Overview
- Interviewee
- Irena Otrebska
- Interviewer
- Buckley, Robert
- Date
-
interview:
1995 August 02
Physical Details
- Language
- Polish
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Jehovah's Witnesses.
- Personal Name
- Otrebska, Irena.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Oral History Branch, in cooperation with Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc. produced the interview with Irena Otrebska on August 2, 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 07:59:48
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508833
Additional Resources
Transcripts (2)
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Oral history interview with Josef Filipp
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Josef Filipp, born March 27, 1926 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his Roman Catholic family; having an older brother, who served as a Marine in WWII; his older sister, Therese, who eventually became a Jehovah's Witness; working between 1943 and 1944 in the "Arbeitsdienst" (work service); cleaning up the streets after a bomb attack and later working in the flak division of the air force; being transferred in 1944 to the Waffen-SS and sent to fight in Italy and on the Western front; being severely injured and eventually captured by American troops and sent to Luxembourg for surgery; being sent to Elberfeld, Germany; being sent to Graz, Austria, where he was dismissed; his war experiences turning him away from religion and church; and becoming a Jehovah's Witness at a later point in his life.
Oral history interview with Gisela Tillmann and Gerd Gotthold
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Gisela Tillmann and Gerd Gotthold, born on November 24, 1923 in Herne, Germany and June 19, 1931 in Buchom, Germany, discuss their parents’ conversion to become Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1926; their religious upbringing; their parents’ Lutheran upbringings and how the Lutheran Church’s involvement in World War I changed their religious views; the mass unemployment in Germany after World War I; their parents becoming very involved in the church; their father’s job as a coal miner and then unemployment from 1927- 1938; their parents’ frequent and open political discussions with them after Hitler’s rise to power; their continued education as Jehovah’s Witnesses; the Gestapo’s arrest of many male Jehovah’s Witnesses, including their father, in spring 1936; their memories of visiting their father during his time in the Dortmund, Germany Steinwache prison; their father’s second arrest in February 1944 and his time in a local prison which was struck by Allied bombers; their mother’s first arrest in 1937 while pregnant and the Gestapo’s ransacking of their apartment in search of Bible literature; their mother’s imprisonment in Steinwache prison and being beaten so badly there that she had to get an abortion; their mother’s sentencing to one and a half years at the Anrath prison near Krefeld, Germany; their memories of their mother’s return from prison in 1939; their parents holding secret Bible study meetings; their mother’s second arrest and time in the same local prison as their father that was bombed; their parents’ time in a prison in Potsdam, Germany starting in August 1944; their father receiving a sentence to six years in a Ludwigsburg, Germany prison, where he remained until liberation, and their mother’s death sentence; their parents’ charges of undermining the Nazi Wehrmacht morale; their mother smuggling out notes to them detailing the accusations and charges; reflecting back on their Bible teachings; visiting their mother in prison before her execution; resurrection in the Bible; their experiences in school related to their religious beliefs; helping to publish and secretly deliver copies of the 1937 Jehovah’s Witnesses resolution against Hitler; how they survived on farms after their parents were imprisoned; how they relied on their religion during the Nazi rule; their father’s release from prison and return home in April 1945; their mother’s execution in December 1944 and the last letter they received from her; their reactions to receiving the letter; receiving an official notice from the Berlin penitentiary director of their mother’s execution; the complications of getting their mother’s personal items returned to the family; reuniting with their father after his liberation by French forces; moving back to Herne; Gisela’s marriage and raising her two children to be Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Gerd’s work as a coal miner and as a preacher around Germany. (Family photographs and descriptions follow the interview.)
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Joseph Hiseger, born on March 1, 1914, in Algrange, France, in the Moselle, discusses his childhood as a Catholic; his pivotal meeting with a Jehovah's Witness who converted him; his disaffection with the Catholic Church; the strong influence on him of books depicting persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses; the 1937 Paris convention of Jehovah's Witnesses and a speech called "Armageddon" discussing the collaboration of Catholic Church and Nazis; his anger at Cardinal Innitzer who received a Nazi official in Austria with the Nazi salute; his anger about the ban on Jehovah Witness proselytizing in Alsace-Lorraine during the German occupation; the Jehovah Witness refusal to serve in the German Luftschutz; his devoted participation in distribution of anti-Catholic and anti-Nazi propaganda; his conscription into the French Army and his refusal to serve; his two years in prison in Thionville, France; his evacuation from this prison when the Germans took over; his imprisonment by the Germans; his release and return home; his re-arrest on March 19, 1942 when the Gestapo arrived at his home; his trial in Metz and sentence to three years hard labor; his transfer by train with 20 people to Zweibrucken, Germany; his work in a metals factory during his imprisonment; his barter of one month's food rations for a Protestant Bible; the difficult conditions in the camp; his memories of liberation and stay in an American hospital for 45 days; his return to Jehovah's Witnesses work; his trip to Nancy, France, in 1946 where he met his wife; his establishment of the Jehovah's first congregation in Metz; and the importance of his religion in all aspects of his life.
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Adriaan Kamp, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in April 22, 1922, discusses his parents and his siblings; his education; conditions in the Netherlands in the late 1930s; his father becoming a Jehovah's Witness around 1928-1929 and later left the J.W.; being arrested for giving out J.W. literature on March 4, 1942; being taken to the bureau at the Haagse Veer and interrogated three times; spending 36 days in solitary confinement; being transferred to the river police, where he stayed for one month; being transported to Amersfoort; arriving at the camp and being disinfected, shaved, put into old Dutch uniforms, and beaten; doing hard labor; being moved in 1942 to Essen, Germany, where he stayed for three weeks; being taken to Alexanderplatz in Berlin, where the prisoners were closely confined; arriving in Sachsenhausen on June 27, 1942 and remaining there until April 21, 1945when they were sent on a death march for twelve days; conditions in Sachsenhausen and living in barrack 59; working at a pumping station and working later on the road; breaking his toe and going to the infirmary; the mistreatment of prisoners; hiding J.W. literature; witnessing the hangings of prisoners; the death march; encountering US troops and receiving food; staying for two weeks in Ommen, which was a quarantine place for ex-prisoners due to the fear of typhus; returning home; experiencing some trauma from his experiences; and details about his wife.
Oral history interview with Truus Heindyk Kamp
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Truus Heindyk Kamp, born September 29, 1917, discusses growing up in Rotterdam, Netherlands; her parents, two sisters, and brother; her brother dying during the bombardment of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940; becoming a Jehovah's Witness in October 1940; growing up Roman Catholic and never accepting Catholicism; her Belgian first husband, with whom she was active in Bible study and working more or less underground; her husband’s arrest in 1943; her daughter; the J.W. meetings held at different addresses; her husband being sent to the Haagse Veer prison, Vught, the Henckel factory, Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, and Buchenwald, where he died in February 1945; and meeting her second husband in a group that went pioneering.
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Oral history interview with Sieglinde Klose
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Oral history interview with Annemarie Kusserow and Waldtraut Kusserow
Oral History
Annemarie and Waldtraut Kusserow discuss their parents who became Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in 1921; being in a family of 11 children; the banning of the JW in Germany in the spring of 1933; the Kusserow family hiding JW literature in their house; the Gestapo searching the Kusserow home for forbidden literature 18 times; the arrest of their mother in 1935 the mother and her imprisonment in Krefeld, Germany; their mother’s refusal to renounce her faith, and her subsequent deportation to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1943; their father’s first arrest in 1936, after which he was in and out of prison several times until 1940 when he was sent to a penitentiary until 1945; Annemarie’s imprisonment in a penitentiary; Waldtraut’s imprisonment in 1941; their other siblings who were sent to Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück; two of their brothers who were executed; reuniting as a family in 1945; and people, including former Nazis, who began coming to the Kusserow family to obtain signed statements declaring their decency toward the JW during the war.
Oral history interview with Hans Werner Kusserow
Oral History
Hans Werner Kusserow, born in 1928 in Bochum, Germany, describes his parents, who were both Jehovah's Witnesses; his ten siblings; his family being subjected to frequent Gestapo house searches after 1933; experiencing trouble with teachers and students in school; being placed with his younger brother in a "reform school" in Dorsten, Germany in 1939; being taken to Nettelstedt (district in Lübbecke, Germany) and placed in a family under the constant observation of the Gestapo; being separated from his brother and finally placed in a foster family in Etten (possibly Etten, Netherlands); English troops occupying Etten in 1945; and being able to return home to his family, where he found out that two of his older brothers had been executed.
Oral history interview with Paul Gerhard Kusserow
Oral History
Paul Kusserow, born in 1931, discusses his parents Franz and Hida Kusserow, who were Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW); his memories from the period of 1933 to 1939; the persecution of his parents and siblings; experiencing persecution in school; the Gestapo searching their house for prohibited JW literature and his father’s arrest; being picked up by the police along with his brother, Hans Werner, and sister, Elizabeth, in 1939 and sent to a reform school in Dorsten; being transferred with his siblings several months later to a reform school in Nettelstadt and being separated from each other; the repeated attempts to make him renounce his faith and convictions, all of which he resisted; living and working on a farm from 1942-1945, under the observation of the local Nazi authorities; being secretly baptized in the summer of 1944; being liberated by the arrival of American troops in 1945; being taken to Wewelsburg by JW; and returning home to the surviving members of his family.
Oral history interview with Willem Coenraad Laros
Oral History
Willem Laros, born June 9, 1902 in Delft, Netherlands, describes his father, who was a stone mason; his education; working several jobs, including bicycle repair and porcelain manufacturing; getting married at age 24; Delft in 1933 and how the Dutch people were concerned about the rise of Hitler in Germany; the NSB Party; never being involved in a political party; being raised in the Reform Church; finding the Jehovah's Witnesses through one of his brothers in the mid-1930s; being baptized on April 15, 1934 in Brussels, Belgium; being active in preaching; the beginning of the war; being arrested by a Dutch policeman with one other person, Mr. Molerfeld, while his wife was out preaching; leaving his three year old daughter with a neighbor; being taken to the Hague, Netherlands and being interrogated; refusing to renounce his faith; being in jail for three months and transferred to Dusseldorf, Germany, where he stayed for one week; being sent to Hanover and Berlin, before arriving in Sachsenhausen concentration camp; other prisoners; being tested by doing physical exercises; writing letters home; the treatment of the J.W. prisoners; having Bible study in the camp; hangings and the punishment for prisoners who tried to escape; his various jobs in the camp; their clothing; roll calls; daily life in the camp; food rations; being sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp to pick fruit; the J.W. prisoners trying to comfort and strengthen each other; starting a Bible study with some Dutch and Belgian political prisoners; hiding his Bible; the death march and the baptism of 38 people in Mecklenberg when they heard about their coming liberation; conditions during the death march; spending a few nights in the forest until the Red Cross brought them some food; being discovered by the Canadian Army; the journey back to the Netherlands and spending a night in a castle near the city of Oman; arriving in Delft and seeing his daughter who was then eight years old; becoming a storekeeper in Delft; his wife, five children, and 18 grandchildren; and being an elder in their church.
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Oral history interview with Max Liebster
Oral History
Max Liebster, born February 15, 1915 in Reichenbach (Gemeinde Lautertal (Odenwald)), Germany, describes his father, mother, and two sisters; being a businessperson for ten years, until the war broke out in 1939; being put into a camp in the Black Forest in 1939; being raised in a Jewish family; the thinking among the Jewish community in 1933; Kristallnacht and the destruction of the town’s synagogues and stores; being sent to Sachsenhausen, where he was in a barrack with Jehovah's Witnesses for two weeks; being attracted to the J.W. faith; being in concentration camps for six years; conditions during the winters; being with his father when he died; being transferred to Neuengamme, where he built a haven for boats; talking with the J.W. every evening; being taken to Auschwitz, where he was tattooed; being sent to Buna (Monowitz); working on steel construction of the buildings; being sent to Buchenwald; suffering from diarrhea; conversing with an SS guard, who felt that if he didn’t kill then he would be killed; speaking with J.W. prisoners; being forced to march during a snowstorm before being sent to Buchenwald; typhus in Buchenwald and being transferred from the little camp, with so much typhus, to the larger camp; being very sick when they were liberated; having reunions with the people he was in the camps with; becoming a J.W.; and going to France and getting married.
Oral history interview with Simone Liebster
Oral History
Oral history interview with Johannes Lublink
Oral History
Oral history interview with Barbara Wohlfahrt, Ida Luckinger, and Anna Stocker
Oral History
Barbara Wohlfahrt, born in 1897 in Pörtschach, Austria, discusses the Anschluss in March 1938; the impacts of the Anschluss on her family; and the few family members who returned after the end of World War II. Mrs. Wohlfahrt’s daughters Ida Luckinger, born in 1923, and Anna Stocker, born in 1927, discuss their family and life in Austria before the Anschluss; their upbringing as Jehovah’s Witnesses; two brothers who were deported; their experiences during World War II and the Holocaust; Anna’s experiences in Germany during the war years; an uncle who was a member of the Nazi Party; learning their younger brother had been imprisoned, tortured in attempts to get him to give up his faith, and executed in 1941; the family’s reunion after the war; and their reflections on the war years.
Oral history interview with Lari Manolovich
Oral History
Oral history interview with Walter Manolovich
Oral History
Oral history interview with Hubert Mattischek
Oral History
Hubert Mattischek, born October 29, 1919 in Hamburg, Germany, describes his parents, who became Jehovah's Witnesses the year he was born; his three brothers; living in Altnach-Buchheim, Upper Austria in 1933, learning to be a painter; being arrested in 1939 and imprisoned in Linz, Austria; being sent to Dachau, where he stayed for six months and worked on construction; being sent to Mauthausen and worked there at the stone quarries until he eventually received training as a stonemason; other J.W. prisoners keeping a hidden bible; having readings and discussions; sometimes obtaining a copy of the "Watch Tower"; being transferred to Gusen in 1942-1943 and working in the stone quarries; helping to build the tunnels which were to house the construction of war planes; being liberated by American troops under the command of Generals Clay and Levy in 1945; staying in the camp for two more months under the care of the Red Cross; receiving identification documents from the Americans; and all his family surviving the concentration camps except for one brother.
Oral history interview with Berthold Mewes
Oral History
Berthold Mewes, born in Paderborn, Germany, describes how in 1934 the Jehovah's Witnesses were banned and their headquarters were closed; his mother being sent to the concentration camp Ravensbrück in April 1939; his father being sent to a penitentiary called Gamazien; his parents hosting underground meetings; being nine years old when his father had to present him to a Children's Aid Society representative at the railroad station; being sent to live with a foster family; his father refusing to participate in the war and being sentenced to 12 years in prison; receiving letters from his mother until 1943; living on a farm and attending school; learning to be self-reliant; being mistreated by the children in school; being treated fairly by the foster family and attending church with them; his mother being officially baptized a J.W. in the camp and re-baptized after her liberation; his mother keeping faith by being with other Witnesses; being reunited with his parents; and his parents receiving monetary compensation from the German government.
Oral history interview with Sophie Mewes
Oral History
Sophie Mewes, born July 18, 1898, describes becoming a Jehovah's Witness in 1931; being arrested in 1939 and placed in a prison at Paderborn for six months before she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp; having a travel pass from the camp, which allowed her to travel to her work place; her work in the camp cleaning and gardening; refusing to become a Nazi; having Bible discussions with other J.W. in the camp and preaching in the camp; food in the camp; being liberated by the Russians; returning home; getting her son (Berthold Mewes); and losing their pre-war home in Paderborn.
Oral history interview with Charlotte Müller
Oral History
Charlotte Mueller, born September 25, 1912 in Siebenlehn (part of Großschirma), Germany, describes her parents; her older sister, three younger sisters, and younger brother; her education; her parents becoming Jehovah's Witnesses in 1925; life in 1933 in Chemnitz, Germany, including the various political movements; the J.W.'s communities in Leipzig, Germany; being employed at a factory which was taken over by the German Arbeitsfront and refusing to join the Arbeitsfront; the J.W. headquarters in Magdeburg, Germany being effective in helping J.W.s; spending some time in a pioneer house in Utrecht, Netherlands; being arrested in August 1936 by the Gestapo for copying and distributing the “Watchtower”; receiving a two year sentence; performing agricultural labor while she was imprisoned; being released August 23, 1938 and immediately being taken back to Chemnitz for another hearing; refusing to renounce her faith; being sent to Lichtenburg concentration camp; being moved to Ravensbrück in May 1939; seeing her sister; her work assignments; being placed in the “punishment” barrack for refusing to wash a Nazi flag; meeting Jews for the first time; obtaining copies of the “Watchtower”; becoming the housekeeper in the household of the SS officer in charge of food provisions for the whole camp; being forced to flee with the family she had been serving when the Allied bombing increased; escaping from the family and finding J.W.s in a small town nearby; traveling by train from Schwerin to Chemnitz; remaining an active J.W.; being moved to Maagenburg, where she was to remain until 1951; the banning of J.W. in East Germany in 1951; acting as a courier, carrying J.W. literature from Berlin to East Germany; being arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison; being imprisoned in Waldheim and Halle; obtaining copies of the “Watchtower”; serving a total of six years in East German and Russian prisons; and being released two years early due to serious illness (the last 7-10 minutes of this interview are devoted to the display of many relevant documents and newspaper clippings).
Oral history interview with Josef Niklasch and Margarette Niklasch
Oral History
Joseph Niklasch, born in 1918 in Šternberk, Czechoslovakia, discusses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the winter of 1932-1933. Margarette Niklasch, born in 1910 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), discusses having her first contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931 and being baptized in 1935; getting married in 1933 to Fritz Delouch who disappeared after the first concentration camps opened; attending secret bible study groups after 1933 and distributing copies of the JW brochure “Crisis”; being arrested in 1937 and imprisoned for three months; refusing to renounce her faith; being taken to Breslau and sent later via Lichtenberg to Torgau (near the Elbe), which was still being constructed by the inmates; being sent to work on the farm of Dr. Felix Kersten (Himmler’s doctor) in 1943; the arrival of the Russian army in April/May; working on the farm under Russian supervision for six months; and returning to Germany. Jospeh Niklasch discusses working in the JW office in Prague, Czech Republic in 1939 when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia; being arrested in June 1940 for refusing military service and being sentenced to eight years in prison to be served after the war; being held in a concentration camp during the war; being deported to camp Börgermoor and later to Brandenburg; and being liberated by the Russians.
Oral history interview with Louis Piechota
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Hisiger
Oral History
Joseph Hisiger, a Jehovah’s Witness born March 1, 1914 in Moselle, Germany (now France), discusses his Jehovah’s Witness faith; his incarceration and liberation; being drafted in 1939 by the French Army; his refusal to take up arms because of his religion; his release in July 1940, at which time Germany had conquered France; attending Bible study in secret; being arrested by the Gestapo after refusing to join the Nazi party or any other political entity; receiving his sentencing by the Sondergericht in Metz, France, which included three years of hard labor; his deportation to Zweibrücken, Germany to work in forced labor camps on German railways; the conditions in the camps and experiencing deprivation; his inability to converse with other prisoners because of his religion; writing down biblical passages on purloined scraps of paper; being liberated in April 1945; and the preservation of his beliefs and commitment to preaching the word of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Oral history interview with Ernst Reiter
Oral History
Ernst Reiter, born April 11, 1915 in Graz, Austria, discusses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) circa 1931; working as a salesclerk; the Anschluss in March 1938, after which the JW meetings went underground; being arrested on September 6, 1938 for refusing military service; spending six months in prison; refusing military service again at the end of his sentence and being returned to prison; being sent in November 1939 to the Flossenbürg concentration camp under Commander Schulze, and later Commander Schierda; being liberated April 20, 1945 by US troops; and returning to Graz in September 1945.
Oral history interview with George Reuter
Oral History
Oral history interview with Magdalena Reuter
Oral History
Oral history interview with Arie Johannes Simonis
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gerda Steinfurth
Oral History
Gerda Steinfurth, born in 1920 in Germany near Berlin, discusses her parents who were baptized as Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in 1923 and got married in 1928; being baptized as a JW in 1942; the arrest of her father in 1934 and his deportation in 1936 to Sachsenhausen; having to work as a secretary to support her mother; her mother, who was active as a JW distributing the “Watchtower”, for which she was arrested in June 1940 and deported to Ravensbrück and Auschwitz; her mother’s death in 1943; being given a tutor in 1936 who was supposed to teach her the Nazi doctrine; meeting Walter Steinfurth in November 1940 and getting married to him in June 1941; being arrested late in 1942 and separated from her young son; being sentence in 1944 to four years of prison; being sent towards the end of the war from Berlin to Cottbus, and being diverted to Leipzig, where she was liberated from prison in April 1945 by American troops; walking from Leipzig to Begin in May 1945; and returning to her husband and son.
Oral history interview with Walter Steinfurth
Oral History
Walter Steinfurth, born in 1919 in Stralsund in East Germany, discusses his family, which came from a Protestant background; his mother’s death when he was thee years old; being baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) in 1942; being called in for military service in the Air Force in 1936, and working in a uniform shop; getting married in 1941; requesting conscientious objector status in 1943 when his unit was about to be moved to the Eastern Front; subsequently being arrested and put into solitary confinement; spending six months in prisons in Spandau (Berlin) and Torgau; being moved later to Milowics concentration camp near Prague; the failed attempt by Czechs of the area to supply the inmates with weapons on July 20, 1944; being transported in 1945 to Frankfurt an der Oder; being liberated by Russian troops; returning to Berlin and his family; becoming a JW overseer in East Germany until the JW were banned in 1951; being arrested and imprisoned; being released in 1960 and moving to West Germany with his family; and working as a JW overseer in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Oral history interview with Michel J. Swierkos
Oral History
Oral history interview with Edda Treforest
Oral History
Oral history interview with Berrie Van der Eikoff
Oral History
Oral history interview with D. Greey Van der Staare
Oral History
Oral history interview with Friedrich Waldmann, Heinrich Waldmann, and Johanna Waldmann
Oral History
Friedrich Waldmann (born in 1927), Heinrich (born in 1926), and Johanna (born in 1922), discuss their siblings and half-siblings; their first contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1923 and their mother being baptized in 1929, one year after their father died in an accident; their family’s move in 1934 to Paderborn, Germany, where their mother worked in bible education for the JW; experiencing harassment from other children because of their faith; the arrest and imprisonment of their mother in 1936, at which time the four children still living at home (Johanna, Heinrich, Friedrich, and their younger brother Berthold) were sent to a Catholic orphanage; the release of their mother after nine months and the younger children returning home; Johanna’s move to Bochum, Germany, where she worked in a bakery and began to go to secret JW meetings and to distribute the “Watchtower”; the Gestapo arresting Johanna in February 1944 and imprisoning her for three months in the Steinwache before she was transported to Ravensbrück in April 1944; Johanna’s liberation in May 1945 and release one month later, at which time she walked to Berlin and secretly crossed the border to the western part of Germany where she found her mother and sister; Friedrich, Heinrich and Berthold being taken to a National Socialist Children’s home in 1939, where attempts were made to make them renounce their faith; the separation of the boys; Friedrich, who was forced to work for a blacksmith and ran away to his mother in 1940; Friedrich being taken away again and put to work in an education home for small children and was later able to join Heinrich in Nettelstadt where they both worked on farms; their mother finding Friedrich on the farm in 1945 and taking him home where most of the family reunited; and their younger child Berthold who is still missing.
Oral history interview with Robert Wagemann
Oral History
Robert Wagemann discusses moving to the United States in 1963; his birth in Mannheim, Germany in 1937; his parents; Mannheim before Hitler’s rise to power; his parents’ conversion to become Jehovah’s Witnesses; his parents’ experiences with persecution for their religious beliefs; his father’s work for BASF in scientific laboratories around Germany; the liquor store owned by his parents; his mother’s arrest and incarceration shortly before his birth; not having access to doctors due to the his family’s religious beliefs and incurring a birth defect in his hip; being summoned to the university clinic in Heidelberg, Germany when he was four or five years old; his mother overhearing the doctors’ conversation and narrowly avoiding being sterilized due to this birth defect; a neighbor who regularly warned the family when searches were planned to take place; his father’s conscription into the army of Nazi Germany; doctors’ discovery of his father’s diabetes and his excusal from military service; his parents’ refusal to say “Heil Hitler” and teaching him to also refuse; the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses; an uncle’s work with Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, during World War I and this uncle’s marriage to a Jewish woman; the bombing of the family’s home during an air raid on Mannheim; how he and his mother moved in with his paternal grandparents in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany, a suburb of Mannheim; not knowing that Jews were being deported to concentration camps and killing centers, just knowing that they were disappearing; how his father’s traveling for work always kept him one step ahead of the police and Gestapo; studying the Bible even before entering school; experiencing discrimination at school; his and his mother’s move after an incident at school to his maternal grandparents’ home in Haardt an der Weinstraße, Germany, where they lived for the rest of the war years; living off what his grandparents’ farm produced; his grandfather becoming mayor of the town during Allied occupation; reuniting with his father after the war’s end; how Jehovah’s Witnesses publications were banned during the Third Reich; his mother’s participation in distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets and publications during the war; witnessing a deportation; living on his maternal grandparents’ farm in Haardt an der Weinstraße; attending Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings with his parents in secret during the war; his memories of the end of the war; working for BASF after the war; a doctor who attempted to correct his birth defect; meeting his wife at a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention in Germany; his children; and his thoughts on the importance of the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Oral history interview with Edward Warter and Ruth Warter
Oral History
Edward Warter (born November 20, 1901) and Ruth Warter (born June 13, 1905), discuss growing up in Memelland, Lithuania (Klaipėda Region, which was annexed to Germany in March 1939); witnessing book burnings of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (JW) literature in 1939; the Gestapo searching their farm in 1940; Ruth’s arrest in 1943 for smuggling a letter to an imprisoned JW; Edward’s arrest for refusing to serve in the military, after which he was tried in Berlin and sent to Stutthof near Danzig; Edward’s experiences in the concentration camp and other JW arranging for him to become a tailor; Edward’s return to Memelland in 1946; living under Soviet rule as a JW until Stalin banned the JW in 1951, Edward was arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in northern Russia; the banishment of Edward’s family to Siberia for life; Edward’s release in 1960, his retirement in 1969, and his return from Siberia with Ruth; and how they later were allowed to move to West Germany.
Oral history interview with Ernst Waver
Oral History
Ernst Waver, born in 1902, discusses his work as a businessman in Dresden, Germany circa 1933; being married to a non-Jehovah’s Witness (JW); participating in underground JW activities and being arrested in 1937; serving two years in prison, one of them in solitary confinement; being asked in the summer of 1939 to renounce his faith and when he refused, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; being moved to Neuengamme camp, also near Berlin, Germany; how the JW in the camp were well organized, and they had bibles and held bible study in groups; being transferred to a small “Schandelager” (shame camp) near Braunschweig, Germany, where he stayed a year and handled the financial management of the camp; how near the end of the war the prisoners were to be loaded on a boat and sunk in Lubeck harbor, but the transport only reached Ludwigsburg, where the prisoners were liberated by the British; and going to Magdeburg and remaining a JW.
Oral history interview with Berta Wenzel and Gustav Wenzel
Oral History
Berta Wenzel (née SIndermann, born in 1904) and Gustav Wenzel (born in 1902), both born in Hausdorf, Silesia in eastern Germany (now Jugów, Poland), discuss becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) circa 1923; their daughter who was born in 1923; getting married in 1925; Gustav’s work circa 1933 as a coal miner in Hausdorf; attending JW congregations and beginning to preach from house to house in 1934; Berta’s arrest in 1935 and imprisonment for three months in a prison in Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland); Berta’s second arrest in 1937 and imprisonment for six months in a prison in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland); Berta’s release and work for a family that protected and hid her; fleeing to Hildesheim, Germany when there was a threat of being found by the Gestapo, and returning to Hausdorf when she felt safe again; how she continues to read the “Watchtower” and preaches to others; Gustav’s arrest in 1935 for selling a bible and refusing military service; Gustav’s imprisonment for three months in a prison in Glatz, before he was moved to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin; how he was treated relatively well because he was the only miner and explosives expert in the camp; the liberation of the camp in 1945 and his reunion with his wife and daughter; and leaving East Germany after the war to live in West Germany, while their daughter stayed behind.
Oral history interview with Charles Schuster
Oral History
Charles Schuster, born on August 3, 1920 in Algrange, Moselle, France, describes Jehovah’s Witness resistance to Nazi occupation; being drafted in 1943 into “Service du travail obligatoire”; completing the training, reporting to the base, and refusing to serve; being arrested; being imprisoned in Marne, Rellinghausen, Münster, and finally in Essen, all in Westfalen, where he was sentenced to four years of hard labor; being sent to hard labor camp in Langenberg; being assigned to a factory making pre-fabricated housing; the attempts by the Gestapo to force him to say “Heil Hitler” and the biblical references that forbade him to do so; experiencing harassment from the Gestapo but eventually being left alone; being liberated on April 1, 1945; and returning to Lille, France by a prisoner convoy on April 15, 1945.
Oral history interview with Alois Moser
Oral History
Oral history interview with Nicolaas Zweere
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fanny Mintzer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Feliks Borys
Oral History
Oral history interview with Hanna Vegeu
Oral History
Oral history interview with Tommy Smith
Oral History
Oral history interview with Karen Johanson
Oral History
Oral history interview with Max Hollweg
Oral History
Max Hollweg, born in 1920 in Remscheid, Germany, discusses being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW); his 18 brothers and sisters; being in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) circa 1933 as a pioneer; being arrested by the SS and taken to Graz, Austria, and being told to return to Germany; returning to Germany and having his passport taken from him; being put under police surveillance; being forced out of the job he had found; going underground and sending an open letter about the bible and god to officials in the area of Koblenz; being arrested several times in the following years and his house being searched regularly; being taken in 1938 into protective custody in Frankfurt am Main and interrogated by a Gestapo man named Mueller; being in prison for three months before being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp under Commander Koch; not being treated for a lung infection because he was a JW; being transferred in May 1940 to Niederhagen, then to Wewelsburg, to work in Himmler’s castle near Paderborn; receiving help from a childhood acquaintance, who was working in the SS office, and helped he and other JW avoid further punishment; managing to produce “Der Wachturm” (The Watchtower); being liberated by U.S. troops who arrived before the camp was to be eliminated by the SS; and working after 1945 with the department of health in Büren, treating sick people when doctors were not available.
Oral history interview with Gerhard Schumann
Oral History
Oral history interview with Horst Schmidt
Oral History
Horst Schmidt, born in 1920, discusses his internment in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany; he and his parents converting to become Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1935; his family’s interactions with and efforts to evade the Gestapo; moving to eastern German cities such as Danzig (today Gdańsk, Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, Russia); being arrested with his parents in Danzig in June 1943; his imprisonment at the Gestapo headquarters at Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany and the conditions there; undergoing interrogations; his imprisonment in Tegel, Germany; being sentenced in summer 1944 to imprisonment at the Brandenburg-Görden Prison; sharing a cell with French and Polish political prisoners; his mother’s internment and execution at the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin; his father’s death at Auschwitz; conditions in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison; and being liberated by Soviet soldiers.
Oral history interview with Robert Wagemann
Oral History
Oral history interview with Genvieve de Gaulle
Oral History
Genevieve de Gaulle, whose father was eldest brother of General Charles DeGaulle, discusses her awareness of dangers resulting from the Nazi rise to power in Germany; her resistance activities beginning in 1940 with an underground journal; being in Brittany when German forces entered Paris; her arrest with identity card and ration card paraphernalia and a false ID card reading Genevieve Garnier; her deportation, first to a prison and then Compiegne internment camp in France; her transfer to Ravensbrück along with 1,000 female political prisoners; her memories of life in the camp; the red triangle identifying political prisoners and letter identifying nationalities; Jehovah’s Witness prisoners and their refusal to work on any tasks directly related to war, their courage, adherence to faith, and help to other prisoners; and her liberation thru an intermediary of the Red Cross.
Oral history interview with Willi Pohl
Oral History
Oral history interview with Hermine Schmidt
Oral History
Hermine Schmidt, born in 1925 in the free city of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), discusses her parents; her sisters; growing up in Danzig; her mother’s Bible studies; her parents’ first contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1919 and converting in 1920; Danzig after Hitler’s rise to power; her parents instructing her and her sisters to not say “Heil Hitler” or salute; her difficulties at school and the other children’s treatment; hearing about arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Danzig and in Germany; her parents emphasizing Bible study and keeping faith; fearing the Gestapo; she and her family experiencing persecution; her parents’ occasional work as couriers for distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses publications; meeting her future husband, also a Jehovah’s Witness; her and her parents’ arrest by the Gestapo in 1943; her imprisonment in a small cell at Gestapo headquarters for a week; being interrogated and pressed for names of other Jehovah’s Witnesses; the beatings her husband endured during interrogations; being transported to Stutthof; forming close relationships with some of the other Jehovah’s Witnesses prisoners; being assigned to heavy work details because of her young age; Soviet soldiers’ arrival at Stutthof after she had left via transport; the different types of prisoners and the conditions in Stutthof; gay prisoners in the men’s section of the camp; the writer Hermann Hesse; her parents’ wartime experiences; being transported by boat to Germany near the war’s end, but arriving in Klintholm Havn, Denmark in May 1945; being released into the care of the Red Cross; the teachings of the Bible; having to wear a purple triangle badge in Stutthof; being offered the chance to leave Stutthof if she signed a document renouncing her faith, but refusing to do so; the behavior of guards in Stutthof; poetry she wrote after the war; and her husband’s wartime experiences. (Family photographs and descriptions follow the interview.)
Oral history interview with Horst Schmidt
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth Abt
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anna Mielczarek
Oral History
Anna Ludwiga Mielczarek (née Kuźmin), born on April 3, 1912 in Schodnica, Poland (present-day Skhidnytsia, Ukraine), discusses being the thirteenth child of Dymitr Kuźmin (Ukrainian) and Paulina Chedryk (Polish); how she became a Jehovah’s Witness in her childhood; receiving a Bible from a Brother Kinicki that she kept throughout her whole life and managed to keep hidden in the camps; traveling seven hours daily throughout the countryside to distribute brochures; almost being thrown out of school for her religion; moving to Warsaw, Poland in 1937 with her husband for Jehovah’s Witness missionary work; living in a small community outside of Warsaw with other Witnesses until 1944; hiding Brother Kinicki, targeted by the Nazis, throughout the war; hearing of other Witnesses getting arrested or detained by the Nazis but continuing to do underground missionary work; becoming separated from her husband, young son, and grandmother when the Warsaw Uprising began in August 1944, and not being able to see them before she was sent to the camps; staying at a hotel in Warsaw with other refugees during the duration of the Uprising; being arrested by the Nazis when the Uprising failed, then being packed into a cattle car with 70 others and travelling to Pruszków, Poland, to wait for another transport, but never knowing where one would be sent next; finding other Witnesses and staying together throughout her time in the camps; being transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria to await relocation; being sent with other female Witnesses to Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany, at the end of August 1944 or the beginning of September 1944; feeling hostility for being a Witness from the SS in Ravensbrück, but not hostility among the other inmates; laboring with other Witnesses in the cold, seeing other Witnesses faint or being beaten during work; and being transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.
Oral history interview with Henryk Dornik
Oral History
Oral history interview with Andrzej Szalbot
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jan Otrebski
Oral History
The first portion of this interview consists of a Polish language interview with Jan Otrebski, it includes his family and religious history, his Holocaust experience, as well as him showing photographs. The second part of the interview is in Polish with an English translator. In it, Jan Otrebski and the interviewers tour Auschwitz.
Oral history interview with Victor Schnell
Oral History
Oral history interview with Max Liebster
Oral History
Oral history interview with Aloyse Elbisser
Oral History
Aloyse Elbisser, born November 9, 1918 in Romanshorn, Switzerland, recalls the German decision at the end of 1942 to integrate Alsatian soldiers into the German Army and his decision to become a conscientious objector; his baptism as a Jehovah’s Witness in Mulhouse, France in November 1942; his two brothers, one of whom disappeared in 1940 while the other was detained on February 26, 1943 trying to escape to Switzerland; his decision to obey God and not man; reporting for duty, declaring himself an objector, and being transferred to the Mulhouse prison; being deported to Schirmeck forced labor and re-education camp in Alsace; the conditions and treatment of inmates in the camp; falling ill three weeks after his arrival; being transferred to the Gestapo in Strasburg, Germany, where he was asked “Who introduced you to the Truth?” (a question he says was designed to identify other Jehovah’s Witnesses); being sent on a death march towards Dachau in April 1945 as the French crossed the Rhine; being turned over to a Wehrmacht paramilitary organization which had own camps; liberation on April 20, 1945; and his return to France.
Oral history interview with Ruth Danner
Oral History
Ruth Danner, born in 1933, discusses growing up in a very religious Jehovah’s Witnesses family; learning her faith at an early age; saying a prayer with her mother every day before going to school; witnessing religious meetings in their home; her early desire to be baptized but parents’ refusal because of her young age; her eventual baptismal ceremony, held in 1947 after her family’s return from the concentration camps, in a picnic setting because religious meetings were still forbidden; the arrival of the Germans in 1940, and the beginning of harassment of Jehovah’s Witnesses; the constant house searches and frequent stops by SS in the street; the forbidden religious meetings that were held in secret; having daily confrontations with school authorities at her refusal to salute Hitler’s image; her mother often being stopped at work by the SS; her mother and sister being taken from home because they refused to clean SS military uniforms; the deportation of her entire family in January 1943 to Upper Silesia; being imprisoned in five camps in the region; the miserable living conditions and little food; how the secretary of the SS in the camp would send her in town to a bakery to purchase bread; the baker taking pity on her and giving her a bit of bread for herself; being liberated by the Allies in 1945; returning to France; the joy she felt that all her family, parents, sister, and herself returned safely; and her commitment to her religion.
Oral history interview with Mary Schnell
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rudolf Graichen
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Oral history interview with Lothar Hornig
Oral History
Oral history interview with Magdalena Reuter
Oral History
Magdalena Reuter, born in a city on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, discusses being persecuted for her religious beliefs; being a Jehovah's Witnesses; growing up with a happy family of six brothers and five sisters; being the eighth child; her father Frank fighting for Germany during WWI; how at the end of the war her family became Jehovah's Witnesses, abandoning Protestantism; her father, who was injured in the war, and therefore retired early from his clerkship at the post office; the family’s move to move to Bad Lippspringe, Germany in 1931 in order for her father to spread his new religion; how her family was very united and religion occupied an important part in their lives; every child in the family learning an instrument; her father’s arrest and imprisonment for a few months in 1936 for his religious beliefs; the arrest of the whole family in 1940; her brother Wilhelm, who was shot in 1940 in Munster for refusing to go to the front, and her brother Wolfang, who was decapitated two years later; being held in a prison in Paderborn, Germany; being sent to a prison in Bielefeld, Germany; being offered freedom if she chose to renounce her religion, which she refused, and spending two more months in prison; turning 17 years old and being sent to Ravensbrück; her parents and another sister, who were also given extended prison sentences; her thoughts upon seeing the crematorium; spending four years in Ravensbrück, where two of her brothers were killed and another brother died soon after liberation; how the Jehovah's Witnesses were a very cohesive, supporting group; reuniting with her mother and sisters in the camp; life and work in the camp; how the Witnesses were known for not trying to escape and therefore were given jobs outside the camp in the private homes of the German officers or in children’s nurseries to where they arrived unescorted; the massage therapist of Himmler, Felix Kersten, who had an estate nearby and convinced Himmler to give him some prisoners as shoemakers, carpenters, etc, whom he needed to work in his home; the 20-30 Witnesses who ended up working for Dr. Kersten; speaking to De Gaulle’s niece, who was also imprisoned in the camp, about their religion; being offered her freedom if she renounced her faith, which she refused (and therefore stayed in the camp); how the group managed to make converts to their faith among the camp inmates; the liberation of Ravensbrück by the Russians in the first days of May 1945; being hiding for six months after liberation; reuniting with the family; and continuing her missionary work for Jehovah's Witnesses around the world.
Oral history interview with Joseph Kempler
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Schoen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Johannes Neubacher
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gerard Los
Oral History
Oral history interview with Stella Los
Oral History
Oral history interview with Luise Ebstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alexander Ebstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Clayton Ball
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose Gasman
Oral History
Rose Gasman (née Klein), a Jehovah’s Witness born in 1913 in Mulhouse, Germany (now France), describes her early life in a Catholic family; life in Alsace when Hitler arrived in 1933; her lack of knowledge about concentration camps; the absence of support for Hitler at the time in Alsace; her conversion to Jehovah’s Witness through an aunt; having no early knowledge of persecution of Witnesses in Germany; beginning Bible studies in 1934-1935 and studying in earnest in early 1940 when she learned of the persecution of Witnesses and the arrest of several in Mulhouse; her work as a hairdresser in from 1940 to 1941, which was unaffected by the arrival of Nazis; continuing Bible study; the Witnesses' meetings in a Mulhouse barbershop and someone's home; the Nazi persecution beginning in April 1944 and being arrested by the Gestapo; her father calling the Gestapo headquarters but not knowing his daughter was a Witness; her three weeks in a jail cell in solitary confinement and subsequent placement in a holding room and transfer to a train for Schirmeck camp (a subcamp of Struthof); how because the war was almost over, prisoners wore their own clothes for lack of prisoners' uniforms; how there were no Jews in the camp but there were Romanies and homosexuals; being grouped in a barracks with about five female Witnesses; deprivation in the camp; visits by her husband who told her if she renounced her faith she could leave the camp and states that her refusal made her realize the power of Jehovah; the liberation of the camp; her return to Mulhouse; and the return of her two sons who had been taken to Switzerland by the Red Cross.
Oral history interview with Maria Koehl
Oral History
Maria Koehl, born January 16, 1903 in Mulhouse, France, discusses her family, her father Sebastian Simon, a barber, and her mother Lamy Simon; being an only child; her introduction to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1925 when her husband, Adolphe, went to a “photo-drama”, returned home and said he had found God; becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in 1936-37; the feeling of safety in Mulhouse, notwithstanding news about Hitler; continuing her Bible study and education after the war’s outbreak in 1939; holding meetings first in the back of their barbershop and, when it became too dangerous, in their apartment that had a door to the roof for escape; how the Gestapo found out they were Jehovah’s Witnesses because there was no photo of Hitler in the barbershop; her husband’s secret travel to the French-German border near Mulhouse to secure a copy of the Watchtower Journal from a French Jehovah’s Witness, his willingness to risk arrest or even death to get the Journal, because it was their duty to seek spiritual truth and spread the word; being regularly harassed by the Gestapo and the French police to contribute money for the German troops; their awareness of atrocities going on in the concentration camps but their disbelief because of the extreme barbarity of it; their lack of knowledge about the deportation of Jews from Mulhouse because they were working inside all day; translating the Watchtower journal each month from French into German at night; how she read the text to the translator who would transcribe by hand while his wife stood watch outside, waiting for a messenger to retrieve the translated document and take it for distribution in Strasbourg, Fribourg, and elsewhere in the region; and continuing their Bible study and education after the war.
Oral history interview with Louis Arzt
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alphonse Lauber
Oral History
Alphonse Lauber, born in 1900 near Mulhouse, France, discusses his parents Emile and Anna-Marie, becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in 1923; going to meetings; the banning of Bible classes by the French Government even before Hitler’s invasion of France; being fired from a job in a factory because he refused to sign pro-German documents; his subsequent difficulties finding a job because the factories were on a war footing and their production ran counter to Jehovah’s Witnesses beliefs; being detained in the summer of 1943; being imprisoned in Mulhouse for 10 days and then transported by train to Schirmeck concentration camp; being sent later towards the end of the war to Gaggenau; the mistreatment of Jehovah's Witnesses in the camps, the determined resistance to the Nazi ideology by the Jehovah's Witnesses and the presence of other political groups in the camps; getting married after the war; not having any children; and continuing his Bible education.
Oral history interview with Charles Frey
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marsha Albert
Oral History
Oral history interview with Johann Albert
Oral History
Oral history interview with Richard Rudolph
Oral History
Oral history interview with Robert Pamranky
Oral History
Oral history interview with Evans Hunt
Oral History
Oral history interview with Silis Panagiotis
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Oral history interview with Hans Bluehs
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irene Kowalski
Oral History