Oral history interview with Abraham Pasternak

Oral history interview with Irene Hasenberg Butter

Oral History

Dr. Irene Hasenberg Butter, born in Berlin, Germany in 1930, describes moving with her family to Holland, Netherlands in 1937; being deported with her family in June 1943 to Westerbork, a transit camp, and then in February 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; how her family managed to be included in an exchange transport in early 1945 using falsified Ecuadorian passports; the death of her father during the transport; the release of the rest of the family, who went to North Africa; and moving to New York, NY after the war ended.

Oral history interview with Erna Blitzer Gorman

Oral History

Erna Blitzer Gorman, describes her experiences as a child when she and her family were in Poland at the time of the Nazi invasion and were unable to return to their home in France; living in various ghettos; escaping the ghetto; hiding for more than two years in a barn by a Ukrainian farmer until the area was liberated by Russian soldiers.

Oral history interview with Ruth Kent

Oral History

Ruth Kent, born in 1930 in Łódź, Poland, describes her life before the war; her family; living with her family in the Łódź ghetto until it was liquidated in 1944; being deported to Auschwitz where her family was separated and some family members were immediately put to death; being sent with one of her sisters to Stutthof, where they were later separated; surviving a forced march as the Germans evacuated the camps in the face of the advancing Russian Army; being liberated by the Russians; and reuniting with two brothers after the war.

Oral history interview with Alfred Lessing

Oral History

An interview with Alfred Lessing, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by Dr. Sidney Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan--Dearborn. Mr. Lessing recalls his experiences living with other families as a hidden child in the Netherlands during the war. He talks about the last year of World War II when he was reunited and lived with his father and brothers

Oral history interview with Agi Rubin

Oral History

Agi Rubin, born in Monkacs, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes being deported with her family in 1944 to Auschwitz, where her mother and younger brother were killed; working in a sorting shed in the camp until it was evacuated in January 1945; surviving a forced march of several months; being liberated in Germany when she was 15 years old; and reuniting with her father.

Oral history interview with Ruth Muschkies Webber

Oral History

Ruth Muschkies Webber, born on June 28, 1935 in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland, describes her childhood; her family’s limited religious observance; the beginning of the war; learning years after the war that her aunt was sexually assaulted during the German invasion; her sister’s piano studies in Warsaw and placement with a Gentile family to continue her education; the creation of a ghetto around 1942; her family attempts at convincing her to hide with a Gentile family and her refusal; her feelings upon seeing the Germans in their town; her parents getting work at the nearby labor facility (Bodzechów camp) and secretly bringing her along; hiding while her parents worked; sneaking out of the camp with her mother during the selections for transfer; her memories of the winter of 1942 and walking all night long so they wouldn’t freeze; her various hiding places; playing with rodents; her daydreams while in hiding; being separated from her father in 1942-43 when she and her mother were sent to Starachowice; witnessing the German camp guards argue over what to do with she and another child and eventually being allowed into the camp; her work in the camp, peeling potatoes and taking messages around the camp; seeing many deaths; the tension and anxiety she felt in the camp; being in Sandomierz concentration camp; returning to Bodzechów; the effects she still feels from her Holocaust experiences; having to internalize all her emotions while she was in the camp; being sent to Ostrowiec concentration camp then Auschwitz; the journey to Auschwitz; arriving in the camp with her mother; going through the showers with the other women and laughing as they left and searched through the available clothing; how they dealt with corpses; teaching each other how to knit; the gas chambers and crematoriums; contracting measles and pneumonia and going to the hospital; the measles epidemic in Auschwitz; the various blocks in the camp; her camp tattoo; living with other children in her block; the twins being taken and returned continuously; her mother being sent away for a few weeks; being liberated by the Russians in January 1945; being in some of the photographs the Russians took; reuniting with her mother and sister in Krakow, Poland; how her relationship with her mother and sister was more complicated after the war; staying in a children’s home with her sister in Bielsko-Biala, Poland; going to Toronto, where they had family; the complexities of speaking about her experiences after the war; finding out about her father’s fate; her thoughts on being one of the few children to survive concentration camps; and her three children.

Oral history interview with Franka Charlupski

Oral History

Franka Weintraub Charlupski, born in 1920, describes living with her family in Łódź, Poland; being in the Łódź ghetto from 1940 until August 1944 when they were transported to Auschwitz and separated; the death of her mother Auschwitz; the death of her father in a labor camp; spending three days with her sister in Auschwitz before being moved to a labor camp outside of Bremen, Germany; the closing of the camp on April 7, 1945 and being transferred to Bergen-Belsen; and being liberated by the British Army on April 15, 1945.

Oral history interview with Emanuel Tanay

Oral History

Dr. Emanuel Tanay, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1928, describes living in Miechow, Poland before the war; living in the Miechow ghetto; escaping with his mother and sister just before it was liquidated; how his father did not escape and was later executed by Amon Goeth; spending part of the war living in a monastery as a novice and passing as a converted Jew; and using false Aryan papers as he moved around Poland and Hungary.

Oral history interview with Stefa Sprecher Kupfer

Oral History

Stefa (Sarah) Sprecher Kupfer, describes being 10 years old and living in Sanok, Poland when the war started; the death of her father in the early days of the occupation; going into hiding with her mother and young sister instead of registering with the occupational government; how a Polish woman, Mrs. Orlewska, played a significant role in their survival by hiding them in her house; and being aided by other Poles, some of whom knew they were Jews.

Oral history interview with Shari Weiss

Oral History

Shari Weiss, born on April 28, 1929 in Herina, Romania, describes going to live with an aunt and uncle in Cluj, Romania at age nine; remaining in Cluj until 1944; the German occupation in 1944; being sent to a transit camp in a brick factory for three weeks; being transported in May 1944 to Auschwitz; living in Auschwitz with her aunt stayed for about five months; being transferred with her aunt to a labor camp in Altenburg, Germany; working in a factory until April 1945; being marched out of the camp with the other inmates; being liberated with her aunt by the American army two days later; and learning that her uncle did not survive the war. [Full transcripts available at http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/]

Oral history interview with Leon Salomon

Oral History

Leon Salomon, a born in Maków Mazowiecki, Poland, describes living in Maków Mazowiecki with his family until Poland was occupied by the Germans in 1939; moving with two of his sisters to Kobylnik (Narach, Belarus) to live with their brother; a school teacher who was later killed when the Germans took over the area; the massacre of the town’s Jewish residents by the Germans in a nearby forest in 1942; escaping the shooting and hiding in the forest; being the only member of his immediate family to survive; joining a partisan group fighting in the Vilnius, Lithuania and White Russia area; joining the Soviet Army near the end of the war; and fighting until he was wounded in east Prussia.

Oral history interview with Martin Adler

Oral History

Marton Adler, born in 1929 in Volové, a village in Sub Carpathian Ruthenia (now Mizhhir'ia, Ukraine), describes growing up the oldest child and his two brothers and one sister; his father; the Jewish community in Volové; the Hungarian occupation in 1939; the conscription of his father into a labor unit in Russia from 1941 until the end of 1942; the anti-Jewish laws and his family losing their store; the German occupation in March 1944; being deported with his family to a ghetto in Sokirnitsa, Ukraine; being sent to Auschwitz and the deaths of his mother and siblings; being sent with his father to Buchenwald; being sent to Dora; his father’s death in Dora; and being liberated by the British from Bergen-Belsen. [Full transcripts available at http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/]

Oral history interview with Alexander Ehrmann

Oral History

Alexander Ehrmann, born in Kralovsky Chlumec, Czechoslovakia (Král'ovský Chlmec, Slovakia), describes his family; being deported with his family to a ghetto in 1944 and then to Auschwitz, where his parents and a sister and her son were killed; being transferred to Warsaw after the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto ended in order to salvage materials from the ghetto; spending five days in Dachau; being transferred to Muhldorf, where the inmates were building an underground aircraft factory; being evacuated from the camp and put on a train; being and moved back and forth in the unoccupied area until they were liberated by American troops; and reuniting with two sisters and his younger brother after the war ended.

Oral history interview with Hilma Geffen

Oral History

Hilma Geffen, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes being an only child; her father serving in the German Army during World War I and being awarded the Iron Cross; moving with her family in 1931 to Rangsdorf, Germany, where they were the only Jewish family in town; her father, an accountant, continuing to commute to Berlin for work; how a couple of nights after Kristallnacht SA (Sturmabteilung) men came to the house and smashed the furniture; moving with her family in 1939 to Berlin because Jews could no longer own property; returning home after work in October 1941 and being told by her mother to run away because people were there to pick them up; using false papers and going into hiding; living with a German couple, who knew only that she was Jewish, until the end of the war; immigrating to the United States; living in Miami Beach, FL, where she had relatives; and how her parents were deported to Auschwitz and did not survive the war.

Oral history interview with Leo Liffman

Oral History

Leo Liffman, born and raised in Wiesbaden, Germany, relates his experiences with antisemitism as a child and young adult during the closing years of the Weimar Republic and the early Hitler years; being arrested during Kristallnacht and imprisoned for several weeks at Buchenwald concentration camp; fleeing Germany in 1939, leaving his parents behind; and being the only member of his family to survive the war.

Oral history interview with Helena Manaster

Oral History

Helena Manaster, born in Poland, describes being one of eight children, all of whom were adults at the beginning of the war; the separation of her family after the German invasion in 1939; going with her father and several siblings to Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine), which was under Soviet control at the time; the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the occupation of Lwów; the deportation of her father and brothers to Belzec, where they died in the gas chambers; being moved with her husband to Lesko, Poland and then Zamosc, Poland; the Germans sending she and her husband to a labor camp in Rokitna because her husband was a doctor; escaping the camp; and making their way to Kraków, Poland, where they remained in hiding until the end of the war.

Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nathan Offen, Bernard Offen, and Samuel Offen

Oral History

The Offen brothers, Nathan (born December 15, 1922), Bernard (born April 17, 1929), and Samuel (born August 7, 1921), describe growing up in Kraków, Poland; the beginning of the war and life in the Kraków ghetto; being sent to the Płaszów labor camp; Bernard describes being transported with other children out of camp Płaszów, escaping, and being smuggled into another sub-camp to be with an uncle; reuniting as a family at Płaszów; being transported to Mauthausen; the separation of Bernard and his father from Sam and Nathan; the transfer of Sam and Nathan to Auschwitz; the death of their father in Auschwitz; Sam and Nathan going to Italy after the war ended; and Bernard finding his brothers in Italy. [Full transcripts available at http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/]

Oral history interview with Marton Adler

Oral History

Marton Adler, born in 1929 in Volové, a village in Sub Carpathian Ruthania (possibly Mizhhir'ya, Ukraine), describes being the oldest of his two brothers and sister; the Hungarian occupation of his village in 1939; the conscription of his father into a labor unit in Russia from 1941 until the end of 1942; how the family eventually lost their store due to the anti-Jewish laws; the German occupation of the area in March of 1944 and being deported with his family soon after; being sent first to a ghetto in Sokirnitsa (Sokyrnytsia), Ukraine and then to Auschwitz, where his mother and siblings were gassed; being sent with his father to Buchenwald and then to Dora, where his father was killed; and being liberated by the British from Bergen-Belsen.

Oral history interview with Nathan Roth

Oral History

Nathan Roth, born in Veliky Bereznyy, Czechoslovakia (Velykyĭ Bereznyĭ, Ukraine), describes being deported with his mother, father, and eight siblings to the ghetto in Ungvár (Uzhhorod, Ukraine) in 1944 after the German annexation of his town; the split up of his family; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to Jaworzno, a sub-camp of Auschwitz; working for I.G. Farben at Jaworzno on an excavation project; being liberated by the Russians while on a death march following the evacuation of the Jaworzno camp; returning to Veliky Bereznyy after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

Oral history interview with Zolton Rubin

Oral History

Zolton Rubin, born in Kapúsány, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), describes being the youngest child in a large family of eight sons and three daughters; how his family was fairly well off since his father owned a large farm and several mills; being protected with his parents from deportation because of an economic exemption until 1942 when the exemption was eliminated and his parents were deported; avoiding deportation because he used Gentile papers given to him by friends; being captured with a group of partisans in 1944 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near Jena, Germany, where he was part of a forced labor detail digging tunnels for the Germans; escaping towards the end of the war with three others and living off the land for about six weeks until the American Army arrived in the area; and reuniting with an older brother, who was a doctor with the Czechoslovakian Army.

Oral history interview with Martin Schlanger

Oral History

Martin Shlanger was born in Vel'ke Kapusany, Czechoslovakia (Velké Kapušany, Slovakia), describes moving to Budapest, Hungary in 1942 to work in a factory; the German occupation of Budapest in March 1944; acquiring false papers but being identified soon after as a Jew and arrested; being sent to Jaworzno, a sub-camp of Auschwitz; surviving a death march to Blechhammer in 1945 as the Russian Army invaded the area; hiding when the Germans left Blechhammer and being left behind at the camp and eventually encountering the Soviet Army; reuniting for a short time with his brother, who was serving with the Czechoslovak Brigade in the Soviet Army; and returning to his hometown where he lived until 1949 when he immigrated to Detroit, MI.

Oral history interview with Abraham Pasternak

Oral History

Abraham Pasternak, born in 1924 in Beclean, Romania, describes his parents and siblings; the religious practices in his family; the Jewish community; the Hungarian occupation; restrictions placed on Jews; being forced out of Beclean and sent to Daiysh (possibly Dej, Romania); the forcing of Jewish men to shave off their beards; being sent to Auschwitz and life there; being sent to Schlieben and his work there; his work in Zeitz, Germany (Tröglitz concentration camp); being sent to Buchenwald for two months; being separated from his brothers; life in Buchenwald; religious practices in the camp; being beaten by a SS woman; food rations in the camp; life in Theresienstadt and reuniting with his brothers; liberation; returning to Beclean; going to Hungary and then the United States; and settling in Detroit, MI.

Oral history interview with Szymon Binke

Oral History

Szymon Binke, born in 1931 in Łódź, Poland, describes how shortly after the Nazi invasion his family was moved to the city's Baluty district, which became the Łódź ghetto; being deported with his family in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his mother and sister were gassed; being placed in the Kinderblock; escaping from the Kinderblock to join his father and uncles in the main camp of Auschwitz; and being transferred later to a series of forced labor camps until he was liberated in May 1945.

Oral history interview with Noemi Engel Ebenstein

Oral History

Noemi Engel Ebenstein, born in 1941, retells the stories told to her by her mother about how the family survived the Holocaust; the deportation of her father being to a forced labor camp when she was a baby; being deported in May 1944 with her brother and mother from Subotica, Yugoslavia to several camps; going to Strasshof labor camp; and being sent to Moosbierbaum, where she and her family were liberated by the Soviet Army.

Oral history interview with Alexander Karp

Oral History

Alexander Karp, born in Baktaloranthaza, Hungary, describes moving into the Kisvarda ghetto with his mother and 15 year old sister in 1944 when he was about 19 years old; the arrest of his father in Russia in 1942 and how they did not know if he was alive or dead; being transported with his family to Birkenau, where he was separated from his mother and sister; spending four months with an uncle in Birkenau; how he and his uncle claimed to be tool and die makers and were sent to several different camps; eventually ending up at an underground airplane factory in the Kochendorf area (Bad Friedrichshall, Germany); being evacuated in March 1945 to Dachau and then to Mittenwald, Germany, where they were liberated; and being reunited with his father in August 1945.

Oral history interview with Bernard Klein and Emery Klein

Oral History

Bernard and Emery Klein, brothers born in Humenné, Slovakia, describe their immediate family, including their parents and younger sister; the German occupation in 1939 and the deportations of Jews in 1941; how their family was not deported until 1944 because their father was an important farming advisor; Emery being sent with the family to Auschwitz without Bernard, who had become separated; the immediate gassing of their mother and sister; Bernard being reunited with his brother and father at Auschwitz a month later; being sent with their father to Gleiwitz, where Emery and his father worked in a factory while Bernard worked in the concentration camp kitchen; the evacuation of the camp in 1945 as the Russian Army advanced into the area and being sent to Blechhammer; how the German guards fled the camp, leaving the prisoners; walking with their father and several others back to Humenné; moving to Israel and Montreal, Canada; and eventually going to Detroit, MI.

Oral history interview with Michael Weiss

Oral History

Michael Weiss, born in Kascony, Czechoslovakia, chronicles his experiences under the Czechoslovakians, Hungarians, and Germans, both prior to and during World War II; being transported with his family to the Hungarian ghetto of Beregszasz (Berehove, Ukraine) in 1944; being deported with his family to Auschwitz, where his mother was gassed by the Germans; and being sent with his father to Buchenwald and then on to Zeitz, Germany.

Oral history interview with Manya Feldman

Oral History

Manya Feldman, born in Dombrovitsa, Poland (Dubrovytsia, Ukraine) in 1923, describes her large Orthodox family; the Soviet occupation of her town in 1939; the German invasion in 1941; how the Jews in Dombrovitsa immediately felt the effects of the German’s antisemitic measures; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1942; escaping with her father, brother, and eldest sister into the forest; the deportation of her mother and her two sisters to Sarny, Ukraine, where they were murdered; joining the Kovpak partisan movement with her family; being separated from her family and spending the remainder of the war hiding in several small villages in the region and serving in different partisan units; the death of her father and siblings in combat; being placed in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany following the end of the war; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with David Kahan

Oral History

Born in 1928, in Gheorgheni, Romania, David Kahan was part of a large extended family, consisting of his mother, father, several siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. In April 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary and immediately began the full-scale persecution of Hungarian Jewry. The Kahan family was detained by Hungarian Gendarmerie and placed in a school room for several days. After their initial detainment, the family was shipped to an ad hoc ghetto in Szaszregen (Reghin, Romania). The family remained incarcerated in a brick factory in Szaszregen for approximately four weeks. They were then shipped to Auschwitz. Upon arrival in Auschwitz, David was separated from his family, who were gassed, and David was shaved, deloused, and held for future use on work details. Of the camp itself, David remembers very few details. After approximately four weeks, David was shipped to the Mühldorf labor camp in Southern Germany. While there, David worked for Organization Todt, clearing trees for the construction of an underground airplane factory. David contacted typhus after he was liberated and was hospitalized in the displaced persons camp at Feldafing. Following his recovery, David showed no desire to return to Romania and made his way to the United States, arriving in New York in May 1949. From New York, David moved to Minneapolis and eventually made his way to Detroit around 1950. He married in 1953 and had three sons.

Oral history interview with Henry Krystal

Oral History

Henry Krystal, born in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1925, describes the escape of his brother and father to the Soviet occupied zone of Poland shortly after the Nazi invasion while he and his mother stayed in Bodzentyn, Poland; being sent to a labor camp in 1942; his mother’s deportation to Treblinka, where she died; being a member of a labor Kommando sent from place to place, including Starachowice, Bobrek, Birkenau, Siemensstadt, and Sachsenhausen, from 1942 until the end of the war; working in a factory operated by the Siemens company; being in the city of Schwerin (Skwierzyna, Poland) in the British occupied zone of Germany at the end of the war; immigrating to the United States in 1947; settling in Detroit, MI, where he lived with an aunt and uncle; and attending school and becoming a psychiatrist.

Oral history interview with Rene Lichtman

Oral History

Rene Lichtman, born in Paris, France in 1937, describes being the only son of Polish immigrants who arrived in France in the 1930s; his father joining the French Army shortly before the outbreak of World War II; the death of his father while in combat just outside of Paris in Compiègne; how after the fall of France his mother sent him to stay with a family in the countryside, where he was kept hidden from the Germans for the remainder of the war; his mother going into hiding in Paris in 1942; the survival of he and his mother and the death of most of his maternal and paternal family members in Poland; and his mother’s marriage in 1950 to an American Orthodox Jew, after which the two moved from France to Williamsburg, NY.

Oral history interview with Jack Gun

Oral History

Jack Gun, born in Rozhishche, Poland (Rozhyshche, Ukraine), describes living in Rozhishche with his father, mother, older brother, and sister; the annexation of Rozhishche to Ukraine by the Soviets at the outbreak of the war in September 1939; how after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 his family was forced into the ghetto and were used as forced laborers; the liquidation of the ghetto in August of 1942 and the murder of his father, mother, and sister; fleeing with his brother and receiving help from their father's non-Jewish friend; how upon this man's urging he and his brother hid first in the woods and then in a bunker they dug in a field; several near-misses with the occupation authorities; and hiding in a non-Jewish Ukrainian household, where they remained until the Russians liberated Ukraine in 1944.