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Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0554 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0049

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    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk
    Transcript
    This is a recording for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum, an interview with Jaffa Munk conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on August 8, 1996
    in Baltimore, Maryland, tape one, side A. What
    was your name at birth?
    My name at birth was Noemi Donath.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Ónod, which is the county of Borsod.
    It's about 9 kilometer or 9 miles from Miskolc.
    And what was your date of birth?
    My date of birth was April the 10th, 1931.
    Would you talk about your childhood?
    Yes.
    I grew up as the daughter of a rabbi.
    My father was a rabbi.
    And 26 little towns belonged to his congregation.
    I had a beautiful childhood, growing up
    among three brothers and sisters.
    And what were their names?
    The name of my brother was Joseph.
    And my sister is Esther, who is alive and is
    living in Montreal.
    My parents were very educated people,
    and they looked into it that the children should
    be going to the best schools.
    I attended a Lutheran school, because there
    was no more Jewish school at the time when I grew up.
    However, we had been learning Jewish studies
    in the afternoons.
    Also, I had a private teacher who was
    teaching the German language.
    That was the language that more advanced people,
    more intellectual people had been learning.
    And my father was originally from Bratislava Czechoslovakia,
    and he wanted his children to be very cultured.
    We are always going to the library, picking up books.
    My father would see what we are reading.
    He would discuss with us.
    I come from a very religious background, but yet very
    open-minded.
    We had lots of celebrations.
    The holidays, Purim, everybody would come to the house.
    Everybody, who?
    Relatives, friends?
    Friends.
    Friends and people who lived in the town.
    The whole town had only 50 Jewish families.
    And how large was the town?
    The population of the town was less than 3,000 people.
    And from that, about 300 were Jewish people--
    50 families, but large families.
    Mostly, the Jewish people in the town, they were storekeepers.
    A lot of the people, they had big farms.
    There were doctors, some lawyers,
    but mainly, really, shopkeepers.
    And your father was the rabbi in the town?
    My father was the rabbi of the town.
    And they really loved him.
    He had a special school for big boys,
    which one, we call yeshiva.
    And I remember very clearly, the beautiful times
    when they were making the matzah near to the house, singing.
    And I used to love, as a young kid, to walk around
    and all these lovely boys, they used to pet me.
    And I used to tell them that, leave me alone.
    So they named me "leave me alone" in Hungarian.
    We had a beautiful house, lots of fruit trees,
    about 50 fruit trees.
    My mama used to cook all the fruit.
    It wasn't like today, you go to the store,
    and you buy the canned goods.
    She would be putting into jars, making her own jams
    and prune nectar, all these things.
    It was all a lot of fun.
    At the end of our house was a river named Sajo.
    And we used to go to the bank of the river.
    It had a lot of grass.
    And cousins would come from the big city of Budapest,
    and we would get out there.
    And we would be dancing there, going swimming there,
    so we had a lovely upbringing.
    I remember that my mother used to bring a sewing lady,
    and she would be sewing for us beautiful outfits
    for the holidays.
    She was a very devoted mother to her children.
    We used to tell, mama, you need, also, something new.
    But first was her three children.
    She had a lot of pride in two daughters.
    My sister's name is Judith Esther, and my brother, Joseph.
    And my brother was educated in the big city in Budapest.
    And we used to love when he came home,
    and he told us beautiful stories about his experience
    in the big city.
    I can thank him a lot, what I am today,
    because he was the one who was always introducing to me
    a lot of things about science and books.
    He would come home, and he would encourage that, whatever
    you have you, can lose one day.
    But what you have in your mind, nobody can take away.
    So that was our life in the small town.
    We have been very friendly with the Gentile people.
    You went to a Lutheran school.
    I went to a Lutheran school, and we were very friendly
    with the minister.
    We were very friendly with the doctor of the town.
    We were very friendly with our simple neighbors,
    too, who used to love to come.
    And my mother was called the midwife of the town,
    because when anybody gave birth to a child,
    my mother was rushing and helping, warming
    water for them, giving them some kind of food.
    So this is not just Jews, but also Gentiles.
    Also Gentiles.
    We were very friendly.
    We went to school.
    And matter of fact, I happened to be, in my childhood, very
    good in arithmetic.
    And there was the daughter of the so-called mayor
    of the town.
    She had difficulty, and I used to go to her house,
    or she would come to our house.
    There was no separation between us, except religiously.
    They went to their church, and we went to our temple.
    But there was such a friendship.
    Or we would go to the farmer to fetch our milk,
    because in those days, you didn't have milk in the store.
    So we would go, and we would sing with them while they
    were milking the milk.
    Or they would come over to us and taste the cookies.
    My mother was an excellent baker.
    And we didn't feel that there is any kind of hostility
    between us and our gentle people in the town
    until about 1942 or '43 when they started
    to throw bad words towards us.
    Now, before 1942, were you aware that there was
    anything different going on?
    No, nothing that was going, on except certainly kind
    of restriction, such as that the Jewish people could not
    any more have beef, because they did not
    allow any more to kill cows according
    to the rituals of the Jewish faith.
    So that was the very--
    So this was the Hungarian government that said--
    The Hungarian government had said.
    --you can no longer kill cows according to the Jewish faith?
    According to the-- that's right.
    That was the very first thing that I recall.
    And then later on, when we started
    to fear that there is something going on,
    us, as children, was that we went one sabbath afternoon,
    a Saturday afternoon, we went for a walk.
    And we were singing some kind of Jewish song.
    And the first time that a lot of the town people,
    they started to scream, dirty Jew, go to Palestine.
    That time, Israel was called Palestine.
    Were these people that you knew or?
    These were not people that we really knew.
    These were-- you can call it sometimes,
    hoodlums, who were in the street.
    So we didn't pay too much attention to that.
    Yet I have to state it that my father had
    brothers and sisters living in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.
    And he used to receive some letters from them.
    And I, as a young child, who happened
    to be hardly maybe 10 years old at that time,
    I remember hearing my father that, oh, poor brother of mine.
    He has to be in a bunker.
    Or poor brother of mine, they don't know where he is.
    But I think being the youngest of the family,
    or even if I wouldn't be maybe the youngest,
    perhaps they wanted to shield us children.
    And they were not too much talking
    about what's going on in the world.
    I remember very vividly that my father used
    to listen to the secret radio.
    There were certain channels that brought news
    from out of Hungary.
    And they would come home and tell, oh, thank goodness
    that Americans are advancing, or that the Britons are advancing,
    that they are hoping that they are going to succeed
    to win the war against Germany.
    That, I remember.
    But being a young kid, they did not involve too much
    into the politics.
    But here and there, I get it, that
    must be something going on.
    And it's very important that the German people should not
    be able to capture more and more countries.
    I also remember-- that is already in 1943--
    that a lot of people smuggled into Hungary, Jewish people
    from Poland--
    not to small towns, because in a small town,
    they rightly would notice if somebody is foreign.
    But we had relatives-- my mother had two brothers and a sister
    in the city of Budapest.
    And they wrote that they have some guests
    from different country, and they telling us terrifying stories.
    But what exactly they were telling, that my mother
    or father would not tell us.
    So I assume, remembering these little episodes,
    that my parents were, to a certain degree,
    aware of it, that there is something bad
    going on in Poland and in Czechoslovakia.
    Also, in 1942, '43 a lot of girls
    came over from Czechoslovakia, who escaped from bunkers where
    they were already hiding and they could not
    hide any more, certain relatives who arrived to the big city.
    And that was the other sign that something going on there,
    that they had to run away from home
    and abandon even their own family.
    You said that you would not be able to hide Jews
    in a small town.
    Where you lived if, a Jew had suddenly
    shown up and started to live in your house,
    what would have happened?
    Well, the local police would come,
    and they would arrest them.
    Now, when we are talking about hiding in a small town,
    this is really a story for later on.
    But it's related to this.
    In 1944, when the Germans marched into Hungary,
    my parents approached the Catholic priest,
    would he hide the children?
    So that also is telling that my parents were aware
    that something bad is waiting for us.
    And at first the Catholic priest was thinking of it,
    that he would hide us children.
    And then he said, how can I do that?
    They right away knew that these are the children of the rabbi.
    That's number one.
    Number two, he said, I have no wife.
    I have no children.
    How can I have children suddenly in my household?
    So my father told him, but after all, you
    can have some students.
    But the end of the story is that he refused to hide us.
    So back in 1942, if extra Jews had appeared,
    would anybody have done anything about it then?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    In '42, they would have.
    In '42, already.
    But your family, as Jews, were living as they had before?
    We had been living as before, yes, I think.
    But if new Jews had arrived, something would have happened?
    Something would happen.
    The local police would come, and they
    would have to identify themselves, who are they?
    In many fact, in 1942, we had a cantor
    who was singing in our temple.
    And since he had no Hungarian nationality--
    in Hungary, it takes much longer than in America.
    In America, in five years, you can become a citizen.
    He was not a citizen, because it takes 25 years.
    I don't know what the law today, but in those days
    you had to live in Hungary 25 years
    in order to get citizenship.
    And this fellow was from Poland.
    And he had no Hungarian citizenship.
    He had to leave the country.
    And we were crying that he is leaving the country,
    and where is he going?
    He went to Palestine.
    And today, he is alive with all his family
    and with grandchildren and so on.
    And my family is in ashes.
    So in a way, it was luck that you were not a citizen
    and you had to leave.
    But that was the law.
    If you were not a Hungarian citizen,
    you could not live in the country.
    If you were not Jewish, you also could not live in the country?
    If you were not Jewish, also.
    Also.
    Also.
    So it wasn't just Jews who had to--
    Well, I don't really know what happened with the people.
    If you were just a temporary citizen,
    you were allowed to leave, except if you were a Jew.
    If you were Jewish and you did not have the citizenship,
    that was the first thing that came out in 1942, that you
    had to leave the country.
    So that applied to Jews--
    To Jews.
    --only?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yeah, only to Jews.
    So you were saying that you were aware that something bad was
    happening and at the--
    Yes, I was sensing.
    I was sensing the tenseness.
    I was sensing that my father is always
    secretly talking with Mama.
    And when they notice that the children are coming,
    they would change the subject.
    I was noticing that my parents were shielding us
    more than before.
    If it was going to the streets or traveling,
    they were much more alert to what's going on than before.
    Until 1942, '43, we were living a fairly free, happy life,
    traveling, going to the theater, going to the circus,
    anywhere we wanted to go.
    Then later on, I am aware of it.
    I mean, I remember it, that the parents did not
    want the children too much to be in the streets
    and not to go to public places.
    We were not questioning why, but that's what I remember.
    And what do you remember next?
    The next thing that I remember, in 1943, September, my older
    sister--
    I am the youngest in the family--
    she went to study, also, in Budapest in a special school.
    And my brother was away, also, in a special school.
    And I remember that the parents were very worried, are they OK?
    When before, they were also away, except till this time,
    they were not so concerned if everything
    is going OK with them.
    And in 1944, when the Germans marched into Hungary,
    my parents wanted the children to come home.
    And there was restriction.
    Jews could not travel any more in train.
    So we are very worried if ever my siblings
    will be able to come home.
    And one morning, my father is just
    stepping out from the congregation, from the temple,
    and here is my sister.
    How did you get home from Budapest?
    And she told us the story, that my aunt
    dressed her to look like a Gentile,
    because the Gentile people were a little bit differently
    dressed.
    We were a little bit more fashionable dressed,
    the Jewish people.
    She should look more like a peasant.
    It's maybe not right to say Gentiles.
    It's right to say that she should look more
    like a peasant girl.
    And she shouldn't be too attractive.
    She was a very beautiful girl.
    And my father was asking, how did you got home?
    And she said let's go home quickly.
    So she came home and she told the story,
    that relatives put her on the train.
    And luckily, it went smooth.
    And when they saw her looking like a little peasant girl,
    they didn't approach her.
    And when she arrived, there was no train station in Ónod.
    It was about seven kilometer from us, a train station.
    And when she unboarded, when she came down from the train,
    she thought, it's night.
    What do I do, a young girl?
    How do I get home?
    I can't walk this in the night.
    She remembered that there is a Jewish family nearby,
    and she knocked on the door.
    And lo and behold, there was the headquarter
    of the German SS army.
    And she is opening the door, and she said, oh, I am sorry.
    I don't want to disturb you.
    I just wanted a little bit of water.
    And she quickly went out.
    And here, she is wandering and wandering.
    And suddenly, she remembered there
    is the other Jewish family living in the town.
    She went there, and they told her, your sleep over.
    And the next morning, they brought her home.
    So that's how my sister arrived.
    And then later on, my brother arrived home, too,
    also in a very special way.
    He got some papers from a Gentile friend.
    And he arrived home, too, so that time, we already
    know that we are occupied by the Germans, Hungary.
    Yet Horthy, who was the head of the Hungarian government,
    was refusing to let to do anything to the Jewish people.
    But it didn't take too long.
    The Germans override him, and they fought against that.
    And the new decree that came out was
    that we have to have the yellow star on our clothing,
    that we are not allowed to be in the street,
    only at certain times during the day.
    The Gentile people are not allowed
    to sell us any merchandise.
    We are not allowed to hire any non-Jewish people working
    for us.
    And slowly and surely, later on came out
    that we have to make a inventory of whatever we
    have in our house and submit it to the mayor of the town.
    I remember that my mother was taking out
    from the closet, the beautiful tablecloths.
    In those days, years before a girl was married,
    they were embroidering and having
    the monograms on the tablecloth and on the bed
    sheets and the pillowcases.
    And by each one that she was folding and writing down,
    her tears running from her eye.
    And my brother was helping her to make the inventory and--
    And you were watching all this?
    And I was watching all this, because I
    was a very curious little girl.
    And I think that I did not grasp it in the depth
    that this is not going to be ours anymore.
    I was just admiring to see the beautiful colors
    and the beautiful embroidery and counting.
    And my brother was saying, Mommy, don't worry.
    We come back, I will buy you the most beautiful linens.
    That is ringing in my ear until this day.
    He said, when we come back.
    When we come back.
    So that time I understood that it means
    we have to leave our house.
    And hopefully, we will come back.
    I have to tell that my father has been chosen to be the head
    of the ghetto, which one was is located not far from Miskolc,
    called the place Diósgyor.
    It was a town where they had factories for iron.
    They emptied the workers houses, which
    one was very poor, like one room and kitchen kind of apartments.
    And they had to organize that place
    to become the Jewish ghetto.
    And at the time when we were doing this inventory,
    my father was away, because he had to go and organize
    the ghetto in Diósgyor.
    Do you know how they chose your father
    to be the head of the ghetto?
    I have no idea why he was chosen to be,
    because not only people from Ónod,
    but from all the surrounding towns,
    except that he was the chief rabbi for all these towns.
    So maybe that's the reason that they
    had been choosing him to be the head of the ghetto.
    And we were expecting that Father should come back
    from that after he is doing that job, organizing the place.
    However, he never came back from the ghetto.
    After a few days, the inventory was made.
    My mother succeeded to take a few precious pictures
    from the family and from us children and a few tablecloth
    and a few silverware, such as in which one
    she was lighting the Shabbat candles, some Kiddush cups,
    and some silver cups--
    one of them, I happen to have it here--
    to our neighbor, who was very devoted neighbor to us.
    Well, we were very devoted, very good friends, helpful
    for each other all the time.
    And she asked her, do me a favor,
    Martha, put these things away.
    And you know we have to most probably leave the town.
    But when we come back, you will give this back to me.
    And if I am not coming back, then please,
    would you give this to my children?
    So all these little things indicate
    that my mother and father, they were informed somehow
    that elderly people are killed, or that elderly people,
    they don't make it.
    They had prayer and hope that the children will remain.
    And she wanted us to have some mementos, something
    that is from our household.
    And--
    At the time, you did not realize what your parents did.
    But looking back on what they said,
    you can see what they knew.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    At that time, I couldn't understand
    why Mother was hiding gems in the attic,
    why was she putting away certain things or some money,
    giving to other Gentile family in a small town who came
    to see if we have everything.
    I mean, there were, which one, we called
    them chasidei umot haolam.
    They called them the righteous Gentiles, who were worried.
    And they understood and endangered themselves,
    such as that family from a little town, Hídvég,
    coming in and bringing some potato,
    knowing that we can't anymore buy food.
    Now, this is before you went to the ghetto?
    You couldn't buy food.
    Before we went to the ghetto.
    Before we went to the ghetto.
    So that family, my parents used to have
    a collection of silver coins.
    Today, people are investing in stock,
    or they're putting in bank.
    In those days, if you had a little money,
    you bought some silver coins.
    The value didn't go down for the children's education
    later or if a child has to get married.
    So my father had a collection of silver money,
    and he gave it to this Gentile family.
    Let's stop here and turn--
    Yeah?
    --over the tape.
    OK.
    Tape one, side B.
    OK.
    Shortly after we had been submitting the inventory,
    giving to our neighbor, certain items to keep,
    it came announcement--
    in those days, it was in the marketplace.
    They used to announce in the loudspeaker,
    all the Jewish families have to pack up.
    They are able to take only certain amount of clothing
    with them.
    And they have to go into the ghetto.
    Now, we had to hire with our own money, a horseman,
    buggy, pack up, and go.
    We had to leave the keys and all the inventory
    at the house of the mayor.
    And we had to be at 9 o'clock in the morning in 1944,
    end of May--
    I don't exactly remember completely,
    the date, but I do remember that it was in May--
    we had to go into the ghetto in the Austria.
    Now, the mayor was the father of your good friend.
    Is that right?
    Yes, that's right.
    And what happened to your friendship with her?
    We were friendly until the last minute.
    However, at the time when the yellow star came out,
    that we had to wear it on our clothing,
    our relationship cooled off.
    And the last thing that I remember him saying, the Mayor,
    that I am sorry.
    I am not in a position of helping you.
    In other words, he must have to have some kind of emotions.
    And yet, he was really maybe in a position
    where he was watched by the German occupying army,
    that he could not do anything since he was the only one
    important person in the town.
    So I am not able to blame him.
    It hurt at that time, but you have
    to put yourself in the shoe of the other person.
    And I have to state here that the Hungarian police
    department, the Gendarmerie, they
    were worse than the Germans.
    They were more brutal.
    They were more beating us up and more hostile in every way.
    So we hired the buggy.
    We packed up.
    My mother took with her, one chicken.
    You have to understand that we lived in a town.
    And in the backyard, my mother was growing chickens and ducks,
    turkey.
    And so somehow, she was so sentimental
    with her little chickens, that one chicken,
    she wanted to take with her.
    So she took a basket, she put some straw,
    and she took one chicken with us to the ghetto, and some dishes,
    some little leftover potatoes and little flour,
    whatever we still had in the house.
    And each one of us packed up some suitcase
    with some clothing.
    And here, we went with the buggy arriving to the ghetto.
    And did you take any favorite things that you wanted to have?
    Only our personal jewelry, but we were not allowed to.
    We had to leave everything, such as clothing--
    Books?
    Books.
    It had to be in the inventory.
    We had to write down how many books we have
    or how many lamps we have, how many--
    So you couldn't--
    --furniture we have, but we could not take with us.
    You couldn't take a favorite book?
    No.
    No, we couldn't take a favorite book.
    The only thing that we took with us
    was really our personal jewelry.
    And my father took with him, when he--
    at the beginning, he went, he took with him
    some books to study.
    But we, when we had to leave the house,
    we had to leave everything in the house.
    And the official statement of the German
    was that you will come back and you
    will-- that's why we are doing the inventory,
    so that we can claim, when we come back,
    what is missing from the house.
    That's where now, you know that behind
    of all these decrees and organization of the Jews
    to go into the ghettos in Hungary was Eichmann.
    Eichmann was in Budapest, and he was
    the one who was organizing the departure of the Jewish people
    from Hungary.
    And the inventory and what you can take
    and what you can't take, this was
    all from the Eichmann office.
    And the Jewish organization was hoping
    to have some kind of dialogue with him,
    some kind of agreement with him, that if people
    are going to give you a certain amount of money,
    would you leave the Jewish people
    to stay in the ghetto in Hungary, or some of them
    even in their homes?
    We arrived to the ghetto, and we were
    shocked to see how many Jewish people have
    been occupying already.
    And the headquarters that was given to us
    was one tiny, small room and a tiny eensy-peensy little
    kitchen.
    And yet, I have to say that all was luxury apartment compared
    to many other people who had to sleep together in two,
    three families in one room.
    Is this, do you think, because your father was
    the head of the ghetto, that--
    Maybe.
    --you had better quarters?
    Maybe.
    And maybe, they, after all, felt that the rabbi still
    is somebody important.
    Let's give him--
    I really think that that was the reason for it.
    My mother placed the little basket with the chicken
    in the kitchen.
    And this made she felt like there is some part with her
    from her childhood.
    She was brought up, she was born in Ónod.
    She was the daughter-- her father,
    my grandfather was the previous rabbi
    before my father became the rabbi there.
    So everything from the town, the river, the grass, the chicken,
    the fruit--
    everything was a part of her life.
    And at least, this chicken reminded her.
    And the chicken is a very special story, because usually,
    chickens, they lay egg every other day,
    except today, when they are in incubator,
    and the food is different.
    But in the primitive way of feeding them and raising them,
    chickens used to lay egg every other day.
    And while we were in the ghetto, that chicken
    laid egg every single day.
    And I remember that my mother always
    said that this egg is for my youngest daughter
    because she is so skinny--
    in those days-- and she should be eating.
    And I refused.
    So sometimes, she made a scrambled egg
    and divided between all of us.
    Sometimes, she collected at least two eggs,
    and she baked a cake with the little leftover
    flours that she brought with her.
    And then, we celebrated Shavuot, which
    one is the holiday of receiving the Torah and half Sinai,
    on Mountain Sinai.
    We celebrated.
    That was the last holiday that I was with my parents together.
    And before that, there went a whole discussion, what should
    we prepare for the holiday?
    We were used to have nice meal.
    And my mother started to cry.
    And she said, should we kill the chicken,
    and I make a nice meal?
    Or should we keep the chicken?
    I'm sorry.
    So the decision was that they kill
    the chicken, because you don't know what will be,
    really, our fate.
    Apparently, they sensed-- again, it's a indication,
    which one at that time, I didn't understand, but looking back--
    and Mother made from that one chicken--
    name it, everything.
    She made chicken soup.
    She made roast chicken.
    She made hamburger from the white part.
    And that was the last chicken soup that my mother made.
    And what was your religious life like in the ghetto?
    In the ghetto, the religious life
    was that my father had a special room where
    the people went to pray, and--
    This is where everyone in the ghetto--
    For everybody in the ghetto.
    But it didn't take too long, and the Hungarian police
    came to the ghetto.
    And they came to pressure and question the people,
    where did they hide things, and where did you
    put certain things?
    You didn't have everything in the inventory.
    We know that you had more silverware.
    We know that you had some silver money.
    We know that you had a store.
    Where is all the money that you have been
    collecting all these years?
    And many times, they will very brutally beat up people,
    thinking that if they are really hiding some things,
    seeing that they are so tortured, they will give in,
    and they will tell.
    And the headquarters of the police department
    was behind our window.
    And my mother used to hear the screaming of the people
    when they were beaten up.
    And she just fainted.
    She just couldn't take it.
    She grew up with all these people from her childhood on,
    and seeing them, that they are blue,
    and that they are losing blood, and that they are beaten up
    so severely, she just couldn't take it.
    Either she was sitting and praying, either she was crying
    or once, I remember when she fainted,
    and I do remember when that took place,
    when our doctor, who was helping the whole town, giving birth
    to children, he was everything, a general doctor, who
    helped heal children and birth children
    and whatnot, he was beaten up very severely, to that extent
    my father had to intervene and to get permission
    to take him to a hospital.
    And unfortunately, he died from the beating-up.
    So that was the time that my mother--
    we used to live next door to the doctor--
    and she just-- this was the height of what
    she could suffer, my mother.
    And after being in the ghetto about three weeks,
    the new decree came out that we have to leave the ghetto.
    Now, going back to the room--
    Yes.
    --that your father had set aside for people to come and pray--
    Yeah.
    --did that room remain set aside for people
    to pray the whole time you were in the ghetto?
    The whole time that we were in the ghetto.
    And were there services held for people to come?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And your father--
    Three times in the day, and my father conducted--
    Every day?
    --the prayer, yes.
    Three times a day.
    Yes.
    As well, my father was corresponding
    with the Jewish organization in the big city of Budapest,
    who were in contact with Eichmann, trying
    to ease the life of the people in the ghetto,
    questioning them, what is our fate?
    What do we have to do?
    Do we have to listen to all this, or should we rebel?
    Should we organize something to escape or just follow orders?
    And that, I recall, that the order came
    in from the Jewish organization in Budapest
    that Eichmann is promising that we will be taken
    to a working camp and nothing is going to happen to anybody
    of us, and that we should be obeying all the laws and all
    the decrees, because that's the only way
    that everything will be smooth and everything will be good.
    So you remember your father talking about that?
    Yes.
    Yes, that I already remember very well from the ghetto,
    and--
    And the services that your father conducted in the room,
    did the police ever try to interfere with that?
    No.
    Do you think they knew about it?
    They knew about it.
    And that was not their concern, because as far as I remember,
    they said, let them do what they want to do.
    It won't last too long anyway.
    OK.
    That was their approach.
    OK.
    So that, they did not interfere with it.
    And from the ghetto, first of all,
    they collected all able working men.
    And at that time, it was my father taken
    from the ghetto and my brother and all the people
    that I can recall from age 16 till about 45,
    50, all able working men has been collected and taken away
    from that ghetto.
    It was very sad kind of a farewell
    from each other departing.
    We didn't know where they are taking them
    and what will be our fate.
    All woman and babies and children,
    we are remaining, and only old people.
    But they said that they need some workers,
    so we hope that it's true, that they are taken to work.
    Did you say they took your father?
    Yes.
    So he had been the head of the ghetto.
    So he was no longer--
    No longer head of ghetto, no longer organized things
    in the ghetto, no more praying in the ghetto.
    The men were taken.
    Two days later, they said that all the people who
    remained in the ghetto, they have to march 7 kilometer,
    which one is approximately 3 mile in our measurements
    here, into a brick factory in the city of Miskolc,
    and that from there, hopefully, in a short time,
    we'll go to Czechoslovakia, where they need working people.
    And we will be transported to that place, the working
    camp in Czechoslovakia in a short time.
    So we are walking.
    And at that time, not only Hungarian policemen,
    but the German SS soldiers were going with us,
    marching with us.
    And if you were going slow, they were beating you up.
    And they were hollering that you go faster.
    We have no time.
    And we arrived to the brick factory, which consisted only
    from a roof and no walls, no nothing
    on the ground except some leftover bricks.
    And as we are arriving to that place,
    we hear some men screaming to us.
    And we thought that we hear the voice of my father,
    but we couldn't recognize him.
    Lo and behold, he was there.
    And they sheared his beard.
    They took off his hair completely.
    He did not had any more, his nice suit.
    He was in pants and a shirt.
    And then, we got united.
    And we were in the brick factory,
    not doing nothing except crying and starving for a few days.
    Did you have anything to eat?
    Only some leftover bread that Mama
    baked yet in the ghetto and maybe a few potatoes.
    I remember that my mother went out in the ground,
    and she collected some woods.
    And she had still with her, one pot.
    And she cooked some kind of a potato soup,
    but it was more water than potato or anything else in it.
    But at least it was warm.
    And really, what we ate, mainly, it
    was stale bread that we had still with us.
    And one day, the Germans soldiers came in,
    and they said that they need some few hundred girls
    to work in their headquarters, to clean and to shine shoes.
    So my mother thought that, here, my girls are
    going to die from starvation.
    Let them go to work.
    Maybe they will be fed.
    Maybe they can bring home some food
    for the rest of the family.
    We were taken with army truck.
    Yet my mother gave a whole speech-- be careful,
    you're going with soldiers, et cetera.
    And they said that they bring us back in the afternoon.
    We went with the soldiers two times, two days.
    And our work was to clean dishes, to wash their clothing,
    to iron for them, to shine their shoes.
    And they threw us some bread and some cooked potato,
    which was luxurious for us.
    And we brought home, we hide it in our pocket, a few potatoes,
    a little bit bread.
    And they brought it back to the factory.
    And the third day, we were waiting and waiting
    that they come to pick us up again, because at least we
    were occupied.
    We were doing something.
    Plus, to eat, we were given a little bit something to eat.
    They didn't come.
    And instead of that, again, they announced
    that we have to march from the factory, which
    was very close to the railroad, we
    have to march to the railroad.
    And we can take as many things we have still left over.
    And we are now going to travel to the real good place.
    We are going to travel to the factory
    in Czechoslovakia, to a working camp-- not to a factory,
    but to a working camp.
    So little we understood or little, really,
    we knew what that meant, to go to the railroad.
    Again, the Germans, with their huge dogs
    this time, they were the ones who were taking care of us,
    watching over us.
    And whoever was collapsing, the dog just tore it apart.
    We were walking, rushing to work, rushing to the railroad.
    And we just couldn't believe our eyes, what kind of train
    was waiting for us.
    It was the cattle train without window.
    They pushed us in, 70 people into one cattle
    train, to one wagon.
    And they gave us two bottles.
    In one was water, and the other one, instead of bathroom.
    Old people screaming and crying, squeezed like sardines.
    And they closed the door.
    Here we are in the cattle train.
    And my mother and father were sitting next to each other.
    And it was nighttime.
    And I heard my mother crying.
    And my father said, I wish that at least the children
    should remain alive.
    So again, I am sure that they sensed it.
    They knew it.
    They had some kind of information.
    They were fearful, their instinct, whatever,
    but they knew that this is not going to a good place.
    You don't take people in a--
    And what about you?
    Do you remember what you were thinking at the time?
    At the time, I was just thinking, where could
    I have some air?
    Where could I have something to drink?
    How could I calm the younger children that were crying?
    So you were thinking of the immediate present--
    Of in the--
    --and not--
    Yes.
    Nothing that--
    --thinking about what going to happen so much?
    No.
    No, I was not thinking.
    For sure, I was thinking of my mother,
    because I saw that she is really not feeling good anymore.
    And I was very close to my mother.
    And I used to pet her and calm her and say to her that God is
    with us, and it will be good.
    And my mother would say, for sure, you will have yet,
    a beautiful life.
    And then, she would overcome her sadness,
    just to reassure her children that everything will be OK.
    When we got to the city of Kosice,
    which is a border city between Hungary and Czechoslovakia--
    What was the name of it?
    Kosice.
    And they opened the wagon, the train, the cattle train,
    and they said that one person can
    go down and fetch some water and empty the bathroom bucket.
    So nobody was daring to do that.
    They thought that this is some kind of a trick
    that the Germans are trying to have some person to go down,
    and they will kill that person.
    My brother volunteered.
    And he went down.
    And he looked around, and he saw that we are in a city.
    From the train station, he could sense it or recognize it.
    And he fetched the water.
    And he asked, aren't we getting all off from the train?
    And that the German soldier said, no, no, no,
    we are not yet in the place where your working camp is.
    It is taking a little bit longer.
    And before they really closed the door,
    they asked that if you still have on you any jewelry,
    please give it now.
    You will get it back.
    But because we are going over a border, and it's not good,
    and it might get lost, and all kind of stories,
    and they took away the last jewelry that we still had.
    By the way, I forgot to start that before we went away
    from the ghetto, they already took it away
    from us all the jewelry except each one of us
    was trying to hide a mementos, ring, or my mother, her wedding
    band, or my father had a very special gold watch that he
    had it in his pocket.
    And they came, and they screamed.
    And they said, you better give it, because otherwise, we
    beat you to death.
    So everybody got scared, and the last jewelry
    or the last possession that we had, we gave it right away.
    They closed the door, and the train
    was going like mad, was rushing.
    Where is the train rushing so much?
    And the noise was tremendous.
    And the crying, and people died--
    people in the train.
    And after three days--
    3 and 1/2, they said, actually, traveling in this abnormal kind
    of situation--
    no more water.
    The bucket was full with what people made.
    This smell, the starvation, the crying, the screaming,
    the unknown--
    people were completely washed out.
    Some old people who died, they smelled.
    And suddenly, they open the train.
    We are in Auschwitz.
    When we arrive to Auschwitz, first the German soldiers
    with their dog, they came to the door.
    And they said that you have to get off
    very fast from the train, because you
    are going to start to work.
    And leave your belongings.
    That will be shipped to your camp.
    Why should you carry it?
    Then there were some striped-clothed men,
    who were screaming also that, go fast!
    You have to line up five in a row.
    And in between screaming to us, they
    talk to us in Yiddish, a few verse in the Jewish language,
    saying to us that, don't go, the mothers with the babies.
    Give the babies to the old grandmothers.
    And we thought they're crazy.
    Why are they saying this?
    Why should a mother give up her child
    and give it to a old grandmother that hardly can walk anymore?
    We all looked pale, hungry, tired.
    There are none.
    The mental facilities, they are not working properly
    anymore when you've starved for such a long time, when you've
    suffered with the darkness.
    We didn't want to believe what they are saying to us
    or to do what they are telling.
    There were people, though, whose mind was maybe working better,
    who took the babies and gave it to the grandmother, which
    one saved many people's life.
    But we didn't want to depart from Mama.
    They said, don't go families together.
    Then, they would holler in German.
    But in between, each time, they would give us
    some little advice, something that later on, we
    understood how much they wanted to try to help us
    and to save us.
    Then, when they noticed that the German soldier with the big dog
    is coming, they would holler, schnell, schnell!
    Los, los!
    You have to go fast and line up, separate the men,
    separate the women.
    We lined up.
    And we were standing, Mama in the middle, my sister, and me,
    and then two other girls from our home town,
    and the men in a separate line.
    And I remember my father screaming my name.
    He was very worried because I was the youngest.
    So you were then about 13?
    Yes, and I was very, very skinny girl.
    They used to send me to a resort place
    to gain a little bit of weight.
    When I was a child, I just happened to be very slim.
    And my father was screaming my name.
    And I turned around, and he said, whatever happens,
    wherever you go, you continue to believe in God.
    And that's the last verse of my father
    that's ringing each time in my ear.
    Apparently, he knew that terrible things are coming,
    and he wanted to reassure that we should continue
    or that the faith should give us strength.
    Let's stop here and turn over the tape.
    This is an interview for the Holocaust Memorial Museum
    with Jaffa Munk, conducted by Margaret Garrett on October 8,
    1996, in Baltimore, Maryland, tape 2, side A.
    You were talking about the last words
    that your father spoke to you at the entrance to Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    Then we were walking, and there was a huge, tall, beautiful man
    in army uniforms.
    He had white gloves on his hand, shiny boots, and a silver stick
    in his hand.
    When our turn came to approach him,
    he pointed my mother to the left,
    my and my sister, and the two others sisters, [? Solomon, ?]
    from our hometown, to the right.
    When I noticed that my mother was pointed to the left
    I grabbed her skirt and I wanted to pull her.
    My mother, who spoke beautiful German, she said to him,
    please mister, I am capable of working.
    I am a young woman.
    May I go to the other side?
    How she knew that left means not to go to good side,
    I can't tell.
    Most probably, she saw that more young people
    are put to the right.
    Or she just wanted to be with her children.
    But I remember her words that she said,
    I am capable of working.
    And he became so angry that with his beautiful shiny boots
    he beat into my mother and he threw her to the left.
    I still was holding her skirt and trying to pull,
    but he pushed her so hard that that was
    the last time I saw my mother.
    As I know, my mother was gassed that very same day
    in Auschwitz.
    We were taken to a big huge place where
    there were "beauticians," quote unquote, waiting for us.
    They shaved our hair off completely.
    They said that we have to take off our clothing.
    We had been traveling for a long time.
    We have to have some shower.
    And that we just should pile up nicely our clothing.
    We were taken into a shower.
    And when we came back, no more clothing was waiting.
    We then naked, we had to stand and German soldiers
    came to count us--
    naked without hair.
    I remember screaming, Esther, Esther.
    That's the name-- Judith Esther--
    my sister.
    And she said, I am standing next to you.
    I couldn't recognize her without hair, without clothing.
    And after they counted us, then they
    threw us, each one, some kind of an old shoe and an old dress.
    Then when we were about dressed, we had to march again,
    five in a row.
    And there was a painting lady who had a red can of red paint,
    and she painted in the back of our dress.
    I remember that I felt that the paint goes into my body.
    Why are they painting our dress?
    Well, in case we might in some miraculous way
    try to escape from Auschwitz.
    We can't because we will be noticed from far away
    that we are inmates of Auschwitz.
    From the bathing house we were marched into Birkenau, which
    was the camp for the womans.
    Yeah, that's a sub-camp of Auschwitz--
    Auschwitz-Birkenau.
    And we were given to go into a huge bunk.
    It was about the length of 2 times, 3 times, of my living
    room, where we had been pushed in, 1,000 girls.
    And no beds, no blankets, nothing was in that room.
    They again called us to stand for Záhlappell,
    which is roll call.
    And I happened to want to make, you know.
    And I asked the head of the camp, where can I go.
    And she said, in the back, but do it fast.
    So until I find it, and until I made it, and I came back,
    and they were already-- the Germans-- they
    were coming again to count us.
    She became very angry and she gave me--
    she beat me up in my face, that I could not see for days.
    I got so swollen in my face, because she
    was blamed that there is missing one person from the counting.
    Then I was standing in the row and they counted again
    and everything was OK.
    We were given food.
    And the food consisted of black coffee
    and a little piece of bread, the size of half of my palm.
    We ate and we asked, where are we going to sleep.
    So the head of the bunk said to us, what do you think,
    you are in Budapest?
    What do you mean, "beds."
    You go and lay down on the bare floor.
    And she threw, for every two girl, a blanket.
    And she said, that is it.
    That's for covering and whatever you want to do with it.
    We were so exhausted from the trip, from their separation,
    from the shaving our hair, from starvation,
    that we all fell asleep with the blanket, two to one blanket.
    The next day, they took us to a different bunk.
    And that bunk had some kind of bridge beds.
    You know, like how you call children have those kind of--
    Like bunk beds?
    Bunk beds, that's right.
    So we were taken there.
    And again, counting-- and this counting business
    meant sometimes three or four times in a day,
    sometimes we had to be standing outside early in the morning.
    And in Auschwitz, even though it was June when we arrived,
    the nights were very cold.
    And sometimes we were standing for four hours,
    until the Germans they arrived and they counted us,
    with the dogs surrounding us, jumping.
    If they saw somebody look to them too pale or too skinny,
    they would call out.
    At that time, we didn't understand
    where they are taking them.
    And each day, we were less and less.
    This was a camp that is called Vernichtungslager, which word
    means that an elimination camp.
    Nobody was working.
    Nobody was doing nothing.
    Every day less and less people remained in the camp.
    Opposite of our bunk was a so-called hospital.
    And if somebody was sick and did go to that hospital,
    never returned back from there.
    My best friend from my childhood, her name
    [? Anniko ?] Weiss, who came down with scarlet fever
    after a few days we were in Auschwitz.
    We tried to hide her.
    We tried to hold her.
    We tried to massage her.
    We tried to give up our little bit of warm stew
    that we were given, just to make sure that she should not
    go to the hospital.
    But nothing helped.
    One day she collapsed from the high fever
    and she went over to the hospital.
    But luckily, there was one German nurse
    who had pity on her.
    She was a very beautiful 13-year-old,
    cheerful little girl whose mother happened to be with us.
    And she told her, you are enough good, go back.
    Don't stay here in the hospital.
    We used to see trucks coming.
    And they would pile on the truck sick people.
    Well, they used to ask, where are they taking them?
    The answer used to be that they are taking them
    to the hospital.
    But they never came back.
    So we understood that it couldn't be the hospital.
    After we have been maybe two or three weeks
    in the concentration camp--
    Lager B3, Birkenau-- they announced
    that all those children who are under the age of 16, from age
    whatever, remained alive, they should be lining up.
    They will be united with their parents.
    They will be given better food.
    They are going to have milk and cake and bread.
    Who didn't want that-- to be united with their parents?
    We did not know yet, you know, that nobody from our parents
    is any more alive.
    Or even, if it's alive, we will not be united with them.
    We lined up happily.
    We going to a better place.
    Now, was Esther under 16 also?
    Yes.
    Esther is two years older than I am.
    So we lined up.
    And the two other sisters--
    the [? Solomon ?] sisters, who were members
    of my father's congregation--
    they said, oh, you're going away,
    you know, we will remain here.
    Because they were older.
    One of them was already married.
    And the other one was 22, 23 years old.
    And they said, oh, we will miss you so much.
    Why are you going?
    But we said, you know, we will be united with the family
    and we are going to be served better food.
    So we lined up.
    Here we are lining up, 5 again in the row.
    They're again counting us.
    Around us all the time, SS soldiers with huge, big dogs
    that, God forbidden, we can't move now any more from the row.
    As we are standing and they are counting,
    I hear a voice saying go back, don't go with this group.
    And I was looking, who is talking to me?
    I believe that the German lady soldier,
    she would be saying this to me.
    Why is she saying this to me?
    Now, until this day, I don't know
    if she was the one who was talking
    or it was an inner voice, instinct,
    or the soul of my mother.
    The end of the story is that I grabbed my sister.
    And she was very annoyed-- why, we should be going,
    we will have good.
    And when I heard this voice three times, saying to me,
    just get out from this, I took her.
    And the German soldier, the lady, with her dog,
    did not interfere.
    She let us go out from the row.
    And we walked back to our bunk.
    And the whole group was taken.
    Not to be united with their parents in this world,
    but to the gas chamber.
    And many times, you know, until this day, sometimes
    I feel guilty.
    Why I have been the one who was told,
    if it was by this German soldier or by the soul of my mother
    or an angel or whatever, you know,
    why the other girls had to go to their death?
    But that's fate, you know.
    And perhaps God had a special reason
    to save us from that time, from the death.
    So a lot of miracle things happened in Auschwitz.
    After a while, we were taken over in the same camp
    to a different headquarters.
    And one night, I will never forget it,
    we heard tremendous screaming.
    And there were no windows.
    Only through the cracks of the wooden bunk
    we could be looking out.
    And we saw a lot of fires and a lot of smoke going.
    All the Gypsies who had been also taken to Auschwitz
    have been gassed that night.
    And the Gypsies were very defiant in that matter.
    The Jewish people, when they were taken to the gas chambers,
    they were singing Shema Yisrael.
    They were saying their prayer.
    The Gypsy people have no religion, you know.
    They are very primitive people.
    They were trying to fight.
    They were trying to take their nails and attack the soldiers.
    It was such a night that it's still ringing in my ear--
    the screaming of the Gypsy people
    who were gassed that night.
    And then the fire that we saw was their body
    was burned to ashes.
    That was the very first time that we really
    saw with all our own eyes that there is a gas chamber
    and that there is fire.
    And from that day on, we knew that if you
    are taken from this camp you are taken to the gas chamber
    and you are being burned.
    So we were very much aware what is going on in Auschwitz
    In about end of August, beginning of September--
    because the dates are not so clear, you know--
    except that through some miraculous way,
    we were aware that when is our holiday coming.
    There was always one girl, or one--
    [INAUDIBLE] marching, they used to take us to the bath,
    to the collective bath.
    We would march near to the men's camp.
    They always used to scream names.
    Maybe that is my relative.
    Did you see this?
    Did you see that, you know?
    They also would scream to us, do you
    know that tomorrow is Shabbat?
    Or do you know that tomorrow is the New Year?
    One day we were marching, and one of my uncle was screaming.
    And he was asking if we saw his wife, Olga.
    So we knew that he is still alive.
    The mens were mainly in Auschwitz.
    And they have been a little bit working.
    What their work was exactly, it's hard for me to know.
    What?
    Do you want to stop and rest your voice?
    Just for a minute.
    OK.
    In about beginning of September, they
    called again that they need some workers for a factory.
    But the entire camp has to line up in a very empty field.
    And they are going to choose some people for work.
    I had no choice, because this time not age, not group,
    or not one part of the camp, but the entire camp,
    had to be naked, stand.
    And the German soldiers, and the head of them,
    Dr. Mengele, that we called him The Angel of Death, he came.
    And he started to count.
    And after he was counting the entire camp--
    that was a few thousand girls--
    he started to point to the right, again, and to the left.
    How did you know that it was Dr. Mengele?
    We know it because when we arrived the striped soldiers--
    the striped inmates-- they told us
    that there is a doctor whose name is Dr. Mengele.
    And then later on, the head of the camp,
    who happened to be a Jewish girl who
    was working for the Germans, she used to throw this,
    oh wait till you meet Dr. Mengele.
    So we knew it, that that was Dr. Josef Mengele.
    And he came.
    And he started to point people.
    But this time the left meant that you remained still
    in Auschwitz.
    And right is the group that is going to leave the camp
    and is going to be taken to some kind of a factory to work.
    They said that the soldiers are very busy on the front,
    you know.
    They are fighting the war.
    And there are no more able people
    working in the factories.
    So my sister has been chosen to go to the work,
    and I to remain in the camp.
    I didn't want to get separated from my sister.
    And somehow I felt that if I remain alone here,
    I won't be able to endure anymore.
    Being together gave strength, each one of us strengthening
    the other, you know.
    We were, at least, giving each of us
    faith and strength to continue.
    So what should I do?
    I started to crawl on my stomach towards the group that
    has been chosen.
    And one of the SS soldiers noticed me
    and beat with his bayonet on my back, which there is still
    a mark of it.
    And he said, in German, [GERMAN]..
    You devil Jew, you will anyway die.
    Go where you want to go.
    And I crawled into that group.
    And then, again, they started to count and count and count,
    you know.
    And somehow I was very lucky that,
    even though that they counted again and again, that there has
    to be only 300 in the group.
    How it happened, it was 300 with me together.
    Now if somebody left because her sister was--
    I can't tell you.
    And at that time they took us to a train and we left Auschwitz.
    They planned to then take us, really, to a factory,
    but the Allies were, by that time, bombing.
    American and British soldiers were already heavily fighting.
    And I remember that the train was going back and forth
    and back and forth.
    They couldn't really go--
    advance-- because each time when the bombing was,
    they would ship the train backwards to Auschwitz.
    So we didn't know, is this a new method of killing us?
    Because in the train we, again, didn't have air.
    We didn't have food.
    And we thought that we are going to die.
    And no one will ever know what happened to us
    because we are in the train.
    However, after three or four days
    of being shifting back and back and forth, we arrived to a camp
    in Bergen-Belsen.
    And when we arrived to Bergen-Belsen,
    it was exactly a day before our most holy day
    of the year, Yom Kippur.
    Yom Kippur is the atonement of the Jewish people.
    And we made that decision that we are going to fast.
    You and Esther decided.
    That's right, and a few other friends
    who were with us in the camp.
    And the German people there in Bergen-Belsen,
    they didn't do really nothing with us--
    no working, not so much roll calls, you know.
    But in Bergen-Belsen the other problem
    existed that a lot of people came down with typhoid fever,
    dysentery.
    The food was tiny bit maybe even better than in Auschwitz.
    That day we requested that we want to fast.
    Would they give us two portions?
    They said, what, are you crazy?
    What you think where you are?
    You are back in Hungary?
    However, we fasted.
    And we were in Bergen-Belsen sleeping
    on the bare floor, a little bit of straw, somehow,
    we collected.
    And I remember that I came down with the infection of my gums.
    My whole face was swollen from it.
    Yet I would not dare to go to the infirmary
    because, by that time, we had enough knowledge
    that if you do go to the infirmary,
    that's the end of you.
    Back to Yom Kippur.
    So you and Esther and some friends fasted.
    And did you observe in any other way than the fasting?
    No, we couldn't.
    Except that a few prayers that we remembered.
    Some older girls who remembered a little part of the prayer,
    we would be singing together or saying together.
    This was on Yom Kippur.
    On Yom Kippur.
    And we remained in Bergen-Belsen for a couple weeks.
    And then, at last, we were taken to another camp
    called Rochlitz, where there was really a factory.
    And it amazes me until this day that-- not only
    that they took us to work, but they
    were teaching us certain technical measurements.
    We were schooled.
    They were hoping-- the Germans--
    that the war will take such a long time,
    or that they will be enslaving us for such a duration of time,
    or just, this is the way of the Germans,
    to educate all the time.
    It was amazing.
    Every evening we were taken to a school for two weeks.
    And we were learning special kind of measurements
    of aeroplane little appliances.
    The factory where we have been working
    was doing all kind of little tools and gadgets
    for aeroplanes.
    In that factory, we worked three shifts.
    Each time, eight hours--
    sometimes in the night, sometimes in the day,
    sometimes in the evening.
    And the foreman, who happened to be a German fellow,
    was having such a pity on me.
    And I am, until this day, very thankful, in a way, for him.
    And he used to call me in, into his office, and close the door
    and gave me a little bit of his farina.
    He was always eating cooked farina in the morning.
    So I always looked forward to the shift
    when I worked in the morning because that day I
    know that I am going to have something in my stomach.
    One day, while I was in his office eating
    the farina, the German soldiers who came once in a while
    to observe if we are working, if we are producing, if we
    are doing our job [INAUDIBLE].
    And she sees me inside.
    He quickly grabbed the plate and threw it down.
    And he's started to scream at me,
    so tomorrow you'll know better how
    to measure the alliance that you have to do.
    I understood that that was a cover-up.
    He himself could be in trouble favoring or doing
    anything for me.
    While we were in that camp, it came our holiday, Hanukkah,
    the holiday of lighting the menorah.
    And we wanted so much to light because they were so
    broken by then-- spiritually, mentally, emotionally,
    physically.
    We thought maybe that would cheer us up.
    Maybe that would give us some kind of a hope,
    thinking how the war between the Greeks and the Jewish people
    many years ago took place.
    Maybe that light would bring in some kind of warm.
    But where do we have--
    where do we have a menorah?
    Where do we have oil?
    What can we do?
    So there were girls who were working
    in the kitchen, that was cooking for us that little bit of food.
    And one of the girls said, you know what,
    girls, let's not talk about it.
    I'm going to bring home some potato.
    We will cut the potato and carve it, and make from it
    like a menorah.
    Lo and behold, every evening she put one potato,
    until she had four potatoes.
    Cut it in half, we scooped it out.
    I don't know how we did it, but we did it.
    And now is the problem where we could get some kind of an oil
    to light the menorah.
    So the other girl, who was working, she said,
    just don't talk about it.
    I'm going to find something.
    And she find a old bottle.
    She filled it in a little bit of oil
    that was used for the cooking.
    So now we have potato and oil but we don't have the wax.
    What we are going to do?
    So we tore from our one dress that we had.
    We had no underwear.
    We tore and we made wicks, you know.
    And put it in the oil, dipped it in.
    We have no matches.
    And was one soldier who, every evening,
    used to come and just go by the little houses.
    At that time, we were put up four to a little house.
    This was a camp that was taken away,
    working, for a summer camp or some sort of thing.
    It had small, tiny, little houses and four girls
    to each little house.
    And the soldier used to come to see
    if it's quiet, if everybody is doing what they supposed to do.
    And I went out and I said to the soldier,
    you know what, I need desperately just one match,
    if you would give me.
    He says, for what.
    I said, well, don't ask too many questions.
    Could you give me one match?
    And he threw his match.
    We lit the Hanukkah candle the next evening.
    And we were all crying.
    And the whole camp came to that one house.
    And they said, how did you got this?
    How did you made it?
    And we remembered one Hanukkah song.
    And we were singing the Hanukkah song.
    And that gave us strength.
    We are human.
    We celebrating a holiday.
    We are not completely oppressed.
    And the soldiers who came to check this evening
    was a different one.
    He was himself, that a few came and started
    to knock on the door.
    What are you doing?
    What do you think where you are?
    You are inmates.
    This is an N-O. You can't do it.
    You can't have Hanukkah candle.
    They didn't say Hanukkah candle.
    They said, you know, you can't have fire in your house--
    out, out.
    And we had to kneel on our knee for four hours as punishment
    that we dared.
    But we were all smiling to each other.
    Never mind this kneeling.
    But we did.
    We shout to the Germans that we are still human beings
    and what they are aiming to completely destroy in us--
    our emotions, our spirit--
    they did not succeed at.
    Many times, you know, when I am asked,
    how did you revolt, why didn't you revolt--
    our main revolt was showing that we are human.
    Physically, we couldn't.
    We were surrounded with barbed wires, with electric wires.
    We could never escape.
    But we always tried to remain human, to help each other,
    to try to celebrate here and there a certain holiday.
    This way we revolted.
    We show to them that as much you would like to destroy us,
    you can't completely destroy our spirit.
    So your religion really helped you to keep going.
    A lot.
    Let's stop here.
    Tape 2, side B. You were talking about how important religion
    had been as helping you to survive.
    All the time that we have been in the camp,
    religion gave us a lot of strength.
    And the devotion to keep religion,
    and the devotion to each other, the helpfulness of one
    to another, gave strength.
    And that ever we could observe any of the customs or holidays,
    I think that spiritually, mentally, and emotionally gave
    us always uplift and strength.
    I remember in Bergen-Belsen, there was a girl with us
    who remained from the Holocaust, lives in Israel,
    in Jerusalem, who would collect in a old broken can some rain
    water, in order that she can wash
    her hand to that little ration, tiny bit of bread,
    and bless over it, so she can thank God
    for sustaining her life and giving her food.
    I remember celebrating in Auschwitz the day
    that we called Tisha B'Av.
    And we are remembering the destruction of the Holy
    Temple in Jerusalem, we fasted.
    And being able to do all these things
    gave us a lot of emotional strength as well as
    spiritual strength.
    I would say that most of the people who
    had faith, who had religion, who tried
    to say a certain prayers that they remember,
    or, here and there, smuggled people in a prayer book.
    And we were, at least once in a week,
    saying some kind of a prayer.
    They were the ones who could take the suffering.
    And they are the ones who were able to overcome
    a lot of the hardship.
    I would say that people who had no faith,
    and mainly people who came from very spoiled backgrounds,
    very well-to-do people who never knew any kind of hardship,
    they were the first one, at least from my own experience.
    The ones who came from Miskolc or from Onód.
    If I look and I see who remained from the Holocaust, definitely
    from my hometown, all the girls who
    came from very well-to-do families, no one of them
    came back.
    And even though that I come from a middle class family,
    and we had a maid, my mother always
    made sure that we have some kind of job, such as making beds,
    washing the dishes.
    And we always used to ask her, but why not Mariska, our maid?
    Why do we have to do?
    Mother said, you never know when you will need it.
    And I am very thankful for her having this foresight.
    If it was for Auschwitz or for my life later on, you know.
    I think that it was very beneficial and very special.
    And I thankful my parents, that they raised me
    to have faith in God, you know.
    And whenever anything very bad happened,
    I know always to whom to turn.
    It was my God.
    And now I am going to go back to the camp
    where I have been working in that factory,
    and where we celebrated Hanukkah.
    And around middle of January, one day
    we were just roaming around in the camp.
    The group that was in the factory was in the factory.
    That girls were working in the kitchen.
    And the group that was off, we were just roaming outside,
    trying to breathe a little fresh air.
    Suddenly from far away, we see a column of mens marching.
    And they were very, very tired, very weak.
    Some of them in striped clothing.
    And they were screaming, the war is over.
    We they thought that they crazy.
    Why is the war over if we are still in a camp
    and they are marching?
    But they probably had some kind of knowledge
    that the Allies are advancing.
    They passed by.
    We didn't know nothing what their fate was.
    We continued to work.
    However, about two or three weeks later,
    we were told that we have to empty this camp.
    And we are going to be taken to a new concentration camp.
    We were taken to a new concentration
    camp called Graslitz.
    Graslitz was actually not a camp.
    It was a jailhouse.
    We were put up, how they emptied,
    or it was an old jailhouse.
    I do not know.
    But we were 1,800 girls put up in a jailhouse.
    They had bunk beds.
    We were given very meager food there, only twice in the day.
    The German soldiers kept on saying,
    we don't have any more food, either,
    so we can't provide for you.
    Every morning, they would march us
    few kilometer away from the jailhouse,
    under the supervision the guard of the SS soldiers,
    to a huge mountain.
    We had to chain line from the top of the mountain
    to the bottom of the mountain.
    On the top of the mountain was a huge pile of stones.
    We had to take those stones down.
    But how?
    One was throwing it to the other person.
    And if you dropped it, you were beaten up.
    Well, we thought, at least we are instrumental.
    We are going to have to build something.
    That's why we are taking the stones down.
    But the next day came our surprise.
    We have to pile the stones and take from the bottom
    up to the top of the mountain.
    And this went on for couple of weeks.
    It was just to destroy us.
    Because even if you are enslaved and you work, and you
    see that something is growing from it, that something
    is built from it, you have a certain kind
    of meaning, satisfaction, you feel that you are instrumental.
    But just to work to make fun of us, to belittle us,
    to make a mockery of us, was very bad for our morale.
    And some of the girls, they just said,
    I wish I collapse already.
    Who wants to live anymore?
    There is no end to this.
    We are not going to make it.
    We have no family anymore.
    We have been in that camp and doing this work.
    About middle of March, end of March,
    one day the SS group of soldiers comes in.
    And they said, stand up next to your bed.
    We have to have a serious talk.
    We thought that they are going to shoot us.
    What do they want?
    Or why they don't take us to work anymore?
    They said, well, we have to tell you, you have a choice.
    Either you stay in this jailhouse,
    but we leaving the building, and we do not
    provide you with any food and not
    with guarding you, anything.
    What will happen to you will happen to you.
    Or you line up, five in a column, and you march with us.
    We have to leave this place.
    We didn't understand why they have to leave the place
    and why they are offering for us that we can stay.
    No one of us dared to remain because we thought,
    who is going to provide us food.
    They might lock the door.
    We won't be able ever to go out.
    The windows had iron bars.
    The door had iron bars.
    If they close us, we will suffocate there.
    So everybody marched out, 1,800 girls.
    And they were marching with us, which one is called
    the Death March, for six weeks.
    Marching every single day, sometimes 40 kilometers,
    sometimes 35 kilometer.
    And we were sometimes sleeping outside on the bare ground.
    Sometimes, I remember, this was Súddeutschland,
    where it's cold still in March and in April, fairly heavy.
    Sometimes on the top of the snow we went to sleep.
    We were licking the snow because we were not
    given any kind of drink.
    No food.
    We were collecting some of the grass, eating.
    Once in a while, they would take us to a big barn
    where we were given some straw.
    The animals in one side and we on the other.
    And I don't have to describe to you what smells we had there.
    And we went to sleep.
    We collapsed-- hungry, wet sometimes from rain or snow,
    without food.
    In the morning, many times I wanted to get up
    when they called us to line up.
    And I couldn't move, people laying on me.
    I would call, please, would you get up.
    Would you move?
    We have to line up.
    They don't move.
    They are dead.
    Each day, less and less of us remained.
    My sister, who was older--
    two years-- than I am, she just asked me, please leave me here.
    I don't want to go anymore.
    Her leg was all swollen.
    She lost her shoe.
    She had swollen legs.
    She had pus in her leg.
    She couldn't move anymore.
    I used to grab her.
    I, the young one, the skinny one, but very determined.
    My personality, I am very active until this day.
    I used to put her on my shoulder and a little bit carry her.
    And then I would say to her, I can't carry you more,
    but you have to go, because we will go back
    and we will tell the story, and we will remain in life.
    And God is with us.
    And, again, going and going and going.
    And this repeated every single day.
    If we were lucky, once in a while,
    they would be able to ask the farmer, the German soldiers,
    if they have some leftover potato
    that they cooked for the pigs.
    And we would be jumping on it.
    And that would be a feast for us.
    Many times we were given some flour.
    And we would just lick the flour.
    Once, I remember we were going marching,
    and by the roads in Germany, in Súddeutschland,
    there are ditch next to the road.
    And we would find some rotten apple.
    We would pick up and we would be just eating.
    Sometimes if the Germans, they noticed
    that you went off from the road even for that one single minute
    to grasp--
    grab-- an apple, they would shoot the person.
    If some people couldn't walk anymore, they couldn't march,
    they would be shooting the people.
    One evening we arrived to a farm,
    and before we were even given an opportunity
    to go to sleep in the barn, one of those German soldiers--
    and the rest, somehow, they were not there.
    One of the soldiers-- a very handsome young fellow--
    he starts to talk to us.
    Before, they wouldn't talk.
    We were like dogs in their eyes.
    Even to the dog they were talking better than to us.
    But this time, he comes over and he says,
    I have to tell you a big secret.
    I am actually Jew.
    My mother was a Jewish person.
    My father was a German.
    And I enlisted to the SS in order that I can help you.
    We were shocked, you know.
    You help us?
    You used to beat us up.
    You used to shoot the girls who were standing,
    who could not move anymore.
    And now you are telling us that you--
    what is the reason that you want so much to find
    favor in our eyes?
    But we could not think any more clearly.
    And he said, but I am going to get for you tonight also food.
    And I am good, right?
    I am good to you.
    So we were not responding to it.
    We just wait, and if he really is going to give us food.
    At that moment, the only thing that we wanted
    was to drink something, to eat something, and be able to go
    to sleep a little bit.
    So, lo and behold, he brought us, again,
    some kind of cooked potato that was half rotten, that
    was cooked always.
    Those days, that's what they fed, usually, the pigs.
    We ate and we went to sleep.
    The next day, we were marching.
    And in the morning, we left that barn and we went by a bridge.
    There was a little river there.
    And we looked how beautiful that water,
    and how lovely it would be just to go down
    and to wash our face.
    We are full with lice.
    Our clothing is full with lice.
    We are dirty.
    We haven't been drinking.
    We haven't been washing our self for weeks already.
    Could we go down just?
    No, the German soldiers are surrounding us
    with their huge dogs.
    And they are keeping us, telling us go fast,
    you know, you have to march.
    We have to get to a place.
    We are marching.
    And then two of us, that evening,
    we see that we are back in that very same place.
    And this went on a few days that they surrounded us
    in that very small spot, maybe two, three little towns.
    But each time, we are back to the same spot.
    So we started to think it must be something going on that they
    can't take us further away.
    But still we didn't believe that the end of the war is coming.
    That time, I think we were already left maybe 400 girls.
    The rest either collapsed, died during the night in the barns,
    or were shot by the Germans.
    Esther was still with you?
    Esther was all the time, and the two sisters.
    That what I think, you know, gave a lot of strength
    to each other, that we remained all the time, from day one
    till the end of the war, together.
    As we are walking, and each one of us fears that any minute
    we are going to collapse.
    And what will be the collapse?
    We will be shot or we will expire anyway,
    from no food, no strength, nothing.
    One of the [? Solomon ?] sisters--
    the older one, [? Mende-- ?] she said,
    I am going to sit down in the ditch.
    If they kill me, they kill me.
    I have been married already.
    I tasted life already.
    But if they don't shoot, then you all come and join me later.
    So she sits down in the ditch.
    And no German soldier is coming back or shooting or counting
    or seeing who is here.
    And we don't see the German soldiers.
    They went ahead of the column.
    So we went back.
    And we sat down with her.
    And we sitting, all four of us, in the ditch next to the road.
    We hear some shooting and we got very scared.
    We thought, oh, this is a trick.
    They just left us to sit, but they will return back
    and they are going to kill us.
    So we look around.
    Where can we go?
    Who will take us?
    There are no houses.
    Opposite of the road we see a little forest.
    We said, let's go into the forest and hide there.
    We go over the road.
    We go into the forest.
    And we are hiding in the forest.
    This is late afternoon, May the 7th, 1945.
    We are sitting there and we are starved.
    What will happen to us if we are not going to have any food?
    That will be our end.
    But the first thing, we look at in the forest.
    Maybe we find something-- a grass, a apple, a garbage.
    Nothing we find.
    We shake out our blanket, which one was full with lice.
    And let's sit down, because if we
    are going to stand or walk around,
    we wasting the little strength we have.
    We sitting down and then we hear some kind of little noise.
    So we walk around and we see a little creek.
    We went, we drank from that water.
    We washed our face.
    We started to say a little prayer,
    but we remembered by heart.
    We sat down and we started to cry.
    What will be our fate?
    What will happen to us?
    As we are sitting and we are quiet, holding each other hand,
    suddenly we hear a rooster.
    And then a mooing of a cow.
    So my sister said, listen, girls,
    we must be close to a farm.
    If we hear so vividly, so clearly, a rooster,
    we must be close to a house.
    I am going to go there.
    Suddenly, she's strong.
    Suddenly, she's willing.
    Suddenly, she's able.
    Suddenly, she wants to do.
    I'm going to beg for food.
    So we said, are you crazy.
    They German.
    They are also going to shoot you.
    She said, I am not going to tell.
    I'm going to tell that I am--
    we spoke very well, German--
    I'm going to tell that I am a refugee.
    My house has been bombed.
    My parents died.
    I happened to be outside.
    I remained in life.
    I have nobody.
    I am an orphan.
    Would you give me some food?
    So one of the [? Solomon ?] sisters
    said, I don't let you to go alone.
    I go with you.
    But how we will find back the way to the forest?
    So like in the story of Hansel and Gretel,
    we tore from our dress, tied to a few bushes.
    And we were in the beginning of the forest.
    We were not going in deep, you know.
    And they walked according to the noise of the cow.
    And they got-- it was not far, really.
    It was at the edge of the forest, a little farm.
    And they went and they begged, and they
    got some mashed potato.
    And in a little jar, a little bit of milk.
    They came back.
    We had a feast.
    We sat down and we ate.
    And then we made the decision that we
    can't sleep all in one time, because just in case
    we hear that the Germans are coming back,
    we have to go more deep.
    Maybe we have to hide, whatever.
    Two, each time, were sleeping.
    Two were sitting and waiting.
    We rotated.
    It was early in the morning, about 4:30,
    5 o'clock in the morning.
    It was still dark outside.
    Suddenly we hear a tremendous noise between the trees.
    We held each one the hand and said
    our little prayer, God, please, just now, keep us still.
    And suddenly we thought, this is our end,
    Maybe a beast, maybe a lion--
    who knows what is in the back of the forest and he
    smelled human being.
    And he's coming.
    And if we were not killed by the Germans,
    we will be killed by a beast.
    But lo and behold, suddenly, a huge, tall soldier is standing
    in the front of us, who screams to us in Jewish language,
    and says, children, don't be scared.
    I am your brother.
    You are liberated.
    That was May 8.
    In the morning, the Russians captured that part of Germany.
    And they knew that there was a group
    of inmates who were marching.
    And they were looking for girls where they are.
    And he was searching in the gardens and in the roads
    and in the forest and in the woods and wherever to get.
    And he says, get up, don't stay here.
    You go into the town.
    It's very close by, a town.
    And any house that you want, you go in
    and you say that the Russian occupying army
    told you to be put up.
    We had no strength to walk.
    We walked a little bit.
    The second house we saw, we opened a gate,
    and a priest comes out and greets us.
    Hello, who are you?
    We told him that we are inmates.
    That we are inmates, and the three
    are going to be here by you, because that's
    what the Russian army told us.
    And he said, OK.
    So he points to the barn, that we should be going there.
    And we didn't wanted to go into the barn,
    so we went into the yard.
    And we sat down in the grass.
    And he had--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I'll shut it off.
    So the woman who was his cook, she
    brought out, again, mashed potato,
    and this time warm milk, you know.
    And we eat and be very happy.
    And we are sitting in the fresh air.
    What was the name of the village?
    The village was [PLACE NAME].
    And we are sitting outside and very happy.
    Later on we went to sleep in the barn.
    It was a clean barn.
    It had hay.
    It didn't smell because, apparently, he
    didn't have any more cow there.
    And we slept.
    In the morning, we getting up and we sit outside.
    We wanted just to be in fresh air.
    She brought us some bread with a little bit of butter on it,
    and again some kind of milk.
    And if I recall, I think she made us some cooked farina.
    About 9, 10 o'clock in the morning,
    the same Russian soldier who came into the forest
    comes to check on us.
    So girls, how are you doing?
    We said, fine.
    How was your sleep?
    OK.
    Where did you sleep?
    So we show him the barn.
    He rushed into the house and he said to the priest, excuse me,
    you have such a huge house, and you
    put these girls who went to a whole year of troubles,
    and you're putting them in a barn to sleep?
    How about you sleep tonight in the barn and these girls
    inside.
    So he gave us a room.
    He slept also, you know, there, in other room.
    He really had a big house.
    And from that day on, he became a whole different person.
    He realized that this is what his mission is now,
    to help the refugees to come to certain kind of health,
    strength.
    And he gave us beds.
    She made us beautiful pillow and covers--
    you know, with feather.
    In those days, the pillows were--
    I just couldn't sleep in the bed.
    So I had to go down on the floor and sleep
    because I was just not used anymore, after a whole year.
    It was too soft.
    I just couldn't find myself.
    For a few days, until I got used to it, first the pillow,
    and slowly I got back and I slept in the bed.
    About three days later, unfortunately, my sister
    came down with a very high fever, and the two
    other sisters.
    And all three had to be put in Libschitz,
    which one is a nearby city.
    And they have been put up in a hospital.
    They all came down with typhoid fever.
    And I started to gain weight.
    And my hair started to grow.
    And I started to look human.
    And this priest was very kind.
    Every day, he wanted to learn to me.
    He was learning with me Hebrew.
    He said, how about you become my daughter, you become Catholic.
    I will provide you with everything.
    I told him, I really appreciate everything
    but I am a daughter of a rabbi.
    And I promised my parents that whatever will happen,
    I will remain faithful to my own faith.
    And from that day on, he never bothered me.
    He was very kind to me.
    And then, there were Czechoslovakian soldiers
    in the town who had a special headquarter.
    And you could go to their headquarter
    if you were a refugee, if you were an inmate from a camp.
    And they would give you a little bit of clothing.
    And they would direct you a little bit.
    And I told them that only one thing that I am requesting
    is if I could get a bicycle so I can go into the other city
    where my sister and my friends are in the hospital
    so I can go and visit them.
    Lo and behold, they gave me-- how
    they got for me the bicycle, I really don't know.
    They gave me a bicycle.
    They gave me a scarf that, until this day,
    I think I never got such a scarf in my life.
    I started to put around my head, you know, around my neck.
    The humanity started to come back.
    The woman in me, you know, to look decent, to look human.
    And the lady who was the cook of the priest,
    she would bake with me cookies that I
    should take to the hospital.
    And I was, at first, shaking.
    How can I ride the bike?
    I haven't been riding a bike for over a year.
    How can I do that, you know?
    But God was good to me, and I started first around
    in the yard.
    And then I went.
    And lo and behold, I was on the road, on the bike,
    going every day to visit the sick.
    Until one day I felt this is quite dangerous on the road.
    There were still Russian army coming in
    and they are not the nicest.
    Except this one fellow who liberated us,
    the rest were not so nice.
    There is a lot [? more ?] to talk about it, you know.
    And I just felt very bad.
    And, also, my sister was very, very sick.
    She-- her mind wasn't any more there.
    So I begged the head doctor if he
    could give me some job in the hospital
    so I can be near to my sister.
    I told him, otherwise she will die.
    We're getting near the end of the tape, so better stop here.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Jaffa Munk conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on October 8, 1996 in Baltimore, Maryland,
    take 3, side A. You were talking about asking
    for a job in the hospital where your sister was.
    So the doctor looked at me.
    And he said, what do you think?
    You look skeleton.
    You want to have a job?
    I explained to the doctor the need
    that I have to be near to my sister.
    And he told me that it's OK.
    I can be in the hospital.
    I can be in a--
    he said to me, I understand the need of you
    to be near to your sister.
    And I tell you.
    There is a little porch that is enclosed.
    I'm going to provide there a little bed.
    And you'll be there.
    You don't have to work here except if you want to cheer up
    the sick people here.
    He said, I see that you have some special ability in you
    and that you are a very cheerful type of a person.
    And I said, yes, indeed, I should be cheerful.
    Do you know what I went through?
    Well, look, I am here, and I am normal.
    So they made me a little room, and that
    was very near to the bed of my sister.
    She was unconscious.
    And yet I used to rub her feet, and I used to talk to her.
    And, slowly and surely, she came back to herself.
    And the other two girls also got better.
    And I used to go to the other sick people
    and sing for them songs that I remembered from my childhood.
    And my sister got better.
    When she was released from that hospital,
    they told us that we are not allowed to leave.
    Going back, we wanted to go back to Hungary.
    We wanted to see maybe somebody remained from the family.
    We hoped for my brother who was the oldest.
    He was 17 years old.
    We thought that maybe he came back, maybe our father
    because my father went from Auschwitz to Mauthausen.
    We didn't know that he perished later on.
    Maybe someone is alive, but they said that we can't travel.
    She's much too weak for such a trip.
    And how they organized it, I really don't know,
    but we were given a room in a kitchen.
    And, every few days, we had to go back
    to the hospital for a checkup with my sister.
    And that time, I came down also with some kind of--
    I had staphylococcus infection all over,
    all kinds of things on my body, you know?
    And the Russian doctor came.
    And, without any anesthesia, without anything, she just cut.
    I have marks from it, painful and whatnot,
    but at least I got here.
    Do you know?
    And, about end of August, we got the permission to leave Germany
    and to go to Hungary.
    Again, the Czechoslovakian organization, the army,
    gave us some money to purchase tickets with the train.
    And we went to Prague first, the capital of Czech.
    And there the Joint, the American Jewish organization,
    had already a headquarter.
    They had already a list of names of people
    who perished, not correct yet completely,
    but they had plenty.
    And, unfortunately, that was the place
    where we find that neither one of our parents and not
    our brother remained from the war.
    We were very torn.
    We didn't want to stay there.
    Maybe some cousin, maybe some uncle, maybe somebody remained.
    Let's go back to Hungary.
    And we took the train from Prague.
    We went back to Budapest.
    And, lo and behold, we found we had two uncles who remained.
    One of them was in the Swedish house of Raoul Wallenberg who
    gave them papers.
    And two of them were in the Jewish ghetto.
    And, in a miraculous way, they remained
    with their whole family, but they didn't have place for us
    because, after the war, everybody was living together.
    There was a shortage of apartments
    or maybe shortage of good will too.
    That, I don't want to go into it.
    It's a painful kind of thing.
    We were put into an orphanage home.
    And our education began right away.
    It's amazing how people who survived
    and were right away active and organized
    schooling for children.
    We both went to school.
    Although, my sister had to be in a sanatorium for a couple
    more months, but, once she was released from there--
    you see the typhoid fever was so strong
    that it attacked her lungs.
    And she had to recuperate fully from the sickness.
    And we both had been in school.
    And, in 1946, at the beginning of the year,
    they were talking about it that all the orphan children should
    go to Israel because the memories are much too
    heavy to be in Hungary.
    We can't return to our hometown.
    We have no parents.
    Maybe if we are in a new environment,
    maybe if we are in a new country,
    maybe it will be easier to forget.
    Psychologically, it will be an easier transition
    from the terrible experience that we went through.
    I didn't want that so much to go yet
    because I wanted at least that one school year to end.
    I felt that so much was deprived from me from my education.
    However, they said that, even though that I didn't finish
    the year, since I was doing very good,
    they are going to give me credit for that year.
    And, in 1946, about May, we went with the illegal boat
    to Israel, which was occupied at that time by the Britons.
    And, even though the Britons knew what we went through,
    they were not much of fans to admit us to Israel.
    We were a lot of orphans and a lot of broken people.
    And we went on the deck of the boat,
    and the British boat came to greet us.
    And they wanted to send us to Cyprus.
    We begged them that, please, we are so broken,
    and we need to get out from here.
    And we need to be in the country.
    After an hour-long discussion, they admitted us to Israel.
    We were put again in a camp for three weeks.
    But then some teachers from the Jewish agency,
    they came, and they released first the young children.
    And I arrived in 1946 in June to Jerusalem,
    and I was put up in an orphanage home, and I went to school.
    So most of my education is really from Israel.
    I have my BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
    And I became a certified teacher over there.
    And then I continued here in Lehigh University in Allentown.
    And how did you get to the States?
    To the States I came as an exchange teacher to New York,
    to Brooklyn, Flatbush, to Yeshiva of Flatbush.
    The principle visited.
    I was teaching already.
    I was newly married.
    And I was teaching in Israel when
    he visited me in that class.
    And he asked me if I would want to come for a little bit
    to America and teach here.
    And I had my only sister Esther was married,
    and she lived in America.
    And I thought to myself, for sure, I want to go.
    This is my only family I have.
    And for two years is not so terrible.
    And the two years lasted for 38 years.
    And I'm very happy to be in this country.
    So now I would like to tell I have been first in the ghetto,
    Diósgyőr.
    Then I was in the brick factory in Miskolc.
    We were taken to Auschwitz.
    I was in the Birkenau lager.
    And the camp was named [? B3, ?] which
    was a camp of elimination.
    Everyday, they eliminated.
    It was called the vernichtungslager.
    It means that camp.
    From there, luckily, in end of the summer,
    about beginning of September, I was taken to Bergen-Belsen,
    in December, from Bergen-Belsen to Rochlitz where we
    worked in a munition factory.
    We made little appliances for airplanes.
    From Rochlitz, we were taken to Rochlitz, Graslitz.
    Graslitz, we were in a jail house.
    And our work consisted of piling stones
    from the top of the mountain down and up and down and then
    for six weeks about the Todesmarsch, the death
    march, and liberated in nearby to Libschitz, [PLACE NAME],,
    Libschitz-- that's Sudeten Deutschland--
    by the Russian army, living by a Catholic priest for a while,
    then in the hospital, and then in a little apartment
    in the city of [PLACE NAME].
    And, from there, we returned to Hungary.
    I can thank to my parents that I was
    able to hold out in the depth of the darkness
    and the most difficult days due to their upbringing
    and due to the special supervision of God
    who, even at the time when there is darkness in the world,
    he wanted people to remain, perhaps to tell the story what
    took place.
    And I am very happy.
    I have a nice family.
    God was very good to me.
    I have four lovely children and 13 beautiful grandchildren who
    know what I went through, and they are really
    trying in each day and in each moment to sweeten my life.
    And you married a rabbi.
    And I married a rabbi who happened
    to be my teacher in Israel.
    And we got married in the Israel,
    and we had two children there and two in this country.
    And your name when you were born was Naomi.
    And now you use a different name.
    My name was-- you see, in those days,
    Jewish people gave a Jewish name.
    And they had to give also a name that was accepted
    by the country where you lived.
    So my Jewish name was Shaindel, which means pretty.
    And my Hungarian name was Naomi, spelled in Hungarian N-A-O-M-I,
    Naomi.
    When I arrived to Israel, the people,
    they thought that I am not Jewish.
    I was blond, very fair face.
    And they asked me, what is your name?
    So I said to them Naomi because, in my papers,
    it is the official name.
    They said, oh, this is not a Jewish girl.
    And I said, what do you mean?
    I have a Jewish name.
    My name is Shaindel.
    Oh, Shaindel, that means pretty.
    Why should you have that name?
    That name in Hebrew is Jaffa.
    Jaffa means pretty.
    In Yiddish, Shaindel means pretty.
    So they said, from now on, your name is Jaffa.
    And, from then on really, in all my papers
    is both of my names, Jaffa Naomi.
    The only name that I do not carry anymore
    is what had been given to me in the Jewish language, Shaindel,
    by my parents, which one is translated into Hebrew.
    And that's why it's the different of the name.
    I also forgot to ask your father's name.
    My father's name was Philippe Donath.
    And your mother's name?
    And my mother's name was Olga Donath born Shick.
    My grandfather, Rabbi Shick, was a very great rabbi
    who established a very special kind of high school, one
    of its kind in Hungary, that people not only learned Bible,
    but they learned--
    it must like a vocal school.
    They also learned some kind of trade, either being a tailor
    or being a shoemaker or carpenter.
    My grandfather believed that a person
    should have some kind of a trade and not
    depend on it that, from somewhere,
    he is going to have an income.
    And I am very proud of him because I
    think that that's how we should be in life, combining the two.
    It's one thing not enough.
    You have to have both.
    And my brother's name was Joseph Donath
    who perished in the Holocaust.
    And my sister Esther Judith, Judit in Hungarian, Judit,
    she's alive, and she lives in Montreal.
    And my name now is Munk because I am
    married to a rabbi, Yona Munk.
    Well, your story has been very important.
    Thank you very much for giving your testimony.
    And thank you for your time.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Jaffa Munk.
    Thank you, Mrs. Munk.
    My pleasure.
    This is a recording for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    Interview with Jaffa Munk conducted by Margaret Garrett
    on March 11, 1997 in Washington, D.C. Take one, side A.
    Mrs. Monk, when we had the interview several months ago,
    we left off about the time that you and your sister, Esther,
    went to Prague for a day and then to Budapest.
    So can we pick up there?
    And could you tell what happened when you arrived in Budapest?
    OK.
    First I want to go back for a minute to Prague.
    The main reason that we went to Prague--
    A, it was on the way, but mainly because that
    was a center of information--
    who, the people, survived?
    And there were charters already put up in the Jewish centers
    and in the temple there.
    And we looked if our father and brother survived.
    Somehow we knew that mother perished at the very beginning
    in Auschwitz.
    However, we didn't find their names
    and we still had a slight of hope.
    We didn't want to spend any more time in Prague.
    We took the very first opportunity of train
    and we went to Budapest.
    As we arrived to Budapest, by the train station
    was big trucks waiting for the survivors, which
    one was organized by the Joint.
    What?
    Organized by who?
    By the Joint.
    The Joint?
    Joint is an organization that is from America,
    Jewish organization helping refugees.
    I really don't know exactly the details of the name,
    but it's a well-known organization.
    It's in existence until this day.
    And they do help out--
    in the diaspora and many, many other countries--
    people who are in need of help.
    And they greeted us.
    They took us to a headquarters that they established
    in a school for the refugees who came back and had no family.
    As we were going through the streets of Budapest,
    suddenly I noticed that we are passing by the house
    where my aunt lived.
    And I started to scream, "This is [PLACE NAME]..
    This is the street where my aunt lives."
    However, they did not let anybody
    to get off because they were not sure
    that anybody survived in that address,
    that aunt really is alive.
    So we continued and we went to that place that was established
    for the refugees.
    And after a day, somebody from the orphanage home
    visited the place.
    Her name is Esther Eckstein, who today
    is still alive and lives in Israel
    in the city of Bnei Brak.
    She was the head of that orphanage home.
    And she made every effort to collect as many Jewish girls
    who remained after the Holocaust and try to bring them
    to the orphanage home that she established in Budapest
    immediately after the liberation and to try to re-educate,
    again, those people who lost--
    some of us a year, some more years of schooling.
    So the orphanage home was located in Budapest.
    And she took us--
    not only me and my sister, but a lot
    of girls who arrived with their transport-- back to Budapest.
    And we were put up in the orphanage home
    where we had regular schooling during the day.
    Teachers-- how she organized this?
    From where she got the money?
    And the energy?
    Her herself, a survivor, who was for many years
    first hiding in Budapest.
    Then she was caught.
    And she was sent to a concentration
    camp in Theresienstadt.
    But upon her return, that was her aim and her dream
    that as many children that survived
    she wants to see them being educated again.
    And in that orphanage home, we had very meager
    but we had some food.
    And we had very simple headquarters
    for sleeping and resting.
    And we had excellent teachers.
    In Budapest, a lot of professors and teachers from the gymnasium
    remained alive--
    thanks to Wallenberg, or some of them just in the ghetto,
    some of them who were hiding or with false papers.
    And they also felt that this much
    what they can do to educate the generation that remained alive.
    So we were studying.
    Now how did that feel to you to be in that situation?
    Well in that situation, in a way,
    I was missing the home atmosphere.
    Your home?
    My home.
    Also, I have to tell you that two uncles and one aunt
    remained alive in Budapest.
    And I had been visiting them once in a while.
    They had free time that we could go visiting museums or going
    for books or to the library.
    And each time that we had that kind of period,
    I would jump over and go to visit my aunt.
    And it was very traumatic to see that they
    lived in their own home.
    They had their own furniture.
    It was a family life.
    And here we had no family life whatsoever.
    Did you wish that your aunt would
    invite you to live with her?
    Not really.
    Because I think not being in the camps,
    she had not enough understanding what we went through.
    So in a way, I cherished that I am together
    with people who have the very same fate that we had, and had
    more understanding of our moods, our crying,
    or not being able to cope sometimes
    with the regular daily situation.
    Because we were together.
    We had all together that very same background,
    that very same kind of faith.
    And we helped each other to overcome.
    And what were the moods and the crying
    and the difficulty coping like?
    Well it was very difficult that we
    had no mommy with whom we could discuss.
    In a simple way, even our menstruation,
    our monthly period did not return back
    yet because of the starvation and the medication
    that we got in Germany.
    It would be lovely to talk over with the mommy
    and to hear from a mother that "don't worry" or "eventually
    it will happen," or that mommy would
    say, "let's go to a doctor."
    All we had to deal with--
    little and big problems-- by ourselves,
    even though that we had teachers and we
    had the mother of the orphanage home.
    But it's not the same, like talking with your own mother.
    So you were able to talk to these people?
    We were able to.
    But it was not as helpful as talking to your own mother.
    It was not as easy.
    Maybe helpful, it was.
    Because they did seek out doctors to take us
    and have checkups here and there.
    But it wasn't the same like talking with your own mother.
    You are shy more.
    And there are certain things that you were just
    keeping to yourself and you wouldn't
    want to share even though they were trying and very warm.
    But nevertheless, it wasn't the same.
    So we were missing family very much so.
    And in the light, that Budapest family life more or less
    returned to normality.
    Of course, the ones who remained there remained intact--
    the families.
    And to see that was a contrast to the life
    that we maintained in an orphanage home.
    But really, I have to praise--
    there were three teachers besides this Esther Eckstein,
    whose name today is Esther Weinberg.
    There were two other teachers.
    She recruited them.
    Very knowledgeable girls.
    And they all are still alive, one of them
    in Brooklyn, New York.
    And the other one is also in Israel.
    Do you have contact with them?
    I do have contact with them.
    And in many fact, this past summer, I was in Israel.
    And Esther, who was the head teacher and the head
    of this whole organization of the orphanage home
    and looking after us--
    she organized a get-together evening in honor of my visit
    to Israel.
    And it was very moving because some, very few,
    who remain still from that school, the orphanage home,
    came to greet me.
    And I am in very, very, very strong contact with Esther,
    mainly.
    However, the other teacher, Rachel, she was also there.
    And the third one, Miriam Gross, she
    is less involved with the group, if it
    has to do with it that she moved away
    from the circle of the girls.
    The majority of the students from that orphanage home
    are living in Israel.
    But I visit very often these.
    So I am in touch with the teachers.
    And each time, a very interesting reminder
    of the era that we all went together after the war.
    And is it partly upsetting for you to visit again with them?
    Really not.
    In many fact, as the years are passing by,
    I am more and more admiring their mission,
    their undertaking, and all the effort and all the attention
    that they gave us.
    And for instance, I remember that Esther
    went to a sewing lady and ordered
    for all of us beautiful blouse and beautiful skirt for one
    celebration to give back to us the feeling of humanity,
    to feel good about ourselves and to look good,
    which was very important.
    We had no clothing.
    We came back from the concentration camp--
    in many fact, my winter coat was a German soldier's army coat
    that I shortened.
    And somebody helped me to change the buttons that I should
    feel a little bit better.
    And here was a woman--
    and you have to understand at the time, the situation
    in Budapest was very difficult. I mean,
    I'm talking about time that it was still
    under a regime of the Russian army.
    And people were standing for bread in the street.
    Clothing was a rarity.
    So we didn't feel that outcast with our poor clothing.
    And yet, she was driving and doing everything to get for us
    some dresses, some blouse, some skirt
    that we should be looking more decent.
    Aside from standing in line, were you
    aware of any abuses from the Russian soldiers--
    personal abuses?
    I personally not.
    But on the train traveling here and there,
    I used to see them seeking out nice-looking girls and when
    the train stopped, stopping these girls of continuing
    their trip and just grabbing them and taking them down.
    And whatever they did with them--
    that could be understood.
    Were you frightened to travel by yourself on the train?
    Very much so.
    And I very rarely traveled, if at all.
    I went on a trip I took once with my aunt to Onod because--
    I don't know if I told you this, that my mother, before we left,
    she hid some of the family pictures
    and some silverware by a Gentile lady.
    And my aunt wanted very much that we should have
    some mementos from our parents.
    So we traveled together.
    And my aunt was putting a babushka on me.
    I shouldn't look decent.
    I should look very frightened and very skinny,
    which one I was anyway, and very pale.
    But she was protecting me.
    And I don't think that ever I would travel
    by myself at all in those days.
    And when you had time off from the orphanage,
    did you walk to your aunt's by yourself?
    We would walk but never alone.
    Never alone.
    We would never walk alone and never in the evening.
    It was mainly in the daytime.
    And luckily, it wasn't too far from my Aunt.
    But if I visited my aunt, I would always watch my watch
    that if it's starting in winter a little bit to be dark,
    we would be already going heading back to the orphanage.
    So you were very cautious?
    Very cautious, yes.
    And when you went back to Onod with your aunt
    to see if you could find the mementos, what happened?
    When we went back to Onod to find the mementos, we came in--
    and she was a neighbor of us-- and she
    greeted us very friendly.
    And when my aunt said, "You know my sister, who
    you loved and loved you, she left with you
    a few very important items.
    Would you be able to give it back?
    This is a child that survived."
    My sister was in a sanatorium so she couldn't travel with us.
    She wasn't well yet.
    And she said, "Well, I am very sorry.
    I know she gave me a lot of things,
    and I was very happy to do that for her.
    But the Russian army passed by here,
    and they came into the houses and they emptied everything.
    And they took."
    Somehow, looking around it didn't
    seem like the house was robbed by the Russian army
    or anything was emptied from there.
    So my aunt told her, "We're very thirsty.
    Would you go out and fetch some water?"
    Because there were no faucets inside in those days yet.
    We are talking about 1945.
    And she went out to pump some water from the well.
    While she was gone, my aunt went and opened up her drawer.
    And lo and behold, there it was.
    And then she came back, she was white.
    And she said, "Oh, gee!
    I really didn't know that the things remained."
    So your aunt showed her that she had
    found the things in the drawer?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She found the things.
    And she said, "Oh, I am so happy that you did find it."
    OK.
    If it was really true that she didn't
    know that it wasn't emptied or the drawers or it
    wasn't at all.
    In any rate, we got it back.
    And that's how I have some pictures of my family.
    How did that feel?
    It was very, very moving.
    Very moving moment to see my parents again,
    even if it's not their life.
    But before I thought to myself, no cemetery and no anything
    to remind my parents at all.
    And here I am looking.
    And I am seeing my beautiful father and mother
    and my brother.
    It was a very great moment.
    And each time I'm taking out the picture,
    I feel like I am close to them.
    How did it feel that the woman planned to deprive you
    of retrieving that?
    Well at that moment, I felt a little bit angry at her.
    And I felt if she could keep the silverware--
    but pictures?
    If she wanted to have the silverware because she
    needed money, wanting.
    But at least the pictures!
    And that, somehow, I couldn't grasp it--
    that why would the Russian army take pictures?
    I do know that they took usually watches or jewelry
    that they were looking for.
    But the picture somehow, I couldn't.
    But I think that she felt, if she's
    looking in the drawer for the pictures,
    maybe other things will come up.
    I really can't figure out exactly.
    I don't want to accuse.
    I felt at that moment that the whole world
    changed, apparently.
    That the people who have been very friendly and very
    helpful--
    not once they used to come and shovel
    our snow because the snow was so high
    they couldn't open our door.
    And we would go and help them in any kind of situation,
    especially my mother, who was the midwife of the town,
    so to say.
    Anywhere that the child was born, my mother was there.
    It didn't matter if Jewish or not Jewish, poor or rich.
    She would go and help.
    Warm water, bathe the baby.
    Cook a meal for the mother after the childbirth.
    And here we are coming back, and they are so cold, so to say.
    And this was a woman that your mother had selected as someone
    that she could trust?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So it's hard to know.
    It puzzles me sometimes.
    But having the nature that I don't
    want to hate people or be angry at people,
    perhaps she wanted really to keep those things.
    It's possible.
    You never know.
    So from that, then we went back to Budapest.
    And I remained in that orphanage home almost
    the whole year, from September 1945 to about May '46.
    Now Esther was in a sanatorium all that time?
    Most of the time.
    After about in January 1946, she was let out
    from the sanatorium.
    She got the OK from the doctors that she recuperated.
    And she joined us in that orphanage home.
    So I do have some pictures of celebration
    that we are together already in the orphanage home.
    Now where were the Solomon sisters
    that you were with earlier?
    The Solomon sisters, they went back to Onod.
    They did find their little home.
    And they were somehow not afraid of living in the home town.
    One of them who was married found her husband.
    He came back.
    So there was a man protecting them.
    It was a very different kind of situation.
    They lived together, the husband and the wife and the sister.
    And eventually, after a very short time being in Onod,
    they moved into a bigger city called Miskolc, which one
    is the nearest city to Onod.
    And there were already many Jewish people
    who either came back and found someone of the family
    or they established again a family life.
    Some people got married a couple of months
    after the Holocaust who were at the age of marriage
    and who wanted to have some kind of family life, a home life.
    So in Miskolc, there was already a fairly dynamic Jewish life
    again.
    They established school.
    They had the temple.
    They had a visiting rabbi coming.
    I never participated in any of the activities
    there because I was in Budapest.
    But even until today, there are a few families
    who are in Miskolc who happen to be from Onod and survivors.
    And they still have a temple.
    I don't think that they have any Jewish schools now anymore
    there.
    In the previous interview, you talked some about your faith.
    What was your religious life like at this point in Budapest?
    In Budapest, this orphanage home was an orthodox religious home.
    We had been conducting the same type of life
    that I was brought up at home--
    praying and blessing over the bread
    and dressed according to the code of the religion.
    It was more or less the very same one.
    And it's really amazing because a lot
    of people who survived they, so to say, turned away from God.
    And as the head of Yeshiva University,
    Dr. Lamm-- once I had a very interesting discussion
    with him.
    And he said to me, "Jaffa, I am not
    surprised the ones who turned away after the Holocaust.
    To me, is the most surprising the ones who remain
    so faithful, such as you," he says to me.
    And many of them who really completely turned away
    eventually recovered from the traumatic kind of experience
    and slowly came back to the realization
    that even though this terrible thing happened, still
    there is God.
    It could be for some kind of reason He turned away
    or He let things to happen in the world.
    But definitely there is a God.
    Unfortunately, a lot of people just can't cope with it,
    and they have so much anger and so much disappointment in God
    that they can't return back again.
    I feel very lucky and very fortunate
    that it did not affect me, and I remained
    the same faithful person that my parents brought me up.
    And I pity the ones who can't recognize the hand of God,
    because I think that it gives me a certain strength.
    In my whole life, if it has to do with coping what
    I went through or our daily life today.
    To see the creation and not to believe
    that it was created by God.
    To see a beautiful day like today--
    the sun is shining, the renewing of nature.
    How all this is taking place?
    Yeah, science has to do with it, but definitely, above all
    is God.
    And I pity the ones who can't see and recognize His presence.
    And so how do you explain to yourself the Holocaust
    and how that could have happened?
    You are asking me a very difficult question
    because I am all the time trying to ask that to myself--
    this tremendous, puzzling question.
    Why it took place and why I had to lose my parents
    and why six million Jews and so many
    Gentiles and so many Gypsies, who were innocent.
    And mainly, the most hurting and most painful for me
    is whenever I think of that one and a half million children who
    were completely innocent.
    Even if we want to blame or we want
    to put any kind of pressure on people or to say
    it came to them because they did something.
    But why the children?
    They were innocent.
    So that's the most puzzling.
    And the only way that I can-- it's
    above my human understanding.
    Because there is no explanation for it.
    The greatest nation, the most culture, the most educated
    people were the Germans.
    The people of science, the people of so many good things.
    Music.
    You name it.
    They really knew.
    And that they could go there, to such a level
    and to be so cruel and so systematically and in so
    organized a way to kill out so many people--
    it's behind my human understanding.
    And I feel that it's for me the best
    answer, that there are things--
    and we have a great sage whose name
    is Rambam, one of our great scholars in Judaism,
    who said that you are allowed to search the ways of God.
    But when there is no answer, that
    means that it's above a human ability to understand.
    And I can cope with that answer.
    I don't buy any kind of answer--
    that they were mad or that they killed the Jews
    because the Jews were rich and all kinds
    of other explanations.
    They took away their jobs.
    There is no justification whatsoever
    to kill so many million people in such a cruel way.
    Except this is one of the things that we don't understand.
    So your very strong faith continued throughout.
    I think so, that that helped me all the time.
    Wherever I have been, I always felt the presence of God
    or the miracles that happened to me during the Holocaust
    and after.
    I feel that He was watching over me, for sure.
    We all survivors have that kind of question--
    why me and not others?
    And it's not always the easiest thing to live with that kind.
    But you have to believe that there probably
    is a special reason why some of us and so few of us
    remained from the Holocaust.
    Perhaps to tell the story.
    To teach people that we care for--
    when you are angry, you have to calm down.
    It's a lesson.
    The Holocaust, if it's not really
    taken as a lesson for humanity--
    to be careful and to know how to conduct yourself in daily life,
    too, with your neighbors, with your friends,
    with your family--
    then the Holocaust was in vain.
    At least if you learn from it and we better
    our way of life and the whole humanity is learning from it,
    then at least it wasn't completely in vain.
    Otherwise, why so many people went?
    So that's part of what we're doing today.
    Yeah.
    So you were in the orphanage until about May of '46?
    Until about end of April, I think.
    It was very interesting.
    In many fact, I was already teaching a little bit,
    even though I was 14 years old.
    About what I learned, I was teaching to younger children.
    Who were in the orphanage?
    In the orphanage home, yes.
    What subjects were you teaching?
    All kind of subjects.
    Mainly math.
    From childhood, I was a very good student in math.
    I remember in my hometown, the mayor's daughter,
    who had difficulty in math, I used to teach her privately.
    I must have been maybe 10 years old.
    It just so happened that that was my best subject.
    So I was teaching to the younger group.
    And then one evening, they gathered us in our social hall,
    and they said that there is an organized group that
    is going to Palestine.
    And who would like to join?
    And they told us that it's a difficult journey
    because it's not legal.
    British people don't want Jewish people to come to Palestine.
    But we are going to organize and there you
    will be put into schools and in orphanage home.
    And it was something that appealed very much to us.
    You have to understand that wherever we turned,
    it reminded us-- the hostility and the abandonment
    and the coldness and the cruelty of people.
    How did they let all this to happen?
    Why didn't they try to hide us?
    Why didn't they try to go against the German regime?
    Why didn't they try to fight for us?
    So we were not happy to be in Europe.
    We wanted to get away from there.
    It reminded us too much, wherever we turned.
    I remember going in the street and suddenly crying.
    Why?
    Because I remember that the last time I was in Budapest,
    it was when my father and mother took me to the big zoo.
    For instance.
    So in a way, we were happy because we had clothing.
    We had food.
    We had good friends.
    We have been in school.
    But everything reminded us of the tragedy
    that happened to our nation.
    And we were anxious to leave.
    So when this came, that we can go to Palestine,
    we were very happy.
    And they organized and they prepared us
    that it won't be easy journey.
    We will have to go through borders from Hungary
    to Romania in the night.
    And we will have to hide.
    And they are going to try to get a boat from Costanta--
    that's the port city of Romania--
    and from there, to go to Israel.
    And we joined that.
    Now who was organizing this group?
    It was a Zionist group organizing this group.
    Based where?
    In Budapest.
    The group was based in Budapest?
    And they wanted to help children get to--
    Get to Palestine.
    They knew that, emotionally, it would
    be the best for the children to be
    away from all the environment that reminds them constantly
    of what took place.
    So to go to a new country where most of the year
    is spring or summer, that alone.
    Being more free.
    And the group was going to be all children?
    The group was mainly children or young people.
    The elderly people, they were sick.
    Very few remained except in Budapest.
    No elderly people came back from the concentration camp.
    So they organized this trip.
    And I remember we were taking very few items with us--
    we didn't have too much anyway, but because we
    had to be in a truck.
    They put some benches on a truck.
    They clothed the truck with blankets.
    And during the night, we went through the border.
    I really don't know how they arranged this with the Romanian
    government that they closed their eyes, so to say,
    that these refugees are going through the border.
    And we were stranded then in Bucharest,
    which is the capital of Romania, for about six weeks,
    also in a Jewish organized home.
    Again, just girls together.
    And our teachers were with us.
    We continued-- even on the truck,
    we were continuing learning.
    They were very much to that the kids should not
    suffer any lack of education, that all what has been deprived
    from us during the year or some who were longer in the camp
    that it should be now given back to them and to educate again.
    In a way, also, to be busy with knowledge instead
    of too much time of thinking.
    We have to stop to turn the tape.
    OK.
    Jaffa Munk.
    March 11, 1997.
    Tape one, side B. You were talking
    about stopping in Bucharest for six weeks on that trip
    and how the lessons continued during the trip.
    Yes.
    We have been stranded in Bucharest
    because dealing with the boat company, with the ship company,
    took a long time 'til they organized, 'til they purchased
    the boat, 'til they find a person who
    was ready to maintain the boat and take
    the group to Palestine.
    How many were in the group?
    We were 1,800.
    Half of it or the majority of it were girls.
    And the other group was boys.
    We joined together with the other orphanage
    home, which one was boys' home.
    And they were outskirt of Bucharest,
    in a little city put up.
    And after six weeks of living in Bucharest,
    where we constantly continue to learn
    and they all the time looked for it
    that life should be as normal as is possible for us,
    we were told one day that at last we
    are going to the port city, and we are going to board the ship.
    I can't tell you how joyful it was for us.
    We were looking forward of leaving Europe.
    Not knowing where we really will be going
    and how good it will be or how bad it will be, how difficult
    or what is waiting for us.
    Did you have some imaginings of what it might
    be like in Israel for you?
    Very little.
    Except I had an uncle who lived in Jerusalem
    and who during the war, when we were still at home in Hungary,
    in Onod, he used to write to us.
    And he would describe the mountains of Jerusalem,
    the beauty of the country.
    So we had a little bit of desire.
    Also they were teaching us in the school songs about Israel.
    Or they would be telling us stories about the prophets that
    used to walk in the streets of Jerusalem
    or the temple that was in existence once upon a time
    and there is the remaining wall.
    So a little bit of a taste or a little bit of understanding we
    had.
    However, I wouldn't say that we were
    very knowledgeable about what life is there.
    Nevertheless, we had understanding
    that the Jewish people who were present at that time
    in Palestine, which one is called today,
    is that they were seeking the Britons to leave the country.
    And that there is conflict there.
    Because I don't think that at that point
    we wanted to go to anywhere where
    life would be a conflict again or war again
    or hostility again.
    What we wanted is to be just in nature
    and to see positive things, to see peacefulness
    among people and love.
    Mainly really, what we seeking for,
    it was to see that people love each other, because a lot of us
    lost that faith that people can still love
    and that people care for each other--
    except the unitedness of our people,
    here and there, and help during or after the Holocaust.
    That boat was waiting for us at that port.
    And 1,800 people in a big ship, which one actually
    wasn't a ship for transporting human beings.
    It was a ship transporting goods or animals.
    But we were delighted that we are heading to Israel,
    to Palestine.
    And the singing and the lectures on the boat.
    And somehow just to go have a new life in a different place,
    it was connected with a lot of hope.
    We were hoping that we are going to establish
    a new type of life.
    We are on the boat.
    And water is coming into the ship.
    We were frightened that we are going to sink.
    They tried to fix the boat while we were in the boat.
    And then one day after traveling,
    they said that all the young people should
    go on the deck of the boat.
    We are in contact by the Britons who don't
    want to let us into Palestine.
    Now how long had you been on the boat?
    About one week.
    One week.
    One week.
    And lots of us were sick.
    Seasick.
    Were you seasick?
    No.
    No.
    I am always the lucky one.
    Was Esther seasick?
    Esther, yes.
    Sure.
    Sure.
    She's very sensitive.
    She's very sensitive until this day.
    We went on the deck of the boat and we saw a huge military boat
    greeting us.
    And they were screaming to the head of our boat,
    to the organizers, that we should return back to Europe.
    So we started to cry.
    We didn't want to go back anymore to Europe.
    Whatever is waiting for us, but just not back to Europe.
    So we were begging.
    Each one had the opportunity to speak in the loudspeaker
    and begging the Britons that please,
    we are refugees who lost everybody.
    We suffered so much.
    We have nobody.
    We want to come to this country.
    We want to start a new life.
    Please let us.
    Oh, this went on for three, four hours.
    The quarrelling.
    Yes.
    No.
    Are you having a lot of men?
    The military people?
    Do you bring with you any kind of ammunition?
    They were frightened that the Jewish people will be strong
    and they are going to try to oust
    the Britons from Palestine.
    After four hours-- about, maybe it was a little bit longer--
    they agreed, that they let us into Palestine.
    And the boat came to the port of Haifa.
    And just from the deck to see the beautiful mountains
    of Carmel, which one is a huge mountain in Haifa,
    was very moving, very emotional.
    The nature-- it was springtime, it was end of May--
    is beautiful in Israel.
    All the flowers are blooming already.
    And as we came down from the boat,
    our people who already lived in Israel, they were greeting us.
    And they were throwing to us bags of all kinds of goodies.
    And the singing and the hugging.
    And some people found some relatives, some friends.
    But the Britons did not allow us to go out to the city.
    We were put in a camp, which one was not a concentration camp.
    It's named Atlit.
    It was surrounded with a gate and a fence.
    It was a fenced-in camp with army barracks.
    And it was a very emotional kind of arrival
    to Israel, which one represents in our eye the freedom.
    That's what we were dreaming-- that now we
    are going to be free from soldiers and from being
    observed all the time.
    And here we are again in a closed camp situation.
    And so what did that feel like to you?
    It brought anger.
    It brought anger because we felt that the world still
    did not learn from the experience
    and from the tragedy.
    And we felt that we are people who actually, all of us, needed
    to be pampered.
    We needed to be loved.
    We needed, so to say, to be in a resort place
    and given all that could be given to us.
    And here we are again in a situation
    where we are closed in.
    We have no contact with the outside world again.
    So again you had hoped, and again you
    had been disappointed.
    In a way, yes.
    And still, it's not to compare--
    because we know that eventually they
    are going to fight for our freedom.
    The people who organized this trip,
    it's called the Youth Aliyah.
    The youth going up to Israel.
    It's a lovely movement who wanted
    to save the children from remaining
    in Europe with the memories.
    They felt that that's the right thing to do for them.
    So you had confidence that they would be able to help you?
    Yes.
    We had confidence.
    Yes.
    And still, we could move in the premises back and forth.
    We couldn't leave the camp.
    But it's not to compare to the camps in Germany.
    We were given food.
    We had some people.
    Had visitors.
    Did you and Esther have visitors?
    We slowly contacted our uncle in Jerusalem,
    who sent his son-in-law.
    And he brought goodies for us.
    And he brought us my very first silk scarf.
    I got from my uncle who sent it to the camp to us.
    He wanted that we should feel human.
    We should feel as girls should feel-- that you
    beautify a little bit yourself.
    So he sent a scarf for me and for my sister.
    And by nature, I cherish until this day
    every little new thing.
    I don't have to have big things.
    Every little thing, I can be very happy.
    And in those days, for sure, that scarf meant so much.
    I was trying to put it around my neck, on my hat,
    and on my face.
    All kind of different things.
    What color was it?
    It was blue with white and pink.
    I remember because I had one nice dress and it matched.
    And the dress was blue.
    So we were in that situation but not too long,
    because then from the Jewish agency,
    which one has branches in America, too--
    and it's subsidized, I think, the money from here, as well
    from Palestine.
    They came in and they demanded from the Britons
    that young children should be let out.
    And after three weeks being in that camp, we were let out.
    And they gave us some tickets for a bus that
    would take us to Jerusalem.
    Because they asked, where is your destination?
    Where do you want to go?
    And my uncle, who lived in Jerusalem,
    he corresponded with my uncle in Budapest.
    And prior to our trip to Palestine, the two of them
    made the decision, since we had no parents,
    that we should be attending a certain kind
    of religious school in Jerusalem.
    And that's what happened to have a dormitory.
    And in that dormitory were the refugees,
    the survivors, the orphans.
    So it was a kind of orphanage dormitory.
    But still, you didn't feel that you
    are in a real orphanage home.
    It was more like a school dormitory.
    How did you feel about that decision?
    Well in a way, I felt that it was somebody
    who is making the decision.
    I didn't have to break my head where to head and what to do.
    Later on, I wished that they wouldn't
    make that decision for me.
    Perhaps I would have chosen a different school.
    This was a little bit more religious than I.
    It was a little bit too pious.
    You know what I mean?
    No.
    I don't know.
    It was a little bit too strict kind of a school.
    I wanted to go maybe to a lesser.
    It's like you go to a regular public school
    or you go to the church school.
    So this was more compared to a church school.
    Very restricted.
    Or there's a very restricted code
    of dressing, code of behavior.
    What kinds of behavior and dress did they--
    Very little freedom in the evening.
    You couldn't leave the premises.
    You had to be at home a certain time.
    In the school, you have to go with long sleeves
    and long skirts.
    Were there boys in the school?
    No.
    Only girls.
    Only girls.
    Only girls.
    But you had to be very covered?
    Very much so, yes.
    Yes.
    So I wouldn't have minded a little bit less strict kind
    of situation.
    Was there more religious training
    and more religious services?
    It was more, yes, than we have been exposed at home
    although I am coming from a rabbinical family.
    But this was a little bit more to the right.
    But the learning was on a high level, so I can't complain,
    because educationally, I got what I wanted.
    I wanted very much to further my education.
    And at the beginning, we had difficulty with the language.
    You and Esther?
    Me and Esther, yes.
    And the language was Hebrew?
    Hebrew.
    And were the other girls in the school survivors or were
    some of them not survivors?
    No.
    A majority of the students were local, who
    were born and raised in Israel.
    Or at that time it was called Palestine.
    And the refugees were trained by private teachers in order
    that they can cope with the material
    that the rest of the group was learning.
    So they subsidized our learning sessions
    by taking us out for a certain time from the regular class
    and then privately teaching us.
    However, in many things, such as science or math or geography,
    we were ahead of the Israelis.
    So apparently, the education in Europe
    was on a high level in certain areas.
    And religious education was much behind.
    So we needed, mainly, language and religious studies,
    such as the Bible or the prophets.
    We needed a lot of help at the beginning.
    Or Jewish history.
    But in many other subjects, we were much ahead
    of the local people.
    You had told me in the earlier interview
    that your father had arranged Hebrew lessons for you
    and your sister and your brother.
    Did that include spoken Hebrew?
    That included spoken Hebrew, but that was so little.
    It was really not--
    we knew certain expressions.
    But we were not able to converse in Hebrew.
    So not only did you have trouble with the classes because
    of spoken Hebrew, but was it hard for you to make friends
    also because of the language?
    It was.
    It was in a way, maybe.
    But it wasn't really because the girls were very outgoing.
    I remember very often being invited
    to several of my friends who were very outgoing to help us
    and to try to make us feel good.
    And being in homes sometimes, not
    always to be in the dormitory.
    Oh, you mean you would be invited
    to be invited to their homes?
    Invited to their homes, yes.
    Were they day students or were they boarders who--
    They were day students.
    Day students, yes.
    Only the refugees were the ones who lived in the dormitories.
    Only the orphans.
    And it wasn't easy at the beginning.
    Certain subjects took us a long, long time
    to be able to join in with the rest of the group.
    But they made us feel good that in other subjects
    we were ahead, such as math or science.
    So they always used to say, we teach you Hebrew.
    We teach you prophets.
    And you teach us other things.
    Did you have much contact with your family at that point?
    With your uncle?
    With my uncle, we were most of the time on the Sabbath.
    Visiting here and there for a meal.
    We never slept over by my uncle for different reasons.
    This boarding school didn't like the idea
    that we are not back in the evenings.
    Also they lived in a very poor condition.
    Housing was very difficult in those days in Israel.
    So my uncle, who had three children,
    lived in a two-bedroom apartment.
    So it would mean that we would be living or sleeping
    in the living room, which one we didn't want to cause
    such a commotion in the house.
    But we went usually for a meal here and there.
    And it was very refreshing.
    My aunt was a highly intelligent woman.
    My uncle was a rabbi in Frankfurt am Main
    And they always tried to tell us things that a parent would,
    guide us.
    So before the Holocaust, your uncle
    had been a rabbi in Frankfurt--
    In Frankfurt am Main.
    And was he a refugee before the Holocaust, too?
    He went in 1939.
    He got certificates from the Britons,
    which one meant that he was invited or allowed citizen
    to come to Palestine.
    They had certain quotas.
    I remember that in this country also you had quotas--
    how many people could come from Hungary, how many refugees
    can come from other countries.
    Now a lot of times, we hear other stories.
    But when I came to this country, I also came on a quota.
    So my uncle went from Frankfurt am Main to Palestine in 1939,
    right after the--
    how you call that night?
    Kristallnacht?
    Kristallnacht.
    Yeah.
    So they were also not too long in that country.
    A few years.
    But they established a nice kind of a life.
    And it was very refreshing to talk with my uncle.
    He would tell us beautiful stories about our parents.
    And be reminded those days when he used to come to visit.
    So you had known him before?
    Yes, we had known him, yes.
    And both of them very outstanding people.
    I remember that one day my uncle took me and my sister
    to a store in Jerusalem.
    And he bought a pocketbook for us.
    I mean, there were more important things, maybe.
    But he wanted so much to give us the feeling that we are girls,
    that we are human, that we have a pocketbook just
    like every other girl has.
    So that was very important to you?
    It was very.
    It was very.
    I have a picture standing by the store when we came out.
    And believe me, my uncle wasn't well-to-do to buy
    these kind of things.
    Yet, for him, it was very important to give
    as many things that he could in order
    to make us to feel that, yes, we live a normal life.
    And we are human beings.
    And we are just like all the other girls after the war.
    And we walked with that pocketbook so proud.
    I wish to see that today teenagers would
    cherish something that they get as we
    cherished those pocketbooks.
    For years-- I think that a couple of years ago that I gave
    it away--
    I kept that pocketbook, even though I wasn't using,
    but I just couldn't depart from it
    because it was so meaningful.
    So special.
    The scarf that he sent to the camp and then this pocketbook
    were the very first things that as a young teenager I had.
    And I wasn't different from others.
    So where did you give such a special thing
    as the pocketbook?
    Where I?
    When you gave it away, such a special thing,
    where did you give it?
    Oh, where I gave it?
    I gave it to a girl who was visiting me from Poland.
    Yeah.
    In many fact, now, we have also here a girl
    from-- but it was not on the tape.
    We have also now a girl who came here to study from Poland.
    You have a girl?
    I am in contact with a girl who, the parents were survivors
    and they went back to Poland to live.
    And this girl is a young girl.
    Parents not young people.
    And she's here to study.
    And she's so determined.
    So it brings back to me so many memories.
    How determined, how much she wants to live a normal life.
    Does it remind you of yourself?
    A lot.
    A lot.
    So this is important for the tape?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I don't know if I should put this story in.
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    Did you know her parents?
    How did you and she find each other?
    She was visiting the librarian from the school
    where I am teaching.
    She goes to a school in Silver Spring.
    And the daughter of the librarian of my school
    goes also to that school.
    And they invited her.
    So then she said, "Jaffa, I think that for you, it
    would be a very meaningful experience
    to meet with this girl."
    And lo and behold, for sure, it was for me.
    Very important.
    And I want her to come for a weekend to visit me also.
    Yeah.
    Had you wished that someone would do that for you
    when you had first arrived in Israel?
    Very much so.
    Very much so.
    So giving her the pocketbook was really very meaningful for you?
    Very much so.
    Very much so.
    And I always wanted that somebody
    who would appreciate as much I appreciated.
    And it would be used by somebody that it
    would be meaningful for her.
    So you found the right person for the pocketbook.
    I think so.
    I think so.
    Back to Jerusalem.
    Yes.
    Who paid for the school that you were going to?
    It was paid by the Jewish Agency.
    It was paid.
    And I remember one thing that I wanted to tell.
    When we were let out from the camp,
    we were just given money to take the bus to Jerusalem.
    And there was no straight bus from the camp
    which one was situated next to Haifa to go to Jerusalem.
    We had to stop over in Tel Aviv.
    And as we are standing, waiting for that connecting bus,
    a lady approaches us.
    She heard me talking to Esther Hungarian.
    And she approached us and she's saying, who are you?
    And we told her our story.
    We are the daughter of the rabbi from Onod.
    And, where are you going?
    We are going to Jerusalem.
    And this was before a holiday.
    And she says, well I know your family from Europe.
    I am here in this country a few years.
    And do you need anything?
    We said, no.
    We don't need nothing.
    Well she ran and she bought for us some cake.
    And she bought for us some candy and chocolate.
    And she pushed into our pocket a very small amount of money.
    But that was the very first money
    that we had in our pocket.
    And she hugged us.
    And she said, God bless you.
    Thank God that I see some young people who survived
    the concentration camps.
    And a million times, I wanted to find out who this lady was.
    What was she doing at the bus stop?
    She wasn't traveling.
    Many times I repeated this story because I
    was very moved by it that somebody who specially found
    for her task to go to stations or bus or ships or wherever,
    maybe, maybe she will find some survivors.
    And she will be able to give them a few things
    to cheer them up.
    And once I told the story to a cousin of mine.
    And she said, you know who this was?
    This lady was a sister-in-law of my sister
    who died after the war in Budapest.
    She didn't know that we are related.
    I mean, it's not real relation, that there is a contact
    or whatever.
    And many times, I learned from this.
    It's not "many times," but I learned from this
    that I also like to go places where
    I know that there is a need to cheer up people,
    if it's an old age home or if it's our orphanage home.
    Because I always will remember.
    It was little.
    It was small.
    But it was very, very much on time.
    That little bit of package that she had given to us
    and a few pennies that she put in our pocket.
    So I hope that I will be able for many years
    to cheer up people and continue to do what I learned
    from that one experience.
    Back to Jerusalem.
    I had difficulties of learning at the beginning.
    But slowly it got each time better thanks
    to lots of the girls who came and learned
    with us, who invited to their houses.
    It was not only the learning session,
    but being invited and being in normal homes
    and seeing that there are families,
    that not everything has been wiped away
    during the Holocaust, gave us a lot of strength.
    And a good meal here and there sometimes--
    because it was very poor time in Israel at the time.
    The food in the orphanage home was, again, fairly meager.
    But we ate.
    We ate bread.
    And latke here and that.
    Potatoes.
    It very helpful to be again among people who were cheerful,
    who were happy.
    Seeing children, seeing babies.
    I remember that I was very moved when I
    saw that babies are so pretty.
    And that mommies are pushing carriages.
    I thought that the whole world has been wiped away
    and only a few of us remained.
    But I saw that life was going on.
    And families were together.
    And they built homes.
    And they were working.
    And they were learning.
    And it was a normal kind of a life.
    Unfortunately, I had to go through again a war in Israel
    in 1947.
    The Independence War of Israel when the British were ousted
    and the Arabs attacked us.
    I had been visiting a friend of mine in Jerusalem,
    and as I was returning back on the road,
    going back to the orphanage home,
    I see that somehow the street is empty.
    And that was very unusual for a Saturday afternoon.
    People used to stroll in the street.
    That's the day off.
    And I hear, boom, boom, boom.
    And I don't see nobody.
    So I ran to a ditch by the road.
    And I was just hiding myself there,
    knowing this kind of things from the experience
    of the Holocaust.
    And then I hear from one window somebody screaming, come in!
    Come in!
    So I came into a house, and they took me
    down to the basement, which one was
    like some kind of a shelter.
    And they told me that I can't continue to go.
    You can't go back now to your orphanage place,
    to the dormitory, because the Arabs attacked us.
    So I went through a difficult time in Israel
    very shortly after our arrival.
    We arrived in '46, '47.
    Already started with the British, with the Arabs.
    And then the Independence War.
    Jerusalem was sieged.
    There was no water.
    There was no way to get out from the city, to come back.
    And yet, I don't know.
    With all that suffering, I never gave up.
    And it wasn't so depressing because you were together
    with many people.
    You saw families.
    It wasn't that we had to be surrounded.
    It wasn't that we have been hearing the gas chamber
    or smelled the smoke of the gas.
    Here, we were fighting for our own independence.
    It was a very different kind of feeling.
    It wasn't easy.
    It was not pleasant.
    But not to compare.
    You didn't feel helpless as you had before?
    No, no.
    Not helpless, not at all.
    We had faith in our soldiers.
    We had faith in HaShem.
    In God.
    But it was difficult. Food was very poor.
    And the main problem in Jerusalem was water.
    They used to give out a bucket of water per family.
    That's how difficult it was.
    And for the time being, school was closed.
    Were you still living in the orphanage?
    Still in the orphanage.
    But you weren't having classes in school?
    We had no classes because we were attacked.
    And they were afraid to have children walking
    in street in those days.
    Children walking to school, even on the bus, it was not safe.
    But after a while, they reopened back the school.
    I left Jerusalem during that siege.
    With an armored car they took down some children to Tel Aviv
    because they felt that it is very dangerous
    to be in Jerusalem.
    And Esther, my sister, by that time was working in Tel Aviv.
    So I went there.
    So she was not in the school with you?
    She wasn't in the school with me.
    She was only for one year.
    And she learned to sew.
    She went to a vocational school.
    And I went to a regular gymnasium.
    Oh.
    So Esther did not go to the same school in Jerusalem
    that you did?
    No.
    Not to the same school.
    No.
    But she was in Jerusalem?
    She was.
    And she was in the same dormitory.
    But they established for girls who
    were unable to do spiritual kind of things or scholastic things,
    who were more broken from the war.
    And Esther was-- even though she's much brighter.
    And for her, learning is very easy,
    while I have to work on my studies
    all the time, all my life.
    Still she just couldn't go back to the books.
    And they found that it's the best thing for certain girls
    to be busy with their hands instead
    of being busy with their mind.
    So you were separated from Esther again?
    I was separated from Esther--
    the first time separated after.
    Because in the camp, after the camp,
    she was in the sanatorium.
    But I was not really separated, because we
    were both in Budapest.
    Here, we were also not separated.
    We lived together in the dormitory.
    But then we were separated because once she learned
    her profession, sewing, she got the job
    and she went to Tel Aviv.
    Also, you have to know that after a certain age,
    they didn't keep the girls in the dormitory.
    We have to turn the tape.
    OK.
    Yaffa Munch, March 11, 1997, tape
    2, side A. You were talking about Esther going to Tel Aviv.
    And you were still in Jerusalem.
    And that was the first time you had been separated.
    And how did you take that, being separated from Esther,
    even though you knew that was important for her
    to be doing what she was doing?
    In a way, it was very difficult, because I
    had nobody except her.
    And being the older sister who, all the time,
    felt a certain kind of responsibility,
    and being a substitute mother, in a way, as much she could.
    But by that time, perhaps due to my friends that were very,
    very careful, and very giving, and very supporting,
    it was a little bit easier to take that separation,
    and be very in constant touch with each other.
    But then when Jerusalem was surrounded,
    and I could not leave, and she couldn't come to visit,
    that was a little bit difficult, because the fear was there.
    There was hope, but there was a fear, too.
    Who knows how long will be this separation.
    When will I be able to see her again?
    And she was the one who initiated that I
    should be leaving Jerusalem.
    And it wasn't easy, because you could not,
    as a civilian leave the city.
    Soldiers were going in secret ways.
    And they organized that, once in a while,
    to unite sisters or unite families, they would take,
    each time, a few people.
    And so happened that she made this arrangement.
    And with the convoy of soldiers, I
    went from Jerusalem, which was quite a dangerous kind
    of a trip to do, to Tel Aviv.
    And she made arrangements in Tel Aviv for me
    that I could continue in the same kind of school setting
    that I have been attending in Jerusalem
    and also in the orphanage home.
    There where orphanage homes established
    by the Jewish Agency in different cities
    all over in Israel.
    So I went back to school.
    I continued my learning.
    And Esther was visiting me on a daily basis.
    She was earning a little bit of money.
    So she bought a blouse for me or some extra little food.
    And then, eventually, after being in that orphanage home
    for about a year, we rented a little room
    with the privilege of using a little bit of kitchen.
    And we joined together again.
    And we lived on our own.
    So this was--
    This was about 1948.
    And so you were 16?
    Yes, yes, I continued to go to school.
    And Esther continued to go to her work.
    And we lived by a family who rented out one little room.
    And we were able to use our little burner in our room
    and make, one in a while, a little soup or a little bit
    of food.
    It was a interesting kind of situation,
    because we felt that we are, again, independent.
    And that one little room, even though it was a rented room,
    but we felt that we are no more orphans.
    That we are like living a normal life,
    like other people are living.
    They're very friendly with the people rented us the place out.
    They were very nice to us.
    Very highly intelligent people who helped me
    a lot with my learning, also.
    Then we made friends, neighbors.
    There was a piano teacher who was very much looking out
    that we should come to her house,
    that we should be in a family environment, once in a while.
    She lived with her mother.
    She had two young children.
    And I'd love to go to visit her.
    She had a brother who was a teacher.
    And in manner of fact, I wanted to learn, at that time,
    a little bit English.
    Because by that time, I had a command of the Hebrew language.
    And I wanted some other foreign language to learn,
    because I always planned to be a teacher.
    And I knew that I would eventually
    need more languages to know.
    Yeah, did you assume that you would live in Israel
    for the rest of your life?
    At that time, I assumed that I am going to be in Israel.
    And I am going to establish a family life, eventually.
    And it's very interesting to note that he was teaching me.
    And he was always looking my handwriting.
    And in those days--
    This is the brother of that music teacher
    who were the neighbors we have been living.
    It's outskirt of Tel Aviv, outskirt
    between Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan.
    So you went to him for English lessons.
    For English lessons free of charge.
    Just you?
    Just me.
    And whenever I came, I used to be amazed with my handwriting.
    I don't know, I was young, very foolish.
    I didn't notice that, actually, he
    is teaching because he is in love with me,
    not because he really was interested to teach me.
    And why did you think he wasn't charging you?
    I thought that so many people wanted
    to help all the refugees in many different ways.
    Some who could help financially, some
    who could help educating way.
    So I thought that this is another--
    yes, and I was really not interested, at that time yet,
    to get married.
    And nevertheless, even if I--
    So now you're about 17?
    I am about 16, 17, going on 17.
    And he wanted to take me to a theater.
    And it's not only that I was not interested,
    because humility came back to me.
    And for sure, at the age of 16 and 1/2, 17,
    something is moving in you.
    And you do feel you are a girl and this is a man, right?
    But he was not attractive at all.
    And I really didn't want to be too much in his caught by me.
    I enjoyed learning.
    But that's about.
    And later on, he was expressing that he
    wants to really date me.
    And he would like to go with me.
    And I said I am too young, yet.
    How old was he?
    He was much older.
    He was much older.
    He must have to be 28, 29, much older than I.
    And many, many years later, when I was already
    a mommy of two children, and I visited in Israel,
    I happened to be in the temple with his mother, who
    loved me very much so.
    And later, I understood why they were so much inviting us
    to the house, because they had a plan in their mind for the son
    to marry me.
    And she said to me, no, later, you can--
    years later, now you can tell me.
    You married already, and my son is married.
    Why didn't you want that to have Zori for your husband?
    I said to her, don't ask me such questions.
    But I know what I was thinking at the age of 16.
    And I didn't want to tell her that he was not attracting me.
    You can't say that to a mother.
    But I started, with him, to learn.
    And I with the sister, I was learning a little bit music.
    I wanted, very much, to get back to all the things
    that my parents always wanted to give us.
    And unfortunately, it was interrupted, by the Germans.
    But it was very difficult because we
    didn't have the means, financially,
    that I could go and study music or financially take
    private lessons in English.
    So here was the opportunity.
    But that had to stop after I learned
    that there are other alternative motivations than just giving us
    the extra lessons.
    So after you figured out what was going on,
    you stopped the lessons?
    I stopped the lessons.
    I stopped the lessons.
    Was that hard for you to do?
    It was, because I wanted very much to further, in any way,
    and in every way, my education.
    But I was involved in the school.
    And eventually, I learned a little bit music
    from other sources.
    And I finished the high school.
    And not too many years after it, I met my husband.
    And I got married with him.
    How did you meet him?
    My husband was living by the principal of my school.
    In Tel Aviv, I was in Tel Aviv in school.
    What school?
    In Tel Aviv, it's call Bet Yaakov.
    And my husband was living in their house.
    And one day, he said to my husband,
    he wasn't born there, people used to take room by families.
    And he said, I have a lovely girl.
    And I think that this girl is just for you.
    She has the very similar kind of a background.
    Although my husband was in Israel from 1939,
    and I only came in 1946, but the background is very similar.
    In what way is it similar?
    Similar because he comes from Czechoslovakia,
    from where my father, from the exact same city.
    He went to the very same school that my father
    went before him, many years.
    But it's the same kind of setting, more or less,
    from the same type of religious background.
    Educationally, the same type, financially, nobody was--
    everybody of us so-called middle class.
    But what did we call middle class?
    If you had that room and you had a bed,
    that was middle class in those days.
    So he was in the army at that time.
    And he had a furlough, few days of vacation from the army,
    and she said, you come to the school.
    I will introduce to you the girl that I am mentioning.
    My husband knew me from before, seeing me
    in the street of Tel Aviv.
    He used to walk with his buddy from the army.
    And he would say to him, you see that girl, then blond one?
    I will take her out.
    He knew me from even before, when
    we attended the wedding of my teacher, Esther Echstein, who
    was my teacher after the war.
    And she is related to my husband.
    She is a second cousin, which I didn't know until that wedding.
    I went as a student of her to the wedding.
    He went as a relative.
    And I was introduced to him at the wedding,
    but nothing more than this is one of my students.
    So when he was on the vacation from the army,
    he came to the school.
    And I was called out from the class
    that I have to go to the office.
    The principal wants to see me.
    My heart was beating.
    I thought God, did I fail in the test?
    Did I do something?
    Why I am called to the office?
    And she says to me, somebody wants to meet you.
    And here on the porch of that office building
    is a soldier in uniform.
    And he asked me, I have two days off from the army,
    I want to take you, tonight, out.
    I said, I have to ask my sister.
    I was-- I had no parents with whom I am talking anything over
    and I said, by the way, my sister is older.
    And she has to get married before me.
    Lo and behold, I don't want to elaborate on this story.
    But now slowly from this, within a year,
    we developed a friendship to the extent
    that we got engaged and married.
    So you were how old when you met?
    19, 18 in the school.
    And then at the age of 19, I got married.
    And you were still in school?
    I was still in school.
    I continue--
    But this was equivalent to a college?
    This was already done, yes.
    Yeah, it was a teacher seminary.
    Which, we don't have too much today, except in--
    We used to have a lot of them.
    Yeah, but we don't have anymore.
    I know that near to Allentown, Kutztown?
    Kutztown.
    Kutztown has a teacher seminary.
    But it's very, very rare.
    I think that is something that I would like to see
    that it's coming back again.
    So you were still in school?
    I was still in the school.
    And he was in the army.
    He was still in the army.
    When you married, he was still in the army?
    He was still in the army when I married my husband.
    And you were then 19?
    Yeah, and it wasn't easy life.
    But we were very happy.
    We lived in one room apartment, which one was our living room
    and dining room.
    And later on, when my baby came, it was even the baby room.
    And we were very happy, very happy, and very thankful
    for everything.
    And this was the first baby, my son,
    that was born into our family, the first child
    after the Holocaust.
    So it was a very special--
    Very, very moving moment.
    I remember them from year they interviewed me
    for the Holocaust testimony.
    And this was the highlight of my life,
    when this baby was born, because that minute,
    I felt that there is continuation.
    And that our nation and the people
    are renewing and getting back their strength.
    And what did you name him?
    I named him after my husband's father who perished also
    in the Holocaust, Gabriel.
    We wanted, while I was pregnant, we were discussing,
    all the time, each one of us lost both sets of parents.
    And each one of us lost a brother.
    So as many children we will have,
    we would like that, in that way, their name should not
    be forgotten.
    So we will name the children.
    I wanted to be a good wife, and I said, if it's a girl,
    I will name it after your mother.
    If it's a boy, it will be after your father.
    So it was a boy.
    And this one that is getting now married
    is named after my mother.
    But we have four children.
    And it's after the four parents.
    So you have two boys and two girls?
    Two boys and two girls, yes.
    Now, the life was not easy, I have
    to say to you, after the Holocaust.
    Even, in Israel, even when got married.
    We lived in one room.
    We shared the kitchen, three families together.
    It was apartment of three rooms.
    In each room, one couple was living.
    And the kitchen, we divided.
    And three women were sharing the kitchen.
    But there was a lot of happiness.
    There was a lot of positiveness.
    There was a lot of sharing and doing together things,
    and respectfulness, and try to cheer each other.
    Were the other women older than you?
    Yes, I was the youngest.
    Before we started the interview, we
    were talking about your learning to cook.
    And how you didn't have a chance for your mother
    to teach you how to cook.
    And that when you were married, you didn't
    know very much about cooking.
    You lived with Esther.
    Did you learn some of that cooking
    when you lived with Esther?
    When I lived with Esther, Esther was mainly
    in charge of the cooking.
    And I was mainly in charge of cleaning or ironing.
    I was not so much interested, really, in cooking.
    I was more into books in those days.
    So how was it after you were married as far as cooking?
    After I got married, it was difficult.
    I remember that once, I tried to make a cake.
    Because my husband said that it would
    be nice on the day of Sabbath to have a cup of coffee
    with a piece of homemade cake.
    I mean, bakeries were not in existence.
    It was too expensive, if it was here and there, a bakery.
    Who bought?
    And I attempted to make a cake.
    And it was a yeast cake.
    And it wouldn't rise.
    So what should I do?
    It's already afternoon and it's nothing moving.
    It's soon the holiday coming, the Sabbath.
    I am not able to bake anymore.
    So I took that dough.
    And I put it in the garbage can.
    And one thing I forgot that I should have been
    wrapping it or hiding it more.
    That was the task of my husband.
    He came home that he helped me take down
    the garbage from their apartment and into the dumpster
    to put it.
    And as he was throwing it, he saw the dough.
    He didn't say nothing.
    Sabbath morning, I was serving coffee.
    And I had a piece of chocolate.
    And he says, it would be nice to have a piece of cake.
    But what can we do?
    It's in the dumpster.
    So I know that he noticed the dough.
    But slowly, I don't know, very little,
    I am not a big cook, today, either.
    I am admiring how my daughter is cooking.
    She is a really gourmet cook.
    I do simple things.
    That taste, I think, came back, remembering from the home.
    I remember how it tasted, good potato soup.
    I remember the dill that mother was using on the [INAUDIBLE]
    or seeing her doing things.
    Eventually, certain things come back to you.
    And from experience, and as my husband says,
    I experimented on him.
    He had to be the one who had to eat certain foods that was not
    so good.
    But thank God, he survived.
    47 years, we will be married, in April.
    So apparently, something went good.
    So back to your schooling.
    You were in school when you were married.
    I was in school after I got married.
    I was in school for a very long time.
    And at a very early age, I was still in school and married,
    I went to teach in the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
    That time, the head of the country of Israel,
    was Ben-Gurion, which one is a known name.
    He asked all the students who went to teacher seminar
    to volunteer and go out to teach,
    because the influx of immigration was so high.
    And Israel was not ready and prepared with enough teachers.
    So it was counted, to a certain degree,
    as credit towards our learning.
    We went out to teach in remote places, outskirt.
    My job was in a slum area, so to say, of Tel Aviv, my first job.
    I had 42 students in the class.
    Not being experienced teacher was not really a easy task.
    What were you teaching?
    And it was maybe--
    I was teaching first grade.
    First grade.
    First grade, reading.
    And I remember that I counted at least 30 different countries
    where the children from.
    And many different--
    And many different languages, yes.
    But I still cherish that year, because it was not
    only teaching those children, but helping them
    to adjust to a new life again.
    Later on, I was teaching children, mainly,
    that they came from Morocco.
    And I remember, I wasn't yet married
    when I was already helping out in that special observation
    center to teach children.
    And I used to take home to bathe children.
    I was not only teaching, but I was teaching the parents,
    because they came from Morocco, from caves that they lived in.
    And they had very little knowledge
    of how to maintain hygiene life at home.
    I used to take home children for the weekend,
    that they should have a little bit better food,
    that they should have a little bit better home.
    And in matter of fact, I got sick from one of the children.
    They had a lot of problems with eye infections, trachoma.
    And I developed from this one little gorgeous,
    beautiful child, I bedded her.
    I put her next to me in bed.
    I didn't have extra bed anyway.
    And she was sleeping with me.
    So my husband is always teasing me
    that when I said to him, yes, I marry you,
    I was not seeing really well, because I
    had that sickness of my eye.
    But it was pioneer years.
    And everybody was doing.
    And everybody was helping.
    So even if we had a lot of difficulties,
    but we felt that we are all together, building back
    normal kind of a life.
    We are building a new home for all of us,
    that we are establishing back a nation that has been destroyed.
    Until this day, when I see a pregnant woman,
    I bless, because it means one more
    life is coming to this world.
    And it's strengthening, again, the humanity.
    That there is one more instant of the ones
    that have been wiped.
    We have to replace the ones who we lost.
    So it was a very--
    it was like the spring.
    Yeah, the springtime is the time when everything
    is starting to come to life.
    That's how those years will be always remembered by me.
    Difficult in one way, it was very little income.
    It was very hard to find a job.
    It was very hard to have normal living
    quarters, or any, really, luxurious condition.
    Who had a car?
    We walked to places.
    And we never minded, because they were all
    determined to try to prove to us, to the world,
    and to humanity, that with all of us we went through,
    we are back to humanity.
    And we are building back a normal kind of a life.
    So I think that that gave us a lot of courage,
    a lot of strength, and a lot of hope,
    seeing that things are getting back to normality.
    So this year that you were teaching on the outskirts,
    you had finished school?
    I finished school two years after I was married.
    I have a teaching more.
    I was teaching and going to school at the same time.
    In school, was your training elementary education?
    Elementary education.
    That's what you were studying in school?
    I was-- yes, I always wanted primary grades.
    And until these days, it's 40 years that I am teaching.
    So you're still--
    And always race young children.
    So you continued going to school and finished when you
    had been married for two years.
    I had been married.
    In matter of fact, I had been pregnant.
    And I was teaching.
    And I was going to school.
    And I continued to go even after it.
    After you had the baby?
    After that I had the baby, yes.
    The same school?
    I went to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
    I have my BA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
    So did you transfer or you had finished one school?
    I finished one school.
    And then I started the other school
    at the Hebrew University.
    And you got a BA there?
    A BA there, in education.
    And then, we came to this country as exchange teachers.
    Now, your husband was out of the army by now.
    My husband was out of the army very shortly
    after we were married.
    Very shortly, I was pregnant with my first son
    when he was out of the army.
    And he went back to his profession.
    He is a high school teacher.
    And he was back to teaching.
    And what was his subject?
    His subject was Talmud, and Bible, and prophets.
    And we were both a couple of teachers.
    And then came as exchange teachers.
    Now, why did you decide to do that?
    Teaching?
    No, to come to--
    To America?
    As exchange teachers, yes.
    Because Esther, my sister, got married
    about a year and a half, because I
    was in high months of my pregnancy
    when Esther got married.
    So she got married a year and a half, about,
    after I got married.
    She married a rabbi from America.
    In Israel?
    In Israel.
    She met him in Israel?
    Yes, he was visiting in Israel.
    And he met her.
    And they got engaged.
    And they got married.
    And she had to wait for papers to join him here back.
    He was a rabbi near to Pittsburgh,
    named a place, Braddock.
    And he came-- she came out.
    And we didn't see each other for a couple years.
    And when this opportunity came that I
    can come to the state as exchange teacher.
    I was very happy to do that, because I
    wanted to see my sister.
    So you thought you would be able to spend some time?
    Some time, yes.
    I thought we came for two years teaching in a school named
    Yeshiva Flatbush.
    One of the best Jewish day schools in this country.
    And how many children did you have?
    I had two sons when I came.
    I came with two sons.
    They are Israeli born, my boys.
    Citizens of America, because, after a while,
    you got your citizenship here.
    But I was able to be--
    Esther moved, at that time, to New York.
    And I was in New York.
    And we saw each other, almost, on a daily basis.
    And she had children.
    So the cousins played together.
    And after the two years, we wanted to return,
    because that was the exchange teachers.
    And we were asked, in Allentown, Pennsylvania,
    by the school established a couple years prior
    to our coming to this country.
    And they asked us to help them out.
    They had problems with the principal and the teachers.
    And they said to us, knowing you,
    as pioneer kind of people, who like to build
    and who want to do, could you do this much a favor
    that you extend your stay?
    We'll make the arrangements for you and stay at.
    Lo and behold, we stay 10 years in Allentown.
    10 years.
    10 years until we establish that school.
    It's a flourishing school.
    We are still in contact with people.
    It's already over 25 years that we
    left that place, more than 25.
    And we still have some people who are in touch with us.
    And when did you decide to stay permanently
    in the United States?
    About 27 years ago, 30 years ago.
    How did you make that decision?
    Well, I tell you, I love you Israel.
    But I am very thankful to this country.
    It has been very good to us.
    And I like the education that my children were acquiring here.
    And I felt that, after Europe, this
    is a country that gives a lot of freedom.
    I wouldn't go back to any of the countries in Europe.
    I am amazed whoever is able to live there.
    And there are people who went back.
    But this country is really home to me.
    You talked about Israel as though you
    might have felt at home there.
    Israel or America, these are the two places
    that I can see myself living.
    But that time, it was really, mainly--
    the decision to remain was mainly my kids
    had very good education.
    And I felt that I can give them a University
    education here much easier if I made the right decision.
    Thank God, I raised four beautiful and very
    well-educated children who contribute to the country
    as much the country has contributed to us.
    So your children were feeling at home here and getting
    plugged in to things.
    And it seemed that they--
    And then I went, also, I went to Lehigh University that's
    in Bethlehem, next to Allentown.
    And I got my master's degree in Children's Literature there.
    It's very hard to jump from one place again to the other place.
    We spend a lot of time in Israel.
    We have a little condominium in Jerusalem.
    And as much we can, we spend.
    And whenever I go, I try, there, to be with young children.
    This whole desire of being with children and teaching,
    I think it comes from the time when we're in the cattle car,
    going towards Auschwitz, and the crying, in the night,
    of the children, which is still ringing in my ear.
    I was very young.
    But yet, there were younger children who
    unfortunately never made it.
    I tried to sing to them.
    I remembered a lot of stories.
    Our house was-- mama was into poetry.
    And my father was always reading to us in the evening,
    or walking with us near to the bank of the river,
    he would always tell us stories.
    So I used the stories and calmed the children.
    And they all took to me during that trip of a few days.
    And at that time, I somehow, it's not that I made a oath.
    But it went through my mind that maybe one day,
    that would be my profession.
    Even my parents encouraged that I go into medicine.
    But maybe that would be better for me.
    So when I came back from the war, I started.
    I always have been tutoring younger children
    or helping the ones that needed in a certain area.
    And it came to me very naturally to go into.
    Seem to fit.
    We have to turn over the tape.
    So teaching has always been an important part of your life.
    And you go back to the time when you were in the cattle
    car with the children.
    You've been teaching for most of your life, I gather.
    Is that right?
    That's very right.
    I am teaching most of my life.
    And I hope to continue for many years.
    And what I like that I want to give to my students
    not only knowledge, but strength,
    and hope, and stamina, and just to teach them
    that they should cherish, always, the positive
    and not to dwell on the negative.
    And I think that comes from my experience as a Holocaust
    survivor.
    And to tell them the story on their own level.
    Well, I think you have lots more to tell us.
    I think we will conclude this interview.
    And then we'll pick up on another day
    with more of your story.
    Thank you very much, Mrs. Munch, for giving your testimony
    today.
    You're very welcome.
    And I'm looking forward being with you again and tell as much
    I can for the future generation to know.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Yaffa Munch.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Jaffa Munk (née Noemi Donath), born April 10, 1931 IN Ónod, Hungary, describes her father Philippe, who was a Rabbi, and her mother Olga Shick Donath; having one brother, Joseph, and one sister, Esther Judith; living a very normal life with a family that was religious yet open-minded and encouraged academics; the many changes that began in 1942 and 1943; being moved in May 1944 to the ghetto, where her father was put in charge; being sent to Auschwitz; the brutal arrival and her father’s last words to her: “Wherever you go, continue to believe in God;” being marched to Birkenau, which was the very last time she saw her mother; being selected by Mengele in September 1944 to go to Bergen-Belsen and the grim living situation there; the forced evacuation in January 1945 and a subsequent six week death march; escaping to a forest and being liberated May 8, 1945 by Russian soldiers; eventually returning to Budapest, Hungary, where she lived at an Orthodox refugee orphanage facility, which was started by Esther Eckstein with education as the primary goal; going with a Zionist group with 1800 refugees to Palestine on a boat leaving from Bucharest, Romania and the refusal of the British to allow them entry, but finally being allowed to land at Haifa, Palestine; the break-out of war in 1947 and the desperate living conditions during the war; being taken to Tel Aviv, Israel, where there was less danger and where she attended teacher’s seminary; meeting her husband, who was in the Army; the birth of her first son, Gabriel, which was the highlight of her life because it meant continuation of her family; her teaching positions, starting with 1st grade, where students came from 30 different countries; and how her personal strengths are her sense of hope and having a positive outlook.
    Interviewee
    Jaffa Munk
    Interviewer
    Margaret Garrett
    Date
    interview:  1996 October 08
    interview:  1997 March 11

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Munk, Jaffa, 1931-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Margaret Garrett, a volunteer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch conducted this interview on October 8, 1996 in Baltimore, MD. The interview was transferred to the Archives on October 8, 1996.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:12:08
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507547

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (6)
    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (5)

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    Also in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history volunteer collection

    Consists of interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators conducted by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Department volunteer staff. The interviewees, among them survivors from Hungary, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Poland, discuss their experiences of life before World War II, life in the ghettos, life in concentration camps, and life after the Holocaust.

    Date: 1993

    Oral history interview with Marie Schwartzman

    Oral History

    Marie Schwartzman discusses her early life in Paris, France; her large Polish family; her father’s arrest and imprisonment in Drancy; becoming the head of the family due to her mother’s illness; hiding house for three months; being arrested and sent to Drancy in October 1942; being deported to Auschwitz; living conditions in the camp; working in the crematorium sorting clothes; being marched to Ravensbrück in January 1945; living conditions in Prchin-Malkov camp; liberation by the Americans; turning in a German officer who was arrested; returning to Paris and Grenoble; immigrating to the United States in 1949; and marrying an American soldier.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Kalman

    Oral History

    Nathan Kalman (b. Natan Kalmonowitz) discusses his early life in Łódź, Poland; joining a Zionist organization in 1930; living on a kibbutz in Krakow for a year; marrying in 1939; the beginning of the German occupation; his mother’s work smuggling food; moving into the ghetto; the deaths of his mother, father, and son; being deported to Auschwitz in cattle cars; keeping a photo of his family in his shoe; conditions in Auschwitz; being moved to Gurlitz; working in an ammunition factory; liberation; remarrying; immigrating to the United States; and living in Israel from 1969-1989.

    Oral history interview with Esthy Adler

    Oral History

    Esthy Adler discusses not knowing her real name or when and where she was born, noting that many of her childhood memories are vague; her papers that say she was born in Kaliningrad, Russia, where she thinks her parents had a summer home; staying with her mother’s sister in a compound where there were frequent bombings; her mother’s death during their stay; her father’s remarriage, despite the family’s disapproval; how the Germans found her, her father, and stepmother; the last time she saw her father; how she, her aunt, cousins, and stepmother were relocated to another compound where they slept on cots in places similar to bunkers; seeing a man digging a ditch and holding a machine gun; being lined up and fired upon, but surviving; finding her way back to the barrack where she found her stepmother and another woman; being loaded onto a cattle car and taken to another location (possibly Treblinka); escaping into the forest with her stepmother via a hole and tunnel dug by another woman; living with a partisan group that consisted of Polish-Ukrainian prisoners of war and Russian deserters; the death of her stepmother by machine gun fire in the winter of 1942; being shot; becoming ill from drinking poisoned water and being nursed back to health by a peasant; living with a woman named Margot who got her a job in a factory sewing pants; leaving her job after a man paid for her to go to a private school; living with the Katz family; becoming legally independent after she turned 18; attending graduate school and being accepted into a program where she was trained as a paralegal; meeting her future husband Jim Adler at the University of Heidelberg in 1954; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Tana Gelfer

    Oral History

    Tana Gelfer, born October 7, 1939 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her parents Herman George Reichman and Johanna Kahn and her family background in Gelsenkirchen, Germany; how her father lost his banking job after the Nazi party came to power; her father’s arrest on December 27, 1942; never finding out what happened to her father; her deportation with her mother to Theresienstadt; living conditions in Theresienstadt; sharing a bunk with her mother; how her mother worked in the fields harvesting crops and sorted through prisoners’ belongings; being hospitalized frequently; how a woman in the camp, Minnie Simon, gave birth to a son in secret; how Minnie Simon, her husband Fritz, and their child all survived; being made to watch, along with other small children, the cruel treatment of men who were brought into the camp from trains; her and her mother’s liberation by Russian forces; living with her grandmother in Berlin; immigrating to the United States; marrying and raising a family; and how her mother helped sponsor several people emigrate from Germany to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Maria Devinki

    Oral History

    Maria Devinki, born June 1, 1920 in Hannover, Germany, discusses her family’s move to central Poland; her parents’ successful business there; the Nazi invasion of Poland; how Jews were forced to live in a ghetto; having to give up her large house; her father’s deportation to Treblinka where he perished; marrying her fiancé and being hidden with family members by a Polish farmer in small underground space; traveling with her husband to Regensburg, Germany to wait for U.S. visas; and settling in Kansas City, MO.

    Oral history interview with Jerome Stasson

    Oral History

    Jerome Stasson (b. Jerome Stashevsky) discusses his early life in Detroit, Michigan; coming from a family of Polish immigrants; being drafted into the U.S. army in 1943; following General Patton to Germany from England; liberating Buchenwald; his first impressions of the camp; speaking Yiddish to the survivors; destroying the letters he sent home to his family due to their distress; and his memories of the smell of the camp.

    Oral history interview with Adriana Pacifici

    Oral History

    Adriana Funaro, born in Rome, Italy on July 28, 1923, describes her early life in Rome, Italy; being expelled from public school in 1938 and afterward attending a Jewish school and a Catholic school; her father’s decision not to emigrate; a doctor’s efforts to help her father avoid a roundup in 1943; hiding with her sister in a Dominican convent; living under a false name; learning prayers while hiding; working in a partisan group while in hiding; the arrival of American soldiers; marrying a childhood friend; immigrating to the United States; and her nightmares about the war years.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Kolben

    Oral History

    Ernest Kolben describes his early life in Vienna, Austria; feeling like an outcast at school; his brother’s arrest and imprisonment in Dachau on Kristallnacht; changing conditions for the Jewish community; being sent to Theresienstadt; living and work conditions in the camp; being moved to Auschwitz in September 1944; volunteering to move to Buchenwald; arriving instead at Kaufering, near Dachau; being force marched to Camp Allach; liberation by American soldiers; his 30 day hospitalization; working for the Counterintelligence Corps to find SS members; returning to Vienna; marrying; immigrating to Montreal; moving to Chicago; and splitting his time between Vienna and the US.

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral History

    Henry Kolber (b. Hirsch Kolber), born June 6, 1923 in Przysietnica, Poland, discusses his early life in Barcice, Poland; moving with his family to Nowy Sacz, Poland after the German invasion; how the Germans shot and killed 15 Jews and selected 100 other Jews, including his father, to be locked up overnight; working as a grave digger with his father after the Aktions; how he was selected by the Judenrat to go to Rabka, Poland; upon arrival he discovered it was a school to train Ukrainian volunteers to become SS; being assigned work to dig a shooting gallery in the mountains where the new recruits would learn to shoot; covering graves and filling them with dirt and antiseptic; the commander, Rosenbaum, whom he testified against in Hamburg, Germany in 1968; his parents’ deaths in Treblinka; being sent to Krakow to build Płaszów concentration camp; being transferred to Auschwitz; marching in December 1944 in the snow for two days then being taken to Buchenwald by train; living in the barracks with Elie Wiesel; being liberated by American troops; moving to Switzerland with the help of the Red Cross; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his marriage and children.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer

    Oral History

    Ruth Greifer (b. Ruth Dahl) discusses her childhood in Geilenkirchen, Germany, and Mastricht, Netherlands; her experiences during the German invasion of the Netherlands; her life in hiding during World War II; her reunion with her parents after World War II; and her life in the United States after 1948

    Oral history interview with Anna Wollner

    Oral History

    Anna Wollner (b. Jakab) discusses her early life in Nagy-Varad, Transylvania (Oradea, Romania); her fiance’s conscription into forced labor; his return and their marriage; being forced into a ghetto; her feelings about wearing the Jewish star; being sent to Auschwitz; being transferred to Stutthof; her friend Suzy, who taught her to sabotage the materials they were working on; being moved to Riga, Latvia by boat; building roads out of Jewish headstones; acts of violence by guards; being marched back to Germany (near Gdansk, Poland); liberation by Russian soldiers; witnessing rapes; returning to Budapest, Hungary; reuniting with her husband; leaving for Munich, Germany after the communists arrived; immigrating to the United States in 1949; divorcing and moving to Israel; returning to the United States; and her feelings about German reparations.

    Oral history interview with Kate Wacz

    Oral History

    Kate Wacz (née Katalin Kadelburger), born in 1932, discusses her childhood in Budapest, Hungary; her father’s death performing forced labor; going to the Jewish gymnasium; the Germans arriving in March 1944; the school closures; moving to the ghetto; anti-Jewish violence from members of the Arrow Cross Party; the Allied bombings in January 1945; living conditions in the ghetto; liberation; readjusting to life after the war; her mother becoming a Swedish citizen; getting passage to Sweden in 1951; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Erwin Forley

    Oral History

    Erwin Forley (b. Feuerstein) discusses his childhood in Košice, Czechoslovakia, (now Slovakia) and Munkacs, Hungary (now Mukacheve, Ukraine); his life in the Munkacs ghetto; his family's deportation to Auschwitz at the hands of Hungarian gendarmes; his work in Budy, a sub camp for farming near Auschwitz; his experiences with Kapos in Auschwitz, some of whom he describes as homosexuals; the evacuation of Auschwitz and liberation by Russian troops; his return to Mukacheve; his reunion with his mother and sister; and the family's life in the United States after 1946.

    Oral history interview with Ernie Marx

    Oral History

    Ernie Marx (né Ernest Ludwig), born in Gelnhausen, Germany on November 8, 1925, discusses his childhood in Gelnhausen and Speyer am Rhein, Germany; his experiences during Kristallnacht; his arrest by the Gestapo and imprisonment in Dachau along with his father in November 1938; his father's work to organize Kindertransports of Jewish children from the Rhein area to France; his travel to France on a Kindertransport; his imprisonment in Gurs concentration camp; his involvement in the Maquis resistance group in France; his reunion with his mother and brother after World War II; and his life in the United States after 1947.

    Oral history interview with Doris Rauch

    Oral History

    Doris Rauch, born August 26, 1920 in Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses her childhood in Brno; the death of her father in 1936; the German invasion of Czechoslovakia; being unable to attend a German-speaking university because she was a Jew; attending a textile school; working in a factory; buying goods on the black market; her deportation to Theresienstadt on a passenger train; volunteering to work planting trees in Bohemia with her mother; returning to Theresienstadt after six weeks; avoiding transports to the East; being put on a transport in September 1942 along with her mother and boyfriend; being taken to Raasiku, Estonia and separated from her mother; being taken to Tallinn, Estonia in December 1942 to clear rubble for the Holzmann construction firm; being taken to a camp in Ereda at the end of 1943; how she and other women stopped menstruating; working in the forest; a romantic relationship between a prisoner and an SS commander; being given a ring by male inmate; contracting hepatitis in Ereda; being taken to Stutthof; how she had written in a diary every day in Estonia; being very sick; arriving at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945; taking another prisoner’s place to work in a factory; finding fliers saying that the Allies were approaching; being taken to the Danish border at the end of April 1945 and turned over to the Danish Red Cross who provided food, care, and new clothing; living in Sweden for two years working as a secretary for the World Jewish Congress; living with two women she met in the camps; moving to the United States in May 1947 and experiencing culture shock; marrying and moving to Chicago, then Pittsburg, and then to Washington D.C.; the effect of her experiences on her religious beliefs; and reparations from Germany.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

    Oral History

    Joseph Elman, born February 5, 1922 in Pruzhany, Poland (present day Belarus), discusses the German and Russian occupations of Pruzhany; his memories of the murder of 11 Jews in Pruzhany by Nazis; being forced into slave labor; the relocation of his family into the ghetto; daily living conditions in the ghetto, which included starvation and crowding; his work in the ghetto’s food department; the liquidation of the ghetto starting in January 1943; his father’s membership in the Judenrat; his father’s suicide; how he and others built a bunker in the ghetto; his contact with a resistance group which was smuggling weapons into the ghetto; his escape from the ghetto with a large group of people during the liquidation; his experience living in the woods as part of a partisan group; forming family bonds with members of the group; liberation by the Russian Army; returning to his home in Pruzhany to find a family living there; living with this family for a period of time; moving to Bialystok, Poland to join his brother; settling in Łódź, Poland; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Gerald Rosenstein

    Oral History

    Gerald Rosenstein (b. Gerhard Rosenstein) describes his early life in Darmstadt, Germany; being attacked and beaten by a schoolmate’s father as a child; immigrating to Amsterdam with his family in May 1940; trying to leave for England after the German occupation; the persecutions Amsterdam’s Jewish community faced; being separated from his family in Westerbork; being sent to Theresienstadt; reuniting with his parents there; living conditions in Theresienstadt; partaking in propaganda for the Red Cross; being deported to Auschwitz with his father; being transferred to Gleiwitz; working conditions in camp; being marched to Blechhammer in January 1945; how he felt at liberation; traveling through Poland, Romania, and Odessa before boarding a Red Cross ship to Paris;

    Oral history interview with Ivan Becker

    Oral History

    Ivan Becker, born in 1929, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his memories of the "hanging priest of Budapest" who killed Jews for refusing conversion to Christianity; the Nazi invasion of Hungary; harsh restrictions on Jews; his father who was sent to Buchenwald; being sent on a death march with his mother from Budapest towards Austria; being separated from his mother and never seeing her again; his life in hiding; his experiences in an unnamed ghetto; his return to Budapest after liberation; his time in a displaced persons camp in Bad Gastein, Austria; his immigration to the United States as a "war orphan" in 1946; and his adjustment to life after the Holocaust and success in business.

    Oral history interview with Romana Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Romana Koplewicz (née Margitte), born April 26, 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her pre-war life in Poland; her parents and sister; her father’s dye factory; her education at a private Jewish school; her law school education at the University of Joseph Pilsudski in Warsaw; the antisemitism she experienced in law school; meeting her husband in 1936; her inability to complete law school due to anti-Jewish legislation; the beginning of the war and ghettoization in Warsaw; working in her father’s factory; her father’s arrest and return in the spring of 1940; the liquidation of the ghetto; her work sewing German uniforms; her escape with her family from numerous selections; the false papers she and her sister acquired in 1943; her work in the ghetto in a manufacturing factory; working as a housekeeper to survive; her time in Otwock Poland working as a chambermaid in summer 1944 at a convent; her escape to Grodzisko Mazovieckie, Poland because the Gestapo were looking for her; her time working for a German in Warsaw; the Warsaw ghetto uprising; the ghetto’s evacuation and her transfer to Piastów, Poland; her survival and return to Warsaw; her reunion with her husband and their marriage; leaving Warsaw for Germany with her husband; her time in Germany with her husband waiting for their visa to the United States; her immigration to the United States in May 1949; her master’s degree in social work; and her two children and her life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Joseph Koplewicz, born December 7, 1915 in Kielce, Poland, describes his pre-war life in Kielce; his parents and siblings; his father’s occupation as a businessman; his education in Kielce and law school education in Warsaw; his family’s religious attitudes; his experiences with antisemitism while attending law school; the beginning of the war; his arrest in Kielce for not wearing a Star of David badge; the ghettoization of Warsaw; performing forced labor in Warsaw; his father’s death due to health complications; his stay with his sister and her husband in a comfortable apartment; his marriage in 1942; being wounded in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; his transfer to Majdanek concentration camp; his transfer to Budzyn labor camp near Krasnik, Poland until February 1944; his transfer to Mielec, Poland where he worked as a draftsman until July 1944; his short time in Wieliczka, Flossenbürg, Litomerice, and Dachau; his transfer to Augsburg, Germany where he worked in airport construction; his time in Kaufering and Nuremburg; a forced march to Landshut, Germany where the SS guards in charge fled; the marchers subsequent scattering; his survival and return to Poland; his reunion with his wife; their decision to leave Poland and immigrate to the United States in 1949; and his post-war life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Irving Schaffer

    Oral History

    Irving Schaffer, born May 26, 1928 in Chust, Czechoslovakia (present day Khust, Ukraine), discusses growing up in an Orthodox family; his early education; a teacher beating him in front of the class in 1943; experiencing antisemitism before the war; his father’s arrest for receiving milk from a neighbor; the deportation of his father and brother to labor camps; his family’s eviction from their home and deportation to the Chust Ghetto; conditions of the ghetto, such as the Jewish leadership; his assignment as a messenger and pass to leave the ghetto; smuggling in bread from outside the ghetto; people being punished for being Hungarian; being transported by train from the ghetto after three weeks; how partisans blew up the train and told prisoners to jump off and escape; arriving at Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; his memories of Dr. Mengele; being separated from the rest of his family at Auschwitz; being sent to Warsaw, Poland after only three days at Auschwitz; working to clean out the Warsaw Ghetto; prisoners escaping from the Warsaw ghetto; being marched out of the ghetto in August 1944; arriving at Kutno on the German and Polish border; being transported by train to Dachau; living in Camp Seven and working in Mühldorf in an ammunition factory; stealing potatoes and bartering with other prisoners; being transported from Dachau; finding a train transporting sugar that had been bombed and eating the hot sugar; being transported to the Landshut camp; working in Landsberg, Germany; a bombing by American planes; being released by the Germans and then chased down and beaten into a coma; waking up in a German hospital; organizations that assisted in reconnecting families, such as UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee; being liberated in Feldmoching, Germany; finding his brother in Chust; how the Russians did not let him leave Chust; escaping across borders into Germany; attending school in Munich, Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with William Klein

    Oral History

    William Klein, born in 1924, discusses growing up in Užhorod, Czechoslovakia (present day Uzhhorod, Ukraine), in a large family; attending Jewish school until the sixth grade, then entering a public high school; the friendliness between Jews and non-Jews in Užhorod; his two older brothers leaving in 1940 for Yugoslavia and Russia with the army; Jews being made to wear the yellow Star of David badge and comply with a curfew beginning in 1942; hearing rumors about Jews being killed in Poland; being forced into the ghetto in January or February 1944; being taken by train to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; last seeing his parents and sister as they went through the selection process at Auschwitz; being advised by a kapo to volunteer for work outside the camp when he had the opportunity; being taken to what had been the Warsaw Ghetto along with his brother and brother-in-law to demolish buildings and clear debris; finding gold pieces in an abandoned house where he was working and hiding them in a belt; prisoners making up songs and singing as they worked; being forced to march to Dachau as the Russians advanced towards Warsaw; witnessing the death of a rabbi he and his brother had helped on the march; staying in Dachau for a few days; volunteering to work at a construction site; being seriously injured on the construction site and being helped by fellow prisoners, including one who was a doctor; escaping with his brother and brother-in-law from a train and hiding in a farmhouse as the Americans liberated the area; reuniting with his surviving family members in Bratislava and Užhorod; living in Sudetenland and then in a series of displaced persons camps in Germany (Wasserburg, Föhrenwald, and Bremerhaven) and applying to move to the United States; having his application delayed after being accused of being a communist; moving to Chicago in 1951; his pride in his Jewish identity; health problems caused by beatings he received during his time as a prisoner; telling his children about his experiences; and his response to the question of why he does not hate.

    Oral history interview with George Pisik

    Oral History

    George Pisik, born May 25, 1925, describes his experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s 15th armored division, 10th infantry battalion; entering Dachau in May 1945 without any prior knowledge of concentration camps; his battalion’s doctor trying to help the prisoners; searching a guard who was subsequently taken by prisoners and killed in the barracks; meeting a 19 year-old female prisoner in Dachau and giving her the mezuzah his grandmother had given him to wear; receiving almost 100 mezuzahs from his family and friends after writing them; giving these mezuzahs to chaplains to distribute and to his fellow soldiers, telling them they were good luck charms; entering Munich and seeing the giant swastika on Munich Stadium, which his commander ordered to be destroyed by tank fire; seeing Germans surrender; conflicts with German civilians; suffering from trench foot and impetigo; returning to the United States expecting to be sent to Japan but staying after the bombing of Hiroshima; after his homecoming, using a swastika flag as a doormat, which drew the attention of the neighborhood and the police when his mother washed it and hung it out to dry; bringing home pistols which his mother took to the army depot to be deactivated; returning to college; his frustration with Holocaust deniers, including a Catholic priest he met in 1950 in Louisiana; the failings of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust; his feelings towards the Germans; his belief that a holocaust could happen again; his level of religious involvement; and the importance of education in preventing another holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rosicka

    Oral History

    Ruth Rosicka, born August 13, 1919 in Nowice, Czechoslovakia (present day Poland), describes her Polish father who was actively pro-Zion; escaping bombing in Bielsko, Poland; escaping through Krakow, Poland and being found by the Russian army; being deported to a camp in Siberia from which she was amnestied in 1941; being drafted by the Czechoslovakian army and working in the medical brigade, where in 1944 she met her husband; being taken to the Carpathian Mountains, to the war front, where they stayed until February 1945; being released from the Army in May 1945 because of her pregnancy; and living in Prague, Czech Republic after the war.

    Oral history interview with Salomon Cohen

    Oral History

    Salomon Cohen, born July 28, 1937 in Athens, Greece, discusses how his family escaped to the south of Greece in February 1943 with the help of partisans; hiding with his family in the mountains for six months; how the partisans obtained food from monasteries in the mountains for his family; using false names while in hiding; traveling to Izmir, Turkey then Syria; being captured by English troops; how the family was taken to British camps in the Gaza Strip; their escape with the help of a Jewish agency; traveling to Ted Aviv, Israel, where they lived from 1944 to 1952; going into the army as a tank fighter; going to Haifa, Israel after leaving the army; getting married and having children; and his visits to Greece.

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

    Suzanne Foldes (b. Zsuzsi Morvai) discusses her childhood in Miskolc, Hungary; her Jewish and Christian schooling; pre-war antisemitism; training as a gymnast but being denied entry into the Olympics because she was Jewish; her father’s conscription into Hungarian forced labor; getting married in 1942 to Paul Berkowitz; terminating a pregnancy; the German occupation of Hungary; being confined to a ghetto; being transported to Auschwitz by cattle car; learning of her mother’s death by gassing; moving to Buchenwald; how she was good at stealing coal; liberation; returning to Budapest after the war; reuniting with her father; learning of her husband’s death; marrying a friend from before the war; immigrating to the United States in 1956; and speaking about her wartime experiences beginning in the 1990s.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Vince

    Oral History

    Tibor Vince, born in 1910, describes his childhood near Budapest, Hungary; his medical studies in Italy; his escape to Cuba at the outbreak of World War II; his immigration to the United States; his work as a physician in the United States Army; his experiences at Dachau shortly after liberation; his medical treatment of Allied prisoners of war; and his life in New York, NY after 1945.

    Oral history interview with Elias Piorko

    Oral History

    Elias Piorko, born on May 15, 1919, discusses his childhood in Zambrów, Poland; his life in a kibbutz near Slonim, Poland (now Belarus); his experiences with forced labor in Russia; being in four different camps; his travels through Europe on the way to Italy after World War II; and his life in the United States after 1950.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Hildesheim

    Oral History

    Benjamin (Beniek) Hildesheim discusses his childhood in Sieradz, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism and Jewish persecution in Sieradz before the Holocaust; his time in the ghettos of Sieradz and Łódź, Poland; his adoption by Chaim Rumkowski; his imprisonment at Auschwitz, Babice/Babitz (a small agricultural camp west of Auschwitz), and Buchenwald concentration camps; his participation in a death march to Theresienstadt, where he remained until liberation; his time in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), immediately after liberation; his immigration to Palestine in the first Aliyah after World War II in 1945; his participation in the Israel-Arab War of 1948 to 1949; and his life in Brazil and the United States after 1962.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Peter Masters (né Peter Arany), born February 5, 1922, in Vienna, Austria, describes his prewar life in Vienna; his Viennese mother and Hungarian father; his escape to Britain after the Anschluss in 1938; his family’s internment as “friendly aliens;” his family’s reclassification as enemy aliens in Britain; his experiences volunteering for special hazardous duty in Britain and being assigned the 3rd Group, 10th Commando, an elite paratroop unit mostly consisting of Jewish or political refugees; his identity being anglicized for his protection; his work to petition for the recognition of Austrians who perished fighting the Nazis; his many family members who perished during the war; and his 1997 book, Striking back: A Jewish commando’s war against the Nazis, which he wrote as a counterpoint to the idea the Jews did not fight back during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Wolke

    Oral History

    Joseph Wolke (Wolkeovich), born July 14, 1919 in Tomashov (Tomaszów Mazowiecki), Poland, discusses his family background and religious upbringing; his father’s successful farm outside the city; the rise of Hitler and antisemitism; racial laws against Jews; being deported during Rosh Hashanah; arriving in Krakow, Poland on a cattle train; his disbelief that the war would last so long; escaping from the Germans and returning to Tomashov by bus; how the farm provided for the family; increases in the deportation of Jews; living in the Tomashov ghetto; smuggling food into the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto on November 1, 1942; the mass burial of Jews in the ghetto for which he was forced to dig graves; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; being transferred on a cattle train to Auschwitz; forced labor digging ditches outside the camp; being relocated to Gross-Rosen camp; the death march from Rosen, which lasted over a week; starvation during the march; liberation by Russian forces; returning home to Poland; meeting his wife and having a child; immigrating to the United States in August 1950; living in Baltimore, MD with his wife’s family; adjusting to American life; creating a business; and learning the fate of his family members in the years following the war.

    Oral history interview with Ionel Ghelman

    Oral History

    Ionel Ghelman, born on March 27, 1929 in Bucharest, Romania, discusses his mother’s death in 1938 and being raised by his maternal aunt; experiencing antisemitism; seeing boys in 1936 practicing to be in the Iron Guard in the future; the German occupation in 1940; the events in January 1941, including pogroms, stores being burned, and Jews being killed; ration cards and how Jews’ ration cards were half of Rumanians’ cards; the Allied bombardments of Bucharest from late 1943 to early 1944; seeing Russian tanks and troops in August 1944; leaving school in 1946 to work in a locomotive factory; rejecting the Communist Youth Party and feeling a connection to Zionist Hashomer Hatzair; going to Bukovina to prepare for kibbutz in Israel; the banning of Zionist organizations in 1949; being a draftsman for oil pipeline company from 1948 to 1950; marrying a Romanian woman in 1956; his children; being expelled from the Communist Party because parents went to Israel; getting visas for Hungary, France, and Germany in 1976; going to New York in April 21, 1977 with the help of HIAS; and settling in Washington and working for Bechtel.

    Oral history interview with Irimia Solomon

    Oral History

    Irimia Solomon, born on November 3, 1924 in Dorohoi, Romania, describes his parents, who were divorced; how he and his mother lived with his grandparents in Falticeni, Romania; his granfather’s farm; the Jewish community in the town and his family not being particularly religious; Jews in Moldovan cities; his education; playing soccer with non-Jewish children; hearing about antisemitism; wanting to go to Palestine; going to school in Bucharest, Romania to learn a trade; his relationship with his father; an uprising in Romania in September 1940; the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier); returning to Falticeni in December 1941; going to Dorohoi; his father being taken away in June 1942; being taken to forced work, unloading rail cards and sweeping; being deported with his mother to Transnistria and conditions during the journey there; having to trade in their Romanian money for Russian rubles; arriving in Sharhorod, Ukraine; being housed in a synagogue for several weeks; staying in a room in a house of a Christian family with other Jews; being in a ghetto, where there was religious life but no cultural life; building roads and sleeping overnight in rail cars outfitted with bunk bed; typhus in Sharhorod and helping to bury the dead; his mother not working and staying indoors; being helped by a cousin’s Christian husband; being taken back to Dorohoi in December 1943; moving from house to house until they could contact relatives; not feeling relief or happiness; his mother being treated as a war widow and being allowed to sell certain items, such as stamps, alcohol, and tobacco; returning to school and going to the polytechnic in 1945; waiting from 1958 to 1972 to get a passport; going to Israel, where his wife did not like the heat; going to Canada, where they settled in Toronto; working as an engineer; and moving to Montreal.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Salus

    Oral History

    Lotte Salus (b. Charlotte Helena Cohen) discusses her childhood living near the Dutch border in Germany; working for a Jewish family; being arrested and pressed into labor after Kristallnacht; being sent to Amsterdam, Netherlands by her father; living with other Jewish teenagers in The Hague, Netherlands; learning her family had been deported to Westerbork; moving to Amsterdam in May 1940; receiving orders to register with the police; being deported to Westerbork; reuniting with her family; daily life in Westerbork; volunteering to go to Theresienstadt with her parents in 1944; her experiences in the camps Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Praust; being taken on a death march in March 1945; liberation by the Russians; sexual violence perpetrated by the Russians; returning to Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949; and marrying and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Irena Kirkland

    Oral History

    Irena Neumann discusses her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); not having a Jewish identity or religious education; evacuating Prague before the Munich Agreement; returning to the city and learning she was Jewish; adapting to restrictions placed on Jews; her feelings about wearing the yellow star; being deported to Theresienstadt with her family; daily life in the camp; contracting encephalitis; being deported to Auschwitz; conditions in camps Auschwitz and Sachsen Chemnitz; returning to Theresienstadt in May 1945; reuniting with her parents; liberation by Russian soldiers; returning to Prague; beginning university; being arrested and released by communists; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Hans Hirsch

    Oral History

    Hans George Hirsch discusses his early life in Stuttgart, Germany; his father’s role as executive director of the German Jewish Community; graduating gymnasium in 1934; prewar antisemitism; the difficulties he experienced attending university and holding a job in Nazi Germany; visiting Palestine in 1937; receiving a visa to leave for the United States in 1937; working on farms in the U.S.; trying to get his parents out of Europe; teaching German prisoners of war farm management from 1943 to 1946; his career trajectory in food administration and policy; and his retirement from foreign agricultural service.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, born January 28, 1911 in the United States, describes his work with the Jewish Welfare Fund in Oklahoma City, OK in the early 1940s; his draft into the military and entering Officer’s Candidate School; being shipped overseas to England, where he worked in preparation for D-Day in June 1944; his recruitment by the Civil Affairs Unit of the Military Government to gather and identify medical supplies left behind on Omaha Beach, France; helping to provide food for the 15,000 survivors of Buchenwald and working with the Red Cross and Joint Distribution Committee; traveling to Bavaria, Germany to work has a health welfare officer; working to reopen schools, hospitals, banks, and other institutions in Germany; maintaining correspondence with his wife in America during the war; returning to the United States after the war and moving to Chicago as an assistant in health planning; and sharing what he had witnessed in Buchenwald after years of being unable to speak about it.

    Oral history interview with Ludwig Jacob

    Oral History

    Ludwig Jacob discusses his early life in Schmalkalden, Germany; being arrested with his parents on Kristallnacht; being imprisoned in Buchenwald for a month; leaving on a Kindertransport to Holland; living in a children’s home; the German invasion; moving to his brother’s home in Amsterdam; the arrest of his brother, who subsequently was imprisoned and died in Mauthausen; receiving a deportation notice; choosing to live under a false identity; moving to Paris, France and working with the underground; sabotaging the German defense organization where he worked; being denounced and arrested; spending time in Fresnes prison before being deported to Drancy; jumping off the train on the way to Buchenwald; rejoining the resistance; working for Americans in Paris; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his marriage and life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Artman

    Oral History

    Barbara Feuerstein Artman, born September 12, 1923 in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her parents Elizabeth and Henry Feuerstein and two younger brothers; her 14 aunts and uncles and 27 first cousins, who all perished in the Holocaust; her family’s move to Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), which in March 1939 was occupied by Hungry; the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944; being forced to live in a ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; her deportation with her family to Auschwitz; conditions in Auschwitz; the treatment of camp guards; being sent to a labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) with her mother; their liberation by the Russians while on a march; walking, at the end of the war, to Krakow; reuniting with one brother; attending medical school but changing her major to chemistry; contacting uncles in United States who arranged for visas and transportation to the US for her, her mother, and her brother; and settling in Forest Hills, NY, where she married another refugee and had one son.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Schonbach

    Oral History

    Fritz (né Frederic) Schonbach, born in 1920, discusses his middle-class childhood in Vienna, Austria; attending private school until Jewish restrictions began in 1938; how life changed with the Nazi annexation of Austria; antisemitism in Austria and the terror campaigns; fleeing to Italy then to England in 1939; his family fleeing to Argentina while he remained in England; his internment in England because of his Austrian background; volunteering for the Australian army; daily life in the army; being discharged in 1946; enrolling in art school after the war; meeting his wife; reuniting with family in Argentina; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and discovering what happened to various family members in the war.

    Oral history interview with Charles Barber

    Oral History

    Charles Barber, born in 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his father, who owned a liquor store; attending a public grade school, where some of the non-Jews wouldn't speak with him; his memories of the first bomb being dropped in Budapest in 1939; his father being drafted into the labor corps of the Hungarian army; his mother’s work as a tailor; being an only child; his father dying after two months in the labor corps; his mother being taken to a camp for eight months in 1943; living with several different people; his mother returning home; his memories of feeling guilty for telling his mother that he was hungry; the Jews being summoned to the courthouse in town and being separated from his mother by the officials; going to live in an orphanage with a Swedish flag out front; the Russian army and their activities in Budapest; his aunt sending him to the Red Cross then a Zionist orphanage in Sagat; returning to Budapest to work in a factory; attending law school but leaving when the revolution began; going to Austria and then the United States with the help of the Red Cross; living with an uncle in the US; becoming an accountant, attending Queensborough Community College and then Bernard Baruch College; working for ABC Transnational Transport; getting married to an Austrian Holocaust survivor; the effects of his Holocaust experience; losing his faith when he lost his parents; visiting Europe; antisemitism in Hungary; wanting to go to Israel; possessing a letter from his mother, which she wrote while she was in Bergen-Belsen, and a picture of his parents (which is in the USHMM Photo Archive); and his other family pictures.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Borsos

    Oral History

    Tibor Borsos, born on March 12, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his highly intellectual Catholic family; his family moving to Debrecen in 1936; having many Jewish friends; how he “looked Jewish” and was sometimes made fun of; his family’s possession of an American flag, National Geographic magazines, and a censored version of Time magazine; his family burning the American flag March 21, 1944 to be safe; his family storing carpets, silver, and jewelry for Jewish friends and hiding them in the university library; his mother being denounced, arrested, and released; his family leaving Debrecen in May 1944; witnessing Jews being rounded up; going to Budapest and living next door to a Swedish protected house; the closing of schools in the fall of 1944; his family going in December 1944 to Halle an der Saale, Germany, where his father taught in a medical school; being drafted into the Hungarian Army in March 1945 and riding on a train for two months to avoid finding his unit; finding his brother on May 8, 1945 in Mitterald; being rounded up by Patton’s troops and sent to Ludwigshafen, Germany; being sent to a POW camp in Heilbronn; going to Gottingen in the British Occupation Zone; sailing to the United States in December 1949 on the USS Harry Taylor; earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Johns Hopkins; researching cancer at NIH; marrying a survivor of Bergen-Belsen; and his feelings about not being officially Jewish.

    Oral history interview with Robert Kertesz

    Oral History

    Robert Kertesz, born in 1933, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; antisemitism in Budapest; his family; his religious upbringing; being stuck in Hungary due to travel restrictions; his father being conscripted into the Hungarian Army; the Hungarian Nazis and Arrow Cross Party members in his neighborhood; the increasing antisemitism and abuse; how the ghetto grew in 1943; finding safe houses for children; escaping from the ghetto after his parent’s deportation; hiding in his Christian aunt’s home; returning to Budapest to escape violence; returning to the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; liberation by the Soviets; looting by the Soviet Army in the city; working as a guide and interpreter for Russians; his parents’ return; living in a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and his life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

    Fred Kahn, born December 19, 1932 in Wiesbaden, Germany, describes being raised until he was six years old by an aunt (Rosa Nassauer) in Wehen, Germany; his older brother, Walter; his Christian friend, Walter Kaltwasser, who protected him from young Nazis; being raised religious by his aunt and uncle; his grandfather dying in 1938; being sent after the Munich Agreement to Aachen, Germany, where he crossed the border and joined his parents and brother in Verviers, Belgium; his father’s successful career as playing bridge; his aunt and uncle being sent to Łódź, Poland; starting school in Belgium; his parents and life in Verviers; going to Liege and Brussels in May 1940 with his family; returning to Verviers; Jews having to register; the small right-wing party, Rexiste, which collaborated with the Nazis; his father being interrogated; getting false identities with the last name Jejeune; being taught Catholic prayers; getting scarlet fever in the spring of 1942; leaving his school after getting in a fight; his principal helping him; going into hiding and the various ways he entertained himself; moving from village to village in 1943; getting a job in 1944, carrying milk; being liberated in September 1944 by the American Army; life when he was in hiding; his mother’s accused of being a German spy and arrested; the Battle of the Bulge; events he heard about involving the underground; factors that helped him survive; developing a sense of humor; and considering Verviers his hometown.

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger (née Hilsinrath), born in 1929, discusses her family and childhood in Bad Kreuznach, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to Paris, France; being homeless; fleeing to Versailles when the Germans invaded; going to Château des Morelles, a home for homeless children; her schooling; getting tickets to the United States from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; her life in the U.S.; her feelings about returning home to Europe; and her life since the war.

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

    Hans Arnold Wangesheim, born in Nuremberg, Germany on July 25, 1924, describes his parents divorcing in 1930; his mother placing him in a very strict Jewish orphanage in Furth; his encounters with Hitler youth; getting passage on a Kindertransport with help of Quakers in 1938; going to Chicago, IL then Milwaukee, WI; running away from a Jewish orphanage and being placed with a family in Janesville, WI; attending a watchmaker’s college; enlisting in 1942 in the Army Air Corps and being a B-17 tail gunner; his training plane crashing in Utah in 1943 and being severely injured; going to OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in Washington in 1944; going in late 1944 to Paris, France then Germany; crossing the Rhine with the 4th Division behind German lines picking up mail from agents; seeing Nuremberg bombed; going back to Furth; going in April 1945 to Dachau to get important political prisoners, including the former French Prime Minister Leon Blum; locating the prisoners in Innsbruck, Austria; his counterintelligence work for de-Nazification and working with Hugh Trevor-Roper to hunt down Wilhelm Zander; being assigned to trace enemy assets including Nazi treasures and Reichsbank gold; his work interrogating Germans, doing anti-Soviet intelligence, and being sent to Czechoslovakia as a contact for Hungarian agents; returning to the US, attending school, and working for the US Treasury; and working for a law firm.

    Oral history interview with Sia Hertsberg

    Oral History

    Sia Hertsberg (née Izrailewitsch), born June 8, 1927 in Riga, Latvia, describes her early family life and schooling; the Jewish community and the state of antisemitism in pre-war Riga; the 1940 Russian invasion; her family’s persecution at the hands of the Russian communists; the 1941 Nazi occupation and implementation of Nazi race laws; the burning of Riga’s synagogues; the help her family received from non-Jewish friends; the establishment and the later liquidation of the Riga ghetto; how a Latvian soldier attempted to rape her; avoiding the Rumbula massacre; working as a seamstress in a Reichskommissariat workshop; her family’s transport to the Kaiserwald concentration camp; how her father saved her sister several times by hiding her amidst the trash or in a pot of soup when the Nazis were looking for young children; the Nazis’ theft of her childhood; the normalcy of discussing death; her family’s transport via ship and cattle car to Stutthof; the typhus epidemic and her work carrying the dead to the crematorium; her mother’s death; her and her sister’s escape from a death march; seeking shelter and being turned away by Polish peasants; liberation by Russian soldiers on March 23, 1945; hospitalization and her sister’s death; her deep depression at losing her family; her hospitalization in Kolomna, Russia; her return to Riga and reunion with her father; falling in love with her future husband; their attempts to illegally immigrate to the United States and her father’s subsequent imprisonment by the Russians; the birth of her two sons; finishing her schooling; her husband’s death; her move to Chicago, Illinois and her post-war life in the United States; and her father’s death on the same day as her sister, thirty years later.

    Oral history interview with Chava Frajhof

    Oral History

    Chava Frajhof (née Geister), born September 20, 1923 in Belzyce, Poland, discusses her family; the German invasion of Poland in 1939; hiding from the Germans; paying the Judenrat to be assigned work in Będzin, Poland; working as a seamstress; being sent to Kraśnik, Poland in 1943; being liberated by the Soviets; fleeing to Lublin, Poland; having a family; going to Frankfurt, Germany then Berlin, Germany; and immigrating to Brazil in 1953 to join her family.

    Oral history interview with Israel Frajhof

    Oral History

    Israel Frajhof, born March 3, 1920 in Krasnik (near Lublin), Poland, describes experiencing violent antisemitism in 1933; the establishment of a ghetto in the fall of 1942; the typhus epidemic and conditions in the ghetto; working outside the ghetto; the deportation of old men, women and children deported to Majdanek and Treblinka in December 1942; trying to become a policeman but being declined permission; doing carpentry work for Germans making furniture; appels, beatings, and sleeping in the synagogue; meeting his future wife Chava Geister, who was in Krasnik camp; the Russians’ arrival in Lublin on July 22,1944; the death march to Germany and escaping into the forest for 10 days; meeting up with Chava and going to Krasnik; going to Lublin; getting married in January 1946; going to Berlin , Germany and being helped by the UNRRA; going to Frankfurt, Germany; going to Brazil in 1953; visiting Majdanek in 1986; and living for his wife and children.

    Oral history interview with Edward Novakoff

    Oral History

    Edward Novakoff, born in 1926 in Boston, Massachusetts, discusses his Ukrainian and Lithuanian immigrant parents; enlisting in the U.S. Army in December 1943; being shipped to Marseilles, France with the 90th Infantry Division; seeing his company wiped out in November 1944; fighting in southern Germany in January 1945; arriving at Flossenbürg in May 1945 and seeing the conditions and the survivors; his transfer to the 26th Regiment, 1st Infantry in August 1945; guarding prisoners for the Nuremburg Trials; having contact with Nuremburg prisoners; returning to the U.S. in December 1945; his life after the war; and helping to create the largest Jewish cemetery in the Boston area.

    Oral history interview with Celia Feldschuh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicole Yancey

    Oral History

    Nicole Yancey (née Guggenheim), born July 26, 1941 in Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, France, describes having one sister, Nanette, born November 1938; being separated from her family when she was two years old and sent to a farm to live in a safe and secure environment; still today calling the farmer and his wife her real grandparents; members of the French Resistance coming in for meals because the farm was close to the demarcation line and there was lots of Resistance activity; her daily routine of working, hiding, and eating; how her relationships were all very harmonious; being moved back to Orléans, France when she was five years old and starting school; the severe personality changes of her parents because of their experiences during the Holocaust; the torment her father experienced because he was not able to save his brothers from being murdered; being sponsored by a French/American agency to attend William and Mary College, where she met her husband; remaining in the Tidewater, VA area; converting to Catholicism because her husband is Catholic as are her children; her position now as Consul for the French Embassy in Norfolk, VA; and her assertion that tragedies like the Holocaust will continue as long as people do not learn to accept each other and their differences.

    Oral history interview with Frances Hirshfeld

    Oral History

    Frances Hirshfeld (née Frieda Miriam Rosenbloom), born in 1918, discusses her family and childhood in Opatów, Poland; moving to Zawiercie, Poland and its local Jewish population; the beginning of the war; her religious life; antisemitism; Kristallnacht; going into hiding in Ukraine and returning to Poland; the Judenrat; adjusting to anti-Jewish laws; moving into the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz in 1943; living conditions in Auschwitz; being moved to Birkenau; contracting typhoid fever and scabies; lack of medical care; bombings near the camp; returning to Auschwitz; hearing about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; working in a munitions factory; being on a death march to Ravensbrück; escaping into a forest; liberation by the Soviets; immigrating to the United States in October 1946; her husband immigrating to the U.S. in 1949; visiting Poland; her feelings about Holocaust deniers; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Moris Gluckman

    Oral History

    Moris Glukman, born in Suceava, Romania in 1924, discusses his childhood; the rise in antisemitism; deportation announcements; his arrival in Bessarabia (in Moldova and Ukraine) with his family and how the peasants took the belongings of the Romanian Jews; travel to Moravia, Czech Republic; living at the mercy of the Romanian Gendarmerie; the spread of typhus and diphtheria during the winter of 1941-1942; how the Ukranian police guarded the village in Moravia; the German entrance into Moravia; building bridges and excavating coal from open mines; his knowledge about events in Bessarabia and Russian positions and the approaching front; working in a Kolkhoz; being liberated by the Russians; his schooling in Bucharest, Romania; and immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Margie Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Margie Rosenthal (née Margit Mary Miedzwinski), born July 19, 1927 in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), describes her prewar childhood; her family’s immigration to the Philippines after the Nazi invasion so that her father could continue in the lumber business; her pleasant life in the Philippines until the Japanese bombing in December 1941 and subsequent invasion; severe changes in their lives in Pasay City as Americans began bombing nearby Manila; the delay in her family’s move to the United States in 1948 as a result of immigration quotas; her life in San Francisco; and her marriage to her husband, Ernie.

    Oral history interview with Emma Mogilensky

    Oral History

    Emma Mogilensky (née Hubert), born May 22, 1923 in Kronheim, Bavaria, describes living in the house that had been built by her great-grandfather; having one brother and one sister; living in a friendly and peaceful community until Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 when antisemitism became so violent that she was sent to Nuremberg, Germany; enrolling in a very strict, all Jewish high school; moving to Augsberg, Germany after her father was released from Dachau; the children’s transport, going to Munich, Germany and being transferred to a boat; finally arriving in London, England, where she and the other children were chosen for English homes such that not one of them would become a public charge; being sent to live with a couple, both physicians, who were extremely helpful; attending school again where English Literature became her best subject; being a Fire Watcher at St. Paul’s Cathedral and joining the British Army when she was 17; antisemitism in the Army; being a cook for 2,000 men; receiving her GED; subsequently attending college on the GI Bill; a trip to Israel with her children after her husband’s death; finding that the cemetery where her grandparents were buried was not desecrated and finding their graves; visiting her foster parents in England every year; and her serious commitment to speaking about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Isaiah Henig

    Oral History

    Isaiah Henig (né Yeshiah Henig), born in 1915, discusses his childhood in Szydlowiec, Poland; his family and the Jewish community; his religious upbringing; the absence of antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes after the German occupation; the outbreak of the war and changes in daily life; being conscripted for forced labor; the creation of the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; working as a laborer in Starachowice, Poland; diseases in the camp; working to build replacement parts for machines; not believing reports about Jewish deaths; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; working in a factory; being moved to other concentration camps, including Mauthausen and Hannover; Allied bombing of the area; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; living conditions in the camp; his job building cannons; liberation by the British; moving to a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1951; his life after the war; and his feelings about what happened.

    Oral history interview with Ida Henig

    Oral History

    Ida Henig (née Markowicz), born in 1924, discusses her family and childhood in Lódź, Poland; Łódź’s Jewish community and economy; not experiencing antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes when the Germans invaded; fleeing to Częstochowa, Poland; working in the ghetto; not believing stories of mass murder; the Jewish police; liberation by the Soviets in January 1945; going to Germany; coming to the United States in the 1950s; the fates of her family members; and her feelings about the Holocaust and war.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

    Marcel Drimer (b. Marceli Drimmer), born in 1934, discusses his childhood in Drohobych, Poland (present day Ukraine); his family; his religious upbringing; life before the war; the Russian occupation; the German invasion in 1941; the looting of Jewish property; the deportations in 1942; moving into the ghetto; the fates of his family members; Ukrainian and German police; the Judenrat; hiding in an attic for a week; escape plans being postponed due to the death of his father; how his female relatives were saved by a woman who was recognized as a righteous gentile; their living conditions while in hiding; liberation by the Soviets; adjusting to life after the war; his education; difficult living conditions in Poland; post-war anti-Semitism; immigrating to the United States in 1961; his family going to Israel; and his feelings about the war, Poland, and anti-Semitism.

    Oral history interview with Michael Silberstein

    Oral History

    Michael Silberstein (né Mieczyslaw Silberstein), born in 1930 in Grudziadz, Poland, discusses his family; life before the war; the arrival of the German Army when he was nine years old; moving to Łódź, Poland; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; being an errand boy and getting arrested in 1942; escaping arrest; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; being sent on a death march in January 1945; arriving in Mauthausen; conditions and life in Mauthausen; liberation by the Americans; reuniting with his family; meeting family in England; immigrating to the United States in1952; being drafted into the U.S. Army; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Joan Schwab

    Oral History

    Joan Schwab (née Nussbaum), born on March 24, 1926, describes living in the Tiergarten area of Berlin, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht and how two men came for her father; being placed on a Children’s Transport to England on May 21, 1939; staying with Norman and Elsie Denham and going to secondary school and Hebrew school; her brother joining her in August 1939; evacuating in September to Chichester; conditions in the home, where she shared a bed with four girls and showered every two weeks; graduating from high school in 1944 and going back to Denhams in London; sleeping in an air raid shelter when V2 rockets attacked; going after the war to the Joint Distribution Committee in Munich, Germany and finding out that her parents perished in Auschwitz and her grandfather died in Theresienstadt; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Erwin Deutscher

    Oral History

    Erwin Deutscher, born on January 28, 1923 in Vienna, Austria, describes being raised with thorough religious training; being in the Zionist Youth group, HaShomer HaDati; how his maternal grandfather had gone to the United States in 1898 to Oklahoma City, OK; his Bar Mitzvah in 1936; hearing about Hitler’s arrival on March 11, 1938; his father’s dairy business closing; his mother being arrested; getting notice that his youth group was going to go to Palestine and meeting Eichmann at the emigration office with his father; conditions getting worse in Vienna; traveling with 25 others by train to Trieste and by boat to Haifa and arriving October 24, 1938; going to Mikveh Israel agricultural school for two years then to Bnai Akiva yeshiva for another two years; working for Haganah and meeting his wife; fighting in the Israeli War of Independence; his father being taken to Dachau after Kristallnacht and then to Buchenwald from June 1939 to January 1940; his parents immigrating to the United States; his life after the war working for a life insurance company; and getting a Ph. D. in Hebrew letters at Hebrew Union College.

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

    George Pick, born in Budapest, Hungary on March 28, 1934, describes his very large extended family; his father losing his job in May 1939 and being sent on labor brigade in September 1940 for three months; seeing German tanks in the streets on March 9, 1944 and the subsequent anti-Jewish laws after including wearing the yellow star and not being allowed to attend school after April; his father having to leave again; being ordered to move to special Jewish houses in the summer of 1944; the air raids in Budapest and the massive bombings on July 2, 1944; his father’s return; he and his mother joining his father in hiding in a uniform factory building in November 1944; the factory being raided December 2, 1944 and bribing their way out; being taken to a Red Cross building and running away; going to the ghetto on December 14, 1944 and his father being in the ghetto police; the siege of Budapest; Wallenberg saving Jews from a massacre in January 1945; liberation; starting school; his Bar Mitzvah in 1947; attending university; going to Austria and then the United States, where his uncle lived; working for the Navy as mechanical engineer and retiring in 1996; his three marriages and not having children; and his commitment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

    Oral History

    Hedi Pope (née Politzer), born March 18, 1920 in Vienna, Austria, describes her prosperous family, which was neither religious nor political; wanting to be a dancer as a child; the increase in anti-Semitism in Vienna; her memories, day-by-day, of Hitler’s invasion of Austria in March 1938; rising fears to speak out about Hitler’s actions; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being sent to Dachau; the difficulty of getting all the documents to go to the United States; immigrating to the U.S. in January 1939; living in Newark, NJ; joining the Refugee Artist’s Group as a dancer; going to Miami University in Ohio and graduating in 1942; having two children; maintaining a dance studio in Alexandria, VA until 1980; and working with the volunteer corps at USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Bella Simon Pasternak

    Oral History

    Bella Simon Pasternak, born in 1928, discusses her liberation from Auschwitz by Russians; walking home to Hungary during the winter; being hospitalized with frostbite and starvation; living in a displaced persons camp in Innsbruck, Austria; immigrating to the United States in 1946; her first impressions of the U.S.; Americans’ disbelief at her experiences; meeting her husband, who was also a survivor; her religious views becoming more orthodox; desiring to immigrate to Israel; coping with the Holocaust many years after it occurred and still experiencing nightmares; and how important her grandchildren are to her.

    Oral history interview with Marion Friedman

    Oral History

    Marion Friedman (b. Traute Marion Julia Georgia Sulimas), born in 1922, discusses her childhood in Hamburg, Germany; being raised with her Christian mother and Jewish father; her parents’ upbringings; celebrating both Christian and Jewish holidays; her brothers’ immigrations to China and the United States; the Aryanization of her father’s bank; her mother’s resourcefulness; receiving a visa along with her mother to go to the U.S.; being sent to the U.S. on her own because her mother decided to stay with her father; learning of her parents’ arrest and deaths; adjusting to life in the U.S.; meeting her husband; returning to Germany long after the war; meeting her German family; and dealing with her losses on a daily basis.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Strassburger, born in 1938, discusses her childhood in a small town near Zakopane, Poland; her father’s arrest and imprisonment in Siberia; being forced into the Tarnow ghetto with her mother and grandmother; watching her grandmother being taken by the Germans; hiding under an assumed Christian identity; being drugged and hidden in a basement during dangerous times; the family who hid her and her mother; believing she was a Catholic; her Catholic schooling; liberation by the Russians; learning she was Jewish after the war; being smuggled out of Poland with her mother; living at a Jewish orphanage with her mother in Germany; learning her father was alive; moving to Italy to be with her father; immigrating to England with her family; immigrating to the United States; adjusting to life as a teenager in the U.S.; her marriage; studying social work in college; her volunteer work; and her family.

    Oral history interview with Jadwiga Dziekonski

    Oral History

    Jadwiga Dziekonski, born in 1919, discusses her family’s emigration from Kiev, Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland in 1921 because of the revolution; her Catholic upbringing; attending public school; following the political situation in Germany; meeting her husband; the German invasion and occupation; her father’s exile in London, England as a member of the Bank of Poland; moving to Warsaw with her husband; her husband’s role in the Home Army; her daughter’s birth in 1943; sheltering two Jewish women in her mother’s apartment; the Polish underground’s participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the Warsaw Uprising; her husband’s arrest and imprisonment in Bergen-Belsen and Gross-Rosen; liberation; readjusting to life after the war; escaping to London through Sweden in 1947; leaving her mother behind; reuniting with her father; immigrating to Detroit in 1951; visiting Poland in 1988 to see her husband’s family; her feelings about being Polish; how she feels about Jewish people and German people; and her two visits to Israel.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

    Oral History

    Ruth Harvey, born in 1928, describes growing up with mixed Jewish and Christian heritage; her childhood in Berlin, Germany; being expelled from public school in 1938; attending a private Jewish school; witnessing the burning of Berlin’s temple during Kristallnacht; hearing Hitler’s speeches over loudspeakers; leaving Germany in 1939 with her mother to meet her father in Cuba; immigrating to New York in 1940 with her parents; growing up in New York City; moving to Washington, DC for a job with the State Department; getting married and having children; having a sense of confusion about her religious identity; why she chose not to visit any concentration camps; and volunteering at the USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Thomas B. Gardiner

    Oral History

    Thomas Brown Gardiner, born on March 26, 1920 in St. Louis County, Missouri, describes being raised by his widowed mother; life during the Depression; working for a house painter as a teen in St. Louis; getting married in 1940; working for a manufacturer that made small parts for the M1 rifle; being drafted in 1944; training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas; being sent to England in the fall of 1944; going to France; being assigned to the 45th Infantry Division; seeing action in the Vosges Mountains and Alsace-Lorraine; participating in the capture of Schaffenburg; going through Nuremberg and Munich; liberating Dachau as a member of L Company in the 157th Infantry Regiment; guarding the camp while waiting for the military police to arrive; billeting in apartment buildings outside of the camp, where the Nazi officers had lived; typhus in the camp and the high death rate of the survivors; speaking with the survivors and being shown the camp by them; going to Munich then Augsburg for a month; being sent to Le Havre, France; returning to the US; working in military camps in Texas until his release; the effect seeing Dachau had on him; and how he feels stronger in his Christian faith.

    Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

    Oral History

    Roberta Jones, born October 15, 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri, discusses growing up during the Great Depression; enlisting as a nurse in the United States Army; being commissioned as a second lieutenant with the 3rd Army and assigned to the 121st Semi-Mobile Evacuation Hospital; traveling by ship to England and helping in a hospital there; traveling to Luxembourg and then into Germany under dangerous conditions; going to Buchenwald; seeing a crematorium, stacked bodies, and starved prisoners still in uniforms; being offered bread by the prisoners; seeing a lampshade made of human skin in the office of a Nazi official; visiting a smaller liberated concentration camp and watching as American soldiers distributed clothing to naked prisoners; traveling with her hospital to a concentration camp near Linz, Austria (possibly Mauthausen); female nurses being kept outside of the camp fence as men worked inside the camp; meeting newly-liberated English prisoners of war who had been captured at the Battle of Dunkirk; returning to the United States and working at McCormack General Hospital in Pasadena, California; the difficulties of severely disfigured patients integrating into the community in Pasadena; marrying her husband; working at Camp Swift in Texas and Camp Polk in Louisiana, and, during the Korean War, in a military hospital in Michigan; encountering Holocaust deniers; and her insistence that her children know everything about her experience so that they can continue to spread the truth about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Christine Cohen

    Oral History

    Christine Cohen, born April 27, 1940 in the Warsaw ghetto, describes living in the ghetto until 1942 when they escaped; using forged papers showing that they were Christian; having one brother, born in 1948; being sent alone to live with a farm family; being helped and protected by an aristocratic woman, who had befriended an old German officer while she worked for the underground resistance; living with a series of families and caretakers; living in Walbrzych, Poland; not knowing she was Jewish until she was 10 years old and not admitting to it until she moved to Israel (seven years later) in 1957; visiting Germany and Poland after the war and going to Auschwitz, all of which was very difficult; wanting to stay in Israel but because of her parents, moving to the United States; the bitterness she still feels about having her entire extended family taken from her; the recurring nightmares and physical ailments that are all tension-related; and her current life in San Antonio, TX, where there are only a few survivors of her mother’s generation.

    Oral history interview with Hugh Jenkins

    Oral History

    Hugh Jenkins, born December 29, 1914 in Lester, England, describes being the youngest of eight siblings, whose father was a Welsh minister; working before World War II with Quakers and being a conscientious objector even before the war; moving to London, England in 1944 to take part in training at a Quaker institute; being sent to Antwerp, Belgium after the training to do relief work; going to Belsen, Germany on April 22, 1944, soon after the camp had been discovered and the horrific scene; the various response processes at the camp; setting up a hospital, known as the “new camp,” maintaining a first aid station, and finding food; eventually being sent to Poland to be in charge of another camp; how even now he has a sense of desolation in how war is used to settle problems; working as the overseas secretary for the British Friends Relief Service until 1948, when he went to Philadelphia, PA to work with the American Friends Service Committee; and being sent to Washington, DC to be the director of the Foreign Student Service Center.

    Oral history interview with Rene Edgar Tressler

    Oral History

    Rene Edgar Tressler, born April 16, 1927 in Strakonice, Czech Republic, describes his childhood in Strakonice; his parents and brother; escaping to Prague, Czech Republic to live with his grandparents; his brother’s selection to be on the Board of Elders at Theresienstadt; how Theresienstadt was used as a showcase for the Red Cross; his deportation to Auschwitz; his camp number; being moved to Birkenau; his movement to Blechhammer camp; his experiences on a death march in February 1945; his arrival at Buchenwald; reuniting with his parents and brother after the liberation; escaping Czechoslovakia in 1956; immigrating to the United States; and authoring several books.

    Oral history interview with Stefan Wohl

    Oral History

    Stefan Wohl, born February 4, 1934 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the Anschluss in 1938; leaving Vienna through Switzerland to Kraków, Poland; traveling with 14 family members in September 1939 to Jaroslav, Zloczow, and Kolomyja; being captured with his father in November 1939 while trying to cross the border; being released and going to Zloczow; being on a transport for six weeks with his mother, sister, and other relatives in July 1940; arriving in the Yakutsk, Siberia labor camp settlement; leaving in May 1941 by train through Moscow to Lvov where they were reunited with their father; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; going with his sister to a farm in Jaroslav; going to Budapest, Hungary via Monkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine) in the fall 1942; changing their name to Wolinski and pretending to be Catholic; going to Leanyfalu in 1943 and staying for a year; the family going to Seged (Szeged), Hungary; being captured and jailed; being released and staying with an uncle in Budapest; his father’s illness; being liberated by Russians in January 1945; going back to Poland in the spring 1945; going to Sweden in the summer 1946; sailing to Brazil in October 1946; attending school and a university in the United States; and being a film producer in Brazil.

    Oral history interview with Yehuda Adam

    Oral History

    Yehuda Adam (né George Strn), born on July 3, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses being raised in a reform Jewish household; being put into forced labor in Budapest; receiving a Schutzpasse and his family working for Raoul Wallenberg; being liberated by the Soviets in January 15, 1945; going to Palestine in 1949; going to the United States in 1962; and living in both Israel and the US.

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

    Arlette de Long, born June 15, 1937 in Brocourt, Somme, France; describes her parents’ medical practice; her early love of the church and uncertainly whether her family was Jewish; villagers’ willingness to maintain friendship with the family because her father was the only physician in the village; having no memory of life before the war; the liberation of France; moving to a suburb of Paris, where she attended Protestant churches rather than synagogue; father’s unwillingness to discuss the Holocaust; her own reluctance to discuss the Holocaust until her sixteen year old daughter insisted that she talk about it; moving to the United States; her work as a psychotherapist for underprivileged children; and her feeling that her story is one of hope, compassion, and gratitude.

    Oral history interview with Eva Adam

    Oral History

    Eva Adam, born September 3, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her Orthodox Jewish family; her family’s awareness of what was happening to European Jews; their reluctance to leave Hungary; her father and brother’s membership in the Jewish Legion; serving as adjunct personnel to the Hungarian Army; changes in their lives in the late 1930s and early 1940s; her family’s unawareness of concentration camps before 1944; the Arrow Cross Party taking over the Hungarian police; deteriorating conditions for Jews; the murder of Jews at the Danube River; conditions in the ghetto; her post-liberation search for family members; finding that only three of her thirty-six family members survived Auschwitz; leaving Budapest in 1949; living in Israel and then the United States in 1961; her plans to return to Israel in the future; her pride in being a Jew and a Hungarian; the value in caring about others; and her strong work ethic as an explanation of why she was able to survive.

    Oral history interview with Herbert Bitter

    Oral History

    Herbert Jerome Bitter, born August 4, 1919 in New York City, discusses his parents who were Romanian immigrants; growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan; becoming more religious during his service in the United Sates Army from 1943 to 1945; his experiences at Ohrdruf in 1945 soon after the Germans evacuated the camp; seeing three U.S. generals, Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton, at the camp on April 5, 1945; the generals’ return visit on April 12, 1945 with photographers; how the freed inmates at Ohrdruf were eager to tell their stories to the American liberators; the effect of witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust had on his Jewish identity; and his reluctance to talk about his experiences during the war, especially to children.

    Oral history interview with Rachel Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Rachel Goldfarb, born December 2, 1930 in Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her life following her liberation by the Russians and her time living in the forests near Bialystok, Poland with her mother; working and living on Russian trains; traveling to Prussia to find shelter provided by various Jewish organizations and the Red Cross; traveling to Italy’s southern coast; attempting to board a ship to Palestine but being blockaded by British authorities; eventually getting to New York City in November 1947 after two and a half years in Italy; visiting Washington, DC after graduation from high school; taking a job with the District Court; attending George Washington University at night; meeting her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, and marrying in 1952; raising two children, both of whom are architects; finally visiting Israel; her good life in the United States; and her advice about valuing what you have in life.

    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

    Oral History

    Tania Rozmaryn, born on June 16, 1928 in Vilnius, Poland (present day Lithuania), discusses her family as strong Zionists; the changes that took place after the German occupation; family’s escape towards the eastern Russian border; working in the house of an SS officer and being offered guidance on survival; frightening years in the Kovno ghetto; going into hiding until 1944 when the ghetto was liquidated; her deportation with her mother to Stutthof; her mother’s struggles and strategies, trying to make her look less like a child so that she would be chosen for work; being sent to various work camps until March 1945 when they were liberated by the Russians and taken to Central Poland to a displaced persons camp; being sent to Germany with false documents to a kibbutz in Munich; going to the American Zone and teaching at a school in Bergen-Belsen in 1947; getting married in 1949; immigrating to the United States in 1950; graduating summa cum laude from the Teacher’s Institute and receiving an M.A. from Queens College in 1960; moving to Maryland in 1990 where she received an M.S. in Marriage and Family Counseling; nightmares about her Holocaust experiences; and her feelings about her Jewish faith.

    Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim

    Oral History

    Franz Gunter Ephraim, born February 19, 1931 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, Germany, describes his family and being raised Jewish but not Orthodox; living an integrated life in the community until 1937 and his participation in the 1936 Olympics events; how Kristallnacht was the impetus for his family immigrating to the Philippines; attending a Hebrew school in Manila before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the politics in Manila; experiencing an open Jewish life; their favorite playing areas, holidays, their several living spaces, and the daily routine in Manila; the attack on Pearl Harbor and his memories of the alarms, airplanes, gas masks, and lack of school for about a year; how after the US declared war there were more air raids and an exodus from the Philippines began; how the US was closed to Jews who still had family in Germany and Europe and his family could not go to the US; the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the many wartime restrictions, including food shortages, looting, changes in currency, and a new governmental organization; how 1944 was the year when things were really deteriorated and the people were starving; the daily air raids from B24 bombers; the Japanese systematically burning down the city of Manila; how February 1945 brought total chaos and there was no food for several weeks; the liberation of Manila by US forces; leaving the Philippines on November 19, 1946; arriving in San Francisco, CA where relatives were waiting for them, along with HIAF; the closeness of the Manila Jewish community in San Francisco; attending UC Berkeley until the Korean War when he was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe as an interpreter; becoming a US citizen in 1952; his philosophy that the importance of Jews as a nation is far more important than Jews as a religion and that self-reliance is the most important quality to have; graduating from UC Berkeley in 1957; and working for a naval architect specializing in submarines, United Airlines, and the Maritime Administration in Washington, DC.

    Oral history interview with Peter Phillips

    Oral History

    Ernst Pieter Philipps, born December 5, 1931 in Essen, Germany, describes his twin brothers, who were three years younger; moving to Prague, Czech Republic in 1936 because of his father’s position with his company; life in Prague, which was normal until the Germans occupied Prague beginning April 1939; moving to Genoa, Italy and spending six months there; relocating by an Italian steamer to Quito, Ecuador, where living conditions were rather primitive and where at their second address they experienced antisemitism for the first time; spending two years in Ecuador; relocating to New York City, NY, where the instances of antisemitism directed at him were violent and ugly; his parents moving back to Rotterdam by 1950 while he remained behind in the house his parents had bought in Queens; attending City College of New York for five years and in 1955 joining the US Army and being sent to Germany where, among other duties, he worked as a teacher and Boy Scout leader for American and German boys; after leaving the Army, working first for the New York Times, a newspaper in Danbury, CT, and Business Week magazine; going to Washington, DC to work for McGraw Hill for 20 years; his experiences as a volunteer at the USHMM; and how he believes his experiences as a Jew have affected his outlook.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Ichiuji

    Oral History

    Joseph Ichiuji describes his parents as having immigrated to the US in the early 1900s; his father being a truck farmer and then owning a shoe repair business; working in a fish cannery and living in Fresno, CA until Executive Order 9066, which required that all Japanese Americans be evacuated to internment camps; being sent by train and truck to Flagstaff, Arizona, where they were assigned to barracks number three of the internment camp at Poston, AZ; conditions at the camp, which was run like an army installation with strict regimentation; volunteering for the 442 Combat Team, formed in 1943 and consisting solely of Japanese American soldiers who had families living in internment camps; fighting in Italy at the front lines north of Rome; liberating Livorno, Italy; helping liberate a subcamp of Dachau; conditions of prisoners still alive at the camp; helping two Lithuanian prisoners reconnect with important people in their lives; going home in December 1945 to find his parents released from the internment camp; helping his father with his business until May 1946 when he went to Washington, DC, where he worked in government service for 37 years; and the reunion of Japanese American soldiers in Los Angeles, CA, which a few of the survivors of Dachau attended.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Horowitz

    Oral History

    Ruth Horowitz (née Salzburg), born March 23, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, describes her Polish parents Isaac Salzberg and Rose R. Kleinert and her sister; life in Hamburg, where they lived until November 1938; leaving Hamburg two days before Kristallnacht; how Hamburg was very open to Jews until Hitler’s regime, though she experienced many instances of antisemitism; being fascinated with the 1936 Olympics; how her father’s efforts to leave Germany began in 1936 and finally succeeded when he dramatically threatened to commit suicide at the US Consul if the visas were not granted; how crossing the Atlantic was very difficult, with cold and seasickness, but they arrived and went to Detroit, MI for a short while, then to New York City, NY, and finally to Washington, DC; learning to speak English by going to lots of movies; her father’s death at age 54; her mother’s transformation from being a housewife to running her husband’s jewelry business after he died; the wartime antisemitism, the problem of quotas, the Nuremburg trials, and the State of Israel; getting married in 1950; traveling to Germany in 1995; and her views on present day Germany.

    Oral history interview with Hermann Kosak

    Oral History

    Hermann Kosak, born May 2, 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes his younger sister, Margaret; how antisemitism was pervasive and being involved in instances of physical violence as early as kindergarten; the growth of the Nazi movement in Austria; the Anschluss in March 1938; seeing Hitler arriving in Vienna in his car; how quickly the Jews were affected by the Nazi’s changes; Kristallnacht and being arrested the next morning; trying to get out of Vienna at age 14 and finally getting to Brussels, Belgium with his mother; the Germans attack on Belgium; how enrolling in art school after the invasion was the most important thing he did; learning survival, watchfulness, and self-reliance at age 16; beginning a diary on May 9, 1940, describing daily life, and keeping the diary until three weeks before liberation; how out of 50 family members, 43 were killed in camps; finally getting visas for him and his sister in November 1947 by forcing his way into the US Embassy and leaving for the United States; arriving in New York City, NY; being a painting instructor; being drafted, released to Reserves, working for a while, and being called back for the Korean War; being married and eventually getting a job with Boeing as an illustrator; and his views on the effects of the Holocaust on humanity.

    Oral history interview with Dolly Bestandig

    Oral History

    Dolly Bestandig (née Hirsch), born July 24, 1939 in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, discusses her family, which had been in Lithuania for 11 generations; her father, who was a mathematical engineer, and her mother, who was a concert pianist; how her parents were both very religious and wealthy; being sent to the Vilna ghetto, the hardship of which marked the beginning of her mother’s psychological changes; the presence of 90 members of her mother’s family in the ghetto; how at age five, after living in the Minsk ghetto, she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz, where her mother managed to save her life by hiding her in a garbage can during the day while her mother worked; being moved to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and father after four months, where she was again hidden in a garbage can every day until liberation on April 15, 1945 by English soldiers; being sent to Sweden for medical care; being hospitalized in Gothenburg and then in Stockholm, where surgery on her palate was performed; leaving Sweden in 1947 and going to New York, where an uncle met her family; going to Mexico City, where two uncles were waiting; how her mother’s psychological state was deteriorating and she died in 1958; having flashbacks to her life in the camps; going to the Margaret Sanger Institute in New York City in 1967, where she received counseling help and tuberculosis was found throughout her body; recovering and adopting two children; being the Sub-Director of Hebrew instruction at the Yeshiva in Mexico City; and her feelings about her survival.

    Oral history interview with Goldie Gendelman

    Oral History

    Goldie Gendelman, born November 17, 1933 in Lechowichi (possibly Lyakhavichy, Belarus), Poland near Baranowichi (possibly Baranovichi, Belarus), discusses her parents, Chaim and Chana Wolochiwianski; growing up in an extremely Orthodox family; being raised to speak Polish and Yiddish; her family’s attempt to immigrate to the United States; how she and her family made it to Cuba and stayed there for 11 years; living in Regla, Cuba; her struggles to communicate in Spanish; being run over by a bus in Cuba; how she and her family finally were able to immigrate to the United States in 1948; her paternal uncle in the United States who assisted with the immigration process; her experience with antisemitism in Poland and Cuba; graduating from high school in the United States; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and her feelings about leaving Poland, living in Cuba, and starting a new life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rhoda Kuflik

    Oral History

    Rhoda Kuflik (née Ruzenka Husen), born in October 1937 in Kitev, Poland (now Kuty, Ukraine), describes living in the Kuty ghetto; escaping to Romania and hiding there; being liberated by the Soviets; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with William Hess

    Oral History

    William Hess was born William Verna on August 8, 1921 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was an only child and lived a pleasant life there. Despite the Nuremberg laws, he was permitted to continue his schooling as his father served during World War I. Nevertheless, they lost the service of their maid. William experienced little anti-Semitism in Germany but knew that Hitler made anti-Semitic speeches and had newspaper articles written against the Jews. His father's business suffered little from the boycotting but he sold it in 1938. Anti-Semitism was more severe in the outlying towns than in Stuttgart. William studied English for two years before immigrating to Danville, Illinois with his uncle's assistance in 1937. He had difficulty adjusting to the US so had an English tutor. Additionally, he had difficulty living on his wages of $12.50 as $9 went toward room and board and he also had to cover tutoring and transportation expenses. Kristallnacht and his father's internment in Dachau influenced his parents to leave Germany in 1939 for Danville.

    Oral history interview with Jutta Levy

    Oral History

    Jutta Levy, born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany, describes growing up in a pleasant upper middle class family in a large Jewish community; listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio and seeing him on a school field trip; witnessing Nazi book burning; learning of the death of Hindenburg; drastic changes in Germany after 1933; living in fear as children were taken from school and acquaintances disappeared; father’s dramatic pleading for visas to leave Germany; obtaining passage on the last train from Hamburg on November 6, 1938; traveling to Paris, France and then to Cherbourg, France, from which her family sailed to New York on the Queen Mary; arriving on November 11, 1938; learning about life in concentration camps from family members who survived the Holocaust; and her return to Hamburg and visit to Bergen-Belsen as an adult.

    Oral history interview with Wolfgang Mueller

    Oral History

    Wolfgang Mueller, born in Hanover, Germany on March 10, 1919, discusses his father’s role as a leader in the Jewish community and being head of B’nai B’rith; being aware of the Nazis at an early stage and seeing posters on kiosks denouncing Jews; refusing to say “Heil Hitler” in school and being advised by the principal to leave the country; going to London, England the summer after his Bar Mitzvah (1932); attending Ewell School and going back to Germany on vacations, pretending he was English; attending Cranbrook School with funding from a relative, Max Nordhaus, in the United States; receiving an affidavit from Nordhaus and getting a visa to the US; arriving in the US July 26, 1936 and moving to New Mexico; his mother and sister emigrating; hearing about Kristallnacht; being drafted in September 1941 and being sent to Florida; being in the Signal Corps; applying to officer’s candidate school and being in a group that called themselves the fighting 614s; being made into an MP after his superiors found out he was from Germany; being stationed in Tampa, FL and Jacksonville, FL; getting his American citizenship; volunteering to go overseas; being stationed in England as a technical supply sergeant and a liaison with the RAF; working after V-E Day in the Air Technical Intelligence Office; interrogating prisoners in Czechoslovakia and Austria and engineers at Zeiss works; being in Nordhausen for an hour; translating V-2 documents; being discharged on January 11, 1947; getting married; working in the meat business, real estate, and as a wholesale fish company; being proud to be Jewish; and his dedication to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Klari Rudnai

    Oral History

    Klari Rudnai (née Takacs), born May 19, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her well-to-do family that was not at all religious; her older sister; her father, who was her hero, and her strict mother; how their cook was instrumental in saving their lives by getting counterfeit papers with non-Jewish names for them and by bringing them food as they hid in a one-room apartment in 1944; moving to a nice hotel and having to go to the hotel’s underground bunkers during all the bombing for almost nine months; her father’s seven siblings, who were all sent to Auschwitz; going back to the hotel, the Vadasqur, until it too was bombed; moving to a new villa in 1946; how when she was 19 years she was picked up by Russian soldiers in a jeep and had to fight her way out of an attack by them and was saved by American soldiers who took her to the hospital for a few days; marrying an American soldier and wanting to go to the United States; finishing high school; how the solitary military life and moving a lot to odd places didn’t suit her; divorcing her husband and moving back to Washington, DC; getting married in 1960 to a Jewish doctor, who had been in many concentration camps and was instrumental in getting her interested in her Jewish religion; volunteering at the USHMM in the Archives and Volunteer Services; enjoying all parts of talking to people and the volunteers in her job; and reading a lot of books and newspapers about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jill Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly, born May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, describes her large, very well-to-do country family; the efforts of her grandmother and uncle to get money to Holland and make arrangements for the family to get to Kenya, where they bought two cattle farms that eventually were very successful; wanting a more orthodox Jewish life after the war; moving to New York City then moving to Vineland, NJ; her family buying a chicken farm, which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1952; the death of her father when he was 66 years old; her mother being her guiding light in terms of religious practice; attending the Pierce School of Business in Philadelphia, PA; working for the Quakers and then for a synagogue; getting her real estate license at the University of Maryland; her two adopted children; retiring in December 1993 from real estate; volunteering at the USHMM in Visitors’ Services and in the Office of Survivor Relations; having very strong feelings about people having access to the Museum; and some of the artifacts that she’s donated to the Museum.

    Oral history interview with Jack Reuben

    Oral History

    Jack Ruben was born Yaakov Ruben on December 8, 1921 in Cincinnati, Ohio and after six months the family moved to LA. He was the only child to Joseph and Sarah Basha Ruben who came from Russia and were not religious. His mother was a garment worker and his father sold fruits and vegetables in a horse and cart in the local area. Due to an eye condition, Jack went to a health camp for a year. Jack's father left the family in 1927 and since lost track of him. Jack was placed in foster homes until the 11th grade and would visit his mother on the weekends. He graduated from high school and worked his way through UCLA by working part-time. In summer of '43 Jack volunteered for the Air Corps and was sent to Pomona College for nine months to study meteorology. He was not picked to be a meteorology officer so joined the infantry and was selected to be a coding clerk. He went to several camps and was shipped to Le Havre. His division had little information of the overall war and no details of concentration camps. From there he was part of the effort to form a bridge over the Moselle and next in a major assault at the Rhine River. Jack was in the Division furthest east in Germany which took many German prisoners as they quickly drove east. His company going east and meeting a surrendering German battalion who were permitted to march on their own. His company formed perimeters around villages and often stayed overnight in a civilian's home. They went through a rural area and saw dead prisoners and dead horses along the road without understanding the situation. They reached Ohrdruf Concentration Camp and saw a few emaciated prisoners leaving and many dead bodies piled up or laying on the ground. Jack did not realize it was a concentration camp at the time or that others existed until later when he returned to the US. The Army newspaper did not publish such information. From there, they went to the Czech border for 3 months which they guarded until VE Day. Then Jack was relocated to a relocation camp near Paris until Christmas '45 when he was shipped home and arrived in NY on New Year's Day '46. He was discharged and married a second time as his first wife was killed in an auto accident. Subsequently, he received a BA in economics, MA in family counseling and PhD in psychology and has practiced 10 years in the field. He has four children. Jack still does not understand how the crimes in the concentration camps could have been performed by fellow human beings.

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tilda Finzi Cohen

    Oral History

    Tilda Finzi Cohen (née Mazel Tov “Tilda” Finzi) born in Split, Yugoslavia on July 11, 1933, discusses Germans passing through their city in early 1941; her father getting called into the army and returning after one month; the Italians occupying Split, closing businesses and setting a curfew; not being permitted to go to school and the formation of community Jewish schools in different locations around city; her uncle being imprisoned and bringing him food; the Italian capitulation in September 1943; her family joining other people fleeing to partisans in the mountains; going with her mother to Brac Island, to Vis Island; sailing to Bari two days before Yom Kippur; living in a camp then a private house; the Germans dropping gas bombs on ships on December 2, 1943; her family moving to a village near Bari and attending school; attending a Seder arranged by the Jewish Brigade in Bitonto, Italy in the spring of 1944; how after the war their relatives told them of the camps and atrocities and advised them not to return to Split; her family moving to Milan, Italy in 1948; her family immigrating to the United States in 1950; finishing high school and attending college; getting married; and feeling that she is not a part of any country and that she lost her childhood.

    Oral history interview with Zwi Golombek

    Oral History

    Zwi Golombek, born in Warsaw, Poland on September 15, 1934, describes his father’s large construction business; the formation of the Warsaw ghetto and his family moving into one room on Nowolipki Street; his father’s ability to exit and enter the ghetto because he possessed building permits; being aware of danger and seeing beatings; his father striking a German guard in early 1942 and being taken to a ghetto prison then Treblinka; his Uncle Mietek placing him with the Abramzuc family in Jozefow, Poland and his mother and sister disappearing from the ghetto two weeks later; staying hidden for three years and his uncle visiting often and playing the family to hide him; being called Henyek; his uncle placing him in a kibbutzim in Poland and Germany after the war; going to Israel on October 6, 1948; working in Tel Aviv and joining the Israeli army in 1952; fighting war in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982; getting married; and his two sons.

    Oral history interview with Samuel B. Hagner

    Oral History

    Samuel Hagner, born November 1, 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, discusses his Quaker parents; becoming a Quaker member at age 14; going to a Quaker work camp; being told about antisemitic events in Europe by a Jewish friend named Doris Weil and not believing her; his brother being a conscientious objector and working in a forestry camp during war; attending Oberlin College; being inducted into the army in January 1944 as a 1-A-O; training as a medical corpsman; sailing to Europe in December 1944; joining 7th Army in Germany and moving as the front moved; being made an armed guard at a billet even though he refused to carry a gun; going by truck to help liberate Dachau; the overwhelming experiences of seeing Dachau and feeling anger towards the SS guards; staying in the camp for one week; wavering about being a conscientious objector and writing to Doris to tell her she was right; going to a German hospital with nuns; going to France and the war ending before he was deployed to the Philippines; becoming a scrub nurse during plastic surgery on war victims in Indiana; being discharged and returning to college in the fall of 1946; practicing psychiatry for adults; living with his Dachau experience but not being at peace with it; and his continued abhorrence of war.

    Oral history interview with Werner E. Michel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guta Jacobson

    Oral History

    Guta Jacobson (née Rogowitz), born on April 23, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her early life in Łódź; relations between Jews and Christians; her activity in a Zionist organization; various holiday celebrations; the German invasion of Poland and the implementation of Nazi race laws; food shortages; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; her family’s indecision on whether or not to flee; life in the ghetto; losing her faith in God after seeing her parents give up their children; her father’s disappearance; the typhus epidemic; hearing rumors of Chelmno and Auschwitz; hiding from the liquidation of the ghetto and their eventual deportation to Auschwitz in August of 1944; her immediate understanding of what was happening in the camp; Dr. Josef Mengele taking her mother away; being transported to a camp in Birnbäumel, Germany (now Gruszeczka, Poland), to work digging anti-tank trenches; the differing conditions of various camps; hiding in the woods during a death march; her return to a liberated Łódź; marrying her husband; her reunion with her sister who had been recuperating in Sweden after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen; immigrating to the United States; the birth of her children; the death of her husband; her avoidance of discussing her experiences with her children when they were young; her motivations for sharing her story now; and her hopes that the world will never forget.

    Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Luksenburg

    Oral History

    William Luksenburg describes going on a death march from Regensburg, Germany to Lebenau, Germany; a German farmer picking him up from the road, where he fell; being brought by the farmer to American troops stationed in the nearby town of Laufen, where he was treated for malnutrition; his cousin coming to the same camp a few months later; returning with his cousin to Bayreuth, Germany, where there were other family members; reuniting in Prague with his future wife, Helen, whom he met in the Blechhammer work camp; getting married in 1947; receiving money and support from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; attending a technical school organized by the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training; immigrating to the United States in September 1949 with Helen; and becoming a mechanic and starting his own business. [Note: This interview focuses on the interviewee’s post-Holocaust experiences. There is an earlier interview focusing on the interviewee’s Holocaust experience. This interview can be accessed by requesting RG-50.030*140.]

    Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld

    Oral History

    Rose Weisfeld (née Friedman), born on March 28, 1914 in Radom, Poland, discusses her early life and schooling; social integration between Jews and Christians at home and at school; keeping Jewish customs and traditions at home; her religious education; her brothers’ conscription in the Polish army; being badly injured and hospitalized for a year; her family’s forced relocation to the Radom ghetto; her father’s death; the liquidation of the ghetto; doing factory work; being transported to Auschwitz via cattle car; the process of selections; being transported to Ravensbrück in 1944; being liberated by Swedish soldiers and their compassion; weighing 32 pounds at liberation; her hospitalization in Denmark and Sweden; finding work in a factory and regaining her humanity; her marriage in Sweden to another survivor; the birth of her children; finding her brother through the Red Cross after four years; immigrating to the United States to be with her brother; the difficulties of adjusting to life in the US; and the importance of raising her children with Jewish traditions.

    Oral history interview with Ruth E. Greifer

    Oral History

    Ruth Greifer (née Dahl), born May 30, 1922 in Geilenkirchen (near Aachen), Germany, discusses her father, who was a cattle dealer, and her Dutch mother; attending a private Catholic school and experiencing antisemitism but being treated well by the nuns; how the plaque on father’s business was shattered in 1938; moving to Valkenburg, Holland in the spring of 1938; Germans occupying the city on May 10, 1940 and her family hiding in catacombs during the bombing; having to wear the yellow star and obey curfew; her father’s business being taken away; the Germans ordering them to leave in June 1942, but she was allowed to stay because she was sick; her brother and two aunts being taken to Auschwitz; how a Mr. Jansen from the underground arranged for she and her parents to go into hiding; going to a coal miner’s house, while her parents went to another; being thought of as a risk and being relocated to a doctor’s house to be a maid; going into hiding at the Robertson’s house near Treebeek and Hoensbroek with another Jewish woman; getting money from the underground organization; hearing about the June 1944 invasion; going to a house in Treebeek; the heavy bombing in the city and hiding in a potato bin for three days; being liberated September 17, 1944; returning to her parents in Valkenburg; the loss of all of her mother’s Dutch family; sailing to the United states in the spring of 1948; settling with her sister in Pittsburgh, PA; getting married April 8, 1951 and having three daughters; moving to Washington, DC in 1957; and her feelings about Germany.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin), born on March 28, 1928 in Siaulai, Lithuania, discusses her life after the war; being liberated by the Russians in Chynowie (known as Chinow in German) near Wejherowo, Poland on March 10, 1945; suffering from typhoid and dysentery and weighing 65 pounds; joining her mother and brother in Feldafing DP camp; going to ORT and UNRRA sponsored classes; getting married to Jack Godin, who had escaped from the Vilna Ghetto and whose family was killed in Ponary; having her first child in Munich, Germany; immigrating to United States in 1950 and settling in Washington, DC; becoming a citizen in 1955 and working as a dressmaker for 26 years; raising her children; sharing her Holocaust experience; working with the UJA, Jewish Community Council and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the US Holocaust Memorial Council; working on projects at USHMM, including the “Remember the Children” exhibit, the ID project, and within the education and development departments; and her thoughts on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Maryla Korn

    Oral History

    Maryla Korn (née Orgel), born on June 10, 1938 in Kraków, Poland, discusses going with her mother first to Wieliczka and then to Bochnia between late 1940 and early 1941; hiding with a peasant family but crying so much that she was returned to her mother; going to a ghetto in Bochnia at the end of 1941; her mother working outside the ghetto in a factory; taking messages outside the ghetto and bringing back food; leaving the ghetto in June 1943 and separating from her mother; carrying diamonds and money, but no luggage and bribing Germans and the Judenrat; traveling by truck to the border then by foot at night; being guided by paid partisans; her grandfather being shot at Bochnia cemetery, her grandmother being taken to Auschwitz, and her uncle being taken to Belzec in the summer of 1942; being by Czech collaborators in Kosice, Slovakia; being released and proceeding to Hungary with help from the Joint; being caught and sent to a prison in Budapest and the Joint getting her out; going to Usod, Hungary in the fall of 1943 and staying there until April 1944 under name of Orglowska; living as a Christian; being treated for gangrene in her leg; the roundup of Hungarian Jews in April 1944; her mother stealing passes and going to Budapest; staying with a Jewish Polish friend and then going to Bucharest, Romania with help from the Joint; almost boarding two different ships in Constanta, Romania going to Palestine, one of which (the Merkur) sank and the other ended up in Cyprus; being liberated by the Russians in the spring of 1945; going to Budapest and staying in a children’s home while her mother went back to Poland to check on family; her mother setting up a business in Vienna, Austria with an uncle; her father returning traumatized from the war; going to Brussels, Belgium in the winter of 1946-1947; going to Israel in 1951; living in both Israel and Brussels until immigrating to the United states in May 1961; getting married in June 1961 to David Korn, who is also a survivor; visiting her parents in Germany; and her work translating for USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born in Brussels, Belgium on September 2, 1928, discusses immigrating to the United States in 1943; being taken in by father’s cousin in Brooklyn, then to foster home; his parents coming to the US in 1946; graduating from high school in 1947; graduating with honors from Brooklyn College in 1951; enlisting in the army and being sent to Germany as an interpreter but requesting to be transferred; becoming a medic near Verdun; feeling very American, but did not speak about his childhood with other soldiers; his feeling about Germany; working at USHMM with the Speakers Bureau and translating materials; speaking about his past; and being featured in the book “The Triumphant Spirit” by Nicholas del Calzo.

    Oral history interview with Lena Jurand

    Oral History

    Lena Jurand (Salzberg), born in Przemysl, Poland on September 13, 1917, discusses being an only child, educated in a Catholic school then at a music conservatory; meeting her husband Julian Jurand in 1931 and getting married in May 1940; living in the Russian part of town; her father being chosen for the Judenrat when the Germans took over; Jews having to give up jewelry and wear a star; the ghetto being formed in July 1942; moving with parents and in-laws from Lvov; working in a factory disinfecting uniforms; her father being taken away and how she went to the Gestapo headquarters and saved him from deportation to Auschwitz; meeting a Polish woman in the factory who offered to hide her and Julian; hiding for 22 months in room off of kitchen in a woman’s apartment; being liberated by Russians in August 1944; living in an apartment with her husband and cousins; living in Munich, Germany with UNRRA staff of the Neu Freimann DP Camp; teaching music to child survivors in camp for one year; moving to Genoa, Italy, where Julian practiced medicine; visiting her uncle for six months in New York, NY; going to the United States in 1951; living in New Jersey, where Julian worked in state hospital as a psychiatrist; and Julian becoming the clinical director at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Wallace Witkowski

    Oral History

    Wallace A. Witkowski, born January 12, 1928 in Kielce, Poland, discusses his escape from Poland on a ship to Goteborg, Sweden in 1948; going to the United States; how his sister was caught by the communists and imprisoned; his struggle to find his father who had immigrated to the United States earlier; settling in Detroit, Michigan and adjusting to American life; how his mother and sister arrived in the U.S. later; attending high school and then Wayne State University; getting married in 1951; working as a radio disc jockey using the on-air name Jan Alexander; earning a law degree; working in Washington, DC and traveling between the United States and Poland; working for the Federal Trade Commission; living and working in Micronesia; his thoughts on religion and how the Holocaust affected him; his identity as a Catholic; his work as a translator; and his work with the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lena Gitter

    Oral History

    Lena Gitter (née Lieba Rosenblatt), born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her life after the Holocaust; immigrating to the US in July 1938 with her husband and small daughter; her husband who worked as a physician; feeling guilty for many years about having escaped Vienna before the Holocaust; her long involvement with the Montessori schools both in Vienna and the United States; the Montessori method; working with people in Mississippi under Johnson’s War on Poverty program; the death of her husband in 1974; her plan to donate her collection of early childhood education materials to a library in Vienna; working under several Presidents of the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Wiener

    Oral History

    Jacob Wiener (né Koppel G. Zwienicki), born March 25, 1917 in Bremen, Germany, discusses his experiences in the United States after World War II; the reaction to the war by the American media; his wife’s experience on the Kindertransport; his memories of watching Nazi war crime trials on television; his thoughts on Israel and Palestine; the Eichmann trial; how he was involved with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from its founding; Holocaust education in American schools; antisemitism in the United States; and how he founded a school for mentally disabled children in the 1950s.

    Oral history interview with Noah Roitman

    Oral History

    Noah Roitman, born in Baranowicze, Poland (Baranavichy, Belarus) on January 10, 1923, discusses his religious upbringing and schooling; being very athletic; receiving warnings from his Christian friends in November 1938; his town being under Soviet rule in 1939; people being deported and his house being burned down; the German invasion on June 27, 1941; the formation of a ghetto on December 12, 1941; wearing the yellow star and working in arms factory; joining the resistance group of Mome Kopelovitz; the first action in the ghetto in March 1942; joining the partisans led by Pougatchov in the forest in August 1942; his activities sabotaging trains and bringing others out of ghetto (saving approximately 80 people); being sent to Pinsk, Belarus in late 1943; joining a group led by Major Igor, attacking trains; being ordered into Russian Army in Slutsk, Belarus in December 1943; fighting Germans and seeing Warsaw destroyed; being wounded by a sniper outside of Berlin, Germany; running a canteen for the Russian Army at the end of the war; returning to Poland; helping Jews get to Czechoslovakia; being captured and jailed, but escaping to Łódź, Poland; meeting his wife; traveling through Germany and France to get to Israel; being detained in Cyprus for 3 to 4 months; having a construction business in Israel; and immigrating to the United States in October 1963.

    Oral history interview with Richard W. Peterson

    Oral History

    Richard W. Peterson, born September 29, 1925 in Iowa, discusses his family’s Danish background; growing up in a Baptist family; first learning about the war in Europe and his family’s concern for Denmark; antisemitism in Iowa; hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor; his involvement with ROTC and Boy Scouts; attending Drake University; joining the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP); reporting to Fort Crook for the reserve program and then to Camp Dodge in Iowa; being sworn into the U.S. Army; training at Camp Livingston in Louisiana with the 86th Blackhawk division; being assigned to A Company, 342nd Infantry; being sent to Le Havre, France; traveling through France, the Netherlands, and Germany; fighting in a battle in Attendorn, Germany; entering what appeared to be a factory in Attendorn and seeing starving people there; the reaction of his comrades to seeing the prisoners; the liberation of Auschwitz; being sent to the Philippines from September 1945 to March 1946; finishing his degree at the University of Iowa; graduating from law school in 1951; getting married; his father’s appointment to the Iowa Supreme Court; how he was a United States Magistrate Judge; his three children; and how he feels about American current events, politics, and world news.

    Oral history interview with Riane Gruss

    Oral History

    Riane Gruss (née Wohl), born on August 18, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, describes her father, who was a banker in Kraków, Poland and an industrialist in Vienna, and how her parents lived half a year in each place; she and her siblings being raised by a governess in Vienna; being in Kraków on September 1, 1939; going to Jaroslav, where there was bombing, then to Zloczow and to Kolomyja; her father and brother being captured at the border and her brother’s release; returning to Zloczow; being sent to Siberia by the Russians in July 1940; her younger brother getting scarlet fever; arriving in August 1940 near Yakutsk and Aldan and going to a labor camp; conditions in the camp; the hard physical labor for adults; how in April 1941 the NKVD said mothers and children could leave; their New York relatives getting them Bolivian passports; leaving in May and meeting her father in Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine); going to a farm in country for four months after the German invasion on June 22, 1941; her family following her uncle Joseph Stieglitz to Munkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine); getting Polish Christian papers; going to Budapest, Hungary; going to Szeged, Hungary, where her father had to be hospitalized; the children being hidden in the fall of 1944 in a caretaker’s house in Buda, Hungary; escaping when the Russians arrived and reuniting with her parents; going with her family to Mako, Hungary for four weeks then to Vienna; her parents returning to Kraków; going with a smuggler to Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and then joining her parents in Kraków; going with her family to Stockholm, Sweden; going to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in October 1946; going to New York, in February 1951; and getting married in December 195 and having two children.

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

    Oral History

    Regina Spiegel, (née Gutman) born May 12, 1926 in Radom, Poland, discusses her post-war experiences starting with her liberation; traveling with 3,000 other female prisoners by train from Elsnig, Germany to Dachau, Germany; how the train stopped on the way to Dachau because the railway line had been bombed; how the train itself was bombed by the Allies while stopped on the tracks; being able to escape during the bombing; traveling with 15 other women by horse and buggy to Poland; sleeping in German homes while traveling to Poland; avoiding large groups of Russian soldiers; promising her mother and her boyfriend that if they were separated during the war, they would meet in Radom, Poland; how she and her friends boarded a train in Poznań, Poland without any money; meeting a man on the train with whom she had been imprisoned in Pionki, Poland; returning to Radom where she was told that returning Jews were being killed; returning to the Radom Ghetto, where many displaced persons were gathering; writing her name on a list of displaced persons in the Radom Ghetto; traveling from Radom to Kozienice to reunite with her boyfriend, Sam; leaving Poland with Sam and traveling by train to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); traveling with the Joint Distribution Committee from Prague to Pilsen, Czech Republic and then to Germany; staying with Sam in the displaced persons camp Föhrenwald; her marriage to Sam in 1946; moving to Stuttgart, Germany, where she learned to be a seamstress through ORT classes; her involvement with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York; her religious beliefs and how they changed throughout the war; moving to Washington, DC; how she and Sam learned to speak English; working as a seamstress before giving birth to a daughter in August 1951; her thoughts on the Yugoslavian conflict; her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during its early development; her activity with the Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Greater Washington; returning with Sam to Auschwitz in 1975; speaking publically about the Holocaust; receiving an award from the United Jewish Appeal; and how she and Sam take groups of 16 to 18 year olds to Poland and Israel through the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization.

    Oral history interview with Charles Stein

    Oral History

    Charles Stein (né Karl Robert Stein), born in Vienna, Austria, on November 28, 1919, describes his childhood; attending medical school at the University of Vienna; immigrating to the United States and arriving on December 18, 1939; his draft into the army on October 7, 1941; discovering that his parents had gone into the Łódź ghetto; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; going to Normandy, France with the 9th Infantry Division as the commander of a prisoner-of-war interrogation team; helping to liberate Nordhausen and interrogating its Ukrainian guards; becoming an Army captain and then the chief of the translation section in the Office of Military History at the Pentagon; serving in Korea and Tokyo for five years; marrying an Air Force lieutenant in Tokyo; returning to the US and settling in Washington, DC; working for the Air Force Intelligence and for the State Department until his retirement in 1978; serving as a foreign service officer and being responsible for the resettlement of refugees in Europe; and writing about his experiences during the war.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Hannah Kalman (née Hannah Finer Kalmanowicz), born in 1912 in Opoczno, Poland and describes her family; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was 12 and joining a Zionist organization; meeting her husband in the Zionist organization and getting married in 1937; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1939; living with her son, sister, and nephew in a small room with bad conditions; being deported with her family on one of the last transports out of the Łódź ghetto; never seeing her son and nephew again after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transport to Waldeslust, Germany, where she did hard labor; going on a death march to Bergen-Belsen; conditions in the camp; being liberated with her sister on April 15, 1945; the death of her sister two months after liberation; traveling around Poland looking for relatives; reuniting with her husband later in Poland; moving to Germany and having a son; immigrating to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; having a daughter; and living in Israel for a short time but ultimately settling in the United States for medical treatment.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral History

    Morris Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Częstochowa, Poland, describes his family; being forced to paint rooms for German troops during the war; his deportation to Theresienstadt; being forced on a death march to Buchenwald; receiving help from the Red Cross after the war; traveling around Poland and Germany trying to find his sister; his time spent in displaced persons camps; his memories of the Nuremberg Trials; immigrating to the United States and settling in New York; the mental stress with which he dealt after the war; attending the international law program at Columbia; moving to Baltimore, Maryland in November, 1949; getting married in 1953; collecting items from the World War Two era; and his reflections on the state of antisemitism in today’s world.

    Oral history interview with Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Sam Spiegel, born in Kozienice, Poland on August 23, 1922, describes his family and childhood; being forced into a ghetto; his father’s involvement in the underground movement; working for the Judenrat and getting papers to leave the ghetto and get extra food; his deportation to Auschwitz in 1942; meeting his future wife in the camp; the Ukrainian camp guards; conditions in the camp and how inmates helped each other; going on a death march as the Allies neared Auschwitz; returning home and experiencing antisemitism; spending time in displaced persons camps; working for the United Nations Relief Organization and the Joint Distribution Committee after the war; getting married; immigrating to the United States; and returning to Europe to visit the concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Fred Gutter

    Oral History

    Fred Gutter, born on December 25, 1926 in Sanok, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of celebrating the Jewish holidays and Sabbath services; attending a high school and experiencing antisemitism; increasing persecution against Jews in the 1930s; moving to Lwów because of the difficulties his family faced; his family’s capture by Russian troops and living under Russian control; being released by the Russians at the end of the war and briefly returning to Sanok; staying in several displaced persons camps; reuniting with his father after the war; receiving aid from the Joint Distribution Committee; spending some time in Palestine and fighting in the 1948 war; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and his feelings about American politics.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Henry Greenbaum, born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of his family celebrating the Jewish holidays; being too young to understand the persecution that was happening around him; his family deciding that one of his sisters should immigrate to the United States in 1937; the establishment of a ghetto in Starachowice; his deportation to a labor camp in October 1942; attempting to escape but getting severely wounded and having to stay in the camp; his transfers to Auschwitz and then Flossenbürg; going on a death march from Flossenbürg; his liberation by the U.S. Army on April 25, 1945; spending time in a displaced persons camp after the war until his sister in America could send papers for him and his brother; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; adjusting to life in America and finding a job at a department store; settling in the Washington metro area; and interacting with other Holocaust survivors who live in his community.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Alper

    Oral History

    Ruth Alper, born on February 18, 1932 in Germany, describes her family and childhood; experiencing little antisemitism as a child; her memories of Kristallnacht; receiving an affidavit from family in Detroit, MI in 1939 to immigrate to the United States; arriving in Cuba and staying there until 1941, when she and her family moved to Miami, FL; the small Jewish community in Havana, Cuba; listening to the progress of the war on the radio; experiencing antisemitism in Miami; her recollections of the response of the American Jewish community experiencing the war from abroad; and creating a new life for herself in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Michael Lin

    Oral History

    Michael Lin, born in Riga, Latvia on September 14, 1936, describes his family and childhood; the Jewish community of Riga; the beginning of the war in 1941 and his family being forced to leave their home to settle in Yaroslavl (IAroslavl' ), Russia; catching malaria and developing pneumonia in 1941 but not being able to get medication; moving to another small village in Russia, where he remained until 1944 when his family moved farther east; having to shave his head to avoid getting lice; his father’s draft into the Russian Army; the end of the war and preparing to return to Riga; his experiences with antisemitism in Russia; beginning school after the war in Latvia; his draft into the Russian Army in September 1955; attending school in Moscow after he left the army; immigrating to Israel in 1969 with his wife and children; immigrating to the United States a few years later; and his reflections on sharing his memories of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Chana Kalman, born on January 20, 1912 in Opoczno, Poland, describes her family and childhood; her experiences with antisemitism; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was eighteen years old; participating in a Zionist organization with several other young people; working during the day and attending a Hebrew school at night; getting married shortly before the death of her father in 1937; giving birth to a child on January 25, 1939; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1940 and struggling to find food for herself and her son; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz with her sister and being forced around by SS men; her transfer to Bergen-Belsen shortly before her liberation; finding out about the death of her husband and child; getting remarried in 1946 and having a son and a daughter; remaining in Germany as a displaced person until 1950, when she immigrated to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; spending some time in Israel once her children had grown up; and her reflections on life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dorrit L. Ostberg

    Oral History

    Dorrit Liane Ostberg, born in Vienna, Austria on September 29, 1929, describes her family; her father fleeing to Paris, France after the Germans entered Austria; escaping to Paris with her mother and sister but discovering that her father had fled to Yugoslavia; arriving in Yugoslavia several months later; obtaining Yugoslavian citizenship and living in Slavonski-Brod and Zagreb (both in present day Croatia); fleeing to Crikvenica, Croatia after Croatian guards arrested her father; her family’s deportation to an Italian internment camp on Rab; attending school until she contracted hepatitis and had to stay in a hospital for four months; her liberation in September 1943; her family fleeing on a fishing boat to Italy and living openly as Jews in Bari, Italy with two Italian women; immigrating to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York in July 1944; attending junior high school; moving to New York City after the war ended; attending university and becoming a math teacher; getting married three times and having one son; and her religious feelings.

    Oral history interview with Alice Eberstarkova Masters

    Oral History

    Alice Eberstarkova Masters, born in Trstená, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1925, describes her youth; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; immigrating to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport; working as a secretary for the Czech government-in-exile in London during the war; following the BBC broadcasts of the war’s progress; the end of the war and discovering that her parents had died in Auschwitz; her reflections on the Nuremberg Trials; participating in Zionist and Jewish organizations while in England; immigrating to the United States in March 1948; working for the International Monetary Fund; losing her religious faith; getting married and starting a family after the war; and telling her children and grandchildren about her experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia) on January 28, 1929, describes his post-war experiences living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; receiving papers to immigrate to the United States in 1946 and living with a distant cousin; working at a butcher’s shop, so he could support himself; opening his own meat store later in life; eventually deciding to volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and not participating much in his faith anymore.

    Oral history interview with Leonard Gordon

    Oral History

    Leonard Gordon, born on June 8, 1925 in Tilsit, Germany (Sovetsk, Russia), describes growing up in Siauliai, Lithuania; his family; attending Jewish grade school and high school; the German invasion of Lithuania in 1941; trying to escape to Russia but instead having to return home and go into the Siauliai ghetto; his family’s transport to Stutthof in 1944; being transported with his father and brother to Dachau, where they worked at Mühldorf; building the German underground airport, Messerschmitt; his father’s proposal that the three of them commit suicide; hearing about the invasion of Normandy; the liberation of Dachau in May 1945; staying in a displaced persons camp in Feldafing and planning to move to Israel; traveling to Italy and studying to be a radio technician; immigrating to the United States; becoming an electrical engineer and serving in the United States Navy; and rediscovering religion after the death of his wife.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Fritz Gluckstein, born January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes the end of the war in Berlin; the food and housing shortages; cleaning up rubble from bombings with his father; the difficulties of re-starting his education after the war; immigrating to the United States in January 1948 and settling in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area; becoming a veterinarian; and volunteering for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Brigitte Freidin

    Oral History

    Brigitte Freidin, born in Augsburg, Germany on June 3, 1930, describes her family and childhood; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her father’s release and her parents’ decision to try to immigrate to the United States; traveling to England while waiting for permission to go to the U.S.; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; staying with relatives who were taking in refugees in Washington, DC; losing touch with much of her family left in Europe and then discovering that many had died; participating in American student clubs during the war; working as a salesgirl when she was fourteen years old to help support her family; getting married and starting a family; and speaking about her personal experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Eva Kristine Belfoure

    Oral History

    Eva Kristine Belfoure, born on October 1, 1924 in Kraków, Poland, describes growing up in a Roman Catholic home; having many Orthodox Jewish friends in her childhood; teaching Catholic prayers to an elderly Jewish lady who was hidden in her home during the war; exchanging goods and delivering messages in the ghetto; being arrested in January 1942 and being taken to the Nordhausen concentration camp, where she worked in various labor camps; her deportation to the Rathsfeld firm, where she worked as a kitchen aide and remained until liberation; doing translation work in a field hospital in Nordhausen after the war; going to the displaced persons camps in Dora, Heilbronn, and Darmstadt; attending the university in Frankfurt after receiving aid from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; immigrating to the United States in June 1950 and marrying a sailor in 1953; teaching languages in Baltimore County for twenty-five years; and translating for the Red Cross and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard

    Oral History

    George Leonard, a concentration camp liberator born on December 24, 1921 in Malden, Massachusetts, describes his childhood; his training in Alabama and California before he and his unit went to England; becoming the company runner, staying close to the captain and lieutenants; translating codes and delivering messages while at war; his memories of the fights at the Siegfried Line; receiving the Bronze Star after being wounded; traveling through parts of Germany along the Czech border and getting ordered to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; helping to give the victims a proper burial; staying in the Mauthausen area for about six weeks until he went to Spital am Pyhrn, Austria in late July; leaving for America on December 15, 1945; getting married; and teaching at Harvard University after the war.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Roberg

    Oral History

    Kurt Roberg, born May 16, 1924 in Celle, Germany, discusses his childhood; attending a German school where he was the only Jewish student; his father Victor Roberg’s profession as a merchant for the firm Gebrüder Freidberg; his family’s religious practices; Kristallnacht; antisemitism in his hometown; details of German politics of the time; the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933; how a retired teacher, Hal Lotheim, taught local Jewish students; the Hitler Youth in his community; his Bar Mitzvah; how his brother, Harry, immigrated in 1936 to Holland, the Netherlands to live with their maternal uncle, Wilhelm Marx; how his father had to close his business in 1937; his mother’s 1938 trip to Hamburg, Germany to visit the American consulate; how his father was sent to Oranienburg after Kristallnacht; his father’s release and experiences in Oranienburg; his journey to Holland to join his brother and uncle; how his mother and father used American visa applications to travel to Holland; how his mother, father, and brother immigrated to the United States from Holland in 1940; German attacks on Rotterdam, the Netherlands; being interned in Holland for his status as a German citizen; being sent out of Rotterdam to Gouda, the Netherlands; how a woman organized transports of children from Holland and Belgium to reunite with their parents; receiving his American visa in January 1941; leaving Holland in March 1941; traveling from Germany to Spain and then to Lisbon, Portugal by train with other children; traveling by American ship from Lisbon, Portugal to the United States; being held on Ellis Island for a month because of visa complications; living in New Rochelle, New York with his family; learning about Pearl Harbor; how he and his brother joined the army in 1943; experiencing antisemitism in the army; his experience in the Pacific during World War II; and his life with his family after the war.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Schnog

    Oral History

    Alfred Schnog, born January 25, 1931, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany; growing up in a relatively secular Jewish family on Universität Straße; his relationship with his grandparents who lived in Deutz, a suburb of Cologne; seeing Nazi parades and looking on with interest but feeling unwelcome; being harassed by Nazi Youth on his way home from school with his twin brother, Norbert; seeing signs in businesses barring Jews and learning that few business owners enforced this policy; spending Passover in a Catholic hospital after being injured in a car wreck and being provided with kosher food by the nuns; watching his father throw pieces of a gun into the Rhine when guns were banned for Jews; his father’s metal trade business being taken over by non-Jews; hearing about concentration camps but believing they would primarily affect immigrants (particularly Poles) and seeing Polish children taken out of his classes by the Gestapo; his parents’ search for a way out of Germany and eventual escape to the Netherlands in the summer of 1938; his family’s return to Germany in November 1938 to retrieve belongings; witnessing Kristallnacht from an upper-floor window of the Dome Hotel; his family being taken to jail as they tried to return to the Netherlands after the German borders were sealed, but eventually being allowed to go; attending Jewish school in Amsterdam and learning Dutch; applying to move to the United States and first going by plane to England in Jan 1940, then by ship (the Britannic) from Liverpool to New York City in April 1940; attending school in the United States; speaking Dutch with his brother because they did not want to be associated with Germans; experiencing discrimination in school when his third grade teacher admonished him and his brother for wearing an American flag pin on a holiday when they were not born in America; having his Bar Mitzvah and attending Hebrew school at the synagogue in Regal Park; experiencing antisemitism as his family vacationed in the Adirondacks, finding many signs restricting Jews from staying at hotels; learning that his grandparents had been killed in a concentration camp; graduating from Forest Hill High School and then receiving a degree in engineering from Cornell; going to Korea in 1954 to serve two years in the U.S. Army; starting and running a company; learning that a pair of his father’s cufflinks were given to his father in recognition of his Bar Mitzvah by Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who later led an assassination attempt against Hitler; his reflections on the way those who did not experience the Holocaust and WWII view it; his children’s knowledge of his and his parents’ experiences and how it has affected them; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Fred Taucher

    Oral History

    Fred Taucher, born on January 29, 1933 in Berlin, Germany, describes his half-brother’s suicide to avoid Nazi concentration camps; the destruction of his father’s store during Kristallnacht; moving to a ghetto in 1938; his father’s inability to leave Germany despite his United State’s citizenship; his family’s relationship with a high ranking Nazi member; his father going into slave labor and then being sent to Auschwitz in 1943; his family’s escape from arrest; living in subway stations to avoid Allied bombings; getting arrested, tortured, and sent to Dachau in April 1945; escaping from the Nazis with some Russian soldiers; his mother’s death during a crossfire between the Germans and the Russians; his 1946 Bar Mitzvah in Berlin; life in Berlin after the Holocaust; his 1946 arrival in America; his decision to join the U.S. Army; his experiences trying to obtain United States citizenship; his life in America as a citizen and his activism in Holocaust survivor networks.

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Goldkind, born in Czechoslovakia (near Volosyanka, Ukraine) on July 9, 1928, describes her early childhood; experiencing antisemitism as a child; her recollections of the Nazi occupation of her town in 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz; how her grandfather was beaten to death for not relinquishing a Torah scroll; being sent to work at a munitions factory in Germany; being with her sister when they were liberated by British troops in 1945; spending time in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp to recover; receiving help from the Swedish Red Cross and traveling to Sweden to recover; immigrating to the United States in 1946 with her sister; finding a job as a secretary in New York City; getting married and moving to Baltimore; the death of her sister and raising her children; and her reflections on the current state of the world.

    Oral history interview with Inge Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Inge Katzenstein (née Berg), born March 27, 1929 in Cologne, Germany, describes her family; having to move in with some of her extended family in Cologne after Kristallnacht; attempting to illegally cross into Holland; getting into Holland but immediately being captured and imprisoned; immigrating to Kenya but not being able to leave their home their without permission; attending stenography school to become a secretary; immigrating to the United States in 1951 and settling in Vineland, New Jersey; getting married and raising her children as Orthodox Jews; and returning to Germany twice and getting treated well.

    Oral history interview with Werner Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Werner Katzenstein, born in Wallensen, Germany on April 29, 1922, describes his childhood; having to leave school in 1933 after Hitler came to power in 1933; his father going to prison because he was Jewish but getting released after about a week; his father being forced to close down his business; buying property in Holland and immigrating there in 1937; immigrating to the United States in 1939 and settling in Somerville, New Jersey; being considered an enemy alien; registering for the draft and being called to service in March 1944; being sent for basic training to Camp Blanding in Florida; being classified for intelligence and reconnaissance work; joining the 100th Infantry Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina; his deployment to Europe; going through southern France and the Vosges Mountains; and getting wounded in combat; returning to his platoon in January 1945 and going through Germany; being in combat in Heidelberg; working for the military government; visiting family who had been in Theresienstadt; returning for New Jersey on April 30,1946; and getting married and settling in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Fred Goldman

    Oral History

    Fred Goldman, born in Fürth, Germany on September 6, 1915, describes his childhood; his memories of Hitler coming to power; finishing high school and moving to Berlin to train to be a cantor and teacher at a Jewish Teacher’s College; returning to Fürth after three years and moving back in with his mother and sister; immigrating to the United States in January 1939 because a distant cousin vouched for him; arriving in the U.S. with twelve dollars and taking a job as a busboy at a department store in New York; marrying Ruth Schuster, a Jewish women also from Fürth; working in a uniform factory until he was drafted into the army in March 1943; becoming a member of the medical corps but then being transferred into the military intelligence unit when the army learned he was fluent in German; going to Camp Ritchie in Maryland; interrogating prisoners in Europe; staying with the army until March 1946, when he returned to the United States and became a diamond setter; and settling in Silver Spring, Maryland after the war.

    Oral history interview with Paulette Stessin

    Oral History

    Paulette Stessin, born in Metz, France, discusses her family and childhood in France; her parents, who sold clothing in the market; keeping kosher; her understanding of events in Germany in 1938 when she was 17 or 18; her family’s move to Angouleme, France where they thought they would be safe; daily life in Angouleme; her work as a hairdresser in Brive la Gaillarde, France, where there was one Jewish family; being arrested near Brive in April 1944; being transferred to Drancy and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her memories of Auschwitz; working on a road hauling stones; “Pitchipoi,” a term referring to the imaginary place they would be sent to and used by the prisoners in Drancy; the addition of a chemical to the women’s soup to suppress their menstrual cycles, which did not work on her; deciding to join her “camp sister”, a Dutch woman in another barrack, who was being deported; arriving at Bergen-Belsen; her memories of the camp; being liberated in April 1945; traveling to Paris; her reintegration at the Hotel Lutetia; and her decision to return to Angouleme.

    Oral history interview with Margitta Cooper

    Oral History

    Margitta Cooper, born on June 10, 1929 in Speyer, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her family’s arrest in 1940 and being taken to the Gurs concentration camp; gathering with about 20 other children and being told they were to be sent to the United States; separating from her parents and seeing them for the last time; spending time in a small French town before her immigration; finally travelling to the United States by boat in 1941; taking a train to Baltimore, MD to recover with the other immigrant children; meeting an uncle in New York City; finding out about the fate of her family; settling into life in Baltimore and receiving a job at the Johns Hopkins hospital; and her reflections on what the world knew about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Erika Eckstut

    Oral History

    Erica Eckstut, born June 12, 1928 in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her family; staying with her sister and brother-in-law at the end of the war; marrying a member of the Czech Army, Robert Kauder, on August 28, 1945; living in Freiwaldau (Jeseník), Czech Republic; how her husband was the big boss (Velitel) in the city, removing Germans from the Sudetenland area; moving to Prague, Czech Republic; having two children over the next few years; how her husband testified at the Nuremberg Trials; the death of her husband in 1957; immigrating to the United States; finally arriving in the United States with her children on April 11, 1960 and being greeted by a swarm of reporters because she was among the first to be allowed to leave Communist Czechoslovakia; attending technology school; living with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their children for a year before getting her own apartment; meeting her current husband in 1962; her diagnosis of lung cancer in 1989; participating in a cancer research study and being one of two survivors of the seventy-five person study; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Tole Johannes Madna

    Oral History

    Tolé Johannes Hendricus Madna, born June 8, 1931 in The Hague, the Netherlands, describes his Indonesian father and his Dutch Protestant mother; living in Holland during the war; the divorce of his parents in 1936; living with his father and a nanny; hiding the infant son, Alfred Munzer, of family friends; the child staying with his family for three and a half years and calling him Bobby; moving to Belgium after the war; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Henri Dupuy

    Oral History

    Henri Dupuy, born June 5, 1920 in Thiviers, France and designated Righteous Among Nations, discusses his anger at the French government and Germany; his decision to join the Resistance; Constantin, nom de guerre Jambard, leader of the Armée Secrète (AS) who formed the Maquis in 1942 in Perigueux, France; how his mother, Helene, hid Maquis members in her home and procured ration cards; joining the police to avoid the draft; guarding the Perigueux Gestapo headquarters and stealing letters stamped “Dordogne,” denouncing French citizens; the November 10, 1943 Maquis attack in Perigueux and roundup and deportation of 350 Jews to Auschwitz; the arrest of the Gruska family and escape of their children; how his mother placed two Gruska sons with rural families and the daughter in a convent; how his mother secured forged identity papers with the complicity of Secretary-General Lafont, joining the Messignac Maquis; Maquis attacks from the woods; the supply of small arms by the Riberac police and by parachute drops; how the Maquis were denounced and attacked by Germans; hiding in Coursac, Dordogne, France and joining the Roland Maquis; a Maquis attack on the Neuvic-Bordeaux train carrying French francs to Germany in July or August 1944; and how the Maquis offloaded the francs in a truck to Saint-Alvere, a resistance center in the Dordogne, to support Maquis families and resistance activities.

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

    Halina Peabody (née Halina Janna Litman), born in Kraków, Poland on December 12, 1932, describes her childhood; taking on a false identity (Halina Litinska) during the war and pretending to be Catholic; hiding in Jaroslaw with her mother and younger sister; being injured on the day of liberation by a hand grenade; being liberated by the Russian Army; living in group homes with her sister after the war; traveling to Italy with her family and staying at a displaced persons camp; traveling to England and then going to Israel in 1957; taking a job at the American embassy in Tel Aviv; marrying a Bulgarian Jew who worked for the U.S. Information Agency; leaving Israel in 1968 with her husband and five year old son; immigrating to Palo Alto, California, where her husband could get a job at the Hoover Institute; moving to Washington, D.C., where Halina’s husband got a job working for “The Voice of America”; getting a divorce from her husband in 1972 and then marrying Richard Peabody; volunteering at the Holocaust Museum; and getting involved with survivor groups such as the Association of Child Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Bercau

    Oral History

    Marcel Bercau, born October 17, 1920 in Paris, France, describes his Romanian family; restrictions placed on Jews during German occupation; his deportation to Drancy in 1941; working in a locksmith's workshop and remaining in Drancy with his father and brother for a year before they were deported; going to Auschwitz, where he worked as an earth-worker and then as a bricklayer; working in the schlosser-electriker division, which allowed him to find a little bit of extra food; the evacuation of Auschwitz on January 17, 1945; going on a death march with 60,000 other prisoners and traveling through the snow and the cold with no food; arriving in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), where they were put in open cattle cars and transported to Oranienburg; how while they passed through Prague, Czech Republic people threw them bread and water containers; how four out of five people died during the transport; the German abandonment of Landsberg, where he was being held; being rescued and taken to Augsburg, where there was a repatriation camp; and returning to Paris to start a family.

    Oral history interview with Rolph Hammel

    Oral History

    Rolph Hammel, born on September 11, 1912, in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes his family; his involvement with a Zionist youth movement; being forced to do military service in 1933 in Dijon; getting scarlet fever; moving to Strasbourg, France and working in a hardware store before starting his own faucet and fixtures business in 1937; being allowed to remain in France because he had inherited citizenship from his mother who was French; working in the DCA during the war; helping to save 70 Jews in Périgueux, France; going to the ORT school; and his reflections on the treatment of Jews during the war.

    Oral history interview with Norbert V. Hilsberg

    Oral History

    Norbert Hilsberg, born on September 3, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; graduating college and serving in the Austrian military for three months; starting the forms to immigrate to the United States after the Anschluss; his parents’ immigration to Cuba, where they stayed until April 1941, when they attained visas for the United States; receiving his visa in June 1938 and traveling to the United States; living with his uncle in Philadelphia, PA when he arrived; learning about the invasion of Poland; working in the advertising department of the Litz department store in Philadelphia; volunteering for the US Army in February 1941; getting sent to an engineering camp, where he made maps; the attachment of his outfit to the general headquarters in DC; being forced to remain in the US when his unit went abroad because he was not yet eligible for his American citizenship; receiving his citizenship in April 1943 and working on plans for the invasion of southern France and Austria; living in North Africa for nearly a year; being sent to Hawaii; leaving the army in 1945; accepting a job with the war department; and settling in Washington, DC with his family.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

    Alfred Munzer, born in The Hague, Netherlands on November 23, 1941, describes his family; how his parents debated over having him circumcised; his family going into hiding in May 1942; his father being admitted into a psychiatric hospital and his mother working at the psychiatric hospital as a nurse’s aide; his two older sisters being taken in by a Catholic family; going into hiding with a family friend and neighbor, Tolé Madna; how he played in the backyard and was called Bobby; his parents being sent to a concentration camp on December 26, 1942; his mother surviving the war, working first as a seamstress and later as an electrician; how his father died soon after liberation; the death of his sisters in Auschwitz; immigrating to Brussels, Belgium in 1952 and to the United States in 1958 with his mother; settling in New York where he attended Brooklyn College; going on to attend medical school at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn; becoming a lung specialist and interning at several well known-hospitals before doing military service at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, D.C.; and settling in D.C. with his partner Joel Wind.

    Oral history interview with Maria Mandel

    Oral History

    Maria Myriam Mandel, born 1938 in Czerwinsk, Poland, discusses the assembly of the town's citizens in a square and their deportation; her family's escape through a bakery door; hiding from the Gestapo in granaries, cemeteries, and the woods; her parents’ execution by the Gestapo in 1942; her placement by her parents in a neighbor's home from 1942 to 1947; her new name, Katia Gortak; the kindness of her foster mother and brother; her Catholic education; her antisemitic feelings; the painful loss of her brother and sister who were placed in other families and abandoned; the arrival of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) at the end of the war; reuniting with her uncles in America and France; her shock at learning she was Jewish; her transfer to a Jewish orphanage in Czerwinsk, where she received a Jewish education; her recollections of antisemitism at the war's end; her life in the orphanage from 1947 to 1949; visits by her foster mother; her bitterness when visits ceased; how the JDC changed her birth date from 1938 to 1937 to allow her to travel alone from Poland to France; her arrival in Paris, France; her refusal to join her uncle in America; and her life in Perigueux, France with her paternal uncle and his family.

    Oral history interview with Yvonne Mignot de Royere

    Oral History

    Yvonne Mignot de Royere (née Roux), born in Clermont d’Excideuil, France on February, 22, 1925, describes how she and her father, Joseph Roux, saved 21 Jews during World War II; the evacuation of Jews in Strasbourg in 1939; working with her father, who was the mayor; taking in French Jewish refugees; how her work as a municipal clerk gave her access to forms and papers, which she used to provide the Jews with forged identity papers and ration cards; hiding Jews in the village rectory; one of the Jewish women giving birth to her daughter, Arlette Veil, in 1943; she and her father saving several families (last names: Robertso, Schwab, Wertz, and Veil); how three of the families were hidden in the caretaker’s house at the Chateau du Noyer and she helped them secure food; how she occasionally left the mayor’s office unlocked so that the families could secure additional ration cards; living in Excideuil from 1942 to 1944, after which the Jews returned to Alsace to rebuild their lives; staying in touch with the people she helped; and being honored with her father by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations in 1982.

    Oral history interview with Susan Berlin

    Oral History

    Susan Berlin (née Suzanna Reichman), born on June 22, 1926 in Rožňava, Czechoslovakia (present day Slovakia), describes her family; her childhood in Rožňava; her memories of the rise of Nazi power; immigrating to the United States on August 3, 1939; settling in New York City, where she went to Julia Richmond High School; graduating in 1942 and attending Brooklyn College for her undergraduate degree and the University of Pennsylvania for her master’s degree; graduating in 1947 and moving to Washington D.C., where she got a job in the Army Intelligence Map Service as an Army Intelligence Research Analyst; marrying in 1950 and having three daughters; retiring from the Army Intelligence Map Service to raise her daughters; becoming an art teacher when her children got older; and volunteering at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Education Department.

    Oral history interview with John Bucur

    Oral History

    John Bucur, born in Youngstown, Ohio on March 5, 1925, describes his childhood; his Romanian-American parents; the multiracial community he grew up in; graduating high school in 1943 as the valedictorian of his class and receiving a scholarship to Ohio University; enlisting in the Army and being sent to Fort Sill, where he received training to be in Battery B of the 17th Observation Battalion; his first assignment watching a ship off the shore of Omaha Beach in France on D-Day; his unit’s move through England, France, and Germany and then going on a tour of Buchenwald at the end of the war; taking college courses at an American School in Biarritz, France after the war; returning home on December 7, 1945 and being discharged from the army; finishing his degree at Ohio University and graduating in 1948; going on to medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon; having five children with two wives; and moving to Arlington, Virginia to found Fairfax Hospital, Northern Virginia Doctor’s Hospital, and the National Orthopedic Hospital.

    Oral history interview with Lore Schneider

    Oral History

    Lore Schneider (née Heti Lore Koppel), born on October 10, 1924 in Bochum, Germany, describes her family; seeing the Nazi youth in her neighborhood; observing the Nazi parades from her home on the main street; immigrating to the United States in June 1934; settling in Washington, D.C. and attending public school; obtaining U.S. citizenship in 1939, five years after her family’s arrival; attending college at night and working as a stenographer at the Interior Department during the war; and marrying in 1946 and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Frank Nathan Liebermann (né Franz Natan Liebermann), born in Gleiwitz (Gliwice), Poland on January 19, 1929, describes his family; celebrating Jewish holidays; immigrating to the United States in October 1938 and moving to Dayton, Ohio, where his father set up his medical practice; his family’s involvement in the Jewish community and helping many European Jews to immigrate to the United States; attending Western Reserve University; meeting his wife during his sophomore year and marrying her soon after he graduated; working for a textile converting firm for many years before retiring and moving to Washington, D.C., where his two daughters had already settled; finding a job at a travel firm; and beginning to volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum after September 11th, 2001.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Liebermann

    Oral History

    Marianne Liebermann, born in Vienna, Austria on October 29, 1929, describes her family and childhood; her education; her father searching for ways to leave Vienna and immigrating to the United States after the Anschluss; her father’s efforts to convince a gentile American family, with whom he had previously done business, to vouch for his family; boarding a train to Cherbourg, France in September 1938 and transferring to the Europa ship, which took them to the U.S.; arriving in New York on October 3, 1938 and living there when the war broke out in 1939; graduating from Barnard University and later going on to get her master’s degree at Adelphi University; marrying Frank Liebermann on November 23, 1950; settling down in Great Neck, New York and having three children; becoming a teacher and spending many years teaching English as a second language; and settling in Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Thea S. Rips

    Oral History

    Thea S. Rips, born in Trieste, Italy on February 24, 1922, describes her childhood; her family moving to Rijeka, Croatia when she was five years old; growing up in a Catholic family but having many Jewish friends; witnessing the persecution of nearby Jewish families; aiding several families in their attempts to escape Italy; wanting to become a doctor and working in a shipyard infirmary in Rijeka; getting a job working on the Marshall Plan after the war in Rome, Italy; being offered a chance to move to the United States and work as an interpreter in 1955; meeting her husband, who she was engaged to for eighteen years before they married in February 1976; going to the United States and living in New York; moving to Washington, D.C.; and the death of her husband in September of 1994.

    Oral history interview with Andrew Glass

    Oral History

    Andrew (né Andrej) James Glass, born November 30, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his early childhood; spending time in his wealthy grandfather's house because of his mother's illness; his grandfather, Jacob, repatriating millions of dollars which had been deposited in Switzerland, New York, and London, back into zlotys in Poland because of a 1939 government decree; hearing planes and bombs exploding in September 1939; his father being forced to clear rubble and fill sandbags; supplying gas to a gentile taxi driver and two families driving east on September 13; going by horse and cart and then by train and on foot to Vilnius, Lithuania; his father getting picked up by a Lithuanian patrol but being released when he agreed with them that President Roosevelt was Jewish; his family receiving three Japanese visas from Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul; paying 600 dollars to get Soviet transit visas; traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway and arriving in Japan in December 1940; getting three residence visas to the Dominican Republic and a one week transit visa from the American Consul in Tokyo, Japan; sailing on the Kama Kumakara in April 1941 to San Francisco, CA; taking the train to New York, NY and staying there until 1943; immigrating to Canada; re-entering the U.S. under the Polish quota; his father working in a defense plant and his mother working as a seamstress in New York; how he determined to not feel different; working for the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, Senators Javits and Percy, and Cox newspapers from 1974 to 2001; becoming a Fellow at Harvard and the managing editor of The Hill newspaper; and feeling that he is living on borrowed time, that life is precious, and that there is a randomness to who survives.

    Oral history interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff

    Oral History

    Renate Fischer Chernoff, born on June 25, 1929 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), describes her early childhood; moving to Racibórz, Poland with her family in 1934; being sent to Berlin, Germany to stay with her grandmother in 1937; her family choosing to immigrate to Canada since her father was a physician; arriving in 1938 and settling in Montreal; moving to New Brunswick; her parents adopting Saul Silvershein, a sixteen year old Polish boy from a displaced persons camp; attending college at Dalhousie University; meeting her husband while in graduate school at the University of Chicago; marrying in New Brunswick in 1953 and moving to Saint Louis, MO where her husband finished his residency and their first child was born; moving to Durham, NC, where they had two more children; and settling in the Washington, DC area in 1980.

    Oral history interview with Eli Dortort

    Oral History

    Eli Dortort (né Klemfner), born on August 30, 1920 in Zdachov, Galicia, Poland, describes his family and childhood; escaping his hometown a few hours before the Germans invaded; traveling with some Russian soldiers to Kiev, Ukraine and then to Starobielsk (Starobil's'k), Ukraine, where he volunteered for the Polish Army; his unit being sent to Israel, where he deserted and worked in a kibbutz; staying in the kibbutz for a year before he joined the British Army and was sent to Italy; later being stationed in Teheran, Iran and Egypt; returning to Israel after the war and fighting in the War of Independence; staying in Israel until the late 1950s, when he immigrated to the United States; and settling in New York City, where he met his wife and had a daughter.

    Oral history interview with Hilda Seftor

    Oral History

    Hilda Seftor (née Cohen), born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 21, 1923, describes her family and childhood; finding out about the Nazi invasion of Poland; helping her local Jewish community and finding homes for thirty-five Jewish refugee children; her parents founding the Whittingehame Farm School; teaching the school’s Jewish children how to farm and giving them a traditional education; attending the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science and graduating with a degree in household and institutional management in 1943; working in the Edinburgh school system and later at a wartime nursery preparing meals for children; marrying after the war and immigrating to the United States; having four sons; moving to Washington, DC in 1994; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Felix Nicinski

    Oral History

    Felix Nicinski (né Fievish Nicinski), born December 7, 1925 in Lochów, Poland near Lódź, Poland, discusses his early childhood; moving in to the fenced-in ghetto in early 1940; how the Germans bombed their city before entering it; being taken to a work camp in Lienzingen (Mühlacker, Germany) in late 1940 with the other 14 to 18 year old boys to dig ditches; slipping away on a march in the summer of 1941 to work and escape to the fenced-in ghetto in Kalisz, Poland; receiving the false identity of an escaped 27 year old; Kalisz Jews being sent to the Lódź ghetto in 1941; being forced to wear the yellow star and beaten by the German guards; working at an ammunitions plants in Skarżysko-Kamienna for 10 months in 1942; being sent to Dora in 1943 and then to Buchenwald in 1944 for six months; his transfer to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; living in Bamberg, Germany between 1945 to 1948 and learning how to be a barber; immigrating to Australia in 1948 and living there for ten years; immigrating to the United States in 1958; and marrying another survivor of Bergen-Belsen.

    Oral history interview with David Brombart

    Oral History

    David Brombart, born on August 3, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his childhood; the German invasion in May 1940 and being able to attend school until mid-1941; the deportation of his sister, Sarah, and his mother in August 1942; running away from a boarding school in Ikla (possibly Uccle in Brussels) and his father placing him in the home of business clients; going into hiding in Hornu, Belgium but visiting his father, who was in hiding in another city; his liberation in September 1944 and returning to Brussels with his father; finding out that his grandfather was a member of the Jewish Committee which made up lists for the Germans; returning to school at age 11 and learning how to write; serving in the Belgian Army from 1952 to 1954 and becoming the head of the Socialist Democratic Youth until 1958; having a full time job with the Young Socialist Guard and attending international conferences as the Labor Secretary from 1958 to 1964; living in Paris, France from 1958 to 1959; getting married in 1961; being offered a job to direct the African Labor Institute of the American organization AFL-CIO; moving to New York and advising labor movements in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia; becoming Deputy Director of the International Department of the AFL-CIO under Lane Kirkland; and being honored for his international labor work by the governments of Dahomey, Togo, and Senegal.

    Oral history interview with Gunter Haimann

    Oral History

    Gunter Haimann, born on January 26, 1922 in Koblenz, Germany, describes his childhood and family; his parents deciding that it was time to leave Germany in the beginning of 1937, when Jewish children were banned from public schools; immigrating to the United States and living with his aunt in Queens, New York; attending high school and night school to learn English; graduating in June 1941 and finding a job at an auto shop; his draft into the army at the beginning of the war and being trained as an interrogator; teaching interrogating techniques at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; his transfer into the 101st Airborne; going to England and jumping on D-Day and landing in Carentan, France; serving with the 101st for the remainder of the war; receiving a Purple Heart after being wounded in Bastogne, Belgium; not taking religion in to account while he was fighting; jumping onto Holland on Rosh Hashonah in 1944; going into Düsseldorf, Germany; finding Hitler’s stationary and using it to write letters; going to Austria and finding Mr. and Mrs. Goering and speaking with Mrs. Goering; seeing Holocaust survivors walking home; returning to the United States and starting a luncheonette business; and meeting his wife and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Lakritz

    Oral History

    Alfred Julian Lakritz, born on June 1, 1934 in Kiel, Germany, describes his family; narrowly escaping deportation to Poland in 1939 and moving to Antwerp, Belgium and then Marmande, France with his family; experiencing antisemitism from his peers in Marmande; how his father was arrested; speaking with the men who arrested his father many years later, and their regret; being sent with his brother to a Jewish summer camp in Creuse, France in July 1942; going into hiding in various safe houses for two and a half years after leaving the camp; ending up at a convent in Lourdes, France, where they met a Jewish French woman who took them in for the remainder of the war; being placed in a Catholic home in Tarbes with his brother after the war; reuniting with their mother in Marmande and applying for visas to the United States; immigrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Oakland, CA; attending the University of California at Berkeley; completing his law degree; moving to Los Angeles, CA with his wife, whom he had met in law school; and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Romania, describes her family and early childhood; her father’s draft into the Russian Army; going into hiding in Transnistria, Ukraine in September 1941; her liberation by Russian troops in April 1944; returning to their home in Romania and discovering that her father had died during the war; attending school for the first time and learning Russian and Ukrainian; traveling to Munich, Germany and posing as a Greek refugee; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp for some time; developing tuberculosis in 1947 and having to go to a sanitarium in Augsburg, Germany; immigrating to the United States with her mother in September 1949 and settling in New York, NY; and getting married in 1959 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Anita Etzyon

    Oral History

    Anita Etzyon, born on October 4, 1941 in Boryslav, Poland (present day Ukraine), describes her family and childhood; being one year old when her mother died from tuberculosis; having few direct memories of the war but being told about her family’s life during that time; being taken away to live with a Christian family and getting baptized to better fit into her surroundings; returning to live with her father, who had remarried, after the war; living in a Jewish neighborhood and attending a Jewish school; moving to various cities around Poland with her father and step-mother; being the only Jew in her school in Swidnica, Poland; adjusting to life as a Jew after she had spent four years as a Christian; immigrating to Israel in 1951; learning Hebrew and adjusting to life in Israel; getting married to avoid serving in the Israeli Army; having a daughter; immigrating to the United States with her husband and daughter 1963; settling in Washington, DC and working for a Jewish Day School; and her reflections on being a Jew in the modern world.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Galun

    Oral History

    Melvin Galun, born on May 10, 1940 in Kowal, Poland, describes his parents’ participation in the Zionist movement; his mother’s stories about Jews being sent away to the camps; going into hiding in the nearby forests; his memory of his family’s liberation by Russian troops; staying in several German displaced persons camps after the war; his early education in the displaced persons camps; participating in Zionist youth movements in the camps; immigrating to the United States in November 1949; his studies in the United States at a Yeshiva school; traveling to Israel after graduating school and working in a kibbutz for a year; and getting married in 1963 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Magdalena Farkas Berkovics

    Oral History

    Magdalena Farkas Berkovics, born on July 15, 1919 in Cluj, Romania, discusses her childhood, schooling and musical training in a conservatory; experiencing low level antisemitism; getting married in 1939; living in her house in the Cluj ghetto with other women after the city’s Jewish men had been taken away for forced labor; conditions in the ghetto, including food scarcity and the black market; providing piano lessons to Christian children; being deported in June 1944; terrible conditions in the train car; her arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from her family except for one 25-year-old cousin; how her clothes were taken away and her hair removed; going to Stutthof in August 1944 and then digging ditches in Steinort (Sztynort, Poland), Elbing (Elbląg, Poland), and Groudentz; speaking about freedom with the other women and singing Hungarian songs; being liberated and traveling to Satu Mare, Romania, where Jewish volunteers helped her return to Cluj; how she found Christians living in her house and learned that she was the only survivor in her family; marrying, Zoltan Berkovics, in 1946; the birth of their son, Tiberius, who later changed his name to John Sylvanis because of antisemitism in Romania; how Communists nationalized her house and forced her to pay rent; teaching in the Romanian conservatory for 30 years; immigrating with her husband to the United States in the 1980s; and feeling very grateful for American liberty and democracy.

    Oral history interview with Sol Mackler

    Oral History

    Sol Mackler, born on January 15,1921 in Poland, discusses his childhood in a small village; visiting relatives in nearby Radom; being forced to live in a ghetto in 1939 with sixteen people in one house; wearing a yellow star; in late 1941 walking seven miles to Pionki labor camp, being given a striped uniform and the number 1058; working in a munitions factory, then laying railway tracks in a tunnel; escaping with four other prisoners to the forest and joining Polish Jewish partisans; being captured by Germans and being sent by train to Sachsenhausen; seeing his sister and her baby there; smuggling his one year old nephew into Pionki to the child’s father, a tailor who made Nazi uniforms; waiting for Russians at liberation; going back to his village and being severely beaten; living in Bad Nauheim displaced persons camp in Germany; working on the black market selling diamonds from Belgium; arriving in the United States in December 1949 after being sponsored by two Jewish Californian wine makers; moving to New York to work and getting married in 1956; working for his brother-in-law; and finding out his parents were executed in Treblinka.

    Oral history interview with Theresia Bauer

    Oral History

    Theresia Bauer discusses her involvement with the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), which paralleled the boys’ Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend); the Soviet occupation of Austria, a time period in which she was constantly hiding from soldiers; and her husband's experience as a prisoner of war in Russia.

    Oral history interview with Carolina Taitz

    Oral History

    Carolina Taitz (née Lena Knoch), born on February 24, 1929 in Russia on a train, discusses her childhood in Viesite, Latvia; having friendly relations with schoolmates in her Latvian public school; how her father, a tree doctor, lost his business and the family house and was temporarily imprisoned as a capitalist when the Russian Communists occupied the town; experiencing a lot of antisemitism; seeing Jews being shot on the street when the Germans came in 1941; being forced to live in the ghetto in Riga, Latvia with five people to a room and little food; getting hit in the eye when a German soldier caught her with a cooked potato; being forced to work in a shoe polish factory from 5 AM to 5 PM; going on a forced march with 30,000 people guarded by German soldiers; seeing and hearing people being shot in a ditch in the Rumbula forest; walking with her mother, sister, and 200 other women to Termini prison; staying on the roof in the cold for two weeks in November 1942 and the birth of a baby, named Termina; going back to the ghetto; dressing as a boy going to work and escaping during a second Aktion when she was 14 years old; taking off her yellow star; being sheltered by a Russian Evangelist priest, Vladimir Michko, and his sister for two and a half years; living in their cellar; going back to Riga at liberation; her mother returning from Auschwitz but dying soon after; attending acting school; getting married and having a daughter; trying for 10 years to go to the United States, and finally getting a visa with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt; arriving in New York in March 1966; working at the New York City Opera for 19 years in charge of costumes, wigs, and makeup for the productions; being widowed twice and moving to Washington, DC in 2008; and still seeing her mother and little brother in her dreams and herself running away from German soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Helen Schwartz

    Oral History

    Helen Schwartz (b. Hela Kirschner), born in 1925, discusses living in the Łódź ghetto in Poland from 1939 to August 1944; working in a laundry in the ghetto; being taken with her family to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944; being marched from Auschwitz to Stutthof; her liberation by the Russians near Gdansk, Poland; contracting typhus in an outbreak that hit a group of female survivors following liberation; returning to Łódź and reuniting with her sister; reuniting with her brother at the displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating in 1949 to Portland, Maine, where her husband worked in a clothing factory; opening a tailor’s shop in 1954; raising a family; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and speaking at schools in Silver Spring, Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Irene Silver

    Oral History

    Irene Silver, born Irena Dynkewicz in Łódź, Poland on January 30, 1933, discusses raising her children in the Jewish tradition, being comfortable with friends who understand the Holocaust experience; her anger with people who ask why victims did not fight back during the Holocaust; being tolerant of strangers after having lived with strangers in the Warsaw Ghetto; her work as a social worker and how it was influenced by her wartime experiences; her sympathy with the civil rights movement; her membership in the Hidden Children group in New York where she feels a common ground; receiving Holocaust reparations which she used to help her children; her view that the world has not learned any lessons from the Holocaust; and her emotion at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, feeling that the rain at the opening ceremony was the heavens crying.

    Oral history interview with Herman Taube

    Oral History

    Herman Taube (né Herschel Taube), born February 2, 1918 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family; being orphaned by age nine; living with grandparents and later moving to Piyotrkov; attending a yeshiva; being encouraged by a Polish doctor to become a medic; returning to his grandparents in Łódź in 1935 and seeing antisemitic incidents; writing poetry; belonging to a literary society and meeting the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber; working in a military hospital in Alexandrov (possibly Aleksandrów Łódźki, Poland), arranged by Father Jagla, a Catholic priest; joining the Polish Army in August 1939; serving in a medical group that marched to the Bug River where the Soviet Army ordered the group to go to Volodymyr-Volyns'kyĭ, Ukraine to get educated so as to lose their capitalist mentality; accompanying a wounded soldier to Poltawa (Poltava), Ukraine, where an Ukrainian militia man arranged for him to take a new name, Grigori Arionowicz Taube, and live with a Jewish family; going to Samarra (Koibashov or possibly Kuybyshev) and getting more medical training; being sent to Tyumen (Tiumen') in Siberia and working in hospitals and in gulags; in November 1941 going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and then to Andizhan, Uzbekistan; working in a malaria clinic; leaving the clinic after reporting that people were stealing food from the hospital; going to Seratov, Russia to the Polish Army; being assigned to the Kotsk offensive in June 1944; being badly injured by a mine explosion while riding in a truck; recovering enough by December 1944 and going to Lublin, Poland to the Polish Army headquarters in Majdanek; being assigned to Platte and opening a Red Cross repatriation station where he treated people with typhus; going to Keslin in Bessarabia in June 1945 to acquire more medicine from a CIBA warehouse; meeting a young woman, Susan Strauss, a survivor from Germany and traveling together to Potsdam, Germany; staying in a displaced persons camp in Halle-Merseburg, Germany, where he opened a Red Cross station; meeting a young Auschwitz survivor, Henry Rothfogel; traveling with Susan back to Platte, and getting civilly married and later religiously married; traveling with Susan and Henry in the summer of 1946 to Berlin, Germany with help from the Bricha; adopting a two year old child survivor, Mark; having first child in the Zingenheim displaced persons camp in September 1946; arriving in the United Sates on April 18, 1947 and being interviewed at the pier by the Jewish Daily Forward; going to Baltimore, MD to join Susan's father; writing for the Jewish Daily Forward; traveling to New York, NY to edit a Histadrut yearbook; returning to Baltimore and helping Susan run a grocery store; working for various Jewish organizations; obtaining accreditation as a journalist at the White House and in Congress; and continuing to write poetry, stories, and essays about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Regine Ginsberg

    Oral History

    Regine Ginsberg, born on November 19, 1925, discusses her childhood in Brussels, Belgium; her father’s work in the leather industry; religious observances in the household; speaking Yiddish at home and French in school; how her father wired money to Chase Bank in New York in the 1930s; her family abandoning their home in Brussels to travel by train to France; staying with a farmer in St. Gaudens, France; the family’s arrest in St. Gaudens; how her brother and father were sent to a prison near Toulouse, France and then released seven weeks later; how her mother returned to Brussels and brought back Sabbath candlesticks, prayer shawls, tefillin, and diamond jewelry which she used to bribe guards; how her father contacted a cousin in Pennsylvania; being on the last boat out of France from Marseilles; arriving in New York in June 1942; staying with cousins in Pittsburgh, PA and then settling in McKeesport, PA; her mother and father’s work in the leather industry; moving to Texas where she met her future husband Reuben Ginsberg in Athens, TX; her brother enlisting in the army and being sent to Belgium where he did intelligence work acting as a French interpreter; studying along with her husband at Columbia University in New York; becoming an art dealer and opening up a gallery in the 1970s; her emotional state after the war; and how her wartime experiences affected her life, her marriage, and the way she raised her children.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney

    Oral History

    Ursula Guttstadt McKinney, born November 17, 1925 in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, discusses her family’s professional and religious background; her childhood and the troubles she faced obtaining schooling due to being half-Jewish; the difficulties her Jewish father and cousins faced; worrying about her father getting arrested; being able to say goodbye to her father when he was taken to prison and subsequently transported to Mauthausen in October 1942; receiving news that her father died; the Third Reich taking ownership of her family’s house; getting expelled from school in October 1942; moving to Berlin, Germany with her mother and sister; the psychological effects of the war, especially the bombings; her limited contact with the underground; working at a convent where there were some hidden Jewish children; her difficulties resuming a normal life after the war; her education after the war; feeling like an outcast because of being half-Jewish; immigrating, along with her sister, to the United States; not wanting to identify as German; her feelings on being a “mischling,” or having a mixed background; not identifying with one religion and being wed in an Unitarian church; and her work as a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rappaport

    Oral History

    Ruth Rappaport, born May 27, 1923 in Leipzig, Germany, discusses her parents, Mendel Rappaport, a Romanian subject, and Helene Rubinstein, who was born in Poland; how her mother’s cousin, also named Helene Rubinstein, was a well-known cosmetics businesswoman, attending an Orthodox Jewish school and an English language school in Leipzig, Germany; her membership in the Zionist youth group, Habonim; her Romanian passport, which did not identify her as a Jew; moving to Switzerland with her family shortly after Kristallnacht; staying in Zurich, Switzerland as a nanny for the Herzog family after her parents returned to Germany; selling nail polish, which her parents sent because they could not send money; being sponsored by her uncle, Carl Rubinstein, who lived in Seattle, Washington to come to the United States; leaving Europe in December 1939 on the Holland American Line boat, the Veendam; her parents’ attempt to leave Germany with Cuban visas; how her father died in Buchenwald and her mother in Ravensbrück, both in 1943; attending high school in Seattle, then the University of Washington, and finishing at Berkeley, majoring in sociology; working after graduation for a Jewish newspaper in Seattle and for the Zionist Emergency Council; working with Bartley Crum for UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) in San Francisco, CA; working in Israel during the War of Independence in 1948, where she exchanged gunfire with Palestinians; working with Golda Meir; helping establish the Israel Photographic Archives; returning to the United States and working for the Department of Defense as a librarian; living overseas in Okinawa, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; and Vietnam; and retiring from the government after 19 years.

    Oral history interview with Edith Langer

    Oral History

    Edith Langer, born October 4, 1932 in Hamm, Germany, discusses living on a farm; her devout Lutheran mother; memories of the prewar Jewish community in her town; her early approval of Hitler because his support of public works; meeting Hitler as a member of her scout troop; attending a one-room school with 30 children, 10 of whom were Jewish; her father’s offer to hide the families of two of his Jewish customers in her family’s farm house; her mother’s feeling that hiding Jews was the right thing to do as a Christian; her father's murder by the Nazis for hiding Jews; being sent away from her family to work on a farm, where she stayed from 1941 to 1945 and had no contact with her family; being afraid of German soldiers; seeing murdered Jews in the streets; giving food to the Russian prisoners, who were living on the farm; emigrating from Germany to the United States in 1956; becoming an American citizen in 1961; her hope that more Nazis would be tried, including the one who shot her father; her membership in the Methodist Church; and taking part in protests against the American Nazi Party.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Milkman

    Oral History

    Marianne Friedenthal Milkman, born May 13, 1931 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Germany; being baptized and raised as Christian to have more opportunities; changing schools and apartments in 1938 because of anti-Jewish laws; her aunt Lotte Friedenthal, who worked with Pastor Martin Niemӧller; her father’s deportation to Sachsenhausen in 1938; traveling to Switzerland in January 1939 and then flying with her sister to England on a Kindertransport in May 1939; living with relatives in Cambridge, England; the arrival of her parents in England and her father’s internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien; joining her father on the Isle of Man in May 1940; returning to Cambridge in May 1941, where she remained throughout the war; graduating from high school and Cambridge University; coming to the United States in 1957 to study biology; getting married and living in Iowa for 30 years; settling in Washington, DC; her Jewish identity; and her feeling that her experience during the war made her a stronger person.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Cohen

    Oral History

    Ruth Friedman Cohen, born April 26, 1930 in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (present day Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her life after the Holocaust; her prewar life in Czechoslovakia; her family’s religious beliefs; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; her mother and brother’s death immediately after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transfer to Nuremberg, Germany and then Holachov; the painful effects of tuberculosis that she contracted in Holachov; her survival and liberation by the Russian Army; her and her sister’s return to Mukachevo, where they reunited with their father; her time in Budapest, Hungary and Prague, Czech Republic, where she recuperated from tuberculosis; her immigration to the United States in 1948; the various jobs she had to support herself; her marriage in 1952; her education at the New School for Social Research; and her struggle to recover from the damaging emotional and mental effects of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Phillip Abraham

    Oral History

    Phillip Abraham, born August 10, 1931 in Podului-Turkului (Podu Turcului), Romania, describes his prewar life in Romania; his family’s religious beliefs; his childhood in a close-knit Jewish community; his family’s move to Tecuci, Romania in 1940; his father being taken away and then released in 1942; the lack of food available to the population; his education in a Jewish school; his town’s liberation by the Russian Army; his post-war Romanian education; his membership in Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth organization; his time in Israel; his education at Hebrew University and Weizmann Institute, where he studied physics; his immigration to the United States in 1959; his careers at Raytheon and the Office of Naval Research; his marriage in 1964; and his two children.

    Oral history interview with George Arnstein

    Oral History

    George Ernest Arnstein, born September 20, 1924 in Stuttgart, Germany, describes his prewar life in Germany; the repercussions of the Nuremberg laws; his experiences with antisemitism; his father’s arrest on Kristallnacht; his father’s time in Dachau; his family’s decision to leave Germany and go to Geneva, Switzerland; his family’s immigration to the United States in 1938; the anti-German sentiment in America during World War II and its effects on him; his service for the United States Army beginning in 1943 and his duties as a crypto-analyst; his work in Germany helping to perform interrogations, monitoring anti-American efforts, and denazification; his return to Wisconsin after the war; his education at Berkeley and Geneva; and his life post-war.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Scarlett Epstein

    Oral History

    Gertrude Scarlett Epstein, born July 13, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, describes her early life growing up in Vienna; her Czech father’s belief in free thinking; how her family was not religious; her parents’ and older brothers’ experiences during World War I; her Uncle Willie, who became wealthy as a textile factory owner; how she began to notice antisemitism in Vienna when her family moved to a non-Jewish part of town in the 1930s; her father’s and oldest brother’s activities in the socialist movement; her memories of a strike in Vienna in 1934; her memories of the Anschluss; her brothers’ immigration to England; her experience securing visas for Czechoslovakia on the day Hitler entered Vienna; her feelings that her moral code shifted as it became necessary to lie; her father’s arrest and later release from jail in Czechoslovakia; the family’s move to Albania by train; help provided to the family by her Uncle Willie; how she smuggled money out of Austria and Czechoslovakia; her family’s life in Albania from November 1938 to April 1939; the reaction of native Albanians towards Austrian refugees; how the Joint Distribution Committee helped refugees in Albania; her experiences teaching German to Albanians and the Italian consulate; problems she and her mother had in securing passage from Albania to England; brutal treatment she and her mother received from German police at a fuel stop in Germany; her memories of learning about concentration camps in 1943 or 1944; and how she tracked down an Albanian family to whom she taught German.

    Oral history interview with Matilde Neuwirt

    Oral History

    Matilde Neuwirt, born December 26, 1930 in Belgrade, Serbia, describes her early life in Belgrade; how her parents spoke Serbo-Croatian and Ladino at home; her family’s upper-middle class lifestyle; her schooling at both a public and a Jewish school; the lack of apprehension she felt in the pre-war years; her mother’s decision that the family leave Yugoslavia in the summer of 1940; her family’s escape westward through Dubrovnik, Croatia and then to Italy; how her parents smuggled money out of Yugoslavia; her family’s arrival in Italy without visas; living in Vicenza, Italy; how her family was moved to a detention camp in Sandrigo by the Italian authorities; the unofficial schooling that families set up for the children in Sandrigo; how the Italian authorities encouraged families to leave Sandrigo when Italy capitulated to the Germans; the help Jewish families received from a government official to get false documents; her family’s experience traveling to Rome, Italy; her memories of German brutality on the streets; how she did not know what was happening to Jews elsewhere in the country nor the rest of Europe; her brother’s return to Yugoslavia to fight with Tito’s partisans; the anti-Jewish sentiment of the partisans; her brother’s disappearance and the lack of information about him from the Yugoslav government; her family’s decision to emigrate from Italy to the United States in 1949; her family’s arrival in New York, NY; her feelings about Americanization and leaving memories of Europe behind; her memories of the Eichmann trial; her experiences returning to Yugoslavia and Italy after the war; and her belief that her family was lucky in the way they lived through the war.

    Oral history interview with Susanne K. Bennet

    Oral History

    Susanne Klejman Bennet, born August 11, 1938 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her memories of entering the Warsaw ghetto; seeing the brick walls being built in the ghetto; living with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles all together in one apartment; beggars asking for food in her building; how her father, a successful art and antiquities dealer, arranged with a non-Jewish friend to have a Polish policeman take her out of the ghetto to a farm in the countryside; how, just before the destruction of the ghetto, her mother escaped from her work group and hid with nuns who gave her a habit and a new name; how the nuns were later rounded up, but were saved on the train platform by a Catholic commandant; how her father escaped from the ghetto through the sewers right before the uprising and went into hiding throughout Warsaw; how as a young child, she knew not to talk about her parents; seeing the red sky in the distance when Warsaw was burning in 1944; her reunion with her parents; the death of most of her relatives during the Holocaust; moving with her parents to Stockholm, Sweden in 1947; receiving visas in 1949 from the Swedish ambassador to Mexico where she and her family stayed for nine months; immigrating to the United States in 1950; living in New York where her father opened up a store off of Fifth Avenue and became a major art dealer with John and Robert Kennedy, the Rockefellers, the Fords, and Greta Garbo as his clients; attending Wellesley College, where she received a masters in library science; meeting her husband Douglas Bennet, who later worked for Hubert Humphrey, Senator Abe Ribicoff, and was an Assistant Secretary of State, head of US AID and NPR, and president of Wesleyan College; their eldest son, Michael, a United States senator from Colorado; their second son, James, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly; their daughter, Holly, a financial adviser; her feelings when visiting Germany with her husband; how her father never spoke about his wartime experience; and how she has only recently started talking about her childhood during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Roberts

    Oral History

    Marianne Roberts (née Marianne Cohn), born June 20, 1920 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Ludwigshafen; experiencing antisemitism; her father's death from tuberculosis in 1933; her expulsion from school with her sister, Lottie, because they were Jewish; her mother's death in 1936; being photographed at the City Hall to show her "Jewish left ear" and being given the name ‘Sarah’; living with her sister until Kristallnacht; hiding in a basement for three days with no food while their apartment was being destroyed; moving into her sister's fiancé’s family's house for a few months and never going outside; going to the American Consulate to get visas their mother had applied for three years previously; leaving Germany in early 1939 with 4 dollars, pots and pans, and a family ring; sailing on the Cunard White Star to New York, NY; working in a doctor's office in Brooklyn; getting married and having two children; and speaking for past 20 years in schools and colleges about her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Antwerp, Belgium; being hidden during the war with the Coons family in Brussels, Belgium, then in a children's home, and then in the Von der Linden's house under the name Henry Von der Linden; his parents who lived in hiding with another couple; how his father did not go outside for two years while in hiding; his brother, Mani, who was saved by Father Joseph Andre; how his mother found him after liberation; the removal of Allied flags at the time of the Battle of the Bulge because of fear that German forces would make their way to Brussels; arriving in the United States with his parents in March 1951; settling in Seattle, WA and going to high school and the University of Washington; traveling to Paris, France for a year for training as a French teacher; traveling to Israel to learn Hebrew; teaching French in Tacoma, WA; learning sign language and working at Gallaudet University for 29 years; feeling more comfortable among Holocaust survivors; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he feels a bond with the other volunteers.

    Oral history interview with Julie A. Keefer

    Oral History

    Julie Keefer (née Jula Weinstock Eisen), born on April 19, 1941 in Lvov, Poland (present day L'viv, Ukraine), discusses her family’s forced relocation into the Lvov ghetto; the escape of her grandfather, Aiski Eisen, from a camp in Janov; her grandfather finding help from Mr. Borecki, who told him in late 1943 that the ghetto was to be burned, and her grandfather’s rescue of her family from the ghetto; her memories of a tunnel or bunker in the forest, to which a few dozen people were smuggled out of the ghetto; her memories of her grandfather donning a Nazi uniform to smuggle people out of the ghetto; being taken out of the bunker because she and her baby sister, Tola, were endangering others by crying; being placed with Mrs. Szwarczynski, a Catholic woman; the arrival of the Russians in Lvov in June 1944; staying in three displaced persons camps in 1945; living in Camp Taylor in Linz, Austria; traveling alone at seven years old to the United States, where she lived in a series of Catholic orphanages, seeing relatives on weekends; being called a Nazi because she spoke German; being sent by the Joint Distribution Committee to the Bellefaire Jewish Children's Orphanage in Cleveland, OH; her adoption by Fred and Tea Klejstadt; attending Oberlin College; getting married and earning a graduate degree in education; feeling grateful to United States; and her desire to find out what happened to her hidden sister whose name became Antonina Noviska.

    Oral history interview with Erica Laufer

    Oral History

    Erica Laufer, born May 11, 1930 in Klagenfurt, Austria, discusses being the only Jewish child in her school, where she was taught by nuns; her mother denying her Jewish identity but her father being observant; an appearance by Hitler after the Anschluss; being forced to wear the yellow Star of David; being barred from attending school; moving into her grandfather's apartment in Vienna, Austria and living there in secret; SA attacks on Jewish homes; witnessing the events of Kristallnacht while hiding in a doorway; how her father obtained tickets to Trinidad; sailing on the Dutch ship Cotica with other refugees; establishing a life in Port of Spain, Trinidad; being forced, as refuges, to live in a detention center after England entered the war; going to a boarding school to be the companion to the daughter of the director; sailing to New York, NY with her parents in December 1940; moving to Washington, DC where she was discriminated against by other children because of her accent; her academic success; her work for the federal government; getting married and starting a family; not raising her children as Jews following an oath to her mother; the number of relatives she lost in Europe; and her attempts to suppress her feelings about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Goldberg

    Oral History

    Barbara Goldberg, born in 1943 in Wilmington, DE, discusses her parents, Emma and Erich, who received visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes to emigrate from France to Portugal; their journey over the Pyrenees to Spain and then to Portugal; their arrival in the United States; her uncle Paul Brennan (born Pavel Briess) who had been in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz; how other relatives made it to Palestine, Australia, and South Africa; speaking only German in the house; how her parents’ personalities were shaped by the war; never discussing the past or other relatives' stories; feeling a connection to refugees; living with the memory of the Holocaust; and her discovery later in life that Aristides de Sousa Mendes had helped her family.

    Oral history interview with Liselotte Epstein Ivry

    Oral History

    Liselotte Epstein Ivry, born July 21, 1925 in Lichtenstein, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Lichtenstein, Saxony, Germany), describes her family, including her father Victor Ivry, mother Elsa Sicher, and younger brother Hans; the large families on both her father’s and mother’s sides; having heard of Hitler at age 12; being taken by truck with soldiers to live with relatives in a nearby village and then by train to live in Prague, Czech Republic; the many changes after the Germans marched in on March 15, 1939; having been set to go to Great Britain in 1939 on the Kindertransport but instead being sent first to a children’s facility in Prague and then to a private home; being sent to Terezin September 9, 1942 to work as a nurse in the hospital; the transport and death of her mother and brother on March 8, 1944; being sent on December 15, 1943 in a cattle car to Auschwitz, to Block 11; being given number 70663; how the will to live was what kept you alive; being sent to Hamburg, Germany to work first in a sand pit, then as a train switcher, and finally as a brick-maker; how their camp was bombed and they were moved to Bergen-Belsen; the ensuing chaos and then the emotion and celebration after being liberated by the British; eventually going to Canada in 1949 to stay with her uncle; marrying in 1950 to a Lithuanian, Sydney; her children; her attitude about Germany now and forgiving but not forgetting; her book, I Am Their Voice, which is a collection of poems, letters, and anecdotes by children from her 25 years as a speaker; and how now she is doing research for a work about Madeleine Albright.

    Oral history interview with Hans Ziegler

    Oral History

    Hans Ziegler, born June 12, 1925 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, discusses being raised as a Christian with a Jewish father; his parents divorcing in 1934; his father’s factory going out of business in 1937; attending a German elementary school; his father’s deportation to Terezin (Theresienstadt concentration camp) in 1942; being transported to Berlin, Germany in 1943 for forced labor; being sent in September 1944 to Postelberg (Postoloprty), Czech Republic; escaping in April 1945 with two others to the woods; hiding in Brno until the Russians arrived; getting repatriated and going to university for three years; being expelled by the Soviets in 1949 because his father was a capitalist and a diplomat; being in the military for two years; being employed as a chemist in an armaments factory; working in Egypt and Afghanistan; escaping to Germany in 1970 and staying until 1983; going to the United States and working in Warren, Ohio until 1990; going back to Germany; feeling more Jewish than Christian; and how he thinks more about his father and his war-time experiences.

    Oral history interview with Vera Levine

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guenter Lewy

    Oral History

    Guenter Lewy, born August 22, 1923 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), discusses his childhood in a large extended assimilated family; his memory of seeing Hitler at the 1936 Olympics; belonging to a Jewish Zionist youth group; being attacked on a hiking trip by German storm troopers; his father’s three month imprisonment in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht; going with Youth Aliyah via Trieste to Palestine in March 1939; being met in Haifa by his uncle; living on Kibbutz Tzarad where he worked as a shepherd; his parents’ escape to the United States in late 1941; volunteering in early 1942 for the Palestine Regiment of the British Army; joining the Jewish Brigade and being stationed in Egypt; traveling to Italy with Montgomery's 8th Army in late 1944; traveling to Holland at the war’s end; his role in organizing illegal immigration to Palestine; interrogating German civilians in Berlin; returning to Palestine; traveling to the United States to see his parents in late 1946; graduating from college in 1951 and earning a Master's and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1957; teaching at Columbia, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts; teaching in Germany from 1961 to 1962; his feelings about German people today; the strong influence of his youth group on his resilience; his writings on the moral dimensions of history and the Nazi persecution of the Romani peoples; his current interest in writing about Holocaust perpetrators; reoccurring dreams about Nazis brutality; and feeling that some of the best Holocaust scholarship has being written by contemporary young German scholars.

    Oral history interview with Malvy Solomon

    Oral History

    Malvy Solomon (née Aizic), born in 1938 in Bacau, Romania, discusses pre-war violence against Jews; her father’s conscription into forced labor for the Romanian military in 1941; living with her mother and grandmother in the ghetto with little food; her father’s return in 1944; attending a Jewish primary school and learning Hebrew; surviving bombings; the Soviet arrival in Romania at war’s end; Soviet looting after the war; her school’s closure by Soviet authorities; post-war antisemitism and anti-Capitalist feelings; her father’s job working for the communist government after he was forced to close his store; finishing high school at 16; her medical schooling and career; her marriage; immigrating to Israel in 1961; attending medical school in Tel Aviv; getting divorced, treating soldiers and bombing victims; remarrying in 1971; immigrating to the United States; her education in the U.S.; working for the Department of Veterans Affairs; and her feelings about the war, communism, and her life.

    Oral history interview with Elia Miranski and Genia Miranski

    Oral History

    Elia Miranski, born on August 3, 1922 in Mir, Poland (present day Belarus), describes growing up in a poor, moderately religious family but experiencing no antisemitism until the German invasion in 1939; his parents’ deaths in the first few days of the occupation; escaping with his brother, Israel, from the ghetto which had been set up in a castle; joining Russian partisans in the forest; blowing up railroad tracks for two years; trains near Valozhyn, Belarus; planes dropping supplies; others taking the wounded away from the front lines; Russians mobilizing all partisans into the army; being wounded by the Germans; traveling back to Mir after the war; working on a dairy farm for seven years as a supervisor; moving to Minsk, Belarus and working as a house painter; getting married and having a daughter; going to Israel in 1972 and then to the United States in 1995; thinking day and night about his wartime experiences; and going back to Mir from Israel for a memorial ceremony in the cemetery. Genia Miranski, daughter of Elia Miranski, adds to her father’s interview by translating it into English and by describing Elia’s membership in the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair; Elia’s parents and two younger siblings being shot by Germans; Elia building bridges and roads; witnessing his friend being mauled to death by a dog; living in the castle ghetto; Elia’s experience escaping and hiding in a swamp for three days and at times breathing through a straw when German dogs were nearby; joining Russian partisans; his return to Minsk at the end of the war and experiencing a significant amount of antisemitism; the Six Day War in Israel; going to an underground bakery at night to get Passover matzo; arriving in Israel in 1972; living in underground bunkers in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War; and her own arrival in the U.S. in 1985 and her parents’ arrival in 1995.

    Oral history interview with Maria Kordalewski

    Oral History

    Maria Kordalewski, born April 13, 1924 in Poland, describes her Ukrainian parents and her two siblings, Nicolai and Nadja; going to school and her Jewish friends; the Russians coming in 1939 and the subsequent food shortages; how people were being sent away to Siberia; the absence of antisemitism in their small town until the German occupation in 1941; how her family hid two boys until the boys escaped; how her brother was arrested in 1942, along with other young men, as a means of preventing an uprising; the Russians coming in 1945 when the war was over; being sent with her sister to Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) to get away from the communists; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany and going to school to study pharmaceuticals; arriving in the United States in 1950 by herself; landing in New York City, NY; the various jobs she held at first; moving to Detroit, MI then to California, and finally to Miami, FL; and her feelings that the Holocaust should never be forgotten.

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