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Oral history interview with Nelly Grussgott

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2011.177.4 | RG Number: RG-50.677.0004

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    Oral history interview with Nelly Grussgott
    Transcript
    You read my story and you know--
    Yes, we did.
    --what to ask me?
    OK, we're ready to go.
    Today is March 29, 2011.
    This is the Fortunoff Video Archive
    for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University,
    and my name is Joanne Rudoff.
    My name is Nelly Grussgott.
    And what was it when you were born?
    I was born in Berlin May 9, 1930.
    Tell me about your parents, and your home, and your school.
    My mother came as an immigrant from Czechoslovakia because
    of the poverty that she experienced in her hometown,
    and she worked--
    she was a single girl, and she worked very hard.
    And she started with rags.
    It's almost like from rags to riches,
    and she established a textile business.
    And she was very religious, and in Germany at the time
    she couldn't find a religious man like she.
    So finally-- she was 24--
    oh, no.
    That's my phone.
    That's OK.
    I should have shut it off.
    You know what?
    Let's shut it off right now, OK?
    Sorry about that.
    That's OK.
    I should have remembered to tell you.
    Great, thank you.
    OK.
    So it was hard for her to find a suitable husband, so to speak.
    So five years later, when she was already 29,
    she met my father, who had just come from Hungary,
    and he was teaching bar mitzvah.
    And he came to Germany for the same reasons.
    And by that time, my mother already
    had established a business.
    They knew each other--
    there was a matchmaker, and that's
    how they met for two weeks.
    And that was-- and they married, and that was--
    It was a shidduch?
    What?
    It was a shidduch.
    It was a shidduch.
    It was a shidduch.
    He was frum, and it was right for my mother.
    But she took him into the business,
    and they worked together.
    And they established a nice textile business.
    And it was a good life in 1927 or '28, and I was born in 1930.
    And, well, they say--
    my mother did have a stillbirth before me.
    She had a son.
    But she was always a very optimistic type of lady,
    and she was thanking God.
    In later years, she used to say to me
    that she gave a kiddush after every year Sukkos
    when she gave birth, she gave a kiddush because God spared
    her life.
    So she looked at it this way, not losing a son
    but God spared her life because she almost died with a baby.
    And as I said, two years later, I was born,
    and by that time, because of the poverty in Czechoslovakia,
    my mother had already money to send home.
    And her brother and her sisters came to live in Berlin.
    And I was a kind of a novelty, the only baby.
    And they fawned over me, and I remember a lot of attention
    and a lot of love.
    Did you all live in the same area?
    In the same area, yes.
    Not only that-- my mother had a single sister, too,
    and she lived with-- she lived in--
    she worked in my mother's business,
    and she lived with us.
    And my mother was very much into the business, but my aunt,
    my mother's younger sister--
    she was more domesticated, and she stayed home with me.
    What was her name?
    So she was like a second mother, and I remember her so well.
    What was her name?
    Her name-- her given name was Pearl,
    but we called her Pepi, Tante Pepi.
    Tante Pepi.
    And she was able to-- my mother was not
    very good at disciplining me at the time,
    but I was afraid of her.
    She was a good disciplinarian.
    So that--
    Do remember Shabbos in your home?
    Oh, yes, we were strictly observant.
    And my father had a beautiful voice, and he used to sing.
    And for Passover, we had a lot of guests all the time.
    And I remember that I had a little cup, a little wine
    cup with a gold rim, and I still have it.
    It's to drink kiddush, and they had a special cup for me.
    So that much I remember.
    And sometimes-- my father--
    my mother had established the business,
    but my father was more of a scholar-student.
    And sometimes my mother would say, go on vacation.
    She had her brothers and sisters helping her, and what I--
    I don't know why he went on vacation,
    but I remember that I went with him.
    And I remember that time in the hotel.
    Where did you go?
    I wasn't-- I must have been four years old, four,
    but it's just like kind of a vague memory.
    It sticks in my mind.
    He used to take me places, to museums.
    My mother was business-oriented, religion and business.
    Yeah.
    Now, you told me you used to visit your grandparents.
    When I was five years old, my mother they
    took me to see both sets of grandparents,
    and it was interesting.
    You asked me before if I speak Czechoslovakian,
    but when I got there, I was--
    the story goes-- they tell me that when
    I met little girls there to play with I said, oh, my goodness,
    they are so dumb.
    They can't even speak German.
    So they used to make fun of me, and I made that remark
    in German.
    Yeah.
    I don't know.
    Do you want me to say it in German?
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] Because I thought
    that was the only language that exists.
    And so I remember my grandmother, my grandfather.
    Yes, that was a very -- yes.
    And then my mother--
    I went with her to visit my father's parents in Hungary.
    That was-- yeah, that's all I knew of my grandparents.
    So that was in 1935.
    1935.
    And when you went back to Berlin, what
    was it like for you in Berlin?
    Well, I was beginning school, so I went to a religious school.
    It was called Adass Yisroel.
    And I had a lot of friends there.
    I even remember a friend that I had there.
    Years later, I tried to contact her,
    but she didn't remember me anymore.
    She had had a nervous breakdown, she said,
    and she has no memory of her experiences, yeah.
    But first, before I went to school,
    I went to kindergarten, yeah.
    And-- was that also a Jewish school?
    All Jewish, all Jewish, yes.
    Did you have any contact with non-Jews at all?
    No, not at that time, no.
    My mother did.
    My mother had customers.
    They were all non-Jewish, very polite, very nice.
    They really-- she allowed them credit when they bought,
    and then she used to go to them and collect what they owed her.
    And they were always prompt, courteous.
    And then, one day, she went to collect--
    this was years later--
    when she-- these were the nicest customers, she said.
    When she came to collect, they said, Mrs. Friedman,
    Frau Friedman, you better leave here very quickly.
    My husband is a Nazi.
    She ran for her life.
    Overnight they became Nazis, it seemed.
    She always tells that story.
    Did you know that as a child?
    If I felt it?
    Did you know that as a child?
    Yes.
    Oh, you mean the threat, the--
    Yes.
    Absolutely, yes, because when I learned to read,
    wherever I went there were signs, "Juden Verboten,"
    "Jews Forbidden."
    And we were afraid to walk in the streets, and there were--
    yeah, it was--
    What did your parents tell you about the situation?
    They didn't have to tell me anything.
    I felt it.
    It was in the air.
    Yeah.
    Did you hear that--
    Well, one year went to the Jewish school,
    and then that school had to be shut down.
    It was no longer-- and I went to another school.
    I don't know.
    It was a government school.
    I think it was-- it may have been--
    but it was just for-- because it was in a Jewish neighborhood.
    That's why.
    There were only Jewish children there.
    And as we came out of the school, they were throwing--
    the youth were waiting there, and they
    were throwing stones at us.
    It was dangerous.
    And after that, we couldn't even go to school anymore.
    Yeah.
    And what did your parents tell you about that?
    They were afraid-- they didn't talk about it.
    We didn't talk about it.
    Yeah, it's just-- but when that had happened,
    my father had left already for Germany.
    But before he-- one day, very--
    one day, I came home, and he was in the kitchen,
    had a pair of new glasses.
    I remember that.
    He looked a little different.
    And my mother announced he was leaving for America.
    Yeah.
    Do you know when that was about?
    1938.
    That was 1938, yeah.
    I have one picture with my father.
    It was taken in 1937.
    I was playing in the park, and when I saw him approach,
    I was so happy.
    I ran to him.
    And he had a friend with him who took a picture of us,
    and years later, I came back with my son to the same spot
    and took a picture.
    I found that place.
    But you couldn't sit on any of the benches in the park.
    On the bench it said "Jews Forbidden,"
    couldn't go to the movies anymore.
    I remember I used to go with my mother to the--
    even my mother was very religious,
    but she liked to have a good time and go to the movies.
    I remember going to see Shirley Temple.
    I enjoyed that.
    She's my generation.
    It was-- I thought Shirley Temple was in German.
    It was-- I didn't know it was a dubbed--
    it was dubbed.
    But I enjoyed all the Shirley Temple
    but couldn't go to the movies anymore already.
    It started very gradually.
    Everything was very gradual.
    But my father was able to leave for America because he
    had a brother and sister living in America,
    and he came to as a visitor.
    He came.
    So he left in 1938, yeah.
    And what did they tell you about why he was leaving?
    Oh, they didn't have to tell me.
    See, I don't remember any words spoken with my mother or father
    or anything.
    I just knew the events of what took place, and what happened,
    and yeah.
    So that was a very sad day for me, very sad time
    just to have him leave, yeah.
    And eventually, my aunts and uncles-- they all left
    for Czechoslovakia.
    And my aunt-- my aunt--
    as I said before, she was single,
    and she was my disciplinarian.
    And so she did get married in 1935,
    and I remember the wedding.
    I was in a nice pink outfit, pink dress.
    And I slept by the super.
    I know my mother sent me down to the-- this was 1935.
    That I remember.
    And they called my father--
    my father's name was Yitzhak.
    That's his Hebrew name.
    But his nickname was Itzhik, and somehow the super
    must have heard my mother call my father Itzhik,
    and it seemed to them that was the name to make fun of.
    And they kept asking me--
    they had company, the super.
    I remember this.
    And they kept asking me, tell us, what is your father's name.
    And I said, Itzhik, and they broke into hysterical laughter.
    And I know that's something I felt that--
    and they had me repeat.
    And here they-- and this was 1935,
    and they were supposed to be friends of ours, yeah.
    Because-- I had to sleep by the super
    because the bedrooms were taken apart because my aunt
    got married in our house.
    And then she had a baby, and I was already six.
    I mean she had a baby a year.
    I was six years--
    six years old at the time, and I felt I had a sister.
    And I loved her so much.
    When she was six months old, they left for Czechoslovakia
    to get away from Hitler.
    And my other-- my mother's brother
    and other sister also-- they all went to Czechoslovakia
    subsequently.
    They didn't survive.
    Yeah.
    So when your father left, did your mother
    continue the business?
    Yes, yes.
    She was able to do that?
    In 1937?
    Well, not really.
    Little-- when I think about it, I don't know how we had money.
    I guess until 193--
    in 1939, we were evicted from our-- it was the 1st
    of September when the war broke out, Germany declared war on--
    they marched into Poland, and we were
    just-- we left with the furniture, everything.
    We went to live in an apartment with five other families,
    and I was sleeping-- and they had a bed--
    a crib for me.
    I slept in the crib in the middle room.
    And food was very severely rationed.
    I was-- didn't have too much to-- especially
    meat or chicken.
    That was a rare--
    that was-- yeah.
    And we lived-- my mother and I, we lived with a--
    with someone who rented us a room in another neighborhood.
    Now, prior to that, you said you went to first a Jewish school
    then a state school?
    Yeah.
    And then you had to stop going to school?
    Oh, yes.
    And what was--
    I didn't go to school anymore.
    And what did you do during the day?
    Sat and looked out the window, not much.
    And your mother was working?
    I guess she was somehow.
    She probably went to customers, and went to their homes,
    and sold them things.
    I just kind of block that out because in between,
    Kristallnacht happened.
    Can you tell me about that?
    What did you experience?
    Oh, that was-- the Kristallnacht was before we
    moved to this apartment.
    Right.
    I have to go back a little bit.
    It's OK.
    What happened-- I was on my way to school,
    and I saw all the stores.
    The windows were broken, shattered,
    and it was such an eerie feeling.
    We went-- I went home.
    I went home again, and a lot of-- all the--
    my mother's friends, the men, were hiding in my apartment,
    in our apartment.
    Under the bed they crept because they
    were looking for men to deport them,
    and they maybe stay two or three days.
    And I saw from across the--
    they didn't come to my apartment because they
    knew that my father wasn't there,
    and they didn't bother the women and children yet.
    But from-- I saw across the street they were throwing out
    furniture, linen from windows, shattering--
    going into people's homes, throwing everything
    out the window.
    It was very frightening, that Kristallnacht.
    That took place in 1938, yeah, so it
    seems that we moved in 1939.
    Now, did you ever go back to school after Kristallnacht?
    I don't think so.
    No, no, I don't--
    no.
    I don't think so, no.
    I was very short--
    a very short time in the state school because, as I said,
    they were throwing stones at us.
    It was dangerous, couldn't--
    yeah.
    Now, were you hearing from your father
    during this period of time?
    I suppose.
    From America?
    Yes.
    Yeah, he wrote to my mother, I'm sure.
    Yeah, he wrote, especially--
    he was very busy arranging for us to come to America.
    So he got us affidavits, and he got it
    from Horowitz Margareten.
    That's a matzoh factory.
    And they are related to us, so he was very pleased
    because these were wealthy sponsors who would supposedly
    support us.
    So he felt that we had a very good--
    had a very good chance of getting us out from Germany.
    That was the goal, that we should come to America.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, he was in America one year,
    and I think, as the story goes--
    I was a child.
    I was not privy to all the information or things
    that were going on.
    But as I understand it, he wrote my mother
    that he was coming back to get us to come back with him.
    He had these wonderful affidavits, he thought.
    So he was going to Belgium.
    Belgium was neutral at the time.
    So my mother wrote to him and told him, don't come back.
    Go anywhere, but don't come back.
    But he got the letter.
    It was too late.
    He was already on the boat coming back.
    Yeah.
    So he went-- so he came back to Belgium, yeah.
    And he realized he had made a great mistake, yeah.
    And he was renting a room, and then he said that--
    oh, God, it's very hard.
    That's OK.
    Yeah.
    He thought that my mother and I would join him in Belgium
    and, together, we would leave for America again.
    that's what he thought when he was in America,
    but it didn't happen that way.
    What I was going to say?
    So we went-- we stayed there in Belgium, and they went--
    my mother went--
    my mother and father went to the consel,
    and the consel said to my mother--
    told them, because my mother was Czechoslovakian-born,
    she's already on a list to come to America.
    But my father was born in Hungary, and his--
    it would be much harder for him.
    So he should stay in Belgium.
    And if my mother and I will come to America,
    my mother will-- being that we would be in America,
    we would be able to arrange for him the visa so
    that he could come to America.
    But it was very--
    Now, did you know that?
    Did you know that at the time?
    While we were--
    Yes.
    Well, first, I wanted to tell you
    that I internalized-- when my father came back to Belgium,
    he was very depressed, but I, as a child,
    thought, well, maybe he doesn't love me
    as much anymore because he didn't show
    the enthusiasm that I expected.
    So I don't think--
    I mean, afterwards, I realized he was depressed, yeah.
    Now, what was it like for you leaving
    Berlin to go to Belgium?
    Oh, well, it was a different culture.
    I saw a lot of people, a lot of kids, riding on bicycles.
    There was a lot of bike-riding, and I was just thinking,
    oh, if I could ever ride a bike like that, it would be nice.
    What city were you in?
    Antwerp, yeah, for a week.
    But we were there only one week.
    That's all.
    And then the consul advised my mother
    to go back to Berlin, Germany because we were already
    on a waiting list.
    And from there, we would be able to leave Berlin, Germany--
    if we stayed with my father in Belgium,
    there would be no chance for either my mother or my father
    to leave Belgium, but because my mother was already
    almost ready to be granted the visa, she was--
    we were told that would be the best.
    And it happened that way.
    And, now, she went to the American consulate
    who told her that?
    Where?
    In Belgium?
    Yes.
    Yes, yes.
    This was the advice she was given.
    I don't know how I--
    I know all the-- well, she spoke about it in later years,
    I guess, because as a child I don't
    know if I was aware of exactly what was happening.
    We went back to Germany, and that was in 1939.
    My father was already a year in America,
    and he really enjoyed the freedom.
    And he was by his brothers and sisters,
    and he was thinking, well, this is--
    he'll save us.
    He really was very worried about us.
    Do you remember what your parents told you then
    about going back to Berlin?
    I don't know.
    I don't remember much of any conversations.
    It's just-- they were talking to each other.
    And you just went.
    I guess I knew what was going on.
    I mean, I don't think I discussed
    much with my mother what was happening in Belgium or--
    it was just--
    And did you-- how did you get from Berlin?
    I was already nine years old.
    Right.
    And do you remember the trip from--
    The trains?
    On the train?
    Mm-hm.
    Oh, yeah.
    I remember the boat coming to America.
    That was an experience.
    All right.
    So you took a train back to Berlin.
    Took a train back to Berlin.
    Then were you able to stay in that same apartment
    with the other people?
    Yes.
    It was just a week, yes.
    And then the war-- yeah, the war was already on, right,
    between England.
    Shortly thereafter, the consel called my mother.
    The visa was granted.
    But my mother had registered me for the Kindertransport
    in the meantime, and my mother was supposed to go as a maid
    to England, something like that, because nothing
    was happening for a while.
    But then, the last minute, they called us.
    And that was in 1940.
    What month?
    January.
    We arrived February.
    And what was that like for you?
    Arriving?
    Knowing that you were leaving.
    Oh, unbelievable, yes, because I felt such empathy
    for the people I left behind because I already had
    established-- the people that we were living with in that
    apartment--
    we had a relationship.
    And I knew, as a-- nobody had to tell me
    that they would not make it, that they would all die.
    And I knew about that we were safe.
    It was unbelievable, yeah.
    I felt very sorry for everyone that I left behind,
    that was left behind.
    And they didn't make it.
    They didn't.
    All those people where I lived with--
    I have photographs of them, too.
    Yeah.
    So the thing is, it was a nine-day trip,
    and we went to Italy, Genoa.
    Again on a train?
    On a train.
    And from there, we took the last boat out.
    It was called the Conte di--
    I remember-- I don't know how I remember these--
    Conte di Savoia.
    That was the boat.
    And it was a nine-day trip.
    And it was in January, and there was a storm.
    And I can't forget.
    I thought I would be dying.
    I was so seasick.
    My mother couldn't get me to get off the bed, but--
    Were there other Jews on the ship?
    I think so, yes, yes, a lot, yes.
    I don't know.
    I don't know, all kinds of people.
    I was on the trip, I stayed in the cabin on the bed.
    My mother was afraid I wouldn't make it
    because I was very seasick.
    But the minute we landed on the boat, landed, I was fine.
    And you remember that landing?
    Oh, yeah, oh, very much, very much.
    My uncles-- my father's brother and my father's brother-in-law
    came to pick us up, but they didn't
    know what we looked like.
    And it was an Ellis Island and had no idea--
    so many people arriving, and my mother
    didn't know what they looked like
    and how are we going to find them.
    But we knew they would be coming to pick us up.
    So my mother-- and I started running away,
    I remember, a little bit.
    I was getting a little--
    I don't know, just couldn't stay in one place anymore,
    was running another direction.
    And my mother started calling Nelly, Nelly.
    And when they heard the name "Nelly,"
    they came walking over.
    Are you so-and-so?
    And they took me to--
    yeah, they took us to my aunt's apartment,
    my father's sister, yeah, yeah.
    And did you speak any English?
    No, not one word.
    And everything here was a culture shock.
    But it was--
    I felt safe, yeah.
    But I missed my father.
    And did your aunts and uncles speak German?
    They spoke-- no, no, they didn't.
    They spoke Yiddish.
    I guess I understood from the German.
    And she was-- my aunt was cooking Friday for Shabbat,
    and it was lunch.
    And she wanted she wanted to give me some chicken soup,
    and I said, oh, no, no, no, no.
    So she said, why not?
    Why not?
    I said, I want to save it for tonight.
    They always-- they remembered that years later
    because I didn't think I could have soup twice.
    I told you that the food was very severely rationed,
    so we could just have a little soup on a Friday night.
    Yeah.
    So now she says, you're here in America.
    We have plenty of soup.
    You can have it.
    You'll have it now.
    You'll have tonight.
    Yeah.
    So it was, yeah, all kinds of things.
    I'll take some water.
    I don't know why I'm so hoarse.
    You've been talking a lot.
    So this was in January of 1940?
    No, we arrived--
    In February.
    --February 1, February 1.
    My mother and I always kind of celebrated that anniversary,
    when we arrived.
    And you stayed--
    Shortly-- no, we stayed a little bit by my aunt
    because she had a tiny apartment.
    And my mother felt she was crowded as it is,
    so we went to the HIAS.
    She was not a wealthy woman, so we
    went to the HIAS, stayed there a week.
    That wasn't such a--
    it was a wonderful experience, being an American in the HIAS,
    but it was--
    the HIAS was very crowded.
    We slept on cots on the floor.
    And it was just a week or two.
    And then my mother--
    she found somewhere where she could rent a room.
    We were living with someone in America.
    And I went to school, and they didn't
    know what to do with-- in those days,
    there weren't many refugees.
    I was like an oddity, and they didn't
    know what to do with a refugee.
    I couldn't speak a word of English.
    I think I was in the third grade--
    they put-- in the third grade they put me.
    I was already almost 10 years old and couldn't speak English.
    So they got me back into the first grade.
    So it was a little embarrassing, but before I knew it,
    I was back in the third grade, and the fourth grade,
    and it wasn't long.
    But I was known in the beginning as The Refugee.
    And afterwards-- after we lived in that rented room,
    it didn't work out that well either.
    It was difficult. My mother started peddling.
    My mother was peddling when--
    that's how she started to make a living.
    Somebody lent her some money, and my--
    and we were able to move into an apartment on Delancey Street--
    I don't know if you're familiar with the Lower East
    Side-- on Delancey Street, under the bridge, a cold-water flat.
    And, yeah, my mother worked very hard,
    and she went to Washington very frequently,
    yeah, because she wanted to get the visa for my father.
    And she went to the senators, and to interviews,
    and it just--
    they didn't-- they replied negatively.
    As a child, you came in February of 1940.
    Were you aware of events in May, when Germany invaded Belgium?
    Oh, yeah.
    You mean when I was in--
    In the United States.
    --in the United States?
    Yes, yes.
    Yes, because my father was deported to Marseille,
    to France.
    They rounded up all the Jewish men, women,
    and deported them to France.
    So--
    And did that at the time?
    I knew there was a war raging in Europe.
    Maybe I didn't know the exact details, yeah, but--
    but I wanted to say something.
    Yeah.
    Coming back to what you said--
    So you're going to school, and you
    know that there's a war in Europe that's
    now impacting your father because Germany invaded
    Belgium.
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    Yeah, he-- oh, gosh.
    He went to the--
    he wrote my mother.
    He went to the consul.
    He was very happy he thought he was getting the visa.
    And then they-- I don't know if you
    want me to read you this, the letter that he
    wrote to my mother.
    Sure.
    "My dearest Yeti--" that's what he called her.
    And what's the date on the letter?
    September 24, 1942.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN],, not only "dear" but "dear precious Yeti,
    dear precious Nelly, Rosh Hashanah
    I received a notice from the consul
    that I should come to see him, and I was under the impression
    that I would be getting the visa.
    But I was informed by the secretary
    that I'm not getting the visa, and I almost
    felt that I had to faint.
    He said to me they can't find the [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    in Washington, they can't find the papers in Washington.
    The cold sweat came over me, and they asked me to sit down
    and to relax."
    In 15 minutes, they couldn't get him to revive--
    they couldn't revive him.
    He felt so faint because he was so terribly disappointed.
    "And he told me it was not a grant--
    it will not-- it's not granted to me now.
    And I asked, why not?
    I'm not a spy.
    Am I a spy?
    Why don't they grant me the visa?
    I have the best papers.
    And he replied he's not responsible--
    the consul replied, I don't know why.
    And that I--" the consul advised that
    he should write or send a telegram to--
    I have to translate this exactly as I'm reading this to you.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    "And it must be because I'm Hungarian."
    And the reason that they gave him
    is that because he's a Hungarian--
    America declared war on Hungary, and he's now
    considered a Hungarian alien.
    But this was before the war.
    1942.
    Oh, '42.
    I'm sorry.
    He is writing from Marseilles.
    And the letter was able to be gotten through?
    Yes.
    And then in subsequent letters he writes that--
    he writes, "Why am I not getting any letters from you?
    You used to write to me so steadily.
    What happened?
    I can't believe that you wouldn't write."
    He didn't know the letters were censored and not sent to him.
    And he said, "I'm suffering, and I
    don't hear from you that you're alive or any,"
    things like that.
    It was just-- he was in agony.
    Now, were the letters going through a neutral country?
    Or you don't know.
    The letters came from Marseilles.
    From Marseilles.
    OK.
    I don't know if they were not--
    If that was occupied--
    France--
    --at that point by Italy--
    I thought-- yeah, but they came.
    It's just curious.
    And he complains that he has rheumatism, he has no shoes,
    he has no underwear, and it's cold.
    And that was the beginning, only the beginning what he was--
    subsequently what happened to him because after the war,
    I didn't know--
    we just knew he was gone because anyone who survived
    came forward, made contact.
    We didn't hear from him, and we assumed
    he perished in Auschwitz.
    But years later, the Red Cross--
    I have all the papers here.
    The Red Cross sent a letter that they
    have access to files that the Germans kept
    and which were now available, and they found out about the--
    what happened to a lot of the victims of the Holocaust.
    And we learned that he went to a death camp in Sobibor
    because the Red Cross contacted us and showed us the papers.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember receiving those letters?
    These letters?
    Yes.
    My mother received them.
    Did she share them with you?
    Did she share them with you?
    Maybe.
    I don't know.
    I found these letters after.
    Maybe she did or she didn't.
    I always wanted to know.
    I remember I always wanted to know if my father wrote
    to me separately.
    And I just felt, what did he write to me?
    And sometimes he would add a little--
    but not always, yeah.
    But I don't think she shared this with--
    the fact that he was in agony and so severely depressed
    and that he fainted, it was hard for him.
    Yeah.
    And I-- when I was in America, every night I would cry.
    I would miss him so much, and I would always daven
    that I would see him again.
    We were hoping.
    But I knew-- by the time the war was ending, I didn't--
    there wasn't much hope left.
    Yeah.
    I was aware somehow that it must have been very vicious there,
    that things--
    I kind of felt that--
    I had that-- when he didn't contact us or my aunt
    and uncle, I used to think every once in a while, well,
    maybe he lost his memory, and maybe--
    that was wishful thinking--
    and maybe sometime he'll--
    maybe we'll get-- but for the longest time--
    since 1995-- I really didn't know.
    When you don't know, you always think that maybe he's
    alive somewhere.
    But the Red Cross settled that question.
    That was--
    So you didn't get those documents to 1995
    from the Red Cross?
    Yeah, I did.
    In 1995.
    In 1995.
    And then somehow the newspaper--
    the local newspapers got a hold of my story that I finally--
    I was one of the first ones to contact the Red
    Cross to find out what really--
    how my father-- what happened to my father.
    And the Red Cross wanted to advertise
    that other people should come forth and try
    to find the whereabouts of their relatives.
    So they had-- they printed a little picture
    of me and my father and wrote my story in the local newspapers.
    I have a copy of it with me.
    Was your mother still alive at that time?
    Oh, yes, my mother lived--
    yes, yes.
    She lived until she was 91 years old, yeah.
    She was always very hard-working, courageous.
    My mother, afterwards-- we were living in this cold-water flat,
    and it cost $11 a month.
    It was cold in the winter.
    And I was 15.
    I was 15 years old It was already after the war.
    And my mother had a male friend from the same town
    where she came from.
    She remembered him.
    And he was married to a relative of my mother's, and they
    were all very close when they were living in Czechoslovakia.
    But he remained here without his family,
    in America here, also for economic reasons.
    So his family was left behind, and they
    perished because it was too late to get them out.
    For religious reasons, he never had them even--
    he was from Czechoslovakia, and it was too late.
    And he remained single, and he approached
    my mother, the two of them.
    So they got married, so he was my stepfather.
    But the way my mother said it to me, when she was about--
    before she agreed to marry him, she said to me--
    I can't forget it.
    She, said Nelly, when you get married--
    you're going to get older, and you'll eventually get married--
    can I come and live with you, be with you?
    I said-- I was thinking about it,
    and I don't know how I answered this.
    But I said, it depends what my husband
    will want, my future husband.
    Yeah.
    I don't know how I said that because I meant to say,
    of course you'll live with me.
    But I said, I don't know.
    I didn't know where this was coming from.
    And then she said to me, you will get eventually
    have your own life.
    You will get married.
    And I can have--
    I will have-- can have a life.
    Your father is-- so I said, oh, Mommy, will we have steam now?
    Because I guess the conditions were not that great.
    We lived seven years in a-- where
    the bathtub is in the kitchen and the toilet in the hall.
    And it was-- and my friends wouldn't
    come visit me in the winter, things like that, yeah.
    So it was-- so my mother remarried,
    but I was never happy with--
    I was never happy with him.
    I kept comparing him to my father, and it was difficult.
    He didn't understand me.
    I didn't understand him.
    He lost his family.
    But we came to terms much later on,
    and we had a good relationship.
    But in the beginning, it was very hard, very hard.
    Where was he from?
    He was also from Czechoslovakia, the same town my mother
    was from.
    Oh, right.
    Yes, I mentioned it.
    But through him I met my husband, yes.
    My husband was a sole survivor from the Holocaust.
    He was in hiding.
    And he decided he'll come--
    this was, of course, after the war, in 1947.
    I was 17.
    And he decided he's coming to visit his uncle.
    He was-- my stepfather was his uncle through his first wife.
    The first wife was my husband's mother's sister.
    It's a little complicated.
    But he had no other relative.
    My husband had no one left anymore from his mother's side.
    So he was coming here as a visitor,
    and he came straight into my house.
    And he was also from Czechoslovakia?
    He was also from Czechoslovakia.
    He and my mother later on had much in common.
    They talked for hours about the town, and the friends,
    and the relatives.
    What was the name of the town?
    Bardejov, Bardejov, yeah, Czechoslovakia.
    So how old were you when you married?
    18.
    Yeah.
    See, he stayed.
    He came to visit.
    Different than my father, he was a visitor, but he stayed.
    And I had my aunt and uncle.
    They survived, and they were living upstairs
    on the third from us.
    And I went to stay in their apartment
    while he was staying in my--
    Yeah.
    This was an aunt and uncle from Czechoslovakia?
    Yes, my mother's brother.
    One of them survived.
    One-- my mother was one of nine, and two brothers survived.
    And all my-- the aunt who was like my second mother--
    she subsequently had two children,
    and she went back to Czechoslovakia.
    They were all killed, my mother's younger sister.
    I have some photos of my mother's siblings.
    They all perished.
    Yeah.
    So maybe this would be a good time for us to stop.
    Yeah.
    And then we're going to set up the easel.
    Oh, OK.
    So you can show the documents and photographs
    and talk about it.
    They stopped now?
    We'll stop now.
    OK, we're ready.
    OK, why don't we start with this picture?
    How's that, Dan?
    Too much glare.
    Turn the whole thing.
    Is that better?
    Turn it towards me.
    Let's see if that helps.
    Like that?
    A little more.
    A little more.
    OK, now back the other way, the other way.
    Back, back, back, back, back.
    Keep going, going, going, going, going, going going,
    going, going, going.
    Keep going.
    Keep going.
    Unfortunately, it's going to be at an angle.
    Here?
    Yeah, that's-- yeah.
    OK.
    Would you tell us about this picture?
    This picture was taken just before we left Berlin,
    and my mother left it for a friend of ours to remember us.
    And they were saved.
    They went to Argentina.
    And years later, he came to visit America.
    It was like a special reunion.
    And he had this photograph.
    I hadn't had-- I didn't have it.
    And he said-- he gave it to me, and it's
    very meaningful for me.
    So this was in 19--
    This was--
    --39, '40?
    1939, '40, just before we left we left.
    You left in January, you said--
    We left in '40.
    In January.
    Probably end of '39.
    I can even see the glare from here, Dan.
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    This was the picture in the park.
    I was playing across the street in the park
    when my father came along with his friend, and I was so happy.
    And you could see he was so proud of me.
    I was so proud of him.
    We took a picture.
    So this was about--
    It's the only picture that I have my father and I.
    So this is about 1937?
    This is 1937, before he left for America.
    Yeah, it's interesting.
    That was really the most interesting.
    This is in 1971, April 1971.
    We went back.
    We went to--
    Germany invited us to come back, and I wanted--
    whatever had happened to me in Germany
    as a child, my good memories, my kindergarten, the park
    I played with--
    it was so vague, like it happened to someone else, not--
    it was just in my mind.
    But to go back, and to be there, and to actually
    experience-- see it again, it brought back like a reality
    to me.
    This really did-- I was really there in this--
    and I had a little bit of a childhood.
    So I kept going back to--
    there was an opportunity to do a lot of sightseeing
    because the German government, as a--
    how do you say?
    Wiedergutmachung.
    They tried to-- but they were very--
    they were OK in trying to make us happy, trying--
    they said they could never make amends for what happened to us,
    but OK.
    Nice, OK, but I wanted to do my own thing.
    I didn't-- I kept going back.
    I made my son come back three times
    to my house where I was born and lived and to the school,
    to the Jewish school that I went to.
    And remarkably, I remember all the names of the streets.
    I told him, we're coming to this corner now.
    Now we're coming to this street.
    I don't know how that came back to me like that.
    It was pretty amazing.
    And this--
    He was amazed also.
    And this picture?
    It's the same picture as the photograph where
    I'm standing with my father.
    I found the spot.
    It was very easy for me.
    I found the spot, and at the exact same spot,
    across the street from the park, I'm
    standing there with my son now from 1937 to 1971.
    I'm not very good at math.
    It's about 69 year, something.
    60 years?
    I'm back there with my son.
    And my son was named after my father.
    His name is Yitzhak also, yeah.
    And he got the idea--
    the reason I took him from the other children
    is because he was instrumental in getting me to go there.
    He started the ball rolling.
    He wrote to the German government that--
    Do you know then--
    in the park, where I remember--
    the first signs were on the benches
    in the park, "Jews Forbidden."
    I kept sitting on that bench, getting up, sitting,
    getting up, and kept--
    I just sat there, and I said, I'm sitting on the bench.
    And I had that feeling.
    OK, let's get this--
    I don't know if this is going to stay.
    Let me take the paper clip off.
    Just hold that corner right there.
    Yeah.
    These are the copies from the letters
    that my father wrote while he was--
    he was in a concentration camp, but I guess
    he was able to smuggle out these letters to my mother,
    advising her what to do and yearning to be--
    in each letter, yearning to be with his dearest, precious,
    wonderful family, to be reunited.
    He had that hope.
    But every once-- as a matter of fact,
    when I told you in this letter they had to revive him
    and he had the feeling that he would never see us-- he
    had that feeling he would never see us again.
    But he said he kind of got a hold of himself,
    and afterwards he said, well, the war is not
    going to last forever.
    And maybe we will get--
    he had to kind of--
    it was a source of comfort for him to--
    And this was written from France?
    From France, yeah.
    And I missed him so much that finally I
    wrote a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt. Yeah, that's
    the letter.
    Because my mother was--
    I was sleeping over by my friends,
    and my mother went to Washington for weeks at a time
    in order to get an interview with one
    of these congressmen, senators.
    And they assured her, yeah, they're going to work on it,
    and then I always got a reply, well--
    should I read this letter?
    Sure.
    Oh, yeah?
    And it's dated?
    I wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt imploring her
    that she is a kind--
    I heard she does so many good deeds for humanitarian reasons,
    and I wrote her that I have a father,
    and we would like to be reunited, he needs a visa,
    whatever.
    I don't remember.
    I remember I started the letter, "I am a girl, 12 years old."
    This was written in 1942.
    And on November 2, 1942, I received a reply.
    "My dear Nelly, I have your recent letter addressed
    to Mrs. Roosevelt concerning the visa case of your father,
    Mr. [? Ignatz ?] Friedman, on which an unfavorable conclusion
    was reached after consideration by the Review Committee,
    the Board of Appeals."
    Can you imagine?
    "Under the regulations adopted by the various agencies
    represented in the review procedure,
    a case may not be reconsidered by the Board of Appeals
    until after the lapse of a period of six months--"
    after all that was happening.
    People were dying by the--
    "from the date of the--
    after the lapse of a period of six months from the date
    of the previous disapproval.
    Under these regulations, it will be
    possible for the case of your father
    to be presented at any time after February 24, 1943."
    By that time he was already in Majdanek.
    So they told my mother to be patient.
    They told me to be patient and wait.
    "You are assured that if the case is taken up
    with the department at that time,
    action therein will be expedited as much as possible
    and any additional facts, when made available,
    will be taken into consideration.
    Sincerely yours, HK Travis."
    And he signed it, "Chief Visa Division."
    And all the other letters, the replies
    from the result of my mother's stay in Washington--
    the same thing, each one of them.
    Wait six months, everything disapproved,
    signed Secretary of Interdepartmental Visa
    Review Committee, the case of [? Ignatz ?] Friedman.
    Yeah.
    Then you had to submit B or C IRS
    forms to the attorneys of such person,
    made it very complicated.
    You know when they wrote my mother a favorable letter
    that something--
    when he was already gone.
    Yeah.
    So how many-- I got quite a--
    I have all these letters as proof--
    they're really important documents--
    to show how indifferent they were to the Holocaust.
    And I don't know.
    I think people did know what was happening
    in Europe at the time, killings and things like that.
    They just didn't care.
    Oh, you want me to show?
    Yes, absolutely.
    Oh, well, this is my family now.
    Yeah, it's wonderful.
    Yeah.
    If you could just face that towards the camera.
    Put it here?
    Yeah, that's fine.
    Well, I have four children, two girls and two boys,
    and they were married and have children.
    And now I have 15 grandchildren and about to have
    11 or 12 great-grandchildren.
    And when was this picture taken?
    This picture was taken in 1998.
    OK.
    Yes.
    My daughter was-- my daughter, who lives in Israel--
    my youngest daughter, Dina, who lives who lives in Israel,
    had an opportunity to come here with her children.
    And that was the first time that all my family at the time
    was together, could be together.
    So we decided on a family picture.
    The great-grandchildren weren't here yet,
    but it was an opportunity.
    And I don't know when we'll ever have that chance
    again, when all the cousins--
    maybe if my son, who lives in Chicago now,
    and my daughter and her married sons will come to Israel or--
    we can all take another family picture again.
    My husband has, unfortunately, passed
    away, but my husband was still alive.
    And we went to the park, and when I--
    this is a copy.
    When we had the picture--
    I have a huge picture in my house
    because it's the only one that I have of the family--
    all my family together.
    So when I had it framed, the person in the frame--
    who was framing it said, oh, this is a boys' school?
    Of course, my daughter has seven sons and one daughter.
    The last one was the daughter.
    And my oldest daughter, [? Rivki, ?] she
    has three sons, and only my son in Chicago
    has two daughters and two sons.
    So my daughter in Israel had another girl,
    so that was seven sons and one girl.
    I call them Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
    And so that makes it 12 grandsons
    and three granddaughters.
    All right.
    That's a beautiful family.
    Kinehora.
    Thank you.
    Yeah.
    OK, now if you'll tell us about this.
    Oh, and this was 1995.
    The Red Cross was--
    I don't know.
    I received a letter from the Red Cross that they are now--
    they have access to files that the Germans kept.
    And for a long time I did not contact them because I thought,
    how would they even know?
    But then somehow I did--
    I thought it over.
    I did send for the application.
    And I was so surprised that someone called me
    about maybe six months later and said they would
    like to come see me in person.
    And they said that because of the--
    well, you said it's not so meticulous, accurate,
    but in this case, it is accurate, that they found--
    they found a records of what exactly happened to my father,
    that he was deported to Majdanek and ultimately taken
    to a death camp in Sobibor.
    And you have his name on a list here?
    This is the list of the convoy in which he was deported.
    In this convoy-- it was under Eichmann.
    Eichmann was the commander.
    And I believe there were 1,000 people who were in his convoy,
    maybe over 1,000.
    Six were able to escape.
    There's his name right there.
    Yeah.
    And this was the convoy 63 from Drancy, it says.
    Yeah.
    I think only six were able to escape.
    Three were ultimately caught, and three made it,
    and one is still alive in Israel.
    Have it, Dan?
    So really until you received this letter you--
    I used to think every once in a while, maybe he has amnesia,
    and he lost it, and that's why he didn't contact--
    I always used to say, maybe he's still alive.
    I wasn't-- but realistically, I knew in my mind that he went
    to Auschwitz because after the war,
    it seemed that everyone was talking about Auschwitz.
    And we didn't-- it was like we didn't know anything.
    Like he kind of just vanished.
    And here's the--
    And until then I really didn't know.
    Here's the page.
    It just documents that he was--
    I was still a child.
    But now I can observe his yahrzeit.
    I know approximately--
    I think, exactly when--
    because they told me when he was deported
    and when they were gassed.
    So I used to keep his yahrzeit, a date out of-- out of the hat,
    so to speak.
    But now I keep it--
    it was just a week ago, in March.
    Yeah.
    So I have a idea of--
    and I know the year.
    But that's it.
    I know for certain.
    If there's--
    Yeah.
    If there's anything that you forgot to tell us
    or that we didn't discuss that you think you'd like to add,
    this would--
    Yeah, I had some traumatic experiences while in Berlin.
    This was after my father was already in America,
    when the hatred for Jews was really in the open.
    And in the neighborhood, they knew who was Jewish,
    and I was known as a Jewish child.
    And I'm walking in the street, and one of the neighborhood
    hoodlums comes from the back of me and slaps me in the face,
    gave me a real hard slap.
    I guess I was only--
    I was barely nine years old.
    And I just kept on walking.
    And then I turned around, and I see he's
    coming after me with a stick.
    He's looking for a stick, and he's coming--
    but I was nearing a corner, and I
    ran right around the corner up in the house,
    up the five steps, shaking.
    When I think about it, I'm still shaken-up.
    And this was like morning, and I stayed there
    until late at night.
    Meantime, my mother was--
    I was afraid to come down.
    This wasn't your house?
    No, I just ran into a building as I--
    I just had reached--
    I don't know.
    I was just so lucky.
    I don't know what he would have done with me.
    And so-- well, anyway, my mother was frantic.
    She sent out looking for me.
    It wasn't like me not to come home.
    But I ventured out as it became dark, and I told her.
    So that's just one of the memories
    besides the Kristallnacht.
    And then there was another--
    I have another traumatic memory.
    I was sitting in a haircut salon,
    and this man was cutting my hair.
    And we got into a conversation, and I even--
    and it was-- the bad times were--
    and I even said, my father's not here or something.
    I was talking.
    I think I was afraid to say he's an American.
    I don't remember the conversation.
    But he assumed I wasn't Jewish, and he was very nice.
    And then I said, [SPEAKING GERMAN],, I'm Jewish,
    as the--
    well, when he heard that, he practically cut me bald.
    He was cutting my hair, started to molest me a little bit.
    I was-- and it was terrible.
    The minute he heard I was Jewish--
    yeah.
    He could do it.
    They felt that now we can-- we're
    free to do with whatever we can.
    And another incident--
    I was riding a tricycle.
    I had a tricycle, and another little kid
    came along and wanted it.
    And they took it away from me.
    There's no one-- no police that--
    it wasn't mine anymore, these little things.
    Now, that I remember when I was quite very young.
    Yeah.
    But the things like that--
    you can imagine.
    That was just the beginning with the antisemitism.
    Oh, I forgot to tell you the most important story that was--
    oh, I don't know how I skipped that.
    When we were living with a family that we moved in,
    there were three other families living there together.
    And I think it was Rosh Hashanah morning.
    It was a holiday.
    And I was sleeping in this crib in the--
    I didn't have a real bed.
    But it was a thoroughfare, the apartment,
    like a railroad apartment, and 6 o'clock in the morning,
    the Nazis marched in.
    And there were two men in their underwear,
    the Jewish men from the family.
    They took them out.
    They marched in, these Nazis, at gunpoint
    told them, out, out, and through my room,
    at gunpoint, in their underwear, marched them out.
    I was so frightened to see that.
    There must have been two--
    and these were my mother's good friends.
    I can't really--
    I don't know how I could have--
    I must've just repressed that in my mind.
    Two days later, my mother's crying.
    My mother and her friend-- they're
    sobbing like anything, terrible.
    They thought I didn't know.
    I don't know.
    I overheard the conversation.
    They sent back the ashes from these men
    that they took at gunpoint.
    They wrote them a letter, and here were the ashes.
    You said if I knew about it.
    No one had to tell me.
    These things were just--
    I knew it.
    Even my mother finally told me.
    She wouldn't have told me.
    Just from overhearing their crying like that-- but
    that's what they were doing.
    And I remember thinking, oh, my father's
    in America, because they didn't harm the women and children,
    not yet, while I was there.
    They were taking the men off the streets
    and sending them to concentration camp.
    But this was so horrible.
    I guess I didn't mention it earlier
    because it's too painful.
    That was something.
    Yeah.
    I know.
    I was so young, and this is so many years later.
    And it just sticks in my mind.
    And considering what the people afterwards went through,
    I can't imagine.
    My story is perhaps not as horrible, but it's still--
    for me, it left something that you can't forget.
    Saying this was my child--
    you can't impart that to young children today.
    They can't even imagine.
    And that's why, when we came to America--
    living the way we did and hoping that my father would still
    be alive, we felt so fortunate.
    It didn't matter that I didn't have steam
    that much and my mother was struggling.
    We were free.
    We were-- yeah.
    I always feel to this day--
    it's like we came out of a fire unscathed.
    But not whole, yeah.
    And it is-- it is unheard of that my father was already
    in America.
    He was one year in America, and he
    was enjoying the sunshine, too, in the summer
    because he suffered from rheumatism.
    And he said he feels healthy again somehow, and summers
    at the beach--
    it was like a healing process.
    And then he went back in 1939.
    He thought Belgium-- he went to Belgium because Belgium
    was neutral at the time.
    But-- I don't know-- he must have been there six months,
    and Hitler overran Belgium.
    It was unbelievable.
    Yeah.
    It's an upside down world.
    Well, I thank you very, very much for coming
    and sharing this with us today.
    Well, OK, I think it's important, right?
    Well, we appreciate it.
    To have to have been in America in 1939 and to go back--
    and if not for my father, my mother and I
    would not be alive.
    He felt-- he missed us so badly--
    it's something that-- it's hard to believe, right?
    Yeah.
    Well, thank you again for coming.
    Yeah.
    I'm glad.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Nelly Grussgott, born May 9, 1930 in Berlin, Germany, describes her Czech entrepreneur mother; her parents’ marriage through a matchmaker; growing up in a religious home; visiting her grandparents who were Czech and Hungarian; attending Jewish school; her mother’s once kind non-Jew customers turning to Nazism; seeing “Jews Forbidden” signs in parks and cinemas; enduring stone-throwing at her school; her hair dresser cutting her bald after learning Nelly was Jewish; the police stealing her bike; her mother and herself rooming with other families; rationing food; Kristallnacht; having to stop attending school; her father’s departure to the United States; Nazis entering apartments; seeing Jewish men marched out in their underwear; her father’s thwarted efforts to bring his wife and daughter to the US and his return to Belgium; going on a Kindertransport in 1940 with her mother to the US; the journey on the ship; feeling empathy for people left behind, knowing they would die; entering Ellis Island and being picked up by family she had not met previously; her surprise in learning she could have two bowls of soup instead of one; being known as “the refuge” in NYC school; learning English; being poverty-stricken but feeling free; her mother peddling goods to survive; crying every night, missing her father; the German invasion into Belgium and receiving her father’s letter of suffering awaiting a visa; her father being rounded up and sent to Marseille, where he was accused of being a spy; the Red Cross confirming in 1995 that her father was sent to Drancy internment camp then to a death camp (Lublin-Majdanek); extended family that perished in the Holocaust; Nelly’s confusion in her mother’s remarriage (mother lived to age 91); various documents including US government’s indifferent responses to Nelly’s and her mother’s pleas on behalf of her father; photographs including Nelly’s return to Germany as an adult; Nelly's regret that her father left the US because he missed his family; and her humility knowing others suffered more than her.
    Interviewee
    Ms. Nelly Grussgott
    Date
    interview:  2011 March 29
    Credit Line
    This testimony was recorded through a joint project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (DVCAM) : sound, color ; 1/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Grussgott, Nelly, 1930-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in partnership with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, produced the interview with Nelly Grussgott on March 29, 2011.
    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 09:26:12
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn44095

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    Oral history interviews with Orthodox Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

    Date: 2011 March 08

    Oral history interview with Isaac Kurtz

    Oral history interview with Isaac Kurtz

    Oral History

    Isaac Kurtz, born November 12, 1925 in Košice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses his loving Polish/Hungarian Orthodox home; his mother and father, a homemaker and a merchant; his four siblings; his first experience with antisemitism in the first grade; how his bar mitzvah was thwarted by a synagogue raid; hearing survivor reports of Jews digging their own graves; the ceding of Košice to Hungary in 1938; the forced liquidation of his family’s store; arrests of Jewish citizenry; sharing a cell with doctors and lawyers; the family’s deportation and transport by cattle car to a brick factory; his attempted escape and beating upon capture; injuries he received from the beating; his family’s arrival in Auschwitz; seeing “big chimney-flames flying to heaven”; the clubbing of the elderly and ill upon their exit from the train; encountering Dr. Josef Mengele; his realization of the gravity of their situation; his mother’s final hope that they would not be tortured; the murder of his mother and disabled uncle; life as a prisoner along with his father and brother in the concentration camp; forced labor on the railroad; miserable conditions in the barracks; the murder of his oldest brother; a prisoner doctor who diagnosed him with a severe leg infection as a result of his beating; his four week recovery in the hospital; the murder of sickly patients; an accident on a work detail from Gross-Rosen camp; his assignment to peeling potatoes in the kitchen; being rewarded by a kapo for singing Shabbat songs; sneaking whole potatoes to others; being caught; keeping track of and observing High Holy Days; enduring other beatings; prisoner hangings; his attempted suicide; being assigned to latrines; visiting his father in the convalescent block; the cries and prayers of fellow prisoners; liberation by the Russians; conditions in the camp after liberation; having to clear roads in frigid conditions to reach a village; enduring torture in a village and nearly freezing to death; his joy in finding his father and brother; their month long journey, reaching their ransacked home; the few Jewish survivors in Košice; learning that his mother and older sister had perished; other survivor stories; reclaiming his mother’s jewelry; regaining his health (describing skeletal photographs); rebuilding his life in Austria, the United States, and Canada; becoming a cantor; and his feeling that the fact he survived is all together miraculous.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Goldner

    Oral history interview with Lilly Goldner

    Oral History

    Lilly Goldner (née Josefovitz), born in 1926 in Újfehértó, Hungary, discusses her Hasidic town and school; growing up in a happy family; being the eighth child of 16 children; the religious inspiration behind her father purchasing the family store; Passover; her family making kosher wine; being 16 years old and hearing that Czechoslovakian Jews were expelled and the disbelief of the town to this news; the order for all the Jews of Újfehértó to stay home; their expulsion and her family's anguish as they were herded into horse-driven buggies; her memories of her best friend, who was a non-Jew, crying as they left; the separation of the women and the men; never seeing her father again; doing forced labor in a tobacco drying barn in Simapuszta, Hungary (a small area in Békés County); doing forced labor in Nyírbátor, Hungary for six weeks; protecting her mother; surviving on bread and potatoes; being transported for two-days by cattle car to Auschwitz; the hostility she endured while assisting her grandmother off the train; seeing men in striped suits; her intitial experiences in the camp, including having her hair cut, being given soap, showering, and dressing in a simple dress; the miserable barracks conditions; how when the women slept they all had to turn at same time; finding Dr. Josef Mengele handsome but seeing him take all of the twins; witnessing pregnant women giving birth and seeing their babies taken away; seeing her 29 year old sister and two year old nephew being taken away and never seeing them again; being taken with 300 other girls to the crematory naked, and then returning to the barracks; being transported to the Weisswasser factory; the conditions in the barracks, including the cold showers; the limited conversation with other inmates, but having a Hanukkah observance; the dangerous forced labor conditions, making glass radio bulbs; having two meals a day, including breakfast (piece of bread and coffee) and soup for lunch; the punishment for stealing potatoes; experiencing a five day "death walk" and stealing bread from pig feed to survive; witnessing assaults by Irma Grese; the infrequent kindness from another woman guard who allowed the singing of Jewish melodies; being transport to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Celle, Germany); the deaths of half the prisoners; finding two of her cousins alive; stealing potato peels for oldest cousin, who was too weak to walk; feeling optimistic when she heard bombings; witnessing gratuitous shootings after liberation; the British troops' well-intended delivery of beans to the emaciated, which caused the deaths of some of the inmates; her husband's experience seeing General Eisenhower in a camp and hearing him say, "You are free"; reuniting with two of her brothers; rebuilding her life; getting married and immigrating to the United States; her visit back to Hungary; and her closing message to her grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Irene Greenfeld

    Oral history interview with Irene Greenfeld

    Oral History

    Irene Greenfeld, born May 2, 1934 in Hungary, discusses growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home; preparing kosher food and celebrating Shabbat; attending a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; enduring stone-throwing and being forced to stay at home; learning of the gas chambers in Poland; the deportation of her father in 1942 to do forced labor; her mother's home garden sustaining the family and neighbors; conditions changing when the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944; the closing of the Jewish school and the deportation of the teachers; being sent to the ghetto with her parents; being sent to the brick factory in Debrecen, Hungary in June 1944; being sent to Strasshof concentration camp and the conditions during the journey there; the Ukrainian guards; her mother’s efforts to protect her children in the camp; being marched with her family from Strasshof to a Vienna school building; conditions in the camps, including the food and lice; educating her siblings; being afraid of the guards; hearing antisemitic military songs; her mother’s forced labor at a bread factory; her grandmother's paralysis; her family surviving a direct bomb to the school; being sent to Theresienstadt and finding her aunt briefly; being forced to send false letters to friends and family; witnessing death; a visit by the Red Cross to the camp; liberation by Russian troops; returning to their home and finding out that only six of the 120 Jewish families in their town had survived; reclaiming dispersed furniture; her father’s experiences in Auschwitz; immigrating to the United States in 1948; living in New York, NY and maintaining an Orthodox home; getting married to a Holocaust survival; her thoughts on history repeating itself; rebuilding her life in the US; and her family in the US.

    Oral history interview with Deborah Freund

    Oral history interview with Deborah Freund

    Oral History

    Deborah Freund, born on August 16, 1926 in Satu Mare, Romania, describes growing up Orthodox; being the youngest of four sisters and two brothers; the deportation of both her brothers to labor camps (one went to Ukraine); her childhood before the war; attending public school and being allowed to be observant; the Hungarian takeover in 1942; her family's disbelief when Polish refugees reported death camps circa 1944; experiencing the rise of antisemitism (Jewish store closings, fear of entering street, enduring name callings); her mother's severe weight loss following the deportation of her son; obtaining false Christian papers, which were ignored; being arrested with her family and sent to a ghetto; spending two to three weeks in Auschwitz; enduring several labor camps (including Danzig and Stuffhof); being treated like animals; enduring belt whippings by "Max and Barbara" (who were later hanged together); receiving only daily cabbage soup; doing forced labor in an airplane factory in Leipzig, Germany (probably the HASAG Leipzig camp); the bombing of the camp; being sent on a forced march for one week; liberation and going to Bucharest, Romania; reunification with her surviving family in Satu Mare (one brother did not return and her other brother was shot following an attempted escape); the few children in town; getting married in 1946; resuming her religious life; going to Cyprus in 1947 and the birth of her daughter when war was breaking out; moving to Israel in 1949; her surprise when she find out her in brother-in-law survived following his imprisonment for stealing potatoes in Kazakhstan; immigrating to Canada; the birth of her son in 1957; moving to New York, NY; her nine grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren; an artifact she has from her childhood home that survived the Nazi invasion; and visiting Romania.

    Oral history interview with Ib Nathan Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Ib Nathan Bamberger

    Oral History

    Dr. Ib Nathan Bamberger, born on March 21, 1925 in Würzburg, Germany, discusses growing up in a Jewish family; his Danish mother and German father; his family moving to Denmark (probably Copenhagen) before 1933; being the oldest of four children; the family's Shabbat traditions; his maternal grandfather (Rabbi Pearlstein from Denmark); his father, who worked as an antiquarian; attending a boys' school; his home studies with a rabbi; having a stable childhood under the Danish government; life under the German "protectorate"; hearing that King Christian X rejected Nazi pressure for Jews to wear the yellow star; the Telegram Crisis in 1942; the Nazis' attempted synagogue bombing, which was followed by the King's apology to Jewish congregants; the beginning of German martial law in 1943 and the Danish government stepping down; the Danish Jews' ongoing disbelief and belief that "nothing would happen"; how relationships played a part in the protection of Jews (e.g. King Christian and his Jewish doctor, Dr. Kaufman); seeing American planes over Copenhagen; the story of a rabbi who received a tip-off and was able to thwart a Nazi round-up of Danish Jews (Dr. Bamberger refers to the events of the evening as "Rosh Hashanah Night"); the 478 Danish Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp; a non-Jewish family hiding the Bamberger family; being transferred to a farm, joining 200 Jews hiding in a hayloft; former Nazi Georg Duckwitz facilitating 7000 Jews in a fishing boat to transfer to Swedish torpedo boats and ultimately be received as "Guests of Swedish state"; receiving a pension from Sweden for teaching children during his time as refugee; how, thanks to King Christian intervention, the majority of Theresienstadt Danes survived the war; his reintegration into Denmark; reclaiming their home, which was untouched, as well as their antique shop; and his family archival photographs.

    Oral history interview with Jutka Strauss

    Oral history interview with Jutka Strauss

    Oral History

    Jutka Strauss, born on October 19, 1924, discusses growing up in pre-war Satu Mare, Hungary (present day Romania); attending public school; enjoying a quiet life in her Hasidic family; her father's disapproval of his wife and daughters reading books; her father's hat store; the deportation of two of her brothers into forced labor in Ukraine; one of her brothers being shot during an attempted escape; being imprisoned with her sister for 10 months after their failed escape to Romania; life in imprisonment; being transferred by cattle car to a ghetto, where they lived for four weeks; arriving in Auschwitz and being stunned by the number of S.S. officers (she had the impression that one of the officers felt sorry for the women); being selected by Dr. Mengele for the crematorium and avoiding it by slipping back into line with her sister; being processed in a holding room; being transported to Riga, Latvia to Dondangen concentration camp; the horrible conditions in the camp and experiencing starvation; being forced to march; going to Germany and doing forced labor in a plane factory; the approach of the Russians and seeing that the German guards were scared; being liberated by American troops; her memories of malnourished survivors getting sick from overeating; going to Budapest, Hungary, and then to her hometown of Satu Mare; discovering that her parents and other brother had not survived; reuniting with her sister; moving with her sister to Romania to join another sister; living in cramped conditions with five other survivors; meeting her husband; immigrating to the United States from Italy; arriving in New York, NY by ship; working in a factory, jewelry business; settling in Brooklyn; meeting a survivor who had jump from a cattle car and was sheltered by a peasant family until the war was over; and some of her family photographs (which she shares during the recording).

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Wargon

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Wargon

    Oral History

    Yitzchok Wargon (born August 28, 1922), describes his family, including his two sisters and brother (born 1930 and died 1932); his extended family; life in Radomsko, Poland; being raised and educated in a Hasidic house and community; his cherished memories of the rabbi and seder, including the music; his family receiving a healing miracle from a rabbi in Kamińsk, Poland; the rise of antisemitism; hearing Hitler on the radio; reading of Buchenwald concentration camp in a Jewish paper; the bombing in 1939 and the Nazis entering Radomsko; townspeople fleeing in fear of more bombings; his family re-entering Radomsko's destroyed town center (had been 95 percent Yiddish); how the Wargon house was still standing but became part of the Radomsko ghetto; the marking of Jewish able-bodied men with colored patches and the forced labor they were made to do, including carpentry; overcrowding in the ghetto; the severe beating of his father; how everyone was holding onto the Jewish belief, "Never lose faith"; the breakup of his family when they were deported into jam-packed cattle cars and many others in town were shot; his father's farewell to him (he told Yitzchok that he had served as a son, "not a 100 percent but a 1000 percent"); the deportation of his family to Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps; doing nine months of forced labor at Skarzysko-Kamienna ammunition factory; life there, including beatings, lice, and starvation; being marched with the other near-dead inmates to a shooting site and escaping over a barbed wire fence into the woods; being captured, but being given a pass; being provided daily soup until the liquidation of the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp; the shootings of many inmates; arriving in Buchenwald and being counted; the Gestapo tricking men by providing bread if they would tell on Skarzysko-Kamienna soldiers; going to Schlieben concentration camp and doing forced labor; his finger being blown off in a bombing and another prisoner (a former surgeon from Warsaw) saving his life; being sent on a death march to Berlin, Germany; how those who fell were shot and only one third of the prisoners survived; liberation; the concerns about emaciated survivors eating too much; the people who helped him recover; bartering with vodka and packs of American cigarettes; staking a claim on housing and being afraid of being shot; being assaulted by an American soldier involved in black market currency trading; how six weeks after liberation, his Jewish Russian soldier friend (Max, who had been guarding Hitler's bunker) sneaked Ytizchok through a small hole into Hitler's bunker; seeing the dining room and crystal ware and getting inebriated drinking Hitler's 90 proof spirit; recovering on Hitler's couch (realizing the irony) and confiscating the silver set with Führer engraving; entering the American zone; working the black market in the DP (displaced persons) camps, (Weiden and Neu Freiman); moving to Hamburg, Germany; receiving HIAS assistance to move to New York, NY in 1949; meeting his wife who also survived the Holocaust; learning trade; being the only one of his extended family to survive the Holocaust; and his closing statement ("We Jewish people cannot give up!"). [Note he shows photographs at the end of the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Miriam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Miriam Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

    Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

    Oral History

    Ruth Finkelstein, born on October 15, 1927 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Polish-Jewish family; her four siblings; her father, who was a store keeper; being frowned upon as Polish Jews by German Jews; experiencing antisemitism from a public-school teacher; enduring stone-throwing from non-Jewish children; exiting Hebrew school; having to blend into the crowd; being prevented from going to parks and theaters; only being allowed to shop during the German siesta (early afternoon); her father being temporarily sent to a camp and returning home physically altered; the deportation of her father to Buchenwald concentration camp (her family received a box of his ashes); Jews being blocked from shelters during air raids; being transported for three days by truck to France in 1940 and the fear and uncertainty she experienced; receiving some assistance by the Red Cross during a stop during the journey; arriving in Camp de Gurs, where they stayed for nearly four months; experiencing overcrowding, straw mattresses, malnutrition, and no medical treatment; her mother’s death from pneumonia; being assigned with her siblings to the children’s barrack and receiving a bit more food; how her older brothers gathered a crowd and provided prayers; being allowed to leave the camp along with her siblings and go to the village; going on a Kindertransport to Château de Chabannes, run by the OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux Enfants); director of the orphanage, Felix Chevrier; having play dates and schooling in the forest while the Gestapo came to the children's home; being 13 years old and providing mothering and education to her younger siblings; Chevrier allowing Shabbat and her younger brothers conducting seder; immigrating to the United States in 1941 under an Eleanor Roosevelt visa; and being taken in by her aunt and uncle.

    Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

    Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

    Oral History

    Pearl Benisch, born in 1917, discusses her parents, Reb Leib and Chaya Fraida Mandelker; a teacher who gave her son to non-Jewish family so he could survive and a toddler's awareness of antisemitism, even at three years old; being a protégé of Sarah Schenirer (Shnirer), who began the Bais Ya’akov movement (Orthodox Jewish girls schools, also called Beth Jacob Schools); observing Schenirer’s burial in 1935; writing a biography on Schenirer called “Carry Me In Your Heart”; her family and classmates being deported to the Krakow ghetto; accounts of the Bais Ya’akov girls' support of each other; stories of prisoners singing to cope with starvation and torturous factory labor; a prisoner risking life for a small piece of bread and tossing it to 30-40 people scrambling to receive it; the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in 1941; the split up of her family; her brother being deported to Theresienstadt (he survived the war); saying good-bye to her parents, who did not survive; being sent with the Bais Ya’akov girls to Płaszów camp; doing forced labor, sewing soldier uniforms; being transported to Auschwitz (Birkenau); witnessing the camp guards ripping a child from a mother, then shooting both to teach others a lesson; witnessing Jews having to jump into pits to be shot (a few singing as they jumped in); enduring beatings; a prisoner sneaking shofar into Auschwitz and blowing it; Rebbetzin Tzila Sorotzkin, the “White Angel of Auschwitz” (formerly “Orlean", also known as “Tillie Rinder”); a notable Bais Yaakov teacher, who after being imprisoned, served as an Auschwitz infirmary nurse/secretary and thwarted killings of countless Jews (and also dared to light candles in the barracks); her Bais Ya’akov classmate, Rivkah Horowitz-Pinkusewitz, who stood up to Gestapo, risking her life for Pearl and others; being transported to Bergen-Belsen; how almost all the prisoners were very sick (many dying); being forced to sew six tops a day for half a piece of bread; trying to observe Shabbos by sewing extra sets on all the other days of the week and turning in those sets on Shabbos; liberation; the soldiers dusting barracks to kill lice; the assistance from Zionist organizations and various rabbis, including British Chaplain Rabbi Baumgarten; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp; establishing a kosher kitchen; her message to young people “Love thyself; once you love yourself, you can love others”; and her memoir “To Vanquish the Dragon.”

    Oral history interview with Malka Schick

    Oral history interview with Malka Schick

    Oral History

    Malka Schick (née Korn), born in 1944 in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy, discusses her family’s flight from Belgium to France; her grandmother’s only son and youngest daughter dying in an air raid; her family constantly moving and hiding from Gestapo; finding safety in Italian-protected France; her family’s anticipation of the Nazi storming of Saint-Martin-Vésubie in 1943; her family fleeing with 1000 Jews, following Italian soldiers over the Alps into Italy, mistakenly believing they were seeking safety; her family being met by Enzo Cavaglion and the Cuneo Jewish community and Cuneo priests; the Fascist forces; how 350 Jews were tricked into coming out of hiding to live openly and the majority of them were killed; her father and uncle hiding with partisans in the mountains, sleeping in the elements, and experiencing starvation; hearing survivor accounts (including Walter Marx and others); the deportations of people in cattle cars; Catholics (one named Anna) sheltering Malka’s mother who was pregnant with Malka; her father being shot and killed while coming down the mountain to meet his new-born baby (Malka); her family’s move to Demonte, Italy; the Christians/Protestants who achieved “righteous Gentile status” (including Priest Raimond), who at great risk to themselves hid and fed many Jewish people; her paternal grandmother’s death in Treblinka; her great uncle’s murder in Auschwitz; life after the war; how her mother and uncle were never able to speak of the Holocaust; returning to Belgium with her grandmother; how even in post-war a Polish Jew returning to hometown to claim his home was shot; having her father’s remains transferred from Italy and reburied in Israel; her survivor documents and photographs of her family; returning to Italy to visit the tree near where her father was shot; documents associated with Enzo Cavaglion, head of Cuneo's tiny remaining Jewish community and the city's yearly memorial efforts; becoming a teacher; and her work teaching the Holocaust to children.

    Oral history interview with Mendel Leben

    Oral history interview with Mendel Leben

    Oral History

    Mendel Leben, born on July 15 (circa 1925-1930) in Konin, Poland, discusses his parents who owned a hardware store; Konin's Jewish community; the Germans marching into his hometown on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, interrupting services (September 13, 1939); the German police entering his home in November 1939 and telling his family they would be “returned in three days”; his family’s three-day cattle wagon deportation to Ostrowiec; being placed in the “Jewish section”; enduring deprivation; struggling to keep his three year old sister quiet; going into hiding with his family; being captured after 18 days; the killing of his mother and brother; spending three months in the ghetto; spending 15 months in Treblinka; his sister and her three year old being shot (his older sister survived); being deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau; being transferred to Auschwitz III-Monowitz-Buna; his brother and father being murdered (possibly in a gas chamber); being in Buchenwald for two weeks and encountering his cousin; being wounded in a shooting; being transported to a hospital; volunteering for Nordhausen; surviving Allied bombings followed by the American liberation; learning of his brother’s plight (first Dachau, murdered at Sachsenhausen); his post-war experiences in Dora and Bergen-Belsen; the liberated dying from well-meaning but poor re-introduction of food; Buchenwald displaced persons camp, which was guided by American chaplain Herschel Schacter; resuming his studies in Lundsberg, Sweden, where he stayed for four years; immigration with his brother to the United States; and becoming an electrical engineer. (He shows personal photographs at the end of the interview.

    Oral history interview with Ava Schneck

    Oral history interview with Ava Schneck

    Oral History

    Ava Schneck, born on November 26, 1923 in Békéscsaba, Hungary, discusses growing up in an affluent family; having six brothers and one sister; living in an Orthodox Jewish community; the German invasion of Hungary in 1944; the closing of businesses; her father transferring his textile business to non-Jewish woman with the understanding that some proceeds would be sent to his family while they were in hiding; her father being taken to a forced labor camp (he survived the war but died from complications incurred from his experiences); surviving in 1944 Budapest by posing as a Christian (she had acquired false papers); her brother offering a Gestapo member a cigarette, which she believes saved his life (she says not having a cigarette could have revealed his Jewishness since there were no cigarettes in the ghetto); living in fear; witnessing deportations; the shootings; using a code word to identify fellow Jews (she has forgotten the code word); sneaking a little money from their textile business to her mother and siblings, who were hiding; her anger that no country was coming to their rescue; taking a two-week journey from Budapest to Békéscsaba (sleeping in barns) after liberation; the Christians’ fear of Russian soldiers retaliation if they did not assist the Jewish community; her family’s first Shabbat following war; seeking fresh flowers (a rarity) for a bridal bouquet; spending two years in a displaced persons camp in the American zone; receiving HIAS assistance; the food shortages; having a baby; saying goodbye to her mother before taking a two-week voyage to the United States; arriving with $10 in her pocket and weighing only 90 pounds; living in Cleveland, OH before moving to New York; starting an office furniture business; and additional memories of her war-time life, including attending public school, removing her yellow star arm band to fit in and learn, and her non-Jewish teacher walking his student home to make sure they were safe from antisemitic acts. (She shares photographs from her post-war life.)

    Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

    Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Chanie Singer

    Oral history interview with Chanie Singer

    Oral History

    Chanie Singer, born June 2, 1935 in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, discusses growing up in a poor, Orthodox Jewish family; having one brother; her father, who was forced into the army; her mother subletting their tiny Budapest space to others in hiding and the landlord threatening to send them to Auschwitz; paying a non-Jewish farmer to hide them in his hayloft and having limited food; how after two months the farmer--fearing he would be caught hiding them--put her family on train and promised they would be safe in the ghetto until the end of the war; the deplorable conditions in the Budapest ghetto; her mother being separated from her children and paced in front of the children’s barracks until a guard let her in; her memories of crying for food at age nine; the lack of drinkable liquids and having to consume urine at one point; the emotions of the people in the ghetto and the feeling that they were waiting for death; her mother sneaking out of the ghetto to find food; how people had been shooting horses for food; experiencing a surprising act of kindness from a non-Jew in the ghetto; being liberated by the Russians; Russian soldiers drinking vodka and singing drinking songs; finding happiness in a survivors orphanage; wanting to be taken in by Israel; rejecting her mother’s invitation to go to the United States, but acquiescing after her mother promised never-ending chocolate in the US; seeing her father for the last time when he came to see the family off; her mother paying gold coins to a truck driver to take them over the border; entering an Austrian hospital and then crossing into Germany at night; being housed at the Rothschild Hospital; spending three years in Kassel, Germany displaced persons camp in the American zone; living in small room and studying Hebrew; her aunt in the US sending care packages and an affidavit to bring them over; a cherished boyfriend who would leave for Palestine; immigrating to the US and arriving in Boston, MA; her aunt, who taught Chanie (then 13 years old) how to smoke; getting married and having four children; moving to New York; and dealing with manic depression but having gratitude for her religious family as well as the US.

    Oral history interview with Avrum Bichler

    Oral history interview with Avrum Bichler

    Oral History

    Dr. Avrum (Abraham) Bichler, born February 23, 1933, discusses growing up in well-to-do Jewish family in Krylow, Poland; family’s charitable endeavors; Jewish community’s superstitions; Hebrew school; antisemitism from Poles in the late 1930s; shock of German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939); seeing airplanes flying over and the family packing up everything; crossing the Bug River and hiding in barns that belonged to his father’s customers (from the peasantry); German tanks rolling in, then rolling out; Russians moving in (Jewish communists feeling more comfortable since Russians were feeding peasants); his family leaving once the Russians moved out; going to Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine, where Russian soldiers arrested his family as "illegal refugees" (this included 11 persons: his father, mother, sister, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandfather); how the remainder of his extended family were never seen again; being shoved into cattle cars and waiting on the tracks for three days; encircling a blanket around a floor cutout for bathroom privacy; the atrocious stench; a peasant owing his father money and bringing two sugar sacks so his father would have something to barter; receiving only soup (mostly water) at night; the screams from those getting caught under the train when it started to move again; doing six weeks of forced labor in a camp near the Arctic Circle; his four-year-old sister dying from malaria; Jews not being allowed to bury their dead (in the evening a wagon would pick up corpses in streets); his father sneaking into the forest and digging a shallow grave for his daughter (his family always worried an animal had gotten to her body); suffering from illness (malaria and pneumonia) and being treated with superstition (giving away children’s clothes to cure him), suction cupping on body, and the family picking bed bugs off of him until he healed; the family being transported to a Siberian brick factory; working 12 hours a day, six days a week; the temperature getting to 50 degrees below zero and wrapping wet rags around bare feet to insulate inside the frozen ice; eating potatoes three times a day; doing forced work on Jewish holidays (his father was able to obtain matzo); his whole family living in one room; enduring communist propaganda; wealthy individuals being imprisoned, including anyone caught with a gold watch (his father had buried his); being transported by cattle car to Central Asia; being taken to Kyrgyzstan by truck; their realization that they had been dropped off to die (the family ran after the truck to be let back on); doing forced labor for a brickmaking operation in Turkistan, Kazakhstan; the blinding of his cousin’s daughter, who died at age two; his uncle’s wife dying at age 27; hundreds starving; eating leaves off trees; a child in town biting off his own fingertips for food; deaths in the streets; the importance of stealing to survive; his father becoming a master builder and being able to improve their living conditions; moving into a mud house; Communists interrogating school children on their parents’ black market activities and religious practices; the KGB circumcising boys; kidnappings by Russians (the victims were sent to the front and no one came back); the Turkestan market; the beatings of people caught stealing; vendors carrying sticks to defend against desperate starving people; going to the market area after it closed to search for crumbs; his grandfather’s death in 1944; the birth of his sister in 1945; his parents’ desire to return home after the war ended; Russian soldiers sneaking his family on a military transport train; traveling for 6-7 weeks on a dangerous journey West; witnessing the decapitation of a policeman; arriving in Kona, where everything was bombed out; being told that Jews were being killed by Poles; his family learning about the ghettos and concentration camps; going through Lviv, Ukraine and then Lublin, Poland; being threatened by Poles when he spoke Yiddish; receiving assistance from Jewish organizations; seeing the Majdanek concentration camp; witnessing his father’s realization of what had happened in Poland during the war (his father gave up hope that he would find their extended family alive); seeing a Polish girl from their hometown and her warning to never return because their families’ homes were now being lived in by others and they would be killed if they returned; seeing the Łódź ghetto; still feeling vulnerable; living in a kibbutz, which was heavily guarded; details about life in the kibbutz and later in Leipheim displaced persons camp; leaving Poland and staying for three days in a forest in the Russian zone; his excitement seeing Berlin for first time; openly singing Hebrew songs; marching constantly in the kibbutz but finding happiness there; going to Augsburg, Germany and being physically assessed for entry to the United States; the language barrier when they arrived in the US; experiencing hunger; seeing a movie for first time (his shock at Americans eating popcorn while watching shootings on the screen); seeing girls play soccer; his enrollment at Yeshiva University and receiving assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; his appreciation of the US; and his message to others to never give up hope and draw strength from ones past. (He shows artifacts from his boyhood illness, the cupping set, as well as family photographs.)

    Oral history interview with Jeshaye Rosenberg

    Oral history interview with Jeshaye Rosenberg

    Oral History

    Jeshaye Rosenberg, born May 21, 1928 in Debrecen, Hungary, discusses being raised in an Orthodox Ashkenazi family, which included his grandfather, grandfather’s sister, parents, two brothers, aunt, uncle, and cousins; the family being able to stay together throughout deportations; the numerous rabbis in his family, including his grandfather who was the first Orthodox rabbi of Debrecen; enduring antisemitic assaults as a child; the anti-Jewish decrees; ghettoization in March 1944 and being placed with his family in the Orthodox section in a crowded apartment; enduring forced labor at age 15, cleaning-up after railroad bombings; being deported with his family in sweltering temperatures, crammed into train wagons; how many Jews from Debrecen were taken to Auschwitz, but his family was taken to Strasshof; disembarking and collapsing from dehydration after an 11-day journey without water; his coping tools to bolster his mother’s spirit; he’s thoughts that the intelligentsia seemed to die faster because many were secular and did not believe they would survive; how it was hope that kept Jeshaye going; his brothers’ forced labor in foresting (weekly allowance of one slice of bread); his mother making soup from edible mushrooms Jeshaye had found in the forest; his grandfather witnessing his sister die in a train transfer to Theresienstadt; seeing skeletal refugees arriving in Theresienstadt from other camps; many people dying and the bodies being thrown on top of trucks; the general belief that they would all be killed; surviving on grass; towards end of war, his grandfather holding a rare celebration of Seder in Theresienstadt (some matzo was obtained); talking his way into becoming a shoe repairman even though he did not have the skills needed; the 30 min walk to the town's shoe shop; the gentile ladies taking pity on him and giving him a little food, which he brought back to his family; being recruited later as a barber; his envy in seeing Red Cross rescuing Danish Jewish people two weeks before war ended; liberation; an organization distributing Sefer Torahs to rabbis; the rarity of his entire family having been able to stay intact, in spite of deportations, enslavement, and depravity (some of his extended family did die in other concentration camps); many people dying after liberation from typhus and injuries; returning to Debrecen; immigrating to the United States in 1946; his education, employment, and marriage; rebuilding Jewish communities in Somerville and Montecristo, NJ; his pride in having 25 great-grandchildren; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust. (The oral testimony closes with family photographs, including his aunt, who was killed at Auschwitz. He also shares photographs from his wife’s family, some of which, did not survive.)

    Oral history interview with Mimi Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Mimi Weingarten

    Oral History

    Mimi Weingarten, born on February 14, 1929 in Sighet, Romania, discusses her four siblings and parents (only two family members survived); growing up in pre-war Sighet; attending public and Jewish schooling); experiencing antisemitism; the forced closure of her family’s cheese shop; the invasion of their home; Jewish schools being forced to close; the arrest of her father and later her sister; a few Gentile friends sneaking food to her family; hearing rumors about labor camps; the Sighet ghetto; being deported with her family to Auschwitz on the last transport in 1944; the three-day journey in a cattle car to the camp; arriving in Auschwitz; being lined up for selection along with her sisters; being placed in Block 13; being moved to another block and her sister sneaking her into the children’s block; being in Barracks 34; being placed in the so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz (Zigeunerlager); her heartbreak at seeing her little sister taken away; enduring whipping after getting caught retrieving ditch water; being sent to Birkenau and doing forced labor; an SS officer showing her a moment of kindness; spending four months working on airplanes; going on a two-day march from a factory to northeast Germany; being liberated by Russian soldiers; sleeping in a forest; receiving warnings from American soldiers about the Russian soldiers; returning to Sighet to find her father (she never found him); a Jewish family that had moved into their home and would not take them in; her sister’s marriage; being homeless; immigrating to the United States; her thoughts on Holocaust denial; and her pride at the accomplishments of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Adele Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Adele Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Adele Rubinstein, born in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary in 1931, discusses being the fifth of seven children; experiencing antisemitic harassment in school; ghettoization in 1944; the draft of her father and two older brothers into a slave labor battalion; being transferred with her family to a brick factory in Debrecen, then to Strasshof; doing slave labor shoveling snow and coal; her mother bringing them extra food; fasting on Yom Kippur; a forced march to Mauthausen; seeing piles of corpses and starvation; being transferred to Gunskirchen; being liberated by United States troops; her hospitalization; escaping with others to find their families; entering a Red Cross camp; her reunion with her mother and siblings; living in Wels displaced persons camp; returning to Hajdúböszörmény; reuniting with her father and older brothers; traveling to Vienna, Austria; living in Salzburg displaced persons camp; moving to Paris, France; immigration to join her father's father in the United States in 1949; receiving assistance from the Joint; her marriage to a Hungarian survivor; the births of four daughters; her orthodoxy and her continuing faith in God; her reluctance to share her story with her children (her husband did); and participating in a survivors' club. [She shows photographs and documents.]

    Oral history interview with Helen Rubin

    Oral history interview with Helen Rubin

    Oral History

    Helen Rubin, born in 1930 in Rozwadów, Poland, discusses being the youngest of three children; living with her loving extended family; attending Polish and Jewish schools; the German invasion; the expulsion of all the Jews across the San River to Soviet territory; living with relatives in ZHovkva, Ukraine for nine months; being deported with her immediate and extended family to Siberia; briefly living in a barrack, then with a family; her father organizing her brother's clandestine bar mitzvah; being transferred to another barrack; the death of one of her aunts; doing forced labor; receiving meager rations; receiving Passover supplies from a Soviet officer; receiving a package from an uncle in the United States; their release after 14 months; traveling to Zhizzakh, Uzbekistan; the deaths of her grandparents and some cousins; moving to Samarqand, Uzbekistan; establishing a weaving business; attending a Polish school; repatriation to Łódź after the war; learning of the death camps; witnessing the destruction in Kraków; her father selling their house; living in Paris, France, while waiting to immigrate to the United States; staying in a Jewish orphanage; immigrating to the United States in 1947; learning English from the radio; becoming a speech pathologist; and attributing her family's survival to their Soviet exile. (She shows objects and photographs at the end of the interview.)

    Oral history interview with Sara Seidman

    Oral history interview with Sara Seidman

    Oral History

    Sara Seidman, born on August 29, 1922 Turda, Romania, discusses her extensive family; her mother who was a nurse; her sister surviving scarlet fever; her earliest education at a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; the public school forcing Jewish children to attend church; finishing high school in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine); teaching in a Bucharest orphanage, where all the workers and children were Jewish but pretending to be Polish refugees; Russian police entering the orphanage and interrogating the children to see if they came from the Russian part of Poland; seeing hundreds of children deported from Bucharest; her family fleeing the German/Hungarian invasion of Turda; bunkering during bombings; her father and grandfather navigating red tape to assist refugees; her brother’s death at sea; her father being assaulted by Russian soldiers; being harassed by the soldiers; going to Prague, Czech Republic a few months after the war; going to Nuremberg, Germany; being chased off a train in France for being Jewish; ending up in Augsburg, sheltered by a rabbi; working as a teacher while her mother worked as a nurse at Föhrenwald displaced persons (DP) camp; the traumatized girls and women survivors; struggling to cheer up the children who were mourning their lost mothers; conditions in the DP camp, including the clothing and lice treatments; salaries in the camp and her mother bartering to assist survivors; her memories of Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam in the DP camp; her thoughts on agunah; Chaplain Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg; teaching in Paris (Fublaines); obtaining papers for entry into the United States. (She shows family and school photographs, including photos from 1947 where children are smiling.)

    Oral history interview with Seymour Kaplan

    Oral history interview with Seymour Kaplan

    Oral History

    Seymour Kaplan, born September 6, 1926, discusses his idyllic childhood in Brooklyn, NY; his family being financially strapped; experiencing some antisemitism; his memories of having visitors to their home who relayed that Jews abroad were being killed; hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio; being eager along with the other neighborhood kids to get into the military service (his brother served in Guadalcanal); the army induction process; leaving the US by ship in 1945; landing on Normandy beach; his combat duty in Nuremberg and Munich; his code name “Chico Blue”; hearing of Roosevelt’s death; speaking Yiddish to communicate with Germans; arriving in German towns; seeing Dachau concentration camp; his shock at seeing a pile of skeletal bodies (there was a Nazi officer on top); how the soldiers seeing Dachau for first time began crying and many threw up; speaking to the former inmates; speaking to a former Nazi guard; finding 36 box cars packed with murdered Jews; catching a SS trying to put on a striped prisoner uniform; hearing that an improper reintroduction of food could kill the emaciated survivors; returning to the US; his family’s disbelief over what he had witnessed; deciding not to speak about what he had experienced; and the 692 Tank Destroyer Battalion chart.

    Oral history interview with Mayer Glickman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Glickman

    Oral History

    Mayer Glickman, born in 1926, describes growing up Jewish in pre-war Sosnovitz, Poland; the rise of antisemitism in 1939; the German invasion and fleeing with his family; returning home in 1940; the men of the twon being forced to go to the police station to have their beards cut off (his father was given a pass since he was respected); the deportations beginning in 1941; the rumors of atrocities in Auschwitz; the gathering of all the Jews in a field in 1942; the selection process; his mother’s despair; his family not being selected because of the local esteem for his father; the deportation of his family in the middle of the night sometime in 1943; being sent to do forced labor loading sacks of cement; being sent to Katowice, where he worked in a steel mill; being transferred to Markstadt labor camp; surviving on bread made of chestnuts; enduring beatings and injuries while laying train tracks; the arrival of the Hungarian workers; going on a three-day march; sleeping in a barn; arriving at Gross-Rosen camp; being transported to Weimar, Germany, and going to Buchenwald camp; the lack of space in the barracks and staying in the shower for two days; his methods for surviving Buchenwald; liberation of the camp; being stricken with typhoid; the US Army chaplain Rabbi Herschel Schacter; going to Switzerland and being placed in Engelberg children’s home; discovering his brother had survived Auschwitz; reuniting with his brother in Belgium; immigrating to the United States in 1948 on the “SS Washington”; his experiences on Ellis Island; becoming a pattern maker; entering the diamond cutting business; living in Israel (1970-1982); returning to the US for his son’s education; photographs he received from soldiers at Buchenwald (he shows them during the interview); and his 90 year old grandfather (a rabbi) who was killed at Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Shmuel Wolfe

    Oral history interview with Shmuel Wolfe

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gittel Wolfe

    Oral history interview with Gittel Wolfe

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lea Greenstein Chopp

    Oral history interview with Lea Greenstein Chopp

    Oral History

    Lea Greenstein Chopp, born on October 15, 1929 in Stachy, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), discusses growing up an only child; her family owning a large department store; her mother encouraged Lea to share their wealth with others; her loving memories of her father; Jewish life in their small town; the Hungarian takeover in 1939; attending a Hungarian school; having the measles during the roundup of Jews; being transported with her family in open trucks; spending three weeks in a brick factory in Uzhgorod, Ukraine; her father paying someone off for their release and Lea’s mother refusing to leave her parents; arriving in Auschwitz and her memories of the sounds and smells; the separate lines for women and men; women’s heads being shaved; being separated from her mother; having diamonds sewn on her garments and shoes; staying in Auschwitz for four months; being transferred to another camp in Poland; doing forced labor digging trenches in frigid conditions; being transported to another part of Poland; almost giving up and being encouraged by the other female inmates; being liberated by Russians; catching a train with three other girls; returning to Czechoslovakia and finding shelter with Jews who survived in hiding; still experiencing nightmares; returning to Stachy; the destruction of her home which had been bombed; staying with a Gentile neighbor; going to Prague, where she found her uncle alive; being in a Red Cross hospital; writing to an uncle in the United States; immigrating to the US; meeting her husband; having three children and four miscarriages; and her great-grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Hadassah Carlebach

    Oral history interview with Hadassah Carlebach

    Oral History

    Hadassah Carlebach (née Hadassa Schneerson), born in 1927 in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Russia, discusses her father, Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn (also spelled Schneerson and Chneerson), who was active in Jewish rescue activities before and during the war; the number of children that Rabbi Schneerson saved; the challenges of being born an unregistered Hasidic Jew in antisemitic pre-war Russia; her mother, Sara, and brother; her father moving the family to Moscow; her father’s job in channeling US philanthropic funds to Jews in need; her father’s clandestine activities, sheltering people in the family’s small apartment; hiding from the Russian police (her father was arrested 16 times); how those in hiding sometimes danced and sang to transcend their difficulties; the 1935 interrogations of Jews; her family’s immigration to Palestine, assisted by Joseph A. Rosen (Russia would not allow transfer of Jews to US or Europe, only Palestine); going on a 12-day voyage; settling in Jaffa; her father being unhappy with Tel Aviv’s socialism; moving with her family in 1936 to Paris, France, where her father created the Association des Israélites Pratiquants (AIP, also called Kehillat Haharedim); her father starting a kosher soup kitchen as well as a synagogue and Hebrew school; the beginning of the war in 1939; her father being assigned by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) to a kosher children’s home, the Chateau des Morelles in Brout-Vernet; her father keeping the children on a strict schedule as they carried out farm life; the German invasion and the deportation of Jews; her father moving the children's home to Marseilles, France to la Maison de Beaupin; her father forming a radio technology school for young men and a pattern-making school for young women; fleeing in 1942 to Dému, France; her father moving the children to Chateau du Manoir within Saint-Étienne-de-Crossey, France; the Italians telling her father to follow them to Nice; how the Germans were waiting in Nice and members of the party were captured; Leon Poliakov (member of resistance), who smuggled the children back to Voiron; her work as a cook for the children and also as a teacher; the capture and torture of her mother; her mother’s release; how most of the children in the home were smuggled into Switzerland; her family’s return to Paris; adjust to life after the war; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; getting married in 1949; and her thoughts on the lauding of non-Jewish rescuers.

    Oral history interview with Helen Weiss

    Oral history interview with Helen Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helene Rubin

    Oral history interview with Helene Rubin

    Oral History

    Helene Rubin, born May 16, 1926 in Vișeu de Sus, Romania, discusses being in a family of eight children; her parents; one of her brothers dying as an infant from scarlet fever; growing up in a town that was part of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period; her father’s shop; her family’s thwarted plans to evacuate to Timisoara, Romania; being taken with her family to a ghetto; being deported on a train to Auschwitz when she was 18 years old; the selection process and being separated from her sister and father; the shaving of her head; being placed in Block 31; staying with her sister and aunt the entire time; the frequent selections; the birth of a baby in the camp that was then killed; being transported to Sosnowitz labor camp, where she had to dig ditches; developing a toothache and being taken to a dentist; the songs of faith they used to cope during their imprisonment; speaking about cooking with other prisoners; being marched for five weeks and going to Bergen-Belsen; the fights over food between the prisoners; being assaulted at Bergen-Belsen and the perpetrator apologizing; having lice and getting typhoid; the numerous deaths of inmates; liberation; the deaths of many of the survivors when they were reintroduced to food; being sprayed with DDT for the lice; going with her sister to Sweden; staying in a hospital for four weeks; living in a nursing home; reuniting with their aunt (her aunt discovered that her husband had survived); living in a DP camp and receiving assistance from Rabbi Jacobson; working in Sweden; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. (At the end of the interview Helene sings the melody to a song.)

    Oral history interview with Esther Peterseil

    Oral history interview with Esther Peterseil

    Oral History

    Esther (Himmelfarb) Peterseil, born December 23, 1924 in Będzin, Poland, discusses her Orthodox family; being one of nine children; her grandfather who built the first brewery in Poland; pre-war Będzin, including the coal mines, Christian Poles, Jewish life, public school, and vacations; the Nazi invasion in 1939; the synagogue burning with people in it on September 8, 1939; Jews being shot on the street; the curfew for Jews; Jews having to give up their businesses; the capture of her brother and sister, whom she never saw again; her parents being taken and her father escaping capture; wearing a yellow star armband; negotiating to bring her mother home; hiding with her family for two years in a tunnel that extended to the next door building; being discovered and sent to the town’s ghetto; doing forced sweatshop labor, making Nazi soldier uniforms; the liquidation of the ghetto and being sent with her family to Auschwitz in 1943; the journey in the cattle car; being separated from her 49-year-old mother; staying with her sister; the shaving of their heads; being quarantined in a large room for several days; conditions in the barracks; the early morning selections; meeting her brother at the barbed wire and sharing bread with him; being assaulted for begging for the guards to spare her sister and Auschwitz Commandant Höss allowing her sister to be removed from the list after a display of willpower and bravery from Esther; marching to Birkenau; living in Barrack 27 for two years; being sent on a death march to Ravensbrück; experiencing frostbite; being forced to dig ditches used to hide the dead; life after the war; finding her brother in Będzin; and her sister’s death in a displaced persons camp.

    Oral history interview with Moshe Apter

    Oral history interview with Moshe Apter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julius Tauber

    Oral history interview with Julius Tauber

    Oral History

    Julius Tauber, born in 1928 in Șimleu Silvaniei, Romania, describes being orphaned and raised by his grandfather; the family’s textile store; the rise of antisemitism; the forced cutting of beards; hardships in the ghetto; his brother drinking from the river and being punished for doing so; his grandfather and brother receiving 25 lashings each and surviving; his sister and step-sister and their struggles to feed their babies; being 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz on a cattle car; being placed in a children’s barrack; being forced to stand in the cold; forced labor; his Auschwitz number; meeting Elie Wiesel; marching to a smaller camp; working in the kitchen with his brother; obtaining matzo; sneaking out food from the kitchen; going on a death march out of Auschwitz; being liberated by Russian troops; going to an American-run displaced persons camp; his faith after enduring the Holocaust; returning with his brother to their hometown; immigrating to the United States; living with their aunt and uncle; Jewish life in the US; his work life; getting married; and his final message: “Doing good for others is the most important thing in the world.”

    Oral history interview with Vilmos Greenwald

    Oral history interview with Vilmos Greenwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bistriz

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bistriz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bronia Brandman

    Oral history interview with Bronia Brandman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Itel Landau

    Oral history interview with Itel Landau

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nissen Mangel

    Oral history interview with Nissen Mangel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Baruch Gross

    Oral history interview with Baruch Gross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Roth

    Oral history interview with Irving Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arthur Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Arthur Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gelb

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gelb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Baruch Schachter

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Baruch Schachter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Salamon

    Oral history interview with Ruth Salamon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Avraham Zelcer

    Oral history interview with Avraham Zelcer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Chaya Small

    Oral history interview with Chaya Small

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gitty Maryl

    Oral history interview with Gitty Maryl

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Veron

    Oral history interview with Lilly Veron

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Corn

    Oral history interview with David Corn

    Oral History

    David Corn, born in Berlin, Germany in 1930, discusses his relationship with his uncle, the esteemed Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg.

    Oral history interview with Gaston Braun

    Oral history interview with Gaston Braun

    Oral History

    Gaston Braun discusses his experiences as a childen child in France.

    Oral history interview with Tzipera Fayga Waller

    Oral history interview with Tzipera Fayga Waller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ethel Kleinman

    Oral history interview with Ethel Kleinman

    Oral History

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