Oral history interview with Henri Broder

Oral history interview with Maurice Benadon

Oral History

Maurice Benadon, born to Jewish parents in 1914, describes his childhood growing up in Thessaloniki, Greece, where his father worked in textiles; being one of four children; attending a Jewish-run school, where he learned French as a foundational language; moving with his family to France amidst the crisis (both economic and political) in Greece; his sister marrying in 1939 and Benadon working with her husband; becoming a communist at age 16; his father dying in October 1941; the German advance on Paris and fleeing to Côté d’Azur (Nice) with his mother and little sister; his brother, who was in Lyon; the Nazis arriving in Nice and rounding up the Jews; going to Lyon to join resistance efforts against the Germans; being stopped by the PPF de Doriot (affiliated with the Gestapo); being taken to Montluc Prison (in Lyon) and interrogated in the Jewish barracks, where he met André Fossard and Marcel Dassault; being transferred to Drancy then to Auschwitz on July 29 1944; arriving in Birkenau and seeing women and children being sent directly to the ovens; being taken to the line on the left where he was shaved and tattooed (Mr. Benadon’s number was B 3682); remaining in Auschwitz until October 1944; an organization of resistors in the camp who wouldn’t let him join because he did not speak Yiddish; being left on his own in the camp; not having the skill that could get him double rations; being placed among the Muslims in Auschwitz; being terribly weak at liberation; losing all of his teeth; how he has tried to forget most of his time at the camp; a typical daily schedule in Auschwitz; being evacuated towards East Prussia in October 1944; being beaten violently by an S.S. officer and losing a piece of his ear; suffering from cancer of the ear in 1958; the advancement of the Russians and being evacuated towards an aviation camp; suffering from dysentery and typhus; being evacuated to a hospital camp; being liberated by the French Army in 1945; being put in a German hospital in Speyer; regaining his strength and returning to Paris to the Hotel Lutetia where he was decontaminated; returning to his house; his girlfriend, who had given birth 10 days before his arrest; and his desire at that time to see his family, his child, and Thessaloniki again.

Oral history interview with Jean Louis Steinberg

Oral History

Jean-Louis Steinberg discusses his life in prewar France; his father’s service in WWI; moving to Orleans, France after laws made it unsafe for grandes écoles students; his return to Paris, France; his apartment in the 14th Arrondissement with his family; his family’s lack of religious observances; his membership in a Communist Party resistance group in 1941; the roundups of Jewish citizens; his time in hiding for one to two days with non-Jews; his family's forged identity papers and freedom of travel; the resistance group order’s for him and two colleagues to go to Normandy and stay in Aubusson; witnessing the Dieppe raid and fleeing to Paris to his family home; being arrested with his parents and two brothers in 1944; his stay in Drancy; being deported with his family on the 76th convoy in June 1944 to Birkenau; being transferred to Monowitz work camp; conditions at Monowitz; his introduction to Alfred Besserman and recruitment into the communist resistance group in Monowitz; the group’s evacuation by the Gestapo on January 17, 1945 and the two day trek to Gliwice; being transferred by train to Mittlebau-Dora; working conditions at Mittlebau-Dora; the American liberation of the camp; his hospitalization until April 1945 because of an ear infection; returning to Paris on April 25, 1945; and his struggles with his communist identity after the war.

Oral history interview with Sophie Micnik

Oral History

Sophie Schwartz Micnik, born in Poland in 1905, describes her arrival in France in 1930 with her husband Lejzer Micnik, an undocumented immigrant; her various menial jobs to make ends meet; Lejzer’s service in the army in hopes to gain citizenship; his dispatch to the southern zone; his severe bout with dysentery; her perilous trip to the Septfonds army hospital-camp for expatriate volunteers in the southern zone; her success in returning her husband to Paris, where she nursed him back to health; their pride in registering as Jews when the Nazis occupied Paris; her husband's arrest in 1941 and his internment in Drancy; her communication with him through scraps of paper hidden in laundry going in and out of the camp; his deportation on July 1, 1942 to Auschwitz with the first transport of women and children; his death from typhus soon thereafter; her unyielding allegiance, along with her husband, to communist ideology and her activity in the Main d'Œuvre Immigrée (MOI) underground in Paris; her organization of Jewish women and later non-Jewish resisters in Paris, which eventually became a part of MOI; her operation of clandestine print shops, distributing leaflets in Yiddish and in French, and forging ration and ID cards; her mobilization of families to hide Jewish children; her forged ID card as Yvonne Masset; the 1943 roundup of 70 Jewish members of the MOI and Sophie's miraculous escape and flight to Lyon; the reconstitution of Solidarité into the L’Union des Juifs pour la Resistance et l'Entraide (UJRE) in Lyon; her travels to various towns to organize, recruit, and train members; the creation of the Commission Centrale de l'Enfance (CCE)to recover and reunite over 250 hidden Jewish children with their families and to find homes for orphans; her appointment as Secretary-General of CCE in 1945; her life in Lyon at the time of liberation; her friendship with René Goldman, a child survivor whose parents had perished and whom she later cared for; and her return to Paris in 1946.

Oral history interview with Frida Wattenberg

Oral History

Frida Wattenberg, born in 1924 discusses her life in prewar France; her family's adherence to religious practice at home; her education at the Lycee de Poitiers from 1939 to 1940; her membership in the Jewish resistance in Paris; her return to school in Poitiers from 1940 to 1942; her work at OEuvre de secours aux enfants at Place des Vosges; her mother’s arrest on July 15, 1942; her work for M. Miret at the Director Place St. Gervais Lycee; helping to smuggle children to Switzerland; her return to Grenoble, France to help Jewish families escape; losing her forged identity papers in Avignon, France; her membership in the Mouvement de la Jeunesse Sioniste (MJS); her assistance in smuggling Hertzel Bialek, a young violinist to Spain in June 1944; the work conditions for the resistance; having easy access to food and lodging and her feelings of guilt about giving testimony; the liberation of Toulouse; her assignment to the Bureau of Jewish Affairs in Clermont-Ferrand; her post-war work in Paris helping resettle Jews; her emigration from France to Israel in 1945; and her marriage in Cairo, Egypt to a Romanian born Jew.

Oral history interview with Sarah Colin

Oral History

Sarah Colin recalls having to register as a German-born citizen; being interned in Gurs; the kindness of the Gurs guards, who upon learning of her father’s military service provided her and a friend a pass to leave Gurs; returning with her mother to Paris, France; escaping to the Zone Libre, stopping in Perigueux, where she found her father who had been released from army; the betrayal by a young seamstress in Perigueux, where she worked; securing forged documents for herself and her brother to go to Switzerland; her dismay upon learning that the escape network to Switzerland had been closed down; escaping to Moissac and then Auvillar in the Tarn and Garonne, where Dr. Sigismond Hirsch (the Sixième leader) placed her in a convent when she was 19 years old; her brother living with a rural family; the difficulties in the convent and Hirsch later placed her in the Chateau de St. Michel in 1942, where Jewish children were hidden; the Gestapo bursting into the chateau on October 18, 1943, arresting her, Hirsch, his wife, and Edouard Rakovsky; being imprisoned in Toulouse and interrogated; being transferred to Drancy on January 6, 1944 and deported to Auschwitz on January 20, 1944; conditions in the camp; the impacts of Allied bombardments in April 1945; the death march and arriving in Ravensbrück; being transferred to Grimma, Germany; the arrival of Russian soldiers and then American soldiers who provided medical care; being transferred to Paris by train; arriving at Lutetia; being hospitalized; locating her brother; returning to Moissac to regain her health; her life after the war; taking her children to see Auschwitz; and attending synagogue Place des Vosges.

Oral history interview with Lotti Groscot

Oral History

Lotti Groscot, born in September 1928 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, describes being in Brussels, Belgium on September 1, 1939 at the outbreak of WWII; the rising antisemitism in Frankfurt, including public place restrictions; the beating of her brother in the street; Kristallnacht; her mother’s anxious desire to leave Germany; her father’s keen interest in waiting it out; her father’s six arrests, interrogations, and release; her father’s decision to leave with a smuggler’s aid in 1939 to Holland; the betrayal by the smuggler and her father’s arrest and return to Germany; her father’s deportation to Buchenwald, where he stayed for three months; her mother’s depression; securing a visa for her father; harassing visits from Germans (once with supposed ashes of their father, which wasn’t true); her father’s arrival at train station, malnourished, having survived a typhus outbreak, holding photo of his three children (Leo, Dorra, and Lotti); the conditions of her father’s freedom, contingent upon his signing a paper revealing nothing to anyone about his internment; her father, upon arrival at apartment where there were Jews and non-Jews, revealing everything to everyone to family’s horror; her father’s departure for England via Brussels; staying at an uncle’s place in Brussels for a year where she attended school but couldn’t speak French; her mother hiding in Brussels because she lacked papers; her cousin’s decision to flee Brussels by car for France on September 1, 1939; their delay at the border for three days because roads reserved for military vehicles only; hiding in a small village with her mother; the arrival of the Germans; their decision to return to Brussels; the notice in May-June 1940 to bring clothes and belongings and report to the police; her mother’s decision for them to go into hiding; betrayal by a neighbor; the kindness of Madame Messer, a German married to a Jew, who allowed them to hide in her home for a few days; another betrayal and moving to another location; her job as a dressmaker; feeling fear as deportations increased; the arrival of Germans at their apartment and the arrest of her aunt and uncle; her and her mother’s arrest and detention; the September 1, 1944 allied bombing and being released from Malines (Mechelen, Belgium) as the allies approached; returning to Brussels; feeling emotional distress; her desire to go to London to her join father; her, her mother, and Dorra traveling via Ostend to reunite with her father; her post-war life; attempting to reintegrate and settle; visiting Frankfurt and going to the synagogue; and her continuing post-war emotional turmoil.

Oral history interview with Jacques Marburger

Oral History

Jacques Marburger, born June 18, 1924, discusses life after the war began; living in Paris, France in the 16th arrondissement at La Muette; his Swiss mother and his German father; his brothers and sisters; his family deciding in June 1940 to go to the Zone Libre; staying in the Tarn for three months and working on a farm; living in Toulouse, France, where he returned to school until 1942; moving to Nice, France; re-joining the Éclaireurs Israelites de France; being in contact with Ben-Veniste of the Sixième in June 1942; Jewish social group meetings at the Boulevard Dubouchage synagogue; receiving instruction on forging identity and ration papers; the relocation of Jews and the network of hiding places; the increase in the number of resistance fighters; increasing the cooperation with clandestine group of the Young Zionists (MJS) led by Jacques Weintrob and his wife; the dispatch of Roger Appel to help the Sixième expand rescue operations in Nice; the rental of a studio at rue Guiglia quartier des Musiciens to ramp up forgery operations; the forgery system and the selection of the best candidates for forged documents to ration scarce stamps; the Gestapo discovering the forgery operation on September 22, 1943; being detained with Weintrob at the Hôtel Hermitage; being interrogated, beaten, and hiding their forged documents in sofa when they were briefly left alone; being released because his identity documents were legitimately produced by a cooperating municipality; hiding with a Jewish family named Shestere then a Catholic family; escaping from Nice to Toulouse, where the resistance hid him; being transferred by the MJS to the Swiss border to help Jews escape via Annecy and Annemasse; his parents getting to Switzerland; being relocated to Paris working with Tony Gryn; going to Lyon and Grenoble to expand the forged-document operations; his brief nom de guerre, François Jannat; returning to Paris to join Maurice Cachoud (Maurice Loebenberg) in the centralization of the forgery operations of the National Liberation Movement; and producing many thousands of identity cards, ration cards, and birth certificates for distribution across France.

Oral history interview with Leon Tsevery

Oral History

Leon Tsevery, born in 1926 in Paris, France, discusses his family members; his father, who was a cobbler from Brest-Litovsk (Brest, Belarus) and came to Paris on foot at the end of the Soviet Revolution; his mother, who was born in Poland; his older brother Jacques (born in 1924); his younger brother; being on vacation in Allier when the war began in September 1939; attending business school while his brother attended a technical school; how in 1941 the school director said that he could no longer protect him and his brother; his father having to close his cobbler boutique in 1941; beginning to work; living on 50 rue de la Chapelle in Paris; the seven Jewish families who lived in their area; his father, who was politically engaged on the left; growing up culturally Jewish but not religious; becoming aware that he was Jewish when he received his card with the stamp “Jew” in 1942 at the age of 16; his mother sewing the yellow star of David for their clothing; how the day before the Vel d’Hiv roundup in 1942, an inspector of the police came to tell his father that all the Jewish men will be stopped tomorrow; deciding along with his two brothers to hide in their apartment; the arrest of his mother; going to visit his mother in a hangar where she was detained with other Jews; the arrest of his father and little brother (his father went to camp Beaune-la-Rolande and his mother went to camp Drancy, and both were eventually deported to Auschwitz, where they perished); going to the Free Zone by train with his brother; being inspected by a German soldier, but being able to pass through the line; working on a farm in a village where they had gone on vacation in 1940; being baptized by a priest and receiving papers of baptism; making a false identity card before returning to Paris where he was able to join the Resistance; meeting with Marcel Rajman (a famous member of the Resistance) in 1941; being arrested by the police in 1943 and taken to the Commissariat; escaping and continuing to work with the Resistance as the liaison for Monsieur Letexier, who was responsible for the young communists; he worked with the group of Missak Manouchian of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Main-d'œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI); being denounced in 1944 but being able to continue his resistance work; joining an all-Jewish group and conducting small attacks on German tanks in Paris; being with the French 2nd Armored Division (2e Division Blindée) under General Philippe Leclerc at the liberation of Paris; his older brother’s work during the war as a courier for the UGIF (Union Générale des Israélites de France); and their attempts to find their younger brother at an orphanage in Montreal and being unsuccessful.

Oral history interview with Maurice Gesundheit

Oral History

Maurice Gesundheit, born in 1906 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses arriving in Paris, France in 1925; his parents, who were already living in Paris; his brother, who was born in France; being a student when the war began; the first round up on May 14, 1941 in the 11th arrondissement of Paris; being taken to Pithiviers; being deported to Birkenau in cattle wagons on the July 23, 1941; how the gas chambers and the crematoriums were still under construction when they arrived; his experiences upon arrival; his work at the camp transporting soil; going to the building school and working as a bricklayer; being transferred to Auschwitz and being given striped clothing to wear; staying at Auschwitz until the evacuation in 1944; being an instructor for building and bricklaying at Auschwitz; the demographics of the “school” which included teenage Roma, Ukrainians, Greeks, and Italians; the closing of the school after the evacuation; a selection process of just the Jews; a regular day at Auschwitz from morning till night; being sent to Buchenwald at the end of January 1945; being liberated from Buchenwald in early April 1945; returning to Paris and his interaction with civilian Germans on the journey; his wife, who was also deported and was very sick when she returned to Paris; the process of regaining his apartment, which had been given to a French chef working for the Germans; having to undergo a legal process to get the apartment back; the various reactions the population of Paris had to the return of the Jews; and his perspective on the fate of future generations and the transmission of the events of the Holocaust to those generations.

Oral history interview with Hanna Gold

Oral History

Hanna Gold, born December 22, 1923 in Constantin, Poland, describes the arrival of Russian forces in Warsaw, Poland on September 1939; the Gestapo’s census of the city’s Jews; the 1941 German construction of an airport nearby; relocating to a transit ghetto; news of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; her May 1943 deportation to Treblinka; her transfer to Majdanek; being transferred in August 1943 with her sister to Auschwitz; daily life in Auschwitz; two years on a work detail; being transferred in January 1945 to Gliwice and then Ravensbrück; her liberation in February 1945; walking to Łódź, Poland; marrying in Łódź; moving to Czechoslovakia, then to Vienna, Brussels, and finally settling in France.

Oral history interview with Alain Fisher

Oral History

Alain Fisher, born in 1925, describes having Soviet citizenship through his father; being the youngest of 10 children, of whom seven brothers as well as his father were drafted; the outbreak of war in 1939; living with his mother and two sisters in Paris, France; being arrested by French police for carrying stolen goods he purchased from a friend; his detention in Fresnes as a minor and being released the day the Germans entered Fresnes; his attraction to communism from the age of 10; being excluded from roundups of Jews because of his Soviet citizenship until June 1941; learning about communism and the need for organized resistance from Jean-Claude Schwartz and Victor Seligman and the beginning of organized Communist youth groups in their respective neighborhoods; the use of the expression "il est tombé" for arrest of a fellow resister; being named leader of the "malice patriotique juif” for the 3rd, 4th, and 10th arrondissements; knowing of deportations but not knowing of the gassing of men women and children; the increase in resistance activities towards the end of 1942, following the accelerated roundups in July and August 1942; the importance of women as liaison agents delivering instructions to the resistance groups; joining a combat group; hiding children in the countryside and securing escape routes for Jews to unoccupied France; living in one room on Ile Saint-Louis; being betrayed by unknown person; being briefly detained then released because his seven brothers were in the army; his nom de guerre aliases including Alain Lefloch and Jean Voriace; going underground in 1942 because of the growing number of arrests; being arrested by the Gestapo in July 1944 at the age of 19; his transfer to 11 rue Saussaies; being tortured and held until August 1944 when the Gestapo headquarters was evacuated as the Allies neared Paris; being transferred to Compiègne then to Drancy along with 25 to 30 other prisoners including Jacques Lazarus; arriving in Drancy on August 17, 1944 and being transferred to Bobigny railroad station four days later; being deported along with the Kohn family and others on the last convoy from France on August 21, 1944; escaping about 300 km from Paris; returning to Paris, where he assumed a leadership role in the "milice patriotique juif” in the 19th arrondissement; his post-war work with Jewish children in schools and orphanages; meeting his wife; and joining the Yiddish theater.

Oral history interview with Anna Parrot

Oral History

Anne Parrot, born in 1932, discusses life in Paris, France in 1939 with her mother, brother, sister, and her Polish-born father, who joined the Foreign Legion; their stay in Limoges, France at the start of the German occupation of Paris in 1940; the family's return to Paris; her father's arrest in 1941 in the 11th Arrondissement roundup; his internment in Drancy prior to deportation to Auschwitz; the family's arrest in the Vel d'hiv roundup on July 16, 1942 and internment in Vel d'hiv for three days; the political activity inside Vel d'hiv; her memories of horrible conditions, deprivation, and promiscuity; the family's release after three days because the Germans needed someone to operate her father's workshop; the children's departure for Valenciennes, France, where they were taken in by a Jewish uncle and his Catholic wife; life in Valenciennes; attending a Catholic school; hiding during a roundup of 10,000 Jews; her uncle's escape; the frequent air raids; listening to free France radio; learning about the war from news reports at the movie theater; leaving Valenciennes at liberation with her mother; the family's return to Paris; her mother's frequent visits to the Lutetia to look for her father who never returned; returning to school; marrying a non-Jew; and her decision to give an oral testimony.

Oral history interview with Ilex Beller

Oral History

Ilex Beller, born in 1914 in Galicia, Poland, discusses his Jewish family; his father, who died when Ilex was born; his mother, who had a very hard life; attending a Polish school because the Jewish school was too expensive; his desire to leave Poland because of the rampant antisemitism; leaving in 1929 and arriving in Belgium, where he worked in the coal mines; joining the communist movement and meeting the brothers Akerman (Johan and Gustaf); being expelled from Belgium because he was not allowed to fight for the Belgian military; going in 1934 to Paris, where he lived in Belleville; working for the communist movement in Paris; meeting with party members at a café with Pierre Georges (Colonel Fabien) up until 1936; going to Spain to fight; being injured and going back to France in 1938; being mobilized into the French army in 1940 against the German offensive; being wounded and taken to Rennes, France, where he was operated on; being evacuated to Sète, France, where he was reunited with his wife who was pregnant with their first child; going to Carcassonne, France with other Jewish refugees; the occupation of the Free Zone by the Germans; going to Marseille, then to Lyon with his family; learning that his son (one and a half years old) could be housed in Switzerland so he and his family went to Switzerland where they stayed until the end of the war; crossing the border into Switzerland at the end of 1942; being placed in a military camp; women and children staying in hotels and men staying in work camps; knowing about the extermination camps in the east after speaking with two Germans; the Allied western invasion; returning with his family to Paris, where he began a new life; his numerous friends who did not come back and others who returned from S.T.O camps; the attitude in Switzerland towards the Jews as initially very antisemitic, but how after Stalingrad there was a change in this attitude; life in the labor camp in Switzerland; they were not allowed to exit and re-enter to camp freely; the Jewish culture in the camps; his re-entry into France and a normal life; the veterans returning to France who had numerous problems (e.g. no lodgment, unable to find their families); creating an organization for children who were without their parents; having two other sons after the war; his travels after the war to Poland; and his wishes to transmit his memory to future generations.

Oral history interview with Cypora Gutnic

Oral History

Cypora Gutnic, born in Poland, discusses her decision to leave Poland because of the antisemitism; immigrating in 1930 to Palestine where she lived on a kibbutz with 100 other people; her life in Palestine; being expelled from Palestine because of her communist activities; going to France to help provide aid for the Spanish Civil War; arriving in France after the war in Spain was over; staying in Paris illegally with a friend; participating in a course for the Red Cross which gave her an identification card and allowed her to stay in the country; the beginning of the war; receiving a card to work and making uniforms for the army; the German invasion; not leaving Paris because she was pregnant; her husband, who was a Romanian refugee, and his detainment in 1940; falling sick during this period and having nowhere to go during the winter of 1941; her efforts to survive with her infant; wearing the yellow star of David; witnessing the first round-ups of the foreign Jews and waiting for the big round-up to come; being stopped July 7, 1943; making arrangements for her infant before she was sent to Drancy; being deported to Auschwitz; going through a selection process upon her arrival in Auschwitz; being taken to Block 10, where human experiments took place; the experiments that took place on her and others that were in this block; being part of a cancer research experiment; being saved by a doctor in the block who operated on her and gave her medicine; the horrors and experiments that took place in Block 10; the anxiety of daily life in Auschwitz under the constant threat of death and waiting for the arrival for the Russians; how on January 18, 1945 the Germans left and the electricity in the camp stopped; cutting through the barbed wires that separated the men’s and women’s camp to find supplies; finding supplies but also many prisoners who were gravely sick; her attempts to help re-establish order with others former inmates; the following week, on January 27, 1945, the Red Army arrived and liberated Auschwitz; being taken to Odessa, Ukraine before making her way back to Marseille, France on May 11, 1945; and embarking on a train to Paris where she was reunited with her friends and her son.

Oral history interview with Raymond Kamonier

Oral History

Raymond Kamonier discusses earning his Polish baccalaureate in 1928 when he was 19 years old; leaving Poland to continue his studies in Caen, Normandy, France, where he enrolled in a chemistry school; beginning to work at his uncle’s barbershop in Paris in 1929; getting married; becoming a barber in Paris in 1932; being 31 years old at the beginning of the war in 1939; being on vacation with his wife and son in Berck Plage when the war started; registering as a volunteer on September 2, 1939; being summoned in January 1940 to the Polish army’s camp in France in Coëtquidan, Bretagne; going through four weeks of preparation, before becoming a corporal; being sent to Rennes at the moment of the capitulation of France in June 1940; returning to Paris to evade becoming a prisoner of war; not being able to find his wife and son, who had left in the exodus of Paris; his wife’s return; the first anti-Jewish laws starting in October 1940; not wanting to register as a Jew but his mother pushing him to respect the law; going to the commissariat and registering as a Jew; being forced to put a sign on the front of his business to declare it as a Jewish enterprise; receiving a notice in May 1941 that he and the other Jews would be arrested; being arrested, taken to Gare d’Austerlitz, and sent to the internment camp at Beaune-la-Rolande; his daughter, who was born in December 1941; becoming the barber at Beaune-la-Rolande and eventually the “manager” of barbers in the camp; returning to Paris in 1942 under the pretext of gathering his materials and being able to see his mother and wife; being sent to Compiègne; being sent to Auschwitz in June 1942; being taken to Block 18; participating in some of the construction of the camp at Buna; many of the prisoners from Compiègne who did not understand German or Polish; presenting himself as a barber to the guards; the infirmary at Auschwitz which was run by Polish antisemites; being refused at first but managed to interview with another polish doctor whom he convinced to accept him after explaining his training in Poland; being placed in Block 21 (the surgical block) which neighbored Block 11 (disciplinary block and execution block); beginning work in June 1942 with Doctor Dering; helping to clean, remove corpses, and feed and care for the sick; spending time working in the crematorium of Auschwitz; being summoned by the head of his block to go to Block 11 with him and being forced to clean two children in a heated cell; gaining authority after a few months; trying to save prisoners from Beaune-la-Rolande; a selection in October 1943 during which the doctors and nurses did not participate; being selected to go to Warsaw with 2,000 other Jews to clean-up the ghetto; his work destroying the remains of the ghetto in preparation for the installment of a monument for Germany; being held in a camp that was close to Pawiak; being forced to search for buried bodies and dig them up to be burned; the special commando (Sonderkommando) that was in charge of burning the corpses in pyres of wood; how an infirmary was established old military barracks in the ghetto; the outbreak of two epidemics; the horrors of his experience, including the sexual assualt of a young woman by all of the Kapos in charge of the clean-up at Warsaw; the installation of new barracks with showers and other convoys arriving; the Soviets approaching in July 1944; leaving the ghetto and marching with 100 other men; the horrors that took place during this march and the constant struggle for survival; boarding a train at Kutno and heading towards Dachau; many people dying of thirst along the way; arriving at Dachau in August 1944; working primarily in the Waldlager which was located in the forest and living there from September to December 1944; how their commando was in the forest and completely unknown to the others; being liberated the May 2, 1945; being taken by train back to Paris, where he was housed at Hôtel Lutetia; and reuniting with his wife and children.

Oral history interview with Charles Palant

Oral History

Charles Palant, born 1922 in Belleville quartier of Paris, France, describes seeing the newspaper headline "War" in September 1939; experiencing antisemitism during his childhood; living in poverty; the influx of German refugees in France; his work in a leather shop; adhering to socialist goals; distributing leaflets for union workers; the first Vichy anti-Jewish laws in October 1940; the arrival of green sheets requiring Jews to register at police stations; a 3rd Arrondissement policeman who told him of his imminent arrest; escaping to Lyon, France; joining Solidarité (a part of the Main d'oeuvre immigrée or MOI); his August 1943 arrest by the Gestapo in Lyon; questioning at Ecole Militaire de Santé in Lyon; his transfer to Fort Monluc with other Jewish prisoners, including Max Heilbronn; being transferred to Drancy; conditions in Drancy; his deportation via an October 1944 convoy from Bobigny, France; how Marcel Stourdze saved him in Auschwitz III (Monowitz ) by pulling him out of line for a work detail in a rubber factory; the January 1945 evacuation by the Gestapo and forced march of 12,000 prisoners; arriving in Buchenwald with 2,500 prisoners; life in Buchenwald; Marcel Paul, leader of the April 1945 insurrection; being liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945; the repatriation of French prisoners; his return to Paris; and his lifelong work against antisemitism.

Oral history interview with Jacques Lazarus

Oral History

Jacques Lazarus, born September 2, 1916 in Payerne, Switzerland, discusses military life in the 152nd Colmar Regiment, mobilized in 1939; being deposed from the military in August 1941 by the Vichy government’s anti-Jewish legislation; crossing Spain to North Africa to join the FFL (French Free Forces) in 1943; his chance meeting with resistance leader Ernest Lambert, a former classmate at the Strasbourg Jewish Trade School; joining the resistance group, the Armée Juive (AJ); moving to Grenoble; working as an instructor of young recruits in the MGS (a Zionist Movement, and possibly the MJS or Mouvement de la Jeunesse Sioniste); his nom de guerre Jacquel; his leadership of the maquis de Rec (Tarn), the underground Jewish Army; relocation of the maquis de Rec to Espinassier (Tarn); its integration into the Montagne Noire maquis, led by Lt. Leblond (Lévy-Seckel) of the AS (Armée Secrète); his work as a military trainer for Jewish maquis; the March 1944 recovery of arms from an errant Allied parachute drop; the transfer of a portion of arms from Castres to Toulouse, with AJ comrades Reine Roman and Régine Knout; being betrayed by Charles Porel (Karl Rebhein) while he and Rabbi Réne Kapel were en route to Paris and planning to fly to London to establish a Jewish unit within the Allied army; his July 17, 1944 arrest and transfer to Gestapo headquarters in Paris at 180 rue de la Pompe; being detained at Fresnes; his transfer by Brunner order to Drancy; being deported August 17, 1944 in the last convoy from Bobigny, which included Armand Kohn, Director of the Rothschild Hospital; escaping August 22, 1944 from the last train car with several friends; finding safe haven; a Red Cross evacuation to Paris; his appointment as Captain in the FFI 17 Toulouse Regiment; leaving the army in December 1944; working to establish post-war Jewish assistance organizations; the AJ request to help the Israeli army; his May 1946 trip to North Africa to recruit students for the Marseille Trade School; the opening of ORT in Algers; his 1949-1962 work on the situation of Jews in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria; and returning to Paris in 1962.

Oral history interview with Frania Haverland

Oral History

Frania Haverland, born in 1926 in Staszow, Poland, describes her life in Staszow under the Nazi occupation, beginning September 7, 1939; her father’s initial arrest because the Nazi Party needed musicians and he was an orchestra conductor; the rising harassment of Jews; her mother’s weakened state of health; the assassinations of members of her family in their homes nearby; the registration of Jews at the town hall; constant deportations; the ghettoization of her town; her parents’ arrest; her deportation with her older brother to Płaszów by cattle car; the conditions in the camp; treatment by Ukrainian guards; her utter despair; her work in a factory making soldiers’ uniforms; her debilitated health; her memory of Max Zimmermann, a Jewish policeman in the camp who was executed in Krakow in 1946; resisters who provided her with medications and a little food; the evacuation of Płaszów and deportation to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944; the harsh conditions in Auschwitz; being transferred to Birkenau; her work repairing old clothes from those who had perished to ship back to Germany; being transferred to Flossenbürg in October 1944, where she worked in an armaments factory; her constant hospitalizations and growing desperation; being transferred by cattle car to Theresienstadt; being liberated by Russian soldiers on May 8, 1945; her decision to leave the camp; walking to Prague, Czech Republic; her medical care extended by the Red Cross; and being transferred to Paris, France in 1945.

Oral history interview with Georges Loinger

Oral History

Georges Loinger, born August 29, 1910 in Strasbourg, France, describes his childhood; his aunt, Ann Mangel, who was the mother of Marcel Marceau; his membership in Hatikwah; studying physical education; serving in the military beginning September 1939; being captured and imprisoned; escaping from Stalag 7A near Munich, Germany; being influenced by Dr. Joseph Weill; his marriage to Flore, who worked as caregiver to 125 Jewish-German children at Baroness Rothschild's Chateau de la Guette near Lagny, Seine-et-Marne, France; their re-installation by the Baroness in La Bourboule, France in the free zone at the Hôtel des Anglais when Northern France was occupied; ; his work as a physical education trainer for Compagnons de France; his official government documents that aided his resistance work, allowing him to travel throughout France; his membership in OSE (OEuvre de secours aux enfants); the OSE decision to disperse the children from La Bourboule because of informants at the Hôtel des Anglais; organizing a secret network to save Jewish children; his assignment to create a smuggling network from Lyon, France to Switzerland; the selection criteria for children; the successful transfer of more than 1,500 children from April 1943 to Spring 1944; the escape of the children to safety in Switzerland; his continued dedication to Jewish causes after the liberation; his role in safe passage through France for Jewish refugees to the Exodus; and his September 19, 2005 Legion of Honor award presented by President Chirac.

Oral history interview with Henri Fenster

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charles Corrin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Pachter

Oral History

Michel Pachter, born in Warsaw, Poland, discusses life in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940; his work in the "Little Ghetto," dismantling houses burned in 1939; traveling to and from the ghetto for work, smuggling small arms for the resistance; his January 18, 1943 arrest by the SS; being deported to Treblinka and then Majdanek; life in Majdanek; being liberated; his two-year recovery in Davos, Switzerland; and his move to France in 1950.

Oral history interview with Ina Rennert-Rakavy

Oral History

Ina Rennert-Rakavy discusses her family; her father, who was an engineer; her mother, who had studied medicine; her parents not being able to find work in Vienna, Austria; her family moving in 1934 from Vienna to Poland, where her grandfather owned real estate; her family’s decision to leave Warsaw at the outbreak of war; hiding among trees during the bombings; arriving in Lvov, Polish (L’viv, Ukraine), which was not under German control; staying with her father’s friends; relocating often in Lvov because they did not have papers; Soviet soldiers deporting refuges and finding her family; her father’s membership in the Communist Party not helping them; the family being taken by a military car to the military station where Jews were separated from other refugees and put in cattle cars; her father’s poor health and decision to escape from train; her father running in one direction while she and her mother ran in another direction; relocating to the Lvov ghetto; the German invasion; her grandfather leaving the ghetto with his US passport, being arrested, and dying in captivity; her parents’ sending her to a rural village for safety; going with her mother to the Warsaw ghetto in November 1942; the increasing number of roundups and deportations from the ghetto; being sent by her parents to a convent in December 1942 along with other Jewish children; leaving the convent with forged documents and the new name Irena Petrofska; going into hiding with mother in January 1943 in Warsaw; her mother’s work with the resistance; being sheltered by a Polish woman and her daughter and living relatively normal despite her fear of betrayal; traveling in 1944 to Krakow, Poland; being relocated by the Polish Red Cross to an apartment for a two-month period; her mother’s job as a maid; life returning to normal in February 1945; the return of some friends and family to Poland; and moving to Paris, France in July 1945.

Oral history interview with Simon Rajman

Oral History

Simcha (Simon) Rajman, born March 11, 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family’s emigration from Poland to France because of antisemitism; their early years at 58 rue Crozatier, Paris, France home to many Jewish families; completion of his studies at Lycee Baudelaire; learning about the Warsaw Ghetto; his father's August 20, 1941 arrest and transfer to Drancy; his father’s death in Auschwitz in July 1942; becoming more involved in the resistance as a member of the Francs-tireurs partisans (FTP); his activities with FTP, including vandalism, gun-running, and procuring small arms; his brother Marcel's involvement as a FTP trainer and key resistance member; the square named for Marcel in Paris; Marcel’s role in the assassination of General Ritter in 1943; being betrayed by an acquaintance in March 1943 which led to the arrest of 43 FTP members; being arrested along with his mother on November 17, 1943; his transfer to Puteaux, Fresnes, Drancy, and Auschwitz; the arrest of a resister, who had information on resistance activities in code; how the resister was tortured by the Nazis, released after his confession, and then murdered by members of the resistance; life in Fresnes with other resisters; how his cell door was marked "dangerous terrorist"; his January 1944 transfer by the SS to Buchenwald; life in Buchenwald, including how fellow resisters helped one another survive and work making weapons; the August 24, 1944 Allied bombing; his liberation from Buchenwald in April 1945; returning to France in May 1945; and his postwar life in Montpellier.

Oral history interview with Eva Tichauer

Oral History

Eva Tichauer, born 26 January 1918 in Berlin, Germany [TN: died 19 December 2018 at the age of 100], discusses her family; her father Theodore, who was an officer in the Panzer army; her mother Ema; living with her paternal grandparents; escaping to Paris, France in July 1933 after Hitler came to power; their arrival at the Gare de l’Est and their midnight visit to Sacré Coeur, which she never forgot; the difficulties of the immigrant experience in Paris from 1933-1939; their status as political refugees; the difficulties assimilating and learning French; her parents’ insistence that she learn French with no accent; her placement in a Russian Jewish family in Paris to learn French more quickly; her enrollment in the lycée Jules Ferry; the death of her brother in 1935; beginning her medical studies in 1937; being naturalized on 7 July 1937 (the publication of her naturalization notice was in the "journal officiel” on 17 January 1937); Pétain taking power on 11 July 1940 and publishing the anti-Jewish legislation stripping the immigrant Jews of their citizenship retroactive 17 years; losing their French citizenship; recalls her father’s arrest in December 1941 and deportation to Auschwitz 27 March 1942; being arrested along with her mother on July 16-17, 1942 during the Vel d’hiv roundup; being transferred to Drancy and then Auschwitz; her first understanding of their fate in Auschwitz when they were told to leave their bags and pocketbooks behind as they lined up and she knew that the “depersonalization” of their identities was real; the separation of men and women, old and young, children from their parents; being separated from her 50-year-old mother at the train; her mother leaving in a truck as she walked towards a barracks; learning immediately that those in the trucks were murdered; working in an infirmary; life in the camp; how survival and solidarity were the two goals in Auschwitz; the contact with outside groups through organized resisters at the head of which were typically German political prisoners arrested and deported and who were able to secure Nazi newspapers and disseminate information within the camps; the conditions on the January 1945 death march; being liberated on 23 April 1945 by a brigade of Soviet soldiers who were Jewish and who helped her and her group to safety and eventual return to Paris; returning via bicycle; and meeting American soldiers along the way who led them to a train, airport, transport to Le Bourget and eventual transfer to Hotel Lutecia.

Oral history interview with Jacques-Albert Zandkorn

Oral History

Jacques-Albert Zandkorn, born in Paris, France in 1923 to immigrant Socialist, Polish parents, describes his childhood in Paris; beginning work at age 14 or 15; belonging to a sports club, le club populaire sportif in 10ème arrondissement, with Jewish and non-Jewish members; the discussions about Resistance activities immediately after the German invasion on June 15, 1940; newspapers becoming violently antisemitic; joining a socialist youth group called “fulcrum rouge”; marching down the Champs-Elysées on 11 November 1940 in first anti-German demonstration; attending a group camping trip in 1941 with Henri Gautherot and Smuel Tyszelman, who were shot shortly after the trip for demonstrating at the Gare Saint-Lazare; becoming more active in the Resistance under the guidance of Pierre Georges (aka Colonel Fabien); training in explosives and armaments; telling his family to bar the door because something was going to happen on July 16, 1942; the arrest of his sister Lucy on July 16 by a French gendarme while his father and brother were hidden in attic; how his mother’s name was not on list because of a clerical error; the departure of his brother for Free Zone to join the Resistance in Lyon; his failed efforts to legalize his parents’ papers and their arrest on August 26, 1942; fleeing to Lyon to join the Resistance; the distribution of warrants for his arrest throughout France; meeting Jean Moulin, chief of the armée secrète in the southern zone, who put him to work for the Resistance; being tasked with going to Camp Rivesaltes to secure the release of detained Jews by bribing guards with cigarettes; eventually freeing two of his cousins and 14 others over a period of eight months; being sent to Toulouse to centralize the passage of Jews through Spain and onward to England, although Toulouse prefecture would not permit him to stay as a Jew; settling in Mazanet (possibly Maçanet de la Selva, Spain), where he secured a residence permit; his Resistance activities, including a secret mission to London to deliver information to Degaulle; returning to Lyon by plane and traveling with Pierre Mendes-France to organize the maquis des Glières in Haute-Savoie (he was also accompanied by Lucien Bussière, Jacques Petrovich, Renaud Dubois, among others); greeting young recruits and taking them to camp; the help of the villagers of Termin; maquis fighting; closing in on the Gestapo; being wounded and spending two months in a hospital in Lyon; being transferred to Besançon and on to the military camp called Camp du Valdahon; receiving orders from General Guillaume on March 31, 1945 to join a brigade headed across the Rhine to occupy Germany; sustaining heavy casualties; the liberation of Dachau along with Louis Armand; his post-war work for the military in Berlin, Germany; being released from the army on November 27, 1945; returning to Paris; and his marriage and the birth of their son.

Oral history interview with Jacques Szmulewicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Daniel Bessmann

Oral History

Daniel Bessmann, born on 15 September 1925 in Paris, France in the 14ème arrondissement, discusses his parents; his father Léo Max, who was born in the 14ème; his mother Suzanne Sarah, who was born in 1904 in Safed, Palestine (now Tsefat, Israel); his family’s relocation in 1931 to Nice, where his father was a leather worker; not growing up religious and not speaking Yiddish at home except when his grandparents visited; being in Vidauban, France with his mother when the war began in September 1939; his father being called up mid-April 1940 while he and his mother remained in Nice; being put in a Catholic school; the emerging Resistance amongst some teachers and students; the return of his father at the end of August 1940, enrolling in the Grand Lycée de Nice; the growing antisemitism after Paris fell to the Germans; the publication of the Pétainiste anti-Jewish legislation on 3 October 1940; street violence and the attack on the magasin Boucharas where they would shop; his father’s refusal to register the family as Jews at the town hall, saying he was French and not Jewish; continuing in school until he was expelled from school during the 1941-1942 year; moving with his family to Saint-André-les-Alpes in 1941, after his father was told by a friend that the Jews were in increasing danger in Nice; returning to Nice in October 1942 and entering a hotel school; being aware that the Jews were in danger; learning that the Jews were being rounded up in Paris from reading newspapers and letters from family; the mayor of Nice in November 1943 telling the Jews that the Gestapo would soon begin roundups, yet his father continuing to say he wasn’t Jewish he was French; the fleeing of most Niçois Jews before the Gestapo began searching for them; his family staying in Saint-André-les-Alpes where they felt safe; the Maquis action beginning to develop during the winter of 1943-1944, which was linked to the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans; joining the group and being trained in acts of sabotage and assassination; various incursions by the Maquis; his friends Pierrot Blanc [PH] and Charles Viale [PH]; the gendarme in the village who were also linked to the Maquis; near misses when the Nazis came to his village looking for members of the Maquis; having run-ins with villagers who threatened to denounce him; enlisting in the air force at the end of the War; and his end of service in 1946.

Oral history interview with Sarah Montard

Oral History

Sarah Montard, (née Lichtsztejn [SP]), born on March 16, 1928 in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland), describes her early life and family; moving to France in the 20th arrondissement in 1930; her mother Maria, who was a seamstress; her father Moïse, who was a non-practicing Jew and gauchiste (political leftist); her entry into the lycée at Porte de Vincennes; the outbreak of war in September 1939; the bombing alerts and their evacuations to the basement; her placement in an OSE-run children’s home in Boulouris-sur-Mer in January 1940; her mother crossing the demarcation line without papers to get her; returning to Paris to begin school in the fall of 1940; her family’s registration as Jews at the commissariat in November 1940 after debating the pros and cons; her father’s decision that registration would give them legal status; her father’s arrest in summer 1941 and incarceration in Pithiviers; her father’s escape in September 1941 and return to Paris to the 20th arrondissement under an assumed name; being arrested with her mother on 16 July 1942 during the Vel d’hiv roundup; arriving at the stadium by bus; her horror at the conditions in the stadium; people with suitcases, babies dying, the elderly and infirm sitting on benches; her mother’s insistence that they escape, saying that, while they were told they were going to work in Germany it was clear from the sick and infirm that that was not the case; how her mother gave her 100 francs, folded her coat on her arm to hide the Star of David, walking straight past a French gendarme, getting on the metro and getting off at Saint-Jacques where her family had friends; meeting her mother in the street; staying first with a Spanish family, headed by a sculptor Gilbert [PH] for six months then with another family for five months; returning to school under her real name; the kindness and fearlessness of her teacher Mlle. Fontaine, who protected her Jewish students as best she could; being arrested with her mother again on 24 May 1944 by French gendarmes; seeing her father approaching their apartment for a visit but seeing what was happening turning back; their transport to Ile de la Cité commissariat where they learned they had been denounced; being transported by bus to Drancy; the conditions at Drancy, including the hay mattresses and families together wearing their finest clothes; inscribing “vengeance” on the walls of Drancy prior to deportation; being deported on 30 May 1944 from Bobigny by cattle car; arriving at Birkenau; the procedures for registration, tattoos, disinfection, and roll calls; the selection for work brigades in August 1944, and her mother not revealing she was a seamstress so she could remain with her daughter; working in the fields outside the camp digging ditches and seeing the trains from Łódź arriving at the gas chambers; being separated from her mother in October 1944; her mother staying in Birkenau while she was sent to Auschwitz; the beginning of the death march in January 1945; going first to Gleiwitz, then Buchenwald, and then Bergen-Belsen; reuniting with her mother on 18 January 1945; being liberated by the Russians, then by the British army on 15 April 1945; returning to Paris via the Gare du Nord; retrieving repatriation documents; and her commitment to telling her story to everyone.

Oral history interview with Margareth Acher

Oral History

Margareth Acher (née Frydman), born in 1930, describes living in Warsaw, Poland; her father, who was a lawyer and was enlisted in the army at the beginning of the war; attending a Polish school; going to live in the ghetto with her mother and younger sister in June 1940; the conditions in the ghetto and her mother’s advice to not focus on what was going on around her; taking classes on sewing; the deportations beginning July 22, 1942; watching the deportation of Janusz Korczak and the Jewish orphans; her mother’s attempts to get her children out of the ghetto; hiding alone in an attic for three weeks; her sister living with a Polish family and passing as a non-Jew; being placed with her sister at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which served as an orphanage to 160 children; her mother’s deportation; the approximately 40 Jewish children at the orphanage; how the children at the orphanage were malnourished and had to work; the hiding of the Jewish children before the Gestapo arrived at the convent one day; and her mother and father surviving the war.

Oral history interview with Yvette Christophe

Oral History

Françoise (Yvette) Christophe, born in 1933 in France, describes her French family; growing up Jewish in Lille; her father’s family who were originally from northern France; her mother (née Nordman) who grew up in eastern France; the beginning of the war in 1939 and the mobilization of her father (he later became a prisoner of war); staying in Paris with her mother; attending school wearing the yellow star of David; her mother finding a passage in 1942 to the Free Zone in the South of France via her Catholic friends; taking a train in July 1942 in the direction of Angoulême and then switching to another train towards Rochefoucauld; being stopped with their false papers at the second station platform by German soldiers and being interrogated and threatened by the German soldiers; her mother revealing their Jewish identity; being sent with her mother to a small town prison in Rochefoucauld and then to camp Poitiers; the conditions in Poitiers; their transfer in cattle wagons to Drancy; the numerous foreign Jews at Drancy and the few French Jews; the hell of Drancy; seeing herds of children without mothers when she arrived and realizing that she was a privileged child; how she and her mother were considered hostages by the Geneva Convention because her father was a prisoner of war; being sent after three weeks in Drancy to camp Pithiviers and then to camp Beaune-la-Rolande, which was a little more humane and she could receive a few parcels; straying in Beaune-la-Rolande for 10 months, during which time her mother became the chief nurse; being sent back to Drancy in a special block for hostages for a year; being sent with her mother to Germany by way of Gare de l’Est in a third-class car and arriving in Bergen-Belsen; the horror of Bergen-Belsen; how the work was hard and people died of starvation; being guarded by the SS and Polish Kapos; staying in Bergen-Belsen for a year; her mother taking care of the children in the camp while the other mothers worked in the commandos; hearing news of the Allied invasion; learning of the horrors of the gas chambers and extermination camps when Auschwitz evacuees arrived in Bergen-Belsen; the living conditions, which were increasingly difficult; many prisoners dying of dysentery; being evacuated in open wagons; the journey lasting three weeks and her mother getting separated when she stepped off the train at a stop and was unable to get back onto the same wagon; being liberated and aided by the Russians; her mother having typhus; the difficulty her father had trying to find his wife and child; her mother remaining sick for a long time afterwards; eventually returning to school; and how her values were not the same as her peers.

Oral history interview with Etienne Raczymow

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charles Baron

Oral History