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Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.35 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0035

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    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris
    Transcript
    I'm Sidney Elsner.
    Today, November 14, 1984, we're interviewing Marguerite Morris,
    a Holocaust survivor.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Marguerite, tell us first where you came from
    and what countries you survived.
    I came from France.
    I was born in France.
    And I was in France throughout the war.
    At what age?
    I came to the United States when I was 17 and a half.
    And when the Germans came to France, how old were you?
    I was a little less than eight years old.
    And what year would that have been?
    1940.
    OK.
    Now, tell us a little bit about your arrival in Cleveland,
    what you do.
    Do you have family here?
    Are you married?
    I came to Akron first.
    I was sponsored by cousins who live in Akron.
    And I lived in Akron for several years.
    I came to the United States in 1950.
    I was married in 1952.
    And we moved to Cleveland the end of '55.
    I am married.
    I have two sons, two grown sons.
    I'm a CPA.
    And I've been working full-time as a CPA for the last seven
    years.
    CPA is certified public accountant?
    Right.
    Right.
    Tremendous.
    Well, I went back to school after my children were grown.
    And I had, prior to that, had an associate degree in accounting.
    When I first came to the United States,
    I went to a business college.
    I had the equivalent of a high school education in France
    and then I went to business college.
    And I had an associate degree and had worked as a full charge
    bookkeeper.
    And then when my children were grown, I-- in between,
    I was doing organizational work.
    I was very active in Pioneer Women and a number
    of other local organizations.
    And then I decided to go back to school
    because I felt when my children would be grown
    and away, I wanted to have a career of my own.
    What do your children do?
    My oldest son is a physician.
    He's living in Chicago.
    He's an internist.
    My younger son is married.
    And he's living in Ossining, New York.
    He is a financial analyst with General Foods
    in White Plains, New York.
    Now, you were in Paris.
    That was your home in France.
    Right.
    Well, we were in Paris until 1942.
    And then we fled from Paris when the Germans began
    to pick up women and children.
    And we moved to a small town near Limoges
    called Oradour-sur-Vayres.
    OK, now, going back to your early girlhood in Paris,
    tell us what life was like before the war, what
    your family life was like, where your parents had come
    from if they were not born in France,
    and how long they had been in France.
    My parents came from Poland, both of them.
    My dad came, I believe, in 1924.
    And my mother came in 1928.
    And I was a little girl when the war broke out in September '39.
    I was seven years old.
    And I don't remember very much, except that my mother
    was reminding me--
    as an only child, I was a very spoiled little girl.
    I had some ear problems.
    And so I led a very protected life, really,
    until the war started.
    My dad enrolled in the French army when the war broke out.
    In '39?
    In '39.
    And he was demobilized when the French army
    disbanded in the free zone and then smuggled and came back
    to Paris to be with us.
    And he was with us until 1941 when he became--
    was taken to a concentration camp in France first.
    How did your family make a living before the war?
    OK, my dad was in wholesale and retail produce in--
    it was like a suburb of Paris.
    It was not Paris.
    It was called Neuilly-sur-Seine, which is a suburb of Paris.
    In which direction?
    It's really-- how do I--
    I don't know quite how to explain it.
    OK.
    Well, how would you describe your family's life?
    And how did you and your family get along
    with your friends and your neighbors, Jews and non-Jews?
    Well--
    And was there much of a the Jewish population
    where you lived?
    Well, in the area where we lived,
    there wasn't a very large Jewish population.
    However, there were other Jews.
    There was a synagogue nearby.
    The bulk of the Jewish people that lived in Paris
    lived near Saint-Paul.
    There was a whole area that had a very heavy concentration
    of Jews.
    But we had enough Jewish friends within the area.
    And we had a lot-- many non-Jewish neighbors
    that we were very close to, and non-Jewish friends.
    In fact, some of the people that when they found out
    that my dad was taken to a camp were very surprised.
    They said, we didn't realize that he was even Jewish.
    I mean non-Jewish, I guess, he didn't
    make a point of publicizing.
    Not that he was trying to hide it because we
    had a very warm Jewish life.
    But he just didn't make a point of publicizing
    it the way we do here.
    Was your family Orthodox?
    My mother came from an Orthodox family.
    However, my early childhood, we were not Orthodox.
    We kept holidays.
    We kept kosher.
    But we were not Orthodox.
    My mother later became again very Orthodox
    after we survived.
    And what was the main language spoken in your home?
    Mainly French.
    Any Hebrew?
    Yiddish?
    Well, my parents would speak some Yiddish.
    Polish?
    Polish was never spoken in our home
    because my father despised the Poles and just
    didn't want to have any relationship with the Poles
    at all.
    Well, now let's--
    Although he remained very active.
    There was a small--
    there was a group called the Society
    of Biala Podlaska, which was his hometown, in Paris.
    And he was very active in that.
    But that was because he was other Jews that
    came from the same town.
    Going back to your childhood, let's talk about personally.
    How do you remember yourself as a very young child
    in those days?
    Are you saying before the war started?
    Yes.
    It's sort of difficult to remember because it goes back
    a long time.
    Well, do you or don't you recall any instances of discrimination
    of antisemitism?
    Before '39--
    Correct.
    --or after?
    Before.
    Before the Germans came.
    Before the war, not really because--
    maybe because in the area of Paris that we lived
    there weren't many Jews.
    I don't really remember any particular instances.
    OK.
    Did you go to Jewish schools or public schools?
    Or were they private schools?
    Well, I went to both.
    I went to a public school-- in France,
    there are separate boys schools and girls schools, at least
    when I grew up.
    And I went to public school for a while.
    When I came back after the war, I
    went to a private girls school.
    So I went to both actually.
    And as far as my Jewish education,
    I was too young before we left Paris.
    I did go to Sunday school when we came back.
    What do you remember about the beginning of World War II?
    Now this is September 1, let's say, 1939.
    And exactly how old were you at that moment?
    I was less than seven.
    OK.
    So whatever memory you have would normally be dim,
    but maybe the years have sharpened them.
    Is there anything outstanding about the beginning of the war?
    Any fear on the part of your family?
    Not in '39.
    But my mother was reminding me that when the Germans invaded
    Paris, which was in 1940, there was a lot of apprehension.
    I remember seeing them marching into the city
    and just having a feeling of fear.
    And I also remember my mother knowing that her parents were
    in Poland and trying to send packages to them
    and figuring out ways to keep some sort of communication
    with them.
    But really, my first recollections
    would be from the time that the Germans invaded
    Paris, which was in 1940.
    Now your father, naturally, a married man and a parent
    volunteered.
    He wasn't drafted into the French army.
    He was not, because he was not a French citizen.
    So he was not required to go into the French army.
    But he considered himself as wanting
    to help France win the war, and he volunteered.
    He felt that he had a duty to go as if he were a French citizen.
    What was his full name?
    Well, Jacques is the name that he used in France.
    Jankel is his Polish name.
    And Yaakov would be his Hebrew name.
    OK.
    And what was your mother's family name, her maiden name?
    Zak.
    My mother came from a very religious and very prominent
    family in Biala Podlaska.
    Her father was a rabbi and also a businessman
    and was very well known in the town of Biala Podlaska.
    All right, after the beginning of the war
    and before the German occupation,
    did you notice any changes in the way non-Jews acted
    toward you and your family?
    Any incidents at school?
    I don't recall any.
    The time when I began to worry about incidents
    was when I was required to wear the yellow star, which
    was later on.
    But not at that stage.
    OK.
    Now, tell us about more open acts of antisemitism
    as the war went on.
    All right, it's 1940, and June, if I remember correctly,
    when Paris fell.
    Mm, hmm.
    All right, what happened that you know
    of that changed attitudes?
    Well, first of all, within a short time,
    these things were happening gradually within--
    I don't remember the exact dates.
    But I know that within a few months,
    we were required to register as Jews.
    And we were not allowed to have any businesses or any--
    in other words, if we had a business, we had to disband it.
    My mother had tried to run my dad's business
    when he was in the army.
    She had to close the business, not because of antisemitism,
    but because of the rule that as a Jew,
    she was not allowed to have a business.
    This was the official rule that she was not
    allowed to have a business.
    Now, your father, you said, was discharged in the free zone.
    Right.
    But your family was still in Paris.
    You hadn't gone into the free zone.
    My mother and I-- no, my dad actually came back to Paris.
    And the way I remember the date is
    because he came back around my birthday, which
    is October, of 1940.
    He worked his way back to Paris.
    My mother recalled that she had correspondence with him.
    And even though we were registered as Jews,
    I suppose we were naive.
    And she didn't think that there was any danger for him
    to come back and therefore encouraged him to come back,
    which was something that she was very, very upset later
    on when she realized what transpired later on.
    Just to establish a record here, France
    was split into two portions--
    Right.
    The German occupied to the north and the so-called free French
    to the South.
    Right.
    Not free French, but the free zone.
    Right.
    Headed by the government of Vichy.
    And you were under the German domination.
    Right.
    OK.
    Now, tell us, what happened when you decided
    to leave Paris when was that?
    And how did it come about?
    Well, we didn't leave Paris until 1942.
    In between the time we're talking about
    and the time we left France, in May 1941,
    my father received a notice to go
    to the police department of our little suburb
    to have his papers checked.
    And I guess he was not suspicious
    because there had been no pickups before then.
    And when he arrived at the police station,
    he found that there were Germans stationed there,
    as well as the policemen.
    And he was being detained.
    And from there, he was shipped to one of the French camps
    called Beaune-la-Rolande.
    We went a couple of times to visit with him.
    And as long as he was at Beaune-la-Rolande
    while he was not free to leave and he was humanely
    treated-- let's put it this way, I'm
    not sure that he had as much to eat as he would like
    and things like that.
    And we had frequent correspondence with him.
    When we left Paris was shortly after the July 16 and 17 pickup
    of women and children.
    In what year?
    This was in 1942.
    Your father had been picked up in May--
    May '41.
    '41.
    And he was one of the last ones to be shipped out
    from Beaune-la-Rolande to Germany.
    As a matter of fact, it was the last convoy
    that went out before the--
    the book that I have here that describes
    the deportation the French deportation refers to the date
    that he was shipped as July 17.
    And what they did is they were trying
    to empty all of the French camps in advance of the pickup
    that they were going-- the mass pickup that they
    had of women and children.
    What is this book?
    This book is-- the French is Le Memorial de la Deportation des
    Juifs de France, The Memorial of the Deportation
    of Jews of France.
    And who wrote it?
    It was written by Serge Klarsfeld, whose father was
    killed in a concentration camp.
    And he and his German-born wife, Beate Klarsfeld,
    have devoted their lifetime to prosecuting
    the Germans that were responsible
    for this deportation.
    And the reason for writing this book
    is that he has the listing of every one of the convoys, name,
    first name, country of birth.
    And he felt that this was going to be
    a memorial to every one of the 75,000 Jews that
    were deported from France.
    And if he did not prepare this book, many of the records
    were on onionskin papers and they were almost erased.
    They were very hard to read.
    In some cases, the records were lost.
    And they had to look in many-- it took them
    two to three years of a whole crew of people working
    to be able to prepare this.
    In addition to the names, he has testimonials
    of people who actually were there at the time.
    And he felt that this was something that
    was very important to produce.
    OK.
    Now, you were in Paris until 1942.
    Your father was sent to Germany in--
    '42.
    In '42 also.
    First, let's continue with your father.
    What happened to him?
    Well, we never had direct word about him.
    The closest that we came to have any indication of where he was
    or what happened was that we did speak to a survivor who
    returned after the war and said that he had arrived
    at Auschwitz shortly after my father had
    gone into a hospital with typhus and had not come out.
    And to the best of our knowledge,
    my father lived about six months in Auschwitz.
    And it was through the testimony of this particular person
    that we were able to get--
    to have a witness to know that my mother was actually a widow.
    And in fact, even for the French government,
    to obtain compensation as a widow of the war,
    it was to this testimonial because we never heard directly
    from any other source.
    And this book does mention that he was shipped to Auschwitz--
    By name?
    By name.
    And convoy number?
    Right.
    And date.
    Now, tell us, please, Marguerite,
    what happened in Paris in this big roundup of 1940--
    of July 1942?
    As you've told me previously, the French officials
    would not turn over Jews as Jews.
    Tell us exactly what the French officials
    did and did not do, please.
    OK, well, as the book says and from my recollection, what
    happened was that the Germans--
    as I mentioned earlier, we were required to register as Jews.
    And as we were registered, they had
    the listing of the various people in various areas.
    They being the Gestapo, the Germans?
    The Germans had the listing.
    And they made up a listing and gave to the police department
    of the various sections the names with the understanding
    that the French policemen would supplement the Germans
    in going to the various homes to pick up the women and children.
    Up to that point, no women and children had been picked up.
    Now, was there a distinction between alien resident
    Jews and French citizens?
    OK, it's my understanding that the Vichy government never
    officially turned over names of French Jews,
    that there was a distinction in the sense
    that they felt that they did not have the same moral obligation
    to non-French Jews as they did for French Jews.
    So all of these people that were picked up on the 16th and 17th,
    the only French Jews that were picked up
    were if someone who was a traitor
    would turn in their name, or if they would be--
    there would be times when the Germans would cut off
    certain sections and systematically
    speak to everyone and try to determine
    whether they can pick up.
    So when we look at the list, we do see French names.
    But they were not--
    the names were not systematically
    given the same way as for non-French Jews.
    So in the German occupied zone, a Jew
    was fair game for any German?
    They could pick up-- they would get anybody
    they could lay their hands on?
    And once they got their hands, the French
    could not do anything.
    Could not do anything, right.
    And then in the unoccupied zone, under the Vichy government,
    the Jews who were aliens, the government gave them the lists
    and protected the French citizens?
    Well, actually, after--
    I don't know.
    Sometime in 1942, the Germans occupied all of France.
    And then there was the same way in both parts.
    There was no more free zone and occupied zone.
    And the rules were the same.
    The only difference is that when they were in Paris,
    there was a high concentration of Jews.
    When they got to the free zone, we
    were scattered in a lot of little towns.
    And it was not quite as easy to round up
    as many people at once.
    Tell us, going back to your father,
    Marguerite, when he was picked up,
    he had some conversation with the police chief of the area.
    Tell us all about that.
    As I mentioned earlier, my dad had gone to the police station
    not realizing that it was a trap.
    And while he was waiting there to be processed,
    my dad, being a businessman in the area,
    knew the chief of police very well.
    And he had the opportunity to speak to him for a few moments.
    And he asked him, can you do anything to help me escape?
    And the chief of police said, I'm not sure I can do anything.
    And even if I would try to do something,
    I'm afraid that they might take-- maybe they
    are watching your house and they might pick up
    your wife and child.
    And so my father didn't try to do anything about it.
    In the meantime, this was in May 1941, as time progressed
    and more and more people were being picked up,
    I think that the chief of police himself began
    to realize that this was a much more serious
    matter than he had even realized at the time.
    And a day or two before--
    this probably was around the 14th or the 15th of July.
    I don't know the exact date--
    he was given the list of the people that
    were supposed to be picked up in his section to make up teams.
    And he saw my mother's name on the list.
    And so he sent his wife to warn us.
    And she came to see us.
    And that I do remember.
    And she says, my husband has to send a crew to pick you up
    tomorrow morning.
    So leave, don't give any indication
    that you're going to travel.
    Don't take any suitcases.
    Act as if you're going to visit some people.
    And just leave, and don't come back.
    And one of my mother's sisters was living with us
    at the time with her little boy.
    So the four of us left.
    And my mother also got word to another sister,
    who was living in another section of Paris,
    by telling her we didn't know whether we had been singled out
    or whether that was going to be a mass arrest at that point.
    But we tried to warn her to also leave her home, which she did,
    but unfortunately decided to come back
    to get clothing for the children and was trapped.
    And when she came back, she came back
    with her children and a French maid.
    And somehow she was able to convince
    whoever came to pick her up to allow the children to go
    with the maid.
    We never spoke to her.
    So I don't really know how the conversation went.
    And the children were too little to be able to tell us.
    And she's also listed on one of the convoys on this book
    as being shipped.
    Those two children survived?
    The two children survived.
    Your cousins.
    Yes.
    Are they still in Paris?
    One is in Paris.
    And one is in Israel.
    There's a very sad story about one
    in Paris because it turned out that the French maid was
    antisemitic and tried to brainwash the children.
    And the little girl somehow never
    was able to be brainwashed.
    But the boy after the war was spouting
    very antisemitic remarks.
    And when his father, who was in the free zone, came back,
    he said--
    it was really very sad because he realized not only
    was his wife killed, but his son was a total stranger to him.
    He never did convert.
    But he never associated very much with Jewish people.
    I guess some of the poison never completely left him.
    So we have the strange experience of this--
    two years after this your father was taken,
    the police chief felt guilty and made a point
    to warn your mother to get out.
    And without him I'm sure we would not
    have been aware of it because it wasn't a matter
    that there were rumors.
    This was a very secret--
    Organized.
    --organized.
    The book does mention--
    see, the pickup was over two days.
    And I guess the first day was a surprise.
    But after that, it wasn't so much of a surprise.
    And the book does mention that while the Germans had
    a goal of 28,000 women and children,
    they were only able to pick up about 13,000.
    And according to this book, there were other instances
    of people who were forewarned, either through somebody
    who had heard, or even through Frenchmen
    who had seen names or heard about the pickup.
    What happened to the mothers and the children?
    You said something about the children were left behind.
    OK, are you speaking about my aunt?
    No.
    Oh.
    OK, well, what happened was that the Germans, because they
    had a quota of that, had made sure
    that they would have a certain number of trains
    available to ship to Germany.
    And I don't recall, but again, according to this book,
    they had not received permission at that point to ship children.
    I don't understand why--
    French children?
    French children.
    Maybe they felt that the French population would be in uproar.
    So in order to fill the trains, they separated the women
    from the children.
    In order to have enough adults to ship,
    they separate that the mothers.
    And there are several pages that describe the horrible scene
    of little children, two years and up, where the older
    child is trying to help the younger one,
    being very bewildered because they're not understanding
    what is happening.
    And then, within a short time, they somehow
    got clearance to ship the children
    by saying that they were going to reunite families.
    That was usually what they would say,
    that they've shipped the parents and they
    will be shipping the children to reunite the families.
    Do you know where they were shipped to?
    Well, I think that most of the people from France
    were shipped to Auschwitz.
    I don't know why the connection.
    But it seems that all these convoys
    that they're mentioning, most of them went to Auschwitz.
    We know what happened.
    Well, it's interesting because the convoy that
    mentions my father, they're saying 980 some people left
    and 18 came back.
    And another convoy, 1,000 left and 5 came back.
    It's only the latter come--
    Back at the end of the war?
    Right.
    Now, the thing that is interesting,
    the last convoy that left Paris was August 17, which was--
    1944-- a couple of days before the liberation.
    And they needed, as they're saying,
    they needed the trains for other purposes.
    But the machinery had to go on, regardless
    of whether they were doing it at the expense
    of military supplies and things of that nature.
    OK.
    Your mother and you had been warned to get out.
    Exactly what happened?
    Where did you go?
    How did you do it?
    OK, we first went to stay for a few days with some friends
    that we had another part of Paris.
    They were-- I think for a few days, we stayed with Jewish,
    but they were French Jews.
    And we were concerned that we might
    be putting them in jeopardy.
    And for a few more days, we stayed with non-Jews.
    And what my mother did is--
    I not sure how she found out how to do that--
    but there were people who, if you paid them,
    would arrange to smuggle you out to get over to the free zone.
    And the way was done is that through little trains,
    because the large trains were all being
    raided, through small trains.
    You don't mean-- so nobody's confused--
    the physical size of the train.
    But you mean small--
    Local train.
    Not the main lines.
    Local trains.
    Local trains.
    I'm sorry.
    Local trains.
    The slow ones.
    Well, the main lines were watched very carefully.
    So I guess they had someone who was working
    in smuggling people had found out ways, which trains maybe
    were not watched as carefully.
    I'm not sure how.
    But I remember that we got on and off several lines.
    And we went to Angouleme, which was
    near the border of what was still
    the part of the other side, the free zone.
    And what they did is they took us to a house.
    And it was arranged that a group of us would stay in that house
    until dusk.
    And then there would be cars that would take us to the edge,
    to a forest.
    And then we would be walking through the forest.
    And on the other side of that forest was the free zone.
    How many in your group, roughly?
    Oh, I'd say maybe 20, 25, something like that.
    There's a story to that also because I
    developed whooping cough.
    And the guide of that group did not
    want my mother and me to go with the group
    because he was concerned-- the Germans were occasionally
    patrolling that forest.
    And if they would hear noise, it might alert them.
    And it would endanger everyone.
    And I guess my mother-- and he said, why don't you
    stay overnight and I'll come back and get you tomorrow?
    And you won't endanger other people.
    I will take you across.
    And I guess my mother became frightened to stay overnight
    because she just didn't like the fact that this
    was a house where there were a lot of people.
    And what if somebody decided to tell the Germans about it?
    And when the last car came to take, she just pushed me.
    And we just got in.
    And they didn't want to create a commotion.
    So we went ahead.
    And I remember being very careful
    and trying not to cough as best I could, you know,
    muffling my coughing.
    And what happened the next day, another group
    was supposed to come.
    And the group did not come.
    And we tried to find out what happened.
    It turns out that there was a maid
    in that house that was fired.
    And she was very angry against the owner
    and went to the Gestapo and told them
    that the owner was hiding Jews.
    And they came.
    And they raided the house and picked everybody up.
    I guess there was another group of people that had
    come and picked them all up.
    So that was one of several times that I guess
    it was beshert to survive.
    How did you get across the border?
    Well, we walked through the forest, as I mentioned.
    When we got-- in fact, there were farms around there.
    And some of the farmers were waving to us
    and wishing us good luck because I
    guess they must have seen other groups before.
    And we crossed through the forest
    and, I guess through the guide, went to--
    from there worked our way to Limoges.
    I'm not sure how because my aunt who was with us,
    one of my mother's sisters, her husband lived in Limoges.
    He had been also demobilized and had stayed in the free zone.
    And we were not permitted to stay in Limoges
    because, I guess, they were overcrowded there.
    And so we began to look for housing in small villages
    around Limoges.
    Well, I just want to get this on the record here.
    Did the French authorities in the unoccupied zone
    allow you to come in freely and let you stay once you
    got by the German lines?
    They didn't try to send you back?
    No, but--
    They registered you and gave you ration cards or not?
    They gave us ration cards.
    But the one criteria was that we had to have housing
    because they didn't want people-- we had
    to show that we had housing.
    They didn't want-- unless, if we didn't have housing,
    I shouldn't say, then we would have
    to stay with-- there were some transient camps.
    And for a while those were being kept.
    The danger of that was that there was constant rumors
    that the Germans were going to march
    on an occupied the second part of France.
    And obviously, if you were in a transient camp, you would be--
    you would be the first ones to be taken by the Germans, which
    they did shortly after.
    So what we did is we tried to travel around
    in little villages around Limoges
    because there was no housing in Limoges
    per se to try to find some sort of housing, which we did find
    and settled.
    How did you pay for it?
    Well, we had some money with us.
    It wasn't-- that we had taken with us from Paris.
    Towards the end of the war, there's
    a story about that, where we ran out of--
    and I don't know if you want me to jump that far ahead.
    Why not.
    We did run out of money because of inflation
    and because we hadn't had that much money with us.
    And my mother knew that one of our neighbors
    had some of the valuables that we had,
    because we had given her a key when we left and asked
    her to take out some things.
    And we were concerned--
    we needed the valuables.
    She couldn't send them to us.
    And we had befriended a French woman,
    who would have been willing to go and get them for us
    by herself.
    In Paris?
    In Paris.
    But we were concerned that this neighbor, not seeing one of us,
    and also because of the mood in the country because obviously
    with all the German propaganda, we were never sure
    how other people would react, we were concerned therefore
    that she would not give the valuables
    to this friend of ours.
    And so she agreed that I would go back with her,
    go back to Paris with her.
    And I would pretend that I am her daughter.
    And--
    This is a Gentile woman?
    This was a Gentile woman.
    And she lived in a farm near the little village
    where we were living.
    And as a matter of fact, she told us
    that any time we wanted to come and hide in their farm
    and stay as long as we needed, that we would be welcome to.
    The way we became acquainted with them
    is because we would go to--
    we had gone to the farm originally
    to get some milk and eggs and produce.
    And as we began to talk, we became closer and closer.
    And she offered, she says, anything that I can do to help,
    I want to help you.
    It's terrible what is happening in this country.
    And I want to help you.
    And that's how we came up with the idea that if both of us
    went back, we would be able to bring back
    some valuables, which my mother was able to sell
    to have enough resources.
    So you went back into German occupied Paris at what time?
    This, I would say, was probably early '44
    because it took quite a while until we ran out of resources.
    I can't give you the exact date.
    But I would think early '44.
    August '44 was the liberation.
    Yes.
    You took the trains back to Paris.
    We took the trains back.
    And I remember the Germans coming on the train
    and, you know, asking for papers.
    And she showed them the papers.
    And they said, who is this?
    She says, this is my daughter.
    Did you have papers?
    Forged--
    No, because--
    I mean forged papers.
    Personally, I didn't need forged papers because children do not
    have papers.
    And I was still a child at the time.
    My mother had forged papers, but we were never really sure
    how good they would be because while my mother spoke
    good French, she had somewhat of an accent.
    But being born and raised in France, I had no accent.
    And I didn't particularly attract any attention
    as looking particularly Jewish.
    So I guess the Germans accepted her explanation.
    And the identification papers evidently
    must not have listed what children she had.
    Or maybe she had other children listed on there.
    And you passed for one of them.
    And so you got back to Paris.
    And how did you get your valuables?
    Well, we went to this neighbor.
    And this neighbor was always very fond of me.
    She had been-- she had tutored me
    when I had ear infections when I was a little child.
    And, of course, there was no question
    when we came and she saw me that she gave them to us.
    And then we took them back with us.
    And we were able to sell them and use them
    for living expenses.
    So you made a trip back and forth to occupied Paris.
    Did you have any fear, any incidents,
    and anything that you--
    Oh, I'm sure--
    --passed through--
    I'm sure there was fear, because there was a feeling of--
    and I have to say that my mother was
    very apprehensive about letting me do this because don't
    forget, I was an only child.
    My dad was away.
    But she realized that it was a matter
    that we had to do this in order to be able to survive.
    And it was not a situation if we didn't
    pay for rent that landlords would let us stay there
    or anything like that.
    What were you able to bring back from Paris?
    I don't remember.
    I think-- I remember particularly a fur coat.
    It might have been silverware or things that kind of valuable.
    Because if it would have been jewelry,
    my mother would have probably worn it,
    although she didn't have that much jewelry.
    But I remember particularly like a fur coat and some silverware.
    And this you could sell and barter?
    OK.
    Now, let's return to the point where you first arrived
    at the village in lower France.
    And tell us what happened.
    You got off the trains.
    You're hunting for housing.
    And you finally found somewhere.
    Under what circumstances?
    Well, we finally found some sort of a little apartment
    in a small town called Oradour-sur-Vayres.
    And that's where we moved.
    Was that within, let's say, 10 miles of Limoges?
    Or--
    Maybe 20, something like that.
    It wasn't very far.
    Because periodically, even though it was dangerous,
    there were several times that we had
    to go into Limoges because it was such a small town.
    If we needed medical attention, we
    couldn't get it in that small town.
    We had to go into Limoges.
    And we led sort of a semi-official life
    in order to get ration cards.
    We were registered in the village, which
    had certain risks because there were times where--
    the Germans didn't always have time
    to come to every little village to find out
    who was registered as a Jew.
    But there was always the concern what if they do
    come and ask for our name?
    OK.
    You registered when it was still the unoccupied zone.
    Right.
    You were registered as Jews.
    Right.
    OK.
    But when the Germans took over the whole zone,
    you were still there living openly
    or did you go into hiding?
    Well, somewhat.
    We were still living there.
    But we would often-- if we would hear rumors of Germans coming,
    we would be staying with this farmer friend.
    So we were not in hiding the whole time.
    The difference was also that in the free zone,
    we never had to wear any kind of outward identification
    that we were Jews.
    No yellow stars?
    No yellow stars.
    In Paris, if I walked around even as a French Jew,
    if I walked around I had to wear a yellow star, which
    immediately would alert the Germans that I am a Jew.
    The yellow star system was never instituted in the free zone,
    even after the occupied.
    Oh, even after the Germans occupied it?
    There was never a yellow star in the Vichy area
    in the free zone.
    Hmm.
    Tell us please, Marguerite, about your life.
    You were a young child.
    You were probably about 10 at this time.
    Did you have any schooling?
    What did you do during the day?
    Did your mother have any kind of work or occupation?
    Or did you have secret hiding places
    prepared, like basements or backyards or anything?
    I did go to school.
    There was a small school in that particular small town.
    I probably encountered more-- and not probably,
    I encountered more antisemitism in that little town
    than I had before because we were outsiders
    who had moved in after the war.
    When I was in Paris, even when I wore the yellow star,
    I was within the school where the kids knew me before.
    And they, not all of them, but most of them
    had some sort of empathy for me.
    In that little town, we were like intruders.
    So not that we were physically harmed,
    but there would be-- in fact, to this day, when my husband met
    me and he wanted to give me the nickname Margot,
    and I says, uh, uh, you can't do that because they
    would call me Margot the Magpie, you know, and give me names.
    And there was no question that they resented us being there.
    My mother was not able to work because there really wasn't
    any jobs available there.
    And they weren't about to give jobs to Jewish people.
    So it was really a surviving on resources
    that we had from before.
    Somehow some money filtered through Jewish agencies.
    And we were able to get some things through Jewish agencies
    as well.
    And I'm not sure how the money got there.
    But I know that at towards the end, when we were really short,
    we were able to get some assistance
    through Jewish Agency in Limoges.
    Were there other Jews in these areas
    in the same circumstances?
    In the same village where we were, not many.
    But I would say maybe 20 families.
    I mean because I remember that we made friends
    with some other people in that same area.
    Of all these experiences, what was the most painful for you?
    I think the most painful was the feeling of loss of family
    because I remember when the war was over
    and everyone was dancing in the streets, and in some respects,
    we felt that we finally could be free
    and didn't have to worry what tomorrow would bring.
    But then it was also bringing the realization
    of a tremendous loss of family.
    I mean when we came back to our apartment,
    everything had been taken out.
    The Germans emptied the apartment.
    It didn't even faze us.
    It was the tremendous amount of human--
    loss of human lives.
    And I have some French poems that I
    wrote after the war was over.
    And when I look at them I'm sad that a 13-year-old
    would have this kind of thought, saying our life is over.
    The war is over, but so is our life because we
    realize our dear ones are gone.
    And there was a feeling of fear.
    I mean, I can remember having a bad cold and running a fever.
    And my mother saying we have to walk over to this neighbor
    because we've heard a rumor the Germans are coming.
    And we're walking at night, and we
    got lost and finally found our way to reach that place,
    and not really knowing what tomorrow will bring.
    And the feeling that if somebody didn't get there
    when they were supposed to be-- there
    was an instance where my aunt and I went in to Limoges
    to the doctor.
    I went to the doctor, and she had to go to the dentist.
    And a little train came back to Oradour.
    And we were not on that little train.
    And my mother was frantic because she
    heard that little train had been raided.
    And she was sure that we had been taken.
    It just so happens that the doctor's appointment ran late
    and we missed it.
    And we took the next one.
    But these are the kind of things where you never
    knew where everything was going-- what was
    going to happen the next day.
    Have you been able to keep up any contact with, let's say,
    call them, the Righteous Gentiles in the village?
    Unfortunately not.
    My mother had kept up contact for a while.
    And then the lady moved.
    And then we just have not been able to--
    I have not been able to locate them.
    And I know my mother had lost contact.
    And when she was alive, I tried to ask her.
    And there was just no way.
    And I feel very sad because these people really--
    this woman really risked her life
    when she was either hiding us, or if the Germans on that train
    would have realized that she was hiding me or protecting me,
    we would have both been taken, not just myself,
    but her as well.
    And there was just many instances.
    I suppose when you say what was the most painful,
    the most painful was to see that as a child,
    the whole world around that feeling of uncertainty.
    But I suppose there was also a feeling
    that there were human beings that still cared about me.
    And I think in some ways that kind of concern
    helped me be the kind of human being
    that I am today because I think through that concern I don't
    have maybe quite the same amount of bitterness
    that some of the people have that survived the Holocaust.
    I was fortunate enough to be still surrounded
    by my mother's love and to see some sign that all of humanity
    had not gone mad, that there were still
    people that cared out there.
    Marguerite, last Monday, there was a program
    narrated by Abba Eban, the former Israeli Foreign
    Minister, in which he traces the history of the Jews.
    And on it, he mentioned a town that
    sounded very much like your village
    where the Germans had come in and killed practically
    everybody as a reprisal for nobody knows what.
    Eban, as I remember, said that nobody knew
    why the Germans had done this.
    I think they had done it in early August, late
    July of 1944.
    Can you shed any light on this?
    I watched that program.
    And I was very taken--
    What was the name of the village?
    Well, the village that was burned
    was called Oradour-sur-Glane.
    And your village where you lived?
    Was Oradour-sur-Vayres.
    Near each other?
    They're very, very close to each other.
    And I was very taken aback when I saw this
    because I recalled not only when it happened,
    because I remember we were shocked,
    but we were even more shocked because when it happened,
    we were sure that it was our village that had really
    been targeted, not Oradour-sur-Glane because just
    a week before, the village where I was, there
    was some partisans, resistance.
    And about a week before, a German car
    had driven by the main street of the village.
    And there were people shouting at them.
    And there was resistance shouting at them.
    And when this happened, a week later, that the village what,
    Abba Eban was saying, is that they drove into the village.
    They shot the men.
    They took the women and children, put them in a church
    and set fire to the church.
    And there was really no reason why that particular small town
    would be singled out except to say that we felt, at the time,
    that it was in reprisal for what had happened because the two
    villages were very, very close to each other.
    And when you-- we had even figured out
    that when you come from Limoges, there's a main street.
    And then there's a fork in the road.
    And you can go either to one or the other.
    And luckily for us, it happened very close to the liberation.
    And if the Germans had intended to burn our village,
    they did not have the time to come back to do it.
    But I remember, we were extremely shocked.
    Again, it's one of these other miracles
    that I guess we were meant to survive.
    In this particular case, we would not
    have been targeted as Jews.
    We would have been targeted as part of a French village.
    That's one atrocity that the Germans committed in error.
    They got the wrong village, so to speak.
    But it was interesting of all the communities
    that Abba Eban should have mentioned, Oradour-sur-Glane,
    and I knew we were having the interview today,
    and I thought it seems like it's a coincidence that he should
    mention it just a few days before we
    were going to speak today.
    We'll take a pause now.
    And we will return.
    Thank you, Marguerite.
    I'm Sidney Elsner.
    Today, November 14, 1984, we are interviewing Marguerite Morris,
    a Holocaust survivor from France.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Marguerite, at the end of our last segment,
    you had told us how you had stayed
    in this small village in what originally
    was the Free French zone, later also occupied by the Germans.
    In your own words, tell us what happened after,
    from the point that you and your mother
    had settled down until the liberation,
    and how you got back to Paris.
    Well, as I mentioned before, I did
    try to attend school during those years.
    We tried as best we could to lead--
    well, I don't want to use the term "normal life,"
    but some sort of life.
    The next vivid recollection that I have
    is when we heard when the--
    not only Paris was liberated, but when Limoges--
    Limoges did have a German occupation,
    and I remember hearing Limoges being liberated, and seeing
    people in the streets dancing, and thrilled
    that Limoges was being--
    that the Germans were gone, and that we
    were going to be free at last.
    And--
    Was this July of '44?
    This was August of '44.
    Limoges and Paris, I believe, were liberated just about
    simultaneously, within a few days of each other.
    At that point, we had no indication yet
    as to what had happened to the people that had been shipped
    to Germany, because we really weren't getting news from them,
    and we really didn't know what was happening.
    But it seems that within--
    I mean, already, we were having--
    my first recollection is sitting down and writing a poem,
    that I'm excited.
    We've now liberated.
    And very soon, our fathers will come back,
    and our families will come back, and we'll
    be able to resume a normal, happy life.
    And as the rest of the country was liberated,
    I guess some news began to filter down, that--
    of the news of the camps.
    And as time went on, we did not leave, actually.
    We did move to Limoges for a while.
    We did not get back to Paris until the war was over.
    Several reasons.
    I almost think that maybe the main one was until the war was
    officially over, maybe my mother was not
    entirely secure in leaving where we were
    and getting back to Paris, even though Paris
    had been liberated.
    And I guess I kept having fantasies.
    I kept hearing stories about things in the camps,
    but I kept having recurring dreams and fantasies
    that when we would arrive in Paris,
    and we would get off that train, my father would
    be there waiting for us.
    And I realized it wasn't a realistic kind of thing
    to be thinking.
    But it was, when I was awake, I wasn't consciously thinking.
    But I kept dreaming that.
    And obviously, when we arrived in Paris, that did not occur.
    And we began to hear more and more news of what
    was happening after the war.
    We did have the opportunity to speak to someone who,
    as I said earlier, who had actually
    been in Auschwitz after my father was there, and gave us
    final news.
    We never did hear officially, as far
    as my mother's sister, who was taken from France.
    We never heard officially as far as my mother-- well,
    my mother's-- my grandfather died of natural causes during
    the war in Poland.
    But my mother had two other brothers, and sisters,
    and children, and aunts and uncles in Poland,
    and we never had any official word,
    except that one daughter survived and is now
    living in Paris.
    We brought her from Poland to Paris after the war.
    And the only thing that I can say
    is, as these things were going on,
    we were becoming more and more depressed, and more and more,
    really, a feeling of despair, realizing how the-- so much
    of our family had been wiped out.
    And one of the reasons my coming to the United States
    was that we had cousins who lived
    in Akron who came to visit us in 1948 in Paris,
    and realized the--
    really, the emotional trauma.
    I had gone back to school, trying to catch up years,
    and working hard.
    But we were all really very, very depressed.
    And this cousin persuaded my mother that,
    being a young girl, that I would really
    be able to build a more positive life
    if I came to the United States.
    And they sponsored me here.
    My mother was not able to come at first because,
    as a French citizen, my quota--
    the French quota was not oversubscribed.
    My mother was, by then, a French citizen,
    but the American rules were that she had
    to go by the country of origin.
    And the Polish quota was a small quota.
    And many, many people from Poland
    wanted to come to the United States.
    So she was not able to join me for several years afterwards.
    And being a mother myself, I realize again
    what courage it took, as far as my mother was concerned,
    to let me come.
    As far as the conditions, we were
    able to get our apartment back, but the Germans
    had shipped all of our furniture,
    and everything was gone from that apartment.
    But very honestly, at that point,
    my mother was able to start to work again.
    The French government, because my father had
    been in the French army, did award my mother a pension,
    and me a pension, and considered--
    gave us the same consideration as if my father had been killed
    in action, as far as any privileges for free schooling,
    or pension, or anything else.
    And this was a situation where many of-- those of us who did
    survive, my dad's sister who survived,
    and my dad's brother-- everyone had members
    of the family that were gone.
    And it was really a very sad time.
    Going back to the Allied invasion of Normandy
    in June of 1944, you were a few hundred miles away.
    Do you recall any--
    the emotional state of the population in your area
    at that time?
    How were they affected?
    Did you have any contact with the Resistance?
    Do you know of any actions that were taken against the Germans
    in your area?
    I know that there was resistance,
    because I'm mentioning that particular instance.
    But we never had, really, direct contact with them personally.
    And I don't recall at what point we started
    to hear what was happening.
    Don't forget, it was very censored.
    And if the news would filter, they wouldn't filter very--
    Once Limoges was liberated, then we
    were able to follow the rest of the combat, because obviously--
    From the Normandy beachheads.
    Well, we weren't really that close.
    I mean, we-- I don't know that we heard about it right away,
    because I think it was probably still--
    the news didn't filter immediately.
    Yeah, I realize.
    But tell us what life was like at the same time, June,
    July of 1944, when you knew the Allied armies were
    coming a little closer.
    Well, there was--
    [CROSS TALK]
    There was obviously a great deal of joy.
    But it was also a matter of apprehension,
    because somehow, as we were saying earlier,
    the Germans, in spite of the fact that they
    had to fight a war, did not let up on their activities
    in trying to pick up more and more Jews,
    and ship more and more Jews.
    So on the one hand, we knew that it
    was getting-- it's, like, closer,
    and hopefully we would survive.
    But on the other hand, there was still that same apprehension.
    And we probably spent more time with that friend of ours
    near the little village in hiding towards the end
    than we did at the beginning, because we-- there
    seemed to be almost a madness, that that persecution
    and that pickup of Jews had to go on,
    regardless of whatever else had to be done.
    We were also very concerned.
    We were convinced that the Germans were not
    going to leave Paris without blowing it up,
    because one of the very proud moments of Hitler
    was when he was allowed to occupy Paris.
    Paris was a beautiful city, and this was a tremendous source
    of pride.
    And we were absolutely convinced that he was not
    going, that the Germans were not going to leave Paris
    without blowing it up.
    It turned out that it went so quickly,
    and they weren't able to.
    And we had family in Paris.
    We weren't able to keep in touch with them,
    but we knew that we had--
    we thought, we hoped that they were still
    living in Paris in hiding.
    Marguerite on the farm where you would go to hide,
    your second home, tell us, please,
    exactly what the circumstances there.
    Where did you hide?
    How did you hide?
    What kind of cover story did you have?
    Well, if I recall, they had sort of a,
    well, almost like a cellar.
    And there was some place that if-- that they
    said when we came, they would be able to cover up,
    so that even if the Germans came there,
    that they would not find us.
    I don't-- maybe it's under the emotion.
    I don't remember the exact details.
    But I do remember that there was a special--
    like, we would have to walk downstairs.
    And they had carts there and things
    so that they would be able to close it up,
    and it would not be apparent that there are people
    down there.
    And it had all been prepared.
    One of the reasons, I guess, we didn't
    stay there all the time is, as I said earlier,
    we still wanted to get some rations.
    And it was just--
    we also were reluctant for a very lengthy period of time
    to impose on these people.
    We would only take advantage of it
    when we felt there was danger.
    OK.
    The liberation of Limoges and Paris has occurred.
    When did you go back to Paris, and how?
    And you found your apartment.
    Had people been living in it?
    When we came, no, there were no people living in there.
    We were able to get back into it.
    We didn't have to ask anyone to leave.
    I remember my cousin mentioning in Poland,
    when she got back to her parents' home,
    she tried to evict people, and they threatened.
    Here was someone who had survived from a concentration
    camp, and was coming back in horrible circumstances.
    And when she tried to get into her parents' home,
    they threatened her life.
    They said, if you try to evict us,
    we will finish what Hitler did not finish.
    This was in Poland.
    But in France, I didn't hear of such circumstances.
    If people left, they were usually
    able to get their apartment back.
    Back in Paris, how did you get along
    until you came to the United States?
    Well, my mother actually, even before we moved back to Paris,
    my mother had enrolled me in a secondary school
    to try to catch up with my studies.
    And then, when I came back, I continued my studies
    in an accelerated fashion because I had really lost
    several years because the small village
    where we were was very backward educationally compared
    to what I had had.
    They put me in the highest class, and that was that.
    My mother tried to reopen part of what
    my dad's business had been.
    And at that point, the Jewish agencies
    were very helpful, because we went, and they assist--
    gave her financial assistance to buy whatever
    was needed to get things going.
    We also, as I mentioned earlier, had the French government
    helping.
    So between all of these--
    my mother was not a very strong person,
    but I guess, under those circumstances,
    she was very courageous and was able to rebuild something
    for us.
    You came right to Akron from France?
    The family that sponsored me all lived in Akron, yes.
    What was their name?
    The Sachs family, who was a prominent family in Akron.
    And when I came, I enrolled.
    I had the equivalent of a high school education.
    I had the [FRENCH],, which is about the same as-- and then
    I enrolled in a business college and completed a two-year degree
    as a junior accountant.
    And they offered me a job in the firm that they had,
    but I wanted to have the opportunity
    of getting my own job.
    So I worked for Firestone for a while.
    And then I went to work.
    Once I proved that I could get my own job,
    I went to work for them.
    And about a year after I was in Akron, I met Allan, my husband.
    And we were married about a year later-- about two years after I
    came, I was married to him.
    Is he also from Akron?
    Yeah.
    He didn't spend-- he was born and raised in Akron.
    Then he was in the army.
    As a matter of fact, he liberated a very small camp
    when he was in Germany.
    I don't remember the name of it.
    And he was also in France.
    He stationed-- was stationed in Normandy.
    We went back a couple of years ago to France,
    and we went to Normandy, to the small village where he
    was stationed during the war.
    I had another interesting experience on that trip.
    When we found out, when we were in Paris,
    that there was a monument that had
    been built in memory of the Jews from Biala Podlaska, which
    was the town where my father was born,
    and I knew that my father's name was on that monument,
    and I tried to find out what cemetery.
    It was within a cemetery.
    And--
    In Paris?
    Well, it's in [FRENCH],, which is a suburb of Paris.
    It's one of the two main Jewish cemeteries from the greater
    Paris area.
    So we had gotten instructions to get to the cemetery.
    And we walked over to the administration office.
    And I was convinced that if I explained to them, because it
    was a fairly sizable monument, that they would
    be able to direct me to it.
    But it turned out that they didn't know where it was.
    And I said, but I can't leave Paris without seeing it.
    I know it's in the cemetery.
    So then they said to me, well, there's a Jewish undertaker
    down the street, and maybe they will
    be able to give you the information.
    So we walked over to the Jewish--
    to the undertaker.
    It turned out we were there late afternoon,
    and the cemetery was closing within the next half hour,
    and we had very little time, and we
    were due to leave Paris the next day.
    But fortunately, they knew when we came back.
    And basically what this monument says is,
    this is a monument to our families and friends
    who were cowardly destroyed during World War II.
    It lists all the people that were taken from France,
    and it also lists people who were
    from Biala Podlaska who were killed in the ghetto in Poland.
    So my dad's name is on the monument.
    So is my mother's sister, and so are my mother's grandparent--
    I'm sorry, my mother's parents and other members
    of the family.
    How do your Holocaust experiences
    affect you now, Marguerite?
    Well, they've affected me in the sense
    that I have been very determined that one of the ways to--
    how should I say?
    To ensure that the people who died did not die--
    that I survived, there was a purpose.
    And one of the purposes I feel is
    I have been very active in the Jewish community.
    I have felt that if my life has some meaning, either Jewishly
    or as a human being, then my survival
    will have had some sort of meaning.
    My father was a very--
    I didn't see my father after I was eight years old.
    But from everything I've heard, he
    was a really very warm, wonderful person.
    In fact, one of the recollections that--
    the person who spoke about him from Auschwitz
    said that when he arrived at Auschwitz,
    people were saying how my father had
    tried to help other people as long as he was alive,
    by lifting their spirits.
    And if I can, in some way, in my life, through my life,
    do some of the things that he would have liked to have done,
    then my survival will have meaning.
    I don't feel that bitterness can ensure that this will not
    happen again.
    I think it's a matter of Jewish people being proud,
    and Jewish people working to keep Judaism strong.
    I think in our relationships with non-Jews,
    I think that we can also strengthen,
    not happening by having non-Jews have the ability
    to know other Jews, to know Jews,
    and to realize that they're human beings, that it's not
    a class.
    I think sometimes what happened is that many Jews lived
    some isolated lives, that stereotypes
    could develop more readily.
    And I think in our context, I think
    we can help to educate us.
    On a one-to-one basis, we can help to educate others.
    What made you decide to share your experiences with us?
    Well, it's my impression that there are not
    many people here in Cleveland that
    have had the experience with the French--
    that lived in-- not too many people that lived in France
    and went through this experience.
    I think it's an educational kind of situation.
    And I hope that maybe by people understanding what happened,
    we can leave some sort of a remembrance so that the next
    generation cannot say that this was a fiction.
    You were 12 when the war ended.
    Do you think that survivors have a message
    that others need to understand?
    I think they need--
    the only thing that can help is not so much
    telling for the sake of telling, but more
    for the sake of if there's something
    that we can do to prevent it from ever happening again.
    That's how our message will be the most effective.
    Marguerite, I do want to thank you very, very much.
    This is Sydney Elsner.
    Our Holocaust survivor today has been Marguerite Morris.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Thank you, again.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Marguerite Morris
    Interviewer
    Sidney Elsner
    Date
    interview:  1984 November 14
    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
    Morris, Marguerite.

    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 08:11:10
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504976

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    Summary (English)

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    Also in Oral history interviews of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section Holocaust Archive Project

    The interviews document the experiences of 136 Holocaust survivors, Righteous Gentiles, and former concentration camp liberators from the Cleveland, Ohio, area.

    Date: 1984-1985

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    Emerson Batdorff describes being drafted into the American Army on May 18, 1942; being classified as “limited service” due to his health problems, but eventually being accepted to Officer Candidate's School; being sent overseas in 1943 as a member of the 103rd Division, 41st Infantry Regiment; being assigned to Casablanca, Morocco, where he became an instructor in a leadership and battle training school; experiencing battle for the first time in 1944 when his unit landed at Naples, Italy; being shot in the leg and spending a short time in a hospital; rejoining his unit in time to enter southern France one hour after the main Allied invasion; his unit going through Alsace and Strasbourg, and then into Germany; not actively participating in battle; being assigned to the 15th Corps' historical section; arriving at Dachau one day after it was liberated and staying for four hours; seeing a transport train filled with dead concentration camp inmates; his current life and retiring from his position as entertainment editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer; living in Cleveland Heights, OH; and his son, stepson, and stepdaughter.

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

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    Estelle Beder, born in Lutsk, Poland (Ukraine), describes her father, who was a tailor, and her mother, who sold hand-made clothes from a covered wagon; her two brothers and one sister; her family struggling financially; the German invasion and the restrictions imposed including curfews and mandatory armbands; the sexual abuse and fear during that time; the creation of a ghetto in 1942 and her family suffering terribly; her father being very ill and still sewing; helping her family by delivering clothes and procuring food; acts of great cruelty to the Jews while in the ghetto; her father being beaten and her brother being killed in public; she and her sister being separated from the family and sent to the Łódź ghetto, where they were treated very poorly; remaining in Łódź until 1944 when they were transported to Auschwitz; the great physical and mental cruelty at Auschwitz; being selected with her sister for death in the gas chambers, but the Germans ran out of their supply of gas; being sent with her sister to work in an ammunition factory for a short period, where they received better treatment; being moved from place to place without reason; passing through Bergen-Belsen and walking on thousands of skeletons, wondering if her family was among them; being selected with her sister to be exchanged for German soldiers in Sweden; enduring a perilous trip to Sweden and being nursed back to some normalcy; her entire family, except her sister, dying during the war; her cousin in the United States arranging for she and her sister to live in New York City; marrying another survivor, Sam Beder; having three sons and moving to Cleveland, OH, where she has enjoyed a peaceful life in a community of other survivors; still suffering from the physical and emotional effects of the Holocaust; and being thankful for her family and her community.

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral History

    Adam Beer, born in Liptovsky Mikulas, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes his conservative Jewish family; his older sister, Gabriela, and his younger brother, Otto; his mother dying when he was very young and his father remarrying within a year of her death; his father owning a business in electrical contracting; the cultural amenities in Liptovsky Mikulas; the active Jewish community; the Slovaks separating from the Czechs in 1938; Tiso coming to power in 1939; finishing school in 1940 and problems for Jews beginning soon after; the restrictions placed on Jews; his grandmother being deported to Poland on April 2, 1942; his father losing his business in 1940 and preparing an emergency bunker in the mountains outside the town; partisans attacking the town and killing several Germans on August 28, 1944; his family and other families escaping to the bunker in the mountains; the Gestapo finding the bunker on December 15, 1944 and destroying it; his younger brother running away; building a second bunker; Russians finding them and taking them back to Liptovsky Mikulas; his family finding his brother hidden with a family; going to Bratislava, Slovakia to begin medical school; communists taking over the country in 1948; deciding to leave rather than finish his studies; going to Cleveland, OH with his fiancée; finishing medical school; opening a medical practice in Cleveland; and his wife and two children.

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

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    Susan Beer, born on May 14, 1924 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in Topolčany, Slovakia, describes being an only child of a physician; the family being very comfortable and Orthodox; the good relations between the Jews and the Gentile community; attending a Jewish public school and a gymnasium, hoping eventually to become a doctor; her studies being interrupted when the civil war broke out; Slovakia becoming independent and allied to Germany; the restrictions placed on Jews; her father being forbidden to practice medicine; her father arranging for her to be smuggled into Hungary, where she stayed with relatives; her parents later joining her; her father passing as a Gentile and being caught by the police; her father escaping the police and making plans for the family to Partisan-held Czechoslovakia; the family being arrested and held in a jail for three weeks; being deported to Auschwitz, and classified as political prisoners; her father working in the camp hospital; being sent with her mother to the "model camp," which was organized for the Red Cross inspectors who occasionally toured the camp; the evacuation of Auschwitz and being sent on a death march; being taken with her mother to Ravensbrück, where she worked as a camp translator; Ravensbrück being evacuated and being sent to a camp deeper in Germany, attached to a camp filled with French prisoners-of-war; the German guards running away and the French prisoners cutting the wires enclosing the camp; the prisoners discovered stockpiles of food; going to the nearby town; going with her mother to Bratislava, Slovakia, where a man recognized them in the street and told them that Susan's father was in Budapest; remaining in Budapest for a year; finishing her studies at the gymnasium; returning to Topolcany; beginning medical school in Bratislava; her family being anxious to leave Europe; going to Williamsburg, New York with her fiancé; moving to Cleveland, OH; her husband’s podiatry office; and their two children.

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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.

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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.

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    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.

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    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 Dina Leiser

    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

    Oral History

    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.

    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 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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