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Oral history interview with Esther Raab

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1994.A.0447.23 | RG Number: RG-50.042.0023

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    Oral history interview with Esther Raab
    Transcript
    This'll be a interview with Esther Raab.
    It's sound roll one, camera one, take one coming up.
    Can you describe for me the transport
    to Sobibor and your arrival there, and what it was like,
    and what happened.
    I didn't come by train.
    I came by horse and wagon because I came
    from a small, working camp.
    And we were like 800 young girls and young men,
    and we rode the whole day to Sobibor.
    And the month, it was December, 1942, December 22, 1943, 42,
    I'm sorry.
    And after riding the whole day in the muds,
    and the wagons got stuck in the mud.
    And we had to go down and pull them out and on the way
    the farmers were outside.
    And they said, do you know where you're going?
    They're going to kill you, and they're going to burn you.
    As much as we knew before and as much we heard,
    we didn't believe it.
    It was very hard to comprehend, to believe,
    why take innocent people and just kill them
    with no reason at all.
    And as the day came to an end, it was only 20 kilometers,
    but it took a whole day.
    Everybody of us, from us, was so disgusted that we
    wanted to get over with.
    If that's what they're going to do to us, let's do it fast.
    So we won't have to suffer.
    I mean, not physically but mentally.
    You know, it was very hard to sit there and think
    I have four hours or three and a half hours or three hours.
    And as we came close to Sobibor after whole day natural
    without food, without water, but that really didn't bother.
    We were used to it.
    The SS came out with dogs and started barking.
    I mean, they never talked.
    They barked.
    You could never make out what they're saying.
    I spoke very well German.
    I had it in school, and I picked up more experience
    during the time.
    They started barking, and they told
    us to assemble on the platform, the railroad platform,
    and we all assembled there.
    And I stood in every way, and you felt already
    the smell there from the burning bodies, and you saw the fire,
    but you don't believe.
    I couldn't believe it.
    I myself and so my friends.
    And all of a sudden, I saw that a girlfriend
    of mine with whom I came walks by with a Kommandant from camp
    that was Wagner.
    The biggest murderer and the biggest
    devoted Nazi that ever existed.
    He was caught later in 1979 in Brazil,
    and she picks up one girl and another girl.
    And I said, Mira, who are you looking for?
    And she says, I'm looking for girls who know how to knit.
    And I said, what about my talent?
    And that was just a split second,
    and she pointed out to me, he said, raus and I came out.
    From the whole transport, they took out
    eight girls and two men which were
    fathers of some of the girls.
    One was a shoemaker, and one was a tailor.
    And they marched us up to the camp,
    and we figured we didn't have no idea what's going on.
    What they're going to do later with us.
    And the others, they marched up.
    And at that moment, I don't think
    you're capable of thinking.
    You don't plan.
    You don't think.
    You don't argue.
    You don't-- you're just numb, and that's how I was.
    Numb.
    And then he took us, all the girls with the two men,
    and they marched us in to the camp.
    The camp, [INAUDIBLE] of the camp
    was very small, very small.
    Because when we came in, we made up 20 women and 100 men.
    So it was very small.
    And that smell, and I thought to myself, what is that smell?
    That smell was-- you couldn't take it in.
    He put us in an empty barrack and then came in
    like the Kommandant, the Jewish Kommandant, of the inmates.
    And he said, you know where you are?
    And we didn't say boo because you didn't know whom to trust.
    You didn't know what to say.
    So we had to be very careful.
    And by looking at each other, we understood
    what we are supposed to do.
    And he explained that either way you see the fire,
    and you see this, and then they brought us in blankets
    and bread and coffee.
    And we figured that's the last meal.
    And we remained there until the morning.
    We lay down.
    We slept.
    We didn't sleep, but I cannot explain the feeling we had.
    If to believe that all those who were with us
    are not here anymore.
    We didn't know.
    We were just numb to the whole situation.
    Early in the morning, they told us to get up,
    and they marched us off to the sorting
    shed the next morning where they told us to sort out
    the belongings of the people.
    And then when we found the belongings and the pictures
    and the documents of the girls and the young men
    that were with us, we realized.
    But it's very hard to just put it into your head
    they are all dead.
    Why?
    It was very difficult. It was very difficult.
    It was very hard.
    And inside, it builds up right away
    a resentment, such a feeling of revenge, such anger.
    If I could just kill one for that what had happened,
    I would feel better.
    But you had to keep your mouth shut
    and just pretend you don't see.
    You don't hear.
    No emotions.
    No emotions whatsoever.
    We didn't even cry.
    Not one of us.
    Can you describe the transports coming in?
    The transport when, usually, most of them
    used to come in during the night, but there
    were some in the daytime too.
    When you heard that whistle from the Kommandant of the camp,
    that meant that the transport is coming in.
    And the men in the camp should get ready to unload the people.
    So that whistle was like somebody would tear out you
    insides.
    You knew here are other people, children, older people, people
    who never did anything wrong in their life,
    and they're going to go.
    And you cannot say.
    You cannot resist.
    You cannot-- just inside it builded up,
    the revenge and that resentment and that anger and that pain,
    you know that, we had builded up inside.
    And sometimes, they came in during the day.
    And sometimes so many came in that they couldn't handle.
    So they would put them behind our barbed wire
    where we were fenced in and tell us just to walk back and forth
    and forth and back.
    So what they told them that they were going to work
    should seem to them to be the truth.
    And it was hard.
    It was hard.
    You walk by, and you look at the face,
    and you know in a half hour won't be here.
    Can't even tell.
    You just put another smile, your best face you can.
    It hurt.
    It was very, very hard.
    And then some transports, usually,
    when I had to work near the railroad tracks,
    near the ramp--
    And sometimes, when a transport came,
    they send us all to the camp except for those
    who worked with the unloading of the people.
    But a few times we went to clean the houses from the SS.
    And there wasn't enough time to run back
    so they would lock us in.
    We knew ourselves we are not supposed
    to walk out and watch us.
    And sometimes, you saw the people,
    the way they were driven before they're dead.
    The torture before they're dead.
    We saw them leaving and screaming
    and children crying and elderly people.
    I cannot explain the feeling that I had, and I wondered why?
    Why, just why?
    That why was such a big question,
    and nobody could answer me.
    Like for instance, the once, I was called to clean up the--
    Boy.
    We just ran out.
    That was--
    Camera roll two starts here.
    Camera--
    This is an incident, which is going to be
    with me the rest of my life.
    All the people that I saw going and imagining what's
    going to happen.
    But once the big shot was supposed to come to Sobibor.
    Usually, they brought even Himmler was in Sobibor,
    to show him how efficient and how perfect they at killing
    and how good.
    And they bought the transport.
    So they took me to clean up the quarters, the living quarters,
    of some of the SS people which the windows face the railroad
    track.
    And while I was there cleaning with another girl,
    the whistle was there that the train comes in.
    So we knew we have to remain there.
    We cannot go out.
    And the transport came in and went everything very fast
    unloading of the people.
    And a mother left a baby--
    I don't know for what reason--
    in the boxcar.
    And Frenzel, who was at that time in charge
    of the transport, grabbed that little baby
    and smashed the head of the skull against the boxcar.
    And he just threw it in like a dead rat.
    And that just I cannot forget.
    I was at this trial about four times,
    and I told him what he did.
    He didn't deny it, but he followed orders.
    And this I cannot forget.
    Why kill that child in such a miserable way?
    Why?
    Why?
    It was a human being.
    I just wish that somebody would do to his children,
    and he should have to watch.
    And this is with me.
    I cannot forget.
    All the gruesome things that I saw, I saw a transport came,
    the people properly resisted in the boxcars.
    I don't know.
    So they threw in chlorine into the boxcars,
    and the whole transport came.
    So that natural all bodies were three or four times the size,
    some even were busted open, and they just deposit them.
    It's a really difficult to think about it and to talk about it.
    And all those builded up in me.
    Such an anger and a feeling of revenge.
    And I remember, after a few days, I came to the camp
    with a pair of brown leather boots, which not everybody had.
    Probably nobody.
    And I said to the group that we slept together, I
    took my boots, wrapped them up nicely,
    and put them on the bunk bed under my head.
    They said, why you put--
    I said, with these boots, I'm going to escape from Sobibor.
    Don't ask me why, and don't ask me how,
    and maybe it's not-- it doesn't even make sense,
    but I'm going to escape with these boots.
    And I did escape with these boots from Sobibor.
    And things like this, every day was something new.
    Like they took all the sick people,
    when we stood in the sorting shed and sorted
    the things from the people belongings,
    and you see the lorries or the wagons go by.
    And the older people or children who were maybe orphans
    were thrown in like cabbage.
    And then at the end rides Gomerski,
    who was in charge of that with the pistol and just asks,
    who is tired?
    And who cannot work, and who is sick?
    I'm going to help you, and then bullet, and then a bullet.
    And I cannot describe even the feeling.
    I cannot describe.
    I don't think there are words really to describe it.
    I was at his trial too.
    He said also he followed orders, and I told the judges,
    if Hitler would come now and give him orders or somebody
    else, they would do it again.
    And it was very hard just to watch.
    Like winter, sometimes, came the transport, and they were busy,
    and they couldn't handle so many.
    They told the people to undress in the snow in Poland.
    It's very cold in the snow naked,
    and they chased them like cattle.
    Cattle, I think, you take better care of.
    All the way to camp three to the gas chambers.
    Let's stop for the truck.
    Can you talk about--
    you talked once about a person named Mitchell, and a charade
    that he had telling people to hang up their clothes.
    Can you talk about--
    That this was in the beginning when it first started.
    They weren't as well organized as later on.
    So the German efficiency, they had the yard.
    A fenced-in yard with hooks to hang up the clothes,
    and they would assemble all the people from the transport,
    and he would go out.
    Scharführer Michel.
    We used to call them the House Speaker.
    And he would say in German, Jews,
    you think you're going to die.
    It won't happen.
    It won't happen to you.
    You brought here.
    You give up all your belongings with a number.
    You'll get a number.
    And you hang up your clothes, and you go to the showers
    because we are afraid of sicknesses,
    and then you'll be sent to work.
    But the way he said, in German, he said.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    If the Jews would want to die, but that won't happen.
    And I feel it was their way of doing it.
    I mean, they were very well organized,
    and I'm not surprised at myself and other people that we really
    didn't--
    Not that we believed it because we saw it,
    but we couldn't comprehend it.
    The way it was done with such a German efficiency,
    and everything to the minute and to the second.
    And in you always ask why, why?
    You cannot ask.
    It wasn't easy.
    To be in Sobibor or any other camp, I suppose, that camp,
    I don't think you could even think straight.
    I remember once came a big--
    when Himmler came to our camp, they brought 400 girls
    from Majdanik.
    That was also a death camp, to show him,
    and that's when they ordered to shave
    the heads from those victims.
    And they shaved the hair from them, and he went and looked,
    and they got such award that they're
    doing such a good job that after a while
    they liquidated Treblinka.
    And all of a sudden, when they closed up Treblinka,
    they brought all the inmates to Sobibor to be killed.
    They were afraid to do it there.
    So one afternoon, all of a sudden, the whistle and they
    lock us in in our compound.
    Then we knew something extraordinary is happening,
    and we could hear the train coming in.
    The Ukrainians took care of it, not our inmates,
    and we could hear shots.
    And we counted the shots.
    So much and so much.
    And after the last shot, they came, they let us out,
    and they send us to sort out their belongings.
    And as we started, we always check very careful everything
    for papers, for documents, for notes for anything.
    And we saw that they were from Treblinka.
    In every pocket was almost a note, take revenge.
    Take revenge.
    We couldn't.
    Maybe you can take the revenge.
    And in times like this and you felt they using you
    and look at what they do to you.
    The same thing.
    So why be here?
    Why?
    Just to their convenience, why?
    And then after a while, they brought the people from Belzec
    because they closed up Belzec too at that time.
    And they were-- and the same story happened there,
    and then they expanded Sobibor, and business started booming.
    Night and day you had transport.
    We used to work 14, 16, 18 hours a day.
    I mean, into the night.
    Just the men took care of the helping
    to unload the people of the belongings.
    And then you had to pack up, and they had to ship it to Germany.
    It was very difficult. I cannot explain that feeling
    and the resentment and the hate and the revenge.
    The revenge was so great--
    We have to reload.
    Can you talk about the choices that the guards
    had versus the choices that you, the prisoners, had?
    First of all, the guards had all the privileges.
    They could do whatever they wanted.
    They didn't have to account if they killed somebody or hit
    somebody or mistreated somebody.
    We didn't have no privileges.
    We were there to serve the Germans probably as
    long as they would have needed us,
    and then it would be the end.
    The guards could go outside, The guards could have furlough.
    The guards had enough food.
    It's altogether a different ball game.
    Did you have choices?
    No, I didn't have no choice.
    Whatever I was told, I had to do.
    And maybe better than I could.
    And whatever they gave me that was to eat, and that's it.
    The only thing that we had in our favor in Sobibor
    which other camps didn't have--
    I don't know about Treblinka and Belzec--
    that they didn't shave our hair.
    The inmates, and that we could take clean clothes
    from the transport and change.
    And we could wash us selves.
    And I think this was keeping ourselves clean
    wasn't so dehumanizing that people
    had in other camps with the dirt, with the filth.
    That this is only for one reason.
    First of all, was as propaganda.
    If some transports came in, they should see that we still
    look like human beings.
    And second of all, they lived so close
    to our quarters, the German quarters,
    that they were afraid for diseases.
    And there was enough clothes so we could
    take and keep ourselves clean.
    This was one of the biggest thing that kept us going.
    We were hungry, not enough.
    Sometimes we stole something from the transport.
    The people used to bring bread or whatever.
    But that was very risky because most of the time
    when we walked to the barracks from the working place,
    they used to check us.
    They used to check us if we didn't take something or so.
    But we tried.
    Sometimes we were successful.
    But the main thing that we could keep ourselves clean,
    and that's why we had that courage and that
    will to do something.
    Because when you way down physically
    and filthy and dirty and shaven and this,
    you give up that very first.
    But I feel that kept us going, and that's
    why we thought even if one makes it and go out, he look normal.
    He won't be right away suspicious.
    He has a stripe outfit.
    He doesn't have no hair.
    That was one plus that they didn't think about
    that we had in our favor to think about uprising, thinking
    about taking revenge and so forth.
    Once a partisan group approached the camp, and they wanted--
    I don't know-- liberate.
    Whatever they wanted to do, but we knew
    it was a partisan group.
    And during the night, the whistle came.
    We had all run out whatever we had on and stayed
    barefooted in the snow probably two or three hours
    or more surrounded by machine guns and everything.
    They figured if they should happen to go through,
    they'll kill us off, but they left the partisans,
    and we went back.
    And at that time, they made minefields around the camp.
    Before, there were no minefields.
    We were so deep in the woods that nobody could even know
    that something goes on there.
    So we started thinking about uprising, about revenge,
    and I think that kept us going.
    Although it was a silly thought, but you know,
    that gave us the courage to survive.
    Because we planned.
    We planned.
    The plans weren't worth it maybe in the beginning $0.05.
    But we planned, and we saw ourselves outside,
    and we saw all the Nazis killed.
    And this kept us going.
    And every day in 1943, probably in February or when,
    Leon Felhendler was picked out from a transport
    and brought in.
    We were cousins by marriage, and after we
    told him what's going on, everybody who came in
    or they took him out, if they killed 10 from us,
    they picked out another 10 from the next transport.
    We told them.
    And he said, we have to escape.
    And we asked how, he said, there must be a way,
    and we're going to escape.
    And we started planning and going
    to a meeting, which only a few went because you
    had to be very careful.
    And coming back, you felt like you're doing something.
    You're planning something.
    You're trying something.
    If you'll succeed, it would be wonderful.
    If not, you'll get a bullet in the back.
    It's better than going to the gas chambers.
    I promised myself I'll never go to the gas chamber.
    I'll start running.
    They have to waste a bullet on me.
    And we started organizing and talking,
    and it kept us alive again.
    You know, that maybe we'll be able to take the revenge
    for all those who cannot.
    Who are already burned dead.
    We promised ourselves it didn't matter if we'll survive or not,
    but to do something.
    Not that the world shouldn't say the Jews
    went like sheep to the slaughter.
    It's not true.
    We saw a lot of incidents in camp
    where women hit the SS people.
    They hit once the Untersturmführer [? Neumann. ?]
    They almost popped out an eye.
    He was all bandaged up.
    They did.
    They did.
    But they're not here to tell the story.
    And I feel that the resistance in general--
    not talking about Sobibor which Sobibor
    had a successful revolt.
    The others tried and didn't succeed.
    You know, this was the only successful revolt,
    but people fought back.
    They fought back in the woods.
    They fought back on the train stations.
    They fought every step of the way,
    but they're not here to tell and that hurts.
    It hurts.
    And time runs out and the survivors too.
    Tell me what a death camp is.
    Assume that I don't know.
    Just define it as opposed to other kinds of camps.
    You see, the other camps were half slave labor camp
    and half death camp.
    Sobibor was only a death camp.
    There was no such thing as slave labor camp.
    That was only strictly the inmates
    that were picked out from the trans- they just took care
    of the killings of the people.
    I mean, they didn't kill them, but they helped.
    You know, they had to.
    And of the work in the camp of taking care of the SS people,
    that's the difference from Sobibor to Auschwitz lets say.
    Auschwitz was a half slave labor camp and a death camp.
    Sobibor was just a death camp.
    No slave there.
    No work, no producing, no doing, nothing.
    Can you tell me about the seamstress and her baby?
    Yeah, she was there.
    She came with the transport in my time
    already with her husband.
    She was a seamstress, and he was a tailor.
    Although, in the film, she says that he
    was in the partisan group, but she came with the husband.
    And she had that baby, I would say, about two weeks.
    And then they finally found it because they
    used to come in unannounced, and they walked in,
    and they saw the baby.
    They gave her a choice.
    It's true.
    They have her a choice that they're going to take the baby,
    and she can remain because she was very good seamstress.
    They used to wear underwear only from silk from the parachutes.
    They didn't use plain materials the SS.
    She was excellent.
    Shirts and underwear to make from those parachutes.
    We have to reload.
    We have to do this--
    This will be--
    OK, let's just start again.
    And do that whole thing again.
    With?
    The seamstress.
    Tell me about she-- what her work was, what she did,
    how she had the baby.
    She came into the camp with her husband.
    He was a good tailor, and she was an excellent seamstress.
    And the Nazis didn't wear underwear just
    from plain material.
    Everything had to be made from silk,
    the shirts, the underwear.
    So she was excellent.
    They brought a lot of silk from the parachutes.
    And she used to be able-- if you told her out of this piece
    has to come out three shirts and three under-- it came out.
    I don't know how she did it.
    But it came out.
    And then after she had the baby, and we all pitched in to help.
    I mean first of all was a baby, second of all, again,
    to do something against the Nazis, maybe we'll be able.
    It was a challenge at the same time.
    And so she kept it for two weeks.
    And once Wagner walked in unannounced, unexpected,
    and he heard the baby.
    And he gave her a choice.
    He gave her choice, just because they needed her.
    Otherwise they wouldn't have.
    And which mother would give up a baby?
    And she just spit in his face right then and there.
    And they shot them both.
    But they was such murderers that he
    had to shoot the baby first, so the mother should
    die with more pain.
    And so I mean I cannot explain what went on in the mind
    of those people, of those SS people.
    I mean a human being was nothing.
    This we know.
    But they took such a joy in seeing blood, in hurting.
    They weren't people, they were animals, hound dogs.
    I always said, they bark like dogs
    and they act like wild dogs.
    It's very difficult. And we were very hurt at that time.
    When you see things like that, and especially when
    they took one of us.
    We were a small group.
    And you felt like they tear out a piece of you.
    That here she was, and the baby was here.
    And you know, there was a little life in the seamstress room.
    And they tore it out completely.
    And you just-- you have to put up a face.
    But inside, everything is boiling, and boiling,
    and boiling, and boiling.
    And it wasn't easy.
    It was very, very hard.
    Not once we said to ourselves, we wish they would finish us.
    But then one encouraged the others,
    especially when Leon came.
    You'll see.
    We're get out, and we'll get out, then we'll get out.
    And one looked at the other, and figured the other one is crazy,
    thinking even about it.
    And that's how every day passed by with the hope of revenge.
    Tell me about escapes and punishments for escapes,
    successful or not.
    First, they escaped, two people.
    They were [NON-ENGLISH] they were plasterers.
    And at that time there were no mines that came.
    So they dug a hole underneath the first fence,
    and they escaped.
    When they escaped, they always explained
    why they're doing things to us.
    They assembled us, and they said every 10th.
    And they took out every 10th, and they shot them
    in front of us.
    And if somebody escapes, that's what's going to happen.
    And those two [NON-ENGLISH] didn't make it.
    They didn't make it.
    Then we had-- they used to take two people to the woods,
    because as Sobibor was announced the best, most efficient death
    camp, so they had to expand, and they had to build,
    and they had to do, and always kept busy.
    The Nazis didn't want to go to the Russian front.
    So they built, and they expand, and they said they need this,
    and they took out more people in order
    to escape from the Russian front.
    And they took out some people to the woods, to cut wood,
    and they used to make their own logs.
    Everything was done on the premises.
    And two escaped.
    They lived a while and they are not alive anymore.
    They went with the guard for water, and they hid them,
    and they escaped.
    They survived the war even.
    And when they escaped, that day I worked in the weaponry.
    They were low on ammunition, so they brought some bullets which
    they got from the Russians.
    And they were rusty.
    So few girls, we sat there, and we sanded them down, and filled
    the belts with the ammunition.
    And all of a sudden, the guy who watched us, the watchman,
    he was a Ukrainian.
    But he was a nice guy.
    But we didn't trust him.
    He said to us, you'll see what I'm going to do.
    One will get killed because of me.
    And it was true.
    But you don't know who to trust.
    And he came around again, and he said, I have to lock you up.
    Something is going on.
    And there's not enough time for you
    to go back to your compound.
    And we saw those people walking in from the main gate,
    on their knees with their hands like this.
    They were beaten up.
    You couldn't tell their faces anymore.
    And then all of a sudden as they walked by the weaponry,
    we heard the whistle.
    And he came, and he opened the door.
    And we had to run to the camp.
    And assembling right away, and as we assembled,
    [NON-ENGLISH] was such a dog, such a miserable character,
    I went to his trial too.
    He followed orders too.
    And they marched us off to camp 3.
    Camp 3 was with the gas chambers.
    And they told us to assemble in a half moon.
    And all those poor guys were standing there.
    You couldn't tell who was who.
    That's how they were beaten up.
    And they told them to pick out another 45 from us,
    and they're going to be shot with them.
    First they had a long speech that some guys of ours
    killed one watchman, one Ukrainian.
    And for, this we have to pay.
    On the way to camp 3, they told us
    that we all are going to be shot.
    But as we came there, they probably changed their mind.
    I don't know why.
    And they told them to pick out.
    And I can imagine how hard it was on those guys
    to go over and choose that you have to be killed.
    I mean in the morning, he was my friend, and now I have to--
    it was a difficult time.
    If not, they said they're going to take 50.
    So some stepped, out and they picked
    blindly and they shot them all in front of us, in their faces.
    They wouldn't let them.
    And friends went over, whoever maybe,
    budged or something, another bullet.
    And these things were so hard on us, harder than the transport.
    Because here we're like a family.
    We planned together.
    We suffered together.
    We do together, and we hoped together.
    And if you take out such a part from us,
    it's like tearing out your own heart.
    But you had to go away and pretend again
    that you didn't see it, or maybe what happened, happened.
    It wasn't easy.
    It wasn't easy.
    I always said to myself, if they would kill me,
    it would be easier for me then to watch somebody
    that I knew and maybe ate together, and stayed together,
    and suffered together, and planned together.
    It was very difficult. It was very difficult.
    We're almost-- we only have one minute left.
    Why don't you just describe for me Wagner or Frenzel.
    I think Wagner, he was caught in 1979 in Brazil.
    Wagner was illiterate.
    That's what they said.
    But he was such a devoted Nazi.
    And there were days when he needed blood,
    like a dog needs blood.
    He needed it.
    When he used to walk in with his thumbs in his pocket,
    we knew that somebody is going to go, otherwise he won't ask,
    besides what he did for the transport.
    And we knew also, but at the same time,
    as illiterate as he was, he was so shrewd
    that he knew what you think, not what you say.
    Why don't we just--
    why don't we do the escape now, the planning and then
    how it happened?
    We planned all the time.
    And we talked about it, and we had the plan ready.
    It was just a matter of time, because we
    had to plan when Wagner is on vacation.
    Because we knew-- on furlough--
    if he'll be in the camp, he'll smell it out.
    There's no two ways about it.
    So we waited.
    In the meanwhile, we knew the schedule with furloughs,
    by being there, we knew everything.
    And before Wagner had to go, 28 days before,
    they brought in a Russian unit from POWs.
    At first, we couldn't understand why.
    But then we found out they were all Jews.
    They were POWs.
    And we got in touch with one of the leaders.
    Every group had a leader.
    And we told them our plan and we asked him,
    because we didn't know what's going on outside,
    how far the front is, and what's going on in general.
    And he told us approximately what's going on and how far.
    And we needed that encouragement.
    And they gave us.
    And they said, your plan is good, and it's going to work.
    And it has to work, and we have to try.
    We don't have a lot to lose.
    And we decided the date.
    When Wagner left, and the date was
    original the 13th of October.
    And that day, we all got the ready.
    Ready?
    We put on two sweaters and my boots
    I put on for the first time again.
    And I get dressed with the coat and with the kerchief.
    And you didn't take no luggage with you.
    You didn't know where you're going anyway,
    if you'll make it.
    And then some units from military Gestapo
    came to the camp, never used to come on that day,
    and we thought somebody maybe slipped out.
    But they left.
    And the next day exactly the plan was at 4 o'clock
    should start everybody has to kill his SS man,
    and his guard at his place of work.
    And it started working, and I was like a messenger girl.
    Going here, four I killed and five I
    killed, just throwing signals, not talking.
    But we couldn't find Frenzel.
    And we thought the electric line was cut,
    telephone wire was cut.
    We were afraid that somehow he got out on the outside
    and went for help.
    And this was before decided.
    In case anything goes wrong, everybody on his own.
    And where everyone can run, or everyone can jump,
    should go, maybe one will survive.
    And will be able to tell the world.
    And we assembled like in a normal day, and then
    Sasha and Leon, the organizers went up on the table
    and they said, we can't find Frenzel.
    Everybody on his own.
    But a lot of people were panicky right away.
    A lot of people didn't want to go.
    They gave up.
    And those who felt they want to try just ran in all directions.
    I saw that somebody put the stepladder behind a carpenter
    shop, and that people are climbing out.
    No one explained.
    This was all split seconds.
    And I just jumped up that step ladder.
    And as I was on top, I noticed a lot of bodies
    already under mine.
    Some people went before me.
    I got a bullet shot from the tower right here.
    And I fell down.
    As I fell down, I was so much aware,
    and the will to live so great there's no measurements to it,
    that I started hopping on dead bodies.
    And soon I reached the woods.
    We were in the woods.
    It was-- I felt I did it.
    I made it.
    For all those, I just looked back to the fire.
    The fire was still burning, and to the people in the back.
    And I figured, I did it for you.
    We took revenge.
    What's going to happen from now on?
    It's a different story.
    Because the war was still on.
    And I had to survive another nine months.
    How-- when you say everyone had to kill his SS man,
    what was the plan for that, and how did it happen?
    If he came in, let's say they called him
    in, they said his suit is ready to try on, his uniform.
    So when he came in, they put it down.
    Everybody had sand in his pockets and a knife.
    This we all had, because we felt if you throw sand in the face,
    then it's easy to stick in the knife.
    Because the person gets blinded.
    So that's what they did.
    The minute he came in, they threw sand,
    they stuck a knife in, and they hit him,
    and that's how we did it.
    We didn't have no weapons.
    The original plan was to assemble,
    to go to the weaponry, take out all the weapons,
    and march out through the main gate.
    But we didn't succeed.
    The plan didn't succeed, because we couldn't find Frenzel,
    and had to be everybody on his own.
    So we did the best we could with whatever we had.
    When you got shot in the head, and you fell down,
    how did you manage to get up again?
    You get up.
    When your life is at stake, you get up very fast.
    You don't think.
    The blood was streaming, and I was running.
    And I didn't get an infection, all those weeks
    that I was in the woods.
    And I didn't get sick without food,
    without water for two weeks, until I
    reached a farm where I wanted--
    where I thought I'll find refuge.
    Tell me about that.
    Tell me about the dream.
    Tell me about getting.
    You see, in Sobibor, all the time that we planned, we knew.
    Actually the one thing that we want to accomplish
    is to kill a few Nazis, and get out,
    And maybe they'll close up Sobibor and all
    that for the end.
    And you didn't think where you're
    going to go, what you're going to do, especially when we had
    plans to go to the weaponry, take the ammunition,
    and go into the woods, and form a partisan group.
    If we have weapons, we can--
    and we had the military people who knew how.
    We didn't know how.
    But like the first day when it didn't come--
    we couldn't run because of the visitors, then at night,
    we lay down.
    In Sobibor, I never cried.
    Nobody cried.
    You were so numb to everything that you saw around you
    that your feelings were dead.
    You just acted like a mechanical thing.
    You get up.
    You go to work.
    You listen, and that's it.
    And that evening, we cried.
    We cried very, very much.
    And everybody said, goodbye.
    Because we figured in our wildest dreams,
    we didn't think one is going to survive.
    And as I cried, I cried myself to sleep.
    I dozed off, and I saw my mother coming into the camp
    through the main gate.
    The way I left, that's how she looked.
    And I said, mom, you know that we're going to escape tomorrow.
    She says, yes.
    That's why I came.
    And she said to me, come with me.
    She took me by the hand, and she led me out
    through the main gate.
    And as we came out she took me into a barn,
    and she showed me the loft where the straw is on top.
    And she says go up here.
    And you'll survive.
    And that was the end of the dream.
    In the morning when I got up, I recognized that barn.
    It was a friend of my parents, and they had a farm.
    They lived in the city, but they had a farm, like a gentleman's
    farm, in the suburbs.
    And I said you know what?
    If I'll survive and I'll escape, I'm going to go to that farm
    and see what's there.
    So they all said, you probably thought about your mother,
    so you dreamed about it.
    You know how they explain.
    But as we escaped and they told us
    to go in groups, not all together, because we
    didn't have any weapons.
    We had a few.
    And if one group was going to get caught,
    the other one will maybe survive.
    And so I wound up with seven men and another girl
    from Czechoslovakian.
    Natural for the girls from other countries,
    it was very hard for the people, because of the language
    barrier.
    Then they were right away recognized.
    So I walked from--
    we escaped on Thursday, and it was already Sunday morning.
    And I just couldn't anymore.
    My wound started hurting me.
    It was brutally infected.
    And in Poland, it was so cold and rain and mud.
    And I being--
    We need to reload.
    OK.
    OK.
    Let's go back to the getting out, and going, making your way
    to the barn.
    Yes.
    So on Sunday, I was finished, no food since Thursday night,
    no water.
    In Poland there's a lot mush in the fields,
    because of the rain.
    We used to squeeze in, just to have a drop of water.
    And on Sunday morning, I saw from far away,
    there's a little deserted house.
    And I said to them, I'm going in.
    Whatever will happen, it'll happen.
    I cannot take it any longer.
    So one guy said, I'll go with you.
    And we started walking.
    And the others said, if he'll be able to buy some food,
    he'll bring it back.
    And as I approached that little house, a house a room,
    and another guy followed us.
    And I knocked on the door.
    And there was a little room, a Polish farmer without teeth.
    I don't know how old he was.
    The cow was there.
    The bed was.
    There the stove was there.
    Those were the conditions.
    And he said, you must be from Sobibor.
    And I said, yes.
    He said, you did the right thing.
    And he said, what can I do for you?
    I said, I'm hungry.
    And I have that wound, and I need cleaning up.
    I had very long braids in Sobibor.
    And on the way when I took out the pins,
    one braid just fell off, because this side.
    And he said, listen.
    How many are you?
    And I said two.
    And then the third one crawled in, and I said that's it.
    And he took us into the barn.
    And he said, he has to go to church.
    And after-- because the people get suspicious.
    After he'll come back, he will feed us.
    And that I was afraid he's going for the SS.
    We didn't trust nobody.
    And as he left and came back in a few hours,
    he brought us in food.
    I still have the taste in my mouth--
    borscht, and meat, and milk, and bread, and cheese.
    And I said, my God.
    That's probably also our last meal.
    And then he said, when it will get real quiet in the village,
    you'll come down and I'll help you out.
    And then when it got real quiet--
    he lived there with his son.
    His son was in his 20s.
    He called us into the house.
    I'm telling it fast.
    And he had a big pot of water boiling.
    He said to me, you go behind the tub
    there and wash up a little bit, and wash up your wound.
    And I'll see what I can do for you.
    And I came back, and he put unsalted lard.
    He said, this helps.
    I don't know.
    It helped.
    No infection or anything.
    And he gave us again to eat.
    And he said, what do you want to do now?
    I said I have to go to one place.
    And if that farmer won't take me in, I'll come back.
    But you have to tell me the village and your name.
    He was afraid.
    If they catch me--
    which I understood.
    So he said, my son at midnight, he'll take you out,
    and he'll show you the road, where to go.
    I told him where I want to go.
    But I didn't tell him the village either.
    Because I was afraid to give away.
    So he gave us a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread.
    And we had some money.
    And I took out and wanted to pay him.
    He said, no.
    There'll be people that won't give you without money.
    And the son took us to the woods.
    And he told us where to go.
    From there to the village, where I wanted to go
    was probably 15 kilometers, about 10 miles.
    I could make it easily in half a day.
    But we walked for two weeks.
    And then we didn't find the others.
    The others thought we went in, and we are not coming out.
    Maybe they killed us.
    So they ran away.
    Nobody from those survived, nobody.
    And while walking in those two weeks, we just walked at night.
    In the daytime, we were afraid.
    We met a lot of partisan groups.
    And those two guys said, why don't we join them?
    I said, if you want to go to the partisans, you go.
    I'm going where I want to go.
    And we walked two weeks, three days we stayed near the highway
    just to cross.
    There was such a busy--
    on the highway, because the Russians
    prepared the offensive against the Germans for the spring.
    And this was already in October.
    And we crossed, and then I went up
    and I recognized the house in the dark.
    But I knew that his mother lives across the road.
    So I said, let me go into his mother.
    I know she's alone.
    But in his house, who knows who can be there?
    So I knocked in the window.
    And the guy came out and said, please.
    Don't shoot.
    Don't shoot.
    He told we are partisans.
    I said, I'm not shooting.
    I just want to know where that owner from this farm is.
    He said, why do you want him?
    I said I have something to settle with him.
    I couldn't tell him I want him to take me in.
    So he said, he doesn't live here.
    In the other house lives his old mother,
    and he lives in the city.
    Which I knew that he lives in the city from before the war.
    So we went across, and we went into the barn.
    We climbed up, and we laid on that loft upstairs.
    But nobody came.
    We heard the babushka going out, feeding the chickens,
    feeding the cow, and nothing.
    We stayed there for three days.
    And we got hungry.
    So we said, soon it will get dark.
    We'll go to the neighboring village.
    Maybe we'll organize some food, buy or maybe someone--
    so we went, and we went a few kilometers.
    We got the bottle of milk again, and a loaf of bread,
    and some onions, and we started walking back.
    And we came back and we climbed up the loft.
    I'm making it very short, as you see.
    And the bottle of milk, the guy, one of the guys
    left it on the floor downstairs.
    And I said, where's the milk?
    He said, I left it.
    It wasn't a bottle of milk.
    But we were afraid to leave any traces that people are here.
    So I told him, go down.
    And in the dark just try to find it.
    And as he went down and looked, and I said in Jewish to him,
    did you find it?
    And as I said did you find it, like a ghost jumped out
    from that loft dressed in white.
    He said, who are you?
    And then I said--
    I recognized his voice.
    And I said Yidl, that was my brother's name.
    And then he said, you dead.
    You better sit down.
    And we'll wait.
    He took my hand, and we waited until daylight.
    We didn't talk to each other even.
    In the morning, I told him from where I came.
    And he was there already 9 months or 10 months.
    And I told him about the dream that mother told
    me to go here, that I'll find--
    she didn't say why.
    She just said, you'll survive there.
    And it took probably-- so my brother said, listen.
    He had, as the loft was probably like a floor high, solid,
    the straw the solid packed.
    You could climb down underneath the ground.
    That's how they made him a bunker underneath the ground
    through the cement floor, a hole.
    He said let's go in.
    And when he'll come, I'll tell them that you were sick
    and one of the men helped you.
    And the other one, we won't say nothing.
    If he'll take you in, whatever he'll give us to eat,
    we'll share it.
    Because three might be too many.
    So after a few days, he came.
    And he had a certain whistle that my brother
    knew the coast was clear.
    My brother jumped out and he said
    partisans are looking for me.
    They want to kill me.
    I don't know if I'll be able to bring more food.
    Because he used to bring the food from the city, food,
    bread.
    And my brother said, it's not partisans.
    It's my sister.
    But she didn't want to say, so she said that.
    So he said, I should come out.
    When I came out, he just went like this.
    And he said, if God put you all together,
    we're going to try to survive all together.
    And that's how I survived with the other two men.
    I was nine months there.
    Without a drop of warm water or cooked food, only bread.
    He used to bring in some onions, some garlic.
    He claimed that that helps your health.
    Now they come out with the same thing.
    Sometimes for the holidays a little jam, a little margarine.
    But he did the best he could.
    He did the best he could.
    And I'll never forget him.
    I mean he's not alive anymore.
    Mom is not alive.
    I'm going almost every year back to Poland
    to visit the children.
    This is already a grandson of his, the one who drove me in.
    They all were in the United States.
    We helped them all out.
    They all have a good education.
    They're all nice people.
    [BEEP]
    Can you tell me again how you felt
    at the moment of the escape?
    How your fear left you and how you felt?
    At the moment of the escape, everybody
    was very nervous and very shaky.
    But there was no way back.
    You had to go.
    One pushed the other.
    It wasn't easy.
    But actually, we didn't have time
    to really think and sort out our thoughts.
    But it was you have to go and you try to survive.
    Even if you hop all over bodies, you don't look back.
    Everything happened split second.
    There was no time to think.
    You were afraid.
    You were scared.
    You were nervous.
    You were shaky.
    But you didn't think.
    Just go as far as you can in those few moments.
    It was very fortunate for us that the woods were right ne--
    that we were in the woods.
    And the field between the camp and the woods wasn't too big.
    My legs were like rubbery.
    They couldn't even run.
    But I did.
    I remember I grabbed the girl to hold down.
    And when it's meant for you to survive or to live,
    you have to believe.
    I'm a strong believer.
    I never gave up my faith.
    And I grabbed her.
    Sarah was her name.
    And she saw that I'm bleeding.
    And so she pushed me away and she said, I want to live.
    And as she said I want to live, a bullet hit her.
    It was meant for her to die.
    It was meant for me to live.
    I don't know why.
    She wasn't worse than I am.
    I wasn't better than she was.
    It's just you have to believe.
    You have to have the faith, because I
    realize that my faith helped me an awful lot.
    Were there people who betrayed you when you were in the camp?
    No.
    No.
    I never had that.
    No, no, no.
    Now, let's go back to before the war.
    Just one thing I want to add on, as I ran with my group,
    after three days, three nights of walking,
    we came back to Sobibor.
    We walked in circles.
    We didn't know.
    And then we started all over again, to run.
    Yeah.
    Let's go back to--
    let's do one other thing.
    What happened to Sobibor after?
    They erased everything-- they killed
    all the people who remained.
    They caught them or whatever.
    A lot of didn't even go.
    They didn't want to.
    They had given up.
    They lost all their families.
    They just didn't care.
    And they erased every trace.
    They dismantled everything.
    And they plant little pine trees.
    You know, it's already going to be soon 50 years,
    49 years, that we escaped.
    Those pine trees, the way they plant them, they never grow.
    They're just the same size.
    I go back to Sobibor almost every year now.
    Now, tell me about before the war, how life changed for you,
    what you remember of the--
    I remember everything.
    I had a very happy life.
    We were two children.
    My father wasn't rich.
    But he was middle class, comfortable middle class.
    I finished public school.
    I went to business school.
    And I never finished because the war came.
    And I had a big family, lots of cousins and aunts and uncles,
    besides friends.
    And I had a very happy life.
    And all of a sudden, everything was gone.
    And I was left alone.
    My father was shot in 1939.
    When the first unit of SS came into our city,
    they picked out-- they told the people
    to report to the main place there
    in our city, the rich people, not so
    rich people, the educated people, the important people.
    And it was 600 and some.
    And they shot-- my brother went with them.
    And they shot them all.
    My brother pretended that he's dead,
    that he got shot and came back.
    That was right away 1939, December.
    And then tell me the incident where
    you were in line and the mistress of the SS--
    Yeah, this was-- and then they put us in a ghetto,
    in Chelm, when they made the ghetto.
    And my mother couldn't live there.
    There were another woman and six children
    and my mother and the two of us in the room in the kitchen.
    That's it.
    And she couldn't take it.
    She couldn't.
    So we had family in a small town, not far from the city
    where I was born.
    And they wrote us that we should come there.
    There's not so bad.
    And they have plenty of room in their house to take us in.
    And we moved there, to Siedliszcze.
    And we stayed there for about a year.
    We moved in '41, about a year or longer.
    And there, it wasn't really so bad.
    I had to go to work every day to dig ditches.
    They wanted to dry--
    Poland had a lot of swamps.
    And they wanted to dry up the fields so they can plant more.
    And they were sure they're going to stay there forever.
    So I used to go with my brother every day to work.
    And my mother would remain at home.
    We would hide during the day.
    In the evening, we would come back.
    And she would come out of the hiding place.
    And we stayed together until '42 October.
    And it wasn't so bad.
    We worked.
    We went every day to work.
    We had enough to eat, not luxuriously,
    but we weren't hungry.
    And when my mother was home, she could wash our clothes
    and help us out.
    And we stayed there.
    And there was in charge, he was a Polack, not a Ukrainian.
    He was the engineer of the whole project.
    And one day, I noticed that he had a girlfriend, which
    lived in our city and I knew before the war, very
    beautiful, nice girl.
    And when she saw me in town, she would say hello and ask me
    if I need something.
    And we became, not friends because who
    am I to be a friend to her, but just acquaintances,
    let's put it this way.
    And then from there, from this place,
    they took us to Staw-Nowosiołki And in Staw-Nowosiołk was
    the worst place I ever went except Sobibor.
    The conditions were unbearable.
    So one day, they told us to get our belongings.
    They gave us a half hour.
    We are going.
    So we went and we walked to [? Staf ?] probably 10,
    12 miles in the wind and October and the mud.
    And my mother said take this and take this,
    and maybe you'll be able to sell it,
    and, maybe you'll be able to buy something, food.
    So my brother and I, we had bundles.
    And I had two coats, my mother's coat, a good coat, and my coat.
    She said she don't need right now.
    She has enough one.
    And we walked all the way, the 10, 12 kilometers.
    And when we came into Staw, I turned yellow, just yellow.
    And I was a young girl, 19, 18 and 1/2.
    And they assembled us.
    And they started picking out to the left and the right.
    Staw was also a working place.
    And as it came up to me, they put me with the older people.
    And she was walking around there with her boyfriend,
    with the big German shepherd, you know.
    And I said, Wanda, look what they did to me.
    She said, come out.
    And I came out.
    And she took out the lipstick and she rubbed in my cheeks.
    And she says take off the babushka.
    I had a babushka to keep warm.
    And she pushed me in again in the line.
    And as I went by again, they took me out
    with the young people.
    You always felt maybe with the young ones
    you have a better chance.
    So I have to say, all through the war, I was very lucky.
    Luck was with me from the first day on.
    I mean I wasn't lucky that I had to go
    through what I went through.
    But by being there, I was lucky that somehow somebody
    lended me over a hand to take me out of a dangerous situation.
    And she took me out, and I went in with the young people.
    And--
    [BEEP]
    9.
    People like to believe in heroism.
    And people like to believe in humankind.
    What is your experience make you feel?
    That the I tried the best.
    I wasn't a hero.
    There were people who were much smarter than I am
    and maybe more capable.
    But I just was at the right place at the right time.
    And I took advantage.
    And I wouldn't say that I'm a hero.
    I just had made up my mind that I would get out.
    But I didn't organize.
    I just was at the right place at the right time
    and thought for the right people.
    And together we did it.
    Before the escape, and other than the planning
    together of the escape, were you inmates
    supportive of one another?
    Very much so.
    Very much so.
    It just because we were such a small amount of people.
    So we became like a family.
    If we knew that this one works very hard
    and needs maybe an extra piece of bread, a little soup,
    we shared.
    I think the relationship in Sobibor was so close
    and everybody tried to help the other one so much that this
    helped too.
    And now, can you talk to me a little bit about the age group
    who survived primarily?
    I mean, who were mostly sacrificed?
    When you say the young and the old, how old were the old?
    You see, when are so young like I was,
    probably 30 was old or 35.
    So really, to judge who was old and who were--
    they were older people who were professionals
    in certain fields, if it was carpentry.
    But I couldn't say.
    But after the war, I would say half and half survived
    when I think older ones and younger ones.
    I feel it was a matter of luck.
    You had to be lucky to survive.
    God had to be with you to survive.
    It isn't nothing that you planned
    or you were smarter than the next one.
    I don't believe in that.
    Was there spiritual resistance in Sobibor?
    Yes.
    There was a lot of spiritual resistance.
    And one isn't surprised.
    And I wasn't surprised either.
    When you see day by day coming transport and being
    killed for no reason, you start asking questions.
    Where is God?
    But there was some who believed.
    And it was-- don't ask me why, I was a strong believer.
    Don't ask me why.
    It just was in me.
    And because I had that faith, I think it was much easier for me
    than for the others.
    Were you able to pray?
    I mean, if you prayed, you prayed only
    to see the Nazis dead.
    That was the only prayer you prayed.
    But everybody prayed in his own way, I suppose,
    deep down, not out loudly.
    And there was once--
    you know Yom Kippur.
    That's the holiest day by the Jews.
    And being it was shortly before the day
    that we set for the escape.
    So they made like services in one of the barracks.
    So the ones who didn't believe and didn't want to go in,
    they stood guard outside.
    They respected what we are doing.
    And they didn't go in, but they helped us.
    So I feel there was a great deal of compassion in camp.
    There was a great deal of closeness.
    There was a great deal of respect for one another.
    And there was a great deal that we tried to help each other.
    And now, can you tell me the story of how when the war first
    came your mother described World War I and what she thought
    it would be like?
    You see when the war started, I mean, we didn't--
    I never saw a war.
    I never knew what a war was.
    I was born after the First World War.
    And I talked to my mother, how does the war look?
    And what's going to happen to us?
    And so forth.
    So she said in the first war-- what did my mother know?
    In the First World War, they were fighting near the railroad
    station.
    And they brought up the wounded to the city, she said.
    And everybody sat in the house.
    I don't know how long it took.
    But they used to go out.
    And that's what they said.
    And my father brought home a lot of groceries and a lot of flour
    and a lot of sugar and a lot of oil.
    He said, in case we won't be able to get,
    we'll have enough to eat until this thing will blow over.
    But it wasn't like that.
    The first day when Germany declared war to Poland,
    they bombed our city.
    The Polish army was nothing.
    They weren't capable to resist anything.
    That was a different ballgame then.
    And then my father realized it's different.
    And my mother-- we saw the planes flying.
    We never saw planes flying before.
    In a few days, Poland was gone.
    And then the Russians came to us,
    because they had some kind of an agreement
    that the Russians will go to Warsaw, whatever,
    they had the agreement.
    And the Russians came.
    And we had the Russian officers sleeping in our house
    because he was in charge of the bakery
    from the men who saved our life.
    And he came to us and he said, listen,
    you better pack up everything and take your children.
    When they made a new agreement that the Russians go back
    to the River Bug and the Germans come in here, and he said,
    in Russia, your children can study.
    They can become something.
    And you'll be all right.
    The Germans are going to do to you awful things.
    But nobody believed it.
    Who believed that they'll come and kill us?
    They'll gas 3 and 1/2 million people only in Poland
    or 3 million.
    Nobody believed it.
    Nobody thought that something like this can happen.
    But it happened.
    First they came and it happened.
    I mean, they were so efficient in their killings, you know.
    And I think they still are.
    First a Nazi, always Nazi.
    I don't believe that they are any different now.
    I went to so many trials in Germany.
    And the only thing that hurt me the most, ,
    that nobody from those murderers said it was wrong what we did,
    we shouldn't have done it.
    Everybody followed the orders.
    And I feel if somebody would come today and give them
    orders, they would do all over again without hesitation.
    And that hurts.
    That hurts very much.
    Especially when I went to the first trials and the judges
    were older gentlemen, older people.
    One Nazi defended the other.
    And I feel that that's why it's so important it shouldn't
    be forgotten.
    It shouldn't be forgotten, because it can happen again.
    Thank you.
    Let's cut.
    Whenever I go to--
    10.
    You see, we liberated ourselves because we escaped
    and we made the uprising.
    All the death camps or slave labor camps
    were liberated by the army, with Edward R Murrow,
    with all the press, and in the world knew.
    Sobibor, nobody knew.
    If I told them after the war there was a Sobibor, never
    heard of it, and never heard of it.
    And that hurt me so much, because I thought
    it will just be forgotten.
    It'll go away if not for Richard Rashke, who
    found a footnote in the library when
    they arrested Wagner in Brazil.
    And he took the story, and he worked on it.
    And he interviewed people.
    And he put in his money.
    And he wrote the book.
    The book opened the eyes that there was a Sobibor.
    And that was the biggest uprising
    in the history of the World War II.
    Why not tell it?
    And thanks to him, Sobibor came out.
    The story came out.
    The world knows what's happened.
    And it's written about it.
    And the book is translated into so many languages.
    And children learn in school thanks to that.
    Otherwise Sobibor who would have been forgotten.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Esther Raab discusses her transfer from a forced labor camp to Sobibór concentration camp; how Sobibór commandant Wagner selected her and other girls to work sorting the belongings of people gassed in the camp; how the SS camp guards processed arrivals of new prisoners in the camp; the extreme cruelty of two camp guards, Frenzel and Wagner; how she and other workers found notes among the belongings of prisoners from Treblinka and Belzec concentration camps and how the notes mentioned revenge against the Germans; how she and other Sobibór inmates planned and executed the revolt in the camp; escaping into the woods near the camp during the revolt and receiving a gunshot wound during the escape; how the Sobibór camp guards punished prisoners who attempted to escape; her thoughts on the differences between a concentration camp and a death camp; how she and other Sobibór escapees received food and shelter from a Polish farmer; her memories of life in Poland before World War II; her time in "Stafnovushulke" forced labor camp; her thoughts on her actions during the Sobibór revolt as being actions of heroism; the types of spiritual resistance that occurred in Sobibór; and how her mother prepared her for World War II by telling her stories of life in Poland during World War I.
    Interviewee
    Esther T. Raab
    Interviewer
    Sandra Bradley
    Date
    interview:  1992 February 18
    Geography
    creation: Silver Spring (Md.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 film reels : color ; 16 mm.
    4 sound tape reels : analog, mono ; 7 in..
    2 videocassette (D2) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. The interviewee restricts the use of the interview, in all formats, to non-commercial purposes.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Raab, Esther Terner.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Esther Raab on February 18, 1992, in Silver Spring, Md., in preparation for the making of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibition film, "Testimony." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received the films and tapes of the interview in August 1994. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the films and tapes of the interview via transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-06-06 12:26:46
    This page:
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    Time Coded Notes (3)

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    Also in Testimony oral history collection

    Contains oral histories interviews with 32 Holocaust survivors from the United States

    Date: 1992

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

    Oral history interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein

    Oral History

    Gerda Weissmann Klein discusses her memories of the German invasion of Poland; her time in the Bielsko ghetto; her deportation to a transit camp in Sosnowiec, Poland; her time working in slave labor as a weaver and loom operator; her friendship with Susie Kuhn and the bet they made together while on board a transport train on their way to Bolkenhain concentration camp; her memories of Frau Kligler, a guard in Bolkenhain; how she and a friend wrote and performed a play in their barrack at Bolkenhain; her memories of crafting a menorah from potatoes and celebration of the Jewish holidays in the camp; how she used her imagination as a defense against her captors; her move from Bolkenhain to Maerzdorf concentration camp where she worked harvesting flax from a swamp for linen production; how she celebrated her 18 birthday; her experiences on a death march through Germany; the death of her friend Susie Kuhn, shortly before liberation; and her memories of her liberation by American troops at a camp near Volary, Czechoslovakia.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Mandl Adachi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Mandl Adachi

    Oral History

    Agnes Mandl Adachi discusses her time spent in Switzerland shortly before the start of World War II; her memories of the takeover by the Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt); how she obtained Swedish citizenship through the Swedish embassy in Budapest; the mistreatment of mixed-marriage couples in Hungary, and how many committed suicide instead of divorcing; her baptism by the Protestant Bishop of Hungary; her work with Raoul Wallenberg and his many heroic efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews, his work with children and orphans in Budapest, and his successful attempt to persuade Adolf Eichmann to call off a massacre of 70,000 Jews in the Budapest ghetto; Wallenberg's disappearance in 1945 and subsequent searches for him in Russia; her reflections on the honors given to Raoul Wallenberg since World War II; and her personal thoughts on her role as a rescuer working with Wallenberg.

    Oral history interview with Edward Adler

    Oral history interview with Edward Adler

    Oral History

    Edward Adler, born in 1910, discusses his memories of the early days of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and his involvement in anti-Nazi activities in Hamburg, Germany; his memories of anti-Jewish boycotts; his memories of joining a military training camp and one experience when he was assigned to a guard detail for Adolf Hitler; his discharge from the military camp when it was discovered that he was Jewish; his arrest by the Gestapo for having a relationship with a Gentile girl; his imprisonment in Oranienburg concentration camp from June 1938 and his release from the camp the following September; his memories of Kristallnacht in Hamburg, Germany in 1938; his flight to the Netherlands with his family shortly after Kristallnacht and their subsequent immigration to the United States; his reflections on how Jews were unable to "fight back" and defend themselves against the Nazis; his memories of antisemitism in Germany in the 1930s; his recollections of the fate of his parents during the Holocaust and how his mother died in Treblinka concentration camp; and his memories of a visit to Hamburg, Germany in 1982 and the emotions he experienced during his stay there.

    Oral history interview with Harry Alexander

    Oral history interview with Harry Alexander

    Oral History

    Harry Alexander discusses his memories of persecutions suffered by Jews in his hometown of Leipzig, Germany, and the events of Kristallnacht in 1938; his flight to Milan, Italy after Kristallnacht and his experiences there with other Jewish refugees; his memories of receiving a one-day visa through the French embassy in Milan and his attempt to escape to France by train; his memories of the "St. Vemo incident" when fisherman from the village of San Remo, Italy attempted to ferry the refugees around a blockade that stopped the train he was on from entering France; his arrest in France and time in prison; his time in Antibes concentration camp in France, and later in a Marseille prison; his escape from a transport between concentration camps; hiding in a forest and his arrest there; being in Di Agilis concentration camp and his transport from there to "Jaffa" (Djelfa) concentration camp in Algeria, where he and other prisoners worked to build a railroad passage across the Sahara Desert; the types of torture in Djelfa; his memories of the various acts of defiance by prisoners in Djelfa and the role that humor played in surviving the camp; his liberation from Djelfa by British troops and his time in British military intelligence after liberation; his reflections on the cruelty of camp and prison guards that he encountered; the role that his mother played in his survival; the loss of his entire family in the concentration camps; his thoughts on survival as a form of heroism; and his thoughts on why more Jews didn't "fight back" and defend themselves against the Nazis.

    Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

    Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

    Oral History

    Sam Bankhalter discusses his memories of antisemitism in Poland in the 1930s and the activities of "Endeks" or Polish Nazis; the various types of persecutions suffered by Jews in Poland; the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his time living in the ghetto in Łódź, Poland; his transport to Auschwitz in 1940 where he participated in the construction of the camp; his recollections of various aspects at Auschwitz including the gas chambers, the crematoria, and selections by Josef Mengele and other doctors in the camp; the mistreatment of rabbis and priests in Auschwitz; the gassing of Romanies infected with typhus; the suicide of his brother, Chaim, and his own attempt at suicide; his memories of the arrival of his parents and sister in Auschwitz in 1944 and seeing them just before they went to the gas chambers; his death march from Auschwitz through Germany to Buchenwald concentration camp; his thoughts on the systematic nature of extermination in Auschwitz; the massacre of many camp prisoners at Buchenwald shortly before liberation; his thoughts on Holocaust survival as a type of heroism; his thoughts on humor as a way of coping in the concentration camp; his memories of the Sonderkommandos in the ghettos and in Auschwitz; and his time working in the crematoria at Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Frank Blaichman

    Oral history interview with Frank Blaichman

    Oral History

    Frank Blaichman discusses his memories of hard labor and various persecutions suffered by Jews when Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of World War II; his time in a ghetto in Poland; his escape to and time in hiding in a forest in Poland; his involvement with a group of Jewish partisan fighters in the forests of Poland where he was a key figure in acquiring firearms and organizing acts of sabotage against the Germans; avoiding capture by Germans and Polish collaborators; his memories of a visit by General Rolojemerski, head of the Polish Partisan Support; and his reflections on the choices Jews faced during the Holocaust and how those choices impacted survival.

    Oral history interview with Shony Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Braun

    Oral History

    Shony Braun discusses his transport by train to Auschwitz concentration camp and his encounter with camp doctor, Josef Mengele, during a selection; the death of his mother and younger sister, Golda, in the gas chamber at Auschwitz; his selection to work on a Sonderkommando; his transport to a camp in France with his father and his brother, Zolton, where they worked in an ammunition factory and his work to sabotage bullets in the factory by mixing sand with gun powder; his transfer to Kochendorf concentration camp, a subcamp of Natzweiller concentration camp in France, where he labored in a salt mine; the death of his father in Kochendorf after a severe beating from SS guards and Kapos; his transport to Dachau concentration camp; volunteering to play the violin for camp personnel in exchange for food; how he was shot in the chest during the confusion of Dachau's liberation; how mental and spiritual strength played a role in his survival; his thoughts on his acts of sabotage as a form of heroism; and his "Symphony of the Holocaust," and how composing it helped him cope while in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

    Leo Bretholz discusses the underground resistance movement in France and its two parts, the Forces Françaises de l'intérieur (FFI) and the Francs-tireurs et partisans français (FTPF); his involvement in the Armee Juive; his various arrests and escapes from prison during his time in the Jewish resistance movement in France; his use of false identification documents to avoid deportation; his time in Rivesaltes concentration camp; his time in hiding in various locations including the attic of a cousin's home; his reflections on being transported by cattle car and the horrors endured by people on the transport; his memories of the Anschluss in Austria in 1938; his witness to the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in June 1944; his memories of Kristallnacht in 1938; and the fate of his immediate family during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

    Chaim Engel discusses his transport by train to Sobibór concentration camp; his time on a work detail to sort the clothing of gassed prisoners in Sobibór; his job cutting the hair of female prisoners in Sobibór before gassing; his thoughts on the differences between concentration camps and death camps; his experiences with the extreme cruelty of the Sobibór guards; his acts of sabotage while on the clothes sorting work detail; the massacre of an entire transport of prisoners from Belzec concentration camp; his participation in the murder of a German Kapo; the prisoner revolt in Sobibór in October 1943; his escape after the prisoner revolt and his time in hiding with other Sobibór escapees; his relationship with his girlfriend, Selma Engel, also a prisoner from Sobibór, and their time in hiding on the farm of a Polish farmer; his thoughts on the choices made by Jews in order to survive during the Holocaust; and his thoughts on heroism as part of the prisoner revolt in Sobibór.

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel discusses her arrival in Westerbork concentration camp; her transport from Westerbork to Sobibór concentration camp; her participation in a work detail sorting the clothing of gassed prisoners in Sobibór; her first meeting with her future husband, Chaim Engel; her recollections of the three separate camp areas in Sobibór; the mistreatment of Dutch prisoners in Sobibór; the extreme cruelty of the SS guards in Sobibór; her acts of sabotage while sorting the clothing of the gassed prisoners; the prisoner revolt in Sobibór in Oct. 1943; her escape from Sobibór during the prisoner revolt; her time in hiding with Chaim Engel, her future husband, on the farm of a Polish farmer; her reliance on Chaim for survival; and her reflections on the German and Ukrainian guards in Sobibór and the choices they made to be cruel to the prisoners there.

    Oral history interview with Paulette Fink

    Oral history interview with Paulette Fink

    Oral History

    Paulette Fink discusses her involvement in the resistance movement in France during World War II and her sabotage activities; the French Jewish Scout movement in France (Eclaireurs de France); the saving of many Jewish children by a French Huegenot pastor and other citizens in the town of La Chambon-sur-Lignon, France; the amount of risk and fear that she lived with during World War II; getting fake ID cards made; her marriage in 1934 and the death of her husband, a member of the French resistance, in 1944; her thoughts on her resistance activity as a form of heroism; her involvement in the illegal immigration of thousands of Jewish displaced persons to Israel after World War II; and her continued dedication to and support of the State of Israel since World War II.

    Oral history interview with Sam Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Goldberg

    Oral History

    Sam Goldberg discusses his use of the false name Sigmund Kamkowsky in order to avoid persecution; his time working with the underground movement in and around Warsaw, Poland; his time living and working in the Warsaw ghetto; his escape from the Warsaw ghetto to the Pietkov ghetto in order to locate family members; his acts of smuggling and encounters with the SS; the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and his subsequent transport by train to Birkenau concentration camp and his eventual move to Auschwitz; hearing about Josef Mengele's medical experiments in Auschwitz; working in the "Canada" commando, sorting the clothing and valuables of prisoners near the gas chambers in Auschwitz; working in the commando assisting prisoners upon arrival at the Auschwitz train platform; his experiences with Kapos and Blockälteste in Auschwitz; the prisoner revolt in the Auschwitz crematoria in October 1944; his evacuation from Auschwitz by train; his participation on a death march; his friendship with a young boy named Herbie; his time in Flossenbürg concentration camp after a death march and his memories of the various colored triangle badges he saw there; his transport to Mittendorf concentration camp near Munich, Germany via Prague, Czech Republic; his experiences during Allied bombing raids on Mittendorf; his memories of the liquidation of the Romani camp in Auschwitz; his acts of sabotage while working on airplanes; his thoughts on spiritual resistance; his liberation by American troops during a transport; how telling jokes and singing songs helped to lift the spirits of fellow camp inmates; his memories of the meeting between Josef Mengele and Chaim Rumkowski, head of the ghetto in Łódź, Poland upon Rumkowski's arrival in Auschwitz; his thoughts on the choice of German Kapos and soldiers to be killers; his reflections on the nature of humanity considering his Holocaust experiences; and the selection process that took place upon the arrival of new transports in Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Siegfried Halbreich

    Oral history interview with Siegfried Halbreich

    Oral History

    Siegfried Halbreich discusses his desertion from the Polish Army in October 1939 and his brief time working as a pharmacist in Oświęcim, Poland; his imprisonment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the cruel treatment of prisoners that he witnessed there; his time in Gross-Rosen concentration camp and his work in a stone quarry near the camp; his experiences with Blockälteste in Gross-Rosen; his time in Auschwitz concentration camp and his work as a nurse in the camp hospital; his role as Blockälteste at one time in Auschwitz; his participation in a death march after the evacuation of Auschwitz; the camp personnel hierarchy in Auschwitz from the SS guards down to the Kapos; his thoughts on the role of mental resistance as a part of survival; the support he received from friends and family while in the concentration camps; his memories of religious practice and celebration in Sachsenhausen; his role as teacher and leader of young Jews for religious education in Auschwitz; the various types of torture he witnessed in Sachsenhausen; and his thoughts on taking revenge on Germans after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Isadore Helfing

    Oral history interview with Isadore Helfing

    Oral History

    Isadore Helfing discusses his arrival in Treblinka concentration camp and his work burying the bodies of persons who died during the transports in mass graves in the camp; his recollections of the physical layout of Treblinka and how prisoners were led through the gassing process; his recollections of many people dying inside the railroad cars while waiting to unload in Treblinka; his experiences with Kapos in the camp; his participation in the prisoner revolt in Treblinka and his escape to a nearby forest; his time in hiding after his escape from Treblinka; his witnessing the murder of a German camp guard by a fellow prisoner and his thoughts on the murder as an act of revenge; how German and Ukrainian guards in the camp made choices to follow orders; the attempts of some prisoners to pray in the camp; participating in soccer games on Sundays, a free day in the camp; the suicides of several persons from his barracks; the orchestra in the camp and a boxing match that took place one day; and the fate of his parents in Treblinka the day before his arrival in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral history interview with Kurt Klein

    Oral History

    Kurt Klein discusses the political situation in Germany during the early 1930s and how Jews did not take the Nazi rise to power seriously; his thoughts on why the Nazi party gained power so easily; the persecutions suffered by Jews and the boycott against Jewish businesses in the early 1930s; his withdrawal from school and his apprenticeship in the printing business; his immigration to the United States in 1937; how he learned of Kristallnacht events through newspaper reports in the United States; his service with the Fifth US Infantry Division of the Third Army during World War II and his assistance to Jewish women abandoned by their German guards in a factory building in Volary, Czechoslovakia; his first meeting with his future wife, Gerda Weissmann Klein, in the factory and the development of their relationship after World War II; and his participation in the interrogation of Erich Kempka, a former chauffeur for Adolf Hitler.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John (Jan) Komski discusses the German invasion of Poland; his involvement in the resistance movement in and around Kraków, Poland; his imprisonment at Auschwitz concentration camp in June 1940; the different types of prisoners in Auschwitz and the various identification badges and triangles used to mark the prisoners; the museum and orchestra in Auschwitz; how he planned and prepared a successful escape from Auschwitz by disguising himself as an SS guard and using false identification documents; the types of mental and spiritual resistance used to survive in Auschwitz; his thoughts on how some Auschwitz prisoners utilized special talents and skills to survive in the camp; the gassing of children and their mothers immediately upon arrival in Auschwitz; his memories of Palietsch, the official executor in Auschwitz; the tattoos used to identify prisoners in Auschwitz and the tattoo he received when he entered Birkenau concentration camp; and how families were treated differently from individuals upon arrival in Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Stefa Kupfer

    Oral history interview with Stefa Kupfer

    Oral History

    Stefa Kupfer discusses the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and the persecutions suffered by Jews during the German occupation; being 10 years old when the war started; her memories of the Gestapo and their dogs; how the Germans used citizens from her town for forced labor; the confiscation of Jewish property by the Germans; her mother's refusal to register the family with the German authorities, thereby saving them from a round up; her family's time in hiding in the attic and basement of an apartment building in Krosno, Poland, and how she and her family were protected and ultimately saved by Penny Olefska, a Christian woman; the various ways she and her family occupied themselves while in hiding; her thoughts on living in constant fear while in hiding; the assistance her family received from Mr. Vishbitsky, a Polish farmer; her thoughts on those who risked their lives to rescue and hide Jews during World War II; her recollections of the many possessions she and her family lost during the war; and the responsibility of each Holocaust survivor to tell his or her story in order prevent another Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

    Cecilie Klein-Pollack discusses the deportation of her family from the ghetto in Hust, Hungary (now Khust, Ukraine) to Auschwitz concentration camp; her and her family's experiences upon arrival at Auschwitz, encountering Josef Mengele, and the death of her mother and young nephew in the gas chambers shortly thereafter; her experiences with Kapos and Blockälteste in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her sister's desire to commit suicide and her attempts to keep her sister alive; her memories of a young ballerina in her block who was forced to dance for the SS camp guards; her witness to the beating death of the ballerina and a poem that she wrote to memorialize the young dancer; her many delousing experiences in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her transport to Nuremberg where she and other female prisoners worked in a munitions factory; her time in Holleischen concentration camp in Czechoslovakia; the types of spiritual and religious resistance that she experienced in the camps; the cruel beatings that she and other prisoners received from SS guards in the camps; her time in Budapest, Hungary after World War II; and her memories of her mother as she was before her death in the Auschwitz gas chamber. During the interview, Cecilie Klein-Pollack recites her poem, "Ballerina," and reads a letter she wrote to her mother (a copy of the letter is located in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives).

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Abraham Malnik discusses the German invasion of Lithuania; his family's life in the Kovno ghetto; how his father, Josef Malnik, rescued him and his mother from a selection of elderly, children, and handicapped persons, thereby saving them from the massacre at the Ninth Fort near the ghetto in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania; his time hiding in a cellar in the Kovno ghetto to avoid capture during a "Kinder aktion" by the Germans; the liquidation of the Kovno ghetto during which many of the remaining Jews were massacred by Lithuanian collaborators; his family's transport to Stutthof concentration camp and subsequently to Dachau, Flossenbürg, and Leitmeritz (Litomerice) concentration camps; how he and his father participated in forced labor in a mine in Leitmeritz; the yellow star and number insignia the Germans assigned to him in Leitmeritz; his experience with Polish Kapos in Leitmeritz; his time spent in the Leitmeritz hospital with typhoid fever; his "walk" to Theresienstadt concentration camp in April 1945 and his liberation there by the Soviet Army; his thoughts on taking revenge against the Germans for their brutality during the Holocaust; and the special bond he and his father shared throughout their Holocaust ordeal.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

    Lilly Appelbaum Malnik discusses her time in hiding in Belgium; her forced labor in a factory; her neighbors in her apartment building who denounced her and her aunt and uncle to the Germans; her family's arrest and their time in the Malines detention camp in Mechelen, Belgium; her family's transport from Belgium to Birkenau concentration camp and her encounter with Josef Mengele upon arrival; the tattoo number she received on her arm; volunteering for work in Birkenau; her transfer to Auschwitz concentration camp and her work in the kitchen there; the transports of new prisoners into Auschwitz and how many prisoners were sent immediately to the gas chambers; contemplating suicide while in Auschwitz; how some prisoners in Auschwitz prayed as a form of resistance; her time on a death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; her friendship with a young girl named Christian while in Bergen-Belsen; Christian’s death from typhus; and her thoughts about how the young had a better chance of survival in concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Ludmilla Page

    Oral history interview with Ludmilla Page

    Oral History

    Ludmilla Page discusses being arrested with her mother and members of the Polish intelligentsia in November 1939; their transport to Kraków, Poland, where they spent time in a fortress prison; her thoughts on the similarities and differences between the Kraków and Warsaw ghettos; her relationship with Oskar Schindler and how he protected the Jews working in his factory; how Schindler compiled his list of names of prisoners from the Płaszów concentration camp; Schindler’s attempt to persuade a fellow factory owner, Julius Madrich, to save the Jews working in his own factory; how Jewish workers in Schindler's Bruennlitz concentration camp factory sabotaged bomb shell casings; an incident in which she and other female Schindler Jews were transported to Birkenau by mistake instead of going directly to Bruennlitz; how some of the Schindler Jews used gold fillings to fashion a gold ring for Schindler on his birthday in April 1945; Schindler’s friendships with the Jews he rescued; and his designation as Righteous Among the Nations.

    Oral history interview with Leopold Page

    Oral history interview with Leopold Page

    Oral History

    Leopold Page discusses his first meeting with Oskar Schindler and Schindler's physical appearance; how Schindler rescued several female prisoners from Auschwitz (Birkenau) concentration camp and male prisoners from Gross-Rosen concentration camp after they were misrouted on the way to Bruennlitz concentration camp; the establishment of the Kraków ghetto and resistance activities he witnessed there; how he and his wife, Ludmilla Page, escaped from the Kraków ghetto during the liquidation action; how he and other prisoners kept statistics on the number of prisoners killed each day in Plaszów concentration camp; his memories of Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszów concentration camp; how the prisoners of Plaszów prayed as a form of resistance; how friendships among the prisoners helped them survive; how the Schindler Jews sabotaged bomb shell casing while working in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz concentration camp; Schindler helping the Jews disarm and imprison their German captors in Bruennlitz; how Schindler attempted to persuade Julius Madrich to save the Jews working in his own factory; Russian soldiers liberating the Schindler Jews in Bruennlitz; Oskar Schindler receiving the award of Righteous Gentile for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust; his memories of Kristallnacht in November 1938; and how some prisoners in Bruennlitz fashioned a ring from gold fillings as a birthday gift for Schindler in April 1945.

    Oral history interview with Agi Rubin

    Oral history interview with Agi Rubin

    Oral History

    Agi Rubin discusses being age 14 when she and her family were deported to Auschwitz; her family's arrival in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and her separation from her mother during a selection; being registered and tattooed in Auschwitz; her work on a special commando sorting the belongings of recently gassed prisoners; how she and others in the commando sabotaged the clothing they sorted and tied into bundles; how the camp guards in Auschwitz singled out certain commandos for certain tasks; her observation of the gassing and cremation processes in Auschwitz and Birkenau; her experiences with a Kapo in Auschwitz; her memories of the "Garnerlager" or so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz; her observations of the selection process conducted by Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz train platform; her thoughts on how the crematoria in Auschwitz affected her senses; how some prisoners recited prayers on their way to the gas chambers; her experiences with lice; her time in Ravensbrück concentration camp; being sent on a death march in January 1945; and her thoughts on heroism as a part of survival. At the end of the interview, Rubin displays and discusses photographs from a family photo album.

    Oral history interview with Bart Stern

    Oral history interview with Bart Stern

    Oral History

    Bart Stern discusses his experiences on a cattle car transport from Hungary to Birkenau concentration camp with his brothers; his subsequent move to Auschwitz concentration camp; his time working in a coal mine near Auschwitz; how religious celebrations became a form of resistance in Auschwitz; how he and other prisoners told jokes as a way of coping; his experiences with Kapos in Auschwitz; his thoughts on humanity in light of his Holocaust experiences; his thoughts on revenge; and how many Jews resisted and did not go willingly to their deaths.

    Oral history interview with Tina Strobos

    Oral history interview with Tina Strobos

    Oral History

    Tina Strobos discusses her experiences during the German invasion of the Netherlands and how life changed for the citizens of Rotterdam; the role of Arthur Seyss-Inquart in the Nazi-occupation government of the Netherlands; the role of the Gestapo during the German occupation of the Netherlands; her involvement in an underground resistance group in the Netherlands lead by Johann Brower; her time in hiding and the hiding place she used inside her own home; the underground work of the "Lomlok Organization" to help Jews find hiding places; how she and her family rescued other Jews by letting them hide in their Rotterdam home; and how some Nazi sympathizers in the Netherlands denounced and betrayed their Jewish neighbors.

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Tanay

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Tanay

    Oral History

    Emanuel Tanay discusses how life changed for the Jews in Miechów, Poland, after the German invasion in 1939; how the Germans increased persecutions against Jews with collaboration by Ukrainians and Lithuanians; his thoughts on the differences between Polish Jews and Jews from Western Europe; his family's time in the ghetto in Miechów, Poland; hiding in a monastery in Mogila, Poland, where he posed as a novice for the priesthood; the assistance he received from the monastery's prior, Father Kuhar; his flight from the monastery when the Gestapo raided his cell; how the Germans imprisoned Father Kuhar and other priests from the Mogila monastery in Auschwitz concentration camp for giving assistance to people in the underground resistance; his thoughts on how being a teenager helped him to survive; how he and his family fled to Hungary in 1943 using false identification papers; his time in a prison in Budapest, Hungary, and subsequent escape; volunteering to the Gestapo to be executed and how the Gestapo failed to carry out the execution; his brief time in the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, just before the uprising; and his thoughts on what special qualities a person needed to be a survivor.

    Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

    Oral History

    Bella Tovey discusses how life changed in Sosnowiec, Poland, and persecutions increased for Jews after the German invasion; how the Germans established a ghetto in Sosnowiec; how members of the intelligentsia started to disappear and how others went to work camps; being taken to a work camp and her parents gained her release by having her younger sister, Pina, replace her in the camp; the liquidation of the Sosnowiec ghetto and her family's move to a smaller ghetto called Srodula; her time in Gräben (a.k.a. Gräen) concentration camp near Striegel, Germany, where the prisoners worked in a flax mill; her experiences with a Kapo in Gräben labor camp; how the Germans incorporated Gräben into the camp system of Gross-Rosen concentration camp; her time on a death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and her bouts with typhus and typhoid while in the camp; the various friendships that she had with other girls during her time in the camps; her thoughts on spiritual resistance in the camp; her reaction to hearing about what happened to Jews in Auschwitz; the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British troops in 1945; and her loss of faith in God during the Holocaust and how she regained her faith and began her Jewish and religious studies later in life.

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

    Helen Waterford discusses her family's time in hiding in the Netherlands and how she and her husband decided to hide their daughter with another family; her family's relationship with Joe Fisch, a rescuer of many Jews in the Netherlands; her and her husband's arrest and deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp via Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences during a selection upon her arrival in Auschwitz; her thoughts on the lack of resistance in Auschwitz; how at one time she was in a barracks with Anne Frank and Anne Frank's mother; her memories of Josef Mengele in Auschwitz; her move from Auschwitz to work in a factory in Czechoslovakia; and her opinions on humankind in light of her Holocaust experiences and how she does not consider survival to be an achievement.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Webber

    Oral history interview with Ruth Webber

    Oral History

    Ruth Webber discusses her memories of the Germans invading Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland, in 1939; her time in Botsohov (Bodzechów) work camp with her parents; moving to the ghetto in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland with her mother; their escape from the ghetto and return to the Botshohov work camp; her time in Austrowiec (Ostrowiec) concentration camp; her time in Starachowice concentration camp; her transport to Auschwitz concentration camp; her arrival in Auschwitz and her memories of the registration process; her time in the Auschwitz infirmary suffering from measles; her memories of the Auschwitz crematoria and her realization of what was happening to the prisoners there; what it was like to be a child among mostly adults in Auschwitz; her move to the "children's block" in Auschwitz after her mother moved to another camp; the special care and protection she received from her mother while in Auschwitz; how she considers her mother to be a hero; and her thoughts on humanity in light of her Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Weihs

    Oral history interview with Ernest Weihs

    Oral History

    Ernest Weihs, born in Vienna, Austria in November 1908, discusses his conversion from Judaism to Lutheranism at age eleven; the changing situation for Jews in Vienna, Austria in 1938; the aid that he and his future wife received from Swedish missionaries in Austria; his imprisonment in Theresienstadt in 1942; his marriage while in Theresienstadt; his escape from a death march on the way to Dachau concentration camp; his experiences with Kapos; the religious practices that took place in Theresienstadt; his brief time in Auschwitz concentration camp; and his witness to a suicide while in Kaufering concentration camp.

    Oral history interview with Norbert Wollheim

    Oral history interview with Norbert Wollheim

    Oral History

    Norbert Wollheim discusses his parents' deportation from Berlin, Germany in 1943 and his deportation with his wife and son to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943; how some prisoners prayed and celebrated Sabbath while on the transport to Auschwitz; his arrival in Auschwitz and his separation from his wife and child; his registration and tattoo; the role of the SS in Auschwitz; his time working in the Buna factory near the camp; his work as a welder in Auschwitz; his friend Fritz Schaeffer who committed suicide while in Auschwitz; his experiences with Kapos; his thoughts on spiritual resistance in the camp; his memories of Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938; his involvement in a Kindertransport of children from Berlin to England shortly after Kristallnacht; his memories of life in Berlin before 1933 and how conditions changed for Jews after the Nazis came to power; his memories of the voyage of the St. Louis; his thoughts on revenge; his feelings at the time of liberation; his thoughts on the different types of concentration camps; his thoughts on forced labor and work camps used during the Holocaust; the choices he made in order to survive; how he relied on the friendships with other inmates for support and how he befriended British prisoners of war while in Auschwitz; how age and gender played a role in who survived the Holocaust; and his memories of the "Appel" in Auschwitz.

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