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Oral history interview with Michael Kishel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0125.61 | RG Number: RG-50.233.0061

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    Oral history interview with Michael Kishel
    Transcript
    I'm interviewing Majlech Kisielnicki--
    Majleck Kisielnicki.
    --on July--
    Kisielnicki, Michael--
    --or Michael Kishel--
    --Kishel.
    --on July 1, 1990.
    My name is Michael Kishel.
    I was born Kisielnicki.
    At my bris, I was giving the name of Majleck.
    I lived in Kaluszyn, Poland, which
    is 56 kilometers east of Warsaw on the way to Brest-Litovsk
    and beyond.
    The first years of--
    when I was a young boy, I was attending cheder.
    And later, I was attending Betasefer,
    which was a Hebrew school only, to learn Hebrew,
    and the public school till the seventh grade.
    My family consisted of parents, my father Moishe, my mother
    Reizel, my brother Abram, and my sister Heisura.
    We had lived very well.
    And we had-- in the late 1920s, early '30s,
    my father had a business of retail and wholesale groceries.
    In the early '30s, my father got to make a gasoline station,
    as the road--
    as this town that we lived in was
    a main road from Warsaw to the east,
    which was very heavy in traffic.
    And [INAUDIBLE] very good things.
    He also made a restaurant that was open 24 hours a day,
    and practically 365 days a year.
    Of course, we only had closed on major holidays.
    Saturdays, we closed the front, but business
    was done in the back.
    We also had a business in wholesale kosher products
    such as petroleum, nafta, coal, rice, sugar,
    salt, and many products that had to be brought in from Warsaw
    to sell to the local grocery stores.
    We were very well-off in many ways.
    What was [INAUDIBLE] your father's [INAUDIBLE]??
    My father was born also in Kaluszyn.
    I believe he was in 1895.
    And my mother was born in 1900, also in Kaluszyn.
    They were young people when they got married.
    Thinking-- my mother would have been 17 or 18 years old,
    as you can see on the picture.
    Could you tell me a little bit about your--
    both of your parents' family?
    Your father had a lot of siblings?
    My father had-- my father's family consisted of--
    there were two brothers and two sisters.
    And where was he?
    One sister emigrated to Argentina in the '20s.
    And another sister emigrated to France, also in the '20s.
    And he also had a brother, who also lived in Poland.
    And my father's brother had--
    the family consisted of him and his wife.
    And they had nine children.
    And they all perished.
    My mother had-- there were four sisters and two brothers.
    One sister lives now in Israel.
    She's the only one that remained.
    One sister died in Russia after she ran away from the Germans
    in 1939.
    And one sister and my mother died in the Holocaust
    in September 1939 when--
    September 1942 when they were taken to Treblinka.
    What did your father's father do?
    Was he also a businessman, a grocer, or--
    I don't remember what my father's father did,
    because he died in the '20s.
    And I don't recall exactly what he was doing.
    I believe he was dealing in produce
    they brought in from Kaluszyn to Warsaw during market days.
    And from there, he brought back merchandise for stores that
    ordered certain merchandise.
    I see.
    So he was wholesaler.
    Some kind.
    He would be called a supplier of things,
    whatever, that someone needed.
    My mother's father, I was told, they
    used to work for someone that lived in the forest,
    like the princess or very rich gentiles.
    And they used to sell their woods.
    And he used to be, I suppose, their accountant,
    or something like that in that respect.
    My grandfather died in the early '30s.
    Did your-- what kind of education
    did your parents have?
    My mother had an education.
    She was attending, during the First World
    War, the Russian schools-- and, of course, Jewish education.
    My father only had a Jewish education.
    Do you know what age he was when he left school?
    No.
    This, I don't know.
    I do not know when my father left school, or my mother.
    But I do know that they could go along
    with knowledge and on many, many different things.
    What languages did you speak in your household?
    In the household, we spoke mainly Yiddish.
    Occasionally, when there are people that came from--
    gentiles that came to visit us, we spoke Polish.
    Did your parents ever discuss the circumstances
    of their meeting?
    I believe my parents did not discuss
    with us the circumstances of their meeting.
    But we know that my mother wanted to marry my father
    because he was very industrious, although the family
    of my mother's was more prominent than my father's.
    But you think they just met through friends?
    Oh, no.
    No, they did not meet through friends.
    But they were about the same age, although it
    was different about five years.
    But when it comes to marry, this is the ages
    that you marry, between four to six, seven years apart.
    OK.
    And did you always live in the same house as a child?
    As a child, I remember, until the 1929 or '30,
    we lived in an apartment, which was a one-bedroom apartment.
    And we were three children, which
    was a little too high, too tight in today's standards.
    But in those years, the more the merrier.
    There was no such thing as there is no space, you cannot sleep,
    or sleep there.
    Right.
    There's no such thing.
    And if somebody came to visit, there
    was always a place to find for them.
    And later on, when we had the business in the late '20s,
    we had rented-- it was a house that my father rented
    at the beginning, which later on we bought.
    It was on a lot that we consider here
    75 feet by 200 feet in the length--
    or not to say 75, maybe 60 feet wide, and about 200 feet long.
    And there was that house that we lived in.
    And the house had a store.
    In the back of the store, we had the living quarters.
    We also had an attic, which a tenant lived there before.
    And then, because we needed the apartment,
    we paid him to move out.
    And we occupied that apartment also.
    Because of the space that we needed more,
    my family rented an apartment that we used only
    for a bedroom about two houses away, which
    was only about 10 steps away.
    The back of the lot or warehouse--
    of course, all the things that was necessary for the business.
    And sometimes, there was a lot of space
    that we used to plant fruits, or onions, or potatoes,
    or strawberries, or whatever my mother or the people that
    worked for us liked to do, because we always
    had people helping us out in many, many ways.
    Non-Jewish people?
    That's right.
    I don't want to mention it over there.
    Yeah.
    That sounds nice.
    So you remember growing up in this environment?
    Yes.
    What kind of a street and neighborhood was it?
    Well, the neighborhood-- our town
    was a town of a population of about 10,000.
    And we had about 75%, 80% Jewish.
    Maybe not exactly 75%, but it was about a 65% Jewish.
    And that, I remember from many, many years.
    The town lived mainly from different trades.
    There were a lot of people that had a trade making
    prayer shawls, tallisem.
    There were also a lot of people that made sheepskin coats.
    There were a few people that dealt in skin, making leather,
    tannery.
    And of course, shoemakers and tailors were abundant.
    And the majority of it, the rest were mostly, I would say,
    about 30% of the people that did have
    businesses, businesses of textile,
    like selling materials for suits.
    There was no such thing as ready-made suits here.
    There were tailors that made ready-made suits.
    But they were making them for out-of-town, maybe
    for business people in Warsaw or other ones.
    But if you wanted to have a suit, you went to the store
    to buy 3 yards or 3 meters of material,
    and give it to a tailor, who made it for you.
    I remember that we always had two suits a year,
    for Passover and for high holidays.
    After that year, the following year,
    my mother gave the suits away to relatives
    who were less fortunate.
    And if they were still good in the same condition,
    they wore it that way.
    If not, they turned it over on the other side, the material,
    and remade it.
    It would look like new.
    The same thing was with shoes and other things.
    How would you describe the relations
    between the Jewish families and the non-Jewish?
    Were they Catholics?
    The gentles in our town were 99% Catholics.
    The relations between the gentiles and the Jews
    officially were supposedly good.
    We, in particular, had no problem,
    because all the gentiles that used to come around
    had respect for my father.
    And especially the precinct, the police,
    were practically stationed in our house,
    because it was a station that the trucks and buses that
    used to pass by our town made a stopover.
    They can gas, fill in with gas.
    And all the passengers came into our restaurants to eat.
    And for this, it was very lively in our area.
    And the town was-- every evening,
    young people used to stroll along the streets,
    especially the main street, which it was called
    Warsaw Street, or Warszawska.
    And especially when it came Friday night
    and Saturday night, you could not pass the certain area
    without bumping into one another,
    because they were walking four or five in a width,
    and all friends and young people.
    And everybody was very happy.
    Of course, there occasionally were anti-Semitic slogans not
    to buy from Jews, because--
    this came from other places that instigated against Jews.
    And of course, it dropped off among other populations,
    other areas.
    And the same thing rubbed off on Jews in our area.
    So there were local fascists, youths?
    Yes.
    There were fascists.
    But officially, they did not come up
    to say exactly what they are.
    But in a group, they were barking.
    But many times, the gentiles had very much respect
    for my family, for my father.
    And there was no hesitation that if someone came into our house
    and said something against the Jews,
    that my father could take his neck
    and throw him out with a kick in the back, in the rear end.
    And it was OK.
    And as the decade, the '30s progressed, did things
    get tougher?
    Well, it start to get a little tougher
    after Hitler came to power.
    And there was a lot of writings about how
    he's treating the Jews.
    And of course, there was a Polish anti-Semitic party.
    It's called Endek, the National Polish Party.
    I don't remember exactly what they called it.
    But there were a few of them.
    And they had their newspapers.
    And they used to write many articles about the Jews,
    how bad the Jews are, and what the Jews did bad to Poland,
    and what they do with this, and what they do that.
    And of course, many Poles that did not have anything,
    or did not have any incentives to go out and work and better
    themselves, only saw that the Jews take everything away,
    that the Jews have everything.
    And this made anti-Semitism a little more.
    So there were more incidents?
    Well, actually, no incidents.
    The only incident that was once was in the county.
    Someone had killed--
    I don't remember exactly.
    But this was that someone had killed someone in the county.
    Or it was at a time when a German ambassador,
    or councilor, was killed in Paris.
    And that person that killed him was from Minsk Mazowiecki.
    I don't remember exactly whether this was the case.
    But there was some incident in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    And of course, it did not do much good.
    But people still lived.
    And there was no other choice to do.
    But you had to live with them, to make the best you can.
    But your freedom of movement or opportunity wasn't restricted?
    No, freedom movement was not restricted.
    And of course, there were restrictions
    on higher education in schools.
    But there was no higher education in our town.
    Our town was only public school up to the seventh grade.
    OK.
    And tell me again what your schooling was.
    Yeah.
    My schooling was that, when I was a boy-- let's say,
    four or five years old-- the first thing you attend
    is a cheder.
    I remember that, till my time of the Jewish education,
    I went to four different rabbis, from the one that
    starts with small children, and bigger children,
    and so on, and so forth.
    And then, when I was about 11, 12 years old,
    I was attending a school which taught only Hebrew,
    because my father was a Zionist.
    And he wanted us to know Hebrew.
    So we went.
    In that day, 11, 12, and 13, I was going to Hebrew school
    in the morning, let's say from 9:00 to 12:00.
    From 1:00 to 6:00, I went to public school.
    And from 7:00 to 8:00 or 7:00 to 9:99,
    the rabbi came to the house to finish my religious education.
    So for a time, we were busy educating ourselves.
    And you were bar mitzvahed when you were 13.
    Yeah.
    Bar mitzvah, I got when I was 13.
    What was the ceremony like then?
    Well, the bar mitzvah ceremony was new to me
    when I came to United States.
    There was no such thing as elaborate bar mitzvahs
    that they have here that was there.
    There was only, at a time when I was bar mitzvah,
    it came on a Saturday.
    I was given an Aliyah.
    And I was reading from the Torah.
    Or I don't remember exactly what I read,
    the part that I supposed to.
    I don't-- but after that, there was a big Kiddush
    in the synagogue.
    And a lot of friends came to the house.
    And we had a separate party in the house.
    But were you--
    I just went to a bar mitzvah on Saturday.
    It was very elaborate.
    And the little kid was just put out on a pedestal.
    You just want to a bar mitzvah.
    Do you want to say it?
    Yes.
    We'll get back to the bar mitzvah.
    But you were going to talk about your great grandmother, Mariam
    Gelbard.
    The picture you see here is my great grandmother.
    Her name was Mariam Gelbard.
    She was a baker woman.
    And the whole town knew her.
    She also made boxes for tefillin.
    She died in 1934 at the age of 100.
    A story comes--
    I was told a story here in the States when
    I came in 1947 through her son, that her son ran away
    from Kaluszyn.
    And he came as a young boy, maybe 16 or 17 years old.
    He came to America.
    His name was Wallace Gilbert.
    And he told the--
    And when he contacted after the war to some Kaluszyn landsmans,
    I was told by some landsmans that went away
    before First World War or right after the First World War
    that, when her son ran away to the United States,
    ran away from home, she did not know where she is.
    And she almost forgot him.
    When one time came a picture from him and without a hat
    on his head, while sitting in front
    of the oven in the bakery, she saw the picture
    and threw it into the oven.
    And you remember her?
    I remember her being sick, laying in bed,
    in the early '30s.
    I see.
    So she was a character.
    Very religious--
    Yeah.
    --obviously.
    These two pictures are of my grandmother,
    who is the daughter of my great grandmother,
    and my grandfather.
    This picture was taken, I believe, in the 1930s.
    Her name was Rivka Rzondzinski.
    She perished during the Holocaust in 1942.
    My grandfather's name was Fischl Rzondzinski.
    And he died before World War II, sometime around '32 or '33.
    And your grandmother Rivka Rzondzinski,
    R-Z-O-N-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I, lived in Kaluszyn?
    Lived in Kaluszyn until the--
    This is-- we went--
    No, because I am not--
    I don't want to come out on the tape that that's why I'm--
    OK, so--
    My grandmother originally lived with my aunt
    in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    Since 1939, after the Kaluszyn was burned out,
    lived with her daughter and her son-in-law in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    In 1942, after they start to liquidate the town of Minsk
    Mazowiecki, my aunt and my grandmother
    came to live with us in Kaluszyn.
    And my grandmother perished in the Holocaust in 1942
    on the way to Treblinka or in Treblinka.
    OK.
    And so--
    My--
    --she was living-- were living with you for a while.
    Yeah.
    Was she born in Minsk?
    No.
    She was born in Kaluszyn, as far as I know.
    Yeah, they were born in Kaluszyn.
    Oh.
    Oh, OK.
    And do you know anything about her background, how many
    brothers and sisters she had?
    Yes.
    My grandmother had-- on my grandmother's side,
    there were three sisters.
    One sister died a long time ago that I did not know,
    that lived in Kaluszyn, who had together the bakery, who
    attended the bakery together with my great-grandmother.
    Her husband, Moishe Aaron Siroka, lived until 1939--
    I'm sorry, until 1939 when the city was
    destroyed, with his wife, and also had a bakery.
    After the city was destroyed, he went away and went out of town.
    But I do not know what happened to him.
    All right.
    He was born in Kaluszyn also?
    You don't know.
    Do you have any idea how old he was in 1939?
    This great-uncle of mine, Moishe Aaron Siroka,
    must have been, in 1939, maybe 65, 70 years old.
    All right.
    And he and his wife, they ran a bakery.
    So your great-uncle Moishe Aaron Siranka--
    Siroka owned a bakery, or he ran a bakery?
    He ran a bakery when my great-grandmother was still
    alive.
    But later on, he ran the bakery also.
    But his wife died early.
    But I don't remember her.
    But he remarried.
    And he ran the bakery.
    Oh.
    How many children did they have?
    They had four children, three sons and one daughter.
    One son died during the Holocaust in 1942.
    One son went to Israel in the 1930s.
    One son went to Russia in 1939, as you
    will see with a family picture, as well as the daughter.
    So those would be your second cousins?
    My second cousins.
    They would be my second cousins.
    So your Uncle Moishe Aaron, did you
    know him when you were a kid?
    Yes.
    I know him very well, because we had a restaurant,
    and we needed cakes.
    And he was the baker that made cakes.
    Oh, OK.
    That's great.
    And did he have people employed in his shop?
    They employ in his shop, but only
    he, his wife, and his daughter, and a son,
    because the other son went away to Israel.
    And one son had a shop in Warsaw with my aunt in partnership.
    They were making knitted goods.
    I mean they were knitting and making garments for--
    they were contractors.
    So your Great-Uncle Moishe Aaron,
    do you remember, what was he like?
    He was a man like you see today.
    I could see it today.
    You go in, in an area where a lot of Jews live.
    You can see the same type of man that he was then.
    You can see today also.
    He was very pious.
    If you look at a picture, you can visualize and go in,
    let's say, if you know New York, Borough Park, or Williamsburg,
    or the east side, you can see Jews like this just like him.
    Do you remember him as being nice to you?
    Well, he had no reason not to be nice to me.
    We were not the type of young boys that went out
    and making mischief to all the people.
    We had, as you call in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]..
    We honored the older people.
    We had respect for them.
    And so do you know--
    he probably had Yiddish schooling, and then--
    Oh, yes.
    He was very well versed in--
    He's not Hasidim, though is he?
    Or was he?
    Yes, he was a Hasid.
    He was?
    Yeah.
    Oh.
    Whether he was a Hasid with his brother-in-law, my grandfather,
    I don't know.
    But my grandfather was a Hasid.
    We used to call this [? Kernowitz ?] Hasidim.
    Used to be, say, they have a Ger Hasid,
    or you have different, from different towns, rabbis.
    People go to him for holidays.
    They go to him for benedictions.
    They go to him for very important questions.
    My grandfather was a Hasid of a rabbi called [NON-ENGLISH]..
    You need the spellings.
    I'll--
    OK.
    So it was a very religious family--
    Yes.
    --the whole, extended family.
    But you--
    My mother's side was very religious.
    But my mother herself not that way,
    because she was already another generation and more modern,
    although she knew all the rights and wrongs of religion.
    And in the house, we practiced religion.
    It was kosher?
    There was no such thing as a non-kosher home.
    In Europe, there was no such thing.
    You could not visualize, even the people
    that did not have much, to go out
    and buy for the house non-kosher meat.
    Younger people of my age at that time--
    13, 14, 16-- to be considered to be a wise guy
    went into a Polish delicatessen and bought
    himself a piece of kielbasa, and said
    he had it, like he conquered who knows what.
    Did you ever do that?
    I did that, too.
    But I didn't eat it.
    But I just had to.
    You had rebel.
    I had to be someone with a group, although my group,
    we did not go there, because it is required to--
    maybe it was cheaper than Jewish salami then.
    Although I had it in our house, this salami,
    which was better quality.
    Of course, it was more expensive.
    But to me, it would cost me nothing.
    But it was a big thing to go in with a group
    and to participate.
    So in your household, you celebrated all the holidays?
    All the-- in our house, everything was 100% kosher.
    We celebrate all the holidays, although as I mentioned before,
    we did conduct business.
    The main thing, the restaurant was not open on a Friday night
    or till Saturday.
    But we did sell gasoline, because we had employees
    that was a whole night.
    And they were gentiles.
    And they were selling the gas and brought the money in.
    So there were a lot of vehicles at this time running on gas?
    I always get the picture of these--
    Pardon me?
    | were a lot of vehicles running on gas?
    Oh, yes.
    If you ask about the vehicles, this
    was a main road, same thing like you have New York to Boston,
    or New York to Washington.
    It was a main road, traffic of trucks and buses,
    that were going with passengers to Warsaw.
    OK.
    But there would be a lot of horse and wagons in town.
    Oh, yes, there were horse and wagons, too.
    But we had nothing to do with the horses,
    since we had the gasoline station.
    Did your family have a car or truck?
    We had a truck for business.
    You ask me if my family had a car.
    I remember, in 1937 or '36, there was an old,
    beaten up Ford.
    And it was called a Model T Ford.
    And because we had two trucks, and we had chauffeurs,
    we were depending upon them to fix it, to run it.
    And my brother bought the Model T Ford and was fixing it.
    It did run, but it looks like--
    I don't remember what happened to it, because my father did
    not allow, because it was too taking away from things that he
    is supposed to do otherwise.
    Maybe it wasn't good enough or something.
    But we had two trucks that were--
    I don't remember exactly.
    But there was two.
    Or maybe, because two, there was different models
    at a later time.
    I remember the first truck we had was a 1926.
    Then it was a 1933 or 1936, Chevrolet trucks.
    So if we can just finish the story of your--
    I know we're skipping around-- of your--
    great-uncle.
    --great-uncle.
    So did he live also with your great-grandmother?
    No.
    My great-grandmother lived with her daughter, Mariam.
    Right.
    But was she--
    --at the time when I knew her.
    Before, maybe she lived with her daughter, with his--
    Where did your great-uncle live, what kind of--
    In his house, in his place.
    Oh, what was his house like?
    He had the bakery.
    The bakery was downstairs.
    And upstairs, they lived.
    OK.
    With four children.
    With four children.
    OK.
    And his wife-- what was his wife's name?
    I don't remember his wife or his wife's name,
    because she died before I even knew her.
    But then he remarried.
    And he remarried.
    Oh.
    Who did he remarry?
    He remarried a very nice lady who worked
    with him continuously till--
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And were the four children all by the first wife?
    The four children were all from the first wife.
    OK.
    And he didn't have any children--
    No.
    --by the second?
    OK.
    So did you ever get together with this great-uncle
    for family occasions?
    The family occasions, we were together.
    This is not with the uncle.
    This was already the younger children, because the uncle
    was the age of my grandmother.
    And the age of the get together was my mother
    with her sisters and brothers and their children.
    So the older generation was not included
    in the gathering, unless the grandmother came, or the--
    But the same thing like you have here.
    You invite the parents.
    Or you invite the children of the parents.
    Or you invite the cousins.
    Or the cousins are excluded.
    It was something like that, but not to that extent
    as it's here.
    So you started to talk about your bar mitzvah and family
    party.
    How many members of the family--
    There was no family party.
    The only bar mitzvah that I had was a Kiddush in shul.
    And there were a lot of people that
    were more friendly with-- more friends of my father.
    I invited them to our house to have
    another drink, and another fish, or another because usually,
    in the shul, you give parties.
    You give whiskey, cake, like sponge cake, and herring.
    And you're inviting them into the house.
    You give them fish.
    Or you give them challah.
    You give them some other things.
    You give them beer.
    This was the party in the house, but no family things.
    There was no such thing as gifts here--
    There wasn't?
    --as a check.
    I don't remember that I got it, but I probably did.
    Maybe I got another talis kuten, a small towel.
    You know what a talis kuten is?
    It's a small towel that you wear on--
    maybe I got it.
    But I stopped wearing it when I was maybe 10, 11 years old.
    Oh.
    But you were 13 when you were bar mitzvahed.
    Yes.
    But you see, that talis kuten you wear when you're a child.
    Oh, OK.
    Many times, you see the young kids.
    They run around.
    The fringe is still outside, and they're running.
    And so just about the same time, you left school?
    The school-- when I left school, I was about 14.
    And that was the end of elementary school.
    That was the end of the elementary.
    And then you--
    I went--
    --to [INAUDIBLE]?
    Yes.
    After I finished the elementary school,
    I went to Warsaw to attend a trade school, which
    was run by the Jewish community, by the Jewish community
    on the Grzybowska.
    It was a street where the Jewish--
    how do you call it?
    I attended that school for about six months.
    And I lived with a family that were very religious.
    It was not too much to my liking.
    And I was a little bit of homesick.
    That was 1934?
    That was 1934.
    What do you mean by they were too religious?
    What were they expecting from you?
    What do I mean by too religious?
    That I had to sleep with a yarmulke on my head.
    I had to pray every morning.
    And the people that I lived with were distant relatives
    of my mother.
    He was a barber that worked in the house only for those people
    that cannot go take shaves.
    Only very religious people came to take haircuts,
    and special haircuts that you cannot use a razor.
    Or just that was such a thing that was very--
    Special.
    --very special.
    I was too restricted.
    And this gave me a little bit--
    made me a little bit lonely.
    And I came back to Kaluszyn, to the house.
    And from there, I worked in our business, because we needed me.
    And my main work was-- we had the shifts, daytime
    and nighttime.
    And most of the time, I worked my nighttime,
    because in the evenings, we used to go out with friends,
    I'd say till about 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock.
    And after that, I came home.
    And I attended the business at night till about 5:00,
    6 o'clock in the morning.
    Wow.
    You mean you worked at the restaurant and the gas station?
    And the gas-- the gas, pumping gas, at the restaurant.
    Oh, wow.
    What sort of things would you do with your friends
    in the early evenings?
    We used to go--
    Go to the movies?
    The movies, we only went Friday night, Saturday night,
    or Sunday.
    Or we used to go out and--
    let's see.
    Summertime, during the daytime, we used to go on bike ridings.
    In the evenings, we used to go out just walk on the street--
    what do you call it-- strolling and telling story,
    just like you have fun here, but not such a degree that
    many time you see here.
    The public school also supplied--
    one school was open evenings so that children,
    that the students could come in and congregate there.
    And we used to play various games, domino or checkers.
    And we used to develop--
    I don't know if you ever heard of literary cards.
    You take-- you have in a deck four cards of each,
    four kings, four queens, four jacks, four aces, and so on.
    We used to make those cards--
    by literary cards, we mean known literary people, like poets,
    or musicians.
    Or matter of fact, I wrote down here--
    writers.
    Composers?
    Composers, musicians, writers.
    They were different type of well-known people--
    politicians.
    And we used to play cards, just like you
    pull a card from someone.
    If you have four kings or you have four composers,
    you go out.
    First you go out with the cards.
    Then you win.
    Oh.
    Oh, that's good.
    We also played the blackjack and other types of games
    with cards.
    And this was our times we--
    Did you start dating in your teens?
    We had a group of friends, dating.
    But we did not go directly with each other.
    We were always going in a group, two friends, two boys and two
    girls, or three boys and three girls.
    I have some pictures of those friends.
    These are my first two girlfriends.
    This is my first one.
    This is my second one.
    I did not bring my third one.
    I forgot to take the picture, which
    the third one was during the war from 1940 till 1942.
    But my fourth and last one--
    This looks like a very modern girl wearing pants.
    And that's my-- ultimate and last one
    is this one with my two daughters.
    Wait a minute.
    This, your wife?
    This is my wife.
    She's not in this picture.
    No.
    But you met your wife in--
    I met my wife in New York.
    Oh, OK.
    She is not-- my wife is not a Holocaust survivor.
    Oh, I see what you're saying, your last girlfriend.
    This picture was taken in 1936, '37 on vacation in Mrozy.
    Mrozy was a railroad station.
    We used to go out there for vacations.
    It's 5 kilometers from Kaluszyn-- with friends.
    It's M-R-O-Z-Y.
    That's right.
    On my right, [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś, that's her--
    to my left, Masha Tennenbaum.
    All died in Treblinka from Kaluszyn December 9.
    [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś had a sister whose name was Lali.
    Lala, we used to call her.
    We called her Lala.
    This is what we called her, because she was a doll
    and looked like a doll.
    Mm, cute girl.
    The family had a store of liquor, a liquor store.
    She was my friend for many, many years.
    And--
    Did she go to the same school as you?
    We went to the same school, the same public schools.
    Oh.
    And she left when she was 14 also?
    Yes.
    And she--
    What did the girls do when they left school?
    Girls didn't do much.
    Some girls, that their family were not well-off,
    while needed, some girls went to work as a seamstress,
    to learn a trade.
    But these girls were well-off.
    The people were well-off.
    So they did not send them to [INAUDIBLE]..
    As I can remember, maybe--
    because I did visit her when she was in Warsaw.
    Maybe she attended a school in Warsaw.
    I don't remember exactly.
    I don't remember exactly.
    Because I did see her in Warsaw a few times where she was.
    But maybe you could talk about this being together in 1936
    or '37 in Mrozy--
    Mrozy, yeah.
    --because I could write about that--
    Yeah.
    --episode.
    what
    Were you doing there?
    During summertime, we used to go--
    Yeah, it's on.
    --for vacation to a town called Mrozy,
    which is a railroad station 5 kilometers from our town.
    Our parents sent us there, because they
    had a friend that was running a vacation house for children
    of our groups.
    And we were there for about six weeks, four to six weeks.
    Was it on water, or--
    No.
    Water was about a mile away.
    And it was mainly in the woods, the house.
    And we used to get up in the morning.
    We used to play ball and go on hikes.
    And although there wasn't much to do,
    but we enjoyed it, because it was in the air.
    We had fresh air.
    We had no one to tell us what we can do and not do,
    because the people that wanted us to be there treated us
    very well.
    How many years did you go there?
    I believe I went there two years, two consecutive years.
    I went there.
    And my sister went also there.
    There was no need for me to go home during this time,
    as the parents wanted to see us.
    So they used to come to see us, how
    we're progressing, because to send children on vacation
    was mainly that they should eat more.
    And because we had everything in the house,
    we had to get paid to eat.
    So they sent us away to a place where we can stay with friends,
    and eat together, and be there.
    And of course, we--
    I don't understand that.
    What do you mean, eat more?
    So you ate very good food at this?
    So you are on fresh air.
    You get more appetite to eat.
    I see.
    OK.
    Well, that's good.
    And you remember the food was good?
    The food was-- they was catering us good food, mostly butter,
    and cream cheese, and the sweet cream,
    and fishes, and herrings, and all kinds
    of things, what we like, because nobody
    knew about cholesterol then.
    We had eggs practically every day.
    So how many of you teenagers would be together here?
    We were there about 18 to 20 teenagers.
    Oh, it must have been fun.
    That's good.
    Did you sing songs together at night or--
    Yes, we sang songs.
    Yes.
    I want to put on another picture.
    Here, I'll show you two pictures again.
    One picture is also myself with friends.
    We also attended the same school.
    The one that stays with me, her name is Sarah Aaronsohn.
    She was married.
    She married after the war with a man by the name of Cooper.
    He died in France.
    She lives now in Nancy, France.
    Do you still stay in touch with her?
    Yes.
    I'm staying in touch with her by telephone.
    And she visit us a few times.
    I saw her a few times in her house.
    And--
    So where were you rowing here?
    That was also in Mrozy.
    That was also on vacation time.
    There was a pond there?
    Yes.
    The person that sits at the end of the boat,
    he is the son of the woman that was running
    the house, the vacation house.
    And this is [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś.
    The person in the middle, the two in the middle, one's name
    is Adam [? Kamieni. ?] He now lives in Israel.
    And his name now is [? Sela. ?] And the girl next to him
    is a girl that came to visit my sister.
    She's from Warsaw.
    She died.
    I don't know where she is now.
    So she came to stay with us one summer.
    And she went for a vacation.
    You look quite old here, all of you,
    to be doing this camp thing.
    You like you're in your--
    well, you were.
    You were 17 or 18 years old.
    So that was really a luxury--
    That's right.
    --for kids that age not to be working.
    This is a picture of the--
    this is the mother of my friend that you
    see in the picture with the two girls, and the other one here.
    The one below her is her daughter, her younger daughter.
    The one next to her is the daughter
    of the woman that runs the summer house, which
    is a sister of hers.
    Next to her is my sister.
    And the couple above are parents of the boy on the left,
    of this boy.
    This picture was also taken in that summer camp.
    See there?
    Around there.
    So--
    It's getting complicated.
    Yeah.
    So you had a very--
    it was a nice break from your regular routine. there.
    But you don't remember what these two
    girls did when they went back to town after that summer camp?
    How young-- neither of them married before the war?
    No.
    No.
    Masza Tennenbaum had relatives.
    They originally came from a town called Kobryn.
    That's about 50 kilometers east or northeast of Brest-Litovsk.
    That would be about 200 kilometers from our town.
    She had relatives there.
    And her parents were not druggists.
    In New York or in Kaluszyn, there were not such a--
    there were a drugstore.
    But there was also a store that used to sell
    ready-made prescriptions.
    You could get pills against a headache, like aspirins,
    or special soaps, like you have a drugstore today,
    but without the drugs.
    But her father could have made drugs.
    But he was not allowed to, maybe because he was Jewish,
    or because maybe he didn't have the license to be a druggist.
    But he was there.
    So--
    Did he own the store?
    He owned that store.
    And they lived in the store?
    They lived there.
    They lived there in Kaluszyn for a time, all that.
    You don't know if she was born in Kaluszyn?
    She was born in Kaluszyn.
    OK.
    Yes.
    But she had an older sister and a brother.
    I don't know whether they were born in Kaluszyn
    or they were born in another town.
    And she had an older sister and an older brother.
    An older brother.
    And she was the youngest.
    Yeah, she was the youngest.
    OK.
    And she had the same schooling as you.
    That's right.
    The school you went to was mixed.
    In school, we went all together.
    Boys and girls.
    Boys and girls.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So it wasn't-- the Hasidic schools were segregated,
    weren't they?
    No, this was a public school.
    Oh, OK.
    But there were a lot of Jewish--
    Yes.
    --students.
    As a matter of fact, the public school--
    we had two public schools, one public school
    that only Jewish students attended,
    only Jews, although it was a public school.
    The only school that non-Jews attended with the gentiles
    were those that had very heavy accents.
    And to straighten out the accent,
    or teaching them better the Polish language,
    those had to go to a Polish public school.
    But we went-- everything was conducted in Polish only.
    Oh.
    Oh, I see.
    The public school-- although the attendance was all Jewish.
    But the schooling was only in Polish.
    And teachers were--
    Teachers were Jewish and Polish teachers.
    Oh.
    Was Maja a good student?
    Masza.
    Masza a good student?
    Yes.
    Were you a good student?
    We were all good students.
    Oh.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But there was never any idea that any of you
    would go on to some secondary school in another city.
    She went back to a school from where her parents came.
    How many years she went there, I don't remember.
    The name of the town again is?
    Kobryn, K-O-B-R-I-N.
    OK.
    And her parents were from that town?
    Her parents were from that town.
    And they settled in Kaluszyn.
    Since I knew them, they were living in Kaluszyn.
    Before she was born.
    I don't know.
    I only know her because we went to school together.
    Oh, OK.
    All right.
    And you've told me a little bit about--
    Idza.
    --Idza.
    Her father was the one who owned the liquor store.
    Liquor store.
    And she had sisters and brothers?
    She had one sister.
    Right.
    She just had one younger sister.
    She only had one younger sister.
    She's adorable.
    Lala.
    Now, the word [YIDDISH] is a doll.
    The word [YIDDISH] in Yiddish is a doll.
    Her name was different, but we didn't call
    her anything else but Lala.
    Oh, she was beautiful.
    And Id-- Idzia--
    Idza.
    Idza?
    Idza, is there anything special about here that you remember?
    We we're very good friends, all of us,
    with Masza and with Idza.
    As I said, she was my first girlfriend.
    How did she became my first girlfriend
    is a whole different story.
    And the story goes back as follows.
    After each school year, the school
    made trips to towns in Poland, historic towns like Warsaw,
    Krakow, Kazimierz-- which was a king, Kazimierz,
    which was very good to Jews-- and to Gdynia, which
    is on the north on a port.
    And supposedly, on the way back-- we had gone by train.
    On the way back, we were sitting at the benches.
    I was sitting supposedly next to her.
    And was was next to me.
    And we were sleeping, or having our heads this way, that way.
    And supposedly, my head touched hers.
    And her head touched mine.
    And it came to know that a maid that
    used to work for us a certain time
    worked later on for her parents.
    And she used to come to us and go there,
    and used to tell stories, whether the stories were true,
    that she likes me.
    And she came to tell me.
    And I said, I like here, too.
    And this was the story.
    But besides her, she was a very nice girl.
    And there was no reason not to like her.
    At the time, we did not think--
    we were 13, 14-year-old children.
    We would not think to go out tomorrow and get married.
    But we were very good friends.
    But then you said that this was also a girlfriend?
    Yes.
    But just a girlfriend, meaning--
    That was a girlfriend.
    --a friend who was a girl.
    We can say more than a girlfriend.
    Oh.
    You were very close.
    Thank you.
    Maybe she-- she looks nice.
    Well, tell me something a little bit more about here.
    She went to the same school as you also?
    Yes.
    We all went.
    There was only one public school.
    One public school was one large building that had--
    in that school we had from the fourth, fifth, sixth,
    and seventh grade.
    All other grades were located in different parts of the town.
    There were a building that had the first and second grade,
    and second and third grade, different grades.
    But that school was a large school with a large yard.
    We used to come there.
    And that was the main school.
    And what did she do?
    Do you know what she did after she left school?
    Did she help in the liquor store?
    No, she wouldn't help in the liquor store.
    Most of the girls didn't do much.
    What did they do?
    I mean, I'm really--
    There was not much to do.
    They used to--
    Did they babysit littler kids, little sisters?
    There was no-- no.
    Maybe she used to babysit for her sister.
    But--
    Did she weave, sew--
    Oh, yes.
    We were--
    --embroider?
    Maybe.
    But as I mentioned before, I believe
    that she went to Warsaw to a school,
    because I met her a few times in Warsaw,
    because I used to travel to Warsaw occasionally,
    because I had nothing to do also.
    I wanted to take a trip to Warsaw.
    So '18, '19, '20, she didn't have any specific work
    that she did?
    Then?
    No.
    She wasn't--
    '20s was already the war--
    Yeah, that was 19--
    --during the wartime, in 1939.
    Oh, OK.
    So that changed.
    That changed.
    And there was not much--
    in a small town, there was not much to do.
    OK.
    So between the ages of--
    but most of these girls would generally married pretty young,
    eventually.
    No.
    I would say there was no such thing as marrying young.
    They married in their 20s.
    Oh, early 20s.
    There was no--
    20, 21.
    There was very few that would marry younger, very few.
    And there was no accidents, I had to marry.
    There weren't?
    No.
    I wouldn't say to.
    No.
    There were more respect for girls than it's--
    Even in the 1930s?
    We never thought-- all right, say
    we used to be in love with the girls-- kiss, and hug,
    and touch.
    But to go to extremes, the risk--
    No one did that.
    I say it for myself that I wouldn't
    take a chance, because you never know what can happen.
    So nobody wanted to.
    OK.
    So a nice Jewish boy wouldn't--
    Do that.
    That's right.
    All right.
    Even though you were very good looking.
    Thank you.
    Wait till you see another picture.
    All right, so to return to your grandmother--
    I remember that, after my grandfather died--
    Rifka.
    Rifka Rzondzinski.
    R-Z-O-N-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I--
    Yeah.
    -- was your--
    Grandmother.
    Mother's?
    My mother's mother, my maternal grandmother.
    All right.
    After my grandfather died--
    In the early '30s.
    --in the early '30s, my grandmother
    got herself a kiosk to sell newspapers.
    And I remember there was a time they came--
    an area that they made a train to go
    to the train, a small train, a feeder,
    because before, and even during that time and later on,
    there used to be special porters, special guys.
    They used to have a horse and buggy, horse and special--
    what do you call it?
    Not a van.
    It's a-- there used to be a horse and carriage.
    It used to take passengers from our town
    to Mrozy to go to Warsaw, which is west,
    or to go to Siedlec, which is east, to other places, wherever
    they need to go.
    Then it became-- the city made a train, a small train,
    with a huff-and-puff locomotive with one caboose,
    with one to carry passengers to the train.
    And my grandmother had there a kiosk
    to sell candy, and newspapers, and the sodas,
    and whatever there was.
    And when the newspaper used to come in from Warsaw,
    it came by train to Mrozy.
    And from Mrozy, they used to bring
    in with that train to Kaluszyn.
    And she used to sell it.
    Later on, the train stopped going,
    because the city was losing.
    The owner of it was losing money.
    And a man that used to be the conductor of the train
    bought himself a horse.
    And he was riding with a horse on the rails
    with a train to Mrozy.
    But it did not do good enough, because he didn't have
    enough money to feed the horse.
    So it's tough going.
    So that kiosk was transferred to another part of town.
    And she had that kiosk in the town.
    Then we had to bring in the newspapers
    from Mrozy to Kaluszyn with the regular drivers,
    with the regular horse and carriage that was running.
    But because there was competition--
    there was another man that had a kiosk--
    we as grandchildren, my brother or I, or my grandmother's son,
    used to go with a bicycle to Mrozy
    and get the pack of newspaper, Jewish newspapers
    and Polish newspapers, on the back,
    load it up on the back of the bicycle, and bring it faster.
    Who brings her faster the newspapers
    is able to sell it to those who were interested to read,
    because not everybody wants to buy a paper.
    There was one that-- if one bought a paper,
    he used to give it to all his neighbors to read it.
    Or two of them bought a paper.
    You buy it today, I'll buy it tomorrow,
    because a paper used to cost 15 or 20 groschen, or maybe more.
    I don't remember exactly.
    But it was a matter of money that no one
    wanted to spend day, after day, after day.
    So from this, she was making a living.
    Later on--
    How old was she then?
    I don't think you told me her approximate birthday.
    I would say that, when she died, she must have been in her 70s.
    OK.
    OK.
    Your grandmother was born about--
    Around 1875.
    In Kaluszyn?
    Yeah, I would say in Kaluszyn.
    Yeah, I believe, because they all came from Kaluszyn.
    All right.
    They went back for generations.
    Yes.
    OK.
    So she had the kiosk.
    And after your grandfather died around--
    did you say 1933?
    Yes, in the early 30s.
    And her husband was a Hasid?
    Was a Hasid.
    Yeah.
    But he did not live from the Hasidic.
    He lived-- he had a job going to the places of woods.
    How do yo call it?
    The--
    You said he was in the--
    Forest-- the forest.
    And he used to--
    when they used to sell the trees to make the wood,
    he used to give a assessment.
    I really don't know what he was doing.
    But I do know that he was connected
    with a forest kind of business.
    All right.
    And your grandmother was just at home then with the children?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And she only started working outside the home
    after her husband died?
    This is what I know.
    OK.
    Well, that's very difficult, a woman
    her age to start working outside.
    Well, to start.
    Yeah.
    But there was not much-- to run a kiosk is just
    to stay there and take her part.
    But because her daughter helped out--
    because her daughter remained with the kiosk later on.
    Her daughter--
    The daughter, the oldest daughter.
    What was the oldest daughter's name again?
    Hanne.
    I did not put a name on.
    Hanne.
    Yeah.
    H-A-N-N-E?
    Yes.
    She helped her mother with the kiosk.
    Yes.
    So her mother wouldn't have to stand up outside.
    That's right.
    She helped in her family--
    That's when it was cold and stuff.
    Yeah.
    It was colder than that.
    She helped out.
    And her family helped out.
    And they remained with the newspaper business,
    with the kiosk.
    So she did that after 1933.
    And then that kept going until--
    That kept going till 1939.
    Oh, OK.
    She was still doing that.
    Did she only speak--
    she spoke Yiddish in Poland?
    Yiddish, yeah.
    My grandmother, she understood.
    I believe she spoke Russian, too.
    But not to me, because I did not understand Russian.
    And Polish, we did not talk to our parents in--
    to our great grandparents in Polish.
    We talked to our grandparents only in Yiddish.
    OK.
    Do you know what your--
    it would be your great-great-grandfather.
    Did you tell me anything about him?
    No.
    About my great-grandfather, I know nothing about--
    OK.
    --nothing of.
    All right.
    Well, do you know how your grandparents met,
    by any chance?
    No, I do not.
    In those days, there were no such thing as meet.
    My grandparents was only a made-up marriage,
    because you did not go--
    they were more religious in that they would not be--
    not to say they wouldn't be interested.
    But their parents would not allow
    for them to go out to see each other,
    and then say, we want to get married.
    Right.
    So it was an arranged--
    It was arranged marriages
    Were they happy?
    Evidently, if you've see Fiddler on the Roof.
    His dream, he said it-- do you love me?
    What's today's love?
    His parents told him.
    They'll get to like each other.
    Do you remember anything about her house, where she lived?
    I remember only that they lived in a house
    where my great-grandmother was with her, in a house.
    And my great-- she was in a bed there.
    I always remember my great-grandmother
    laying in a bed.
    She was sick.
    Occasionally, she was out.
    But the few times that I went in to see my grandmother,
    she was there.
    I saw her there.
    But there was not--
    what can I tell you?
    Did she live near you?
    No, that was not far away, maybe 100 yards.
    Oh.
    Oh, she was very near you.
    Yeah, near.
    OK.
    Did a lot of the family members live in the same neighborhood?
    Yes.
    You did?
    Yes.
    Most of the family lived in the same, unless they moved out.
    Which family members are you talking about?
    It's only my grandparents and my aunt, this aunt,
    that she lived in Kaluszyn.
    The other ones did not live there.
    For instance--
    Well, you talked about your great-grandmother
    and your great-uncle.
    They didn't?
    Yeah, all right, they lived 100 yards further.
    But this is already considered their second generation,
    the third generation of me.
    Right.
    OK.
    Just trying to get the picture.
    Yes.
    All right.
    Before 1939, some of your family members emigrated to Israel?
    Yes.
    Before 1939, my mother's sister--
    Whose name was?
    --whose name is Nechama Hausmann.
    Left for Israel with her husband, Meyer Hausmann.
    They were Zionists?
    Before I do that, I'll say it differently.
    Before the war-- let's say, about in the '30s, maybe
    '34 or '35--
    my mother's sister, Nechama had a partnership
    with a cousin whose name was Fischl Siroka in Warsaw where
    they made the knit goods.
    They knitted goods and cut into articles,
    like sweaters and jumpsuits, for children.
    Later on, my mother's sister married and went to Israel.
    Another sister--
    But were they Zionists?
    Yes.
    They were.
    So a lot of your family--
    Practically all the family was Zionists, Zionist oriented.
    How was the decision made?
    How did certain people decide to leave then for Israel?
    Was it a matter of-- because I understand
    there were only few places.
    Or--
    They decided because-- first of all,
    they decided to leave because they were idealists.
    And they wanted to go to Israel.
    And of course, they also had to have a certificate, which
    the certificate is a permit from the British government
    that they can get into the country.
    So that's what they did.
    When they got the permit, there was-- just like today,
    somebody gets a visa from a country
    that it's out of someplace, and tries
    to get here, which is the most important thing.
    But was there any idea of escaping
    something that might happen?
    At that time, there was no thought about escaping.
    The only reason people went to Israel--
    because they were Zionists.
    They wanted to help build a country.
    About what year did she leave?
    That was in the early '30s.
    OK.
    And you mentioned some other family members
    who emigrated to South America?
    The other families that emigrated to South America
    was my father's sister, to Argentina.
    That was much earlier?
    That was in the late '20s.
    That was-- maybe not late '20s, maybe in the middle '20s.
    And another sister went to France, also
    about the same time.
    Just to make better lives for themselves?
    Or because--
    That's right.
    --they married people who--
    They married people.
    And they were making for themself a better life,
    for their husbands to make a better life in those countries.
    One was making wooden articles for toys and for furniture.
    And that was for Argentina.
    And the one that emigrated to France was a tailor.
    He had a very important tailor shop in Paris.
    And you kept in contact with the cousins?
    Yeah, we kept--
    I remember the addresses from the cousins,
    from the relatives in Argentina and in France,
    because when they were writing letters in there,
    I used to read the addresses or address the letters,
    the envelopes to them.
    So when I came back after the war,
    I remembered the address in France of my uncle
    to see whether they are alive.
    And after the war, somebody was traveling there.
    And I gave him the address, they should
    look up and see whether that address exists,
    and if they are there.
    And they did bring me a notice that a son was
    alive of that uncle of mine, which is my cousin.
    And we were in touch with them since.
    Were his parents killed?
    Parents were killed.
    They were deported?
    They were deported in 1939, in 1941 or '42,
    when the Germans started sending all
    the people to the concentration camps and to gas chambers.
    They were deported from Paris?
    From Paris.
    But they are not in this picture.
    This, I'm talking about my father's family,
    from my father's side.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And--
    So those were the family members that were.
    Otherwise--
    Those family members in this picture
    are all family members, from my mother's side.
    Right.
    From my father's side, I only have one picture,
    which is my father's cousins.
    And this picture was taken sometime,
    I would say, in the '30s or '20s.
    And did all these cousins live in Kaluszyn?
    They all lived in Kaluszyn.
    They all perished in the Holocaust.
    So please talk about what happened
    after Germany invaded Poland.
    After Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939,
    we were on the belief, as we were
    told by the Polish government, that the war will not
    take long, that the German armaments are made out
    of wood and cardboard things, and things will fall apart,
    and they will not last long.
    But soon afterwards, maybe two or three days
    in the war, a plane passed by.
    And we thought that these is a friendly plane,
    because it came in so low.
    And what it did, it just threw down a little bomb in our town,
    as there was a line in front of a bakery to buy bread.
    And a lot of people got killed.
    After this had happened, we realized
    that all the propaganda that we were told about before
    is not as true as it seems to be.
    And being that we had trucks and some other people and friends
    of our family had trucks, we decided
    that we'll take two trucks and go away
    to the east towards Russia.
    In the meantime, things will slow down and stabilize itself.
    The reason why we went away is because the older people
    knew from the First World War that when the Germans come in,
    the first thing they do is they take
    the young men and the older men to work.
    And they tell them to work on the roads, forced labor,
    to work for them.
    And being that Hitler came to power,
    the fright was a little bit more than before.
    So everyone said for the young people to move away.
    But in 1938, after Kristallnacht in Germany,
    nothing happened in your town?
    After 1938, we were only frightened.
    But we did not think that this thing will come up,
    because when Hitler went to war with Poland,
    it was only that he wanted to have the corridor
    to go through to Danzig, to take away that right, and so on.
    But nobody knew that this is going to come so far.
    And later on, everything-- his propaganda
    was that the Poles want to attack him, and so on.
    But when the war came, all our thoughts
    were how to escape from Hitler, that they're coming in,
    because the radio and the news came in the Germans have
    entered Poland, and they are pushing certain areas
    into the country more and more.
    So my father and his friends took two trucks,
    and went away, about 20 people.
    And we took some food with us towards the Russian border.
    Your whole family, your whole immediate family?
    No.
    Only my father, my brother and I, and friends of ours,
    and friends of other people, and their families.
    Your mother and sister stayed there?
    My mother and sister--
    at that time, my mother and sister and my grandmother,
    my father's mother, was living with us,
    as her husband passed away some 8, 10 years before.
    And they remained, because there were no--
    nothing was taught that they will do anything to the women.
    So they remained.
    After we went back about 200 kilometers from our town,
    we heard that the town has already been taken.
    But we did not realize at what cost.
    And we waited later on to go further and further away.
    We were up to the Russian border, about 3 kilometers
    from the Russian border.
    The name of the town was Mezhyrich.
    It's a town past Ratno, Kowel, Lutsk, Rowno, and so on.
    Then, on September 17, the Russians came in.
    And the Russians came in from the other side, started
    to occupy the Russian area.
    At the same time also came news that the pact
    that the Russians made with the Germans
    was that the Russians will go up to the Vistula.
    And the Germans will go up to the Vistula.
    And that will be the dividing line.
    Being that we were on the east side of the Vistula,
    we presumed, which is logically, that we
    will belong to the Russians.
    So while the Russians were pushing forwards,
    we were behind the Russians going with our trucks,
    going home to see our parents, to see our mother and sister
    and the family.
    When we came to a town 33 kilometers from Kaluszyn--
    which the town's name is Siedlce--
    we were told that the Russians are not going
    to occupy until the Vistula.
    They're going back to the Bug, which
    is another demarcation line.
    And at that time, we heard the news that the town of Kaluszyn
    was bombed out, all, everything.
    There was a big fight there, because there were many--
    many groups of soldiers were there congregating.
    And they had to put up a big fight against the Germans.
    So the only thing the Germans could take revenge
    is they burned down the whole town.
    Our house was on the outskirts of the city.
    Well, actually, we were coming from Warsaw to our town.
    We were the first or the second house entering the city.
    So the outskirts of the town remained.
    So our house remained standing.
    So being that we were in Siedlce,
    we heard the bad news about it.
    We decided that, no matter what, we will go back
    to see our mother and sister and the other relatives
    and see what happened.
    When we came, we saw the very bad situation
    with the town burned out, and we were
    told how the fight had happened, that they
    took all the Jews and other people into the church
    and were closing the doors.
    They supposedly wanted to kill all the people.
    But anyhow, when we came in, we started
    to realize that many people were living in our house,
    because they did not have anyplace else to live.
    So we see more strangers than our own.
    And so we start to negotiate with the people that were there
    either to go to their relatives to live there,
    as we had our relatives to take into our house,
    or to some people to give money to go to other towns,
    because they did not have anything.
    And slowly-- it took about maybe a week, maybe 10 days,
    I don't remember exactly--
    the people vacated our house.
    And we took in our relatives to stay with us at the time.
    Then the town was without any government.
    The Germans weren't in.
    The Russians did not come in.
    And the Poles did not know what to do.
    But there were the militia, the civil--
    Wait.
    The Germans did not occupy the town?
    The Germans-- being that the Russians
    were supposed to go up to the Vistula, the Germans moved out.
    And the Russians did not go in.
    It was very close--
    did not go in.
    So the Russians didn't come in there.
    So the town was by itself.
    But there were civilian employees of the town hall,
    of the town government.
    They patrolled.
    The city should remain and see what happened.
    A few days after we returned, the Germans started to come in.
    And they started to come in.
    And they told the mayor of the city, which
    was a neighbor of us, to order the Jews to make a Judenrat,
    to make a Jewish government to attend to the Jewish things.
    But what they had in mind was not
    so much as to attend to the Jewish problems
    as to supply them with whatever they want.
    And their appetite became bigger and bigger.
    They wanted for the Jews to supply them
    with furnitures for their occupation
    that they're going make to be there.
    And being that they did not have a place in the town,
    because the town was burned out, they moved into a town
    5 kilometers from our town, which is Mrozy.
    And they settled there.
    And the Jewish Judenrat, the Jewish community,
    had to supply all the tables, and chairs, and beds,
    and everything there.
    They also ordered the mayor of the town, which his name was
    Plywaczewski, to nominate 10 rich Jews that they
    should be responsible for anything they will want to.
    Among the 10 Jews was my father also.
    I wrote a separate article in Yiddish
    about the functioning of the Judenrat.
    This article I wrote in request of some Jews
    that came back from Russia and settled in Israel.
    Being that we were very few from our town that remained alive,
    he wrote to me.
    And I responded to him.
    And I wrote a letter, an article in Yiddish,
    sent to them to Israel to publish it.
    They took out a lot of items that needed, and put it
    in the book, of a yizkor book, of a commemoration book
    for our town.
    Maybe they have it.
    YIVO has it.
    It's in Yiddish.
    It's in Yiddish.
    I brought it with me here.
    All right.
    Well, we'll deposit that in the archives.
    That will be useful.
    So--
    To be exactly-- what happened, how it went through,
    through the time the Jews lived under the German occupation
    until 1942, is mostly described in this article.
    Being that my father was in Judenrat
    and doing all the things what the Germans wanted--
    What specifically did he do?
    Specifically, his main object was
    to make the laws, or their requests, or their orders
    smaller, which he many times succeeded, most of the time
    succeeded.
    For instance, although the town was living mainly
    in the center of the town before the war,
    when the town was burned, all the Jews--
    there were also people that lived
    in the outskirts of the town.
    When the ghetto was made, the Germans
    ordered that all the Jews should go into the center,
    they should have more of them.
    What my father did is to make the Jews live the way they are
    in the outskirts of the town-- wherever they were before,
    make it like that.
    When they closed the ghetto, because the ghetto was
    an open ghetto-- that means you could go in, you could go out.
    When they closed the ghetto, it also remained the way it was.
    Jews had no right to go out of town.
    And most of the Jews that lived there, that remained there,
    made their livelihood from the villages,
    from the farmers that lived in the outskirt.
    They used to go out and sell them a shirt, buy from them
    the cheese, or the eggs, or anything.
    And this was their business.
    This is how they--
    their livelihood.
    The orders were not to go, because they will be shot.
    Of course, there were many instances
    that some were shot going to the railroad.
    My father succeeded in getting many permits for those people
    to go out during daytime.
    And there were many things, for instance,
    for the community itself.
    There were--
    There are many orders that the Germans
    came in requesting that they want
    to have for their families--
    rings, and earrings, and dresses, and things like that.
    The first thing they did is they came in to us
    because we were the first house almost in town.
    And my father was the person that used to deal with them.
    They came in, they gave all of us orders.
    They need this and they need that, if not, they will do this
    and they will that as punishment.
    And most of the time he succeeded to annul this
    or to come down with the orders that they wanted.
    And sometimes happened that they couldn't do it either.
    They killed a family of two children and a friend of one
    of them was a very bad situation.
    But most of the time, although it was very painful, but it did
    succeed a lot of them.
    Now there was no wired ghetto though?
    No.
    It was just a designated area?
    There was a designated, the ghetto
    was whatever the Jew lived, in Kaluszyn it was the ghetto.
    That means--
    But it was not closed in?
    There was no closed in like you had
    in Warsaw ghetto with a gate or with a closed around.
    There was no closed in.
    But the closing in the ghetto, but meant that they cannot go
    beyond the area where they live.
    They can only go in the town.
    They're not allowed to go to the village.
    They're not allowed to go out of the city without a permit.
    There was also was succeeded, my father succeeded
    is to bring back food from the County, because the gendarmes,
    the police, the German police used
    to confiscate from the farmers.
    They used to bring to take food to sell
    in Warsaw and other places.
    When they passed by, they did not allow to do it.
    They used to confiscate it.
    So they used to give out to the churches
    and to different areas.
    So my father used to go there and ask
    him to give some of them to the town where they made a kitchen
    to feed the poor people and children.
    My mother was attending this kitchen for a long time
    to see that they would supplies are enough.
    But your father's business was totally disrupted?
    Or did he continue to [INAUDIBLE]??
    There were no, the business was disrupted in 1939
    because there was no guests.
    Jews could have no guest business and the trucks,
    they were not available and we did not have any supplies.
    The only thing is what he had was
    the store that we could still have,
    the restaurant going for a part time,
    and some groceries to sell.
    But most of time my father was busy
    because they made my father busy with Judenrat business.
    What did you do?
    I was also getting there.
    They also requested that the Judenrat get
    the Jewish police and Jewish sanitation people,
    people that help out to keep the clean,
    to keep clean the houses because on top of that,
    our town was destroyed in 1939.
    They send in a transport of Jews from two other towns
    that the Germans annexed to Germany.
    There was a town called Pabianice and Kalisz.
    A few hundred people from each of those towns
    were brought into Kalisz.
    And they were settled there.
    Said this is where they have to live.
    They had to be given a place to live and to other families
    and some to live to repair in the buildings that
    were destroyed.
    And many of them couldn't do it.
    And they felt that to go away someplace else where
    all of their relatives lived.
    And that remained.
    Then to be able to keep the apartments, or their houses,
    or their houses clean, there was no facilities to bathe.
    There was only one mikveh.
    And to have these people, they did not have much.
    And to have these people to have clean to where
    to take them properly by inducing them with bread
    or with other things.
    They should go and take it because they were afraid
    that going to the mikveh or something
    being that is an order from the Germans
    will be something wrong.
    And being that everything was closed,
    the city had became infected with typhus.
    I was one of the men going to the sanitary committee, about
    a dozen friends.
    Not friends, a dozen friends and non-friends,
    other people that were designated
    to go out to those houses to see that the people keep clean.
    There were times that we used to take a brush
    and clean up so many, you could see on the floor
    so many lice walking like bugs, was terrible.
    And slowly we had to induce the people to come to get clean.
    So every day, every day of the week,
    we had other groups of people to take in to the mikveh
    so they can go in there and take baths and get clean.
    And the meantime some people leftover,
    while they were in the bath to clean out the house that they
    can go back and clean.
    What would the non-Jewish have?
    The non-Jewish population, they had not do anything.
    They were staying--
    Lived there?
    --They still lived there because many of them,
    they all got burned out.
    But they had the right to go anywhere they wanted.
    They were not restricted.
    It's only the Jews that were restricted.
    And that went on and on.
    And then came the German companies.
    Wait, what was your sister?
    My sister wasn't do anything.
    They occasionally they used to-- yes, occasionally
    my sister also helped out to induce
    people to go because they needed to have people direct them
    where to go.
    Because some of them were children without families.
    Some of them were older people and they needed help.
    And so all of you were involved in some way in the effort?
    Yes.
    In the effort to, yes.
    And this went on to in many ways that the beginning of 1940,
    1939, '40.
    And your grandmother and your grand uncle, they were all--
    I don't know what happened to my grand uncle during the war.
    I don't know what happened to him.
    But he died.
    But was still in--
    I don't remember him what happened to the war.
    But my grandmother went to live because they were burned out.
    They went to live with my uncle's family, with my uncle.
    Which uncle?
    My mother's sister, my mother's brother-in-law.
    My mother's sister's husband had relatives in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    And Minsk Mazowiecki was not destroyed.
    So he went to live in that town.
    And it took along my grandmother.
    My aunt with her husband took along my grandmother.
    She lived there until 1942 or even before 1941 because they,
    my aunt did not have a apartment large enough,
    so they send in my grandmother to live with us.
    My grandmother, my mother's mother, lived with us.
    My father's mother also lived with us during a time.
    And she died of heart failure.
    My mother--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --My father, my father's mother.
    In 1940?
    In 1940 or '41.
    '40 and '41.
    But did people have enough to eat?
    Did your family have enough to eat [INAUDIBLE]??
    There was always enough, not enough to eat.
    But you could always get for money to buy,
    was very expensive.
    We managed, there was a lot of, of course, there were--
    there was a flour mill nearby.
    They used to mill flour.
    We used to get it, and the food was a problem.
    It was expensive.
    But things a lot of people did not have the money.
    And they did not have much to do in the work.
    So I'm coming back now to work, they came in a time
    that the Germans came in to take people to work.
    But they needed to clean up the roads
    because the army used to pass by and the road was full of snow.
    They could not pass by and they grabbed Jews to clean.
    Later on, they had to repair the roads and came in a civilian
    company, a German civilian company by the name
    [? Vulffer ?] & [? Gable. ?] And they used to grab Jews to come
    to work for them without anything just to come
    in as Germans.
    Although they were in civilian clothes, but he was a German,
    he had the power.
    Nobody could go fight against them.
    They used to go for days.
    Grab every day some other people to come to work, and take them
    away four or five kilometers from the house, from the town,
    and used the work on the roads.
    Break stones and work on the road, and do different things.
    Later on, being that this has happened,
    and my father used to go to the Germans for many things
    that they wanted.
    So he said, you always coming to bring me this
    and bring me that.
    Why don't you see that the company that takes the Jews
    to work that they should pay?
    So he was calling the German civilian company,
    told them that they have to pay for the work that they did.
    And although before, more people wanted
    to go to work because they got beaten up.
    They didn't get paid.
    After there was the arrangement that they have to pay,
    a lot of people wanted to go to work.
    But it still was not enough payment
    what they wanted to pay because at that time,
    they paid 5 zlotys a day, which is a kilo bread, which is
    about 2 and 1/4 pounds cost 10.
    So all they could make is a half a kilo bread.
    So how could they go to work?
    So being that the people, the Judenrat
    wanted to have the people work and do
    in something, so the Judenrat supplied with the bread
    with each worker that goes to work
    will get a half a kilo bread.
    And the money, what we will get for the work,
    you will have for other things.
    And there was also some other supplies
    that used to bring in from sequestrated merchandise.
    The potatoes, or onions, or salad, or some vegetables
    just to bring in for the kitchen.
    There used to many times to be extra potatoes used
    to give the poor people to, and this is how they lived.
    Was very hard and, but this how they--
    They were alive, yes.
    --Yeah.
    But you had typhus.
    That's right.
    A matter of fact, [INAUDIBLE] typhus a matter of fact,
    I got sick of typhus, too.
    And your family was able to get medicine, or?
    Yeah, the only thing we got is there was strychnine,
    there was the injections.
    And my brother was also got sick of typhus.
    That was in 19--
    That was in 1940.
    And they established--
    You were really sick?
    Yeah.
    I was sick.
    I had a lot of fever.
    The typhus, it's not water typhus, no.
    It's [INAUDIBLE] typhus that you get a very high fever.
    I say to--
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    --Well, a lot of people died.
    And there was also they built a hospital.
    They established a hospital.
    There was only one doctor and there was one nurse.
    One, she was actually, before the war she was a midwife.
    And when the hospital established,
    she was supposedly running it.
    And the only thing the hospital to do
    is to at least take out the patients
    from the house that they should not infect the others
    and attend to that.
    But later on, other patients from that family also came.
    A lot of them died, which there was no medicine to support,
    and some of them came out.
    So how long were you sick?
    I was sick about I would say about three, four weeks.
    And you and your brother were the only ones who got it?
    Yes.
    My brother and I was the only ones
    that got it, because we stayed in our house
    because we tried to keep the house clean that should not
    get someone else get infected.
    And this is how we got out of it.
    But a lot of people got out from the hospital [INAUDIBLE]
    it's the luck, it's the attention, and everything.
    So well more explanations is in the story
    that I wrote in Yiddish when different sections
    of different times.
    What the Judenrats had to do and how they did it,
    and who was responsible, where, and how, and so on.
    How many people were working and what the work was there.
    If it would work out from on the pages,
    what would be if you are someone that reads Yiddish?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    If you will make the copies, so if there's any question,
    you'll tell me which page it is, then I'll call on the phone
    and I'll talk to the person exactly what it is.
    Then when it came in 1942 when they started
    to send the Jews to the gas chambers
    and supposedly to work in the East
    for the start of the Warsaw.
    Then we get closer and closer again to Minsk,
    and they came to Kaluszyn.
    And--
    Did you have news of what was happening in the war?
    --Yes.
    We had news of the fact.
    Matter fact, we had news because there was a time
    that we could get a permit from the German authorities
    to allow us to bring in the family from Warsaw.
    And there was also many German wehrmacht soldiers that
    were drivers that were there.
    That was in 1941, '41 or '42.
    They were working and to dismantling the synagogue.
    So we used to induce him to go to Warsaw
    and bring out some people.
    So my brother used to go out with him to Warsaw
    and bring out the relatives and some other relatives
    of other people who used to be there.
    And of course, we took them out from there,
    and they came in to us.
    And they perished through later on.
    It was very hard, but this is what happened.
    Did they have to sneak out of the ghetto in Warsaw?
    Oh yes, unless they come with a group that was going
    to work outside the ghetto.
    This is what happened when I was in Warsaw.
    Didn't the East German army people know what was going on?
    They were bribed, or?
    Most of them knew.
    Those that knew that were working in around
    say if there were guards around the ghetto,
    they knew, they guarded the Jews not to go out.
    Or many, many Germans that were just in the wehrmacht,
    just in the army did not know, they just
    knew that the Jews are their enemies,
    but they didn't tell them anything.
    But those that they used to take care of all these
    the re-settlements are mostly SS,
    and their helpers were mostly Ukrainians, Lithuanians,
    Estonians, Latvians from Latvia, and Poles.
    Or Volksdeutsche-- the Germans they
    used to live in Poland before, we used
    to call them Volksdeutsche.
    That means they're Germans--
    Poles of German extraction.
    And they were the worst, because they knew exactly who was who,
    and what is what, and they were the biggest obstacles.
    So you got some people out and then what now?
    When Germans came in 1942.
    What month was that?
    It was in September, which I already told in the beginning.
    Yes, when I ran away, then I ran away to they came to Warsaw.
    Can you repeat that story?
    Yeah.
    Or [INAUDIBLE].
    In 1942 when the Germans came, it was in Yom Kippur,
    it's 21st of September.
    And told the Judenrat that they have
    to have people to go to the camps to work in camps,
    because they need a lot of people there.
    Whether they needed or not because Germans want,
    a lot of Jews don't want to go.
    But some of them, a lot of them went
    and they remained alive until later on.
    And those that didn't want to go, there used to,
    they remained there.
    Four days later they came and they
    had an action to take to send them out to Treblinka.
    At that time, I ran away from the marketplace
    through a [INAUDIBLE] that I took pails of water
    to supply the people that were on the market.
    And I went a few times with a friend of mine.
    And later on, at the evening when the evening approached,
    his name by [? Yosef ?] [? Gontarski ?] he was
    a neighbor of mine and lived across the street.
    And after we watched them taking away
    the people in the horse and buggy to the railroad station.
    And when the night approached, we
    ran away to a camp to our labor camp called [? Nienya. ?] There
    I was for about a month.
    And I met my brother that was in another camp.
    So we got together and we stayed there
    in a little place working on the roads until December 1st.
    On December 1st, the Germans released all the labor camps,
    which were around the city, around the coalition,
    and other places, and sent them all into town
    to make a new ghetto, supposedly.
    But that was only for the reason to make another settlement
    instead of sending each one from 15 different places,
    they got everybody in one place and sent them out together.
    At that time, I ran away again and tried to run away,
    but one of the policemen tried to cut us
    and was aiming at me and at a friend of mine
    running together.
    And he killed him.
    I ran back and hid in a cellar all through the night
    and about 3:00, 4 o'clock in the morning,
    I walked to another to the County town, Minsk Mazowiecki
    where there still remained a place of work.
    And I was there for a few days, and I
    met another friend that was came there
    and we both made passports, Polish passports
    that we are Poles, that we are Christians.
    And he looked for a place for us in Warsaw, and they are inside.
    We lived with a woman whose husband supposedly
    was in a prisoner of war camps with the Germans
    or was killed during the war.
    And she was a poor woman, and we paid her well.
    And we were there since more or less December 15
    'till about January 10 or January 15.
    Where we heard that there's still
    a lot of Jews in the ghetto and that life goes on as before,
    and there is nothing much is expected.
    So we decided that we'll go into the ghetto to see what's what.
    My friend had a sister with a family living in ghetto.
    In Warsaw?
    In Warsaw ghetto.
    And while there, I found out that I had cousins
    living in Warsaw ghetto.
    So he went to the sister and I went to the cousins.
    We were only about a block away, let's say about 200 yards
    from each other.
    And we saw each other occasionally.
    And this, we were only there about a week,
    maybe less than a week, 'till January 18, 1943, when we got
    caught in another deportation.
    The Germans surrounded again the Warsaw ghetto
    and took out a lot of people, a lot of people
    to send them to Treblinka.
    So my cousins and I were going to the place
    to the gathering place.
    And at the gathering place, I met my friend with his family
    together.
    So I said to them and they said to me, let's stay together.
    Whatever we decide to do, we'll do it together.
    Meantime, my cousins were wise guys.
    They did not let themself go that easy.
    And they run away right away from the gathering place.
    They went back and hid and then was all right.
    My friend and his family, which was
    a couple of mother and father and two sons.
    One son remained hiding.
    And just the couple, and the son, and I, and the friend
    went into the train.
    We were together with a plan that as soon as we move out,
    we will jump the train.
    And we made up that whoever jumped--
    This a regular train with--
    --No, not a regular train.
    Not with seats.
    There was no first class train, or second, or even third class.
    It was a cattle train.
    OK.
    So this was a deportation?
    It was a deportation.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    It was a deportation to Treblinka, not a--
    Forced labor?
    --Forced labor.
    This a deportation to Treblinka.
    So my friend, and his family, and I
    decided that he will jump first to go forward
    to meet the other jumpers.
    And this one that will jump the last to go
    backwards to meet the jumpers.
    So the first one jumped, the woman, my friend's sister.
    She was also from Kaluszyn but she lived in Warsaw.
    His father, his name was Michelson.
    I mean my friend's.
    His father was originally the president
    of the Jewish community in Kaluszyn
    His name was Michelson.
    In that explanation in that story what I have
    there is written about that he was there.
    Anyhow, when she jumped perfect, very good.
    Then jumped her husband.
    What was it below?
    Was there a ravine or?
    Below was just a train.
    But on top on the roof were the Germans with guns.
    And you only had to jump to realize where you're
    jumping because along the railway,
    there were poles of telegraph, or electric poles
    that you should not hit.
    The second one that jumped was the husband of the woman.
    The third one jumped, the son.
    I jumped the fourth one and I started to go back.
    So I found the son a little injured.
    Then going more forward, I found the father more injured
    on his head here.
    And we were waiting to go forwards the three of us
    because we didn't see the woman coming forward because it
    was already quite a distance.
    So we presumed whatever happened to her,
    she has to be on her own.
    We were three of us.
    So I said, let's go forward and we'll
    see whether his relative, my friend,
    which was a brother-in-law of the father, whether he jumped.
    Wait, so the train was moving very fast?
    The train was moving very fast and to me,
    the only thing that happened to me is a button.
    I button from my overcoat on my jacket that broke.
    But the two, Michelson, the two friends,
    the two people from the family, one
    got injured alongside on his face,
    and the other one on his head, very heavy injury.
    But we had no choice.
    I could not take him the way they are.
    And we went over to where I knocked on the door.
    And a farmer saw a village.
    There was--
    Did a lot people try to jump?
    Oh yes, there were a lot of people jumping
    and a lot of people got killed.
    They were being shot at [INAUDIBLE]..
    [INAUDIBLE] they got shot because you were,
    you had no-- there was no other way out.
    You got to take your chance here while you can.
    But you knew that you were taken to be killed?
    Yes, Yes.
    How did you know that?
    Because we already knew that everything goes to Treblinka.
    The way the road took, because see, I know the area Warsaw.
    Then the whole land of the road, I
    know whether the goes if the train goes East,
    it's on the way to Treblinka.
    And Treblinka was from Kaluszyn was about 50, 60 kilometers.
    And you had already heard [INAUDIBLE]..
    We already-- at that time, we already
    knew because when they started at the beginning
    to resettle the Jews, the news was
    that they are resettling to the East
    because they need a lot of workers to help on the front
    because they are attacked the Russians in 1941.
    And they need people to work there,
    and this is what they need people.
    So this was the thought.
    But later on, we knew because there
    were a lot of people that ran away from Treblinka.
    So being that I knew that I'm going,
    here is my chance to do it now or to do it later.
    If out right now, I have a chance.
    So I jumped from the train and nothing happened to me.
    But I had to do something with my two friends.
    I could not leave them.
    So I knocked on the door.
    And there was a woman that opened up and she let us in.
    She gave us some water.
    She gave us some things to clean them up,
    that they should not be visible on his face and his head
    that something happened to him.
    Being that was wintertime, took heavy clothes.
    They had a big hat.
    I fixed him up good and then she said we have to pay her.
    All of us had money.
    The money we had were bills, not double bills,
    they were bills that you could put in money
    in between belt. He had money, the son had money,
    and I had money.
    But he told me he cannot take out the money yet
    because she'll see it.
    I should pay her.
    So I had actually money in the belt
    and I had money in my pockets.
    So I took out the money and I paid her a few thousand zlotys,
    I don't remember how much it was,
    but quite a lot and quite nothing, but we were saved.
    We went back to the station, to station was a station away from
    Warsaw was Rembertów.
    The name of the station was Rembertów.
    I went to Rembertów--
    How far was that?
    We walked about three kilometers to the station.
    And I went in and I bought three tickets back to Warsaw.
    My looks were like a Pole.
    Nobody could recognize me that I am a Jew, because I
    had from pictures that you will see,
    you will see if you know the features of Poles
    and see my features.
    I bought the tickets.
    They had a place, my friends had a place in Praga.
    Warsaw was a two town, there was one side
    of Vistula called Praga, on the other side of Vistula
    called Warsaw.
    But together was Warsaw.
    They had a place prepared.
    So I took the train, and he went off with his son
    where they supposed to.
    And they got to the place where they
    were hiding then right when I took him back.
    I went further to Warsaw, and I had also a place
    that I could go in because my brother had
    a friend, a Polish girl, and she took him.
    That Polish girl's sister got an apartment in Warsaw.
    And she took my brother there.
    She was hiding him for them.
    When I came back, I had to go someplace in.
    I went in to that place together with my brother.
    We were staying there together 'till a few weeks, maybe two,
    three weeks.
    At that time, there were two ghettos in Warsaw.
    There was the regular ghetto and a small ghetto.
    The small ghetto was a place where
    many Jews and tradesmen, tailors, or [INAUDIBLE] to work
    and letter things to provide the Germans with their needs
    for their clothing, for whatever they needed.
    So they needed people that know how to sew, how to cut things.
    So we thought we'll go in, my brother
    and I, we'll go into that ghetto and see maybe
    we can stay there, because we did not want to antagonize
    the people that took us in.
    But being that there is a place in case something
    will happen, we have a place to fall back.
    So we went in there, but we couldn't arrange anything.
    We couldn't do anything.
    So we went back.
    He was staying there, but being that my brother was there
    and I seen that this will not be too good to stay two together,
    if something will happen let happen to one, not to two.
    So we'll look for another place.
    And I went to a separate place to another Pole.
    He was a shoemaker, and I remember
    how much money I paid him.
    And every time I paid him for the week,
    he said oh, the price went up so much,
    it cost so much money and this, and this.
    I've seen that shortly I'll be out of money
    and I want to have a place to be there.
    At the same time, I knew that there
    is a place that the regular ghetto is still alive,
    still there.
    And so I thought, I'll go into the ghetto again.
    When I came in to the ghetto again,
    I found my cousins, the same ones
    that we were taken to the umschlagplatz,
    to the gathering place to go away.
    And they hollered at me, why didn't you stay with me?
    Why did you run away?
    Why did you went with them?
    I said look, he's also [? calashina. ?]
    Well I started to live with them, period.
    And we went occasionally we went out from the ghetto
    because you could go out with a group,
    supposedly to work to get the bricks here and there.
    And I saw my brother and told him
    what's going on that they're still alive,
    and we could come in there.
    And being that they were my cousins
    were dealing in food, the place what they had,
    where they lived was called [? Smutcher ?] and Miller.
    There was almost a corner building.
    And right after the building was the wall.
    From one side of the wall used to come in the workers that
    used to work in the canals in not the underground, the,
    you call it?
    Where all the water goes through, the sewers,
    to work in the sewers.
    They brought in through the sewers,
    they brought in to my cousins hams, and butter, and breads,
    and everything.
    And there was a regular business going on.
    So it came up with the story in case something
    will happen, those Poles will lead us out
    to the inside to take us away from there, which was good.
    But nobody trusted them it was said,
    and we built a bunker in the building we were there.
    The bunker, what was you call the bunker?
    That was closed from all the sides.
    They could only know one opening to get inside
    and was so camouflaged that seldom anybody could find it.
    Of course, we did.
    As a fact, when the--
    Say that again.
    The bunker was made of?
    --It was a basement.
    It was so camouflaged to get in there that you could not
    see that this wall, one touch of this wall
    would come out and be able to go in.
    Was camouflaged.
    So we were there until May 8 since--
    May 8.
    --1943 when the action started I think in the 19th or the 18th
    or 19th in Warsaw ghetto.
    I have it written someplace.
    So we were there up almost three weeks.
    We were there and we couldn't be found, because we always
    heard that the Germans are coming in through the walls
    to the places and they're looking
    because they were knocking in places, they couldn't find it.
    Finally what they did--
    You hid in the basement?
    --We hid, we hid under the building.
    Three weeks?
    For three weeks.
    How many of [INAUDIBLE]?
    How many we were?
    Well, my cousins there were three boys and two had wives.
    Is five, the wife had a sister, is six.
    Is six and there were all, those people
    that live in the building was a dentist
    and his brother was eight.
    The brother has a girlfriend is nine and a child.
    We were about 15 people.
    In this cellar?
    In this cellar.
    That was connected by sewers [INAUDIBLE]??
    Yeah.
    We could go out through the sewer.
    And from there, we could go out into the sewer
    and go out, in and out.
    You did that all the time?
    You went in?
    No, we did not go in.
    The workers, the Poles that sold all the merchandise,
    they delivered to us through the sewers.
    Was this common in the ghetto?
    Were the other people building bunkers like this?
    That's right.
    That's right.
    And the Germans, they didn't know about it?
    They knew, but they didn't know which way to get in there.
    But you see, there is when to get into a building in Warsaw
    were built in such a way that there's an arch.
    The two sides of the building, inside is an arch.
    When you go in the middle, usually
    was concrete in the middle and the like trucks or wagons used
    to go in used to pass by here and then
    they realized maybe they should bomb here.
    So they started to throw in bombs
    into that concrete while getting into the building
    into the complex with gas.
    And this gas got to us.
    So instead of being caught by them,
    we went out through the sewer to another place
    to another bunker, which that bunker was already raided.
    And that was a bakery, we went there and we hid behind,
    my two cousins and I hid in that bakery behind the flowers,
    because a lot of-- the bunker was already raided
    so there was nobody there.
    There are few people came back.
    But my brother meantime wanted and another cousin and one
    of the other people that were in the bunker
    wanted to know what happened to the people across the street,
    because we were live in the side of the street.
    And another side of the street was another bunker.
    We were connected.
    We could go to them, they could come to us.
    So while they went to see what happened to them,
    my brother got caught from the Germans.
    And they took him to the umschlagplatz.
    And they sent him away.
    We were waiting a whole night.
    He survived?
    He survived.
    We were waiting almost the whole night or a day,
    we don't remember whether it was day or night.
    And they didn't come back.
    So we presumed that what happened.
    Meantime, the Germans knocked us out from our bunker
    and we went into the bakery.
    And they came, later on, they came into the bakery.
    We had some guns with us.
    And--
    You did?
    --Yes, we did, but we were afraid to shoot
    because as long as you were quiet, they did not find us.
    And they find us this way, we would been there much longer.
    But we were thinking the only time
    we'll use the gun is for last resort, you or me.
    How did the Germans try to find you?
    They knew that each building, they
    know that each building had people in there.
    The upper floors were bombed.
    There was nobody there.
    But the main floors were also nothing there.
    But they knew that people in there, but how they get there,
    they didn't know.
    Then they would put tear gas?
    So they put tear gas in.
    First they bombed it to make a hole,
    and then they put tear gas in.
    Or there was tear gas or whatever kinds of mustard gas,
    or other kind of gas.
    As matter of fact, I got gassed, which I'll
    come later on to tell about it.
    So they came in to the get us out from the bakery bunker.
    We, my friends, my cousins and I we had,
    there were two guns between us.
    We were three of us.
    And we threw the gun away.
    When they took us out, they found the gun [INAUDIBLE]
    and they ask, whose gun is it?
    Said, we don't know.
    We just came in this morning.
    We know nothing about the guns.
    And they looked us and they didn't find anything.
    What language did you speak?
    German.
    Oh.
    I speak German.
    Oh, you speak German.
    Yeah everybody spoke German.
    I mean, they spoke Yiddish, they spoke German.
    I speak German well.
    So they took us into the gathering place,
    the umschlagplatz, to the place where this and that.
    I was gassed heavily from the gas they threw in.
    I could not breathe too well.
    But my cousin, one of my cousins was worse.
    So I ask to drag him to come to the place because he
    at least while they're pushing you
    and they shoving you and this, so you should not
    get killed on the way there.
    Maybe you'll sit down and relax and feel better.
    Whatever happens later on.
    Before we got into the umschlagplatz,
    he came over a German says, why your [INAUDIBLE]
    this dog or something.
    He took me away from him, put a bullet in his head, finished.
    So I remained.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    His name was Manischewitz.
    This leave this now because we'll cover a lot of thing.
    And I remain by myself there with two of them
    with another cousin because there were two of them.
    One cousin was been my brother.
    And somehow, the other cousin either he wanted to run away,
    I didn't hear from him since then.
    And I came in on the road to my Majdanek.
    I could not escape anymore, because I felt very bad.
    I could not get into another window to crawl out to escape.
    And then in the condition that I was then,
    I wasn't sure that I would make it.
    But I'll see what happens where we go.
    Where did you go?
    We went to Majdanek.
    Majdanek is a camp near Lublin.
    It was a concentration camp.
    You were deported in the train?
    Deported in the train, whole train to Majdanek.
    How long did it you to get there?
    Overnight.
    Well, I don't know what time it took,
    but we left in the evening and we will not
    how long we were sitting in the trains until we were send out.
    That was what month?
    That was in May, in May 10.
    I came to Majdanek May 10.
    Then we had to, Majdanek we had to strip.
    They said whoever has a double built
    throws it away over there, because they
    knew that double belts contain money,
    jewelry, anything that they wanted.
    So I happen to have a double belt.
    I throw it away, a single belt, but means it's only
    a piece of leather like this.
    No danger, so you could keep it.
    OK and then they were taking, go here, go there.
    There's and Majdanek also had gas chambers.
    They also had the people that did not take into the camp.
    So they killed by various means.
    I was into the line to go into the camp.
    I showered, and they throw us, they gave us some new clothes,
    camp clothing.
    And I went into the camp.
    I was assigned in a certain bunker, a certain bunk
    to be there.
    And that's what there.
    The following day, they took us out to work.
    Yeah, while they were assigning us, they name this.
    I got a number 14677.
    My number in Majdanek was 14677.
    I realized later that I not the 14,000th men there.
    These numbers are taken away from one
    died before and given new ones.
    So that same number could have gone out four or five, 10 times
    of the quantity that the number said.
    But did they put that on your--
    No, no.
    It was a not a bracelet, but a piece
    of metal, a piece of thing you put on
    and scraped on the uniform, the number what you have.
    There was no tattoo.
    In Majdanek was no tattoo.
    In the barracks in Majdanek was it mostly men your age?
    Mostly men my age, older ones, younger ones mostly my age.
    How old would you say the youngest was?
    The youngest was, later on came younger ones.
    The oldest must have been about 16 at that time.
    But because I felt very bad, I was afraid if I would go out,
    they took us to work to dig ditches, what kind of dishes
    was for before, I don't know.
    But we had to do whatever they wanted us.
    And I felt that one of go another day, another day, I'll
    collapse.
    And at the end of the work, they m
    the Kapo ask who wants to go to the hospital?
    Who feels bad?
    I volunteered.
    I had no choice, because if I'm not going to hospital,
    I'll be shot on the road going or coming.
    You couldn't breath.
    Lucky me, I couldn't breath.
    Lucky me, I got into a hospital.
    The [INAUDIBLE] hospital and I was there
    and they gave me medicine.
    I remember that I was on a diet.
    They gave me a hard boiled egg where nobody else
    got a hard boiled egg.
    The medicine that they gave me, everything was on my chest.
    I couldn't breathe heavily.
    I couldn't breathe.
    And they gave me a medicine like a liqueur, a little sweet,
    and it put the flag down and it helped me.
    By coincidence, I found a man in the hospital that
    was a son-in-law of somebody that I knew in Kaluszyn he
    lived in Warsaw.
    And I asked him what happened to your family?
    No.
    And he was there and I said, your here, they treat you,
    it'll go out.
    I never heard from him again, because he went probably went--
    either he was in another--
    what happened to the man, I do not know.
    But anyhow, I felt better.
    And I went back to work in Majdanek.
    By coincidence, I heard that my brother
    is in Majdanek but in another camp, in another part.
    And going to work or from work I met him.
    And we talked, and we greeted each other
    and we'll say we'll talk.
    We hope that we'll see [INAUDIBLE]..
    We did see another time also.
    At that time what also happened to be transports.
    There was picking up people that were there
    to send of transport to some other places.
    So being that it was end of transport,
    I communicated with my brother and he
    with me that when it comes the next transport,
    we should run to get into the transport.
    At least, maybe we'll be together, shipped out,
    whatever is going to be.
    Something happened that he went and when
    they came the next transport, he was taken.
    I was not.
    And he was sent to a camp called [? Calzrisk. ?]
    There was a camp that they were a place of work
    that they were making ammunitions for the Germans.
    From there, they sent them to Czestochowa
    to different places, to Buchenwald and there
    where he was liberated.
    I remained in Majdanek for about two months
    'till about July or mid-July.
    What did you do there?
    Pardon me?
    Did you work?
    Yes, we worked on the gang outside digging ditches.
    What kind of, what the ditches were for?
    Many times we were thinking digging ditches for us,
    maybe one of these days, they'll line us up there and that.
    Then it came new transports.
    And we're talking, we've got friendly with one another.
    And said look, what do we have here?
    The war is up.
    At the beginning, when I came there
    I couldn't eat anything because nothing tasted good.
    I came out from a place that the Poles brought out
    hams, and cheeses, and butters and breads and all kind.
    So you come into a camp, they give you water and soup
    and nothing help you.
    So I said, let's go in a camp.
    Let's go someplace else.
    A little water and soup we'll get someplace else also.
    Or the piece of bread, whatever it was.
    Well they came, the next transport came,
    and I run in there to the next transport
    and we shipped me out to Auschwitz.
    We came to Auschwitz was in July, end of July or beginning
    was, I don't remember.
    And we came to a camp and they--
    So it was totally your choice?
    The way you described to me, they just
    wanted a certain number of people?
    Probably.
    I was lucky.
    They kept send me from one camp to another.
    So I came to Auschwitz, it was part
    of Auschwitz two, Birkenau.
    There where the gas chambers are.
    We came in, we met by car person,
    by other one and the language that I
    heard there, I did not hear until at that age when
    I was there.
    Such foul language, unbelievable.
    And such murderous language not by
    Kapos, not by SS, but by Kapos, by Jews, by Germans.
    All [INAUDIBLE] all people that were in the camps.
    What date did you arrive there?
    End of July or August, 1943.
    And we were assigned to the camp which the camp Birkenau was
    just building.
    It was started to build maybe three or four months before.
    And when we came in, we're all going
    to have to start building.
    The grounds were all full of mud, full of clay.
    We had to straighten out and this, and work was not easy
    because everything was hard to push wagons, and rails,
    and with a shovel.
    And pick and shovel, and carry cement up or down
    in different places.
    But you still
    I was still--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --because the fright made me strong.
    But I mean, constitutionally--
    Yes.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    My mind was strong because I always
    said whenever I've been assessed,
    I have to live this through.
    Because if anyone in the camps that
    said, oh, what should I do, was beaten up and if he would
    stood up because they're beaten up by a German, by SS
    man because it didn't work.
    If he would get up by the first hit,
    he wouldn't have beat him anymore.
    He would go up and start to do something.
    But he didn't, he beat him more.
    And we ask why didn't you do it?
    I says what for?
    I'll be killed anyhow.
    My philosophy was different.
    I said, I have to live it through.
    And no matter how much of beatings I got.
    Why did you think you had to live it through?
    I wanted to see the end of Hitler.
    I want to see why is it that the world--
    later on, will you close it?
    And I try to do my best to work as hard as possible, as
    cooperative as possible.
    Not to give anyone a chance, whether it's
    a German, whether it's a Kapo at the work,
    whether it's a blockalteste, which
    is the headman of the block.
    Whoever it is, not to give him a chance to beat me.
    I could only take a chance to be beaten
    when I've seen someplace that were
    like it's a piece of bread.
    That I have to nourish me.
    That I have to take a chance.
    If I'll catch it, I'll have it.
    If I'll get beaten up for it, but I had a piece of bread.
    Did you get beaten?
    Yes.
    I got beaten, but I had a bread.
    How many months were you in [INAUDIBLE]??
    I was there 'till May 8.
    'Till May 8 'till the end of the war.
    Oh you were?
    OK, so you were there almost three years?
    Yes.
    So then the work place is in--
    Birkenau worked mostly those people that belong live
    in one bunk in one place, they go out altogether
    with a Kapo work from this place.
    So he does not have to go out from other places
    to look for people to work.
    So I was working there from one or two places, but not steady.
    They transit me from there to another bunk.
    The first one was block number 24.
    From then, they transferred to block number 16.
    Was a Kapo, a Czech.
    He took us in to work and in the third camp
    with which was the hospital camp.
    See there were four camps, four blocks, four camps.
    The women's camp, the men's camp, the Gypsy camp,
    the krankenhaus, the hospital.
    And beyond the hospital were the crematoriums.
    So we were, I was working with the--
    You were all Jewish.
    Yeah, but all Jews, there were occasionally some non-Jews,
    but most of them Jews.
    All of you from [INAUDIBLE].
    No, no because there were no such thing as from.
    We did not have a name.
    We had a numbers.
    And Birkenau I got a number 129354
    it was a tattooed number.
    I forgot to mention that while we were still in Majdanek
    came a transport from Greece.
    And they were very, very, very fast to fall.
    It was, even if it was summertime,
    they were not used to the climate.
    And they were falling like flies, very bad.
    We, although we had it bad, we had pity on them.
    So when the Dutch Czech Kapo that was the last--
    that was another Kapo have to work, he was from Krakow.
    We used to work in the hospital block
    because the hospital they had lot of people,
    although they were taking people to the crematorium,
    but they're still taking people, taking the inmates
    to the hospital.
    Why?
    I don't know.
    First they made them well and then
    they took them to the crematoriums.
    So we worked in the hospital block in hospital camp
    to straighten out the roads or they should be straight.
    There should be no mud.
    And the walkways and flowers, and there--
    Would this be considered an inside job?
    Not an inside job, because we came in the morning
    and went out in the evening back to the block.
    Oh, so how far did you have to walk?
    To walk, maybe a kilometer.
    And not far to walk.
    And the later on we were told that they beautifying up
    this path that the Germans ordered to beautify up
    the hospital camp, because there eventually
    is going to be a International Commission come to see
    how they treating the people.
    They will show that they have a hospital,
    and they have a nice place to stay, and so on.
    Somehow I lost that job.
    Not that I didn't lose the job, but I lost the work
    in that area.
    So being that I was left over, they transferred me
    to another block number 4.
    The prisoners that were in block number 4
    did not have a steady place of block.
    So whenever somebody needed some prisoners to work,
    you went there and got them 10 people.
    So they were never steady.
    Today you worked in one place, tomorrow they take you,
    another Kapo takes you someplace else.
    So I was in that place maybe for two months,
    maybe for a month or six weeks.
    That was the worst block, the worst
    that I was there because you would never
    know where you're going tomorrow and where
    you're not going tomorrow.
    Also at that time was a selection.
    They came in, the Germans, the SS and
    took out a selection of a lot of people
    to dig right into the crematorium.
    We won an appeal [INAUDIBLE] outstanding
    and they used to take out, this out, this in, this out.
    People who looked most ill?
    Not the looks who was more ill than no who had swollen legs
    and who had injured legs, and this, and that.
    And I remember like today, there was one prisoner
    that they choose him to go to the crematorium.
    And he ran away and he hid.
    He hid someplace, and they couldn't find him.
    They couldn't find him, and they were held up
    practically a whole day, but they could not
    let go because they thought who knows what this guy is?
    Maybe he's a spy, maybe he's something that he knows?
    They finally, they took the rest of them
    that selected to go to crematoria,
    took them and they kept on looking for him.
    They finally got him.
    And they walked with him through the camp
    that everybody should see what happens
    to somebody that runs away.
    Separately, I witnessed they were in camp,
    they were brought back some guys that run away.
    That run away from the middle of work
    because they want to run away from camp.
    And they got a beating.
    I don't remember whether they shot him or they hanged them.
    I don't remember that.
    But the hanging was in another place.
    You didn't see any public hangings?
    I saw.
    They were also the one, two bunkers,
    two blocks that I call it bunker or block that we lived in.
    That called [? affect ?] kommando and Sonderkommando.
    They were all our people.
    The Sonderkommando worked-- excuse me--
    the first, the [? affect ?] kommando.
    When the transports came to Auschwitz II-Birkenau,
    the [? affect ?] kommando used to look up and look
    at all the clothing after they got undressed.
    They look all the clothing and looked
    for all the hidden valuables--
    rings, and the money, and all the things that they
    have to bring it all there.
    They themselves had nice uniforms
    because the Germans treated them nice.
    Everybody wanted to go that job to do it
    because you had a lot of bread, and a lot of this, and all
    that.
    They well fed.
    And this what they did.
    The other one was called Sonderkommando
    The Sonderkommando were the ones that
    were working to put the people in from the gas chambers
    into the fire.
    And they were also well fed.
    But they were also very dangerous.
    And the [? affect ?] kommando they are black.
    And the Sonderkommando they are black, being that they had fed,
    they were fed before very well so they had portions,
    they had rations.
    What they were getting, they gave it away.
    So it comes after we came back from work,
    we all congregated in front of them
    because they were throwing out their bread and their potato.
    We could have a piece of potato, something we're all--
    separately, the Sonderkommando made a revolution then they
    was trying to--
    so they was the one's that were working for them.
    And they realized today they work, tomorrow don't know.
    What's the difference?
    We got to do something.
    And they tried, some of them, they got caught,
    and this is what happened.
    I was in that block for 'till about December 1 or December
    10, something like [INAUDIBLE] when it got colder.
    When it came a new transport, they're
    sending away new transports.
    The new transport they used to send to the coal mines.
    There were coal mines [NON-ENGLISH] there were
    different, I don't remember the other one's.
    There were more than few different ones.
    So we thought we'll go there.
    As long as we go away from the crematoriums.
    Let's go away from the crematoriums.
    But we didn't realize that they can bring you
    from there to here too.
    And they send us away to a new camp
    to build a new camp called Lagischa.
    At camp Lagischa, they had almost two barracks.
    And we had to finish up all the things what
    was necessary to live there to stay there.
    And lageralteste.
    A lageralteste means that German that he is
    the head of the lageralteste.
    You'll build yourself a camp, you'll have it.
    That means it's my business, I have to have a camp.
    Otherwise, I cannot live without it.
    But we had no choice.
    We had to build one.
    And the building of the camp is the worst thing
    that can ever happen, because you come in
    to roll places that there is not anything there.
    You got to start from scratch.
    There was very little food, and very little bread,
    and very little--
    but hard labor, and a lot of beatings and a lot of that.
    Well--
    So you were doing like pick and shovel?
    We even doing the things that we didn't do.
    Everything, there was no water.
    Winter time we had to get the ice, not ice, snow
    to if you want to wash yourself because if your hands were
    dirty from the work, one thing we could do
    is to wash with snow.
    Where did you sleep?
    We had bunks.
    We had had some [INAUDIBLE] places to sleep
    and this is how we did.
    Slowly, it build up the place.
    But it's still coming, there was in the winter of 1943 December
    or beginning of January.
    I found and when I was in Birkenau,
    I found a [? lance-men ?] of mine from Kaluszyn.
    That they also came from Majdanek,
    but he was in a different place.
    So we didn't see each other, but we came to Lagischa
    we saw each other.
    And we're keeping together to see what we can do.
    He was an older man.
    He was a man maybe 10, 15 years older than I was.
    And somehow, he got beaten down.
    And they were starting to get a selection
    to get some people and--
    no, I'm sorry-- it was not a selection.
    He registered to go to the hospital to the krankenhaus,
    they call it a krankenhaus, the infirmary.
    He had an infirmary and he had, and one thing
    I have to mention whenever I see my friends of mine,
    I mention it because I was frightened that I
    was sorry about for asking him.
    Of course, you did not have anything yours,
    everything was from the camp.
    You got a jacket.
    You got out pants.
    You got a shirt.
    Somehow he had a sweater.
    And you knew it that whenever you go from here to there,
    they take away everything, even the spoon.
    And I ask him, would you please give me the sweater?
    And he said to me, I'm still alive.
    You want to be my inheritance?
    You want my inheritance?
    I said, please, you know that you'll go there,
    they'll take it away from you.
    At least, I'll have to the time for the time being.
    And if you come back, I'll give it back to you.
    He said that I did not take it from him.
    And for this day, I'm sorry that I mentioned it to him.
    For this reason I keep repeating.
    You should forgive me that I ask of that.
    It did not take a week or 10 days
    to send him to crematorium.
    He's gone, we remained there.
    We remained there working and they
    were building their new factories, new buildings.
    The buildings we were working on with the wagons
    and on rails to supply coal, to supply cement,
    and sand different things.
    And to work different, to work a lot.
    And the one time as I got beaten up.
    I got beaten up from here, I got a scar.
    That whatever, was no blood.
    Everything was so thin that water was could not heal.
    For working there for a few months
    and it came sometimes in May, April of 19.
    April, May or maybe June of 1944.
    It came in a new selection, a new guys
    from another place taking away people
    from our camp either to send them to the crematorium
    because they couldn't work or sending from there
    to coal mines.
    I presume that I will go to a coal mine.
    So I was rushing to get into the line
    to be taken to the coal mine.
    When the SS men showed me, he put me out over there.
    That means he doesn't want me.
    I did not want to give up.
    I wanted to go to coal mine.
    I sneaked in again.
    And he recognized me because he said, he took his stick
    and he hit me.
    He says, you are already here.
    I told you I don't want you.
    And he called in the other SS men said to give me a beating.
    So I got a beating from him later on.
    But I got lucky, because the men from the block for the head
    man from the place we were there,
    he went over to the SS man says, I'll take care of him.
    That means he'll give me the beating.
    He was not a Kapo, he was he'll give me the beating, not he.
    Which was good because I saw of course many times
    Kapos were beating up guys, but it
    was still better than the SS men were beating up.
    So he said to the SS man that he'll give me the beating.
    Of course, he gave me the beating
    because there was somebody was squealing.
    I was glad that I got it from him.
    And I was there, I wasn't taken not to the crematorium,
    and not to [NON-ENGLISH] to the coal mines.
    Later on came, of about a month later
    came another group to go for another transport.
    And they were sending me into Monowitz,
    Buna was another Auschwitz camp called Auschwitz III, Monowitz
    II-Buna.
    When I came to Buna, I got a vacation.
    For a week I walked around the camp and I didn't do a thing.
    I was just getting breakfast and dinner.
    In morning, I got a piece of bread
    and at night I got a soup.
    Nobody took me to work.
    A whole group of us because we were so undernourished that
    couldn't do anything with us.
    Why they did us to us?
    I don't know.
    They could have as well sent us to the crematorium.
    There I got, they sent me to a place
    where they start take us to work and I
    was working in a place they called Karbidworke.
    They produced synthetic carbide.
    Know what carbide is?
    It's a chemical that when it comes together with water
    it gives out gases.
    And we were work in that factory to make that.
    There was also a place they said that they making
    their synthetic gasoline.
    I don't know, this is what the synthetic gasoline or whatever
    it is.
    And this is what I was doing in Buna.
    Later on, I left that place and I went to work
    in a [NON-ENGLISH] it's called they put up pieces of to go up
    to a building alongside the building to go higher there.
    Builders using it, not to put up stents to--
    Oh, scaffolding?
    --Scaffolds.
    I work with the scaffold part.
    Until it came 'till 1945 in January 18.
    But during the time there were some prisoners
    that wanted to run away.
    And they caught them, and brought them back
    and everybody had to come out and watch hanging them.
    There were two men that were hanged that I had to watch.
    That was the most horrible thing.
    The horrible thing you could ever see.
    And then they played the music, and they--
    it's terrible.
    And came January 18, we knew that the Russians
    are coming closer to the camps.
    And we had to evacuate.
    And they sent us out an evacuation.
    We walked towards an area called Gliwice different cities.
    We walked until we came to a place
    that we couldn't go any further.
    They load us up.
    We were in trains.
    And there was one time we stopped in a train,
    we couldn't go and not left or right because the Russians had
    bombed the railroad.
    That the cart, we could not go either there or here.
    And they took us out, and we started to march.
    How did you walk to the train?
    That wasn't very far?
    Well the train, we were loading the train from Auschwitz.
    But the train stopped in the middle near Gliwice a place,
    [NON-ENGLISH] is in place there that the train could not go any
    further because the rails were broken.
    And that then we started to walk on the roads.
    While walking, we came into a place called Woldenberg.
    Today belongs to Poland called [? Wolbzech. ?]
    They had no place where to put us to sleep,
    because we were working days, days and nights.
    And some places, they had to place to put us up
    in a school or another place.
    And in this place, they did not have a place.
    But there was, Woldenberg was a mine, had a mine.
    I don't know what kind of mine, but the entrance to the mine
    was a big entrance.
    When I say maybe 30 feet wide and maybe 30 feet high.
    And you had to walk, and walk, and walk.
    When you walked in, they closed the doors.
    We were maybe 1,000 people, maybe more.
    And from the heat, a lot of people
    got in heat and hunger and everything.
    They collapsed I think.
    I had two friends that were with me.
    And although I was very poor and at that time,
    we walked out of Buna we wasn't that bad
    because we had the situation was bad,
    but not as bad as in Birkenau or in other places.
    And they got where they made [INAUDIBLE] themselves and they
    had to be cleaned up, and they opened up
    the gate in the morning, there was
    a leak from the water from the snow was a leak.
    I took them over there.
    I cleaned them up.
    And there were a lot of civilians
    that were also evacuated.
    And I went toward the civilians to beg them
    for a piece of bread, a piece of this, and a piece of that.
    And I brought them something to eat and there for myself also.
    And we sticked all together, the three of us continuously.
    And that was one of our first days of on the road.
    We were walking in I don't know whether we're
    walking towards the East or toward West.
    And until we came to a place that was almost
    in the front with the Russians.
    We were in stalls in places that farmers left.
    And we were there.
    The German, the army took us to the front to dig ditches.
    Wait a minute.
    So you escape from the--
    We did not escape.
    We could not escape.
    But all this time while we were with the Germans
    from the camp--
    Oh, the Germans took you to dig ditches near the front.
    --They took us on the road, we were always on the road.
    How many days were you after you left Auschwitz?
    'Till May 8.
    Oh, OK.
    So you walked--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Through all this time, we walked.
    Where we were tonight, we were not tomorrow.
    For every, let's say we found a place
    that we could stay overnight, the Germans
    could stay with us overnight, then we stayed for a few days.
    How many were with you [INAUDIBLE]??
    We were few hundred.
    It was less and less because they're falling.
    All men?
    All men.
    And especially when it's not only
    that it was hard to walk in the snow, but we were walking,
    Silesia--
    that is the area are a lot of hills.
    We had to go up hills and down hills.
    And we also had to carry or push the equipment of the Germans
    that walk with us.
    They had their backpacks, and they put it all on a wagons,
    and we had to push and pull.
    That was--
    You have blankets or jackets?
    They had blankets.
    The Germans had blankets.
    We didn't have any.
    We just had what we had a little jacket.
    The jacket depends what we were.
    There were no such thing as winter clothes as anything.
    We had nothing.
    But we had to carry them.
    The later on for maybe there was some blankets.
    No, I don't think so.
    We were sleeping in our clothes and just like that.
    One next to the other.
    Our bodily heat to keep us.
    We were pulling and pushing a wagons
    with their equipment with their packs, with their guns,
    and so on.
    This was a type of death penalty.
    Each wagon, there were no horses, we were the horses.
    Each wagon had about 15 or 20 prisoners.
    Those that were on the sides and the back
    were beaten up by the Germans to push to go faster.
    Those that were in the front to pull
    were beaten up while you're running so fast to pull back.
    So no matter what, if you went to the wagon,
    you were a dead man.
    Well I was having two friends that
    were close to death, not close to death, but were very weak.
    Carrying them, the smell and the vision
    that some place over there is something maybe you'll
    find a piece of bread was so great that you felt it.
    You felt that even not you had eyes in your back.
    I realized that over there in the ditch
    is a piece of apple laying there.
    Who threw it away?
    I don't know.
    I left my two friends and I ran over get the piece of apple.
    The German that were beating up all the other ones
    saw me running.
    He says to me, oh, you're running well.
    Oh good.
    Come into the wagon.
    He got me to the wagon, and when I came into the wagon to a side
    to relieve other ones, those that
    were beaten to relieve them.
    And I was to the wagon that the guy says to me, stay here.
    He put his harness that you put in like on a horse
    because we had to.
    He says, stay here.
    This is not so bad.
    And I was there for--
    Another--
    Another because I relieved him.
    --I see.
    He said, stay here.
    This is not so bad.
    Because the German that was walking alongside him maybe
    had a little heart, maybe his heart wasn't that bad.
    And I was there and pulling that wagon maybe for an hour or two.
    But the two friends of mine already said goodbye to me,
    because they knew that you're going to the wagon,
    you are through.
    When they saw me coming back, like Messiah
    came, because they actually-- they were no organizers.
    Organizers mean somebody that can produce something,
    somebody can lead something.
    They praised me and we were still a group.
    And we were walking from one place
    to another 'till we came to a place
    that we were in front of the Russians.
    And then digging ditches to defend the Germans.
    'Till it came almost at the end.
    The Germans were approaching.
    And we remained maybe 50, maybe 100 of us on the road
    with the Germans, German soldiers.
    And they did not know what to do with us.
    The artillery was knocking so much
    and fire was from all places.
    And they wanted to leave us, but they were afraid
    that we will attack them.
    We were afraid that they will attack us at the last minute
    because what have they've got to lose?
    And some of us guys that while we were walking through
    on the road, many times you see water
    from one side to the other, and there's a little bridge.
    That some of us wanted to help themselves
    being that so it is the end of it, they wanted to run away.
    And they went in through that tunnel to get from one side
    to hiding.
    And they were so, by the time of the Germans saw them going in,
    they went right in shoot them and many of these places.
    So I was afraid to run away and see what's going to be the end.
    When the Germans, we were remain three of us,
    my friends three of us together, and maybe another 5
    or 10 groups of three to four together.
    And they were about five Germans SS guarding us.
    And slowly they moved away.
    While they moved away, we saw some
    stalls, little buildings there.
    So we said we'll hide there.
    So we went in there to hide and every time the morning gets
    in closer and closer.
    And we hear more shouting, more artillery, more this.
    And then it's quiet.
    We walked out and you don't hear anything.
    We start to walk down to a town so from the mountains to a town
    and said let's go down.
    At least we'll look for some clothes
    because the clothes that we had, we and this.
    So we got some clothes.
    And we went into a house, and we stayed there.
    And we saw the Russians coming in.
    Meantime, we started to get pales,
    so we're going to get soup.
    So we started to get three of us, we got three pails of soup.
    While three pails?
    Because we were always hungry, we were afraid,
    who knows what's going to be later?
    We ate a soup and we later on came the afternoon,
    we started to eat the soup is sour.
    Saw the Russians still there, we spilled the sour soup,
    we went for other soup.
    This what we used to do that three times a day.
    Whatever we could eat up and the rest of we spilled out
    and we got the other one.
    And we decided that we'll go home.
    I was from near Warsaw.
    They were also from Northern Warsaw.
    We went together by train.
    Hitchhiked by train maybe two, three days.
    We came back to Warsaw.
    Then--
    Can you give me friends' names?
    I don't remember.
    One friend I remember because one I missed.
    One friend was name, he had a number 126655.
    665 or 655 his name was [? Jacob ?] Evans.
    I think that's what he gave me.
    And he told me that he has a brother in Uruguay, Montevideo.
    I asked people from Uruguay, Montevideo,
    did they ever heard a name like that?
    They did not find any name like that.
    I looked in their registration at the American Holocaust
    survivors at American gathering, I didn't find.
    Maybe I think he gave me the name Evans.
    Maybe the name is not right.
    Maybe it was different, but they did not find him.
    A fact that one after we I got liberated, after we got
    liberated, I went from Warsaw from one end to Warsaw
    to the other because I had to take a train to go to Kaluszyn.
    And Warsaw was destroyed.
    So I walked from one end to Warsaw to the other end
    to get another train to come to Kaluszyn.
    When I came on the road to Kaluszyn
    I met a guy, a Polish guy, and he looked at me.
    He was scared because I looked like a dead man.
    And I told him who I am I asked you [CRYING] but the first
    [CRYING] was the first good news I heard that my brother is
    the [NON-ENGLISH].
    Then May 15 or May 20 and I was sleeping and eating
    for two weeks.
    And this is how I looked after two weeks gaining 15 kilos.
    This [INAUDIBLE].
    Pardon me?
    I don't know [INAUDIBLE] all the ones
    that are marked you want to go into the archives?
    Yes, I'll give you all those pictures
    that you want and you'll send them back to me?
    Right, right.
    This is my brother and his wife.
    You went back to Kaluszyn
    I went back to Kaluszyn and I found my brother.
    He was staying there for about a month
    and we had to leave because before our arrival,
    one Jew was killed by the National Army, National
    Polish army.
    They claimed that he was a Russian sympathizer
    and they had to get rid of him.
    At the same time, there was a few people
    that were hidden in villages and forests,
    came back and worked at a factory
    that they made originally they made a sheepskin jackets.
    Their family name is [? Berman. ?]
    And because of the fact that this person was killed,
    they had to leave the town.
    And since then, no Jews live there anymore.
    We left, my brother and I, we left for lodge.
    We're staying there for a few months
    and then we went back to Germany.
    To Landshut and from Landshut [INAUDIBLE] to America.
    What year did you immigrate?
    In 1947.
    Now can you tell briefly what happened to the family members?
    They were all in the ghetto [INAUDIBLE]??
    Well, they all--
    Who was there and the days?
    Well the other family members that were
    first, we were at a time when there was the liquidation,
    the first liquidation was in September 25 1942.
    It was my mother, my sister, my mother's sister, my aunt,
    and her mother.
    And some other cousins, and my father's relatives,
    my father's brothers and his family were all on the market.
    They were all sent to Majdanek.
    I'm sorry, not to Majdanek, to Treblinka.
    And they were all killed?
    They all perished.
    And your father?
    My father was killed in Kaluszyn in Yon Kippur night 1942,
    September 21.
    Was he killed, was the whole committee killed then?
    No, the whole committee-- they were just sent for him
    before was killed, the SS sent for him to come.
    And when he went to see them, they
    told him that he's arrested.
    And they later on, they sent to inform the other members
    of the Judenrat that they should inform the family
    to come say hello to him because they're
    going to send him to Warsaw.
    And when my brother and I came to the jail
    where he was supposed to be to call the window,
    called him, father, father, we are here waiting for you.
    We didn't hear any reply.
    But staying there for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes
    and waiting for his reply, we heard shots,
    which was in the square nearby.
    And we went over there and then we found our father dead.
    It happened once before that the SS came once and arrested
    my father, took him to Warsaw.
    He was sitting at that time he was in jail in the Warsaw
    together with Czerniaków, the leader of the Jewish community
    in Warsaw.
    And of course, when he came back,
    he told the problem what the Warsaw has.
    And that no matter how bad we have it,
    that they have it worse.
    And there were many, many ways that the Judenrats in our area
    communicated with one another.
    They did help each other in many ways,
    but there was, they could never be
    ahead of the Germans what their plans were to realize
    what they want to do.
    There were always trying to think that only would
    this law, only would this special thing
    that the Jews have to do, this will
    be it and no more, and no more.
    And everything now will be good, and good, and good.
    Is there anything else that you want to say for the record?
    I don't know.
    You came to the United States and you met your wife.
    I came to United States, my wife originally is from Poland.
    Her family emigrated from Poland to Costa Rica
    in Central America.
    And she was in Costa Rica by chance,
    she came to New York on a business trip
    with other people who are my relatives.
    And I meet my wife at that time on a trip
    and I felt that she's a nice person for me to meet again.
    And for me that met a few times.
    And we decided to get married.
    And then you got married [INAUDIBLE]..
    I got married in Costa Rica.
    Going to Costa Rica to marry her, it was in January 9,
    or is it 8?
    1949.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    January 9, 1949.
    And you had three--
    And we have two daughters.
    And we came, of course, we came to live here.
    We lived in Brooklyn.
    And then we lived in Queens.
    And since then, I lived there.
    You live in Queens?
    I live in Queens.
    What do you [INAUDIBLE]?
    I have two [INAUDIBLE].
    Are you retired?
    I am now retired, I was since 1948.
    When I came to the first to the states,
    I got a job as a messenger in a shipping company.
    This gave me a lot of, a big break
    as I learned English I believe well.
    I also went to night school.
    And about six months, I went to night school whatever it was.
    And then I went for about six months to a--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Can you imagine you get so excited
    that you're missing a word?
    I went to high school.
    I believe that I learned the language well
    to my writing I could say is perfect, as
    good as any American born.
    And although I believe I have an accent, I'm not ashamed of it.
    And then after learning working for the company, which
    is an export, which is a forwarding company
    dealing and arranging shipments for customers overseas
    who actually introduced me to that job because they
    were a client of that company who they gave business
    to that company to ship for them to Costa Rica merchandise.
    So through them, I got the job and I worked there
    for almost two years.
    And then we started to go into business
    and to provide my relatives in Costa Rica who
    are importers with samples of textiles,
    and different kind of materials.
    And this is how I got into the export business, which
    was called in 1948 I went into the business,
    and we called [? Keschell ?] Brothers Trading Company.
    Later we incorporated, became a corporations.
    Of course, our name was no one in New York
    and a lot of companies in the states we had a very good name.
    So you did this with your brother?
    Yeah.
    We had a very good name, my brother and I,
    and very well known in the trade of textiles, and clothing,
    cosmetics, and anything that my customers wanted we had.
    We export our merchandise to South America,
    to Central America, and even to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
    and Lebanon.
    I retired in 1988 after my brother
    got a few times heart attacks.
    Then we decided that business is not going to be better.
    And I'd rather, I said to myself that I would rather go out
    of business than be taken out.
    And that's what I did and I'm very happy for it.
    After all the things that I recall and think
    of what happened to me, what makes me so lucky?
    That someone was behind me.
    And that was my father.
    I always felt that he is watching over me.
    And whenever I was in the biggest--
    I came out.
    I came out with flying colors all right.
    It doesn't mean that I was always the winner,
    but even I was beaten up but I came out alive.
    A separate story about my father is written in the story
    that I gave about how the ghetto works which we'll see it.
    I will just mention one particular instance
    of my father what happened in 1940.
    Some time in 1940, the Germans came with an order
    that the Jews, the coalition must supply 150 men to be sent
    to Biala Podlaska This is a town on the way before Brest-Litovsk
    which there is a work camp and they will have to work there.
    Of course, nobody wanted to go there
    as everyone already knew who the Germans are and what they are
    and what their stories are.
    But who can say no to the Germans all the way?
    With all kind of work in all persuasions,
    my father persuaded them to take only 40, from 150
    to knock them down to 40.
    But only 38 went there.
    As soon as the young boys came to Biala Podlaska,
    they had a very bad experience.
    Of course it's not a bad experience,
    they never had any other experience
    because they were young boys and there were no such things.
    They were forced to do certain types of labor.
    They were not used to it, they were not accustomed.
    The accommodations, the life was very hard,
    food was very mean and bad.
    From the letters that they wrote was very alarming
    to their parents, and of course those letters came back to you
    Judenrat.
    My father, being that he's under practically all
    the arrangements, all the things to get things done,
    he took a trip to Biala Podlaska to see if he can
    bring the boys back by himself.
    He had to receive a permit from the county Germans
    to go there, as Jews were not permitted to go by train.
    When he came there he got all the story
    from the boys what they were doing.
    He could only see 12 of them.
    The other ones they were at work,
    they were not allowed to be seen.
    And he was talking to the Germans in that camp
    to release them, to let them go home
    because we need them at home.
    We have industries that work for the German Wehrmacht,
    for the German army.
    For the nerve to tell the Germans to let them out,
    he got so beaten up that he could not do anything.
    And luckily he came home.
    He was in bed, laid in bed for about two weeks
    till he came back to him.
    Seeing the conditions that was there at Biala Podlaska,
    he decided that he must do something.
    We cannot leave those boys there.
    And he went to the authorities in the county
    again with a story that, why don't they give us a paper
    that we need those boys in the factory that
    is producing a product for the German army
    like the sheepskin coats which the Germans need for winter
    clothing and other things?
    This helped.
    Again he made a trip to Biala Podlaska with that letter
    and he brought the boys back.
    As you can sometimes see Moses going out of Egypt?
    Well Moses came back with 38 people from that camp.
    That was my father.
    And for this I believe that he stayed behind me also,
    all the time.
    Whenever I was in a jam, whatever I couldn't do,
    he was behind me and he brought me out.
    As you can see there are two pictures.
    One is with a synagogue standing,
    and around it are bombed-out houses
    which was done in 1939 when the Germans fought in Kaluszyn.
    The synagogue remained during this time
    until 1941 when the Germans destroyed it and took away
    the bricks to make an airfield.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Michael Kishel (né Majlech Kisielnicki), born in Kaluszyn, Poland, describes his family; his childhood; growing up Orthodox; his great-grandparents who had a bakery; completing grade school at age 14 and attending trade school in Warsaw, Poland for six months; working in the family business and saw his friends in the evening; attending camp in the summers with other teenagers; going to the Russian border for a short time and the German occupation of Poland shortly after his return; the formation of a Judenrat (Jewish council), which his father was part of; living in an open ghetto; being on the sanitary committee to prevent typhus; getting papers, along with his brother, to live on the Aryan side of Warsaw; moving in with their cousins in the ghetto; being deported on a cattle car to Treblinka; jumping out of the train and returning to their cousins; hiding in a basemenrt when the Germans came; being deported to Majdanek; going to a hospital and recuperating after being sick; being deported to Auschwitz, where he remained for two years; being beaten numerous times; being transferred to various subcamps, including the coal mines (Waldenburg subcamp); being evacuated on January 18, 1945; being on the road until they were liberated in May 1945; returning to Kaluszyn; immigrating to the United States in 1948; getting married in 1949; settling in Queens, NY; working in the export business with his brother until they retired in 1988; and his belief that his father helped him survive.
    Interviewee
    Meilech Kisielnicki
    Interviewer
    Susan Bachrach
    Date
    interview:  1992 July 01

    Physical Details

    Language
    Yiddish English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (90 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
    Kishel, Michael.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Susan Bachrach, of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Card Project, conducted the interview with Michael Kishel in Bayside, N.Y., on July 1, 1992.
    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 08:23:48
    This page:
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    Transcripts (4)
    Time Coded Notes (3)
    Supplementary Material (English)

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    Oral history interview with John Friedmann

    Oral History

    John Friedmann, born on born October 19, 1913 in Vrbove, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes growing up in Vienna, Austria; his apprenticeship as a salesman in a linoleum business; the German annexation of Austria; being arrested and sent to a jail in Linz, Austria in August 1938; being taken by cattle car to Dachau concentration camp; the work and various prisoners in the camp; being sent to Weimar before being transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp; his work in the camp; hangings in the camp; his mother’s attempts to write to the camp officials and get John out; being released and returning to Vienna; Kristallnacht in November 1938; going to Shanghai, China in December 1938; his mother joining him in Shanghai; working as a supervisor for the trash dumps; working for the Shanghai Bus Company; having to live in the ghetto; working for Citroën Motors; getting a job in the Toyota Company, which allowed him a pass to leave the ghetto; the arrival of American troops and being hired as a foreman in the ATC (Air Transport Command); flying to Alaska with a Jewish organization in 1949; going to Vancouver then Toronto; working for Austin Motor Company; getting married in 1950; and moving to California in December 1950.

    Oral history interview with Irene Frisch

    Oral History

    Irene Frisch (b. Bienstock), born in 1931 in Dohobyz, Poland (Drohobych, Ukraine), describes her life in pre-war Poland; her parents; her father’s occupation as a businessman; her family’s housekeeper, Frania Osobokowa, who helped save her life; the beginning of the war and ghettoization of Dohobyz; the harsh conditions her family endured while in the ghetto; Frania’s willingness to house and feed her, her mother, and her sister during the war; the murder and persecution of Jews after the liquidation of the ghetto; her survival in hiding and liberation by the Russian Army; antisemitism in Poland after the war; her miraculous reunion with her father on a train; her experience with antisemitism in high school and her struggles with her principal; her family’s decision to immigrate to Israel and the painful goodbye with Frania; her emigration from Israel to the United States in 1961; her life in the United States; and her lasting relationship with Frania.

    Oral history interview with Andrzej Garczynski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bozenna Gilbride

    Oral History

    Bozenna Gilbride, née Urbonowicz, discusses her childhood in Wolyn, Poland (present day Volhynia, Ukraine); her Christian farming parents; how her father hid Jews in a shed on his farm early in World War II; escaping after Ukrainians burned her family’s farm and their village; immigrating to Germany, unaware of what was happening there; working in a factory making leather goods for German soldiers; working in a slave labor camp in Chemnitz; contracting TB; how her mother was suspected of being in the Polish underground and was sent to Ravensbrück, where she was sterilized; how her mother was sent to Gross-Rosen; her feelings about being separated from her mother; the arrival of American troops; the behavior of German citizens; living in a displaced persons camp in Leipzig from 1945 until the beginning of 1947; immigrating to the United States; and her mother’s difficulty in obtaining a visa to join the family in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Marian Gnyp

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alma Goldberg

    Oral History

    Alma Goldberg (née Bressler), born on March 22, 1930 in Czernowitz, Bukovina (Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes her younger sister (Lydia Bressler Goldring); her father’s import business; her religiously traditional family; attending soccer games with her father; attending a Romanian school and learning Hebrew from a private teacher at home; experiencing antisemitism from other children; living in an integrated neighborhood; hiding during the pogroms committed by Romanians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks; going with her family to Bucharest, Romania; the bombardments in Bucharest; having to leave a cinema once because of the bombing; attending school in Bucharest; sending family heirlooms to relatives in Israel and hiding other possessions; going to Switzerland with her family then Milan, Italy; going with her family to Cuba in 1948; attending business school and being a secretary, using six languages; living in Havana; moving to the United States; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Charles Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Goldkind discusses her grandmother, who was 80 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz; her childhood in Volosyanka (Ukraine); her extended family, most of whom were deported to Auschwitz; growing up as one of seven children; the Hungarian occupation of her town in 1939; her limited access to education; speaking Czech and Yiddish; restrictions under Hungarian rule; how her parents were forced to close their store; her brothers’ deportation to a Hungarian labor camp; the arrival of German forces in her town between 1942 and 1943; the establishment of a ghetto in a brick factory in Uhzgorod; being forced to move into the ghetto in 1943, where she lived for a few months; her deportation to Auschwitz; the commotion and confusion she experienced during her arrival at Auschwitz; the deaths of family members; staying together with her sister in the camps; being sent to Bergen-Belsen with her sister; and how her sister aided in her survival.

    Oral history interview with Philip Goldstein

    Oral History

    Philip Goldstein, born in 1922, discusses his childhood in Radom, Poland; his secular and religious education in Poland; joining the youth Zionist movement; participating in Hashomer Hatzair in Radom; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and his family’s house arrest; forced labor; being marched to many towns in Poland including Belzec, Lublin, Annapol, and Krasnik; seeing his family for the last time in 1942; his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his brother; life in the camp; contracting typhus; walking from Auschwitz to Birkenau; living conditions in Birkenau; mass killings in Birkenau; building the gas chambers and crematoriums; the uprising in Birkenau in October 1944; returning to Auschwitz; evacuating Auschwitz-Birkenau; being forced to march to Gross-Rosen; rumors about war’s end; being liberated by U.S. troops; his relatives who survived; living in a displaced persons camp; immigrating to New York in 1945; and his family and life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sally Goldstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Monique Goodrich

    Oral History

    Monique Goodrich (née Jackson), born on October 29, 1937 in Paris, France, describes her Russian father and Polish mother, who were both orphans of World War I; spending most of the war years in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste, France; her family’s escape to the Pyrenees at the beginning of the war; receiving help from people in the town; speaking Basque; her brother’s birth in 1941; Germans coming into the town and rounding up people; sensing the danger but not understanding it fully as a child; instinctively knowing as a hidden child that she shouldn’t call attention to herself; living for a while in an orphanage in a convent when she was four; the regimented life in the orphanage; the severe rationing; living on a farm apart from her family; her mother getting false identity papers from the policeman who was helping her; her father’s garden; her father going to Spain and living in Miranda de Ebro concentration camp; smugglers in the area; the resistance in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste; her mother’s despair when she learned of her sister’s deportation; being in Paris during the liberation; her father coming back from Spain; being sent to the countryside; living in Paris for six years before going to the United States; attending school in the US; feeling that she knew more about the Catholic religion than Judaism; making more time for Judaism in her life; and her appreciation for all the things the people in Saint-Laurent-de-Neste did for Jews during the war.

    Radio broadcast about Karl Gorath

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edit Gredinger

    Oral History

    Edit Gredinger (née Grinsphun), born on March 2, 1922 in Kishinev (Chisinau, Moldova), describes her parents and little brother; living well on their own land; her father farming and working for the railroad; being sent at the age of 11 to Tigina (Bender, Moldova) for gymnasium; graduating in 1940; not being allowed to discuss the war nor read newspapers while she was at school; the rise of fascism in 1938 and the subsequent pogroms; not being affected by the pogroms; studying at the Teacher Institute in Kishinev; the Russian occupation; going to Bulboka to get her parents so they could evacuate together; traveling east with her parents and brother; going to Pervomaysk, Ukraine; being caught by the Germans and assembled in a church in Bogopol (Bohopil); being separated from her family and taken with other people to work; the murder of her mother, father, and brother; escaping with a friend across the frozen river; hiding in pigpens; passing as a Romanian Christian; being sent to a ghetto camp in Otmechatka; the hard labor she performed in the camp; getting married in 1942 to Matvey Gredinger (RG-50.233*0042); working on a farm with her husband; her husband being sent to other places for two years; her husband’s return in 1944; having her daughter in the camp; returning to Moldova; and the communal grave at Pervomaysk.

    Oral history interview with Matvey Gredinger

    Oral History

    Matvey Gredinger, born June 2, 1921 in Moldavia, discusses his prewar family life; his home town in which 500 Jewish families lived; studying Hebrew and the Jewish religion; antisemitic groups at school; visiting in parents in Versoka, Romania in 1940; the murder of his parents in Versoka by the Germans; being shot in the neck in his home along with his father; marching through Moldova until reaching Soroka a week later; being marched to a concentration camp in Vertajan (Vertiujeni, Moldova)at the end of September 1941 with over 20,000 prisoners; how mostly Romanians guarded the prison with some Germans; being forced to carry rocks to build a road; his fellow prisoners who were Romanian, Moravian, and Ukrainian Jews and political prisoners; his liberation by the Russians in April 1944; his arrest by the Russians in 1947 and his time in Siberia; and his arrival in the United States in March 1990.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Green

    Oral History

    Bernard Green, born March 6, 1911 in Rozwadow, Poland, discusses his family members, several of whom survived the Holocaust with false papers; attending a private Jewish school and completing three years of college for engineering; his awareness of antisemitism when he was unable to finish his education; working for Germans in a factory; being recruited into the Polish Army from 1934 to 1937; being stationed in Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine); attending school in the army; running the canteen in the army for two years; the head of his outfit who was a Jewish mayor; events following the German occupation of Rozwadow; the camp in Pisznica, Poland; and his return to Rozwadow after the war.

    Oral history interview with Sabina Green

    Oral History

    Sabina Green (née Low), born on March 23, 1922 in Ulanow, Poland, describes her childhood; her parents; her two brothers and sister; her parents taking in a young Jewish boy from Frankfurt, Germany; attending public school and Jewish school; the Jewish organizations in Ulanow; the German invasion in 1939; doing forced labor; the looting committed by local non-Jews; the Judenrat (Jewish council) choosing people for work details; her brother’s deportation to a work camp in 1941; visiting her brother at the camp and bringing him food; her brother’s release from the camp; the murder of her uncle and his family; being ordered to go to Saklikov; getting false papers with the name Zofya Jamowa; going with her future husband to Stryj, Poland (now Stryĭ, Ukraine); the death of her sister and younger brother; passing as a non-Jew and attending mass; witnessing the destruction of the whole Jewish community in Stryj in 1943; the massacre of the Jews in Stryj; how the Polish people in Stryj helped the Jews; visiting Ulanow after the war and finding no survivors in her family; leaving Poland in 1957 and going to Israel; going to the United States in 1960; and living in Brooklyn, NY.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Blanka Gross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elias Grossman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerald Grossman

    Oral History

    Gerald Grossman, born on December 20, 1923 in Rovno, Poland (Rivne, Ukraine), describes his Jewish parents; his three brothers and one sister; his father’s work as a tailor; attending public school and cheder; attending a specialized ORT school in 1936; speaking Yiddish at home and Ukrainian and Polish elsewhere; the relations between Jews and non-Jews in Rovno; belonging to a religious Zionist organization; discussions in the 1930s about Hitler and the Nazis in Germany; the beginning of the war and the Russian occupation in 1939; living with his family in the nearby town of Abarro; continuing his education in a Russian-controlled school; going to a railroad school in Zdolbunów (Zdolbuniv, Ukraine); graduating in 1941 and working as a locomotive engineer in Kamionka Strumilowa (Kam'ianka Buz'ka, Ukraine); the German invasion in June 1941; traveling by train east during the bombardment; returning to Rovno; being sent to Russia as part of a special reserve transport group for the military; going to Harkov (Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 1941; living in Zagorsk (Sergiev Posad), Russia circa 1942, working on the railroad near Moscow; deserting his railroad job with four Ukrainian men and going to east; the harsh winter and his experiences in Gorki (Nizhniĭ Novgorod), Russia; going through Kuibyshev (Samara), Russia to Tashkent, Uzbekistan; being afflicted with lice and typhoid; living in Tashkent for about nine months working as a machinist; throwing away all his documents and pictures that would identify his real name for fear of being discovered as a deserter; going to Cuzar with his uncle to sign up with the Polish Army to fight the Germans from the English side; being rejected because he was Jewish; going by the name Grisorus; returning to Poland and going to Krakow; not knowing what happened to any of his family; and his efforts to help other survivors find family members.

    Oral history interview with Robert Gruber

    Oral History

    Robert Gruber, born on December 6, 1933 in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes having few memories before 1938; the Hungarian occupation and watching the Hungarian victory parade; his parents and their backgrounds; going to his mother’s hometown, Michalovce, Slovakia; the anti-Jewish laws; attending a Jewish school; the views of his relatives on Zionism; the deportations beginning in 1942; the Jewish council; how luck and chance influenced one’s survival; his parents hiring a smuggler to get them to Uzhhorod, Ukraine; being detained in a prison in Uzhhorod for a week with his family; being returned to Slovakia; going into hiding; the prevalence of false conversion papers; passing as Christians; living in a boarding school in Miskolc, Hungary for a year; going to Budapest, Hungary with his sister when she needed a tonsillectomy; his mother removing he and his sister from the boarding school soon before all the students were deported; hiding in a pigsty with his family for a few days; moving west to Nitra, Slovakia; the hiding place close to their apartment; avoiding a roundup; getting sick and having a severe fever; liberation of the town; the family members who perished and those who survived; attending gymnasium after the war; the communists' coup d’état in 1948; and going to the United States with his family in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Grudzinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laura Gruenbaum

    Oral History

    Laura Gruenbaum (née Ellenbogen), born in 1911 in Rozwadów, Poland, discusses her brother Abraham Ellenbogen and her sister Hanna Ellenbogen; the family’s six-room house built outside of Rozwadów about two years before World War I; Abraham’s education in Czechowice and Krakow; his move to Prague to attend medical school; his return to Poland to attend law school in Krakow; his thriving general law practice at the family home outside of Rozwadów for two years before the Germans invaded Poland; Hanna and Abraham’s travel to Russian-controlled Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) after the German invasion of Poland; her family’s eviction from their house by the Germans; finding her siblings in Lvov where they lived together until she and her parents were sent to Russia; being separated from Abraham and Hanna; and her attempt after the war to find out what happened to Abraham.

    Oral history interview with Lutz Haase

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Hass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margot Heuman

    Oral History

    Margot Heuman, born on February 17, 1928 in Hellenthal, Germany, describes her pleasant childhood in Lippstadt, Germany, where her family moved in 1932; her family’s large home; attending public school and Hebrew school; her family’s religious observations; living briefly with her grandparents in Euskirchen, Germany; moving with her family to Bielefeld, Germany around 1937; her memories of the day Jews were no longer allowed to attend school in 1938; having to wear a Jewish star; the restrictions placed on Jews; the deportations of other Jews, including many of her friends; her grandfather’s death from starvation; being deported with her family to Theresienstadt on June 29, 1942; life in the ghetto/camp; the theatrical and musical performances; the Zionists in Theresienstadt; meeting her very good friend Dita in Theresienstadt; her father’s work for the post office in Theresienstadt; being deported with her family to Auschwitz in May 1944 after her father was caught stealing; the journey to Auschwitz; witnessing the murder of an infant when they arrived at the camp; being placed with her family in Birkenau; being tattooed with a number; her friend Dita arriving after a month; the death of her grandmother; the pain of hunger in the camp; roll calls, during which the prisoners stood naked outside; being sent to a labor camp in Hamburg, Germany with Dita; living in a warehouse on the harbor (probably Hamburg-Geilenberg); digging ditches; her friendship with Dita in the camp and sharing everything with her; the bombings at the camp; being sent to Neugraben concentration camp and the conditions there; a German soldier who gave her his lunch every day because she reminded him of his daughter; being physically abused a few times in the camps; being transferred in February 1945 to Tiefstack and the terrible conditions there; their mixed feelings about the bombings; being sent to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; being very ill upon liberation and her will to live; going to Sweden, while Dita went to England; living with Marta Dandenell in Stockholm for over a year; attending private schools; corresponding with Dita; the loss of most of her family; going to the United States, where she had uncles; her dislike for New York when she arrived; working in an advertising agency as a systems analyst; getting married; and feeling obligated to have many children to replace her lost family.

    Oral history interview with William Himmelfarb

    Oral History

    William Himmelfarb, born on July 19, 1927 in Koprzywnica, Poland, describes his siblings; his parents; speaking Yiddish at home; attending school; the German invasion in 1939; living with three other families in their house; doing forced labor; the Judenrat (Jewish council); the restrictions placed on Jews; the formation of ghettos; being taken with others to Skarzysko-Kamienna; his work in the camp; hearing that the Jews in Koprzywnica were annihilated; suffering from typhoid; his kind supervisor; the dangers of working with ammunition; being taken by cattle train to Czestochowa; being placed on trains soon after and sent through Leipzeig, Germany to Buchenwald; arriving in the camp on July 18, 1944; the processing of prisoners; the Kapos; working in a quarry; being sent to Schlieben; working in a factory for anti-tank grenades; an explosion in the factory and how he still doesn’t know if it was due to sabotage or an accident; rebuilding the factory that had been destroyed; the difficult conditions in the camp; being sent out of the camp by cattle cars in April 1945 towards Theresienstadt; being abandoned by the guards during an air raid of their train; getting to Theresienstadt, where he received medical care in the hospital; being liberated by the Russians; going to Prague, Czech Republic then Windermere, England; being sent by the British government with other Jewish youths from city to city; staying in a boys’ home with 15 other boys in Winchester; living in England for five years; going to the United States in 1950; serving during the Korean War; getting married in 1951; and never returning to Poland.

    Oral history interview with Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin

    Oral History

    Twins, Rene Slotkin (born Rene Guttman [Gutman]) and Irene Hizme (born Renatta [Renate] Guttman), describe their stories and memories, starting from their birth on December 21, 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia (Teplice, Czech Republic), and continuing through their early lives in Prague; their father, Herbert Guttman, who was arrested as a political prisoner in December 1941 and eventually sent to Auschwitz, where he died; being deported with their mother, Ita, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and then later to Auschwitz, where the family was separated and where their mother perished; their experiences in Auschwitz, where they were kept separate and subjected to Mengele’s medical experiments on twins; their reunion several years after liberation, thanks in part to an article in Life Magazine that contained a profile of Irene; Operation Rescue Children which brought Irene to the United States; her adoption by the Slotkins; the Slotkins’ search for Rene, eventually finding him living in Czechoslovakia; and Rene’s adoption by the Slotkin family who brought him to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Irving Horn

    Oral History

    Irving Horn (né Isachar Herszenhorn), born in February 1927 in Radom, Poland, describes experiencing significant antisemitism as a child; the integration of schools when he was seven years old; how he and the only other Jewish boy at his new school were severely beaten by some of their schoolmates; the war breaking out and his father losing his job; his brother being accused of spying and temporarily jailed; attending a secret Jewish school for two years until Radom became a ghetto; the ghetto in Glinice; how upon the liquidation of the Radom ghetto, he and his father volunteered to work on the Waschnik estate; surviving encounters with the SS; working in a weapons factory, where he encountered Jacob Holz, a ruthless security guard against whom Irving later testified; how around July 25, 1944 he marched to Tomaszów because the Russians were approaching Radom; being deported by train to Auschwitz; being chosen with his father and two brothers to do work in Vaihingen an der Enz near Stuttgart; being sent by a guard to work on the Nazi Secretary of State’s sister-in-law’s estate for two weeks, where he received food and regained his strength; being sent to Camp Unterriexingen, Kochendorf, and finally to Dachau; being in Tyrol, Austria at the end of the war but being taken back to Germany and almost shot into a ravine; how before the killing was to take place, the SS men changed into civilian clothes and left; ending up in a military hospital in Mittenwald, Germany due to severe hunger; spending several years in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and being in the US Army between 1950 and 1952.

    Oral history interview with Molly Ingster

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Katalin Karpati

    Oral History

    Katalin Karpati, born in 1912 in Újpest, Hungary, discusses growing up in a large, modern house in a gentile neighborhood; her father Izidor Dicker, who was the director of a lumber factory in Újpest, and her mother, who was well-educated and helped her husband with his business; how her family was not religious; marrying her first husband Lajos Nagy, a wealthy businessman who owned a store and mines; how Lajos received a degree in diplomacy from the University of the East in the late 1920s but was unable to find work due to anti-Jewish laws; how in 1940, all Jewish men in the village were sent to a labor camp, but Lajos received a medical exemption and was permitted to relocate to a family villa in Újpest; the birth of their first child Shandor Michael in January 1944; how on April 23, 1944, Lajos was taken to forced labor in Felsőgalla, where he died in an air raid; being sent with her son to live in the ghetto; their deportation to Auschwitz; how six-month old Shandor Michael was killed immediately upon arrival; her second husband, Joseph Karpati; how in May 1944, 25 members of the Karpati family were taken from Buj to Auschwitz, where they were killed; how her current husband Joseph and his brother spent four years in forced labor, but survived the war; and how two of her nieces survived and settled in Israel.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kirzhner

    Oral History

    Joseph Kirzhner, born January 7, 1916 in Odessa, Ukraine, discusses his four brothers; his father who was killed fighting in war; his mother who also perished; his experience driving tanks in the Russian Army; being captured after fighting in Nikolaiev (Mykolayiv), Ukraine and becoming a prisoner of war in 1942; being sent to a concentration camp; his transfer to three or four concentration camps, partly because he tried to escape several times (twice from Auschwitz); how, after being caught, Kapos used sticks to beat his bare feet, and then made him walk until his feet bled; undergoing surgical experiments in Auschwitz; his memory of constant beatings, wire all around, and German soldiers trying to shoot inmates as the liberating Russian Army approached; his liberation in April 1945; his hospitalization and surgery following liberation; his return to service in the Russian Army; his immigration with his wife to the United States in 1978; and persistent health problems in the years following the war.

    Oral history interview with Ingrid Kisliuk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Kupfer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Walter Lachman

    Oral History

    Walter Lachman (b. Wolfgang Louis Lachman), born May 26, 1928, discusses his family background and comfortable childhood in Berlin, Germany; his grandfather’s service in WWI as a master sergeant; his father’s service in the German army and participation in the Spartacus movement; his early school days during which he would sing the German anthem and National Socialist anthem; changes in Germany in 1935 and 1936; the banning of Jewish children from public schools; attending Jewish school in the backyard of an old synagogue; Jewish doctors and attorneys who were no longer allowed to practice their professions; broader restrictions placed on Jews in Germany; his father’s gentile customers who stopped shopping at the family’s business; his experiences with antisemitism and daily harassment from non-Jewish children; his memory of Kristallnacht, during which his father’s business was vandalized; his small Bar Mitzvah in an orthodox synagogue in 1941; his mother’s death from Leukemia; his father’s death from tuberculosis; his last memories of Berlin; being taken by open truck to a railroad yard; his journey east by freight car which took seven to eight days; the conditions in the freight car; his arrival in Riga, Latvia in several feet of snow; his relocation to the Riga ghetto with his grandmother; daily conditions in the ghetto; the murder of his grandmother who was gassed along with other older people inside a truck; the formation of the Council of Elders; the ghetto’s hospital where abortions were performed; the ghetto’s small synagogue; becoming a messenger for the Council of Elders; being sent to Pleskau (Pskov), Russia to cut down trees; the liquidation of the ghetto and his relocation to Kaiserwald concentration camp; working in a factory in Riga where he repaired uniforms for the German Army; harassment from the factory’s guards; conditions in the factory from which there were several failed escape attempts and subsequent hangings; being punished after he was caught attempting to steal shoes; pro-German and anti-Russian sentiment among Latvians; being forced to work 12 hour shifts while unloading ammunition at Riga harbor without protection from the elements or Russian air raids; being taken to Libau (now called Liepaja), a port on the Baltic Sea, to load and unload ships and dismantle tin roofs to send back to Germany; bombings from the Russians; evacuating Liepaja and being taken back to Germany in a freight boat; his confinement in a crowded jail in Hamburg, Germany for three to four weeks with little food; being forced to collect shell fragments from A.A. guns; his relocation to Bergen-Belsen; contracting typhus; the abandonment of Bergen-Belsen by German guards as British forces approached; his liberation by the British on April 15, 1945; how the British used German guards to bury the dead and then burned down the camp; medical care from the British Red Cross; working for the British Red Cross as an interpreter until late 1945; working for the United Nations in Munich, Germany; sailing to the United States on the S.S. Marlin; living in New York and Massachusetts; working as a stock boy; advancing in sales and becoming the president of several successful department stores before his retirement; and returning to Bergen-Belsen in the 1990s and seeing young German citizens who were interested in what happened there.

    Oral history interview with Aaron Laro

    Oral History

    Aaron Laro, born March 23, 1919 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dziatlava, Belarus), describes the prevalence of antisemitism in Poland; the signs posted in 1937 demanding a boycott of Jewish-owned shops; the beginning of the war; the confiscation of Jewish property, including the Laro’s six-room house; working with others to hid weapons in the woods; the creation of a ghetto in January 1942 in Novogrudek (Navahrudak, Belarus), and Jews being forced to move there and wear the yellow Star of David; two massacres in Navahrudak, including one in April 1942 when 800 people were killed; escaping from the ghetto and joining partisans in the woods; being a machinist and repairing tanks and other vehicles they found; finding Jewish families hiding in the woods; the attitude of the Russian Army towards Jews; making a detonator that derailed a train going to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) and helping to derail three more trains; being incorporated into the Russian Army; fighting in numerous battles; being wounded and still having a bullet near his heart, a piece of shrapnel in his head, and a leg injury; spending a month in a hospital recuperating from a bullet wound; being made a sergeant; deserting from the Russian Army in the autumn of 1944; immigrating to the United States in June 1947 with the woman who had been with him throughout their time in the woods; getting married; and his thoughts on the actions he took during the war.

    Oral history interview with Anthony Lazar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Lazar

    Oral History

    Lillian Lazar (née Guzenfiter), born in Warsaw, Poland on June 16, 1924, discusses her family life in Poland prior to World War II; rebelling against wearing the yellow star and being beaten by Polish children; being sent with her parents to a small ghetto in Prosta; her father’s acquisition of papers listing him as Aryan; working in the ghetto’s factory that made German military uniforms; working 12 hour days for one bowl of soup, which she shared with her mother; her mother’s weak health from starvation and subsequent death from German gunfire; how most of her family died in the ghetto from starvation; memories of her grandfather when the Germans surrounded the ghetto; witnessing a German soldier shoot a mother with a baby in her arms; her attempt to defend herself when the Germans surrounded the factory; being sent with the remaining few hundred factory workers in cattle cars to Majdanek; being beaten at Majdanek; escaping by hiding in a large sewage pipe; boarding a train going to Skarzysko (Skarzysko Kamienna), where she worked making bullets for rifles; performing sabotage by approving several bushels of bad bullets; her liberation by Russian forces in January 1945; Russian soldiers’ harsh treatment of women, including sexual assault; marrying a man she had known in the ghetto, traveling to Italy; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Fanny Lebovits

    Oral History

    Fanny Lebovits (born circa 1923) describes the backgrounds of her father (Herman Judelowitz born in Aizpute, Latvia) and her mother (Sarah Gamper Elterman born circa 1899); her father’s efforts as a liberation fighter for Latvia and his capture by the Germans during WWI; growing up in Liepāja, Latvia; speaking German, Yiddish, and Latvian at home; antisemitism in Latvia; attending a Jewish school; being raised by her parents as a Zionist; attending school in Riga, Latvia when the Russians came in 1940; the deportations of wealthy Latvians to Siberia before the Germans arrived in 1941; working in a hospital; the death of her father in the forest with other Jews; the Latvians who collaborated with the Germans; the creation of the ghetto in 1942; conditions in the ghetto; being send with her family to Riga-Kaiserwald camp in October 1943; and being separated from her younger sister and mother [note that the remainder of the interview concerns the interviewee’s family’s background].

    Oral history interview with Emmi Lehner

    Oral History

    Emmi Lehner, an Austrian-born Catholic born March 7, 1913, discusses her childhood in Vienna before the war; her sister Helene who became mentally ill in her late teenage years and spent most of her time in different hospitals until she was most likely killed by the Nazis after the Anschluss; her family’s experiences during World War I; leaving Austria with her Jewish husband for England in April 1940; and settling in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Isabella Leitner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Levinson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Johanna Liebmann

    Oral History

    Hanna Liebmann (née Hirsh), born November 28, 1924, discusses her childhood in Karlsruhe, Germany; attending public school, where Jews were harassed; being forced in 1936 to transfer to the Jewish school which was shared with mentally-challenged students; the damage to her home and burning of her synagogue on Kristallnacht; her arrest in 1940 along with her mother, three aunts, and grandmother at the home they shared; spending three days on a train and arriving at Oloron Sainte-Marie, France; being sent with her family to the Gurs camp; the tremendous cultural life at Gurs despite knee-deep mud and raging dysentery; working in the camp’s office, where she met her future husband; food from the Swiss Red Cross; being sent in September 1941 by a social worker to the village Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where young people were helped to survive; hiding with villagers when Germans came to Le Chambon; escaping, alone, to Switzerland; living with an aunt’s the family; nearly having a nervous breakdown; traveling to Geneva where she reconnected with her future husband and worked as a maid; having a daughter and remaining in Switzerland until 1948 when the Swiss declined to let them stay; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

    Max Liebmann, born on September 3, 1921 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a comfortable household that was not particularly religious; beginning to play the cello when he was eight years old and having hopes of going to a conservatory in Zurich or Jerusalem; attending public school until 1937 when he left due to the harassment he experienced as a Jew; attending a private school from early 1938 until Kristallnacht; his mother, who was trained as a concert pianist, and his father, who was in the textile business; how his father was forced to give up his business in 1938 and moved to Greece to build a business there; moving with his mother to live with his grandmother; his father’s illegal move to Nice, France, where he remained until the end of the war; the outbreak of the war and being called to perform harvesting work in East Germany; returning to Mannheim in late autumn 1939; volunteering for emigration offices in Berlin and working there until his deportation on October 22, 1940 to Gurs internment camp; being separated from his mother at the camp; remaining in Gurs for 20 months, working in the office of the camp block; being given a pass that allowed him to move about the camp more easily because he played the cello; seeing his mother and his new girlfriend daily; the closing of his block and moving into the camp hospital, where he ran the office; being removed from the camp at the end of June 1942 by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants to a farm outside of Lyon run by the Boy Scouts of France; saying goodbye to his mother before he left; being dispersed from the farm when they learned that a raid was planned; being hidden on another farm for about three and a half weeks with the help of Mireille Philip; being given false papers and trekking with others over the mountains into Switzerland; being arrested by the Swiss patrol and told that they would be escorted back to France; escaping capture with another man and returning to Switzerland; being interned in Switzerland; and remaining in Switzerland for five and a half years until he was able to immigrate to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lipton

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

    Arlette de Long, born in 1937 in Brocourt in Picardy, France, describes living under the German occupation; her mother’s Russian immigrant status; receiving a baptismal certificate from a priest; being raised as Christian but also being vaguely aware of her true Jewish identity; how the house was taken and the family moved in with a widow until the end of the war; her memories of Americans arriving with two tanks and Germans immediately being made prisoners; moving to Paris, France around age 11; becoming a practicing Jew; her memories of driving to Brittany, France before the German invasion and hiding from bombings with her grandmother; living for a year in London, England and working as an interpreter after the war; moving to the United States; her daughter; experiencing survivor guilt and nightmares; her Jewish identity and lack of faith in God; and her thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Alexandra Lorenz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lubell

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Lubell, born December 9, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Budapest, where she was not aware of antisemitism; Hitler’s rise to power; the large Jewish community in Budapest; being forced to wear the Star of David; her deportation to Poland in 1941; her father’s background as a military officer for which he earned the Iron Cross; the murder of 40,000 Jews in Kamieniec Padolski; living in the ghetto of Kolomjya, Poland; escaping from the ghetto and returning to Budapest; hiding in the woods from the Germans; using Catholic documents to pass through the area safely; her capture and transfer to the camp at Sarvar; being saved by Raoul Wallenberg who placed her under Swiss protection; liberation by the Russians; continued attacks by Germans after liberation; traveling to Israel to visit her brother; and immigrating to the United States on the RMS Mauretania.

    Oral history interview with Henry Lubell

    Oral History

    Henry Lubell, born in 1911 in Dombrova, Gornicza (Dabrowa Gornicza), Poland, describes his family of eight; his family’s move in 1916 to Rawicz and later to Katowice; his father, who worked as a hazan (cantor) and shochet (mohel or kosher butcher); how his family kept kosher, but was not religious; not experiencing antisemitism before World War II; how on the first day of the war, the family sent the mother and two sisters to Kielce, farther from the German border; walking with his father eastward with other refugees until a Jewish peasant gave them a ride in his horse-drawn buggy; living with his wife and his parents in a ghetto (unclear which one) with about 25,000 inhabitants; the clearing of the ghetto of all but a few hundred people after inhabitants were marched to a train station for deportation; seeing a Jewish woman hand her baby to a Polish woman as they left the ghetto; his memories of 70 to 100 people being shoved and beaten into cattle cars; how he loosened a wooden bar from the window, and he and several others jumped from the train; hiding with about 20 men and women in the woods with partisans; being sent by the partisans on sabotage missions, including putting bombs under train tracks; “liberating himself”; and going to Budapest, Hungary to look for his wife, whom he found and rejoined.

    Oral history interview with Trude Ludwig

    Oral History

    Trude Ludwig (nee Gertrud Grunbaum), born on March 26, 1917 in Vienna, Austria, describes her Catholic mother and Jewish father; being baptized and reared as a Protestant; the high level of antisemitism in Vienna even before the rise of Hitler; attending a children’s conservator in Vienna along with her younger brother Otto; dancing and acting in the theater by the age of seven; her stage name which was Trude Hermann; how her career took her to Italy in September 1937 and her mother’s warnings immediately after the Anschluss to remain in Italy; her mother, who managed to get to Prague, then to Paris, and eventually to the United States; her father, who was in Switzerland on business, and later went to Paris; helping her brother get a transit visa by writing him a letter saying she was very sick and needed him to visit her; her brother, who eventually to Paris, where he studied under pianist Claudio Arrau; Otto receiving help from the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who got Otto a student visa for the U.S. in 1939; Otto’s studies in New York City with Arthur Schnabel, until he joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and served in Germany; being visited by her brother in post-war 1945, and his death a month later in an accident; her life during the war; the expiration of her Austrian passport and managing to get a German passport without the “J” mark that would have officially identified her as Jewish (she credits a “nice guy” officer in Germany’s consulate in Rome for granting a non-Jewish passport despite her Jewish last name); how she did not see antisemitism in Italy, and did not think she was in danger; going into hiding in 1944, just ten days before American troops arrived on June 4, 1944; returning to theater work, and then becoming an interpreter for the Americans until 1948; immigrating to Argentina with her non-Jewish German husband, who had been a POW of the Americans, and their child; and receiving a visa in 1951 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Magier

    Oral History

    Nathan Magier, born in Bedzin, Poland on May 4, 1925, describes living with his mother, father, and two brothers when the Germans invaded; the several days of bombings; his brother being sent to a camp and never seeing him again; being put to work on various labor projects before being sent to the nearby Komyunki ghetto; being separated from his father in the ghetto and never seeing him again; hiding during the deportations in a wall with his mother; being sent in 1943 first to Birkenau and then to Auschwitz; working as a tailor in Birkenau; being put to work outside the camp while he was imprisoned in Auschwitz; escaping from Auschwitz and joining the underground resistance; being wounded; joining the Russian Army, but deserting and being arrested for his desertion; getting married in Italy, and going to Montreal, Canada in 1951; going to the United States in 1955; and living in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helena Manaster

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Judith Mandel

    Oral History

    Judith Kalman Mandel describes growing up in Hatvan, Hungary, where her family identified as Hungarians who happened to be Jewish; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944; Jews having to wear the Jewish star; being spit on by other children; being moved with other Jews into a ghetto; being forced to march with 50 other Jews in the middle of a gutter, kissing the ground filled with horse-dung, while civilians in the town watched and cheered; being beaten by Hungarian police; destroying their valuables before they could be confiscated; her mother’s refusal to be separated from her child; being sent to Auschwitz and arriving on June 15, 1944; being separated from her mother; conditions in the barrack; never stealing from fellow inmates; being sent after three weeks to Płaszów concentration camp in Krakow, Poland, where she worked moving large gravestones; the Gestapo constantly beating and torturing people; the use of dogs to punish people; seeing children burned alive; surviving typhoid fever and being helped by a friend who sneaked her out of the hospital; surviving blood poisoning and pleurisy; being beaten so many times that she often thought about killing herself; one of her friends who grabbed the fence and electrocuted herself; reciting poetry and singing for food; being sent back to Auschwitz on a three day journey with no water; being under 50 pounds when American troops liberated her train on May 1, 1945 at Seeshaupt, Germany; being taken to Munich, then to Dachau; being found by a friend, Dr. Gatheish Gabol, and taken to Partenkirchen, Germany to a hospital for a week; being in an UNRA camp until September 1945; finding out that her mother, grandmother, and cousins perished; returning to Hungary and finding her father, who had been liberated in January; getting married and immigrating to the United States; and her belief that her survival was due to luck.

    Oral history interview with Lily Margules

    Oral History

    Lily Margules discusses her family’s experiences during the Holocaust; the three layers of Jewish society in her village of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); learning Yiddish in the ghetto; her mother's death from cancer in 1939; moving from Vilna to Soły (Salos), Lithuania; the 1943 liquidation of the ghetto in Soły; being sent with her sister to the labor camp Dünawerke; her father’s deportation to the Kaiserwald concentration camp; surviving the labor camp with her sister and staying at a displaced persons camp in Italy after the war; how her uncle secured papers for Lily and her sister that stated they were Protestants; immigrating to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1948; marrying and raising two sons; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Manon Marliac

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Margit Meissner, born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1922, discusses her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); her mother’s wish to have her children baptized; her parents’ differing views about being Jewish and the difficulties it caused the family; how, before World War II began, her mother often invited impoverished refugees from Germany and Poland or Russia to their house for lunch; her father’s job as a banker; living in a large house with many servants and a governesses; her father’s death of natural causes before World War II; being sent in 1938 to the outskirts of Paris, France to live with a French family; being baptized in France as a Lutheran, but always identifying as a Jew; attending dress design school; how her mother eventually joined her in France; her mother’s arrest and deportation to Gurs; living in Paris when the Germans advanced; how, as an Austrian citizen, she was declared an enemy alien and was forbidden to leave Paris; defying this order and riding a bicycle to Étampes, north of Lyon; spending the night with fellow refugees at a school, which was bombed two hours after she left; obtaining a train ticket to Brittany to join friends; how her train was diverted to Bordeaux, near Gurs, and she was reunited with her mother; getting arrested as she walked with her mother over a mountain to get to Spain; how friends in Barcelona helped get them out of jail and into Portugal; becoming a dressmaker to refugees in Portugal; immigrating to the United States with her mother in April 1941; how she, her mother, and all three brothers survived the war; working two jobs in the U.S., dressmaking and assisting the U.S. Office of War Information; and being part of the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Mendel

    Oral History

    Ellen Mendel, born in Essen, Germany in 1935, discusses her comfortable childhood with her parents, Ernst and Jella Hocher Mendel; how her grandfather, great-uncle, and father were all physicians; her father’s preparations for her family’s immigration to the United States; living in Brussels, Belgium from 1939 to 1940 while they waited for visas for the United States; how the boat on which they emigrated, the Van Dank, was torpedoed and sunk on its return trip; how her maternal grandparents, Eva and Ferdinand Holchherr, were killed at Sobibor; how other family members were killed at Auschwitz and Theresianstadt; her aunt Ella Holchherr, who survived the Holocaust; her aunt and uncle, Erica and Franz Josef, who fled Holland by disguising themselves as French peasants; and her occupation as a teacher and then a guidance counselor in the New York City schools for 32 years.

    Oral history interview with Arthur Menke

    Oral History

    Arthur Menke, born on February 23, 1927 in Hamburg, Germany, describes how Jews were starting to suffer from persecution around 1935, and had severe restrictions after 1938; being forced with his family, like other Jews, to move from their nice neighborhood; being forced to wear the Jewish Star of David; being prohibited from sitting on benches, going to movies, or shopping in regular stores; events during Kristallnacht and how his father’s small factory (which made rubber signs) was not destroyed because the Germans did not realize he was Jewish; the arrest of his father, who was a World War I veteran, and his imprisonment in a concentration camp near Berlin for six weeks; the return of his father who was hardly recognizable after his time in the camp; the Nazi takeover of the family’s factory and bank account; working as a laborer, packing shoes in a factory; his mother, who wanted the family to leave Germany and how they waited too late in the 1930s to leave; being deported in 1940 with about 1,000 other Jews to Minsk, Belarus; his memories of the journey; being forced to walk in the snow to a school in the Minsk ghetto; seeing dead bodies inside the building; the murders of his mother, father, and sister; and daily life in the ghetto. [There is a break in the audio for around 15 seconds at 31:30]

    Oral history interview with Semyon Menyuk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abe Morgenstern

    Oral History

    Abraham Morgenstern, born in 1923, discusses his Russian Jewish parents and family life in Lublin, Poland; attending Polish public school and a Jewish school; graduating from business school at 16 years old, just before war broke out in 1939; the Russian invasion of Poland and feeling that they were protected under the occupation; the German invasion of Poland; how German forces shot 99 percent of Lublin’s best educated, professional Jews; how two ghettos were established in April 1942 during which he and his family moved into one of them; the lack of food in the ghetto; the death of his father and sister during the first of four actions; how no Jews from his town were taken to concentration camps, but instead, shot in the woods and buried in mass graves; reporting to the Judenrat for work assignments but eventually just staying home; digging a hole with eight other ghetto residents and hiding there until Russian troops liberated the area; immigrating to Italy with his mother after the war; planning to go to Palestine where relatives lived, but ultimately immigrating to the United States; and how only about 200 of Lublin’s estimated 10,000 Jews survived the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Betty Migdol

    Oral History

    Betty Migdol, born December 19, 1927, describes her childhood in Ruscova, Romania; her large family’s Hasidic orthodox life; her memories of the Hungarian invasion; her brother’s conscription into forced labor; how her life changed with the 1943 German invasion; her sister’s experiences passing as non-Jewish in Budapest; her deportation to a nearby town where she was put in a ghetto; Jewish relations with Ukrainian neighbors; wearing the Star of David badge; her deportation and life in Auschwitz; her separation from her family; her memories of fasting in Auschwitz during Yom Kippur; her deportation to the Weisswasser labor camp in Czechoslovakia in October 1944; conditions in the work camp run by the Wermacht; liberation by Russian forces on May 9, 1944; her experiences being smuggled into the American zone in Germany; life in displaced persons camp; and her return to Ruscova in 1984.

    Oral history interview with Israel Milkow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Munzer

    Oral History

    Emanuel Munzer, born February 26, 1920 in Berlin, Germany; discusses living in a neighborhood of mixed population in the district of Schöneberg; his memories of Hitler’s rise to power; living under an assumed name in a sublet in Berlin; being placed with his grandmother in 1934 when his parents fled to France; living in a Jewish orphanage from 1934 until early 1937; never having to wear the yellow Star of David badge; joining his father and stepmother in France in 1937; attending a training institute for mechanics in Paris; working for Hispano-Suiza in Paris in 1938; being classified as an enemy alien in 1939 and taken to harvest sugar beets in the Touraine; conditions of work; joining the French Foreign Legion in 1940; the disbanding of the Legion by the Germans in 1941; forced work on a German railroad project; his father’s payment to free him from labor; living in Nice where there was a large Jewish population; being sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars on Convey 69 from Drancy in March 1944; the death of his parents in the gas chambers in Auschwitz; working for Siemans Works as a mechanic and living on site; his transfer to the Siemans Arbeitslager in Berlin, the location of the main factory; his relocation to Buchenwald after Russians forces were close to Auschwitz; Allied bombing raids; his relocation to Oranienburg when the labor camp was destroyed by bombing; being treated well by Russians who discovered him and other forced laborers in the forest when they were marched from the camp; recovering in a hospital in the British zone; returning to France; and immigrating to the United States in 1947 after his uncle furnished an affidavit.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Murawski

    Oral History

    Sylvia Murawski, born July 10, 1928, describes growing up in Warsaw, Poland with her well-known and well-to-do, assimilated parents; the bombardment of Warsaw in September 1939; the beginning of deportations to the ghetto; moving with her family into the ghetto; the term “szmugiel” (smuggling between the Aryan population of Warsaw and the Jews in the ghetto); leaving the ghetto on August 16, 1942; living in hiding with her parents for two years in Milanowek with the Sokolowski family; the emotional effect of living in hiding for so long; and how she eventual finished school, completed a law degree, and got married.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pola Nirenska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Offen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miki Pear

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Peker

    Oral History

    Eva Peker, born March 18, 1921, discusses her childhood and family life in prewar Vertuzhaniye, Saroka district, Romania (now Vertiujeni, Moldova); her large town in which there were about 500 families, including Jews and Russians; moving with her family in 1936 to Visoka, where there were fewer Jews; learning to become a seamstress; marrying in 1940; the presence of Russians before the war began; witnessing some of the richer townspeople being sent to Siberia; her husband being taken to the front in 1941 when she was pregnant; Romanians coming to her village and taking her family to the Village Council from which they never returned home; walking three days with her family of eight with no food or water to a ghetto in Soroka; leaving there with about 1,000 others who were marched from village to village; how those who could not walk were shot; reaching the forest Kosauts and staying there for six weeks; the living conditions in the tents in the forest; the death of her newborn; being marched to a work camp in Torkanivka, Ukraine, where they worked on a beet farm; being taken out of the camp by friends of her parents; liberation by the Russians in 1945; going back to Soroka after liberation; taking courses in bookkeeping and being employed in government work; never finding out what happened to her husband; working for 30 years in a textile factory in Chernovitz; and immigrating to the United States in 1980.

    Oral history interview with Catherine Polak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Polak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janina Prot

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Raymes

    Oral History

    Fred Raymes, born February 6, 1929 in Hoffenheim, Germany, describes experiencing serious antisemitism in school and in the neighborhood; changes after war broke out; his forced exodus from Germany and eventual arrival in Vichy France, in Gurs; being taken by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, Children’s Aid Society (OSE) in December 1941 to an orphanage in Aspet, France, run by Swedish Quakers; being sent during the winter of 1943, first to a school in Toulouse and then to a children’s home in Montsec, France; and going to the United States in December 1946.

    Oral history interview with Moses Rechnitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zofia Reginiewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

    Liane Reif-Lehrer, born in 1934, describes living in Vienna, Austria after her Polish father’s medical training was completed; her father’s home-based dentistry practice and their well-to-do life in a 14-room apartment; her mother, Klara Gottfried, who was born in Poland; political changes that began in 1933, resulting in her father having to close his practice in 1938; her father’s suicide; her memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to France with her mother and brother, and living with other refugees in Limoges, including two girls who were her closest friends: Ruth Isner Kissinger and Bella Isner Uhlfelder; her mother’s deteriorating personality and eventual diagnosis with Alzheimer’s; and the voyage to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Reiser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berta Rivkina

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Robertson

    Oral History

    Henry Roberston (né Heinz Rosenberg), born September 15, 1921, in Gottingen, Germany, describes his prewar life in Germany; the devastation that occurred during Kristallnacht; his brother’s transport to Sachsenhausen; his family’s deportation in November 1941 to the Minsk ghetto; the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto and his last time seeing his wife and parents; his transfer to a series of camps, including Treblinka, Płaszów, Wielicza, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, and Bremen from which he was liberated on April 15, 1945; numerous postwar ailments from which he suffered; his transport to Sweden to recuperate; and his immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Coenraad Rood

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Izy Rosenblat

    Oral History

    Izy Rosenblat, born January 8, 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his family life before the Holocaust; his two brothers Eli and Herschel; his family’s move to Radom; at nine years old becoming a tailor apprentice to his future father-in-law, Yanka Fishman; courting his wife Hanna Taube, born in Radom in 1917, for 13 years; being forced to pay for protection against antisemitism in school; opening his own shop and becoming registered as a master tailor; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Mengele did the selection; being transferred to another camp where he worked as a tailor; his memories of German disorganization; his liberation by the French on April 5, 1945; living for a short period on a farm; being taken to Dusseldorf and then to Stuttgart to a displaced persons camp; and arriving in the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Pal Rozsa

    Oral History

    Pal Rozsa, January 20, 1925, discusses his memories of early pre-war life in Budapest, Hungary; his family life; his father who was a freemason and language teacher; how his family celebrated high holidays and Sabbath despite being non-religious; his oldest sister’s activities in the Communist movement, which led to her arrest; his sister’s contraction death from TB; his inability to attend university in 1943 because of laws restricting enrollment; his memories of the German invasion on March 19, 1944; his memories of forced labor beginning in June 1944 in Northern Transylvania; his work on a railroad with other Jews, Romanians, and Serbs in the camp; liberation by Romanian and Russian forces on October 19, 1944; his return to Budapest; the Arrow Cross takeover; the death of family members during and after the Holocaust; and his time in university after the war.

    Oral history interview with Eva Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marsha Rozenblit

    Oral History

    Marsha Rozenblit discusses her father Mendel Rozenblit (born November 3, 1907 in Lukow, Poland): his life in prewar Poland; his father Avraham Rozenblit, mother Masha Markusfeld Rozenblit, and five brothers and one sister; his family’s religious observances; his two children with his first two wives; his time in the Warsaw ghetto from which he escaped during the uprising in April 1943; his arrest and internment in Auschwitz; his experience on a death march from Auschwitz to Dachau from which he was liberated in April 1945 by American forces; his work for the UN Relief and Restitution Agency; his immigration to the United States in December 1947; his marriage and birth of his daughter Marsha Rozenblit; his trauma from losing his first two children and the atrocities he experienced during the Holocaust; and his emotional struggles post-war.

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozsa

    Oral History

    Eva Rozsa (née Muhlrad), born October 13, 1924 in Ujpest, then a suburb of Budapest, Hungary, describes her pleasant family life until anti-Jewish laws and restrictions were in place in 1939; the German occupation of Hungary; drastic changes in living conditions and being deported on the last transport to Auschwitz; the revolt of the Sonderkommando, the crematoria workmen; her mother being sent to Bergen-Belsen then to work in a light bulb factory; being assigned to work in potato fields where she became very ill; remaining at the camp when the forced march began and subsequently being liberated by the Russians on October 27; being ill with tuberculosis and being taken to Cracow, Poland, where she spent ten months recovering; enormous difficulties in getting home to Hungary because she had neither money nor official papers; and finishing university in Hungary in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Sophie Salerno

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Charlene Perlmutter Schiff

    Oral History

    Charlene Schiff (née Sulamit Perlmutter), born December 16, 1929 in Horochow, Poland (now Horokhiv, Ukraine), describes a secure and happy prewar life in a large Jewish community governed by the kehillah (Kehilla); her family members who were town leaders; the Russian occupation of Eastern Poland; the German invasion in June 1941; the ghettoization of her town and the desperate living conditions therein; her mother’s arrangement for her and her sister to escape the ghetto and hide in farm houses across the river; the disappearance of her mother; the rejection of an agreement by the farmer, leaving her abandoned and alone; her attempts to find her mother while hiding in the woods; her eventual discovery by Russian troops; her hospitalization; her time in various displaced persons camps in Germany; her education at the University of Heidelberg; her immigration to the United States in 1948; living with her aunt in Columbus, OH; and her life post-war.

    Oral history interview with Michael Scislowski

    Oral History

    Michael M. Scislowski, born September 30, 1922, in Siedlce, Poland, describes his life in prewar Poland; his school years in Siedlce and in Wilaka (now in Lithuania) until September 1, 1939 when the war began; his attempts to escape the Soviets; learning English; his membership in the ZWZ (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej), the underground group that preceded the AK (Armia Krajowa); his arrest on March 19, 1943; his time in the Poliak prison; his transport by cattle car to Auschwitz; his forced march to Dachau after time in Flossenbürg; his liberation on April 24, 1945 by Patton’s Third Army on the third day of the march; witnessing medical experiments that were conducted in Block 10 of Auschwitz; working for the US Army from 1945 to 1950 serving the Labor Service Company; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Ida Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rubin Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lewis Shabasson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Shapiro

    Oral History

    Irene Shapiro (née Hass), born in 1925 in Berezhany, Ukraine, describes her life in Gludjan until 1938 when her family moved to Bialystok; Russian propaganda; her strong Zionist beliefs; the Russian occupation of Bialystok, which became part of Soviet Byelorussia; the ghettoization of Bialystok during the second German occupation; her involvement with the Jewish underground; her time in Treblinka, Lublin, Majdanek (where her father was killed), Blitzen, and in May 1944, Auschwitz Birkenau; how she survived in the camps; her liberation; her immigration to the United States in 1946; and her work with American and British forces after the war.

    Oral history interview with Flora Mendelowitz Singer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dr. Laszlo Sokoly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Somogyi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harold Spear

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vera Sprecher and Robert Sprecher

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Morris Steiman

    Oral History

    Morris Steiman, born August 5, 1918 in Bodzanow, Poland, describes being the youngest of 14 children in an Orthodox family; fighting with Polish boys on his way to school; antisemitism in Poland; speaking Yiddish and Polish at home; attending Yeshiva in Tutusk for two years; being in Tutusk during the German invasion; being taken out of school to dig ditches; not being allowed in the street; being forced to wear a yellow Star of David badge in the fall of 1939; working in a tailor shop for a German until being relocated to a ghetto with approximately 1,200 people; receiving help from some Poles while in the ghetto; deportations but no killing during the first year in the ghetto; being taken to Dzaldowo, and the brutality of a camp there (Soldau concentration camp); and then to a ghetto in Chestochowa; reuniting with his family in Yaldodov, where there was another ghetto; getting married in 1941; being in the ghetto synagogue when the ghetto was liquidated on Yom Kippur of 1941; his transfer to a smaller ghetto; an unsuccessful escape attempt; the ghetto’s liquidation and being taken to work in an ammunition factory in 1943 with his wife; being taken to waiting trains just before liberation; arriving in the United States on March 3, 1947 with his wife; his post-war life including the birth of his daughter and grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Matylda Szymaniak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Florence Tabrys

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Tabrys

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Walter Taranowicz

    Oral History

    Walter Taranowicz, born July 22, 1918 in New York City discusses his parents who were Polish-born Catholics; his father’s American citizenship; how during the Great Depression his father took the family to a ranch they owned in Lublin, Poland; his father’s return to the United States for work and subsequent inability to return to Poland; attending Polish schools in the 1930s; planning to get an European education then returning to the US to become an engineer; the outbreak of war in Poland; the arrival of the Russians and loss of the family farm; the family’s attempt to reach the American Consulate in Warsaw, Poland; staying on the German side of the border; his mother and sister’s deportation to Siberia in 1941; his arrest on January 13, 1940 because the Nazis thought he was an American spy; his brutal treatment by the Nazis; being taken with 5,000 Polish men on trucks to Auschwitz; building Birkenau; working as a cabinet maker, making soldier beds, rifle racks, tables, and benches for German army supplies; volunteering in 1942 to transfer with 4,000 others to Mauthausen, where he worked as a cabinet maker with the camp architect; his liberation on May 5th, 1945 by American forces; being taken to Regensburg, Germany to recover; becoming an interpreter in Italy and being stationed in Verona then Milan for seven months; his transfer to the US in the fall of 1945 on the Marine Falcon; the liberation of his mother and sister from a work camp in Siberia; working as a cabinet maker in New York; marrying his wife Sabina; and details about her life.

    Oral history interview with George Topas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Trompettor

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edward Unkiewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Urbach

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Moishe Weiner

    Oral History

    Moise Weiner, born in May 24, 1927 in Vakhnivka, Ukraine, discusses his prewar life in Vakhnivka; attending Ukrainian school instead of the Jewish school; his memories of people’s reaction when Molotov announced war with Germany; escaping on a train with his sister; managing to escape when the Germans attacked the train; making their way to Orsk in the Urals; working different jobs until he was called into the army in 1945; the Russian Civil War and pogroms of that time; how his brothers and sister became Communists during the war; becoming a writer after the war; translating novels by Jewish authors from Yiddish into Russian; and living as a Refusenik for ten years.

    Oral history interview with Paul Wos

    Oral History

    Paul Wos, born December 22, 1920 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his life in prewar Starowka; his Catholic family; his membership in the Polish Army; his experience helping Jewish families hide during the German occupation; his membership in the resistance movement; the Warsaw ghetto uprising; his family’s deportation as political prisoners; the family’s relocation to several concentration camps until they were finally taken to Flossenbürg; conditions at Flossenbürg; his feelings that he owes his survival to his friend Jan Shienitski and to the power of prayer; and his immigration to the United States in 1961 with his wife and two children.

    Oral history interview with David Yegher

    Oral History

    David Yegher (né Jegher), born in December 22, 1920 in Rona de Jos, Romania, describes his life in Romania before World War II; early institutionalized antisemitism throughout Europe; his displacement in a ghetto in Slotyna, Czechoslovakia (now Solotvyno, Ukraine); transporting goods from nearby towns to Jewish families in the ghetto; his experiences in Auschwitz and Gleiwitz and subsequent hardships in the labor camps; being liberated by the British Army; his post-war hospitalization; immigrating to the United States; his encounter with the American Nazi Party; and the importance of trying to overcome contemporary antisemitism.

    Oral history interview with Eva Young

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frances Zatz

    Oral History

    Frances Zatz, born in May 4, 1932 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her early childhood in Poland before World War II; the siege of Warsaw by German troops; the outbreak of the war; the building of the Warsaw ghetto and subsequent hardships there; her mother smuggling ammunitions into the ghetto; plans for the Jewish uprising; being smuggled out of the ghetto and living with a Christian family; her reunion with her mother and sister after the Warsaw uprising; working in the factories making uniforms for German soldiers; her time in a German detention camp; being liberated by the Russians; moving to Berlin, Germany after the war; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Trude Ludwig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Rein Cox

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Zoberman Kupfer

    Oral History

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