Oral history interview with Jack Unikowski

Oral history interview with Benjamin Lewin

Oral History

Benjamin Lewin, born in 1926 in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Czech Republic, describes his father, who was a traveling salesman for a shoe manufacturer; his mother, who ran a kosher "Pensionat" (i.e. a small hotel), accommodating 50 guests; the increase in Nazism in 1936; his family moving to Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), Czech Republic; the German takeover of the Sudeten in 1938; his family moving to Prague, Czech Republic; the living conditions in Prague after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and being fraught with fear; his family manufacturing of electric kettles for export to Germany in conjunction with a workshop, which was formerly owned by his uncle and transferred to non-Jewish management; the Jewish life in Prague and his bar mitzvah; their manufacturing job lasting until May 1941 when they ran out of production materials; being provided food by Czech farmers; how the Czech police hated the Germans and behaved "decently"; the deportation of Prague Jews to Theresienstadt beginning in May-June 1941; the lists of the Jewish population that were drawn up by the Jewish administration and how call-ups for "resettlement" took place in alphabetical order; his family being sent to Theresienstadt in September 1941; working as an electrician in the camp; his mother being assigned to the kitchen, which helped him get extra rations; the poor conditions in the camp; he and his father being in a barracks with German Jews and his belief that they received preferential treatment; the well documented visit of the Swiss Red Cross officials and the sham perpetrated by the Germans; being taken with his father to Auschwitz during the summer of 1944; he and his father surviving the selection; being protected by a Kapo along with two other youths; being taken to Czechowice (Tschechowitz), where his father died; being marched to Obitz and then transported in open cattle cars to Buchenwald; how only 1,000 of the 7,000 people on the train survived; being liberated by the Russians; returning to Prague in August 1945; finding his mother and sister who were liberated in Theresienstadt; being called up for military service in the Czech Army; going to Belgium where he briefly attend school; his adjustment to life in Australia; and how he attributes his survival to youth.

Oral history interview with Lea Rehberger Heimler

Oral History

Lea Heimler (née Rehberger), born March 3, 1927 in Gyor, Hungary, describes her father, who owned a pub and was killed in an accident in 1939; moving with her mother to the small town of Farád nearby and living near other family members; the local Jewish population consisting of only eight families and her mother running a small store; the Germans occupation of Hungary in March 1944 and the local Jews being forced into a small ghetto in Csorna; being moved several weeks later to a larger ghetto/camp in Sarvar; being transported with all the camp inmates, mostly women and children, to Auschwitz by cattle cars in June 1944; arriving in Auschwitz; being separated from her mother and never seeing her again; being held in barracks for about six weeks; being transported to Allendorf concentration camp in Frankenberg, Germany in August 1944; working in an underground munitions factory and the conditions there; being marched for approximately 60 kilometers to the vicinity of the town of Homberg (Kreis Kassel), Germany; the German guards disappearing and being liberated the next day by American troops; returning to Gyor in 1946; getting married in 1948; and leaving Hungary for Austria with her husband and daughter and immigrating the same year to Australia.

Oral history interview with Sara Shur Lamdanskaia

Oral History

Oral history interview with Abram Goldberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Izabella Sztein Krol-Stupecki

Oral History

Oral history interview with Simon Michalowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Veronika Roth Varga

Oral History

Veronika Varga (née Roth), born in 1921 in Hungary, near Kisvarda, speaks about her childhood, her father’s work as a bank manager and his sudden death in 1928; moving to a new house (Horthy 28 in Kisvarda); her extended family and schooling; having an ordinary life in the pre-war years and early 1940s; the Jewish community of Kisvarda; their disbelief of news or personal reports of antisemitic actions elsewhere; her marriage in April 1944 to a member of the Hungarian army, a “sad wedding” as carts bringing people from the country to the new ghetto passed by the window; gendarmes seizing her mother’s house, just inside the ghetto perimeter, the following day and moving more people into it; the brief, six-week-long existence of the Kisvarda ghetto and cruel treatment by the gendarmerie; deportation in June 1944 to Auschwitz, where her mother and grandmother perished; conditions in camp; being selected for a work detail; being taken to Birkenau; being disinfected with other women; traveling to Stutthof and their quarters there; living in a tent at Ollec; doing hard labor during a cold winter, digging ditches for cables, and her role as Blockälteste; the Germans fleeing in January 1945 and her escape with the woman who was Blockälteste for 50B; staying in various houses as they made their way out of Poland; walking and riding in wagons and Russian trucks; searching for her brother, Ivan, at a camp in Krakow; going to Red Cross in Kosice, Slovakia and learning her husband, Imre, had survived; returning to Hungary and reuniting with Imre at his house in Nyíregyháza; visiting Kisvarda only to see her father’s grave; the birth of their daughter, Zsofia, in 1946; losing everything again, this time to the Communists; changing their surname to Varga to obtain visas; and immigrating to Australia in 1958. (Near the end of the interview, she displays two documents, a permit to travel through Poland and a Red Cross paper from Czechoslovakia to facilitate travel.)

Oral history interview with Gunter Sondheim

Oral History

Oral history interview with Floris Gryfenberg Kalman

Oral History

Floris Gryfenberg Kalman, born in Brussels, Belgium, describes her Polish parents who had immigrated in 1929; fleeing to France in May 1940; her father being inducted in the Polish Army in France; being sent back to Belgium with her mother and younger sister by the Germans in late 1940; living fairly normally until the summer of 1942 when the deportations started; her experiences as a hidden child, which she still feels the effects; her relationship with her parents deteriorating and feeling abandoned by them; her family surviving the war and immigrating to Australia in 1949; finishing high school and earning a university degree; returning to the Jewish religion through her children despite the protests of her parents who were of Bundist conviction; her involvement with her children and grandchildren; and how her newly found faith has made her a happier person.

Oral history interview with Helena Storch Jacobs

Oral History

Oral history interview with Stephen Curtis

Oral History

Stephen Curtis (né Istvan Kertesz), born September 7, 1918 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in a middle class, non-religious family; being inducted into a work battalion of the Hungarian Army in 1942; how the conditions were not bad and there were several lengthy periods when he could return to Budapest; getting married in April 1944 and having to go back to the camp; working for the Wehrmacht in Poland digging ditches; how his wife and mother-in-law were sent to a camp in Burgenland (now Hungary) and survived; getting back to Burgenland toward the end of the war; his family returning to Budapest on April 18, 1945; immigrating to Israel (then part of Palestine) in 1946; spending time in the Hagana and in the War of Liberation (1948); participating in the battle to open up the road to Jerusalem; moving in 1955 to Australia because he got tired of serving every year in the reserves; and his advice to fellow Jews.

Oral history interview with Frank Jenner

Oral History

Frank Jenner (né Gazirovsky), born on January 2, 1920 in Düsseldorf, Germany, describes his youth in Düsseldorf and Wuppertal, Germany; not experiencing much antisemitism until well into the Nazi period; being counseled in 1938 to join a Jewish training farm for young people; his memories of Kristallnacht when he and other students over the age of 18 were arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany; conditions in the camp; being released in early 1939 when he received a visa to Australia, which was in need of agricultural workers; and arriving in Australia in the summer of 1939 and working for two years on farms.

Oral history interview with Jakob Ginzberg

Oral History

Jakob Ginzberg, born in Łódź, Poland on March 10, 1920, describes being raised in a family of seven children; his father, who was a Gerrer Chasid and the owner of a small knitting factory; his father’s death when Jakob was 14 years old; his family escaping the ghetto with the help of a Volkdeutsch acquaintance; going to his mother’s hometown of Koinck (near Radom, Poland); being taken to Chelmno and Lublin, where he was forced to work on airplanes; being taken to Ukraine to do forced labor on roads and fortifications; having an accident and going to the hospital; being sent back to Koinck; winding up in the Radom ghetto, where he worked in a bicycle factory; learning the electrical welding trade, which later became the secret of his survival; working in a munitions factory in Skolna (ph) as a welder; being taken on a five-day march as the Russians approached; winding up in Auschwitz; continuing to Wehingen, Germany, where there was a French prisoner of war camp and eventually to Dachau; being taken to Seefeld and Garmisch Partenkirchen, where he was saved by a German woman; being liberated by the United States Army; and believing that he survived in order to share his story with future generations.

Oral history interview with Magda Fried Curtis

Oral History

Magda Fried Curtis, born in Kismarok, Czechoslovakia in 1921, describes her father dying while she was an infant; her mother and two older brothers; moving with her mother to Budapest, Hungary in 1929, while her brothers stayed in Czechoslovakia; the anti-Jewish laws beginning in Hungary in 1939 and not being allowed to get a higher education; finding a job as a secretary in a non-Jewish cosmetics company, where she managed the business; meeting her husband Stephen (RG-50.407*0012) in 1938; the war beginning and her husband serving in the Hungarian military labor camps; getting married during the German occupation of Hungary; the severe conditions in Budapest when they were moved to “Jewish Houses”; how she and her mother were among 2,000, mostly Jewish women, who were taken to Deutschkreis in Burgeland in October 1944; being left behind with her mother and approximately 30 other women to clean up the camp, while most of the other prisoners were taken to Bergen-Belsen; managing to get back across the Hungarian border and being liberated by the Russian Army; her husband surviving; making their way back to Budapest where only her father-in-law had survived; immigrating with Stephen to Israel in 1948; immigrating to Australia in 1957; and ascribing her survival to luck and a positive mental attitude.

Oral history interview with Anna Grunfeld Danko

Oral History

Anna Danko (née Gruenfeld), born June 29, 1924 in Verek Berchova (ph), Czechoslovakia near Munkacz (Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her religious family; her brothers attending Yeshiva in Bratislava; how her hometown became part of Hungary during the war; the formation of the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz; how she and her sister were able to help many fellow prisoners while in the camp; being sent to Ravensbrück and then Reichshof, traveling by foot and by cattle car; and being liberated by the Russian Army.

Oral history interview with Klara Litvak Eydina

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bela Garfinchel Meylikh

Oral History

Bella Garfinchel Meylikh, born August 1925 in Benderi, Romania (Bender, Moldova), describes the population of 50,000-60,000 inhabitants, of which approximately half were Jewish; her parents, who were both medical doctors; her father’s death when she was five years old; growing up in a non-religious environment, but with a feeling of Jewish belonging; her family moving to Kishinev (Chisinau, Moldova) in 1930; Jabotinsky’s speech about the coming dangers for the Jewish people; the political upheavals in Romania when the Iron Guard came to power; how in 1940 Bessarabia was taken over by the Soviets; escaping into Russia with her mother in 1941; winding up in a small village in Kazakhstan, living under extremely primitive conditions; her mother continuing to practice medicine in Kazakhstan; entering the university in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1942; receiving permission in 1944 to return to Kishinev; finishing college and studying medicine in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, Russia); the nightmarish antisemitism of Stalin’s final days; and receiving permission to leave the Soviet Union in 1970 and settling in Australia.

Oral history interview with Miriam Blumenstock Unreich

Oral History

Miriam Unreich (née Blumenstock), born April 30, 1923 in Spicka Staravetz (ph), Czechoslovakia, describes her father’s store selling clothes and textiles and his involvement in the lumber business; the deportations beginning in March 1942; the Aryanization of the family business and the new proprietor giving them permission to stay; how only eight Jewish families remained in their town by the end of 1942; preparing to go into hiding in 1943 but being betrayed and handed over to the Germans at the Polish border; being kept in prison for a short time then sent to Płaszów concentration camp near Kraków, Poland; being separated from her mother; her mother hiding 500 dollars in Miriam’s clothes; receiving help from a German inmate, who got her extra food; being transferred after two months to Birkenau; meeting a friend who was a Blockälteste and protected her; being sent on death march to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany on January 18, 1944; going to Neustadt-Glewe; and being liberated on April 30, 1945 by the Russian Army.

Oral history interview with Alex Heimler

Oral History

Alex Heimler, born on May 16, 1924 in Vered, Hungary, describes his town as small with 30 or so Jewish families; his father’s wholesale grain business, grocery, and fuel depot; finishing high school, apprenticing as an automobile mechanic, and obtaining his certification in 1943; how after the Germans entered Hungary, he had to go to a labor camp and was put to work in a manganese mine; escaping from the camp after Hungary pulled out of the war on October 16, 1944; making his way to Budapest, Hungary and surviving the war under the protection of the Red Cross and the Swedish Legation; liberation and working for three months for the Russians, rounding up Nazi collaborators; returning to Vered in March 1945; and escaping in 1956 to Austria and immigrating to Australia the same year.

Oral history interview with Serry Wolf

Oral History

Serry Wolf-Gans, born in 1927 in Winterswijk, the Netherlands, describes her father, who had a wholesale knitwear business; her family being strictly observant; her family going into hiding in 1943 and being subsequently betrayed; escaping while her family was arrested; the deportation of her family; finding a new hiding place, where she stayed until two months before liberation; walking with a friend towards the liberators; meeting up with Scottish troops somewhere in Germany; getting married to a Holocaust survivor; immigrating first to New Zealand and then to Australia; and how her family is still strictly observant.

Oral history interview with Sam Pick

Oral History

Sam Pick, born October 27, 1924 in Pabianice, Poland (near Łódź), describes his family’s Orthodox background and his father’s prosperous textile business; the persecution during the first years of the war; being sent to a labor camp in 1941 in Zbąszyń, Poland; arriving in the camp and working on German railroads under supervision of the Bahnpolizei (railway police); the conditions in the camp and having sufficient food to survive; being sent with his fellow inmates to Auschwitz in June 1943; being recruited after three weeks to work on the cleanup of the ruins of the former Warsaw ghetto; how is group of 80 prisons were the only polish speakers of the some 9,000 workers sent to Warsaw; conditions while working in Warsaw for a year; finding valuables in the rubble, which eventually helped him to survive; being sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he worked in underground hangars on German fighter-planes; winding up in the Tyrol, Austria, where he was supposed to work on the "Nazis redoubt” towards the end of the war; being liberated by the United States Army near the Starnberg Sea in Bavaria; being reluctant to tell his story until recently; how he believes his story is common and Elie Wiesel's and Primo Levi's wonderful retellings of their experiences; and attributing his survival to the grace of God and simple luck.

Oral history interview with Zofia Hockin and Maria Robe

Oral History

Zofia Hockin, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1947, describes her parents, Leon Nadel and Estella Lipshitz, who were both born Jewish but survived the Holocaust by passing as non-Jews; how after the war her parents continued to live in Poland under their assumed identities; how her father was a university professor and her mother worked in Polish radio; not knowing of her Jewish background as a child and discovering it as a teenager when a Jewish boyfriend pointed it out to her; her father being demoted in 1968 during the anti-Jewish campaign and choosing to stay in Poland; struggling with her identity; looking for spiritual meaning in her life; joining a group of second generation holocaust survivors; and being accompanied to the interview by her Aunt Maria Roba, who is Zofia’s only relative who left Poland before the war and never concealed her Jewish background.

Oral history interview with Renia Rutman

Oral History

Renia Rutman, born in Warsaw, Poland on May 15, 1921, describes being the youngest of six children (three girls and three boys); her father, who was a tailor and a manufacturer of men’s clothing; how one of her brothers had good connections with non-Jews and managed to find hiding places for his mother and three sisters; how a Polish girl fell in love with her brother and managed to save them; her brother getting married to this girl after the war; instances of betrayal and the family’s miraculous escapes; how during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the family was arrested by the Germans, but not identified as Jews; being separated from their brother; going to Germany, where the four women managed to keep up the masquerade as Polish non-Jews; she and her sisters speaking Polish perfectly while their mother feigned deafness in order to hide her Jewish accent; and being liberated near Leipzig, Germany and returning to Warsaw, where they were reunited with their brother.

Oral history interview with Jack Widawski

Oral History

Jack Widawski, born on November 28, 1926 in Łódź, Poland, describes his parents, Victor and Esther Widasky; being raised in a traditional Jewish home; his family owning a jewelry shop; life in the Łódź ghetto, where he worked in a “engineering factory” on a milling machine; his father working at a food distribution center; the curfew in 1942 and the subsequent selections and deportations; the Judenrat members and his mixed feelings about the Jewish police; his mother dying in the ghetto in 1943; being deported to Auschwitz with his three sisters and father; staying with his father and surviving the selections together; volunteering with his father as tradesmen; being sent to Germany, where they worked in a car factory; the bombing of the factory and moving to another factory in Sigmar-Schoenau (located in Chemnitz, Germany); being put on a death march in April 1945; escaping with a friend and being liberated near the Czech border; finding his father again; his father getting married; the family immigrating to Australia in 1949; and his belief that it is important to “stick to Jewishness.”

Oral history interview with Guta Goldstein

Oral History

Guta Goldstein (née Koppel), born in Łódź, Poland in 1930, describes how her father was a textile merchant and came from a large Orthodox family; being only ten years old when the Łódź ghetto was established; her escape from a “children’s camp” during one of the Aktions; the Judenrat chief, Chaim Rumkowski, urging parents to give up their small children; being deported with her mother to Auschwitz concentration camp in August of 1944; their arrival and her first impressions of the camp; still looking like a young child, but surviving several selections; being taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in November of 1944; being taken to Mehltheuer, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany, where she worked as a chambermaid for German officers; being liberated on April 16, 1944 by the United States Army; and immigrating to Australia in 1949.

Oral history interview with Samuel Dason

Oral History

Sam Dason, born in Pinczow, Poland on March 1, 1924, describes being put to work on roads shortly after the German invasion; the deportation of his family in 1942; being forced to work in a munitions factory in Czestochowa, Poland; being transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany in 1943 then Schlieben concentration camp, where he worked for six months repairing railroad tracks; working in the factories in Myslowice and Bamberg, Germany before being sent on foot march to Theresienstadt (Terezin, Czech Republic); escaping the march and being taken in by a Czech farmer who harbored him for six weeks, until liberation; going to Australia; and how he spent time in Geneva, Switzerland, where he married.

Oral history interview with Vera Ray

Oral History

Vera Ray, born December 10, 1932 in Orlová, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) near Ostrava, discusses her parents Yelena and Heinrich Silbiner (later changed to Silvan); how her father’s real name not used for 53 years and is unknown; being raised in a middle class family; her father’s work as a watchmaker and mother’s work as a teacher of piano and languages; being an only child; the loss of her paternal grandmother and five of her father’s seven siblings in the Holocaust; her father’s efforts to smuggle Jews out of Ostrava circa 1938; how her family appears to be the only survivors from Ostrava; leaving Czechoslovakia in 1939 and going to Kraków, Poland, avoiding air raids along the way; moving to Korets', Ukraine and living there until 1941; moving to Ulyanov (Ul'ianovsk), Russia circa 1941 and later to Alma Ata, Kazakhstan; the end of the war and moving with her family to Bucharest, Romania and later to Prague, Czech Republic; her parents’ decision to become nondenominational so as to avoid antisemitism; her family’s immigration to Australia in 1948 via Egypt, where they spent several months in a tent camp before moving on to Australia; getting married circa 1952 to a Czech camp survivor and later divorcing him; her two children, who are not particularly interested in Judaism; and coming out as a lesbian.

Oral history interview with Ida Hampel

Oral History

Ida Hampel (née Scheuer), born in December 1914 in Tarnów, Poland, discusses her family, including her four sister and one brother; her father, who had a very large bed feather business; attending a Polish school and a business college; antisemitism in school; her father, who was religious and attended synagogue regularly; being Kosher at home; being aware of the anti-Jewish sentiments in Germany during the 1930s; working in an office; the beginning of the war; part of her family going eastward briefly to the part of Poland occupied by the Soviets before returning home; her first encounter with the occupying Germans; feeling scared constantly; receiving help from a friend in Switzerland, Carl Busch; the process of getting a visa to Australia, where her fiancé was living; traveling through Vienna, Austria to Switzerland; going by ship to Australia; arriving in Melbourne on May 10, 1940; getting married on May 25, 1940; her attempts to send parcels to her family members in Poland; the survival of her sister Branca; the deaths of her mother and sister Blanca in Auschwitz; the fates of other family members; her two daughters; her husband’s death in 1955; taking over her husband’s cake business; her thoughts on her life and Australia; and never telling her children about her experiences in the war. (The interviewee shares family pictures at the end of the interview.)

Oral history interview with Kim Mordchell

Oral History

Kim Mordchelll, born September 5, 1924 in Grodno, Poland (Hrodna, Belarus), describes his father, who was a house painter and glazier and had difficulty finding work before the war; the Russian occupation of eastern Poland and his family’s financial condition improving; how there were fewer problems associated with antisemitism during this time; the German invasion and he and his brother having to report for forced labor; working in a mechanical shop repairing German military vehicles; the liquidation of the Grodno ghetto in January 1943; being deported with his family to Auschwitz concentration camp; being assigned to work in "Kanada," sorting the belongings confiscated from new arrivals; how this work allowed him to acquire additional food and clothing, which helped him survive; working in "Kanada" for about six months; being assigned to farm work outside the camp; working on the construction of the crematorium, where he assisted Russian POWs doing iron work; spending time in Gleiwitz concentration camp in Poland as well as a few other minor camps; being liberated in January 1945 after escaping while on death march to Blechhammer concentration camp; and immigrating to Australia in 1950.

Oral history interview with Esther Blatt

Oral History

Esther Blatt, born in 1930 in Romania, discusses her family; being raised Orthodox; growing up on a farm outside of Oradea, Romania; attending school in Oradea; the Jewish community and Jewish traditions she participated in; having to attend a Hungarian school after 1940; speaking Romanian, Hungarian, and Yiddish; the Nazi occupation in 1944 and losing their farm and her father’s distillery; having to wear a star; being moved to the ghetto in May 1944; living in a brick factory; staying in the ghetto for two weeks and having her 14th birthday in the ghetto; being taken to Auschwitz in cattle cars; the selection process upon arrival; staying in Auschwitz for six months; the Blockälteste (inmates in charge of the barrack) in Auschwitz; being taken with 600 other girls to a bomb factory in Czechoslovakia in October 1944 (probably the Flossenbürg subcamp Hertine located in present day Rtyně v Podkrkonoší, Czech Republic); work and life in the camp; an explosion in the bomb factory and the death of one of the German guards; the lack of work and being sent to the fields to dig holes one day and filling in the holes the next day; continuing her religious observations in the camp; fasting on Yom Kippur and deciding to never fast again after someone stole her bread; no longer being religious; her awareness of time in the camp; seeing the Allied planes fly over; being taken to Theresienstadt, where she stayed for two weeks before being liberated; going to Budapest, Hungary; returning to Oradea for three months; living on Mizrachi kibbutz near Rome, Italy with her cousins for over three years; getting married in 1948; deciding to immigrate to Australia; and the difficulty adjusting to life in Australia and feeling ostracized by many Australians.

Oral history interview with George Blatt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edward Schreiber

Oral History

Edward Schreiber, born in 1934 in the town of Kumene, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes his Orthodox family, including his parents and four siblings; how his father was a textile importer and wholesaler; his parents sending he and his younger sister to their grandmother in Hungary in 1943; the deportations beginning in Hungary and being sent with his sister back to their family; their father arranging hiding places in the vicinity of Bratislava, Slovakia for all seven members of the family; the entire family being betrayed and handed over to the Nazi authorities in December 1944; being sent to Auschwitz concentration camp along with his mother and siblings while his father was taken to a labor camp in Germany; being transported with his mother and his siblings to Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic, where they survived the war; his father surviving and reuniting with the family in Bratislava; his father’s death in 1946 from the aftereffects of his labor camp experiences; his family’s move to Australia in 1952; and his regret that he never had a proper education.

Oral history interview with Rozia Krakowski

Oral History

Rozia Krakowski, born June 24, 1926 in Konigsberg (probably Chojna, Poland), discusses her family’s moves back and forth between Konigsberg and a town near the German border during the 1930s; her sister’s birth in 1928; her parents getting an apartment in Łódź, Poland a few weeks before the war began; living in Konigsberg after the war started; her parents’ backgrounds; her religious life and attending a Jewish school as well as a Polish school; experiencing some antisemitism as a child; her extended family; being part of a youth organization; the Nazi occupation; the burning of the synagogue while people were inside; men’s beards being cut; having to wear a yellow star; the arrest of her father several time and paying a bribe to have him released each time; working in a factory; her grandmother’s death; living in the ghetto; the deportation in 1941; many members of her family being sent to Auschwitz; her brother hiding when the Germans searched for him; receiving a work letter and hiding in the cellar behind her cousin’s house; being sent to a transit camp; being sent in the fall of 1942 to Markstädt labor camp (also called Laskowitz-Meleschwitz, and located in Laskowice Oławskie, Poland); conditions in the camp; her work detail; her friend Bella; a prisoner in the camp who was impregnated and had to have an abortion; getting letters and parcels from home; being transported to a munitions factory in Germany; her work in the camp; learning that they were making screws for ammunition and beginning to sabotage the screws; being liberated by the Russians; being afraid of the Russians; returning to Poland; finding her brother; going to several places in Hungary; going to Graz, Austria and then Lignitz; going to Turkey illegally and being imprisoned; meeting her husband; going to Paris, France in 1948 while her husband traveled to Israel; going to Israel in January 1949 and getting married; immigrating to Australia with her husband and children in 1960; and adjusting to life in Australia.

Oral history interview with Luba Olenski

Oral History

Luba Olenski, born in Kidau (Kedainiai), Lithuania on March 3, 1931, describes how in 1935 her family moved to Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania), where her father established a wholesale tobacco and cigarette business; how her family was strictly orthodox and her father was an adherent member of the "Mussar" movement; the Soviet occupation of Kovno and her father fleeing with her to Bialystok, Poland days before the German invasion; the occupation of Bialystok on July 3, 1941 and how three days later her father was among 6,000 Jewish men killed by the Nazis; remaining in the Bialystok ghetto, where she was cared for by relatives; the liquidation of the ghetto on August 15, 1943 and how the 60,000 remaining Jews were put on transports to Treblinka concentration camp; escaping the transport and wandering the countryside; getting help from local Poles; joining a Jewish partisans unit, where she met her future husband; remaining with the group until they were liberated in the fall of 1944; moving with her future family to Briansk, Russia and eventually escaping to Poland; immigrating to Australia in 1947; and getting married in 1950 and raising three children.

Oral history interview with Leo Wayman

Oral History

Leo Wayman, born on January 7, 1924 in Radom, Poland, describes his memories of the Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky speaking and predicting disaster for the Jews; the establishment of the ghetto and the living conditions; how his family was well-to-do before the war and his father managed to get along with the Nazi Treuhändler put in charge of the family business; continuing to do business and smuggling supplies into the ghetto; the liquidation of most of the ghetto and the brutal roundups by the SS; being taken to work in a munitions factory in Radom and the awful working conditions; the liquidation of the last ghetto; being made to march to Tomaszów, Poland and then being taken by cattle cars to Auschwitz concentration camp; being sent on to a succession of other concentration camps, including Weinigen (possibly Vaihingen/Wiesengrund concentration camp near Karlsruhe, Germany), Hessenthal, and Dachau; being liberated by the United States Army while on a transport to Tirol, Austria; surviving the war with his father, who decided to stay in Germany and was successful in business; immigrating to Australia and having little contact with his father; becoming a successful businessman in Melbourne; being a member of the corn exchange; the inhumane treatment by Jewish Kapos during the war; and how his father was able to bring one Kapo to justice after the war.

Oral history interview with Szoel Balbin

Oral History

Szoel Zeilig Balbin, born February 1, 1926 in Rawa Mazowiecka, Poland, describes his parents and three siblings; attending school; being in the Rawa Mazowiecka ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto in September 1942; living in hiding in Zawady, Poland after 1942; going to Berlin, Germany in February 1946; immigrating to Australia in April 1951; and getting married and having four children.

Oral history interview with Ivan Jarny

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kurt Jilovsky

Oral History

Kurt Jilovsky, born July 11, 1905 in Liberec, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), discusses his family; the small synagogue and Jewish community in Liberec; studying Talmud at his paternal grandfather’s house; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; his father’s work as a landscape photographer; his sister Greta who was born in 1908 (she was his only family member who survived the war); moving to Prague in 1910 and attending a government school; attending a convent school at first because it was best primary school in town; speaking German and Czech; growing up in an assimilated family; joining the Jewish boy scouts at age 11; becoming an ardent Zionist but not being religious; his father’s service in WWI; attending a grammar school; his bar mitzvah; conditions in Austria and Czechoslovakia; attending the Czech university of technology, studying economics; his first job at a Jewish-owned company that manufactured tin household articles and steel drums to transport petrol and chemicals; his life in the late 1920s; working for the Philips radio company; traveling to Berlin, Germany to attend a radio exposition after September 1938 and seeing Nazi Germany for the first time; spending three months in Holland in 1938-39 before going to Cyprus; spending two years in Cyprus, working for Phillips; the closing of Philips; trying to volunteer with the Czech Army; working for an orange grower in Cyprus; going to Haifa in 1941; his wife’s experiences during the war; volunteering for the British Army in Palestine; being sent to Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt; being part of a materials transport company; returning to Palestine for officers training school outside Haifa; being paid differently from his peers and reporting it to the British army newspaper; serving in Cairo and meeting Jews who spoke Yiddish; seeing King Lear performed in Yiddish in the Cairo Opera theater; the dispersal of the Jewish company and being stationed in Rome; being discharged from the army in Terranto, Italy; reuniting with his sister; returning to Prague; working for Philips again; going to Palestine and reuniting with his wife in 1946; working for Philips in Holland; going to Sydney, Australia in November 1948; and his feelings about his life.

Oral history interview with Stefania Steel and Maximillian Steel

Oral History

Stefania Steel (née Medeska), born on December 17, 1918 in Łódź, Poland, discusses growing up as an only child in an Orthodox home; attending a Jewish school until she was 16 years old; her parents; speaking Polish, English and Yiddish at home; working her family’s book shop and printing business; the German invasion; trying to escape Łódź with a boyfriend and returning soon after; having to wear an armband; the burning of the synagogues; going to Warsaw, Poland; going to Bialystok, Poland; getting married; traveling with a large group through Kiev, Ukraine; going to Kattakurgan, Uzbekistan; the typhus epidemic in Kattakurgan; working in a library; her husband working in a hospital until he was mobilized into the army for six months; living in Uzbekistan for five years; the bad conditions in Uzbekistan; returning to Łódź in 1945 from Tashkent, Uzbekistan; the births of her son and daughter; standing in lines for food and milk; experiencing a lot of antisemitism; going to Vienna, Austria in 1958; immigrating to Australia; adjusting to life in Australia; visiting Poland twice; believing she survived because of luck; and her religious life in Melbourne. (She shows personal documents and photographs at the end of the interview.) [An interview with Maximillian Steel begins at 1:16:00]. Maximillian Steel (Stahl), born in 1910 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his parents (his mother’s name was Herta Falsberg); his family’s chicory factory; becoming a boxer at age 16 and winning a boxing championship in Łódź in 1934; not being allowed to compete in Austria in 1935; working as an electrician in Palestine for five months; returning to Łódź in 1935; the beginning of the war and being taken by the Germans to work cutting wood; living in Warsaw and then Bialystok; going east to Uzbekistan, and working in a hospital for about a year; working as a truck driver; being mobilized by the Russian Army for about six months; being released as an invalid and returning to Tashkent; returning to Łódź; working as a truck driver and then in a salt factory; immigrating to Australia; working many jobs in Australia; his message to future generation to never surrender. (He shows photographs at the end of his interview.)

Oral history interview with Rena Shisman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Tzipora Landau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aron N. Babuh

Oral History

Aron Nuhimovich Babuh, born May 13, 1927 in Vladimir-Volinsk (Volodymyr-Volyns'kyĭ), Ukraine, describes his parents and three siblings (none of whom survived); the Vladimir-Volinsk ghetto; being liberated by the Russian Army in June 1944; living in after the war; immigrating to Australia in December 1994; getting married twice after 1945; and having one son and one daughter.

Oral history interview with Sonia Hornstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph West

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Tonkin

Oral History

Henry Tonkin, born April 20, 1926 in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), discusses his family background; his father (Herschel Yakka), who had two brothers and was in the transport business; his mother (Nettie Yakka), who had two sisters; having three brothers and being the youngest; the Russian occupation of Lvov in 1939; his oldest brother who was mobilized into the Polish army; being chosen for the Russian Youth Organization; spending six months in Moscow, Russia; his father’s business being taken; the German invasion in June 1941; the establishment of a ghetto; Jews being issued identification cards; the deportation of the elderly to camp Belzec; his middle brother being sent to camp Janowska; the deportation of his father to camp Belzec; one of his brothers hiding with a Polish dentist; having a work permit; digging trenches at the Lvov airport and then working as a painter; being arrested by Jewish police; being taken to gestapo headquarters; being held for three months for changing jobs without permission; his work while in prison, supplying wood and coal for German apartments; stealing food from cellars; being put on a transport to camp Belzec; escaping and returning to the ghetto; registering as a rail worker; seeing transports of prisoners; being arrested by Ukrainian police twice; being beaten and imprisoned for two weeks; being put on a transport, escaping, and returning to the ghetto; purchasing Polish ID cards and shedding his Jewish identity; taking the name Vladislov Yachavsky, born June 5, 1925; working on the railroad; being sent to Stalino (Donets’k, Ukraine); going to OT (Organisation Todt) headquarters and getting a work assignment; being given a pass back to Poland; being given a German uniform and returning to Lvov, where the ghetto had already been liquidated; returning to Stalino; traveling to Katowice, Poland; going to Prague, Czech Republic and working in the steel industry; the arrival of the Russians; returning to Katowice; his father who was drafted into the Russian army but escaped and survived in Poland; living as a Pole from 1945 to 1948; being arrested in 1948 by Polish police for having American currency; being sentenced to a labor camp for three years; escaping and leaving Poland for political reasons; the difficulty of adapting to life after the war; his suicidal thoughts; going to Lübeck, Germany; being arrested and imprisoned for weeks; denying being Jewish, but reading Seder and receiving help from Jewish authorities; going to a displaced persons camp for a year; immigrating to Australia; getting married in 1956; and his thoughts on Israel and Zionism.

Oral history interview with Leo Parker

Oral History

Oral history interview with Paul Ryber

Oral History

Paul Ryber, born on June 24, 1917 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses his family, including his father Zeigman (Seigman) Rosenberger, his mother Rosa Rosenberger, and his older sister Milla Lester, his younger brother Zoltan, and his younger sister Gertrude (married to Mr. Brill and immigrated to Israel in 1939); the company that his father and uncle owned called Fisher and Grandowitz, which sold women’s clothing; working as a salesman for company; the rise of antisemitism in 1933 and how it became worse in the following years; being given an exception by ministry in 1939 to keep working because he worked at a shop owned by soccer player Dowchick (possibly Jan Dvoracek) who had connections; working until 1944 and having enough food; the German occupation of the city on September 1, 1944 and the relocation of people to Poland; leaving Bratislava in September 1944 and going without his family to Banská Bystrica, Slovakia; staying with a customer; building a bunker; meeting a Russian partisan in the fall of 1944 and hearing from him that Germans were killing all the Jews; going along with the partisan and participating in actions against the Germans; the situation getting worse and helping the American army in April 1945; returning to his house, which was occupied by a Slovak and returned to Ryber; retrieving merchandise that had been buried and beginning work again; the deaths of his parents and brother; getting married in 1945; the communist takeover and losing his business; and immigrating to Australia.

Oral history interview with Herta Ryber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lola Rapoport

Oral History

Lola Tennebaum Rapoport, born October 4, 1919, discusses her family’s move to Łódź, Poland; her father Moshe Tennebaum, who owned a cigarette factory; her mother Tola Weissfle; her older brother and younger sister; attending a Polish school; the beginning of the war; being expelled from their home; her father having to give away his factory; working in a knitting factory 1939-1941; getting married in the ghetto on March 6, 1942; working in the office of an upholstery factory; her brother working as a doctor for which he received special rations; her sister, who worked in a raincoat factory; the deportation of her family in August 1944; her husband, who hid his parents; the 500 Jews allowed to stay in the ghetto; living in a compound in the ghetto that was administered by the Gestapo; being liberated by the Russians; living with her husband’s family; her father and brother returning to Łódź in May/June 1945; her father getting his cigarette factory back; having a baby in 1946; going to Stockholm, Sweden for eight months; traveling through Copenhagen, Denmark then Italy, and ultimately immigrating to Australia in March 1948; her father, who remarried and went to Israel; her brother staying in Poland until 1958 when he immigrated to Australia; adjusting to life in Australia; her husband’s knitting factory; having a second child; and her message to future generation to learn the history of the Holocaust and try to prevent it from happening again.

Oral history interview with Rose Fixler

Oral History

Rose Fixler (née Szold), born on July 29, 1921 in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (now Mukachevo, Ukraine)discusses her family; being the seventh child of eight children (her siblings were Suryankus, Ecka Suri, Malka Schindell, Yosef (survived), Gertel, Pearl, Barish); the Hungarian occupation beginning in November 1938; her family being forced into a ghetto in March 1944; the liquidation of the ghetto in May 1944; being sent to Auschwitz with her family; the deaths of her mother, father, and two nieces; being transferred to the Roma barracks in Birkenau; being in Birkenau for eight months; being sent to a textile factory in Frengal in Czechoslovakia (possibly camp Freudenthal); learning to sew; being liberated by the Russians; returning home; going to Prague, Czech Republic, where she stayed for two years; getting married; her husband’s factory, which was taken over by the communists; going to Sydney, Australia in July 1949; starting her own sewing factory; their one son and eight grandchildren; and moving to Melbourne.

Oral history interview with Jack Bart

Oral History

Jack Bart, born September 2, 1929 in Łódź, Poland, describes his parents and two siblings (none of who survived); the ghetto in Łódź; being deported to Auschwitz for three months; working in the factory in Braunschweig for five months; marching to Ravensbrück; being sent to Ludwigslust labor camp; being liberated; being in the Bergen-Belsen orphanage; living in England (1945-1948); immigrating to Israel and living there from 1948 to 1964; immigrating to Australia in 1964; and his marriage and three children.

Oral history interview with Dina Webb

Oral History

Dina Webb (née Bachrach), born May 1932 in Warsaw, Poland, discuss her parents, Hesch and Anka Bachrach; her father who was a printer and active Bundist; attending a Yiddish kindergarten and the secular school; her father fleeing to Lithuania in September 1939; the immigration of her uncle to Chile; staying in Warsaw with her mother and her mother’s family; passing as Aryans; fleeing to Russian-occupied Poland; staying with relatives in Bialystok, Poland; going to Lida, Belarus; going to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); being treated in a hospital after suffering from frostbite in her toes; her father getting visas to Japan from Chiune Sugihara; taking the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok, Russia; taking a ship in 1941 to Japan; staying in Japan for 10 months; being deported to Shanghai, China, where they stayed until the end of 1946; attending the Freysinger School, the Kadoorie School, and the Shanghai Jewish School; having to move to a ghetto after Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941; immigrating to Australia after the war; settling in Melbourne; and their lives in Australia.

Oral history interview with Ludwig Sokolov

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcus Hirshorn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Katz

Oral History

Albert A Katz, born in Hungary, discusses his mother, Madia, and father, Martin, who was a farmer in Czechoslovakia and employed many non-Jews; growing up in a religious and Kosher home; having three sisters and three brothers; attending a secular school in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine); being a pharmacist; owning a shop from 1937 to 1941 in Irshava, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine); the Hungarian occupation; being taken in 1941 to a forced labor camps; the German occupation; being forced to build airports and dig tank trenches; living in stables with other Jews as well as Jehovah Witnesses; Hungarian crews hanging the prisoners by their arms, a practice which the Germans stopped as it prevented the prisoners from being able to work; being taken to Bor, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia) where they worked in copper mines for the Germans; being marched from Bor to Flossenbürg, Germany; being taken to Dresden to clean up the city after the bombings; being taken to work in copper mines in Germany; being sent to Theresienstadt; being liberated; contracting typhus; convalescing in a hospital; a friend taking him to Pilsen, Germany (Plzeň, Czech Republic); getting married to a Slovakian survivor; going to the United States in 1948 with his wife and son; working at a night club for 12 years; immigrating to Australia in 1960 because his wife’s family lived there; telling his children about his war-time experiences. (The interviewee shows family photographs and a letter from his mother at the end of the interview.)

Oral history interview with Kaziemierz Stalmach

Oral History

Kaziemierz Stalmach, born on February 24, 1920 in Kraków, Poland, discusses his mother who was from a shtetl in eastern Poland; his father, who was from a shtetl near Krakow, and worked as a tailor (he died in 1925); his siblings Shimon (born 1917), Max (born 1917), and Amelia (born 1915); attending public school for four years; attending evening classes at Talmud Torah in Krakow; his mother who was religious and spoke Polish and Yiddish; knowing conditions were bad for Jew sin Germany in 1933; being in Kraków at the beginning of the war; the rationing of food; his siblings, Amelia and Max, living in a Jewish orphanage; the restrictions placed on Jews; being forced to live in the ghetto in 1941; living in one room with his extended family; conditions in the ghetto over time; many Jews fleeing to Russia; the Judenrat that ran the ghetto; being allowed to leave ghetto for work; the Jewish police in the ghetto; his friend Adam Bachman, who had run away from camp Belzec; planning an escape from the ghetto with Bachman; getting a Polish birth certificate and a German identity card from a Polish friend who worked on the railroad; Bachman being turned into the Germans in January 1943 by a Jewish informer (hearing after the war that Bachman was killed in Auschwitz); the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943 and the subsequent deportation of his mother, brother and sister to Auschwitz; living as a Polish Christian outside of Kraków; hiding in Kraków with the help of the resistance movement; living in the woods with the partisans beginning in May 1944; returning to Kraków in October 1944 because of a dental problem; the arrival of the Russians in Kraków in January 1945; reuniting with his brother and sister; running a photograph business after the war; getting married to the daughter of the people who had hid him during the war, and her death soon after their marriage; getting married to Sophia in 1952; the births of his children in the 1950s; immigrating to Australia in 1960; and working at Courtney clothing factory for 20 years. (He shows family photographs at the end of the interview.)

Oral history interview with Lisa Finkelstein

Oral History

Lucia (Lisa) Finkelstein (née Altstock), born on March 1, 1923 in Zloczów, Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), discusses growing up in a comfortable home with two brothers, Marcus (born 1921) and Isaac (born 1931); attending a state school and then high school; attending Hebrew school; the Russian occupation in 1939; finishing high school in the Russian school system; the invasion of the Germans, which ceased her schooling; the murder of her family members by the Germans; a Polish woman, Wiktoria Glowacz, who took her into her house to do housekeeping and childcare in Kraków, Poland; staying with Ms. Glowacz for almost three years; receiving a false birth certificate (her false name was Waclawa Olszewska); being detained by the Gestapo, but running away while being taken to the police station; hiding overnight and returning to the house of Ms. Glowacz; getting a false ID; working in an advertising office; Ms. Glowacz arranging a hiding place for her; Ms. Glowacz helping many Jewish people, especially during the Warsaw uprising; a Jewish boy who stayed with them for five weeks (he was later hidden at a church); meeting and marrying her husband at the end of 1945; leaving Poland for Munich, Germany, where they lived for six years; preparing documents for Ms. Glowacz to be recognized as a Righteous Gentile; immigrating to Australia in 1951; settling in Melbourne; and her message to future generations to be good. (Family photographs are shown at the end of the interview.)

Oral history interview with Wilhelm Korn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alice Halasez

Oral History

Alice Halasez, born on January 21, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her parents, Shomrai Klein (born 1899) and Esther Shpitz (born 1905).; growing up in town a half hour from Budapest; her younger sister; her father’s button factory and two button/embroidery shops where her mother and other relatives also worked; attending a commercial school in Budapest but never graduating; parents keeping kosher at home and attending an Orthodox synagogue; speaking only Hungarian (her mother’s parents only spoke German); the beginning of the war, which had little effect on her family at first; a detective accusing her father of being a spy in 1942 and her father bribing him to drop it; Jews not being allowed to attend universities, which was the only restriction on Jews from 1939 to 1944; not knowing about the concentration camps, but her father was sent to a labor camp in 1942; being forced with her family to live in the ghetto in April 1944; being sent via cattle car to Auschwitz along with her grandmother, aunt, mother and sister; her grandmother’s death on the journey; the killing of her mother and sister upon arrival; taking care of her aunt; being sent to Birkenau; eating potato peels found in the garbage; being sent to Bergen-Belsen to work in a munitions factory; a German foreman giving her sandwiches which she shared with other prisoners; being treated better than at Auschwitz; being hospitalized for a month and being very weak when she returned to work; being liberated by Russians around April 1945 before the Americans arrived; staying at Bergen-Belsen until June 1945; returning to Budapest; reuniting with her father and future husband, whom she knew before the war (he was in hiding during the war); getting married to Laszlo Halasz on July 14, 1945 in a religious wedding; her father getting married in 1947 to a widow who had a son named Peter Handelsman (born 1937); working with her father; the broth of her son George; her family’s immigration to Australia in 1957 and the immigration of her father and stepmother, and stepbrother in 1959; her father starting a printing factory; and working for Kodak and then for her father.

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Herzog

Oral History

Elizabeth Herzog, born April 10, 1924 in Poland, discusses her middle-class family’s move to Yaroslav (Jaroslaw, Poland); her father Max (born circa 1898-99) and her mother Laura Rothstein; her two younger brothers, Ismayel (born 1926) and Boris (born 1931); attending school with Jews and Poles; having to attend a private high school as Jews were not allowed in the public high school; never attending synagogue and never learning Hebrew or Yiddish; experiencing some antisemitism; her grandfather who was religious and was beaten up because he had a beard; belonging to a Zionist youth organization that met in secret; the picketing of Jewish shops around holidays to make buyers go to Christian-owned shops; the migration of members of her family in the mid-1930s from the German borders to Jaroslaw; her family’s consideration of emigration and deciding not to when her grandparents refused to leave; the beginning of the war in 1939; the frequent bombing of the city; the roundup and killing of Jewish businessmen; her father and uncles fleeing to Romania, where they were stopped by Russians and sent back to Poland; Jews being ordered to report to the train station with no belongings on October 13, 1939; going with her mother, aunts, and brothers toward the Russian border with many other women and children; arriving at Lubatchev and lived with a cabinetmaker; her father and uncles rejoining family; being evicted and moving to Lviv, Ukraine; attending school in Lviv; the Russians ordering her family to leave in April 1940; being taken by train to Irkutsk and staying in barracks for a while; going north by boat on the Angara River into the Taiga of Siberia to a labor camp 30 km from Bodaybo (Bodaĭbo, Russia); living in primitive barracks without electricity; eating mushrooms and berries in the summer and fish from the river in the winter; her family’s work cutting timber seven days a week; having little bread; getting water from snow; occasionally getting meat and oil; the awful mosquitos; going to the nearby city of Bodaybo; working at the train station along with her brother; becoming Russian citizens; being taken to a primitive collective farm near the Volga River in 1944; becoming a kindergarten teacher; food from the United States arriving in that area; repatriating to Poland on April 10, 1945; going to Silesia; hearing about the camp and thinking it was Russian propaganda; meeting her future husband (he was the only survivor of a 30 person family); her father experiencing antisemitism when he tried to return to their home; getting married in 1948; her brother’s immigration to Australia in 1946 so he could avoid pogroms; the immigration of her parents and youngest brother to Australia in 1950; immigrating with her husband in 1958 to Australia; their two children and two grandchildren; and her thoughts on Poland.

Oral history interview with Jechiel Gutman

Oral History

Jechiel Gutman, born in February 1914 in Poland, discusses his father Chaim and mother; his three brothers and two sisters; having five uncles on his mother’s side; his grandfathers, Chaim and Yitzhak; growing up in a religious home and speaking only Yiddish; attending a cheder for a while and working in a knitting factory at age 16; learning the knitting trade in Czestochowa, Poland and then going to Łódź, Poland to work; bringing his family to Łódź; living in Dundegasse, which was a working area; working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week; working at home making jumpers to sell in the local market; the prevalence of antisemitism and occasionally being beaten up for being Jewish; being forced to work in Germany at the beginning of the war, building a road near Stuttgart; returning to Łódź and living in the ghetto with his family circa 1940; working in a knitting factory and transporting alcohol to men who guarded the ghetto; the two halves of the ghetto, which were connected by two bridges; his wife and sister working in hospitals in the ghetto; his father’s death at age 52 in 1942; being ordered with his family to the train station on August 28, 1944; being taken to Auschwitz; the selections; the deaths of his wife, mother, and sisters; going to Australia after the war; his knitting factory in Australia; and getting remarried and having two children.

Oral history interview with Fela Goldbaum

Oral History

Fela Goldbaum, born on April 3, 1915 in Pabianice, Poland, discusses her parents; growing up in a close, religious, but not overly strict, family; living mainly among Jews; speaking Yiddish in the home and Polish outside; becoming a seamstress; the antisemitism among the local population; attempting unsuccessfully to immigrate to Palestine; being aware of Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies; her first contacts with the Germans following the invasion of Poland; attempting, unsuccessfully, to prevent the arrest of her brother; establishment of a ghetto in Pabianice and being forced to wear the yellow star; Jews establishing a Judenrat to deal with the Germans; the arrests of Jewish men; working as a seamstress while other women were forced to be “concubines”; having a special permit to leave the ghetto to work and being given special rations; being forced to sew Nazi flags; the closing of the ghetto in 1942; being rounded up by the Gestapo and marched to a field, where everyone was forced to spend the night; the separation of the young from the old; being sent to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź; others being sent to Chelmno; continuing to work in a workshop in Litzmannstadt; marrying in order to get more time off under Judenrat policies; hiding from the Germans in 1944; being sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars with no food or water; seeing smoke coming from the chimneys; going through the selection; standing naked and having her hair cut; standing in the open for three days; being separated from her two sisters, Hana and Pearl (they survived); being sent to Mittelsteine to work; the daily routine in the camp; being taken on a forced march as the Russians approached; being freed by the Russians and returning to the camp barracks (for shelter); developing dysentery; going from village to village scrounging for food; marrying an acquaintance from Pabianice; returning to Pabianice; deciding to flee Poland and return to Germany; staying in the Landsberg displaced persons camp; giving birth to a son; immigrating in 1948 to Israel; becoming ill and returning to Germany for treatment; and moving to Australia.

Oral history interview with Henry Lipschitz

Oral History

Henry Lipschitz (also spelled Lipschutz), born on March 1, 1917 in Poland (possibly in Wieleń), discusses his father, Moishe, and mother, Zesu; his older brother and three younger sisters; his middle-class family’s two flour mills (still in existence); having a traditional Jewish life; the antisemitism among Poles of his village; speaking only Yiddish in the home; how most of his family remained in Poland after Hitler’s rise and ultimately perished; his surprise that the Zionist community also remained in Poland rather than leave for Palestine; being in the army infantry service in early 1939 and encountering antisemitism; after the German victory, witnessing the separation of Jews from Poles and execution of some Jews; being taken to Germany as a POW; being separated into national-religious blocks; being sent home to Poland after the Nazi-Soviet pact; working as a painter for the Nazi occupiers; being sent to the Łódź ghetto in 1942; being rounded up with thousands of Jews and being forced to hold many of them while a German officer named Grosmann shot them; wanting to be shot himself, and not understanding how he survived, but speculating that he was young and strong enough to work; watching his parents and sisters along with over 9,000 (out of a group of approximately 10,000) being sent to Chelmno by truck and hearing of this group’s extermination by gas; believing this story while others did not; not wanting to be interviewed for this story but being urged to do so by his children and grandchildren; joining the fire brigade in the Łódź ghetto; conditions in the ghetto, including starvation; urging mothers to hide their children; watching trainloads of Jews being taken away; not feeling guilty for his killing of about fifteen Germans after the war; Jewish cooperation in selections for transport; final liquidation of the Łódź ghetto in August 1944; being transported by train to Auschwitz; selections at Birkenau; details of existence and struggle for survival in the camp; being sent to Mauthausen and later to Ebensee camp and survival ploys in those places; liberation and brief return to Poland where he found almost no one he knew alive; leaving Poland for Germany, where he met his wife in 1947; immigrating to Australia in 1948; losing his belief in God; and advising Jews of today to fight. [Post-interview, shows various photos, prewar and postwar.]

Oral history interview with George 'Gecel' Steinic

Oral History

George Steinic, born on September 30, 1926 in Bedzin, Poland, discusses his parents; his three sisters; his Orthodox family life and education; the town population of about 30,000 Jews and 20,000 Christians; the town’s economy being mostly prosperous based on manufacturing; his father’s awareness of developments in Western Europe and disinclination to leave Poland when others did so; the German invasion in September 1939; the hanging of two bakers for raising bread prices; random killing and bribing of Jews by a Polish policeman; wearing the yellow star; the beatings and harassment of Jews; the burning of the synagogue; burning to death of some 200 Jews in their houses, and a few who were saved in a church; the gradual deterioration of conditions and resettling of some Jews; the deportation of some Jews to Auschwitz and the failure of Jews to believe reports or rumors of atrocities there; being taken with about a thousand Jews on 7 April 1942 to a series of labor camps; living in barracks and the conditions there; the presence in the camps of British POWs; being taken to build work camps; the attitudes of Poles being worse than the Germans; working on munitions for Krupp; hearing of the death of his family with the liquidation of the Bedzin Ghetto; being sent to a new camp where he worked as a carpenter; being aware of the progress of the war; friendships made almost entirely on the basis of mutual support; never believing he would survive the war but wanting to survive to bear witness to events; the approach of Russian forces in 1945, liquidation of the camps, and forced marches during which those who could not walk were shot; arrival at Gross-Rosen; the consolidation of prisoners from several camps; the brutal treatment; washing and maintaining personal hygiene as a key to survival; managing to maintain his health by obtaining food; importance to survival of doing one’s work well; being sent to Buchenwald but then on to Flossenbürg due to lack of room; some Jews voluntarily cooperating to survive; several people being killed by Germans and also by Americans; being liberated by U.S. Army troops on 23 April 1945 and receiving crucial help from an American captain; staying in Weiden, Germany, where he married; moving to Brussels, Belgium in December 1945; returning briefly to his home in Bedzin, and finding it occupied by Poles who said they now owned it and turned him away; briefly recounting the story of a Jew who was soon after killed by Poles in similar circumstances; immigrating to Israel (near Petah Tikvah), but then returning to Brussels for one year; ending up in Melbourne, Australia, where he and his wife raised a son and daughter; not telling his children much about his wartime experiences; and advising future generations of Jews to fight, but not believing he can advise them on religion.

Oral history interview with William Waller

Oral History

Oral history interview with Miriam Gutman

Oral History

Miriam Gutman, born in 1923 in Kaunas, Lithuania, discusses her father, Shmuel, who was a self-employed painter; her father’s death in 1937; her mother, Frieda, who opened a restaurant; her brother and sister; being close to her grandparents, who owned a general goods shop; living in a close-knit community; attending a state school until sixth grade; speaking primarily Yiddish and a little Russian; being raised in a traditional Jewish home; being aware of antisemitism but not experiencing it firsthand because there was very little contact with the Lithuanian community; the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1939 and her mother being forced to close the restaurant; getting married to a wealthy man in 1940; the German invasion in 1941; the deadly pogroms in Kaunas; being sent into the ghetto in Slobodke (an area of Kaunas now called Vilijampole); being pregnant and being hungry; people believing the worst would be over soon; her husband being killed at work when their child was three months old; meeting a factory owner who hired her, which enabled her to move back in together with her mother; smuggling food, which helped for a few months; the morale in the ghetto; the murder of approximately 10,000 people; being sent with her mother to a work camp on 27 March 1943; returning after work to discover that her twenty-month-old child had been taken away and murdered; a sadistic German guard; being sent to hard labor building an airport; being sent without food or water for six days to the concentration camp in Stutthof (Sztutowo), Poland, and being subjected to selection; being chosen with her mother to survive; seeing tall piles of shoes and glasses, and being unable to comprehend what was happening; five girls sleeping closely together for warmth; finding the strength to survive; the disappearance of her mother; going through another selection; walking for miles without food or water to another camp near the front, where they were assigned to dig foxholes for German soldiers; being determined not to be broken by the Germans; escaping and being taken in by Poles; being liberated by the Russians; saving the life of the Polish man who took her in; traveling to Bialystok, Poland; being told there was no one to return to in Lithuania; going to Łódź, Poland; meeting a representative from a kibbutz and moving to Palestine; meeting and marrying a man on 7 November 1945 and moving to Germany; losing a daughter at five months and giving birth to a son (and later another daughter); gradually falling in love with her husband of fifty years; moving to Australia in 1952 because her sister lived there; and her message to her children and future generations to avoid hatred and jealousy and try to see the best in people.

Oral history interview with Rita Ross

Oral History

Rita Ross, born on January 14, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her early childhood in Wolomin (approximately 30 km east of Warsaw); being an only child; her father, mother, and extended family; moving into the ghetto in Wolomin with her mother, father, and grandmother soon after the ghetto’s creation in late 1939; having no memory of religious upbringing or practice; her father, who was able to travel between the Wolomin ghetto and Warsaw for business; her father being warned by a Polish friend of the impending liquidation of the ghetto; fleeing the ghetto in 1941 and staying in an apartment of the Polish friend; her grandmother remaining in Wolomin and not being heard from again; hearing screams from the ghetto the next day; moving to Warsaw and hiding on the Aryan side; moving from place to place and finally being hidden for the rest of the war in an apartment along with another family in Pruszków, a town just southwest of Warsaw; having to live in strict secrecy and not being able to go outside or attend school; being liberated with her mother and father by the Russians in March 1945; feeling joyous at the newfound freedom; walking to Warsaw; moving to Łódź and living in a tiny apartment; going to school and encountering antisemitism but being unable to recall specific incidents; developing a mild case of tuberculosis and spending some time in a sanitarium; leaving Poland for Paris, France in 1947 on their way to Melbourne, Australia; and getting married and raising a family.

Oral history interview with Alex de Zoete

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Richter

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Oral history interview with Paula Boltman

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Oral history interview with Simon Kon

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Oral history interview with Rose Butt

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Oral history interview with Jacob Rosenberg

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Oral history interview with Frank Loffler

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Oral history interview with Israel Ungar

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Oral history interview with Zvi Sharp

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Oral history interview with Susan Reichman

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Oral history interview with Pearl Recht

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Oral history interview with Roma Frey

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Oral history interview with Leib Fryszer

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Oral history interview with Eniv Lebovich

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Oral history interview with Marianne Roth

Oral History

Marianne Roth (née Freund), born in 1920 in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany (now Opole, Poland), discusses her father, who was an academic and intellectual; her mother, who was a musician; her younger brother; living in a very cultured home filled with music and art and many visitors, both Jews and gentiles; living in a deeply religious but largely secular and diverse environment; attending school in Oppeln and Berlin; the constant presence of antisemitism in Berlin but getting along well with gentile friends; being aware of significant social and cultural change associated with Hitler’s rise; despite being warned of danger, insisting on viewing Kristallnacht incidents to bear witness; the Gestapo coming to her home several times in search of her parents, who had been warned off by friends; meeting up with her parents and brother in hiding; her father turning himself in to local police and being warned to leave Germany; her father becoming very ill and dying in hospital five weeks later; her brother being taken in April 1939 to England via Kindertransport and interned on the Isle of Man; escaping Germany in May 1939 and immigrating to Australia, where she had relatives; her mother remaining in Berlin and attempting suicide in 1940 and again in 1942; receiving a letter from the Red Cross that her mother had been taken to a concentration camp in Poland, where she died; her explanation of Nazis’ success in turning Germans against Jews and gradually increasing economic and political pressure on Jews; arriving in Australia, where she was initially treated antagonistically by Australians and other Jewish refugees; getting married and having two daughters; and her continuing faith in God.

Oral history interview with Leo Lew

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rose Pop

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Oral history interview with Henriette Liebman

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Oral history interview with Rachel Lebovich

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Oral history interview with Alice Spierer Landau

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Oral history interview with Israel Blass

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Oral history interview with Doba-Necha Cukierman

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Oral history interview with Alice Plesser

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Oral history interview with Helena Blass

Oral History

Helena Bronislawa Blass, born March 28, 1921 in Bochnia, Poland, describes her parents and three siblings; being in Sosnowiec, Poland when the war began in 1939; being taken to work for the Germans in 1939; her father and brother being taken away in 1940; working with her mother and sister in 1941 for the Germans; being taken to the ghetto; being taken April 14, 1943 to Hirschberg concentration camp; being sent in August 1943 to Bolkenheim (Bolkenhain) concentration camp; working in a textile factory; being sent on a death march in January 1945; being liberated May 9, 1945; going to Landsberg, Germany in September 1945; going to France in 1947; going to Israel in 1947; moving to Italy then Australia in 1956; and her marriage and two children.

Oral history interview with Mendel Blicblau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Ronec

Oral History

Joseph John Ronec, born June 1, 1924 in Topol'cany, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), describes his family; being expelled from high school; Jews having to wear the Star of David; living as a refugee with false identification papers in Budapest, Hungary from 1942 to 1944; being sent to the Hungarian-Slovak border (possibly Salgótarján, Hungary); being transported to Auschwitz in May 1944; being sent to Buna (Monowitz concentration camp), working as a slave laborer for I.G. Farben; going to Buchenwald in transit from January 28 to February 1945; being sent to various camps in Germany between February and April 1945, including Buchenwald and Theresienstadt; returning home in June 1945; living in Prague, Czech Republic; living in France from April 1951 to August 1953; going to Melbourne, Australia in September 1953; and getting married and having three children.

Oral history interview with Elchanan Sosnowski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mayer Frenkel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerta Bennett

Oral History

Gerta Bennett, born December 26, 1913 in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia (Plzen, Czech Republic), describes her father and husband (neither of whom survived the war); being in Prague, Czech Republic when the war began in 1939; living in the Łódź Ghetto with her parents-in-law and husband from 1940 to 1943; leaving the ghetto August 25, 1944 and being deported to Auschwitz with her mother-in-law and husband; going to Stutthof in 1944 then Dresden, Germany; escaping from Dresden in February 1945; going to Prague and being liberated by Russians in May 1945; living in Stockholm, Sweden in the fall of 1946; immigrating to Australia in 1946; living in Melbourne; and remarrying and having one child.

Oral history interview with Motek Kinderlerer

Oral History

Motek Kinderlerer, born September 23, 1920 in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes his parents and five siblings; working as a shop assistant; being in Lviv, Ukraine in 1940 when it was occupied by Russians and worked whatever jobs were available; going to Chernowitz, Romania (Chernivtsi, Ukraine) illegally in 1941 and working as a waiter; being captured in July 1942 in Sosnowiec and sent to a labor camp near Breslau (possibly Markstadt); going to several other camps; being in Fünfteichen camp (Laskowitz-Meleschwitz) in January 1944; marching to Gross-Rosen and Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Germany; immigrating to Australia in July 1949; and getting married and having two daughters.

Oral history interview with Alex Strauss

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Oral history interview with Ida Rozen

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Oral history interview with Paul Grossman

Oral History

Dr. Paul Grossman (originally Pavel Ulrich Albrecht Grossman; and in Nazi records,Paul Grossmann) August 3, 1924 in Teplice-Šanov, Czechoslovakia, describes his parents and two siblings; fleeing from the Germans and going to Úsobí, Czechoslovakia (Havlíckuv Brod, Czech Republic) to his parents' home; starting an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker; doing forced labor in a forest near Chotěboř, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); the assembly of Jews June 5-9, 1942 in Kolín, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); being in Theresienstadt from June 9, 1942 to the end of the war; being liberated on May 5, 1945; returning to Úsobí; living in Prague, Czech Republic; going to England from July 1949 to March 1950 en route to Australia; life in Australia; getting married in 1956; and his two children.

Oral history interview with Uldis Kurzem

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Wingate

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Oral history interview with Sabina Jakubowicz

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Oral history interview with Rachmil Szejer

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Oral history interview with Rachel Szejer

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Oral history interview with Blima Frenkel

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Oral history interview with Rina Starikova

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Oral history interview with Erna Fishman

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Oral history interview with Samuel Hirsh

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Oral history interview with Edith Preston

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Oral history interview with Alex Bodian

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Oral history interview with Mira Zylberman

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Oral history interview with Regina Lipshut

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Oral history interview with Godel Wroby

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Oral history interview with Emil Braun

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Oral history interview with Pinchas Ringelblum

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Oral history interview with Jadzia Opat

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Oral history interview with Edith Tarjan

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Oral history interview with Elyane Hoffman

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Oral history interview with Frank Kun

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Oral history interview with Semyon Shamrakov

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Oral history interview with David Sternschuss

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Oral history interview with Gisella Frayman

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Oral history interview with Hans Friend

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Oral history interview with Sophia Bitenki

Oral History

Sophia Bitencki (also Bitenki), born October 25, 1924 in Bratslav, Ukraine, describes her parents and sibling; living in the Bratslav ghetto in 1941; being sent to the Pechora labor camp in December 1941; being freed in 1944 and going to Uzbekistan; immigrating to Australia in December 1994; and her marriage and two children.

Oral history interview with Deborah Zuben

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Oral history interview with Maximilian Frayman

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Oral history interview with Mikhail Rossinsky

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Oral history interview with Khaim Frayman

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Oral history interview with Martin Gelberg

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Oral history interview with Agnes Kadar

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Oral history interview with Sara Kolber

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Oral history interview with Jack Krauskopf

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Oral history interview with Amalia Miller

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Oral history interview with Joseph Rubinstein

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Oral history interview with Sonia Wajcman

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Oral history interview with Abraham H. Biderman

Oral History

Abraham Hersz Biderman, born August 20, 1924 in Łódź, Poland, describes his parents and one sibling; his education; going to the Łódź Ghetto on May 1, 1940; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being evacuated to Dora on January 18, 1945; being evacuated to Bergen-Belsen during the first week of April 1945; being liberated by the British Army on April 15, 1945; crossing the border to Belgium in November 1945; arriving in Australia January 11, 1949; and getting married and having one child.

Oral history interview with Lea Bonk

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gitla Borenstein

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Oral history interview with Bep-Rie Gomperts-Gerritse

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Oral history interview with Herman Jam

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Oral history interview with Mikhail Minkovitch

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Oral history interview with Gregori Umanski

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Oral history interview with Pola Vaver

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Oral history interview with Ester Braitberg

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Oral history interview with Jack Fields

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Oral history interview with Oscar Freedman

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Oral history interview with Herszel Goldwaser

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Oral history interview with Anne Handelsmann

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Oral history interview with Jan Kostański

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Oral history interview with Clara Leventer

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Oral history interview with Motl Mindelis

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Oral history interview with Jossif Oklander

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Oral history interview with Vladimir Patent

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Oral history interview with Helmut Reifenberg

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Oral history interview with Julian Scelwyn

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Oral history interview with Victor Sirota

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Oral history interview with Dora Steiner

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Oral history interview with Fajga Szyfman

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Oral history interview with Joseph Teitelbaum

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Oral history interview with Lejka Weintrub

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Oral history interview with Michele Bude

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Oral history interview with Abram Bursztyn

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Oral history interview with Andre Dubrovin

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Oral history interview with Tibor Farkas

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Oral history interview with Bernard Friedman

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Oral history interview with George Ginsburg

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Oral history interview with Yelena Gorodetsky

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Oral history interview with Boris Kiner

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Oral history interview with Efim Kordonsky

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Oral history interview with Stanislaw Kron

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Oral history interview with Naum Plotkin

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Oral history interview with Henry Prinz

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Oral history interview with Judy Racz

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Oral history interview with Chaim Rozenberg

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Oral history interview with Sarah Saaroni

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Oral history interview with Curt Scharf

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Oral history interview with Katalin Tyler

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Oral history interview with Henry Vollweiler

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Oral history interview with Blanka Willinger

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Oral history interview with Christine Winecki

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Oral history interview with Abram Zaltsman

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Oral history interview with Lily Zimet

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Oral history interview with Leopold Zylberman

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Oral history interview with Erika Bence

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Erika Charlotta Bence, born March 11, 1928 in Spišská Nová Ves, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes her parents and brother; attending school for six years; learning to be a dental assistant; living in Liptovský Mikuláš, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1942; fleeing to Závažná Poruba, Slovakia in August 1944; hiding in a bunker; the Germans occupying the nearby village and getting caught; being sent to a collection camp and doing forced labor; being sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in January 1945; liberation; going to Bratislava, Slovakia in July 1945; returning to Spišská Nová Ves; going to Liptovský Mikuláš in January 1946; living in Prague, Czech Republic; going to Vienna, Austria in October 1949; immigrating to Australia in 1950; living in Melbourne; and getting married and having one child.

Oral history interview with Stan Fox

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sholem Rosenberg

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Oral history interview with Albert Shelling

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Oral history interview with Eva Slonim

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Oral history interview with Samuel Stopnik

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Oral history interview with Gisele Vadasz

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Oral history interview with Harry Barr

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Harry Barr (originally Chaskel Barszcz), born January 21, 1920 in Maków Mazowiecki, Poland, describes his parents and six siblings; immigrating in March 1939 to Australia, where two of his sisters were already living there; getting married; and having four children.

Oral history interview with Zygmunt Bryce

Oral History

Oral history interview with Doba-Necha Cukierman

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Oral history interview with Regina Bialek

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Oral history interview with Gretl Luber

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Oral history interview with Fania Molnar

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Oral history interview with Lola Schindler

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Oral history interview with Rubin Wassertheil

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Rubin Wassertheil, born October 5, 1929 in Cieszyn, Poland, discusses his father, who ran a produce shop and regularly traveled to Katowice, Poland; his three brothers (Morlehai, Arnold, and Sigmund) and one sister, named Dola; his father who was to taken in the 1930s to Siberia to work; being sent on September 19, 1939 to Sanok to do forced labor; being transferred by train to Bobova; being transferred to Płaszów concentration camp near Krakow; spending several weeks in Camp C before being sent to Camp A; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944; being sent to an ammunition factory in the Schlieben subcamp; being evacuated to Theresienstadt; being liberated on May 9, 1945; his life after the war; finding his father who was a leader in the Red Army; living on the border of Poland and Czechoslovakia and working on the black market; going to Paris, France; reuniting with his brother, Arnold, and hardly recognizing each other; his life in Paris; and immigrating to Australia.

Oral history interview with Paulette Goldin

Oral History

Paulette Goldin (née Camyanka), born on July 27, 1922 in Siedlce, Poland, discusses her father who died when she was two years old; being an only child; moving with her mother, Ester, to Paris, France in 1927 to live with her maternal aunt; her mother working as a legal worker; working in the 1930s in a small factory as a fur machinist; her fiancé Jacques Goldin, who joined the French Army on May 13, 1938 and was captured by the Germans in 1943 and returned in 1945 after liberation; continuing to work in Paris at her job until 1942; being subject to Germany’s antisemitic laws; being offered refuge along with her mother in a friend’s antique shop in July 1943; going with her mother to Compiègne, France in July 1944; going to Lyon, France by train where she was hidden by a women whose children she cared for; leaving the family to protect them from retribution; staying at a church for two weeks; receiving a French birth certificate later from a member of the Resistance; liberation on September 3, 1944; her life after the war; immigrating to Australia; and adjusting to life in Australia.