Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Oral history interview with Rafael Abarbanel and Rachel Abarbanel

Oral History

Raphael (Rudy) Abarbanel, born in 1920, discusses his family and his childhood in Pirot, Serbia; moving to Belgrade, Serbia; his religious upbringing; joining the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement; his disbelief about events in Germany; the German bombings of Belgrade; being taken from his home; his work in a forced labor group under German control and his attempts to join Communist partisans; escaping from a train in Lom, Bulgaria; joining other refugees in Sofia, Bulgaria; being caught and interned in Albania; forging documents; escaping by boat in February 1944; landing in a British camp for refugees in Bari, Italy; immigrating to Palestine; and settling in a kibbutz in Israel. Rachel Boyana Abarbanel, born in 1922 in Yugoslavia, discusses her family and childhood in Slavonski Brod, Croatia before the war; joining the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement; joining the communist youth movement; her disbelief about events in Germany; the April 1941 German occupation of Slavonski Brod; German officers occupying her family’s home; wearing the yellow star of David; forced labor; escaping to Pirot, Serbia; living in semi-hiding in Sofia, Bulgaria; attempting to connect with the partisan movement in the mountains; escaping to the Albanian border; being caught and interned by Albanian police; life in Albanian internment camp; escaping by boat to a British camp in Bari, Italy; and immigrating to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Sini Adler

Oral History

Sini Adler, born in 1928, discusses his childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); being the only Jewish family in his neighborhood; increasing anti-Jewish restrictions; not knowing about what was happening to Poland’s Jewish community through 1942; being deported to Terezin in March 1943; maintaining his Jewish identity in the camp; being deported to Birkenau in May 1944 in cattle cars; daily life in the camp; being moved to a forced labor camp; the death of his parents; the role his faith played in his survival; being forced to march from Auschwitz in January 1945; the Red Army’s approach; being moved by cattle car for 2 to 3 weeks; arriving in Mauthausen and then Gunskirchen; liberation by the Americans in May 1945; returning to Prague and living in refugee centers; going to England for 6 months; immigrating by boat to Palestine; landing in Jaffa; living in Israel; and his book he published.

Oral history interview with Moshe Alpan

Oral History

Moshe Alpan (born Moshe Elefant) discusses the antisemitism in Vranov, Slovakia before the war; joining Hashomer Hatzair; the anti-Jewish measures and violence; the disbelief of his community at what was happening; becoming active in the Zionist movement as a way to help; organizing the Hashomer Hatzair underground movement in Budapest, Hungary in February 1944; the German occupation of Budapest in March 1944; the Jewish resistance groups; partisan rescue missions; working with the communist underground movement; helping Polish Jews cross into Slovakia; his emotional responses to the events; immigrating to Israel in July 1946; and his philosophical ideas about heroism, being a victim, and resistance.

Oral history interview with Tzvi Aviram

Oral History

Tzvi Aviram (b. Heinz Tzvi Abrahamason), born in 1927, discusses his family and childhood in Berlin, Germany; Berlin’s Jewish community; the Nazi rise to power in 1933; life during the Berlin Olympics in 1936; Kristallnancht’s effect on the Jewish community; how wealthy Jews were leaving; war’s outbreak; increasing antisemitism; the British bombing of Berlin in 1940; forced labor; German propaganda; escaping deportation; Zionist groups in Berlin; joining the Hechalutz underground; Jewish property being taken by Germans; being arrested and interrogated in Grosse Hamburger Strasse; escaping from prison; Berlin’s burning in January 1944; reorganization of the underground movement; hearing about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; liberation by the Soviets; Americans entering Berlin in July 1945; organizing immigration to Palestine; immigrating to Palestine from France in March 1948; adjusting to life in Israel; and his thoughts about present day Germany.

Oral history interview with Zvi Azaria

Oral History

Zvi Azaria (b. Herman Helfgott), born in 1913, discusses his family and childhood in Beodra, Yugoslavia (present day Novo Miloševo, Serbia); antisemitism in his school; finishing university in 1940 in Vienna, Austria and becoming a rabbi; the Jewish community in Vilikibershki, where he lived; joining the army in Macedonia for six months; bombings in 1940; being taken by train to a camp near Nuremburg, Germany; organizing religious life and cycles in the camp; being transported to other camps, including Langwasser; escaping and marching to Pommern, Germany (Pomerania, Poland and Germany) in 1945; liberation by the British; going to Bergen-Belsen in order to help; providing spiritual guidance to the living; arranging burials; working as part of a rescue operation; and the fate of his family.

Oral history interview with Miriam Bakovitz

Oral History

Miriam Bakovitz, born in 1921, discusses her family and childhood in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (present day Bosnia and Herzegovina); joining Hashomer Hatzair; her increasing awareness of the war; encountering refugees between 1938 and 1939; the Germans arrival in Sarajevo in 1941; the deportation of her parents; anti-Jewish violence, including synagogue burnings, deportations, and shootings; being sent to do forced labor at the military camp Maryunvo; being deported to Gakovo (in present day Serbia); hiding under an assumed identity; living with partisans; being arrested and escaping; fighting with communist partisans; violence by Chetniks; German patrols for partisans; traveling by rail to Croatia; working as a medic; the end of the war and liberating a town from German occupation; working as a nurse in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina; not being able to find living family members; her experiences in the Yugoslav People's Army after the war; hiding her Jewish identity until her children were 14; and immigrating to Israel in 1972.

Oral history interview with Alizah Baruch

Oral History

Alizah Barukh (née Zarfati), born in 1928 in Salonika, Greece, discusses her family; war with Italy breaking out in 1940; the lack of antisemitism before the war; changing attitudes when the German occupation began in June 1941; wearing the yellow star of David; forced labor; being deported to Auschwitz in March 1943; learning of her family’s fate in the gas chambers; her experience in Auschwitz as part of Mengele's radiation experiments; performing forced labor in the UNION ammunition factory; being sent to Camp Malchow; being ordered to march on May 1, 1945 but instead finding chaos and the retreat of the Germans; how she and others were protected by liberated POWs and stayed with German families for two and a half months; the arrival of Russian forces; returning to Greece; immigrating to Palestine with the help of the Jewish Brigade; traveling by illegal boat to Atlit, Israel; settling in Haifa, Israel and being reunited with family; and having a family of her own in Israel.

Oral history interview with Genya Batasheva

Oral History

Genya Batasheva, born in 1923 in Kiev, Ukraine, discusses her childhood; the famine in 1933; going to school for accounting and becoming a bookkeeper; the German occupation of Kiev, Ukraine; constructing defense positions in the suburbs of Kiev; the round ups of Jews; the massacre at Babi Yar and the murder of her family; telling guards she was Russian; getting fake identity papers; leaving for Kharkiv, Ukraine with her friend Olga Zacharovna Rozhchenko; working in Omsk, Russia for two years; hearing the news that the Soviets liberated Kiev; receiving a letter from her father and joining him in Barnaul, Russia; daily life in Barnaul; her post-war life; and her immigration to Israel due to Russian anti-Semitism.

Oral history interview with Ezra Ben Gershom

Oral History

Ezra Ben Gershom, born in 1922 in Würzburg, Germany, discusses living in Heilbronn, Germany; growing up with his rabbi father; increasing antisemitism in his town and school; working with Zionists; moving to Berlin, Germany in 1942; not registering with the Gestapo; changing residences constantly; his parents’ deportation; arranging for false identity papers; fleeing Germany; reaching Budapest, Hungary in 1943; his arrest and detention in Romania; being freed by Romanian Jewish organizations; his journey to Palestine; his post-war life; and his feelings about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Sonia Berenshtein

Oral History

Sonia Berenshtein, born in 1923, discusses her childhood in Zheludok, Poland (present day Belarus); her family; joining the underground movement in the Dzyatlava ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1942; hiding in the forest with a partisan group under Hirsch Kaplinski; participating in partisan actions; a typhoid epidemic; liberation by the Soviets; immigrating to Palestine; and her life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Tamar Berger

Oral History

Tamar Berger (née Karla Wagenburg), born in 1923, discusses her childhood in Anhalt, Germany; her family; attending a Jewish boarding school; her school’s burning in November 1938; being involved in Zionist youth groups; staying at a Jewish orphanage; going to a labor camp near Furstenwalde, Germany and doing agriculture work; her deportation to Auschwitz in 1943; conditions in Auschwitz and Birkenau; joining the band; the importance of music; falling ill; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British in April 1945; moving to Frankfurt, Germany; being sent to Belgium; immigrating illegally to Israel; and her life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Paulina Bergman

Oral History

Paulina Bergman, born in Gorlice, Poland, recounts her family's orthodoxy; her father's service in World War I; attending Beit Yakov, public school, then gymnasium; summer vacations at her aunt's house in Nowy Sacz; participating in Noʻar ha-Tsiyoni; arrest by Polish police for Zionist activity; attending university in Kraków, Poland; a trip to Italy with her boyfriend; vacationing in Zakopane, Poland; working for the Red Cross; the German invasion; relocating to her father's village; fleeing east; German bombardment; traveling to Skelevka (Felsztyn), Ukraine; reunion with her boyfriend in Sambir, Ukraine; traveling with him to Zabolotiv, Ukraine; obtaining false papers as non-Jews; moving to several villages, including Zagoździe, Poland and Kolomyia, Ukraine; living as non-Jews in Tarnów; assistance from the Judenrat; hiding in a bunker; entering the Tarnów ghetto; forced factory labor; escaping with a friend's child to Kraków; obtaining papers as Polish guest workers through the underground; traveling to Vienna, Austria then Semmering, Austria; working in Hermagor, Austria; sabotaging farm production; assisting prisoners of war; sexual harassment by the farm's owner; transfer to another farm; working at the train station in Villach, Austria; assisting Yugoslav partisans; working in a clinic; smuggling medicine to partisans; liberation by British troops; traveling to Arnoldstein, Tarviso, then Udine, with assistance from a British officer; locating the Jewish Brigade in Bologna, Italy; traveling to Rome; reunion with a cousin; traveling to Venice, then Rome; assistance from the Joint; immigrating to Palestine via Marseille; her incarceration in ʻAtlit; escaping; learning her future husband was alive; joining him in Munich; and visiting Gorlice and Warsaw.

Oral history interview with Hella Berlinski

Oral History

Hella Berlinksi, born 1919 in Poland, discusses her Jewish family life and charities; moving as an infant to Łódź, Poland; her father’s death in 1936; getting married to Jacob Berlinsky in 1939; the German invasion in 1939; Jewish community and life in Łódź; traveling to Piotrkow in January 1940; her employment in the shops sewing clothes; her husband’s deportation to Auschwitz in 1942; moving to Karo with her sister; the realization in November 1944 of the end of the war occurring; a four day trip to Fuerstenberg in train cars; walking to Ravensbrück camp 80 miles north of Berlin; liberation; joining her husband in Bergen-Belsen; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Josef Binenshtok

Oral History

Josef Binenshtok, born 1919 in Wadowice, Poland, describes the beginning of the war and the racial laws; building barracks in Auschwitz; traveling to the labor camp Ottmuth to build the Berlin Moskva autobahn; arrival of other Jews from Holland, Belgium, and Greece; the shutting down of labor camps and mass extermination camps; traveling to Blechhammer and working to build gas chambers in Blechhammer; traveling by train to Gross Rosen, Buchenwald, Dora, and Sachsenhausen; liberation near Schwerin (Skwierzyna, Poland); living in a displaced persons camp near Bergen-Belsen; and immigrating to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Orna Birenbach

Oral History

Orna Birenbach discusses her return to Poland in 1987 to retrace her earlier life; returning to Warsaw and Krakow; Tarnow in 1941 and the action that took place there in 1942 when 10,000 Jews were killed; what occurred to different family members; the actions and cruelty of a particular commander; her experiences in Płaszów, where she witnessed mass killings; revisiting Auschwitz; and her liberation by the British while she was in Muehlhausen.

Oral history interview with Ya'akov Biskovitz

Oral History

Ya’akov Biskovitz, born in 1926, discusses his childhood in Hubicze, Poland; Polish antisemitism; German forces arriving in Hubicze; being deported to Sobibor in May 1924; his work in the Bahnhof commando; escaping Sobibor; meeting Russian partisans; returning to Hubicze in 1943; volunteering for the Polish Army; detonating mines; being jailed in Warsaw, Poland for desertion; escaping to Lublin, Poland; joining a Revisionist party and going to Austria; working in a transit camp for children near Grodzisk Wielkopolski, Poland; immigrating illegally to Palestine and escorting 600 children with him; being caught by the British and interned on Cyprus; living conditions in the camp; entering Israel in 1949; his life in Israel; and witnessing war trials in Germany and giving evidence in the Adolf Eichmann trial.

Oral history interview with Matla Blander

Oral History

Matla Blander, born 1931 in Hrubieszów, Poland, discusses her family life with three sisters; leaving the public schools for a private tutor; the influence of her father as a Judenrat police officer; going to Majdanek with her mother; marching to Auschwitz and her mother’s death during the march; the drowning of people at Stutthof; how camp inmates helped on another; and her life before the war.

Oral history interview with Avraham Blander

Oral History

Avraham Blander, born in Hrubieszów, Poland in 1923, recalls his family's orthodoxy; attending an ORT school; the German invasion; his brother fleeing to the Soviet Union; the Judenrat organizing forced labor and deportation lists; hiding during round-ups; being discovered; having to bury those killed in mass shootings; clearing former Jewish homes and sorting the goods; being deported with his sister and her husband to Budzyn in 1942; working as a locksmith; assistance from German civilian workers; being transferred to Mielec, then to Wieliczka in 1944; being separated from his sister; being transferred to Flossenbürg, then Leitmeritz; sharing extra food received from Czech workers with his brother-in-law; his transfer to Augsbürg, Dachau, and Landau; a death march to Trostberg; his brother-in-law's death; abandonment by the guards; assistance from local Germans; liberation by United States troops; non-Jewish Russian and Polish prisoners killing a cruel German foreman; returning to Hrubieszów; learning his sister and brother had been killed; meeting his future wife; antisemitic violence; their return to Trostberg; getting married; moving to Ulm, Germany and Marseille, France in preparation for immigration to Palestine; assistance from the Jewish Agency and UNRRA; immigrating to Israel in 1948; the births of his three children; and fighting in the Sinai and 1967 wars.

Oral history interview with Leon Blatt

Oral History

Leon Blatt, born in 1919 in Katowice, Poland, discuses his family; moving to Będzin, Poland at the start of the war then Sosnowiec, Poland; his involvement in the Judenrat; performing forced labor in German factories; organizing an underground movement; creating false papers and helping to smuggle people to Slovakia and Hungary; the liquation of the ghetto in November 1943; living under the false identity Roma Nowakowski; moving to Budapest, Hungary in 1943; joining a Zionist group; being captured at the Romanian border and being sent to Auschwitz; liberation by the Soviets; becoming head of the Jewish community in Sosnowiec; staying in Poland until 1949; living in Germany for 25 years; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Ben Zion Blushtein

Oral History

Ben Zion Blushtein, born in 1924 in Domachow, Poland, discusses his family; his experiences with anti-Semitism; the German invasion; how Jews were forced to perform labor; being forced into the ghetto; escaping to join Jewish partisans in the woods; partisan actions against Germans; capturing a German fort; being liberated by the Soviets; living in a displaced persons camp; his family life; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Alexander Bogen

Oral History

Alexander Bogen, born in 1916 in Vilna, Poland (present day Vilnius, Lithuania), discusses the bombing of Vilna; the German invasion and occupation; the Russian Army’s retreat; joining refuges to leave for the Soviet zone; ending up in the Vilna ghetto; meeting Abba Kovner and continuing to create art in the ghetto; joining the ghetto underground movement; starting the “Revenge” group of the partisans with Moshe Shultan; challenges facing the partisan movement; immigrating to Israel; and his artistic representations of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Samuel Borenstein

Oral History

Samuel Borenstein, born in 1918 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his upper-class upbringing and family; his education; being involved in the Zionist movement; the bombing of Warsaw; fleeing to Minsk, Russia (Belarus) through Łódź, Poland and Belarus; living conditions while moving from town to town; joining the partisans in Minsk; living conditions in the woods; partisan actions against Germans and Ukrainians; being wounded in a battle in Bialystok, Poland; anti-Semitism in the hospital; working with Zionist groups to organize illegal immigration to Palestine; organizing groups of partisans for immigration; and crossing Italy to arrive in Palestine.

Oral history interview with Sonya Borstein

Oral History

Sonya Borstein (née Narenchuk), born in1923 in Bielice, Poland, discuses the bombing of her hometown; being deported to a ghetto in Belarus; participating in the underground movement; hiding during the ghetto’s liquidation; being sent to a labor camp; hiding in the woods; joining the Krasna Vardesk partisan group; becoming ill; partisan actions; antisemitism among the Russian partisans being liberated by the Soviets; immigrating to Israel; and adapting to life on a kibbutz.

Oral history interview with Rozina Bressler

Oral History

Rozina Bressler, born in 1927 in Saaz, Sudetenland (Žatec, Czechoslovakia), discusses her family’s attempts to escape in October 1938; being arrested on Kristallnacht by the Gestapo and forced to return to Czechoslovakia; daily life in a Czech village with other refugees; being arrested along with her family in 1942; being deported to Theresienstadt and subsequently Auschwitz; being sent to work in a linen factory in Merseburg, Germany; and being liberated by the Soviets.

Oral history interview with Irena Bruner

Oral History

Irena Bruner (née Rothberg), born in 1923 in Krakow, Poland, discusses her family; living conditions in the Krakow ghetto; performing forced labor in brush and munitions factories; adaptations to ghetto life; being marched to Płaszów in February 1943; being moved to various concentration camps in Poland; her experiences in the camps; being liberated by the Soviets; and her life after the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Meir Bussak

Oral History

Meir Bussak, born in 1912, discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; going to study Jewish history in Warsaw, Poland; increasing antisemitism; being expelled from Krakow to a work camp; working for Simens, building railroad tracks; the dismantling of the work camp; being sent to Płaszów; forced labor in the quarry in Płaszów and living conditions; being chosen for Schindler’s factory in Brněnec, Czechoslovakia; his personal connection with Schindler and Schindler’s wife; and liberation by the Soviets.

Oral history interview with Simcha Byalovitz

Oral History

Simcha Byalovitz, born in 1912, discusses his childhood and family in Izbica, Poland; the outbreak of the war; joining the Polish army as a medic; being taken to a work camp; returning as a medic to the hospital in Izbica during a typhoid epidemic; being deported to Sobibor in April 1943; working in Sobibor’s pharmacy; learning the fate of his family; escaping from Sobibor; surviving in a village near Izbica; being liberated by the Soviets; post-war antisemitism in Poland; moving to Berlin, Germany and then Heidenheim, Germany; immigrating to Israel; and his testimony in war crimes trials for Wagner and Frenzel.

Oral history interview with David Kahane

Oral History

David Kahane, born in 1903, discusses daily life in Grimaylov, Galicia (present day Ukraine); studying to become a rabbi; teaching high school in Lvov, Poland (present day L’viv, Ukraine) from 1929 to 1941; the German invasion in June 1941; German violence against the Jews; the burning of synagogues in August 1941; secret worship in homes; the Judenrat and its role in determining deportations; being deported to Janowska; living and working conditions in the camp; the Jewish police; the observance of holidays in the camp; escaping the camp and hiding in a Greek Orthodox monastery; German crimes in Lvov; mass killings; meeting with a Gestapo man named Blum after the war; and the fate of his friend Rabbi Jecheskel Levin.

Oral history interview with Betty Cana

Oral History

Betty Cana, born November 11, 1919 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, discusses being the youngest of five sisters; her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; antisemitic harassment; attending a Jewish school; participating in a Zionist youth group; one sister's immigration to Palestine in 1936; her father's death; preparing to immigrate to Palestine on a Hechalutz kibbutz in Beverwijk; German invasion; returning to Amsterdam; her marriage; operating a children's kibbutz in Elden with her husband; being arrested in October 1942; being deported to Westerbork; the arrival of her mother and one sister; deportation with her mother and husband to Auschwitz in September 1943; being separated from her mother; volunteering for specious medical experiments by Dr. Claus Clauberg to avoid transfer to Birkenau, where she thought she could not survive; sending food and messages to her husband; a camp official saving him from selections; working in the hospital; leading prayer sessions; encountering the camp Kommandant, Rudolf Höss; public hangings; a death march and train transfer to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945; learning one sister was there; receiving extra food from her; contracting typhus; her sister nursing her; liberation by British troops; assistance from the Red Cross; repatriation to Eindhoven; learning her husband had not survived; hospitalization; her illegal immigration by ship to Palestine via Marseille; interdiction by the British; her brief incarceration; reuniting with her sister; her marriage; adopting two children; losing her religious faith in the camps; the prisoner hierarchy and relations among national groups; and chronic health problems resulting from her experiences.

Oral history interview with Eli Carmel

Oral History

Eli Carmel (né Hans Weinberg), born in Vienna, Austria in 1917, recounts participating in Blau-Weiss; working at a Zionist summer camp with Teddy Kollek; his brother's immigration to Palestine in 1934; attending university; antisemitic harassment; the Anschluss; warnings from their non-Jewish landlord of German raids; moving to Zurich, then Geneva; his arrest in September 1939; his expulsion from Basel to a Gestapo prison in Lörrach; his transfer from prison to prison en route to Sachsenhausen; forced labor in a brick factory; beatings, hunger, and lack of sanitation; public executions; his release in September 1940 because his mother documented he would leave for Shanghai; returning home; traveling with his parents to Graz; illegally entering Yugoslavia; traveling to Zagreb via Maribor; the Jewish community assigning them to live with a non-Jew in Ruma; German invasion; Germans and Ustaša registering Jews; deportation in cattle cars to Zagreb; the Jewish community securing their release through bribes; obtaining false papers; traveling to a village in Italian-occupied territory; his arrest; imprisonment in Fiume (presently Rijeka); transfer 18 months later to Ferramonti; receiving Red Cross packages; escaping; hiding with villagers; liberation by United States troops; immigration to Palestine via Bari and Alexandria; his incarceration in ʻAtlit by the British; his release; serving in the Palmah; relations between national and political groups in Sachsenhausen; Polish Jews praying; his scars from mistreatment; the kindness of the Italians; lack of interest and disbelief from the Israeli public about his experiences until the 1970s; sharing only parts of his story with his children; and a recent visit to Berlin.

Oral history interview with Aharon Carmi

Oral History

Aharon Carmi, born in Opoczno, Poland in 1921, recounts being one of seven children; attending cheder, public school, then Tarbut school; participating in Gordonyah; antisemitic violence; his older brother's immigration to Palestine in 1935; two brothers' conscription; the German invasion; one brother's return; anti-Jewish restrictions; Germans taking community leaders for ransom, including his father; the community paying the ransom; his father's appointment to the Judenrat; ghettoization; working in the family bakery; volunteering in a soup kitchen; his assignment to bury corpses from a killing; hiding with his brother and uncle during a round-up; his capture by Poles; securing their release with a bribe; hiding in a cemetery (a Polish friend brought him food); returning to his parents in the ghetto; transfer with his family to the Ujazd ghetto; escaping from a deportation train with encouragement from his father; Poles offering him shelter, then robbing him; traveling to Warsaw; returning to Opoczno to retrieve buried money to purchase false papers; assistance from Polish family friends; returning to Warsaw; obtaining false papers; his arrest; interrogation and beating by the Gestapo; transfer to the ghetto; forced labor sorting Jewish belongings; escaping; hiding with a Jewish family; contact with Eliezer Geller; joining the Jewish resistance (ZOB); arms training; participating in missions, including arresting collaborators; the ghetto uprising; escaping with a group through the sewers to a forest; David Nowodworski organizing them; obtaining supplies from friendly Poles; other ghetto fighters joining them; receiving weapons from the Polish Communist Party (PPR); moving to another forest; joining Armia Ludova partisans; skirmishes with the right wing Armia Krajowa (AK); a Soviet air drop of weapons and supplies; blowing up German trains; his unit's dissolution; many casualties from German attacks; liberation by Soviet troops; interrogating German POWs; joining the Soviet militia in Minsk Mazowiecki; guarding Jewish refugees; traveling with the Soviet Army to Praga; returning to Minsk Mazowiecki; meeting Abba Kovner in Lublin; interrogating AK members; traveling to Warsaw; meetings with Yitzhak Zuckerman and Marek Edelman; discussions of revenge; returning to Minsk Mazowiecki; his marriage; briefly returning to Opoczno; joining a group immigrating to Palestine; receiving documents as Greek Jews; traveling through Poland to Slovakia, then boarding a Red Cross train to Romania; living three months each in a kibbutz in Alba Iulia, then Bucharest; his illegal emigration by ship from Constanța to Palestine; interdiction by the British; his release; his reunion with his brother; his wife's uncle hosting a Jewish wedding by a rabbi for them; working as a baker; being drafted into the Haganah; and serving in the 1948 Arab-Israel War and 1956 Sinai Campaign. Mr. Carmi also shows photographs.

Oral history interview with Manoss Diamant

Oral History

Manoss Diamant, born in 1921 in Katowice, Poland, discusses his family and childhood; his education; being in a Zionist youth group; escaping to Warsaw, Poland in 1939; being forced into the Sosnowiec ghetto in 1943; being in a resistance group; the activities of the Judenrat who collaborated with Germans; being selected for work by the Germans; his sabotage activities; escaping from the ghetto; working in Austria under an assumed identity; being caught and sent to a camp near Vienna, Austria; passing as a doctor and working in a hospital in Graz, Austria; escaping to Hungary and joining a work group in Budapest; the Germans entering Hungary in March 1944; being liberated by the Soviets in January 1945; and his post-war feelings about perpetrators.

Oral history interview with Arie Distel

Oral History

Arie Distel, born in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes his education in Zionist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair; survival in the small ghetto after the German occupation; his participation in the underground; details of the underground’s functions and work; joining a work group outside the ghetto; his transport along with his group to Tartu, Estonia, and then to camps in Soski, Gorodenko, Kurome, Yama (Kingisepp), and Goldfitz; being sent to Stutthof concentration camps; his liberation by French forces; his life in a transition camp; being sent to a youth camp in Magento; joining the 'Revenge' group; joining the Jewish Brigade and awaiting orders; his travel to Germany, Italy, and Palestine; and life in Kibbutz Yakum.

Oral history interview with Ya'akov Eisner

Oral History

Ya'akov Eisner, born 1904 in Czestochowa, Poland, recounts attending Jewish and Polish schools; starvation during World War I; his marriage and the births of two of his children; leaving his family to work in Paris for two years during the Depression; the German invasion; ghettoization; his mother's murder by Germans in 1942; burying her; his deportation with his wife and children to Treblinka; his selection as a carpenter (his family was killed); sadistic public executions; escaping; assistance from a local non-Jews who brought him to Jewish partisans; fleeing when other non-Jews approached; returning to the Czestochowa ghetto via Warsaw with assistance from non-Jews; his marriage to a cousin; slave labor; being deported; escaping from the train; returning to Czestochowa (now a camp); liberation with his wife by Soviet troops; his immigration to Israel; and being a witness at a war criminal trial of S.S. men in Düsseldorf.

Oral history interview with Erna Elerat

Oral History

Erna Elerat, born September 1920 in Oświęcim, Poland, recounts her large family's affluence; summering in mountain resorts; participating in Betar; Vladimir Jabotinsky staying at their home; antisemitic harassment beginning in 1933; one year of school in Myslowice; one brother serving in the Polish military; German invasion in 1939; fleeing with her family to Przeworsk; her father continuing to the Soviet zone; finding her brother in Kraków (he had been wounded); their return home; her brief arrest with her sister by Soviets in Tarnów en route to find their father; reunion with him in Lʹviv; a brief stay in Rava Ruʹska; returning home; volunteering with a sister, brother, and his wife for work in November 1940; their deportation to Annaberg; her brother's transfer to Auschwitz (her parents received his ashes shortly thereafter); transfer to Ottmuth; her job in the hospital; poisoning herself; her hospitalization in Krapowice; escaping; joining her family in the Sosnowice ghetto; her transfer back to Annaberg; working in the hospital; her transfer six months later to Parschnitz, then to Markstädt, and back to Parschnitz for a year; learning her father had died; arranging for her mother and sisters to join her; separation from them upon transfer to Blechhammer, then Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943; her assignment to the “medical experiment” barracks; caring for Greek women on whom the experiments were done, most of whom died; her transfer to Union factory; working as a translator, then a supervisor; participating in sabotage; assistance from civilian workers and Wehrmacht; a death march and train transfer with her cousin to Ravensbrück; her transfer by herself to Malchow, then Taucha; escaping with others from a death march; a man hiding them until the arrival of Soviet troops; traveling to Sosnowiec; reunion with her mother and sister; joining a brother in Feldafing displaced persons camp; her family joining them; and testifying against a camp official at the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC).

Oral history interview with Ruth Elias

Oral History

Ruth Elias, born October 1922 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, discusses the entry of the Germans into her town March 14, 1939; her family fleeing to a small village near Brno called Pojojitze until 1942; her happy life in the village; the family being caught and sent to Theresienstadt (Terezin); the meticulous German labeling and numbering system; the history of the city and the conditions in the camp; getting married; working as a nurse to the elderly; the creative activities in the camp, including operas, choirs, and concerts; the Red Cross visit and the false beautification efforts; getting pregnant while she was in Theresienstadt; being sent to Auschwitz then Birkenau B-2 “Familienlager”; conditions in the camp and the mistreatment of women in the camp by SS guards; receiving medical exams; experiencing night blindness due to lack of vitamins; being sent to Ravensbrück after it was discovered that she and her friend, Berta, were pregnant; being sent to the Krankenbau barrack; the sadistic SS female guards in the camp; being sent back to Auschwitz, where they pretended to not be Jewish; learning about Mengele’s experiments and meeting him; giving birth and the eventual death of her baby; being sent with Berta to a work in Germany in Taucha bei Leipzig; working in a munitions factory and later a bakery; the Roma and prisoners of war; finding work outside for extra food; the death march; living in Prague after the war; and her immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Ze'ev Faktor

Oral History

Ze'ev Faktor, born in Łódź, Poland in April 1926, describes the arrival of Germans; the establishment of the ghetto; the job of the Judenrat; the hierarchy within the ghetto; working in the ghetto administration and a metal factory; being deported to Auschwitz in 1944 then Birkeanu; the death march in January 1945 to Bolkenhain; the five day train ride to Buchenwald; the liberation by the United States Army; immigrating to Israel; and the psychological effects of the Holocaust on his life.

Oral history interview with Yitzhak Finkel

Oral History

Yitzhak Finkel, born in Łódź, Poland in April 1917, describes the bombing of Łódź; the creation of the Łódź ghetto; being arrested with 1,500 others and sent to Czestochowa to work in a weapons factory in 1942; being transported to Skarzysko in 1944 by train and then to Pelzerium by train; the conditions in the camps; his experiences of going to Buchenwald and Terezin; his illness at Terezin; the liberation of Terezin; witnessing the trial of Gunther Fuchs in 1962; and his adjustment to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Fela Finkelshtein

Oral History

Fela Finkelshtein, born in 1921 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses joining the Beitar youth movement; life in the Warsaw ghetto; joining the Irgun Zvai Leumi underground movement, where she received military training and worked as a messenger; how they smuggled weapons into the ghetto and the plan to escape through the sewers; her deportation to Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Birkeanu; being ill with typhoid fever; surviving the death march; escaping and going into hiding; her liberation by the Soviets; traveling through Łódź, Austria, and Italy; her illegal immigration to Haifa; her immigration to Israel; and the psychological effects of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Rivka Freed

Oral History

Rivka Freed, born July 1, 1923 in Łódź, Poland, discusses moving to Paris, France in 1938; moving to Lyon, France with family in 1940; joining the resistance movement FTI-MOI (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main-d' oeuvre Immmigree) in 1942 and working as a liaison officer and smuggling weapons; moving to Grenoble, France in 1943 to create a resistance movement there; providing aid in Marseilles and Nice, France; her mother's arrest and deportation in summer 1942 (she never saw her again); her brother's execution as a Resistant in November 1943; blowing up a military fortification (blockhaus); staying in Marseilles until liberation; returning to Paris to look for her family; her post-war life and experiencing depression; and her awards for partisan actions.

Oral history interview with Anushka Freiman

Oral History

Anushka Freiman, born Anja Schmidt in 1918 in Fenibesh, Lithuania, describes long-term antisemitism in Lithuania; moving to Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania where her sister lived; her marriage to a cellist named Misha Shenkor who had escaped to Kovno from the Germans in February 1940; the Russian occupation of Lithuania; deportations to Siberia by the Russians; her relocation to the Kovno ghetto; her separation from her husband and daughter who both perished; her time in Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia; her transfer to Ochsenzoll (Hamburg area) to work in a munitions factory; her transfer to Stutthof and Bergen-Belsen; her liberation by British forces; becoming a translator for the British; the establishment of a central committee and card catalog to search for survivors; her reunion with her brothers in Johannesburg, South Africa; differences in how she and her brothers wanted to remember their experiences during the Holocaust; and marrying her second husband and moving to Israel between 1966 and 1967.

Oral history interview with Yaakov Freimark

Oral History

Yaakov Freimark describes working in Auschwitz offloading people; the daily life in Auschwitz and the relationships between prisoners; the various personalities of the Kapos at the camp; resistance in the camp, including the bombing of a crematorium; his memories of various transports; the so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz and their extermination; being in a transport arriving in Berlin, Germany during a bombing; marching to Oranienburg, Germany; his experiences in Sachsenhausen; a death march to Buchenwald, then Weimar and Theresienstadt; being liberated; traveling to Łódź; working on a kibbutz and the criteria used to choose people to send to Palestine; smuggling a group of Jews out of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); meeting his wife; his feelings after the war, including guilt and thoughts of revenge; and immigrating to Israel in 1949.

Oral history interview with Alfred Frenkel

Oral History

Alfred Frenkel, born in 1920 in Breslau, Germany (present day Wroclaw, Poland), discusses his family and childhood; joining a Zionist Hechalutz group and studying carpentry; Kristallnacht; trying to leave Germany; his sister being sent to England; being sent to a Jewish organization in Wieringen, Northern Holland in March 1939; his memories of the Klaus Barbie invading Wieringen in March 1941; being taken to Amsterdam, Netherlands and being sent to live with a family by the Judenrat; working as a courier between Amsterdam and Westerburg, Germany; obtaining false papers and traveling to France; joining the French resistance group Armée Juive and his activities; his arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; being marched west during the camp’s evacuation; escaping the march during an air raid; staying in Liebstadt, Germany after liberation; returning to Holland; working for the Joint in France; sailing to Israel; arriving in Haifa and being detained in Atlit; and living on a kibbutz after his release.

Oral history interview with Rudi Fruchter

Oral History

Rudi Fruchter, born March 1922 in Budapest, Hungary, describes antisemitism in Hungary and Romania; being recruited into the Jewish unit of the Hungarian Army; going to the Carpathian mountains as a forced labor group; being deported to Auschwitz to cut hair and translate; singing for the Kapos; moving to a French labor camp near Strassburg and the Maginot Line; returning to the Kochendort German camp October 1944; building camps for Russian POWs; moving by train to Dachau; liberation; looking for friends and family after the war; participating in Yiddish theater; immigrating to Israel; and adjusting to Israeli life.

Oral history interview with Moshe Fuchs

Oral History

Moshe Fuchs, born in 1923, discusses his childhood in Łódź, Poland; his involvement with Hashomer Hatzair; the outbreak of war; spending two years with uncles in various Polish towns, including Staszów, Topiyanova, and Klimontov; his activities in a youth movement; bribing Germans to be taken to Skarzysko; the conditions in the camp; escaping into the woods; his relations with villagers, partisans, and Poles; the partisan movement in winter 1943; being liberated by the Soviets; traveling from Romania to Italy; travelling to Palestine illegally through Egypt; and his post-war life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Kariel Gardosh

Oral History

Kariel Gardosh, born in 1921, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; pre-war antisemitism; outbreak of war in 1939; being conscripted for forced labor in the army; working in central Hungary and then Bor, Yugoslavia (Serbia); building train tracks; being marched back towards Hungary; witnessing exterminations in Zamun, Serbia; being taken to a brick factory; witnessing exterminations in Hungary; escaping in October 1944; being hidden by Hungarian train workers; being liberated by Tito partisans in Serbia; joining their fight; obtaining Russian papers; returning to Budapest; joining the Russian army and entering Budapest; learning the fate of his family; and going to Yugoslavia.

Oral history interview with Esther Gelbelman

Oral History

Esther Gelbelman, born in 1926 in Kishinev, Romania (present day Chişinău, Moldova), discusses the Soviet confiscation of her family’s store; fleeing the city during bombing raids; moving to Domanovka, Ukraine and being forced into the ghetto; living and working conditions in the ghetto; mass killings; the German guards fleeing as the Russians approached in April 1944 and the dispersal of the prisoners; walking to Karlovka, where they were liberated by the Soviets; being asked to testify about what happened in Bogdanovka; returning to Bogdanovka after 20 years; her efforts to have the graves cared for; and her inability to forget.

Oral history interview with Alvin Glazer

Oral History

Alvin Glazer, born in 1919 in Kromeriz, Czechoslovakia, discusses his studies; having to quit school in 1939 due to the German occupation of Prague; changes in everyday life under the Germans; playing a role in Youth Aliyah; the leadership of the Jewish community, including Otto Zucker, Jakob Edelstein, and Yanovitch; being sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto; helping to prepare the ghetto in November 1941; relocating to the Magdeburg Barracks; and living conditions in the camp.

Oral history interview with Menachem Granek

Oral History

Menachem Granek, born in 1914, discusses his childhood in Chepitz, Poland; organizing a Betar youth movement in 1931; his schooling; pre-war antisemitism; joining the Polish Army for two years; being taken as a prisoner of war by Germany; being sent to Lipowa camp in Lublin, Poland in July 1940; escaping the camp and returning home; organizing a resistance group; the head of the Judenrat; being conscripted for forced labor for eight months in 1941 and working on the Autostrada with Russian POWs; being injured and going to a hospital in Sosnowiec, Poland; returning home; going to Sosnowiec; helping with the underground movement; escaping deportation; living under an assumed identity in a Mercedes-Benz work camp in Oppeln, Germany; liberation by the Soviets; and illegally immigrating to Israel via France in 1948.

Oral history interview with Hanna Greishitzki

Oral History

Hanna Greishitzki, born in 1926 in Cluj, Romania, discusses German forces arriving in Cluj in March 1944; the swift implementation of anti-Jewish measures; being forced into the ghetto May 3, 1944; being deported to Auschwitz; conditions on the train; arriving in Auschwitz; being taken to the labor camp Hainichen; working conditions in the factory; atrocities in the camp; marching to trains to take them to Theresidenstadt (Terezin) in April 1945; being very ill; being liberated by Soviets; her life after the war; and dealing with the emotional effects of the war and Auschwitz.

Oral history interview with Pnina Grinshpan

Oral History

Pnina Papler Grinshpan, born in Nowy Dwor near Warsaw, Poland, describes the creation of the Warsaw ghetto and conditions inside the ghetto; managing to get a job working in the Landau furniture factory; how on April 19, 1943, Germans entered the ghetto and prepared to liquidate it entirely; escaping with several fighters through the sewers to join Antek Zuckerman, who was fighting outside the ghetto walls; joining the partisans in the forest and subsequently joining the Polish resistance in the forests; encounters with Soviet soldiers, escaped war prisoners, and local farmers; how her jobs in the forest consisted mainly of sabotage; her husband, Chaim Grinshpan, who was also a ghetto fighter, and their immigration to Palestine via Bucharest, Romania; and her children and grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Willi Groag

Oral History

Willi Groag, born on August 7, 1914, in Olmvetz, Moravia, describes how after Germany invaded Czechoslovakia he tried to leave but was unable to do so; teaching school from 1939 to 1940; going to Hachshara for agricultural training; leaving the farm in January 1942 and anticipating the transport of all Jews from Olmvetz; Willi describes his transport to Terezin, life in the ghetto, his work in the children's house, and transports from Terezin; art in the ghetto and the artists Karl Fleischmann, Peter Kien, Leo Haas, and Ferdinand Bloch; and the Red Cross visits and beautification of the ghetto for those visits.

Oral history interview with Eitan Ginat

Oral History

Eitan Ginat (né Otto Dniyevsky), born in 1920, in Vienna, Austria, describes life in Vienna and the rise of Nazism; his family’s move in 1935 to Belgium, where their father had business connections; his father’s opposition to Zionism; being taken on May 10 with other refugees to a camp in St. Cyprien near the Spanish border; the nearby Gurs camp; being discharged from the camp; he joined the rest of his family near Toulouse; being a student at Montpellier University and emphasizes the strong influence of Zionist organizations; how he and the Zionist Congress members had to go underground when identification papers were required of them; moving to Grenoble, with the help of an Italian Colonel, and registering and living at the university; a training school for counselors that they established and those associated with it who dispersed in August 1943; the extensive underground activities near the university involving moving, hiding Jewish families, and trying to get children to Palestine; being called Toto while he worked with the underground movement; eventually being caught and sent to a labor camp near Karlsruhe, Germany; the war's end and going to Paris, France to complete his PhD; and obtaining a certificate to immigrate to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Tova Gurevitz

Oral History

Tova Gurevitz, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes her observant family and their life in Vilna; the occupation of Vilna on September 1, 1939 by Russians who turned the city over to Lithuanian rule; life in the Vilna ghetto, particularly cultural activities; the music song in the ghetto; deportations from the ghetto to Estonia and the Ponari massacre; leaving the ghetto shortly before its liquidation and spending eight continuous months hiding with ten others in a hole dug under a pig's stall, which was owned by a peasant family that was paid for this accommodation; how they occupied themselves, writing a diary, and the risks they took; moving to another hiding place for two months; eventually being captured by the Russians and returned to Vilna at the end of July 1944; being recruited to teach children Hebrew; going to Łódź, Germany, Prague, and Paris in order to care for Jewish children and to prepare them for immigration to Palestine; and settling in Israel and her adaptation to that country.

Oral history interview with Chaim Gurewitz

Oral History

Chaim Gurewitz, born in Lithuania, describes his family and growing up in Panevezys, Lithuania; the growing antisemitism in the late 1930s; Jewish life in Kaunas in the 1930s; his life in the Kaunas ghetto, how they lived, what they ate, and the tasks they were assigned; executions in the ghetto, including the Ninth Fort massacre on October 29, 1941; the escape of prisoners of war and Jews from the Ninth Fort; being taken to the Landsberg concentration camp; life in the camp; being beaten for stealing potatoes; being moved from Landsberg to Dachau in April 1945; trying to return home after liberation and interrogations by Soviets; going to Munich, Germany and being taken care of by Americans; his attempts to memorialize losses; and the need to educate youth about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Israel Gutmann

Oral History

Israel Gutman, born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1923, describes joining the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement; life in the ghetto, underground activities, and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; his transport to Majdanek and subsequent transport to Auschwitz I; the underground activities in Auschwitz; being evacuated in January 1945 from Auschwitz and his arrival in Mauthausen; being in quarantine; daily life in the camp; being liberated on May 5, 1945, and hospitalized in Linz, Austria; going to Italy with the Jewish Brigade to help out those wanting to immigrate to Palestine; his immigration to Palestine and joining a kibbutz; his thoughts on what it means to be Jewish; and the meaning of heroism during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Shmuel Hacohen

Oral History

Shmuel Hacohen, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands on July 7, 1926, discusses his extended family, most of whom were murdered; the food restrictions at the beginning of the war, National Socialism in Holland, and mobilization of the Dutch army; life in Amsterdam after the German invasion, including activities of the Judenrat; how in January 1941 the registration of Jews was organized by the Dutch Interior Ministry; being transported to Westerbork in April 1943; life in the camp, its hierarchy, hospital, concerts, and opera; his transport to Bergen Belsen; the changing conditions of the camp during his time there; the liberation of the camp; being taken to Risa, north of Leipzig, to a Polish POW camp where he contracted typhoid fever; his return to Holland and the post-war antisemitism; and his immigration to Israel and his long period of adjustment to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Hadar ben Zion

Oral History

Hadar ben Zion, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1936, describes his religious family; the walls of the Warsaw ghetto going up; experiencing hunger, food rationing, and seeing people lying on the street dead in the ghetto; how when he was about five or six, his sister would sneak him out of the ghetto, so they could go and sing in courtyards for money and food which they smuggled back to the ghetto; his older sister’s role as a nurse in the ghetto hospital; how she took him to stay at the hospital to save him the deportation that occurred the following day, during which his family was deported; how the hospital staff and his sister were taken away and he escaped the hospital; escaping the ghetto and meeting other Jewish children, with whom he started a life on the streets buying and selling newspapers, cigarettes, and staying overnight in different places; making his living riding on trains and singing; being liberated by Russians; and his memories riding in a Russian tank through the ruins of Warsaw.

Oral history interview with Shimon Hamel

Oral History

Shimon Hamel, born in September 1907, in Strasbourg, France, describes his childhood in an assimilated middle class family; how he became aware of Judaism through his religion classes in a Protestant school; joining a Jewish scout group and became a leader of the scout group, Hatikva; working on a PhD in chemical engineering; being in the cavalry in 1938 and the disarray in the French army; becoming a chemist in the army in 1939; his belief that in 1940 the Jews of Strasbourg knew what was happening to Jews in Germany and what was in store for them; developing an action plan in the winter of 1941 to open homes for children under age 17; how the aim was to save children and to train them to earn a living in agriculture and trades; buying a farm near Lyon, France and remaining there with 27 children for three and a half years; how in April 1944 the scout organization decided to dispense with the farms because of increasing danger; living on a kibbutz in Israel; and visiting France to meet with friends and family.

Oral history interview with Chaim Hamer

Oral History

Chaim Hamer, born in 1924, in Dorna, South Bukovina, describes Jewish life in Dorna, including speaking Hebrew and being in youth movements; attending school and synagogues; antisemitism when Bukovina was taken by the Russians and retaken by the Romanians; his deportation to Mogilev (Mahiliou, Belarus) in 1941; joining a group of young Zionists in 1942; being ordered to go to Torchin to work in a coal mine; his return to Mogilev and his unsuccessful attempt to lead a group of orphans across the Dniester River; functions of the Judenrat in Mogilev and the Pechora camp; his enlistment with the Soviet Army, reaching Riga, Latvia and Smolensk, Russia; returning to Bucharest, Romania and working with youth groups assisting Jewish immigration to Palestine; and his immigration to Israel, meeting his wife, and life in the early stages of the State of Israel.

Oral history interview with Helena Hammershmash

Oral History

Helena Hammershmash (née Rosenberg), born in Turka, Ukraine, describes her childhood in a religious, well-to-do family; moving to Czechoslovakia at age 15; joining a Zionist youth group; meeting her future husband in Turka; how the Germans entered Turka in 1941; Ukrainian-led pogroms; Nazi-led Aktions and her interrogation and release by the Gestapo; her escape with her husband and baby to Budapest, Hungary; going with her husband to a refugee camp under assumed identities, passing as non-Jewish Hungarians; being taken to Tokay, Hungary, and subsequently deported from a camp near Yugoslavia in April 1944; her arrival in Auschwitz; conditions in the camp and living in Birkenau in Block 13; the social hierarchy in the camp and the female Kapos; being moved to Auschwitz I; the hanging of some of her friend at the end of 1944; being sent on a death march to Bergen Belsen; getting typhoid fever; being liberated by the British; working as a nurse with the British and later Belgian doctors in the tuberculosis ward; how she hid the evidence she had written down and her poems; being sent by UNRRA to study medicine in Munich, Germany; testifying against the SS in a British military court; meeting up with her husband in Rome, Italy; and their journey to Palestine and life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Joseph Hanfeld

Oral History

Joseph Hanfeld, born on December 27, 1921, in Borislav (Boryslav), Ukraine, describes his family; the Zionist youth movement; the relations between Jews and non-Jews in Borislav; his childhood and adolescence; Polish politics before World War II and the roots of antisemitism; what happened to the Jews when the Germans entered Borislav; life under the Russians’ progroms; a large Action in June 1942; the Lvov and Yanov camps; escaping a deportation and continuing to work; the establishment and liquidation of the Borislav ghetto; being sent to the Yanovksa work camp; escaping back to Borislav and being sent to Płaszów; working in salt mines in Walewkie and being sent to Mauthausen, where he worked in the stone quarry; being sent to Linz II camp; being liberated by the Americans at Linz; traveling to Budapest, Hungary in 1945; going to Austria and Italy to lead groups of refugees across borders; spending seven months in Belgium organizing refugee camps; going to Marseille, France, and by boat to Palestine; and his views on war crime trials.

Oral history interview with Avraham Hass

Oral History

Avraham Hass, born in 1923 in Bukovina, Romania, describes his family of Hassidic farmers near the Polish border; life and survival in Ukrainian ghettos; the Judenrat and its uneven treatment of ghetto residents and its collaboration with authorities; his family's expulsion across the Dniester River to Mogilev-Podolskiy, Ukraine; returning home to Soziawa, Romania after liberation and subsequently going to Bucharest, Romania, where he made contact with Hashomer Hatzair, which organized his illegal immigration to Palestine; his detention in a camp in Famagusta, Cyprus; and joining the Haganah and smuggling inmates out of the camp.

Oral history interview with Shalom Hertzberg

Oral History

Shalom Hertzberg, born 1915 in Bedzin, Poland, discusses his prosperous Zionist family; his daily Talmud studies; being an active member of the Zionist youth movement, Noar Zioni; being recruited to the Polish Army in 1938; being imprisoned by Germans in Krakow, Poland; being helped by non-Jews to get a German identity and to escape; the first Aktion on August 12, 1942; being sent to the Blechhammer camp; the death march of January 1945; liberation April 27, 1945; aiding American intelligence to get information from SS prisoners; returning to a normal life; establishing a Massuah in Israel; and early attitudes about the Holocaust in Israel.

Oral history interview with Friedrich Hillman

Oral History

Friedrich Hillman, born in Vienna, Austria in 1919, discusses living in a mixed neighborhood with his parents and his sister; the Germans entering Austria 1938; trying to escape to Czechoslovaka; escaping to Luxembourg; going to Brussels, Belgium with his parents; being sent to a work camp near Perpignan, France in May 1940 and escaping; trying to join the Foreign Legion and cross into Spain; being sent to Drancy and then Auschwitz; going to Gogolin and the conditions there; being sent to Blechhammer; conditions in the camp, including the people, children, women, prostitutes, and black market; hangings in the camp and abuses by Kapos; the escape attempts; going on a three-week march to Gross Rosen; being transported to Buchenwald; the American bombardment of Blechhammer; going to Flossenbürg and Mauthausen; being liberated at Mauthausen; the communist underground at Buchenwald; going to a hospital in Switzerland (St Galien); being reunited with his mother and sister in Brussels; and immigrating to Israel in 1949.

Oral history interview with Nechama Hochbaum

Oral History

Nechama Hochbaum, born 1924 in Stottz, Poland, discusses moving to Lachowicze, Poland (Liakhavichy, Belarus) in 1934; attending a Jewish high school in Baranovic until 1939; life under the Russian regime; the Germans entering the town at the start of the war and the positive reaction from Poles; working under the S.S.; the establishment of a Judenrat; the aktions and escaping with her sister to the forest for two years; finding her mother and brothers in the ghetto and conditions there; escaping another aktion with her mother but being caught and sent to the ghetto; trying to organize the remaining 100 Jews in the ghetto to escape to the forest and their fear; escaping to the forest and her family’s survival there; attempting to join the partisans; being liberated by Soviets spring 1944 and returning to their town; moving to Łódź and then Germany 1945; going through Italy to Palestine and arriving in Israel 1948.

Oral history interview with Peretz Hochman

Oral History

Peretz Hochman, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1927, describes life in Warsaw before the war; his family; attending Cheder and being in Jewish youth organizations; the beginning of the war; the ghetto, hunger, and smuggling of food; his thoughts and plans; leaving the ghetto and how he and a brother survived on the outside by singing in courtyards; the uprising and burning of the ghetto and his escape through the sewers; how in the winter of 1943 he and his brother joined a group of children selling cigarettes; their contact with partisans, who helped them and provided them with identification; joining the Polish rebel army; being taken as a prisoner of war and sent to camp Lamsdorf (Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf) and then Millberg, where they worked in an airplane factory; being liberated by and then joining the Russian Army; traveling to Krakow, Poland; going to Marseille, France and boarding a Turkish boat to Palestine; being caught by the British and transferred to Atlit and then to Kibbutz Shaar Hagolan in 1946; and his family and post-war life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Baruch Hod

Oral History

Baruch Hod (né Baruch Van Der Hoeden), born 1924 in Utrecht, Netherlands, discusses his Zionist upbringing; his happy childhood; his father's secularism and Zionism; attending public school; the cordial relations between Jews and non-Jews; his mother's illness; his father's military draft in 1940; the May 1940 invasion of Holland by Germany; the lack of measures and antisemitism against Jews in Holland prewar; the 1941 restrictions; rationing food; wearing the yellow badge starting in 1942; Jewish schools starting; the deportation of the Jewish community; the knowledge of the existence of concentration camps since 1939; the Westerburg camp in Holland; the local non-Jewish community’s solidarity with their Jewish neighbors; the removal of property; obtaining false papers from the underground and hiding in Holland; the underground movement and his participation starting fall 1943; hiding with non-Jews in several locations, including an impoverished farm in Almelo for six months; briefly staying with his older sister, a nurse who lived as non-Jew; his last visit with his mother (she died in a sanatorium); moving to a farm in Lunteren in fall 1943; his capture by Nazis and torture; his escape and the underground movement finding him a safe place; the invasion of south Holland; the liberation by the Canadians, Americans, and British; reunion with family; the psychological effects of the war; joining the Zionist movement; locating hidden Jewish orphans; helping smuggle Jews and weapons to Palestine; meeting his future wife at a Hechalutz orphanage; immigrating to Israel in 1948 and healing from the war; his career as an educator; and attending a reunion of his underground unit in Holland in the 1970s.

Oral history interview with Itzchak Huberman

Oral History

Itzchak Huberman, born 1929 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family; the start of the war; the German invasion; the Łódź ghetto; deportation to Marichin, a youth village for orphans; living in the ghetto; the disbelief about Auschwitz; summer of 1944 and action in the ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being moved to Braunschweig work camp; the escape attempts; being sent on a death march to Wattenstedt and Ravensbrück in April 1945; outbreak of dysentery; liberation by Americans May 1945; being taken to hospital in Lubbecke, Germany; going to Sweden for training for Israel immigration; his immigration to Israel; adaptation to life in Israel; the War of Independence and his enlistment in the army; and his life since.

Oral history interview with Rachel Kalisher

Oral History

Rachel Kalisher, born in Sokoly, Poland, discusses her education; antisemitism in the public school; her attempt to leave for Israel; the war breaking out in 1939; Germans invading then Russians coming in; the separation of her family due to the “Iron Curtain”; their Russian ID cards; joining the rest of her family with the Russian takeover of Lithuania; the Germany entry into Lithuania; Lithuanian support of Germany; the anti-Jewish laws; being deported in Fall 1941; the Vilna ghetto; stories of the mass killings of Jews by Germans; hiding from forced labor deportations; escaping to the Bialystok ghetto; hiding with a Christian family; the underground movement; the transference of the Vilna ghetto to Lublin in February 1943; hiding in a bunker; arrival of the Russians; searching for a home and being unwelcomed; the remaining 30 Jews in Bialystok; joining the Brechah movement; the arrival of survivors from the camps and the stories emerging; returning to Sokoly; a pogrom in Sokoly by Poles the spring of 1945; joining Dror and being sent to a training farm in Waldenburg; immigrating to Israel with her mother; working with orphan children coming to Israel; joining the Lochamei Hagetaot Kibbutz; teaching school in Israel; and the development of the kibbutz.

Oral history interview with Noach Kaplinski

Oral History

Noach Kaplinski, born in 1909, in Slonim, Poland (now Belarus), describes studying medicine at the University of Vilnius; returning to Slonim when World War II broke out; the Soviet Army entering on September 19,1939; being arrested by the Soviets and expelled to Siberia; returning to Slonim and became the head of the hospital there; the mass murders of Jews after the Nazi occupation; the selection and role of the Judenrat and the Slonim ghetto; being marched with 20,000 Jews from other villages, including Masty, Pisc, Wilkomirsk and other villages, to a camp located between Białystok, Poland, and Wilkomirsk; the starvation and transports from the camps; going into hiding for a while and going into the forest to join the partisans; being liberated by Soviet soldiers; waiting six months for a certificate to go to Palestine; his opposition to relations with Germany; and serving as a witness against war criminals.

Oral history interview with Avivit Kashiv

Oral History

Avivit Kashiv, born in 1932 in Siauliai, Lithuania, discusses her family; visiting Palestine in 1935; the outbreak of war in Lithuania; the withdrawal of the Russians and the German occupation; her father starting a Zionist underground; how in July 1941 wealthy Jews were sent to Siberia; entering the ghetto in Carcas and conditions there; being in a children’s work group; smuggling food into the ghetto and bartering for food; going to another ghetto in Krakov in September 1943; mass murders committed in the ghettos; her deportation to Stutthof concentration camp; daily conditions at Stutthof; her selection for forced labor, digging an anti-tank ditch; the approach of the Russian front and evacuation of the camp; being marched towards Germany; her liberation by the Russians on January 1945; traveling through abandoned villages to Bialystok, Poland and then to Łódź, Poland; her time in Kibbutz Dror and a kibbutz in Landsberg; and her life before and after immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Iakov Kayun

Oral History

Iakov Kayun, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina in January 1905, describes his family and his father’s death in WWI; graduating from business school and working in a bank (Jewrejska Centralna Banka); being drafted in 1926 into the army for 14 months; his various jobs in the 1930s; the beginning of the German occupation; the killing of Jewish community leaders in Sarajevo by Germans and Ustasa; constructing a hiding place in the cellar of a building and creating a passage behind it and with the help; having opportunities to escape but did not want to leave his sister, who was active in the underground; finding out about a major roundup from his sister and their escape to Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina; staying in Mostar for three days and then escaping to Dubrovnik, Croatia; being transported to an internment camp on the island of Rab; life in this camp before and after the Italian capitulation; his underground activities such as leading a group of 405 people to a liberated area of St. Juray (Sveti Juraj); joining the partisans; life under communist rule; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Bronka Klibanski

Oral History

Bronka Klibanski, born in Grodno, Poland (Hrodna, Belarus), in 1923, describes the entry of Germans into Grodno in June 1941; being forced into the ghetto with other Jews on November 1, 1941; entering the ghetto two with her family; being sent to the ghetto in Bialystok, Poland at the end of February; meeting with an underground group and their plans; working in a sewing factory and becoming from malnutrition; being recruited in November 1942 by Mordecai Tenenbaum as a courier and receiving Polish identification papers; passing to the Aryan side and working as a maid; details on Mordecai Tenenbaum and the content of his secret archive, which was discovered and saved; her activities helping people escape from the ghetto, finding sources of weapons for the resistance, and couriering for the Soviet resistance; the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto; her liberation in 1944 in Bialystok; her disappointment after the euphoria of liberation; traveling around Poland to Łódź and Gdansk and visiting displaced persons camps; and her immigration to Israel and work as an archivist at Yad Vashem.

Oral history interview with Jack Klinger

Oral History

Jack Klinger, born on September 22, 1920, in Poland, describes his family and their move to Trier, Germany when he was five; his father experiencing antisemitism and their subsequent move to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in 1934; his family’s move to Paris, France when the Germans arrived in Spain in 1936; his unsuccessful attempt to leave Paris before the German occupation; being among 5000 Jews who were taken by train on May 14, 1941 to Pithiviers concentration camp; details about the camp; being transported in June 1942 to Auschwitz; the Polish underground in the camp, the Canada section, Kapos, and saving his brother multiple times; saving people by falsifying records; being selected to go to Birkenau in June 1942; the population of the camp, daily routine, and his work in the records office; being transferred in October 1944 to the Heinkel Werke airplane factory and from there to Kaufering camp near Dachau; his work; being taken in April 1945 to a camp of Russian POWs; he describes this camp, Buchenberg, and the prisoners' survival until liberation by the Americans; being reunited with his parents; being a witness in the trials of two kapos and of SS Hess; experiencing psychological problems and trying to adjust to normal life; and his later immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Frieda Kobo

Oral History

Frieda Kobo, born in 1921, describes growing up in Salonika (Thessalonike), Greece within a strong Jewish community; how when Hitler came to power no one knew what to do or how to react; being sent to Auschwitz and her role as supervisor for other girls in Auschwitz; her work in the Kanada barrack; working on the train tracks; working in Brzezinka; music she sang in the camp; being marched on January 18,1944 out of Auschwitz to Gleiwitz and from there by train to Ravensbrück; being transported to camp Mecklenburg, escaped the camp and went to Neustadt, Germany; leaving the Russian zone and getting to the American zone, then to Brussels, Belgium and from there to Athens, Greece; her immigration to Israel; writing an account of her Holocaust experience; and her post-war Holocaust experiences in Israel.

Oral history interview with Yehoyakim Kochavi

Oral History

Yehoyakim Kochavi, born in1922, in Berlin, Germany, describes growing up in a non-traditional Jewish family, attending Jewish schools, and encountering antisemitism; being involved in Zionist activities as a young person; leaving for Palestine in 1938 to escape the Nazis; returning to Germany in 1946; learning that his mother had committed suicide and his father had died during the war; living in Israel and not bringing up the past with his children.

Oral history interview with Rivka Kooper (Rivka Liebeskind Kuper)

Oral History

Rivka Liebeskind Kuper (née Shpiner), born in 1920, in Rzeszow, Poland, describes her family and education; her family moving in 1933 to Krakow, Poland, where she attended school and became active in the Zionist youth movement, Akiva; the arrival of the Germans; the establishment of the Krakow ghetto and life there; deportations and joining the ghetto underground; how she looked Aryan and managed to get a false identification with a false name; selling documents to other Jews for money, which they used to buy weapons; being arrested and sent to Birkenau; life in the camp; being sent in November 1943 to Reichenbach and then to work in a Telefunken plant; moving to Hamburg, then to Bergen-Belsen, and finally to Denmark, where she was liberated; moving to Sweden, where she met her second husband and worked with Zionist youth groups; how she became involved in the Haganah; going to Cyprus then to Israel; and her post-Holocaust life.

Oral history interview with Shalom Kooper

Oral History

Shalom Kooper, born in March 1918 in Poland, describes his upbringing in an ardently Zionist family; his family’s move to Łódź, Poland; his unsuccessful attempt to immigrate to Palestine in 1939 shortly after the outbreak of war; the establishment of the Łódź Ghetto and his experiences there; his work in an orphanage in Łódź; the liquidation of the orphanage; cultural activities in the ghetto and the organization of youth movement; communists in the ghetto; working in a nail factory and a strike there; being deported to Auschwitz, where he stayed for two months; encountering one of his former students, Itzchak (Ilyia) Huberman; the camp orchestra and other cultural activities; experiencing a spiritual crisis; his arrival in Braunschweig, Germany, his work at Siemens at night; his journey to Ravensbrück; being liberated in Wobbelin; moving to Sweden and his work in Jewish schools there; being called to testify in the trial against Bokser after the war; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Yehuda Arie (Leo) Koretz

Oral History

Yehuda Arie (Leo) Koretz, born in Hamburg, Germany in July 1928, describes his parents; the fates of family members; how in 1933 his father was appointed chief rabbi in Salonika (Thessalonike), Greece; the implementation of the Nuremberg laws in Salonika in early 1943; the natural ghetto in Salonika; his family being taken to Baron de Hirsch camp, where they stayed until August 2, 1943; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; camp life of Belsen; life in the camp including his jobs, medical care, and the conditions; being evacuated towards the end of the war and his liberation by Soviet soldiers; returning to Salonika and immigration to Palestine; his post-war profession and family; and the rehabilitation of his father's reputation.

Oral history interview with Edit (Dita) Kraus

Oral History

Edit (Dita) Kraus, born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) on July 12, 1929, describes her assimilated Jewish family; going into the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto in 1942; participating in cultural activities in the ghetto, including operas, drawing and painting, and taking art lessons from Friedl Brandeis; the death of many of her older relatives in the ghetto; being sent to Auschwitz in December 1943, where she thought about committing suicide; being moved to a work camp in Hamburg, Germany, where she removed debris of collapsed buildings and worked in distilleries along the Elba River; being sent to another forced labor camp, Neugraben, then camp Tiefstock, and then to Bergen Belsen; her return to Prague; and her immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Mati Landshtein

Oral History

Mati Landshtein, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929, describes her family and attending a Jewish school; the Germans entering Warsaw and his family moving to the ghetto in August 1940; his brother being shot to death; his father’s death in 1942; being put on a child transport to Treblinka; escaping the transport and returning to the ghetto; escaping into the woods in 1942 with a group of children; the German and Polish underground; escaping from the forest and working for two different peasants; the 1945 Russian invasion and returning to Warsaw in search for his brother; going to Łódź and becoming a member of a kibbutz; going by boat in 1947 to Palestine via France and Italy; being detained in Cyprus for four months; going to Israel to Kibbutz Govrin then Jaffe; moving to Germany then Brazil; and his post-war family and life in Brazil and Israel.

Oral history interview with Abraham Larva

Oral History

Abraham Larva, born in 1922, in Siauliai, Lithuania, describes his pre-war life, including joining a Maccabi youth group and attempting to immigrate to Israel; the German entry into Siauliai; being taken to work at a mass burial of Soviet POWs; escaping and working for a peasant, digging ditches at an airport and working in a leather factory until 1943; being sent to work at a camp outside of the ghetto; returning to the ghetto, where he worked in a tannery; life in the ghetto, including schools, songs, weddings, court, hospital, births, and abortions; escaping from the ghetto to the forest with a group of six; life in the forest and meeting with Lithuanian communists who gave them food and weapons; being liberated and joining the Russian Army; returning to a burned-out Siauliai; going to the Landsberg displaced persons camp; receiving a visa from his aunt to go to the United States; and his family and life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Naftali Lavie

Oral History

Naftali Lavie, born on June 23, 1926, in Kraków, Poland, describes living in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland; how his father was the rabbi of the community in 1935; his Bar Mitzvah in July 1939 in Krakow and what he saw on the way to Krakow and Jewish life in the city; the beginning of the war, including bombings and people fleeing to Russia; the creation, operation, and liquidation of the ghetto there; violence in the ghetto; the burning of synagogues; the expanding population in Piotrków Trybunalski and a typhus epidemic; life in Auschwitz, where he stayed in Block 23 for forty days; Birkenau and how he got out; hearing stories about Chelmno; transports from the ghetto to Treblinka; being transported from the ghetto to Czestochowa with his brother; being evacuated and sent to Buchenwald; the things he carried in his bag; being in Block 52 in Buchenwald then transferred to Block 8; his several jobs; working in Dora-Mittelbau; escaping from an evacuation train; going to Jena, Germany; coming down with typhoid fever; recuperating in a sanitarium in France, near Normandy; and his immigration to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Genia Lebel

Oral History

Genia Lebel, born in June 1927, in Nis, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), describes living in Nis until she finished kindergarten and the family returned to Belgrade, Serbia; the sudden bombing of Belgrade and the German entry on April 12, 1941; joining her old kindergarten teacher, Yelena, who was working for the partisans; obtaining documents and a new identity; the partisans' organization and their publication and leaflets; being arrested with Yelena on February 22, 1943; her interrogation and torture; being transferred through Serbia-Croatia to Mariburg on the River Drava and the conditions there; her escape, recapture, and transfer to a labor camp; assuming a new identity (Yoran Kalagy from Wiener-Neustadt); her assignments and how her translating skills helped her out on many occasions; going to Berlin, Germany and the bombardments there; how the Gestapo housed them in 31 Oranienburg near the Berlin synagogue that was burned during Kristallnacht; returning to Belgrade; experiencing survivor’s guilt; going back to school; working as a journalist for the paper Politika; seeing Jewish suffering, communism, and antisemitism in postwar Yugoslavia; being a political prisoner and writing a book on that period; being held on Goli otok and Sveti Grgur, where she experienced beatings and hard labor; and her immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Juergen Levenstein

Oral History

Juergen Levenstein, born in Berlin, Germany 1925, describes joining a Hachshara (Zionist) group to prepare to immigrate to Israel; antisemitism in Berlin after 1938; the closing of the Hachsara group; working in a farm work group in Schnibichen then Grutens; his deportation to Birkeanu; going to Buna to work in the rubber factory; going to Zgoda to work in the cannon factory; being ill in Auschwitz; transferring to Monowitz to work in a factory; being transported to Mauthausen to avoid the oncoming Soviet forces; the liberation by the United States Army; walking to Linz, Austria; being hospitalized for a year with tuberculosis; immigrating to Israel; feelings about post-war Germany; and reflections on what occurred.

Oral history interview with Chaim Levkowitz

Oral History

Chaim Levkowitz, born April 23, 1921 in Vlonia, Poland, describes the bombing of the town September 1, 1939; the creation of the ghetto; racial laws; the Judenrat; the Jewish police; moving to twelve camps; working in an ammunition factory; working on the Autostrada roadways; marching out of Langenscheid as American forces approached; liberation by the Americans; and the effects and lessons of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Azriel Levy

Oral History

Azriel Levy, born June 1923, describes his life and schooling in Kovno, Poland (Kaunas, Lithuania); the Soviet occupation; German occupation in June 1941; the creation of the ghetto; ghetto institutions and living; joining the partisan movement; getting caught and deported to Landsberg-am-Lech concentration camp in July 1944; escaping from a train to Dachau in April 1945; liberation by the Allies; immigrating to Palestine (Israel); and not discussing the Holocaust until the early 1990s.

Oral history interview with Vera Levy

Oral History

Vera Levy, born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), discusses growing up with a Zionist family; the German invasion; what happened to different members of her extended family; the difference between Italians and Croats, between “occupation” and “annexation”; the difficult winter of 1942; escaping to Split, Croatia and life there; being shipped by the Carabinieri between August and November of 1942 by boat along the Adriatic to Zadar, Ipag (Pag Island), and north to Novi Grad (Bosanski Novi) along the Sava River; being guarded by local Italian authorities; being isolated to be kept from partisan influence; being deported to camp Kalinska; self-rule and institutions within the camp; moving to the Island of Rab, Yugoslavia (modern Croatia); being guarded by Italian fascists; the uprising against the fascists when Italy gave up; the youth joining the partisans; remaining people at Rab Island being shipped to Auschwitz; returning to Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1945; moving to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (modern Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1948; and immigrating to Israel in 1950.

Oral history interview with Uziel Lichtenberg

Oral History

Uziel Lichtenberg, born February 1916, discusses his Jewish family’s history in Poland; his family moving to Łódź, Poland in 1929; joining the Polish Army 1938; fighting against Nazis; being taken prisoner and sent to Stalag 2-A; arriving in the Łódź ghetto; escaping to Warsaw March 1940; going to the Kibbutz Grokhuv near Warsaw on the Vistula River; working with the youth Zionist group; leaving the ghetto and going to Slovakia near Poprad; being assigned to visit Slovakia and to organize the youth over the age of 18 for the Maccabi organization; fleeing to Hungary; receiving papers as a Christian Pole to live in Budapest; what happened to his parents in Łódź; being arrested in 1942 and taken to the Hodik military fortress in Buda as a suspect of espionage; being sent to other prisons in Hungary; being released from prison and being part of the Zionist underground in Hungary; and his journey through Constantinople to Israel.

Oral history interview with Eda Lichtman

Oral History

Eda Lichtman (née Fiszer; also known as Ada Lichtman), born 1915 in Jaroslav, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), discusses the German invasion; being caught by the Germans; being transported to Sobibor and arriving in the camp; the treatment of prisoners by Ukrainian guards; the camp and living conditions; Eichmann’s visit to the camp; a group of painters from France and Belgium; preparing for the revolt; a prisoner uprising in Sobibor on October 14, 1943; escaping to join the partisan movement; liberation; life after the camps; immigrating to Israel; and her experiences educating people about Sobibor.

Oral history interview with Eliezer Lidovski

Oral History

Eliezer Lidovski, born October 18, 1908 in Zhetel, Poland (now Dziatlava, Belarus), discusses the arrival of the Soviet troops; being identified as a leader of the Zionist movement; accusations and questioning by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) of the Soviet Union; being spared exile to Siberia; being cleared of all charges and his passport was returned; being caught by Germans in Minsk, Belarus; being sent to a military camp outside of Minsk; fleeing the camp; living in the Baranowice ghetto; living with partisans in Rovno, Poland (Ukraine); participating in the NAKAM (the Jewish Avengers); living in Italy with the Jewish Brigade; being caught by the British; internment in Cyprus; immigration to Israel; and adjustment to a new life.

Oral history interview with Otto Lingfelder

Oral History

Otto Lingfelder, born on November 29, 1915, in Jakovo, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), describes his early life and the Jewish community of Jakovo; moving to the city of Osijek, Croatia when he was a teenager; his vivid memory of the terrible day when the Germans came to Jakovo in their motorized units; trying escape to the Italian occupied territory with false documents; being taken by the Ustashi one night when they came bursting into the house looking for him; being transported by freight train with many others to Gospic, Croatia and worked several weeks for the local peasants; being rounded up after seven weeks and shipped to Jasenovac in August or September of 1941; living in Jasenovac I, the original section, and the poor living conditions there; his work at the camp, which included building, fencing, and enlarging the camp; working in a shoe shop that was later transferred to Stara Gradiska, Craotia, where he worked for several months; remaining in Stara Gradiska until 1943 when the boot shop was transferred to Lepoglav, Croatia; being sent back to Jasenovac; being transported at the end of 1944 to a factory manufacturing armored vehicles; the massacre of prisoners in Jasenovac; how on April 22, 1945 the last remaining inmates made a prison break, and details about their escape; running with two friends to the forest as the partisans made their attack; being held prisoner by the partisans and sent to Slavonski Brod, Croatia then Lupanje and Osijek; and being released and returning to his home.

Oral history interview with Yehoshua Lior

Oral History

Yehoshua Lior, born in 1923 in Lachva (Lakhva), Belarus, describes Lachva and the Jewish community there; life under Soviet rule from 1939 to 1941; the Wehrmacht entering the city on June 8, 1941 and how they took all men fourteen years and older to work; the creation of the ghetto on Passover eve in 1942; his current mission to publicize the Lachva ghetto so that others will know about it; the resistance movement in the ghetto and its young leader, Yitzhak Rochzyn; the revolt during the night of September 2-3, 1942; his escape and encounters with partisans who were not willing to accept him and shot some escapees; the death of his family in the ghetto; joining the Red Army and moving through several countries after the war, including Cyprus; testifying at war crime trials; and immigrating to Palestine in 1947.

Oral history interview with Menashe Lorenzy

Oral History

Menashe Lorenzy, born in 1934, in Kluzh, Hungary (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), describes his family and his twin sister, Lea; the persecution of Jews by Hungarians and Romanians; the large Jewish community in Kluzh; his father being sent to do forced labor; the Kastner family and the later Kastner trial; being ordered to go to the ghetto in Czilastnocho; the liquidation of the ghetto after two months and being sent with the other inmates to Auschwitz; being marched out of Birkenau to the forest where they were liberated by the Russian Army; going to Katowice, Poland, and was taken with Italian prisoners of war to Belarus to the Slutsk prison camp; his post-war life and family; and how his Holocaust experiences influenced his thinking about the wars in Israel.

Oral history interview with Clara Ma'ayan

Oral History

Clara Minskberg Ma'ayan, born on December 7, 1915, in Rzeszów, Poland, describes participating in Hanoar Hatzioni; attending the Institute for Judaic Studies in Warsaw; becoming a teacher and worked in the orphanage headed by Janusz Korczak; the Germans entering Rzeszów and her family members being taken to do forced labor; the drowning of Jews on Yom Kippur in 1939; trying to escape the city with her father; the secret meetings of the Hanoar Hatzioni; working in the ghetto and the Judenrat; escaping to Lvov (Lviv), Ukraine, and reuniting with other youth movement leaders from all over Poland; going to Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in January 1940; her father’s death from dysentery; obtaining false documents from the Japanese ambassador stationed in Vilna and a representative from the Netherlands; returning to the Lvov ghetto, where she worked; getting married; being taken with her husband to Czortkow forced labor camp for three months; hangings in the Lvov ghetto; leaving the ghetto with false papers; living with a Polish woman as a Pole and traveling to Warsaw, Poland; the ghetto in Warsaw; the uprising in August 1944; immigrating through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania to Palestine on the ship Transylvania; her post-war family; and the relationship of Israelis with the subject of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Benjamin Maierchik

Oral History

Benjamin Maierchik, born in 1917 in Wloclawek, Poland, describes his pre-war family life and the Jewish community of Wloclawek; studying engineering to prepare for immigration to Israel and attending school in Warsaw; joining a Polish artillery unit; escaping and going to Mezerich; going to Brest, Belarus and his work there; moving to L'viv, Ukraine in Spring 1940; being arrested by the Soviets and sent to Rybinsk, where he was part of the project to build the port; Turgenievo camp; the conditions in Turgenievo; joining the Red Army in September 1942 and being sent to the Caucasus and Uzbekistan; joining the Free Polish Army; participating in actions in Smolensk, Russia, in the liberation of Warsaw and Poznan, and in a victory parade in Prague; Polish antisemitism; his journey to Palestine in 1948; and fighting in the Israeli War of Independence.

Oral history interview with Abraham Maneleh

Oral History

Avraham Maneleh, born in Benjin (Bedzin), Poland, in 1922, describes his early life and attending school; joining the Gordonia youth movement, a Zionist movement, in 1940; the German occupation of the city and the ghetto; being a member of the leadership of the underground resistance organization, which had a way of saving Jews by obtaining false certificates from Switzerland; receiving a certificate of Paraguayan citizenship; the efforts to save other Jews; being sent with some of his friends to a camp for alien citizens called Titmonic, in upper Bavaria in May 1943; conducting communal life and corresponding with people in Switzerland, Palestine, and Benjin; receiving food from the Red Cross; going for hikes, holding sport activities, and participating in cultural activities under German surveillance; staying in the camp for two years until liberation by the American Army in May 1945; how in the post-war period he helped survivors organize Zionist movements in places like Landsberg and Bergen-Belsen; and going to Palestine where he helped found the Kibbutz Netzer Sereni.

Oral history interview with Hela Manesberg

Oral History

Hela Manesberg (née Finder), born in 1923 in a village near Bochnia, Poland, describes her family; attending school in Bochnia; how in 1939 the Volksdeutsche in the village took all Jewish property; her family’s move to one room in their maid's home; working in the forest; how in 1942 her mother, brother, and sister were taken on a transport after the first action; escaping with her brother and living together in the ghetto until November 1942, where she worked in a knitting workshop; being taken during the third action and transported to Trzebinia near Auschwitz; her arrival at the camp, searches, and physical exams; being taken by train to Auschwitz; escaping the train and returning to Auschwitz as a non-Jewish Pole; being interrogated by Germans and sent to jail in Wadowice, Poland, where she worked for the city as a cleaning woman; being released from jail and going by train to Kalvarija, Lithuania in May 1944; escaping from one Polish family to another, fearing discovery; the Germans retreating and killing all the Poles in the village where she stayed; returning to Bochnia and reuniting with her brother who returned from Siberia; her post-war marriage; and her move to Israel.

Oral history interview with Iehudit Maraton

Oral History

Iehudit Maraton, born in 1936 in Reghin, Romania, describes her family; the Jewish community in Reghin; the increase in antisemitism when the Hungarians came; the arrival of Jewish work groups in 1943; the Germans entering her town in 1944; being sent to the ghetto and life there; being sent to Birkenau on May 31, 1944; her arrival at Birkenau and the selection, showers, and supervision by Slovakian Jewish women; being transported after four days to Płaszów, where she worked in the quarry; being marched out to Gross Rosen, where they stayed for two weeks; being transported to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British Army; and her return to Reghin, Romania to search for her family.

Oral history interview with Yehuda Marshand

Oral History

Yehuda Marshand, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands on September 27, 1914, describes his family; his childhood; working for a firm that imported metals; meeting his wife, Hetti, in 1935; the arrival of Jewish refugees from Germany in 1938; joining the Dutch Army and becoming an officer; how after the Germans occupied Holland, he met a woman in Amersfoort who was active in the underground and a nobleman who agreed to give him his name so he would have a new identity; living in hiding with a Christian family; going in 1943 to Groningen, where he had to give his documents to the manager of the hotel who had to give them to a German policeman; being captured and sent to 's-Hertogenbosch camp, where Yehuda worked for the Philips factory; being sent to Westerbork, and then Birkenau, Monowitz, Gleiwitz, Dora, and Nordhausen; his post-war life; and immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Fredka Mazia

Oral History

Fredka Mazia, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes her early Jewish life and Zionist activities; her family’s attempt to leave Sosnowiec but returning home; the German invasion and administration and the establishment and functioning of the Judenrat; her husband, Yuz’ak, and his role in the Judenrat; helping in a hospital; the creation of the ghetto in 1943; deportations including one on August 12, 1942; joining the underground, attempting to help Jews escape; the death of her husband in August 1943; being arrested on a train to Krakow, Poland and imprisoned in Tchebinia then Katowice, where she was interrogated; her attempted suicide; being sent to Myslowice then back to the ghetto in Sosnowiec; returning to Katowice, from there to Zverdin and then to Budapest; getting certificates to go to Palestine by train from Budapest via Istanbul, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon, and from there by taxi to Palestine; her reception in Palestine, her work in Italy assisting refugees, and her post-war experiences in Israel; and her feelings about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Iasha Mazubi

Oral History

Iasha Mazubi, born in 1920, in Czuczewicze in Byelorussia, describes his family and childhood; being sent by the Soviets to Lida; the bombing of Lida; how after the German invasion he escaped and returned to Czuczewicze; the Judenrat; the May 1942 assembly and selection of 2000 Jews who were executed; being among the young who were selected to work; the states of mind of people in the ghetto; organizing a group to escape and joining the partisans; life with the partisans and actions in which he participated, such as exploding bridges and trains; how they got ammunition; recruiting young men from the ghetto; a German action against the partisans in August 1943; the Bielski partisans; the deportation of all the Jews from Czuczewicze, including his family, were taken to Lida and then to Sobibor where they were killed; joining the Russian Army and being sent to Lida to be the administrator of a plant and stayed there until May 5; helping to organize the escape of Jews through Austria and Italy to Palestine; getting married in Italy in 1948; and going on a false passport to Israel, where he worked in the arms industry until retirement.

Oral history interview with Moshe Meler

Oral History

Moshe Meler, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1922, describes his family and being raised Orthodox; being aware of the deportation of Polish Jews from Germany in 1933; the start of the war; the establishment and functioning of the Warsaw Ghetto and its gradual extermination; working in road construction; conditions in the ghetto; being transferred to work in a nearby Opel factory, from which he was able to make periodic visits to the Ghetto; eventually being sent to Majdanek concentration camp and life there; working in a Hasag ammunition plant and being transferred to other labor camps including Skarzysko; being moved to Radom, Poland, into a prison only for a night; being sent to a place near the Felitzia River, where they had to dig trenches against tanks; being moved again to a transition camp, Sedziszow; being in Sedziszow for several months before being moved to Myslowice, where the Hasag factory was located; being moved again to Buchenwald and to Schlesien, and ultimately to the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia; being liberated by Americans; his immigration to Israel; and his post-war work life.

Oral history interview with Itzchak Meres

Oral History

Itzchak Meres, born on October 8, 1932 in Kelme, Lithuania, describes his religious family and attending a Jewish school; the arrival of the Germans; an action in July 1941, during which women and children were taken to a huge barn from where they were taken out in groups and shot, including his mother; escaping the ghetto with his sister; the efforts of a Lithuanian woman and husband to hide them; being handed from one family to another; being taken in by a Lithuanian family who had six children, and staying with them until 1947; keeping in touch with his sister who was taken in by another family; life with a Catholic family, going to church, and learning to pray; and his post-war years; becoming a writer and having difficulty writing about Jewish themes; his novel “Zheltiy Loskut,” which is about life in the Vilnius ghetto; and his life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Ya'akov Michaeli

Oral History

Ya'akov Michaeli, born in Warsaw, Poland, in December 1929, describes his family; the beginning of World War II and going to live with an aunt in the Praga neighborhood, where he worked; having to go back to the ghetto in Warsaw; the typhus epidemic; how he and other youngsters sold things outside the ghetto and smuggled food; escaping to a village from the ghetto with the assistance of a Polish woman; passing as a Christian and working as a shepherd; receiving a false birth certificate from a Polish friend in Praga; moving back to Warsaw, living with a Polish woman, and working as a trader; the ghetto uprising; remaining in Praga; the German retreat in August 1944 and the Russians arrival; joining the Polish underground; being taken prisoner by the Nazis; the POW camp near an Opel factory; his transfer to camp Milberg, where he worked in an airplane factory near Dresden, Germany; being freed on May 3; his work at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) camp in Italy; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Litman Mor

Oral History

Litman Mor, born in 1917, in David-Gorodok, Belarus, describes his schooling at Hebrew school; being in the Zionist youth movement; going to Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1931 to attend school; antisemitism in 1933; the presumed and assorted escape options from Vilna during the late 1939 to early 1940 period; how at that time he was more afraid of the Russians who then deported Jews to Siberia than of the Germans; remaining in Vilna and obtaining assorted jobs in order to be saved from forced labor deportation; life in the Vilna ghetto and the crowded conditions; being a member of a five person underground cell working for the Judenrat and printing underground leaflets; escaping from the ghetto and going into the woods where he joined the partisans; being given assignments involving intelligence, getting food, collecting ammunition, and sabotaging airports and trains behind enemy lines; leaving the partisans at the end of the war; attitudes of the partisans towards Jews; spending time as a POW interpreter, assisting refugees to emigrate, and returning to his home and discovering the fate of his family; and his feelings toward Germans, Germany, and the emotional effects of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Yosef Morgenshtern

Oral History

Yosef Morgenshtern, born on July 8, 1922 in Subotica, Serbia, describes his family and living in Sremska Mitrovica; the German arrival on April 22, 1941, prior to which his father was then arrested and taken to a camp near Osijek; being arrested with his brother by the Ustashi; the family being taken to Zagreb, Croatia and put into prison; how his family had provided housing to two Jews who fled Germany in the 1930s; being transferred to Gospic; being transported after 20 days to Jasenovac II and his work there; the atrocities at Jasenovac, where he was held for about two months; being sent to Stara Gradiska, where he and his brother were assigned to work at the 'economy,' farm work; witnessing the murder of his brother; his life after liberation, including spending three years with the partisans and having various jobs; and going to Israel in 1947.

Oral history interview with Yehuda Mymon

Oral History

Yehuda Mymon, born in 1924 in Kraków, Poland, describes his family; the Jewish community in Kraków; his desires to go to Palestine in 1938 when he was a young scout leader; his knowledge of what was happening in Europe but did not believe it would reach Poland; the beginning of the war and the closing of schools; the underground schools and joining the Akiba movement; the family’s move in fall 1940 out of the ghetto to the suburbs; passing as a non-Jewish Pole and working for the army in road repair; joining the partisans and the actions in which he participated; being arrested and imprisoned; being sent to Auschwitz III, Buna IG Farben factory, where he joined the underground organization; going to the Gleiwitz camp; escaping and being imprisoned by the Soviets; joining a kibbutz group in Bucharest, Romania; joining the 'Revenge' group (Nakam) headed by Abba Kovner, and assisting refugees on their way to Palestine; details about the group’s plans; his feelings of loss at liberation; immigrating to Israel; his return to Poland in 1963 as an Israeli diplomat; and his reunion with a Polish family that had hidden him.

Oral history interview with Alfred Naar

Oral History

Alfred Naar, born in 1919, in Saloniki (Thessalonike), Greece, describes his family; battling antisemitism; life in the Jewish community; joining the army in 1940 and participating in the war between Greece and Italy; being sent to front near Bulgaria when the war with Germany started; "Black Saturday" in Greece when the Germans collected Jews and imposed special rules; how his family was taken to the ghetto and were transported to Birkenau; his arrival in Birkenau in February 1943; going through the selection process and conditions in the camp; his memories of Kapo Zeppel; meeting Mengele; the sonderkommando; marching to Auschwitz and the subsequent train ride to Warsaw, where he worked in the ruins of the ghetto; the march from Warsaw to Kutno and from there by train to Dachau; being sent to Muhldorf to a work camp; the American bombardments of Munich and the Muhldorf works; being put on a transport train to Poking; being liberated by the Americans; the killing of Germans by the camp inmates; being smuggled by the Jewish Brigade to Italy and from there on the boat Arlozorov to Palestine; being brought to Cyprus by the British; and arriving in Palestine in March 1948.

Oral history interview with Zvi Naor

Oral History

Zvi Naor, born on September 14, 1924, describes his family; living in Tyszowce, Poland; the burning of their town by the gentiles and moving to Komorov (Komarów-Osada); the arrival of the Germans and the establishment of anti-Jewish rules; being moved into a ghetto; going with his family to Tushab (possibly Tuczapy, Poland); the German’s arrival in Tushab; the murder of many Jews, including his mother, and hiding during the massacre with his sister; finding his friend Shimon; going to live in the Rubyeshov ghetto; going to Budzyn concentration camp; working in road paving; a plan to escape the camp; the execution of many people; being sent to Myelitz camp (possibly Myslowice) and the cruelty of the Jewish guards there; being sent at the beginning of 1944 to Vyelizka (Wieliczka) for several weeks then Flossenbürg; conditions in Flossenbürg; being moved to Litomerice, where he stayed for 10 months; his work in Litomerice and his experiences receiving medical care; being moved to Theresienstadt in April 1945; being liberated by the Russians; going to Italy before immigrating to Palestine; his reflections on his experience and teaching the Holocaust; and testifying in a war crimes trial in Germany after the war.

Oral history interview with Shoshana Naor

Oral History

Shoshana Naor, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes her family; experiencing antisemitism; Kristallnacht; being sent by her family to Denmark where she stayed with a few different families in Copenhagen and in the countryside; her correspondence with her parents and sister; the Danish underground moving her to Sweden where she decided to study to become a nurse; specializing in midwifery; learning the fate of her mother from the Red Cross and trying to immigrate to Israel through Belgium and France; arriving in Haifa after an arduous journey, but not being allowed to disembark; being sent to Cyprus; eventually going to Palestine; and why she felt she survived.

Oral history interview with Menachem Ofen

Oral History

Menachem Ofen, born in Debica near Krakow, Poland, discusses being a member of Hashomer Hadati; organizing an underground Yeshiva in his attic in the Tarnow ghetto; being involved in religious and spiritual resistance until the summer of 1942; how at the end of 1942 all Jews went into the ghetto in the poor section of town; being sent to Czechowice to work in an airplane factory; work conditions, life in the work camp, and his state of mind; being sent to Flossenbürg, Muhlhausen, Sachsenhausen, Braunschweig, and Bergen Belsen; the liberation of Bergen Belsen; his immigration to Israel; and his thoughts about survivor syndrome.

Oral history interview with Eili Ofner and Francis Ofner

Oral History

Francis Ofner, born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), describes being raised by his grandparents in Schimanovski; his memories of World War I; his university studies in the 1930s; joining Zionist student organizations; studying law in Zagreb, Croatia; founding a revisionist group in Zagreb, which gave paramilitary training; developing the organization called Beitar all over Yugoslavia; the debate between Jabotinski and Weitzmann; Beitar's plans to kill Hermann Goering when he came to Zagreb, but he did not come; the head of the Joint, Spietzer, and how they bribed officials to give permits to refugees to go to Sabac, Serbia; establishing escape routes for refugees; his work in intelligence and his contact with Yugoslavian Intelligence; Germany entering Yugoslavia March 27, 1941; escaping with his wife to Budapest, Hungary, where he managed to get a visa to Turkey; the massacre of Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad; his meetings with Kalman Iure, Immanuel Springman, and Yoel Brand; their rescue work and illegal immigration activities in Turkey; being assigned to monitor radio transmissions; propaganda in occupied countries; and his various activities in Turkey during the war. Eilie Ofner, born in 1915, discusses her early life in a philanthropic Zionist family; her music studies; her life in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia after the German invasion and the massacre of Jews and Serbians in Novi Sad; meeting her husband and working to help refugees; Schimon Brod, a Turkish citizen and his help in rescue efforts; and the rescue of Romanian Jews.

Oral history interview with Leonid Okon

Oral History

Leonid Issakovich Okon, born in 1929 in Minsk, Belarus, describes his family; the purges in the late 1930s; the bombing of Minsk when the war started; the German entrance into the city on June 28, 1941 and the hanging of Jews in those first days; the pogroms; the creation of a ghetto; how in 1942 Germans brought Jews from Hamburg and put them in a separate area of the ghetto; working at the Kroll factory carrying cement bags; how in early 1942, a Russian woman, whom his mother paid, took Leonid to the woods, where he found three partisans (two groups included the Belski and Zorin units); performing various missions inside the ghetto that included carrying messages and radio equipment; seeing the hanging of his mother and brother in Minsk; partisan operations and German attacks; joining a group of Soviet Army intelligence agents, who parachuted into partisan territory and served as their guide; how after Minsk was liberated he learned that his father was still alive; the post-war period investigations by the KGB; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Miriam Pinkoff

Oral History

Miriam Pinkoff, born in 1916, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, describes her family, which has been in Holland since the 16th century; her parents and siblings; growing up on a farm; attending school; teaching in Orvacker School in Bilthoven, Netherlands with Jopp Westerwelt and his wife; the arrival of Jewish refugee children in 1938; returning to Loosdrecht, Netherlands in 1940 to start a school, which allowed Jewish children; becoming interested in Judaism and Zionism; her family’s reaction to the war and the fate of her siblings; the help of the non-Jewish population; her husband’s book; being part of the Dutch underground; hiding fifty children and assisting people to escape; trying to escape to southern France; being arrested and imprisoned in Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen; her life and work in Bergen-Belsen; the Chalutz group in the camp; being evacuated by train and being evacuated after two weeks; immigrating to Palestine; and adapting to life in Israel. The recording ends with a group meeting between Miriam and her three adult children and includes their reaction to the tapes as well as a discussion of how the Holocaust experience affected the family.

Oral history interview with Iakov Politzer

Oral History

George Politzer, born in April 5,1930 in Cadca, Slovakia, describes his family; attending a Jewish school; having a normal life until 1938; the Jewish community in Cadca; his Orthodox father and progressive communist mother; experiencing antisemitism from schoolmates; the arrest of his mother by the Slovenians in the early 1940s, her release after three months, and her escape to Budapest, Hungary; meeting people who escaped from Auschwitz in 1941 and how no one wanted to believe their stories; fleeing four months after his mother left; leaving in the spring of 1942 and going to Budapest; hiding separately from his parents in an institution for mentally challenged children; his father being caught with his false papers; going to live in Mukacheve, Hungary (now Ukraine) to live with his grandparents; being arrested after the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944; being deported and the journey in a cattle car; going through selection and pretending to be older than he was; receiving a number and being sent to the kinderblock when the guards realized his age; a scarlet fever epidemic; fighting to survive for the sake of his parents; getting sick, being temporarily hidden by his boss, but eventually being sent to the hospital; meeting with one of his previous nannies, who lived in Birkenau and worked in the Canada block; the people he met in the camp; contracting a rare disease; the murder of the Romanies in Lager A; hearing about the uprising in Birkenau; rumors of sexual assault in the camp; his weight loss in the camp; a huge selection in October 1944 and convincing Mengele not to kill him; being sent to work in Heinkel factory in Oranienburg, Germany; being attacked by a dog and hospitalized for three months; being shipped to Mauthausen; escaping the camp when the guards ran away one night; going to Wels, Austria; being treated by German prisoners of war in Hershing (possibly Hörsching); staying in a monastery in Melk for several days; his despair at hearing about his mother’s death; the loss of his faith; returning to Cadca; living in Zilina, Slovakia; smuggling Jews from Hungary to Israel; going to Israel; working on a kibbutz; and his thoughts on Israel.

Oral history interview with Artur Posnanski

Oral History

Artur Posnanski, born on July 30, 1912, in Berlin, Germany, describes his family; being part of a Jewish organization (ILI); working for a Jewish social agency and taking 120 children to Denmark in 1935; bringing 30 children to Sweden in 1938; saving his parents eight times from transports; going to Hafilberg in the province of Brandenburg in 1938; going back to Berlin, where he was conscripted into forced labor; his brother going to Palestine illegally; being transported to camp Monowitz (a sub-camp of Auschwitz); the bombing of his barracks by the English; scarlet fever in the camp; selections in the camps; being moved to Buchenwald; being liberated and the condition of camp at the time of liberation; his post-war family life and immigration to Israel; and his views on post-war Germany.

Oral history interview with David Pur

Oral History

David Pur, born in Siaulai, Lithuania in October 1924, describes his family and childhood memories; being in the Shomer Hazair youth group; the arrival of Jewish refugees; how in 1940 the Russians entered Siaulai and in 1941 the first German bombing occurred; his family's attempted escape to Russia; being caught by Lithuanian partisans and brought to a prison in Siaulai; the move to the ghetto; life in the ghetto and functions of the Judenrat; the beginning of an underground group, the leadership, and different functions of the group; the Massada and their relationship with partisans; being transported to Stutthof, then Dachau, and then a camp near Utting (Kaufering V), where 400 to 500 Jews from Siaulai were held; being taken back to Dachau; the death march from Dachau and being liberated by the American Army; helping to organize groups in displaced persons camps to go to Israel; going on a boat from France to Israel but being taken by the British to Cyprus; the fate of his mother and sister; eventually getting to Israel; and meeting his wife and her story.

Oral history interview with Masha Putermilech

Oral History

Masha Putermilech (née Gleiterman), born in Warsaw, Poland, describes her mother’s active membership in the BUND; her father being apolitical; her wonderful childhood; being in a youth group; living on Nalewki Street; being 15 years old when the war began; the establishment of the ghetto in Warsaw; working as a seamstress and hiding; being recruited into the fighting organization in the Warsaw ghetto; the ghetto uprising and escaping from the ghetto to Lumyanky, a young forest with short trees; moving 50 kilometers to the Vishkov forest on the bank of the Bug River; meeting Russian partisans; how they obtained food and survived in the forest; meeting her future husband in the forest and how he took care of her and helped her survive; the Warsaw uprising and liberation by the Soviets; immigrating to Israel; and the memorial for the fighters who died in the rebellion of the Warsaw ghetto.

Oral history interview with Emmanuel Racine

Oral History

Emmanuel Rassin, born in Moscow, Russia to a bourgeois family, describes his memories of the Russian Revolution; his family moving to Paris, France; attending a French boarding school; getting married; joining the army when he was 27 and going to the from for nine months in 1939; his family’s Jewish faith; belonging to the Jewish Zionist scouts led by Robert Gamzon; trying to escape to Morocco with other influential individuals from Bordeaux but being unable to do so; moving to Marseilles and joining the French resistance; the organization of the underground; arranging for forged papers for the combat group and helping Jews escape over the Pyrenees; working with monasteries to hide groups of children; going to Nice then Aiz le Bain; working with Gamzon and Levi to develop an escape route for groups of children into Switzerland; his sister being caught and her death in Mauthausen; how at the end of the war he worked on reuniting hidden children with their families; immigrating to Israel in 1951; and starting the Israel Oil Company.

Oral history interview with Ivonne Razon

Oral History

Ivonne Razon, born in 1928 in Greece, describes living in a Jewish neighborhood; her family; her early life; how one night they heard that their neighborhood (“Baron Hirsch”) was surrounded by a fence and that a ghetto had been established; the start of the transports, but her family not going because her father had Yugoslavian citizenship; being 14 years old when she was sent on a transport to Birkenau; life in the camp; her work digging ditches; working in the Kannada Commando; going to Auschwitz; going on a death march from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and then Malchow; working as a nurse; being liberated; going into houses and looking for food; entering a Soviet displaced persons camp, where she contracted typhus and had to stay in the hospital for a lengthy time; returning to Greece and immigrating to Palestine; experiencing depression; her difficult adaptation to a new country; and her reasons for telling her story.

Oral history interview with Simon Tov Razon

Oral History

Simon-Tov Razon, born in Salonika (Thessalonike), Greece in 1919, describes attending Jewish school; his neighborhood (number 151); being recruited into the Greek Army in 1939; being near the border of Bulgaria and in the mountains for 7 to 8 months in 1940; joining the partisans in 1942; obtaining a false identification card as a Christian with the name Simon Demandopolis; how their partisan base was in the caves in the mountains and there were women among their group; sabotaging the railroad stations; receiving orders to go to the villages and shoot so as to make it seem like they had large forces and thus encourage the farmers to join them; how his partisan division consisted of 3000 people, among them 10 to 15 Jews who got weapons and food from farmers; how after seven months after liberation he met friends from the Jewish Agency; his immigration to Israel; and his adaptation to that society.

Oral history interview with Walter Reichmann

Oral History

Walter Reichmann, born in Vienna, Austria in 1918, describes his family moving to Britchova, Romania (Briceva, Moldova); attending public school and a trade school; belonging to Hashomer Hatzair and Maccabi; the expulsion of Jews to Slovakia in 1938; working in a Balia shoe factory (possibly Bata); moving to Pechov; the anti-Jewish laws in 1939; camp Patrouka; being caught in 1939, jailed, and enlisting in the Slovakian Army; being sent to Camp Zohor to build a canal; being taken to Zilina, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) at the end of 1942; being sent to Auschwitz, Buna, and Birkenau; working in the Canada barrack; the revolt and burning of Crematorium III; kapos; the Red Cross visit in 1943; the clinic in Auschwitz; surviving a death march from Auschwitz, and escaping from a march back to Slovakia; joining a Russian partisan group in the mountains and being sent on a mission to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); working until being liberated by the Russian Army; digging anti-tank ditches; immigrating to Israel in 1949 with his family and the adjustment; and revisiting camps later in life.

Oral history interview with Peretz Revess

Oral History

Peretz Revess, born in 1916 in Horitz (Horice), Austro-Hungary (now Czech Republic), describes his family, education, and encounters with antisemitism; becoming a leader of the Maccabi movement in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); how when the Nazis came to power, Peretz's family arranged to escape to Budapest, Hungary; hiding in various locations in Hungary and assisting Joel Brandt in saving others; being liberated and assisting in bringing food to children's homes in Budapest; running the office responsible for children's homes and being responsible for over 1200 children; how most of the budget came from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; immigrating to Israel and settling in a kibbutz; and the trial of Rudolf Kastner.

Oral history interview with Nissan Reznik

Oral History

Nissan Reznik, born in 1918 in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovs'k), Ukraine, describes how when he was a young child his family moved to Pinsk, Belarus; being active in Hanoar Hatzioni; the Jewish reaction to the Soviet occupation; going to the ghetto in Vilnius, Lithuania and joining the ghetto partisans; the underground organization providing training in the use of weapons, boycotting, and attacking German property; false papers and smuggled weapons in the ghetto; going to the Narocz forest and joining Markov’s partisan group; his group no longer being the Nekama and instead being called Komsomolski; how his group of nine prevailed upon Kazimir to allow them to join his partisans and he relented and ordered them to join the Vilnius group in the Kazan forest, where they remained until liberation in June-July 1944; how most of his group was comprised of women; his immigration to Israel on the "Transylvania;" the Israeli war of independence; and his post-war life.

Oral history interview with Moshe Rodnitzky

Oral History

Moshe Rodnitzky, born in 1923, in Svencionys, Lithuania, describes his family; attending technical school in Vilnius, Lithuania; his participation in youth group; the Germans entering Lithuania; escaping with his cousin and three others to Hlybokaye, Belarus; how he and his friends organized an underground unit and how they got weapons; being sent by the Judenrat to work in an ammunition dump; spending four months in the Vilnius ghetto with his family; life in the ghetto underground and the Jewish police; escaping the ghetto with several others and going to the Narocz forest; joining Fedor Markov’s partisan group under; the partisan’s attitude towards Jews; his unit going to the Kazan forest, where munitions were dropped by the Soviets; becoming the unit commander; his first action; how he and a large group of partisans destroyed railroads, fuel tanks, and supply buildings; the winter of 1943 and living in the village of Mankowicze; battling with the Waffen S.S.; going to Vilnius and bringing doctors (including Nissan Reznik) to the forest to help the partisans; several missions his unit went on before going to Berlin, Germany in April 1945; liberation; spending three to four months in a camp near Milan, Italy; his immigration to Palestine; and joining the Haganah in 1947.

Oral history interview with Iakov Ronen

Oral History

Iakov Ronen (né Tybor Rosenberg), born in 1917 in a small town at the intersection of the Polish-Czech border; his family moving to Prešov, Slovakia at age five; being involved with the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement; life in the 1930s, including cultural trends, his Jewish experiences, and idealogical conflicts (the division between communism and fascism in his society and having to choose); his changing roles in the Hashomer Hatzair movement leadership; his activities, mostly supplying school programs, as youth movement activist, between the years 1939 and 1941; the persecution of Jews; escaping to Budapest, Hungary on a Danube boat and joining a penal unit in the Hungarian Army in 1942; escaping to Koszyce (Košice), Slovakia and Prešov; his activities in a youth movement; returning to Budapest, where his activities related to arranging illegal immigration and escapes for youth members; and immigrating to Palestine on March 6, 1944.

Oral history interview with Simcha Rotem

Oral History

Simcha Rotem, born in 1924 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family and early life; experiencing antisemitism in school; joining the Akiva Zionist youth movement; the first German decrees against Jews; being transferred to the Warsaw ghetto and living conditions inside the ghetto; life in the ghetto, including contact with friends, slave labor, and opportunities to trade for food with gentiles, the Judenrat, and on the black market; being involved in meetings of the resistance movement; going to Czerniakow; not being active in the first uprising; resistance activities and various hiding places; going to Krakow to contact partisan leader Michel Borwicz; the difficult conditions in Krakow prior to capture by the Red Army; and his illegal immigration to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Shaul Sadan

Oral History

Shaul Sadan (né Charles Blaser), born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1925, discusses moving to Middelburg, Netherlands in the Zeeland area; his non-observant Jewish family; the respect and lack of antisemitism in the area; the Germans entering May 1940 and destroying Middelburg while taking Jewish property and goods; the family moving to Amsterdam and seeing the Jewish world for the first time; being sent to Westerburg and eventually being sent to Birkenau; volunteering for outside work in Warsaw, Poland and seeing some Nazi medicine being performed; being deported to Dachau then to Kaufering camp III, where he was wounded transferring huge concrete bags; becoming a translator for American units at liberation; returning to the Netherlands to find his father in Amsterdam and his sister elsewhere; the death of his two other sisters and a brother; and his thoughts about the ability to share Holocaust experiences and painful memories of concentration camps.

Oral history interview with Gustav Schaumberger

Oral History

Gustav Schaumburger, born on December 6, 1925 in the small town Hlyboka, Ukraine; describes his family; his childhood; how in 1940 the Russians took back Bukovina, the Germans retreated, and how it affected daily life; how in May-June 1941 most Jews were ordered to move to a prescribed ghetto area; his family going to the Czernovitz (Chernivtsi) ghetto; life in the ghetto and having to forge and barter for food; being transferred to Mogilev-Podolsk, Ukraine; being liberated by partisans; the partisans distributing arms and ghetto conditions improving; the fates of his siblings; being recruited into the Red Army and sent to build an airport in Belarus; moving to Israel; and discussing his Holocaust experiences.

Oral history interview with Leon Schwartz

Oral History

Leon Schwartz, born in 1923 in Chrzanów, Poland, discusses his early family life; the Jewish community in Chrzanów; the Germans’ arrival; traveling from town to town to escape the Germans; working in Gogolin, Poland, building the highway between Berlin and Moscow; being taken to Markstaedt-Funfteichen labor camp; conditions in the camp; being sent to Flossenbürg; being sent to Regensburg, where he worked on the railway; being liberated by the Americans; traveling within Germany; going aboard the ship the "Haportzim" to Palestine in January 1948; his reunion with his sister; and relaying his Holocaust experiences to his descendants.

Oral history interview with Simon Srebnik

Oral History

Simon Srebnik (also spelled Shimeon Srebnick), born in 1930 in Łódź, Poland, describes the Germans entering Łódź, Poland in 1939 and moving the Jews to a ghetto; life in the ghetto; being caught and sent on a truck to Chelmno, where he was taken to the forest to build the crematorium; the brutal camp commanders; being among five prisoners who were told to lie down at which point he was shot and pretended to be dead; how a group of the craftsmen saw what was happening, took one of the guards prisoner, took his gun, and started shooting Germans; escaping from Chelmno and hiding in a peasant's house; being one of the two survivors of Chelmno and the psychological effect of his experience; and giving evidence at various war crime trials in Israel and Germany.

Oral history interview with Yehoshua Shachar

Oral History

Yehoshua Shachar, born in 1925 in Debrecen, Hungary, describes his orthodox family; community life and incidents of antisemitism; the Germans entering Hungary in March 1944; the increasing restrictions imposed on the Jewish community; how his mother and her three sons were forced to pack and were pushed with others onto crowded trains; going to Vienna, Austria, where he worked in a school and in farms; being forced to march with thousands to Mauthausen; conditions in the camp; Kapos; being sent on a truck to Gunskirchen; liberation by Americans; escaping the camp when Russians took over and he returned to Vienna to contact the JOINT; finding his family in Debrecen on August 20, 1945; his immigration to Palestine; and his postwar life and family in Israel.

Oral history interview with Shlomo Shafir

Oral History

Shlomo Shafir, born in Berlin, Germany in 1924, describes being raised by his father and grandmother in Eitkoven, a small town in the Lithuanian east Prussian border; living with his father who moved to Kovno in 1938; the German take-over on June 22, 1941 and how antisemitism became much worse; moving to the ghetto with his father; editing and working on the underground news; mass killings in the ghetto; being deported with an aunt to Stutthof and then sent to Dachau on July 13, 1944; life in Dachau and his forced labor work; being transferred to Kaufering II and Kaufering I; continuing his extensive underground Zionist activities and even theater; their evacuation by train and march to the central Dachau camp; being liberated on May 2, 1945 and helped by villagers; going to Freimann displaced persons camp with the help of Jewish officers; spending two weeks in St. Ottilien hospital; staying in Bergen Belsen displaced persons camp; and immigrating to Palestine in April 1948.

Oral history interview with Shlomo Shapira

Oral History

Shlomo Shapira, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924, describes his family; joining the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement; Operation Barbarossa and life in the Warsaw ghetto from 1941 to 1942, including death from hunger and typhoid fever; being sent to a labor camp and escaping; receiving a letter from his brother in Tarnów, Poland, which prompted him to escape posing as a Polish Christian; his escape and how he obtained false documents; liberation; his initial encounter with Soviet soldiers; going to Warsaw and seeing the destruction; life in the Föhrenwald refugee camp in Germany, where he learned carpentry; and his immigration to Israel.

Oral history interview with Iosef Shapira

Oral History

Iosef Shapira (Szpiro), born in Warsaw, Poland on August 28, 1930, describes his religious family; experiencing antisemitism; the outbreak of war in 1939 and the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto; life and actions in the Warsaw ghetto; his sisters' survival on the streets; actions in the ghetto; being caught and detained in jail of Jewish police in the ghetto; different smuggling operations by children (he is one of the group described in the book, The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square by Joseph Ziemian); those involved in cigarette trade; working for peasants; liberation by the Russians in September 1944; life in Jewish children's home in Łódź; going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; preparations for aliya to Palestine; traveling on the SS Theodor Herzl to Palestine but being caught by the British and sent to a camp in Cyprus; and the adjustment to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Shlomo Shein

Oral History

Shlomo Shein, born in Krakow, Poland in May 1920, describes the German entry into Krakow on September 6; the looting of Jewish homes for three days in December 1939; the ghetto opening in March 1941; the nature of Akiva youth movement; his work in a garage and role as translator between German managers and Polish workers; moving to ghetto and the living conditions; being involved in the underground and obtaining false papers; how Moshe Zuckerman was good at faking rubber stamps; being caught, arrested, and sent to Montelupich prison, Auschwitz, Golleschau, Mauthausen, Oranienberg, Flossenbürg, and Ganacker; spending two months in Auschwitz before being transferred to Golleschau, where was involved with quarry work lifting heavy stones; going by train to Mauthausen for one week and then to Oranienberg and Flossenbürg until March 1945; working in the Ganacker airport and being marched out of the camp; escaping the march and being taken care of by a Bavarian farmer whose son was in the SS; staying in the Eggenfelden displaced persons camp; the conditions in the DP camp and the black market; his journey to Palestine: traveling as illegal immigrants through several countries, boarding the Atlit, and being caught by the British after a three week trip and sent to Cyprus, where they spent eight months before going to Palestine; living four years in the Kibbutz; and serving in the army during the War of Independence.

Oral history interview with Ze'ev Scheinwald

Oral History

Ze'ev Scheinwald, born in July 1921 in Sochaczew, Poland, describes his family; being a member of Betar; the outbreak of war; escaping temporarily to Warsaw, Poland but returning to Sochaczew; being expelled from Sochaczew in February 1940; life in the Warsaw ghetto; escaping from the ghetto and working for Polish peasants; going to the labor camp Skarzysko; being transferred to Buchenwald; being sent to Schlieben to work in the munitions factory; being liberated in Mauthausen; his immigration to Israel; and his disappointment with the reception of Holocaust survivors in Israel.

Oral history interview with Shaul Sagiv

Oral History

Shaul Sagiv, born in 1924 in Linden Park, a suburb of Cologne, Germany (possibly Lindenthal), describes his family; his family moving to Arden, Netherlands in 1936; how at the beginning of 1939 the political situation became tense and he joined the Zionist youth organization; Kristallnacht, after which his father moved his business to Arnheim and the whole family moved to Amsterdam; returning to Arnheim when the German army entered Amsterdam; joining the Hachshara in June 1940 and went to a farm to work for a peasant; being ordered in June 1942 to go to a work camp but escaped and returned to work for a peasant; hiding in September with four friends in a forest; leaving after one month and returning to Arnheim; being taken by train to Westerbork, his arrival and initiation into the camp; friction between Dutch and German Jews in camp; how at the beginning of January 1944 the transports started again and he made a plan for his group to escape; his escape to Amsterdam and hiding out with a non-Jewish family while trying to get to France through Belgium; arriving in Paris, France and planning to escape to Spain over the Pyrenees; his train ride to Toulouse and his contact with the underground; his arrival in Spain, where he managed to get a permit to immigrate to Palestine and his adaptation to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Lucia Shimel

Oral History

Lucia Shimel (née Pinchuk), born in Minsk, Belarus, describes her family moving to Vilnius, Lithuania after the Russian Revolution; growing up in Vilnius and studying pharmacology; experiencing some antisemitism; the outbreak of war; the atmosphere during the German occupation; Germans sending Jews into the Vilna ghetto and her family's entry into ghetto 1; the organization of life in the ghetto; working with the underground and meeting with Abba Kovner; working with a group in Porobanek; forced labor in Bielowaka; hearing about the Ponary massacre; being ordered to assemble and leave the ghetto on September 23, 1943; her arrival and treatment at camp Kaiserwald in Riga, Latvia; being taken by train to Siauliai, Lithuania; being sent to Stutthof; being sent to Krumau with 100 women to dig trenches; being marched at the beginning of January 1945 for six weeks; being rescued by a Polish woman, who took care of her; immigrating to Palestine; and her adjustment to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Elimelech Shklar

Oral History

Elimelech Shklar, born in 1919 in Zuromin, Poland (a village northwest of Warsaw), discusses his Hebrew classes in school; attending public school; the beginning of the attacks against Jews due to the death of Pilsusky in 1935; antisemitic attacks in his college work; planes dropping leaflets to Jews promising them a "new" year in September 1939; the bombing of a Jewish meeting point in the center of Warsaw on Yom Kippur; the forced labor of the local Jews and burning of the synagogue; his deportation on a train to Nowy Dwor (Novi Dvor; Novyy Dvor), Belarus, and ending up in the ghetto of Mlawa, Poland; hearing news about the Warsaw uprising and the conditions there; being deported in a regular passenger train via Czestochowa, Poland to Auschwitz; being sent to Birkenau; attempting to escape and buying a gun for protection; the experimentation done on Jewish women in the camp; the death march from Birkenau on January 18, 1945; being liberated and traveling in the Soviet zone toward Berlin, Germany; his plans to immigrate to Israel via France; and adapting to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with anonymous interviewee

Oral History

The interviewee, born in 1926 in Belitsa, discusses studying in Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) before the war; blending in while in Vilna due to her blonde hair; the happiness of being under Soviet control with the invasion; the stealing of property by Soviets; her marriage in 1940 and having a daughter; her husband being taken to the Russian Army; the Germans burning the town as they advanced in 1941; deciding to run to Zetl (Dziatlava, Belarus), a nearby town; the second action in Zetl; going to Dvorets (Dvarets); being in charge of a group of 25 women who had to build a railroad; managing to escape the labor camp and live in the houses and attics of various people; eventually entering the forest and meeting up with partisans; living in a camp near the partisans and having to find food by themselves; the tragic liberation and not knowing where to go or where to return living in Łódź, Poland, for a while and then ended up in the Wittenau displaced persons camp before immigrating to Palestine; her adaptation to life in Israel; and her feelings about the Holocaust and losing her family members.

Oral history interview with Amiel Shomroni

Oral History

Amiel Shomroni, born in 1919 in Zagreb, Croatia, describes his family; joining the several youth movements, including Noar Echudi, Shomer Hatzair, and Bnei Akiba (Bnei Akiva); going to Palestine in 1939 but being sent back by the British; studying veterinary medicine; the Germans arrival in 1941 and his family being protected by General Kvatenik, who had been his father's patient; being arrested when the General was dismissed; how he, his wife, daughter, and father hid in a village near the Hungarian border; crossing the border and going by train to Budapest; getting papers to go to Szeged, Hungary; his immigration to Palestine through Romania and Turkey and via train through Syria; and his reflections on his experiences and why he believes he survived and others did not.

Oral history interview with Moshe Shutan

Oral History

Moshe Shutan, born in Svencionys, Lithuania, describes his Bundist family; the arrival of the Germans and some of the Jews obtaining some weapons; hearing Radio Moscow encouraging youth to fight as Partisans in August 1941; also hearing Radio London and Radio Jerusalem; how he and others hid in the ghetto and were not on the official roster of inhabitants; joining the partisans in the Vilna Ghetto; his first assignment was to procure weapons; the various partisan groups and the politics involved with each; the poets Kacherzinsky and Sutzkever joining the partisans; the activities of the partisans in the winter 1944; encountering a retreating German Army on the way to Pleshtchenitz (Pleshchenitsy), Belarus with a Red Army detail; receiving an order to rejoin all other partisans in Minsk, Belarus; being stricken with typhoid fever and sent to the hospital in Minsk, where he stayed for over a month; being inducted into the Red Army in Minsk; leaving Russia in December 1946 through Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and Cyprus; being detained in Cyprus for two years; and finally arriving in Israel in January 1949.

Oral history interview with Tzvi Shpigal

Oral History

Tzvi Shpigal, born in January 1915 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in Muncacz, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine); enlisting in the Czech Army but not being able to graduate from officer school because he was Jewish; being sent to several labor camps, including Košice; life in Auschwitz and Birkenau where he worked with twin children, helping to save children; and his present contact with those children.

Oral history interview with Avraham Shpoongin

Oral History

Avraham Shpoongin (also Abraham Shpungin), born in 1921 in Yakovshtat (Jekabpils), Latvia, describes his village and the Jewish population; relations between the Jews; studying in Rīga, Latvia in 1939; the Russians entering in 1940; Latvian history and Jewish history in Latvia; being sent to the ghetto in Rīga, where he remained until 1942; the first action on November 30, 1941 (the Rumbula Massacre) and the second action in December 1941; the Judenrat; being taken to Kaiserwald transit camp and conditions there; volunteering with 200 others to work in Dondangen (Dundaga), Latvia, where he stayed from 1943 to 1944; the work and conditions in Dondangen; the advance of the Russian front advanced and hiding with a friend in a peasant’s barn for 11 months until May 1945; life in hiding and the help of peasants; and the German surrender and his liberation.

Oral history interview with Baruch Shub

Oral History

Baruch Shub, born in Vilnius, Lithuania on March 24, 1923, describes his family, who were Lubovitch; attending Cheder; the youth movements in school; attending a scout camp, where Aba Kovner was one of the leaders; the outbreak of war in September 1939; life under the Russian occupation; the entry of the Lithuanian Army; the Jewish community helping refugees; the typhoid epidemic in Vilnius; being caught by the Germans and taken to work unloading trains; the atmosphere in the ghetto, the Judenrat, and the Jewish police; planning to join the partisans, obtaining money and weapons, and contacting the partisans; arriving in the Rudniki forest and looking for partisans; the organization of groups in the forest; his unit being responsible for sabotaging trains; the bombardment and the siege of the forest; volunteering to join a Russian unit at the front and traveling through Eastern Europe after the German surrender; ending up in October 1945 in Bari, Italy at Camp Dror; his nine-day boat ride to Palestine in 1946; and his difficulties entering Israeli society.

Oral history interview with Itzchak Shverzentz

Oral History

Itzhak Shverzentz, born in Berlin, Germany on May 30, 1915, describes his father and Jewish home life; attending school; being in Jewish boy-scouts (Kadimah); antisemitism during his childhood and youth; Enzo Sereni as youth leader; taking refuge in Amsterdam then returning to Germany; taking teachers seminar in Cologne and teaching in southern Germany; working in the Aliyat Hanoar school in Berlin and participation in the youth underground in Berlin; the Kulturbund; changing his name from Hans Yoachim to Itzchak; Kristallnacht and males being deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; posing as an Aryan in September 1942; escaping Berlin through Schafhausen and arriving in Zurich, Switzerland in 1944 to a refugee camp, where there were also German army deserters; his release from the refugee camp; working with a Jewish orphan group from Bergen-Belsen, periodically returning to Germany in order to teach and talk with students about his experiences; and his reactions to neo-Nazism in Germany at present.

Oral history interview with Sima Skurkovitz

Oral History

Sima Skurkovitz, born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1924, describes her childhood and attending school; her family and their religious life; incidents of antisemitism; the outbreak of war in 1939 and Lithuania taking over Vilnius; pogroms led by Lithuanians; going to Dobozce with her uncle; returning to Vilnius; the Judenrat and going into the ghetto; ghetto life, including singing and putting on performances; public hangings; the death of her sister in a Ponary massacre at the end of 1943; her activities in the ghetto underground; partisan songs written during the war; her work in Łódź, Poland with the puppet theatre; being taken with her boyfriend by train to Estonia; Sima talks about twenty-five camps; the Vivikoni (Werk IV Sillamäe) camp and her work in the kitchen; the emotional support that singing gave them; aktions in the camps; being taken to camp Narva, Kiviöli, and Stutthof and then taken by train to camp Neuengamme; conditions in the camp and work in the factory; preparing Chanuka celebration in the camp; being transported by train to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British Army; working in a children's camp in Bergen-Belsen after liberation; serving as a witness at war crimes trials; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Shemshihu Spivack

Oral History

Shemshihu Spivack (born in Lithuania in 1920) discusses his family’s move to Palestine and return to Kaunas, Lithuania when he was nine years old; the Soviet Union occupation and trying to escape the Russians; the Germans invading and Lithuanians bombing everything while fleeing; the Germans placing all Jews in the ghetto in Kaunas; going out and trading goods of other ghetto residents for food; the Altestenrat dividing the community and the various abuses towards the groups; mistreatment from the police force; forced labor; the liquidation of the ghetto; being deported to Stutthof; being sent to Landshut, Mühldorf, and Waldlager; escaping from the trains after being forced from Waldlager; liberation by the Americans; being taken to Waldheim, Germany and then to a hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, where he recuperated; and his views of antisemitic Lithuanians.

Oral history interview with Jaques Strumza

Oral History

Jacques (Ya'akov) Strumza, born in 1913, in Saloniki (Thessaloniki), Greece, describes his family; studying electrical engineering in Paris, France; the cultural life in Saloniki; being a violinist in an orchestra; joining the Greek Army and playing in the army band; relations between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in Saloniki; the introduction of the Nuremberg laws in Saloniki in July 1942; the SS closing the Baron von Hirsch quarter and making it into a ghetto in 1943; going on a transport train in April 1943, and arriving in Birkenau; being recruited as a violinist; being transported to Auschwitz as an engineer; working as an engineer in Messerschmitt air plane factory for six months; antisemitism from other inmates; camp life, the underground in the camp, and the revolt and the crematorium explosion; being accused of attempting an escape; the January 1945 death march to Buchenwald and Mauthausen; leaving Mauthausen with the advance of the French Army and being taken to Gusen; Gusen in detail; being liberated by the American Army in May after two weeks; not wanting to return to Greece; being sent to Nice, France, to recuperate; and later going to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Tzvi Tatarko

Oral History

Tzvi Tatarko (born in Bedzin, Poland, in 1924) discusses his family; attending school in Sosnovitz (Sosnowiec) and Bedzin; the Zionist youth groups in Sosnovitz; the outbreak of war; going with his siblings to Radom; being sent to the large ghetto in Radom, Poland, in 1940 and working in a factory; the 1942 action in a small ghetto; being taken to Shkolna work camp after the Radom ghetto was destroyed; working in an arms factory with 2000 to 3000 other workers; the killing of mothers and children in the camp in winter of 1943; the Judenrat in the ghetto and the Jewish community; the camp changing from a work camp to a concentration camp; the march from Radom to a train in Tomaszów Mazowiecki and from there to Auschwitz and then to Weingens concentration camp; hearing about the Warsaw ghetto uprising; the camp and his work there; the French Army arriving and being liberated in April 1945; the French Army taking them to Neuberg, Germany, to recuperate; leaving Neuberg to search for his sister; going to a kibbutz near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and leading the group in preparation to go to Israel; his immigration to Israel and adjustment to life there; living after the Holocaust; fighting in the Six Day War after joining the Israeli Army; and the important lessons to be learned from the Holocaust and WWII.

Oral history interview with Ruth Tatarko

Oral History

Ruth Tatarko, born in Hrubieszow, Poland, describes how it is difficult for her to remember her experiences in the Holocaust since she blocked most of it; entering school in 1938 in Chelmce, Poland and staying with a teacher; her father enlisting in the Polish Army when the war broke out; hidding with her teacher and passing as Christian; returning home and becoming a messenger in the underground; an action in 1942 and escaping to her teacher’s home; being sent to the work camp Yadkov (possibly Jadów) at the end of 1942; the work and living conditions at the camp and being saved many times by a gestapo named Wagner; being sent to the Mielec camp; working in camp Vielishew (possibly Wieliszew or Wieliczka concentration camp) at an underground airplane factory; being sent to Płaszów; her work and state of mind; joining a transport to Auschwitz; the selections, showers, food, and Kapos; getting sick but recovering; being selected for office work to forge documents; the bombing of the crematorium; being taken in 1944 to Mühlhausen and working in a weapons factory, etching and doing graphic work; being taken to Bergen-Belsen and the horrors of the camp; how she got food and managed to stay alive; being liberated by the British Army; joining a kibbutz (“Nocham”) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; her relationship with Germans; studing fashion design in Germany; working and teaching in Israel; her regrets of not giving her testimony sooner; the voyage to Israel; and her life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Avraham Tory

Oral History

Avraham Tory was born Avraham Golub in 1910, in the small town of Lazdijai, Lithuania. Avraham was hiding in Kovno when war broke out on June 22, 1941, and began to write his diary which he kept for three years. He describes life in the Kovno ghetto and life in hiding for four and a half months. He discusses leaving Kovno to go to Vilna, and in February 1945, escaping to Lublin, Poland. He describes the escape route through Bucharest, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, crossing the Austrian border and subsequently into Italy, where he became active in the illegal immigration movement. He arrived in Tel Aviv, Palestine, on October 17, 1947; he discusses his early years in Palestine, as well as the sequence of events that led to the publication of the Kovno Ghetto diary

Oral history interview with Zachar Trubakov

Oral History

Zachar Trubakov (born in 1912 in the village, Surazh, Bryanski district, Russia) discusses the family moved to Kiev, Ukraine, where they would live until 1941; avoiding execution by the Gestapo and being taken to the village, Svirek, to work in 1943; the partisan movement and the fakes hired by the Germans to capture Jews; the 100 Jews from Svirek that were taken to Babi Yar and forced to dig up bodies of Jews who had been murdered and then burn the bodies; how three hundred twenty-seven persons tried to escape en masse, but only fourteen survived; how he did not know which way to go after escaping but one man from the village gave them shelter and showed them to the direction of the village, Kerosiry; how his wife and daughter were found soon after and moved to the village, Fastov (Fastiv), to be with his wife's relatives; and how the relatives were afraid to keep them so they stayed with another woman in Fastov until Kiev was freed; writing a book about his experiences; the German treatment of women in the camps; the war crimes trials against the Germans in the camps; the deaths and burial of Jews in Babi Yar and the Germans trying to prove they did not kill the Jews in the camps.

Oral history interview with Liza Tzepnick

Oral History

Liza Chapnik, born in Grodno (Hrodna), Belarus, in 1922, describes her religious family; finishing school in 1941; leaving Grodno with her brother and sister, heading to Direchina (possibly Dziarechyn), Belarus, where they satyed with relatives for a few months; going to Slonim, Belarus, in August 1941 and returning to Direchina; returning to Grodno and hiding with her family; the deportation of her family members; members of the underground organization in Grodno making her an identity card with the Polish name Bpozovskaja Marisha; working as a member of the underground organization and moving to Bialystok, Poland; her task of finding a few secret apartments in Bialystok that would be good for her and other members of the underground organization; working with her friends to deliver weapons for people involved in the uprising in Bialystok; delivering secret information about places that were mined by the Germans during occupation; Bialystok and Grodno being freed in July 1944; going to Moscow, Russia in 1945; and living in Israel since 1944.

Oral history interview with Sara Umelinski

Oral History

Sara Umelinsky, born in 1924 in Wlodawa, Poland, describes her Hassidic family; the German invasion and occupation of Wlodawa, the short-lived Soviet takeover, and the subsequent German reoccupation; the murder of the Jewish Polish prisoners of war in 1940; the selection of Jews in Wlodawa to be sent to construct Sobibor camp; the actions against the Jews in Wlodawa; being able to obtain false papers, which a Polish person traveled to Lublin to obtain for her; escaping from Wlodawa after the final action in May 1943; going to Oudampol (Adampol), Poland; deciding to join the partisans and life with them; moving to the partisans family camp in Parczen; going with the partisans to Pinsk, Belarus, and serving as one of the guards of their encampment; antisemitism amongst the partisans; fleeing in March 1944 until they met the Red Army; doing laundry for the army in exchange of salt; getting married to another partisan and moving to Gomel, Belarus, then Minsk, Belarus; the birth of her children in an UNRRA camp in Berlin, Germany; and immigrating to Israel in November 1948 on the American ship the SS Galila.

Oral history interview with Zipora Vardi

Oral History

Zipora Vardi (born in 1928 in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary) describes her family life; the government’s mistreatment of Jews; the beginnings of war in Europe in 1939; the German occupation of Hungary in 1944; the establishment of a ghetto; arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau; the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 18, 1945; arriving in Ravensbrück; being moved to Neustadt-Glewe camp; liberation; her arrival in Szczecin, Poland; traveling to Prague (Czech Republic), Bratislava (Czech Republic), Michalova (Czech Republic), and Budapest (Hungary); going to the displaced persons camp in Wintzenheim, France; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Avraham Weitzman

Oral History

Avraham Weitzman, born in 1924 in Radom, Poland, describes his parents; his older sister and younger brother; his parents’ successful shoe business; growing up observant; being a member of Hashomer Hadati, Akivah, and Massada; his education; his extended family; the annexation of Austria; the German invasion; his mother’s reluctance to leave; Polish collaborators; the persecution of Jews and restrictions imposed; the black market; the Judenrat (Jewish council); forced labor; Passover in 1940; being sent to study mechanics for 10 months in a weapons factory in 1941; how the Jewish police were selected; the creation of the ghetto; his role in family underground business of selling the hidden leather stock to Polish shoe manufacturers; the conditions in the ghetto and his informal education there; the round ups and deportations; the Judenrat organizing a course on precision mechanics; hearing rumors about atrocities in other towns; the two ghettos in Radom; working in construction in a factory; feeling very isolated and lonely; leaving and working in a coal unloading and distribution plant; not eating bread during Passover in 1943; going to Pionki and working in the bicycle maintenance section; conditions in the barracks; being left behind as most of the prisoners were sent to Auschwitz; his work digging trenches; being sent to Chestochova, Poland, where they boarded a train for Berlin, Germany; being transferred by truck to Oranienburg, Germany, where they entered Sachsenhausen; seeing the words “Arbeit Macht Frei”; receiving an ID number and being quarantined for six weeks; German prisoners in the camp; studying German in the camp from a Nazi paper with the help of a professor from Munich; Yom Kippur in 1944; his uncle’s arrival to the camp; being sent in October 1944 to Glöwen, Germany to work in DAG factory, where Abraham was appointed as manager of the new arrivals; being in charge of food distribution and barracks cleaning; being transferred to Bergen-Belsen; working in a factory in Rathenow, Germany that produced airplane wings; the conditions in Rathenow; liberation in April 1945; going to Berlin to make contact with refugee organizations; returning to Radom; living in Neuruppin, Germany; immigrating to Israel in 1948; UNRRA’s displaced persons camps; helping the Zionists send people to Palestine from 1946 to 1947; and his work preserving Holocaust memories.

Oral history interview with Ana Vinocur

Oral History

Ana Vinocur, born in Łódź, Poland, on September 25, 1926, discusses her family life; the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; establishment of the Łódź ghetto; discussion of Chaim Rumkovsky; the liquidation of the ghetto; arriving in Auschwitz and life there; her arrival and life in Stutthof; a female kapo; singing for an extra ration of bread; contracting tuberculosis; liberation; immigrating to Uruguay; the publication of her book, "A Book Without a Title;" and her work with other survivors in Uruguay.

Oral history interview with Misha Vruvlevski

Oral History

Misha Vruvlevski (aka Mischa Wasserman or Michal Wroblewski), born in Pinsk, Belarus, on September 29, 1911, discusses his family life and schooling; the pogroms in Poland against the Jews in 1917; moving to Warsaw, Poland, and working for Janusz Korczak at his Jewish orphanage as a nurse for children in the late 1930s; war breaking out on September 1, 1939; moving into the orphanage; the orphanage becoming part of the Warsaw ghetto; buying a railroad ticket to L'viv, Ukraine; moving to Kiev, Ukraine; joining the Red Army near Kiev; joins first Polish Army part of the Soviet Army in 1944; becoming an officer and fighting from Elbe to Berlin, Germany; Cherniakov and the Jewish police in ghetto, Jewish collaborators, and the resistance movement; heading the Korczak committee in the 1960s; moving to Sweden in 1979 to work in orphanages; being honored by UNESCO; and the spread of Korczak’s ideas.

Oral history interview with Mira Warbin

Oral History

Mira Warbin, born in Vilna, Lithuania, on October 25, 1919, discusses her family life; pre-war antisemitism; going to Częstochowa, Poland to the Hachshara to undergo agricultural training in 1938; war breaking out between Germany and Poland on September 1, 1939; how her father was taken to Ponary, Lithuania and murdered; the establishment of the Vilna ghetto; her work in an experimental agricultural school; the fates of her mother and sister; an encounter with Rushka Korczak; her thoughts about Jacob Gens; meeting Abba Kovner while in the underground; Narocz forest partisans, the Rudnicki underground; antisemitism among partisan groups; arriving in Kazan, Russia; a camp in Kazan, Russia; the liberation of concentration camps; activities with the avengers group; traveling to Romania, Italy, Germany, and France; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Yaakov Wasserman

Oral History

Yaakov Wasserman, born in Kraków, Poland, in 1926, discusses his family life; outbreak of war in Kraków, Poland, when he was 13 years old; working in sugar fields in Prokocice, Poland; being transported to Swoszowice, Poland; being taken in cattle cars to a camp in Prokocim, Poland; life in the Kraków ghetto; working in Płaszów; being taken by truck to Schindler’s camp and then to another camp, where he worked in an airplane factory; the barracks, Kapos, and Jewish police; details about Schindler; being separated from his father and taken to Mauthausen; a march to Gusen I and Gusen II; returning to Mauthausen; arriving in camp Gunskirchen; being liberated by Americans; life in an American displaced persons camp; revenge actions; and travel through Italy to Palestine.

Oral history interview with Rita Weiss

Oral History

Rita Yamberger Weiss, born in 1926 in Domokos, Romania, discusses her family life; antisemitism; men being taken to Ukraine to clear mine fields; life under the anti-Jewish laws; life in the ghetto; working outside of the ghetto in a hospital; her arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau; being taken by train to Stutthof; the work camp in Krottingen (Kretinga), Lithuania; working in a Wehrmacht factory shipping uniforms; work, hygiene, and religion in the camp; seeing the bombardment of Memel (Klaipeda, Lithuania); being evacuated to Stutthof; a Ukrainian Blockälteste and the crematorium in the camp; a Polish Kapo; prostitution and births in the camp; getting sick and being saved by a Wehrmacht man when all the other women were taken away; being liberated by the British; being sent to a sanitarium in Neustadt, Germany; being sent to a relocation camp in Schleswig Hollstein; meeting Jewish Brigade soldiers; revenge activities; traveling in Germany to Hamburg, Bergen Belsen, and Feldafing; going to Budapest, Hungary then Romania; traveling through Austria to Vienna, Linz, and Salzburg, and going to Munich, Germany; going to Italy with the help of the Bricha movement; her arrival in Israel in June 1947; the effects of her Holocaust experiences on her life; and her application for restitution.

Oral history interview with Mordechai Weiss

Oral History

Mordechai Weiss (born in 1926 in Balassagyarmat, Hungary) discusses his early family life; Jewish life before the war; pre-war antisemitism; the German entrance into Hungary in March 1943; the establishment of the ghetto; working in various unnamed labor camps; being moved closer to Budapest, Hungary, as the Soviet Army advanced; his knowledge of the extermination of Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe; being taken by train to the Austrian border in December 1944; digging anti-tank tunnels in another unnamed labor camp; maintaining his religiosity; being taken to Mauthausen; traveling through Vienna, Austria; the death march leaving Mauthausen; arriving in Gunskirchen; being liberated; returning home and the destruction of his hometown; traveling to Budapest, Hungary; preparing to immigrate to Palestine via Italy; the fate of his immediate family members; holding the Germans responsible for their actions during the Holocaust; relaying the stories of his Holocaust experiences to his children and grandchildren; and the adjustment to life in Israel.

Oral history interview with Kalman Wexler

Oral History

Kalman Wexler, born in January 1920 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family life; being involved with the Bund movement; pre-war antisemitism; walking to Warsaw, Poland, when the war began and returning to Łódź; the creation of the Łódź ghetto its leadership; hidden radios in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto; being sent to Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen; being liberated by the Russians; returning to Łódź; and leaving for Israel in 1948.

Oral history interview with Shlomo Wolkowitz

Oral History

Shlomo Wolkowitz, born in 1922 in Jagielnica, Tarnopol district, Galicia, Poland (now IAhil'nytsia, Ukraine), describes his family; studying in L'viv, Ukraine; the German invasion; prohibitions and life during that time; the Russians fleeing and the heavy bombing in L'viv in 1941; going to Zolochiv, Ukraine; avoiding a roundup with his uncle; being caught and sent to a former fortress with other Jews, where they were made to remove the bodies of executed Ukrainians and bury them; surviving the subsequent massacre of Jewish forced laborers; staying with his uncle in Zolochiv; moving to Voroniaky, Ukraine; living with a Polish family; making a fake ID; working on a farm; returning to Jagielnica; being detained and tortured by Ukrainian police; his escape from prison and return home; the Judenrat in Jagielnica; a German officer, Ludwig Zemrod, taking over his father’s tobacco factory; an Action in the summer of 1942; a work camp being established nearby; working for Zemrod at the factory; buying a gun; the liquidation of the work camp and hiding in the sewer; escaping to the forest; his friendship with Zemrod; his feelings at the time of liberation; being put in charge of a large metal factory in Chortkev, Ukraine; producing replacement parts for the vehicles used by the Russian army in the southern front; going to Kraków, Poland; living in the displace persons (DP) camp in Steyr, Austria; being transferred to DP camp Braunau, Austria; moving to Salzburg, Austria; immigrating to Israel; working for three years as a representative of an Israeli company in Germany; his encounter with the Zemrod family after the war and getting Yad Vashem to honor them as Righteous Gentiles; testifying against S.S. war criminals; and his relations with Germans and Israelis.

Oral history interview with Shlomo Yashuner

Oral History

Shlomo Yashuner, born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, in 1919, discusses his family life; Hashomer Hatzair activities; events in Ponar (Panieri Woods) outside of Vilna; the establishment of the Vilna ghetto in late 1941 and its organization; joining the partisans (“Revenge” group) in late 1943; partisan activities; partisan commanders; returning to Vilna in July 1944 as the Russians entered; traveling in 1945 via Austria, the Alps, and Italy; being detained in Cyprus; and his arrival in Israel.

Oral history interview with Bela Yehuda

Oral History

Bela Yehuda, born in Salonika (Thessalonike), Greece, in 1924, discusses Germans arriving in 1942; being taken to the Jewish section of town; being sent to the Baron Hirsch camp; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; working in a munitions factory; march to Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland); being taken by train to Ravensbrück; liberation by the American army; life in Berlin, Germany, before being repatriated to Greece; returning to Salonika; and her immigration to Israel in 1963.

Oral history interview with Yitzhak Phillip

Oral History

Yitzhak Phillip, born in 1906 in Recklinghausen, Germany, discusses his family life; his father’s participation in WWI; his membership in the Maccabi organization; Kristallnacht in Recklinghausen; being sent to Buna in Auschwitz in 1941; working in the Buna tire factory; his friend, Walter Blum; the march from Buna to Gleiwitz; a six day train ride; a camp (possibly Neuengamme) in Germany and the British bombarding the brick factory there; finding a refugee organization and getting papers; traveling to Berlin, Germany, Kissel, Germany, and a Kibbutz in Buchenwald; being sent by the Jewish Brigade to bring groups of refugees from Dusseldorf to Antwerp, Belgium; the camp in Antwerp; being taken by truck to Marseille, France; being taken by boat to Palestine; and returning to Recklinghausen, Germany, for a visit in 1962.

Oral history interview with Zvi Za'ira

Oral History

Zvi Za'ira (né Herman Kline), born in 1928 in Szirma, Hungary, discusses his family life; pre-war antisemitism; schools in Szirma; his family wanting him to become a rabbi and being involved with Jewish cultural activities; life for Jews worsening in 1938; the Ukrainians ruling for 11 months with a platform of hatred to the Jews; life under the Czech regime; being taken to the ghetto in May 1944 in Szelicse (Za’ira states that it is an hour walk from Szirma); being sent to Auschwitz and his arrival there; transport to the Warsaw ghetto in a work detachment; walking to Kutno; transport to Dachau to camp number 7 (Kaufering VII or Erpfting Concentration camp); working in the nearby forest; his work disposing of bodies into an open mass grave; experiencing a crisis of belief; liberation; traveling to Pilsen (Czech Republic); going to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); returning to Szirma; and his immigration to Israel from Constanta, Romania, in January 1949.

Oral history interview with Pinchas Zabludovitz

Oral History

Pinchas Zabludovitz (Zabludowicz), born in Poland on January 6, 1924, discusses his family history and growing up in Ciechanów, Poland; the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939; traveling to Warsaw, Poland; returning to Ciechanów; life under the severe restrictions of the Gestapo; being assigned to work for a German; the treatment of the handicapped; attempting to escape to Russia; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on November 4, 1942; his electrical work in Auschwitz; living in barrack number 16 and the various barracks; his brother hoarding explosives for the underground and the explosion in the crematorium; the wrestler Shimshon Eisen; the 80 km death march; arriving in Gross Rosen; being transported to Dachau; liberation by Americans on May 1, 1945; the reunion with his brothers; and traveling to Israel via Egypt in 1945.

Oral history interview with Magda Zalikovitz

Oral History

Magda Zalikovitz, born in 1915 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her early family life; her twin brother; her Zionist upbringing; getting married in 1936; the outbreak of war; the establishment of the Munkacz (Mukachevo, Ukraine) ghetto; arrival in Auschwitz; being selected for the twin group; being forced to run to Ravensbrück; liberation; returning to Munkacz; living in Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) for five years; her immigration to Israel; and sharing information about her Holocaust experiences with her children.

Oral history interview with Mordechai Zeidel

Oral History

Mordechai Zeidel, born 1926 in Svenicionys, Lithuania, discusses his family; the arrival of the Germans; escaping to camp Poligon; returning to the ghetto Vilnius; going to Ponar by truck; his cutting trees and dig pits to burn the bodies from the mass graves; the killing of a group of Dutch Jews; escaping from the camp; joining a group of Jewish partisans; escaping an ambush and making it to the Rudninkai forest to Abba Kovner’s partisan unit; life with the partisans; life under the Russians; how he had been sent to Ignalina, Lithuania while his family was sent to Siewierz; participating in the battle to liberate Vilnius; being recruited to the NKVD; going to Palestine and the group he was traveling with; the effects of his Holocaust and World War II experiences; the difficult adjustment to Israel; and telling his children about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Hedva Zeliger

Oral History

Hedva Zeliger, born in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia (Mariánské Lázne, Czech Republic), discusses her family life; growing up in Przemysl, Poland; pre-war antisemitism; Jewish life until 1939, and her first encounter with German police; Germans starting a series of Aktions, and establishing an orphanage for the children she found afterwards; the selection and killing of the children in her orphanage; life in the Kolomea (Kolomyia, Ukraine) ghetto; escaping with her husband to Budapest, Hungary; being placed in the Stanislawow (Ivano Frankivsk) prison; being transferred to the Lvov (L'viv) Jewish camp; transferring to Lublin, Poland; her experiences in Majdanek; moving to Łódź, Poland; leaving Poland to immigrate to Israel in 1950; and writing about her Holocaust experiences in her published book.

Oral history interview with Elieyzer Zilber

Oral History

Elieyzer Zilber, born in Kaunas, Lithuania, March 2, 1925, discusses his early family life; joining the underground movement in pre-Soviet Lithuania; the German invasion of Lithuania; the rise of the nationalists; mass killings of Lithuanian Jews; establishment of Kaunas ghetto; the Judenrat in Kaunas; a major action on October 28, 1941 and the murder of people the next day at the 9th Fort; the underground anti-fascist organization; partisan activity; the cooperation between ghetto underground and partisans; being smuggled from the ghetto to reach partisans; what happened to ghetto inhabitants; Yiddish culture in Vilnius; being in Haim David Ratner’s partisan unit; partisan missions; liberation by the Soviets; his job in the Central Archives of Lithuania after liberation; what happened to his family; and his postwar marriage. During the interview Mr. Zilber shows pictures of various ghetto resistance leaders.

Oral history interview with Dan Zimerman

Oral History

Dan Zimerman, born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1919, discusses moving to Poprad, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); his family; joining the Hashomer Hatzair and Hachsara; what they knew about the fate of European Jews in 1939; joining the Slovak Army in 1941; traveling to Bratislava, Slovakia; his parents and two brothers escaping to Budapest, Hungary, and life there; his connections to the underground; making false papers; German invasion of Budapest March 19, 1944; escaping to Romania; hiding in Arad, Romania, and traveling throughout Europe to Haifa, Palestine (Israel).

Oral history interview with Pinchas Ziontz

Oral History

Pinchas Ziontz, born in September 1930, in Baranow, Poland, discusses his early family life; the outbreak of war in September 1939; the establishment of the Judenrat and the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto and hiding on a farm for a week southwest of Baranow, Poland; leaving the farm and hiding in the forest until June 1942; travel to Kamionka, Poland, where he and his immediate family hid in an aunt's attic; escaping to Konskowola, Poland; returning to Baranow after being away for five months; hiding in the forest in October 1942, next to Pogonow, Poland, until the end of the war; his father managing to buy a hiding place in the straw storage belonging to a Polish farmer where they remained for two months; building bunkers in the forest; contact with the PPR (Polish workers party) partisans; life in the forest; being shot in the leg in the forest; liberation by the Russians; traveling to Lublin, Poland, in September 1944; and his post-war reunion with an aunt.

Oral history interview with Arie Zizamski

Oral History

Arie Zizamski, born1923 in Pruzany, Poland (present day Pruzhany, Belarus), discusses his childhood; rising antisemitism; the invasion of Germans and withdraw of Soviets; the Judenrat and ghetto of Pruzany; arriving at Auschwitz-Birkeanu; going to Buna (Monowitz); going to Buchenwald; entering Czechoslovakia; going to the hospital in Terezin; going to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg and Bergen Belsen; going to Italy by Bricha; illegally migrating by boat to Palestine; being interned in Cyprus; and arriving in Israel in 1948.

Oral history interview with Dan Arad

Oral History

Dan Arad (né Theodore Hirschdorf), born in 1922 in Kraków, Poland, discusses his family life; moving to Przemysl, Poland, to avoid the war in August 1939; university in Lvov, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine) until 1942; moving back to the Kraków ghetto in 1942; his father working as a doctor in the hospital and being affiliated with the Judenrat; the two large deportations from the ghetto; working in a repair shop; being transported in September 1943 to Auschwitz; the selection process and being sent to Birkenau after six weeks; life in the camp; escaping from a death march January 19, 1945; returning to Przemysl, Poland; traveling to Bucharest, Romania; joining the Abba Kovner revenge group 1945; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Alexander Avnon

Oral History

Alexander Avnon, born Alexander Silberstein March 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses moving to Otwock, Poland 1936; life in the Warsaw ghetto 1940; being smuggled out of the ghetto; living with a Christian woman; traveling to Moscow, Soviet Union; being in jail for vagrancy; being sent to a Polish orphanage; returning to Warsaw in 1945; and immigrating to Palestine (Israel).

Oral history interview with Chanan Bachrich

Oral History

Chanan Bachrich (born in Ústí nad Labem, on January 2, 1924) discusses his family moving to Prague, Czech Republic; receiving a Zionist education; being thrown out of school when the Nazis entered Czechoslovakia; the Jewish community making lists for transport in 1941; being sent to Terezin (Theresienstadt) along with his mother in 1942; engaging in hard labor, laying heavy cables; forging his worker’s ID and escaping with a friend; going to Krakow, Poland, and passing as German; being caught and sent to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942; leveling the Warsaw ghetto and building a camp inside the ghetto in July 1943; the four day march to Kutno, Poland; travel by cattle train to Dachau; marching to Allach; being liberated by Americans in Allach; returning to Prague; enlisting in the Czech Army; and being in training for Israeli air force and going to Israel with a shipment of airplanes in 1949.

Oral history interview with Ya'akov ben Dror

Oral History

Yaakov Ben-Dror (né Ya'akov van Helde), born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1926, discusses his family life; being sent to a rabbinical seminary high school in Amsterdam in May 1940 because Jewish children were not allowed to register in high school; Nazi bombs destroying his street and killing thousands of people and fleeing with his family; his father being in Spain when his mother died and being placed in a Jewish orphanage for a short period; refugees arriving in Holland; the youth movement in Zichron; leaving in 1940 for Amsterdam; being recruited by a British friend of his father to smuggle microfilm to the Maquis in Paris, France; having to register as a Hitler Youth; being arrested and sent to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz in July 1942; life in the camp, including the work and food; observing selections; roll calls and the disposal of bodies; transporting people to the crematorium and vowing that he would avenge them; his loss of faith in God while in Auschwitz; the “Canada” camp; being sent to Birkenau after six months; the arriving transports; the underground in Birkenau and having his name changed; becoming a Kapo’s assistant; falling ill with typhoid fever; working for a camp commander’s wife; an instance of rebellion in the crematorium when a group of women refused to undress and killed several guards; being sent to Oranienburg; walking to work daily in Ohrdruf; being sent to Buchenwald at the beginning of April 1945 and being loaded into a cattle car with the rest of his commando to avoid Allied bombing; being liberated by the Russians; working as a translator and clothing distributor after the war; returning to Holland and finding some surviving relatives; and eventually leaving for Palestine and working with the Armed forces when he arrived there in 1946.

Oral history interview with Itzchak Dugin

Oral History

Itzchak Dugin, born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania in 1916, discusses his family life; working as a printer until 1941; the Germans arriving in Vilna; enforcement of anti-Jewish laws; moving to ghetto II in Vilna; obtaining a work permit to leave the ghetto and working at a gasoline depot; being taken to a work camp in Ponary; digging up corpses; escaping from Ponary in small groups; and meeting up with and joining Russian partisans.

Oral history interview with Alexander Alerhand

Oral History

Alexander Alerhand, born in June 1928, in Kraków, Poland, discusses his family; his father being in the Polish reserve and being called up in 1939; the Germans arriving in Kraków; the introduction of anti-Jewish laws; moving to a village with his mother and sister outside of Kraków; subsisting by trading their belongings; living in the Kraków ghetto and working at the airport; escaping from a Belzec transport; and internment in six, unnamed, camps.

Oral history interview with Rachel Gliksman

Oral History

Rachel Gliksman (née Halperin), born in May 1924 in Vilna (Vilnius) Lithuania, discusses her family life; attending Tarbut school and belonging to the youth group 'Bnai Yehuda'; Jewish life in Vilnius; the Germans entering Vilna; being moved to the Vilna ghetto; becoming a member of the underground; liquidation of the small and large ghettos; Abba Kovner's plan to lead members of the underground through the sewers to the forest; being caught during her escape and witnessing the hangings in the ghetto; being sent to Kaiserwald; working in an AEG factory; being transported by boat to Stutthof and the horrible conditions there; being transported to a work camp in Torum (Torun, Poland) to work in a factory for communication equipment; being liberated in January 1945; trying to return to Vilnius and the repatriation trains that moved from country to country; going to Warsaw, Poland and Bucharest, Romania where there were organized Jewish communities; immigrating to Israel and being interned in Atlit; joining Abba Kovner's revenge group and went to Europe to help people leave; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Israel Granatshtein

Oral History

Israel Granatshtein, born April 3, 1930, in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, describes growing up in Łódź, Poland; his family life; the beginning of the war and his grandfather taking he and his mother to Lublin, Poland; returning to Łódź then going to Piotrków; life in the ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski; beginning of the transports in October 1941; abuses from the SS; working in factories; being taken by train to Czestochowa, Poland, where he worked in a weapons factory; being taken by train to Buchenwald in January 1945; being taken to Terezin (Theresienstadt) in April 1945; being liberated by the Russians in May 1945; reuniting with his father; and immigrating to Israel.

Oral history interview with Zalman Hochman

Oral History

Zalman Hochman, born in 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his family life; the outbreak of war in 1939; anti-Jewish legislation; establishment of the Warsaw ghetto; the first Aktion in 1942 and his mother being deported; joining the group, the "cigarette kids" and becoming a cigarette trader from 1943 to 1944; joining the Polish underground and participating in the Warsaw ghetto revolt in 1943; how he and so many others were led to Umschlagplatz, where they were beaten; escaping from a transport train; details about his group; joining the Polish underground with his brother and their assorted sabotage activities; surrendering and being taken by train to Lamsdorf; working in an aircraft plant near Dresden, Germany; the arrival of the Russian Army and being liberated on May 5, 1945; returning to Warsaw, Poland; traveling to Kraków, Poland; immigrating to Palestine; his internment on Cyprus; and feelings about his Holocaust experiences.

Oral history interview with Avraham Kapitza

Oral History

Avraham Kapitza, born in Tykocin, Poland, on June 6, 1925, discusses his family life; pre-war antisemitism; the Germans' arrival in 1941; the administration of Tykocin under German occupation; fleeing to Knyszyn, Poland, where he stayed for three weeks; fleeing to Jasionowka, Poland; ending up in the Bialystok ghetto; being taken to Blizin; being sent to Birkenau, where he would have been killed because he was infected with typhoid fever, had it not been for a Jewish commander; being taken to Sosnowiec (Sosnowice) then Mauthausen; being taken to Gunskirchen; being liberated by Americans; traveling to Budapest, Hungary, and Salzburg, Austria; and immigrating to Israel in 1949.

Oral history interview with Moshe Keini

Oral History

Moshe Keini (né Max Kchechover-Cohen), born in Cologne, Germany, discusses traveling to Holland after Kristallnacht; life in children's home near Rotterdam, Holland; the Nazi occupation of Holland in May 1940; being moved in September 1940 to Loodsrecht, Holland, to another children's home; anti-Jewish laws in Holland; changing hiding places thirteen times in one year; his imprisonment in Antwerp, Belgium; hiding out in a village near Utrecht, Holland; crossing into Belgium with the assistance of Yop Westerwel; the workings of the Westerwel group and their leadership; travel to the south of France and Paris; travel to Bordeaux, France, with forged German transit papers; being sent to Toulouse, France, where he joined the Jewish chapter of the resistance; crossing into Spain in April 1944; life in Barcelona, Spain, for five months; and traveling to Haifa, Israel, on a small Portugese boat called the "Guinee" via Cadiz, Spain, in November 1944.

Oral history interview with Eli Laskali

Oral History

Eli Laskali (né Erich Lichblauheier), born in 1911 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses his family; his father's death when he was nine; pre-war antisemitism; studying to be a window decorator, then working in 1930 as a decorative painter in Hamburg, Germany; experiencing antisemitism in Hamburg; returning to Ostrava and working as a poster painter; participating in Tehelet-Lavan; military service; meeting his wife in 1934 and getting married in Andrychów (her hometown) in 1937; his mother's deportation to Poland in 1938; all non-Czech Jews being ordered to be deported to Poland in 1939; escaping to Prague, Czech Republic on the last train before war broke out; joining Hechalutz and being placed on a farm in Dobešice; organizing a group to work for a wealthy peasant near Písek; being transported along with his wife to Bohušovice then walking to Theresienstadt in November 1942; living in the Hechalutz barrack; working in Terezin as a painter of buildings and posters; painting daily life in Terezin and keeping paintings hidden; trading drawings for extra food; being transferred to Germany for forced labor in 1944; returning to Theresienstadt in March 1945; being liberated from Terezin in 1945; immigrating to Palestine with his wife in 1947; and his drawings of life in Theresienstadt, which he destroyed fearing their discovery then recreated after the war.

Oral history interview with Marko Menachem

Oral History

Marko Menachem, born in Skopje, Yugoslavia (Macedonia) in 1920, discusses his family life; visiting relatives in Istanbul; his mother's sister and her father emigrating from Istanbul to live with them; attending synagogue daily with his grandfather; his mother's death when he was eight; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; attending university in Belgrade, Serbia in 1938; the arrival of the Germans; establishment of anti-Jewish orders; doing forced labor clearing bombing rubble; a Jew, whose entire family had been killed, volunteering for a suicide task to save the group; escaping to his family in Skopje and hiding in the attic and basement of his father's home; his sister's friend providing him with a Bulgarian passport and a job in Cërrik, Albania; enrolling in university in Sofia, Bulgaria; the deportation of foreign Jews in March 1943; returning to Skopje; being rounded-up with his family the next day; his father helping him to escape (his family were all deported); illegally traveling to Tirana, Albania; being arrested and being saved from imprisonment; working for an Albanian who promised him protection; being arrested with his employer for helping his employer's uncle, an official in the German administration; his imprisonment for four years; working as a translator in prison, then as a textbook translator and university lecturer after his release; his marriage and his three daughters; immigrating to Israel in 1991; and he and his employer being proclaimed Albanian heroes in 1993.

Oral history interview with Dov Nir

Oral History

Dov Nir (né Sztatfeld), born in Tarnogrod, Poland in 1930, discusses his family life; atmosphere at the beginning of the war in September 1939; escape to the Russian zone to Vinnike, Ukraine; family's move to Unterwalden, Poland, in the Tarnopol region at the beginning of 1941; entering into the Przemysl ghetto in October 1942; life in a work camp; escaping to the forest where they lived from July 1943 to July 1944; liberation by the Russians in July 1944; moving with the Red Army to Przemysl; returning to Tarnogrod; traveling from Lvov, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine) to Kiev, Ukraine; moving to Lublin, Poland and Łódź, Poland to a Jewish children's house, where he prepared for immigration to Palestine; traveling to France; being taken to Cyprus in April 1947; and his immigration to Palestine in December 1947.

Oral history interview with Lea Portnoy

Oral History

Lea Fuchs Portnoy, born in Rafalovka, Ukraine in 1918, discusses her family life; pre-war antisemitism; joining Jewish youth groups; the German entrance in 1941; life in the ghetto; escaping to the forest with her child; shelter given to her by Polish peasants; briefly joining the partisans in the forest; boarding various trains in the direction of Russia; spending time in Kiev, Ukraine; working in an army kitchen; and attempts to return to Rafalovka, Ukraine.

Oral history interview with Anka Rochman

Oral History

Anka Rochman, born in Warsaw, Poland, discusses pre-war antisemitism; getting married in 1938; the beginning of war in 1939; life in the Warsaw ghetto; food shortages in the ghetto; her husband and a friend building two attached bunkers; hiding with 21 others during round-ups; hiding with her husband, his brother and sister, and others during the ghetto uprising; working in a battery factory in the Warsaw ghetto; a visit by Mordechai Anilevitch; the structure of bunkers and food storage in the Warsaw ghetto in January 1943; some leaving after the larger bunker was destroyed; using drains to obtain food from Poles; her husband negotiating with Poles who killed him; staying with her brother-in-law and sister-in-law in the drains for three more days; exiting to the house of a Pole who helped them; and the Polish uprising; and how she hid in the bunker for nine months and only she and her sister-in-law survived the war.

Oral history interview with David Ruher

Oral History

David Ruher, born on March 10, 1913, in Lublin, Poland, discusses his family life; imprisonment in Bereza-Kartuska, Poland (Biaroza, Belarus) and the Rawicz prison in Rawicz, Poland, for Communist activities; building of the ghetto in Lublin, Poland; finding refuge for his family in the colony of Czechowice, Poland; finding refuge on a farm in Melgiew, Poland; plans to go to Germany; being separated from his father; traveling to Lublin; contact with the underground in Lukow, Poland, in September 1942; witnessing the liquidation of the Jews of Lukow; returning to Lublin in 1944; reuniting with his brother and sister at the end of May 1945; and immigrating to Palestine before 1948.

Oral history interview with Vera Tarsi

Oral History

Vera Tarsi, born on May 20, 1923, in Uzhgorod, Czechoslovakia (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), describes her family; moving to Prague, Czech Republic when she was one-year old; the German entrance into Czechoslovakia in 1939 and her father's attempts to obtain Hungarian passports; moving to Budapest, Hungary through Vienna, Austria in 1942; teaching English and French to two sisters in Budapest; obtaining fake Swiss passports; moving into a protected house on the shores of the Danube in 1944; the Russian army's arrival; working at the newly opened Czech embassy in Budapest; returning to Prague; marrying another survivor; and immigrating to Israel in March 1949.

Oral history interview with Ada Willenberg

Oral History

Ada Willenberg (Vilenberg) (née Lubelchik), born in 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses moving to the Russian side; her father's mobilization in the reserves of the Soviet Army and his death there; returning to Warsaw in 1941; life in the Warsaw ghetto; working in a brush factory; her mother's transport to her death in 1942; being sent with her grandmother into hiding in 1943 with the help of an uncle; obtaining false papers under the name Christina Malinovka; the Majersky family (later recognized as Righteous Gentiles) that hid Ada; being sent to an agricultural site next to Oschatz, Germany between Leipzig and Dresden; returning to Poland in April 1945; beginning dental school; and her immigration to Israel with her husband.

Oral history interview with Samuel Willenberg

Oral History

Samuel Willenberg (né Shmuel Vilenberg), born in 1923, in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses moving with his family to Radość, Warsaw, Poland in 1939; joining soldier groups going east to defend Kovel', Ukraine, against attacking Russians; being wounded in the back; escape with his family to Opatow, Poland, where they remained until January 1942, even after the establishment of the ghetto; his mother obtaining non-Jewish identification certificates to ease restrictions; his father painting for food; his two sisters being taken by the police; being sent to work in a metal factory in 1942; the train ride and arrival in Treblinka; the working conditions, the Jewish Capos, the Vorarbeiters in charge, and the German officers’ dog; the camp’s hospital; sorting clothing and bribing Ukrainian guards with the items he found; how the Jan 9th transport brought a violinist, Gold, which led to establishing an orchestra to amuse the Germans; conditions during an important person’s visit; his escape from Treblinka with 30 inmates and three stolen guns; his search for his parents; contact with the Polish underground; being involved with the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising; work and experiences with a brigade of the Polska Armia Ludowa (Polish National Army); conditions in the forest from 1944 to 1945; serving as an officer in the Polish Army from 1945 to 1946; joining a Zionist group in Łódź, Poland; his marriage; immigrating to Israel in 1950; and his adjustment to life in Israel.

Learn About The Holocaust

My Saved Research

Oral history interview with Lili Ofek

Overview

Physical Details

Rights & Restrictions

Keywords & Subjects

Administrative Notes

Additional Resources

Download & Licensing

In-Person Research

Contact Us

Also in Oral history interviews of the Israel Documentation Project