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Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.133 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0133

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    Oral history interview with Miriam Wexberg
    Transcript
    I'm Bea Stadtler.
    Today we're interviewing Miriam Wexberg, a Holocaust survivor.
    The project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Miriam, thank you for coming and being with us today.
    Tell us something about yourself, your name, age,
    work, where do you live, marital status, children, how
    many do you have, what do they do, and where do they live?
    I am married to Philip Wexberg, who is also a survivor.
    I am a homemaker presently.
    I did spend quite a few years working.
    I graduated from John Jay High with a bookkeeping training.
    And we have two children, Marcia and Steve.
    Marcia is a lawyer in Philadelphia,
    and Steve is a pediatrician at Cleveland Clinic.
    My husband is an electrician.
    I have been in the United States since 1946.
    Philip came here in 1949.
    We were married in 1950.
    OK.
    Can you tell us where you came from?
    What was the town like?
    What was the Jewish and non-Jewish population
    like and how many of each?
    I come from Poland city of Lwów.
    Lwów-- can you spell it for us?
    In Polish, it's spelled L-W-O-W. In English, it's L-V-O-V.
    My father had a store where he sold notions.
    My mother was a homemaker.
    Occasionally, went to the store to help my dad out.
    I went to school.
    I have a sister.
    We lived in the same apartment building
    as my grandparents did and had a very close association
    with them.
    I went to a school that was mostly non-Jewish.
    Antisemitism in Poland was a very common occurrence.
    I lived with it daily, at school and at play.
    Religion was taught as a subject in public school,
    and when my non-Jewish classmates had the subject,
    the Jewish children left the classroom
    and stood in the hallway.
    When the class was over and the children emerged,
    I was often called Jew, and I was spat upon.
    My relationship in class was close with another Jewish girl.
    When I did develop closer association
    with a couple of non-Jewish children
    and sometimes went over to them, I
    was never let into their homes.
    The girl would come out, and we would stay outdoors,
    walk up and down, but I never had contact with their parents.
    You actually weren't allowed into the houses.
    No, I felt that I was rejected.
    Every so often university students
    would go through the business area of the city, where
    my father had his store, and would smash and break
    the storefronts of Jewish stores.
    At a time like that, my father would quickly
    pull down the grates and run into adjacent gate, where
    he would hide until the barrage was over.
    I was constantly seeing graffiti on all the buildings
    "Jew to Palestine," "Not a Penny Into Jewish Hands,"
    "Beat the Jew."
    And that was the environment I lived in.
    Lwów was a town in Poland, right?
    It was a town in Poland at that time.
    It was--
    Today it belongs to Russia.
    It was a big city or--
    It was the third-largest city in Poland then.
    In 1939, when Germany and Russia signed
    an agreement of non-aggression, Poland was partitioned,
    and my city then was in Russian hands for two years.
    And at that time, the Jewish population in Lwów
    swelled to 150,000 people, and that
    included the influx of Jews from Western Poland, the area that
    was already occupied by the Nazis,
    and they hoped to run away from their wrath.
    What was the population generally in Lwów?
    I really don't know what the population was--
    Jewish population?
    --Jewish population before the influx of the refugees.
    When the agreement between Germany and Russia was broken
    and the Germans came to our city,
    the Ukrainians joined with their forces
    and played a very important part in the destruction of the Jewry
    in my area.
    On the day that the Germans entered,
    my father came home with a wound in his head, blood streaming
    down his face.
    The Jewish children were forbidden to go to school.
    Ordinances for Jews not to enter parks,
    for Jews to wear white armband was a blue star on it
    were issued.
    I remember standing on a street, waiting
    for a streetcar for a very, very long period of time.
    Five or six would pass by, and each said "Juden Verboten,"
    meaning "Forbidden to Jews," until finally there
    was one that had no sign in it.
    The months that the Germans entered was a horrible month.
    Many Jewish leaders and Jewish people in general were jailed.
    Many beatings by the incited mob occurred.
    Ration cards were issued.
    I stood in lines to receive the little bit of flour and sugar
    and discovered that the non-Jews were receiving larger
    portions of food than the Jews.
    I saw my mother take off her ring
    and carry it to a place of--
    a collection point where the Jews
    were requested to turn in their jewelry,
    supposedly for a ransom for some Jewish figures that
    were taken into the prison.
    My family suffered its first casualty.
    My uncle, a father of two children,
    was taken out of his apartment at night and never seen again.
    I remember trailing my grandmother up the staircase.
    She was pulling on her cheeks and invoking the name of God.
    Our family underwent a very swift deterioration.
    Just a second, can you tell us how old you were
    and how old your sister was at this time?
    Yes.
    When the war started, I was 10.
    The time the Germans came, I was 12.
    The Russians were in our area for two years.
    My sister was six years older than I was, so at that time
    she was 18.
    My father and my sister joined a street cleaning crew,
    where they were given portions of soup,
    and my father started bringing the soup home.
    And when they discovered that he was bringing the soup home,
    they threw him out.
    My mother was trading clothes, pieces of furniture for bread
    and other foods.
    My grandmother and grandfather, who lived upstairs,
    thought that perhaps if they go back to their town of origin,
    which was a small town further away from Lwów,
    that perhaps the rest of the Germans
    would not reach them there.
    So they dressed themselves as peasants
    and on a wagon drawn by horses, at night,
    they went to the city of their origins.
    And we never saw them again.
    Miriam, can we just go back for a minute to the time
    before the war?
    Did your family have non-Jewish neighbors?
    I know you went to a school where there were many non-Jews.
    Yes.
    How did you get along with them?
    And what was kind of a typical day?
    And what part did religion play?
    Did you belong to a synagogue, to a Zionist organization?
    What language was spoken in your home?
    All right.
    My parents spoke to each other Yiddish,
    and they spoke to their grandparents also Yiddish.
    And I know it from hearing it.
    I myself spoke to them in Polish,
    and they spoke to me in Polish.
    We went to Polish schools, and our Polish was very fluent.
    And I would say my grandfather's Polish was not
    as fluent as mine because he used it less.
    My father was a self-taught person
    and spoke several languages, and he was very fluent in Polish.
    But yet the language at home between them was Yiddish.
    I don't know how belonging to synagogues was in Poland.
    I don't know that you actually paid your dues yearly
    like you do here and belong.
    But my parents in High Holidays--
    they went to a shul that was a prestigious shul in town.
    And that's where they went for yontif
    now for the big holidays.
    Otherwise, they went to--
    it wasn't even a school.
    It was like a shtiebel, a room, and that's
    where they went to pray, which was
    just two or three houses away from us, where
    the area people prayed.
    And did you belong to a Zionist organization?
    No, I did not belong to a Zionist organization,
    and I often--
    I think now that, had I belonged to the Zionist organization
    and was imbued with stories and our heroes,
    that during my ordeal it probably
    would have helped me to sort of--
    --overcome--
    --draw the courage from these people.
    But I did not.
    I was not brought up zionistically.
    OK.
    Were you a healthy youngster?
    Did you have any special interests?
    I was-- as far as I remember, yes, I had no health problems.
    I loved to sing, and my father would copy songs
    from street singers.
    It was very popular in Poland for students
    to go from court to court or on the streets
    with their instruments and play music,
    and he would copy songs, words to songs from them,
    and bring it home.
    And we would spend hours sitting on the balcony with other kids
    and neighbors and sing.
    And we had a beautiful garden, which
    was my grandfather's, and an orchard
    in the back of the house.
    And this custodian of ours, whose name was Marcin,
    came to Lwów with my grandfather.
    At one time, they all moved from that small town
    to this big house and big city.
    And when the Russians were there--
    Marcin was communist.
    When the Germans came, Marcin got to be a Nazi
    and took that beautiful garden from us.
    And we could not use the soil for nourishing ourselves
    with whatever would grow there.
    So we lost that.
    You had vegetables in the garden, and fruits?
    We had vegetables and potatoes and corn and things
    that we used each summer for--
    --food.
    --feeding ourselves.
    And the first that you were really aware
    of the problem of the war was when your father came home
    or was it before then even?
    Well, we were afraid of the Germans.
    We were glad that they stopped when they stopped.
    We were glad of the agreement between Russia and Germany.
    My father had three sisters in Vienna,
    and I remember a postcard from one
    of the sisters that was very upsetting to my parents.
    And they knew that horrible things are happening
    in that area of Poland, so we had a notion
    that when the Germans come, things will be bad.
    But we didn't to what extent.
    The Ukrainians, though, were almost as bad as the Russians--
    as the Germans.
    They were--
    I would say worse.
    Worse.
    They were very brutal.
    They were very brutal, and they were
    the ones that walked with the Germans
    to pull the Jews out of their homes.
    And they performed atrocities on the Jews.
    After my grandparents left, their daughter,
    one of my mother's sisters, would go into a--
    there was an old lady living in one of the apartments,
    and my aunt, Lila, would go into that lady's room every day.
    She was very old and feeble.
    And Lila would take care of her, wash her,
    and give her her food.
    And she probably received some food from her too,
    and she was hoping that when she is in that Gentile apartment
    she would be saved from the roundups
    that the Germans periodically--
    --ordered.
    --ordered.
    And one day, the Germans came, went right upstairs,
    pulled her out of there.
    She was the only person that they took that day,
    so I'm convinced that someone pointed her out.
    Our condition kept getting worse and worse.
    We had nothing to eat.
    There was no more--
    there were no more things to trade.
    And my father went into depression.
    He went to bed and stayed there for days on end.
    I was walking around with a button in my mouth.
    My mother would send me to our Gentile neighbors
    to ask for potato peels.
    When I brought those, she would grind them and made patties.
    But then there were no potato peels either.
    And when we would run to hide when
    we thought the Germans were coming,
    my father wouldn't leave the apartment.
    He stayed in bed.
    He made us put a lock on the outside of the door.
    And at the very beginning, they did not break into the homes,
    so he was safe for a while.
    One day, a German and a Ukrainian came to the apartment
    and ordered us to leave the apartment.
    My mother started begging for some things,
    a few pieces of the beds and some other things.
    And we moved out the very next day
    into an enclosure at the end of the courtyard
    where my grandfather at one time kept horses.
    Our original apartment was taken over by a Volksdeutsche--
    that is a person of German ancestry--
    who just threw us out.
    There was a Ukrainian and this person,
    and she liked the apartment.
    And they told us to go, and we had to go.
    And you couldn't take anything with you
    or very, very little very little.
    Very little, very little.
    The roundups were constantly upon us.
    My sister was blond and blue-eyed
    and did not look Jewish.
    And she would get up in the morning and go into the city,
    to the sections of the city where she thought
    no one would recognize her.
    And she would walk the streets all day.
    My mother and I would hide.
    Of course, we always hoped that in the evening,
    my sister will return because sometimes these people did not
    return.
    During the intense roundups, they would just
    get you on the street, and you never came home.
    Where did you hide?
    My neighbor, our neighbor--
    Mrs. Schneider was her name--
    had a cellar underneath her bedroom.
    You opened a flap.
    There was a staircase that descended into the cellar.
    Mrs. Schneider worked.
    She was Jewish?
    She was Jewish, and she worked.
    She went to work every morning.
    But she let my mother and me into her dwelling,
    and that's where we would go.
    We would descend the staircase daily.
    And she would take a pitcher with some gruel,
    and we sat there in the darkness.
    In the evening, you would come out?
    Well, not always in the evening.
    We sat, and we heard--
    because they did enter the dwelling.
    And we heard noises, and we heard the boots.
    And then when it got quiet and we figured they already
    inspected that area, my mother would come up and lift the flap
    and listen.
    And when she thought they were gone and it was quiet,
    we would come up for some light and air.
    And when we heard noises, we would go down again.
    And one day, we came up for air.
    It was already towards the evening.
    Mrs. Schneider was back from work.
    And we came up, and we sat in her little vestibule.
    And suddenly, we looked towards the gate down the courtyard,
    and there was a German and a Ukrainian.
    We had no time to run down to the cellar.
    My father was there too.
    He ran out into a stable, and my mother and I ran into a pantry
    that Mrs. Schneider had right near there.
    And we scooted down, and they saw us.
    The Ukrainian went to pull out my father,
    and the German pulled my mother and me out into the courtyard.
    The German asked my parents if I was theirs.
    My mother and father answered at the same time.
    She said no, and he said yes.
    I imagine that my mother said yes
    because she hoped at that instant
    that if she says no perhaps he won't take me.
    The Ukrainians slapped my mother on the face.
    She fell to the ground.
    She picked herself up, and we were let through the courtyard
    into the street.
    There was a throng of people walking down
    the street being with Germans and Ukrainians on--
    --both sides.
    --both sides.
    And as we were walking, I was hanging on to my mother's hand.
    She kept saying, pull off your band, pull off your band.
    And I started pulling off my band,
    and I slipped it into my pocket.
    And then she kept saying, run.
    She kept saying, run, run, run.
    And as we were walking and approached a side street,
    I let go of her hand, and I turned into that street.
    Nobody followed me.
    That's how she saved me.
    I knew I couldn't go home because of the roundups,
    so I went into a field where I used to sled
    and play, a grassy area.
    And I laid down in the grass, hoping
    to just spend the time there and go back when it gets dark.
    A group of kids discovered me and started
    screaming "Jew, Jew."
    And they ran away, and I knew that they
    were going to get someone.
    And so I picked up and started walking,
    and I stumbled upon a church.
    I sat behind the church.
    It was very quiet there.
    And I sat there for many hours until it got dusk.
    And I came home.
    I came home, and I went straight to the janitor's dwelling.
    This janitor, Marcin, had a wife who was a very good woman.
    She was very pious.
    And my mother had very good relationships with her,
    and somehow, in my child's mind, I expected them back.
    And when I sat in Marcinova's place,
    she told me that she was very, very sad
    and told me that she saw my parents
    being loaded on platforms at the end of the street.
    I went back to this stable that we lived at and waited
    for my sister.
    My sister came back, and I was very glad to see her.
    Had she not come back, I would have
    been all alone and certainly would not
    have known what to do.
    From then on, as long as the roundups took place--
    it was a period of two weeks at that time--
    we would get up in the morning and go
    to walk the streets of Lwów.
    We left the gate, and each of us went in an opposite direction.
    I looked Jewish, and she did not.
    And we could not walk together.
    As I was walking in a non-Jewish section of the city,
    this one day, suddenly, I saw a German and a Ukrainian--
    they always walked in pairs--
    coming towards me.
    I knew I couldn't run.
    I had to keep on walking towards them.
    They stopped me, and the Ukrainian asked me
    in Ukrainian, are you Jewish?
    And I said no.
    And he asked me, can you pray?
    And I said, of course I can pray.
    I spoke a good Ukrainian then.
    He did not ask me to pray.
    Had he asked me, I couldn't.
    And that was another close call for me.
    My sister knew somebody who knew someone else who transported
    Jews for a fee to Warsaw.
    She gathered up whatever else there was, sold it,
    and gathered up enough money to pay this man to get us
    to Warsaw.
    We boarded the train in the evening, and at the time,
    I knew only two faces.
    They were afraid to tell me things because I was a child
    and because I looked Jewish, and they were afraid
    if I know details, probably under torture
    I would reveal them.
    And her friend's name was Irka, so I knew Irka,
    and I knew my sister.
    We got on the train, and we spread into different wagons.
    And when we got to Warsaw and I came out on the platform
    and searched for my sister, suddenly I
    realized that there was a group of people huddled together.
    And I realized that this man, Tadzik, brought a group of Jews
    to Warsaw.
    We were led into an apartment in Warsaw
    and stayed for the rest of the night.
    At dawn, we were asked to leave.
    We left very quietly and singly, and we were on our own.
    This was after the Warsaw Ghetto was established.
    The Warsaw Ghetto was in existence.
    And you were--
    We were not-- we were on the Aryan side--
    --Aryan side, yeah.
    --and posing as non-Jews.
    My grandfather had a partner with whom
    he owned the building involved together who
    had a daughter whose name was Zosia.
    Zosia left for Warsaw as an Aryan at the very beginning.
    She also looked Aryan, blonde, spoke a good Polish,
    and she more or less established herself in Warsaw.
    My sister obtained her address from her father in Lwów.
    And we came to Warsaw.
    She started searching for her.
    She thought that she may rely on her help in this strange city
    that we were at.
    When she went to Zosia's address,
    Zosia was no longer there.
    Her room was ransacked, and she had to leave the place.
    When we left this building that we were brought to when we just
    came to Warsaw, we went into a shabby hotel, the three of us.
    I was told to stay in bed with my face towards the wall
    so that if someone opens the door,
    they will not see my face.
    My face was Jewish.
    And my sister and Irka went to look for work.
    They found some work in a factory,
    where they were making matches, and I stayed
    in the room with my face to the wall,
    didn't stay there very long.
    One day, there was a knock on the door,
    and they hollered for me to leave.
    Very cautiously, I went through the hallway downstairs
    out of the building.
    When my sister and Irka came back, I was standing out there.
    There was-- the Germans surrounded the building
    and pulled out some Jews out of the building.
    They boarded up the hotel, and we stood there, again,
    not knowing where to go.
    So we went to the railroad station,
    and we huddled together and spent the night, sitting there,
    surrounded by other people coming and going
    and Germans coming and going and very, very frightened.
    And my sister kept on looking for Zosia,
    and one day, she stumbled upon her in a marketplace.
    Zosia wanted to see me badly, but I could not come near her.
    So they created a plan.
    My sister and I got on the streetcar.
    My sister sat in front.
    I sat in the back.
    My sister got off.
    I got off.
    And Zosia stood in the gate of one of the buildings,
    behind a glass door, and I walked up and down
    so she could see me without having
    physical contact with me.
    She was very close to my family and knew everybody well.
    She was at my mother's wedding, and she had this longing
    of seeing someone from home.
    My sister and Irka found a place for me
    with a family who had a child who needed someone
    to do house chores and take care of the child,
    and that was the first place where I was to be a servant.
    How old were you, Miriam?
    I was then 12, 12 and a half.
    I didn't stay there very long because they
    started saying that I'm Jewish.
    The neighbor came to the people that I was--
    whose house I was employed, and the minute I
    heard them whispering, I knew I had to--
    I knew they were talking about me, and I had to run.
    And Zosia-- through my sister, Zosia found a place for me.
    She was pulling us out of these situations, my sister,
    too, from one place to another without ever having contact
    with me.
    And I was told, go to such-and-such place,
    which I did.
    The woman's name was Janczewska, and I became a servant
    at Janczewska's.
    Janczewska had two stores.
    In Warsaw, she had a vegetable store with produce,
    and she had another store in Otwock, a store with porcelain.
    I would get up with Janczewska at dawn every morning
    and go with her to the market, where
    she would shop for vegetables.
    She would hire a rickshaw.
    The rickshaw was loaded up with the vegetables,
    and I would sit--
    her rickshaw was a large box.
    It was like a bicycle, but it had three wheels.
    And the rickshaw-- the box sat on two wheels.
    That was loaded up, and I went on top of it.
    And the guy carried me to the store, where
    we unloaded the merchandise.
    Then I went back to the apartment.
    I cleaned the place.
    They lived on the fourth floor.
    I carried coal from the basement in buckets
    and did whatever she told me to do.
    She had a store in Otwock that she also delivered merchandise
    to.
    Now, where was Otwock?
    Otwock was a small place, a country--
    a small town.
    It was famous for bass, and people would go there
    after illnesses to recuperate.
    It was very, very pretty place.
    And she would shop for porcelain and various gift items,
    and I would carry these large packages,
    deposit them on the train.
    There was a regular train running
    between Warsaw and Otwock.
    Otwock was the last station, and--
    About how far away was it from Warsaw?
    It took about an hour.
    An hour.
    And on the way, there were various little municipalities
    where people would get off.
    A lot of these people worked in Warsaw
    and commuted to these small towns.
    And I would load up these big boxes
    into the platform of the train and was constantly
    aware of being observed.
    I walked with my head down.
    If somebody stared at me, I would leave this compartment
    and go to another one to lose the person.
    And then I would come back, and when we got to Otwock,
    I would pull the packages off.
    Then somebody would come from the store,
    and we would take it into the store.
    This is the same store with the vegetables?
    No, this is in Otwock, and this is the porcelain store.
    And I carried the porcelain--
    Oh, I see.
    --to Lwów.
    In Otwock, behind the store, Mrs. Janczewska
    had an old mother living in one room
    in the back of the store who kept an eye on the store.
    When I got to Otwock and we unloaded the merchandise,
    I usually stayed with her old mother.
    I cleaned the store.
    I cleaned her place.
    I carried the water from the well
    and washed the laundry in a big tub, no washing machines.
    And Mrs. Janczewska's old mother was very antisemitic.
    She constantly cursed the Jews, and I shivered.
    She stood over me and hollered when I peeled the potatoes
    and the skins were more than paper-thin.
    Back in Warsaw, Janczewska had one little boy.
    What would-- you'd stay in Otwock
    for, say, a day or two days?
    No, I usually stayed longer because I cleaned,
    and I washed for her.
    And sometimes I stayed several days.
    Sometimes I stayed a couple of weeks.
    But there were times when Janczewska
    would send her little boy and me to Warsaw--
    I mean to Otwock.
    And then I would stay longer.
    Her mother was old and feeble, and for her son,
    it was a vacation.
    So I stayed there with the little boy and did the chores.
    When I returned to Warsaw, one day I took the little boy,
    Wojtus, I took him out for a walk,
    and I stumbled upon a wall and realized
    that that was the ghetto wall.
    I also, in the course of my shopping and bringing groceries
    up to the apartment--
    I saw Jews being walked out.
    I suddenly realized that we are right on top of the ghetto.
    I saw Jews being marched down the street,
    and I was on the street.
    And my reaction was--
    I was petrified, and my reaction was to just disappear, just go
    and-- go away, hide.
    So I would quickly enter a gate and stay there
    until they were gone.
    OK, let's hold it, and then we'll come back in few minutes.
    Sure.
    OK, Miriam, we left off when you realized
    that you were very near to the wall of the Warsaw Ghetto
    and you would see the Jews being marched out.
    --marched out of the ghetto, right.
    At that time, my association with the few Jews
    completely vanished.
    Irka returned one day into her apartment,
    and there was police waiting for her.
    They took her away.
    I almost never saw my sister, but on Sunday,
    when the maids get some time off,
    I would walk to the apartment building
    that I thought she was at--
    because sometimes I didn't even know for sure
    where she was at--
    and I would go up into the corridor
    and stand there, hoping to perhaps catch
    a glimpse of her when she comes out with the garbage.
    I was very lonely and at times wished to be picked up
    and get it over with.
    One day, I also realized when I lived with Yanchevska,
    that Mr. Yanchevski was doing some business with the ghetto.
    One day, they brought a little girl to the house,
    and told me that she is their cousin
    and she's going to live with them.
    Her name was Alinka.
    I took one look at her, and I instantly
    knew that she was Jewish.
    She had Jewish features, tight curly hair.
    Yanchevska did not let Alinka out of the apartment.
    Alinka stood on the balcony upstairs,
    and Alinka didn't get to eat what they ate.
    Alinka wet her bed nightly and was getting spanked for it,
    and my heart broke.
    Alinka never came down, but people saw her up
    on the balcony.
    And they knew that Yanchevska had only one son,
    and rumors started to circulate that Yanchevska
    has a Jewish child.
    And Yanchevska got frightened.
    One of her customers was a Volksdeutsche,
    that is, a person of German descent who had privileges,
    more food, and a better life.
    Yanchevska negotiated with that woman to take the child,
    and the woman took the child.
    I don't know whether Alinka survived
    and what happened to her after the war, but at that time,
    I thought it was a wonderful gesture of Yanchevska to wanted
    to save a Jewish child.
    It's interesting, her mother being so antisemitic--
    Her mother was, and--
    --but she must have had some compassion.
    --she was not.
    She had she had dealings-- being in business,
    she had dealings with Jews, I gather,
    and got to know them and did not hate them just because--
    --they were Jews.
    --somebody said "You've got to hate the Jews."
    Yanchevska rented out some of-- the apartment was very large,
    and a couple of her rooms she rented out to tenants.
    And Friday night, everyone took baths.
    So I brought the coal and heated the water
    and stayed up until very early in the morning
    to wash the tub after each person's bath.
    I was then about 13.
    For my work, I received no pay.
    I had a pair of socks and a pair of men's shoes
    and a sweatshirt and a skirt.
    My shoes Yanchevska wouldn't let me wear.
    I had to save them for Sunday.
    So I walked barefoot the streets of Warsaw.
    I was infested with lice.
    I had black lice in my head and white lice
    in the seams of the shirt.
    I wore the shirt all day, and I slept in it.
    To the socks, in winter, I sewed on cloths of a different color,
    and then for them to cover my thighs
    I sewed on cloth of another color
    and tied them with strings.
    I was forever hungry.
    I did not eat the food they ate.
    You weren't permitted to.
    No, my food was rationed out to me.
    I usually had soup and some bread.
    And I would go to the pot and take some spoonfuls of soup,
    but I was afraid to take too much
    so that she wouldn't see that the content has diminished.
    I also had a problem--
    well, I had many problems, but this was one of the problems.
    Poles were very religious people,
    and during the German occupation,
    each courtyard erected a statue of Jesus or Madonna.
    And every evening, all the people from the apartment
    would come down and sang hymns and prayed.
    I didn't know what to do.
    If I don't go down, they will say "She's not coming.
    She's Jewish."
    And if I do come down, then they'll see me,
    and they'll perhaps discover me, that I am Jewish.
    And I had that dilemma constantly.
    Should I go down?
    Shouldn't I go down?
    I stood on the balcony when the ghetto was burning,
    and I saw the fiery sky.
    And everybody was on the balcony, making comments,
    and again I felt that I couldn't stay there.
    What if I reveal my emotions and they will discover me?
    I studied, praying, in the evening when they were all
    asleep or I took the little prayer book with me
    to the bathroom and looked through different prayers.
    Mrs. Yanchevska was not a church-going person,
    and so in Warsaw, I could fake going to church.
    I said I went to church, and I didn't.
    But when I was in Otwock with Mrs. Yanchevska's old mother,
    she took me to church with her, and what does a Jewish child
    think when she has to kneel in a church in front
    of a religious figure?
    She thinks that surely heavens will open
    and I will be struck by God.
    And so I recoiled, trying to block out my surroundings,
    and prayed to my God.
    My sister was a servant at that time at Yanchevska's friends.
    The woman's name was Musia, and one day, my sister
    had a conversation with Zosia over the phone.
    Now, most homes did not have phones in Poland,
    but Musia was a well-to-do person,
    and there was a phone in her home.
    And while she had the conversation with Zosia,
    Musia was listening in on the extension.
    And Zosia and my sister spoke about saying something's not
    kosher, and Musia stormed into the kitchen,
    screaming obscenities at her, telling her
    that she's going to turn her over to the SS
    and throw her out.
    Some time later, Musia came over to Yanchevska.
    That's the place that I was at.
    Yanchevska was entertaining, and Musia was there
    with her husband and some other people.
    Yanchevska called me into the dining room,
    and they looked me over.
    They stared at me, and I knew that
    what they were looking at-- why they were looking at me.
    When her company left, she came into the kitchen
    and asked me if I have papers.
    At that time, I had papers.
    I have just gotten the Kennkarte.
    Kennkarte was an ID issued by the Germans,
    and everyone absolutely had to have it.
    Tell us first, what was your name during all this time?
    You had changed your name?
    My name was Maria Gorczynska, the name of someone
    that I knew in Poland during my very young years.
    I played with that girl occasionally,
    and I told my sister, I'll be Maria, I'll be her.
    And my sister's name was Stefa Gorczynska.
    And up until then, we had no identification papers,
    and if you were caught and didn't produce your ID,
    you were you were instant suspect.
    And the time was approaching-- there
    was a time scheduled where everybody just had to have it.
    We didn't know what to do.
    We went down to the office where they
    were issuing the Kennkarte.
    We got in line.
    We stood in line a little bit--
    my sister left me there--
    and went around to the back of the building
    to see if she could perhaps get in that way.
    She gave somebody at the door there a few dollars.
    He let her in, and she got her Kennkarte
    Now, normally, you would have to present
    some documents which they would use
    to produce the Kennkarte from.
    We had nothing.
    She told the guy that she's sending in her sister.
    She came back and got me in line.
    And I went back there, and I said, my sister was just here.
    They let me in, and I got a Kennkarte.
    The fact that she bribed someone there, smoothed it out for us--
    nobody asked her any questions.
    Nobody asked me any questions.
    And we actually obtained the Kennkarte
    in a legal way, which was rather--
    --miraculous.
    --unusual and miraculous.
    So you had your papers when Mrs. Yanchevska--
    When Mrs. Yanchevska--
    --asked you?
    --asked me if I had papers, I had papers.
    And thinking back, I think that she realized that I was Jewish
    because of the incident with my sister,
    and she wanted to cover herself.
    So she was really a good woman.
    What happened to your sister at that point?
    Did she leave Marusia?
    Yeah, she threw her out, but she did not call the SS.
    She threw her out.
    And my sister told me that she went to a neighbor,
    and then Zosia found her another place.
    And so again she was at another place.
    The other place was in--
    one station before Otwock was called Swider,
    and that's where she was until the end of the war
    was a short distance from Otwock.
    So she did the same thing as the servant?
    Yeah, that's what we did all through our hiding.
    When the Polish Uprising took place--
    that is the Polish Uprising, not the Ghetto Uprising--
    I was in Otwock with her old mother.
    And Warsaw was leveled.
    There was not one house standing in Warsaw.
    The Germans leveled it to the ground.
    All the people from Warsaw were evacuated.
    The Russians liberated that area,
    and I was with the old lady.
    For many weeks, she has not heard from her daughter.
    The railroads were out of commission.
    You could not travel.
    And I knew the war was over, and here I was.
    The war was over, and I don't know what to do with myself.
    My sister found out that there was
    a committee that formed in the city of Otwock,
    a Jewish committee.
    I knew where the building was, and I was afraid to go in.
    Was your sister in touch with you all this time?
    My sister was then in Swider, and I was in Otwock.
    And I knew she was in Swider.
    Our meetings were very precarious.
    She would-- the store and the room behind the store
    was on a corner, and when she came from Swider, that road led
    right in front of that store.
    And I would see her.
    She walked by the store and kept on going.
    When I saw that, I came out, and I followed her at a distance.
    And she would walk further on past the church, and then
    past the church, there was a narrow path, no people.
    I would catch up with her, and we
    would exchange a few sentences.
    And then she would go back, and I would go back.
    Our meetings were-- they knew I had a sister,
    but our meetings were rather covert
    because of this constant fright that we may slip up
    or I would be her giveaway, something that was very, very
    important to watch.
    At the time that-- when I did have some contact with some
    of the Jews in Warsaw on the Aryan side,
    when they would meet and my sister was there
    and I was there, I was never near them.
    I was, like, maybe 20 meters away because I knew,
    I just knew that I better not go near them because of my--
    Appearance.
    Features.
    Where was Zosia during all this time?
    Did she escape?
    Zosia survived.
    Did she?
    She also had some--
    she had to run from one place to another
    on a couple of occasions.
    Everybody suspected everybody else, but she has survived.
    She lives in Israel today.
    All right.
    The war was over, and I wouldn't go into that Jewish committee
    building.
    I was afraid to be seen.
    But my sister went in.
    And the first thing when the Jews came out of their hiding
    places and--
    the ones that survived right away started asking about--
    --family.
    --people, family, people from the same hometown.
    So she went into that place and asked if there
    is somebody there from Lwów.
    And there was a gentleman there.
    His name was Hoffman, and he said, yes, there
    is somebody here from Lwów.
    And he arranged a meeting between my sister
    and this man, Arnold.
    Arnold told my sister that he's going to go to Lódz.
    He was in a Polish-- in the Polish army then.
    There was an army formed in Russia of Poles.
    There were many Jews among them, and they liberated the areas
    together with the Russians.
    He said he'll go to Lódz and he'll
    send for her, which he did.
    And then Mr. Hoffman, who originated from a place
    called Stryi, not far from Lwów, also went to Lódz.
    And he had other people there.
    He collected people from all over,
    and they all lived in that apartment.
    A little later, I got a postcard from my sister on which she
    said "regards" and an address.
    You were still with Mrs. Yanchevska's mother?
    Still with Mrs. Yanchevska's mother, didn't know what to do,
    didn't know where to go, and I was still a child.
    When I got the postcard with the address,
    I immediately knew that I was going to go.
    I readied myself to go.
    The train started running, and I inquired.
    And I found out when a train will depart for Lódz.
    I told Mrs. Yanchevska's mother that I will be leaving.
    This is a funny story.
    I boiled some eggs, but I didn't boil them at the place
    that I stayed.
    I took them to a neighbor to boil
    because I was afraid for the old lady to know that I have eggs
    because if I had eggs, where did I get the money
    to buy the eggs with?
    So I cooked the eggs.
    So where did you get the money?
    Where did I-- When I was traveling between Warsaw
    and Otwock, bringing these produce, the sour cream,
    and butter--
    so when I paid 80 groszys.
    I told Yanchevska that I paid 85 groszys,
    and I really had some groszys in my pocket.
    And for these groszys I paid the fare to Lódz
    and bought those eggs.
    Well, I hard-boiled the eggs, and I put them
    between the lining and the shell of my coat.
    And on the way, I lost the eggs.
    There was a hole in that lining, and on the train
    I looked for the eggs, and there were no eggs.
    So I didn't eat.
    I didn't eat until I got to this Arnold's place, who turned out
    to be my brother-in-law later on.
    How long did it take you to get from Otwock to Lódz?
    It took me a whole day.
    And when I got to Lódz, the curfew was on,
    and I could not continue going to this address that I had.
    Now, this was a Russian curfew?
    The Russians had occupied Lódz by this time, I presume.
    Yes, yes.
    And I sat at the railroad.
    Well, everybody-- there was throngs of people there.
    And if you were stuck at a certain place,
    you just waited until you could travel again.
    So people were sitting on the ground,
    leaning against the wall, and spent the night
    at that railroad station.
    When it started dawning and the curfew was off,
    I took a streetcar, carrying my belongings, my multi-colored--
    Knapsack-like.
    --wrapped in newspapers.
    The thing broke for me on the way.
    I was very embarrassed.
    I started losing all those schmattas.
    And I asked for directions, and I came to Andrzeja Street.
    It was still very early.
    And I climbed the staircase, and I sat down on the steps.
    I didn't want to wake the lords.
    My brother-in-law thinks it's very funny.
    He reminds me of it.
    But I had this mentality of a servant,
    and I wasn't going to wake them.
    When I heard noises, that's when I knocked on the door,
    and they let me in.
    My sister discovered me.
    She was surprised to see me because in the meantime,
    they sent someone out for me to Otwock, you see?
    But I didn't wait for the guy.
    The minute I had that address, I went, and, well, I was--
    my sister was there, and Mr. Hoffman was there.
    They made me eggs for breakfast, and they took me to a doctor.
    I was covered with a very itchy rash.
    And they smeared me up with things overnight,
    and I recovered.
    And my brother-in-law-- well, my sister and my brother-in-law--
    well, my sister got married--
    that was in '45--
    to my brother-in-law.
    And my brother-in-law went to register me to school.
    There was a school that taught a whole year's curriculum
    in six months, so you would make two classes in a half--
    in a year.
    He registered me under the name of Maria Gorczynska
    because we realized that the antisemitism was
    very strong still.
    What was your name, your original name?
    My name was Miriam Gross.
    Gross?
    And he had to register me as a non-Jew,
    and again, as long as I went to that school, again,
    I lived a lie.
    There was a Jewish boy that registered
    into that same class.
    He stayed there for three days.
    They jeered him, made him miserable,
    and he couldn't stay.
    And the same thing would have happened to me.
    I couldn't bring home people that I
    got closer to because my home was Jewish,
    and I didn't want them to discover
    the fact that I was Jewish.
    There were pogroms after the war in Poland, small ones.
    There was a big one in Kielce where 40-some Jews were killed.
    By the Poles?
    My sister met on the street her latest employer,
    and she told her, how can you live
    in such a Jew-infested city?
    And my brother-in-law realized that we will have to leave.
    And so I stayed in Lódz only to complete one grade,
    and we packed up again and went to Austria to a DP camp.
    At the camp--
    Was the camp run by the Russians or the Americans?
    No, no, this was in the American zone.
    We were fed by UNRRA.
    I was given shoes and some clothes.
    My brother-in-law hired a German teacher
    whom I studied with a few times a week
    in German various subjects, and I also
    started taking English lessons from a British person.
    I don't know why she was British in the American zone,
    but she was.
    And we just sat there.
    We didn't know where our fortune will carry us.
    From whence cometh your help.
    Right.
    People were registering-- a lot of people had relatives--
    and working under affidavits.
    I had relatives in America but didn't know them.
    My grandma had a sister I remember people coming
    home from America, and I also know
    that my father's sister, one of his sisters from Vienna,
    supposedly was able to escape Germany.
    But neither my sister nor I knew their last names or--
    we really had no one to call upon.
    I kind of nursed the idea of going
    to Israel, but at that time it was rather difficult.
    Israel was under the British mandate, and--
    --immigration was illegal.
    It was illegal and presented a lot of difficulties.
    America never entered my mind, but it did my brother-in-law's.
    And one day, there was a registration for children
    without parents, the youngsters, and my brother-in-law
    went and registered me and presented me with the idea
    that I'm going to America, didn't ask me if I want to.
    I probably didn't know whether I want to or I didn't want to,
    but I did what my brother-in-law told me to.
    You were, what, about 14, 15 at this time?
    I was 16 or so.
    16?
    17.
    And one day, I boarded a bus which took me to Bremen.
    There was another girl that came to America to family,
    and we kind of had each other.
    I was in Bremen for three months.
    It was during the coal strike, and we couldn't depart
    until the coal strike was over.
    And we departed in December of '46.
    From the time I boarded the bus in Austria
    until I finished John Hay High School in Cleveland,
    I was being taken care of by the Jewish Children's Bureau.
    Of Cleveland?
    Of Cleveland-- well, I don't know whether they have--
    Branches.
    --branches in other cities, but--
    Nationwide.
    They put a pin on me when I boarded the boat,
    and I stayed with that pin forever.
    And when we got to New York, there
    were a lot of relatives that came to meet and pick up
    their European families.
    We had no one, this friend of mine, Frieda, and I.
    And we stood there for many, many hours
    until things got organized, and unexpectedly, Frieda went--
    a social worker showed up, and Frieda went one way,
    and I went another way.
    I went to Ellis Island.
    During my extensive examinations in Germany
    before they let me go on the ship,
    they discovered that I had a spot on my lungs,
    and evidently, in Germany, they were
    satisfied that it was inactive.
    But when I came to America, they saw in my papers
    that there was something there.
    They sent me to Ellis Island.
    So I spent a week on Ellis Island, bewildered, alone.
    They took a series of X-rays again, and one day, there was--
    I was called to the doctor's office,
    and he turned out to be a very kind Jewish doctor,
    told me that I'm OK and told me if I need anything,
    I should contact him.
    I sent him one letter when I came to Cleveland
    and told him that I have arrived at my destination and was OK.
    When I-- all right, again, when they dismissed me from Ellis
    Island, I sat and waited.
    It seemed like forever.
    But a social worker showed up, and I got on the little boat
    and went back into--
    --New York.
    --the city, to New York.
    And I could have gone anywhere in the United States,
    but I had no preference.
    I didn't know where I wanted to go.
    And so they sort of distributed us throughout the States.
    My friend Frieda went to Los Angeles.
    She had family--
    You were in contact with her again after you [CROSS TALK]??
    Yeah, when I came back to Bronx, she was still there.
    They stayed, I think, all in all about two weeks.
    And there were other children, and I came to Cleveland
    with a group of--
    I think we were 11.
    And we came to Bellefaire.
    From that group, I was the only one that stayed in Cleveland.
    From here, they, again, were sort of scattered.
    A couple went to Texas, some to Pittsburgh, to Detroit.
    And I stayed in Cleveland, in Bellefaire, for a short time,
    and then I was placed in a foster home.
    My foster father, Al Horowitz--
    That's my brother.
    No.
    Al Horowitz?
    Al Horowitz wanted a child-- he was a liberator.
    Oh, no, different one.
    Different one.
    He was a liberator, and he happened
    to liberate a concentration camp that my husband at one time
    was incarcerated at.
    And he wanted a child.
    He had a daughter who was five years old,
    and he wanted a companion for his daughter.
    And he also wanted to help a child from Europe.
    And one day, the agency called him
    and said that they have a child, but the child is a little older
    than what he wanted.
    And he said, OK, and when he came to get me,
    he found a big girl.
    Nonetheless, he took me, and Al took
    me to have my teeth repaired.
    For one whole year, every Saturday,
    he drove me to the dentist.
    And I realize now that I presented some problems
    to them.
    I would not communicate.
    I went to the library downtown, came home
    with a pile of Polish books and went upstairs
    and shut the door.
    And I sat there with the books, and I wouldn't come out.
    Nonetheless, they had a lot of understanding.
    They worked with the agency on my behalf,
    and they registered me to school, to Collinwood.
    I was getting a series of tests by the Jewish Vocational,
    and I turned out to be very dumb.
    I scored very low.
    I didn't know what they were saying to me.
    I was just going to say, your English probably wasn't going--
    Right.
    When they gave me those tests three years later,
    I scored very high.
    And we lived on East Park Drive near Euclid Beach,
    and the closest school there was Collinwood High.
    And so I was registered at Collinwood High,
    and I was there only about one week.
    I was very unhappy there.
    And they realized that I had no--
    I couldn't talk, and it was very difficult for me to be there.
    But there was a class for foreigners at John Hay High,
    and the agency decided that I would be better off there.
    And so I started attending that class.
    It was a long way from where I lived.
    I took two buses and a streetcar to get to 107th and Euclid,
    and I was very happy in that class.
    We had a teacher, Ms. Himmel, who not only taught us English,
    but she was like a mother to us.
    She taught us to sit and to shave and to use deodorant
    and to eat properly.
    And I was very, very happy in that class.
    I made-- that was my social environment as well
    as school environment.
    In that class I made bonds with people that I have today,
    and they started--
    after a little bit, they started filtering us out accordingly
    to how much one could undertake in a normal class,
    and the first subject I was introduced to was biology.
    I left my class for this one period every day
    and studied with American children often.
    And when I was done, I returned to my sanctuary.
    And I had a biology teacher whose name was Ms. Arbuthnot,
    and one day, we were given a test.
    We had 200 questions.
    And she received my paper back, and I answered 60 questions.
    But they were all correct.
    And so she seeked me out and discovered
    that I was a foreigner.
    And she had me stay after school every day,
    and I read to her aloud out of the biology book.
    The Jewish Children's Bureau also
    provided me and a couple of other girls
    with a private tutor who lived in the Heights,
    and we went to her twice a week.
    And in the privacy of her living room, she taught us English.
    And gradually, I filtered out of this class entirely.
    I graduated in 1950 with honors.
    I received a gold pin for an over-90 average.
    Terrific.
    Over the three-year period.
    And I left John Hay with having had an intense course
    in preparation for a business--
    --career.
    --career.
    I majored in bookkeeping, and that's
    what I did after I came out of school.
    I threw out my--
    the three years I did not fit well
    with the American children.
    I didn't have what to talk with them about.
    I came from a different world.
    But I was in close contact with kids that came from Europe.
    We met on weekends.
    We organized picnics.
    We went to Camp Vladek.
    We sang Jewish and Polish and Hebrew songs.
    We formed a club, called ourselves
    United Jewish Newcomers.
    We made dances at JCC on 105th.
    We charged $0.50 admission, and at the end,
    we owed the JCC money, couldn't pay for the hall.
    And they wrote it off as a bad debt.
    And in 1950, I married.
    I met my husband at JCC, playing ping-pong
    while I was doing something else there.
    And my new life has emerged.
    Can you tell us whether there was
    some person or some remembrance that helped you
    during your difficult times?
    Well, physically, it was my mother that first saved me,
    and then it was my sister, who conceived the idea of us
    leaving Lwów because I would--
    if my sister hadn't come back, I certainly
    would have been destroyed.
    I wouldn't have come up with any such idea.
    Of course, Zosia, who helped us throughout.
    I think Mrs. Yanchevska, who I think knew, didn't turn me in.
    Spiritually, my mother helped me.
    I saw my mother in my dreams.
    For a very, very long time.
    So you think that this dreaming that you did also
    helped you keep your--
    Yeah, I saw her image--
    And that was the image--
    --nightly, and I hated to wake up.
    I think that sustained me.
    Did you speak a lot about your experiences,
    or did you just recently start to talk about them?
    Did you tell your children?
    No.
    I have not spoken to my children about my experiences
    for many, many years, and my daughter tells me--
    well, now we speak about it all the time.
    And my daughter, Marsha, tells me
    that when she was growing up, she
    was reading all these books on Holocaust.
    And she thought that all the things that she read
    happened to her parents, and she was deeply troubled by that.
    But she would not approach us for fear of evoking
    all of those bitter memories.
    But when we started talking--
    we started talking when the community started listening,
    and my children have been asking me to.
    Mom, I know it's so hard for you, but I would like to know.
    So you made some tapes for them.
    Yes, I made a tape, and my husband made a tape.
    And the kids listened to the tape,
    and I feel that now that I made the tape,
    I have opened that path between me and my children.
    That secret that separated us is no longer there,
    and it really was very important to say it.
    I feel that I have done what I should have done.
    I feel much better about it.
    I cleansed myself, and they know that there was a family.
    That they had a genealogy.
    Right.
    My daughter has made a tree, and she
    went to listen to this person--
    Arthur Kurzweil.
    --Kurzweil, who speaks on genealogy.
    And she's been writing to every place in his book
    to see if, perhaps, there will be a trace of someone who
    survived.
    Do you think-- or let me rephrase it.
    To what extent do you feel that the Holocaust
    has affected your present health and your emotional health?
    Well, it certainly has affected me and others like me.
    Outwardly, we do not look unusual.
    We have adjusted.
    But our scars are very deep, and they have
    perpetuated unto my children.
    They are very much aware of what happened.
    But this is not necessarily bad, that they are aware of it.
    No, I'm not saying that's bad.
    They should be aware of it.
    It's very painful, and if somebody tells you
    that we are not different-- that we are not different,
    it isn't so because we are.
    I think you would have to be different
    because your experiences were much more intensive and much
    different than ours.
    Thank you very much.
    Are we done?
    This is--
    Is there some-- may I?
    There's something I want to--
    Yeah, do you have something that you'd
    like to tell before we close?
    I'd like to say--
    I want to say that I'm very nationalistic.
    I bless America, and I love her dearly.
    I hope that work for advancement, for human rights,
    and understanding tolerance and defeat of bigotry and hatred
    never cease.
    I think that's a very good message.
    This is Miriam Wexberg, who is our Holocaust survivor,
    and Bea Stadtler, who is the interviewer.
    The project has been sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland Section.
    Thank you, Miriam.
    Thank you, Bea.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Miriam Wexberg
    Interviewer
    Bea Stadtler
    Date
    interview:  1984 November 01
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Wexberg, Miriam.

    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 08:11:45
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn505074

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    Summary (English)

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

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

    Date: 1984-1985

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    Oral history interview with Molly Akst

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    Molly Akst, born in Bodzanow-Ktodzisko, Poland, describes being one of seven children born to Orthodox parents; her grandfather living with the family; her family owning a dry-goods store; the positive relations between Jews and Gentiles in her town; belonging to the Mizrachi youth group; how the only antisemitic acts in Bodzanow were perpetrated mostly by young boys; leading a quiet, studious life and planning to eventually go to Krakow to teach Hebrew; the German invasion; the many restrictions placed on Jews; most men, including her father, being forced to go to work camps; her father returning home shortly before they were deported in March 1941; being sent to Chasno, where Jews were still living in their own homes and moving freely through the city; the creation of a ghetto in Chasno; convincing four of her siblings to escape with her; hiding for two years with gentile families and fields; keeping the other children safe; her sisters being denounced by a former neighbor in 1944; the arrest of the girls and their release after two weeks, but never seeing their younger sister again; taking her brothers and her sister to live in the woods; remaining in hiding, living outdoors until their liberation in January 1945; returning to Bodzanow, where they lived in a cousin's empty house; several Jews returning to the town and learning that her parents had died at Treblinka; getting married and going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; becoming ill with chronic hiccups; going to Montreal, Canada in 1948 after the birth of her son; her brothers and sister eventually moving to Cleveland, OH and joining them in 1957; living in Cleveland with her husband; and her two children and three grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral history interview with Jennie Alpert

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emerson Batdorff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral history interview with Estelle Beder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral history interview with Adam Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral history interview with Susan Eisdorfer Beer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral history interview with Sidonia Benedek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral history interview with Alice Ben-Horin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral history interview with Joseph Benson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral history interview with Jack Beigelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral history interview with Leah Binstock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral history interview with Elias Cala

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral history interview with Vincent Cochrane

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral history interview with W. Louis Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral history interview with Peppi Dekker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

    Oral history interview with Maury Feren

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    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 Max Solomon

    Oral history interview with Max Solomon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral history interview with Helen Stone

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral history interview with Inge Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral history interview with Jack Wieder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral history interview with Abraham Akst

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral history interview with Roni Berenson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Berger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral history interview with Leon Bergrin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral history interview with Betty Berliner

    Oral History

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

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

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Bitterman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral history interview with Helen Cik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Ann Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral history interview with Paul Cyncynatus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral history interview with Madeline Dautartus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral history interview with Eugene Davidovits

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral history interview with Karola Dorfberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral history interview with Helen Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral history interview with Louis Dub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral history interview with Leon Faigenbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral history interview with Helen Feig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral history interview with Lilly Feig and Helen Kormis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral history interview with Esther Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral history interview with Nina Frankel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Art Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral history interview with Rose Gelbart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral history interview with Erika Gold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral history interview with Wiera Goldman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Elaine Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Maurice Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral history interview with Zev Harel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral history interview with Larry Hersh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral history interview with Rose Kaplovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral history interview with Phillip Wexberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral history interview with Jack York

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Lavon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral history interview with Ezra Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Olga Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral history interview with Bella Lebowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lerer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral history interview with Ruth Lidawer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Danny Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral history interview with Eva Luedecke

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral history interview with Rosette Lurie

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral history interview with Harold Mailman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral history interview with Ita Majzner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral history interview with Isador Malcmacher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral history interview with Sandra Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral history interview with William McKee

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral history interview with Tibor Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral history interview with Henry Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral history interview with Jack Mintz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral history interview with Mark Moss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral history interview with Louis Muller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral history interview with Ben Nebel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral history interview with Mark Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral history interview with Marvin Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral history interview with Esther Pinkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral history interview with Sally Pitluk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral history interview with Mike Prayzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral history interview with Alex Rabiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral history interview with Eva Reis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral history interview with Leslie Robicsek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral history interview with Celia Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral history interview with David Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral history interview with Rena Rubinow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral history interview with Freda Salick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral history interview with David Schneider

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral history interview with William Seas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral history interview with Edith Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral history interview with Julia Simon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral history interview with Alfred Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral history interview with Jetse Sprey

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral history interview with Milton Steinbock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral history interview with Eric Stern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral history interview with Andrew Sternberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral history interview with Sam Teitelbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral history interview with Hannah Rath Trabitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral history interview with Freda Traub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral history interview with Harry Unger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Marcel Weintraub

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral history interview with Malke Weiss

    Oral History

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