Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Wilf and Erwin Fisch

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0088.208 | RG Number: RG-50.002.0208

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Wilf and Erwin Fisch
    Transcript
    Good morning.
    I am Joseph Preil.
    I'm privileged to serve as the director of the Holocaust
    Resource Center here at Kean University,
    in Union, New Jersey.
    And this morning, we are privileged to have with us two
    of our distinguished survivors, Mrs. Elizabeth Suzie
    Wilf and Mr. Erwin Fisch, and they are also
    going to be talking about their heroic mother, Mrs. Miriam
    [? Link ?] Fisch, of blessed memory.
    Mrs. Wilf, you brought some pictures here today,
    and you want to tell us about them.
    And Erwin you'll join in when you feel it appropriate.
    All right.
    Well, this is a picture of our mother, Miriam Fisch, that
    helped us survive the Holocaust through her efforts,
    and this here, he made it through.
    And we'll hear about her heroism shortly,
    but I want to point out for non-family members
    that this wonderful lady in this picture is how old?
    Oh, maybe 96.
    She passed away at the age of 97.
    So this probably was done a year ago.
    And I understand she was driving her car.
    Almost to the last--
    She lived [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    About the year.
    Yes, yes she lived.
    All right.
    Now, this next picture.
    This is our father, Marcos Fisch,
    in our lumber yard, Lwow, Lemberg.
    And that lumber yard was passed down from father to son?
    All right.
    Yes, yes.
    Whom do we have in this picture?
    In this picture is our mother, Miriam Fisch, my brother Erwin,
    and myself, and walking on the streets of Wolf,
    it must have been just before the war started.
    Do you remember this picture?
    Of course, and I think I was maybe
    five years old all the time or something like that.
    We'll have an interesting time later
    talking about which one or two pictures
    are we going to keep for the publication.
    Whom do we have here?
    These are our parents, Miriam and Marcos Fisch.
    And this was made in Augsburg on our way to America.
    He left Poland, he stayed in Germany
    before we emigrated to America.
    Augsburg was a DP camp in Germany.
    Augsburg-- No, this was already outside the DP camp
    in the private the apartment.
    This was taken probably in maybe--
    Just before we came to America.
    48, 49-- 1948 or 49.
    And you came here in 1950.
    1950, yes.
    Now we're getting to other members of the family.
    These members.
    Can you see it?
    Yes.
    This is my mother and I, my grandmother,
    my mother's mother, my mother's oldest sister, Żenia,
    and her two children, Lila and Marcel,
    and they all perished in the Lemberg Ghetto,
    in the Lwow Ghetto.
    In the ghetto.
    In the ghetto.
    Yes, yes.
    Do you remember them?
    The, Germans, yes, of course, they took--
    The little boy, Marcel, went to a soup kitchen
    and never came back.
    They rounded up all the children.
    It was a terrible blow all the time to the family.
    Of course, they all later perished as well, but then
    my mother and I here in this picture
    are the only, from this picture, surviving.
    That was in the same ghetto that we were in,
    and, fortunately, we were able to escape from the ghetto
    later on.
    But this picture was--
    That's how we survived by escaping from the ghetto
    before the Germans liquidated it.
    But this picture was done much before the war started.
    Another family picture.
    Another family.
    This is in the resort place.
    My parents, my father holding me.
    Again, my mother's older sister, Żenia, her husband, Dolek.
    And they had two children, Lila and Marcel.
    They perished.
    These look like familiar people.
    This is my brother, Erwin and I, in the DP camp
    Ainring near Reichenhall Berchtesgaden area in Germany.
    1957.
    No, '40s.
    '47, '48.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    See, we'll help you on the dates.
    Even I can help you on that one.
    And this looks like we're in--
    In Forrest Hills.
    My parents, my oldest son, Ziggy, and I.
    And we'll hear about Ziggy's birth later in the interview.
    All right, thank you very much.
    All right.
    Now at the outset we'll start with you as the older child.
    When and where were you born?
    Tell us something about your home background.
    OK.
    I was born in Lwow, Lemberg, Poland and what else?
    I don't know what to say.
    Well, that was a big city.
    Was a big city, yes.
    How large?
    I would say I just don't know that the population number.
    I wouldn't know.
    Would you have an idea of the population
    of the total population and specifically Jewish population?
    The general population I think was maybe 200,000 people.
    It was a large city.
    The total population?
    200,000?
    The Jewish population, I don't know.
    I'm not sure.
    There's the total population or the Jewish population?
    Not 100,000.
    Well, I don't know exactly.
    Yeah, we don't know.
    I should have came prepared better with that.
    It's all right.
    What kind of a city was it?
    It was a very vibrant city.
    Vibrant, modern.
    At that time, it was a modern city.
    What did people do?
    Commerce, business commerce.
    Was a very advanced city for the '20s and the '30s at that time.
    In what respect was it advanced?
    Well, from what I know is obviously
    there were the large population centers like Lemberg, Krakow,
    you know?
    Warsaw.
    Warsaw.
    And outside of those centers, the other parts of the country
    were a little bit more not as advanced as the centers.
    We are talking possibly culture, medicine,
    those were the centers that those advances were going on
    and Lemberg was part of that.
    So in the Russian zone, Lemberg was the largest--
    or Lwow was the largest city.
    I would say so.
    Because you mentioned Krakow and Warsaw,
    they were in the German zone.
    This was before the war.
    Talking about before the war.
    Before the war we were all in Poland.
    When the war started, Poland was divided So we were in the part
    that Russia took over.
    And in that part, I gather Lwow was the largest city.
    Was the largest city.
    Taken over, yes.
    Yeah, of the Russian zone.
    Right.
    Right.
    OK.
    And it was considered to be a modern, up to date city?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    As Warsaw and Krakow considered to the modern,
    up-to-date cities.
    But the smaller towns, the shtetlach
    could be 19th century communities.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    They were the communities without the infrastructure,
    maybe the electricity or maybe the water resources
    that the cities had already and so that's to that aspect
    Before the war did everybody have a phone in Lemberg?
    Or Lwow?
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Not that modern.
    Not that modern?
    No, no.
    Not that.
    You're talking modern for 1930's, not for the '90s.
    Oh, OK.
    Exactly.
    You said your father had a lumber yard.
    What do you remember about the lumber yard?
    What do you want me to--
    Evidently, it was a good business that--
    Good business, yes.
    --was going from father to son.
    Delivering lumber to the places that
    were building up homes and businesses and houses and so.
    Now let's see.
    You were born in 1932.
    That means you were already in school when the war broke out.
    Certainly.
    Yes, in the beginning.
    Even when the Germans invaded in '39, you were seven years old
    and it really came to your part of Poland in '41, June '41.
    When the Russians came back, they moved our grades back
    one year because in Russia they started
    school I think at 7 or 8 and in Poland they started earlier.
    So when Russia took over Lwow, children
    were pushed back one year.
    What do you remember of your life until the war?
    What kept you going?
    What did you look forward to?
    Playing with other children, having fun, doing homework.
    Doing well, hopefully, in school.
    And I remember my cousins.
    That with Sam we were close, and Sam did not live in Lwow.
    It was not so close.
    But life was pleasant?
    Very pleasant, yes, yes.
    And what do you remember?
    For you it's more difficult but do you remember something?
    Well, it's a little more difficult,
    but to the extent that I didn't go to school,
    I don't remember going to school.
    But as a toddler or a young four,
    five-year-old I remember playing and I remember
    the streets and the few friends that we
    played with and with my sister, of course.
    So I do remember that part and it was pleasant.
    We were very comfortable, had a loving family.
    What do you remember of Jewish life?
    Jewish life?
    There was a synagogue around the corner, holidays,
    and this is what I remember.
    My grandmother coming over and so.
    And you?
    Same.
    Well, not as much as my sister, but I
    remember those happy occasions of course.
    What do you remember in terms of comparing first
    to the Russian takeover, and then the German takeover?
    Well, the Russians came over, they were not a threat
    to our lives.
    Of course, the Germans came, then that was it.
    Because all the neighbors that were Ukrainian or non-Jewish
    were happy that the Germans came and screaming in the streets
    that it will be bad for the Jews.
    They were glad about it.
    Was that the impression that you had,
    that the population saw the events of 1941
    as a turn against the Jews?
    Was that the whole thing?
    Well.
    That they--
    They were not in danger.
    --were pleased with this development?
    Yes.
    We did feel that.
    Yes.
    We did feel that.
    We had to have--
    I don't think in the other population,
    the others were in danger of their lives.
    And there's not--
    Anti-Semitism reared its ugly head when the Germans came in.
    It was just Carte Blanche and opened everything up.
    You mean they could help themselves to your belongings?
    They certainly did.
    Eventually they did.
    They eventually did.
    And one of the first things, of course, we
    know the Germans did is create and form the ghetto
    and the orders went out to the Jewish communities
    that everybody had to move into the ghettos.
    So we had to leave.
    So when Jews family's businesses left,
    whoever took it over, whether it's the Poles or Ukrainians
    or Germans.
    Just like my father the lumber yard, who knows
    who took it over?
    But we certainly didn't see any benefit of it.
    So that that's the sense and it's not the sense.
    It's in the reality, that's what happened.
    We all know that during the actions that the Germans had,
    let's say even in the ghetto when
    they would come in and take our children
    or elderly people, different times, different segments
    of the population they wanted to take out,
    there was always some Gentile Poles or Ukrainians
    with the Germans and they were the ones who--
    Rounded up Jews.
    --helped more than anybody else to round them up and take them
    out.
    Would you say that what the Germans did was--
    while Poland was really a defeated country,
    a vanquished country at this time,
    the Germans succeeded in blinding them
    to what was taking place with them
    by giving them the Carte Blanche to do
    what they wanted with the Jews?
    Right, right.
    I would agree with that general statement
    and of course, I would also say not the entire population.
    I'm sure there were good people and people were helping us
    and even in our own case, there were some Gentile families who
    helped us get out and survive.
    And so it's not everybody, but--
    Excuse me, Erwin.
    To get out from the ghetto nobody helped us.
    Well, but the one time, for instance--
    That they took me over.
    --somebody took you for a few days, you know?
    They were Gentile.
    They were Gentile.
    But generally speaking, they were not
    unhappy with the situation with the Germans coming in and doing
    what they were doing.
    Even though they were defeated country, your view of it
    is that this made their defeat more than palatable for them?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    The Germans didn't need to do much the work
    at liquidating Jews.
    Well, they had the plan and everything,
    but they had tremendous cooperation with the Gentile,
    Ukrainians, and the Poles.
    All right.
    Let's consider now the members of your family.
    You know, your father's family, your mother's family.
    We were talking about this a little while ago.
    Let's go to your father's family first, may we?
    Your father's family consisted of what?
    Of a brother and sister.
    Brother and a sister.
    What happened to them?
    The brother perished with his family.
    The sister survived in Russia with her family.
    OK, so they were married and they had children?
    Each had two children.
    All right.
    So you're talking about two families of four?
    Right.
    One family of four escaped to Russia--
    Of three.
    My father was one of three.
    There was another--
    Oh, no I'm talking about his brother and his sister.
    Right.
    So the brother escaped to Russia?
    No, the brother perished.
    The sister.
    The sister in Russia.
    So the sister and her husband and children--
    --two children survived.
    --left, fled to Russia.
    And survived.
    All right.
    That's the sister.
    The brother and his wife
    And two children
    Perished.
    Perished.
    You don't know where?
    Stanislav, but I don't know how and what.
    You don't know if it's a ghetto or if it's a camp.
    You just know that they weren't around after the war.
    Right.
    OK.
    Now your mother's family was a larger family.
    Larger family, she was one of seven
    and only she and her sister survived.
    Your mother survived with her husband and two children.
    Two children.
    The sister survived with a daughter
    and a ex-husband, which was in a different part of the world.
    OK.
    And now five siblings, and that's-- they perished.
    Perished, yes.
    Different part of the world.
    With their husbands, with their wives--
    Childen--
    --and with the children.
    --wives, with their spouses.
    Yes.
    So that's where the the losses were greatest.
    And of course, my mother's mother perished.
    Grandmother.
    She was the only member of that generation who was still alive?
    Yes, yes, yes.
    Now you were in the ghetto in Lwow.
    Yes.
    What happened there?
    Well, daily life was very tough from day-to-day,
    but of course, worse was the aktion that
    were rounding our people, and there was no place to hide
    and whoever was open were taken away and never heard of again.
    But at one time we were hiding in a attic
    and we survived that aktion.
    Other aktion were hiding other places,
    and eventually my parents decided to leave the ghetto
    and to take that chance.
    To escape.
    Now, all the Jews of the Lwow were rounded up
    and settled in the ghetto?
    Ghetto, yes.
    What do you remember of what the life consisted
    of in the ghetto?
    I think struggle from day-to-day.
    I remember my parents, my mother was
    able to get out from the ghetto and bring food inside
    because food was a shortage.
    Shortage of food, shortage of medicine.
    Shortage of everything.
    But I don't remember ever being, or you
    being hungry because mother always
    were able to go out and bring bread, potatoes,
    and all kinds of things.
    Was everybody in the ghetto able to do it?
    No.
    How did she manage it?
    When she was going out, she pretended to be not Jewish
    and she had the look about her that way.
    So she was able to mingle with the non-Jewish population
    outside the ghetto and to just get things.
    With maybe some money we had she was
    able to buy outside the ghetto.
    So people didn't know her outside the ghetto?
    She was always afraid that somebody
    will recognize her, a neighbor.
    Which at one time, it happened and she miraculously
    escaped that person that followed her.
    A non-Jewish neighbor saw her and followed her all over town,
    but mother did manage to escape her.
    That was a frightening experience.
    That was a frightening experience
    that people will-- that's why when we did leave the ghetto,
    we had to go out outside Lwow because it was always a danger
    that someone will recognize.
    A neighbor, a mother of a school child
    will eventually give us out.
    I believe in your mother's writing
    we have a number of incidents that took place
    while the family was still in the ghetto,
    but the way I understand it, you were outside the ghetto--
    Just for one aktion.
    For one aktion I--
    You were in the ghetto.
    Yes.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    And the other aktion, you were out of the ghetto.
    One aktion was outside.
    Mostly I was in, just one aktion was out.
    When did you leave the ghetto?
    There was a rumor that the Nazi is coming up and my mother--
    I don't remember if somebody came
    to get me out from the ghetto.
    Mother took me out to family.
    Family from before the war.
    Yes.
    They took me--
    Polish family?
    Polish family, yes.
    A Gentile family?
    Yes, Gentile family.
    Yes.
    A Gentile Polish family, and they sheltered her.
    Yes, for the time of the aktion.
    Then they took me back.
    So basically you were together the whole time?
    Yes, yes, yes.
    Except maybe for two days, let's say.
    Exactly.
    Exactly, right.
    OK.
    And at a certain point--
    so you'll live through and the family
    lived through, survived several aktions in the ghetto,
    and then the family left the ghetto.
    How did that come about?
    That's the key to your survival.
    Leaving the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    Well, mother writes in here that the decision
    came when my father was injured while being transported out
    of the ghetto to a work outside the ghetto.
    And it was a big incident that some truck fell over him
    and he was badly injured.
    So while recuperating back in the ghetto,
    my parents decided there's the time.
    Because nobody will be missing him at
    work knowing that he's recuperating.
    And we decided to leave.
    We obtained some-- partially, mother obtained Aryan papers,
    which were not so--
    For you two?
    For herself as an Aryan person.
    And so at least she had something
    to show if caught outside.
    And what about the two of you?
    But those papers were only for her
    and for my sister and myself.
    Not for my father.
    Not for my father.
    Why was that?
    Well, the papers were for a woman--
    From a separate family--
    --her age.
    --that they gave us.
    They gave you their papers?
    No.
    No.
    The papers were not so--
    Legitimate?
    --legitimate They were very safe,
    but were safe in the packet.
    Once they had to be shown and if they will just
    follow all the details of those papers, wouldn't be good.
    But for the first glance, the papers were OK, let's say.
    For a family of a boy and a girl and a mother.
    Mother and my father was just--
    Who prepared the papers?
    We had somebody that did it for us.
    This was from a deceased family, they got a copy.
    Oh, these were real people.
    These were real papers.
    Real paper of people that if you would really look through,
    they were non-existence, partially existing.
    I'm not sure how, but they were not from people that were alive
    and that they gave up their own papers.
    Were just false papers, false--
    maybe one was in the K-paper, but for the two of us maybe
    it was a little bit falsified.
    Well, I can understand it because if the people weren't
    alive, that means they were dead.
    And you were children who were just
    born within the past decade.
    I don't know how exactly which paper was the right one.
    Probably mothers.
    And the two of our papers maybe were falsified or just
    made up for.
    And your father had no papers?
    No papers, no.
    Just went out on a chance.
    And in the film that was in the video for--
    Stern.
    --Stern College.
    Your mother was very clear with the statement
    "here we have no chance to survive.
    Outside is 50-50.
    I'll take the 50-50."
    Exactly.
    So it was her decision?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She was very strong, yes.
    Do you remember her always being the decisive person
    and making moves?
    Never came to our mind before the war how strong
    and how decisive she was till the occasion came for--
    In those
    --emergency like that.
    --moments of crisis and everything,
    of course she discussed it with her father,
    I'm sure, and so forth.
    With her father?
    Oh, you mean with--
    With our father.
    --your father.
    My father.
    With her husband.
    With her husband.
    But she really was the strong force
    in getting things accomplished that had to be done.
    And first of all, she didn't look Jewish.
    Which quote, unquote, whatever "Jewish" for the non-Jewish
    population a Jew looks like.
    And being a woman was easier to get around
    than for a man, which could be, of course, for a Jewish man,
    male was--
    Could be dangerous.
    Right, could be proven immediately.
    So mother had the ability, of course the strength,
    and everything else that she could maneuver easier
    than a man, which was my father.
    After the war, when you came to America,
    did you always see your mother as being that decisive person?
    Because evidently she played that key role in your lives.
    Yes, she did.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    You always saw that?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She was a good guide for us, different decisions,
    where to live, settlements, so forth.
    She was involved all the time.
    She had a good sense about what's right
    and it's proven that she was right in all her decision
    making.
    So she was really quite a personality?
    Yes, she was.
    And in the sense that in her case,
    you could see where the decision was made that saved the family.
    In the ghetto In the ghetto.
    And most people can't do that.
    They will throw up their hands and say it was luck,
    they can't understand how they survived.
    And mostly people in the ghetto.
    Mother used to tell us that people said,
    whatever happened with everybody else will happen with us.
    Of course, not thinking that such a final thing will happen.
    They couldn't absorb it, what was taking place.
    Couldn't.
    Even if they knew somehow, said, well, it
    would not maybe happen to us, maybe soon it'll end,
    maybe just part of us will perish, not all.
    I don't think they thought that it's--
    This is probably one of the most puzzling things
    from the whole Holocaust, just to my mind anyway.
    How millions and millions of people
    just either didn't know what was going on,
    which is quite possible and they always thought of, well,
    if we resist we'll get killed immediately.
    So let's go along.
    Where was the resistance?
    There was some, of course, we know,
    but generally speaking we were just
    led to believe that everything will be all right.
    I still don't know how it all went that it just--
    if was even full resistance, if we knew all the facts,
    what was going on.
    Maybe half our population could have been saved.
    It's hard to believe.
    You know, Wiesel said when he was here,
    how do unarmed people resist the mightiest army in Europe
    and the greatest army until that time?
    With what?
    That is true.
    That is true.
    It's hard to fight with bare hands guns and tanks.
    The population was hungry, scared, and just not organized
    and just not believing that--
    Not organized, we didn't have backing.
    We didn't have countries, nations, saying this is wrong.
    We have to do something.
    We didn't have it then.
    Now your mother made the decision and the history
    has proven that she was right and she
    was original and creative in how to save the family.
    Did she talk to others that you know
    of about what was in her mind?
    Or she only kept this within the family?
    That was her decision.
    It was very hard to advise anybody else without--
    you can't tell people, let's get out from ghetto.
    She had the will, the opportunity as far
    as the papers she had.
    If somebody didn't have papers, how do you go out?
    Have you heard of other people who escaped the ghetto?
    Probably.
    Probably, yes.
    Of the Lwow ghetto?
    We did not hear or know of anyone.
    Yes, no.
    Yeah, you haven't come across anyone?
    We haven't come across anyone, but hopefully some did.
    But on the other hand, it was not
    easy to get out of the ghetto either.
    You just didn't decide I want to get out.
    That was not the Germans plan.
    Even according to her paper here--
    we had somebody that was in the Jewish militia
    and he helped us.
    He was our neighbor--
    So we needed a lot of help and planning--
    --and he helped us to get--
    --to get out.
    --through the gate.
    A lot of help and planning?
    A lot of help and planning.
    The timing, so forth, and so on and when this particular man
    was near the guard, near the gates to help us get out.
    She had spoken to him?
    She had spoken to him, made arrangements so that--
    He didn't make it.
    He himself perished, but he was in the militia,
    in the Jewish militia of ghetto.
    And when we came up to the gates he
    told the one that was guarding the gate, also Jewish militia,
    to look other way.
    Not to look this way or that way,
    and he shielded us with his back and said, go.
    An absolutely--
    So we went through the gate.
    --remarkable story, how she saw what was going on
    and saw how to save her family.
    Just exactly how she stated, that she would take her chance
    on living outside, because inside she
    could see that nobody will survive eventually.
    We have here quite a few incidents
    that she talks about I think what we decided
    was that you'd begin to read them
    and we'd see if we can get some clarity as to what took place,
    when it took place, and so forth.
    So if you'll be good enough, would you read the first one?
    I'd be glad to, certainly.
    These are some remembrances and thoughts
    and things that my mother at one time
    a few years ago decided to put down and she wrote it in Polish
    and she asked me to translate it, which I did, into English.
    And being sort of a perfectionist
    that my mother was, she didn't like my translation.
    In some instances some phrases weren't quite the way
    she wanted them to be.
    She edited my translation in English and of course,
    then we typed this up and these are
    a few remembrances of the Lemberg, Lwow ghetto in Poland.
    This is my mother's story and I'll
    be glad to read it for you this morning.
    "In the ghetto they had a kitchen
    for children who came with their own container
    to receive a little soup and bread.
    My nephew, Marcel, he was six years old,
    went one day to this kitchen with our children
    and never returned or was ever seen again.
    Tears are swelling in my eyes and I cannot write anymore.
    Further remembrance--"
    Wait, is that the first one?
    That's the first one.
    All right, let's talk about that a moment.
    Tell us about Marcel.
    Marcel was the youngest child of my mother's oldest sister,
    Żenia.
    Actually, he was close in age to you.
    He was.
    Right, right.
    He was my age.
    So was her sister closer to my age
    and Marcel was closer to Erwin's age.
    But in our case, we never had the need
    to go to the soup kitchen because always mother
    was able to provide food for us and we really never went
    hungry, even in the ghetto.
    But that family, somehow my mother's older sister
    didn't have the strength or the ability
    to go out of the ghetto to get the food for the children.
    So the children were forced to go to a soup kitchen
    and that was the plan, I guess, to round up
    all the children from that soup kitchen
    and then take them away.
    They disappeared.
    They disappeared.
    This was our first shock for the family, for our family,
    that he didn't come back.
    That was right at the beginning of the German occupation then.
    Exactly.
    Yes.
    Exactly.
    Many times they would have people gathering,
    receiving some bread and soup and so forth
    and trucks would come up and take 20, 30 people and out.
    So it was just like they were there.
    You saw it?
    I don't remember seeing it, no.
    No, I didn't see it.
    Because you never went to the soup line?
    Never went to the soup line.
    Right, but my mother and father, they talked about.
    They knew that's how things were going on.
    Right.
    OK, let's go onto second one.
    Further remembrances and dates, unfortunately I
    do not remember so I wouldn't put them here any dates.
    Her second point is "they announced aktion, which
    means to take hundreds of people to the camps
    and thereby shrinking and reducing the ghetto.
    I took my daughter, Zuzia Elizabeth,
    to my former neighbor who lived in my former neighborhood
    in Lemberg.
    She hid Zuzia in the basement so that her father, who
    was of German origin, should not find out that she
    was hiding a Jewish child.
    Me and my little son, Erwin, who remained with me in the ghetto.
    Next to the house where we lived was a barn,
    so I and my son Irwin climbed into the attic of that barn
    to hide from the Ukrainian militia.
    We covered ourselves with straw and lay still, barely
    breathing.
    The Ukrainian militia came and were taking people away.
    My husband, who had working papers for the railroad work
    which was considered essential work, was outside the ghetto.
    Some Ukrainian men raised the ladder
    to go up and look into the attic where I and my son were hiding.
    Erwin was seven years old at the time.
    As one militiaman was climbing up the ladder,
    another one said to him, can't you
    see that there is a roof up there?
    He climbed down and my husband took the ladder away
    and we were saved.
    From the same hiding place, I saw through a little opening
    how they took my older sister, Żenia, and her daughter, Lila,
    and how the brutal Ukrainians took them for the last walk.
    I can't write any further.
    Tears are swelling in my eyes."
    This was probably in 1942 because you were seven.
    Wait a minute, you became seven in--
    In 1941.
    --November '41.
    So it was probably sometime in '42.
    '42 I would say.
    In the first year of the German occupation.
    Probably, yes.
    Yes.
    And this is the one time that you were not in the ghetto.
    Right, yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    But it was maybe only for two days
    because the aktion didn't last that long.
    I mean, it was long enough but then I came back.
    And when you came back, what do you recall when you came back?
    To tell you the truth, just mother
    telling us that her sister and mother and niece
    were taken away.
    In the first aktion?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    This was the first aktion.
    One of the first ones, right.
    That's the first one she's talking about.
    Right, yeah.
    There may be smaller ones before she put this main one up,
    but this was--
    Do you have any recollection of this aktion?
    This particular incident I do have
    because I remember being in the barn, in the attic with her
    and just stands out in my mind.
    But of course, it was reinforced by after the war and so forth.
    We always talked about these different pockets,
    different incidents, and that I do remember,
    being up there with her.
    And of course, being a small child,
    we were always admonished to be quiet and still
    and all the different things that we needed to
    do in order not to give ourselves away.
    So war creates this type of situations.
    You just know instinctly what to do, seems to me like.
    We had to do all the right things.
    All right.
    Let's see what else Happened Over here
    and see if we begin to see any kind of a pattern.
    What's the next one?
    She continues, "Another time you could hear screaming and crying
    to the heavens and we knew that someone was
    being tortured and murdered.
    It was then that I and my husband
    decided that I with my son Erwin would leave the ghetto
    and try to go to the outside.
    Because if they came to our house,
    they would take us away."
    Is that the end of it?
    No.
    "I was able to obtain a passport from a Ukrainian woman
    acquaintance and that of her small boy
    which fit my son's description.
    With my knowledge of the Ukrainian language,
    we set out to go out of the ghetto
    for the time of the raids, which lasted one or two days.
    I held Erwin by the hand and we started walking
    toward the outside gate.
    But before we could cross this large field,
    a band of eight 8 10 Ukrainian youths with sticks and razors
    along with one Ukrainian militiamen and one
    Gestapo officer approached us.
    My fear was unbelievable because all they were interested in
    was beating and killing Jews.
    One of the youths shouted, no!
    No!
    No!
    Meaning that we might not be Jews.
    I showed my passport to the Ukrainian militia,
    conversing with him in Ukrainian.
    He looked it over and returned the passport to me
    and told us we could proceed and go ahead.
    I held my son Erwin's hand tightly so he would feel secure
    and that is how we left the ghetto this time.
    A few days later when the situation in the ghetto
    was calmer, I returned with both my children, Erwin and Zuzia.
    I picked up my daughter, Zuzia, from the woman
    who hid her in the basement.
    Upon my return to the ghetto, my beloved mother, Branja,
    was gone."
    That's my grandmother.
    "They took her away during those two days of raids."
    So this is the aktion that you were away?
    Probably, yes.
    Probably.
    Didn't we say when he was in the attic with the mother,
    you were also away then.
    Sounds like you missed two aktions.
    Possible.
    Possible.
    This I don't recall.
    This I don't remember if it's one or two.
    And she only talks about holding his hand.
    Yes.
    And then afterwards she picked you up.
    Yes.
    Because during the time that we were returning,
    she picked her up from when she was away for a couple of days.
    So the aktions were going quickly at this point?
    You were away for a short time and she's
    talking about two aktions here.
    Yes.
    They were going on quite often.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    There was a story my mother told us that where some people were
    hiding out and there was a woman with a little baby and they
    said that they cannot take the baby because the baby will cry.
    So she came up and left the baby downstairs.
    Of course, the baby was gone after the aktion.
    There was another incident, another woman had a baby
    and she took the baby up with her.
    But when the baby started crying,
    she put a pillow on the baby to be quiet and--
    That was it.
    --the baby never cried.
    I think mother writes about it here.
    And after that the baby never cried again.
    Was she rare in the sense that she could speak Ukrainian
    and that's what saved the family?
    Yes, I did not speak Ukrainian but my mother did.
    She did, she spoke Ukrainian.
    Yeah.
    About what proportion of the Jewish population
    was able to speak Ukraine?
    Do you have any idea?
    I would say not too many.
    She just knew it.
    I don't know how she knew the language.
    But that saved you.
    Saved us.
    Well, each step was a different situation that--
    Her bearing and her able communicate Ukrainian
    seemed to be what saved the family at this point.
    And your father was working?
    He was in the labor crew.
    He was in the labor crew on a daily labor work force.
    He was considered an essential worker?
    Yes.
    Right, right.
    He would go out every morning, come back
    at the end of the day every day.
    Of course, we mentioned it earlier
    that he was hurt in an accident one time outside working.
    And that was right before--
    And there was a period of time that he
    was able to stay in the ghetto to recuperating
    and during that period is when we got out.
    Do you have any idea as to when you crossed outside the ghetto?
    In other words, when--
    The last time?
    --the date.
    Do you have an idea of a date at this point?
    Could have been 1943.
    Could have been 1943.
    We were liberated 1945.
    '45?
    That's pretty late.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    1945.
    Yes, we were not in Lwow.
    Lwow was liberated before, but we had to get out of Lwow--
    We were near Krakow.
    --to a village near Krakow.
    Oh, so you were in western Poland.
    We were liberated 1945, January.
    January.
    Beginning of '45--
    February.
    When they were already out of Auschwitz.
    --by the Russians.
    What do you mean out of Auschwitz?
    That's when they left Auschwitz already.
    Well, yeah.
    Because the part that we left, Lwow, was liberated a year
    or half a year before us.
    And I know the people in Żołkiew, that talk about '44.
    Right.
    No, no we were about a year later.
    Different approach.
    Winning the war, the Russians and the Americans,
    there were different parts of the--
    you know?
    But we were one of the later ones.
    OK, so this was an aktion.
    Now I guess what's the next one?
    Is the next one where the decision is made to leave?
    She says another instance, another time.
    "One evening my husband and the children and I
    were at home in the ghetto and my brother-in-law
    came to visit.
    I wondered why he came so late and I asked him, where's
    Minka, my younger sister?
    He told us that she and their four-year-old son are far away.
    Upon hearing that, I had a premonition
    and started crying out her name.
    Minka!
    Minka!
    And now I lost you too.
    My brother-in-law didn't say anything
    upon seeing my despair, but looking at him,
    I knew what had happened to her.
    We said goodbye to each other and he left.
    From a former Catholic neighbor I
    found out how my younger sister, Minka,
    and her four-year-old child and her sister-in-law died.
    My sister, Minka, and her sister-in-law
    were working as cooks in a German officers kitchen
    together with a third Jewish woman.
    One day they let the third woman go because they apparently
    didn't need her.
    This woman was caught in a roundup
    and they put her on a train for the camps.
    She somehow escaped from the train, returned to Lwow,
    went to the police, and told them
    the story of my sister and little son and sister-in-law,
    that they were working in the German kitchens.
    The Gestapo immediately took them away.
    My brother-in-law found out too late to do anything about it.
    And the night before he found out,
    they took all of the people from the police station
    to the Janowska cemetery and shot them all.
    I now know how my younger sister, Minka,
    and her four-year-old baby son died."
    Do you understand this whole story?
    Yes, sure.
    Maybe you can explain it.
    The woman that was dismissed from the German kitchen--
    A Jewish woman?
    A Jewish woman.
    Out of revenge when she escaped the trains to the camps,
    came back and out of revenge, told the police
    that there's some other Jewish people working in the kitchen
    by the German officer and that was probably not allowed.
    And it was not an official--
    But I know it was the German officers who
    were satisfied to let them stay if nobody would say anything?
    Right.
    For a while, I don't know for how long.
    It wasn't a long situation.
    But they weren't taking any action?
    They needed--
    They needed the cooks.
    --my aunt, the cooks, the cleaning and people.
    They probably would not be there for very long
    anyway because with a small child--
    but the woman made it sooner.
    Out of revenge she spilled the beans that--
    Well, what was the revenge against the remaining Jews?
    In other words--
    Because she was dismissed from that position.
    It's very hard.
    It didn't bring out the best in all of our people.
    No, sometimes not.
    Sometimes not.
    It just happened that way.
    It's an incredible story.
    I mean, it's not easy to--
    you can't understand it.
    You cannot understand it, but it happened and it participated
    in liquidating--
    Somehow mother didn't--
    --her sister.
    --want to write about the incident, but she wrote it.
    It wasn't easy for her to write this particular thing
    because it is something that's casting some aspersion
    against another Jewish person.
    But it just somehow happened, so she wrote it.
    OK, let's go on to the next one.
    Another time.
    "My neighbor, a widow, lived with her daughter, Rivka,
    for many years.
    Rivka worked as a bookkeeper in the ghetto
    and they lived in a small apartment not far from me.
    One day when they announced an aktion raid, which
    meant that they would come and take
    many people to the Janowska camp from which no one ever
    returned, Rivka took a few neighbors and her mother
    and locked them up in a separate room and stood watch herself.
    When the Gestapo came, she showed them her working papers,
    which were in order.
    When they asked her was there any people here, she said no.
    Unfortunately, someone in the hidden room
    coughed and of course, they pushed her aside, broke down
    the door, and pulled out all these people,
    among them Rivka's mother.
    One of the Gestapo pulled out his pistol
    and shot Rivka on the spot.
    Rivka's mother begged them to shoot her too,
    they refused her and took all of them
    to the Janowska camp of no return."
    Which eventually they were killed.
    Did you you have something to say about this?
    No.
    Only were incidents that mother remembered from ghetto
    and talked to us after the war, you know?
    And then she put--
    So Rivka was a--
    A neighbor.
    Just a neighbor.
    A neighbor that she knew lived in the ghetto nearby.
    She's just relating a incidence, just an incidence.
    Of which these were happening constantly.
    Of course, but this--
    She saw it, she knew about it.
    She lived this, she knew about it.
    So that's why she put it down.
    Nothing to do with our family or anything.
    But this is what life or not life was like at the time.
    I'm still disturbed by that previous story
    about the woman who came back and spoke about the cooks
    in the officers mess.
    That woman was being sent away to a concentration camp and she
    got these people--
    Taken away.
    --taken away and killed.
    What happened to her?
    I'm sure she didn't make it.
    I'm sure she was--
    We don't know.
    Yeah, I don't know.
    But it's not said over here.
    No, mother doesn't relate about her.
    I'm sure she didn't make it and she probably knew herself
    she's not going to make it.
    OK.
    We're coming down to the tail end
    when we're going to get out of the ghetto, I think so.
    I would say so.
    Another incidence my mother writes about
    is, "A raid was announced.
    Myself and my children along with many other people,
    some of whom I didn't know, went into a cellar
    to wait and hide until the raid was over.
    There were between 10 and 15 people all huddled together
    in the pitch dark.
    There was one mother with her child we did not know.
    When the Gestapo came together with some Jewish militia,
    we could hear the opening and closing doors
    and lots of banging going on.
    At this moment, we could hear the child cry out in the cellar
    and at that same time, one Jewish militia in Polish
    said out loud, I hear a child crying.
    The mother in the cellar, fearing
    discovery and the lives of many people were in danger,
    did put her hand over the child's mouth and the child
    never cried again."
    So that's the story.
    Exactly.
    I didn't remember if it was a pillow she put over
    or her hand over the child's crying mouth.
    It's hard to relate things like that,
    but when you're in a situation like that it's
    to save maybe 10 or 15 people.
    And I suppose if the mother didn't do it,
    maybe somebody else would do it.
    It's hard to imagine today that those decisions
    and choices probably had to be made routinely, maybe.
    I don't know.
    Actually there were no choices.
    No choices.
    But my mother relates the story that she saw--
    That she knew about.
    --she knew about.
    She saw, she knew.
    I mean, the decision to choke the baby is not a choice.
    Maybe she didn't realize she was choking it
    till just to quiet it down.
    She kept it quiet for a while--
    Probably consciously she didn't think she'll it'll happen.
    You'll appreciate this.
    Our speaker this year writes that they
    were choiceless choices.
    You choose to do something, but it's no choice.
    There were no good choices.
    OK, now I think now we're getting out of the ghetto.
    I don't think so.
    Might be.
    Another time.
    "We realized that no one would ever leave this ghetto alive.
    As time went on, everyone knew that on a given day
    they would come and close down the ghetto
    and take all the people out and that will be the end.
    I feverishly thought about how to get out and leave
    certain death behind.
    We waited for an opportunity, but this
    was easier said than done.
    On the other side, we had no one.
    One accident that befell my husband
    helped a decision on how to get out.
    One morning my husband was packed into a truck
    with other men who went to work on the railroad.
    One of the truck's side racks opened up
    and some men fell out, with my husband on the bottom.
    They took him to a drugstore and treated him for his injuries
    and militiamen came to my house and told me about the accident
    and told me to have a few zlotys ready to pay for the treatment.
    So we went to the drugstore to pay for his treatment
    and to take my husband home.
    The militiamen told us that my husband didn't
    have to report for work for two to three weeks
    and it was during this time that we
    prepared our plan to leave and escape from the ghetto.
    The accident turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
    I told my husband not to return to work afterward,
    as they will probably shut the gates to this working
    camp with all the people in it with my husband
    and that will be the end.
    At this time there were less people left in the ghetto
    and we came up with our escape plan.
    My husband met with the Gentile fellow
    who used to work for him in the lumber yard business
    before the war on Krolowej Jadwigi street."
    "Jad-waga?"
    Jadwiga.
    Jadwiga.
    "This fellow agreed to hide us out
    for two days, a short period of time,
    if we got out of the ghetto until we located elsewhere.
    When my husband recuperated from his accident
    we decided to leave.
    By now, the gates were completely
    under the control of the Jewish militia.
    We could only leave in the early morning
    together with the workers who went outside
    from the ghetto every day to work.
    They were checking everyone's working papers
    and it was not easy to leave.
    We had a good friend, who was not afraid of the militia,
    he told us to meet him by the gate on a certain morning.
    On a cold, rainy, freezing day in a December,
    I went to the gate with my son in my arms,
    as he just got over an illness, and my daughter
    holding my other hand.
    We were at the gate when a Jewish militiaman
    said to me, where are you going with the children?
    They have no working papers.
    Children don't work.
    Our friend went to the militiamen and said to him,
    look away the other side and let them by,
    because if you don't look away you will never
    be able to look again.
    This is how we left the Lemberg ghetto, Lwow ghetto,
    to a new location, eventual survival, and life.
    Our friend wished us good luck in saving ourselves.
    Unfortunately, this friend was not saved and perished
    with all of his family--"
    We'll continue later.
    It just went off.
    Finished?
    That's the first hour.
    We'll just have a few minutes now.
    Oh, so now I can relax.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Well, this--
    But she didn't have the koyach.
    I was telling her a few times what you said.
    She said, I don't have the koyach to talk.
    All right, we're on tape now.
    As the first hour was running out,
    you had just finished reading your mother's description
    of leaving the ghetto.
    And the help from the Jewish militia person.
    Do you know anything about that person?
    Well, he was a neighbor of ours, before the war.
    And he became a militia person during the ghetto.
    And by that, he was able to take us out
    of the gates of the ghetto wall.
    He played a crucial role in saving the family.
    Yes.
    Yes, yes.
    What happened to him?
    Do you know?
    Well, he perished.
    How.
    I don't know, because all militia people perished.
    There was no special treatment because they were militia.
    And your mother said the only sentence
    that we could not get--
    I'll start here.
    Our friend wished us good luck in saving ourselves.
    Unfortunately, this friend was not saved, and perished.
    There it is.
    With all of his family together.
    One of his sisters was here in America.
    Did you ever meet that sister?
    Yes, I met.
    We were in touch with her.
    She lived in New York.
    Then she died of old age.
    She knew that her brother saved you.
    Yes, she knew.
    You both met her.
    I did not.
    Erwin did not.
    But I did.
    And my mother.
    We were in touch with her till she died of natural causes.
    And she has family here?
    She has a niece.
    She was not married?
    She was married but--
    No children.
    She lost everybody.
    She lost her husband and children.
    She herself survived, by hiding out, or I don't know how.
    And of course, the brother that helped us through the ghetto
    also perished.
    So she was the only survivor.
    What happened when you left the ghetto?
    Where did you go?
    We went on the Aryan side and mother
    took an apartment-- room, boarding room by somebody.
    And till we decided what to do further,
    we stayed in the apartment for a very short time.
    Till mother could get more secure Polish papers
    for the family.
    Not for my father.
    And the transportation to another part of Poland.
    Because in Lviv she could not walk around.
    There was always somebody that she met,
    that followed her, that wanted to extract money out of her,
    to expose her.
    So she-- There were a few incidents
    that a neighbor or a Polish friend saw her,
    and they followed her.
    Took her sometimes hours to lose them,
    running away and so forth.
    Because once they would catch her,
    or followed her where we lived, we would have been all exposed.
    Being able to escape once she was spotted by a person,
    her ability to escape is very impressive.
    How did she get away?
    She walked from door to door, and then the person
    followed her.
    And she made faster steps, and faster walking,
    till she went to an attic, and lost sight of that woman.
    And stayed in that attic or top stairs,
    some abandoned building, till nightfall.
    Then she came back to the apartment.
    And this happened about how many times?
    A few times.
    A few times, till we were--
    This is frightening.
    Very frightening.
    Because Erwin and I and my father,
    we were in that apartment.
    We did not go out because of exposure.
    And we thought, if mother doesn't come back,
    that's the end of us.
    We have to go out because--
    but finally she came back.
    And then we have the story that she had to--
    took her a whole day not to come to the apartment.
    Otherwise the woman would follow us and give us all out or just
    the men money or whatever else we had of value.
    And that value saved us to be transported by train.
    We went by train to the village that we were finally liberated,
    outside of--
    We went to a village and we worked.
    We stayed on the farm.
    And we stayed there to the end of the war.
    My mother worked on a farm.
    She help with chores.
    Is this near Krakow?
    This is near Krakow.
    Yes, this is the village near Krakow.
    So you went to one place?
    To one place.
    And the place was?
    Lipnica.
    Lipnica, all right.
    Near Vilichka, near Bochnia near Krakow.
    You don't have an idea of the date?
    All you can say is that you think it was in 1943?
    Which month I completely don't know.
    And then you were in la pitra?
    Did I say it correctly?
    Lipnica.
    You were there--
    Till the end of the war.
    Then we were liberated by the Russians.
    We were there for about two years.
    When were you liberated?
    In January '45.
    January, February, December, I'm not--
    So it was well over a year that you were hiding out.
    Oh, yes.
    About two years.
    A year and a half, two years.
    What did you do during that time?
    Who were you?
    Who are you?
    We were-- our papers were that we
    are from a different part of Poland.
    And my mother with the two children--
    Displaced family--
    Displaced family from that part of Poland,
    and looking for a place to work and to have
    a roof over our head.
    For work for your father?
    For my mother.
    No, my father was incognito.
    It was not known to the farmer woman that there is a father.
    My mother--
    Was that because she had no papers for him?
    She would not.
    No, a man you don't, it's not--
    And we also didn't have any papers for him.
    He had no Gentile papers.
    We did.
    And when my mother was arranged to this elderly woman,
    farmer owner, needed help to work with her farm and the cows
    and whatever.
    She needed some help.
    My mother and two children was the family
    would come and help her.
    So for all the help, the only thing mother
    ask is a roof over our heads, and the food.
    Whatever she could she would be--
    At this point you had no money.
    Very little, no.
    Nothing to be able to pay her for.
    Because in Lviv I gather, you had money.
    Yes, we were able to--
    Yes.
    But a lot of the money was spent for various things
    that we needed to survive during the time,
    Including the papers.
    You mean it was used up?
    It was consumed.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --papers Whatever.
    Favors.
    And getting out the gate--
    Everything.
    Yes everything.
    Different things that I had to do.
    See, decisions were made, and they were important decisions.
    And probably one of those decisions
    was, we're spending this money.
    Because if we save the money and not ourselves,
    it's not worth anything.
    These hard decisions.
    These were decisions that were being made constantly.
    And you as children don't know anything about it.
    Not too much.
    Not too much.
    Because it was our parents daily thing that I don't think
    they shared with us at the moment.
    Even after the war?
    After the war, yes, she told us that.
    But not during the war, total details to--
    So what did you do for a year and a half, or whatever it was?
    We helped mother in the fields and whatever the peasant woman
    needed to do around the house.
    My mother actually worked very hard during that time.
    She would tend to the fields, gather
    the crops, whatever was on this little farm.
    It's a small little farm, very primitive.
    We had no running water.
    Because I remember, I myself and my sister,
    we all had to go always to the well.
    To the well, to get the water from the--
    To get water.
    Now you're back in the 19th century.
    That's right.
    Yes, in that part, yes.
    This is not Lemberg anymore, this is a farm.
    And completely not to be exposed ever to a village, farm,
    and things like that.
    But we just have to go it like we were born to it.
    So we did it.
    What were your names at this time?
    His name was--
    I was Ursula Osofsky.
    And I was Kazimirz Osofsky.
    How do you spell Kazimirz?
    K-A-Z-I-M-I-R-Z.
    I thought I did that for you.
    I know Ursula is U-R-S-U-LA.
    Yes, yes.
    And that's how you called each other?
    Of course.
    Yes, there was nothing--
    It was drilled into us by mother completely
    to forget our previous names.
    Not if somebody will ask us, what's your name?
    Not to just--
    I mean, for something in your situation,
    you don't tell a child--
    For a year and a half, you did not call him Erwin?
    No, of course not.
    It was life and death.
    You knew it.
    We knew it, yes.
    And your mother taught it to you?
    That's right.
    And not only that.
    During that period of time, being
    that my father didn't have Aryan papers,
    my mother had to arrange a hiding place for him
    on our farm.
    Which she did.
    That the peasant lady didn't know?
    No, no.
    She did not know.
    Was there a peasant man or just the lady?
    No, it's just a woman.
    Only an elderly woman.
    Maybe she was in her 70s.
    She was alone?
    She was alone.
    That was probably our saving grace.
    She needed help.
    She didn't get out of the house too much.
    So when my mother--
    Your mother was terrific for her.
    She was terrific.
    But it went two ways.
    Yeah, sure.
    It was a good situation for us too.
    And during that period of time my mother--
    my father was in hiding on the barn,
    underneath the floorboards.
    He made a hole in the ground underneath the floorboards
    in the barn.
    And that's how he survived till the end of the war.
    And he stayed there?
    He stayed there day and night.
    Day and night.
    Could not get out.
    This was as difficult a time as you had.
    This is a very difficult, nerve-racking--
    Absolutely.
    Nerve racking.
    At night we used to go out to bring him food.
    Food had to be brought to him every day, which we did.
    Did nobody in the neighborhood suspect anything?
    No.
    These farms were quite a distance apart.
    There wasn't like a house next to another house.
    Listen.
    When the family left Lviv.
    Or Lemberg.
    I don't know, what am I supposed to say to you?
    You seem to say Lemberg more often.
    That's OK.
    Whichever way, it doesn't--
    Lviv.
    To me it's Lviv.
    Don't be friendly, just--
    Yeah, yeah.
    No.
    Yes, Lviv.
    I say Lviv.
    You say Lviv.
    So when the family left, did you know you were going to Lipnica?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    How was the decision made that this little 19th century
    village.
    Or it's not even a village, it's less than a village.
    That's the place to be.
    How was that decision made?
    The decision made through some other people that--
    They arranged with this--
    No, I cannot describe it exactly.
    I'm not so sure how to say it.
    Mother, it was mother's thing to do.
    I don't know how she came up on that.
    Basically the arrangements were made
    that this is where we would go.
    They were made, that we would go to this little farm,
    and work there.
    Oh, she was-- she knew exactly what farm--
    That it's a possibility.
    That there's a possibility.
    There's an old woman in the village
    that might need some help from people like ourselves.
    With a woman and this and--
    This is amazing, that this should be known.
    That there is a person over there who was isolated, really.
    That if you go there.
    That's it.
    You're just with that lady.
    We looked for an isolated place.
    Nobody, and nobody on Lipnica cared if you were there or not.
    Well, there were people that were gossiping.
    Yes, they were suspecting, possibly that we were maybe
    Jewish.
    It's possible that this woman maybe--
    So there were some other incidents
    where they tried to find out a little bit more about us.
    But again, mother somehow overcame all these things.
    There was an incident with me, myself for instance,
    where they tried to--
    on one of my daily, or maybe every-other-day trip
    to the well, which was maybe 2,000 yards away
    from the house, was down the hill.
    There was a well.
    I would go there for water with a bucket or maybe two buckets,
    and bring water back to the house.
    There were a few fellows there, men, young boys.
    And they were there.
    When I got there, they tried to interrogate me and ask
    me are you this, are you that, where are you from?
    And they wanted to examine me--
    Physically.
    --to see--
    Because you're Jewish.
    --if I'm Jewish.
    So of course, I knew what that meant too.
    And I dropped everything and ran back to the house.
    Ran away from them.
    I ran away from them.
    So of course, that caused other problems.
    That's suspicious.
    How did my mother handle that?
    She explained to them, he's a young boy.
    He's embarrassed.
    You embarrassed him.
    What are you bothering him for?
    And the embarrassment type thing explained it.
    Why he escaped to be physically examined.
    So that's how she explained.
    So they left you alone after that?
    They left me alone after that.
    But there was an incident that if I didn't run
    and they examined me--
    That's right, it would have been the end.
    Because in the early 1900s, '20s, '30s,
    I don't think circumcision was a generally accepted
    medical practice, which it is today.
    Today, I don't know, maybe in America 95% of the people born
    are circumcised I would say.
    But in those days, I think it's only Jews.
    so that's just one of those telltale signs.
    So it was a nerve racking existence.
    It's another-- any one of those incidents.
    It's just one.
    And there were many that Mother encountered herself.
    That they were saying to her that she's
    holding Jewish children.
    She herself being non-Jewish.
    But I'm sure he said, the children are Jewish.
    I guess we did not look so non-Jewish.
    Like she, the way she combed her hair or whatever else.
    So that was another rumor.
    This woman is probably hiding her Jewish children.
    And the two of us.
    What do you remember about the war ending?
    Liberation.
    The war ending-- the Russians came very sparsely,
    not in full force, to our village.
    Because we were so isolated.
    And they came, I remember, with white--
    Paratroopers.
    --with white uniforms against the snow, to be covered.
    When they came first to our house,
    so we right away told them that we are Jewish.
    Mother spoke to them--
    not in her presence, in the woman's presence--
    that we are Jewish and Russian.
    Why did she tell them so quickly?
    He said that we are not here in full force yet.
    And that there still are pockets of Germans here and there,
    and they are still fighting through.
    And we decided to stay, yet I think another day or two.
    And then came somehow that we had to leave earlier.
    Just when they first stepped in.
    Because there were neighbors, and they said,
    I think they on us, that they are Jewish.
    And we might do to kill them.
    And another neighbor came in and told it to my mother.
    I think they are suspicious of you and the children.
    They intend to--
    Harm you.
    --that you took advantage of them.
    That you are, after all, you probably are Jewish,
    or your children are Jewish.
    And they don't intend to let you go freely.
    That meant that they probably will come at night and kill us,
    before the full force of liberation comes through.
    So we decide to leave at night.
    Where did you go?
    We picked up our father from the barn.
    And walked toward--
    How was he?
    Physically?
    He was all swollen.
    Because he contracted kidney disease.
    He was laying-- if he had to be hidden during the day,
    under the boards, it was full of water.
    And he always laid in dampness and water--
    And he couldn't do a thing.
    Couldn't do-- no medication, nothing.
    He had the most difficult time--
    Yes, physically, yes.
    Yes.
    He was not suffering hunger but this--
    And then he was swollen.
    So they knew he's very sick.
    Which he was, with the kidney disease.
    He retained all the water.
    The kidneys probably were shut up.
    And we walked towards--
    the next town was Bochnia or Vilichka,
    I'm not sure which came first.
    And we caught a Russian truck.
    A Russian transport truck took us to Tarnov.
    It was already liberated.
    And then the first thing that we did
    was taking our father to the doctor.
    And he gave him medication.
    Of course, we knew that he had a kidney problem.
    And he was, I think he was put in the hospital.
    And he got better.
    And we immediately joined Jewish communities formed--
    So how long did it take for him to get better?
    This, I also don't remember.
    How long it took.
    But we were in Tarnov for a while.
    For a while.
    It was a Jewish community already formed.
    Like Jews were coming from concentration camp
    with their striped uniforms, and very haggard-looking.
    But everybody-- and my parents were talking
    about going back to Lviv.
    Not knowing that there's nobody left of this.
    And everybody was telling them, please, don't go back.
    There's nothing there.
    And whoever made it will come this way anyway.
    And just let's go the other direction.
    Toward big cities.
    And of course, eventually--
    So from Tarnov, we went to--
    I forgot where we went to.
    We went to Katowice.
    Katowice.
    That was a liberated part that I think
    belonged before to Germans.
    And we stayed there for a while.
    And then, again, Jewish community.
    And people were recruiting the Jews to live.
    Not that my mother ever wanted to stay.
    But she waited for her sister to come back from Russia.
    My mother, she decided she wants to stay
    till the sister with her daughter
    will come out out of Russia.
    And together we should leave.
    It took her a while to come out from Russia.
    And we waited, and then we left for Germany, to wait out--
    to Germany, to the American zone.
    With the sister.
    DP Camp.
    For the sister.
    Yes.
    Together we went, and she went to Israel.
    Later from the DP here.
    That's where she lived?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And we went to America.
    How were the decisions made as to who went where?
    There was the person.
    Israel was not, that was Palestine at that time.
    You couldn't get in easily.
    No.
    Right, so that was that.
    But she went because she was just with one daughter.
    My cousin had an uncle in Palestine.
    At that time that was Palestine.
    Her father's brother.
    And that was one decision, that's why they went there.
    And we didn't have anybody here or there.
    And it was not easy to get to Palestine, things like that.
    So my parents--
    The immigration to the United States was more open.
    I mean, it wasn't open but there was--
    We had to wait the quota to sponsor--
    It still took a few years.
    It took you a few years.
    But at least you knew that a certain amount
    of people every year would--
    1950, people were getting over.
    Some of them said this--
    President Truman signed some kind of an order and the gates
    opened.
    In 1950.
    Your arrival was sponsored by the Birmingham
    Jewish community.
    And you went to Birmingham, Alabama.
    Yes.
    How long did you remain in Birmingham?
    My husband and I and Ziggy.
    At the time I already was married and had a child.
    I think a year.
    I think a year, approximately.
    So it didn't take long to get out of Birmingham.
    No, we didn't intend to stay there.
    I lived there for two years, about two years.
    That was the extent of your high school education?
    In Birmingham, there.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    And when you came to New York you--
    no, you said you--
    When I came to New York I went to, for a little short time,
    Forest Hills High School.
    Then in Woodside.
    Woodside High.
    Then he went to college.
    How much college did you do?
    Two years.
    Which one?
    CCNY.
    OK.
    And then you decided--
    And then I had to roll up my sleeves and go to work.
    And actually, no, that's really true.
    During that period of time, my father got sicker and sicker.
    Yes, the kidney didn't--
    Eventually he really couldn't work.
    Was he able to do anything in America?
    He started a little bit on the jobs in New Jersey.
    Yes, he did some--
    He worked, he worked.
    Different things.
    But he couldn't work steadily because of his health.
    And so--
    At that time they didn't have the--
    Again, we have to do the right amount.
    So life was difficult for him.
    For him it was, because there was no dialysis at the time.
    There was no kidney transplants, nothing.
    So just diet, some water pills, which was very--
    and the kidneys both failed, and eventually--
    When did he pass away?
    '59.
    He was 57 years old, or?
    He was 59.
    I think so.
    Yeah.
    He was born 1900.
    But he was paying the price every day.
    Yes, yes.
    Because that failure of the kidneys came from the place
    that he was hiding.
    There in hiding.
    Yes, yes, yes.
    And you came to Elizabeth.
    How did you get in here?
    Business brought you here.
    Business.
    Yes, opportunities.
    Business.
    The Jewish community in Elizabeth.
    First Joe and my sister came to Elizabeth,
    and I followed them within--
    Joe's parents were here, and Joe's brother.
    Actually, his parents and his brother I think
    were here first.
    Right.
    Yes, yes, yes.
    Then we followed.
    And then the brother followed.
    The family's coming to Elizabeth was hopefully
    good for the family, certainly good for Elizabeth.
    So that's the story.
    It's a remarkable story of a remarkable woman.
    Yes.
    Yes, she certainly was.
    And she remained a remarkable woman all these years.
    All these years, to the end.
    Really to the end.
    The way she looked at her life, at her old age, things that she
    could do or couldn't do.
    She came and--
    And she was alive and alert--
    To the last minute.
    She did a remarkable--
    she lived a remarkable life.
    And did a beautiful job of saving the family.
    And the sad part is that there were so few people who
    were able to do it.
    That's true.
    It's encouraging to see that you benefited from it.
    And you realize as you go through the story, how rare it
    was.
    Because this is the only one you hear about.
    In all of Lviv.
    From the whole history of Lviv that my parents were telling us
    that after the war, they were talking to other people
    or documentaries.
    We are the only intact family that
    lived through the ghetto and the entire, without--
    because there were many that went to Russia that made it.
    Or people that individually made it.
    But the intact family, it was, if not one, this Yes.
    Because through the ghetto through the--
    because usually these members were lost in the ghetto
    during other acts.
    So it's a remarkable story, which
    is a tribute to a remarkable woman.
    Yes, we're very grateful that she saw a lot of bad times,
    but she also saw and had a lot of naches in her years
    after the war.
    And she saw naches from my sister's family, myself.
    She saw happy occasions.
    13 great-grandchildren she has.
    She had, she still has.
    And weddings, bar mitzvahs.
    So she shepped a lot of naches, and we're grateful for that.
    That she was strong, she was traveling to Israel often.
    She said that my children will be here.
    Well, I could live here.
    But with all the children she--
    It is very understandable.
    I have some questions over here.
    Let's see how we handle them.
    When did you start talking--
    you know, I really don't know how to--
    I look at you people and I'm thinking,
    hey, this really is going to your mother, you know.
    You're a combination of survivors
    and second generation, rolled into one.
    That's true.
    All right.
    And that's because of how your mother protected you.
    Exactly, exactly.
    And you said that on the Stern College tape.
    I understood what you were saying.
    When did you start talking about the Holocaust, and with whom?
    I think your family was always talking about it.
    I think we were.
    I think yes.
    But maybe--
    Because you know there are a number
    of survivors who didn't talk to their children about it.
    No, no.
    I think that-- it's not a daily thing, of course.
    Because it's just--
    In beginning, possible that we were
    getting ready to establish our lives in America.
    And we are very much concentrated on that--
    establishing our family life, religious life.
    And just busy.
    Busy with establishing our life in America.
    So maybe it was not such a--
    of course, my children was not big enough
    to be talking to that.
    And with us, mother, I don't know how much she--
    she was always reminiscing about her siblings, her mother.
    But your children had you to talk to, and your brother.
    So was there this communication going
    on about the Holocaust with your children?
    When they were young--
    I think when they were small, maybe not.
    When they were small.
    It's such a serious topic and subject that it's--
    but somewhere later on, I remember that my kids,
    and I think your kids, they know all about it from us and from--
    it wasn't something that we were--
    Not maybe with such details, like my mother
    put it in the paper.
    This came later.
    This could be one of the first times
    that incidents and details are related in this type of a form.
    Good morning.
    Good morning.
    It's March 8th, 2000 now, just about a month since we
    met last time, and we received the main body
    of the story of what happened to the Fisch family
    during the Holocaust.
    Again, I want to greet Mrs. Elizabeth Susie Wilf and Erwin
    Fisch, the two representatives of the Fisch family.
    And we felt when we wrote it up with all your mother's seven
    incidents that we have two more questions that we want to make
    sure get proper treatment.
    The first question was the role of your father
    during the Holocaust.
    The story, as it's told--
    and for good reason, which we'll go into--
    is that your mother was so very active in saving the family.
    And she was the one who went out to get the food and so forth.
    But I was sure that your father had a lot
    to do with the experience of the family.
    And how would you describe his role during this very terrible
    experience?
    Well, he was supportive, encouraging,
    and gave her the will to fight.
    And you had to get it from someplace.
    Even she had it in her own, a lot of fight and will
    to do what she did, but my father
    was really very supportive and very--
    gave her a lot of courage and guidance.
    She had to talk things out with him, certain things
    that she did or had to do, or this,
    and all this was easier to talk it out with my father
    that he said, is it OK?
    It's not so OK, and the guidance that he gave her
    helped her tremendously, and that was the support.
    Well, some of the people that helped us eventually
    get out of the ghetto and survive.
    And of course, he knew them.
    As far as we know, he and my mother
    made some of the arrangements with them to set it
    all in place, the one instance we told you the last time
    how this Jewish friend of ours that he
    knew and the family knew helped us get out through the gates.
    You know, that that's the type of things
    that had to be prearranged and set up so that it would work,
    otherwise, you know we wouldn't be successful.
    And of course he worked, he worked outside,
    and that obviously contributed because, as a working person,
    they needed some people to work and some of the things
    that they were doing.
    So we were able to survive longer maybe because he was
    working and they needed him.
    So it was sort of a pass, a daily pass on life,
    and obviously he was the one who was
    working until he got hurt the one time where
    he couldn't work anymore.
    But a critical factor in the story
    is the fact that men could not be as involved
    in terms of public appearance--
    Right.
    --of going out, and your mother would go out and buy food.
    Right.
    And this was a major undertaking with her Ukrainian language
    and--
    Yes.
    --and so on.
    She was able to maneuver, but she was--
    what you said last time it seemed to me
    was that she could do it, and she looked Ukrainian.
    Is that it?
    Well, she--
    She didn't-- it's hard to say.
    Would you say her appearance was one that
    wasn't as obviously Jewish--
    Right.
    That's true.
    --as some people.
    Right.
    That's true.
    But a man couldn't do this.
    Yes, for a man it was easily physically identifiable
    of being a Jew.
    Even in that small town, Legnica.
    Every place.
    --they wanted to check you out over there.
    Right.
    Absolutely.
    So as soon as the strangers came--
    Right.
    We had to be a little bit not so visible with strangers
    because we never knew what their approach will be
    toward us, and questions, or--
    We had to be vigilant at all times.
    At all times.
    It instilled in us--
    my father and my mother, and we were small children.
    It was just like--
    I don't even know how we were so lucky
    that we could understand it, but it was like second nature.
    A stranger talked to you.
    Don't say anything, don't reveal anything,
    because we were told that it's a matter of surviving, and--
    You mean you could talk but don't say anything?
    [LAUGHS] That's [INAUDIBLE].
    Well, even talk less because, you know--
    And if possible, to be--
    if somebody strange came to the house
    that we were, if we knew that somebody is coming,
    we made ourselves unavailable.
    We went into the woods to pick mushrooms or things
    like that, or just an excuse to be out of--
    Well, there was always a situation
    where we knew that, whether it's the Poles
    or whoever would come, they had no good intentions.
    They were looking are they Jewish or are they not.
    That was just a normal way of life during the war
    and so forth, especially when we were
    on the farm among Gentiles.
    I mean, that's just the way it was.
    So we were told--
    I mean, obviously the fear was always
    on our parents part-- that maybe would come out with something,
    that it was not proper.
    Mhm.
    So obviously we were always on the side,
    and so that's how we spent the war times, just kind of laying
    low, and fortunately the place where we were at,
    the farm where we were at, was so isolated that not
    too often people came, strangers came visiting,
    so that was very fortunate.
    Let's talk about daily life for you during the time
    that you were in Legnica About how many months
    would you-- first of all, you had no idea of dates
    at the time.
    No.
    Not me.
    My mother, maybe yes.
    As children or in general.
    Even adults probably didn't have an idea of dates.
    My mother had the dates.
    My mother and father had completely dates,
    and every day was like a year.
    But for us children to know the dates--
    What do you mean?
    What did they have?
    The date-- a day was like a year because it was a daily
    struggle, a daily concern how to do that day, how to--
    it was not like sitting on your laurels
    and just being for sure that you're safe.
    But your mother could have told us the day you came to Legnica
    and the day you got out?
    Possible.
    More my father maybe more than mother in her later years.
    But my father I'm sure knew the day and the dates much--
    she always said my father had a good memory for dates.
    Oh.
    She didn't, but--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --but you didn't have the dates.
    We didn't have the dates.
    All you know is that was '43 until--
    Yes, more or less.
    Right.
    --until sometime in '45.
    Right.
    Right.
    May, or was it--
    Liberated by the Russians.
    I think May of '45.
    So let's--
    No, no.
    No?
    January or February.
    January.
    January.
    It was winter snow.
    We were walking through the woods,
    going out from the village.
    And what time of year approximately in '43
    do you think you went there?
    It could have been summer.
    I cannot recall.
    It was the summertime.
    Could have been summertime.
    So July '43 till January of '45.
    You're talking about a year and a half, 18 or 19 months.
    Yes.
    It might have been.
    What did you do every day for 18, 19 months?
    There must've been some kind of routine that you came up with.
    We tended to the farm animals, and we gathered firewood
    in the forest for hours.
    And just--
    You had responsibility?
    We had responsibilities.
    We had to take care--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --whatever mother told us to do on the day--
    That was your responsibility.
    --or that morning, that was it.
    Yes.
    Or the farm woman that needed to be done something,
    so she told us.
    I remember that my kind of small chore
    was getting water almost every day.
    I was getting water--
    Water out of the well.
    --from the well, which was maybe 1,000 yards
    from the house down the hill.
    And I used to get two buckets--
    Two buckets on the shoulders was--
    --on the shoulders.
    Right.
    Such a stick across the shoulder.
    Strap thing to carry those.
    It was just easier to carry, and I would bring water in.
    It was kind of a thing that I used to do.
    Was it tiring at times for a youngster to do it?
    I don't think so.
    Probably-- no, I don't think so.
    It was small buckets.
    We carried as much as we could--
    Right.
    --and if not, we went twice.
    Sometimes during those trips that I
    would have to go down to the well, which
    was right near the barn where my father was hidden,
    my mother would put in some food or something in the bucket.
    And I would go down there and drop it off for him,
    and that's how we got food to him sometimes.
    Other times, she would take it down there.
    Right.
    Sounds like you had a job like Rivka and Rachel
    had in the Torah.
    [LAUGHS]
    They had to go bring the water from the well, too.
    Water.
    [LAUGHS] Yes, yes.
    I remember doing that.
    I also--
    What I'm saying is that Legnica in the 1940s
    sounds like the same--
    Biblical.
    --but biblical times.
    Times, right.
    Absolutely.
    In terms of the way people had to get the necessities of life.
    Right.
    Absolutely.
    It was very primitive.
    I think we mentioned it in the--
    Previous state.
    --first interview.
    Right.
    I mean, obviously no phones.
    I mean, just it was primitive, everything was.
    But in the '40s, 1940s, Poland and most of it
    other than big cities probably was that way, farms
    and so forth.
    It's not the way it is here.
    So how did you feel when you were there.
    In other words, what was life like for you?
    You woke up in the morning.
    You were there for a year and a half.
    Did you have any thoughts go through your mind
    as to why you're there, or you just
    figured you had to be there?
    We just had to get through the day,
    and I don't think we worked for the next day,
    but that they had to be taken care of, whatever that they
    had to be done.
    So, for the children, once we were with the parents,
    the parents did all the worries, the arranging.
    So it's not so much--
    for us children, we just obeyed what we're supposed to do,
    and that was it.
    When you were in Lvov, you had been in school already?
    Yes, yes.
    And you were also in school?
    No.
    I don't think so.
    No, no.
    No.
    No, Erwin was not.
    I just started, and he just--
    Prior to before the war, I don't--
    So you don't remember being in school?
    No, no.
    I don't think so.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --started.
    I just started.
    You were in school in Lvov.
    Yes.
    And now you're not going to school?
    No, not at all.
    Did you ever think about the fact that you--
    Personally?
    Mother, yes, but I personally didn't think.
    Didn't think of school at all because we were not
    permitted to go to school.
    I mean, it would be dangerous for us to go to school,
    to be exposed to people and--
    no, no.
    During that period, we knew it was war,
    and we were always told that--
    But if I'm not mistaken--
    --we needed to survive, and someday the war will end,
    and we'll go back to Lvov, and I remember that.
    That's what we were thinking we'll do.
    We'll go back to Lvov as soon as the war is over,
    and we knew that.
    So it was a matter of every day doing whatever
    had to be done to survive.
    To survive.
    Did you have any understanding of what was happening
    to Jewish people outside of--
    Yes.
    Yes.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Absolutely.
    Sure, sure.
    You were aware of--
    Frightening thing.
    Yes, yes.
    From the experiences that we had throughout the ghetto
    times, where we saw people being taken away.
    People had to hide also.
    And we were hiding.
    And we were told if we don't hide,
    then they'll take us away.
    And it's
    Was very frightening.
    So we of course, we knew.
    Yes.
    That's why probably how during the period of the ghetto,
    we were incubated-- sort of-- that we had
    to be careful on the outside.
    And that's how the fear of doing everything correctly--
    About our Jewish identity-- about our Jewish identity.
    --in order to survive, probably that's
    how it was instilled during that period.
    Yeah.
    Completely hide our Jewish identity
    and to present ourselves that way.
    And you felt that this period was coming to an end?
    Did you have a feeling of optimism.
    That this is temporary, or--
    do you have any recollection of how you
    understood this period of time?
    Only from what the parents were talking between each other--
    our mother.
    When we heard the artillery shots,
    there was-- and Lvov was taken, liberated, by the Russians.
    And we were, I think, a year later liberated.
    So they were saying, they're getting closer.
    Liberation comes closer.
    But of course, it took a year for us
    to be liberated after Lvov--
    Lemberg.
    And so this I remember hearing our parents
    talking whenever they--
    About the war--
    The war.
    Some rumors that the neighbors would say.
    Oh, the Russians did this or that somewhere-- so
    sort of rumors.
    That they come closer, yes.
    So there was-
    But generally speaking-- what I'm trying to get
    at-- generally speaking, people have to have a feeling of--
    At best, the ideal would be to have a feeling of optimism--
    that life can be good and there's a role for me in life,
    and so on.
    Here, to say that there was optimism
    would be very difficult because it was such a difficult time
    that you were going through.
    So what did you think your parents were feeling?
    Your father was hidden underground in water.
    And I guess you people, even though you were children,
    you used to take food out to him too.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes, sure.
    So you saw this the whole time.
    We had to feel.
    How did you go through life at that point?
    There was always hope.
    There was hope.
    There was hope.
    Hope, yes-- hope that we'll make it.
    Our parents would always say, hopefully soon.
    Soon, it's not long.
    It's sooner.
    And this why on a daily basis, every day
    was important to keep going.
    Yes.
    And nobody knew.
    Nobody knew it would last five years-- the war
    or whatever, obviously.
    But there was hope.
    There was hope.
    They would tell us that--
    That we'll make it--
    that we'll make it through.
    --hopefully soon.
    Nobody knew.
    Maybe they were saying it as encouragement.
    What was the attitude in the--
    what was the feeling in the family when
    the Russians came, and you were able to leave
    your prison, really--
    Relief.
    --the prison that you made for yourself?
    Freedom.
    Liberation.
    You felt it?
    Well, of course.
    Yes, of course-- of course.
    The first thing that I remember we
    did when we left Legnica is we started heading towards Lvov.
    So we got on some kind of a truck-- a Russian truck--
    Yes, a military truck.
    --a military truck.
    And we started heading towards Lvov.
    We thought we were going back home.
    We didn't know.
    You know how it is.
    There was no news.
    There was no information.
    There was just some rumors here and there.
    So that was our hope.
    And of course, halfway to Lem-- to Lvov, we stopped off in--
    Tarnów.
    Tarnów.
    Tarnów.
    And we found out that there's no point in going back to Lvov.
    Yes.
    There's nothing there for us.
    And we didn't go back to Lvov.
    From Tarnów, we worked our way back to Germany.
    And in Germany, we waited to come to the United States.
    At this point in your lives, you had been through three stages--
    the pre-war stage when you, at any rate,
    had begun school already,
    Right.
    Then you had the war-time stage in the ghetto.
    And then the period of time in Legnica.
    Right.
    How would you compare your lives in these three stages?
    [CHUCKLES] I can--
    want me to compare war years--
    Yeah, in other words--
    --to before the war?
    --before the war was normal.
    Normal, of course-- good life, enjoyable.
    And that was a good life-- enjoyable.
    Children, parents, good home, family.
    Extended family-- the cousins and cousins, and uncles,
    and aunts, and the grandmother.
    And vacations and just going to the park,
    going visiting family, holidays.
    Everything was--
    Life was good.
    Was very good, yes.
    Yes.
    You were a little boy.
    Do you remember this period?
    I remember.
    I remember that period.
    And it was obviously normal and good.
    OK.
    And then life changed.
    Changed, yes.
    And that was the period in Lvov.
    Period Lvov to the ghetto.
    We had to move from our apartment
    that we lived to the ghetto area.
    And from then on the ghetto gets--
    That was the worst part.
    Well, after [INAUDIBLE].
    I would say the ghetto was the worst part--
    The worst part, yes.
    --because there we knew.
    People were liquidated.
    It was instilled in us that--
    People were liquidated.
    --any day when they took you away, that was it.
    That's right.
    They took you to be shot or killed
    or never to be seen again.
    And how is it that you weren't taken away?
    Was that because your father was working?
    Working?
    No, we could hide--
    hide in the attic.
    You were hi--
    In the attic in the ghetto-- an attic--
    In other words, you had better hiding places,
    facilities than others?
    Some people did have hiding places.
    Some hiding places were discovered by a crying child,
    by different--
    It's a combination.
    We were lucky our hiding place in the attic
    was not discovered during the--
    It's a combination of hiding places and being very lucky.
    It's really being very lucky.
    And that's when your mother--
    or your parents-- decided--
    That's right.
    That's right.
    --they're not going to depend on this luck holding out.
    Because eventually each thing was discovered--
    That's what she said.
    --and they would have been.
    And then you came to Legnica, which
    was sort of a holding action.
    Exactly.
    Still dangerous because we could have been taken--
    he for his physical examination.
    And the papers were the false Aryan papers--
    were the best when they were in the pocket without
    had to be shown.
    Because once they start really getting
    into the background of those papers,
    they were not so secure.
    All right, so that's the part of the story
    that we did not spend any time on last time.
    And I'm happy that you came down today
    to complete the story of what happened with your family.
    Thank you very much.
    OK, thank you.
    Thank you.
    Yeah.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Erwin Fisch
    Elizabeth Wilf
    Interviewer
    Joseph J. Preil
    Date
    interview:  2000 February 03
    interview:  2000 March 08
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Copyright Holder
    The Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Wilf, Elizabeth.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University in 2000.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 07:57:26
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508122

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (3)
    Time Coded Notes (3)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    Also in Oral history interviews of the Holocaust Resource Center at Kean University collection

    Oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators.

    Date: 1982-1993

    Oral history interview with Martin Radley

    Oral history interview with Martin Radley

    Oral History

    Martin Radley, born in 1924 in Beuthen, Germany (Bytom, Poland), describes his childhood; encountering antisemitism in 1933; attending Hebrew day school; his experiences during Kristallnacht; traveling to England as part of the Kindertransport; his host family in London's West End; the death of his parents and extended family in Beuthen at the hands of the Germans; his induction into the British Army in 1943; changing his name on the advice of his superior officer; his service as a translator; his contact with survivors from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; hearing about the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen; assisting a rabbi chaplain at Jewish funerals; his experience watching survivors beat a Kapo; the assistance of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid and Sheltering Society to survivors of Bergen-Belsen; getting married to a Czech survivor and adopting her son; their two sons born after the war; immigrating to the United States in 1951; his wife's death in 1961; his conversations about the Holocaust with his children; and his feelings toward Jewish policemen and Kapos. Also contains photographs of Martin Radley in 1939 and 1993.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Spiegel

    Oral history interview with Miriam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Miriam Spiegel discusses her birth on May 8, 1931, and early life in Janów Lubelski, Poland; the bombing of her home; being identified by a Polish boy as a Jew; being attacked and having her teeth punched out by German soldiers; her father's moving of the family into the forest; the killing of two cousins during a trip into a village for food; her memories of the conditions in her family's forest hut; a fire that burned the hut and killed her grandmother and aunt; their leaving the forest near the village of Bulka Rateuska; their travel to a forest near Sułowiec, Poland; their meeting with partisans in the forest and the attacks on Jews by partisans in the forest; the death of her mother and the separation of the family as a result of a shooting attack on the forest and a wound she received as a result of this attack; an attack she suffered at the hands of young Polish men while she hid in a barn; her begging for food at the home of a Polish family and the kindness of the family in feeding her and hiding her in a barn for five years; the liberation of Sułowiec, Poland, by the Russians, ca. 1944; her baptism and agreement to be adopted by the family that hid her; her reunion with her family; her stay in Kránik, Poland; her move to a children's home near Lublin, Poland; her sister's move to Bergen-Belsen, Germany; her family's move to Bergen-Belsen to join her sister there; her move to a children's home in Hamburg, Germany; her immigration to Palestine in 1947; her marriage in Israel in 1950; the birth of her children; her immigration to the United States in 1959; and the effect of the Holocaust on her faith

    Oral history interview with Margit Feldman

    Oral history interview with Margit Feldman

    Oral History

    Margit Feldman describes her childhood in Tolcsva, Hungary, near the Czech border; recollections of antisemitism in Tolcsva; memories of the Jewish men of Tolcsva being taken for forced labor in 1943; her internment in a ghetto; her memories of transports of many Jews from the ghetto to a forced labor camp; her transport to Auschwitz; her memories of Joseph Mengele; the gassing of her relatives shortly after arriving in Auschwitz; her work in a quarry in Kraków, Poland; her memories of girls being conscripted for prostitution by the Germans in Auschwitz; her time in Grünberg where she met Gerda Weissmann Klein; her participation in a death march leaving Grünberg; her time in Bergen-Belsen; her liberation by British troops at Bergen-Belsen; her move to Sweden after World War II; and her life after immigration to the United States in 1947. Also contains a photograph of Margit Feldman at age 8 and two photographs of her in 1992.

    Oral history interview with Pepa Gold

    Oral history interview with Pepa Gold

    Oral History

    Pepa Gold, born in 1924, discusses her childhood in Buczacz, Poland (Buchach, Ukraine); recollections of occupation by the Russians in 1939 and occupation by the Germans from June 1941 until March 1944; memories of life under Russian occupation; her memories of living under German occupation; her memory of a two-day "Aktion" in February 1942 after which 1,000 people were taken away and typhus was introduced; her time hiding in several Polish homes; her escape from detection by Germans by hiding in abandoned Jewish home in February 1944; her liberation by Russian soldiers on March 24,1944; her return to Buczacz after liberation; her move to the Russian side of the front; her move to the Russian-Polish border where she lived for three months; her return to Buczacz in July 1944; her move to Kraków, Poland, in July 1945; her time in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), with two of her brothers from July 1945 until May 1946; her recollection of the confiscation of her father's candy factory by Germans to sew soldiers' caps; her time in Berlin, Germany, from 1946 to 1948; her memories of support by United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; her life in Munich, Germany from 1948 to 1951; her move to the United States in 1951; and her life in the US after 1951.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gottdiener

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gottdiener

    Oral History

    Ernest Gottdiener, born October 13, 1920 in Hajdúnánás, Hungary, discusses his life in Debretzen (Debrecen), Hungary and Hajdúnánás; his recollections of his father's death from cancer in 1935; his memories of secular and religious elementary education; his Yeshiva education; his business education and business career; his memory of the outbreak of war in 1939; his brother's army service and death from typhus; his brother's experience as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1944 until 1947; his relatives hiding in a monastery as well as Hungarian homes with Wallenberg and their Gentile papers; hiding in Wallenberg's "Swedish House;" his brother's move to Palestine in 1939; his many relatives who were murdered in Auschwitz; forced labor units; the change in Jewish lives after March 19, 1944 when Germany became dominant in Hungarian affairs; his several escapes from Nazi capture; his "Swedish papers;" his memory of ghettos in Budapest after liberation; his life in Debretzen and Hajdúnánás from March 1945 to 1948; his marriage to Judith Gottdiener in Budapest, Hungary, in 1948; his memory of communist domination of Hungary; his move to Vienna, Austria, in 1948; his immigration to the United States in 1959; and his life in Elizabeth, NJ, after 1961.

    Oral history interview with Judit Gottdiener

    Oral history interview with Judit Gottdiener

    Oral History

    Judit Gottdiener, born in 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her early childhood in Budapest; her recollections of enjoyable family life and religious experience; the Royal Air Force bombing Budapest; her father's tobacco accessories store; her memories of wearing a yellow star; her family's attempt to escape to Palestine; her transport to Bergen-Belsen; participating in the daily counting; her memories of Yom Kippur in Bergen-Belsen; her transport to a Red Cross Camp in Switzerland; her memories of her grandparents' deaths in the Budapest ghetto; her marriage to Ernest in 1948; her move back to Vienna, Austria, from the United States in 1958; and her permanent move to the United States in 1961.

    Oral history interview with Arie Halpern

    Oral history interview with Arie Halpern

    Oral History

    Arie Halpern, born in 1918, discusses his life in Chorostkow (Khorostkiv, Ukraine); recollections of Polish occupation of the area in 1920; Hasidism and Zionism in Chorostkow; his public school education and "cheder" education; his career as a bookkeeper; his eldest’s brother's move to Lemberg, Galicia (Lʹviv, Ukraine) in 1934 to work in a Zionist organization; his conscription by the Soviets in 1941 into an army construction battalion; his memory of the Russian-German war beginning on June 22, 1941; the German occupation of Chorostkow in October 1941; the Judenrat in Chorostkow and in Terebovlya (Terebovlia), Ukraine; hiding in Poland and in Ukraine; performing manual labor for the German labor force; his memory of "Chol Hamoed Succot" in October 1942; his proposition to the parents of Mary Schwartz, a local survivor, to build a secret tunnel together; his memory of an "Aktion Night" in Chorostkow; his escape to Terebovlya in November 1942; his memories of the Terebovlya ghetto; the murder of his family by Germans in April 1943; his time spent in a labor camp outside of Terebovlya in April 1943; his time in hiding with his brother Sam in the barn of a Polish-Ukrainian farmer from July 8, 1943 until March 22, 1944; and returning to Chorostkow after he came out of hiding.

    Oral history interview with Gladys Halpern

    Oral history interview with Gladys Halpern

    Oral History

    Gladys Halpern discusses her childhood and family in Zólkiew, Poland (ZHovkva, Ukraine) and those family members who survived; the Russian occupation between 1939 and 1941; her memories of pogroms, murders, and selections when the Germans arrived in June 1941; the Jews being moved to Belzec, Poland, and their murders; the murder of her father and the remaining Jewish population of Zólkiew in March 1943; the Jews buried in three mass graves outside of L'vov, Poland (now L'viv, Ukraine); hiding for 18 months in L'vov; meeting her future husband in Poland; living in Bayreuth, Germany, between 1946 and 1949 with her husband; going to New York, NY in 1950; and establishing contact with the daughter of the Halitskys, a Polish couple who hid her family during World War II.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Halpern

    Oral history interview with Samuel Halpern

    Oral History

    Samuel Halpern discusses his childhood in Chorostkow (Khorostkiv, Ukraine), near the Polish border; his memories of a diverse population of Jews, Polish, and Ukrainians; his interactions with Gentiles at school and in business; his memory of the Nazis killing one of his brothers; his survival with his brother, Arie; his memories of a second brother's death before World War II; the liquidation of the family's business; his father working for the occupying Russian government; his memories of Jewish reactions to Adolf Hitler's propaganda; the ghetto in Kam'iane Pole (Kamenka), Ukraine; the liquidation of the Khorostkiv ghetto in October 1942; his father's deportation to the Belzec concentration camp; the transport of his mother and brother to the ghetto in Terebovlia, Ukraine; his mother's death in the Terebovlya aktion of March 1943; joining with his brother, Arie, in Kam'iane Pole; his escape from Kam'iane Pole; his time in Ivanovka, Ukraine; his time in hiding on the farm of a Polish family; his memories of Russian liberation in March 1944; his move to the United States in 1949; his feelings of obligation to tell the story of the Holocaust for those who died; and his feelings of bitterness at the failure of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin to address the plight of the Jews during World War II.

    Oral history interview with Luna Kaufman

    Oral history interview with Luna Kaufman

    Oral History

    Luna Kaufman, born in Kraków, Poland in 1926, discusses her childhood and pre-war life in Kraków; her pre-war Catholic school education; the German invasion of Poland in September 1939; the Germans' use of psychological tactics and violence to undermine Kraków’s Jewish community; the gradual degradation of the Jewish community in Kraków; the German brutality toward Orthodox Jews; her move to Bramovitz for one year; her life with her family in the Kraków ghetto from approximately 1941 until 1943; the Jewish efforts to resume cultural life and maintain intellectual stimulation in the cramped and uncomfortable conditions of the ghetto; her work in a nearby brush factory; her reflections on the Judenrat in the Kraków ghetto; the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto; her march to and life in Płaszów concentration camp; acts of resistance in the camp; efforts to maintain culture amidst the camp's unsanitary and inhumane conditions; her reactions to the Red Cross's visit to and inspection of Płaszów; her escape from Płaszów at the end of World War II; her shipment to Leipzig, Germany, to the Hasag ammunition factory in the spring of 1945; her sister's time in Auschwitz concentration camp; her sister's transport to Stutthof concentration camp and subsequent drowning on a ship in the last days of war; her father's extermination in Auschwitz in May 1944; her evacuation from Hasag and the death march that followed; her memories of Russian soldiers raping and killing women; her return to Kraków with her mother and a friend; her life in Kraków from 1945 to 1950; her move to Israel in 1950; her life in the United States after 1952; and her current activism through lecturing about the Holocaust to school children and her efforts in a national project to pay tribute to liberators. The recording also includes one photograph of Luna Kaufman in 1938 and one of her in 1993.

    Oral history interview with David Kempinski

    Oral history interview with David Kempinski

    Oral History

    David Kempinski, born on July 21, 1921 in Praszka, Poland, describes his youth in Wieluń, Poland from 1927 until 1939; hiding during the bombing of Wieluń on September 1, 1939; a roundup of Jews in Wieluń on August 9, 1941; his transport to Poznań, Poland; his time in a "Reichsautobahn" labor camp; his transport to Regensburg concentration camp; his life in Kreising (Krzesinki), Poland; his time working in a lumber mill in Rzepin, Poland; his transport to Britz; his transport to in Birkenau concentration camp; his transport to and work at I.G. Farben from September 1944 until January 1945; selections in the camp; his time spent in Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, and Flossenbürg concentration camps in Germany; liberation from Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945; his time in Feldafing and Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camps in Germany from 1945 until 1949; his move to Switzerland; his life in Israel from 1949 until 1957; and his life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Eva Kempinski

    Oral history interview with Eva Kempinski

    Oral History

    Eva Kempinski, born in 1925, discusses her childhood in a Polish shtetl; her family; the bombing at the beginning of World War II in her town on September 1, 1939; her public school education; her move to Warsaw, Poland from Łódź, Poland in December 1939; life in Warsaw; her father's transport to Treblinka concentration camp; her move to Majdanek concentration camp with her mother in 1943; her mother's extermination in Majdanek; being transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp and her life in the camp; working in a munitions factory in Czechoslovakia from December 1944 until her liberation by Russians on May 8, 1945; her emotions at the time of liberation; her feelings about the United States and the response of American Jews to the war; her return to her shtetl; her move to Slovakia and Austria; her move to Palestine as part of the first group of Agudat Israel; her life in Palestine; her move to Switzerland in 1958; her move to the United States in 1964; and her ideas about her children, her grandchildren, and the concept of continuity.

    Oral history interview with Clara Kramer

    Oral history interview with Clara Kramer

    Oral History

    Clara Kramer (born in 1927) discusses her childhood in Zholkva, Poland (now ZHovkva, Ukraine); her memories of a "vibrant" Jewish life in Zholkva before German invasion in 1939; antisemitism in the 1930s; her recollections of the slow changes to Jewish status in the town after 1939; the April 1942 Aktion in Zholkva; the curfew in Zholkva and transports to Belzec concentration camp, starting in the summer of 1942; her time helping people who jumped off transport trains; her time hiding for 22 months after the November 22, 1942 Aktion with her family and others in the home of a Polish family, the Becks; her memories of Mr. and Mrs. Beck and their daughter; her trip to the Zholkva ghetto with her mother and Mr. Beck and his daughter; the Judenrat (Jewish council) in the Zholkva ghetto; the March 1943 Aktion; a fire in the Becks' neighborhood on Palm Sunday, April 20, 1943; her sister's death on April 20, 1943; liberation by the Russians; her time in a displaced persons camp in Germany; descriptions of her diary that she wrote in throughout the Holocaust; and her post-Holocaust American-Jewish activism. Also contains a photograph of Clara Kramer at age 15.

    Oral history interview with Rose Kramer

    Oral history interview with Rose Kramer

    Oral History

    Rose Kramer, born on January 21, 1921 in Beuthen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bedzin, Poland; her father's death before she was born; the death of her mother when she was eight years old; her recollections of the importance of economic survival; her family not paying attention to the Nazis; her three years in a ghetto; her transport to Auschwitz concentration camp; her transport to Ravensbrück concentration camp and then to Neustadt-Glewe; her memories of liberation from Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp; her time in Feldafing displaced persons camp; her memories of learning of one brother's survival; her travel to the United States in 1949; and her divorce from her first husband after ten years and her marriage to Mr. Kramer.

    Oral history interview with Rae Kushner

    Oral history interview with Rae Kushner

    Oral History

    Rae Kushner, born on February 27, 1923 in Novogrudok, Poland (Navahrudak, Belarus), discusses her childhood community of Novogrudok; her family's middle class life style; her father's fur business; the Russian occupation in 1939; the Russian deportation of wealthy families to Siberia; her memories of Jewish parents hiding children to protect them from deportation; her memories of the German occupation in 1941; her memories of the establishment of a ghetto in a suburb of Novogrudok by the Germans; her recollection of the number of Jews (350 of the original 30,000) who survived the ghetto; the murder of her mother; the digging of an escape tunnel in the ghetto by 70 young men and her brother, Chonon; her brother getting lost after leaving the tunnel; her family joining a partisan group led by Tuvia Bielski; living in a forest for nine months; fleeing to Czechoslovakia at the end of the war; her marriage in Hungary; her memories of secretly crossing the Italian border; life in a displaced persons camp in Italy; her family's journey to the United States in 1949; and her reflections on the role of the United States and other counties in preventing Jewish immigration from Europe before, during, and after the war.

    Oral history interview with Mayer Lief

    Oral history interview with Mayer Lief

    Oral History

    Mayer Lief, born August 18, 1908 in Lemberg, Galicia (Lʹviv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his schooling in Lemberg; experiencing antisemitism; his experiences in the Polish Army; his family's attempts to emigrate from Poland to the United States in 1939; the Russian occupation of Lemberg and Eastern Poland in 1939; the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and Mayer's capture that same day; digging mass graves for the Germans; the issuing of armbands and the establishment of the ghetto in Lemberg by the Germans; living in the ghetto beginning in November 1941; his move to and stay at German Army facilities until June 1943 due to his skills as a locksmith and safe cracker; his imprisonment in Janowska concentration camp in Ukraine in June 1943 and his eventual escape from the camp; his purchase of false papers in August 1943 in order to avoid capture by the Germans; his life in a suburb of Lemberg until the liberation by the Russians in 1944; traveling to Poland in 1946; his time in a displaced persons camp in Germany around 1946; immigrating to the United States in 1949; his time in Boston, MA and New York; arriving in Elizabeth, NJ and reuniting with his mother; his marriage in 1954; and his work since his arrival in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Isak Levenstein

    Oral history interview with Isak Levenstein

    Oral History

    Isak Levenstein discusses his childhood in a town near Lublin, Poland; moving to Kraków, Poland to live with his uncle after his parents' deaths; his education in Kraków; his work as the owner of a pots and pans factory; getting married on December 29, 1931; the size and professions of the Jewish population in Kraków; his membership in Mizrachi and Hechalutz Zionist organizations; antisemitism in Kraków in the mid-1930s; the banning of ritual slaughter in Kraków; Polish collaboration with the Nazis; the murdering of 1.2 million children by the Nazis during the Holocaust; the saving of Jews by very few Poles; the hiding of his wife's family in a bunker near Kraków and their eventual murder; his and his wife's move into the Kraków ghetto in 1941; his memories of the instructions given to the Judenrat by the Nazis; the deportation of Jews from Kraków to Treblinka and Auschwitz concentration camps; his memories of Jewish religious observances in the ghetto; his time in hiding in order to escape selections; a comprehensive round-up that took place in the ghetto in 1943 and the hiding of his family in a bunker during the roundup; his imprisonment in Płaszów concentration camp; his effort to save his family by bribing a German commander; the hiding of his children in the bunks of Płaszów concentration camp for 14 months; his inability to save his children; his qualifications as a metal worker; his time in Oskar Schindler's Gross-Rosen and Brünnlitz factories; his memories of Oskar Schindler; his wife's time in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps; his and his wife's search for relatives after the war; his thoughts on the differences between the Poles and the Czechs after the war; his and his wife's visit to Theresienstadt concentration camp; his separation from his wife between October of 1944 and August of 1945; their immigration to the United States after World War II; visiting Israel 25 times; and starting of a construction company with two other Schindler Jews in New Jersey.

    Oral history interview with Sally Levenstein

    Oral history interview with Sally Levenstein

    Oral History

    Sally Levenstein, born in 1909, discusses her childhood in Kazimierza Wielka, Poland; the Jewish community in Kazimierza Wielka; the death of her father in 1918; her education in Kazimierza Wielka and in Kraków, Poland; the relationship between the Gentiles and the Jews in Kazimierza Wielka; getting married to Isak Levenstein in 1931 and moving to Kraków; the size and level of religious observance of the Jewish community in Kraków; her social life in Kraków; her involvement with the Jewish National Fund; the birth of her two children in 1932 and in 1937; the start of World War II in 1939; the betrayal of her sister by a Polish neighbor; the arrival of Jews in Poland, deported from Germany; the establishment of the Kraków ghetto; her work in a factory making stockings for German soldiers; her memories of selections that took place in the ghetto; the Judenrat and the Jewish police in the ghetto; the establishment of Płaszów concentration camp in 1942; the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in 1943; hiding in a bunker with her children for 70 days near Kraków; her husband's imprisonment at Płaszów concentration camp; her memories of searching for food for her children while in hiding; her husband's smuggling of the children into Płaszów to be with him; her time hiding in the factory where she worked; her voluntary movement to Płaszów concentration camp to be with her family; the help that she received for her children from Mrs. Rosner; the roundup of all the children in Płaszów; her and her husband's inability to save their own children; the move of her husband and other family members by Oskar Schindler to his Brünnlitz factory in Czechoslovakia; her deportation to and time in Birkenau concentration camp; her memories of selections by Dr. Josef Mengele for the gas chamber; her aimless work while she was imprisoned in Birkenau; Dr. Menegle's experiments on inmates in Auschwitz; her transfer from Birkenau to Auschwitz; being in a death march to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the shooting of those prisoners who stopped marching; her experiences in Bergen-Belsen and her bout with typhus while in the camp; her time in a hospital during the time of liberation; the death of inmates from over-eating after liberation; an invitation to the survivors by the Queen of Portugal to come to Portugal after World War II; her search for her family after the war; her reunion with her husband in Kraków and their return to their apartment there; the help that they received from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; their time in Vienna, Austria and in Bindermichl displaced persons camp; the birth of her daughter in Bindermichl; her family's immigration to the United States in 1949; their life in New York and their move to New Jersey where her husband started a construction company; and her reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Manya Mandelbaum

    Oral history interview with Manya Mandelbaum

    Oral History

    Manya Mandelbaum, on August 16, 1919, discusses her childhood in Debica and Kraków, Poland; the Jews' relationship with the Poles inside and outside of Kraków; antisemitism in Poland in the late 1930s; the start of World War II in 1939 and her memories of radio announcements urging the Jews to flee from Poland; her attempted escape east to Russia in 1939; the German bombings that forced her to return to Kraków; the anti-Jewish laws and Nazi proclamations in Kraków; her time in the Kraków ghetto; her marriage to Simon Mandelbaum in 1940; the deportation of her parents in 1940; her movement to Płaszów concentration camp; the gassing of children in Auschwitz concentration camp; her work for the Madritsch firm making blouses (Julius Madritsch’s factory in Płaszów); the deportation of Jews to Mauthausen and Auschwitz concentration camps; the shooting of her brother in 1945; her deportation to Auschwitz and the conditions there; her transport to Hamburg, Germany, in January 1945 to work in a plastic factory and a beating she received from a German guard there; her observance of Passover in the camp; her escape from the factory with four other girls and the help that they received from some Poles; the arrival of British and American soldiers in April 1945; her time in Bitterfeld, Germany and in Prague, Czech Republic after the war; her travel to a hospital in Wels, Austria to find her husband; her reunion with her husband in Poland; the help that they received from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their life after the war in Brooklyn, NY and Elizabeth and Hillside, NJ; her ability to talk about the Holocaust with her children and grandchildren; and her love for the United States and Israel.

    Oral history interview with Allen Moskowitz

    Oral history interview with Allen Moskowitz

    Oral History

    Allen Moskowitz, born on March 27, 1923, discusses his childhood in Brusnica, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia); his family's move to Svidnicka, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1937; his time in Yeshiva in Šurany, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1939; his move back to Svidnicka at the outbreak of World War II in 1939; his parents' distrust of the Germans; antisemitism in Czechoslovakia; his family's obtaining false papers and hiding in Czechoslovakia; the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1944; his mother's hiding with a Gentile family who subsequently forced her to leave; his capture by the Gestapo in 1944; his imprisonment in Sered concentration camp as a Mischlinge; his interaction with Nazi Commandant Alois Brunner; his mother's work as a cook at an inn; his transport to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943 and his subsequent march to Heinkel concentration camp; his march to Siemensstadt concentration camp; his transfer to Ohrdruf concentration camp; a beating he received in Ohrdruf; his ongoing belief in God and religion; the morning roll calls in Ohrdruf; the Kapos in Ohrdruf; his march to Crawinkel concentration camp; the shooting of prisoners on their way from Crawinkel to Buchenwald concentration camp; falling ill with typhus; the liberation of Buchenwald by the Americans; his return to his home town and his reunion with surviving members of his family; his discovery of the fate of his father and 14 year old brother; his family's immigration to France and then to Palestine at the end of World War II; his later immigration to the United States via France after World War II; the role of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, his rabbi and “hero of the Holocaust”; the fate of his extended family members during the Holocaust; his life in Brooklyn, NY; his marriage and his life in Elizabeth, NJ; his decision not to talk about the Holocaust with his family; his feelings towards the Germans in World War II; and his thoughts on what can be learned from the Holocaust. Also contains a photograph of Allen in 1946 and a photograph of him in 1993.

    Oral history interview with Sonya Oshman

    Oral history interview with Sonya Oshman

    Oral History

    Sonya Oshman, born on December 17, 1922, discusses her childhood in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus); growing up in a wealthy family; her family's near deportation to Serbia by the Russians; her Polish neighbors being sometimes helpful and sometimes antisemitic; her sister's death in a German bombing raid; the elderly and the very young being murdered first; young people being used in forced labor; her memories of her father before his death in a concentration camp; her family's escape from a ghetto through a tunnel; the "Aktion" in the ghetto following their escape; her brother's immigration to Israel following liberation; her five years in a displaced persons camp in Italy; and her move to the United States with her husband in 1950. Also contains two photographs of Sonya (one is dated June 1988 and the other is undated).

    Oral history interview with Liesel Mayerfeld

    Oral history interview with Liesel Mayerfeld

    Oral History

    Liesel Mayerfeld, born in 1933, discusses her early childhood in Frankfurt, Germany; her memories of pre-war life in Frankfurt; her memories of Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's deportation to Buchenwald concentration camp during Kristallnacht; her move to the Netherlands with her sister following Kristallnacht; her life in the Netherlands with her uncle; her mother's work to get her father released from Buchenwald; her father's release from Buchenwald; her father's travel to England in July 1939; her mother's travel with an infant son to England in August 1939; moving to England in January of 1940; her family's move to Detroit, MI in 1940; her reaction to American culture and the English language; her brother's move to Israel; and her current life in Elizabeth, NJ.

    Oral history interview with Lisa Reibel

    Oral history interview with Lisa Reibel

    Oral History

    Lisa Reibel, born in 1930, discusses her childhood in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus); her memories of her siblings, specifically her sister, Rae Kushner; her memories of the Russian occupation in 1939; the German occupation of 1941; the thriving Jewish community in Novogrudok; her reaction to her sister's murder; the murder of 5,000 Jews in December 1941; her plan to dig an escape tunnel out of the Novogrudok ghetto; crawling through the tunnel at night; hiding in bushes, barns, and underground bunkers; Tuvia Bielski's partisans; liberation by the Russians in 1945; her time in a displaced persons camp in Italy; her move to the United States in 1949; and her life in Brooklyn, NY, and in Elizabeth, NJ. Also contains photographs of Lisa Reibel in 1994 and one of her at an earlier date.

    Oral history interview with Paul Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Paul Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Paul Schmelzer, born September 3, 1916 in Gwoździec, Poland (Hvizdets', Ukraine), discusses his life before World War II; antisemitism in Poland; his time serving in the Polish Army from 1937 until 1939; being a prisoner of war in 1939; living in the Gwoździec ghetto; his time in the ghetto in Kolomyya (Kolomyia), Ukraine; being in numerous slave labor camps in Ukraine; his numerous escapes from the Germans throughout the war years; meeting his wife, Susan, in Tolstoye (Tovste), Ukraine, in 1941; hiding in the homes of many different Polish farmers; moving to Chernivtsi, Ukraine before liberation; his time in various displaced persons camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany and Czechoslovakia; moving to the United States with his wife and son in 1949; living in Bronx, NY from 1949 until 1970; and moving to Elizabeth, NJ in 1970. Also contains a photograph of Paul Schmelzer in 1988.

    Oral history interview with Susan Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Susan Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Susan Schmelzer, born on February 23, 1923, discusses her childhood in Zaleshchiki, Poland (Ukraine); antisemitism in Zaleshchiki; the Russian occupation of Zaleshchiki from 1939 until 1942; the German occupation of Zaleshchiki in 1942; the mass murder of 2,000 Jews from Zaleshchiki in November 1942; her secular, public school education; moving from Zaleshchiki in order to continue her education; her move with her family to the ghetto in Tolstoye (Tovste), Ukraine; performing slave labor in the fields outside of the Tolstoye ghetto in March 1943; meeting her future husband, Paul Schmelzer; the murder of her parents and sister along with 3,000 other Jews from the Tolstoye ghetto; her time hiding with her future husband and a girlfriend until they were liberated by Russians in March; moving with her future husband to Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), Ukraine after liberation; getting married to Paul Schmelzer in Czernowitz; moving to Germany; immigrating with her husband and son to the United States in 1949; and her life in the United States after 1949. Also contains a photograph of Susan Schmelzer in 1987.