Oral history interview with Alice Adler

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0127.1 | RG Number: RG-50.154.0001

Overview

Interview Summary: Alice Adler, born in 1910 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her experience as a Jew who was caught by the Germans, sent to Auschwitz and survived; her parents who were both born in Austria; her father, who died when she was 18 years old; her two brothers; her family’s prestigious and profitable women’s clothing design business; being educated in Budapest and Vienna; the antisemitism in Hungary and experiencing antisemitism first-hand; the German annexation of Austria in 1938; getting married in 1935; the conscription of her husband into the German army and the forced labor he conducted at the border; her husband’s return and death soon after; the immigration of two of her bothers and her mother to the United States in 1939; planning to immigrating to the US but being thwarted by the start of the war in September 1939; remaining in Budapest, operating and eventually selling the family business; being arrested on March 18, 1944 and sent to Auschwitz two days later with thousands of others; being selected for forced labor, and sent to an aviation parts factory in Sudetenland, where she remained until March 14, 1945; being put on a train with other prisoners and escaping from a small window; returning to the camp and being picked by some French prisoners of war; eventually being delivered to the American Forces; going to Paris, France and working for a year with the United Nations and the American Consulate to obtain papers; arriving in New York, NY in March 1946; being sterilized in the camp; getting married to an attorney, who was sent to Japan to represent Japanese war criminals as defense counsel; her husband’s practice in New York; and eventually moving to Sarasota, FL.
Interviewee: Alice D. Adler
Date: interview: 1986 April 11

Physical Details

Language: English
Extent: 1 sound cassette (90 min.).

Rights & Restrictions

Conditions on Access: There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
Conditions on Use: No restrictions on use

Keywords & Subjects

Topical Term: Forced labor. Holocaust survivors--Interviews. Holocaust survivors--United States. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Jewish businesspeople. Jewish women in the Holocaust. Jews--Hungary--Budapest. Women concentration camp inmates. World War, 1939-1945--Conscript labor. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Hungary. World War, 1939-1945--Refugees. Women--Personal narratives.
Geographic Name: Austria--History--Anschluss, 1938. Budapest (Hungary) New York (N.Y.) Paris (France) Sarasota (Fla.) United States--Emigration and immigration. Vienna (Austria)
Personal Name: Adler, Alice Dunn, 1913-
Corporate Name: Auschwitz (Concentration camp)

Administrative Notes

Holder of Originals: National Council of Jewish Women, Sarasota-Manatee Section
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: The collection was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992 from the National Council of Jewish Women Sarasota-Manatee Section.
Special Collection: The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive

Record last modified:: 2023-11-16 08:17:52
This page:: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510721

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Date: 1986

Oral history interview with Eva Anderman

Oral History

Eva Anderman, born in 1911 in Krakow, Poland, describes her experience of surviving captivity by Germans during WWII; her family which was comprised of her parents and two younger brothers; her father’s dry-goods store; her father’s death from a stroke; her mother’s death in a concentration camp; getting married to a dentist in 1931; the antisemitism intensifying in Poland in 1939; her 4-year-old daughter, Felicia, who was very fragile; the family decision that her husband would go towards Lemberg (L’viv, Ukraine) and his death from typhoid later on; having to live in the ghetto in a single room with five adults; living in the ghetto for two years; working as a corsetry maker; the liquidation of the ghetto and relocation of Jews to Płaszów concentration camp; receiving help from the Jewish policemen and escaping the roundup; taking her daughter to live with a Polish woman (her daughter stayed with the woman until 1945); being captured and thrown to jail for a short time; being marched to an open pit with 250 people and going through selection process; being amongst 60 people selected to work and the massacre of the remaining people; working as a machine operator in a factory that repaired army uniforms; her brothers and mother ended up there too; her brothers’ work as watchmakers and her mother working as a maid to a German commander; remaining there until 1944; being sick in 1944 from an open wound on her leg and receiving help from a Jewish doctor; befriending two young women and staying with them until liberation; being separated from her mother and brothers in 1944; being sent to Auschwitz and then a camp near Dresden; working in a small factory making parts for weaponry; being transported by train to Theresienstadt; being liberated by the Russians; the typhoid epidemic; returning to Krakow and reuniting with her daughter; learning of the deaths of her husband and mother; the survival of her two brothers, who were living in a small village near Hamburg, Germany; staying with her brothers for some time; her family’s move to Stuttgart then Bremerhaven, from where they all sailed to New York in 1946; moving to Detroit, MI; and getting married to Mr. Anderman.

Oral history interview with Lily Baron

Oral History

Lily Baron, born in 1910 in Prague, Czech Republic, describes her parents, who died before she was six years old; her older sister; their adoption by their maternal aunt and her husband; their aunt’s death a month before the actual adoption, and being adopted by their aunt’s husband; their adopted father’s successful wholesale metal business; finishing high school; her sister’s work with their adopted father; getting married in 1939 to a man who owned a necktie factory; being captured by the Germans on October 30, 1941 and sent to the Theresienstadt work camp; the conditions in the camp, including sanitation, food, and sleeping facilities; the deaths of many of the inmates; being in the camp with her husband, sister, brother-in-law, and her sister’s two children; the regular deportation from the camp; the deportation of her husband to Auschwitz at the end of 1944 and following him a week later; not seeing her husband again; her sister and her family surviving the war in Theresienstadt; being sent on a death march and deciding she had to escape; staying in a barn with a friend and being picked up by Russian troops; returning to Prague in May 1945; getting married to her second husband in 1946; working in a chemical factory; moving to London, England in 1947 and staying there for three years; living in Montreal, Canada; and later moving to the United States.

Oral history interview with Oscar Baron

Oral History

Oscar Baron, born in 1903, in Prague, Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), describes his mother, who died when Oscar was very young; his father, who was an engineer; attending public school in Prague; going in 1920 to Hamburg, Germany, where he studied fermentation at the university; remaining in Hamburg until 1932; the rise of antisemitism in Czechoslovakia; the restrictions placed on Jews in Prague in 1939; returning to Prague and working at a chemical factory; deciding to become a teacher; getting married in 1941; the deportation of the Jews in Prague in 1941; being sent to Łódź, Poland; conditions in the Łódź ghetto and doing forced labor; being sent to Auschwitz in March 1944; living in barracks; working on various jobs; being separated from his wife (she died in Bergen-Belsen); spending six weeks in Auschwitz before being sent to camp Lidalow and then Dachau; working at a Messerschmitt airplane plant while in Dachau; being sent to camp Riderlo; contracting typhus from lice; being liberated by American troops; being in a hospital for seven weeks in Munich; returning to Prague; meeting his second wife, Lilly; going to London, England in 1948 and living there for three years; and immigrating to Canada.

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Oral history interview with Alice Adler

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Administrative Notes

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