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Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.42 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0042

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    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow
    Transcript
    Today I'm talking to Ursula Rosow, a non-Jew who lived
    in Germany during World War II.
    My name is Donna Karen Yanowitz.
    And first, let me thank you, Ursula,
    for participating in this Holocaust Archive
    Project, which is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    To begin with, let's talk about your life today in Cleveland.
    Tell us a little bit about yourself--
    your full name, your age, where you live, and so forth.
    I live in Cleveland Heights for 27 years already.
    And I live alone now.
    I'm divorced.
    And I've been trying all these years to keep up the house,
    and now I'm ready to sell it and join
    my children in Los Angeles.
    How many children do you have?
    I have two children.
    My daughter is about 36 and my son will be this month 28.
    And do you work, Ursula?
    No, I don't work.
    I have worked during the '60s, in the theater mostly.
    What kind of work did you do?
    I started out with Karamu, and I did costumes there
    for the operas and I painted the scenery.
    What was your maiden name?
    Braatz, B-R-A-A-T-Z.
    And you are divorced?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Let's talk about your life now, what
    it was like before the war.
    Let's go back to the 1930s.
    Tell us where you were born and something about your life then.
    I was born in Berlin in 1919.
    That was right after the war, the First World War.
    I don't remember much of that, except when
    I was three years old, there was a lot of money
    around because it was inflation, and butter cost a pound,
    about 2,000 Marks.
    And some of the money I could play with,
    and that's why I remember it.
    What else do you remember about your childhood?
    Well, I have memories of family and playing with my cousin
    and going camping.
    That was a very common way of recreation in Germany.
    Especially around Berlin were many lakes and rivers,
    so you could always go swimming somewhere in the summer.
    And we used to tent over the weekend
    and have an awful lot of fun that way.
    You lived with your family, your parents?
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    Yes.
    No, I don't have any brothers and sisters.
    But since apartments were very tight in those days,
    my aunt, my mother's sister and her two children,
    lived with us for some time.
    And what did your father do?
    How did he earn a living?
    My father was a photographer.
    He was a lab technician, and he made huge photographs
    of murals, landscapes, and he translated them
    into photographic murals for exhibitions and things
    like that.
    Describe the relationships between the Jews
    and the Gentiles during your younger days that you remember.
    Well, if there was somebody who was Jewish,
    it was usually known, but it didn't mean more
    than knowing that my mother was part Polish
    and my father was part Hungarian.
    And it had no other meaning.
    It had no other consequences until the Hitler time,
    or shortly before the Hitler time.
    Did they go to the same school as you did?
    Yes.
    Well, there were some Jewish people
    who sent their children to Hebrew school, just like here
    in America, but most of them went to public school.
    Did you personally associate with any Jews?
    Well, our neighbors were Jewish, some of our neighbors,
    and I played with the children.
    They were my closest friends.
    Could you tell us something more about your family?
    Who lived in your household?
    You mentioned your aunt and some cousins.
    Well, after my aunt got a divorce, she moved in with us.
    And she had a son, who was half a year younger than myself,
    and a little girl who was seven years younger than myself.
    She was a baby at the time.
    And my cousin, of course, went to the same school,
    only on the other side of the school.
    Boys and girls were separated.
    And we also had religion in the morning.
    So everybody who went to public school
    had one hour of religion.
    Could you tell us a little bit about the religion class?
    We learned everything about the Old Testament, the Bible,
    and the New Testament, which is the story of Christ,
    and some popular children's stories,
    of course, when we were little.
    But I took it for three years.
    And since we were not religious, I
    asked my parents to excuse me from having religion
    all the time, since I always got an A, and they agreed with me,
    and I left religion.
    The students had the option of--
    Oh, yes.
    --not going to the religious--
    Well, I was punished in a way because I wasn't given
    a stipend for high school.
    You would have to go to high school at the age of 10
    and make up your mind for the rest of your life.
    And I was scheduled to have a stipend to go at the age of 10
    to high school, but since I wanted to be released from
    religion class, the teacher said,
    then you cannot have the stipend.
    That was my first punishment.
    Did that mean that you couldn't go to high school?
    For standing up for my non-beliefs.
    Did that mean you couldn't go to high school
    or that you had to pay for it yourself?
    We would have to pay for it ourselves,
    and my father couldn't afford it.
    You told me what your father did for a living.
    How would you say you were financially?
    Were you poor?
    Well, I would say we were middle-middle class.
    We were not poor, but we were not rich, either.
    We just sort of made it nicely.
    You lived in Berlin.
    In Berlin.
    What part of Berlin did you live in?
    Well, I was born in the western part,
    which was a sort of plush part.
    And later on, my parents finally got an apartment
    for themselves.
    We lived with my grandparents in the west,
    and that apartment was in the east, so we moved.
    What was a typical day for your family?
    Would you describe a typical day?
    My father went to work.
    My mother made the beds and swept the floor
    and washed the dishes from breakfast,
    and then we went shopping.
    I'm not going to school at the time, but if I went to school,
    then she did all these things without me.
    And sometimes when I came home from school,
    she sent me shopping, like most children were sent shopping.
    What do you remember about holidays
    and other special occasions?
    We always had a Christmas tree at Christmas.
    Like when I was 12, as I mentioned before,
    I said this is enough.
    I'm now a big kid and I don't need it anymore.
    So we never had a Christmas tree anymore.
    But Easter was always nice and Whitsuntide.
    You have green trees outside the doors
    at Whitsuntide, which was very nice.
    You mentioned that you were not religious.
    Was your family religious?
    No.
    No.
    Actually, I'm coming from a long line of freethinkers,
    which reaches back until the middle part
    of the 19th century.
    Did socialism or any political organization
    play a role in your family's life?
    I think it played a big role in Germany altogether.
    I think it started with the publishing of Karl Marx's
    Capital.
    And many other people, like pedagogues,
    like Fichte, who was a forerunner of pedagogy
    for children, to raise them as individuals, rather than
    as little slaves for the state.
    And these ideas sort of spread, and many people
    were attached to these ideas, and some of them
    joined organizations that were socialist--
    some radical, some less radical, some more centrally-oriented.
    But you could find these people just about wherever you went.
    And you could find them at the beaches, too.
    Did you participate yourself in these events?
    Well, as I was little, my parents
    participated in some of these events.
    My cousin and I, we enjoyed it very much, too.
    It was very much an atmosphere of freedom,
    rather than put your hands in your pocket or don't do that
    don't.
    Put your skirt over your knees.
    Don't open up your knees, or whatever.
    We could be free and spontaneous,
    and we liked that very much.
    Your parents were active socialists, would you say?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    Can you tell me a little bit about their activities
    and what happened to them?
    Well, we knew people from almost all walks of life.
    In our family, I remember when I was five years old,
    we used to have weekly sessions in our living room,
    where people would come together after having read an assignment
    by Schopenhauer, by Kant.
    Would then discuss what they had read.
    And there was a professor from Berlin University
    who would give the assignments and who
    would discuss what they had read with those people.
    And these people, some were very educated
    and some were factory workers.
    And they all wanted to know what was what in politics
    and philosophy, and so on.
    Did your parents have any problem
    with being socialist during that time?
    No, not in those days.
    No.
    That was during the Weimar Republic.
    There was no problem whatsoever.
    How about in 1933, '34?
    That's when it started, obviously.
    The signs were already there in '31,
    I would say, when there were fistfights
    in the streets among people, grownup men.
    '32, some people were already shot in the streets.
    It wasn't just fistfights anymore.
    And after '33, that was pretty common.
    Your parents never had any problems?
    Oh, yes.
    What happened to your parents?
    My father, one day, came home after work.
    Well, he went to a pub to have a beer.
    He was pretty erudite, and he couldn't stand it
    when people sort of muzzled intellectually.
    So he said something, and didn't realize
    early enough that two SS men had come in to the pub,
    and they heard him.
    And they were just drinking a beer,
    but my father had the feeling he had to be
    very careful from then on.
    And that was in 1934, early--
    no.
    Yeah, early '34.
    And he finally left the pub and went, very fast,
    in the middle of the street.
    As he heard steps behind him, he just sort of furtively
    looked around and he saw those two SS men after him.
    So he started running and they started running.
    And as he came into our little alley,
    there was a bend in the alley and the door
    to which he had the key.
    And he could disappear there.
    They couldn't find him afterwards,
    but they shot at him, and there were
    two marks on the wall where the bullets hit.
    And that was in the beginning of '34.
    You had mentioned that your parents were imprisoned then
    at that time.
    Yes.
    That was for political reasons.
    We tried to help somebody who was
    transporting printed material from England to Czechoslovakia.
    I don't really know, or I don't think anybody really
    knows, what was printed in it, but I
    think it was something like propaganda against the Nazis
    that was supposed to be distributed.
    And these people were caught at the border
    after they had picked up the stuff from us.
    We took it in for about three weeks,
    and then it was supposed to be picked up.
    And those people who picked it up were caught
    and they were beaten to a bloody pulp.
    And I went to the trial of my parents.
    They were imprisoned for a year.
    And my mother's aunt, my mother's sister, too, my aunt.
    And they left us children out in the cold.
    Who took care of you?
    Nobody.
    My father left a little bit of money,
    and we skimmed and skimmed and skimmed.
    How old were you then, Ursula?
    I was 14 and my cousin was 13 and 1/2.
    And my little cousin, who was seven,
    was picked up by some relatives of her father's.
    And you lived alone with your cousin?
    Yes.
    And since I went from jail to jail, where my mother was
    and where my aunt was and where my father was--
    and I didn't have any money for the bus or for the streetcar,
    so I walked all these distances.
    Miles and miles I walked.
    And I was out of the house, and the neighbors in the house
    thought I was walking the streets.
    So they called the social workers
    and they picked me up and put me in a house of fallen girls.
    But the social worker noticed on the bus,
    when we went to this home, that that
    wasn't the right place for me.
    But she made me sort of a go-between the girls
    and the authorities.
    And I was on the side of the girls, of course.
    [LAUGHS]
    And then when your parents were released from jail?
    What happened then?
    Well, they were acquitted, and that was a fluke,
    because the judge who normally presided at these trials
    was on vacation.
    It was in August.
    And the judge who substituted for this other one
    was an old-timer.
    He was an old man, and he was obviously not a Nazi.
    But he still had his job, and they probably
    let him die out of his position.
    And he let my folks go free.
    He acquitted them.
    And I was just lucky.
    Now, let's talk about you personally before the war.
    How do you remember yourself?
    What did you look like and how was your health,
    and what were your interests, generally?
    Well, as a child or later on?
    Well, when you were a little older, right before the war.
    Well, I was 15 when my parents came out of jail,
    but the social worker was still interested in me
    and we sort of had become friends.
    And I used to help her sometimes with some girls who defied
    her but would talk with me.
    And I went on some of such errands
    for her to talk with young girls and to take them
    to the police station, and so on, and take care of them.
    And she found out that I was interested in drawing
    and painting and clothes.
    I had always made dolls for my dolls,
    I mean doll clothes for my dolls.
    That was the only thing I played with.
    And I wanted to become a fashion designer,
    and she made it possible for me to go to a very, very
    good school, a private school.
    And that was in 1937 that I started the school.
    And in the meantime, I had TB and I was in a sanatorium,
    so that delayed everything a bit.
    But when I came out, I was very healthy and raring to go.
    And I went to art school for six years.
    And after a year and a half, I had my first job
    through the school.
    And I'm very proud to say I had two teachers who were friends
    of Paul Klee from the Bauhaus.
    One of them was Hanns Johst and the other one was Georg Muche.
    And they gave me a very good grounding.
    That's very impressive.
    You mentioned that you did have some Jewish people who
    lived in your building and you had friends who were Jewish.
    Oh, yeah.
    And that you played with them.
    And all these organizations I talked about previously, there
    were always Jewish people.
    Did you know about any plans or any actions
    to fight antisemitism?
    There seemed no reason to fight antisemitism before Hitler,
    since antisemitism was like a growling cat in the background.
    You could always kick it out.
    You didn't have to really take it too seriously.
    There were always antisemites, yes,
    but they were not in the foreground.
    Well, let's say during the rise of Nazism,
    did your friendships continue with your Jewish friends?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    But there was no change in--
    Well, there was no change in our friendship.
    The change came when some of them left the country.
    Others were incarcerated or were put in concentration camp
    and others went into hiding.
    Well, then as the war progressed,
    what were the changes in the way non-Jews
    acted toward Jews, in other words, in general, the people?
    It became highly dangerous to be seen with Jews.
    And many Jews wouldn't want to be seen with a non-Jew in order
    not to jeopardize that non-Jewish friend.
    Do you remember any non-Jews trying
    to help Jews at this time?
    Oh, yes of course.
    Most of our friends were helping.
    In what way did they do this?
    In 1935, we had connections with people
    who forged passes to help people to leave the country,
    because the government was very reluctant to give Jewish people
    passes to leave the country.
    And so many of them who didn't have much money for bribes
    got their passes through this underground organization.
    Now, we didn't do that ourselves,
    but we had connections, and we contacted Jewish people we
    knew, remembered.
    And we tried to get them to accept this and leave
    the country, if they could possibly do that,
    and in that way make it easier for them.
    And that worked very nicely for a number of them.
    Only one mother and her son-- her husband
    had died a few years before we contacted her.
    And we found out that they probably were in such fear
    that they switched completely, in the sense that the son, who
    was about 17, became a member of the SS Hitler Youth.
    It wasn't just the ordinary Hitler Youth.
    It was the SS branch.
    Do you remember their names?
    Sonnenfeld.
    Sonnenfeld?
    Sonnenfeld, yeah.
    Sunfield in English.
    My mother and I, who visited them,
    tried to make clear to them, without necessarily
    mentioning everything openly, what
    possibility we had for them.
    And the young son said something to the effect, well,
    we don't see anything wrong.
    This is a very beautiful country and it
    has very beautiful ideas, and we are not going anywhere.
    We are going to stay right here, and you better
    make sure that you don't have to go somewhere else.
    And at this point--
    or something to the effect, I don't remember the exact words
    anymore--
    at this point, my mother and I looked at each other
    and we figured we'd better go home,
    or otherwise they might denounce us to the police.
    Once the war started, did your life change?
    Well, everybody's life changed.
    How did it change?
    Well, in 1939, the first thing that was rationed
    was milk and butter and eggs, and it was rationed severely.
    And then as the war proceeded, of course, everything else
    was rationed, and it was very difficult for Jewish people who
    were in hiding to get any food.
    Did you know any Jewish people who were in hiding?
    Oh, sure.
    Sure.
    And so the only contribution--
    I was going to art school at the time
    and I had friends at the Berlin Academy of the Arts.
    And many of them were left-wingers, still
    left over from before Hitler, and I
    knew they would contribute if they could.
    And I went around the Academy to all these people
    I knew and collected ration cards--
    two grams of butter, five grams of meat, 10 grams of potatoes,
    something like that.
    And what did you do with this?
    Well, I collected them, and then I
    gave them to another person whose name I didn't know,
    who would then distribute them to other people whose name he
    didn't know.
    And we hoped that in the end, they
    would go to some of the people who were then
    found, at the end of the war, still living
    in Germany in hiding.
    There were some Jews that--
    That's how they got their food.
    There were some Jews who spent the entire war in Berlin.
    Yes.
    I had a friend of mine, she was a dancer.
    And she came home one evening and saw two men
    in the hallway talking with her landlady.
    And she didn't want to turn around and go back down again,
    so she went right past them, and the landlady didn't say a word.
    If the landlady had said something-- oh,
    there she is-- then that would have been it.
    But the landlady didn't say anything.
    No, she is not here, she said.
    And she went upstairs and waited upstairs
    until those two Gestapo men had gone.
    And then she went in and got a few of her things
    and came to a friend's house, who was also my friend,
    and there I met her.
    And she said, guess what happened to me?
    I was nearly picked up.
    And so stay here for a while.
    Don't leave the house.
    I bring you food tomorrow and clothing, and so on.
    And I got her a passport with a picture that looked like her.
    It wasn't her, but it looked like her.
    And if you didn't look too close, it could have been her.
    And well, I kept her there for three weeks.
    I didn't think we could make it any longer.
    She might drop something and people
    might hear somebody was upstairs,
    and there wasn't supposed to be any upstairs.
    It was too dangerous to keep her any longer.
    I sent her on to somebody else, whose name I didn't know,
    and I hope she went over the border.
    She was a dancer and she was a Jewish girl?
    Do you remember her name?
    No, hard to remember.
    She was not a close friend of mine.
    She was a friend of my friend, who was also a dancer.
    She was a student of my friend, and I had met her previously
    several times.
    When did the Nazis really become active in Berlin?
    Oh, they became active around 1930.
    1930?
    Yeah.
    But as the war progressed, now we're into, say, '39 and '40.
    They became active very early in '34 already.
    After '33, you couldn't be safe anymore,
    if you had any left wing affiliations,
    or even if you were not left wing
    but if you were just known to be anti-Nazi, anti-fascist.
    Did you have to move?
    That was very dangerous.
    Yes, we moved, but not because we were afraid.
    We just had to move.
    What happened to your family as the war continued,
    to your parents, to your aunt, to your niece?
    Well, my boy cousin was drafted into the army.
    And my little cousin, during the war, during the bombing raids,
    was sent to Silesia, a children's camp.
    And in 1943, September 22nd, I had acquired a little studio
    in the meantime.
    That was bombed out.
    And the next day, I walked over to my parents' house
    on the other side of town, which took me hours
    because there was no public transportation left
    after that bombing.
    And when I came to my parents, all the windows were gone
    and there was an air mine exploding somewhere there.
    And that night and the next night,
    my parents' house was burnt down.
    And the whole neighborhood, everything was gone.
    And we went into the underground train station.
    There were electric trains going north, south through the city.
    And that was my idea.
    I said, let's all go there.
    And I ran ahead and I found the second-class compartment, where
    the seats were upholstered.
    I was one of the first one to get in there.
    And after people saw me going in, the others came, too,
    and within half an hour, the whole train was full of people.
    And we stayed there for three days,
    until we finally got some food.
    There was bombing going on during this time?
    Oh, yeah.
    The whole city was in flames.
    You didn't know where you were.
    If you turned around a little bit,
    you wouldn't know where you were anymore.
    It was all rubble.
    What happened when you left the train?
    We went to a part of the city that wasn't bombed out yet,
    in which some friends of my father lived,
    and they took us in for three weeks.
    And then we got an apartment.
    [LAUGHS]
    This is the irony.
    The owner, or the renter, the prime renter of this apartment,
    was an SS man guarding the fuhrer at Berchtesgaden.
    And my father got this apartment because he
    had been drafted to a military laboratory, where
    he had to work.
    All the men were all drafted, but since he had this skill,
    they didn't put a broomstick in his hand
    to go up and down like a soldier.
    They took him to this lab and he had to work there.
    And through one of those Nazis there, he got the apartment.
    He said his son was in Berchtesgaden,
    guarding the fuhrer, and we could have his apartment.
    And how was life then in the new apartment?
    It was precarious because every night there were bombs
    and you had to go in the basement,
    and that went on for two years.
    But what was terrifying--
    that was terrifying enough, because you never knew
    when you would be hit again.
    But my father was working in this lab, and one day, a bunch
    of SS men and Wehrmacht men--
    in their uniforms and the tassels and all the lametta,
    as they used to call it, the tinsel, Christmas tree tinsel--
    gave him some glass plates to develop.
    And as he developed them-- and they were standing there
    watching him--
    as he developed them, he saw that they
    were pictures of shootings, that there were whole rows of people
    that were being shot at.
    And in front of them were a big ditch
    dug, and there were woods behind them.
    And some of the people who were shot
    had uniforms that my father didn't know.
    He didn't know who they were.
    But one of the guys, who came with those
    who brought the films, mentioned a Polish city
    or a Polish region.
    And so my father assumed that perhaps these things
    came from Poland.
    Well, later on, after the war, we
    found out that there were many shootings going on
    in the woods, in the forests of Poland,
    and here was my father developing the negatives.
    Did you know about the death camps?
    Oh, yeah.
    How did you find out about that?
    Some of our friends died there of unknown diseases
    after two years.
    But you knew of the concentration camps?
    And you knew when your friends were being sent there?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, there were trucks going through the cities, these sort
    of dark olive green, grayish-green trucks
    with canvas tops.
    And they would rattle through the streets
    and stop in front of a house, and some SS men
    would go out and go into the house
    and come back with an old couple and a young woman.
    And somebody from the inside of the truck
    would open it a little bit and then
    they would have to climb in that truck.
    And the SS man wouldn't help them
    in, not even the old woman.
    Somebody from inside pulled them in.
    And you couldn't see who it was on the inside,
    but I assumed there were other people already in it.
    And sometimes the truck would rattle through the street.
    And under the awning, you know, where the boards and the awning
    met, a little hand would stick out, a three-year-old child
    or so.
    So you knew what was going on.
    You would say that most of the people in the [CROSS TALK]??
    People would look at each other and look away.
    They didn't want to make a comment because you didn't
    know who the other person was.
    If you showed sympathy or horror, you were anti-Nazi
    and you could be denounced.
    So after a while, nobody said anything.
    You didn't know who anybody was politically anymore.
    You couldn't trust anybody.
    And when you were listening to the English sender
    on the radio, you took a big blanket
    over your radio to muffle the sounds.
    And you tuned it in very, very low
    and everybody put his ear right next to the speaker
    so that nobody else would hear a sound.
    During those days, did you have any contact
    then with any Jews who might have been left in the city?
    Yes.
    There were many students in the art school who were Jewish,
    and some of them went to New York,
    and we had a farewell party in the cafeteria.
    And it was all very tearful, but at least we
    knew they were going to be safe.
    But they were rich.
    The poor ones couldn't get out.
    And what happened to the others?
    Well, they get transported to Auschwitz and Belsen,
    all the others.
    And there was one young man who was a student.
    He was a bit younger than myself.
    He was in love with me, but I was not in love with him.
    And he came to school with his yellow star.
    And one day in a hall, he grabbed me and kissed me.
    And I was sort of taken aback.
    First I was angry, and then I realized what was going on,
    and this was in 1939.
    This was late.
    And I said, when are you leaving?
    Instead of saying anything else, I said, when are you leaving?
    And he said, we are not going to leave.
    I said, why not?
    We can't.
    I said, why can't you?
    I can't tell you, but I love you.
    And before I die, I would like to go to bed with you.
    And so I did.
    He was 18.
    Did you keep in contact with any of the people that you helped
    or with whom you worked?
    No, and we were bombed out.
    There was very little contact left
    with anybody, even the ones who weren't Jewish
    and weren't in hiding.
    I had very, very few friends left.
    I left with my mother to the Saar country
    where we had relatives.
    It was between France and Germany,
    that part that was given to France and then
    to Germany and now to France again, and so on.
    And we lived in the country there for some time until--
    What year was that?
    We were bombed out on November 23rd, I remember, 1943.
    And we left Berlin in the spring,
    early spring, I guess in March of '44.
    And my father couldn't leave because he
    was drafted to that lab.
    And my mother and I went to my aunt and my cousins.
    I thought I could go without.
    That's all right.
    You stayed in the country then, in the countryside?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And when the front came closer, we had to leave there, too.
    In August, I had gone to Wurzburg,
    which is a beautiful medieval city, full of history
    and architectural beauties, and I loved the city.
    And I was bombed out in Wurzburg,
    and my mother had to leave the country.
    She left on a tank, sitting on a tank,
    with her two suitcases in the rain.
    And she came to Roseburg, just about two weeks
    before I was bombed out.
    And I sent her on to another place about Kissing,
    in the village next to Kissing, where
    she was lodged with a farm wife, a peasant wife, whose
    husband was at the Russian front, who had a Belgium
    prisoner of war helping her with the fields and the animals.
    That's where my mother lived.
    And I took some of my belongings and went there
    and put them there, and I went back again.
    And one night I was bombed out there.
    Because I had friends in Wurzburg.
    I didn't want to leave yet.
    So I went also to that village.
    In that village in April, the Americans
    came and liberated us.
    What year was that?
    It was in April '46.
    And my mother nearly went wild.
    She wanted to run out when the first tank came
    around the corner, the main street, in that village.
    She wanted to run out and welcome,
    but they would have shot her.
    They didn't know she was a friend.
    So the Belgian prisoner of war, he subdued her.
    And I talked to her, said, you can't do that.
    They don't know us.
    She was hysterical.
    Were you able to get back together with your family
    after the war?
    Well, my mother and I stayed together in Kissing
    and we moved into the city then.
    And I got a job with the Red Cross Special Service.
    I was making portraits, sketches for the officers and sergeants
    and enlisted men.
    Actually, it was the Americans then
    who liberated your village?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah, we were liberated a month before the official liberation.
    That came before.
    What effect do you think this experience
    had on the rest of your life?
    There is a part of me that doesn't belong anywhere.
    I mean, I have tried to adjust.
    I had a culture shock when I came to America.
    And even though the two cultures are probably
    closer than any other culture, it was a shock.
    You grow up with certain expectations
    that seem so natural, and then you
    find out they aren't natural.
    They are only your set of expectations.
    They are not other people's set of expectations.
    So you constantly run into certain frustrations
    and disappointments and misunderstandings.
    And certain sets of knowledge and experience
    lose their validity.
    They lose their currency because there's
    nobody else who remembers those things you remember.
    You would have to find somebody who comes from that same place,
    from the same time, with whom you then
    could talk sort of spontaneously without having
    to explain anything.
    And I mean, even if I wanted to translate a joke,
    I had to make a preamble first so that people would
    at least understand the joke.
    And then it fell flat because it wasn't spontaneous anymore.
    There was one joke from the concentration camps.
    It was called galgenhumor in German.
    It means gallows humor.
    And there's a row of Jews.
    They have dug their own mass grave
    and they're standing at the edge.
    And they're supposed to be shot.
    And the SS man who is going to shoot them all of a sudden
    says to one of the Jews, turn around.
    You there, you turn around.
    And he turns around.
    And he says, look at me.
    And he looks at him.
    And he said, you know what?
    I'll save your life.
    You can go home again if you tell me which of my eyes
    is the glass eye.
    Well, it's pretty obvious.
    Well, which one?
    It's the left one.
    Jeez, how did you guess that, he said.
    It looked so human.
    No, you can't really laugh about that, can you?
    But it was funny.
    And with the preamble, it just went to the ground.
    Now after liberation, in this small town with your mother,
    where did you go from there?
    What was it?
    Oh, well, I made portraits in the Red Cross club,
    and that's where I met my husband, my future husband.
    Was he an American?
    Yes, he was an American and he was Jewish.
    [LAUGHS]
    I couldn't get away from them.
    Some of my best friends are Jewish.
    I think we're going to stop now for a little bit
    and take a little breather and then we'll come back.
    OK.
    I'm Donna Karon Yanowitz and I'm talking
    with Ursula Rosow, a non-Jew who grew up in Germany during World
    War Two.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Ursula, we were talking about after liberation.
    And you were working at the Red Cross,
    and you were doing portraits.
    And you had just mentioned that this
    is where you met your husband.
    Yes.
    Would you like to continue from there?
    [SIGHS] Well--
    How did you meet your husband?
    I had just finished a portrait, and there
    was a soldier sitting there.
    And since nobody else was waiting in the wings
    to sit down and have his portrait taken, I said,
    would you like to have your portrait taken?
    And he said, no, thank you.
    And he was the only one who ever said no.
    [LAUGHS] And that sort of took him out of the crowd.
    And he also wore his cap very much askew
    and very unmilitaristically.
    And that touched me because no German soldier could ever
    dare do something like this, wear his cap the wrong way
    or whatever.
    And there were other aspects of American soldiers,
    that nonchalant behavior, rather spontaneous, very informal,
    even to officers.
    There was no heel clicking.
    There was no straightening up, no ramrod back, and easy
    answers, and no jawohl.
    [LAUGHS]
    And it was human and natural and right.
    And it was new to me.
    Where was he from?
    He was born in Cleveland, but he grew up in Detroit.
    And at the time that I met him, his parents lived in Detroit.
    Or his mother lived in Detroit.
    His father was already dead.
    And well, he wanted to get married right away.
    And I said, uh-uh, not so fast.
    Because he had told me what he wanted to do.
    He had attended Princeton in the army to learn German,
    to become an interceptor for German Luftwaffe.
    And so he was in intelligence.
    And he spoke German very, very well.
    And I knew already that he wanted to study.
    He wanted to go back to the university.
    And I knew if he was going to sign up again,
    it would be another two years or four years,
    and all his plans would be thrown overboard.
    You know?
    And I didn't want to be responsible for that
    because it was his life too.
    You know?
    So he said he would come back as a civilian.
    And he tried, but it didn't work out that way.
    So finally, we got together.
    And I don't want to go into details.
    It's really not relevant.
    I came to America.
    And we got married in Reno.
    Before you came here, were you able to re-establish
    your family ties with your father and your mother?
    No.
    Didn't see your family again.
    No.
    Nothing.
    And you decided to leave Germany in order to get married.
    Is that right?
    Well, I had never been a patriot.
    And I'm not a patriot now.
    To me these are artificial emotions.
    I feel loyal to the people but not such remote ideas.
    You know.
    But when I left Germany after the war--
    I came here in '48--
    I had the feeling I wasn't making a contribution
    to the country, that I might have made if I had stayed,
    whatever it was, whatever little I could contribute.
    That was my only regret.
    Did you have any difficulties in getting to the United States?
    No, not to great difficulties.
    But I don't want to go into details there.
    And when did you arrive in Cleveland?
    Was this before you got married or after you were married?
    No.
    We lived in Cambridge.
    My husband went to Harvard to get his PhD in sociology.
    And from Cambridge he got a job in England.
    We spent almost three years in England, where my son was born.
    And he has dual citizenship until he decides to vote.
    Then he will either vote in England or in America.
    And-- what was I going to say?
    Oh, yeah.
    And then we came back, and we spent a year in Lafayette,
    at Purdue University.
    And then he got his post here at the Western Reserve University,
    Joint appointment as a sociologist.
    We bought a house in Cleveland Heights, in which I still live,
    which I now try to sell.
    [LAUGHS]
    Let's talk now a little bit about the effects
    of the Holocaust.
    On me?
    Well, how often do you think about the war in your part,
    for instance, in assisting Jews with the passports
    or other Nazi victims that you may have helped?
    How often do you talk about these events?
    And with whom can you talk about them?
    Very little because people don't really want to hear about it.
    It's too, too frightening.
    The on some-- one couple asked me once,
    did that really all happen?
    And I said, yes, it did.
    I said, it's so hard to believe.
    I said, I was in it and it was hard to believe.
    It was happening all around me, and I couldn't believe it.
    How have your war experiences affected
    your physical and your emotional health?
    Well, obviously it has affected me emotionally.
    But I think when I was younger, I
    could handle it much better than I can now.
    I did see a psychiatrist from time
    to time, just to have somebody to talk to.
    Do you ever dream about the war?
    I used to dream, but I haven't been dreaming in a long time.
    A big knock on the door was always something frightening
    because you never knew who it was usually.
    And it was somebody you didn't want to see.
    What made you decide to share your experiences with us?
    And do you have a personal message--
    Well--
    --that you would like to give?
    What really brought it home to me,
    that history should commemorate these events.
    I have some friends--
    as I said, some of my best friends are Jewish.
    And they have a farm in Pennsylvania.
    And some of their neighbors look after the house.
    And they had talked with those neighbors
    and heard from them that there's a rumor going around
    that the Holocaust is a hoax.
    And they said, would you talk to them?
    Would you tell them that it really happened?
    And I said sure.
    So they brought them over.
    And they said, you know, I've heard you come from Germany.
    You have lived through the war and so on.
    That's really happened, all these things,
    with the concentration camps and this?
    I said, yes, it did happen.
    And I started talking about some of the things.
    And that you didn't have to be Jewish for this to happen.
    You could be French.
    You could be Ukrainian.
    You could be Hungarian.
    You could be almost anything and it could happen to you--
    and German, you know.
    And they mentioned a magazine, where
    they had read some articles that propounded the fact that all
    this was a hoax and just to bad mouth the German people
    And so on.
    I said, no, no.
    Don't believe that.
    But there was nothing that I could
    do to change those people's mind until they
    were willing to change it.
    If they didn't want to believe what I said,
    and if they wanted to believe that article,
    that was what they could do.
    The only thing that bothered me is,
    when it is more than just an isolated couple who
    don't believe this, when it becomes
    organized, like people who write articles in magazines
    and people who put out magazines that
    carry messages of this kind.
    This is when it is frightening.
    And for this reason, I called.
    I saw the advertisement on TV one day.
    And I have a hard time remembering phone numbers,
    but somehow I remembered this.
    That really rang a bell in me.
    And I remembered the phone number.
    I wrote it down immediately, and I called up.
    And it took some while for the people to get in touch with me,
    but then they finally did.
    So that is my purpose, to verify again what had happened.
    And it is not a hoax.
    In your opinion, what would be an appropriate way
    to commemorate the memory of those
    who lost their lives during the Holocaust years?
    That's hard to say because, when friends are dying,
    the memories die with them.
    I mean, I still remember people that have died.
    And as long as I live, they live with me.
    But when I die, my children have no memory of them.
    They just heard the story.
    And there's very little, I think,
    one can do, aside from having national holidays,
    or formalized institutionalized things.
    You know, celebrations or whatnot.
    But nobody wants to celebrate anything like this.
    It's too horrible to celebrate.
    What do you think are the reasons
    for your personal survival, your stamina, your outlook on life?
    I was lucky.
    I was lucky I was not caught by the Nazis,
    and I was lucky I wasn't hit by a bomb.
    That was sheer luck.
    It could be-- both of these things, many times over,
    and it just didn't happen.
    I mean, my father was called to the police--
    that was even during the war--
    because some people in our house,
    in the apartment building that we lived in,
    denounced us at the police station,
    that we never greeted with Heil Hitler.
    We greeted with guten morgen, good morning, good day,
    good afternoon, good evening, good night.
    But we never said Heil Hitler.
    And they found this was very suspicious.
    So they went to the police and told them.
    And the police called my father to come and justify his
    not greet-- and his family not greeting with Heil Hitler.
    And he said it's a very personal thing.
    I don't think I would like to use
    anyone's name for a greeting.
    I mean, Hitler is a good name, a good sounding name.
    But if it were Schultz or Croider, or Schmidt,
    I wouldn't feel so good about it.
    And I just don't believe in using names for greetings.
    And he just made this up as he was standing there.
    You know?
    And they believed him.
    And they sent him home.
    That was lucky because if that policeman had
    been a shrine, [LAUGHS] he could have kept him there already.
    The whole family could have gone off to concentration camp
    just for not saying Heil Hitler.
    Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
    Yes.
    There's a story that my mother initiated.
    She went shopping one day, and she bought 5 pounds of potatoes
    with her ration cards and some vegetables.
    And in the store, which was very full with many people,
    there was a sort of strange figure, a young man,
    standing in the shadow of a corner behind the door.
    And as she was turning to go through the door,
    he winked an eye at her.
    And she caught the wink, and she winked back.
    And as she left the store, nothing happened.
    But after a while, she turned around
    and he was following her.
    And it was not very far from us, the store,
    so she didn't have to go very far to go home.
    When she reached our house, she just stood awhile
    in the door, very short while, and looked around and winked
    again and went in, and went up one flight
    and waited there until she heard the door opening.
    And then she looked down and saw that was the young man.
    And she didn't know who it was, but she just
    had a feeling it was somebody who needed something.
    And she took him into her apartment.
    And since she still spoke a little bit Polish
    from her childhood, she could understand what
    he says because he was Russian.
    He was from the Ukraine.
    And he was one of those people that were shipped by the Nazis,
    from the Russian front to Germany to do
    slave labor in camps.
    When my aunt came home from work,
    she had been in Russia for several years.
    My little cousin was born there.
    She spoke Russian, so she translated everything he said.
    He was from the Ukraine.
    He had a family, two children.
    He was a truck driver.
    He got caught by the Germans as a soldier at the front.
    He was shipped to Germany in a cattle car.
    He was living in a camp in the north of town,
    about an hour's walk away from where we lived.
    And once in a while, he could go out.
    And when he could go out, he tried
    to solicit some extra food or ration card.
    And why did he winked at my mother?
    He doesn't know.
    He just had the feeling.
    And somehow she had the feeling that she should wink back.
    And it was dangerous for both of them.
    My mother could have been a Nazi,
    or he could have been a Nazi in disguise.
    And either one could have been arrested.
    But it worked out.
    And we had a neighbor who was a doctor,
    and many people were coming as patients.
    So we said he could come too, between the hours
    that the other patients would come to this neighbor,
    and nobody would know he was going to us.
    And he wouldn't come into our house,
    if somebody would see him.
    He would ring the bell, and he would
    stand by the doctor's door.
    And when the person was going up the stairs, or down the stairs,
    then he would finally come he would always
    look through first to see that he was alone
    when we let him in.
    We had to be very careful about these things.
    And he told us horrible stories from camp.
    People didn't get enough to eat.
    They got the potato soup that was very watery.
    And people got swollen legs and swollen / people
    broke out with pimples from lack of /
    Do you know what camp he was in?
    It was one of those--
    Work camps.
    --work camps Yeah.
    And they were all from the Ukraine, men and women.
    And some of the young girls got pregnant.
    They got no extra rations.
    Some of the kids were born dead, others died shortly afterwards.
    Those who survived a little bit longer
    died later on, at the age of two or so,
    just from malnutrition because they
    didn't get any extra rations.
    And the mothers died because they
    tried to feed their babies from their own rations,
    and it didn't work.
    So he and a couple of other guys would go around and solicit
    food and ration cards or money.
    So what we would do, we--
    I went around to collect ration cards for Jews in hiding.
    Now I had this guy on my hands too.
    Now I split the ration cards, so the Jews
    would get a little bit less and the Ukrainians
    would get something.
    And I also solicited for clothing--
    shoes, gloves, hats, scarves, clothes.
    You know dresses, pants, everything.
    Who could you go to for these things?
    [SIGHS] Friends, colleagues trust.
    Some people I didn't know.
    I just was told, go to so-and-so.
    I didn't know the name.
    I just knew the address.
    I rang the bell.
    I didn't know who it was going to be.
    I said, I come from so-and-so.
    Oh, yeah, come in.
    He told me.
    Yeah.
    It was all just trust, trust and chutzpah.
    You know?
    Just a feeling you had, whether you could trust or not.
    But most of the time you had to be suspicious of everything.
    Somebody was walking behind you, you had to be very careful.
    You didn't go back to Berlin at all after the war.
    No.
    After I was bombed out and we left,
    I never went back to Berlin.
    I couldn't take it.
    I just couldn't take it.
    Is there anything else that you can remember
    that you'd like to share?
    Yeah, there's a story of a young woman, a Jewish woman, who
    had liaison with a married man.
    And his wife knew about it.
    And he knew that his girlfriend was Jewish.
    And she hated Jews.
    And she always threatened with denouncing him,
    and if not him, then at least her.
    And he had, in the meantime, tried
    to get her across the border.
    But she had his baby, and that was
    difficult to go across the border with a baby.
    So he arranged with some other friends,
    whom his wife didn't know, that she would bundle up the baby,
    and somebody else would take the baby
    and put it at those friend's doorstep.
    Now, this young woman was red haired and had green eyes.
    And she looked like a Raphael Madonna.
    But she was Jewish, and so the kid was half Jewish
    but it was blonde.
    And the people duly found the baby and took it in
    and had it certified as an Aryan baby and adopted the baby.
    But shortly after that happened with the baby, she had to--
    it was the timespan that she had to stay in town until she could
    make contact with somebody who would take her
    across the border.
    Where could she stay?
    So a friend of mine said, I know somebody
    who needs a night's sleep.
    Could she stay with you?
    So I asked my parents because we lived together.
    I couldn't just decide that for them.
    You know?
    And they said sure.
    So I picked her up at the subway with some description.
    And she wouldn't even have recognized me.
    She didn't know who I was.
    I just went to her and said, is your name such-and-such?
    It was a fake name.
    And she said, yes.
    I said, come with me.
    She stayed that night and left early in the morning,
    going to some other place.
    And that's exactly what some friends of ours
    had done several years before.
    And they got two years imprisonment.
    The husband-- when after two years they came out,
    and after four weeks being out, the husband was
    taken to concentration camp.
    And after two years, he died of an unknown disease,
    just for having somebody overnight.
    After having had this example, what do we do?
    We take in a Jew.
    And yet, how could you not?
    There's somebody's coming, you say, look,
    she needs a night's rest.
    She's on the run.
    So what do you do?
    I hope she got across the border.
    I don't know.
    She was a stranger to me.
    Can you think of anything else that you
    might want to share with us?
    God, I don't know.
    There are so many things, they don't always come in a bunch.
    But I think I have given enough evidence of the fact
    that all this happened and that it
    was horrible and unbelievable in the middle of it all,
    and that I should sit in a basement
    with the bombs falling around me and be actually
    glad that the Americans came to bomb us,
    just so we would get rid of the Nazis,
    knowing we would have to lose the war in order
    to get rid of the Nazis and thereby gain some freedom.
    Now, anybody being in a position to
    wish that his country would lose a war, that's pretty weird.
    Isn't it?
    That's not a normal wish.
    But then those were not normal times.
    And I guess that will be all.
    This is Donna Karon Yanowitz again,
    and I want to thank you, Ursula--
    You're very welcome.
    --for participating in this project,
    which is sponsored by the Cleveland Section, National
    Council of Jewish Women.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Ursula Rosow
    Interviewer
    Donna Yanowitz
    Date
    interview:  1984 November 08
    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
    Rosow, Ursula, 1919-

    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​/irn504983

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    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emerson Batdorff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral history interview with Simon Fixler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral history interview with Herman Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral history interview with Helen Fried

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral history interview with Marcel Friedman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral history interview with Ann Frum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral history interview with Jack Gildar

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral history interview with Ileen Green

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral history interview with Phillip Green

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral history interview with Ervin Heksh

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral history interview with Karel Hoffman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral history interview with Al Horwitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral history interview with Rose Ickowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral history interview with Munci Katz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral history interview with Paul Kuper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral history interview with Bertha Lautman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

    Oral history interview with Dina Leiser

    Oral History

    Dina Leiser, born in Paris, France, describes her parents, who had immigrated to France from Poland to escape antisemitism and worked as tailors; her younger brother; her family not being religious; experiencing antisemitism from her schoolmates; wanting to be identified more as French than as a Jew; staying with her brother for several months on a farm in Souillé as part of a school-sponsored program; the war beginning in 1939 when she was 12 years old; her father enlisting; joining her brother on the farm; her mother obtaining false papers and joining them on the farm; the villagers in Souillé being very protective of them; remaining in Souillé for the duration of the war; finding out her father had been deported and learning only recently that he had been sent to Auschwitz; studying shorthand and typing; experiencing antisemitism at work and going to work for a Jewish firm; immigrating with her brother to the United States in 1947; her mother going to Canada and then the US five years later; teaching herself English by listening to the radio and reading; her brother being drafted into the US Army; getting married to one of her brother’s soldier friends in 1952; her son and grandson; living in University Heights, OH; and working for the Jewish France.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Sylvia Malchmacher, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1926, describes the Jewish community in Vilna, including the many synagogues, Hebrew schools and universities, and the many Zionist organizations; her older and younger sisters; her father, who was a printer, and her mother, who kept house; experiencing antisemitism after 1939; living in the Russian zone of Poland; food rationing and being forced to work for the government; the German invasion in 1941; the collaborators in Vilna; the creation of the ghetto; her sister’s work in a fur factory; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being ordered to report with all the children under 18 and old people and going with her younger sister; being sent home because she was 18 and her sister never coming home; being deported on May 16, 1944 on trains to a camp in the Kaiserwald, where they remained for three weeks; being sent in August 1944 to Stutthof; remaining in Stutthof for two weeks under horrible conditions; selections for work and being sent to Milldorf, a camp near Mannheim; clearing the debris as tunnels were blasted into a mountain; washing clothes for the German camp staff; being liberated by American troops on May 2, 1945; going to a displaced persons camp; learning that her father, mother and sister had died; attending a training school and marrying Israel Malchmacher in 1946; going to Cleveland, OH in 1949, sponsored by the Jewish Family Service; and her two grown daughters.

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral history interview with Marguerite Morris

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral history interview with Anna Moses

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral history interview with Dan Pavlovitch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral history interview with Hilda Prooth

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral history interview with Isidor Reisman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral history interview with Sally Rettman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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