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Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.40 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0040

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    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman
    Transcript
    You'll open up over here.
    Bob said if he, Mr. Reisman, holds them up,
    I think it wouldn't be too difficult.
    How about just like--
    I'm Judy Levendula.
    And today, I'm interviewing Mr. Isidor Reisman.
    I'd like to thank you for being here and sharing with us today.
    And to begin with, I want to ask you a little bit about--
    well, the very present.
    Let me ask you, first of all, your age,
    if you would share that.
    I was born 1920.
    I'm 64 now.
    And where were you born?
    In Bilka.
    That was Czechoslovakia at the time.
    It was Hungary before World War I.
    Then it was Czechoslovakia for 20 years.
    Hungary again for four years.
    And now, it's part of the Ukrainian USSR.
    It's called the Subcarpathian Mountains.
    And where do you live now?
    I live right now in Cleveland, in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.
    Are you married?
    Married with two children.
    And I work as a Hebrew teacher and also a consultant
    at the Instructional Materials Center
    at the Bureau of Jewish Education,
    where I create visual materials for teaching
    Bible, Jewish history, Israel, and Hebrew.
    Good.
    Let me ask you about what your life was like just
    before the war, if you can start with the year 1939
    and tell me what you remember about your situation then.
    Where you were and so forth.
    Before 1939, we lived in the eastern part of Czechoslovakia
    of the Carpathians.
    And I could describe my life, our life, our community life
    as very idyllic, quiet mountainsides,
    with beautiful countryside.
    And we lived in a real democracy, which is often
    called the European America.
    We had all the rights and privileges.
    Our Jewish community of over 1,000 people,
    we had some 200 families, 250 or so.
    And we organized our lives around our religion,
    around synagogue, around the rabbi,
    around the Hebrew schools.
    And we started education rather early, at the age of 4,
    for boys mainly.
    And girls joined then later on, their own Hebrew schools.
    But we had, I would say, a quiet, normal, hopeful life
    until 1939 when troubles start.
    Let me ask you a bit about the structure of your family.
    How many children were there?
    And what were they like?
    We were a family of nine children.
    I was the oldest one.
    And we lived in very close quarters of two rooms,
    often sleeping two or three in one bed.
    But we were a happy family.
    When I was older, I was away from home in yeshiva,
    so there was a little more space.
    And we didn't struggle much as far as making a living.
    My father was a good provider.
    What did he do?
    He was really-- he had several trades.
    First of all, he learned his trade as a shoemaker
    from his father.
    But when he came to live closer to the center of the city,
    he went into producing like marmalade through the summer,
    as the seasonal job.
    And he produced at one time every summer
    two tons of marmalade to be shipped out
    to western Czechoslovakia.
    And then he also learned to be a monument engraver and selling
    monuments.
    He learned this on his own.
    And in addition, he was the sexton of the congregation,
    of the large temple, synagogue, that
    is in the middle of our town.
    And this was the major synagogue,
    seating about 300 men, and on the mezzanine, equal number
    of women or more.
    So he was the actual caretaker of--
    it was really more or less a mitzvah job
    because he got maybe a half a day's pay for a week.
    But this made him--
    this is a picture of my father that I found after the war.
    I was given it by a friend, who had a picture and also
    some other materials that my father and mother gave
    him to hide until we return.
    And, of course, she sent us this picture.
    It's the only picture I have of my father.
    And I have no other pictures of home at all.
    And I treasure it very much.
    I have copies made for my sisters in Israel.
    And later on, when I've written for the Jewish News,
    I have his picture of course also featured in it.
    Otherwise, our life was considered without trouble
    because every one made a living, more or less.
    And we were happy with less.
    As far as housing or as far as food, we had enough to eat.
    And especially on the Shabbat, it was very beautiful,
    the way I describe it in my writings
    that I have written a book on my hometown, Bilka.
    And this book was really a thesis
    on my master's degree at the college, Cleveland
    College of Jewish Studies.
    Instead of writing about medieval history,
    so I thought I'll write a book about the history
    of our hometown, which has a history of some 300 years
    from the beginning through the very end, when out
    of 1,130 Jewish souls, about a little
    over 100 remained, which is about 1 out of 10 survived.
    What do you remember about the beginning of World War II?
    When were you first aware that there was a war?
    We were first aware that war is in the making when
    Hitler came to power.
    And we used to hear all kinds of discrimination and bigotry
    and then laws against the Jews.
    But this was out in Germany.
    And we hoped that this will just pass.
    But then, of course, the war came in.
    And we saw that it's going to other countries.
    And entire Europe was swept away under the Nazis.
    And finally, in 1939, when Hungary took over
    from the Czechoslovakians and from the Ukrainians, about
    six months of independence, and then
    we knew that it's coming closer.
    And Hungary became an ally of the Germany.
    And they started to institute anti-Jewish laws.
    But they were not as severe as in Germany.
    They were only like a Jew has to have special permission
    to have a license to have a store, a grocery
    store or a haberdashery store.
    So you had to have extra permission.
    And they checked whether he paid--
    whether he is already a native or a citizen for the past 100
    years, for the second or third generation.
    And they always could say no.
    And they tried to limit Jewish activity
    as far as commerce and work, but not the shoemakers
    or tailors and cobblers and cabinetmakers and so on.
    And as the war progressed, what happened to your family?
    As the war progressed, in 1941, I was 21 at the time.
    And I was inducted into the army.
    But at that time, there was no more room
    for the Jew in the army.
    And they established work camps, paramilitary work camps
    in Hungary, throughout Hungary, for all the recruits.
    And I was together with some 400 recruits
    coming to Kassa, which is in Slovakia.
    At that time, it was already Hungary.
    And we worked there.
    We learned basic training first.
    And instead of giving us weapons,
    they gave us a shovel to work in digging for a--
    mostly, we worked for about two years
    we built a railroad in Transylvania.
    And we had to wear--
    we had our military uniform for about 6 or 8 months.
    And we had to wear these yellow badges as a sign of a Jew.
    And there were some in our unit that
    come from Budapest or from other parts of deep Hungary.
    And they wore white badges.
    The white badges were for those who converted to Christianity,
    but they were considered still Jews.
    And they thought that they would be more privileged,
    but they were not really.
    At times they were treated even worse because they said,
    we don't want Jews to be Christians.
    How long were you in that work camp?
    I was there from 1941 in October throughout 1945 in January
    when I was liberated in Budapest.
    I have been working in the railroad for close
    to two years.
    And then later on, which was very hard labor,
    we had to actually fill up many wheelbarrows of, I would say,
    by the hundreds a day and to break through
    or to cut through a mountain and then fill in a valley
    to build a railroad.
    And it was very hard labor.
    And during the winter, it was very cold.
    And at times, we used to have food for lunch--
    we got out at 5 o'clock to work.
    It took us about an hour and a half to walk there.
    And then it was so-- the winter was very harsh.
    That was in northern Transylvania.
    And we actually had to eat bread that
    was frozen or salami at times.
    We had to figure out a way how to eat it.
    The next day we used to make crumbs out of the bread
    and chopped up the salami in squares.
    And it was frozen, but nevertheless we
    put it in our mouth.
    And it warmed up.
    That's how harsh the winter was.
    After that period, they were looking for someone
    to go to Budapest, they said, to a unit of someone who
    knows mechanics for motors, motor mechanics.
    I was not a mechanic.
    And I did not volunteer because I always
    felt I'm not pushing myself.
    Whatever will be, I left it to my fate.
    But they needed only 40.
    And then they needed 40 helpers assistants.
    And I was among the last two assistants
    to be called to be the assistants.
    And then we were for some-- over two years in Budapest.
    And we had a little more--
    First of all, we were not taken to the front lines
    out in Ukraine, in Russia.
    And very few of them survived.
    I would say out of the 400, maybe 20 survived.
    And from our group of 80, we had a better survival rate.
    But we were there in Budapest.
    And we had contact with a large Jewish community.
    We were able to go out every weekend.
    And we were able to go home every few months on a holiday.
    And things were made sort of more or less normal,
    like we would be in the army.
    It was really under the Hungarian army,
    paramilitary work for the army.
    We used to do work for the units that
    brought back some old shot down airplanes, mostly
    from Allied forces.
    And we had to take them apart and then
    sort them out in baskets.
    And at once, I was asked to--
    they asked for someone who knows how to do sign painting.
    And I heard that.
    I raised my hand.
    And I am not a sign painter, but my father
    taught me monument making.
    And I thought to myself, I would rather
    make monuments instead of signs.
    But I was accepted to be a sign painter.
    And I knew how to draw letters.
    And I had to put on every supply box or basket--
    they used to come in with an order,
    they need 10 signs for this and this size of screws
    or other materials or parts of the motors.
    And I was working for close to two years inside--
    not inside in an office, but at least in a hallway.
    And I had my table.
    And I did that kind of work.
    So this is until almost the very end,
    until 1944, when things got worse.
    So we had other assignments.
    But for most of the part, I survived because of that.
    And you were considered in the military
    throughout this whole period?
    It was-- well, I was considered in the military only
    for strictness and for punishment.
    If we would be AWOL, then you could be shot.
    Some of them were shot.
    They didn't come back to the unit or they were out.
    And for that, we were not for privileges.
    We didn't have-- only privileges we used to get
    is going home once in a few months, three, four months.
    We had a better chance to go, like the others were far away.
    What did you know about the rest of your family
    during this time?
    Well, during this time, since I was the oldest,
    I used to send letters often home.
    And I used to tell them I often visit
    synagogues and houses of study.
    And I came to the Jewish community.
    I told them I need a better coat because we
    had to exchange our uniforms after eight months
    into our own clothing.
    And when the order came, we did not have our civilian clothing,
    and they did not care.
    We were stripped down to actually our underwear.
    And for a few weeks, we had to walk around
    with our night covers over us because we
    had nothing else to wear.
    So after that, I went to the Jewish community.
    And we got some coats and warm clothing for the winter.
    And then my package came from home.
    And I was able--
    all we had to wear is a yellow badge
    again on our clothing as a sign of a Jew
    so we shouldn't escape, or we should be easier to identify.
    But often, when I used to go to Budapest, to the city,
    I used to take it off.
    And I took a chance, of course, because if I
    would be identified, if I would be asked for my ID,
    and I would have a good pass, but for that I could be either
    in jail for a few weeks or giving harsher treatment.
    But I had to take this chances because we were getting
    ready for a time when we'll have to live incognito or run
    away or do some underground work, which we did later on.
    In a way, I used to keep contact with my family,
    very close, very often.
    But in 1944 when things got worse, and especially
    in the very beginning when Germany took over
    Hungary and they occupied the entire Hungarian region.
    And the Carpathian Mountains were about 50 kilometers,
    which is about 30 miles to the border--
    and to the Russian front.
    So they made arrangements immediately
    that they'll have to evacuate the Carpathian region, which
    is actually the upper part of Hungary, which is
    right here close by to Poland.
    The Polish border is right out here.
    And this is Hungary.
    And we try to maintain a low profile.
    But it did not help.
    They said that this area, the Carpathian Ruthenia called,
    had to be evacuated because we were
    too close to the borderline and to that place where
    the front might start.
    In March and April, things were started quite bad.
    In March, I received a letter from my parents
    that they will be evacuated to Beregszasz,
    which is about 37 kilometer out of our hometown Bilka.
    And some 10,000 Jews were concentrated there
    in a makeshift camp, in a former brick factory.
    And they asked me if I could come and visit.
    It would be fine since I did get offered visitation
    rights, or privileges.
    I came to my superior.
    And I told him my parents are being evacuated to resettled.
    At that time, this was the euphemism for it
    I would like to go and visit them.
    So he said he'll give me a two-day pass.
    And he did give me a two-day pass.
    So I traveled from down--
    several kilometers down Budapest to Beregszasz.
    And I came off in Beregszasz.
    And right near the railroad, there was this camp.
    And this encampment, I came up.
    I showed my pass.
    I had a Hungarian military cap.
    I had my yellow badge.
    I came up with very good papers from the military
    that I'm here to visit my parents for 48 hours.
    They let me in.
    The German guard didn't understand Hungarian.
    So the Hungarian explained what this is.
    He let me in.
    And when I arrived there, I was like someone
    coming from America.
    They said, you look to us like you're
    coming from the freest country in the world, from America.
    Some others said, you look to us like you're coming from
    the Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel,
    like you really can come and go because we cannot come and go
    anymore.
    As I arrived, I came--
    look around for the barracks where
    my hometown people would be.
    There were several dozen barracks.
    And the barracks were just really plain huts
    without walls.
    And since this was a factory, a brick factory,
    there were many bricks there.
    So the people there build their walls, just walls high enough
    so the wind shouldn't blow in.
    And the people used to sleep on the floor.
    But before I came to see this, I saw a man without a beard.
    And he looked a little bit like my father.
    But all Jews were ordered to cut off their beards because this
    was a sign of Jewishness and they
    don't want-- they have a sign, the yellow star.
    Everybody had to wear a yellow star,
    from children and adults, everyone, men, women,
    and children.
    And my father saw me.
    He recognized me.
    I look the same.
    And he motioned to me.
    And I came up.
    And I see him without a beard.
    It was very traumatic to see him without a beard.
    And he had some--
    he was a maintenance man there because he was very handy.
    And he said, come on, we'll go to our barracks.
    And he says he's doing maintenance work.
    And he picked up his basket.
    And under the maintenance things, there is a Bible.
    And he says, I don't work all the time.
    Whenever I have time, no one is around, I study the Bible.
    I study the Chumash.
    And I follow the weekly portions of our reading.
    I hope we'll go back home.
    We'll need the next book of Moses.
    So I sighed.
    I said, I hope so too.
    And then we came to our barracks.
    And my eight little brothers and sisters down from 20
    down to 2 and 1/2, 3 years old came out and my mother.
    And I came in.
    And I saw they were on the ground.
    They had their covers.
    And they had their belongings.
    And they were all sleeping right there.
    This was their sleeping area.
    And they were getting ready some food at that time
    for lunch, which they brought along.
    And luckily, it was--
    luckily I say-- it was right after Passover.
    And they had a lot of matzah leftover.
    And this was easier to carry.
    And it wouldn't spoil as bread would spoil.
    So they had a lot of matzah.
    And then I had my 90-year-old grandmother right there also.
    And some 15 families, totaling to almost 100 souls.
    And uncles and aunts and cousins were all there.
    And soon the word spread that I'm there.
    Everybody came and shake hands.
    And whether they say in Budapest, what they say,
    the front is close.
    And they looked around no one should hear
    talking about the front line.
    I said, they're probably resettling you to work,
    and they need work in the farmlands.
    And they probably would go there, would take you there
    because they need farmhands desperately.
    Summer is here.
    And so they all hoped this is the only thing
    because the war's end is really at hand.
    And they all wanted to know what--
    in Budapest they must know.
    Maybe I can go and intervene.
    And they were desperate, but not panicky.
    And everybody showed me around says, come see,
    this is all what's left of my house.
    That's all we have.
    And others were saying, we're here.
    We are really here.
    From here, we're going straight to Jerusalem.
    We're not going back home because this is
    the time of Messiah will come.
    And that's why we're all here.
    This is camouflage.
    This really will be and we'll all
    meet in Jerusalem, in Israel.
    And everybody was hopeful.
    They had prayers said, evening and morning prayers.
    And I participate in these prayers.
    And I was very close, of course, to the entire community.
    And they all wanted to hear if I can do something,
    if I can go and intervene someone
    should send a visa to America.
    They have friends in America.
    I should go to the American embassy.
    I told them there is no American embassy there.
    But there is someone who takes care of it.
    I'll find out.
    Everybody was hopeful that this is only a few weeks
    that they'll be there.
    And it turned out they were only a few weeks.
    While I was there I encouraged them,
    and I said, the thing looked hopeful,
    although many Jews were treated horribly.
    But this looks like just a concentration camp
    of people who will be soon taken to farmlands because they
    need it.
    And that's the only thing I could say, I would want to say,
    and I would want to believe.
    But soon, when I had to live, I was really very much taken
    by seeing this scene.
    And here, I have a picture that I
    took while I was going back to Budapest by train.
    So I have seen hundreds of kids standing out there
    with yellow stars.
    And I was just seeing puffing of the ominous smoke.
    You never thought of the smoke of Auschwitz
    at that time, and the covering their smoke
    and they were just waving.
    And here, I made the pictures of all my brothers
    and sisters and others who are standing by,
    my little brother who was there, who was only a little
    over 2 and 1/2 years old.
    And they were just waving goodbye.
    And as they were waving goodbye, I
    was the only one crying there.
    And people looked around there.
    They knew why I was crying.
    Tears filled my eyes when I saw them.
    They were just waving like little children,
    waving to the train.
    And every train, they were just saying goodbye to every train.
    They did not realize they are saying
    goodbye to the whole area.
    Now, while I was there, before I left,
    my little brother came up to me.
    And he said he wants to go to Budapest.
    He wants to go to the big city because every time I used
    to come I did not even know him because he
    was born while I was in the camp already, in the work camp.
    But my father came up to me.
    And he said to me, I look around at these mountains.
    And here, I'm reading, I lift my eyes
    to the mountains from where will help come?
    Not those mountains way out where the Russians
    are waiting and not moving.
    Help will not come from there.
    Help will come from God, creator of heaven and Earth.
    This is how my father felt. And this is what he said to me.
    And he was reading from the Psalm prayer
    book, this Psalm of David.
    His name is David.
    It was David Aaron.
    And of course, our son is named after him.
    And I was so hopeful that he feels that way,
    that God will help, and that help will come.
    And I told him that King David was
    saying this looking around the mountains of Jerusalem.
    We hope to see those mountains in Jerusalem.
    Sure enough, when I was in Jerusalem, every time I go--
    so I'm saying this Psalm for him.
    And I always remember what he said.
    But those mountains were mountains in diaspora,
    in exile.
    So this is like a memorial for him.
    My little brother, of course, he wanted to go so badly too.
    I always used to tell him, I take him to a big city
    because he knew he has a brother in Budapest.
    It was a big thing.
    My sisters used to tell him I'm coming.
    I'll bring him something.
    And I'll take him along.
    He said he wants to go now with me.
    But, of course, he said to me that he knows what
    to say when he's in danger.
    So look at him.
    What do you mean by you're in danger?
    I have to say a prayer.
    He said remember we have a mezuzah on our door.
    And we left it there.
    We couldn't take it because we were going to come back.
    And every night before I went to sleep, I touched the mezuzah
    and kissed it.
    And I said, may God protect me from evil all the time.
    And that's always before going to bed,
    even a little child like that learned that.
    Kissed the mezuzah before they go to bed.
    In the morning the first prayer was
    we thank you God for returning my soul,
    serving you with truth.
    And then he says, if I'm in real danger,
    then I have another prayer.
    So I look at him, what other prayer did you learn?
    He was saying, I would close my eyes and say Shema Yisrael,
    adonai eloheinu, adonai echad, meaning hear, O,
    Israel, our God is our God.
    God is one.
    And then he took away his hand.
    And when I heard that, my heart dropped
    because this is a prayer of every Jew, the last prayer,
    a martyr's prayer.
    And I thought myself here when I hear a little child like that
    already learned how to sanctify Gods name in his last moments.
    And of course, it took me to the future.
    And I hoped that hear, O, Israel,
    that God will hear this prayer.
    God heard, but people didn't.
    And just to change the subject, something related
    to this subject, I'd like to say one
    time we were working on a railroad and unloading things.
    And we saw a group of German soldiers coming back
    from the front lines.
    And they were singing marching songs of victory.
    And then they saw us with the yellow badges.
    And then they start shouting to us.
    And they were-- someone came up and said,
    would you like to have a cigarette?
    One of our men.
    He says, no, I want no cigarette from a Jew.
    And we turned away.
    And then they start mocking us and jeering us.
    And you know what they cheered us with?
    Suddenly, I hear him say in unison,
    Shema Yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad, over and over.
    And I was just--
    we didn't know what this was about.
    I thought, are they Jewish?
    We didn't know what it was about.
    We thought, well, what are they doing?
    Are they Jewish?
    I thought maybe they're partisans dressed in uniform.
    Well, they witnessed many Shema Israels probably.
    And they thought they will find Jews.
    So they gave us regards to Israel.
    So this is a related story.
    Then I went back to Budapest.
    I was-- March 19, March 18, I was there.
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    [NON-ENGLISH] means life.
    March 19, I arrived.
    And everything was taken over by German.
    And I showed them military pass.
    He looked over.
    He asked his colleague there.
    And he said, I work for the military.
    So they let me pass.
    I came back.
    And everybody asked me what's happening there.
    I said to everybody, what's happening here?
    They are asking, what's happening here?
    We received letters.
    One of my-- as I--
    I have to go back.
    As I walked out of the camp in Beregszasz,
    brick factory, so I see three cars from a train
    just pulled up.
    And I looked over.
    I looked.
    And I see these remnants, the last people from our town,
    the sick, the invalids, someone on a stretcher.
    And I see, I recognize some people.
    And they saw me, they said, where are you from?
    Where are you coming from?
    They saw me with a yellow badge with a Hungarian cap,
    uniform cap.
    So I said I came here for one day.
    And I am going back.
    And they said to me, can you do something?
    Can you in Budapest intervene?
    And everybody says, we are here.
    We are the last ones.
    One person died before he was able to take this journey here.
    And everybody was saying thank God he died.
    And I remember the prophet saying,
    there will come a horrible time when the dead
    will be envied by the living.
    And that was that time.
    But he died, everybody said, like an angel
    that he was not-- he was saved, spared from being dragged here.
    And then I saw a man, Yitzhak Davidovich.
    He says my wife had a baby boy.
    And she had a miscarriage because it was too early.
    And the baby was alive for five days.
    And the baby died.
    Thank God, died.
    To hear a father say that and the mother
    was pale and with the other five children with them.
    So they were the last ones I have seen, and elderly people.
    So now, back to Budapest, we received letters from there.
    I received a letter from a friend of mine
    who is now in Israel, very active in the National
    Religious Party.
    And he sent me a card.
    And his sender's address said [NON-ENGLISH],, [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means out of Zion will have help.
    It was, of course--
    they thought it was just his name.
    And another card I received, the last card
    I received from my mother, in Hungarian,
    and I will translate into English.
    And she said, well, my dear son, they are taking us away.
    Where to?
    We don't know.
    We are loading the trains.
    And I'm dropping this in the post box, post office.
    We don't know where.
    We hope for the best.
    We are in Gods hands.
    Please watch out for yourself.
    Well, all the things that were written there,
    that they were in God's hands.
    They were not in God's hands.
    They were in Hitler's hands.
    And they hoped for the best.
    They did hope to the last minute.
    The one thing that she says, watch out
    for yourself I try to remain alive.
    This is how I kept honoring my mother and my father--
    to remain in spite of it all, just to spite and live on,
    go on to live.
    With love, your mother, Rachel.
    Rachel.
    When I received that card, they were in God's hands already.
    Three days later, they journeyed to Auschwitz.
    And when they started seeing that they
    are going towards the east and towards north, so they figured
    out they're not going down south to the Hungarian small villages
    and farms.
    And they arrived in--
    they're coming towards Auschwitz.
    And coming closer to Auschwitz, our president
    of our community-- he was the head of the community--
    have asked the rabbi, rabbi--
    and this is the name-- this is a picture of the rabbi, Rabbi
    Naftali Tzvi Weisz.
    He was a scion of the dynasty of Spinka.
    And this man was the image of looking up at the Jew,
    looking up at our spiritual strength, that he kept with us.
    He was able to go to the United States.
    He had a visa.
    But he refused.
    He said, I cannot leave my home town.
    I cannot leave my congregation in exile and I should go
    to freedom.
    So he was asked by this Rabbi [PERSONAL NAME] Reiss,
    he said to him, Rabbi, where are we going?
    You must know.
    Tell us, where are we heading for?
    And the rabbi said, can't you hear the--
    can't you hear the wheels squeaking,
    wheels of this train?
    Can't you heal the crying of the wheels?
    The wheels are crying.
    The world is crying.
    No one hears.
    God will hear.
    When I received this card and then I received a telegram
    from the shochet of Bilka, who was the ritual slaughter,
    they were the only two that were able to retain their beards
    because they were the heads of the community
    as far as spiritually.
    And the rest of the community were all--
    I didn't recognize them all.
    They all used to have beards.
    And suddenly--
    So this man sent a telegram.
    And the Telegram, it says, we're being taken away.
    If you can, please help.
    We got the Telegram.
    His son-in-law was in Budapest.
    We were trying to help.
    We made an effort to find out.
    No one knew.
    We did not know.
    We couldn't figure out.
    Some of us from the Carpathians that lived in Budapest
    received postcards from a fictitious place
    called the Waldsee, which means Forest Lake.
    And we looked up, there was such a thing,
    Waldsee near the Swiss border.
    So we thought maybe they're in Switzerland, maybe.
    Waldsee.
    But my sisters never wrote to me.
    And I was waiting for my sister.
    They never wrote.
    And later on after the war, they told me--
    those two sisters remained alive--
    they told me they were afraid to send a card to me.
    They remember the address.
    But they were afraid that this will be another address
    for them to bring you here.
    They thought this is why.
    And this is only-- just before they went to the crematorium,
    they had to sign, we are fine, we are OK, we are working,
    we are all right, sign the name, and stamped with Waldsee.
    So all this, we used to get cards.
    And we used to hear here and there, there were atrocities.
    But we never thought that it could be true.
    When I look back and think about my little brother,
    I often wonder how cruel can people
    be to kill children that age and younger?
    And when my-- our son was born and he was little,
    I was hugging him and caressing him.
    I used to tell him the names of my brothers and sisters
    when he started talking, when he was 2 years old,
    when he was 2 and 1/2, he was almost 3.
    I kept touching him and hugging him.
    And I was thinking my little brother.
    It-- it took me--
    when he was 14 and a half--
    those-- since we were eight children in Auschwitz, the two
    oldest ones were put to the right to work.
    And they worked in Sonderkommando,
    which means they were taking apart the clothing of people.
    And they used to put them in certain packages
    and send them to the bombed out places of Germany.
    And they were saying this is a present from the people
    of Hungary on their packages.
    And my sisters used to find, and the others who
    were in this department, sometimes a piece of candy
    or a dry piece of bread or cake or a cookie.
    And this helped them as far as eating there,
    as far as maintaining their health.
    But six-- three brothers and three sisters did not make it.
    The oldest one that didn't make.
    He was 14 and a half.
    This one I was trying to say until our son was
    14 and a half, I felt--
    I always was thinking when he was three and four,
    I had a four-year-old sister.
    He was six, I had a six-year-old brother.
    When he was eight, I had an eight-year-old brother,
    and so on.
    When he was 14 and a half and my oldest brother didn't make it,
    so I felt kind of a relief of growing up with this age
    and always feeling that they would have been alive.
    And many times when I see and I meet somebody,
    somebody tells me somebody is 50 years old, I was thinking,
    my brother would have been that age.
    My sister would have been-- somebody is 45, I was 42.
    This is how it relates still to this day after 40 years.
    I would like to say that those things that we are doing now
    is very important, very painful and gruesome.
    But the story has to be told.
    And I know we had a gathering of the Holocaust survivors
    in Budapest--
    in Washington, DC, thank God.
    When I see a little child like this holding up,
    I can tell you I think my little brothers.
    And this is why we have to say it.
    And this is why we have an obligation to do this
    and to remember and to tell, to say what it was,
    what it was like.
    And this is why I made it my life obligation
    to write about my hometown and to write
    the story of my hometown.
    And this is why I've written a thesis on our hometown, Bilka.
    And here, I have the first time in 1971
    when I've written it for the Rosh Hashanah
    supplement, "Bilka, My Hometown a Bittersweet Remembrance."
    And this is a picture, a drawing of the largest
    of three synagogues in Bilka, as remembered by me.
    And I begin with a poem saying, "My son, where is your soul?
    Wandering the world, search it, my angel,
    there is a quiet village."
    This is a poem by Bialik, name of the poem, when
    your angel will ask you, where is your soul?
    Say, there is a quiet village surrounded
    by a wall of forests.
    A child plays there alone, angel, the child am I.
    And here, I'm going to read--
    I don't know whether I'll be able to--
    there's a beautiful folk song about the shtetl,
    a little hometown, where I spent my childhood years.
    To me, it is just like a dream, a remote dream,
    as I remember Bilka.
    That sentimental song of the past
    has turned into a lament in my thoughts and my heart.
    Recollections of a person's hometown
    inevitably evokes nostalgic memories
    of early childhood years.
    All Jews of Bilka were like one big family,
    living in clusters around the main streets.
    To anyone born and raised in Bilka,
    our home town meant more than just where our families lived.
    It was a place of joyful and sorrowful creativity,
    growing up, raising families, and developing the home
    community.
    There were some 2,000 houses scattered throughout the area.
    The town's boundaries, six quiet brooks
    followed through the mountains, mountain valleys
    of the village.
    About a dozen watermills added unusual charm
    to form winter ice sculptures and summer waterfalls.
    And on the outskirts, of course, the deep and raging river
    of Borzhava.
    The population consisted of about 10,000 inhabitants,
    mostly Ruthenians, farmers, a few Hungarians,
    and over 1,000 Jews.
    The Jewish population lived an idyllic community life
    in their own tradition.
    Most Jews lived on farming, trade, or small home industry,
    tailors, cobblers, and storekeepers.
    Now why I have written this, I would like to relate a story.
    I used to hear beautiful folk saying, or parables.
    And I used to hear a story saying that after a fire,
    one becomes rich.
    And I couldn't understand why is that?
    How can someone-- he has a fire.
    He's burnt down.
    So I was given the explanation saying
    that after a person's property burns down,
    he starts recounting the losses.
    When the damages are accounted for
    and they are looking back what someone lost,
    one concludes that he was indeed rich before the fire.
    Before that, he didn't realize how rich he was.
    This analogy I could draw also about my hometown Bilka.
    We had a home, parents, family, brothers, sisters,
    grandparents, three, four generations, uncles
    and aunts and cousins.
    The entire village was one big family.
    Today, after the fire, we are looking back and thinking how
    great a loss, how rich we were then.
    Now, we are all orphaned, the remnant few.
    Where ten of us one stood and lived, only one still is alive.
    For the other nine are martyrs, missing from minyan.
    This memorial is a humble tribute.
    And when we started gathering Bilka young boys and girls,
    we were sitting together and we looked around.
    There are about three adults who survived,
    three fathers and one mother.
    And they looked around.
    They said, we are all [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Every one of us is an orphan.
    We used to see someone who lost a parent.
    We used to pity him, help him.
    I'll never harm or never say no to him.
    And now we're all orphans.
    I can say that a hometown such as we had,
    if someone is looking at Fiddler on the Roof, we lived it.
    As Sabbath, we might not have enough or plenty
    to eat all week long, but for the Sabbath
    there was always a beautiful Sabbath table set.
    Thank you.
    That's hard.
    [AUDIO OUT]

    There is no transcript available for this track

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Isidor Reisman
    Interviewer
    Judy Levendula
    Date
    interview:  1984 August 06
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Reisman, Isidor.
    Corporate Name
    Hungary. Honvédség

    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 08:11:12
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504981

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

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

    Date: 1984-1985

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    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

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

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    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 Hilda Prooth

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral History

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

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

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

    Oral History

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