Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2000.372 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0137

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 Fritz Gluckstein
    Transcript
    This is The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Volunteer Collection interview with Fritz Gluckstein conducted
    by Esther Finder on October 5th in the year 2000.
    This interview is part of the museum's project
    to interview Holocaust survivors and witnesses who are also
    volunteers with the Museum.
    This is a follow up interview that
    will focus on Fritz Gluckstein's post-Holocaust experiences.
    In preparation for this interview,
    I listened to the interview conducted
    with the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
    on March 10, 1997.
    I will not ask you to repeat everything
    you said in that interview.
    Instead, I will use this interview as an opportunity
    to follow-up on that interview and focus
    on your post-Holocaust experiences.
    This is tape number 1 side A.
    OK.
    We're back after a brief interruption with a telephone.
    I'd like to start the interview by asking
    you to set the stage for me and describe
    the last few weeks and months of the war
    and what was happening in your life, including telling me
    how old you were at this time.
    [INAUDIBLE] I was born in '27.
    And '27 until '45--
    18.
    Well, I would say the end of the war--
    the beginning of the end was when we could hear the cannon
    fire in the distance.
    You got up in the morning, and then you heard a cannon.
    Went to work and we heard the cannon.
    And it happened that my father and I worked at the same place,
    the cleaning up of the air raids.
    And my father came to me and said, you know what happened?
    The foreman, the overseer if you wish,
    just addressed me, your honor.
    My father was a judge.
    It used to be, in the beginning, it was just Gluckstein.
    Well, then it was probably Herr or Mr. Gluckstein.
    And lo and behold, when the Russians came closer,
    then he remembered, ah, and said, Your Honor.
    And they put us to work to build tank traps.
    And there's a story now.
    How long will it take the Russians
    to go to breach the tank traps?
    Well, exactly 31 minutes.
    Why 31 minutes?
    Well, for 30 minutes, they laugh,
    and they're taking one minute to get through.
    That's exactly what happened by the way.
    Actually, pretty soon you could--
    the shells fell into the city.
    And of course there was no water in the houses or apartments,
    and you had to go out.
    you had to grab the couple of buckets,
    and ran to the nearest pump.
    Berlin at that time still had water pumps on the street.
    And filled up the buckets, and then you ran back.
    And suddenly, whee, and you just hit the ground
    and of course spilled all the water.
    And then I went back, and did it again, and filled up
    the buckets again.
    And if you were lucky, you got the buckets home.
    Otherwise, you can hit the ground
    and get three or four times, but finally you got it home.
    And actually it was quite dangerous.
    I had a very narrow escape standing
    in the entrance to the house, waiting
    for a lull in the fighting to get some water.
    I was standing there with another fellow,
    and suddenly he falls down.
    He was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
    This was, I want to say, about less than a yard.
    It could have been me.
    I've always been very lucky.
    And actually, some street fighting occurred.
    And I remember, it was a group of Russians,
    and I believe Ukrainians in German uniforms.
    And we said to each other, if they
    get caught by the Russians, they won't stay alive.
    Actually, one thing I still remember,
    the last issue of a paper--
    at that time they didn't-- some special issue,
    it was distributed, where Goebbels, and I quote,
    In front of the gates of Berlin, the Russians will meet
    their final defeat.
    And don't fear the Russians.
    They are inferior fighters.
    And this he wrote where he could hear the cannons
    and where the shells came in.
    Well, actually, one of the reasons
    I always say I was lucky, Berlin was attacked
    from two sides, the East--
    over the East came Marshall Zhukov and from the South
    came Marshall Konev.
    And Marshall Konev came in so fast, well,
    actually, I wonder what would happen to us hadn't he
    came in so fast.
    I remember where the Russians came in.
    And of course, first they didn't believe that we were Jews.
    All Jews are gone.
    But we persuaded them there were still a few alive.
    And then, of course, the shelling stopped,
    and we ventured out in the street.
    And actually, what you saw there was--
    as you walk out, there were dead bodies, corpses, all
    along the street.
    And some sites were quite horrible.
    Bodies actually run over by tanks, flattened on the street.
    And you went further and saw the devastation,
    and you realized how lucky you were that the house we stayed
    in-- this was a kind of apartment building with two
    other families--
    only had minor damage.
    If we got hit, we wouldn't be alive.
    Then of course a food shortage.
    However, we were lucky.
    In the house we lived, there was a horse butcher.
    At that time people ate horses.
    And of course there were some--
    I remember, a Russian officer's mount was badly hurt
    and had to be butchered.
    And thanks to the butcher, we had some horse meat.
    Of course, we did not--
    horse meat, you would think-- but, well,
    if you have nothing else, you eat it.
    And actually you can't tell.
    Unless you know it, you wouldn't know it was horse meat.
    And I still remember, my father and I
    ventured out for some reason to try to visit someone.
    I don't exactly recall why we did it.
    And lo and behold, there came a Russian soldier and shouted,
    "Voina kaputt!"
    Meaning the war was over because we had surrendered.
    I still remember distinctly.
    Now, the soldiers, I believe he was in the army,
    the front line soldiers, very decent behaved quite well.
    Well, they had to fight, they had to face death every minute,
    and they behaved OK.
    But later on, the people that brought up the supplies,
    and there came the Kommissar and so on, they did not always
    behave very well, and some plunder.
    But there too, actually lucky again.
    Nothing much happened to us.
    And I must say that the Russian authority at that time
    did their best to prevent plundering and harassment
    of the population.
    I must say that.
    They tried their very best.
    Now, it's all over.
    What do you do?
    I remember at one time, that just wait.
    When the war is over, I will get him, and I will get hurt.
    And just wait what I will do to them.
    Revenge.
    Did we do it?
    No.
    Before I let you continue, I have a few questions
    that I would like with respect to the very end of the war.
    How many Jews were with you at the end of the war?
    Right close by in the same apartment?
    With you when you were working, when the Russians came in.
    Oh.
    I would say-- of course, once the Russians came close,
    we just stopped working, because we couldn't-- no public
    conveyances, and we simply couldn't get to our workplace
    or we just stayed home.
    I would say 20, 30, 40.
    There were groups all over Berlin.
    At that time were mostly mixed marriages.
    Most of the other Jews either had been deported or--
    well, some were in hiding.
    But I would say groups varied.
    What happened, sometimes 50, then they were taken away--
    10 taken away to another place and so.
    That's where I met my father.
    I used to work in one group and my father another.
    And one day I see a group coming,
    my father was among the group.
    And from there on, we worked together--
    it was just by chance in the same group.
    But there were about 30, 40 or so.
    We did various things, cleaning up.
    I remember the last job was cleaning up--
    it was a cold storage house and apartment houses
    or whatever had to be done.
    Or they put us to work to build those Panzer tank traps.
    You mentioned that you were living in a house, a building.
    Can you describe your living conditions
    at the end of the war?
    Yes.
    We had been bombed out twice.
    And, of course, when we were bombed out, we have to--
    the second time were bombed out--
    we stayed actually at the Jewish hospital.
    And then we found some kind of apartment--
    meaning an apartment that we shared with two other families.
    I remember, there were my parents, I, and two couples--
    two tailors.
    Well, at that time we all lived in one apartment.
    And I still remember, at that time you don't have bed sheets.
    You just put a blanket on a bed, and there you stayed.
    Usually, pretty often, you didn't
    even undress because of alarms or shelling or something.
    But we were fortunate too that the house wasn't hit.
    It was an apartment-- an older apartment house.
    And there we lived.
    You mentioned shelling.
    Do you remember the birthday present
    that the Russians gave to Hitler in April of 1940?
    Actually, I would say the entire--
    let's speak about the birthday present.
    It's getting worse and worse.
    I wouldn't even say it started there.
    It ended.
    Shelling, bombing, everything else.
    And then, of course, you had small arms fire heard too.
    But of course some say, thank goodness
    the Russians took Berlin.
    Had the Americans Berlin, they probably
    would have pulled back the troops, no street fighting,
    and would have completely bombed Berlin into submission.
    When did you learn about Hitler's death?
    Actually, I didn't learn details.
    We actually didn't learn for quite some time.
    We know the shelling stopped and the Russians were there.
    And we were so busy trying to get something to eat,
    and board up the windows, and so on, we really didn't--
    there were no papers.
    We had a radio.
    When we had electricity, we heard a little bit
    on shortwave.
    But actually, the death of Hitler, I don't recall.
    Eventually, it came-- we realized it.
    But was there a consequence?
    We weren't quite sure.
    We didn't even know that the government probably
    had left Berlin.
    I don't recall exactly the exact time
    when we learned about Hitler.
    We learned about the capitulation.
    It actually was, if I recall, done first in the West .
    And then it was done.
    Yes.
    Part of the Germany army capitulated
    to the Western powers and part of the Russians,
    and then they came over to Berlin in order
    to have them all together.
    I recall that.
    What was the state of your health at the end of the war?
    I would say quite good.
    Yes.
    there was never much to eat, and in fact we spent very often--
    while working, I remember particularly
    the older men designed menus what they would
    eat when the war was over.
    Of course, we didn't go--
    what did we know about menus.
    It was OK.
    But there too I was fortunate that particularly my aunt,
    my mother's sister, did her very best to give us some food.
    I still remember when they met her on the street.
    Of course they couldn't go to her apartment.
    And she gave me a parcel.
    And lo and behold, who came around the corner?
    One of the biggest Nazi women in the district, and said,
    ah, good evening Mrs. So-and-so.
    He's helping me carrying some stuff.
    We had to do this.
    But it was very--
    well, let's say I was hungry, but not starved.
    Other people had it much worse.
    I can't-- really can't complain.
    It was all right.
    Did you have much contact regularly
    during the war with your relatives that were not Jewish?
    At the end of the war, no.
    But actually, I remember I would say too,
    at the end of the war when the Russian bombardment started,
    actually there was no contact whatsoever.
    Before that, yes, to a certain degree, particularly
    with my aunt.
    In fact, whatever she could give us, she gave us,
    I'm quite sure.
    But I would say we never lost contact.
    You talked about the invasion of the Russians,
    but I'd like to ask you what were your thoughts, what
    was going through your head, given the situation that you
    had been in during the war, what was
    this experience like for you?
    So actually I would say you were almost numb.
    You were concerned would you survive and not get hit
    by a shell.
    And of course you hoped too that you
    don't get some fanatic Nazis would
    come after us of course, which some instances happened
    in the North of Berlin.
    But thanks to Marshall Konev coming in so far to the South,
    nothing happened to us.
    And perhaps if we ever think about it,
    would the Russians recognize us as Jews?
    Actually, we didn't think about it.
    When they came, what are you doing here?
    Look, a young fellow, sitting here--
    is he a deserter?
    What is he doing here?
    Well, we explained to them.
    But thinking back, was there a sudden sigh of relief?
    No.
    It slowly dawned on us, you know, now it is over.
    We are still in one piece.
    Wonderful.
    Thank God.
    When you realized that it was over and you were in one piece,
    what steps did you take to start a new life again?
    Well, the beginning, actually, you
    were busy cleaning up in the neighborhood.
    Rubble everywhere.
    In fact, you couldn't even enter the house.
    That was number one.
    And then, of course, you tried to have better living
    conditions and more room.
    It was quite crowded in that apartment actually.
    But what did you do?
    At the beginning there was no public transportation.
    And again, the food situation.
    Well, actually, we tried to go toward the suburbs--
    less devastation in the suburbs--
    to find something there.
    In fact, we found something.
    Now, of course, at that time there was actually a change,
    a condition change, when the Americans,
    the British, and French arrived.
    We took a hand to begin once-- you had to walk an awful lot.
    Actually, we walked.
    Occasionally, we jumped in a truck.
    Somebody came by, go a direction,
    and we went to the suburbs.
    They found something.
    Actually, it was a house.
    It may have belonged to a former Nazi.
    And well, we moved in there and moved some of our stuff.
    There wasn't much left.
    There was no furniture actually.
    The only furniture we had left was our beds
    and all the other stuff.
    We moved the beds, I remember, and the home was furnished.
    And it was the suburbs.
    And we had a garden, which was very important.
    Because, what did you do for food?
    Well, we grew tomatoes, and potatoes, and beans
    right in the front yard and the backyard.
    We had to do it for food.
    And I remember it was my mother and I went to another suburb
    to get some apples and fruit.
    And what did we do?
    The bridge across a canal had been demolished,
    and we walked across the canal on a big sewer pipe.
    Thinking of it, what was in our mind?
    We could have fallen, but we walked right across.
    Food was very important.
    Actually, we moved to that house.
    I don't exactly know why this particular house.
    But my father in some some way-- probably we found it empty.
    And at that time, the Russians were still out there
    in that suburb, and looking how to get in there.
    Now, the Americans came in.
    And lo and behold, pretty soon, they
    started out to requisition some of the houses
    for the military staff.
    And I still remember, we were there.
    Came the American Jeep, stopped at almost every other house.
    I saw a young man, a young officer, sitting in the--
    looking in the house, stopped, went inside, probably
    requisitioned.
    And the people who lived had to leave.
    Lo and behold, I went out there and I tried to explain.
    My English, well, it was passable.
    I tried to explain I'm Jewish.
    And he said, number one, you didn't have to talk English--
    fluent German.
    Probably [INAUDIBLE] and he said,
    I see you looking at that--
    I wouldn't worry.
    I don't think I'll need your house.
    And we could stay.
    And again and again food.
    Actually, in the beginning, the Russians,
    before the Americans came, tried their very best.
    I remember what they did.
    At the cemeteries they had greenhouses.
    Well, they said, no more flowers.
    Now we will grow tomatoes and vegetables.
    And those quite good.
    Then the Western powers came and they took turns.
    Actually the Americans and the Russians
    took turns supplying food for Berlin.
    One month the Russians, meaning usually
    dark bread and potatoes.
    And then one month the American, that meant white bread.
    It was quite something-- white bread was a delicacy.
    In fact Jews didn't get it at all.
    But I still remember, after the end of the month, people said,
    enough of the white breath.
    They look forward to the dark bread of the Russians.
    It worked fairly well.
    They tried.
    I think it worked out OK.
    Organization was quite good.
    You said the Jews didn't get white bread at all.
    No.
    This is after the war.
    During the war you see ration cards.
    Jews essentially got no white bread.
    But after the war they got white bread.
    Oh, yes.
    I just wanted to clarify.
    Yes.
    It was quite-- and then the first packages,
    the first food arrived, I remember, with the Joint.
    And I remember going to the place which
    distributed the food, and someone goofed very badly.
    What had happened, someone got the idea
    that the food was only for the Jews
    part of the mixed marriage.
    The non-Jewish part wouldn't get it.
    Well, I believe at lasted a day and half.
    The person who had that brilliant idea
    was never heard of again.
    (CHUCKLES) No, I must say they really--
    actually, there was trouble too, since I'm right here,
    later on clothing came, and for some reason
    you see many people from the East, refugees,
    they were housed in the camps.
    The closest was one in Duppel.
    [INAUDIBLE] It was exhibit at the Holocaust Museum,
    and they stayed there.
    In order to keep them busy, some of the people
    were asked to help out with distribution.
    Some of them were really misbehaved.
    Well, they had, you were sitting here all the time,
    we're in camps, and made remarks--
    well, you married non-Jews, and so on, and actually
    tried to revolt from it.
    That didn't last very long either.
    I must say anyone who did that--
    not everyone did, but some did it--
    they were immediately revealed.
    They were very careful and very sensitive
    at the time that, the Joint.
    I must say that.
    By the way it wasn't--
    I said good luck.
    It was lucky we wound up in one of the Western sectors.
    If you wound up in the Russian sector
    it was much more difficult to emigrate.
    They didn't let you out.
    And the say it took a year or two years longer
    for those living in the East sector
    to even be considered for emigration.
    Good luck again.
    I'd like to ask you, when did you
    come to realize the extent of the genocide during the war?
    We knew that people were deported--
    or as we called it evakuiert.
    Evacuated.
    In fact, we expected it too.
    We already had rucksacks and suitcases
    ready in case that would happen.
    We knew if you were sent--
    I remember Litzmannstadt.
    In fact, we had some friends--
    Lódz it used to be.
    We actually sent postcards and got postcards back.
    And we actually send food packages to Lódz,
    even to Theresienstadt.
    We knew something was happening.
    Some letters-- when that card came back no longer
    there or something.
    But well-- we are not fully aware of what
    actually happened.
    We knew something was happening.
    But the full what happened in Auschwitz, the gas
    chambers and so on, the death marches,
    we didn't find out until--
    well, after the war, finally we realized what was happening.
    But it did not-- suddenly, you realized.
    We suspected something.
    And some people knew about it.
    Others didn't.
    Then, of course, you heard rumors.
    All you can say, there was no sudden awakening
    to the fact what had happened.
    Soon we learned about it, and then the pieces fit together.
    In fact, what happened too, at that time
    there was a transport coming back from Theresienstadt
    with survivors.
    And I remember going to the station,
    or what was left of the station, in order to welcome it.
    Because they came by train and then
    were brought actually to the Jewish hospital.
    And I still see the little old lady getting out of the train
    and asking me-- tell me, are there
    cabs in front of the station?
    I said, no.
    They didn't go by cab to the hospital.
    They had to be helped on a truck to get there.
    We have to pause so I can change the tape.
    Just one moment.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum Volunteer Collection interview
    with Fritz Gluckstein.
    This is tape number 2 side A. And you
    had been telling me about people who
    had survived who had come home.
    You were in the process of telling me how you slowly
    learned about the genocide.
    I wanted to ask you about your Jewish side of your family,
    your father's family.
    What happened to your Jewish relatives during the war?
    There was only one close relative,
    my father's first cousin.
    He went immigrated to Shanghai.
    His mother, my father's aunt, died in an old people's home,
    I would say, before the end of the war.
    And there were some very distant relatives.
    One couple, I remember, the Lippman's had a little boy.
    And they decided to send the little boy to England.
    He was two years old.
    Imagine sending a two-year-old little boy boy to England.
    Well, he survived.
    I lost contact with him, but the parents
    perished-- both perished.
    And some other distant relatives died before the end of the war.
    When you said you were slowly learning about the genocide,
    how did you learn?
    Did you learn through the media or through word of mouth?
    Or was there some other method?
    Both.
    Word of mouth from people who actually came back and then
    the media--
    the public media.
    And then, of course, the Jewish congregation was established.
    Again, my father took a major part in it.
    And in fact it would come slowly back.
    We heard about it and we pieced things together
    and realized what has happened.
    In fact this was a major point the re-establishment
    of the Jewish congregation.
    People realized the congregations in Germany
    were quite different from here.
    There was one congregation, and we had the conservative part.
    We had the liberal part, which stands between reform
    and conservative.
    And we also had reform.
    Only the ultra orthodox, while they were still part
    of the so-called congregation, they kept--
    that's right.
    And it was established again.
    Well, I believed-- it reminds me of a young rabbi--
    he wasn't quite the rabbi--
    he hadn't finished his study when he was a student.
    And of course they abolished the rabbinical college,
    but he took over after the war.
    And I remember there was something he didn't like.
    He got up to the pulpit, I see, and he says well, the President
    and Vice President, and actually it
    was a council of Representatives the Jewish congregation,
    he said, he had a lack of responsibility.
    And I remember my father called him in and said,
    you can differ with us, and you can voice a different opinion,
    but never will you say that we and my colleagues
    lack responsibility.
    I remember this.
    I remember what happen.
    I don't know what happened to him,
    His services started and actually were quite attended
    by some usually [INAUDIBLE].
    And then came the time to go back to school again.
    There were special courses.
    It was very important for us.
    And actually it was in paper and even radio--
    there's going to be a meeting to set up
    special course for all those for some reason had
    to interrupt their education.
    And they start, I remember, with a meeting,
    and yes, they're found.
    They were for Jewish students and German students
    who had finished the study or had taken the Abitur.
    That's your final examination in high school there.
    They passed a so-called emergency Abiturjahr.
    And after a certain date, that was no longer recognized--
    that if you took this after a certain date, it's void.
    And you have to go back to school.
    I remember the first time, the first few days,
    one side of the room or the hall were
    the student and the other side the German students.
    Well.
    But after a while, the Germans realized
    the Jews are quite ordinary people--
    not at all what they told us they were.
    And we realized that not all Germans are SS or Gestapo.
    And we got along quite well.
    Young people thus had to serve there.
    And they had no--
    frankly, they were not even anti-Semitic.
    And there was one instance, one of the students,
    he was actually from a mixed marriage
    and was raised Catholic.
    I remember, on one day, it was Winter, and he comes to school,
    and as a scarf he had a tallit.
    And you can imagine, it was highly offensive.
    What are you going to do about it?
    Someone offered in, well, if you do this, I'll get you a scarf.
    Nothing doing.
    Well, he said, what are we going to do?
    Start--
    And I said, wait a minute.
    I had an idea.
    I knew he was Catholic and that once or twice a week a priest
    came to conduct services.
    Let's talk to the priest.
    Well, the priest told him.
    That was it.
    And tallit no longer appeared.
    I remember distinctly.
    And then of course the teachers.
    What the Nazi teachers?
    It was quite difficult to find a teacher.
    And it happened at the time some teacher came, and after a week
    or so he disappeared.
    Because you found out that the good man was an active Nazi.
    Then the opposite too.
    For instance, history was quite a very sensitive subject
    to get a history teacher.
    There they got a teacher and must give his name.
    His name was Birkler.
    He did not go long.
    I guess they put him along to a little in the boondocks,
    and he did not join the party, and he really did the very best
    to oppose immediately.
    And they got him in, and he was our history teacher.
    There were still teachers who did not go along,
    I remember distinctly.
    I remember the music teacher.
    And I remember-- we didn't know too much about him.
    But lo and behold here was a test.
    And one of our Jewish students got a poor grade
    and said, wait a minute.
    Now, I'm going to tell that the guy was a Nazi
    and did so and so and so.
    And we said, other Jews, you are not.
    You should have done it before.
    Not now after he gave you a bad grade.
    That is out.
    He was a music teacher.
    Not a great Nazi, but he was a Nazi.
    But he stayed there.
    And well, I mentioned something else what
    happened with the studying.
    Then came the time when there was quite--
    I still remember distinctly-- a very, very tough winter.
    Well, it was no heat, little electricity.
    We rationed electricity.
    You actually had to go to the meter and see,
    well, I may use so much kilowatts,
    then I have to shut it off or something.
    Or suddenly you sitting there and the light went out.
    Silly story.
    Whether it really happened, I don't know.
    People sit, have a party and someone had nice cake, probably
    sent from the United State.
    Lo and behold, one piece left.
    I can eat the last piece.
    Light went out.
    Suddenly, all of us screamed.
    And now there are two versions--
    one version is everybody grabbed with a hand and one
    with a fork, and the other version
    is everybody grabbed with a fork and one with their bare head.
    But you never know what happened.
    But it was unbelievably cold.
    I remember and I went to bed fully clothed in an overcoat.
    We had gotten some potatoes.
    The potatoes were out in a kind of veranda.
    They froze.
    But it was no plumbing now.
    People don't realize what that means
    if you have no plumbing-- no sanitary facilities.
    Well, there you could see.
    It was wintertime.
    It was bad.
    Women, very nice in fur coat.
    There's little packages.
    You can't imagine what they contained.
    We couldn't use the toilet.
    We were-- we went furtively through either--
    well, on someone's lawn, or went to the park, or even the side,
    which in wintertime there was snow.
    But you can imagine when the that set in what happened.
    It wasn't funny particularly.
    Look, if you lived out we lived with a yard at least.
    But what did you do if you have an apartment?
    Well, you had to empty the stuff someplace.
    You emptied it in places you shouldn't have.
    It was quite a bit.
    And now what to do?
    I had to study school.
    No heat and no light.
    Well, I picked up my books, went to the subway,
    and spent the evening driving in the subway across Berlin.
    Let's take a quick pause.
    We have a minor problem here.
    We are back now after a minor break.
    Would you please continue what you were telling me
    about the subway.
    I took my books and I studied in the subway,
    going cross-cross Berlin.
    Only had to watch out at the end of a line that you got off.
    But otherwise, I would say, more to three or four days a week,
    every evening, 4, 5, 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock
    I was sitting in the subway.
    Difficult to write at times if you had to do something,
    but it worked.
    Then, of course, came the first care packages.
    And the first the care packages were actually care rations.
    Actually, it was a big package which
    contained one day provisions for four or five men.
    Everything from bread and usually crackers,
    and coffee, and cans, and napkins,
    and whatever-- your toilet paper everything.
    And something else-- cigarettes.
    Now, cigarettes had become the currency.
    And what did you do?
    You got a package and you never knew what brand it was,
    because that was important.
    I still remember, to this day, the value.
    On top with Camel, followed by Lucky Strike
    and there was one brand--
    I forget-- Chesterton?
    Chesterfield.
    Chesterfield.
    Then came Pall Mall.
    Then came Phillip Morris.
    Then came Old Gold.
    And the bottom was Raleigh.
    You never knew what you had.
    Of course, we had some difficulties.
    My father at the time was reinstated.
    And we used to get some food.
    But my father mustn't know about it, you see?
    We kept it all from him.
    I think he knew, but we tried not
    to embarrass him and tell him.
    But cigarettes, it was absolutely everything.
    And remember, at the time, it was--
    interest in music started again--
    concerts and opera.
    And I remember, at that time, I took the first.
    Sundays, they sold tickets for the following week.
    And you had to stand in line to get the cheaper tickets.
    And I took Sunday, the first train running again
    at least to center of Berlin, and then walked
    to the opera house.
    It was a temporary quarters in the theater,
    and you stood in line for the tickets.
    And even there one time, with a ticket, a cigarette.
    I didn't smoke, but I had cigarettes.
    And we bartered cigarettes for tickets.
    We went to a store or something-- don't have any!
    You want a cigarette?
    Ah.
    I'll come back to this later, to the cigarettes as a currency.
    But the care packages were wonderful.
    And I remember, the first time we had instant coffee.
    Never had instant coffee before.
    It was in a little can, you open it up.
    And of course, what you usually did with coffee,
    you used it once and then kept the ground
    for a second and third time.
    But lo and behold, there wasn't left over.
    And I still remember what happened--
    instant.
    At that time too, I remembered coffee, a GI named Rosenberg,
    he visited us and brought as a present a pound of coffee.
    I remember it distinctly.
    It was quite something.
    And I remember at that time other packages
    came on the regular.
    The army, after they have used up all the army
    care packages then came packages of actually care packages
    and such, that had Crisco and various foods there.
    What we did, we ate what with spread on bread?
    You ever try it?
    Not very good, but we did it.
    And we also had, it was a food package.
    And there was also blanket packages.
    And what usually happened, you got a little note in the mail--
    a are package has been purchased for you by so-and-so,
    and would you please pick it up.
    And I remember, once you went there-- we
    didn't know what it was-- and we got two or three blanket
    packages.
    Well, very nice, but food would have been more welcome.
    We come back, and the mail had come, and lo and behold,
    there were two or three food packages.
    And we went back and got the real packages.
    Real-- well, the food package.
    And at that time the chaplain center opened.
    There were two chaplains, army chaplains in Berlin.
    At the time, one was Rabbi Zhukov,
    a conservative from Boston, and Rabbi Friedman, who
    is still alive, Denver.
    What they do, every Friday night we
    went there to the [INAUDIBLE] and for the first time gefilte
    fish.
    That was quite something.
    We had known it too, but what we had known, the real gefilte
    fish, you actually had a pike, and then you
    filled that fish with pike--
    this what we have here, we'd never seen.
    It was quite something.
    And there was a service.
    And also the chaplain regularly got letters
    from the United States.
    Can you find out what happened to my cousin so-and-so?
    Last seen here.
    Or what happened to our friend so-and-so?
    And there the rabbi was sitting there.
    Here is a letter addressed to so-and-so.
    Anybody?
    No.
    Well, for instance, I said, I go to school
    and the address given is close by.
    I will stop in Bavaria, there where
    the house is still standing.
    Well, someone there said, yes, I know.
    I will take the letter.
    I will tell them that the letter is there.
    Lo and behold, one night, our name was called.
    And we got two letters.
    One for very good friends, the Aarons in Pasadena,
    and then a letter for Ginzberg, Louis
    Ginzberg the Talmud scholar.
    His wife was the sister of my father's best friend.
    And they too asked us, what have you--
    you know what happened to them.
    Well, we got their letters, we wrote them,
    and then they sent off packages directly I remember.
    But many times-- well, what do you
    know about Cohens or the Davies or the Friedlanders or so.
    Well, we'll take a look.
    And we went to the place, and either the building
    had been destroyed or nobody knew about them.
    Or some neighbor said, yes, he had been deported or so.
    And what happened, there was a curfew.
    Everyone had to be home at a certain time,
    at 8 or 0 o'clock.
    But the services in the chaplain center lasted long.
    Well, what happened?
    An army truck came afterwards and we all
    went in the army truck.
    And the army truck went around to the various addresses
    and dropped us off.
    And the driver and his assistant, he
    waited until we were inside so that we are not
    picked up by a patrol.
    It was tough at the time.
    And sometimes we went to the opera and came back late.
    I had a nightstick just in case something happened.
    There were some elements who tried to rob people.
    But well, actually, nothing happened to me.
    And at that time we had the first seder too.
    A seder in the courthouse in Schulenburg.
    In fact it was the same place, the same quarter
    from which Kennedy went, Ich--
    I am a Berliner.
    There was quite-- the British, American,
    and French commandant came.
    The Russian didn't come when we had been our first seder.
    It was quite something.
    There was something else--
    there was an anecdote.
    Well, of course, people came back and somebody--
    one more.
    It's a number of restaurants of teahouses in London.
    I think they're still there.
    And the host Gluckstein.
    Well, why don't you go over there, to London?
    You are a poor cousin there who survived.
    And you want some handouts.
    Even if you're not related, you can
    be absolutely sure they will give you something,
    because it would be bad for business
    if somebody would find out that the Gluckstein teahouses--
    I guess t 4 or 5 or 6 are still there in London--
    don't help one of their cousins.
    No, they are not relatives.
    Because I know for sure that the name Gluckstein,
    actually none of them are relatives.
    My grandfather came from Russia and took the name.
    Well, I didn't know it.
    But still, unfortunately, I might as well mention here,
    some people came back and claimed
    to have had property which they didn't really have.
    The said that-- hoped that the records had burned.
    Well, nobody could prove it--
    Say, come and look here, that was my house.
    But people came back, and my father at that time
    was reinstated, and he was involved in this.
    It was embarrassing, of course.
    They came and said, look, there's my house,
    and they have found the records.
    Well, you lived there, but it wasn't your house.
    But that was on;y far and inbetween.
    Otherwise, it didn't happen.
    And actually, my father was invited
    to visit the Nuremberg Trial for a couple of days.
    It was a very interesting [INAUDIBLE]..
    Can you elaborate on the Nuremberg Trails.
    Well, actually, some of the Jewish jurists
    were given the opportunity to go there.
    There was a special train, interzone train,
    and they took the train and spent some time there.
    Just observers-- just to see how things are going on.
    Had you been following the preparations for the trial
    and then the actual trials themselves?
    Only to a limited degree.
    Yes, I know what's going on, read occasionally.
    But at the time, I was busy with school.
    Don't forget you had to go back to school, and it wasn't--
    going back to school after there was still quite difficult.
    And we knew what would happen.
    In fact, I had the opportunity-- right now,
    things come back to me--
    to do some translations at the Nuremberg Trial.
    Nobody knew what was going on.
    But not that I followed it every day.
    I had two questions for you.
    My first one was, after the war was over,
    and the Soviets had come, and everything was opened up,
    did you ever go back to your home from before the war?
    Not directly.
    We had some friends, non-Jewish friends that actually
    lived close to where we lived.
    But you didn't go back.
    That was over.
    In fact, I can tell you, the last time I
    went there two years ago, and I took Marin.
    I wanted to see what happened in Berlin where I came from.
    And I went back there and went to the court there.
    That was the last time.
    And I was so surprised how small it
    was, how narrow everything was.
    I had forgotten.
    No, I didn't go back there.
    The neighborhood, yes.
    But not with the purpose of going back to the old home, no.
    You were in your late teens when the war was over.
    Did you have any kind of social life and did you have friends?
    Yes, I had friends.
    Actually friends still-- high school friends.
    But they emigrated too.
    The are now here in the States--
    Minneapolis, Jersey, California.
    I had some friends.
    Actually, social life, yes.
    But primarily with Jewish friends.
    Made some new friends at school.
    Even went for dance class.
    Didn't do any good.
    [LAUGHING]
    But yes, I had some social life.
    But still it took time to--
    we lived in the suburbs.
    The school, the special courses, were the suburbs
    on the other side of town.
    And it took a long time to get there.
    And then, of course, studying, and then
    you still had to scrounge for food.
    And social life slowly started--
    movies.
    Actually, the only thing, I became a complete opera nut.
    But this was, yes, some social life.
    But then the friends left one after another.
    And yes.
    When you started studying again, and you became a student again
    after the war, what goals or plans
    did you have for yourself for your future?
    Actually, I planned to leave Germany,
    because it was quite clear--
    my father, he encouraged me to go.
    He told me, if I were 10 years younger, I would go with you.
    But as a lawyer--
    over there, law is based on the old English law,
    and here Germany is based on Roman law.
    The philosophy is different, and there are only so
    many spots for consultants of international law
    in the States.
    I expected to emigrate.
    But on the other hand, you didn't want to sit around.
    You wanted to continue studying, complete your education,
    regardless of whether you would leave
    or whether you would go on to University there.
    It was quite important.
    But what would happen--
    well, one thing.
    I knew my father told me, I wish you would not become a lawyer.
    I was raised by a lawyer.
    Nothing or anything is wrong with lawyers.
    But he said, look, I wish you would take a profession that
    is not limited to one country.
    Look what happened to me.
    We're going to pause so I can change tapes.
    Mission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with Fritz Gluckstein.
    This is tape two, side A. And you
    were telling me that your father told you not to study law.
    Did you have any idea at that time
    what you did want to study?
    I would say I always had a bent for science.
    That special course for the Abiturium
    there were two tracks, one--
    languages.
    They had a second language--
    French.
    And the other was mathematics and science.
    And I, of course, took the mathematics, science.
    I [? obviously-- ?] towards the medical science, particularly.
    And in regard to my intentions to immigrate,
    of course I thought about it, and I felt that I did not--
    didn't feel it my duty to rebuild Germany.
    But of course, I gave it some thought,
    and one of my father's colleague and judge
    had left before the war.
    And he worked at a [? mill, at a ?] factory,
    and he came back after the war.
    So once he got his [INAUDIBLE] he left his fiancee
    and he married soon after he came back.
    He didn't even take out the first papers.
    For him, the United States was only a stopgap,
    and he came back.
    And I asked him if I should go--
    or not and he said look, you go.
    What I did is something completely different.
    I'm older and I had a special bond here.
    I came back.
    But this-- and I quote--
    you will thank your creator that you took the step.
    You went to the United States.
    And this actually helped me a lot.
    But actually, decision wasn't too difficult. Yes,
    I maybe had some friends over here--
    maybe they would move there, but it turned out differently.
    Now, I decided to--
    just finished up for some reason,
    right after the Abiturium, pretty soon afterwards, I left.
    Frankly, I might have left even before the Abiturium,
    but it just happened to be it took
    some time with immigration.
    And shortly after I did Abiturium,
    then the first concrete steps for immigration was taken.
    Did you ever consider at all going to Palestine?
    No.
    And perhaps I can tell you one of my very good friends, Bill
    [? Freight, ?] he survived to--
    actually, he did.
    He survived.
    And after the war, he went to Israel, Palestine.
    And he came back, actually, and we discussed it.
    I was always interested in Israel, Palestine,
    but actually never intended to go there--
    visit or something.
    And at that time, of course, it was--
    look what happened at the time-- the added difficulty,
    and Jews tried to get in there.
    The British-- it was quite an uproar.
    It was thought about it, but I mostly wanted to say no.
    I considered it, but I [INAUDIBLE]..
    We tried to immigrate to the United States,
    actually before the war.
    But the affidavit-- but it was difficult [INAUDIBLE]
    an affidavit.
    Finally got one from a distant relative.
    And well, by the time we had it and had to wait for a quarter,
    and by the time the quarter came,
    the war were there [INAUDIBLE].
    Tell me about the process of coming to this country.
    Yes, of course, I was thinking about immigration
    and trying to sign up by the register
    or whatever had to be done.
    And lo and behold, there came the day
    I had to appear at the consulate.
    And they questioned me, and we were
    given a physical examination.
    And then, they give us a general question.
    I still remember distinctly, when two or three people
    sitting there, one doing the interview.
    And now, tell me about what happened in the time.
    And what came up that I worked some time--
    worked some few weeks at Eichmann's headquarter.
    [INAUDIBLE] moment-- "Hmm?
    Eichmann's headquarter, just a moment.
    Would you please be good enough to wait outside
    for a few minutes?"
    And after 15 minutes, I come back.
    And instead of three, there were six people there
    and another guy was there.
    Said, "Now, please tell me," and asked
    me to describe the various details, the rooms,
    and everything else, what was going on.
    I remember distinctly.
    And for a have an hour, they questioned me
    about minutia of the headquarters.
    They said, well, thank you very much.
    It must be one of the SS or whoever,
    I don't know who it was.
    But they were very interested.
    Maybe they compared what I had to say with others.
    And lo and behold, I got my visa.
    Actually, there was one consul, he has a reputation,
    was very antisemitic.
    But the consul here was very nice, Sullivan.
    Wished me good luck.
    And lo and behold, I got the visa.
    And then, of course, they had to get us from Berlin to the boat.
    Don't forget it, they had to go through East Germany.
    The put us, at first, one night in a camp in Berlin.
    And next morning, on a train to Bremen.
    And there were Jews and some citizens.
    They were Germans who had been born--
    their parents lived here and they
    were born in the United States.
    They probably would have been two or three years old
    when their parents came back to Germany.
    Those were still American citizens.
    I still remember, they were on there too.
    And we come to Bremen.
    And there was a kind of staging area,
    a camp to wait for a boat.
    Every year, I would say, every other week or so,
    one of the Liberty ships came and ferried the people.
    And I member sitting in the camp in Bremen.
    Was something strange too, I remember.
    They had kind of guards or--
    what they were guarding, it wasn't quite clear,
    if they guard us or what.
    And those fellows were not Jewish.
    I think they were refugees or something from Poland or so.
    And some were not--
    certainly not philosemitic, very antisemitic.
    I remember this distinctly.
    And I remember that I took time--
    not much to do.
    I took English lessons.
    And of course, some people, and I don't forget it, "Oh,
    we don't want the English lessons.
    We learn in the countries-- in the country."
    They were the ones who when they came here
    were completely helpless.
    Couldn't even ask for the restroom.
    Then something else happened.
    Shortly before we embarked somebody
    said, "Ladies and gentlemen, please remember, the moment
    you set foot on the boat, a cigarette is only in cigarette.
    It has no monetary value.
    Please, don't forget that."
    And I remember getting on the boat.
    And it was a very stormy voyage, I remember.
    It was-- we were fortunate--
    it was a troop ship, a Liberty ship, a Marine Flasher.
    Actually, we were lucky.
    Normally, there were four bunks.
    We only had two.
    But the food was very good.
    I tell you, it was magnificent.
    And the first time I tasted ginger ale.
    It was like--
    And they showed us some films on the--
    through the voyage.
    Well, I only understood half of it.
    I still remember what it was.
    One was Gentleman's Agreement with Gregory Peck.
    But I got the idea, but of course, [INAUDIBLE]..
    And then to New York.
    I think it took 10 days or so.
    It was slow.
    But in the middle of a night, arriving, about 2:00.
    And we had to wait till next morning.
    And I still see, I guess it was Riverside Drive, the cars going
    at night and lights.
    The next morning we came into customs.
    Actually, not very nice.
    One guy was harassing me for some reason,
    but then the supervisor came at said now, that's enough,
    let him go.
    I remember then, we all--
    it's very clear to me--
    Hotel Marseilles.
    And then, of course, came the--
    we had to be placed.
    At that time, the various family services
    throughout the United States took so-and-so
    many every month.
    And actually, I might have had some friends here,
    might have to come or go to Pasadena.
    But had I gone there, they would have taken more or less--
    would have been obliged to take care of me and so on.
    I said, no, I'd rather do it on my own.
    Anyhow, I appeared one morning for an interview.
    And the question came, well, right now
    there are two places--
    Detroit or St. Paul.
    Well, it was St. Paul.
    I still take some time to when actually I got--
    when to discover New York.
    At that time, a nickel a subway ride, $0.40,
    maybe $0.50 a haircut.
    And something surprised me.
    Next to the mailboxes, these stacked packages.
    And I said, "Well, what's going to happen to the packages?"
    "Well, they just put them there."
    "Won't they be stolen?
    "No, not so much."
    "Why?
    "Risk a federal rap for taking a package."
    They stayed there.
    At night, I remember, took a long movie.
    I came out of 1 or 2 o'clock.
    It's still there.
    Automat restaurant, I went in there.
    And then I actually walked back.
    Nothing happened.
    And what-- and I was grateful to my teachers
    that I learned some English.
    It wasn't perfect, but it was serviceable.
    At least I could find my way around.
    When did you come to the United States?
    I came here--
    I arrived on January 30th, 1948.
    I happen to remember this.
    In fact, I remember too, with a friend, who took me
    to the Metropolitan Opera--
    a friend of friends, a musician, who took me
    to the Metropolitan Opera.
    I still remember what was played and who was singing.
    I have a memory for that.
    And then there was a second cousin,
    who one time had to give an affidavit.
    With a lawyer in Connecticut, he came in.
    I remember, Sunday, and it was snowing, and he picked me up.
    And he looked at me, "What, no rubber boots?
    No rubber boots?"
    First thing, stopped right in a place,
    "A pair of rubbers for this young man."
    I remember distinctly.
    And then he took me to a smorgasbord.
    And I didn't realize this, of course the smorgasbord was just
    the appetizers and the real steak came afterwards.
    I guess the same night, we went to the opera.
    Anyhow, it was quite something.
    In fact, we went to Mount Sinai Hospital.
    I had some sinus before I left German, had some sinus surgery
    that was acting up again.
    And I went to see the famous--
    actually grand to me, Mount Sinai Hospital.
    When I came today, they put me on a train.
    It was a Trailblazer from Pennsylvania station
    to Chicago.
    I remember it distinctly.
    Sit up, it was quite a trip.
    And in Chicago, for some reason, the train was late.
    I missed my connection to St. Paul.
    There was one train in the morning and one train
    and at night.
    And I remember we missed the train.
    But I went to traveler's aid.
    And I left my luggage there.
    And he said, well, I'll have to see something of Chicago.
    Well, he said, "Listen, listen up.
    You go out.
    You take a bus downtown.
    Do not walk in rough neighborhood here.
    You might lose your topcoat."
    But anyhow, I took a bus downtown.
    And went to the art gallery.
    It had two lions on each end.
    And I spent most of the day at the art gallery.
    And then came-- took the bus back to the station.
    And then I remember we took the evening Zephyr
    to St. Paul, the Twin Cities.
    And there I was greeted by Bill Hoffman.
    He was a social worker at the St. Paul Family Service.
    And he put me to a hotel.
    Actually, there was another refugee who had come,
    and we were together.
    And we stayed there for a few days.
    And then another interview.
    I had to take a test, putting round thing
    into round hole, then square.
    Anyhow, and then they found a family--
    actually a room with a family in St. Paul.
    And actually, I was fortunate.
    I had some recommendation from Ginsberg.
    He had many, many of his [INAUDIBLE] rabbis.
    And there was one Rabbi Wright, Rabbi Cohen in St. Paul,
    and there was [INAUDIBLE].
    At the time, it was close to Passover.
    And I guess, we went to the service there.
    And actually, he somewhat looked after me.
    And I remember going to the services.
    And I was somewhat taken aback that people are
    talking through the service.
    And later on, when I went to the university,
    I stayed at the Hillel House.
    And there, when I was staying in Hillel,
    I mentioned that, you see at the service, it was quite noisy.
    "Well," said the rabbi.
    And he turned to another student who had come from Poland,
    and said, "Where you come from, what's going on here
    is whispering."
    And he turned to me, "And where you come on,
    what's going on in synagogue is yelling.
    It depends on your background."
    But the service was very nice.
    And then, actually, I remember going to a conservative,
    I also went to a reform synagogue for the first time.
    That was quite interesting.
    But anyhow, they found me a room at a Jewish family.
    And then I got a job.
    First, I worked as a porter at the hospital.
    And then I took a job--
    didn't pay too much-- then I took a job
    at a refrigerator company, putting refrigerators together
    in there too.
    Well, they tried to embarrass me there.
    They tried to teach me four-letter words.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Well, I had to disappoint them.
    I said, "Four letter words of Anglo-Saxon or Germanic origin.
    They're almost identical in German,
    with a vowel in the States [INAUDIBLE] at the end
    isn't going to fool me.
    I know what they mean.
    I'm not going to embarrass myself."
    And it then came time for school.
    And I, actually with the help of the family service,
    they found me room in Minneapolis.
    University of Minnesota, I had to take some entrance tests
    there too.
    Actually, I started from the beginning, this so-called--
    Abiturium.
    It didn't do any--
    didn't mean very much.
    And I started out.
    And of course, I had to have a--
    I took a job, [INAUDIBLE] job in the morning.
    What did I do?
    I worked in the cafeteria as a busboy.
    Then sometimes at night worked as a guard at the--
    at the gym.
    And what else?
    I had various jobs.
    Then tutoring.
    Graduate students had to pass a reading test in German
    and I helped to tutor.
    And I was severely criticized by some other tutors.
    Didn't charge enough--
    "You'll ruin us."
    And actually, I met a family too,
    who invited me a time, when actually,
    when the summer suspend.
    They lived in Mankato.
    It was a little town about 40 miles, 50 miles out
    of Minneapolis, a Jewish family.
    And then, when we went to university,
    there was one important point.
    I had to become a resident.
    Because out-of-state fees at that time, prohibitive.
    I got some help from the family service,
    but most of the time, most I had to earn.
    And I had to become a resident.
    And I had to be before the board of residency
    and to explain or tell them that I didn't come to visit,
    didn't come to study, but I did come to Minnesota to live.
    Well, they believed me, and I was declared a resident
    with resident fees.
    That was quite helpful.
    And then I have forgotten exactly how
    it came about, but, yes--
    there was always a student assistant caretaker
    to Hillel house.
    And the present caretaker had graduated.
    Needed a new one.
    And I got a job.
    And I moved to the Hillel House.
    And I had a room there, actually at one time
    with the roommate from Israel.
    But they took care with the janitor, the custodian,
    Sundays, at and nights I had to take care of the house.
    At least had a place to live and it was quite helpful.
    Could use the kitchen, had a refrigerator.
    And that was most helpful.
    And of course, not to forget meet your spouse
    at the Hillel house.
    It was on Sunday.
    And I went downstairs.
    And explained to students who used the kitchen, because it's
    Sunday, the sororities and fraternities
    didn't serve meal for some reason.
    Anyhow, they came to the Hillel House
    to use the kitchen-- fine.
    But I explained there was the milchig and the fleishig,
    and don't mix them up.
    Five minutes later, I come down, they're all mixed up.
    I was quite upset.
    And there was a redhead, and, "Oh, tell me about it."
    Well, I told here.
    Well, that was Ethel, meet your spouse at the Hillel House.
    She listened to my complaints.
    I remember that.
    Your spouse and the other people that you
    met when you came to the States, did they
    ask you about your experiences during the war?
    And what did you tell them?
    Well, actually I never sat down to told them about it.
    But yes, they asked.
    And I told them here and there.
    There was one incident, one incident at Purim carnival.
    They had various booths and games.
    And there was a pie throwing contest.
    They bought pies.
    And someone stuck his face out.
    And they threw it.
    And I got very upset.
    Food, and how can you do this?
    And they went to the rabbi-- now, "Why is Fred so upset?
    It was our own pie."
    Well, Rabbi Meldrum had to explain that food is food.
    And in the past, there were times
    I didn't have so much food.
    And I found it offensive if the food, whatever it is,
    used for this.
    Yes, they asked me questions.
    But there was actually never any formal--
    never [INAUDIBLE].
    What happened here, what happened there,
    or incident reminds more instance.
    Example, comes a time, at Passover,
    I mentioned how we baked our own matzos from rye flour,
    pretty bad.
    Really [NON-ENGLISH].
    Not the nice egg matzo we get here.
    But this was-- actually, I never formally talked about it.
    But I was frequently asked what happened.
    What did you tell your future wife
    about your childhood and your past
    when you were meeting her, and dating her, and courting her?
    That's interesting too.
    Well, she knew that I had come over.
    And her relatives were in Duluth.
    And we went there, introduced.
    And of course, she was afraid I wouldn't understand Yiddish.
    Of course, I knew Yiddish quite well.
    There were actually two aunts there I remember.
    I even impressed her uncle and her aunt, and everything fine.
    Then we went to Aunt Jenny's house
    for dinner, Aunt Jenny and Uncle [? Jelik. ?]
    And there, Aunt Jenny--
    it was-- well, how should I say, a hefty woman,
    tried to explain to me--
    at that time, I believe Ethel was 19 or 20.
    The advantages of a heavy woman, what-- this is very good,
    you see.
    And other-- and poor Ethel was sitting there and hoping
    he doesn't understand.
    He won't understand what she is saying.
    And she was quite drastic to explain.
    I understood very well.
    It was a good woman.
    And I might as well mention it to you what happened to her
    [INAUDIBLE].
    She told me the other aunt was asking questions.
    They knew that her mother wasn't Jewish.
    And she was always raised Jewish, but it wasn't enough.
    Anyhow, they told me.
    And [INAUDIBLE] was hemming and hawing around her.
    Finally, she realized what she wanted.
    She wanted to know whether I was circumcised.
    Well, a young woman should know in general,
    particular in this case.
    Well, she told her aunt, "Fritz has assured me
    he was raised Jewish from birth on."
    And this was it.
    This was very important.
    But otherwise, we were treated very well.
    I remember this, about the business with Aunt Jenny.
    Poor Ethel was sitting there, so embarrassed, red in her face.
    It was [INAUDIBLE].
    But, well, at that time, 19 years old,
    that was already an old maid.
    But of course, we decided not to marry till I graduated.
    And since it took some time-- since I
    went to professional school, that was taking some time.
    Well, it was a good time.
    Not much money and lots of work.
    But we were young.
    It didn't matter.
    At this point, where you had met your future wife,
    did you know what you wanted to study?
    Oh, yes, yes I do.
    I already-- I wanted to become a veterinarian.
    Actually, what I wanted to become was a zoo veterinarian,
    but I went--
    I was ready to go to a veterinary school.
    And at that time, yes.
    And I remember, it was a nice time--
    I remember I met her.
    There was a little town, close to a little community,
    called the Dinky Town, very close to the university.
    Had stores, and restaurants, on so on.
    And we met.
    And she told me afterwards I was just
    sneaking out in my grungies.
    And lo and behold I run right into you.
    I didn't know what she wore--
    didn't remember what she wore.
    Didn't never knew what it was wearing.
    Well, about-- it was hard.
    Working, one morning at work, [INAUDIBLE],,
    of course, lots of work and tired.
    And the busboy and I had--
    I had-- was a truck.
    I took, loaded the truck with glasses that had been washed.
    I'm very tired.
    And I didn't look where I put the tray.
    Somebody had moved the truck.
    And the tray fell right onto the ground.
    That woke me up.
    By the way, on that I can recommend something else
    if you'd want to be awakened.
    In the mornings, very tired--
    it was twice it happened.
    I took shaving cream out of the tube--
    that was in the tube, instead of toothbrush.
    That'll wake you up, if you brush your teeth
    with shaving cream.
    I still remember that.
    I'm going to pause now because we're at the end of the tape.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum Volunteer Collection interview
    with Fritz Gluckstein.
    This is being resumed on December 7th, in the year 2000.
    Originally, we began on October 5th, 2000.
    This is tape two, side B.
    What surprised you most when you first
    came to the United States?
    What were the things in America that surprised you?
    I tried very much to come to the United States
    without any preconceived ideas.
    Well, that's the country I'm going to live.
    I'm not going to obviously compare what was here.
    A few things did surprise me.
    In high school, I remember teachers and my fellow students
    had some very strange ideas about the United States.
    For instance, the principal--
    well Fred, talked about United States.
    He gave the distinct impression that the United States
    had no cultural life.
    And then they had some very strange customs.
    For instance, if you went to a party you were invited,
    it was impolite to use a knife.
    Because the meat had to be cooked tender that you
    could cut it with your fork--
    nonsense.
    | at school we got a plumber or a carpenter
    that came and did some work.
    And we watched a little bit what he was doing.
    "Oh, oh, that's the American way.
    We don't do it here.
    In the United States, one fella works, and the other looks on."
    This kind of nonsense.
    Well, I don't know where they got it.
    Let's not forget, some of the Jews in Germany, particularly,
    they consider themselves elite.
    They came over here.
    Well, we are going to [INAUDIBLE]..
    We are going to show the Americans
    what cultural life is.
    Not all, but some.
    And look, some actually tried to hold on desperately--
    I would see desperately to old times.
    They had so-called old world clubs.
    There was one in Minneapolis and there was one in St. Paul.
    And I remember, they asked me to join, to go.
    Well, I went.
    Guess how often-- once.
    I wasn't like sitting there and reminisce
    how things here, and how different it is, and, oh, oh,
    oh.
    No, I tried to come over here and to adapt the best I could.
    What surprised me most, yes, some very minor thing.
    In New York, walked down the street,
    and you see packages piled next to the post-- to the mailbox.
    Why?
    Well, the mailman bill collector, of course.
    So then, well, I asked might not it be stolen?
    "No," they said, "If anybody wanted it,
    it would be a federal offense and it isn't worth it."
    And of course, traffic.
    And I was more in awe than surprised.
    I'd like to know what your ambitions were
    in those first few years and what career
    goals you were setting for yourself for the long term.
    I wanted to go back to school.
    I wanted to go to college.
    And I wanted to become a veterinarian.
    So I set my goals and went after them.
    And came to Minnesota.
    And did my best to fulfill the requirements for admission.
    And that actually kept me busy with the jobs I had,
    the part-time jobs, and the quite rigorous course.
    Well, I hadn't too much time.
    And I remember even people at the family
    service, who were very nice.
    Each newcomer more or less was looked
    after to a certain degree by the family service.
    They taught me, look, very nice, but recreation just
    as important as studying.
    I had some advisors too who would say, "Now, look,
    don't overdo it."
    Well, I tried not.
    Actually, still, it was--
    well, I was busy.
    And it wasn't easy.
    But still, had a good time.
    And I have pleasant memories of my student days.
    You said you wanted to be a veterinarian.
    Did you have any idea in what capacity?
    No.
    Originally, I wanted to become a zoo veterinarian.
    Well, it didn't turn out, but a veterinarian nevertheless.
    And of course, I still remember, actually,
    what my father told me--
    "Do not take a profession that is limited to one country."
    And what he meant is law.
    But actually, it only played a minor part.
    But I always was interested in animals.
    And I think that would be a job I would be happy.
    Did you imagine yourself setting up a private clinic?
    Or did you think that you might-- you said originally
    you wanted to work in a zoo.
    Where did you think you would be professionally established?
    Actually, at the beginning, actually, your main goal
    is to graduate.
    And to feel that through your study,
    you will actually realize what your interests
    are, what are your abilities.
    And you might have surgical ability or your might have--
    well, would like to be with people at a practice,
    or research.
    Actually, I was a little more towards the research type.
    Because on the other hand--
    well, it went back and forth.
    Some would be nice to work with hands on.
    Frankly, when I started out, I had some vague idea
    of becoming a zoo veterinarian, but my mind wasn't set.
    I said, let's see what happens.
    And look, what happens though, is you get very often,
    become a mentor, and in some way,
    you are guided in a certain direction.
    And of course, how did it happen that I wound up
    in the information field?
    Well, it was my second year and the library wasn't open nights
    and weekends.
    Well, we got together, the students-- something
    has to be done.
    We have to have the library open.
    Well, why don't you go to the professor
    whose in charge of the library and talk to him
    about what could be done.
    Maybe we could do something about, take turns.
    Well, I went up there.
    I remember distinctly-- in fact, this professor
    just died in one of the air crashes, the plane that
    went to Zurich.
    Very nice.
    Oh, he listened to me.
    "An excellent idea.
    You are hereby appointed chairman of a committee
    to redevelop detailed plans to have the library open
    nights and weekends."
    Well, what could I do?
    See, there I was, spending quite a bit of time,
    drawing up plans, making assignments, and so on.
    And actually, I got into--
    I didn't object, but actually that guided and gently
    pushed into information field.
    There it started.
    So when you got out of school, what was
    your first professional job?
    At that time, actually, it was the Korean War at the end.
    In fact, during the summertime, one of the summers,
    I worked on a farm with veterinarian, of course.
    And I remember at that time, I had
    to-- this was up in northern Minnesota,
    and I had to come to Minneapolis to take a physical
    to be inducted in the army.
    However, let's see, when it came down to it,
    I was deferred because I was officially a student.
    However, only deferred.
    I had to fulfill my obligations.
    And upon graduation, I actually volunteered--
    I didn't want to wait till they called me--
    for the army.
    And while waiting for the army, I
    took a job in meat inspection.
    Very interesting.
    And worked a year, year and a half in meat inspection.
    First, I-- in south St. Paul.
    And then, actually, I got an assignment,
    a temporary assignment in Beltsville.
    Actually, that is an interesting story too,
    how I got this assignment.
    I was a meat inspector.
    And lo and behold, one day came the big boss
    from Washington, Dr. Stein.
    Came home for a visit.
    And they came with the local chief inspector
    and some other inspectors.
    Went around the pickling plant.
    Lo and behold, they came to the place where I was at that time
    inspecting calves.
    And the calves primary is immaturity.
    You get to not pass--
    immature calves are not passed.
    They're watery and not very aesthetic.
    Now, comes a calf.
    And comes down.
    And I say, well, this is immature.
    Lo and behold, the local inspector in charge,
    said "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute,
    let's talk about this here.
    I don't think that is quite correct."
    Hmm?
    OK.
    And he asked, so Dr. So-and-So, "Now
    what do you think about it?"
    Well, he said, "I think its immature."
    The other said, "Well, he--" He probably didn't want,
    in view of the big boss standing there--
    "It can go either way."
    There was another one I will recall.
    I guess he said he wasn't sure either.
    OK, lo and behold, the [INAUDIBLE]..
    Now, I did something.
    And actually, this has always been my motto.
    Behold the turtle, he makes progress
    only if he sticks his neck out.
    Well, I did something [INAUDIBLE]..
    Now, I stuck my neck out.
    "Wait a minute, gentlemen.
    Dr. Stein, now, we must make a decision.
    Please, would you make a decision."
    He upheld me-- immature.
    Maybe he didn't like it, but he remembered me.
    And two months later, I get a temporary job in Washington
    at the [? Beltzer ?] Laboratory.
    What's the timeframe on that?
    When did this happen?
    I graduated in '55.
    This was about-- it was, I would say, that was in 19--
    in spring, 1956.
    And what was the ultimate story on your military service?
    While I was out here, I was called to the army.
    And I took me physical in Alexandria.
    What if physical, I want to tell you.
    It wasn't very stringent.
    And actually, I came back to Minneapolis.
    Was sworn in.
    Actually, I didn't--
    I quit my job.
    Then immediately went to Chicago to the meat and dairy hygiene
    school for about two or three months.
    The government sent you there?
    That was in the army.
    Fortunately, I got a commission--
    being a veterinarian, I didn't have
    to go through basic training.
    And I got a commission as first lieutenant right away.
    And I spent some time there in Chicago, specialty courses.
    There, too, I was extremely lucky.
    I remember we had to--
    every Monday there was an examination.
    Meaning the weekend was filled with studying
    and what have you.
    That was OK, but once I got my assignment, well, I kept up,
    but I didn't really kill myself anymore.
    I remember, I went to a movie on weekends.
    And with my assignment, I was exceedingly lucky too.
    I could have been wound up looking for dented cans, pinned
    feathers in turkeys.
    It has to be done.
    Don't get me wrong, this is an important job.
    Or as one of my classmates, he was going in Nebraska from farm
    to farm candling eggs, which is important,
    because unfortunately, still now, people--
    some contractors try to palm off to the army what
    they can't sell to others.
    Well, anyhow, comes the great day of assignment.
    Now, what will happen to me?
    I walk in there.
    And it's a colonel and the personnel officer
    of the veterinary corp. [INAUDIBLE]
    saluting, reporting there.
    "Ha, ha," he laughed at me.
    He then addresses me in German.
    Well, I was taken somewhat surprised.
    Maury was his name.
    "Ha, ha, ha, you're surprised, aren't you?
    Well, don't-- my mother is from Hamburg."
    He probably talked German before he--
    But for some reason, [INAUDIBLE] my experience here at the lab,
    and perhaps he took a liking to me,
    because he had to do something that surprised me.
    I got a very good job.
    It's biological warfare center in Frederick, Maryland.
    And while [INAUDIBLE],, I learned a lot there.
    Actually, worked at a laboratory.
    It was like a job in the morning.
    Went to the lab, evening come back.
    Every time I left the lab, I had to take a shower,
    because we worked with quite dangerous organisms.
    But I really-- and I did an awful lot--
    how to handle dangerous, contagious agents, how
    to work-- exacting.
    I was quite grateful the army--
    was grateful what they did.
    Very little soldiering.
    Occasionally, or throughout the day, but mostly
    in the laboratory.
    And I must say, I still remember my second anniversary.
    We were already to go out at night.
    Had the reservations.
    But I couldn't come because I was inside the lab.
    Had a very restricted area.
    There were monkeys that were infected with certain organism.
    And they could only be approached
    in kind of spacesuits.
    We went in with a spacesuit.
    And one monkey escaped.
    And we had to catch him.
    And I lost my glasses inside the spacesuit.
    And my wife, who was sitting outside,
    didn't know what happened.
    I still remember this.
    Is there anything more you can tell me
    about the nature of the work that you did in the military?
    Actually, it was biological warfare.
    Quite a bit-- some stuff I could talk about, others I couldn't.
    Some people, of course, criticized me--
    how can you possibly work for biological warfare?
    Well, I thought it has to be done.
    And you can learn quite a bit if defensive too.
    And quite a bit of what we were doing there benefits every day.
    Even there, I was--
    did quite a bit in the information field.
    "Huh?
    German?
    Go to the library and look up and translate."
    Quite a bit of this work had been done on certain organisms
    in German.
    And there too, I did quite a bit of information.
    It was really a good job.
    I can't complain.
    Did you have any moral qualms about doing the kind of work,
    given your personal background?
    No, I thought about it.
    Actually, I remember later on when I went to library school,
    I wrote a paper about that.
    Look, war-- war is hell anyway.
    And if you come down to it, some of the methods used in war
    actually are not [INAUDIBLE].
    And very often, biological warfare
    doesn't necessarily kill.
    It's directed just to disable the enemy
    and to effect his livestock and so on.
    There's quite a bit--
    what we know now in immunization and vaccination
    has been learned actually through work similar to this
    or actually done at Fort Detrick.
    How long did you stay in the army?
    Two years.
    And then I stayed on in the reserve.
    I stayed on several years in the reserve, which
    meant you met once a week.
    And in the summertime, you had some--
    went to some exercises and some courses.
    But this was not, at that time, was not biological warfare.
    It was more or less medical food inspection.
    At that time, I was a reserve on the veterinary corp, this food
    inspection, zoonoses, diseases transmissible
    from animal to men, which later on became
    one of my specialties.
    And I stayed there, actually, in the reserves,
    till I joined the public health service.
    Can you give me some timeframe on when
    you get out of the army, how long you stayed in the reserve?
    I got out of the army--
    I came in at '56, roughly.
    And I guess in '57.
    I came out in '59.
    In '59, I left the army.
    And went back, actually, for the Department of Agriculture.
    And this was meat inspection.
    But at the time, when I went back to meat inspection,
    it wasn't named that.
    What I did, it was in the laboratory,
    not on the killing floor.
    See where your specimens are taken is the killing floor
    and sent to a laboratory.
    The animal is held in a freezer and then it's been examined.
    Something like this, I did.
    And when did you start working for agriculture?
    I started at agriculture right after--
    in '55.
    And actually, I worked all the time,
    even when I was in the army and was officially--
    I was on military leave.
    You see, you had to go.
    It was [INAUDIBLE].
    And when I came back, right away I went back to agriculture.
    And how long did you continue to work for the Department
    of Agriculture?
    Actually for AIMS.
    I went to Washington and worked there
    for the agricultural service.
    And there too, I collect information
    about livestock, animal diseases in foreign countries.
    How do you find out?
    You go there.
    You interview people.
    And you search he literature.
    Well, that I did.
    And I got more and more in the information field.
    Eventually, if you do it a long time,
    you develop a sense of where to look, what to find, and so on.
    And there I stayed till '60.
    Wait a minute--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yes, about '60.
    I came there in '60.
    I believed I stayed there till--
    four or five years, '65.
    And then I went to the Smithsonian Institution
    in information service there too.
    There I stayed for a about a year, a year and a half.
    Then I joined the public health service
    as a commissioned officer at the National Library of Medicine.
    And there, the National Library of Medicine.
    I stayed for 28 years.
    Actually, I was fortunate, because
    of this special position I had I wasn't transferred.
    They kept me there.
    And I was not [INAUDIBLE].
    In the army, you know, there's a transfer ever
    two, or three, or four years.
    In the public health service, not that frequently,
    but they tried to transfer people too.
    It didn't happen to me.
    And I stayed here at the National Library of Medicine
    for 28 years.
    By being there, I said, finally-- well,
    I worked with the librarian--
    I might as well find out what they think,
    learn a little bit more about it.
    And I went to library school.
    And actually, I did it on my own.
    I made up-- I went nights, weekends.
    And if I had to go at the time that we had duty, I made it up.
    And I graduated in '84, I remember.
    And it was difficult to go back to school.
    But it was interesting too.
    I always wondered when I was doing it,
    well, once this is over, look all the time I will have.
    I still don't know what happened.
    I finished, became a master of library science,
    but I never found the time.
    But it was very interesting.
    Usually, going back to school, it's the old thing--
    you always see it--
    25% eminently worthwhile, 25% useful, 25% redundant
    and useless, and 25%, you know what.
    But I believe this is usually at many schools.
    But 25%, it was worthwhile.
    You mentioned your second wedding anniversary.
    Do you have children?
    Yes, a daughter, Ruth.
    She was born, actually, when I was still
    at the Smithsonian Institution.
    This was in '64.
    One daughter, yes.
    She lives close by.
    And I am now an insufferably grandfather.
    What does it mean to be an insufferable grandfather?
    An insufferable grandfather-- look, the other day,
    we played running around the island in the kitchen.
    Guess who had more fun?
    Or playing with the trains or running around, making
    a complete fool of myself.
    And I enjoy every minute.
    She's just two years, in September, two years old,
    Emily.
    I tell you, they tell me, whenever I see her,
    I light up like a Christmas tree.
    Probably right.
    I don't notice it.
    And of course, I try to be a good grandfather,
    not to indulge her too much.
    Has to be some discipline.
    And of course, no criticism.
    Well, if I-- and Maran, of course,
    is a wonderful grandmother.
    But if I have anything to say, perhaps, I might do it once.
    I might be insufferable, but I don't like
    to be a nagging grandfather.
    Yes, sometimes I have to--
    stop, it's time now, it's enough.
    But, of course, at the beginning,
    everybody be told about it.
    But look, it is so nice to be a grandparent.
    You just enjoy it.
    And then you go home.
    And the parents [INAUDIBLE].
    I want to go back and review some of the things that
    were happening around you during these years that you just
    outlined for me.
    You were in the United States during the Nuremberg trials.
    Correct.
    How were they reported in the US media?
    And what was the general reaction
    that you saw around you?
    Frankly, I didn't--
    I read about it, but people around me,
    it was not discussed, at least in school.
    It was really not discussed.
    Yes, occasionally you saw it, but by no means
    was that a topic of conversation.
    Did that surprise you?
    No.
    I realize people would mention--
    yes, they were not unaware of it.
    But it was not--
    perhaps too, probably, maybe history and sociology students,
    probably it was discussed more.
    I stayed that time--
    I had a position as the assistant caretaker
    at the Hillel House.
    But even there, it wasn't--
    I don't recall it was discussed very much.
    Was there anything about the way it
    was covered by the American press that surprised you?
    No, [INAUDIBLE].
    What was your reaction to the judgments in the trial?
    At that point, I think I found it just.
    Right now, I'm reading--
    I have read the book The Nuremberg Trials, by Persico.
    In retrospect, certain things could be different now.
    But at that point, I felt it was certainly just.
    I think I'm going to pause, and change tape, and not ask you
    another question right now.
    A continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum Volunteer Collection interview
    with Fritz Gluckstein.
    Time this is tape 3, side A. And I'm
    curious to ask you about your reaction
    when you came to this country and you
    saw the way whites and Blacks in America related to each other.
    Given your background, what was your reaction
    to what you saw happening in this country?
    Actually, in New York, when I first came,
    I knew there was a difference, but it wasn't quite obvious.
    You didn't have that much segregation.
    Later on, actually, once in Frederick, and even
    here in Washington, I was much more exposed to it.
    I still remember in Frederick, unofficially
    in the movie theater, the black upstairs,
    the whites downstairs.
    I still remember setting it.
    I was quite taken aback.
    In Richmond, separate drinking fountains.
    I personally was quite taken aback.
    And certainly I was very much opposed to segregation.
    However, I was fortunate, in Minnesota
    there were some black students.
    Ethel, my first wife, lived in a rooming house
    and there were some black girls there.
    And I got to know them well.
    And also I had some black colleagues.
    Actually, I had some contact and really, I couldn't do anything.
    But I was glad that the marches [?and felt] that the Jews had
    a high profile.
    Did you follow the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem?
    I was aware of it and I followed it to a certain degree.
    What were your thoughts and impressions?
    There was one thing, being the son
    of a judge, that came to mind.
    How could the aggrieved judging Eichmann?
    I was glad they caught him, and I believe justice was done.
    But I still wondered if you are--
    maybe it is splitting hairs.
    But actually if you--
    at that time, it wasn't quite a parent, but later on--
    have read books and actually if you follow--
    they have video of the Eichmann trail--
    I would see he was given a fair shake.
    But at that time, it came to mind.
    Actually, there was an argument raised by the defense.
    You can't-- you are the aggrieved party.
    You can't sit here in judgment.
    I believe that was one [?note of] criticism.
    But then perhaps-- but I believe he was fortunate
    that he was given a trial at all.
    An accident could have befallen him just as easily.
    Do you remember any reactions of other people
    around you during that trial?
    No, I do not remember anything.
    Of course [?I did with] Eichmann, yes.
    So at first you had the Nuremberg Trials, yes.
    But I would assume I assume, I don't know for sure.
    Well, another trial, they finally
    caught another one of those.
    Then, of course, through the years a trial here,
    a trial there.
    I don't think many people were fully aware of the significance
    of what Eichmann actually did.
    Hitler, Keitel, and Goering, yes.
    But I wonder whether they realized.
    And of course I was particularly interested
    since I spent some time working in his headquarters
    and even if not meet was standing close to him.
    By the way, they still didn't catch the real "makher,"
    the fellow who ran that headquarters, his deputy,
    Rolf Günther.
    I wonder what happened to him.
    During your years in the US, you saw a lot
    of social and political change.
    What was your reaction to the war in Korea?
    Actually, I would hope it would be over soon.
    As they all.
    And let's face it, if it hadn't been for my deferral,
    I probably would have owned up in Korea.
    I followed it, but of course really interesting
    when Truman fired MacArthur.
    In some way I agreed.
    Maybe I personally never like MacArthur for various reasons--
    I was never an admirer of MacArthur.
    But I was actually confirmed when the Chinese came in
    and what would happen, when will it be over?
    And of course the endless peace negotiations.
    I can only say that I was very glad when it finally was over.
    How did the war in Vietnam compare, in your mind,
    to the war in Korea.
    Actually, sometimes I had wondered where I'll be,
    what I'll be doing there.
    In my life probably we did not approve
    of people who refused to serve.
    I could see their point.
    But of course I feel that had I been called, I would have gone.
    I just wonder--
    I actually question the wisdom of being there.
    What about the years of conflict with the Soviet
    Union and the Cold War?
    I felt that it was difficult to deal
    with the mentality, the Soviet mentality.
    Some were easy.
    In fact [? I] was very surprised at finally the upheaval
    in the Soviet Union.
    Because I felt once you indoctrinate young people,
    it is very difficult to change things.
    But actually, while I was concerned,
    I did not feel that it would come actually
    to armed confrontation.
    More or less my feeling--
    I had no insight or special information,
    but I feel that many things that were said we read
    was propaganda to keep the people in line over there.
    That perhaps they really didn't mean it.
    But there, too, politics and such was definitely secondary.
    I just asked you about wars and potential war.
    When you look back, in what ways did
    your childhood and your life experiences impact the way
    you reacted to those things that were happening?
    Oh.
    To me, war is madness.
    They Start.
    Out for some reason or other, and pretty soon
    nobody knows what it's all about.
    We haven't learned anything from history.
    For some reason we called ourselves
    homo sapiens, the wise one, and we are so foolish.
    It's going on and on.
    And as you can see or have known it continues and will continue.
    We can't live in peace?
    Why is that?
    There always has to be a fight.
    Be it for religion, for political reasons,
    what have you.
    It seems to be mankind can't live without war.
    I don't know way that is.
    With respect to the situation in Israel,
    it had changed and is changing over the years.
    How have you seen those developments
    from your perspective, again with your life experience?
    I think-- I believe then Israel has to
    and will remain despite efforts by others to destroy it.
    And the people that want to destroy
    it might as well realize the Jews won't go away.
    And there are too many of the [INAUDIBLE] religious reasons
    to, I hope, they come to a modus vivendi
    to a way to live with each other.
    I always believe in order to understand Israel,
    you have to go there.
    Unless you have been in Israel, you really don't have feeling,
    really you don't have an understanding
    what it is all about.
    But right now, I am quite saddened what's happening.
    You were in this country during the assassination
    of President Kennedy, the assassination of his brother,
    the assassination of Martin Luther King.
    How did you react to this violence in American society
    around you?
    Maybe it might be a cliche, I was appalled.
    I was really shocked when it happened.
    But [INAUDIBLE] I sometimes wonder
    whether perhaps the American gun culture
    has anything to do with it.
    But I realize violence doesn't only
    occur in the United States.
    Unfortunately, homo sapiens is violent--
    either wars or violence at home.
    I think things like this unfortunately happen.
    But with Kennedy, I remember this day distinctly.
    I even knew what I was doing the moment when it happened.
    I was still with the Smithsonian Insitution
    It was quite shocking.
    But one thing, despite all, life went on.
    There was an orderly transfer of government.
    I was very much impressed.
    Has anything specific interested or concerned you
    in all these years in the United States that you've been here?
    Any causes that have culture attention or imagination?
    But of course, integration-- what
    happened with the integration of schools.
    This actually was very dear to my heart.
    And I was very pleased that integration occurred.
    And of course now, right now, I see it.
    Right now, immigration is relatively easy,
    but at one time, remember, what happened.
    Immigration was by no means easy.
    The waiting-- the quotas.
    Without quota, probably my parents
    would have immigrated actually before the war.
    But immigration policy-- but you realize,
    people say, well, we have to do something, illegal immigration
    and what have you.
    If I were a judge and would have to judge on immigration issues,
    I would recuse myself.
    For some reason-- an immigrant myself--
    I simply haven't the heart to say and criticize other people.
    You can't come.
    I know there are certain problems, I realize that,
    but I can't.
    I understand why they are coming and what they are seeking.
    And I've found a really group life.
    I'm very happy here.
    And how I can stand there and deny it to others?
    Have you ever experienced anti-Semitism
    in the United States?
    I would say no.
    Once surprise-- in New York, after coming, we
    are assigned to certain areas.
    I was sent to St. Paul, Minneapolis.
    Oh, some people, said, that is a hotbed of anti-Semitism.
    Never found any.
    Not at all.
    There was one incident, one moment I thought, well,
    that is antisemitism.
    I had a caretaker position at the Hillel house.
    Next to us was a fraternity.
    Lo and behold, one night they got drunk there,
    and they started to throws stones and break the windows
    of the Hillel house.
    Well, of course at that time a major investigation of what
    had happened.
    They all got drunk.
    They didn't realize-- they would have
    broken the window of any other.
    And of course they're very sorry.
    Even in order to show, they sent a contribution
    to the Jewish Home for the Aged and so one.
    And they made it very clear that while it was regrettable
    that it happened, but it was not in any way anti-Semitic.
    And I believe them.
    They were just drunk.
    But otherwise, I can honestly say, I didn't.
    What's your reaction to the resurgence
    of interest in the Holocaust in recent years?
    I'm surprised.
    I'm glad.
    I think it's a good sign.
    But when I go and volunteer, I appear there
    usually at 9 o'clock.
    And people stand in line, and when I go to the back
    to the administrative building, I pass the line.
    And a few people there, all walks of life.
    And I can see obviously for the middle westerners,
    I wonder, what is the interest?
    Why are they here?
    I wonder, maybe they have been asked,
    are they really interested?
    It just a curiosity to see it?
    But I'm glad they come.
    I think they must be reluctant to talk about it.
    I personally are-- and actually, Merrin always--
    in fact, this interview, more or less Merrin
    suggested that I do it.
    I personally hesitate.
    But I have more and more come to the conviction
    that particularly as long as survivors are alive,
    it is important that you speak out.
    Nothing is better than a first-hand experience,
    a first-hand report.
    I'm surprised at the interest, and I am pleased.
    You just mentioned the people in line.
    You're taking about people in line
    waiting to see the United States Holocaust Memorial I assume.
    Yes.
    In your work there, which I'll ask you about in a minute,
    do you ever have a chance to speak to the public
    and ask them why they're there?
    No, I never.
    I hope somebody will.
    But sometimes I actually want them to tell me,
    why are you here.
    But it might be misunderstood.
    And I don't think--
    I'm hesitant doing it.
    But it ought to be done.
    What do you do at the Holocaust Museum?
    I'm translating documents and letters.
    Very often, people-- for instance,
    right now, when I translate letters,
    I send the parents who have a daughter in England
    through the children transport.
    And they are writing what's going on.
    And actually, they'll write and mention people I know.
    They mentioned one of my very best friends.
    They mentioned the doctor I had.
    It's quite interesting.
    And sometimes documents people write.
    For instance, what happens to people--
    actually write their experiences.
    Romania, for instance, [INAUDIBLE] letter
    that they wrote shortly after they escaped
    or even while they still were there and smuggled out.
    Or correspondence from and actually to Auschwitz.
    In fact, some of the correspondence survived.
    The prison in Auschwitz for some reason
    was able to keep the letters.
    And the some of those letters had
    been given to the Holocaust Museum,
    and I'm translating those right now.
    Or some documents, even something for the Nuremberg
    Trial and so on.
    That's what I'm doing.
    Have you donated anything to the museum?
    Yes, some of my documents.
    For instance the permission to use the public transportation
    or my papers--
    certain [INAUDIBLE] [? by doing ?] they forced
    work, they're cleaning up the air raids.
    I worked for a company and we had certain papers.
    And one time they had me in a local camp in Berlin,
    and they had the--
    what would we call it--
    Nazi release slip.
    And something I found just not too long ago,
    the final report card from high school.
    It was in 1943.
    Well, it wasn't even a very good report card,
    but there was something on that report card
    which made it a document.
    Now, why was it a final-- it said on the proper final report
    card--
    why?
    And I translate because of the disordered dissolution--
    dissolution, that word-- of the Jewish school system.
    This was the last one after that, all schools were gone.
    And I though, this is quite something.
    At least we knew the date and everything.
    This I also gave to the Holocaust Museum.
    And some other-- in fact, I was surprised
    I had some Jewish stars left, the yellow ones.
    I kept one.
    I wondered, don't you have many of those?
    No, they want them anyway.
    All right, I gave it to them and some other documents I had.
    How do you respond when you hear Holocaust deniers?
    I don't understand.
    Do they believe that all of the Holocaust survivors,
    they are lying?
    Make it up?
    To me, that is pure anti-Semitism, nothing else.
    I cannot say--
    I suspect that people, the deniers
    don't believe it themselves.
    I think they just want to deny it
    because they're an expression of the antipathy toward Jews.
    This is absolutely--
    Do you think that the Jews in the United States
    need to be concerned about neo-Nazis, and skinheads,
    and all these other groups?
    You shouldn't be ignore it.
    Perhaps concerned to the extent that don't ignore it.
    Know what they are doing.
    But I believe there is no reason for panic.
    I still believe what happened in Germany
    and some European countries will not happen here.
    How has your experience during the Holocaust
    influenced the choices that you've made over the years?
    Well, I tell you they led me--
    I have two models, two things in my life came in front of me.
    One is Hillel's don't do unto others what
    you don't want to yourself.
    And the other is a proper translation
    of the saying carpe diem, which actually is usually
    incorrectly translated.
    Because we retranslated Caesar.
    They know that that it is not correct.
    Because the full is "Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."
    What it means, pluck the day.
    Gather the flowers, pluck the cherries today, and don't
    or little trust the next one.
    Therefore, if you want to do something, do it today.
    If you want to go on a trip, do it today.
    If you want to visit a friend, do it today.
    The time is today.
    If you have two bottles of wine, drink the better one first.
    Has your view of Judaism changed since your childhood?
    Probably not changed.
    In childhood you don't think very much about the reason.
    You go to services, and you do it.
    And well, I like the service or not.
    And I think you don't think too much about it.
    But later on, I personally do not
    believe in what you would call deus ex machina,
    the supernatural suddenly happens.
    Perhaps I have become numb.
    In one way, although I am probably
    less religious as such, I feel more as a Jew.
    I think there's actually more to it
    than just going to the services and keeping
    kosher what you have.
    I think being a Jew is--
    well, I guess, we are more than the religion,
    and I am very conscious of it.
    But I believe you can be a Jew without [INAUDIBLE] religious.
    Some are and why not.
    That is your choice.
    When you look back on yourself as a parent,
    do you see any relationship between your childhood
    and your experiences during the war and the way
    you raised your child?
    No, I didn't.
    But I tried very much to keep my us of discipline,
    right and wrong, and propriety.
    But on the other hand, I tried to adapt to modern times.
    I realized a I had certain standards, but time changes.
    And you simply can't sit there, because I did it,
    because of what's appropriate when
    I was young it has to be still.
    I tried to go with the times.
    Do you speak publicly about your experiences during the war?
    Usually only if I'm being asked.
    I'm somewhat reluctant.
    But I can be persuaded.
    I don't make a show of being persuaded.
    Some people like to be persuaded and make a big show.
    No, no, and finally.
    Well, Merrin pointed out, the live survivors
    have to speak out because it best counteracts the deniers.
    How can they deny first-hand experience?
    Are you involved with any of the survivor groups in the area?
    There is a survivor group at the Holocaust Museum
    which meets at certain intervals.
    And while I participant, I'm not an official
    or [INAUDIBLE] involved.
    But I take part, yes.
    We meet once a month.
    In fact, the last meeting was yesterday.
    I believe that would be the only extent I am involved.
    And you said that meets with the Museum--
    with the survivors in the Museum?
    Yes, the volunteer survivors, we meet.
    There are quite a number of volunteers.
    Some are survivors, and the survivors actually
    have a special group, and we meet at certain intervals.
    And it is an interesting meeting, with various concerns
    and so on.
    Where too, we all agree, even if reluctant,
    and if we don't want to talk about it, we have to.
    Because we have to be a witness as long as we can.
    Let me pause and I'll come back to this point.
    Just one minute.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum Volunteer Collection interview
    with Fritz Gluckstein.
    This is tape 3 side B. And you had mentioned just a moment ago
    about the meetings that the survivors who are volunteers
    have at the Museum.
    Can you give me some insight as to the kinds of things
    that you all talk about when you meet?
    For instance, we discuss the services
    of the Holocaust Museum, the exhibits, the publication.
    We also discuss where the information about the Holocaust
    will be spread and in what way.
    For instance, yesterday we had shown a video, Yad Vashem.
    And we discussed that and actually
    there was some I believe constructive criticism--
    what should be done and why that particular video was good
    or it was not.
    And very often we even discuss the reactions
    of people to the speakers.
    And very often there's a common complaint--
    right now it's that people are invited
    to talk about the Holocaust and actually not given enough time.
    They are first being told, well, you
    talk for half an hour or 20 minutes.
    And when it comes down to it, well, we only have 10 minutes.
    You see, you have to be--
    and this seems to be a quite frequent complaint.
    Perhaps not deliberately, but probably there
    is a special Memorial Day or some other occasion,
    and they simply don't give a schedule,
    and the people are then forced either to cut it short
    or actually only tell half of the story.
    Matters like this are being discussed.
    And it's interesting, I guess [? and there were some ?]
    two new people from Bulgaria, Lithuania,
    and we talk among each other.
    And this is interesting--
    each and every one of us has a different story.
    Absolutely.
    Yesterday too, we discussed First Person.
    It's an interview.
    And actually it was discussed, and I went
    to one of the First Persons.
    I think it was most interesting.
    And I even on the advice of my good wife
    or urging off my good wife, I signed up for one in March too.
    I need some clarification.
    You've mentioned your wife Ethel and you've
    mentioned your wife Merrin.
    Can you tell me first about Ethel.
    Ethel I met in Minneapolis.
    Meet your spouse at the Hillel House.
    Well, I worked the Hillel House, lo and behold,
    Sundays they did the fraternities
    and did not serve meals for some reason.
    The Jewish students came to Hillel House
    to use the kitchen.
    I came downstairs and said, here's milkhik,
    here's flayshik, don't mix them up.
    Five minutes later, I come downstairs, everything
    is in shambles and mixed up.
    Well, I was upset.
    And there was a redhead who said, now,
    what are you so upset?
    I said, look!
    Well, why don't you tell me about it.
    That was Ethel.
    We married and '55 and had Ruth.
    And unfortunately I lost her to cancer after 38 years in '93.
    But I was fortunate and God kissed me on the eyes twice,
    and three years later in '96 I married Merrin.
    How did you meet Merrin?
    Merrin was the principal administrator at our synagogue.
    And Ethel used to teach recorder there.
    And, well, we knew each other, even friendly.
    We were good friends.
    That's the way I met.
    Well, Ethel told me, Fritz, she said, get married again.
    Because you're not doing well alone.
    I might want to also mention that your wife Merrin has
    done interviews of survivors.
    Yes, very much.
    Actually, some we did together.
    I was kind of the timekeeper and took notes.
    If there was a word, I put it down.
    And she was very active.
    We do Baltimore, and actually it was very interesting to me.
    There too, each story is different.
    With the Shoah Foundation we worked quite a bit.
    Yes.
    Have you had any recurring nightmares since World War II.
    Occasionally, Yes.
    Can you share?
    Yes.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I don't know why.
    Sometimes actually doing the forced labor,
    sometimes the air raids.
    It comes occasionally.
    What very often happens, admitted, I translate
    letters, and sometimes--
    I wouldn't say depressed, becomes remembered.
    And then I come home and I see the people sitting there.
    [INAUDIBLE] Those of Romania didn't even
    know how bad it was.
    Right now, simple, they'll write to the daughter.
    Ah, yes, we are really touched about your concerns,
    that you tried some way to get us over to England.
    But, well, you see, we need the money.
    And then, yeah, maybe in your school
    you have some classmates who have rich and good parents who
    will vouch for them, give some money.
    Naive, and they knew it.
    [INAUDIBLE] and you read.
    And it comes through they get the idea
    that you will not survive.
    And yesterday, what happened?
    I went to the library to look up something,
    and lo and behold somebody left the Berlin memorial book
    on the table.
    It gives the names, dates, people, in Berlin
    who were deported.
    And I have looked through there.
    Actually, every year there's a reading
    of names at the Holocaust Museum.
    And actually I read names.
    I don't have to be given a special list.
    I have my names, [INAUDIBLE] [? some ?] [? I ?] remember.
    And yesterday some came to mind when I was reading
    this-- going through the book.
    A young fellow, [INAUDIBLE] a young man reminded.
    My son-in-law reminds me of him--
    looks and the way he acts.
    And just a two-year-old child, not even--
    they killed them, all three.
    They come back somewhat, subdued.
    Yes, occasionally.
    I haven't forgotten it.
    No, I don't.
    When you look back on all your years in the United States,
    what has been your biggest surprise, happiest surprise?
    Surprise.
    Perhaps not surprise, but actually
    I might wonder sometimes, am I really made it?
    I was reasonably successful in my profession.
    And when I came over with 70 pounds,
    I was permitted to take hundred as I mentioned it, [? only] 70,
    I was somewhat apprehensive of what happened.
    Will I be able to make it?
    Language, what have you?
    And sometimes I look back--
    look, it worked out.
    But a surprise-- perhaps in some way
    that things turned out the way they did.
    Not that I was a pessimist at heart,
    but I've always been some kind of worries.
    Maybe not excessively so, but I was never happy go lucky.
    What was your reaction when Joseph Lieberman
    was selected to be the Vice Presidential running
    mate for Al Gore?
    Good.
    Finally.
    just a good idea.
    I wondered what is going to happen?
    Are they going to protect him?
    Every year at Shabbos he would go the same time the same way.
    What are they going to do?
    Otherwise, I was glad.
    Actually, people said, oh.
    Yes, I knew it would be some anti-Semitism,
    but I didn't think it would be prevalent.
    And no, I was glad a Jew was nominated.
    What has been your biggest disappointment in the United
    States?
    Disappointment, I would say my main thing
    that I wish wouldn't be--
    I feel what we have now, right now--
    good manners seem to be out of fashion.
    For some reason, we abandoned good manners.
    And we have the [? contentious ?] litigation.
    Everything has to be sued.
    And for some reason, even with our children,
    there is a time where you have--
    we are so sort of careful that if you don't do it right--
    and so we believe even children should have all the rights
    of adults or this.
    I don't think so.
    They don't need to be suppressed,
    they don't have to be tyrannical,
    but occasionally I think a little more discipline
    and good manners would be very helpful.
    I think right now we are getting a little bit too liberal.
    Occasionally, certain guidelines have to be followed.
    I think if you want to lead a civilized life,
    we have to do with that, whether we like it or not.
    What's next in store for you?
    What else would you like to accomplish?
    Accomplish.
    Well, number 1, I don't want to be a burden to anyone.
    And I try right now--
    I'm retired now, but I still try to be busy.
    Do simple volunteer work, even keep up my profession,
    do some writing.
    But major accomplishment.
    well, I try to see you my grandchild grow up,
    try to see Merrin's children get established
    in their profession, and perhaps, occasionally, I
    can give a piece of advice, that'll make things easier.
    I think if I have accomplished all this, that would
    be a reasonable accomplishment.
    On the other hand, to realize once you retire,
    you have to scale down your expectations.
    I still don't like retirement.
    What would you like your family, friends, and listeners
    to know about you that they may not know about your war
    experiences?
    Is there anything that you haven't told them
    that you'd like them to know?
    My war experiences, I can only say
    I was exceedingly fortunate.
    I was really lucky.
    My name actually, Gluckstein, Glücksstein-- happy stone.
    Lucky stone-- glück.
    Not happy, lucky.
    I was lucky.
    And without that, I wouldn't be here.
    I always say why I am still here--
    I believe I mentioned it before-- three things--
    because of my mother, who wasn't Jewish, that helped.
    Good luck-- very good luck.
    I always-- I can say I was never physically abused.
    And I mentioned it too, I got the temporary duty
    at Eichmann's headquarter.
    I was assigned to the best guy there.
    I still don't know what the man was doing there.
    And third, Marshal Konev.
    He came in very fast before anything could
    be done to surviving Jews.
    And her I am.
    Always fortunate.
    Without good luck I would have never made it.
    Is there anything else that you would
    like to add before we conclude the interview today?
    Anything that we didn't discuss that you'd like to bring up?
    No, I don't think so.
    I at least I can't think of it right now.
    I think you've covered it.
    Right now there's nothing urgent that I really--
    no.
    OK.
    Well, I thank you very much for allowing
    me to do the interview on both days that I was here.
    And this concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum interview with Fritz Gluckstein.
    Thank you.
    All right.
    We are back with a postscript to this interview.
    After we concluded, you told me that you're
    listed in American Men and Women of Science.
    There's a listing on you.
    And there's also listing on you in Who's Who in America.
    Can you tell me--
    I will put these into your file--
    me what this is about, how you became
    listed in the Who's Who and what they have listed as?
    Usually you are listed because you are nominated.
    People think that you have accomplished something,
    that you are a distinguished representative
    for your profession and you're nominated.
    And I believe if enough nominations or the people who
    nominate you are prestigious scientists,
    you are put in to American Men of Science
    and also in Who's Who in America.
    There's not much you can do about it.
    And I must say, I was pleased.
    I would be lying-- it was good for the ego,
    and I'm glad that happened.
    And what did I say about you in these listings?
    My field, primary information science.
    I was initial [INAUDIBLE] of medicine.
    And what happened, people--
    it was know if somebody needed some information, particularly
    needed it fast, I usually could provide it.
    And apparently word got around that people liked it,
    and I had some colleagues who nominated me.
    Would you care to comment about the current work
    that you're doing that I see in this folder?
    [INAUDIBLE] I am, [INAUDIBLE] also I am--
    actually, it's a specialty board, America Veterinary
    Preventive Medicine.
    Well, it was prior to that were called Veterinary Public
    Health.
    So it deals with animal diseases that
    also affect man, zoonoses, for instance
    like rabies, toxoplasmosis, or food inspection.
    In fact, many people don't know that the meat they eat
    are inspected by veterinarians.
    All aspects of veterinary medicine that effect man.
    And I remember of the, their specialty I
    have to pass this examination.
    And I'm still interested in the zoonoses.
    I tried even to do some writing.
    Right now, of course, boy is it a popular field.
    But it is quite changed because of what
    scientific writing has little to do with popular writing.
    Which actually is bad-- it should.
    Have you ever been asked to comment
    on what's gone on in Europe with the mad cow disease?
    Have you ever been asked about mad cow disease?
    Yes.
    I have been asked.
    But I am very careful.
    This is a very specialized field.
    There is a new concept actually, we know about--
    people know about bacteria, they know about viruses,
    and now there is new-- actually, what it is
    a protein that is infectious.
    This is something very problematic
    and people who are much better qualified than I am are not
    quite clear what it is.
    But I'm very careful, because I hope we can solve the riddle.
    But I think we are coming close.
    Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
    Any other folders that you'd like to open before I leave?
    I don't think so.
    I thank you, and I'm very glad that you remembered that
    at the last minute.
    This now concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum interview with Fritz Gluckstein.
    Thank you again.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Fritz Gluckstein, born January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes the end of the war in Berlin; the food and housing shortages; cleaning up rubble from bombings with his father; the difficulties of re-starting his education after the war; immigrating to the United States in January 1948 and settling in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area; becoming a veterinarian; and volunteering for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    Interviewee
    Dr. Fritz P. Gluckstein
    Interviewer
    Esther Finder
    Date
    interview:  2000 October 05

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Gluckstein, Fritz P.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch conducted the interview with Fritz Gluckstein on October 5, 2000. The interview was transferred to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in February 2001.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:12:39
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508459

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (3)
    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (3)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    Also in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history volunteer collection

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

    Date: 1993

    Oral history interview with Marie Schwartzman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nathan Kalman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esthy Adler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tana Gelfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Devinki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerome Stasson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adriana Pacifici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest Kolben

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Kolber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Wollner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Wacz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erwin Forley

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernie Marx

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doris Rauch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gerald Rosenstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ivan Becker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Romana Koplewicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koplewicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irving Schaffer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Klein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Pisik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rosicka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Salomon Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tibor Vince

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elias Piorko

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Hildesheim

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Wolke

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ionel Ghelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irimia Solomon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Salus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irena Kirkland

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hans Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ludwig Jacob

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Artman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritz Schonbach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tibor Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Robert Kertesz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sia Hertsberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chava Frajhof

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Israel Frajhof

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Novakoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Celia Feldschuh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicole Yancey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frances Hirshfeld

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Moris Gluckman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margie Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emma Mogilensky

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaiah Henig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ida Henig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Silberstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joan Schwab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erwin Deutscher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Simon Pasternak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marion Friedman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jadwiga Dziekonski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas B. Gardiner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Christine Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hugh Jenkins

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rene Edgar Tressler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefan Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yehuda Adam

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Adam

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herbert Bitter

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rachel Goldfarb

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Phillips

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Ichiuji

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Horowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hermann Kosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dolly Bestandig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Goldie Gendelman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rhoda Kuflik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Hess

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jutta Levy

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Wolfgang Mueller

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Klari Rudnai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jill Pauly

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Reuben

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tilda Finzi Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zwi Golombek

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Samuel B. Hagner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner E. Michel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guta Jacobson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Luksenburg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth E. Greifer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maryla Korn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lena Jurand

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Wallace Witkowski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lena Gitter

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Wiener

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Noah Roitman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Richard W. Peterson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Riane Gruss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Stein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Gutter

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Alper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Lin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dorrit L. Ostberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Eberstarkova Masters

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leonard Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Brigitte Freidin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Kristine Belfoure

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kurt Roberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alfred Schnog

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Taucher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Inge Katzenstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Katzenstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Goldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paulette Stessin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margitta Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erika Eckstut

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tole Johannes Madna

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henri Dupuy

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Bercau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rolph Hammel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert V. Hilsberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yvonne Mignot de Royere

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Berlin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Bucur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Schneider

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marianne Liebermann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thea S. Rips

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Andrew Glass

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eli Dortort

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hilda Seftor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Felix Nicinski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Brombart

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gunter Haimann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alfred Lakritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Etzyon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Melvin Galun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magdalena Farkas Berkovics

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sol Mackler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Theresia Bauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carolina Taitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herman Taube

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Regine Ginsberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rappaport

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edith Langer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marianne Milkman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Phillip Abraham

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Arnstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Scarlett Epstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Matilde Neuwirt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susanne K. Bennet

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marianne Roberts

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Julie A. Keefer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erica Laufer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Goldberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liselotte Epstein Ivry

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hans Ziegler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vera Levine

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guenter Lewy

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Malvy Solomon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elia Miranski and Genia Miranski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Kordalewski

    Oral History

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

    View All 264 Items in the Collection