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Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.47 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0047

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    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer
    Transcript
    All three are rolling.
    OK.
    You'll watch for history.
    Yes.
    My name is Stanley Garfinkel.
    And in a few moments, I'm going to be interviewing--
    Cut, cut.
    Sorry, Stan, we had a jump on the tape here again.
    Oh.
    So relax now.
    And don't worry.
    Your part was fine then.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    We'll be looking for the point.
    And Stan, when you do, address it right in there
    where his finger is to start with, just at the start.
    OK.
    OK.
    My name is Stanley Garfinkel.
    In a few moments, I will be interviewing
    Mrs. Freda Schmelzer, who is seated here next to me.
    We're going to be talking about Mrs. Schmelzer's experience
    as a Holocaust survivor.
    This is a project, Holocaust Archive Project,
    sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women,
    Cleveland section.
    Mrs. Schmelzer, first of all, I'd
    like to ask you something about your life
    as a child in the village in which you were born
    and grew up.
    Yes, I was born in Turulung, Túrterebes in Hungarian.
    The population were Schwabes.
    We were about 45 Jewish families in that village,
    and the Jewish people, mostly all of them, Orthodox Jews.
    And me and my parents lived in a very strong
    religious upbringing and respect.
    I had three sisters and three brothers, seven of us
    all together.
    And we lived there in peacefully with the Gentile people.
    And until 1941, '40, we were Romanian.
    In 1941, the Hungarian came in and took over
    from the Romanian.
    The place is in Transylvania, Romania right now.
    We were going in Romanians--
    I was going in Romanian school and talking Hungarian.
    Tell me, what did your father do?
    What was his occupation?
    My father was in America.
    My father came in America in 1913.
    And he came home in 1920.
    And I was born after he came home.
    And he left my mother with three--
    five-- three or five-- two died, so three older sister
    and brother than me.
    And he was working in Bronx.
    And what he did--
    in a Jewish household, there was a lot of things doing.
    My father bought property.
    He had a big vineyard.
    He made slivovitz.
    And we had a combine, which cleaned
    the wheat for a percentage, I don't know, 10% or 9%.
    And the girls, we had a store around the house.
    And everybody was busy, very busy.
    And what did you sell in the store?
    Grocery, yard goods, and our own wine,
    and our own liquor because we had that.
    Did you help and did your mother help in making the slivovitz?
    Or was this--
    My father was working.
    And my oldest brother--
    I had a brother which was the oldest.
    And everybody, every boy--
    I had three brothers and sisters.
    And we went even in the vineyard.
    And everybody was working.
    I see.
    Tell me, in the village in which you lived,
    were there only Jewish families?
    No, we were about 800 Gentiles.
    And we lived in a very peaceful atmosphere.
    There was always a little antisemitism, like jealousy.
    There was no such a thing a Jewish child would
    be illiterate because they had to go--
    if he had four classes in public school,
    then he had to go in Hebrew school.
    And everybody looked for a trade, go to a yeshiva,
    or go and--
    in high schools, it was possible,
    who could afford to do that.
    My brothers were yeshiva bochurs.
    And did they plan to become scholars or teachers?
    Or did they plan to go into a trade?
    That was their idea.
    My parents are there first, the religion, first the--
    after a couple of years until they grow.
    My oldest brother was 21 when he came out from the yeshiva.
    My youngest were younger already.
    And he went to my uncle--
    he had a big store--
    and helped out to learn the trade
    to be a merchant, or a storekeeper, or something.
    And my other brother too.
    Jewish girls, that was a different story.
    They had to stay at home mostly because--
    learn, help out in the house, learn from our mothers
    how to keep kashrut, what to do.
    And that was the mother's responsibility.
    And very few girls left the house.
    What sort of house did you have?
    A big house.
    I am sorry, I didn't bring the picture.
    We had a beautiful, big house.
    And we had a nice garden with the trees
    with fruit and all the certain--
    everything.
    I should have the picture.
    You mentioned that you lived quite
    peacefully and pleasantly.
    But you mentioned also that sometimes, there
    was a little antisemitism.
    Yes.
    Can you give me an example?
    Because they were Catholics, Catholics and Greek Catholics,
    most of them, in the villages.
    They were taught, the children, in the school
    already, Jews killed Jesus.
    And when we went in school, and we got a push from here
    and there, we went home complaining
    and told our parents, I was beaten by this or that,
    and the answer was always, don't go near to her or him.
    And it went.
    The boys had payos and like this.
    And always were holidays like Easter or Christmas,
    some kind of violence, there were always, always.
    But people live with that.
    We shouldn't.
    We should pay attention to those things.
    It went too far already.
    And people kept the stores closed, never open.
    We didn't do any job, any kind of work
    on Shabbos or High Holidays.
    And you see, in 1937, the stores start to be open,
    the Hitler's thing came in already,
    the Hitler's pressure in Germany's Jews, antisemitism.
    It was very bitter for us when we saw the store.
    We had to go and serve people came in the store.
    We didn't believe it.
    We thought they won't-- wouldn't come in the store.
    On a Saturday, you mean?
    On a Saturday.
    And you'd be surprised, they came.
    If we wouldn't serve, that would be a violation.
    Were-- this was a time when the Romanians were adopting some
    of the antisemitic measures.
    Cuza and Goga era.
    That lasted for I don't know how many-- not too long.
    Did you-- do you remember your parents talking
    about this at home at all?
    They took it hard.
    They took it-- it was very bad.
    And they hoped it will be over.
    You mentioned that you spoke Hungarian at home.
    Your parents spoke Hungarian.
    You, however, and they consider themselves
    Romanians at this point.
    All they considered themself Jewish.
    Romanian or Hungarian, any European country--
    you see, like we came here, we are good Americans
    and good Jews.
    So that they were Jews and Romanians?
    That's right.
    You didn't speak Yiddish, then, at home?
    My parents did.
    And always, I understand everything Yiddish.
    But we had maybe servants in there,
    somebody in the household.
    And they spoke to us Hungarian.
    And our friends, we were socializing
    with the Hungarian girls--
    and not boys, just neighbors and some girls
    from school, but not boys.
    Not boys because your parents said not?
    No.
    No.
    Absolutely, god forbid, no.
    And was the same true with the boys
    as far as Romanian girls were concerned?
    Hungarians.
    Or Hungarians?
    That's a very funny situation there because Transylvania
    considered Hungarian and Romanian.
    We were speaking at home Hungarian.
    And I went in Romanian school because it was Romania
    until 1940, I guess, '40.
    Would you tell me something about the way
    you celebrated Jewish holidays?
    Beautifully.
    Say the Sabbath.
    Sabbath?
    That's absolutely was nature, keep everything.
    There is one kind of Judaism.
    That is no left or right, just straight Orthodox.
    There was no carrying a handkerchief
    on Yom Tov or Shabbos, except if Yontif
    was on Tuesday or weekdays.
    Shabbos, you didn't carry anything.
    You didn't pick a fruit from the tree.
    I was walking in my backyard in my garden,
    beautiful fruit maybe fell last night from the tree.
    I wouldn't pick it because that fruit was fallen on Shabbos.
    And every-- we didn't make fire.
    We had to have somebody come to light
    because Shabbos wasn't out.
    Sometimes, we couldn't sit there.
    We didn't have electricity that time yet.
    And somebody, a neighbor, what we paid for it,
    they should come and light the light or make fire in winter.
    Because we didn't have that kind of stoves like here.
    We used wood for burning.
    And everything is possible.
    Was possible to eat kosher food for the extent.
    There is no-- nothing in mind for however
    you should eat treyf.
    I went to visit my friends, they would offer me anything.
    They know-- they knew we wouldn't take except fruit.
    And it was like this and beautiful holidays.
    Everything was celebrated, nothing left out from Shabbos.
    The Maleva Malka, the doing Havdalah, going in shul Friday
    evening candlelight, and so on, doing nothing, just
    celebrating, resting up.
    And you had a shul or synagogue in your village you shared?
    You share, yes.
    The synagogue, It was beautiful.
    My father was sitting by the Ark.
    And those shuls were not like this one in United States.
    The bench were separate.
    You had a long bench.
    And in front of you, there was a stand for your books,
    for your tallis.
    And there was no fancy rabbi.
    There was only a schachter who did the shechita,
    cut the poultry.
    And I don't know.
    And so who conducted the service if there was no rabbi?
    The schachter.
    The schachter.
    And was there a cantor?
    No.
    Every bar mitzvah, it was very simple.
    A bar mitzvah-- the bar mitzvah fell on Tuesday,
    they celebrated on Tuesday.
    You go to a minyan.
    And before you know, the boys know
    more about Judaism or a bar mitzvah
    than just going shul, and learning from a tape,
    and say it like a poem.
    And you go in a treyfer restaurant here.
    And there was nothing.
    Maybe you gave a Kiddush.
    That's what I did for my oldest son.
    My oldest son was bar mitzvah in Szatmár.
    And I gave-- we gave a Kiddush.
    And his friends came over and had a good time
    in a very quiet way.
    But it's possible.
    And it doesn't give you so much headache like here.
    You have to-- so people have to go for after somebody
    who has more than other people.
    And then it's terrible.
    It was in one way.
    Woman on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, everybody
    was wearing white.
    I mean, white dress.
    Maybe people like my mother was wearing his--
    her wedding dress for a long time after he--
    she changed it to a very light blue,
    but is with a white apron covered all over.
    And you should see her when she was ready to go to Kol Nidre.
    One piece of hair didn't look out from that white scarf.
    There was a scarf under the scarf and her beautiful face.
    He blessed the candle.
    And my father blessed the children.
    All of us, we kiss our parents' hand.
    That was our education.
    That was our upbringing, respect and well behaving, not
    hanging on the streets.
    And it was very nice.
    I wish my sons had--
    I have good sons.
    But it's beautiful.
    You cannot teach that in college.
    It's beautiful.
    You can't describe it when I-- my father
    blessed us seven children.
    I had two more.
    But they died.
    They were infants.
    And we all lined up.
    And he blessed us before he went to Kol Nidre and Rosh Hashanah.
    And my mother told us not to warm up the food
    until the stars don't come up.
    After the Neilah, after Yom Kippur,
    and for 10 days after Yom Kippur,
    we had to say that prayer, [HEBREW]..
    Two times a day, we ate our meals, we had to bentch.
    There was time for everything.
    At 4 o'clock in winter, the store door was closed.
    Everybody knew it was Shabbos already.
    And they made it.
    If they wanted something, they were in a hurry to come.
    Like here, they say, it's competition.
    They have to open because the competition.
    And they lose their customers.
    If they want your store, they wouldn't use--
    they wouldn't miss it.
    And they would go earlier.
    But this is-- it's a big change.
    One more question-- perhaps not the most important question--
    about life in your home--
    food.
    What sorts of food, tell me what-- a little bit about the--
    Very nature of food, everything, everything natural.
    Every mother, every girl--
    I did it here too.
    I baked my-- you should see, ask Lynn.
    My challah, I bake challah, I bake kuchen.
    I am making meals.
    You save a lot of money.
    I don't like to go in restaurants.
    That was natural.
    You made your noodles at home.
    You bake your bread, your challah and cooked your meals,
    everything-- every day, different things, different,
    not just a piece of roast and you go--
    pull put a piece of vegetable, or this, or that,
    but you have every day a piece of roast.
    No.
    Every day, different meal.
    And at 12 o'clock in noon.
    And for supper, we had only light, some milk, some coffee,
    some vegetables, some fruit.
    That's what-- how we ate--
    and kosher food.
    When was the first inkling, your first knowledge
    that something was going wrong as far
    as the Jews were concerned?
    After-- before the war.
    Like I told you, the Jewish people are very good patriots.
    So was my parents and the Jewish people.
    When the bishop came in the country,
    no matter how religious the person was,
    he took off his hat for respect.
    We never went in a Catholic Church or something
    because that was not our religion.
    Maybe we were brought up this way.
    But after, for a while, the Hungarian came out.
    We were very happy.
    I went out.
    I was a young girl.
    And I-- to receive, to be happy because the Hungarian came in.
    The nice things, my parents told about the Hungarian era
    they lived in.
    And first of all, we were among Hungarian people.
    We spoke the language.
    And then those people told us, the Jewish people came,
    some of them.
    Don't be so happy.
    Because they bringing you that tsuris.
    After the Hungarian came in, the Jewish--
    the boys there must be as pre-military,
    you understand me?
    A military service before the real military.
    It started from 16 to 21--
    21.
    And the Jewish boys already couldn't
    have an arm, only from wood.
    And they were not accepted in '41, only to clean the streets.
    And the people change their faces right away toward us.
    They were big Hungarians.
    And even if they were never honest with us, a lot of people
    could save their lives if they would be--
    from after the war start, Germany went in in Poland.
    And the preparation for the war and everything, the excitement,
    a lot of Hungarian people, boys run away
    to Hungarian from Romania volunteer in the army.
    And later, after year by year, and called in, and taken
    to the front, never once, we didn't
    hear what's going on in Poland.
    The telephones and radios were confiscated.
    And Jewish girls and boys couldn't educate themselves
    in high schools and colleges.
    And it was--
    Jewish stores had to be open again.
    And you couldn't get a license anymore to open a store.
    Young, married couple would open a store, they couldn't.
    And a lot of things like this-- it was very, very hectic.
    And our boys, I don't forget this.
    And this boy is from all over in '40 and '41 already,
    started to be cleaned out, to clean out
    from the villages from cities, and taken to make bunkers.
    And it went so fast, so fast.
    Everything went so fast.
    And still, we were good friends with our neighbors
    in the villages.
    And they were very happy, right away,
    when the Hungarian came in.
    They saluted Mussolini, and Hitler, and Goring.
    And even then, we didn't take it so seriously.
    We thought it will change.
    And then in 1943, my middle brother, the second brother,
    died.
    They let us know he disappeared.
    Was he taken?
    Was he then serving in one of those labor
    units in the Hungarian Army?
    Army as a soldier.
    He-- they took him.
    He's supposed to be a soldier.
    You see, this has a memory to me too.
    Because that boy was born in 1920.
    And a couple of days made him older with one year, in 1920,
    December 24.
    And he was-- when he had to go to--
    he was called in.
    He went with the '20s.
    And seven days made him a year older.
    And those contingents, those boys, no one of them
    came home in that city of mine.
    Lot of-- who was born in 1921, lot of people
    came home a lot of boys came home.
    My brother was older with a year.
    So my sons were born--
    first, Eugene, the oldest, he was born in December 6th.
    And I thought, in the hospital, for the nurse--
    was a nurse, wasn't a house called or--
    Midwife.
    --midwife.
    I says, don't report my son only in December-- in January 1.
    And my Eugene is older--
    younger with a year because of his what happened with him.
    My second son was born in December 27.
    And I told the doctor to--
    to midwife to keep quiet four more days.
    And he was born in January 1.
    When-- I don't want.
    So every occasion brought some memory back
    to us, occasions like this, and marriages.
    How old were you at this time in 1943?
    1943?
    20.
    OK.
    What happened then in 1943?
    In 1943, already, we didn't have men, only old men in the city.
    Everything was taken away from us.
    You know that I mentioned we had the slivovitz-making business.
    That was put a stamp on it.
    And the cylinder was put on the attic.
    And we couldn't have the bar.
    We had-- we sold our drinks, wine.
    And we couldn't have that anymore.
    And we had-- we didn't get license for anything.
    Jews, all the Jews were at home.
    They were pulled by the beard.
    They were cut-- some of the drunk boys who
    came home from the front cut the beard with a knife.
    And we were afraid.
    We couldn't get newspapers anymore,
    maybe if your-- the store owner was very good friend of yours.
    And that was in '43.
    A Jewish man couldn't go out already
    with a Jewish girl on the street.
    We have to stay at home, mostly.
    And we did.
    A lot of people didn't have anything to make a living.
    So they went to work for the Gentiles
    for third part of the--
    maybe potatoes, or this, or that,
    and working in the fields.
    And it was very sad already.
    Were there still Gentiles who were friendly?
    That was already not friendly.
    They couldn't do otherwise but be friendly.
    They were not friendly.
    Now, I'm thinking back a lot of times,
    they should be more honest and tell us what's going on.
    They knew what's going on in the front
    because those boys came home for maybe-- they were wounded.
    They were in the hospital and released.
    And they went.
    They knew the story what's going on with the Jews.
    They should let us know, at least.
    But they kept quiet.
    I'm sure they knew about it.
    And among the Jews, there was no feeling
    that they had to escape somewhere or somehow save
    themselves?
    No.
    It went too far.
    Where could you-- where could we escape?
    In-- we were surrounded in Bulgaria,
    in Hungary, it was fascist already,
    and Yugoslavia was fascist, Poland was fascist.
    We can't-- we couldn't.
    We were in very, very wrong place, in the middle.
    And then what happened?
    Then in 1940--
    I don't want to left out anything.
    In 1944, it was very bad before.
    We had to go with tickets to buy bread and this.
    And this level poverty was very, very big
    among the Jews and especially big families.
    And they were just-- we were hoping miracles.
    The Jewish people look always hoping.
    We were praying.
    We were fasting.
    We knew already, finally, something is going on wrong
    with the Jewish people.
    And we were fasting on Thursday.
    The shochet gave out we should fast on Thursday
    because maybe, the situation should change.
    And in 19-- that's how it went.
    Then my oldest brother disappeared--
    died, disappeared.
    They let us know.
    They sent home the empty suitcase of my second brother,
    full of letters what my mother sent him.
    He saved it.
    He carried it with him anywhere he went.
    And all the letters what he got from us, he saved it.
    They sent that home for us.
    So we were sitting shiva for an hour.
    And the chevra kadisha man came and cut that.
    And that was it.
    I don't know how my mother took it.
    So the last Pesach, we were baking the matzo
    because we baked our matzos.
    We made our wheat specially and select every kernel.
    And there were people who go through those wheat
    in the mill.
    And by supervision, all Jews--
    older men, younger men-- participated in that
    to making that flour specially.
    And the girls, we went.
    You came to me and I went to you to make the round matzos.
    And that's how it was.
    And the last Pesach, I had to-- we cleaned, we--
    like other Pesach.
    And except, I had to wear already
    in March the yellow star.
    This is in March '44?
    '44.
    And I went to the shochet to cut my poultry.
    We had our own turkey, beautiful, and fat goose
    for Yontif.
    And I had to wear my yellow star.
    So imagine that, the village already, Turulung, Terebes
    in Hungarian, was full with German soldiers,
    how exposed we were to them going with a yellow star.
    I had a good neighbor, a very good neighbor.
    You were talking about good Gentile friends.
    He was the-- she was the best.
    And he was the best.
    And he-- she was a seamstress.
    So why-- my-- we couldn't go further higher education.
    And my father said, I should learn something.
    I was there for a year and a half.
    She was doing beautiful job on embroidery and all that stuff.
    And I was there.
    And I saw--
    I told her to make the yellow star for me and my parent--
    my husband's parents lived across the street
    from them, very good neighbors, very good.
    And they lived like relatives.
    And she didn't see me, but I saw man coming from that way.
    And he ask her, what are you doing?
    And she picked up the yellow star
    and show him what she was doing.
    And I put up a good face to it.
    And I walked in.
    And we were not talking about these things.
    So Pesach came.
    And we made the meat kosher.
    And we prepared.
    My father-- we used to have nine people sitting
    around the table.
    We were only six, the four girls, and them.
    And my mother says to us, you should come.
    We had a big table.
    They-- we didn't have a living room and dining room there.
    It was a room, a nice room, where--
    the family room, let me say.
    And we had a big table, a dining room table there.
    And the window was this way, looking to us.
    And the table was set nice.
    We were sitting around.
    And my mother told us to come away from the table
    because she saw some German soldiers looking
    through the window.
    Even then, we didn't think it's that bad.
    That's idea, it will pass by.
    So Germans are in the city.
    They are.
    And it was after Passover.
    And before already happened, two Germans
    came in and put the dog on the table
    where my father was sitting, even on there, a table.
    And we were sitting around, and talking, and very quiet,
    very depressed already.
    And they came in, two of them.
    And one of the Germans had a dog.
    And he put it on the table.
    And the dog's name was Ivan.
    And he looks around.
    And we were sitting there.
    And he ask Ivan if Freda is coming with us--
    [GERMAN]
    My mother made a sign to me.
    First, he asked, what is my name?
    And I told him what is my name.
    And here is his dog.
    And I went in from that room.
    And I opened the door, the store door.
    And I went out.
    And he saw me going out, he went out on the kitchen door.
    And when I saw him going out, I came back in to my family.
    And I just locked the door.
    He went back to the kitchen door and knocked the door,
    knock to the door.
    And then I walked out and went to the other side, we--
    the river, a Tur, call it Tur.
    And I was felling in and out from one hole to another.
    And then I established myself somewhere on the riverside.
    I could see what happening with my family.
    And I saw my family didn't open the door for the Germans,
    the kitchen door.
    They-- one by one, they crossing the street
    and going in to a neighbor's house.
    The old lady let them in.
    So when I saw this, the German was looking for me
    with a light--
    when I saw this, I walked in to that house.
    And they-- we were-- everything made us happy already,
    just to be together.
    That's all we wanted, always, until the last minute,
    hold your hands, be together.
    So that's how it was before Pesach.
    And after Pesach, that was a--
    Pesach-- during Pesach, we didn't have patience.
    We didn't have peace of mind already.
    We didn't know anything.
    My mother-- my father talked to that lady, to that seamstress--
    her name was Juliszka--
    and asked them, maybe two of the younger girls, me
    and my sister, we could sleep at their house.
    They have a back room, a very nice bedroom.
    And she was a good woman.
    And they right away told us, yes.
    So every night during Pesach, my father
    escorted us to that place to sleep.
    The man was so decent, gave me the key.
    I should lock the door from inside.
    But we have to come out from there.
    And there were Germans in the room, in the front room,
    because there were more Germans coming.
    And they needed to give rooms for them.
    So a couple of them put to station at their house.
    I had to come out.
    I was wearing a babushka, no sign I
    was a Jewish girl or something.
    I had a babushka, no hair was looking out.
    And a German soldier ask the owner, who am I?
    He says, my sister.
    And then she asked--
    he asked me, what's my name?
    I says, Freda.
    That was foolish.
    Oh, Freda, showing her name.
    Then I shouldn't tell that.
    So I figured-- and I told my father,
    no reason we should go there anymore because I
    am suspicious.
    We are suspicious there.
    And we stayed at home for the last two days.
    And I never forget the end of Pesach.
    Pesach ended.
    And next day, my mother appeared in our bedroom standing
    by the door.
    I could see her and telling us, I don't know what's going on.
    We are surrounded with those young soldiers, military.
    I went to go out to bring a little water because we
    didn't--
    we had to go in the yard for water.
    And they didn't let me.
    And your father wanted to go out for wood.
    And there is no--
    they chased him back.
    We wake up and go out.
    And we saw boys sitting in our store's window,
    with their food outside and have a very happy face
    like they watching the Jew.
    And when-- so it was 10 o'clock already--
    10 o'clock, around 10 o'clock.
    Our neighbors, my best friend's husband came,
    he was the instructor of those paramilitaries
    and their orders.
    And he says--
    I says to him, as a good neighbor, friend.
    Was-- they were all--
    I looked through the window.
    Then I see a very poor family, grandmother, a son, wife,
    and seven children, the smallest aged.
    The grandmother holds the children's-- the
    grandchildren's hands.
    And that shocked me.
    Where are they going?
    I says to that fellow, I says, where are they going?
    He says, I think they taking you in Nagyszolos.
    Nagyszolos was a part also connected to Hungarian
    after '40.
    That was Czechoslovakia.
    I didn't know about ghetto.
    Who wanted to hear?
    I was never busy with the word ghetto.
    So at 10 o'clock, they came after us--
    pack three days' clothing, three days' food.
    And that's all.
    Nothing is allow.
    We are not allowed to take anything out from the house.
    And we went to the shul where we used to pray Kol Nidre
    and celebrate bar mitzvahs.
    There was straw on the floor.
    And we stayed in there until Tuesday.
    Old and young, we were not allowed
    to go out, only maybe in the yard, only in the WC,
    they call it.
    In European houses, that time, they didn't have a bathroom.
    So we'd escort every one of us--
    and pregnant women, young children, 90-year-old,
    85-year-old, innocent people there--
    young girls, boys.
    And we stayed there until Tuesday.
    And Tuesday, they came and tell us, get ready.
    We going.
    What we did-- we didn't have anything anymore, but food
    for three days, they said.
    You going in Szolos.
    So even then, they didn't tell us,
    the people with the wagons--
    you don't know Romania, or Hungarian, or even still now,
    Romania, everything was done by wagon with horses--
    put eight people or 10, one wagon.
    We were sitting on top of each other,
    just we should be somewhere.
    We have to go.
    We have to be there.
    So we went from Terebes a long line, young and old.
    I remember an old woman.
    She was 83.
    That's how she took from her house.
    She cut one corner of a pillow.
    And she picked it up.
    She was a very intelligent woman.
    Her husband was a secretary of the-- in the city hall.
    And she says, [HUNGARIAN] in Hungarian, the sickle one.
    And she was sitting there, 80-90.
    My husband grandmother, 83.
    And the other, 83, innocent.
    They kept religion like it's in the Torah,
    from everything, from soup to nuts, everything.
    They were taken.
    So I was laughing because when we arrived there,
    one of the old lady says to his son-in-law,
    he says, in Hungarian, Lajos, he says, you are a very smart man.
    Why don't you do something we should go home from here?
    So what happened?
    We were packed in a shul, big temple for the first night.
    But you don't know how we looked at.
    Terrible-- all our packages what we can pick up,
    some cover, or something for us, everything,
    and packed in the temple, not sitting, not standing,
    not sleeping.
    The kids were crying.
    The old people were--
    ah, ah, oy can, like this.
    They were sick.
    They were tired.
    They were old.
    And the ventilator was going.
    And that made us so--
    feel so bad.
    And some Germans sometimes came and look around.
    But imagine the chair put like this or more together,
    and another people put his packages here,
    no word of sitting, just standing, like herring were.
    And it was like this.
    So next morning, they packed us out, put us out.
    And very interesting thing-- my mother
    was around there from Szolos.
    And when they put us out in a house,
    we find out that house was my aunt's.
    My mother had a old sister--
    my grandfather gave that big house for her
    because she could have an income for that to rent it.
    It was a big house.
    And all lot of my friends wanted to be with us,
    stay together together.
    So when I come here, my grandmother comes here,
    only my uncle comes here, only this.
    And she had a tenant.
    But the tenant was put in one room.
    And the tenant, their name was Handler.
    And they were also appreciate it like me in there.
    You have to be how many people, 20 people in one room.
    So we were sleeping together, everybody together
    on the floor, every room.
    They came and they told us, that's not enough.
    You should have 40.
    We should have 30.
    They don't have the transports.
    And the wagons came in.
    They didn't have place.
    So everybody settled down.
    And while we were traveling with the wagon, no word
    to each other.
    Everybody was keeping quiet.
    We were mute, just we going someplace
    for two or three hours.
    Somewhere, we wind up, my mother thought.
    And she was so happy to look around in that area
    because during the--
    the two countries were divided.
    For 25 years, she never saw her sisters and brothers.
    And she find there one brother with wife,
    and son-in-laws, and grandchildren,
    and other sister, and another sister.
    They were sitting shiva because she died.
    My mother didn't know.
    She sat for an hour.
    So the family, cousins, all of us beautiful girls,
    we were together.
    I don't know how many very intelligent people at that time
    in my family, there were lawyers, and professors,
    and teachers, and bankers.
    And my cousins, they were chosen out to the Judenrat.
    I know now, I read about it, they were exceptions.
    They were high officers in the Hungarian Army before.
    And they had some kind of deferment.
    They came in in the same day of the deportation
    with cousins we, were together, and their parents,
    and their cousin.
    Sometimes, what they can bring us, you know what, peas--
    peas and onions.
    That was good too?
    Finally?
    What is it?
    Further?
    A little bit.
    Pardon me.
    So that was until four weeks in ghetto.
    Four weeks in ghetto, there were laws,
    the Jewish girls have to cut off their hair.
    It started.
    There were laws.
    There were sick people, older people.
    There were no medicine.
    And sometimes, the Germans went in places
    where they saw beautiful girls at night.
    So the older people and the religious people
    gave out orders not to socialize because we were in a place,
    beautiful place in a garden.
    The lilac was blooming.
    And young people-- and it's always young people.
    Young people, we were talking to each other.
    We went out in that garden from the house.
    The houses were blocked with wood.
    We couldn't look in the streets because the window
    was with lumber.
    So that particular family, my--
    shall I?
    Pause for a minute.
    We'll pick up.
    We're going to pause for a moment.
    And our interview will continue in just a few minutes.
    I know, you know this.
    All tape's rolling.
    OK.
    We'll cue you then.
    And watch for Jim's fingers.
    OK?
    Oops!
    Sorry about that.
    Five, four, three, two, one.
    Please ask me the question.
    My name is Stanley Garfinkel.
    I'm continuing to interview Mrs. Freda Schmelzer
    for the Holocaust Archive Project sponsored
    by the National Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland
    chapter.
    Mrs. Schmelzer, when we last spoke,
    you were just beginning to explain the ghettoization that
    took place after you were taken to the town of Soluge.
    Yes.
    I wonder if you would continue to tell us about that.
    So I am going to continue.
    We left at the putting us, jamming us, in the synagogue.
    It was a mess.
    I don't know how many hundred, or maybe
    thousand, from that convoy we came, that--
    not only from Terebes, from the surrounding of Soluge.
    When we were coming, we still--
    we didn't know there will be a ghetto for us, waiting
    for us, a ghetto.
    But now we saw already something wrong, very serious,
    because we met people outside their houses--
    I imagine, Jewish people--
    crying, behind their homes.
    They were ready to leave also.
    I know those villages by name, all of them.
    But why we were going--
    they start from Terebes.
    Then they went to [NON-ENGLISH],, then further and further.
    The borders were open already.
    We were Hungarians not Czechs and not Romanians.
    We were all Hungarians.
    And we were escorted.
    So we were sitting on those wagons--
    I didn't tell you about that--
    sitting eight or 10.
    We didn't feel our joints.
    Mute-- nobody dared to ask one question-- why?
    Where?
    There was no answer for us.
    We were afraid to talk anymore, because the man
    who was with us and the police and everything.
    So we were frozen already.
    So we arrived in Soluge.
    And like I told you, we went in that temple,
    with baggage, packages, and all what we had--
    not too much already.
    But everybody had something--
    and especially the family.
    It was terrible to see--
    grandmother suffering, father suffering,
    mothers seeing their children, their daughters, together.
    My oldest sister lost her husband already,
    and she moved in with us.
    And we considered her lucky, because she
    didn't have her baby.
    She died, before.
    Her father never saw her and so on.
    So we were there in the temple for a night.
    It was not possible for anyone to sleep,
    because of the moaning of the sick--
    crying, the babies.
    And there was no place for us to move.
    We were, all night, in standing position.
    We were happy if we let the sick, at least sick,
    sit, not sleep.
    They were sitting.
    They were lucky to sit a little bit.
    And so, in the morning, they emptied the temple,
    and they start to locate us in different--
    in every house which was within the ghetto area.
    You know?
    So 20, or maybe more, in one room.
    And no bed.
    The beds or furniture had to be emptied from those places,
    we should have place.
    We were not even hungry.
    We didn't sleep, all night.
    We didn't eat, yesterday.
    We didn't eat, today.
    We forgot about eating already.
    Who wanted to eat?
    And there was no possibility for to wash ourselves.
    There were young boys, men, older men, in that place,
    and young girls.
    And I don't know--
    They always came.
    There was the girl in that place--
    you know, my aunt's house, I told
    you-- fell in in the ghetto.
    And those people who rented her house,
    they had a 23-year-old girl.
    Her name was [NON-ENGLISH].
    And they put her in charge with everything in the house.
    That's what they did.
    They put one person as supervisor.
    In Hungarian, I know how [HUNGARIAN],, if somebody
    will listen to me.
    I know you understand.
    And she was notified about their laws.
    We have to cut our hair down to short,
    the men had to cut their beards down,
    and so on-- what we are allowed, not allowed, to do.
    But it wasn't worth what we are allowed to do.
    Everyone who would try to go in the city
    or get out from that ghetto would be shot.
    And you hear that every single day.
    We went out, you know, girls and young boys.
    What can we do?
    Sit in the house?
    We didn't have place.
    And there was a big backyard, like, and from both sides,
    two streets in between.
    So we have place in the [NON-ENGLISH] to walk around
    there and talk what is going to happen with us.
    But we still hope we're going to go back home.
    It was like this for four weeks.
    And we never gave up hope.
    We're going to go home.
    Where are they going to take us?
    And it went on for four weeks, doing nothing.
    They didn't take us to do something there.
    They took us for--
    They took Soluge for a transition place--
    between Soluge and Auschwitz.
    We find out that later.
    So after four weeks, one Friday morning we got one word.
    We're going to go away.
    Everybody has to--
    They didn't give the order, like last night.
    Everything had to be done in the morning.
    Right-- you have to be ready within an hour
    and go out in the [INAUDIBLE] garden.
    That's what we did.
    We got-- but how much we had?
    Nothing.
    I have an uncle there, lived in that place, an 83-year-old.
    He was a-- vinegar--
    he had a vinegar factory in Soluge--
    very well-to-do man and 80--
    also 83-year-old wife.
    He started to pick up a big [HUNGARIAN]----
    you know.
    Quilt.
    The quilt, the Hungarian, you know, with feather.
    A feather quilt, yes.
    --and schlepping after his wife, because he was covering her
    always on the floor.
    They were sitting on the floor.
    And also my cousins, his children and grandchildren,
    they were lucky to stay at home.
    They were not taken for--
    in the work camp, so they were lucky to come in the ghetto.
    And he was walking with that quilt. And one Hungarian
    gendarme, with a black feather--
    they wore a black hat and black feather--
    very, very shtolts people.
    And he says, put that down.
    And he start explaining, his wife is sick.
    So he took his arm, and he gave him a push, a good push,
    for the old man.
    He put the [HUNGARIAN] right the way down.
    So we went out.
    And I saw-- and everybody--
    the singles of the homes are lifted up,
    and machine guns are directed toward us.
    And I know we were standing with my husband.
    My father recognized our cousin and his father.
    And he was an electrician, an electrical engineer,
    and he says, he has poison.
    He will kill himself.
    And I told him not to, but I think he did.
    A lot of people did.
    They find out already what's what.
    So they came out, some gestapos already,
    and they start asking us names.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]?
    I says, "Ich bin Freda Israel."
    "Du bist Sara."
    Every Jewish girl got a new name.
    You didn't have your name anymore.
    You are Sara.
    Sara.
    So they went to my sister and my mother and everybody
    and they told him, you are Sara.
    And the boys got the name [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And so we should put everything down.
    I told about the experience.
    People were called in to give jewelry--
    where are they money--
    where are their money-- before that week.
    They should give it to the authorities,
    because they cannot use their valuables anymore.
    They have to give everything except their wedding band.
    So they did.
    And because the wedding bands was left to the Germans
    already, you know?
    They have to give something for the Germans.
    So that was done,
    Everybody had to stand up, to funf, in [NON-ENGLISH]----
    in rows--
    five, hand on the shoulder--
    your hands on-- always in the first shoulder.
    And we marched on, very fast, very fast.
    It took time until everybody came out from their house.
    And everybody looked to keep close to their families.
    My mother had her four daughters,
    and we were lucky to stay together.
    We didn't need a strange five.
    And cousins also together.
    And the word went on-- always hold onto your hands.
    God forbid, nobody should lose any sister or brother
    or daughter or whoever.
    So we going.
    We had to throw--
    There was an order--
    throw down everything except your clothing-- no pictures,
    no papers, you know, official papers, or--
    everything.
    We were walking out from the ghetto.
    And while we were walking, we recognized pictures.
    We're walking on the pictures of our family members and friends.
    So here is [NON-ENGLISH].
    Oh, here is Olga Klein, on the--
    and therefore, we were walking like this.
    The floor outside, you know--
    everything was, all over, pictures.
    So we arrived to the place.
    We started.
    We're going someplace.
    The cattle wagon was ready for us and open.
    And there was a little straw on the bottom.
    And they told us we should help our olders.
    Oh-- then we couldn't keep up anymore.
    The only thing-- we were numbers--
    75 in one cattle wagon.
    And Schneller.
    Schneller.
    You know?
    Well, had to go very fast.
    So, around 4 o'clock, I guess, we were in the wagon.
    They throw a couple of loaf of breads, round bread--
    two-- three or something.
    They gave us some kind of dish-- you know, pails.
    We had to go someplace.
    Cattle wagons doesn't have--
    Bathrooms.
    --bathrooms.
    And what we did--
    we separate one section with a white sheet.
    Somebody put a white sheet and every--
    we start going.
    We reached Kassa--
    Hungarian or Hungarian city that they had the check
    had him had that beautiful city in the Tatra Mountains.
    And then the Hungarian took it over.
    That was the granica between Poland or--
    you know, it's--
    It's all close together, there.
    Then we saw-- we left Kassa.
    We entered in Poland.
    Then we're going in Germany.
    We thought so.
    But I tell you, we didn't talk.
    There's 75 people-- young, 19-year-old boys, or 16 or 17--
    young girls, our parents, our relatives--
    people from home.
    And we just sit there.
    There was no place where to--
    you just put yourself down and rest up a little bit,
    to think--
    nothing.
    And the night came.
    Meanwhile, a big whistle, when we start going--
    a long whistle.
    That whistle I could hear always in my life--
    a whistle, when we start going.
    And we traveled all night.
    And you are not allowed to talk, because you don't know--
    you don't know who he is-- what you have there.
    You just sit there and--
    without words how you feel.
    Rest up.
    Put your head here, for my parents or some sick people.
    Some of them died, while going there, with lack of water,
    lack of food.
    Nobody was thinking of us, to stop somewhere
    to give us something.
    No one.
    Except, they opened the wagon on a station,
    to take out the bucket.
    We were so happy, when we saw, you know, they--
    we gave it to the SS, to take it.
    And that's all it was.
    There was a little window, that small,
    with wires, barbed wires, between.
    And my mother was standing.
    She loved nature very much, and she
    came from that area, the Tatra Mountains.
    She came from Czechoslovakia.
    And she didn't see those places for a long time,
    because we were separated--
    Romania and Czechoslovakia.
    And she says, we are in the mountains of Tatra.
    How beautiful it is in the morning.
    And she says, maybe they taking us for to work.
    And she thought so, you know, maybe we're going-- it's war,
    and maybe they were-- she consoled our self.
    So we were riding like this, three nights
    and two and a half days.
    The trains arrive always at 1 o'clock exactly in Auschwitz.
    Meanwhile, always somebody, until we were still
    in Hungary--
    until Kassa-- a Hungarian soldier
    came up and told us to give our valuables.
    The last time, he's telling us, if we don't give gold we have
    or diamond or ring or watch--
    anything-- if we are not going to give it to them,
    they will find it, and the person will be punished--
    100 for 1.
    That was the word.
    100 for 1.
    So we passed, and the German came always.
    They wanted our gold.
    They wanted our money.
    We got used to that tsuris.
    We didn't even listen to them anymore.
    No.
    So, after the third night, we had--
    approaching Kraków-- this, I don't remember--
    the second or the third night--
    we had a big air--
    the Americans came-- how is call it, attack, attack.
    And the SS and all of them, the guards,
    ran away from the railroad station,
    and they left us locked in the cattle wagons, all of us.
    And we couldn't go nowhere.
    So the attack was over.
    And I remember, my father--
    I had his head in my lap-- he was crying.
    And we arrived in Auschwitz.
    And I don't know--
    Monday, I guess, it was Monday or Tuesday--
    my mother looked through the window and says,
    there is a crazy--
    some crazy people here, he said.
    They wear rags!
    And they don't have hair.
    They look at those women.
    I could see.
    I went there, and I could see.
    And they were-- you know, now I know how I looked,
    from the far--
    no hair and gray dresses they wore.
    First when we arrived, we all got gray dresses.
    So there was no time for thinking--
    no time.
    Big noise.
    Dog barking, and the killers barking,
    the SS and the Gestapo, and everybody--
    And the thing opened.
    You know, the wagon opened.
    And-- heraus, heraus, heraus.
    Everybody had to go out.
    Schneller.
    Schneller.
    You know what this means-- fast.
    And they was just throwing with people already.
    We were not people already.
    I remember, one Polish boy caught me.
    Now I understand, because I read about them.
    They belonged to the Kanada, those groups
    who came to the wagons and collected our--
    what we had to leave.
    They told us to leave everything.
    Meanwhile, he was talking loud.
    Three or four, they came in, and they say to us,
    there is no 13-year-old between you.
    Everybody's 16 year old.
    If some old, the oldest is 45 year old.
    Nobody is 50.
    So they know they can't help the--
    you know, they talked Jewish like this.
    They were hollering, two of them, and two of them
    were talking.
    I remember, they told us there is no 13-year-old.
    If somebody asking, you know, no.
    But he didn't-- they risked their lives.
    They were not allowed to talk to us.
    So we were thrown out.
    One Polish boy caught me and throw me far away
    from my mother and my sister.
    That's what they do, the young people.
    You know?
    Still, we went there to die, all of us.
    We are not supposed to survive, no one of us
    who went in Auschwitz.
    But still, to die, everybody has time--
    they thought.
    And they were right.
    And then we came out.
    And Mengele is standing there--
    handsome, tall officer.
    The music is playing.
    And with a white glove in one hand,
    in the other hand he had those stick--
    I don't know how they call it--
    A baton or wand.
    --yes-- and showing left and right.
    And he told us they were the older people on the left.
    They could take-- oh, oh-- and the mothers, with babies,
    children, on the left.
    Older people-- young people on right.
    And it went very fast, because they came and they beat people.
    And everybody was afraid from beating.
    So we didn't have nothing.
    Well, we couldn't hit back.
    We didn't have with what.
    And so the selection went on.
    I remember, they start marching.
    I remember my father looking back to us.
    And we didn't even say goodbye to each other.
    I thought we-- everybody thought we're going in the same place.
    And then they left, a big group of people on the left,
    and we on the right--
    to live for a while.
    And they took us in a place.
    We didn't know-- we-- they didn't tell us anything,
    where we're-- now are we going here or there?
    No!
    [GERMAN]
    You know?
    [GERMAN] funf!
    Stay.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    And hollering-- "Links, Links, Links, and Links!"
    You know what is?
    That's--
    How you march.
    --march, left and right.
    And Links, and Links.
    They made such a noise.
    And we had to-- we went--
    no stop, no rest, for three nights and--
    three nights and two and a half days--
    excitement and everything-- no rest.
    So we arrived in a place.
    And we had to stand still.
    And we didn't even have to think.
    We didn't have time to think where are our parents.
    Where did the old and the children
    go-- or a mother who was still young,
    and she gave it to-- because those Polish Jews told
    the young mothers they should give their children
    to the grandmother.
    And some grandmothers were walking
    with three and four grandchildren, one in their arm
    and two beside.
    The babies were taken care right away.
    The babies were thrown on trucks.
    I saw them every day I was working in that washroom--
    call it washroom-- call it WC.
    And I saw them, right away, putting them
    on the trucks and the--
    looking like nurses, German women, with that fancy thing
    and dressed up in white.
    They were carried the buggies, to fool people they're
    taking the kids somewhere.
    The buggies were empty.
    And a half an hour later, the kids were dead.
    So I saw that every day.
    Now, you arrived at--
    was it a barrack, where they took you?
    We arrived, and I go back.
    We went in a place where they shave our heads first.
    Listen to this.
    I look in, and I see a beautiful girl, my best friend,
    sitting there.
    And handler Sori, who I was talking about--
    he was our commandant in the house where we lived.
    And he-- she has a shaver, a shaver, and shaving her.
    She--
    I looked over there.
    She is bald.
    She-- now one of my friends already have hairs already.
    So-- [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    The next.
    I go in, sit down, and I am shaved.
    Then they told us to take off our shoes--
    throw down our dresses.
    I have a nice spring coat with me.
    It was-- you know, we always took the--
    in May, it's still chilly, so we had our coats and dress.
    The coat has to be thrown separate and our dresses thrown
    separate.
    And hold on to your shoes, in your hands.
    After we were shaven, they commend us in in another room.
    There is a big bottle of water--
    water.
    And two SS men or three-- who knows how many-- stands there.
    We walk in, naked.
    We were shaved all over from hair from our bodies
    and smeared then with a greenish like of a liquid.
    And we go in the other room, and a man, an SS, just--
    like-- it was like-- a paintbrush--
    put it in that liquid, in a pail,
    and he smeared us, after he shaved us.
    It was so strong.
    We went into-- to that room, and they
    told us we should put our shoes in that bottle of water
    and rinse it out, if there is anything in it.
    So, after this, everything was done.
    We went to take a shower--
    a shower.
    We came out alive, fortunately--
    our shower.
    And , then they throw us a dress--
    only one-piece dress, a gray dress.
    I had a fancy shoes, a new shoes for Pesach.
    [LAUGHS] You know, you buy--
    bought things, especially for Pesach--
    new dress, new shoes.
    That was all of everybody, even the poorest people.
    So that was my beautiful, new shoes I bought from Satmar.
    And I had that all wet from the water.
    And they told us, Schneller.
    If you don't Schnell, then you got beaten up.
    Everything had to be made very fast.
    So we went out.
    It was a platform, like a yard.
    I have here a picture of that--
    a clipping.
    And they throw you a dress--
    one piece, a dress--
    no panties, no bras, nothing, no slip--
    only one dress.
    Now, we had our life and bodies and souls
    and covered with one piece a dress--
    if you call a "dress"--
    a gray dress.
    It was like a shift.
    It was cut out.
    It's nothing-- just covered us.
    And we stand up to funf and marched up--
    [GERMAN]
    We went to a barrack.
    It was a Gypsy Lager.
    And we went to the barrack, and we started thinking.
    After then, finally, we are somewhere.
    But where are our parents?
    And a young lady--
    I know her-- she was 21.
    She gave birth to a baby girl, two weeks ago, in the ghetto.
    She says they take away, somebody, her has a baby.
    She doesn't have an address where to call.
    And she become hysterical--
    and all of us.
    And the Blockalteste was--
    a Blockalteste was who is chosen to be
    our supervisors in the block.
    Was it someone from the group or someone else?
    No, a Polish or a Czech girls.
    Because Czech Jewish girls were taken away, some of them,
    three years before.
    Beautiful girls were given to the soldiers,
    on tickets or coupons.
    That was true.
    That was true.
    And from those girls who were taken away before,
    they were there already for a long time,
    and they were trained.
    They knew German.
    And they had to be responsible for us--
    or Polish Jewish girls.
    They were dressed up like that every day in different dresses.
    They had their hairs.
    We envied them so much.
    We were bored, naked, hungry, and they looked nice.
    And they had more to eat than we had.
    So those girls took us over.
    Her name was Marika.
    She was a doctor's wife.
    And she has a substitute "Schreiberin," they called--
    a secretary-- Schreiberin.
    I could name her like this--
    [NON-ENGLISH]-- and those two.
    Then they chose also.
    When we went out for Zahlappell, next morning, and they
    chose from us who spoke German.
    And then they should--
    the German officers or German SS women
    never spoke directly to you or us.
    Always, somebody has to be between us.
    That's why we had those girls chosen from us.
    And they had to execute everything the Germans told
    us-- the rules and regulations.
    They told us we have to get up in morning at 4 o'clock
    and go out in the WC--
    washroom.
    You know, I can describe the running.
    Because we only had, I think, two WCs
    in the back and two in the--
    one Lager had 2,000 inmates.
    And everybody was in a hurry, very much in a hurry,
    because we were--
    you didn't have time to wait.
    But we had to go in the bathroom-- let me call that--
    I don't know how shall I call latrine--
    a bathroom.
    We had to go, because we had to stay from 6 o'clock
    until 10 o'clock for Zahlappell--
    What is that?
    --in Auschwitz-- Zahlappell, for numbering you,
    numbering people.
    You didn't have names, in Auschwitz-- numbers,
    dead or alive.
    That was no trouble if somebody died.
    It has to stay Zahlappell there.
    I saw a picture--
    three sisters.
    The fourth was dead.
    Somehow she died.
    And she was covered there, in front of them,
    counting the five.
    You understand me?
    Three, four, and she was the fifth.
    But she had to stay there, or lay there, dead,
    covered with a blanket.
    And all day we were busy, with this, with the tsuris.
    We were busy, all day, with the tsuris--
    running-- running to the washroom.
    So they gave us the breakfast.
    Let me tell you about the breakfast.
    Six people, or I don't know how many,
    was chosen by the Blockalteste.
    Let me stay Blockalteste, the people who
    were chosen from us-- to send people to pick up
    the coffee from the kitchen.
    In the morning, we didn't have bread or anything
    with our coffee--
    if you call it "coffee."
    It was a dark water--
    water.
    They said-- you know, the evergreen has that long fruit.
    Yes-- pine cone.
    Pine cone, you call it?
    That's what we find.
    From that, they made the coffee.
    It was good-- warm.
    It has a sweetish taste.
    And you make sure you have plenty from it, you know,
    to satisfy yourself.
    To me, or to others, that was the idea.
    We should have something, anything, in our stomachs.
    That's why we survived somehow.
    And the food-- so, we got one dish for five.
    Now, this was at--
    Auschwitz!
    --say, at lunch or--
    The breakfast.
    Oh, the breakfast.
    That, you got a dish for, about a liter.
    And that, they gave that for the first.
    And everybody was drinking very consciously,
    not to swallow more.
    God forbid that water shouldn't have or the last.
    If there was leftover, then we start again from the first.
    And that person starts swallowing--
    maybe she counted.
    I guess I did.
    I didn't want to have more or some--
    everybody should have.
    After we drank that mush, we throw the dishes away.
    There was a pile.
    They told us where to throw the dishes.
    Those dishes were from ours what else, you
    know chipped ones what they didn't
    needed, because the good dish, they saved that for themselves.
    And so we throw away the dishes.
    And the flies was having a good time on them.
    Those didn't have to be washed, because that was only liquid.
    So, 12 o'clock, we didn't get anything.
    At 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock, Zahlappell again,
    going in the washroom, and coming back for 6 o'clock.
    Then we got a piece of bread--
    not a piece of bread.
    It was a square, about 2 kilograms, I guess,
    if I am sure, that big and square.
    And it was cut first in five--
    then, later, six-- then eight--
    and so on.
    We had a piece of margarine, about that size--
    how much you spread once on a slice of bread.
    That was supper--
    For five people.
    --for five people.
    And they put it on, on the bread, in the first row.
    Sometimes we had some marmalade--
    1 teaspoon full.
    Sometimes we had-- we had--
    I think that was 12 o'clock.
    12 o'clock.
    I guess so.
    Let me think.
    In the morning, with our coffee, piece of salami
    made from horse meat.
    Oh, it was so good.
    [LAUGHS] it had every taste.
    We never had salt.
    And we never had our periods, after we
    start eating that food.
    Had, specially the soup had a very funny taste.
    And after one week you were there, girls,
    we find out there is nothing coming.
    And we lost our menses.
    We had, for supper, a mush with barley.
    And it was mixed with a kind of green.
    I know in Hungarian.
    I don't even see here in United States!
    If it touched your hands, it made on your skin bubbles.
    And in Europe they gave it to the pork, the khazir--
    To the pig.
    Mhm?
    --pig-- pig food.
    That, we had in it [INAUDIBLE].
    After we were crying, the Blockalteste told us, the--
    I says, what is it?
    How long we are going to be?
    I don't want you to ask questions.
    I am here for four years--
    five years-- and I could be--
    I can lose my hair like yours again.
    Why did you come here, they told us.
    You animals, why did you come here?
    Then we start crying.
    Says, why did you come here?
    Then, she told us, when I came in Auschwitz,
    she said, we build the barracks.
    When we came here, we didn't have this barracks.
    We opened the tallis--
    you know the tallis, the prayer shawls?
    And people were holding those prayer shawls,
    and we were working under it.
    And that's how--
    At least you have a cover--
    some kind.
    We didn't have-- I don't want you to ask questions.
    You just eat whatever they give you--
    anything!
    You make sure.
    It doesn't taste good.
    You should have it inside--
    anything.
    We had sand in it.
    [LAUGHS] We had-- you could feel-- it wasn't even washed!
    And you know, that too, it was thick sometimes.
    We were happy.
    And we had a kind of-- "répa," in Hungarian.
    It's beets, but it was long--
    for the cows and horses.
    That was cut in pieces and put in.
    Oh, you were lucky if you get a piece like this.
    It has--
    We talked about, it has the vitamin,
    and you shouldn't look the taste.
    You should eat.
    We tried to convince each other, everybody
    should eat the food-- anything food, anything they give you.
    So [SIGHS] it was stories, and I don't want to go--
    it's interesting, but it would take me too long to tell
    the everyday life of Auschwitz-- the selection of people, daily,
    chasing you out--
    I think we should try to learn as much about that as we can.
    Very interesting.
    And it's clear to me, and I--
    so the selections-- and we try to steal.
    The second day, we went out for Zahlappell,
    and we didn't have our hair.
    We didn't have a sweater.
    We didn't have a panty or a slip-- anything on us, anything
    at all.
    It was cold.
    And our Blockalteste, Marika-- if someday she will find out I
    was talking about her--
    I appreciated her.
    She didn't have one person in the blocks.
    Because if you sneak back to the blocks--
    You know, Mengele was always coming, or the SS, to look--
    go up on the bunk beds, three or five.
    And if he finds somebody didn't feel good,
    they took her right away to the gas chamber.
    So that was her policy.
    Her group, 1,200 girls, no matter what.
    I was breaking stones--
    stone.
    And then I went to clean.
    The first day I went out to break stone--
    because they repaired the Lagerstrasse--
    I met a Polish boy.
    He came straight to me.
    And he says--
    He was [NON-ENGLISH] an officer in the army,
    and he went every day to the arriving of the newcomers.
    He had food.
    And he brought me khazir-- you know, that--
    now they're selling in the stores, that pork
    for sandwiches on white bread.
    And he gave it to me.
    And I didn't want to take it.
    Until then, I never ate treif.
    And I had people, girls, they invade me and says,
    give it to me.
    I'll eat it!
    Then a third day, again, he show up every day.
    And he told me what to do and what not to do.
    You don't go nowhere voluntarily,
    unless you have to.
    Don't drink the water, because--
    no good.
    And he--
    He was very good.
    He passed by the row, when we were-- you know,
    the blocks had a space between them
    where we stayed for the Zahlappell, to count us.
    "Zahl" is "count."
    "Appell," the book they should book to register us--
    "Zahlappell."
    So he went and start-- or, I start
    thinking-- my older sister start being a little weak.
    I says, I accept.
    That's all he gave it to me.
    And he left.
    Mhm.
    OK?
    Shall I stop?
    No, I just wanted to ask you--
    this young man was a Polish Catholic.
    Yes.
    He was a soldier.
    Yes.
    He was an officer in the Polish army.
    And he deserted.
    Somehow was he did something.
    I never talked to him-- never.
    That's all he did.
    Once, he wrote me a letter.
    I was volunteering, I wanted to go someplace,
    and they asked 200 girls to take some blankets
    in Birkenau, another factory.
    And when I came back, he was standing in the Lager,
    at the gate.
    And he wrote me a letter.
    He thought I went in the crematorium.
    They took us there.
    And he says, never again, unless they call you--
    unless you have to, never volunteer anywhere.
    And we ate our food with no spoon!
    That thick-- thick--
    we didn't have-- he gave me a spoon.
    Nobody-- it was a spoon, you could fold it like this
    and open it.
    And I never took that spoon over.
    I put it on my bed, you know, under the wood.
    How is call it?
    those barracks had wood, across, like the Spanish buildings.
    A beam.
    A beam.
    Beam.
    You're right.
    Well, we're going to continue in a moment.
    And we'll return to discuss with Mrs. Schmelzer more
    of her experiences for this Holocaust archive project.
    OK?
    My name is Stan Garfinkel.
    I'm continuing to interview Mrs. Freda
    Schmelzer for the Holocaust Archive project.
    You were telling us, Mrs. Schmelzer,
    about the Blockalteste.
    And I was wondering what sort of people they were.
    And they sounded very, very hardened.
    Very hardened.
    They went through a lot during the four years
    being in ghettos and lagers.
    And they knew all the tricks that the German
    could do with us if he is-- she is not tough.
    So she was.
    You see, one day, Mengele comes in.
    And he tells us, children, if somebody is sick or has fever,
    report.
    We going to take you in a sanatorium or in the hospital.
    We will take care of you.
    And one girl, yes, she reported.
    Her name was Eva.
    And Marika says, I am responsible here.
    And I am talking.
    I am the one doing the reporting.
    And you sit down.
    And Mengele turned his hand and gave her two patch.
    Two slaps?
    Yeah, two slaps.
    And after he left, she told us, no one reports for anything
    because that's not true.
    They are taking you somewhere.
    They are taking you in the crematorium.
    I am doing the talking.
    And it happened.
    One night, after she told us this, she says--
    we woke up.
    We didn't even sleep because the rain fall on us.
    We-- between the bunker beds were that height,
    you couldn't see it, you couldn't-- if you
    couldn't sleep because we were sleeping five here and five
    here, with the understanding that one try to turn,
    the other try to turn, everybody was turning.
    And we had once a girl who had pneumonia.
    In the morning, she had to-- we had doctors between us,
    woman doctors, Hungarian doctors.
    And we didn't have medicine.
    But she told her, she has pneumonia.
    But she had to go and stand out for the Zahlappell.
    And also, you see, she can't hide anything.
    She had to report when the SS comes in.
    And she has to be responsible for everything.
    This is the Blockalteste?
    The Blockalteste.
    What about Olga?
    You were mentioning something about her.
    Olga was taken away.
    And Olga was-- well, we were crying.
    We knew she was taken.
    Then she was brought back.
    The sick who didn't feel good, there
    was a big oven in the middle of the barracks, made from bricks.
    It was tall and fancy.
    And the people who were sick was put there already
    to taken away.
    And Olga was already there.
    We were crying.
    And she knows she will be taken away.
    And she came back by miracle.
    I don't know what happened.
    But she came back.
    And one night, after the Blockalteste were talking,
    we hear a noise, barking, shooting, crying,
    and everything.
    And before, we heard Levinele, or a girlfriend of ours
    from Terebes in the block 10.
    And we thought we going to visit her tomorrow morning, tomorrow
    morning.
    So that night was that noise--
    barking, and shooting.
    And we went to see Levinele and 100--
    1,200 girls were taken away and killed, young girls.
    There was no living there anymore.
    And that night, next night, after the noise,
    and we were so scared that the Blockalteste
    told us not to make noise.
    Take ever it comes.
    But you shouldn't panic.
    I don't have-- I don't want to hear it
    because they could come here too and take you away.
    So next day-- night, it was in the night, we went to sleep.
    Who could sleep?
    Every day had a different surprises for us.
    So three SS came in-- it was raining--
    with long, black raincoats, black hat, black gloves,
    and three dogs.
    And it was so quiet.
    It was so quiet, I says to my sister, this is it.
    We going to go now.
    And we going to go.
    They were looking around, turning their heads.
    Went down.
    It was very quiet.
    And they left.
    They left.
    And it meant, again, a day pass by.
    But we were never sure one minute to another
    we're going to survive.
    There's so many things you saw happening there.
    So when I hear that Marika told us,
    I went out of-- the coming Friday evening,
    you have the window here.
    This is a window to me, I don't know, a window.
    And the window was open, no glass in it.
    And I went out because I had to go to the toilet.
    And we couldn't go outside at night.
    We had to do it in that particular outside.
    And the window was open.
    And the first time I saw, I saw the crematorium burning,
    big flame.
    When you put-- you make barbecues,
    put lot of fuel, and that kind of fume and thing, you saw,
    and flame, and the smell, and everything.
    That-- day and night, we saw that day and night.
    And that was a morgue not far.
    We had to pass by every day by that morgue.
    They collected the dead every morning.
    There was a death Kommando, came with a wagon.
    It had only two wheels.
    And they throw the dead and pushed that wagon further.
    And that place, the morgue, didn't have a top,
    or roof, or anything, just throw it up, like a piece of garbage,
    not even human being.
    You couldn't do with a chicken what they did.
    And tomorrow morning, they came with a covered truck,
    with a black something, black cover,
    and they took those people away--
    healthy people, maybe a glass of milk could save.
    And you see, the men lager was next,
    only the wire separated us from the next.
    I lived in that lager two months.
    And then one day, we had a selection.
    And my sister, Irene, was selected.
    His-- her ankle was swollen a little bit.
    And she was going already.
    And there was two blonde girls.
    One was crying for her sister.
    She was taken.
    And she says to me, is your sister going?
    Let me go instead.
    I go with your--
    instead your sister.
    We didn't say her to go instead of my sister.
    But she did.
    She pulled her out.
    And she was standing to the five.
    We went always in five.
    And my sister was with us.
    And the group was selected one group to go to work.
    And one group was selected to go to die,
    who has some kind of trouble.
    And we remain.
    We ran away.
    We ran away.
    But we didn't have place anywhere-- nowhere,
    no block could take us because we were in plus.
    You were an extra group.
    Extra, extra four-- five--
    our fifth widow stayed with us.
    So we had to go every night in a different place,
    a different barrack.
    It didn't matter.
    We stand Zahlappell here or there.
    And how did you manage to the counting?
    The counting?
    Every day, people died.
    So it was really-- they weren't really counting, truly.
    Yeah.
    So they were.
    They were.
    Maybe we were lucky.
    You don't know.
    They were counting from one person.
    It didn't matter if they--
    he was or she was dead.
    But the number had to be that day.
    The register had to fit.
    But maybe, somehow.
    So what happened?
    We went.
    We didn't have one cover.
    We didn't have-- nobody wanted to-- when
    I wanted to go up to sleep somewhere, I didn't have place.
    So the last block let us sleep on the cement one night.
    And I was very sick, very sick.
    And that would be a long story.
    I don't want to go into it.
    So we were waiting for two days.
    And there was another selection.
    And my sister had--
    we had somebody working in the-- a relative in that warehouse
    where they collected the clothing.
    And she got a--
    that girl gave her a pair of shoes, which covered her ankle.
    And we went.
    When they wanted to select for the work, we were there.
    And we passed in the next lager, the Tsche-lager,
    that Tsche-lager that day had to be emptied.
    That's a family-- that was a family lager.
    And you should see the selection we saw in July.
    It was in July, this month.
    The older people were taken away.
    And the younger was reaching after the trucks like this,
    embracing the air.
    They know where are they going.
    And then the working youngsters went away.
    The children, gorgeous children, remained alone.
    In particular night in the Tsche-lager--
    What do you mean Tsche-lager?
    The Czech people-- there were a group of Czech people,
    working Czech people.
    Czech?
    They were-- Czech.
    They were working.
    Jewish?
    Jewish, Jewish-- Czech Jews.
    And they were singing and playing the guitar every night,
    about two months they were.
    Then we needed the lager.
    And our lager had to be given to newcomers.
    The French, the Belgian Jews came in.
    And the Holland Jews came in.
    And always that's what they did.
    So they made place for us.
    So we were selected.
    We were taken to that Tsche-lager
    because the children were killed for next morning.
    They were taken away.
    And the lager was empty.
    So we went to that lager.
    We stayed there for two and a half months.
    And there was a selection again.
    And second day Rosh Hashanah, I don't want to talk about it.
    Just the-- just what you are interested how
    it was a selection.
    Those German couldn't make a selection
    for a group of people.
    They needed 300 girls to take us somewhere.
    They couldn't count us because they start counting from here.
    Those people run away in the back and so on always.
    So somebody told us, no matter what, you can't run away.
    Let them count the 300 girls.
    So they did.
    And that particular Rosh Hashanah, we left Auschwitz.
    In June, they gave us the number.
    And we were condemned to leave.
    They don't tell you anything.
    You don't have to be prepared.
    They just gave a piece of bread at the gate, the daily,
    that little nothing.
    And the wagon was there already.
    And they took us.
    We left Auschwitz.
    This is in September of 1944?
    For second day Rosh Hashanah.
    And we went in Gorlitz.
    It was a beautiful city.
    We never saw the real city.
    So we traveled.
    And we saw Jewish cemetery in that particular city why--
    You were in a train?
    Train.
    And that was different already because we could sit.
    The door was open.
    It was closed with wire.
    It's a wire there some kind.
    But we could see outside.
    And the same day we arrived, we were selected already
    to go to work.
    36 of us that day was chosen.
    They chose girls to work for the Lagerführer in the kitchen.
    Mostly, they chose blonde they needed to work for them.
    Repeat that.
    Blonde girls.
    Why?
    That was their mania, the blonde.
    So they chose the--
    I don't know how many very nice girls
    working the kitchen for the SS.
    And some of them were chosen to work in the factories.
    And 36 of us, including me, we got overalls.
    And they gave us a nice trim on the hair.
    And we were marching.
    And every morning, I was working in a Koche.
    The train came in.
    The train came in the factory.
    I was reading about, it's Goring something.
    We made-- they burned the iron, the raw iron
    and the other thing and made grenades and bombs.
    But I did first, I painted the outside
    of the-- and inside of the grenade,
    it has a switch for the bombs.
    It was long like this and heavy.
    And that's what we did, four of us,
    and four Hungarian Jewish girls and one Polish, who was
    an artist, a painter, artist--
    Max.
    He was painting the Lagerführer with his family.
    And the foreman in that big factory
    was sitting for him to make a portrait.
    But he says, he was not satisfied
    because I couldn't make his nose smaller.
    He had a big nose.
    He was a comic also.
    And he was also doing that same work I did.
    That was a machine after.
    And I don't know.
    Then they put me in to work in the control
    with to German girls to push--
    put a stamp on that, a K, a number
    K. Those two girls never spoke to us.
    But same place, we had French and Italian boys working.
    And the next factory also, all Italian and French boys,
    it was.
    Did they speak to you?
    Yes.
    Prisoners-- they were prisoners.
    And I had a chance to steal potatoes.
    My oldest sister was weak.
    All 36 of us had a chance to boil potatoes.
    We had that underground storage, which was covered only
    with dirt and straw.
    We went outside.
    We had the bathroom.
    And I could reach for there-- in Gorlitz,
    this is in Gorlitz already--
    potatoes.
    And I made a place for myself in that cover.
    Where were the potatoes?
    I told you, for the SS.
    And they stored that inside in our lager.
    And that was different already.
    We had a washroom.
    We had an ambulance.
    Nobody wanted to go in the ambulance to sit.
    If I had something, I wouldn't report I am sick.
    And every day, we were up at 4 o'clock,
    stand Zahlappell, have that lunch or coffee,
    and up marching in the factory.
    And I made place in my lining, between my lining
    in my coat for that thing.
    And I could boil a couple of potatoes
    because the boy there, in the Koche,
    just took out a piece of iron, raw iron.
    It was hot.
    It was all fire, put it in that pail, I throw the potatoes.
    And he cooked it for me.
    And it was in my inner lining in my coat.
    So anyhow, that all of us, we did.
    See, we were not soldiers.
    We shouldn't do it.
    I think the SS could shoot us, all of us.
    He didn't.
    Because while he was standing in that reflector,
    the lagers were so lighted up, you could pick up a needle
    from far--
    in Auschwitz too, all corners, the reflectors
    were scary, very scary.
    And here too.
    And he saw us.
    It was a shadow between the latrines,
    the WC, and the potatoes what we steal.
    And one day, it was a control.
    I make it short--
    a control.
    And I was working at night.
    They find the potatoes in my bed.
    The girls came in in the morning.
    There was a report what's going on.
    And they find mine because I--
    somebody had to be the victim, somebody.
    The Blockalteste we had, it was a girl, a crazy girl
    from Pozsony, from Bratislava.
    She wanted very much to prove for the SS she is honest.
    She wanted to keep her job.
    So they find mine.
    If she would be good, she wouldn't let that happen.
    It's-- we don't have.
    But the SS outside had to report because one day,
    the thing would be open, empty.
    Sooner or later, they had to be discovered.
    And all of us, not only me and those 36,
    we ate potatoes even raw, lot of people
    would eat if we would have.
    So they find it.
    And they came in and told me what happened.
    And I was standing.
    I was put to wash the washroom of the SS
    with the strong soda caustic.
    And they put me outside.
    I couldn't sleep with my sisters in the barrack.
    They locked me outside in cold November
    without my coat and my no food, nothing.
    But somebody brought my coat, my sister.
    And they brought me my food, my portion.
    The SS woman asked me who gave my coat.
    I says, I didn't see who was.
    Somebody pushed it in.
    But I didn't see her face.
    And who gave me food?
    I didn't see.
    So they decided to give 25 on me.
    25--
    Lashes?
    --lashes.
    And with condition, if I tell who
    were the orders, who stole the potatoes, I was thinking,
    what shall I do?
    If I die-- maybe they will kill me.
    Why shall they kill 36 of us?
    And I didn't tell.
    A Sunday morning in November, the last days of November,
    the bell was ringing.
    And there was a Zahlappell.
    Those 700 men, 300 women were stand up.
    And I was sit, seated on a stool or chair.
    And a man in behind me, a Polish Jew--
    I didn't know he had a revolver.
    He has-- I didn't care anymore.
    And gave me the question.
    The SS told him to tell me who were the others.
    I says, as you find mine, I was hungry.
    But I don't know who were the others.
    They start shaving my head off.
    And the first, I could prove it with two friends
    I have here, Regina Adler and Hanni Smal.
    They were with me.
    Everybody was crying.
    I kissed my hair.
    The second time, I was bald.
    And the-- I wind up--
    just cutting my hair, I was happy.
    But those girls who were working for the SS Lagerführer and--
    they ask him not to punish me that hard.
    So they cut my hair again bald.
    That night, I got a letter from somebody who says,
    I like you bald better than with your hair.
    And I got from him a green turban.
    And I should wear it.
    It was cold.
    I was a tall girl and marching up early,
    it was snowing and freezing.
    And I wear that, even in the factory.
    And I was-- there was a Gestapo who was
    working who was with us always.
    He was wearing just a coat, and overall, and his outfit.
    And he says to me, he says to my Aufseherin,
    the German girl who are marching with us in the factory, says,
    he should tell me, I shouldn't--
    I am not allowed to wear that thing, that turban, that shawl.
    And then he start with me.
    He says to me, the Lageralteste told me--
    no, no, the Aufseherin, the SS woman, she says,
    he says, you were punished.
    And you are not allowed to wear anything on your head.
    He says-- she says to me, Agnes, she says to me,
    if I'm marching with you and he's not there, I allow it,
    you should have the turban.
    This was a German girl?
    German.
    And that's what I did with my hair for four weeks.
    I had curls all over.
    And that's what happened.
    I escaped.
    And that was-- we were in Gorlitz.
    It was very hot already.
    In December, they start already.
    The Allies were winning the war and coming closer.
    And it was in February already.
    The air raids were very often.
    One night, I remember, we were left alone.
    We escaping.
    You telling me about how we should escape.
    We couldn't.
    We were surrounded.
    The Americans came.
    And we were left in that thing, in the factory, big factory.
    So they run away.
    And the earlier-- the girls went out.
    They find a place where to stay.
    And they hollered for us.
    And we went there.
    And one hole fell in, so we wanted to-- we
    didn't want to stay inside.
    With no escort, we went and reached a civilian bunker
    full of Germans.
    What shall we do?
    Our coats had a patch in behind.
    And here, we were always--
    we had our number.
    The man had a stripe on his--
    their hair.
    So we were-- we looked like haflingers.
    We looked like prisoners.
    There were a lot of prisoners.
    And so when we came in, we saw so much Germans.
    We were happy to see them hiding.
    They were afraid.
    So we come out.
    And did you go into the bunker with them?
    Yes, we did.
    And what did they say?
    Nothing.
    One old woman comes to me and starts
    speaking to me in German.
    She says too, she is alone.
    And she wants to come out.
    And it's dark outside.
    They didn't have light--
    and if I am willing to take her.
    I didn't answer her.
    She was holding my hands.
    When I stepped out from that place,
    I gave her a push with my elbow like this, Fraulein, bitte,
    Fraulein.
    I left her there.
    You are going to be tough when you think, maybe,
    she has a son, an SS or who knows,
    some relatives killing my people.
    I am going to escort her?
    She fell on the floor.
    And we were there February.
    It was like this-- running and making, working,
    beautiful work.
    They said, never in that history in that factory's history,
    women's work on that machines we were working.
    We did a beautiful job.
    They put the plan, the drawing.
    And we were cutting the screws and everything
    like they told us to.
    But we were sabotaging, all of us-- the French, the Italian.
    And the engineer complained that is-- everybody is working.
    The machine is running.
    But the material, the ready work is not coming in.
    It's supposed to.
    That's fine.
    My sister was working, was very weak.
    And I said, go and wait here.
    And I stop.
    And I took my--
    what she made, I had to do something with it
    to put in my machine.
    And I gave her ready work.
    When I took mine in the control, coming back,
    I brought her a couple, maybe 20-25 pieces
    what was controlled already.
    So that's why.
    And a lot of people did that, French,
    they gave me a look like this when he broke that--
    how it's call, a drill?
    Drill.
    Expensive drills, I broke three.
    And one comes to me.
    He says to me, don't do it.
    I fix this one to you.
    I says, Robert, I am in trouble.
    He says, Freda, I cut it down.
    Don't report it to your foreman because you broke two already.
    That cost 60 French one.
    And one girl--
    What do you mean it cost 60 French one?
    60 marks.
    60 marks.
    Marks.
    I had so many money already.
    How did-- where were you when the war ended?
    In Gorlitz.
    So they took us away from Gorlitz.
    This is very interesting.
    I'm going to close very soon.
    I want to mention this.
    In February, the frontier was very close already.
    And they marched us up.
    It was very urgent, we should march up.
    We were walking for 26 kilometer.
    How many miles is that?
    I don't know, very far.
    And they marched up by foot, raining.
    It was snowing and raining, and no food, and no nothing,
    no warm clothes, the water run in in our shoes and came out.
    And we arrived in a place.
    It's a mystery, still a mystery to me
    why did they took us there, 1,000 of us.
    It was in a field, open field.
    There was a horse barn, a horse barn.
    And the first time during 14 months, we had sort.
    We find in that place where the horses were hiding,
    those were race horses, or SS horses, who knows?
    And they put us in that place.
    We were there for two weeks.
    It's a mystery behind that.
    We didn't see anything, any people or human beings.
    Where did you get food?
    Food.
    What food?
    Food was easy to get.
    But we didn't have nothing--
    nothing, almost nothing.
    But we had the kitchen with us.
    They gave an excuse.
    They didn't have-- the supply didn't come in.
    So that day, we didn't eat.
    And it-- we were happy.
    We were under a cover.
    And we were laying on this manure of the cows.
    All of us put a little straw.
    We had one blanket.
    And the patrol was rolling up and down in front of the barn.
    And nobody could come in or go out.
    We were locked in like a bunch of sheeps, or pigs,
    or anything.
    I don't know what.
    And how did you--
    what happened when the war ended?
    So we went back.
    Nobody knows why we went there marching.
    War ended in 9 of May.
    In that month-- in April already--
    April, they went to pick up food for us.
    And they couldn't.
    The British were very close.
    And everything was very hectic.
    When we walked to the factories, those factories, all of us--
    French, Jews, different, it was--
    I would be happy to work, I says,
    when I go home, in a beautiful place like this
    and doing intelligent work.
    But we didn't have one--
    nothing-- paid nothing, anything, not even--
    they could afford to give you--
    give us food.
    In April and May--
    and when we went already in last weeks of April to work,
    we didn't walk already in the middle of the street
    like we used to.
    We went with a side street, like not on the side,
    always on the side of the street and a different direction.
    We could hear the boom, boom every day.
    And one day, a Friday, for end of the weekend, we start--
    we didn't know what's going on.
    A French boy goes past by us.
    Because we picked up that he was working here,
    for he was working 100--
    pick the orders.
    On your way back into the-- from the barrack?
    Yes.
    And we were standing in very much order they asked us to do.
    And we used to do.
    And French boy passing by.
    And he says, [GERMAN].
    That's it.
    I thought, I didn't hear well.
    I tell my sisters we were in-- and we had another girl.
    And everybody is looking so happy.
    We didn't believe it.
    He marched in, very interesting.
    This is very interesting.
    We marched in in the lager.
    And already, we have-- we go in the blocks.
    We go in different direction.
    And they telling us, after a few minutes, we should come out.
    Tomorrow morning, we go again to work.
    But we don't stay too long.
    We don't stay too long.
    At 10 o'clock, somebody comes in and tells us,
    we should go out because the Lagerführer and the Oberleiter,
    and the whole, they want to talk to us.
    All of a sudden, somebody talks to us.
    When they never say hello to us, we have to stay--
    stand out three--
    how it call it?
    Three yards.
    Three yards and stay in Achtung.
    And [NON-ENGLISH] that thing.
    And all of a sudden, so we go out.
    The Lagerführer stand up in Zahlappell.
    The Lagerführer tells us--
    first, Janko-- we had a new Blockalteste there--
    tells us what the Lagerführer has in mind.
    We should get ready.
    The front is very near.
    And they want us to go with them.
    So we had a doctor, Klari, a doctor, a Hungarian doctor,
    Dr. Klari.
    Who was among your group, who was a Jew?
    Yes, Jewish girl and a Polish man, a doctor.
    And he was a very funny man.
    He was working in the same factory with me.
    He was a very interesting man.
    And he says, when we come go out, and they gave us the word,
    the frontier is very near here.
    And the British, and the Russian,
    and the Allies, they very near.
    And if they will occupy Gorlitz, then it's very frightening,
    especially for women, because they
    don't care somebody's 60 year old
    or I don't know how many year old.
    So if we don't go with them also,
    they will take all the food what we have here in the--
    they didn't have.
    Even they didn't have what to eat already.
    And they take all the food with them.
    And we going to be left with anything.
    So when we go back, and we go back, and the doctor comes in,
    and the two doctors, he says, look,
    I'm going to tell you, you move on and pack and go.
    But you pack.
    Because they have to go away.
    It's very urgent.
    But you pack.
    You have to-- you make yourself busy packing.
    Do something.
    In other words, don't really go with them,
    but pretend that you're getting ready to do it.
    Yes.
    You getting ready.
    Always, they came in and hollered, we should go,
    we should go.
    And we were not ready.
    Finally, one came in and says, look, if you are not going--
    they could force us, the doctor, the Polish, he said--
    a couple, we must.
    I am going with you.
    And the last village--
    I don't understand that.
    Don't wait for them, they could come in.
    They should shot-- they could shot us.
    They could get revenge.
    You mean the Germans?
    Germans.
    And just somebody has to go, already that many is ready.
    So everybody who was one person--
    not sister, just only her, 14 of them left, 14 girls.
    And I don't know how many--
    we were separate from the men--
    how many from the men.
    And 14, they left.
    There was--
    14 went with the Germans?
    Yes.
    They went.
    They did go until the nearest city, 12 miles.
    And the term was so big, Erna, who was--
    she was a witch, that Erna was a monster.
    I want to make short.
    I don't want to talk too much any more, finish it up.
    And you should see the girl.
    So the girls went in hiding.
    Erna, the soldier woman, went in to get down,
    to change from the uniform.
    And until she went away, they all 14,
    they went someplace and hide in--
    on an attic or someplace.
    And they waited until they left.
    They went in someplace, the SS too.
    And they run.
    They came back to us.
    They had to come back in the lager
    because it was very dangerous.
    Even if the Russian occupies the place, I almost--
    I was caught, for an example.
    You don't have any identification
    to prove who you are.
    Then they could take you, the Russian too.
    So I showed this one.
    So we went back.
    They went away.
    And we went out with another girl, we and my sister,
    to look for some food.
    We find two Hungarian-- two German women
    coming and bringing potatoes in a net-like something.
    And she says to me, that order, you
    know what we're going to do?
    We ask her and ask for the potatoes.
    She's not giving it to us, we going to take it anyhow.
    That's what we did.
    We didn't take.
    When they heard us talking Hungarian,
    she says, she is from Miskolc or somewhere in Hungary
    and they speak the language.
    And they invited us to their house.
    And we went.
    It was a [NON-ENGLISH]--
    how it's called, a air raid, a big one.
    He says, we should come in and stay.
    And the first time for 15 months, we saw a table.
    We saw ourselves in a mirror, like somebody-- you could--
    you people really could go crazy in misery.
    Imagine that, sitting again on a chair,
    sitting by a decent table, and having a teaspoon,
    not just when we were working in Gorlitz already,
    we had a spoon.
    And we had a red plate, red enamel, look like a washtub.
    But we went.
    I says to her, look, Manzie, it's a mirror.
    Then we saw how we look, really look.
    And they made coffee for us.
    They could kill us.
    But they knew you were prisoners?
    They knew you were Jews?
    Sure, they know.
    They didn't want to know.
    You imagine, we are walking there, coming and going.
    Sometimes, we see, they were not allowed
    to look through the windows.
    And somebody pulled the curtain.
    And the last time, last--
    in April, I think, we find apples on the floor.
    But we were not allowed to reach for it.
    No.
    And then who came in, who-- what soldiers, English?
    And then the SS ran away.
    And that night, until 4 o'clock, all day,
    they were bombarded the city.
    It was a very, very big city, a bigger city,
    all make ammunition, all kind.
    And at 4 o'clock, they put out the flag, the white sheets
    and all that.
    And that say-- the Russian, they say,
    maybe they were-- so they stop bombing.
    Until 4 o'clock, still, they were bombing.
    So we decided, all of us.
    And when the SS went away--
    no light in the barracks should be seen from outside
    because the running Germans could come in and harm us.
    So we couldn't even go out.
    Some-- we sneaked out and found on the dump parsley
    and baked it on the stove.
    We were very hungry.
    Even that, the lager kapo, Jewish boys, Jewish boys
    were from the other lager kapo--
    kapos were from ours too who were taking us to work
    and over watching us about our behaviors.
    They were lager kapo from girls and also for the men, 700 men.
    And that night, we decided, Jacobs, a Polish Jew came in.
    And he says too, we are free.
    Don't show any like you are happy--
    Emotion?
    --emotion.
    You make yourself you don't know anything at all.
    We are free.
    And then he says, nobody goes outside, very quiet.
    Light, god forbid, maybe those Germans were running,
    running away.
    Fleeing.
    Yes, fleeing.
    One group maybe could stop in here.
    If there is no light, they won't know there is a lager here.
    Or maybe there is no one here.
    So we watching you.
    So there were those boys, Rensburg and Jacobs.
    And they were just the lager kapo,
    the kapo I told you about I met in France.
    They had arms already.
    And they were watching us.
    They told us, we should go down.
    There was not far from there, it was a bunker.
    So we spent the night there.
    And one girl went out at 1 o'clock at night.
    And she comes back.
    She says, I hear motoryzacja.
    She was a Polish girl.
    The motoryzacja is here, the army--
    by motoryzacja.
    I don't know.
    I understand for myself.
    The trucks and--
    And all that.
    They coming-- and the tanks.
    And we were there until 5 o'clock in the morning.
    5 o'clock, some of them they came and test the road
    not to have a grenade or some mines.
    Mines.
    So we went out from the bunker in the lager.
    And the Russian was over already there, the Russian.
    When the Russian-- he was a colonel, a Jewish boy.
    It's done?
    OK.
    No, continue.
    The Jewish boy was a high-m ranking officer
    with the Russian Army, says, Shema Israel,
    there are Jews in Europe yet.
    I think that's--
    That's it?
    So this is the freedom.
    Well, this is the freedom.
    Good.
    I want to--
    I made it short.
    I told you, I could.
    I have nine tapes, very interesting, nine tapes I have.
    I want to thank Mrs. Freda Schmelzer for her courage
    and commitment in telling so much
    of her story about her experiences
    during the Holocaust.
    This is Stan Garfinkel speaking for the Holocaust Archive
    Project sponsored by the Cleveland
    chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Freda Schmelzer
    Interviewer
    Stan Garfinkel
    Date
    interview:  1984 July 11
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Schmelzer, Freda.

    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 08:11:14
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504988

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    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 Ursula Rosow

    Oral history interview with Ursula Rosow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral history interview with Leo Rzepka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral history interview with Eva Sands

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral history interview with George Sapin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral history interview with Werner Sauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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