- [INAUDIBLE]
- To the editor, we have a boom on channel one
- and a lav on channel two.
- I'm sorry, go ahead.
- Channel two?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- That's OK, [? nothing. ?]
- So tell me--
- Yes, what would you like to know?
- Where were you when the war started?
- And how did you respond?
- Well, I was in Warsaw.
- Sorry, you have to tell me what you're talking about.
- So you have to tell me when the war started.
- Oh, when the war started September 1, 1939--
- Sorry, I have to take one more time.
- You have to try and look at me look.
- I'll look at you.
- As though it's a conversation.
- Yeah, OK.
- I'm not interested.
- I don't need to know the date.
- Ah, OK.
- When the war started, I was on a beach with a young man
- on the Vistula River.
- And we were lying in the sun and watching the sky.
- And we saw little puffs in the air, little white puffs.
- And we thought that these were maneuvers of Polish planes,
- you know.
- And we stayed there a whole day, till about 5 o'clock.
- And when I got home, my family was gathered around the radio,
- listening to the start of the war.
- And that's how I first found out about, of course,
- the Germans were far away.
- They had just crossed the border and so on.
- And we didn't know what was going on.
- And of course we were all frightened and upset,
- and we really didn't anticipate the future at all.
- And that was the first day, my first impression.
- And were there many air raids after that?
- And what did you do [BOTH TALKING]
- Well, the air raids came a little later.
- I don't remember exactly.
- Probably took maybe a couple of days or whatnot.
- Because at the beginning, the Polish army
- was resisting on horses with sabers,
- fighting the motorcycles and the airplanes with sabers.
- But that was really a very tragic phase in the resistance.
- But the air raid started pretty soon.
- And that was really frightening because we didn't expect it.
- I mean, it was just a total surprise.
- But the war started September 1st.
- And on the 3rd, two days later, we heard that England
- and France, who had a pact with Poland,
- joined the resistance to Hitler.
- So we all gathered on a big square in Warsaw.
- It was packed with thousands of people.
- And we were celebrating the entrance of France and England
- into the war.
- And we went home happy.
- I mean, we were going to defeat them in a week, you know?
- And so that was the very beginning.
- And then of course on the 7th of December, a week later,
- the Polish radio announced that all men of military age should
- leave Warsaw and go East, because the Germans are coming
- closer to the city.
- So that's when my father and one of my younger uncles
- decided to leave Warsaw.
- Is that the real thing, or is that--
- No, this is real.
- Ooh, I thought you were just--
- No, that's the --
- Right.
- [? Let ?] [? me just do ?] [? one thing ?] [? before we go on.
- ?] and [INAUDIBLE] [? the question ?] [INAUDIBLE].
- Rolling.
- OK.
- When the war started, did you think that Poland would defeat--
- Absolutely.
- There was absolutely no doubt.
- First of all, nobody knew how strong the Germans were.
- Absolutely nobody knew.
- And--
- And tell me what you're talking about.
- When you say absolutely we don't know what you're talking about.
- So just say--
- Poland was definitely going to defeat Germany.
- And especially, since England and France joined the team,
- we were absolutely sure that Hitler was going
- to be defeated in no time.
- But actually, what happened is within a year,
- he was all over Europe.
- Nobody expected it.
- So that was really a terrible blow to everybody.
- When did your father and his brothers decide to leave?
- Well, my father and my uncle left on September 7th,
- a week after the war started, because the Polish radio came
- out with an announcement that all men of military age should
- leave Warsaw and go east, because the German army is
- approaching.
- That they are marching in our direction on their motorcycles,
- which would be very fast.
- And at that point, my uncle called my father,
- and my father said, wait 10 minutes, and I'll be with you.
- And my father and my uncle went out on the road.
- On the way to Brest-Litovsk Brest, I forget.
- Anyway.
- And I was actually sleeping over in somebody else's house
- that night, because what happened
- is I went to check on a friend of mine,
- whether she survived the air raid.
- And curfew came on at 8:00.
- And I couldn't go home.
- So I stayed overnight.
- When I came back in the morning, my father was gone.
- So that's how it all started.
- And then the German army came closer,
- and they surrounded Warsaw.
- And that's when the real bombardment started.
- They were throwing incendiar--
- I can never say the word.
- Anyway, firebombs.
- And we were sitting in coal bins, mainly, downstairs.
- Because in Warsaw you heated with coal.
- And so we were sitting in coal bins,
- hoping for the best, that not our house will be hit.
- And when the air raid was over, I
- would run around to family and friends
- to see whether people survived.
- And one day, my little brother, who was only 12, was asthmatic.
- And we were sitting in the coal bin.
- And he forgot his nebulizer.
- And he ran upstairs for the nebulizer.
- And we were all sweating it out, whether he'll come down with it,
- it will not hit--
- a bomb will not hit the house.
- But he came down OK.
- So that was the situation.
- And that lasted for about two weeks,
- because the Germans really didn't enter Warsaw
- until late in September, when Warsaw really surrendered.
- For a while, we had the radio.
- But later on, the radio was silenced also.
- Of course, we heard plenty of Chopin's music at that time.
- But anyway, and then the radio was silenced.
- And we really had no contact.
- And eventually, the Germans entered Warsaw.
- Why didn't you and your mother, and why didn't your whole family
- leave?
- My whole family wouldn't-- first of all,
- they only mentioned on the radio that men should leave.
- There was no mentioning of families leaving, because well,
- even if the Germans would come in,
- what would they do to families?
- Who could imagine a future that came later?
- I mean, the wives and children with household goods,
- take them out on the road with a knapsack and little children?
- I don't even remember strollers in Warsaw.
- I don't know what how They had carriages, but I don't--
- I mean, you couldn't.
- You just wouldn't think of it.
- I mean, the men would have stayed, if not for the report
- on the Warsaw radio.
- The men wouldn't have left either.
- But the call was only for men.
- So the men left.
- And stayed out.
- And after the Germans entered Warsaw,
- some men came back, because they left without money,
- without anything.
- They had to eat.
- They had to have a cup of tea.
- People left sometimes with 50 dollars or 50 zlotys
- in their pocket.
- And so some men came, and some people
- were anxious about their families,
- to see if they survived, because they knew that we were
- surrounded for two weeks by Germans with attacks,
- with shrapnels from, you know.
- And air raids.
- So they were anxious to see if the families survived.
- So that's what happened.
- Now, my father, we later got regards
- that my father was in Brest, but I don't really
- remember it exactly.
- When and how did you decide to leave?
- I decided to leave on the spur of the moment.
- A young man who was giving me Latin lessons
- came with his older brother.
- He was 18.
- His brother was 21.
- Came to say goodbye to us.
- They said that they were leaving Warsaw.
- As young men, they were leaving Warsaw.
- It was somewhere around the middle of October.
- And I decided on the spur of the--
- they came to say goodbye to our family.
- And on the spur of the moment, I said to my mother,
- why don't I go with them.
- I'll contact our father.
- I'll tell them that we're alive, and what happened and so on.
- And so on the spur of the moment, the next morning
- at 5, 6 o'clock I left.
- It was not a premeditated decision.
- It was all last minute.
- And it was all based on the assumption that in two weeks
- I'll be back.
- Or that the war will end very soon.
- There was no premonition or nothing
- that we will never see each other again.
- And so I left with these two young men.
- Also, they were beginning, that was middle of October,
- two weeks after the Germans more or less entered Warsaw--
- first of all, they were picking up men on the street
- all the time.
- You could take a walk to the library or to a grocery store,
- and they would just pick you off and make you clean this town,
- because there were killed horses lying around,
- and all kinds of debris on the street from the bombardments.
- And so they would pick them up and keep them for a whole day,
- or who knows what.
- And actually, my husband and his father--
- my future husband and his father were picked up that way.
- They came back, they were all smeared and dirty.
- And it was awful.
- Anyway, and so there was no way families could leave.
- I mean, we didn't have station wagons.
- We didn't have a six pack of Coca-Cola with us.
- I mean, there was no way.
- They were home.
- They were safe.
- And we were going out on a dangerous road in the open,
- without any protection.
- And who would imagine that anybody would invade your home
- to come and take you away, or rob you, or kill you,
- or whatever.
- There was no way.
- So that's the reason that--
- I mean, the only thing, if my mother said, don't go,
- I would just stay.
- There was no way--
- first of all, these two guys were going on a farmer's wagon.
- And the farmer said that he would take us across the border
- where the Soviets were.
- I don't know if you remember that during the Hitler
- Mussolini-- the Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin pact,
- Poland was Split into two halves.
- What did you take with you when you left?
- I took with me my little knapsack
- that I used during my hikes when I was a teenager.
- I used to do a lot of hiking in the mountains
- in the South of Poland.
- There were the Tatra Mountains that are
- bordering on Czechoslovakia.
- And we used to spend a lot of winter a little skiing,
- and in the summer hiking.
- So I took my little knapsack, and I took a dress and a belt,
- and I took a little underwear and a sweater,
- and maybe a toothbrush, maybe a few pictures.
- I don't know.
- I don't really remember.
- Maybe I took a couple of pictures.
- But I don't remember exactly.
- And a few Zlotys.
- That's the Polish money my mother gave me.
- And that's how I left.
- With the two guys in the morning.
- How did your mother--
- what did your mother think of your idea?
- My mother was-- she, first of all,
- she was very willing to let me go.
- She didn't object at all.
- She thought it was a great idea.
- I will see my father.
- I will tell him that we're alive.
- I'll tell him that our factory was bombarded
- and is not existing anymore.
- And there was no way we thought that this was the end.
- No way.
- My little sister, she was six years old.
- I kissed her goodbye, and she was still sort of half asleep.
- There was just-- I don't even remember
- if I kissed my brothers.
- But that was really very--
- it was tense.
- And it was anxious.
- But it was not a permanent partition.
- Definitely not.
- Definitely not.
- Could you tell me about the journey
- and being stopped by the guards?
- Well, the Polish farmer that took us to his house,
- and we stayed overnight, he put us in his barn on straw.
- In the morning his wife gave us a borscht with potato breakfast.
- And he had two little lovely little boys.
- And he said, I will take you now to the border.
- Or whatever he said, he took us to the railroad station
- where the Germans were standing and sorting everybody out.
- So I was very surprised.
- It was not far from the border.
- But he did not take us to the border.
- He took us to the railroad station.
- And of course, that was a shocking experience,
- because the Germans checked everybody's clothes,
- took away everything from my knapsack,
- pointed a revolver at my chest, and said,
- give me everything you have.
- So I took out the little money that I had and gave it to them.
- And of course, they emptied my knapsack.
- I have a belt from the dress.
- They didn't see the belt. So I have the belt. I mean,
- it wouldn't fit me anymore.
- But anyway, and so I have a little memento from those days.
- And they let me go.
- But they kept the two men, my two friends.
- And I left.
- And I went on the road towards the Russian border.
- And I just sat down waiting.
- I hoped maybe they were detained a little later,
- and I thought they would come.
- And a few hours later, they did come,
- but they took a nice few hours.
- And I guess that they never told me actually
- why they were detained.
- But I am sure that the Germans were not very polite with them,
- not very easy.
- And then together we walked towards the border.
- And at the border, the last German that I saw, he saw my--
- I had ski gloves on with lined with white flannel,
- warm mittens.
- And he took a look at this and he said,
- oh wow, that looks pretty good.
- Then just peeled off my gloves and let me go.
- So of course, I was very happy to be let go.
- But you know, it's just awful.
- So that's the story of our crossing the border.
- And then we went to Brest, where my aunt lived.
- My mother was born in Brest.
- But she was married in Warsaw, so she lived in Warsaw.
- And my aunt was also hiding out at the time.
- She was not home when I arrived.
- She came a little later by accident.
- The house was full of people, some refugees I don't even
- know from where.
- And she was hiding out, because she was a shopkeeper.
- She had some business.
- I'm not quite sure.
- But she had a--
- and the Soviets considered her an enemy of the state,
- because she was a capitalist.
- So she was hiding out with her husband,
- with her little girl from the Soviets.
- And somewhere out in the country.
- But she happened to come to the house by accident.
- And I haven't seen her in about 10 years.
- So we had a very nice reunion.
- And she gave me some extra money,
- because I had to give everything to the Germans.
- And the boys went to another town.
- I split up with my two friends.
- That was very bad.
- They went to Lvov, to Lemberg, to another city.
- [? This ?] widen out.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yeah, what?
- What am I doing?
- No.
- If we can just keep it shorter, OK?
- Let me ask more questions.
- Oh, OK.
- You're anticipating questions.
- Oh, ahead of time.
- OK.
- Yesterday you told me what the German guard
- said when he took your stuff.
- Yeah, you want it.
- OK, I can put it in.
- OK.
- So let's start the story.
- And tell it like a story in the sense that you set it up
- and then you pay it off.
- Yes.
- It's almost like a joke.
- Yes.
- Where should I start?
- When you--
- Well, the farmer took us to the railroad station,
- and instead of taking us to the border, where
- I could have crossed the border, he took us
- to the railroad station.
- But there were Germans.
- And we were shocked.
- But obviously, I mean, they couldn't miss us.
- And so we entered the railroad station,
- and the Germans started looking, you know, sorting out people,
- and checking their stuff and their knapsacks,
- and so on and so forth.
- And of course, they asked me--
- they put a revolver to my chest and they
- said that they are going to take everything out of my knapsack
- and take my stuff.
- My dress and my underwear and my sweater.
- And I mean, just a few things.
- My knapsack is very small.
- And they said to me, well, for centuries
- the Jews were stealing from everybody,
- were robbing everybody.
- And now we are taking it back.
- And so what could I say, you see?
- And they said that in German, actually, which I understood.
- And so of course I was scared.
- So they took everything away from me,
- except for my belt from my dress.
- They missed it, luckily.
- And they let me go after they took everything.
- My two friends for some reason were left behind.
- I didn't see them.
- I didn't know what happened to them.
- But I went out on the road.
- And I sat down.
- Before the border crossing.
- And I waited.
- I thought maybe they would show up.
- It was still daylight.
- And a few hours later, they did show up.
- They came, and they didn't say very much
- as to what happened, why they were delayed, or what happened.
- But I'm sure that they got some rough treatment.
- But they just never mentioned it to me.
- And then we moved towards the border.
- And at the border, the last German
- that saw me saw that I had some mittens, some ski mittens.
- They were canvas lined with white flannel and so on.
- Nice warm mittens.
- And he just pulled them off.
- He said, oh, that'll be nice for us.
- And he took it off.
- But I was glad.
- He let me go.
- And I was on the Soviet side now of Poland.
- And I was no more Germans.
- I didn't see a German ever since.
- So that's OK?
- That--
- Yeah, that was very good.
- Well, whatever.
- You can combine it.
- Tell me how or why you decided to go to Vilna,
- and was your father there?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Well, but you have the part where I met with my aunt?
- Yes, yes.
- My aunt told me right away that my father and my uncle
- were there.
- But they went to Vilna.
- [BOTH TALKING] Well, where?
- Oh, that my-- yes.
- My aunt told me that my father and my uncle
- were in Brest visiting her in her house.
- But they decided to go to Vilnius.
- The reason I decided to go to Vilnius
- was because when the Soviets took over Poland,
- they took over the parts where Brest was permanently.
- You had to become a citizen, a Soviet citizen.
- The Baltic states were going to be a little freer,
- that they would have a regiment of the army or whatnot,
- but that the countries will be able to lead their own affairs.
- And that was the only way that my father
- thought that we could ever get out
- to go to America, if we could.
- Because from the Soviet Union, you cannot leave.
- You're stuck.
- Or you're you know--
- so he decided to go to Vilna.
- And that's why he went there.
- And so she said that he's there, and she
- thought that I should go there.
- She gave me some extra money, because the Germans
- took everything from me.
- And I remember I had a sausage and a loaf of bread
- in my knapsack.
- But I took the last train, the last train going to Vilnius
- from Bialystok.
- And somebody stole-- when I arrived in Vilna
- and I unpacked my knapsack to get my food, it was gone.
- The food was gone.
- Nothing else was.
- Well, the knapsack was empty anyway,
- because the Germans took everything.
- So anyway, yeah.
- Can you tell me about your reunion with your father
- in [BOTHT ALKING}
- Well, that's another story.
- Well, first of all, I parted with my two friends.
- They went to another town.
- I went-- I've never heard that from them.
- They're gone.
- Anyway, so I went to Vilnius.
- And this is what happened.
- I arrived at about 4 or 5 in the morning.
- And I had to look for my father in a big city.
- And it was 6 o'clock in the morning.
- I went to a park to eat something.
- I looked at my knapsack.
- It was empty.
- But we had the only name that I remembered.
- Our company in Warsaw, the Pickle Factory,
- had a representative in Vilnius who used to do our buying.
- I remembered his name, because I worked
- for a few months in my father's business
- while waiting for my visa and my admission
- to Zurich, to medical school.
- So I remembered his name.
- At 6, I didn't want to go too early.
- So at about 7 o'clock in the morning,
- I went somewhere, I don't know where, to a hotel somewhere,
- to look at the telephone book.
- And I found his name.
- I called him up.
- I said I'm Ruth Berkowitz.
- I'm the daughter of Leon Berkowitz in whose business you
- have contact with in Warsaw.
- Did he by any chance contact you?
- Because he's supposed to be in Vilna.
- And the guy said to me, wait 10 minutes and I will be with you.
- And he came, and he picked me up.
- Not by car.
- We didn't have cars.
- And he contacted me, him -- me with my father.
- That's the only way.
- If I didn't have his name--
- I mean, it's everything was just patching up everything.
- And that's how I contacted my father.
- What was that like?
- Well, it was very emotional.
- First of all--
- Tell me what you're talking about.
- What was emotional.
- Oh, well my reunion with my father was very emotional.
- And also with my uncle.
- Because both our families were in Warsaw,
- and they didn't know whether we were alive or dead.
- So first of all, I was alive, so that was number one.
- Secondly, I told them that the families are alive.
- Thirdly, I told them that the factory was bombed,
- and that all of Warsaw was walking around without, pickles
- and our fish and whatever.
- And our anchovies and ok.
- That's number three.
- And so they were, of course, happy.
- But at the same time, we were all split up in all directions.
- And they found me a place to stay.
- And they told me what their plans were.
- And at that time, you see, Europe
- was still free, not occupied.
- And they thought that my father and his brother
- had two brothers in New York, two brothers who
- were living here.
- And they thought that getting a visa
- would be no problem, to bring their brothers home.
- So they told me what their plan was.
- And that we will come to New York and we'll bring the family.
- So that was the plan.
- And then we settled into a year or so
- of being refugees in Vilnius.
- What [INAUDIBLE].
- OK, and roll the tape.
- So what was it like being a--
- --refugee in Vilna?
- --refugee in Vilna?
- Tell me daily life, any kind of breadlines, or what food
- you ate, where you slept, how you planned to get out.
- Well, in Vilna--
- And try not to --
- Yes, yes, talk to you.
- Yes, right, see you.
- In Vilna, it was a very different story.
- First of all, every day when we picked up the newspaper there
- were new acquisitions by Hitler, Holland, France.
- All the countries were occupied, and that
- was a terrible blow to everybody because we realized
- that we may not make it.
- It was just shocking.
- And so our whole existence there was
- extremely anxious and tense because we really didn't know--
- all of Europe got blocked out from travel,
- besides the other tragedy, the travel for us to get out,
- number one.
- Number two, our living quarters-- well,
- we all rented rooms in people's homes, and since the Soviets
- came in, a lot of companies-- the people didn't
- have the work they had, and everything was discombobulated.
- So a lot of people had rooms to rent because they needed
- the money to pay the rent.
- And so we all split up.
- By that time, my other two uncles arrived also.
- So there were now four men, and I was there.
- We rented rooms.
- Now, the dinners were communal dinners.
- I think that it was either the Bund, or the Joint Committee,
- or maybe the UJA, the United Jewish--
- I don't-- I think it was Bund because the people I met there
- were all Bundists.
- And every day, at 1:00 or so--
- we had our dinners during the day at that time,
- and they would have a hot meal, either
- meatballs with something, or meatloaf, or some such thing.
- So dinner was provided, and breakfast and supper
- we all had together in whatever apartments we lived in.
- Now, my father, because of his two brothers in America--
- we had our own financial support.
- We didn't need the communal support.
- I'm sure a lot of people were supported
- by the American Jewish Committee people.
- So we had our own support.
- I tried to live as much of a normal life as I could.
- I took courses, and I went to the library.
- And I joined the university to study science,
- and it went on for a few months.
- But at one point, the--
- Vilna was given by the Soviets to Lithuania,
- so the Lithuanians changed the language from Polish
- to Lithuanian.
- Well, we did not consider ourselves permanent citizens,
- so we did not even try to learn Lithuanian.
- But the people who actually lived
- there had to start from scratch, a completely new language
- because Vilna was really a Polish city.
- It had Polish schools and everything.
- People didn't know any Lithuanian.
- Maybe the farm people were more Lithuanian.
- I really don't know because that was an area--
- over the centuries, there was continuous turmoil there.
- And I felt protected because I had my father and three
- other uncles.
- There were four men who were taking care of affairs.
- So I myself-- but of course, I read the newspaper,
- and I saw what was going on.
- And it was frightening.
- Now, we were getting mail from our families, postcards
- that said, really, nothing.
- You had to read between the lines.
- They were all censored.
- They all had the German eagle stamp and so on and so forth.
- But they gave us information that they were alive,
- that they were-- they never even mentioned ghetto.
- They didn't.
- We are all right.
- We are fine.
- My sister started learning how to write--
- she was six years old--
- and little bits of--
- and we are anxious to be with you.
- We're anxious, which meant we want to be together.
- But there was no way you could do it.
- The borders-- there were two borders.
- There were the border, the German-Soviet, that I crossed,
- which was now completely shut, and that
- was the border from the Soviet part of Poland to Lithuania.
- There was no way that you could go anywhere unless you
- belonged there or something.
- But anyway, in the meantime, we kept reading the papers
- and getting more nervous.
- And in the meantime, all of Europe got occupied,
- so everything was closed.
- And also, in the meantime, the Japanese visas
- came up, although we never expected to actually use them.
- Who would go to Japan across the Soviet
- Union, a country that was closed to foreigners for 20 years?
- It was impossible to even think about it.
- But you know refugees.
- They here are visa, so they go for it.
- And that's when I went.
- So my father went to Kaunas and got the Japanese visa
- in the summer of 1940, and we had the visas.
- Now, my husband, who also was there as a young boy,
- went to use the visa because he had
- an American visa at the time.
- And he left for America very early,
- before we even knew that anything would come up for us.
- But we were there with a lot of people
- whom we knew also from Warsaw, mostly men, some women.
- Some wives came because they had either no children
- or they didn't have any children yet
- or the kids were teenagers or something.
- Well, I mean like [INAUDIBLE].
- But anyway, mostly they were men,
- and everybody was hoping for some miracle to happen.
- And the miracle was that Sugihara visa.
- Although we did not expect anything to come out of it,
- eventually it saved our lives.
- OK.
- Great.
- Hold that for a second.
- How is her make-up --
- --want to say about--
- I have to think a minute.
- Yeah, well, maybe you want to-- yeah, OK.
- Well, why don't we start over with--
- how or when did you decide to leave Lithuania?
- And then tell me about-- you've got a visa--
- My father didn't.
- --but your father didn't.
- And what--
- OK.
- Now, hold on.
- I have to remember the dates.
- Now, it was January 1941.
- But I'm not interested in--
- And that was 1940.
- Yeah, I know, but I have to keep the sequence going.
- And try and look at me also, because you were looking over
- there.
- Yeah, OK.
- Yeah, OK.
- And when I put my hand up, that's just to tell you--
- Oh, yeah, what does--
- That means to just look at me.
- Ah, OK.
- What else?
- Any other movement?
- That's it.
- That's it.
- OK.
- Well, yeah, ask me a question.
- When and how did you decide to leave Vilna or Lithuania?
- Well, when the first people started going across to Japan,
- we applied for an exit visa.
- You had to not only have a transit visa to Japan.
- The transit visa was only for 10 days.
- But you also had to get an exit visa from the Soviets,
- and so we applied for exit.
- And my two uncles got their visas first,
- and they went with one group.
- Then there was a room upstairs which
- we used to visit where the man used to read the list of people
- who were getting exit visas that day,
- and one day they mentioned my name without my father.
- So I got very upset.
- I didn't want to go all by myself across the Soviet Union,
- leave my father behind.
- My mother was in Warsaw with her family.
- It was no good.
- And so I said to--
- I came home, and I said to my father, they read my name.
- They didn't read your name.
- And my father said, Rutka, you have to go.
- You are 18 years old.
- You are young.
- You have your whole life ahead of you.
- You've got to go.
- And so I decided to go, and I did go.
- Two weeks later, my father came also, so that was OK.
- But you never knew because my father
- said to me, with the Russians, it's like this.
- One day they say yes, and one day they say no.
- And when they say no, everything is finished.
- They said yes.
- You go.
- So I went.
- Now, the train that--
- Wait a second, back up.
- What was it like leaving your father?
- It was very hard.
- Tell me what you're talking about.
- Oh, it was very hard to leave my father.
- He was 50 years old or 51 by that time,
- and we were going to be split up three ways.
- My family was in Warsaw.
- My father was left behind in Vilnius,
- and I was going on a journey.
- I didn't know what was going to happen.
- We were going through Siberia.
- I didn't know if they'll stop the train somewhere
- in Siberia among all these birches and so on.
- And we really didn't know what was going to be,
- and so I was, of course, very upset about it.
- But I did.
- Did you hug him and kiss him?
- Did he have any words of advice?
- Well, he just told me, be happy.
- Well, I don't remember exactly what he said,
- but obviously he was very concerned with my future
- since I was a young person.
- And of course, we had addresses to my uncles in America
- and all of this kind of practical things
- that you had to take care of and so on.
- And the one thing that I did not mention
- about the transport across the Soviet Union
- was that the Intourist office required $200 per person
- for the trip.
- And we've got our meals and sleep,
- whatever, on those hard benches, but we'll manage.
- And my father, I remember, said to them,
- where are we going to get $200?
- Because in Soviet Union you were not
- allowed to carry foreign currency.
- So they said, go to the black market, and clean it up.
- Anyway, well, our trip was paid by my uncles in America,
- so we didn't have any problem of that kind.
- Now, on the train, I was surrounded by people I knew.
- We had several compartments that were entirely
- designated for Polish refugees.
- We did not mingle with the other people at all.
- Some people tell me they did, but we did not.
- And we had our meals on the train,
- and everything was provided but very primitive conditions.
- The seating arrangement and the sleeping arrangement--
- you had to be young and have a little energy
- to be able to cope with it.
- Now, we had to stop in Moscow for a few days
- because the Trans-Siberian Railroad actually
- starts in Moscow.
- That didn't start, at that time, in Vilnius.
- So when we arrived in Moscow, we were put up
- at the hotel called the Intourist.
- There was another hotel.
- I think it was called the Metropol, which
- was a little more fancy.
- But we were in the Intourist Hotel, and on each floor,
- there was a woman sitting there like a concierge looking
- over everything.
- Anyway, we had that they gave us a tour of the city.
- We had a very young lady who could have been American,
- or French, or anything, blonde hair, red fingernails,
- perfect English.
- They trained them very well.
- And she took us around the city in little buses
- or something of that sort, and we even
- managed to go to see a ballet, Sleeping Beauty--
- I still remember it--
- in Moscow, yes.
- But we were a group, although I was without my father,
- without a relative.
- But we were all from the Bundist and not Bundist, either.
- But we were together, you see, in Vilna,
- and we overlapped for mail, and for food, and so on.
- So they were not people that I didn't know.
- And when you're young--
- and I didn't have the responsibility
- because my father took care of--
- so there were a few people that--
- so I did not feel like a stranger,
- but I did not know that they are not going to stop the train,
- and let us off, and say [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- and especially since we had some--
- [PERSONAL NAME] were, at that time,
- exiled in Siberia as far as we knew.
- And I was with them on the train.
- I was with one of his sons and his wife on the train.
- So it was a very anxious time.
- When I tell my story to other people,
- they say, oh, how interesting.
- I said, yes, it's interesting for you but not for me.
- I always tell them this.
- Oh, you come from Warsaw.
- Oh, you come from Poland.
- How wonderful.
- I said wonderful for you, not for me.
- You should have been born in Warsaw.
- I should've been born in America.
- So anyway, I'm going to cry in a minute.
- I don't do that anymore.
- Tell me about what did you anticipate
- getting to Vladivostok.
- And what was your trip like across the Sea of Japan,
- and what did you expect in Japan?
- We didn't know what to expect.
- I only had one book in Polish, The Spirit of the Samurais Over
- Asia, and it was a very nice book, very pleasant,
- and beautiful, and so on.
- We didn't know what to expect.
- First of all, we knew that they were part of the Axis powers,
- and besides this, I didn't even know
- they would let us in because--
- Could you start again?
- Talk about Japan.
- I don't know that you're talking about Japan.
- Now, how do I say--
- So why don't we go-- why don't we back up to Vladivostok,
- getting to Vladivostok?
- OK, well, first of all, well, I did tell you
- that we passed Lake Baikal, but that's not important.
- Tell me that story, too.
- What did you see on your trip across Siberia.
- Well, on the trip across, we saw just wilderness.
- Between the cities it was empty tundra.
- You know what tundra is, empty trees, birches.
- I have one birch in front of my house
- that I'm cherish because of the--
- but anyway, it was really very empty.
- But when we reached Birobidzhan, I came out to the station.
- Basically, it was January 1941, very cold.
- Siberia was freezing.
- But the train had to stop to get water because it
- was steam engines at that time.
- Anyway, and I stopped in Birobidzhan,
- and I went into the hut, the station.
- And a woman in a babushka, a little kerchief
- was sitting there, an old lady, and I started
- talking to her in Yiddish.
- And she said to me, who are you, and where--
- I said, well, we are going to America.
- And she said to me, oh, from here nobody goes anywhere.
- That's the way she pointed to me.
- Anyway, it was Birobidzhan in Yiddish.
- They have a sign in Yiddish out by the railroad station.
- We came to Vladivostok, and I have very little memory
- because I don't think we were there more than overnight.
- They put us on a Japanese fishing boat with an ice cutter
- in front of us because it was January, and it was all frozen.
- So far the first 24 hours of our trip on that Japanese fishing
- boat, it was all ice, and there was a Russian ice
- breaker that was in front of us cutting the ice and so on.
- On the boat, the conditions were terrible.
- We were all seasick.
- It was a little boat and in a very up-and-down type
- of situation.
- And also, they fed us Japanese food.
- We didn't know anything about the rice,
- and the fish, and all that.
- And so nobody ate, and everybody was just prostrate.
- We were just lying flat.
- And the ice breaker turned around, and as sick as we were,
- we just burst out.
- It was deliverance.
- Germans are behind us.
- The Russians are behind us.
- And now, of course, Japan was a big unknown.
- We didn't know.
- But the entrance was beautiful.
- Everything was green.
- It was in Tsuruga, Japan.
- Everything was green.
- We walked into a coffee shop, and it had Beethoven.
- They were playing classical European music.
- I couldn't believe it.
- Anyway, and then we went from there to Kobe.
- That became our permanent place to be.
- Now, my first two uncles were already there,
- and my father was still behind.
- And we settled in Kobe, waiting for my father to come,
- hoping he will come.
- Now, the entrance to Japan is another story
- because Sugihara gave us those visas against the better
- judgment of the government.
- Three times he was refused to give us visas, and he gave us--
- so we didn't know whether we would be accepted.
- And they could have turned us back,
- and nobody would ever know, right into the sea.
- Nobody would know.
- But they did accept us, and actually their treatment
- was very good considering the fact that they were axis powers,
- but they were not yet, I don't think, at that time aware
- of antisemitism.
- To them, we were Caucasians.
- We were white people.
- Although, the Hitlerjugend was marching in Kobe
- because the embassy had their own people and all this.
- But the Japanese were very kind.
- They extended our visas.
- We had transit visas to go nowhere.
- We did not have a destination.
- So considering all of these negative things,
- everything went smoothly, and they took us in.
- And in Kobe we established a community.
- There was one building where all the mail came,
- all the information, and whatever information
- you needed you could get.
- And there was a little place for prayers
- because there was a yeshiva there.
- They were religious people.
- And so as a matter of fact, one day, a big truck
- came with a whole bunch of apples, boxes of apples,
- and they considered themselves, a group
- of Japanese, the lost tribes.
- Can you imagine, the lost tribes in Japan?
- It was just unbelievable.
- But while we were in Japan, we could still
- get mail from our families.
- It was already ghetto, but we didn't know.
- It was 1941.
- And we could send them packages, so every day we
- made a package of tea because tea was a big item.
- In Europe, you have to get tea from India, from Japan.
- You cannot-- and tea was our drink.
- We didn't drink coffee at that time at all.
- And so we could send them packages,
- and we even got acknowledgment from them
- that they received them.
- And for tea they could probably get food or whatever
- there was in the ghetto.
- And so that for those six months that we spent in Japan,
- we were in touch with our families.
- Again, their letters don't say much, just the fact
- that they can write, that they are alive,
- and that they want to be with us.
- So that was it.
- So that was a big plus for us, to be able to get the mail.
- Now, in Japan, of course, immediately
- my father and his brothers started applying for a visa
- to America.
- Again, we got a negative--
- the State Department was very antisemitic.
- All you have to do is read Roosevelt's biographies.
- In that period, with Morgenthau and all these people,
- it was terrible.
- No refugees were admitted.
- And so they wrote in-- and last part was "at this time."
- I think partly, maybe, they claimed
- that, because we had relatives under German occupation,
- we were not safe, whatever.
- But anyway, that was ridiculous because who would become
- a spy when you have relatives--
- it's ridiculous.
- Anyway, they did the same thing in England,
- but that's another story.
- Anyway, but what I did in Japan--
- I started taking English lessons from American missionaries,
- believe it or not.
- There were American missionaries there,
- and I don't know which denomination.
- I come from a Catholic--
- I was Jewish, but I came from a Catholic country in Poland.
- I didn't know very--
- of course, we studied the Reformation and all this
- in history classes, but I really didn't know the real difference.
- I knew that the Protestants don't believe in the Pope
- or whatever, but I really didn't know
- the different denominations.
- So I don't know who they were.
- But there was a woman there, and anyway, they
- gave us English lessons.
- And we were as a group of about 10 or 12 people,
- and they opened the New Testament, the Book of John,
- and they said read.
- Here, we were Jews, to read the New Testament.
- You know they did--
- anyway, but I forgive them.
- It's OK.
- And that's how I took some English lessons.
- But at one point, in March or so,
- two or three months later, they had to leave Japan,
- and I suspect that the situation between America and Japan--
- there was political complications, which
- we know about more now than we knew at that time,
- and because there were Japanese delegations going
- back and forth about the embargo on oil and all that stuff.
- So they cleared out.
- And then we got more nervous because we
- knew that if the missionaries are leaving something
- is wrong in the relationship between America and Japan,
- but we didn't know what.
- Yes, what else?
- Could you tell me what your daily life was like in Japan?
- What did you eat?
- Where did you sleep?
- Also, did you have much hope of getting out?
- What were your fears?
- There were about 2,000 people there, not all at the same time,
- in Japan.
- OK, so start again.
- In Japan, there were-- well, they claimed that Sugihara gave
- 2,400 visas to the Polish Jews at the time.
- Well, every day we had breakfast,
- and we would go to look for mail.
- So there was a walk like going to get your newspaper.
- So we had to get our mail, letters, visas, uncles,
- correspondence, family, making packages for our families
- and all that stuff, and that took up quite a bit of our time
- because everything was walking.
- There were no bicycles.
- There were no cars and so on.
- And Kobe is a very hilly town anyway.
- It's a lovely town.
- Anyway, and so our daily life was really the anxiety
- to leave, but to go where?
- Every 10 days or two weeks you had to renew your visas,
- so there was a lot of activity going on and a lot of gossip.
- Anybody that had a distant cousin in Canada,
- in Australia, any place was bombarding their relatives
- or friends for visas.
- Some people managed.
- A few trickle went to Canada and so on, and some--
- to Australia I don't think so.
- And so your day was really quite full, with those activities,
- also, there was a lot of anxiety.
- So you don't look for pleasures.
- But we did a little bit of sightseeing, a little,
- not much and not far.
- Also, we were in Kobe.
- All the embassies were in Tokyo or in Yokohama,
- so there were trips to be taken.
- My father used to go back and forth to the embassy,
- to here or there.
- So there was a lot of this kind of stuff going on.
- How did you ever get--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- Actually, before we change, can we
- just grab a little loop of the compressor
- while it's on so if you need to match them--
- Sure.
- Sure, go ahead.
- This is just room tone with the compressor on.
- That's good.
- So tell me about how clever the Japanese were.
- Well, I must say that they were extremely clever and extremely
- willing to sell their products.
- Sorry.
- Start one more time, but tell me "the [? Japanese." ?]
- Japanese, yeah.
- The Japanese that we encountered on our arrival in Japan
- were extremely clever and extremely
- willing to sell their goods.
- They had their fruit stores.
- Every fruit was marked in four different languages,
- in Russian, in Yiddish, in German, any language that we
- could possibly speak, except for English, which we didn't know.
- And really, they were very helpful in even the prices
- because we didn't really know our way around.
- It was a very strange, different culture,
- and they were very good about it.
- And could you tell me the story again about the--
- --the apples.
- --apples.
- Well, one day, when I came to look at our mail in the Kobe
- Jewish Community Center, a big truck
- came with boxes of fresh apples, and we
- didn't know what was happening, what kind of a delivery
- that was.
- And it turns out the Japanese--
- there was a group of Japanese that considered
- themselves the 10 Lost Tribes.
- And they heard that there were some Jews in town.
- So they came with a gift of apples for us,
- and it was really very lovely because there
- were a lot of apples.
- And that was expensive.
- But the thought that there were Japanese Lost Tribes--
- I just couldn't believe it.
- And so it was very nice of them to do that.
- I also would like to tell you about the Russian Jews.
- OK, sure.
- But at what point?
- Right now is fine.
- Well, you asked me about our lifestyle in Kobe.
- One of the things that was difficult for us
- is the Japanese food.
- You must remember that that was Japan before Pearl Harbor.
- That was Japan that was real Japan.
- Ethnic, and food, and everything was Japanese,
- and so we could not get accustomed to the food.
- And so there were some Russian Jews, a few families, maybe two
- or three families, who lived in Kobe.
- They trickled down from Harbin, through Shanghai, to Japan.
- And so they lived in Kobe, and they've been there already
- for a number of years, since, probably, the Revolution
- or something.
- And they decided-- they hired a few people,
- and they were cooking European-style meals
- for us, soup, and a piece of meat,
- and not everything scrambled together.
- And so that was a great help because they also
- acted as our translators because they already knew Japanese.
- I don't know what they were doing.
- In general, Japan, at that time, had a lot of Indians
- and had a few Jews.
- We called them "import-export [? Rappoport." ?]
- I don't know.
- Maybe they imported pearls.
- The Indians mostly imported pearls.
- There were Indians that were exiled from India because they
- were freedom fighters, and [? they had ?] turbans.
- They were gorgeous young men.
- Yeah?
- What fascinated you the most about being
- in Japan, the kimonos, or the way they
- cared for their children, or [? anything? ?]
- The Japanese-- they were very quiet.
- They were very considerate.
- They were very polite.
- Of course, we know, now, different,
- that there is a hidden life within them, except if you--
- on trains, everybody was extremely polite,
- and if you stepped on their toe, wow, there was a big outburst.
- But if you stayed in your own part, you didn't touch them,
- they were very nice people, polite, very polite.
- Now, I also used to go to the Japanese baths,
- and, well, I don't know if I should tell it.
- You can cut it out if you want to.
- OK.
- Start over again, though.
- "I used to go to the Japanese baths."
- --baths--
- OK, so [INAUDIBLE].
- --because during that--
- Sorry.
- I have to hear you say that [? again. ?]
- Yeah, but you may have to cut it down
- because I'm going to tell you something that I
- wouldn't tell anybody else.
- When I was in Vilnius, I was 18 years old.
- I lost my menstruation due to stress.
- I went to a doctor, and you said, look, you're a virgin.
- You'll go to Japan.
- Go to the hot baths.
- So I started going to the hot baths.
- Well, my menstruation returned, but cut it out.
- Anyway, so I used to go to the hot baths,
- and there was this man who was sitting at the end.
- He could see both--
- men and women were separated in the hot baths,
- but there was a man who looked in both directions.
- So that a very strange feeling.
- But we did go to these baths, and they were very--
- it was a new experience for me, but I did it mostly
- because I had to do it.
- And everything was OK within a short while.
- So that was one experience that I had.
- Well, the other part I won't tell you
- because it's a little--
- so I used to go to these baths.
- In general, it's a very different culture there.
- It's not just the fauna and flora, whatever,
- but the people were very quiet and very polite.
- And we had a dealing with one storekeeper
- that we bought pajamas from.
- And what they used to do-- during the day,
- they wore Western clothes.
- The minute they got home, they changed into kimonos.
- Women wore skirts, and men wore ties or whatever, a shirt.
- And so that part was a little surprising to me
- because they were already westernized before their time.
- Let me ask you [INAUDIBLE].
- So how did you end up getting your visas to New Zealand?
- Oh, OK.
- At one point during our stay in Japan,
- my father was notified that the Polish consul--
- now, I think that the Polish consul in New Zealand
- heard that there were some Polish Jews stranded somewhere,
- and he persuaded the New Zealand government
- to let him give visas to 24 of these people.
- And there was a certain selection in that process.
- They wanted people who were mature--
- I don't know mature--
- who had skills.
- You have to remember that New Zealand was already
- at war in 1941 because the British were at war since '39.
- All of their men from New Zealand were gone.
- Women were driving buses and doing all kinds of things.
- They needed labor.
- And so they picked their people, and they
- picked my father and the three brothers,
- the four of the men in my family,
- and me, and several couples, and a few single men.
- 24 of us got visas to go to New Zealand.
- And so that's how we got our visas.
- But there were only 24 out of a whole bunch
- of people who needed to go somewhere,
- needed to go somewhere.
- So we got those visas, and that's
- how we happened to go to New Zealand.
- Excuse me for one second, Ruth.
- Could you just be careful about the microphone
- that's on your chest there.
- I was fiddling with it.
- I could hear [INAUDIBLE].
- Ah, OK.
- I didn't know.
- I fiddled with something.
- It's all right.
- It wasn't [? terrible, ?] and I didn't
- want to interrupt your story.
- Oh, no.
- No, that's OK.
- What was the-- in your whole journey,
- what role did luck and youth have--
- Everything.
- Tell me in a complete sentence.
- As far as I'm concerned, everything was luck and youth,
- although I was not the only one.
- My father was in his 50s already.
- But as I told you, the minute we arrived in Japan,
- the Germans attacked the Soviet Union,
- so all these people who were so helpful to us in Vilnius
- got killed.
- Immediately, their anti-Jewish troops
- were right behind the [? 1st ?] Army.
- They would immediately round up Jews.
- So all the people that helped us in Vilnius
- who were citizens who couldn't leave--
- there were a lot, local citizens.
- So that was number one.
- As soon as we arrived in Japan, Pearl Harbor came,
- so Japan was already in a different league.
- So that was another lucky strike.
- That's very important.
- Even when I came to Vilnius to begin with,
- the borders were becoming much tighter,
- and you couldn't cross anymore.
- You couldn't go.
- When my husband came, he had to smuggle at night
- and got caught by the Soviets, [? and they ?]
- took his watch and everything.
- And he had to drink dirty water and got typhus
- when he came to--
- that's how our romance started.
- I was taking care of him when he got typhus.
- Anyway, he was in the hospital, and I came to visit
- and sort of started the whole thing.
- But we were 18, and we were not involved in any realistic way.
- So I think, well, the luckiest thing
- was that these two guys came to say goodbye to us when
- I was still in Warsaw.
- If they didn't come to say goodbye,
- I would have been with my family,
- and the rest I don't have to tell you.
- I would be a goner.
- I wouldn't be sitting here.
- So I think it was-- there was no great grandiose plan.
- There was no feeling that I'm going from one step to another
- to improve my situation.
- Everything was pure luck, and that's how it happened.
- But not everything is lucky because of my family.
- When did you lose contact with your family?
- When we arrived in New Zealand, that was the end
- because that was enemy territory for them, Germans fighting--
- Tell me what you're talking about again.
- OK.
- We used to get letters from my family all along in Japan.
- When we left Japan and we came to New Zealand,
- we lost contact with them because New Zealand
- was at war with Germany, so you couldn't get mail.
- So that was the end.
- And when did you find out about their fates?
- Very late, after the war, really.
- When you're in the United States?
- Yes, yes.
- I remember once in New Zealand reading in the paper
- or something that there were some antisemitic something
- going on in Europe, that there was some killing.
- But really, it was just a [? blimp, ?]
- a little something.
- And I remember I cried, and I didn't know where--
- they didn't say which city, which town, nothing.
- I really found out after the war.
- I really-- what I used to do--
- I was in college at that time, in Queens College,
- and after school I used to go to the HIAS building
- where they would publish a list of survivors in the camps.
- But when I came to this country, well,
- the Bund had certain information, secret information
- from Poland about Treblinka, about camps,
- but they were all--
- The New York Times had it on page 18.
- Nobody wanted to rock the boat, and nobody
- wanted to say anything.
- And Roosevelt-- it was that whole situation
- that was really very tragic.
- Could you tell--
- So I really didn't know for sure.
- Could you tell me what happened to the family that
- was left behind?
- My family-- well, most of Warsaw Jews went to Treblinka,
- and I think that they all went to Treblinka,
- but they didn't all go at the same time.
- Sorry.
- "They all went--" we don't know who you're talking about.
- OK.
- My whole family went to Treblinka.
- My mother, and my two brothers, and my little sister
- went to Treblinka somewhere between 1942 and '43.
- I really don't know exactly.
- One of my aunts survived, but she left Warsaw
- at a certain point.
- And she has no idea what happened to the rest.
- She's still alive.
- She's in New York now.
- She's 88 years old, and she doesn't really know everything.
- And my aunt and my cousins, little cousins--
- I assume that they all went to Treblinka
- because most Jews from Warsaw were sent to Treblinka.
- Did you tell me they went to Treblinka
- and were killed there?
- Because your audience doesn't--
- --know that.
- Ah, they don't know Treblinka.
- Well, Treblinka is now a field of daisies.
- That's why I didn't want to go.
- A field of daisies--
- they burned everything, and they cleaned it up.
- And they made a field of daisies.
- OK, now where am I starting?
- My whole family--
- Sorry, I was talking.
- So you have to give it a little pause.
- Yeah.
- I assume-- and I'm almost sure-- that my whole family went
- to Treblinka because most Jews of Warsaw went to Treblinka
- and were gassed and killed there.
- I don't know exactly when, somewhere between 1942 and '43,
- and I know that they didn't all go at the same time.
- But I think--
- I'm quite sure that they went to Treblinka
- and were killed there, and that includes
- all the wives of my uncles and all my little cousins.
- I was the oldest.
- I was the first grandchild in the family,
- and I was 17 when the war broke out.
- Everybody else was younger, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds,
- 12-year-olds, 15-year-old.
- Everybody was younger than I, and they all went to Treblinka.
- There was another camp, Sobibor.
- I heard that one of my cousins, a seven-year-old boy,
- went to Sobibor, but I really don't know.
- And when did you find out about all the atrocity?
- When did you find out about the existence of the concentration
- camps and stuff?
- Well, some news came through even before the war was over.
- There was some information.
- There was this Polish guy, Jan Karski.
- Have you ever heard of him?
- Well, he brought some info.
- That was also a suicide in England
- by a guy named Zygielbojm who committed suicide to tell
- the world what's happening.
- And it just went under the carpet.
- Nobody paid any attention.
- So you really didn't know for sure.
- It was not publicized.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- If I had a Kleenex, I could--
- No, no it's OK.
- Have you had some fun?
- How did you make it-- or when did you leave from New Zealand
- to America, and how did you--
- who arranged that?
- How did that happen?
- Well, in New Zealand--
- I spent two years in New Zealand.
- It's a lovely country, and I was in a nursing school there.
- Do you want me to tell that?
- Well, [? as long as it's short, it's short. ?]
- Yeah, you can edit it.
- Yeah, OK.
- I was in a nursing school because I
- was going to study medicine originally,
- and so I wanted to stick as close to the subject
- as I could.
- So I learned English, and I entered this nursing school
- because New Zealand and Australia
- were way ahead of their time.
- They had socialized medicine, and so nursing was also free.
- We used to get extra money, shillings, to buy shoes,
- but they kept us-- there gave us rooms and board.
- But also, the nurses were gone.
- They were fighting Rommel in North Africa.
- All the medical people were gone and fighting in the war.
- And so I worked in a hospital there, and at one point,
- my father told me that we are on the way
- to get a visa to America.
- Our uncles in this country wrote to their senators
- and wrote to everybody they could.
- They said, we have two brothers.
- They're stranded.
- Their families are in Warsaw.
- They're split up in all directions.
- They've got to-- yeah.
- And so eventually we got the visas,
- and I had to get a special release from my hospital
- because I was a student, a pupil nurse because this
- was the essential service.
- And the matron tried to persuade me to stay.
- She said, look, you're young.
- You have your whole life ahead of you.
- Let your father go.
- I said, look, we're already split up.
- My family is in Warsaw.
- I cannot-- well, they were probably already dead, 1943,
- but I said, I am not going to split up the family anymore.
- So she gave me a release.
- And we went to--
- we were living at that time in Hastings,
- and we went to Wellington.
- And until the last moment we didn't
- know because it was a troop ship,
- and the war in the Pacific was at its height, Guadalcanal.
- The Philippines were occupied.
- And they were shipping wounded marines on an American troop
- ship, and they permitted a few civilians, a couple
- of Australian wives and us.
- And so we didn't know until the last minute
- when we would leave.
- And eventually we left Wellington,
- and we were traveling on a dark ship.
- The war was on in the Pacific.
- And we took a long route.
- It took-- I don't know-- maybe 10 days.
- I don't really remember.
- But we stuck close to the South American border.
- We didn't get into the Pacific as much
- as we could, didn't stop in Hawaii or anything,
- went straight to the Golden Gate.
- So I came in here through the Golden Gate.
- And when I went to see Mrs. Sugihara to honor her,
- I said that I have completed the cycle,
- that I came in through the Golden Gate
- and so on because she came to San Francisco.
- And so that's how we came.
- And when we arrived in San Francisco,
- we missed the train for New York.
- So we went to Oakland, and we came from Oakland
- by train, two nights and three days or something.
- But it was 1943.
- Everything to me happened September 1.
- September 1, the war broke out.
- September 1, I arrived in New Zealand.
- September 1, I arrived in New York or whatever.
- And it's going to be 60 years.
- This September 1 will be 60 years since the war broke out,
- and to me, it's like yesterday.
- I can almost smell my family.
- Well, I don't do that anymore, but occasionally it hits you.
- Tell me what you said to us today about despair
- and not wanting to become another victim of Hitler.
- Well, there are moments when you really cannot quite comprehend
- that a thing like this has happened.
- And actually, it probably got worse
- as I grew older because during the years when you are active,
- you go to school, you have children,
- you worry about careers, you're busy
- and you only think about it in rare moments.
- But as you grow older and you begin
- to think about your past, and your childhood, and so on--
- I guess you think about your childhood
- than about the years in between--
- it's very possible to really reach moments of despair when
- you really don't feel that you can cope with it,
- that it's just unbelievable.
- But I have learned and I have talked to a few of my friends
- who also survived to push it away to a certain extent
- because I feel that if you become desperate
- and you lose control of yourself,
- you just become another victim of Hitler.
- And that's the last thing I want to do.
- That's when I try to--
- you have to live with it, and you
- don't want to destroy yourself.
- And that's when I say, well, he's not going to defeat me.
- I've got to keep on and tell the story.
- What do you think it's important for you
- to be here telling this story?
- I'm not-- look, if I didn't exist, there wouldn't be a--
- nobody would know anything.
- If I stayed in a Warsaw and I was killed with my family,
- it wouldn't make a big difference to anybody at all.
- It's important to tell the story.
- Well, I cannot say "because it cannot be repeated again"
- because things are happening now that are awful.
- They are not the same, but they're awful.
- So it's possible that it might happen again or whatever.
- It probably wouldn't happen specifically to Jews,
- but there are other people that are important also.
- But I think the world needs to know it.
- I really don't know why it's important.
- I don't know.
- What was the toughest part about being a refugee?
- The uncertainty, not knowing what's going to happen
- and especially when you're separated from the family.
- Then you know you don't exist as a unit.
- And so the anxiety for the future and, at the same time,
- the pain of separation--
- I think that's the hardest part.
- Could you tell me that again using "refugee."
- You didn't say what you were talking about.
- Ah, OK.
- I think that the hardest part of being a refugee
- is the uncertainty of the situation,
- not knowing what's going to happen to you,
- and being separated from the family.
- If we were all together, maybe it
- would be a little different but probably not any more different
- in terms of the uncertainty of the future
- and the situation in general.
- But at least you are together.
- And so that's what I feel--
- as I told you yesterday, 60 years past,
- I'm still in the visa mode.
- When I get American Express or I get there all the other cards,
- I just throw them out.
- I only keep Visa in case I need it again.
- You're just permeated with that feeling of uncertainty,
- that you really--
- I have friends who make plans for next year, for five years.
- I don't do that.
- I don't do it, not because I'm old, old or older, whatever,
- but I just don't have that feeling of security
- that maybe other people have.
- And that's a permanent-- maybe it's
- just my individual person, having lost so many people
- and so on.
- And so I really--
- I don't know.
- But that's something that stays with you forever.
- Did you cry a lot?
- We need to change tapes.
- I used to--
- --lost their language.
- OK.
- Did you cry a lot as a refugee?
- I only cried when we talked about personal things.
- I didn't cry because I was a refugee and I didn't--
- you know.
- And in general, you develop a certain resistance
- and a certain strength, and you don't want to get embarrassed
- in front of people.
- And so when I cried, it was on my own, on my own,
- not in public.
- Was the Bund very helpful in--
- Well, I was-- it was in terms of friendship.
- Tell me what--
- Ah.
- The Bund what was important in terms of friendships
- because they were people that we knew,
- that we were familiar with, not that they
- could help us anything.
- But my father was much more involved in it.
- But as I mentioned, my father had private means
- because he had these two brothers, so in practical terms,
- we didn't depend on the Bund.
- But in social terms, we did because they
- were our immediate companions, and of course, my father
- changed his political views very soon,
- as he came to this country.
- He said, all the things the Bund was fighting
- for-- it's already in America.
- We have social security.
- We have Unemployment we have Medicare, these basic things.
- So he changed his mind.
- But anyway, yeah, the Bund--
- they were my friends.
- They were my immediate friends.
- While you were in Lithuania and stuff,
- did you have an overwhelming feeling
- that you were going to survive, that you were
- going to get out of this mess?
- I think I did.
- Just tell me what you're talking about.
- Ah.
- When we were in Lithuania, our main thrust was to get out
- and to go somewhere, and we had these two uncles in America.
- If we didn't have the two uncles in America,
- I don't know what we would think.
- But they were our hope, and we didn't see any reason
- why, one way or another, we wouldn't eventually--
- or something would happen.
- At least they supported us, too.
- But I also had an aunt, my father's sister, in Palestine,
- and they couldn't get us a visa.
- My uncle was a high official in Israel, couldn't.
- They were not giving out any certificates.
- It was called a certificate.
- The British clamped down on immigration, even
- in such desperate situation.
- We were willing to go to Palestine,
- couldn't get a certificate.
- Who did you leave in your immediate family in Warsaw?
- And then tell me what happened to them.
- My immediate family in Warsaw--
- I left my mother, who was 42 years old,
- two younger brothers-- one was 15, and one was 12--
- and a little sister who was six years old.
- And they all died in Treblinka, and they were killed.
- Let's see.
- What else?
- Did you ever get down?
- What kept you going?
- This was-- this totally ruined your whole life.
- Well, in a way, by the time I came to this country,
- I was 21 years old.
- I went to college.
- It didn't postpone certain things, but it didn't ruin it.
- Emotionally, I was a mess because I was very sad,
- but in other ways--
- in other words, I came to parties.
- I was supposed to be a regular guy, a regular woman, but inside
- of me, everything was aching.
- For many years it still is.
- But there isn't a day, not one day that I don't think about it,
- not one day.
- And actually, I talk to American veterans of World War II.
- There was a TV program last night on Vermont Public Radio.
- All these guys-- they say there isn't a day
- that they don't think about their fallen comrades.
- It's amazing how it now comes out.
- 50 years, they didn't talk about it, didn't tell their wives,
- didn't tell their children, didn't tell anybody.
- They were showing--
- Start that again.
- Sorry about that.
- That's OK.
- Yeah, what am I --
- Oh, that's OK.
- And they showed the Battle of the Bulge.
- It was-- well, I don't know if you know about it.
- But anyway, it was terr --
- And we had a newspaper-- a guy who I see every day--
- he said, there isn't a day he doesn't
- think about Montecassino, going up the Italian Boot.
- They never--
- You socialize.
- You drink, and it doesn't come out.
- They don't communicate it.
- And now everything is coming out, not only for us
- as Jews but all these veterans.
- They were expected to come home and be normal.
- Anyway, OK, we've got off the topic.
- Yeah.
- How did you get back in touch with your husband
- or your boyfriend at that time?
- Or he wasn't really your boyfriend.
- Yeah, well, anyway, I saw him off
- in Vilnius in September 1940.
- He left for America.
- I got a photo from Yokohama.
- He and a few other guys who were going through
- had visas to go to America.
- And he had a visa because his quota number came up.
- Sorry.
- Tell me who you're talking about.
- My future husband.
- Well, I don't know how to call-- my boyfriend, at that time
- my boyfriend.
- I saw him off in Vilnius on the train in September 1940,
- and he went to Yokohama.
- And I got that photo from him from Yokohama.
- And he went straight to this country,
- where he had a grandmother and all his aunts and uncles.
- He didn't know anybody.
- He was 18 years old, went to Pensacola, Florida,
- where they were all living.
- And he entered Gainesville University,
- and then he was drafted.
- And he joined the--
- he tried to volunteer, but they wouldn't take him
- because he was not a citizen yet.
- But they drafted him.
- My husband spent four years in the army.
- He was in intelligence service and a paratrooper.
- A lot of the Jewish refugees were in intelligence service
- because they knew languages, Camp Ritchie.
- I remember it distinctly.
- Anyway, he spent four years in the army,
- and when he came out, when he was discharged in 1945,
- we got married.
- And he joined me at Queens College,
- and he was in Queens College.
- And then he went to graduate school.
- He went to Harvard and got a PhD in economics,
- and his career took off.
- He went to Williams, and he came to Dartmouth.
- Now, how I met him--
- when I was in New Zealand, he corresponded with me
- because when he went to America we
- gave him the address of my uncle's, so he knew where I was.
- When I reached New Zealand, we were
- corresponding, and his picture in army uniform
- with his paratrooper boots and whatever
- was standing on my dresser.
- And I didn't know.
- We were just a high school sort of a crush or whatever.
- And I came to this country, and when
- I was crossing from San Francisco to New York,
- he was waiting for me in Chicago at the wrong station.
- Chicago had two stations.
- When you came across, you had to get off one train.
- It's like Penn Station and Grand.
- You had to change.
- And he was waiting for six hours at the wrong station,
- so I couldn't see him.
- He was, at that time--
- he knew Russian, and he knew English, of course,
- and German, and whatever, and Polish.
- They sent him to the University of Chicago to learn Chinese.
- That was the army for you.
- He knew all these other languages,
- and he didn't have an ear for Chinese because in Chinese,
- uh, uh, uh-- it means different things.
- He didn't have the--
- And so he was in the army at the time.
- And three months later, he got a two-day or three-day leave,
- so he came to visit me in New York.
- That was our first reunion after three or four years
- because I was in New Zealand for two years, six months in Japan,
- and Vilnius, a total of about three and a half years.
- What was that like?
- Well, it was very strange.
- He spoke English.
- I didn't know him as speaking English.
- We always spoke Polish.
- Of course, last time I saw him we didn't know any English yet
- because he was in the army, and he was already
- an English speaker.
- And so it was very strange, and it was very nice.
- And we sort of took off, and we were-- but of course,
- he was in the army.
- He went to England and so on and so forth.
- So yeah, he was in the 82nd Airborne.
- And he came back, and that's when we got married.
- So anything that I haven't asked you about that seems important?
- I'll probably think about it tonight
- when you are in New Jersey.
- I thought you were in New Jersey for some reason.
- You're in New York.
- And I can't think of anything at the moment.
- It'll probably come back to me, but I don't know.
- Well, do you any questions, any holes, any curiosities?
- I think we've covered a lot of ground.
- Yeah, yeah.
- We have.
- You think you'll get 30 seconds out of this?
- I hope so.
- 30 seconds, that's all I ask for.
- But I was at the Holocaust Museum twice,
- but anyway, I'm familiar.
- There's a room where you--
- yeah.
- So, well, there are a lot of things I could add,
- but I can't think of a specific--
- Do you have anything to say about--
- My feelings?
- You want my feelings?
- Yeah, [BOTH TALKING] optimism that got you through,
- or your youth that got you through, or luck again?
- I guess I inherited my father, who was always very optimistic.
- He always looked forward, not backward.
- My father was a terrific guy.
- He died at 91.
- He came here with me.
- You know.
- And he died.
- He was 91 years old.
- As I told you, he loved Queens Boulevard, the movement,
- the lights, the stinking cars, stinking cars.
- He loved it.
- He thought America was great.
- So he had a very optimistic, forward-looking approach
- to life.
- I think I have inherited something of it.
- I like people, and I like contact with people.
- And most people don't know my story.
- They think I'm a very cheerful, pleasant kind of a person,
- helpful, whatever.
- I feel-- you don't have to do it, but I have to do it--
- I have to justify my existence because I'm a survivor.
- You can live your own life and do nothing for anybody
- because you accept the fact that you're alive,
- and you demand things from life.
- I feel that I owe something because I'm alive, that I could
- have died without a ripple.
- So maybe I'm a little more--
- I connect people.
- I do things for people.
- People don't call me unless they need an apartment,
- or they need to find something, or they have a problem.
- A my wife wants to leave her husband,
- and she needs a room, something.
- And I'm always-- my husband used to criticize me for that.
- Oh, and he's taping it?
- Yeah.
- --that I'm doing more for people than for ourselves
- because he would come.
- I would be on the phone with other people, the League
- of Women Voters or something, and he
- would be working for dinner and all that kind of stuff.
- What was the scariest moment on your whole journey?
- Oh, well, I cannot point out.
- There were a few incidents where I was really very anxious,
- but there was no one area because even when
- I left the Germans, as scared as I was of them,
- that was way before anything really terrible happened.
- There were no ghettos.
- There were no killings, and there was no gassing.
- It was way before anything.
- So I can't even say--
- there were a few moments of exhilaration,
- and that happened when I crossed the German-Soviet border, when
- that ice cutter left.
- There were these great moments in my life
- that happened that really could have ended in disaster.
- And they didn't, so you just keep on going.
- I really don't know.
- I really don't know.
- I only know one thing.
- Elie Wiesel-- don't put me because he will sue me.
- Did I tell you this?
- Elie Wiesel wrote the op-ed page or something
- in The New York Times a couple of years
- ago that he made peace with God.
- I read it, and I was--
- that he finally came to the conclusion
- that he can believe in God.
- We cannot forgive for the people who died.
- We can only forgive for us, who are alive,
- say, OK, I forgive you for doing such and such doing.
- I don't know how the people who died would have felt,
- so we can really not forgive for the people who are not here
- anymore.
- And I sort of resented his letter.
- I really did.
- One last question, Mrs. Segal.
- Did you really think that the Japanese might send you
- back to Russia when you left?
- We didn't know.
- I really didn't know.
- Well, first of all, I didn't know at that time
- that Sugihara was doing it against
- the Japanese authorities.
- I thought he just gave out visas.
- It's later on.
- So I really didn't know.
- They didn't do it.
- Later on, when I found out that three times they forbid
- him to do it and he did it--
- but that was much later, you see.
- I didn't know.
- At that time, I didn't know, and so the--
- Did you have that fear?
- No.
- You didn't, OK.
- No.
- I was afraid of the Russians, that they would drop us off
- in Siberia, and we would be totally forgotten.
- That I did.
- That was a rational fear until we got through with them
- because they did these things, especially since we were--
- well, a lot of our group were Bundists, socialists, and so on,
- and that was, in general, persona non grata.
- But when we got to Japan, I didn't
- know that they had a negative attitude,
- and I didn't see it in their actions.
- They were polite and everything.
- Now, after Pearl Harbor, they interned the Caucasian community
- in Japan, and later on they sent them to the ghetto, to Shanghai.
- And they established sort of a ghetto,
- although my son just saw a movie.
- Oh, well, you--
- It's OK.
- In San Francisco, they just had a Jewish film fest--
- Listen
- At what point did you realize or suspect
- that there was no hope for your family that was left behind?
- I really did not--
- I really expected somebody to survive until I
- heard the numbers, six million.
- Somebody had to go.
- I figured maybe the children-- maybe my mother died.
- Maybe the children would survive.
- When people go to Warsaw, I ask them
- to look up the telephone book.
- And there were six Berkowitzs in the phone book,
- but they're all non-Jewish.
- I'm surprised because I thought it was a Jewish name.
- And so every day I went to the HIAS to look up a list.
- I thought somebody maybe survived, but unfortunately--
- but I figured, with the mother and young children, they--
- because the children were taken right away.
- The children were right away going to gas chambers.
- They didn't even bother to put them into labor or anything.
- Six-year-old, seven-year-old-- they
- would separate the mothers and the children.
- The mothers, if they were of an age where they could work--
- over 50, to the gas chamber.
- How did your father respond to the news of what
- happened to your family?
- Also very slowly.
- It was all inch by inch, trying to find names, trying to find--
- well, he was devastated.
- He was totally.
- All my uncles-- they all lost their families.
- It was a terrible experience.
- But we didn't find it out at one time
- that somebody came and said, your family is gone.
- It was bit by bit.
- Information kept coming in, that the house
- was demolished and everything.
- The apartment house where we lived
- is right in the ghetto section and so on.
- And there's only-- the Catholic church is there,
- but all the houses around--
- I have photos of the Catholic church
- because every morning, as I got up, I pulled up my shade.
- There was the church.
- And it's the only thing standing,
- so every time somebody goes to Warsaw,
- they bring me a photo of the church.
- And I knew of friends who survived and who died.
- The only one, our friend, Marek Edelman--
- have you ever heard that name?
- He was a hero in the Warsaw Ghetto.
- He survived.
- Marek Edelman-- that's a very important name.
- He was the Bundist leader of the uprising in the ghetto
- during the uprising in 1943, in April 1943, and he survived.
- And he knows a lot.
- And they were all young people.
- Let me ask one more question.
- You have a photograph of you as a schoolgirl?
- Yes.
- Could you describe that to me and what happened
- to the rest of your classmates.
- Well, that was taken in 1932, the photo.
- Could you start with--
- I have a group photo of my classmates in 1932,
- in gymnasium, and I'm standing right near the teacher
- up front, teacher's pet.
- And there are-- I didn't count how many girls,
- but I know that when I graduated in '38 there were 28 of us.
- But there were more, I think, in that group.
- This was our second grade.
- And of that group, only about four people survived.
- This was a Jewish day school.
- We studied in Polish.
- Everything was in Polish.
- The only difference was we had a course in Jewish history,
- but we had no religion or anything at all.
- And of that whole group, I think four have survived.
- The rest are all killed.
- They all died, and they were young.
- They were 18-year-olds.
- And what happened to your best friend?
- My best friend, Paula, stayed behind in Warsaw,
- and when the Germans came to take her family away to the gas
- chamber, to Treblinka, she happened to be in bed.
- I don't know whether she had a headache or she was sick.
- She wasn't feeling well.
- And they couldn't take her, and they shot her right in bed
- because they were afraid of epidemics or whatever.
- She couldn't come with them, so they shot her on the spot.
- She was a wonderful person.
- She was a great pianist.
- She played for us when we had gym classes or everything.
- And it's from her, really--
- we used to sneak into concerts and Chopin.
- They had Chopin competitions.
- We used to sneak into the elevator.
- She was a wonderful person, and she was just
- killed right on the spot.
- That's what I heard.
- Now, what else you wanted?
- Your husband also has a class picture?
- My husband also has a--
- a graduation picture, 1938.
- His gymnasium, his maturity.
- Well, it's a [NON-ENGLISH].
- What do you call bacalaureate.
- Anyway, when you finish gymnasium, you get a degree,
- and then you go on to university.
- Sorry.
- Your husband has a photo--
- My husband has a group photo of his graduating class in 1938
- of all his classmates.
- They were also-- it was a Jewish day school,
- and also, three or four of the boys survived.
- The rest were all killed.
- And the reason we went--
- these were private schools, day schools, and the reason
- we went to these schools was, although there
- were public gymnasiums, too--
- but there were a few, and it was not
- very pleasant to have one or two Jewish students in class.
- And our parents preferred to send us to a school
- where we will have no antisemitic--
- Poland was a very antisemitic country.
- It was semi-fascist.
- You have to be--
- the only country in Europe that had any glimmer of democracy
- was Czechoslovakia.
- They were all--
- Hungary, Romania-- they all had their dictators.
- And Poland also was very antisemitic and very threatening
- to the Jewish community, and there were three million Jews
- there, mostly poor, mostly poor in the small towns and so on.
- And there were some people who were in the labor force.
- The Bund really got their membership
- from the working-class people.
- Were you surprised that the Poles did what they did?
- I was not surprised at all, and I--
- you mean, what, that they did not save enough and that--
- no, not at all, not at all.
- I think the Poles were very antisemitic, even after the war,
- in Kielce.
- Have you heard of Kielce?
- They stoned out the Jews whose apartments they took over.
- There were no too who came back to find a family member.
- They were stoned out.
- No, I'm not.
- I hold it against the Poles.
- See, I don't even want--
- I never went to Poland.
- I would probably go to Treblinka,
- sit down in the daisies, whatever, and not want to leave.
- I would probably catch a stroke.
- But anyway, maybe I should have gone 20 years ago,
- but my husband wouldn't go.
- He wouldn't.
- He said, I'll lick the floor in this country,
- and I wouldn't go back to Poland.
- But he did better than lick the floor.
- But anyway, no, I hold it against--
- my aunt, the one who survived--
- she was blond and blue-eyed.
- She gave away her engagement ring to a German,
- and he let her through.
- She had a diamond engagement ring.
- She worked as a Polish girl--
- she crossed herself.
- She did everything-- in a Polish home where she worked.
- But don't put it on the tape.
- And she worked in a Polish home as a maid, housekeeper.
- And when the ghetto was burning, they
- said, that's good, they are burning our kikes, in Polish--
- I'm translating it-- that's good, they're burning our kikes.
- What can I say?
- So the Poles-- there were some good elements
- there but very few.
- The universities were worse, where
- you would expect intellectuals, and thinkers, and ideologues.
- You couldn't sit together.
- This is room tone again.
- Quiet.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- [? Gail's ?] shooting now.
- So the floor is very bouncy.
- You are a smoker.
- Yeah.
- I can smell it on him.
- That's right.
- Yeah.
- Well, it's OK.
- [? When ?] your hunger's come and gone,
- down a quiet street like this, one car will go by.
- You can smell it.
- And it's the same thing with you.
- Very few people now smoke, actually.
- You feel like you're in part of a shrinking--
- Yeah, but that's-- no, no, it's OK.
- It's OK.
- Yes, I did.
- I used to smoke about three or four cigarettes a day.
- Really?
- Only after meals.
- And when I wrote a letter, I had to have an ashtray set up
- with my cigarettes, and so on.
- And for a while, for a year, I couldn't write letters,
- because I stopped smoking.
- And I didn't get the atmosphere, the set up.
- Well, you left me with a lot over with-- you know what,
- as long as we are alive.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Well, you cannot.
- [BOTH TALKING]
- You know, you just--
- as long as we are alive, we have to--
- memory goes.
- Everything goes.
- And that goes for personal things, and also history, too.
- We go.
- There's nothing that you can think of There's nothing
- that you can resolve, nothing.
- It's all the--
- Just the natural [INAUDIBLE].
- You want to go.
- Don't forget.
- Don't forget.
- Right.
- Actually, we weren't rolling on those takes.
- We got to do the whole thing over again.
- Hmm?
- Have you ever been here?
- Hanover?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Oh.
- Family and friends have a house in [PLACE NAME] actually.
- Oh, really?
- What's their name?
- Maybe I know them.
- Carlton.
- Carlton.
- Carlton.
- I know Carltons.
- [INAUDIBLE] shots.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Ruth Segal
- Date
-
interview:
1999 August 03
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
5 videocassettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Personal Name
- Segal, Ruth.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Firstlight Pictures, a film production company contractor for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Ruth Segal on August 3, 1999 in preparation for the exhibition, "Flight & Rescue." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes of the interview from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibitions Division in August, 1999
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:57:02
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508248
Download & Licensing
- Request Copy
- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit
Contact Us
Also in Oral history interviews of the Flight and Rescue collection
Contains oral history interviews with twenty Holocaust survivors and witnesses recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Flight and Rescue," which opened May 3, 2000. The interviewees discuss their experiences of their journey from Lithuania to Shanghai, China, via Japan
Date: 1999 June-1999 October
Oral history interview with Yukiko Sugihara
Oral History
Oral history interview with Motl Goldberg
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jechil Dobekirer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Zorach Warhaftig
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jan Zwartendyk
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Bluman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Norbert Swislocki
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leo Hanin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Hanni Vogelweid
Oral History
Oral history interview with Benjamin Gelbfish
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alexander Schenker
Oral History
Oral history interview with Victor Erlich
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ernest Heppner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leo Melamed
Oral History
Oral history interview with Moshe Zupnik
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marko Nowogrodzki
Oral History
Oral history interview with Lucille Camhi
Oral History
Oral history interview with Yonia Fain
Oral History
Oral history interview with Meri Nowogrodzki
Oral History