- Eric Kestenbaum.
- This is why I think--
- this is why I wrote this.
- Maybe it will be much, much better if they would call me,
- and having a quiet moment, and nobody is in a hurry,
- and nobody disturbs one another.
- Let's try it.
- Let's try it.
- And we'll play it back.
- And we'll see what we can do.
- I would prefer, if it's possible, to make
- it this way better, to call me up, and take me a day,
- and I'm going away, and I have a very quiet interview,
- and I can speak what I think is important.
- And you can ask me questions about what
- you think is important.
- I think, if you want to start, let's see how it goes.
- And then let's see if we can't do what you want after that.
- All right.
- So my name is Bella Adler.
- I am born Hamburg.
- I was born in Lithuania.
- I grew up in Lithuania.
- I went to high school there.
- And then I was a teacher in Kaunas in a Hebrew school,
- in a Jewish school with Lithuanian language.
- And when it broke out the war, I got a job
- in a Jewish school, a Yiddish--
- Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium.
- But the same year, I met my husband,
- who was a student in the Yeshiva Mir.
- But they fled, all of them, and they came to my home place
- where I was born.
- And as a matter of fact, it was so that my brother
- needed a private tutor.
- He was in the last gymnasium grade, eighth class.
- And he was very bad in Latin.
- I was very good in Latin.
- And I wanted to help him.
- Because to get a good teacher, private teacher in Latin
- was not so easy.
- And I every day traveled from Kovno
- to Kedainiai, which is my place where I
- was born, to teach my brother.
- It was about March, I think.
- And it was as the end of the semester.
- And in every afternoon, we had teachers' meetings.
- So I couldn't come to my brother.
- And he was the last grade.
- And it was very important, the grades for him.
- So I called up home.
- And I said that I'm sorry, but I cannot come today.
- We have a meeting, a conference of teachers.
- And they told me, I don't have to hurry too much because he
- got a teacher.
- And these were the words of my brother,
- who knows 1,000 times more Latin than you.
- So when I came for Shabbos home, my brother
- took me in another chamber and very quietly said,
- my teacher wants to meet you because he never saw
- a girl who is a Latin teacher.
- And I says, OK.
- After 8, let him go.
- And my husband came.
- And this was it.
- I knew that I'm never going to leave.
- And after a short time, he asked me if I'm going to marry him.
- But to marry a girl from a good house
- with a very good job, gymnasium teacher in Kovno, [INAUDIBLE],,
- who's finished university, it take some [? courage, ?]
- you know.
- I was even afraid to tell with my parents.
- But happened so that he was also not sure.
- But he knew that this is it.
- He wrote to his parents that he met
- a girl who he wants to marry.
- And they let him-- to Germany.
- He was from Germany, from Ansbach,
- where were living his parents.
- His father was a teacher in Nuremberg, the Jewish school.
- At this time, it was 1940.
- He was home already with--
- the Jewish school was liquidated in Germany.
- And when-- and he said, we don't know what to do.
- Maybe we should come back to Germany.
- And the answer from his father was my dear son,
- if even you have to go and beg a piece of bread
- from house to house, you shouldn't dare to come back.
- We knew what it meant.
- And we tried to get permission to leave Lithuania and go
- to the States.
- We didn't have a visa to the States.
- And he decided that he's going to do something
- to get some visa.
- He got a visa to Curacao in the Japanese.
- And the visa to get in the Curacao was a very plain thing.
- He-- my husband was an extremely clever man.
- In my eyes, he was a genius.
- And I think there are many other people who say the same thing.
- And when he went to Curacao, to the consulate,
- they told him that you don't need a visa to go to Curacao.
- And he said, OK, this is wonderful.
- So please, write it down in my passport
- that I don't need a visa and give me a sign.
- How do you say [NON-ENGLISH]?
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- Yeah, that it is so.
- And he got it.
- The man did it.
- And he got it.
- So he took his passport and went to the Japanese consulate.
- He was the first one who did it.
- And the Japanese consulate gave him
- a visa to go via Japan to Curacao because--
- From Latvia to Japan?
- From Lithuania.
- From Lithuania to Japan to Curacao?
- I think it was Curacao, I hope so.
- Because this is why I wanted now to tell you everything.
- Because I feel that every day, my mind
- is getting worse and worse.
- And I was a teacher at this time, as I told you.
- It was-- the time was the Russians were already
- in Lithuania.
- But they still behaved somewhat.
- And I was a teacher, a plain [NON-ENGLISH]----
- a plain [YIDDISH] who doesn't know right and left,
- who knows what is right is right, what is said
- is right is to be left.
- And said, how can I go with you if I begin here
- to teach in school?
- How can a teacher leave her job?
- A soldier can't leave his.
- With a teacher is even 1,000 times more.
- I was young and I was believing everything was good.
- And I believed in honesty.
- And he began to look for a visa to go out.
- But he said, but anyway, are you going to marry me?
- So I said, in such an hour, probably,
- we have to think that it is possible, that there
- are certain times what you say.
- And it happened.
- So I said, with you is the end of the world--
- very romantic, very beautiful.
- But it happened that it was so.
- He got afterwards, with a lot, a lot
- of difficulties, the permission to leave Lithuania.
- And he went to Japan.
- It was the 6th of December, 1940.
- We married approximately, I think, it was August.
- And we didn't tell my parents.
- And he didn't tell the yeshiva because we have been afraid.
- It was very romantic and beautiful.
- And he said, because at least I has to--
- we have to be married.
- So we married.
- We have been extremely happy.
- Nobody has such a honeymoon like we
- because it was-- we went with the car to see my parents.
- And we have been poor.
- I had a good job.
- I had still a little bit money.
- But he didn't earn anything.
- And we couldn't get anything from his parents
- or from his relatives.
- And he left for Japan via Vladivostok, Russia.
- I stayed home.
- And it was very hard time.
- And I was still teaching.
- And I began to see, and very clear to see,
- the paradise Russian promised is, I think,
- worse than was the [INAUDIBLE].
- It was-- we saw that they are taking with iron trowels,
- pushing everything down.
- And there is not even air to breathe.
- And everybody gets scared.
- What it is?
- It means freedom, freedom.
- But the freedom was so that you wouldn't dare to say anything.
- You wouldn't dare to do anything.
- You wouldn't-- it was something terrible.
- And you begin already to feel the terrible pressure,
- like an iron hammer on your head.
- Was it mostly to the Jews?
- Not only to the Jews.
- It was the atmosphere in the place.
- And all of a sudden, I found out that I'm pregnant.
- My husband said, he's not going any farther.
- He tried to get a visa to America.
- He got it.
- He would have got it, but he said, I'm not going anyplace.
- I'm waiting for you in Japan.
- Come immediately.
- Of course, he got-- he have only to say, you want to go.
- And it began a torture, a real torture
- to get the permission to get out from Russia.
- I cannot tell you even now on the tape what I went through
- with the NKVD to get out from Lithuania.
- And you don't know that you are getting a permission
- to get out.
- So you have to be very, very careful.
- Because if you want to leave Lithuania--
- we were going to be occupied by the Russians--
- it means that you are an enemy of the Volk.
- You want to-- doesn't want to stay with us.
- And what that meant already to be an enemy of the people,
- I knew already very well paragraph 57.
- So it was a managing so-and-so and so-and-so
- how to get the permission to get out.
- Well, this all things, how I got permission to get out,
- I would speak someplace else and sometimes else.
- But I got it, at least, in May.
- Nobody believed that it's possible.
- Because then was already the time.
- So it was May--
- no, not May, April, I think--
- April, like now, '41.
- And I had my ticket.
- And I was very happy when I came--
- went out.
- And my father came to take me till the border,
- and my uncle with my cousin, which I am here-- her father
- too came from another place from near Vilna.
- He came from Dukstos.
- And my father, we met.
- And they brought me till the border.
- And my uncle specially, who was a very, very frum
- Jew was so happy that my husband is a pupil of Mirrer Yeshiva,
- has his rebbe, his rabbi, et cetera.
- And he was extremely happy about it.
- And I'll never forget how he told me, [YIDDISH]..
- And that means that I have to be--
- have a real good Jewish home.
- And I have to be a Jewish wife and mother.
- And this was the last time I saw them.
- And I came to Moscow, tired and pregnant, and so on, so on.
- And they-- in a hotel, Novo-Moskovskaya.
- And the first thing, they asked me
- to give me my passport because they
- have to put it in the hotel.
- I took out a German passport before I left.
- And it was already Sarah and was a big J.
- And I got it only through my husband,
- who was a German citizen.
- And I thought, I have a German passport,
- so the Russian can't do me anything.
- I never had another document, as only a Lithuanian passport,
- which I had to give up in the German consulate.
- And I got this one.
- And the next day, I went to ask for my passport
- because I had to leave for Vladivostok.
- And they said, I have to go to pick up
- my passport myself in the NKVD.
- And without a date, when I came to the NKVD
- to pick up my passport, and so on, the request,
- it was a lot of [INAUDIBLE].
- Go around.
- And the only thing what they told me-- listen, my dear lady,
- you got the visa to go out from Russia.
- It's not the real way you have to get.
- Because you have first to get out
- from the Russian citizenship.
- And I began to say, I never was a Russian citizen.
- And I never had a Russian citizen passport.
- I was a Lithuanian citizen.
- I married.
- And I have a German passport.
- And I want to go.
- It was absolutely impossible to speak to anybody because they
- don't listen to me.
- I speak one, and he say something else.
- I began to-- maybe I can get a lawyer.
- Maybe I can get somebody-- absolutely impossible.
- It doesn't exist something like this.
- And I knew very--
- I know till today very well Russian because my stepmother
- was Russian, from Ukraine, as a matter of fact.
- She has a cousin of the Agnon--
- Agron, who was the first--
- Mayor of Jerusalem.
- --mayor of Jerusalem.
- And she was first cousin of him.
- And she was from Ukraine so far.
- And she made us children speak Russian
- and take Russian lessons private, et cetera, et cetera.
- And a person who didn't know perfectly
- the Russian literature didn't exist.
- So it was for me very good because I knew Russian
- like a real Russian woman.
- And I went.
- I have been so energetic.
- I used to be energetic once upon a time
- that I had a rendezvous with Kalinin.
- And I came to his, old Kalinin shake my hand.
- And I told him what I want.
- And he say, I'll try to do everything.
- And surely, he didn't do anything.
- That was not Kalinin, nobody had anything
- to say if NKVD doesn't want to.
- And why doesn't-- didn't want NKVD?
- It was something what they made out with my husband, what
- I didn't know.
- So to make it short, they said, tomorrow.
- Tomorrow.
- I was pregnant.
- It was terrible.
- And I wanted to go to my husband.
- It was a terrible time for me.
- And I was very excited.
- I called to my uncle, who lived in Leningrad.
- He came immediately.
- And he was very happy to see me.
- He stayed two days with me.
- I had till then every day telephone
- calls from Lithuania, from Kovno, from my sister and so.
- And when my uncle left for Leningrad back,
- I was crying very much if can-- you can extend.
- And you don't know what's going on.
- It's all dark around.
- And you don't know anything.
- And I have been crying so much till I cried myself to sleep.
- And I woke up, and I didn't feel good.
- And I went to wash my hands.
- And all of a sudden, I see, I'm standing in a lake of water,
- you could say.
- And this what young lady who had experience as a teacher
- about three or four, maybe five years already,
- who had a diploma from the University of Lithuania, who
- has all the education, the degrees
- necessary, the doctorate almost and so,
- didn't know that if a woman is getting a child,
- she has to have a water level.
- It was our education once upon a time.
- And I thought, what is it?
- And I had-- it hurts me, and so bad.
- What can it be?
- But it probably--
- I knew, I had always a very good appetite.
- I ate probably something was no good for me.
- Because I couldn't imagine that my child
- can be born one day before.
- Because I was so strong, and sport, and gymnastic,
- and everything.
- You just assumed it had to come on the right day
- and that was it?
- No, it was not time.
- It had more about two months, I thought.
- But I felt it worse, and worse, and worse.
- And all of a sudden, coming a telephone from my sister,
- from Kovno.
- And she said-- she spoke to me every day.
- And how is it?
- When can you go farther?
- And I says well, you know our cousin, Rachel Weger from Vilna
- has her daughter in Moscow.
- And this is her address.
- And she gives me her address.
- And I'm trying to write it down.
- And I feel so bad.
- I'm all perspired.
- And it's cold I feel.
- And she gives me and write it down the address
- of her daughter on the telephone.
- And it gets worse and worse.
- And I feel worse and worse.
- And I don't know what's going on.
- I don't think even once all the time that's possible
- that the child is coming.
- Were alone in-- was Hotel Novo-Moskovskaya in Moscow.
- And my father sent me more money.
- And I knew how hard it is for them
- because they didn't have it.
- But they sent it, I should stay there,
- don't know how long it's going to take.
- And I feel so bad that I was already--
- and I took the number what she gave me.
- And now, you're going to have a red thread through all
- my history, that everything comes
- at the moment it has to come.
- And we want to know that we have to think that there
- is somebody who takes it like--
- a hand takes it all over the places.
- And I call her up.
- And I say, Fanya Weger, you are the daughter of Rachel Weger.
- I am so-and-so.
- I am Bella.
- And I am here in Moscow.
- And I didn't know your address and telephone number.
- But I now just got it.
- And I feel very, very bad.
- And she heard from my voice, and it was about 12 o'clock
- in the night.
- She was in half an hour in my place.
- And she was older.
- And she was experienced woman.
- And the moment she saw me, she knew what's going on.
- She called the hospital.
- And they took me to the hospital.
- I came to the hospital about 1 o'clock.
- And about 4 o'clock was born my son.
- I didn't know.
- I was very happy.
- And I tried to let everybody know.
- And I called to Lithuania.
- And I gave a telegram, I think, to Lithuania.
- And to my husband, I had every day cable from Kobe.
- He was waiting for me.
- And I sent him every day to Kobe cables to Japan.
- And as a matter of fact, I hold them, all of them,
- all the cables that I sent to my husband.
- He kept it.
- He kept them.
- And all the cables what I sent to him, I had it, all of them.
- And you can see the agony what is going on, only
- from the cables.
- It was a real terrible thing what was.
- And we didn't know what it going to be.
- And they said, I should wait.
- The child was born.
- And it was born seven months only, not even this.
- And he was very weak and very small.
- And I didn't have milk.
- And this child saved my life because if he wouldn't
- be so big, so small, they would send me immediately back
- to Lithuania.
- And they told me every day, they are going to send me back.
- And I said, no, I don't want to go.
- I want to go to my husband.
- And they said, no, you have--
- you cannot stay in Moscow.
- It's not permitted.
- You have to go home.
- And the doctor from the hospital gave me a letter that I cannot
- be moved at all because it's a danger for the child.
- And this what I have to say.
- I had the best.
- I was treated wonderful in the hospital.
- And the child, they gave him lots of milk
- from a certain kitchen.
- And a nurse used to come to me in the hospital-- in the hotel
- after the hospital to take care of the child.
- It is impossible to believe how much attention and care I got.
- What was going on in Moscow at this time?
- Were the Germans-- was before the--
- It was the beginning of May.
- My child was born the 21st of May, 1941.
- And they said, another week, another week.
- And he's still getting milk from the kitchen.
- And it's still coming the nurse every day to me in the hotel.
- And I'm sitting all the day.
- And I'm trying to massage my wrist.
- And I have still a letter from my parents,
- from my stepmother, where she writes
- to me the letter in Russian, please,
- do everything that you can.
- Because one drop of mother's milk
- is better than everything in the world.
- So I tried to get some white milk.
- But she was so weak, he didn't have the strength
- to get it out.
- But I didn't stop massaging.
- I didn't stop till I should have some milk for him.
- And it was a Saturday.
- I was very much upset.
- I used to take out the child a little bit for a walk.
- It was, Novo-Moskovskaya, not very far from the Kremlin
- and near the River Moskva.
- And I'm coming on Friday night and Saturday evening.
- And I'm getting a cable from my husband,
- cannot do anything more.
- Pray to God.
- So I decided, he got me crazy.
- But what is it?
- He sent a cable with such a thing?
- I can't do anything for you more.
- Pray to God.
- They knew already that the war broke out in Japan.
- I didn't know in Moscow.
- I laid down to sleep.
- I slept very little.
- And I hold it, every second, only with the child,
- looking at him, and how he's going, and how he is.
- And all of a sudden, I heard the radio.
- And the radio says--
- I think it was-- yes, it was the voice of Molotov.
- And he said, [RUSSIAN].
- It means brothers and sisters, our homeland is in big danger.
- I understood what was going on.
- I tried to get the Lithuanian consulate.
- I couldn't get anybody.
- I have been running here, and back,
- and here, and back, keeping all the time the baby in my arms.
- Moscow is a city which I don't know, really.
- And I don't know what to do-- would
- be glad to go to Lithuania.
- But there is no possibility.
- I wouldn't-- otherwise, I don't know what to do.
- In the night, the whole city was in a terrible tumult.
- In the evening, we had [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Sirens.
- Sirens.
- And we have been put in the cellar of the hotel.
- They took us to in the cellar of the hotel.
- And they said that had heard bombing.
- If it was bombs already in Moscow or not,
- I really don't know.
- But was a most terrible night, you can imagine.
- It's a nightgown with a baby always.
- The next morning, I was-- didn't go out.
- I was staying in my place there in the hotel.
- And all of a sudden, they saying that the hotel has
- to be cleaned up.
- We have to go in another place.
- And so I took my two bags, child,
- and they took me to another hotel
- on the Ploschad Dzerzhinskogo.
- And you had a German passport?
- I didn't have the passport because they
- didn't give it back to me.
- And as a matter of fact, to tell you,
- I have been running to the German consulate
- to ask the Germans should help me.
- And they all-- they laughed at me.
- This was ill.
- And I asked the Germans should take--
- help me.
- I couldn't do anything because I have no passport, nothing.
- And I came to the other hotel, very nice room,
- staying with the child, trying to get the Lithuanian
- consulate, trying to get--
- absolutely impossible, running here, running there.
- I met one Jewish person, whose daughter is now in Tel Aviv.
- And she was a pupil of mine.
- But I asked him what he's doing.
- He said, I don't know what to do.
- He's got here all stuck out.
- It was Mr. Amsterdamski.
- I remember his name from Kovno.
- And I'm coming home.
- All of a sudden comes in a gentleman, very nicely dressed,
- black.
- He said, you are Mrs. Adler?
- Yes.
- You are a German citizen?
- I say, yes.
- It is a very dangerous thing for you to stay here.
- And we are going to take you in a place
- where it's more comfortable for you.
- And you will be much more safe.
- Who was this man?
- I also didn't know this man.
- So they take things what you need.
- And you take everything what you have.
- And we'll bring you.
- So I'm running to the phone.
- And he comes to me, takes my hand-- no phone calls anymore.
- It was clear for me what it is for a man.
- And he took me.
- And he brought me in a place near Butyrki,
- the famous Russian jail.
- And they met-- it was summer.
- And I could remember, it was June 22, I think, or 23.
- And they met barracks.
- And they put me in a place there.
- And they have there more women.
- And they says, you are going to stay for a certain time.
- This was, I understood, terrible because the woman I saw is it--
- woman, they said they're German, but they have not been German.
- They didn't know a word of German,
- but they kept the German passport.
- Probably, the real [NON-ENGLISH],,
- that they called it, Germans who have been supported
- by the German consulate.
- But I have that in common with such people--
- very, very low class people, with a terrible dictionary
- and terrible behavior.
- And they have been like--
- I don't know, they would tear me in pieces.
- Because they were antisemitic?
- I don't know antisemitic, but I only
- know that they were very, very low in every respect, say.
- Like you say, [NON-ENGLISH],, that's not much better,
- not much better.
- I don't know where we stopped.
- You were in the jail or the barracks
- with these Lithuanian women.
- Not Lithuanian, from Russian women.
- Russian women with German--
- German passports.
- And they couldn't take my soup.
- How can I take from somebody?
- It was very hard for me to get used to a situation
- where all your human dignity is lost.
- We used to say in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]..
- It was so terrible, I couldn't do it
- until the hunger flashed, and the little baby on my arms,
- and I don't have anything to give him.
- Until now, he had had a kitchen and everything.
- And now, we don't give him a drop of milk.
- And where can I get it?
- Nothing.
- So I tried to give him the milk as much as I could.
- And he was very hungry.
- He began to drink a little bit.
- But I knew it was not enough.
- I ran to the kitchen.
- They used to give us rice.
- And so I tell to the man, he should give me the water,
- what he's cooking the rice.
- And I used to put in a bottle.
- And I used to try to give it to the baby.
- And he began to eat a little bit better because it was already
- three and a half weeks old.
- From a bris or from something like this, no, nothing.
- You cannot even-- they only try to tell me that I have to give
- the name to the baby.
- So my mother's name was Mariasha Leah
- and my grandfather's name was Mordechai.
- And my grandfather, I loved extremely-- very, very much.
- I lost my mother, was very baby.
- And I didn't know what kind of name for the baby.
- My dad's husband sent me a telegram.
- And I heard that the baby's Namen Kalman.
- It's his grandfather's name who was a teacher in Hamburg.
- And Kalman Rothschild, everybody from Hamburg who is now
- is because he was their teacher of the Jewish Talmud Torah
- from city of Hamburg.
- And the child's name is Kalman.
- So I said, Mordechai Kalman.
- So what happened is he has no bris.
- What kind of a name can I give him?
- So I wrote it down, baby's name, Mark--
- Mark.
- This was what I wrote down, Mark Kalman,
- that my husband gave to him.
- But Mark is going to be Mariasha or Mordechai.
- And when he's going to have his bris,
- he's going to get his real name.
- About this, I have to tell you a story because I'm very much
- interested to tell you everything what
- I know about my husband because he passed away not very long
- ago.
- He's not able to say what makes himself.
- Because he was he went through so much
- that it's hard to imagine.
- And everything what I know, I would like very much
- should be recorded here.
- Tell us what his name is and what his mother's name is.
- His name was Leo Adler.
- And his mother's name was Miriam Adler, born Rothschild.
- And his father was Nathan Adler.
- He was a teacher in Nuremberg, primary school,
- I think, in Ansbach.
- My husband was born in Ansbach.
- And he was a primus of the Nuremberg [INAUDIBLE]
- gymnasium, where I think all the Nazis would have been there
- with pupils.
- He was one of the best students.
- And he wanted to study further.
- He was very much interested in old languages and antiques.
- But when he finished, he was not anymore accepted to university,
- although he was the first in his class.
- So he decided to go to Poland, as a matter of fact,
- and to study yeshiva.
- When they said no, he first--
- he went to Würzburg and finished the teacher's seminary.
- This was the only Jewish place where he could still study.
- And he finished it.
- But he couldn't study further.
- And he went to Mir.
- And he learned from [PERSONAL NAME]..
- You can say because it was no comparison what
- the Polish or Lithuanian Jews learned from being very small.
- But he was ordained rabbi.
- He was one of the very best in Würzburg.
- And he got his diploma as a rabbi.
- And when he got it, it was the war with Russia and--
- not Russia, Poland and Germany.
- And he has to go away.
- The way he went out, it was a very, very interesting thing.
- And one story which he told, and I don't think it's
- a story because it's something what is hard to believe,
- that I heard it from him many times-- he was traveling
- through Poland, I think, from near to Vilna, he wanted to go.
- And the only thing what he had is his German passport.
- And he didn't know one word of Polish.
- And all of a sudden, the bus stopped by Polish police.
- And everybody was asked to give his documents.
- And he was sitting near his--
- near the window.
- He was praying.
- And he said, he thought the last second of his life came.
- Because a young man--
- and he looked him younger than he was.
- He was then 24 and a half.
- And he has a German passport.
- And the war he already is--
- was already began already.
- And he was looking through the window and saying [INAUDIBLE]..
- Because he thought is his last hour.
- And the Polish police went all over,
- even an old Lithuanian peasant there was.
- He looked at his documents.
- And a woman with chickens was sitting and everybody.
- And he, a young man, sitting in the window,
- they didn't ask him anything.
- So that my husband brother used to say,
- you think they forgot you.
- And I am telling you that they didn't even see you.
- And afterwards, he came to Lithuania.
- Tell us what happened when he--
- in Japan with him.
- Oh, it was was very terrible.
- Japan, he had a--
- because he said the name of the baby is Kalman,
- the Japanese thought it is a certain code.
- Code?
- And they took him to jail.
- And he was long in jail.
- And they tortured him and when he
- should tell him what it meant.
- Baby's name, Kalman, it was exactly a couple of days
- before the war broke out.
- It is a certain code.
- And they kept him in jail.
- And to be in jail in Japan, it means they almost a death
- sentence because they were so dirty and so everything.
- You can get typhoid.
- And they are dead.
- I'm sorry, I thought it's my.
- But how he got out from jail, it was also something
- that he was speaking to somebody during his davening.
- He was-- another sailor, was another Jew.
- And they had been arrested.
- He came out some way.
- But it was-- because of the war, put baby's name in Kalman
- made him a lot of trouble.
- He almost had to pay with his life for this.
- And he was there in Japan, who was very much concerned
- about me because he didn't know what happened to me
- and what happened to the child.
- And they all-- and they have been in a terrible situation
- too.
- And then they would be placed from Japan, from Kobe,
- to Shanghai.
- He went from--
- From Japan--
- --Japan to Shanghai how?
- They didn't let him stay.
- The Japanese didn't let him stay.
- I see.
- And they made him go to Shanghai?
- They made him go to Shanghai.
- And then he made the whole yeshiva in Shanghai.
- And he was studying there or not studying.
- It was very, very hard for him.
- Did you know he was in Shanghai?
- I didn't know anything.
- I knew-- the last thing what I knew about him was Kobe.
- But that he went to Shanghai, I didn't know.
- And his life in Shanghai was a very hard one.
- And the people was living there in very bad conditions.
- And there was a committee of Russian Jews
- who tried also to help the deputies.
- But he is an Orthodox Jew, didn't want
- them to have a treyf kitchen.
- And he tried to-- for the people who
- are Orthodox to get them a kosher kitchen.
- And he sold his last suit which he had still made in Mir.
- And he sold it.
- And he bought something.
- And he organized a Jewish kitchen,
- fighting very much with the Russian ladies, from Russia,
- who said that he's not educated ham and so on, whatever,
- to have something kosher is absurd, it's funny,
- and it doesn't--
- it's very much behind life people.
- But he organized a kosher kitchen.
- There had been Jewish children.
- And he taught there.
- And he was a rabbi, I think, between the refugees, who
- had many from Vienna and so on.
- They knew him.
- How long did he stay in Shanghai?
- He stayed in Shanghai to end of '46.
- To the end of '46.
- And you were all this time?
- I was all the time--
- when they took me to this nice place, and then Moscow
- was bombarded, and they took us all in cars,
- in wagons like the cattle, and they sent us from Moscow.
- It was a terrible journey.
- This journey alone is impossible to describe,
- so many people in the wagons, and everybody
- got very little place.
- There was one-- no, there it was still
- no cattle wagons, but wagons, like passengers going,
- but so many people in one place that I-- now, I
- had a kupe, where it was only one bench.
- And in this bench you were more than 13 people.
- And I was with the little baby.
- And where was the wagon going?
- And they sent us, we didn't know.
- It took us, I think, two weeks or more.
- And it was already--
- began already to be cold.
- And we came-- no, it was not cold still.
- It was only hot and very, very little air to breathe.
- And we didn't have anything to drink.
- And they gave us the dry fish, salt, and no water,
- and a little piece of bread.
- And we almost thought that we are going to starve.
- And I have the little baby.
- And he's crying because he's hungry.
- And the only thing what I could do--
- 24 hours, the kid with me in my breast.
- And the women around said, oy, eat,
- if the child would die at least, it
- would be wonderful so they would know that they
- have to give us something.
- You can imagine how I felt when that had.
- So I was crying so terrible.
- All the time, the Russian guard--
- and they have special soldiers for this--
- should be either absolutely dumb or retarded people, mostly.
- And I heard how they have been speaking
- that one or two weeks ago, they have been transporting people
- from Lithuania to Siberia.
- And this was how I find out, through these guards.
- And this guards had pity on me.
- And when they had their dinner, what the leftovers,
- they put it on, and they gave to me.
- And I really saved me.
- And I never in my life ate anything better than this,
- so hungry I was.
- And in my group was another woman
- with twins, a French woman, who married a Russian.
- And she was also sent.
- And she was also hungry.
- So I divided with her and the children with this, what I had,
- this wonderful meal, the leftovers
- of the drunk soldiers.
- And then we came to a place, which is called Aranki.
- It is near Nizhniy Novgorod, near Gorky.
- It was also on a time a monastery.
- And then we met already other people
- who have been brought from Estonia and Latvia--
- German passport, Austrian passport,
- which then was the first time met Jews.
- The first time I met Jews, so I saw--
- I thought, with my knowledge of Litvisher [? cop, ?]
- that now, I'm saved.
- It's [NON-ENGLISH].
- And now, I found out what it means to be [GERMAN]..
- The way they treated me, my darling, it is terrible.
- To tell you, first of all, they decided, a young woman
- who looks like a child, because I had long hair.
- And I looked maybe like 15.
- But I was already much older, as you
- can imagine, being a teacher already and so,
- and speaks perfectly Russian, speaks German, with a baby.
- And nobody, but nobody knows her.
- So she is a planted in spy.
- What can she be?
- I didn't know about anything, but only their behavior.
- I'm talking to everybody what I think he's a Jew.
- And I am so happy that I found a sister, a brother, father.
- And they are so reserved to me.
- And I couldn't understand what the matter
- is, except a couple of people have been different.
- And in this camp, we stayed.
- I can't tell you how it was in barracks.
- And the toilets were--
- did you read Solzhenitsyn about the parasha?
- This is what we used to have, the parasha.
- It is a big--
- And you didn't hear anything from your husband
- all this time?
- You had no idea?
- Nothing, no place, I didn't hear from him.
- And family?
- Nothing.
- Nothing.
- Because they had been cut off.
- So you had no idea where anybody was?
- Nobody.
- I didn't have idea where they are.
- And I didn't know what to think.
- And I didn't know what's going on with me.
- And probably, most probably, I would have said, it's-- now,
- it's enough.
- But I have the little baby.
- And I knew that I have to do something to keep the baby.
- And this what people say, that I took my baby through all
- those things.
- But I have to tell you, when I know it for sure,
- that the baby took me.
- The baby took you.
- Because such a desperate situation, a young woman,
- the first time in her life, who doesn't know anything what
- is bad, for only from the books can
- imagine that there is something bad,
- everybody is good, and everybody you trust,
- and everybody is only love, and you're
- coming in such a situation.
- And I had to fight for the life of my baby.
- So we used to get 400 gram bread a day, twice a day water.
- It should be soup, but was a couple of pieces of cabbage,
- but only the green leaves of the cabbage, and one
- cup, and small cup, of kasha--
- [NON-ENGLISH],, they used to call it.
- I don't know how you say.
- How long did you stay there?
- In this Aranki, we stayed approximately till November.
- OK.
- And then?
- And then when the Russian tried to take Moscow,
- they were afraid that they can come to Aranki too.
- And one, two, three, they made trains and the wagons.
- And these were the wagons where already
- have been cattle wagons.
- And they took all the people.
- And they took us farther.
- It was very cold.
- They took everyone, not just Jews?
- No, everyone.
- And there have been Italians, all kinds.
- We have been interned by them.
- And we-- they took us to the trains.
- And it was a terrible thing the way
- you had to be on the way with the little baby.
- And nobody wants to take you.
- And I don't have even diapers for the child
- because I didn't expect.
- Everything I had, I sent to Vladivostok.
- Only I was lucky that I have two bags who didn't have a cover.
- They have to have covers.
- So they didn't take it to send it away.
- So I had to have it with me.
- And this was everything my-- what I had.
- So for this child being so cold in the winter, and so hungry,
- and going with the train days, and days, and days, and days,
- and nobody wants to help me, and everybody pushes away
- because the Jews have been not good, not bad, nothing.
- They didn't care.
- And they Goyim persecuted me.
- And I was afraid how I can bring out
- this child from such a situation, shouldn't
- get a cold.
- So I had a silver foxes with me.
- And I had a cape for the theater, from angora,
- something really wonderful, so that I have to take my bags,
- and I have to carry the child.
- How can I make it when there is nobody to help me?
- So I took the child, who I had with diapers, no diapers,
- and I put him in the cape, and in the cape,
- gave the fox, and then a scarf, and I made such a bundle.
- So I knew that he is warm.
- And this is the way I have been taking him
- from one place to another.
- And when I was laying there in the wagon, near the wall,
- in the morning, I was frozen to the wall.
- Frozen to the wall--
- I couldn't move.
- I had to take off the coat to go out.
- So it was-- the child all the time kept this way
- and try to give him a little bit milk.
- And if there was one woman, she was--
- no, she was later, I think.
- There was-- everybody tried to push me away.
- And they have been making a fire in the middle
- of the wagon and to warm a little from the-- of water.
- If I used to get something, that was already special.
- And then we have been traveling, traveling
- till we came to Aktyubinsk in Karaganda,
- in the beginning of Karaganda.
- And then they put us to barracks,
- where the floor is from only--
- how do you call it--
- the earth.
- There is nothing more on the earth in barracks.
- So from wood--
- Boards.
- --boards.
- And everybody gets only 30 centimeters.
- You have to wash for a child.
- I have to do.
- And it was a terrible thing.
- And the main thing that I do, you
- began to drink a little bit.
- And this I was very happy that I knew that we
- can't get too much out of it.
- And the only thing what I could give him was only water.
- Black bread, you can't give a child till probably a year old.
- And so was so terrible crying.
- And once came a Russian--
- Russians in the barracks.
- And between them was to look how we are.
- And I began to say that it is impossible,
- that wouldn't do anybody.
- It's not human.
- It's a foreign so far that we don't
- take-- if you don't have anything to give to food,
- don't take us.
- Here is starving a child in my hands and can't do anything.
- So it was a Russian--
- a guard, an old Russian, but he was probably an old Kazakh,
- was very, very big and so.
- But with a real human heart, he said to me, do you have money?
- I didn't have too much money.
- What I have, I give you.
- So he went to the marketplace, and found woman who have milk,
- and told them to bring it to him in the vakhta,
- in the place before you are going in the camp.
- He used to buy for me the milk and bring me
- a glass of milk for the child there.
- I'll never forget it.
- A Russian.
- I think it was a Kazakh, an old Kazakh--
- gray, was gray.
- And he did it for me.
- I met so many Russian people who have been really human to me.
- So I had a little bit milk already for the child.
- And we have been staying in this the whole winter.
- I'll never forget it.
- I had to wash the child diapers, no diapers with pieces
- what I had.
- And they didn't let me hang it up
- in the barrack with the stove because I'm
- going to spoil the air.
- Imagine what kind of air that it was.
- So I had to hang it up outside.
- I'll never forget that you took the wet diapers
- to hang it up outside.
- And before I can move, my fingers
- were already frozen to this.
- And it all was bloody, torn down.
- And in a second, it was like a piece of steel.
- This was-- I remember, this was so terrible
- because all the fingers was gone bloody.
- There, I met some people, interesting people,
- and interesting because they have been for me something
- like still--
- they let me believe that there are
- people in the world, old ladies who have been staying--
- there was one lady, a professor of English literature.
- And she was French, married to a Frenchman.
- But her husband died.
- And she had-- still had a French passport.
- And she behaved to me like a real mother.
- She was not a Jew?
- No.
- Why were the Jews so much less nice to you than the non-Jews?
- They hadn't been less nice, but afterward, they left me alone.
- They hadn't been good, they hadn't been bad.
- Why?
- They were afraid you were a plant?
- Yes.
- And they didn't know when I wasn't a German--
- and the way the Germans looked at the Ostjuden.
- And I was so atypical, like you say,
- that I didn't understand that something-- to say something
- was not true.
- I said to them, I must Yiddish, and I said them,
- I'm Lithuanian.
- I said all the truth.
- And this what make them farther, and farther,
- and farther to go away.
- And they stayed.
- Yes, it's hard for them.
- Was an Ostjude.
- And there was another lady, which
- I would like to say, she was a Russian princess, furstin.
- She was a born Kutuzova.
- And she was married to an old man
- from Austria, with an Austrian passport.
- And this man of hers was some--
- she stayed in Latvia, I think.
- And she was alone, living in Russia with her children.
- And then she kept her Austrian passport.
- And her name was Olga Konstantinova Neufneugen--
- Drin-- I don't remember.
- But she was born Kutuzova.
- And she took care of me, I would say.
- She was very, very nice to me.
- And this life in Aktyubinsk ended very quick
- because they decided we have to go to another place,
- where should be-- this was a place, we didn't know.
- But we know it's going to be big, big preparations,
- and big preparations took so long.
- And one day, we have been transported to the station
- in wagons with straw and hay.
- And I got a place up with the baby, and have been traveling.
- Our food, I don't have to tell you,
- but it was in comparison what they had in the Germans' camps,
- it was already good, but it was not much better.
- Water, we had 300 grams bread, sometimes 400 grams bread,
- and this was it.
- Sugar, it was very precious thing.
- We should have sugar, get a teaspoon a day,
- but we didn't get it very often sugar.
- We got sugar once in three months.
- So it was a little bit more.
- And after traveling, I think, six or eight weeks in such
- conditions, what I cannot describe you,
- we came to a station called Karaganda.
- Karaganda.
- Karaganda.
- It was Kazakhstan.
- And then we went out from the wagons.
- And men who were a little bit stronger, they had to work.
- And afterwards, I being very much protege because I had
- a little child, we have been taken by a [NON-ENGLISH],,
- they call it, a big wagon, a truck,
- and brought to a place called Spassk.
- It's 40 kilometers from Karaganda.
- And then they had their criminals or other people,
- maybe even political in barracks,
- who were-- we saw already that have been many people.
- And we had to stay there.
- I got a little place.
- And near me was this--
- what I told you, this countess, Alexandra Nikolaevna--
- think I mixed up her name.
- It is going to come to me.
- This is why I decided I want to come now because I'm getting
- worse, and worse, and worse.
- And the second or third day, I began
- to feel so terrible, terrible cramps all over my belly.
- I think the child was 11 months old.
- I said-- and I didn't know what to do, to go to the doctor,
- there was a doctor or somebody, who was from Vienna.
- He was an intern doctor.
- And there are the Russian doctors
- what they used to work there.
- But it was impossible to come to the doctor
- because all the people are sitting and waiting for them.
- So it was one day and another day.
- To make a long story short, they sent me to the hospital
- because I had typhoid.
- What to do with the baby?
- You had typhoid?
- Went to the hospital.
- The hospital is also on the floor
- was not a floor, but earth.
- Earth.
- And such from [NON-ENGLISH].
- You know what is [NON-ENGLISH],, a bed barrack.
- And then we had a little place to--
- on a straw bed, having sleeping there.
- And it was so that my temperature was constantly
- 38 and 36, constantly 38 and 36.
- But we have to eat.
- It is-- it was from potatoes, which
- they used to use for the soldiers the shells.
- Peels, yeah.
- The peels, this was cooked now.
- I find out that it was not such a bad thing at all
- because it had the vitamins.
- And where was the baby?
- The baby, I kept it with me.
- All the time?
- All the time, he was laying with me.
- And this was it.
- And he was drinking.
- And I says, maybe I could give the baby maybe
- to bring in Karaganda in a child center.
- And I said, no, I don't give the baby away from me.
- Yeah, this is what I told you about this.
- I'm telling you the name.
- It was Bauer.
- It was in Basel.
- We didn't have it on the tape.
- This is the second tape of an interview with Bella Adler.
- The Holocaust.
- Start again.
- Yes, Professor Bauer, I think it's Bauer if I'm not mistaken,
- has lectured about the Holocaust in Basel.
- Last year?
- I think it was last winter.
- I don't know.
- This is what is also going on with me
- that I'm mixing up the time, it was this winter or last winter.
- I think it was this winter.
- And he spoke about the refugees in Shanghai.
- And he said about a young student, he called him student.
- Because my husband was always very elegantly dressed.
- And he came up with a wonderful idea
- to go to the consulate of how do you call the--
- of Curacao to ask for a visa.
- And the consul told him that to Curacao they
- don't need any visas.
- So he came up with a wonderful idea
- to ask him to write it down in his passport,
- and give it a stamp, to stamp it down.
- Yes, he said.
- This he can do for me.
- And when he came home with this, he went to the Japanese,
- and he got a permit.
- And professor Bauer knew this and told this story?
- Well he was talking.
- Yeah, he told the story about the young student.
- And I know it because it was Leo Adler, my husband.
- And I was the first person to whom he came.
- And he was laughing and telling me
- the whole story, what kind of idea he had and what he did.
- And he showed me that he got this idea and this visa.
- The Japanese visa.
- The stamp.
- And the stamp, and he went immediately--
- And when you told this to Professor Bauer--
- When I told this to Professor Bauer, he said--
- I went to Professor Bauer because I
- was sitting in the first row.
- And I told him, I know the name of this young student,
- because this young student was Leo Adler.
- So he said, OK.
- And turned away, and didn't even speak to me
- to want more because this was not interesting.
- So either he should have find out maybe I
- am making a mistake, maybe I'm doing something
- what is not right, or ask me something more details about.
- And you were very disappointed that he didn't care--
- I was very disappointed.
- --to have you have you tell your story.
- Yes, and I am myself a historical student
- and so far and so far.
- And I was very, very insulted, not for myself,
- but for all the people who are gone,
- and about them he's nothing to care,
- and they're going to make from the Holocaust
- not a history which is true, but writing something
- what something makes up.
- And that's why you came to tell your story now.
- That's what I decided it's absolutely
- impossible that I should not do, although he
- don't like to do it.
- And it is very hard for me.
- I understand.
- Because my husband passed away a couple of years ago.
- And it's such a terrible shock for me that I cannot get over
- it.
- But tell us how you lived the rest of the time in Kazakhstan,
- and how did you find your husband again?
- The rest of the time I lived in Kazakhstan
- was a lot to tell you.
- It's very hard.
- We have very bad conditions.
- I didn't tell you something what happened to me.
- It was-- you see how much I'm forgetting.
- What happened to me when we have been in Aranki.
- And I was once in the yard, where
- they have been in the yard.
- And I see a girl going through the yard, a girl who
- she was working in NKVD.
- And this was a girl from Kovno.
- And she knew me very well because she was a student,
- and she used to come in the gymnasium
- where I was a teacher.
- And she asked me, I should give her students, private students,
- to tutor them.
- Because she has all these students who needed help.
- Yes.
- And she was NKVD?
- And she was working as a donoschik in the NKVD probably.
- And she all of a sudden saw me.
- And I saw how she was surprised that she saw me.
- And a couple of hours later, I had
- been asked to come to the NKVD.
- It was Aranki.
- This I remember.
- I came over to the NKVD, and he said the first thing
- what he said, first of all, he said, Mrs. Adler, usually they
- said you and this is it.
- I was surprised.
- And he said, we know who you are.
- You know everything about you.
- And I know that your place is in my chair,
- but not to be with those people.
- It means this garbage together.
- And I am going now to Moscow.
- And I will try everything that you have to leave this place.
- It is because this girl knew me from Kovno.
- She knew first of all that I am not a burzhui.
- So it's another human being who tried to do something for you?
- Yes, and I very happy to hear it.
- But he left.
- And he probably was not going to Moscow immediately on the--
- Front.
- --on the front and was probably killed.
- But it was all of us.
- But through this, they find out that I have a diploma,
- that I was a gymnasium teacher, that I
- am a teacher at all the pedagogues, that I finished
- university, and who I am.
- Of course I'm telling you this is important
- because when we came to Karaganda,
- all of a sudden and the typhoid just took me very long.
- I told you that they I got sick with typhoid.
- But it came in.
- It was probably June or July.
- I don't know really the month, probably June.
- And I left, it was already after Stalingrad.
- Yeah.
- And I was all the time with the baby in the hospital.
- And the only thing what I could do it was they
- used to give us some bread to eat.
- So in the hospital, they used to give us there a little sugar we
- used to get every day, a teaspoon taken,
- only a teaspoon, not a [NON-ENGLISH] what means a lot.
- They used to cut the bread in little pieces.
- We'll get you on here.
- With the sugar on top of this bread
- and these little pieces of bread to put on his tongue
- to give him a treat.
- So I used to call it [NON-ENGLISH]..
- You understand?
- And this is what I used to give him to eat when he was with me.
- And all the time he was with me in the barrack with typhoid.
- And he probably also had it.
- Surely.
- And then one day I felt better.
- It was every 3 and 1/2 weeks for half an hour
- I used to get 76 and 8 temperature.
- A temperature.
- So but it took me only 6 hours or 12 hours.
- And afterwards again, they call it was [NON-ENGLISH],,
- it is the typhoid who comes back.
- And this is why it took me so long.
- And when I once had normal temperature,
- he threw me immediately out.
- They even didn't believe me about the temperature already
- anymore.
- And they used to watch me.
- To see that you weren't making it up.
- Making up.
- So they threw me out and I came to the barrack
- with this little baby who was so tiny and sick.
- And I don't remember, the same night or the next night,
- all of a sudden the child begins to breathe very badly
- and he's crying.
- But not crying, but like a cat meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
- Cannot swallow, cannot breathe.
- And I don't know what to do.
- And he doesn't get better, not nothing,
- what I'm giving him to eat he cannot eat.
- And he's only this way, and it began about in the middle
- of the night.
- And I don't know what to do with this child.
- And this, as I told you, this princess-- this [NON-ENGLISH],,
- was near me.
- And she was like a mother, or even older.
- She was an old lady.
- She tried to take care of me and the child.
- But both of us couldn't do anything.
- And we didn't know anything what we can do here.
- And he's worse and worse and worse, and doesn't breathe.
- And all of a sudden, he's quiet.
- So I got so scared.
- The moment he was quiet, all the time we
- wanted to make him quiet, to make him relax a little bit.
- But in the moment, he stopped I got so it was pure instinct.
- And I still feel today, I think it's purely mother instinct.
- I got so scared and I began to throw him back and forth
- and back, and shake him.
- That it's such a force.
- And so terrible much that they thought I'm crazy.
- This woman near me that I told you, this princess,
- she wanted to take away the child from me.
- And I didn't give it to her.
- The only thing is all my strength--
- with all my strength I tried to get him--
- Breathing again.
- To get him to cry.
- But he didn't cry.
- But all of a sudden, I thought like a glass of milk
- spilled out all over.
- Now, and I didn't know what it is.
- I could tell you all the literature of the world
- literature, everything you wanted about this here,
- and this here, and this, but I didn't
- know that this is diphtheria.
- And the stench.
- Surely.
- And it was white, white like milk, gray even.
- And all over and he began to breathe.
- And he got quiet.
- And he fell asleep.
- The woman in the barrack already, they couldn't sleep.
- They didn't care what happened to the child.
- But they were angry that they couldn't sleep.
- They told the doctor what's happening here with a child.
- It's terrible.
- And she came from the hospital.
- And she made the whole barrack sick.
- And coming in the doctor.
- He said, you are going to the hospital.
- I come to the hospital.
- There was the doctor which I told you from Vienna.
- He was a Dr. Winter, his name.
- And he said he didn't even think too much.
- He took one with a piece of wood,
- and looked him in the throat, and yes, he has diphtheria.
- But we don't have anything against it.
- And then comes the Russian doctor.
- I want to describe you, a small woman, blonde,
- looks wonderful, like a little girl.
- She's a doctor.
- And he tells her.
- He says, a diphtheria.
- And we don't have anything against it.
- And this Russian woman took us horse and the sleds,
- puts two or three scarves around, and sat down herself.
- And went to Karaganda 40 kilometers away.
- And came in the evening with a serum
- that you use for diphtheria.
- In couple of days the child was OK.
- Another fantastic example of someone
- who behaved like a human being.
- I don't know.
- You can't say.
- When I say, I have my son here.
- I just want to tell you that he is himself
- a professor, a medical director of medicine in the Hospital
- Maimonides.
- He is now in California.
- If I wouldn't be here, I would be with him in California
- where he is getting accepted as a fellow to the doctors
- and physicians there.
- I don't know what it is anyway, a very high degree.
- And he is well.
- And well, I'm telling him that you are doing too much,
- and you are giving too much [INAUDIBLE] or something.
- So he said, Mommy, I can't understand you.
- Do you think that God wanted me to be a rich man in America
- when he saved me from so many dangers?
- It's fantastic.
- How did he keep that humanity?
- How did you keep?
- Why weren't you bitter and angry?
- I was not bitter.
- I was not angry.
- I was happy that I have this child.
- And after all these things, how was the life in Karaganda,
- I have to make the long story a little bit shorter.
- Yes, tell us--
- And it's very interested he's going to--
- Contact you.
- Look for me, contact me, only I have
- to tell you why I told you about my degrees and my everything
- what they found out about me.
- It was when I came to Karaganda.
- But some come to Politruk and said,
- Stalin said that on the Russian territory of the USSR,
- there cannot be even one child without a school.
- And we have so many children in the camp.
- And you are going to make a school.
- And I didn't want to.
- Because I knew the less you are involved, the better.
- So he said you know everything.
- You are the only teacher who has all the degrees
- for the teacher has to have.
- You can take some help if you want.
- But you are going to make the school here.
- Because we know everything about you.
- And he said everything about you and everything.
- I knew from where it is, that he told him.
- Yes.
- And so I said it's OK.
- I'll do it.
- But the only one condition that I
- shouldn't live in the barrack.
- So you could get out of there.
- Because the child get, his impressions of what
- is going on in the barrack, in the woman barrack,
- when everybody is hungry.
- And they're saying [NON-ENGLISH] that this is much worse.
- The human being is much worse than a lupus.
- Believe me, when he's hungry and when
- he's so unhappy like we were.
- And I didn't want he should hear what's going on
- and see what's going on.
- So I said because all the pedagogical things have
- been falling in my head and how important
- it is for the education of a child, et cetera, et cetera.
- So I said this is the only condition.
- He said, OK.
- You are going to have in the school
- where is going to be a teacher's room, one little corner.
- And there you can stay.
- So this is the only condition.
- I don't want anything.
- OK, I had a school.
- And the school had been all the children from the camp.
- At the end of the war it was 99 children.
- From all different places?
- No.
- From this--
- But from all different countries.
- Yeah, from all different places, yeah.
- And the kindergarten also had, because after once,
- after the Russians began to get help from the states,
- they tried to make the people who
- had been working skeletons workers,
- so they began to give better food and to make them work.
- And they give them a lot of industry there, our people.
- Because they knew how to work from the other countries.
- They had a lot of experience.
- And they made such real factories there.
- But we had a little bit more food.
- At the moment we had a little bit of food,
- more surround some certain women, and men,
- et cetera, et cetera.
- And there began to be children.
- And this later had a kindergarten.
- So how many years was this that you did this?
- I came in '41.
- And I came to America in '48 or '47, '48 I think.
- You skipped something.
- How did you get to America?
- Oh, this is what I'm telling you.
- I have a lot to tell you.
- This is a lot of things involved with NKVD,
- involved with the American Consulate
- and involved here with me.
- And I said a lot of things once upon a time in Israel.
- They're having Yad Vashem, because Yad Vashem is
- working with one man who was together with me in camp.
- And now he's a director of the Yad Vashem.
- His name is Rosenkranz.
- And he knows a lot about me.
- He know how the behavior was.
- To make you a long story short, all the German Jews and all
- the [NON-ENGLISH] worshiped me by the end of the war,
- and they found out that I am not an enemy, and I am not a spy,
- and I'm not doing anything.
- And I did a lot of help for them.
- Because I knew Russian and a little bit maybe education,
- I don't know.
- And by the end of the war, they have been taken away.
- And because the Russians said that after the war
- the Germans have to build up everything
- what they ruined in Russia.
- And 400 Jews have also to be between this building
- up of Russia.
- And they sent them after the world war
- and after so much anger to be in their coal mines.
- And this means a death sentence, the coal mine,
- because the SS people didn't hold out
- more than three months.
- And they came with another supply of strength.
- So I was the one who wrote this--
- how do you call it?
- Wrote to Stalin, it never came to Stalin.
- But it came very high.
- And there came a commission and they came.
- And they sent me to speak to this commission.
- And I had to make this commission of NKVD
- clear what the difference is between Germans
- and Jews with German passports.
- And it was, believe me, a very hard job.
- And if you are going to say that there
- is a certain human way of doing things, so I have to tell you
- that there was somebody speaking in me,
- if I could persuade these people that the Jews have nothing
- to do with this military.
- And then 400 Jews have been saved.
- He was one of them.
- And this has to be saved for the Yad Vashem.
- Record, yes.
- And maybe we can meet maybe.
- I'll come to you even to Washington
- if you are interested to find out a lot more.
- Well, tell me more.
- The war was over.
- And you somehow without knowing where your husband was.
- Yeah, not now.
- I will only tell you a little story how it was,
- as to my husband, he didn't know where I am,
- and I didn't know where my husband is.
- And I didn't know what happened in Lithuania.
- And people have been from our camp walking outside.
- So I used to give them letters, and write on the address
- of my parents to Lithuania.
- Because Lithuania was already nothing, absolutely nothing.
- So I decided I'm going.
- OK.
- I don't know where my parents are.
- But maybe they made it in the city.
- You might find them.
- So I wrote a letter to the mayor of the city.
- And you believe it or not, I got an answer.
- And this letter I have.
- And this is going to be the way which
- I'm going to write down in my testament
- that this letter has to be put in my grave together with me.
- Although I know that in Jewish law it is prohibited.
- I myself [INAUDIBLE] We have to inform you with our deepest
- feelings that on the 29th of August, I think,
- I now have counted out, despite the days in Elul,
- your whole family, and your parents and brothers
- have been killed by the Nazis.
- And they can only express to you and all the other Jews
- of your city, our deepest sincerest feelings with you.
- And this is it.
- So I have been sitting shiva for him for an hour.
- And afterwards, even the color of my face was changed.
- I was not any more depressed.
- And then I find out that this was already in '47 or '46,
- I don't know.
- But they didn't let me out.
- And with force I stand up, and I try
- to do something for the Jews who have been taken out
- to work in the mines.
- I got suspicious for the Russians.
- And there was another thing where I got suspicious.
- When the whole camp was almost--
- not a whole camp but all the Jews went home.
- I was kept, because they didn't know what to do with me.
- And they said they're going to send me to Lithuania.
- And I said I am not going to Lithuania.
- First of all, I can't find there anything on the graves.
- Secondly, I'm sure that I'm going to see it,
- I'm not going to live anymore because I cannot take it
- anymore.
- And they kept me all the time like a German.
- I also want to be now a German.
- If I was a German for you all those terrible years,
- I am now a German too.
- And they had a hard time with me.
- And then they decided they're going to send me in some camp
- where it is maybe they want to decide.
- They have people who were taken out from jails, for example,
- Italian who killed his wife.
- And there were other people.
- So they have sent us all too.
- We should have been gone.
- I think we should have begun to Kyiv or something
- where is a central camp for all the people who
- they don't know decide to do.
- But on the way, the criminals were with us,
- like Italians is what I told you.
- There were two.
- Now they had set down with the people, the soldiers who were--
- Taking you
- Taking-- who were with us.
- Who have been how do you say?
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- And they have been sitting and playing cards all night
- and drinking and they stole the documents from them.
- So they couldn't have any proof that they were criminals?
- And it was gone.
- And when the Russians said what they have to do,
- there is nothing.
- So instead of bringing them to one place,
- brought us to Odessa.
- And from there, they began to make new documents
- for everybody, with who and what's what.
- And I have been staying in Odessa.
- And it was a very hard time.
- The children got [NON-ENGLISH] how do you say?
- Measles?
- Measles.
- And I was very much afraid, because they got it
- in the train.
- The travel from Karaganda till Odessa,
- it was can write a book about only this.
- And I tried to take care, good care of a sick child
- who is so weak.
- And I know that I had a wonderful, wonderful
- for 24 people a tablecloth still.
- Because I had what they didn't take.
- So I gave to one Russian woman, and she brought me
- a lemon for it.
- It was all hand embroidered for 24 people in a camp.
- For $10,000, you cannot get such a thing now.
- It was done years and years of wonderful--
- and she brought me a lemon from someplace
- that I could have for the child.
- But she tried to help me.
- This I have to say this woman.
- And in Odessa, I saw that people, women
- are coming out from the villages and bringing in something
- to sell.
- And if you're going out from the camp, so here was our camp.
- And here on the other side was the Russian commandant
- or the Russian all this.
- So you have to get out from this camp
- and to come in the other one.
- But how can you go out?
- So I decided, if I'm going to say that I'm going to be
- the cleaning woman in this [NON-ENGLISH] they called it.
- So I'll go out.
- And when I'm going out I can buy something for the child,
- for the baby.
- But I didn't have any money anymore.
- So I sold, I had not the Persian, but the silk.
- The silk.
- A silk one.
- I still had from that.
- So I sold it for a doctor.
- I don't know how much money they gave me,
- a couple of thousand rubles I think.
- And I used to work to clean this and that.
- And on the way back I used to buy
- some fruit, some vegetables, some carrots for the child.
- This was how.
- This way I knew already all the officers and mayors
- who have been working there.
- The Russians, they had a lot of doctors and officers
- who have been Jews.
- They respected me very much because in Odessa we
- had been staying in a hospital, and there
- have been Germans too.
- And I never looked in the side where a German is.
- The opposite I was a woman too.
- When they see me, they flip to some.
- So they had extremely much respect for me.
- The head of this hospital was a man by the name Waxman.
- You can imagine who it was, Waxman.
- He was to say hello to me and everything very nicely.
- But I didn't know anything.
- And on Friday, just I'm mixing up a lot of things.
- And there a lot of things what there has to be put in,
- and this Mr. Waxman, this Mr. Waxman saw me,
- and when I one Friday went over to wash the floors--
- it has to be washed twice a day and to bring the water up
- and down and so on and so forth.
- So I'm coming over Friday about 2 o'clock
- to wash the second time the floors.
- And he's coming the head of the staff, Polkovnik Fridman
- and he says to me.
- He said Madam Adler, Madam Adler, come with me.
- And I'm coming in his room.
- He said, sit down.
- I have very good news for you.
- One day all the Austrian people are
- going to be sent to Austria.
- And you are going to be sent too.
- I say, I'm sorry.
- But you cannot send me because I am a German, not an Austrian.
- He said, you have to go.
- And he only said because nobody was there.
- After a while we hear what's going on.
- It was Friday.
- Sunday in the afternoon, about 5:00, 6 o'clock,
- was coming a very small little woman, like a child, dark,
- skinny.
- And she's looking for me.
- Would you please to come in the room of Dr. Waxman?
- I said, OK.
- I'm coming up.
- And she has to make an [NON-ENGLISH] to fill out,
- at least.
- It is in Russia very often you have
- to write and write and write and write without end.
- So I was not surprised anymore because of this.
- And she writes my name and so on and so.
- And asked me.
- When it comes to citizenship, she doesn't ask me.
- She writes Avstrijskoe.
- So she knew to fill it in.
- No.
- So I saw what she's writing.
- I said, you write it, but I see what you are writing
- and I'm going to tell you that I'm not going to sign it
- because it's not true.
- But she [INAUDIBLE] she stopping writing, she looks at me
- and she says, this was dura, it means fool.
- So you don't understand.
- They want to save you?
- [RUSSIAN] it means to save, this word.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- And this is side two.
- And he told Dr. Waxman what's going on.
- They found a Jewess.
- She was Jewess, this little girl, a little woman.
- It was a woman that nobody should know.
- You see, it was such a whole chain
- and they made it between himself to save me.
- I didn't know.
- And so then [NON-ENGLISH],, and I went with all of them
- to Austria.
- To Vienna?
- To Vienna.
- Still not knowing?
- Yeah, I knew that I'm going with them.
- But I wasn't sure that on the border
- they're going to send me back.
- And I was so much excited.
- And I didn't know what to do that really
- the first time through all these years
- I really got a nervous breakdown when
- we have been in Baden already, near Vienna
- before we came to Vienna.
- And I got so hysterical that one other woman,
- she was from Latvia, [NON-ENGLISH],,
- came over to me and she gave me one and two over the face.
- Now, you're going to be quiet or not?
- This was the woman whom I would kiss the hand today.
- Yes.
- I was so panicked.
- And this somehow they brought me out.
- Now, you want to know--
- But you didn't know where your husband was still?
- No.
- By this time I knew.
- But how I knew this, what I have to tell you.
- In the school we had a lot of children,
- I told you how many there were, and from all countries.
- Between them was one Finnish, girl Anushka.
- She was my pupil.
- She began to learn with me from ABC
- and she finished all the program of all the four grades.
- Her mother was a very plain, uneducated, illiterate woman.
- And her daughter was already now,
- and the Finns had been the first one
- to get free, because they signed the treaty the first.
- And all day, we find out that this girl with her mother
- are going to leave.
- Everybody who was in camp wrote letters and gave addresses.
- To get mail out to see if someone--
- I see.
- I knew that this woman is not going to do anything
- because she can't do anything.
- So I just decided that I'm not going to do anything.
- What can she do for me?
- What can she do for me?
- All of a sudden, about 5 o'clock,
- she had to go out already almost from the camp.
- She's coming, not the girl, not my pupil,
- but her mother is coming in.
- She said, I can't understand you.
- Why don't you give a letter?
- Why don't you give a letter?
- Now, what I'm going to tell you.
- All the letters what I have here so much,
- they are going to be in the closet, the toilet
- before I'm leaving.
- You think I'm such a fool to risk my freedom because
- of these letters?
- But if I'm going to take a letter,
- it's only yours because I know, an illiterate woman,
- plain, plain, plain and ugly woman
- says to me that for you I'm going
- to do everything in the world.
- Because I know what I want.
- I can't write and can't read.
- But my Anushka is going out now a literate person
- and you did it.
- So I'm going to do for you everything.
- Sit down and write a letter.
- I'll take it.
- I took out from my school a little paper.
- And I took.
- It was a written paper.
- I scrubbed it out, and I wrote a letter to my cousin.
- I don't have anything what to--
- how to do it.
- I wrote this letter.
- And I made it this way.
- Mrs. Adler is folding a piece of paper to look like an envelope.
- And this is what I did with a little bit of bread--
- As glue.
- As glue, and I wrote down the address.
- This was very happily I knew the address of my cousin
- who left before me to the States to join
- her husband with her two boys, one Meyer and the other Julius.
- And this Julius Berman is the president
- who had the speech now.
- And he wasn't 4 years old when they left for the States.
- And she wrote the letters.
- And she has a handwriting, a very straight one.
- And I remember the address.
- You remembered the address after all those years?
- Yes, because his handwriting was such a clear one.
- Bolden Street 10 Hartford, Connecticut.
- My God.
- And I wrote this letter and I wrote Bolden Street 10
- Hartford, Connecticut.
- And I gave it to this woman, not even thinking
- once that this letter is going to come once to the States.
- Unbelievable.
- But this cousin is now here with me.
- And I have now a very bad conscience
- that she is alone here, and I now with you.
- We'll go find her in a minute.
- Yes.
- And I have the letter.
- I found it at my cousin's.
- And I wrote this letter, and I gave it to her.
- One day my cousin is cleaning her house, like every day,
- and dusting, and she has a wonderful plate,
- a black plate with red roses.
- And she said, [NON-ENGLISH]
- And she's crying the whole morning
- because she's sure I am not alive.
- The same morning is coming the mailman on Bolden Street 10,
- and looking around where is this and Mrs. Sara Berman.
- And he looks all over and he doesn't see any.
- He is about to go away with this letter in his pocket,
- all of a sudden comes down an old sweet woman, Mrs. Wilson,
- illiterate old Jewish woman.
- And she says, hello, how are you today.
- He said, fine but I have here a letter to some Mrs. Berman,
- and I don't see her any.
- Oh, she said, she doesn't live here anymore.
- She's living now in Florence street.
- But if you want, I'll take it to her.
- Because I'm going there.
- The cousin's husband is a shochet.
- And he's bringing for her meat.
- And she's an old woman and a poor woman,
- and this makes out for her relatives
- she's getting meat for half a price.
- So I'm going today to Mrs. Berman anyway.
- I can take it.
- And she's coming to my cousin with this piece of paper, not
- even a letter.
- Because something like this you put in the garbage.
- And she forgot already about it.
- And she sees my cousin is standing and dusting the house,
- and she's crying bitterly.
- Also it was raining.
- So she says, even my [INAUDIBLE] left and so and so.
- But she says, I don't know.
- I find a letter I have for you.
- The mailman brought today in Bolden Street.
- And she opens this letter from me.
- She immediately took her coat.
- And went to the station to go to New York.
- Because in New York was the uncle of my husband,
- still alive.
- And a friend of him from [NON-ENGLISH] yeshiva who came
- before.
- And between them was a cousin of my husband.
- And she knew this?
- No, a cousin of theirs, Rabbi Bender who
- was a cousin of her husband.
- But she knew that your husband's relatives were in?
- Yeah, just before she knew this.
- OK.
- Because it was time before the war broke out and before
- I was taken to write to them.
- And she went to New York.
- And she visited her cousin, the Rabbi Bender.
- And she tells him that I am alive.
- And she went to call the uncle of my husband
- and he wrote a letter.
- She called my husband's uncle and he immediately
- gave a telegram to my husband in Shanghai.
- In Shanghai?
- That I am alive, and the child is alive.
- Now there are people, friends of my husband in New York,
- who told me they are still alive.
- They said they have been sure that my husband got crazy,
- because the whole yeshiva who was absolutely sure that I
- am dead.
- Of course.
- How can somebody survive, survive so many years?
- And he was the only one who said she's not dead.
- Because I know it.
- You feel if somebody is dead.
- But she's not dead, because I feel it.
- So they said he's crazy.
- Because how can a person say such a thing?
- And when he used to say to everybody that he knows that I
- am alive, they said he's crazy.
- And the friends of him say, all of these friends to whom he
- spoke mostly, is now a patient with my son.
- We told him that my husband used to speak to him
- so calmly, he's living in New York.
- He's used to speak to him so much that his feet began
- to ache him, because they have been walking around.
- And they thought that he is crazy.
- And this is how my husband immediately got a telegram
- from his uncle that I am alive.
- And all day, I began to get in the camp packages.
- Packages.
- From America?
- From America.
- From Israel.
- From all over.
- Because now people knew you were there.
- They knew that I am alive, and this is how my husband find out
- that I am alive.
- And he then came where?
- What did he do?
- He was in Shanghai.
- And afterwards he came from Shanghai via San Francisco
- to the United States.
- And you came?
- I came much later, because they kept me in the camp
- till the end of '47.
- I came '48 in January.
- And you saw your husband?
- Yes.
- And the bris of my son was in Bedford Hospital in New York
- when he was seven years old.
- When he was seven years old.
- And then he got his name Mortrech.
- And I wanted to call him Mordechai
- because I don't believe in calling Jews not Jewish names.
- And I think the Jewish names are exactly
- as beautiful as all the others.
- And my husband said a name is something, but has his signs.
- He was a little bit mystical too.
- He was a very big scholar.
- And he said he was saved from so many dangers by the name Mark.
- He's going to be Mark [PERSONAL NAME]..
- And what did your husband do when you lived in the States?
- We had a very hard time.
- Yeah.
- We had a very, very hard time.
- They would understand in '48 in '49.
- [NON-ENGLISH],, from psychology, they are making how so much
- libraries, a lot of things would be different.
- We had an extremely hard time, extremely hard time.
- And not only monetary, monetary too,
- you have to use every penny to make go as long as possible.
- But the human dignity, we was so threaten us with feet,
- you know, so dirty.
- If a butcher has to tell you that you
- are fit to be a teacher or not.
- If you're coming to get a job like a teacher,
- what you had the best education from Germany.
- You have the [NON-ENGLISH] And he's taking his steady hand
- on his apron and he says, this is not good.
- What is what is your experience?
- The paper--
- And my husband had it extremely hard.
- And afterwards, he was elected the rabbi of Basel.
- And then you went from the States to Basel?
- I see.
- And your son was educated in Basel?
- Yes he finished medical school in Basel,
- and then he went back to New York.
- You say they.
- Yeah, I got two children more.
- Did you?
- Yeah.
- Two boys.
- Tell me about them.
- They're wonderful.
- One is-- the oldest Mark what I told you.
- Yes.
- He is I told you, medical director
- in Maimonides Hospital.
- And the other is--
- this what happens to me.
- It's all right.
- Tell me in any language you want.
- No.
- This is he is a [NON-ENGLISH] specialist.
- [NON-ENGLISH] specialist, a gynecologist?
- Yes.
- And a very good one.
- And he has also an assistant professorship already,
- et cetera, et cetera.
- Where is he?
- He's in New York.
- He has his own practice.
- And he's doing research.
- And the third one is David.
- He's a psychiatrist.
- And he has his own practice on Park Avenue.
- And you had three sons whom you got through medical school,
- and who got to do this when you had so little money?
- Very little money, very little patience, a lot of trouble,
- a lot of hardships.
- But I was very happy that we met again,
- and we have been very happy together.
- And it was not very easy to be happy.
- Because lost patients, and lost a lot of things.
- And I'll never forget that my husband told me,
- I can't recognize you.
- I don't believe it's you.
- You don't even have the same voice.
- You know, the dream girl from Lithuania
- with a lot of wonderful dreams, believing that the world is
- so wonderful and good.
- Yes.
- And to go and to fight through a lot of things,
- I would like to tell you another episode.
- Wait, I want to ask you something.
- Please.
- Tell me how you think you managed to keep your humanity.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- But other Jews didn't behave that way.
- No.
- Have you told your children these stories?
- No.
- They don't know.
- They know a lot of things that they saw between.
- But I even couldn't tell it to my husband.
- No, I couldn't tell him.
- He couldn't hear it.
- It's too hard for him?
- Yes.
- Too hard for him.
- And you know what once, we have been looking at the television
- not very long ago, a couple of years or more, six years,
- maybe seven.
- When in Holland, have been taking the--
- Oh yes.
- You remember?
- And then they have been kept I think,
- I think maybe a couple of weeks.
- The strange thing on the train when they hijacked the train?
- Yes, hijacked the people and they didn't let them out.
- You remember?
- And then there was a professor in Holland
- about the psychology of these people he was speaking.
- And how they are going to remain from two weeks being there
- for the whole life what kind of psychological traumas
- they have.
- You know?
- Then he said all of a sudden, look,
- it looks to me that you have exactly the same things.
- And that's when he began maybe--
- No, not only maybe.
- But he knew that it is impossible
- that you are trying--
- and maybe this experience what I had with my son
- that you have to, you have to, you have to,
- because you have to keep in mind maybe
- this I learned a certain technique, I would say.
- Yeah.
- You know, you have to, you have to, you have to,
- push it through.
- It was very, very hard.
- I had the most wonderful person you can imagine my husband was.
- I can't even describe to you what kind of an extremely
- wonderful person.
- But he was not--
- he was a genius, he is not.
- Yes.
- And to make the dollar go as far as possible is even harder.
- And even in Basel, things were difficult?
- Even in Basel.
- No, in Basel we had it much easier.
- But in Basel, I have other things to do so.
- I couldn't give to my family so much time.
- And so much like I wanted.
- Well, it sounds like--
- Because I had other obligations.
- I had other--
- I understand.
- And it was not so easy.
- And the time what was during this time what
- my husband went through, is even harder than I was.
- And it was also not so easy because it
- didn't go away from him.
- So it left very deep signs.
- He began to smoke passionately when
- he find out that his father was in the concentration camp.
- And since then he couldn't do anything.
- He was like crazy.
- He adored his father.
- He adored his father in such a degree
- that I think it was not even normal anymore.
- And he felt everything.
- He felt one night he woke up and he said,
- this night my father died.
- And he wrote down the date.
- And after the war, after many years,
- he found out it was exactly the day when he was killed in Riga.
- And his mother who was killed, was the first one
- who died in Riga on the way when she was brought from Germany.
- And his brother died in Minsk.
- And there was a little brother who was in Holland,
- and he was taken also to the concentration camp and killed.
- And the wife and the child, he didn't know where they are.
- And he knew only to learn, and to learn,
- and he had so much humor and so much life,
- and so he was impersonated life, you know.
- And always thinking-- he has a doctorate in philosophy.
- He is with honors and honors and honors.
- He was one of the biggest speech orators you can imagine.
- He has immense and immense knowledge.
- But he couldn't take it anymore.
- And it was not easy, no, no.
- I thank God my children are standing on their own feet.
- And so anyway, and my youngest son always says, Mama,
- you have to have decent.
- Go and buy another dress.
- Do something.
- We don't want you to--
- you don't have to keep any money for him.
- And I don't have never money I have.
- You have to spend everything on you.
- So I said, you have to live for you also something.
- I'm telling you now already, every penny you leave
- is going for stock now.
- OK.
- Good.
- That's good.
- This is the way I feel.
- I'm thinking this is what makes me proud.
- I should think so.
- But he is a good psychiatrist and doctor.
- And one day calls him up, a Hasidishe rebbe,
- that he wants to meet him when he can came home.
- So he just to tell you the education they got.
- They said, the rabbi is coming to me?
- No.
- You please tell me when I can visit you
- if you want to speak to me.
- What is their connection with the Jewish community?
- They are observant Jews.
- The youngest one is that psychiatrist, you know.
- I don't know if he's so strictly Orthodox.
- But he's very observant too.
- And the others are strict law too,
- especially this oldest, Mark.
- And his Jewishness is Litvish Jewishness.
- My son, David.
- Yes.
- He was living in New Haven, Connecticut.
- So there was every Friday in Shabbos at least 12 people
- at his table, because his wife has a service for 12.
- She's from German origin, you know.
- So it's just so.
- And if he's going to be [INAUDIBLE] different,
- is very bad, but not less than 12.
- Also they have only three--
- Are their grandchildren?
- I have four grandchildren.
- Yes.
- The oldest, Mark, has two.
- And the second one has three.
- I don't have the pictures with me because it's heavy.
- No, maybe I do.
- This is the end of this recording.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Bella Adler
- Date
-
interview:
1983 April 13
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 sound cassettes (60 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors conducted the interview with Bella Adler on April 13, 1983, in Washington, D.C., during the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Conference. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Dept. received the tapes of the interview in 1989. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes by transfer in February 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:13:29
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn503175
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Also in American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors oral history collection
Contains oral history interviews with 157 Holocaust survivors recorded during the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Washington, D.C., in Apr. 1983. The interviews contain information about persecution, life in the ghettos and concentration camps, and concentration camp liberation during World War II.
Date: 1983 April 11-2083 April 13
Oral history interview with Suzanne Agasee
Oral History
Suzanne Agasee, born in Paris, France on January 12, 1939, describes police coming to her home when she was two and taking her parents, leaving her grandmother, two brothers, and herself behind; a Jewish woman from an underground organization coming the next day to hide them; her grandmother being caught, deported, and dying in a gas chamber; being sent with her brothers to live with Catholic families; being taken to a Jewish orphanage after the war and living there for three years; searching for living relatives; she and her brothers becoming wards of the Jewish Congress and being sent to Canada to live with an uncle; being an atheist for years; marring a Jewish man; and deciding with her husband that having a strong Jewish identity was important in raising their two daughters.
Oral history interview with Janet Applefield
Oral History
Janet Applefield, born Gustava Singer in June 1935 in Kraków, Poland, discusses her family; being sent with her mother to Wadowice, Poland when the war began; her father joining them and moving to Vynnyky, Ukraine, where they lived for several months; her family returning to the Nowy Targ ghetto; leaving the ghetto with her parents and going to Niepolomice, Poland; how her parents decided to give her away to a half Polish, half German woman; her parents deportation the next day; staying with a cousin under the name Christina Antoskevitch; her cousin’s arrest by Nazis during a raid; not know what had happened to her cousin; a soldier refusing to help her; how a Polish woman took care of her for several weeks and then sent her to her family’s farm; staying on the farm; returning to another cousin after the war; being treated in a home in Zakopane, Poland for jaundice; reuniting with her father; immigrating with her father to the United States on March 25, 1947; and marrying and having three children.
Oral history interview with Idel Barth
Oral History
Oral history interview with William Basem
Oral History
Oral history interview with Adam Beer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jack Begleiter
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irene Berger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mira Berger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Dan Berkovits
Oral History
Oral history interview with Philip Bialowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Paul Blank
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Blitzer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Morton Blumenstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Frieda Braksmajer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alice Braun
Oral History
Oral history interview with Menucha Cale
Oral History
Oral history interview with Werner Cohen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Janet Davidson
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jolan Deitch
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lillian Eckstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mariene Einhorn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Samuel Einhorn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Max Eisen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ida Ender
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Fabian
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Farkas
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leo Fettman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josef Feuereisen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rena Finder
Oral History
Oral history interview with Frances Finkelstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Michael Finkelstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Curt Fondell
Oral History
Oral history interview with Helen Zimm
Oral History
Oral history interview with Luba Frederick
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sylvia Freilich
Oral History
Oral history interview with Izrail Frenkel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Szyja Frenkel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ruth Friedman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Fruhman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Georgia Gabor
Oral History
Oral history interview with Moshe Gimlan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anita Graber
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ann Grauman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eva Greenspan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mark Grunseid
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fay Guttman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gucia Haut
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Heller
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marcus Heller
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ellen Hersh
Oral History
Oral history interview with Celia Hershkowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fany Hoffman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Molly Ingster
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Itzcowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sol Zimm
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose Jacoby
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Kahan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henry Kanner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Moshe Kantorowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henia Karp
Oral History
Oral history interview with Katalin Karpati
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Karplen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Arnold Kerr
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irving Kider
Oral History
Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Michael Klein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Hilda Kober
Oral History
Oral history interview with Emmy Kolodny
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Korzenik
Oral History
Oral history interview with Adrienne Krausz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josef Kreitenberg
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mary Kress
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sonia Krul
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lewis Lax
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lefkovits
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rachel Lefkovits
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rosie Leibman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ida Lender
Oral History
Oral history interview with Charles Lipshitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ilse Loeb
Oral History
Oral history interview with Esther Lubochinski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose Luftig
Oral History
Oral history interview with George Lynn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher
Oral History
Oral history interview with Judith Mandel
Oral History
Oral history interview with John Marek
Oral History
Oral history interview with Tobie Markowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henry Marton
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sara Marton
Oral History
Oral history interview with Paulette Meltzer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sonia Meyers
Oral History
Oral history interview with Bernard Milch
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lusia Milch
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sonja Milner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Seymour Moncarz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Felicia Neufeld
Oral History
The interview describes Ms. Neufeld's childhood in Berlin, Germany, her father's escape to Paris, France where she joined him and they lived until 1942, her father's arrest, and her move to a series of French orphanges. Ms. Neufeld describes an incident in which she was taken by the director of an orphange to see her mother, who had been transported to a prison in Paris from Berlin, where she had been hidden. Ms. Neufeld discusses the disappearance of the director of the orphange, escaping to northern France with other children from the orphange, and remembers air fights and struggling to survive in the countryside. Ms. Neuberg describes her life after the war, being sent for by relatives in the United States, and learning that both her parents perished in Auschwitz.
Oral history interview with Edie Newman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leslie Niederman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Niederman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Judith Novak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anna Olivek
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mayer Pasternak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sonia Pasternak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jill Pauly
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lee Potasinski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lily Redner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Edith Riemer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Dora Riss
Oral History
Oral history interview with Noah Roitman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sol Rolnitzky
Oral History
Oral history interview with Barbara Rona
Oral History
Oral history interview with Michael Ronay
Oral History
Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld
Oral History
Oral history interview with Helen Rothstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Aliza Rubin
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Oral history interview with Meyer Rubinstein
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Oral history interview with Hadassa Rublevich
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Oral history interview with Charlotte Rudner
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Oral history interview with Frieda Salomon
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gloria Salomon
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Oral history interview with Theodore Schwarcz
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Oral history interview with Hilda Schwartz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Barbara Seligman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irene Shapiro
Oral History
Oral history interview with Meyer Shnurman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ruth Gabriele Silten
Oral History
Oral history interview with Claudia Sissons
Oral History
Oral history interview with Isadore Small
Oral History
Oral history interview with Klara Snyder
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Sochaczewski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ruth Sold
Oral History
Oral history interview with Goldie Speiser
Oral History
Oral history interview with Meier Stessel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Felice Stokes
Oral History
Oral history interview with Norman Swoy
Oral History
Oral history interview with Simon Taitz
Oral History
Simon Taitz, born in Königsberg, Germany, describes having a successful watchmaking business in the suburbs of Kaunas, Lithuania; hiding with a Gentile family after the German invasion; being in a motorcycle club before the war began and how it was taken by the partisans; being forced to do labor; being mistreated by the Germans; being sent to the ghetto; working in the nearby airport; being sent one day to another work place and writing a song (he sings it during the interview); witnessing the reactions of the parents during and after the roundup of Jewish children; the separation of the men and women in a camp and writing a song about a woman who saw the men dancing and was punished (he sings it and the interviewee reads the translation); his song about the daily life in the camp (he sings it and the interviewee reads the translation); more details about life in the ghetto; writing a song about the choices people made during the war; the journey on cattle cars to Dachau; being sent originally to Stutthof; being transferred to Dachau, where he was separated from his mother and never saw her again; details on his childhood (losing his father when he was very young and having two siblings); helping to save other Jews in the camp by giving them jobs in his watchmaking repair shop in Kaufering; and more details on daily life in the camps.
Oral history interview with Halina Zimm
Oral History
Oral history interview with Solomon Teichman
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Tenenbaum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Matthew Tovian
Oral History
Oral history interview with Max Trompeter
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fela Unikel
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Wakshlag
Oral History
Oral history interview with Dobka Waldhorn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sidney Wapner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Martin Water
Oral History
Oral history interview with Celine Weber
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eva Weinberger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alice Weinstock
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Weinstock
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Weisfeld
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sol Wieder
Oral History
Oral history interview with Samuel Wisznia
Oral History