Oral history interview with Werner Reich

Oral history interview with Annie Bleiberg

Oral History

Annie Bleiberg (née Wertman), born on October 1, 1920 in Oleszyce, Poland, describes her parents, Isaac and Sophie Wertman; her younger sister Helen; moving with her family to Jarosław, Poland when she was 10 years old; her father’s leather goods business; having a happy childhood; attending high school; being a leader in the Zionist organization, Akiba; eating kosher food at home; experiencing antisemitism from a high school teacher; the German invasion in 1939 and being forced out of their home; going to the Russian occupied territory in eastern Poland, specifically her grandfather’s house in Oleszyce; the curfew during the Russian occupation; working with her father in a sawmill; the German occupation in 1941; the banning of Jewish texts; Yom Kippur during the occupation; hiding with her family in a hole in the earth on her grandfather’s property; how in October 1942 all the Jews in the nearby towns were forced into the Lubaczów ghetto; staying in the ghetto for three months; life in the ghetto; being warned about the liquidation the day before it occurred; hiding with her family in the attic of the house they lived in the ghetto; being discovered in their hiding place and taken to a warehouse outside the city; being deported with her family a day later to Bełżec extermination camp and escaping from the train after her father and being separated from him; receiving some help from a Polish watchman near the train tracks and returning to the ghetto; reuniting with her father in their house in the ghetto; hiding for four weeks in a barn belonging to some of their non-Jewish friends; receiving false papers from the Polish underground; being on a train heading to Germany when she was beaten by Poles and imprisoned in Kraków, Poland (this was February 1943); the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto; being sent to Birkenau; being tattooed; daily life in the camp; her work cleaning up debris from bombs; the women prisoners ceasing to menstruate; helping to translate between prisoners in the camp; working in the Kanada kommando; being taken by train in October 1944 to a small camp in Czechoslovakia (probably Mährisch Weisswasser in Bila Voda, Czech Republic); being liberated by the Russians; working for the Russians as a bookkeeper; going to Prague, Czech Republic; searching for her father in Poland, going to Katowice and Lublin; living in Oleszyce again but not wanting to stay; going to Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland) and getting married on April 7, 1946; moving to Bayreuth, Germany and the birth of her daighter; immigrating to the United States in 1950; the difficulty of adjusting to life in the US; her reflections on the Holocaust; and her wish to live as fully as she can.

Oral history interview with Ruth Cohen

Oral History

Ruth Renee Cohen (née Friedman), born on April 26, 1930 in Mukačevo, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes growing up in an Orthodox family with her parents (Bertha and Herman), her sister (Teresa), and her younger brother (Arnold); her father’s wholesale business manufacturing wine and liqueur and bottling beer; how his business was taken from him in 1938 when their part of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Hungary; attending a special Hebrew gymnasium where all subjects were taught in Hebrew; her parents’ hope to go to the United States; hearing in 1940 or 1941 that her aunt and some cousins had been deported to Majdanek; how life began to change and more restrictions were placed on Jews; her family taking in two of her cousins when their parents were deported; being forced to go to a ghetto just before Passover in 1944; the looting of their house; staying in the ghetto until the end of May when they were transported to Auschwitz; witnessing the shooting of a favorite teacher who refused to get on the train; arriving in Auschwitz and the immediate killing of all her family except her sister and father; Teresa knowing their blockälteste from before the war, which helped them get good jobs; the closing of the crematoria in October 1944 because of a prisoner revolt; being transferred to Nuremberg, where she worked in a spool factory; experiencing terrible back pain in Nuremberg; being transported to Holýšov (Holleischen) to do similar work and remaining there until the end of the war; returning to Mukačevo with her sister and reuniting with their father; living at their grandfather’s house; spending a month at the Children’s Hospital in Budapest, Hungary, where they could find nothing wrong with her despite the persistent pain; discovering she had tuberculosis of the spine; being hospitalized for a year; going to a sanatorium in the Tatry Mountains; going with her father and sister to the United States; working in the day and attending school at night; learning English; speaking to her children about her experiences during the Holocaust; receiving financial remuneration from Germany; her thoughts on the treatment of Nazi criminals within the legal system in Europe; her choice not to watch films on the Holocaust; meeting her husband in 1952; and her three children and eight grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Steven Fenves, born on June 6, 1931 in Szabadka, Yugoslavia (now Subotica, Serbia), describes his family, including his older sister Estera; his father Lajos, who was the manager of a publishing house and a newspaper; his mother Claire Gereb, who was a graphic artist; having a very conventional, affluent childhood; his governess Fräulein Schmidt; the importance his parents placed on speaking “Hochdeutsch” (“high German”); speaking Hungarian at home and German with his governess; the economic differences between the Jews in the community; attending a state school called the Queen Mary School (it was informally referred to as the Jewish school); having a few Gentile friends but being mostly friends with Jews; antisemitism in Yugoslavia; his lack of awareness of antisemitism until April 1941 when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; his father’s expulsion from his job; being one of the nine Jews allowed to attend higher education; experiencing antisemitism in the classroom; the financial difficulties experienced by his family; the German occupation of Hungary in 1944; his parents’ decision not to leave; the requisitioning of rooms in their house for Hungarian soldiers; the deportation of his father and most of the town’s intelligentsia; being forced to leave their home and move into the ghetto; being jeered at by their non-Jewish neighbors as they left; the looting of their home after they left; turning 13 years old in the ghetto and not having a bar mitzvah; being in the ghetto for two weeks and working at a machine shop outside the ghetto; hearing about the Normandy invasion on a hidden radio at the machine shop; being sent to a camp in Bácsalmás, Hungary for a week before being transferred to Auschwitz; the six day train journey to Auschwitz; the terror they experienced upon arriving at Auschwitz; being separated by gender and never seeing his mother again; his sister’s fate (she remained in Auschwitz for some time and then sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated in 1945); going to the boys’ barracks in Compound C, where he stayed for four months; daily life in the camp; witnessing many deaths; being selected as an interpreter for the kapos in the camp; the extermination of many Roma in August 1944; working with a Polish kapo; being an interpreter for the German foreman and camp commander; the black market and the resistance in the camp; being part of a roof repair detail and being able to visit with his sister; managing to buy a sweater and scarf for his sister before she was sent to Bergen-Belsen; the communication between the resistance inside and outside the camp; being smuggled out of the camp with the help of the Polish kapos; arriving in Niederorschel; his work and sabotage efforts in the camp; being sent on a death march in April 1945 to Buchenwald and the deaths of prisoners along the way; being herded into a small camp in Berlstedt; arriving in Buchenwald; the Americans arriving in Buchenwald soon after; his convalescence; his decision over where to go after liberation; his search for surviving family members; finding his aunt in Budapest, Hungary; going home and reuniting with his sister and father; his father’s death on February 6, 1946; returning to school; life under the communists; leaving with his sister in 1947 and going to Paris, France; going to the United States three years later; being drafted into the army; qualifying for the GI Bill and earning his doctorate; becoming active in a survivor organization in Pittsburgh, PA; and his thoughts on Germany and antisemitism in Europe.

Oral history interview with Agi Geva

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marscha Kreuzmann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Moshe Haelion

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marta Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther Mannheim

Oral History

Oral history interview with Usher Aud

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanna Rosbruch

Oral History