priest who helped Jews find hiding places; leaving their first hiding place after three months but, with the priest’s help, finding a new shelter in Delft, in which they hid for thirty months; and her liberation in May 1945.

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

    Edward Lessing, born in the Hague, Netherlands on May 8, 1926, describes moving to the United States in 1929; returning to Delft, Netherlands in 1932 because of the economic depression in the US; entering trade school in 1942 to become a tool maker but having to leave because Jews could no longer attend public school after the German invasion; splitting up from his family after the invasion in October 1942 and finding a place to hide with a farmer, who employed him as a farm hand; relocating to hide in a convent in the Hague with his mother; the German raid of the convent in December 1943, during which he escaped, but his mother was taken to Bergen-Belsen; reuniting with his father and brothers in their hiding place in an abandoned cottage; remaining in this cottage through May 1945 when they returned to Delft; his mother’s liberation from Bergen-Belsen in late 1945; and immigrating with his family to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

    Werner Goldsmith, born in Erfurt, Germany on November 13, 1928, describes his family; the expulsion of Jewish children from German schools in 1938; the death of his father in 1938 and moving with his mother to Berlin, Germany; his mother placing him in the Auerbach Orphanage while she lived with another Jewish woman in West Berlin; his mother arranging for him to be placed in a transport to France while she traveled to England; living in the home of a French count until the invasion of France in 1940; the count being taken prisoner in Germany in 1940 and going into the care of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; unsuccessfully attempting to flee to southern France and getting separated from the other children when he was placed in the Rothschild orphanage, where he remained for nine months; moving to Marseilles, France in the spring of 1941; receiving an emergency visa in September 1941 to immigrate to the United States because he had relatives there; getting on a transport from Marseilles to Portugal and then embarking on a Portuguese freighter and sailing to the United States; and living in Jewish foster homes until he reunited with his mother in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

    Beatrice Pappenheimer, born in October 1932 in Lauterbach, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her parents having to register with the local police; moving to Karlsruhe, Germany after her father had to give up his business in 1936; starting school in Karlsruhe but experiencing much antisemitism; being forced to leave school in November 1938 because of a law forbidding Jews from public schools; the Gestapo forcing her and her family from their house and onto a train in 1939; arriving in the Gurs camp and contracting dysentery; her transfer to the Rivesaltes camp; her mother placing her on a truck run by the Oeuvre de Secours des Enfants and moving into homes in France; reuniting with her sister, who had gone through terrible times in the camps; the bombing of France that picked up in 1943; receiving letters from her grandmother in Palestine, her aunts in New York City, NY, and her uncle and aunt in London, England; arriving in London to be with her uncle and aunt; immigrating to New York City in October 1947 to live with her aunts and attend high school; and her thoughts on her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John Komski, born in 1915 in Galicia, Poland, describes growing up in a Gentile family; having some Jewish friends at the Academy of Arts in Kraków, where he graduated from in 1939; leaving Kraków when the Germans invaded but returning to join the resistance; escaping to Czechoslovakia, where he was caught by Slovaks who turned him in to the Gestapo; being rounded up in 1940 with 756 other Poles and deported to Auschwitz, where he worked in the architect's office; helping to create the museum in Auschwitz in 1941, collecting items of interest from the incoming inmates; escaping from Auschwitz to a small village, where he received false documents from the underground and boarded a train to Kraków; getting captured in Kraków and sent to prison; his transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to Buchenwald, where he worked as a kitchen chef; his deportation to Gross-Rosen, where he worked in the labor relations office; being transported to Hersbruck towards the end of the war and then forced on a death march to Dachau, where he was liberated; and his immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

    Curtis Whiteway, born in Newburyport, MA on November 3, 1925, discusses his draft into the United States Army in December 1943; his basic training in Fort Knox, KY and intensive training with Rangers; transferring to Camp Maxie, TX, where he joined the 99th Division and immediately went to England; crossing into France with his division and participating in several skirmishes with the Germans; fighting the Third Panzer Division, which helped to push American forces further into Germany through the Siegfried Line; fighting near Cologne, Germany and encountering several concentration camps; helping to liberate the few surviving prisoners at Ohrdruf; going south into combat after the arrival of the Red Cross; reaching Dachau 3-B and then liberating the Moosburg prison camp (Stalag VII A) in Germany, which had about 30,000 prisoners, including some American prisoners of war; going to the Landshut sub-camp of Dachau to meet up with English and Canadian troops; and his assignment after the war to work temporarily in Cherbourg, France.

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

    Lore Baer, born August 26, 1938 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; how her family moved from Germany to the Netherlands in 1933; developing a close relationship with her maternal grandfather, who was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Bergen-Belsen, where he perished; her family's relationship with Elsa and Sam Izaaks, members of the underground resistance; her time in hiding with the Schouten family and becoming friends with Cornelia Schouten; her memories of living as a Catholic in order to conceal her identity as a Jew; hiding in various places on the Schouten family farm in order to avoid the Germans; her difficult separation from the Schouten family at the end of the war and her readjustment to life in Amsterdam; immigrating to the United States with her parents and settling in the Bronx, New York; and returning to the Netherlands to visit with members of the Schouten family several years after moving to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

    Erich Kulka (né Erich Schön), born on February 18, 1911 in Vsetín, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his childhood and family; being raised as a conservative Jew; attending a trade school, where he studied forestry and then worked in the family lumber business; smuggling people through the woods after the German annexation of Austria; being caught, arrested, and tortured by the Gestapo in June 1939; being released from prison in August 1939 and resuming work with the underground; his second arrest in 1940, when he was taken to Dachau as a political prisoner and then transferred to Auschwitz, where he was assigned to a work detail with a group of five in the Birkenau camp; assisting in resistance activities in Auschwitz; going on a death march as the Soviets approached and then put on a train from which he escaped; fleeing from Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring in 1968; living in Vienna, Austria for three months; and how all his family now lives in Israel.

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

    Cornelia Schouten, born on January 21, 1920 in Huizen, Netherlands, describes growing up as one of five children of a Christian farming family in Oosterblokker, Netherlands; one of her brothers serve in the Dutch Army and fight against the Nazis in 1940; the arrest of her father and uncle during the German occupation of the Netherlands because they were striking in protest of the occupation; her family’s decision to harbor those who resisted the Nazis, including members of the resistance and men who were drafted for forced labor; sheltering the young Jewish girl, Lore Baer, for over two years; Lore’s parents emerging from hiding after the war and reclaiming their daughter; reuniting with Lore several times after the war; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

    Drexel Sprecher, born on March 25, 1913 in Independence, WI, describes his family; his education at the University of Wisconsin, the London School of Economics, and at the Harvard School of Law; receiving a position on the Labor Board in 1938; his enlistment in the United States Army after the US declared war on Germany; being sent to London, England, where he was assigned to the Inspector General's office; later serving as a prosecutor of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials; and prosecuting Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth.

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

    Bela Blau, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1910, describes his family; getting married in 1930 and moving to Zilina, Slovakia; serving in the army for eighteen months and then working as a salesman representing a photo company; having a son in 1937; being dismissed from his job in 1938 because of his Jewish background; being arrested by two Hlinka Guards one day after Yom Kippur in 1942; his and his family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where he was placed in Block 10 and worked on building a bridge above the River Sota; doing writing jobs for an illiterate German Kapo because he spoke German; being assigned to the Kommando Kanada until May 1943 when he became a scribe and met his future second wife Magda; going on a death march in January 1945 from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Mauthausen, where he spent one month until he was transferred to Gusen, where he worked as an engineer fixing petrol tanks, gas tanks, and the wings of Messerschmitt planes; his transfer to Gunskirchen on May 1; and United States forces liberating him on May 7, 1945 in Gunskirchen.

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

    Magda Blau, born on August 19, 1916 in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes growing up in a Jewish family; becoming a kindergarten teacher; the German invasion and her deportation to Auschwitz, where she worked scrubbing floors for three months until she became an assistant to the block supervisor; being put in charge of the barrack for medical experiments in the autumn of 1942 and becoming the protégé of Dr. Eduard Wirths, the garrison physician; later working in an office and becoming the concentration camp commander of the camp for Hungarian Jews; getting a job counting potatoes in a kitchen and then a job as a concentration camp supervisor in a fabric production facility; going on a death march on January 18, 1945 to Malchow, where they were liberated by the Soviet Army; settling in Prague, Czech Republic for a short time and then immigrating to Israel; and finally immigrating to Australia in 1965.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

    Barbara Lederman Rodbell, born in 1925 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933 with her family; becoming friends with Anne Frank and her family; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940; her boyfriend getting her false papers through his underground contacts; the deportation of her mother, sister, and father to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz; working for the resistance and surviving using her false papers; helping other Jews find hiding places; joining a ballet company for two years after the war; and immigrating to the United States in November 1947.

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

    Jerry Slivka, born on July 11, 1915 in Western Ukraine, describes his memories of the Soviet takeover of Russia; moving to the neighboring town of Povorsk, Ukraine with his family; participating with the Zionist movement and joining a kibbutz; moving to Łódź, where he worked as a manager of a village store from 1939 to 1941; entering the Polish Army in 1939 but settling in Soviet-held territory after the takeover of Poland; joining the reserves of the Soviet Army; escaping a German attack and seeking refuge at Soviet military headquarters; being sent to a labor camp in Stalingrad (Volgograd), Russia and then to the railroads east of the Volga because the Soviets were suspicious of him; working in a coal mine near Moscow, Russia for one-and-a-half years before he was freed; his interment in Italy until he could return to Łódź in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

    Rochelle Blackman Slivka, born in 1922 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes growing up in a Jewish family; the German occupation of Vilnius in June 1941 and moving into the ghetto with her family in October; her mother’s death in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943 and being transported to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof; her father’s murder in an Estonian prison camp because he had served as a Jewish council member; her experiences in the camps until she had to go on a death march, during which the Soviet Army liberated her; beginning to make her way back to Vilnius with her sister but instead going to West Germany; separating from her sister while they both awaited permission to go to the United States; learning nursing during her stay at a German displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States and arriving in Massachusetts on May 18, 1949; working as a nurse’s aide in an American hospital; and meeting and marrying a Holocaust survivor in the United States in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

    Francis Akos, born on March 30, 1922 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his childhood; attending a music academy, from which he graduated in 1941; becoming the concertmaster for the Budapest Jewish Community Cultural Center orchestra; being drafted for forced labor into the Hungarian Army in 1943; getting captured with other Jews in Budapest while on leave from the army to get fresh clothes; being sent by train to Neuengamme on November 4, 1944; playing violin in the camp; his evacuation from Neuengamme on May 3, 1945 and being transported by the ship Cap Arcona, a passenger liner that was evacuating refugees from West Prussia; the British mistakenly attacking the Cap Arcona and three other prisoner ships, which resulted in eight thousand deaths; returning to Budapest after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1954.

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

    Beno Helmer, born in 1923 in Teplice, Czechoslovakia, describes his childhood and family; using his foreign language skills to land small movie roles before the war; attempting to settle in Hungary with his family before the war; his family’s deportation to Łódź in 1939 because they did not have immigration papers; arriving in the Łódź ghetto and staying there until he had to begin doing forced labor outside the ghetto in 1942; securing a job posing as a non-Jewish German and collecting information for the underground and becoming an expert at derailing trains; returning to the ghetto when his father became sick and remaining with his family until they were deported to Auschwitz after the liquidation of the Łódź ghetto; his deportations to Gross-Rosen, Krupp Bertha-Werk at Laskowitz-Meleschwitz, Buchenwald, and Ludwigslust; his liberation by American soldiers while in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp; attempting to get back to Poland and on the way joining a Polish forced labor group that was later incorporated into the Russian Army; spending time hunting for Nazi war criminals after the war; and living in Europe for several years until he immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

    Jerry von Halle, born on December 2, 1922 in Hamburg, Germany, describes his family and childhood; learning the Hitler salute in school and having to fly the Nazi flag over his house on holidays; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands with his family in 1933 to get away from the Nazi party in Germany; the German invasion of the Netherlands; the Gestapo arresting and sending him to prison; being sent to Mauthausen with his brother and other boys but returning because he claimed to have tuberculosis; learning to be a shoemaker to avoid deportation; hiding in a house in the countryside with his family but returning to Amsterdam with his mother; going into hiding with his mother in the small apartment that belonged to one of his former teachers; his hider being caught and arrested four weeks before the end of the war and having to find a new place to hide; his liberation by Canadian troops; being arrested after the war with his mother because of their German passports but shortly being released when the authorities realized through what they had been; and immigrating to the United States in 1945.

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

    Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall, born in 1929 in Klyucharki, Czechoslovakia (Kliucharky, Ukraine), discusses her childhood; her father immigrating to the United States but being unable to arrange for her entire family to come over before the war began; no longer being able to attend school and experiencing increased tensions with her neighbors after the German annexation of Czechoslovakia; being forced to move into the ghetto with her family; being loaded onto a train after spending several weeks in the ghetto and arriving in Auschwitz two and a half days later; pretending that she was 15, so she would be old enough to work; her assignment to carry rocks between two places; being sent to the gas chambers during a selection but getting rescued just before she entered the gas chamber itself; working in an airplane factory with six hundred women; running into a forest with a friend and walking to a town that had been liberated by the Russian military; being given an apartment, food, clothing, and medical attention by the Russians; returning home to find her house destroyed; living in her grandmother’s house with other survivors and living off of the money her father sent her; learning that she had an uncle who had survived and sneaking across the border into non-communist Czechoslovakia to reunite with him; and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with her father.

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

    Ralph Codikow, born in 1930, in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes his family; the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941 and his brother shortly thereafter being shot at the Seventh Fort; his and his mother’s confinement to the Kaunas ghetto, where his mother saved them by pretending to be married to a male friend; his mother using her husband’s Lithuanian military service papers to forgo deportation to the Ninth Fort; being saved by his work in a ceramics factory when the children’s Aktions were decreasing the number of children in the ghetto; his and his mother’s deportation to Stutthof, where they were separated; his transfer to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau in Germany, and then to Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau; contracting measles but being considered healthy enough to go on a forced march to Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany, in the winter; his liberation at Buchenwald in April 1945; moving to France after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

    Ruth Borsos, born in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, describes her family; moving to the Netherlands after Kristallnacht in 1938; her and her father obtaining permits to sail to the United States but not being able to do so when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940; her deportation to Westerbork in 1943 and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; being interned with her father in a camp near the Swiss border when an exchange agreement with the Allies broke down; being chosen to be traded for German prisoners because of their foreign passports; their liberation from the internment camp by French forces on April 23, 1945; spending some time in a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp after the war; returning to the Netherlands in 1947 and receiving a visa to immigrate to the United States; and marrying another Holocaust survivor, whom she met in Washington, DC.

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

    Simone Marguerite Lipman (née Weil), born on April 4, 1920 in Ringendorf, France, describes her family; participating in a Jewish scouting organization, Les Eclaireurs Israélites de France, with her brother; moving to Strasbourg, France, a city with a vibrant Jewish community; graduating from high school in 1938 and moving to southern France to care for her elderly grandmother; relocating to Blâmont, France because of fears of Nazi invasion; training in early childhood education and working at a private school in Paris, France for a few months until she returned to take care of her mother who was extremely ill; the German invasion of France in May 1940; packing up her family’s belongings and driving towards southern France; arriving in Périgeaux, France, where her family had to register as Jews; going to the Rivesaltes camp in France to work for the Organization for Children’s Rescue, for which she distributed food, cared for the children, and tried to find ways to get them out of the camp; helping to rescue hundreds of children with the Catholic Church after the Nazis began to round up children in late 1942; working to reopen many children’s homes after the war ended; receiving a scholarship from America’s National Council of Jewish Women for her work during the war; moving to the United States in 1946 to attend Tulane University, where she received a master’s degree in social work; returning to Europe, where she trained employees of children’s homes to deal with the special needs of young Holocaust survivors; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

    Shony Alex Braun, born on July 14, 1930 in Transylvania, Romania (possibly Cristuru Secuiesc, Romania), describes his family and early childhood; learning to play the violin at age five; the occupation of his town by Hungarian forces in 1940 and by the Germans in 1944; being deported to Auschwitz in May 1944; his transfer into the Natzweiler (Struthof) camp system in France and then to Dachau, where American forces liberated him in April 1945; his immigration to the United States in 1950; and becoming a professional composer and violinist.

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

    Doriane Kurz, born in Vienna, Austria in March 1936, describes her family and early childhood; moving to Maastricht, Netherlands and then Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1939 for her father’s business; experiencing several Nazi air raids over Amsterdam; Dutch Jews losing their businesses in 1942; her parents being imprisoned for trying to escape from the country and then getting deported to Westerbork; her father’s transfer to Auschwitz on November 10, 1942 and never being heard from again; her mother’s return to Amsterdam to take care of her and her brother; going into hiding with two farmers in the countryside; her capture and deportation to Westerbork with her mother and brother at the end of 1943; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen; contracting typhus in March 1944; being liberated by English troops while on a train ride; going to a displaced persons camp in Maastricht in June 1945; her mother’s death in March 1945 due to cancer; and immigrating to the United States in July 1945 with her brother to live with her uncle.

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

    David Lieberman, born in Częstochowa, Poland on December 31, 1925, describes his family; living through pogroms as a young child; having to move into the town’s ghetto and perform forced labor after the German occupation; seeing many of his family members deported to camps; his deportation to Treblinka, where he escaped after eleven days by cutting a hole in the fence with wire cutters that he had stolen; running with two friends to the house of a nearby farmer who put the three onto a train headed back to Częstochowa; reuniting with one brother, his sister, and his mother upon his return; being taken to another concentration camp, where he worked in a munitions factory as a bullet maker; the camp’s liberation and traveling by train to Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where he entered a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency camp; traveling to Italy with the intention of taking a boat to Palestine but being returned to Karlovy Vary by the Italian government; and soon immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

    Laura Margolis, born in Constantinople, Turkey in 1903, describes her family; immigrating to the United States in 1908 and settling in Ohio; becoming a social worker for the Jewish Welfare Society of Cleveland after graduating from college; joining the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and going to Havana, Cuba, where she was in charge of sheltering and feeding Jewish refugees; her transfer to Shanghai, China in May 1941, where she aided over 8,000 Jewish refugees; her capture by Japanese forces after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and going into an internment camp; faking an illness to be transported to an American hospital, where she knew a doctor; the doctor lying about her health and refusing to release her from the hospital; returning to the United States as part of a prisoner of war exchange in 1944; being sent to Barcelona, Spain in 1945 by the JDC to aid Jewish refugees; helping to organize a parcel-sending program to former prisoners of concentration camps after their liberation; moving to Israel in 1953; and returning to the United States in 1983 to retire.

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

    Paul Strassman, born on January 24, 1929 in Trenčín, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), discusses his father’s work as an army officer for Austria-Hungary in World War I; the antisemitism his family experienced in the 1930s, which led them to consider escaping the country; his father divesting his share of his business; getting baptized, so they could avoid deportation; going into hiding in late August 1944; his father’s brief emergence from hiding and getting caught by the Gestapo, who sent him to Sachsenhausen; joining the Jegorov Brigade, a partisan group, in September 1944 and remaining in it until April 1945; joining the Czech Army in April 1945 as a noncommissioned officer and going to his station in Bratislava, Slovakia until the end of the war; remaining in Czechoslovakia but leaving just before the Communists took power in 1948; living briefly in Paris, France and London, England before immigrating to the United States in October 1948; and discovering that he was the sole survivor of his family.

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

    Ernest James, born in 1920 in Ord, NE, describes his family; joining the California National Guard in 1940; holding the position of sergeant and being called into active service in 1941; being stationed along the coast of San Francisco, CA and then going on to serve as platoon leader and company commander of the 238th Engineer Combat Battalion in the later years of the war; his unit’s attachment to the 1st Army and the 7th Corps; landing in Europe, where they swept through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany; reaching Nordhausen in April 1945 and finding workers from a V-2 missile and arms plant; ordering the German civilians to begin burying the large number of people who had already died; and assisting in the guarding of a nearby camp containing approximately 80,000-100,000 military prisoners of war.

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

    Chaim Engel, born in January 1916, describes growing up in Łódź, Poland; his experiences with feeling different as a Jew growing up; fighting in the Polish Army during the war and getting captured as a prisoner of war; being released and traveling to Lublin to work as a farmhand; his father’s and step-mother’s transport to Sobibór in June 1942; going to Izbica Lubelska with a friend to join a partisan unit; being caught and sent on a transport in September 1942 with about eight hundred people to Sobibór, where he worked sorting the clothes of people who had come into the camp; getting beaten for stealing pants on a couple of occasions; meeting his future wife Selma when they were both assigned to sort clothes; participating in the Sobibór uprising and escaping with Selma to a farm where they stayed until June 1944; his liberation by Russian troops and going to Parczew, Poland, where he and Selma had a child and started to re-organize their lives; moving to Holland, where they stayed until 1951 when they immigrated to Israel; and his and Selma’s immigration to the United States in 1957.

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel (née Wynberg), born in Groningen, Netherlands in 1922, describes her family and childhood; moving to Zwolle, Netherlands when she was seven years old; her family’s ownership of a kosher hotel; her father dying of a heart attack in 1941; the German invasion of the Netherlands and the confiscation of her family’s hotel; moving with her mother into the home of another Jewish family; receiving help from a Catholic priest in 1942 to hide in a non-Jewish family’s home; never seeing her mother and brothers again; hiding in a nurse’s home in Utrecht, Netherlands for a few months until she moved into another family’s house, where the police soon discovered her; being sent to an Amsterdam prison for three months; her deportation in 1943 to the transit camp in Vught, Netherlands, from which she went to Westerbork, where she worked in the laundry room; her transfer to Sobibór, where she had to sort clothes and clean the woods and railroads; contracting typhus; meeting Chaim, her future husband, when they had to dance in front of the Germans; escaping with Chaim from Sobibór during the uprising and hiding in the woods for several weeks; staying with a farmer in exchange for money for nine months; the farmer taking her and Chaim to Chełm, Poland in 1944; their liberation in July 1944; immigrating to Israel in 1951; and immigrating to the United States in 1957.

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

    Morris Engelson, born in 1935 in Paberze, Lithuania, describes his family; his father’s work in the grain business; the Soviet invasion in 1939; the German invasion in 1941 and forcing the Jews of Paberze into a ghetto; dressing up as a peasant woman with his mother to escape the ghetto that was soon liquidated by the Einsatzgruppen in September 1941; moving around and hiding in different farms with his mother; being smuggled to the Lithuanian-Polish border and ending up in another ghetto; reuniting with his father in April 1943 and hiding in a barn and then a farmer’s attic; moving westward towards the end of the war and arriving in the American zone in Germany; going to a Berlin displaced persons camp and later to the Gobrasa displaced persons camp in Bavaria after the war; and immigrating to the United States after four years.

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

    Lonia Mosak, born on July 20, 1922 in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, Poland, describes her family; moving to Ciechanów, Poland when she was young; attending a separate Jewish school in Poland and serving in a Zionist youth group; completing her school education in 1936; becoming seriously ill with typhus after the German invasion of Poland in 1939 but recovering even though Jewish physicians could not use medicine to contain the epidemic; her internment in Neustadt, a labor camp in Germany; being split up from her family in 1942 and transported to Auschwitz, where she remained until January 18, 1945 doing forced labor; being forced on a death march to Gross-Rosen and then to Ravensbrück, where she was liberated by the Soviet Army on April 30, 1945; returning to Ciechanów after her liberation; residing for short periods in Łódź and Bialystok to await the return of her last brother from Russia; marrying in Austria after the war; immigrating to a Polish-Jewish neighborhood of Chicago, IL in 1946; and having two children and eventually bringing her brother to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

    Agnes Grossman Aranyi, born on May 2, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; her father being drafted into forced labor camps from 1939 until 1942 when he was finally deported; attending Jewish school until 1942 when the war began in Hungary; the restrictions on Jewish life in Budapest; being warned by a friend to disappear because he knew that the round-ups were to begin soon; meeting a woman who worked for the underground and who took them to live as Christians in a Swedish house set up by Raoul Wallenberg; the Germans invading their home and forcing them into a ghetto; the Russians arriving to liberate the Budapest ghetto; living under Russian oppression until 1956, when she escaped to Austria with her fiancé during the Hungarian Revolution; and immigrating to North Carolina shortly thereafter.

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

    David Bergman, born on May 3, 1931 in Beckov, Czechoslovakia (present day Velykyĭ Bychkiv, Ukraine), describes his family and childhood; the German occupation of his town, previously annexed by Hungary, in 1944; his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1944; being transferred with his father to Płaszow, Gross-Rosen, and then Reichenbach an der Fils; being among three of 150 people in a cattle car who survived a transport to Dachau; being placed on a train to Innsbruck, Austria three days before the Americans arrived in Dachau; his liberation while on a death march from Innsbruck toward the front line of combat between United States and German troops; going into in an American hospital and rehabilitating; traveling to his old family home and finding it occupied by a Russian family; discovering that everyone in his family except him had perished; immigrating to the United States, where he settled in Cleveland, Ohio; and joining the American military to fight in the Korean War.

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

    Lila Lam Nawakowska, born on November 24, 1924 in Stanislawów, Poland (Stanislav, Ukraine), describes growing up in a large family; the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet occupation of Stanislav until June 1941, when the Soviets withdrew, and the Germans entered and constructed a ghetto; her father becoming the chairperson of the ghetto’s Judenrat because he was such an influential businessman in their community; remaining in the ghetto with her family until December 1942, when they were able to obtain falsified Aryan papers and escape on the eve of the ghetto's liquidation in January 1943; renting an apartment in Warsaw, Poland and remaining there until the Warsaw uprising, when she was transported to Mauthausen; briefly spending time doing forced labor in Steyr, a sub-camp of Mauthausen and in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); her liberation by Soviet soldiers in May 1945; and reuniting with her mother and future husband shortly after the end of the war.

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Yaffa Rosenthal, born in Solotvyno, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) on October 7, 1926, describes her family and childhood; her experiences with antisemitism as a child; the Ukrainians taking over her town in 1938 and learning in a different language in school; her father losing his job and having to work in mines and on a cattle farm to support his family; receiving a notice that her family would be taken away in the early summer of 1941; her deportation to Yasinya (IAsinia), Ukraine and then being marched toward Galicia, Poland; escaping from the Germans and going to live with her uncle in Oradea, Romania and then with her sister in Budapest, Hungary; having a somewhat normal life until the German occupation of Hungary in 1944; hiding in the Budapest ghetto until January 1945 when she was liberated by Russian troops; trying to survive after the war and receiving help from the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with her sister in Debrecen, Hungary and then returning with her to Budapest; participating in the Budapest Zionist organization and immigrating to Israel in 1948; getting married to an American man in 1959; and immigrating to the United States to settle in New York, NY.

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

    Eve Wagszul Rich, born in Kovel', Ukraine, describes her family and childhood; the German invasion and having to move into the ghetto; the Germans bursting into her home one night and killing her father in front of her; immediately running away into the forest and going to nearby villages, where she met peasants who gave her some food; going into hiding with a group of Carmelite Nuns; the Germans discovering her and sending her to Majdanek; escaping with a friend during a transport and going to Bavaria to work on a farm; her liberation by American forces; and immigrating to New York to live with her grandmother’s sister.

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

    Magda Mezei Lapidus, born on July 18, 1923 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; attending the Commercial Academy of Budapest for two years; first realizing the danger posed by the Nazis when they invaded Austria in 1938; seeing several young Hungarian men shipped out to labor camps starting in 1941; her brother being taken away to a labor camp in 1943; the German invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944; being forced into the Budapest ghetto and living in the Star of David House; her father returning to live with them in June 1944; being forced on a march with her father to the outskirts of Budapest, at which point she was separated from her father and never saw him again; hiding in a bush on her march and ripping her identifying star off and returning to Budapest to reunite with her mother and brother; going to the Spanish Legation near the ghetto and receiving a safety pass to move into a house protected from German invasion; remaining in the house until January 18, 1945, when the Russians liberated Budapest; and discovering the fate of her father.

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

    Avraham Ronai, born on September 14, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in a religious family; attending a secular public school and a Jewish school at night in Budapest; not experiencing many difficulties under the pro-Nazi Hungarian regime; the German invasion of Budapest in March 1944 but not really suffering until the Nazis took full control over Hungary in October 1944; the Nazis rounding up Jews into ghettos and deporting them; seeking help at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest and receiving a space in a Spanish safe-house due to the efforts of Giorgio Perlasca; remaining in the safe-house until the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945; and immigrating to Israel in 1949 because of the oppressive Hungarian Communist regime.

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

    Eva Konigsberg Lang, born on April 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her childhood and family; the Jewish community losing several of its rights when the war began; her relatives arriving from Czechoslovakia to live with her; being forbidden to attend school after March 1944; receiving a protective pass to get food; hearing that the wife of any man in forced labor would not be deported and getting married in 1944; hiding in a Spanish protective house on St. Paul Street and getting food supplies provided by the Jewish Council; the German occupation of Budapest; forging a telegram to prove that they were under Spanish protection and to save themselves from the Arrow Cross; and reflecting on how certain Spanish diplomats saved her life during the war.

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

    Cornelius Loen, born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) on May 2, 1922, describes growing up with a Jewish father and Gentile mother; the German invasion of his town on January 23, 1942 and German troops killing two of his uncles; escaping with his family to Budapest, Hungary, where they lived for ten months; his deportation to a forced labor camp in Hungary, where he remained until 1944; escaping to a nearby barn, where he hid for three days, during the liquidation of the camp; Russian troops liberating him while he hid in this barn; walking to a nearby displaced persons camp, where he met his future wife Masha; taking a Russian transport to Budapest and reuniting with his parents; discovering that his father had survived a concentration camp and his mother had helped to hide and save many Jewish people after her family was taken away; and immigrating to Los Angeles, CA in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

    Thomas Blatt, born in 1927 in Izbica Lubelska, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox family; the establishment of a ghetto run by the Germans after the war began in September 1939; working in a garage, which protected him from early ghetto roundups; trying to escape to Hungary with false papers in 1942 but getting caught; his and his family’s deportation to Sobibór, where his family was gassed immediately; the Germans choosing him as a laborer because of his mechanical skills; participating in and escaping during the Sobibór uprising on October 14, 1943 by escaping through the wire fences and avoiding the land mines; going into hiding with a friend on several farms; hiding in a stable and then in an abandoned brick factory; working as a courier for the Polish underground; and immigrating to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

    Anita Magnus Frank, born on January 29, 1936 in Emmen, Netherlands, describes her family; her move to Breda, Netherlands, where her family was living when the war broke out; the German invasion of 1940 and being told to leave because the Germans were going to bomb the town; walking thirty kilometers to a farm, where they stayed for five days; returning to Breda and experiencing increased persecution; obtaining false passports and assuming Dutch names to shield their Jewish identities in 1942 (Verified from other sources, the name of the individual who assisted Anita and her family was Govardus Pinxteren, who was later honored as Righteous Among the Nations); going into hiding first in a non-Jewish neighbor's home and then in a Quaker family’s home in Bilthoven, Netherlands; living as “normal” Dutch schoolchildren except having to hide their Jewish identities and constantly being in fear; leaving their hiding place in August 1944 because the Quaker family was too scared to keep them; returning to Limburg with her parents; the liberation of Limburg in September 1944; returning to Breda in April 1945 and living in an uninhabitable, bombed house for six months until they could move into a bigger and better house in the same town; and immigrating to the United States on December 7, 1952 because antisemitism was still a problem after the war.

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

    Guta Blass Weintraub, born on January 22, 1924 in Łódź, Poland, describes her childhood and family; her experiences with antisemitism in her youth; attending a private, Jewish, all-girls high school until the German invasion in September 1939; moving from Łódź to Wierzbnik-Starachowice in December 1939 because of fears about what the Germans had planned; the formation of a ghetto and having to share a home with at least one other family; meeting her future husband when he came to her home in the ghetto asking for her father to make him a suit with special pockets; being rounded up in the ghetto’s marketplace and sent to labor camps; managing to smuggle out some pictures with her as she, her mother, and her father were taken to a woodworking camp; surviving several shootings and experiencing starvation; her deportation to Auschwitz in 1942 and staying there until 1944, when she was transferred to Ravensbrück; her liberation by the Swedish Red Cross; and traveling to Sweden to recover.

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Henry Schmelzer, born in March 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes growing up as the youngest of four children in a middle-class family; graduating from a Jewish high school in 1938 shortly before it closed; his brothers fleeing, while he and the rest of his family endured Nazi raids on their home until they were evicted; his father losing his business and having severe depression; escaping to England on December 18, 1938 and finding refuge at a children's camp; remaining in England throughout the war and living with a group of young Zionists; enlisting in the British Army in 1943; being sent to a mountain unit, the 52nd Division; receiving his degree at the London School of Economics; spending 18 years in Israel; and immigrating to the United States in 1969.

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Liebowitz Goldkind, born in Volosyanka, Czechoslovakia (Ukraine) on July 9, 1928, describes her childhood and family; the Hungarian occupation of Czechoslovakia and going into a ghetto in Uzhgorod, Ukraine; maintaining religious traditions in the ghetto; the Germans taking over the ghetto and deporting her and her family to Auschwitz; her transport to another camp and hearing bombs going off during the train ride; arriving in a German camp and working in a munitions factory; going on a truck with two hundred other girls to Bergen-Belsen, where English troops eventually liberated her; the Swedish Red Cross offering to take care of her and others in Sweden; discovering that only one of her sisters survived the war and had immigrated to the United States; and following her sister to the United States, where she settled in New York, NY and got married.

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

    Johanne Eva Liebmann (née Hirsch), born in 1924 in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her family’s deportation to the Gurs camp in southern France in October 1940; being rescued by the Children's Aid Society in September 1941 and hiding in a children’s home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France until 1943, when she obtained false papers and crossed into Switzerland; discovering that her mother had died in Auschwitz; getting married in Geneva, Switzerland in 1945 and having a daughter in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

    Max Liebmann, born on September 3, 1921 in Mannheim, Germany, describes his family and childhood; attending school until December 1937, when he had to quit because of the antisemitism he was experiencing; his memories of Kristallnacht; his father travelling to Greece and Italy to do business since he could no longer do it in Germany; he and his mother being called into a Wehrmacht office shortly after the war began in September 1939; being made to do forced labor harvesting fields in East Germany; being deported with his mother to the Gurs concentration camp in France; playing the cello as part of several concerts given at Gurs; meeting his future wife in the camp through a connection his mother made; managing inventories for French camp officials; his transfer to the Talluyers camp in July 1942; escaping to Le Chambon, France to reunite with his girlfriend for a short period until they both had to find hiding places; finding a guide to take him through France and into Switzerland; arriving in Ouchy, Switzerland and receiving work papers on December 22, 1942; reuniting with his girlfriend in Switzerland on February 28, 1943 and marrying her in Geneva on April, 14, 1945; having a daughter in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

    Giorgio Perlasca, born on January 31, 1910 in Como, Italy, describes growing up with a father who worked for the Italian government in Padua; fighting in the Spanish Civil War and later taking a position in an Italian trade firm; working around Eastern Europe after Italy entered World War II in 1940; maintaining an official position with the Italian Trade Commission and living in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1941 and 1942; continuing to work for the Italian government until the fall of Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1944; his internment by the Hungarian government from April to October 1944 after the Germans took control of Hungary; escaping his internment with falsified papers provided by a member of the Swiss Diplomatic Corps; adopting a Spanish nationality because of his veteran status from the Spanish Civil War; posing as the Spanish Charge d'Affaires after the flight of the appointed Charge d'Affaires for Spain in December 1944; helping to establish of several safe-houses in Budapest to shelter Jews under Spanish protection; coordinating his efforts with representatives of other neutral nations, including Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, and the representatives of the Vatican, Portugal, and Switzerland, to shelter and save Jews from deportation; and returning to Italy to start a family in February 1945.

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

    David J. Selznick, born in Anykščiai, Lithuania in 1912, describes growing up as the youngest child in a large family; going to Ukmergė, Lithuania to study at a yeshiva in order to become a rabbi; his father’s death shortly before his twelfth birthday and becoming the legal master of his father's estate; deciding to sell off his family's farm and livestock and move to Kaunas, Lithuania; attending a Yiddish night school in Kaunas and working during the day as a retailer of office supplies; his experiences with antisemitism, which hurt his business; selling his business to two Christians but remaining as a silent partner; receiving a visa to serve as a diplomatic envoy to New York because of his business connections but instead deciding to leave for Portugal; returning to Kaunas in 1936 because he was worried about his mother and sisters; his deportation to the Kaunas ghetto in 1941; performing forced labor until late 1944 because he had worked for the ghetto Kommandant; smuggling food to the Jewish prisoners in the ghetto; escaping during the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto in July 1944 and fleeing into the countryside, where he hid with some other Jews; his liberation by the Soviet Army; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

    Elisabeth Model (née Dittmann), born in Bayreuth, Germany in 1897, describes her family; getting married in 1922 and moving to Amsterdam, where she worked as a sculptor; returning to Germany after Kristallnacht to help her mother emigrate; helping her mother sneak into the Netherlands with the help of a Dutch underground organization; her husband being imprisoned for one month by the Nazis after being falsely accused of smuggling money into the Netherlands; bribing a woman at the Spanish Consulate to give her and her husband exit visas in 1941; traveling to Madrid, Spain; and eventually arriving in to New York, NY in 1942.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

    Joseph Levine, born in Molodezhnyi, Russia on July 20, 1907, describes the difficulties his family faced in World War I; his family’s immigration to San Francisco, CA on February 12, 1917 and then settling in New Haven, CT; attending Franklin and Marshall College and then the graduate school for Jewish social work; working with the Jewish Board of Guardians for six years until 1941; starting to work as a parole officer in 1941; joining the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1945 as a social worker; going to Schwandorf, Germany, where he worked with many Polish Jews; his transfer to Dachau in October of 1945, where he also worked closely with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; bearing witness to the war crime trials at Nuremberg; and returning to the United States, where he worked as the executive secretary of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society.

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

    Eugenia Blau Szamosi, born in Transylvania in 1914, describes her family, childhood, and growing up in Budapest, Hungary; her experiences with antisemitism in Hungary; marrying in November 1941 and having a son the following year and a girl the next; her husband avoiding forced labor by spending time in a mental hospital; having to move into the Jewish section of the town and wear the yellow star after the German invasion of Hungary; escaping from the Budapest ghetto and looking for a flat in town; pretending to be a Transylvanian refugee because she had Aryan looks; returning to the ghetto to work with her husband in a children’s home and await deportation; getting the supplies to make shutzpasses for people; getting Spanish passports for her and her husband, which helped to save them from deportation; her family’s liberation and her husband’s work for the International Red Cross after the war; and immigrating to Israel in June 1949.

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

    Irene Dynkiewicz Silver, born in January 1933 in Łódź, Poland, describes her family and the Jewish community in her town before the war; her family’s move to Warsaw just as the German bombardment of Warsaw began; the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto wall; learning how to read and write from one of her cousins; wearing a kerchief and putting on lipstick to look older and avoid deportation during ghetto-round ups; going into hiding in January 1943 with a woman who had managed to attain a Christian identity for her; not being able to leave the home in which she hid and reading to pass her time; attending school for the first time after the war; traveling to London with several other children to attend a boarding school established by a rabbi; and immigrating to Brooklyn, NY in January 1950 to live with her aunt and uncle.

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

    Alice Lok Cahana, born on February 7, 1929 in Sárvár, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her relationships with her parents, grandfather, and siblings; her experiences in the ghetto in Sárvár, which was situated in a brick factory; her work with children in the ghetto; her deportation by train to Auschwitz; her experiences in "C Lager" of Auschwitz; her memories of selections by Dr. Josef Mengele; her successful rescue of her sister Edith from the infirmary in Auschwitz; her survival of the Auschwitz gas chamber because of a malfunction in the chamber; her memories of camp guard Irma Grese; her transfer from Auschwitz to the Guben concentration camp where she worked in an ammunition factory; her participation in a death march with a group from Guben; her escape and subsequent return to the death march group; her separation from her sister in Bergen-Belsen; her evacuation from Bergen-Belsen and transport to a hospital in Sweden; her reunion with her father in Hungary; her illegal immigration to Israel by boat; her return to Sweden with her husband Moshe Cahana; the Cahana family's move to the United States; and her thoughts on the rescue efforts of Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary.

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

    Eva Brust Cooper, born in 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; living on the Pest side of the Danube River; her memories of the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944; the various types of persecution experienced by the Jews in Budapest including the wearing of yellow Stars of David; her father receiving papers from Raoul Wallenberg to avoid deportation; the family's time in hiding in various locations around Budapest; her and her mother's attempts to appear Catholic by going to church, learning the Catechism, and acquiring false identification papers; her family's return to Budapest at the end of World War II; her father's participation in negotiations with Adolf Eichmann in hopes of reducing the number of Hungarian Jews to be deported; her family's immigration to the United States and their new life in New York City; and her activities with various Holocaust survivor groups.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

    Frieda Belinfante, born in 1904 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her family; being raised without a religion because her father was Jewish and her mother was Gentile; the death of her sister in 1915 after an appendectomy and the divorce of her parents soon after; the death of her father in 1923 from natural causes; not being surprised by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands; getting married in 1931 and divorcing in 1936; becoming the first female conductor of a professional orchestra in Amsterdam; participating in the cultural commission of Amsterdam and receiving instructions from the Nazis about what artists should or should not do; making false identification cards to help save people; discovering her homosexuality but trying to keep it a secret during the war; living disguised as a man for three months; taking on a new female identity and fleeing to Switzerland; participating in several activities of sabotage with other gay and lesbian refugees; returning to Amsterdam after the war and discovering the fates of the members of the resistance group in which she participated; immigrating to the United States in 1947 for a change of scenery in her work; participating in a string of concerts in the US; and her life in America.

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

    Philip Vock, born in 1929 in Paris, France, discusses his family background and childhood; the German invasion of France in 1940; the confiscation of the family business by the Germans; antisemitism that he encountered in the media and in personal contacts; leaving the occupied zone of France in 1941 and finding refuge in a town on the Spanish border; the German occupation of their town in November 1942; fleeing to Nice, France, which was occupied by the Italians; being denounced to and arrested by the Gestapo as they were preparing to move to another town; being transported to Drancy concentration camp in 1943; life in Drancy and the possibility of escape from the camp; his deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944; the intake process at Auschwitz and then his outside work detail; the black market within Auschwitz; a death march in January 1945 as the Allies were approaching the camp; life in Buchenwald and liberation; returning to Paris in April 1945; the return of his mother and uncle; and nightmares that he had after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

    Joseph Gatenio, born in 1929 in Thessalonike, Greece, discusses his childhood; the German occupation of Thessalonike in 1940; his deportation from Greece with his family in 1943; the week-long journey to Birkenau; selections at Birkenau; the deaths of family members; his participation in the camp orchestra; how orchestra members helped him survive; being forced to leave the orchestra; the brutality of the SS and Kapos; being transferred from Birkenau to Henkel, then Sachsenhausen, Ohrdruf, Sachsenhausen again, Neubrandenburg, Ravensbrück, and finally Ludwigslust; the appalling conditions in the camps; staying in Ludwigslust until May 1 when they were transported to another camp; his liberation by American soldiers the next day; joining the Russian liberators and wandering throughout Europe for a few months; returning to Thessalonike in December 1945; and the long-term effects of his experiences during the Holocaust on his well-being.

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

    Mariette Moscovici, born on January 24, 1916 in Iasi, Romania, discusses her family; her father, Hani Garfiender, who was a merchant and owned a store for travel items; her mother, Cecile Garfiender, who was a housewife; attending Alexandru Labrian elementary school; attending Institute Notre Dame for high school; living in Iasi on Cuza Voda street and later on Ice Bratianu street; Rumania entering the war on June 22, 1941; German soldiers entering on the night of June 29, 1941 and taking away all the Jewish men from the shelter; going to the Jewish community the next morning to ask about the fate of the Jewish men and not receiving an answer; stopping at a friend’s house on the way home to warn the men in the family about the arrest of the Jewish men; being stopped on the way home and directed into a convoy; finding her mother and sister in the convoy; being taken to the police headquarters; more Jews arriving at the headquarters wearing pajamas and night gowns because they were taken without anytime to get dressed; the women and girls being released while the men and boys over the age 13 were detained; the chaos of the scene; her father arriving at the shelter in the afternoon; the numerous false alarms to concentrate the population in shelters; the German soldiers enter the shelter around 5pm and demanding their jewelry and money; giving one of the soldiers her money and being instructed by the soldier to go home and not enter the shelters; leaving her aunt’s house with her family the next morning (June 30, 1941) and going home; seeing posters on wall that state the “Communist Jews” of Iasi have been arrested and killed and the rest of the population can continue their lives; staying home and not knowing what happened to other people; going to a market with her cousin dressed like peasants and seeing dead bodies on the street; Jews not being allowed to travel; and the propaganda in the news.

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

    Henry van den Boogard, born in Holland in 1915, discusses his childhood in Tilburg, Netherlands; his early education and seminary days; his ordination to the priesthood and first mass in 1942; his memories of Jews being helped by non-Jews in the Netherlands; his personal activities with the resistance movement in southern Netherlands such as making false identification papers for various persons, smuggling children into the Netherlands for hiding, and finding hiding places in homes for Jews and other persons; his dealings with the black market in the Netherlands in order to clothe and feed people in hiding; his reflections on antisemitism in the Netherlands; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940; the feelings of native Hollanders toward the "Dutch Nazis"; and his life after World War II in the United States where he worked to integrate Catholic churches in Virginia.

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

    Jack Moss (né Jakuv Mozelsio), born in 1924 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family background; his encounters with Polish antisemitism; his family's feelings about the possibility of a German occupation; the restrictions imposed on Jews by the Germans; the lucrative business that the Germans brought to his father's tannery; odd jobs that he did at the request of the Germans, including helping to tear down a statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko in Plac Wolności; a German friend who agreed to be a stand-in owner of the tannery, so it would not be confiscated; his uncle, aunt, and other family members fleeing to Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland for safety while he and his parents stayed in Łódź; the return of his sister and cousin from Tomaszów Mazowiecki; and how the rest of his family in Tomaszów Mazowiecki perished while he and the others who remained in Łódź were saved.

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

    Boleslaw Dytlow, born in 1932 in Pruszków, Poland, describes growing up in a Romani family; the German occupation in September 1939; moving to Warsaw, Poland with his family and earning money there as a musician; being captured on the streets in Warsaw in late 1942 and delivered into the Warsaw ghetto; meeting other Romanies in the ghetto and forming a plan to escape; escaping to the Aryan side in the spring of 1943; leaving Warsaw and only traveling by night; being ambushed by German soldiers on the outskirts of Kielce, Poland; successfully overpowering the Germans and escaping back to Warsaw; and remaining hidden outside of Warsaw until the end of the war.

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

    Mel London, born in 1923, discusses growing up in the Bronx, NY with immigrant parents; his awareness of the political situation in Europe before World War II; his concern for family in Europe; his identification with being Jewish; enlisting in the United States Army signal corps in May 1943; going to Officer Candidate School; antisemitism he encountered in the army and prejudice because of his friendships with black soldiers; seeing the aftermath of World War II in Europe; his knowledge of the Nuremberg war crime trials; becoming a documentary filmmaker; the request to interview Albert Speer after his book "Inside the Third Reich" was published in 1970; preparing for the interview; different attitudes towards Speer among Germans of different generations; and his perceptions of Speer.

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

    Henry Cohen, born in 1922 in New York City, NY, describes growing up in a family of Jewish immigrants; receiving a master’s degree in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; enlisting in the United States Army in 1944 and fighting with the infantry during the German campaign; his appointment as the director of the Föhrenwald displaced persons camp in Germany in January of 1946; leading the camp until July 1946; and returning to the United States to teach at the City College of New York.

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

    Gisela Feldman, born in 1923, discusses her first encounters with antisemitism in Berlin, Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933 and her political awareness at that time; her father's deportation to Poland in 1938 because he was a Polish citizen; the confiscation of her family's apartment; being barred from going to school; her mother obtaining visas to Cuba and booking passage on the SS St. Louis; her father not being able to leave Poland in time to join them on the SS St. Louis; departing with her mother and sister from Germany in 1939; the atmosphere on board the ship; their arrival in Cuba and the announcement that their visas were no longer valid; the desperation of some passengers on board; sailing near the coast of the United States during the return journey to Europe; her family being selected to disembark in England; her job as a domestic in a convalescent home for Jewish refugees in Broadstairs and then as a nanny for a family with two children in London; her involvement in war work, making uniforms and gunpowder bags; meeting and marrying her husband in London in 1943; her mother's attempts to get permission for her father to emigrate from Poland; and her life in England after the war.

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

    Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming describe how Bert grew up in Warsaw and Łódź; Bert’s family’s deportation to Hannover, Germany before Kristallnacht; Bert’s deportation from Hannover in 1938, receiving aid from the Joint Distribution Committee, and going through the camps; Irene witnessing people being smuggled from her ghetto and fleeing to Siberia; Irene holding on to her violin through her time in the camps; their experiences with Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski and his relationship with the Nazis in the Łódź ghetto; Bert having to shave his head and watch people steal food while in the camps; Bert’s work in several different factories and the transport of all of the goods he produced to Germany; and their immigration to New York and life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

    Norman Belfer, born on September 27, 1922 in Wodzislaw, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; the German invasion of Wodzislaw in 1939 and hiding in his family’s factory warehouse until they were discovered; the confiscation of his father’s feather and down business; being forced to clean roads around the town with other youth; going to work for a nearby German company while the rest of his family went into hiding in an underground shelter outside of Wodzislaw; his family’s capture and transfer into the Kraków ghetto; returning home, where he retrieved some of the money his family had buried before they had left; hiding for several weeks in his father’s former factory; joining his family in the Kraków ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto on March 13, 1943; his family’s transfer to Płaszów, where an SS guard shot his father, and his mother and sisters were sent elsewhere; being transferred with his brother to Mauthausen, where they volunteered as carpenters until they were sent to Melk; digging tunnels and moving machinery for several months at Melk with his brother; going on a barge to Linz and then going on a death march to Ebensee; his liberation by American forces on May 5, 1945; walking to Salzburg with his brother but deciding to go to Palestine through Italy; and remaining and working in Italy until he immigrated to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

    Carola Stern Steinhardt, born on March 8, 1925 in Nieder Ohmen, Germany, describes losing her non-Jewish friends after 1933; her experiences during Kristallnacht; attending a boarding school in Bad Nauheim until the Gestapo stormed it and harassed students; her father’s deportation to Buchenwald; her mother’s and sister’s arrival in Bad Nauheim; going to Berlin to do hard labor at an airplane factory until her deportation to Auschwitz in March 1943; her selection to be a camp “beautician,” which involved cutting the hair off of incoming prisoners; reuniting with her sister in August 1944 and learning that her parents had died; going on a march to Ravensbrück in January 1945; staying in Ravensbrück for four weeks until having to march to Malchow, where she worked in the camp kitchen; her liberation by American forces in May 1945; her internment in the Kammer displaced persons camp in Austria; and immigrating to the United States in July 1946 on an army transport.

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

    Haim Shmueli (né Heinz Ruman Shmoll), born in 1935 in was born in 1935 in Usti nad Labem, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his family and childhood; his mother’s conversion to Judaism, which she renounced when Hitler came to power; moving to Germany in 1938; his father’s involvement in the underground movement; his deportation to Theresienstadt and his memories of the children’s part of the camp; participating in the propaganda movie filmed in Theresienstadt; his liberation from Theresienstadt in 1945; reuniting with his father after the war; and immigrating to Israel with his father in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

    Itka Zygmuntowicz, born April 15, 1926 in Poland (possibly Ciechanów), discusses her family and childhood in Poland before World War II; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; relations between her family and Gentiles in her hometown; her knowledge of politics as a child and involvement in the Zionist movement; the German occupation of her hometown and the restrictions that the Germans imposed on the Jewish population; the confiscation of her family's valuables; a beating that she and her mother suffered at the hands of the Gestapo for not revealing information; her family's deportation to the ghetto in Nové Město in 1941; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and the mass deportation to Auschwitz; her arrival at Auschwitz and her separation from her parents and younger siblings who perished in the camp; finding a friend named Binna in the camp; her forms of spiritual, mental, and physical resistance as a prisoner; her contact with the guards in the camp; her experience sorting the belongings of dead prisoners in the "Kanada" warehouse; a death march in January 1945 to Ravensbrück concentration camp and then a transport to Malchow concentration camp; her liberation during Passover in 1945; recuperating at a hospital in Sweden after the war through the help of the Swedish Red Cross; living in a displaced persons camp in Sweden; leaving the camp with two friends and getting a job; meeting and marrying her husband and the birth of her son in 1948; and her immigration to the United States in 1953.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

    Gertrude Granirer Flor, born in 1921 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, discusses her childhood; the lack of antisemitism she encountered growing up; the Soviet occupation in 1940 and the confiscation of Jewish property; Soviet propaganda and the pressure to inform on others; the arrest and execution of her step-father; involuntary deportations by the Soviets to Siberia, including the deportation of her mother; escaping from a deportation and finding refuge at the conservatory of the Universitatea din Cernauți; meeting and marrying her husband, Sam; the German occupation of Chernivtsi; German restrictions and the establishment of the ghetto in Chernivtsi; the help that the mayor of Chernivtsi extended to the Jewish population; deportation by train to a stone quarry where she and her husband stayed for several weeks; her husband telling the Romanian authorities that he was a dentist, so that they would be transferred to a work detail in a hospital; being liberated by Russian partisans after being in hiding for several days; returning to Chernivtsi and joining the Czech Army; being part of the liberation of Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); immigrating to South America with a stopover in the United States on the way; living in Columbia with an uncle on his coffee plantation for six months and then immigrating to the United States; her feelings about her new country and the difficulties she experienced as an immigrant; and how her experiences during the Holocaust have affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

    Renee Scheuer, born in 1909 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; antisemitism in Vienna before World War II; her and her husband’s arrest in November 1938 and the order to leave Austria in three days; traveling to Cologne, Germany and then to Belgium on foot; living in a refugee camp in Antwerp, Belgium; the occupation of Belgium by Germany in 1939 and their attempt to escape to France; returning to Belgium and living in Brussels where they had to wear Star of David badges; receiving a notice to report to a concentration camp; she and her husband going into hiding in Brussels in 1942 and staying in different hiding places until liberation in 1945; the feelings that she had during the events of the Holocaust; the resistance of the Belgian population against the Germans; the fates of her mother and sister; returning to visit Vienna in the 1970s; her immigration to the United States in 1950; and settling in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

    Bent Melchoir, born in Denmark, describes growing up with a father who was a rabbi; the ease of relations between Jews and Christians in Denmark; the help that the Danish Christian community gave to the Jewish community to help them escape to Sweden; raising money with his brother to get Jews out of Denmark; the Danish resistance movement; leaving Copenhagen and arriving in Sweden by small boat; returning to Denmark three weeks after liberation; his surprise at the jubilant welcome given by the Danes when the Jews returned; the re-opening of the local synagogue for the fall holidays in 1945; and working on behalf of Soviet Jewry after the war.

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

    Renata Laqueur, born on November 3, 1919 in Brzeg, Poland, describes growing up in Amsterdam; never considering herself Jewish and attending a Christian school as a child; the German invasion in 1940 and registering as a Jew; her father’s decision to volunteer for the German Army as a medical research officer; her marriage to Paul Goldschmidt on December 24, 1941; becoming involved in the underground movement with Paul; her arrest on February 18, 1943, when the Gestapo took her to a prison for ten days until her transfer to the Vught transit camp in the Netherlands; her transport to the Westerbork transit camp, from where she was soon released because of her father’s connections; being arrested again in November 1943; her and Paul’s transport to Bergen-Belsen on March 15, 1944; writing a daily diary about her experiences in the camp; her liberation by the Soviet Army on April 23, 1945; recovering from illness in a field hospital outside of Dresden; spending a week in a displaced persons camp near Kassel; returning to Amsterdam on July 26, 1945; and immigrating to the United States through Canada in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

    Carl Hirsch, born in 1912, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria and Chernivtsi, Ukraine; his schooling in mathematics and engineering in his university studies; his work as a civil engineer and service in the Romanian Army before World War II; his first experiences with antisemitism when Romania occupied Chernivtsi and when he lived in Bucharest; Soviet occupation of Chernivtsi from 1940 to 1941; the deportation of business owners in Chernivtsi to Siberia; the Soviet withdrawal in June 1941 and Jews fleeing with them; the takeover of the town by Germans and Romanians and the persecution of Jews; finding a job with the railway, so he would not be taken for forced labor; the establishment of the ghetto in Chernivtsi; his marriage to Lotte; witnessing deportations from Chernivtsi; the influx of Romanians into Chernivtsi; the return of many Jews who had fled with the Russians; the integration of Chernivtsi into the Soviet Union in 1945; leaving Chernivtsi and living in Romania from 1945 until 1961; and immigrating to the United States in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

    Lotte Hirsch, born in 1918 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, describes her childhood; her encounters with antisemitism while she attended university; the Soviet occupation of Chernivtsi from 1940 to 1941 and having to stop her university studies and work in a factory; witnessing deportations to Siberia carried out by the Russians; Romanian and German troops taking over Chernivtsi and establishing a ghetto and several restrictions on the Jewish population; hearing about executions carried out by the German and Romanian soldiers; how her fiancé Carl was able to obtain an exemption from deportation because of his profession as an engineer; her marriage to Carl in a civil ceremony in the mayor's office; life under the occupation; witnessing more deportations in 1942; receiving better treatment after a new governor of Bukovina was instated; the return of Carl's cousin from deportation to Transnistria; her liberation by the Russians in 1944; and her immigration to the United States in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

    Walter Meyer, born on May 31, 1926 in Kassel, Germany, describes growing up as a Catholic in a diverse religious community in Düsseldorf; his experiences during Kristallnacht; joining the Hitler Youth in 1940 but then deciding to organize another group to oppose the Hitler Youth; his recruitment into a military academy, to which his father did not allow him to go; assisting French prisoners of war in 1943 until the Gestapo caught him and placed him in a Düsseldorf prison; his transfer to a prison near Frankfurt, where he remained until the spring of 1944 when the prison director recommended him for the army; his deportation to Sachsenhausen and then Ravensbrück; escaping from Ravensbrück and hiding with a farmer who lived nearby; returning to Berlin and then Düsseldorf; recovering from tuberculosis after returning home; and immigrating to the United States in 1958.

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

    Dora Kramen Dimitro, born on January 22, 1922 in Eišiškės, Poland (now Lithuania), describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home with her parents and three siblings; attending Hebrew and Polish schools and experiencing antisemitism; the Russian arrival in Eišiškės in 1939; losing their rights as Jewish citizens when the Germans invaded in 1941; the Germans ordering them to assemble at the synagogue, where they were kept for two days and nights before many were taken away and shot; escaping with her boyfriend with the help of a Lithuanian police officer; the murder of most of her family on September 25 and 26, 1941; going to the Radun ghetto, where she met up with her father, sister, and boyfriend and stayed for ten months until they decided to escape because of ghetto liquidation warnings; running into the woods and trading valuables for food and clothing; living in the woods until late 1942 or early 1943 when they moved into the Hrodna ghetto in Belarus because they had heard of its better conditions; the transports from the ghetto two to three months after her arrival; fleeing to the Nacha Forest in Belarus; joining Jewish and Soviet partisans and staying in their underground bunker through the winter; hiding in homes or in the forest until the Russians liberated her in July 1944; returning to Eišiškės but fleeing when a group of Poles attacked the few remaining Jews there; marrying her boyfriend and living in Vilnius and Warsaw before moving to Israel in 1957; immigrating to the United States in March 1959 with her sister's help; and giving birth to a son soon after her arrival in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

    Herma Barber, born in 1921 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; experiencing antisemitism after the Anschluss in 1938; her and her parents' unsuccessful attempts to immigrate to the United States and their decision to go to Yugoslavia instead; their journey into Yugoslavia by foot; their arrest in Zagreb, Croatia and spending a week in jail; being confined to the town of Samobor after their release from jail; deportation by the Ustaša in 1941 to Mostar, which the Italian military occupied; being moved to Čapljina by the Italians; traveling to Split, Croatia without permission and being arrested and put in jail by the Italians for a week; being moved to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where she worked in a restaurant and also did knitting for a store; not having enough to eat; going to an Italian-run concentration camp in 1943; their escape from the camp to a partisan-controlled area of Yugoslavia; being in the same town as Randolph Churchill during a British diplomatic mission to the partisans in Drvar in 1944; moving constantly with help from partisans; she and her parents escaping separately to Bari, Italy in 1944 and 1945; her life in the refugee camp at Bari and her marriage in 1946; and her parents' immigration to the United States in 1946 and her immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

    William Zeck (born on March 3, 1915 in New York City, NY) and Belle Mayer Zeck (born on February 22, 1919 in Port Henry, NY) describe their families and childhoods; Belle's work as a New York lawyer and getting a job working for the General Counsel of the Treasury and working on the Foreign Funds Control Bureau; helping the bureau to enforce the Trading With the Enemy Act, which forbade communication with and transmissions to German occupied countries; working on a book analyzing Yugoslavia’s financial laws and investigating Germany’s external assets in the United States; Belle becoming an unofficial expert on German financial affairs at the Department of the Treasury and attending the commission for the Allied nations to outline the principles of law for prosecution and trial of Europe’s major war criminals; Belle meeting William when they were both preparing for the Nuremberg Trials; the deterioration of Belle's health as she prepared for the trials and having to go home; Belle returning to Nuremberg in 1947 for the start of the trial; going back to work for the Department of the Treasury to organize the reconstruction loans for the United Kingdom, France, and Germany; their friendship with Telford Taylor; and William’s return to the United States after six years.

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

    Michel Reynders, born on June 29, 1930, in Uccle, Belgium, describes his experiences as the nephew of Father Bruno Reynders, who ran a rescue network that saved about 350 Jews; growing up in a tight-knit Catholic family; helping Father Bruno in his efforts to hide Jewish children by coercing local families to take them into their homes; being unaware of antisemitism until the war; helping a young girl who had fled from Fascist Italy; the German occupation and the following food shortages, imposed curfews, censored textbooks, and Jewish transports out of Belgium; beginning to observe the restrictions placed on Jewish neighbors in 1942 and realizing that it was primarily Jews who were being taken for forced labor in Germany; his introduction to the resistance movement around the end of 1942 and serving as an escort and messenger for his uncle's rescue service; initially having no idea that the children his uncle asked him to escort were Jewish or that Father Bruno was secretly hiding them throughout Belgium; eventually understanding what his family was doing and that his uncle's actions were secret and extremely risky; his family's decision to hide several Jews; graduating from medical school in 1959 and immigrating to the United States in 1961; and being named as the Honorary Vice-Consul of Belgium.

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

    Marthe Hoffnung Cohn, born on April 13, 1920 in Metz, France, describes her childhood; being forced by the French government to move out of Metz along with all of its other rich families; moving to Poitiers, France, where, in June 1940, Jewish refugees started coming; attending a Red Cross nursing school in Poitiers; escaping with her family to the unoccupied side of France in the summer of 1942; the arrest of her sister Stephanie, who later died in Auschwitz; becoming involved in resistance and rescue operations, which enabled her to get her parents, grandmother, two sisters, and a cousin to the unoccupied zone of France; finishing nursing school in Marseilles; leaving Marseilles for Paris, where she lived with one of her sisters and found a job with a family that did not know she was Jewish; joining the French Army after the liberation of Paris; doing intelligence work for the Army because she could speak German; going undercover as a German nurse and receiving two Croix de Guerre medals, signed by Generals De Lattre and De Gaulle, for her work; going to Vietnam with the French Army after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

    Miriam Kabacznik Shulman, born on June 26, 1918, in Eišiškės, Poland (Lithuania), describes her childhood; her father’s death of typhus during World War I and living with her mother and two brothers; the Russian arrival in Eišiškės in September 1939 and the nationalization of her family’s tannery business; the Lithuanian takeover in 1940 followed by the German invasion on June 23, 1941; the German implementation of edicts that restricted and isolated Jews; the murder of most of the town’s Jews by an einsatzgruppen squad between September 25 and 26, 1941; the help their family’s friends and co-workers gave them throughout the war by hiding money and providing information and hiding places; hiding from the Germans from 1941 through 1944, when they were liberated by Russian soldiers; returning to their home in June 1944 to find an elderly couple living there; deciding to allow the couple to stay and inviting about twenty other Jews to live in their home; living through a Polish pogrom in 1944; fleeing to Vilnius the day after the pogrom and never returning to her home; spending the next years of her life in several displaced persons camps; meeting her future husband Norman in an Italian prison; and immigrating with Norman to the United States, where they had two children.

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

    Anna Szyller Palarczyk, born on July 21, 1918 in Kraków, Poland, describes her family; studying law in Kraków before World War II; working for the underground organization Armed Struggle Alliance; the arrest of everyone in her underground group in June 1942 and their deportation to Montelupich, where they faced harsh interrogations; her transport on August 17, 1942 to Auschwitz, where she was selected as a cleaning woman for Lauder Kommandant Otto Schmidt; walking to the Birkenau camp and being admitted to the sick-room in Birkenau for flu-like symptoms; her experiences in camp with having little food and seeing dead bodies lying around her; the women guards, including Margot Drexler (Dreschel); Katya Singer, who was from Mariková, Slovakia and was appointed as a Raportschreiberin (assistant to the guards) and her activities in the camp; making friends in the camp, which helped her to survive emotionally; the roll calls and selections she went through; the black market in Auschwitz; the Red Cross sending packages to Jewish women in the camps; concerts that were played sometimes in the camps; discovering the fates of her family and friends after the war; and seeing the Russian Army unite with the American Army during liberation.

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

    Steven Galezewski, born on May 11, 1923 in Inowroclaw, Poland, describes his childhood; joining the Polish underground in Mińsk Mazowiecki, Poland; recalling that, in 1940, the Nazis ordered all the Jews to wear an armband with the Star of David; the relocation of his community into the Mińsk ghetto at the end of 1940; the liquidation of the ghetto on August 21, 1942 and the survival of only 282 tradesmen who were still useful to the Nazi war effort; participating in underground activities, which included blowing up buildings or means of transportation; his resistance unit being sent under Soviet command; being stationed in Lublin, Poland; providing security for the public hanging of five SS officers in Majdanek in 1944; remaining in Soviet hands from March to July 1945; being perceived by the Soviet Union as a potentially subversive element supporting the Polish government-in-exile and then receiving a prison sentence from the Soviets; his transport to Siberia, where Polish guerrillas freed him; escaping into the American zone; joining the Polish Army in Italy but returning from Italy in 1947 and joining the British Army; immigrating to the United States in February 1951; and joining the US Army in 1956.

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

    George Havas, born in 1929 in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), describes the Hungarian takeover of his town after the Germans took the Sudetenland; his father no longer being allowed to practice medicine; the German takeover of Mukacheve in March 1944; his transport to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944; learning after the war that his father had died in the Sonderkommando uprising in Auschwitz; being transferred to Mauthausen and then to Ebensee, where he stayed for one year until liberation; working in the tunnels at Ebensee, where he was able to make contacts and bring back news; the death of his brother and several of his friends in Ebensee; his liberation on May 6, 1945 and leaving for Prague on June 7; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

    Maria Rosenbloom, born on December 26, 1918 in Kolomyia, Poland (Ukraine), describes her Orthodox Jewish family; learning the violin and playing it every weekend in the Hatikva before the war; feeling increased antisemitic sentiments and fleeing with her family into the Carpathian Mountains; attending a special gymnasium for girls in Poland; starting university in 1936 in Lvov, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine) and never being allowed to sit down because she was Jewish; vacationing with a boyfriend in the Carpathian Mountains until the Soviet invasion on September 1, 1939; getting married in 1940; the Soviets taking away her father’s store because of nationalization policies; opening a pharmacy with her husband in 1940 in a small town called Glen-na-novaria [phonetic] and being pestered by the Russians for condoms; the Nazi invasion on June 21, 1941 and registering with the troops; contracting pneumonia and being treated with leeches; moving into the ghetto after Passover in 1942; working in the ghetto soup kitchen; escaping from the ghetto on Christmas in 1942 and going to live with her friend Blancka; discovering the fates of her family during the war and finding a job in a German hospital; taking a train to Warsaw, Poland in April 1943 and hearing rumors about what was happening to the Jews; living in fear that she would be caught because of her prominent Jewish features; joining the resistance movement; the chaos of the Warsaw uprising in 1944; having to join a Hitler parade in 1944 in an attempt to fit in; taking a train to Heidelberg, Germany hoping to reunite with Blancka; the German surrender of Heidelberg to the Americans and deciding to learn English; working for the US Army and then the Joint Distribution Committee; immigrating to the United States in September 1947; and becoming a social worker.

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