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Oral history interview with Anna Moses

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.36 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0036

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    Oral history interview with Anna Moses
    Transcript
    Hello.
    I am Leatrice Rabinsky.
    Today, we are interviewing Mrs. Anna Moses,
    a survivor of the Holocaust.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Mrs. Moses, we're so pleased to speak with you today.
    And I'd like you please to share with us some information
    about yourself.
    Could you please tell us what you are doing at present
    and what some of the delightful experiences
    are that you've had with your family now?
    Tell us something about them.
    At the present, baruch Hashem, I'm enjoying my children.
    I have three daughters.
    One is Sarah--
    Sarah Spero.
    The other one is Esther Ostroy.
    The third one is Chaya Wolf.
    And, baruch Hashem, I see, Hashem,
    let me live to see naches for my grandchildren,
    for my children, grandchildren.
    I occupied my time since after when my husband [NON-ENGLISH]
    for 11 years in the Hebrew Academy working.
    And now I work part-time.
    Could you tell us something about your husband,
    your late husband?
    He was married before the war.
    He came from a family of eight.
    Seven of them were married.
    He had his own family.
    I'm the second wife.
    I was the second wife already.
    He had two children, who he lost.
    And he was the only survivor from the whole family.
    I don't know really exactly how many grandchildren
    they were in the family.
    But I just know a little bit about him.
    And what did he--
    And after the war, we got married in Poland.
    And we were there a short time because it was impossible.
    The antisemitism was extremely--
    they-- it's indescribable how they treated us.
    They killed every day.
    Some people showed up--
    and to find-- to be able to find somebody someone,
    and they found out they killed many, many people.
    So you and your husband came to America?
    As soon as possible.
    I had an uncle in New York.
    And he sent for us papers.
    And we came to United States.
    Here, we came-- first was we stayed to New York
    for three months.
    And his first position was in Bangor, Maine.
    Could you tell us what his profession was?
    He was a rabbi.
    And he had a congregation, [PERSONAL NAME] Yitzhak,
    in Bangor, Maine.
    And we had-- our first child was born
    in the way in Czechoslovakia in Prague.
    When she was not full four months,
    we came to the United States the day she was four months old.
    And he was in Auschwitz before--
    he was survived, one of the survivors from Auschwitz.
    The stories from Auschwitz, I assume
    they are very well known.
    Mrs. Moses, though, could you please bring us up to date
    about what you and your late husband
    did together until he passed away.
    We were in Bangor, Maine.
    And we had at the time two children.
    And we were afraid to stay there because we saw what's going on,
    how the yiddishkeit looked.
    We were afraid for our children.
    You're talking about Judaism--
    About Judaism.
    And our aim was to bring up children the way we wanted.
    They should remain-- our survivors shouldn't
    have passed away in vain.
    This is the whole idea.
    So we traveled all over the country.
    The third child our was born in Bangor, Maine, where we lived.
    And the third one was born in Los Angeles, California.
    The climate in Los Angeles was not
    suitable enough because after the war he was a very sick man.
    In fact, when we came to the United States,
    they found out that he had--
    he was really a sick man, but baruch Hashem, that we--
    that's why, this is the reason they send us from the Joint
    Distribution, he had the first position
    in Bangor, Maine because of the climate.
    And there we lived a few years.
    But on account, because of the children, we were afraid.
    And we traveled all over.
    In Los Angeles, we just lived for two years
    because the climate was not good enough.
    From there, we traveled back to Bangor, Maine.
    We stayed there again for two years.
    And again, we were looking for places
    where we can send our children to day schools.
    That's Jewish day schools?
    Jewish day schools.
    And they always went to day schools.
    We lived not far from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
    And in Scranton, they had a day school.
    And from there, we traveled again other places,
    until we came--
    after Pennsylvania, we were in Pittsburgh for 11 years.
    And after that, we went again to Massachusetts for a short time.
    And from there, since then, we came back--
    we came here to Cleveland, where our oldest son
    was born-- was married already.
    And since then, we lived here.
    And about 12 years ago, he was passed away.
    Passed away.
    What kind of position did he hold here?
    Here, on account, because my oldest daughter had already two
    children, so he took a position in the Menorah Park
    as the spiritual leader and of all the religious functions,
    which had to be done there.
    That's a home for the aged.
    Home for the aged, yes.
    I see.
    And since that time, Mrs. Moses, you
    have been volunteering your time there?
    I go whenever it's possible.
    While I was there, it's not that I want even--
    when we were there, we lived nearby in [PLACE NAME]..
    And from there, usually Shabbos and Yomim Tovim,
    I used to volunteer, not volunteer,
    I tried to help out whichever I could.
    And until now, whenever I have an opportunity, every week
    or second week, I go to see some people there.
    Mrs. Moses, would you share with us some memories
    about your own childhood?
    What was your maiden name?
    And would you tell us where you were born and something
    about your family?
    My maiden name is Felsn, F-E-L-S-N.
    And I was born in Poland not--
    in the city of Milicz.
    From there, in 1935, we moved to Krakow.
    And it was, as you know, just a few years before the war.
    Could you share with us something about your family?
    How many family members you had?
    We were 6 children, 4 girls and 2 brothers I had.
    And I'm the only survivor.
    What did your father do?
    My father was a businessman.
    He was a scholar before, but he was a businessman.
    And during the time of the war, just before the war,
    my brother, the older brother, was very young yet.
    He learned to make some suitcases.
    In account of this, when they send us to the ghetto,
    we were occupied all in the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    working for things which the soldiers used to have the bags,
    all kinds of things.
    And account of this we could survive for a short time
    until they start sending out people,
    which we didn't know where.
    And--
    May I ask you some more about your family?
    You had mentioned that you were raised
    in a religious, spiritual atmosphere.
    Could you tell us what life was like in your home
    and in your immediate surroundings
    as you were growing up?
    In Europe, the life, we didn't have to learn so much.
    We lived the Jewish life.
    A child knew-- my father once explained to me that religion
    is [NON-ENGLISH].
    You give it over.
    And he told me, which father would
    want to deceive his child, to tell him
    that something is not right?
    So he was extremely, not because he was my father,
    high intelligent person, a big [NON-ENGLISH]..
    He had smicha.
    Which means that he was a scholar.
    Yes, he was a scholar and an extremely refined person.
    And this gave me a lot of strength
    to endure everything which I did during all the years.
    Could you recall what holiday or Sabbath was like in your home?
    Did you have other relatives or friends who joined you?
    We were all surrounded by families.
    My mother had two brothers and a sister living
    not far where we lived, and my grandparents
    from my mother's side.
    And the religious life in Europe, I'm sure is known.
    And very extremely there, one neighbor
    watched out for the other one.
    I remember a family who had a very hard life.
    They struggled extremely.
    But it came before Shabbos, for Shabbos,
    they put in enough water, and they made cake.
    And they went to people who didn't have enough and shared
    with them to bring them hot coffee and cake for Shabbos
    morning, of which somebody baked challahs for Shabbos.
    They had some chicken or goose or whichever,
    they share it with their neighbors all the time.
    And this is an atmosphere and a place I was raised.
    And I'm sure it was not the only one.
    The whole lifestyle in Europe was--
    I went to a public school.
    We didn't have a day schools, religious day schools.
    But I went to Beth Yaakov in the afternoon.
    That's Beth Jacob School for Girls.
    Beth Jacob's School for Girls, yes.
    And then it was organization, the [NON-ENGLISH]..
    But the most important for me was
    the home, which I saw the way my father when
    he was a businessman, it's the way he kept all the laws.
    We had a wholesale.
    And when used to come in big loads of flour,
    big sacks, and there were people who,
    especially people who took it down from the wagons.
    And he asked me once, I was still little.
    He asked me I should stay here a while.
    I will be back in a few minutes.
    He went out next door with some men who was--
    they had a stone.
    They used to buy from us.
    And he took from the money when the people will come back--
    when they will finish the job, they
    shouldn't have to wait a few minutes for their pay.
    Also, he used to go to our rabbi--
    And that was the rabbi, the local rabbi.
    No, this which when he went to a rabbi,
    this was for [NON-ENGLISH] in a different city.
    And there was a Hasidic leader?
    Hasidic leader.
    And he made a new [NON-ENGLISH],, a new--
    Garment?
    A [NON-ENGLISH] for yontif.
    That's a garment.
    A garment, yes.
    And the man who did it was even a widower.
    And he lived not far in our country.
    It happened he came and he wanted to try it on.
    They had to sew on the buttons.
    And my father wasn't home.
    And he had a ride back.
    So he left it.
    And my father didn't put it on because the man wasn't paid.
    So he put on his old garment when he went.
    So being raised in a home like this,
    I guess this always could give me the strength, which I could
    and do it and remain deeply religious,
    baruch Hashem, that I am.
    I see.
    Could you tell us-- you mentioned
    this going to the rebbe or to the Hasidic rabbi.
    Could you explain that custom?
    And how did it influence the life that you led?
    Did you follow the rules or the teachings
    of that particular rabbi?
    I don't think it was a specific teaching.
    The teaching is all the same for everybody.
    It's just, I guess, as a spiritual uplift
    to be in an atmosphere.
    And this was usually in Rosh Hashanah,
    which is the new years.
    And being in a big crowd together
    with a spiritual leader and praying together, I guess,
    this gave a lot of strength.
    This must have been the reason that he went.
    And you have memories of how your mother conducted
    the household.
    Did that influence you in later life?
    Naturally.
    There's no question about it.
    Like I mentioned, like the other woman, my mother did it too.
    And naturally, the lifestyle was different
    that now the woman occupied them self with all kinds of things.
    The mother in Europe her whole life was just the children,
    watch the children, did for them,
    and tried, I know, that she didn't have opportunity
    to have a better education.
    And she would never tell me, she always told me
    if I have to go with my friends and study together,
    do together, she would never object
    and relieved me from any other things which
    I had to help in the house.
    You mentioned studies.
    What was your school like?
    First was our public school, which was like a grade school,
    and part-time and not too much high school.
    And then it wasn't really too much more
    that they had at that time, except a few exceptions,
    which went to the gymnasium, which
    is a high school, or colleges.
    This was just a few exceptions.
    What language was spoken in your home Mrs. Moses?
    Jewish and Polish.
    And you were fluent in both languages?
    I should say so.
    Tell me, for entertainment, do you
    recall what your family did?
    Did you have simchas a lot that you went through--
    Naturally.
    --joyous occasions?
    Could you describe them?
    When a child was born, naturally this is the usual procedure.
    It's a bris.
    And then we had before the bris was [NON-ENGLISH]..
    A [NON-ENGLISH],, it means you watch over the baby.
    And you make a beautiful party with all the delicatessens,
    all the beautiful party, more than the bris itself.
    The bris was the circumcision.
    Yes.
    So this was the mostly or the weddings or other things.
    And as girls, we had plays in school.
    And Bais Yaakov we had a lot.
    We used to go there in the afternoons or at nights.
    And we used to have classes, lessons,
    and also play sometimes.
    And we spent our time very, very lovely.
    Do you recall any talk about Zionism in your neighborhood?
    Or were there organizations that maybe talked about the state
    of Palestine at that time?
    Yes, I do.
    Could you discuss that with us?
    The only reason the Hasidic movement objected it.
    Why?
    Because the religious-- the Zionist organization started
    out with [NON-ENGLISH],, which was non-religious.
    And naturally, in account of this, they didn't--
    they were not for it.
    But later on, it didn't take too much longer.
    It started the Agudath Israel, which
    is our religious organization, which
    Bais Yaakov was a part of it.
    And for this one, we wanted-- we were-- a lot of people
    wanted to go to Israel.
    But we didn't have the visas.
    We couldn't-- as you know, it was occupied.
    It was was in the British occupation.
    And they didn't let us go.
    They were just a few, a few privileged ones who could go.
    But a lot a lot of youth and a lot of people
    were willing to go.
    They didn't have the ability.
    Right.
    So there was a willingness to leave Poland in those years.
    No question about it.
    Great willingness and no possibility.
    Could you recall from your childhood growing up years
    any negative feelings toward the Jewish neighbors
    or Jewish community?
    Was there any antisemitism that you were aware of?
    From our neighbors, the Poles?
    Yes.
    Do you recall anything?
    We went to school together with the Polish.
    Not in my youth right away.
    But a little later on, they started like to organize.
    They had their own stores.
    And this was like they started to boycott
    the Jewish storekeepers.
    And the ones who bought from the Jewish people,
    because for their convenience, they had everything in credit.
    And many, many times, they never paid.
    And that's why for their own convenience.
    But I wouldn't say, but we lived with them in the most friendly,
    neighboring way that we could.
    They always received from us the presents for their holidays.
    And we never had any disputes with any of them.
    And not far where I was born, I didn't see it,
    but I was told there were German colonies.
    And next door neighbors who always
    treat the neighbors beautiful, they always
    gave them presents or always share with them.
    The minute the Hitler came in, they killed them all.
    It's unbelievable.
    Unfortunately, this is true story.
    You mean those the--
    Same neighbor--
    --colonies who were friends?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    They turned and killed their Jewish neighbors.
    They turned and killed the Jewish neighbors, yes.
    It's unbelievable.
    When were you first aware in Poland
    that something was not right?
    We heard about it.
    We it was not--
    I mean when Hitler came, we knew about it when it was too late.
    I mean we knew when the war started the 1st of September.
    And we lived in Krakow.
    And the Germans came in the 6th of September already.
    Can we go back to 1933, Mrs. Moses,
    when your family moved to Krakow from Milicz.
    Yeah.
    Could you please tell us what was the reason for the move
    and how you got settled?
    The reason for the move because my father had partners.
    And the business were not good.
    And he was mostly involved with selling flour.
    And there were a few mills around.
    And the place was not big enough.
    And so we decided we will move to a bigger city.
    The children, a few of them were already grown up.
    And there, we could manage better.
    And when we came there, my brother, who was the fourth,
    he learned to make suitcases.
    And it's just like a miracle for the time
    that it was so short before the war
    that this trade, which he learned, the war
    broke out very soon after.
    And we all helped with this.
    And on account of this, we could survive during the hard time
    being in ghetto.
    The prices were unbelievable.
    And we wouldn't have any means of surviving if not this.
    This way we worked for the Germans in ghetto.
    And at night, we came home and we worked in the house.
    And my younger sister was still a little girl,
    9 or 10 years old.
    And she used to take out--
    send out the merchandise to our customers, Gentiles.
    Naturally, she went out without armband
    because she didn't really need it because she was not of age.
    And in this, because of this, we could
    survive being in the ghetto.
    For that time, you had once mentioned
    that the situation in the '30s began
    to be very critical in Krakow and that you were
    working in a chocolate factory.
    Would you like to describe those times?
    We were eight people.
    And you needed to survive.
    So everybody, the children tried to help.
    I found a job in a chocolate factory.
    I worked there for a short--
    it wasn't too much, about 2 or 3 years.
    And it helped out to survive.
    And not long after, my brother learned his trade.
    And we all were involved in it.
    So you and your brother were the main supporters of the family?
    It was my father worked with us together.
    And while he worked, because my brothers didn't
    have opportunity to have the education, while working
    my father learned with my brothers during the work.
    It was-- we rented the basement of our apartment.
    Could you please tell us what you remember
    of the first day of the war?
    The first day of the war, we had already--
    What was it like?
    --rented a store.
    And a week before, we had already
    sent out-- my father was a big businessman,
    like I mentioned before.
    When he we started working this, he had already an agent
    send out to sell the merchandise.
    We had made the first transport of the better
    kind of suitcases.
    And this was everything lost in the war already.
    But when I went in the morning to open the store,
    our neighbor called down to me.
    And he said to me, don't open the store.
    The war broke out.
    This was on a Friday morning.
    And then we were just a few more months.
    This was '39.
    My father didn't go out from the house for three months.
    Why was that?
    Because he was afraid they will cut his beard.
    It was not just this.
    We saw right away the cruelties.
    What were some of them that you had seen?
    Some of them, there were big shuls in Krakow--
    Synagogues, right?
    Yes.
    And the Germans, in order to hide their cruelties,
    they just--
    they used to go in the street and cut people's beard
    with their skin.
    And people who didn't have beards,
    they did the same thing to their hand and their heads.
    All I saw myself in the middle of the street,
    they ask a Jew to catch a German by the collar in the back.
    And he stick out his tongue to show, make pictures,
    which is not true, which they do to Jews, but it's the opposite.
    Then it's other incident.
    I didn't see this.
    But this in the city where I was born.
    I knew the whole family.
    It was a slaughterhouse.
    Before Rosh Hashanah, we had the Kippurs.
    That's--
    And they two men and help.
    And everybody-- and it's just a lot
    of people there waiting for the killing of the chickens.
    Yes.
    This was a ritual before--
    Yes.
    --the Yom Kippur holiday--
    Yes.
    --using live chickens.
    And they spilled gasoline all over this.
    And they burnt the people together with everybody
    in the whole surroundings.
    I happened to be-- a friend of mine
    asked me to go to that city after the war when I came back
    because she wanted something for one of the offices.
    And I saw that whole section where there are few synagogues.
    It was a ritual bath.
    Everything was burned to the ground.
    It was nothing, a plain field.
    And going back to the story with the ritual slaughterhouse,
    they were the wife and the children,
    two grownup, married daughters, and they came to them
    they should sign that their fathers died
    with a natural death.
    And they said no, which for?
    You can do the same thing to me.
    They said no.
    We will take 50 or 100 other Jews.
    Naturally, they didn't want to have the responsibility
    that other 100 people should be killed in account of this.
    They had to do it.
    And this is the way they tried to hide all the cruelties which
    they did.
    And this was repeated many, many times.
    This all took place in the opening months of the war.
    Yes.
    And we lived in Krakow.
    But I remember I had an uncle in Boston.
    And after this tragedy, he wrote to us.
    And he asked, he wanted to know if we still received it.
    This was still before we went into the ghetto.
    And he wanted to know with us, we had moved already.
    Other thing in Krakow itself, it was called the Black Monday.
    I don't know if it was ever said.
    Krakow was a big city.
    In comparison to America, it wouldn't be too much.
    But they were before the war like 80,000 Jewish people.
    And most of the people which I came
    in contact, I would say they were all strictly
    religious people.
    And there were old shuls in Krakow.
    Krakow is an old historic--
    A historic city.
    And one Monday, the Germans came to all the synagogues,
    took out all the Torahs, and asked the rabbis
    to desecrate the Torahs, to step on them.
    And they naturally didn't want to.
    So they killed many, many thousands of people
    at that time and burnt the shuls and burnt the Torahs.
    And this was the Black Monday in Krakow.
    Now, what happened, Mrs. Moses, as the months began to pass?
    You mentioned that you were concentrated then in a ghetto.
    Would you like to tell us how that came about?
    How did they notify you?
    We were in Krakow living there.
    And then they gave out--
    they always put on signs.
    They put on notice.
    They had in Krakow itself, they had a whole ministerium
    how to lead this everything.
    By the end, which happened after that, nobody knew what went on.
    They did it so secretly.
    They did it in such all ways that nobody knew.
    After we found out, I forgot to bring
    the pictures, which I have.
    I can give it to you later on if you would like to.
    Nobody knew which went on exactly.
    In other words, you had an organization
    that controlled the city?
    We didn't have.
    The Germans--
    The Germans.
    --put on my whole staff to make laws
    and do to the people in a way that they should not
    be aware of anything which went on.
    It was said that they are sending people to the work when
    they send it out later on.
    After that, the privileged ones, the ones
    who had professions, who worked for the Germans,
    were the privileged ones--
    were sent with-- just 10,000 were sent to the ghettos.
    The rest either they were killed or they tried to escape.
    But in the ghetto itself, they were just privileged ones.
    And we were among the ones.
    Who were first sent.
    Were you aware of a Jewish organization
    that the Germans had placed above the community,
    the Judenrat?
    The Judenrat.
    Sure.
    Would you describe that to us?
    They had some people whichever functions
    they wanted to fill out, they gave them the orders
    and they should do it.
    Many times, they gave us some-- we had some rations,
    if I recall it.
    And we had to pick it up from there, all kinds of things.
    But--
    Did you know any members of the Judenrat?
    Do you recall seeing any members?
    I think I saw them because I used to go there but.
    To tell names, I really don't remember.
    Why did you have to go to the Judenrat council?
    For all kinds of things.
    I guess for anything, we needed our [NON-ENGLISH]..
    How do you say it?
    To be able to do this or this.
    Permission slip.
    Permissions, or all kinds of things.
    So like when they stuck us in the ghetto,
    they gave apartments according to the windows.
    If it's a room from three windows,
    there were nine people.
    And if it's a room naturally more windows, it's more people.
    So they decided how many people should come--
    Yes.
    According to the windows, yes.
    We were limited in ghetto with electricity.
    Certain amount we couldn't use anymore.
    And I remember how my father made a special, like a box,
    for Shabbos in order to keep our food warm or hot water,
    or how to distinguish the lights in Friday night, put on-- we
    didn't have all these things which you have here now.
    And he made a clock with a little string.
    And when it was like alarm clock.
    It went off because we were not allowed to use it.
    So we had so much and so much kilowatt to use.
    How did you move from your house into the ghetto?
    Did you walk?
    Did you have a public streetcar?
    At that time, it was public transportation.
    I really don't remember exactly how this went down.
    I remember when we went there before Pesach--
    Passover, right?
    Yes.
    And in order to have matzahs, the ones we wanted,
    I have a friend--
    I had a friend from the organization,
    like from [NON-ENGLISH],, and her brother used to work for us.
    And she bleached her hair.
    And somebody came in where I worked.
    And she told me somebody is calling me.
    I went out the first time.
    She was hiding someplace or being,
    I don't know, in some Polish papers as a Gentile girl
    and dressed like a Gentile girl.
    And she had somebody and some other products
    which she had in a little bag.
    And actually, my mother bought it from her.
    And she bought for us even Shmura matzah meal.
    That's particularly washed--
    Particularly for-- yes--
    --flour to make matzahs.
    To makes matzahs for Pesach.
    Whichever she brought, my mother always bought it from her.
    Was she able to live as an Aryan?
    She lived there for a while.
    And what's happened later on, when they send us--
    this is already '40--
    it happened while we were there a lot of people
    came into the ghetto without the Kennkarte, which
    means the permission to be in that haven.
    So this people didn't have no means of surviving.
    So we used to collect in--
    cook whichever we could, soups, and bring to the people.
    And in this ghetto, I still went out-- before the war,
    Krakow was a big city.
    And there were a lot of hospitals.
    Smaller towns didn't have all the big hospitals
    which they were required something more serious they
    used to send to Krakow.
    And through a friend of mine from the same organization,
    I started to go and visiting Shabbos
    in the hospitals, every Shabbos.
    And I went even while still in--
    until they closed the ghetto.
    Who did you visit in those hospitals?
    Everybody.
    And we used to go to collect--
    this was before the war.
    I went to everybody, whoever--
    they were two or three girls.
    We went to our neighbors.
    Everybody gave us something, a piece of challah,
    piece of cake.
    Somebody gave a little wine.
    We made some kind of--
    from rhubarb some compote.
    And we brought it to these people.
    And many times, they are a lot of people
    who didn't need anything.
    But especially, in Shabbos was very important--
    This is Sabbath, right.
    Very important to go to visit because this was a day
    that there was no visiting day.
    This is usually the day with the cleaning.
    And why they let us in?
    We gave something, so he let us in.
    And we went to the people, and it's unbelievable,
    not that they needed something, but just our good word,
    the people see that somebody is interested
    because there were a lot out of town people,
    like I mentioned before.
    And in the beginning of the war until they closed the ghetto,
    we met German people there in the hospitals, many times,
    because it was sections, they were
    occupied with a lot of Germans.
    The Polish government treated the Jewish people
    like the biggest enemies.
    And it was not true, when it came out
    a call for support, every Jewish family,
    everybody gave nice donations, more than they could.
    But when they built ammunition factories,
    Jews were not allowed a long distance before.
    They never trusted.
    They trusted the Germans.
    And that's why Poland was sold out in such a short time.
    In three weeks, the whole Poland was under occupation.
    Mrs. Moses, what was the year then
    that you entered the ghetto and you started this whole ghetto
    experience?
    I think either end of '40 or the beginning of '41.
    Who in your family went into the ghetto?
    The whole family, except one of my sisters.
    And where was she?
    Could tell us about her?
    It was before, when it was closed before the war,
    it started already, people--
    like you could feel it in the air.
    And a cousin of mine came.
    And she wanted to send her children because they
    saw a lot of planes flying.
    They had exercises already.
    And the children were afraid.
    So she wanted to send the children to--
    my sister volunteered to take her children to her mother, who
    lived a distance farther.
    And from there, they send out the people
    to Russia, occupied Russia from there naturally.
    In meantime, we found out that she was married.
    And she even had a child.
    And she wrote-- we had a card still in the ghetto that
    the name of the child that he is--
    couldn't write it in the card--
    she said it's my son Joseph needs--
    likes the uncle [NON-ENGLISH].
    It means he is hungry.
    He needs-- [NON-ENGLISH] is bread.
    So that was a code--
    So my father's-- right, yes.
    So my father still tried to send us some packages from us,
    from ghetto to wherever-- they were near Lemberg, near Lwów.
    And after that, we didn't hear any more.
    You never saw that little child?
    Not one child.
    She sent with her three children.
    It happened that these children survived.
    They were sent-- my sister got married.
    And since-- that's why she was stuck there.
    But the family, the father went after first my cousin,
    who is now still in Israel.
    He decided, because the children went away,
    he has to go and look for them where they are.
    And he reached them.
    And they were sent away from there to Siberia,
    to Russia someplace.
    After the war, when I got married--
    this is later on-- we found out--
    my husband was acquainted with a man, a very known man,
    by the name Parnas.
    And he had a big influence, started organizations.
    And the first thing they started first to send out to,
    at that time, I don't know if it was Eretz Yisrael yet,
    or it was Palestine yet.
    I think it was--
    Palestine.
    It's '46.
    No.
    Yeah, if it was '46.
    And so they sent the children first.
    So he went to-- we went both of us to meet the friend.
    And he send out the children.
    And they were the first one to come to Eretz Israel.
    And I saw them.
    It was a boy.
    He must have been at that time about 17, 18 years.
    He looked like 10.
    Very bright and very intelligent.
    And now he is married and lives, I think, in Belgium.
    Other two daughters remained.
    One of them has already grandchildren.
    The both sisters live in Eretz Israel.
    And your sister was instrumental in saving them?
    And she was instrumental in taking and saving
    these children.
    And their father remained, but not the mother.
    I see.
    Now, what was happening in the ghetto during this period,
    '41 and '42?
    Was there any opportunity at all for learning?
    What did the children do in the ghetto?
    Did they have any kind of school?
    I don't remember having open schools.
    If somebody learned, they learned by themselves.
    But--
    What about religious services?
    Religious services, naturally, we had religious services.
    I don't remember having open shuls.
    Maybe the shuls were there in--
    I wasn't married before the war.
    And I didn't go to the shul.
    But I remember even in Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur--
    The holy days--
    The holy days, we kept.
    And we were in shul.
    And we had even religious services
    in concentration camps, the first one.
    We went and we pretended we are working.
    We were sitting at the tables and having hammers
    and whichever the things we needed.
    And somebody was watching our side and gave us a signal.
    And it's a [NON-ENGLISH] means that somebody is around.
    So we started working.
    And we had there the [NON-ENGLISH]..
    We kept every holiday.
    That's remarkable.
    In the--
    And the people fasted.
    And I remember after that fast, it
    was the greatest tragedy which I've ever seen.
    People who fasted and worked--
    we worked.
    The people-- we had the light work.
    But people were working in the field
    in that concentration camp, not that the work was needed.
    Work was understood, it was not that they needed our work.
    They want just to tire out the people, to just punish them--
    I don't know the expression-- to torture them.
    This was the whole idea.
    Right.
    Now in the ghetto yet, as time went on in '41 and '42,
    were people being sent out of the ghetto on a regular basis?
    I don't know how regular.
    I mean even in the ghetto, I remember
    there were three, like, main entrances.
    One was right next to our house.
    And a young man who was a friend of my brother,
    my younger brother--
    he is now in New York.
    His father was one of the ones who perished in this fire.
    He came and my father saw him.
    And he came in.
    And he asked my father, can I come to your house?
    He said sure.
    And this was into that punishment.
    We made for him a bed in a attic.
    And he stayed with us.
    It happened that after that they looked--
    they send out a lot of people.
    And the ghetto started shrinking.
    Where did they tell you tell you they were sending the people?
    Like mine, one of my sisters, the older
    was married in ghetto.
    They sent her away in '42, which they told them, I don't know.
    But it was not revealed.
    They need workers in other place, other factories.
    But they were enough to see the streets were all bloodied.
    They had to wash the streets for many, many days to clean them.
    Why?
    What had taken place?
    They killed them.
    In the street?
    In the street.
    Like after the war, when I went with a friend of mine
    to other city by Tarnów, and the Gentiles didn't recognize us.
    Our Polish was better sometimes much than a lot
    of the Polish girls or men.
    And they said, they looked like Jews,
    but we will recognize them, the Poles, after the war.
    And we will make them shorter with a hat.
    This was our neighbors, our Polish people.
    They were exceptions, but always.
    But most of the Polish people were very cruel to us.
    Like in before going to the ghetto,
    they made a lot of, how do you call it, prepared, like in case
    of war, they should hide--
    A bunker.
    Like bunkers in the street, whole streets.
    Hiding places.
    And they called for us, like in before the ghetto,
    they made a minyan in our third floor for Yom Kippur--
    A religious gathering.
    Yes, to come-- they had services.
    And people were watching outside.
    And they called, like you say, from the Judenrat,
    the police came that they need workers.
    Need workers.
    My father told me not to go.
    But I felt-- and they said if this will not--
    they wanted already to put back the ground that shouldn't be
    seen--
    if it will not be finished, the job,
    they will do it with people.
    I went at that time.
    And I worked in Yom Kippur.
    And the Poles, when they saw us working
    with our shovels and our bags--
    can you imagine me with a shovel in the back?
    They called and they said to us, this is your most holy day
    and you have to work, Jews.
    This is the Jewish--
    the Polish people.
    So many incidents, so many stories, I mean,
    it's unbelievable.
    It's unbelievable.
    Do you want to remember-- or do you
    recall any other special incidents from the ghetto life,
    any particular friends that you had or relationships
    that you may have had at that time?
    Like I told you, I was pretty occupied
    working a whole day for the Germans.
    Coming home-- coming home, I had to work in order
    to be able to survive.
    And the rest of the time, it was any time left,
    we cooked and made things.
    And my parents, they sent away my parents and the whole family
    in one day.
    After I was left with coal and potatoes and other groceries,
    so occupied myself.
    Thursday, I had to go to work the next day.
    I occupied myself at night.
    I cooked potato soups, big pots.
    I made potato like cook with baking sheets.
    This puddings like--
    And people came at night cold, hungry.
    And they had something warm.
    So you were cooking then for other people then.
    And Friday night, I--
    Thursday night, I used to bake.
    I used to bake challah and used to make--
    Friday night, I went around in the ghetto and to the windows.
    You rapped on the window?
    No, not rapped, just to listen to--
    That's when you were alone?
    Yes.
    I wasn't alone because there were
    a lot of people in the house.
    We went-- we went to collect.
    We went to do things.
    Mrs. Moses, we're going to stop for a moment now.
    And then we'll return and continue with your story,
    telling about the deportation and from the ghetto.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    But I think it might be an idea to follow through when
    Mrs. Moses comes to my class.
    Oh I do, too.
    To have him come out.
    And here, she spoke here, and gave her story.
    Then have her reach the students.
    Oh, wouldn't they-- to hear somebody that was there,
    and to tell it, I should say so.
    So if you want to mention it, it might be an idea.
    And I have-- and then the kids ask questions.
    And we recorded in class--
    Is it a whole semester or is it--
    The whole semester, five days a week,
    as an English course, right?
    I'm a regular English teacher.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And I created this course.
    It's a long time ago already.
    1973 was the first--
    Who did I come across the other day?
    We were at dinner up at Mrs. Murphy's, and this--
    she lives on Cedar Road, just past Cedar and Green.
    Yeah, Cedar and Green, Mrs. Murphy.
    And her next door neighbor teaches Holocaust that some--
    I am Leatrice Rabinsky.
    Today we are continuing the interview
    with Mrs. Anna Moses, a Holocaust survivor.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Mrs. Moses, you were telling us about the period
    just before the deportation from the ghetto.
    And you had mentioned that you were left alone in the ghetto
    without your family.
    Could you please share with us the time
    when your family was deported?
    Tell us how that happened.
    Actually, how it happened, like you mentioned before,
    the Judenrat, they always took the orders from the Germans.
    And it seems they had to deport so many people.
    My father was working.
    And when they came to the house to pick up my father, I said,
    it's impossible.
    Cannot be.
    Must be a mistake.
    And my father just gathered a few most important things,
    the religious, naturally the tallis, tefillin.
    This is a prayer shawl and the phylacteries.
    And some changes.
    And he said to the children, he said, we should keep together,
    and we should watch your mother.
    And he wants one wish.
    He wants to be brought to [NON-ENGLISH]..
    It means to be buried as a Jew.
    I went with my father.
    But it was the 28th of October 1942, on a Wednesday.
    And it was chilly.
    And he send me up to bring him his galoshes.
    When I came down, I didn't see my father anymore.
    I found two of my brothers.
    The younger one was just over a pneumonia.
    He's talking about life in the ghetto.
    And he was so sick, he didn't want to drink non-kosher milk.
    And I stood with my two brothers, holding their hands.
    And all of a sudden, I didn't see from where, from when,
    they sorted out people, one to the right and one to the left.
    And they gave me, with a rubber stick in my-- over my forehead.
    And I must have been unconscious for a minute.
    And when I looked around, I didn't see nobody anymore.
    Your brothers were--
    Finally, they took us back to work.
    When I came home, I met a friend of mine, our neighbor, who
    happened to be the same name.
    And I ask her, did you see my family?
    And she turned around, and she couldn't face me.
    Then, right on, she told me that they all were together,
    because I was positive.
    I'm positive, if a woman with a child could escape,
    couldn't a young boy like my brother escape?
    But I understand the reason.
    He didn't want to be separated from the family.
    And the same thing happened with my youngest sister.
    In the beginning of the war, like I mentioned before,
    we worked.
    And she was the one we send out with our merchandise.
    And the gentile people--
    they must have mean a joke--
    said to her, why don't you stay with us?
    And she said-- and we ask her, why don't you?
    She said, no, I don't want to be wherever my parents--
    I want to be with my parents.
    This is the story, that when they send them out
    only one day.
    Your whole family was--
    My whole family in one day.
    What did you do then?
    I had to go to work the next day.
    It's unbelievable and impossible,
    and it's indescribable.
    The cruelties are--
    I started.
    After work, it came in other young men in the ghetto.
    He escape from some place where he worked,
    because he saw what's going on.
    It's not that you work for a purpose.
    The work was they are taking-- asking people
    to drag heavy objects from one place
    to the other for no reason, just back and forth, in order
    to be tortured.
    He came in in the house.
    And he tried to help.
    He prepared, like we--
    I had left-- because we all worked in this [GERMAN],,
    we had-- they gave us a lot of potatoes and coal.
    So he prepared.
    He prepared the potatoes, peeled the potatoes.
    When I came home, I made a meal.
    So he ate, and then it was a other boy who ate there.
    And then, at night, there were some people
    who were not the privileged one, didn't have the--
    couldn't stay in ghetto.
    So they were hiding in the basements, in the cold places,
    winter.
    So I started making potato soups, big pots.
    And they used to come at night and eat, and warm up a little.
    So you spent your time there helping the other people.
    I tried.
    What else could I do?
    I felt I-- at least I can do this.
    Mrs. Moses, were you aware at any time that there might
    be an underground movement in the ghetto,
    or people thinking about escaping, or helping
    each other, or fighting back?
    Was there any such thing?
    Not that I know of any.
    I don't know if anything happened like anything
    like it happened in the ghetto in Kraków.
    My husband's the one that told me that he once mentioned--
    he was in a other ghetto.
    He once mentioned that let's organize and do something.
    The other people didn't like it.
    What were they afraid of?
    They were afraid of it's foolish.
    But they were afraid of everybody.
    Like, they always took five or 10 people for no reason--
    just came in.
    And each time it seems people were fooled.
    They meant it-- that just them.
    And they were hoping the next day
    or next week the war will be over and they will be saved.
    Organizing.
    And it's a other thing.
    I don't think they have had any means.
    We were surrounded by--
    I'm not talking about myself, but people who hated us.
    If they were any way-- they were single people who
    would be willing to help, naturally they were.
    Later on, when I was already in Plaszow,
    in the concentration camp, I found there some people I knew.
    And I saw that they were a whole family.
    She was with us, because they were separated.
    And I saw her husband is coming at night and her children.
    And I once ask her-- and I saw they
    ate food which it wasn't given in the concentration camp.
    So she told me that they had a bakery,
    in partnership with a gentile.
    And this was one of the decent ones,
    because he truly risk his life.
    Because if somebody would caught him bringing in anything,
    he could be shot very easily.
    And this is the way they survived.
    But this were very, very few single people.
    Mrs. Moses, what happened then with your deportation
    from the Kraków Ghetto?
    How were you notified, and what did you?
    Do you recall that period of time?
    This is no notification.
    They usually, they announced we should gather in a place
    here and there.
    The same thing was with the other deportation.
    We didn't know anything.
    They just told us one morning, like I
    mentioned before, one of the gates were near our house.
    And we saw outside a few hundred--
    the Germans, with the helmets.
    And we knew something is going to happen.
    But in the-- we couldn't do anything.
    If you have some acquaintances, you have your own place,
    you prepare a lot in advance.
    We were-- from our own homes we were already out before we
    lived in Kraków.
    And then they took us to that ghetto.
    And like I describe, we were people,
    three people for one window.
    And it was, like, my father told me I should hide him.
    And I saw we had just the, behind the steps,
    there we notice a little nick there.
    I felt what's this?
    In case they will find him-- and they would--
    and I would see him shot, I would
    feel as my responsibility.
    So I was thinking about it a lot of times.
    And then I felt it wouldn't have been any
    better if I would have done it.
    What happened on the day you were deported from the ghetto?
    Can you recall that day?
    They took us to Skarzysko-- not Skarzysko.
    This is in Plaszow.
    This was the place that used to be the Jewish cemetery,
    the new one.
    How far was that from Kraków?
    It's not far.
    It's a few kilometers.
    It's not far at all.
    How did you get there?
    We walked.
    They put us together, and whichever we had in our hands,
    and we went.
    What did you prepare to take with you?
    We didn't prepare anything.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    We had always, all of us, had a little thing
    made out from linen.
    And I had even once, I prepared before--
    we had from our bedcover, and made up, like, a bag.
    And I put in something in it.
    I meant-- we had something, a watch, a ring, whichever
    we had, I put this in a little jar,
    and I took this in the back.
    And a few other things which I really don't remember.
    It couldn't have been-- what can you put it in the time,
    spur of the moment?
    But one thing, I am very happy that, like I said before,
    while we were still in ghetto, I used up
    all the materials we had.
    And then we had furniture.
    And this man who was in the house, he said,
    it's no more wood.
    I said, take all the furniture and break it, and cook,
    as long for you're here.
    I took down my Pesach [INAUDIBLE] dishes,
    and I gave out.
    And everybody should have spoons and forks wherever they go.
    I took the beddings.
    People came.
    They were driven out from other ghettos.
    I put them out in the porches.
    Take whichever you want, because I knew, and I felt,
    if we will survive, we will have.
    And there they told--
    after we found out that Hitler said, whichever we have,
    it will belong to them anyways.
    It's just a shame which we use up.
    So I wasn't sure--
    So you shared.
    I tried to use everything.
    I wasn't saving nothing.
    You shared everything with your others.
    Everything which we have, which I had.
    And I had with me a few spoons, a few forks.
    I had, like I mentioned, one of my brother's friend
    who came in the house.
    And then they needed--
    they always send out more people,
    and the ghettos were smaller.
    They call this the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means they took all the furniture in one place.
    They throwed it out.
    And the same thing went with all the things
    which they found in the Jewish homes.
    And I assumed that the most important thing, the better
    thing, they sent to Germany.
    And this friend of my brother brought home needles,
    brought home a few combs.
    And when I worked, we went out already
    to work, I gave it to everybody, because the most necessity, you
    need a comb, you need a needle.
    Even when we came to the second concentration camp,
    I still have some needles.
    And a man, he looked like 70--
    he probably was 18 or 19 years old--
    he told me he was from Warsaw.
    His father was a millionaire.
    And I told him-- he asked me, Fraulein, can I
    sell him a needle.
    I said, sell him?
    I mean, here I have a needle, and I don't need to-- you--
    He said, you don't know which means a concentration camp.
    I told him, don't worry.
    You will see.
    God will help.
    The war will come to a end.
    It will not last forever.
    He said, who care--
    I mean, this is the-- which went on in the second one,
    happen if somebody couldn't work anymore,
    they didn't have any more strength,
    they swell up from hunger, whoever doesn't know.
    The worst part is much worse than to be killed
    is to suffer hunger.
    I saw these people.
    And when I came already to the second one, I couldn't believe.
    And I always tried my friends, and I talked to them.
    I said, we have to try our best.
    Things happen unbelievable.
    The first thing I saw when they brought us there,
    like Friday, late in the afternoon,
    almost night, they took us into a barrack.
    And men were living there before.
    How could these people be sanitary, be clean,
    if they didn't have any clothing?
    They just brought it, and we lived in this clothing
    which we had on our bodies.
    And especially men.
    Woman could somehow manage.
    I took off everything from my body and put on my coat,
    and washed mine whichever I had.
    Men couldn't do this.
    And we didn't lie down, because I knew it's unclean.
    So we were sitting a whole night.
    And after Shabbos, we took some-- or throw out
    this whichever it was left of that straw,
    and we washed the few boards, and we are lying.
    This is the way we are lying in the boards, like five.
    And it was no space even for this.
    If you wanted to turn around, you
    had to say-- everybody had to do it in the same time.
    And for until now I cannot fall asleep,
    put on my hand behind my head, because I'm used to this way.
    From the concentration.
    From the concentration camp.
    I can't.
    I just have to put out this.
    I can't fall asleep.
    Mrs. Moses, do you want to take us
    back to your first concentration camp when you left the ghetto?
    What was it like coming into Plaszow?
    Could you describe it?
    They took us coming in there.
    We had-- they built barracks.
    The barracks consisted of three layers of boards.
    I was always in the second floor, which I'm
    doing until now, by the way.
    And we went.
    They took us out early in the morning before daybreak.
    Took us out to work.
    And we were not allowed to wear even on decent underwear.
    No bras, no-- they wanted to--
    the life should be for us so--
    we should lose our will of life.
    This was their whole idea.
    But they didn't succeed.
    It was amazing to see how the girls, how we kept ourselves.
    We had, like I mentioned before, the Poles.
    The Poles, when we came, they looked us over all the time.
    And their whole concern was to punish us.
    What did you do in Plaszow?
    What was your work?
    My work was the same like we did in ghetto.
    They took it over.
    And in Kraków, we had the hospitals,
    was a Jewish hospital.
    They brought over all the equipment.
    I even tried to take care for my teeths in there.
    We went to the dentist in that first ghetto.
    So we worked, whichever they gave us the food.
    What was the food like in Plaszow?
    Which-- with the food?
    You didn't have to go on a diet.
    It won't work.
    I mean, I don't even remember.
    You should know one thing.
    During a war, everybody tries to take a part for their own.
    Everybody is concerned just about himself.
    The Poles had the authority.
    They must be the bakers, to bake for us bread.
    They took out the flour, the rye flour,
    and they put in potato starch.
    So a piece of bread was like good, like you could fill holes
    in a wall.
    But nobody was sick.
    Nobody was, in this concentration camp,
    not that I know.
    One woman with who died a natural death.
    This is one of the greatest miracles
    that could be described.
    If people would start--
    That none of you were sick?
    No.
    This was the first one.
    What did you do there all day?
    We worked.
    We worked 12 hours, and going to work and coming back to work.
    This is daily--
    What was the routine?
    --seven days a week.
    When you got up in the morning, what was the routine?
    Routine?
    We went first.
    I could never push.
    So whenever, right in the morning, I ask a friend.
    I always had a lot of friends.
    I said, you take my portion, which they gave out like--
    I call it [NON-ENGLISH] coffee.
    It's like a water-colored water, and a piece of bread.
    So I told her, please take care for my portion.
    And I went usually down.
    It was like for everybody the same.
    It's like a shower, to take a shower.
    When I came back, I ate my breakfast.
    I took a little piece, and a little some of this water,
    and they took us to work.
    And I didn't feel hunger.
    I just can't see it, because of the merit
    of my father's upbringing.
    My father brought us up that you are not allowed--
    to spoil food is the greatest sin.
    And I even very concerned even now
    because which I see what's going on.
    It's who has the right to take food and throw it out if it's
    good, if people can eat it.
    Even animals can eat it.
    My father taught me that you're not allowed to spoil food.
    When we were, like, I mentioned before, six children,
    went to school in the morning, my father
    prepared sandwiches for us to take along.
    And usually children don't eat the rinds.
    He cut around the rinds, put them in a tray.
    And he always called me and said--
    he explained to me how a great sin it is to spoil food.
    And I always felt that this is just the merit of my father,
    that I didn't feel hunger.
    Whichever I had, naturally, we tried
    to keep our holidays by heart.
    You were able to count the days?
    We counted the days, baruch HaShem,
    that they couldn't take away our minds.
    They could do with our bodies everything they wanted.
    And the fact, when they took us from one concentration camp
    to the others, we overheard.
    We understood German, and I speak it a little bit.
    And they said-- they ask who--
    whom do you have there?
    And they said, you should excuse me, the [GERMAN] Juden.
    The dirty Jews.
    The dirty Jews.
    And they said, are they?
    He said, oh, yeah, we have use them--
    as long as we need their strength,
    we will use out their strength, and then we
    will turn their bodies to soap, which they did.
    Did you ever see that, the soap?
    I didn't see it.
    I know.
    My husband certainly told me.
    He was in Auschwitz.
    He didn't want to use the soap.
    He knew it was made from human bodies.
    So he didn't want.
    And they beat him up a lot.
    Also, they beat him, and they knocked out all his teeth,
    because they found a potato in his pocket.
    Oh, he was running.
    They found a half [INAUDIBLE] of the tefillin.
    The phylacteries for the religious prayers.
    Yes.
    And somebody had it.
    And they went about 3, 4 o'clock, early in the morning,
    to be able to put it on just to do the mitzvah, which
    is obligated.
    And with the risk of his life.
    Also, they made a sukkah.
    They put together a few bricks, and they put-- found some straw
    and put it on top, and went in just to make a prayer.
    That is for the feast--
    This was in Auschwitz.
    Right.
    The feast of booths in the fall holiday.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    And we kept a sukkahs, which was not allowed.
    We had it.
    A lot of people had it in the ghetto.
    So your husband was able to do that in Auschwitz?
    Yes, he did it.
    You did the same in Plaszow?
    I wouldn't say there exactly the same, because he couldn't go in
    during the day or whenever they gave him,
    whichever they gave him.
    He came out from Auschwitz, he weighted
    80 pounds, which he weighted before the war, like, 200.
    You knew him.
    He was a tall man.
    Mrs. Moses, how long did you remain in Plaszow?
    Nine months.
    How did they let you know that would be leaving there?
    It was no way of knowing.
    They just came and they took you.
    And the first-- they took you at night.
    And in the next morning, people, they get at us.
    And then they picked out people.
    And some people meant that they will
    be able to save themselves because they had their husbands
    or children.
    And I had a very dear friend which I got acquainted with her
    in a concentration camp.
    And she had a pair of diamond earrings.
    That she was able to keep with her?
    She gave one to that--
    should I say it--
    Ordnungsdienst-- policeman.
    She meant that she will be able to save herself,
    but she didn't.
    One she still had.
    When we came-- this was still in the first one,
    first concentration camp--
    they send us away.
    They packed us, like, 102 in a car.
    And took you to a train?
    They--
    Or was it--
    We walked to the train.
    We didn't have cars.
    And they send us away.
    And when we were in these cars, I felt for myself, so what?
    I didn't leave anybody there.
    In this one, people, you hear the screaming, the crying,
    the leftovers there.
    I don't know when they send away the rest of them.
    Did you have any idea where you were going?
    No, but I felt maybe it's the same place where
    they took my whole family.
    So which-- am I more privileged?
    Am I more?
    Or why should I be different?
    So it didn't bother me at all.
    Were the others around you as calm, or were they bothered?
    I don't know.
    Nobody said anything.
    Some people were standing and asking,
    where are they taking us?
    I felt it's stupid to ask because who are
    the ones who are helping them?
    If the people who get us are the ones who are helping,
    then they wouldn't tell you.
    Even they wouldn't know.
    So make ourself-- a fool out of yourself?
    What was the train like, ride like?
    Do you recall?
    We had-- what can I tell you?
    It was in summer.
    It was no air, no way to go to--
    we are human beings.
    It's just the way they did-- they would transfer cattles.
    Not no different way.
    I'm sure a cattle, they took better care for them
    than for other human beings.
    With [INAUDIBLE].
    Did you have any kind of water or bread that they gave you?
    Anything?
    Once in a while, when they stopped,
    I had a little cup from my home.
    And when they had some water, it stick out my little cup,
    and I had a sip of water.
    Maybe it was a piece of bread, which I don't-- it must have
    been, because we traveled a long distance.
    Do you know how long you remained on that ride?
    Not exactly the hours.
    We didn't have any watches.
    They came to the first concentration camp
    one day in [PLACE NAME].
    Not to mention a name.
    It's a shame.
    And they called out to everybody, you should know.
    They put in suitcases whoever has any valuables--
    any gold, any watches, any valuable papers,
    whichever somebody has should just
    throw it in in the suitcases.
    And in case not, they shot a few people before.
    You should know this is the consequences.
    So everybody complied?
    Everybody.
    I don't know of everybody.
    Maybe somebody hid something someplace else.
    They could-- So this is the way they-- this is was before that.
    What was the camp that you arrived at now
    the second one was Skarzysko, near Radom.
    Had you heard of Radom before?
    Had you ever visited there?
    I heard.
    No, not visit.
    I heard of the Radom before, because they
    were great sages in Radom.
    They were rabbonim.
    Rabbis and scholars.
    And Rabbis.
    Yes, scholars.
    Radom was a known city, but I was never there.
    Was this camp like Plaszow, or was it different?
    This first camp we worked with ammunitions.
    This was a Polish ammunition factory.
    And it was set up in a forest.
    The Poles, when they worked there, when we came,
    there were still some of them there.
    But they were the managers, the helpers,
    which helped for them too.
    We had over ourselves, we had Germans, Volksdeutschen,
    the Poles, and our own [NON-ENGLISH]..
    But the ones, it hurts most, was the last.
    And these people supervised your work in the--
    They supposed to, yeah.
    And they demanded-- the Poles demanded much more
    than the Germans wanted.
    It came.
    This concentration camp was called Auschwitz.
    I happened to end up in the first part.
    There were three sections--
    A, B, and this was the C.
    So this was a work camp that was attached to Auschwitz?
    No, this-- Auschwitz is a other-- altogether different
    section.
    Auschwitz is not far from Kraków,
    and this was in a other section.
    This place has-- this one's Russian Poland,
    because Poland was in three times under Russian occupation.
    And there they put me to work.
    I had to clean grenades.
    Grenades?
    Grenades.
    They were production places which they filled them.
    They filled them with our special thing.
    They called it trotyl.
    It's yellow.
    And some places where they produced
    this, the people who worked in these places
    looked just like the canaries, like the birds, yellow.
    The whole-- they all looked yellow, yellow skin.
    Right.
    Trotyl is a type of chemical.
    Yeah, it's a chemical, and it's a yellow.
    The situation was, there, I felt that the only way we can
    survive is to help each other.
    I stood at a table by the finishing,
    and they put boys, young boys.
    They put a young Polish boy, the one
    who was supposed to sharpen the knives.
    This is very hard, when it's hardened.
    And you have to have a very sharp knife
    or whichever object to scrub it down.
    When they fill it, it leaks out a little bit.
    And this boy, I talked to him, and I said, why don't you
    sharpen this?
    And he said, let them scrub with their teeth.
    I said to him, if you will not do it, which you have to do,
    I will go to your manager, and I will tell him.
    The manager is one of the greatest sadists.
    Nice-looking young man.
    It's just a shame that his soul was in a human body.
    He tried to smile.
    I just couldn't look.
    I did my part.
    I came to me, my function was to wash him, again--
    To wash the grenades?
    To wash the grenades.
    This supposed to be washed with alcohol, rubbing alcohol.
    The Poles sold the alcohol, and they
    bought the cheapest kind of liquid, which sets up
    in the lungs, in the heart.
    And then couldn't we see that they want to finish us out?
    Because if you want somebody to work,
    why didn't they give us rubber gloves?
    They didn't.
    They gave us schmattas--
    rags.
    Rags.
    And this ate up the--
    my fingers, I don't have a strength in them.
    They looked, my hands, this side,
    like I would never do anything.
    This was I could see through, because it ate up
    the whole meat around from here.
    But I had in one hand that knife and in one hand that rag.
    And when I saw something, they-- it was--
    how you call it--
    a line, one shifted to the other.
    And they had to be filled, because otherwise they
    stood in the back with a big stick, and they hit you.
    Were you ever hit?
    Yes.
    But this didn't matter to me.
    I felt very sorry, and it hurts me much more
    when I saw that the young children were hit.
    But I tried to do my part.
    I took and I scrubbed it up.
    And the head to-- the line has to go on.
    Once they called me in.
    In the last, where they finished it up, they closed it up,
    they were [INAUDIBLE] Germans.
    The Germans who were there in this particular factory
    were the ones who were already injured,
    without legs, without a hand, like mostly without one limb.
    They were handicapped people.
    Handicapped.
    And they, when once they came in in the middle of the night,
    and he said, [SPEAKING GERMAN]?
    Would you translate that for us?
    Which is he wanted to know one of the laws,
    that their whole idea was to uproot our belief because they
    couldn't stand our belief teaches to be human,
    and to treat a other human being the way you
    should treat your neighbor.
    And they were just the opposite.
    That's why they hated us.
    And they used to test you on your religion?
    No, just like somebody was saying, [GERMAN]..
    And they used to say, where is your God?
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] I mean--
    "Why doesn't he help you?"
    The whole thing.
    And before the history, you know about the Kristall Night,
    which was in '38.
    The first thing, they destroyed the synagogues.
    They destroyed the Torah, because with the Commandments
    from the Torah, which is obligated,
    a few of them for all mankind is written there.
    And they are just--
    these people, unbelievable.
    They, it was even before.
    The beginning of the war, my sister, little sister,
    went out to buy a white chicken for my father.
    And I know that they, the Germans,
    couldn't kill a chicken.
    They could kill people, but in a very gentle way.
    If they killed somebody, they just
    pulled away the soft part in the ear, and they shot him.
    And they said, danke schoen, which means thank you.
    Is it believable?
    It's one thing to show that knowledge without Torah
    doesn't mean a thing.
    If people think that they educated
    their people, their children, and they don't give them
    the right upbringing, a religious upbringing,
    no matter which any religion is, but it contains
    some obligations, if a person is free,
    he can do everything which he wants, he thinks.
    But of course, we can see that as Germany
    was the country which was in the highest culture.
    And the big doctors and the big professors,
    what did they accomplished?
    They just sat and find ways how to gas people,
    innocent children, innocent people, people
    who could never kill a fly?
    For what reason?
    And then what happened while you were in this ammunition
    factory?
    How long did this last?
    For nine months.
    For nine months.
    While we were there, they brought out some people,
    like you mentioned before.
    Somebody tried to save themself.
    Some people tried to get arisch papers in order to survive.
    And they were some informers, or, by coincidence--
    because the German people themself,
    they wouldn't recognize us.
    Like I mentioned, my little sister used to go out,
    and she said she never--
    Jews, the Polish people weren't allowed
    to be in the same streetcar, in the same compartment
    with the Germans.
    She always went to the German side
    because she said they would not recognize me.
    But with the Poles, she was afraid.
    A little child like this.
    But about the child of my, this is a child.
    She didn't walk, but she danced.
    She didn't talk, but she sang.
    I've got an Shema, a good soul.
    We used to go out until we used to see her back.
    It was-- can I describe it to you?
    She used to come in.
    And she used to--
    my mother used to save her her supper at the end of the stove.
    And she took the supper, and where are you going?
    She says, a poor man is staying near the door
    there, near that entrance, and he is hungry.
    I can eat something else.
    Whenever she had some money, she always distribute it everybody.
    This was my little sister, which [INAUDIBLE] is named after her.
    I brought her up.
    Mrs. Moses, when you were you in the second concentration camp,
    was there any particular person whom you remember?
    You had talked about certain people who perhaps made
    an impression on you there.
    Finkelstein?
    Does that name--
    Finkelstein was a Jewish policeman.
    And all these people meant that they will save themselves.
    And this, most is people, some people
    meant that they wanted to show off.
    One thing I always believed, and I still go with the same,
    that I never volunteer, not volunteering for anything.
    They ask me, they send me, I had to go and I had to do.
    But I should be shown off, never--
    especially not with the Germans, because you
    couldn't believe it.
    Their language, their style of speaking is so nice.
    Without our danke schoen, and bitte schoen, which means,
    I thank you very much, and I--
    it's unbelievable.
    They came into Jewish homes, and they asked
    the people, can take out our--
    something, your first and most needed thing,
    and take it in you bag.
    And they gave them a receipt.
    You understand, it's a war.
    And they had-- these people had to leave the home.
    And they took it over.
    So you said it was with politeness.
    Everything which they killed and they persecuted,
    everything with politeness.
    One thing.
    In the second concentration camp, we were let the--
    he's one of them, the Melchek I guess.
    The Ukrainian.
    They help us too.
    They were our watchers.
    They led us to work with machine guns.
    Counted to five.
    These were the guards.
    The guards, our guards, our protectors.
    They count us better than millions.
    And in the way, one said that one of-- a young boy,
    they whistled something, a song.
    And they accused this boy that he whistled the song.
    And this is probably supposed to be their hymn or something.
    That boy was hanged in the second concentration camp.
    You recall that?
    Oh, in the first.
    I think it in the first.
    Anything which went on-- all the hangings, all the prosecutions,
    we had to gather in a place, and then stand in line.
    I, because of mine height, I had to be always in the front.
    I will never forget, as long as I will live,
    will always be in my ears, how this boy pleaded
    in German, ich bin unschuldig.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    And he fell down twice, which, as you know,
    the international law is against.
    And the third time, they hanged him, a boy maybe 17 years old.
    I seems-- mine eyes were already trained to look and not to see.
    I didn't see.
    These people had to hang for three days,
    and we passed by every day.
    I never saw a dead body there.
    I passed it by, but I never saw it.
    And he was hanged for whistling?
    He was hanged just because he whistled,
    and somebody reported him.
    Is this believable?
    Can anybody-- would anybody believe?
    I come across many times in the press and the papers,
    they are supposed to be professors,
    teachers of our youth who deny this,
    this is everything not true.
    And you saw it.
    I saw it.
    And we have the evidence.
    We count 6 million, but I assume it must be more.
    Can you imagine?
    They said, Hitler in [NON-ENGLISH],, said,
    even for 1942, it will be--
    or '43, one Jew will remain, it will
    in the palm will grow a hair.
    And if we lift this, it is an indication, like we always--
    Like Moshe Rabbeinu, our leader, Moses, saw that burning bush,
    and he saw it doesn't distinguish.
    This is the life.
    This is the existence of the Jewish nation.
    And whoever our enemies think that they will us annihilate,
    it will never be, as the long as the world exists.
    We have this assurance.
    And we kept with this.
    We kept this faith in ourselves.
    You feel that faith helped you through the concentration
    camps?
    No, nothing else but the faith.
    Because you can see, who did to whom?
    How can we lead a different life, eating kosher.
    We didn't.
    But I couldn't even swallow those
    which they gave in the soup.
    I just didn't go through to my throat.
    I know I didn't eat kosher.
    I didn't eat in Yom Kippur.
    I saved this piece of bread.
    And then I always had with me, because hunger is more--
    the mind works more.
    When you know you don't have it, you're longing for it.
    And you know you have it.
    You are not hungry.
    And this which I felt. Ba HaShem, I
    never, even it was a time.
    One time it was a Tisha be-Av.
    It's a fast day.
    It's a fast day.
    It's a mourning day.
    We mourn the destruction of our holy temples.
    And at night, it's usually it fell this year in a Saturday.
    Saturday we don't fast.
    We eat and fast the next day.
    We kept everything in our minds.
    And then the next morning, I went out.
    I tried to fast.
    I went out to wash whichever I had on my body,
    just leaving the coat on top, just in cold water.
    Can you imagine?
    And I felt sparks over mine eyes.
    And I never knew, which means fainting.
    And I felt no, if the situation goes that way, I'm not fasting.
    I went in, and I had my portion, which
    was a little piece of bread with a little bit black water.
    And we had either a half a spoon or a one spoon of marmalade.
    I ate it.
    It didn't take maybe a half hour to a hour.
    And I heard a whistle.
    The whistle was the sign we have to gather, to gather,
    everybody.
    We stood.
    This day could not be forgotten, because they put people
    in singles, looked us over.
    Whoever didn't look good went one side,
    and the other ones went on the other side.
    They killed, in this only place, more than 500 people.
    Mrs. Moses, we're going to stop briefly for a moment.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    When we come back--
    right-- when we come back, you'll
    be able to tell us the conclusion of that story,
    and then the rest of your experiences.
    I am Leatrice Robinsky.
    Today, we are interviewing Mrs. Anna Moses, a Holocaust
    survivor.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Mrs. Moses, we were talking about your concentration camp
    experiences.
    Do you remember any particular experience about holidays?
    You said that was so very important to you
    in the concentration camps-- the Passover, Seder.
    It was not just me recalling.
    We tried to keep our mind, and we believed--
    a lot of us believed that the only way we can survive
    is to keep our spiritual life going.
    It couldn't be any other way.
    We came, and I can't believe how people could think different.
    Because the whole world saw which was done to us, and how
    can even our own people be different?
    Who did to whom, I mentioned it before.
    When people take human beings, when
    we came to that second concentration camp,
    we met people literally just covering their body with paper,
    with a piece of string around.
    No thread of any material.
    Is this believable?
    Is this was led by human being?
    This what they did with human beings?
    What did you do, then, on the Passover holiday?
    The Passover holiday, we tried as much as possible.
    Some people bought some flour from ways
    and means they could ever get it,
    and they baked it in a little iron oven, a round one.
    Did you ever see this?
    I don't know if you ever saw this.
    It was standing like in the middle,
    and it was pipe in the top.
    And this was people used to heat homes sometimes, or one room.
    Was this in your barracks?
    This is in the barracks.
    And naturally, everything had to be secretly done,
    and they baked it at night.
    And it came the holidays, everybody,
    they tried to give a piece to make to [NON-ENGLISH]..
    In other words, each a piece of the matzo.
    Eat a piece of matzo.
    And the first one, not in the second one,
    I didn't eat any bread.
    Not that I can say the food which I ate
    anything else was kosher, but I tried.
    Did you have a Seder service?
    Did you try among--
    This was in the last one in Germany.
    It's unbelievable.
    I remember there were some girls who knew a few other languages,
    and I always wanted to learn.
    It was hard enough for sure, but we
    used to give her eat a piece of bread, a piece of margarine,
    and she taught us.
    One woman said to me, Haniu, for you,
    I will teach you without anything.
    She wanted me to know.
    But we tried to learn.
    Also, it came for the Passover.
    Like they had made--
    we didn't have matzo.
    It was in Germany already.
    But even before that, we tried to keep whichever we could.
    I want to bring out a few other points
    in the second concentration camp.
    Like I mentioned before, when we came there,
    and I saw the situation, and I couldn't believe that this is
    a place we can exist too long.
    But we, again, comes in the fate.
    Because is it describable when a person passed away already,
    they throw him literally in a box where you throw garbage.
    Used to be the big garbage boxes.
    And then, and they had filled it up,
    they came big wagons like in a slaughterhouse,
    and they throw him-- they took off--
    they never had a thread on their bodies.
    And I felt the life is so bitter,
    but the death is even worse.
    I said, it doesn't pay to remain here.
    We have to try our best.
    And it's just for some miracle.
    When we came to this concentration camp,
    this was in Skarzysk--
    Called it Skarzysko-Karmienna.
    Was that the one that was near--
    This is in Poland, which was--
    Near Radom?
    Near Radom.
    And not long after, before that woman
    I mentioned before had given one of her earrings came to me.
    I saw, I noticed that somebody, a man came into the barrack,
    and he wanted to buy from her that diamond--
    a Jewish man.
    He knew that she had had that diamond?
    No, she must have tell him.
    She must have knew him.
    I don't know how it went about.
    I happened to notice as people are talking already about it.
    See, Mrs. so-and-so.
    I don't want to mention.
    She never finished-- she was [INAUDIBLE]..
    She wrote me still when we lived in Pittsburgh already.
    And she said to me, I said, I don't like it.
    Because if too many people know about it,
    they will take it away from her.
    She will not have nothing.
    I worked when I came there.
    It was all-- all ammunition with a woman.
    They were there two sisters.
    I don't know if they are still here.
    I never met them.
    I never heard about him after the war.
    Two sisters had married two brothers.
    I just want to describe how I became a diamond--
    You were a diamond dealer?
    Diamond dealer in the concentration camp.
    It's interesting because so she said to me
    the epidemic, naturally, such uncleanliness, is such a--
    in such situation didn't take too long and broke out typhus.
    For the uncleanliness, they called it [NON-ENGLISH],,
    like bloody typhus must be the name.
    And everybody got sick.
    And a lot of people were sick.
    And this woman was extremely refined person.
    And she said to me, she wants to help people.
    Before that, I met this woman.
    We were sitting and talking, and she told me
    where she comes from.
    And that she was dealing with diamonds before the war.
    And told me a place in Poland where
    she hid a lot of diamonds.
    Her husband, I think, and her son, they were--
    they left.
    They went someplace.
    They must be-- or if not them, maybe the children
    someplace in England.
    So I was talking to her, and she said, what can I tell,
    and what can I say?
    She started telling me the story with the diamonds.
    After that, I asked her.
    I said, a woman has a diamond and I
    don't like the way it's going to be sold because I'm
    afraid they will take it away from her
    and she will not have nothing.
    Because they used to buy it up.
    They used to sell it to the Germans.
    Germans bought it up.
    So she asked me, what should I do?
    Before that, when I looked around right in the beginning,
    I went out.
    And I saw that there is no way to survive here.
    I met two sister in-laws--
    young woman, and they looked very decent.
    And I asked them, how long are you here?
    And she told me, a year and a half.
    And I said, how is it possible to be here a year and a half
    and look the way you look?
    Can you tell me the secret of your survival here?
    She told me, they had left merchandise at the neighbors.
    Again, that they were some decent ones.
    And now they are sending it over to them either by money,
    way of money.
    So a woman once told me that they had a Gentile apartment,
    and she was there with two children and her sister-in-law.
    And I told her, she was never very hungry.
    She was in her middle age in her 50s.
    And I happened to know the family
    because my sister, one of my sisters
    were married to this family.
    I said, you have obligation to your husband and your wife.
    Try.
    You see, we can't survive here by doing nothing.
    So she says she's afraid.
    They're not allowed to send out mails.
    You weren't allowed to write.
    So she asked me.
    I wrote for her the letter sitting in top,
    and wrote a few words.
    Can I tell you that when they were sick,
    these people received some money.
    Let's say they get half, but it doesn't make any difference.
    As long as they-- it can't be helped.
    So I knew that this woman had still some money.
    And I told her, I said, would you please loan me some money?
    I didn't have anything, but they trusted me.
    I don't know why.
    Because I have a case here that I would like her to
    should have as much as possible because she could
    help a lot of other people.
    And I gave her some money in order
    to help meantime these people she wanted to help.
    Meantime, they took us out every second week called
    to the [NON-ENGLISH].
    One Sunday, nobody knew why, they didn't let us out.
    I know why, because I told her that woman,
    it's not here anymore.
    You don't have it.
    She sold it, and she sold it--
    we gave her more.
    I didn't plan to have anything.
    The woman who sold it said to me, how come you are foolish?
    We given her at least 1,000 zlotys more
    than she could have.
    And we shared with 1,500 zlotys.
    Didn't take maybe two more days, and all of a sudden,
    I was standing waiting.
    We supposed to go to work, and I felt very dizzy.
    I went to doctor, and he gave me an injection.
    I was sick, but I had it in a very mild.
    Very mild.
    And because I had this money, it helped me to survive.
    I could have bought--
    they bought for me a piece of bread,
    or I had something that I could survive.
    Isn't this a miracle?
    And where did the diamond end up?
    The diamond end up--
    it was sold to somebody, but for a higher price.
    The woman had the money.
    She didn't have to do a way not to help
    anybody, and the opposite.
    She could help more people.
    And she had survived.
    I did not know she had survived, and I at once received,
    and we lived in Pittsburgh, I received a letter from her.
    She lived in Holon, Israel.
    And her husband happened to be with my husband together,
    and he survived.
    But after the war, people couldn't-- started to eat too
    fast, and they couldn't digest it.
    And a lot of people on account of this died, too.
    All right, Mrs. Moses.
    Now, would you share with us, you
    said you were nine months in each concentration camp.
    What happened after the second camp after the nine months?
    After the second camp--
    How did you leave that?
    --they scattered us again.
    Kept us overnight, and the next morning, they sent us away.
    Did you have any idea?
    No.
    Did you walk or go in a train?
    No, they took us in--
    In a train.
    --with this-- to the rail station,
    and they packed us in, again, like 102.
    And they throw when a few breads.
    And I had one in my hand, and a taller woman took it out.
    I forgive her because it was a time that you can't really
    accuse anybody.
    And then I met two women even before in--
    I felt to them like my mother.
    And they had some bread, and they shared with me a piece.
    Was this on the train ride?
    In the train ride.
    And I put it in my little bag whichever I had,
    and I-- it was very bitter.
    And it-- the whole-- the day when they send us away
    from the second one to the third one, they took us to the place
    where we worked in the ammunition factory.
    Put us in a stone floor.
    We were lying like one top of the other.
    And the next day, they picked us in this.
    And they were some--
    we met there some girls already, and they
    had tattooed their hands, KL.
    And they said-- they start to push.
    He said, you don't know which means a concentration camp.
    KL means concentration lager?
    Concentration camp-- lager.
    Right.
    I didn't have-- naturally, in the first one, they painted us.
    They painted our clothing, as it's known,
    and I had just my number and my clothing.
    And at that time, it was so unknown.
    They told even the people whichever they belonging
    they have they should take along,
    and people started to schlep this around.
    I didn't take anything.
    Just foolish.
    So we were in the way from Poland to Germany.
    We didn't know where.
    You had no idea where you were.
    No.
    Do you have any idea about how many girls went with you?
    No.
    I really don't know a number.
    And there, we came.
    We met all nationalities already.
    Do you know any reason why they emptied
    out the second concentration camp?
    Were there rumors of what was happening?
    We didn't know anything.
    We didn't have no any way.
    We could know a little better when we were in Germany.
    I happened, when we came already to Germany
    to describe this trip, it took us from Sunday
    until Friday surviving just in a little water.
    With no food?
    Because I gave this piece of bread
    to somebody, a friend of mine.
    And I said to her, please keep it for me.
    And when I-- in the first day, in the second day,
    I was so over fed up with everything
    that I didn't feel a hunger.
    I just once in a while, I had an opportunity
    to have a lick of water.
    I drank it.
    But I didn't feel hungry.
    When I started to feel hungry, I asked her.
    She says to me, they used to have a pastry bakery in Krakow.
    She says, after the war, I will give you torte for it.
    So--
    A torte.
    Something to look forward to.
    Yeah, but what could I do?
    She didn't mean anything.
    She couldn't-- she couldn't control herself.
    So we remained friends until I always
    used to see her when I used to go to New York.
    They're a lovely people, but in a time like that you cannot
    judge nobody.
    So I lived with literally a little bit of water
    a whole week.
    Came the Friday, they ask us to go in.
    I meant maybe-- this is the end already.
    Maybe gas.
    Who knows?
    They took us in.
    We saw a few buildings-- barracks.
    We saw people, it looked like a crazy house.
    They cut their hair because they didn't the previous ones, too.
    They looked over all the time.
    Sometimes it was nothing because some people have dandruff.
    And it looks like this is not clean.
    But they were sitting, again, Polish woman.
    And the minute they just had the greatest satisfaction
    to take with a little machine, not with our scissors,
    and cut on the hair.
    They shaved their heads?
    They shaved their heads.
    They had [NON-ENGLISH]---- the [NON-ENGLISH] on.
    What is a [NON-ENGLISH]?
    The stripes which everybody saw in the movies.
    I have pictures of them.
    And they took us in.
    They asked us to undress.
    Before I left, I had on a little overcoat like a housecoat.
    It's not really-- it's not really
    a house because you could work outside
    or to work special made.
    And I had a little pocket, and I had the pictures
    from my whole family.
    And whatever I felt, whichever what happened, wherever I go,
    can never know.
    Maybe at work, maybe--
    I want to have it with me.
    But they took us in a room.
    They ask us to undress.
    And we walked around just like newborn children.
    And there walked on the big educated men.
    And then they took us to other rooms.
    They didn't have prepared-- our clothing wasn't ready.
    So we just walked around in nightgowns, which they did.
    For short women, they gave long ones.
    This is the Poles already.
    This was in Germany already.
    For tall ones, they gave short ones.
    And this way, we walked around for two weeks until--
    You had no underwear, nothing?
    Nothing.
    We didn't even have toilet paper.
    Can you imagine?
    No toilet paper.
    They prepared-- we had a soup when we came in,
    and people who didn't eat a whole week.
    And it-- is this possible?
    You know how we had a piece of paper?
    Different margarine, everybody had
    the next for every third day, every fourth day,
    this was saved.
    What was the name of this camp the third camp?
    This was-- Birkenau-- was in Buchenwald.
    You were in Buchenwald.
    Buchenwald.
    And for good work, they gave us-- they had a canteen.
    And they gave us--
    and the canteen I still have at home.
    I used to hang it out before the Seder a few reminders.
    It was a piece of paper, it's written [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And for this, we could buy in the canteen
    a toothbrush, a piece of soap, which was like nothing.
    It's not soap.
    And little comb.
    I don't know.
    If it was a comb, I didn't remember.
    Do you remember what year this was?
    That was-- and when they took--
    this was in '43.
    They came there '42 in the middle--
    in November '43.
    And there, again, we worked.
    I happened to end up being the lucky one working in a place
    that I had even a little stool.
    Because this was the finishing out.
    We had to look over and clean out the timers which
    went into the grenades.
    So you worked in ammunitions again?
    In ammunitions.
    And there, it was a beautiful building.
    And it was-- the radio was on, and we understood everything.
    After they saw we understand, they took it out.
    And even--
    What had you heard on the radio?
    Had you heard news about--
    We had some news, too.
    And they were some old German people, and they told us.
    They said, you will take off you [NON-ENGLISH],,
    this concentration camp uniforms,
    and we will have to put them on.
    And we knew even some--
    I would say we read them their every move.
    It was-- the one who was in charge of our room,
    he knew Polish.
    So we had to be careful not to speak it
    because he was in Poland during the war.
    They used to have a map, and they used to-- after the news,
    they used to go in and show it.
    And we used to tell to each other,
    they staying [NON-ENGLISH].
    Standing and praying?
    Saying, no, we know that something goes on.
    We just watch their move.
    But again, nobody can believe the German nation naturally
    must have been told a long time ago.
    And a lot of people, they took--
    they let us out all the criminals from all the jails.
    We had our men there, old men who
    had all his hand-- the hand tattooed all over.
    And I remember this was already in this concentration camp.
    In the beginning, they gave us a soup.
    And with us was a German woman because later on, and even
    before as maybe people told the ones in Krakow, when they send
    out the people in 1938 from [PLACE NAME],,
    this was the border, all the Polish citizen,
    German threw them out.
    Poland didn't let them in.
    Somehow they came to Krakow, and they
    tried to locate them in the beginning in all
    the synagogues, in all the buildings
    which were occupied from the Jewish, let's say, federations.
    They had all kinds of buildings.
    So these people were there, and slowly, they tried to,
    whichever way, to emigrate.
    I don't know how, but not all of them remained.
    In this one, we worked already.
    They had airlifts, which means not
    like now airlifts, but the--
    we heard the planes.
    And they had the sirens.
    They were yellow.
    They were worried, the Germans.
    We said, we have to take a break.
    We were just-- we didn't care at all.
    We weren't afraid.
    We didn't even mind at all.
    And this is almost--
    You weren't afraid of air raids?
    Not at all.
    For what?
    I mean, what do they want to do with us?
    Did you know it was the end of the war?
    Did you feel it was?
    We did not know.
    We know it's coming closer, and they
    are-- we understood when they are already
    fighting in Germany.
    If we lived to this time that they are already in German air.
    So we know something is coming close.
    How and what you didn't know, but we observed them,
    and we watched them, and you could feel it in the air.
    You could feel it.
    Did you sense that the Germans were afraid?
    We saw it.
    The minute the siren was-- they were just--
    they became wild.
    We were laughing.
    We just used to joke about it.
    When will we have our intermission?
    Just we went down like nothing.
    We didn't worry, not at all.
    In this camp also--
    How long did you stay in this camp?
    Nine months.
    So you were nine months in each camp?
    Nine months in each.
    And I mentioned, and I guess that the good Lord just
    repaid me with three, Ba-HaShem, lovely daughters.
    He felt one to represent the birth period
    for each of the nine months that you stayed?
    Each for nine months.
    What happened toward the end of this camp stay?
    The end?
    This was even before we tried to keep-- again,
    the spirit kept us.
    They were high intelligent girls, and we made plays.
    We made a theater.
    Found a piece, like you found a piece of paper, set the table.
    We took the coffee, that colored water.
    This was the wine.
    We found what you call it like a big ribbon.
    It's a vegetable.
    And we made nice round slices, and this was the matzo.
    A turnip?
    Like, but it's a big one.
    The turnips are small, and this was a big one.
    Like they have it-- sometimes they have it like sugar ones.
    Beets?
    No, beets is red.
    I see.
    This was a kind of a vegetable, a round one-- big one.
    And we made out of this, this was the slices,
    so this was the matzo round.
    And we, whichever we remembered by heart, we said the seder.
    And I can tell you, the Poles couldn't believe it
    how we kept ourself.
    They were the same time in the concentration camp, too.
    The difference was their sin was because we
    had to limit time still in the ghetto how long we could walk.
    And when we had a time, and when they cut him,
    they put him for a week, for a month, for two months.
    They had a limit.
    For us, there was no limit.
    And they, in a short period of time,
    they looked-- it's unbelievable.
    And we kept herself nice, and clean,
    and decent, and with hope.
    The ones who said, oh, we can't survive never-- didn't survive.
    And I'm positive that just the spirit--
    the spirit helped a great lot, and that's why we could--
    they were among people, friends, which
    they tried to help each other.
    Without this, would have been impossible.
    Did you remain at the camp toward the end of the war,
    or were you taken from the camp?
    From the camp when the front came close, they took us out.
    And how they, like you say, how did you know?
    They told us a part of the people
    they took to Czestochowa.
    This was in Poland.
    And they told us like we would be fools.
    Unfortunately, and naturally, everything in German,
    we can't rescue you because it's no time.
    And we couldn't say nothing.
    And we were in Germany.
    This was when they sent us out.
    And then in Germany, when it came by the end,
    all of a sudden they took us out--
    Didn't you go on a march from there?
    Yes.
    Could you describe it?
    Yes.
    Before this, it was just always like the holidays.
    We try to remember.
    It was as the Taanis.
    It's a day of fast before Purim.
    This is a fast of Queen Esther?
    The fast of Queen Esther.
    And all of a sudden, it was a air raid.
    And then we went outside, and they took us home.
    It's unbelievable.
    The houses there, lights, this is a very beautiful city.
    You were near the German city of Leipzig, right?
    We were in Leipzig, but this was maybe a little out of the city
    because we weren't free to go anyplace.
    We were just in the buildings, and they took
    us to work and back from work.
    They took us by lanterns by 4 o'clock in the morning,
    and they took us back at night, always with guards.
    And after that air raid, we went out.
    We saw just like burnt papers outside.
    They were a few buildings all demolished.
    One of the men who was a watchman, or I don't know,
    who worked in this place came to work.
    His wife and two daughters went to visit,
    and happened to be in the building.
    Their bodies were still in the--
    covered with the ruins, and he came to work.
    And he said, Deutschland über alle--
    the country goes before anything.
    Can you imagine?
    And he knew that his family was?
    He knew.
    And also, before we left, we saw they took all the machineries
    and they hid them underground.
    And the same places, if anybody would take me there,
    I could show it.
    It's nothing new.
    The war machinery was saved?
    The war-- or the ammunition factories, the machinery,
    everything is saved underground.
    Could you describe this march that you went on?
    The march, they took us out.
    And again, we walked, and we couldn't
    wait to see our building.
    We worked for three weeks like this.
    We couldn't wait to see our building.
    We hoped already to see our building with electric wires.
    Each one of the concentration camp
    was surrounded by electric wiring.
    And they had-- also, they had the watch things, the high--
    Towers.
    --towers.
    And so they took us, and we walked.
    They said it's just a short distance,
    but we walked for a long, long time.
    The only rest, we rested a little bit in the ground,
    in the fields.
    And they had very little food already there.
    So they gave us, for a day, maybe a half a baked potato,
    and we had to survive in this.
    Because in the beginning, they fed us.
    The rations were pretty decent.
    But I assume at that time by the end of the war,
    they didn't have.
    And they had-- they needed us so badly, they couldn't let us go.
    And by the end, before they took us, we saw it.
    Because when they dragged us around,
    we saw some of the German people put on their civil clothing.
    And on top, they put on the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    their military clothing.
    So we could understand.
    We weren't fools.
    And while we walked, we had always planes on top of us.
    And when the planes came low, they came close to us.
    They shouldn't be seen.
    But we, even in this situation, we tried to help.
    It was one girl, a daughter of a rabbi,
    there were two sisters from Radom.
    And she was so weak she couldn't walk.
    We carried her.
    We changed, but we carried her.
    And also, we passed by the German country.
    Unfortunately, is so nice.
    The scenery is lovely there?
    Beautiful.
    Beautiful houses.
    We said-- we pass by, and people saw--
    they dragged us around a transport like this.
    They couldn't believe it.
    And one older woman said, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    That means, what this good-for-nothing people did
    with these people, it will be a disgrace for all the time
    to come for the whole nation.
    For the German nation.
    For the German nation.
    Because we looked-- it's--
    I can't describe it.
    Because when we left, everyone had one blanket.
    We were already at the time with all nationalities.
    We had even gypsies among us.
    And the gypsies, we were lying down.
    So we put them in the ground one blanket,
    and we covered ourselves with the other one.
    All of a sudden, they took off--
    they stole it away.
    So I remember walking with my friend,
    and we both covered with one.
    How did we survive there?
    They-- somebody had-- we didn't have any water.
    We found some place--
    I don't know.
    I can't call it a stream because it was so little,
    and we had a can.
    And we took a little water.
    It was more dirt than water.
    And some people tried to get some grass and cook this grass.
    And found some splinters of some--
    it was in the forest.
    And which, I mean, it's the life they've had for three weeks.
    Was this--
    This was in German ground.
    German-- did you have any idea where they were taking you?
    No.
    They just schlepped us.
    They didn't know themselves.
    They did not know themselves.
    Did you hear any news--
    I assumed that they took us because the few German people
    were afraid they shouldn't be sent to the front.
    And they want to save their skin, so they had to--
    Stay with you.
    They stayed with us.
    How did you know liberation was at hand?
    Could you describe the day of liberation?
    Yes.
    It was not early because the last few days, we ran away.
    How did that happen?
    --girls came to me, and she told me we are eight.
    Would you like-- we are seven, eight.
    And you want to be with us?
    I knew them.
    Not all of them, but I knew them.
    And I said, the only condition I have,
    I have a close girlfriend.
    If she can come with me, I will be with you, too.
    I didn't ask for any details because I didn't have anything
    to contribute.
    I figured maybe they give something.
    It seems that they watched the guard who
    was watching us fell asleep, and they started running away.
    And I ran after them.
    I couldn't run as fast because--
    I don't know.
    I just-- is a high up hill, and I couldn't.
    I was too weak.
    Because before that, and even during that march,
    it was the time like in March.
    The ground was still frozen.
    We could still see a little bit of snow or ice.
    We didn't have-- the shoe broke.
    I threw it away, and I was just running.
    And before that, when they schlepped us around,
    dragged us around, people stole some potatoes
    lying in the fields to prepare to be able to--
    for what you call it, for the new potatoes.
    And there were two sisters, German girls.
    One bent down, picked up a potato,
    and the watchman shot her.
    And the other sister--
    He shot her right there?
    He didn't say nothing before.
    This is right before me.
    He didn't warn her.
    He didn't say, don't take it.
    He just shot her.
    This is such a cold blooded murders.
    And the other one started crying.
    And he said to her, you want I can do the same thing to you.
    And they just-- whoever during that march is--
    people fell like during the cutting of the wheat, whichever
    you call it, the harvest.
    People fell because they couldn't continue,
    and they just say [NON-ENGLISH],, which means, continue.
    Walk fast.
    The one who couldn't, they fell in the way,
    and a small group remained.
    Do you have any idea how many of you remained?
    I know which people say that like a half
    a percent people from the concentration survived.
    They were other people survivors.
    Most of them could be just like the ones--
    somehow, the ones who were taken to send away even to Siberia.
    From there, it was-- they had their portion enough, hunger,
    and a lot of people died from all kinds of sickness,
    but half of them, I know a fact from my family, half returned.
    From the concentration camps, I'm
    the only one survived from my whole family.
    Mrs. Moses, tell us about the day of liberation.
    When we ran away, I sticked with my--
    in the fields.
    Like if somebody fainted in a way,
    we found a little piece of rhubarb,
    and this was our medicine-- a little sour to survive.
    I didn't have the mood anymore already,
    and I said to my friend, I said, let me sit already in the road.
    I don't care.
    And she just dragged me along.
    She cried.
    She cut a piece of grass.
    It was in April already.
    And she tried to give it to me, or the piece of rhubarb
    we held for--
    this was the medicine for survivors.
    And then we came to a countryside,
    and we went in our--
    I was always blonde, and people didn't recognize me.
    They were some Polish girls working there.
    A lot of Polish people went to Germany
    because they needed workers to work in the fields.
    I saw one Polish woman, and she meant I'm Polish.
    And she brought me some food, and she brought me
    a dress to cover up.
    Because we couldn't walk around because they recognized us.
    We had the [NON-ENGLISH],, which is clothing from the jail.
    So I had this dress.
    We went into one woman, and we asked her
    if we can stay here in the stable.
    And somehow, it was an old man there with that woman.
    She had mercy on us, and she let us go in there.
    And the man brought us some warm water.
    Can you imagine our feet were just sores.
    He brought us some warm water, and she cooked for us a light
    soup, [NON-ENGLISH].
    And we stayed there.
    We were there at night, and we lay down.
    We could hear, the war could not be too far away.
    We could hear the machine guns.
    So he said to us, don't worry.
    The war is coming to an end.
    And we stayed there a few days.
    First, we-- the first group, we separated in three parts.
    I felt that we should follow the way of our patriarch Jacob
    that he didn't keep the whole camp at once.
    If one is attacked, the other one.
    But we kept contact.
    And then it took a few days, and then we weren't just freed.
    You know who came in.
    It was close to the Russian border.
    The Russians came in.
    A day before, we didn't have electricity.
    We didn't have it because we weren't in the house.
    It was no electricity, and no water, and we could know.
    This is something-- a end, but it's not the end [? we had. ?]
    So when they saw it so close, they
    asked us already, come into the house.
    And we closed the door, and the next day,
    or at night, the Russians came in.
    And they came in, and they had to open the door.
    And they opened the door.
    It's no problem.
    They came in first the tanks--
    with the tanks.
    And my girlfriend was a very beautiful woman.
    She had lost her husband and her children.
    And the Russians are known for these types of people,
    especially for soldiers who were in the--
    and they stood to her, and they wanted to-- they--
    so she said, please leave me alone
    in Polish, which is a little similar.
    We told the people because you treated us, you took us in,
    we tried to do-- we will try to do our best to say
    good words for you.
    Those were Germans who took you in?
    German people.
    And when they came in, and they were looking, and we told them,
    it's nobody here.
    It's just a woman and it's just an old man.
    And then, anyway, so my girlfriend, until she told him,
    I'm [NON-ENGLISH],, he wouldn't let her go.
    She said that she was a Jew?
    She's Jewish, and this must have been a Jew.
    You mean the Russian liberating soldier was a Jew?
    The Russian liberator-- one of them was a Jew.
    Because the minute she said, I'm a [NON-ENGLISH] and I lost
    my family, she said it in Polish.
    And she said, please leave me alone.
    He let her go.
    At first, unfortunately, a lot, a lot of incidents
    with this Russian soldiers.
    What happened to you then?
    You realized it was the end of the war?
    We knew, but it was--
    naturally, we realized that we knew before we could feel
    every second what's going on.
    But we didn't know which the end will be because here
    are the Russian people.
    And we know stories which our parents told us
    about the First World War which happened how were the--
    now it's nothing to talk about it.
    But at that time, how they were looking for young woman,
    and especially young girls.
    And they did a lot, a lot, a lot of people--
    girls which I knew.
    Mrs. Moses, now at the end of the war,
    what were your thoughts?
    Did you want to go to your home?
    We tried.
    I mean, it's-- it's not that we wanted.
    We were without anything.
    We were-- we tried already when we knew
    that the war is to the end.
    We tried to go back.
    They were trains.
    The trains, we could ride an hour or two.
    And the next morning, we wrote again.
    And we came to the same place.
    But we passed by Terezin--
    Theresienstadt.
    Is it Theresienstadt?
    No, Dresden.
    You're talking about Dresden?
    Dresden.
    Dresden, they called us always-- the German called us,
    this is the heart of Germany.
    And I was privileged, I could say, to see the ruins there.
    It was-- I didn't see not maybe further out,
    but in the city itself I didn't see a whole house.
    And from Dresden.
    From Dresden, we tried to travel by this type of transportation.
    And we came back.
    We came back to Krakow.
    You had told us the story of meeting
    your husband in the very beginning of our interview.
    But just briefly recount for us, where did you and your husband
    come together?
    Where did you meet?
    It was-- first I came to Krakow, and I
    want to mention one word about still the Poles.
    The ones who were good, they are single people.
    I went to-- I told to my friend, I said, let's go.
    He is a socialist worker.
    He took over the nicest store for a Jewish store.
    And I said, let's go.
    I know the house, and let's go to this place.
    We came there, knocked at the door.
    They didn't recognize me.
    I told them who I am.
    They didn't say, come into the house,
    but they gave us a cup of sour milk
    and a piece of bread outside.
    So they were kind to you and--
    And they told us, so many of you still survived?
    This people, he knew my whole family.
    Used to come to our house.
    And this was-- can you imagine?
    That was your welcome.
    This is the most marvel come.
    And then from there, I met-- we were first
    located again in homes like we belonged to Jewish people.
    Temporarily, they opened a public kitchen.
    They gave us a soup.
    And I was waiting there, and everybody there, they
    had lists.
    And they got the whole world.
    And I wrote in my name.
    I remembered my mother's-- my mother had a brother,
    and my father had a brother, and I remembered the name
    and the address.
    And I put it in the list.
    And also there, I met a cousin of mine who ran away.
    He went to Russia.
    And he came back.
    He was in the Polish army if you know of the [NON-ENGLISH] army.
    So you had then some relatives who did survive the war?
    You were fortunate.
    I had from Russia one, but he was just-- he was still
    in the Polish uniform.
    And from there, I said, because before the war,
    my father had very good friends.
    And I said, somebody told me that they survived.
    And I had met them in before.
    In the first concentration camp, I met them.
    And we promised each other, if Hashem will help,
    that we will survive.
    We should be together.
    And when I heard that they are here, I went to Tarnow.
    This was they lived.
    And there, I met my husband.
    And that's the beginning.
    We got married in '46, and we left Poland in '40--
    we came to United--
    we left in November '47.
    And we arrived to United States the 4th of April in 1948.
    Mrs. Moses, we're so grateful for sharing this story with us.
    I'm glad that I could do it.
    This is Leatrice Robinsky.
    Our Holocaust survivor today has been Mrs. Anna Moses.
    This is a project of the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Anna Moses
    Interviewer
    Leatrice Rabinsky
    Date
    interview:  1985 January 17
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 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
    Moses, Anna.

    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​/irn504977

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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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    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

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    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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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    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.

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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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    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 Marguerite Morris

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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