Oral history interview with Marcel-Francis Kahn

Oral history interview with Chil Rajchman

Oral History

Chil Rajchman, born in June 1914 in Lódz, Poland, describes his childhood; leaving with his sister to go to Pruszków, a town near Warsaw, where they were interned in the ghetto there; working at a railroad labor camp while in Pruszków; being sent with his sister to Warsaw, where they obtained travel documents allowing them to go to Lubelski, Poland; being forced to travel by foot to Lubartów, Poland in October 1942; his deportation to Treblinka, where he worked as a barber shaving victims’ hair before they entered the gas chambers; escaping Treblinka and hiding with various people as he headed for Warsaw; moving on to Piastów, Poland, where he obtained false papers; remaining in Piastów, where he took part in the Polish uprising of August 1944; and remaining in hiding in Warsaw until he was liberated on January 17, 1945.

Oral history interview with Nesse Galperin Godin

Oral History

Nesse Galperin Godin, born in 1928 in Siauliai, Lithuania, describes her family’s work in the dairy business; the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941 and the establishment of a ghetto in Siauliai; starting to do forced labor in 1943 when she was old enough to work; being deported with her mother and her brother to Stutthof in Danzig, Poland in 1944; working in various sub-camps of Stutthof until she was put on a death march in January 1945; her liberation by Russian soldiers in March 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1950.

Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

Oral History

Eddie Willner, born on August 15, 1926 in Germany, describes how his father had felt that his family would be safe because he had fought in the German Army in World War I; being separated from his parents and sent on a train to Brussels, Belgium, where a Jewish refugee organization placed him with a Dutch family; his parents’ move to Belgium in 1939 and seeing them on weekends until the war broke out in May 1940; the arrest of his father and his deportation to an internment camp in France; remaining with his mother and tracking down his father in the Pyrenees Mountains; living in the house of a French priest; getting caught with false identification cards with his family and being sent to Drancy; his deportation out of France and toward the east on September 12, 1942; arriving in Auschwitz, where his mother was immediately gassed while he stayed with his father; his transfer to a work camp in Lazy, Poland, where he worked on reconstructing bombed-out railroads; enduring harsh conditions, especially in the winter months; losing his religious faith after the war; returning from his work detail one day to discover that his father had been selected for the gas chamber during the day; the bombing of the train on which he was being transported to Buchenwald, escaping, and being liberated by American troops; staying in the Frankfurt displaced persons camp and then searching for his family in Brussels after the war; and immigrating to the United States in December 1947.

Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

Oral History

Lisa Dawidowicz Murik, born on November 5, 1925 in Ostroh, Poland (Ukraine), describes her family; attending public school until the outbreak of war in 1939; the German occupation of Poland and having to endure forced labor; working on a labor detail to construct a railroad station; by 1942 having built a shelter in her family’s basement to hide from the Nazis who were rounding up Jews in the ghetto; later fleeing into the Polish countryside, where a poor Polish farm woman gave them refuge hiding in the potato bin of her barn for sixteen months; surviving on a daily ration of a quart of water and one potato each; finding out that they were liberated in 1944; returning to Ostroh and then going to Lódz, where she met her future husband, a refugee from the Soviet Union, during her stay; leaving for Germany, where she and her future husband spent time in German displaced persons camps in Berlin and Eschwege; and immigrating in 1949 to the United States.

Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

Oral History

Ernst Weihs, born in 1908 in Vienna, Austria and describes his family; his father’s participation in World War I and returning to ask for a divorce from his mother; moving out to the country with his mother and having a difficult life; getting baptized and attending church at the age of 11; finding a job as a gardener to support himself; returning to Vienna in 1928 and living near his father and stepmother; being declared Jewish, having to wear the star, and quitting his gardening job; working for a summer with a Jewish Agency to train for living in Palestine; living in a Swedish mission house associated with the Lutheran church and managing its gardens; working with a Guildemester organization that brought food to people until 1942 when the Germans closed it; being deported to a ghetto in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia and then to Auschwitz; his transfer to the Kaufering labor camp, where he worked farming nearby fields; remaining in Kaufering until the spring of 1945, when he had to evacuate toward Dachau; being liberated during the march to Dachau by American troops; getting married and having a baby after the war; and immigrating to the United States and raising his daughter as a Lutheran.

Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

Oral History

Agnes Vogel, born on January 1, 1924 in Debrecen, Hungary, describes her childhood; attending a special school in a Catholic Convent in 1939; being rounded up in June 1944 and put on a transport to Auschwitz; ending up in Strasshof, a transit camp in Austria; starting on a transport toward Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany, but turning back to Strasshof because of an air raid that destroyed part of the railroad; her liberation by Soviet troops in 1945; and immigrating to the United States after the war.

Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

Oral History

Dora Goldstein Roth, born on February 1, 1932 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her family and early childhood; her father’s participation in the Zionist movement; being forced to live inside the Vilnius ghetto; her deportation to the Kaiserwald-Riga, Dinenwerke, and Stutthof camps with her sister and mother; seeing her mother die from hunger; her sister's death in the camp; difficult memories including mass rape of camp inmates, forced labor, and struggling to survive from day to day; deciding while she was still in the camps that she wanted to immigrate to Palestine after the war because she wanted to be surrounded by Jewish people; her liberation by Russian forces; staying in a Jewish hospital for three years to recover from injuries and disease; immigrating to Israel in 1952; getting married and having children; her identity as a mother and Holocaust survivor; and working for the United Jewish Appeal.

Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Irene Weber

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Josef

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with David Klebanow

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Raya Markon

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Paul Matasovsky

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Martin Spett

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

Oral History

Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ray Buch

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Leif Donde

Oral History

Leif Donde, born on May 30, 1931 in Copenhagen, Denmark, describes his upbringing in a religious but not Orthodox Jewish family; the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940; seeing the German police begin to arrest Jews in early October 1943 and fleeing with his family by train to the Danish city of Nykøbing Falster, south of Sjælland island; being smuggled by a fishing boat to safety in Sweden; arriving in Trelleborg, Sweden after an eleven-hour nighttime boat ride in October 1943, during which they passed through a German mine field; attending school in Sweden while his parents worked in a garment factory in Uddevalla, Sweden; his family returning to Denmark after the end of the war; and settling in Denmark, where he serves as the Consul General.

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with David Pollack

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with William Farkas

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Frima L.

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Guy Stern

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Toby Stern

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Masha Loen

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Max Haber

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with William P. Levine

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with John Komski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Lore Baer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Bela Blau

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Magda Blau

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Francis Akos

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with David Lieberman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Ernest James

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Selma Engel

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with David Bergman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Philip Vock

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Jack Moss

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Mel London

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Herma Barber

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with George Havas

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with William Perl

Oral History

William Perl, born in 1906 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses growing up in Vienna, Austria; his early involvement with the Zionist movement; antisemitism that he experienced in Vienna; participating in a Jewish student fraternity as a law student at the University of Vienna; hearing Ze'ev Jabotinsky speak at a conference in 1935; his activities promoting Zionism in the Jewish community in Vienna; organizing illegal immigrations to Palestine for Jews in Vienna in 1936; the Anschluss in 1938 and the desire of many Austrian Jews to leave the country; meeting with Adolf Eichmann to represent the Revisionists in Vienna; his trip to Berlin to try to obtain permission from German authorities for Jews to emigrate from Austria; a raid on his offices by the Gestapo; his arrest and release from prison; getting a visa for Great Britain and settling in London; returning to Europe to continue helping Jews flee from the Germans; Jewish refugees arriving from all over Europe to escape; his arrest in Greece and deportation to Germany; his attempted suicide and escape from deportation; the help of a Franciscan monk who obtained a visa for him to Portugal; traveling from country to country; immigrating to the United States; his wife's arrest in Austria and imprisonment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp; his service in the US Army in military intelligence; interrogating prisoners of rank for war crime trials in England; and reuniting with his wife after World War II.

Oral history interview with Rolf Hirschberg

Oral History

Rolf Hirschberg, born in 1902 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood; the death of his father when he was six and his older brother taking over the care of the household; his sickliness as a child; leaving school at age sixteen and working at the same firm that had employed his older brother; developing a friendship and then an intimate relationship with an older man named Emil; Emil's sister-in-law finding out about their relationship and urging them to see Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld; a party that they attended at Magnus Hirschfeld's house; Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933 and the beginnings of persecution against homosexuals and Jews; his and Emil's decision to leave the country in 1936; their journey through Europe until they immigrated to the United States in 1937; arranging through a rabbi to have his mother hidden in a nursing home for the elderly; finding an apartment and settling in New York City; his Jewish upbringing and his awareness of antisemitism in Germany; a meeting with a high-school friend who had joined the Nazi Party; his memories of homosexual bars in Berlin during the 1930s; and the fates of family members and other homosexual friends in Germany.

Oral history interview with Joe Friedman

Oral History

Joe Friedman, born in St. Joseph, MO on March 10, 1920, discusses his attempts to join the navy at the beginning of the war; being drafted into the US Army in July 1942; moving up the army ranks from private to corporal to sergeant; attending officer’s training school to become a second lieutenant; going overseas in 1944, where he was attached to the Third Army division and became a member of the 91st Evacuation Hospital; being part of the first company to enter the gates of Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Germany, in early April 1945; helping to get food and give the former prisoners the attention they needed; volunteering for work in displaced persons camps, which included Wildflecken in Germany and Baumberg, Germany; becoming the commander of the camp in Coburg, Germany and then being promoted to a captain; being commissioned to oversee all displaced persons camps and German repatriation in American-occupied Bavaria; working with the Jewish underground to get Jews across the border from the Russian zone into the American zone of Germany; being caught working with the underground and threatened with arrest; and making it back to the US, where he received an Army Commendation Medal.

Oral history interview with Rose Klepfisz

Oral History

Rose Klepfisz, born on July 22, 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her family; the death of her father in 1927 and tutoring children to make a living for her family; joining the Hachshara to work on a farm and prepare to immigrate to Israel; her siblings’ participation in the Bundist movement; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; getting married to her Polish boyfriend Michal against her mother’s wishes in 1937; Michal leaving the city on September 8, 1939 after the mayor of Warsaw warned all men of fighting age to leave; Michal returning and moving into the ghetto with her and her mother; the birth of her daughter Irene; Michal joining the underground movement; keeping her baby quiet during selections to avoid deportations; escaping from the ghetto to the Aryan side and adopting a new name and a job as a nanny; leaving Irene at an orphanage in Warsaw; discovering in late 1943 that Michal had been killed doing work for the underground; trying to track down Irene, who had been moved to Pruszków; going to Pruszków, where she stayed until Russian troops liberated her; meeting what family she had left in Lódz; immigrating to Sweden on March 31, 1946 with Irene; immigrating to Melbourne, Australia for a short period; and settling in the United States in 1949.

Oral history interview with Helen Tichauer and Anna Palarczyk

Oral History

Helen Tichauer and Anna Palarczyk discuss a three-dimensional model of the Auschwitz concentration camp that Helen made at the request of German authorities; contracting typhus in the camp; how Gentiles were also selected and gassed at Auschwitz; Anna's experience working for an SS commandant before being deported to Auschwitz; Anna's time as the leader of one of the barracks in Auschwitz; political and language differences among the women in her barracks and a Christmas party that they held; the organization of the women's section of Auschwitz; the underground in the camp; mistakes that have been made in later maps and drawings of the camp; and the interaction that the women's camp had with the men's and family camps.

Oral history interview with Lore Perl

Oral History

Lore Perl, born in 1913 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; the hardships of growing up during World War I; her mother's Catholicism and her father's lack of religion; going to a teacher's college and becoming a kindergarten teacher; the effects of the Great Depression on Austria and finding work as a secretary; her friendships with Jews and meeting her Jewish husband; her conversion to Judaism; her husband's immigration to England while she stayed in Vienna, Austria, taking care of her sick mother; her husband's involvement in illegally smuggling Jews into Palestine; her memories of Kristallnacht and the beginning of World War II; her arrest by the Gestapo for helping Jews; her transfer to several different prisons, the suffering she witnessed there, and her eventual arrival in Ravensbrück; the conditions in Ravensbrück; how an uncle who worked in the Foreign Ministry in Austria was able to obtain her release; her return to Vienna where she lived with an aunt and cousin; organizing a kindergarten with neighborhood children after the liberation of Vienna; her husband's return from the United States; her recuperation in a hospital for several months and then her immigration to the United States; and how her faith was affected by her experiences during the war.

Oral history interview with Anne Herzog Resnik

Oral History

Anne Herzog Resnik, born in 1939 in Hindenburg, Germany (Zabrze, Poland), discusses her father's persecution as a journalist and the family's escape to eastern Poland; early memories of antisemitism; how normal daily routines were disrupted by anti-Jewish restrictions; the first "aktion" that took place in their town and her parents' and her survival in hiding; her brother's deportation; the liquidation of their town and their transport to a ghetto in Buchach, Poland (Ukraine); her father hearing of an impending "aktion" and leading others in the ghetto to build a bunker as a hiding place; being discovered in the bunker by the Germans but managing to escape arrest; her escape from the ghetto with the help of a family friend; being hidden in a barn by a Polish farmer; her narrow escape from a house search and her move into her parents' hiding place; having to move to a new hiding place with another farmer and being liberated by Soviet forces; their difficult journey back to their hometown; finding their house destroyed and then spending time in a hospital recuperating from illness; becoming established in the town once again; continuing antisemitism in Poland; moving to Austria and living in a Jewish community; pursuing her education; enrolling in the University of Munich; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Seymour Rubin

Oral History

Seymour Rubin, born April 6, 1914 in Chicago, IL, discusses his family background in Chicago; his schooling and becoming a lawyer; his knowledge of the early days of Nazi Germany; his work for the Securities and Exchange Commission and transfer in 1943 to the State Department where he worked in the Reorganization Program in the Foreign Funds Control Division; his part in trying to wrest businesses in Latin America from German control, so they could not be used to fund the German war effort; his involvement with the Safehaven Program's efforts to prevent the recurrence of fascism; blacklisting companies from neutral countries that were doing business with the Germans; antisemitism within the State Department and other American agencies; the controversy surrounding the invitation of prominent German scientists to immigrate to the United States to help the US with its rocket building program; the system set up under the Paris and Potsdam Agreements to secure German assets in neutral countries in order to use them as war reparations; negotiations with Switzerland about reparations; the fate of gold looted by the Germans; and his role in the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization.

Oral history interview with Ernest Rosin

Oral History

Ernest Rosin, born on March 20, 1913 in Znina, Slovakia, discusses growing up with six older siblings; his parents and their small shop in the village; his older brother’s immigration to the US; the tension between Germans, Slovakians, and Hungarians in his hometown; doing two years of military service which stopped him from immigrating to Palestine; taking training courses in Pressburg (Bratislava, Slovakia) to go to Palestine in 1939; his first encounters with antisemitism in 1942; going home to his family for Passover and being arrested by the police; being sent to Auschwitz in 1942 and then being moved to Birkenau two days later; witnessing a gassing in a farmhouse on the way to Auschwitz; working in the gravel pits at Birkenau; being a prisoner of higher rank and working for the SS; keeping notes on the number of deaths for the SS; rescuing his friend, Andre Mueller, and hiding him in Birkenau; his friends’ work at the camps (working in the crematorium); meeting and befriending Erich Kulka and Otto Kraus; being tortured by the Gestapo for helping two prisoners escape; his plan to escape Birkenau and flee to Russia; hiding in a hole in the gravel pits for three days with another prisoner and then escaping Birkenau in 1944; the train journey to Zakopane, Poland and walking to Slovakia; being arrested and questioned by the gendarmerie; bribing the police and being released; living in secret in Pressburg and meeting other escapees; moving house every few months to evade being arrested; his marriage in 1946; being a witness in the Auschwitz trials; living in Palestine and Prague from 1946 to 1949; moving back to Pressburg; the persecution of Jews in 1954; working for the Czechoslovakian television from 1960 to 1966; and his brother and sister-in-law’s visit and their reaction to what happened in Slovakia during the war.

Oral history interview with David Stoliar

Oral History

David Stoliar, born on October 31, 1922 in Chișinău, Moldova, describes spending his early childhood in France and in Bucharest, Romania until the age of ten when his parents divorced; going to boarding school in France until he returned to Bucharest in 1937 to live with his father and complete high school; enrolling in a Jewish junior college because Jews were not allowed to attend university; the closing of his school and the round-up of the town’s young Jews; his father’s successful efforts to buy him a passport and an exit visa from the Romanian government, which got him on a ship destined for Palestine; boarding the Sțrumah but drifting in international waters for a few days when the ship’s engine broke; the towing of the refugee boat into the Turkish port of Istanbul because the Romanian government refused to take the refugees back, and the British government would not permit them to enter Palestine; being forced to sail in international waters until the ship was destroyed by a torpedo explosion, and all 769 passengers and the Bulgarian crew were thrown into the water; being found among the wreckage by Turkish sailors who brought him to shore as the Sțrumah’s sole survivor; going to a military hospital for a week and then moving to a Turkish prison; finally receiving an entrance visa into Palestine from the British government; arriving in Tel Aviv in April 1942 and soon joining the Jewish Brigade of the British Army; fighting the Germans in Tripoli, Greece; being transferred to Cairo, Egypt, where he met a Jewish woman from Alexandria who later became his wife; leaving the British Army and returning to Palestine in 1946; fighting for the Hagannah in Israel’s War of Independence; and living in Israel until 1954, when he took a job with an oil company in Japan.

Oral history interview with Erna Karplus

Oral History

Erna Sporer Karplus, born in 1907 in Vienna, Austria, describes growing up in Vienna and experiencing very little antisemitism; how her family was deprived of many daily necessities during World War I; becoming a photographer and moving to Paris in 1932; her return to Vienna and marrying her husband in 1936; her fear of Hitler in the 1930s and living in Vienna during the Anschluss; the SS taking her husband and brother-in-law to the local police; moving to Zurich before Kristallnacht with her husband; immigrating to New York in 1938; her parents’ struggles as they moved from Italy to Portugal and finally to New York; the loss of several of her family members who stayed in Europe; adjusting to life in the United States and finding a job wherever she could; moving to Boston about a year after her immigration; her lack of excitement about moving to Palestine when some of her father’s family did; and what her family who immigrated to the United States did with the rest of their lives.

Oral history interview with Lucia Franco

Oral History

Lucia Franco, born in 1921, discusses growing up in Kos, Greece; the relationships among Turks, Greeks, and Italians in Kos and between Christians and Jews; the Italian occupation of Kos and the racial laws that Italian authorities reluctantly enforced; the lack of concern of the Jewish community in Kos about Hitler and the Nazis during the first years of World War II because of their remote location and the leniency of the Italian occupation; the arrival of Germans in Kos after the 1943 Italian armistice with the Allies; the round-up of the Jews of Kos by the Germans in July 1944; the attempt of the Mother Superior of a local convent to prevent the deportation of her mother and her mother's refusal to be separated from her family; the massacre of 300 Italian soldiers by the Germans in Kos; the deportation by boat to the mainland of Greece where their baggage was looted by Germans and then the train trip to Auschwitz; selections for the gas chambers at Auschwitz; difficulties with the different languages spoken at the camp; religious observances in the camp; differences in work details for men and women prisoners; life in Landsberg concentration camp; her mother receiving a favorable work assignment from a Kapo; liberation; spending time in Italy as a refugee and her return to Kos; moving to Italy and marrying an Italian soldier she had known in Kos; and living in Jewish communities in Africa and then immigrating to Belgium.

Oral history interview with Mikulas Judikovic

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ramon Serrano Suner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Juergen Simonson

Oral History

Juergen Simonson, born in 1924, discusses his paternal family's conversion from Judaism to Christianity in the nineteenth century and his status as a Mischlinge under Nazi law; his father's dismissal from his judgeship in Forst, Germany in 1935; moving with his parents to Dresden, Germany after experiencing antisemitism; attending a German school and graduating in 1942; being sent for forced labor to a Dresden armaments factory; his father's immigration to England in March 1939 and getting involved with the British German Christian Fellowship in England; his father's failed arrangements for his and his mother's immigration in September 1939; his recruitment into the Organisation Todt (OT), a Nazi construction and engineering group that employed forced laborers; his work with the OT in France and escaping with four friends; his attempt to join the French resistance but getting arrested; finding a job with the American Army and contacting George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, for help in contacting his father and immigrating to England; his immigration to England in June 1945, reuniting with his father and meeting Bishop Bell; his father's ordination as an Anglican priest; his impressions of Bishop Bell and of his advocacy for Jews during World War II; the deportation of his paternal aunt and grandmother from Berlin, Germany to Theresienstadt in 1943; his first experience preaching in a German prisoner of war camp in France and his pursuing a call to ministry in England; his time at theological college in Surrey, England from 1948 to 1952 and his life as an Anglican priest; the relationship between Christians and Jews in England today; and the Church of England's current position on the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Dorothy Howell-Thomas

Oral History

Dorothy Howell-Thomas, born in 1913, discusses her father's job with the Eastern Telegraph Company; moving to different countries in Europe and Africa during her childhood; attending high school in Paris, France and moving to England after graduation to live with family friends; becoming a secretary in Chichester, England in 1934; the connections between Dean A.S. Duncan-Jones, Bishop George Bell had, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the German Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche); Duncan-Jones' strong anti-appeasement stance before World War II; Duncan-Jones and Bell opening their homes to German Jewish refugees in England; the relationship between her Christian faith and her desire to help the oppressed and suffering; moving to London, England in 1936 to be an administrator in a Christian organization; the involvement of many English Christians in the Communist movement; Oswald Mosley and the activities of the British Union of Fascists in England; English opposition to fascism; becoming secretary to the Archbishop of York, William Temple, in 1938 and seeing him become the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942; Bishop Bell and Archbishop Temple uniting to advocate for and help refugees held as enemy aliens at the internment camp on the Isle of Man; the founding of the Council of Christians and Jews by Chief Rabbi Hertz and Archbishop Temple in 1942; the British government's scrutiny of the Anglican church’s help of Jewish refugees; Archbishop Temple calling on the government to do more to alleviate the suffering of Jews in Europe; and the progress of Jewish-Christian relations today.

Oral history interview with Eli Rock

Oral History

Eli Rock, born on August 12, 1915 in Rochester, NY, describes growing up with Russian Jewish immigrant parents; practicing law in Rochester until he moved to Washington, DC in December 1942 to work for the Labor Relations Board; joining the American Field Service in late 1944 to be a part of the war efforts; serving as an ambulance driver for the French Army in Germany; being hired by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to help with relief efforts and to act as an interpreter to the French Jewish community; organizing a tracing center to reunite survivors with their families and administrating the dispatch of relief teams to Feldafing, a displaced persons camp in Germany; accompanying General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George S. Patton when they visited Feldafing on September 15, 1945; returning to New York in December 1945 but returning to Europe to direct the JDC office in Berlin, Germany; helping Jewish survivors to reach the American zone of Berlin and running the Schlachtensee displaced persons camp in Berlin from January 1946 until January 1947; returning to New York in February 1947, where he worked as a lawyer for the JDC until 1948; helping to create the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization whose function was to provide restitution for Jewish property in Germany; and continuing his work as a lawyer in Philadelphia.

Oral history interview with Stefan Czyzewski

Oral History

Stefan Czyzewski, born on August 12, 1922 in Leśnogóra, Poland, describes growing up on a farm; joining the Obroncy Polski (Defenders of Poland), an underground organization; being caught and sent to a camp in Siberia a month later; becoming a translator because of his skill with languages and being allowed to go outside the camp, where he became friends with some of the natives; his training as an underground fighter in British military camps in Prussia; infiltrating Nazi-occupied Poland and joining the Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej (Union for Armed Struggle) in central Poland; being given command of a twenty-person action group squad that destroyed bridges and German supply trains and fought the Germans in central Poland; attacking Einsatzgruppen patrols from May 1943 to March 1944; being caught by the Germans in March 1944 and interned at Skaryszewska transit camp in Warsaw; his transfer to a labor camp in Silesia, Germany; escaping in April 1944 and joining the Narodowe Sily Zbrojne (National Armed Forces) only to be arrested again and sentenced to death; his temporary confinement in May 1944 to Gross-Rosen, where he worked in the stone quarry; his transfer to Mauthausen in June 1944 and working in an armament factory there; narrowly avoiding execution on several occasions until his liberation in May 1945; going into a tuberculosis sanitarium in Forchheim, Germany and then living in another displaced persons camp in Aschaffenburg, Germany; starting to work as a police officer for the UNRRA in 1948 in Wildflecken, Germany; and immigrating to the United States in the fall of 1949.

Oral history interview with Samuel Makower

Oral History

Samuel Makower, born on January 6, 1922 in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes his life, town, and family before the war; his experiences with antisemitism; participating in the Hashomer Hatzair youth organization; being forced with his family into Russian-controlled Białystok, where he stayed for three months; moving to a small town in the Ural Mountains, where he worked on a copper and gold mine; no longer practicing his faith once he was forced from his home; moving to Minsk on June 22, 1941 and the Germans forcing him into the Minsk ghetto in August; managing to get food from nearby peasants while in the ghetto; witnessing the pogroms committed by Ukrainian guards; going up to the Judenrat office to find work and often receiving construction jobs; escaping from the ghetto with a group of thirty people to join the Chicalifsky partisan group in the woods; blowing up trains and attacking Germans as part of his work for the partisans; receiving food and information about German forces closing in on the partisans from local peasants; meeting the Red Army in the forest and assisting them in fighting the Germans by cleaning up after attacks, blowing up remnants, and helping to liberate cities like Berlin; going to a displaced persons camp in Berlin, where he reunited with his mother, brothers, and sister; entering the university in Berlin in 1948 and meeting former German soldiers who he might have almost killed during the war; receiving his doctorate in chemistry and getting a job in Massachusetts in 1956; and reconciling with his past.

Oral history interview with Inge Sachs Rosenthal

Oral History

Inge Sachs Rosenthal, born May 27, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; going on a Kindertransport to London in March or April 1939; meeting her Scottish-English guardians who lived in a London suburb; not having enough money to attend school and instead going to a crèche to be trained as a children’s nurse; returning to her guardians to work as a housekeeper once the war broke out in September 1939; hating her life with her guardians in the suburbs and leaving them after three years; locating a job at an optical factory with the help of the German-Austrian Labour Exchange; loving her work and deciding to become an optician; eventually becoming a Fellow of the British Optical Association and working in a firm on Regents Street in London; immigrating to the United States in 1947; spending two years working in an optometrist’s office in New York City, NY; marrying a German refugee in 1949 and moving with him to his coffee farm in Rolândia, Brazil; her husband’s death in 1973 and taking over the administration of the coffee farm; and having a family of four children and five grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

Oral History

Joseph Elman, born on February 2, 1922 in Pruzana, Poland, describes growing up in a religious Jewish family and in a large, active Jewish community; his recollections of antisemitism before the war; becoming involved with the Betar Zionist youth movement after listening to radio reports about Hitler and the Nazi rise to power; the Russian takeover of Pruzana on September 1, 1939 and the Nazi takeover on June 23, 1941; the establishment of a ghetto in Pruzana in September 1941 and moving in there with his family in mid-1942; working for the ghetto’s food department; the influx of people into the ghetto from other towns and hearing their stories of villages being wiped out by the Germans; joining a partisan resistance group with his brother and smuggling weapons into the ghetto; the four-day liquidation of the Pruzana ghetto beginning on January 27, 1943; escaping into the forest with his partisan group and living there for the next year and a half; joining a larger group of Soviet partisans (Panteleimon Ponomarenko’s partisan group) in September 1943 and then having to register and form organized groups for the Soviet government; his assignment to the Kirov Brigade, where he handled the group’s anti-tank gun and helped to destroy Nazi supply trains, cut telephone and telegraph wires, and divert the German military’s attention from the Soviet army; his liberation by the Soviet Army in July 1944 and learning that his mother, father, and sisters had died; traveling through Białystok, Lódz, Vienna, Bratislava, and Graz until arriving in a displaced persons camp outside of Munich, Germany; and immigrating to and arriving in New York on June 7, 1947.

Oral history interview with Jozef Szajna

Oral History

Jozef Szajna, born on March 13, 1922, in Rzeszów, Poland, describes his childhood; leaving his Polish high school at seventeen and joining the Union of Armed Struggle, an underground organization; working in an airplane factory, where he replaced good parts with defective parts and made drawings of the factory's layout; being captured with a friend in January 1941 in Slovakia while trying to flee to Hungary; being turned over to the German border patrol in Muszyna, Poland and then going into prisons in five different towns; his transfer to Auschwitz in the summer of 1941; continuing his underground activities in Auschwitz by smuggling food and clothing to the women's camp; contracting typhus and going into the sick barracks; obtaining a position through friends cleaning the SS cafeteria; attempting to escape Auschwitz with two other people in August 1943 but getting caught and sentenced to hang; receiving a different sentence and instead working for the penal company; wearing a red dot, which signified that he was a dangerous prisoner; convincing a Nazi official to assign him to a Buchenwald transport, so he could attempt to escape; contracting a lung infection and remaining in the Buchenwald hospital; obtaining ink and drawing pictures in exchange for food; the evacuation of Buchenwald on April 6, 1945; escaping with another prisoner to a field after there was an explosion while on their march from Buchenwald; his liberation by American soldiers; remaining in Poland after the war and graduating from the Academy of Art in Kraków in 1947; and becoming well-known for his artwork and theater productions that depict imagery and themes from the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Tadeusz Marchaj

Oral History

Tadeusz Marchaj, born on December 12, 1924, in Kielce, Poland, describes his life growing up; the Nazi occupation of Poland when he was a high school student; his involvement in the underground with Szare Szeregi (Gray Troops), a scouting organization; working with Szare Szeregi on preparing military education programs, procuring weapons, distributing publications, and sabotaging German military activities; assisting the Home Army in the Warsaw Polish Uprising on August 1, 1944; the capture of his troops by German police on August 23; his troops’ deportation to the transit camp in Pruszków, Poland and then to Stutthof; claiming he was a draftsman and then being transported to Dziemiany, a sub-camp of Stutthof; working on drawings for various constructions being erected on the grounds; being allowed to receive mail and to leave the camp with permission; losing any privileges on November 23, 1944 when his troop became classified as political prisoners; the camp's evacuation to Pelplin, Poland, where they were forced to clear the roads and dig anti-tank ditches; and going to Gdansk, Poland, where he hid in the woods until the German Army capitulated on May 9, 1945.

Oral history interview with Trude Heller

Oral History

Trude Heller, born on June 19, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, describes her family and having several non-Jewish friends; meeting her husband Max at a summer resort when she was fifteen; the Anschluss in March 1938 and losing her family’s home and their two stores; her father’s escape to Antwerp, Belgium and then following him there with her mother; living with a refugee status and attempting to get a permit every thirty days that would allow them to stay in the country; getting in touch with a distant cousin who lived in the United States; going to the American consul in Antwerp and receiving a visa to travel to the US to meet her cousin with her mother; having to leave her father behind because he had been born in Poland; arriving in New York on March 10 and immediately finding a place to live and going to work; receiving a telegram from her father on May 10 that he had received a passage to come to the US; the Nazi invasion of Belgium, which kept her father from leaving; Max arriving in the US and finding out that her father had been deported to a camp in France on July 18; her father’s escape and him managing to get to the United States a year later; her recollections of her life after Kristallnacht and in Antwerp; getting a cleaning job with the National Silver Company while she was in New York; moving with her family and Max to Greenville, SC in 1942; marrying Max shortly after their arrival in Greenville; and starting a family with Max.

Oral history interview with Max Heller

Oral History

Max Heller, born on May 28, 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes growing up in an Orthodox family; his exposure to antisemitism and hearing his mother’s stories about the pogroms she had experienced in Poland; graduating from gymnasium, beginning work, and attending business school; meeting his future wife Trude and an acquaintance named Mary Mills on a family vacation in 1937; not being afraid of Hitler until the Anschluss and the immediate implementation of anti-Jewish laws; his family’s desire to leave the country; visiting the United States consulate to obtain a visa and to write to Mary Mills; Mary’s work to obtain visas and positions for Max and his sister in a shirt factory in the United States; immigrating to the US four months after the Anschluss; beginning his work almost as soon as he arrived in the US; receiving a telegram in November 1938 with news that his parents had been given visas by the US Embassy and would be arriving in New York; Trude’s immigration to the United States and starting work at the shirt factory in 1940; his marriage to Trude in 1942 and having three children; and serving as the mayor of his city and as the Chairman of State Economic Development.

Oral history interview with Rosalie Laks Lerman

Oral History

Rosalie Laks Lerman, born on March 5, 1926 in Starachowice, Poland, describes growing up as the middle daughter in a well-off Jewish family; her internment in the Starachowice ghetto; her deportation to the Majówka labor camp, where she stayed from 1942 to 1944 working in a brick factory; her transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1944 and remaining there through January 1945; her transfer to Ravensbrück in January 1945 and then to a sub-camp of Ravensbrück; her liberation on May 4, 1945 by the Russian Army; being placed into a displaced persons camp in Berlin in 1946; and her immigration to New York on February 11, 1947.

Oral history interview with Sigmund Strochlitz

Oral History

Sigmund Strochlitz, born on the first day of Chanukah in 1916 in Będzin, Poland, describes growing up in a close-knit Jewish family; attending Kraków University in 1936 and experiencing antisemitism there; his transfer to a Business Academy in Kraków, where his sisters also went to school; his family’s move to Działoszyce, Poland in 1939 because of his father’s fear about the approaching war; moving alone to Lwów (L'viv, Ukraine) in 1939 while the rest of his family moved back to Będzin; his return to Będzin at his father’s request; marrying Sabina Koninski in 1940; moving into the Będzin ghetto in the spring of 1943; his supervision of a group of farmers cultivating food in the ghetto because of his father’s connections with the Judenrat; his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1943 and remaining there until October 26, 1944; the immediate gassing of his parents, sisters, and wife upon their arrival; meeting his second wife and a close companion in the camp; his transfer to the Dautmergen concentration camp in Germany; and his liberation in April 1945.

Oral history interview with Amy Zahl Gottlieb

Oral History

Amy Zahl Gottlieb, born in London, England in 1919, discusses her work in helping Jews living abroad; the bombing in London during the war; joining the Jewish Relief Unit of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, sponsored by the Central British Fund for German Jewry, in 1943; being sent to Egypt to prepare for the liberation of the concentration camps and to tend to the needs of European refugees evacuated by the British Army; being sent to Greece in April 1945 to help refugees; her appointment as the director of immigration from Austria and Germany for the American Joint Distribution Committee and helping seventy thousand people leave Germany and Austria; helping Oskar Schindler and Jewish families immigrate to Argentina; teaching a course at the University of Illinois on the Holocaust in 1977; compiling a record of recently discovered documents of the Central British Fund that detailed the work of British Jews who had helped those persecuted during the Holocaust; and writing a book about the Central British Fund, titled “Men of Vision: Anglo-Jewry’s Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime 1933-1945.”

Oral history interview with Rachel Bielicka Gurdus

Oral History

Rachel Bielicka Gurdus, born in December 1922 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes her family and their traditional religious practices; her father’s business running a mill; the pressures of antisemitism in Poland; her family considering themselves Jewish and not Polish; learning Russian after the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939; accepting refugees into her home after the war started; the Russians taking away land and sending some Jews to Siberia; moving into the Vilnius ghetto and working for the Judenrat; the transfer of her father and brother-in-law to a work camp; organizing groups to garden and procure food in the ghetto; making connections with friends who had jobs in the ghetto; fighting the Nazi and Lithuanian guards through a ghetto resistance organization; the ghetto’s liquidation and her attempts to hide in and escape from the ghetto; partisan activities in the forests; her transfer to a camp outside of Riga; working in a linen factory and having to sing for the soldiers at her camp; her transfer to Strassenhof and then Stutthof; keeping herself clean and finding food in the camps; the evacuation of Stutthof through the forests; the arrival of Allied tanks, who liberated, fed, and housed her and the other inmates; the difficulties of traveling after the war because she did not have any documents; receiving medical treatment and reuniting with her family; and her immigration to the United States in 1976.

Oral history interview with Sulamif Shreyber Zhabinskaya

Oral History

Sulamif Shreyber Zhabinskaya, born on January 23, 1928 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes her early wartime experiences; her family’s move into the Vilnius ghetto on September 6, 1941; participating with activities of the Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsiye (United Partisan Organization) from September 1941 to September 1943; escaping from the ghetto once in 1941 and once in 1942 but soon returning; her deportation to Kaiserwald, a concentration camp in Latvia, in September 1943; working in the Juglas Manufactura, a textile factory; her internment in Stutthof, a concentration camp in Poland, where she stayed from August 1944 to March 1945; going on a death march; her liberation in Lauenburg, Germany on March 10, 1945 by the Russian Army; and her immigration to Montreal, Canada on December 4, 1989.

Oral history interview with Rachel Bielicka Gurdus and Sulamif Shreyber Zhabinska

Oral History

Rachel Bielicka Gurdus and Sulamif Shreyber Zhabinskaya discuss first meeting each other through family connections in the Vilnius ghetto; Rachel living with her boyfriend’s family; Sulamif’s family’s adoption of Rachel; staying together when they were forced into wagons leaving the ghetto; helping each other to survive the war; Sulamif becoming extremely ill after the war and Rachel taking care of her; Sulamif meeting her future husband, an army officer, during her liberation; keeping up a relationship between themselves and their families; not sharing much with their families about their experiences; and the “accidental” survival of all Holocaust survivors.

Oral history interview with Anita Sockol

Oral History

Anita Sockol, born in 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; going to a Jewish school to avoid antisemitism; noticing the atmosphere of fear and anxiety that surrounded Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933; her memories of seeing Hitler in parades, Hitler Youth on the streets, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics; preparations for emigrating from Germany and then leaving for the Netherlands in 1938; arriving in New York in September 1938; difficulties adjusting to American life; hearing of Kristallnacht and other details of the Holocaust in the United States; the immigration of an aunt who had survived Theresienstadt; reparations her parents received from Germany; her first trip back to Germany, which she took at the invitation of the German government in the 1980s; her impression of Holocaust memorials in Germany; and her reflections on how her experiences as a refugee changed her.

Oral history interview with Ruth Zellner

Oral History

Ruth Zellner, born on December 1, 1920 in Wroclaw, Poland, describes her experiences during Kristallnacht; her father's arrangement for the family to board the SS St. Louis; boarding the ship on May 13, 1939; reaching the port in Havana on May 27, 1939 but being denied entry by the Cuban government; her mother's attempt to telegraph Eleanor Roosevelt asking for help; her father's decision to get involved in a passenger committee and act as a liaison between the captain of the St. Louis, the passengers of the ship, and the various governments with which the captain was negotiating; her father's testimony at the Nuremberg trials that the St. Louis captain had tried to help the passengers of his ship; the ship being forced to leave Cuban waters on June 1, 1939; the ship's return to Europe in June 1939; immigrating to England with her mother; and immigrating to New York in November 1946 with her family.

Oral history interview with Marguerite Glicksman

Oral History

Marguerite Glicksman, born in London, England on July 21, 1915, describes her father who was Polish but had become a British citizen; volunteering in the British Red Cross and being called up for military duty when the war started; being stationed in London and learning first aid; going to Italy in 1944 and coming in contact with American troops who were very good to her; spending time near Venice during D-Day and then being sent home; learning about the German people from a woman with whom she worked and not understanding the seriousness of the war; going back to London between 1944 and 1945; going to Athens, Greece, where she worked with the American Joint Distribution Committee to help students who had hidden in the mountains or who had been in the camps; helping these children get back to normal by providing them with food, books, and lodging; staying in Greece for four years after the war; hiding some people during the Greek Civil War; helping girls learn occupations like dressmaking through the ORT and the National Council of Jewish Women; returning to England in 1950 and then traveling to New York to work; going to Vienna, Austria in 1957 to work for the Joint Distribution Committee during the Hungarian uprising; and finally settling in Washington, DC because her brother was a doctor in Alexandria, VA.

Oral history interview with Michael Naoum Matsas

Oral History

Michael Naoum Matsas, born in 1930 in Iōannina, Greece, describes growing up in a family involved in the wine and cheese business; his father’s work in the banking system; attending a Jewish school and only occasionally experiencing antisemitism; moving to Agrinion, where there were few Jews; joining a youth organization that participated in Greek nationalist activities but leaving in October 1940 when the Italians invaded Greece; living in decent conditions under the Italians until April 1941, when the Germans invaded; returning to Iōannina because it was out of German control; leaving the city in September 1943 to go hide in a small village, where he faced starvation and thievery; his mother’s trip to Agrinion to retrieve food and to find out that all of the town’s Jews had been deported; the approach of German soldiers in August 1944 and their destruction of several villages; the work of the partisan movement in helping Jews; how the Jews of Greece had no idea about what was going on in Europe; how more Greek Jews than other European Jews were able to escape or hide from the Germans; writing down his memoirs immediately after the war; learning several songs sung by the partisans; moving to Athens and starting university at the age of 17; immigrating to the United States in his twenties and having to redo his undergraduate and graduate degrees; and settling in New York and starting a family.

Oral history interview with Ginetta Sagan

Oral History

Ginetta Sagan, born in 1923 in San Colombano al Lambro, Italy, describes her childhood; her friendships and activities with the Italian anti-fascists before World War II; the fear and anger when intellectuals and others critical of Mussolini were executed or imprisoned; her involvement with the Italian Mountain Club and meeting people with different political ideologies; the kindness that most Italians displayed towards victims of persecution; the racial laws of 1938 instituted by Mussolini; receiving news about Nazi atrocities from Italian soldiers in occupied countries; her parents' efforts to protect her from persecution; her involvement with the Italian resistance; her job as a secretary at the headquarters of the Italian Air Force in Milan; the underground press and the organization and integration of various anti-fascist groups; her growing dislike of politics and her uneasiness with the Communists' plans for post-war Italy; her role in supervising three apartments where the resistance hid materials and people; spies and methods of communication in the resistance; the arrest of her parents and their pre-arranged plan for her to go into hiding; the chaos in Italy after the armistice with the Allies in 1943 and its repercussions for the Germans; her assistance in smuggling people over the border to Switzerland; her capture in February 1945 and the torture she endured; and her rescue in April 1945 and recuperation.

Oral history interview with Lidia Siciarz

Oral History

Lidia Siciarz, born on May 16, 1930 in Kraków, Poland, describes her family and growing up as an only child; moving to Łacko, Poland and not participating in the religious community; her father’s mobilization into the Polish Army on September 1, 1939 and then being taken as a prisoner of war by the Soviet Army; leaving with her mother and other members of her family for Pinsk, Poland (now Belarus) to live with her mother's family; her father escaping the prisoner of war camp and rejoining his family in Pinsk; her family moving to the Ukraine to avoid her father's recapture by the Russians; the Nazi invasion of Ukraine in June 1941; her mother getting notified in January 1942 that the local Jews were being deported; hiding in the local hospital for several weeks with the head nurse Sister Jadwiga; going to an orphanage in Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), where she hid in the orphanage as a Polish Catholic and assumed the name Marysia Borowska; her transfer to another orphanage in Poland because there were accusations of her being Jewish; Ukrainian nationalists attacking the orphanage in early fall of 1943; going to orphanages located in a former part of the Warsaw ghetto on Wolnonc Street and then to Kostowiec, Poland after the Warsaw ghetto uprising; reuniting with her father on May 5, 1945; discovering that her mother had been denounced to the Gestapo in the summer of 1942 and was killed; moving to Hirschberg (Jelenia Gora), Poland with her family; marrying Leszek Siciarz and immigrating to Israel in 1957; and immigrating to the United States in 1969 with her husband and two children.

Oral history interview with Gunnar Sønsteby

Oral History

Gunnar Sonsteby, born on January 11, 1918 in Rjukan, Norway, discusses the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940; joining the Norwegian resistance movement; becoming the leader of the Oslo Gang (Oslogjengen); leading 17 attacks against German units and installations in Oslo from May to October 1944; attacking the German air depot in Korsvoll and destroying 44 Nazi aircrafts; destroying a machine tool plant; invading German oil storage depots; becoming the chief of all sabotage operations in Norway in November 1944; his gang serving as the bodyguards to the crown prince; and his military decorations, including the Norwegian War Cross with two bars.

Oral history interview with Hans Mommsen

Oral History

Hans Mommsen, born in 1930 in Marburg, Germany, describes joining the Deutsches Jungvolk (German Youth Folk) in 1940; remaining a member of the organization for four years; his recollections of being sworn in for the Hitler Youth at an assembly with 800 boys; singing antisemitic songs in the Hitler Youth but not realizing their significance; seeing American troops enter his town on April 22, 1945; completing his doctoral work under Professor Rothfels after the war; acting as a Professor for Contemporary History at the Ruhr-University Bochum from 1968 until 1996; and currently being the Shapiro Senior Fellow in Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with John E. Dolibois

Oral History

John E. Dolibois, born on December 4, 1918 in Luxembourg, describes growing up as the youngest of eight children and without a mother; his immigration to Ohio in June 1931; his graduation from Miami University and marriage to Winifred Englehart in 1942; being drafted November 13, 1942; starting a course in December 1943 to become an interrogator for prisoners of war; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; arriving in Revin, France, where he worked for the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces; arriving in Dachau on April 30, 1945; his assignment to the Central Continental Prisoner of War Enclosure no. 32 in the Palace Hotel in Mondorf, Luxembourg, where he interrogated Nazi prisoners of war; working with 51 prisoners including Hermann Goering, Julius Streicher, and Robert Ley; going to the International War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg, Germany, where he acted as the interpreter for the prison psychiatrist, put together a scrapbook of autographs and photos of high-ranking Nazis for General Eisenhower, and looked out for the welfare of the Nazi prisoners; his promotion to captain in January 1946; his participation in a project to get the “German viewpoint” of the Holocaust; returning to New York in May 1946; serving as the Vice President for University Relations at Miami University from 1967 until 1981; and serving as the United States Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1981 to 1985.

Oral history interview with Peter Black

Oral History

Peter Black, born on December 29, 1950 in Boston, MA, discusses his academic career as an historian; working on a case for the New York attorney’s office against a former Nazi policeman; his view of various immigration acts passed by Congress; joining a legal organization in Washington, DC that prosecuted former Nazi soldiers and guards; and becoming the senior historian at the United states Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Gabriele Derenberg Schiff

Oral History

Gabriele D. Schiff, born in 1914 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses her childhood in an assimilated Jewish household; her encounters with antisemitism; her job as a social worker in a Jewish orphanage; moving to England for school and then returning to Germany; immigrating to England and then to the United States in 1937; graduating from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in English and then earning a degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania; her knowledge of the situation in Germany during the war; working with the American Friends Service Committee to help refugees get affidavits of support to immigrate to the United States; working as a counselor at a refugee vacation camp set up by the Quakers in Nyack, New York; working for a year at a state psychiatric hospital in Maryland and serving as the director of recreation at a camp for conscientious objectors; being classified as an enemy alien during the war but then becoming an American citizen; being asked by the War Relocation Authority to work at the refugee camp in Oswego, New York in 1943; going to Italy with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1946; her observations on the suffering of refugees after World War II; the desire of refugees to immigrate to Palestine; leaving Italy in 1948 and working for the Joint in Brazil; returning to Europe and working for the Joint in Germany; suffering injuries in a car accident and recuperating in a hospital in Italy where she met her husband; returning to the United States in 1950, marrying, and starting work; and her experiences working with Holocaust survivors in the United States.

Oral history interview with Louise Segaar

Oral History

Louise Segaar, born in 1920 in Indonesia, describes her childhood; moving to the Netherlands for her father’s work when she was four years old; her father’s military legacy; her forebodings about the German occupation; Dutch anger at the restrictions imposed by the Germans; her experiences in the Girl Scouts; her brother's time in hiding; her work as a nurse in a hospital and in the Dutch underground; her interactions with Germans in the Netherlands; how she helped to save children through the Girl Scouts and at the hospital where she worked; a German soldier who was billeted at her family's house during World War II; her two uncles who perished in Auschwitz; and the liberation of the Netherlands and how the Dutch punished those who had collaborated with Germany during the war.

Oral history interview with Lillyan Rosenberg

Oral History

Lillyan Rosenberg, born in 1928 in Halberstadt, Germany, describes her family and childhood; the religious rituals her family practiced like attending synagogue and keeping kosher; experiencing Hitler coming to power and increasing antisemitism in Germany in the 1930s; immigrating to England through a Kindertransport arranged by the Bloomsbury House in 1939; attending a German convent school in Rochdale, England and then The Beacon school in Tunbridge Wells, England; preparing for German air raids with her foster family; immigrating to the United States with her brother and living with her uncle; meeting her husband Jerry and having children; and retrieving some of her family’s belongings long after the war.

Oral history interview with Regina Laks Gelb

Oral History

Regina Laks Gelb, born December 16, 1929, discusses her childhood in Wierzbnik, Poland; her experiences of antisemitism in school; the town's evacuation to a nearby forest under air bombardment in September 1939; her return home where her sister, Hasia, set up school because of restrictions, roundups, and beatings; the family's move into the ghetto in early 1940; the roundup and deportation to Strzelnica camp on October 27, 1942, where she worked in the laundry and shared a bunk with her sisters, Hania and Krysia; her deportation to Auschwitz with her sisters in early August 1944, where she cut marsh grass and sorted the clothes of political prisoners; the death march to Gleiwitz beginning January 18, 1945, then to Ravensbrück, and later to Rechlin where she worked as a maid to an SS woman; her evacuation in early April 1945 and her liberation by Russian soldiers; her experience in Lódz, Poland, where her sister Chris married Miles Lerman; her life in Berlin, Germany after April 1946; and her immigration to the United States in February 1947.

Oral history interview with Anna Laks Wilson

Oral History

Anna Laks Wilson, born October 16, 1924, discusses her childhood in Wierzbnik, Poland; her entrance into school at age 11 in Radom; living in rented rooms and experiencing antisemitism as the only Jewish student in her class; her return home in September 1939 where she set up a school for younger children; her family's move into the ghetto in 1940, her work in the labor bureau, and her later job in the brick factory on the night shift; the liquidation of the ghetto at night while she and sister Krysia were working and how her parents and sister Renia were taken away; her deportation to Majówka, then to Strzelnica; her work typing up daily work lists and deceased prisoners' names; the role of the Judenrat and the Jewish police; her future husband Adash Wilczek’s escape in late 1943 with nine other prisoners from the camp to join Russian partisans in the forest; her deportation to Auschwitz in July 1944 by cattle car with her sisters; her work cutting bulrushes in wetlands then sorting the clothes of incoming Polish prisoners from November to January 1945; the death march beginning January 18, 1945 to Ravensbrück and then to Rechlin; her escape with her two sisters from the camp; and joining up with fleeing Germans and leaving their homes ahead of the arrival of the Russian Army.

Oral history interview with Miles Lerman

Oral History

Miles Lerman, born in 1920 in Tomaszów Lubelski, Poland, discusses his childhood in Poland and his experiences of antisemitism while in high school in Lwów (L'viv, Ukraine); his return home after his father’s death in 1938 to help his mother in her import business; the destruction of their home at the beginning of the war and his return to Lwów with his mother; his work for the Russians from 1940 to June 1941 and the rescue of his mother from inside a cattle car as she was being deported to Siberia; his work for the German Wehrmacht in Lwów after June 1941; hiding in a basement during a roundup; his deportation to the Viniki (Vynnyky) labor camp and his work breaking up Lwów cemetery stones to make gravel for roads; his escape with four others from Viniki to the forest, where they joined a group of 250 people led by Colonel Proch and George Meisel and fought against the Ukrainian National Guard; his return home after the Russian Army advancement and becoming a partner in a leather business in Lublin with Leon Feldhendler, who had escaped from Sobibór; the murder of Leon by Poles, going to Lódz to open a nightclub, and meeting his wife Chris; his journey to Berlin with Chris and her sister Renia; their arrival in the United States in February 1947; his work as a farmer in New Jersey and then as the owner of a heating and gasoline business; and his appointment by President Carter to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Oral history interview with Helene Reeves

Oral History

Dr. Helene Reeves (née Mencel), born May 10, 1912, discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria and her experiences with antisemitism; her membership in the Zionist Youth Movement “Blau Weiss;” the changing political climate in Austria between 1933 and 1938; her expulsion from medical school after the Anschluss on March 21, 1938; her passport which was stamped with the letter “J;” being assigned the name Sarah; her feelings of desperation during that time; her marriage in December 1938 to another physician; receiving an affidavit from Sam Menczel, a cousin in the United States; her husband’s receipt of an affidavit from the American psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner; going to Switzerland on a temporary visa to get help from a lawyer at the League of Nations in Geneva; persuading a Gestapo officer in the German consulate in Zurich to give her a visa to return to Vienna; traveling to the American consulate in Vienna to get her quota number; reuniting with her husband in Genoa; immigrating to the United States; receiving her medical certification; and receiving financial help from Muriel Gardiner in the US.

Oral history interview with Sophie Koper

Oral History

Sophie Koper, born on May 5, 1916 in Moscow, Russia, discusses how her family, even though Jewish, was allowed to stay in Moscow because her mother was a medical professional; her family’s immigration to Warsaw around 1922; learning Polish and attending mixed religion schools; starting her university education and meeting her future husband in school; the 1939 German invasion of Poland and moving into the ghetto in October 1940; receiving an “ausweiss” that kept her safe from early deportations; smuggling food into the ghetto and living in terrible conditions; hearing about the underground movement in the ghetto; getting a job sewing camouflage because of her ausweiss; escaping from the ghetto through a hole in the wall and moving in with Stefan Koper, the man who later became her husband; her and Stefan’s capture after the ghetto uprising; her deportation to a prisoner of war camp, where the Red Cross supplied them with packages of food and cigarettes; her escape from the camp, meeting American troops, and reuniting with Stefan; going to Quakenbrück, where Stefan found a job writing for ‘The Polish Soldier’s Daily’; getting married to Stefan, having a child, and immigrating to England; and finally settling in the United States.

Oral history interview with Edith Csengeri

Oral History

Edith Csengeri, born on March 4, 1926 in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, discusses growing up with her grandmother after her parents immigrated to France; being religious before the war but losing her faith after she witnessed the war’s atrocities; her involvement in a Zionist movement while keeping her non-Jewish friends in high school; the increasing antisemitism of the Hungarian people and government in the late 1930s; seeing refugees from Eastern Europe fleeing to Hungary and not believing that what happened to them could happen to her; the German invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944; attaining false papers with a friend but being caught by the Germans in Budapest and sent to Sharvar (Sárvár); her long journey by train to Auschwitz, where she stayed from May to October of 1944; finding out about the crematoria and smelling the burning bodies; her transfer to a forced labor camp in Czechoslovakia; her liberation by Russian soldiers and then walking to Budapest; reuniting with her brother and mother after the war; marrying her husband in 1947 and living with him in Hungary until the communist regime took over; immigrating to New York between 1956 and 1957; and viewing world events today from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor.

Oral history interview with Andrei Rosenberg

Oral History

Andrei Rosenberg, born in Uzhhorod, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), describes a happy but economically tough childhood; the Hungarian takeover of his town in 1938; his father’s arrest and murder by Hungarian soldiers in 1941; quitting school and going to work after his father’s death; the German invasion in 1944 and his deportation to Auschwitz; witnessing the selections made by Dr. Mengele; working in the Janina coal mine near Auschwitz; meeting several Jewish doctors in the camp, who helped him to survive; the evacuation of Auschwitz as the Russians neared Kraków; escaping from the death march by laying down in the forest and pretending to be dead; hiding in some sheds in Szczejkowice, Poland until Russians liberated him; walking 20 kilometers a day until he arrived at Hanushofser, Czechoslovakia, where he got a ride to Uzhhorod; reuniting with only his sister after the war; his draft into the Hungarian Army for three years; meeting his wife in 1953; and immigrating to the United States with his wife and children in 1973.

Oral history interview with Lucille Eichengreen

Oral History

Lucille Eichengreen, born on February 1, 1925 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses her happy childhood; the arrival of SA troops that were placed around her community; being taunted at school for her religion; her family's belief that they were protected as former Polish nationals; her memories of Kristallnacht and of her father being taken away to Poland; shipping most of her family’s household goods to an uncle in Palestine; her father's death in Dachau concentration camp in 1941; her family’s transport to the Lódz ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto, including its lack of food and sanitation; tensions between the Western and the Eastern Jews in the ghetto; her mother’s death in July 1942; how she and her sister buried their mother's body; Chaim Rumkowski's role in the deportation of the young and the old from Lódz, including her sister; the difficulties of finding a job in the ghetto as a woman; her close relationship with Isaiah Spiegel; working in the administrative offices of the ghetto and finding out information to which only few had access; her frequent meetings with Rumkowski and his physical abuse; her deportation from Lódz in the fall of 1944 to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where the British liberated her; her immigration to New York after the war and finding a job in a glove factory; and meeting her husband in New York and then moving to California.

Oral history interview with Steen Fischer

Oral History

Steen Christian Fischer was born on September 18, 1920 in Copenhagen, Denmark and discusses growing up in a conservative, Christian household; leaving school when he was fifteen and working as a courier for a steamship company; how nobody really worried about other people’s religious beliefs in daily life; the increasing difficulties to ship goods across Europe as the war approached; the precautions the Danish people initially took to avoid a German attack on Denmark; the German invasion of Denmark and how the military was told to do nothing; his conscription into the Navy; joining a movement to publish illegal newspapers after he left the Navy in 1941; helping Danish Jews escape to Sweden with the help of fishermen; other activities of the Dutch resistance; being caught by the Germans; being interrogated and sent to Neuengamme concentration camp; becoming sick and having to go to a hospital, where he remained until the Red Cross took the Danish and Norwegian political prisoners from the camp; returning home to his family before the war had ended; and going on with life after the war.

Oral history interview with Ernest Loewenstein

Oral History

Ernest Loewenstein, born in Koblenz, Germany on May 28, 1926, discusses growing up in a moderately religious home with his brother, parents, and grandparents; going to school until 1937 when antisemitism began to affect his family; having to leave school and see his father’s business closed in November 1938; the arrest of his father, who was sent to Dachau for a few weeks; traveling with his brother to Belgium to live with German families who had earlier relocated there; the travel visa that his parents received to go through England to the United States; the German invasion of Belgium and having to take care of his brother while living in the attic of a house; moving in with a German lady and getting a job in a bakery; going to Berlin, Germany, where he and his brother stayed in the Jewish Home for the aged; going to the American consulate to get a transit visa through Spain to reunite with his parents in the United States; learning that most of his family that had remained in Koblenz died; his experiences leaving a German-occupied country and going into Spain; his maturation during his immigration to the United States and while he took care of his brother; arriving in New York, NY to meet his parents and settling into life in America; his draft into the US Army when he turned eighteen; learning about the concentration camps while he was overseas fighting; and returning to America to start a new life working in the agricultural business and starting a family.

Oral history interview with King Michael I of Romania

Oral History

King Michael I of Romania, born on October 25, 1921 in Sinaia, Romania, discusses growing up and receiving a very diverse education; his father’s tumultuous reign in the early 1930s; the emergence of an extreme rightist movement, including the Iron Guard, in Romania in the 1930s; how his father never divulged his opinions about Jews; knowing what was happening with Hitler in Germany; meeting with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 but not discussing the Munich Accords; his father’s reorganization of the Front of National Rebirth in Romania; the Iron Guard’s murder of prime minister Armand Calinescu; his father’s decision to invite some Iron Guard members into the government in 1940; becoming king after his father abdicated in 1941; dealing with General Antonescu, who had recently become Prime Minister, established a state with the Iron Guard, and gained the support of Hitler; the Iron Guard Rebellion and the terrible violence against the Jews; Antonescu’s decision to declare war against the Russians without telling him; Antonescu’s deportation of many Jews from Romania; his and his mother’s attempts to stop the deportations; attempting to convince Antonescu to stop the deportations; dismissing Antonescu from office and then signing his death sentence two years later; and his frustration with the entire wartime and post-war period.

Oral history interview with Michael Wertman

Oral History

Michael Wertman, born in 1928 in Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), describes his childhood; his parents' divorce and his father's remarriage; the Soviet occupation of Lwów in 1939 and the nationalization of his father's business; his oldest brother's conscription into the Soviet Army; the confusion and tension leading up to the German occupation of Lwów; the implementation of antisemitic restrictions after the German occupation; the early pogroms instigated by Ukrainian nationalists; the formation of the Lwów ghetto and its Judenrat; the birth of his younger sister Helen; his older brother’s deportation to a forced labor camp; life in the Lwów ghetto; his father obtaining false papers and sending him to Warsaw, Poland; finding a job in Ternopil, Ukraine and living with other boys his age; getting an official Kennkarte as an "Aryan"; his fears of being detected as a Jew outside of the ghetto; befriending a Polish family and staying with them during the 1944 Warsaw uprising; the evacuation of Warsaw and the deprivations during that time; his liberation by the Soviet Army; finding his father, stepmother, and siblings in Lublin, Poland, and learning of the death of his mother; his and his brother's time in a displaced persons camp in Germany; and his immigration to Canada in 1950.

Oral history interview with Regine Donner

Oral History

Regine Donner, born in 1928 in Poland, describes moving to Antwerp, Belgium as a child; her involvement in Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir; encountering antisemitism in school; the German invasion of Belgium and her family's failed attempt to flee to France; attending an agricultural school and receiving a summons to the Malines concentration camp; meeting a man on the train to Malines who encouraged her to escape; her attempt to reach Switzerland with four other young Jewish refugees but being turned away; the train journey back to Belgium when she and the other teenagers discussed committing suicide; a woman who overheard their conversation, asked them to follow her off the train, and gave them the names and addresses of people who would help them; going to the house of a dentist in Jodoigne-Souveraine, Belgium and then being sent to hide with a Catholic family in Grez-Doiceau, Belgium; the parish priest who obtained false documents under the name Marie Goossens for her; receiving a letter asking for help from her mother in Paris, France; the journey to Paris to rescue her mother and younger brother; taking them back to Belgium and finding places for them to hide; her conversion to Catholicism; the news of her older sister's arrest and her mother's illness; her mother's last days; her brothers' return from Auschwitz after World War II and her conflict with her family about her conversion; her decision to become a nun; and the eventual reconciliation with her family.

Oral history interview with Amalia Magda Basch

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alice Jakubovic

Oral History

Alice Jakubovic, born in 1922 in Prešov, Slovakia, describes her childhood in an Orthodox household; how her life changed in 1939 when Jozef Tiso took over Slovakia and anti-Jewish laws came into place; her father having to give up ownership of his bakery to a Christian; having to register as a Jew named Sarah in Prešov and then being deported to Auschwitz; having to shave her entire body and getting a tattoo; working in the laundry, the sewing room, the gum fields, and on the nearby roads at Auschwitz; living in Block 10 and passing along rumors about what was going on there; having to go to the camp hospital when she became sick; her experiences helping and leading other prisoners at the camp; leaving Auschwitz on a death march in January 1945 and arriving in Ravensbrück; her liberation and return home; meeting her husband; and her reflections on how her experiences in Auschwitz shaped her life.

Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Basch Klayman, born in 1938 in Zagreb, Croatia, discusses her childhood; moving to Ludbreg, Croatia; the confusion and tension she encountered as a young child at the beginning of World War II; her recollections of being passed from family to family and hidden in Ludbreg along with her younger brother; battles between the Ustaša and partisans in the streets of Ludbreg; the deportations of her father and her non-Jewish uncle Stricek to the Jasenovac concentration camp; the end of the war and her and her brother's adoption by Sticek; her brother's death from scarlet fever; her trip to Switzerland when she was in high-school to find relatives who had survived the Holocaust; finding out as a teenager that she was Jewish; and meeting and marrying her husband and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Lucie Sternberg Rosenberg

Oral History

Lucie Sternberg Rosenberg, born in 1921 in Zagreb, Croatia, discusses her childhood; the political tension between Croatia and Serbia before World War II; the influx of Austrian Jewish refugees to Croatia; leaving to study at Oxford University in England in 1937; her engagement to a fellow Oxford student Joseph Heaton and bringing him home to meet her parents; staying in Croatia and the heightened tension in Zagreb as the German invasion neared; her father obtaining immigration visas to the United States for the family; their journey to Switzerland and phoning their relatives in Yugoslavia to warn them of the German occupation; their journey from Switzerland to Spain and then to Lisbon, Portugal; their journey to the United States and settling into a new country; her brother's enlistment in the US Army and his death in battle in France; the death of her fiancé in the war; and meeting and marrying her current husband.

Oral history interview with Isaac Nehama

Oral History

Isaac Nehama, born in 1926 in Athens, Greece, discusses his childhood; the integration of Sephardic Jews into Greek society; the Italian occupation of Greece and the deprivations of many of its citizens; his graduation from high school and working for a black market trader; the increasing fear in Greece of the German occupation; how most of the Jewish population of Athens dispersed and went into hiding when the German implemented first antisemitic laws; staying with family friend until deciding to join partisans in the mountains of Greece; his daily life and missions with the partisans; reuniting with his father and learning that his mother and younger brothers had been deported; the British arresting him for being a partisan but being released due to his father's intervention; his brother’s return from Buchenwald; learning of the death of his mother and other brother; and obtaining a scholarship to attend college in the United States.

Oral history interview with Helen Spitzer Tichauer

Oral History

Helen Spitzer Tichauer, born in 1918, discusses her journey to and arrival in Auschwitz concentration camp from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; her first impressions of Auschwitz; the internal organization of the camp and the various jobs she had there, including working in a demolition crew and painting stripes on prisoner uniforms; the selections of women to go to the gas chambers; becoming ill with typhus but recuperating from her illness with the help of friends; her relationship to some of the female guards at Auschwitz; her transfer to Birkenau; the functions of different offices in the camp; roll calls in camp; getting food parcels in the camp and exchanges for extra food; the administration of the hospital; sending reports about the status of the camp to Berlin; a model of the camp that she made; the distribution of goods in the camp; a friend's unsuccessful attempt to escape; and how punishment was directed in the camp.

Oral history interview with Julian Bussgang

Oral History

Julian Bussgang was born in 1925 in Lwów, Poland (now L’viv, Ukraine) and describes his childhood; his Bar Mitzvah in 1938; experiencing the German attacks on Poland in September 1939; packing up with his family and driving out of the country unsure of where they would go until they arrived in Romania; attending school and his parents trying to get visas for France or the United States; immigrating to Tel Aviv during the war; enlisting in the Polish army in 1943 and being stationed around the Mediterranean; fighting German forces in Italy with other Allied forces; working in a Displaced Persons camp near the border of Austria as an interpreter; studying engineering in England after the war; immigrating to the United States with his parents and sister; eventually going to M.I.T. for his Masters and Harvard for his Ph.D. in electrical engineering; starting his own engineering company and working with NASA on the shuttle that made the first moon landing; and meeting his wife and starting a family.

Oral history interview with Nicole Long

Oral History

Nicole Long (née Denier), born in 1921 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood; the backgrounds of her Jewish mother and Catholic father; the German occupation of France; her studies in high school and university; her brother's escape to the Pyrenees mountains; going into hiding in Limoges, France but returning to Paris; her mother losing her job with the French government and working for the U.G.I.F. (Union générale des israélites de France); her involvement with the French resistance while a student at the Sorbonne; working underground with the U.G.I.F. to transport Jewish children to safety; her and her mother's arrest and eventual release after providing a false baptismal certificate; moving to her Catholic grandparents' apartment in Paris with her mother; temporarily hiding Jewish refugees until they could find them permanent placements; the liberation of Paris by American forces; working in Switzerland postwar and assisting refugees; and immigrating to United States.

Oral history interview with Paulette Nehama

Oral History

Paulette Nehama, born in 1933 in Volos, Greece, discusses her family and childhood; the Italian occupation of Greece during World War II and how the Italian Navy confiscated her family's home; the bombardment of Volos by British planes; deprivations that she and her family suffered during the occupation; her family's move to Athens, Greece right before the German occupation; going into hiding in Athens using false papers; their time with the Pavella family in Athens; the liberation of Greece in October 1944; remaining in Athens after the end of the war; her schooling and work as a social worker in Greece; meeting her husband and moving to Canada to marry him; and her life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Gisela Zamora

Oral History

Gisela Zamora, born in 1928 in Battenberg, Germany, discusses her family and childhood; the intense antisemitism in Battenberg after Hitler's rise to power; her family's move to Friedberg, Hesse, Germany; her father's arrest on Kristallnacht and imprisonment in Buchenwald for a month; the closing of Jewish schools in Aichach-Friedberg in 1939 and her continued schooling in Frankfurt, Germany; her family's deportation in 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia; her experiences in the “kinderheim” in Theresienstadt; her and her family's deportation to Auschwitz; her daily life in Auschwitz and the support from friends that she had there; doing forced labor at a camp near Gross-Rosen; her liberation by the Soviets; her recuperation from tuberculosis in a German hospital; her time in the Feldafing displaced persons camp in Germany; her immigration to the United States in 1947; her feelings toward the Germans; and her current religious beliefs and thoughts on the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Charles Siegman

Oral History

Charles Siegman (né Jechiel Sigmann), born in 1935 in Scheveningen, Hague, Netherlands, discusses his childhood; how anti-Jewish laws in the Netherlands after the German occupation impacted him; the decision for his family to separate and go to different hiding places; his placement, along with his older brother and sister, in an orphanage; his parents' and eldest brothers' deportation to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz where they perished in 1943; his and his siblings' deportation to Westerbork; his experiences in the children's barrack at Westerbork; his and his siblings' deportation to Theresienstadt, where they were cared for by Malka and Paul Weinmann; the daily routine in Theresienstadt; missing the chance to escape to Switzerland; the days leading up to his liberation by Soviet troops; being found by relatives, the Bergers, who had survived in hiding in the Netherlands; he and his brother being sent to the United States to live with relatives; his sister being taken in by relatives in Switzerland; and his life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Edgar Krasa

Oral History

Edgar Krasa, born in 1924 in the Sudetenland, discusses his childhood; the growth of antisemitism; moving to Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1933 because of German nationalism in the Sudetenland; his apprenticeship and early career as a cook in Prague; the implementation of anti-Jewish laws after the Nazi occupation in 1939; an offer made to him by Karl Schliesser, an elder of the Jewish community of Prague, to be among the first Jews transported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in order to keep his parents safe; the expectations and feelings of those first residents of Theresienstadt; his experiences in setting up one of the ghetto kitchens and in feeding the residents; the bartering system of Theresienstadt; the role of music in the ghetto; the Red Cross visit in 1944; his deportation to Auschwitz and then to Gleiwitz; doing forced labor as a welder; going on a death march and the Soviets liberating him; and his reunion with his parents and his future wife Hana, who also had been a prisoner in Theresienstadt.

Oral history interview with Hana Fuchs Krasa

Oral History

Hana Fuchs Krasa, born in 1923 in Karlsbad, Germany (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic), discusses her childhood; the changes she experienced in 1938; the German occupation of Prague and her father losing his job; her family taking in refugees from Austria and Germany; the confiscation of family property; being expelled from school in 1939 and becoming a dressmaking apprentice; her family's attempts to immigrate; her refusal to go on the Kindertransport without her older brother; the enforcement of anti-Jewish restrictions in Prague; her deportation to the ghetto in Theresienstadt; how the mother of a friend took care of her in Theresienstadt by getting her a job in a factory and preventing her deportation to Poland; becoming an agricultural worker in Theresienstadt and smuggling food into the ghetto; her parents' arrival in Theresienstadt; her father's execution and her mother's deportation to Auschwitz; musical concerts and theater in Theresienstadt; visits by the Red Cross and her refusal to be rescued, so she could stay and wait for her parents to return; her liberation by the Soviet Army in May 1945; returning to Prague and reuniting with her brother; her job as a secretary in Prague; and meeting her husband Edgar and getting married.

Oral history interview with Paul Wos

Oral History

Paul Wos, born in 1920 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses growing up in a Catholic family; his father's knitting factory and the large number of Jewish employees that he had; antisemitism in Poland before World War II; being drafted into the Polish Army after he graduated from high school in 1939; his capture by the Soviet Army in battle in 1939 and bribing officers to obtain his release; his long journey on foot back to Warsaw where the Germans had already taken power; his difficulties finding work; his and his family's involvement in the Polish underground; his father establishing a business in the Warsaw ghetto; bringing food into the ghetto and smuggling out Jews; his participation in the Warsaw uprising in 1944; and his time in Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Oral history interview with Berendina Diet Eman

Oral History

Berendina Diet Eman, born in 1920 in Hague, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in a Protestant family; the five days the Netherlands was at war with Germany in 1940 and the German occupation of the country; her feelings about Queen Wilhelmina and the rest of the Dutch royal family; her desire to resist the German occupation and her collaboration with her boyfriend Hein to send Jews to the Dutch countryside; stealing identification cards from German offices to give to Jews in hiding; how her Christian faith sustained her during the war; the danger involved in working for the resistance; using false names and hiding in different places to avoid Gestapo questioning after 1943; the arrest and death of Hein in 1944 because of his activities in the resistance; her arrest during a train inspection because of a mistake on her false identification card; her experiences in prison and then in Vught concentration camp; her interaction with Corrie and Betsy Ten Boom; means of resistance in the camp; her release and continuing her work for the Dutch resistance while in hiding; her liberation by the Canadian Army on April 20, 1945; and her reflections on her part in the resistance.

Oral history interview with Helen Bamber

Oral History

Helen Bamber, born in 1925 in London, England, discusses her childhood; her father's involvement in rescuing Jews from Europe and calling attention to their plight before and during World War II; joining the Jewish Relief Unit to be able to help others in Germany after the war; her training in England and her impressions of German devastation; her work with refugees in Germany; the tension and conflicts with the local German population; her efforts to obtain permission for young refugees suffering from tuberculosis in Germany to recuperate in Switzerland; her interaction with survivors at Bergen-Belsen and their strong desire to immigrate; an accident she suffered in Germany and the agency's decision to send her back to England; her frustration at attitudes among the English on her return; her work with the Jewish Refugee Organization and the Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps in England; joining Amnesty International in 1961 and helping to found the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in 1985; and her recent testimony on behalf of a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli court as part of her collaboration with Israeli and Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights.

Oral history interview with Gitta Sereny

Oral History

Gitta Sereny discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her mother's career as an actress and translator; her schooling in England and France in the 1930s and 1940s; her work with refugee children in Paris, France with the Auxiliaire Sociale during the first years of World War II; helping to start a children's center for orphaned and abandoned children with the Auxiliaire Sociale in Villandry, France after the German occupation; her work with the French resistance movement; her observations of the German occupation of Austria; returning to Europe after spending time in the United States to work with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration helping children in displaced persons camps; the German program for taking Aryan-looking children from their parents in Eastern Europe and giving them to childless German couples and her work in restoring these children to their biological parents; working for the Daily Telegraph magazine covering the German trials; and her interaction with various German war criminals, including Franz Stangl and Albert Speer.

Oral history interview with Grigory Liberchuk

Oral History

Grigory Liberchuk (né Gershel Leib Liberchuk), born in 1938 in Dnipropetrovs'k, Ukraine, discusses his childhood; the Soviet government evacuating Jews from Dnipropetrovs'k on trains as the German Army approached; his infant brother's death during German bombing of the trains; his father's service in the Soviet Army and the help they received from the Soviet government; staying for a year in Stavropol, Russia; the German occupation of Stavropol in August 1942; his mother leaving him with a Russian woman and moving to another village to live under a false identity; being recognized as Jewish by the German boyfriend of his caretaker and taken to a round-up point; being rescued by a member of the underground and taken to a childless Polish couple; his mother's return several months later and the reluctance of the couple to give him back to her; his mother finally regaining custody of him and moving to another area; making contact with his mother's family in Kazakhstan and staying with them until the end of World War II; their return to Dnipropetrovs'k and then moving to Kiev, Ukraine; his life in Kiev after the war; and his eventual immigration to the United States with his wife and son.

Oral history interview with Claudia Royter Liberchuk

Oral History

Claudia Royter Liberchuk, born in 1939 in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, describes her family; her mother avoiding the evacuation of Vinnytsia and hiding with her in a cellar; her grandmother walking from Zhmerynka, Ukraine to pick up her and her mother and take them back to Zhmerynka; her grandfather's arrest and execution in prison; the establishment of a ghetto in Zhmerynka; her grandmother throwing her over a barbed wire fence to a group of Ukrainians standing outside the ghetto; being cared for by a Ukrainian woman for a brief time; returning to the ghetto and reuniting with her mother and grandmother; pretending to be sick with typhus to avoid the Germans; her liberation by the Soviet Army; the return of her father; moving to Brailiv, Ukraine for her father's job; her aunt’s return; difficulties she encountered after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1988.

Oral history interview with Rachelle Perahia Margosh

Oral History

Rachelle Perahia Margosh, born in 1924 in Drama, Greece, discusses her childhood; her father's Zionist beliefs and investments in Palestine; her time in a Swiss boarding school; relationships with non-Jews in Greece; her family's decision to move to Athens, Greece after the Italian occupation; hiding with several Gentile families during World War II; being denounced to the Germans by a family friend and getting arrested; her imprisonment in Haidari and deportation to Auschwitz; the deaths of her parents and older brother in Auschwitz; her experiences in Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen; her treatment in hospitals after liberation and moving to the American zone of Germany to be an interpreter for the American Army; going back to Greece and living with an aunt; meeting and marrying her husband; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with John Meyerstein

Oral History

John Meyerstein, born in 1935 in Halle an der Saale, Germany, describes his family; his father's arrest during Kristallnacht and imprisonment in Buchenwald; his family's decision to immigrate after his father's release; the family's voyage on the St. Louis; his father's decision to go to England after the St. Louis passengers were refused entry into Cuba; his and his mother's relocation to Bedfordshire, England to escape the bombing of London; his father and grandfather's arrest and internment on the Isle of Man; their release from internment and his father finding a job in Bedfordshire; being accepted into the Bedfordshire Modern School; and being drafted into the British Army after World War II and serving overseas.

Oral history interview with Ursula Pawel

Oral History

Ursula Pawel (née Lenneberg), born in 1926 in Aplerbeck, Dortmund, Germany, discusses her childhood; the discrimination against Jews in Germany from 1933 to 1942; the complexities of family life with her mother Lina, who converted to Judaism, and her father Otto, an assimilated Jew; her status as a Mischlinge; her deportation in 1942 to Theresienstadt; life in Theresienstadt between 1942 and 1944 with her father and younger brother; the deportation of her father to Auschwitz in 1944 and her convincing him that she and her brother should go as well; her notification while in Auschwitz that her father and brother had been gassed; her transfers to Kudowa-Sackisch (Kudowa Zdrój), Poland in December 1944 and then Merzdorf (Marciszów, Poland) in December 1944; her liberation on May 8, 1945; going on a 500-mile bicycle ride home to find her mother and other relatives; her experiences in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration displaced persons camp in Deggendorf, Germany; and her and her mother's immigration to the United States in June 1947.

Oral history interview with Manfred Gans

Oral History

Manfred Gans was born in 1922 in Borken, Germany and discusses his experiences as an Orthodox Jew in Germany; his immigration to England to continue his schooling; his internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien; joining the British Army in an elite commando unit consisting of European refugees; his unit's landing at Normandy and participation in the D-Day invasion; serving as a battlefield intelligence operative as the British Army advanced from the Normandy beaches into Germany; his discovery that his parents might be alive in Theresienstadt; his experiences traveling by jeep across unconquered territory to Theresienstadt two days after it was liberated by the Russians; his emotional reunion with his parents; his help in the release and resettlement of Jews, including his parents, to the Netherlands; his work as a guard in a prisoner camp for high-ranking Nazis and Gestapo members; becoming one of the three officers running the town of Gladbeck, Germany; becoming deputy commander of an intelligence section of a prisoner camp for high-ranking Nazis, located in Sennelager; and his interrogation of some of the prisoners in preparation for the Nuremberg trials.

Oral history interview with Sibylle Sarah Niemӧller

Oral History

Sibylle Sarah Niemöller (née von Sell), born in 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses growing up in an aristocratic German family; her family's attitude towards Jews and the rise of the Nazi party; her first meeting with Martin Niemöller and her continued contact with the Niemöller family; her family's resistance against the Nazis; her close friendship with a Jewish family in her neighborhood; widespread destruction during Kristallnacht; her father's involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler and his subsequent imprisonment and death; the political climate in Germany at the end of the war; her immigration to the United States; and her conversion to Judaism.

Oral history interview with Moshe Leshem

Oral History

Moshe Leshem, born in 1918 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, describes growing up in a Zionist family; the relations between Jews and Gentiles before World War II in Czechoslovakia; his studies at a medical school in Brno until he decided to quit and start tutoring at a local coffeehouse; his father's efforts to take his family to England or the United States; his involvement with the Zionist Hechalutz organization; working on a farm in Michałowice, Poland as part of the agricultural training needed to immigrate to Palestine; being transferred to a farm in Prague, Czechoslovakia and taking a leadership position in Hechalutz; the belief of the Jewish community in Prague that the ghetto in Theresienstadt was the best way to save Czech Jews from deportation; the involvement of the Jewish youth in preparing the ghetto for habitation; his suspension from the Hechalutz for speaking out against the Jewish community's leadership; obtaining false documents for himself and his wife; contacting the communist underground and working as a forger; setting up a deal with the Prague Labor Exchange to replace Czechs who were to be sent to forced labor camps in Germany with Jews; and immigrating to Israel and then the United States.

Oral history interview with Paul Peeters

Oral History

Paul Peeters, born in 1921 in Torgny, Belgium, describes growing up in a large family involved in the sugar industry; how his family did not expect the Nazi invasion of Belgium; helping a priest who was hiding young Jewish boys; the Gestapo finding out about the boys and how he helped them to escape; the liberation of Torgny and joining the American Army as a volunteer; experiencing communism when he helped to liberate Buchenwald; his time after the war in Europe; and how the boys he protected during the war have reunited over the years.

Oral history interview with Irena Veisaite

Oral History

Irena Veisaite, born on January 9, 1928 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes her family; the divorce of her parents in 1938 and staying with her mother in Kaunas, where she attended a Yiddish school; not experiencing much antisemitism before the war; traveling to Berlin in 1938 to be with her father and returning to Kaunas in 1939; her plans to flee to Helsinki that failed because her flight was scheduled to leave on the day that the war started in Poland; staying in Kaunas with her mother and going under the control of Soviet forces; losing her home; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; her mother’s arrest and murder; going to live with her aunt, who was her only surviving family member after several brutal massacres in her town; the negative Jewish stereotypes that arose in Lithuania because of Nazi propaganda; moving into the ghetto with her aunt in late 1941; the assistance that Lithuanians gave the Nazis in maintaining the ghetto; having to do forced labor until she became sick with dystrophy and had to stay home for six weeks; the organization of cultural activities, like orchestra performances, in the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto and going into hiding with families and in a children’s home in Vilnius; her experiences with other people who have survived the camps or who went into hiding; and Lithuania’s role in the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Steven Fenves

Oral History

Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Serbia, discusses his childhood and the Subotica Jewish community; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; his father's deportation to a village called Bačka Topola; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; his deportation to Auschwitz and being separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a sub-camp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with George Schwab

Oral History

George Schwab, born in 1931 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood; hearing the first reports of persecutions against Jews in Germany and Austria and dismissing them; the feeling in Latvia that the Soviet Union would protect them; the confiscation of his family's apartment and of his father's medical practice after the Soviet invasion; deportations to Siberia before Germany declared war on the Soviet Union; harsh treatment of the Jewish population of Liepaja after the German occupation; his father's arrest, torture, and death; moving into the Liepaja ghetto with his mother and older brother; being deported to Kaiserwald concentration camp; his and his mother's deportation to the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944; his transfer to Stolp, Germany (present day Slupsk, Poland) to work on a railroad; returning to Stutthof and then being evacuated by boat; being abandoned by the German guards while sailing on the North Sea; landing in Holstein, Germany and being discovered by the German Navy; his liberation by British troops; his hospitalization in Holstein; being transferred to a Latvian children's home and running away from the home to a displaced persons camp in Neustadt, Germany and then to Berlin, Germany; his contact with relatives in England and the United States and reuniting with his mother; spending time in the Schlachtensee displaced persons camp; and immigrating with his mother to the United States.

Oral history interview with Michael M. Cernea

Oral History

Michael Cernea, born in 1931 in Iasi, Romania, discusses his family life; experiencing antisemitism in his hometown; the activities of the Iron Guard in Iasi; his father losing his job as a factory engineer after Romania entered the war; Romania's declaration of war on the Soviet Union; a pogrom in Iasi that his family survived; the fear Jewish families in Iasi had after the pogrom and how his family went into hiding; the Romanian government's oppression of the Jewish population even before German occupation and their collusion with the Germans during the war; attending a Jewish community synagogue school starting in 1942; the hope that was inspired in the Jewish population when the war started to turn against Germany; his mother's attempts to find out information about family members during the war; news about persecution outside of Romania; his family's flight to Bucharest, Romania because of fear of reprisals at the hands of the retreating Romanian Army; Allied bombing of Bucharest near the end of the war; his feelings about being liberated by the Soviet Army; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Hedwig Rose

Oral History

Hedwig Rose (née Cohen), born in 1936 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood before the war; the increasing tension among the Jewish population of Amsterdam after the German occupation; starting first grade and then stopping after a few weeks because of a decree forbidding Jewish children to attend school; her father's arrest and never seeing him again; leaving her house with her mother and older sister immediately after her father's arrest; hiding in the basement of Toos Koolhaas Revers-DeWitt's house in Amsterdam; tensions in the house between her mother and Tante Toos; her home schooling by her sister; German searches of her house; her mother's death from a stroke while in hiding; becoming ill with whooping cough and being put in the hospital; her liberation in 1945; being found by an aunt and uncle in the United States and preparing to immigrate; and her first impressions of the United States.

Oral history interview with Evelyn Arzt Bergl

Oral History

Evelyn Arzt Bergl, born in 1931 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; her father's arrest and imprisonment in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps; her father's release due to her mother's efforts; her father's escape to Milan, Italy with a passport her mother obtained for him; her, her mother, and her brother joining her father in Milan; traveling to Ventimiglia, Italy and paying guides to cross over to France; traveling to Genoa, Italy and being cared for by the Jewish community there; being sent with her mother and brother to Veggiano, Italy by the Italian government; being reunited with her father in the Ferramonti concentration camp; life in the camp; the closing of the camp and moving to Bari, Italy, where her father and brother worked as agricultural laborers; her apprenticeship to dressmakers in Bari; being informed that Germans were coming to Bari and fleeing into the forest; the help that they received from citizens in Bari; liberation by French and Moroccan soldiers and partisans; life in the Cinecittà displaced persons camp and meeting her future husband there; and immigrating to the United States and living in New York.

Oral history interview with Zdenko John Bergl

Oral History

Zdenko John Bergl, born in 1929 in Sveti Ivan Zabno, Croatia, discusses his childhood; antisemitism in his hometown; sheltering Austrian Jewish refugees after the Anschluss; boycotting German-made goods in protest of Hitler; the confiscation of his family's property after the German occupation of Croatia; his father's forced labor in his own vineyards; his father's rescue from deportation by an aunt who had connections with authorities; hiding in the Italian-occupied zone of Yugoslavia; celebrating his Bar Mitzvah in hiding; his family's flight to Italy; their confinement in the town of Modena, Italy; obtaining false identification papers under the name "Luigi Bianchi"; hiding in Florence, Italy after the German occupation of Italy; his liberation by the American military; life in the Cinecittà displaced persons camp and meeting his future wife there; forming a Jewish youth group in Cinecittà; dealing on the black market in Cinecittà; his thoughts and feelings about Mussolini and Italy during World War II; his family's decision not to return to Croatia but to immigrate to the United States instead; and joining the American military.

Oral history interview with Denise Epstein

Oral History

Denise Epstein was born in 1929 and describes growing up as the daughter of the celebrated Ukrainian-born author Irene Nemirovsky; her mother's background and her exile to France; her mother's lifestyle in Paris and their family life before World War Two; the family's conversion to Catholicism in 1939 to escape the fate of other Jews; her and her sister Elisabeth's escape from Paris to the French countryside and their life there; how her mother was busy writing until the moment of her deportation; the letters her mother wrote to the family before she left France for Auschwitz; her father's desperation and eventual deportation; her life in hiding with her sister until a relative adopted them; how their grandmother disowned them; the suitcase in which the manuscript of her mother's last book was found forty years later; the time it took before she found the courage to read the manuscript and decided to have it published; the reaction of the literary world and the French public to the book “Suite Francaise,” which won a major literary prize in France; her own feelings today about the way the French behaved during the war; how the publication of her mother's book changed her own life; and the "imagined biography" that her late sister wrote about their mother.

Oral history interview with Paula S. Biren

Oral History

Paula S. Biren, born in 1922 in Lódz, Poland, discusses her childhood in Lódz; antisemitism and prewar relations between Catholics and Jews in Lódz; the German occupation of Poland; her family's arguments about whether to stay or flee; their move into the Lódz ghetto and the living conditions there; her graduation from high school in the Lódz ghetto; her time as a member of the Jewish police force in the ghetto; the year that she spent on a kibbutz near Lódz with other teenagers from the ghetto; her memories of and feelings toward Rumkowski; her family's deportation to Auschwitz; her separation from her mother who was selected for the gas chamber; her and her sister's stay in the camp hospital; her sister's death in the camp; a death march from Auschwitz; her and a group of friends' escape from the death march; hiding in a German cottage for a few days until they were liberated by the Russian Army; working for the Russians as they marched to Berlin; returning to Lódz; enrolling in the university in Lódz; getting married; going to a displaced persons camp in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; enrolling in medical school in Frankfurt; and her family's immigration to the United States.

Oral history interview with Fred Loewy

Oral History

Fred Loewy (Löwy), born in 1925 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, discusses moving to Alsace, France after his father opened a business there; growing up in Sélestat, France; his father's business partnership in a metal recycling factory; moving to Colmar, France; the German occupation of France and fleeing Colmar; the journey by train to Toulouse, France with thousands of other refugees and the difficulties involved in the journey; the round-ups of refugees and their transports to the Agde concentration camp; his family's release from Agde because of the intervention of Camille Ernst; his father's efforts to obtain the release of other prisoners at Agde; their move to Celleneuve, France; obtaining false papers under the name Hebergé; working for the French resistance; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Budd Schulberg

Oral History

Budd Schulberg, born in 1914 in Harlem, NY, describes his childhood; moving around the country to attend school and developing his screenwriting skills; receiving his Navy commission and going into Naval training; working with John Ford's documentary unit; being sent by the Navy to London, Paris, Belgium, and Germany; working for the OSS (US Office of Strategic Services); observing the Dachau Trial; preparing photographic evidence for the Nuremberg Trials; showing the film "The Nazi Plan"; and helping to found a writing school in New York City.

Oral history interview with Marianne Windholm

Oral History

Marianne Windholm, born in 1910 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; her father's death and her family's difficult financial situation after his death; the Anschluss, Kristallnacht, and the restrictions that were imposed on Jews after the German occupation; her brother's immigration to Venezuela; her sister's arrest, release from prison, and exile to Yugoslavia; her mother's deportation to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia; her knowledge of what was happening in the concentration camps; her and her husband's decision to go into hiding in 1941 after receiving a deportation notice; being blackmailed by her rescuer's boyfriend and eventually being denounced by him and going to prison; her and her husband's deportation to Auschwitz; her separation from her husband at the selection and his death; her time in Auschwitz and her liberation in January 1945 by the Soviet Army; her fear of being sent to the Soviet Union; her escape from the camp with a few other women; her return to Austria; her reunion with her sister; her time in Italy working for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Ernest Culman

Oral History

Ernest Culman, born in 1929 in Liegnitz, Germany (now Legnica, Poland), describes his childhood; being so young when Hitler came to power that he did know that any kind of other government could exist; experiencing antisemitism at school after Kristallnacht; immigrating to Shanghai in July 1939; attending school, learning English, and living in a German-Jewish community in Shanghai; moving into the Shanghai ghetto; the American bombings of Shanghai and hearing about the atomic bombs; immigrating to Baltimore, Maryland; and reflecting on his past with his present life in mind.

Oral history interview with Robert A. Belfer

Oral History

Robert A. Belfer, born in 1935 in Kraków, Poland, discusses growing up in a somewhat religious family; his father’s decision to leave Poland for business reasons right before the German invasion; his mother’s attempts to get her children out of Poland to Spain, Cuba, and finally the United States; reuniting with his father in Brooklyn and attending public school without knowing any English; studying the Holocaust; the family members who he lost during the Holocaust; meeting his wife; helping his father cope with the early death of his mother; and his grandchildren who are curious about his experiences during the war.

Oral history interview with Betsy Cohen

Oral History

Betsy Cohen, born in 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her childhood; having an atheist father and a Jewish mother; experiencing antisemitism while trying to determine her own religious beliefs; having her grandparents live with her for a couple of years before the war; living next to a Wehrmacht office; her father’s deportation to Auschwitz; going into hiding and surviving with her mother and sister; coming out of hiding once the Nazis left Holland; immigrating to the United States with her sister to live with their aunt and uncle; starting school in Rochester, NY and trying to fit in as an American girl; and creating a life and family for herself after her war experiences.

Oral history interview with Joseph Gurwin

Oral History

Joseph Gurwin, born in 1920 in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, describes his childhood in Panevėžys, Lithuania; learning several languages in Hebrew school and playing on a soccer team after school; receiving one of seventeen visas to immigrate to the United States and live with his uncle in 1936; learning English in an American high school; entering into a government manufacturing business with his uncle; being drafted into the US Army in 1944; finding out about his parents’ deaths and his brother’s survival; his brother’s life behind the Iron Curtain in Lithuania until his 1989 immigration to Israel; participating in several community organizations after the war; and raising a family.

Oral history interview with Ann Green

Oral History

Ann Green, born in 1925 in Neunkirchen, Austria, discusses her childhood and family life; living as a Jew after the Anschluss; not really understanding what was happening during Kristallnacht; her parents’ deportations to Theresienstadt at the beginning of the war; going into hiding with an SA man and several other neighbors or family friends; following the progress of the war by listening to the Voice of America; being caught in hiding and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her difficult life and losing friends in the camp; being transferred to Bergen-Belsen and working in an ammunitions factory; her liberation by American troops; immigrating to New York and meeting her husband there; and keeping up a relationship with one of her friends from the camps.

Oral history interview with Kurt Julich

Oral History

Kurt Julich, born in 1922 in Cologne, Germany, describes his family; attending a German school during the day and a Jewish school in the evening; moving to France to live with his aunt and uncle after Hitler came to power; returning to Germany for a month to get Bar Mitzvahed; going back to France but soon being marched and put on cattle cars to Saint-Cyprien and then Gurs; his release to live in and work as a farm hand in Castelnau-le-Lez; working as a slave laborer at Labenne-Océan then going through several other labor and transit camps; escaping from the Nazis and joining the Foreign Legion; trying to survive after the war but then finding a great job in France; and moving to the United States, meeting his future wife, and starting a family.

Oral history interview with Henry Bialowas

Oral History

Henry Bialowas, born in 1917, describes his childhood in Stopnica and Lódz, Poland; living in predominately Jewish areas but experiencing antisemitism; his participation in the Labor Zionist youth group; the German invasion and bombing of Lódz; his attempted escape to Russia and being stuck in between Russia and Germany; sending food into the ghetto where his parents and sister stayed; taking Russian citizenship to escape; his participation in the black market; his move into the Baranavichy ghetto and his participation in a resistance group; his return to Lódz and discovering that most of his family had died; meeting his future wife right after the war and staying in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp with her; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Sarah Zelazny

Oral History

Sarah Zelaznyt, born in 1934 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her family; the German invasion and bombing of Warsaw; her father’s participation in the Bund; her family attempting to escape from Warsaw to Bialystok, Poland; moving to Ufa, Russia to work in factories; hiding with her brother but catching malaria; her father’s decision to join the Russian Army; her sister’s birth in 1945; the immigration of some of her family to Israel; her entrance into a Polish school in Germany after the war; moving to and getting married in Israel; and immigrating to New York City in 1971.

Oral history interview with Nick Levi

Oral History

Nick Levi, born in 1921 in Kavala, Greece, describes his happy childhood; how most Greeks did not support the German regime; going to medical school in Athens until the Nazis occupied Greece; moving to the Thessalonike ghetto and having a difficult life; his Spanish heritage that eventually helped him to get to the United States; the destruction of the Thessalonike Jewish cemetery; his family’s deportation in 1943 to Bergen-Belsen; his removal from the camp because of his Spanish citizenship; and his immigration to Palestine, Cuba, and finally the United States.

Oral history interview with Ruth Buhling

Oral History

Ruth Buhling, born in 1922 in Cologne, Germany, describes growing up with adopted parents; not having much money but making the best out of her family life and education; moving to Amsterdam and making new friends; her experiences when the Nazis came to power; surviving during the war by having a fake ID and living with her friend Joe; the loss of her immediate family; getting married to Joe and having children in Holland; what she knew about the death camps and antisemitism during the war; and eventually immigrating to the United States and settling in New Jersey.

Oral history interview with Heinz Drossel

Oral History

Heinz Drossel, a German who received the Righteous Gentile award from Israel in 2000 for saving a number of Jews during World War II, discusses his childhood in Berlin; his liberal religious upbringing and numerous, positive encounters with the Jewish community; completing his legal studies in November 1939, but being denied a position in the courts because he was not a member of the Nazi party; being drafted and spending six years at war, first in France and later as an officer on the Eastern Front; his ongoing struggle to reconcile his opposition to the Nazi cause with his responsibility for the welfare of his troops; saving a young Jewish woman who was about to jump off a bridge in Berlin; how this young woman survived the Holocaust and later became his wife; saving a number of other Jews by hiding them in his family’s apartment; encountering obstacles in his legal career after the war, due to the persistence of Nazi sympathies and the fact that his wife was a Jew; serving as a judge for many years before being elected as the head of the prestigious Courts Council, the body that oversees all judicial hiring and promotions; retiring in 1981 and volunteering as a Zeitzeuge (Contemporary Witness); lecturing widely to reveal the truth about war and the moral dilemmas his audience may face; and his warning to his audiences that that while human rights in Germany have greatly improved, antisemitism and xenophobia are still very real.

Oral history interview with Sara Shapiro

Oral History

Sara Shapiro (née Goralnik) discusses her childhood in Korets before the war; being expelled from school because she was Jewish; witnessing a progrom in 1942 when she was still a child and then moving to her town’s small ghetto; running away from the ghetto and finding a house in which to work as a maid; returning to Korets after the war to discover that most of her family had died but then meeting her husband; going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; and eventually immigrating to Detroit, Michigan in 1949.

Oral history interview with Asa Shapiro

Oral History

Asa Shapiro describes his life growing up in the small, mostly Jewish town of Korets; stealing goods and selling them on the black market for his family to survive; being caught and sent to a work camp in Siberia; joining the Russian Army and later the Polish Army; the antisemitism he experienced in the army; searching for his family members after the war; his quick marriage after the war and making a living on the black market; and his immigration to Detroit, Michigan.

Oral history interview with Kristine Keren

Oral History

Kristine Keren (née Krystyna Chiger), born in 1935 in Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), describes her childhood; her family’s history and their personalities; the Russian and German occupations of Lwów; how her life changed during the Nazi occupation; her family’s move into the Lwów ghetto; going into hiding in a sewer system underneath the ghetto after a liquidation; her physical and mental states at liberation; and how the sweater she kept with her while in hiding symbolizes her struggles and the memories of her family.

Oral history interview with Saul Kagan

Oral History

Saul Kagan, born in 1922 in Vilnius, Poland (Lithuania), describes his childhood and his family; antisemitism in Poland; his trip in 1940 along the Trans-Siberian railroad to Japan and then to the United States; his enlistment in the US Army; being in a specialized training program to study Russian; being with the Air Force and assigned to a fighter bomb unit in Normandy, France; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; his honorable discharge from the Army to do research for the Office of Military Government (OMGUS); his work with the Joint Distribution Committee in Berlin, Germany until the Soviet blockade; and his involvement in academic research on the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Haim-Vidal Sephiha

Oral History

Haim-Vidal Sephiha, born January 28, 1923 in Saint-Gilles-lez-Bruxelles, Belgium of Istanbul-born Jewish parents, discusses his childhood and family life in Belgium and his schooling in Saint-Gilles; his memories of first hearing about the Nazi Party from Jewish refugees; a general absence of fear in Belgium and the consequential shock on May 10, 1940, when Germany invaded Belgium; his inability to obtain a scholarship because of his religion; his studies in agronomy, paid for by his father; a Ministry of Education letter telling him to stop his studies because he was a Jew; his memories of the school director, Haroun Tazieff, who later joined the Belgian Resistance; his educational pursuit through private lectures in hiding in early 1942; his recollections of the slow growth of Jewish restrictions under occupation and some anomalies such as his parents' freedom to circulate without wearing Jewish stars because of their Turkish citizenship, yet the presence of a sign indicating a Jewish-owned shop on their house; his own restrictions as a Belgian-born Jew and his requirement to wear a star; his March 1, 1943 arrest in the street without his star and detention in isolation for two nights by the Gestapo; his March 3, 1943 transfer by truck along with other Jews to a transit camp in Malines (Mechelen), Belgium; recollections of the camp, where he was designated with the letter E, indicating a forthcoming decision as to whether he was a Turkish Jew and therefore not deportable; a failed intervention by the Turkish Embassy in Paris to declare him Turkish; his designation with the letter B for Belgian which meant that he was not deportable because of Germany’s agreement with the Belgian Queen Elizabeth; the liberation of some Jews from the camp in March to September 1943; the Nazi revocation of the agreement in September 1943 and steady arrival of Jews in Malines; his life in detention; the presence of Flemish and Wallon Belgian SS guards; his friendship in Malines with the Belgian philosopher Leopold Flam; his departure for Auschwitz-Birkenau in the 22nd convoy with 1,600 other inmates; being in Auschwitz for eight days; aspects of gradual Nazi dehumanization of Jews; his deportation in 1943 to Furstengrabe sub-camp and mine; conditions working in the mine; violence of Nazis toward prisoners and the treatment of prisoners towards one another; his evacuation from Furstengrabe on January 18, 1945; his long march in harsh winter conditions and train transport to the Dora labor camp; his imprisonment in Dora until March 20, 1945; his transfer by train to a military base at Bergen-Belsen; his liberation by British on April 15, 1945; his views on the forgotten Sephardic Jews of the Holocaust and, in particular, those from Salonika, Greece; his efforts to preserve the Ladino language; and securing a commemorative plaque in Auschwitz inscribed in Ladino to the lost Sephardim.

Oral history interview with Joselis Turkas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lore Segal

Oral History

Lore Segal, born in 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the novel she wrote representing her wartime experiences; her family life in Vienna and her move to England in 1938 on a Kindertransport; the friends with whom she attended school and who went through the camps; the effect on the daily lives of Austrians once Hitler came to power; how her parents prepared to immigrate by learning various professions; her re-unification with her parents in Kent; and her family’s final move to New York in 1951.

Oral history interview with Werner Kleeman

Oral History

Werner Kleeman, born in 1919 in Gaukönigshofen, Germany, discusses his childhood in Germany; being raised in an Orthodox family; antisemitic attitudes in Germany in the 1930s; Kristallnacht; being taken to the Ochsenfurt prison and finding out about the concentration camps; being sent to Dachau; being released from Dachau; immigrating to the United States; joining the US Army in June 1942; getting his family out of Germany; experiencing antisemitism in the army; going through amphibious training in West Florida in 1943; his travels and work for the army in Europe as a translator; being part of the D-Day invasion; meeting Ernest Hemingway in Germany; life after the Holocaust for himself and for others involved in the war; his wife and children; and his book “From Dachau to D-Day.”

Oral history interview with Adalbert Lallier

Oral History

Adalbert Lallier, born on May 7, 1925 in Botos, Hungary (present day Botoš, Serbia), describes his family and privileged childhood; the death of his mother when he was five years old; his family losing some of their factories during the Great Depression; the Nazi invasion in 1941 and immediately seeing the effects of the invasion on the local Jewish population; witnessing antisemitism among the Hungarian peasantry; his memories of the 1936 Olympics; his draft into the German Army on June 1, 1942; fighting Titoists and partisans in the Balkans at the end of 1944; attending officers' school; cleaning up after the bombing of Nuremberg; seeing a concentration camp for the first time in 1945; the ideological training through which he had to go as a member of the German Army; his capture by British soldiers; his father’s participation in the Nazi war crimes trials after the war; getting married in 1948 and then having two children; immigrating to Canada in October 1951 and finding a job working with an international refugee organization; and his reflections on his participation in the war on the side of the Germans.

Oral history interview with Zygmund Shipper

Oral History

Zygmund Shipper, born on January 18, 1930 in Lódz, Poland, describes his childhood in an Orthodox household; his parents’ divorce and living with his grandparents; the changes in his life after the Nazi invasion of Poland; moving into the ghetto with his aunt and grandparents and seeing his grandfather die there; finding a job in a ghetto metal factory; the liquidation of the Lódz ghetto in 1944 and his deportation to Auschwitz; his transport to Stutthof to work in a stone quarry; his transport to Neustadt and trying to escape; his liberation by British troops in May 1945; receiving help from the American Joint Distribution Committee and the Red Cross while staying in a displaced persons camp; finding out the fate of his family; immigrating to England in December 1946; getting married to another Jewish refugee and opening a delicatessen shop; and making a life for himself after the war.

Oral history interview with Ada Ustjanauskas

Oral History

Ada Gens Ustjanauskas, daughter of Jacob Gens, born in 1926 in Smalininkai, Lithuania, discusses her childhood; the difficulties of growing up in a mixed Roman Catholic and Jewish family; moving with her family to Kaunas, Lithuania; her father’s experiences as a volunteer soldier during World War I; how her father was initially protected and given a job in the Lithuanian Health Department by Colonel Usas; her father’s work for a paramilitary organization; seeing Soviet soldiers march into Kaunas and deport many of her school friends; her family’s escape from early deportations because no one could find their house; moving to Vilnius, where she and her mother lived in a house immediately outside of its ghetto while her father lived inside the ghetto; having to sneak food into the Vilnius ghetto; her father becoming the chief of ghetto police and managing to keep the rest of the family outside of the ghetto; trying to escape on a train but running into a couple who sent them to an estate in Siauliai, where they hid for two years; coming out of hiding once the Soviets had broken through and pushed the Germans out from Leningrad and Riga; getting to Kaunas with her aunt and mother and beginning university while her aunt went back to work; staying with a German nurse and her husband for two months as they tried to organize themselves to go to Palestine; beginning her education in music at the Munich conservatory; immigrating to Australia in 1948; and tracing down her aunts and uncles after the war.

Oral history interview with Annette Fein

Oral History

Annette Fein, born in 1940, discusses living in an orphanage in Taverny, France until 1948; being adopted by Russian-American Jews; immigrating to the United States; trying to remember being a child in Europe; adjusting to and being accepted in America; becoming involved in Jewish youth groups; her university education; feeling connected to Israel and desiring to live there; the background of her adopted family; working in Africa; working in Israel; meeting her French relatives via Yad Vashem; her feelings about Judaism; and her feelings about not knowing her birth mother and father.

Oral history interview with Ira Segalewitz

Oral History

Ira Segalewitz, born in 1936 in Sarny, Poland (present day Ukraine), discusses his family; fleeing Sarny with his mother when the Germans invaded; traveling via cattle car to the Ural Mountains; working on a farm near the Volga River; working in a factory during the Stalingrad campaign; remaining in a labor camp near Ufa, Russia from 1942 to 1945; antisemitism in the camp; attending school in the camp; returning to Sarny with his mother; finding their home destroyed; learning the fate of their relatives; living in a bombed-out building; living in a displaced persons camp from 1947 to 1951 in Austria; immigrating to the United States; attending school and learning English; and marrying and having four children.

Oral history interview with Esther Fol

Oral History

Esther Fol (née Onay Vidoma) discusses her early life in Slonim, Poland (present day Belarus); knowing little about her family; her mother’s role in the partisans; the train she was on with her mother; hiding in the woods; immigrating to Israel and finding out about her parents in 1960; living in a Christian orphanage; her uncle coming and taking her; going to Warsaw, Poland to get help; being given to a Jewish agency; being placed in Lodz, Poland in an orphanage; immigrating illegally to Palestine on the ship Sylvania; being arrested by the British; living with a foster family near Netanyah, Israel; being named Esther Pajewski; finding extended family in the United States and Italy; being removed by the Israeli court from her foster home to become Orthodox; her education and job in Israel; immigrating to the United States; becoming a Hebrew teacher; meeting her husband; taking a trip back to Belarus; and her life in the U.S.

Oral history interview with Ellen Kaidanow

Oral History

Ellen Kaidanow, born June 15, 1936 in Dubno, Poland (present day Ukraine), discusses the German invasion of Poland; being relocated to the Dubno ghetto; hiding in an underground shelter; the conditions of the ghetto; sneaking food into the ghetto; being taken out of the ghetto by a Christian nanny; the liquidation of the ghetto; being caught with the Christian nanny by Ukrainian police; escaping from the Ukrainian police and hiding in a farm; living in Radziwillow, Poland; bombings by Russian forces; being raised Christian; uniting with her birth family; living in the Bad Reichenhall displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States on the USS General W. M. Black at age 12 or 13; meeting her aunt in New York; and her reflections about her life during and after the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Helena Swierczynska

Oral History

Helen Swierczynska, born in 1943 in Milicz, Poland, describes the story her uncle told her concerning her early life, including her birth in a barn while her family was in hiding and being taken in by a stranger until 1945; her family’s betrayal by neighbors leading to the death of her family except for her father and her two uncles; the neighbors looting their belongings; being brought to an orphanage by the woman who originally took her in; antisemitism in Poland; being moved to six other orphanages before being adopted; her memories of the orphanages; living with her new parents; marrying at age 19; staying in Poland until 1989 when her son convinced her to join him in the United States; her life in the U.S.; and coming to terms with her past.

Oral history interview with William Zdzislaw Kisielewski

Oral History

William Kisielewski, born August 31, 1939 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses the Warsaw ghetto; his family members who were deported to camps; his mother’s escape from the camp; his mother’s return to Warsaw where she hid among nuns; his time in an orphanage; his mother’s return for him in April 1946; being adopted by his stepfather and moving to England; immigrating to Argentina in 1949; living in Buenos Aires; meeting other child survivors in Toronto; discovering what happened to his sister; his feelings about being raised as a Christian; and his life after the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Eva Brettler

Oral History

Eva Brettler (née Katz), born November 29, 1936 in Cluj, Romania, describes her life before the war; her parents Aleksander and Margit Katz; her father’s occupation as a printer and her mother’s as a hat maker; her family’s religious beliefs; her family’s move to Budapest, Hungary; antisemitic acts of the Arrow Cross party; her trip to visit her Grandmother in Tashnalt, Transylvania when the Jewish population, including her Grandmother, was rounded-up and taken away; her time hiding in the woods after attempting to visit her Grandmother; her return to Budapest; the ghettoization of Budapest; her time in hiding with false papers; her transport to Germany after someone discovered her and her mother’s true identities; her mother’s death; her time in Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen; her liberation in Bergen-Belsen by the British Army; her time in an orphanage in Sweden post-war; her return to Hungary in 1947; the communist revolution in Hungary; and her decision to immigrate to the United States.

Oral history interview with Gittel Jaskulski Hunt

Oral History

Gittel Jaskulski Hunt, born November 5, 1942 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her parents; how her Jewish grandmother took care of her when her parents had to do forced labor; her grandmother being protected for a time from deportation because her husband was Catholic; her parents' deportation to Auschwitz; her grandmother’s deportation to Theresienstadt and taking Gittel with her, believing it was her best chance for survival; not remembering Theresienstadt; immigrating to the United States in 1951 and settling in Chicago, IL; learning about her story from her grandmother; adjusting to life in the US; her education and nurses’ training; experiencing antisemitism in Chicago; and attending a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Israel in 1981.

Oral history interview with José Coltof

Oral History

José Coltof, born in 1942, discusses her middle class upbringing in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; her mother’s fear of Hitler; Jewish persecutions; the outbreak of war in Holland in May 1940; medical professionals who hid children; hiding with a Protestant family for the length of the war; fearing the Nazis; raids looking for Jewish children; returning to her mother after the war; attending the only Jewish school in Holland; religion; living in the United States for short periods but returning home; permanently moving to the U.S. in 1962; adjusting to American life; and her feelings on what happened to her and other children who survived the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Harry Merin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leonard Vis

Oral History

Leonard Vis, born September 16, 1930 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, discusses his home life; his family’s decision to remain in Holland in 1939; attending a Jewish school after the invasion; losing touch with his friends; going into hiding at a neighbor’s home with his siblings in 1942; moving to Huizen to live with another family from 1942 to 1943; getting caught in 1943; his detainment in a Jewish Theater in Amsterdam and his imprisonment in Haarlem; escaping a train headed to Westerbork concentration camp in 1943; hiding until 1945; reuniting with his family after liberation; immigrating to the United States in 1954; joining the U.S. Army and being stationed in Germany and Austria from 1955 to 1956; and his life after his service ended.

Oral history interview with Renne Schiller

Oral History

Renee Schiller, born in 1936 in Horodenka, Poland (present day Ukraine), discusses her family; her experiences as a young child living in the ghetto; fleeing to other towns and ghettos with her family; hiding in a bunker and escaping when it was discovered; returning to hiding until liberation; developing typhus after liberation and losing her hair; leaving for Poland with her mother and brother; staying in Polish orphanages and a displaced persons camp in Germany; returning to a different orphanage and being sent to the United States in 1949; living with a foster family with her brother until her mother joined them; attending school in New York and Minneapolis; her marriage; and her life in the U.S.

Oral history interview with Paula Bronstein

Oral History

Paula Bronstein, born in 1937, discusses her childhood in Eindhoven, the Netherlands; her parents’ Polish background; being separated from her parents while in hiding; being raised as a Catholic by a Protestant couple; living under a false name; neighbors’ suspicions that she was Jewish; bombing raids; liberation; reuniting with her parents; difficulties in reestablishing a relationship with her parents; post-war anti-Semitism; the births of her siblings; immigrating to the United States; taking care of her younger siblings; her strained relationship with her parents; meeting her husband and building a family; staying in contact with her rescuers; and joining a child survivors group in the 1990s.

Oral history interview with Sonja DuBois

Oral History

Sonja DuBois (b. Clara van Tyne), born in 1940, discusses her family and childhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; her family’s deportation to Westerbork; being hidden with a neighbor; the underground movement’s work to protect children; food rationing; hiding with a Protestant family and attending their church; liberation and her feelings of confusion about what happened; the legal battle to decide who should raise her; staying with her parents; her struggle with her identity; being renamed Sonja van der Kaden; immigrating to the United States; her feelings of being raised as a Christian; trying to find out details about her family; and her life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Charles Baron

Oral History

Charles Baron, born July 18, 1926 in Paris, France, discusses his family background; his childhood on his grandparents’ farm in Seine-et-Oise, France; returning to Paris at the age of six to attend school; his memories of the outbreak of World War II; seeing signs posted saying that Jews could not enter Paris; the arrival of German forces; departing for his grandfather’s farm; his parents’ arrest by French policemen and their deportation to Drancy on July 16, 1942; his apprenticeship in Paris; being arrested at the Vallee de Chevreuse train station with his grandmother’s brother on September 12, 1942; being sent to Drancy and then Dresden or Leipzig before arriving at the Kozle labor camp in Poland; working on the Berlin-Moscow Victory road; being transferred to Dachau and then to Kleinmanndorf camp; learning how to make bad concrete; working in a factory in lower Silesia; being accused of sabotaging factory operations; being sent to Auschwitz on July 26, 1944; working in a concrete factory; his forced evacuation from Auschwitz via train; escaping the train with another man; receiving assistance from villagers; the arrival of American troops; staying in an American military hospital for four months; returning to Paris on September 17, 1945; and difficulties reintegrating into a normal life.

Oral history interview with Sami Djalilov

Oral History

Sami Djalilov, born March 10, 1925 in Khujand, Russia (now in Tajikistan), discusses his family life with his four brothers and two sisters; major changes in their lives after the Russian revolution; his voluntary enlistment at 17 years old into the Russian Army; how army enlistees were from all five republics of Russia and united in their determination to fight the Nazis; fighting in Eastern Europe, on the Crimean front, and in the Czech Republic where he was captured; being sent in a cattle car to Auschwitz; and details of his experience in the camp.

Oral history interview with Henry Gallant

Oral History

Henry Gallant, born on October 30, 1928, in Berlin, Germany, describes his family; how life was fairly normal until the 1936 Olympics, at which point Jews were forbidden from going to certain places; his memories of Kristallnacht and the Nuremberg Laws; losing several of his friends once Hitler came to power and antisemitism was institutionalized; his journey on the S.S. St. Louis and being forced to return to Europe; traveling to Switzerland and finding a job in a hotel; being separated from his father, who was sent to the Gurs and Auschwitz camps and never seen again; staying with his mother in a small house in Le Mans, France and then moving to an unoccupied part of Nice, France once the war began; living in the attic of a Gentile home and having a small Bar Mitzvah in 1941; sneaking into Geneva, Switzerland and living with a foster family while his mother stayed in a refugee camp; attending the École d’Humanité in Switzerland; seeing American troops come into Switzerland; immigrating to the United States; and moving around the country working for various hotels.

Oral history interview with Sholom Rosenheck

Oral History

Sholom Rosenheck, born in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), describes his pre-war life in Czechoslovakia; the Ukrainian, Hungarian, and German occupation of Czechoslovakia; his family’s move to Kwassie near the Carpathian Mountains; his experiences with antisemitism in school; his father’s lumber business; his father’s time in forced labor; experiencing German persecution and running away from the shots of soldiers; his time in the Malteszalka ghetto during the winter of 1944; his transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his time in Auschwitz; the medical experiments conducted by Dr. Mengele; his transfer to Trzebinia where he worked in an oil refinery; his experiences on a death march towards Gliwice; his transfer to Sachsenhausen and then Bergen-Belsen; his labor in Augsburg working on airplanes; his march to Dachau; his survival and liberation by American soldiers; his trip to Israel after the war; his immigration to the United States in 1950; his marriage; and why he gave his testimony.

Oral history interview with Fred Jarvis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Tracy Strong

Oral History

Tracy Strong, Jr., born September 4, 1915 in Seattle, Washington, discusses living in Seattle until 1923 when his family moved to Geneva, Switzerland for his father’s work; attending a public school and an international school; returning to the United States because his father thought he should learn English; graduating from high school at age 16; attending school for two years in Germany at the Deutsche Unionhoff; attending Oberlin College in Ohio; earning a master’s degree in divinity from Yale Divinity School; travelling back to Geneva where he worked for the European Student Relief Fund; working with the European Student Relief Fund to identify and rescue students held in camps; working for La Cimade, a group that assisted with travel documents for students; working in Geneva where he assisted prisoners of war in German camps and American aviators shot down in Switzerland; enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1944; his transfer to Berlin, Germany after the end of the war, where he reeducated German youth; being demilitarized and returning to Berlin as a civilian; living in Berlin until 1949; returning to the United States; getting married; obtaining a master’s degree in education; and teaching in California and at a school in Beirut, Lebanon.

Oral history interview with Lucie Ragin

Oral History

Lucie Ragin, born in 1935, describes her childhood in Antwerp, Belgium; her family, including her brother Andre Zalc and sister Joyce Mizrachi; fleeing to France with her family when war broke out; living in the internment camp Rivesaltes in Vichy France; her mother’s difficult pregnancy due to lack of food; hunger in the camp; how her father helped others escape from the camp and then had to escape himself; her mother being questioned by authorities about her father’s whereabouts; learning about Auschwitz from a rabbi; escaping the camp with her mother; arriving in Marseilles and reuniting with her father; how the Red Cross got her infant sister out of the camp; living with her family in a French woman’s hotel; how the French woman refused to collect rent; life in the village; German threats against the village; air raids; the American liberation; living in Chateau de Marjolet after the war; returning to Belgium; reasons why her parents decided to leave Europe; immigrating to United States; and the importance of speaking publicly about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with André Zalc

Oral History

Andre Zalc, born in 1931 in Antwerp, Belgium, describes the outbreak of war in Antwerp, Belgium; his family, including his sisters Lucie Ragin and Joyce Mizrachi; his family’s eastern European background; how his family was able to flee to France; the train ride to southern France; his family’s internment in several camps including Rivesaltes; how his father used to help people escape through his job as a plumber; escaping the camp with his father; arriving in Marseilles; living with a friend’s family for two years; daily life with this family; reuniting with his mother and sisters in another town; living next door to three Arab men under arrest by the French for advocating North African independence; his father’s work as a lumberjack near the resistance; fleeing to the mountains to escape air raids; the town’s liberation by American forces; the role of the resistance in the town’s liberation; reprisals against captured Germans; interacting with German prisoners of war; immigrating to the United States; and being drafted into the army.

Oral history interview with Joyce Mizrachi

Oral History

Joyce Mizrachi, born in 1941, discusses her birth in the Rivesaltes camp in southern France; her family, including her brother Andre Zalc and sister Lucie Ragin; her mother and sister’s escape from Rivesaltes without her; being returned with her family by the Red Cross; living in Marseilles at the end of the war; air raids in Marseilles; memories of constantly being frightened; the difficulties her family faced when they returned to Belgium; post-war antisemitism she experienced in Belgium; her family’s arrival in United States; her homesickness; her father’s difficulties adjusting to life in the US; her mother’s strength; the fear she had that she was not her mother’s real child; how her parent’s dealt with their wartime experience; growing up with parents who are Holocaust survivors; life lessons she learned from her mother; her love of acting; the effect of Alzheimer’s disease on her father’s memories of the war; learning about her father’s family after the war; and the comfort she found in her marriage and family.

Oral history interview with Lucie Ragin, Joyce Mizrachi, and André Zalc

Oral History

Lucie Ragin, Joyce Mizrachi, and Andre Zalc describe their mother’s early life in Latvia and Azerbaijan; their father’s background in Lodz, Poland; their parent’s marriage in Belgium; leaving Belgium for France by train; their two week train trip; daily life in the Rivesaltes camp; life in Tresse, France, the village to which their family fled; hiding personal documents throughout the war; acts of resistance in Tresse; their father’s role in the resistance; Lucie and Andre’s experiences living in an orphanage immediately after the war; the lack of sufficient food in the orphanage; Andre’s bar mitzvah in France; their trouble getting visas to come to the United States; arriving in the United States; other Rivesaltes prisoners and their families; their father’s difficulty adjusting to life in US; their religious life in US; the rabbi who was the religious leader at Rivesaltes; and the reasons they choose to speak about their experiences.

Oral history interview with Maurice Friedberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edmund Potok

Oral History

Edmund Potok, born March 6, 1929, discusses being from a traditional and wealthy family; attending a private school in Katowice; speaking Polish at home; going to Warsaw with his family, and then to Otwock with 42 other family members; Russian soldiers confiscating his family’s truck and sending the family to L'viv, Ukraine; the NKVD coming, registering them, and taking his family to Russia in 1940; taking a train to Krasnoye in the Urals; his father’s job as an engineer; attending school where he learned Russian; Russia joining the war against Germany; being evacuated to Tashkent and to Djabad Abad where his father worked as an engineer; staying there until April 1946, when they were able to go back to Katowice; getting their apartment and their belongings back from those who were occupying it; graduating from the Russian-language high school; starting to work; all 42 family members coming back from Russia; attending university in Kraków; marrying and moving to Huta, Poland; and eventually moving to Sweden.

Oral history interview with Saul Merin

Oral History

Saul Merin born August 25, 1933 in Bendzin, Poland, describes his childhood in prewar Poland; his father Itzhak, mother, and sister Dina (born 1935); his religious education in a chayder; antisemitism in Poland; the boycott of Jewish stores in Poland and the effects on his family; the beginning of the war and the German occupation; Jewish persecution by occupying forces; his Grandfather’s business which was destroyed by the Germans during the war; deportations from Bendzin to Auschwitz; the ghettoization of his town and the worsening conditions; his family’s failed attempt to leave in 1943; hiding with his family in a bunker where they were discovered and then sent to Auschwitz; his time in hiding in various apartments with a Polish woman; his liberation and failed attempt to immigrate to Palestine; his time in Austria post-war; continued antisemitism in postwar Europe; his immigration to Israel in 1949; his life in Israel; his immigration to the United States; his career in ophthalmology; and his life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Hermine Liska

Oral History

Hermine Liska describes her experience as an eight-year old farm girl in Carinthia (Kärnten), Austria at the time of the Nazi Anschluss; how her parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses and very anti-Nazi; the pressure she was subjected to in school to join the Hitler Youth and to give the Nazi salute; how in 1941, after her parents refused to sign a pledge to raise their children according to the Nazi ideology, she was taken away and sent to a Nazi children’s home on the mountain near Feldkirchen; the ways in which she continued to resist teachers’ pressures to conform; being sent to a convent in Munich, where she remained until April 1944; the ways in which her parents, particularly her mother, had prepared her for these trials; attributing her moral strength to their teachings and her faith in God; her brother’s experience at Dachau; and how she currently lectures in schools and encourages children to be strong and to resist peer pressure and xenophobia.

Oral history interview with Lili Brody-Carmosino

Oral History

Lili Brody-Carmosino born June 2, 1938 in Iasi, Romania describes her childhood in prewar Romania; her father, mother, and brother Morris; her father’s occupation as a tailor; the Jewish and gentile relations before the war; the beginning of the war in 1942; the persecution of Jews; her family’s move to Bucharest after Iasi was bombed; her family’s arrest and transport in a boxcar; her family’s escape to Budapest after their boxcar disconnected from the rest of the train; her family’s time hiding in the woods where they were eventually found and put in jail; her family’s escape from the jail and time hiding in a stable; her family’s clandestine escape to Salzburg, Austria; their survival together in Austria; their time in Beth Bialik displaced persons camp; her immigration to Toronto, Canada; economic aid provided by the Jewish Federation; her immigration to the United States; her marriage and life in Connecticut; and her second marriage and work for the judiciary system.

Oral history interview with Sidney Zoltak

Oral History

Holocaust survivor Sidney Zoltak sings and discusses Holocaust-related and Yiddish songs.

Oral history interview with Feiga Hollenberg Connors

Oral History

Feiga Hollenberg Connors, born in 1933, discusses her childhood in Korolowka, Poland (present day Oleyëvo-Korolëvka, Ukraine); her extended family; her family’s religious observances; conditions under the Soviet occupation; pre-war relations among Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians; getting news from out-dated foreign newspapers; Jewish refugees arriving from Silesia; the German invasion; the police force created by the Germans; wearing white arm bands; the aktions carried out in the ghetto; moving into the ghetto in Borschiv, Ukraine; her brother’s birth and death in the ghetto; local police participation in the aktion; smuggling food into the ghetto; hiding in the forest with her immediate family; escaping the forest with her father; hiding in a barn for the winter; hearing about the death of her father and brother; liberation; returning to Korolowka; immigrating to the United States in 1947 on a children’s visa; living in a boarding school; studying social work; and her feelings about the events of the war and not knowing the fate of her family.

Oral history interview with Norbert Krasnosielski

Oral History

Norbert Krasnosielski, born on January 25, 1918 in Nikopol, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Nesvizh, Poland (now Niasvizh, Belarus); living in Vilnius, Lithuania during the 1930s and being in the Hashomer Hatzair; the death of his mother who was killed by the Germans; joining the Russian army after Western Poland came under Russian occupation and later fighting for the Polish Army; being in Saint Petersburg, Russia during the siege of Leningrad; occupying Berlin, Germany during the final stages of the war; learning of the brutality of the Germans in Poland where many of his relatives were killed; studying at Warsaw University after the war; and immigrating to the United States and settling in Philadelphia, PA with his wife.

Oral history interview with Vera Glasberg

Oral History

Vera Glasberg, born in 1912 in Riga, Latvia, describes moving to Kiev, Russia (present day Kiev, Ukraine); her childhood; returning to her family’s hometown of Riga after the Russian Revolution in 1917; moving to Berlin, Germany and then to Belgium at age 17; remaining in Belgium until May 1940 when Germany invaded; fleeing to France with her parents; living with other families in a community house; getting married; immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1941; helping European Jews obtain visas; her parents’ immigration to the U.S. after the war; and her life in the U.S.

Oral history interview with Hélène Chemla

Oral History

Hélène Chemla (née Boukobza), born in Sousse, Tunisia in 1932, discusses being raised in an extended family as her father suffered from a fatal disease; how as middle class Tunisian Jews, her family was often looked down upon by the Italian and French Jewish community; her father’s successful boutique which tailored custom-made clothing to the French community of bureaucrats and government employees; attending public school and learning French; how the Germans imposed wearing the Jewish star in Sousse, though not in Tunis; fleeing to Djemal (Jamel) and then eventually Moknine and Monistir after the Allies and Germans started bombing Tunis; how her father had been recruited for hard labor but was allowed to work at another location once the Germans realized he was an excellent tailor; how once defeat was imminent, the Germans told her father not to return to work for several days, during which he fled to find his family; and moving with her family back to Sousse and in 1956, to France, when Tunisia declared its independence.

Oral history interview with Mario Bensasson

Oral History

Dr. Mario Bensasson, born on September 10, 1932 in Tunis, Tunisia, discusses his family who was part of the “grana,” the small number of Italian Jewish elite of Tunisia; how his father owned several large factories and was involved in exports; how his father had fought and was decorated for valor in the Italian Army during World War I; how his father was a friend of Angelo Donate, an Italian Jewish banker instrumental in saving Jews in Nice during World War II; having Jewish and non-Jewish friends in Tunisia; encountering antisemitism, but as part of a wealthy family, avoiding persecution and hunger during the war; how his family enjoyed a fine standard of living; his family’s move to the city of La Marsa when Tunis was bombed; his recollections of the day his father was called to report to the Germans at the synagogue; how his father’s citations and various medals he received during WW I impressed the German soldier on duty and he was allowed to return home; how Italian citizens, including Jews, were treated with favor during the German Occupation; how in contrast, after the Allies liberated Tunisia, his father was considered an “enemy” and interned as an Italian citizen; and his family’s departure in the late 1940s for France, where he wanted to study medicine but instead followed his father’s wishes to study law and political science.

Oral history interview with Edmond Chemla

Oral History

Edmond Chemla, born February 5, 1921 in Monastir, Tunisia, discusses the history of the Jewish community of Monastir; his father’s early life and glass-cutting business; his education in a Franco-Muslim school; his religious education and practice of Judaism; his mother’s family history and jewelry business; his family life in Monastir; the family’s move to Sousse, Tunisia in 1939; his job at the Bank of Tunisia in Sousse; his reaction to the outbreak of war in Europe; Tunisians’ position on France’s collaboration with Germany; the Tunisian authorities’ reluctant compliance with antisemitic laws; his work during the war, first for a wealthy family and then at BNP, after being dismissed from the Bank of Tunisia for being Jewish; his experiences during the German occupation from November 1942 to April 1943, including forced labor under German command; Tunisians’ reaction to the liberation of Tunisia by the English; his work at BNP from then until the end of the war; changes in Jewish-Arab relations in Monastir after the war; his views on the founding of Israel; his support of Tunisian independence from France; his move to Paris, France in 1956; his work as an independent stockbroker and portfolio manager; the increased tension between Jews and Arabs in Tunisia; the different ways Ashkenazi Jews and North African Jews perceived Arabs; his desire for peace between Jews and Arabs; and his views on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its relations with its Arab neighbors.

Oral history interview with Ellen Zweig

Oral History

Ellen Zweig (née Seligman), born May 18, 1929 in Regensburg, Germany, describes her childhood in prewar Germany; her mother Rose Hirschfeld, father Juilius Seligman, and sister Margit; her education in an all-Jewish school beginning in 1936; discrimination against her father because he was a Catholic married to a Jewish woman; her father’s arrest on Kristallnacht; her move with her mother and sister to her grandmother’s apartment; her father’s eventual return; her family’s ability to immigrate to the United States in 1940; her family’s time in Munich, Germany then Italy then Genoa, Switzerland on their way to New York, NY; her family’s move to Washington, DC; and her postwar life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Barbara Firestone

Oral History

Barbara Firestone, born February 14, 1939 in Krakow, Poland, discusses her father Simon Spielman (ph) and her mother Cznrna Stiel (ph); her sister Helen Winchester and her brother Arthur Spielman; her father’s occupation as a shoemaker; being raised in an Orthodox Jewish family; speaking Yiddish and Polish at home; moving with her family to a ghetto; daily life as a child in the ghetto; how her father saved many people, including the Bobower Rebbe and the Halberstam family; how her parents sent her brother and sister to an orphanage; reuniting with her brother and sister and living in Hungary as gentiles; her memories of when the Russians bombed the entire town; how her brother and father returned to Poland and found their home occupied by a Polish family; how her father earned money by bootlegging alcohol and selling it to Russian soldiers, her father’s arrest after the Russians were made sick from drinking his alcohol; leaving Hungary in 1946 and living in a Displaced Persons camp for three years; how her brother and sister wanted to go to Israel; her family’s plans for immigrating to the United States; how her father would not leave the ship upon arrival in New York because it was the Shabbat; adjusting to American life; learning English; her family’s Jewish faith; her realization that she was a Holocaust survivor; and personal details of her marriage to a fellow Holocaust survivor.

Oral history interview with Paula Goldlust Blue

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anita Graber

Oral History

Anita Graber, born October 29, 1925, discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; how her parents were from Warsaw, Poland; her father’s profession as a fur trader; how her parents spoke Polish and Yiddish at home; traveling between Berlin and Warsaw as a child; growing up speaking German and studying English at school; the social separation of German and Polish Jews in Germany; how her mother had a nose job by a World War I surgeon; her mother’s work in her father’s fur shop; attending a German school; how her younger brother wanted to be part of the Hitler Youth so that he could feel he belonged; how her parents transferred him to a Jewish school; being expelled from a German school after Kristallnacht; identifying more as Polish than Jewish; how in 1939 the Nazis rounded up Polish citizens and Jewish males, transporting them to Polzen; how her father closed his business in 1939, but served non-Jewish customers through the back door; receiving visas in 1939; her family’s trouble getting to Paris, France; how her father slowly smuggled bags of furs into Paris; immigrating to the United States; and how her father was able to start his fur business over again in New York.

Oral history interview with Esia Shor

Oral History

Esia Shor (née Levin), born December 3, 1925 in Nowogródek, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus), discusses her childhood; life under the Russian occupation of Eastern Poland; Polish antisemitism; the German invasion of Eastern Poland in June, 1941; fleeing to her cousin Bielski’s farm and standing guard against robbers; the deaths of her mother and sisters in December 1941; how she and her father survived because he was the only bookbinder in the town; living in the ghetto and working with Mr. Foltanski, a polish engineer, as a house maid; her escape from the ghetto with the help of Mr. and Mrs. Foltanski; her return to the ghetto to reunite with her father; escaping once again and fleeing to her cousins’ partisan group in the woods; how the partisan group rescued her father and 80 other people through a tunnel; how her experiences compare to the film “Defiance”, based on the partisan group; her life as a female partisan; the time she spent with Russian partisans; how Russian partisans treated their Jewish counterparts; liberation of Poland by Russians; attending school in Poland under Soviet rule; and marrying in Lódz, Poland.

Oral history interview with Joachim J. Baer

Oral History

Joachim Baer, born December 29, 1929 in Hamburg, Germany discusses early childhood memories in Hamburg; antisemitism; traveling in 1933 and 1936 to Palestine where his father practiced medicine; his first impressions of Palestine and challenges in adjusting to life there; antisemitism in Palestine; his father’s difficulties with practicing medicine as he was not able to find many patients; tension between him and his sister because he continued his education while she had to work; financial struggles his family faced; how antisemitism in Palestine seemed to diminish during World War II; being approached to join Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization in Palestine; being in the Israeli Navy; being sent to Washington, DC in 1952 by his employer in Israel; studying electrical engineering at George Washington University; starting a family in Washington, DC; traveling back to Hamburg, Germany for his sister’s 70th birthday; and his father’s explanation of the difference between German and Nazi culture.

Oral history interview with Romeo Fagiolo

Oral History

Romeo Fagiolo, born January 29, 1922 in Washington, DC, discusses being drafted into the armed forces in February 1943; basic training in Fort Hood, TX; how his Italian-born parents immigrated to the United States; attending Texas A&M; being sent overseas in November 1944; landing in Marseille, France; memories of battles and living conditions; encountering German prisoners of war; his experiences with French and German civilians; avoiding battle fatigue; poverty he saw in France; war stories he had heard while in France and Germany; his experiences at Dachau concentration camp; how US soldiers attacked Dachau, killing SS guards; and bringing civilians from the city through the camp.

Oral history interview with Rita Penn

Oral History

Rita Penn, born March 29, 1933 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood as the only child of Polish-born parents; how her parents came to Austria as young adults; leaving Vienna, Austria when she was six years old; how her mother sewed jewelry into underwear; moving to London, England with her family; living through the Blitz; sheltering in the Underground; how her father was interned for eleven months on the Isle of Man because the British were nervous about people speaking German; how her father was not mistreated while interned; living with a family and attending school outside of Cheltenham, England; being asked to speak German with German prisoners at a POW camp; learning English and teaching her parents English; how her maternal aunt was also interned on the Isle of Man; listening to Churchill on the radio; memories of school in England; moving to the United States with her family; never speaking German again; identifying as neither Austrian nor British; returning to Austria for family vacations; and her cousin Irwin Knoll who worked for the Washington Post.

Oral history interview with Giacomo Nunez

Oral History

Giacomo Nunez, born November 27, 1927 in Tunis, Tunisia, discusses Tunisia’s community of wealthy Livornese Jews; his years at the Italian Regina Margherita school in Tunis; the rise of Italian fascism and his subsequent transfer to the French Lycée Carnot; the relations between Livornese Jews and other ethnic groups; the beginning of the war; his family’s acquisition of French citizenship; the exclusion of Jews and socialist teachers from the Lycée Carnot; the German occupation of Tunisia; his father’s forced participation in the Judenrat; the liberation of Tunis by the Allies; Italian soldiers’ resentment of their former German allies; the French and British military command’s reproach of Italians, including Livornese Jews, for supposed collaboration with Germany; his education in Tunis and Algiers after liberation; his horror upon learning the full extent of the Holocaust; and antisemitic violence after independence and the subsequent emigration of Jews from North Africa.

Oral history interview with Perla Nunez

Oral History

Perla Hauszwalb Nunez (born in Pulawy, Poland on January 6, 1928) discusses growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving to Paris, France in 1933 with her family and attending a public school; being required to register as Jews at the local mayor’s office; the first roundup of Jews in France; crossing the demarcation line to the free zone with the help of an underground network; eventually traveling to Espéraza, France; going to a boarding school in Limoux, France, where she was the only Jewish girl; her feelings of being French; returning to Paris in 1947 and finishing her studies in Versailles; not receiving help from Jewish aid organizations; meeting her future husband, Giacomo Nunez; traveling to Tunisia; and moving to Maryland in 1996.

Oral history interview with Benno Gantner

Oral History

Benno Gantner, born on May 8, 1921 in Percha, Germany, describes learning about the death march from Dachau the day before it occurred; preparing to photograph the prisoners; hearing the sound of wooden shoes approaching from the direction of Starnberg (a neighboring city); witnessing the prisoners march by his family’s house on April 27, 1945; how the prisoners begged for water and the responses from the SS guards and his family; bringing water to the prisoners instead of taking photos; seeing a guard strike a prisoner; the terrible conditions of the prisoners; how prisoners were shot if they could no longer walk; feeling ashamed to be German upon witnessing the march; taking photos from his balcony the next day and being threatened by a guard; the people in town who watched the march; being approached six months later by a survivor of the march who wanted copies of the photos; learning from a customer two years later that some of his photos were being displayed at Dachau and that the survivor had provided them; offering his photos to the press in Munich twenty-five years later, but being turned down; creating a painting of the first day of the march for Dachau; seeing between three and five thousand people pass his house during the march; the SS guards and prisoners; never seeing anyone shot near his home; his opinions on the SS and on National Socialism in general; seeing a roommate’s photos from his time as a Wehrmacht soldier in Russia during the war; learning how, as a soldier on the front, this roommate had been involved in the shooting of thousands of Jews into the Dnieper River; his reasons for photographing the death march and the entire town at the beginning of the war; his father’s work as a barber and friendship with General Schleicher; his family’s opinions and the general opinions on the Nazi rise to power; Jews in Percha and Starnberg before the war; the Nazi presence in nearby Feldafing; his knowledge of events such as the book burnings and Kristallnacht; prewar life; his involvement in the German Youth (Deutsches Jungvolk) and Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend); the start of the war and his experiences during the war years; what he and others knew about Dachau; hearing about events in Poland and Russia during the war; his childhood and family; his political awareness as a child; no longer feeling ashamed to be German; and the arrival of American forces in Percha. The interview ends with Mr. Gantner showing and describing his photos of the death march.

Oral history interview with Herman Obermayer

Oral History

Herman Obermayer, born in 1924 in Philadelphia, PA, describes attending Dartmouth; being drafted into the army at the end of his freshman year in 1943; landing at the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945; serving in France, Belgium, and Germany immediately following the end of World War II; spending most his war-time experience in Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany; his feelings on being a Jew fighting those who persecuted Jews; his and fellow soldiers feelings about the German people and German soldiers; the execution of some German soldiers; the role of the chief army executioner; attending the Nuremberg trials; and how his experience in the army affected his perspective and post-war experiences.

Oral history interview with Lily Cohen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sami Dorra

Oral History

Sami Dorra, born in Beirut, Lebanon on March 28, 1920, discusses his family’s move to Vienna, Austria then Paris, France; enrolling in the Sorbonne to study physics and mathematics; how two days before the Germans reached Paris in June 1940, Sami, his elder brother, and his cousin Moïse Lévy took bikes and headed towards the south of France, and eventually splitting up; going to Port Vendres in the Pyrénées-Orientales; being a stowaway on a ship; managing to get to and stay in Algeria; enrolling in the only French university still functioning in North Africa; travelling to Casablanca in 1940; deciding not to return to Algiers; being arrested by the local police because he lacked proper permits and visas; being taken to the camp of Oued Zem; being sent to the camp of Im Fout; how many of the workers fell ill with typhus and he caught amoebic dysentery; how Morocco was liberated in November 1942 by Americans; the French authorities tracking him down, but the Iranians provided him with a certificate stating he was essential to the war effort; meeting an American woman from Illinois who was working for the Red Cross; getting married in 1945; returning to France in 1946 to visit his parents; and returning to Morocco, where he worked in various capacities for local newspapers until he left for France in 1950.

Oral history interview with Flora Rojchin

Oral History

Flora Rojchin, born on October 30, 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, describes being married to Jose Rojchin, who was born on November 21, 1928, passed away in 2009, and was an optometrist; her two daughters, who live in the United States; living in the US; how she and her husband had an optical store and office in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; her husband speaking German very well and being very appreciated by his German clientele because of that; their store, which also carried a large section of photographic equipment and medical accessories, opened in 1953, and was located in the suburbs, in Vicente Lopez-Olivos; their two employees and store hours; how the majority of their clients were non-Jewish Germans; how most of the stores there catered to the German population; how around 1959-1960 a group of men identified themselves as representatives of either the Wiesenthal Center or the Mossad; Jose checking the their identification with the local Jewish Agency and being told to give them all the documents and information they were asking for; antisemitism in Argentina; how many of the Jews in Argentina were not religious but very Zionist; belonging to Zionist organizations; providing information to the investigator on one of their clients, Ricardo Clement, who was an amateur photographer with a heavy German accent; finding out later that Ricardo Clement was actually Adolph Eichmann; her husband being threatened three months after Eichmann’s trial and advised by the Jewish Agency to leave Argentina; Jose moving to Israel in 1964, while Flora stayed behind with their daughters and to liquidate everything; going to Israel in 1965; moving to the US in 1967 after the war; living in New Jersey and Jose being elected the president of B’nai Brith; their daughters finally understanding why they left Argentina; the rabbi of a synagogue in Fort Lauderdale, FL encouraging her to leave a testimony of their story; and further details on Eichmann’s capture and the role a family friend, Dr. Herscovici, played.

Oral history interview with Virgil Myers

Oral History

Virgil Myers, born July 6, 1918, discusses growing up on a farm; working for the Quaker Oats Company; how Quaker Oats paid for him to attend business college; being drafted into the army; going to Leavenworth, KS; going to Camp Hood, Texas; his twelve weeks of basic training; entering the army in May 1944 in the 80th infantry Division, Patton’s Third Army, 317th regiment; sailing to Liverpool, England in September 1944; arriving at Omaha Beach, France on September 27, 1944; crossing the Moselle River; his first war experiences; liberating about 40 Polish prisoners of war; setting up road blocks in Sivry, France where German forces were traveling; being a squad leader; having fellow soldiers taken as prisoners of war or wounded in Sivry; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; traveling to Luxembourg and later to Weimar, how his division sent a message to the mayor of Weimar, warning that if they did not surrender, they would attack; how the mayor and a woman rode out of the city on a bicycle with a white flag of surrender; how the American regiments were treated coldly by adult German citizens, but were given a warm reception from German children; seeing men in striped outfits walking by and discovering the Buchenwald camp; speaking to a Lithuanian prisoner who had been there four years; learning from the Lithuanian prisoner that the SS guards had deserted the camp when they heard Americans were in Weimar; his memories of Buchenwald; seeing dead prisoners and learning about the crematorium; rounding up prisoners who had wandered away from the camp, so they could get medical care and food; returning to the United States on January 16, 1946; going to Czechoslovakia with the army; returning home; how emotional his wartime experience was; and speaking publicly about his experiences during World War II.

Oral history interview with Clarence Brockman

Oral History

Clarence Harvey Brockman, born June 26, 1920, discusses growing up in Midway, PA; his father’s work on the railroad; being drafted into the army on July 23, 1942, joining the Third Army 80th infantry division 317th Head Quarters Company; training in Camp Forest, TN, Camp Philips, KS, and Yuma, AZ; his job as a wireman in the army; going to England then France; taking a Polish prisoner his first day of combat; crossing the Moselle River; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; seeing President Roosevelt who visited his training camp during the war; seeing his first concentration camp prisoners, having no prior knowledge of the camps; finding a slave labor camp; his memories of first entering Buchenwald; the story of a German Captain who beat up a woman and tried to pass as a Private; how he and his fellow American soldiers shot this German Captain; taking over German civilians’ houses; the killing of a German civilian woman; befriending a young Austrian girl with whom he kept in contact and visited later in life; his feelings for the German people; his brother’s death two days after the war ended; speaking publically after the war; his job in the coal industry; meeting and marrying his wife; and receiving the Good Conduct Medal.

Oral history interview with Edward Klein

Oral History

Edward Klein (né Isaac Klein), born circa 1926, discusses his childhood in Sieradz, Poland; having two older brothers who were partisans in Poland; his father’s merchant business; speaking Yiddish and Polish at home; being forced to move with his family to the Lodz Ghetto in March 1940; settling into life in the ghetto; his father’s work digging for potatoes; his job of sewing leather; befriending residents of the Lodz Ghetto orphanage; his father’s death in the ghetto; searching for his father’s remains later in life; difficulties in finding his birth certificate and exact date of birth; studying poetry; being beaten by a policeman for bringing bread to his mother; his mother’s deportation from the ghetto; the Culture House in the Lodz ghetto; his memory of Bolek Jakubowicz who was in charge of distributing apartments in the ghetto; being placed in Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski’s house, which was divided into four apartments; being given clothes and access to food; Dr. Rabiner Berliner who became his instructor in logic, math, and German; living in Rumkowski’s apartment; the privileged circle of ghetto officials with whom he lived; the various people who came through Rumkowski’s household; rumors that the Germans were planning on leaving the Lodz ghetto; the “ranks” and strata in the ghetto; orphanages and schools in the Lodz ghetto and Rumkowski’s role in them; people’s opinions of Rumkowski; wanting to be deported to Auschwitz with his friends; how a Gestapo informant, Gertler, was not only aware of what would happen in the ghetto, but was also a perpetrator; relationships ghetto officials had with Germans; final deportations in 1944 from the Lodz ghetto; his deportation to Auschwitz; how Rumkowski arrived at Auschwitz one week later; being sent to Mauthausen; German SS guards at Mauthausen; being chosen to peel potatoes; being told by a guard that he would not die, but would work for the Reich after the war; a German guard who wanted sexual favors from him; prisoners from Theresienstadt; Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, an Auschwitz inmate who did portrait drawings for Dr. Mengele; the Terezin family camp; being given a diamond by another prisoner; providing food and clothing to other prisoners in the camp; falling in love with a Polish woman who worked in a factory; being given special attention by SS guards; needing medical attention while in Mauthausen; how an SS guard operated on him; how another inmate tried to kill him in Mauthausen; an attack on Mauthausen; leaving Mauthausen and eating grass to survive; spending time in a hospital in Austria after liberation; and living in Montreal, Canada.

Oral history interview with Joseph Eaton

Oral History

Dr. Joseph Eaton (né Wexler), born on September 28, 1919 in Nuremberg, Germany, describes his parents; growing up in Germany in the 1920s; his father’s experiences with antisemitism in the German Army; his education; Hitler’s rise to power; belonging to a Zionist youth group; attending a Jewish high school in the suburb of Berlin called Grünewald; going with his brothers to the United States to finish school as a part of a special program in November 1934; staying temporarily with an officer of the German Jewish Children’s Society, John L. Bernstein; his parents’ divorce and separate immigrations to the Netherlands; adjusting to the US; staying with several different foster families in New York, NY; attending Cornell University; being active in the Hillel Society; studying cooperative farming experiences in the United States before he was drafted; the publishing of his book, “Exploring tomorrow's agriculture” in 1943; going through basic training at Fort Dix, NJ; being trained as medic; not experiencing antisemitism during his training; he and his brothers changing their surname in 1940; working as a clerk in a military hospital in Camp Rucker, AL; being considered an enemy alien and being monitored by the FBI; being transferred to Queens College in New York in preparation for the US involvement in post-war France; his unit’s mission being scrapped; being sent to Camp Ritchie in Maryland; being attached to the psychological warfare division of the Army; his training at Camp Ritchie; writing leaflets; going to London, England in 1943; landing in Omaha Beach in France five weeks after D-Day; going to Paris, France then Luxembourg; being stationed at Radio Luxembourg and his work there; the dropping of leaflets and the newspaper “The Front Post”; the content of their written materials; handling the surrender of German General Ernst von Poten in Trier, Germany; how he was naturalized before he was sent to Europe during the war; his feelings as a Jewish soldier; asking people in German villages around Aachen about the local Jews; visiting Buchenwald concentration camp and his impressions of the camp; the children’s barrack and his report on it; visiting Theresienstadt; driving through Marienbad (Mariánské Lázne, Czech Republic) and Prague, Czech Republic; the typhus epidemic in Theresienstadt; meeting with Leo Baeck, who was a leader of the Jewish community in Theresienstadt; learning of the death of his grandmother; becoming the editor of a newspaper and the content they published; writing a story about Hitler’s birthplace; not getting permission to visit his brother in Palestine but managing to get there; being offered a job in military government in Germany by the US Army and declining; finishing his PhD and his career in research; retiring and writing a history of how his family interacted with the German culture over many centuries; identifying as a Jew; and helping to establish a school of social work in Haifa University.

Oral history interview with Ernie Pollak

Oral History

Ernie Pollak discusses speaking Yiddish as a child in Hungary; how his father, a WW I veteran, owned a Kosher butcher shop; going to Budapest in 1942 learning to be a dental technician when he was 15 years old with his brother David; living in Romania when the war started; the German occupation of Hungary; living in a ghetto; being marched out of the ghetto each day for forced labor; how his brother David was in hiding with his girlfriend; seeing Raoul Wallenberg; conditions in the ghetto; marching to Mauthausen Concentration Camp; his liberation by American soldiers; seeing former camp inmates suffer from eating too much after being liberated; learning that his sister was in Bergen-Belsen; moving to the United States; reuniting with his surviving family members; and his religious views before and after the war.

Oral history interview with Harry Iticovici

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ninetta Matsas Feldman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edith Lowy

Oral History

Edith Lowy, born in Lazy, Czechoslovakia, discusses her childhood in Poruba, Czechoslovakia; her tight-knit family; her family’s general store; the nearby Jewish community of Orlova; her experiences as the only Jew among her friends; the 1938 arrival of Polish troops; her family’s flight to Poland where her grandfather had relatives; her time in Prokocim, Poland; the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and Russia; her family’s flight to the Russian front; her family’s return to Poland; experiences with antisemitism in Poland; her father and uncle’s forced labor; her experiences in hiding with her brother; her mother’s deportation; her attempt to pass as an Aryan; a priests’ offer to forge false papers; her family walking freely into their first labor camp in Prokocim, Poland, thinking it would be easier to survive there than in hiding; her work in the camp’s kitchen; witnessing deaths in the camp; the camp’s liquidation; being sent to a labor camp in Plaszow, Poland; her brother Erik’s murder; her first train transport; being sent to Skarżysko-Kamienna in Poland; the commandant of the camp, Paul Kuhnemann; details of different subcamps of Skarżysko-Kamienna; her work at the ammunition factory at Skarżysko-Kamienna; memories of her father at the camp; her aunt working as the housekeeper for Kuhnemann; being sick with typhoid; how people at Camp C of Skarżysko-Kamienna were green and yellow from working with poisonous gas; her transfer to Buchenwald with family members; her work at the ammunition factory making bombs; how the overseer at this factory acted kindly; her experiences learning poetry while working at Buchenwald; her friendship with a Belgian teen at Buchenwald; the death march from Buchenwald where she experienced pain, hunger, and exhaustion; her liberation by Russian forces; her time in Oschatz, Germany, where a German family took care of and protected her; being reunited with her father; returning to her home in Czechoslovakia; regaining ownership of her family’s general store; continuing her education; immigrating to Israel; her work in the Israeli military; and her post-war relationship with her father.

Oral history interview with Eugene Miller

Oral History

Eugene Miller, born October 16, 1923, discusses his family’s background in Lithuania and Russia; his birth in Meretch (Merkine), Lithuania and childhood in Lodz, Poland; details of his education at a gymnasium before the war; his education in the Lodz ghetto; his attempted escape to Russia; the closing of the ghetto’s school in 1941; his memories of the Nazi-appointed ghetto leader, Mordekchai Chaim Rumkowski; industry and administration in the ghetto; his work at the ghetto's labor department and economic department; his transfer to the fire department; deportations and deaths in the ghetto; his mother’s sickness from typhoid and the death of his parents; his deportation to Auschwitz; the presence of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz; details of the train transport; his imprisonment in Birkenau, artificial rubber being made in Birkenau; his deportation to Dachau; details of his liberation; the arrival of American forces who distributed rations; deaths of former camp inmates by overeating; his return to Poland; meeting with a neighbor who tried to avoid him; his move to Frankfurt, Germany, where he attempted to attend university; his work with the Jewish Student Association; antisemitism in Poland; his wife’s time in nursing school; immigrating to the United States and attending Butler University in Indiana; earning his PhD at the University of Chicago; and his wife’s experience during the war.

Oral history interview with Bertl Rosenfeld Esenstad

Oral History

Bertl Esenstad, born in Korb, Germany in 1925; discusses her childhood in Adelsheim, Germany; her father Adolf Rosenfeld, who lost a leg in World War I; her father’s business in cattle trade and feed; her close relationship with her three sisters and one brother; her mother Katharina (Katty) Lemberger Rosenfeld, working alongside her father; how her father was very strict; attending a Jewish school in Heilbronn, Germany where she lived with her maternal aunt; later moving to Aachen, Germany to attended a second Jewish school; her memories of Kristallnacht; being sent with her sisters Edith and Ruth Rosenfeld to London, England in March 1939 where they had a maternal aunt; how the Rosenfeld sisters lived in private homes and hostels; how sister Esther Rosenfeld later joined them; living with the Poole family in London; how Mr. Poole was a chauffer for a Jewish family for which Bertl’s aunt worked; how the Poole’s maid taught her English; traveling to Scotland with the Poole family after war was declared; how the Bloomsbury House assisted with the Kindertransport; communicating with and sending money to her parents through the Quakers; her parents deportation in 1942 to Gurs and then Auschwitz; her youngest brother Herman Rosenfeld’s deportation to Gurs and his eventual immigration to the United States with other children; immigrating to the United States in 1948 with her sisters; settling in Washington, DC; and working for Hymen Goldman who was the founder of the Hebrew Home.

Oral history interview with Fred Firnbacher

Oral History

Fred Firnbacher, born on May 19, 1930 in Regensburg, Germany, discusses his childhood in Straubing, Germany; his birth name Manfred Firnbacher which he later changed to Frederick Stephen Firnbacher; his father’s profession in the horse and cattle trade; his mother’s hometown of Buttenwiesen, Germany; his childhood memories of visiting his maternal grandfather in Buttenwiesen; being raised as an Orthodox Jew; attending a Protestant school; being expelled from school at the age of six when he was threatened by a Nazi youth; meeting with a retired religious leader who clandestinely taught Jewish children; German troops passing through during invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia; his memories of Kristallnacht; his father’s arrest and deportation to Dachau the day after Kristallnacht; his family’s journey to the United States Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany in December 1938 for visas; traveling by train to Holland in January 1939; immigrating to the United States and settling in Washington, DC with his family at the age of eight; how his great-grandfather Moses Firnbacher commissioned the creation of a Torah from which four generations of Firnbachers were Bar Mitzvah’d; how his father Maier Firnbacher brought the family’s Torah out of Germany; censored mail from extended family in Germany during war; being stationed in Germany in 1954-55 during the Korean War; being stationed in Wildflecken, Germany; traveling to Buttenweisen, Würzburg, Munich, Augsburg, and Straubing while stationed in Germany; and his mother’s bitterness towards Germany and Germans.

Oral history interview with Grant Shultheis

Oral History

Grant Shultheis, born in 1920 in Latrobe, PA, discusses growing up on a poultry farm; being married for 58 years; being blinded in his right eye at age five; his army training in Maryland; his shooting skills; details of battles and his wartime experiences in Europe; interactions and fights with German forces; details of an airplane battle; weapons used while in the army; his memories of seeing Dachau for the first time, observing two prisoners at Dachau chasing a German soldier; his observations of other prisoners at Dachau; wounded comrades; interactions with German soldiers; taking prisoners of war; being told by German soldiers that the war was over; hitch-hiking home to Latrobe; working and living with his family on a horse ranch after the war; starting a job as a hammer driver; and how his son, Jerry Shultheis, fought in Vietnam.

Oral history interview with Rosette Konick

Oral History

Rosette Konick, born January 17, 1929 in Malinsk, Poland (now Ukraine), describes her prewar life in Poland; her father Abraham and mother Faye; her father’s occupation converting wool to thread for textiles; her family’s orthodox religious beliefs; her family’s awareness of the political situation in Germany before the war; antisemitism in Poland; her family’s unsuccessful attempt to leave Poland; the beginning of the war and initial Russian occupation; various transports to Siberia under the Russian occupation; the German occupation beginning in 1941 and the harsher anti-Jewish legislation that followed; her life in the Beresno ghetto; her work in the fields at the Beresno ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto and her escape into the forest; her time hiding in various barns; her travels across the River Sluch into Russian territory to search for safer hiding; her family’s involvement in the partisan movement; her family’s stay in France while waiting to obtain visas to the United States; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.

Oral history interview with Algimantas Gureckas

Oral History

Algimantas Gureckas, born June 2, 1923, in Tauragė, Lithuania, discusses his early childhood and his memories of good relations amongst nationalities and religious communities in Lithuania; his family’s openness about religion and lack of discrimination towards Jews; their move to Panevėžys; his family’s mistrust of Poles following the Polish invasion of Vilnius; the 1939 German occupation of Klaipėda; his feelings on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; how the invasion of Poland changed Lithuanian attitudes towards Poles; his involvement in a voluntary organization formed to defend Lithuania; the October 10, 1939 treaty between the Soviet Union and Lithuania; how he volunteered to fight against the German occupation, but was denied the opportunity by the recruiting officer; the Russian occupation of Lithuania; his feelings that the Jewish community betrayed Lithuania because many of its members supported the Russian occupation; seeing the German invasion as liberation from the threat of deportation to Siberia; the establishment of his town’s ghetto; popular feelings about the killing of the town’s Jews; attending university in Vilnius; the Lithuanian boycott of German goods; attempts to establish SS legions; his membership in a resistance movement against Nazis; his draft into the Reich Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) and service near the island of Rügen off the coast of Germany; his move to East Prussia because of the inevitable takeover by Russian forces; being forced to work in the Luftwaffe; his move to Munich and reunion with his mother; Munich’s liberation by American troops; and immigration to and life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Frida Ruderman

Oral History

Frida Ruderman, born February 26, 1925 in Serei, Lithuania, describes her prewar life with her family; her father’s occupation as a doctor and her mother’s occupation as a dentist; her involvement in the Communist Youth Group; relatively congenial relations between Jews and non-Jews in Serei; the Soviet occupation of Serei; her escape to Moscow before the war broke out; her survival in Moscow with her aunt; her sadness and distress after learning that the rest of her family had perished; her marriage in 1952; her status as one of seven Jews from Serei who survived the Holocaust; her emotional return to Serei post-war; and her immigration to and life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Blanche Hall

Oral History

Blanche Hall (née Katzenstein), born March 2, 1913 in Schlüchtern, Germany, discusses her parents Hermann and Gutta Katsenstein; her mother’s death in 1933; her brother Ludwig Katsentein; how her father was a salesman and her mother was a business owner; her memories of World War I and her fear of soldiers; her early education; the Jewish community in Schlüchtern, Germany; how many of her childhood friends were gentiles; her work as a nanny; how she and her father moved to Frankfurt, Germany because the Nazis wanted to arrest her father; her marriage in 1935 to Justin Halle who was from Darmstadt, Germany; moving with her husband to Darmstadt, Germany; their immigration to the United States in 1936; how she and her husband sponsored nearly 90 people who emigrated from Europe and came to the United States; how her father-in-law’s sister was married to Congressman Bloom, and he helped supply affidavits to people who wanted to immigrate to the United States; various jobs she held in the United States; and her life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Erica Kanter

Oral History

Erica Kanter (née Hecht), born April 19, 1929, discusses her childhood in Stuttgart, Germany; being the child of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother; her father’s career as a physician; her sister Lisa and brother Karl; attending elementary school in Stuttgart; traveling to Czechoslovakia during the summers to stay at her grandparents’ castle; no one in her family practicing Judaism; attending Lutheran Sunday school; her father’s deportation to Dachau; her father’s rescue by the police chief of Stuttgart; how her father left Germany through Switzerland to go to England; being sent to England on the Kindertransport with her siblings in April 1939; packing and preparing for the trip to England; staying with the Emerson family in Marple, England; English customs; being evacuated to the countryside; how her mother stayed in Germany and then went to Italy where her parents had a home; leaving for the United States through Portugal; sailing to the United States on the Britannic with her father, sister, and brother in 1940; moving to Massachusetts; joining the Congregational Church; studying literature at Harvard; how her mother recovered her jewelry which an acquaintance had hid for her in Germany; her marriage to Milton Kanter; and her experience writing and publishing a memoir.

Oral history interview with Hanny Leitson

Oral History

Hanny Leitson (née Johanna Gross), born June 16, 1925 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her family life before the war; how the Nazi rise to power affected her family members, especially her father who was an attorney; how her brother left in 1938 for Denmark and then later traveled to Bolivia; her feelings about leaving her family to go on the Kindertransport in 1939; how she and her mother prepared for her journey to England; her memories of crossing the Dutch border by train and then taking a ship to England; how her mother’s cousins met her in England and arranged for her to live with a foster family in Cheltenham; learning English and attending school in England; her work as a secretary for the US Signal Corps in Cheltenham; how her parents immigrated to the United States in 1939 and settled in Elmhurst, New York; the death of her father; her immigration to the United States in November 1944 to be with her mother; difficulties in adjusting to living with her mother again; receiving a scholarship to the University of Michigan; her brother’s, step-brother’s, and mother’s lives after the war; studying English literature; and meeting her husband at the University of Michigan.

Oral history interview with John H. Lang

Oral History

John Lang (Hans Ludwig Lange), born June 28, 1930, discusses his childhood in Berlin, Germany where his family was very active in their synagogue (Prince Regent Street Synagogue); experiencing antisemitism; memories of his early education; people throwing stones at him and his father when they sat in the park together; memories of Kristallnacht; attacking a Hitler Youth and his parents intervening with the family of that boy; going to England on the Kindertransport; staying completely silent on the Kindertransport train until crossing the border into Holland; living with a Christian family in England for half a year; his feelings of abandonment concerning his father; his parents escape from Germany just weeks before the war started; being evacuated to the English countryside; his father suffering multiple strokes; facing antisemitism in England; immigrating to the United States in 1940; being separated from his parents who stayed in England because his father was paralyzed; the bombings in London; his relationship with his sister; experiencing antisemitism in New York; bad experiences playing with American Jewish children; moving to Los Angeles, CA in 1940; learning about finance; moving back to New York with his mother; returning to Berlin, Germany with his children; and his belief that Americans will forget about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Harry Ebert

Oral History

Harry Ebert discusses his childhood in Heidelberg, Germany; moving to Mannheim, Germany, where his father joined his grandfather’s law firm; attending two private boarding schools in Italy, one near Milan, Italy; his experiences in Italy; leaving Italy in 1938 and returning to Mannheim; attending a Jewish boarding school in Germany; his sisters’ escape to Holland, Netherlands with family friends; leaving on the Kindertransport in January 1939; his father’s arrest and internment in Dachau; how the bishop of Lichfield, England sponsored his father’s release; traveling to Rotterdam, Netherlands; staying in quarantine in Rotterdam; living in Holland until April 1940; training in the oil and gas field while living in the Netherlands; how his father went to England while his mother stayed in Germany; the deportation of his mother and maternal grandparents to a camp in Gurs, France; traveling from the Netherlands to England; immigrating to the United States with his family; settling in Manhattan, NY and later moving to Ohio; entering the Army Specialized Training Program; training at Camp Richie in Maryland; his experiences being stationed in Germany with the US Army from 1945 until 1947; working as an investigator in the Nuremberg Trials; investigating Alfred Krupp’s wartime activities; his career in the military; his extensive experiences while stationed in Europe; his experiences with war crime trials; his career in America; experiences living and working abroad; and speaking publicly about his career after World War II.

Oral history interview with Paul F. Halpern

Oral History

Paul Felix Halpern, born November 29, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, discusses growing up in a wealthy household; how his family only recognized high Jewish holidays; the Nazi rise to power in Austria and its effect on his family; his Catholic nanny who had to quit working for the family; his mother’s arrest and detention in a Vienna prison; how his former nanny visited and cared for his mother in prison; how his maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States in 1938 or 1939; how his grandmother arranged for him and his sister to be on the Kindertransport to England; living in Bunscourt, England and then in London; leaving England with his sister on a ship bound for the United States, but instead arriving in Montreal, Canada; how his grandparents took care of him and his sister in the United States; how he and his sister sponsored his parents immigration to Portugal and then to the United States; how his father returned to Austria, postwar, to rebuild his factory; his military service in Vietnam; how his family never spoke about their experiences during the Holocaust; his master’s degree in public relations; memories of childhood friends, including professional tennis player Renee Richards and director Mike Nichols; his close relationship with his grandchildren; his anger towards Austria and towards immigrants who speak poorly about the United States; and his views on contemporary acts of genocide.

Oral history interview with Manfred Lindenbaum

Oral History

Manfred Lindenbaum, born in Unna, Germany in 1932, discusses his father’s clothing store; his memories of antisemitism in Germany and its effect on his father’s business; how, following the arrest of his father, he and his siblings were sent to live with a gentile friend; escaping to Poland with his family, living in Zbaszyn, Poland for nine months; leaving Poland with his siblings; how he and his brother got on the Kindertransport; living with Christian foster families in England; misbehaving and moving from family to family; how his parents Otto and Frida Lindenbaum and his sister Ruth died in Auschwitz; investigating his sister’s death after rumors that she was still alive; immigrating to the United States in 1946; raising a family in the United Sates; and speaking publicly about his Holocaust experiences.

Oral history interview with Marion Wolff

Oral History

Marion Wolff (née Pollak), born May 8, 1930 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her Austrian-born father and German-born mother; how her father owned movie theaters in Berlin and became the North German distributor for a major production company; moving to Prague, Czech Republic with her family for nine months in 1935; moving to Vienna, Austria; memories of her father dying at an early age in Vienna; experiencing antisemitism as a child; her memories of Kristallnacht; how her mother made and sold leather flowers; unknowingly signing up for the Kindertransport; preparing to leave on the Kindertransport and her mother’s reaction to her departure; leaving Vienna on December 10, 1938; wanting to protect her mother; experiencing fear while on the train to Holland; living in Dovercourt, a large camp for children when they first arrived in England; how a Quaker family from York took her into their home; life with her foster parents, Jessie and Walter Robson; learning English; how the Quaker foster family brought her mother to England; experiencing antisemitism while in school in England; attending a Quaker boarding school; her mother’s experiences upon entering England; how her grandmother was in Theresienstadt; the guilt her mother felt about leaving her family in Germany; her extended family and their fates; working for the American Chamber of Commerce in London; and immigrating to the United States in 1960.

Oral history interview with Doris Small

Oral History

Doris Small, born July 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her Polish-born father who was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War I; attending school as a child in Berlin; her mother’s frequent hospital stays because of her poor health; her father’s tobacco store in Berlin; her mother death in 1936; living on rations; experiencing antisemitism; her father’s death from throat cancer in 1938; how her brother cared for her and her sister; her brother’s arrest on October 28, 1938; how she and her sister were left alone; staying with a married couple who had known her father; sleeping in the couple’s bathroom; the kindness of the couple; how the woman’s younger brother was an SS officer; how this man signed the girls up for the Kindertransport; how her sister was too old to go on the Kindertransport; moving from house to house before leaving for England; being on the same Kindertransport train as an old classmate; traveling to Holland; her foster family who lived in London; getting a job sewing in a London factory; how her foster parents lied to authorities because she was not supposed to have a job; how her sister made it to England on a domestic servant permit; and being reunited with her sister.

Oral history interview with Ruth K. Heiman

Oral History

Ruth Heiman, born December 31, 1923, discusses her parents’ textile business in Germany; her father’s work in Louisiana before World War I; her mother’s job as a chemist working for the German equivalent to General Electric; experiencing antisemitism as a child; refusing to attend German high school, and instead attending a Jewish high school; how her younger brother was sent to Palestine; leaving on the Kindertransport; being harassed by Nazis on the train; arriving in London; being taken in by a Jewish family; how her foster family was poor and her foster mother was volatile; memories about the outbreak of the war while in London; living with the foster family for a year and half; being interned on the Isle of Man because she was 16 years old and considered an enemy alien; how much she enjoyed living on the Isle of Man; the presence of German nuns on the Isle of Man, and how one of them was a male spy; the family she lived with after her internment on the Isle of Man; the death of her parents in Sobibor; attending dressmaking school; arriving in the United States on January 1, 1947; getting married and raising a family; thoughts about her parents; and her life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Paul M. Wolff

Oral History

Paul Wolff born, December 27, 1929 in Hamburg, Germany, describes his childhood in Hamburg before the war; his parents Charles and Erika Wolff (born Abeles) and two sisters; his father’s service in World War I; experiencing antisemitism as a young man; his desire to join the Hitler Youth and his ignorance of the anti-Jewish sentiment that was behind it; his father’s arrest on Kristallnacht and his family’s realization that life for Jews in Germany was deteriorating; his family’s acquisition of exit visas to England; his sisters’ travel to England on the Kindertransport; his time on a farm in Devonshire, separated from his family; his travel from England to San Francisco; and his post-war life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Herbert Friedman

Oral History

Herbert Friedman, born December 11, 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes his childhood in an Orthodox Jewish family in the 20th District of Vienna; his memories of attending temple with his father; how his parents were originally from Poland; attending public school until he was forced to transfer to a Jewish school; his Bar Mitzvah; antisemitism he experienced as a child; memories of being shown antisemitic films at public school; saving a woman’s life in the Danube River as a young boy and the community backlash that followed; his family’s struggle to leave Austria in 1938; registering with the Palestine Office to leave Austria; the situation in Austria after Germany’s annexation and the events leading up to Kristallnacht; Nazi officers arriving at his family’s home; his experiences with Nazis in Austria; how a friend of his joined the Hitler Youth; helping Jews avoid deportation; preparing to leave Austria on the Kindertransport; traveling to England on the Kindertransport; his feelings about leaving his family behind in Austria; how the rest of his family eventually left Austria; the many places he lived in England; experiencing air raids; his emotions and experiences while supporting himself in England; volunteering as an air raid warden in England; immigrating to the United States with his parents; his disappointment upon moving to the United States; joining the US Army; receiving a scholarship from Loyola College; being sent to the Pacific Theater as part of a medical unit; his experiences as a medic in the infantry; being stationed in Hawaii; attending the University of Hawaii; attending pharmacy school; fighting in the Korean War as a commissioned officer; his feelings of guilt concerning relatives who were murdered in Europe; participating in the documentary “Into the Arms of Strangers;” and his work as a pharmacist in Baltimore, MD.

Oral history interview with Eleanor Rolfe

Oral History

Eleanor Rolfe, born January 31, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses her childhood in Hamburg; her father’s status as a World War I veteran and job as an attorney; how her family was completely assimilated into German society; her parents’ reaction to the Nazi rise to power; her father’s arrest while in court on the day of Kristallnacht; the domestic help leaving her family’s household; how her father’s non-Jewish colleague, Dr. Zibeking, arranged for her to leave on the Kindertransport; how Dr. Zibeking arranged for her parents to relocate to Amsterdam; her feelings as the Kindertransport train crossed into Holland; how her mother’s family all traveled to Holland; the murder of her Uncle Walter by a famous playwright; arriving in London and seeing foster families waiting for children to arrive; how an elderly couple took her in and cared for her in their very simple home; moving with her family to Seattle, WA; how her husband survived the attack on Pearl Harbor; starting a family; how her husband and her children accepted the Jewish religion after moving to the United States; and returning to Germany with her daughter and visiting the house where she was born.

Oral history interview with Eva Yachnes

Oral History

Eva Yachnes, born May 1932 in Vienna, Austria; discusses her family life in prewar Vienna; how her father, a Communist, found work in Russia after he lost his job in Vienna; how her mother received a visa to go to England as a cook in April 1938; staying with her maternal grandmother in Austria while her parents worked abroad; attending a Jewish kindergarten in Vienna; how her maternal grandfather founded the Free Thinkers Association; how her family celebrated Christmas and did not celebrate any Jewish holidays; her memories of the Nazi rise to power in Austria; her father’s efforts to teach her English; how her grandmother signed her up for the Kindertransport; her memories of leaving on the Kindertransport in December 1938; her journey to England through Holland; harassment from Nazis on the way to England; being taken to Dovercourt Camp upon arrival in England; how an English minister wanted to adopt her; attending English schools; her reunion with her father and mother in the United States; settling with her parents in Manhattan; and her father’s service in the United States Army.

Oral history interview with Michael W. Wolff

Oral History

Michael Wolff, born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on June 29, 1936, discusses his childhood in Reichenbach, Germany; how his mother worked in his grandfather’s store and his father owned a saw mill; celebrating Jewish high holidays; how his mother made arrangements for him to live with a Jewish family in Glasgow, Scotland; how his father traveled to England in August of 1939 and was interned on the Isle of Man; his mother’s immigration to Bolivia and how he and his father later joined her there; daily life in Bolivia; attending a Catholic school in Bolivia; how his father became the manager of a mine; attending a company school and learning English; speaking German, Spanish, and English; his family’s immigration to the United States; living in San Francisco, CA; attending a city college and then University of California, Berkeley; being drafted into the United States Army and being stationed in Dugway, Utah; settling in Orange County, CA after the end of his service; visiting Scotland with his wife; his mother’s Shoah Foundation interview; his children and grandchildren; and religion.

Oral history interview with Lore J. Schore

Oral History

Lore Schore, born in Berlin, Germany in 1924, discusses her childhood in a well-off family; her maternal aunt’s deportation to Auschwitz; how she was 15 when her mother sent her on the Kindertransport; the journey to Holland and then to England where she attended a girls school in Surrey; attending art school; living in Hampshire with a woman and her daughter; being sent to live with a Vicar and his family; her mother’s immigration to England on a domestic visa; how, as a result of the Nationality Act of 1940, she was able to immigrate to the United States because her father was American; meeting her husband who was originally from Eastern Europe; starting a family and living in New York and New Jersey; how her family has never practiced Jewish holidays; and returning to Berlin, Germany later in life.

Oral history interview with Marlies Plotnik

Oral History

Marlies Wolf Plotnik, born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1928, discusses her childhood and family; how her father Herman Wolf was the last Jewish lawyer allowed to practice in Darmstadt; her memories of the Nazi rise to power; her non-Jewish nanny whose father had been Hermann Wolf’s orderly during World War I; how in 1936 her parents travelled to the United States to visit relatives and prepare for their eventual immigration; her memories of Kristallnacht in Darmstadt; her father’s arrest and later release; how she still owns a carbon-copy of a list of valuables her family owned before the war; traveling in 1939 with her entire family on the Queen Mary to New York City, NY; settling on the Upper West Side; her father’s disappointment at not being able to provide for his family; attending Barnard; her brother Paul’s enlistment in the US Army and participation in the second Normandy landing; meeting her future husband, Gene Plotnik; and having her sons’ surname legally changed to “Potter” in 1973 to prevent them from suffering antisemitism.

Oral history interview with Charles Malka

Oral History

Charles Malka, born January 1, 1922, discusses his childhood in Mascara, Algeria; attending school with Christian, Muslim, and Jewish students; being particularly good at all types of sports and belonging to the Eclaireurs Israélites from the age of eight on; later being part of the Chantiers de Jeunesse, the Vichy youth brigade; his internment in the Camp de Bédeau; how when the Vichy regime arrived in 1940, the Jews of Algeria, who had been made French citizens in 1870 by the Crémieux Decree automatically lost their French citizenship; his job as a court clerk; being called to military service on in November 1942; Operation Torch, the plan the Allies used to liberate Algeria; his military training at Camp de Bédeau; fighting in the Battle of Monte Cassino; his military service and moving through Europe during the war; joining the police force after the war; leaving Algeria with his family and settling in Paris; and his career in the textile industry.

Oral history interview with Réne Pariente

Oral History

René Pariente discusses growing up in La Marsaa, just outside of Tunis, Tunisia; his family’s ancestry in Italy; his parents Vera Gutierrés and Jules Pariente; the history of Jews in Tunisia; how, when Mussolini proclaimed the anti-Jewish laws of 1938, his father applied to obtain French citizenship; the battle of Kasserine; his father’s death from a pulmonary embolism in June 1940, two days before Germany invaded France; celebrating his Bar Mitzvah in April 1942; the death of his little brother from typhus two days later; memories of bombings in his hometown; soldiers living in his mother’s and grandmother’s apartments; the English liberation of Tunisia; traveling to Paris, France for medical school where he studied to become a lung specialist; becoming the “Chef du service” at the Hôpital Laennec, and then working at the Hôpital Antoine Baeckler in Clamart and the Hôpital Beaujon in Clichy, which was part of the French research institute INSERM; writing a book published by L’Harmattan in 2009, about the “dangers of utopian socialism;” and how religion is forbidden in his household.

Oral history interview with Nicole Dorra

Oral History

Nicole Dorra, born June 9, 1932 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood and family life in Paris before the war; her father, Elie Dorra, who was born in Syria and was considered a “protégé français;” her mother, Hinie or “Annie” (née Feingold), who was from a Viennese Jewish family; her family’s two hat boutiques; the arrival in 1938 of two cousins from Vienna who came to live with her family; how the rest of the Feingold family was smuggled out of Austria and obtained visas for South America; living with her family in the coastal resort town of La Baule, in southern Brittany during the “drôle de guerre” from September 1939 to September 1940; returning to live in Paris from the fall of 1940 until April 1941; how despite the fact that her paternal grandparents were on the list of Djugutis or Djougoutes, Iranian Jews who were considered Aryan, this status did not help the Dorra family; leaving Paris in April of 1941, well before the June 7th, 1942 law imposed the wearing of the Jewish star in the occupied northern zone; settling with her family in Nice, where her father purchased an apartment; her baptism by a priest in Monaco, Father Arrighi; moving to a small hamlet in early 1944 in the department of the Isère, 20 kilometers from the city of Voiron; attending mass every Sunday to hide her family’s Jewish identity; hearing about the Liberation of Paris in Le Sarra and moving back to Nice several days later; how her father joined the Forces Françaises Libres and went on to liberate Germany; staying in Nice until 1946 and then moving back to Paris; her family’s new home on the avenue Suffren in the chic 7th arrondissement; attending school at Lycée Victor Duruy; working as an anesthetist in the same maternity clinic in the 14th arrondissement of Paris where she was born; and how in February 2010, the City of Paris bestowed its highest honour on her, the “Médaille de Vermeille.”

Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Oppenheimer

Oral History

Michel Oppenheimer, born March 16, 1930 in Darmstadt, Germany, discusses his parents Moritz and Margarete Oppenheimer; his father’s cigar factory in the town of Fränkisch-Crumbach, Germany; his sisters Hannah, Ruth, and Féodora; attending a Jewish school in Höscht; how the day after Kristallnacht, his father and half-brother Ernst were arrested; how Moritz and Ernst were sent to Buchenwald, but Ernst was released because he had papers showing a visa for the United States; moving with his family to Mannheim; how Hannah and Ruth left Germany in June 1939 as part of the Kindertransport, but he and Féodora were too young to leave; being deported to the camp of Gurs in southern France; how, he left Gurs for La Maison des Pupilles in Aspet; how his parents were sent to the Rivesaltes internment camp near Perpignan in spring 1941; how he spent a month and a half at the Château de Chabannes in Creuse and then ended-up at the Château de Masgellier; later living with a rabbi and his wife; living in Bas-Pays near Montauban and the town of Aubenas, and then Feneyrols; attending a special school called “cours complémentaires;” passing his “Certificate of Studies;” enrolling in the (Ecole de l’orientation professionnelle) on the rue Gay Lussac; becoming an apprentice to a man who blew glass; working with scientists at the government research center (CNRS) in Meudon; and meeting his future wife Miriam and raising one son and one daughter.

Oral history interview with Miriam Oppenheimer

Oral History

Miriam Oppenheimer, born February 17, 1934 in Mulhouse, France; discusses her childhood in an Alsatian Jewish family; her parents, Grand Rabbi René Hirschler and Simone Lévy; her sister, Jocelyn, and her brother, Alain; her father’s appointment as Grand Rabbi of Strasbourg at an early age; how the family took refuge in Bordeaux and then Nantes when France went to war in 1939; living in Marseille from 1941to 1943; how her father was “Aumonier General” or General Chaplain in the internment camps throughout southern France; how in November 1943 her father decided to send his children to boarding schools in the Alps; being sent with her sister to a Catholic boarding school in La Bourboule; how teachers knew that they were Jewish but hid the truth; leaving La Bourboule in 1945 to stay with an aunt and uncle in Villeneuve-sur-Lot; attending high school in Clermont-Ferrand; living with her sister and brother in Paris with their maternal grandmother; working at the Institute of Social Sciences; meeting her future husband, Michel Oppenheimer, at the home of a rabbi; and their children.

Oral history interview with Anthony Acevedo

Oral History

Anthony C. Acevedo, born in San Bernardino, CA in July 31, 1924, discusses his experience as a medic with the US Army's 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division, Company B during World War II; his capture by the Germans and time as a prisoner of war; how he endured torture, forced marches, and near starvation; how, because of his background as a Mexican American, he was singled out along with several hundred fellow soldiers for transfer from their POW camp to Berga an der Elster, a section of Buchenwald concentration camp; his responsibility in the camp for caring for his fellow prisoners; recording in a small diary the names and numbers of those who died so their sacrifices would be remembered; and being liberated during a death march in spring 1945 when German guards abandoned him and his fellow prisoners in the face of approaching American forces.

Oral history interview with Martin Gaudian

Oral History

Martin Gaudian, born in Paullina, Iowa on October 27, 1922, describes his parents’ German background and his own identity as a German-American growing up in Paullina; how his father fought for the United States in Germany during World War I; the effect of Hitler’s rise to power and the beginning of World War II on his town; the draft and its effect on his family and classmates; being drafted in 1943; his experience in the Air Force and training at various bases throughout the United States; being shipped to La Havre, France in April 1945; being switched to the Army; the train ride from France to Germany, where he was first stationed in Munich; arriving at Dachau in May 1945 after it was liberated; in the camp seeing a warehouse with various medical tools and body parts in jars, the water tower, and the furnace; being isolated from the outside world during his time in the camp; staying in Dachau for about three weeks; and the rest of his time in Bavaria until being shipped home after serving in Germany for seven months.

Oral history interview with Margaret Schoenfeld

Oral History

Margaret Schoenfeld (née Weiss), born in 1914, discusses her upper-class childhood in Landau, Germany; her family life; the close relationship she had with her non-Jewish nanny; being sent to Alsace, France in 1933 when Hitler came to power; immigrating to the United States in 1938; living in Charlotte, NC; meeting her husband, who had escaped from Dachau; moving to Seattle, WA; her marriage; and her reflections on her life.

Oral history interview with David Wisnia

Oral History

David Wisnia, born in 1926, discusses his experiences growing up in Sochaczew, Poland; attending an exclusive private Zionist school; the German invasion of Warsaw, Poland in September 1939; the formation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940; his brother’s move to Otvosk; worsening conditions in the ghetto; his father’s work doing repairs at an airport; taking his father’s place at work one day in 1941 and being barred from reentering the ghetto; returning to Sochaczew alone; staying with various families and then being helped across the Bzura River to Wyszogród; his deportation to Auschwitz in the fall of 1942; claiming to have been born in 1924 and choosing to go with the men instead of the children upon arrival at Auschwitz; being assigned to collect the bodies of those who had committed suicide; singing for the block elder who made him an assistant to the stubendienst; receiving better treatment and access to food and clothing because of his singing talent; working in the sauna for six months; being made to participate in a mock hanging as an initiation to the strafkommando; meeting his wife; going on a death march to Gleiwitz in December 1944; making a failed escape attempt; arriving at Dachau and then being put on a train to Austria; escaping in the chaos of bombing; encountering tanks and joining an outfit of American soldiers; going with the soldiers to a military cap at Bar-le-Duc France; being stationed at Versailles; and reuniting with a friend he met in Auschwitz, who had saved the songs he had written while in the camp.

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbach), born December 3, 1916 in Lódz, Poland, discusses her family’s move to Brussels, Belgium; her prewar life in Brussels and Schaerbeek; her public school education in Belgium; graduating from a college of art and design; working for the royal family designing clothing; her marriage to Jacques Aizenberg in 1938; her memories of Kristallnacht and the subsequent influx of Jewish immigrants to Belgium; the invasion of Poland and beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; her husband’s mobilization; her daughter’s birth; hiding members of the underground; the persecution of Jews in Belgium following the German invasion; her decision to put her daughter in the care of two benevolent German women; her anxiety about her unknown future; going into hiding with her mother; their discovery by the Germans and deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; laboring in an ammunition factory in Auschwitz; the harsh conditions and treatment of prisoners in Auschwitz; medical experimentation; a death march to Ravensbruck; her survival and liberation; reuniting with her daughter and husband; her struggle to recover from her Holocaust experiences; and the importance of providing her oral testimony.

Oral history interview with Henry Blumenfeld

Oral History

Henry (Heinz) Blumenfeld, born in Amsterdam, Holland, on May 31, 1925, discusses his father Erwin Blumenfeld, who was a renowned artist and photographer; his father’s autobiography “Jadis et Daguerre;” his family’s move to Paris, France in 1936; his father’s internment in Montbard-Marmagne, transfer to Le Vernet, and eventual release; his sister Lisette’s internment in Gurs and release; the family receiving visas in Marseille, France from the American Consul; their travel from France to Casablanca, Morocco in 1941; being sent to the camp of Sidi el-Ajachi, near Azemmour, Morocco; finding passage on a Portuguese steamship to the United States; arriving in New York City, NY in August 1941; adjusting to a somewhat carefree life in the US after living under difficult conditions; attending high school in New York; his entrance into Bard College; being called up as a laboratory technician in the US Army from 1943 to 1945; how he helped disembark German prisoners of war in the port of Charleston, SC; graduating cum laude from Harvard and being denied access into medical school because of Jewish quotas ; his shift to a physics doctorate; his research with elementary particles in cloud chambers; his work at Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., and Princeton; his marriage to photographer Kathleen Levy-Barnett, who had assisted his father; his return to France in the mid-1960s to work on research at the French national scientific center Bure-sur-Yvette; and his and his daughter’s work on making his father’s photography known.

Oral history interview with Gennadiy Zaster

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maria Zhorella Federova

Oral History

Maria Zhorella Federova, born on November 8, 1915, describes her childhood and family in Vienna, Austria; starting singing lessons as a girl and studying singing after school; her marriage to a half-Jewish man; the antisemitism she and her husband encountered; the fate of her Jewish voice teacher; her early dealings with the Gestapo; helping Jewish acquaintances and others throughout the war; meeting Claus von Stauffenberg, who would later be executed for the failed assassination plot against Hitler; hiding people in her basement; the Gestapo searches of her house and others; seeing older Jewish people being forced to clean the streets in winter; her Jewish friends and acquaintances; her feelings on the Nazi regime; her mother’s efforts to help people during the war; officials asking her to sing at a private party for the mayor of Preßburg (Bratislava, Slovakia); the Gestapo’s suspicions about her and the phone call that saved her; her role as a singing cook in a film in the 1940s; the arrival of the Russians and the division of Austria into Allied sectors; returning to Vienna; and learning the fate of her husband after the war.

Oral history interview with Brooks McClure

Oral History

Brooks McClure, born March 8, 1919, discusses growing up in New York City; receiving Australian newspapers from a pen pal in Australia; sending a letter to one of the newspapers and being accepted by the newspaper as a correspondent in 1937; the death of his father in 1940; getting a job as a copy boy at the International Herald Tribune; joining the Army in 1942; working with a teletype team on special assignment in the infantry; arriving in Europe in early 1944; being posted in the 65th division of Patton’s army; working with military communication systems between the front lines and headquarters; his assignment in Ohrdruf to take pictures the day after the camp was liberated; viewing the barracks and seeing dead and dying people throughout the camp; the camp’s mass grave; prisoners attempts to converse with him; eventually learning the full extent of what went on in the camp; visits to the camp from Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton; moving with Patton’s army into Austria; being in Linz, Austria when the war ended; participating in the recovery of paintings lost from a museum in Linz; and being shipped home from Paris where his last assignment was with the Stars and Stripes news source.

Oral history interview with Stephanie Andriūnas Egan

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Rynecki

Oral History

David Rynecki, born in 1928 in Shedlitz (Siedlce), Poland, discusses his early childhood in Shedlitz; his family life with his parents and brother; his family’s move from Shedlitz after Kristallnacht; the start of World War II and its effect on his family; the establishment of the ghettos; his father’s abduction by the Nazis; daily life in the ghetto; his work for the SS as a cleaner; his family’s decision to flee the ghetto before they could be taken away; how a sympathizer hid them from the Nazis; his life in hiding for two years; liberation; returning to Shedlitz; the kindness of the Russians; his search for remaining family members and supplies in his old house; reuniting with his father who had been in a concentration camp; his time in Bremenhoffen; immigrating to the United States; his life and work in America; how he met and married his wife; moving to Georgetown and the birth of his children; his parents’ death; his children’s success; his grandchildren; his satisfaction with his life after the war; and his involvement with the Democratic party.

Oral history interview with Arlette Benichou

Oral History

Arlette Benichou (Messaouda-Fortunée El Haïk), born March 7, 1921 in Tunis, Tunisia, discusses her family background; how her family gained French citizenship because her father was employed by the French protectorate; her schooling; working in the Postal Service; the background of her husband, Albert Benichou; how she learned of Albert’s Jewish identity; marrying Albert in June 1941 and moving to his hometown of Orléansville, Algeria (now Chlef, Algeria); losing her government job because of the Vichy regime’s antisemitic legislation; how her husband started a firewood business using a Catholic acquaintance to legally own the business; how the acquaintance took over the business when her husband was ill and then refused to return it to him; how her family doctor worked in secret because Jews were no longer authorized to practice medicine; giving birth to five children between 1942 and 1952; knowing about the secret plans for the liberation of Algeria; listening to de Gaulle on a small radio which they hid from the authorities; the invasion of Allied soldiers in 1942; how her family invited English soldiers into their home to eat with them; how her husband joined the French army while still remaining in his job in the Postal Service; and leaving Algeria in 1962 and settling in Toulouse, France.

Oral history interview with Henri Dray

Oral History

Henri Dray, born on January 15, 1925 in Oran, Algeria, discusses his pre-war life in Oran; his family; attending a secular public school; speaking French at home; leaving school when he received his brevet at age 13 or 14; his religious education; the drafting of his five brothers by the French army; not being mobilized until 1944; combat training; being sent to the south of the département of Constantine, Bou Saâda, to quell a restive FLN uprising; taking over his father’s butcher shop after being demobilized in 1946; owning a supermarket; fleeing Algeria with his family, and leaving behind most of their belongings in 1962 when it declared independence from France; moving to Bordeaux; his life in France; and his son and daughter.

Oral history interview with Arlette Taïb

Oral History

Arlette Taïb, born April 10, 1930 in Sétif, Algeria, discusses her family; her parents’ background; her father’s work as a manager for a wealthy Jew, traveling six days a week, only returning home for Shabbat dinner; her memory of arriving at school for the start of sixth grade and being told that Jewish students could not return to school because of the Vichy regime’s anti-Jewish laws; attending makeshift classes run at her local synagogue; her family faring rather well despite rationing because they had farm goods to barter for necessities; how American soldiers who attended services at the synagogue were invited to eat with families in Sétif once Algeria was liberated by the Allies; living with her family in a building owned by a Muslim; how a French Alsatian family that lived on her same floor belonged to the ultra-right wing organization, Croix de feu; wanting to pursue her studies after her baccalaureate, but being unable to do so because of lack of means; becoming a teacher in a French school; her husband’s job as a tax inspector; living with him on the outskirts of Sétif; leaving Algeria permanently in 1961 after an incident; requesting, along with her husband, to be transferred to municipal jobs in France; being placed in the town of Barbezieux; and retiring and moving to Bordeaux.

Oral history interview with Georges Azogui

Oral History

Georges Azogui, born on October 13, 1943 in Meknès, Morocco, discusses his parents; growing up in a villa in the Jewish quarter of Meknès; his family’s synagogue, attended by over 200 people; speaking Arabic at home, but learning to read and write only in Hebrew; his education in a secular school; being raised by his grandmothers; his family’s vineyard; studying oenology in Bordeaux after he passed his baccalaureate exam; his siblings; an incident depicting the friction between the Muslim and Jewish communities; Morocco declaring its independence from France in 1956; living on Ben Gurion’s kibbutz after completing his oenology studies; working in Corsica and Greece; settling in Bordeaux and becoming a wholesale wine merchant; and his children’s move to Israel.

Oral history interview with Lyliane Guedj

Oral History

Lyliane Guedj (maiden name Tellouck), born on January 11, 1938 in Sétif, Algeria, discusses her parents and siblings; being raised during the war by her great great aunt due to her parent’s poverty; returning to her parents in Bône (Annaba), Algeria and starting public school at the age of 7; her neighborhood; being taken out of school at age 13 to help take care of her brother; marrying in 1959; her husband working as part of the French police force and a government employee; following her husband to mainland France when he was sent there in 1962; living in Bordeaux for a time; the anti-Algerian sentiment on the French mainland; her husband dying suddenly in 1965; being given a job working for the police administration so she could have the means to raise her four children; retiring in 2002; and being active in the Jewish community of Bordeaux.

Oral history interview with Albert Toledano

Oral History

Albert Toledano, born in 1936 in Meknès, Morocco, discusses his large family; his father’s work to make sure that people in the Jewish community received medical care; speaking Arabic at home; his schooling in French; marrying at age 22; living with his family in the “New Mellah” (the old and new Jewish quarters) with the wealthier Jews; becoming a successful car salesman; living in Morocco until 1981 when he and his family moved to Bordeaux, France; difficulty in remembering the wartime period; his memory that his family did not suffer from rationing as they were fairly well-off; and his ancestry and his children.

Oral history interview with Khosrow Banayan

Oral History

Dr. Khosrow Asher Banayan, born in 1951 in Tehran, Iran, discusses coming from a prestigious Jewish family; being active in attempts to renovate the Jewish cemeteries in Iran; obtaining his baccalaureate in Iran; moving to France to study medicine; marrying a French Jew and having four children; the lack of anti-Jewish repression in Iran during World War II; experiencing antisemitism; speaking French at home growing up; going to a Persian-speaking secular school; his education in a lycée; and his relatives.

Oral history interview with Georges Bouhana

Oral History

Georges Bouhana, born in 1935 in Oran, Algeria, discusses why his grandfather moved to Morocco; his parents and his family background; attending a secular public school until the Vichy authorities expelled Jews; attending a private Catholic school after his expulsion; Bedeau (Râs el Ma) and Tindouf camps; continuing his education in public school after the Allies entered Algeria; later attending a private lycée; being a Jewish boy scout; being sent to a boarding school in 1955 as incidents related to Algeria’s war for independence increased; Jews fearing for their lives and belongings during that time period; his family’s move to Bordeaux, France; enrolling in dental school after passing his baccalaureate exam; spending his entire career as a dental surgeon in Bordeaux; and being president of the local International League against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA).

Oral history interview with Mebourah Zerbib

Oral History

Mebourah (Prosper) Zerbib, born January 23, 1922, describes his childhood in Constantine, Algeria; his parents Eliahu and Messouka; his father’s occupation as a jewelry repairman; his family’s strict religious observance of traditional Judaism; his family’s first apartment with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim residents; his family’s forced relocation to a more Jewish oriented apartment due to the landlord’s antisemitic views; his education in a public, secular school; his religious education in an establishment run by the Alliance Israelite Universelle; his bar mitzvah; his apprenticeship with a furniture upholsterer; the 1934 pogrom in Constantine; his move to Oran for work; his return to Constantine in 1939; his service in the French Army; his time in a forced labor camp, which he identifies as Gambetta; discrimination towards Jews that were recruited into the French Army; his participation in the liberation of Provence and occupation of Germany; the lack of work available to him and his brother in the post-war period; his immigration to mainland France; his arranged marriage in 1954; his parents and brothers’ immigration to Israel; and his second marriage to his current wife.

Oral history interview with Simone Jourjon

Oral History

Simone Jourjon (born Benhamou), born on December 9, 1930, describes her childhood in Tlemcen, Algeria; her parents Etienne and Renee; her mother’s desire for her and her siblings to be well educated; her restriction from attending public school because she was Jewish; her attendance at a Jewish-only school; her father’s service in the French Army; Algeria’s liberation by American forces; her work for an architect, insurance company, and secretary; passing her civil service exam for the Department of Public Treasury in 1949; her arranged marriage to Monsieur Soussin in 1953; her move to Angouleme, on the French mainland; the declaration of Algerian independence on July 5, 1962; her mother’s death on the day of Algerian independence; the general resentment towards French Algerians in France; and her career with various professional organizations.

Oral history interview with Marcelle Ohayon

Oral History

Marcelle Ohayon (born Elmosino), born March 9, 1932, describes her childhood in the Moroccan town of Safi; her father and his occupation as a grain merchant and her mother Esther; her father’s position as the head of the local Chevrah Kadisha, or “Burial Society;” her education at the Alliance of Israelite Universelle school beginning in 1939; her further education at les cours complementaires; her membership in the Eclaireurs Israelites where she met her future husband; repressive measures against Jews in Safi; the arrival of American forces in November 1942; antisemitism she experienced at les cours complementaires; the period of time when the town was divided in regard to how the Jews should be treated during the war; her sister’s occupation at the Jewish Agency working for the Israeli Foreign Ministry department; her and her family’s immigration to Bordeaux; her husband’s work helping people immigrate to Israel; her parents’ move to Israel; her regret that she and her immediate family never immigrated to Israel; and her heavy involvement in the Jewish community of Bordeaux.

Oral history interview with Marc Alimi

Oral History

Marc Alimi, born in 1936 in Batna, Algeria, discusses growing up in a French speaking family; learning Arabic at school; his parents and grandfather; attending a secular public school in Batna until the Jews were expelled during the war; his father and his uncle being mobilized in 1939; his father’s return home; his father working under a false identity in Constantine; experiencing antisemitism; the Vichy regime constructing a concentration camp at Timgad; his father being sent with his family to Bordj Bouarreridj, then to Bouira for work; failing his baccalaureate; working for the Postal, Telegraphic, and Telephone services starting in 1954; working at a house painting business; becoming a teacher; being protected from the attacks against non-Muslims because of his extraordinary kindness to the local children; working until 1962, when he was given a teaching job in Bordeaux, France; and becoming a leader of Bordeaux’s Jewish community.

Oral history interview with Claude Mamane

Oral History

Rabbi Claude Mamane, born July 16, 1941 in Fez, Morocco, discusses his family; his father’s business which was pillaged by the Vichy regime; his father’s lawsuit against the government for damages, and success in winning his case; rules regulating where Jews could live; attending the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in Fez; demonstrations in 1956 and the deposing of the Sultan; moving to France in 1957 to continue his general and rabbinical education; studying to become a rabbi at a yeshiva in Aix-les-Bains; problems at the school due to the fact that Ashkenazi rites were imposed upon all the students, which were different than Sephardic rites; the arrival of many Algerian Jews in France in 1962; the creation of a small Jewish community; various places he was assigned to as rabbi; marrying in 1966; having three children; living in Nantes from 1971 to 1975; holding the position as Grand Rabbi of Bordeaux from 1976 to 2006; the particularity of the Bordeaux rites and music; retiring, but remaining advisor to the Grand Rabbi of France for the Chevrah Kadisha.

Oral history interview with Judith Heimann

Oral History

Judith Heimann, born August 23, 1920 in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses her Protestant father and Jewish mother; her well-to-do but unostentatious life in Frankfurt where she and her older sister Ruth grew up as Protestants; various schools she attended in Frankfurt, Switzerland, and England, and jobs held in doctors’ offices in Frankfurt; her memories of the bombing of Frankfurt; meeting her Jewish husband while both worked for the United States military government in the post-war denazification program; immigrating to the United States in 1947; maintaining ties to Germany through friends and family; and her view that any German citizen who had a connection with Jews knew as early as 1935 about the treatment of Jews and later about the concentration camps.

Oral history interview with Daisy Chelly

Oral History

Daisy Chelly (Seror), born January 20, 1933 in Gabes (Qābis), Tunisia, describes her grandfather’s prestigious reputation within the Jewish community; her grandfather’s department store which provided the Jewish community with provisions during Shabbat; her attendance of public nursery school; the lack of antisemitism before the war; the Tunisian Consul’s attempt to recruit members of the Jewish community of Gabes; the requisition of Jews for forced labor; the liberation of Tunisia; her job providing assistance to a local Jewish doctor; the Jewish community’s mass exodus to Israel; her marriage to Youna Chelly and their four children; and the Chelly family’s immigration to France.

Oral history interview with Willi (Wolf) Akselrad

Oral History

Willi (Wolf) Akselrad, born in Paris, France on September 28, 1934, describes his family and his life before the war; his father’s participation in the Legion Etrangere during World War II; his father’s time in a Prisoner of War camp; the fearful times he and his mother endured during the war; the anti-Jewish laws that were adopted during the war; being forcibly evicted from his home by the French police; his and his mother’s time in Drancy; their transport to Bergen-Belsen; his experiences in Bergen-Belsen; being sent with his mother towards Theresienstadt; his liberation by the Russian Army at Tröbitz, Germany; his mother’s death from typhus; his time in a Home for the Children of Resistance Fighters in Ville-d’Avray, France; how an account of his experiences were incorporated into a series of brochures, "Enfantines;" being transferred to a home for Jewish children called “Le Vieux Phare” (The Old Lighthouse) in Malmaison, France; his immigration to Palestine; his occupation as a tailor; his involvement in the French Communist Party; and his post-war family life.

Oral history interview with Gugliemo Levi

Oral History

Gugliemo Levi, born January 1, 1922 in Tunis, Tunisia, describes his family’s long history of prestigious medical doctors; his father who refused to join Mussolini’s Italian fascist party and was fired from his job at the Italian hospital in Tunisia and forbidden to practice medicine; his involvement in the Jewish boy scouts that brought him closer to his religion; his completion of his baccalaureate exams in 1938; his father’s forced hiding after the French Police and Gestapo attempted to arrest him; his enrollment in a French lycee, the Lycee Carnot; the Tunisian liberation in May 1943; his forced labor in the Chefferie du genie, the Headquarters for Supplies and Engineering; the completion of his medical studies in Paris, France; his immigration to France; and his wife and two children.

Oral history interview with Josiane Azoulay

Oral History

Josiane Dayan Azoulay, born on May 3, 1933 in Setif, Algeria, describes her childhood in Bougie (Bejaïa), Algeria; her father and mother; her father’s butcher shop; her education at a secular public school; the butcher shop’s service to the French Army, Navy, and police force; the antisemitic organization “les Croix de feu” and its violence towards her uncle; the family’s fear due to antisemitic violence; being expelled with her siblings from public school with the implementation of anti-Jewish laws; frequent air raids; the family’s move to Setif; the victory in Europe; Muslim violence on May 5, 1945; her marriage to Maurice Azoulay; and her family life in Nantes, France.

Oral history interview with Marcel Charbit

Oral History

Marcel Charbit, born December 12, 1932 in Tlemcen, Algeria, describes his life before the war; his father and uncle’s furniture before the war; his family’s religious observances; his father and uncle’s service in World War II with the French Army; his forced eviction from regular public school to an all Jewish school during the war; the Algerian liberation in 1942; the termination of his studies because of his duties in his father’s store; his military service in 1953; his emigration from Algeria to mainland France; his occupation working for the Singer Company; his marriage in 1964; and his active support for Israel.

Oral history interview with Guy Nouchi

Oral History

Guy Nouchi , born on March 29, 1932, describes his life in his hometown Kenitra, Morocco; his father’s service during World War I; his father and uncle’s grocery store that they owned before the war; his father’s entrance into the French Administration as a public works supervisor; his father’s service in the French Army Reserve during World War II; his father’s inability to work under the Vichy laws; his attendance in secular French public school because of his French citizenship; his religious education; his family’s move to Rabat, Morocco due to his father’s new job; the latent antisemitism in his school; his studies at Lycee Gorau; his advanced scientific studies at the Faculty of Science; his father’s transfer to Beziers; his military service in Morocco; his occupation in molecular optics; and his contemporary family life.

Oral history interview with Rubin Pizem

Oral History

Rubin Pizem, born November 29, 1930, describes his prewar life as a child in Poland in a place that is now located in Ukraine; the invasion of Poland and German occupation; the murder of his father and two uncles by the Einzengruppen; his sister Esther, who was killed in a labor camp; his time in hiding with the help of non-Jewish friends; his time in the woods where he hid in underground shelters with his mother and sister, Ida, for a year; their liberation by the Russian Army in 1944; difficulties he faced trying to immigrate to Israel to join his mother and sister; his eventual decision to immigrate to the United States instead; his marriage to a Hungarian woman he met in the United States; and his struggles to recover emotionally from his experiences during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Agnieszka Holland

Oral History

Agnieszka Holland, born November 28, 1948 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Henryk Holland (b. 1920) and Irena Rybczynska (b. 1914); her parents’ extended family members who perished or were in hiding during the war; how she found out that she was a Jew; her mother’s work in the Polish underground during the war; growing up in Warsaw in the 1950s; different people’s memories of the war; reactions to the Communist Party and Stalin’s death; her father’s death in 1961; how she became interested in filmmaking; her decision to attend film school in Prague, Czech Republic; exploring Catholicism and her religious identity; making the film Angry Harvest abroad during the imposition of martial law in Poland; her interest in Janusz Korczak, director of Jewish and Polish orphanages before and during the war; her work as a film director; her intent to make films about the complexity of human experience; her surprise with the great success of her film, In Darkness, in Poland; and negative reactions to her films among right-wing groups in Poland and Russia.

Oral history interview with Leni Hoffman

Oral History

Leni Hoffman (née Eckmann), born August 25, 1930 in Bamberg, Germany, discusses her childhood in Hofheim, Germany; antisemitism in her town before Kristallnacht; her parents’ attempt to emigrate; being on one of the last Kindertransports to a home near Brussels, Belgium in July 1939; her transfer to a non-Jewish orphanage, Foyer des Orphelins, in Middelkerke, Belgium with ten other girls; being transferred to the orphanage’s campus in Brussels after the start of bombing of the Belgian coastline on May 10, 1940; spending her days pasting ration stamps when she and the other Jewish children could no longer attend public school in 1942; how those in charge of the orphanage protected her and the other Jewish girls living there; seeing Nazi officers on the street; restrictions affecting the Jewish girls in the orphanage; wearing a Star of David badge for a short time; her liberation by the British on September 4, 1944; hearing news about the war on the radio; immigrating to the United States to live with her aunt and cousins in New York City in 1946; attending high school there until she had to get a job; attending night school, where she met other Jewish refugees; meeting and marrying her husband; staying in contact with and later visiting people from the orphanage in Belgium; and visiting Germany where she spoke at an exhibit about the history of Jewish life in her hometown.

Oral history interview with Fred Lorber

Oral History

Fred Lorber (b. Fritz Lorber) describes his early years growing up in Vienna, Austria; his modern Orthodox religious upbringing; his educational experience at an Austrian public school; his memories of the Anschluss; antisemitism he experienced in the 1930s; changes in Vienna during the Nazi occupation; what happened to his family during Kristallnacht; his father’s arrest and imprisonment in Dachau; how the Jewish community in Vienna coped with anti-Jewish laws and with being expelled from schools and professions; feelings of unease after the Nazi occupation of Vienna; how his school friend’s uncle and his mother helped get his father out of Dachau; when his family received their American visas; their arrival in New York, NY; attending an American high school and his Americanization process; how his family found financial success in the United States; being drafted into the army in 1943; his feelings of discomfort because he was not an American-born citizen; basic training; his brief time in Casablanca, Morocco before being moved to Italy; the Italian campaign; relations between US GIs and Italian civilians; being picked to go to Austria because of his German language skills; his feelings while being back in Vienna; his return to his former apartment; relations with Viennese citizens; his involvement in translating interrogations; antisemitism he found in post-War Austria; the experience of his family members who remained in Europe; his post-war family life in Des Moines, where he became involved in the Jewish community; and the aid he and his family gave to Russian immigrants who arrived in Des Moines in the 1970s.

Oral history interview with Jack Sanders

Oral History

Jack Sanders (né Jacques Szakderman), born March 10, 1921 in Przytyk, Poland, discusses his family life and childhood in Poland; the naturalization of his family as French citizens; the family’s visit to Radom, Poland and their first experiences with antisemitism; the 1936 Przytyk pogrom; the first roundup of Jews in Paris, France in 1941; the first anti-Jewish measures in France; the notice to go to the Gare de l'est to report for work in German factories in 1941; his flight to Chalon-sur-Saone, France to the free zone; his detention by French police at the demarcation line; being sent back to France by Swiss immigration authorities; his return to an army camp in 1942; the French resistance; the sabotage of a French Navy fleet; the work of female maquisardes; his arrival with troops at the German border; learning to drive a tank; liberating Strasbourg, France; news from French police that his father had been detained in Drancy and later deported to Auschwitz; his return to Berlin, Germany with Colonel Clavier; his work with army intelligence services in Paris; his work investigating kapo abuses in the camps in May 1945; his assignment in Haifa, ISrael to guard crates of tractors, later converted into tanks and spare parts for planes used in Israel's 1948 War of Independence; and his immigration to the United States in 1960.

Oral history interview with Gerhard L. Weinberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Pranas Jurkus

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rafael Wilschanski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michael Pupa

Oral History

Michael Pupa, born 1938, discusses his childhood in Ukraine; the death of his family in 1939; escaping to a forest with his father and uncle; hiding; bribing his way from Poland to Germany; living in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany; transferring to a displaced persons camp in Munich, Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1951; living as an immigrant in foster homes and the homes for the homeless for short period; joining the military; having a family in the United States; and his lack of resentment towards Germany.

Oral history interview with Uri Chanoch

Oral History

Uri Chanoch, born March 28, 1928 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes a happy prewar family life, speaking Russian, Lithuanian, Yiddish, and Hebrew at home; his father’s business as a wood merchant; his mother’s positive attitude about everything; how Lithuanian society was completely segregated so that he had no non-Jewish friends; his close relationship with the family’s nanny; a reunion with the nanny’s daughter in 1995; the Russian evacuation of the city when the Germans arrived; German forces barricading Jewish men in one synagogue and then burning it down; spending three weeks barricaded in another synagogue with approximately 150 people; conditions during the confinement; the actions of Lithuanians in rounding up the Jewish population; returning to Kaunas and finding that everyone had disappeared, the mass killing of the Jewish community at the Ninth Fort; and life in the ghetto where he worked as a messenger for a German work office.

Oral history interview with Leibel Zisman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aldo Naouri

Oral History

Dr. Aldo Nauori, born December 22, 1937, describes his early life in Benghazi, Libya; his parents’ lives before he was born; his father’s early death; his family’s extreme poverty; his family’s piety; his family’s French citizenship dating back to the early 19th century; the Arabic dialect of Judeo-Libyan his mother spoke; daily life in Libya; the ancient history of Jews in Libya; how the Italians expelled all French citizens to Algeria in 1942 during the occupation; his memories of the trip, including smuggling; his family’s arrival in Orleansville (now Chleff), Algeria; how Algerian Jews were stripped of their citizenship, but the Libyan Jewish refugees were not; contending with antisemitism and hostile treatment from the Arab community, French colonialists, and indigenous Jews in Algeria; his schooling in Algeria; studying medicine in Paris, France; his family’s repatriation to France after Algeria gained its independence; his postwar life as a well-known pediatrician; and his thoughts on his family’s love.

Oral history interview with Donna Dray

Oral History

Donna Dray (née Pinto), born on August 28, 1916, discusses her childhood in Tangiers, Morocco; her family structure; how her family spoke modern Spanish; her family’s religious observances; why her family moved to Casablanca; her schooling; prewar relations between Jews, Catholics, and Muslims; her brothers’ studies in Paris, France; how she met her husband Jacques Dray; work restrictions placed on Jews in Morocco during the war by Vichy, France; the birth of her children; the American liberation of Morocco; how her family made a living after the war; her family’s immigration to Paris sometime after Moroccan independence; and her family’s adjustment to life in France.

Oral history interview with George Javor

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elie Lucien Uzan

Oral History

Elie Lucien Uzan, born on November 15, 1924, describes his childhood in Tunis, Tunisia; how his father was granted French citizenship for volunteering for the French army in WWI; his father’s career as a French civil servant working in prisons; his father’s atheism; his experiences with antisemitism from the Muslim community in smaller towns; his strict upbringing; how his father was called up to serve in WWII; his conscription into forced labor during the German occupation; his desertion from a work brigade; remaining in hiding until Tunisia was liberated; his experience fighting for the Free French; antisemitism he experienced when trying to join de Gaulle’s army; a soldier’s daily life; his experiences during the invasion of Italy; his postwar career working in the tobacco industry; his involvement in the Tunisian Communist Party; Tunisian independence in 1956; his family’s immigration to France; how he did not observe Jewish religious practices; and his thoughts about antisemitism.

Oral history interview with Lester Libo

Oral History

Lester Martin Libo, born in 1923, discusses his childhood in Chicago, IL; growing up in a Jewish-Russian household; enlisting in the Army to continue college; being shipped to Normandy, France in January 1945; using his Russian and Yiddish language skills to translate for his company; going to Kulmbach, Germany then Austria; aiding concentration camp prisoners and evacuating prisoners to safety; working with the denazification program in Germany; how German war criminals were treated; the cleansing of the German government by Americans; and the strengths and weaknesses of the program overall.

Oral history interview with Eric J. Hamberg

Oral History

Eric Hamberg, born in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in Ludwigshafen, Germany; his parents; attending school; his non-Jewish friends; the Nazi rise to power in 1933; graduating from high school in 1937; being an apprentice chef; the events on Kristallnacht; his father’s imprisonment in a concentration camp; going to England in June 1939; working at a small hotel right near the beach in Cliftonville; taking care of Jewish children who had come to England via Kindertransports; going to the United States in May 1940; finding a job in Chatham, NJ; being drafted in 1942; training at Fort Dix and Camp Rucker; working in the kitchen; experiencing antisemitism in the army; being sent to Oran, Algeria; going from Tunisia to Sicily; being in the 84th Chemical Mortar Battalion; experiencing combat; being sworn in as a US citizen; being part of the invasion of Anzio; being a sergeant for most of the war, then becoming a platoon leader towards the end of the war; supporting the 10th Mountain Division at the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy; how he earned the Bronze Star; the death of his friend at Lake Garda; the end of the war and going to Newark, NJ, where his sister also lived; attending cosmetology school on the GI Bill; and meeting his wife.

Oral history interview with Freddy Schumer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rebecca Fried

Oral History

Oral history interview with Eric Heinz Bondy

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald Liebenau

Oral History

Gerald Liebenau, born on November 30, 1925 near Elssholzstrasse in Berlin, Germany, discusses growing up in the Berlin neighborhood Schöneberg; his younger sister; his father (Kurt, born 1889), who worked as a window decorator for a Berlin department store and owned a textile store; his mother (Helene “Lola” Organitsky Liebenau, born 1898), who was a pianist; his family’s participation in the Jewish rowing club on the river Spree; having a relatively peaceful childhood until Jews were no longer allowed to attend public schools in 1936; his family’s move to the Haberlandstrasse section of Berlin; his parents seeking an affidavit for immigration to the United States from a relative who lived there (David Miller); the events of Kristallnacht; their affidavit being turned down; his father leaving Germany for London in September 1938; his father sending all of their furniture to Scranton, PA, before the Gestapo ransacked Jewish homes; receiving visas to London and leaving Berlin in December 1938; having his bar mitzvah in London; going to the US in late January 1939 on the “RMS Aquitania”; settling in Scranton, PA; moving with his family to New London, CT in 1941; his girlfriend Vivian Shepardton; being drafted into the US Army within a week of his high school graduation; being trained at Camp Blanding to be a machine gunner (approximately 1942-1943); being sent to Southern Italy in 1944; going to Caserta, Italy and then to a villa on the Adriatic Sea, where he trained to jump from airplanes; becoming part of the Austrian unit of the OSS in Vienna; spending a little time in Germany searching for scientists for the US; returning to Berlin briefly to seek out survivors from his family (circa 1945-1946); leaving the army as a “buck sergeant”; attending Yale, where he studied history and Russian; getting married to Vivian Shepardton; moving to Arlington, VA, to work with the CIA; and living in Berlin with his family for a few years.

Oral history interview with Ruth Geller

Oral History

Ruth Geller (née Ginsberg), born on April 10, 1933 in Moravska Ostrave, Czechoslovakia (now Ostrava, Czech Republic), discusses her mother Blanche Basia Ehrlich Ginsberg (born March 13, 1904 in Krakow, Poland) and her father Gerson Ginsberg (July 7, 1897 in Szinov, Czechoslovakia); her parents’ work in the fur trade; her brother Oskar (he died young of a heart attack while living in the United States); having a comfortable childhood before the war; being raised religious (her father was Orthodox); the arrival of the Germans in Moravska Ostrave in 1939; going with her mother and brother to the Port of Gdynia and taking a ship across the English Channel; living initially with her great-aunt in Stamford Hill in London, England; living with her father after he recovered from a heart attack; being evacuated to Kennington, outside of Oxford multiple times between 1941 and 1943; attending a Catholic school in a covenant while living in London (being allowed with other Jewish children to attend); going to the underground during the bombings of London; being part of the Zionist youth group B’nai Akivah; the end of the war; moving to the United States in 1948; sailing on the “SS Degrasse”, and living with her maternal Aunt Lena Ronga and Uncle Henry Ehrlich in Manhattan; attending the Long Island City High School; her father’s death in 1948; attending the Baruch School; working at the Gertz department store and eventually becoming an assistant buyer for the children’s department; moving to California with her husband; attending graduate school in California for business administration and marketing at California State University at San Bernardino (CSUSB); teaching at CSUSB; her mother’s death in 1993; and her cousin Zvi Barlev (Bleicher), who wrote a book, “Would God it Were Night”.

Oral history interview with Ed Gardner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erwin Dankner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ruth K. Westheimer

Oral History

Ruth K. Westheimer discusses a song (which begins with the line, "Jeder Mensch auf der Welt hat sein eigenes Heim") she learned at a home for refugee Jewish children in Wartheim, Switzerland, while a resident there from Jan 1939 through July 1945 and reads portions of her memoir, "Musically Speaking," that include her thoughts on the song’s origin and meaning.

Oral history interview with Suzanne Coppel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvia Rosen

Oral History

Sylvia Rosen (b. Cesia Rojzen), born in 1924, discusses her childhood in Wlodzimierz Wolynski, Poland (present day Volodymyr-Volynsky, Ukraine); her family; the Soviet invasion in September 1939; moving into the newly created ghetto with her family; her family’s murder in the ghetto; going into hiding outside the ghetto; the Judenrat; Jewish forced labor; violent crimes against Jews committed by German and Ukrainian police forces; how the Germans separated unskilled laborers from skilled laborers; wearing the required yellow badge; sorting through Jewish property; mass murders in Wlodzimierz in December 1943; liberation by the Soviets; living in a displaced persons camp created by the U.S. Army; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

Oral history interview with Raymond Turgel

Oral History

Raymond Turgel, born February 28, 1924 in Berlin, Germany, describes his family, childhood, and school life; the presence of Hitler in Berlin; antisemitic songs; witnessing a fight between communists and Nazis; his awareness of rising antisemitism in Germany; bullying from members of the Hitler Youth; events surrounding Kristallnacht; the disappearance of antisemitic signs during the Olympic Games in Berlin; leaving on the Kindertransport; being placed in a boarding school in North London; being assigned the status of enemy alien; his time on the Isle of Man and the boredom he experienced there; the lack of communication with his parents; being sent to a camp in Canada; the lack of freedom within the camp; taking classes at the camp; leaving the camp with the help of the Canadian Jewish Committee and a fraternity; his higher education; his work life; travelling back to Berlin; compensation he received from the German government; his family; and becoming an American citizen.

Oral history interview with Donald Butler

Oral History

Donald Butler, born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1919, discusses his Orthodox upbringing; his religious education; being called for service in WWII in 1942; receiving only six weeks of training in a Virginia military camp; his assignment as vice-chaplain to Protestant Army Chaplain Eccles for the Jewish troops; traveling to Morocco on the British ship the Empress of Scotland; being stationed in Casablanca, Morocco; the warm welcome American troops received from Jews of Morocco and Algeria; the Allied invasion of Italy; being stationed in Florence and Rome; the challenge of abiding Jewish dietary laws while stationed during the war; receiving special leave to go to Palestine in 1945; returning to Italy to work with the UNRHA and hearing stories from Jewish survivors; returning to the United States in January 1946; and his role in helping convince Haiti to vote in favor of the creation of the State of Israel at the UN in 1948.

Oral history interview with Litza Guttierès

Oral History

Litza Guttierès, born in 1928 in Tunis, Tunisia, discusses her background as a Sephardic Jew in a small isolated community of 3,000; the possibility of being part of the Jews of Spain, Marranos/Anusims, who hid their Jewish roots after the Inquisition; attending an Italian school with her sister Elaine until ant-Jewish laws went into effect; transferring to a French school after being tutored in French; not experiencing any antisemitism at the Italian school; an altercation after a girl called her antisemitic terms at the French school; being allowed to remain in the French schools despite Vichy laws and the German Occupation; her French school being hit by Allied bombs and the excitement that the Allies were coming; the liberation of Tunisia; English troops entering Tunis; moving to Paris, France in 1948 after passing her baccalaureate exam and starting medical school; working in the psychiatry field, moving to Geneva, Switzerland, and returning to France 30 years later.

Oral history interview with Odette Cohen-Solal

Oral History

Odette Cohen-Solal discusses her family background in a predominately Jewish neighborhood in Tunis, Tunisia; an Arab uprising in 1936 during which her family had to seek refuge; her schooling at Alliance Israélite Universelle and transfer to Lycée Armand Fallières where she was prevented from completing her baccalaureate exam as a result of the French declaring war; an event where the Jewish community was taken hostage in a synagogue by German forces; how her brothers hid from the Germans; one brother who ended up in a concentration camp; the banning of Jews from school; the liberation of Tunisia; English and American troops in Tunis along with journalists from the United States; names of Jewish American troops that the Jewish community hosted on major holidays; using her Arabic skills with the Créditfrançais Algérie Tunisie and then the Banquefrançaise de Commerce extérieur, which helped people put together dossiers for requests for loans and aid; her trip to Germany in 1949 where she felt hostility because she spoke French with her friends; her marriage to her husband and France’s refusal of allowing him citizenship because of his health; leaving Tunisia for France with her two children; and becoming the Director of the Banquefrançaise de Commerce extérieur on the mainland until she retired.

Oral history interview with Ron WG Jones

Oral History

Ron Jones, born April 30, 1917 in Bassaleg, Newport, Wales, discusses being drafted into the British Army in September 1940; being sent to Cairo, Egypt to join the First Battalion Welsh Regiment; his capture by Rommel’s forces near Benghazi, Libya in January 1942; being taken to Tripoli and sent to Naples, Italy via cargo boat and imprisoned in Camp 065 in Brindisi, Italy; his transfer to the Germans; being taken first to Stalag IVB in Moosburg, Germany and then to Stalag VIII-B near Lambinowice, Poland; being chosen as one of 280 prisoners to work at the I.G. Farben factory at Auschwitz; witnessing brutality against Jews in Auschwitz; being aware of the gas chambers and crematoria; giving food to Jews he encountered at the factory; receiving a ring from a Jewish prisoner with whom he had shared food; being treated relatively well by the guards assigned to the British prisoners; seeing a German officer shoot one of the British prisoners in an argument and hearing that the officer was sent to the Russian front as punishment; being jailed in town for smuggling eggs into the camp; playing football with fellow prisoners on Sunday afternoons; putting on stage plays in the camp; listening to a radio assembled by other prisoners; experiencing the bombing of Auschwitz in 1944; giving a Rolex watch he had bought with cigarettes to a German officer in exchange for bread during the march out of Auschwitz; being liberated by American soldiers in April 1945 in Regensburg, Germany; returning to his job after the war; suffering both physical and psychological effects as a result of his wartime experiences; his decision to only share his story with his family in the years following the war; returning to Auschwitz in 1999 and receiving press attention; and his disbelief of stories of British POWs swapping places with Jewish prisoners.

Oral history interview with Arthur Gifford-England

Oral History

Arthur Gifford-England, born August 1, 1919 in Kingston St. Mary, England, discusses joining the 106th Army Troops Company, Royal Engineers; being stationed in Egypt in early 1942 and working to maintain the water supply for troops there; going to Tobruk, Libya and being captured by German forces; being taken to Benghazi, Libya where he was fired on by the Sansui there; being taken to Italy and then to Germany via Lambinowice, Poland, and arriving at Auschwitz near the end of 1942; his forced labor at the I.G. Farben factory; witnessing the abuse and killing of Jews in Auschwitz; hearing about the shooting of Corporal Reynolds by an SS officer; rumors that a spy had been placed in the camp by the Germans; being tied up with other British prisoners by the Germans in retaliation for Allied attacks, but being untied by a fellow prisoner and then taunting the Germans; participating in sabotage by mixing up shipments so that the wrong supplies would be delivered to German troops; being afraid to interact with Jewish prisoners as Jews caught talking to the POWs would be killed; injuring his hand in an accident at the factory and spending time in the hospital; creating a garden at the camp while recovering from his accident; surviving the bombing of Auschwitz; seeing the body of a friend in the wreckage of a bomb shelter; participating in stage plays put on by prisoners in the presence of a German censor; being marched out of Auschwitz in the spring of 1945 and contracting pneumonia; being treated by a dentist and staying in a large house with five other ill prisoners before rejoining the march at Pilsen, Czech Republic; being liberated by American troops and arriving back in Britain in May 1945; experiencing residual fear upon his return home; personal feelings about his experience and what he had witnessed; his feeling that the fear of retaliation made the British POWs distance themselves from the Jewish prisoners and their suffering; testifying at the Nuremberg Trials; his anger towards Holocaust deniers; and his decision to talk about his experiences in the years following the war.

Oral history interview with Brian Bishop

Oral History

Brian Bishop, born October 30, 1920 in Portslade, Sussex, England, discusses joining the British Army in 1939; being in the 50th division; the Battle of Dunkirk; being evacuated from Dunkirk; being stationed in North Africa in 1941; his capture by Rommel’s forces near Tobruk, Libya; his transfer from the Germans to the Italians; being taken to an Italian POW camp; his transfer to a second Italian POW camp (PG52) and then to the German POW camp Stalag VIIIB; volunteering to join a work party and being taken by cattle truck to Auschwitz in October 1943; working in the I.G. Farben factory; witnessing the abuse of Jewish prisoners by kapos; experiencing the August 1944 bombing of Auschwitz; receiving Red Cross packages and bartering some of the contents with civilians for bread and eggs; being marched out of Auschwitz as the Russians approached; being liberated by American soldiers in Bavaria and taken to France; psychological problems from his experience in the camps; his medical discharge from the military; attending college and training for a career in electronics; revisiting Auschwitz years later; and his feelings about the suffering he witnessed, both on the battlefield and in the concentration camp.

Oral history interview with Nicolaas Van Vliet

Oral History

Nicolaas Van Vliet, born December 1, 1926 in Utrecht, Netherlands, discusses his childhood; the Jewish community prior to the war; the German invasion and occupation; changes for Jews as a result of anti-Jewish laws; having to leave high school; going into hiding in 1944; hiding other Jews; the resistance movement; the capture of friends and loved ones; the separation of his family members in hiding; the fates of various family members; the importance of his legal papers; hiding in barns and living off what he could find for six months on his own; using his Boy Scout training to survive; liberation by American forces; returning home; food drops from the Americans; the Dutch famine of 1944; and his immigration to the United States.

Oral history interview with Peter Kory

Oral History

Peter Kory, born in 1931 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his birthplace; immigrating to Brussels, Belgium with his parents when he was one year old; the German invasion of Belgium; his father’s arrest as an enemy alien by the Allied forces; leaving Belgium for France with his mother as a refugee; searching for information about his father; learning his father was in a prison camp in southern France; bribing the guards to get his father out of prison; living under an assumed identity in Toulouse and Mane, France; how his family made ends meet in Mane; their attempted escape from France through the Pyrenees; losing his parents in the forest and returning to Mane; his parents’ arrest; living under an assumed identity in hiding with a French noble family in Auriac, France; daily life in Auriac; running messages for the resistance; the role his rescuers played in the resistance; the German occupation of Auriac; living with German soldiers who were billeted in their house; liberation; being labeled a Jewish war orphan; legal battles between his new French family and Jewish organizations; living in a Jewish orphanage; his feelings about Zionism and Orthodoxy; learning the fate of his parents; being contacted by an aunt in the United States; choosing to immigrate to the United States rather than Israel; and adjusting to postwar life in the US.

Oral history interview with Reine Tata Chouraqui

Oral History

Reine Tata Chouraqui, born on September 29, 1924 in Oran, Algeria, describes her mother, Ester Benayoun, and her father, Chaloum Chouraqui, both of whom were Jewish French citizens; her siblings Josephine (born in 1916), Dina (born in 1918), Léon (born in 1922), and Simone (born in 1927); living in Paris, France with her family from 1927 to 1928 before moving to Marseille, France; her father, who was more observant than her and her siblings; not having much connection to the Jewish community; Jews being asked to register with local authorities; not losing their French nationality like many Algerian Jews; voluntarily signing up to work for the Germans (though not a form of Service Obligatoire du Travail) in order to make money and be in a protected situation; working as a house-hand in Aubagne, France; how the civilians were constantly hungry and she was caught stealing food and sent to a convent for a few months; her father’s assistance to a Jewish German family to get visas to leave France; being sheltered from the news of the roundups in Paris and Marseille; being arrested with her family in late January 1943 and held at the Prison des Baumettes; being transferred to the train station (headed for the internment camp of Royallieu in Compiègne) and avoiding the transport along with her mother and her sister Simone (her father escaped the train later); remaining in Marseille with her family; her sister Joséphine, who was pregnant and sent briefly to an internment camp near Marseille (possibly Les Milles); being sent with her entire family to the département du Lot, in a tiny village called Terrou; working as a typist for the communist resistance group, Francs Tireurs et Partisans Français (FTPF); living with the group for over a year, transporting suitcases with weapons and coded messages; her memories of Capitaine Gaston and a Capitaine Georges, and never knowing their real names; how her group intercepted parachutes from England that were intended for the English resistance network or the Armée Secrète; being stopped during a mission at a road-block by the Gestapo and being tortured by five young German soldiers after a coded message she was carrying in her hair fell out; being rescued by her comrades after she was sexually abused by the five men; never telling her family about the incident; being ostracized by her sister Joséphine, who did not approve of Reine living with the resistance fighters; being very patriotic and continuing to work with the FTPF for this reason; how even after the liberation in August 1944 and at the end of the war (May 1945) she was ready to sign up to fight in Indochina; being a minor and her father refusing to sign the papers authorizing her to go; losing contact with the group; learning that her siblings, Dina and Léon, died in the Sobibor death camp; working at the post office; meeting Bernie Marks, one of the American sailors piloting the Exodus; her lack of interest in Zionism or immigrating to Israel; Bernie Marks fathering her son, Bernard; opening a successful bar-restaurant and even a hotel de passe (a brothel) to have the means to provide for her son; her son finding his father in Cincinnati at the age of 20 in 1967; and her son’s success and children.

Oral history interview with Ernest E. Dutcher, Jr.

Oral History

Oral history interview with Cesare Ugianskis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Arvydas J. Kliore

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jack Mondschein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Chasten Bowen

Oral History

Chasten L. Bowen, born July 12, 1924, describes his childhood in Missouri; being drafted into the army in 1942; his time training as a radio operator in Fresno, California; his assignment to a bomb unit in England; his interactions with British citizens; working as a radio operator in an aircraft; being shot down over France; sheltering with a French family; being denounced by a Belgian who was working with the Germans; his time in a French prison; his transfer to Buchenwald; conditions in a boxcar with other prisoners; his time at Buchenwald; his interactions with German SS officers; the comradeship among military prisoners; his emotions during liberation; his postwar life; his reluctance to talk about his wartime experiences; the medals he received for his service; and his belief that people need to become better educated about history.

Oral history interview with Richard Bedford

Oral History

Richard L. Bedford, born April 17, 1922 in Rochester, NY, discusses his early childhood; marrying his wife; enlisting in a military cadet program; his first military experiences; attending flight school; his experiences in the United States Army Air Corps; going overseas; being stationed in England; the events surrounding D-Day; being shot down over France; finding shelter with French farmers; being interrogated at Gestapo headquarters; being sent to a prison in Paris, France; the evacuation of the prison; his transfer to Buchenwald via boxcar; conditions at Buchenwald; the camp’s prisoners; his transfer to a POW camp; liberation; and his transition back into civilian life.

Oral history interview with Samuel Marein-Efron

Oral History

Samuel Marein-Efron, born in Budapest, Hungary on May 5, 1933, describes his childhood growing up in Budapest as a member of a wealthy family; his memories of antisemitic laws passed in Hungary in 1938; his father’s travels and relocation first to New York and then to Mexico City in June 1940; his father’s business ventures in Mexico; his father's involvement in helping families, many of whom were refugees from Poland, procure residence papers; his cousin’s experience during the war; his cousin’s time working as a surgeon in a camp; his experience leaving Budapest with his mother and sister and moving to Mexico in 1941; the culture and traditions of Mexico; his experiences with antisemitism in Mexico; the blending of different Jewish cultures in Mexico; the origins of his hyphenated last name; the fate of his extended family after the war; and his father’s postwar involvement in helping Jews obtain visas.

Oral history interview with Norman Miller

Oral History

Oral history interview with Eva Desrosiers

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mania Jonas Mayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Paul Jonas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Shulim Jonas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Goldie Buch Jonas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Wanda Wos Lorenc

Oral History

Wanda Wos Lorenc describes joining the resistance in Warsaw, Poland at age 15 and her experiences; taking part in the Warsaw Uprising; helping wounded soldiers; being arrested with her family after the uprising; being sent to Flossenbürg and then Ravensbrück, where she was separated from her brothers; her experiences in Ravensbrück; and returning to Warsaw after the liberation.

Oral history interview with Jerzy Glówczewski

Oral History

Jerzy Glówczewski, born in 1922 to a gentry family, describes escaping Poland as a teenager soon after the Nazi and Soviet invasion; fleeing to Romania with his stepfather, and eventually making his way to Palestine via Turkey; graduating from the Polish high school in Tel Aviv; being accepted into the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade; volunteering to serve in the air force in 1942; undergoing flight training in Britain; being posted to fly Spitfires in the No. 308 "City of Krakow" Polish Fighter Squadron in 1944; shooting down a Focke-Wulf 190 in January 1945 at his unit’s base in Ghent, Belgium; flying over 100 missions against the Germans during the latter half of the war; and writing his memoirs, The Accidental Immigrant.

Oral history interview with Maria Pawulska Rasiej

Oral History

Maria Pawulska Rasiej, born in Lvov, Poland (present day L’viv, Ukraine), describes being deported to Siberia as a child in April 1940; the arrest and death of her father, a high-ranking military officer; her release from a labor camp in late 1941; and leaving the Soviet Union.

Oral history interview with Alice Tyroler

Oral History

Oral history interview with Eugenia Greenberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helena Kubowicz Knapczyk

Oral History

Helena Kubowicz Knapczyk, born in Niedźwiedza, Poland, describes being deported in 1940 as a young girl with her family to the forced labor gold mining camp Pidhorodek near Krasnoyarsk, Russia; her release from the labor camp in September 1941; leaving the Soviet Union with two of her sisters and her father; immediately being separated from her family and arriving in Iran; living in orphanages in Asia and East Africa for six years; immigrating to the United Kingdom and then the United States after the war.

Oral history interview with Vincent Knapczyk

Oral History

Vincent Knapczyk, born in Dziedzin, Poland (present day Belarus), describes being deported to Siberia as a teenager in 1940 from northeast Poland; being sent to a labor camp in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia; his release from the camp in late 1941; joining Anders’ Army; being allowed to leave the Soviet Union with his family; undergoing military training in the Polish Armed Forces under British jurisdiction in Palestine and Iraq; serving in the Polish Army in Italy; and being wounded in Montecassino, Italy.

Oral history interview with Andrew Garczynski

Oral History

Andrew Garczynski, born in 1924 in Poland, describes being imprisoned in Auschwitz in the fall of 1943 because of his resistance activities; his family’s escape from Warsaw, Poland at the beginning of the war; their deaths due to a bomb; his older brother’s imprisonment at Auschwitz in the beginning of the war for his involvement in the resistance; and his brother helping him avoid heavy labor in Auschwitz by getting him a job helping a medical orderly.

Oral history interview with Frank Hyde

Oral History

Oral history interview with Pepi Schafler

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Oral history interview with Aimée Beressi

Oral History

Madame Aimée Beressi (née Setton), born on May 12, 1924 in Cairo, Egypt, describes her father Chaloum Setton, who was born in 1881 in Alep, Syria, but moved to Cairo, Egypt at a young age; her mother Esther Nahman, who was born in Cairo after her family immigrated from Kavala, Macedonia (present-day Greece); her family speaking French, Arabic, and English at home; her siblings in order of birth (Aimée is included): Joseph, Victor, Félix, Raymond, Aimée, and Robert; her father attending a Sephardic synagogue; how her family observed Shabbat and the Jewish holidays, but did not adhere strictly to Orthodox practices; receiving no Jewish education herself; living in the center of Cairo in a neighborhood where Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Greek Orthodox families lived; attending a French private school for girls then the Lycée Français; attending the American University of Cairo for two years, wanting to become a journalist; abandoning her studies in 1942 or 1943 to take a job in an English firm as a translator and working there until 1947; not remembering the rise of Nazism during the 1930s and the plight of German Jews; meeting Jews from Vienna and Russian; her family being preoccupied by Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Libya; the treatment of Jews in Egypt during the war between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries; joining the clandestine Egyptian Communist Party during the war and meeting her future husband, Armand Beressi, who worked as an agent de change; dropping out of the university partly because attending an American university seemed to be in contradiction to Communist principles; being disappointed to find that the communists in France were hardline Stalinists and not open to discussion; severing her connections with the Communist Party in France; not experiencing any antisemitism until late 1947 when the U.N. voted the creation of the State of Israel; the arrest of her fiancé in 1948 and his imprisonment for a year at a detention camp west of Cairo (the camp of Huckstep); how Jews were convicted of “Zionist conspiracy”, even if they had no involvement in politics of connections to Israel; her younger brother, Robert, spending two years in a camp near the Oasis of Farga, in Northern Egypt (circa 1950); going to France on tourist visas with Armand in 1949 and becoming stateless refugees; her husband’s publishing business, which he later sold to Hachette; Armand’s death in 1979; her two sons; studying Arabic for two years at the Sorbonne; and also studying Jewish history, Hebrew, and the Talmud at the center for Jewish studies.

Oral history interview with Israel Gruzin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mira Wallerstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Norman G. Coulson

Oral History

Norman Coulson, born on March 10, 1920 in Hanover, PA, discusses his family background and childhood; his interest in architecture; his marriage in 1941; being drafted in 1943 and his initial training with an anti-aircraft unit; being shipped to England; landing in France after D-Day; volunteering for architectural work and arriving at Dachau on May 1, 1945; his first experiences there; the presence of former SS guards and around 30,000 prisoners; becoming friends with a former prisoner who worked in his office; the black market; how the mayor and some citizens of Dachau were made to unload bodies of prisoners; preparing the camp for the Dachau trials of local SS guards; the struggles many prisoners had when they were told to go home; taking photos around camp to document it; the behavior of former prisoners and American soldiers; the food in Germany; the loss of his diary; the end of the war; wanting to finish his time in the army and leaving Dachau in May 1946; American soldiers’ general opinions of Soviet soldiers; how the camp changed over his time there; his postwar life and work as an architect; and never opening up about his experiences until the past year.

Oral history interview with Matilda Bakker

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sybe K. Bakker

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Oral history interview with Hilde Gundel

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Oral history interview with Lotte Simmons

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Oral history interview with Harold Burson

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvain S. Smadja

Oral History

Sylvain Samuel Smadja, born on December 25, 1921 in Tunis, Tunisia, describes being the eldest child born to Julie Smadja (née Uzan) and Albert Smadja (a grain merchant, born in 1890); his one brother and two sisters; the three Jewish quarters in Tunis; speaking French and Judeo-Arabic; his Bar Mitzvah; a serious typhus epidemic in the mid-1930s, which decimated the population; attending the Lycée Carnot, a public school run by the French; being a competitive swimmer; how his father (Albert) became a naturalized French citizen and was called into the military in 1939 but released because of his age; being called up to join the Chantiers de la Jeunesse after the Vichy regime came to power in June 1940; being sent to an officer training school for a month during the nine months he was in the Chantiers; compositions that were arranged by one of the men, Gigi Halphon, in the Chantiers; the athletic competitions held by the Vichy government in Algiers during the war and being excluded because he was Jewish; being sent with all the Jewish men of a certain age to the forced labor camp in Bizerte, where they were forced to clear rubble after an Allied bombing while planes flew low overhead; not being aware of the danger nor of what was happening in Europe at that time; his interactions with the other forced laborers and the German guards; the liberation of Tunisia in May 1943, at which time he was called up to perform military service with the regular French army under the General Giraud; being stationed in Aïn Draham (ʻAyn ad Darāhim) in northwestern Tunisia, where like other Jews he could not bear arms and had to do menial tasks; deserting with his friends and signing up with the Free French Army in Southern Tunisia (they were in the 2e Division Blindée led by the General Philippe Leclerc de Hautecloque); training in artillery in Tripolitania (a former province of Libya); spending the winter in tents in Temara, Morocco; going to Liverpool, England aboard the ship “RMMV Capetown Castle” and landing in Normandy, France on August 1, 1944; proceeding to the Château d’Avranches; going to Paris, where his future brother-in-law, Tullio Attias, was wounded; remaining with his group of friends, namely the non-Jewish Bogo brothers and other North Africans, in the Second Armored Division; all the places he went during the war, including Hesse, Diessen am Ammersee, Berchtesgaden, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen; being demobilized after VE Day and sent to Marseille before his return to Tunis; getting married to Liliana Desegni, who was from the Italian Jewish community; the birth of his daughter, Cathérine, in 1947 and his son, Jean-Pierre, in 1950; going to France with his family in 1959; and establishing a construction business. In part two of the interview Mr. Smadja discusses details of everyday life in the forced labor camp in Bizerte from December 1942 until his escape from the camp; the consequences of his desertion from Giraud’s army in Aïn Draham circa May 1943; how he signed up for the Free French Army, Leclerc Division, in Tunis; his training in Kairouan, Tunisia; the beautiful city of Zabratah (probably the extinct city of Sabratha); his role in the Second Armored Division and what he and his fellow recruits expected while waiting for the Normandy invasion; possibly being entrusted with more responsibilities because his commanding officer, Elkoubi, was also Jewish; his experiences while being billeted with the civilian German population; the two types of Islam that were present in Tunis (the Hanafites and the Malikites); and the description of Tunis from the French writer Guy de Maupassant.

Oral history interview with Léon Klein

Oral History

Léon Klein, born on November 17, 1921 in Paris, France, describes his Polish parents, Israel and Karola Klein; his father’s boutique where he sold different types of underwear; his parents’ naturalization before 1927; his brother Jacky, who was born in 1928; attending French public schools, first in the 20th arrondissement and then in Romainville in 1927; receiving religious instruction from a rabbi who came to the house and being bar mitzvahed at a synagogue in the 20th arrondissement; how his family did not keep Kosher nor attend services; being apprentice to a tailor named Gaftarnik (1934-1940); being enthusiastic about the Front Populaire and his activities with the group; being wounded during the clashes between the Front Populaire and the far-right group, La Cagoule (Comite secret d'action revolutionnaire); his memories of the beginning of the war, including the bombing raids; the mass exodus when the Germans invaded France in May 1940 and leaving Paris with his family; refusing to wear the Jewish star; going with a friend to a small village called La Loupe, where the mayor and a schoolteacher made him fake identity papers; working for a year on a farm and sleeping in the barn with the cows; returning to Paris around 1942 and moving in with his non-Jewish girlfriend, Jeanne Cambron; the births of their daughter in 1944 and son in 1947; getting married after the war and divorcing in the 1950s; working at the tailor’s shop during the war and one of the main employees trying to get him to become active in the MOI; meeting Henri Krasuki, the head of the CGT (a powerful Communist labor union) for many years; learning that people were being gassed to death in the Nazi camps; his activities with the resistance, which included distributing resistance flyers and information; being arrested in July 1944 and sent to the Fresnes prison, where he was tortured; being in Drancy for a few days and escaping from a transport out of the camp with approximately 23 others; asking for shelter from a village priest, who had been suspected of collaboration; arriving back in Paris after the city was liberated; opening a shop for custom-tailored clothing; meeting his second wife; and his post-war meeting with people he knew during the war, including those with whom he escaped such as the Rabbi René Kapel.

Oral history interview with Miron Kolodziejczak

Oral History

Oral history interview with Markus Lesh, Peter Lesh, and Michael Lesh

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Oral history interview with Mary Hermanowski

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Oral history interview with Richard Hermanowski

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Oral history interview with Jadwiga Chrusciel

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Oral history interview with Sol Kohn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Antoni Chroscielewski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Stanley Kiersnowski

Oral History

Stanley Kiersnowski, born on August 17, 1926 in Wilno, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), discusses his family’s well-to-do background; the history of and Jewish community in Wilno; his childhood; the arrival of the Soviets; his family’s deportation in June 1941 and separation from his father; the three-week journey to Siberia with his mother and sister; their arrival in Rubtsovsk; finding somewhere to live and getting a job; the good treatment he and his family received from the local people; his move to a collective farm; being freed by the NKVD and following the Polish army south; traveling to Teheran and becoming ill; his arrest for stealing coal; traveling with the Polish army along with about 1,200 other boys through places such as Pakistan and Palestine; learning of his father’s death; reuniting with his mother and sister; the family’s attempts to get to the United States; his brief schooling in a Bombay Catholic school; the family’s journeys to the US and arriving in New York with his mother on December 28, 1948; the fate of many family members; and the lessons he took away from his experiences.

Oral history interview with Zbigniew A. Piotrowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Andrew Targowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ewa T. Budek-Bielski

Oral History

Ewa Budek-Bielski, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 18, 1932, discusses her father’s work as a diplomat; her two older brothers, her parents’ prominent families, and her father’s past in the military; her family’s return to Poland after the start of the war and living near Gdynia; moving into the city of Gdynia and hiding in the basement during bombardments; seeing Hitler in his motorcade after the Germans arrived; being evacuated by train and her grandfather arranging for the family to be smuggled out at Krakow; living in a former servant’s apartment and being forced to share it with a German couple; being constantly hungry and the general air of fear and suspicion; her father’s time in prisoner of war camps; her mother’s nervous breakdown and death in Auschwitz in June 1942; her time spent skipping school to walk around the city and observe what was happening; seeing people deported and how disappearances were common; going back to her convent-run school and not liking it; visiting Hans Frank with her grandmother in attempts to get information on her mother; knowing about Auschwitz but not about the atrocities; the Polish resistance; her uncle’s death at the Katyn Forest Massacre and her grandparents’ reactions to losing both of their children; leaving Krakow when the Soviets neared and moving to a town near Moravská Trebová, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); the Soviets’ arrival at their house; moving to Katowice, Poland; learning the war had ended and reuniting with her brothers; deciding to leave Soviet-occupied Poland and being smuggled into the British sector of Germany; reuniting with her father; her brothers’ efforts to join them; hearing that the Soviets shot their own soldiers and her distress at most Americans not knowing this; living in Germany from 1945 to 1950 until immigrating to the United States; her feelings about her father’s remarriage to a German woman; moving around the US until getting married and settling in Detroit, MI; trying to educate her children about the war; and her thoughts that people should pray for peace because they have no idea what war is truly like.

Oral history interview with Elen Murad

Oral History

Oral history interview with Larry Edelstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maria Kipnis

Oral History

Maria Kipnis (née Schraibschtein), born in Brovary, Ukraine on June 12, 1928, describes her parents, who were both doctors; how her father, Miron Schraibschtein, served as a doctor in the Soviet Army when WWII began and did not survive the war; how her brother, Emmanuil Schraibschtein, was evacuated from Kiev University to Alma-Ata, served in the Soviet Army, and was killed in the Kherson region on December 23, 1943; how she and her mother, Ida Ofman, fled from Kiev in September 1941, going from village to village and ending up in Glińsk (Hlyns'k, Rivnens'ka oblast, Ukraine); being allowed to live in the morgue of a clinic by a local doctor, Maria Grigoryevna Gaponenko, and her husband, Nikolay Fomich Gaponenko; the horrible conditions; how the Gaponenkos knew they were Jews but never discussed it; changing her name to Tamara Gorskaya and her mother changing hers to Lidiya Mikhaylovna Gorskaya (maiden name Zhukova); how Mr. Gaponenko helped her mother get a new ID; how her mother, who was a dentist, began seeing patients; the German commandant's office in Glinsk and the chief of police, who was a Latvian, added her and her mother’s names to a list of people to be liquidated; how the Gaponenkos helped them avoid arrest; her memories of Ukrainian police killing communists and Jews; the antisemitism in Glinsk; moving with her mother in the beginning of 1943 into a house where the owner sympathized with them; the liberation of Glinsk in September 1943; returning with her mother to Brovary and seeing that their house had been destroyed; how her mother was a well-known person in Brovary before the war, which helped her to get building materials for a new house relatively quickly; how in many cases Jews who returned to Kiev could not get their apartments back; and her views on antisemitism and its effects on relationships between people.

Oral history interview with Jasmine Laskar

Oral History

Madame Jasmine Laskar (née Teboul), born on February 28, 1929 in Bou Saâda, Algeria, describes being the ninth child of 11 children born to Albert Teboul and Nejama Nedjaoui; growing up speaking the local Arab dialect and French; her family’s status as French citizens; her father, who fought in WWI and was injured in the Battle of the Dardanelles Straits; her father’s wholesale business in Bou Saâda; living in a large home next to and above the family’s warehouse and offices; the Jewish community of Bou Saâda; attending the public schools, run by French civil servants; how she was about to pass her “certificate d’études” at the age of 13 in 1942 when she and other Jews were expelled from the school; never returning to school; her family’s practice of a very liberal form of reform Judaism; attending a synagogue on the rue de Rouville; the arrival of Jewish families expelled by the Italians from Libya; the American troops who were stationed in Bou Saâda; how her father’s business suffered; meeting her future husband, who was Algerian and a POW in Germany for four years; moving to Paris, France after their marriage in 1952; the violence against Jews in Bou Saâda, including the murder of her brother; helping most of her family immigrate to France and returning only once to Algeria to repatriate her brother’s coffin to the mainland; her husband’s business in the garment district of Paris; living in the Parisian suburb on Antony; and her entrepreneurial enterprises.

Oral history interview with Rita Frank

Oral History

Rita Frank, born on March 18, 1933 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes her early childhood and growing up in Šiauliai, Lithuania as the only child of a Jewish mother (Lidia Shapiro) and Lithuanian father (Jonas “John” Frank); her mother’s debilitating illness in the 1930s; the prosperity of both her mother’s and father’s families; her memories of the first Soviet occupation in her city and how her father was forced to wear a Soviet uniform; how her father was arrested by the Soviets on June 14, 1941, deported to Siberia, and eventually died in 1944; being sent to live with her aunt and uncle, who became her adopted parents, and the destruction of all the documents that said she existed as Rita Frank; being renamed Rita Žilinskaite; how her mother was bedridden and looked after by a housekeeper until she died a few years after the war; the recognition of the housekeeper, Anelė Skirvainytė, as Righteous Among the Nations because of her efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust; an unsuccessful attempt by the Gestapo to get information from her about her uncle helping Jews; leaving the city with her aunt and uncle to their country estate, where they thought it would be safer; taking in another Jewish girl, Lucy, who escaped the ghetto and was her mother’s first cousin; fleeing in 1943 with her aunt, uncle, and cousin westward with the imminent return of the Red Army; going to Dresden, where she attended school; being close to a phosphorus bomb explosion, being ill for the following week, and how her eyes are still sensitive to light; how her uncle remained in Dresden as she, her aunt, and cousin fled; witnessing the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 from a train; settling in Gortbild, Germany; being forced labors on a farm and “Gasthaus”; the anti-Hitler sentiments expressed by the villagers; being forced to join the Hitler Jugend when she began attending school; being liberated by the French; her aunt’s status as a United States citizen; finding her uncle in a U.S. military hospital; and leaving for the U.S. in a ship called the USS Marine Flasher in May 1946. At the end of the interview Rita reads a translation from the memoirs written by her adopted father, Jurgis Žilinskas, wherein he describes what he saw happening to Jews in the streets of Vilnius, and also how he agreed to shelter Rita's first cousin. Some photos were filmed as well.

Oral history interview with Frank Towers, "The Death Train at Farsleben"

Oral History

Oral history interview with George W. Landau

Oral History

George W. Landau, born March 4, 1920 in Vienna, Austria, describes in detail his childhood in Vienna; growing up as the only child of two upper middle class, secular Jews; the intellectual life of his parents and his education; visiting his extended family in Bukovina, Romania; the division of his school between those who were Aryan and everyone else; being in one of the last cohorts of Jews to graduate; a humiliating experience he endured when he was forced by young Austrian Nazi sympathizers to clean pave stones in the street; immigrating alone to Columbia; learning Spanish and finding a job; converting to Catholicism and managing to get his parents out of Austria; getting a position in the Bogotá office of Otis Elevator and being transferred to the New York office, arriving in 1941; being accused of being an enemy alien by his employers after the Pearl Harbor bombing and going to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC to get a letter stating that this was untrue; quitting the company and working elsewhere until 1942 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army; being naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Texas in 1943; attending Officer Candidate School with much difficulty and convincing the administration to let him graduate; going to the Pentagon after graduation to ask for a position with military intelligence; attending Military Intelligence School at Camp Ritchie, MD; going to France in early 1945; being in Paris when World War II ended; being sent to Gmunden, Austria to interrogate prisoners; screening Soviet refugees in a displaced persons camps; leaving the Army in 1947, but staying in the reserve; marrying a woman from Austria; taking the foreign service exam but not being admitted due to his young citizenship; working in the shipping business in New York and Cali, Colombia until 1957 when he was appointed as the commercial attaché in Uruguay; serving in Spain and Canada and as an ambassador in Paraguay, Chile, and Venezuela; and how his experiences in his youth in Vienna influenced his subsequent service in the U.S. diplomatic corps.

Oral history interview with Diego Masson

Oral History

Diego Masson, born in Tossa de Mar, Spain (Catalonia) on June 21, 1935, describes his family; how his artist father, André Masson, moved the family back to France when the Spanish Civil War started in late 1936; how the family lived frugally on a stipend from the art-dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler; how after the German invasion his family took refuge in Auvergne, France then Marseille, France; how his father was on the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) list that Varian Fry brought with him to Marseilles in August 1940; leaving on a cargo ship, the Carimare, which was transformed to carry passengers; staying briefly in Martinique before going to New York, NY; how Alexander Calder helped them find a farmhouse to rent in New Preston, CT; going to the local school; antisemitism in New Preston; returning to France in the fall of 1945; settling in Aix-en-Provence, France; studying at the Paris Conservatory of Music; his involvement with the FLN (National Liberation Front); and his guilt about not having done more to thank Varian Fry for all that he did for his family.

Oral history interview with Roger Neighborgall

Oral History

Roger Neighborgall, born on September 13, 1923, discusses his childhood in Garrett, Indiana; hearing about European events and Hitler on the radio while in high school; attending Indiana University and the University of West Virginia with his older sister; enlisting in the army at the age of eighteen against the wishes of his father, a World War I veteran; the beginning of his time in the army and joining the 5th Ranger Battalion; his preparation for and participation in D-Day; his battalion’s assignment to General Patton’s Third Army and conducting reconnaissance missions in France; playing soccer and football with local people; learning about the rest of the war in Europe by reading the Stars and Stripes newspaper; his part in the Battle of the Bulge; his temporary assignment to the Monuments Men in Bavaria during April 1945; hearing other soldiers’ reactions to seeing concentration camps; the occupation in Germany; returning to the US; his postwar life and international travels; his thoughts on The Monuments Men book and film; and his feelings on how much information to reveal when talking about his war experiences.

Oral history interview with Ezra Sherman

Oral History

Ezra Sherman, born on February 25, 1931 in the small town of Mlynov, Poland (Mlynove, Ukraine), describes his family; the death of his mother before the war; his father’s role as the kosher butcher in the community; his town coming under Soviet control in 1939 and the almost immediate scarcity of food and other necessities; his father’s efforts to fill this gap by continuing to find goods and services for people, which landed him into trouble with the new Soviet authorities; being forced to move to Dubno, Ukraine, where he saw mass executions of Jews in a nearby cemetery; going to live with his grandmother in Mlynov after the Germans invaded; the creation of a ghetto in their neighborhood; slipping past the ghetto fence to work at a farm; being helped by Polish, Ukrainian and Czech gentiles; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942; hiding in a nearby shed with another child; seeking shelter in the home of an old woman, who denounced them to a Ukrainian policeman; having is boots and jacket taken and being ordered back to the village; surviving on his own in the forest and with the help of local farmers; living with a Czech farmer for a year and being liberated by the Soviet Army; being treated well by the Soviet troops; helping to liberate Auschwitz; taking part in the battle of Berlin, but prevented from fighting; returning to Ukraine with the Soviet unit and finding his brother; going with his brother to Palestine, passing through Poland and a displaced persons camp in west Germany; being recruited into the Palmach in 1947 to fight for independence; also taking part in the 1967 war; immigrating to the United states in 1974 with his wife and three children; and settling in Philadelphia, PA.

Oral history interview with Jacques Ribons

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sara Sherman

Oral History

Sara Sherman, born August 8, 1938, discusses her family in Kamenets-Podolsk, Soviet Union (now Ukraine); her father’s conscription into the Soviet Army and his death; German bombings; moving around a lot as a child; her younger brother’s death from scarlet fever; her forty-day stay in the hospital while sick with scarlet fever; her mother’s remarriage and her close relationship with her stepfather; eventually moving with her family and her mother’s brother and sister to Pocking displaced persons camp in Germany; her family joining the SS Exodus journey to Palestine and the conditions onboard; seeing a woman buried at sea; the ship’s encounters with the British; her mother giving birth in Haifa and the baby boy dying soon after; living in the Atlit camp for a few months; celebrating the creation of Israel; moving into the city of Haifa and learning Hebrew; meeting her future husband and their marriage; her mother’s stories of antisemitism in the Soviet Union; visiting the United States in 1968 and moving to Philadelphia, PA with her three children and parents; not telling her children or grandchildren much about her experiences; wanting people to understand that life is a struggle; her good memories of her parents; and her hopes for her children and grandchildren.

Oral history interview with David Halivni

Oral History

David Halivni, born in 1927 in Kobyletska Poliana, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), discusses moving from place to place as a young child; the divorce of his parents and moving with his mother and sister to live with his grandfather and aunts in Sighet, Romania; his greatest influences; his status as a child prodigy in Sighet; childhood memories of the city and its Jewish community; knowing Elie Wiesel; his pre-war studies with a rabbi and getting ordained around age sixteen; the work of the Hungarian police in the ghettoization of and the deportations from Sighet; his deportation to Auschwitz and his transfer to Wolfsberg, part of the Gross-Rosen labor camps in the Arbeitslager Riese; various experiences at Wolfsberg; his transfer to the Ebensee concentration camp and acquaintances’ confidence that he would survive; the liberation of Ebensee by American soldiers; learning the fate of his immediate family members; moving to the United States and taking the last name Halivni; meeting his wife; his thoughts on interpreting historical events and the Holocaust in particular; whether or not another Holocaust is possible; and questioning the reasons for his survival and his continued dedication to learning.

Oral history interview with Eric Simon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frieda Lefeber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald Silver

Oral History

Gerald Silver, born on April 26, 1923 in Brownsville, New York, discusses his family’s background and his childhood growing up in a culturally-rich atmosphere; his fluency in Yiddish; his family’s Jewish background and religious views; following current events in the newspapers; graduating high school in 1940 and working various jobs; being drafted in February or March 1943 and his initial training in the 397th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, working with 40 mm anti-aircraft gun; his experiences in Chicago, IL during his training; not experiencing antisemitism before going to Europe; arriving in Glasgow and then Wales for further training around April 1944; being transferred to the 16th Infantry; his experiences crossing the English Channel, during which a friend (Jimmy Speridegus) died because of an attack from a German U-boat; landing as part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944; the chaos on the beach and being hit by shrapnel in the leg and arm; his efforts to help other wounded soldiers; making it to the seawall despite his wounds; helping others get to the wall and getting gas masks to other soldiers; receiving a letter of commendation for his action in lieu of a Bronze Star and promotion (both were denied him by an officer with an antisemitic attitude); his and other soldiers’ opinions about the invasion; his emotional reactions to films such as The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan; his temporary work as a beach master; confronting a group of German prisoners of war on the beach; rejoining his unit; Passover services in a Venlo, Netherlands convent where the nuns had been hiding Jewish men in the basement; his brief visit to Dachau after its liberation; his time in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria as part of the occupying forces; his return to New York in late 1945; how the war affected him personally; his marriage in 1951; and his postwar life and work.

Oral history interview with Henry E. Freedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rabbi Bernard Spielman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Cecylia Thibault

Oral History

Cecylia Thibault, born on June 1, 1934 in Ropczyce, Poland, discusses her gratitude for the opportunity to share her experiences; her family background and her parents’ arranged marriage; her father’s death in 1937; her and her mother’s time spent living with her grandmother; her persistent hunger; her mother’s and grandmother’s work for Jews; the invasion of Poland; seeing Jewish people from the town beaten if they resisted boarding the trucks; the shock and fear felt by the Polish people in town; how her mother received a notice to report for labor service; her and her mother’s transport to Germany and arrival at a farm outside of Pößneck; her book; her mother’s work; being bullied by the Polish foreman’s children; the presence of French and Russian prisoners of war; her mother having a son in 1942; being transferred to a smaller farm at the end of 1943; being forced to wear a “P” on her clothes for “Polish”; becoming fluent in German; turning 10 years old and joining the workers; becoming ill; being transferred to a factory that made rifle stocks; liberation by American soldiers in April 1945; moving through a succession of displaced persons camps; her mother’s remarriage; her family’s arrival in New York in April 1948; various moves and jobs around New York; discovering at age 18 that she was an American citizen by birth; becoming a receptionist and bookkeeper for a Polish newspaper; her marriage in 1961 and move to Manchester, NH; and the importance of forgiveness and education. Note: At the very end, photos from Mrs. Thibault’s book are shown.

Oral history interview with Ed Slotkin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helga Niedrich

Oral History

Helga Niedrich (née Mader), born on April 20, 1929 in Witkowitz, Czechoslovakia, discusses her family and early childhood spent with her grandparents in Leipnik, Czechoslovakia (Lipník nad Bečvou, Czech Republic); attending German school; moving with her mother and stepfather to Stadt Liebau, a village in the Sudetenland; her mother’s work for the National Socialist Women’s League and her stepfather’s membership in the SA; her time in the League of German Girls; her memory of Hitler and the Nazis marching into the village; the food rations and her work on a farm once the war began; her stepfather’s conscription into the army and his eventual capture by the Soviets; the camp for British prisoners of war outside of the village; having no knowledge of the extermination of Jews during the war; fleeing the Soviet soldiers at the war’s end; her mother’s sexual assault; eventually arriving in Prague and staying in a stadium; her and her mother’s transport to Theresienstadt on May 24, 1945; the 15 months she spent there as a forced laborer; her and her mother’s transport to the Soviet zone of Germany and their work on a farm there; their escape to the British zone; visiting the Czech Republic later in life; her move to be with a friend in Braunschweig, Germany; her stepfather’s fate; meeting and later marrying her husband; her family’s immigration to the United States; her visits to Israel; learning more about the camps later in life; the dangers of Holocaust denial; and the guilt and shame she sometimes feels about her German heritage.

Oral history interview with Jutta Popower Preuss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Morris Sternberger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Werner Preuss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Georges Cohen

Oral History

Georges Joseph Cohen, born on November 21, 1932 in Tunis, Tunisia, describes his two siblings; his fathe, who imported cheese and dairy products from France; living on the rue d'Isly, near the Grande Synagogue of Tunis; his family not being strictly observant; attending the Tunisian equivalent of a heder and learned the rudiments of Hebrew; belonging to a group of scouts for members of the Jewish bourgeoisie, the UUJJ (Union Universelle de la Jeunesse Juive); not attending school during one year of the German occupation; his memories of the air raids and having to seek shelter in outdoor trenches dug in a Jewish cemetery and indoor shelters at the local police station; the Vichy laws which obliged all Jews to hand over their radios to the police; how his family’s house was not requisitioned or pillaged; how the French militia, such as the Service d'ordre legionnaire (SOL), took over people's apartments and stole their belongings; the conditions for Jews in North Africa during the war, including families moving in together, crowding apartments to the bursting point; his family moving into their grandmother's apartment on the rue de Constantine with 17 other people; a cousin who had been requisitioned to work clearing debris in the port and airfield in Bizerte later told him about his experiences; how a young uncle, René Pariente, was not allowed to practice law; his father being unable to obtain products from France to sell; passing his baccalaureate exam in 1951; continuing his university studies in France to become a teacher; being a civil servant and being sent to the city of Sousse, Tunisia; the politics of being a teacher when France controlled Tunisia; the “crise de Bizerte” in 1961 and how it incited Tunisian Jews to emigrate en masse; marrying his wife (née Boccara) in 1962 at the Grande Synagogue of Tunis; moving to France; his thoughts on the history of Jews in Tunisia; remaining close to his Tunisian Jewish friends; and his two children.

Oral history interview with Robert Berrebi

Oral History

Benjamin Robert Berrebi, born September 3, 1934 in Sfax, Tunisia, describes being the youngest of a family of six children; his father, Victor, who was a wholesale merchant; the city of Sfax and how its socio-economic divisions; how his family was well-to-do and lived in the European sections on the rue des Belges; how his family was pious and celebrated Shabbat; attending synagogue; receiving religious instruction and learning Hebrew from the Rabbi David Guez; attending school at the Alliance Israélite Universelle and not having much contact with non-Jewish children his age; his family getting along with their non-Jewish neighbors until the war when some neighbors displayed far-right inclinations; his father’s experiences with antisemitism; how his family considered themselves Tunisian and not French or Italian, although they had neither passports nor identity cards; his views on the war in Tunisia; his memories of rationing; taking shelter from the nightly air raids in a warehouse in his neighborhood and his mother praying in Hebrew most of the night; his mother’s refusal to leave Sfax; how when every other building on their street had been destroyed, the family left for the country to a place called Bourj El Khemakhem; Montgomery’s troops liberating Tunisia; an American Jewish soldier came to his family’s house and wanted to propose to one of his sisters; how the Jews of Tunisia made sure that Jewish soldiers in the Allied forces were welcome; returning to school; seeing the destruction of his fahter’s warehouse; his father’s death in 1948; how his family gradually left Sfax in 1956 when Tunisia declared its independence from France; and how Tunisia never recognized the family’s ownership of their property.

Oral history interview with Anne-Marie Levain

Oral History

Anne-Marie Levain, born on May 25, 1932 in Paris, France, describes her father, Paul Levain, who was Catholic and a political cartoonist for the weekly satirical newspaper, Le Canard enchainé; her Jewish Romanian mother, Etel (“Odette”) Sapira and her family; not interacting with the Jews in her community; her aunt posing for the sculptor, Bourdelle; her mother’s beauty parlor; attending a Montessori school in Versailles from the age of six to eight; being sent to public school in the 16th arrondissement then not attending school; her father making extra money by painting décor or posters for the music-halls and attending the shows with him; insisting that she wanted to be a dancer; being enrolled in all sorts of dance classes; her mother registering as a Jew and wearing the yellow star; her father making false identity papers for her mother; her mother’s parlor being turned over to an Aryan administrator; the arrest of her maternal grandmother; hearing rumors that people were treated well in Mathausen, where they believe her grandmother was sent; how after the war her mother volunteered at the Hotel Lutetia, where those who returned from deportation were sent first; accompanying her mother and being horrified by what she saw; her mother receiving compensation but being emotional affected by her experiences; her life in the theater; and her thoughts on her mother and grandmother.

Oral history interview with Simon Coencas

Oral History

Simon Emmanuel Coencas, born January 28, 1927 in Saint-Denis, France, describes his four siblings; his Greek father, Michel Coencas, who owned a chain of clothing stores; his mother, Victorine Behar, who was from a well-to-do Jewish family from Egypt; how his family was not especially religious; being raised partly by his maternal grandmother, who spoke Judeo-Spanish; attending a Catholic primary and elementary school; not experiencing antisemitism; moving to Montignac, France when France declared war on Germany in September 1939; discovering the Lascaux cave with friends in June1940; moving on September 12, 1940 to Paris, France; his family being registered in October 1940; living in their grandmother’s apartment on the boulevard Davaut in Paris; how his father’s five stores were assigned an Aryan administrator, named Charles Noyer and whom later denounced Simon’s father; his father being sent to the Fresnes prison; visiting his father in prison; being arrested and sent to Drancy; being in Drancy for about a month and a half and being released because the Red Cross decided that children under 16 should not be interned; the arrest of his parents while he was imprisoned; living in a tiny room under the roof of an apartment building in the 9th arrondissement with his aunt and cousins; how food was brought to them by the aunt’s second husband, Vilalik, a Hungarian non-Jewish painter; how he did not stay inside all the time because various Jewish organizations gave him small jobs; how two of his younger siblings were hidden by a woman named Suanne Raynaud-Coet, whom was later honored as a “Righteous among Nations”; working with his cousin, Raphael Nakache (also known as Miguel Cordoba), selling shoe polish on the streets when the war ended; being paid to attract clients to various businesses; working in Saint-Denis; meeting his future wife, Giselle Dufresnoy, whose father was a brocanteur; starting his own business collecting scrap metal; the growth of his business; moving from Charenton to Montreuil; his children; being recognized for his discovery of the Lascaux murals; being named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres; the Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy bestowing the Ordre de Mérite on him; and his religious beliefs.

Oral history interview with Julian Kulski

Oral History

Julian Kulski, born on March 3, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his prominent family’s background and childhood; his Jewish ancestry, but being considered non-Jewish by the laws of the time; his parents’ personalities and his father’s political views and career; his father’s time as mayor of Warsaw from 1939-1944; the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939; the fall of Warsaw; his father’s arrest and later work with the occupation government; his and his father’s involvement in the underground; living with his former scoutmaster during the war and becoming a soldier in the underground at the age of 13; activities in the underground and his continued training; his arrest by the Gestapo; his time and torture at Pawiak prison; narrowly avoiding transport to Auschwitz; his scoutmaster’s death; his efforts to steal guns from the Germans and the consequences of his actions; being part of the small group in the Żoliborz district who set the Warsaw Uprising in motion on August 1, 1944; the Warsaw Uprising and surrender; his brief time in the Stalag XI-A prisoner-of-war camp in Germany; his arrival in England and admission to the Polish army; not seeing his family until 1960; suffering from PTSD; his difficult relationship with his uncle; being taken in by an aristocratic woman; attending an elite school in Northern Ireland; attending Oxford from 1947 to 1948 to become an architect; leaving for the United States and attending Yale; his marriage and American citizenship; the effects of his experiences; visiting Warsaw later in life; his family’s postwar life in Poland; his final thoughts on freedom; and attending the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.

Oral history interview with Barbara J. Syska

Oral History

Barbara J. Syska, born on May 24, 1927, discusses growing up in the city of Białystok, Poland; her parents’ professions and family stories; her school and two Jewish classmates; her parents’ thoughts on religion and politics; her relationship with her parents and older brother; the start of the war and the atmosphere of fear; the arrival of the German and then Soviet armies; Soviet occupation of the city; her father’s experience in the Polish Army and his later imprisonment; her brother’s experiences with the resistance, service in the Polish Air Force, and death in July 1945; her and her parents’ move to a village near Warsaw and their life there; the German occupation; working for the Red Cross Archives and later the Home Army; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the Warsaw Uprising; learning about the transports from Warsaw and the Katyn massacre; her time spent in the prisoner of war camp near Oberlangen, Germany; the camp’s liberation by Polish forces in April 1945; moving with her parents first to Italy to join Anders’ Army and then to England; eventually moving to the United States with her husband and children; earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland; not telling her children and grandchildren much about her wartime experiences; and what she feels are the most important lessons for young people to understand.

Oral history interview with Zinaida Khomenko

Oral History

Zinaida (Zina) Khomenko (née Zaznobina), born June 3, 1928 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (Saint Petersburg, Russia), describes her childhood memories; her Orthodox parents; state-sponsored repressions and purges; the start of the war; extinguishing the flares dropped by enemy planes on the roofs with her friends; the conversion of their school into a hospital; the beginning of the siege of Leningrad; leaving with her mother and others around November 1941 and going to the train station in Lychkovo; the train station being bombed and the death of many people on their train; going to Prokopeva in Belokholunitsky District, where her disabled mother worked as a nurse; experiencing antisemitism; her mother going to Kirov; life in that region; hearing rumors that her mother was dead and her father was missing; returning to Leningrad with her mother before the siege ended; her mother working in the Izhorsk brickyard; her life after the war; attending high school and a university; the persecution of anti-fascists, poets, and writers; and immigrating to the United States in 1989.

Oral history interview with William H. Hunley

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dino Brugioni

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henri Hurwitz

Oral History

Henri Hurwitz, born on March 28, 1934 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family’s background and his early years in Berlin; his father’s Croix de guerre, awarded to him in 1935 for his actions in World War I; the circumstances under which his father applied for exit visas to Belgium in 1937; his family’s failed efforts to acquire legal resident status; receiving financial aid from relatives in South Africa; the 1939 arrival in Belgium of his grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin; attending a school in Uccle, Belgium and transferring to a Flemish school after the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; his father’s deportation to camp Saint Cyprien, then Gurs, and finally to Drancy, from which he never returned; a family friend who moved in and his black market activities; how he and his cousin were taken in by a Belgian woman in Ottignies and baptized as Catholics; a collaborator who reported the woman to the Gestapo and how the crisis was averted; his life in Ottignies; the liberation of Belgium; his studies in chemistry at the Université Libre de Belgique; meeting and later marrying his wife; and his cousin’s move to and life in the United States.

Oral history interview with Arielle Potasznik

Oral History

Arielle Potasznik (born on June 18, 1943 in a convent in Tirlemont, Belgium, where her mother Golda Potasznik (née Zinger or Zingier) had taken refuge) discusses the circumstances that led to the interview; her parents’ Polish backgrounds, educations, and life in Belgium; her father’s participation in the armed resistance and his execution in September 1943; the help she, her older brother, and her mother received from members of the resistance after her father’s execution; her mother’s struggles in finding work and being a single parent; her mother’s efforts to get recognition from the Belgian government for her late husband’s resistance actions; her mother’s death in 1955; moving to Israel to be with an uncle and living in the kibbutz Ginegar for a short time; returning to Belgium in 1956 and living in a Jewish children’s home in Rhode-Saint-Genèse; her passion for painting and work in theater; and her marriage and two daughters.

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Ribot

Oral History

Jacqueline Sarfati Ribot, born on December 23, 1936 in Marseille, France, describes her family, including her parents, Simon Sarfati and Jeanette (or Georgette) Sarfati (née Rouard); her childhood memories; the Italian occupation of Marseille; life under the German occupation; the birth of her brother in 1942; the arrest of her aunts and father in 1943; moving out of the family apartment and living with her uncle for a while in the Belle de Mai neighborhood of Marseille; her family moving to Vitrolles; being secretly baptized with her brother; correspondence her mother received from her father, who had been sent to Drancy concentration camp; going on a trip to Paris with her mother to visit with her father temporarily and staying overnight at the Austerlitz satellite camp of Drancy; life after the war, including her education and becoming a high school teacher; and her efforts to document her family’s war-time experiences.

Oral history interview with Wesley Adamczyk

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Migut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Eugene Alfred Chmielowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sabina Berggren

Oral History

Sabina Berggren describes being deported with her mother to Kazakhstan in 1940, while her military officer father was imprisoned as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

Oral history interview with John Krawiec

Oral History

John Krawiec describes being a non-Jewish, Polish prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald.

Oral history interview with Thaddeus Gubala

Oral History

Thaddeus Gubala describes being a member of the Polish Home Army; participating in the Warsaw Uprising; and being imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp.

Oral history interview with Adam Szymel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anthony Chudzik

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mira Zimmerman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Zofia Barczyk

Oral History

Zofia Barczyk describes being a former member of the Polish underground and a medic in the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising.

Oral history interview with Witold Pawlikowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jolanta Pawlikowski

Oral History

Jolanta Pawlikowski describes being a Polish child forced laborer in German camps.

Oral history interview with Irene Sobczak

Oral History

Oral history interview with Stella Tobis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Eleonora Ryvkova

Oral History

Ella Ryvkova, born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, Russia) on April 4, 1938, describes the blockade of Leningrad, which started on September 8, 1941; her family evacuating in April 1942 to the town of Chelyabinsk, Russia; experiencing starvation there; her mother giving blood donations to get food and medicines to Ella, who was getting very sick; the terrible antisemitism at the time and experiencing antisemitism during her walk home from school; her mother’s family living in Klintsy, Russia; her grandmother evacuating with her four children to the east while the rest of the family perishing in Klintsy; and antisemitism after the war when she was studying in a university and later when she was looking for a job.

Oral history interview with Gilbert Waganheim

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elio Grandi

Oral History

Cornelio Giacomo Emilio Grandi, born in Boston, MA on April 9, 1924, describes his three siblings; his maternal grandparents, who were Jewish; his family (except for his father) all moving to Italy for 18 years in 1934 because of the terrible economic conditions in the US; his experiences during wartime in Italy, where he was drafted; spending three months as a soldier until September 1943 when Mussolini surrendered to the Americans; experiencing several instances of good luck after having been taken by the Germans to be part of a work gang then an anti-aircraft unit; acting as an interpreter for the Germans; being tried for treason on a small matter by the Germans and sent to prison in Bolzano, Italy for over four years, until it was liberated; joining the US Army 88th Division as an interpreter after the war ended; working for the US State Department; returning in 1951 to Washington, DC and continuing to work for the State Department; and having had no problems during the war because of his being half-Jewish.

Oral history interview with Harold Bland

Oral History

Oral history interview with Genrikh Tseytlin

Oral History

Genrikh Tseytlin, born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, Russia) on March 27, 1933, describes being at a daycare’s “dacha” in the town of Luga (outside of Leningrad) in June 1941; being taken back to Leningrad with the other children when the war started; the daycare being evacuated to a village in the Vladimir Region in August 1941; living in a local school and helping adults work in a field; moving to the east in September 1941 with his grandmother and aunt; going to the town of Yekaterinburg (Ekaterinburg), where they met up with his mother and sister; going to the town of Tashkent, Uzbekistan and then to Tajikistan; experiencing hunger for several years as well as antisemitism; living in Tajikistan until 1945 when he went with his grandmother back to Leningrad; finding that their apartment was occupied by another family and having to go to court to get their apartment back, which took years; graduating from high school; not being admitted to the university where he wanted to study because he was a Jew; and another experience of antisemitism in the Soviet Union after the war.

Oral history interview with Isaak Zagoskin

Oral History

Isaak Zagoskin, born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, Russia) on May 24, 1930, describes the beginning of the war when his family was in a settlement outside of Leningrad called Repino; returning to Leningrad and on July 3 and his father voluntary jointed the Red Army; some people being evacuated to the East, and his family staying in the city; the bombing of Leningrad; the citizens in the city being given food cards; how the normal allotment for a child or a dependent was 125 grams of food per day and for those who worked was 250 grams; the winter of 1941-1942, which was extremely hard; people dying from starvation and cold and it was not possible to bury them; the piles of corps laying on sidewalks; his uncle, an artist named David Zagoskin, and his baby son dying from hunger and the Leningrad Union of Artist getting a coffin to bury them two weeks later; how he, his sister, grandmother, and two aunts survived thanks to his mother, who did incredible efforts to support them; his class being sent to Leningrad’s outskirts to work on fields in the summer of 1943; the fields being about 20 kilometers from the front line and hearing the noises of battles; and his class being awarded the “Medal for the Defense of Leningrad.”

Oral history interview with Jonas R. Puodzius

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Vipartienė-Vaicekauskaitė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julija Pėzaitė Vaicekauskienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Vilius Kairys

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rytė Nunilė Merkytė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Grazina Carneckienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Povilas Carneckis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marija Urbšytė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jonas Markauskas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irena Saulutė Spakauskienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dainora Stanislava Urbonienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ana Barkauskienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Iseris Shliomovichius

Oral History

Oral history interview with Birutė Svelnikaitė Arlauskienė

Oral History

Oral history interview with Schneur Rachlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ted Martin

Oral History

Ted Martin (né Tadeusz Rapczynski) describes being a Polish resistance fighter in the Warsaw ghetto; a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa); and a survivor of several prisons under Nazi occupation.

Oral history interview with Peter Wirths

Oral History

Peter Wirths describes living near Auschwitz while his father, SS-Standortarzt Dr. Eduard Wirths, was stationed at the camp; attending school with five or six other children; being instructed by his parents to not have contact with anyone from the camp or to go close to its grounds; not knowing his father’s role at Auschwitz until later in life; his grandfather’s, uncle’s, and mother’s knowledge of and interest in his father’s work; what he has learned over the years about Auschwitz; the roles of his father and Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz; his father’s interactions with a political prisoner, or “Häftling;” his decision to donate an album containing original photos of his father to the USHMM; Fritz Bauer, a German justice official involved in identifying the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann after his postwar escape to Argentina; his father’s journal from the 1930s and 1940s; and his views on his father and his father’s actions today.

Oral history interview with Robert Sejwacz

Oral History

Robert Sejwacz, born on November 13, 1934 in Paris, France, describes his father, Walek (born June 6, 1906), who emigrated from Mogelmica, Poland, and worked making suits; his father serving in the French Army from September 1939 to June 1940 and being a prisoner of war at Stalag VIIIC; his Lithuanian mother, Freida Smulevicius; living on Rue Castex in the 4th Arrondissement; his family not being very religious; not registering as Jews nor wearing the Jewish star; attending the local school and taking part in after-school activities; the birth on September 17, 1942 of his little brother, Henri; his parents sending him to the countryside because he seemed frail and in poor health; living on a small farm owned by Monsieur and Madame Roy in Thorigné-sur-Dué; attending school in Nuillé-le Jalais, where his teacher was a fervent communist; his parents being denounced and deported to Drancy with baby Henri; living with the Roys until 1946 when he was taken back to Paris and assigned to the COSOR home in Char (60km north of Pontoise, France), which was run by Madame Lechat; being sent to the Château de Grigny in Orly, run by Monsieur Duvauchelle; being sent to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; his teacher Monsieur Tomeno; the COSOR creating a group called "La chorale des petits chanteurs de la Bohême" in 1948; being settled with other boys in a home near Geneva, where they lived for two years; the boys being responsible for cleaning and cooking; attending school; thei benefactor, Monsieur Gardinier; being sent to a home in Boulogne-Billancourt, on the western edge of Paris; choosing not to pursue his academic studies and studying electronics; his first job at a research company and living in Paris; being diagnosed with tuberculosis of the spinal column and the kidneys and spending five months in the Saint Louis Hospital and a few months in nursing homes; returning to his job at the Dervos lab and meeting his future wife; becoming a sales representative for a company that manufactures large, industrial ovens; his two daughters and four grandchildren; feeling that the COSOR children and the adults who directed the COSOR establishments are his true family; keeping in touch with the surviving members of the various homes he was in; and the photographs he was able to get of his biological family after the war.

Oral history interview with Edith Levy Weinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Samuel Rachlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Léon Sztal

Oral History

Léon Sztal, born in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France on May 6, 1933, describes being the youngest son of Chil Jankiel Sztal and Barbe Louise Hendrickx (a Belgian woman who converted to Judaism); his older brother and older sister; his Polish father’s background and life in Palestine from 1920 to 1925; his father’s work in Liège, Belgium; his father’s successful business selling leather goods; attending public school; not experiencing antisemitism; the family’s exodus by automobile when France was invaded in May 1940; going to Saint-Fargeau for a few weeks and returning to Paris; his mother not registering as a Jew since she was originally Catholic; not wearing the yellow star and the neighbors not denouncing them to the police; hiding with neighboring friends during roundups; his father’s arrest in May 1941 and visiting him in Beaune-la-Rolande; his father’s deportation on June 27, 1942; his mother’s bravery and how she took in several children; subsisting on assistance from the COSOR; going with his sister to L'Isle-sur-le-Doubs, France in early 1944; his brother joining them in June 1944; his mother searching for word of his father after the war and learning that he died in Auschwitz; his bar mitzvah in 1947; leaving school at age 14 and working for his uncle; being called up for military service, becoming part of the Groupement 2, which succeeded the illustrious Second Armored Division and was assigned to NATO; how an exhibition at the Great Arch at La Défense inspired him to find out more about what happened to his father and uncles during the war; becoming the official flag-bearer for the Association of the Union des Déportés d’Auschwitz and attending commemorative ceremonies linked to the Holocaust and World War II; his second wife, Michèle Benichou, who was born in Algeria; and his two daughters.

Oral history interview with Robert R. Max

Oral History

Robert Roger Max, born July 10, 1923 in Newark, NJ, describes his wife, Shirley Max; growing up in New Jersey; learning that his family’s name was original Manczyk; his Jewish family’s background; moving to the suburbs; the Jewish community; never encountering antisemitism as a child; his education and awareness of the war; starting college in 1942 at New York University and transferring to Ohio University, where he studied journalism; participating in ROTC; signing up for the US Army; being sent to Fort Dix; being recruited into the army band by Jack Leonard and playing clarinet and saxophone; going to basic training in Alabama at Fort McClellan and details about the training; doing the Charles Atlas workout; attending the Army Specialized Training Program at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University); applying to Officer Candidate School and the Air Academy, but being sent to Indiana for combat training at Camp Atterbury; being assigned to the motor pool unit; sailing on the RMS Mauretania to Liverpool, England and the false reporting that it had sunk during the voyage; the treachery of crossing the English Channel; landing on Omaha Beach, Normandy in 1944; being in the 6th Armored Division, Company B and riding in half-tracks; his experiences with combat and finally realizing the seriousness of war; digging a foxhole and nearly being killed by an incoming shell; abandoning the half-tracks and proceeding on foot; witnessing the deaths of two men next to him; the battle at Han-sur-Nied, France; his participation in the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944; being captured by the German Wehrmacht and narrowly escaping being shot; being a slave laborer; dealing with starvation; passing through two German labor camps in Prum and Gerolstein; being forced to march from place to place; working on repairing rail lines that were bombed the Allies throughout the winter of 1945; sabotaging the railroads; contracting frostbite in his foot; escaping with a few others to Reichenbach, Germany, where they found a Nazi staging area; receiving help from a German civilian couple; hiding in a barn; being liberated by American troops; going to a field hospital then hospitals in Liège, Belgium and Paris, France; writing in the hospital during his recovery; returning to the US and finishing school; founding an organization with his wife at Ohio University to help prevent antisemitism and inviting Elie Wiesel to speak at the university; deciding to share his experiences with others; his strong Jewish identity and wanting to help others because of his experiences during the war; having a second bar mitzvah at age 83; and his involvement with Jewish organizations and charities.

Oral history interview with Marianne Berg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Wilhelmina Juhlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Eliach

Oral History

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

Oral history interview with Efraim Jessner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ruth Taub Feldman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maurice Bower

Oral History

Maurice Bower describes serving in the US Army from September 28, 1942 to March 13, 1946; being part of the 89th Infantry Division; and being one of the liberators of Ohrdruf.

Oral history interview with Luisa Brightman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Felix Heilpern

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Rosenfeld

Oral History

Harry Rosenfeld, August 12, 1929 in Berlin, Germany, describes being a refugee from Berlin, Germany in the United States.

Oral history interview with Henry Shery

Oral History

Oral history interview with Benni Korzen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michael Goldmann-Gilead

Oral History

Michael "Miki" Goldmann-Gilead, born in 1925 in Katowice, Poland, recounts his childhood in Poland; his family life; antisemitism in Katowice; his war-time experiences in the Przemysl ghetto, including a vicious beating from Josef Schwammberger (the ghetto's Nazi commandant); his subsequent deportation to the Szebnie concentration camp and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his Zionist activities and friendships in the camps; his transfer to Buna-Monowitz, where he worked for the I.G. Farben industries; his flight from a death march in January 1945; being rescued by a non-Jewish Polish family; volunteering as a soldier in the Red Army; being wounded in battle outside of Prague, Czech Republic; visiting Katowice after the war and his experiences in the Pocking displaced persons camp in Germany; his attempted immigration to Palestine in May 1947 on a ship that was intercepted by the British; being transferred to a detention camp on Cyprus, where he met his first wife and engaged in educational and Zionist activities; his immigration in 1948 to the newly founded State of Israel; working in the Israeli police force and rising to the rank of Chief Inspector; starting to work in 1960 as an investigator for Bureau 06, a special unit within the Israeli police force set up to investigate and interrogate Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in preparation for his trial; gathering evidence and identifying survivor witnesses for the trial; the structure and administration of Bureau 06 and its daily work; his interactions with colleagues and supervisors at Bureau 06, including his work and friendship with Avner Less; his interactions with Adolf Eichmann; his work during the trial as the personal aide to Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General heading the prosecution; the unexpected moment during the Eichmann trial when he was pointed out by a testifying witness as the boy who had survived a beating of 80 lashes by Schwammberger in the Przemysl ghetto; the events during the night of May 31 to June 1, 1962 when Mr. Goldmann served as a state witness during Eichmann's execution and was tasked with scattering Eichmann's ashes into the Mediterranean sea; his departure from the police service in 1963 and his work in Latin America as an emissary of the Jewish Agency; his subsequent work as the head of the Central Administration of Schlichut until his retirement in 1995; participating as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of Josef Schwammberger in Germany in the early 1990s; and his life and activities after his retirement, including his work for Yad Vashem.

Oral history interview with Miriam Ofer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther Vamos

Oral History

Esther Vamos, born on January 18, 1937 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her father, who was born in Budapest in 1905 and was a physician; her mother, Erna Popper, who was born in Budapest in 1904; her father’s work in Russia and Africa; the family all eventually living in Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo); her father working for a mining company; her older sister being sent to a Catholic girls’ school in Elisabethville, Congo; her father’s death in 1940 from a heart condition soon after the birth of her little brother; her mother trying to make a living by doing portraits; the sizable community of Sephardic Jews from Greece and Turkey in the Belgian Congo at the time; her mother’s attempts to get her family in Hungary to take refuge from the war in Africa; the local Jewish community financially helping her family; not having to ration in the Congo; being sent to the same Catholic school as her sister; feeling isolated from the Jewish community; the black and white communities living separately; joining the Hashomer Hatsair and becoming a fervent Zionist for a while after the war; her sister marrying a South African Jew and immigrating to Israel in the late 1940s; being given a scholarship for university studies in Belgium, where she later obtained Belgian nationality at the age of 20; her mother moving to Belgium, Hungary, and then Israel; her mother’s artwork not being accepted and her suicide in Israel; meeting her future husband, Henri (or Heinz) Hurvitz, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles; specializing in pediatrics and later becoming part of a medical research team in Philadelphia, PA in the early 1960s; and her children.

Oral history interview with Richard Teig

Oral History

Richard Otto Teig, born on November 5, 1924 in Essen, Germany, describes his parents who were born in Poland; his sister, Claire, who was two years younger; his father’s service in the Austrian Army during World War I; his father’s furniture business, which was closed on Kristallnacht; attending the Jewish public school and seeing a Rabbi after school for Jewish education; playing with his many cousins; his parents concerns in the late 1930s and being sent with his sister to Holland by train on January 20, 1939 without a permit; the couple who accepted Claire in their home and hid her when the Germans invaded; being placed with other boys in a camp in North Holland and receiving an education; the beginning of the war and having to relocate five times; going to Emmen, Netherlands in December 1942; attending school to learn about machines and working in a bakery; how on December 25, 1942 the SS lined them up and put them on a train to Westerbork; working for a farmer and later working on a narrow-gauge railroad; joining the Dutch underground and helping prisoners escape on the railroad; carrying messages back and forth between underground members; his parents who were able to flee to Belgium in May 1939, then unoccupied France, and then across the Pyrenees to Barcelona; being liberated from Westerbork on April 13, 1945 by the Canadians; hitch-hiking to his parents in Madrid, stopping off to visit his sister and viewing signs in Paris that said “Kill the last Jews”; his sister, who flew to Madrid; immigrating to the US; working in the diamond business; getting married on January 23, 1955; and his children.

Oral history interview with Julius Wald

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susi Frank Annes

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jack Appel

Oral History

Jack Appel describes serving in the US Army; being part of the US First Army and landing in Normandy, France in June 1944; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; driving a lieutenant to Buchenwald and witnessing events at the camp right after its liberation; and how he considers himself a witness not a liberator.

Oral history interview with Antonio Serri

Oral History

Antonio Serri, born October 8, 1928 in Venice, Italy, describes his family; his older sister and two younger brothers; how his father moved for work to New York City after Antonio was born; being raised by his mother and his grandmother; his grandmother, who directed the household and was his biggest influence; growing up Catholic; his Jewish and non-Jewish friends; the German occupation in 1941; the general fear of the Germans; the community’s mixed feelings about Mussolini; the numerous Venetian Jewish women who were sent to concentration camps; fixing old guns for the partisans; being saved by his grandmother during a roundup of suspected resisters; his grandmother hiding six Jewish men overnight before they escaped from Italy; working for 18 months at the German arsenal; going to the US in 1946; living in Greenwich, CT, where his father was a butler for a wealthy family; serving in the Korean War; his grandmother’s death in Italy circa 1950; getting married; working for a family friend from Venice for 10 years in the light fixture business; and visiting Venice a few times with his wife.

Oral history interview with Miriam Fridman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albin Irzyk

Oral History

General Albin Felix Irzyk (né Jerzk), born February 1, 1917 in Salem, Massachusetts, describes being the eldest of three siblings; his sister Flora, who was three years younger and his brother, Arthur, who was six years younger; growing up with good values in a middle class family; his schooling; life during the Depression; attending Massachusetts State College and working full or part-time to help pay his tuition; being active in ROTC and graduating college on June 10, 1940 with a bachelor's degree and as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Horse Cavalry Reserve; going to Fort Ethan Allen in Vermont for active duty for two weeks and then to East Boston Airport for Air Cadet training; going through physical exams and receiving notice to report July 1, 1940 to Fort Ethan Allen as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment; being the platoon leader for 40 Cavalry men and joining the first squadron of the Cavalry at Ft. Myer, Virginia, where he trained draftees; being in Fort Myer when Pearl Harbor was bombed and being sent the next day with the regiment to Washington, DC to guard government buildings; beginning an intensive and extensive training program in the spring of 1942; his regiment being redesignated as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Mechanized; training in Tennessee and the Mojave Desert; being promoted to the rank of Major in 1943; being sent to England in January 1944; being trained close to Bristol; attaching to the 4th Armored Division; arriving in France on July 13, 1944; staying in Granville for three days; being the operations officer and living in a tank for eight or nine months close to several other men; his memories of the winter of 1944-1945 and the Battle of the Bulge; going through Germany; heading south to Ohrduf; being surprised to find a concentration camp, where they saw many dead bodies and people who looked like skeletons; facilitating Eisenhower's visit to Ohrdruf; the book he is writing about his experiences; remaining in Germany during the occupation with his wife, Evelyn, from 1948 to 1954; spending two years in Vietnam; and retiring as a Brigadier General.

Oral history interview with Gary H. Philipp

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jenny Brody

Oral History

Jenny Brody (née Judith Sara Regen), born on August 16, 1928 in the Scheunenviertel neighborhood of Berlin, Germany; her older brothers (Herbert, Helmut, and Alfred) and her younger sister, Romana; her mother, Bertha (née Cahn), and her non-Jewish stepfather, Josef Regen; life in Scheunenviertel; her mother’s work ethic; being beaten by her stepfather; growing up poor and never having a sense of family; spending Sabbath with her maternal grandmother; her schooling and experiencing discrimination; her fear during Kristallnacht and seeing people being beaten in the streets; the deportation of her three brothers; her grandmother’s deportation to Theresienstadt; her stepfather’s disappearance; her mother’s imprisonment in Berlin and her sister joining her there; being left alone to fend for herself; hiding in a neighbor’s cellar; being caught by Stella Kübler; being imprisoned in a former Jewish school turned jail in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin, where she stayed throughout the remainder of the war from 1942 to 1945; being a slave laborer at a tailoring shop owned and run by Albert Kielhorn; her work sewing army coats; suffering abuse from Kielhorn; hearing of her sister’s death; her life after liberation; the courses she attended through the ORT, which was a school set up in Berlin for Jewish survivors; her reasons for remaining in Berlin until 1993; owning her own high-end clothing store for two decades; the painting of a large Jewish star on her store once in the post-war years on the anniversary of Kristallnacht; her four marriages; moving to the United States to be with her fourth husband; and her life in Boca Raton, FL.

Oral history interview with Sidney Simon

Oral History

Sidney Simon (né Moishe Schmeel Shimonovicz), born May 22, 1925 in Sapinka (Săpînța), Romania, describes his father (Natan Natan), who traded cows and horses for a living; his two brothers and four sisters; attending public school for half the day and Hebrew school for the other half of the day; the Hungarian occupation of their village, at which time his family moved briefly to Satu Mare, Romania before returning to Sapinka; his thoughts on the Hungarian occupation; seeing the deportation of people in boxcars but not understanding what it meant; his mother’s death two years before the deportations; being sent with his family 10 kilometers away to a ghetto where they remained one month; being deported with his family in the summer of 1944 to Auschwitz, where he along with his three younger sisters were selected to survive and his father, brother, and older sister were killed immediately in the gas chamber; being in Birkenau for two weeks before being selected for a work camp in Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland); spending nine months at the work camp before being marched with 500 other prisoners to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British; registering as Romanian and not being picked up until he registered as Czech; being taken to the Hungary/Czech border where he boarded a train for Budapest, Hungary; being registered at the Jewish Federation office and placed in an empty school where he reunited with his uncle and sisters; getting married to a fellow survivor from Czechoslovakia; going to Prague to be with his aunt and uncle; the communist take-over and leaving with his wife and young daughter, Marjorie, to Paris, France; immigrating to the United States in December 1949; his three daughters, grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren; how he began questioning whether there is a God when he was eight and completely lost his belief when he arrived at Auschwitz; and his continued efforts to help Jewish synagogues and charities.

Oral history interview with Hilbert Margol

Oral History

Hilbert Margol, born February 22, 1924 in Jacksonville, Florida, describes his identical twin Howard as well as his older brother Melvin and sister Bernice; his parents who emigrated from Lithuania and married in the US; living in a Jewish neighborhood and attending a public school; his father’s correspondence with his sister in Lithuania until the letters stopped once the war began; graduating high school along with his twin brother in June 1942 and entering the University of Florida and the ROTC program; the activation of their reserve unit on April 3, 1943; going to Camp Blanding, FL for indoctrinati