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Oral history interview with Henry Werner Bloch

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.203.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0932

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    Oral history interview with Henry Werner Bloch
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Henry Bloch on May 2, 2017
    in Fresh Meadows, New York.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Bloch, for agreeing
    to speak with us today, for agreeing
    to share your experiences and your story.
    And we will start with the most basic questions.
    And from there, we'll develop and build your story
    so that we learn of your experiences.
    OK.
    My first question is, can you tell me the date of your birth?
    March 11, 1914.
    Oh, my.
    And today is May 2, 2017.
    So that means you are 103 years old?
    Just had your 103rd birthday?
    Correct.
    Congratulations.
    Thank you.
    And what was your name at birth?
    Heinz Werner.
    Heinz Werner Bloch.
    Yes, yes.
    OK.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in the city--
    I was born during World War I.
    Yeah.
    And my father was in the army, in the German army.
    My mother was by.
    Herself and we were at the time in Duisberg.
    Duisberg.
    I don't know if you know Duisberg.
    Duisberg.
    And I was born in Duisberg at that time.
    But we then later on resettled back further south,
    if you would call that, and we stayed in Mannheim.
    So did you grow up in Mannheim?
    Basically.
    OK.
    How is it that your mother gave birth to you in Duisberg
    and not in Mannheim?
    An aunt of her, or rather a sister, an aunt of mine,
    a sister of her lived in Duisberg or Essen,
    which is another city nearby.
    And she wanted to be near the family.
    Yeah.
    This is all North Rhine-Westphalia.
    Correct.
    This whole area.
    Correct.
    OK.
    But Mannheim is not.
    Mannheim is Baden.
    Baden is the southern part of Germany along the Rhine River
    across from, call it Alsace-Lorraine,
    next to France.
    Is this wine country, German wine country?
    It is not necessarily known for wine, but across the river,
    which is called the Pfalz--
    or Palatia, I think, in English--
    there is a lot of wine grown--
    I mean, there are a lot of vineyards.
    So was your mother originally from Duisberg?
    No.
    No.
    She also was born--
    she was born in Germany in a small town.
    Her family was-- there were seven children.
    She was one of seven children, who
    lived in the southern part of Germany.
    Do you remember the town that she was from?
    It was a small town, which was Meisenheim--
    Meisenheim.
    --which is not very well known.
    But maybe the city which is nearby is called Kreuznach.
    Kreuznach.
    Kreuznach or Munster, which is on the river now,
    which is not far from Bingen, which is not far from the Rhine
    River.
    So that area was her background.
    OK.
    What was your mother's name?
    David-- Emma David.
    Emma David.
    And had her family been in this area for a long time?
    The family David has been there for many generations.
    How did the family make its living?
    How did they support themselves, her family?
    The detailed part, I am not quite so well familiar,
    but I think most of which they handled grain from the farmers.
    They purchased the harvest of grain of all sorts,
    and they sold this to breweries and also similar institutions
    which would require this sort of item.
    And that's what was their main business.
    OK.
    They had storage warehouses for this grain.
    So they're grain merchants.
    Yes.
    But also grew it.
    And they also had a factory where they brewed
    the grain, which was cooked.
    I'm not quite sure of the procedures and all this
    anymore, which was primarily for the brewery.
    I think it was mostly the grain which they
    bought was sold to breweries.
    So to make beer.
    Make beer.
    OK.
    And was it a well-to-do family as far as you knew?
    They were considered very much so.
    OK.
    And your father, what was his first name?
    Ludwig.
    Ludwig Bloch.
    Yeah.
    How many brothers and sisters did he have?
    He had one brother, and I think five sisters.
    Also a large family.
    Yeah.
    Well, in those days, the families,
    they certainly had many children.
    Yeah.
    It has changed.
    Yes.
    So seven on one side, seven on the other side.
    Something like that.
    And you had all-- you had 14 aunts and uncles or something
    like that, you know.
    12 aunts and uncles, if we don't take your parents in there.
    And where was your father from?
    What place was he from?
    He lived in the city, Baden, in Baden, the state of Baden.
    The name of the city was Offenburg.
    Offenburg.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And his father--
    I am not definite, but I think he was a butcher.
    OK.
    Did you know both sets of aunts and uncles and grandparents
    and so--
    We were in touch with them during the year.
    Traveling was not as popular at the time.
    But occasionally, a vacation time through the school years,
    we visited each other one way or another.
    OK.
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    I had one older brother.
    And what was his name?
    Fritz.
    Fritz.
    And when was he born?
    He was born-- let me think for a--
    in Mannheim.
    He was born in Mannheim.
    Yeah.
    And was he four years, five years older than you?
    He was nine years older.
    Oh.
    So he was considerably older.
    Yeah.
    That would have made him--
    if he was nine years older, would have been 1904.
    Yeah but--
    1905.
    My mother came-- in Mannheim, then she moved to Meisenheim.
    That was during the war, during the earlier years.
    There was a lot of changing positions and locations.
    And I don't know about the reasons, to be honest.
    OK.
    You know, parents in those days did not
    tell the children everything as much as it's more the case
    nowadays.
    OK.
    It's true.
    It's true.
    They kept a lot of things to themselves.
    And children just listened.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    There are some families where there are storytellers
    naturally, and there's some families
    where there's more reserve, and that's just
    as natural for those families.
    Did either of your parents talk much about World War
    I and what that was like?
    No.
    No.
    I don't know, for some reason or another,
    I don't remember details.
    My father came back after the war.
    I don't know any more details where he--
    he was in France.
    That I know.
    He was somewhere in those battles or wherever there was.
    In trenches probably.
    Yeah.
    And he came back after the war.
    Did he have a certain rank?
    I don't remember the rank.
    I don't remember.
    I don't really know.
    There was not much talk about it, at least I was--
    I mean, I was 5 years old, 4 or 5 years old.
    It didn't mean much what he would say to me or so forth.
    If so, I forgot it.
    Yeah.
    And do you have any earliest memories from your childhood?
    Even if they're just episodic, do you have any?
    Do you remember any particular scenes in your mind?
    Well, I mean, I cannot think of any specific ones,
    but the school years, we all--
    I mean, we were equal with all the Gentile people.
    I had very good friends as schoolmates
    with whom I went to school.
    And there was no difference in those days
    that you would say, oh, my God, you are Jewish,
    and you are Protestant or Catholic or whatever.
    You would not associate and would be together
    with the family as well as with their offspring.
    Well, tell me this.
    Did you grow up in the same place?
    That is, once your mother came back to Mannheim,
    did you have the same home that you spent your childhood years
    in?
    No.
    It was not the same home anymore.
    That was in-- no, it was not the same home.
    It was a different apartment.
    So did you grow up in one apartment or in several?
    It was mostly in one apartment in Mannheim.
    And do you remember the address?
    [GERMAN]
    But I don't know the number, even though I have visited
    Germany many times after the war, and I visited the area
    and so forth, I just remember the numbers or things
    like that.
    I know where it was, but I don't remember the numbers and things
    like that.
    That's OK.
    Do you remember what the apartment looked like?
    Not the outlay anymore.
    Not the outlay.
    I wouldn't remember where the living room was or bedroom was
    or anything else.
    I don't remember that.
    Do you know how many rooms you had?
    But it was a quite accommodating place.
    OK.
    It was a modern house.
    There were other people in the same house.
    It was an apartment house.
    OK.
    Two, three stories, four?
    About two or three stories, something like that.
    Was it in the center of Mannheim?
    Well, Mannheim-- I don't know if you know that--
    Mannheim is built in such a way that you cannot get a lot
    of-- it's done with the A, B, C. The streets go from one river--
    there is the Rhine River, and the--
    now, you see, now I can't think of the other side of the river.
    It's not the--
    Was it the Pfalz?
    Heidelberg.
    Do you know what the river is in Heidelberg?
    No.
    I'm sorry.
    But it was the same river that goes to Heidelberg?
    Right.
    What the heck is the name of the--
    It'll come to you when the cameras are off.
    Anyhow, that river was one street, and then also
    another line from the castle.
    There was a castle on the other side, to the other end.
    And in between this, there was everything detailed.
    You start, on the castle you start
    A. The next block was B, C, D, E, F, G. Everything like this.
    And so you were Louise--
    If you were in A, the other way, you go A1, A2, A3, A4.
    If you're know the ABC, you couldn't get lost.
    You could find your way around the city.
    You could find your way in--
    that was a city which was laid out
    by whom I don't know but on the basis of alphabet.
    And so you're street was L.
    Well, we were on the--
    there is a ring.
    The whole thing was around.
    The whole city was a ring which had different names.
    And we lived on the Luisen ring, which was not
    on the inside of the city, but it
    was the outside of the ring, which had a number,
    but it didn't have A, B, C number.
    Right, right.
    And was this a residential kind of--
    All.
    Only residential.
    The whole city, if I remember, was all residential.
    I mean, the shops and department stores
    and all this but no industry.
    What was the economy of Mannheim?
    It was the second largest harbor on the Rhine River.
    Really?
    Yes.
    The biggest one was in Duisberg, where ships stopped.
    And then on the way back to go to Switzerland,
    Mannheim was the second largest harbor.
    So there were a lot of ships going up and down the river.
    I wouldn't have thought but how interesting.
    Yeah.
    I didn't know that about Mannheim.
    So its economy probably was quite dependent
    on this kind of trade.
    Well, there were a lot of industries on the outskirts.
    Across from Mannheim was a city called Ludwigshafen.
    Ah.
    OK.
    And in Ludwigshafen is a city, which is now still
    in business--
    matter of fact, I visited not too long ago--
    BASF.
    Oh, that's right.
    The company BASF.
    Yeah.
    It's one of the biggest in the world.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It is.
    It's bigger than Dupont and any of the other ones.
    And that is the industry on that side.
    I mean, it's right across the river.
    But when you were a young boy, let's take the year arbitrarily
    1920, you're 6 years old.
    You are growing up in Mannheim.
    I went to public school.
    And you went to public school.
    Tell me, what did Mannheim look like?
    I mean, were there streetcars?
    Were there many automobiles?
    Well, yes.
    There were definitely streetcars all over going from--
    in the city and also going the outskirts.
    People had cars.
    Many?
    German cars, I think mostly.
    French cars.
    Different makes from Italy, also for Czechs.
    Not American cars, I don't think.
    I don't remember that any American cars off hand.
    Was still a different kind of a car.
    You had a start in the front had to turn the handle
    to get the motor started on the outside.
    You had clutches.
    You had shifts.
    You cannot imagine how difficult it would have been for somebody
    today to drive those kind of cars.
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    But they existed.
    And were they a rarity or were they everyday occurrence
    to see a car down a street?
    It was very, very, very much so.
    It was a very affluent area.
    OK.
    And in your own home, did you have electricity?
    Yes.
    Did you have indoor plumbing?
    Yes.
    OK.
    All this was there.
    Yes.
    And how was the home heated?
    Do you remember?
    That I don't know, if that was coal.
    You would have coal ovens?
    You know, those stapel oven?
    It was central heating, but I don't know from--
    What source.
    Yeah, boiler.
    I don't know how it was heated.
    I don't know.
    Did your family have a radio?
    Yes.
    Telephone?
    Yes.
    So this was quite modern.
    Yes.
    Actually, for the time, it was quite modern--
    Yes.
    --to have these things.
    Right.
    Yes.
    There was no television yet.
    No.
    No.
    And things think that, no.
    What was your father's occupation
    when he came back from the war?
    He, together with the family members,
    they started a company, which made kitchen cabinets.
    Oh, OK.
    Woodworking.
    Woodworking.
    Yeah.
    And that must have been quite a business.
    Well, like everything else, after the war, a lot of things
    were destroyed--
    Yeah.
    --and had to be renovated, had to be done over again
    or new homes were built. So it was a lucrative business.
    Did you ever visit him in his--
    I mean, visited the company, the office
    because my father worked there in the office
    and so on and so forth.
    Yes.
    But I mean, I didn't do anything.
    I went to school.
    Yeah.
    But did you see the cabinets being made?
    Oh, sure.
    A lot of woods, if I remember.
    That took a little time.
    It didn't come right away.
    That happens later.
    It was then later imported.
    Wood came from America.
    Oh, really?
    Pitch pine, yellow pine, things like
    that came from America to Europe,
    and that was very popular in kitchen manufacturing.
    And what about European woods?
    What woods would be natural or native to Germany
    that were also used?
    They don't have that many good trees in Germany.
    They had oak trees.
    Well, it's interesting that you bring up the wood.
    You know, my specialty in my later years
    and especially here in this country is I was--
    I don't want to call an expert--
    but I was looking all over the world
    for exotic and foreign trees.
    Oh, wow.
    And I selected those trees to be brought here to this country
    to be processed into lumber and wood, which
    is then finally used for architectural woodwork.
    Oh, wow.
    Oh, wow.
    So is this as a result of your father
    having had such a business?
    Right.
    My brother was in the same-- not actually in the same business--
    my brother came to this country also
    later, much later than I did, and he also
    was in the wood business.
    But he got together with big companies from the West Coast
    and only handled soft wood lumber like spruce and hemlock
    and pine and spruce, which is used for construction of homes,
    which was for outdoors use.
    The soft woods are used for outdoor use
    in the construction of homes?
    You mean the frames that we see?
    The frames, like a 2 by 4 or 3 by--
    anything in the construction field is only soft woods.
    That doesn't make you feel very confident about the strength
    of one's house if it's all soft wood.
    It is very strong.
    It's the thickness and the width of the board.
    I mean, that was the style, and it still
    was vogue until about a few years
    ago when things changed here, this country to.
    Everything here was wooden frames.
    Every house was wooden frames.
    And the outside naturally you had different finishing.
    But the inside was everything done by 2 by 4s or 2 by 6s or 3
    by 10s.
    The whole house was of wooden frames.
    And then later on when the fire department
    insisted that you have to protect people more,
    then they changed it.
    It was that you had to use some fire retardant
    chemicals on the wood.
    And last but not least, also you used metal instead of wood.
    So nowadays in big, big buildings,
    they will not use wood anymore because they're afraid.
    They're using steel or metal.
    So that would be for large non-residential buildings
    mostly.
    It depends on the architects.
    Well, you know, the interesting thing
    is that when the people who are familiar with Germany
    and have visited there often comment
    on the beauty and the strength of the houses
    compared to the United States and their construction.
    There must be some difference in construction process.
    Well, the houses in Europe, they were mostly built out of stone.
    Stone houses or even, if you can afford it, I mean, it's brick.
    Right.
    Which is definitely much more solid but much more costly.
    Yeah.
    But it lasts longer.
    Your house, was it a stone house?
    Your apartment?
    We didn't have a--
    the original houses where we lived,
    I have no idea how it was built because those houses were--
    if you remember, if I should remember,
    I don't know when they were build.
    God knows when.
    Yeah.
    And they were certainly built with wood.
    There was no other way of doing it
    because that was the only way they could do it.
    And only later, when people had maybe chances
    to get either stone or brick, which would be much more
    costly, they built houses, and they could naturally
    afford it also, which were much better and last longer.
    Well, so many of the houses in the inner cities of, not only
    Austria and Germany, but France and Brussels and so on,
    were stone houses that were--
    I'm talking the central cities, where
    you'd have an apartment building, that
    could be many stories high, they were stone.
    They were brick and stone.
    They were with the 19th century, if you
    think of that kind of construction
    with high ceilings and big windows and verandas
    and you know.
    I'm not talking about outer city,
    you know, where residential areas.
    And that lasted.
    It still is.
    It lasted.
    Sure, it lasted because it was easier
    for them to get the stones.
    Apparently there were areas where there were stones.
    You know, Italy is known for that, for marble and all this,
    to get the material.
    And I have no idea exactly where the stones or bricks
    or something were manufactured.
    But it was there.
    It came from somewhere.
    And in your apartment building, was--
    I don't know actually the apartment.
    They were there, and I just--
    I naturally looked underneath.
    I didn't know.
    Of course not.
    Of course not.
    Naturally, I don't know.
    Of course not.
    But it was definitely solid buildings.
    Solid building.
    Your father, having himself been a butcher's son,
    how did he come by this trade?
    How did he come by this particular business?
    You mean the kitchen manufacturing?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, the family, there were two or three other who all--
    the money--
    I don't know exactly how they came to found the company.
    They had an idea that this will be a good item to start
    and would be needed.
    And the company was founded.
    Yeah.
    It was a family business.
    It was a family business.
    What was the name of it?
    At the moment, I wouldn't know what the name of that anymore.
    OK.
    So it wouldn't have been like [GERMAN] Bloch or something
    like that.
    It could have been, but I don't remember.
    And did they have many workers manufacturing the cabinets,
    making the cabinets?
    Naturally, they had people to work there.
    I don't know how many.
    But they had people who were qualified.
    And we had actually cabinet makers.
    Those people were-- how I should say--
    certified.
    They had an apprenticeship before they could call
    themselves a cabinet maker.
    Here, you can go to a company and it says--
    and the man goes and says if you--
    I would like a job.
    So the man says, what can you do?
    Well, I'm a cabinet maker.
    You have no proof that he ever was taught
    or that he knows anything.
    He doesn't even know how to put things together perhaps.
    Yeah.
    There is a difference.
    There is a difference.
    That's a big-- I mean, apprenticeship.
    Yeah.
    In the sense of artisan craftsmanship,
    that was their guilds in Germany and so
    that are part of the quality control as well.
    Did you have the kitchen cabinets in your own apartment,
    were they from the company?
    No.
    That apartment was already in existence.
    We didn't get it.
    No.
    No.
    OK.
    But did you find your father's business
    interesting or not so much?
    Well, I mean, not for me personally interesting.
    Well, I mean, I went to school.
    I mean, I had to go to school.
    I had no time to worry about getting
    a job or something like this.
    Oh, no, no, no.
    That's not what I meant.
    I meant more like some boys would
    see something made of a metal, and they're just fascinated.
    They take their family radio apart.
    Things like-- I wondered whether that was of interest to you,
    what you saw there.
    In a way, yes.
    In a way, yes, because it's nice to see
    that you can manufacture something,
    and you have a product at the end.
    It was of interest to me, yes.
    But it was not for me that I would
    say I want to get into it.
    I wanted to finish the school first and see what happens.
    But well, that is another story.
    Yeah.
    And Fritz, your older brother, what was--
    He was in the company.
    He worked there too.
    He worked at company, but he also
    was anxious to get ahead of him.
    He didn't see any future in this company.
    He made connections with another company.
    And he left, and he became quite important
    for the other company.
    But it more or less in the same type of business.
    Same type of business.
    OK.
    They not only made kitchen cabinets,
    they made also other furniture.
    OK.
    And we'll keep on going.
    Did your father have higher education?
    No.
    OK if I close this door?
    OK.
    And your mother, had she had any?
    No.
    Any kind of--
    They were home keepers.
    She was a--
    Homemaker.
    Homemaker.
    Women didn't go to work.
    Or they worked at home.
    They had no education for business.
    They were taught have babies and keep a home and cook.
    Did she have any help in any of this?
    Yes.
    Yes?
    Yes.
    We always had some help.
    Did your father on an automobile?
    No.
    In the city, we didn't have a garage,
    and we didn't have an automobile.
    No.
    OK.
    Was your family religious?
    Not that I can say.
    They were going to the synagogue on holidays
    but not regularly on the weekends.
    We believe-- we were Jewish, and we had a congregation.
    And we kept the holidays naturally.
    But we were not religious.
    And then naturally the trend started in Germany--
    what do you call it now?
    Let's cut for a second.
    What is that looking for?
    Oh, so they were reformed Jews.
    Right.
    OK.
    Oh, I just had a thought, and it went in here and out here.
    Did your-- ah, this was it.
    Did Mannheim have a large Jewish community?
    Yes.
    There were quite a few synagogues,
    religious ones were orthodox.
    And I don't know how many.
    That I cannot tell you anymore.
    Big buildings, matter of fact.
    Also out of stone, which you mentioned earlier.
    At the congregational church--
    I don't know how many people lived in Mannheim--
    they had a very considerable amount
    of Jewish people living in Mannheim, yes.
    And would you say that most of them, like your own family,
    had been in Germany for generations and generations?
    Yes.
    Were there any newcomers from the East,
    for example, from Poland, from other countries
    further east like Russia?
    They used-- well, it used to be that during the year,
    some people from the eastern part of Europe came to Germany,
    not necessarily to settle down, but to get help--
    money.
    And it was a general German attitude, we did help them,
    but we didn't like them.
    That was a German attitude.
    A German-Jewish or German in general?
    German-Jewish.
    Yeah.
    Well, I've heard that there has been
    a certain tension between East European Jews and German Jews.
    Exactly.
    OK.
    I mean, the background of German Jews and the background
    and the upbringing of Eastern educated
    or born Jews was like--
    I don't want to say day and night,
    but it was a big difference.
    Yeah.
    We were-- you see, I also when somebody would ask me
    what are you in Germany, I mean, they would say, what are you?
    I said, I'm a German.
    Now, most people would say I'm Jewish.
    Jewish is not a nationality.
    Jewish is a religion.
    Judaism is a religion.
    I'm not interested to know your religion.
    You want to know what part of the country
    or what part of the land you belong to.
    I was 100% German.
    And your father and your mother?
    Same.
    We had-- I mean, we did not find any problems to live
    amongst the Gentile people.
    You were just as German, and they were just as German
    as you-- you all were the same.
    I mean, there were incidents maybe when you--
    offhand, I cannot give it to you where and when--
    where there are some antisemitic incidents, sure.
    But as a rule, we were accustomed to being equal.
    We didn't expect to be any different from anybody else.
    Matter of fact, our attitude was not
    that we would take a step back because somebody
    was at a Gentile person and you were Jewish and says,
    well, I better don't do it because I'm Jewish.
    No.
    If I feel that I had the proper background,
    I went ahead with all the other non-Jewish people just the same
    because I feel I'm just as good or maybe even better.
    That's the attitude.
    It doesn't have the complex that often
    would accompany someone who felt they had to be more careful.
    We lived a very comfortable social life before Hitler.
    Were your parents-- were their friends Jewish and non-Jewish?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And yours?
    Same.
    OK.
    Let's talk about school now because you
    started talking about school.
    What were your first years of school?
    Describe a school room to me from the 1920s.
    Well, you see, this--
    can you imagine how many years?
    That's right.
    You went to public school.
    The learning-- the teaching in those days
    was entirely different.
    You learned how-- you had to learn how to write.
    Matter of fact, there's a German style, that is here.
    What is it called?
    German term for it--
    Deutsche schrift.
    Deutsche schrift.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I mean, it's different from what we are using now,
    which is not the Roman.
    This is the ABC, the alphabet and all this.
    Latin.
    What is it called?
    Well, that's what is now all over the world used similar.
    Oh, the Latin alphabet.
    Yeah, but we had to learn a different--
    learn how to write German schrift, you know?
    Well, sometimes one sees old printed matter from Germany,
    and it's hard to read because it's in this schrift.
    If you didn't know the German schrift, you didn't know just--
    I mean, we knew it.
    Yeah.
    Also, I mean, everything was more geared
    that you have to do it on your own.
    Everything was-- it was not-- it was very competitive.
    Was it?
    Yes.
    Was it?
    And teachers, the teaching method, was it mostly--
    well, tell me.
    What was the teaching method for--
    I don't know what do you mean by method.
    You had respect from the teacher.
    Did the students, they were not--
    how should I say--
    revolting or being problems for the teacher.
    I mean, God knows, the teacher would take a stick or something
    and hit you over the head.
    I mean, that was in the beginning.
    That also changed gradually in all this.
    But it was very strict.
    So you had some fear of the teacher or just respect
    that this is someone you don't mess with?
    This is someone you don't cross.
    I mean, you're brought up, and you
    know that it's your teacher, and you respect him.
    I mean, it was just natural.
    Were their favorite subjects that you
    had, things that you liked learning more than others?
    Well, at the beginning, I mean, I for instance, had to learn
    the beginning Latin and Greek.
    Oh, wow.
    Because it was customary that you should learn Latin first
    because that was the basic of all, later in law or medicine
    or anywhere, where the Latin basic comes in.
    And then even later on, they added Greek to our curriculum.
    But then I found out--
    times also changed.
    Naturally that was now in the '20s and so forth.
    I wasn't quite so sure that I would want to be a doctor
    or whatever would require--
    lawyer or something like this.
    Even so, a lot of young Jewish people,
    also especially wanted to become doctors and lawyers and things
    like that.
    And I was more geared to one language.
    I wanted to learn English and French.
    And then I had to switch to a different department.
    And I had to catch up in order not
    to lose another year because I didn't have in the beginning.
    I had to learn French and English separately
    in order to catch up with the ones who
    did learn already that before.
    OK.
    So you had-- can I understand from this that you had an extra
    load of classes because you had this interest in--
    Through the summertime or something
    because a teacher who helped me to get
    this part through the six months or a year.
    But I lost years before to catch up with the others.
    Why did you lose the six months?
    Because I learned Greek and Latin,
    and they learned French and English.
    Ah, I see what you mean.
    I see what you mean.
    Well, it's a good basis to have Greek and Latin,
    but it's not with children today.
    It's not.
    Well, it's very well learned, and it's good for everything.
    I mean, you can't go wrong with it.
    But it depends what your future is
    or what you want to do with your future.
    Was it an assumption in your home that you and your brother
    would have higher education?
    It was the assumption that the children should graduate
    and finish high school.
    Abitur.
    Abitur.
    OK.
    And then-- well, that--
    So your father's business took a hit.
    Sure.
    OK.
    Did it continue anyway?
    Yes, it did.
    But it was not the same anymore.
    It became more difficult as time goes on,
    also because it was Jewish.
    Yes.
    And people didn't want to buy from Jews.
    And it became more difficult.
    OK.
    But I would say they lived on this--
    the company lived on for a little while longer.
    I don't know anymore because then I--
    later on I left, and I don't know anymore
    just how they negotiated or how they liquidated
    or how the deal was settled.
    I don't remember the details about.
    OK.
    We'll talk about that part later.
    Let's still stay in the 1920s and beginning of the '30s.
    Did your parents have any kind of political interests?
    Well, there were-- unfortunately,
    all were democratic showing the leaders
    to get the country solidified on that basis,
    on the democratic base.
    But it didn't work.
    It just, there were too many other parties.
    There were so many parties.
    I don't remember how many, maybe 25, 30,
    or even more parties and not strong enough
    to work out a Congress or to be able to--
    and then also Germany had to pay reparation to the Allies.
    I mean, it reigned Germany to the last penny
    to pay them whatever.
    I don't know how much.
    Did you feel that personally?
    That is, as a family, did you feel the unjust--
    I mean, personally, I didn't feel it, but I mean,
    you are in the environment, you hear what is said.
    And people naturally talk about it.
    As a German, did you feel it--
    I don't mean like you had an effect of it,
    but did you as a German citizen think
    this is unfair that we should have to pay these reparations?
    Well, you feel that it is not right.
    I mean, you lose, but you--
    as a loser, you then would like to lose more.
    That's right.
    So this is a natural thing.
    But what choice have you got?
    If you're a loser, you have no choice.
    That's right, you pay.
    They got the upper hand.
    Yeah.
    That's true.
    They got the upper hand, and Germany was in very bad shape.
    That's what happened.
    What were you studying at university when you went in?
    Actually, I was not really.
    Really, actually what I was--
    that I wanted in architecture, I thought, because it
    was something in the line of--
    what do you call it?
    Manufacturing furniture and things like that.
    I thought that would be nice.
    But then, I wasn't quite sure if I would
    be able to get through with it.
    And then it became so difficult to stay in the university,
    I had to leave.
    And what was the difficulty?
    How did it express itself?
    They made it so difficult for Jewish people to stay up.
    Was it through the kinds of courses
    you were required to take?
    No.
    Was it the grades?
    Political.
    Political.
    OK.
    Hitler or socialism, all this was already taking definitely
    an upper hand.
    So was Hitler already elected in '33
    when you left Heidelberg University?
    Oh, sure.
    OK.
    OK.
    I don't know now what year it was,
    but Hitler became chancellor in '33.
    That's right.
    Before that, the Nazis were all over the country.
    I mean, not perhaps as active as where once he was chancellor,
    but they made it difficult for Jewish people to--
    I mean, it was not easy anymore.
    Then you knew that you were a minority, so to speak.
    You had not your same rights like the others did.
    Can you think of examples of what difficulty meant
    in your life?
    You could not go to certain areas.
    They would not allow you in.
    I mean, that was one of them.
    There are certain functions where
    they said Jews not allowed.
    You couldn't go to certain affairs, where they also
    said Jews not allowed.
    So I mean, they made it very clear,
    in order to protect themselves, not
    that they thought it was right.
    But they wanted to be in agreement with the ruling
    people in order not to lose out on their end to oppose them.
    Then they would lose even more if they would not
    go along with the same thought.
    OK.
    So if I understand this properly-- let me see if I do--
    it may not be that everybody was as ideologically
    convinced as the Nazis were, but because they were fearful
    of the power of the Nazis, if and when
    they would get into power, they would
    acquiesce to their demands and even before they were told to.
    And that could have been the university authorities
    or there could have been some municipal authorities or people
    who would have been in charge of one
    or another aspect of German life.
    That's right.
    Is that correct?
    That is correct.
    And so this is what you would feel.
    Yeah.
    And then, I connected--
    since I mentioned my brother was in a bigger big place, which
    was woodworking and wood and everything else.
    I was able to get in this company.
    After you left university.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I was an apprentice.
    I mean, like everything else, you have to start someplace.
    I was an apprentice in that woodworking business.
    And I don't know what year it was.
    And it lasted maybe, not too long, that they also,
    the owners, it was--
    the funny part is, they were originally Jewish people,
    but what did I say before it was?
    What kind of a--
    the--
    Reformed Jewish?
    What did I say?
    I couldn't think the name before.
    Reformed.
    The reform.
    There were all reformed Jewish people.
    They didn't hold any particular special services or so,
    but they didn't deny it, couldn't deny it anyway
    that they were Jews.
    But that's the way their life was, moderate.
    And then they began--
    they took in partners who were Gentiles.
    So it was 50-50 Jewish, and 50 were Gentiles.
    That lasted for a little while.
    And then when Hitler already started with this whole thing,
    they, the Gentiles, became more interested
    with the political thing and made
    it uncomfortable in the company too.
    They then pushed out everybody who was Jewish.
    OK.
    And I left.
    Well, I had to leave, not I left.
    Yeah.
    And Hitler at that time had a ruling
    that anybody who was born in '14, any Gentile or any German,
    not Gentile, any German '14 is going to go in the army.
    And I was in the German army.
    You were in the German army?
    I had a rise--
    I had [GERMAN] just like any other German.
    Were there many other Jewish boys who were in the army?
    Any other one who was born in '14 was in the same category.
    Oh, my goodness.
    We were not active but reserves.
    But we were in the German so-called army.
    So you were drafted.
    Drafted.
    Can you tell me about that experience of being drafted?
    Well, I mean, we did not have much to doing
    because the Allies also did not want this German,
    any army or anything like this at the time.
    We were just practicing with wooden rifles
    and with make-believe machinery and tanks.
    The little things.
    Not that we have anything officially available,
    but in that pass which I had, it says Jews in it.
    It was mentioned that I was Jewish.
    But I was nevertheless in the German army.
    And what year were you drafted?
    Right after Hitler got power.
    So 1933.
    Right.
    1933.
    And that means you're 19 years old.
    At that time, I applied.
    Then I said, I'm not going to stay here in this country.
    That is pretty early on.
    Yeah.
    So I went to Stuttgart where there was an American
    Consulate.
    And I applied for immigration.
    And naturally, it was extremely difficult to get somebody
    to sponsor me.
    Did you have any relatives in the United States?
    Not known.
    Even so, there were, I was told--
    I mean, you hear this always later on more so.
    There were some Davids who, for what reason I don't know,
    emigrated to the United States, and lived in Chicago.
    And by hook and crook I found out,
    and I don't know how it went.
    They finally-- they were nice enough,
    even they did not want to do it originally.
    They gave me an affidavit to come,
    but they did not want me to come to them.
    Of course.
    They said they had some other relatives who lived here
    on the coast, near West Point.
    And when I came finally then to the United States, those people
    who lived in Newburgh.
    I don't know if you know where it is.
    No.
    West Point is--
    West Point is the army.
    Yeah.
    Right.
    Army, what do you call it?
    Where the cadets--
    Yes.
    Army cadets have to graduate from.
    It's outside from West Point.
    I went to Newburgh and stayed with them, and I came here.
    And when I left Germany, I never forget,
    I was still in the army, the German army.
    I had to resign by the Office of the Military.
    And they made it very firm and told me that as soon
    as I get off the ship--
    I mean, we had to go by ship.
    There were no planes--
    we have to sign up to the German Consulate here in New York
    to let the consulate know in New York where I am.
    I said, yes sir, I will do the first thing
    when I get off the ship, let the German chancellor know
    where I am.
    And he's still waiting.
    [LAUGHS]
    Sometimes the absurdity of those rules and the absurdity,
    given what we know now about the context in which all of this
    took place.
    Let me step back a little bit.
    Before this all happens, your, quote, "basic training"
    with wooden rifles and sort of like play equipment,
    how long did it last, and where did it take place?
    In Mannheim.
    In Mannheim.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    They had local little department where
    they had places where you had to assemble
    every week for a few hours.
    OK.
    And was it a politicized kind of atmosphere, not just
    a military one?
    In other words, were the ideals of national socialism--
    Well, more so, it became like this.
    OK.
    More so, but it was actually originally a military draft.
    For that, he took naturally the--
    So what was the point when you said, I'm outta here,
    I'm leaving?
    I was able to get out.
    I know.
    I'm talking about earlier than that.
    I'm talking when you come to the decision,
    I'm not staying in this country, was there something that came--
    that happened that brought you to that?
    I don't know.
    I saw that--
    I mean, by then, I was a grown-up person.
    I was old enough to understand what's going on.
    And I saw that Germany was in such dire--
    in such a bad shape, and I saw Hitler.
    And I thought, this is not going to go away.
    This is not going to help us.
    And my parents were very much against that I should leave.
    Because that is one of my next questions.
    It's unusual that somebody--
    I mean, from the stories that I hear
    and the people that I talk to, I've
    interviewed people who left as late as 1940.
    And certainly in 1933, there were--
    nobody liked what was happening, of the people that I've
    interviewed, but they didn't at that point say it's time to go,
    you know?
    They said it was too early at that point.
    And there always was pressure not to go.
    So I want to find out how was it for you and your family.
    Well, as I said, my parents were definitely saying,
    this will pass.
    Like most Jewish people thought, Hitler comes and Hitler goes.
    But I personally didn't believe that.
    I just said that is not going to work.
    And I wanted to get out.
    What about Fritz?
    What did he think?
    He didn't go on out.
    He was married.
    And he was older, and he had a business.
    And he-- I don't know.
    He didn't go.
    OK.
    Did he still live in Mannheim?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And aunts and uncles, and did you have--
    Yes.
    Did they--
    They all stayed.
    They all stayed.
    But I said, I will--
    I'm not going to stay.
    And it was quite a decision for me to make.
    Yes.
    And it took two years.
    I mean, '33 I applied and '35 I only got the visa.
    And why two years?
    Why did it take so long?
    Because the United States government did only
    allow X amount of people from each country to emigrate.
    And if you had a quota or a number,
    you had to wait for your number to come up.
    And do you remember your number?
    No.
    I have no idea.
    Did you, between 1933 and '35, experience any physical danger?
    Physically, no.
    I was never injured or anything.
    But I was uncomfortable.
    When you went someplace and everybody said Heil Hitler,
    and I didn't put my hands up.
    Or when you went someplace, they spoke openly
    about the political thing and what they feel, what they--
    and I certainly didn't explain my opinion
    because they would maybe take an example
    and maybe start something with me, which I didn't want.
    So I kept quiet.
    I mean, physically I was not in any way set up.
    Did you lose friends?
    Most of my friends in same age wanted to get out too.
    Some did go out and went--
    some friends went to Brazil, was able to take people up
    and made it maybe easier to get into Brazil than to go
    to the United States.
    Some people emigrated to England or some other country.
    I don't know.
    But the United States was very difficult.
    Why did you want to go to the United States?
    I thought it was my future.
    I wanted to go to--
    I wanted to go to the United States.
    Without much thinking, but this is where you felt this--
    I felt, I mean, if anything, I always
    read a lot of books about the United States
    and about what's going on.
    And there's no such thing that you are handicapped.
    You have a free way of doing, and you're not
    handicapped in any way.
    You can express yourself.
    You can leave and go wherever you want.
    You can be yourself.
    Yeah.
    I said that that's where I would like to be.
    But naturally, it was, like I said, you get an affidavit.
    And during those two years, were your parents--
    I mean, was that a constant conversation, don't go,
    don't go?
    Well, not constantly, but I'm naturally
    they knew that that was the ultimate thing
    would be that I would leave.
    OK.
    Can you describe leaving to me and the detail
    how you said goodbye?
    Did you say goodbye to the larger family?
    Well, look.
    I didn't think that I would not see them again.
    I mean, at the time when I left, I said look,
    we will see each other somehow.
    When I get to the United States, I
    will see that I get an affidavit for you
    too, saying that maybe I will be able to do this,
    not knowing anything.
    I have no idea.
    As it turned out, things did not go like this.
    What happened?
    My parents went to the concentration camp.
    The relatives?
    My brother was able to get out before they were
    caught after Kristallnacht.
    He was affected by the Kristallnacht.
    They came to his apartment, and they demolished the hold damn
    thing there.
    They didn't manage to hold him?
    They demolished the whole apartment.
    Oh, they damaged the whole apartment.
    They smashed everything.
    So then he realized that it's time to get out.
    But then it was already late.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And I was here in America, and I really
    tried to get things going.
    But I had a tough time to get people to help me out
    because they were not that anxious.
    People here in America understood,
    but in order to give an affidavit,
    they have to show their income, what they owed,
    what they owned, and everything else.
    And they didn't want to show the government
    all this personal stuff.
    They didn't want to give that information out.
    Are you talking mostly American Jews?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    They didn't want to do it.
    OK.
    It was too much risk for them and too much exposure?
    Not so much a risk.
    They just-- look.
    There was no income tax or at least that I
    know there was no income tax.
    And if you own or if you had X--
    I don't know exactly how it was anymore--
    you had to pay.
    I suppose if you had a certain amount
    or if you were the owner of buildings or had income--
    I don't know the details--
    they would have to pay the government something.
    And if they didn't--
    if they don't--
    Declare it.
    --declare it, they don't owe.
    And in order to give an affidavit,
    you will have to declare that you
    are able to let that person come from Europe,
    you are financially able to pay for it if anything comes up.
    They didn't-- the American government didn't want to have
    the person who comes from Europe come and is going to be not
    able to get a job or doesn't know what to do.
    And the government has to support him
    or has to pay for his livelihood.
    They didn't want that.
    They want to make sure that the person who sponsored them
    is financially able to do it.
    And they did not want to give that information out at first.
    They did not want to do it.
    That was your experience, when you were trying
    to do this for your family.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So you leave in 1935?
    Yeah.
    And you live from Mannheim.
    Yeah.
    By train?
    By train to a Hamburg.
    And then from Hamburg?
    Ship.
    OK.
    You don't remember the name of the ship.
    Columbus.
    You do.
    Columbus.
    Was it a passenger ship?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And were there many other people in your situation?
    There were a couple of Jewish people, who
    also were on the same ship, who were fortunate enough
    also to leave, right.
    And how long did the journey last?
    A week or more.
    I don't remember.
    It was not the fastest.
    OK.
    We got in August here.
    We got here in August, and it was a heat wave.
    It was no air conditioning.
    So you can imagine for somebody who was not used to this heat,
    I really didn't like the climate.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Germany is in a northern parallel,
    not as far south as here.
    Did you have anybody meet you at the pier?
    Those people who lived in Newburgh, which is outside
    of West Point, they came.
    And we had to have somebody.
    They didn't know me, and they took me in.
    And they took me up to Newburgh.
    They were also, from those people from Chicago, relatives.
    So this would have been--
    Yeah.
    The owner of those people in Newburgh had a big factory.
    They made clothing.
    They made men's suits and men's overcoats and things like that.
    And they had a lot of people work there.
    And I was supposed to work there too.
    And not having air conditioning in a place like this
    and the lint when you cut clothing
    and, like I said, not had machinery
    to cut the clothing to make suits and overcoats and all
    this, the lint and perspiration, it stuck to your skin,
    and it makes it itch.
    I didn't like this one bit.
    And they called me a greenhorn.
    They says, look at this greenhorn.
    He's here only a few weeks, already he's complaining.
    I mean-- I mean--
    Did you already speak English because
    of your English classes?
    I spoke English, not American English.
    English, like in England.
    You know, the typical English.
    But you lose that after a while.
    So they told me I was a greenhorn, you know.
    So I stayed with them for a little while.
    I mean, I didn't know the first thing anything about America,
    but they were--
    they actually also lost a fortune during the crash here.
    There was a crash here in America.
    And in '35 when I came here, they were again able to--
    they did pretty good.
    They had a very nice home.
    They had a car.
    matter of fact, they had two cars.
    I learned to live a little bit American style of living
    and did very good.
    And I looked around.
    I said, I'm not going to stay the company which
    they had because this making suits over overcoats,
    it's not for me.
    And I looked for a place in New York-- in New York City--
    and I found a place which had a lumber company.
    And I moved from Newburgh to New York.
    And I worked for a lumber company there.
    So when you got the affidavit and the visa,
    you got the right to work.
    So you were able to-- you know, you
    had freedom to go and find work anywhere.
    I mean, you see, this is the difference.
    When I came here, naturally so I was not tied down by anything.
    I had my freedom.
    And even so, I knew there was problems and my parents
    and my brother and all this.
    And I tried to explain it to those people here.
    They listened, but they don't act.
    They listened, but they didn't act.
    Just like Roosevelt, I don't know.
    He also had that ship here in the harbor.
    St. Louis.
    Yeah.
    And refused to let the people get off the ship
    and sent it back.
    I mean, this is what was the attitude people had here.
    They didn't understand how serious
    this Hitler socialism, Nazi antisemitism, all this
    was already.
    They thought, oh, it's on the other side of the ocean.
    We don't want to get involved.
    Did you learn of the St. Louis as it was happening?
    I read about it, but I mean, what could I do about it?
    No, but did you see the ship in the harbor?
    No, I didn't see it myself.
    I saw it on tel--
    I don't know if I saw it on television
    or I saw it in newspaper.
    Papers, yeah. yeah.
    Now, when you came down and looked for a lumber company
    in New York City, where did you live?
    Well, I mean, when I did get a job in New York,
    I rented a room in the neighborhood
    where the place was and--
    Where was that?
    On the West side, on West 72nd Street, somewheres--
    Oh, so you were on the Upper West Side.
    And there was a lumber company that was also--
    Well, the lumber company, actually they had two places.
    There was one on the East side and one on the West side.
    The East side was where the main office was,
    and they had one on the West side, which they gave me.
    They told, you are in charge of that.
    So I took care of the West side lumber yard.
    OK.
    But it was nothing to speak-- it was a small lumber
    yard, not big.
    We sold whatever in the lumber yard,
    you know, here to-- same thing like this.
    But you had some--
    Retail.
    A retail lumber yard.
    People come for this or for that, for a piece of plywood,
    for the [GERMAN],, for whatever there is.
    Yeah.
    But it was a foothold.
    See, this is the interesting-- for me, an interesting point.
    You had background and some experience from Europe,
    and it gave you the foothold in New York City to then go for--
    I knew something.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Were there letters back and forth
    between you and your family?
    Yes.
    What did the letters from your parents say?
    Well, I cannot go--
    tell you each--
    Of course not.
    --individual letter anymore.
    But they told us--
    told me that things are not going well,
    and it's getting worse, and so forth.
    And then finally, I found out that all the Jewish people
    in that area from Mannheim, all the way down
    to the Swiss border, which is clear to the bottom,
    were taken by train one day--
    I don't know what day it was, I don't know--
    and sent to a concentration camp in France.
    And it was called Gurs.
    Yeah.
    You know it?
    I've heard of it.
    I've heard of it.
    Actually, they first went to a place
    called Recebedou, which was during the Franco
    regime, a Spanish military camp, and then abandoned.
    And they took over in the Pyrenees.
    That was in the mountains, in the Pyrenees Mountains,
    which is between Spain and France.
    And there were all those Jewish people were in that camp, Gurs.
    And was this after Kristallnacht?
    Yes.
    You think they were taken?
    Yes.
    OK.
    My brother was able to leave Germany--
    Mannheim.
    Actually, I wanted him to come to New York before,
    but it didn't work.
    I wanted him to go to l, to go to China,
    and come over the East Coast to the United States.
    Didn't work.
    Somehow neither did-- it was extremely difficult.
    But he was able to get out of Mannheim.
    He was able to go to Portugal somehow,
    and I got him a crossing from Lisbon to New York.
    And in I would say about '40, 1940.
    What about his wife?
    She with him as well.
    With him, both of them.
    Did they have children?
    No.
    OK.
    It was the two of them.
    So they came on one of the large ships, which actually
    left Lisbon or Portugal.
    He came to New York.
    And when he settled actually with me
    because he had no place to go.
    He had no place to go.
    He and his wife settled with me.
    I made arrangements that he could stay with somebody
    in my neighborhood.
    And I took care of them until he was
    able to find also something in his line in the wood
    business in Washington, DC.
    I see.
    And he moved to Washington, DC, and he actually
    was in Chevy Chase for the rest of his life.
    And did you then provide the affidavit for him and his wife?
    I was able, together-- somebody else, with mine together--
    to get him out.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And for your parents?
    Had they been taken?
    What happened?
    That is a story by itself.
    My parents were in the Gurs.
    And there is no way of escaping it.
    They were all booked to go by one of the trains
    to get to the--
    Auschwitz?
    Auschwitz or someplace.
    And I knew a senator--
    no, I didn't know--
    the person I lived with in Newburgh
    was a very strong Republican political influence,
    knew a senator, who was a Republican senator,
    in his area.
    So in New York--
    nevertheless, in New York or Maryland.
    And he lived right next to Franklin Roosevelt.
    Yeah.
    And he took me one day to this senator,
    who lived not far from us, from Newburgh, was a half an hour
    by car.
    And the senator was nice enough to listen to my story.
    Long and so behold, he arranged, that senator--
    his name was Howard Lufisch, a very old
    English immigrant family who was already
    for three generations at least--
    very strong Republicans.
    He arranged to get Marseilles consul
    to get to the government-- of the French government
    of something in Gurs, get my parents out of this Gurs.
    And we were-- and he arranged it.
    I don't know exactly how it went.
    And they went from Gurs to Marseilles,
    went over to Africa to Casablanca,
    and stayed in Casablanca 'til I was able to get a ship for them
    from Casablanca to come to New York.
    Hah, so you saved your parents.
    Right.
    Oh, my goodness.
    My parents came here in '44--
    '43.
    I was in the army already.
    I was already in the American army, ready to go to Europe.
    Congratulations.
    Congratulations.
    The youngest child gets everybody out.
    And my parents lived here in New York, Washington Heights,
    where most of the German people live.
    And they died, and my father died first,
    and my mother followed 10 years later.
    Did they tell you of what had happened since you had left?
    Well, the detail part I don't want to hear anymore.
    But all of my uncles and aunts who were in that same camp,
    I couldn't get them out.
    I could not get them out.
    They all died.
    They all were killed.
    They all were killed.
    Yeah.
    It had been almost--
    when they finally arrived in 1944,
    it had been almost 10 years since you-- nine years,
    eight years--
    since you had left Germany.
    Did they look different to you?
    Well, they didn't have much to eat.
    They look-- you know, they lost weight, lost-- and aged
    in something fierce.
    But somehow they didn't actually have any physical problems
    later on here.
    And things worked out pretty good.
    Did they ever--
    I was fortunate enough to get them--
    with this help of the senator, otherwise I
    wouldn't have been able to get them out.
    But it took a lot of doing to do all this.
    What was the name of the man who owned the factory up
    in Newburgh?
    Do you remember?
    Scott, his last name.
    The name of the company-- that I never forget--
    it was LBS, Lehman, Berkowitz, and Scott.
    They had a very big company.
    I mean, it was big in clothing.
    They had at least maybe 100 or more people working there.
    Very big company.
    And his name was--
    And they made men's suits an overcoats.
    And his name was Scott, Mr. Scott.
    Yeah.
    Now, he never told me that he was--
    he never said he was Jewish.
    And he never told me where he came from.
    And he never told me where his family was from.
    Somehow or another, people here in this--
    it's the funniest thing--
    somehow people, somehow, if they didn't want to tell you,
    they didn't tell you.
    I have not-- I mean, maybe his name was Schott in Germany,
    but he was here, and he says his--
    sometimes he told me once he is Italian.
    He comes from an Italian family.
    And because he told me once, this lady or this family,
    which was they were Italians.
    They are relatives of mine.
    So I said, how come they're Italians?
    Well, I don't know how he explained it.
    And yet, you saw--
    you knew that it was some sort of family
    connection between them and the Davids in Chicago.
    Well, his wife was a David.
    His wife was David, who married a Scott.
    I see.
    I see.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    Let's at this point take a break.
    All right.
    OK.
    So let's focus now a little bit on your life in the United
    States, starting with the small lumber yard retail
    that you're working at on the Upper West Side,
    and you rent a room in an apartment close by, you said?
    Mm-hmm.
    How long did this particular job last?
    Until I was inducted in the army.
    Oh, so a good number of years.
    Yes.
    Well, can you tell me about how many years
    that would have been?
    Five years.
    Wait a minute.
    I got the army in '42--
    '43.
    Five, six years.
    OK.
    That was-- no, I changed once.
    That place was so small, it didn't give me
    much of a challenge, and I didn't see a future in it.
    And I didn't make enough money.
    And I want to make more money.
    And I wanted to be developing and things.
    So I went with a bigger company in Brooklyn.
    And I naturally also had to move in a different place
    in Brooklyn.
    But they were much, much bigger.
    And it helped me.
    OK.
    What neighborhood in Brooklyn was this?
    The name, I think it was Lutz.
    The name of the company.
    Yeah.
    Lutz.
    OK.
    And was this Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Heights?
    No, it was in Williamsburg.
    In Williamsburg.
    OK.
    And you lived then close by?
    I lived-- I don't know know anything about a street,
    unfortunately.
    Also I stayed nearby, right.
    OK.
    Did you have your own apartment or did you still rent a room?
    No, I had a little apartment.
    And can you describe it for me a bit?
    I don't know how I would describe a little apartment.
    It was not much to talk about.
    Was it a one bedroom, studio?
    One room studio, I would call it nowadays.
    Right.
    OK.
    But it was self-contained.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And I had and that already then at that time some of the boys,
    who I know from Mannheim, came here.
    And naturally, we got together on weekends and so forth, which
    was very nice.
    And we went in many, many times here and there and so forth.
    It became a little club like.
    You know, you anticipated my next question
    because since you came over and you were truly alone,
    you know, without close family by and without a community,
    I wondered what kind of social life you were able to develop.
    How should I say?
    In Newburgh was very similar.
    They had a daughter, marriage in age,
    and they had ideas that maybe I would be interested.
    I mean, she still was in college.
    And she came home for whatever.
    They had vacation or whatever.
    But I was not interested.
    Not that she was not nice and all this, but I just couldn't--
    That was not your life at that point.
    No.
    Actually, I wasn't ready to marry.
    You were already married?
    I was not married.
    No, no, no.
    You said-- you said, actually I was already--
    something.
    And I thought you said married.
    I wasn't interested.
    OK.
    So anyhow, when we met with the other young people who
    came from Mannheim too, we met here on weekends
    and so forth, we met other girls.
    And we joined and did go on excursion and so forth.
    So we had a nice social life, very nice.
    Did you join any kind of community?
    Did you--
    No.
    We did not join any Jewish congregation or nothing.
    OK.
    No.
    You see, I don't know what it is.
    Even today, I'm not a--
    I mean, I don't deny that I'm Jewish, and I pay my dues
    and I pay the congregation, whatever is coming up.
    But I don't like--
    they are conservatives.
    And I don't particularly care for the services
    and especially I didn't even care for the rabbi.
    So I just--
    You don't have a connection.
    No.
    I just never feel like it.
    And I know it's maybe unfortunate,
    but that's the way it is.
    That's OK.
    Every individual has that right to know their own soul and know
    what fits with them and what doesn't.
    I mean, this reform movement became very popular.
    And I know more people who are thinking similar what
    I do than I ever had before.
    So they just don't do more than just
    what is necessary, so to speak.
    Did you meet your wife at this time?
    I met her before I went overseas.
    I was married in '43, and I went overseas a few months later
    to Europe.
    Tell me how you met.
    Blind date.
    Really?
    Like I said, we met, and those people
    who came from the other side had always friends
    and so on and so forth.
    And on weekends, we met here and so forth and so on.
    And one day, I was introduced to her.
    And she seems to be very nice.
    I thought to myself, very nice young lady.
    And we stuck together.
    And did she tell you much of her story?
    She lost her whole parents.
    She lost them all.
    All.
    How is it that she ended up in the United?
    She went under Kindertransport.
    She left Cologne with--
    you know what a Kindertransport is?
    Tell us.
    Sure.
    Tell us.
    She went to England and was on a Kindertransport also.
    Her parents said, you've got to get out.
    You have to get out because it's not good for you to stay here.
    And they let her go on the Kindertransport.
    And she went to England, and she worked as a governess or kinder
    or what do you call it?
    A nanny?
    Nanny for some English family someplace--
    I forgot where-- until she got her visa,
    which also took a long time.
    And then she emigrated to New York.
    I think she came in 1940 or '41 to New York.
    And what was her first name and maiden name?
    Her first name was Hilda, last name Katzenberg
    Katzenberg and then Bloch.
    Well, came Bloch.
    You know, Katzenberg is that, you ever
    heard of Jeffrey Katzenberg?
    Yeah, I have.
    But I don't--
    It's that movie--
    That's right.
    --mogul who has the--
    well, there are three guys together now.
    It's the Disney on the thing.
    He is one of them.
    And we found out indirectly there
    is a little bit stretched this cousin of what her name was.
    OK.
    Of Hilda.
    And when was she born?
    Do you know?
    1920.
    OK.
    So she was six years younger than you?
    Yeah.
    And she passed away.
    In '14, 2014.
    2014.
    She also came here, and she also took an apprenticeship
    in Germany before she left.
    She had an affidavit in the booklet and everything else,
    where she was qualified as a--
    not as a tailor.
    What do you call it?
    Seamstress?
    No, not a seamstress.
    She could make the clothing.
    And when she came here, I don't know what the heck is the name.
    It's not clothing.
    It's a-- she was a certified--
    I can't think of the name what she was.
    Anyhow, she came here to the country.
    She went to Bergdorf Goodman.
    She showed this letter to the owner.
    They hired her to be there.
    She was in charge of made-to-order dresses
    for all the well-to-do people who came the Bergdorf Goodman.
    Custom.
    Custom.
    Custom clothing.
    Custom-made clothing.
    Bespoke is, I think, the way the British would say.
    Bespoke clothing.
    Bespoke suits.
    Bespoke.
    She worked for Bergdorf Goodman.
    God, that was so long.
    OK.
    It was a very good job for her.
    OK.
    So when you-- your work life was at this Lutz company--
    That was before the war.
    That's right.
    In Brooklyn.
    In Brooklyn.
    And when the war starts, do you remember?
    Oh, let me-- before we start the war,
    were you reading newspapers about what
    was going on in Germany during your time here?
    Sure.
    Which newspapers would you read?
    Well, I don't know.
    The Times mostly.
    So English language newspapers.
    I always was very much a Times reader.
    OK.
    So you were all--
    was it that you were following the news of what was going on
    in Germany in an active way?
    That's really my question.
    Yeah.
    All right.
    And the source of this was mostly The Times.
    Well, I mean, you hear from other people too.
    But mostly The Times or radio.
    Now, radio was already available.
    OK.
    There were a couple of very famous American journalists
    who were in Germany during those years,
    William Shiver was there.
    Did you hear his broadcasts?
    Sure.
    OK.
    And then, of course, after the war, it was--
    his name escapes me now, but he had that very famous report
    from Buchenwald.
    He's on 20 minutes.
    Murrow?
    Was it--
    Ed Murrow.
    Ed Murrow.
    Right.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you read German language newspapers?
    No.
    OK.
    You know, it's a funny thing.
    We never spoke German in our household.
    Even though my parents--
    I had to speak somehow--
    my daughter, she can understand and speaks haltingly German.
    Our son can understand it but not speak it, no.
    Now, I not only spoke French and English,
    but the army made me learn Russian.
    I went to the--
    when I came here--
    before I went overseas, I should say,
    they drafted me and made me go to the University
    of Pittsburgh.
    Oh, really?
    And I went to University of Pittsburgh for nine months.
    And there were a lot of Russian immigrants,
    teachers, and so forth.
    And I had to learn Russian from morning to night.
    Oh, my.
    And when I was finished, I could--
    I should say not really speak it,
    but I made myself understood in Russian.
    I don't know why of all--
    I had with me a lot of young boys who came from Yugoslavia.
    That's right.
    Who came from, maybe from Hungary or from Poland
    or from someplace in the eastern part of Europe, who
    had the alphabet, the Russian alphabet, and also
    their language is a little bit better
    than German or English or French.
    They had it a lot easier to learn it.
    For me, it was a tough, tough thing to learn.
    It is a different sensibility.
    Learning Russian--
    You spoke Russian.
    [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] He speaks Russian.
    Oh, yeah?
    Yeah.
    Our videographer speaks Russian.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Let's cut the camera.
    OK.
    Let's step back a bit.
    Were you drafted or did you volunteer?
    I was drafted because I--
    actually, I could have volunteered,
    but I had at this time all the work to do for my parents.
    And I couldn't go in the army and do this from the army.
    And my brother and all the same kind of thing
    while I was still able to do it on my own.
    Once in the army, you have to do what the army tells you.
    And I couldn't do this anymore.
    So you were drafted.
    I was drafted in '43.
    So '43 means that you were then 30 years old?
    29, 30 years old?
    Right.
    Right.
    OK.
    And I was-- not only was--
    once I was finished with the Russian business,
    then they pulled me over to Ritchie.
    OK.
    Tell us what is Ritchie.
    Ritchie is outside of Washington.
    OK.
    And what was it?
    It was a camp, just like any other camp is,
    where I think there were 2,000.
    I read it some someplace lately.
    All together, 2,000 immigrants from Europe, mostly Germans
    and other countries as well.
    So young men.
    Yeah.
    All young men.
    And we were taught the German regulations and the German
    Army's insignia and whatever we to know and to learn
    to identify and to keep information
    because once we were overseas, we were always with the troops
    right in front in order to capture somebody
    from the Germans, who we could interrogate and give
    that information to our headquarters
    so they know what they have to face.
    So you were intelligence.
    Yes.
    Did they know that you had been drafted into the German Army?
    I don't know if I told them or not.
    I don't know.
    Because I find that really--
    I just find that so unique, that here you start with this
    and then you end up in the American Army.
    Right.
    There aren't many stories like that.
    Right.
    So what was the training course?
    How long did it last at Ritchie--
    Camp Ritchie?
    I think about three months.
    OK.
    So you were inducted or you're drafted in what month of 1943?
    Now, the month I don't remember.
    Don't remember.
    OK.
    But at any rate, nine months Pittsburgh,
    three months Camp Ritchie.
    And then what happens?
    Then, I think in '44, we--
    I don't know what year, but a month and a half
    before the invasion, we went to England.
    OK.
    So the invasion was June 6, 1944.
    What was it, '44?
    '44.
    June 1944.
    So that would have been about April.
    Yeah.
    Sometime in April '44, you were sent to England.
    Right.
    On a troop ship?
    Yes.
    OK.
    It was a convoy.
    It was a bit convoy.
    And where did you land?
    That is a good question.
    I don't know where in England we landed.
    I have no idea anymore where we land.
    Somewheres on the South Coast.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    And did you stay on the South Coast?
    We stayed near-- not in London.
    We stayed in a city near London.
    All of us, we were in a city near London.
    Did you already belong to a certain unit or division?
    Oh, sure we were.
    At that time, we were six people.
    We were a team.
    I think our team was number 17.
    There was two captains-- no two lieutenants,
    myself is three, and three other fellows, who also were with us.
    We had two Jeeps.
    And that was it, two Jeeps, and a little wagon behind it.
    And we were a separate unit by itself.
    And all of you had been emigres, refugees from Germany?
    All of those people had been with German background.
    Did you have a rank?
    Did you have a rank?
    Were you were a soldier, a sergeant, a private, a--
    Yeah, my-- that's interesting too.
    At one time, they offered it to me when I was in the army.
    They offered to me to become an officer.
    And they said I should go--
    I should apply for it because I have the qualifications
    to become an officer.
    So I said to myself, if I become an officer,
    I will end up as a lieutenant.
    And a lieutenant, first lieutenant,
    or a second lieutenant, and then maybe a captain,
    and so forth, they are the lowest
    of all the ranking officers.
    They all have to do what the others tell them to do.
    I became a master sergeant.
    That's the highest rank in the non-commissioned rank.
    I mean, you cannot get higher, is a master sergeant.
    And I was able to tell others what to do.
    And I didn't have to do it.
    So I said, I'm not going to become an officer.
    I am going to be a master sergeant,
    and nobody is going to tell me what to do.
    If something comes up, I tell them,
    the next one is sergeant or the corporal or the private
    to do this and this and this because I know how it works.
    So I--
    Smart.
    I refuse to become a lieutenant.
    OK.
    That's why I did never become OCS.
    OK.
    So you were a master sergeant.
    Master sergeant.
    OK.
    Now, the six of you--
    And we split up.
    OK.
    There were three-- there was one of-- there were two officers.
    One officer went with three and another of with three.
    OK.
    How long did you stay in Britain?
    Not long.
    We were in a movie, and they showed all kinds
    of German equipment which we had to identify in order
    to know what it means and what they're doing with it.
    And the movies was going on.
    And all of a sudden the movie stopped, and the lights
    go on in the movie house.
    And here they call out a few names,
    and amongst them also my name.
    That means we had to be ready to go,
    and within the next two hours, we were shipped to the port.
    And within the next few hours, we were already on a ship
    to Normandy.
    Had the invasion started?
    The invasion had just started a week ago.
    So you were--
    And no sooner we got over there, no sooner we got over there,
    we didn't know anybody.
    We didn't know-- you don't know anything.
    So we were told that we were assigned to the French Army.
    There was an army, which called the Second French Armored
    Division, which was we had to be liaison
    between the Americans and the French,
    and since we were able to speak French and so forth.
    So we were with the French all the time.
    And whatever was going on, we had
    to tell them in American at the same time
    so they knew was it coordinated.
    And we went with the French army for Normandy
    'til it ended up in Strasbourg at the end of the war.
    So you were in France.
    I was in France.
    OK.
    And we were with the French Army all the time.
    The name of this General Leclerc.
    I don't know if you ever heard of him.
    I've heard of him.
    I've heard of him.
    He was-- I mean, he was just like-- he was sitting down
    with you, it didn't matter that he was the high general.
    He was down to earth fellow.
    And he also had--
    he had troubles before with de Gaulle
    and all this kind of stuff.
    But he was really down to earth fellow.
    And we got along very well.
    But came lunchtime, between 12:00 and 2:00,
    there was no war.
    This is the French army.
    Between 12:00 and 2:00, he had dinner.
    No matter where the battle was on, he says,
    that is dinner time.
    I mean, it was--
    I mean, it was a wonderful guy, a wonderful guy.
    But when it was serious, he was really there.
    And we went with him through the whole campaign.
    We were the ones who entered Paris with him.
    We were the only--
    the Americans allowed the French to liberate Paris,
    even so the Americans were ahead of us.
    But they said, we don't want to do it.
    Let the French come into Paris first.
    So we went with them into Paris.
    What was that like?
    Oh, that was liberation.
    You should see all the women coming.
    It was something.
    Anyhow, well, one of the things--
    I know you told them that I was at the--
    one of the consuls here now want to give me a decoration.
    That's right.
    So what is it?
    The French Legion of Honor?
    Is this it?
    I don't know what--
    I don't even know what kind of a decoration he wants to give me.
    But it is as a result of serving with--
    It was while we were serving with the French, the Second
    French Armored Division, through all the campaign,
    from the Normandy 'til Strasbourg.
    So tell me, in this campaign, what did you do,
    and what kind of experiences did you have in your role?
    Each day, they sent out with a Jeep
    and so forth, armored vehicles ahead of us.
    I mean, we had to make progress.
    We had to get ahead of us.
    We had to get ahead of the areas and had
    to find the enemy, where we have to get through.
    We had to find German officers or whoever was caught.
    And we had to interrogate them.
    And we knew how to do it because even so sometimes they
    didn't want to cooperate, but we know how to do it.
    And we were able to tell them what equipment they had
    and who was in charge, where they were located,
    and all this.
    So we could tell them behind so they
    know where to send artillery where they would bomb
    and all this kind of stuff.
    We were on the front lines every day.
    So you were in a danger zone.
    Most of the time.
    So when you would capture someone,
    and you say they didn't want to tell you, how did you--
    how were you able to get information from them?
    Some of them--
    I tell you, some of them were glad to--
    I mean for them, the war was over.
    Once they were captured, they were not sent back
    to the Germans anymore.
    They were sent back to a prison camp.
    And they didn't have it so bad.
    Sometimes I told them, you can go to a nice camp
    or you can go to a difficult camp.
    And once we-- even I had once a fellow that was in the Austrian
    area--
    I mean, that was already later after France,
    when we were over on the other side of the river--
    of the Rhine River, we called some German major or colonel
    or whatever he was.
    I forgot.
    He wouldn't budge.
    He says-- you know, he joked in German--
    he says, according to the German Geneva Convention,
    I'm only obliged to give you my name, rank, and that's all.
    You know, according to Geneva Convention,
    all he is obliged to tell me his name
    and his rank and his number.
    I said give me your Soldbuch.
    You know, that's his book.
    Everybody had a Soldbuch.
    And once I looked at this, I know exactly what
    was going on because I know the Germans are very, very
    accurate.
    I knew everything I needed to know,
    but I want him to tell me.
    I said you want to talk or you don't want to talk.
    He wouldn't want to talk.
    I said, listen.
    If you don't want to talk, I'll send you out to the Russians.
    The Russians were coming from the other side.
    You know, he wouldn't budge.
    He was so stubborn.
    I said, look.
    You can go to the American prison camp
    or you can go to the Russian.
    You know how they'll treat you.
    He didn't care.
    He doesn't care.
    So stubborn.
    Wow.
    But you had the information from his--
    I got it all.
    Did you catch anybody who--
    so most of the intelligence was of a military nature.
    All was.
    That is, what is it that you're bombing
    and what kind of equipment do they have,
    and the strength of that particular--
    Right.
    OK.
    And were you in Strasbourg when the war ended?
    We were in Strasbourg where the SS was there two hours before.
    We got in the building where the SS was two hours before.
    The meals-- all the food was still on the table.
    And they fled across the Rhine River
    to go on the other side of the river while we came in.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    Really fast on their heels.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And did you go beyond Strasbourg?
    Sure.
    We went up to Vienna.
    With the French.
    No.
    The French stopped.
    OK.
    Once Strasbourg was taken, the French Army, this General
    Leclerc said, they are going to rest now.
    So we-- as we were three and the other three,
    we were then naturally assigned again
    to get back to the American troops.
    And we went back to--
    what is his name?
    What was this guy who was killed--
    General Patton.
    General Patton.
    Then we were with Patton 'til the end of the war.
    OK.
    And what month did you get to Strasbourg?
    Do you remember?
    No.
    I don't know anymore.
    Well--
    Was it fall?
    Was it--
    It was-- let me see.
    The war was over-- when was it over?
    May '45.
    In May.
    So Strasbourg, it must have been in the fall.
    Oh, we were in Belgium before what, the Bulge.
    You were the Battle of the Bulge?
    Yeah, sure.
    That must have been tough.
    We were-- oh, I tell you.
    I had my share.
    Tell me about that.
    I had my share.
    I mean, we were not expecting the German to break through.
    And the Americans were not prepared for it.
    And we didn't have the equipment to hold them back.
    So everybody, even cooks, who were not
    supposed to fight or anybody who was not
    able to do any artillery or any tank or so, but everybody
    was drafted to hold back the Germans who were coming.
    And the weather was bad, was visibly bitter cold snow.
    Then finally, two or three days later, the wagons
    were able to come from the other side
    and were able to break who and captured us and could get us
    out because we were surrounded l
    And this is when you're still part of General Leclerc's--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Let's cut.
    So you were still part of the French forces
    during the Battle of the Bulge?
    And it's the American--
    No.
    That was already after it.
    That was with-- what's his name?
    Patton.
    Patton.
    OK.
    So you were part of the American forces but surrounded.
    Yeah.
    And then the Americans break through.
    I got a piece of news in my ear that I should ask you
    about a particular instance which sounds very, very unique.
    Were you involved in protecting the royal family
    in some way in Belgium?
    Well, of course, nothing unique.
    Like I told you, we always for some reason
    or other, we had a fellow--
    I mean, that lieutenant, my age, a daredevil,
    if you can call him.
    He didn't care about the regulations,
    about what is supposed to be and on.
    He says, this is war, and I keep it my way.
    And he always wanted to be there ahead of everybody
    and see when they can get.
    I mean, souvenirs of all kinds of things.
    So we are all of a sudden in--
    that was in somewheres in Austria.
    I forgot exactly where it was.
    We come to area, there is a Nazi soldier standing
    in front of some kind of a gate.
    We come up there.
    And naturally, he right away puts his hand up
    when he saw Americans coming.
    He didn't want to go on to it.
    So he was captured.
    So we ask about, what are you standing here for?
    What's the thing?
    So he told us that there were some important people
    in that castle.
    It was a castle, which he protected the entrance for.
    So we didn't know.
    So we just drove in in that castle,
    and here was the King Leopold and his wife
    and family from Belgium kept prisoners by the Germans
    all this time.
    Oh, my gosh.
    And we just came in there, and we told them, what's-- what's--
    he says, well, we were not able to get out.
    He says, now you can get out.
    Now you get out.
    And he later on gave us a decoration of Fourragere.
    I mean, we were just always ahead of everything.
    And at one time, unfortunately, this is what I just can--
    if I can remember--
    there were certain things in Austria, mines--
    I don't know exactly what kind of mines.
    I should know, and I can't think of the name--
    where the Germans had taken jewelry
    of people who they killed or they had accumulated somehow,
    from where, I have no idea.
    Now, if I can tell you, the room is not big enough.
    There were bar-- you know, barrels full of diamonds
    and jewel--
    and valuable things.
    So in these mines.
    In the mines.
    So we're not talking about mines that explode.
    We're talking about mines that are underground.
    Right.
    I think it was--
    what was it?
    It was for reasons, those mines.
    They kept food in those mines.
    They keep it for coolness, for the temperature there.
    I forgot the name of it anymore.
    And also, they had Germans guarding it that all the time.
    We come up there, and we both, we jumped out.
    This German-- those German soldiers, they
    were all glad it was over.
    They gave up you said to hell with it.
    We went inside.
    I cannot even explain to you.
    This whole area full of barrels and barrels and barrels
    and barrels of nothing but jewelry and diamonds
    and so forth, where the Germans had hidden for whatever reason,
    for future, get it into money or to sell it or something.
    I don't know.
    Oh, my gosh.
    Oh, my gosh.
    And then once you see this, did the US Army take it over?
    We immediately put soldiers--
    American soldiers there-- and tell them, you got it.
    You don't let anybody go in.
    Yeah.
    And we had naturally right away reported back
    to our headquarters, and they came up.
    And then I don't know exactly what later on happened.
    But just--
    That's amazing.
    --things like that, you didn't expect.
    Did you know by that point about--
    did you have news of what had happened to the Jews?
    In Auschwitz?
    Mm-hmm.
    Oh, sure.
    We went to--
    Dachau?
    Dachau.
    And we liberated the people.
    We were actually in Dachau.
    Tell me about that.
    Well, what can I tell you?
    To get to Dachau and saw the barracks and those people which
    are practically skeleton, more to speak of,
    and we come in there and tell them
    you are now no longer prisoner, they were emotionally,
    you know, so taken that they couldn't explain--
    they couldn't even say anything.
    That was not easy.
    It was terrible.
    It was terrible.
    But you spoke German, and maybe not all of them spoke German,
    but you'd have more ability to communicate
    than most of the others.
    We all knew German.
    OK.
    We, all of us, knew German.
    The cap-- I mean, the fellow with me and everybody
    spoke German.
    Yes.
    But I mean, the regular US soldiers who were liberated.
    The regular US soldiers didn't speak German.
    No.
    No.
    So you could communicate with the prisoners.
    Oh, sure.
    Well, what shall I-- should I ask them how do you feel?
    I mean--
    No, of course not.
    Silly to ask.
    I mean, there were some so weak, they couldn't even
    get out of the bed anymore.
    Some died even before they were able to be liberated or taken
    back in the hospital or someplace
    where they would take them.
    There were hundreds of them, hundreds of them.
    Terrible situation, but--
    Do you remember how you arrived at Dachau?
    Was it also ahead of the Army in a Jeep?
    Was it-- the circumstances of how you got there.
    Well, we asked some people.
    We knew about it.
    Only we didn't know exactly where,
    but then we found somebody in that village
    or nearby the village.
    And we just took them along, and he showed us which way to go.
    So we know which way to go.
    OK.
    I mean, we had to be aggressive too.
    We couldn't be timid about it.
    You do what we tell you or else.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And did you encounter resistance?
    Not really.
    Not really.
    And you said that that lieutenant was not
    a rule-book kind of person.
    Was he with you at this point?
    Yes.
    And were you a head of the army when you entered Dachau or were
    there Americans already there?
    I mean, he was with me.
    He was with me.
    Look.
    You spread out, you know.
    I mean, only with three people, one went this way, one this way
    or this way.
    Different directions, but all over they see the same thing.
    There's very little you can do as a person.
    But they knew--
    I mean, we told them in German-- that we told them
    that no longer any Germans anymore around them.
    We are hear, Americans now, and that you no longer be afraid.
    It was-- I tell you something.
    Somehow, when you come now, since you bring it
    back more so than I ever would have done otherwise,
    it will fade.
    It will fade.
    All this will not longer be so much on your mind
    anymore as time goes on.
    Is that a good thing?
    It's a normal thing.
    If it's a good thing, I don't know.
    But it's normal.
    Are you saying that because in some ways
    you're not as affected by it as you might have been?
    Look.
    I tell you something.
    There were wars, when you go back to the Romans
    or by the Greeks or by any other wars, whatever happened
    in the world, there were terrible things
    happening in those places.
    And it's history.
    It's written down someplace, and you read about it,
    and you take a notice.
    Things which happened the last 10 years in Afghanistan
    or in Iraq or in other places all over the East there,
    still not very, very well known to everybody.
    But surely, not very pleasant to hear about it.
    But in time, all this will dis-- not disappear,
    but it will not have the same effect anymore as now.
    This also, it will be history in another 50 years or 100 years,
    that the Holocaust or the Kristallnacht or Hitler
    itself was this and this and so forth.
    And you will read it in the history.
    And that is it.
    It will not change anything.
    It will not change anything.
    That's kind of fatalistic.
    I'm just-- I'm just responding.
    I mean, I'm not challenging or anything like that.
    But it's-- but a lot of people say the sort of activity that
    we do is in the effort so that it will never happen again.
    And from hearing you say this, I get the sense
    that you're saying it'll all happen again.
    It will.
    And not in the same way.
    I tell you something.
    When we fought the war, every soldier had a uniform on.
    The German were the German uniform, the American uniform,
    the English and so forth.
    You knew your enemy when you saw them.
    You either took them or you killed them
    or whatever you did.
    That was war.
    The war is no longer like this anymore.
    Nobody's dressed in uniform.
    The enemy can be dressed as you and I am now
    and are very seriously our enemy or opponent
    or God knows what we can call it.
    Just as much as if they had another uniform.
    Right.
    Yeah.
    This is not the same kind of a war anymore like it used to be.
    But it will happen in a different way, I'm sure.
    Things, people, will not change.
    And you will see it.
    You see it now over there.
    And I'll tell this right now--
    and you know what is the cause of it?
    What?
    Religion.
    Religion has caused more of this than everything else.
    If you're a different religion, they
    kill you because they don't believe
    that you are of the same kind, and they
    say you have to be killed because you are not
    the same as we are.
    Well ISIS or whatever is this name group?
    ISIS.
    They openly say, you are not one of us, and the--
    what do you call it?
    Not the-- what is their religion?
    Islam.
    Islam says you should be killed.
    Well, many people who are Muslim say
    that that is a bastardization of Islam,
    that they are really just thugs.
    And many of the victims that ISIS has controlled
    have been Muslim, other Islam, other Muslims.
    It gets complicated like that.
    But I don't-- I'm not arguing with your point.
    I think that sometimes we don't have
    that perspective that we should, that there has been war.
    There is war, and there will be war.
    It will change in its manifestations,
    but we will not do away with war.
    We don't even know.
    I mean, you read and you turn the page.
    You know, for instance, in Chad in--
    Africa.
    --in Africa, it's--
    I mean, you cannot imagine how big it is.
    It's bigger than Texas or even.
    I don't even know.
    And certain sections which is South and North,
    I don't know exactly, they kill those people every day.
    What do we do?
    Yeah.
    It's going on.
    For what reasons do they get killed?
    Because the other ones don't agree that they
    are the same kind what we are.
    And therefore, we have to get rid of them.
    It's the way people live, the way things go.
    Well, then how do you go forward?
    With that kind of knowledge, how do you go forward?
    I don't think we ever-- well, what can I say?
    I'm not a--
    I have no way of explaining it or even
    give you an answer to this, which is almost impossible.
    It's the nature in a person that does this.
    I don't know.
    Did you feel that kind of anger too?
    Not at any time that I would somebody-- that I would say
    I would kill somebody.
    When you crossed from France into Germany,
    as part of the American Army, was it a different feeling
    from you coming back into the environment that
    had been your home?
    No.
    You know, boundaries, like you had
    mentioned as Germany or France, you don't see it physically.
    No.
    You go across an area, and you say now you're in France
    or you're in someplace else.
    This is man-made comment, which you either accept or don't.
    But I'm talking the first time you come into a village that
    is German, a town that is German,
    a place where you were in danger, and your family
    was certainly in danger, and most of it didn't survive,
    did that have a different response from you
    than when you were with General Leclerc through France?
    You are-- how should I--
    how should-- I don't know how to put it.
    You are maybe a little bit more on guard.
    You're more-- consider the situation and give it maybe
    some--
    before you were nonchalant.
    You didn't think of it.
    Now, you are aware of it, and you said, I'd better be careful
    or I have to be more guarded or something maybe.
    Maybe.
    I don't know if that's the right answer or not.
    You could say that, yes, what you say now is true.
    You could say that.
    But not-- I mean, I have been back in Germany many times.
    And I spoke to people who I know they were Nazis.
    I mean, call them Nazis.
    They were sympathizers.
    And all of them, they were Christian.
    And I ask them, don't tell me you didn't care for Hitler
    and all this other thing.
    Well, in one way, you have to have the mentality
    of the German now.
    Germany, was down and finished.
    He came along and brought it up.
    And he unified it.
    And he'd succeeded in some way, hook or crook,
    to get more out of the other allies.
    And he did more and more for Germans.
    And they naturally lived through this,
    and they saw what he's doing.
    They wouldn't say we didn't love him.
    But we respect him because he was their leader.
    And they got along.
    When I would ask them, what about the Jewish people
    who lived there?
    Would you-- what you have--
    they'd say, well, look.
    We know his-- what do you call his--
    Policies?
    Policies.
    His ideology.
    And that he hated the Jews and wanted to get rid of it.
    And we had to abide by it because if we would
    have done sympathizing with the Jews,
    they would have killed us.
    They would.
    They would have killed them because they
    were nice to the Jews.
    So they were not sympathetic one way and not helpful
    on the other way either.
    Did those answers satisfy you?
    Now, you have to be objective.
    Put yourself in their shoes.
    I don't know.
    There was a-- what do you call it--
    television program not too long ago in Nuremberg.
    I don't know if you saw it or not.
    About Nuremberg?
    Yeah.
    The trial of Nuremberg or something.
    And you'll see the scenes, which this was an old movie, I guess.
    You see the scenes, which Tracy--
    what his name?
    Actor Tracy was the judge.
    Oh, Spencer Tracy.
    Spencer Tracy.
    Oh, yeah.
    Judgment at Nuremberg.
    There is that film.
    I knew that film.
    Right.
    You saw it?
    Mm-hmm.
    Years ago.
    OK.
    Now, those Germans explain to them
    exactly what I said just now.
    You have to put yourself in their shoes
    and think, what would you have done?
    That's the way it looks.
    They wouldn't have helped the Jews, it's true.
    But that's the way it is.
    And your point of view is one that I
    would say not many share who were direct victims.
    Some do.
    I mean, take for instance, it's very hard for me
    to get this across.
    There were people were told shoot this guy.
    He's a commanding officer.
    You are the soldier.
    There is the person.
    I tell you, you shoot this guy.
    If you say, why should I shoot this guy?
    He didn't do-- you know what I mean?
    You don't want to do it.
    If you don't want to do it, he said, well,
    I will shoot you because you refused his orders.
    What would you do?
    Yeah.
    You have to be sometimes saying, what would I
    do under the circumstances?
    That was the answer the Germans gave the Allies.
    We didn't want this.
    We didn't want to have the pogroms.
    We didn't want to have all this Holocaust business
    or we didn't want to have everybody killed.
    But we had no choice.
    If we wouldn't have done it, we would have been killed.
    He-- or the Nazis or whoever told us you go ahead
    and do this and that, et cetera.
    This makes sense to you, this point
    of view, this explanation.
    I'm just asking.
    I'm not challenging it or anything like that.
    I'm just asking because many people wouldn't accept it.
    Many people wouldn't accept that explanation.
    Well, tell me why.
    I mean, if you're are sensible and you
    have to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes
    in that same setup, what would you do?
    You have no choice.
    And that is exactly why a lot of those people, when I went back
    to a small village and it told them how could you be a Nazi?
    How could you have done this and this and so forth?
    They said, listen.
    If we wouldn't have said everything yes, OK,
    they would have ruined our business.
    That would have destroyed our home or whatever
    they could have done physically to me or my wife
    or to the children.
    Simple.
    So we just said, we didn't say no.
    We didn't say yes.
    We just said OK or we said nothing even.
    But in their own heart, if you can say it,
    I don't know if they were Nazis or not.
    But openly, you would consider them, yes, they were all Nazis.
    You know, people who grow up in societies that have freedom
    of expression often don't realize the pressure that
    people who grew up in societies where their freedom
    of-- there's no freedom of expression--
    Exactly.
    --what compromises you make, what kind of such choices
    you have to make.
    Exactly.
    And that is--
    I've often heard Europeans say about Americans that you
    don't know what war is.
    You see, I don't know if you understand me.
    I am very much like that.
    Yeah.
    I can see what they tell me, and I understand it.
    I don't always agree with everything,
    but I can also feel why they did this.
    I mean, there were people--
    I mean, there was a fellow who went to school with me.
    We sit on the same rank next to each other.
    We copy things of every--
    I mean, we did whatever normal people do.
    Never was there anything said about religion
    or so that we had.
    But later, he became a big shot in the Nazis.
    Why?
    Because somebody higher told him, look.
    From now on, you are going to be the police
    officer of this town.
    And you have the qualifications, and you have
    to do such and such and such.
    So now think about it.
    They come up and says, look.
    Tomorrow, you arrest this Jew over there.
    He knows that this Jew didn't-- this fellow didn't do anything
    to him.
    And why should he arrest him?
    But he is told we want him arrested
    for whatever reasons they have.
    And these are policeman.
    He has no choice.
    If he says, I'm not going to do it, they said why?
    He has to say, I'm not going to do it.
    Why are you not?
    Because I-- he can't say he's my friend.
    But he can say, why should I?
    He didn't do anything.
    But the other one says, I am telling you you'll do it.
    Will you do it?
    Good.
    If you don't do it, they give him
    whatever they will do with him.
    What are you going to say?
    Do you think that as time goes on,
    each generation understands this less and less,
    this kind of situation?
    Because you're one of the people who was an adult already
    before the war started.
    And I wonder whether-- you know, you have the perspective
    to see how people talked about it right after the war,
    how they talked about it in the '60s, the '80s, and so on.
    I can tell you that in 100 years from now,
    there will be very few people alive, who
    lived through this Holocaust.
    Oh, of course.
    And the people who hear about the Holocaust,
    oh, they say, oh, we heard about it.
    And we read about it.
    And we know about it.
    But it will go in one ear and out the other and nothing more.
    And they couldn't care less.
    And you're saying that's the way of the world.
    And that's the way it will be.
    You went back to Mannheim?
    Yes.
    Right as a-- while you were still in the military?
    No.
    When did you go back?
    A civilian.
    As a civilian.
    I was there many times.
    OK.
    I have some friends there, Germans.
    Matter of fact, they're big shots with BASF.
    I go to Ludwigshafen and Mannheim
    very often because they are big shots.
    They work for BASF, and they have something to show for.
    Anyhow, they tell me the same thing.
    I know they're not Nazis.
    They tell me openly now, we are not Nazis.
    But they explained it to me just like I explained it to you.
    What would you have done if your--
    Yeah.
    I mean, that's the way of life.
    Things go on and pass.
    It will go on, and yes, the combat will just be history.
    Is there-- I feel like we've come
    to the end of our interview.
    Is there something I haven't asked you
    about that you think is important that we should--
    because what you just told me, I think
    is something that's very important, what we've just
    talked about.
    Is there something else that you would like to share?
    Well, I mean to help the Jewish people in a way
    like we are doing--
    I don't know-- here in this country
    or overseas is commendable.
    I mean, it's very nice to help out and all these other things.
    But in many cases, in many cases,
    I sometimes also blame the Jewish people themselves.
    For what?
    That sometimes they are taking a viewpoint
    or they express themselves in such a way
    that is offending others.
    It's sometimes not appropriate.
    I mean, I tell--
    I don't know how much this would--
    Well, do you have an example to illustrate?
    You know Mr. Bloomberg.
    Mm-hmm.
    The former mayor.
    He used to be mayor.
    He's a billionaire, whatever he is.
    He doesn't need the money.
    He could have been, if he wanted to, president.
    And he declined.
    He said-- he's Jewish, not--
    I mean, he's made these assurances, or maybe less.
    He doesn't show it or he doesn't say anything about it.
    It would be catastrophe for a Jewish person to be president.
    He said that?
    Indirectly, he said it, yes.
    I would never hope that a country like the United States
    will have a Jewish president.
    God forbid.
    That would be the worst thing that Jews could expect.
    And why?
    Because if things are not going good, it's the Jews' fault.
    They're scapegoat.
    If it is-- why?
    Don't we-- I don't understand.
    The Jewish people are a minority in the world.
    I don't know how many is the percentage, but what it is.
    We are a minority.
    And we have to somehow say to ourselves we cannot be--
    tell other people how to run themselves
    or do other things which we tell them.
    We have to be considering also their viewpoint
    more so than ours.
    I think that's very much what we have to be aware of.
    You cannot do it.
    I don't think it would be a good idea that ever--
    you would have, God forbid, a Jewish president.
    Because if-- and being president is often things
    are out of your control, you know,
    whether you're coming in at good times or bad times.
    Look, I don't know if it ever would come to something
    like this, which I doubt.
    But I hope never that America would vote
    or would select a person who is a Jewish to run this country.
    God forbid.
    Things would not go just the way it should be
    or something goes wrong, it would be the Jews.
    That's exactly what they need, a scapegoat.
    Mr. Bloch, thank you.
    Thank you very much for what you've shared today.
    I appreciate your honesty.
    I appreciate your forthrightness.
    I am awed that at 103 you are as with it as anybody half
    your age and sometimes even more.
    I hope that you're--
    you're a hope for all of us.
    Thank you very much for this interview.
    Well let me, on the other hand, also thank you, and your help
    too, for coming and interviewing me
    and give me the opportunity to talk
    about what is done, very easily to be done
    and common and appreciated, that you took it
    on notice that will be on the record even--
    It will be on record.
    Of what value, I have no idea, but certainly it was so good
    and especially appreciate it.
    Thank you.
    Thank you very much.
    And I will say that with this, this
    concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Henry Bloch on May 2, 2017
    in Fresh Meadows, New York.
    Thanks again.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Henry Werner Bloch was born on March 11, 1914 in Duisburg, Germany to Emma David and Ludwig Bloch. He had one brother, Fritz (b. 1905). He discusses his father serving in the German Army during World War I; growing up in Mannheim, Germany; his father working for the family business making kitchen cabinets; his brother working for the business; his family not being religious and considering themselves German; specializing in language during high school; not experiencing antisemitism before Hitler came to power in 1933; his father’s business suffering after 1933; getting drafted into the German ARmy Reserves; wanting to emigrate from Germany against his family’s wishes; immigrating to the United States aboard the SS Columbus with help from a distant relative in the U.S.; staying with relatives in Newburgh, New York; his brother’s apartment being destroyed during Kristallnacht; his brother immigrating to the United States in 1940 and settling in Washington, D.C.; unsuccessful attempts to get his parents visas; his parents getting deported to Gurs concentration camp; his brother Fritz contacting Senator Hamilton Fish who arranged for their release; his parents immigration to the United States in 1943 and settling in Manhattan; working in his cousin’s clothing factor in Newburgh, a small lumber yard in Manhattan, and a larger company in Brooklyn; getting drafted into the United States Army in 1943; marrying Hilda Lazar Katzenberg; getting sent to the University of Pittsburgh to study Russian and then to Camp Albert C. Richie in Maryland for intelligence training in interrogation; arriving in England in June 1944 and his unit connecting to the French Army from Normandy to Strasbourg, liberating Paris, and helping free King Leopold of Belgium; getting assigned to General Patton near the end of the war; discovering jewels hidden by the Germans in caves; liberating Dachau; moving to Newburgh with his wife after getting discharged; and working in the lumber business.
    Interviewee
    Henry W. Bloch
    Interviewer
    Ina Navazelskis
    Date
    interview:  2017 May 02
    Geography
    creation: Fresh Meadows (New York, N.Y.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Bloch, Henry W., 1914-

    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 Henry Werner Bloch on May 2, 2017 in Fresh Meadows, NY.
    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 08:05:38
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn561464

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    Oral History

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    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

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    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.

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    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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