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Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.33 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0033

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    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser
    Transcript
    Do you remember your friends when you got back to Paris?
    Oh, Yes.
    The stroke that you had before left
    the left side of her face--
    I didn't realize that she had had a stroke before.
    And she came out of that.
    Then she buried two husbands.
    And then her granddaughter, Hala, who--
    Bettyville 151, Bettyville 151.
    OK.
    My name is Carol Tobin.
    And I'm interviewing Dina Leiser in Cleveland, Ohio.
    Dina, why don't you start by just telling us
    a little bit about your life now, what's going on.
    I'm employed at the Jewish Federation.
    I am married.
    I have a son, who is also married.
    And I am a grandmother.
    How old is your son?
    My son is 29.
    And what does he do?
    He works for one of my relatives in an auto wrecking yard.
    Where do you live?
    I live in University Heights on Washington Boulevard.
    What kind of work do you do at the Federation?
    I am a supervisor of a general office in the pool.
    I have about--
    I'm supervising about 10 ladies.
    OK.
    Why don't we start going into talking about before the war.
    Can you tell us a little bit about what your life was
    like before the war started?
    Well, I was 12 when the war started.
    So I was really a child before the war, and--
    Excuse me, and you were in Paris?
    Yes, I was in Paris when the war--
    in September 1939, when France declared war on Germany.
    When war was declared, that was during vacation time
    because we didn't start school in those days until October.
    So I think after war was declared,
    we did go back to school in October.
    OK.
    But let's go back before the war and talk a little bit
    about what was your life like before the war.
    Well, would you like me to talk about my parents?
    Or go back that far?
    Yes.
    What was your family like?
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    Yes, I do.
    I have one brother, who's 2 and 1/2 years younger than I am.
    And my brother and I were born were born in Paris.
    My parents were born in Poland and came to France
    soon after they got married.
    And that's where they established themselves.
    What did your father do?
    My father, he worked in the tailoring.
    And my mother also worked because they
    were very young and very poor.
    They had fled Poland to escape antisemitism.
    And their life was a life of struggle then.
    Did you live in the city in Paris--
    Yes, we lived--
    --or in a suburb?
    No, we lived in the city.
    We were born in the city, and we lived in the city
    in an apartment building.
    What did it look like?
    Your neighborhood, what was it like?
    Well, the first place I remember was when I was about 5 or 6,
    we lived in one room only, the four of us.
    There was no-- it was no luxury.
    Then after that, we moved to a larger--
    it was a two-room apartment.
    But we never lived in larger quarters
    than that with no facilities at all.
    I mean when I say no facilities, no running water,
    nothing like that.
    My parents were poor and struggling.
    How did you cook with no-- did you have a kitchen?
    Yeah, we had a tiny kitchen.
    I mean there was one for one.
    It was just my mother to get into the kitchen
    with a little stove.
    And I guess we manage.
    I mean, we didn't know any better.
    So we were-- this is all we had.
    Was this a Jewish neighborhood?
    No, not necessarily.
    It was mixed.
    No, it was not a Jewish neighborhood.
    Although the first place I remember where we lived,
    there were a lot of Jewish people, a lot of immigrants
    from Poland and these countries because they tended
    to keep together in those days.
    But as I grew a little older, I remember
    we lived in a mixed neighborhood.
    As a matter of fact, we were a very low minority
    in that neighborhood.
    What were your friends like?
    And what did you do with your friends?
    Well, my last year--
    when I was 12, I had a--
    most of my friends were not necessarily Jewish
    because they weren't that many Jewish children in the school.
    And above all, I wanted to be French like everybody else.
    So I really wasn't seeking Jewish companionship
    because like I said I wanted to be French before anything else.
    Did you feel that there was any antisemitism at all,
    at that time?
    Definitely there was.
    Definitely there was because I remember
    when we lived in one of the apartments,
    and when we moved in there, they had a word a certain word
    for Jews, like they have here.
    I think they call them--
    I don't know what they call a Jew here,
    which is not a very complimentary word, like kike
    or something.
    They did have such an expression.
    This I was called that many, many times.
    What was the French word for--
    [FRENCH]
    It was-- and it always hurt when you heard that word.
    But I heard it many times.
    I could not say that my teachers were antisemitic.
    The teachers were always very nice and very--
    that I never heard any antisemitic remarks
    from any one of the teachers.
    But from some children I did.
    Did your parents tell you how to handle these remarks?
    No, my parents were so involved in their work,
    in their life, which was a struggle continuously,
    they really didn't counsel us that much.
    We pretty much grew up on our own, my brother and I.
    Would tell your brother about these experiences?
    Or did he have similar things happen?
    No, I don't think my brother, being a little younger than,
    I always protected him.
    And I don't think he was exposed as
    much as I was to those things.
    Was your family religious?
    Not at all.
    My mother and father both came from very religious homes.
    But it seems that they went the opposite way
    when they came to France.
    They didn't follow any religious rules.
    I mean we never kept a kosher home.
    We didn't even observe the Jewish holidays in France.
    I used to go to school on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
    I knew these were Jewish holidays,
    but they were not observed by us.
    What sorts of things did you do in your free time?
    Did you go to the movies?
    We went a lot to the movies.
    We used to go to school from Monday
    through Saturday, except Thursday,
    which was our day off in those days in public schools.
    It's been changed since.
    Now, it's Saturday off.
    But in those days we used to get Thursday off.
    And since my mother was going to work,
    we were always by ourselves.
    So we used to go to the movies, get in the movies at 1 o'clock
    and stay there until 6:00.
    So I was an avid movie goer, especially of American movies.
    And I could name you all the American stars.
    Did your family go on vacations?
    No.
    My parents did not go on vacation.
    But they used to send us away on vacation
    because there was a program sponsored
    by the public schools.
    And when I was about five, when I went to a nursery school,
    the directress of this school was
    from a small town in western France,
    not far from the Atlantic coast, about 50 kilometers
    from the Atlantic coast, right south of Brittany.
    So she was from there.
    And she used to place children, poor children,
    with farmers for the summer, for two months.
    So she sent us away with a group of children.
    My brother and I were sent away to this place.
    And we were placed with farmers.
    And we would stay there for two months.
    This was the best time of our life.
    We always ate to our content.
    And we had a good time.
    And we used to go back year after year.
    Did you ever have any antisemitic experiences
    on your vacations?
    Never.
    Never.
    But you felt somehow that you were
    different from the other children?
    Absolutely.
    Yes.
    First of all, because my parents could not speak
    as well as the other children's parents.
    My parents had a very strong accent,
    and especially my mother, who always spoke in Yiddish.
    As a matter of fact, my first language
    was Yiddish because when my parents came
    to France they naturally couldn't speak any French.
    So when I was born, I spoke Yiddish until I went to school.
    Then when I went to school, I learned French.
    I did not forget my Yiddish.
    But I spoke French.
    And my brother, who only spoke French,
    couldn't understand my mother when
    she was talking to him because she would speak in Yiddish.
    So I would do the translating for them.
    Did your parents have books in the house?
    No.
    OK, let's talk a little bit about you personally.
    How do you remember yourself in those days?
    What did you look like?
    For example, were you healthy?
    I was-- no, I was very, very skinny because apparently I
    was undernourished.
    So was my brother.
    And I--
    But not because there wasn't enough food,
    you just didn't have--
    There was not enough food.
    That was also was one of the reasons, the proper food.
    We used to get a meal in school.
    The school provided the children with a free meal,
    which was a complete meal from soup to dessert.
    So I guess that was the best meal of our day.
    Did you have special interests or hobbies?
    Reading.
    I used to read a lot.
    This is how I--
    I learned to write and read at a very young age,
    by the time I was 6.
    And I used to do all the correspondence from my parents
    because they couldn't write.
    I think I was-- like I said, when I was six years old,
    I could write and read fluently.
    What did you think about yourself in those days?
    Were you shy?
    I was very shy.
    And I had a complex on account of my--
    I think it's terrible to say, I was not exactly ashamed,
    but I resented that my parents could not speak French
    without an accent, that they couldn't
    be as fluent as the other children's parents.
    And I guess this was very--
    impressed me a lot.
    And this is probably why I excelled in French at school.
    I was always above everybody else in the French language.
    And this is probably why I read a lot.
    Do you remember what you wanted to do
    when you grew up at that time?
    What were your plans for the future as a little girl growing
    up in France?
    I really didn't have--
    I don't think I had any then because our life was
    such a struggle, a continuous struggle.
    Even though I was young, I had problems already.
    And I just couldn't think that far ahead.
    And then by the time I was 12, there
    was another problem presented itself.
    So there was really never any plans for a future.
    OK.
    What do you remember about the beginning of the war?
    Well, I remember-- first of all, I
    remember 1938 when they already were talking about war.
    We were on the brink of war in 1938.
    And I think this was when Chamberlain went to Munich
    and appeased everybody, came back to England.
    And we lived for another year.
    And then finally, Germany attacked Poland,
    and France declared war on Germany.
    And it was in September when a lot of people
    were still away on vacation.
    So Paris was very calm at that time.
    But there was a feeling of--
    it was-- there was some kind of a fear in the air.
    And people were starting to--
    we were making preparations for the war.
    When we went back to school, we were issued gas masks
    that we had to carry with us at school.
    I remember the firemen came to the school
    and taught us how to use the gas mask.
    It was in a long--
    in a gray metal box.
    And like I said, we had to carry it to school.
    And then a few months after, we were awakened during the night
    because there were alerts, the Germans would--
    planes would come nearby.
    So we had to take shelter in the subway.
    Used to run to the subway.
    That happened a few times.
    How would this happen?
    The sirens would go off.
    In the middle of the night?
    And they were so loud that you were awakened.
    So you had to grab you gas mask and whatever
    clothes you had under your hand and run to the shelter.
    What did your parents think about these changes?
    Did they ever talk about them?
    Oh, yes, they talked about it.
    Because by that time, being Jews,
    we already knew what was happening in Germany
    because a lot of German Jews had escaped Germany
    and come and seek shelter in France.
    So we were exposed a little bit to that already.
    And we knew that if the Germans ever
    came to France that thing would not be good for us.
    My father was not in France at that time.
    He had gone to Belgium.
    He had a job there.
    But he enlisted in the French army.
    France did not take foreigners in the army
    unless they enlisted.
    Even though you were residents of France,
    you were not drafted in the army even though there was a war.
    But my father enlisted.
    And he was sent in for training in Southern France.
    But, as you know, by 1940, I mean,
    the French army was defeated.
    Did you experience more antisemitism at this time
    when the war started?
    Yes, we did because all of the children's father
    were in the army.
    And my father was not in the army at the beginning.
    And he enlisted a few months later.
    And I felt some kind of a pressure,
    like they were looking at me.
    My father is in the army.
    He's fighting for France.
    What's your father doing?
    So when my father enlisted, I was relieved.
    Even though I knew that he was risking his life,
    I was relieved because I said, well, now
    my father is like your father.
    My father is also fighting for France.
    What are some examples of these incidents where
    you experienced antisemitism?
    Well, they were not blatant then because the war was
    on everybody's mind, not so much antisemitism
    because the Germans were our common enemy.
    So it was more important to fight off
    the Germans than antisemitism.
    When did your life start to change?
    Well, it started to change right then.
    I remember then in 1940--
    I think it was May 1940, when the Germans were approaching
    Paris.
    A lot of people fled Paris.
    I mean they took everything they could on their back,
    and they just went.
    And we were living in a six-story high building.
    And we were the only people, the only family
    left in the building.
    Everybody had gone.
    Paris was deserted.
    But where could we run?
    Where could my mother with two young children run?
    So we stayed home.
    Then I remember one day, it was in June 1940,
    when the Germans came into Paris.
    I was walking.
    And all of a sudden, I heard the roar
    of motorcycles and big trucks.
    And the Germans were coming in.
    How old were you?
    I was 12.
    No, 13.
    13.
    All the stores were closed.
    It was a beautiful summer day.
    And all these motorcycles and trucks were going by.
    We knew that a new life was going
    to begin for us, not better.
    So what happened after that?
    Well, that was June 1940.
    Then there were-- all the schools were closed then.
    The summer was pretty quiet.
    Then we went back to school in October, in October 1940.
    In the first year--
    oh, and we started to have restrictions.
    Food started to be restricted.
    We were issued coupons.
    But the Germans did not start with the Jews at a rate of way.
    That came little by little.
    I think--
    Food were restricted for everybody or just the Jews?
    You mean for rations?
    Yes.
    No, that was everybody.
    We were not singled out for that.
    It was everybody.
    I mean little by little, you could see the Germans all over.
    And they were going to the store, buying the best things.
    And food was getting scarce in the stores.
    Like I say, we went back to school.
    And that first winter was a very rough winter
    because food was hard to get.
    And it was so happen it was a very cold winter.
    Everything was bleak.
    What were some of the other restrictions
    that started to come about?
    Against the Jews?
    Yes.
    Well, the first one that I remember I
    think it was in 1941 when the Germans started to round up men
    only.
    They sent them notices to come to the police.
    And they came to the police.
    And some of them didn't because they
    knew what was waiting for them.
    But most of them did because they were afraid
    if they didn't go, there would be reprisals
    against their families.
    So they went.
    And they were sent to camps in France.
    One of which was Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande.
    And they were there.
    And their families used to go and see them on weekends
    and bring them packages.
    I mean, these were the first steps against Jews.
    Then little by little after that,
    we had to give up our radios.
    All the Jews had to bring their radios to the police.
    Their wages?
    Pardon me?
    Wages did you say?
    No, radios.
    Radios.
    Yeah.
    I see.
    The radios.
    And we were given a little receipt,
    which was absolutely useless, because they just
    didn't want us to have radios.
    That's the first thing we had to give up.
    Then we weren't allowed to go to--
    then we had to wear the stars.
    That was in-- that was in 1942 I think.
    What did the stars look like?
    It was yellow with a black print saying Juif on it, J-U-I-F.
    It means Jew.
    It was a six-pointed star.
    And I think they were issuing three stars per person.
    And we had to sew them on our clothes on our left,
    on the left side.
    How did you feel about having to wear it?
    I had to-- and I was still going to school.
    And the first day I had to put on my yellow star
    and I went to school, I took the subway to go to school.
    And I got off the subway.
    And one kid called me a dirty Jew.
    So I naturally, how do you feel?
    Do you think I went to school that day?
    I was very distraught.
    And I-- this was in May, I think, of 1942, then when
    we were wearing the stars.
    And that went on.
    And then one day in June of '42, I came out from school.
    And this German soldier comes up to me
    and says, where are your papers?
    I said, I don't have any papers.
    He says, well, if you don't have any papers--
    he was talking a broken French--
    you come with me.
    So I started to cry because I knew
    by then that this was nothing pleasant was going to happen.
    So one of my teacher came up to the German.
    And meanwhile, I had all--
    people were around me and arguing
    with the German soldier.
    And she talked him out of it.
    And she talked him out--
    leave me-- leave her alone, and he did.
    Well, when I got back home, I said to my mother,
    I am not wearing that star anymore.
    I'm not going to school.
    I don't want to go out in the street.
    Did you stay home?
    So meanwhile, my brother had been sent back
    to this place in the country where
    we used to go on vacation because he was sick.
    And he had spent the whole year there.
    And this was almost vacation time.
    Although school wasn't over until about July 15,
    my mother decided to send me away there.
    So I took off my star.
    And I went with the children of these farmers who
    lived in Paris who were going on vacation.
    So she sent me with them.
    And I left.
    But before that, I feel that I left something out.
    When my father enlisted in the army, he came back from--
    the French army was defeated in 1940, in the summer of 1940.
    My father came back from the army
    and left for Belgium again.
    And we never knew whether he had arrived there or not
    because there were no way of communication.
    So all this time went on without having any news from him.
    When you came back from the camp, what was Paris like?
    When I came back from where?
    When you came back from this camp,
    where the farmer's children lived.
    Oh, that wasn't a camp.
    It was a farm.
    A farm rather.
    What happened after that?
    You mean after the liberation?
    No.
    You stayed in this farm for a while?
    No, well, when I left to join my brother, we stayed on that farm
    because we used to call the farmers
    grand-pere and grand-mere because we used to go
    to them on vacation every year.
    And we had become very attached to them.
    And we were like their own grandchildren.
    So this farmer's son worked for the French police in Paris.
    And July 16, 1942, this was the day
    where the Germans rounded up all the women
    and children, Jewish women and children,
    they could find in Paris.
    He came to warn my mother at her apartment
    that this evening the Germans were
    going to round up all the Jews.
    And he told her, don't stay home tonight.
    So my mother went into hiding to some friend's house.
    And in fact, the Germans did come looking for us.
    They were looking for my mother and me.
    And naturally, they couldn't find us.
    So they sealed the door of to our apartment
    so we couldn't get into the apartment anymore.
    And that night, that July 16, 1942, thousands of Jews
    were arrested in Paris and sent to one of the detention
    camps near Paris, Drancy.
    And from there, they were sent to different camps in Germany.
    So what happened in your life next?
    Well, my mother eventually got false papers.
    And she came to join us there on the farm.
    And we lived on the farm there until 1944,
    until the liberation.
    In that little village, everybody knew us.
    It was a farming village.
    And the people, like I said, knew us
    since we were little kids.
    And I've never heard a word of antisemitism in that village.
    And all the children our age grew up with us.
    And they knew us well.
    And they all protected us.
    So the police, who was a few miles away,
    they knew we were Jewish.
    They were aware that if they the Germans would find out,
    it would mean trouble for everybody.
    But everybody was mostly very protective of us.
    What did this place look like?
    It was an old farm with four cows and chickens, rabbits,
    an old French farm.
    So you really escaped a lot of the terrible things
    that were going on.
    Yes, we did.
    We did.
    We used to listen to the BBC every night.
    We used to listen to Free France.
    By that time, the goal was in England.
    And they had raised an army, the Free French.
    And they were broadcasting every night.
    So we used to listen to the BBC to know the progress of war.
    Things were very bad at first.
    But as it progressed, the war turned.
    The tide turned.
    And we knew it was a matter of time
    before we would be liberated.
    But before that, before that, life in Paris I feel
    I missed a lot.
    It was very hard.
    Since being a Jew, we weren't allowed to ride in the subway.
    In any train that we went we were
    restricted to the last train in the subway.
    We could not go shopping after--
    during certain time, our shopping hours
    were in the evening where there was nothing left in the stores
    anymore.
    These were some of the restrictions against Jews.
    And how did you find out about these restrictions?
    They were on-- they were on the papers.
    They were on the walls, on the walls that we weren't allowed.
    And I guess they knew we were Jews.
    They must have sent us notices we couldn't do those things.
    We couldn't go to the market during the day.
    By the time we get to the stores, there was nothing left.
    Everything was gone.
    Did your Gentile friends associate with you
    during this time?
    Some of them did.
    I remember particularly I had a Gentile girlfriend.
    And I had a Jewish girlfriend.
    And the two of us were wearing our star.
    And one Sunday, we decided to go for a stroll.
    And the two of us were wearing our star.
    And she didn't have--
    she was a Gentile.
    So she got in between the two of us.
    And arm in arm, the three of us walked in the street.
    So she was very proud that she was--
    she considered us as friends.
    Naturally, a lot of French people were antisemitic.
    But for most of them, I would say they were protective.
    Most of them were.
    Did you have a hard time understanding
    why these changes were happening?
    I-- it's funny of thinking about after all these years.
    I don't know why we accepted all that.
    We didn't even question-- well, I did question why us Jews?
    But this is how far my thinking went.
    Because we were so busy trying to survive,
    to find ways of surviving, that we really
    didn't try to analyze the thing completely,
    until much later, until we realized what happened when--
    I know that some of my classmates
    never came back, were taken to concentration camps.
    I remember particularly one of my classmate
    who didn't come back.
    So until then, we were too busy fighting to stay alive.
    How did your parents react to all these changes?
    Well, as I say, my father--
    I had no-- we had lost contact with him completely.
    We didn't know what happened.
    We didn't find out until 1944.
    And my mother was too busy--
    we were all too busy hiding and trying to be--
    trying to live from day to day.
    What was the name of the place where you stayed, this farm?
    It was called Souil, S-O-U-I-L. It was about 50 kilometers from
    La Rochelle, La Rochelle, which is a port that was bombed many
    times by the Germans because there was a submarine base
    there.
    So we used to hear the bombing.
    Were there other Jewish people at Souil?
    No, in this particular village, we were the only ones.
    But I know there were-- in the vicinity there
    were some other peoples because we did hear that some of them
    were caught by the Germans.
    And on more than one occasion, we
    were warned by friends there, be careful, the Germans are out.
    They're looking for Jews.
    And they would tell us, be careful.
    So then the people in this community protected you.
    Absolutely, 100%.
    100%.
    There were occasions where they could have given somebody
    notice that you were there.
    Of course, they could.
    Instead, they chose not to.
    But I don't think it ever entered their mind.
    They were good people, just good people.
    What were they like and--
    They were hard-working people, Catholic.
    It's a very Catholic country in this part of France.
    But they had no hint of antisemitism at all.
    They were-- they loved us like one of theirs.
    Do you remember any incidents where possibly you
    were in danger and somebody protected you?
    Just that one incident I had when
    I came out of school in Paris.
    And, no, I remember Germans going through the village
    there.
    But what they were mostly looking at that time
    it was for food, eggs, butter, and things like that.
    I don't think they were too concerned with Jews then.
    They wanted to have food.
    What was your life like there?
    Day to day, what did you do?
    We went to the field.
    I helped my friends, my girlfriends
    whose parents had farms.
    I went with them to the field.
    They took the cows to the fields.
    So we spent the days there taking care of the cows,
    seeing that they don't run away.
    And we helped out on the farm.
    And there was nothing to do.
    There was nothing we could do because we had to hide.
    So we had to make ourselves as unobstructive as possible.
    And how did you do this?
    How did you stay unnoticed?
    Well, since everybody knew us in the village,
    I mean we didn't go out much of the village,
    although people around the village knew us too.
    But the Germans were not in that village.
    They didn't live in that village.
    There were Germans in about 10 kilometers away.
    There was a large concentration of Germans.
    But I guess we were just lucky.
    We were just lucky.
    Did you feel safe there?
    I felt quite safe.
    Although when we saw Germans coming out, and even we knew
    they were looking for food, we kind of we disappeared.
    We just didn't stay there.
    And there were times at night when we would hear footsteps,
    we turn off the light and didn't make any noise.
    Did you think about going back to Paris?
    No, we knew it was out of the question
    because we couldn't go back to our apartment.
    There was no way we could get into the apartment.
    Had you heard anything about your father at this time?
    No.
    I had no idea what happened to my father
    until after the liberation.
    So then when June 6, 1944, came, we knew that--
    when the Americans landed in Normandy, well,
    we knew that pretty soon our turn would come.
    And from then on, everything looked so much brighter
    in our lives, although the Germans
    did remain there in that little village a while longer.
    But little by little, they disappeared.
    And by October 1944, we were able to go back home.
    But when we got back home to our apartment,
    our apartment was empty.
    There was nothing.
    Some of the neighbors I guess helped themselves
    for whatever we had there.
    So there was nothing in our apartment.
    Do you remember the day you found out
    that you could go home?
    Yes.
    Well, we waited until October 1944,
    although Paris was liberated in August of 1944.
    But there were no trains.
    And most of the bridges had been bombed.
    And so we really couldn't leave sooner.
    Even though when we left in October,
    it took us about three days to get back to Paris,
    although the distance is not that far.
    And then we had to cross the bridge--
    a bridge on the Loire River on foot because the bridges
    had been blown up.
    So it was a long trip for about 350 miles,
    400 miles at the most.
    It took us about three days to get back.
    What were your feelings at that time?
    Well, I was elated.
    I mean it was great.
    I was going to go back home.
    I was going to go back to school.
    I was going to see my friends again.
    I was going to know what happened to my father.
    Maybe I know where he was.
    But life was still very difficult
    because a lot of my friends were gone.
    And war was still going on.
    The war wasn't over yet.
    We were still restricted.
    We didn't have any lights until late at night.
    Food was still rationed.
    And shoes were rationed.
    Everything was still rationed.
    And then the Germans started to push the Americans back.
    And Christmas 1944 was a very scary one
    because we were afraid the Germans would get back
    to Paris.
    The war wasn't going so well.
    But the Americans pushed them back.
    And it was just a matter of time when little by little
    we saw the deported ones, the ones who
    had been deported, coming back.
    Meanwhile, I knew someone who was from Belgium,
    went to Belgium.
    And I asked him to look up my father
    to see what he could find out about my father.
    Then when he came back, he told me
    that my father had been deported.
    Did you know where?
    No, they didn't know where.
    And I just found out last year.
    I found out where my father was deported.
    Just last year?
    Last year I went back--
    I went to Belgium, and I found out
    where he was deported after all these years.
    But I knew that he was deported.
    But I didn't know when.
    But I did find out the date.
    It was October 1942.
    I had the convoy number, the train number.
    And I kept writing to Belgium asking them if they had heard.
    But even after I came to the States, he never came back.
    How did Paris start to change when you came back?
    Well, it changes in the sense that instead
    of the German uniforms, we had American uniforms in Paris,
    a lot of American soldiers.
    I went back to school.
    Did you notice a difference between the Germans
    and the Americans?
    Well, I have to say the Americans were
    more rowdy than the Germans, although I
    liked that rowdiness.
    But they were more effervescent, more jovial, friendly.
    And like I said, they were very loud.
    But I loved it.
    Did you speak to any of them?
    No, because in school I had only had one year of English,
    although many times I was approached by German--
    excuse me, American soldiers because I was 17 then.
    There were a lot of young American soldiers.
    I did talk to some of them, but very briefly
    because my English was very poor.
    And most of them did not speak French.
    Did you feel that life was normal then?
    No, it was not normal.
    It was not normal because nothing was normal.
    I mean people-- there were still a lot of tragedy
    in a lot of people's lives.
    A lot of people were still missing.
    A lot of prisoners of war were still in camps.
    People had been deported to concentration camps.
    So life was not normal.
    No, it wasn't.
    So you went back to school.
    What about your mother and brother?
    My brother also went back to school.
    My mother went to work.
    And we resumed life as normally as we could.
    I went back to school to learn a trade.
    I took up shorthand and typing.
    And in a few months later, I was able to secure a job.
    Did you see any of your old schoolmates?
    Yes, I did.
    My best friend came back.
    She was also in hiding with her parents.
    She was lucky to come back.
    Some of my relatives were missing,
    were sent to concentration camps.
    Some of them came back.
    Some never did.
    And--
    Did they tell you about what happened in the camps?
    Well, at first, they didn't.
    You didn't have the heart to ask them because they came back,
    they were so thin, so pathetic looking.
    How could you ask them?
    Had you heard about what was happening?
    Oh, yes, we knew what was happening.
    We knew what was happening.
    This is why I'm surprised when Americans said they
    didn't know what was happening.
    To me, it seems unbelievable that in America they
    didn't know what was happening.
    Did you ever fear that you might be put in a camp?
    Oh, yes, many times.
    That's why I consider very lucky.
    That's why I feel my story is--
    my story cannot compare to these people's stories.
    It's a very interesting story.
    Different.
    Yes.
    All of that, I even now I feel that it was--
    I was cheated of many years of my life because what's that--
    when the war started, I was 12.
    When it ended, I was 18.
    That's six important years in your life,
    which were not normally--
    normal years for me.
    What happened when the war ended in Paris?
    Well, little by little, businesses started to open up.
    School started again.
    And little by little as the camps were being liberated,
    we saw people coming back.
    Every day, family used to go to--
    there was a special place where they used to bring back
    the people from the camps.
    And the families would go there and wait for them.
    Was this a medical facility?
    No, it was a hotel, I think.
    And the trucks would--
    truckloads would come back with these people from the camps.
    And I'll never forget when one of my cousins came to our house
    looking for his brother.
    He came back from a camp.
    He was so thin.
    And his wife and two children died in the camp.
    He's the only one who escaped.
    And he came looking for his brother, a cousin of ours,
    who was living not far from us.
    And this was my first exposure to someone
    who just came out of the camp.
    I'll never forget the sight.
    Then like I said, we saw truckloads of a camp survivors
    coming back.
    And then the prisoners of war started coming back too.
    And strangely enough, the prisoners of war, the Jews,
    the French Jews were not treated any differently
    than any other prisoner of war in Germany,
    even though they were Jews.
    They were treated as prisoners of war, not as Jews.
    Do you remember D-Day in France?
    Oh, I remember very clearly D-Day.
    I remember--
    Where were you?
    I was in that little village.
    I was particularly thought of D-Day this year
    since it was the 40th anniversary.
    I remember that day very clearly.
    If it's not my most happy day of my life,
    it certainly is the most memorable day of my life.
    I remember hearing the BBC saying
    that the Americans had debarked on the Normandy shores.
    And it was such a beautiful June day, June 6, 1944,
    beautiful day.
    And I felt so light, so different.
    I knew that at that point we didn't
    have to live with fear anymore.
    How did the people around you react?
    Oh, everybody was happy.
    Everybody was happy because everybody there
    was anti-German.
    There was-- no one was for the Germans.
    What about when the war ended?
    World War II, do you remember that day?
    Oh, yes, it was 1945, I think.
    May of 1945, I think it was May 9, 1945.
    Well, to us when liberation came, it was like--
    to us it was the end of the war.
    This is what really mattered to us, to be liberated.
    We knew that the rest was just a matter of time.
    So to us D-Day was much more important
    than the end of the war.
    But do you remember what that was like in France?
    At the end of the war?
    Yes.
    Oh, Yes, I remember.
    It was-- of course, it was that day
    that everybody who lived in those days will remember.
    But like I say, I think the liberation,
    the day they were liberated was the most
    important day in their lives.
    The day Paris was liberated, the day the Americans came
    on the shores of Normandy, these were the most memorable days.
    So at this time you said, Dina, that you were a secretary.
    Yes.
    Working.
    And where were you working?
    My first job was with a place where
    they were manufacturing typewriter ribbons and carbon
    paper.
    That was my first job.
    And I left because I felt there was antisemitism in that place.
    So after working there one year, I left that place.
    And then what happened?
    Then I went to work for another firm.
    They were brokers, grain brokers.
    That was a Jewish firm.
    I felt after that I didn't want to go and work
    for another Gentile company.
    What made you feel that there was
    antisemitism in the first job?
    I heard some of the remarks being made on the jobs.
    And I was the only Jew there.
    And I felt very uncomfortable.
    Although when I left, I gave my notice,
    they assured me there was no antisemitism there.
    But I know it was there.
    How did you happen to come to the United States?
    How did that come about?
    My grandfather lived in the United States.
    My grandfather had come from Poland.
    That was my father's father.
    He came to the United States in 1913.
    My father was then a little boy.
    My father was left in Poland.
    And--
    Why didn't he come too with your father?
    That's another story.
    I don't know if you want to hear it.
    Is it short?
    It's involved.
    Briefly, why--
    My father was left in Poland.
    My grandfather came here because my father's mother had died.
    And my grandfather remarried.
    And he came here with his second wife.
    No, his second wife came after.
    My father has a brother who came after the war here.
    And my father was left with his sister in Poland.
    And this is why we came--
    after the war, things were so bleak,
    we didn't know what to do.
    And I knew that I had an uncle and a grandfather
    in the United States.
    So we wrote to them.
    At that time, my uncle was in the army.
    He was in the Pacific.
    But when we heard that we were alive,
    he started to correspond with us.
    And we decided to come here.
    OK.
    I'm curious about why you decided to come here.
    You mentioned things were bleak.
    And I think that we'll get more into that on the next tape.
    Yes, things were bleak.
    And I add since we had no family in France,
    I mean no close family, and I had never
    met my grandfather and my uncle, I
    was anxious to get to know my family better.
    And since I knew that my father was no longer here,
    this was his family.
    And I wanted to know them.
    So this is why we decided to come here.
    We'll conclude the tape here.
    And next tape we'll start talking about Dina's returned--
    or I shouldn't say returned.
    Dina moving to the United States.
    Dina, we ended the first tape with your saying
    that conditions in France were very dreary
    and that you and your family thought
    about leaving at that time to the United States.
    Could you say a little bit more about what
    France was like, what the city of Paris
    was like that caused you to want to leave?
    Well, first of all, one of the reasons I wanted to leave
    is, like I said, my father's family
    was in the United States.
    That was my father's father and his brother.
    And I didn't know them.
    And the close relatives we had in France were just cousins.
    And I didn't have an uncle.
    I never knew an uncle or an aunt or a grandfather.
    And since I knew that my father had disappeared
    and probably would never come back,
    I wanted to meet his family.
    But you didn't feel that France was where you grew up
    and you had some friends there?
    Yes, I did.
    But I felt no future for us then.
    Because we didn't in which direction to go.
    And I thought maybe there would be a better chance for us
    in the United States.
    Although I did feel very strongly
    about France, especially Paris, where I was born and grew up.
    But we were so young.
    And there was nothing.
    There was no opportunity then.
    So how did you leave?
    We started to write to my uncle.
    Well, my uncle was in the service then.
    He was in the Pacific.
    Then when he came out from the service in 1945,
    we told him of our idea.
    And he agreed.
    And by that time they had to have papers made, affidavits
    that we wouldn't become a charge of the United States.
    And by the time all the papers were done,
    it was the end of 1947.
    So that's when my brother and I left, in November of 1947.
    And my mother remained in Paris because she could not
    come with us.
    My mother was born in Poland.
    And although she was stateless, she
    was still considered as not a Polish citizen,
    but she was on the Polish quota.
    And that quota was closed at that time.
    The United States did not admit any Polish citizens.
    But there was no quota for the French citizens.
    So my brother and I decided to leave at that time.
    Did you hope that she might be able to come later?
    Oh, of course that was with the understanding
    that my mother would join us as soon as it would be possible.
    Was she possibly waiting for you for word of your father?
    Well, I don't think that by 1947, there was much hope.
    Because everybody had come home.
    Everybody who was going to come home
    had come home by that time.
    I kept on writing to this office in Belgium, in Brussels.
    They had set up a special office for Jewish affairs.
    And periodically I would write to them
    and ask them did you hear anything,
    do you know what happened.
    And I would get the same answer all the time.
    I even wrote after I came to the United States.
    I think I wrote until 1949.
    But by that time, they told me there's
    all reason to believe that your father died.
    Was your mother working at this time?
    My mother was working, yes.
    So my brother and I came.
    As a matter of fact, we came on the Queen Mary.
    The Queen Mary, which is at Long Beach, California now.
    And my grandfather and my uncle came to pick us up in New York.
    What was it like on the Queen Mary?
    Were there other people like you moving to the United States?
    Yes.
    We traveled with some French people and a young woman who
    was going to Atlanta, who had met
    an American soldier in Paris.
    And she was going back to the States to get married with him.
    Another one was going to another city also.
    She had met a young American soldier.
    And they were war brides, actually,
    who were going to join their husbands or get married.
    Were you looking forward to coming to the United States?
    What were your thoughts about it?
    Oh, yes.
    I was looking forward going.
    Because first of all, the United States,
    everybody talked about the United States.
    And the American soldiers were there, were in Paris, I mean.
    And that was an enticement.
    And also, my family was here.
    My closest family was here in the United States in Cleveland.
    So yes, I was looking forward to coming to the United States.
    But I did leave Paris with a lot of regrets and tears.
    What was the Queen Mary trip like?
    What did it look like on the boat?
    It was a luxury boat.
    [LAUGHS]
    It was a holiday.
    It was beautiful.
    A lot of food--
    How long did it last?
    We went over to Southampton.
    And from Southampton to New York, it took five days.
    So then you arrived in New York.
    Did you come immediately to Cleveland?
    No, we stayed in New York about five days.
    My uncle and my grandfather wanted to show us New York.
    And we had some cousins in New York.
    So everybody was anxious to show us New York.
    Particularly I remember a young cousin, she was 14 at the time.
    And she would show us the skyscrapers.
    And each time she pointed to a building,
    she would say this is the biggest in the world.
    This is the tallest in the world.
    And I thought, my God, there's nothing
    but everything is bigger and taller in the United States.
    [LAUGHS]
    Did you think about staying in New York?
    Not really, I was anxious to get established,
    to start doing something, to get on with my life.
    So we really didn't think of staying in New York
    because we came primarily to be with our family.
    So we really wanted to be with the family who
    lived in Cleveland.
    You were how old at this time?
    I was 20.
    20.
    So what was it like first coming to Cleveland?
    Well, I found Cleveland very--
    it was November '47.
    We had our first Thanksgiving dinner in New York City at some
    cousins'.
    And I was appalled when they put corn on the table
    because I thought corn is only for animals.
    I mean, people don't eat corn.
    Because in France, corn was fed to the animals only.
    But they do eat corn now.
    But in those days, they didn't.
    And I was amazed at the amount of food.
    Because in France, the food wasn't as plentiful in 1947.
    It still wasn't.
    And when we got into Cleveland, well,
    I found Cleveland very, very dreary, not very pretty.
    How did you start to get settled and think
    about what you might do now?
    Since I spoke very little English,
    I only had one year of English at school,
    my aunt and uncle suggested I go take night courses.
    I went to John Hay.
    They had a special course for newcomers.
    Because in those days, a lot of people came over from Europe.
    So I joined one of the classes.
    But I was very disappointed.
    Because all the people there, most of them spoke Yiddish.
    So my Yiddish improved a lot, but my English
    wasn't getting anywhere.
    So I said this is not for me.
    Then they would teach us words like table, very
    elementary English, which I felt that I
    was above that at that time.
    So after a few months, I gave up those courses.
    And I took up reading a lot and listening to the radio.
    And then six months later, I started to work.
    So this is really the way I learned English.
    And where did you work?
    In those days, there was a company
    named Cashmere Corporation of America.
    They used to make cashmere sweaters.
    It was Hadley.
    And I worked there for three years.
    And that's really where I got my experience
    in English and American life.
    And from then on, I went to work for an office--
    you know, did some office work.
    Did you have any agencies try to help
    you get settled in Cleveland?
    No.
    It was mainly your relatives helped you with this?
    No.
    The only thing is we had--
    I think it was through the JCC.
    I don't remember which organization helped us.
    They contacted a young Jewish couple
    who received us, my brother and me, in their home once a week.
    And they would converse with us in English.
    So that helped us tremendously.
    So we would go and visit them once a week.
    And we would have a couple of hours of just conversation.
    Although we lived with my aunt and uncle,
    and my aunt and uncle had two children,
    a cousin who is about four years younger than I am.
    So we did have a lot of conversation
    going in English all the time.
    But like I said, this is how I learned English.
    Was there a difference between your expectations
    about the United States and what you found here when you finally
    did get settled?
    Oh, yes, yes, there was.
    First of all, I didn't find Cleveland that exciting,
    for one thing.
    After Paris, what would be?
    I did long for Paris.
    I mean, I did miss Paris a lot.
    And I did miss my friends.
    Because although I joined a group, the Jewish newcomers,
    there were a lot of young people who had just come over
    from Europe and we all were together,
    but they were mostly from Eastern Europe.
    And they tended to be in one group.
    And I was a little bit like the outsider.
    And so I found it very hard to make friends.
    And I did miss my friends from France.
    I guess the friends that you make as a child and friends
    that you have, that you grow up, these
    friendships you don't make later on in life.
    What about your brother?
    What did he start to do?
    Well, my brother went to work in the factory.
    I think it was a suitcase factory.
    Then he was drafted in the army in the Korean War.
    [LAUGHS]
    Just like that, it was 1949, '50 he was drafted.
    There was the Korean War.
    And they sent him away to Korea.
    I mean, you coming out from one fire
    and you're being sent to another.
    Boy.
    Meanwhile, my mother came over from France.
    We were able to bring her to Canada
    in 1949, where she remained for five years
    before she was able to come to the United States.
    Did she have friends in Canada?
    We knew some people there.
    My uncle and grandfather knew some people in Toronto.
    So they consented to have my mother live in their house.
    And so she came there.
    And this way we were able to go see my mother.
    Every two or three months we would go and visit her.
    So from the time you were 12 to about 22,
    your life was very unsettled.
    Yes, it was.
    It was not a normal life.
    Did you begin to think, finally, that your life was
    going to start to settle down when you came to Cleveland?
    Or did it still take you a while?
    My life really didn't settle until I got married.
    Because I was living with my aunt and uncle who
    were very nice, but it still was not my home.
    I was not with my mother or my brother.
    Then my brother was gone into the army.
    And I felt--
    I was very sad and very concerned about him.
    And you know, life still wasn't a happy life.
    Where did your aunt and uncle live?
    They lived in University Heights.
    And your uncle, what did he do?
    He owns that auto wrecking yard where my son is working at now.
    Well, how did you meet your husband?
    Well, my brother was sent for military training
    in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
    And my husband was there, too, at the same time.
    That's how they met.
    And my brother showed him a picture of his sister.
    And he started to write to me.
    And that's how we got together and got married.
    And he was from Cleveland?
    No, my husband was from Detroit.
    He was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Detroit.
    How did the meeting happen?
    Well, my husband had the furlough.
    And instead of going home to Detroit,
    he came to Cleveland to visit me.
    And he proposed almost immediately.
    And when he came out of the service,
    we got married, in 1952.
    So you were in Cleveland how long before you
    finally settled down?
    Five years.
    Five years?
    Mhm.
    Almost five years, by that time, I
    had become a citizen, an American citizen.
    Your husband's family is from here?
    Yes.
    Well, my husband was born in the United States.
    Yes.
    Did you join a synagogue when you first came?
    No, I did not.
    Because like I told you before, my parents were not religious.
    But my grandfather here was very, very religious.
    I did not join a synagogue.
    No, I did not, until just the last few years.
    How did you feel about seeing your grandfather?
    I was very elated.
    I was thrilled to meet my grandfather.
    And I think he was, too.
    He was, too.
    He was very protective of us while he was-- he died in 1956.
    So I got him got to know him for about nine years almost,
    nine years.
    How did you happen to settle in Cleveland and not Detroit,
    where your husband is from?
    Well, my family was here.
    And my husband really didn't have anything.
    His mother, his parents had moved to California by then.
    So in Detroit, he only had cousins.
    And since I had my family here in Cleveland, my brother
    and everybody, I didn't want to move away from my family again.
    So my husband was agreeable and said, OK, well, I'll
    stay in Cleveland.
    Mhm.
    And what was your family life like as far as when did you
    have your children and what types of jobs did you have,
    where did you live?
    When we first got married, we lived in a very small place.
    My son was born in 1955.
    And by then, my mother had come to the United States.
    And she was living with us.
    Then two years later, I had a daughter.
    But she died 10, 12 years ago.
    She was handicapped all her life.
    Mhm.
    And I went back to work when I was able to.
    At the Federation?
    I've been working at the Federation.
    I went to work to the Federation a couple of months
    after my daughter died in 1972.
    I'm going to ask you a few questions
    about your feelings about the Holocaust and the war years.
    Do you think that these experiences
    that you've been talking about affect you now?
    Oh, definitely.
    In what way?
    Because each time I go back to France,
    this is all we talk about with my friends
    that I have in Paris, particularly my girlfriend.
    And I have another friend, a childhood friend,
    he was born in Germany and came to France in 19--
    just before the war.
    He had fled Berlin.
    And all we seem to talk about is the war,
    the Holocaust, all the time.
    I don't know why, all the time.
    So this happens more with your friends in Europe?
    Oh, yes, naturally, naturally.
    Because people here don't like to talk about that.
    I know my husband doesn't want to hear about those things.
    When there's a program on television
    about the Holocaust, a movie or something, I want to watch it.
    I read all the books I can find about the Holocaust.
    My husband doesn't want to know about those things.
    I've noticed that some people really don't want to know.
    No, they don't want to know.
    And some survivors don't want to talk about it.
    Well, I guess maybe if I had gone through their experience,
    maybe I would feel this way.
    I don't know.
    But I want to know.
    One of the reasons I want to know
    is because I want to know how my father lived and died in camp.
    Oh, yes.
    Now you mentioned that you found out recently
    what happened to him.
    Yes.
    Last year, my friend and I, when I go back to Paris
    I stay with my childhood friend.
    And her brother lives in Brussels.
    So one weekend when I was there last July,
    she says let's go to Brussels.
    I said, fine.
    I've been wanting to go for a long time.
    Because I want to see if I can find out
    something about my father.
    So I said this is the perfect opportunity.
    So we took the train from Paris to Brussels.
    It's about a three-hour ride from Paris to Brussels.
    Her brother came to pick us up at the train station.
    And he showed us the sights of Brussels.
    And then we went over to a camp that
    was set up outside of Brussels where my father was deported
    from that camp to Germany.
    It's called Mechelen.
    It's between Brussels and Antwerp.
    So we went there.
    And it's an old army camp.
    And there's a plaque on the wall showing that from this site,
    20,000 Jews were deported to camps in Germany.
    And I knew that my father had been deported
    from that particular place.
    So to me, it meant a lot being there and seeing that place.
    And from there, he took us to Brussels to a park, like.
    And there's a monument.
    It's a big wall with names, thousands
    of names all over the world in alphabetical order.
    So I proceeded to look for my father's name.
    And sure enough, I found my father's name
    inscribed on that wall.
    What was your maiden name?
    Rothstein, which I didn't know that it existed.
    So like I said, I took a picture of it, naturally.
    Then my friend's brother gave me a book about the Jews
    who were deported from Brussels from Mechelen.
    And it showed that they were all sent to Auschwitz.
    So this is where my father died, in Auschwitz.
    See, he had very little chance of survival.
    Because the ones who were deported at the beginning,
    like in 1942, very few of them came back.
    And my father was only 37 at that time, a young man.
    Did you feel a sense of relief having finally found out?
    Yes, because somehow I had the feeling that maybe one day--
    [CRYING]
    That you might find?
    He might show up.
    Yeah.
    You talk a lot about your experiences
    with your friends in Paris.
    Yes, we do.
    Do you think that they're ever envious that you came here?
    No.
    And escaped?
    That we came to the United States and they stayed here?
    Absolutely not, because their lifestyle
    has changed and improved, that their lifestyle
    is comparable to our lifestyle here now.
    And their standard of living is at the same level
    as the standard of living in the United States.
    As a matter of fact, my friend's standard of living
    is even higher than mine, I could say.
    She's got a cleaning woman every day.
    I don't.
    [LAUGHS]
    But the fact that you broke away from your past
    completely by coming to this country.
    I did not break away from my past
    completely by coming to this country.
    Because I went to another life.
    But I did not break away from my past.
    Because my past is always with me.
    And since I go back there every two or three years,
    I go back to my past and I want to hold on to my past.
    And I don't want to forget my past.
    Has anyone ever visited you here from France?
    Yes.
    I had a cousin.
    As a matter of fact, she was here just three years ago.
    This cousin was in a camp.
    She came back from the camps.
    She was here for a month.
    And my best friend, that one I stayed with,
    she came here about eight years ago.
    Do you feel that the Holocaust affected
    your present physical health?
    Of course, it affected other peoples' very seriously,
    but what about yours?
    No, not mine.
    I don't feel so.
    Because my health was not the best before the Holocaust.
    So I don't feel that the Holocaust,
    because I was lucky enough to live in a place
    where there was fresh air and food, so no, it did not.
    Really, it didn't.
    It affected me in the sense that the Holocaust is a part of me.
    It's always with me.
    It always will be with me.
    But it may affect me mentally sometimes.
    I think about it often.
    How does it affect you mentally?
    Do you mean, maybe, do you dream about it?
    Yes, I dream about it a lot.
    I often dream, I picture how my father lived and died.
    I tried to put myself in his place.
    I often wonder how did it happen to him?
    How did he die?
    How long did he suffer?
    [CRYING]
    Yeah, I could imagine that.
    I think about that very, very often.
    Do you ever feel angry or bitter now, or perhaps in your past,
    did you when you were younger and these things just happened
    to you about the Germans?
    Yes, I do feel cheated.
    I do feel that I was cheated of many years of my life,
    that my father was cheated out of many years of his life.
    Yes, I feel anger.
    But I can't say that I ever--
    I don't like the Germans and I don't ever
    want to go to Germany.
    But I don't think I hate them.
    I just don't want to be associated with them.
    But I wouldn't say that I hate them.
    Do you think your brother feels the same way you do?
    My brother is more passive on all these issues.
    He very seldom talks about those things.
    And I don't know if it's because he's is two years younger
    than I am and he wasn't as involved as I was.
    So I was very close to my father.
    Where my brother was not as close to my father.
    So I really don't know.
    My brother very seldom talks about those things.
    To what extent do you think the Holocaust affected your outlook
    on life, if at all?
    Well, the only thing I can think of, it's
    my feelings toward Germany itself, the country itself.
    Excuse me.
    There's a Kleenex there, too.
    Although I love to travel, I don't want to go to Germany.
    I never want to go to Germany.
    I don't blame you.
    We were ready to go to France last year.
    And it was a chartered flight.
    And we were supposed to, I don't know
    how, the agent booked us for a flight to Paris through Munich.
    But when I heard of it, I said, I don't want to go to Munich.
    But she says you don't get out of the plane.
    I said I don't care.
    I don't even want to go over Munich.
    I just don't want to go there.
    Do you think that survivors are different from other Jews?
    Oh, definitely.
    They are different than other Jews.
    You mean, the American Jews?
    Because you calling survivors the ones
    who survived the European war years, the occupations?
    They are definitely different.
    How would you say they're different?
    Because they lived with the Holocaust.
    They're so involved.
    Most American do not want to hear about it.
    It's only in recent years that the Holocaust
    has become such a subject.
    Is it because we're getting older
    and in another generation, most of us
    won't be here anymore to talk about it?
    But if all American Jews behaved like my husband,
    they don't want to hear about it.
    So we are different.
    Because we've got something to tell.
    They don't have that to tell.
    Did you feel many times that you wanted to talk,
    but people just didn't want to?
    They're not interested.
    People in general are not interested.
    My generation, my son is interested
    because I've told him about all that since he was a little boy.
    I told him about my father.
    So my son is very well aware of the Holocaust.
    But I imagine all the children of Holocaust survivors
    are interested.
    But that's all.
    What do you think are the reasons for your survival?
    The reasons is, like I said before, it's we were lucky
    that we were going on vacation to that village.
    This village was our salvation.
    And the French people there were our salvation.
    And I'll never be able to thank him enough.
    Do you think that there's ways that you contributed
    to your own survival?
    No, I don't think so.
    I don't think so.
    Well, just by being where I was.
    I guess I was at the right place at the right time.
    I could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
    What made you decide to share your experiences with us?
    I guess what was most in my mind is
    I said I wanted to thank the French people who saved us.
    I wanted them to be publicly acknowledged,
    that not all French people were collaborators
    and that French people are not what many, many say they are.
    I just wanted to say thank you to them.
    Do you think that survivors like yourself
    have a message that others need to understand?
    The only message I have is I feel that these experiences
    should be made public.
    And that it should become a part of--
    it will become a part of history.
    And it should be a subject taught in all the schools,
    just like American history or any other subject,
    especially when you hear that people are denying that it ever
    happened.
    Yeah, that's unbelievable.
    Yes, it is absolutely unbelievable.
    In your opinion, what would be an appropriate way
    for those who did not go through the Holocaust
    to relate to survivors?
    They should-- well, I don't know if the people who
    don't know much about the Holocaust,
    I don't know whether they're afraid to ask questions.
    Are they afraid that the Holocaust survivors
    don't want to talk about it?
    Or they don't want to know what happened?
    Or I don't know what the reason is.
    But I feel that if you have not been exposed to it,
    you should go and ask questions.
    Because that's the only way you're going to learn about it.
    And I feel after all these years that I do
    feel that the Holocaust survivors want
    to talk about it.
    I really do.
    I think that some people are afraid that they don't.
    And don't want to offend them.
    And I think that's why they keep quiet.
    But I think, like you said, it seems
    that there's a trend now to be open, more open
    about these things.
    I think it's because everybody feels that time is running out.
    And everybody is trying to grab whatever they can.
    Because like I say, in another generation,
    who's going to talk about it?
    Dina, are there any other things that you
    would like to talk about as far as your whole experience
    with this, any details that we may have forgotten,
    any interesting stories?
    It doesn't have to be in order.
    We've covered a lot of ground.
    But I just wondered if there was anything in particular
    that maybe you would like to mention.
    Well, some incidents maybe that happened during the occupation
    while I was going to school and when Petain
    was the head of the government.
    And we were told--
    I think it was Petain's birthday.
    And we were told would children write a letter to Petain.
    And if you want to ask him something, ask him that letter.
    And since the Jews were being sent to camps at that time
    and we knew about it, so I wrote a letter to Petain.
    And I said, why are you doing that to the Jews?
    And I did get an answer.
    But it was the same mimeographed answer then
    any child got into in the school system.
    That's one of the things.
    So you weren't satisfied.
    And you still didn't find out why they were doing that--
    No.
    --to the Jews.
    No.
    Do you ever think about that now,
    or come up with any answers?
    Why they did it to the Jews?
    Why was there an anti-Semitism for so many years?
    In Poland, my parents had to leave Poland
    because of anti-Semitism.
    Why did it-- why?
    It's always been like that through history.
    So Hitler did it on a much bigger scale.
    But I think it's history repeating itself.
    I hope it never will happen again.
    But who knows?
    Have you had any experiences in this country,
    anti-Semitic experiences.
    No, I did not.
    I did not, I guess, because I always
    lived in a Jewish neighborhood.
    And I worked for the Jewish Federation.
    So really I was not exposed to any anti-Semitism
    in the United States.
    And I think that the Americans are more aware of Jews
    because the United States is a melting pot.
    The world is in the United States.
    You've got people from all over.
    So I feel this you celebrate your holidays here,
    Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
    On the television, they wish you a happy New.
    Year.
    Well, those are things that were never done in France.
    Even to this day in France, they still
    hide their Jewishness, most of the Jews.
    You just don't go around and saying well,
    I'm a Jew, like you say it here.
    So to some extent the freedom that you experience
    in the United States, you don't experience anywhere else
    in the world, the freedom of being
    a Jew, the freedom of expressing yourself
    is unique in this country.
    Is there anything else that you would like to talk about or any
    other feelings that you might want--
    Many times I feel like I would like to live in France again.
    Yet when I think back of what happened,
    because I do miss Paris, but I love the Americans so
    much that I said, well, if I could combine France
    and America both in one place, that
    would be the ideal place for me.
    But unfortunately, I can't have both.
    Do you ever find that might be true in Canada, Montreal?
    No, because I feel that in Canada and Montreal,
    there's a lot of anti-Semitism.
    I feel it more up there than here.
    Oh, that's interesting.
    Yes, because I've been a couple of times to Montreal.
    And speaking French the way I do,
    I felt it there a lot more than I felt it here.
    Well, I don't have any questions.
    Is there anything else that you would like to bring up?
    I can't think of anything else, of course, to say.
    There's a lot more to tell.
    But I don't know.
    I don't think you want all these details.
    The most important--
    I do if there's more to say.
    I can't-- other things that I remember during the war
    on the subway, all the big--
    on the walls, they had big posters
    on the walls depicting anti-Semitism.
    They always had Jews, big, big hooked nose.
    And they would say this is our enemy.
    I can't imagine what that would be like, being a Jewish person
    to see that.
    And then walk past by, it was, like,
    billboards in the subway stations.
    The anti-Semitism, it was advertised all over.
    Did you feel like hiding when you would see that?
    I imagine that.
    Sure I felt like hiding.
    But how could I hide?
    I was wearing my star.
    Unless I stayed home and didn't go to school
    or didn't do anything, that was the only way to hide.
    But this is one thing I'll always
    remember, the way that they were depicting the Jews,
    ugliest people on Earth, and despicable.
    That's how we were pictured.
    That's incredible.
    Yes.
    What about on the radio?
    On the radio, It's very-- well, of course,
    when we were in Paris, we didn't have a radio.
    Because we had to give up our radio.
    So we just couldn't listen to news.
    We weren't allowed to go to the movies, either.
    That was off limit to the Jews.
    So there was nothing, really, that much we
    could do besides walking.
    And then after a certain time in the evening,
    we weren't even allowed in the streets, either.
    I think it was after 11 o'clock we
    weren't allowed in the streets.
    It's hard to imagine that we lived through a time like that.
    Maybe because you were young it was a little easier for you.
    Probably.
    I am sure it was.
    Although I was at an impressionable age.
    Because between the age of 12 and 18, I mean,
    it's really your growing up years.
    This is when you really become aware of everything around you.
    So this is probably why I feel different.
    And this is always on my mind.
    Because those pictures always keep coming back.
    And I do think about it quite often.
    Do you ever feel that you could see a movie, such as Sophie's
    Choice?
    Did you happen to see that?
    Yes, I saw it.
    Yes, I see the movies.
    Of course, it makes me cry.
    But I do see them.
    It makes me cry and I am drawn to see them.
    Because like I said, I want to see how my father died.
    I just want to imagine what his life was
    like during the time he was there.
    That's interesting.
    I guess some people would feel like you.
    And other people would feel the opposite.
    That they don't want to know about it.
    They just don't want to know.
    Yes, I know.
    And I guess personally, I think it's good.
    I think I would want to know also.
    Yes, I want to know.
    This is why I was--
    maybe I shouldn't use the word "elated."
    But I was elated in relief when I found my father's
    name inscribed on that stone.
    Because in one way I want my father to have a monument,
    his own.
    So although he shared that monument with thousands,
    still his name is there.
    Do you think that there should be a way
    to commemorate the memory of the people that lost their lives?
    Absolutely.
    I am very happy that they decided to have
    a museum in Washington, DC.
    And I think that there should be a day, at least one day a year,
    where all these Jews should be remembered.
    Although I'm sure that most of us remember them all the time.
    Excuse me.
    Do you ever envy the life that your son had,
    growing up in one place?
    No, I didn't envy him.
    I was very happy that my son never
    had to live the way I did.
    And my son feels very bad that I had
    to go through all these experiences.
    He's very attentive and very, very concerned.
    And he always, always tells me, oh, Mom, I
    feel so bad that you had to go through all that.
    I'm happy that he had a good life.
    Anything else?
    I can't think of anything else.
    OK.
    Well, Dina, I want to thank you so
    much for agreeing to do this.
    And your story and thoughts have been real interesting.
    Thank you.
    I hope it helps and people will learn from it.
    I hope so, too.
    We're going to conclude the second tape here.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Dina Leiser, born in Paris, France, describes her parents, who had immigrated to France from Poland to escape antisemitism and worked as tailors; her younger brother; her family not being religious; experiencing antisemitism from her schoolmates; wanting to be identified more as French than as a Jew; staying with her brother for several months on a farm in Souillé as part of a school-sponsored program; the war beginning in 1939 when she was 12 years old; her father enlisting; joining her brother on the farm; her mother obtaining false papers and joining them on the farm; the villagers in Souillé being very protective of them; remaining in Souillé for the duration of the war; finding out her father had been deported and learning only recently that he had been sent to Auschwitz; studying shorthand and typing; experiencing antisemitism at work and going to work for a Jewish firm; immigrating with her brother to the United States in 1947; her mother going to Canada and then the US five years later; teaching herself English by listening to the radio and reading; her brother being drafted into the US Army; getting married to one of her brother’s soldier friends in 1952; her son and grandson; living in University Heights, OH; and working for the Jewish France.
    Interviewee
    Dina Leiser
    Interviewer
    Carol Tobin
    Date
    interview:  1984 August 08
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Leiser, Dina.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview was acquired by the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 from the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:11:09
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504974

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    Summary (English)

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    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral History

    Sidonia Benedek, born in 1924 in Caraseu, Rumania in the region of Transylvania, describes her large, religious family; her father’s role as the spiritual leader of the community; her happy childhood, having many friends, and doing well in school; her family supporting themselves through a small family farm and being very well-respected by both Jews and gentiles; first seeing antisemitism when Jews in Bucharest, Romania, were killed in 1937; the lack of physically-threatening antisemitism in Caraseu; her teachers having to fight for her status as class valedictorian; the fear and sadness in the Caraseu Jewish community; Germany's influence in the region growing and the Jews suffering the loss of rights and privileges; her family being split up and deported in 1944; the deportation of her brother and brother-in-law to work camps (her brother-in-law survived and her brother did not); the deportation of others to a ghetto in Szatmar (Satu Mare, Romania); her family being transported after five weeks to Auschwitz; her parents, two sisters, and her sisters’ children being killed immediately; surviving the camps along with her younger sister and younger brother; another brother dying in a forced labor camp in Russia; being sent to work in Stutthof, and then to Prost to build an airport; being evacuated in a two-week march during January 1945; escaping with her sister and being liberated by the Russian Army; returning home and reuniting with her brother; reuniting with a childhood friend, Les Benedek, whom she married in September 1945; her brother-in-law (who survived the forced labor camp) moving to New York; her younger brother, Martin Lax, who left Romania in 1946 and lived in Austria for several years before moving to the United States (Cleveland, Ohio) in 1949; leaving Romania in 1965 with her husband and three children (Aliz Benedek, Michael Benedek, and Vera Benedek); and settling in Cleveland.

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral History

    Alice Ben-Hurin, born in Hungary (along the Danube between Budapest and Vienna, Austria), describes being the youngest of three children; her father working in the import-export business and her mother assisting him with the bookkeeping; her prosperous family; how education was very important to the family and several cousins stayed with them while attending school in the city; finishing high school in 1939; the German takeover and her father being temporarily arrested; working for the local Jewish committee with her older sister; her brother joining the army and disappearing in 1942; trying to persuade her family to escape from Hungary; being sent to the ghetto with her family the day after her brother returned; being sent to an old army post with Jews from the city and the surrounding countryside; her brother returning to the army and being the only survivor of the massacre of his unit; being deported to Auschwitz; the immediate killing of her family except for herself, her cousin, and her sister; being sent to Dresden, Germany, where she worked in a munitions factory; being evacuated in a march to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by American and British troops along the way; working for the Red Cross for a short time; going to Austria with a friend's brother who worked for the US Army; working as a high school teacher in Philadelphia, PA after coming to the US; living in Cleveland, OH; and her three children and three grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral History

    Joseph Benson, born in Strasin in the Northern Bohemian section of Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes his German mother and Czech father; having a happy life on a farm with his family and receiving a strong Catholic education; acquiring a love for aviation early in life; being a teenager when the Germans occupied the Sudentenland; being loyal to the Czech ideals and people at that time; becoming involved in anti-German activities; joining the underground movement when he turned 18; being smuggled to England to join the Czech Army in exile; eagerly volunteering for intensive combat flight training and mastering all facets in a short time; his plane being shot down over Germany during an early combat mission; being discovered by the Gestapo and imprisoned for interrogation; suffering torture and imprisonment in Nuremberg, Selenstrausse, and Stadelheim prisons; being in isolation for a great deal of the time; refusing to divulge any information; being transferred first to Dachau and then to Buchenwald; performing labor in aircraft component factories; being transferred to Schoenbeck and escaping with a friend to the American lines; his methods for survival; being a strong believer in personal freedoms; and lecturing to youths about the dangers of totalitarian governments.

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral History

    Jack Biegelman, born in Łódź, Poland in 1930, describes being part of a large family, where music was the major vocational and recreational focus; being a young boy when the Germans invaded Poland; the turmoil and the powerful images of the German military force; life in the ghetto; doing forced labor; being transported with his family to Auschwitz in 1944; the death of his mother and younger brother; his father surviving several months, but dying from illness; enduring the horrors, starvation, and work at Auschwitz; being transferred to Glechamberg camp, where he was liberated by the Russians; returning to Łódź; living with an uncle in Germany; going to the United States and, with the aid of Jewish organization, being placed in the home of a retired school teacher; his studies in music; enlisting in the Air Force during the Korean War; getting married and having three children; his life in Cleveland, OH; and his commitment to Jewish organizations, especially those dealing with education and commemoration of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral History

    Leah Binstock, born in Jaroslaw, Poland, describes the prevalence of antisemitism before the war; the large and active Jewish community; her parents’ candy factory; her sister; her family being very religious; attending a private Jewish school; belonging to a Zionist organization and hoping to someday go to Palestine; being 14 years old when the Germans invaded; the anti-Jewish measures; all the Jews in Jaroslaw being forced to move to Krakow, Poland; escaping with her sister and going to a work camp for Polish women; assuming the identity of two Ukrainian girls they befriended on a train; living as Christians in Terezin, Poland, where they worked for the telephone company; her sister learning to speak German and getting a better job; being denounced to the Gestapo by their co-workers; being deported to Auschwitz in February 1943; being evacuated on foot with the other prisoners; escaping on the second night with four others; being hidden by a priest for several days until the war officially ended in May 1945; returning to Jaroslaw with her sister; learning that their parents died in the Krakow ghetto; moving to Germany, where they opened a grocery business; meeting her husband through a girl she knew in Auschwitz; registering with a Zionist organization that helped refugees immigrate to the United States; settling in St. Louis, MO; moving to Cleveland, OH after experiencing antisemitism in St. Louis; living in Mayfield Heights, OH; working for her husband's business; and her three children and four grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral History

    Elias Cala, born in Dobrzyn (Golub-Dobrzyń), Poland, describes the Jewish population in the area; being the third of five children in a close, loving family; his father being extremely religious; the lack of anti-Semitism in Dobrzyn prior to 1934; working at a cousin’s shoe store in Łódź, Poland in 1936 when he was 16 years old; his father’s death in 1938; being drafted into the army in 1939; his unit being on the German boarder when Germany invaded; a fierce battle lasting several days; his unit being taken prisoner by the Germans; the Jews being immediately separated from the rest of the unit and pretending he was a gentile with the help of his fellow soldiers; the non-Jewish prisoners being released soon after their capture; staying with his cousin in Łódź; going to Dobrzyn, where the Germans were persecuting Jews; being expelled from Dobrzyn; settling in a town near the Russian border with his aunt and uncle and their children; getting married; being deported to a camp at Dzialdowo, and then sent to a ghetto in Piotrkov; escaping with his wife and going to Warsaw, Poland; going to Nalewaj, where they found his wife's family; working on a road crew, but getting sick and being hospitalized; being badly burned during a fire; his wife giving birth to a daughter; being deported to Auschwitz; being separated from his wife and baby; being sent to an I.G. Farben factory; the bombing of the factory; being evacuated and forced to move from camp to camp; going to Mauthausen and Oranienburg; being left at Flossenbürg; being transferred to a work-camp near Stuttgart, Germany; being evacuated from Stuttgart and traveling again from camp to camp; hiding in a haystack with 21 others; being discovered and many of them being shot; surviving and being taken in by villagers and given food and clothing; being liberated by the Americans on May 1, 1945; remaining in Germany, where he got married again; moving to the US in March 1949; living in Beachwood, Ohio; and his five children.

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral History

    Vincent Cochrane, born in 1919 in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, describes enlisting in the US Army in 1937 and serving until 1950; serving in Germany from 1944 to 1945; being a captain and commanding a medium tank company; being present at the liberation of three concentration camps in Ahlen near Hannover, Gardelegen, and Salzwedel; his unit only staying about an hour until back-up units and medical units arrived; how it took a while for the liberators to realize what they were seeing; becoming an operating engineer after his service; being the on the security staff of Cuyahoga County, OH; feeling that his experience in the war may have helped him become more sensitive person; and wanting to be interviewed to help make sure the Holocaust is never forgotten.

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral History

    W. Louis Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes having a younger sister, born in 1927 as well as an older brother; his father, Waldemar, who was an attorney with the German government; his father working from 1925 to 1931 in the German embassy in Nice, France; his mother, Lottie Epstein, who came from a prosperous family; his family moving to the outskirts of Berlin in 1937; being assimilated into German life and belonging to a Reform congregation; attending elementary school from 1931 to 1935 without problems and attending gymnasium from 1935 to 1938; being kicked out of school in November 1938 and attending an improvised Jewish school; antisemitism increasing; the deportation of men to concentration camps; his brother going to the US; being sent on December 10, 1938 with his 11-year-old sister and his ten-year-old cousin on a train to Holland, where his cousin's grandmother lived; missing the train and being sent to a refugee camp for two to three months, then a children’s home, and then to a camp near Utrecht; his mother finding then in May 1939 and taking them to Brussels, Belgium; attending school in Brussels for a year; being arrested by Belgian police in 1940; being sent to Paris, France then moved from camp to camp; finding his father in Gurs concentration camp; working in the censorship office at Gurs and being able to smuggle news out; getting caught smuggling letters; being deported to Mauthausen and escaping with some other young men in August 1942; going through France to Spain; being sent from Barcelona to Africa for basic training; going to England where he was trained in counter-espionage by the Office of Strategic Services; being assigned him to parachute into France and blow up wheels in a German motor pool; completing his task and searching for his sister and parents; finding his sister in a convent under the false name Elise Carpentier; returning to England and receiving further training from the US Army 82nd Airborne Division; parachuting into France on D-Day and being wounded on the beachhead; staying in a hospital for three days; fighting with the Allies in Northern France, Holland, and accompanying them into Berlin; going to his family's apartment building, which had been bombed and finding his family’s possessions, which were buried in the yard; losing all his family except his sister and his uncle’s family; going to Palestine, where he worked on a kibbutz and helped train the Haganah; having special status because he was a captain in the US Army and becoming a US citizen; going to Cleveland, OH in 1947 and attending college to become an engineer; marrying Lottie Wolff in 1951; believing he survived because he worked hard and took care of himself; receiving help from Quakers in Spain and counseling from Catholic chaplains during the war; and missing out on his youth but feeling that perhaps he learned something from the experience.

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral History

    Peppi Dekker (née Chajes), born in Apeldoorn, Holland, describes having a twin sister; her parents’ successful textile business; attending public school until the war began; Germany invading Holland and being forced one year later to attend the local Jewish school; her family escaping the first roundup of Jews in May 1942; her family being deported the following September; being sent with her sister, mother, and grandfather to Westerbork, where they found her father; her father becoming a "law and order officer" at Westerbork and the family acquiring special status; being sent in 1944 to Bergen-Belsen with a transport of Dutch orphans; staying at Bergen-Belsen for two years; being sick often; her mother’s strength and determination to survive and maintain the family's dignity; her mother’s cleaning job outside the camp; her mother being beaten and sexually assaulted; being evacuated from the camp and sent by train to Elba; being liberated by the Russian Army; her family being given a home which had been occupied by a German officer; moving to the American zone after several incidents with Russian soldiers; returning to Holland; receiving reparations from the Dutch government; her father sending she and her sister in 1957 to the United States, where they stayed with her father's brother and his wife; getting married and moving with her husband to Chicago, New Jersey, and then to Cleveland; living in Strongsville, Ohio; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral History

    Maury Feren describes being a member of the 2nd Infantry Division, 5th Division, Medical Detachment from 1943 until 1945; his unit being located near Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in early May 1945 when they suddenly came upon 75 emaciated, dying women between the ages of 20 and 35; how these women had been among a group of 500 who had started on a death march from Auschwitz and most had died along the way; the horror and pain of discovering human beings in such a state of suffering; how the army tried to help these women medically and emotionally in their struggle for recovery; being moved and disturbed by his role as liberator; and feeling heartened by the courage and devotion of those who tried to help the survivors.

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral History

    Simon Fixler describes being one of 16 children, born to a prosperous family in Kelca, Czechoslovakia; his happy childhood, with religious freedom and no sense of antisemitism; the introduction of antisemitism with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Hungarians; the anti-Jewish atmosphere escalating; the Jews being forced to perform menial work in labor camps; evading conscription to the labor camps for a year and a half; being discovered by the government and sent to a parachute factory; getting married in 1943 and being able to see his wife after the work days; being sent in November 1944 to a more severe forced labor camp in one of Eichmannfs last transports; enduring terrible working conditions and witnessing mass murders and atrocities at the labor camp; being transferred to the concentration camp at Mauthausen in April 1945; he and his brother supporting each other physically and emotionally throughout this horrible ordeal; being liberated by the Americans in May 1945; wandering through the countryside with his brother; seeking the aid of the Jewish Federation in Prague, Czech Republic; moving to Budapest, Hungary, where they reunited with the six other surviving family members; moving with his wife to Germany, where they remained for three years; being selected for sponsorship to Cleveland, OH by a knitting mill; having several knitting jobs and building his life in the US; becoming interested in Jewish fund raising and Holocaust memorial activities; enjoying the freedoms of the US; believing that it is his duty to share his experiences; and believing the best investment in the future of Judaism is education.

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral History

    Herman Frank, born in Łódź, Poland, describes being the only child of a well-to-do family in the textile and fur business; having an active and happy childhood, attending concerts and the theater and vacationing abroad; the antisemitism in Łódź; his father’s death before the war and deciding not to emigrate; the German invasion; his mother’s preparations for the war; being moved to the ghetto; his mother’s death in 1942 when he was 17 years old; attending a textile engineering school in the ghetto; his various jobs in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto and the deportations to Auschwitz; being transferred to Gleiwitz; being evacuated in January 1945; escaping but being captured and sent to Gross-Rosen; being propositioned sexually by the camp commander; being evacuated to Buchenwald; being moved a few weeks later to Berga-an-Elste; being assigned to work in the kitchen because of an injury and getting more food; the evacuation of the camp and escaping with his friends; convincing SS that they were Polish civilians; how after liberation he went to the American zone in Weiden, Germany, and worked for the US Army; marrying another Polish survivor in Germany; the birth of their first son in Germany; his wife’s aunt sponsoring their entry into the US in 1949; the difficultly of adjusting to life in the US; owning his own carpet cleaning business; living in Pepper Pike, Ohio; and his two sons and two grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral History

    Helen Fried (born circa 1926) describes being the third of ten children in a large, orthodox family in Hust, Czechoslovakia (Khust, Ukraine); the Jewish community of Hust; her mother supporting the family by running a leather store, while her father was a Torah schlar; her grandparents living in an adjoining house and helping to raise the children; her family having good relations with their gentile neighbors; the start of the war and her family losing their store; the Hungarian invasion of Hust; the store being returned to her family under the Hungarian occupation and living a relatively good life; anti-Jewish measures being imposed when the Germans were in control again; the creation of the ghetto in 1943 and the deportation soon after to Auschwitz; her parents, four brothers, and one of her sisters being killed immediately; remaining in Auschwitz with her four sisters until late 1944 when they were sent to work on a farm; being evacuated and forced to march; escaping with her sisters and taking the identity of Polish maids who had worked for the German army; maintaining their identities until liberation but being separated; going to work in a factory with 60 Russian women; being liberated before the official end of the war by Russian soldiers; reuniting with several cousins and her sister in Dobrzyn, Poland; going to Prague, Czech Republic; living in a displaced persons camp in Leipheim, Germany to wait for a visa to the United States; marrying a man she met in Budapest, Hungary; going to the US in 1949; settling in New York, NY; the Joint Distribution Committee helping them find a place to live and a job for her husband; moving to Cleveland, OH; not telling her son about her Holocaust experiences; her feelings about Judaism; the effects of the Holocaust on her life; and her thoughts on why she survived.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral History

    Marcel Friedman describes having a comfortable childhood with his family in Presov, Slovakia; his numerous non-Jewish friends; having a religious home life; his educational and recreational interests; being denied admission to the University of Bratislava in 1939 due to a Jewish quota; deciding to go to Palestine, as he had been an active Zionist; beginning his journey to Israel in 1940 and encountering political problems, a shipwreck, and bombings; being interned on the island of Rhodes in a tent camp; being moved to a camp in Southern Italy; being treated fairly well during his internment; being liberated by the British in 1943; joining the Czech Army and being part of the weather department; being transferred back to Czechoslovakia, where he was reunited with his brother and sister in 1945; his parents' fate in the concentration camps; being recruited for Palestine in 1948; joining the Israeli Army and serving in the weather service; determining that life was too difficult in Israel in 1953 and moving to the United States; his American family members sponsoring and financially aiding he and his wife and child; working in a travel agency in the US; joining a synagogue and becoming active in Jewish activities; believing his luck, personality, and religion contributed to his survival; his belief that survivors have a responsibility to make others aware of their experiences; still feeling some bitterness; and his interests in learning more about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral History

    Ann Frum, born in 1925 in Zdunska Vola, Poland, describes her Orthodox Jewish family; experiencing antisemitism before the war, but enjoying a fairly stable, carefree childhood; the German invasion and fleeing for safety; being forced to live in a ghetto in her small town; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and being sent to the large ghetto in Łódź, Poland; the terrible living conditions during her transport and her internment in the ghetto; being sent to work in a munitions factory in Czestochowa, where she met the man she later married; being transferred to a concentration camp in Ravensburg, Germany, where she was forced to dig trenches for the burial of other Jews; being sent to Bergau (Burgau) and Turkine (Türkheim), smaller concentration camps, where she again was forced to work amid horrible conditions; being liberated at Allach, near Dachau, by the Americans on May 1, 1945; reuniting with her future husband and getting married in 1946; going to the US in 1951 and settling in New Jersey; moving to Cleveland, OH; having three children, and creating an extended family of close friends in the Cleveland Jewish community; and her belief that it is essential that survivors tell others of their experiences.

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral History

    Jack Gildar, born in Tarnowa, Poland, describes his the strong Jewish community in his town; his close, loving family; his father’s death; going at the age of nine to attend school in Lomza; becoming an apprentice carpenter; antisemitism in Tarnowa; working in a town near the German border when the war began; returning home and discovering that Tarnowa had been bombed; the Russian occupation; the German occupation beginning in 1941; being sent to a ghetto in 1942 in Lomza; being sent to a camp in Zembrov (Zambrów); being sent with his family to Auschwitz; being separated in Auschwitz and never seeing his family again; being sent to Birkenau, then to another section of Auschwitz, where he worked in an SS hospital; being able to trade for extra food, medicine, and items such as soap and razor blades because of his work; sharing much of his good fortune with others, sending food and medicine to friends and cousins in other parts of the camp; remaining relatively strong and healthy; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and being walked for four days to the Czech border, where they boarded trains for transport to Mauthausen; volunteering for a transfer to Ebensee; being liberated by the American Army; spending June through November after liberation in an abandoned lake house in Austria; going to Germany, where he lived on a kibbutz in Landsburg; the closing of the kibbutz in 1949 and discovering relatives in Cleveland, OH; going to Cleveland in June 1949; living in Beachwood, OH and his work as a butcher; his wife Sara, who is also a Holocaust survivor; and their two children, Rochelle and David.

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral History

    Ileen Koslov Green (née Chaia Koslovsky), born on September 23, 1926 in Holsczaly, Poland (near Vilnius, Lithuania), describes being the middle child of three daughters in an orthodox Jewish family; her father owning a dry goods store and the family living in 13 rooms located behind the store; living with her parents, sisters, grandmother, aunt, and cousin; her father leaving in 1938 to live with his brother in Cleveland, OH; the family planning to follow her father later but their plans being interrupted by the war; the Russian occupation, during which the family's store was closed; surviving by trading merchandise for food with local farmers; the German occupation in 1941; being sent with her mother and sisters to a ghetto; Gentile friends supplying Jews in the ghetto with food; being sent to a labor camp in Lithuania soon after her sister was sent there; her work building streets; her mother and other sister arriving in the camp a year later; being sent to Dunjeje in Estonia, and then to Kaiserwald in Lithuania in 1943; going to Stutthof and life there; being beaten for stealing food; volunteering for farm work; being sent to Dresden, Germany, where she and her older sister worked in an ammunition factory; the bombing of the factory and being forced to march to Prague, Czech Republic; being liberated by French and Russian soldiers; returning home; going to Fahrenwart displaced persons camp and contacting her father in the US; immigrating to the US in 1948; living in South Euclid, OH; and her son, daughter, and five grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral History

    Philip Green describes his Orthodox family; his older sister and younger sister; the vandalizaton and boycotts of his family’s dried-goods store; being 14 years old when his family moved from their small Polish town to Łódź, Poland; the creation of the ghetto in 1939 and moving there soon after with his family; he and his sisters being forced to work in factories; his father dying after being attacked by the Gestapo in his home; surviving in the ghetto with his mother and sisters until 1944; returning home from a food search one day to find a note saying that his family was taken; surrendering himself and being taken to Auschwitz; being transferred to Braunschweig, a truck factory, where he worked under deplorable conditions and near-starvation for over eight months; being moved to the Hermann Goehringwerke airplane factory for a month's work; being transferred to Ravensbrück; being moved around until the Russians liberated Philip and his group of near-dying men on May 5, 1945 near Ludwigslust, Germany; being taken to a hospital for treatment and slowly began to recover their health and their lives; trying to locate his family in Łódź and finding no one; going to Munich, Germany, where he joined a displaced persons camp, and later worked in the office of an American aid organization; meeting his future wife, also a survivor, and going to the United States in 1948; getting married in 1951; working for a plumbing supply company; his daughter and son; and how he is a strong supporter of Israel.

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral History

    Ervin Heksh, born in a village 60 km northwest of Budapest, Hungary, describes how there were few Jewish families in his village; having a happy and active childhood; not being able to attend a university and going to yeshiva instead; entering his father’s grain business; the rise in antisemitism after 1935; his father being forced to take on a partner; the deportation of many Jews and his near deportation because he bought a house that a Hungarian gendarme wanted to buy; being sent to a forced labor camp in Crimea, Ukraine in 1942; witnessing many instances of brutality; being transferred to Belopolye, Ukraine in October 1942; working through a harsh winter, which few of the men survived; the cruel commander; a group of Italian prisoners joining his unit in Belopolye and the kindness they showed to Jewish prisoners; working at a hospital in the Bryansk forest; returning home that summer, where he found his family and his son, who had been born while he was in Russia; working for a while as a traveling salesman; the creation of the ghetto in Budapest, where his parents, wife, and son were confined; working in a mine; he and some friends being arrested and placed in the ghetto when they were caught sneaking in to visit their families; being taken out of the ghetto to work; being arrested and sent to a labor camp, which he escaped; finding his wife and child in a Red Cross community; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; hearing rumors that they would be sent to Switzerland as part of a special exchange; being evacuated to Theresienstadt in April 1945; their train being stopped between stations and the SS guards abandoning them; being liberated the next day; spending time in Hildenheim, Germany; returning to Budapest; learning that his parents died at Auschwitz and his wife died at Bergen-Belsen after liberation; finding his son in Budapest, living with his wife's parents; his son dying from illness when he was two years old; secretly crossing the border into Germany and living in several refugee camps; working for the UNRRA; eventually remarrying; going to the US in 1948; working at a plumbing supply company; his son and daughter; and his reasons for sharing his story.

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral History

    Karel Hoffman describes being 21 years old when he was ordered to report to Terezin, Czechoslovakia to help in the construction of a model prison camp; how Terezin was originally a fortress town from the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the many ironies and falsehoods of this model camp; how the Nazis touted Terezin as having many services, such as a bank, but money was totally worthless within the town; the outward appearance of Terezin versus the actual treatment of inmates within the concentration camp; the poor living conditions; the food rations and overcrowding; the inmates suffering beatings, physical abuse, and intimidation from the Nazis; remaining at Terezin for three years; being one of 5,000 taken to Auschwitz; the horrors of induction at Auschwitz, especially in the later years of the war; being transferred to Gleiwitz, where he participated in the construction of platforms for cannons and machine guns; being liberated at Gleiwitz in 1945; wandering through the woods, witnessing the chaos and confusion; returning to his home to search for family members and being unsuccessful in his search; moving to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where he remained until 1949; being sponsored for immigration to the United States by his aunts in 1949; pursuing furniture and carpentry work in the US; and getting married and having one son.

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral History

    Al Horwitz, born in Ohio, describes being part of an American Army division that liberated Nordhausen concentration camp; being drafted into the army in 1941; serving as a staff sergeant in the 104th Infantry Division, 387th Field Artillery; being stationed at Camp Adam, Oregon, went on maneuvers in the California and Arizona deserts, and spent time in Washington state; being sent with his unit in June 1944; landing in France and being part of the battle to free the port of Antwerp, Belgium; being active in Holland; moving into Germany through Aachen, as part of the drive to Koln (Cologne); going to Nordhausen, in the Hartz Mountains; how Nordhausen was attached to a German bomb factory, and the inmates were Jews and political prisoners; being there while Generals Eisenhower and Bradley toured the camp; moving on to Leipzig, Germany, where he helped set up the "Lucky Strike" displaced persons (DP) camp; being in Leipzig when the famous conference was held to divide post-war Germany; returning to the US in June 1945 and being discharged from the army shortly after; living in Cleveland, Ohio; working in the life insurance business; and his wife and three children.

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral History

    Rose Ickowicz, born in Vicovu de Jos, Romania, describes enjoying a pleasant family and community life as a child before World War II; being the oldest of seven children and raised in an atmosphere of strong devotion to family and pride in country; the invasions of Hungary in 1944 and life changed drastically for her family; being taken to a ghetto for three weeks and then sent to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz near the end of the war; suffering the atrocities of the Nazi regime and also the cruelty and jealousy of other Jews who had been imprisoned much longer; believing she survived because of her strong faith, clear values, and what she calls "miracles"; doing manual labor; being transferred to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated a year after she entered the camp; trying to immigrate to the United States and going to Canada with her husband; life in Canada; encountering difficulties; moving to the US; building an economic and social foundation; and retaining great pride in America and being grateful for the opportunity to start over in this country.

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral History

    Munci Adler Katz, born in Rakov, Czechoslovakia, describes her hometown, which had 60,000 people, was near the Polish border, and was later part of the Soviet Union; the large Jewish community in Rakov; belonging to Mizrahi, a Zionist youth organization; her very orthodox family; her father working in a factory and being financially stable; her mother dying when she was 13 and her father remarrying; her three sisters; attending a Czech public school for eight years; learning the trade of dressmaking; the increase in antisemitism in Rakov after the German invasion; the Jews of Rakov being ghettoized briefly; being were sent to the crowded ghetto in Matejovce (possibly Matejovce nad Hornádom, Slovakia); being deported four weeks later to Auschwitz; the death of her father, stepmother, and two sisters; being selected with her sister to go to a work camp in Geistlingersteiger, Germany; being the camp seamstress and receiving extra food and better treatment; being evacuated to Dachau then Allach; being the seamstress under the same commander from Geistlingersteiger; staying behind at the camp with her sister while most of the women were evacuated to the Tyrol mountains; being liberated on May 9, 1945 by a unit of black American soldiers; finding her father's brothers in Tsiget; being forced to get engaged to her uncle’s friend; returning to Rakov and finding a farmer neighbor living in their house; returning to Tsiget and going to Bucharest, Romania to escape her fiancé; getting engaged to Harry Katz; losing touch with her sister; received permission to emigrate in 1964; going to Cleveland, OH, where Harry had an aunt; working as a dressmaker; and their two children.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral History

    Joseph Klein, born in Strabyczowa, Czechoslovakia (a small town in the Carpathian Mountains that was later part of the Soviet Union), describes being part of a large, orthodox family; his three brothers and three sisters; his father working in the lumber, sand, and gravel trade; his youngest sister dying in childhood and his father dying of liver cancer in 1943, one year before the family was sent to Auschwitz; how the Jews of Strabyczowa were among the last to be deported; being sent to the ghetto at Munkacs (Mukacheve, Ukraine); being sent to Auschwitz; the death of his mother and sister; being sent to work camps with his other sister; spending ten days in Buchenwald, then going to a work camp near Leipzig, Germany, where he repaired a bomb-damaged petroleum refinery; being evacuated by train and escaping the train with another prisoner; being recaptured several days later and returned to their unit; being marched back and his friend being shot by their Gestapo guards; being forced to march to Theresienstadt; remaining in Theresienstadt for one month; being liberated by the Russian Army on May 8, 1945; becoming gravely ill with typhus; obtaining a train ticket to Czechoslovakia when he was well enough to travel; returning to Strabyczowa and finding his brothers, uncle, and sister in Chop; crossing the border into Czechoslovakia before it was permanently closed; going to England in May 1946 through an orphan-refugee program; immigrating to the United States three years later; his surviving siblings settling in the US; serving in the American Army for 19 months during the Korean War; working as a printer at the Cleveland Press; travelling to Israel for the country's tenth anniversary and meeting his wife, Bela, there; living in South Euclid, OH and working as a property manager; and his two daughters, Audrey and Mona.

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral History

    Paul Kuper, born on December 31, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, describes being the youngest of three children; having a sister who was four years older and a brother who was six years older; his mother, who came from a White Russian family; his Polish father; living in a small apartment with no running water; his father working long hours as a baker; the German invasion in 1940; hiding in a basement with his mother when the Germans bombed the city; the Germans establishing their headquarters in a school on their street; being required to wear the yellow star; Jews being banned from theaters, movies, and hospitals; the deportation of his brother and sister; being taken by his mother to the Tuberculosis Society, where the underground was active; being placed in a sanatorium in a suburb, under a non-Jewish name, and staying there in 1941 and 1942; his parents being sent first to Malines and then to Germany; staying with a non-Jewish family friend, Seline Sinn, in his old neighborhood; attending a Catholic school; living with Seline’s sister in a different neighborhood; being discovered by the Germans in 1943 and sent to a village near Brussels, which was controlled by Jewish youth; being sent to another camp in Aix-la-Chapelle, where he lived in an old castle; the liberation of Belgium and being told by underground members from nearby Peruwelz to run into the woods so the Germans would not use them as hostages; the children being taken to stay with families in Peruwelz; going back to Brussels; attending Catholic school and living with his godparents; immigrating to the United States on his 21st birthday; living with his godmother's cousins and becoming a truck helper for Dean Supply; settling in Cleveland, OH and being in the military; living in South Euclid, OH; and being married with four daughters.

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral History

    Bertha Lautman (née Berkovitch), born in Banska Stiavnica, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes her religious family; her Hasidic father; attending school in Swidnica; being taken by train to Auschwitz on March 23, 1942; her mother taking her out of hiding to send her to Auschwitz instead of her father; her parents, along with her youngest brother, being taken to Majdanek three months after her; the death of her parents and her brother’s survival; being a teenager and put to work digging ditches in Auschwitz; being moved to Birkenau in August 1942; working as part of the Leichencommando, taking care of the dead bodies; being taken from Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen on October 31, 1944; being liberated by American soldiers in April 1945; reuniting with her sister and brother; getting married another survivor; going to the United States in 1949; and visiting the concentration camps she was in three times over the years as well as Majdanek, where her parents were killed.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Sylvia Malchmacher, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1926, describes the Jewish community in Vilna, including the many synagogues, Hebrew schools and universities, and the many Zionist organizations; her older and younger sisters; her father, who was a printer, and her mother, who kept house; experiencing antisemitism after 1939; living in the Russian zone of Poland; food rationing and being forced to work for the government; the German invasion in 1941; the collaborators in Vilna; the creation of the ghetto; her sister’s work in a fur factory; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being ordered to report with all the children under 18 and old people and going with her younger sister; being sent home because she was 18 and her sister never coming home; being deported on May 16, 1944 on trains to a camp in the Kaiserwald, where they remained for three weeks; being sent in August 1944 to Stutthof; remaining in Stutthof for two weeks under horrible conditions; selections for work and being sent to Milldorf, a camp near Mannheim; clearing the debris as tunnels were blasted into a mountain; washing clothes for the German camp staff; being liberated by American troops on May 2, 1945; going to a displaced persons camp; learning that her father, mother and sister had died; attending a training school and marrying Israel Malchmacher in 1946; going to Cleveland, OH in 1949, sponsored by the Jewish Family Service; and her two grown daughters.

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral History

    Marguerite Morris, born in Paris, France, describes her parents, who had emigrated from Poland; enjoying a comfortable childhood; keeping kosher, but not being orthodox; living in a predominantly gentile neighborhood; her father enlisting in the French Army and returning to Paris in October 1940; her father being sent to Beaune-la-Rolande concentration camp in 1941 and never seeing him again; fleeing with her mother to unoccupied France; going first to Limoges then Oradour; living on their savings; returning with a Gentile friend to Paris to retrieve family valuables they had left with a neighbor; staying with 20 other Jewish families in Oradour until liberation in August 1944; going to Limoges and returning to Paris after the war ended officially; her mother receiving government assistance to reopen the family business; attending an accelerated school; being depressed and deciding to move to the United States to live with cousins in Akron, OH; studying accounting and working for Firestone; getting married to an American, who had been stationed at Normandy during the war; her two sons; and becoming certified public accountant.

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral History

    Anna Felsn Moses, born in Milicz, Poland, describes her large, traditional, religious family; her family moving in 1933 to Krakow, Poland, where her father was a businessman; acts of antisemitism carried out by the Poles of Krakow before the war; the boycotts of Jewish businesses; the German invasion and life rapidly becoming more difficult for the Jews; "Black Monday," when Torahs were desecrated and synagogues were burned; her family being among the 10,000 Jews enclosed in a ghetto; living in the ghetto from 1940 until the end of 1942, when she became separated from her family and was sent to Płaszów concentration camp; remaining there for nine months; being sent to Skarszysko, where she worked in a munitions factory; being sent to Buchenwald, where she remained for nine months, working at making grenade timers; being marched for three weeks; escaping with eight others and being liberated by the Russian army several days later; returning to Krakow; meeting her husband in 1946; arriving in the United States in 1948; and living in Cleveland, OH, where her husband is a rabbi in Menorah Park.

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral History

    Mimi Ormond describes growing up in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia (Mariánské Lázne, Czech Reublic); the German community in Marienbad; switching from a German school to a Czech school; her family deciding to flee after Kristallnacht; the Jewish population of Marienbad; her brother, who was away at college when her family fled Marienbad; belonging to a Zionist organization; her parents’ lack of interest in Zionism; feeling isolated from other students during the Nazi salute and Catholic prayers; fleeing to an apartment in a small town called Kolín, Czech Republic; the German invasion; her father being a socialist and on a Nazi arrest list; leaving on a children’s transport to Palestine via England; living on a farm in England; being moved with the other children to unoccupied castles in 1940; learning Hebrew and receiving agricultural training; receiving a notice that her parents were going to Palestine; the British authorities declaring Jewish refugees over the age of 17 to be enemy aliens; being left alone in the castle; night bombing near the castle; moving to another castle and joining an Orthodox Mizrahi labor group when she was 15 years old; going to live with an uncle in London; studying early education at a university; meeting her future husband, who was an American soldier; having a temple wedding; visiting her parents in Palestine; living in Ann Arbor, MI then Indianapolis, IN; feeling isolated from other Europeans; moving to Cleveland, OH and meeting survivors from her hometown; having survivors guilt; and her feelings about Israel.

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral History

    Dan Pavlovitch, born in 1928, describes being the oldest of three children in a fairly unconventional family in Ploesti, Rumania; his parents and their attitude toward Judaism was one of respect for tradition rather than of religious belief; his grandfather, who was a rabbi; living in an enlightened household, which valued music and literature and open discussion with the children; his father working as an engineer for an American oil company and his mother owning a dress shop; the Iron Guard, a fascist organization, becoming powerful in the late 1930s and Jews beginning to suffer; his father being forced to resign from his job and the family being forced to go to Yugoslavia; being sent to Belgrade (Serbia); living safely in Belgrade until the German takeover; his father being sent to a labor camp and never hearing from him again; being put in a camp across the river from Belgrade in December 1941 with his mother and two sisters; conditions in the camp; his mother getting false identities for them and being released from the camp; going to Bulgaria and then Turkey; living as Christians in Turkey from 1943 until 1948; his mother working as a translator for the US consulate in Turkey; working at a YMCA hospital as a translator for the US War Information Office; working for a German film company in Yugoslavia; leaving Turkey and returning to school; attending Roosevelt College in Chicago, IL; his mother and sisters eventually settling in the US; going to the Cleveland area with his wife and two sons in 1963; and living in Cleveland Heights and working as a paint distributor and with wood and stained glass.

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral History

    Hilda Prooth, born in Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) in 1904, describes her father, who was a painter and chose to become a Czech citizen after WWI; having three brothers and two sisters; the fates of her siblings, some of whom died in concentration camps; going to Prague, Czech Republic to earn a living as a governess; teaching German to Czech children; becoming a seamstress after the German occupation; meeting her husband, Mike, in 1939 in the Jewish community and getting married in 1940; coming under the protection of the Swedish government after she was married to Mike, who was Russian; being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943; being considered a Russian internee; being sent to Prague in 1944 then by train through Austria to an internment camp in Vittel, France; being liberated by the French in March 1945; being evacuated with a group of about 100 internees to the French Alps, to a former resort for asthmatic children; returning to Paris, France in August 1946 to get permission to return to Prague to find her husband; being sent to Epernay, France and traveling for three weeks in cattle cars back to Prague; reuniting with husband in Prague; working in an old printing house while her husband taught at the university; crossing into Germany in 1947; her husband working as an interpreter between the Jews and the Americans in Munich, Germany; waiting for passage to the US in displaced person camps in Bremen and Hamburg; going to Cleveland, OH in 1948; life in Cleveland and her husband’s death in 1960; working in the needle trades at Keller-Kohn and being very active in the ILGWU (International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union); and her reasons for volunteering to be interviewed for the Holocaust Archives Project of the Council of Jewish Women.

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral History

    Isidor Reisman, born in 1920 in Bilka, Hungary (Bilky, Zakarpats'ka oblast', Ukraine), describes being the oldest of nine children; his father, who was a monument engraver and a good provider; the active Zionist movement in Bilka; being inducted into the army in 1941; the uniforms having yellow badges to identify the Jews; doing hard labor, building railroads, for two years; receiving word from his parents that they were moved about 37 kilometers from Bilka and visiting them in 1944 in the barracks where they were living; his division being walked in January 1945 toward Germany and told to go to a synagogue which was controlled by the Germans; living in a ghetto and working as an emergency volunteer for several weeks; being freed by the Russian Army; deciding to go to the United States; going to New York, NY, where he worked as a monument engraver for about two years; going to Cleveland, OH in 1952; living in Mayfield Heights, OH; teaching Hebrew at the Bureau of Jewish Education and consulting on religious education; getting married to Ann (née Zaremsky) and having two children; and rebuilding his life after the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral History

    Sally Rettman, born in 1923, describes growing up in Bedzin, Poland; being 16 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939; her father, who was in the textile business and died suddenly in 1942; being sent to the ghetto in 1939; her mother being taken to Auschwitz and killed in 1943; being forced into another ghetto on the outskirts of Bedzin; getting married to Yakov (Jack) Rettman in the ghetto; her aunt being sent to Auschwitz; being moved to the Greenberg labor camp and being assigned to textile factory; her husband being sent to the camp also but not being allowed to see or talk to one another; being evacuated and marched to the Czech border at the end of 1944; their numbers dwindling from 1,500 female prisoners to 120; escaping from the transport with her sisters and two friends; being housed and taken care of by a Mrs. Schmidt living in Langesdorf; being liberated by American soldiers; finding her husband back in Bedzin; living in Hungary for five years then Germany; and going to New York, NY in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral History

    Ursula Rosow (née Braatz), born in Berlin, Germany in 1919, describes growing up in a middle-class, gentile family; her parents being active socialists; her father, who was part Hungarian and was a laboratory technician; her mother, who was part Polish; the Nazis coming to power and street fights beginning all over Berlin; the SS shooting at her father in 1934 for making anti-Nazi comments in a local pub; her father’s imprisonment that same year for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda; her family belonging to an organization that helped Jews escape Germany with false identity papers; helping to obtain ration cards for Jews in hiding; hiding a Jewish dancer; leaving the city with her mother when the Allies beginning to bomb Berlin; going to Wurzburg while her mother went to Bad Kissingen; marrying a Jewish American soldier after the war; going to the US in 1948 with her husband; settling in Cleveland Heights, OH; being divorced; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral History

    Leo Rzepka, born in 1913 in Ruckzyn, Poland, describes the Jewish community in his hometown; being one of nine children (five girls and four boys); his father, who was a wagon-wheel maker; working with his father after finishing school at age 13; the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and his family fleeing to Russia, where they lived for several years; attending chauffeur's school, from which he graduated two days before the Germans invaded Russia; life becoming difficult for Jews in Russia; trying with one of his brothers and one sister to return to the home of one of his sisters in Poland; living for many months in the woods and staying with farmers in exchange for work; going to a small concentration camp in Zembrov in late 1942 with his sister, brother, and brother-in-law; remaining there for three weeks until January 1943 when they were deported to Auschwitz; working as a carpenter; spending time in Birkenau; being evacuated in January 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Ebensee, Austria, where he worked in the stone quarries; being liberated by the Americans on May 5, 1945; going to Israel illegally; being intercepted by the British and spending 21 months in Cyprus; being able to go to Israel, where he spent five months in the army; getting married; going to the United State in 1956; living in Cleveland, OH; having a wife, a son, a daughter, and one grandchild; and being retired.

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral History

    Eva Sands, born in 1940 in a Jewish ghetto, describes her parents, who came from Piotrkov, Poland; her father, Zev Wolfe, who was in the wood veneer business and was also a Talmudic scholar; her mother, Hannah, who died when Eva was seven months old; her father remarrying shortly after her mother’s death; her aunt Esther obtaining false papers and escaping the ghetto with two-year-old Eva and Eva's cousin, Naomi; Esther finding refuge for Naomi in a convent and leaving Eva on the doorstep of a woman named Maria Zaider; her parents remaining in the ghetto, having another child against ghetto rules, and being shot when this was discovered; living with the Zaiders throughout the war in Pustelnik, Poland (possibly the Pustelnik in Łódź Voivodeship) and not being aware of her Jewish identity; her Aunt Esther passing as a Polish Aryan until the war ended, and then reclaiming Eva from the Zaiders; being hysterical for several days after the separation from Maria Zaider and not wanting to be in the same room with her aunt; living first in a displaced persons camp in Germany, where her aunt was married; settling in Frankfurt, Germany; antisemitism in Frankfurt; attending a Hebrew school in Salzheim, Germany; growing up in Germany; moving to the United States in 1952 and spending a year in New York, NY; attending an Orthodox Jewish boarding school in England at age 14 and attending a finishing school in Switzerland; attending college at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, and meeting her husband, Barry Sands; going to Poland to find Maria Zaider in 1976 and her painful visit with her; living in University Heights, OH; and her two children.

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral History

    George Sapin, born in 1924, describes entering into the army in 1943; being a member of the 67th Signal Battalion, the 82nd Airborne, and the 1286th Engineer Combat Battalion; going to England and arriving before the Battle of the Bulge; antisemitism in the army; his life after the war, becoming an electrical engineer then a technical writer; being originally from New York, NY; moving south with his unit along the Rhine as the war drew to a close; his emotions during the war and not having developed a Jewish identity; being Jewish in the army; not being present at the actual liberation of any camps; having many experiences with German citizens and seeing physical evidence of Nazi atrocities, including pictures of torture and rapes; his experiences having a strong influence on his political and social philosophy; and his attempts to live according to his belief that one should be committed and active.

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral History

    Werner Sauer, born in 1918 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, describes the Jewish population of Gelsenkirchen; his family considering themselves German and being financially well-to-do; his father’s meat-packing plant; attending a Jewish Volkschule (an elementary school) for four years and then a gymnasium until he was forced to leave in 1933 at age 15; having to relinquish his license in 1938; becoming a bricklayer with the help of his father's friend; the ruin of his father’s business; the gradual changes under the Nazis; Kristallnacht and being arrested; deportations in 1940; being deported with his parents to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia in the winter of 1941 along with 500 Jews from Gelsenkirchen and 500 from Dortmund; conditions in the ghetto; his family being taken to Stutthof concentration camp; going to a section called Lent a where the Nazis had gathered all the artisans and skilled laborers; living and working in the factory, which he was ordered to rebuild with virtually no materials; being transferred with his father to Buchgarten, a section of Stutthof where people were exterminated; escaping with a friend and being caught briefly and passing as marine deserters; escaping the deserters’ camp and hiding on farms; being caught by Russians and having to prove they were German Jews; obtaining identity papers; his parents’ deaths; walking toward Germany; working in a Russian-occupied hospital after the liberation; living in Berlin, Germany until he received his emigration papers in May 1949; flying out of Berlin in an empty cargo plane and then taking a boat to New York, NY; getting a job in Cleveland, OH, where he had an aunt and uncle who sponsored him; working for Carling Brewing Co. for three years; his work installing boilers for the Ira E. Baker Co. until the company liquidated and he retired at age 60; and living with his wife in Middlefield, OH.

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Freda Schmelzer, born in a small Romanian town in the region of Transylvania, describes her parents, who ran a small general store; being one of seven children; the beautiful Jewish traditions and the peaceful life among the gentiles during her childhood; her home life and learning homemaking by assisting her mother; the arrival of the Hungarians; the restrictions placed on Jews; her family’s last time together at their Passover meal in 1944; the great psychological distress of not knowing what was happening elsewhere or of what was going to become of her family; the Jews of her town being taken to a ghetto in Soluge (possibly Vynohradiv, Ukraine), where they remained for four weeks; being transported to Auschwitz and being separated from her family; the conditions in the camp; being selected to work in a grenade factory, where conditions were slightly better; being marched to an unknown location and detained for four weeks in a horse barn; being liberated by the Russians; and returning home.

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral History

    Max Solomon (ne Slomovitz), born in Drahova, Czechoslovakia (Drahovo, Ukraine), a small town in the Carpathian mountains; being the oldest of four boys and having six sisters; his father’s saloon and restaurant; being raised religious and being part of a relatively small Jewish community; being affected by the war in June 1941 when the Germans invaded; Jews being deported from his town and the remaining Jews being forced to work; being taken with his family to Kolomyja, Poland (Ukraine) and then to Horodenka, Ukraine; his family’s attempted escape and the women being successful while the men were captured and killed; escaping the massacre; passing as a Christian and going to Russia, where he lived as an adopted son on a communist co-op; a flood causing a famine in the area; meeting people who were looking for food and reported that many Jews were still living in Drahova; returning home and finding his mother and sisters; being sent to a Hungarian forced labor camp while his mother and sisters were sent to Auschwitz; escaping and joining the Yugoslavian underground; fighting until the war ended; returning home and finding two of his sisters; going to a displaced persons camp in Egenfelder, Germany where he married in 1945; going to the US in 1949 with his wife; living in Beachwood, OH; and being an active member of Green Road Synagogue.

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral History

    Helen Stone (née Kahan), born in Napszolok, Czechoslovakia, describes her life in Cleveland, OH with her husband and her son, daughter, and grandchild; growing up in Nagydobryn, near the large city of Ungvar (Uzhhorod, Ukraine); the Jewish population in Nagydobryn; being very close to her mother, but having a bad relationship with her stepfather; her five brothers and sisters; her stepfather sending her to an orphanage, but returning home at her mother’s request; antisemitism increasing in 1939; getting typhoid; being deported with all the Jews in her town shortly after Passover in 1944; being sent to Auschwitz and separated from her mother; conditions in the camp; witnessing medical experimentation on the inmates; being sent to work in a factory in either Altenburg or Waldenburg (Mrs. Stone is not certain); being forced to march with her fellow prisoners for many days; being liberated by American soldiers, but having to go to a Russian refugee camp since she was a resident of the Russian-occupied zone; returning to Nagydobryn; escaping with a friend over the border and getting married to him shortly after; going to the United States in 1948; her husband working in a meat market in Cleveland, OH; and feeling proud to be Jewish.

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral History

    Inge Weiss, born in 1923 in Hannover, Germany, describes her father, who was born in Warta, Poland and became a men's clothing manufacturer in Germany; her mother, who was born in Germany but lost her citizenship when she married; her younger sister; her family being active in the Jewish community and keeping kosher; attending public school and having a Jewish education; attending business school for a short time; her family’s plan to immigrate to the United States; antisemitism increasing as the Nazis rose to power; being ostracized in school; the vandalism of her father’s store; her family being deported to Poland in October 1938; staying in crowded stables in Spoczynek; living with relatives in Kalisz, Poland; not being able to speak Polish nor Yiddish; the war starting and her family being deported to Krakow where they lived under very poor conditions until 1941; escaping to Warta; the atrocities in Warta; the gathering of the Jews in the town square and being separated from her family; being sent with her father to the ghetto in Łódź, Poland, where they stayed from 1942 to 1944; being deported to Auschwitz and sent to Bergen-Belsen in September 1944; her job distributing bread, which she got because she spoke German; getting typhoid; being liberated by the British and living in the German officers' quarters until she recovered; returning to Hannover in 1946 and working for the Jewish community; getting married in 1947; getting half of her father’s business and running a notions business there; going to the US in September 1949; her son’s birth in 1948; going to Cleveland, OH; and receiving help from the Ratner family.

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral History

    Jack Wieder, born in Bozkov, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes being the fourth of 11 children in a happy, religious family; his father, who was a wood processor; the existence of some antisemitism but his family being treated well because of his father’s good reputation; the Ukrainians taking over in 1939; the situation improving temporarily when the Hungarians came to power in 1941; the deportation of some Jews; the Nazis arriving in Bozkov in 1943; his sisters fleeing to Budapest, Hungary and Belgium; his father and older brother being sent to a work brigade; his father returning in 1944; being deported with his remaining family to a ghetto in Matejovice (possibly Matejovce nad Hornádom, Slovakia), where they stayed from five weeks; being taken to Auschwitz and the death of his mother and six younger siblings; being sent with his father to Warsaw, Poland to work at clearing the remains of the Warsaw ghetto; being sent to Dachau to work the camps in Kaufering and Landshut; being sent back to Dachau; his father dying at Dachau four days before liberation; being evacuated from Dachau to Garmisch-Partenkirchen; being liberated by American soldiers; returning to Bozkov and discovering that his brother, Hermann, and sisters, Julia and Toni, had also survived the war; being inducted into the Russian army; serving in the army for one year and escaping to Hungary; working for a refugee assistance organization and meeting his future wife, Eva; going to Vienna, Austria; immigrating to the United States; and living in Cleveland, OH, as do Toni, Julia and Hermann.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Billys, Sophie Billys, and Millie Korman

    Oral history interview with Henry Billys, Sophie Billys, and Millie Korman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral History

    Madeline Dautartus, born in Strasbourg, France, discusses her parents, two sisters, and one brother; being raised Catholic; attending a Catholic high school; the evacuation of the entire town to Perigueux in Dordogne 1939; her father and brother being drafted into the army; the German occupation; her family’s return to Strasbourg; the Aryanization of Alsace-Lorraine; the burning of books; participating in the resistance; refusing a job in Germany; working at the social security office and being given a pass to enter the POW camp; bring food, clothes, and information to the prisoners; her desire to join the French army in Africa; being caught in 1942 while attempting to escape from Strasbourg with two young men; swallowing the message she was carrying; being detained in prisons for a month; being interrogated; being taken by train to Schirmeck camp (near Struthof extermination camp); her work in the laundry and cutting trees; a rosary that was shared amongst inmates; contracting diphtheria and pneumonia; the doctor who visited the isolation unit regularly to see who should be sent for extermination; being released after a year; being required to sign a statement saying she would never reveal anything about the camp; returning to Strasbourg and her job; being warned that she was being watched; being arrested twice more and questioned about her resistance activities; being prepared to commit suicide when she arrested two months before liberation; the Gestapo building being burned by US bombers; her family hiding two wounded US soldiers and two Arab soldiers from the French army in their basement until liberation; her brother’s experiences during the war; the liberation of Strasbourg in November 1944; serving as civilian in the Bureau Militaire; enlisting in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in France; being posted in Stuttgart, Germany and then Freiburg, Germany for five years; her encounter with a former SS guard; preparing the papers for a Lithuanian scout, who later became her husband; serving as a secretary to General Jean de Lattre; and working as a civilian in the military until 1950 when she immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral History

    Eugene Davidovits, born in 1930 in Satu Mare (Satmar), Romania, discusses being raised in an Orthodox family consisting of his parents, five brothers, and one sister; working at forced labor two days a week after the Hungarians occupied the county; being beaten by a teacher and others as antisemitism rose; Rabbi Teitlebaum influencing Jews against going to Israel; living in the closed ghetto for before being taken by cattle car to Auschwitz; going through selection; being separated from his father and his two older brothers; being taken to Krakow-Płaszów where he worked for four months; the Germans killing the leaders of a resistance attempt; being transferred to Gross-Rosen death camp where he witnessed a rabbi being beaten to death; being taken to a subcamp in Gorlitz where he did chores for the doctor who treated him decently, gave him food, and later arranged for him to work in the kitchen; getting caught giving food to other prisoner; being sent to work in the tank factory that was run by German civilians; being treated relatively well by civilians within the factory until a Gross-Rosen inspector enforced limitations on food; being sent to make bunkers for German soldiers in March 1945 as the Russians approached; witnessing weaker workers being shot and sometimes buried while still alive; returning to Gorlitz in May 1945; leaving camp with a friend when the guards were away; being given food and civilian clothes by a policeman; staying in a well-supplied former Gestapo building; returning to Satmar in hopes of finding his family; realizing that he was the only member of his family who survived; living in a Jewish hospital for one month; living with the son of the Cantor until he was placed in a Joint-supported orphanage where he stayed from 1945-1947; getting married; and moving to Cleveland, OH at age 36.

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral History

    Leon Faigenbaum, born in Gniewoszow, Poland in 1917 describes his life before the war; being taken to a labor camp near Radom; his father being buried alive when he was too ill to work; running away to rejoin his family in the Gniewoszow ghetto; being forced out of the ghetto in early 1942 and going to Zwoleń; being sent to labor camps in Deblin and Stawisk; getting caught while attempting to run away; being taken to Budzyn labor camp, run by SS Feix and a Jewish leader, Stockman; being saved by Stockman when Feix was about to kill him; being sent to Majdanek; being saved in December 1943 by the person overseeing the shoe makers when other Jews were gunned down at the edge of an open grave; being taken to Płaszów concentration camp, led by Göth; receiving daily beatings by non-Jewish Kapos; being sent towards Auschwitz in August 1944 but the train was sent onward to Mauthausen, a journey of eight days without food; surviving another selection and being put to work mining stones; volunteering to work as a toolmaker in St. Valentin, Austria, where an Austrian manager saved him by teaching him the skills he lacked; being moved to Ebensee in 1945 after US bombers destroyed the factory; being beaten so badly he could no longer work and then placed in a barrack with men waiting to die; witnessing cannibalism; being rescued by US forces in May 1945; spending six months in a nearby hospital; living in a displaced persons camp before returning to his hometown to search for relatives; fleeing to Łódź, Poland after being warned by an old friend that Poles would kill any Jews who remained; returning to Austria where he stayed at a DP camp in Linz, Austria; marrying his wife, a woman he knew from before the war; going to Palestine in 1947 with the help of the Haganah; serving in the Israeli Army and then working as a shoemaker; and immigrating to the US in 1959 so that his wife could be reunited with a brother and sister living in Cleveland, OH.

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral History

    Helen Feig, born in 1925 in Craciunesti, Romania, describes being the only child of Orthodox parents; the roundup of 500 Jews in 1941 who were taken to Galicia and killed; Hungarian soldiers chasing Jews out of synagogue on Rosh Hashanah; never seeing her father again after he was taken to the Kasho ghetto while he was out of town on business; being sent to the ghetto in Selo Slatina (Solotvyno, Ukraine) along with her mother and other women and children; being taken by cattle car to Auschwitz in 1944; being separated from her mother; running away from Block C-8 to be with her cousins; being transferred to Lübberstedt labor camp, near Bremenhof, Germany; being required to sew a different color sleeve on the left side of her dress; building bunkers to stay safe from bombing that was occurring at Bremenhof; being transported from place to place by train as the Germans were facing defeat; just missing a boat going to Mare Baltica and then being forced to walk until Ukrainians and Russians told them the war was over; being liberated by English soldiers who housed them in a summer resort near Neustadt; returning to her hometown where she stayed with family in a nearby town; neighbors who refused to return her family’s home or belongings; going to Frankfurt, Germany; getting married in 1948 and immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1949; living in Cleveland, OH until her husband became ill; living in Allentown, PA for two years while her husband was in a sanitarium in Colorado; and returning to build a life in Cleveland.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral History

    Leslie Robicsek, born in 1924 in Oradea, Romania, describes being the son of a kosher butcher; singing in the synagogue with a famous cantor; the destruction of a synagogue in 1933 during an Iron Guard riot; becoming an apprentice in in a plastics factory owned by Glick in 1937; the repressive measures against Jews being put in place after the Hungarians entered in 1940-1941; his brother and other Jews being removed from the army and sent as forced labor to Nagybánya (now Baia Mare, Romania); being sent to the ghetto in May 1944; being taken daily to a cadet training camp to do maintenance work; his father’s non-Jewish friend sending word to him that he’d help the family get out of the ghetto, but his father refusing; being transported to Birkenau where they went through selection; claiming he was a tool and die maker when volunteers were sought; his father being taken to work in the stone quarries at Melk where he died; being moved to Auschwitz where he was sent each day to work at Union Machine Works, an ammunition plant; watching famous actors and musicians perform at night; witnessing hangings after Sonderkommandos blew up a crematorium; beginning a death march on January 18, 1945; arriving at Gross-Rosen where he was selected to work as a Sonderkommando for three weeks; moving on to Flossenberg at the end of February and then to Pocking where he was put to work constructing an airport; being liberated by American troops on May 6, 1945; his wife who had also survived Auschwitz; his reluctance to dicuss the camps; and his thoughts on his Jewish identity and faith.

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral History

    Rena Rubinow, born in Kraków, Poland, describes being the oldest of three sisters; her mother dying when she was a child; one sister moving to Palestine in 1937; being a married mother of a two year old child when the war began in 1939; being forced into an open ghetto; fleeing to a small town 20 miles from Kraków in 1940 when the ghetto was closed; running away from the town and being hidden by a peasant in October 1942 when they were warned that Jews in the area were being killed; walking back to the ghetto in Kraków three weeks later as they believed it offered their best chance for survival; working in Madritch’s uniform factory outside of the ghetto and sewing bras in her spare time which she sold to female guards; arranging for her former maid to hide her young daughter; being taken to Płaszów concentration camp on March 13, 1943, her maid and child also being sent to the camp where her daughter was killed; being transported via cattle care to Birkenau with her sister, Rose, in 1944; her husband being transported to Mauthausen where he was killed; being sent to Lichtenburg at the end of the year; remaining there for five months before being liberated by Russians on May 5, 1945; receiving no assistance and walking to Kraków where they learned that none of their other relatives survived; supporting herself by sewing; remarrying in 1946 to a man who had served in the underground; moving to Sweden, then Montreal and finally to Canton, Ohio, where husband had two brothers; struggling financially and eventually moving in 1958 to Cleveland, where she had a grocery store; supporting herself and three children after her husband killed himself; remarrying and putting her two sons through college; and her daughter dying while she was a student at Boston College.

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral History

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