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Oral history interview with David Eliach

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2015.289.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0822

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    Oral history interview with David Eliach
    Transcript
    I know where you are.
    OK.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Rabbi David Eliach on July 19,
    2015, in New York City.
    Thank you so much, Rabbi, for agreeing to speak with us today,
    to share your experiences with us today,
    and to talk a little bit about what you encountered
    in the course of the war and the Holocaust
    while you were in Israel.
    And as I mentioned before, we will start our interview
    much earlier than that.
    I'd like to ask you about your own life,
    and what your life was like up until that point.
    So I'll start from the easiest of questions.
    Can you tell me the date you were born,
    the place you were born, and your name at birth?
    I was born in September 13, 1922.
    Where?
    In the old city of Jerusalem.
    And your name at birth was?
    What was your name at birth?
    Eliach.
    And your first name?
    Israel.
    Israel David Eliach, the same name.
    Israel David Eliach.
    It hasn't changed.
    Not changed.
    OK.
    How is it that you came to be born in Jerusalem?
    It's very unusual.
    I was born in Jerusalem, and I am the sixth generation.
    Well, that's what's the usual part.
    In Jerusalem.
    At that time, when my first grand grandparent came,
    there was a group of Hasidim in the area
    of Pinsk and Minsk and the others,
    that they decided that it's important for any Jew
    to come to Israel to live there.
    To Palestine.
    At that time, it was Palestine.
    And my grand-grand-grandfathers, they
    were one of those who made this decision.
    They came to Israel.
    This would have been in the 19th century,
    the early 19th or even earlier than that?
    Yes, yeah.
    OK.
    It's at least They have to count about 180, 190 years ago.
    That's a lot.
    That's a lot.
    How much of your family history--
    how much of the history of your family was known to you?
    That is, about not only your grandparents,
    but their grandparents and so on?
    I had a cousin who wrote a book.
    And in that book, he's counting us back
    to Rashi, who was one of the biggest
    commentators in the Jewish area of the Bible and the Talmud.
    And this goes back--
    he passed away about in 1040, which means about close
    to 900 years ago.
    So he traces us back to that period and has the names.
    Amazing.
    Yeah.
    Amazing.
    Most people, if they can trace anything back,
    maybe into the 18th century.
    Maybe.
    Very few beyond that.
    Because we come from a family of rabbis and rebbes.
    You know, rabbi is somebody who is a judge, like.
    And Rebbe is from the Hasidim.
    And my grand-grand-grandfather, who was a brother of one
    of the leading rabbis--
    rebbes of the Hasidim in the area of Pinsk,
    they are called the Karliner Hasidim.
    Karliner Hasidim.
    Right.
    Can you describe a little bit about your family
    when you were a small child?
    Who your father was, who your mother was,
    did you have brothers and sisters and so?
    I had-- we were five brothers, no sisters.
    OK.
    And I had an older brother, who was the first one.
    And I was the second one.
    All right.
    Tell me, when you tell me about your brothers,
    could you also tell me their names?
    So your older brother?
    My older brother was named-- his name was Batzalal.
    Batzalal.
    Mm-hmm.
    And of course his name is because we had a grandfather
    whose name was Batzalal.
    And my name is Israel David, which
    is also the name of one of the big rabbis in Karlin dynasty
    that we are related to them.
    OK.
    And then I have a brother, what his name is Ariel Yehuda
    Leb, who I really don't know why he was called Yehuda Leb.
    I don't remember anybody in the family.
    And then I had a brother Chaim Shimon, who also after the name
    of one of Hasidic rabbi.
    And then I have a name Yachil Zvi
    is my fifth brother, who's also named after a rabbi who
    was in Jerusalem.
    OK.
    Your father, what was his name?
    My father was the grandchild, the fourth, fifth generation
    of this great grand rabbi of Karlin, a Hasidim.
    By the way, at that time, they called all the Hasidim
    by the name Karliner.
    Mm-hmm.
    And why do they call them Karliner?
    Because the rebbe of Karlin was like a missionary,
    and he used to go around people to make them Hasidim,
    because at that time there was a big fight.
    The Gaon of Vilna didn't want Hasidim.
    He was against them.
    Tell us about that a little bit, because the Gaon of Vilna is
    quite a well-known, prominent--
    He fought the Hasidim very, very, very powerfully.
    He was very, very against them.
    Why?
    He thought that this is a group of people who
    are moving away from Judaism.
    And at that time, the Baal Shem Tov,
    who was the founder of Hasidism, was a little bit, in a way--
    and my wife also wrote a PhD on the origin of the Baal Shem Tov.
    And according to her, too, there was
    a connection between the Baal Shem Tov
    and some of the Christian hierarchy.
    Really?
    Really?
    Yeah, this is the first time people hear about that.
    [LAUGHTER]
    It's written by, but so--
    But what was-- for somebody who is not Jewish--
    Yeah.
    --explain to me what was the theological difference between
    the Gaon of Vilna and the Hasidic--
    the founding of Hasidism?
    When the Baal Shem Tov started his movement,
    he told them when they pray, they
    should fall on the floor and--
    I don't know how to say it in English, but in other words,
    they should fall on the floor, and move around,
    and like people, like athletics, all the time.
    And they should have white garments.
    Clothes?
    OK.
    And the Gaon of Vilna, in his cheyrem,
    which means excommunication of them--
    he put them in excommunication--
    said that one of the things they do is they put on white.
    And in other words, he saw in what they do
    something which is not Jewish.
    OK.
    My wife made in her research, she
    found the group of Christians in Russia
    that this is what they did.
    And it seems that the Gaon of Vilna he either knew about it
    or he heard about it.
    So it was a big fight, and it took a long time
    till today they are in peace.
    But there was a time that they didn't marry each other.
    Some of them didn't talk to each other.
    And it started in which century.
    It's like today we have the Sunnis and the Shiites.
    That's right.
    You know, the two different directions.
    That's right.
    So therefore at that time, they call
    them Karliner because the rebbe from Karlin, which
    is my grand-grandfather, he was like a missionary,
    went around to make people to become Hasidim.
    But in Lithuania and in that area, they were against it.
    I see.
    And this was a controversy of the 18th century,
    the 17th century?
    Well, it was the 18th century.
    The 18th century.
    Mm-hmm.
    And you were born in the Hasidic world.
    I was born in the Hasidic world.
    Yes.
    Can you describe to me a little bit about that?
    Was your father also a rabbi?
    My father, I just found out only two years ago,
    that he was a rabbi.
    He never told us he was a rabbi.
    Really?
    There was somebody did some research, like my wife.
    And he found files in the place that my family lived.
    And they found a list of the new rabbis, and his name was there.
    He never told us that he is a rabbi.
    So how did he--
    how did he live his life, then?
    When you knew him, what was he was--
    he was a secretary of an institution.
    What was the institution?
    The institution was--
    I had grand grandfather who felt that he
    doesn't want to go on the path of being a rabbi and teaching.
    He opened a soup kitchen for poor people.
    For nothing.
    For just poor people.
    He had a big soup kitchen in Jerusalem,
    and many poor people used to come to eat there.
    And you wrote letters to the people
    who were the middle class, that they should come to eat there,
    too, and pay not to embarrass the poor people who
    come to the soup kitchen.
    Did it work?
    It worked.
    It worked very well.
    And your father worked there.
    And my father was the secretary.
    What did that mean, being secretary?
    Like somebody runs an office.
    You have-- what is their name?
    Sharansky at the Holocaust Center.
    So he was running the place administratively.
    Administratively.
    And that's how you knew of what he did during the day, when
    you were growing up?
    Yeah, and then we used to go to daven,
    to pray at the Karliner synagogue, which
    was a very special kind of unique place to daven.
    Because they yell.
    They yell so high, so loud.
    Daven-- they communicate with God in that way.
    So this was how I was brought up.
    And then I learned in the cheder--
    a cheder, it's like a school, but they
    teach only religious material.
    And I went there to the cheder every day.
    I was, remember, seven years old.
    I used to go to cheder in the old city of Jerusalem.
    And a matter of fact, whenever I had
    to go through the Arab section, they used to throw stones on me.
    And so to the other little Jews.
    And they yelled to them--
    [NON-ENGLISH], means "kill the Jews."
    This goes back 85 years ago.
    85 years ago.
    There was no state.
    There was no Israel.
    There was nothing.
    This was the relationship between them.
    So I used to go alone in the cheder.
    I was there all day, even at night.
    And--
    What did you primarily study when you were in the cheder.
    Tanakh-- Bible.
    OK.
    And then Gemara--
    Talmud.
    OK.
    And Schulchan Aruch, which means the law.
    That's all what we studied.
    No geography, no mathematics, and nothing else.
    And for how many years?
    For how many years?
    Well, I wasn't there too many years, because when I was 11,
    my father took me out from this cheder
    and put me in a modern school.
    This was the break.
    Uh-huh.
    He took me out from there and put me in the modern school,
    where they teach geography, they teach languages,
    they teach mathematics, they teach history.
    It was another world, a total other world,
    when I was 11 years old.
    And one of the Karliner Hasidim used
    to come every day in my school to take me home and try
    to influence me to go back to the Hasidim.
    Really?
    Now, why did your father do that?
    Did he do that with your other brothers?
    My father was in America.
    OK.
    He was sent by the institution to make some money here
    to send to the institution there.
    And my father felt it was so embarrassing to go
    to ask money from people, the way they relate to you.
    He wanted me to be a person who has a profession.
    Until then, he thought in order to become a professional man,
    you have to throw away your religion.
    But when he came to America, somebody
    took him to the Yeshiva University.
    It's a university here in New York.
    And he saw that people can be religious and have science.
    They can be religious and become an engineer, become a doctor.
    He said, this is what I want to do for my son.
    And therefore he moved me from the Hasidic section
    into the modern school.
    Before we go to the modern world,
    what would you say that that experience,
    that time in the cheder, what would you say that it gave you?
    What kind of legacy do you have from it?
    The cheder gave me a sense of religion, of believing in God.
    It gave us a sense that you have to be a good human being.
    Because they used to teach us the [NON-ENGLISH] and the ethics
    of our fathers.
    I had a good time in cheder.
    I felt good in the cheder when I learned.
    So it was not my decision to go.
    But this was a educational decision to make.
    So it was values, values and spiritual things.
    Values, right.
    Values.
    And you know they taught you in cheder
    when you were a little kid, if you
    see an old person comes into the synagogue, you have to stand up.
    That's respect.
    You have to give tzedakah.
    You have to give charity.
    And every day, when I was even a kid,
    my father used to give me a few, like a cent,
    and throw in for the charity.
    So this kind of an education we got in the cheder.
    Many people would say that in our modern world
    that's exactly what is missing.
    Absolutely.
    Absolutely.
    It doesn't mean that from time to time
    the rabbi didn't give you a patsh.
    You know, he hit you, which we cannot do today.
    But today, of course, there's no comparison
    what you got as a little kid.
    And most of the people were poor.
    Most of the people didn't have a very luxurious life
    like I have here.
    It was totally different.
    But you got values.
    So in the modern school, also it was a religious school.
    But then I got the world in addition to my religion.
    What about your brothers?
    Did they follow the same path?
    Did your father do the same?
    When my father saw that he put me in this school,
    I went to a youth organization, where girls are there, too.
    He said, oh, this is dangerous.
    So all my other brothers didn't go to the modern school.
    Really?
    They stayed?
    I'm the only one.
    And how did your paths--
    did this have an influence on the paths
    you took later in life between yourself and your brothers?
    I have a brother here who's a very, very religious person.
    He's Haredim.
    He's from the extreme.
    But we have a class by telephone every day.
    We study every day.
    Really?
    Even today.
    It's already 45 years.
    So we have a wonderful relationship.
    And they know who I am.
    Because I'm not so far away from them.
    I daven every day.
    I -- I do what they do, but not to that extreme that they do.
    I am a Zionist.
    They are not Zionists.
    So those are the things they know I'm different.
    They have beards.
    I don't have a beard.
    This may seem self-evident, but let me ask it anyway.
    What was your very first language?
    What language did you speak?
    Yiddish.
    Yiddish?
    Then it's not self-evident.
    I would have thought it was Hebrew.
    My first-- at that time, nobody spoke Hebrew.
    Only the Zionists, the very extreme Zionists.
    But I come from a Hasidic family.
    And the Hasidic family, even today they speak Yiddish.
    Oh, my.
    Even today in the modern Israel, they speak Yiddish.
    Yeah.
    It's just as-- if one is in a country for so many generations,
    and you said you were sixth generation,
    then usually another language comes into the family.
    Well, [INAUDIBLE] no.
    We spoke only Yiddish.
    And what was the language in the street?
    In school?
    In Jerusalem.
    What other languages?
    It depends.
    OK.
    If you are a Mea She'arim or you are in Geula,
    where I lived all those years, there are many there
    and they spoke Yiddish.
    At that time.
    Now everybody speaks Hebrew.
    OK.
    But at that time it was not allowed
    to speak Hebrew in the Hasidic world
    or in the very religious sections.
    And at that time, the land was British.
    Is that so?
    At that time when you were born, Jerusalem
    was under British control.
    Is that so?
    Yes, they had the mandate.
    It was the mandate of the British.
    And Jerusalem was a little town, very little.
    When I come today in Jerusalem, I don't recognize it.
    It was little.
    At that time, in my time, it was the beginning.
    I remember when there was no cars.
    No there was no buses.
    So how did people get around?
    There were buggies and horses, and that's
    the way we went around.
    They used to even go from Yerushalayim to Tel Aviv, which
    today takes a half an hour.
    At the time, it took 12 hours during the night, with a horse
    and with a buggy.
    Did the British rule in any way appear in your life?
    That is, it was part of their mandate, but how did it--
    did it make itself felt in your daily life as a child?
    When?
    When the Brit--
    When I was in cheder or when I was in the modern school?
    Either.
    I think I was a person who fought for things.
    And I'll give you an example.
    OK.
    I remember when my father was in America
    and I went by myself to the synagogue in Karliner shtiebel
    in Jerusalem Beth Israel.
    And one of the Hasidim saw that I came with a jacket--
    with a half jacket.
    Because in Jerusalem, the kids used to go with long jackets.
    So in his eyes, I was like an apikor,
    which means a heretic who is doing the wrong thing.
    So he took me down the steps and said go to your mother,
    and say to her to give you a jacket that is a long jacket.
    When he left, I went back to the synagogue.
    [CHUCKLING]
    So I didn't feel like, look what he's doing to me.
    I know how to fight you, too.
    So if there was an authority and you
    didn't agree with that authority,
    you would find a way to do what you felt was the right way.
    No, I didn't see him as an authority.
    I saw him as a--
    because I had done that for so many years.
    Nobody told me that.
    So I didn't see him as an authority.
    So it would be different if the rabbi would say it to me,
    but just somebody made a decision
    that that's what he has to do.
    That you have the wrong jacket.
    The wrong person.
    But he was the wrong person to do,
    because there was in Jerusalem at the time
    that I still remember, that the people were nice.
    Even though I was different, they were nice.
    They understood.
    Then a group of people came from Europe, Jews,
    who were extreme people.
    In what way extreme?
    Like this man who take a little kid of seven years old
    and send him home to change his garment.
    OK.
    Or this you may not do, this you may not do.
    There were some people who were very, very extreme.
    And they brought in also to fight everything.
    Ah.
    To tell people what they want you to do.
    So it changed a little bit the atmosphere
    in some of the synagogues and some of the places.
    And then what happens if you know now, they are all extreme,
    they are all on the right side.
    And they want you to do exactly what they want.
    And that's not the spirit that you were brought up in.
    But I didn't take it as--
    look, I went through every day to the old city in Jerusalem,
    to my cheder, and every day they throw at me stones and said
    "kill the Jews."
    And I went through that.
    And I'm not-- but I didn't feel that they
    have the right to do that.
    Yeah.
    It was like a fight you have among youngsters.
    They have different ideas or the different sports clubs,
    whatever.
    Do I understand--
    I myself sometimes am surprised that I went through all that
    and I'm here.
    And did your brothers have the same experience?
    They were Hasidim.
    They were extreme.
    And they fit in, and they live among their people,
    and they are very comfortable with that.
    But the people who threw the stones at you were not Jewish.
    They were Arabs.
    They were Arabs.
    They were Arabs.
    Yeah.
    Did your brothers have the same experience of hostility from--
    Do you know, I never discussed it with them, really.
    Never discussed it with them.
    It was not an issue for me at that time.
    It was not an issue.
    The modern school.
    The modern school, you were exposed to the world.
    Mm-hmm.
    Yeah?
    What--
    But it was religious.
    Yes, I understand.
    I understand.
    What did you get?
    If I asked the legacy of the cheder,
    what is the legacy of having gone to this modern school?
    I learned that there is history.
    I learned that there is something like science.
    I learned there is something like mathematics.
    I mean, it's a different world.
    It's more free.
    You can do many things that you couldn't do before.
    Mm-hmm.
    And this part my father really didn't like.
    And therefore he didn't send all the other children
    into a modern school.
    So I'm really--
    My brother also-- I had a brother who was after me,
    was also for a while, but I am really
    the only one who went through all
    that cycle of a modern school, and then
    I went to a teacher's college.
    I went through all that way.
    Tell me the years that you were in the modern school,
    if you remember, from about what year to what year?
    I think I went in there when I was 11 years old.
    So it would be '34, 1934.
    And then 14.
    Or 13 and 1/2.
    I was a fairly good student.
    So I think about 13 and 1/2, something like that.
    OK, so '37, '38, the mid-'30s.
    The mid-1930s.
    Yeah.
    Mm-hmm.
    One thing I didn't ask you about was,
    what was your father's name?
    Yakov Yitzhak.
    Yakov Yitzhak.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And your mother's?
    My mother's name was Rakhel.
    Rachel.
    OK, Rachel.
    Told me a little bit about their personalities.
    What kind of people were they?
    Were they gregarious, and open, and fun?
    My father or mother?
    Yeah.
    My father it seems after he came back and he put me in a--
    he was more open with us doing that.
    I mean, he was exorcised by old Hasidim.
    Was he?
    To a point that even when he had yahrzeit,
    means the memorial day of every year of his mother,
    they didn't let him go to pray in the synagogue.
    He paid a price.
    Paid a price.
    But he was more open.
    But he was nice.
    I'll give you an example.
    Sure.
    I bought a book.
    It was a book--
    I was at that time probably 14 years old or 15 years old.
    [?
    A foil. ?]
    Oh.
    And I put it in the closet, where he has his holy books.
    Oh my goodness.
    It's a book.
    I put it there.
    Yeah.
    I read it nobody of course touched that book.
    But then he said-- he said maybe it shouldn't be in that shelf.
    Maybe you can find another shelf.
    So I realized that he feels uncomfortable
    that I put a secular book, totally secular book.
    But he was open.
    And also sounds very gentle in his suggestion to you.
    He was a very gentle man.
    I never remember him ever give me a patsh or something.
    Never.
    But my mother took over.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That was my next question.
    She was a toughie, but she was very smart.
    She had so much humor, but she was very tough.
    She was very tough.
    And therefore we learned to be organized.
    We learned to be clean.
    Because she was very tough on that.
    Well, she was in a household of men.
    Five boys and a husband.
    She just like-- let's say she took over
    because my father was so gentle.
    I mean, usually in our circles it
    wasn't such that a father didn't hit you
    or a father didn't yell at you or something.
    So this was the balance between these two.
    Was her family also--
    But she was so devoted.
    I'll give you another example.
    I was born with a leg--
    I was limping as a kid.
    And at that time, the hospitals were no good in Jerusalem,
    in Israel.
    And she took me to Vienna at that time.
    Wow.
    There was no planes.
    And it was very difficult because you
    had to go with ships and trains, and she was by herself.
    She never was the outside of Israel or Palestine.
    And she took me.
    She was there for a few months to make the operation
    so I shouldn't limp.
    At that time I thought it was a great thing on her part.
    Of course it was.
    Of course it was.
    You know--
    Yeah, I just want to be the character .
    She was tough, but she was also tough
    in making decisions, and good decisions.
    Making good decisions.
    And she did everything by herself.
    I mean, she washed by herself.
    And at that time we had no machines.
    And everything she did.
    She was cooking.
    She was a --
    She was a baker.
    She was a good cook.
    And she had a sense of humor.
    Many people used to come just to sit and talk to her, because she
    was so sharp.
    But she was never in a school.
    Really?
    Never.
    Her father was so religious in the sense, and at that time
    this group did not send girls to schools.
    So did she know how to read and write?
    At home they taught her.
    Well, you have in America, too, people
    who don't send their children.
    Of course.
    So she learned.
    She knew to write.
    She knew to read.
    She read everything in Yiddish.
    Everything in Yiddish.
    Was her family also from the same part of Belarus?
    I think-- they were another family at all.
    But I think also she came from a place called--
    also in that area--
    it has to be in White Russia, someplace.
    I can't remember now the shtetl.
    But it was not far from--
    it was either in the Ukraine or in White Russian.
    OK.
    And had they also been there for so many generations?
    No.
    Her father came from Europe.
    Oh, OK.
    Her father came from Europe.
    And he also was--
    he was like a leader in the Karlin synagogue there.
    And he also was like the principal
    of a school, a very Hasidic school,
    which they had like a regular school.
    He was supervising.
    He was testing.
    So we all had an education, most of us.
    It sounds from your telling me that you
    had a world, a world of Hasidic life.
    And the larger world didn't really impact it,
    aside from your exposure in the modern school that you went to.
    Right.
    But at that time most of Jerusalem
    was people who are religious, and they had
    nothing to do with the world.
    OK.
    And they were against learning secular studies.
    What was the name of that modern school, if you remember?
    Yeah.
    Tat Mizrahi.
    That's the name.
    Tat Mizrahi?
    Tat Mizrahi.
    This was the name of the school.
    OK.
    And there were many people who came from Europe at that time.
    And they were teachers.
    And many of them knew Hebrew.
    So they taught us--
    Did you learn Hebrew at the school?
    They learn-- the modern school?
    Of course in Hebrew.
    Everything was in Hebrew.
    I see.
    And we were Zionists.
    They taught us to be Zionists.
    We had a teacher in history in the elementary school
    who translated Tacitus from Latin to Hebrew.
    Oh, my God.
    This caliber of teachers we had.
    Oh, my God, Tacitus.
    In elementary school.
    I had a teacher in elementary school
    in Bible who wrote three books.
    He had a PhD.
    Oh, my gosh.
    Because many of them came from Europe.
    And there was not many places, schools that they
    should find a place to work.
    So they couldn't work in a university.
    There was only one university.
    So they had to go to a high school to an elementary school.
    And the children benefited.
    And we benefited, whoever wanted to study.
    Because in discipline they were not so great.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Yeah?
    Because, look Israelis, the Sabras,
    they were a tough, tough bunch.
    But we learned a lot.
    We learned a lot.
    I mean, after I had elementary school,
    I knew so much in geography, in Jewish history.
    I knew the [NON-ENGLISH].
    I mean, to compare what they did,
    we even had in the elementary schools.
    No comparison.
    1937, '38, you finish with your modern school.
    What happens then?
    Where do you go?
    I went to a seminar with teachers.
    It was like a college, a teacher's college.
    OK.
    But at that time was something very interesting.
    In Jerusalem many, many of the Hasidic children, many, many
    of the religious children went to the left.
    They joined organizations--
    Shomer Hatzair.
    They joined organizations were against Judaism.
    They belonged to organizations who were against religion.
    So they became secular.
    They became secular.
    Why?
    This was the-- it's like here in America 20 years ago
    you couldn't discuss gay marriages, right?
    Today, is not only discussed, it's done.
    Yeah.
    And the same happened there.
    There were people who wanted to be more free.
    They didn't want to--
    they saw.
    There were papers of the whatever,
    and they decided that this is not what they want.
    So I'm talking about hundreds.
    So I was a member of the Bnei Akiva with many others .
    We say, look what's happening.
    We're only 16 and 1/2 years old.
    We have to do something in order to stop it.
    16 and 1/2 years old.
    And we came to the conclusion that we have to open a yeshiva,
    but we learn in the morning Judaic studies,
    and in the afternoon secular studies.
    In other words, to combine the Hasidic approach,
    the religious approach, and we opened the yeshiva Bnei Akiva.
    We were seven kids who made this decision.
    And we got a rosh yeshiva, and we were the one kids who did it.
    Because at the time a kid 16 and 1/2 was like today a 25-year-old
    or something.
    So in some ways--
    So I was one of the founders of an institution which
    today this same institution has 50 yeshivot in Israel.
    And they made the change.
    Did they?
    Because the kids see that you can learn
    secular and religious in the same place.
    So this was a new movement started.
    So I have a question about-- number one,
    I have a thought occurs.
    You did what your father saw at Yeshiva University.
    Yeah.
    In other words, when he came and he saw that you
    could both be religious--
    But this was much before that.
    Yeah.
    And then when you become 16 and 1/2,
    in some ways you take the same model.
    Right.
    And you open this school.
    But the model-- there was no model in Israel a yeshiva
    with secular studies.
    OK.
    And we made something which was totally different.
    Got it.
    And then I have another thought.
    And I don't know if it resonates or if there's
    something similar to it.
    But I go back to Europe, to Russia, to White Russia,
    to Ukraine, to the Tsar's empire.
    In the 19th century, a great many young people felt
    constrained not only by tsarist rule but also their religious
    life.
    Whether they were Jewish or whether they were Christian,
    it was a very conservative, closed type of life.
    And many also rebelled against that
    when they became revolutionaries.
    That is, they also went to the left.
    And the left then became--
    And who are they?
    How old was Lenin?
    Exactly.
    When he got started, he wasn't more than 16 or 17 years old.
    So it was the geist of the world.
    The spirit of the world.
    Of the world.
    And it went from place to place, that there
    was a kind of a revolution.
    Yeah.
    That people were looking for something different.
    That there was something about what
    they were born into which was not satisfactory.
    Not satisfactory.
    Uh-huh.
    So this is what really happened.
    And therefore we opened a new window to another kind--
    and I'm talking about it takes years, you
    know, till all this develops.
    So with you, how many of there were you, five or six?
    And you were 16 and 1/2?
    We were seven kids.
    Seven kids.
    My age.
    We had a seminar in Bnei Akiva, which
    was the youth movement, the religious youth movement.
    But they hold on a little bit because they were Zionists,
    and they believed in religion, et cetera.
    But we felt at that time, we were idealists.
    And we wanted to make a change.
    And we thought this will make the change.
    So we preached not only that, but to go to a kibbutz,
    to live the life of a kibbutz, and live another kind of a life,
    to go out from living in places where you have to be supported,
    and you have to get charity, et cetera.
    That you become self-sufficient.
    Yeah, self-sufficient.
    And you know, I think probably also
    that when the British came in, they made a change, in a way.
    Because before it was Turks.
    And the Turks were like the Arabs.
    They were neglected.
    They were not cultured.
    But when the British came in, they
    showed there is a different way of life in just looking at them,
    the way they behaved.
    So I think it had a little bit of influence, too.
    Well, that goes back to one of my earlier questions,
    as to how did the British presence make
    itself felt in your life?
    Not to me, but I think it did, in a way.
    Personally, no, but we looked at them like the bad people.
    Really?
    And the reason is?
    I'll give you one example.
    Friday night, I left-- you know, at that time
    there was also Etzel Haganah.
    Are you familiar with those words?
    Well, Haganah I have heard was an underground movement, yeah?
    The underground movement, but there was a worse Haganah
    movement that was Etzel.
    OK.
    And other one was [? terror. ?] There were three.
    Terrorist groups, yes.
    And it was very terrorist groups.
    And we all were in the Haganah.
    We all were there, also.
    My mother didn't know about it for two years that I was there.
    And so-- I'm sorry.
    I have to--
    OK, we were talking about the British.
    I was asking you about what kind of influence they had,
    and you said you looked upon them as bad people.
    Yeah, very bad people.
    Right.
    But at that time there was the Etzel Haganah.
    And they behaved to us very nasty.
    The British people, the soldiers, the British police,
    there were police all over.
    Only British, not Jewish or Arabs.
    Very few of them.
    So at that time, they did a lot of hitting and fighting,
    the Etzel and the Haganah and the other.
    So we hated them.
    We didn't like them.
    We're talking the 1930s?
    One time I went--
    Is this the 1930s or the 1940s that you're talking about?
    When this conflict showed itself?
    This was in the '30s.
    OK.
    This was in the '30s.
    And--
    At one time you went?
    And one time, a Friday night, I went back for my group
    in Bnei Akiva, and a police was on the way.
    He was watching.
    He was policing.
    Whatever he was doing there, this was about 9 o'clock
    at night.
    And he takes out a gun, and he said,
    if you are not going to run home, I will shoot you.
    I didn't know who he is.
    He didn't know who I Am this was the relationship.
    They hated the Jews.
    I don't know how much they hated Arab,
    because I didn't live in an Arab neighborhood, so I don't know.
    But our relationship was not good.
    So when your relationship is not good,
    you don't try to learn from them.
    Of course not.
    I pushed them aside.
    Of course not.
    So I don't think--
    they may have had an influence of certain girls,
    and they met with them in bars or something
    like that, could be.
    But you would see such things?
    Yeah.
    You would see that.
    But basically, to us, this was not really the influence.
    Influence came from probably people
    that had books, people who was in contact.
    The '30s was a tough, tough period in Israel at the time.
    What in particular made it tough?
    Because of the British rule?
    Because of economy?
    Well, the British rule definitely
    brought in something modern.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    OK, let's cut.
    Yeah?
    Yeah.
    I was asking what was it particularly that made life
    tough in Israel in the 1930s?
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Let's cut.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    [LAUGHTER]
    So what made-- we were talking before we were interrupted,
    that life was tough in the 1930s in Israel, then Palestine.
    And I was asking what made it tough?
    What were the features that made it tough?
    In 1936, my family, my father at the time was in America,
    I told you.
    My mother had to deal with five kids.
    We didn't have money.
    We couldn't pay the rent.
    1936.
    We did not have money.
    We couldn't pay the rent.
    So we had to move.
    Luckily, I had an uncle in America
    who had a house in Jerusalem.
    But he had a house in Jerusalem in a very dangerous place, which
    was out of Jerusalem in a way.
    It's called Kiryat Moshe.
    Beautiful house.
    One unit, not an apartment house, a beautiful house.
    But it was in a place where we are afraid of the Arabs.
    The Arabs started in the '30s to move against Zionism,
    against the Jews coming to Israel.
    And they had connections already at that time with Hitler.
    And so we moved.
    We had no choice.
    We moved to this house.
    Kiryat Moshe.
    And my mother had two sacks.
    One was flour, and the other one was len--
    lentils?
    Lentils?
    Lentils.
    Lentils.
    And every day she made soup of the lentils and she
    baked bread from the--
    Flour.
    This went on for a year.
    In 1936, I went from Kiryat Moshe by bus
    to Jerusalem, to Bnei Akiva, to my youth group.
    And on the bus they were throwing a bomb in the bus
    that I went there, and they started to shoot.
    This was the beginning of the terrorism by the Arabs,
    and it was from '36 to '39, till World War II.
    And the Arabs tried in every place to shoot Jews,
    to kill Jews.
    In one place they went in, it was an institution of children,
    they killed, I think, 18 children just like that.
    So at that time, it was a bad time with the Arabs,
    and because of that with the British,
    because they helped them.
    And so then the Haganah, and we were more active.
    It was very tough for us.
    So therefore, I mean, this also made changes
    in the attitude in a way with [? them. ?]
    And then started the war, World War II.
    Now at that--
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, that was going to be sort of my next area of questioning,
    is how must did the--
    even before we get to the war, how much did
    the events of the wider world, how much did the news about what
    was going on in Europe, what was going on in Germany,
    how much did that filter through into Jerusalem into your world?
    So let me-- I want to come to that.
    So this was the situation in the '30s till World War II.
    Right.
    But at that time, when I, with other friends,
    had the idea of opening this yeshiva, which is half a day
    and half a day, my father said to me,
    if you want to go to a yeshiva, you go to a real yeshiva.
    And at that time, I couldn't fight with him much,
    because there was no yeshiva yet.
    We have to create it.
    And he [? said-- ?] so he said, I'll
    put you in the best yeshiva.
    It's like a Harvard yeshiva in Jerusalem.
    So I joined this yeshiva.
    This yeshiva which was most of them
    were Lithuanians, people who came from Lithuania.
    Very smart people, very intellectual,
    modern dressed, totally different than the Hasidim.
    So I start-- I went there.
    And I was there for about four years.
    In 1943-- here I come.
    In 1943-- and I still--
    I was in Bnei Akiva.
    So I was here, and I was there.
    Mm-hmm.
    And the yeshiva said to me, how can you be in Bnei Akiva,
    in this youth movement?
    You have girls there, and to be in a yeshiva?
    So I have a secret for you.
    I met the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva's daughter
    is there.
    I think if she can be there, I can be there, too.
    Anyway, so I was there.
    I learned in the yeshiva.
    And in 1943, I get a call.
    And at that time I made a decision, I want to be a lawyer.
    I went back to be a lawyer.
    And I already went to find out which schools I can go.
    And at that time to be a lawyer, you cannot go to the university.
    It was a special school.
    The Hebrew University was so sophisticated, only research.
    They didn't want people who want to be a doctor.
    All this is not the university.
    Just real--
    It's not intellectual enough.
    Intellectual.
    Not intellectual.
    Now, it's a profession.
    We don't deal with it.
    OK.
    Anyway, so called me up and said to me,
    children came from the Holocaust.
    Did they call it that?
    What?
    Did they call it that, at that time?
    At that time?
    It was the middle-- yeah, from the Holocaust.
    And we need people to help, to volunteer.
    I am an akivanik.
    I was one of the leaders of Bnei Akiva, also.
    I said, of course I will come for a few weeks.
    And I will help you, and then I will go to register to my school
    for to be a lawyer.
    Excuse me.
    I want to interrupt here.
    Yeah.
    Because that's the heart of our story, is when you come
    and you work with these children.
    I want to go back.
    Go back now.
    I want to go back.
    I want to go back to get a sense of how much you knew,
    you personally as well as you as a group, as a society,
    knew of what was going on in Europe in the 1930s.
    In the beginning.
    In the beginning.
    When Hitler came to power in '33.
    I'll tell you.
    I'll tell you why.
    Because in 1933, when Hitler came into power,
    when he came into power, we knew about it.
    OK.
    That he became-- he came into power.
    And I will tell you a story about that, too.
    OK.
    We lived for a while in Bnei Brak.
    Bnei Brak was a little town, a very little town with Hasidim
    who came from Europe.
    And they opened like a shtetl.
    But they were not learning, but they had agriculture.
    They had-- they had--
    what did they have?
    [NON-ENGLISH] they call it.
    Oranges.
    Fruits.
    They were growing fruits?
    Growing fruit, vegetables, like a little agricultural place.
    Mm-hmm.
    And we lived there, because my father
    had six dunam, which was a lot of money at that time.
    And if we would have it today, I think
    it's worth about $1 billion.
    $1 billion.
    But we don't have it.
    We had to sell it.
    Anyway, so we lived there.
    And at that Friday night I came to the synagogue.
    And I heard--
    I was there 11 years old.
    I came to the synagogue, And I heard that people
    are talking about Herr Hitler.
    He's in power.
    And I asked my father what is that?
    He said, you're young now.
    You don't have to know about it.
    But I was--
    I always wanted to know what's really happening.
    So I asked people.
    So somebody told me that he is in Germany.
    He's going to be the leader, and he wants to kill all the Jews.
    Even then?
    And on that Friday night, they killed Arlosoroff.
    Did you hear the name Arlosoroff?
    He was the head of the Haganah at the time.
    He was a big shot with Ben-Gurion,
    and somebody killed him in Tel Aviv.
    These two were very strange together.
    But at that time, when Hitler came up, we knew that it's bad.
    Because people talked he wrote a book, Mein Kampf,
    and he told he wants to kill all the Jews.
    And people are not doing anything about it.
    So we heard about it.
    And then of course when we heard the glass
    breaking, Kristallnacht, we heard about it.
    But not more than that.
    But then no information came to Israel.
    So these events that you're talking are before the war.
    Kristallnacht is in '38, in November before the war.
    The war starts September 1, 1939.
    And you're saying when that happens, no information?
    We knew.
    We knew.
    But then we didn't know enough.
    And I'll tell you, people didn't believe.
    Just didn't believe.
    But this was later.
    That's right.
    We didn't believe it.
    OK.
    I mean, how people can be so bad to do something like that?
    Did you have-- I'm sorry to interrupt,
    but I want to make sure I don't forget my questions here.
    Did you have radios?
    I mean, you talked that there were no cars in Tel Aviv.
    In 1936 was the first radio came to Jerusalem.
    Really?
    And I remember again I had this uncle who sent us a radio.
    So people used to sit on chairs in our front apartment,
    to sit and listen to that somebody is talking
    and you don't see him?
    I mean, this is a miracle.
    What's happening?
    And this went on for weeks and weeks and weeks.
    So we really didn't have a radio.
    But you started to get--
    I'm trying to sense how do people find out things?
    So did you find out from newspapers?
    Did you find out from letters from people.
    Newspapers.
    Mainly newspapers.
    OK.
    Mainly newspapers.
    So they wrote certain things.
    People said, can't be.
    It's impossible, something like that to happen.
    So it went down, then later on, and we really
    didn't even believe it.
    And people really didn't know exactly what
    was really happening.
    So I guess then my question is, by 1943,
    when you were asked to postpone entering the law school,
    did you by that point know that there
    were these atrocities happening in Europe, or was that--
    Well, that already we know, because the children
    came from Tehran, they said about the children
    they were in the middle of the Holocaust.
    They came from Europe.
    So by that point, you knew that there was a Holocaust--
    We know there's something bad going on.
    I mean, we knew, but we didn't know exactly what.
    OK, OK.
    So here we come to--
    to the Tehran.
    Children of Tehran, 1943.
    I'm sorry, I'm going to-- even before we get there--
    Yeah.
    --I have other questions.
    By 19-- when the war starts--
    '39.
    In 1939, Britain is also attacked soon thereafter
    by Hitler.
    And did you see more military activity
    taking place in then-Palestine by the British?
    Yeah.
    And can you describe what that was?
    And then this relationship between the Arabs and Hitler,
    how did they react to that?
    We saw-- we saw many vehicles running
    in the streets, military vehicles, which
    we didn't see before.
    And the main problem was, as you know, in the South,
    in Egypt, El Alamein, in North Africa.
    And we know that something is going on.
    And Rommel was-- and they said Rommel
    is one of the biggest, the best generals in the world,
    and he may go in and come to Israel.
    And there was a big fear about what's going to happen.
    And many decided to commit suicide.
    Really?
    They even had places where to go to commit suicide.
    There was a group of people who came to be near the ocean.
    And when this happens, immediately to go in and just
    kill themselves.
    So they were preparing.
    This is not called prepared, but they were frightened.
    Yeah.
    They were frightened.
    Did anybody-- did anybody--
    I know given the relationship between the British authorities
    and Jews in Palestine, nevertheless,
    did anybody join the British forces to fight Hitler?
    Oh, many Jews fight.
    Many Jews fight.
    They had even a special a special regiment.
    It was only Jewish people there with the British.
    And I think the Arabs, the British told the Arabs,
    in other words, if they are going to do something,
    there will be a reaction.
    Because now we have war with an enemy,
    and nobody can interfere with us.
    But in the same time, this we knew later, later,
    later that the mufti came to Hitler
    and made his agreements with him.
    Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
    But there was a fear.
    There was a sense of fear.
    And then there's no food when the war started.
    Because the ships couldn't go in the Mediterranean.
    And we had nothing at that time.
    We had a few kibbutzim.
    We had a little food or vegetables,
    but it was not enough.
    It wasn't developed yet.
    Yeah, it wasn't developed enough for so many people.
    So I remember there was a time we
    used to get every day one piece of bread for the entire day,
    for a teenager.
    Wow.
    For a growing boy, that's not much.
    And not only that.
    They couldn't make it from flour,
    because they didn't have flour.
    They have a certain food that they
    used to give to the chicken.
    And from that they made the bread.
    And after one hour or two hours, it became green.
    Oh yay.
    And you had to eat it.
    Oh yay.
    So it was very difficult time.
    There was no eggs.
    There was no meat.
    There was no chicken.
    All this you couldn't get.
    Unless people had money and they go to black market.
    So we were not in this category, so we didn't have.
    Mm-hmm.
    So it was it was a tough time.
    You had fear.
    You had no food, really the way you need.
    You have your children, couldn't buy an egg and no milk.
    It was really tough.
    It was really tough.
    Only the rich people and those who had money
    could afford themselves in the black market again.
    Still maintain some kind of normal existence
    that you could have enough food to eat.
    Yeah, but you see, I think because everybody
    was in the same category, we did not feel this kind of hatred
    against--
    it was only against the enemy.
    But not-- in a time like that you go against the mayor,
    against the prime minister.
    But at that time still it was the British.
    And we hate them anyway.
    So there was no--
    So they were the enemy.
    Not Hitler, but they were the enemy.
    Well, I wouldn't say that, but people
    knew that the British are not on our side.
    All the time they are on their side.
    And then they had to start fight the British.
    This is the way they fight, the Etzel and the underground
    for the British, because of that,
    because they worked with the Arabs.
    OK.
    Until the war.
    Or even during the war?
    During the war, I think it was a bit quiet.
    Because I think the British probably told them very clearly,
    if you're going to start that, we
    are going to do something to you.
    They told the Arabs that.
    It was not published every place,
    but I assume that this was probably that.
    So it was a tough time.
    Which means I was born in Israel in 1922.
    And the first pogrom that I saw with my own eyes was in 1929.
    And I lived in Wadi [? Varsha, ?] which
    is near Mea She'arim, if you heard the name.
    Mm-hmm.
    And we had to put stone on our balcony.
    In case the Arabs come, we can throw the stones on them.
    And the Arabs came.
    They came to kill us in the Jewish quarters.
    They wanted to kill.
    They came to kill.
    And they killed a Jew.
    So we threw stones, and some people got killed.
    So it was a tough, tough time for me.
    Then you have '29.
    Then it started in '36, and it continues to the war.
    Then we had the war.
    And then we had the Israeli War.
    So--
    Always.
    If you have a problem with Sabras,
    you have to understand what they went through.
    And it was real.
    Every house was about to be shot somebody or kill somebody.
    It was tough psychologically.
    But we had fear, it's true.
    But we had so much courage and so much
    hope that we overcame them.
    I don't feel at the time that I was scared.
    I was in a bad situation.
    I'd say that you have to fight it.
    You have to do.
    And we were in the Haganah.
    I was in the Haganah already.
    I want to ask one other thing, again,
    that as a result of the war and how things might have developed
    in the Middle East as a result. In 1939,
    in August, Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop
    Pact, which allowed them to divide Eastern Europe,
    divide and get Poland and the Baltic states
    and down through Moldova.
    That was the Soviet part, and then the Germans got 3/4
    of the other part of Poland.
    At any rate, it meant that Hitler
    was safe on his Eastern front, and the Soviet Union
    would not declare war on him.
    And so Hitler declares war on Poland September 1, 1939.
    And the Soviets, controlling these territories,
    begin deportations of people from their territories
    to Siberia, to the East.
    Fast forward two years, when the Wehrmacht attacks the Soviet
    Union and the forces--
    well, let's put it this way.
    The military officers that Stalin
    hadn't shot, because he shot so many Polish officers in Katyn,
    he releases.
    Because he needs people to fight now against the Germans, who
    have attacked him.
    And so there's an amnesty for these deportees who
    had been deported to Siberia in 1942,
    to release those who have military connections
    and others, to come to help and fight against the Germans.
    And many of these-- this is General Anders' army.
    Polish.
    Polish.
    They come through Tehran, and also
    Jews, who had been released under this amnesty,
    are allowed to leave the Soviet Union if they can.
    Many can't.
    They have no connections, nowhere to go.
    But at any rate, there is this wave of people,
    both military and sometimes civilian,
    the families of this military, that
    make their way to Tehran, and then further to Palestine,
    then some to camps in Egypt and some elsewhere and so on.
    So there's a wave of people that are coming.
    Did that affect-- did that reach Jerusalem?
    Did that affect-- did you see things like this happening,
    where these sort of refugees, not refugees but you know,
    these people are coming from the Soviet Union,
    and they're there as a result of the German aggression
    and invasion of the Soviet Union.
    We knew about all that.
    OK.
    We knew about all that.
    And of course, this brought in fear again,
    that they are very powerful.
    They can do all these things.
    They can overcome Russia, and they can overcome--
    whatever they want to do, they can do.
    And then the agreements that they had--
    And of course in Israel at that time, we didn't believe in--
    when they made an agreement with the British.
    What was his name?
    Oh, Chamberlain.
    Chamberlain.
    "Peace in our time."
    Everybody was against it.
    I mean, they felt that this was a terrible mistake which
    was done.
    But all this we knew, but you know, it's still at that time
    it was there.
    But when they came to North Africa and they started there,
    and we were not sure we don't want the Arabs--
    are they with them, or they are still
    going to fight to save themselves?
    OK.
    It was not clear what's happening.
    There is a story at that time.
    We had-- among the Haganah there was Palmach.
    Did you hear the name Palmach?
    Yes, I have.
    Yes, I have.
    Well, you know Palmach.
    Palmach was a group, a supergroup.
    Mm-hmm.
    They were bright.
    They were brilliant.
    They knew how to fight.
    They knew-- most of them.
    There was a special group in Palmach, the German group.
    Which means blue eyes, blonde hair, knew German perfect.
    This was a special group.
    In case we need to fight the Germans in any way we can,
    they will be sent to Egypt at that time,
    and they will maybe be able to help.
    And according to what I know, what I heard
    is that they knew so much at that time in technology
    that they changed the orders.
    When they gave an order, for instance,
    you go with your group over there in the South,
    they sent them to the North.
    So it was sabotage.
    Sabotage.
    The Palmach, this German group--
    This group, because they know German,
    and they understood what they do, and they
    did a lot of this kind of shtick, and that's what I heard.
    You know, I was young at the time, but this is what I heard.
    This is the way many things helped in Egypt,
    in North Africa against Rommel.
    But it's interesting.
    I don't know how much people know about it.
    Because how does it happen that they don't come to Israel?
    I mean, everybody knew that the army of Egypt was nothing.
    And we had almost no army at that time.
    How does it work, all that?
    So this was Palmach.
    They had the name like, I don't know today,
    the best army in the world.
    Mm-hmm.
    But it was a small group, very smart.
    I was involved in a certain way in the religious group
    to engage people to Palmach, to bring them to Palmach,
    to influence them to go to Palmach.
    Understand what I'm saying?
    So I was a little bit involved.
    Mm-hmm.
    And I have a friend who went.
    I couldn't because I had some problems with my legs.
    I couldn't be in the army.
    I couldn't be fighting there.
    But very interesting story.
    Yes, it is.
    Yeah.
    Yes, it is.
    But there was fear in this.
    And people prepared themselves to commit suicide.
    And all of it-- now, did these soldiers--
    I'm talking now about the Poles who were released,
    and then Jews who had been in Poland, who had been deported--
    did they come--
    Many Poles with Anders then came to Israel.
    They went to Palestine.
    They were there.
    So did--
    And you know what happened?
    What?
    Many, many Australians came at that time.
    OK.
    in other words the British took many of them
    that they could to send to Israel, probably to Palestine,
    in case something happens in North America-- in North Africa.
    Did that not give any sense of security,
    having all these different military forces?
    We never really-- there was a fear,
    but it's another kind of fear I'm feeling for Israel now, too.
    It's another kind of a fear.
    OK.
    But we had a problem more with the food.
    We didn't have to eat anything.
    This was more on a daily basis, this was a problem.
    Well, you know, you're trying--
    I don't remember as a kid that we had this kind of fear
    that I'm not going to go out.
    Who knows what's going to happen?
    It's amazing to me, too, but this is what it was.
    Well, you know, you're also--
    somebody who's never been through war, and that's me,
    is asking somebody who has experienced some of it.
    What is it like?
    I was not in the war, but I just was in the periphery of the war.
    And we had this feeling, but we knew what's going on.
    Yeah.
    But it was not the personal feel that you
    have like, when I would go in, into an Arab village.
    We'd be more afraid than thinking
    about Hitler with his army.
    OK.
    Well, the other--
    Because was the real one.
    It was close.
    It was real.
    I mean, the other irony is also what
    eventually happened to Rommel.
    You know, he was--
    Yeah.
    Who knew?
    But I say, this could be one of them.
    Could be other shtick that people did in different ways,
    and they confused them.
    Of course, of course.
    There's one thing the European doesn't know
    and America doesn't know.
    They don't know the Arabs.
    They don't know their psychology.
    Which every kid in Israel knows.
    For instance, an Arab in this culture
    is not used to telling the truth.
    He's not used to it.
    If you go in the old city of Jerusalem
    and there is a place to go down to the Kotel, to the wall,
    and there is a lot of stalls there.
    Some of them have gold and diamonds.
    So when you go into an Arab there and he says how much is
    this chain from gold, he says $10,000.
    An American would take out his check and give him $10,000.
    An Israeli comes and says, $10,000?
    I give you $1,000.
    $5,000?
    No, no, no, no.
    I'll give it to you for $8,000.
    And so what does it mean?
    He is not able to tell you the truth.
    He cannot tell you.
    That's their way of life.
    They can't tell you the truth, because that's not
    the way he live.
    So when they say something, we don't believe them.
    We don't accept it.
    We know there's a place for bargaining.
    It's a part of the culture.
    So therefore when you see, for instance, that the Jews are so
    against Iran and--
    because they have a different way of life.
    You know, a European, when you say
    something, that's what he says.
    You accept it.
    You sign it.
    That's it.
    But this is not their culture.
    And I'll tell you a personal story.
    I went with my wife and my mother to Hebron.
    This goes back many, many years.
    And on the way, we saw people who are selling grapes.
    And they had one of the best grapes at that period of time,
    like August.
    So I bought grapes, a kilo.
    A kilo of grapes, and I paid what I paid.
    My mother asked me, did you buy grapes?
    How much did you pay for the grapes?
    I told her how much I paid for the grapes.
    1 kilo.
    I know Arabic.
    I'll speak to them.
    We'll have a nice discussion.
    I will get it for half the price.
    She went to them.
    She spoke to them.
    She told about four jokes in Arabic,
    and they gave her for half the price.
    When we came home, I said to my mother,
    I want to weigh your grapes.
    It was half a kilo.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That's typical.
    That's typical Arab culture.
    Typical.
    So when we deal on the global way ,
    you are dealing with people who have a different culture.
    When they say something, it's not what they mean.
    They are not used to it.
    They can't say the truth, because that's not
    the way you make business.
    You start out at something, and then you
    know that you'll bargain to something else.
    Exactly.
    Yeah.
    I'm sure that there was some Jews also
    in Europe in the [? kleinshtetl, ?]
    when they met people who were not so cultured
    and all that, they took advantage of them, too.
    But this is what is happening now on a global way.
    So--
    I think-- am I interrupting you?
    Go ahead.
    I think at this point let's take a break.
    OK, now let me call up.
    OK.
    So before the break, we were talking--
    A little louder.
    I will try.
    Before the break, we were talking about the circumstances
    that were surrounding Palestine during the late 1930s and early
    1940s, and how the war in Europe was having an impact on life,
    Jewish life, Arab life, but particularly Jewish life
    in Palestine and what were the things that were happening.
    And now I'd like to come to that point.
    In all of this, well, chaos but turmoil
    that was going on, about the phone
    call that you got, or the message
    that you got in 1943 to come and help with some children.
    Tell me what was the beginning of all this.
    One day, it was publicized that 800 children came from Tehran,
    which is--
    Iran.
    --Iran today.
    And the 800 children have to be dispersed in institutions
    to have an education.
    But like anything else, it started a fight.
    The religious people said most of them are religious,
    so we want them in our institutions.
    The non-religious people said, between World War I
    and now, there's a change and the people
    are not religious anymore as they used to be.
    So therefore they belong to us.
    It was a big fight, who's going to win those kids.
    It became a business.
    I was at that time in the yeshiva.
    OK, all right.
    You were at the yeshiva.
    So it was a question, where are the kids going to go?
    So they decided they are going to make centers,
    about two or three centers.
    And all the 800 kids will be in those centers.
    And at that time, there would be a few weeks,
    and people would go through and talk to kids,
    and then decide he belongs to religious,
    he belongs to a non-religious.
    Sort of like a filtering center.
    So they wanted me at that time to be
    one of those, who come to be in the centers
    before they are going to go to the real place that they belong.
    My place was, I said of course I'm going to go.
    No question about it.
    I was in Bnei Akiva, and I was also
    in the committee of the leadership in Yerushalayim,
    Jerusalem.
    And I said, of course I will go.
    So this was, I think, in the beginning.
    So I went Kfar HaNoar Hadati, this was a big institution,
    a religious institution.
    And they had another two non-religious institutions,
    which in every place there was about 250 kids or something
    like that.
    And at that time, we had to make these decisions, who's
    religious, who's not religious, where will everybody go,
    and how it will work.
    The only language most of them knew was Yiddish.
    Do you remember--
    It was really--
    I'm sorry.
    Do you remember the first time you met these children?
    Yeah, sure.
    What did they look like?
    Did they look different than other children?
    Of course.
    How?
    Because the kids were, before were sabras.
    The face, the light in the face.
    And they looked like they had a fear of something.
    We didn't know at that time what.
    And there was not too many psychologists
    in Israel at the time.
    So they looked different.
    They dressed different.
    Even the same-- they got khaki the same,
    but it looked different than on an Israeli or somebody
    who was there.
    Where had these children come from?
    You had said they're from Tehran,
    but where were they from before Tehran?
    They came from Italy.
    Italy?
    Came from Italy.
    They came from Holland.
    Not too many.
    Most of them came from Poland.
    Had they gotten to Tehran the same way?
    That is, how did they get to Tehran?
    Oh.
    Many of the Polish people went to Russia.
    In Uzbekistan, you know where I'm talking about?
    Yes.
    Those are the warmer places a little bit.
    That's right.
    Some of them went to Sibir.
    Because to run away from Poland, it
    was a safe way to go to the Russian fields
    and in the forest.
    So many Jews came there with their children.
    But there was no way for them to go away from there.
    That was my question.
    So then there was like an agreement
    with the Polish general.
    What was his name?
    Anders.
    Anders.
    And they made a decision that all those who came from Poland
    are Poland citizens.
    So therefore they can go out.
    Because Russia didn't allow anybody to go out from Russia.
    So they are not Russians.
    OK.
    They are Polish.
    OK.
    And then the Jewish Agency worked through
    there would be a way that they will be able to bring them
    from Uzbekistan and all the other places
    where they lived there, to bring them to Iran.
    So where they were working--
    that is, General Anders had said they're Polish citizens.
    And if all Poles were now able to leave the Soviet Union,
    they are as well.
    And they should join the army of the Poles.
    I see.
    So many of them said, look, but you
    have children who have no parents and they are orphans.
    You can't bring them back to Poland or what.
    But let them-- let's take them away and put them someplace.
    Someplace.
    I don't think they knew exactly where they are bringing them.
    And that's the way they brought the first 800 kids who
    were in the Shoah, in the Holocaust,
    and then they went away to Russia.
    And from there they brought them through Teheran to Israel.
    OK.
    And the children that you mentioned who were from Italy,
    were from Holland, those few, had they
    followed the same route?
    It seems that they got lost someplace,
    and parents started to flee, to fly, to go away from Europe.
    Italy wasn't too good for Jews.
    OK.
    Holland wasn't too-- I mean, all Europe wasn't good.
    And we know that from France what they did officially.
    So there were here and there are people
    who ran away to other places.
    And from there they ended up in Russia.
    And from there, they said they are Poles,
    and they brought them there to Tehran.
    Got it.
    So the only key word was, you have to be Pole--
    OK.
    Then you can go out.
    Otherwise, you can't go out.
    That's the way they came to Tehran.
    OK.
    And in Tehran, they had ships, this Jewish Agency at the time.
    She did the entire work.
    And they brought these 800 children there.
    There probably were other people, too,
    adults, but the adults couldn't because the Poles said,
    if you go out, you have to come with us and fight with us.
    You can't go away.
    But the children, there was an agreement that they should go.
    So therefore we got those 800 children.
    Were there any other groups that came after this 800 children,
    or was this the one and only time?
    Oh, yes, but this was already after the war.
    OK.
    OK.
    During the war, it was impossible to leave Europe.
    Impossible to leave Europe.
    So one could say this is due to the amnesty
    that the Poles negotiated with Stalin to let the people go.
    Right.
    OK, fine.
    And so they end up there, and you
    can tell right away that they are different, that they--
    Yeah.
    If I go in today in a place where
    there will be children, let's say, from Denmark,
    I immediately would recognize that they are not Americans.
    So it's a certain feeling that you
    have after you saw so many kids and all the different kids
    over there.
    So when I was there in Kfar Vradim near Haifa,
    I decided I don't want to be a lawyer.
    I was good with them.
    I was successful, and they asked me,
    would you come to Motza or to an institution of 70 kids.
    Would you like to come with us and be there a [NON-ENGLISH],
    which is a--
    not a teacher really, but to help out?
    I said yes.
    So that--
    I was an idealist.
    And I said that's what we have to do now.
    So what was it about these children in that temporary place
    that you were supposed to be only for a few weeks?
    Yeah.
    What was it about your interaction with them that--
    I mean, they told stories.
    What were some of those stories?
    They told-- this was later.
    I'll push it off.
    OK.
    But they told stories about what happened to them.
    And now I'm going to be a lawyer?
    I'm going to make money?
    So I decided I go.
    Because I had already training as an educator in the seminar.
    So I was a teacher.
    Understand?
    So it was not just--
    but I had the training.
    And that's the way I went with them.
    At this [INAUDIBLE] Motza it was 70 kids.
    So let me stop.
    Before we get to there, the 800 children come.
    Do they actually stay in this place for only a few weeks
    until everybody decides you will be more religious and so?
    And the 70--
    And then after a few weeks, they said you go there,
    you go there, you go there, you go there.
    OK.
    And the 70 that you went with were going
    to go to what kind of a place?
    Religious, not religious.
    Then it started religious.
    Mm-hmm.
    The whole kind of religious.
    There are the extreme Hasidim.
    There are extreme Agudah, which is the most extreme in religion.
    Or the more modern religions, like me.
    Like kibbutzim, like the others.
    Where would they go?
    Right.
    So people were trained to talk to them
    and ask questions and then make decisions.
    And I'm not sure that every decision was really right.
    It was a fight also about that, who
    gets the kids, who gets the children.
    Every institution understood that the government,
    or the Jewish Agency-- there was no government.
    Jewish agency will take care of you.
    They will give you money.
    So when it comes to money, people lose their mind.
    And it becomes a fight.
    So that's the way--
    [COUGHING]
    But in the beginning when they brought them, the first time
    they didn't bring them to these institutions.
    They brought them to Atlit.
    Did you hear the name Atlit?
    No, tell me.
    What is that?
    Atlit was a center that refugees from Europe, even before
    came there, and then they arranged
    them, you go to this kibbutz, you go to this place, et cetera.
    But first [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], a place where it receives
    or accepts people from Europe.
    And there, too, they made this decision where would you go.
    Because many of them had no parents, and no relatives,
    and nobody.
    So they came to Israel.
    So what?
    What's happening now?
    Yeah.
    So it was a place to sort them out, and give them jobs,
    and give them a place to live, et cetera.
    From there, they sent the kids to these different--
    because Atlit was not only for kids.
    Atlit was--
    For everybody.
    Everybody.
    Everybody who came to Israel, that's the way.
    So if a ship came from there at night,
    nobody knew about the illegal ships,
    so they brought them to Atlit first.
    OK.
    And by the way, about a few years ago,
    I met the same kids who came to this Atlit.
    I came to see them after many of them I didn't see them from 19--
    so about almost 70 years.
    I'll bet you, you must have had discussions.
    And somebody came to me and said to me, "David,"--
    that's what they used to called me--
    "Do you recognize me?"
    I said, look.
    You were a little kid.
    You were nine years old.
    Now you're an adult. You're probably
    a grandmother or a grandfather.
    How can I recognize?
    Tell me your name, and tell me a little bit about you,
    I'll know who you are.
    Yeah.
    So then from there, they came to matriculate in Motza.
    But before that we lived in Jerusalem, because we
    didn't have a place in Motza.
    So they rented a few apartments, and we
    took like half of the buildings, and we opened the institution
    there.
    And we were like parents to them.
    We watched them.
    We cleaned them.
    We started a school.
    Did they all speak Yiddish?
    Excuse me?
    Did they all speak Yiddish?
    Did you have a common language?
    Yiddish.
    Yiddish.
    OK.
    That's the only language they knew.
    And I knew Yiddish.
    OK.
    So I could speak to them freely.
    Were they traumatized children?
    Were they traumatized?
    "Traumatized" is not the word.
    I'll tell you a few stories.
    OK.
    The first night we put them into the rooms.
    We tried to make it nice.
    We had clean beds.
    We had pictures on the wall.
    Make it a home.
    In the middle of the night, they cry and they yell.
    And we lived with them on the same floor.
    The madrichim the teachers there.
    What's the matter?
    Take off all these pictures.
    Everybody yell.
    And there are kids from six years old to 14 years old.
    They all were saying, take down the pictures?
    Take down the pictures.
    I said, why you want take down the pictures?
    They may come out in the middle of the night,
    they will go down, and take us someplace else.
    Oh, my.
    Is this traumatized?
    Oh, yeah.
    What do you do?
    You are a young teacher.
    You're not a psychologist.
    And there's nobody psychologist in the institution
    to ask what to do.
    What do you do?
    We took off the pictures.
    And we sat down with them, and we told them
    that it doesn't work that way.
    "We don't believe you."
    The children didn't believe you?
    They didn't have any trust in us.
    Because they were moved to so many places, from one place
    to another.
    They didn't believe, because tomorrow it will probably
    be somebody else who will come take us to another place.
    "We don't believe you."
    What do you do?
    So we had a meeting then--
    Every night we had a meeting with the counselor-- counselor--
    counselors and teachers, what do we do?
    So some of them say, we have to be very strong.
    We have to be--
    Strict.
    Strict with them.
    And we have to bring them in life, the way life is.
    It's not easy.
    I said, no.
    That's not the way.
    What we can do is only by love.
    So I read the newspapers, and I knew
    a little bit what's happening.
    And you can't deal with these kids like regular kids.
    So we decided to do that, to try to do that.
    So how do you show that?
    How do you make the--
    I said, tomorrow, five kids, you come with me in Rehov Jaffa,
    which is the main street, like 42nd Street here,
    and I will buy you ice cream there.
    Simple as that.
    Another day, I will take another five.
    We'll go.
    We'll go on the streets.
    Like regular people belong here.
    You have some fun.
    Have fun.
    And I felt it worked.
    You can be strict with them.
    They have no parents.
    And we have to do the best we can to love them.
    And this was the direction that we took at that time.
    How many of you were there, the teachers and counselors?
    Beg your pardon?
    How many teachers and counselors were there in total?
    For these 70 children?
    [MUMBLING]
    I'm not counting the school now.
    Because when we are in Yerushalayim,
    they went to a regular school.
    But they couldn't teach them, because there's no Hebrew,
    and the kids laughed at them.
    You know, they looked at them--
    like in America, too, they call them de grine, the green people.
    You know that?
    When they came to America, the Holocaust people,
    they called them de grine.
    De grine?
    The green people.
    Because they know nothing.
    They are different.
    After enough time, after they came to America here.
    Yeah.
    So past now we had the pictures were not on the wall.
    And we tried to give them the best food that we can.
    We didn't have a budget of money.
    And we tried to--
    in the dining room there should be order.
    You can't run around.
    You must sit and finish to eat.
    So we tried on one hand to show them we love you,
    we are taking you for trips, et cetera, et cetera.
    On the other hand, there is a discipline.
    There's structure.
    There's a certain structure.
    And I asked the question about how many teachers were there?
    How many guidance counselors were there?
    Yeah.
    Besides at school, maybe six or seven.
    OK.
    So it was like almost a proportion of 1 to 10.
    If there were 70 children.
    Yeah.
    Did you--
    And the head of the institution at that time was a woman.
    Mm-hmm.
    Her name was Taubman, [? Suzanna ?] Taubman.
    She was a dynamo.
    She was a good administrator.
    She know how to handle things.
    She was from Germany.
    She was organized.
    And that's where we--
    and then everybody did what they did.
    There was no school yet.
    We had no this.
    We didn't know what to do, didn't
    know how to teach them, what to teach them, if we teach them.
    So we are trying to meet every time
    and try this system, and that system, and that system.
    Did you have a lot of resistance to your approach?
    Were there other people who said, no, we just
    need discipline?
    Who's the other people?
    Well, amongst the guidance counselors.
    Oh, yeah.
    Sure, of course.
    There was a lot, a lot of give and take.
    And there was a lot, but everyone was devoted.
    Everyone.
    I didn't think anybody had a question about it.
    OK.
    No, I think people--
    but we don't have the knowledge.
    We have to know what to do.
    So one night, again, the entire institution, 70 kids are crying.
    Again, come up-- or come in.
    What's the matter?
    They are shaking.
    All of them are shaking.
    70 kids shaking.
    And how old was I?
    I mean, young people--
    You were 20 years old yourself.
    We don't know what to do.
    They are shaking.
    All of them are shaking.
    I say, why are you shaking?
    What happened?
    Do they have fever?
    They had malaria.
    They didn't tell us.
    They had malaria.
    You know what malaria is?
    Describe it to me.
    You know, you have high fever and you shake.
    That's malaria.
    Because they were in Russia there in the--
    In Uzbekistan.
    In Uzbekistan and other places there.
    I mean, they were full of water and all that, and they got sick.
    This was about 2 o'clock at night, I think.
    I said to another teacher, let's go to a doctor
    and bring them in.
    Mm-hmm.
    Let him see what is happening.
    We come to a doctor.
    We knock on his door.
    It was 2:00 in the morning.
    I said to him, we have an institution
    of 70 kids who came from Europe and all that,
    and we want you to come to see them.
    What was the first question he asked me?
    What was it?
    What was it?
    "Are you going to pay?"
    I was a sabra, and I said to him, are you a doctor?
    So in between all that, we saw evil all the time.
    You're a doctor.
    And I tell you what it is, and you're
    asking me if we are going to pay you money?
    I said, yes, we'll pay you money.
    So when we talk about evil, you have a doctor, who's a good man.
    But he's not a good man.
    Now I think, in a way, it made me a different person.
    I wanted to ask you about that.
    How?
    How did it make you a different person?
    I say, if a doctor can talk like that, what do we have to Hitler?
    I mean, for you to do something like that,
    it's almost the same thing.
    I tell you people there are 70 kids who are crying,
    and I say come, and he said, would you pay me for that?
    Did he come?
    What?
    Did he come?
    Yes.
    If he wouldn't come, I would schlep him to come.
    I wouldn't let him stay home.
    So of course it made me a different person.
    But--
    Did it make you a harder person?
    What?
    Did it make you a harder person, to fight for those children?
    What?
    Did it make you a harder person, to fight for those children?
    In what way did it make you different?
    Be more sensitive, know that the world is bad,
    and even your neighbors are not good.
    Not all of them.
    And something has to be done.
    But again, I don't know where we took this courage with all
    that not to say, "I'm leaving.
    I can't take it."
    What were some of the hardest moments, then, for you?
    At which point were you pushed to such a point where
    you'd be tempted to say that?
    I don't think I was even tempted to say that.
    OK.
    When I made the decision that I am not
    going to go for a profession to make money, everything changed.
    I knew that's what I'm going to fight for,
    and these children are my children.
    And I was only a counselor.
    I was not a teacher at the time yet.
    And I was only a counselor.
    Now, that is to show that the environment was not too good.
    And people I don't think really realized
    who is coming here, who are they, and the attitude.
    And look, we came there because we were idealists.
    An idealist person doesn't care the effects what's happening.
    Because if he would think that way, he would do nothing.
    Yeah, he wouldn't go.
    Wouldn't go.
    Mm-hmm.
    Can you cut just for a second?
    Again.
    All right.
    Rolling.
    All right
    So he came, this doctor.
    He brought with him the--
    what do you call it?
    Oh, the stethoscope.
    Stethoscope and the other things.
    But it was so old, I knew that he's old fashioned already.
    Maybe he was tired already of being a doctor.
    But I decided I have to be tougher.
    I have to-- whatever we have to do for the kids,
    we are going to do.
    OK.
    I believed that.
    So they were sick for a day, a day or two.
    We gave them chinin.
    You know what chinin is?
    It's the only medicine that helps.
    Is it quinine?
    Is that what it is?
    Quinine, yeah.
    Quinine, OK.
    Yeah, chinin.
    And that's what helped them.
    So these few stories shows you the environment
    that we lived in, that I had to deal, what
    was the attitude to kids who come from the Shoah,
    and the same attitude was then when they came, the adults.
    It was the same problem.
    The psychologists have to look, why was it that way?
    In America is was the same, de grine.
    They don't belong to us.
    Did you get to know the children closely?
    That is, was it such that you weren't yet teaching them,
    but was it that you became their confidants?
    Mm-hmm.
    Was that the role that you ended up taking?
    We tried to do that.
    Took a long time.
    One night, we come up, and they are playing with the pillows.
    You know, like kids in a camp.
    I was really happy to see that.
    They fight each other.
    It's wonderful.
    But then suddenly I see from every bed falls down food.
    Every bed.
    What's that?
    And what was it?
    Everyone, every night, was stealing some food
    from the kitchen.
    They put it under the mattress.
    In case somebody comes in middle of the night
    and takes them away, they have food.
    They still don't feel safe.
    They didn't yet trust us.
    But to show you that everything that you do, you felt the loss.
    The people outside are no good.
    They're no good.
    What's happening?
    What can we do?
    So we decided maybe we will teach them, try to bring him
    into a daily routine.
    And many [INAUDIBLE] to make with the many,
    take them out to the world, and show them
    they're like anybody else in it.
    And I think this started to work.
    In the end, they put back the pictures.
    So what were the activities that started to bring them out,
    that bring them back to the world?
    Every night, we had a program.
    OK.
    And the program was always a program of not "I want
    to lecture them."
    Everybody's going to be involved.
    So a kind of games, but everybody is involved.
    Everybody has to help the other.
    You can't do it by yourself.
    And this was people who had no courses in psychology.
    A little psychology.
    We had psychology.
    As a teacher, you have some courses.
    Right.
    So then started the stories of talking to them,
    get their stories.
    Tell me about those.
    Many of them didn't want to say anything.
    nothing.
    They were afraid, I think, that their story
    would be against them.
    Would be used against them.
    Why?
    Yeah, why?
    Because in order for them to survive, they had to steal.
    And they don't want us to know that they were stealing,
    that they were thieves.
    They didn't tell stories.
    And I think this was the same problem with survivors,
    that many of them don't want to tell their stories.
    And if somebody tell--
    many of them will tell stories that
    are stories that they heard, not that they went through.
    And this is a message to you, that you have
    to be very careful with that.
    It's true.
    And I spoke to a man in--
    I davened in a shtiebel, in a little shul,
    in [PLACE NAME] in Flatbush where I lived.
    And can I--
    Of course you can.
    Of course you can.
    I came to the synagogue.
    And we used to talk about Talmud, about this.
    Whenever I mentioned something, he knew.
    I said to him, what is your business?
    What do you do?
    He said, I have a laundry.
    After a year and a half, I knew him a little better.
    I say, you're not a laundryman.
    What are you?
    Who are you?
    Finally after two years, he told me.
    He was the chief of a yeshiva in Poland.
    And he knows shas.
    It's like he knows the entire laws of the Jewish people,
    he knows.
    He knows it here.
    So he told me.
    I said, how did you survive?
    He says, listen to me a while.
    I became his confidant.
    Nobody survived if he didn't do something wrong.
    Nobody, he says, including me.
    You couldn't survive if you didn't take
    the bread from his [INAUDIBLE].
    Because otherwise you would die.
    You can't.
    So there's no survivor.
    And therefore they don't want to tell their stories.
    Yaffa sent one of her students to interview
    a person with a PhD.
    And he started to be interviewed.
    And in the middle, he started to cry.
    And he couldn't continue.
    And Yaffa said to me-- because we knew the person,
    Yaffa said to me, what do you think?
    What is it?
    I said, he probably had something
    that he doesn't want to tell.
    We found out half a year later, he was a Kapo.
    Ah.
    You know what I'm talking about?
    I know, but tell the camera.
    Tell the people in the future, what was a Kapo.
    Tell me, what was it?
    What is a Kapo?
    A Kapo was the police in the camps, but they were Jewish.
    Hitler was smart, whoever ran that, Eichmann or whatever.
    They took Jews to be the police.
    And many of them didn't behave the way they should.
    And I remember as a kid, was a kid in Tel Aviv once.
    I went to a movie.
    It was before I got married.
    And people came in with a cover.
    And one of them sit there, and they took the cover around him,
    and they pushed him out from the theater.
    "Kapo," they started to yell.
    "He killed my brother."
    And they killed him.
    And this was after the-- right after the war?
    This was after the war.
    And the conversation you had in Flatbush was sometime
    in the 1950s or '60s?
    So for some of them, it took years
    till somebody found out that you were a Kapo.
    And therefore this kid interviewed
    him, couldn't continue.
    He's not going to tell the story.
    So these children thought that you
    would think of them as bad because they
    would have done something that in normal life is wrong.
    In other words, they will appear either thieves or bad people,
    so they didn't like to talk.
    This was my theory a long time ago already about that.
    I am not sure that everyone will agree with me.
    The survivors of course not.
    But this man in the shtiebel was honest, he told me.
    Anyway, but one story I got which
    was really shaking me again, we had
    one of the girls named Miriam.
    What did she look like, this Miriam?
    I'll show you the picture.
    I don't want their names to be published.
    I never gave the last name.
    That's OK.
    Because I don't know, maybe they don't want it.
    But you'll see the picture.
    And she trusted me.
    I say, Miriam, how did you survive?
    She said, we started running from Poland to Russia.
    And we came to the Uzbekistan or what's the name?
    Forgot the name of this one.
    There's Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz--
    Kazakhstan, yeah, all these places there.
    And we went through forests.
    All this was illegal.
    So I went with my mother.
    She probably was a kid of seven years old, six
    or seven years old.
    I went with my mother.
    And there was about another 30, 40 people.
    And there was one guy who told where to go,
    because we have to know.
    And this is the way we went from one forest to another
    until we came to Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan
    In the middle of one of the forests, her mother got sick.
    All the people there, none of them said to Miriam,
    this little girl, "I'll stay with you."
    Nobody.
    Everybody left.
    She left with her mother.
    But she was already for two years a survivor.
    So she said to the mother, "you lie here,
    and I'll go to find food."
    And she went out of the forest, and there were farmers there.
    And she went to the garbage, and she brought potato peels and all
    that to feed her mother.
    After three days, she came back.
    Her mother doesn't move.
    She's dead.
    And a girl of seven years old knew what to do.
    She took branches from the forest.
    She covered her, and she went by herself
    to look for another forest.
    40 people there, nobody cared even
    to ask here if you need help.
    It's like that doctor, you know?
    And what do you expect of a girl like that?
    How long did it take her to open up to you?
    I think three years.
    Wow.
    Three years.
    Didn't tell me the story for three years.
    And I was really friendly with her like I said.
    They couldn't-- they couldn't tell me because she probably
    thought I would say that she killed her mother because she
    was sick, and she can't move.
    You know, the way--
    And after you heard the story--
    What?
    After you heard her, finally when she told you--
    Yeah.
    How did that affect her?
    After she opened up.
    I don't know.
    She was a toughie.
    You have to understand, a kid who can do that
    is not a simple girl.
    She's a toughie.
    She knows how to take life and how to overcome it.
    Yeah.
    And maybe all the other kids were like that,
    and therefore, they survived.
    But she especially was tough.
    You'll see the picture.
    It's tough.
    But I think she felt better that she can talk to somebody
    and tell the story.
    So describe to me, then, how things evolved in this center.
    Would it be that you were there as--
    you and the six or seven other people
    were there more or less as counselors?
    Or did you actually also teach them formally in classes?
    No, I missed-- now I'm going to--
    when we moved to Motza, which was
    a little town near Jerusalem, it was a nicer place.
    It was nature.
    You see trees.
    It was beautiful and nice, everything there.
    They had rooms.
    And we made sure that every room has every day
    flowers and a nice tablecloth.
    And they had to work every day.
    They were [INAUDIBLE] means from time to time adults.
    They had to take off the tables.
    They had to put in the kitchen.
    They had to clean their rooms.
    We helped them, but they had to do it.
    They had chores.
    It was based on that they are working like they would be home,
    helping your mother.
    That's what you're going to do here.
    We are help, but when I came into a room
    and I saw they're working, I helped them.
    Another teacher came and helped them.
    And then I became a teacher.
    And I happened to be a good teacher.
    And I taught them, and they liked it.
    And this was another way of getting close to them.
    And we had to look for a method.
    There was a kid there that he just couldn't learn.
    He was 11 years old, and he just couldn't
    read anything, any language.
    And he got so frustrated, one day he ran away.
    And the people went after him.
    He went up to the roof to commit suicide.
    Oh, my goodness.
    Because all his friends know to read already.
    He doesn't know how to read?
    They were younger.
    It was easier for them to learn to read.
    So you have to think about it.
    So how do you teach him?
    My goodness, but how extreme.
    What distress he must have been in.
    The child must have been in such distress.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    Did you catch him in time?
    Oh, I didn't.
    But others who saw him, his friends, and they
    brought him to me, of course.
    So we had a system of classes, and we put them in the classes,
    and we taught them.
    We were teachers.
    I brought to Motza the best teachers you can think of.
    Not looking somebody who has no choice.
    I wanted the best.
    And all those, my friends that I learned with them in the seminar
    of teachers, I took them.
    One of them became after that the head
    of the religious education in Israel.
    And another one, she was a woman.
    She was the wife of the chief rabbi of Israel.
    I mean, this caliber of teachers.
    Another one went for his PhD.
    I had good people.
    And I had, I think, the best.
    And it made a change, because the kids liked to learn.
    They enjoyed learning.
    And they were good people, nice people.
    I mean, they were my friends and my classmates, some of them.
    And it made a change.
    So the combination of teaching them and liking them, loving
    them, helping them, it takes time,
    but they realized in the end we didn't have food
    under the mattresses.
    But it's not we told them don't do it.
    Yeah.
    It had to come.
    It had to be natural.
    I had to do something that it will come bring to that.
    But we are people that we were thinking about-- every night we
    had a meeting.
    Every night.
    And I remember we had--
    in Israel, there a person by the name Nechama Leibowitz.
    She is like the dean of teaching Bible in Israel.
    The greatest teacher almost in Israel.
    She came up to see how I teach children to read.
    Because nobody had the experience.
    Said what are you saying, Nechama?
    I used to call her by her first name.
    You're doing a good job.
    She was older than me, about 40 years.
    I was almost a teenager.
    So--
    So you lived with them all the time, yes?
    You know, as you're telling me, it
    sounds like from the very beginning your job was not
    to teach them history, and math, and geography,
    but to bring them back to life.
    Of course.
    No, but they had to know to read.
    Of course.
    If they don't know how to read and write,
    they are going to be lost in this society.
    They must.
    Yeah.
    They must learn.
    But they loved to learn.
    They loved to learn, because they knew if they are not
    going to learn, they are lost.
    And they wanted something-- it seems
    at home also they said you have to be a mensch,
    you have to be a scholar, you have to learn,
    they have to be this, a teacher, a [INAUDIBLE].
    You know, whatever.
    So that's the way it worked over there.
    And you were-- and this lasted how many years?
    From 1943 till?
    This was in 1947.
    Four years.
    Then I became the principal of the school.
    They pushed me up.
    And in the end, I became the director
    of the entire institution.
    And what did that mean?
    If you're the principal of the school--
    During the four years.
    Mm-hmm.
    But I think after two years or 2 and 1/2 years,
    they made me the principal of the school.
    And then I made the--
    because I did a good job.
    And this meant--
    I didn't ask for it.
    I never asked for a job in my life.
    Never.
    They saw I'm doing a good job.
    "Can you do it?"
    And I used to have--
    Mrs. Szold was the head of the Youth Aliyah in Israel.
    It started in 1933 with Germany.
    When Hitler came up, they started
    to send young people to Israel.
    And she was the head of that.
    She was a scholar, an American.
    She was an American.
    She was a scholar.
    She never married.
    She was a rabbi.
    At that time a rabbi, a woman?
    And she loved me.
    Why?
    Because she used to go to Atlit.
    Mm-hmm.
    To accept the new kids who came in.
    Every few weeks, there's another group
    of kids, another group of people,
    and she took care of them.
    She came there to talk to them, to show
    this is the head of the Aliyat Hano'ar,
    but she was an old lady.
    And once I was in the middle between Atlit and Yerushalayim.
    So she stopped at Motza.
    And she loved-- it was clean.
    It was nice.
    And she got a good meal.
    And she could rest.
    And then the view was beautiful there.
    So she was such a lady.
    Tell me, what did the children-- these 70 children,
    what did they give you?
    What did you learn from them?
    What did I give them?
    No, the other.
    What did they give you?
    From your interaction with them.
    I learned from them, first of all,
    that the world around is not the best that we think they are.
    I learned from them that you have to love people in order
    to do something for them, not to yell at them
    and not to hit them.
    At that time, you could hit.
    You know, nobody cared.
    I learned many things from them.
    That's the way.
    I learned I have to know those kids are going to lie
    and those kids are not sure where they're going
    and what happens to them.
    And you have to understand that.
    You have to understand that.
    We are talking from 1943.
    How many years is that?
    Till now?
    Yeah.
    Oh, my.
    It would be 57, 67, oh, 70 years.
    72 years.
    I am not emotional about so many things,
    but I'm emotional like it happened yesterday.
    This is something that you do because you felt you must do it.
    That's the way to do it.
    And thank God I am happier more than an educator than being
    a lawyer.
    I have a son--
    a grandchild who graduated Yale with honors.
    He graduated Harvard Law School with honors.
    He worked for two years, said, "I don't want to be a lawyer."
    He got a salary more than I got as a principal,
    and he doesn't want to be a lawyer.
    He goes now to be a rabbi.
    Not an Orthodox rabbi, but wants to be a rabbi.
    I'm just saying, it's in the blood.
    It must be.
    It must be.
    In the blood.
    So after these children, did you have more children
    come in after the war to your school?
    Oh, yes.
    Then from them, in 1947, this entire institution
    moved to Kfar Batia.
    Mm-hmm.
    This was a big children's village.
    So does this mean 800 children moved?
    No, no, no.
    Just the 70.
    The 70.
    The 70.
    The 70.
    They came to Kfar Batia.
    And Kfar Batia in the end had 400 kids.
    They built the most beautiful buildings.
    We had the most beautiful gardens.
    We had the most beautiful flowers in every room
    every single day.
    And one day, Mrs. Roosevelt with the undersecretary
    of the interior, which is like the secretary of state,
    came to visit Kfar Batia.
    Because Kfar Batia was under the auspices of the American woman
    Mizrahi.
    And it seems they had people who--
    and they brought them there.
    And I was the guide.
    I will never forget that.
    The assistant secretary asked me a question.
    Why do you spend so much money?
    I bought gardens?
    Why do you build houses, four kids in a room?
    Why can't you build one big room for 100 kids and they
    should be there?
    I say, excuse me, sir.
    You know, I was a Sabra yet.
    "Excuse me, sir.
    Do you have children?
    Where do you send them?"
    He said, "in this school there."
    I said, "this is a private school, right?
    Why do you send them there" "It's my kids."
    "They are my kids."
    So I learned that the administration of America,
    who is the best country in the world with a democracy,
    can talk like that about children who
    just came from the Holocaust.
    I tried to ask the headmaster of this Kfar Batia,
    make better gardens.
    Make better rooms.
    They don't understand.
    So the entire institution moved to Kfar Batia.
    And that's where we stared there.
    And there was a school.
    There was a swimming pool.
    There was a beautiful synagogue.
    And we had a lot of agriculture there.
    And every kid had to work three hours a day.
    You could choose.
    We had a school.
    An academic school, a high school.
    We had weaving.
    You know, weaving to make [INAUDIBLE].
    Weaving.
    And we had an electronic high school.
    And you could choose either one of those.
    My wife liked the flowers.
    Tell me, how did you meet your wife?
    There in Kfar Batia.
    Oh, really?
    She was my student.
    Was she one of the--
    Today, I'm not allowed to say that.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Was she one of the 70 children?
    No, no.
    No.
    How did she end up there?
    She came from--
    Kfar Batia was accepting from about four or five institutions.
    So all my 70, another 70 from [INAUDIBLE] she was.
    And another-- and about 400 kids.
    And at that time, most of them were European kids.
    We had from Czechoslovakia.
    We had from Poland.
    We had from Lithuania.
    We had from-- from all over the world they came.
    From Europe, I mean.
    Yeah.
    And my wife, she was from Lithuania, you know?
    She came there.
    So and we had classes there.
    It was an organized school.
    And there, too, I started as a teacher and became a principal.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So it was a very disciplined place.
    The headmaster was a little--
    also a German with too much.
    He was-- I had fights with him.
    OK, he said, I don't want this school.
    Well, teach everybody wants to study, let him come in
    and learn.
    He had a dream from--
    what was the name of the German educator?
    Oh.
    That he said we have to have free education for the kids,
    they can choose whatever they want.
    Not too much discipline, in other words.
    No discipline.
    They want to come to learn, they learn.
    Don't want to come, let them not learn, then do something else.
    I said, hey, but this is not going to work.
    The kids need discipline.
    You want to do that, do it.
    Do whatever you want.
    I said, yes, I'm going to do it.
    And he was the master teacher in Israel.
    They used to come to him from all over Israel, religious,
    not religious, Hashomer Hatzair, everybody,
    because he was so great in methodology.
    And I was with him four years, and every day we
    spoke about methodology, and learning, and teaching.
    So I have so much learned not in school with him but--
    On the job.
    On the job.
    He was a philosopher of logic.
    And so I was lucky.
    Did the children-- did any of these children
    have the happy end that their parents
    turned up and found them?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
    There were many, many children that the parents came to Israel
    and they found them.
    But we had other problems, too.
    So we had a girl, again, wanted to commit suicide.
    What happened?
    They told her all the time that she
    has a father and a mother who is a doctor, and she's a doctor.
    And they came to Israel, and she used to visit them.
    Suddenly, one day, a person with payot, a Hasid,
    comes and tell her, you're my sister.
    They told you about your father.
    He's not your father, and she's not your mother.
    She wanted to commit suicide.
    Why would someone do that?
    No, he was her brother.
    He didn't know.
    No, no, no, no.
    Why would someone tell her that her father and mother--
    I don't know.
    It happens many times with children, adopted children.
    It happens with many of them.
    Anyway, so--
    Did you lose any children?
    What?
    Did you lose any children?
    That is, did you lose any?
    Did any of them succeed in committing suicide?
    Oh, many of them.
    I'll show you.
    I have only from Motza, from the 70 kids
    an engineer, a doctor, a scholar.
    Uh, uh.
    One of the other--
    everyone is married.
    Everyone has a job.
    Everyone was in the army.
    I think we had a great success with all--
    we made a lot of mistakes, but in general, we loved them.
    That is key word.
    And they knew it, in the end, that we loved them.
    And we are for them.
    And you see sometimes from the letters they write and all
    that, that what we did to them.
    I had two years ago, from those kids, five kids, came.
    They were with me on Friday night.
    We prepared food for them.
    Everything for Friday night.
    One of them, or one of them was the head
    of all the jails in Israel.
    He was like a general.
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    A general.
    See what I mean?
    I have four students who are professors in Bar-Ilan
    and the Hebrew University.
    I think we were very successful, very successful.
    Here's my other question.
    Did you lose any children?
    Did any succeed in committing suicide?
    No.
    No.
    Not that I remember.
    No, no.
    OK.
    I know only these two cases, and they are alive.
    OK, OK.
    That is a success.
    And he did very well, the one who didn't know how to read.
    He did well after that.
    You know?
    What would you want--
    if you had to speak with American educators today,
    a group of educators, and say--
    and explain to them what they need
    to know when they are dealing with children who have
    gone through such experiences--
    I will tell you.
    When I came to America, I heard after a year or two
    what's happening here with the minorities,
    and how the kids have no parents and this and that.
    So I said, can I meet with one of the senators from New York?
    And I suggested, my suggestion to open institutions like that.
    Because we were successful.
    It works.
    Take the best place, nice places, good food, nice clothes.
    Because you will save after the jails and murders and all that.
    "Are you funny?" they said to me.
    Say you must be a not nice person.
    I said, why?
    "Because you want to take them away from their homes."
    I said, what kind of homes do they have?
    So this was at that time the attitude of the Americans.
    A child must be with his parents.
    You can't take him away from his home.
    I had a plan.
    I said, I could advise you from A to Z, because I was there.
    Didn't accept it.
    So I gave up.
    What brought you to the United States to begin with?
    I was invited by a principal of the high school in Brooklyn.
    OK.
    To come to be a teacher for two years.
    What was the name of the school?
    What was the name--
    Yeshiva Flatbush, where I am still working.
    Where you're still working.
    OK.
    And I said yes.
    Because at that time, I just married Yaffa.
    And I thought it would be the best to go away from Israel,
    you know.
    Because they said you are old, 30 years old, and I don't want
    [INAUDIBLE] We'll go in a new place.
    And he invited me.
    I said, OK, two years only.
    And two years became 61 years.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Because then I became the assistant principal.
    OK.
    Then I became the principal of Judaic Studies.
    Then they make me the principal of the high school.
    And then I became the dean of the entire school.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    And then I retired.
    That's a lot in those sentences.
    I worked also in Yeshiva University.
    Mm-hmm.
    You know about that?
    It's a university.
    Yeah.
    And I was there in the School of Education.
    I gave courses there.
    One day, the Rabbi [? Lem ?] was the head of the school,
    was the president.
    I did something wrong?
    No.
    Everything's fine.
    He wanted me to become the dean of the educational school.
    No.
    I like what I'm doing , and I know one thing.
    Here I make decisions.
    When I come to you, you will make the decisions.
    I don't want that.
    It's a very interesting, and to me, it
    sounds very satisfying circle.
    Oh, yeah.
    That the way you came to go from a cheder to a modern school
    is because your father had come and someone
    showed him Yeshiva University.
    Yeshiva University.
    Right.
    And then you end up teaching there.
    So people don't know how things work in life.
    Yeah.
    Because if not, I would be like my brothers,
    and the others the same thing.
    Did you--
    OK, I'll be a teacher, but I think
    I did so many things there.
    One, I decided that what we are doing in our schools,
    in the high schools, is not enough
    religiously or being good people independent.
    We came up with the idea, I and another principal,
    that they should go to Israel for a year.
    So most of the people in America in the yeshivot,
    they go to Israel for a year because we
    established this program.
    Thousands go.
    Every year, it's about 3,000 who are going.
    That's amazing.
    And it made such a change in the education and the attitude.
    Absolutely.
    Yeah.
    So I always-- I was never satisfied with what we have.
    Yeah.
    The other impression I have from what you tell me is that when
    you're educating--
    I mean, people have different attitudes of what
    is the role of an educator, but I
    get a sense that you look at the whole person, not just
    the subject that you're teaching him,
    that there's more to being the educator than just the subject
    matter.
    Of course.
    And I remember speaking with someone
    who is a music teacher from the ex-Soviet Union, who
    had come here, who was a choir director, and who would tell me,
    here in the United States the teacher will teach just music.
    I look to see the child, to see who is the child.
    And only then can I teach the music.
    Exactly so, exactly so.
    Yeah.
    It's so clear that there's a difference between an educator
    and a teacher.
    What is the difference?
    A teacher teaches you a subject.
    A good teacher, subject good.
    An educator tries to change you, to show you.
    And you cannot change somebody unless he loves you,
    unless you love him.
    That's the key.
    That's the key.
    You know, I couldn't think of a better note
    on which to end our interview.
    Excuse me?
    I said, I couldn't think of a better note
    on which to end our interview.
    Yeah.
    But I don't want to do it unless--
    if you have anything else you would
    like to add to what you said.
    No, I think sometimes it depends on the mood.
    There could be many times I can sit with people,
    I wouldn't say anything.
    Yeah.
    I wouldn't say anything.
    But it's a mood, certain things to say.
    And you could see how much emotion I was involved.
    Because it was not a job for me.
    It was more than a job.
    Yeah.
    And thank God, I think I did something good.
    I did, I'm sure, hundreds of mistakes.
    But in general, in total, I think I did something good.
    Well, I appreciate it.
    I instituted in my school here 50 years ago
    that if you don't do charity on your own time
    to help people, so many [? good, ?] so many points,
    you don't get your diploma.
    Not just like that.
    You don't get your diploma.
    Now, every kid since 50 years ago
    has to show that he did every year so and so for other people.
    In the hospital, in the old ages, in other things.
    And you can see.
    I called-- the other day I called up
    a student of mine, Neil.
    He's in New Jersey.
    And I said, what do you do today now?
    He said, I have a swimming pool.
    And I invited all the kids from Yachad,
    the kids, autistic children, to come to use my swimming pool.
    I said, how many times this summer?
    He said every week.
    This is the seed that we put into them that's important.
    It's as important as mathematics.
    It's as important as prayers.
    As prayers.
    And they do it--
    I wouldn't say everybody, but for them, there
    are many people who are really, as a result of that.
    We helped people who have [INAUDIBLE]
    and from 50 years ago, nobody cared about homeless people.
    Today, it's a little different.
    But 50 years ago, nobody cared about them.
    We were the first ones to institute it.
    An educator.
    And I had a lot of opposition.
    Did you?
    From teachers.
    "Why do you take away time from them?"
    But there were probably many mistakes we made.
    Many mistakes.
    But in general, I'm happy with what I did.
    I'm very happy.
    Thank you for sharing it.
    Thank you for sharing those parts.
    You know what?
    My key was, I listened.
    I didn't say I know everything.
    You have something to say to me?
    A parent came saying to me, I want
    to talk to you about education.
    I say, I'm listening.
    Tell me what you think.
    And many times I did change because you make sense.
    I was a good listener.
    And the same is with students.
    You have to listen to them, not tell them all the time.
    But listen to them.
    So I made seminars for the kids.
    Every year there are seminars.
    They go away in a hotel for three days, a weekend.
    And they talk.
    Open sessions, no marks, nothing.
    Just bring together, singing together, dancing together,
    talk together, discuss together.
    So there are so many good things that can be done.
    So many things can be done.
    But not every time you have the listeners
    who are willing to listen.
    That's true.
    That's true.
    But I want to thank you.
    My pleasure.
    It was really a good session for me, too.
    Thank you.
    Yeah.
    Thank you.
    How do you remember all the questions?
    I didn't see the paper in your hand.
    I'll tell you off camera.
    [LAUGHTER]
    But right now what I'd like to say is,
    this concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Rabbi David Eliach on July 19, 2015
    in New York City, New York.
    Thank you again.
    Wonderful.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Rabbi David Eliach, born in 1922, describes his work in Palestine with the “Tehran children," a group of some 800 Jewish children from eastern Poland and the Soviet Union who were either orphaned or separated from their parents and had made it to Palestine; being responsible for the education and care of about 70 of these children; and the psychological trauma that he and other adult caretakers witnessed and the strategies they employed to best help the children heal as well as begin to take part in formal education.
    Interviewee
    Rabbi David Eliach
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2015 July 19

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material. Museum staff are currently unable to copy, digitize, and/or photograph collection materials on behalf of researchers. Researchers are encouraged to plan a research visit to consult collection materials themselves.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Geographic Name
    Palestine. Israel.
    Personal Name
    Eliach, David, 1922-

    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 Rabbi David Eliach on July 19, 2015.
    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 08:05:01
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/bookmarks​/irn610026

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    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

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

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