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Oral history interview with Erica van Adelsberg

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.24 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0024

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    Oral history interview with Erica van Adelsberg

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Erica Van Adelsberg (née Herz), born in Munich, Germany in 1928, describes her assimilated, liberal Jewish family; leaving Germany with her parents and younger brother in 1932 to live in Aerdenhoudt, Holland; living comfortably and the decency of the Dutch people; how in 1940 after the German occupation, her family was designated as being stateless; being forced to move and conditions worsening; being sent to Westerbork internment camp in 1942; continuing her education and being trained as a laboratory technician at age 14; becoming part of a Zionist youth group, which heightened her Jewish identity in contrast to her parents' assimilated orientation; life in the camp, including her friend's wedding as well as the weekly transports to Auschwitz; being sent with her family on February 15, 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; the camp routine and her work in a plastic pipe factory; the cruelty of the Polish Kapos; contracting with para-typhoid for several weeks with no medication; the family being transported by train in April 1945 with about 600 others for two weeks; enduring bombings by Allied planes; being liberated by two Russian soldiers on horseback in Trbitz, near Leipzig, Germany; the Russians setting up a hospital and caring for the survivors, many of whom succumbed to typhoid fever; how six weeks later the Americans took her family back to Holland, where her brother became the first to celebrate a bar mitzvah after the war; going to the United States in 1946; and attending a Quaker school.
    Interviewee
    Erica Van Adelsberg
    Interviewer
    Lucille Fisher
    Date
    interview:  1981 December 08
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 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

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive conducted the interview with Erica van Adelsberg in Philadelphia, Pa., on December 8, 1981. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from Gratz College on September 26, 1997.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:36:03
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508645

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