Oral history interview with Charles Froug

Oral history interview with Charles Froug

Oral History

Charles Froug, a medical officer in the United States Army during World War II, discusses his memories of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp; being the general surgeon with an evacuation hospital; being stationed in Rosenheim during the last week of April 1945; coming upon the open gates of Dachau and seeing the conditions of the camp and inmates; the Jewish and political prisoners (including Lutheran and Catholic clergy members); the crematoria; how he and the other Jewish members of the unit, about 18 doctors, went to the camp to say the Kaddish prayer for the dead; how 8,000 people were marched from the city to dig a large, single grave (200 by 50 by 10 feet); his commanding officer having the mayor of Rosenheim arrested and interrogated; being transferred to Lake Kimze (Chiemsee); treating American and German soldiers with equal priority; going to Hof, Germany; how much angrier they were after finding Dachau, since they had no knowledge of any of the camps beforehand; speaking to the B'nai B'rith about his experiences during his first week home; the fate of the 800 people saved at Dachau; speaking with inmates in Dachau during the first day there; prisoners dying from starvation and typhus; and Barbi's trial and his attorney's reference to French cruelty to the Algerians.

Oral history interview with Rachael Frydman

Oral History

Rachael Frydman (née Alperowicz), born May 8, 1926, discusses her life in a Kurzeniec, Poland (now Kurenets, Belarus) before World War II; the lack of a Jewish ghetto in her town because it was so small; how the Germans arrived abruptly in June 1941; her sister leaving with a neighbor; how there was no full government established yet, only the army; how once the Gestapo came, gold and silver was demanded from everyone via the Jewish Committee; the selection process, during which individuals age 16 and up were taken away; being made to work; how just before the high holidays approximately 50 men and a few women, including her neighbors across the street and two cousins, were slaughtered in the streets and how one man escaped; the specific men who committed atrocities; working as a cleaning lady; the liquidation three days before the high holiday; hiding with her family in a false attic her brother had built; a neighbor reporting on them to the Germans; a family down the street committing suicide by starting a fire; sneaking out of the attic and hiding in the woods and losing track of her brother; living in a hole in the ground with 18 people; her mother being caught; how the forest was divided by numbers and each village had a part of the forest; the Germans surrounding their area of the forest on April 29, 1943; escaping the Germans; not joining partisan groups but making them food; the rainy summer of 1943; hearing that her brother was alive in the Vilna ghetto; going to several villages before returning to the woods; hearing that her brother was sent to Estonia; searching for her brother in villages, partisan groups, and the forest; finding him in the forest; and being shot at by German soldiers, but avoiding being hit by running in a zig-zag.

Oral history interview with Judith Koch

Oral History

Judith Koch, a German exchange student, discusses the absence of Jews from her village in Germany and the impact of the Holocaust on her life; the remnants of Jewish history and culture in her village, including a cemetery; how there was once a synagogue in the village, which the Nazis tore it down in 1939; learning about the Holocaust as a child; the impact of the Holocaust on her father; American patriotism versus German patriotism; Germans discriminating against the Turkish; the role the United States played in helping to rebuild Germany after the war; prejudices in the US; and how being German affects her interviews with Holocaust survivors.

Oral history interview with Helga Levy

Oral History

Helga Levy discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; her memories as a young adult living under the Nazi regime; her memories of discriminatory laws against Jews; and her survival in hiding in Berlin

Oral history interview with Ben Muler and Bernice Muler

Oral History

Bernice Muler (née Braha “Bronia” Fogul), born in 1925, describes living in Tomashov (Tomaszów Lubelski), Poland; her brother and sister; hoping to become a teacher; the Russian occupation; being advised to leave and having little time to pack their belongings; 2000 people including her immediate family and some of the neighbors leaving in army trucks bound for Russia; her family staying in a small hut with a dirt floor for six months; not being allowed to stay there and deciding to go to Odessa, Ukraine; travelling in cattle cars in January 1940 for 20 days and arriving in some wood cabins by the Ural mountains, close to Siberia; her family moving to a city where she attended eighth and ninth grades in a Russian school; having to work at age 16 in a factory for twelve hours a day; and going with her mother to Sumz, Russia, where she met her future husband Ben. Ben Muler, born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1922, describes his family; keeping up with the news as the Nazis rose to power; antisemitism in the 1930s; German Jewish refugees arriving in Poland; the Lithuanians being abusive towards the Jewish population; the Russians arriving; the German bombardments in 1941; trying unsuccessfully to convince his family to leave; the journey with his friends to the Russian border; arriving in Osmiany (Ashmiany, Belarus) and separating from his friends; reuniting with his friends in Minsk, Belarus; working on a collective farm in Ukraine with other refugees; going to the Ural Mountains; being drafted into the labor army and sent to work cutting timber for a copper mine; meeting Bernice; and corresponding with his aunt in Mississippi. Ben and Bernice describe returning to Poland in 1946; the fates of their family members; the Jewish underground helping them cross the border illegally into Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany; going to the Deggendorf displaced persons camp; arriving in Boston, MA on October 14, 1949; going to a small town in Mississippi; and moving to Dayton, Ohio.

Oral history interview with Richard R. Seibel

Oral History

Retired Colonel Richard R. Seibel discusses his experiences as commanding United States Army officer at Mauthausen concentration camp after liberation in 1945.

Oral history interview with Marlene Stine

Oral History

Marlene Stine discusses life as the daughter of Holocaust survivors

Oral history interview with Johanna van Schagen

Oral History

Johanna van Schagen discusses her experiences of hiding Jews in her home in the Netherlands during World War II and her recognition as a "Righteous Among the Nations" by the State of Israel.

Oral history interview with Murray Weisman

Oral History

Murray Weisman, born in Poland in 1930, discusses living in Łódź, Poland; the German occupation of Poland; ghettoization; forced labor; his memories of being deported; arriving in the camp, being stripped, searched for gold, given a number on his arm, put into a shower, and given clothes; lying about his age during the selection process; his job building roads; witnessing a mass murder of inmates; the suicide of some inmates; being taken to Auschwitz; the burning of the dead and weak during the journey; his work; the selections on Fridays; the torture from 1941 to 1942 in Auschwitz; the Kapos; being sent to Buna (Monowitz) concentration camp, where life was somewhat easier; starvation; having to sing while they marched; being in Buna for a year and a half; a bombing at the camp and trying to hide in a bunker; evacuating the camp and being forced to march to Gleiwitz (Gliwice), Poland; being taken on a train to Dora; the Americans bombing the train rails; being stabbed by a Nazi at one point; being sent to Buchenwald; seeing prisoners being taken out of the camps and shot or drowned; hiding in a pile of corpses for two days before being liberated by American soldiers; going to Paris, France; going to the United States for his studies; and his life in the US. Mr. Weisman also shows pictures and sings a song from the camps.

Oral history interview with Sam Heider

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachael Frydman

Oral History

Rachael Frydman discusses her life in Poland before World War II; her time in hiding in a forest; and her life as a partisan resistance fighter during the Holocaust

Oral history interview with Judith Koch

Oral History

Judith Koch, a German exchange student, discusses the absence of Jews from her village in Germany and the impact of the Holocaust on her life

Oral history interview with Helga Levy

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ben Muler and Bernice Muler

Oral History

Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marlene Stine

Oral History

Oral history interview with Johanna Van Schagen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Murray Weisman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Delbert Cooper

Oral History

Oral history interview with Donald Key

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bernard Mellman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gabe Vacca

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Long

Oral History