Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.39 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0039

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth
    Transcript
    This is Sidney Elsner.
    Today, December 27, 1984, we are interviewing Hilda Prooth,
    a Holocaust survivor from Prague, Czechoslovakia.
    This is under the sponsorship of the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Before we begin the questions, I want
    to explain that Mrs. Prooth was a resident of Prague who
    was sent to Theresienstadt, the so-called good concentration
    camp in Czechoslovakia.
    But she was not sent there until 1943,
    in contrast with many, many thousands of Jews
    from elsewhere in Czechoslovakia,
    who went there immediately after the German occupation.
    This is because Mrs. Prooth was under the protection
    of the Swedish government, as on the books,
    a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia.
    Her husband had been born in what was Russia,
    but taken when he was six months old by his parents
    and the family to England.
    And he was brought up thinking he was born an Englishman.
    It was not until during the war, when
    he was teaching in Germany, that he
    realized he had Russian birth.
    And consequently, the family had to leave Germany as Jewish
    and go to Prague, which was then free.
    At that-- after some time, when the Germans
    occupied Czechoslovakia, this Russian citizenship by birth
    came in very handy because Russian citizens
    were regarded as interned.
    Czechoslovakian Jews were deported to death camps.
    Accordingly, Mrs. Prooth had this document
    in which the Swedish consulate changed
    her place of birth, which was erroneously listed here
    as Czechoslovak--
    Then I was stateless--
    Stateless, she was stateless--
    --because my husband was stateless.
    --then changed to USSR.
    And this is what kept her out of the death camps in that period
    and sent her to Theresienstadt, instead, in 1943.
    Mrs. Prooth, tell us, please, about your early life,
    what it was like in Germany--
    what your life was like in Germany before.
    It never was in Germany.
    This was Austrian-Hungarian monarchy.
    We never was in Germany.
    This was only the first--
    after the First World War, we had the option
    to be a Czech or a Sudeten district.
    My father made the option we were Czechs.
    So we lived in Karlsbad.
    We were born in Karlsbad, I and the family.
    And I moved into Prague because Prague,
    I wanted to widen my horizon.
    So I went to Prague.
    And I lived in Prague.
    When I say Germany, I was referring, I think,
    to your husband's--
    No, he was--
    --teaching.
    You said that--
    --he was alone.
    He was there alone.
    He was in Stettin in--
    alone as a teacher.
    He came from England.
    I didn't-- I was not yet married to him.
    Right.
    But tell us--
    And I couldn't get married because he was stateless.
    And I was sick.
    So I would have lost my--
    Wait, back up just a minute.
    Yeah.
    When did you meet the man who became your husband?
    He became to me a husband, I think, in '40.
    OK.
    When did you meet him and under what circumstances?
    In '39.
    Where?
    In--
    In Prague?
    In Prague, in congregation, all the truth--
    all the refugees came to the congregation
    because first of all, they had to be registered there.
    And second of all, they had to get some--
    some of them, they got some support from them.
    So and since I was very much involved with the people,
    with the thing, so I--
    Saturday, when somebody, Friday, came from Germany as a refugee,
    so when a woman was, they sent them to me
    because the congregation was closed for religion Friday
    evening and Saturday.
    So they opened again on Sunday.
    There was also a Russian girl with.
    So she knew him because they came together there.
    And my husband, he translated.
    And I sent letters for the people
    who couldn't speak English and wanted
    to emigrate to America or Australia,
    like this particular girl.
    So he made all the things.
    So I came involved with this all.
    How did the Swedish consulate come to know of you?
    Because I went there.
    Tell us what happened.
    I went there.
    And I said, I married one of your subject now.
    And I wanted to tie him.
    And he said for me that I was there.
    So he said-- he tried to help me whenever, however it would
    be possible for him to help me.
    But he doesn't know not yet how he will deal with the Nazis.
    The Swedish were watching out for the Russian interests--
    Yes.
    --in Czechoslovakia--
    In Czechoslovakia.
    --just as the Swiss do for the American interests--
    The Swiss, yes, quite right.
    --in Cuba at the moment--
    Quite right, yes.
    --1984.
    Yeah.
    Correct.
    And so he-- when--
    once I came home, and I had a cleaner woman at home--
    my husband was gone already in Germany in the camp.
    And I was arrested-- not arrested,
    but some people, because I didn't have any star, so
    these two guys or three guys, these Nazis,
    took me along and want to go into Gestapo.
    But of course, they had to release me again,
    accordingly about this paper.
    OK.
    But then I said--
    We'll come to this paper in a minute.
    How is it that you did not wear the yellow star that everybody
    else--
    Because the consulate made--
    wrote a letter to the police, said,
    Russian Jews is not necessary to wear the star.
    You have that letter here?
    Yes.
    Read it to us.
    It's over there.
    Where is this?
    No, it's on your--
    Is this here?
    Yeah.
    No, it's not here.
    Yeah, yeah.
    You have it there, no.
    We're on television, so.
    I'm sorry.
    Oh, here it is.
    But this is in German, of course.
    Read it in English, translate it to English.
    Yes.
    We take the answer according to your question whether the--
    and the [INAUDIBLE] Swedish consulate in his--
    being he has the Russian interest
    in mind for the protectorate and permanent man.
    This was in our state.
    And so he writes, he was the Soviet Russian state people,
    stating they are not necessary to wear
    the Jewish star, the David.
    And this is signed by the Swedish?
    Signed by the Swedish General Consul.
    And what date?
    This was on the 20--
    1920-- '42, December 1942.
    Fine.
    Yeah.
    Tell us about your life in--
    before Hitler came to Prague and after Hitler
    came to Prague, the differences.
    Now, right, I-- when I was working.
    As what?
    I was, like I say, a governess.
    But I was at home.
    And I was teaching the Czech children German.
    So I was tutoring, really.
    And of course, then, when the Nazis came,
    it was not necessary.
    The Czechs they had no--
    they were so without the head, they didn't know anything.
    So I didn't do much.
    I was sewing.
    My really thing is a seamstress.
    And so read-- then I was my husband.
    I didn't know, when the Nazis came,
    we were not allowed to go in the evening.
    Of course, out after 8 o'clock, you
    were not permitted to go in the street.
    And in the morning, at 5:00--
    6 o'clock was again the curfew from 8 o'clock in the evening
    till in the morning 6 o'clock, they had a curfew.
    You couldn't go out.
    If you would go out.
    And even if you looked for the window out, you would be shot.
    What year was this?
    This was in 1939, when they came.
    And the Jews were not allowed to go shopping, only from 3:00
    till 4:00 in the afternoon.
    The Jews couldn't have any eggs, no onions, no meat, no nothing.
    They couldn't eat.
    They couldn't get.
    So they had the card, the ration cards.
    They were stamped everywhere--
    Jude, Jude, Jude.
    This means Jew.
    And you could only go--
    no shopkeeper would sell you something.
    Even if you would go in, he would be arrested
    for giving us the food.
    OK.
    And what was your life like socially?
    There were no much socially life anymore.
    You could only have it amongst something
    because after 8 o'clock, you couldn't go anymore
    in the street.
    We-- and when-- you married-- this was 1939.
    And you became married in 1940?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, about, yeah.
    What was the Jewish wedding like under occupation?
    They couldn't marry anymore in the city.
    We had to go in a suburb.
    My husband was already in the camp.
    And I had to get the permission to get him out.
    What type of camp?
    In Prague, interned camp, already from the Russian.
    Was the Russian, what were there together.
    Correct.
    And so I had to get a permission to get him out
    to go in the suburb.
    There came a policeman with him.
    And I ask him--
    I gave this policeman some cigarettes.
    I said, listen, I have a dinner prepared.
    Could you go with him--
    bring him at least home?
    So he said, yes, I have permission to.
    He have permission till 4 o'clock to be out.
    But at 2 o'clock will be an exchange of the guards.
    So in my house, there were the--
    was funny enough.
    And there was a guard.
    This one came in.
    And the other one went out.
    So then we went--
    I went with him to get in this camp.
    It was an hour away from Prague.
    And so right in this ended our marriage.
    And then they told me, maybe he comes away in 10--
    in a week or so, they come away from here.
    They don't stay in Prague.
    So right, and this one guy, this German, this Nazi-- well,
    I don't know the rank what he had,
    but he was fairly decent to me.
    And he said to me, he will come away.
    And once I heard the first transports
    went to Poland from the Jews in Prague, so I was so excited.
    And I went to him in the office of the Gestapo.
    And I said, listen, the people come away now.
    What happened now when I think--
    I said.
    He said, no, your husband comes away too.
    I said, would you promise me that I
    will know when he is coming away or something?
    He said, I promise you, when he is coming away, I let you know.
    And sure enough, a week later, I came home,
    there was a note under the door.
    Your-- the men are coming away next day.
    It didn't say, go visiting or something,
    only that's what he let me know.
    Was very nice-- I found this was decent of this guy.
    He had a beautiful--
    either a high rank of the Nazis.
    But he was very nice.
    I mean, I was grateful to him.
    So then later on, I ask him where the men are going.
    He said, I cannot tell you.
    I said, you know what?
    Is Christmas coming.
    And maybe I could send him some cookies,
    my imagination what I had.
    So he said, you don't send any cookies.
    Now, maybe I have to wash him his clothes.
    He needs-- he will be dirty.
    So I said, maybe, you do this one.
    He said, he doesn't need you either.
    Now, I pestered him so much, so long
    that he gave me the address.
    And he said, write on this address.
    So I wrote him on this address.
    And I got, after a time, this address, a letter back.
    And there was written in shorthand,
    he is well, and don't write anymore.
    So this what is.
    Was the address in Poland or where?
    No, no, this were in Germany.
    This were between Munich--
    In Germany.
    --and Nuremberg or somewhere there in the camp.
    So this what is.
    This is all what I knew from him.
    Your husband survived the war and came with you to Cleveland?
    He was sooner there as I was.
    Yeah.
    Because I was in France.
    No.
    But he came to Cleveland?
    Yeah.
    He survived.
    He came to Cleveland and looked for me.
    OK.
    We'll come back to that.
    But we want to make sure that everybody knows
    that he did survive the war.
    Yes, sure, he survived.
    Yeah.
    And he died when?
    He died in 1960 in America.
    Right.
    And how did your--
    before you were married, how did your family make a living?
    How many brothers and sisters did you have?
    What did your father do?
    My father was a painter--
    but of course, no painting anymore.
    And you lived somehow.
    I don't know anymore.
    Sometimes, I think, how did we live?
    I did odd jobs.
    I went some-- when somebody was sick,
    and I helped them something.
    But I got paid for this-- not very much.
    But I don't really--
    I don't know how we lived.
    How many brothers and sisters did you have?
    We were four.
    We were really six, but one died already
    on cancer many years ago.
    And then I had a brother.
    And he was a communist.
    So of course, he was Jewish and communist,
    was a very bad mixture.
    So I had to get him out to England.
    He came to England.
    And I had another brother, a younger brother,
    and a younger sister.
    And the older sister, she was in Vienna.
    I never knew what happened to her.
    Of course, she was much more older as I was.
    She was seven years old as I was.
    So I-- she was very old already.
    And she-- I don't know what happened to her.
    She just got lost.
    And I never heard again anything.
    And I wouldn't know where to find her--
    find something about her.
    Did any of your brothers and sisters survive?
    No.
    No, just my brother from England.
    He survived in England.
    In England.
    But--
    But my younger brother, he was beaten
    to death because somebody told him,
    he should take such a money out.
    And he had to work the trenches outside the ghetto.
    And they found on him this one.
    Then they beat him up.
    And this time, I was very psychic.
    I dreamed in the night, my brother--
    his name was Freddie.
    And he called for me.
    He said, Hilda, help me.
    Help me, help me.
    Please, come and help me.
    And I woke up.
    And I said, something happened to Freddie.
    He called me.
    And sure enough, it didn't take maybe 10 days,
    12 days long after this, I came to Theresienstadt.
    So of course, I looked in the matric
    where this is, in the thing, in the files.
    They said, go look there by the dead ones there.
    So of course, he was by the dead ones.
    And he was in a transport.
    And he was gone.
    So I had a sister.
    She was married and had four children.
    They were all there.
    But you see, in Theresienstadt, the women,
    they got something in their food, mostly in the soup
    that you lose your menstruation.
    So the women, sometimes, when they have a husband
    and so, they didn't know, when you have no menstruation that
    you cannot be pregnant.
    And they made always lectures that women
    shouldn't think about this.
    They can't be pregnant, even if they
    have no menstruation because this was artificially subtract.
    So right-- and she also got.
    But what I heard from her, how she died,
    I heard when I came back to Prague in a synagogue.
    I heard-- when the mothers--
    there was a transport in Auschwitz.
    And the Nazis said, the children, they come in the gas,
    and the mothers are spared.
    So the mothers all, they sent-- they said,
    we go voluntarily with the children in the gas.
    And I heard this one.
    And every year, in March, is a service
    in New York for this particular group of women.
    Amazing.
    Yeah.
    You told us, of course, that the Swedish consulate
    saw to it that you didn't have to wear a yellow star.
    Yes.
    Tell us about the period leading up to the time
    when you went to Theresienstadt.
    Others from Prague were being shipped off regularly.
    Oh, yes, they were.
    But you yourself were under Swedish protection.
    What-- just describe what life was
    like when the others were going and you
    were under Swedish protection.
    I didn't know right there were so many thousands
    and thousands in transport.
    I had always the people I was in a help--
    like here, volunteer always, were help the people.
    There were old people, 80 years or 90 years.
    They came in a transport.
    They didn't know what hit them.
    They said, no, right, we are here.
    We are Prague.
    We are here from citizen.
    What do you say?
    They didn't know it.
    They couldn't comprehend what this was.
    So of course, the--
    These people coming from elsewhere in Czechoslovakia--
    Yes.
    --were brought into Prague, funneled into Prague--
    Yes.
    --and then out again?
    They went there.
    And so then we had a--
    they went on the transport.
    And I, because I was home free--
    so far you can say free--
    and I went.
    I had-- yeah, they called me then
    for a transport in the congregation.
    So I went to the congregation and said,
    listen, I have not to go in the transport.
    So they said, we cannot say anything.
    Go to this office.
    This is where the Gestapo.
    So I went in the Gestapo.
    And they said, you come in here.
    Stay here.
    Nothing.
    So next day, of course, they--
    I had to take my keys away from my apartment.
    What did you have in your apartment-- and this and this,
    what you can think what you have just when you
    out there and the things.
    So I half didn't mention it at all, or mention yes, or so.
    But also some-- my custodian in where I lived,
    they were very nice.
    They went in.
    And they took something out, but they
    knew what I could use later on.
    So they took all kind of a thing--
    a big lockwood for my husband, what he got in Germany
    for the university--
    all kind of little things, previous things.
    So then I was away.
    I was there in this place where they collecting the Jews.
    And there were some other-- two women
    were there and the two men.
    The one was-- I think they were Hungarian.
    And the other one were other something--
    a daughter with a mother, and a son
    with her husband, a father, and me.
    So we came two days later on a trolley, on a lorry,
    to go to Theresienstadt, not with a transport.
    We were extra.
    There's also everywhere written, this
    is an extra special transport.
    So we came not in this place where the transport,
    where thousands come in.
    We came through the gendarmerie therein.
    And so we came in just there five.
    And so we came in this--
    there's a Judenalteste, to this Edelstein.
    And so he had--
    You have to explain who Edelstein is.
    Well, the, Judenalteste he's like a father for the camp.
    The head of the Judenrat?
    Head of the Judenrat, yes.
    There was him.
    And there was-- he was from Czechoslovakia.
    And there was one from Vienna, from Austria
    because there were also from Austria, they came also there.
    And from Germany, they were also there because they thought,
    in Germany, this is a wonderful--
    you go now, pack up your things, and you go in a summer resort.
    So these people in Germany, they took nice things along.
    They didn't know this were a concentration
    camp or something.
    So they left.
    And they went there.
    And they didn't know what hit them.
    They came there in this camp.
    They took everything away what they had.
    And this was this.
    OK.
    Now, at what month and year were you taken to Theresienstadt?
    In February?
    And year?
    In '43, 1943.
    So up until-- between the German occupation of Czechoslovakia
    in the spring of 1939 and February of '43,
    you were able to live under Swedish protection?
    Yes.
    Now, right, protection was so far that--
    Yeah.
    And while everybody else was being shipped out.
    Now, we're in Theresienstadt in '43.
    What was it like when you arrived?
    Oh, my gosh.
    I came there.
    They were this Hamburger--
    I had to go--
    they were in the--
    go in the Hamburger Kaserne.
    We have now nobody is here.
    That's a barrack.
    This-- in a barrack.
    There were soldiers once living.
    And the soldiers, they were maybe for 500,
    for 300 and some people.
    And we then 5,000 were in this Hamburg Kaserne.
    Now, you can see how were the toilet things here,
    the facilities, the washing things.
    This was very limited because it was only for so few people
    prepared.
    And we have 5,000 there.
    We should explain to the people that the town of Theresienstadt
    was a city of about 7,000 population.
    Yeah, maybe 10,000 maybe even.
    Yeah.
    And they put in, what, altogether,
    at one time, 50,000 Jews.
    Yes on the two thirds.
    In two thirds of the city, and one third was--
    Yes.
    --they threw out the Czechs from two thirds.
    Yes.
    They had to--
    They moved them out.
    They had to come to Prague to--
    immigrant to Prague.
    And then they were shipped, again, in a transport.
    I met one girl from Dr. Heller.
    He was a doctor in Theresienstadt
    before the war in normal time.
    And his daughter was a friend of mine.
    So we were working together.
    Now, see, I came in this room.
    And suddenly-- and I had a big hat off and elegant--
    I came in with kid gloves and all,
    with a handbag under the arm.
    So I came there.
    I didn't have a toothbrush or nothing, nothing with me.
    So I was in there.
    And then this--
    Lily Heller was her name.
    When she saw me, she said, for goodness' sake, Hilda,
    where do you come from?
    I said, no, I came now from Prague.
    Now, there were no transport.
    I said, no, right, we were five people.
    And so the soldiers, they gave you
    a kick in the behind if you didn't act fast,
    go down from this lorry or some.
    So I said, no, this is--
    so I was sitting there.
    And the woman let me sleep on her straw sack, on straw.
    And in the night, I couldn't sleep, of course.
    And the people, they had to go to work.
    They were also-- there were bunks
    three story high to the people.
    Maybe 70 women were in one such a room.
    Now, you can imagine that the people couldn't sleep very well
    because the one snoring, the one crying, and the one this one.
    And so they came sitting onto the bench there.
    And they said, couldn't you sleep?
    I said, no, I hear mice or what is here?
    Is there such a noise here?
    Yeah, next door is the bread--
    Bakery?
    Not a bakery, where they have it put there for the whole thing.
    So I said, no, right now, I'm here.
    What should I do?
    I cannot-- I'm so afraid when all this would cross.
    But after all, whom am I to cry?
    So next day, my friend, this Lily, she
    said, Hilda, here, you have to eat everything
    because she knew I was-- at home,
    I helped myself always a little with the black market
    or something.
    So she said, here, you have to eat everything.
    It's not like the home.
    It's different now-- and right next day.
    And I had there friends also, and pupils from my husband.
    And I went into her--
    now, I went already in this--
    I ask already where the husband is.
    These were a lawyer from Prague.
    And I said, where is Dr. Hostovsky?
    No, he's here in this kaserne--
    Grosser city hall.
    So I went there and I asked whether a Dr. Hostovsky there.
    No, but I said, tell her Mrs. Prooth is here.
    Oh, they were-- next day, they came already looking for me.
    And of course, he brought me a toothbrush.
    And he brought me this one, what utmost necessity.
    And so her mother was also very old lady.
    But she survived.
    And she came back to Prague.
    And she came to New York, where we visited her.
    And then so I was there.
    And next day, finally, they gave me
    this Hamburg kaserne up in the second floor, also in the room.
    And there was the bunks, the bunks on both sides.
    And in the way there, there were other beds-- here one, there.
    And they said, here, you can sleep.
    Hilda, you said you came in there
    with kid gloves and a handbag.
    Yeah.
    And you were able to carry this handbag with you?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And you went onward?
    I was with his handbag.
    I wouldn't let this handbag go.
    You're probably the only prisoner
    who went through 10 concentration camps and work
    camps carrying a handbag.
    Always a handbag with me.
    It's a wonder.
    Why did they not take it away from you?
    Right asked.
    There were always no rhyme and reason.
    Then I had a big hat on, beautiful, of course.
    Then when I went and visited Mrs. Hostovsky,
    she was in the office there too.
    And the people said to the-- oh, Mrs. Hostovsky,
    this lady with a hat is out there.
    Now, who were wearing a hat in Theresienstadt?
    I said, don't you have a babushka or something
    on my head?
    I cannot go around with a hat all the time.
    No.
    Then she gave me a babushka so I could give this hat away.
    Because these were ridiculous.
    They thought, the Nazis, they came only the women
    in with the hat.
    Now, Hilda, we have this photograph
    of that you brought that was taken in 1945.
    Yeah.
    And I want you to hold that up.
    Yeah, maybe '48, yeah.
    All right, '48.
    It's as close as we've got.
    This that you're going to look at
    is Hilda in a photograph taken in 1948,
    which should give you an indication of the young lady
    she was just a few years before when she first
    entered Theresienstadt.
    Now, it is 1984.
    And if you don't mind saying your age now.
    I'm 80 years old.
    And at that-- and in 1943, when you went to Theresienstadt,
    how old were you?
    I was maybe 36 or something.
    Fine.
    Thank you.
    So this happened to a very knowledgeable woman
    at that point.
    Tell us-- we've heard so much about Theresienstadt
    as a good place to be, full of culture, and teaching,
    and learning.
    And the Germans, of course, wanted you to believe it.
    But what was its real purpose?
    Right.
    The purpose was this, the world should
    know that how good the Germans were to us--
    the world.
    Because there were so many, really, very big artists,
    there were lawyers, there were doctors there, and all.
    They came from everywhere else.
    And they wanted to show off.
    So there were musicians there.
    They made-- had to make concerts there.
    Whether their hearts were bleeding or not,
    they had to do it.
    But just-- that didn't save them from going to Auschwitz
    to be gassed.
    No, oh, no.
    They were gassed then.
    When the purpose were fulfilled, then they had to--
    they didn't come back.
    So Theresienstadt instead was just a transient stop
    on the way to the death camps?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    Now, you mentioned the concerts.
    Tell us, please, Hilda, what you know from what you saw
    or what others told you in Theresienstadt
    about the so-called cultural life.
    Start with concerts.
    Yeah, they made very nice concerts.
    They made philharmonic concerts there
    because we had the best musician there.
    I don't know anymore many names because I forgot.
    I forget here the names.
    So I wouldn't know so many anymore.
    But I knew very many very well-known.
    Because Prague was a cultured city.
    And they came there, were from Vienna were people there.
    Were the best thing what they have,
    and they made-- the Nazis made them do a philharmonic.
    And they all came, the Nazis, and were listening.
    And of course, the Jews, they had to come too.
    This had to be filled out.
    Because then they made pictures and said, look how what we do.
    Now, how about coffeehouses?
    A coffeehouse was there too.
    There is a coffeehouse.
    And there were a very--
    I mean, musically or so on.
    They had-- even an opera, somebody
    wrote from the ghetto girl.
    Did you go to a coffeehouse?
    No, no, no.
    Why not?
    Because I couldn't stand it.
    Explain.
    It hurt me.
    A friend of mine, she said to me,
    which I was very close in Prague--
    we went out dancing and we had always good times.
    And she said, you know, Hilda, my brother
    said I should call you.
    You should come with us because we had always a good time.
    And you should again make a little fool of yourself.
    So I said, no, here, I don't make a fool anymore of myself.
    I'm here.
    And I don't want to know anything.
    I only try to survive.
    That's all what I want to do.
    What were you surviving at?
    What work did they have you do?
    I was working in the uniform for a military--
    for German military.
    And this was a firm from Munich.
    We had to make the uniforms for the soldiers.
    Did they pay you?
    No.
    Oh, no, no, no pay.
    These were all forced labor.
    What about this Theresienstadt money we've heard about?
    This money?
    Tell us, first, what was--
    The money was done also--
    again, like in Russia.
    I don't know whether you heard it
    once in Russia, but the Potemkin villages,
    what they build up when the-- after the First World
    War, when they started to have the communist country there.
    Then they build up a village, beautiful.
    And when somebody came to visit, they showed them this job.
    And look what we do here.
    This is a progress already and all.
    These were only Potemkin villages
    because this were only on the outside.
    And so it is with this money.
    They printed money, they said, we can buy something.
    There are stores.
    And we can do everything with this money.
    They made even a bank there--
    all Potemkins, they're all outside.
    You have some of this occupation money with you?
    Yes, I have.
    Where did I put it?
    I think it's there.
    Here is this.
    Hold up, please, to the camera.
    What do you want, this $100?
    Yeah, kroner.
    $50?
    Yeah, hold both up.
    $20.
    Don't know where the $100 are.
    It's all right, just any of them, anything.
    Put it up, Hilda.
    This one?
    That's good.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Now, the camera will show you what that-- that
    was with the tablets of Moses.
    Yes.
    And they were printed in Prague.
    And this was only for the ghetto.
    Was not by-- by punishment, high punishment,
    if you brought it out outside somewhere.
    It says on there, Theresienstadt money.
    Yes.
    And how did you earn that money?
    No, you got it.
    They just issued it?
    They issued it, yeah.
    You didn't have to work?
    No.
    With this work, we didn't get anything.
    This is only-- you could buy some for the people who died
    or people who came to the transport
    and they couldn't take anything.
    They left it there.
    We had to leave it there.
    So then they made stores out of this.
    And then you could go, for this money, to buy this one.
    But you had to have also a permission
    to go there and buy this.
    Do you have one of those documents that
    allowed you to buy something?
    Yes, somewhere is this here.
    Where was this, here, somewhere?
    Here, yeah.
    Good.
    Show us what you could buy with that.
    You could buy a pair of pants.
    I think it's upside down.
    Yeah.
    Hold it up here.
    Yeah.
    You see, you could buy--
    I got the permission to buy a pair of pants
    because I had to--
    Have the camera come in right here.
    Yeah.
    Hold that up.
    Because I had to work--
    beside my work, I had to also do chop wood
    and make a fire in the morning for our workshop.
    So I needed a pair of pants.
    And then-- and so this were the reason
    why I had this permission.
    And this would have cost $50--
    ridiculous for an old pair of pants.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    You can put that down.
    But I never came to it.
    Now, you said, your brother had been beaten to death
    for carrying money like this outside?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    And how did I know about this?
    Once came a man where I worked in the uniform barrack.
    So came a man, a younger man.
    And they heard, when they called me.
    So says, he said, are you this Hilda Prooth?
    Yeah.
    He goes, did you have a brother Freddie?
    I said, yes.
    I helped him.
    I had to beat him up.
    I was with him in the cell.
    And I had to beat him up.
    And he called for you.
    Therefore, I knew this were authentic, what he told me.
    This is the same as your dream?
    It was the same what I dreamed.
    And when he wouldn't-- he said, if I wouldn't have beaten him
    very much, they were standing there,
    then they would beat me up.
    Did he use the same words as you heard in your dream?
    The same words what this was.
    And he said, Hilda, Hilda, please, oh, help-- in German,
    of course.
    [GERMAN]
    And I woke up then.
    I said, something happens to Freddie.
    Same day?
    Yeah.
    Same day, same night.
    Yeah.
    Amazing.
    Therefore, I know what happened to him.
    What was your family name, Hilda?
    Schierl.
    Can you spell that?
    S-C-H-I-E-R-L, Schierl.
    You described the coffeehouse and the theater--
    the cafe and the coffeehouse.
    I cannot explain it because I never went in.
    Yeah.
    But they told me that they had chairs there.
    And like in a coffeehouse, you go there.
    And there are waitresses were there.
    And I think for this money, you could also buy some coffee.
    Artificial coffee?
    Maybe for a-- for this--
    I don't know which one it was.
    The coffee was never good anyhow.
    So we got tea.
    I washed my face with his tea because was--
    you couldn't-- it's just hot water.
    And I rather had nothing.
    And so it was this.
    What other social amenities-- we've
    heard much about the artists of Theresienstadt.
    Yeah, there were big artists.
    I told you, they made a theater.
    They made a-- they made Variété.
    You know what you call a Variété, a musical,
    or something?
    They made even a musical.
    And they saw it should be very good.
    And they were singing this.
    There were-- one had composed this one.
    And one was a musical star there.
    And they-- of course, they got a little more bread and butter,
    maybe, from the ghetto.
    Tell us about the artists while I'm looking for something here.
    You tell us about the artists who drew pictures
    in Theresienstadt.
    Did you know any of them?
    I don't know-- I didn't know any of them
    before because I was working.
    I had to get up in the morning, 5 o'clock.
    OK.
    Hilda, I want you to hold this up so the camera can get it.
    This is a scene by--
    at the theater in Theresienstadt by the artist Otto Ungar.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Now, we want the camera to focus on the picture,
    down just a little bit.
    There, very good.
    Thank you.
    Now, although you didn't know-- did
    you know any of the people who knew any of the artists?
    Did they say anything about their work?
    Yeah, they told me.
    They told me.
    They have a kind of a--
    I met-- not that I met them.
    Once we had-- oh, yes, on the 9th of November--
    because there, they burned all the synagogues in Europe--
    not in Prague, but everywhere else.
    In Karlsbad, our synagogue was burned down.
    And so I-- they had-- we had to go all out to be
    counted on the 9th of November.
    In what year?
    There were 40-- this was in '43.
    Yeah.
    There was 40,000 people in the camp.
    And 8,000 were not able to go.
    They were in the bed.
    But 32,000 people had to march out in this--
    you call it like the military, this exercise place there.
    So we had to march there, all young kids or some.
    Everybody had to go out for--
    to being counted.
    How can you count 32,000 people?
    Then they came some Nazis with a little cane of them.
    And we had to stand there.
    And they counted, one, two, three.
    How can you say 32,000 people and counting.
    Of course, it took them-- and up there were a hill.
    There were-- every 10 yards were a gendarme with a bayonet.
    So we thought, right, what would now be--
    maybe we cannot come back anymore.
    Maybe we are killed here.
    Maybe they bring a gas down here.
    Something has to be.
    But anyhow, it became dark.
    And they came back.
    And we were there in limbo.
    So we didn't know where to go.
    So we went around there and had called out.
    Maybe there is a husband from this Hilda,
    Hilda Polak from Pilsen.
    So you called out, Karl Polak is here somewhere, Karl Polak.
    Maybe we find somebody.
    The mother from this Hilda Polak as well in the room, her mother
    was old already.
    And Hilda Polak was nearly blind.
    So I had to carry her.
    Then we had the old thing.
    So we went finally in a summer hut what there.
    It was dark.
    And I said, we cannot stay here.
    Now, we have to look-- go back somewhere.
    So we climbed over the--
    on a board there, where they have this bike in there.
    So all right, I said, come on.
    We climb through.
    And we go somewhere we have to go.
    So finally, we came at-- was 11 o'clock back in our ubication
    again.
    And it was really--
    without food.
    We were standing there and had nothing.
    We couldn't go away, had no toilet.
    From before dawn?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, this was the 9th of November.
    I'm sure nobody forgets it, what was it.
    Maybe this is here?
    Yeah, here you have it.
    Hold that up.
    Here you have it, November the 17th, the count-out.
    See?
    I knew this was here somewhere.
    And here, you have the gendarme of them.
    Hold up the picture while you're telling this.
    See?
    Thank you.
    See here, the gendarme on top there?
    Yeah.
    So this was the count out for 32,000 people.
    Did you ever know of a swimming pool for the Kommandant
    and his children on the other side
    of the wall in Theresienstadt?
    No, no, no.
    I saw that when I was in Theresienstadt a year ago,
    last summer.
    They made it then somehow.
    They never were there and wouldn't have--
    I wouldn't want to be extra out that the people notice me.
    Because when I was fairly good-looking still,
    and I was young, and they said always,
    I look 10 years younger.
    So I didn't want to be noticed by the SS or somebody
    because they would get--
    they would do all kinds of a thing with me.
    So I never went somewhere, where they see.
    I went to work.
    And I went home again, and so fast, nobody could see it.
    Because these were the reason I didn't go anywhere.
    Because there were terrible thing what they had,
    what they did to girls and to women.
    And so far, I said, I wanted to survive somehow.
    Even in Theresienstadt.
    Even in Theresienstadt and everywhere else.
    In prison-- we were in prison, and through 10 prison we went.
    There were this one.
    I want to show you, there is a picture from the ubication,
    from inside.
    And this looks like--
    I said, always, this looks like me.
    I cannot find.
    I made a note.
    Keep looking while we're talking.
    So you see, I never I never wanted
    to be amongst these people.
    They said once-- the SS, they will look for some people
    to sew or something.
    I don't go.
    I said, I don't want to have anything.
    I'm here.
    And this is all what I have to do.
    And I don't do--
    Working on the uniforms for the German Army?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    And here, you have again--
    here the execution.
    Here is the execution.
    See?
    Hold it up a little more.
    There.
    All right.
    Were you witness at any of those executions?
    No, this was outside of the ghetto.
    This was at the little camp?
    By the small fortress, they call it the small fortress.
    See?
    I know, I've seen it.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So this is this.
    Now, when you were in Theresienstadt,
    were the people aware of the death camps to the east?
    Sure.
    Sure, we knew it.
    Right.
    We've heard that Dr. Leo Baeck, who was the head of the Berlin
    Jewish community, and was interned in Theresienstadt,
    he had information about them.
    But he never told the people of Theresienstadt.
    This was this--
    Would you know anything about that, why he didn't--
    I knew it.
    --why he didn't tell it?
    I was in Prague already.
    And we knew it in Prague.
    Yeah?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    What was he keeping such a matter secret for?
    No, I didn't know the people.
    There were many old people.
    It's enough when they lived in this--
    how they lived.
    This was disgraceful.
    So what do you tell them other things more?
    I wouldn't have told them, either.
    It's not-- no use for this, just the same when something else
    comes up somewhere.
    It's no use to talk to them.
    Just the same here-- if somebody, you tell them this
    and this is so sick.
    What for?
    When my husband was in hospital, a friend of him died.
    A girlfriend called me up.
    I didn't tell him.
    He says, why didn't you?
    And the doctor told him, well, he died now.
    What do you have to show us there, Hilda?
    This is here--
    Hold it there.
    --when the cemetery-- when they go to the cemetery,
    how this goes here.
    And Leo Baeck was walking behind them
    because he makes the service there.
    See?
    And this list, they were only thrown in a trench.
    They didn't-- they brought this back again empty,
    these boxes here.
    Yeah.
    Now, the picture on the other side, right there--
    This is the--
    Hold it up.
    --the gates where the men, they go through when they are dead.
    See?
    Yeah.
    That's a photograph of Theresienstadt city.
    Yeah.
    See?
    Yeah.
    Thank you.
    Now, would you show us the title of the book, the front of it?
    Hold up-- hold up the front--
    Terezín.
    --so anybody who wants to--
    Terezín.
    This is just Terezín.
    --and you got that in Prague.
    They sent it to me here.
    Sent from Prague.
    Yeah.
    It's the only one what exists.
    Nothing else exists anymore from this one.
    And this is a picture how this was.
    See how the streets are?
    Hold it up.
    I'm not sure if we can see that so clearly.
    OK.
    I understand.
    Now, we're going to end this tape in a minute.
    So I want you to conclude your impressions of Prague
    without the book, Hilda.
    Yeah, I want to see only one thing I found.
    Without the book.
    Yeah.
    Conclude your impressions of Theresienstadt.
    What-- when did you leave?
    How did you leave?
    How I left?
    This was, again, I suppose, through this Swedish consul
    because they came.
    It took a year, maybe, before the thing once I
    was summoned to the office--
    the Jewish office, not to the Germans.
    And they said, well, from Berlin,
    they had a notice for what kind of a papers you have,
    that you are a Russian citizen.
    So I showed him my-- this one there from the police.
    And other two women, they were real Russian.
    They had the passport sent to Ankara to have the renewed.
    Of course, they had the paper for this all.
    And then other was too-- they were also from Austria.
    And their husbands were dead already.
    And they were also Russian citizen for this.
    So right away, showed them all, and they wrote down everything,
    and I went home again.
    Now, maybe so three months later, they called--
    two guys came in the evening.
    And they said, you come on down.
    I was prepared to go to sleep because I had to get
    at 5 o'clock up in the morning.
    So he said, come on down.
    I have something for you.
    I said, I'm very tired.
    I have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning.
    And you better come down.
    So he wrote-- gave me this little paper.
    I had it somewhere.
    I should prepare it in the morning, warm dressed,
    with something the food, and at 8 o'clock
    in the German Kommandant-- to the German headquarter.
    So all right, what has to be, has to be.
    So I was so skinny.
    And in the meantime, I had made me already two dresses more
    because I had sewed myself things.
    I got remnants somewhere and made it.
    And I took maybe--
    I could wear.
    You can imagine how skinny I was,
    I had maybe four pairs of pants on, three slips on, three
    dresses on, and a sweater under coat.
    And where did they take you?
    To Prague in a prison.
    OK.
    We'll come back in the next session.
    Yeah.
    I'm Sidney Elsner.
    Today, December 27, 1984, we're in the second segment
    of our interview with Hilda Prooth,
    a Holocaust survivor from Prague, Czechoslovakia.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    We are showing you this letter which Hilda referred
    to in the first segment because this is the only documentation
    I am aware of in which a foreign government interceded
    for a Jewish citizen in Prague.
    Hilda was under the protection of the Swedish consulate
    in the years before she was taken to Theresienstadt--
    that is from 1939 to 1943--
    because her husband was naturally born
    Russian, although brought up in England.
    As a Russian subject, the family was
    protected from the laws that pertained
    to the Czechoslovakian Jews and the German Jews
    for that period.
    But Hilda, tell us what the Germans
    wanted to get out of this.
    Why were they so amenable to letting
    the Russian citizens stay?
    Because they thought they will win the war.
    And when they win the war, then they
    will exchange us, because there were Germans also in Russia,
    and they wanted us to exchange them for them.
    The Germans would come back, and maybe they
    would give maybe 100 to 1.
    This was the reason.
    That were for this reason brought to France
    in this other interned camp, because this
    was an exchange camp.
    And so we were for this purpose, we were kept.
    OK.
    OK.
    Now we just want to make sure that the camera has picked up
    this letter, so that in the future years, if anybody's
    interested in the documentation or translating it,
    there's enough there on the film that they can do that.
    We'll let it run until it's necessary.
    Hilda, you've now left Theresienstadt on a transport
    in February of 1944.
    Describe what that was like and where you were first taken.
    It was in winter, in February, very high snow.
    We were five women.
    The oldest was 79 years old, Mrs. Korvitz.
    And the youngest was me.
    I was maybe 36 years old or something in this age,
    and in between.
    So we had to walk an hour to the station in Leitmeritz.
    This was the station to Theresienstadt.
    And so then they brought us to Prague,
    in the prison, the same prison where my husband was once,
    where I didn't want to eat the onion soup,
    because it wasn't so very good.
    But then when I came from Theresienstadt,
    after our good food in Theresienstadt, I said,
    this is wonderful.
    It's a wonderful soup.
    Isn't this a good soup, I said to my inmates.
    All right.
    So we had-- we were a couple of days in Theresienstadt.
    And then we had to go again on a transport.
    And we came to Linz, Austria.
    There were a couple of Czechs women with us,
    but not Jewish women.
    And they were with us, and their husband
    somewhere also for listening to the radio or something what
    they said.
    And this old woman, she sold onions
    somewhere without a ticket, and they arrested her.
    So they were with us together.
    And we went to Linz.
    In Linz, we were there in a camp.
    And in a corridor, so a corridor, and we
    could hardly sit in this way.
    We had to sit, so that we could--
    it was so narrow.
    So I said, it is so hot in here.
    We take off the coats, and put them all in one pile.
    And then suddenly came the air raid,
    and we had to run all out without a coat,
    we couldn't find it in the dark.
    It was dark.
    So we went far.
    They brought us over the railroad.
    There were the [NON-ENGLISH] worker,
    the [NON-ENGLISH] worker.
    No, no, it wasn't [NON-ENGLISH].
    What I was talking about?
    From Goering-- from Goering, he had this big munition factory
    there and all.
    And so we had to go far out in a bunker,
    and then wait till the air raids off.
    And then we could go back.
    And two days later, we were brought to Salzburg.
    Again, there was more people with us.
    They brought some two French girls along,
    and all kinds of Viennese girls, who didn't show up
    to work or something.
    These were all the reasons that they were with us.
    So from Salzburg we went to Innsbruck.
    And I was in a prison train.
    From Innsbruck, we came then to Munich.
    In Munich, we went in, in the railroad station.
    And we came also somewhere in a prison somewhere.
    And there were a lot of people there.
    And then eight days later, there were so many air raids,
    there were no railroads anymore.
    So they had to bring us out somewhere underground.
    And we went again to the railroad, and again.
    So we went maybe to Stuttgart or to Ulm,
    and everywhere were you had to make stations.
    Then we came to--
    Bruchsal somewhere.
    And then we came to Metz.
    In Metz, it was terrible.
    In Metz there was an SS, they were all SS.
    And there was a big dog.
    And there was the French girls, this one,
    she looked a little dark hair.
    So they thought this was a Jewish girl.
    She was not.
    And this SS guy, he asked her [NON-ENGLISH]..
    So she said--
    What does that mean?
    [NON-ENGLISH] What's your name?
    So she said [NON-ENGLISH],, in French.
    I don't understand.
    One slap.
    So he asked again, what's your name?
    [NON-ENGLISH], again.
    And maybe also how many times you said.
    And she was so stubborn.
    And she didn't say anything.
    She was so hateful already.
    And she always said that she doesn't understand it.
    I thought already then, it was this big dog,
    it will jump on her.
    So anyhow we didn't get any food.
    They were with us murderers were with us
    that came from Metz, and from all kind of prison.
    And they got food.
    And they get a blanket.
    We didn't get any blankets.
    There were only plain wooden, like couches but wooden.
    And this was all where we were driven in.
    Next day, they found out this girl is not a Jewish girl.
    So they took her out.
    And when there was an air raid, we
    heard other people had to go down in the bunker.
    But we didn't.
    They didn't take us in the bunker.
    We were there.
    So right, we were there also maybe eight days or nine days.
    And we had five minutes to go in the toilet.
    The other one is here a pail with what you could
    do when nature calls, or some.
    Water to drink was not in there.
    So we were five women there lying there
    on this wooden thing here.
    And finally, they said then they brought water in.
    And they said now we have to clean out for the Jews.
    Without the Jews here, somebody else comes in.
    So we have to clean this out here.
    So then we cleaned it out with water and all.
    We washed a little bit something.
    The next day, there came a young girl
    with two other guys in civil, and took us away
    to the station, railway station.
    So I said to them-- and they were with an attache case.
    And they always watched us.
    And this old woman, the 79 years old, she
    couldn't hardly walk anymore.
    And this other one, this Miss Friedstein, she
    was Russian, real Russian from Moscow.
    And she couldn't walk anymore.
    She was very sick.
    She was a doctor.
    And then there was this old lady, this 72 from Austria.
    She broke her wrist on the way from Theresienstadt
    to the station.
    Nobody set it to her, nothing was--
    it was just growing together.
    And she was very painful also.
    So right then, we came there.
    And they were always watching where we go.
    And I said to this one guy, in German, I said,
    you don't have to watch us.
    We don't run away.
    I said we are 2 and 1/2 women, this as well.
    Old woman they couldn't walk at all,
    it was me and another woman.
    He said it wouldn't help you at all,
    because we have guns and all.
    You wouldn't go far.
    I said, don't worry.
    We don't run away.
    We have nowhere to go.
    We are 2 and 1/2 women.
    The others you cannot count.
    So we came then to Metz.
    We went to Nancy and to another French city
    what we had to go through.
    And then we came to Vittel in France.
    We didn't know what it is there.
    But I saw that there were no guards anymore on the train.
    What part of France was this?
    This was in the Eastern part in the [NON-ENGLISH]..
    About what month?
    Near Colmar.
    What month?
    It was in-- when was this?
    The was already in--
    we were four weeks on the go, must have been March already
    something, end of March.
    Because we were four weeks from one prison,
    10 prison go through.
    It takes four weeks.
    So then I said, now since we are here,
    there were no soldiers anymore, no bayonets anymore out
    on the railroad.
    So I was a little already forward already.
    And this lady, this Mrs. Sana, she spoke very good French.
    So I said to these guys, I said, if you
    don't understand the people, this lady speaks French.
    Maybe she can translate this all.
    We know where to go.
    So where can we go?
    So around the corner, there was really already this camp.
    It was an interned camp.
    There were Americans there.
    There were English people there.
    And we came in there.
    Were those people civilians, or were they military?
    These were all-- and the thing this was for the camp,
    these were German military.
    But the people were there, they were all persons,
    they were all interned.
    They were all from France and from everywhere.
    Nuns were there, and all.
    So they were all there for this purpose.
    Not prisoners of war?
    No, no, no, no.
    No, just interned.
    So I didn't know what it goes on.
    Now finally, we came again to the headquarter.
    And we got rooms.
    And we even got a key to the room.
    Oh, my gosh.
    A key.
    So I wrote to Theresienstadt a card, well, here we have water.
    We have water.
    We can wash ourselves in the room.
    And we have a key to the room because who
    had the key in the room?
    We were like enemies already.
    I never got an answer, of course.
    But a lady told me they got this letter when I came back.
    I met the lady from Theresienstadt from my room.
    And so she told us.
    Hilda, how do you account for this atmosphere of putting
    internees in with--
    Because this was again the reason,
    that we were for the purpose to exchange.
    There were Americans there.
    They were under the Red Cross.
    The Russians were not under the Red Cross.
    But there were Americans and English.
    They wouldn't tolerate such a thing.
    They were in beautiful hotels brought under there.
    And it was really like you come in another world.
    I believe.
    Was it a hotel were put up in?
    They were all real hotels.
    Because this was once a health resort for kidney disease.
    And what was the name of the resort or the town?
    Vittel.
    Vittel.
    Spell that.
    V-I-T-T-E-L.
    In Eastern France?
    In Eastern France.
    Yeah.
    The [NON-ENGLISH],, The district [NON-ENGLISH]..
    They were later on the big fights by Colmar.
    And the Americans had their very big fights.
    And we were also liberated there.
    The war was for us we had to go, we were again
    evacuated from there.
    But anyhow, before this was--
    Now, after you left Theresienstadt,
    were you ever in a work camp, a labor camp?
    No, we couldn't.
    No.
    Not at all personally?
    No, no.
    Then it was just on transit all the time.
    And this is because you were still under Swedish protection?
    Somehow I must have thought about this.
    Amazing.
    I was lucky.
    I was really lucky.
    I didn't know where I would come.
    So in Theresienstadt, when I went in the morning away,
    a friend of my husband was there a pupil, a Mr. Firth.
    And he said, Oh, Mrs. Prooth, what are you doing here?
    Where do you go?
    I said I go on a journey now.
    On a journey, he said, what's the matter with you?
    He thought there, I'm crazy, you know?
    I said, yes.
    He said, where do you go?
    I said I go into Switzerland now.
    I go in this order.
    I'm already a little thing.
    Who goes on Switzerland?
    Who goes on a journey alone or something?
    Nobody heard of such a thing.
    And when he came back--
    he came, also survived in Prague.
    And when he met my husband on the Jewish congregation,
    he said you know.
    I met your wife but she didn't make it.
    He said, oh yes.
    She comes back.
    Incidentally, did you have any word from your husband
    or about your husband in all the years you were away?
    No.
    Once I got a card, when I went in hotel already,
    there were other women.
    They got cards.
    Of course, they were printed whatever,
    is [NON-ENGLISH] or something.
    And I didn't get anything.
    So I said, what's the matter with me?
    Why shouldn't I get it?
    So I went to the Gestapo in France.
    I was never afraid.
    I walked.
    I had to go.
    I had to know.
    So I said, you know, I would like
    to have an audience with you because my husband is there
    and there.
    And I would like to know whether he is alive or dead.
    And I would like to know how he is.
    No, he said to me.
    This guy said, I don't know anything either.
    I have no letters from my family.
    I said for you is something different.
    For me is something different.
    I would like to know.
    So but then he promised me I will get a card.
    When something comes, he will let me know.
    And I got a card then, a printed card.
    Hilda, tell us about the living conditions in this internment
    camp.
    What about food?
    No, we got-- we got food from the Red Cross,
    from the Germans they had to provide.
    What type of food?
    But we were in France.
    We were in France.
    No the food was coffee in the morning and a piece of bread.
    We had more bread, I must say, as the French people outside.
    As much?
    Yeah.
    And better bread because the people from outside,
    they were the barbed wires went high up.
    And they said, they came and begged for bread.
    And when we could, we threw it over this barbed wire,
    and an old lady gave me then some--
    came once and she thanked me so much that I gave her bread.
    She was visiting her children.
    They didn't have anything.
    So right, it was not bad.
    The food was could live.
    And besides bread, what did you eat?
    We had potatoes, and sometimes something of meat.
    I don't remember anymore what we had.
    But it was not bad.
    As I say, we could survive on this.
    What was your daily routine?
    I was working again, I had my workshop.
    I was sewing already.
    Uniforms?
    No, there were no uniforms.
    I worked for the Red Cross.
    I mended for the men who worked for the camp.
    I mended.
    And in the afternoon I had a ladies salon already made up.
    People needed dresses.
    How did you get your material?
    They had all kind of combination,
    one dress is bad, the other you cut out, and make another one,
    and make two--
    Out of two, you make one out of this.
    But nothing like the other camps where people were shipped off
    and you got--
    No, no.
    There was, because you see there was also
    from Poland people who was in Uruguay, not from Uruguay--
    yeah from a Southern American thing.
    And they were very anti-Semitic of course, the government.
    And they had the Poland, they could buy papers.
    They could buy papers from the people which are there.
    They sent papers from--
    Passports?
    Uruguay passport.
    And then another government comes there,
    and they are anti-Semitic.
    They say this has no values anymore.
    So there were a whole part of really from Poland and Russian
    people.
    They had to go in a transport.
    This was pathetic.
    It was really pathetic.
    They had to go away in a locked up wagon, kids and all kind.
    And one young man, I was so shocked.
    He had here-- it was before Pesach.
    He had here the matzah in the hand.
    And he here a [NON-ENGLISH] in the hand.
    And so he went in this transport, nothing else.
    Nothing else.
    I came.
    I said, oh my gosh.
    I said what I saw now, this young man matzah
    and the [NON-ENGLISH] in this.
    So impractical, maybe he could do something somewhere.
    No he had nothing.
    They were very religious.
    They had the locks and all that.
    So of course, they came in the gas chamber there.
    A young man just jumped out of the train
    and then he came through our camp to our hotel.
    And there were this barbed wire.
    And of course he jumped.
    Just I'm telling you they were shooting.
    He jumped over this wire was maybe so high.
    He jumped over there and ran away.
    I think he came away.
    And the Nazis looked for him, of course.
    But I hope--
    I don't think that they caught him.
    But this was pathetic.
    And afterwards, they said now we have to-- we come away there.
    There are other people, they always
    only see black for everything.
    And I were more or less an optimist.
    And they came.
    And they said no, Frau Prooth, now, you have to prepare.
    We have to go on a transport.
    They said we coming.
    I said, I don't prepare anything anymore.
    Because when we go from here away,
    there is no going back and nothing to prepare anymore.
    So I won't prepare anything.
    And just I will go over there with this.
    That's all.
    So thanks God it didn't come to it.
    The war became nearer, like Eisenhower.
    And they all came nearer, the war.
    And then the Germans, when our thing came, all of them
    came the Maquis.
    You know the Maquis, what was it?
    The French underground came and helped.
    Of course, we gave them-- they got.
    Oh yeah, now I know what we ate, we got also.
    The Red Cross sent parcels every week to the American,
    to the English.
    They got parcels from the Red Cross.
    And because we were nothing, so they made us,
    they collected for us always, and we got also a parcel.
    So there were sometimes [NON-ENGLISH] or whatever sort
    of food, or corned beef or something,
    and some dried milk and jam was in there, and coffee, Sanka.
    No not Sanka, this Nescafé was in there.
    Nescafé?
    Yeah.
    And all sorts of things we go.
    Cigarettes were in there.
    So right, I didn't under the Nazis,
    you couldn't smoke cigarettes, because when
    they smelled from you, you were gone also already.
    So there I started again to smoke.
    Because what else did you do?
    So this is what we get.
    This is I forgot, these parcels.
    So then I saw the people.
    And the people gave me something to exchange something,
    some brought a tin of jam.
    And some brought me another tin of coffee, and so on.
    So I survived somehow.
    Tell us about the arrival of the liberators.
    Were the Americans or British?
    The first came the French army, the French from La Guerre who
    were fighting in Spain.
    They came first, and liberated us really.
    And then came the American Red Cross.
    Wait.
    Do you mean, the French partisans?
    No.
    They were not partisans.
    This was the army.
    Yeah?
    This is the--
    Leclerc.
    Leclerc with the French?
    Yeah.
    You know Leclerc?
    Yeah.
    This is a general who were fighting in Spain
    the communists against Franco.
    So they were in somewhere in Libya or somewhere.
    And when they were nearer to us, so they came first to us here,
    and liberated us.
    How far was your camp from Paris?
    Oh, from Paris, it wasn't--
    this one was not very far.
    But when we were later on we were evacuated--
    How far?
    Well, maybe six, seven hours, I suppose.
    To the East of Paris?
    Yeah.
    And when were you liberated?
    We were liberated when the war was over,
    we were here liberated because we had to go away.
    The war was on.
    There were the battles were there,
    very heavy battles in Colmar, this where the pocket there.
    And there was heavy, heavy fighting was there.
    So they had to take us away.
    So we went three days.
    Also again you had to take water, all along.
    And three days, there and backwards in France.
    They didn't know where to put us.
    So we came then to La Bourboule.
    It was the most gorgeous place where we ever saw.
    Wait.
    Give us a date for this approximately.
    It was in October somewhere.
    In '44.
    It was in October '44.
    Yeah, it must be the 18th or something October.
    It was in October, because there was snow already on the ground.
    And this was a 1,000 meter high.
    So the Germans took you out of this internment camp.
    Yes.
    And sent you by train.
    Sent us away.
    By train or walking?
    Yeah, by train.
    By train.
    And where did you arrive?
    In La Bourboule.
    Which is where?
    This is mostly I think it's in the French Alps.
    OK.
    It's the most gorgeous place what I ever saw.
    The whole interned-- all the internees?
    All the thing, we came out there.
    How many?
    Well, maybe how many were roughly?
    300, 400 people.
    And we were evacuated again.
    We came in several hotels brought under.
    Of course, this was only a summer resort,
    this La Bourboule.
    This was for asthmatic children.
    But of course, there were no children.
    Was this near Chamonix?
    No, no, no.
    You said in the French Alps.
    In the French Alps.
    Yeah.
    This was near-- it was between Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand,
    so in between there.
    Fine.
    Then how long were you there?
    I was there, till I went home in '45, then in May,
    when then the war was over.
    That's when the French troops came.
    No then there was the French troops came in with there.
    Yes.
    There were no troops anymore.
    Excuse me.
    It was the French who sent you or the Germans who sent you?
    The Germans sent us away.
    To the French Alps.
    Yeah, no somewhere.
    They didn't know where to give us.
    But they sent us on a train and sent us to go.
    And then all right.
    But the French were the first.
    The French were there, and liberated us
    from the war, not the war when it had finished,
    but the war, the fighting there.
    And then came the American Red Cross.
    The first one with the helmet, with the Red Cross on.
    And they came then there.
    So they didn't do much, but they opened and they cut the holes
    in the barbed wires.
    And I crawled out already.
    And because I was always very, I'm a Leo.
    And the Leo has to go everywhere where it's possible.
    I found a new synagogue, a very wonderful synagogue.
    I said to the girls--
    Wait, wait, wait.
    Wait, slow down.
    Where was this?
    In Vittel.
    In Vittel.
    OK.
    And this was just before the high holidays.
    So I said, we could have a service here.
    Look at this, a synagogue is here.
    So right then, we had really the service in there,
    because the armies came there from the American army.
    And we went out in the freedom, as we said, in French
    in the city already.
    And we bought a duck, a goose.
    And there were a shochet there.
    They made us this kosher.
    And we had already a feast here, the first time.
    You see?
    So you survive somehow.
    You have to survive.
    However it is.
    I said I was--
    when people commit suicide and all, why do they do this?
    Maybe they survive somehow.
    Maybe it is another way.
    This would be the last resort what you do.
    But for many people it is the last resort
    when they commit suicide.
    All right, Hilda, you came into the French Alps
    in the late fall of 1944.
    Yeah.
    When was your imprisonment over altogether?
    More or less this was in prison.
    We were then again displaced person.
    See, you came from one stage to another one.
    Then we were a displaced person there,
    because we had no country.
    Some people were already registered
    to go to Palestine then.
    They said to me, come on.
    Go with us.
    I said, I cannot.
    I have to go home and look for my husband.
    That's all what I had.
    Wait.
    We left.
    You got there in October of '44.
    Yeah.
    Bring us up between October of '44
    and May of 1945 when Germany surrendered.
    Tell us what happened to you.
    No, they were not much to say.
    Because I found again an sewing machine somewhere.
    And I was sewing again for people.
    And I got a little money.
    And I had to earn 500 francs, so I
    can buy on the black market some butter.
    And bread we got every day, a third of this long bread
    what the French has.
    So we got one such a served for one day.
    It was enough.
    And so the other thing.
    You got food in the hotel.
    But sometimes it was not to eat, so it goes in the toilet in.
    Because then you looked already something else
    to get somewhere.
    See?
    So everybody tried somehow to get something somewhere.
    How did you-- what gave you strength and hope
    in all this period?
    I have to find my husband.
    Did you?
    Yeah.
    Tell us.
    I didn't find him, but I found my brother
    through the Red Cross.
    I found the address for my brother in England.
    He lived in Birmingham and got married to a Gentile girl.
    And so I had already with him the connection.
    When the war was in Germany, this came when my husband was--
    they just fled other way.
    They brought him on--
    how you call it?
    On a [NON-ENGLISH], death march.
    If you die, you die.
    If you fall down, if you can make it, you are shot down.
    So and they went and went everywhere.
    They finally came in a place, [NON-ENGLISH] or something
    my husband told me.
    And there they were staying, and then they
    were for them the war over.
    This were already then Americans there.
    So then they took a car somewhere, they
    were five guys from Prague.
    And they went home.
    They tried to come home to Prague.
    But they couldn't go only to Pilsen.
    The English couldn't go further.
    And the Americans couldn't go further,
    until the Pilsen on the border from Czechoslovakia,
    because they made a pact, our government with Russian
    and all.
    They made this pact.
    They cannot go further.
    They [? stopped ?] for the Russian.
    So right, so my husband went in Pilsen
    to the English headquarters, because he
    knew Carl was in England.
    He didn't know where or what?
    Your brother, Carl?
    Yeah.
    So he said he went there, and this guy said, of course,
    my husband was 6 foot tall.
    He was a professor once who spoke
    this English, King's English.
    So he went.
    He said, what can I do for you, sir?
    He said I would like to look for people, for young soldiers,
    maybe from Carlsbad.
    My wife is born in Carlsbad, is born this and this.
    And her brother was I know, he was once in the army,
    in the Czech army.
    So I assume he is again in the army somewhere.
    So this is [NON-ENGLISH],, or whoever it was.
    He called all the guys from this city together,
    and they were frightened.
    They wondered what they did.
    They had to summon them in the--
    so they came in.
    And he said, the issue stating.
    So he said, this chap here, he said
    his wife comes from Carlsbad.
    And I wonder what you are from there, whether you
    know these people, him.
    Oh, yes, we went with her to school, one said.
    And the other said, my mother lived with him
    in the same building in Birmingham.
    So right this was already wonderful.
    So he wrote me.
    He couldn't write anything.
    But the soldier wrote a letter to his mother.
    And my brother didn't even know I was married.
    But I wrote him already.
    I had the connection already.
    So then my husband wrote a few letters, a few lines to it.
    And then he got this letter.
    So my husband knew already that he is alive.
    And he sent me a telegram.
    He said, Mike is alive.
    So this is how everything comes somehow together.
    How did you get to Prague?
    Oh, this was a terrible thing.
    I went in.
    When the war was over, it took maybe a long time,
    maybe in July or something or beginning of August.
    A friend of mine, she worked for the French government
    for the refugees that we were.
    And she was from Berlin.
    She was very-- I was my customer.
    I was sewing for them.
    They had money.
    So they said, she went to Paris.
    She had to go to Paris.
    I said, oh go to the Czech consul,
    or whoever there is, and tell them I want to go home.
    I have to go home.
    So she was there two days and she sent me a telegram already.
    Hilda come back up and come to Paris.
    So I packed up and went to Paris.
    And so she picked me up from the train
    and brought me in a beautiful villa.
    Well, these were all refugees there.
    They were from Liechtenstein there,
    and they were from Belgium there, people and me,
    Czechs too.
    And so now, I went to the--
    and I should have gone immediately to Orleans,
    and should have flown home.
    So when I came to early on the airport,
    they found out I went in a German school.
    So I explained it to them.
    When I was born, and when I was a kid and went to school,
    there were no Czech, there were no Czechoslovakia.
    They were still Austrian Hungarian.
    And they had no Czech school.
    Right?
    What you're doing to me?
    So right, they didn't take me.
    I had to go back again to Paris and again in this camp.
    So I was running really like a boomerang there and back.
    And four weeks I was running around.
    Finally in this camp, in this Czech camp
    there, this was divided.
    These were rooms for Czech.
    And these were rooms for Lichtenstein.
    And these were rooms for this and this all.
    And there was a girl, a German girl,
    and she was running around with this one guy who was
    a little manager in this camp.
    And I told him, this is so terrible what they do to me.
    I cannot go home.
    Yet then they said I have to get from the Czech government
    papers that they allow me to come back,
    since I was at a German school, and all kinds of the thing.
    I said, but I'm Czech.
    So therefore, I have this paper.
    I'm allowed to come back to Prague again.
    So then they said.
    This guy said to me, you are such a run around,
    and they don't let you go easy, up to the consul,
    you better write a letter and go in the afternoon
    to the consulate, when nobody is there.
    And give it to the concierge.
    This is a custodian.
    Give it to the concierge and tell them wait for an answer.
    So she went up there.
    And he let me come in, this consulate.
    And what had happened, we had the address in Prague,
    where we will find each other when we should survive.
    This way, we had to act, what a friend from the consulate,
    and then in the end he said, I know your husband.
    Isn't he an English professor?
    I said, yes, he's my husband.
    All right.
    He said, I know and you had the best right to go home again.
    And he told me then and then goes a transport.
    It goes to Epernay we have to go.
    All right.
    I went to Epernay.
    It was a terrible camp.
    And so then we went to--
    two weeks.
    I was in this camp.
    I was so cold.
    I was never frozen so much.
    But there were three soldiers, Czech soldiers.
    And they picked me up, really picked me up in Paris
    on the train.
    And I had already conserved you know tins, and all
    prepared, when my husband and I come home.
    He would be hungry.
    He would be starving.
    And so I had a rucksack full of these tins.
    And I had all this luggage there.
    And I had to schlep it all the time.
    Now what can I do?
    So the three soldiers said to me in Czech, can we join you?
    I said, yeah.
    If you carry my things here, you can join me.
    So what a guy.
    Oh, he was tall.
    So he took this in hand, he said for goodness sake.
    What you have in here.
    I said, these are all tins for my husband
    when I come home, because he would be starving.
    And I should bring him something to eat.
    So right, they were very nice and they took care of me
    the two weeks when we were in Epernay.
    Epernay is the out thing, there were
    the grapes for the champagne.
    And oh, it was a gorgeous city too.
    So we went away, took some potatoes from a field,
    and baked them outside.
    And we had to survive.
    And then we went on this transport.
    They brought all these orders were a terrible transport.
    They brought from Northern France
    all the communistic miners to Czechoslovakia and back again,
    repatriating again them.
    Because they threw out all the Nazis
    what were in this coal mines.
    You know, Sudeten district had big coal mines there.
    They had nobody there.
    So they had to bring them from there again back.
    And these were the most lowest, lowest people were ever there.
    And then came women from the Red Cross.
    And they said, I couldn't be with 18 men here.
    I said, yes, I will stay with these 18 men here.
    I don't go in another wagon.
    Because this is were these cattle trucks.
    You open here, there, and you just go out.
    But I stayed there.
    What year was this?
    '45.
    Still?
    So in August '45.
    I just had my birthday in this Epernay.
    So we went out and had a good dinner with potatoes,
    took out had baked potatoes and all kind.
    And so we had a thing.
    You lived.
    How could you do?
    Whatever it was possible.
    So then we went two weeks in these cattle trucks
    through Germany and come home to Prague.
    So this was this.
    How did you recuperate physically?
    How long did it take?
    Bad.
    Bad.
    A year I couldn't go near a train.
    I couldn't go.
    My husband said, maybe we go there.
    I said, don't ask me anything.
    I cannot go near a train.
    I don't want to see a train, nothing.
    I couldn't see a train.
    A whole year, I couldn't see a train.
    Otherwise, if I didn't see a train it was all right with me.
    When you went home, naturally, you met your husband.
    No, not immediately.
    My husband was already teaching in a school in a university.
    And this my friends, they were engineers.
    So he said always when some mail or something comes,
    that they will come.
    So when I came this at night at 4 o'clock.
    I had no money.
    I had only cigarettes.
    And this was a fairly way where I had to go with his friends.
    And I heard in the street that everything were locked up.
    Even the railroads were locked up.
    And the people said you cannot get out here,
    because the Russians were raping the women,
    and you cannot get out.
    I said, I have to go out.
    I open the door, a big door and I heard this click clack
    with a horse.
    So you were in Prague?
    By the Wenceslas Platz?
    Yeah?
    Where the museum is?
    From there came, and there is a railroad next door.
    And then from there, I heard a click clack,
    click clack, some horses.
    So I looked out.
    And I said to this guy.
    You know what?
    I have no money.
    I have cigarettes.
    I can give you cigarettes.
    Bring me down there and there.
    This was near [NON-ENGLISH],, further out.
    So he said, yeah, I'll take you.
    It was 3 o'clock in the morning.
    So I went in the cart.
    The luggage I gave into in the storage there.
    And I went with this one satchel, all rags.
    So I went there and this guy wanted to go another way.
    I said, where do you driving around here?
    This is not the way I should go.
    No right then you have to give me more cigarettes.
    So I said, no.
    I give you one.
    If you don't let me go there, I get out and walk.
    That's what you do.
    Right?
    Finally, he brought me there to the door.
    So then I went up in this house.
    And of course, I had to ring the custodian out.
    And this custodian was a new one in this all the time.
    And so they let me in.
    And I said, I'm a friend from [NON-ENGLISH],,
    so I knocked at the door 4 o'clock in the morning.
    And I thought my husband would be there somewhere.
    No, he had an apartment already somewhere else in the city.
    So I came in.
    Oh, my gosh.
    At least they gave me a hot bath, and they had to clean.
    I was dirty you couldn't believe it.
    Two weeks on a cattle truck.
    And so nice, in a nice couch, they made up and all.
    And in the morning, when Mike called up, and said,
    is there news?
    He said, yeah.
    Come on here and pick up the news yourself.
    So he came at 10:00, when he had recess.
    He came.
    And I opened the door and big as was, he fainted in my arms.
    And I said-- and I learned a very good English,
    because I knew when we are in Prague, we cannot speak German.
    He couldn't speak very good Czech, of course.
    So I thought I have to learn English,
    because we had to talk now English.
    German, I cannot talk in Prague now after this thing,
    what they had there.
    So I said immediately, so right finally we went home.
    And he had the apartment already,
    two bedrooms and a kitchen, and bathroom and all, in the city.
    And me and my neighborhood where I lived.
    And so it was all right.
    But he said, you know what?
    I don't work anymore.
    Because you cannot buy anything.
    Here you have the ration cards, and you cannot get
    for the ration cards.
    I said you better go to work.
    We will have to need the money, you know?
    I said to him.
    And I went to the old custodian where I lived used to live,
    and they gave me already a casserole with a roast.
    And I came home I said, you see.
    We won't starve.
    Now we have it already.
    I'm home, and you won't starve, and you go to work,
    and you make the money.
    And because I will need the money,
    we have to buy on the black market.
    So that's what it is.
    Then what were your plans for the future?
    I didn't have plans at all.
    They told him, my Mike, he could go back to Germany.
    And he could get our furniture along,
    and we could get an apartment.
    I said I don't go to Germany and I don't want to see anything.
    And I don't go any railroad.
    And I don't go anywhere.
    I stay here now.
    But of course, he didn't feel too good.
    His nerves, he lost 100 pounds.
    He was sick, of course.
    So after a while, I saw what I do to him
    if I wouldn't go anywhere.
    The people got lost in the street.
    When you say something, for instance, I took a newspaper.
    We had four newspapers then.
    And I bought this one newspaper.
    Went in a dry cleaner store.
    And this guy said to me, oh you buy this newspaper too?
    I said, yeah.
    That's right.
    And he had a girl working there.
    Next day, I came and wanted to pick up my things.
    I said, where is Mr so-and-so.
    Oh, he's not here anymore.
    He was gone already.
    They arrested him already, because he was sympathizing
    with this newspaper.
    What party was the paper?
    What politics?
    I don't remember what for.
    There were democratic.
    Democratic, they had then four papers.
    Of course, there were the Russian newspaper.
    And they were a state newspaper.
    And they were this democrat newspaper.
    These were all later-- they're now gone.
    And this was the Russians who arrested?
    The Russians, sure.
    The Russians.
    And so my Mike was so afraid.
    He got so sick then his nerves were.
    So I thought, all right.
    I said, all right.
    If you have somebody to write it's finished now?
    No.
    Go ahead.
    Go ahead.
    And if you have somewhere to go to America,
    let's go to America.
    All right.
    He wrote to a friend, but before his pupil was.
    But he sent in every day, but this was not a whole every day.
    It was not a very good one.
    And I must say that the consul in Prague,
    they were the most horrible people that I ever saw.
    The American consul?
    The American consul.
    They were not very good.
    Nobody liked these people.
    We came in this office.
    He sits there with the feet on the thing.
    He wouldn't say can I help you or something, until I said,
    you know, and my husband was so his nerves were so shocked,
    and he was so down, because not a bit of respect nothing
    to show.
    He couldn't speak the language at all.
    Who sent out in another language, therefore,
    we are so bad off.
    And so he wasn't very helpful.
    So a friend of ours.
    she could get someone go there, and she
    went to her relatives, and her dead husband's relatives
    to Saint Louis.
    And so she said, she prepared everything for us.
    You go illegally across the border.
    So we went illegally across the border to Germany.
    We're going to let you stop there for a few minutes.
    And then we'll come back with another segment, Hilda.
    Yeah.
    Oh, my God.
    Thank you.
    I'm Sidney Elsner.
    Today, December 27, 1984, we are in the third segment
    of our interview with Hilda Prooth,
    a Holocaust survivor from Prague in Czechoslovakia.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Hilda, after the year returned to Prague in 1945,
    tell us about life under the Communist regime
    in Czechoslovakia and what made you determined to leave.
    It was very hard because you couldn't talk anywhere.
    You couldn't talk to people in the street.
    I mean, you could, but very limited
    because you never know who the people are or who the people--
    how the people think.
    And everybody tried to be nice to the Russian, just
    the same way they nice to the Nazis.
    So they were nice to the Russian,
    and think they save themselves, or something.
    This were in thing.
    And the food was not very much.
    You couldn't-- but this wouldn't bother us because I could
    something to get from the country or somewhere.
    But and altogether, I couldn't make--
    and my Mike was nervous about this
    because since he was born in Russia
    and he was not very keen about this, so he was always afraid
    they would take him away somewhere.
    So I said, he could have gone to Germany.
    Can I help you?
    No, no, please, sit down.
    He could have gone to Germany.
    But I said, no, I don't go to Germany.
    I don't go to a railroad.
    I don't go anything.
    I cannot have it.
    But then I saw, he says so sick, he gets sick by days
    and depressed.
    So I said, no, write this and this guy for papers.
    We can go to America.
    No-- write, but the guy to America
    is-- he didn't send very good papers.
    What guy was this?
    Huh?
    Who was this?
    A friend from Hemmingstedt, in where
    he was a pupil once in Germany.
    And they lived somewhere in Jamaica, somewhere there
    near New York or somewhere.
    So he wrote and he had the address.
    So anyhow-- and he prepared them to go to America
    and tell them always.
    But they went.
    And of course, so it was not a very good papers.
    So we didn't have enough.
    So we couldn't go.
    So then a friend of ours, she had from her former husband--
    the husband was dead in Poland.
    So she said to me, she--
    my husband wrote her the letters to America, said,
    she will come to America.
    And she could go because she had a German quota.
    And this was very fast.
    She could go.
    So then she said, you have to go illegally to Germany.
    And she prepared.
    She was a wonderful person.
    She could everything could go.
    So she prepared our things to go to Germany.
    But we had to go in the evening night to a train
    and go to Cheb, this is a border on the-- city on the border
    still in Czechoslovakia.
    And so I-- we left the luggage on the train.
    And they asked where I go--
    this, and this, and this address.
    They said, yeah, go in this one.
    So suddenly, this was dark and nobody on the street,
    of course, nobody.
    So suddenly, I heard gap, gap, boots, heavy boots to walk.
    I turned around, oh, my gosh, police with a bayonet again.
    And oh, I got sick again.
    So I said, don't turn around, I said, but there
    are-- the police is behind us.
    So the police came.
    They said, where do we want to go?
    I said-- I gave them the address.
    I said, we should go there and there.
    Oh, he said, yes.
    You see, we didn't know, the Jews, they were from Israel--
    the Jews, the Israelis Jews, they were in Prague.
    And they should help us to go over the border.
    And they were so tired, they fell asleep and didn't wake up.
    They should have been on the train and pick us up.
    But the soldiers were young soldiers.
    They were friends with this one.
    They didn't know.
    They said, no, no, we will bring you there.
    I said, my gosh, the prison comes again on a prison.
    So they saw it.
    But they brought us in a house.
    And there were several Jews awaiting there.
    So they went in this room and said, listen, wake up, wake up.
    We picked up for you these people here.
    So then I knew already we were amongst the Jews.
    So next day, we went across the border.
    And we had to say--
    we didn't say we were from Prague.
    We had to say we come from a border,
    from Poland and German, where they speak German because we
    couldn't speak Polish.
    I mean, I could make that understood,
    but this is not the right thing.
    We couldn't speak English because we shouldn't be.
    We should be immigrants from there.
    So we went.
    There were a couple of people with us there.
    And they went to--
    they went there in this--
    through immigration thing again.
    And they brought all kind of a food with me.
    And they took it away, of course.
    So then we went like a no land--
    nowhere land.
    Stateless?
    Yeah.
    We went through there.
    And then we went finally to Selb in Germany.
    It's on the border.
    And there were people, they went--
    there were this-- was a headquarter for the Jewish
    there.
    So we went in there.
    And I had a kidney trouble.
    I was lying on the floor.
    I couldn't sit anymore.
    And so he said--
    this guy came, was from the Jewish congregation from there.
    He said, who is this what on the floor?
    I said-- my husband says, my wife.
    She had kidney trouble.
    And she cannot sit up anymore.
    So he invited us in his house, where a new build house,
    beautiful.
    And we got again a bath and all right.
    We were really nicely done and in a nice, clean bed and so.
    But next day, we had to go to Munich.
    And the Munich, we couldn't go in the street before 7 o'clock
    in the morning because we didn't have any papers.
    If they would have found out us, we would have to go in a prison
    again.
    So we had to stay the whole night on this railroad station.
    And I had to lie on this little wheels, where
    they bring the luggage on.
    On this, I lie down.
    I couldn't sit anymore.
    I couldn't make it anymore.
    So finally, the day grew out.
    And they-- we were 7 o'clock.
    So they could go out.
    And we asked where we go in this Jewish congregation.
    It was Saturday.
    Saturday, the congregation is not open.
    Now, what do we do now?
    Now, they told us where we go with a bus.
    We have to go with a streetcar.
    But the streetcar doesn't ride all the time.
    They have no codes or no electricity for this.
    But we had to go in this and this kaserne again further out.
    I want to go back a minute.
    You're in Munich in late 19-- it's 1947 now, correct?
    Mm-hmm.
    And in Munich was a Jewish congregation
    after all the pogroms from Hitler?
    There was a congregation.
    But this was not-- this were for the Jews what is--
    this was not-- the congregation was only
    a city hall or something, where the Jews are.
    Community center.
    Yeah, a community center, something.
    Not a religious congregation?
    This not, but there was a religious congregation there.
    Also?
    In the city, yeah.
    So then we went there.
    And we couldn't-- so we went then in this camp there.
    Oh, terrible.
    So they brought them.
    I said, I come from Prague.
    So they brought a guy, a Czech, talk with her,
    whether she speaks Czech.
    All right, I talked with him.
    And he said, yes, she is Czech.
    You can leave her here.
    There were Polish people there.
    Oh, there were all kind of people there.
    And we were there in this place.
    What a terrible place.
    So you had smuggled yourself across the Czech border
    into Germany--
    Yeah.
    --awaiting entry into the United States.
    We had to wait there.
    You had to wait there.
    Now, tell us, please, before you left Prague,
    you were telling me something about a printing house.
    Yeah, I had to work there.
    Tell us about that.
    Oh, they were fun.
    It was no fun.
    I mean, I had to--
    there was a note on the door, we accept--
    we look for young girls.
    They don't need any--
    don't need to know anything.
    We will train them and all, right.
    What kind of a printing house was this?
    Printing.
    These were books, and books, and--
    Old, established firm?
    Oh, yes, a old one.
    They made prayer books already in 1850 or some, the oldest
    prayer books what they had.
    Jewish prayer books?
    Jewish prayer books.
    Hebrew?
    Yeah.
    These were Hebrew and all, were old established.
    Of course, this-- the one manager was a Gentile
    and were a democrat.
    And the other one were a communist.
    Right, so now, it's Prague 1945--
    '46.
    '46.
    And Israel established a Jewish printing press in Prague.
    It still was there.
    Yeah.
    Now, it's not anymore.
    No, but then.
    Then it was.
    And I went in.
    And I said, I'm not a young girl anymore.
    But I need a job.
    And you can train me.
    I mean, I'm not so stupid.
    You can train me.
    You can show me what to do.
    All right, they took me.
    Then I had to go to the labor exchange from the communists
    to ask the permission to work in this one.
    All such a ignorant things.
    All right, anyhow, I get it.
    I got it.
    And then so I worked there for a half a year.
    It was also Christmastime.
    You couldn't make-- if you want to have a Christmas day,
    you have to work this hours in during the other days.
    You cannot day off this Christmas Day.
    And my husband had a operation.
    So I had to go out to the hospital.
    So when I went to the hospital, these hours, I had to make up.
    So it was 8 o'clock in the evening sometimes, 9 o'clock
    before I went home.
    It was good enough.
    I lived only around the corner.
    And so I went to my husband on every second day in thing,
    went in sanatorium.
    And by far out, I had to go by bus again or by streetcar.
    And so then, finally, he came home and was all right so far.
    He was, again, teaching.
    And he had private teachers and all from Masaryk.
    You know who is Masaryk was?
    Yes.
    He had also from the ministry for Masaryk
    were his pupils in English.
    They came all in the house and did that.
    And so it wouldn't be so bad, only we had to go away.
    We had to go away from Prague.
    Because of the political situation?
    Because political situation.
    So we went there.
    And when we came to Munich, and we came in this kaserne again,
    this Funkkaserne was the name, so then we--
    then my husband-- there was a guy.
    And he said-- he was from Romania.
    And he said to me, to my Mike, if somebody speaks
    like you English, and my friend is Mr. Retter,
    he's a manager from this--
    not congregation, from this Jewish thing here.
    He will get you a job immediately.
    They will need such a thing.
    And all right, my Mike went there.
    And he got him like a foreign minister.
    He was a liaison officer between the Jews and the American.
    And then to this, we got in a hotel room.
    So we could live in the hotel.
    When they were-- in Europe, you didn't
    have a closet for clothes.
    You had wardrobes.
    Yes.
    So right there were the three wardrobes.
    And I sat there.
    The chambermaid came.
    And there were no keys.
    I said, where are they?
    There's no keys to this.
    And she started off in German to say, yeah, there they
    were living some Jews.
    And they were--
    I said to my husband, listen to this.
    Start all over again.
    So my Mike went over.
    And he was talking.
    He learned German in Eastern Germany,
    you knew this were a German when he talked like a--
    Prussian.
    --Prussian, yeah.
    So he said, Fraulein, we are Jews too.
    We don't want to hear it at all what you have to say.
    So she was quiet.
    And she never-- she was the best person what I ever had there
    of course, then after this.
    But immediately, they started, oh, we are the Jews.
    They left all the--
    they weren't very tidy.
    And they-- I said to him, listen to this again.
    Starts already.
    So he shut her up immediately.
    And then it was all right.
    So in Munich, did you get any help
    from the Jewish organizations, the international ones?
    Really, I didn't.
    The Joint Distribution Committee, from America?
    We didn't need it.
    Didn't need it.
    First of all, I brought-- we brought money from Prague,
    all the marks what I could get.
    There were no value in these things.
    Of course, they were not too long
    value because there were money reform again.
    I went through-- I went only though three money
    reforms because Hitler printed money galore, like our beloved.
    And so he-- so in France, we had to give the money away,
    whatever we had.
    And we got 350 francs to live a life, start a life over again.
    So then I came to Prague.
    In Prague, our custodian had money for me
    because we couldn't have more than 3,000 crowns in the hand,
    in the thing.
    And I sold some jewelry.
    And I gave this guy to keep my money.
    He were-- they were very honest people.
    And so we had this money.
    And you couldn't buy much.
    So and it comes again a money reform in Prague.
    We got 500 crowns.
    And there's other one in the bank.
    And goodbye again.
    So right now, we came to Germany.
    In '38, money reform.
    Again, this money give away.
    And we got, I think, 50 marks in the hand.
    And then my husband was very sick in nerves.
    They had to give him in a sanatorium.
    And he had to get shock treatments and all.
    This is '48.
    This was in '48.
    And then I brought him out.
    And he said-- and I had to bring him in a home.
    Yeah, then I couldn't get him anymore in the hotel.
    We couldn't pay it in the hotel.
    I had to look for an apartment.
    You couldn't get any apartment.
    You could only get a room with somewhere.
    All right, Hilda, let's move from Munich
    onto getting into the United States.
    You went from Munich to where, Hamburg?
    Bremen?
    Yeah, Bremen and Hamburg.
    What a terrible camp there.
    What kind of camp, displaced persons camp?
    Displaced persons camp.
    And then there was Polish Nazis there.
    And they came with a bayonet.
    They ran around.
    And when the children-- there were people with children.
    And he was-- they were terrible.
    This was horrible.
    Now, these were all interred people waiting waiting--
    Waiting for--
    --or displaced persons, rather--
    Yeah, they ran--
    --stateless and such.
    --waiting for a transport to go to America.
    So we went on the boat.
    Who operated the camps?
    Polish people.
    And what government?
    German.
    Horrible.
    East German, West German?
    No, in east-- West German, was under English,
    I don't remember what it was.
    Didn't ask them much.
    But this was a horrible thing.
    And besides this, when we came back to Prague,
    there were no children in my life
    because they were all killed.
    There were no children there.
    You can imagine a city--
    Jewish children?
    --without Jewish children, nobody.
    Came to the effect that I hated people with children.
    I hated them, really.
    In Germany, it was terrible when I saw the German children.
    Oh, I could kill them.
    I was really ready.
    They really frustrated me so much.
    So when we came from Germany in the train to--
    yeah, then on the boat to New York, and from New York,
    we were only three days in New York.
    How was it you got to the United States?
    There was a new law for displaced persons?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Truman had to sign.
    We were waiting for President Truman,
    he should sign the displaced person pact.
    And then we could go.
    We had to go again, undergo all kind of a treatment
    and all kind of a thing.
    Oh, this was terrible-- hours to walk in high snow and all.
    Now, you went on the ship from Bremen to New York.
    Yeah, was a ship.
    Was a good ship for us.
    Were there--
    And only displaced persons.
    This were only a ship for displaced person.
    Of course, there were also-- there
    were only 135 Jewish people on.
    And the others were all Lithuanian
    and all kind of a people.
    What were they like?
    They didn't bother us.
    One couple were there.
    And there were young Jewish guys from Poland.
    And they were always in bundles.
    And they were shh-shh.
    When this couple come by--
    Who came by?
    A couple from Lithuania and a couple
    with kids, dressed up to a T.
    A kapo is a camp guard.
    No, this was a camp guard, yeah.
    From the Nazis?
    Yeah.
    And they were in the same camp where this guy was a cap.
    So they were always whispering.
    My Mike said to them, what are you doing?
    Why whispering?
    So they said, oh, we don't want to tell you.
    We are afraid.
    And I said, what-- he said, what you are afraid of here?
    So then they told him.
    And my Mike had the audience by the captain.
    And they told him what's going on.
    This guy were a cap in Lithuania.
    This is a secret Nazi.
    And there, they called up the immigration officers
    when they came to New York.
    We were in line.
    And this couple with the kids, they
    were like they already owned the boat.
    So these two, this guy from the immigration office--
    this was such a big guys--
    and they came.
    And they said, are you Mr. Wojek [PERSONAL NAME]??
    Yes.
    Oh, yes.
    All right.
    Then when they came down, they were railed away.
    And they were separated already.
    And my Mike had to interpret into them,
    had to stay with them.
    And I had to stay in front of my luggage
    to get the P, under the P. And he was there.
    So there were people from the press in--
    from New York.
    And they wanted to talk to us both, Mike and me.
    So I said, yeah, my Mike-- my husband is there.
    So then finally, they were already
    taking care of these people.
    They came to Ellis Island.
    They came back again to Lithuania.
    And they didn't come into country.
    Your husband saw to it that they were not admitted--
    They were not permitted.
    --because of the Nazi background.
    No.
    So all right.
    Now, how did you come to Cleveland?
    No, they were-- we went to Cleveland.
    Why?
    Because in Munich, they asked my Mike, where--
    you have a preference which city to go?
    And he said, no, New York will be too big.
    So Chicago, they had too many racketeers.
    We don't go there.
    He knew already from Al Capone and so
    only he didn't want to go there.
    Then he said, no, San Francisco.
    But it's overcrowded already.
    We cannot send you there.
    But we send you to Cleveland.
    No, right, wherever.
    What can you say?
    Well, you have a preference then?
    So we went to Cleveland.
    So I said to my Mike, how is the climate in Cleveland?
    Very good, the good air comes from Canada over the Lake Erie.
    Later on, I cried.
    I said, you said this is the--
    when it was muggy and all.
    What work did your husband do here in Cleveland?
    Immediately, he was a bookkeeper.
    He had an accounting degree in Europe?
    Oh, yeah, in England.
    But he was here a bookkeeper.
    He was by a company, Heimans.
    We are still friends and they live now in Florida.
    When they come, they come always here and visiting me.
    And then they were by a firm, a paper company, Glennville
    Paper.
    And they were wonderful to my Mike.
    They were really wonderful to us.
    Whenever-- when he was two months in the hospital,
    they brought us the check in the house
    or in the hospital with the overtime what he made.
    They were wonderful, these people.
    Fine.
    Now, Hilda, your own work in Cleveland
    was in the garment trades?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, from the making.
    You'd been a dressmaker in Prague
    before you went off to Theresienstadt.
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    And in the camps, you made German uniforms, the labor
    camps.
    You didn't need a degree for this.
    Yeah.
    You didn't volunteer.
    And then you come to Cleveland and you're
    in the needle trades.
    Now, tell us a little bit about your work
    and your activities, now, in the union movement.
    Oh, I was in the--
    I worked in [PLACE NAME].
    This was the finest coats, and the ladies' coats,
    and ladies suits factory on 24th and Payne.
    Now, it's the board of election in there.
    In the needle trades.
    I would like to explain that next to New York City,
    Cleveland was the--
    Was the biggest.
    --was the biggest in the needle trades in the United States.
    So and now, is nothing there anymore.
    So and then I went-- and they closed up [PLACE NAME]..
    Then I had a operation, two operations, and so on.
    So I was sicks.
    And then my husband said, you know what?
    You don't have to.
    Then I said, I make it home alteration.
    I stay home.
    And I make alterations at home.
    I sewing at home.
    And this finished.
    But then, of course, then he got sick.
    And I was glad I was home.
    And then he died.
    What year?
    In '60, in March.
    And you never had children?
    No.
    I had a miscarriage.
    And you were active in the International Ladies' Garment
    Workers Union?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    always.
    Always.
    I was a chairlady.
    I was.
    Now, tell us now what you do in the 1980s with the union.
    Oh, I'm always involved.
    First of all, I'm the president from the retirees
    in the Union for the Ladies' Garment Workers.
    Then I'm a member from the Federation of Retired Workers.
    This is also only workers out there.
    And we work.
    We try to do something for the senior citizen good.
    What are your projects?
    Project is always now-- is just--
    I had just now, we have to--
    our Social Security, we have to tax.
    And we should have gone already a long time to Washington
    to try them after.
    Now, do you go to Columbus, and Washington--
    Yes, oh, yes.
    --and Cleveland City Council.
    In Columbus and Washington.
    And you appear before the committees and lobby?
    Yes.
    Good.
    And you're 80 years old?
    Yes.
    And we went twice already to--
    three times to Washington.
    I belong also National Council of Senior Citizen.
    This is a outfit in Washington.
    So I have-- and then the CLUW.
    The CLUW. is a coalition of labor women.
    I was in Chicago in the convention.
    And I was in--
    we had from the federation, we had a convention
    in Philadelphia this year.
    And I go any time when something is.
    All right, Hilda, please tell us how the Holocaust experiences
    affect you now.
    It affects me.
    I tell you the truth, I don't want
    to talk too much about this because then I get sick.
    I can't sleep the whole night.
    This affects me in this way.
    So when is in the afternoon, I still can talk.
    A little later, I cannot talk anymore because I get
    so distraught.
    And I cannot sleep.
    Well, what made you decide to share your experiences with us?
    Because everybody said, you should have gone there.
    You should have done this.
    Why didn't you go there?
    No, I thought, all right, once, why?
    Then I saw the mayor was talking and said,
    the people should call up this and this number.
    On television, the mayor of Cleveland?
    Yeah.
    So I thought, I'd do him a favor.
    And I call up.
    And this was this.
    For this Holocaust survivors project?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    No, I was in the civic auditorium when it was opened.
    And I was there.
    And I brought--
    And they had an exhibit from Prague and Terezín.
    Yeah.
    And I brought my book along.
    Oh, the girls, they were out.
    I went there in the evening, the first evening
    when nobody was there, not yet.
    This girl didn't want to let me in.
    I said, don't talk so much.
    I said, I was there.
    I want to see it all alone.
    I don't want to have any audience with me.
    And I don't want to have a distraction at all.
    I said, I was there.
    And I wanted to see it.
    So all right.
    Then I went again once and took my book along,
    and took the things along, and I showed it.
    There were these volunteer girls there.
    And they were very nice.
    They told me, I should call this and this rabbi.
    But I didn't say anything.
    Then I have two neighbors.
    They said, you call this and this rabbi up.
    But of course, this rabbi never, never called me.
    So I didn't bother.
    So this was the reason what I said,
    I thought I'd do him a favor, said, I call it up.
    So and there was the--
    what's her name-- this Inge Kootz was on the telephone.
    She said-- her mother is my friend.
    Good.
    Hilda, do you think that survivors
    have a message that others need to understand?
    Nobody understands.
    Nobody wants to understand.
    When something would come here in America,
    they wouldn't do a thing because they don't believe you.
    See, I worked in Majestic.
    Majestic was an outfit for all the ladies--
    were only a shipping plant.
    It was in Lampard Building.
    This were a Jewish Jewish outfit.
    We had there a girl, a Italian girl.
    And there were also girls from Poland.
    And they were in the bunker there.
    They didn't even know whether-- or were frightened.
    They were in Palestine, in Israel,
    came back here, frightened girls.
    And this Italian girl said to this one,
    I said-- you know what she said?
    Hitler didn't do a good job with you.
    But now, I have a boyfriend.
    And he is a German.
    And he said, he will finish up what Hitler didn't do.
    So these girls were so frightened.
    They came to me and said, Hilda, what's the matter with this?
    I said, all right.
    And so this one girl heard that all the Jewish girl-- she said,
    this one vice president passed.
    And he said, this is a free country.
    Can say what-- she can say what she likes.
    I was not satisfied.
    So I went to the president on a Saturday, when we worked.
    I said, Harold, can I talk to you?
    Yeah, come on in the office.
    Come on.
    So I told him about this incident.
    I said, these girls, they suffered so much.
    They were in the war.
    They were in the bunker in Poland.
    They didn't even know the war was over.
    They were afraid to get out.
    I said, these girls, they heard it from this Maria.
    Here in Cleveland?
    Yeah.
    And what I intend to do?
    He said, nothing.
    I said, you wouldn't want her?
    After all, you are Jewish.
    This is a Jewish outfit.
    Your uncle is a Jew, who belong--
    who is the owner.
    No, it wouldn't do any good.
    I said, you wouldn't do anything?
    I said, you should be ashamed of yourself.
    So I said, if I have to go down-- because we had
    the boxes on the escalators.
    You had to take it down.
    They come around the boxes for packing.
    So he said-- I said, should I go next to her
    and I hear one peep out of her, so the big box comes
    on her head.
    That's all.
    So he said, Hilda, you wouldn't.
    I said, try me.
    I said, and since you are also Jewish
    and I went through this all, I would greatly
    suffer with you again.
    And you should suffer.
    See?
    Therefore, nobody would fear a finger.
    This I tell you.
    And I hope only the government will never come such a thing.
    But nobody would move a finger.
    And I can tell you, I know it.
    This is Sidney Elsner.
    And our Holocaust survivor today has been Hilda Prooth.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    We thank you very much, Hilda.
    You're welcome.
    Get--

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Hilda Prooth
    Interviewer
    Sidney Elsner
    Date
    interview:  1984 December 27
    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
    Prooth, Hilda, 1904-

    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 08:11:11
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504980

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (3)
    Summary (English)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    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

    Oral history interview with Molly Akst

    Oral history interview with Molly Akst

    Oral History

    Molly Akst, born in Bodzanow-Ktodzisko, Poland, describes being one of seven children born to Orthodox parents; her grandfather living with the family; her family owning a dry-goods store; the positive relations between Jews and Gentiles in her town; belonging to the Mizrachi youth group; how the only antisemitic acts in Bodzanow were perpetrated mostly by young boys; leading a quiet, studious life and planning to eventually go to Krakow to teach Hebrew; the German invasion; the many restrictions placed on Jews; most men, including her father, being forced to go to work camps; her father returning home shortly before they were deported in March 1941; being sent to Chasno, where Jews were still living in their own homes and moving freely through the city; the creation of a ghetto in Chasno; convincing four of her siblings to escape with her; hiding for two years with gentile families and fields; keeping the other children safe; her sisters being denounced by a former neighbor in 1944; the arrest of the girls and their release after two weeks, but never seeing their younger sister again; taking her brothers and her sister to live in the woods; remaining in hiding, living outdoors until their liberation in January 1945; returning to Bodzanow, where they lived in a cousin's empty house; several Jews returning to the town and learning that her parents had died at Treblinka; getting married and going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; becoming ill with chronic hiccups; going to Montreal, Canada in 1948 after the birth of her son; her brothers and sister eventually moving to Cleveland, OH and joining them in 1957; living in Cleveland with her husband; and her two children and three grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral History

    Jennie Alpert, born in Czechoslovakia, describes being the second of three daughters; her mother dying when she was three; her father remarrying and going to live with her stepmother's sister; becoming a dressmaker and having a small business, which employed several young girls; being sent with her aunt to a ghetto in Ungvar (Uzhhorod), Ukraine in 1941; her father, stepmother, and eight brothers and sisters being sent elsewhere; being sent with her aunt to Auschwitz and wearing red arm-bands since they were barracks workers; the mass killings in the camp, and the death of her aunt; being selected for death but being forced to wait three days and then selected for work; being given a piece of bread and a dress, and then being transported to Traxenberg; their work digging trenches in the woods and being forced to sing as they walked to work; becoming a favorite of the camp commander, who was not a member of the SS, but of the Wehrmacht; the camp being evacuated in November and being forced to march for three weeks; the emotional state of one of the guards; being taken to Bergen-Belsen, where she remained until the liberation in April; being very sick at the end of the war and taken to a hospital in Juttaborg, Sweden (possibly Goteborg, Sweden); immigrating to the United States along with her brother and two sisters; meeting and marrying a Polish man who had moved to the US in the 1920s; and having a daughter and living in Cleveland Heights, OH.

    Oral history interview with Emerson Batdorff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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 Anna Moses

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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

    View All 133 Items in the Collection