Oral history interview with Faye Porter

Oral History | Accession Number: 1992.A.0126.48 | RG Number: RG-50.156.0048

Some video files begin with 10-60 seconds of color bars.

Interviewee: Faye Porter
Date: 1984 April 25 (interview)
Language: English
Extent: 1 sound cassette (90 min.).

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Special Collection: The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
Topical Term: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
Holocaust survivors--United States.
Personal Name: Porter, Faye--Interviews.
Holder of Originals: Jewish Community Relations Council, Anti-Defamation League of Minnesota and the Dakotas
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: The interview with Faye Porter was conducted by Rhoda G. Lewin on April 25, 1984, as part of a Holocaust oral history project sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, Anti-Defamation League of Minnesota and the Dakotas. The interview was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in October 1992.
Conditions on Access: No restrictions on access
Conditions on Use: No restrictions on use
: Record last modified: 2018-01-22 10:51:28
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510702

Also in Jewish Community Relations Council, Anti-Defamation League of Minnesota and the Dakotas collection

Date: 1982-1990

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Henry Abramowicz, born in Lodz, Poland in 1929, describes his parents; his family’s shoe store; his brother; being nine years old when the war began; being the youngest child and his three sisters; the burning of the synagogue; his father being mobilized into the army; his family’s religious practices and involvement with the Jewish community; his interactions with non-Jews; his education; his memories of the beginning of the war; his parents’ decision to flee and staying in Lodz with his sisters; traveling through Praga (suburb of Warsaw, Poland) with his sister and 20 other Jews in December 1939; the fates of his extended family members; going to Bialstok, Poland; being sent to Siberia in the summer of 1940; the conditions in Siberia; living in a camp with other Jews; being allowed to leave in 1941; going to Ulyannas, Russia; staying in Vyanaska oblast; attending school; his father’s mobilization in the Russian Army; returning to Poland after the war and living in Klatsko; going to Germany; studying veterinarian science at the university in Giessen, Germany; studying medicine in Munich, Germany; going to the United States in the early 1950s; moving to Minnesota; his wife and children; and his thoughts on sharing his story.

Oral history interview with Sam Ackos

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Oral history interview with Sam Ackos

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Sam Ackos (Semanto Menachem Ackos), born November 10, 1931 in Breveza (possibly Preveza), Greece to Menachem Semanto and Rebecca (Chaim Vitalis), discusses his family’s move to Athens circa 1936; his father, who was a merchant buying and selling anything and everything, and later became a taxi driver; his mother, who worked as a seamstress; having four sisters; his family only speaking Greek; having limited education; attending synagogue on holidays, but not on Shabbat; the good relations with non-Jewish Greeks, except during Pesach/Easter when Greek children were told that Jews put them over barrels on pins and needles and used the blood to make matzah; his father’s care for various aunts and uncles who later died in Auschwitz; the Italian invasion of Greece; the German occupation of Greece; the food scarcity during the occupation; hiding with his family in various basements around Athens; the dismantling and hiding of his father’s taxi (it was reassembled and driven after the war); living on beans and bread and other food bought on black market in villages outside of Athens using gold his father had accumulated; his father’s activities as a partisan; the roundup of Jews on March 25, 1944 and detainment in camp Chaidari; the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz; not being taken during the roundup; participating in acts of sabotage with other teens; being unsure of the fate of his father, but hearing a rumor that he was involved in a plot to destroy a crematoria in a camp; life after the war; his family’s desire to immigrate to Israel, and their decision to go to the United States; arriving in New York in January 1951 with the help of the United Jewish Appeal; settling in St. Paul MN where they lived in a Jewish neighborhood; living near two other Greek families, Nathan Asher and Ira Rosenbaum; getting married, but not having children; and not being active in the Jewish community.

Oral history interview with Sam Bankhalter

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Oral history interview with Fred Baron

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Fred Baron, born in Vienna, Austria, describes being 15 years old when the Germans marched into Vienna; his life before the war and his family’s religious practices; his education; experiencing overt and subtle antisemitism; being imprisoned temporarily on Kristallnacht; his father’s death in 1939; his sister getting on a transport to England; wearing the yellow star and the restrictions placed on Jews; going to Hungary, where he was considered a legal resident; his mother being placed in a camp in Budapest; being deported with local Jews to Auschwitz in June 1944; the selection; being sent to Dörnhau (now Kolce, Poland), where there was a subcamp of Gross-Rosen (Riese camp); building roads; a Jewish Kapo who gave him advice on surviving the camp; suicides in Auschwitz; the abuse of prisoners; working with Germans while he was in Gross-Rosen; being marched to Czechoslovakia then taken by train through Germany; being taken to Bergen-Belsen; being sent to Stettin (Szczecin, Poland) to build fortifications against the Russians at one point (possibly Pölitz concentration camp); being liberated by the British from Bergen-Belsen; being taken to Sweden to recover; staying in Stockholm until 1947; deciding to go to the United States; receiving help from HIAS and going to Minneapolis, MN; his sister living in Israel; and his thoughts on why he survived.

Oral history interview with Felicia Broh

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