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Oral history interview with Max Solomon

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.48 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0048

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    Oral history interview with Max Solomon
    Transcript
    I'm Donna Karon Yanowitz, and I'm speaking today
    with Max Solomon.
    First I want to thank you, Max, for participating
    in this very important project.
    And I wonder if you might first tell us a little bit something
    about your life today--
    your age, where you're living, a little bit about your family,
    and the kind of work you do.
    My age-- I'm 60.
    I'm going to be 61 pretty soon.
    I have got a nice family.
    The work that I am doing is, I have been a building contractor
    for quite a while, first a carpenter contractor and then
    a building contractor in building homes.
    And I live in Beechwood, with the family.
    We still have our family together.
    Do you have any children, Max?
    I have one son.
    Is he living at home, or is he married?
    No, he's not married, he's living at home,
    and he also works with me.
    He's a builder, also.
    Well, kind of.
    [LAUGHS]
    And how about your wife?
    My wife is just a housewife, taking care of the home,
    taking care of everything else.
    OK.
    Let's go back now and talk about when you were living in Europe.
    What was your town like?
    Let's go back to, say, 1939.
    What was the town like-- the people?
    Was it a big town-- a small town?
    Give us the name and the country and anything
    that you might remember about your early childhood
    and growing up there.
    Well, you can hardly call it a "town."
    It was a small village, kind of.
    As close as I can recall, in 1939 that was about the time
    when the Hungarians took it over from Czechoslovakia.
    Because after World War II, it was Czechoslovakia.
    That's where I was born and raised
    and go to school and so on.
    And just about in that time is when
    the Hungarians came in and took it over from Czechoslovakia.
    So actually, it was Czechoslovakia before
    and Hungary in that time.
    In 1939, it was already not so hot in the town,
    especially for Jews, because there was already
    too many stories coming out of Hitler and Germany and so on.
    What was the name of the town?
    And it was in Czechoslovakia--
    It was, the name, Drahovo--
    D-R-A-H-O-V-O-- Drahovo, Czechoslovakia.
    And I think you said it was before World War II--
    I think you meant before World War I--
    it was taken over.
    No, before World War II.
    By the--
    By the Hungarians.
    By the Hungarians.
    Right.
    It was when the Germans started operating already.
    That's when Hungary took it over from Czechoslovakia.
    All right.
    And did you have any brothers and sisters?
    Yes.
    I had three brothers and six sisters.
    We were 10 children, altogether.
    What was a typical day like?
    Well, what was a typical day like?
    Most of us-- and I would say, like,
    maybe 85% or 90% of the townspeople--
    were kind of living from day to day, eating, most of the time,
    that they grew in the backyard-- in a back garden,
    something like that.
    And everybody adjusted their lives accordingly.
    In other words, there were some tailors.
    There were some shoemakers, some cabinetmakers, and so on.
    There were a lot of tradespeople.
    There were also quite a few religious people,
    you know, like rabbis and melamdim and so on--
    educators.
    What is the melamdim?
    Melamed is we used to call it, is kind of a Hebrew teacher.
    Right.
    OK.
    Mhm.
    Did you go to Hebrew school?
    It was called a cheder.
    Cheder.
    It was not a Hebrew school.
    There was no graduating or something like that.
    But it was a cheder where all the classes were combined
    into one, except that the younger children were
    in one section of the room and the older children
    and the other section of the room,
    because we were taught something different
    and they were taught something different.
    Was that the only school you went to?
    Did you go to a general school?
    No.
    No.
    We also had a school, a public school, a Czech school,
    at home, with Czechoslovakian.
    We went to that school also.
    Used to get up early in the morning
    and go to that Hebrew school.
    And then we'll go to the public school till about 2:00 or 2:30
    in the afternoon.
    And then we'll go back to the Hebrew school
    till 6:00, 7:00 in the evening.
    Did all your brothers and sisters do this?
    Yes.
    Everybody did that.
    Yes, everybody did that.
    That is, when there was nothing else to do.
    If there will be some chores to do, we'll do the chores--
    you know, work around the house, in the garden, in the field,
    and so on--
    which there was quite a bit of to doing.
    You mentioned you had nine brothers and sisters.
    Yeah, nine brothers and sisters.
    They all lived at home?
    Yes.
    They all lived at home, in 1939.
    We were all together at that time-- and my father
    and mother.
    OK.
    Were you the oldest, or--
    I was the oldest of the boys.
    You had older sisters?
    I was the oldest of the boys, but there were still--
    let me see-- three older than I am which were girls.
    They all lived at home.
    Yes.
    OK.
    What did your father do?
    My father-- from the beginning, as I can remember,
    we had a restaurant-- kind of.
    It wasn't even a restaurant--
    well, here it would be a combined saloon
    and a restaurant--
    which used to sell liquor.
    We also used to cook for people and--
    But most of his work was outside.
    We held some fields, and we had a team of horses,
    so he'll be working out there with them.
    When I grew up a little bit, I used to help him, go with him,
    go to the forest, and there was a big sawmill--
    and that kind of work, around the lumber and woods and so on.
    When you started to work--
    tell me about your day.
    I started to work at a very, very early age.
    And when I say "a very early age," maybe at seven or eight
    years old.
    Because I was the oldest boy, and in the old country
    there was no such thing like somebody
    would not carry his own.
    So I started working at a very early age.
    At the time when I was maybe 10, 11 years old,
    I remember that I took from the work--
    as far as working as concerned-- took most of my father's burden
    off.
    Oh, I used to plow--
    go out in the field and plow, go out in the forest
    and cut timbers and cut wood and bring them home--
    sell them, and so on.
    We planted a little orchard, which--
    I did, with my younger brother, all the work,
    and everything that came up.
    That was my work at that time already.
    When did you finish school and start to work full-time?
    When-- at eighth grade.
    That was my complete finish school--
    my complete school finish.
    And then what was your day like?
    You would get up and--
    My day like was-- in that time, I was not
    working anymore at home.
    I mentioned before, we had a sawmill.
    And there just wasn't enough to do at home for all of us.
    And besides that, there wasn't just enough to live on
    for all of us.
    So as long as I was the oldest boy,
    I went to work in that sawmill.
    It was approximately 8 kilometer,
    which is maybe 5 and 1/2 or 6 miles, from home.
    So I'll walk in the morning and put in a day's work
    and come home in the evening.
    And, I believe, on Friday I'll bring home a paycheck.
    I was working that summer for a couple of years, probably.
    How old were you, then, about 16?
    It was in '39.
    I was 16 years old.
    How about religion?
    How religious was your family?
    I wouldn't say strictly ultraorthodox,
    even though my father had a beard
    and I don't think that a day passed by he
    would not go to shul to daven in the morning and in the evening.
    And of course it was strictly kosher.
    And all the children knew the same thing.
    There was no such thing by us like working
    on a Saturday or anything else.
    But the real-real religious people that walked around with
    the kaftans and the tzitzit outside, we were not--
    moderately religious family.
    Did you belong to a synagogue?
    Oh, yes.
    No question about it.
    Do you remember anything about the holidays--
    how you celebrated them?
    Yes.
    We had fun.
    You want to tell me something about that?
    Well, I'll tell you-- first, there was always--
    every holiday was a celebration, for a simple reason--
    because every Jew, in that time, knew that,
    for Shabbos or for holidays, no matter
    what happened the whole week, that had to be a good meal.
    And normally my mom will bake something for the holiday.
    Like I said, we have to save it out
    from the whole week or the whole month.
    But we knew that, there comes a holiday,
    it had to be something good.
    So automatically the children were waiting for that holiday.
    Then there'll come a holiday like Pesach or Rosh ha-Shanah.
    Normally, children used to get some new clothes--
    partially, all of it-- whatever-- whatever
    my parents could afford.
    It wasn't much they could, but--
    so that was the second joy.
    Also for the holiday was very joyous because we
    didn't work on holidays.
    It was the day that the children--
    If it's summer, we knew that we can go out and play.
    Because it's going to be a holiday,
    we don't have to go in the field to work or anything else.
    And if it was wintertime, we knew we could go out--
    a little skiing or a little ice skating or so on--
    on the river, of course.
    There was no ice-skating rinks.
    So that's why the holidays, I think, were joyous at home--
    very much.
    Tell me something about the Sabbath-- about Shabbat.
    The people started working early in the morning.
    They'll start walking to shul.
    There was no cars or anything else or any transportation.
    Even if it would have been, nobody would ever
    drive or ride to shul.
    So the people from down the street will start working,
    and as they walk along everyone will keep on joining in.
    In other words, they'll start out probably
    with two guys, two people, two neighbors, and maybe a quarter
    of a mile further up the street there'll be 15,
    and then there'll be 20 and 25, and everybody
    keeps joining in to go to shul.
    The shul was, I would say, right in the middle of the village.
    So at the time we'll get to the shul, the people
    as we used to call it, from up the street and the people
    from down the street, there'll be
    maybe 50 from each side, maybe 75, maybe 20
    from one side less.
    So, like, everybody will come in the same time,
    and they'll walk in the shul.
    Naturally there is-- everybody has his own seats, everybody,
    because that was his father's and his grandfather's
    and great-grandfather.
    And they'll stay there, and the better ones, the luckier ones,
    will have--
    they used to call them Hasid on the Eastern Wall, [LAUGHS]
    you know.
    And everything was done by the rabbi,
    whether it was conducted-- even though there was somebody else
    will be a Balkora--
    yes-- Balkora-- the first one.
    But everything is done by the rabbi.
    The rabbi is an old man Illui Schwartz.
    Hit sit with his great white beard,
    and he'll just keep on telling what to do.
    And he does mostly all the work.
    Did you just mention his name?
    Yeah.
    What was his name--
    Schwartz.
    Schwartz.
    Rabbi Schwartz.
    Yehuda Schwartz.
    A matter of fact, he was also--
    during the week, he'll be a part-time teacher,
    a part-time Hebrew teacher--
    that is, if there are some potentials for some people
    to be into the higher ultraorthodox religion.
    They will come to the rabbi.
    And he kind of make, like, a little yeshiva
    in his own house, and he'll teach them.
    You mentioned the better ones, regarding seats in the shul.
    How would you describe your family?
    Would you describe them as comfortable
    or poor or well-to-do?
    By today's standards, very poor.
    By then standards, I would say, middle--
    the middle class.
    OK.
    How about, was your food different on Shabbat?
    Yes, quite a bit of different Shabbat,
    generally, because for Shabbat my mother will bake challahs.
    And even though very, very seldom
    that we'll have ever meat during the week--
    there is never meat during the week.
    But, for Shabbat, there is meat and
    any other Jewish traditional foods like a kugel and so on.
    Yes, the food is always different on Shabbat
    than during the week.
    You had plenty of meat on Shabbat?
    No way.
    [LAUGHS] No way, plenty of meat.
    But there'll be some substitutes.
    If I remember the normal--
    this was, like, 1 kilogram, which was a little bit
    maybe better than 2 pounds.
    And that will be the meat.
    So what will happen--
    my mom [LAUGHS] always make a large pot
    of soup, with noodles, and a kugel and so on.
    There is substitute for the holiday.
    How about Zionism?
    Were there any political organizations in your town?
    Or did you have any part in them?
    Yes, there was, but a very weak one, a very, very weak
    political organization.
    In that time, I remember, in the middle to the late '30s,
    there was an organization in our town that was called Betar.
    That was a group I did not belong to,
    because I was too young.
    There were some older boys, some older people,
    that belonged to it.
    A matter of fact, they did leave, some of them,
    leave at very early age.
    And they were quite a while throughout the country
    by the time they did get to Israel in the '40s.
    How about general organizations like a socialist group
    or other political groups in the town?
    No, not that I can recall.
    There wasn't any groups.
    There were non-Jews in your town.
    Oh, yes.
    What was the proportion, do you think, of Jews to non-Jews?
    The proportion there was about 200 Jewish families
    and about 5,000 gentile families around the town.
    What language did you speak in your house?
    At home?
    Yiddish.
    Mhm.
    Strictly Yiddish.
    And no other languages?
    No other languages.
    Did you speak other languages also, though?
    Well, I spoke Ukrainian, because that
    was the general population.
    And I spoke Czech, because that was the school that I went to.
    In the later years, I spoke a little bit Hungarian.
    OK.
    And cultural activities in your town.
    Was there a theatre, would you say?
    Did you have books, magazines?
    Magazines, no.
    I don't think there were any books either.
    I can't remember any books, even though we used to get books
    when we went to school--
    which were mostly children books, at the time,
    yet, to learn.
    Any other kinds of entertainment, like sports?
    No, there was no library, and there was just
    no way we could get books.
    And I don't think that, of course,
    we didn't even have the money for it.
    Maybe some people did have it.
    I don't remember ever.
    Was there such a thing as a vacation that you took?
    No, there was no such thing there.
    I never even heard that word "vacation."
    OK.
    There was no such thing that we heard anything
    about a vacation.
    How do you remember yourself in those days,
    when you think back on it?
    How do you think of yourself?
    How do I remember myself?
    In those days--
    What did you look like, even?
    Do you remember?
    Well, first of all, when you were young--
    and I was young--
    other things don't matter too much.
    I think that a person is happy especially
    if he doesn't know about anything else.
    Were you physically healthy?
    Physically, I was healthy.
    Our whole family was healthy physically.
    And I guess that we had a pretty decent happy life at the time.
    Did you think of yourself as a strong person,
    a sensitive person, or--
    Yes, I did.
    Now, how about your friends?
    Were all of your friends Jewish, or did you
    have non-Jewish friends?
    No, not quite.
    I had some Jewish friends, and I had some gentile friends--
    Ukrainian-boys friends-- some of them that you went to school
    together, some of them-- most of them--
    that we were working together.
    And also, we used to go a lot in the summertime.
    We had some horses and some cows.
    So we'll go out in the field, like, grazing and so on.
    So I'll meet those friends down there, and they are friends.
    You got along with them all right--
    Oh, yes.
    What plans did you have for your future?
    Did you think about that when you were a teenager?
    Then it's very hard to point your finger
    on just one thing at that time.
    Anybody's future, as far as I can recall,
    was to have enough to eat for that day--
    not to worry about that.
    Try to get a pair of shoes or a pair of boots on.
    Any other desires, big desires, we
    didn't have, because we didn't know about them.
    I don't even think that such thing exists
    like a lot of people had or a lot of people
    have in these days-- or maybe, even
    in that time, someplace else.
    There was no electricity in town.
    There was no radio nor television
    nor newspaper in town.
    It was very little contact that you could
    get from the outside world.
    I remember my father used to get a Jewish paper from Warsaw,
    and that used to be about three to four weeks old
    when it got to us.
    And if I remember correctly, that
    was about the only connection we had to the outside world,
    and that was in Yiddish, that paper.
    So, if you don't just what to plan for,
    I don't think that we had too much-- like everybody else knew
    that you have to grow up, and you have to get married,
    and if there is any room in the backyard
    my father will either put in another addition to the house
    or build a little, separate, little house,
    and the children just keep on living around there.
    What do you remember about antisemitism in those days?
    Do you remember there being anything like that?
    Oh, no question about that, that wherever
    you turned, wherever you went, you heard the word "Jew"--
    Zhyd.
    Even though, sometimes, there are families-- like our family
    was.
    My father was considered, like they used to say,
    one of the better Jews--
    not because he was better than anybody else.
    He was just probably a little bit stronger
    than somebody else.
    In that time, a strong hand meant everything.
    In other words, the guy would not
    tell you something you right, because you're just
    going to hit him.
    But there will be some Jewish people
    that will be really scared to walk through a place,
    because they were Jews.
    They were not strong enough to defend themselves
    nor rich enough to buy themselves out,
    so they will watch out.
    They won't go there, and they just simply,
    like they say today, will not trespass anything,
    that it could hurt them.
    Yes, there was antisemitism, but they were also not too
    educated, at that time, yet.
    So it was kind of like on a level until later.
    What was your father's name?
    My father's name was Isaac--
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    And his last name?
    Slomovitz.
    That's it, yes.
    And your mother?
    Rose-- Raisel.
    Slomovitz.
    Her maiden name was Dawidowicz, and then she was Slomovitz.
    And you have nine--
    had nine-- brothers and sisters.
    Nine brothers and sisters.
    Are they still living?
    Three sisters, three of my sisters, thanks God,
    are living.
    Are they in Cleveland?
    Two of them are in Cleveland, and one is in California,
    in Oakland.
    And what happened to the rest of your brothers and sisters?
    My three brothers were killed on August 26, 1941,
    when they shot my--
    they shot them from a machine gun.
    And three sisters and my mother--
    let me see-- yeah, the three sisters and my mother
    went to Auschwitz.
    OK.
    Well, we'll talk more about that in a few minutes.
    I think we'll go now to as the war begins.
    What do you remember about the beginning of World War II?
    Like I mentioned before, there was no newspapers, no radios,
    no televisions, nor anything else, but, even
    though, everybody felt it in the air.
    Because Germany was already in the--
    took over part of the Sudeten, which
    was down in Czechoslovakia.
    How did you know that?
    Did you know that from the one newspaper that you had?
    No.
    We had a radio--
    there was a shoe store, right in our house,
    that we rented out to a company, in that time called Batja--
    B-A-T-J-A. And there happened to be a radio.
    And I remember like now that, when
    the Czech president, Benes, was speaking on the air, when
    the Germans attacked Sudetengebiet,
    which was the first their venture coming
    into Czechoslovakia.
    So he was on the air, and the whole town
    came around, surrounding, to hear what was happening.
    So we heard him speak, and then we heard speak--
    what's his name-- Hitler.
    Also, people were coming and going.
    You know, people were coming.
    There were people in the army.
    There were people going to Prague, Czechoslovakia,
    Bratislava, and all those places.
    You know, people wouldn't--
    The news will come.
    The news will travel.
    Maybe you don't hear it in the same time, the same day,
    but sooner or later it'll get to you.
    Besides, in that time already, anyplace
    you turned to any Gentile, all you could hear--
    "Hitler will come and get you."
    It was already without any question.
    Everybody knew about it.
    Even your friends-- people who had been your friends?
    Well, a real friend will not tell it to you.
    So he'll tell the other guy.
    He'll tell it on the next guy.
    But yes, you heard it already, quite a bit.
    Where was your town in relation to, say, Prague?
    Pardon me?
    Where was your town located, in relation
    to Prague, Czechoslovakia?
    Oh, very, very far away.
    Far away?
    I would say, 1,000 kilometer.
    That would be, like, 600 miles.
    We were strictly on the foot of the mountain of the Carpathian
    Mountains.
    Now, once the war started, how did your life change?
    Did it change in any way?
    Well, unfortunately, once the war started--
    when you're talking about the war-- when it started,
    that means that when Germany attacked Russia.
    Because there were some little wars, before.
    They started-- they went into Poland,
    to Czechoslovakia-- all those little
    surrounding small countries.
    We never did consider that as a war, because there was no war.
    Like, Czechoslovakia didn't fire a shot.
    France didn't shoot anything, almost.
    They just gave up.
    So when the real war started, in June,
    and that was when they started, when they attacked Russia--
    the Soviet Union-- that's when we considered it a real war.
    And we used to see already, over our town,
    over the place, dogfights--
    Russian planes, German planes, and so on.
    And that's when it really started.
    But after that, there wasn't--
    we weren't home for too long anymore.
    The war started in June--
    Of what year?
    --of 1941.
    And about a month later, they already
    started to take us away from home.
    The Jews.
    Yes.
    Was anybody in your family taken, at that time?
    My whole family was taken.
    A matter of fact, almost the whole town was taken--
    every family out of the town.
    There were maybe a half a dozen or less families left.
    And the ones that were left behind
    was some young people that were married,
    and their husbands were taken into a labor camp
    already before.
    So those families were not taken.
    They were supposed to wait for their husbands.
    But most everybody else was taken.
    Looking back, what happened to your family
    as the Nazis entered the country?
    Just exactly what happened to your family?
    While we were at home yet?
    Yeah.
    Well, when the Nazis entered the country,
    you said your family was dispersed--
    Well, the Nazis did not enter our country--
    I mean, our town.
    The Nazis did enter our country.
    And like I said before, in that time
    it was not Czechoslovakia anymore.
    It was Hungary.
    Hungary was cooperating with the Nazis.
    But kind of, like, you know, whatever
    they'll tell them, they'll do.
    And some of them will do a little bit more.
    Some of them will do a little bit less.
    Everybody knew that, sooner or later--
    which was unfortunately sooner--
    they will take us away from our homes.
    They were making, like, working for the war effort--
    mostly Jews.
    And they will take us already from home,
    to go and work for the government--
    without pay-- as they called it in that time, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And we'll just keep on working for them.
    Would you repeat that word?
    I didn't understand--
    There was a Hungarian, [HUNGARIAN]..
    [HUNGARIAN]
    Yes.
    That was working for the war effort.
    If we do not produce, or we do not work, they'll beat us.
    A matter of fact, I was a very young boy
    when they took me in into the garrison, the Hungarian police,
    with about, I would say, 75 to 100 other Jewish people.
    They were older, most of them.
    And they were beating us, there in the evening.
    Oh, just everybody stays in line,
    and he goes and gets his portion.
    They'll take our shoes off, and they
    keep hitting with those rubber this down on your feet.
    Again, we were still at home.
    It was not a ghetto, like, but you could not walk out of town
    anymore, because you had to have-- there was--
    everybody had to have--
    there was a yellow passport and a white passport.
    Now, the white passport was not the Jewish one.
    The Jewish, with a yellow one, could not
    walk out of town anymore.
    In other words, if you had to go from one town to another one,
    you already either had tried to do it at night
    or somehow just get to not to be seen.
    So it was kind of like locked in place already,
    even though there was no ghetto yet.
    And that was going on for quite a while,
    until approximately the time when they took us away
    from home.
    You mentioned that it was forced labor.
    Now, your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters?
    Or was it just you, in your family?
    Did this involve your whole family forced--
    Well, my father was not home anymore.
    In that time, my father was in a forced-labor camp already.
    Out of your town.
    Out of my town.
    And because I was the provider, and I was the man of the house,
    and I was everything, so that's the reason
    I was already forced into the forced labor
    to do at home for the government
    Where did your father go?
    Where did I go?
    No, where did your father go?
    Oh, my father was in a labor camp-- in a forced-labor camp--
    as close as I can--
    about 300 kilometers away from home.
    He never got home, then.
    Yes, he did get home.
    Oh, he did.
    That was in 1940, when my father did get home.
    He was not a young man anymore.
    So the older people, they did let back home.
    So he just came home enough to be taken away
    with the whole family.
    Your other brothers and sisters worked in forced labor also?
    No, they were young.
    They were very young kids.
    My other brothers--
    I was 16, and the next brother to me was, like, 12 years old.
    What was his name?
    Moishe.
    And your third brother?
    Simcha.
    And the fourth brother, Raphael--
    Raphuel.
    And they were too young to work.
    They did work but not in labor camp.
    They did work around home.
    They just stayed home--
    But I don't remember that they would
    have to do any forced-labor work, except for me,
    because I was already the older one.
    And how about your sisters?
    My sisters-- one of my sisters was married already.
    What was her name?
    Golda.
    And she lived apart from the family?
    She lived in the same town, apart from us.
    And her husband was a young man.
    And he was in a forced-labor camp,
    and that's the reason they did not touch her at the time.
    What was his name?
    His name was Pinchas.
    And his last name?
    Solomon-- real Solomon.
    OK.
    And then you have more sisters.
    Yes, I had, beside her, five more sisters.
    The one oldest, next to the married one,
    she was in Belgium at the time.
    What was her name?
    She left yet before the war--
    Ruth.
    Rivka.
    And the other sisters was Toba--
    Toby-- Chaya, Mariam, and Helen.
    And they were all at home--
    They were all at home, yes.
    --except for the one in Belgium.
    OK.
    What else do you remember about that time
    before people were taken?
    Did life change a lot in the town?
    Yes.
    Life changed quite a bit.
    And it isn't so easy to remember,
    so many, so many years back, but as I flash back,
    people were living kind of from day to day.
    I remember, I was working for a family, for a Jewish family,
    in our town.
    And they were a little bit on the better-off people.
    Because her husband had a grocery store.
    And he was always afraid that he was not too liked
    by the general gentile population,
    because, you know, in a grocery store people who
    come in a lot of times, and they'll
    want credit or so on and so on.
    So she said that they closed up the store.
    And they're trying to move someplace else, because they
    were afraid that they were going to raid them at night
    and beat them up or hurt them or kill them
    or something like that.
    Because it was already very tense,
    the situation, at the time.
    What were your thoughts and feelings, at that time?
    What did you think was going to happen?
    My thought, my feeling?
    All my life, I wasn't scared too much of anything, never.
    Not that I'm trying to be that I was a hero or anything.
    But somehow or the other, I figured there always
    could be a situation-- if anybody can get out of it,
    I would get out of it.
    I was never a negative thinker.
    I always was thinking positive, no matter what I did
    and where I went.
    And probably that did a lot of help for me.
    I also had a--
    God blessed me with very good health,
    especially at the time, and sort of being
    good mostly on everything, on hard work and so on and so on.
    So I figured, if there is a chance that anybody can ever
    survive by being a hard worker, obedient,
    or even if I have to fight, so I thought I have a chance.
    So I really--
    Those things went through my mind
    all my life, all that time.
    And it kind of would work out like that.
    Generally, you think the people in your town
    realized what was happening?
    The Jewish people?
    Yeah.
    Everybody realized what was happening,
    but nobody realized how far it could go.
    There was no such thing, that anybody ever,
    ever realized that it could come to a point
    that they would do to us what they did.
    In other words, they didn't plan to deal with the situation
    at all.
    No.
    No such thing.
    Is there anything else you can tell me about those times
    before you actually left?
    Well, what I can tell you about those times
    is, even if there would have been any Jewish people, maybe
    a year or two before that time, that were not
    so friendly with each other, or were kind of jealous
    at each other--
    maybe one guy had a couple of goats
    more than the next guy or something like that.
    But when the real problems came in, I think that, when I saw,
    the Jewish people started being more friendly to each other--
    there was more sharing with each other--
    and more, one will try to stand up for the other.
    In other words, if a guy will be in trouble--
    See, we also had, in that time--
    when the Germans started operating in Europe,
    there came out, a new organization.
    In all towns, not just in our town,
    not in all Czechoslovakia, but in all Carpathian district--
    "mountains," as they call it--
    the Ukrainian organized their own group.
    They called themself [UKRAINIAN]..
    Or like they call it in Germany, the "Hitlerjugend."
    Or they would call it, in any other country,
    the young organization is coming up,
    and they want to organize for their country.
    At their first get-together-- and that was as close as I can
    bring it in--
    to make themselves popular with something,
    was by starting hating the Jews.
    They started talking about getting rid of all the Jews
    in whatever way needed.
    I remember like now when they made their first--
    what do you call it-- "meeting"--
    in the middle of the town.
    Oh, there must have been a couple of people--
    gentiles.
    And they did it right in the square
    where it was exactly between all the Jewish houses--
    the general population.
    And that was the real first time when I heard them openly--
    "Jews out."
    In other words, to get rid of the Jews,
    with whatever means they have to.
    In that time, there were no Jews-- nobody--
    you know, 200 Jews will not be a match for 5,000 gentiles
    to start them out.
    But then not every gentile was like that.
    There were some people that just were not that bad.
    Some people did not even go to that demonstration.
    But the Jewish people will try to protect each other
    in that time.
    What year was that, do you know, when they organized?
    I would say in 1940, as close as I could come to the--
    it was anywhere between '39 and '40--
    they took away already every Jewish front store.
    In other words, there will be some stores, Jewish stores,
    until then.
    You either give it up completely, or, if not,
    they'll put you in a boss, a Gentile,
    and you'll work for him, even though he
    hasn't got any idea how to run a butcher shop or a tailor shop
    or a grocery store or something.
    But you cannot have the license anymore.
    The license is his.
    And you could work in their firm,
    and that way you're going to get to eat.
    That organization operated up to the day
    when the Hungarians came in.
    Because the Hungarians came in, and they knocked them out.
    It was quite a scare, at that time.
    The Jewish people were pretty well shaken up at that time.
    And then the Hungarians came in, and they
    didn't like the Hungarians either,
    because the Hungarians said that they
    are more of a communist group than anything else.
    So the Hungarian government started
    prosecuting them as well as the Jewish people.
    A matter of fact, at the time, the Jewish people
    felt much safer with the Hungarians
    than with the home population, with this [UKRAINIAN],,
    as we were calling them.
    What happened to your father's little business?
    And you said most of the Jewish businesses were taken.
    Well--
    Was his taken?
    --we gave it up.
    We just, plain simply, closed up shop.
    We had that little restaurant, and we just
    closed up completely.
    It was not there anymore--
    just made another room out of it.
    I even don't remember, he was still
    selling a little whiskey here and there on the side,
    but that was it.
    So then your life did change a little bit in--
    Changed quite a bit.
    Mhm?
    How did you earn a living at that time?
    Again, by working out more--
    working.
    We had a few fields, and we'll grow our own tomatoes,
    potatoes, and so on, until they took that away later on.
    OK.
    Let's go on to as the war progressed.
    You said the Hungarians came in.
    What happened after that?
    Well, as the war progressed, there started again rumors--
    everything came out of a rumor--
    that they are taking away people that are not citizens.
    Now, as far as I can remember, as far as my father remembers,
    he was born--
    I was born in that town.
    He was born and his father, his grandfather,
    and great-great-grandfather.
    Who knows how many generations were born in that town,
    because we never knew anyplace else.
    But all of a sudden, the Hungarians
    came in and said that you're not citizens--
    that no Jew is a citizen of the country.
    And for a while, everybody started
    running to try to get some citizen papers.
    It was just merely something to make it hard on people--
    not that the citizen papers meant anything,
    in the later days.
    But all you could hear, at that time, is "citizen papers."
    You had to go and try to dig up who
    was your father and grandfather and great-grandfather,
    and where did he come from.
    And in case, God beware, where he came from Poland or Romania,
    without any question you were already out.
    They already shipped you out of the country.
    But anyway-- but as long as you kept on working on it
    and spending whatever few pennies anybody had--
    to try to get those citizen papers.
    Some people got them; some people didn't.
    We never did get them.
    And like I said, towards the end it didn't mean anything
    whether somebody had a citizens' papers or not.
    So from the beginning, we used to hear--
    and see, of course--
    because in our town there was about four or five people that
    settled there during World War or after World War
    I. I remember, there were a couple
    of people that came that were only married.
    They were from Russia.
    They married people from us.
    There were one man that came to our town
    from Romania a long time ago.
    There were a couple of people that came to our town
    from Poland a long time ago.
    Well, they were the first ones taken away.
    They were just plain, simply--
    the Hungarian police came with a truck
    and loaded them up and took them out.
    So everybody was saying, well, they're not going to--
    they took those people because they were not citizens.
    They were from Romania or Russia or so on.
    And then we started hearing rumors
    that they are taking people--
    whole towns, even though they are not
    from Romania nor Russia nor anyplace else.
    They are people that were born there
    and had the citizen papers.
    And that's how they did, and that's
    how they started taking out town by town by town.
    And that was in 1941.
    So, sooner or later, they came to our town.
    Like I mentioned before, in another town
    they took almost everybody away except for a few young women
    with their small families, that their husbands
    were in the forced-labor camp, working for the Hungarians.
    That's when they took my family away-- the whole family--
    my father, mother, and all our nine children.
    Because one of my sisters was in Belgium.
    She did not come with us.
    And your married sister didn't come.
    And my married sister did not come.
    So we were eight children and father and mother--
    four boys and four girls.
    You all went together.
    Yes, we all went together.
    [SIGHS] On trucks, they took us to the railroad,
    which was maybe 25, 30 kilometer away from our hometown.
    By that railroad we stayed a day--
    maybe two.
    And then they load us into--
    they were freight wagons and, you know, freight cars,
    and also cars that they used to carry,
    before, cattle and so on.
    And they took us east towards Poland,
    I don't remember how many days, maybe three or four days,
    until we came to the Hungarian-Polish border.
    I think what we're going to do now, Max, is pause
    a little bit on the border.
    [LAUGHS] And we'll come back.
    We'll take a little rest, and we'll
    come back in a few minutes--
    Fine, thank you.
    --and continue the story.
    Good.

    There is no transcript available for this track

    There is no transcript available for this track

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Max Solomon
    Interviewer
    Donna Yanowitz
    Date
    interview:  1984 August 10
    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
    Solomon, Max.

    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​/irn504989

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    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 Freda Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Freda Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with 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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