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Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.41 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0041

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    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman
    Transcript
    How about you?
    You want a level in the audio player?
    No.
    I already checked the level.
    OK.
    My name is Michael Weiss.
    And we're here with the National Council
    of Jewish Women on the Holocaust archive project
    to interview Mrs. Sally Rettman, who was
    a survivor of the Holocaust.
    I want to thank you, first of all, Mrs. Rettman,
    for participating in this very important project, which
    will someday have, we hope, some historical significance.
    Before we begin, I'd just like to get some background
    information on your current life, Mrs. Rettman.
    Would you tell us your name, please, and where
    you're living right now.
    My name is Sally Rettman.
    I live in Cleveland, University Heights.
    Where in University Heights do you live?
    On Faversham.
    And are you married, Mrs. Rettman?
    I am married.
    Yes.
    And what is your husband's name?
    My husband's name is Jack.
    And is Mr. Rettman a survivor also?
    He's also a survivor from the Holocaust.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And did you meet Mr. Rettman after the war or before?
    No.
    During the war.
    We know each other before the war,
    but we got married during the war.
    Oh, so you've known him right through the Holocaust up
    until the present time?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Well, we'll get back to that in a little while.
    But first let's get some more background.
    Do you have any children?
    I have two daughters.
    What are their names?
    My older daughter's name is Leah.
    And the youngest one is Shirley.
    And how old is Leah?
    Leah is 37, and Shirley is 32.
    OK.
    Are they living in Cleveland?
    They both live in Cleveland, both married.
    Leah has two children, and Shirley has three children.
    So you have five grandchildren?
    Right.
    Lovely, too.
    You don't look old enough to be a grandmother.
    Yeah.
    Thank you.
    If I'm not being too impolite to ask, what age are you?
    I am 61.
    You're 61 years old?
    You look much younger than that.
    On that note, why don't we get to the gist
    of today's interview, which is the Holocaust and its effect
    on you and your family.
    Where are you from originally?
    I'm originally from Poland, from a city by name Bedzin.
    Can you spell that for us, please?
    B-E-N-D-Z-I-N. Bedzin.
    It's pronounced "Benjin" in English?
    Yes.
    Where is Bedzin?
    It's in Poland.
    It's close by Silesia.
    It's not too far from the German border.
    OK.
    Now you were born there.
    What year were you born?
    1923.
    OK.
    Is Bedzin a small town, or what we might refer to today
    as being a shtetl?
    No.
    I wouldn't say a shtetl.
    But it's not a big town like you would say here in this country.
    It was around 80,000, the population.
    Was there a large Jewish population in Bedzin?
    Very large Jewish population.
    It was like maybe 80% Jews.
    OK.
    Was Bedzin a-- would you call it what we would call a suburb
    of a larger city, or was it--
    No.
    No, it wasn't.
    It was an independent city on its own?
    And independent city, it was not a suburb.
    OK.
    And it was located in Silesia, you said?
    Silesia, yeah.
    Is Silesia a state?
    It's a slonsk.
    Pardon me.
    Slonsk.
    Used to, before the First World War, used to belong to Germany.
    OK.
    So this had been part of Germany before World War One?
    And after World War One it became
    incorporated into the nation that we now know is Poland?
    Poland, yeah.
    OK.
    Now, did you speak Polish or German?
    I speak Polish because I used to go to Polish school.
    OK.
    So your native tongue is Polish and not German.
    Polish.
    Yeah.
    You were born, again, in what year?
    In 1923.
    OK.
    And in 1923, when you were born, do
    you know what your father was doing for a living?
    Yeah.
    My father was in the textile business.
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    I have six sisters.
    You have six sisters?
    No brothers?
    No brothers.
    OK.
    And did your sisters survive the Holocaust?
    Three of them.
    Three of them survived the Holocaust?
    Yeah.
    My oldest sister and my youngest one.
    OK.
    And you lost three of your sisters during the Holocaust?
    Three.
    Yes.
    What about your parents?
    My parents perished during the war, in Auschwitz.
    Your father, what was your father's name?
    Avrum.
    Avrum.
    And what was your maiden name?
    Neier.
    How do you spell that?
    N-E-I-E-R.
    Your father was Avrum Neier.
    Yes.
    And your mother's name was?
    Maiden name?
    No, what was her first name, her full name?
    Leah.
    Oh, her name was Leah?
    OK.
    Your sisters that are still living,
    are they in the United States today?
    Yes.
    One is in New York.
    My oldest sister lives in New York,
    and my youngest one lives in Chicago.
    OK.
    Were you-- you were one of the middle children.
    I was the fourth one.
    You were the fourth daughter.
    OK.
    And did you go to school in Poland?
    Yes.
    I was in school in Poland, and I finished Polish school.
    OK.
    You went to a Polish, what we would
    refer to as a public school?
    Public school, yeah.
    OK.
    It was a school that was open, then,
    to the general population.
    It wasn't a religious school.
    No.
    After the public school, we went to private, religious school.
    And when was that?
    How old were you when you began at
    the private, religious school?
    It was different.
    Some children started by age 10, and some by 11, and some by 8,
    depends.
    So in other words, public school lasted until you
    were about 10 years old?
    No.
    Public school we went from 7 to 14.
    OK.
    But you began private school--
    Around 10.
    Around 10 years of age?
    Why did you start going to a private school?
    Just for Jewish education.
    OK.
    Now did you-- do you recall where you lived in Bedzin?
    Yes.
    Do you recall the name of the street?
    Yeah.
    [POLISH]
    That's mean [POLISH] 19.
    That was the name of the street?
    Of the street, yeah.
    Do you remember the address on the name of the street?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    19.
    19?
    Yeah.
    The building was 19.
    Have you been back there since the war?
    I was back there in 1945, after the liberation.
    But I didn't go into the house.
    I couldn't go in.
    I was a very short time there, maybe two or three weeks.
    OK.
    Well, we'll get back to that in a moment.
    You were a while a young woman by the time Hitler
    came into power.
    Do you recall your first knowledge of Adolf Hitler?
    Yeah.
    In 1939, in September--
    I think it was in September, when
    the German walked into Bedzin.
    Into Bedzin?
    Yeah.
    And we had to evacuate from our house,
    because our house was a corner house by a bridge.
    And it was dangerous, so the Polish soldiers
    came in and told us we have to leave because we
    have to demolish the bridge.
    The Germans shouldn't be able to come in.
    So we evacuate only for two or three days.
    We came back, which was-- that time, the bridge was damaged.
    A little bit our house was damaged too.
    And we stay in our house maybe a few months.
    After that, we have to go.
    We were shipped to the ghetto.
    OK.
    You were shipped where?
    To the ghetto.
    To the ghetto.
    Which was in a Polish section.
    Was that a Polish section of Bedzin?
    Yes.
    OK, but let's go trace it back a little bit.
    How old were you in 1939?
    16.
    OK.
    Was prior to 1939--
    of course, we know that Hitler came into power in 1932,
    I believe it was in Germany--
    were you aware of Adolf Hitler at that time,
    when you were younger?
    A little bit, not too much.
    You don't recall your first--
    the first time you heard the name Adolf Hitler?
    It meant nothing to you?
    I remember my parents used to talk, you know,
    what's going on in Germany.
    And they were a little bit scared
    because he was so powerful.
    And at that time, they took a part
    of [PLACE NAME],, which was Poland at that time.
    So we were scared a little bit they shouldn't go farther.
    And didn't took long in 1939.
    The second day or third day during the war the Germans
    were already in Poland.
    OK.
    So you recall prior to 1939 that your parents expressed,
    at least to each other, if not to you,
    some concern about Adolf Hitler?
    That's right.
    Right.
    OK.
    So by 1939, you were already aware?
    Completely aware, what's going on.
    You were aware of Adolf Hitler's threats
    to the Jewish population?
    OK.
    Do you recall any incidents prior to 1939,
    in your home or outside of your home, of antisemitism?
    Yes.
    Because in 1938, it was short before Christmas,
    the Polish people were also not this nice to the Jews
    in Poland, especially in our town.
    They used to put all kind of signs on the Jewish stores--
    don't buy by the Jews.
    And we start to feel a little bit this.
    OK.
    This was prior to 1939 then?
    Yeah.
    Were these the first episodes of antisemitism
    that you can recall?
    No.
    It was before also.
    Like one incident in 1938, it was like us little pogrom.
    And there was a lot of fighting in the city.
    And I remember, my mother was in a different town.
    It was a little bigger town, like Katowice.
    And my mother was supposed to arrive in the evening,
    and we had to send our maid with our janitor from the house
    to pick up because we were afraid to go to the station.
    Why were you afraid to go to the station?
    Because there were-- the Polish people were not as nice to us
    at that time.
    You stated you had your maid and your janitor.
    Were these people that worked for you in your own home?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Were they Jewish people?
    No.
    Was there a lot of resentment, did
    you feel, in Poland because you were Jewish
    and because you had non-Jews working for you?
    I was maybe too young to feel that way.
    But later on, during the war, I did.
    Did you ever meet the people that
    worked for you after the war or during the war?
    No.
    Not the ghetto.
    So once the war began in 1939, you lost track of these people.
    Do you recall their names?
    I remember our maid's name was Mania.
    Yeah.
    And how long did she work for your family?
    12 years.
    Yeah.
    So you pretty much knew her most of your life.
    That's right.
    And you completely lost track of her?
    Completely.
    And never even heard from her after the war or since then?
    No.
    You don't know if she's living or dead today?
    No, I don't.
    OK.
    What kind of a textile business did your father own?
    Was it a store or a manufacturing business?
    No.
    He used to have people what they used to sell to private people.
    We used to have this in our house.
    Yeah.
    So he worked out of your home.
    He didn't have a store front?
    Right.
    And how long was he in that business?
    As long as I remember.
    And what happened to that business in 1939?
    Everything was taken away from us.
    OK.
    You were 16 then.
    Who took it?
    Who did you think took it away?
    When we went to the ghetto in 1940--
    no, pardon me.
    We went to the ghetto in 1945--
    '43.
    The beginning of 1943, we went to the ghetto.
    But when the times when we used to live still in our house,
    we were only allowed to go out, like, to 7 o'clock.
    Jews, the business, everything was taken away.
    So we had this little bit of merchandise
    we used to sell and make a living from that.
    So that between 1939 and 1943, you
    were still living at your home?
    No, 1943 we were out from our home to a section
    where all the Jews have to be together in one section.
    OK.
    But before 1943, you were still living at home.
    For a very short time.
    OK.
    Where did you go?
    Did you go directly from your home, when you
    left your home, to the ghetto?
    No, not to the ghetto.
    We went to sections where all the Jews were concentrated,
    before we went to the ghetto.
    And to the ghetto we went in 1942.
    OK.
    So that after the war began in September 1939,
    you left your home.
    Yeah.
    Do you recall what date you left your home on?
    You mean the--
    The date of the year, 1939?
    This was in the summer time in 1942--
    '41, end of '41 and the beginning of '42.
    We used to be in a very-- you know,
    this was like the slum section in our town.
    That's where you were forced to move to?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Now when I used the word forced, were you
    forced out of your home?
    Yes.
    How were you taken from your home?
    We had to move out, leave the furniture, everything, just
    whatever you can take out.
    How was your family instructed to leave the home?
    Did police come into the home?
    Police came and said you have to leave
    in a certain amount of hours.
    And we left.
    Do you recall how many police there were?
    I think at that time, in the house was, like,
    three or four policemen for the whole building.
    Were these uniformed policemen?
    Uniformed police, yes.
    Were they Polish or German?
    German.
    They were German officers, German army officers
    or German policemen?
    German police.
    Were they-- do you know what division
    of the German government they represented?
    No, I don't.
    Storm troopers or-- you didn't know what the--
    No.
    I don't remember.
    OK.
    So these German officers told you
    you had so much time to leave your home?
    Were you allowed to pack your clothing or belongings
    of any kind?
    We are only-- that's what we were wearing on our body.
    And we try to take with, a little bit bundles
    and things like that.
    And we went to a small apartment,
    where we were, like, one of two or three families in one
    house-- one room.
    Do you recall where it was went you went?
    Yeah.
    We went that time--
    you mean the name of the street?
    The name of the street.
    It was very, very low section.
    And the Polish people moved out and moved in in our house.
    So that prior to your being moved there,
    there were Polish people living in--
    In our home.
    OK.
    In the home you moved to.
    Do you know what became of the home
    that you lived in before the war?
    It's still there.
    Do you know if other people were moved into it
    or began living in it after you left it?
    Yes.
    They're still there.
    Were there Polish people living in it?
    Polish people occupied the whole building.
    Did you own the home?
    This was our own house, yeah.
    Your father owned the home?
    Yes.
    This was my mother's parents' house.
    And was it a private home or an apartment building?
    It's an apartment-- was like 23 tenants.
    It's a big building.
    And before the war, you received,
    or your parents received rent from the tenants
    of the building?
    Yes.
    Were all the tenants of the building Jewish?
    Yes.
    And they were all forced to leave?
    Yes.
    And your father, as far as you know,
    was never offered any compensation for the building?
    Nothing.
    No.
    OK.
    Now the place that you were sent to,
    was it also an apartment building?
    Yeah.
    It was a very small, little--
    small little houses, very small.
    So it was you and your mother and--
    And our sister-- all my sisters.
    And one sister was married with a child.
    She was with us too.
    So you had-- let me see, that would
    be six, eight, nine-- nine adults and one small child?
    Yeah.
    And how many bedrooms was the apartment that you moved to?
    One room.
    One room?
    That's all.
    One large room with--
    One large room.
    Did it have a kitchen or--
    Everything in the one room.
    Was there a bathroom in the apartment?
    Downstairs on the courtyard.
    And do you know how many other families
    lived in this building?
    There was maybe 10, 15 families.
    And they were all Jewish families?
    All Jewish families.
    Were they families, from your prior apartment?
    No, mixed.
    So you didn't know a lot of the people
    that you were living with?
    That's right.
    OK.
    You lived there for--
    until, you said, about 1942 or 1943.
    Yes.
    OK.
    While you were living there, were going to school?
    No.
    School, the minute the German occupied our town,
    the Jewish schools were closed.
    We didn't have no schools anymore.
    And you weren't allowed to go to a public school?
    No.
    OK.
    Now tell us what a normal day was
    like in your apartment, that one room that the nine of you
    shared.
    It was not easy because it was everything so crowded.
    At that time, the Germans opened some factories,
    where we were working, were forced
    to go to work in the morning.
    We used to sew uniforms for the German soldiers.
    When you say "we," who are you referring to?
    All the young people had to go to work.
    OK.
    And that included you?
    And the sisters.
    Your sisters?
    All five of your sisters?
    Even my mother went to work.
    How old was your mother at that time?
    My mother, when she was taken to Auschwitz,
    she was 48 years old.
    And what year was that?
    In the '43.
    OK.
    So she was about 47, 48 when she was
    put to work in these factories sewing uniforms.
    Were you paid for the work?
    No.
    What did your father do?
    My father was already dead at that time, passed away.
    Oh.
    When your father pass away?
    In '42.
    And how did he pass away?
    Sick.
    And do you know what kind of sickness your father--
    No, I don't remember.
    Do you recall, was he sick for a long time?
    No, he was a young fellow.
    How old was he?
    Maybe two years old from my mother.
    And it was just a sudden illness that took his life?
    Yeah.
    Was it a heart attack or something of that nature?
    We didn't know at that time.
    Were you able to take your father
    to a hospital or a doctor?
    No.
    No.
    Do you recall-- it must have been quite traumatic for you,
    but do you recall if he--
    did he pass away in the apartment or outside?
    In the apartment.
    OK.
    What did you do when your father passed away?
    Was there anybody to call?
    Yeah.
    We had the Jewish--
    how you call this?
    Like here, the Jewish Federation.
    So we had the--
    like, they call it the gemeinde, the Jewish gemeinde.
    And this was-- we still buried him
    on the-- a matter of fact, my grandma passed away
    at that time too.
    And we buried her on the Jewish cemetery.
    OK.
    Where was the Jewish cemetery?
    In our town.
    Was it near the area where you were forced to live?
    Where I used to live.
    OK, were your original home was.
    Yes.
    Were you allowed by the authorities
    to go to the cemetery?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    To bury your father?
    Were you religious, observant Jews?
    Yes.
    I know that there's quite stringent requirements
    as far as burial in the Jewish tradition.
    Were you allowed to follow those?
    Not exactly.
    OK.
    I know, for instance, the sitting shiva for one week--
    were you permitted, were you able to sit shiva
    for your father?
    We were allowed, yeah.
    So for a week you didn't go to work?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And then--
    Not exactly a week, maybe we were sitting maybe
    two or three days.
    How did you support the-- or how was the family
    supported during these years?
    It was very hard.
    We used to sell.
    We had a little bit jewelry.
    We had a little bit clothes.
    We used to sell this.
    And this is the way we survive.
    Who did you sell to?
    Some people came, and so even we used to sell this
    to the Polish people.
    They used to say, now it's our turn to have this stuff.
    So we sell this sometime even for food.
    Was that your only source of income during these times?
    Yeah, only the-- only way.
    How did you obtain food and necessities?
    It was very hard.
    From necessities was-- the only necessity was, that time, food.
    That's all what was on our mind.
    So you weren't so much concerned even
    about what you might have considered necessities
    before the war.
    It was just you filling your stomach
    and getting something to eat?
    That's exactly.
    Were there grocery stores?
    Used to be, but not later on.
    The Jewish people didn't have no business.
    They took away all the business from the Jewish people.
    So where did you get your food?
    There was a Jewish gemeinde, where
    used to give some rations.
    Like, we used to have some potatoes, some flour,
    and things like that.
    And where we used to work, once a day
    we used to get something to eat there too.
    Yeah, like a slice of bread and a black coffee, at work.
    The Jewish gemeinde then, is that-- am
    I pronouncing that right?
    Yeah.
    Was that a quasi-governmental unit?
    That was only by Jewish people.
    OK.
    And were those the people that you always took your problems
    to if you had any?
    Yes.
    Who were the people that were in this organization?
    Most of it were the Jews, like intellectual people and people
    what they were a little bit on the higher level, what
    they could get in touch with the German.
    Because if the German need something,
    so they always used to get through the gemeinde,
    not to us.
    See, like dealing something, everything
    went to the Jewish gemeinde.
    Were they also able to get money to you or--
    No.
    No money.
    No.
    What happened to all your belongings
    at the house that you left?
    You just left them behind and never--
    Never.
    --never saw them again?
    No.
    Do you recall, how many times a day were
    you able to eat in those days?
    I'm talking about before you went to the ghetto.
    Maybe twice a day.
    And what did your meals consist of?
    Soup, piece of bread, maybe once a week a piece of meat,
    if we were able to buy someplace.
    Did you have cooking facilities?
    Cooking facilities?
    Yeah, we had a stove.
    OK.
    Now then in 1943, I take it that this area
    that you're describing to us was not called a ghetto.
    Or was it?
    In 1943, we all were forced to the ghetto.
    OK.
    So you were taken from this place in Bedzin and taken to--
    The ghetto.
    Was the ghetto in Bedzin also?
    The ghetto was outskirt of the city.
    OK.
    I'm calling it-- it's Bedzin.
    Bedzin, yeah.
    OK.
    In the area you were living in prior
    to being taken to the ghetto, were you
    allowed to leave that area during the day or night?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So you could go outside of that area freely, to and from?
    Freely, yes.
    OK.
    Now when you were taken to the ghetto,
    how did your life change?
    We went to work in the same place,
    but we were only allowed to go--
    like for instance, in the morning,
    we had to be on a certain place, concentrated.
    And we went escorted by police.
    Were these German police, Polish?
    All German police.
    Yeah.
    All German?
    OK.
    Was your family unit still intact
    at the time you were taken to the ghetto?
    Sometimes.
    What do you mean sometimes?
    Like for instance, in the Jewish gemeinde,
    we used to have also the Jewish police.
    And the Jewish police sometimes used
    to take, sometime in the ghetto, to keep order,
    sometimes they took us to work too.
    Because without escort, we were not allowed to go to work.
    And you were not allowed to leave the ghetto.
    This was the place only for the Jews,
    which were the facilities in the homes were terrible.
    OK.
    Did your family live together in the ghetto?
    Yes.
    So it was, now that your father was gone,
    there was your mother and your five sisters?
    Yeah.
    And one married sister with her husband and the child.
    How old was the child?
    The child was three years old.
    OK.
    Did the husband survive the war?
    My brother-in-law survived the war.
    Yeah.
    What about the child?
    The child and my sister, not.
    So he survived the war, but his wife
    passed away during the war.
    OK.
    Did you live together in the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    And again, would you describe the quarters
    that you were given.
    Like, for instance, before we went to the ghetto in 1943,
    at that time I married my husband.
    So I was not with my parents, with my family I mean.
    I was living with my husband's family, also in the ghetto.
    Did you marry your husband before you went to the ghetto?
    Before.
    OK.
    How old were you when you married your husband?
    Not quite 20.
    OK.
    And was your husband living in the same building
    you were living in at the time you married him?
    No.
    OK.
    When did you meet him?
    In 1941, because my husband was--
    when the war broke out, my husband was in the Polish Army.
    And when he came back from the Polish Army after the war,
    so we started to date each other and to see each other.
    And we decided in 1943 we will get married.
    So you got married prior to going to the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    Did you know at time that you would be going to the ghetto?
    Yes, we knew.
    A matter of fact, when we went to the office
    where we the guy what gave us the license, marriage license,
    we were escorted also by the Jewish police
    because this was already out of the Jewish section.
    OK.
    So prior to going to the ghetto, there
    were already restrictions on your right to travel around.
    Absolutely-- certain sections only.
    When you say you went to get a marriage license,
    were you required to get a civil marriage license?
    Yes.
    Rather than just a religious marriage.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Do you recall the date on which you
    were married to your husband?
    In January 1943.
    And then when did you go to the ghetto?
    Three months later.
    So that you were married and living with him at the time
    that you went to the ghetto.
    Yes.
    I used to live, at that time already,
    with my husband's family.
    Oh.
    So you moved in with his family?
    Did he have a large family?
    Yeah, in the ghetto.
    Was a sister with her husband, and a brother, an older
    brother, and my mother-in-law, my husband
    and myself, his uncle with his wife and two daughters.
    We live in one room.
    Again in one room.
    Right.
    This was before the ghetto?
    This was in the ghetto.
    Oh, in the ghetto.
    What kind of a room was it?
    Was it an apartment building?
    No, it was straight with the ground.
    It was like a shack.
    A little shack?
    Yes.
    Were there toilet facilities?
    No, in the field.
    Once you got into the ghetto, how
    did life change for you and your husband from what it had been?
    It changed drastically because it was everything so combined.
    And that's all what you saw is only one street.
    And the ghetto from Bedzin and Sosnowiec was not too far away.
    What's Sosnowiec?
    Another city.
    Yeah.
    They used to call this twin sister city.
    And the house where we used to live was like in a valley,
    down.
    It was terrible.
    There was no facilities whatsoever.
    Were there other houses or shacks around?
    Around, yeah.
    And Jews were living in all of them?
    Yeah.
    Some people used to make little shacks, just
    from a piece of metal and two, three mattresses.
    And it was a room.
    You mean, people used to tack these together themselves?
    Together.
    Were all the people living within
    this ghetto Jewish people?
    Only, yeah.
    Only Jews?
    Only Jews.
    OK.
    Do you have any idea how many Jews were living there?
    It was quite a big amount of Jewish people
    because, at that time, when we went to the ghetto,
    it was a lot of people and a lot of young people
    sent out already to labor camp.
    OK.
    During the time that you were moved out of your home,
    between 1939 and the time you moved into the ghetto,
    did there come a time when you actually feared
    that your life was in danger?
    In the ghetto, yes.
    In the ghetto when we lived, we saw
    our life is in danger because we sometimes
    didn't know what day the Germans would
    come and start to arrest us.
    Because, like for instance, they used
    to say to the Jewish gemeinde, I need today 150 people,
    young people to send out to labor camp.
    Who, the Jewish gemeinde?
    The Germans said this to the Jewish gemeinde,
    because they didn't come direct to us.
    So you never know what date or what night they
    will come and drag us out from the bed and go.
    Many times we used to go, and instead of to go to bed,
    we went to the bunker.
    What's the bunker?
    Bunker, we were hidden there.
    OK.
    What were you hiding from?
    From?
    Because at night, when they come into the house,
    they would take-- see, young people, they would take us out.
    And they would send you out, and you didn't even know where.
    Who would come and get you?
    German.
    There were German soldiers again?
    Soldiers, yeah.
    They spoke in German?
    Only German, yeah.
    Did you understand any German?
    Yes.
    Did you have any conversations with a German soldier?
    No.
    No.
    You never, for instance, saw a German soldier
    standing somewhere and began a conversation with him?
    No.
    No.
    Why not?
    Because we were afraid.
    What were you afraid of at the time?
    Because he was always with his gun in his hand.
    And if you would say one word what you're not supposed to,
    that's it.
    This was the end of it.
    You didn't speak any German or understand German?
    I did understand.
    I speak a little bit, not too-- not fluently, but I understand.
    Did the German soldiers ever speak to you?
    No, just they came in and then they say, in German, hurry up.
    Get dressed.
    Out.
    Out.
    Macht schnell?
    Macht schnell.
    OK.
    So basically, their vocabulary, as far as you're concerned,
    was pretty limited to--
    Exactly.
    --to giving orders or things of that nature.
    You just told us that the Jewish gemeinde
    was told to gather up so many Jews every once in a while.
    Did you know where these Jews were going?
    We know they go, some to-- some of them
    they were sending to labor camps.
    Some of them were sending to Auschwitz--
    depends.
    When was the first time you learned of Auschwitz?
    The first time-- when I went to the ghetto,
    I knew already from Auschwitz.
    How did you first hear of Auschwitz?
    Because my mother's sister, which is my aunt,
    she was sent to Auschwitz.
    Yeah.
    Did you know what became of her?
    No.
    I knew when she went to Auschwitz
    she is not anymore alive.
    OK so that, even at that early time,
    you knew that Auschwitz meant--
    Death.
    --potential death.
    That's right.
    OK.
    How did you learn that your aunt went to Auschwitz?
    When I learned?
    How?
    How?
    My aunt went with a whole shipment of people
    to the station.
    And the Jewish police used to see on the trains written,
    "Auschwitz."
    Oh.
    So that's how you knew where they were going.
    It was on the--
    the first cab, the destination was Auschwitz.
    That's right.
    So was there any communications between, say,
    your immediate family and other members of your family, say
    cousins or aunts and uncles?
    No.
    You were unable to communicate with anybody?
    Even if you had relatives in a different city,
    you never were able to communicate with each other.
    You had no way of writing them through the mail.
    No.
    No mail.
    For Jewish people was no mail, no telephones, nothing.
    No telephones, uh-huh, so that most of your information,
    I'm assuming now, that most of your information
    then would have come through word of mouth.
    That's exactly.
    Now, when you went to the ghetto,
    you stated already that you continued working in the--
    Yeah.
    The company what used to call Rossner.
    That was the name of the company?
    Company, yeah, Rossner.
    And we used to work there.
    We used to make uniforms.
    And you continued doing that while you were in the ghetto?
    Yes.
    And was your mother still working at the time?
    No.
    Where was she?
    My mother was just in the house.
    She was allowed to stay in the house?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did there ever come a time when members of your family
    were taken away?
    My sister what is now in Chicago,
    she was taken to the labor camp before we went to the ghetto.
    Oh, so she didn't go to the ghetto with you.
    No.
    She with us when we left their house, our private home,
    to the Jewish section.
    She was taken from there because each family
    had to give, at certain times, amount of people
    for the labor camp.
    Each family has to give somebody.
    So when the police came, and she was in the house,
    they took her.
    The police came to your home?
    This was in the Jewish section?
    And they-- do you remember what they said to you?
    Were they speaking in German or in Polish?
    In German.
    In German.
    And they conveyed to you that they
    wanted to take one member of your family?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    How did you select a-- did you select a member?
    Because she was in the house at that time.
    She was the only one there, so they just took her away.
    Took her.
    That's right.
    OK.
    And we know she was sent to Greenberg.
    Where is that?
    This is not too far from Breslau.
    It was--
    Is that in Poland also?
    No, this was in Germany.
    Yeah, this was in Germany.
    So Greenberg's in Germany.
    Yeah, Greenberg, Silesia.
    How did you come to find out that she ended up there?
    Because from that camp she used to write to us,
    to the Jewish gemeinde.
    So we knew she is there.
    How did she--
    I mean, she actually wrote letters to you that somehow--
    Well, letters-- she sent us, maybe altogether,
    maybe two postcards.
    How old was she at the time?
    She was, at that time, 14.
    And you were-- she's your younger sister?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Now, in the ghetto, you were together
    with your husband and his family?
    Yeah.
    Were they working also?
    No.
    My husband was working.
    Where was he working?
    My husband used to have a little factory.
    He used to make all kind of tools for farmers.
    But when the Germans came in, they took away the factory,
    and he had a Treuhander.
    A toy handler?
    A Treuhander.
    This means he was only allowed to work,
    and the Treuhander used to take care.
    It belongs to the German.
    Yeah.
    Were you paid for the work that you did?
    My husband used to get paid.
    Yeah.
    They paid him in Polish currency?
    No, in German.
    In German marks?
    German.
    Yeah, marks.
    And he used to work there.
    He used to go--
    this was outskirt of the ghetto.
    So that was outside of the ghetto.
    Yeah.
    How did he get outside of the ghetto?
    Also by police.
    So they had escorts, kind of.
    Escorts, right.
    Was the ghetto enclosed?
    Enclosed, yeah.
    How was it enclosed?
    With wires.
    Yeah.
    With barbed wire?
    Barbed wires, yes.
    Were there soldiers at all times?
    No.
    No.
    Because we knew we were not allowed
    to get-- because if you get out of the ghetto,
    you would be shot.
    Well, were they-- in other words,
    they were watching outside the ghetto.
    Absolutely.
    Were there searchlights or spotlights?
    No.
    No.
    Do you know of anyone who tried to escape from the ghetto?
    No.
    Nobody tried?
    No because we went to work, and we came home from work.
    And this was the end of it.
    Yeah.
    So you just-- basically it sounds
    like you lived day to day.
    That's exactly.
    When did you finally--
    did you finally leave the ghetto?
    The ghetto was, in 1943, it was the final cleanup
    of the ghetto, the final solution.
    OK.
    You just used a very important term, "final solution."
    Because at that time, it was supposed
    to be the whole ghetto and the city, judenrein.
    Judenrein?
    You're saying rid of Jews.
    That's right.
    So my mother was in the bunker at that time
    with her sister and the child.
    And they all were taking out from the ghetto,
    from that bunker.
    And they were sent--
    Where was the bunker?
    In our house, under the floor.
    Was this a bunker that you had dug yourselves?
    We had did ourselves this.
    Yeah.
    And you thought you could hide there.
    Yeah.
    But the Germans found it somehow and took your mother, you said,
    and your sister?
    And the child.
    Yeah.
    Where were you at the time?
    By my in-laws.
    OK.
    And what about your other sisters, where were they?
    My one sister, my oldest one that she's
    from-- what lives now in New York, she was at that time
    working on a night shift.
    So when she found out in the morning, when she came home,
    the bunker was emptied out, she was hysterical.
    When did you see her then?
    The following day.
    You saw your sister the following day.
    The following day.
    That's when you learned that your mother had
    been taken away?
    Yeah.
    The whole part of that ghetto was completely wiped out.
    It was completely rounded up?
    Yeah.
    Where did your sister stay after that?
    She came with me to my mother-in-law,
    which we decided at that time, we
    will go to the Jewish gemeinde.
    And we will register ourselves, we
    would like to go to Greenberg, to the same labor camp
    where my sister younger is.
    So my husband, my sister--
    my oldest one-- we went to that camp.
    And we were there working because we didn't have anybody
    anymore in the house.
    But you went to the camp at Greenberg?
    Greenberg Schlesien.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    This was after your mother was taken away?
    My whole family.
    OK.
    So there was now only you and your sister left,
    of your immediate family.
    Did you know what became of your mother at that time?
    No.
    I know everybody went, that time, to Auschwitz.
    And was the sister that was taken, she's gone too?
    She's--
    With the child?
    Mhm.
    Everybody.
    They're dead now?
    My sister, the youngest one, which
    is a twin sister from my sister from Chicago, she's gone too.
    OK.
    They were, the ones that-- the mother
    and the-- your mother and your sister
    and the small child that were taken,
    you never saw them again?
    No.
    No.
    You never heard from them?
    Never.
    Only my brother-in-law survive, my sister's husband.
    He wasn't in the bunker at the time?
    He was in the bunker, and he went to Auschwitz.
    But he was working in Birkenau.
    Which he was working, he survive.
    Oh, so he was taken with him but managed to survive?
    Have you ever thought about why he survived and the others
    didn't?
    Because they took him to work.
    And my sister didn't want to give away the baby,
    so she went with the baby.
    My next sister older from me, she
    didn't want to leave my mother.
    So she went with my mother.
    Mhm.
    Mhm.
    So the only reason your brother-in-law survived
    was because he was a man and could do some work?
    Work.
    Not everybody survived.
    You work so long till you--
    as long you can take it.
    Now then you went to the Jewish gemeinde
    to try and get out of that ghetto.
    How did the Jewish gemeinde get you to Greenberg?
    There was-- I had to wait in Sosnowiec, where
    was a place where we were waiting for certain groups
    to go in certain camps.
    So I was sent there.
    And I stayed there with my sister and my husband
    for three or four days.
    In Greenberg?
    No.
    Or in Sosnowiec?
    In Sosnowiec.
    And from there we found out in two days
    is going a shipment to the Greenberg, to the labor camp.
    And we went there because I knew my sister is there.
    So while you were waiting in Sosnowiec
    to go somewhere, whatever, any place that became available,
    I mean was--
    you knew that you would be safe in Greenberg,
    or did you think you would be safe in Greenberg?
    I know my sister is there, and it's a labor camp.
    And as long I would be able to work, I would be alive.
    So did you work in Greenberg when you got to Greenberg?
    Yes.
    I work in Greenberg.
    Was Greenberg a ghetto?
    No, it was a factory.
    It was a factory, and it was a big camp.
    We were like 1,500 girls there.
    So you were staying in a-- was it a concentration camp?
    First it was a labor camp, then became a concentration camp.
    When did it become a concentration camp?
    Because there was a camp for girls and men.
    My husband was in the same camp.
    But we didn't see each other.
    You were separated from each other?
    Separated, yeah.
    But sometime at work, when he passed through in the factory,
    maybe I saw him.
    But we were not allowed to talk to each other.
    And that time, my husband--
    they took all the men, and the shipped to [NON-ENGLISH],,
    to a men's camp.
    There where my husband was transferred.
    From Greenberg?
    From Greenberg.
    And from that on, I didn't hear till I
    was liberated if he's alive or he's dead
    and what happened to him.
    Do you remember when he was transferred out of Greenberg?
    He was transferred out from Greenberg,
    I will tell you exactly.
    It was like in '44.
    In '44, yeah.
    How did you get from "Soskowitz"--
    am I pronouncing that correctly?
    Yeah, Sosnowiec.
    Sosnowiec-- to Greenberg?
    By train.
    We were waiting there for a whole group.
    And we went, I think, maybe 150 people, maybe 120 people.
    Just crowded on a train?
    Yeah.
    What kind of a train was it?
    Can you describe the train for us?
    A plain train.
    It was not like a train, you would say, a train with seats.
    It was--
    Just a car, an open--
    A car, that's right.
    Not open.
    OK.
    But it was-- there were no seats in the car, right?
    Yeah, right.
    And how many of you were on the car at the same time?
    We were maybe 40, 50 people.
    Men and women?
    No.
    Just men-- or just women?
    Separate.
    OK.
    So they separated you before you arrived at Greenberg.
    Matter of affect, in Breslau, which
    is one station before Greenberg, we had to change.
    I don't know why, but we had to stay there and wait an hour.
    And my husband saw me from far away.
    And he said something to me.
    Came a policeman-- that time, the first time my husband
    was hit from the policeman.
    He hit him very--
    Your father was hit by--
    My husband.
    Yeah, he was hit by him because he said something to me.
    You saw this happen?
    Yeah.
    This is where again?
    In Breslau.
    Yeah.
    On the way to Greenberg?
    Yeah.
    So you were on separate cars, and then you
    had to get off the car to get onto another train.
    That's right.
    And you never found out why.
    No.
    But while you were there, you were
    able to see your husband in a distance.
    That's exactly.
    Who hit him?
    A German police.
    German.
    OK.
    Did he hit him with his hands?
    Yeah, with his hand.
    Did you fear that your husband was hurt?
    Absolutely.
    I felt very bad.
    Was he knocked to the ground?
    No.
    He just gave him twice over his-- in the face,
    straight in his face.
    Punched him in the face just for talking to you?
    What were your feelings at the time?
    Very bad.
    I cried myself.
    Were you angry, or hurt, or scared?
    I was angry and I was scared, that should nothing
    happened to him.
    Yeah.
    Are we going to go onto another tape now?
    I know you just tapped me on the shoulder.
    I don't know if I should go ahead or--
    OK.
    Mrs. Rettman, we were discussing your trip
    to the Greenberg camp.
    At the station, you observed your husband
    being struck by a German guard.
    Was that the last time you saw your husband
    during the Holocaust?
    No.
    When we arrived to Greenberg, my husband
    went to a different barrack and I went to a different barrack.
    And then the following day, I was assigned to a factory,
    and I was working in a textile factory.
    And I was working on Weberei on two machines.
    What are they?
    Weberei.
    That's the name of the machines you were working on?
    Yeah, where we were making materials.
    And my husband was working as a locksmith.
    Ah.
    Yeah.
    How did you come to find out he was working as a locksmith?
    In the factory.
    So you learned at that time that he was working as a locksmith?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you hear it from other people in the camp
    or did you have actual communication
    with your husband?
    No, we didn't have any communication,
    except sometime in the eye.
    He passed through with his toolbox and he waved to me.
    That's the only time I was a chance to see him.
    Now these barracks that you were staying at,
    would you describe those for us?
    They were big, big barracks.
    We were like 60 to 80 girls on one barrack.
    And I was with my sisters.
    I was sleeping on the lower bunk bed, my older sister.
    My younger sister was on top with somebody else.
    You had to share a bed with one of your sisters?
    Yeah, bunk beds.
    You had to share--
    they were double bunks, up and down?
    Yes.
    And there were two people sleeping on each level?
    Yes.
    So that you were actually sharing your mattress
    with one of your sisters?
    It was a straw sack.
    Pardon me?
    A straw sack, not a mattress.
    Oh, a straw sack?
    Yes.
    Was it filled with anything?
    With straw.
    Oh, it was filled with straw?
    Yeah.
    And you had no pillows?
    No.
    What about bedding or covers?
    One blanket.
    Each one of you had a blanket?
    One blanket.
    Yes.
    When were you issued your straw sack and your blanket?
    When we came in to the barrack.
    The sign, this is your bunk.
    And we got that time, the only thing we got,
    the blanket and the clothes what we were wearing.
    Then when this became a concentration camp,
    we had to change our clothes to a striped dress.
    So that when you arrived at the Greenberg camp,
    you continued wearing the same clothing that you left with?
    Is that correct?
    Yes, just for a short time, until they gave us
    the code, the pasiak.
    What's that?
    This was a dress, gray with light blue stripes.
    That was later on after you had arrived there?
    Yeah.
    Did you have any other clothing to wear?
    Did they give you underclothes?
    We had underclothes, yes.
    Panties.
    No bra.
    Just the panties and the dress and the wooden shoe.
    Wooden shoes?
    Yes.
    What kind of wooden shoes were they, like Dutch shoes?
    No.
    It was open in the back and closed in the front
    with a piece of cloth.
    Were you ever able to wash your clothing?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Once a week we were allowed to go.
    We used to go downstairs to the washroom and wash.
    Or sometimes they used to give us,
    once in a while, a clean dress.
    Were there toilet facilities in the barracks?
    It was one big toilet, like a piece of wood with holes.
    With holes in it?
    Yeah.
    A latrine?
    Yeah.
    How many hours a day did you work?
    We went to work like, for instance,
    6 o'clock in the morning.
    They used to make the alarm in 4 o'clock.
    We should have enough time to make
    the bunks very nice and smooth.
    And we got dressed, and we passed
    around some black coffee and a slice of black bread,
    and we went to work.
    6 o'clock on the dot we start to work.
    So they woke you up at 4:00 in the morning?
    Mm-hmm, because we used to stay on the Appellplatz, which
    means in the courtyard.
    Sometimes for two, three hours, till we start to march by SS
    ladies to the factory.
    It wasn't too far to walk to the factory.
    Where did they feed you, if you could call that feeding?
    The morning before we went to work we,
    got a slice of black bread and a black coffee.
    At your bunk or in another room?
    No, in the room.
    Yeah.
    And then when we came back, after 12, 14 hours of work--
    because we had to make production.
    They used to call lights.
    Like for instance, like here, production.
    We had to make so much and so much,
    otherwise you were not released to go back to the camp.
    And we were working sometimes 12 hours, 14 hours a day.
    When we came back from the factory,
    we lined up by the kitchen, a big line.
    And we was waiting for our soup, our dinner time.
    The dinner was only consist of a bowl of soup.
    Sometimes was potatoes, sometimes spinach,
    but most of the time was plain water.
    Hot water, cold water?
    Warm.
    Warm water?
    Yeah.
    Plain water with nothing in it?
    You were lucky when you found a piece of potato
    or some pieces of vegetables.
    And that was all were given for dinner?
    That's all what we used to get for dinner.
    What happened when people got sick?
    They send us to a Revier.
    What?
    They use, like here, Krankenstube.
    Krankenstube means, like here, in a hospital.
    But in camp was, at that time, one doctor and one nurse.
    The doctor was a woman.
    Were they Jewish?
    No.
    So they were Germans or--
    No Germans.
    She was a Russian lady, a doctor.
    Yeah.
    She was also a Haeftling.
    But they were prisoners?
    Yes, also prisoners.
    So besides Jewish prisoners, there
    were non-Jewish prisoners?
    No.
    In our camp was only Jewish people.
    She was the only one non-Jew because she was a doctor.
    And what kind of treatment did they give people
    when they became ill?
    Nothing.
    Just we were laying.
    The only privilege, the sick people
    used to have maybe sometime a little bit more black coffee
    or maybe a little bit extra soup.
    This was the only privilege.
    No medication, nothing.
    Do you know if anybody died?
    Many of them.
    What became of the people who died?
    What became of their remains?
    They took them out from the Krankenstube.
    What happened to them, we don't know.
    Did you see or know of--
    were there any crematorium?
    No, not in our camp.
    No.
    Did you become ill at any time?
    I was, a matter of fact, very ill.
    When was this?
    This was in 1940--
    end of '43.
    End of '43.
    I came back from the factory and I got
    very, very high temperature.
    And we didn't know what happened to me.
    All of a sudden, I got swollen.
    My legs got very swollen.
    In the Krankenstube, you were only
    allowed one week, the most one week.
    You were lucky if you were one week in the Krankenstube.
    What happened after a week?
    You had to go to the factory working.
    So they would leave you there for a week and then--
    That's right.
    --you had to go back to work?
    But I didn't have a chance to go back
    to work because in January 1945, our camp was evacuated.
    A year before-- it was a few months before, maybe six,
    eight months before, they took out all the men's camp
    and they send it away.
    And what?
    They send away my husband to a different camp.
    So sometime-- just to clarify matters, you're still in 1944?
    Yeah.
    When they cleared the men out of the Greenberg camp?
    Yeah.
    When were you sick?
    Was that prior to the men leaving or after the men?
    After the men left, yeah.
    And at that time, that was the last you saw your husband?
    Saw my husband.
    And then sometime after that, in late 1944,
    is when you became ill?
    Yeah, I was very ill.
    And you were sent to the hospital?
    Yeah, if you call this hospital.
    I was going to say the so-called hospital.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And who was it--
    did anybody take care of you while you were in the barracks,
    before you were sent to the hospital?
    Before I got sick?
    Were you still with your sister?
    Yeah, my sister-- when they came home from work,
    they used to come in and see me and talk to me.
    And sometimes they were able to have extra soup to bring in,
    I should have a little bit more soup.
    And this was the extent of my food.
    And then you went to the hospital, again,
    the so-called hospital.
    Were you treated by the doctor there?
    The treatment was only she used to come in
    and maybe gave me, once in a while, an aspirin.
    I don't know what kind of pill it was.
    But this was not the right medication,
    what I really needed, because nobody
    knew what's wrong with me.
    Did you ever find out what was wrong with you?
    Yes.
    I had like, they used to call in German, [GERMAN]..
    Like here, pneumonia.
    Yeah.
    And do you recall the name of the doctor that--
    No.
    You don't know.
    How long were you there?
    I was there maybe for two or three weeks.
    Why didn't you get sent back to work after a week?
    I went out every morning to the Appell,
    when they were counting the people to send to the factory.
    But after the count, I went back to the hospital.
    Was this surreptitiously, or you snuck back in the hospital?
    Exactly.
    So that the Germans didn't know you were--
    Exactly.
    Was anybody helping you to maintain this?
    Yes.
    Who was helping you?
    Even the doctor, the Russian doctor, she helped me.
    She was helping you get back into the hospital
    so that you didn't have to spend 14 hours a day--
    Once in a while used to come an SS man.
    He was a [GERMAN].
    Like here, like a nurse.
    But he was not a nurse.
    He used to wear a German uniform with that hat on top
    of his head.
    And when the doctor knew he's coming to check the people,
    she used to sneak me out from the hospital.
    Do you know what his name was?
    No.
    You never found out.
    So what happened after you were in the hospital for two
    or three weeks?
    After that, the camp had to evacuate.
    Now, when you're saying the camp, by this time
    there were only women in the camp.
    Only women, yeah.
    Were there any children in the camp?
    No.
    No.
    What became of the children?
    What happened to the children?
    We didn't have any children in the camp.
    No children were brought?
    No children.
    No.
    What about--
    There were a few girls there, maybe 14, 15 years old.
    This was the youngest one.
    But very small children, no.
    How old were the oldest people at the camp?
    Maybe 35, 40 maybe the most.
    So after two or three weeks, then
    you were taken from the camp?
    The rumors were the camp would be evacuated.
    So my sisters were afraid if the camp
    has to be evacuated, they will would everybody
    from that hospital to Auschwitz, because we
    were evacuated by foot.
    So one evening, the doctor came.
    And he said, Sally, you'd better get dressed and get out, back
    to your bunker, which I did.
    The following morning we were evacuated.
    How did the doctor know that the camp was being evacuated?
    Do you know how she knew?
    Evidently, she knew from the Lagerführer.
    The Lagerführer was the lady--
    we had ladies, SS ladies.
    She found out from them, how we should prepare ourselves
    because tomorrow, the camp, we have to march.
    So being that although the doctor was a prisoner also--
    That's right.
    --being that she wasn't Jewish, she
    was able to get information or speak to the Germans in a way
    that you could not.
    The head of the camp was a Judenalteste,
    which she was Jewish, also a prisoner,
    and she was able to talk to the German.
    But was this person appointed by the Germans?
    Yes.
    She was picked up by the Germans.
    They picked somebody out of the prison population, the camp
    population, to be the spokesman for the camp?
    Do you know who that was?
    She is right now in Australia.
    Do you know that she's still living in Australia?
    Yeah.
    What was your feelings about her or people in her position?
    She was very helpful in some directions
    because she was always protecting us
    as much as possible.
    Yeah.
    Did she go with you when you left the camp?
    Yes.
    She was just the same prisoner like we all.
    So she wasn't given any kind of special treatment
    in the way of food?
    No.
    No.
    Then when you left the camp, you had to leave on foot?
    On foot, yeah.
    And where did you go?
    Our destination was supposed to be Oranienburg.
    Where is that?
    This is 60, 60 or 70 miles-- that's what I was told--
    before Berlin.
    And we were in Greenberg, which was very far away.
    We were marching and marching for days and months.
    On foot?
    On foot.
    All on foot.
    We were 1,500 girls.
    And we were marching around the circle.
    Why around a circle?
    Because wherever we went, the Russians were already close
    and they didn't want we should get liberated.
    So they were marching us and walking around the circle,
    and we didn't know actually where we go.
    What do you mean?
    I don't understand what you mean by marching in a circle?
    Well, let's say we went in to Breslau.
    Not Breslau.
    What was the city?
    I forgot the name of it.
    Dresden.
    Exactly.
    Then at that time, Dresden was bombed
    and all Dresden was in one big fire.
    So we had to go back.
    And that time--
    You went back to Greenberg?
    No.
    We went back to another camp.
    This was Helmbrechts.
    This was also a concentration camp, but a very, very bad
    concentration camp.
    And in Helmbrechts were only people--
    the police was there.
    Like not as much German.
    Like there were Ukraine.
    Ukrainian?
    Yes.
    And the Ukrainian were not so good to us, either.
    A matter of fact, they were even worse like the Germans.
    Was that your first experience with non-German guards?
    There were German police there, but in the barracks,
    there were, most of them, Ukrainian.
    And if they found out that a Jewish shipment
    of Jewish people, they were terrible to us.
    We were there maybe for three days, three days in that camp.
    And the barracks were without windows, just open,
    without glass, without anything.
    No bed, bunk beds, nothing.
    We were laying on the floor.
    And they were pushing us.
    And in that barrack, we were laying like sardines in a box.
    How many of you were there?
    Maybe 150 in one little room.
    We were laying on top of each other.
    Were you fed?
    Did you get anything to eat?
    No.
    The third day, they gave us--
    on the courtyard, there was snow up to the knee.
    And they shoved us out and we were standing there
    for three, four hours.
    Who was lucky and pushed into the line,
    we were lucky we got a bowl of soup.
    Otherwise, you could be for two or three days without food.
    The girls were dying like flies.
    You brought up something interesting about the weather
    conditions.
    The weather condition was terrible
    because it was January.
    When we left Greenberg, it was January.
    It was very cold.
    You had the wooden shoes?
    Wooden shoes and the only dress, and that's it.
    So you were still in the wooden open shoes and the same dress
    that they had issued you?
    That's right.
    And a blanket.
    We were dragging with us a blanket.
    And what happened to the women who couldn't make it,
    who died or fell off?
    We left them.
    They were just left behind?
    They're left behind.
    There was no opportunity to bury them or say a prayer?
    No.
    Nothing.
    Nothing.
    Were there religious Jews who were
    observing any Jewish tradition or able to?
    No.
    Some girls were away from Orthodox homes.
    They were saying prayers quietly in silence for themselves.
    So I take it you were marching away from the Russians?
    Yes.
    How did you know that the Russians were
    coming in or moving, I guess that would be, westward.
    How did you know that they were coming in?
    Because the police, the soldiers,
    were marching with us.
    We sometimes picked up, here and there,
    about what they were saying to each other.
    Yeah.
    Because otherwise, we didn't know nothing was going on.
    We didn't have no newspaper.
    We didn't have no radio, no news, nothing.
    We know only one thing, one direction we have to walk.
    After you left this Ukrainian-run concentration
    camp, where did you go from there?
    We were marching again.
    And our destination, like I said before, was Oranienburg.
    Oranienburg was like Auschwitz.
    They used to call this a [GERMAN] Lager.
    A what?
    [GERMAN] Lager.
    That means you went there one night, the following morning
    you went to the crematory.
    That's all.
    This was the end of it.
    But luckily, we didn't.
    60 miles before Oranienburg we went back, because already they
    were saying Russia was around surrounding Oranienburg.
    When was the first you had heard of crematoria?
    We knew about it in Greenberg.
    That's the first you heard of it?
    Yeah.
    Because in Greenberg, being in Greenberg,
    if some girl used to-- she didn't finish her production--
    let's say we had to make a production, so much and so
    much, a certain amount.
    She didn't finish it, or she did something
    that she not supposed to, so she was sent to Auschwitz.
    In that time, we learn Auschwitz is a crematory.
    Or a death camp.
    Yeah.
    So while you were marching, you suspected that you were also
    going to a death camp?
    Yes.
    Were you told that by the Germans?
    No.
    No.
    Were you given any information by the Germans
    or the Ukrainians, or whoever it was that was guarding you,
    watching you?
    When we walked out from Helmbrechts,
    the Ukrainians used to say to us in German,
    that's the end of you.
    Every minute, on the minute, we used to hear this,
    this is the end of you.
    If I've looked at you, that's the end of you.
    When you turned around 60 kilometers,
    was it, outside of Oranienburg?
    Oranienburg.
    Oranienburg.
    Where did you go then?
    We went back, and then we--
    Did you go back to the Ukrainian--
    No, we went to a different camp.
    We went that time to Zwodau, also a camp.
    In Zwodau we stay maybe for two or three days, maybe two days.
    I don't recall exactly.
    I think it was only two days.
    And there we didn't do anything.
    And we stayed only overnight.
    And one day, the following day, we marched again.
    From there-- actually, when we walked from there out,
    we didn't know the cities.
    We didn't know the date.
    We didn't know what month it is.
    Was it still cold?
    Very cold.
    Was there snow on the ground?
    Snow and ice.
    We used to sometimes, at night, when it was already dark,
    the police--
    they used to call the Wachtmeisters in German--
    they used to go into farms and they
    used to take some Scheunes, where
    they used to have the high and things storage.
    We used to go in there and stay overnight.
    Most of the time in the evening, we
    used to sleep on the open field.
    And my experience once was I was laying
    on an open field with my two sisters,
    and somebody was pushing me over my head.
    And I was punching her, she should push away her foot,
    because it was something hurting me.
    Meantime, when it starts to get light in the morning,
    I found out that girl is dead, frozen, frozen to death.
    And never, when we start in the morning to walk,
    never the same amount went back to the march,
    because a lot of the girls were frozen to death.
    Did you know the girl that you found frozen to death?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She was a Hungarian girl.
    We were marching together for a long time.
    What were your feelings at the time?
    Did you have any?
    We were so stiff, you know, and everybody
    was fighting for the tomorrow.
    It was even hard to imagine that this
    could happen to human beings.
    Where did you finally end up on that march?
    We wind up and on the border, Czechoslovakia.
    Did you know it was the Czechoslovakian border?
    We saw signs, and the signs, Czechoslovakia
    was similar to Polish.
    So we went into a farm.
    And at that time, we were very small.
    We walked out from Greenberg 1,500 girls.
    By the end, we were left 120 from 1,500.
    Were the German guards still watching?
    Were killing left and right.
    Pardon me?
    They were killing us left and right.
    If somebody was not able to walk,
    they were on the spot killed.
    How were they killed?
    Shot with a pistol.
    So you actually heard the gunshot?
    Of course.
    What was done with the bodies after they were shot?
    We don't know.
    They were left.
    The guards were still with you, surrounding you,
    when you reached the Czechoslovakian border?
    Border, yeah.
    How many guards were there?
    There was, I would say, maybe 15, 18.
    Yeah.
    What happened then?
    So we were walking on the Czechoslovakian border.
    When we were already in [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which was not too far from Langesdorf.
    In Langesdorf, my sister said to me, my older sister--
    my younger sister, pardon me-- she said, listen, Sally.
    I'm going to escape here.
    I said, Jenny, if you have a chance to survive,
    go ahead, because I was not able to go any farther.
    My legs were very swollen.
    I was very sick.
    And I didn't know how I survived so far.
    So I said to my sister, oldest one, her name is Gertrude,
    Jenny already escaped.
    How about we should escape, too, if it's possible?
    We don't have nothing more to lose.
    You see we will be shot anyhow.
    You don't want to go away by yourself.
    I cannot.
    Why don't you decide it?
    She said, OK.
    So somehow-- it was already like a little bit dark--
    my sister and myself, we escaped and we ran over to a cemetery.
    And we stayed there overnight.
    But there was no way to stay because there was no trees.
    It was all covered with snow, and we
    were afraid they will see us.
    So we went back to the little town
    and we went to the police station.
    And we said, we lost our transport.
    We didn't say we're Jewish.
    We were in a Polish camp.
    We lost our camp and I would like to go back.
    They took us back to our camp.
    At the police station, they said,
    here is a camp from Jewish ladies.
    Why don't you go there?
    We went and we went back to our transport.
    So you ended up back with the same group?
    The same group.
    Were these police that you spoke to,
    were they Czechoslovakian or German?
    German.
    This was already German, too.
    Czechoslovakia was, that time, occupied from the German.
    So we came back to our transport.
    We found our sister, the younger one, there, too.
    She came back, too.
    Oh, you were separated from the youngest one?
    Because she ran away a day before.
    And she came back.
    She was afraid.
    So we were marching again a few days,
    but this was already by the end.
    And my sisters and myself and two
    of our friends, which one is now in Boston and the other one
    is in Israel, we all decide we are escaping here.
    We don't have nothing left to lose.
    The transport is getting smaller, smaller, and smaller.
    So what, we should wait till somebody will kill us?
    Let's take a chance.
    We escaped.
    How?
    We went into a Scheune.
    What's a Scheuene?
    A Scheune is like a barrack where the farmers are
    keeping starch and food.
    A barn?
    A barn, exactly.
    And we stayed there overnight.
    He was a Czech.
    Pardon me?
    He was a Czech.
    He was very nice and kind to us, and he
    saw the condition we are.
    He saw we are Jewish because we were
    wearing the yellow Jewish star, but written Jude.
    We had on our back written our concentration number.
    When did you get those uniforms?
    In Greenberg, and since Greenberg
    we were wearing the same dress.
    But earlier when you had escaped the first time,
    were you wearing that also?
    Absolutely.
    But we were covered with the blanket.
    Oh, you had the blanket covering you.
    OK.
    And we stayed in that Scheune for overnight.
    We stayed there.
    The farmer brought us hot potatoes and a hot soup,
    and it was like in heaven.
    Did you ever find out his name?
    No.
    And we stayed there maybe three, maybe four hours.
    Fall asleep, finally.
    He came in.
    He said, girls, you have to escape from here because I need
    that barrack for the soldiers that
    are coming back from the front line, and I have to prepare.
    I got a telephone.
    I have to prepare this for the soldiers.
    Oh, they were going to stay in this barn
    that you were staying in?
    So that farmer gave us instructions
    how to go into Czechoslovakia to Langesdorf.
    We went to a little river.
    The water was up to here, which wasn't too bad,
    but it was winter time.
    The blanket was heavy because it was wet.
    And we had to pass a bridge, and on the bridge
    were Hitlerjugend.
    And they were screaming at us, Jude, Jude, Jude.
    They saw you?
    Yeah.
    We didn't pay any attention.
    We were walking.
    How old were these Hitler youth?
    Maybe 14, maybe 15 years old.
    They were German?
    German.
    We came to the first house in Langesdorf.
    We knocked the door.
    Her name I will never forget.
    This was Mrs. Schmidt, her name was.
    And we told our story.
    We are from a Polish camp.
    We lost our camp because the camp was bombed.
    This was a makeup story.
    If she would be kind enough to let us stay here overnight.
    She used to have one room, straight from the street.
    But before it was like a little vestibule
    before you walked in, just a little--
    you call this here vestibule, but it was like a shack.
    She said, the only thing I were allowed you here to stay here,
    just till it gets a little light.
    But early in the morning, you have to leave.
    So one of our girlfriends, she spoke very fluently German.
    And she said to her, Frau Schmidt
    allowed us to stay here.
    You see we have a sick girl, which that was me .
    She said, no, I cannot allow you here because my husband is
    in Dachau.
    Is what?
    In Dachau concentration camp.
    And I'm watching very carefully.
    My husband is not--
    he didn't want to belong to the party, and they arrest him.
    This was a German woman?
    Yes.
    She was a Czech.
    She was not German.
    She was Czech.
    And they took away from me the two children
    because they didn't want to say in the school, "Heil Hitler."
    And I'm watching.
    I'm afraid because I'm the same position like you are.
    The only thing, I am not a person of war,
    but otherwise I'm in the same position.
    I'm afraid.
    But she said to us, listen, kids, don't worry.
    The war is pretty soon over.
    And go, you will find somebody else who
    will let you stay another day.
    So we start to cry and we didn't want to leave there.
    We knew we're putting her in a bad spot,
    but we didn't have any choice.
    So she went to the landlady in the back of the house
    and she said, what shall I do?
    Those girls want to leave and they just came in.
    What shall I do with them?
    So she said, listen, Frau Schmidt, let's take
    the girls over in the attic.
    She took us to the stepladder, because it was not an attic
    to go over from the house, but from the backyard, on a ladder,
    like on a farmhouse.
    And she gave us that attic and we stayed there
    for three weeks.
    That Mrs. Schmidt was very nice to us.
    She risked her life, too.
    She risked very much.
    But she was very nice and she was very sympathetic with us.
    And we stayed there for three weeks.
    She came over every night and was quietly in there,
    and brought us every night a little bit soup
    and sometimes a piece of potato.
    She was poor by herself.
    And every day she used to come over and tell us
    the news, what's going on.
    She said, you will see, you will be pretty soon liberated
    because the Americans are coming closer, closer, and closer.
    But meantime, we were there, laying quietly.
    Nobody should hear us.
    And around one day--
    this I will never forget.
    This was May 12th--
    and she came.
    She said, you will see, tonight you will be liberated.
    May 12th of 19--
    May 12th, 1945.
    Pardon me, April 12th.
    April 12th, 1945.
    She came over, 11:30, with a broom and a white rag pinned
    with thumbtacks.
    She said, when I will give you the signal,
    you will take this out to the window.
    It was exactly 12 o'clock, April 12th,
    when we were liberated by the American troops.
    Yeah.
    What happened then?
    Then a few hours later, I don't know how they found out,
    soldiers came over and saw us, the condition
    we are laying here.
    One of my friends, when she passed away--
    She passed away there?
    Not there.
    We couldn't commute with them because we
    didn't speak English.
    And Mrs. Schmidt came over with them.
    The soldiers thought she was a German woman
    and she found Jews and put them in the attic.
    They were ready to kill her.
    So we said, wait a minute.
    You better bring a Dolmetscher and let us know.
    And bring a what?
    A Dolmetscher.
    He should understand what we are saying.
    That woman--
    What do you mean by Dolmetscher?
    Dolmetscher, a--
    A translator?
    A translator.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    So he came, a soldier, an American soldier.
    Spoke very nice Polish.
    Evidently, he is from a Polish family.
    And we told them that Mrs. Schmidt was
    one who kept us here, and she was very kind to us
    and gave us that attic to stay here for three weeks.
    And around 6 o'clock in the morning
    came a truck, Red Cross, and took us all to Langesdorf,
    to a hospital.
    And I was there for seven weeks in that hospital.
    My legs were swollen.
    I couldn't walk.
    I was on crutches.
    And the other girls were located in a house with American
    to care, and I was in the hospital.
    My younger sister was in the hospital.
    The youngest sister was only a few days, and she was OK.
    My girlfriend died on typhus.
    In the hospital?
    In the hospital.
    And I was in the hospital seven weeks.
    They were very nice to me, very kind.
    I had very good care.
    The food wasn't so great because they didn't have too much,
    but the Czech people were extremely nice to us.
    When did you get reunited with your husband?
    Then after the war, when I came out from the hospital,
    I found a few friends in Pilsen, which is a town
    in [NON-ENGLISH] We are alive and we are here.
    They came to visit us.
    One of the girls-- that lives now in New York, her name
    is Zosia Bakalasz.
    Her husband was with my husband together in camp.
    He didn't survive.
    And she says, Sally, now you are able to go and to walk.
    You are feeling a little bit better.
    How about we should take the train and go to Prague,
    which is a big city?
    We will find out there what's going on, if somebody survived,
    if we'll be able to find somebody.
    I said, OK.
    So we got a pass from the American authorities
    to use the train, because we didn't have no money.
    We didn't have anything.
    But the Burgermeister from the town-- which like here,
    we call our mayor--
    brought us clothes, and we got that permission
    to go to Prague.
    We came to Prague.
    We found out a big concentration of people
    from survivors is in one of the schools in Prague.
    I went there.
    I found a few of my friends there.
    And they told me in this and this hospital
    came a shipment of men from this camp and from other camps.
    I said, you know, Sasha, let's go.
    We find maybe your husband is alive.
    Maybe my husband is alive.
    But meantime, it was in different places--
    from the Red Cross, places where you can register yourself,
    like for instance, tell your name
    and you survive, from which town you are.
    You're looking for your husband or your parents,
    and you gave them all the information.
    I left the information, I am Sally Rettman.
    My husband's name is Jakob Rettman.
    I am from Bedzin, and the date and everything,
    all the information, all my backgrounds from my family.
    But I was not successful.
    So I said, Sophie, why should we stay here?
    I am really tired.
    Let's take the train and go back to Langesdorf, where
    my sisters are and my friends.
    And we stayed there a few days, and then we go again
    hunting for the husbands.
    In the meantime, I came back to my sister's and I
    stayed with them a few days.
    During midnight one day, the door is knocking.
    Somebody knocks on the door.
    And two guys-- so my girlfriend, what is now in Israel,
    she opens the door.
    And one of the fellow said, is here Jakob Rettman?
    By name, a woman, Sally Rettman?
    She said, yes.
    So he said, I am Jakob Rettman.
    She knew my husband.
    He said, sir, I think you have the wrong Sally Rettman.
    He saw in Prague, in the Red Cross,
    Sally Rettman is looking for Jakob Rettman.
    He saw the two names.
    He was so excited, he didn't check if I am from Bedzin,
    and that guy was from Lódz.
    And the names were the same.
    Oh, a different Jakob Rettman.
    That's right.
    So he came and he was very disappointed, and he cried.
    So we fed him.
    We tried to find something, something like pens
    and another shirt for him, and we gave him a loaf of bread.
    And he went back to Prague to hunt for his wife.
    I was hunting for my husband.
    He was hunting for his wife.
    The names were the same, but the wrong people.
    A week later, we went to [PLACE NAME]..
    To where?
    [PLACE NAME]
    It's a city in Czechoslovakia.
    The same girlfriend.
    And there we found out our shipment of people
    from a concentration camp came to a hospital.
    So I went with my girlfriend to the hospital
    and I walked from bed to bed, and asked each guy,
    from where are you?
    From which city?
    Did you see, by any chance, somebody by name Jakob Rettman?
    Did you see--
    I start to mention names from members of my family.
    But they were all from different parts of Poland, nothing
    from our hometown.
    So I was, again, disappointed.
    And here was already 7 o'clock.
    We were not allowed because there was a curfew,
    and we're only allowed to go till 7 o'clock.
    So my girlfriend and myself, we slept
    on the steps in the hospital till the following morning.
    Following morning, we took the streetcar, or the bus,
    whatever the transportation, and we found out different places
    where are concentrating people from concentration camp.
    But again, we're unsuccessful.
    I didn't find anybody.
    We went back to the main station in Prague, tired, hungry.
    We found a place, a stand, where the Red Cross put up,
    so we got some soup and a little bit bread.
    And we had stew.
    We hold a blanket.
    That's the only security we had, was the blanket.
    You still had your blankets with you?
    No, not anymore.
    And we couldn't go out anymore because it was 7 o'clock.
    So we took the blanket on the floor.
    We slept on the station.
    In the morning, train came from Katowice, and one of the people
    saw me.
    She was from our town.
    She said, Sally, do you know I am just coming from Bedzin.
    Do you know I saw Jakob, your husband?
    I said, did you?
    She said, yes.
    He is in Bedzin.
    He lives with his sister, which survived from Auschwitz,
    his older sister.
    She lives now in Cleveland, the older lady.
    And the reason my husband didn't came right after the liberation
    to Bedzin, because when he was sent to Kittlitztreben,
    to the concentration camp, when we got separated in Greenberg,
    he said, Sally, if God will give and one of us
    will survive, let's not look each other no place.
    Let's not get lost.
    If you survive, you come to Bedzin.
    If I survive, I will wait for you in Bedzin.
    And this is exactly what happened.
    He came to Bedzin, and he stayed and wait for me.
    But he saw a lot of girls in Bedzin from Greenberg.
    And when they saw my husband on one side of the street,
    they walked on the other side.
    Because everyone from Greenberg who was survived,
    from the 120 girls, knew it was impossible I should be alive--
    I was so sick, and how it was physically impossible
    I should survive.
    And nobody wanted to tell him that--
    That's right.
    --you were probably dead?
    That's exactly.
    So one day, my husband went to Katowice by train from Bedzin.
    And he saw a boy, which he knew from home.
    He said, from where are you coming now?
    He says, I'm coming now from [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Do you know, by any chance, you saw someplace my wife?
    He said, no, I don't even know your wife.
    And if I show you a picture, would you be able to recognize?
    He said, if you show me the picture, maybe.
    So he showed the picture.
    And he said, if I am not mistaken,
    I saw that face in Prague on the station.
    So my girlfriend and myself, we went back to Langesdorf,
    where my sisters lived, and I took out
    a pass from the American authorities
    to be able to go into Poland.
    And we both went to Poland.
    Took us a few days because it was very hard
    with transportation.
    We were in open trains to where I arrived to Poland.
    And in Poland, in our town, my husband was waiting for me.
    Do you remember when you first saw him?
    When I first saw him, I was told, he is with his sister,
    because his sister used to have a big building in Bedzin.
    So he lived with his sister on the fifth floor
    with a cousin, which the cousin is still now in Poland.
    And I knock on the door.
    And my sister-in-law, which is now a sister-in-law,
    opened the door.
    She didn't know me and I didn't know her.
    But when she opened the morning, it
    was 6 o'clock in the morning when I arrived to Bedzin.
    She said, are you Sally?
    I said, yes.
    Is Jakob here?
    She said, yes.
    So she went into the other room and she said, Jakob, get up.
    Your wife is-- no, she said, Jakob, get up.
    Somebody wants to see you.
    So he said, just a minute.
    I will put on pants and I will come out.
    No, you can go out in the pajamas.
    And he saw me in the hall, and it was a very happy reunion.
    And he saw me the first time.
    How did you get out of Poland then?
    We stayed in Poland only five or six weeks, not long.
    From there, my husband, my sister, and myself,
    we went to Budapest.
    We stayed in Budapest, and my sisters were still
    in [NON-ENGLISH].
    In Budapest we stayed maybe nine months,
    because we were planning, from Budapest, to go with the Aliyah
    to Israel.
    Then it was very hard to get it, so we decided to go back
    to Germany, I mean to [NON-ENGLISH] to my sisters.
    And my sisters, at that time, were not anymore
    in [NON-ENGLISH].
    They were in Germany, in Retz.
    This is in Bayern.
    And we went to Germany and we reunited with my sisters.
    And there I stay till we were able to register ourselves
    for our quota to come to the United States.
    And when did you come to the United States?
    In 1949.
    So you were in Germany for four years after the war?
    Yes.
    Approximately four years.
    Yeah.
    And you landed in New York City in 1949?
    '49, with my daughter Leah.
    Is there any one thing, out of those years,
    that you would want to share with us,
    one major thing, anything that you haven't gotten into?
    You mean what I didn't mention?
    Feelings.
    Yes.
    Your feelings or your experiences.
    My experience right now, I was very lucky.
    I was able to come to this country
    and to raise my children right here in a free country, which I
    am very, very thankful for it.
    Yeah.
    Do you ever think maybe it was meant to be that way?
    I would be more happy when I would
    be able to have my whole family, but if this is the case
    and God wants it that way, I was lucky I survived
    and I found my husband and be here.
    OK.
    Thank you, once again, for participating in this project.
    I think we can fade out from here.
    That's a pretty good note to end it on.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Sally Rettman
    Interviewer
    Michael Weiss
    Date
    interview:  1984 August 01
    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
    Rettman, Sally, 1923-

    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​/irn504982

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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.

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    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 Isidor Reisman

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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