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Oral history interview with Henry Deutsch

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.311 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0311

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    Oral history interview with Henry Deutsch
    Transcript
    OK, Jill, you can start anytime.
    OK, today is Thursday, November 21, 1991.
    We're interviewing Henry Deutsch for the Holocaust Oral History
    Project here at Temple Beth Sholom in San Francisco.
    Assisting with the interview is Eric Saul.
    OK, could you just tell us your name, your birth date
    and where you were born?
    My name is Henry Deutsch.
    I was born in Vienna May 28, 1919.
    And actually my given name was Heinrich
    and I anglicized my name in Panama
    to make it easier for people to know who I am.
    And I was matriculated in the Israel kultusgemeinde
    in Vienna the name of Heinrich, Heinrich Yuri Deutsch,
    May 28, 1919.
    OK, now you said you wanted to--
    Yes I'd like to paint a picture as far as I remember back.
    First of all, I would like to make a statement as to the fact
    that this is a very painful episode for me to talk about.
    It touches my very soul and heart.
    The fact it happened to our people,
    they have to be remembered for old times.
    They cannot be forgotten and shall not be forgotten.
    And the only reason I'm doing this, doing this interview here
    is I wanted to have future generations
    have an insight as to the happenings in Europe
    after the First World War.
    I was born into a family, a very well to do family of merchants.
    My father was the heir to an uncle of mine
    into one of the largest textile companies
    in Vienna in the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire.
    This was long before I was born, that company existed.
    It was working, was working in now
    Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and of
    course, Austria.
    The family I was born into was a Jewish family.
    My grandmother on my father's side
    were shtetl and kept a kosher house.
    However, my father and mother, they
    were much more secular Jews and I was brought up a secular Jew.
    Not meaning that I was not given Jewish education.
    Actually, my professor in high school of Jewish
    was Dr. Frankfurter, a rabbi, And he
    was the brother of the Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court
    Justice in the United States.
    He was the brother.
    He was the one who taught me my Hebrew.
    I have to paint a picture that Jews in Germany and Austria
    were so far assimilated that they became
    first citizens of the country.
    And we didn't know much more about Jewishness
    that we were Jews as a religion.
    That is, not a conscious Jew, but a religious-- it
    was a religion like Catholicism or Protestantism.
    We were Jews.
    Now the country of Austria has a very long history
    of antisemitism goes way back.
    In some instances, it was more latent and others
    it was much more open.
    And of course, the year 1938 brought it
    out to an effect never seen before, not even in Germany.
    It was much worse in Austria than in Germany.
    The Austrian people, the history says
    that Maria Theresa was one of the greatest
    empress of Austria.
    She was an antisemite.
    And her son Joseph II, he was a very liberal man.
    He was a Mason too.
    And he was Jewish-friendly.
    And so it went, up and down, up and down
    for the Jews of Austria.
    And we, the Austrian Jews, we always
    tried to assimilate within the country.
    We didn't try to say that we are Jews first and then Austrians.
    We said we were Austrians, and secondly we were Austrians,
    and third we were Austrians, and fourth we
    had the Jewish religion.
    Now, I can go back to my very young years
    when I was in high school, we had professors
    who were antisemitic and they made
    it well known that I was Jewish in front of all the class.
    I was made sometimes a laughing stock.
    He came out with sayings, trying to copy
    Yiddish, which I personally never spoke
    until I reached Panama.
    I was perfect in Yiddish and I speak Yiddish.
    But I didn't speak it in Austria.
    Yiddish for me was a language which
    the Jews from Poland and Lithuania
    and Russia and Romania who immigrated to Austria
    brought with them.
    The second district in Vienna was the Jewish district.
    My grandmother lived there.
    She observed every holiday, on holiday she went to shul.
    My father, my, my brother and I we went with him to visit her.
    And we were members in the Seitenstetten Temple in Vienna,
    which is--
    well, if you can talk about the elite,
    it's the elite of Jewish life in Vienna.
    Used to be.
    And this is for the first time I saw Baron von Rothschild
    on holidays with his top hat.
    And I was quite impressed with that.
    And we observed Pesach, we went to Seder every year
    to my uncle's.
    My life there in school was intermittently
    shown that I was Jewish in a very negative way.
    Then I joined the Boy Scouts in Vienna.
    And I have a letter here from my troop leader
    who immigrated to Athens, to Greece, after 1938.
    The fact that as a Boy Scout we went on summer camps.
    We went to summer camp in Italy in the year 1933.
    And in 1933 we were invited by the Youth of Mussolini.
    Already there was, the relationship between Mussolini
    and Austria was much better than Germany and Italy at the time
    because Hitler already was there.
    So the Balilla, the Youth of Mussolini,
    invited us over to visit them, which we did.
    We went to Northern Italy and on the way to Venice or Milan
    or whatever, when all of a sudden,
    we saw a concentration of military tanks and units
    massing at the border of Austria.
    What happened was that the illegal Nazis in Vienna
    had murdered our chancellor Dollfuss, sorry,
    Schuschnigg wasn't on the scene yet.
    Dollfuss.
    And were trying to make a putsch to take over
    the government for Nazis.
    And Mussolini didn't agree with that,
    so he massed his armed forces to intervene.
    He didn't want Hitler in Austria.
    I have to give you a picture now as
    to the political life of the Nazis in Vienna.
    The Nazis in Vienna were always illegal.
    They were not permitted to function in Austria.
    But they were the strongest and the most radical elements
    in Austria.
    The Social Democrats, of which we were not
    members but my father voted Social Democratic all the time.
    The Social Democrats were not as well organized.
    And then we had a third party, which
    was the Heimatschutz, which was a little bit
    on the fascist side of the Austrian government.
    They were also fascists, but not as--
    much less even than Mussolini.
    So they fought each other, the amateurs and the Social
    Democrats, the Schutzbund.
    It actually came to war.
    I remember when I was a child the cannons were brought up
    to the streets below where we lived
    and they were shooting into the 21st district, which was
    a stronghold of the Democrats.
    And they really bloodily suppressed
    the Social Democrats.
    They suppressed them.
    So the Social Democrats didn't have
    any force at all in the government or political life.
    The Nazis were helped from Germany.
    There were financed from Germany, they had uniforms.
    Their ideology was there, and the latent antisemitism
    in Austria helped them to get more and more converts
    and their work became quite outspoken.
    It was a time, I remember when I was
    still small, I don't remember exactly how old I was,
    when my father and I, we came walking.
    We didn't have an automobile these times,
    nobody had an auto so we walked most of the time.
    And there was a demonstration by the SA, illegal SA,
    there in full uniform with torches.
    Well, all of us were afraid.
    They didn't do anything.
    I mean, we were just walking in, they marched there.
    They sang songs, Nazi songs, but we were afraid.
    I mean, I didn't know as a boy I was--
    what's going to happen.
    What's going to happen after 1938 comes later.
    So the Nazis killed Dollfuss and wanted to make a putsch
    and take over the government.
    That didn't materialize, they couldn't do it.
    The professor Schuschnigg took over
    and he became chancellor of Austria.
    And he started a new movement now called the Vaterlandische
    Front, which means the Patriotic Front, of which I
    became a member.
    Patriotic Front.
    I want to point out the difference between nationalism
    and patriotism.
    With patriotism, I agree 100%, you can be a very good patriot
    and it's a good feeling to be a patriot.
    But once you become a nationalist,
    you become violent.
    You become aggressive.
    So this is a big difference between nationalism
    and patriotism.
    Now the Patriotic Front I belonged to
    was fighting actively for a independent Austria,
    independent from Germany and France.
    In February 1938, Schuschnigg was
    called to Berchtesgaden by Hitler
    and called on the carpet.
    And it was really a very sad sight to hear that because--
    and he stood up to him.
    He scheduled a plebiscite for Austria on March 13 to vote.
    Are you for an independent Austria or not?
    Vote yes or no.
    And this was the death stroke for Hitler
    because he knew that the Austrians might,
    I didn't say they would, but they might.
    Now, I have to say something about the Austrian people too,
    because the Austrian people, and I cannot generalize it by no
    means, there were some very good Austrians, very good Austrians.
    And I can't say at this point what percentage
    were the bad ones, what percentage were the good ones.
    The fact is that the bad ones took over
    and the good ones disappeared.
    So on March 11 after Hitler had given an ultimatum
    to Schuschnigg.
    Schuschnigg resigned and he already
    had in the government upon Hitler's demands
    a man by the name of Seyss-Inquart
    who was made Chancellor of the Interior, which
    is the key post.
    He controlled the military, he controlled the police.
    On March 11 we were sitting in my uncle's apartment,
    having dinner with the radio on.
    Everybody was-- before that, I have
    to mention that we had demonstrations
    in Vienna of which I partook, pretty violent demonstrations
    against the Nazis.
    We were marching on the Karntner Strasse, which
    is the very elegant, the most elegant street in Vienna,
    purchasing and buying street for stores and so on.
    And on one side the Nazis marched, on the other side we--
    they felt the Patriotic Front-- and the Social Democrats
    joined us.
    They had the three arrows on the lapel.
    And it was pretty bloody.
    We bloodied the noses of the Nazis then.
    So this was another reason for Hitler
    to say that German blood is flowing.
    German blood, it was Austrian that--
    It was the Austrian Nazis who were bloodied, not the Germans.
    Maybe they had German instigators there,
    but was mostly Austrians.
    So Schuschnigg resigned on May 11,
    and we heard that on the radio.
    And his last words were "God save Austria."
    In this moment we all stood up.
    We knew that-- my mother was there my brother and I
    and then there was my uncle, my aunt his wife, their daughter.
    And we knew that we young men had to leave.
    That from one day to the next we were not sure about life.
    We were free to be shot or killed or aggressively attacked
    by anybody without any reason or rhyme.
    What will we do?
    Where will we go?
    And I come to a point now which probably I
    should say a little later, but I blame the rest of the world
    the same as Germany.
    The world was closed to us.
    No country would take us in.
    My mother had a good friend of hers
    who was a singer in Vienna.
    And her brother had left Vienna the '20s, '22, '23,
    and went to Panama.
    There was an idea came up that maybe we could go to Palestine.
    It wasn't Israel, it was Palestine.
    My brother and I could have gone, as hard as it
    seemed, but without my mother.
    My mother would have to go to England
    as an employee of a household.
    And we didn't want to split the family,
    so we decided against that.
    And then this friend of my mother's
    came in, Elza Kaufmann is her name.
    Was her name, she's not alive anymore.
    Excuse me.
    The idea came up that we could get help
    from him to go to Panama.
    So we got in touch with him and yes, he
    would have to put up a deposit.
    Minimum $50, $60 at the time.
    And there was a group of 26 people who took him up on that
    and he got that for 26 people.
    But there was no Panamanian consul in Vienna.
    We had the permits, but no visa.
    So one of the group of the 26 went to Hamburg
    where the nearest Panamanian consulate was,
    and he got the visa for all the 26 of us.
    So now we had our visa.
    And then we booked, then we booked
    on the Viglio, the ship Viglio out of Genoa
    in the month of September.
    But we didn't want to stay in Vienna one day longer than we
    had to because we never knew.
    The picture in Vienna became so grim.
    Now I have to paint the picture in Vienna after 1938
    because we Jews, like I said before, we were just free as--
    I mean, nobody really had any recourse to anything there.
    The minute they knew you were Jew,
    it doesn't matter whether you were killed
    or you were mistreated or you spat up on or whatever.
    Smart vignettes from that era.
    My cousin, I have a picture of him here.
    He was caught in the street in a roundup with Jews.
    He was given toothbrushes and he had
    to clean the streets or the jackboots of the SS.
    We had we had dinner at my uncle's one evening,
    it was my brother and I and there was my uncle
    his wife and his daughter.
    We sat down for dinner and all of a sudden
    there was a knock on the door, pretty loud and persistent.
    My uncle opened up, there were three SS out
    there with rifles and bayonets, jackboots and everything.
    Stormed into the apartment looking for God knows what?
    Money, jewels?
    They turned the whole apartment upside down.
    I went into the bedroom and everything was just
    left in shambles.
    My brother was so much younger than I.
    He Knew that my aunt had hidden her jewelry
    in an upholstered chair.
    And he was so afraid, he wanted to get rid of them.
    He said I'll show you where the jewelry are.
    He pulled them out, they grabbed and ran out
    and we never saw them again.
    We were lucky that nothing else happened.
    So actually, he could have saved us from worse things.
    But that just goes to show you, there
    was no recourse to do anything.
    My uncle lived in Molkereistrasse
    in Vienna, which was next to the Morzinplatz, which
    were a highly hotel, a huge hotel there.
    The hotel was the command center of the Gestapo.
    So you know where we were.
    These are things from which really
    is painful to talk about.
    I mean-- my father, I have to go back again
    to my father's early life, long before I was born.
    He was a good Austrian citizen.
    He was in officer in the Austrian-Hungarian army.
    He served at the Russian front.
    He was taken prisoner.
    He was sent to Krasnoyarsk, to Siberia.
    He wanted to go back to Austria, so he grew himself a beard.
    He spoke four languages, he'd learned himself Russian,
    escaped and got back to Austria.
    Just goes to show you, a patriot not a nationalist, patriot.
    This is what hurts.
    Part of my uncles, they were serving
    as officers in the army.
    One of them was severely wounded in Italy, in Isonzo.
    Others served on the Eastern Front.
    First World War, not second, of course.
    So the family, like I stated before,
    was patriotic Austrians, and this is what happened.
    Well coming back to 1938, when we decided to go to Panama.
    And my mother my brother and I we
    decided we want to leave Austria as soon as possible.
    Better a day ahead than a day too late.
    So where do we go to wait for the ship to leave in September?
    We had gotten back to Vienna in 1937.
    We had lived in Budapest, Hungary for two years,
    and we got back in October in 1937 to Vienna.
    So my mother thought that we could go back to Hungary,
    we still had a permit, and stay there until the ship leaves
    and then go to Italy.
    Now I want to--
    well I should not read the letter from Czechoslovakia
    do I?
    Go ahead.
    One of my uncles, my mother's brother, lived in Prague.
    And my mother first thought that maybe we could go to Prague
    and wait there.
    So she wrote him and he wrote back to her.
    No, I'm sorry.
    This letter is dated September.
    That is referring to our previous
    asking him to go to Czechoslovakia.
    This letter, both these letters reached us in Geneva
    shortly before the ship left.
    It's says, "Dear Vilma," that my mother's name.
    "We received your dear letter and with my best intentions
    I can't give you any advice.
    I'm sure that the political situation will remain quiet,
    but nobody can be sure.
    I would be very sorry--"
    This is before Czechoslovakia was taken.
    Czechoslovakia was still independent,
    but there were questions regarding the Sudetenland.
    The Germans wanted the Sudetenland,
    which was still not given to them
    but later, Czechoslovakia became also a victim.
    That's why it says, "I'm sure that the political situation
    will remain quiet, but nobody can be sure.
    I would be very sorry if we could pass up the opportunity
    to see each other.
    But I don't want to accept the moral responsibility for it.
    I can understand you wish that we should follow you."
    That is come with us to Panama.
    "I hope that it will be possible to visit you once,
    but I hope to be able to stay here for the rest of my days."
    And he did.
    He was killed.
    "I wrote to Lisy," another aunt of mine, "a few days
    ago and thought that she also was affected by the happenings.
    Today I received the letter from Julius," a very good friend
    of my parents, "and yesterday Ygaza Weiskopf,"
    who is family of ours, again, "brought personal greetings
    and report from you.
    Ana Klein's husband," friends, "was here yesterday.
    I was not home and promised to call again.
    I believe that they are going to Australia.
    I did everything I could regarding representations."
    That is, my mother wrote to him.
    If we go to Panama to start living there,
    we should get representations or become
    somehow active to earn some money
    because we didn't have any.
    "I would, however, prefer to see the boys," my brother and me,
    "doing other things and making a living through commerce.
    But I can't make a judgment from here.
    I see it very difficult to get representations
    for the boys, one at 16 the other 20."
    I was not 20 years old as that says.
    I was 18, I was not 20.
    Excuse me.
    These things like this should be shot out.
    OK.
    "They don't get representations at that age.
    Therefore, I turn it over in your name.
    The difficulty is that you have never worked in any business
    and therefore you don't have any references.
    Maybe when you are there it would be easier
    and that will always help.
    Meanwhile, I have written to various industries, glass,
    porcelain, and tableware.
    I went personally to the chamber of the glass industry in Prague
    and I shall make copies of 40 German and 20 Czechoslovakia
    circulars, which the secretary will send to all companies.
    I also wrote to engineer Latina of Cosmos of Olmitz, who
    manufacture all kinds of machines
    like meat grinders, et cetera.
    Besides I will go to the messe," trade fair,
    "and I will research about steel silverware.
    I would not start anything in manufactured clothing,
    these items are too heavy and you can start this
    once you're there.
    Even if I look at this pessimistically,
    and did everything I could, you also
    have to figure that with representations for overseas
    you will have to wait a long time for the commissions
    because of the time elapsed from the sale
    till the goods are delivered and paid for.
    It will be five to six months.
    Even if you are very busy now, I would
    like to ask you to write soon again embrace you and the boys
    in all my love."
    And then his wife added on, "Dearest Vilmachen, I
    hope that by now everything is all right.
    We can safely say that we are thinking
    about you continuously.
    Even if you can't decide to come here,
    I'm very sure that we shall see each other again.
    The world has become much smaller
    because of the big events.
    But maybe you will reconsider.
    I was very happy to have met with Klein,
    he's a very nice mensch.
    I'm still expecting a letter from you, Julius, regarding
    you and the boys.
    I'm very optimistic, and now we are waiting for important news
    from you.
    I kiss you and the boys with all my love."
    This was written on the 7th of September.
    No, I'm sorry.
    The ninth month is September isn't it?
    Yeah.
    The next one probably reached us in Panama
    already because this was written on 24th of September
    and we had left already by ship.
    Same brother, Arthur in Prague.
    His last letter.
    "Dearest Vilmachen, I'm so happy that you finally
    are before your great trip.
    I'm sure that everything will be all right over there.
    We would have liked to send you some money
    for the last few days, but unfortunately this
    is not possible.
    So far we are all right.
    Here we have a mobilization but everything
    is quiet and goes smoothly.
    I'm very sorry that we did not see you before your voyage.
    But you see that we had advised you correctly.
    Goldschmitz," that's Julius, "are in Prague
    and I hope to see them on Monday.
    They will be leaving for Hungary immediately.
    Vilmachen, I wish you and the boys
    the very best for the future, and hope that we shall see--
    see each other again in happier times than these.
    Good navigation.
    Many loving kisses from Uriella Auld."
    That was his wife.
    Now he writes, "Dear Vilma and boys,
    when I received your dear card from Genoa
    today, a big stone fell from my chest.
    Before anything I have to tell you
    that the Goldschmitzs arrived in Prague on 15 of September
    and were immediately arrested at the airport
    because they did not have the necessary papers for entry
    and to stay and they are still in detention.
    Julius was able to call me from the police station
    and they started immediately everything to get out.
    They're victims of a con gang who got 1,100 marks from them
    in Vienna, where it promised that they were supposed
    to be received in Prague by a lawyer who was supposed
    to arrange everything legally.
    The lawyer was there but was unable to do anything.
    So I had to get another one who promised me today
    that he received the word that they
    were to be released on Monday.
    Until now there was always a danger
    that they would be exposed to Hungary,
    but I was able to arrange that they would be
    taken to the Hungarian border.
    And not by uniformed guards, but by a detective
    in mufti at their cost.
    You cannot imagine how much work I had this week.
    I did nothing else from morning til night with the case.
    On top of this, I did not receive any money
    from my cousin Katya from Ivanovich
    and I had to pay everything myself.
    Yesterday I received--" Excuse me.
    "Yesterday I received 2000 kronen,
    but these are gone already.
    This case will cost a lot of money.
    You can't imagine how much they've suffered.
    Both of them are in different rooms.
    The building is quite modern, but this
    is the extradition station of the state
    and only prostitutes, homeless, and criminals are there.
    As you can see, the public there is not first class
    but there were also a number of acquaintances there,
    Yulia Diamond, and Brauer, a singer who came together
    with Hilda and is still there.
    I know from Goldschmitz that you went to Hungary and Irving,"
    that is us.
    And Irving, that's another brother of my mother in Vienna
    who was working for the Jewish Health Committee, the help
    committee, the Irving.
    "Irving wrote that you are gone from there already
    and that he was without any news from you.
    You can imagine that I was very worried about you, especially
    as I saw the suffering of the Goldschmitzs.
    I also cabeled to England and wrote by airmail
    if they could give them a visa, but I have not
    heard from there yet.
    I am very happy that you are in good health in Genoa
    with the boys.
    And wanted to send you by money order 50,000, no 50,
    of kronen, but because of yesterday's mobilization
    all money orders out the country were prohibited,
    and only with the permission of the National Bank
    would I be able to send something.
    But that would not have arrived in time.
    I will try to send you some international postage stamps."
    I put a question mark in there because there
    are no international postage stamps.
    I'm a stamp collector, I should know.
    "And if you are unable to convert them into
    money you could always use them for postage.
    Also I recommend that you go to the Jewish community in Genoa,
    they surely will give you some liras.
    I'm very sorry that I can't send you at least a little bit.
    On board the ship you have everything free
    but you will always need a few pennies extra.
    That you were unable to say goodbye to Arthur--"
    that's the brother in Yugoslavia.
    We had a brother in Yugoslavia, a brother in Czechoslovakia,
    a brother in Vienna.
    And I'll let you know what happened to each one of them
    later.
    "That you were unable to say goodbye to Arthur
    and me shows the tragic of today's times.
    But the main thing is that one is healthy
    and that you will have a better life in Panama.
    You did everything so efficiently, to be admired.
    And I don't know if I is a man, who
    has other connections and experiences,
    would have done as well.
    I'm really proud of you, Vilma, and I'm not
    worried about you and the boys in Panama in the future.
    Even with Panama so far away and with completely different
    living conditions, you will be able to manage.
    Please write to us immediately upon your arrival by air mail
    only.
    Otherwise, it will take too long.
    You will be able to get some representations
    and I will do everything once you are there.
    Until then the situation here will be cleared up
    but now you can't make any plans for the next half
    hour much less for tomorrow.
    The Czechs are an admirable people whom I have come to know
    and sympathize in those 19 years I've lived here.
    But what I have learned here during the last few days
    made me a glowing patriot for the country and its people.
    You cannot imagine with what discipline and order the people
    of Prague demonstrated for the liberty of this state.
    These demonstrations were not organized by any party
    but were the genuine expressions of a true plebiscite.
    These people will defend their country,
    these people will defend their country and their right
    to the last drop of blood if it comes
    to a war, which I don't expect.
    There were no incidents with the police.
    As we saw the people coming together
    from various directions, we stood at the window.
    A few good-natured people called out to us,
    Jews come with us into the streets it's also for you.
    Harry doesn't speak Czech and the worker of stepped
    on his foot.
    Harry turned around and the worker
    tapped him on the shoulder and excused himself.
    You were among brothers who all had the same pain, as we heard
    about the acceptance of the plan to turn the German territories
    over by Churchill."
    I put a question mark here because Churchill didn't do it.
    It was not Churchill, who was, he's in our time.
    Chamberlain.
    Chamberlain, it was Chamberlain.
    "Dear Vilma and boys, I embrace you in spirit on European soil
    and hope that you shall--
    hope that we shall keep--" I'm sorry.
    "I embrace you in spirit on European soil
    and hope that we shall meet again very soon
    somewhere in the world.
    The world today is not small anymore
    and therefore I won't say goodbye,
    I will always be with you--"
    The world today is not small anymore
    and therefore I won't say goodbye.
    I will always be with you in spirit and hope
    that you will write often.
    Send your letters always to one or the other,
    we will forward them.
    You don't have to worry about us we
    won't share the fate of the Goldschmitzs.
    And there should be a change, which I don't expect,
    we won't get lost.
    I kiss you all."
    We never saw Arthur, we never saw Vera,
    we never saw any of the family.
    They were sent to the concentration camps
    and perished.
    One of the daughters, Helga, escaped
    and was spared the fate of the parents and her sister.
    She joined the partisans and fought the Germans.
    After the war we received, not we
    but my uncle in New York, Irving,
    received a letter from her giving us
    the details of the fate of her parents her sister and herself.
    I wanted her to that letter and was unable to find it.
    I will keep on looking, if it comes to a second session I'll
    bring it with me because this letter is
    a document of the time.
    She became a communist, which is most natural having
    gone through these things.
    She had to have something to hold on to.
    So she became a communist.
    And as I heard she was still living
    and I haven't heard from her for a long, long time.
    Now to the fate of the other uncles
    I talked about in that letter.
    Uncle Irving, who used to work with the Jewish Help,
    Hilfes organization, the Helps organization in Vienna.
    He left and he went to New York where he passed on a few years
    afterwards, being ill.
    My other Uncle Arthur, from Zagreb and his wife and son,
    they left Yugoslavia and they went to Uruguay.
    He was an electrical engineer.
    He started a company in Uruguay, very successful,
    but they did move to New York also.
    And we had a family reunion in New York in 1948.
    My brother got married in New York in 1948 and both my mother
    and I came to the wedding.
    And the family was together after many, many years.
    The family that was able to save themselves.
    As far as the other uncle of mine,
    Yosef on my father's side, the one we had celebrated
    pesach with and had the Seder evenings at their home,
    he was--
    the business he had, he had a very prosperous business.
    And it was taken away from him.
    So he tried to turn it over to his confidante who
    was able to sign checks.
    He had an employee who was more than an employee, who
    was more of a partner, but he was still--
    so the Nazis took both of them and took him to court.
    And I have the court document also at home
    and I couldn't find that either.
    I mean, all these important documents I was unable to find.
    I looked all over.
    If I do find it I'll bring it.
    In that court document the outstanding feature
    which struck me terribly was the fact how it was done.
    Of course, there was absolutely no justice for any one of them.
    I mean, they want to take over the business, that's
    what they did.
    But how did they refer to my uncle?
    The judge himself addressed my uncle in the third person.
    He never said Mr. Vaskopf, his name was Vaskopf.
    He said the Jew Abraham Vaskopf.
    Another very painful episode.
    Both his wife and he--
    Oh, my grandmother was still alive before we
    left, little episodes in Vienna after 1938.
    My mother wanted to go for her for a walk to get out.
    She was an elderly lady.
    So they went to a park and sat on a bench.
    Along came a few Hitler Youth and said this bench is not
    for Jews get up you Jews.
    Had to get up, an old lady.
    I mean these are little episodes in Vienna.
    You couldn't do anything but follow
    what they said, if you don't want
    to get into bigger trouble.
    Because if not, they go to the next man he takes you in
    and God knows what happens.
    Both my grandmother, another daughter of hers,
    sister of my father, he and my Uncle Yosef,
    they also disappeared.
    Actually, I saw their record.
    I have a friend here in San Francisco who
    has a book of the Austrian Jews who were sent to extermination
    camps and both of their names appear in there
    with the dates and everything.
    This is documented.
    On my Czechoslovakian side I didn't know.
    I wish I would know what happened, really.
    I mean, I could stand it now I guess
    to know what happened to my uncle
    and aunt and their daughter.
    And anybody who sees this film the name was Rena.
    That is, Vera Rena, she was Vera Rena.
    He was Max Rena and the daughter was Leah, Leah Rena.
    And if anybody can find out what happened to them,
    I know they're not here anymore, but if you can find out
    I'd appreciate it.
    I would really need for my own soul.
    Now, what happened to us?
    I went to school in Vienna and at the time
    the Nazis came I was already graduated from school.
    I was attending textile academy.
    Because everyone of my part of my family
    was in the textile business.
    So I was supposed to learn the textile trade.
    Not the trade, but the manufacturing end of it.
    So I went to textile academy.
    And of course, after the Nazis came,
    one day I tried to get into the academy.
    There were uniformed boys standing there
    and the men standing there and they said are you Jewish?
    I said yes.
    You can't go in anymore.
    So I didn't attend school anymore, didn't finish.
    I was a boy scout in Vienna.
    And one of my very good friends was my troop leader.
    We became very close friends as a matter of fact.
    In 1938 he was able to live with his brother Paul.
    His name was Carlo, Carlo Canetti.
    And he was able to get to Greece, escaped to Greece.
    But of course, Greece during those years
    was a country independent.
    But during the war years, first Italians took it over
    and then the Italians were suffering defeat after defeat.
    So the Germans came in and took that over
    and they finished them off.
    But both of them went on to the partisans too
    and they were also shot.
    I mean, they were--
    I have his last letter here from him.
    You want me to read it?
    Would you?
    Yes.
    This was dated August 5th, 1940.
    It's a very long letter.
    Oh no, that's my wife's transcription.
    I had to translate it into English.
    It says, "Dear Hetti," now Hetti was my boyscout name
    and it might sound like a girl's name,
    but we had names for ourselves.
    "I received your dear letter sometime ago
    and would like to take the time to inform you about everything.
    Even if I don't have your letter at hand
    I will try to answer all your questions at the end of mine.
    First to you.
    I was very glad to hear from you after a long time
    and excused this because we are very busy and tired.
    But you wrote anyway, and this is most important,
    not to lose the contact with one another.
    I am in contact with Kurt Coma," that's
    my cousin they have pictures of him here.
    "In every letter I had asked about you,
    but was unable to get some information.
    It's interesting that you also write about Booby."
    Booby was his name, his boyscout name.
    "Don't you see each other?
    Now there are two cousins in far away countries
    and one doesn't know about the other.
    Well, let's leave this point.
    I was very happy to have heard that your dear mother had
    married again and you have now a father whom you like.
    Congratulations.
    How do you converse with your father?
    In Spanish?
    In all cases, you have a home again and this is worth a lot.
    We others roam in the wide world, rent furnished rooms,
    move in and out but have not found a home yet.
    This will probably be the case until we marry, but until then.
    As you can see I'm not writing with ink
    and this is because now I am," tiddles, "at home.
    By the way today is September the first, one year of war."
    It was already war.
    "And your letter's still here.
    But today I will finish it because it is Sunday
    and it is time that you get my answer.
    You may wonder that I'm writing from Athens
    since I had been in Thessaloniki for such a long time.
    It is true that I went to Thessaloniki from Vienna
    through Belgrade where we made a living by giving classes
    of commercial correspondence.
    We lived quite a ways from the center
    of the city almost in a rural area
    with the family of a teacher where we
    had two small separated rooms.
    Slowly we started to learn the language.
    Slowly we found work and hope that
    finally to be rid of some of our troubles
    before the war destroyed all our hopes and took our jobs.
    So it was for 18 months until February.
    We barely made a living.
    Therefore,
    And because of other reasons I went
    to Athens, the beautiful capital of Greece.
    After one month my brother Paul came also.
    We worked in various offices and made pretty good money,
    but the world politics again took a hand in our lives.
    The attack on Belgium, Holland, and France began.
    And because of the connected slowdown in the industries,
    we lost our jobs again.
    I am now a salesman in a ladies dress store
    where I make very little money, but I have also an office
    where I write the correspondence for foreign countries
    and also give lessons in German.
    Paoli, the brother, who is presently
    quite ill he had a flu with infected sinuses and pain
    in the kidney.
    He is getting better slowly.
    He's continuously asking me to bring him a piece of cake
    from the store.
    He was also fired and makes very little presently,
    which makes our present condition not to be envied.
    But in one of our old scout songs it says--"
    I have it here in German and English,
    you want me to read it in German too?
    Yes.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    Translated it means if everything goes its own way
    a true man stays always on top.
    He travels through the wide world
    no matter how the die rolls.
    We had sung that song many times in our group.
    I never knew how this would apply to this situation,
    you know?
    "What else shall I write to you?
    During the winter I went skiing, also from Thessaloniki
    and during the summer I also did some sports.
    We don't have many acquaintances,
    we left most of them in Thessaloniki
    and we have not been there too long.
    Our Father, who lives in Constantinople,
    was with us in Athens for the Easter holidays
    when we spent some 14 beautiful days together.
    He was until now a business manufacturing
    shoe laces and made all he needed to make a living.
    Now three weeks ago his partner was drafted in the army
    and had collected all monies before him.
    Now my father is exactly where he was two years ago
    and he has to start all over again, like us.
    Now I have given you everything about us
    and want to inform you about our people as far as I know."
    Now he gives us a list of members of our troop,
    where they are.
    "Norm, he was in Belgium and came
    to New York with his family from where
    they were shipped by the committee
    to Los Angeles I don't have any letters from him.
    Edith, his sister, she stayed in New York
    with Otto Schoenwalder.
    Kurt Reiser lives with Richie in New York, both employed
    and make a living.
    Streisel is a pastry chef in New York hotel
    and makes more than the rest of them.
    There are also a number of others
    in New York such as Kit, Selinksi, Marketizelt, et
    cetera.
    Peter Lilienfeld is in Vancouver, Canada
    but does not write for a month.
    Elrich Francos lives with his family in Chicago.
    He does well, he is studying.
    Elrich Neuberger was with his brother in Uruguay,
    first doorman in a hotel, then entrepreneur,
    and was cheated by a con man, then again doorman.
    He is in Buenos Aires now for some time.
    Veneto, he was a very good friend of mine,
    "he was in Utrecht, employed by the refugee committee
    and wanted to go to Brazil.
    I don't have any more news from him.
    Levi was in Paris and Constantinople.
    He wants to become a musician.
    Walter Maier is in Palenstine, from whom
    I don't have any news.
    Dick and Penhauler are in England,
    but I am without any news.
    With this I'm closing my report and hope to hear from you soon.
    Your friend, Carlo.
    "PS, many greetings to your parents,
    Herbert," that's my brother, Herbert, "and Booby."
    That's my cousin, Kurt Coma.
    "I'm still collecting stamps and would like
    to ask you to send me new ones.
    If you should have other interests I shall reciprocate.
    I also include an old picture of our scout group."
    I have that picture here.
    And I think you can take, a little later on,
    you will take a picture of it.
    Now, this is another destiny which was fulfilled in Greece.
    He was, joined the partisans, was captured, and shot.
    Carlo?
    Both.
    Carlo and Paul.
    Was he Jewish?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes, both of them.
    He was Sephardic too, actually.
    Carlo Canetti is a Sephardic.
    He came from Greece.
    I think it was Greece he came from.
    But those people came from Spain, Greece, and Holland.
    Those are the Sephardic type Jews.
    Not the Oriental, but the Sephardic.
    OK.
    This is all what happened to us before we actually left Europe.
    Now we came to Hungary.
    And we were not given the permission to stay there.
    We had to leave.
    In the year 1938 the system of transit
    was not what it is today.
    There were no planes you could hop on and fly over a country
    and get in another country.
    You had to go by train.
    Now, what we didn't think about was that Hungary--
    we had to go to Italy to board the ship.
    What we didn't think about was the fact
    that Hungary doesn't have a border with Italy.
    So we had to go to Italy either through Austria
    or through Yugoslavia.
    To go through Austria was impossible.
    First of all, the exit for Austria
    was not as easy as everybody thought.
    First of all, both my brother and I
    had to show the Austrian authorities
    that we were full-blooded Jews, not half Jews, not quarter
    Jews, not 3/4 Jews, 100% Jews.
    Both my parents, Jewish.
    We had to show that, otherwise they would never let us leave.
    Because we would, at that point in time,
    there was still military service for half Jews,
    or 3/4 or half or quarter Jews.
    You see, the divisions they put us Jews in was unbelievable.
    They didn't say that you're Jewish.
    How much percentage are you Jewish?
    How far back to your Jewish parents go?
    I had to bring it, show they authorities
    that I am 100%, 100% Jew.
    Which I did.
    That's why we were allowed to leave.
    Now leaving, we had to sign a paper
    that we shall never return to Austria, which we gladly did.
    We didn't want to go back to Austria.
    We didn't want to.
    Let them have their own problems, I didn't want them.
    So what do we do?
    We were in Hungary.
    We had to go to Italy.
    So we went to the Yugoslavian consulate.
    And I have a paper here, which was never
    filled out to get a transit visa, which we were not given.
    We weren't given a transit visa.
    But the Yugoslavian consul, or the diplomat
    who was in Budapest at the time, was a big-hearted fellow.
    He said, I tell you what you do, we put you on a train
    here in Budapest that goes to Italy through Yugoslavia.
    You don't have a transit visa.
    When we get to the border, we put you in a car.
    We seal the car so you, heaven forbid, escape.
    And when you get to the Italian border we open that seal and--
    imagine, being driven to Italy like cattle.
    Idiots.
    So we did take that up and we went from Budapest
    through Yugoslavia to Genoa, no, to Milan.
    We stayed in Milan a few weeks.
    Because we could have gone to Genoa too
    but we wanted to, since we were there, I knew Milan,
    we had been to Milan already.
    But we wanted to get to know it a little better.
    It was a little freer country already.
    We were a little bit, feeling a little bit more
    on top of things, not being under the threat of death
    or worse, you know?
    So we stayed in Milan for a few weeks and then we went to Genoa
    and stayed in Genoa another couple of weeks
    before the ship was supposed to leave.
    Now all the 26 people who came on that transport,
    they were all meeting in Genoa and we boarded the Vigilio.
    I forget the exact date, it was in September
    but I forget the exact date.
    Now, an interesting sideline, which might be funny
    and might be throwing a little bit of humor
    in the whole thing, if there's such a thing possible.
    My mother was always an entrepreneur.
    She wanted to-- what can we do in Panama?
    So the brother of Elza Kaufman wrote back.
    He says here in Panama we don't have any geese.
    Maybe you can bring some geese over here and start a geese
    colony or start something new?
    People would like to have geese here.
    So sure enough, my mother bought a male goose whatever
    they're called, gander?
    Gander.
    Then she bought some female geese
    and they were loaded on the ship together with our belongings,
    which we had in crates.
    The funny part I have to go ahead now
    and we unloaded the stuff in Cristobal in Panama already,
    when we got to Cristobal and I have to go ahead.
    When we got to Cristobal, we were standing at the pier
    and our stuff was unloaded with the wrench, with the thing.
    And crate after crate came down.
    Some people standing next to us, and they
    were saying what happened?
    What are these?
    And then all of a sudden the geese up there
    they started snattering and yattering and crying.
    And he said that must be a film company.
    I said, no way.
    Anyway this is a funny joke in the set up.
    So in September we did leave the European continent
    on the Vigilio.
    The Spanish Civil War was still raging.
    I mean, it just goes to show you that things are not
    as easy as they are now.
    And who thinks about these things?
    So the Vigilio was afraid to travel
    with lights on because of submarines,
    of German or Spanish submarines, being shot at or something,
    you know?
    So we turned the lights out and we, in the darkness,
    we went through the Mediterranean.
    Finally we hit-- no, we landed in Marseilles,
    in the French port of Marseilles.
    That was one landing we made.
    And then from Marseilles we went through the dark,
    through the Mediterranean, through the Straits
    of Gibraltar.
    And when we finally hit open ocean, the Atlantic,
    our next stop was the Canary Islands.
    And from there we went across the Atlantic, we landed.
    The next stop, first stop in the Americas
    was in La Guaira, which is Venezuela.
    And then we went to Cristobal and then we unloaded our geese.
    Now we are in Panama.
    Maybe you have some question now before I go into Panama
    because I think now I demonstrated,
    at least to the best of my ability,
    I'm sure there are things I did forget and not
    bring up, the situation in Europe and the way we left
    and what happened then.
    So maybe?
    OK, yeah I'd like to go all the way back to your childhood
    and talk in more detail about what your everyday life was
    like in Vienna.
    As far back as you can remember, what your relationship
    with your family was.
    Who actually was living in your house
    with you, your father, your mother, and your brother?
    We had, like I said, our family was very well-off.
    We had a huge apartment.
    In Europe people don't have their own homes
    like the American dream here.
    I have my own home now.
    I joined the American dream here.
    But in Europe nobody had their own homes
    except very wealthy people.
    My grandparents had a villa in a very well district,
    but we didn't.
    I mean, we were not that wealthy yet.
    We were never supposed to, and now [INAUDIBLE] anyway.
    No, we had a very, very large apartment, my mother,
    my father, my brother and I. We had a nanny, who
    took care of my brother and myself,
    and we had a cook, a young lady who did the cooking for us.
    Oh, that brings me to a very interesting point.
    Life in Vienna under the Nazis, with the Nazis, OK?
    We had the whole floor of a huge house as the apartment.
    To the back was a smaller apartment.
    And that apartment was inhabited by a couple.
    And that couple, both of them were Nazis, very illegal Nazis,
    very, very fervent Nazis.
    Very, very fervent Nazis.
    And our cook, she didn't sleep in our apartment
    but she had a small room in theirs.
    And he was a bad man.
    He was really bad, in every respect.
    He tried to rape her.
    And there was a big argument between my father and him.
    Of course, my father was always the Jew then.
    He was right and my father was wrong, of course.
    In 19-- I didn't want to go to Vienna ever,
    but I wanted to visit the grave of my father.
    He's buried in Szekesfehervar in Hungary.
    And I had my mother's ashes with us.
    No, that was the second trip.
    The first trip I went to Vienna, to Budapest,
    and I went to my old, to the house we lived in,
    and I went up to my apartment.
    It was closed.
    Then I knocked on the door of where the ex-Nazis lived.
    And nobody came, and I knocked again,
    and nobody came, and I again.
    And then finally a voice behind the door said, who is it?
    In German, of course.
    And I said, I told her my name, under which she knew me then.
    My name was Bushy, Bushy.
    I was called Bushy by everybody.
    And she said, oh my God, Bushy's home.
    I said Bushy's home?
    Anyway, we went in.
    And my daughter was with us.
    My wife, my daughter, and I went in there.
    And I broke down there, there I was completely,
    I mean, I really broke down.
    She told me about the Jews who jumped from the sixth floor
    to their death.
    They didn't want to be taken.
    And she spoke in such a everyday tone.
    These things happen every day, you know?
    I asked her about her husband, he was dead.
    I didn't even ask her how he died, I didn't care.
    I mean he's--
    But just goes to show you how old things sometimes
    work out and bring a different picture into focus.
    I have a completely different mind of the whole thing.
    I'm sure she's not alive anymore either.
    How my life was there?
    Well, my brother, my parents, and I, like I said,
    we had the nanny, Lola, who was with us for many, many years
    until the time we went to Budapest, which was 1935.
    She was with us.
    And we loved her.
    We love to just like a parent.
    Elderly lady, very, very nice.
    She was Catholic.
    Very nice, I mean, she really loved us too.
    See, this is the contradiction in Austria.
    You have the Austrians whose antisemitism is furthered
    by the Catholic church.
    This is the reason, the main reason in Austria,
    the Catholic church.
    The one who instigates, who tell the people that we Jews
    are Christ murderers.
    I was told to my face, I told him I wasn't even there.
    I was a kid.
    I wasn't even there.
    But this is the contradiction in the whole thing.
    And then there are so many nice people there,
    good people there.
    So I hate to generalize and say every German
    or, like the Nazis did to us, all the Jews, you know?
    All the Jews, there's some good Jews
    and there's some bad Jews, right?
    Now life in Vienna, like I said, we were secular Jews.
    We were not very religious.
    We knew about religion.
    We went to visit my grandmother for the holidays, Rosh
    ha-Chanah, Yom Kippur.
    We went to shul, we went to Seder
    and we learned our Hebrew and [SPEAKS YIDDISH] we all said.
    But we were Austrians.
    Now, let me tell you, this is the change
    that was brought in me, the Holocaust, what it did to me,
    it brought out a conscious Jew in me.
    I came to Panama and I was [SPEAKS YIDDISH]
    I don't know whether you speak Yiddish
    or not, [SPEAKS YIDDISH].
    But I didn't know what was what until I joined up
    with all of the other Jews from all over the world.
    And we had mostly Eastern European Jews,
    they were the Yiddishkeit, the menschkeit.
    And I became one of them.
    I learned Yiddish, I learned Yiddish.
    I loved it.
    Yiddish was for me the heymishkeit, the shtetlkeit,
    which I never knew in Vienna.
    So at this point here, this makes it so much more painful
    for me to talk about this sort of thing
    because there's a certain guiltiness, that we
    didn't have that.
    And it was not because we didn't want it, wasn't given to us.
    But we became part of it after what was done to us.
    Our life in Vienna, very, very protected.
    We went to school.
    We went to all kinds of sports, tennis, swimming, fencing,
    horseback riding.
    I mean, it was just the life of Riley, right?
    Life of Riley.
    And nobody had any worries except when
    we went on the street and we saw the Nazis.
    We read about the Nazis and we read
    about the Germans electing Hitler, not electing Hitler,
    rather Hitler coming to power by force, you know?
    All of these things disturbed us,
    but then we closed the door behind us and we were home
    and we forgot about that.
    We went to the--
    of course, being in Vienna, we went to the opera.
    I'm deeply involved in music even here, music, opera,
    theater, stage, painting.
    My father, our father took both my brother and myself
    every Sunday to a museum.
    We had the most gorgeous museums in Vienna, the art,
    the most famous art in the world.
    The Museum of Natural History in New York
    is nothing compared to what they have in Vienna.
    I went to New York into that museum.
    I even went to the--
    but the only thing in Washington, the Smithsonian,
    is bigger.
    But believe me it's done without taste.
    The Smithsonian is everything thrown together
    without any rhyme or reason.
    Whereas in Vienna it has a little bit more.
    The culture, European culture is there.
    It always was there, is there, but it is tainted.
    It is tainted by this anti-everything.
    Except myself, I'm not anti myself.
    But they are anti everything else.
    They're anti-foreigners, they're anti-Jews, of course,
    and anti this and anti that.
    But everything myself, I'm not anti myeself.
    But the cultures that you talk to in Austria,
    and he may be the most charming fellow, he's talking
    and he's charming.
    He has a charm.
    I know it because I had it, they tell me I've had it.
    I don't know maybe I did, I don't know.
    Again, one of those assimilation things.
    And the-- life in Vienna like I said, protected, well educated.
    And torn out of this milieu if you
    will, by force into a life in Panama,
    which you can't even compare to anything.
    Because you don't-- have any of you been to Panama?
    No.
    Panama is completely, it's a 180 degree turn around.
    Not only the climate, I'm not even talking about the climate,
    you get assimilated, acclimatized.
    The lifestyle, the language, I had
    to learn two languages at the same time, English and Spanish.
    So I had to learn that.
    I had to get used to the life there, to the people there,
    to the idiosyncrasy of these people.
    And I did, I lived there for 21 years.
    When I came to, in '59, we came to the United States.
    Ever since we have lived here.
    But Panama, I will never have a bad word for it.
    Because the people of Panama took us in.
    The people of Panama were good to us.
    We made a living.
    We made a very good living.
    We made a standard there which according to us
    here might not be what we expect, what we'd like to have,
    but over there it was.
    And especially coming out of the cesspool of Europe,
    it was really fantastic to come to Panama.
    Well we went to Budapest in 1935.
    Budapest, the whole life just continued like this.
    We did everything.
    I had to work too, by the way.
    It was not everything planned, no work.
    I went to school, I studied, and I had
    to work in my father's store.
    As a matter of fact, in my uncle's store too.
    Not a store, was not a store.
    It was a wholesale huge place.
    I mean it was.
    They sold wholesale only.
    And my father, of course, was manufacturing still.
    So it was a really big operation.
    That's as much as I can say about our life.
    Did you have, when you were a young child,
    did you have a lot of mostly Gentile friends?
    Mostly Jewish friends?
    A mix?
    We had mixed, we had mixed.
    Probably with the Jewish friends we
    were closer, a little bit closer.
    But the group I have here is all Jews, we were all Jewish.
    We were much closer.
    But we had Gentiles too, We had Gentiles.
    This is why I say, the assimilation effect there.
    But the closer relationship was always with Jews.
    Much closer than with Gentiles.
    As a matter of fact, my brother had his best friend,
    this was exceptional, he was not a Jew.
    He was a half Jew, that's what, he was half Jew.
    Here we are, either mother or father, you know?
    But he was only half Jew, but he was his best friend.
    In my group we had the, boy scout troop was almost 95%
    Jewish.
    And in my school the friends I assimilated with--
    we were subject--
    I had to by force because the others were on the other side.
    We had this discrimination from the professors already.
    So they looked upon us in a different way
    and I looked upon them in a different way.
    Maybe not knowingly, not willingly, but it was there.
    So the closeness of friends was always more between Jews.
    Did you notice a change as you got
    older and Hitler came to power, did
    you notice a change in attitude of the Gentile people
    that you know towards you?
    Or was it always?
    No, I never noticed a change of the Gentiles toward me.
    As a matter of fact, it was an old joke going around
    in Vienna.
    That a Jew was a good friend with a Gentile, you know?
    And the Gentile said when he was talking to somebody else,
    he says oh, my best friend is a Jew.
    I mean it was that type of situation.
    He always treated me right, even those Nazis next door,
    even those Nazis next door.
    Knowing we were Jewish, and I knowing that there were Nazis.
    It was not a close relationship, by no means,
    but when we talked to each other, we talked to each other
    as human beings.
    We were not looking down upon him,
    he was not looking down upon us.
    So no, I did not notice any change of the Gentile people
    I knew.
    After Hitler, of course after 1938, yes, after 1938, yes.
    After Hitler came to Austria, that was a different story.
    I'm talking about 1933 to '38.
    But 1938, after the Nazis were in power,
    then you were really exposed and you never
    knew what's going to happen.
    It's happened in a lot of cases I know.
    I told you about those demonstrations I
    was involved in 1938 in March.
    We had the red, white, red band here,
    which was the Patriotic Front and the Social Democrats
    had the three arrows here, and on the other side
    where the Nazis with the illegal NSDAP emblem, which
    was the Nazi party emblem.
    On the 11th and 12th it was like this.
    On the 13th, a big majority of the people who had red, white,
    red and the three arrows here turned it around
    and in the back of the lapel they had the NSDAP,
    they were already illegals.
    Not all of them, I don't say all of them, but a lot of them.
    They were illegals.
    You never know who you talk to.
    You said that when you read about Hitler, when
    he came to power in 1933, you were about 14 then.
    Yeah.
    And you weren't that worried, it was distant.
    When did it feel threatening to you?
    Well in 19-- when Dollfuss was murdered
    and we saw the troop movements of the Italians on the border.
    And they were trying to take over Austria,
    then it became more clearer to us that there was a danger.
    But the danger became more and more prevalent
    as the years went by until 1937, 1938.
    Even 1937 was not that bad because we did, in fact, go
    back to Vienna from Budapest.
    Otherwise we wouldn't have gone to Vienna.
    And we were still thinking it's all right.
    But 1938, it started January, February, and then, of course,
    came March.
    So this is when it became really urgent.
    And of course, 13th of March, it was the breaking point.
    Even earlier than that, did you know
    of any people whose belongings were being confiscated?
    No, not in Austria.
    Any people that--
    No, not in Austria.
    When were you barred from school?
    After 1938, after March 1938, when the Nazis were already
    there.
    I wanted to know more about the demonstrations
    that you were involved in.
    How did you get involved in them?
    Who organized them?
    The parties.
    The Patriotic Front, which was the dominant party
    at this point.
    You see in Austria, like I said before, there were the Social
    Democrats, which had a militant organization called
    the Schutzbund.
    Then there was the Heimatschutz, which was
    the fascist-type organization.
    It was not really very antisemitic at all.
    And what they wore is the feather
    of a cock on their head, so we called them Hahnenschwanzler.
    Hahnenschwanzler is the cock feather,
    the feather of a cock of the--
    tail feather of a cock.
    And no.
    And then the Patriotic Front started relatively late.
    It was more or less a roof organization
    of the Social Democrats, the Schutzbund,
    and the Haimatschutz.
    And to unite the people, because the Social Democrats
    were really running to ground, into being nothing by Dollfuss.
    He shot and cannoned them in.
    So they were really persecuted and they were really made
    illegal, as far as that goes.
    But then Schuschnigg wanted them back again
    because they were his help to get a front, a united
    front against Germany.
    So he called them in and then he formulated the Patriotic Front.
    And this party then started organizing the demonstrations.
    We all heard on the radio demonstrations going on.
    We were in our prime year for these things.
    So what happens?
    We will kill ourselves a few Nazis, you know?
    Can you describe a demonstration?
    Give me some details, what was it like, what went on?
    Yes, you lose your identity.
    In a demonstration, you lose your identity.
    You become part of it, of a mass.
    I don't want to be in it again, ever.
    Because you lose, you can't think your own thoughts
    anymore.
    You become part of a huge mass and this
    is what happened to the Nazis, the same thing,
    in Germany, same thing.
    It's, how shall I describe it?
    It's a well, I described it best.
    You lose your identity.
    You become part of the mass.
    And what the mass shouts for and growls for,
    this is what you do, whether it's right or wrong,
    whether you think it's good or not,
    but you're always there to do it with them.
    I don't want to do it again.
    I don't think in the United States
    people would do it either.
    I don't think so.
    Explain that more, what do you mean?
    Yes, the people here in the United States
    are of a completely different breed than Europeans.
    You don't have this.
    You think a little bit more.
    Before you do something, you rationalize more.
    Maybe we rationalized too, but then we
    became, under pressure, we became a mass.
    We were under threat of being run over by Germany, OK?
    We wanted to defend our country, Austria,
    and wanted it to remain independent,
    which was our main goal.
    This is what my uncle writes hear, about the Czechs,
    remember that in the letter?
    Same thing.
    Very well-organized, and very patriotic,
    and they would give their last drop of blood
    for the freedom of the country.
    He writes the same thing here.
    It's the same thing.
    And here the United States, fortunately, you
    have never been under this type of pressure,
    under this, in these circumstances.
    You have never been in these circumstances, fortunately.
    So even when you demonstrated it was as an Austrian Patriot
    not as a Jew.
    Oh yes, no, Austrian Patriot.
    This is what I said.
    I became a Jew in Panama.
    Well I know it was Jew always, but I became a Yiddish boy,
    a Yiddish mensch in Panama.
    Can you describe any other antisemitic things
    that you remember as you were growing up,
    that sort of precursors to what happened?
    Well, I told you about the school
    when the professor got up and he singled me
    out trying to imitate Yiddish.
    And the whole class howled, of course,
    because he pointed me out as a Jew, you know?
    And the whole class howled except the Jewish, few Jews
    we had there, probably, other Jewish.
    Yes, yes of course.
    This picture you saw of the summer camp I went to,
    I was much younger then.
    What year was that?
    Anyway, we'll get to that a little later.
    I was maybe 14, 15.
    I always had curly hair.
    My hair was standing up, maybe too much.
    My wife says still my parents would have cut it.
    Made it look better.
    But I didn't and they didn't and I looked the way I did,
    I didn't care.
    And the name they gave me in that camp
    was not anything connected with my hair,
    it was a name connected with my religion.
    They called me the Reserve Moses,
    referring to the Michelangelo Moses who had
    his hair in horns, of course.
    So this is another sign, not ill-meant.
    It wasn't meant ill.
    It was meant in a funny, in a good-humored way,
    but still the Jew was in there.
    So it's part of the upbringing of theirs.
    The Jew is the one who stands out.
    The Jew is the one who can be ridiculed.
    I'm talking about still the times when it's not 1938 yet.
    It's talking about the time when it's still Austria.
    And Austria was-- and again, I point out
    that the I blame the Catholic church in Vienna,
    in Austria very much for that.
    The head of the church, actually, during the Hitler
    time was a Cardinal Innitzer, and he sanctioned the Nazis.
    And he didn't officially sanctioned
    the concentration camps and the killings,
    but he went along with the Nazis.
    And so did the Vatican for that matter.
    Vatican didn't do much about it either.
    I mean, not that they openly did it,
    but they didn't do anything against it.
    But for that, coming back, I blame the whole world,
    because neither the United States, nor England, no country
    in the world would take us in.
    As a matter of fact, they sent shiploads back to Germany
    to be killed.
    Cuba did it, the United States did it.
    So we were really alone, really alone.
    But this brought us closer, all of us,
    the Jewish colony in Panama.
    Of course, I can only talk Panama, I was there,
    was so much closer because of that.
    We received ships after the war from Shanghai.
    And there were, I remember one ship specifically,
    left Shanghai with old and sick and infirm people
    and they went through the canal and landed in Cristobal.
    We lived in Panama City on the other side,
    on the Pacific side.
    So we loaded trucks and cars and everything
    with blankets and food and everything
    and went over to the other side.
    And we went aboard the ship and we alleviated
    the suffering of those people.
    This was because of what happened to us,
    the cohesion of the people was affected.
    And this is what was needed.
    And this is why the state of Israel
    exists between you and me.
    This is why the state of Israel exists.
    I want you to talk more even about when
    the change did take place.
    1938 came and then, as you said, the changes
    started taking place.
    Describe what that was like.
    While you were still in Vienna.
    Well, in 1938, like I said, March 13 was the deadline.
    Next day we saw German troops on the street.
    Our first thought was we had to leave as soon as possible.
    I mean, there was no way for us to stay
    one day longer than we had to.
    First we were looking for a country
    to go to and then set in motion all the necessary steps
    to do that.
    But of course, this was not 24 hours a day.
    We had other-- we had meetings, this group.
    I have a picture here of.
    This is interesting.
    We met, all Jews by the way, in a house
    maybe on the sixth or seventh floor with windows
    out to the street.
    And it was the day when Hitler was
    received in Vienna, when he was driving
    in his open car in Vienna.
    And he was passing underneath the window.
    And I said if I have a flower pot that
    can drop it on his head, maybe we all get killed, probably.
    Maybe I kill him too.
    It would have saved something, you know?
    But I didn't do it.
    Nobody did it.
    We didn't have flower pots, maybe.
    On the other hand, I don't think we would have dared.
    I don't think we would have dared.
    We were scared.
    We were scared.
    Really scared.
    Tell me even in more detail, if you
    can, what were the things that happened that you saw,
    that you heard about, that made you scared,
    that made you realize?
    Well, the fact that I've seen them,
    Jews rounded up on the street, pulled by their beards
    if they had beards.
    And made to clean in the streets with toothbrushes,
    clean the boots.
    Of course there were no more-- in the beginning, in Germany,
    they had those painting of the swastikas and "Jude"
    on the storefronts.
    That wasn't necessary then anymore because they
    were already in charge.
    I left before the Kristallnacht, I left before.
    I wasn't there when they broke the windows in the synagogues,
    burned the city synagogues, I wasn't there anymore.
    That was in November and I left in September.
    So I wasn't there, so I couldn't say.
    What made me scared is the plain fact
    that the street was filled with brown and black uniforms.
    The street was full with youngsters in the Hitler Youth
    uniforms.
    The fact that everybody was in the street cursing the Jews
    and calling Jews to not to kill, but to do something,
    and to take away, you know?
    Like when I told you about my uncle,
    when they broke into the house and made a shambles out of it.
    I mean, this was, was that not enough to be scared?
    I was 18 years old and I didn't have a gun and the bayonet.
    They had it.
    And they didn't have any permit to come in anyway.
    I mean, you were completely without any rights.
    You didn't have any rights.
    You were Jews, so you were Jews.
    And as Jews you were set upon.
    Isn't that enough to be scared?
    You didn't need many more examples of that.
    My cousin was caught on the street.
    I wasn't caught in the street, never I mean,
    I never had to shine the shoes.
    Actually, the Viennese are funny people, funny people.
    I stood in line for my passport I had to get--
    not for my passport, for exit visa, for my exit visa.
    And there was a long line of Jews standing there
    and one of those Viennese fellows came by
    and he looked at me and says, well why don't you
    go where the other people stand, those are for Jews.
    I said, I'm a Jew.
    He left, he didn't say anything anymore, you know?
    But he pulled me out from these other people said,
    you go over there, you don't belong here, these are Jews.
    This is scary too.
    Why, like in this country here when
    you had the Black and the white population.
    You had Blacks go to the back of the bus
    or couldn't go into there.
    In Panama, the Panama Canal zone, up to late up to 1940
    or '41, '40 I think it was, they had the gold and silver roll.
    The gold roll was for the whites and the silver roll,
    it was for the Blacks.
    They get paid the same wages, not the same wages,
    but the same money, the same currency.
    But one had to stand here in line for his money
    and the other had to stand here in line, you know?
    It's not much better here or there.
    It used to be here.
    Was your father able to work up until the time you left?
    My father died in Budapest.
    He passed away, he died in Budapest.
    We left Vienna in 1935 and he died in 1937 in Budapest.
    He never came back to Vienna, we buried him there,
    and then my mother my brother and I came back to Vienna.
    Yes he was-- he never saw the Nazis.
    He never lived under the Nazis.
    He was gone already when the Nazis came.
    But of course, again, we are talking about Hungary.
    Hungary is also antisemitic country, strongly so.
    For that matter Poland, Romania, Lithuania.
    You talk about these Eastern European countries,
    they're not much better.
    And if you go back and read some books,
    the Germans had help in the concentration camps
    from Ukrainians and from all of these people
    here, antisemites who were put to work to gas
    and kill those people.
    I mean, it's not, it's not a phenomenon just
    to certain people, you know?
    It's a phenomenon all over Europe.
    The French, look at the French they turned them
    over Jews to the Germans.
    Strongly antisemitic, the French.
    The Dreyfus affair, which you remember, I'm sure.
    My cousin, this I forgot to say, that my cousin,
    Uncle Weisskopf's daughter.
    I mentioned her, that she was with us when they broke in
    and she was with us when the news came
    about the fall of Austria, and she was able to escape.
    She went to France and she hid in a convent for years.
    The nuns hid her.
    Then she got out.
    She she's a very well educated person and she taught
    at the university in Biarritz.
    It was run by Americans, by American military in Biarritz.
    And then she was brought to the United States
    with the help of the Navy Secretary, whom she met there,
    whoever it was at the time.
    And came here and then she taught at other colleges
    here in the United States.
    She lives now in Los Gatos.
    She married the dean of the language department of San Jose
    State.
    He died, he passed away now.
    And she lives in Los Gatos now.
    Another member of the family who was saved.
    What's her name?
    Litzy, Alice, Alice.
    She her name is now Newby.
    That's the name of her passed husband.
    And her name was Weisskopf, the same as my uncle
    and my aunt, Weisskopf But she had changed it
    after that to Whitehead.
    She translated literally from Germany
    to English Weisskopf, Whitehead.
    Which I would have never done.
    I mean, my name is my name and I would never have translated it.
    Except my first name, that I did.
    Heinrich is a little bit too tough, you know?
    So I translated it into English, anglicized my name.
    When you came back to Vienna after leaving Hungary in 1937,
    how did you support yourself?
    It was just the three of you?
    Yes, my mother and my brother they lived in one apartment.
    They took an apartment in Vienna.
    We didn't know exactly what we were--
    by the way, my mother, yes, she made a good living.
    She played very excellent bridge.
    Well, she made a good living doing that.
    Because she taught bridge and she ran a bridge club.
    She made very good money doing that.
    Boy, was she good, she was really excellent class player.
    I did too, by the way.
    And I stayed, I was put up in the Vasco family.
    I was given a room to sleep and I was fed.
    I went to school and I worked in the manufacturing business
    with my uncle, helped out there for the beginning.
    But we never knew how fast it would end.
    I mean, it was only October of '37
    and then in March everything fell together anyway.
    So it was really just a very short transition period.
    I couldn't tell you exactly what the outcome could have been
    or would have been if it would not have come.
    You know, I don't know.
    And we would have probably made some kind
    of arrangements for my brother and I
    to live together, probably.
    My uncle was very interested, he didn't have a son, maybe.
    And he wanted me to work with him
    so probably I would have brought into this family's business
    then, because our business was already gone.
    What happened to the business?
    Well, our business after the First World War
    started already to be run down.
    The First World War was the start
    of the death blow of the big company of my family.
    My family's business Heinrich Deutsch and Company in Vienna
    was a name which was well known, very well known name.
    And after the First World War, of course,
    Austria-Hungary broke up into different countries.
    Czechoslovakia became Czechoslovakia, Romania
    became Romania, Hungary became Hungary.
    This was the start of the deathblow of the business.
    So the main seat was still in Vienna, but we had still--
    Czechoslovakia and Romania didn't
    exist already then anymore.
    And then Budapest was the second one,
    then Vienna folded and that's why we
    moved to Budapest, to Hungary.
    And then this folded too.
    So it folded before your father died?
    Yes.
    I'd like to know in more detail what kind of preparations
    you took for leaving, how you contacted the man.
    Why Panama?
    OK.
    The way it was, that we didn't have anywhere to go,
    we took any straw that presented itself.
    My mother had a good friend, Elza Kaufman,
    she was a pretty well-known singer in Vienna.
    Her brother had left for Panama in the '20s.
    He was what they call the black sheep of the family, OK?
    And having lived in Panama for 20 years he was already
    Panamanian citizen, he had his own farm already,
    he was pretty well-to-do.
    I mean, he was not rich, but he was well-to-do.
    Furthermore, he was a foreman, working as a foreman.
    He was not an intellectual, let's say as such,
    but he was a foreman in the Canal Zone Company,
    paid very good wages there as a foreman, you know?
    And when the situation was such that we didn't know where to go
    and what to do, Elza Kaufman wrote to her brother
    that we had a number of people here
    who didn't have anywhere to go, if he could help.
    So he put up a deposit.
    I forget it was, $50, $40, $50 for each person.
    There were 26 of us.
    And he sent us the papers to immigrate.
    Now to get the visa, we had to go to Hamburg.
    Because in Vienna we didn't have any Panamanian consul.
    So one of the group of the 26, one of them took 26 passports,
    took them to Hamburg, had them stamped there and came back.
    Once we had the visa, then we started,
    my mother took most of the thing.
    I mean, I should have done more.
    I mean, I'm sorry to admit with 18 years you should
    do more than I did really.
    But you have to take in consideration that 18
    years in Vienna 1938 not what is 18 years in the United States
    today.
    When I see my son at 18 years, he's 25 now,
    he's much more of a man than I was ever at 18.
    Well, not ever, but when he was 18 it was more of a man
    than I was, and he did more things than I did.
    We were innocent babes, really.
    European upbringing, we didn't know anything.
    Anyway, my mother did, really, in the letter
    of my uncle it's testified.
    She took immediate steps to get to a boat, to a ship.
    How do we get to Panama?
    So she went to the Italia line and booked on the Vigilio which
    was supposed to leave in September, .
    It was already done in maybe April, May, I don't know.
    And we paid everything there.
    The only thing we could do is pay.
    I think it was a minimum amount, 100 shilling, 100 lira,
    100,000, very minimal, as board money for each person.
    So she paid that too, otherwise we
    couldn't take any more money out.
    We were only allowed to take out personally
    with us about $10, equivalent of $10, that's all.
    Nobody allowed any money out.
    Actually I had a stamp collection,
    which was not worth that much, but it was stamps anyway,
    and there was a certain value to it.
    To get it out, I had to go to an evaluator,
    get the stamp collection evaluated,
    which he undervalued.
    I ask him to, undervalue it.
    Then wrap it and seal it so nothing can stick in there.
    And then I was allowed to take it out.
    My mother did something else.
    Now we can talk about it, we were shivering in the boots.
    We were not allowed to take out any jewelry,
    and she had some fantastic jewelry.
    A huge diamond ring.
    She had a what do you call it?
    Rain, against the rain, what is it?
    Umbrella.
    An umbrella.
    And the umbrella had a leather knob.
    And she opened the seams of the leather knob,
    stuck the diamond in there, and sewed it up again.
    She had a beautiful bracelet of diamonds and rubies.
    She took the handle of the suitcase, opened the seam,
    put it in there and sewed it up again.
    She did all of these things.
    She was really great, my mother was absolutely great.
    She was fantastic.
    Anyway, this is what we had to do to go.
    All of these things take preparations.
    And some of our belongings were allowed to take.
    How they got from Vienna to Genoa, I still don't know.
    Maybe they went by a tracking firm or something.
    I don't know.
    We left without the crates to Budapest.
    We didn't have any crates with us.
    But the crates were there when we got to Genoa.
    I mean, some of our furniture and rugs and pictures,
    we had some fantastic rugs, and they were all sold in Panama
    in the beginning.
    The jewelry was sold in the beginning.
    Because we didn't have any money.
    We had to eat.
    I come to Panama later, I mean this
    is in the second part of the interview I guess,
    because Panama is a very interesting story.
    Very interesting story.
    Yes, I'm looking forward to that.
    Very interesting story.
    Were there some failed attempts to go somewhere else?
    I mean, you said nobody would take us,
    so did you try and go somewhere else first?
    Yes, yes.
    Tell us about that.
    Well, first of all, the United States,
    you had to have somebody here sponsoring you.
    Then you had to have, I mean those were the legal ways.
    If you didn't have anybody here in the United States, which
    we didn't, you just couldn't get in.
    We didn't have the money to put out.
    I don't even know if it was possible to.
    Oh, everything was on the quota system besides, quota.
    Every country had its own quota.
    And the Austrian quota was tremendously smart.
    Actually, I had applied, we had applied in Panama
    to immigrate to the United States
    from Panama in the year 1945, after the war, '46.
    We applied to immigrate to the United States.
    My brother, like I said, got married in New York in '48,
    and because of that I had to renounce my application,
    annul my application.
    Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to go to my brother's
    wedding in New York.
    Yeah, because I needed a, not an immigration visa,
    but a transit visa, a visitor visa.
    So I had to renounce and void my application,
    then I could go to New York.
    And then, still under visa, Austrian visa,
    Austrian quota still in the Austrian quota
    and the Austrian quota was very smart.
    And still is.
    Nowadays I don't think you have a quota anymore,
    now it's caused by a lottery as I understand it.
    So, yes, we did try.
    Like I said before, there was a possibility,
    the only way we could have really gotten out
    of the country immediately was for my brother and myself
    to go to Palestine as [SPEAKS YIDDISH] And my mother
    couldn't go there, they didn't want women or ladies,
    so she would have had to go to England and only
    as a house employee, as dusting or cooking
    or something in the household.
    Because otherwise, she wouldn't have gotten to England either.
    There were other ways.
    Of course, you could have gone to Uruguay, which uncle did.
    And my other uncle Irvin, who went to New York,
    well he got there because he worked with the Jewish Help
    Committee, you know the Jewish Help, so he had some kind of,
    he was able to get there, you know?
    No, we were not able to go anywhere
    and had to take what we were able to get.
    And we work hard to get that.
    Was all of what you were, what was going on around you,
    your preparations to leave, was all of this
    putting a strain on your family relationship?
    No.
    How was it effecting?
    None whatsoever.
    None.
    It was a strain when we left, to say
    goodbye to my uncle, my cousins.
    And this, yes, it was, that was a big strain.
    I mean that was probably, heartrending.
    I mean, to say goodbye.
    Because we never expected, they were already on in age.
    They wouldn't have left, you see?
    We knew that we would not see them again.
    Whereas my uncles like Max and his, they were much younger.
    This is much more heart wringing yet.
    We never saw them again.
    Is the uncle that you're talking about,
    the man who tried to pass his business on to his employee?
    No.
    That's Weisskopf, that's the one in Vienna.
    That's the one who was, who disappeared and was killed in--
    what's the name of the concentration camp?
    Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz, Auschwitz, he was killed
    in Auschwitz and his wife.
    And no, this one here was the one,
    he tried to help everybody.
    I read all of the letter.
    He helped everybody, money wise and he did everything to get--
    and then he himself couldn't get out.
    This is a tragedy of the whole thing.
    He himself could not make it.
    Everybody did.
    This family Goldschmitz Yule, Julius, they
    were able to get to Israel.
    They lived in Israel and he started a factory
    to make pipes, a pipe factory.
    Of course, Israel was in a building era
    now, so they needed those pipes.
    He made a lot of money there.
    He had already also, years ago, many years ago.
    But he was able to get out finally from Czechoslovakia.
    He was exports to Hungary and then, I
    don't know how they got to Israel.
    England, yeah, they went over England then they got to--
    it was still Palestine, but he was there
    when Israel was already a state and he had a factory there.
    OK.
    How did you, did you take a train from Vienna to Budapest?
    Yes.
    How was that?
    Was there anything-- what was that like?
    Well, my mother, my brother, and I,
    we went to the train station.
    The last goodbye was from my cousin Litzy,
    from the one who lives here now.
    She took us to the train station and we said goodbye to her
    there.
    That was also heart rending.
    I mean, we never knew whether we would see her again
    and she was much younger.
    Well the minute we said goodbye, and it was not
    easy to do that, we sat in the train.
    And when the train started rolling,
    it was a huge sigh of relief.
    That finally, we are on the way out.
    But there was always the threat of the border,
    that something might happen at the border,
    that they might not let us through.
    Until after we were over the border
    and we were in Hungarian territory, then of course,
    this was the big moment.
    This was the big moment.
    But then again it started up.
    How do we get to Italy?
    I mean, go through Austria?
    We wouldn't have gone.
    Go through Yugoslavia?
    They wouldn't let us through.
    Until we finally got--
    the whole thing is, I mean, it is
    unimaginable the situation of those countries in these years.
    Because the borders were so closely guarded
    and everybody was jealous of its borders
    and there were restrictions and there
    were passport regulations and this and that.
    It was just, we don't even know that thing here.
    Today, a flight to Europe, a flight to Germany, I go in I
    don't even have to show my passport.
    Which is unbelievable in these times, you know?
    They looked through you.
    They came aboard twice.
    On the Austrian border, and then on the Hungarian border.
    And they looked through you.
    They looked at what you have on you,
    what you have underneath you.
    Not very nice fellas on the border.
    What kind of things did they, did they ask you questions?
    Oh, well, I don't remember now whether they
    asked me really questions like that, but I'm sure they did.
    I mean, where are you going?
    What are you?
    You know, I'm sure they did.
    I don't remember that, it was not important.
    Our heart was sitting up here and here, you know?
    We didn't have any more brains.
    The brains were already gone.
    Where did you stay when you got to Budapest?
    At friends.
    We had many friends there.
    My mother had many, many friends there.
    Also well-to-do friends and they put us up, they put us up.
    And even they tried very hard to make us stay there,
    that we could stay the time there until the ship leaves.
    They weren't able to do that.
    Because your papers weren't?
    Yeah, because the papers were not in order
    and the Hungarians did not want to give us papers to stay for,
    let's say it was at least two or three months, you know?
    It was June, July, August, September, yeah, three months.
    So they didn't want to give us papers to stay there.
    I mean, we had a problem.
    We had we had a big problem.
    And in Italy we could have stayed because we
    had the tickets to leave Italy.
    They were not afraid we would stay there.
    Now Italy also is a very interesting thing.
    We stayed in Milan, as I said, in a small pensione.
    And that was when the Sudetenland thing came up.
    It was very prominent, you know?
    I don't know whether they had already, the Germans already
    have taken it over or they were about to take it over.
    Anyway, the Italians, living under fascism, they came to us
    and they said, you are Jews.
    We are going to protect you.
    We're going to hide you if the Germans come.
    You know, this is people are good per say.
    People per say are good.
    It's just that certain people, you know,
    and then again, the mass hypnotism
    starts and then takes over.
    It's certain, I would say the majority of people are good.
    But then there is always this big question mark.
    Were you meeting other Jews who were fleeing
    as well, as you were traveling?
    You mean in Hungary?
    Yeah.
    Well the friends of ours were all Jewish.
    Yeah.
    The friends of ours who lived there.
    And in Italy we didn't know anybody until we got to Genoa.
    Until we met up with our 26 group you know.
    And our geese.
    What were the conditions on the train
    ride from Budapest to Milan?
    How long was that and what were the conditions, Besides
    that it was closed in.
    Well it was closed in only in Yugoslavian territory.
    Actually, I don't recall any particulars
    because a train ride for me was a train ride.
    We were outside of Austria.
    There was no immediate danger to our lives or to our belongings.
    We were just glad to be away from it,
    except for the fact that we were locked in through Yugoslavia.
    Which we took in stride, because we
    didn't want to go to Austria, so fine, we are locked in.
    We didn't want to stay in Yugoslavia anyway.
    I mean, who wants to stay in Yugoslavia?
    We want to go to Italy to escape.
    And when we came to Italy, Milan is a beautiful city.
    I mean, has so many art things and we went sightseeing a lot.
    I mean, it didn't keep us back.
    I mean we tried to forget and we did
    forget in fact, some of the things that has happened,
    had happened.
    And we did go sightseeing.
    We saw the Last Supper.
    I saw it already before, I had seen it before.
    And we went to see a lot of things, and the cathedral.
    Milan is a beautiful city.
    And Genoa, we spent also a lot of time, in Genoa.
    We spent some nice days in Genoa because of the beautiful city
    it is.
    We went to a little port outside of Genoa.
    I mean, just to sit there and look at the sea.
    We had never, I mean I had seen the sea,
    but never knowing on the other end of the sea
    is my future country, you know?
    It's a thought, you know?
    Over there, this is my future country over there.
    And the unknown we are going into, you know.
    I was not afraid.
    None of us were afraid.
    We were not afraid to go.
    I mean, we knew our capacity.
    We knew that we would learn the languages.
    We knew we make our living.
    We would make somehow make it do.
    And we gave strength to one another.
    We were 26, and one another gave us strength too.
    That's another thing, if you go alone it's different.
    I know a lot of my friends and a lot of acquaintances of mine
    had to go alone over the frontier,
    let's say from Austria to Switzerland,
    illegally over the mountains in snow and ice alone.
    I know some of them.
    That's heartbreaking.
    You have a completely different attitude toward life
    when you do this.
    But when you're 26 people all in the same boat
    and you're going to the same country, it helps.
    Describe for me when you first met these people
    and tell me about them.
    That's tough, I don't remember them.
    I don't remember them.
    I remember Elza Kaufman, her husband, two sons,
    and her mother.
    That, I remember.
    There alone, you had five.
    And then we were three, that's eight.
    So that leaves only 18, of which I don't remember who they were.
    Really, I don't remember who they were.
    Elza Kaufman, yes.
    In Panama itself, and I have to go into Panama really
    now because my mother and she started the restaurant
    in Panama City.
    That was the very first object.
    In that hot climate, the subtropical climate,
    they started the restaurant for servicemen, of course.
    Panama, I don't know, Panama was already--
    then it was not an American colony, but it was American.
    The Canal Zone was there and you had American personnel.
    You had army, you had Navy, you had airmen there.
    And she started a restaurant on Avenida Central.
    In that heat, over the hot stove, and she
    worked like a horse.
    My brother and I, we started also working immediately.
    I was able to get a job with-- and the Jewish Committee
    helped us a lot.
    They had a huge Jewish Committee in Panama for the refugees.
    And Samuel Friedman was my first.
    His wife and he, they were marvelous.
    I started working for him.
    He had a haberdasher store.
    And three months after I started working I
    had to have an appendectomy.
    And they took me to the hospital and paid everything.
    Everything was paid for by the committee.
    It was really great.
    My mother, they had a party for us when I was in the hospital.
    And Mrs. Friedman took my mother with the good food
    and everything, to that hospital to celebrate with.
    They were marvelous people.
    I mean, it's unbelievable you know.
    I would have done the same thing.
    We did the same thing to other people,
    Jewish people who came through.
    But when it happens to you, you feel twice as obligated
    and twice as nice, you know?
    We need to take a break.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Henry Deutsch (né Heinrich Yuri Deutsch), born on May 28, 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes living in a wealthy family with a mother and three brothers (Arthur, Vera, and Herbert); his father, who was an heir to a textile business that had been passed on in his family for several generations; taking responsibility for the family business when his father died; his mother, Vilma, who was an owner of a club (the club featured the card game bridge, and his mother was a very good bridge player); being raised a secular Jew and being proud to be Austrian; experiencing antisemitism as a child, particularly in the scouts; his thoughts on the differences between patriotism and nationalism; partaking in several violent protests in support of Austria’s freedom from the Nazi regime; the Anschluss in 1938 and beginning to fear for his life; witnessing more open antisemitism in Vienna; Nazi troops ransacking their home; attempting to flee to Hungary, United States, and Uruguay along with his mother and being rejected; the arrest and imprisonment of two of his siblings, Vera and Arthur; booking transport with his mother to Panama; staying in Panama, getting a job, and making a decent living; his mother, who started a restaurant in Panama; learning Spanish and Yiddish; going to Chicago, IL after the war and reuniting with his brother Arthur; and moving to California.
    Interviewee
    Henry Deutsch
    Interviewer
    Jill Nierman
    Saul, Eric
    Date
    interview:  1991 November 21
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Deutsch, Henry.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Henry Deutsch on November 21, 1991. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from the Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project in December 2001.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:44:42
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn509549

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    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral History

    Lily Spitz discusses her childhood in Satu Mare, Romania; her family life; her religious upbringing; the changes she observed after 1939, the increased antisemitism, and the difficulty in attending school; the changes she experienced when her region became part of Hungary in 1944; her family's deportation to a ghetto and the conditions there; her experiences during her family's deportation to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; the selection process, and her entry into the camp; her experiences in Auschwitz, the work she performed, and the many selections she endured; her transfer by train to Mauthausen in early 1945; being liberated; the medical care she received from the United States Army; her reunion with her surviving siblings and their return to Romania in July 1945; her marriage and family; their immigration to the United States in 1964; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral History

    Melvin Suhd discusses his childhood in Detroit, Michigan; the antisemitism he experienced in school; his education as an electrical engineer; his decision to join the military in 1943; his training in weaponry; his arrival in France in December 1944; the military actions he was involved in; his experiences while helping to liberate Dachau and his emotions at the time; his life after he returned from the front; and the psychological aftermath of his wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral History

    Bernard Broclawski, born January 27, 1917, describes his childhood in Pabianice, Poland; how he began to work at 13 to support his family; his socialist political leanings; his involvement in Jewish socialist organizations from 1936-1939; his awareness of political events in Germany; being drafted into the Polish Army; his time in Soviet-occupied Poland; reuniting with his father and brothers in Grodno, Poland (Hrodna, Belarus); his work as a machinist in Siberian coal mines in January 1940; his work as a German-language teacher in 1941; his arrest for giving a counter-revolutionary speech in 1943; his experiences in prison from 1944 to 1948; his release from prison and return to Poland in 1948; his marriage and the birth of his daughter; his involvement in workers' organizations; his studies at the University of Łódź; the increase of antisemitism in 1968; how and why he immigrated to the United States with his family; their immigration with the assistance of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society); and his life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral History

    Julius Drabkin, born in 1918 in Maritopa, Latvia, describes his parents, Mikhail and Sarah Daviolovna; life before the war when he lived in Riga, Latvia; being a soldier in the Latvian Army until the German invasion in July 1941; living in the ghetto for most of the war; getting married to his first wife, Amalia, in 1941; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being sent to Kaiserwald camp; being liberated on March 10, 1945 at Stutthof; returning to Riga after the war because he was distressed, even though he had the opportunity to emigrate; the perishing of all of his family during the Holocaust, except for one of his aunts; getting remarried shortly after the war (his wife also lost all her family); having two sons and living in Riga until he immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s; emigrating because his older son found it impossible to pursue his career because he was Jewish; and visiting Riga for the World Conference of Holocaust Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral History

    Renee Duering, born January 7, 1921 in Cologne, Germany, describes her childhood in Cologne; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933; her experiences in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation; getting married in 1941; the time she and her husband spent in hiding; her family's deportation to Westerbork in July 1943; her experiences in Westerbork; her parents’ deportation to Bergen-Belsen; her and her husband's deportation to Auschwitz; how her husband perished in Auschwitz; being a subject of medical experiments, including those involving sterilization; her deportation to three other camps; her experiences on a death march to Ravensbrück in January 1945; her escape during the march; hiding near Dresden, Germany until liberation by the Soviets; living with her sister after the war; moving to Israel; immigrating to the United States; her second marriage; and her joy at becoming pregnant despite the experiments she endured.

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral History

    Werner Epstein discusses his childhood in Berlin, Germany; the anti-Jewish regulations he and his family encountered when the Nazis rose to power; his decision to leave Germany after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing by bicycle to Belgium, where he prospered until the war began in September 1939; being arrested as an enemy alien; his experiences in a series of detention camps in southern France; his arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz; volunteering to work in a coal mine in Silesia, where he remained until December 1944; being ill with malaria, which he contracted while in French detention camps; the death march he endured after the camp’s evacuation in advance of the Soviet Army’s approach; being liberated by Russian Mongol soldiers; journeying to a transit camp in Magdeburg, Germany; reuniting with his fiancee; returning with her to Paris, France, where they settled and he became a chef; and immigrating to California in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania (Chisinau, Moldova); her family's flight after the invasion of Nazi Germany; a traumatic incident in which Romanian soldiers sexually assaulted the women in their group, after which the family returned to their home town; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, Ukraine from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage; her life in Riga, Latvia; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco, California in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral History

    Lore Gilbert, born in Worms, Germany in 1929, describes her childhood in Worms; the antisemitism she experienced as a child; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938 and its impact on her family when her father's assets were confiscated; the family's move to Heidelberg, Germany and their deportation to France; their experiences in Gurs concentration camp; the family's selection by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) to be sent to the Dominican Republic; the Jewish refugee community in Sosua, Dominican Republic; the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina; the security and safety Jewish refugees enjoyed in the Dominican Republic during the war years; her family's immigration to the United States; her father's difficulties in adjusting to their new life; the experiences of her grandparents, who remained in France during the war years and were sheltered by the French Catholic Church; and the trauma and fear she has felt over the years as a result of her Holocaust-related experiences.

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral History

    Rita Goldman discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; her parents' painful decision to send her on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for England in 1939; the kindness of the family with whom she stayed; the events of the war years; corresponding with her parents, who had fled to Shanghai, China; her reunion with her parents after the war; and the difficulties she experienced in adjusting to life with them.

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral History

    Mala Holcberg describes her childhood in Poland; her early memories of the Nazi occupation of Poland and crimes committed against Jews and her family's desire to flee Poland; the confiscation of her family's possessions and the family's deportation to an unidentified ghetto; her experiences in the ghetto; the murder of her father; being deported to an unidentified concentration camp, where the inmates were forced to make bombs and grenades; the terrible conditions in the camp and her illnesses; the camp's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Poland; her marriage and family; her present ill health and the lasting emotional effects of her experiences during the Holocaust; and the loss of many family members.

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral History

    Kate Kaiser describes her childhood in Mistek, Austria (now Czech Republic); her marriage and move to Hamburg, Germany; the rise of antisemitism after the Nazi's rise to power; how she and her husband were affected by the Nuremberg Laws; their decision to leave Germany after their daughter was born; the wait to obtain papers; her husband's move to the United States in advance of them; waiting with her daughter in Mistek until August 1938 when their visas arrived; her adjustment to life as an immigrant in the United States; her attempts to find her family after the war; learning of the death of her family, all of whom perished except for one brother and a cousin; and her trip to Prague, Czech Republic in 1998 to discover the details of her mother's fate.

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral History

    Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner describes her childhood in Odessa, Ukraine; her family life and her marriage at age 19; the outbreak of World War II being ejected from her home by her neighbors and being imprisoned with her family in Odessa; the ensuing chaotic events; being separated from two of her brothers; being placed on trains to a small village, where she endured terrible conditions with her younger brother, daughter, and mother; the threat of mass murder; escaping with her mother and daughter; being transported to a series of villages; attempted sexual assault at the hands of a Rumanian officer; being separated from her mother; successfully passing as a non-Jew and working as a cook at a police station until the end of the war; reuniting with her mother and husband; and immigrating to the United States with her family in 1978.

    Oral history interview with Vera J. Lieban-Kalmar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral History

    Bernard Offen discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; his early experiences with antisemitism; the events he witnessed during the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his experiences in the Krakow Ghetto starting in 1941, including the deportations of many family members and hiding from raids; being deported to Płaszów in 1943; his narrow escape from Płaszów; hiding in a nearby camp with a family member; his deportation to Mauthausen; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his experiences in Auschwitz; his transfer in October 1944 to a subcamp of Dachau near Landsberg; his experiences in the subcamp; being on a death march in May 1945; being liberated by the United States Army; his search for other surviving family members; the fates of the rest of his family; immigrating to the United Kingdom after the war; his subsequent immigration to the United States; enlisting in the United States Army to serve in the Korean War; his life after the war; returning to Poland to conduct tours of Holocaust-related sites; the time he spends speaking about his personal experiences.

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral History

    William Pels, born on May 11, 1924 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his prewar experiences in Amsterdam; his memories of the German invasion of Holland in 1940; the changes that he witnessed during the occupation; witnessing the arrest and deportation of Jews; the German raids on homes to find hidden Jews; his own close call with deportation; moving to Vienna, Austria in 1942 to work in a hotel; his experiences with wartime Vienna; the bombing campaign by the Soviets in March 1945; travelling into Hungary, where he remained until May 1945; his postwar activities; working for the United States Army; working in a former concentration camp; returning to Holland; marrying his wife in Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1957; and his life in America.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral History

    Ruth Plainfield (née Oppenheimer), born on January 27, 1925 in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, discusses her childhood in Mainz, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party to power; her father's arrest in 1935 and the effect that had on her; her childhood encounters with antisemitism; her family's immigration to the United States; living first in New York and then San Francisco, CA; her family's experiences in California; her education; and learning of the fate of family members, including a grandfather who died in Theresienstadt.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral History

    Thomas Schneider discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; being raised as a Catholic child of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism; being forced to leave school and study at a Jewish school in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany; his family's immigration in March 1939 to the United States; settling in New York, NY; his experiences in school, college, and law school; his legal career; and the conflicts he has felt throughout his life about his Jewish identity.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    Benjamin Sieradzki, born on February 4, 1927 in Zgierz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Zgierz; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1939; hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet section of Poland; his family's move to the Łódź ghetto; the harsh conditions in the ghetto; the first deportations in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly, and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching the selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers; his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory; being forced to work in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentery, and indifferent to his fate; the abandonment of the camp by German troops; being liberated; the state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden; experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden; being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle; his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war; the difficulties of his living situation; his immigration to the United States in 1953; and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral History

    Erika Weingarten (née Mosler), born on October 9, 1918 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; her assimilated family life; her education; the few instances of antisemitism she experienced; her family's decision to send her out of Germany to attend school in Switzerland and her experiences there; her journey in August 1939 to Great Britain, where she reunited with her parents; their immigration to the United States in March 1940; the work she performed; her continued education; passing as Swiss when she tried to get work; her trips to Europe in later years and the closure she experienced; and her thoughts about the German people.

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral History

    Max Weingarten, born in April 1913 in Lechnau, Poland, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; his education and religious upbringing; studying the law; his work in the film industry with his uncle in London beginning in 1936; his immigration to the United States in 1938 and the work he performed in the film industry; his experiences in the United States Army and his work in intelligence and international law; his life after the war; his marriage and children; his work as a lawyer; his feelings about the United States; and the fates of his other family members.

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral History

    Liza Avrutin, born in 1930 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes her big family, which consisted of nine brothers and sisters; how even though her family was not very religious, Liza remembers various religious traditions such as all of the kids saying a Shabbat wish in front of the candles; her mother’s reluctance to leave before the Nazi occupation; her uncle’s evacuation to Tashkent where he and his family survived the Holocaust; the Nazi occupation in October 1941 and the summoning of Jewish residents on December 22; being taken with other Jewish residents to Slobodka (a section of Odessa) where they spent three months; a pogrom in Odessa on October 23-24, 1941 in which much of the remaining Jewish population was murdered; being sent with her family on cattle trains to Vaselinivska; the train journey, during which many passengers died including her father and her four-year-old brother, Boris; her mother’s psychological reaction to their deaths and her eventual death; being taken to Vasnisenska (Voznesensk, Ukraine), where they were sorted and sent to different places; being sent to Babini Balki in Krivoruchka, Ukraine; the lack of food and the death of many of the imprisoned people from starvation; the arrival of the Russians, who murdered all the civilians; being one of two survivors (Rosa Lifchitza also survived) who were rescued by the nearby villagers; waking up in Nadia Zhigalovna’s house with a bullet wound on the top of her head; hiding her Jewish identity by saying her name was “Lida” not “Liza”; changing her name to Valentina Ivanovna Panchivka; her life in the village and the sacrifices her new mother made for her; living with Nadia and her family until 1947; staying in close contact with the family that rescued her; getting married and immigrated to the United States; and changing her name back to Liza when she became a US citizen.

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral History

    Aleksandr Belfor, born September 18, 1923, describes his childhood in Kishinev, Ukraine (now Chisinău Moldova); the onset of the war and his family's escape from the approaching Nazi forces to Alma-Ata, Khazakstan, where Mr.Belfor lived and studied medicine until he was inducted into the Soviet Army; the stories he heard about the tragic fate of many family members during the Holocaust, including the sexual assault of one aunt; being arrested and imprisoned after the end of the war; his life in the Soviet Union and the antisemitism he encountered there; and his immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral History

    Semyon Berenshteyn discusses his childhood in Moldova; the family's move from Balta to Odesa after the beginning of the war in 1941; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto in Balta; working for a Christian friend; passing as a non-Jew by wearing a crucifix; learning of war news from Christian neighbors; the forced labor imposed on Jews; the murders of Jewish men, women and children by German soldiers, including the death of his father; liberation by Soviet troops in March 1944; his service in the Soviet armed forces; his marriage and the birth of his son; and his immigration with his family to the United States in 1988.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral History

    Lev Dumer, born in 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes the Jewish community in Odessa before the war; experiencing antisemitism before the war; the deaths of his maternal grandparents in pogroms; receiving a degree in radio engineering; working in Kirovograd (Kropyvnyts'kyi, Ukraine) when the war began; the German occupation of Kiev; the Jewish response to the invasion; his family’s evacuation to Chelyabinsk in August 1941; his grandmother, Pena Gershova Dumer, dying while evacuating later in 1943; the Romanians entering Odessa; Jews having to register; the denouncement of Jewish families by antisemitic neighbors living in the same building as his family; the hanging of his college mathematics and physics professor, Foodim, for failing to register; the roundups and mass murders in Odessa; Alexander Sepino, who was able to escape imprisonment; observing a minute of silence every day for five years as a prayer for those who perished; the deportation of the remaining Jews to a ghetto in Slobodka; various righteous people who risked their lives to save Jews, including Oleg Krist and Jora Temoshenko; the experience of his aunt, uncle, and two cousins in Pervopol; the difficulty of living during the Stalin regime; the growing antisemitic trend in Russia during the years following WWII; the Russian government hiding the evidence of the Holocaust from the people; and spending many years gathering information from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust in Ukraine in order to preserve the memory for future generations.

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral History

    Anisim Dworkin, born in 1923 in Smirenskiy, Soviet Union (possibly one of the many Russian places named Smirnovskiy), describes how at the time Jews were required to live in a few designated towns in the Soviet Union; his great-grandfather, who served in the Tsar’s army as a cannon operator for 12 years and was thus given the right to live in a Russian town even though he was Jewish; the regret he feels for having spent his childhood in a Russian town because it stripped him of the rich Jewish culture he saw in his parents, including celebration of Jewish holidays and speaking Yiddish; not experiencing antisemitism as a child but being teased as a child for being part of the lower middle-class; moving with his family to a kolkhoz in Smolensk in 1928; having a good life on the farm until the famine in 1933; several of his aunts and uncles who moved to Brest, Belarus with their families; the arrest of his older brother for writing a letter expressing anti-Hitler sympathies in 1939; the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; being sent to the east since he was not able to serve in the army because of an injury to the eye; being accepted to serve in the Allied army for four months; studying after the war at a university in Ural (possibly Ural Federal University); working in the oil industry in Ural after the war and being discriminated against because of his religion; being fired from a job as head of the research department at a university because of rumors that he was involved in the Zionist movement; his life now in Perim, North Ural (probably Perm’, Russia); his daughter who is married to a non-Jew; and reuniting with his older brother in 1987.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral History

    Ernest Feld discusses his childhood in Lucenec, Slovakia, close to the Hungarian border; the occupation of his town by Hungary in 1938; the onset of anti-Jewish restrictions and curfews; his removal to a ghetto; being conscripted for forced labor in 1944; being able to continue his apprenticeship in a bakery; the advance of the Soviet Army and the ensuing confusion; his return to Lucenec in November 1945; his reunion with his mother; their move to Prague, and then Karlsbad; their decision to immigrate to Israel; the boat trip to Israel; the detention of the group in Cyprus by the British; his life in Cyprus until 1949; emigrating from Cyprus to Israel with his wife, whom he met in Cyprus; his successful bakeries in Israel; his later move to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania; her family's flight after the German invasion; the gang rape of women by Romanian soldiers; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, in the Ukraine, from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage and life in Riga; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral History

    Inna Kagan, born in 1937 in Kharkov (Kharkiv), Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Kharkov; being a descendant from Khazars; the evacuation of her family in September 1941 to Khazakstan; her father's later evacuation to Perm, Russia; her family's move to Bukhoro, Uzbekistan; and the family's reunion in Kharkov in December 1944. She dicsusses the destruction of the city and learning of the death of her paternal grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. Ms. Kagan describes the increase in antisemitism that she experienced after the war, and emigrating with her family to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral History

    Vilem Kriz discusses his experiences in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in the late 1930s and under Nazi occupation; his observations, as a journalist, of the unfolding events of Nazi aggression; an encounter with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936; the mobilization of a small national army in 1937; the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its allies in 1938; the grief of the Czech people after Nazi troops occupied Prague in March 1939; demonstrations against the Nazis by university students and reprisals that came after; his experiences as part of the Czech underground; and conditions in Czechoslovakia during its occupation and after the war ended.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral History

    Mikhail Lapan, born on March 9, 1920 in Bobruisk, Belarus, discusses his childhood in Bobruisk; his enlistment in 1941 at the age of 16 in the Soviet Army; the German attack on Bobruisk; his hospitalization in 1942 in Stalingrad (Volgograd); the invasion of Stalingrad by the Germans; an incident in which the German troops removed the hospital patients and selected Jews and Communists for execution, and that by using the name of a fellow patient who had died earlier that day, he was able to escape that fate; being forced to work in a salt mine in Peine, Germany; having his Jewish identity betrayed; his escape, recapture, and removal to Braunschweig concentration camp; being liberated by US troops; being returned to the Soviet Union; his work in a coal mine in Harlov; his marriage; his return to Bobruisk, where he discovered that he parents had died during the war; and his eventual immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral History

    Shaya Neys, born on June 28, 1927 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood in Liepaja; the arrest of his family in June 1941 by the Russian security agency NKVD, and the family's transport to a military port, where the men were separated from the women and children; traveling by train with his mother to Krasnoyarsk, Russia; their experiences of forced labor and misery in various locations in Siberia until the end of the war; difficulties in returning to Latvia after the war ended and his return in 1956; his reunion with his son and their lives in Riga, Latvia; learning that his father died in a labor camp, and that many of his relatives from Liepaja perished; and his reflections that their deportation to Siberia probably saved his and his mother's lives.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    The interview describes Mr. Sieradzki's childhood in Zgierz, Poland; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1938. Mr. Sieradzki describes hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet sector of Poland; and his family's move to the Łódź ghetto. Mr. Sieradzki recalls the harsh conditions there; the first transports in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; and the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans. He describes the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching Dr. Mengele make selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers. Mr. Sieradzki describes his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory, and then in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentary, and indifferent to his fate. He recalls the abandonment of the camp by German troops, his liberation, the dreadful state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden. Mr. Sieradzki describes anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden, being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle, and his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war. He discusses the difficulties of his living situation, and describes his immigration to the United States in 1953, and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral History

    Rahilia Sirota (née Aizenman), born in 1913, discusses her childhood in Chemirovits (now Chemerivtsi), Ukraine; the Nazi occupation of her town in the summer of 1941; her move to a nearby village; learning that the Jewish community of Chemirovits had been taken to the Kamentsk Podolsky ghetto, where 80 of her relatives were killed days after their arrival (this included her parents and younger brother); living in fear in the village she had moved to, and being rescued by two brothers, Nikolay and Pavlo Kuchman [PH], who hid her and then her boyfriend throughout the remaining years of the war; living in holes in the corn fields and caves; moving from village to village; living in barns and hiding from the Ukrainian SS; the assistance she received from the Kuchman brothers and other Ukrainians; learning of the liberation of the Chemirovits in March 1945; her reunion with her boyfriend; finding that everything they had was gone; getting married; the birth of her son; her life in post-war Ukraine until her immigration to the United States; and her enduring gratitude to those who hid and save her during the war years.

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral History

    Tom Szelenyi discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his assimilated family life; his education; his religious upbringing; the antisemitism he experienced while growing up and the increase of antisemitism after the war began in 1939; his family's deportation to the ghetto in Budapest; the anti-Jewish laws; being deported to a Hungarian military labor camp in 1944 and the changes he experienced after the Germans occupied Hungary; his experiences on a forced march in October 1944 from Budapest to Wiener Neustadt, Austria; his journey to Buchenwald by train; the conditions there; the cruelty of the guards; his transfer to Colditz a month later; the work he performed; his experiences on a death march in April 1945 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); his liberation there by the Soviet Army and the conditions after; his return to Budapest; his reunion with his mother; his work with the American Joint Distribution Committee; his experiences in the DP (displaced persons) camp in Ulm, Germany; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his life in the US; his family; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral History

    Tamara Iosifovna Albukh, born on December 21, 1918 in Minsk, Belarus, describes her childhood; having to leave school after six years to work and contribute to her family financially; getting married and having two daughters (Sara born on May 5, 1940 and Gena born on August 31, 1942); not being able to evacuate once the war started; the German occupation of Minsk; her husband being taken into the army; moving into one of the Jewish ghettos in Minsk; pogroms in the ghettos; doing forced labor in the ghetto and the murder of her daughters one day while she was working; being moved to Trostinetskiy (Maly Trostinec) concentration camp and having to work for the Germans; the murder of inmates every day in the camp and ghetto; escaping the camp on July 29, 1944; the intensification of antisemitism during the war; hearing Russians scream the slogan “Kill Jews, save Russia” which continued even after the war; and having two daughters after the war in 1946 and 1949.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral History

    Audrey Doughty, born in San Diego, California in 1921, describes her mother, who died when Audrey was three years old; her father, who was a naval officer and a member of the diplomatic core; going with her father to Berlin when he was stationed there in 1938; transferring from Stanford University to the University of Berlin; being in Berlin during Kristallnacht and taking photos afterward; writing a journal entry describing that night; having little notion of what was really happening in Germany apart from Kristallnacht as well as the antisemitic and anti-American sentiment from the Germans; how soon after arriving in Berlin, she and her father were invited to review the troops with Nazi officials; sitting in the stands three feet from Adolf Hitler, watching endless waves of troops pass underneath; going with her grandmother on a tour of Germany and neighboring countries in 1939; working at the American consulate after she turned 18; her duties, which consisted of convincing refugees applying for visas to leave the country; being evacuated to Copenhagen in 1940; returning to the US after the war ended; graduating from Stanford University; working as a war correspondent in Honolulu and then went to work for the San Francisco Chronicle; working in the Office of War Information and then working as an Associated Press correspondent in China; leaving journalism and pursuing a career as a social worker; becoming the director of the International Institute in San Francisco from 1975 to 1983; spending two and a half years as the director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; founding and directing the AIDS Benefits Counselors; directing AIDS Indigent Direct Services; her plans to write a book about her family's history; writing many editorials on possible fascist trends in American society; and her thoughts on Germans [note that artifacts relating to her experiences are shown at the close of the interview].

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender (née Buzyn), born circa 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her childhood in Warsaw; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's escape to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; getting married in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, France, where they lived until 1951; their immigration first to Canada, and then to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral History

    Sofia Ginzbursky (born on December 27, 1915 in Asipavichy, Belarus) describes her mother, who died at the age of 27, soon after she gave birth; going with her siblings to live with their grandfather, who observed Jewish traditions; studying at a technical school in Gomel (Homel), Belarus; living in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), working as a nanny and secretary; getting married and moving to Gomel; moving later to Belostock (Białystok), Poland; being left alone with their two children when her husband was called up for military duty at the beginning of WWII; evacuating from Belostock by train to Zlobin (ZHlobin, Belarus) and then to Baranovichi, Ukraine; destroying all her documents to hide her Jewish identity; witnessing the persecution of Jews in Ukraine when locals helped the Nazis find Jews; how speaking German helped her find a job at a food exchange center where she received food to feed her children; obtaining false papers with a new last name that showed she was Russian and not Jewish; returning to Gomel to look for remaining family members and being captured by the Nazis and was humiliated by Politsai for several days; being released and living with a woman named Nadia Lisitskaya; passing as a gentile refugee from Poland; washing clothes for the German army in exchange for soap and kerosene; seeing the deportation of hundreds of Jews from the Gomel ghetto; traveling with her friend, Sonia, as well as all their children to Oryol (Orel), Russia; finding a new place of stay every night so no one would suspect them of being Jewish; living with Sonia and the children at the house of a Latvian lady for two years; choosing to not wear the Star of David as was requried for the Jews by the Nazis; passing as Russian Orthodox; having a Russian lady teach her son how to pray to an icon when bombings occured; working small jobs while in Oryol; being liberated and moving to Leningrad; getting a new passport and stating her nationality as “Jewish” again; reuniting with her husband in Chkalov (possibly Orenburg, Russia) with the help of her sister; experiencing even more antisemitism after the war; and becoming more observant after the war.

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral History

    Annemarie Roeper (née Bondy), born August 27, 1918 in Vienna, Austria, describes her childhood in Vienna; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi ascension to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with Annemarie’s siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father selling their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral History

    Clara Tsukerman discusses her childhood in Chisneau, Romania (now Chișinău, Moldova) and her experiences after the war began in her region in 1941; her experiences during her family's journey on foot to Vasylivka, Ukraine; their efforts to evade the advancing German front; and their life in hiding in an unnamed village after the Germans caught up with them; the help and protection they received from the villagers, as well as her experiences during and after the war.

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral History

    Sam Weiss, born in 1928 in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of the town by Hungarian soldiers; the conscription of Jewish men for forced labor; his father being sent to Germany for forced labor; the institution of anti-Jewish restrictions such as yellow stars and in March 1944, the deportation of the Jews of Ricka; his arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from his family and sent first a children's barracks; being sent to Camp Four in Munich, Germany; being sent to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau, where he was liberated by American troops in 1945; his return to Ricka, where he was reunited with his sister; his attempts to escape Czechoslovakia; his imprisonment by Russian soldiers; his escape to Munich; his immigration to the United States; his service in the United States military; and his family life and career in California.

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral History

    Isaac Silber, born in 1913 in Złoczów Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Złoczów; the occupation of Złoczów by German troops; the violent and terrifying conditions of the Nazi occupation; his escape from murder by German troops; being conscripted for forced labor in a brick factory; returning to Złoczów to learn of the murder of family members; his experiences in the Złoczów ghetto and in work camps; giving up his baby daughter to be cared for by a non-Jewish family; escaping with his wife and finding refuge in the farmhouse of a Polish man who hid them; and the gratitude he feels to his rescuer.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Roeper

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Roeper describes her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi acsencion to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with her siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father's selling of their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Janina Swift

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl, born August 9, 1921, discusses his childhood in Long Island, New York; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS operational group; working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral History

    Janice Auerbach, born August 7, 1934 in South London, England, describes her childhood in London; the bombings and fear she felt during World War II; her evacuation to a farm in Cornwall; the discomfort she experienced while there; her reunion with her family after the war; her various employments around the world; and her marriage to a Jewish man in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral History

    Helmut Kobler, born on January 18, 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Pohorelice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); his experiences growing up with his Jewish father and Catholic mother; his experiences after the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938; his mother's decision to move herself and her son to Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the conditions they lived under; the Nazis' search for his father; being deported to a camp near Ivancice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1939; the camp’s transformation from a concentration camp to a forced labor camp; working as a coal miner at the camp; the camp’s liquidation in June 1942; being transferred to another labor camp near Oslavany, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the work he continued as a coal miner; the conditions at the camp; the brutality of the Czech and German guards; being transferred in the summer of 1944 to a labor camp near Postoloprty, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); working to construct an underground fuel pipeline; an accusation against him of sabotage; his subsequent imprisonment in Saaz, Czechoslovakia and Karlsbad, Germany (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic); the brutality of the guards; the poor conditions there; his escape from Karlsbad while out on a labor detail; being recaptured in Brno; the executions he witnessed while imprisoned there; being transferred by cattle car to a prison in Mirosov; escaping from Mirosov in May 1945, a few days before liberation by the United States Army; the aid he received from refugee organizations after the war; reuniting with his mother; being educated as a mining engineer; defecting to the west with a sample of uranium ore; moving to Canada; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Yellin (née Feller), born on December 6, 1928 in Chemnitz, Germany, discusses her childhood in Chemnitz; her family life; the changes she experienced after Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's arrest and release; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her journey with her parents to Belgium in September 1939; her experiences after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 and her father's decision to hide her in a convent; her experiences in the convent; moving between institutions to avoid capture by the Nazis; her conversion to Catholicism; her reunion with her parents after liberation in September 1944; their immigration to the United States at a later point; her life in the US; and the emotional aftermath of her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral History

    Adele Silber discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her education in a Catholic school; her family's religious practices; her experiences during the German invasion in 1939; hiding her young daughter with a Catholic family; living in hiding on a farm with a group of partisans; her experiences while in hiding, including the lack of food and the necessity of living in the woods near the end of the war; her reunion with her daughter; her decision to immigrate to the United States with her husband and daughter in 1946; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral History

    Sylvie Marshall (née Bedel), born on July 1, 1923 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood; her older brother Michel Bedel (born 1918) and her younger brother Alain Bedel (born 1926); her father, who was the president of the largest moving and storage company in France before the war; her adolescence in Paris; being raised Catholic; the participation of her father and brother Michel in the French Resistance; her life with her mother in south central France; the liberation of Paris; the story of her father and brother's arrests by the Gestapo and her father's subsequent death in Buchenwald.

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral History

    Elena H. Javor (née Gross), born December 15, 1914 in Martin, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes her childhood in Martin; her siblings; her medical education and practice; the birth of her three children; the threat of deportation in 1942; her escape from deportation due to her husband's exemption; Allied bombing in spring 1944; the Slovak national uprising in August 1944; her husband's enlistment to fight; fleeing with her children to a monastery, where they were sheltered; joining her husband in Banska Bystrica; her arrest in October 1944; her husband's disappearance; her liberation in April 1945; her reunion with her three children; learning of her husband's, sister's, and parents' deaths in Auschwitz; her return to Martin with her children; her life after the war; how she studied dermatology; her remarriage; and her family's immigration to the United States in 1968.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral History

    Joseph Welgreen, born in 1918 in Sosnowiec, Poland, discusses his childhood in Sosnowiec; his family life and education; the work he performed; the antisemitism he experienced; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Poland in 1939; being deported to Annaburg in late 1940, and his subsequent transfers to several other labor camps, including Breslau and Klettendorf (both subcamps of Gross-Rosen); the conditions in these camps, his experiences there, the work he performed in highway construction, and his experiences with the guards and Kapos; being transferred to Bunzlau in 1943; the work he performed as a machinist and the conditions there; his experiences on a death march to Dora in February 1945; the work he performed there and the conditions; his liberation at Bergen-Belsen; his journey to Hannover, Germany; the business he established there; and his immigration to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Frank Weinman, born on July 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia); the introduction of restrictive anti-Jewish laws in Vienna after the Anschluss in March 1938; the family's definitive move to Bratislava soon after; his marriage; his and his wife's forced move to a ghetto camp after Nazis took control of Czechoslovakia; their experiences there doing manual labor; their fortunate escape through a German baggage firm, HAPAG, to Budapest, Cuba, and finally the United States; his parents' escape to Cuba where his father died; his reunion with his mother in October 1942; the assistance he received from his brother who had immigrated to Chicago, IL in 1938; and the success and prosperity he experienced in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral History

    Morris Rosnow (né Moishe Raznov), born on January 7, 1927 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dzyatlava, Belarus) discusses his experiences during World War II while hiding in the woods as a member of a Jewish partisan group operating under the organization of the Russian partisans; liberation in 1944 by the Soviet Army; his return to his hometown in Poland, where he remained with his sister until the death of their father; moving to Munich, Germany; earning a degree in engineering; immigrating with his sister to join their other sister in the United States; and earning a degree in pharmacy and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Eden

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva K. Breyer

    Oral History

    Eva Breyer, born on August 18, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her parents, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism after the death of her grandfather; being christened Catholic; her brother, who was born Jewish and converted when he was about a year old; attending Catholic religious classes; antisemitism in Hungary before the Germans invaded; the laws passed against Jews in the 1930s; the bombings after the war started; the drafting of non-Jewish men for the military and Jewish men for labor service; her father being called up for labor service near Budapest; how her mother was able to keep her father from being sent to the front in 1943; the German occupation, at which time the Jewish laws grew worse; having to move to Jewish houses with other families; the round ups led by the Arrow Cross and police in the summer of 1944; her aunt saving her mother from deportation; moving into an apartment building that was under the protection of the Vatican; her brother, who was sent to a monastery for extra protection; being sent to the hospital where a doctor diagnosed her as sick so she could hide with terminally sick children; going to a convent outside Buda; seeing people being shot into the Danube; going to a Swedish house and finding it empty; the arrival of the Russians; her family, who went to the ghetto while she was in hiding; her father’s death from pneumonia in March after the liberation; the mistreatment of the Hungarians by the Russian soldiers; life under the communists; escaping to Austria and then the United States in 1956; and how she identifies as Catholic.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Levi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl discusses his childhood in Long Island, NY; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS “operational group” working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral History

    Ellen Van Creveld, born in 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; her assimilated family life; her lack of awareness of her Jewish heritage; the changes she experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940, including the new restrictions and her transfer to a Jewish school; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends during this period; the fear of arrest and deportation; her family's decision to go into hiding in November 1943; her experiences while living in hiding; her family's move to Brussels, Belgium with the help of the underground; the false identities they acquired; her experiences in Brussels under false papers, her education; the betrayal of the family and their arrest; her reprieve from deportation due to illness; her experiences in the Jewish hospital and orphanage; her subsequent time spent living in hiding on a farm and in an abandoned castle during the winter of 1944-1945; her reunion with one of her brothers after the end of the war and the fates of her other family members; her postwar life in the United States and Holland; the challenges she faced; her marriage and family; her permanent immigration to the United States in 1956; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshtein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's flight to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; marrying in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to the Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, where they lived until 1951; their emigration first to Canada, and finally to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral History

    Leonid Bobrovsky, born on May 4, 1937 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes being only three years old when the war began; his father who fought with the partisans during the war; the Nazi invasion of Odessa, at which time he and his family were in an underground hiding place (“Kotokloomba”) reserved for partisans and their families; hiding with his mother while his older brother and father helped the partisans; getting sick because the hiding place was very wet; the Nazis discovering various entrances to the hiding place and using poisonous gas to force the people out; escaping from the hiding place along with his mother and older brother; getting caught by the Nazis and taken away to the city jail where there were many other Jewish residents; being separated from his mother, who was later murdered by the Nazis; being moved with his brother to a different jail; his brother’s attempted escape and then suicide; being taken to camp Ombarova where he remained until liberation; working even though he was so young; attributing his survival in the ghetto to the women who protected and took care of him; liberation; being taken to an orphanage where he stayed until his father’s return; his father, who remarried after the war; attending school and studying construction at a college; being married twice and having two daughters; and naming his younger daughter, Polina Bobrovskaya, after his mother.

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    Joseph Schein discusses his childhood is Sosnowiec, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany; being sent to his mother’s hometown Brzostowica-Wielka, Poland (now Vialikaia Berastavitsa, Belarus); avoiding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec; being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940; his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiesau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, and Buchenwald; the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform; being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld; enduring a death march from Buchenwald; being liberated by American troops; being hospitalized; his marriage to his childhood sweetheart and their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; being the only member of his family that survived the Holocaust; immigrating with an accordion, which was his only possession at the time; and his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagi-Talavera

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral History

    Edith Eger (née Elefant), born on September 29, 1927 in Kosice, Hungary (now Slovakia), describes her father (Lajos), who was a tailor, and her mother (Helen Klein), who worked for the Hungarian ministry; her two sisters, Magda and Klara; her favorite memories are of her mother's cooking; her childhood, during which she trained in ballet and gymnastics; preparing to compete for the Olympics for Hungary but being disqualified because she was Jewish; her sisters, who were gifted musicians; the story of how her sister Klara was smuggled out of Hungary when the war began by one of her professors from the music academy in Budapest; the German occupation of Hungary; being taken to a brick factory; being deported with her sister, parents, aunts, and uncles to Auschwitz in May 1944; being separated from her parents, and thus spared the gas chambers; being selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele; using her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz; conditions in the barracks; how she helped Magda survive in the camp; being liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, at which time she had five types of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and no hair left; going to a displaced persons camp, where she met her husband and became pregnant; immigrating to the United States in 1949, going first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory; moving to Texas, where she had two more children and attended the University of Texas at Austin; earning her doctorate; moving to San Diego, CA and working as a family therapist; and how her grandchildren are her world and how she lives every day for them. Ms. Eger, her parents, aunts and uncles, and her eldest sister Magda, were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. Ms. Eger was separated from her parents; she and her sister Magda were spared the gas chambers. Because of her talent for ballet, Ms. Eger was selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele. She was able to use her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz. Ms. Eger was liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945. While in a displaced persons camp, she met her husband and became pregnant. She emigrated to the United States in 1949; first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory. She, her husband and her daughter Marianne moved to Texas, where Ms. Eger had two more children, and attended the University of Texas at Austin where she ultimately received her doctorate. She settled in San Diego and works as a family therapist and with battered wives and abused teenagers.

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral History

    Otto Springer discusses his German upbringing in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic); his education; his family life; the antisemitism he witnessed in Prague in the early 1930s; his marriage to his Jewish wife and the discrimination he experienced as a result; his arrest in 1941; his sentence of forced labor; the help he received from a Gestapo officer; his activities in the Czech underground including the rescue of Jews, aided by two members of the Gestapo; his experiences in another labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) beginning in October 1944; the work he performed; a forced march he underwent in January 1945; acts of vengeance by Czechs that he witnessed after the war ended; the suspicion he fell under because of his German heritage; the assistance he received from a Czech military commander; and his immigration with his wife and children in September 1948.

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral History

    Magda Silberman, born on August 17, 1928, discusses her childhood in Pavlovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of her town by the Hungarians; antisemitism that she and her family experienced; the occupation of her town by Nazi troops; the gathering of the Jewish citizens and their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944; her arrival, the selections, and her experiences while at Auschwitz; the death march she endured in January 1945 to Ravensbrück and Leipzig; her liberation in May 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral History

    Eric Willgott, born on February 12, 1925 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna; his family life; his Orthodox religious upbringing; his involvement with a Zionist youth organization; his education; the increased antisemitism he experienced after the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in March 1938; his experiences during Kristallnacht in November; his family's decision to send him to Great Britain with the Kindertransport in December 1938; his experiences in London during the Blitz; his work with the United States government in Germany after the war; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his marriage; his life in the US; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral History

    Cecilia Kornbluth (née Cilli Mehlman), born on October 11, 1920, discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her early experiences with antisemitism in elementary school and gymnasium; her memories of the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, by Austrian Nazis in 1934; the Anschluss in March 1938; the changes that occurred for Jewish Austrians afterward; her two older brothers fleeing to France and to Switzerland; the arrests of her younger brother, father, and mother; her father's eventual deportation to Auschwitz; her brother's incarceration in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps for 11 months, and his release and move to England; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; being sent for by her brother in Switzerland; her illegal crossing into Switzerland; hiding because she lacked legal papers; being questioned and released; living and working in a refugee camp for single Jewish girls in Basel; living there throughout the war; marrying another refugee who was living in a single man's camp in 1942; having a son; being supported by the Jewish community during this period; her immigration to the United States in 1947; and her family and work life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral History

    Ruth Steiner discusses her childhood in Dresden, Germany; her well-integrated family life; her education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power in 1933; the necessity of attending a university outside of Germany due to her Jewish heritage; her studies in Geneva; her family's decision to leave Europe in 1939; their immigration to Brazil; their move to the United States in 1940; her life in the US; the work she performed as a librarian; and her husband and family.

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral History

    Trudy Lyons discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; the family's assimilated life; the changes that occurred after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938; having to leave school, and witnessing abuses against Jews. Ms. Lyons describes the family's flight to Czechoslovakia, and their successful immigration to the United States in November 1938; the family's adjustment to life in the US, eventually settling in Indiana; and her education, marriage, and family life in Detroit, MI and San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral History

    Margrit Schurman, born on April 1, 1925 in Essen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Essen; her memories of antisemitism; the flight of her sister to Switzerland and her brother to England; the events of Kristallnacht; being sent with her sisters to a Catholic school in England; their conversion to Catholicism; her life and experiences in England during the war, including her brother's deportation as an enemy alien to Canada; her separation from her mother, who had married an Italian and spent the war years in Italy; her immigration to the United States; her marriage and life in Berkeley, California; being reunited with her family in California; and her return trip to Germany.

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral History

    Edith Deutsch, born on January 21, 1925 in Arnswalde, Germany (now Choszczno, Poland), discusses her childhood in Arnswalde; her father, Fritz Abrahamowsky, and her mother, Lotte Gradnauer; living in a large home and being raised as a young child by servants, rarely seeing her mother or father; her family's move to Berlin, Germany in 1933; the difficulties experienced by her family when Hitler rose to power; going to the Olympic Stadium with her class and seeing the No Jews Allowed signs; having to leave public school after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing Germany with her family in April 1939 for Thailand; traveling by ship to Singapore; abandoning their plans to travel to Bangkok and instead opting to go to Shanghai, China; staying in a camp in Shanghai for a week; her experiences in Shanghai; working as a sales girl and as a beautician; her marriage in 1946 and the birth of her son in 1948; immigrating to Australia in 1949; living in a boarding house; moving to the United States in 1951; living in Oregon and then San Francisco, CA; and her efforts to socialize with other refugees over the years.

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral History

    Francis Cappel (né Franz Erwin Cappel), born on June 2, 1916 in Cologne, Germany, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany;his parents, Dr. Paul H. and Meta Cappel (née Braunschweig); growing up in an apartment flat near a synagogue in a mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) neighborhood; antisemitism in Germany; the beating of his lawyer father by Nazi storm troopers (Sturmabteilung) in April 1933; the boycott of Jewish business; moving in October 1933 to France, where he worked in the textile business; concealing his Jewish origins as best he could, always carrying French or English newspapers with him; befriending a man who brought him to the German Reich secret headquarters where he got to see rare German stamps (Mr. Cappel was an avid stamp collector); moving to Hamburg, Germany in 1935; immigrating to England in 1937; serving as a corporal in the British Army; his success in obtaining transit visas for his father and mother, thus rescuing his father from Dachau concentration camp; getting married to his wife Margo in 1944; leaving the Army in April 1946 and returning to London; immigrating with his wife, children, and parents to the United States; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral History

    Thomas Trier, born December 27, 1930 in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses his childhood in Frankfurt; his family's roots in the city; his integrated family life; his education in a Jewish school; his experiences in Nazi-era Germany; the economic difficulties his family faced; their decision to immigrate to the United States; the journey to New York, NY and then Chicago, IL; his experiences as a young immigrant in America; his feeling of isolation among his peers as a boy; his education through graduate school; his life after school; the work he performed; his feelings about his German and Jewish identity; and his marriage and family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral History

    Rita Grunbaum (née Rita van Leeuwen), born on April 9, 1910 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Holland; her career as a social worker in the Hague; her marriage in 1936;the onset of World War II in September 1939; the bombing of Holland; the German occupation beginning in 1940; the birth of her daughter in 1942; the family's arrest in September 1943; their transport to Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences in Westerbork; receiving papers for Palestine from her in-laws who had fled to Mexico; being selected as part of an exchange program with German prisoners-of-war held in Palestine; being sent with her family to Bergen-Belsen in February 1944; being transported from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 on the Lost Train (also called Lost Transport); her liberation in Troebtiz, Germany; the deaths of her family members during the Holocaust; and her post-war experiences.

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral History

    Lily Robinson (née Lily Solomon Leibovitch), born on June 29, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, discusses her childhood with her mother and sister who had been deported to Haskovo, Bulgaria from Sofia in 1940; her experiences there as a young child; her family's return to Sofia in 1945; immigrating to the United States in December 1946; her life in California; and the emotional aftermath of the Holocaust that she witnessed in her brother.

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral History

    Herman Apteker, born on October 9, 1915 in Dresden, Germany, discusses his childhood in Dresden; his Ukrainian parents; his father (Elieser), who was in business and died when Herman was only four years old; his mother, who started a wholesale business selling clothing out of the family's six or seven room flat; his four older siblings (three brothers and one sister); his male "guardian" (this was a German requirement for children whose fathers had died) Dr. Avraham Borg, who took Herman to synagogue and was the primary source of Herman's religious education; his experiences with antisemitism at public school; his strong desire to leave Germany once Hitler rose to power; his trip to Czechoslovakia in 1933 as part of the Young Macabees, in preparation for immigration to Palestine; spending 10 or 11 months in Slovakia, taking part in agricultural training; his arrival in Palestine in April 1933; becoming very ill with dysentery and malaria; his experiences in Palestine; the immigration of his mother and brothers to Palestine; his work in Haifa; riots that occurred in 1936; becoming a temporary policeman before a British officer offered him a job in the immigration office; his marriage in 1938; the beginning of WWII and his work for the British army (in an office) until he was conscripted into the Israeli Army; working as a commission officer at the Lebanese border; his unique relationship with an Arab officer on the Lebanese side; his divorce and remarriage; his immigration with his second wife to the United States in 1953; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral History

    Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, born on February 14, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his childhood in Budapest; his time in a Transylvanian ghetto in 1944; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz; the work he performed in Josef Mengele's medical complex; the experiments he witnessed; his impressions of Mengele; and his subsequent experiences at Mauthausen, Gusen II, and Ebensee.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral History

    Semyon Veyber, born on December 20, 1927 in Tomashpil, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Tomashpil; his religious upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German Army invaded in June 1941; his family's attempt to evacuate, their capture by the Germans, and the help given to the Germans by the local Ukrainian people; his escape from an Einsatzgruppen action; being deported with his family to a ghetto in July 1941, and his experiences there; the work he performed and the conditions; the fear he felt as the German Army retreated that he and his family would be killed before they were liberated; the arrival of the Soviet Army in March 1944; the charges of collaboration that he faced; his life after the end of the war; and his immigration to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral History

    Chaya Ash-Furhman (née Averbuch), born March 19,1920 in Kishinev (now Chisinau), Moldova, describes her childhood; her parents’ involvement in Yiddish theater; her own involvement in theater at a young age; the outbreak of war in June 1941; hiding with her family in the basement of a theater in the Russian section of Tiraspol, Moldova; being transported to cooperative farms in Ukraine and Uzbekistan; being underfed; her father, who suffered from mental distress and dysentery and was taken to a courtyard and shot; how the people who were murdered were then covered in lime, so as not to spread disease; the hardships she and her family endured working on these farms; becoming sick with malaria; working as a seamstress in a nearby town where conditions were better; meeting her first husband; antisemitism that was rampant after the end of the war; her leaving for Poland with her mother and husband, who was Polish by birth; their decision to leave Poland in 1947 while she was pregnant; the family's experiences in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria; and their immigration to Israel, where she continued her involvement in Yiddish Theater.

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral History

    Peter Mueller, born on December 30, 1926 in Hannover, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hannover; his family's decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938; his life with his father in England; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1943; his service in the US Army with the medical corps as an instructor in Texas; and his life after military service.

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral History

    Eva Cohn (née Eva Maria Rhee), born in 1923 in Dortmund, Germany, describes her parents, Max Rhee and Else Heinemann; experiencing a warm family life and peace in her early childhood; not experiencing antisemitism until 1934 when her friend shunned her, teachers began to treat her unfairly, and Aryan students were being separated and taught antisemitism; being prohibited from attending public schools around 1935; moving to Cologne, Germany, where she attended a Jewish school while staying with a Jewish family; her family’s experience during an anti-Jewish “Aktion” in 1938, during which German soldiers threw rocks at their windows and burned their synagogue; returning to live with the family in Cologne, while her parents moved to Baudin and stayed with a friend; leaving Germany with her family circa 1938 and going to England just before the ill treatment of the Jews became worse; a law in England that prohibited immigrants from working, which meant her family could not make any money; spending one year in England, before being allowed to immigrate to the United States; settling in Los Angeles, CA; attending Whittier College and majoring in English; working at a school as an instructional supervisor; her father’s death in 1941 from a heart condition; meeting and marrying Hans in Salinas, CA in 1949; having three children and moving quite frequently; and her life in Palo Alto, teaching German, participating in the German association, and leading the Bridge to Understanding, which takes a group to Germany each summer.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Fred Baum (né Efriam Dovid Boymelgreen), born in Slupaianowa, Poland (possibly Nowa Słupia, Poland), on October 1, 1921, describes his childhood; his one younger brother; his parents, Majlech and Miriam Nhuna, whom he lived with until 1930 when their mother died; being raised religious, and studying before the war at a yeshiva in Otwock, Poland; returning home from school after the war started, and seeing Jews being rounded up for forced labor; working in various government factories, and how the situation got worse and worse; his memories of shootings, confiscations, and deportations; how Jews were not allowed to go to school or to religious services and there was no electricity; his memories of several events including a memory of the rabbi of his town being tied to a horse and forced to run after it until he died; being put into Starachowice with his father and brother in August 1942; suffering from typhus and his father’s efforts to keep him out of the "hospital" so he wouldn't be shot; their transfer in July 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his father’s death in Birkenau around January of 1945; being sent with his brother to Buna (Monowitz), where they were given striped uniforms; being transferred with his brother to Lara Hut; being moved in early 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Gusen in Austria; spending a week there and then four days without food in an open train to Hannora, where they worked on an unfinished concentration camp; being separated from his brother on April 5, 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; spending six months in a hospital unit recuperating, and then staying in Bergen-Belsen for five years; meeting his wife, Helen Wiesel, there; getting married in 1946; never returning to Poland; reuniting with his brother, who was his only surviving family member; immigrating in 1950 with his wife and young daughter to the United States; having two more children; and his brother, who also immigrated to the United States and started a family.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral History

    Cantor Hans Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany on May 31, 1926, discusses his childhood in Berlin; being forced to leave his public school after the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935; antisemitic propaganda; his feelings of exclusion from social and athletic activities; the 1936 Olympic games; the events of Kristallnacht; the long wait for a visa to the United States; the family's decision to leave Germany for Shanghai, China; his impressions upon arrival in Shanghai; the life of his family and the Jewish community in Shanghai; his mother's death; the difficulties and illnesses he endured; moving into the Hongkew ghetto when the Japanese took control of Shanghai in 1942; his experiences there; the Allied bombings of Shanghai that took place in the spring of 1945; his life in post-war Shanghai; stowing aboard a ship to Australia in 1946; living as an illegal immigrant in Australia; his immigration to the United States in 1948; being drafted into the military; volunteering as a cantor in a San Francisco synagogue; returning to school and obtaining a cantorial diploma; working as a singing waiter in the Borscht Belt in New York while he was attending Hebrew Union College in New York; being reunited with his father in 1952; and his later experiences.

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral History

    Gilbert L. van Mourik, born June 27, 1930 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses his childhood in Rotterdam; his family life; his Protestant upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; his experiences during the bombing of Rotterdam; his father's efforts to gather and store food; his parents' decision to become part of the resistance; his family's activities, which included hiding a Jewish child in their home for the duration of the war; and the dangers his family experienced and their efforts at self-preservation as well as the moral challenges they faced.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral History

    Sam Zelver, born in 1935 in Kalisz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Kalisz; fleeing with his family to the Soviet Union after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the attempts of his father, who was in the Polish Army, to join them; the family's journey across Russia to Siberia; his mother doing hard labor in return for housing and food; the hardships they endured for a year and a half; the journeys the family took, which ended in Kazakhstan, where they lived with other Jewish refugees; discovering a relative nearby with whom they stayed from 1942 until the end of the war; the family's post-war journey to Germany, where they lived in a DP (displaced persons) camp; his immigration with his sister in 1947 to San Francisco, CA, sponsored by an uncle who died before they arrived; their stay in the Jewish children's home, Homewood Terrace; his reunion with his mother and stepfather, who emigrated in 1952; his education and service in the United States Army; his work as a salesman; his marriage; family; and religious life.

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral History

    Asya Grunkina, born on March 2, 1936 in Odesa, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Odesa; her memories of the occupation of Odessa by Nazi troops on October 16, 1941; the orders for Jewish families to identify themselves in preparation for deportation; hiding with her family in their home to escape deportation; the family fleeing with the assistance of a local Russian man in January 1942; hiding in the catacombs and caves nearby; the assistance of their rescuer and his family who brought them food at great risk; the terrible conditions and privations they endured; and leaving their hiding place in April 1944.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral History

    Kurt Mostny, born on March 3, 1919 in Linz, Austria, discusses his childhood in Linz; the antisemitism he experienced growing up; enlisting in the Austrian army and being posted in Vienna; the Anschluss in March 1938; serving as part of the honor guard surrounding Adolf Hitler when he arrived in Vienna to oversee the transfer of power; evading the roundup of Jews in Linz; escaping from Austria; going to Egypt to join his sister, who was pursuing a doctorate in Egyptology; their subsequent move to Belgium; his mother's friendship with a woman from Chile; her success in obtaining visas for Mr. Mostny, his sister, and herself; the entire family's immigration to Chile in 1939; his experiences in Chile; his work and family; his immigration to the United States with his wife and five children in 1964.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Hanna Cassel, born on December 6, 1914, in Berlin, Germany, describes her father Arthur, who owned a shoe store and her mother Rebecca, who helped run the store; her one brother, Werner, who was six years younger than her; her mother's parents, who were very religious, and spending during many holidays going to the temple with them; her parents, who were not religious; attending a private elementary school and then a girls' high school, which she was not able to finish because about a year and a half before she would have graduated, she lost her scholarship (because she was Jewish); her father's business ending because he was Jewish; not experiencing much antisemitism when she was younger, and how at first most people thought Hitler was crazy and he would never amount to anything; her very good non-Jewish friends, especially at school; her family home and her childhood and her love for reading; not having many options after she dropped out of school; her desire to go to Palestine with some of her friends, which her parents did not want her to do; moving to Rome, Italy and working as a nanny for several different families; how by 1939, Hitler had influenced Mussolini's policies and foreign Jews were required to leave Italy; the popular sentiment in Italy about Germany; the government-sponsored persecution growing worse; being arrested in December 1940 and put into a women’s concentration camp (she had avoided the first roundups); living with about 65 other Jews, Roma, and Yugoslavian partisans; conditions in the camp, the people there, and the flourishing black market; the German occupation of Italy and how the villagers in the town around the concentration camp helped free the prisoners because they knew the women of the camp would be killed or deported immediately by the Germans; hiding in the fields and then walking back to Rome, which took her about ten days; eating vegetables she took from nearby fields during her journey; being given fake papers by the police in the concentration camp’s town (the papers identified her as Anna Castelli; she told anyone who asked that she was an Italian fleeing the Allies); hiding with various friends in Rome; how most people at this time were surviving on the black market; the destruction of the synagogue in Rome right after she returned and the liquidation of the ghetto; the deportation of thousands of people; how several years earlier her parents and brother had gone to Shanghai, China, where her brother and father both died; having very little correspondence with her family while she was in Rome; getting some information from listening to the radio, which was illegal; living in hiding on the outskirts of the city when Rome was liberated on June 5, 1944; the euphoria at that moment and the difficulty of life after the liberation; how food was hard to come by; getting a job at the American Joint Distribution Committee; getting a visa to the United States and arriving in the US in December of 1948; her mother’s death and Hanna’s depression; working nights while taking classes at San Francisco State College; earning a BA and wanting to become a librarian; becoming a teacher after earning her Master’s degree; returning to Italy almost every summer once she was a teacher and visiting friends; returning to Germany for the first time in 1972 to visit a cousin; her hesitation to return to Germany; having a Bat-Mitzvah in 1983; experiencing antisemitism in the US, especially at the high school where she worked; and never marrying or having children.

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral History

    Vera Korkus, born in 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood in Vienna; the onset of World War II, and the opportunity that she and her sister had to go a Kindertransport, which they both refused; the forced move she and her family made in 1940 to Jewish ghetto in Vienna; their transport in October 1942 to an unnamed camp, where her father died of lung cancer; being sent with her mother to Auschwitz two years later; being separated from her mother; her reunion with her sister; the terrible conditions at Auschwitz; her encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele; being transported to Kurzbach, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where she endured forced labor and a 3-day march to Bergen Belsen; her escape from the march; finding protection from the Germans with Russian soldiers; the sexual assaults that occurred; her life after the war; moving to Bohemia (Czech Republic) then Vienna; and her immigration in 1949 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral History

    Steffi Black, born on October 17, 1920 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; her Polish parents Charlotte Pink and Felix Israel; her father’s factory in Berlin and his work with his brother, Leo, installing electricity in the city; her complex family dynamic; her lack of a Jewish identity; her parents' divorce; her mother's remarriage to Otto Goetz in Switzerland; her separation from her father; her father's involvement in the Spanish Civil War; spending the summers of 1932 and 1933 in Poland with her grandparents; attending a Jewish school for about nine months, but feeling left out since she was not Jewish; her reunion with her father and their immigration first to Cuba and then to the United States; her father's death in 1946 in Nevada; her marriage and life in the US; visiting Germany in 1980; and her three children.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral History

    Ann Burger (née Anni Rosalie Rautenberg), born in 1920 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), discusses her childhood; her father Arthur Rautenberg, who was the manager of department stores; being raised religious but not Orthodox; attending private school and then public schools; her experiences with antisemitism in school after Hitler's rise to power in 1933; her Jewish friends at school; the loss of her father's business; the family's move to Berlin, while she remained in school; her move to Berlin after her graduation in 1936; her cousin's immigration to Palestine; the family's decision to flee Germany; the efforts of their American family members to obtain visas for them; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; training as a nurse; a job opportunity for work in Sweden, where she remained during the war years; her parents’ journey to Spain, Cuba, and then to the United States; her reunion with them in the US in 1946; and settling in San Francisco, CA, where she married and had a family.

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral History

    Klara Garmel (née Pleshivaya), born on February 17, 1926, discusses her childhood in Yarun’, Ukraine; her parents' work on a collective farm; her memories of Jewish school as well as participating in a pioneer Ukrainian youth organization; the onset of war with Nazi Germany in 1941; the confusion that ensued; the enforcement of anti-Jewish laws; hiding from a roundup; witnessing brutal acts perpetrated against her grandfather; escaping, with the assistance of non-Jewish friends, to Poland; encountering her mother and sister, who returned to Ukraine; her experiences moving, hiding, and passing for a non-Jew; her conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith; marrying a widower far older than she; the advance of Soviet liberating forces; reclaiming her Jewish identity; leaving her marriage; working until she had sufficient funds to return to her home; learning that all but a sister and brother had perished; remarrying and having a daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1992 due to the antisemitism she experienced in Ukraine.

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral History

    Polina Sorkin (née Britavskaya), born on November 25, 1931 in Krutye, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Ukraine; her brother and father's service in Soviet Army; the German invasion and seeing troops in her town; her family's unsuccessful attempt to flee; an incident in which all the Jews were rounded up and marched to a barracks where they were imprisoned; escaping the barracks; traveling from village to village; being sheltered by relatives and strangers; her reunion with family members in a ghetto; traveling to an orphanage in Balta, Ukraine, where she remained until the end of the war; reuniting with her family; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral History

    Mikhail Blank, born on April 22, 1930 in Bershad, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Bershad; the family's experiences on a collective farm; his memories of antisemitism; the family's move from Bershad to a nearby camp after the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; an incident in which his father and brother with other men were locked in a stable from which they escaped and returned to Bershad; the occupation of the area by Romanian troops and the establishment of a ghetto in September 1941 in Bershad, where he and his family lived until the end of the war; his escape attempts; illnesses he endured; the forced labor his father and brother performed; his father's death; the liberation of Bershad in March 1944 by Soviet troops; his brother joining the fight against the Nazis and his death in battle in July 1944; his life in Bershad after the war; his military service; and his immigration to the United States in 1991.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral History

    Kurt Gronowski, born on July 16, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Berlin; the antisemitism he experienced; the destruction of his family's business during Kristallnacht, November 1938; the family's escape to Shanghai, China; his experiences while on board the ship from Italy; the family's arrival in Shanghai and the assistance they received from the Jewish community; life in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai; conditions during the Japanese occupation; the improvement of conditions after the war ended; immigrating to the United States; the difficulties he encountered while living in Indiana; and settling in San Francisco, where he became a successful businessman.

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral History

    Rosa Wigmore (née Adler), born September 8, 1923 in Ulic, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her childhood in Ulic; her family life; the changes she experienced in 1939 following the Hungarian annexation of the region; her experiences during her deportation with her family in 1944 to a ghetto in Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine); their deportation to Auschwitz; the selection she survived with her sister; her illness; her experiences in the infirmary and the help she received from a doctor who arranged to transfer her to another camp; the work she performed; the assistance she received; her lingering health issues; being liberated in May 1945 by Czechoslovakian partisans; her postwar experiences in Prague; her reunion with her sister; their immigration to the United States; and the fates of her other family members.

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral History

    Evelyn Lowen Apte (née Eveline Loewenberg), born in 1929 in Goerlitz, Germany, describes her brother Gerald; her father Herman Alexander Lowen, who was a cavalry officer during the First World War; her mother Else (Gradnauer) Lowen, who had a great interest in art and attended an art school in Berlin; how her family did not consider themselves religious but when the war began the Jewish holidays became more culturally significant to the family; having a happy childhood; her father’s desire to emigrate as soon as Hitler came to power; getting around the quota system by becoming property owners in the United States; traveling through Paris, France in 1937 and taking a ship to New York, NY, arriving on February 22, 1937; the fate of her extended family; settling in Portland, Oregon; learning English; the difficult transition to American life, especially for her mother; feeling like an outsider in high school, but beginning to feel American in college; visiting Germany in 1966; how she does not enjoy speaking German with people her age, but is willing to speak German with the younger generation; attending Reed College in Oregon for two years, and then transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where she did her undergraduate and some graduate work, finishing her education in London; becoming a social worker; considering herself an atheist, but still feeling close to the Jewish culture and traditions; the large community of Jewish refugees in Portland; and her reflections on her experiences as a refugee.

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral History

    Annette Herskovits discusses her experiences as a young child during the Holocaust, including her infancy in Paris, France; the occupation of Paris by Nazi troops; her father's decision that the family should go into hiding; hiding with her older siblings with occasional visits from their parents; the arrest and deportation of her parents in June 1943; her brother's efforts to find a safe place for her outside of Paris; being fostered with a couple in an unidentified location; being visited by her siblings during this period; and understanding that she would never see her parents again.

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral History

    Alfred Cotton (né Baumwollspinner), born on December 29, 1925 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hamburg; his Polish parents; his father’s wholesale wine distribution business; his memories of the antisemitism after the Nazis rose to power; his parents' selling their business because of the anti-Jewish boycotts; the expulsion of his father to Poland in 1938; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; the arrests of the teachers at the Jewish school he attended; his parents' decision to place him on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for a boy's camp in Suffolk, England; the arrest and internment of all boys over age 16; being moved to Sheffield, England and living in a camp run by refugee women; attending a public school; learning that his parents and grandparents were deported in 1942 from Poland where they were living; his immigration to the United States in the early 1950s; and his involvement in Kindertransport reunions.

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral History

    Marion Mostny, born on May 22, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; the changes she experienced during the 1930s; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her family's immigration to Santiago, Chile in April 1939; the community of Jewish refugees there; the fates of family members left behind in Germany; her life in Chile; her and her husband's decision to immigrate to the United States in 1963; their life in San Francisco, CA; her decision to write her memoirs; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance. [See her memoir titles, Conversations with my grandchildren : a journey through three continents.]

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral History

    Roy Calder describes his early life in an assimilated family in Berlin and Dresden; his invovlement in Jewish youth groups; his awareness of increased antisemitism after the Nazi rise to power; his parents' decision to send him to school in Switzerland in 1935; his attempts to convince his family to leave Germany; his regret that they did not; his decision to immigrate to Great Britain; the jobs he held in Birmingham, England; the beginning of World War II in 1939; his internment as an enemy alien in Sherbrooke, Canada; his return to England in late 1940; why he volunteered for the British army; his six year service in Scotland, Nigeria, India, and Burma; his marriage to another Holocaust survivor; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1953; his Jewish identity; and the effects the events of the Holocaust had on him and his wife.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Batzdorff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Felberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral History

    Abraham Jaeger, born on March 13, 1916 in Vel'ký Bočkov, Czechoslovakia (now Velykyi Bychkiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his career as a salesman; his escape in October 1939 to Palestine, where he was imprisoned for six months; his experiences serving in the British Army in Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus; joining the Israeli Army in 1948; his career and life in Israel, where he lived until 1958; his immigration to the United States; and the death of his parents and three of sisters in the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Kuhn

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Ms. Kuhn's childhood in Berlin, Germany, her life as the daughter of a Jewish father and non-Jewish German mother as the Nazi regime rose to power, and her growing awareness of antisemitism and change. Ms. Kuhn describes the dismay she felt after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the privations her family suffered as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws and her father's unemployment, living with meager ration allotments, detainments, and forced labor. She discusses life trapped in Berlin during the war years, bombings, and forced labor in a small factory. Ms. Kuhn remembers the round-up of Jews in Berlin in February 1943 and her release, because her mother was German. Of particular note, Ms. Kuhn discusses the Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943, when a group of Aryan women protested the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children, in which her mother participated. Ms. Kuhn describes the occupation of Berlin by Russian troops, and her family being asked to identify Nazis to them. She recalls her first exposure to information about the concentration camps and the Holocaust, the time she spent in a displaced persons camp, her desire to leave Germany and her immigration to the United States in 1948. Ms. Kuhn describes her return to Berlin for the 50th year memorial of Kristallnacht, when she participated in a silent march from the a synagogue to Rosenstrasse in commemoration of the protest there.

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral History

    Greta Reisman, born on January 6, 1927 in Mattersdorf (Mattersburg), Austria, discusses her childhood in Nuremberg, Germany; her religious upbringing and assimilated education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power; the increasing antisemitism as well as her family's decision to relocate to Yugoslavia and Hungary; her experiences in Yugoslavia; the actions her grandmother took to allow them to remain there; her decision to join the rest of the family in Hungary; and immigrating to the United States in 1940.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Mr. Schein's childhood is Sosnowiec, his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Mr. Schein describes being sent to his mother’s hometown, Brzostowica-Wielka, near Volkovisk, in Russian Poland, and eluding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec. He discusses being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940, and his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiessau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, Buchenwald, and possibly others. Mr. Schein describes the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform, being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld, and enduring a death march from Buchenwald. He discusses his liberation by American troops, his hospitalization, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany, and their immigration to the United States in June 1946. Mr. Schein relates that he was the member of his family that survived the Holocaust and his only possession when he emigrated was an accordion. He also describes his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral History

    Dan Dougherty, born May 30, 1925 in Austin, Minnesota, describes being drafted into the United States Army 17 days after his high school graduation; transferring from the 44th Division to the 45th Division; seeing combat on the Sigfried Line and experiencing a slight injury; returning after his recovery and fighting at Aschaffenburg, Germany; the surrender of Germany seven days later; taking part in the liberation of Bavarian US prisoner of war camps and concentration camps; going towards Nuremberg, which had already fallen to the Allies; arriving in Dachau, where they found thousands of emaciated corpselike inmates; coming upon Allach concentration camp; and going to Munich, which they occupied on May 1, 1945.

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral History

    Max Erlichman, born in November 1931 in Caracas, Venezuela, describes his parents Tobias Erlichman and Bella Galinskaja; spending his childhood years in Amsterdam, Holland until he was taken to Westerbork with his brother and father in mid-November 1942; the deportation of his mother to Auschwitz in September of 1942; the deportation of his older brother Zacharias to Auschwitz in October of 1942; never seeing either Zacharias nor his mother again, and finding out after the war that they were both killed in the camps; being sent with his brother and father to Bergen-Belsen, where they stayed for nine weeks; being sent to a camp in Wülzburg, Germany and remaining there until they were liberated in March or April of 1945 by the American Army; recuperating along with his father and brother in a house provided to them by civilians in the town of Weissenburg in Bayern, Germany; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Würzburg for a week before being sent back to Holland; his father’s travels between Holland and the United States for a few years after the war; and immigrating to the US with his brother.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Gerhart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugene Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral History

    Tillie Molho, born on December 25, 1926 in Salonika, Greece, discusses her childhood in Salonika and Athens, Greece; her experience of the Italian and German invasions of Athens; living in hiding for two years with a Christian family; the scarcity of food and the fear of discovery; her reunion with her family after the liberation of Athens; her family's attempt to reclaim their home from German collaborators; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral History

    Agnes Allison (née Agnes Suzannah Halàsz), born on October 28, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her younger sister, Judy; her mother, Ilona Gero and her father, Robert Halász; attending a private German school established for the children of diplomats; the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and the arrival of Polish refugees; the Hitler Youth movement at her school; her family’s conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and her awareness of the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944 and the increased restrictions imposed on the Jewish community; her family being forced out of their home; working for the Germans for a short time in exchange for protection; becoming friendly with a German officer's chauffeur, Fritz, who told her that the German soldiers kept watch at night to protect everyone in the apartment from the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross; going into hiding in December 1944 with the help of a priest, Father Reile; remaining in hiding until the liberation of Budapest in April 1945; learning the fates of family members; and her belief that the Arrow Cross was responsible for the deaths of Budapest Jews.

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral History

    Ann Gabor Arancio, born on September 2, 1926 in Gyula, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Gyula; her childhood experiences with antisemitism; her experiences passing as a Christian with false identity papers; being captured in November 1944 by Nazi troops; doing forced labor in a brick factory; her escape with her mother and sister; going into hiding in several locations; the liberation of Hungary; studying in Holland; immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1950; and her divorce, remarriage, and family life in the United States. [Ms. Arancio was featured in the book, A Time to Flee: Unseen Women of Courage.]

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Yanina Cywinska, born on October 28, 1929, describes growing up with her Ukrainian family, including her parents, Wladyslaw and Ludwika, and her older brother, Theodor; traveling a lot as a child; living mostly in and around Warsaw, Poland; attending ballet classes; being raised Catholic; her father’s Jewish friends; being taught by her parents to not look down on Jews or ever make an antisemitic comment; her father, who was a doctor and was asked by the Nazis, once they had invaded Poland, to perform some medical experiments on Jewish twins; his refusal to conduct the experiments and his subsequent imprisonment in jail for a short period; the Warsaw Ghetto, which was constructed in 1939; her father’s realization that he had a moral obligation to help the Jews and his failed attempts to get the local priest to help; her family’s participation in the underground movement; making several trips a day through tunnels and sewer lines into and out of the ghetto; carrying ammunition, jewelry, furs, medicine, and poison for the black market; witnessing executions and other violence; the various tunnels that they used to get in and out of the ghetto; being arrested and sent to a detention center; being taken out in the middle of the night with other people into the forest, where they dug ditches and then were lined up and shot; surviving the massacre because she was behind another woman, and she fell into the pit and pretended to be dead; climbing out of the pit and hiding in a haystack, where a farmer found her; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; her aunt, Stasha, paying the Gestapo to get Yanina and her brother out of the detention center; returning to her aunt’s house; being beaten and abused by her aunt for being a “Jew-lover”; her brother, who ran away; working as a servant for her aunt; ending up homeless and wandering around the streets of Warsaw for a while; staying for a few weeks with a couple she met at the detention center; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; being sent with the other prisoners to Auschwitz in cattle cars; the journey; arriving at Auschwitz; surviving a gas chamber after being revived by another inmate; being given a uniform; the shaving of her hair; being tattooed with a number; working in various places, including a factory, a kitchen, in the labs, and at the crematorium (note that it is generally thought that only men worked in the Sonderkommando doing the jobs that Yanina said she did); her methods for survival; being forced on a death march to Dachau; being liberated by American soldiers; staying in a displaced persons camp for a while, where she was sexually assaulted and impregnated by a soldier; her two abusive marriages after the war; meeting her third husband; the effects of the war on her emotionally; giving up on God; and her long recovery from her traumatic experiences.

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral History

    Ilse Lewy, born on February 26, 1920 in Wuppertal, Germany, discusses her childhood in Wuppertal (now part of Elberfeld); her memories of the increase in antisemitism after Hitler rose to power 1933; being forced to leave school and move with her family; working at a factory until 1936; her move to a children's school in Sweden that prepared students for immigration to Palestine; her travels there by train and her experiences in the school for the next two years; being summoned back to Germany to immigrate with her parents and sister to the United States; the voyage on a ship through the Panama Canal; arriving in San Francisco, CA; returning to school; her attempts at and final success in being admitted to nurse training; her experiences with antisemitism in the United States; volunteering for the United States Army; being stationed in the Philippines where she met her future husband; and their marriage and family life.

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral History

    Esther Kemeny, born on August 19, 1912 in Michalovce, Slovakia, discusses her childhood in Michalovce; attending law school and graduating 1936; incidents of antisemitism; her disbarment in 1939 because she was Jewish; meeting her husband and their marriage; the escape of her brothers and father to the United States in 1940; being deported with her husband to Auschwitz in 1944; the deplorable conditions at Auschwitz; the birth and tragic loss of her son in Auschwitz; her work in the hospital at Auschwitz; the death march she endured; her experiences at Ravensbrück concentration camp; being liberated by Russian soldiers; the assistance she received from the Red Cross; her return to Slovakia and her reunion with her husband who was in the hospital in Bratislava; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their move to New York and then Ohio; her husband's medical practices; and the birth of her daughter in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Ray Redel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral History

    Roma Barnes (née Rosenmann), born on March 15, 1930 in Demblin (Deblin), Poland, describes being subjected to a lot of antisemitism in school when she was growing up; the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the roundup of Jews; fleeing the roundups several times; her parents, who were caught in the first roundup and sent to Sobibor, where they were killed immediately upon arrival; returning to her town, where she met up with her uncle and stayed with him; her uncle’s preparation of fake passports for all of them to go to Switzerland; watching as her uncle was captured by the Nazis and shot; being caught and sent to a work camp, where she witnessed such atrocities as watching the hanging of her friend; being sent to Chesokova, where she was liberated; and staying in Egland after the war before going to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral History

    Margot Braun (née Feibush), born January 28, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, describes growing up in a suburb of Berlin, where there were very few Jews; being forced to go to a Jewish school in Berlin when Hitler came to power in 1933; her family’s experience of a "pre-Kristallnacht" in June of 1938, at which time she and her family were awakened and forced to leave their businesses and move in with their relatives; her father’s many siblings, including his brother who was an extremely wealthy businessman in San Francisco, CA; leaving with her family for England in March 1939; the arrest of her parents at the beginning of the war; living with her cousin in a foster home in England; her parents’ eventual release; and her family’s immigration in October 1948 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral History

    Theodore “Ted” Ellington, born in February 1928 in Vienna, Austria, describes being an only child; growing up around antisemitism and being defensive of his Jewish identity; the religious nature of Vienna schools and having to attend Christian educational activities; being also required to go to Jewish education sessions; how there were about eight Jewish students in his elementary school class of 35 children; his father, who made a living selling foodstuffs for livestock; the economic inequality in Vienna and his family’s practice to provide lunch for an unemployed family once a week; the violence that erupted in Vienna in 1934; the Anschluss in 1938; seeing tanks in the streets and army planes flying overhead daily; the Nazi flags and swastikas all over Vienna and the pro-Nazi sentiment of many Austrians; the Nuremberg laws; being forced to attend an all-Jewish school, where Nazi children would gather outside and taunt the Jewish students; the burning of synagogues and the destruction of his grandfather's store; his memories of Nazis entering their family home and beating his father after he asked the officers for paperwork stating that they were allowed to conduct the search; how the officers took virtually everything the family owned, including his cherished stamp collection; his parents’ desire to relocate to the United States; his parents’ decision to enroll Ted in a program that was run by the Quakers that took children from Austria and placed them temporarily with a family in England; going to Belgium in April 1939 to live with his uncle; going to England in May 1939 and staying with a family there until 1946; being treated well by the English family; attending school in London; his parents’ migration to San Francisco, CA in 1940; traveling to New York, NY in 1946 and a train to San Francisco, where he reunited with his parents in May 1946; attending San Francisco City College for one year and then UC Berkeley; earning his degree in accounting in 1950; joining the US Army for two years and then becoming a CPA; getting married in 1965; and his two daughters.

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral History

    Elisabeth Katz (née Rosenthal), born on April 23, 1920 in Fürth, Germany, discusses her childhood in an assimilated Jewish family; her mother's conversion to Judaism and reversion to Lutheranism; the ambivalent position that she felt placed in because of this difference; having to change schools once Hitler rose to power in 1933; attending a Jewish boarding school; entering nursing school in Frankfurt in 1938; her memories of the events surrounding Kristallnacht in November 1938, including the arrest of her father; immigrating to London in late 1938 to work in a hospital; being interned as an enemy alien; returning to London and working as a nurse during the Blitz; visiting her parents in 1947 in Germany, where they had remained throughout the war; her father being one of the three Jews in Furth who survived the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States in 1949; moving to San Francisco, CA; and marrying a fellow refugee.

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral History

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