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Oral history interview with Manfred Steinfeld

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1989.346.70 | RG Number: RG-50.031.0070

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    Oral history interview with Manfred Steinfeld
    Transcript
    Our interview today is being conducted
    as part of a joint project by the Holocaust Memorial
    Foundation of Illinois and Loyola University of Chicago.
    In this project, a number of GIs who were either liberators
    of concentration camps or who visited the camps shortly
    after the liberation will be interviewed.
    The larger purpose of the project
    is to fulfill the injunction-- tell it to your children,
    and your children should tell it to their children,
    and their children to another generation
    so that the horrors of the Holocaust will not be forgotten
    and that perhaps a similar tragedy may be prevented
    from happening in the future.
    Our interviewee today is Mr. Manfred Steinfeld,
    and I thank you very much for coming.
    And we will be discussing the Wobbelin concentration camp.
    We'd just like to say a few words about Wobbelin.
    Wobbelin was opened very late in the war, in February 1945,
    as an administrative subcamp of the larger concentration camp
    Neuengamme.
    Wobbelin is located some 20 miles from Schwerin in Germany
    and some five miles from a town called Ludwigslust.
    Wobbelin had only male prisoners.
    And when it was liberated on May the 5th, 1945,
    some 2,500 prisoners were found alive.
    In the surrounding forests, however, the Americans
    uncovered some 800 bodies that had been hurriedly buried.
    And within the camp itself, there
    were hundreds of other bodies.
    Lieutenant General James Gavin visited Wobbelin shortly
    after its liberation.
    Gavin wrote, "we were told that at one time
    the camp had 4,000 inmates, but Wobbelin wasn't a concentration
    camp in the sense that they had gas
    chambers or various devices, not a death camp specifically.
    They had their own sophisticated way of killing,
    of getting rid of these people.
    They just starved them to death.
    We were uniformly very depressed, and angered,
    and saddened by this whole thing.
    It was-- it's beyond human experience."
    I would just like to ask you a few preliminary questions
    for the record.
    First of all, your date and place of birth.
    I was born April 29, 1924, in Germany.
    And then what year did you come to this country?
    1938.
    What was the year then-- you were drafted into the army?
    Joined the service in 1943.
    And your serial number?
    36737899.
    And then also the unit that you were with at the time
    of liberation and your rank.
    I was a member of a military intelligence specialist
    unit, order battle team number 16,
    attached to the 82nd Airborne throughout the entire Normandy,
    Holland, Central Europe Campaign.
    So that you landed on the continent on June the 6th,
    1944.
    Participated in the Normandy invasion, the invasion
    at Nijmegen, and was with the 82nd Airborne
    until we occupied Berlin in July of '45.
    Where was your unit stationed just previous
    to your encountering Wobbelin?
    The unit actually at that particular time,
    the first week of May 1945, everything was very fluid.
    The Germans were advancing en masse,
    and I believe, on the morning of May 5,
    I was a member of the reconnaissance patrol that
    made the contact with the Russians at Grabow.
    There were two contacts made with the Russians, one
    at Torgau.
    About 150 miles further south, which had taken place on May 3
    or may 4, and on May 5, the 82nd Airborne linked up
    with the Russians at the town called
    Grabow, again about 10 miles or 15 miles east of Ludwigslust.
    And this was quite close to the Elbe, then.
    No, we had crossed the Elbe on--
    You crossed the Elbe.
    --on April 29.
    We were at that time attached to the 2nd British army.
    And we're the only American unit that actually ended up
    in that part of Germany.
    This was actually very close to the Baltic coast.
    Schwerin is a Baltic port.
    It's approximately-- if you were to take
    a straight line between Berlin and Hamburg,
    you would be two thirds of the way to Hamburg.
    Mm-hmm.
    Dissecting that line, you end up at the Baltic coast
    to the northeast in the town of Schwerin.
    How was it that your unit was attached to the British army?
    Well, being-- the airborne units were more or less fluid units.
    During the Normandy campaign, we were part of the American army.
    During the Holland campaign, we were part of the British army.
    We were part of the 18th Airborne Corps attached
    to the 2nd British army.
    Then we became part of the 15th Army
    Group holding the west bank of the Rhine near Cologne.
    Approximately, I would say on April 25 or thereabouts maybe
    April 23, we were alerted, and we were reassigned again
    to the second British army in a town called Bleckede,
    B-L-E-C-K-E-D, West of the Elbe River.
    The 82nd Airborne at that time, the reconnaissance unit,
    crossed the Elbe River and really encountered
    the final resistance of World War II,
    because the resistance had stopped.
    And the Germans were surrendering en masse.
    We then proceeded to--
    we were in Bleckede and Ludwigslust, really.
    I wish we had a map here, which we don't.
    I'm doing this from recall.
    On the morning of the 4th or the 5th, we contacted the Russians.
    And I remember very distinctly when we came back
    to Ludwigslust, I was involved in translating
    the unconditional surrender document which
    was being executed by the German commander who had contacted
    General Gavin, a general by the name of Tippelskirch,
    who commanded the 21st German Army Group,
    and he signed a surrender on behalf of all the German troops
    that surrendered to the 82nd Airborne
    at that particular time.
    Mm-hmm.
    I believe the same day we had found out,
    we had heard in the morning about this concentration camp
    with a mountain of bodies.
    And I think it was liberated by 10 o'clock in the morning.
    I first heard about--
    That day, May the 5th.
    On that May-- I mean, that day, May the 5th.
    And I remember going out there about 2:30-ish,
    3 o'clock that afternoon.
    And it's very difficult to describe--
    I mean, today, almost 40 years later,
    the sights that you encountered at that particular moment.
    The camp was an ordinary Wittenbergs camp.
    The guard towers had been deserted.
    Everything was open.
    There was barbed wire.
    Of course, the first barrack we went into,
    there we found some--
    among the living we found many, many bodies.
    There were just some--
    some of the bodies that were being removed by the medics.
    Just moving them, they died.
    We-- I don't recall the exact details,
    but we received very substantial support from the medical units
    from the 2nd British army headquarters because they had
    had substantial experience, because I believe a week
    previously Bergen-Belsen was liberated,
    which was not too far to the--
    which was probably only about 50 miles to the east--
    no, to the west, to the west.
    We were the one unit that ended up the furthest to the east
    in Germany, because there were no troops further east than we
    were.
    Mm-hmm.
    And this was to the west, I mean, Bergen-Belsen.
    And we received very substantial medical support
    in order to salvage and save whatever
    lives that could be saved.
    Had you heard about the concentration camps.
    So it had received a substantial amount of publicity
    in Stars and Stripes.
    We did not expect to be the ones that liberated--
    to be liberating a concentration camp, but we were aware.
    But when you've--
    I mean, being aware and being--
    and seeing it is totally different.
    You cannot believe, really, the horror and the degradation
    of human life the way it existed.
    What-- when you came to the camp,
    there was no longer any German resistance.
    No, all the German guards had taken off.
    They had fled.
    They had all fled.
    So that only the inmates--
    Yes, only the inmates.
    Do you recall your first impressions of the camp?
    What struck you when you just came there?
    I mean, just the horrors.
    And I mean-- I mean, the conditions
    in the wooden barracks with wooden bunks,
    three, four, five people in the bunk,
    some dead, some alive, people crowded on the floor
    in the corner, some dead, some alive.
    These were about generally the conditions, I mean,
    as we found them.
    The people hadn't had any substantial food
    probably for the past month, I would say.
    Just sheer starvation.
    And that was the method of exterminating
    most of the ones that were--
    I mean, they were inmate at that particular camp.
    And the inmates were of all varying nationalities.
    All nationalities.
    I remember talking to some Hungarians.
    I remember talking to some people from Poland, French,
    and Russians, and so on.
    All nationalities.
    What stories did they tell you about the camp?
    Do you recall anything in particular?
    At this particular stage, I don't--
    I don't really recall except the horrors.
    I was just more concerned to make them comfortable.
    Of course, their attitude towards the troops was--
    We were the liberators.
    Liberators.
    Thank god, we just got there a bit too late.
    So they were-- and how long did you remain in the camp?
    I went in that camp--
    that camp was pretty much cleaned out within about--
    of all the death and the living--
    within about 24 hours.
    At that time, General Gavin decided that we
    would have a public funeral.
    I was in charge of going to the local Bürgermeister,
    since I spoke German fluently.
    The mayor of Ludwigslust.
    Yes, to get a labor force to help clean up the camp
    and help move the dead bodies and wrap them in sheets,
    whatever was available.
    And then we arranged a funeral for those bodies
    that we discovered, I think, for approximately 200 of them,
    that we arranged a funeral for right in the town square
    in front of the castle.
    Now, in the feudal days, Mecklenburg, Schwerin,
    was one of the feudal duchies of Germany.
    And the castle in Mecklenburg, Schwerin,
    the headquarters of the duke, was in Ludwigslust.
    And there's this huge, enormous beautiful castle,
    and with a park directly to the south of it.
    And in the park, adjacent to the square in front of the castle,
    we've decided to bury those bodies that were able--
    that we found.
    I was also in charge of making arrangements.
    All the Germans in the town had to walk through there.
    Of course, the Germans all in total
    said, well, we knew nothing what happened.
    We knew it was a labor camp, but they all pleaded innocence.
    They had their suspicions, but no one
    is going to admit that they knew, that they
    knew what was going on.
    Were they made-- the civilian German population,
    were they made to attend the funeral?
    Yes, they were made to tend to feel.
    And what was their reaction?
    We did not know, uniformly.
    That's the excuse everybody gave in Germany at that time.
    There weren't any Nazis in Germany in 1945.
    [LAUGHS] So they denied.
    They denied any--
    They denied all knowledge at all.
    Yes.
    Did you have occasion to speak to any military personnel
    or anyone who had been the charge of the camp?
    No.
    All those in charge of the camp had fled.
    Had fled.
    Because they of course, knew there would
    be potential war crimes that--
    I mean, war criminals.
    They would be arrested.
    They had all taken off probably in civilian clothes
    and pretending that they knew nothing about it,
    and they just all disappeared.
    Mm-hmm.
    Just getting back to the camp itself for a moment,
    other than the barracks for the prisoners, what other buildings
    did you find in the camp?
    I-- really, at this stage, I cannot recall all
    the buildings.
    I think there were basically barracks and the guard towers.
    And as far as kitchen, I really don't recall.
    I'm sure there was one for first aid and medication,
    but it was really no different than any other barracks.
    It was just basically all wooden barracks.
    Mm-hmm.
    It was not a large camp.
    It was-- when you--
    the total population was approximated at its peak 3,000
    with an average of 300 per barrack.
    That's only 10 barracks.
    That was the size.
    It was 10 or 12 barracks.
    That was it.
    Do you recall the reaction of other GIs upon seeing the camp?
    They were all horrified at just the degradation
    of human life, where humanity had subjugated
    someone else to a subhuman level was just unacceptable to us.
    But that's exactly what had taken
    place in that particular camp.
    And did there-- did that reaction manifest itself
    in anger against the German population?
    Well, the only incidents that I can tell you
    when some of the guys saw some of the--
    they may not have been inmates.
    We found a number of displaced persons wearing concentration
    camp uniforms, and they recognized a particular German
    who may have been a guard or someone else, and they just--
    we did permit them to beat up occasionally, I mean,
    their previous captors.
    Mm-hmm.
    We just closed our eyes to that, but that
    was just one or two instances, I mean, that we noticed.
    At the funeral for the prisoners,
    there were probably several chaplains, several army
    chaplains who officiated.
    Yes.
    Do you recall anything that they said
    or anything that General Gavin said?
    He was there also.
    Yes, General Gavin was there.
    The one who made--
    the eulogy was conducted by Chaplain Wood,
    who was the 82nd Airborne Division chaplain.
    I don't remember the remarks that he made,
    but let the world never forget what we're witnessing here
    today et cetera.
    I mean, the same typical eulogy that
    was in order at that particular time.
    After you remained in that vicinity for a while, and then
    you were assigned elsewhere?
    I was assigned again as part of the 82nd Airborne
    area of responsibility to the military government office
    in Boizenburg an der Elbe.
    Which is a town about, I would say, 25 miles west
    of Ludwigslust by the name of Boizenburg.
    And I was in charge of--
    I and two other--
    one officer and the master sergeant,
    we became in charge of the military government office
    for that particular town.
    Had quite an experience that took place
    at that particular time about, I would say, May 20, May 15,
    about that time.
    I don't know whether it's appropriate at this particular
    instance to mention it, but we were walking down
    the street when a woman in concentration camp dress
    walked down the street and came up to me and said,
    Mr. Officer, the man walking on the other side of the street
    is a criminal.
    And she spoke German.
    I was able to understand German.
    The other two men I was with did not.
    And she identified herself that she
    had been a previous concentration camp inmate,
    and that she recognized the man in civilian clothes
    as being Ludwig Ramdohr, who had been the concentration camp
    commander of Ravensbrück--
    Ravensbrück.
    And she had been inmate at Ravensbrück
    for a considerable length of time.
    And she had survived.
    And based on her information, we followed the man,
    and we arrested him.
    And he did not deny whom he was--
    I mean who he was because we had positive identification.
    Of course, the typical excuse was--
    what he said, the orders that I obeyed and so on.
    We received from him a complete--
    we interrogated him, and we had a fairly substantial confession
    based on the responsibility that he had
    and based on some of the tragedies
    that took place in the camp.
    We at that time--
    we left that particular part of Germany about June 15
    to go back to France where the unit was being reassigned to.
    And we turned him over to the British military tribunal
    in Hamburg.
    Approximately four years, later Ludwig Ramdohr
    was hanged by the British authorities for the war crimes
    that he submitted.
    The woman who came up to us to identify
    him was Margaret Buber, the wife of Martin Buber,
    who was a famous German philosopher who
    had gone to Palestine, to Israel in 1930--
    probably 1933 or '34.
    She had been married to Heinz Neumann, who
    was the communistic leader of Germany.
    This was Buber's sister.
    Buber's sister was the wife of Heinz Neumann,
    who was the communistic leader of Germany before Hitler.
    They fled to the Soviet Union in 1933 when Hitler came to power.
    And in 1935, he was sent to the--
    he was sent to Spain to fight with the loyalists in Spain.
    When the loyalists were defeated by Franco,
    he found his way back into Russia.
    He was promptly put on trial with a number of others
    as being traitors to the cause, and he was executed.
    She was then sentenced to--
    I don't for how long--
    to Siberian labor concentration camp by the Russians
    in Siberia.
    In 1939, she was repatriated during the time
    of the German-Russian non-aggression pact to Germany.
    And she went from a Siberian labor camp
    to a German concentration camp, but she survived.
    In other words, from '34 to '39 in Siberia, from '39 to '45
    in a German camp.
    Incredible.
    And she survived.
    I arranged for her to go to the American territory,
    because all the territory that we vacated
    became Russian occupation territory.
    Because the Russians had east of the Elbe.
    Of course, the Russians would like nothing
    better than get their hands back on her and back to Siberia.
    In fact, I contacted Professor Buber.
    Her two daughters lived in Jerusalem at the time.
    I had a brother of mine living in Jerusalem
    to whom I wrote to notify Professor Buber
    that his sister had survived.
    And that's the last I heard of her.
    She did write a book on the two dictators
    by Margaret Buber, which was published by 1950.
    That's an amazing story.
    In all your interrogation of a wrongdoer,
    there was never any admission of criminality
    on his part, no feeling of remorse?
    Everything-- no, none.
    Nothing?
    He did admit to things that took place, the medical experiments
    on women.
    Ravensbrück was a notorious camp where
    many of the medical experiments were taking place basically
    with women.
    Mm-hmm.
    And it was very difficult to deny it.
    Of course, the typical excuse was
    that we only followed orders.
    It's--
    Mm-hmm.
    So just no--
    No particular remorse.
    No particular remorse at all.
    When you returned to this country--
    well, when actually were you shipped back
    to the United States.
    I came back.
    We became-- the 82nd Airborne moved into Berlin
    in July of '45.
    I was with the 82nd Airborne until I
    was ready for discharge.
    I left Germany October the 25th '45 and was discharged October
    the 29th.
    During those last months in Germany,
    did you have occasion to speak with any camp survivors
    or with any German civilians or military personnel
    from the camps?
    My responsibility in Berlin when I was stationed there
    was really finding those who were expected
    to be living in Berlin who were under automatic arrest
    category.
    I became part of our counter-intelligence unit,
    and we arrested many, many Germans.
    Those-- we had several categories, automatic
    or less category.
    We had fairly good intelligence, and we
    knew who we were looking for.
    And we arrested--
    I don't remember any names, but several hundred
    potential criminals, or--
    I mean those who were--
    The potential Nazi war criminals.
    Yes.
    Did you interrogate any of them?
    Yes, a number of them.
    And the uniform response was no admission of guilt.
    No admission of guilt. I would say occasionally
    you find someone said, yes, we were wrong.
    But uniformly, you would find, we only followed orders.
    I was only a soldier.
    I was a member of the party.
    We followed orders.
    Mm-hmm.
    Mm-hmm.
    And we just had to carry out what was whatever was told us,
    and that was all.
    Those few that did admit to some wrong,
    do you recall any particulars there?
    I don't really recall any today.
    But they were very few and far between.
    Very few.
    And as far as German civilians that you ran across,
    the typical--
    Yes, well, I went back to my hometown
    where I was born as an American soldier
    in, well, the beginning of June of '45.
    Since my mother and sister did not
    leave Germany when I left, and they perished
    in a concentration camp, we were able to determine
    that they died really during the last three or four
    months of the war, the beginning of '45.
    Which camp?
    Well, the last that we knew about,
    we were able to determine a first cousin of mine who was
    with my mother and sister also was with them until about
    December '44 in a camp called Stutthof, S-T-U-T-T-H-O-F,
    which is near Danzig.
    And she was then shipped to Bergen-Belsen.
    And I presume that most of them perished during the cold
    and during the winter.
    The Russians were advancing, and they were evacuating them,
    and they were just dying en masse.
    They managed, though, to survive until almost the very end.
    Yes.
    They were deported in beginning of '42 to Lithuania.
    And I would say that from probably the end of '43
    on, they were in a concentration camp,
    in various concentration camp.
    And I mean, at the end--
    I mean, they were in the camp Stutthof.
    When you came here, did they try to get out at the same time?
    Yes, but they tried to, but it was very difficult.
    My mother was a widow, three small children.
    And she was able to get me out.
    I lived with an aunt of mine here in Chicago.
    But the rest the other children were--
    And a brother of mine went on youth Aliyah to, I mean,
    to Palestine.
    In--
    1938.
    So he was saved.
    Well, he died in 1945 fighting the British.
    Fighting--
    Against the British.
    Oh, against the British in Palestine.
    Oh, my.
    What did you find when you returned to your town?
    This was in Hesse.
    This was in the province of Hesse.
    It was a small agricultural town.
    Of course, they had many, many casualties.
    I would say that I don't know the exact figure,
    but out of a population of 400 people, I've heard at least 25%
    were in the army.
    And those near-- those who were in the army,
    probably 30 or 40 perished on the Russian front,
    and many of them were killed.
    But these were more or less small towns in Germany.
    Although they were Nazis, they were really not aware
    in the overall scope of what was happening.
    Because they were basically an agricultural community,
    they were not really aware of what
    was happening on the plot scale, I
    mean, throughout the rest of Europe.
    Did you meet acquaintances, people
    that you had known before?
    Yes, yes.
    Non-Jews?
    Non-Jews.
    What was their reaction?
    They were happy to see me back.
    [LAUGHS] Hmm.
    And they-- in terms of the atrocities
    and the camps and so on?
    They could not believe it.
    And I would say, really, that in many small communities
    of Europe, particularly Germany, people
    they were really not aware of what was happening
    on the much larger scale.
    They perhaps had some vague awareness.
    But you also have to keep in mind,
    if in 1944 or '45 in Germany, these people had no cars.
    There may have been one radio in town.
    We didn't have transistor radios.
    They were more or less fairly primitive conditions.
    And they would get a newspaper probably once or twice a week
    from the next largest city, which would be either Frankfurt
    or Kassel.
    And they were really not being--
    I mean, they were not informed, really.
    They were Nazis.
    They belonged to the party.
    And they were anti-Jews.
    And they were-- and they were anti-Semitic,
    no question about it, because it was part of the policy.
    One of the things that took place in Germany
    that through the rise of Hitler, it went down to the lowest
    level of German society.
    Every town from the Hitler Youth on, they became--
    it became part of the entire German psychology.
    Mm-hmm.
    But it is difficult to really realize how
    unless someone from the immediate family
    would be a guard in a concentration camp,
    or would be--
    would have been assigned to it, they would not
    have any knowledge of it.
    And there was no--
    there was no camp in the area, in that particular area.
    No, not in that particular--
    How did you feel going back to the town at that point?
    Well, mixed emotions.
    The first thing I was going to look for
    was someone who would normally-- we lived in the small town,
    and every Saturday morning, we would
    go to next town for services.
    We had to go by several homes between the two towns.
    And every Saturday morning, we would go by,
    they would let the dogs loose to start chasing us.
    And my first inclination was, if he's there,
    I'm going to shoot the SOB.
    Well, he had been killed in World War
    II, so there could have been--
    I mean, a nicer fate couldn't happen to a nicer person,
    you see.
    So but I've been back there.
    In fact, the cemetery where my father, grandfather,
    and great grandfather buried is in fairly good shape.
    I'm almost amazed.
    Maybe that explains the German psychology.
    In the middle of Frankfurt, there's an old Jewish cemetery.
    It was not desecrated any more than any German cemetery.
    The only thing that was done to it, all the metal and glass
    headstones were removed.
    But any stone out of stone, any memorial stone
    out of stone or marble was left intact.
    So here in the middle of Frankfurt,
    the cemetery was in pretty good shape in 1945.
    Since my grandmother was buried there, I went there.
    And I was amazed in the good shape it was.
    Maybe that explains their psychology--
    lots of respect for the dead and no respect for the living.
    [LAUGHS]
    At least in those days.
    You found no Jews that were in your town.
    No, no, no.
    How many had--
    It was--
    How many had lived there before?
    There were six Jewish families when I left.
    An additional one, two, three--
    three families emigrated.
    One emigrated through the Argentine to the United States.
    The ones who were killed were my mother and sister.
    Another family, the husband, wife,
    and one daughter, and then one spinster woman,
    about 50, 55 years old.
    They're the ones who were killed.
    They perished.
    And you have visited the town since?
    Yes, yes.
    And it is still--
    there are--
    Today, of course, the towns in Germany
    are going through the same changes that happen
    anywhere else in the world.
    Instead of being farmers, they work in factories.
    And the small town was 400, the population in 1938.
    The population now may only be 250.
    That's because most people have moved to the next largest city.
    They all have-- today, they have television sets, Mercedes.
    Where they had a cow to pull the plow,
    today they have tractors--
    Modernization.
    And do you still know people there?
    You still have--
    I am going there probably in September
    to have a monument put in the cemetery in my mother's
    and sister's memory.
    Oh.
    That's very nice.
    Which I have been meaning to do for a long time.
    I finally made arrangements to do it.
    And there's been cooperation on the part of the town
    authorities for this?
    No problem?
    Yes, yes.
    When you returned to this country,
    did you discuss what you had seen in the concentration camp
    with anyone else?
    You also have to keep in mind, in 1945,
    the newspapers were full of it.
    Every newspaper, Life magazine, Time magazine,
    Newsweek magazine, they were just
    filled with the atrocities that had
    taken place in World War II--
    the atrocities from Birkenau and Auschwitz,
    and I mean, all of them.
    And it really-- we went through an initial stage
    of being informed.
    Then I would say about the '48, '49, after Nuremberg trials,
    it really died down for about 10 or 15 years.
    It's just a good thing that, again,
    today, the permanent records are being made,
    so people should never forget what happened.
    So you feel that in terms of what you're doing now,
    as far as giving testimony, that the purpose for that is--
    Should have been done in '45, when
    you had much clearer recollections of everything
    that had taken place.
    Do you think that most GIs would have been willing to talk then?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    No question about it.
    And by way of a summary question, what
    sort of lessons, what sort of meaning can be derived,
    do you think, out of what you saw,
    out of your family's experiences,
    out of the tragedy of the Holocaust?
    Well, that's very difficult to explain.
    Shall we forgive and forget?
    Or shall we forgive and never forget?
    Or shall we always look for the best in humanity?
    I have always taken the philosophy
    that just because these horrible things happen,
    there is still much good in most people.
    But a situation such as the Holocaust
    can really only happen when you take
    a certain segment of humanity and create an environment
    of subhuman environment.
    So people are really relegated to subhuman status,
    and then you're willing to accept
    that someone is inferior, and there's a reason for it.
    So I think, really, the lesson that we have to learn,
    that we can never permit any segment of society
    to be really delegated or to be persecuted
    to that particular subhuman environment.
    And I think it needs constant-- it needs constant--
    constant awareness.
    When you take a look and see what's
    happened in Cambodia and Vietnam and other parts of the world,
    I mean, basically again it comes down
    that these people became expendable.
    But then again, life is cheap, you know.
    Especially when you fight for survival,
    and people very quickly forget to look in the best in people.
    And I am sure there are stories where people
    have survived by means of--
    by persecuting others, by taking advantage of them.
    And it's just survival is very important.
    Just by way kind of an aside, something
    that occurred to me that might be of interest, in terms
    of your youth in Germany and your experiences
    with anti-Semitism there, do you recall
    when it was, where it was that you first
    experienced anti-Semitism?
    Well, I recall very vividly, and I was only
    at that time nine years old, when the day
    Hitler came to power.
    Because a doctor came from a town about 15 kilometers away
    from where we were living to take care of my grandmother.
    And he had been a member of the Nazi party.
    And he said something wonderful has happened.
    I mean, Hitler is our new chancellor.
    It really-- the first signs of antisemitism
    started probably during the first boycott of Jewish stores.
    Just right after that, with the assumption of power.
    Which started, I would say, either middle of '33, '34,
    and then it accelerated in '35.
    I attended the German public schools until 1938
    till the week before--
    the week before I left for this country.
    From that point on, you could no longer
    attend any German school.
    But I had finished primary school
    and I left at that particular time.
    My brother who was two years younger,
    could not attend school, so we had
    a Jewish teacher come from a town about 10 kilometers away.
    But he went to work in a training farm
    to prepare himself for life in--
    for a life in Palestine.
    Mm-hmm.
    And in school, while you were in school and especially
    after Hitler's assumption of power
    there was a good deal of anti-Semitism or?
    Not really.
    The antisemitism didn't really start until the--
    probably '35 or '36, when a new teacher
    was brought into the town.
    The old teacher was transferred or retired,
    and a new teacher who had been totally indoctrinated
    in Nazi philosophy, I mean, took his position
    in that particular town.
    And then he made things hard for the Jewish children.
    No, he didn't make it hard.
    But you were made fun of, and the typical remarks,
    and you being singled out, et cetera, et cetera.
    Mm-hmm.
    So you had-- certainly by 1938, your family had the feeling--
    Oh, yes.
    --that they wanted to get out of Germany.
    Yes, yes.
    That life was becoming untenable.
    Yes, 1937 we first tried, but I left in '38.
    Mm-hmm.
    Yes.
    Well, I'm really happy that the monument will be erected there.
    I think that'll really be a nice memorial.
    Yeah.
    Well, thank you very much for sharing
    your experiences and your insights and for all your time.
    And--
    OK.
    Thanks very much.
    Thank you.
    We're all set?

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Manfred Steinfeld, born on April 29, 1924 in a small agricultural town in Hesse, Germany, describes arriving in the US in 1938 and joining the army in 1943; being with the Military Intelligence Specialist Unit attached to the 82nd Airborne through the entire Normandy Invasion, Holland, and central European campaigns; landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944; being part of the invasion at Nijmegen, Netherlands; his group occupying Berlin, Germany in 1945; making contact made with the Russians at Torgau, Germany then at Grabow, Germany; being part of the 15th Army Group holding the West Bank of the Rhine near Cologne, Germany; being attached on April 25 or 23 to the Second British Army; proceeding to Bleckede, Germany; arriving in Schwerin, Germany (near the Baltic Coast); translating the unconditional surrender document which was being executed by General Gavin; coming across Wöbbelin concentration camp and his reaction to the scene; being in charge of talking to the Burgemeister (mayor) of Ludwigslust, Germany; getting laborers to remove the dead bodies and arranging for a funeral; the civilian population being forced to attend the funeral; the buildings in the camp; incidents when former inmates took revenge on camp guards; Captain Wood of the 82 Airborne Division giving a eulogy; arresting a former concentration camp administrator after receiving a tip from Margarete Buber; returning to France; being sent on leave to Berlin in July 1945; being discharged on October 29, 1945; being part of the counter-intelligence unit while he was in Berlin; arresting and interrogating numerous potential war criminals; visiting his home town in June 1945; the deaths of his mother and sister (possibly in Camp Stutthof); one of his brothers escaping to Palestine in 1938; speaking with his non-Jewish acquaintances in his hometown; going to the cemetery in Frankfurt, Germany, where his great grandfather, grandfather, and father were buried; the importance of giving testimony; and the lessons he has taken from his and his family’s experiences during the Holocaust.
    Interviewee
    Mr. Manfred Steinfeld
    Date
    undated: 
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois (now Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center) conducted the interview with Manfred Steinfeld. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received the tape of the interview from the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois on June 20, 1991.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:07:20
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507500

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (2)
    Time Coded Notes (English)

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    Also in Oral history interviews of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois

    Contains interviews with Holocaust survivors and liberators in the greater Chicago, IL area

    Date: 1982-1994

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    Oral history interview with Helga Franks

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    Oral history interview with Rodi Glass

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    Oral history interview with Stephen Gonczy

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    Oral History

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    Oral history interview with Walter Gray

    Oral History

    Dr. Walter Dennis Gray, born on July 20, 1925 in Yakataw, Washington, describes being a private in the Regimental Headquarters Company of the 354th Regiment unit part of the 89th Division, which was part of Patton's 3rd Army; his division's route through Germany; maintaining a log while in Germany, even though many soldiers were not allowed to; one of his jobs running observation posts, one of which was outside Ohrdruf; entering Ohrdruf concentration camp with his unit; being toured around the camp; the condition of the inmates; spending several hours at the camp; meeting Jewish and non-Jewish Belgians, French, Russians, and Poles in the camp; the importance of giving testimony on what happened during the Holocaust; his experiences with displaced persons (DP) camps; being transferred from the 89th Division to the 83rd, which ran a series of DP camps; his duties from December 1945 until April 1946 to keep a tally of the number of persons every day in the camp in the city of Linz, Austria; returning to the US in April 1946; the upheaval in Europe at the time; trying to teach his students about the origins of racism and genocide and the terrible consequences they can have; being influenced strongly by Hannah Aaron's book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”; and his view of Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Grant Grimm

    Oral history interview with Grant Grimm

    Oral History

    Grant Grimm, born January 29, 1921, discusses his experiences in the US military during WWII; being drafted into the army in October 1942; ending up in the Air Force by the time of liberation at the rank of Sergeant in the 430th Squadron, 474th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force Tactical Unit; arriving in Weimar, Germany in April 1943; going to the Buchenwald concentration camp after it was liberated; his experiences seeing the camp and the former inmates; seeing the crematory; the imprisoned former camp guards; sharing his experiences with his children and their lack of belief; feeling different after he returned to the US; getting divorced soon after the war; and his thoughts on the denials about concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Hans Gross

    Oral history interview with Hans Gross

    Oral History

    Hans Gross, born in 1928 in Stockerau, Austria, describes being forbidden to be involved in the newly-formed Austrian State Youth meetings; not being allowed to enter secondary school; his parents being told to leave Vienna in the summer of 1938; his father losing his job from a bank in Vienna; how all Jews living in the provinces were ordered to move to Vienna; his family’s hope to immigrate to Argentina; moving with his family into a bedroom of a house belonging to a widow; the events on Kristallnacht including his father being taken away; his father being released and sent to Shanghai, China; going to England with his mother, where they were separated for two years; his family never reuniting; his father’s move to Chicago, IL in 1949 and his mother’s death in England; and how the Holocaust affected him.

    Oral history interview with Henry Hartmann

    Oral history interview with Henry Hartmann

    Oral History

    Henry Hartmann, born in 1926 in Chemnitz, Germany, describes his family history; his father, who was an attorney and served in WWI; his memories of 1933 when Hitler came to power; attending public school and religious school at the synagogue; how his family never seriously considered emigration; how the sudden emigration of Jews to Poland mortified people; the events on Kristallnacht including his father being taken away; not being allowed to attend public school; the strength his mother displayed during that time; his father’s release from Buchenwald concentration camp in December; studying for his bar mitzvah; going with his brother to England; his parents’ deaths during the war; going to the United States in 1946; and his son’s work on a kibbutz in Israel and travels to Europe.

    Oral history interview with Jack Heiman

    Oral history interview with Jack Heiman

    Oral History

    Jack Heiman, born in 1920 in Demmelsdorf, Germany, describes his family history; the increase in antisemitism in Demmelsdorf in 1929; relations between the Jews and non-Jews; his father’s death in 1934; going to Hamburg, Germany for school; attending a private Jewish school in a suburb of Nuremburg from 1930 to 1935; experiencing abusive antisemitism; visiting relatives in Chicago, IL and make arrangements to get his family affidavits; learning the shoe trade in 1935 twenty minutes from downtown Hanover; the Nuremburg laws; the events on Kristallnacht, including the destruction of the Jewish stores and synagogue; the confiscation of Jewish possessions and homes; his mother having to leave her home; going to England in March 1939; his sisters in Chicago; pleading with his mother to leave Germany, which she did in late August 1939; going to the United States; and his hope that history will not repeat itself.

    Oral history interview with Hans Herzberg

    Oral history interview with Hans Herzberg

    Oral History

    Hans Herzberg, born in 1919, describes growing up in Hannover, Germany; his father, who was a general physician; his younger brother; being the only Jew in the class throughout most of my school years; his non-Jewish friends, who began disassociating with his family after 1933; Jewish life in Hanover; having his bar mitzvah in the conservative synagogue in 1932; how life for Jews changed dramatically around 1935-1936; not being allowed to attend school; his father losing his medical practice; the strength his mother displayed at this time; attending school in Berlin, Germany in 1938; taking a job in Dortmund, Germany in a bell factory welding steel bells; being arrested by the Gestapo in November 1938 and transported by train to Sachsenhausen; life in the camp, including the forced labor, maltreatment, forced singing, and rations; being released after five weeks; going to Berlin and then Hanover; his father’s imprisonment; his brother being sent on a children’s transport to the Netherlands; and having to get rid of all their property. [Note that the recording ends prematurely.]

    "Holocaust Masters"

    "Holocaust Masters"

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ursula Joachim

    Oral history interview with Ursula Joachim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Kalkstein

    Oral history interview with Jacob Kalkstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margit Kirsche

    Oral history interview with Margit Kirsche

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margaret Kolb

    Oral history interview with Margaret Kolb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Allen Kupfer

    Oral history interview with Allen Kupfer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renny Kurshenbaum

    Oral history interview with Renny Kurshenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Al Lachman

    Oral history interview with Al Lachman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lassers

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lassers

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Lassers was born in 1920 in Offenbach am Main, Germany, describes her mother; her father, who was a gynecologist; her younger sister; being in a Zionist youth organization and attending a public school until age 16; attending a school in Switzerland before returning to Frankfurt to become a nursing student; feeling that nursing was an occupation she could practice in other countries; living in Germany during the boycott of Jewish businesses, many prohibitions against the Jews, and Kristallnacht; her father being taken to Buchenwald concentration camp during Kristallnacht and released after six weeks; her parents deciding to leave Germany; learning about the concentration camps by treating patients who had been released; her family’s cousin in Chicago, IL, who was willing to give them affidavits to immigrate and to get her father an internship so he could support the family; receiving help from Quakers to get to England and then to Chicago; and her visit to Germany in 1976 to see the places where she had lived and finding that many of them had been torn down.

    Oral history interview with William Levine

    Oral history interview with William Levine

    Oral History

    William Levine, born in 1915 in Duluth, MN, describes enlisting as a private in 1942 at Fort Snelling, MN; being commissioned in the artillery in 1943 after going to officer candidate school; going to England; going through France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany; being part of the third, the ninth and later the seventh army; moving through Stuttgart, Dachau, and Munich; being aware of the existence of the concentration camps; entering Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945; conditions in the camp; how seeing death in the camp was different from seeing death in combat; finding camp guards and taking them into custody; how he was an intelligence officer at that time and interrogated the prisoners and also the citizens of the town of Dachau; the sorting of the prisoners, especially those who needed medical attention; malnutrition and typhus in the camp; speaking with camp survivors; learning about the camps from the survivors; moving to a zone of occupation by Stuttgart to take over a supply function; returning to the US in July 1946; not discussing his experiences for many years; speaking with high school students about his World War II experiences; and meeting with survivors at a world assembly in Israel in October 1990.

    "Liberators Excerpts: Opening the Gates of Hell"

    "Liberators Excerpts: Opening the Gates of Hell"

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Robert Lippurt

    Oral history interview with Robert Lippurt

    Oral History

    Robert Lippurt, born May 19, 1914 in Chicago, IL, describes working as a part-time general practitioner; holding a reserve commission for many years; working in VA hospitals for a few years before applying for active duty in May 1944; being assigned to 130th Evacuation Hospital; going to South Wales in December 1944; how the evacuation hospital was a mobile unit, following the combat troops, and served the wounded; moving rapidly across France in March 1945; his unit’s whole function changing with the closing of the war when they were in the middle of Germany; serving the prisoners who had been liberated from the concentration camp Stalag 7A near Moosburg, Germany; conditions in the camp, including the sanitation and the illnesses present; speaking with prisoners with the help of Polish chemist Lichtenstein, who spoke several languages; how some camp survivors were out of touch with reality and viewed the Americans with suspicion and disbelief; the 20 percent mortality rate of survivors; seeing very few female patients; the stories he heard from camp survivors; staying in the camp for a month and moving to Mauthausen by truck; conditions in Mauthausen concentration camp; the 11th Army Division liberating the camp before they arrived; his unit’s mission to prevent inmates from setting fire to the barracks; the gas chambers and crematorium; trying to interrogate two uniformed women who worked for the Nazis; not working as a general practitioner or psychiatrist at any time in Mauthausen, but instead doing whatever needed to be done; his methods for determining medical problems; how pulmonary tuberculosis was a problem; the nearby stone quarry; the prisoners in Mauthausen; the people in his unit, including a Japanese-American orthopedic surgeon who was a surgeon in their unit after being with the Japanese-American combat troops in Italy; having 30 army nurses in their unit but how it was still too few and they got some nurses from the regular German Army who were eager to help; and the local civilians’ views of Mauthausen.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Lorge

    Oral history interview with Ernest Lorge

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Meisels

    Oral history interview with Helen Meisels

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Donald Miller

    Oral history interview with Donald Miller

    Oral History

    Donald Miller, born in Maywood, IL on December 9, 1909, describes being a medical doctor and entering the US Army in January 1943; enlisting with the 108th General Hospital and in his last year of service being in charge of the 2nd Auxiliary Surgical Group; his unit advancing towards the fighting area and stumbling on Dachau concentration camp a few hours after it was liberated; taking photos of what he saw (he shows some of these photographs to the camera); the conditions in the camp, including the victims, survivors, crematoria, and hospital; seeing boxcars full of dead people; the food boxes from the Red Cross, which the camp survivors were hesitant to open; speaking with children who were emotionally detached; the reaction of the liberating American troops; the artwork of the surviving children; remaining at Dachau for two weeks; the medical work he did in the camp; interrogating SS doctors and nurses; the townspeople, who all said they were oblivious to what had been happening in the camp; deaths from typhus; returning to the US in January 1947; and wanting to tell of his experiences in Dachau when he got home and speaking at high schools.

    Oral history interview with Douglas Monsson

    Oral history interview with Douglas Monsson

    Oral History

    Douglas Monsson, born in Chicago, IL, describes being a cadet at Tilden High School and at the University of Illinois; being in the reserve then commissioned in 1940; being stationed at various camps in the US; landing in France after the 3rd Army; how his division was ordered to view a camp outside of Ohrdruf a few days after it was liberated; how the German civilians filled the graves on order of an American general; the reaction of the American troops; seeing the ovens; speaking with one camp survivor; staying in the camp three hours; speaking with the mayor of Ohrdruf; going towards Linz, Austria; being near Mauthausen concentration camp; handling the recreation activities; how he feels about his experience witnessing the camp; and his hope that the Holocaust never happens again.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rontal

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rontal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Mulholland

    Oral history interview with John Mulholland

    Oral History

    John Mulholland, born on July 21, 1919 in Chicago, IL, describes enlisting in the US Army in July 1942 after he graduated from Marquette University; his unit, which was attached to the fifth and third armored divisions in Europe; being stationed and trained in England for three months; landing in Le Havre, France in December 1944; their mission to go on patrol and call in artillery fire once they had located enemy positions; being sent south across the Rhine, towards Mannheim, Germany; his job reconnoitering enemy communications; being called by the 7th Army to go see how Ulm was; going to Czechoslovakia in early April 1945; coming across Dachau concentration camp; seeing hanged Polish prisoners-of-war; communication between his unit and the camp survivors; the local German civilians; going to Mossbach, Germany and becoming the information and education officer for the battalion stationed there; speaking with the people in Mossbach about Nazi camps; his interpreter Egon Tien, who was a German prisoner of war; and his reasons for not speaking about his experiences in Dachau.

    Oral history interview with Monroe Nachman, Douglas Monsson, and Walter Gray

    Oral history interview with Monroe Nachman, Douglas Monsson, and Walter Gray

    Oral History

    Col. Douglas C. Monsson describes the liberation of camp Ohrdruf; seeing naked bodies and hearing rumors about the camp before seeing it; seeing only one camp survivor. Monroe Nachman describes being involved in the liberation of the Landsberg camp and conditions in the camp when they found it. Monsson and Nachman describe the reactions of the American soldiers to the sights in the camps; taking some SS prisoners, who were later killed by American troops; Holocaust deniers; and their conversations with survivors.

    Oral history interview with Narsay Serges

    Oral history interview with Narsay Serges

    Oral History

    Narsay Serges describes landing in Normandy, France six days after D-Day; fighting at the Battle of the Bulge; approaching the Buchenwald camp around April 12, 1945; being appalled and nonplussed by the camp; taking photographs of the survivors; the restricted diet placed given to the survivors; conditions in the camp; the surviving inmates, who were Jews, Poles, Russians, and clergymen; the papier-mâché memorial erected in honor of the camp victims; his job to keep the Americans away from the camp; and how his experiences at Buchenwald have affected his whole life.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Neumann

    Oral history interview with Joseph Neumann

    Oral History

    Joseph Neumann, born May 29, 1916 in Eastern Slovakia, describes his family’s bakery, where he worked until October 1938; his father, mother, and twelve siblings; how antisemitism was very common in his town; volunteering for the Czech Army in 1938; withdrawing from the army in 1939; going to a labor camp; returning home after two years and finding Jews were being rounded up; going into hiding in the forest; working as a lumberjack; how the SS stormed his hiding place as they were preparing for Passover and arrested everyone; being taken in cattle cars to Auschwitz in April 1942; being beaten as he left the train; being tattooed and quarantined in the barracks overnight; being marched to Birkenau; having a nice Kapo; going to the camp hospital and getting out before he was killed; Himmler's visit to Birkenau; how the nurse gave him new job of watching over supplies in the hospital; thievery in the camp; his job counting dead bodies; working near Dr. Mengele and seeing a change in him after the doctor’s trip to Berlin; helping to save Meyer Kronenberg who was beaten and sentenced to hang for writing letters to his wife; attempted escapes from the camp; the transports to the camp; his sister who was in a Czech camp; being interrogated by the SS guards after his friend tried to escape with his girlfriend; leaving with a transport of Poles in October 1944; hiding in a shed with two men near Dachau, Germany until the end of the war; being liberated by American troops; his reflections on the reasons for the Holocaust; witnessing some of Mengele's twin experiments; how the Holocaust changed his outlook; being wary of speaking about his experiences because he fears discrimination; and the importance of fighting antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with Edith Adlam

    Oral history interview with Edith Adlam

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Herbert Oppenheimer

    Oral history interview with Herbert Oppenheimer

    Oral History

    Herbert Oppenheimer, born on January 4, 1926 in Berlin, Germany, describes living with foster parents, who were Seventh-Day Adventists, from the time he was four months old until he was 11; learning his was Jewish at the age of nine for his school; staying in a Jewish orphanage from age 11 until 1940; learning a trade in the orphanage; how he had to join Hitler youth when he lived with his foster parents; how the orphanage was run by the Jewish community center; living with a Jewish family while learning a trade at the age of 14 and the family’s arrest in 1941; receiving help from his foster parents; working for a company making typewriters; how Jews were not allowed to work in the daytime; not having to wear a star badge; being a foreman until August 1942; being arrested and held in a detention center; being sent after four weeks to Camp Ruellhide; working on a railroad for four weeks; being sent to Auschwitz; being mentally prepared for the camp and his survival techniques; being sick in the hospital and advised by the doctor to get out as soon as he could; volunteering to go to another camp; lying about his age and skills as a mechanic; working in a small camp, working on anti-aircraft guns; being sent to Mauthausen in January 1945; being liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops; the Russian troops taking over and the sexual assault of women camp survivors; being marched by the Russians and escaping with a friend; going to Frankfurt, Germany; meeting his future wife; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margie Oppenheimer

    Oral history interview with Margie Oppenheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Politzer

    Oral history interview with David Politzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ernest Pollak and Ilse Pollak

    Oral history interview with Ernest Pollak and Ilse Pollak

    Oral History

    Ilsa Pollak, born 1923 in Pomerania, Poland, describes growing up in Cologne, Germany; experiencing more antisemitism after 1933; listening secretly to the radio and hearing about persecution; attending an all-girls, private school; the anti-Jewish boycotts; her family’s attempts to emigrate after Kristallnacht; losing many of her non-Jewish friends; her brother’s imprisonment in a camp near Cologne and his early release; the destruction of the synagogue in Cologne; how her father was not Jewish; being deported to Theresienstadt in 1942; writing to her parents in Latin; shoveling coal in the camp; returning to Cologne after liberation and deciding to leave Germany; her father’s death from malnutrition; and her feelings when she visited Cologne in 1971. Ernest Pollak, born in 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes the increase in antisemitism during the 1930s; his non-Jewish friends; losing his job in June 1938; deciding to leave Austria after the Anschluss in 1938; reading about Kristallnacht in the newspapers; going to England before he could immigrate to the United States; arriving in the US in September 1940; being drafted into the US Army in 1943; going to Europe in 1944; going through France, Holland, and Germany; and going to Vienna after the war was over and finding out about his parents' deaths.

    Oral history interview with Magda Rebitzer

    Oral history interview with Magda Rebitzer

    Oral History

    Magda Rebitser, born March 7, 1928 in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), describes her older brother and sister; living a middle class life; her father’s hardware store; how her father was an atheist and her Jewish mother was very religious; the antisemitism in her town; her Catholic friends at school; being deported with her family to Auschwitz and her father’s death on the journey there; arriving at Auschwitz in April 1944 and seeing the crematorium; the brutality of the guards; conditions in the camp, including the roll calls and sanitation; being selected for work in a factory; and being liberated in April 1945.

    Oral history interview with Ralph Rehbock

    Oral history interview with Ralph Rehbock

    Oral History

    Ralph Rehbock, born July 11, 1934, in Gotha, Germany, describes not having many memories of Germany since his family left in 1938 when he was four years old; going to England on the way to the United States; settling in Chicago, IL; the other immigrant children in Chicago; feeling accepted by the other children; attending Hebrew school and participating in Boy Scouts; his non-Jewish friends; feeling detached from European experiences as a child; realizing he and his family were survivors; his feelings when he visited Gotha years after the war; hearing stories about his mother’s life in Germany; and the importance of not forgetting the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rehbock and Ralph Rehbock

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rehbock and Ralph Rehbock

    Oral History

    Ruth Rehbock (née Nussbaum), born on November 24, 1906 in Schmalkalden, Germany, describes her sisters and brothers; living with her uncle and aunt while her father worked as a cattle dealer and her mother raised all the children; attending school; her family’s move in 1917; working as a dental hygienist; getting married in Gotha, Germany; her son (Ralph Rehbock, RG-50.031*0060); how life changed after the Nazi rise to power in 1933; her oldest brother’s suicide in 1928; experiencing persecution; moving to Strassburg (Strasbourg, France); preparing to immigrate to the United States; hiding her husband for a week after Kristallnacht; going to England with her husband and son in December 1938; the fates of her family members; and her feelings about Germans.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Rosenberg

    Oral history interview with Samuel Rosenberg

    Oral History

    Samuel Rosenberg (born on September 2, 1922 in a Polish town 100 miles east of Warsaw) describes his younger brother and sister; his father, who was a shoe merchant; growing up in a religious family; her family’s long history in the town; attending a public school then a religious school at age 14; antisemitism in the school; Zionism in his family and joining a Zionist movement when he was 11; how life changed around 1938; the German invasion; his Zionist group’s plans to form a resistance; the restrictions placed on Jews; having religious services in family circles at home; the creation of a ghetto in 1942; the organization of a Judenrat (Jewish council) and forced labor; hearing about the massacre of Jews in nearby towns; working in a nearby camp, working on the Autobahn; being transferred with his brother in 1943 to an airplane parts factory; punishments and food in the camp; the deportation of his parents; his sister, who was in a camp near them called Fischer; being taken to Auschwitz, where they stayed on the train; being taken to Płaszów for a few days and witnessing a massacre; being taken briefly to several camps before going to Floss, Germany then Flossenbürg camp; being in a separate barrack from his brother; food in the camp; working for Messerschmitt; being marched to Floss in April 1945; his brother’s death during a bombardment; being fed by local Germans; being taken to a hospital run by the US Army; and watching as the German townspeople were forced to witness the burial of camp victims.

    Oral history interview with Dora Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Dora Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Saffro

    Oral history interview with Ruth Saffro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannelore Silverman, Sol Schindel, and several unnamed people

    Oral history interview with Hannelore Silverman, Sol Schindel, and several unnamed people

    Oral History

    Hannelore Silverman, born June 22, 1926 in Germany, describes her memories of 1938 when she was 12 years old; being sent on a Kindertransport via the French-German, Spain, and Portugal; being put on buses to Lisbon, Portugal; being housed for approximately one week before being transported to the United States; and having to wear an identification tag on the boat. Sol Schindel describes arriving at Birkenau; being beaten before entering the barrack; being in the camp with his father for three weeks; being in Melk during a bombing raid in July 1944; liberation; and how he survived Melk psychologically. An unnamed woman describes being 15 or 16 years old when the Germans occupied her hometown in 1941; the anxiety of the time; the deportations; the murder of Jews by Poles; and being liberated in the spring of 1944. A second unnamed woman describes conditions in the ghetto, including the cruelty inflicted on Jews; the Judenrat’s (Jewish council) role in the ghetto; the loss of most of her family; hiding in the ghetto; her father’s deportation; sneaking out of the ghetto to join the Jewish underground in Krakow, Poland; living in a room with 500 women; getting in contact with a Zionist group; speaking with an American prisoner of war who was afraid that the camp would be liquidated before liberation; and being liberated by the US Army and working as a translator for them. An unnamed man describes being a stamp collector and going to visit a German officer to exchange stamps, not being recognized as Jewish; and briefly he describes how he passed as a soldier in the German army. A third unnamed woman describes trying to get out of a ghetto in occupied Poland; receiving some help from Poles; and living in a small town in 1944 and anticipating the Russians arrival. A fourth unnamed woman describes her mother finding her after the war ended; learning about the Holocaust in school; and immigrating to the United States. A second unnamed man describes hearing about the shooting of people in a mass grave; the ghetto; being sick in a concentration camp and beaten when he didn’t feel strong enough to work; staying in the camp for around five weeks; and getting caught while smuggling cigarettes and some supplies into the camp.

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Sharon

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Sharon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liza Silbert

    Oral history interview with Liza Silbert

    Oral History

    Liza Silbert (née Gittleman), born August 10, 1922 in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes growing up in a middle class home; her father’s death just before the war; her three brothers and one sister; being the only survivor of her immediate family; attending school; being raised Orthodox; the Russian occupation then the German occupation in 1941; her mother’s reluctance to leave; the prevalent antisemitism; her brother’s death; how Jews had to wear yellow stars; being kicked out of their home and forced into the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; being forced to build a bridge; her mother’s loss of hope; her younger brother’s death from pneumonia; the frequent deportations; moving to the smaller ghetto; working in a brick factory; becoming ill and going to a small hospital in the ghetto; hiding with her mother in an apartment that was then occupied by the Gestapo for two days; going to another hiding place, where they stayed for three months; being discovered and taken to city hall; escaping while her mother was called inside; returning to the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto; being sent to Kaiserwald; staying with her cousin; witnessing the murder of an infant; the journey to the camp in cattle cars, where there was sexual assault and no food nor water; being in Kaiserwald for two weeks then transferred to Dünawerke, where she worked building a hospital; being sent to Riga, Latvia after six months; working for Krupp, making ammunition; being moved around as the Russians approached; and being liberated in January 1945.

    Oral history interview with Martin Spitzer

    Oral history interview with Martin Spitzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renee Stern

    Oral history interview with Renee Stern

    Oral History

    Renee Stern (née Renate Israel), born on July 1, 1926 in Mannheim, Germany, describes being raised Orthodox Jewish; being an only child; her father’s wholesale shoe business, which he got rid of in the early 1930s; living a comfortable life; her maternal grandmother, who lived with them; visiting her grandparents, who lived near Heidelberg, Germany; not being able to attend the public school because she was Jewish and attending a Jewish school; becoming aware of antisemitism; their family friends who moved to Chicago, IL in 1938; being active in the Jewish community and attending a Zionist youth group; her father’s deportation to Dachau concentration camp for four weeks in 1938 before Kristallnacht; her father’s injuries from the camp; trying to emigrate; how she was visiting her grandparents when Kristallnacht occurred; her father’s attempts to rescue items from the synagogue; going to England with her family on a tourist visa in March 1939; living in England from March 1939 to April 1940; arriving in Chicago in April 1940; continuing to be aware of what was happening in Europe; their correspondence with her paternal grandfather, who was in a camp in France; and her impressions of Mannheim when she visited years after the war.

    Oral history interview with Martin Tatar

    Oral history interview with Martin Tatar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Walter Thalheimer

    Oral history interview with Walter Thalheimer

    Oral History

    Walter Thalheimer, born in 1925 in a small German town in the state of Württemberg, describes his father, who served during WWI; his sister; living a comfortable life; how life changed after 1933; the roundups of Jewish men; how the children in the Hitler Youth would gang up on Jewish children; his father and uncles deciding to move the family to Stuttgart, Germany in 1936; attending an all Jewish school; the events on Kristallnacht, including the burning of the synagogue and deportation of Jewish men to concentration camps; his father and uncle receiving help from a childhood friend who held some power in the Nazi Party; breaking his arm and how there was only one doctor to see all the Jews; receiving affidavits from a cousin in the United States; getting a visa to the US in April 1940; waiting in Cologne, Germany until May 9, 1940 when they were allowed to enter Holland; being kept in a refugee camp in Rotterdam; the German invasion of the Netherlands; receiving help from a rabbi; being forced to leave Rotterdam; having to wear the Jewish star; being sent to Westerbork transit camp; saving his family from deportation because of his job; being deported to Theresienstadt soon after his parents; work in the camp; the propaganda film made of the camp; being transferred with his father in October 1944 to Auschwitz; being separated from his father, who was immediately killed in the gas chamber; how Kapos took their belongings; daily life in Birkenau; being selected for a transfer to Meuselwitz, Germany in November 1944; working in an ammunition camp with a German Gentile who was a communist and smuggled him shoes and food; how some people sabotaged their work; getting shingles; an air raid and the destruction of several buildings; having to disarm unexploded bombs; being transferred in open cattle cars in early 1945 to Czechoslovakia; escaping with a friend into the forest and caught by an SS man after five days; being marched 30 miles to the SS Headquarters and escaping again; being helped by two women; finding an American soldier and being sent to live with other escapees; receiving clothing and food; returning to the Netherlands; and his mother’s survival.

    Oral history interview with Joe Weichselbaum

    Oral history interview with Joe Weichselbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

    Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

    Oral History

    Mark Weinberg, born on February 17, 1912 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his six brothers and two sisters; growing up in a very religious, middle class family; attending a private grammar school, a mechanic school, and business school; being in the Polish Army; antisemitism; his work selling motorcycles and bikes; going to Germany for work in the later 1930s and the Nazi propaganda; fighting the Germans as part of the second battalion and the quick Polish loss; not registering as a Jew; being sent to the Warsaw citadel, where he prepared rifles; living in the Christian Polish section of Warsaw; passing as non-Jewish; his work smuggling materials for an underground political rights group; leaving Warsaw in July 1942, posing as a Christian Pole, and being taken to Vienna, Austria; being taken to work in the factory in Auschwitz; leaving the factory and returning to Warsaw; working in Vienna at a post office; the sabotage of trains; providing Polish spies with information; being arrested in March 1943 and beaten up by the Gestapo; attempting suicide; being taken to three jails and to several different camps before he was taken to Auschwitz in September 1943; arriving after the Jewish New Year and singing Jewish songs from Yom Kippur; being classified as a political prisoner; being sent to Birkenau; managing to get out of the line for the gas chamber; living in Block 29; being put to work in the kitchen by the underground and sneaking food to others; being near the uprising in the crematorium; being sent to Oranienburg to work as a mechanic in a bomber factory; being sent to Sachsenhausen for two weeks; being sent to Dachau; being liberated by the US Army; and the importance of fighting antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

    Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berta Weiner

    Oral history interview with Berta Weiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alice E. Wintergreen

    Oral history interview with Alice E. Wintergreen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

    Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

    Oral History

    Irving Wolf, born in October 1915 in Chust, Czechoslovakia (now Khust, Ukraine), describes being the youngest of his six brothers and one sister; attending cheder and public school; antisemitism in the public school; his mother’s store; being drafted into the Czech Army in 1938-1939; the German occupation in 1939 and being an interpreter for the Germans for a few weeks; being called to the Hungarian Army for six weeks; going to Budapest, Hungary; being in jail for 18 months from 1941-1942; escaping from a Hungarian concentration camp; being arrested and escaping again; the survival of his brother’s children, who were hidden and passed as Catholics; the ghetto and Judenrat (Jewish council) in Budapest; being deported with his parents to Auschwitz-Birkenau; getting sick after fasting on Yom Kippur; being liberated in Mauthausen; being taken to the hospital; working odd jobs after his release; and the importance of educating children about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

    Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hanna Zwang

    Oral history interview with Hanna Zwang

    Oral History

    Hanna Zwang, born in 1927 in Mosbach, Germany, describes her family’s history in Mosbach; her father’s store; her sister’s move to the United States in 1934; her brother being beaten up by Nazis in another town; the good relations between Jews and non-Jews in Mosbach; her father’s arrest in May 1938 and imprisonment in Dachau and Buchenwald; her experiences with antisemitism; hiding at the Bürgermeister’s home during the events on Kristallnacht, which included destruction and deportations; going to England with her parents and brother; going to the US in December 1944; her shock at the abundance in the US and feeling guilty for buying things when she first arrived; and her reflections on the significance of Kristallnacht.

    Oral history interview with David Rozencwajg

    Oral history interview with David Rozencwajg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Fink

    Oral history interview with John Fink

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Moses

    Oral history interview with Martin Moses

    Oral History

    Martin Moses, born on February 5, 1928 in Deutsch Krone, Germany (now Walcz, Poland), describes his family history in Deutsch Krone; his first memory of the Nazi presence in Germany; his family’s interactions with non-Jews; his Orthodox Jewish education; his family’s move when he was six years old to Schönlanke, Germany (now Trzcianka, Pila, Poland); Kristallnacht and his father’s deportation to Sachsenhausen; his father’s release in February 1939 and going with his parents to Shanghai, China; arriving in Shanghai and being placed in a reception camp by the Jewish Committee; moving into a one-room flat in Hongkew; being ordered with the other Jews to move into a camp in March 1943; life in the camp; listening to the Russian radio stations about the victories in Europe; the Americans’ arrival in 1945; continuing to live in China for three more years; going to Chicago, IL in 1948; his parents moving to Chicago in 1951; visiting Germany several times a year for work; not feeling German; and the Jewish community in China.

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Babich

    Oral history interview with Edith Babich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lisl Bogart

    Oral history interview with Lisl Bogart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sonia Bornstein

    Oral history interview with Sonia Bornstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Buchsbaum

    Oral history interview with Fred Buchsbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Trudy Chester

    Oral history interview with Trudy Chester

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Cooper, Emilia Dragunsky, and Lynn Weiss

    Oral history interview with Regina Cooper, Emilia Dragunsky, and Lynn Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with Rose Davidovics

    Oral history interviews with Rose Davidovics

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Dicker

    Oral history interview with Sam Dicker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marion Domanski-Erdmann

    Oral history interview with Marion Domanski-Erdmann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Eisenstadt

    Oral history interview with Helen Eisenstadt

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with Aaron Elster

    Oral history interviews with Aaron Elster

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Engel

    Oral history interview with John Engel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Betty Federman

    Oral history interview with Betty Federman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Earl Fein

    Oral history interview with Earl Fein

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with David Figman

    Oral history interviews with David Figman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Fishman

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Fishman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renee Friedman

    Oral history interview with Renee Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Juliana Friedman

    Oral history interview with Juliana Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Gerstner

    Oral history interview with Lillian Gerstner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gabriel Gilead

    Oral history interview with Gabriel Gilead

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rodi Glass

    Oral history interview with Rodi Glass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Goldwater

    Oral history interview with Ben Goldwater

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alexander Greenspoon

    Oral history interview with Alexander Greenspoon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Otto Grenton

    Oral history interview with Otto Grenton

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with Samuel R. Harris

    Oral history interviews with Samuel R. Harris

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Heidelberger

    Oral history interview with Lilly Heidelberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Heimlich

    Oral history interview with Larry Heimlich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Heller

    Oral history interview with Anna Heller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Isaacs

    Oral history interview with Miriam Isaacs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Jelen

    Oral history interview with Henry Jelen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ahlyce Kaplan

    Oral history interview with Ahlyce Kaplan

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lea Katz

    Oral history interview with Lea Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ida Kersz

    Oral history interview with Ida Kersz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koek

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koek

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ernest Kohlmann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fira Krimis

    Oral history interview with Fira Krimis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

    Erich Kulka, born in Czechoslovakia, discusses his experiences in Auschwitz; the crematoria; the pits in the camps and hearing the cries but not seeing because the pits were obscured by planks; his observations at end of 1944 when the gassing stopped; the S.S. beatings waning; prisoners in last transfer from Slovakia who were not placed in selection; their commandant believes that Hitler would carry on annihilating Czechs & Poles; officers fleeing the camp; being forced with other prisoners to march from the camp to a train station; being loaded like sardines in coal trucks; escaping and reuniting with his mother and two sisters; his father having been shot at Sachsenhausen; losing 60 relatives in the Holocaust; his marriage; his pride in his sons who achieved successful careers; his life’s mission sharing his story; his concern that the Holocaust could happen in other nations; his pursuit to believe in God's existence; his contact with people Dr. Mengele had experimented on; the artist Dina Gottliebová Babbitt; the corruption among the S.S., and their abuse of women prisoners; S.S. women being fond of using dogs to attack women prisoners; at night, prisoners committing suicide on electric fence, and the special commando in charge of picking up suicide victims.

    Oral history interview with Matt Lasson

    Oral history interview with Matt Lasson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Leavitt

    Oral history interview with George Leavitt

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lisa Lehner

    Oral history interview with Lisa Lehner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gisela Lenneburg

    Oral history interview with Gisela Lenneburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Lipman

    Oral history interview with Regina Lipman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Avi Livney

    Oral history interview with Avi Livney

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liesl Joseph Loeb

    Oral history interview with Liesl Joseph Loeb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erica Mansfield

    Oral history interview with Erica Mansfield

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Mendels

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Mendels

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Steen Metz

    Oral history interview with Steen Metz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Messinger

    Oral history interview with Sol Messinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lothar Molton

    Oral history interview with Lothar Molton

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arno Motulsky

    Oral history interview with Arno Motulsky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Naft

    Oral history interview with William Naft

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Nortman

    Oral history interview with Rose Nortman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janine Oberrotman

    Oral history interview with Janine Oberrotman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dennis Pogany

    Oral history interview with Dennis Pogany

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Poll

    Oral history interview with Irene Poll

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Herbert Prauer

    Oral history interview with Herbert Prauer

    Oral History

    Herbert Prauer, born in 1908 in Landeshut in Schlesien, Germany (Kamienna Góra, Poland), describes his family history in Landeshut in Schlesien; his family’s shoe factory; starting elementary school in 1915 and being transferred to different schools during WWI; his non-Jewish friends; the Nazis rising to power in 1933; working in his family’s factory; his father’s death in 1933; the Nuremberg Laws; getting married in 1936 to a German Jewish girl; deciding to leave Germany in 1938 and trying to go to the United States; his sister, who went to China in 1938; visiting the US in the spring of 1938 to secure affidavits; the events leading to Kristallnacht; the events of Kristallnacht, including the destruction of the synagogue; being taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; his mother getting a visa to London about two weeks before the start of World War II; conditions in Sachsenhausen; being released from the camp and going to Palestine for several weeks; going to the US; settling in Chicago, IL; and joining the congregation of Ezra-Habonim, which he became president of in 1963. [Note: File three is a lower-quality duplicate of file two, but it is about six minutes longer]

    Oral history interview with Rose Price

    Oral history interview with Rose Price

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ralph Rehbock

    Oral history interview with Ralph Rehbock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Morris Riff

    Oral history interview with Morris Riff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meyer Rosen

    Oral history interview with Meyer Rosen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Halina Rosenberg

    Oral history interview with Halina Rosenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Finnie Rosner

    Oral history interview with Finnie Rosner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hella Levinson Roubicek

    Oral history interview with Hella Levinson Roubicek

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meyer Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Meyer Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Daisy Weiser Schuman

    Oral history interview with Daisy Weiser Schuman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Schultz

    Oral history interview with Bernard Schultz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agnes Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Agnes Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Malka Mittleman Seifert

    Oral history interview with Malka Mittleman Seifert

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with Jerry Shane

    Oral history interviews with Jerry Shane

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Avraham Sharon

    Oral history interview with Avraham Sharon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Shindel

    Oral history interview with Sol Shindel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Silberstein and Rabbi Abraham Klausner

    Oral history interview with Fred Silberstein and Rabbi Abraham Klausner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Siegler

    Oral history interview with Ilse Siegler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Singer

    Oral history interview with Magda Singer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Adam Spiro

    Oral history interview with Adam Spiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Stein

    Oral history interview with Leon Stein

    Oral History

    Oral history interviews with Barbara Steiner

    Oral history interviews with Barbara Steiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Franz Steinitz

    Oral history interview with Franz Steinitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Stelzer

    Oral history interview with Ben Stelzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Israel Stol

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Kelley Szany

    Oral history interview with Kelley Szany

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Thalheimer

    Oral history interview with Eva Thalheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alice Thomas

    Oral history interview with Alice Thomas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Phil Trietman

    Oral history interview with Phil Trietman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jules Wallerstein

    Oral history interview with Jules Wallerstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rudy Weingartner

    Oral history interview with Rudy Weingartner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Werner

    Oral history interview with David Werner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kastan Weiss

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kastan Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nora Wiznitzer

    Oral history interview with Nora Wiznitzer

    Oral History

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