Oral history interview with Bella Mischkinsky

Oral history interview with Irene Hizme

Oral History

Irene Hizme (née Renate Guttman), born in 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia (present day Teplice, Czech Republic), discusses her earliest memories of childhood; her father’s arrest; going with her mother and twin brother, Rene, to the Theresienstadt ghetto; memories of hearing music and presentations in Theresienstadt and being photographed for propaganda materials; being deported to Auschwitz in December 1943; being separated from her mother in 1944 and later from her twin brother; her experiences as a small child in Auschwitz, including hiding among dead bodies, standing for hours during roll call, and getting lost one night; suffering a medical experimentation carried out by Dr. Mengele; being taken in by a Polish woman following liberation but finding it an unloving home; being forced by the Polish woman to go back to Auschwitz to sift through the ashes for gold; attending school and Catholic church in Poland, which she enjoyed; going to several Jewish orphanages in France; being taken to the United States to raise money for orphans of the war; being adopted by an American family; continuing school in the United States and encountering major differences between European and American education; feeling a need to excel in school and other activities to show that she was worthy; experiencing anxiety about trains, showers, electricity, doctors, and police because of her experiences in Auschwitz; feeling that she could not tell anyone about her experiences; reuniting with Rene in 1950; going to college, studying chemistry, physics, and math; wanting to be a doctor but being discouraged by her orthodox adopted parents; becoming a biochemist for Cornell Medical College; feeling that her Holocaust experience was belittled even by other survivors because of her young age at the time; attending a 1985 gathering of twins who had been subjects of medical experimentation; meeting her aunt and cousin in Dresden and seeing pictures of her family; researching what happened to her and her family and learning about the experiments to which she was subject; finding her transport records, a record of her mother’s death, and a photo of her father in Auschwitz; talking to her children about her experience and speaking at schools and synagogues; and meeting with a therapist and writing poetry to work through her memories.

Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

Oral History

Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leonard Zawacki

Oral History

Leonard Zawacki, born January 20, 1916 in German-controlled northwest Poland, describes being brought up as a Catholic and having a comfortable, good life; taking part in the defense of Warsaw, Poland September 28, 1939; being sent to Auschwitz, where he joined forces with the underground; escaping and living for four months in the Carpathian Mountains with about 100 partisans; the scenes of total chaos after Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians on January 28, 1940; returning home briefly; moving to Krakow, then to Italy, and then to Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1951; going first to New York and then to Milwaukee, WI, where he was married and worked for various financial institutions; moving back to New York in 1978 and becoming an executive in the finance industry; having become more tolerant, understanding, and forgiving as a result of his war experiences; his view that the Polish did more to help Jews than any other nation; his views on the actions of Lithuanians and Ukrainians; the uncertainty of life as being the worst part of Auschwitz; and his greatest sense of pride was having been able to escape from Auschwitz, having been able to outwit the Germans.

Oral history interview with Arnold Einhorn

Oral History

Arnold Einhorn, born May 1, 1923 in Antwerp, Belgium, describes growing up in a Jewish section of Antwerp; experiencing antisemitism in Belgium in the 1930s when two strong fascist groups emerged; the German invasion of Belgium and the bombing of Antwerp; fleeing to France with his family; being placed in an internment camp in Agde, France with other refugees; his family’s transfer to Rivesaltes; the liberation of Rivesaltes; going into hiding; becoming a part of the Jewish resistance; helping in the creation of false papers and finding shelter for Jews; crossing into Spain to set up contacts for the Resistance; his interment in several prisons and camps until he was released with the help of the American Joint Distribution Committee; relocating to Palestine where he joined the British Royal Army Service Corps; becoming involved with the Royal Army Medical Corps; fighting in Italy where he joined company 178 of the Jewish Brigade; helping smuggle out children out of concentration camps; his postwar reunion with his family in Belgium; studying medicine in France; the difficulties of being an adolescent during the war; arriving in the United States in the 1950s; becoming a chief resident at a hospital; meeting his wife; his decision to not share his wartime experiences with his children; his views on Palestine; and the long-term impact of the war and the Holocaust on his life.

Oral history interview with Eva Edmands

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lucine Horn

Oral History

Lucine Horn, born in Lublin, Poland, describes her experiences after the end of the Warsaw uprising in October 1944; the evacuation of Poles to southwest Poland until liberation in January 1945; the relationship between Poles and Soviets; returning to Lublin; meeting with other Jews coming out of hiding; tremendous antisemitism in Poland; living in Wroclaw, Poland; joining a student Zionist group; living in Vienna, Austria; living as a displaced person; her immigration with her husband, Felix Horn, to the United States; her first Thanksgiving; her positive experiences living in New York; having her first child; moving to Chicago in 1960; completing her college degree; telling her children about the Holocaust; the unknown fate of her brother during the war; her American patriotism; the difficulty of talking about her Holocaust experiences; her severed ties with Poland and Germany; her happiness and gratitude for life; and her thoughts about the importance of family.

Oral history interview with Felix Horn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anny Kast

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Leiser-Kleinhaus

Oral History

Anna Leiser-Kleinhaus, born in 1936 in Antwerp, Belgium, describes her frequent changes in identity while in hiding during the war; posing as a Catholic in France; returning to Antwerp with her mother after the war; reuniting with her father after his liberation from a concentration camp; the changed dynamic of her family; her family’s immigration to the United States; her early work career; studying in Switzerland; meeting her husband at university; the birth of her three children and her relationships with them as adults; incorporating Judaism into her family life; receiving a doctorate in pharmacology; her multicultural life; and reasons why she keeps her past life private.

Oral history interview with William Lowenberg

Oral History

William Lowenberg, born August 14, 1926, describes his liberation by the American Army in 1945 from a subcamp of Dachau; diseases and lack of sanitation in the camp; participating in the killing an SS officer; searching for his family after liberation; religious faith within the camps; his postwar living situations; odd jobs he obtained to make money; his struggle to find faith after the war; immigrating to the United States; being drafted into the army during the Korean War; his feelings about being in the army; his reluctance to discuss his past life; his desire to have a normal, American life; his political affiliation; and the reason he chose to write a book about his life.

Oral history interview with Florence Gitelman Eisen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anita Frank

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lily Margules

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

Oral History

Ernest Heppner, born in 1921 in Germany, describes the ceremony at the end of the war in Shanghai, China and the jobs he and his wife held with the Shanghai Port Command; the tremendous difficulty they had getting visas to go to the United States; arriving in San Francisco to a very warm welcome; his first job as a typewriter mechanic that eventually led to owning his own corporation; moving to Indianapolis, IL in 1953; selling his first computer in 1964; pioneering medical practitioner equipment and designing custom software; becoming really interested in Holocaust studies in 1954; giving his first public talk about his life in the Shanghai Jewish community on January 15, 1976; publishing his book, “Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto,” in 1993; his growing involvement with the civil rights movement, developing a kinship with blacks because of his own experiences; his own changing views on religion, moving towards a simpler definition of what faith is; and his view that Germany today is very open about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Lisa Derman and Aron Derman

Oral History

Lisa Derman (née Nussbaum), born in 1926 in Raczki, Poland, and Aron Derman (né Dereczynski), born in 1922 in Slonim, Poland (present day Belarus), discuss their experiences as Soviet partisans; fighting German soldiers; revenge as their motivation for fighting; their feelings and experiences while in the partisan camps; the arrival of the Russian Army; the order from the Russians to gather in Vilaka, Latvia in the summer of 1944; Lisa and her sister being rescued by a Christian; Lisa’s time in the Slonim ghetto with her family; finding Lisa’s old Hebrew school instructor and staying with him and his family; Aron’s time spent in Bialystok, Poland with Lisa’s father; a Jewish committee that organized and connected survivors in Bialystok; the internment of Lisa’s brother in Stutthof; traveling to Palestine; pretending to be Greeks; receiving rations from the United Nations in Budapest, Hungary; traveling across Europe; being smuggled through Italy on trucks; staying in Florence, Italy from 1944 to 1945; living with an Italian family in Rome; details of their March 25, 1947 marriage in Italy; immigrating to the United States; the difference in ways survivors and resisters were treated; their families in the United States; Aron’s work in the steel mills and experiencing antisemitism there; Aron’s trouble finding work; Aron opening and working in various stores in Chicago; Lisa’s father and brother living in Munich, Germany and then moving to Chicago; the death of Lisa’s father; Lisa’s involvement with her children’s lives and education; ideals and morals they used to raise their sons; speaking to their grandchildren about the Holocaust; traveling to Cologne, Germany in 1968 to testify against Nazis; and their dedication to Holocaust education.

Oral history interview with Rene Slotkin

Oral History

Rene Slotkin, born December 21, 1937 in Teplice, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses his family’s deportation to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz in 1942; being liberated by the Russians in January 1944 when he was seven years old; living with Frank and Edith Maun and their children and being introduced to traditional religious practices; his arrival in the United States on March 29, 1950 and reuniting with his sister Irene at the Meyer Slotkin home in Orange, Long Island, New York; his first marriage and the birth of his three children; joining the National Guard; his second marriage and the birth of his fourth child in 1982; how all four children have remained closely united and have spent time in Israel; his time with Eva Kor’s organization for twin survivors, at which a mock trial was held in 1985 for Dr. Mengele in Yad Vashem; how he and Irene can finally talk about their shared wartime experiences; Irene’s effectiveness as a lecturer; and his lingering feeling of uncertainty as to whether he has lived a truly fruitful life.

Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

Oral History

Doriane Kurz discusses life in a Red Cross facility and her memories of being liberated by Russians from a train leaving Bergen-Belsen with her sick mother; the doll that she found and for whom she made clothing; finding her best friend Nomi upon returning through Leipzig to Amsterdam; returning to her old apartment in Amsterdam; coping with the death of her mother; her deep emotional connection to her brother Freddy; plans for her immigration to the United States; her summer in boarding school outside Stockholm and making friends with the caretaker’s daughter Marisha; her experience on the Gripsholm sailing from Sweden to the United States; her arrival in New York and life with her relatives; adjusting to life in the United States and the American school system; her identity as an American citizen; her belief that religion has remained an important part of her life; attending Barnard; visiting her grandmother on a visit to Israel with her brother Freddy; her experiences as a teacher and then as a small business women in New York; her memories of her surprise 16 birthday party given by her brother Freddy; her feelings about achieving the American dream; her ability to talk about her life during and after the war; and her gratitude for surviving cancer.

Oral history interview with Ernest Koenig

Oral History

Ernest Koenig discusses his family background and childhood in Miroslav, Czechoslovakia; his first awareness of Hitler and the Nazi Party; meeting his future wife Elizabeth as a refugee in Paris, France in 1939; his liberation by the Russians after escaping a death march in 1945; his return to Czechoslovakia where he discovered that his family had perished; his immigration to England in 1946; his lack of plans after liberation except to find Elizabeth and immigrate to the United States; the conditions in Czechoslovakia after World War II; reuniting with Elizabeth in England and marrying in 1947; immigrating to the US in 1948; his first impressions of the US; earning bachelor's and master's degrees in economics and obtaining a job as a junior instructor at Johns Hopkins University; getting a job at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC and working there for forty years; becoming an American citizen; the ignorance and lack of interest in the Holocaust in the US before the 1980s; his appointment in 1959 as the Assistant Agricultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Germany, moving to Brussels, Belgium in 1964 to work as the Agricultural Attaché with the Common Market (European Economic Community); leading the American Agricultural Delegation in a trade negotiation in Geneva, Switzerland in 1974; returning to Washington, DC for two years and being appointed as the Counselor for Agricultural Affairs at the American Embassy in Paris, France; retiring from government service in 1990; dealing with government officials in Germany who were former Nazis; antisemitism in Germany after World War II; his beliefs about Holocaust survivors and how his experiences affected his daughter; his memories of his time in the French Army and as a concentration camp inmate; and his reflections on learning about the Holocaust and the possibility of future genocide.

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

Oral History

Elizabeth Koenig discusses growing up in Vienna, Austria; her brief connection to the French Resistance as they escaped Europe in 1942; a complicated immigration to the United States ending in New York City; her first experience of “freedom” as the essence of America; her reunion with and subsequent marriage in London, England to Ernest Koenig; becoming a United States citizen; working at New York Public Library’s collection of Nazi materials; encountering Mein Kampf for the first time; looking up to Varian Fry as her true hero; her early married life where she became a medical librarian; the difficulty she has describing her war-time experiences to her daughter; her return visit to her neighborhood in Vienna; her anger at the injustices of life; working in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum library; the closeness of her band of Resistance survivor friends from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a village famous for its refusal to cooperate with the Nazi-backed government; and the need to speak openly about the Holocaust because the people who can testify are dying out.

Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

Oral History

Agnes Vogel (née Agnes Weisz Varga), born in 1924 in Debrecen, Hungary, discusses her family life prior to the war; attending an art-oriented Catholic high school where there were instances of antisemitism from nuns and students; being deported to Strasshof, Austria, then to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated in April 1945 and returning home on foot; arriving in New York in 1946 and then moving to Detroit; her four children; her three sisters; developing artistically through porcelain painting; becoming a public speaker about her experiences during the Holocaust; how her role as a parent was impacted by her war-time experiences; the Holocaust survivors’ gathering in Israel in the 1980s and finding her family’s history at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv; and her hope that people will learn from her interview to be tolerant of others, to be aware of world events, and to teach future generations not to blindly follow leaders.

Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

Oral History

Michael Vogel, born in 1923, discusses how he survived Novaky, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Landsberg; being sent on a death march in March 1945; escaping the death march and being picked up by United States forces; the complicated way in which he finally arrived in the United States in May 1946; living in Detroit where he met his wife, Agnes Weisz Varga; attending the first gathering of Holocaust survivors in Israel in 1981 and the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1985; how his friend from Auschwitz, Erik Kulka, co-authored with Ota Kraus the book, The Death Factory; how Claude Lanzmann’s film “Shoah,” was a most authentic portrayal; how he continues to have nightmares and phobias resulting from time spent in the camps; becoming a serious soccer player and coach; being awarded the Jefferson Award in 1996, a national recognition of his devotion to charitable works; how he is asked on many occasions to take part in Holocaust events around the country, including a presentation to the United States Supreme Court; and his feelings that future holocausts can be prevented by education and acceptance of people on an equal basis.

Oral history interview with Toby Stern

Oral History

Toby Stern, born in 1920, discusses her childhood in Viseu de Mijloc, Romania; her strict religious upbringing; marrying at age 18; living in Bukovina, Romania with her husband when the war broke out; the first pogrom in their village; hiding in the woods for two weeks; atrocities committed against the Jewish community; moving to Hungary; the birth of her first child; her husband’s conscription into Hungarian forced labor in 1942; the premature birth and death of her second child; being sent to Auschwitz; giving away her young child to an older woman during the selection process; living conditions in Auschwitz; learning about the gas chambers and her child’s death; being taken on a forced march in January 1944; arriving in Ravensbrück; living conditions in Ravensbrück; liberation; rumors of rape by Soviet soldiers; experiences at a displaced persons camp in Germany; returning to Viseu de Mijloc after the war; learning of her husband’s death; reuniting with her brothers; remarrying; moving to Paris, France; her husband’s smuggling operation; his arrest; their flight to Germany; immigrating to the United States; adjusting to life in the U.S.; her children; her feelings about how much loss she’s had to endure; and her war-time experiences and the effects on her life.

Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

Oral History

Cecilie Klein-Pollak (née Cecilia Goldensile), born on April 13, 1925, in Yasinna, Czechoslovakia (IAsinia, Ukraine), discusses her experience in Auschwitz and how the Holocaust overwhelmingly changed her outlook on life; meeting her husband while both were working as dental lab technicians in Budapest, Hungary after liberation; arriving in New York City in December 1948 and spending most of the next two years in a sanatorium to recover from TB; her two published books of poems, “Out of the Ashes” and “Poems of the Holocaust” and her published memoirs, “Sentenced to Live”; her three children and her second husband, Isaac Pollak, a survivor of Buchenwald; attending the first reunion of Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem; the ongoing effects of the Holocaust on her emotional well being; how she has never returned to her homeland; and her gratitude for the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Brenda Senders

Oral History

Brenda Senders describes her childhood in Sarny, Poland (now Ukraine), where her family had lived for more than 800 years; her father Samuel Schier and mother Leah Bourka; her one surviving family member, her sister Simma; her escape with her sister from a work camp outside Sarny; joining a partisan group led by Shimone Picov; how this group joined a larger partisan group, consisting of many communists and escaped prisoners of war, led by Naoomoff (possibly Major General H. I. Naumov); her post-war years in displaced persons camps in Austria (where she was married) and in Italy; immigrating to Washington, DC in 1951; her many speaking engagements in which she describes her experiences with the partisans; her inclusion as a guest speaker at the open ceremonies of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; her sympathies with the feminist movement, ERA, the civil rights movement, and Israel’s struggles; and her personal motto for survival: “Be brave in any situation.”

Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

Oral History

Renate Liselotte Margarethe Laqueur, born in 1919 in Brieg, Germany (now Brzeg, Województwo Opolskie, Poland), discusses moving to Holland when she was a child; becoming a United States citizen in 1957; her assimilated family’s affiliation with Judaism; life in the Netherlands from age three until her arrest in 1943 and then being taken to Bergen-Belsen, where she kept a diary from 1944 to 1945; life in New York City in the 1950s; a New York University professor’s discovery of her diary; her interest and successes in fashion illustrating and reporting; her 1971 Ph.D. dissertation, which discusses thirteen other diaries written by concentration camp inmates; her connections to the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City, both as a patient and as a staff member; and the publication of her diary in 1965 in the Netherlands and the 1983 German translation.

Oral history interview with Regina Laks Gelb

Oral History

Regina Laks Gelb, born on December 26, 1929 in Starachowice, Poland, discusses her two surviving sisters Anna Laks Wilson and Rosalie Kristina Lehrman; her attachment to her maternal grandmother Sara Tannenblume, who perished in Treblinka with all other maternal relatives; the series of camps she was sent to beginning in October 1942 and including Shellneetsa, Afectencomer, Ravensbrück, and Radsoff, from which she escaped during a forced march; her move to a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany with her sister and brother-in-law; her arrival in New York City, where she attended high school and some college until moving to Bloomington, Indiana to teach at the language school at Indiana University; eventually completing her undergraduate degree; her marriage to Victor Gelb and birth of two sons Harry and Paul; her career as interpreter/translator, including her service to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum when the Polish archives were released; her strong belief that family and health are the keys to survival; her lifelong attachment to learning and academics; and the importance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a combination resource center, educational center, and museum.

Oral history interview with Chaim Engel and Selma Saartje Engel

Oral History

Chaim Engel and Selma Engel discuss how they met while being forced to dance at the Sobibór camp in Poland; their arrivals at the camp; how they were separated from their families; the layout of the camp; how they communicated within Sobibór; escaping from the camp during the planned uprising; their life in hiding; the birth of their first son; meeting Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank; trying to get back to Selma’s hometown in the Netherlands; how they survived after the war, their life in the Netherlands; their move to Israel; the growth of their family; their immigration to the United States and settling in Connecticut; sharing their stories with schoolchildren in Germany and the United States; their trips back to Germany to testify in SS Guards’ trials; how they feel about religion and Judaism; and their belief that the Netherlands was very antisemitic despite what is presented in the story of Anne Frank.

Oral history interview with Johanna Liebmann and Max Liebmann

Oral History

Hanne Liebmann and Max Liebmann discuss their childhoods in Karlsruhe and Mannheim, Germany; their families’ hardships with the rise of Hitler; their memories from Kristallnacht; their deportation to Gurs, France; their daily life and the economic system of the camp; their release from Gurs to Le Chambon with the help of social service agencies; Hanne’s life in hiding; Max’s life at a Jewish Boy scout farm; their experience escaping to Switzerland; their experiences living in a work camp; immigrating to the United States; being diagnosed with tuberculosis; trying to survive and raise their daughter in New York City; their views on Judaism and being religious; and finding other survivors after the war and sharing their stories with school children.

Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

Oral History

Leo Bretholz, born on March 6, 1921 in Vienna, Austria, discusses escaping from a train headed to Drancy; his experience during liberation in Limoges, France; his search for his family; how he supported himself during the war; his immigration to the United States from France after the war; his life in Baltimore, MD and his views on segregation; the community group he founded, Prejudiced Anonymous, and their open speeches against hate; his survivor guilt; his family in America; his views on religion and a Jewish state; his feelings about going back to his birthplace in Vienna; and his relationships with other survivors.

Oral history interview with Simone Weil Lipman

Oral History

Simone Weil Lipman (born in 1920) discusses her family and growing up in Strasbourg, France; her days as a Jewish girl scout; the rise of Hitler; experiencing antisemitism; her views on Judaism; her experiences as a volunteer internee social worker at Rivesaltes; her membership in the underground network at Ose; helping hide children in homes throughout France; how the war affected her family; her life and religious practices after the war; working in synagogues in Syracuse, NY; reconnecting to those she had known during the war, including the children she helped save; how she started speaking openly about the Holocaust; living in France for three years and sharing her story there; revisiting the cities where she lived during the war; and her views on Germany.

Oral history interview with Barbara Rodbell

Oral History

Barbara Rodbell discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; moving to the Netherlands; her family history and religion; life as a dancer in Amsterdam; how her instructor, Madame Gasco, and others from the underground helped protect her during the war; living next to Anne Frank; life in hiding; her other family members in hiding; immigrating to the United States with the help of the family friend Dr. Kalinoffsky; moving to Greenwich Village, NY to dance; moving to Baltimore, MD; her challenges with dating; the birth of her children; returning to the Netherlands; her children’s lives; her views on religion in the Netherlands; and her feelings toward Germany and Poland.

Oral history interview with Francis Akos

Oral History

Francis Akos, born on March 30, 1922 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his current occupation as the assistant concert master in Chicago, IL and traveling through Europe with the Chicago symphony; living in the transit camp Neuengamme; how music helped save his life in the camp; surviving the bombing of the ship Cap Arcona; being a violinist for the British officers club; trying to survive in post-war Budapest, Hungary; living in Berlin, Germany; immigrating to the United States; his family life in Chicago; his feelings during his business trips back to Europe; and his views on religion.

Oral history interview with Fritzie Fritzshall

Oral History

Fritzie Fritzshall, born in 1929 in Klyucharki, Czechoslovakia (Kliucharky, Ukraine), discusses how she survived Auschwitz; her prewar family life; being liberated from a death march; the former prisoners receiving medical attention; daily life after liberation; being smuggled out of Communist Germany; immigrating to the United States; the fate of her family members; reuniting with her family; her life in Chicago, IL; meeting her husband; how she started speaking publicly about the Holocaust; her views on survivors guilt; her feelings about Germany and Germans; her views on Israel; and her beliefs about Dr. Mengele’s death.

Oral history interview with Gerda Haas

Oral History

Gerda Haas (née Schild), born in Ansbach, Germany in November 1922, discusses her prewar family life in Ansbach; her family’s religious practices; training to be a nurse in Berlin, Germany; her deportation to Theresienstadt; her liberation from the camp; receiving aid from the Red Cross and her recuperation in Switzerland; reuniting with her pre-war rabbi Eli Munck; celebrating Passover for the first time after being in Theresienstadt; her freedom in Switzerland; writing about her experiences during the Holocaust; learning of the death of her mother and sister; finding her father after the war; immigrating to the United States on the SS Mulholland; her views on Judaism; her resentment towards her father for leaving Germany before the war; living in Washington Heights, NY; getting married and starting a family; coping with her memories of the Holocaust; the first time she spoke publicly about the Holocaust; teaching about the Holocaust at Bates College in Maine; giving a deposition against former SS guard Alois Brunner; how her story was recorded in the book “Stella” by Peter Wyden; why she felt the need to write a book about her experiences; her feelings toward America; and going back to visit Germany.

Oral history interview with Ruth Meyerowitz

Oral History

Ruth Meyerowitz, born in 1929, discusses her childhood and Judaism in pre-war Frankfurt, Germany; the rise of Hitler; trying to escape Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion; living in a ghetto; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; daily life in Auschwitz; returning to Frankfurt after being liberated; not living in the Zeilsheim displaced persons camp; trying to reunite with her family; immigrating to the United States; getting married and starting a family; her views on civil rights; going back to school; her experiences as a survivor living in America; writing a book about German Jewish history; and her life as a German Jew in particular.

Oral history interview with Stefan Czyzewski

Oral History

Stefan Czyzewski, born on August 12, 1922 in Leśnogóra, Poland, discusses life in Poland during the war; how he and his father hid Jews in their house throughout the war; training to be a fighter for the resistance in a British camp in Iran; his experiences fighting in the underground resistance as a member of the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ); antisemitism within the NSZ; his family’s activities during the war; being sent to a field hospital; recuperating from tuberculosis in a sanitarium in West Germany; daily life in various displaced persons camps, including Aschaffenburg (the Jaeger Kaserne camp); his work as a stenographer for the police and becoming a detective at the Wildflecken displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States on the ship General Hersey; joining the United States counterintelligence corps; sneaking into East Germany for the United States Counterintelligence Corps; his father’s experiences with communism in Poland; his experiences interrogating suspects; his views on Holocaust perpetrators’ punishments; his religious beliefs; establishing a life in Saint Paul, MN; his feelings about the immigrant experience in the United States; becoming an American citizen; getting married and starting a family; reasons why he has never gone back to Poland; and his work with Mung refugees.

Oral history interview with Doris Greenberg

Oral History

Doris Greenberg, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1930, discusses her family life in pre-war Poland; how her mother was caught and sent to Umschlagplatz; living in the Warsaw ghetto; obtaining Catholic identification papers; how her sister was captured by the Germans; being taken to Ravensbrück and then to Neubrandenburg; being assigned to work for an SS guard’s parents; her liberation by the Russians; traveling to Berlin, Germany; getting arrested in Dresden, Germany by the Russians; searching for family members; visiting an orphanage at Bergen-Belsen; traveling to Kiryat Anavim, Israel on the ship Champalion; her experiences during the War of Independence; getting married; immigrating to the United States; starting a family and living in New York; coping with her memories of the Holocaust; going back to Warsaw for the fiftieth anniversary; experiencing antisemitism in contemporary Poland; and her views on U.S. politics.

Oral history interview with Rochelle Slivka

Oral History

Rochelle Slivka, born in 1922 in Vilnius, Lithuania, discusses her family and early life in Poland; how her friends and neighbors turned on the Jewish population when the war started; daily life in the Vilnius ghetto; her father’s position as a member of the Vilnius Judenrat; the resistance movement within Vilnius; the liquidation of Vilnius; being separated from her family; how her father died in Klooga, Estonia; being sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Latvia and then Stutthof, Poland; her liberation by Russian troops; finding family members in the United States through a Jewish newspaper; her feelings of guilt; traveling to West Germany from Poland; becoming a nurse in Landsberg, Germany; immigrating to the United States; helping her sister immigrate to Israel; living in Boston, MA; her first public talk about the Holocaust; going back to Poland; her feelings about discrimination in the United States; her religious beliefs; traveling to Israel; volunteering in her local Jewish community; her family life in the United States; and her feelings about Germany.

Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

Oral History

Jerry Slivka, born July 11, 1915 in Ukraine, discusses being evacuated to Germany during World War I; growing up away from his siblings; his early political affiliations; getting married and starting a family; the murder of his wife and son in Povorsk, Poland (Ukraine); living in a labor camp in the Soviet Union; his views on communism; staying in a displaced persons camp in Italy; immigrating to the United States on the ship Marine Perch; establishing a life in Boston, MA; becoming an American citizen; attending Bentley College; meeting his second wife and starting a family; moving to Portland, ME; how Povorsk came under Communist rule and did not allow monuments to the Jews who were killed during the Holocaust; contacting the House of Waleen, an Israeli organization, to help establish a monument; going back to Poland; finally erecting a monument to honor those who were killed in Povorsk; working as an interpreter for newly arriving immigrants; volunteering with the Jewish community; helping establish the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine; speaking to school-children about the Holocaust; his family and his religious beliefs; and his thoughts on violence in the world.

Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

Oral History

Drexel Sprecher discusses his role as one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials; his motivation in becoming a prosecutor and his determination to expose and bring to justice the Nazi regime; writing a book entitled “Inside the Nuremberg Trial, A Prosecutor’s Comprehensive Account;” the validity of the often-used defense statement “I was following superior orders;” his role in organizing several Nuremberg reunions; his optimism about the future of international law versus the rights of national sovereignty; anti-Nazi experiences while attending the University of Wisconsin; the student group “COINOSE” that he helped organize at the University of Wisconsin; his post-Nuremberg political activism; and the Genocide Convention, enacted towards the end of the trials.

Oral history interview with Susie Schwarz

Oral History

Susie Schwarz, born May 3, 1931 in Schlüchtern, Germany, discusses her parents; her family moving to Dinxperlo, Netherlands because of the political situation in Germany; her prewar family life and their religious beliefs; how the Pagrachs family in the Netherlands hid them during the war; her daily life in hiding; her liberation from hiding; her life in the Netherlands after the war; her experiences immigrating to the United States; living in Baltimore, MD with her extended family; her parents’ immigration to the US; meeting her husband and starting a family; her religious practices; traveling back to the Netherlands; reuniting with the Pagrachs family; her views about being a Holocaust survivor; her feelings about other atrocities such as Rwanda and Kosovo; giving her oral testimony to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and her views on Israel.

Oral history interview with Leon Chameides

Oral History

Leon Chameides, born on June 24, 1935 in Katowice, Poland, discusses life in hiding at the Univ monastery in the Ukraine; his liberation from hiding by the Russians; traveling to Lwów (L'viv, Ukraine); his reunion with his brother; staying with family members until the end of the war; moving to western Poland to escape Stalin; the black market in Poland; immigrating to England; daily life in Newcastle, where he lived for three years; immigrating to the United States on the Queen Elizabeth I; daily life in Brooklyn, NY; remembering the Holocaust and his views on being a survivor; getting married and moving to Boston, MA; joining the Coast Guard and moving to Ohio; raising his family in Connecticut; reconnecting with others that hid in the monastery during the war; going back to Poland; and his thoughts on genocide.

Oral history interview with Frima L.

Oral History

Frima L., born in 1936, discusses her pre-war family life and growing up in Proskuriv (Khmel'nyts'kyi), Ukraine; her life in hiding; reuniting with her mother and sister; her anger towards her father for not escaping; surviving on a Christian family’s farm; being liberated by the Russians; going back to Proskuriv; finding her brother; traveling to Germany and staying in a displaced persons camp; daily life in Schlüpfing and then Vollstedt, Germany; her feelings about Germany; staying in Paris, France; traveling to Havana, Cuba; her life in Cuba; immigrating to the United States; going to school at Yeshiva in New York; going back to visit Cuba; meeting her husband and getting married; her feelings about how the Holocaust took away her childhood; starting a family; her views on religion and world politics; her thoughts on Franklin Roosevelt and Japanese internment camps; how her experiences during the Holocaust affected her and her mother differently; her reasons for writing a book about her experiences; her feelings on the Korean War and U.S. politics; Israel and its history; her job helping children; and how the Holocaust made her who she is today.

Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

Oral History

Fred Bachner, born on September 28, 1925 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz; his death march out of Auschwitz; finding his brother near Dachau; his liberation by American forces; how he was treated under the American occupation; the physical attacks on Jewish Kapos in Munich; living in a Nazi’s house; reuniting with his father; immigrating to the United States; religion; his life in New York; how the Holocaust affected his identity and sense of wellbeing; being drafted into the Army; meeting his wife and getting married; his children and grandchildren; going back to Auschwitz; taking his family to Germany and Poland; speaking about the Holocaust to school children in Germany; traveling to Israel; antisemitism; and the Civil Rights movement.

Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

Oral History

Judith Meisel, born in 1929, discusses her father’s death in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1938 when the family lived in Josvainiai; her experience as a prisoner in Stutthof; life after escaping Stutthof with her sister, who had typhus at the time; living in a convent; working for a family as a refugee; nearly drowning in the North Sea after her ship was torpedoed; living in the woods in Denmark; being liberated by the Red Cross; contracting tuberculosis and staying in a sanitarium in Copenhagen, Denmark; finding her brother; meeting her ex-husband and moving to Canada; getting married; how the Holocaust shaped her life; Zionism and Israel; starting a family; the Civil Rights movement in the United States; meeting Martin Luther King; how she began sharing the memories of her experiences during the Holocaust; going back to the Kaunas ghetto; creating the Beyond Tolerance Center; working on the Anne Frank exhibit in Santa Barbara, CA; her daughter’s Holocaust art; founding the Northwest Interfaith Movement; going to Israel; being a single mother; meeting her second husband; the feminist movement; her film of her trip back to Lithuania; and her philanthropic achievements.

Oral history interview with Fred Deutsch

Oral History

Fred Deutsch, born on November 13, 1932 in Czechoslovakia, discusses his pre-war family life; his experiences as a hidden child in Czechoslovakia; his experiences in a Catholic orphanage shortly after liberation; returning home and joining boy scout organization; his family moving to Znojmo, Czech Republic; antisemitism in Czechoslovakia; moving to Israel to escape communism; living on a kibbutz in Israel; being drafted into the Israeli Army; returning to Czechoslovakia for his mother’s funeral; communism in Czechoslovakia; his feelings towards Israel; how the world changed after the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States; post-war family relations; moving to New Jersey; living with his uncle and finishing his education; his views on the United States; meeting his wife and getting married; starting a family; his views on affirmative action; working for the American government; antisemitism in the American Civil Service; moving to Maryland; his feelings on being an American citizen; and how memories of his experiences during the Holocaust have affected his life.

Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

Oral History

Leo Hanin, born in 1913, discusses his prewar life with his family in Vilnius, Lithuania; his parents’ decision to escape increasing persecution in Europe in 1916 and move to Harbin, China, where they had a relative; changing his name; getting married to a Russian Jew in China and starting a family; working with textiles across Asia and Europe; his pre and postwar experiences in Shanghai, China and Japan; the Shanghai ghetto; Communism in China after the war; helping organize a Jewish community in Japan; helping European Jews to escape the Holocaust and enter Japan; being liberated by the American forces in Japanese occupied China; going to Israel on the S.S. Wooster Victor; starting his own storage facility; the black market; his religious practices; moving to Tokyo, Japan; immigrating to the United States on the ship President Cleveland; Japan’s relationship with Germany during the war; his feelings about the importance of a Jewish State; the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement; and his involvement in a documentary about Jews in Japan.

Oral history interview with Isaac Danon

Oral History

Isaac Danon discusses his childhood in Split, Yugoslavia (Croatia); his family’s religious practices; how the rise of Hitler affected his life; life in his town after German forces invaded; joining a group of partisans and his sister joining as well; living in Italy; reuniting with his family; immigrating to the United States; daily life in Fort Ontario, NY; moving to Philadelphia, PA; daily life in the United States; becoming “Americanized”; being drafted into the army in January 1955; being stationed in Germany and then in France; becoming an American citizen; meeting his wife and getting married; moving to Columbus, OH; starting a family; how he started speaking publicly about his experiences during the Holocaust; his views on the Civil Rights movement; antisemitism and the anti-war movement; his reconnection with Judaism; and his views on current American politics.

Oral history interview with Sol Lurie

Oral History

Sol Lurie discusses the change in relationships between Jews and Christians in Kaunas, Lithuania once the war started; when Poland was invaded by both the Germans and the Russians; living in the Kaunas ghetto; the ghetto killing grounds; his time in Birkenau; being liberated from Buchenwald by the Americans; the death of his brother; traveling to France; finding his relatives in the United States; immigrating to the United States on the S.S. Marine Flasher; his goal to outlive Hitler; daily life in New York; returning to Germany as an American soldier; becoming an American citizen; meeting his first wife and getting married; raising a family; reuniting with other children who survived Buchenwald; his views on religion and fate; meeting his liberator in New York; reasons why survivors should talk about the Holocaust; his views on US politics; being a member of the Knights of Pythias; his thoughts on Israel; his post-war family; the death of his first wife; and marrying his second wife and starting a new family.

Oral history interview with Jack Ahrens

Oral History

Jack Ahrens (né Yakob Aronczyk), born in 1921, discusses his pre-war life in Lida, Belarus; going to L'viv, Ukraine in 1940; his experiences living in hiding; being arrested by Russian soldiers; his life in a displaced persons camp in Chianchetta, Italy; daily life in L'viv after the war; the black market; the importance of education; meeting his wife; studying in Turin, Italy; immigrating to the United States; reuniting with his mother in New York; attending the University of Illinois; becoming a member of Tau Delta Phi fraternity; changing his name when he became an American citizen; his feelings about Israel and religion; moving to Cleveland, OH; moving to New York; starting a family; his views on Zionism; the 1960s race riots in New York; going back to Italy; and his feelings on genocide in other parts of the world.

Oral history interview with Preben Munch Nielsen

Oral History

Preben Munch Nielsen, born June 13, 1926 in Copenhagen, Denmark, discusses his childhood in Snekkersten, Denmark; Danish politics; the rise of Hitler; distributing Studentinus Iftatin, “The Student’s News,” for the resistance; the Elsinore Sewing Club; his teacher Froida Yacobsen, who fought with him in the resistance; the Danish King Christian X; his participation in helping Jews in Denmark; the night the German forces surrendered; post-war punishment for collaborators in Denmark; meeting his first wife and getting married; his second wife; his children; donating artifacts to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; speaking to groups about why the Holocaust failed in Denmark; the importance of NATO; and acts of contemporary genocide.

Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

Oral History

Michael Diamond (né Diamant), born July 10, 1919, discusses the death of his parents in Auschwitz; his liberation from Bergen-Belsen; living with Russian soldiers in Germany; returning home to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); living with his sister in Prague, Czech Republic; working in a small store in Slovakia; meeting his wife and getting married; the rise of Communism; traveling to Israel; daily life in Israel; immigrating to the United States; living in New York; becoming an American citizen; his views on contemporary genocide and religion; and his feelings on the McCarthy era.

Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

Oral History

Walter Meyer discusses his time as a political prisoner in Ravensbrück, Germany; his reunion with his family; his liberation by American forces; receiving treatment from American soldiers in a hospital in Düsseldorf, Germany; daily life in Germany after the war; killing a Russian soldier in self-defense during a border crossing; traveling to South America as a hideaway on the ship Parkhaven; having to jump from ship to ship through South America; working on a movie set in Martinez; owning his own tobacco farm in Salta; traveling through the United States on his way to Los Angeles; racial segregation in the United States; returning to Germany; his various occupations; returning to the United States; living in California and Texas; meeting celebrities and presidents; getting married and having children; receiving three Ph.Ds; opening up his own restaurant Hansel and Gretel in Austin, Texas; his divorce; traveling to Rome; meeting his second wife and starting a new family; and writing a book about his wartime experiences.

Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

Oral History

Abe Malach, born on May 12th, 1935, in Zwoleń, Poland, discusses being transported to Auschwitz; his liberation by Russian forces; living with a childless couple in the town of Auschwitz; staying in a monastery; reuniting with his mother and sister in Kraków, Poland; learning how to read; the difficulties of traveling to West Germany to reunite with his father; life in Germany after the war; studying in Israel; living in Stuttgart, Germany; meeting his wife and immigrating to the United States; working as an engineer and starting a family; reasons why he started speaking publicly about the Holocaust; his views on Bosnia and Kosovo; Israeli politics; and his relationship with his family.

Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

Oral History

Liane Reif-Lehrer discusses her voyage on the ship Saint Louis; living in Portugal and Spain; the death of her father; her memories of life during the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States; adjusting to life in New York, NY; her experiences with prejudice; being sent to Catholic summer camps; how the Holocaust affected her physical well-being; her relationship with her family; the importance of education; going back to Portugal and Spain; her views on contemporary acts of genocide and war; receiving accounts of the deaths of her relatives during the Holocaust; giving lectures on her experiences during the Holocaust; visiting the house where she grew up in Vienna, Austria; and her views on the German people.

Oral history interview with Robert Holczer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvia Green

Oral History

Oral history interview with Justine Lerner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Abram Jakubowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ann Klein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Paul Pressman

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Rosenberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Emilie Szekely

Oral History

Oral history interview with Melvin Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fryda Haber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Oscar Haber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Rosenberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Gavi

Oral History

Oral history interview with Paul Schlisser

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kurt Thomas

Oral History

Kurt Thomas discusses growing up in Boskovice, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); helping sick prisoners in Sobibór; the death of his sister and parents at Sobibór; life after his escape from Sobibór; his life in hiding on a farm with a Christian family; joining the Czech Legion in Romania in 1944; his views on the foundation of antisemitism; the Christian church; the post-war Czechoslovakian government; his views on religion; going back to Boskovice; immigrating to the United States on the ship, Queen Mary; daily life in Pennsylvania; becoming an American citizen; meeting his first wife and getting married; his feelings about testifying against the SS guard Karl Auguste Frenzel Rosen in Frankfurt, Germany; receiving correspondence from the family that hid him during the war; his feelings about Germany and contemporary German citizens; his views on Holocaust literature; reuniting with the other Sobibór survivors; the death of his first wife; meeting his second wife and getting remarried; and his decision to never have children.

Oral history interview with Frida Wallenstein

Oral History

Frida Wallenstein, born September 14, 1926 in Solotvyno, Czechoslovakia (Ukraine), discusses her pre-war family life; moving from Czechoslovakia to Belgium; daily life after the war started; going into hiding; becoming a maid for a family in Liège; the arrest of her family by the Gestapo; the deaths of her mother and sisters in Auschwitz; traveling to Brussels, Belgium to hide with the Friedman family; post-war life in Liège; immigrating to the United States; her post-war family; her views on religion; living in Cleveland, OH; meeting her husband and getting married; becoming an American citizen; working in a factory; having children; the death of her father; working as a secretary to the professor of neuropathology at Western Reserve University; going to Israel and staying on a kibbutz; giving an oral testimony at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; going back to Belgium; and traveling throughout Europe.

Oral history interview with Eva Cooper

Oral History

Eva Cooper discusses watching the Nazis march into Budapest, Hungary; living in hiding; her religious identity; immigrating to the United States; living in New York and assimilating into American society; teaching in New York City; marrying her first husband and starting a family; her divorce; meeting her second husband; returning to Budapest; her views on Germany and German citizens; her love of art; the importance of teaching children about the Holocaust; and her views on Israel.

Oral history interview with Gerald S. von Halle

Oral History

Gerald S. von Halle discusses his parents, who moved the family moved from Hamburg, Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933; his experiences while in hiding in Amsterdam; his father’s arrest by the Gestapo; the relationship between German Jews and Dutch Jews in the Netherlands; being liberated by the Canadian Army; being arrested by the Dutch police after liberation because he was a German citizen; immigrating to the United States; American culture and politics; staying at Rabbi Stephen Wise’s refugee center in New York, NY; daily life in New York; meeting his wife; his views on religion; working in sales; starting a family; how his experiences during the Holocaust affected his political beliefs; speaking to groups about his experiences during the war; and his feelings about Israel.

Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

Oral History

Morris Kornberg, born in Poland, discusses his pre-war family life; the German invasion of Poland; being forced to move into a ghetto; daily life in the ghetto; being arrested and beaten by the Gestapo on suspicion that he was helping the Polish Resistance; his experience in a prison in Końskie; being sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner; working in a coal mine in a sub-camp of Auschwitz; being forced to go to Buchenwald on a death march and working in the sub-camp Tröglitz; being moved to Theresienstadt; his liberation with the help of the International Red Cross; post-war life in Poland; traveling to Prague, Czech Republic; staying in sanatoriums; working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany; immigrating to the United States; living in Washington, DC; working for a mattress company; getting married; how the memory of his experiences during the Holocaust have affected his daily life; and antisemitism in the United States.

Oral history interview with Rose Warner

Oral History

Rose Warner (née Luft) discusses the various camps in which she was a prisoner, including Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Meyerhoff; the murder of her daughter in a camp; her liberation by the American Red Cross; traveling to Denmark; being taken care of by the Danish people; going to Sweden and being adopted by a Swedish couple; the poetry she wrote after the war; reuniting with her father, brother, and husband in Poland; having more children; her religious identity; moving to Israel; moving to Canada; immigrating to the United States; the tattoo she received in Auschwitz; her second marriage; being interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Ku Klux Klan; how her experiences during the Holocaust have affected her daily life; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; and her views on American politics.

Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

Oral History

Hetty DeLeeuwe (née D’Ancona), born on May 1, 1930, discusses life in hiding in the Netherlands with a Christian family in Venlo; her liberation by Scottish forces; going back to Amsterdam, Netherlands with her father and reuniting with her mother; life in postwar the Netherlands; her feelings on Germany and Germans; the similarities in her and Ann Frank experiences in hiding; meeting her husband and getting married; immigrating to the United States; her life in Long Island, NY then the Washington, DC area; raising a family; coping with the memories of her experiences during the Holocaust; her visits with the Christian family that hid her during the war; and her volunteer work with Soviet Jews in the United States.

Oral history interview with Carla Lessing

Oral History

Carla Lessing discusses living in the Hague, Netherlands; going into hiding with her family with help from the Catholic Church; her experiences in hiding; daily life in post-war Netherlands; joining a Zionist organization; meeting her husband and getting married; immigrating to the United States in 1949; daily life in Ossening, NY; moving to a kibbutz in Israel in 1951; the difficulties of moving back to the United States; life in Hastings, NY; having children; working on her education; her career in social work; taking her children to the Netherlands; founding a support group for Dutch Holocaust survivors who had been in hiding; working with the Hidden Children of the Holocaust conference; and her religious beliefs.

Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

Oral History

Edward Lessing discusses the German invasion of the Netherlands; going into hiding in Delft, Netherlands; difficulties in hiding; reuniting with his father and brothers in hiding; his mother’s arrest and deportation to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by Canadian forces; realizing the extent of the Holocaust; being reunited with his mother; joining a Zionist organization; working as a draftsman; immigrating to the United States; life in Schenectady, NY; antisemitism in the United Sates; getting married; going to Israel to live on a kibbutz; returning to live in the Netherlands; returning to the United States; having children; getting involved with the Hidden Children Foundation; working for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation; reuniting with people he met while in hiding; returning to the Netherlands for a television program on the Holocaust; his views on religion; his feelings on Israel; the benefits of therapy; and “adopting” a disabled survivor as a brother.

Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

Oral History

Lonia Mosak discusses her experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz; an uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau; her liberation from the camp; returning to Poland after the war; the Armia Kryova; reuniting with her brother; staying on a kibbutz in Białystok, Poland; going to Austria; meeting her husband and getting married; the difficulty of immigrating to the United States; daily life in Chicago, IL; starting a family; her feelings about her tattoo number; finding family in the United States; why she never went back to Europe; her views on Israel; how the Holocaust affected her life; neo-Nazis and antisemitism; her feelings on contemporary acts of genocide; her views on Germany and Germans; and her religious beliefs.

Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf

Oral History

Adam Starkopf, born in 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his family and pre-war life in Warsaw; his brother’s move to Palestine; the outbreak of the war in Poland; getting wounded while enlisting in the Polish Army; the invasion of Poland by the Russian Army; returning to Warsaw; the death of his mother; living in the Warsaw ghetto; being imprisoned by the Gestapo; the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto; his deportation to the Treblinka concentration camp; escaping the ghetto; his family living as Roman Catholics; liberation by Russian forces; escaping communist forces and going to the American zone in Germany; staying in the Feldafing displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States; his life in Chicago, IL; his post-war family life; his book “There is Always Time to Die”; antisemitism in the United States; speaking about the Holocaust to school children; his penny project; religion; and how he and his family cope with the memory of their experiences during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

Oral History

Fela Warschau discusses her pre-war family life; her experiences as a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen; her forced labor in the sub-camps of Bergen-Belsen; her liberation by British forces; the difference between the American and British zones; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp; meeting her husband and getting married; having children; the fate of her family in Auschwitz; immigrating to the United States; living in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; her views on the United States; the importance of sharing her Holocaust experiences with school-children; visiting other survivors from the Łódź ghetto; going back to Auschwitz; her feelings on Germany and Poland; her thoughts on Kosovo and contemporary acts of genocide; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

Oral History

Norman Salsitz, May 6, 1920, discusses his pre-war family life in Kolbuszowa, Poland; living in a ghetto; witnessing the Gestapo shoot his father to death; joining the Armia Kryova; being shot by a member of Armia Kryova; his views on the importance of revenge; life in hiding; being liberated by Russian forces; post-war life in Poland; joining the Polish Army; joining the Polish Counter Intelligence Core; meeting his wife; uprisings in Poland; escaping to Berlin, Germany; working for Bricha; immigrating to the United States; his views on perpetrators during the Holocaust; his experiences with his American family members; starting a construction company; joining the George Washington Legion; going to Israel; his Jewish identity; communism and the Cold War; his experiences with antisemitism in the United States; his book titled “Against All Odds;” American politics and contemporary acts of genocide; his work with the Red Cross; sharing his Holocaust experiences with school children; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Amalie Salsitz

Oral History

Amaile Salsitz, born October 21, 1922 in Munich, Germany, discusses being raised in Stanislawow, Poland, her various false identities during World War II; working as a secretary for the German Army in Poland; being liberated in Kraków, Poland; meeting her husband in the Polish underground; helping the Polish underground gain access to German documents; escaping from Russian forces and going to West Germany; her difficulties in immigrating to the United States; arriving in New York; becoming a Hebrew teacher; going to Israel; starting a family; how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust affects her daily life; her views on Israel and Israeli politics; her views on religion; testifying against Holocaust perpetrators; and her views on contemporary acts of genocide.

Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

Oral History

Guta Blass Weintraub discusses her pre-war family life in Łódź, Poland; moving into a ghetto; establishing a kindergarten in the ghetto; being sent to a work camp; attacking a Ukrainian guard; her experience during a death march out of Auschwitz; being relocated to Ravensbrück; the death of her mother in Ravensbrück; being liberated through the intervention of the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress; her religious beliefs; traveling to Berlin, Germany; being reunited with her husband and getting married; immigrating to the United States; living in Charleston, SC; her large family; antisemitism and racial segregation in the United States; talking about her Holocaust experiences to school children; going to Israel; testifying in Germany against Holocaust perpetrators; going back to Poland and visiting Auschwitz; how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust affects her daily life; moving to Rockfeld, SC; and her patriotic feelings towards America.

Oral history interview with Masha Loen

Oral History

Masha Supporzhnikov Loen, born in July 28, 1930 in Kaunas, Lithuania, discusses her liberation from Stutthof by Russian forces; her life while working for the Russian forces in Regenwald; reuniting with her father in Łódź, Poland; getting engaged to a Russian soldier; moving to Austria; meeting her future husband; working for Bricha; how she helped to smuggle people out Poland; getting married; attending art school; immigrating to the United States; arriving in New Orleans, LA; moving to Los Angeles, CA; her experiences working in the fashion industry; starting a family; her views on Simon Wiesenthal; her work with the Holocaust museum in Los Angeles; her views on religion; American politics; helping to establish the Gateway of Mental Health Hospital; her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; her opinions on the personalities of Holocaust survivors; her poetry; going back to Europe; her view of Israel; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

Oral History

Cornelius Loen, born May 2, 1922 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (Serbia), discusses his family life during World War II; joining a Serbian Jewish society; how being half-Jewish helped him during the war; escaping from a train in Hungary; reuniting with his parents in Budapest; life in Hungary post-liberation; traveling to Austria; staying at the Bindermichl displaced persons camp; meeting his wife and getting married; working for the Joint Distribution Committee; immigrating to the United States; his views on civil rights in the United States; life in California; starting a family; going back to visit Europe; visiting Israel; American politics and contemporary acts of genocide; his views on religion; how his mother was honored as a Righteous Christian; and his identity as an American.

Oral history interview with Blanka Rothschild

Oral History

Blanka Rothschild, born August 19, 1922 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her forced labor in Wittenberg and her acts of sabotage; being beaten as Allied forces entered Wittenberg; her difficult experiences during liberation; the behavior of Russian soldiers towards women; going back to Poland; Polish citizens’ attitude towards returning Jews; traveling to Germany; daily life in Germany; immigrating to the United States; living with family members in Detroit, MI; moving to New Jersey; her survivor’s guilt; her religious identity; getting married and starting a family; how her wartime experiences affected the way she raised her daughter; her views on Israel; sharing her Holocaust experiences with groups of people; why it is important to speak out about the Holocaust; and her feelings on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Estelle Klipp

Oral History

Estelle Klipp, born in Łódź, Poland in 1922, discusses her experiences in the Łódź ghetto; being in Auschwitz, work camps in Hamburg and Sasel, and Bergen-Belsen; her liberation from Bergen-Belsen by British forces; working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Hanover, Germany; post-war life in Germany; meeting her husband and starting a family; immigrating to the United States; antisemitism; moving to Los Angeles, CA; meeting other Holocaust survivors; the 1939 Club for Polish survivors; becoming a real estate agent; the death of her husband; why she never returned to Poland; her views on Israel and Judaism; how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust have affected her daily life; alternative medicine; assimilating into American culture; the significance of Holocaust studies; her views on contemporary acts of genocide; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance.

Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

Oral History

Beno Helmer discusses his liberation from a prisoner of war camp by the American Army; traveling to Czechoslovakia; recovering from rheumatic fever; life in post-war Teplice, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); escaping from Russian forces by smuggling himself into Germany; finding his sister, who he thought had perished in Auschwitz; immigrating to the United Sates; daily life in New York, NY; being drafted into the United States Army; working for American counterintelligence; his views on American politics; his volunteer work; his views on Israel; sharing his Holocaust experiences publicly; taking his children to Teplice; his views on Judaism; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; and his views on Holocaust movies.

Oral history interview with Harold Zissman

Oral History

Harold Zissman discusses fighting as a partisan during World War II; working for the KGB; his escape to West Germany; being arrested and sent to Italy; working as an administrator in displaced persons camps; working on a kibbutz in Italy; immigrating to the United States; starting a family and settling in Chicago, IL; how the memory of his experiences during the Holocaust has affected his daily life; moving to Skokie, IL; joining B'nai B'rith; his views on Holocaust resistance; writing and speaking publicly about his Holocaust experiences; the American Civil Rights movement; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; his involvement against the Nazi march in Skokie; his view on the American response during the Holocaust; contemporary American politics; antisemitism in the United States; the importance of Israel; and his large family.

Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

Oral History

Norman Belfer discusses his pre-war family life in Wodzisław, Poland; life in Poland after the German invasion; going into hiding in Kraków, Poland; staying in a displaced persons camp in Modena, Italy; traveling to Milan, Italy; daily life in Italy; learning of the fate of his family members who were taken to Auschwitz; his feelings toward the German people; his experiences traveling throughout Italy; his views on religion and antisemitism; meeting his wife and getting married; immigrating to the United States; attending New York University; Israel and Israeli politics; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; speaking publicly about his experiences during the Holocaust; life in New York, NY; his large family; returning to Poland; and joining the March of the Living to Auschwitz.

Oral history interview with Dustin Dezube

Oral History

Dustin Isaac Dezube, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, born in 1983 in Boston, MA, discusses his close relationship with his maternal grandparents, Norman Salsitz and Amalie Petranker Salsitz; his grandfather as determined, principled, and courageous; his grandmother as brilliant, speaking seven languages, and loving; the generational differences in feelings about the Holocaust; his Jewish identity; and the lessons of the Holocaust as being proud of who you are and of maintaining your identity.

Oral history interview with Esther Dezube

Oral History

Esther Cylia Salsitz Dezube, the child of Holocaust survivors, born in Newark, NJ, discusses her father Norman Salsitz, author of “Three homelands: memories of a Jewish life in Poland, Israel, and America” and “A Jewish boyhood in Poland: remembering Kolbuszowa” and her mother Amalie Petranker Salsitz, co-author with Norman Salsitz of “Against all odds: a tale of two survivors”; her youth during which she knew only survivors as family friends; her parents continually talking about the Holocaust; her birth as a victory over Hitler; leaving home at an early age; becoming a lawyer because she always wanted to help the underdog; meeting her husband, now an A.I.D.S. physician and researcher; having three sons; justice as the most important consideration for her in any political arena; the identity of children of Holocaust survivors; and their role as the bridge from the past to the present, helping to insure that the Holocaust is never forgotten or repeated.

Oral history interview with Frieda Noga

Oral History

Frieda Noga (née Kranika), born October 19, 1920, discusses growing up in Michaelnbach, Austria prior to World War II; the presence of the Nazi party; her family’s use of Polish laborers on their farm after the war started; falling in love with a Polish laborer (Julian Noga); working in Eferding, Austria; her arrest because of her relationship with Julian; being sent to Ravensbrück; being released and reuniting with her family; getting married to Julian and having children; immigrating to the United States on the ship Marine Jumper; daily life in New York, NY; becoming a United States citizen; buying a farm; starting a monument business; going back to visit Austria; and how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust have affected her daily life.

Oral history interview with Julian Noga

Oral History

Julian Noga, born July 31, 1921 in Poland, discusses his parents’ pre-war life in the United States; his mother’s decision to move to Poland after World War I; growing up in Poland; life in Tarnów, Poland; life after the German invasion of Poland; being taken by the Germans to Linz, Austria to work on a farm; meeting and falling in love with the farmer’s daughter and being arrested by the Gestapo for that relationship; being sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp; his experiences in the camp; being liberated by American forces during a death march to Dachau; reuniting with his wife and getting married; starting a family and immigrating to the United States; meeting his father; becoming an American citizen; his experiences living in New York, NY; co-founding the Newcomers Organization; starting a monument building company; sharing his Holocaust experiences publicly; going back to visit Flossenbürg; going back to Poland; creating a monument for the American soldiers who liberated him; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; his views on antisemitism in pre-war Poland; working with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC; working for an American radio station; contemporary American politics; his volunteer work with various Polish organizations; and his view on American-Polish relations.

Oral history interview with Jan Nowak

Oral History

Jan Nowak Jezioránski (nom de guerre Nowak), born in 1913 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his activity with the Polish underground; being a survivor of the Warsaw uprising and being sent as an emissary by the Polish commander in chief of the underground army to London, with microfilms of the uprising; working with Polish, British, and American authorities; his position with the Polish sector of the BBC in London; being appointed the first director of the Polish service of Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany; the reason why he chose a career in radio; visiting Warsaw for the first time after the formation of a non-Communist government; how his experiences in the underground have helped him in later life; arriving in the United States in 1977 and the motivation behind his move; living in the Austrian Alps for two years and writing his book "Courier From Warsaw"; his preference for focusing on the present and future; his views on hatred; being a witness to the Holocaust; receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the King’s Medal for Courage; his impression of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and his faith.

Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

Oral History

Eddie Willner discusses his pre-war family life in Mönchengladbach, Germany; his experiences during Kristallnacht; escaping from a transport leaving the Langenstein concentration camp; meeting up with American forces; being in the care of the American Army; traveling to Brussels, Belgium after the war; his views on Judaism; immigrating to the United States; joining the Army and working in West Germany; working in France with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a criminal investigator; becoming a US citizen; graduating from Officer Training school; being sent to Korea and then Germany; meeting his wife and getting married; going to Israel; working as a Central Intelligence Agency liaison at the American embassy in Germany; his experiences in seeking restitution from Germany for slave labor; his views on contemporary Germans and antisemitism; segregation in the United States; being stationed in Japan; his views on the Japanese people and Japan; his large family; working in the federal civil service; his life in Falls Church, VA; how the memory of his experiences during the Holocaust has affected his daily life; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance.

Oral history interview with Shelly Rothschild-Sherwin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Gelb

Oral History

Harry Gelb, born May 6, 1956 in New York, NY, describes growing up as the son of a survivor; his childhood; learning about his mother’s Holocaust experiences; his family’s involvement with activities commemorating the Holocaust; the importance of education in his family; his Jewish upbringing; learning the importance of cultural diversity through his mother; his decision to work in the legal profession regarding child abuse and immigration; his wife, who is also a child of a Holocaust survivor; educating himself on Holocaust history; his mother’s dedication to social justice; his views on equal opportunity; his children; travelling through Europe and visiting Auschwitz; Polish influences in his life; the bond he feels with children of survivors; and the importance of memorializing Holocaust history.

Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Blanka Rothschild

Oral History

Blanka Rothschild describes her liberation from forced labor in Wittenberg at the end of the war; leaving Poland for Berlin, Germany after the war; her time spent in the Schlachtensee displaced person camp; her boat trip to the United States; meeting and interacting with relatives in the US; marrying and having a daughter; living in New York, NY; her daughter’s life; visiting Israel; her views on religion; speaking publicly about the Holocaust; the importance of the founding of Israel to her; and her granddaughter.

Oral history interview with Regina Laks Gelb

Oral History

Regina Laks Gelb, born December 16, 1929 in Starachowice, Poland, describes her family; her experience in a displaced persons camp in Schlachtensee, Germany; the Hebrew school established in the displaced persons camp and its curriculum; arriving in New York via boat in 1947; the activities she took part in while on the ship; her time in high school in the United States; her 18th birthday party, during which reporters asked about her tattoo from Auschwitz; graduating from Indiana University in 1953; her relationship with her husband; the Jewish cemetery in Starachowice and how she managed to have it declared as a historic landmark; various plays and stories she has translated; her two sons; her views on the McCarthy era; her views on the counter-culture movements in the 1960s; how her early experiences have shaped her opinions; her career choices; and her work with an elementary school and high school.

Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

Oral History

Thomas Buergenthal describes his work for a court of the United Nations; his postwar experiences in the United States; his interest in international law, human rights, and international tribunals; his memories and thoughts on the Eichmann trial; helping establish the study of international law in universities; establishing a study panel on the American Society of International Law for human rights; sharing his Holocaust experiences with his family; working with UNESCO; serving on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; returning to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the ghetto in Poland; serving on the committee of conscience for the Holocaust States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the duty of survivors to try to prevent similar events from happening to others.

Oral history interview with Paula Sawicka

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charlene Perlmutter Schiff

Oral History

Charlene Schiff discusses being liberated by Russian forces while she was hiding in a forest; being treated at a hospital in L'viv, Ukraine; traveling to her hometown in eastern Poland; antisemitism in Poland; traveling to Germany; her experiences in the displaced persons camp Föhrenwald; immigrating to the United States; moving to Columbus, OH and attending Ohio State University; meeting her husband and getting married; becoming an American citizen; moving to New York, NY; her experiences as a military wife; being stationed in Germany; moving back to the US; starting a family; being stationed in Japan; how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust has affected her daily life; the Vietnam War; going to Israel; meeting with other survivors; patriotism in America; dealing with survivor’s guilt; and becoming involved with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Isaac Nehama

Oral History

Isaac Nehama, born in Athens, Greece on April 29, 1926, discusses his pre-war family life in Greece; the German invasion; going into hiding; returning to Athens after liberation; being reunited with his father; the British arresting him for his partisan activities; his view of Greek Jews; immigrating to the United States; his life in Illinois; moving to New Jersey; becoming an American citizen; meeting his first wife and getting married; being drafted into the army; working for Bell Laboratories; American politics; returning to Europe; meeting his second wife and starting a family; moving to California; moving to Washington, DC to work on the Apollo program; founding the International Computing Company; contemporary Israel politics; and his volunteer work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

Oral History

Emanuel Mandel discusses living in Israel; immigrating to the United States; life in New York and then Philadelphia; becoming an American citizen; getting an formal education; meeting his wife and starting a family; his religious upbringing; his views on Israel; working for B’nai B’rith as a social worker; the importance of Holocaust remembrance; working for the Peace Corps; speaking publicly about his experiences during the Holocaust; how the memory of his experiences during the Holocaust have affected his daily life; and taking his family to Europe.

Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

Oral History

Boleslaw Brodecki discusses his experience as a prisoner in Mauthausen; his time in Czechoslovakia after his liberation from Theresienstadt; living in a resettlement camp in Landsberg, Germany; working as a policemen; meeting his wife and starting a family; immigrating to the United States; segregation and civil rights in the United States; moving to Richmond, Virginia; working in a tobacco factory; becoming an American citizen; working for Circuit City; the American Jewish Club; antisemitism in the United States; Zionism and his views on Israel; speaking publicly about his experiences during the Holocaust; how the memory of his experiences during the Holocaust has affected his daily life; and his views on contemporary acts of genocide.

Oral history interview with Sonia Brodecki

Oral History

Sonia Brodecki discusses living in a ghetto in Poland; her experiences returning to Poland after the end of the war; living in a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany; meeting her husband and starting a family; immigrating to the United States; moving to Richmond, VA; becoming an American citizen; the Jewish American Club; learning English; her large family; how the memory of her experiences during the Holocaust has affected her daily life; getting together with other survivors; and speaking publicly about her experiences during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Mieczyslaw Madejski

Oral History

Mieczyslaw Madejski, born in Warsaw, Poland on June 26, 1923, describes his Catholic upbringing; how his advanced proficiency in the German language and training in scouting helped him survive the war; the “Volksdeutsche”; Polish citizens who felt as if they were German and the “Herrfolke”; how his family saved twelve Jews during the war; his experiences with the Zegota; his membership in the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army; his battalion receiving a medal from Yad Vashem for their efforts during the Warsaw Uprising; how he and his wife left Poland in 1968 to immigrate to the United States; his unusual circumstance of having been declared dead due to mistaken identity; belonging to a Polish veterans’ group; how his studies in mechanical engineering eventually got him the position as the head of the x-ray department at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, NY; and his feelings about war and his hopes for a peaceful world for his grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Paul A. Strassmann

Oral History

Paul Strassman, born on January 24, 1929 in Trencín, Slovakia, describes his early childhood; joining the Hashomer Hatzair at a young age; immigrating to the United States in 1948; starting a family and having two sons; his memories of losing his family during the war and going into hiding as a Christian; returning to Europe long after the war to visit his childhood home; settling in New York, NY after his arrival in the US; studying to become a civil engineer and meeting his wife while in school; raising his children to make their own choices regarding religion; the personal successes of his children; running his own business; consulting for NASA; and reflecting on his past.

Oral history interview with Haim Solomon

Oral History

Haim Solomon, born in 1925 in Bivolari, Romania, describes his experiences at the end of the war; immigrating to Israel in 1949 and joining the Israeli Army; helping his family immigrate to Israel from Romania in the 1950s; attending university in Detroit, MI; struggling in school when he first arrived; getting involved in the Detroit Jewish community and teaching Hebrew at local synagogues; helping his brother open a fabric store in Detroit; going to graduate school for microbiology; moving to Washington, DC to work with the Food and Drug Administration on food safety; participating in the Zionist Organization of America; attending a wedding in Israel, where he met his wife; returning to DC with his wife and having a son; his experiences during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s; helping Russian Jews immigrate to America; not speaking publicly anymore about his experiences but volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and returning to Europe with his sons to tell them his life story.

Oral history interview with Flory Jagoda

Oral History

Flory Jagoda discusses growing up in Yugoslavia; getting married in Italy in 1945; the concept of freedom as her principle reason for immigrating to the United States in 1946; her life in Youngstown, OH and Dayton, OH before moving to Washington, DC; her four children and six grandchildren; losing contact with her family and friends in Yugoslavia after it became a communist country; her sympathies with the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; traveling and performing with her children; writing nineteen songs and continuing to perform in many venues; starting a Ladino singing group in Washington, DC; how her apprentices will continue her work in music; and her belief that music has been the foundation of her life.

Oral history interview with Frederick Wohl

Oral History

Frederick Richard Wohl, born on June 7, 1914, describes his family’s prominence in Baden-Baden, Germany; his two sisters who perished during the Holocaust; his first wife Lillian Eisenberg and his second wife Evelyn Mitzner; his various apprenticeships as a young man; voluntarily relocating to Athens, Greece, Nicosia, Cyprus, and East Africa; immigrating to the United States and eventually settling in Washington, DC, where he became a licensed insurance agent; his two daughters Jacqueline Diane Wohl (Tinney) and Valerie Ann Wohl; working as a life insurance salesman in Maryland; his volunteer work in precinct politics; and his participation in B'nai B'rith and the Masonic Lodge.

Oral history interview with Lucie Rosenberg

Oral History

Lucie Rosenberg, born in 1921 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Croatia), describes her travels and residences as a youth in the United States and Europe; her early career as a broadcaster and translator for what was to become the Voice of America; meeting her husband in New York City and marrying him in 1946; starting a family; her eight years in Venezuela in the 1950s when her husband began a long career with the Associated Press; living in Mexico, New York City, and then Paris, France for eleven years; the detention of European refugees as potential enemy aliens in Oswego, New York; the changing political scene in Yugoslavia; moving to Washington, DC in 1979 and instructing U.S. State Department personnel assigned to work in Yugoslavia; her role as a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she worked with collections related to Croatian Jews and the Holocaust; and her hope for tolerance in the world.

Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

Oral History

Joseph Elman discusses his experience of being liberated by the Russians; joining the Russian military; returning to his hometown of Pruzhany, Poland, where he was in charge of finding collaborators; returning to his family home, which was occupied by a Gentile family with many children; meeting Dr. Ola Goldfein, a highly respected member of his family's Jewish community who had been hidden by a nun upon escaping from the second transport of Jews from the ghetto of Pruzhany; being smuggled out of the Russian territory by the nun and the doctor in a horse-drawn cart; reuniting with his brother Louis who had fought as a member of the Jewish Resistance; enduring hard times before immigrating to the United States and settling in Syracuse, New York; and succeeding in business in New York.

Oral history interview with Agnes Mandl Adachi

Oral History

Agnes Adachi, born on October 26, 1918, discusses her childhood in 1920s Budapest, Hungary; attending the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; traveling to England and Italy and learning teaching methods from Mother Montessori in 1937; seeing Polish members of the Zionist Congress react to the news that Hitler had invaded Poland while they were in Budapest; meeting Romanian and Polish refugees and finding their stories difficult to believe; the presence of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party; the arrival of the Germans in March 1944; travelling to Sweden as a guest of Ambassador Carl Ivan Danielson in 1944; meeting Raoul Wallenberg and working with him to protect Hungarian Jews by giving them shelter and providing them with schutz-passes; witnessing and participating in rescue missions led by Wallenberg; the Siege of Budapest and the presence of Russian soldiers in the city; the capture and hanging of an American pilot who crashed in the Danube; the taking of the Swedish legation by the Soviets and the disappearance of Wallenberg; getting false papers to go to Romania in February 1945 and becoming connected with the Swedish ambassador in Bucharest, Romania; leaving Bucharest and being taken to an Italian transit camp after landing at the Bari airport because a fellow passenger heard her speaking German and suspected she was a Nazi; spending time in Rome, Italy; living with extended family in Zurich, Switzerland; finding out that her Swedish fiancé had become a Communist and deciding not to marry him; lecturing about her experiences and teaching Swedish culture and literature at repatriation camps from November 1945 through 1946; working as a maid and then for Skandinaviska Banken; living in Australia for six years then moving to the United States in 1951; working at a restaurant then for Trans World Airline; bringing her parents to the United States in 1957; attending concerts at Carnegie Hall and meeting her husband, a Japanese immigrant and doctor; working with the Wallenberg Committee; speaking to school groups about her wartime experiences; awarding high school seniors the Wallenberg Humanitarian Award; seeing her children’s dedication to humanitarian efforts and to continuing Wallenberg’s legacy; and encountering people who make false claims about Wallenberg or argue that the stories about his heroic efforts are not true.

Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

Oral History

Thomas Buergenthal, born in 1934 in L'ubochna, Czechoslovakia (present day Slovakia), discusses his family moving to Poland in 1939; living in the Kielce ghetto beginning in 1942 and surviving by offering to work; serving as an errand boy for a German officer who ran the Kielce work camp; listening to the officer’s radio for news about the war and reporting back to his parents; running ahead to warn fellow prisoners when the officer was coming through; learning to ride a bicycle that belonged to an SS officer; being deported to Auschwitz and then surviving a death march to Sachsenhausen with injuries from frostbite; the liberation of Sachsenhausen in 1945; exploring deserted houses in Oranienburg, Germany looking for food; being found by a group of Polish soldiers who adopted him as the “mascot” of the scout company of the 1st Polish Division; being given a small uniform, pistol, and pony; being cared for by the Polish soldiers who fed him and tried to stimulate his appetite with vodka; associations he still has with foods from that time; witnessing the Battle of Berlin and interacting with German prisoners of war; staying for a year in a Jewish orphanage run by the Bund; his relationship with the Norwegian author Odd Nansen, who interviewed him at the orphanage and wrote about him; his reunion with his mother in Göttingen, Germany in 1946 after his name appeared on a list of children waiting to go to Palestine; attending school in Göttingen and finding that, while he did not encounter antisemitism, teachers never mentioned the war; receiving care packages from the United States and from Odd Nansen; going to the United States on the USS General A. W. Greely to live with his uncle and aunt, the Silbergs, in Paterson, NJ; attending Bethany College, then law school, and eventually receiving his doctorate in international law; becoming a US citizen in 1957; dedicating himself to the defense of human rights as he represented the United States at UNESCO and served on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the El Salvador Truth Commission; establishing courses on international human rights law in United States law schools; talking to his children about his wartime experiences; his philosophy on human rights and his opinions about how neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers should be treated; dealing with difficult memories, especially since the death of his mother; how he avoids books and movies about the Holocaust; his own Jewish identity and raising his children in the Jewish tradition; and writing about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Erwin (Froim) Baum

Oral History

Erwin (Froim) Baum, born on April 15, 1926 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses being raised in an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto; his deportation to Auschwitz in the fall of 1942 with his mother and siblings; being in several concentration camps, including one in which airplane parts were fabricated; being subjected to physical torture in the camps; his liberation; being sent to Luxembourg; moving to Israel, Belgium, Canada, and finally settling in the United States; visiting the Polish orphanage in 1988; and his continuing nightmares about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Harry Alexander

Oral History

Harry Alexander discusses fleeing from Germany to Italy during the Holocaust; being trapped in San Remo because neither Italy nor France would allow him entry; sneaking into France on an overcrowded fishing boat from which several passengers fell and drowned; being helped by resistance fighters in Nîmes, France; being arrested in Nice, France and then escaping from jail; being caught and taken to Algeria, first to a prison in Algiers then to the concentration camp in Djelfa, Algeria; spending two years at Djelfa where he was forced to work on the Trans-Saharan Railroad project; being liberated by the British in 1943; joining the British military, learning English, and training in military intelligence; tracking down war criminals in Europe; being discharged from the military and sent to England; moving to New York City in 1947; training to become a watchmaker; raising a family; returning to his hometown to see his childhood home and synagogue; searching unsuccessfully for his parents, brothers, and sisters; feeling that the world betrayed the Jewish people by not giving them refuge; and understanding how his experiences have shaped his worldview, the way he raised his children, and his religious beliefs.

Oral history interview with Esthy Adler

Oral History

Esthy Adler discusses living in a children’s home in Barbizon, France after liberation from a concentration camp; being adopted by a French family and moving to Paris at age eleven; receiving an education in Paris; going to live with the Katz family and then the Lehman family and being declared a legal adult at age seventeen; meeting her American husband, Jim Adler, while visiting Germany; moving to New York City with her husband and working for the French Film Office while he worked for NBC; moving to Washington, DC and helping her husband start and run a business that collected and indexed congressional records; working for the United Nations representative from Laos; starting a publishing company with her husband; travelling extensively; becoming involved with community projects and organizations; confronting and processing her Holocaust experiences and confirming her memories with research; and understanding how her experiences have influenced her religious identity, worldview, social interactions, and her relationship with her two children.

Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edwarda Rorat

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz Schnaittacher

Oral History

Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Loew

Oral History

William Loew discusses being captured at age 17 as he tried to flee from Hungary to Romania; entering Auschwitz as an orchestra played a march; being imprisoned in Auschwitz and Flossenbürg camps from October 1944 to April 1945; receiving the number 193229 because the SS believed he had special information and marked him as someone to be preserved for later questioning; reuniting with his hometown doctor in the Auschwitz clinic; witnessing the public hanging of five Polish prisoners who attempted to escape Auschwitz in December 1944; feeling a loss of hope upon hearing the news of President Roosevelt’s death in April 1945; his liberation by American troops while on a forced march from Flossenbürg to Dachau; feeling that he was in a “no man’s land” in which he was free, but had to reconstruct his life; traveling to Bamberg, Germany with American soldiers as an interpreter; discovering he had tuberculosis and staying for over a year at a sanatorium in Gauting (near Munich); taking high school courses to further his education and attending Technische Hochschule in Munich; taking courses on a subsidy from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA); serving as an interpreter for displaced persons seeking to enter the United States; helping a Jewish family that could not meet the literacy requirement by using a Hebrew prayer book and letting the man recite a prayer so it appeared as though he was reading; moving to New York in 1949 and staying with a family in Roselle, NJ; working for the American Company for Electronics, installing antennas and repairing televisions; attending the New York College of Engineering and receiving a degree in 1955; working for the General Instrument Corporation in engineering applications until 1960; moving to Philadelphia, PA and then to St. Louis, MO; designing fire control systems for B-58 airplanes at Emerson Electric until 1962; working for the Mallory Company in Indianapolis and marrying his wife Lois, a psychologist, in 1962; working for the Food and Drug Administration researching the emissions of x-rays from cathode ray tubes in televisions and the engineering of medical devices from 1975 until 1990; starting a vineyard in Fredrick County, NJ in 1982, making honey wine as his family did in Poland; sharing very little of his experience with his children or grandchildren; feeling regret and sorrow that his brothers and mother did not survive; experiencing nightmares and flashbacks; feeling that his character has been primarily shaped by his family and upbringing, not his Holocaust experience; and feeling that survivors are more driven to succeed and work hard to have a good life.

Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

Oral History

Barbara Marton Farkas, born in 1920 in Arad, Romania, describes being sent to Sweden by the International Committee of the Red Cross after her liberation in May 1945; her long recovery time in quarantine; her work for a few years in a clothing factory; returning to Romania to attend university; her studies in an industrial pharmacy from 1946 to 1951; her work as a biochemist in a hospital in Arad, Israel; her move to Israel in 1962 after a 10 year wait for a passport; terrorist attacks in Israel in 1967 and the assault on Jerusalem; her move to the United States in 1968; and her support for the mission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.