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Oral history interview with Sylvia Murawski

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0125.96 | RG Number: RG-50.233.0096

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    Oral history interview with Sylvia Murawski
    Transcript
    OK, the date is Friday, June the 5th, 1992 and we're
    talking with Mrs. Sylvia Murawski in Annandale,
    Virginia.
    Mrs. Murawski, could you please--
    Oh, call me Sylvia.
    Sylvia, could you please tell me your name,
    your name that you were given in Poland
    and that you used during the war, your date of birth,
    your place of birth, and anything you possibly
    can about your childhood and your family growing up.
    OK.
    I was born July 10th of 1928.
    My name is Sylvia.
    Was-- my name was Sylwia.
    Sylwia Anna Winawer.
    But I was never, ever called by this name.
    I was Dzidzia for a--
    called Dzidzia at home.
    How do you spell that?
    Dzidzia.
    Let me write it down.
    OK.
    It was a nickname.
    Dzidzia.
    Something like it's-- something like this.
    OK.
    Dzidzia.
    OK.
    It was quite popular a nickname in Poland.
    And I was known as Dzidzia through my schooldays
    till the--
    well, before the war.
    For a long time, I was an only child
    and I loved the status of being only child,
    and loved by everyone, and at center of attention, of course.
    I had the small puppy that I loved
    but she passed away as a puppy.
    But later on, I had a sister.
    And my sister, in my life, played a special role
    because she was nine years younger than me.
    And I treated her something between my toy
    and between my child.
    And it was very, very, very nice feeling.
    And my mother was wise enough to keep
    me believing that I'm the one who
    is responsible for my sister.
    So my friends at school were very jealous.
    Nobody had such a small sister or brother around.
    Well, I could tell you about my childhood.
    It was very happy childhood.
    Did you live in a suburb of Warsaw or in the city?
    No, I lived in the center of Warsaw.
    My father was a lawyer.
    And we lived in a big apartment.
    You know, those old days, everybody had maids.
    Everybody-- well, middle class people had maids.
    And well, it's such a distant, different life.
    You came from a Jewish family?
    Well, it's very, very hard to say about
    that my family was a Jewish family.
    We were Jewish because my parents were converts.
    So it wasn't strictly Jewish family.
    I was raised more in Christian traditions
    than Jewish tradition.
    So your family had-- your parents
    had both converted to Catholicism?
    My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant.
    And on my father's family was family of assimilaters.
    Is the right word?
    Well, they were assimilated?
    Assimilated.
    But they were Jew-- the father's parents were Jewish?
    Well, it takes some more explanation.
    OK.
    By face, they were Jewish, my father's family.
    My father's family was quite known.
    And I would even say famous family in Poland.
    Your name is Wina?
    Winawer.
    My father's cousin was a very well-known writer, playwright.
    My father's grandfather was--
    oh, my goodness.
    Can you take that?
    Oh, sure.
    That's interesting.
    Famous chess player.
    And he won.
    He was a best in Europe.
    He won a tournament as a--
    well, how do you say it?
    He was a--
    Champion?
    --champion.
    Maybe once, maybe.
    But he was a European champion.
    But he felt Polish.
    Because in those old years, it was a very strong movement
    of assimilation.
    And Jewish intelligentsia-- you know the word?
    Was very Polonized.
    Right.
    And so on my parents, my father's side,
    it was very natural that he felt more Polish than Jewish.
    And his conversion didn't bother anybody, I think.
    But on my mother's side, it was a different story.
    Because her family was more Jewish, more traditional
    and more Jewish.
    So there were some misunderstanding
    between my mother and her mother.
    So did you ever see them?
    Well, yes.
    My grandmother lived in Lodz.
    It's a big city in Poland--
    Oh, sure, yes, I know Lodz.
    --with big Jewish and German population.
    And she used to come over for to visit us twice a year, stayed
    for a few weeks.
    And there were always some misunderstanding
    about synagogue, about Christmas, about something.
    I felt it.
    It wasn't very open, but I felt there was
    some tension about religion.
    Did you have any religious instruction?
    Any formal instruction?
    No because my parents weren't very religious people.
    It's really hard to understand in America
    why people change their faith only
    to show that sort of belonging to Polish society or something.
    I think it was, in Europe and in Poland especially,
    it was a form of social mobility.
    Maybe.
    Definitely, definitely.
    Well, for my father it was sort of patriotism.
    Maybe.
    He was very young, it was naive.
    It wasn't very wise, what he did.
    But on mother's side, it was because she--
    my father wasn't Jew.
    I don't know how the situation was between Jewish and not
    Jewish marriage.
    But I think that my mother wanted some change, wanted
    to conform to my father's standards
    or something like this.
    But it's interesting, then, that number one, that she chose
    Protestantism, and number two, that he wasn't a Polish Pole,
    he was formerly of a Jewish-- you know, they still had this.
    Difference of religion, yes.
    Yeah, I mean they still came from that background.
    And that's interesting.
    The times were of utmost political atmosphere.
    And social atmosphere changed so quickly in Poland.
    So some things that in 1921 or 1920 were appropriate
    might be less appropriate in 1927
    when my mother got married.
    I never asked my parents.
    I just accepted the situation that I was put.
    My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant.
    And children were Protestant, too.
    We had two Jewish girls in our class.
    And they were taught religion by a rabbi.
    And I was taught religion by pastor.
    And Jewish girls didn't feel--
    it felt ill at ease being Jewish.
    It was such an atmosphere in Poland.
    I don't know why it was like this, but it was like this.
    But we used to go to Protestant school.
    And you didn't feel different?
    When I spoke with Jana in Boston,
    she said even though she was raised
    with these Catholic parents, she said
    she knew they were different.
    She knew something about her family
    was different than all the other Catholic people.
    You know.
    Did you have a sense of that?
    Well, was something was different.
    But it wasn't different because of religion.
    It was different because of--
    I don't know because of what.
    It was different because I think that my parents were
    more independent people than most people around.
    More free-thinking, free-thinkers.
    Well, better-educated or something like this.
    More open mind.
    What was your mother's education?
    My mother's formal education wasn't very high.
    She was orphaned.
    Well, not complete orphaned.
    Her father died when she was 13.
    My grandmother married at age of 16 with no education at all.
    So when she widowed, she widowed at age of 33
    with three teenagers.
    Well, two teenagers and one small girl.
    Two teenagers and one small girl.
    And it was the end of the war, end of the First World War,
    in 1917.
    And they went through a real terrible poverty.
    And my mother was extremely brave, and industrious,
    and ambitious, and beautiful.
    You can't see now, but she was.
    And she didn't accept.
    She was more like American women, not Polish.
    She didn't accept the whole situation
    of being poor, and poorly educated,
    and living in lower middle class family.
    So she, as an external, she tried to.
    She got a high school diploma.
    But she didn't finish high school.
    But she made her diploma, went through exams as an external?
    Is this the right word?
    No, you don't say this.
    External student, kind of?
    Something like.
    Yeah.
    You can say.
    And she took any chance she had in life
    to be among interesting people, to learn things,
    and to see what.
    She spent few years in France.
    How did she do that?
    Oh, she was a student, she gave lessons, she tutored.
    She worked as a tutor.
    Sometimes, she was a tutor living with a family.
    She was very popular with people, very, very easy
    to make friends.
    And when she married my father, she
    had some few years of college but she didn't finish college.
    But she had many talents, many interests.
    She was interested in art.
    She got a real knowledge in art, especially in China,
    in oriental rugs.
    And during the war when we were alone
    and my father went to the army, she
    started buying and selling things.
    And this is how we survived the war.
    Because she was able to earn that money.
    And after the war, when it was forbidden and very, very
    dangerous, she did the same.
    So my parents were very well-to-do people.
    So I never went through--
    never, it's not the right word.
    But most of the war, most of the time, the war time,
    we were well-to-do in sense that we weren't hungry.
    We, and the friend of my parents,
    and relatives of my parents had always at least one meal
    fixed at my parents' table.
    I see.
    Can we back up a little bit?
    Yes, sure because if you start the story of your life,
    it gets extremely poorly organized.
    Unorganized.
    That's fine because we'll just jump a little, no problem.
    So what about your schooling?
    So where did you go to school?
    Did you go to private school?
    I went-- it was a private school.
    The name of the school was very long name.
    It was a private school.
    Supported-- not supported by.
    It was run by or founded by.
    Founded, run, and something more.
    You want to look it up?
    No, I can't because I don't remember even in Polish
    this is the right word.
    And under the help, under the supervision and help
    of a Lutheran church.
    And there were two schools.
    One, the Szkola Reja, that school was old,
    very, very well known in Poland, in Warsaw for boys.
    And after the First World War, there
    was a parallel school for girls opened by the same Lutheran
    church.
    Imienia Wazowny.
    It was a Waszowna, it was a sister of Polish king
    from 16th century.
    They were Protestants and the patron of the school
    was that Protestant princess of the past.
    I see.
    And the school, Rej High School, was
    very well-established and very highly accepted school.
    Was more for girls.
    But it was OK.
    It was OK.
    Now would that be--
    The atmosphere was very liberal.
    Everybody was well-bred, tactful.
    And I didn't feel--
    I felt at home there.
    I didn't feel any that I didn't belong.
    I belonged.
    I belonged perfectly well.
    The education there, then, is equivalent or better
    than a Gymnasium?
    Or is it at the level of a Gymnasium education?
    I didn't.
    I didn't get.
    I didn't go that far because when the--
    When the war broke out.
    Yes, I finished, I was in elementary school.
    It was fifth grade.
    I finished fifth grade.
    And I started sixth grade.
    And then the trouble started.
    Now, did you take ballet lessons, or any music lessons,
    or anything like that?
    Music lessons and not ballet because I had no talent.
    Me either.
    Very poor ear for music, no talents for dance.
    Nothing for drawing.
    I had only very bad marks on all of those subjects.
    Did you enjoy to read?
    Read, yes.
    I was good in reading, in history, in writing.
    OK, well.
    I had a extremely nice, sweet teacher of religion.
    She was a saint.
    She never, ever-- sometimes Christianity
    is in conflict with Judaism.
    But it wasn't the case.
    I never felt that something against Jews
    in my teaching of religion, in whatever I
    learned in my religion lessons.
    So I didn't feel anything wrong about my double personality,
    let's call it.
    But you didn't even feel that it was a double one?
    No, I knew.
    I knew.
    It wasn't a secret.
    It wasn't a secret.
    It wasn't anything to keep in hiding for us.
    My family was very proud of being one of Winawers.
    It was very special thing that my father
    tried to explain me before he-- when
    he visited me before he died.
    It was the last visit and last like saying goodbye.
    And we were very open with each other.
    And he told me, it's very hard to explain.
    But I felt more Polish than Jewish.
    It didn't have anything to do with my religion.
    That's understandable.
    So it wasn't more like trying to hide whatever you were.
    My parents were Jewish friends.
    And the best friends, they didn't feel like my parents.
    They felt very-- how to say it?
    Rebellious.
    They felt Jewish and rebellious.
    It wasn't to confirm to Polish standards.
    It wasn't done to conform to anything.
    It was sort of emotional attitude.
    Did your family ever--
    I mean, your parents' best friends, then, were Jewish?
    Did they ever spend any holidays or anything
    like that with them?
    No, they weren't that religious.
    No.
    Oh, OK.
    I see, OK.
    It was a young generation.
    You never, ever saw in Poland any Jewish holiday,
    any Seder, any Passover, anything like this.
    I'm sorry.
    I'm very sorry.
    I wish I knew more about Jewish tradition.
    But I had no chance to.
    People, young people weren't religious.
    They were being progressive.
    They were progressive.
    OK, I understand.
    OK, so we've established a little bit
    about your childhood.
    Did you play with your friends?
    Or your sister was so much younger,
    I assume she was just a baby when--
    She was a baby.
    --most of this started.
    I had an aunt.
    It takes long time.
    Yeah, I'm just keeping an eye on it so when I need to switch it.
    Don't let people talk.
    Once people start talking, they can't stop.
    That's what we want.
    That's what I want.
    I want you to tell.
    I have five tapes here.
    If you want to fill them up, go ahead.
    Now we talk to enter into.
    So I had an aunt in Warsaw suburbs, in Podkowa Lesna.
    It was something like or to place we are living here.
    And every Sunday-- she wasn't married.
    She lived with her old, charming father.
    I was the only child in the family.
    And I used to go to visit her from almost every
    Saturday and Sunday.
    From Saturday till Sunday evening.
    And I had friends over there.
    And we played together.
    And of course, I had other friends in the town, too.
    But it wasn't like American suburban life.
    If you visiting friends, was a big happening.
    Because in big city, long distance to go everywhere.
    So it was always planned event.
    I see.
    Mostly planned for two days, usually, from Saturday
    till Sunday.
    Oh, it was very exciting.
    And I had some friends in my building, too.
    They played together.
    Before the war, there wasn't--
    I didn't go downstairs to play in the yard.
    But I visited my friends in my building.
    But well, it was such a typical life of a child.
    Nothing, nothing.
    Nothing out of the ordinary?
    No.
    So would you like to discuss, then,
    about what happened to your family
    in 1939, when the war broke out?
    Well, first thing happened, it was raining like this,
    with just before the--
    like today, night before the war.
    Maybe two nights earlier.
    Maybe three nights earlier.
    And I was stupid enough to leave a book that I was reading,
    to leave my book outside.
    And the rain damaged the book.
    And the book didn't belong to me,
    it belonged to my mother's friend daughter.
    And I was so scared.
    So I didn't know what to do to hide the book.
    But those people didn't let me go without returning that book.
    I know that they were very strict.
    So the war broke out, and I was so happy, oh, my.
    I'm saved, I'm saved.
    And no school.
    And no school.
    That was good?
    You liked that?
    Ah, it was great, it was fantastic.
    It was extremely exciting happening.
    But before that great, fantastic thing happened,
    some bad things happened before.
    In August, 1939, last month before the war broke out,
    my parents went for vacation for a week or two.
    They left my grandmother, that grandmother
    that I told you about from Lodz, me, my little daughter, and--
    Your little sister.
    --my little sister, and some, oh, maid, well,
    some maid who worked for.
    But my mother had a younger sister.
    She lived in France.
    My mother always worried about her
    because she married very young.
    She didn't finish any school.
    She was little, she was very unbalanced,
    emotionally unbalanced.
    She had a very bad, bad marriage.
    And her husband was communist.
    And they were deported from France to Poland.
    And my mother's sister, with her small son, Claude,
    came to stay with us for two weeks, for three weeks.
    And part of the time, my parents were out.
    And this was only one, only time in my life
    I met my cousin Claude.
    He came from France.
    He hated everything Polish.
    Looking at them, I had a premonition
    of what will happen to us.
    Because they were so poor, so--
    they were deportees.
    They had no work.
    His close parents had no work.
    They didn't belong anywhere.
    Because they didn't belong to France,
    they didn't belong to Poland.
    They were victims of some social forces that we became later on.
    And they perished in the Holocaust.
    They were in Lodz ghetto.
    And they perished.
    And they took probably were first to die from hunger
    because they were not able to work.
    They were not able to work in normal conditions.
    Not only in Lodz ghetto, which was terrible place to live in.
    And that small child, that Claude, and my aunt,
    whom I didn't like and I didn't know well.
    I hardly knew them.
    Are still with me.
    Did you see the picture of Mr. Lanzmann from--
    Yeah, Shoah.
    --Shoah.
    Oh, yes.
    His name is Claude.
    And he looks exactly like my cousin Claude.
    Because they were the same age, the same family, the same--
    very similar kind of family, Polish emigres.
    And it's such a similarity between them.
    And I can't forget that.
    And my grandmother that lived with us in Warsaw
    during the time, war time, she didn't get any letter
    from her daughter in Lodz ghetto.
    And it was sort of constant work and tragedy that killed her.
    Yeah.
    Can I ask you-- what type of awareness
    did you have of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Austria?
    Did you have a sense that the danger?
    Oh, I have something before my aunt, Helenka,
    and Claude came to visit us.
    I had another experience with Nazism.
    Not with Germans, but Germans.
    Nazi Germany deported German Jews who were born in Poland--
    That's right, right.
    --in 1937.
    And it was sort of obligation, sort
    of moral obligation of everybody who
    belonged to the Jewish-- somehow to Jewish community
    to help them.
    And my mother took a young girl who was maybe 19, maybe 20,
    gave her a job of teaching me German sort of
    like being governess.
    It wasn't exactly governess, but something
    like teacher and governess, something in between.
    She was boring, stupid, and I didn't
    want to learn German like that.
    But she was-- on the other hand, I knew she was so poor,
    she was so troubled.
    She didn't feel happy.
    She was so out of place.
    So it was bad experience.
    But I felt that this was my fault.
    Did she live in your home with you?
    No, she used to come over, well, twice a week or so.
    But that relation didn't last long.
    Because it didn't work at all.
    Right.
    She wasn't born to be teacher, or governess, or anything
    like this.
    And she wasn't any companion to me, either.
    So it didn't work.
    But I know that that was something always
    sort of talking about helping those.
    And I had, in my school-- oh, the school wasn't antisemitic.
    In my school, there was a girl.
    Too long?
    No.
    No?
    But a few more minutes and I'll flip it.
    There was a girl deported from Austria.
    Her name was Ingeborga.
    Her parents didn't speak Polish at all, they spoke German.
    She was very poor.
    And during the war, I had a special, special relation
    with her.
    But this is the story later that I will tell you later on.
    OK.
    And it was only two people I knew,
    two deportees I knew from Germany.
    I didn't know.
    We children didn't take Germans seriously.
    They were something so--
    Poland was strong, and prepared for war,
    and the whole world was supposed to help Poland.
    No, Germans were something to make fun of.
    No.
    I was only 10 and 11.
    Do you know, did your parents have
    a sense of the German racial laws and things like that?
    Oh, you are kidding.
    Of course they did.
    Yeah.
    So I mean, they knew the extreme danger that was posed?
    Well, they knew, but somehow people didn't know.
    There was some blockage in their heads.
    No, your imagination can't go that far.
    You have to have some experience to imagine things.
    If you don't experience things like that, you can't.
    They knew that life would be very hard.
    But there was always hope the war won't break out.
    There was always hope that Hitler will stop.
    Well, and this was sort of loyalty.
    You can't escape from place where the others have to live.
    You know, and this is something not honorable
    that my father was-- well, it was
    sort of romantic generation.
    Well, I'm going to flip the tape over.
    So he was 40 at that time.
    He was in peak of his career.
    He was very well.
    He had big clientele.
    He was a very well-known lawyer, hardworking lawyer,
    very, very clever.
    My father says, we have to go back to Warsaw,
    things are getting dangerous.
    So he packed all of us into that small car.
    We left everything that we had at home.
    It wasn't anything very valuable.
    And we went back to Warsaw the next day.
    My father said to my mother, I love you all,
    but I love my country more, or something like this.
    And he kissed us goodbye and went to fight for the country.
    And he left my mother with two-years-old, and me,
    and everything, with no money.
    Because somehow, people weren't prepared.
    If he had anything, he didn't have at home.
    Maybe in bank.
    Maybe clients were.
    It was a normal, regular life, like every day.
    Day like every day from financial point of view.
    Right, right.
    So the war started this way for almost everybody.
    With not mentally prepared for the change.
    So my mother-- and the bombardment started.
    And there was no food in the stores.
    The stores were shut closed.
    And well, every day was worse than the day before.
    And my sister became ill, sick.
    And she got a very high fever, and she was dying.
    Oh, my.
    And she was dying.
    And well, I don't know how far you
    want to go into gossips, into small things.
    This is fine.
    Fine?
    Yeah.
    And we lived on--
    I didn't give you my address.
    But you don't want any address.
    Sure, why don't you tell me?
    Tell it on the tape.
    Well, it was at--
    I lived at Kapucynska [POLISH] in the war.
    It was a very small street with dead end.
    So the traffic was limited.
    They were habited mostly by lawyers
    because the court was very close.
    Court and hipoteca, I don't know how you--
    whatever it is.
    The place that--
    I will check.
    Can you stop?
    Yeah, sure.
    OK.
    And there was a--
    can you stop again?
    Sure.
    OK, so you were telling me about--
    About that strange street we lived on
    with historic monuments, with monastery, Kapucyn monastery
    with big, big garden.
    So it was very quiet, quiet place.
    But I don't remember why I told you that.
    I had some idea.
    But I forgot.
    So you can forget what.
    But we came back home.
    And oh, I know.
    On the first floor of the same building,
    we lived with our aunt, my father's aunt.
    She was old lady, was a widow with two daughters.
    They had no children because she didn't like children.
    And when my small sister, Kicia--
    she had nickname Kicia.
    Kicia became ill.
    And we lived on the third floor.
    And bombardment became very frequent.
    We were forbidden to live upstairs.
    And we couldn't stay in the basement
    all the time because of sick child.
    So we asked that aunt to let us stay with her.
    She lived on the second floor.
    And she said no because I don't like children.
    And sick children is something that I really hate.
    And I [LAUGHS] she was my father's aunt.
    Nice lady.
    But before the war, she was extremely nice.
    She became-- she was very nice as long as everything
    was planned and organized.
    She loved guests from 5:00 till 7:00 every Tuesday
    and that's it.
    So my mother was absolutely astonished.
    It was something unbelievable.
    So we went down to the first floor
    to the neighbors, who were very unfriendly.
    But he couldn't-- he had no guts to say no.
    So we spent part of the September
    of 1939, the terrible--
    you know what was September of '39 in Poland in Warsaw?
    At the beginning of the war.
    It was the beginning of the war.
    It was the bombardment of Warsaw.
    And we spent partly in the basement,
    partly in that neighbor's apartment.
    In the basement, people prayed all the time.
    And then I felt the very tension between my mother
    and my grandmother.
    She was strongly against accepting and being
    part of that prayers.
    She felt it was a time of trial.
    And she felt that she's Jewish, and she
    didn't want to stay with those praying people.
    And well, after Warsaw came into hands of Germans,
    my grandmother went back to Lodz.
    And she was evacuated, deported in very brutal manner.
    Not all Jews, but some--
    I don't know why my grandmother, maybe all the people
    were departed from Lodz.
    Took to small towns.
    And because she had--
    and Jewish-- [POLISH], Judenrat.
    Do you know the word Judenrat?
    Yeah, the Jewish council.
    Jewish council used to find place for those deportees.
    But my grandmother didn't need any place
    because she had her daughter in Warsaw.
    She came to us.
    But when she was in Radom, she had such an experience
    that is worth telling and worth remembering.
    Those poor, poor deportees were placed among people
    by Jewish council.
    And there were many in one building.
    And in the evening, one of a German captain,
    or lieutenant, or something used to gather them.
    They stayed there for few days.
    And he gathered-- the German captain gathered them and wrote
    Bible to them.
    And told them that monster and Antichrist
    will be punished by God.
    And that something will happen.
    You know who am I talking in, Antichrist and monster.
    It was Hitler.
    And his, well--
    His theology.
    Yes, that he will be punished.
    And that everybody has to keep faith, and hope.
    And he gave them extreme consolation.
    And he was sort of saint.
    But he was taken next day.
    Was some evening he didn't come.
    And those people asked what happened to them.
    And they were told that better not to ask because he was.
    He was a German officer?
    German officer.
    I see.
    So it was something that doesn't happen very often.
    And something that shouldn't be forgotten.
    And so my grandmother came to us, and stayed with us,
    and went to ghetto with us.
    Oh, you were sent to the?
    We went to ghetto in October of 1940.
    How did that happen?
    You were deported to the ghetto?
    No, because there wasn't deportation,
    anything like this.
    The ghetto was built. The place for Jewish population was--
    It was marked.
    It was marked out.
    The wall was start to be built. And the deadline was set.
    We were in trouble because my parents
    had beautiful, beautiful apartment,
    with beautiful furniture, and charming place, and everything.
    And somehow, they couldn't find anybody to.
    Jewish population outside the ghetto
    had to find place in the ghetto district.
    And people from Polish population from ghetto
    used to trade their apartments.
    So it was very unpleasant time.
    Because it was time for a very easy, quick bucks, mostly
    for people who lived in--
    Polish people who lived in the ghetto quarters.
    And it was a big, big tension, the deadline was very close.
    And we didn't have place to live.
    But at last, in last minute, in the court,
    one of the clerks, court clerks, told my father,
    there's a judge who lives in ghetto,
    one of judges who lives in ghetto,
    and who is in the same situation.
    He has to go out of ghetto and has no place to live.
    He was very unpractical man.
    So we quickly changed apartments.
    Traded apartments among ourselves.
    And we moved into Nowolipie [POLISH]..
    Did your parents ever consider trying not to go?
    It wasn't.
    They were--
    It wasn't possible.
    Do you have my parents, my father's?
    Yeah.
    He looks like absolutely--
    he's quintessence of Jewish.
    Yeah, yeah.
    More than me.
    I'm Jewish enough, but he looks more than me.
    Yeah, I would think so.
    And he had too many acquaintances.
    He was well-known among people.
    And it was too risky.
    Absolutely.
    They didn't take that.
    It was a chance.
    They considered it, but they decided not.
    At the same time, my grandmother--
    I had two grandmothers.
    Right.
    One from Lodz that I told you about.
    Another, my father's mother.
    And she lost her mind.
    She was very seriously mentally ill, very dangerous for her.
    So dangerous for her.
    It was something very, very acute.
    Acute illness.
    You asked me about family.
    Yeah, this is important.
    Well, on my father's side, my mother, her mother's family
    were manufacturers.
    And her father-- it's too long story to go that far.
    But he had to quit Poland because as a young boy,
    14 years old, in some case, 11 years old, and other,
    14 years old.
    Because the Russians deported Jewish young boys
    to make them--
    young, strong, healthy boys to make them,
    to take them to army, and make them
    something of special guard.
    Well, I don't even understand it myself.
    But it was something very dangerous.
    And he had to escape at night, go through border.
    He lived in a border, in a small town
    at the border with Austria.
    And his father got information by policemen
    that that night there will be hunting for Jewish boys.
    And that same-- in 15 minutes, he left home
    with few rubles, whatever he had, they had at home.
    And he went through the border.
    And he started his independent life.
    And he worked for farmers.
    At last, he worked in the manufacture of ribbons.
    And when he grew up, at the age of 20 and something,
    he returned home.
    But he didn't speak Polish.
    And I don't know about his Jewish.
    But he spoke only German that time.
    So my grandmother's family was bilingual.
    They spoke German at home.
    And my grandmother was very, very, very fluent in German.
    And being so sick and out of mind, she
    used to open the windows and start very, very
    convincing speeches to German people to get rid of Hitler.
    Oh, my god.
    It was very dangerous.
    It was very dangerous.
    So my parents need get to wire windows.
    And she had to be under constant supervision.
    But she didn't trust anybody except me.
    So I stayed with her day and night.
    Was she dangerous?
    She was dangerous, she was dangerous.
    I mean, physically dangerous.
    Physically dangerous.
    She had hallucinations.
    and when something came into her mind,
    she was dangerous because she believed that.
    Like seriously mentally ill people.
    It happened very sudden after the whole--
    because my father went for war.
    And there was no information on what happened
    to him for a long time.
    And my grandmother pledged not to eat until he comes back.
    And I don't know if she was sick then
    or she became sick because of emotions and of her pain.
    So we stayed with grandmother.
    We had to keep her separate from the world.
    And at last, we had to put her into a hospital
    because the place we got in ghetto, we
    divided with another relatives, another family of five people.
    So we had no room to keep grandmother safely.
    So she went to hospital, in Sofiowka.
    It was in suburbs of Warsaw, Jewish hospital for mentally
    ill.
    Before that hospital was--
    Liquidated?
    --liquidated, she took away her life.
    So she died in December of 1940.
    And well, we went to ghetto.
    The first year of war was still a normal life for me.
    I used to go to underground.
    No, it wasn't even underground.
    To school.
    Because children in that time were--
    well, there was no statute to forbid
    children, Jewish children, to go to school.
    So I used to go to regular school.
    And from 1940, from the summer of 1940,
    the real war life started to me because everything changed.
    First with illness of my grandmother.
    Later in ghetto, everything was completely different.
    And well, in the ghetto, when it came to ghetto,
    we started our--
    started meeting people from over there.
    And we learned that that judge who we traded apartments
    was a special person.
    And his family was very, very unusual.
    They were owners of the possession of the land.
    Owners of the buildings.
    And they were owners of the lumber
    that was behind the building.
    It was very, very unusual.
    It's important to part of my story.
    OK.
    So we moved Nowolipie [POLISH].
    Around, we have regular buildings, three,
    four-story buildings, like in a crowded city street.
    But our building was completely different.
    We had three courts, very long three courts.
    It was very old part of a farm, of plantation
    that existed in Warsaw few hundred years ago.
    The people who-- the owners were owners of plantation,
    they had plantation in the eastern part of Poland.
    But they lost everything because of revolution.
    Sorry, they return.
    Russian revolution in 1917.
    The returned to Warsaw, and they treated
    the place they lived like their plantation.
    They took care of people who lived there.
    Oh, really?
    They didn't expect to be paid for rent
    because they treated them like--
    Serfs?
    No, they didn't expect any work.
    But they had the mentality of people of plantation
    in the best sense of that word.
    That you take care, they are your people,
    you take care of them.
    They teached them, they give them help if they need you.
    If they need medication, the mistress is there, too.
    They were absolutely crazy people.
    It sounds like it.
    They lived in poverty.
    The apartment was never painted, never
    nothing was repaired for probably, oh, more than years.
    There was plenty of space, but on the right side
    of those courts were sort of buildings,
    two, three-story buildings.
    Very primitive, but buildings.
    On the left side was sort of barracks, like in the country.
    The poor country dwellings.
    So keep it in mind because this is important.
    And lumber factory in the back.
    So when my father learned who the place belonged
    to saint people who took care of all poor, terribly
    poor, Jewish, the poorest of the poor who lived in the building.
    It was sort of obligation, sort of challenge for us.
    So in the same apartment with us lived our--
    moved into the same apartment, moved our family
    two doctors, my father, two doctors.
    And my father organized sort of community association,
    you can say it.
    It wasn't association.
    But he was so convincing that everybody
    tried to take care in improving our life in our building.
    So he built some grass, some places to play for children.
    He organized kitchen soup?
    Soup kitchens.
    Soup kitchen.
    Soup kitchen for poor people.
    There was one prostitute who lived in the attic of--
    because it wasn't a building, it was something
    like rural, like rural house.
    So the prostitute came once.
    I remember, she said, I earn money very easily.
    So I can money easily, too.
    But I can't help people to feed them.
    Because I work at my apartment.
    This is my place of work.
    So I will give money, whatever you need.
    But I can't take people for dinners.
    Because people felt sort of obligation.
    And my father gave initiative, too,
    that everybody has to give once a week
    dinner for at least one person.
    And give money if they can do it.
    And I taught children, two girls.
    I taught program of third class.
    Well, I was then in high school, I should be in high school.
    So I taught them some, gave them some elementary program
    teaching.
    And we became very, very, very friendly,
    with very, very close to those people in our building.
    Well, you can tell, in our neighborhood.
    In our area.
    So we had books, so some young people
    used to come over to borrow books.
    And doctors used to give medical help to people
    who lived in those barracks.
    About how many people what was this altogether?
    I tried to figure it out, but it's impossible.
    There were at least two, two parts of one, three maybe.
    Maybe 12.
    Maybe 12 apartments, 12 regular apartments.
    Middle-sized, three, four rooms.
    And probably 10 small apartments, one room,
    one kitchen in the barracks for 10 families.
    And maybe one or two small stores.
    But people were crowded.
    Oh, yeah.
    So there were many, many people.
    It was probably a couple hundred people or so.
    Probably couple of hundred people but not
    that many apartments.
    And one of those girls that I taught, her name was Faiga.
    But I didn't feel Jewish.
    My mission was keep those kids Polish.
    So I didn't know German.
    I didn't.
    So one of the girls promised to teach me German.
    Because some people didn't speak Polish.
    Right, oh, they spoke Yiddish.
    They speak Yiddish because they were
    very, very poor, poor Jewish population
    of uneducated Jewish population.
    Some [NON-ENGLISH].
    Oh, I remember that but I don't know the name.
    Let me check.
    They discussed politics and everything in Yiddish.
    And they were different type of people
    than I knew before because they were real Jewish population,
    Jewish proletarian.
    And we were very, very close friends.
    Especially with that girl, Faiga.
    Tinsmith workshop.
    Tinsmith.
    We don't-- it's a tinsmith, tinman.
    Zinc.
    I don't know what they--
    oh, they probably fixed parts, something like this.
    This kind of people.
    So not a full-fledged tinsmith.
    No, no.
    They were extremely poor, extremely smelly, extremely--
    and they were always hungry, I know.
    I remember that my student, my pupil Faiga,
    how hungry she was, how thin she was, how pale.
    How did you manage to get food in the Warsaw ghetto?
    Oh, how it was.
    If you had the money, it wasn't hard to get food.
    And my mother was a businesswoman.
    Right.
    So she managed to.
    She managed.
    And well, she didn't have any other ambition.
    She didn't have ambition to gather money,
    she had ambition to buy food and let people work.
    And help some people with feeding them.
    So we had three meals daily.
    Wow.
    And not everybody was hungry in ghetto.
    There were people who were very rich in ghetto, too.
    So we had three meals.
    And we had always two, three, four people
    who were regular boarders.
    Two uncles of my mother.
    And well, I don't remember all of them because it changed.
    But we had always 12 people for every meal.
    And most of them were regular boarders.
    They didn't live with us, but they used to eat with us.
    It was sort of, well, sort of help because it was fixed.
    And they could trust.
    They could rely on it.
    They could rely.
    But there were tragic situations.
    Behind every jolly and cheerful meal that we tried to keep,
    there was always tragedy.
    One of my mother's uncles had grown up
    son who was mentally ill and not able to work and to do
    anything.
    And my uncle had a girlfriend.
    Not a wife, but sort of wife.
    She was, we call it common law.
    Common law.
    And she didn't come over for meals to us.
    I don't know.
    It was impossible to feed everything, just impossible.
    So it was a very, very unpleasant situation
    of making choices.
    And it was the very bad part because my grandmother
    had bad feelings.
    Give this, give him for Vera.
    Vera was that common law wife.
    Give some well food for Julek, his son.
    So whoever used to eat at our table
    had many people who should be fed, too.
    And it was absolutely--
    it was absolutely impossible.
    It was always a choice of every day that one day,
    you could give them, another day you couldn't.
    It wasn't pleasant.
    It wasn't pleasant situation.
    It wasn't pleasant situation even for my mother's uncle.
    Because he wasn't hungry.
    And I don't know.
    But the art of life, of living, in those days
    was not to talk about everything.
    To avoid negative talking.
    What type of goods were available, though?
    I mean, you said food was available.
    Of course, it wasn't any problem if you had money.
    There was a big market.
    The problem was to get food in the nearest
    close, nearest store.
    We had a very small store in our home
    or maybe in the neighboring house.
    But the problem was, the art, the challenge
    was to buy a loaf of bread and take it home.
    Because the moment, very moment you left the store,
    the buggers, the hungry people, tried to--
    Take it away.
    --take it away.
    And they did.
    Most of the time, they did.
    I assume that you did go out of this little enclave
    during your time in the ghetto.
    Do you want to discuss any of the things
    that you might have seen, anything that you
    witnessed while you were there?
    In the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    Well, I want to tell about two things.
    One about Faiga.
    I called her Frania, but she accepted it.
    I felt Polish and I tried to-- well,
    I didn't understand the Jewish-Polish problems
    in those days.
    So eventually, because her uncle was so poor,
    eventually she had been taken to Korczak's orphanage.
    And I was over there and visited her.
    And I didn't-- it was the most remembered by me experience,
    very touching thing to do.
    I don't know.
    I don't use the right word.
    But something very inspiring going to Korczak's orphanage
    and taking.
    Well, his work was.
    It was absolutely-- it was the place for like well,
    how do you call the place where Eve and--
    Oh, the Garden of Eden.
    Garden of Eden, Garden of Eden.
    So it was the last time I saw my Faiga,
    it was only in that orphanage.
    And another thing I wanted to tell you,
    it was the girl from Austria.
    The girls from Austria somehow lost her parents
    during the ghetto.
    She was my classmate before the war.
    Her name was Ingeborga.
    And we, her friends, few friends who lived in ghetto,
    tried to help her by making cigarettes, and selling
    cigarettes, and giving money to her.
    But any time I saw her, she was more like a ghost,
    not like a living person.
    She didn't look like a living person.
    She went through typhus.
    She went through hunger.
    It was in ghetto, it wasn't in a camp.
    But there were places in ghetto that people lived like--
    she looked like skeleton.
    And had her mind, her mind was almost gone in there.
    And all, but otherwise, there were
    some people who lived a regular life, more or less.
    I want to change tapes if that's OK for you.
    OK.

    There is no transcript available for this track

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Sylvia Murawski
    Date
    interview:  1992 June 05

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 sound cassettes (90 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Murawski, Sylvia, 1928-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Card Project conducted the interview with Sylvia Murawski in Annandale, VA on June 5, 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 08:24:01
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    Oral history interview with Paula Dash

    Oral History

    Paula Dash (née Garfinkel), born in 1920 in Łódź, Poland, describes life in Łódź; the beginning of the war and the German invasion; the roundup of Jews and deportations; having to turn in their valuables and wear the star of David; being moved into the ghetto and living in one room with her family; rations in the ghetto; the death of her father from starvation in 1942; the deportation of her sister and brother; the atrocities in the ghetto; learning of the mass killings; a Kinder Aktion in the camp when the Nazis rounded up and killed all the children they could find; being sent with her mother and youngest brother in August 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being shaved upon entering the camp but not receiving a tattoo; the emotional torture the guards subjected the inmates to; the heavy bombardment to the camp and being crammed into a barrack with hundreds of other people; life in Bergen-Belsen; seeing piles of corpses and the mass graves; being sent briefly to work cleaning bombed out houses in Bremen, Germany, where she found a towel that she managed to keep in the camp; witnessing cannibalism; contracting typhus; receiving help from her friends in the camp; being liberated by the British in April 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Ani Davidovics

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Juliusz Deczkowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aron Derman

    Oral History

    Aron Derman (né Dereczynski), born on May 5, 1922 in Slonim, Poland (Belarus), describes his life before the war; his parents who were shopkeepers; his experiences with antisemitism before the war; his involvement in the Zionist movement and membership in the Hashomer Hatzair; the boycott of local Jewish businesses towards the end of the 1930s; being on a date in Oftryn when the war began; the arrival of Russian soldiers; his journey to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) in hopes of immigrating to Palestine that came to no avail; the ghettoization of Slonim; the liquidation of half the ghetto and his escape from the round-up; his escape from a German “Aktion”; his decision to leave the ghetto and travel to Grodno; being sent to Auschwitz, escaping the train, getting caught, and being sent back to the ghetto; hiding in the Grodno ghetto and hopping a train headed to Vilna with several friends (including his future wife Lisa Nussbaum); joining the FPO; leaving the ghetto and going to the Narocz forest; joining the Nakamah partisan group, which was disbanded; being in the Kalininski partisans and his activities; being liberated by the Russians; getting married in Rome, Italy in 1947; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his life after the war in Chicago, IL.

    Oral history interview with Henry Drobiarz

    Oral History

    Henry Drobiarz, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes growing up in Kozlow, Poland; attending public school and cheder; his siblings; his family’s religious practices as Orthodox Jews; apprenticing as a tinsmith with his uncle in Sosnowiec; the German invasion and continuing to work as a tinsmith; being sent to Krakow, Poland in 1940; staying in town to work as a tinsmith as other Jews were sent to Slomniki in 1942; hiding with his parents in Kozlow during roundups; the separation of his family to various places; working in Krakow-Jerozolimska (Płaszów) concentration camp; being sent to Mielec concentration camp; his work making airplane parts in the camp; working in Sandomierz concentration camp; being taken to Wieliczka concentration camp in June 22, 1944; being sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp and the terror experienced by the inmates when they thought they were going to be gassed; working in a quarry; being transferred to Leitwezil, Czechoslovakia (possibly Litomerice, Czech Republic) to a carbide mine for six weeks; being sent to Dachau concentration camp for three days then Augsburg to work in a Messerschmitt factory; daily life in Augsburg; being transferred in December 1944 to Leonberg concentration camp; being taken to Kaufering concentration camp for three weeks; being taken to Allach concentration camp; being liberated on May 1, 1945; going to the nearby town; going to Munich, Germany; working for the US Army for a few months; meeting his future wife; going to the United States in December 1949; living in New York, NY; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Maria Efes

    Oral History

    Maria Efes, born on July 15, 1909 in Kopys', Belarus, describes living in Orsha, Belarus; going to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) in 1924; graduating from the Gertson institute in 1933; working as a speech therapist in a Russian-occupied area of Finland; her parents’ backgrounds; her siblings; being a child psychologist in the 1930s; her studies on school children in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Russia; going to Crimea, Ukraine in 1936; being a graduate student, studying foreign languages; the German invasion in 1941; her sister’s experience during the German invasion; the bombings; the experiences of her siblings during the war; taking a group of children to Siberia in September 1942; working at a children’s house in Siberia for two years; returning to Leningrad when the war ended; and her husband. [Note that the interviewee describes her early life approximately half-way through the interview.]

    Oral history interview concerning Abraham Ellenbogen and Hanna Ellenbogen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel discusses her early childhood and family life in Zwolle, Holland; her three older brothers; attending Dutch public school and Hebrew afternoon school; how her parents ran a kosher hotel; the death of her father in 1941; how in 1942, the Germans threw the family out of their hotel and placed them in a small house with no electricity or bathroom; saying goodbye to her mother and brothers and going into hiding in July 1942; being sent to Sobibor the following year when her mother was sent to Poland; two of her brothers being sent to a work camp, while the third remained in hiding; how at the beginning of the war and in 1945 their hotel was used as a place to hide German Jews who were smuggled to Belgium; her observation that all small towns in Holland have memorials to the Jews who were killed during the war.

    Oral history interview with Lonia Fishman

    Oral History

    Lonia Fishman (née Goldman, born on May 3, 1920 in Wegrow, Poland) and her husband, Sevek Fishman, discuss Lonia’s childhood and her family; attending public school and a Hebrew school; making and selling quilts in Warsaw, Poland with her sister; her family’s move to Warsaw; getting married; the German invasion; how some Jews committed suicide; Sevek’s experience getting shot in the ghetto; stocking up on supplies with the family; the resolve of the family to remain together and not separate; Sevek’s mother; the Jewish police in the ghetto; Sevek witnessing his father being shot to death; and her sister Edith Goldman.

    Oral history interview with Sevek Fishman

    Oral History

    Sevek Fishman, born on July 14, 1918 in Kaluszyn, Poland, describes his childhood and attending a Jewish school; religious observations in his family; apprenticing as a tailor; the Jewish community; the German invasion; antisemitic propaganda; the roundups; going to the Warsaw ghetto with his whole family; smuggling in food for his family; his work removing corpses from the ghetto streets; his work for Organisation Todt; being sent briefly to a small camp; hiding with his wife during another roundup in the neighboring suburb Wegrów, Poland; escaping from the ghetto; people hiding out in the woods outside Warsaw; hiding in a hole in the floor of a house with his wife for 18 months; being liberated by Jewish soldiers and sent to a field hospital; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jack Frenkel and Henry Frenkel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Freund

    Oral History

    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 Michael Kishel

    Oral History

    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.

    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 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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