Overview
- Interview Summary
- Berek Obuchowski, born in April 1928, describes life in Ozorkow, Poland in the 1930s; his family circumstances; his education; incidents of antisemitism; the German occupation of Ozorkow from 1939 to 1942; overcrowding in the town; restrictions on Jews; the humiliation of Jews; his brother's refuge in Russia; knifing by Pole; Polish antisemitism under the Germans; the German policy towards Jews; the selection of Jews by Germans in June 1942; the fate of his family in Chelmno; being an inmate in the Łódź ghetto from 1942 to 1944; conditions in the ghetto; the behavior of criminal police; the problems of cold and hunger and the difficulties of escaping; employment in ghetto; contracting typhoid and other health problems; the liquidation of the ghetto; being an inmate in Birkenau beginning in 1944; restrictions on the use of latrines; surviving the selection process; tattooing; being an inmate in Auschwitz in 1944; the Romani inmates’ fear of other inmates; the electrocution of Romanies on the perimeter wire; the food rations; being an inmate in Babitz in 1944; his friendship with a German Jewish doctor and helping in surgery; inmate clothing; the journey from Babitz to Buchenwald in December 1944 and being made to march; the shaving and disinfecting of inmates; overcrowding; being an inmate of Rehmsdorf (Troglitz) in 1945; conditions in the camp and the abuse of inmates by German civilians; breaking his foot; escaping from execution; obsession with survival; a murder committed by an inmate; the behavior of inmates towards each other; the behavior of the Kapos; the journey from Rehmsdorf to Theresienstadt in 1945; an Allied air attack on the train; rejecting the offer to make an escape attempt; the shooting of stragglers; life in Theresienstadt; his hospitalization for his broken foot; the sight of newly constructed gas chambers; liberation by Russians in May 1945; the lack of retaliation against Germans by inmates; physical condition upon liberation; his opinion of the medical treatment given by Russians; immigrating to Great Britain in 1945; details on his obsession with survival in the camps, the lack of news about the progress of war, his religious observance and beliefs, and the effects of his experiences on his attitude towards non-Jews; an incident of a random hanging of Jews in Ozorkow in 1942; his post-war visit to Chelmno; the execution of inmates in camps; sadism exhibited by guards; and his rehabilitation in Britain.
- Interviewee
- Berek Obuchowski
- Date
-
interview:
1986 February 03
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
4 sound cassettes (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Permission to copy and/or use recordings in any production must be granted by the Imperial War Museums.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Antisemitism--Poland. Concentration camp inmates--Medical care. Concentration camp inmates--Religious life. Concentration camp inmates--Selection process. Concentration camp tattoos. Death march survivors. Death marches. Hanging. Holocaust survivors--Great Britain. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives. Jewish ghettos--Poland--Łódź. Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Poland. Jews--Persecutions--Poland. Jews--Poland--Ozorków. Kapos. Prisoners--Abuse of. Romanies. Typhoid fever. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Poland. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Chelmno (Konin, Poland) Germany. Great Britain--Emigration and immigration. Łódź (Poland) Ozorków (Poland) Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945. Rehmsdorf (Germany) Terezín (Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic)
- Personal Name
- Obuchowski, Berek, 1928-
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
Imperial War Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview was conducted by the Imperial War Museum as part of their retrospective oral history interview program. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired a copy of the interview with Berek Obuchowski from the Imperial War Museum in February 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:17:26
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510837
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Transcripts (2)
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Oral history interview with Odette Hallowes
Oral History
Odette Hallowes (born in 1912 in France) describes her enlistment and training with the Special Operations Executive in Great Britain; being married to an English man and offering to help the War Office; her motivation for enlistment and her attitudes towards Germans; her impressions of Colonel Maurice Buckmaster; details about the training she received; her acceptance of the risks of service and feeling prepared for what was to come; wearing the same suit during all of her imprisonment; going to France in 1943 as an agent with Special Operations Executive; the journey to France on a fishing boat; going to Cannes, France; the Réseau in Cannes; being an inmate of Fresnes Prison, Paris, France, in 1943; resisting Gestapo questions; attitude towards torture and her methods for getting through it; her religious beliefs; her torturer who was a Frenchman; reasons for attitude of defiance in captivity; using the name Churchill in the prison and attributing her survival to it; further details of her defiant attitude in captivity; her contact with other F Section prisoners and befriending another female prisoner; the importance of secrecy for her while she was imprisoned; her attitude towards the Germans at that time; her views on those who gave up information to the enemy; the difficulty of being separated from her children; controlling a female SS guard who wrote to her after the war; her conversations with other imprisoned British female agents; her arrival in Ravensbrück; being put in an isolated cell next to the punishment cell; conditions in the camp; being moved to a cell next to the crematorium; witnessing the cannibalism of a woman who was shot; punishment in the camp; going to several different camps north of Ravensbrück after Hitler’s death; her physical condition upon release from the camp; her feelings when she returned to England and experience of wartime service; her reflections on her captivity from 1943 to 1945; her attitude to her biography and film; being awarded the George Cross; and further details on Fresnes Prison.
Oral history interview with Mayer Hersh
Oral History
Mayer Hersh, born in Sieradz, Poland, in 1926, describes his family; education; the orthodox beliefs of his family; his family’s lack of political interest; their loyalty towards Poland; antisemitism in Poland; aspects of being a schoolchild in Sieradz from 1939 to 1940; the reaction to the German invasion in September 1939; leaving their home town; the shooting of Polish civilians by the German Army; living conditions during the occupation; the restrictions on Jews; the execution of a friend by Germans in Otoczna concentration camp in 1940; rumors that Jewish civilians would be transferred to a labor camp; being taken from his family home in March 1940; being an inmate of Otoczna concentration camp from 1940 to 1942; the effects of the lack of food; being beaten by a camp guard; the rations they received; their daily routine and work building a railway line; the suicides of inmates; the possibility of escape; the brutality of Hitler Youth towards his brother in another camp; the attitude of the Polish population towards Jews; the character of Kapos; being an inmate in Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 to 1944; the selection process under the supervision of Dr. Josef Mengele; roll calls; the construction of a camp compound; selection of inmates for gas chambers; the orchestra playing at the camp gates; the uprising by Sonderkommando in the gas chambers in 1944; the presence of gypsies in the camp and their elimination by the Germans in 1944; resistance in the camp; personal morale; a story of support received from an older inmate during a march in 1945; being an inmate in Stutthof concentration camp in 1944; the presence of his sister in the camp; being moved to an airfield near Stuttgart, Germany, in December 1944; his work duties and contact with German civilians; being an inmate in Gotha then Theresienstadt in 1945; the march to the camp; conditions in the camp and the typhoid epidemic; the death of his friend; liberation of the camp in May 1945; contracting typhoid; his immigration to Great Britain in 1945; arriving in Windermere, England; his attitude towards the work of Jewish organizations; the German medical experimentation on twins in Auschwitz; inmate relations; the discomfort of train journeys; the psychological and physical impact of imprisonment; his attitude towards Germans; the punishment work on Sundays in Auschwitz; medical problems in the camps; an inmate with a sense of humor and rumors about the war’s progress; the degree of religious life in the camps; the impact of his experience on his religious beliefs; and his survival.
Oral history interview with Jerzy Herszberg
Oral History
Jerzy Herszberg describes his background in Poznan, Poland, in the 1930s; Polish antisemitism; his family circumstances; their level of knowledge about Hitler; the arrival of Jewish refugees in Poznan; being in the Łódź Ghetto from 1940 to 1944; conditions in the ghetto; the death of his mother; his job as a messenger; selections in the ghetto in 1942; food in the ghetto and conditions during the winter; his work making parachute harnesses; hospitalization during the typhoid epidemic in 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in July 1944; hiding in a cellar and leaving with the police deportees; the train journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau and being there from July to November 1944; his reaction upon arriving in the camp; ex-policemen in the camp; the camp guards; the selection process; being moved to Birkenau; rations in the camp; the discovery of a water source; the contrast in diets between the ghetto and camp; morning ablutions; roll calls; latrines; the growing awareness of nature of camp; his method for leaving Birkenau; the train journey to Braunschweig in November 1944; arriving in the camp; conditions in the camp; the infestations of lice; working in a factory and the German master; rations and water supply in the factory; Ukrainian female workers; Allied air raids; the state of his health at that time; the character of German and Jewish Kapos; his will to survive; companionship in the camp and the treatment of dead and sick inmates; the journey to Watenstedt in February 1945; the accommodations and size of the camp; Spanish inmates playing music; the different nationalities in the camp; activities when they were confined to the barracks; why Germans evacuated inmates; being sent to Ravensbrück in March 1945; Hungarian inmates; the visit of a Red Cross representative; being in Wöbbelin from April 1945 to May 1945; the preparations of Kapos to leave and the disappearance of guards; being liberated by US troops; trips into the Russian zone; the relations between the US and Russian troops; going to Poland through Czechoslovakia and the attitude of Czechoslovakians to camp survivors; going to Great Britain in August 1945; Theresienstadt transit camp; the fate of his sister; being a refugee in England; his flight from Prague, Czech Republic to Britain with the group “The Boys”; arriving in Windermere, England; continuing his education; receiving reparations; and his post-war visits to Germany and Poland.
Oral history interview with Stephanie Hessel
Oral History
Stephane Hessel, born in Berlin, Germany in 1917, describes his family moving to Paris, France in 1924; his parents; his education; his attitude towards the Nazi regime and his reaction to the Munich Crisis in 1938; his conscription into French Army in 1939 and being an officer; the retreat after May 10, 1940 and the morale in the French Army; his attitude towards Fifth Column; reaction to the Dunkirk Evacuation and Mers el Kebir; escaping from France to Great Britain in 1940-1941; being an officer with Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA) in England from 1942 to 1944; his initial training as a navigator with the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1942; being recruited to intelligence service; his role and duties; aspects of operations as officer with the BCRA in 1944; parachuting into France in March 1944; his role organizing resistance communications; being captured by the Gestapo and interrogated; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in October 1944; arriving in the camp; his change of identity; working in a German factory; escaping from the camp and being re-captured; being sent to Dora concentration camp in February 1945; living under threat of execution; conversations with V2 saboteurs; escaping from a train near Luneburg, Germany in April 1945; joining US forces near Hanover, Germany; his temporary capture by SS; the comparisons between Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps; control by ‘criminal’ inmates in Dora; working on V-weapons; sabotage attempt on V-weapons; his own Kommando at Dora; the arrival of victims from concentration camps in the east; the use of limited power by ‘political’ inmates in Buchenwald; the divide and rule tactics employed in concentration camps; the attitude towards Russian inmates in Buchenwald; memories of Wing Commander F F E Yeo-Thomas; his opinion of misconceptions about concentration camps; the Nazi attitude towards camp inmates; his contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the camps; the behavior of ‘mussulmen’; possessing an escaping mentality; Rottleberode work camp; the degree of breakdown in Germany in the spring of 1945; the effects of his experiences on personal attitudes; the achievements of the resistance in France in 1944; and his observations on the British during World War II.
Oral history interview with Piet Ketelaar
Oral History
Piet Ketelaar, born April 7, 1921 in Haarlem, Netherlands, describes his family and educational background; the invasion of Holland by Germans in May 10, 1940; war work; witnessing dogfights over Bennebroek; the arrival of the Wehrmacht and the attitude of the Dutch population towards the arrival of Germans; the impact of the occupation on the standard of living; rumors regarding the fate of Jews; collaboration and resistance in the Netherlands; his resistance work in Holland from 1940 to 1944; being a resistance leader; resistance groups; listening to the BBC; distributing newsletters to Dutch people; supplies dropped by the Royal Air Force; acquiring and concealing weapons; organizing weapons training; sabotage; types of people that joined the resistance, including a female courier that gathered information on V2 sites; members of his group; German attempts to capture resistance workers; helping Allied airman; being arrested in December 1944; the fate of his brother; being interrogated; the journey to Neuengamme, Germany; being interned in Neuengamme concentration camp; the procedure on arrival; his first impressions of the camp; Appells; privileged Norwegian and Danish prisoners; various types of inmates; relationships between inmates; security in the camp; medical problems in the camp; his recollections of being aboard Cap Arcona, leaving Neuengamme and the air attack on the ship; illness and hospitalization; travelling to Brussels, Belgium; contracting typhus; and the attitude towards the bombing of Cap Arcona.
Oral history interview with William Dillon Hughes
Oral History
William Dillon Hughes describes being the senior medical officer with Royal Army Medical Corps at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp hospital from May 1945 to July 1945; taking Royal Army Medical Corps staff to Belsen; conditions at camp on their arrival; conditions of the inmates; diseases to be treated; the influx of Russian forced labor workers suffering from tuberculosis in late June 1945; the use of DDT (AL 63) to kill typhus spreading lice; uncooperative attitude of the leader of the Russian group; visitors to Belsen inmates; the sanitary situation in the camp; relations between medical personnel and camp inmates; handing over the camp to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association in July 1945; and the role of British nurses in the camp.
Oral history interview with Jack Kagan
Oral History
Jack Kagan, born in 1929 in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus), describes the demographics of the Novogrudok area, including the languages spoken and poverty in the peasantry; his family and education; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; the role of Polish nationalists; Jewish political organizations; the religious attitude of his family; examples of Polish antisemitism; the Russian occupation of the Novogrudok area from 1939 to 1941; the Russian introduction of communists measures; his experiences with the pioneers; the Jews' welcome for Russians and the suppression of antisemitism; opportunities for Jews; the changes in his schooling; the German attack on Russia in June 1941 and the Russian retreat; the German bombing of Novogrudok; the German treatment of Russian POWs and witnessing a German killing a Russian POW; the German occupation of Novogrudok; the Polish collaboration with Germans; his belief that Germany could not win the war; Germans massacring the Jewish population on July 12, 1941; being an inmate in the Piereszeka Ghetto from December 1941 to August 1942; the work regime within the ghetto; narrowly escaping from the German round up in May 1942; the massacre in Piereszeka Ghetto on July 8, 1942; conditions in the ghetto and the rations; relations between ghetto inmates; receiving aid from outside ghetto; being in the Novogrudok labor camp from August 1942 to May 1943; the character of the German commandant; his reaction to Appells and escapes; his own escape from the camp in December 1942; an attempt to join a partisan group; returning to the camp and the amputation of his toes because of frostbite; surviving a massacre on July 5, 1943; an inmate's concealed radio; plans for a mass escape; hearing the news of the Piereszeka Ghetto liquidation in January 1943; the construction of an escape tunnel; escaping from the Novogrudok Camp in September 1943; being with partisans in the Naliboki Camp from 1943 to 1944; life with the partisans, including the supply problems and workshops; the German counter-measures; the attitude of peasants towards partisans and the partisan tactics towards them; the aid given by Russians; camp defenses; relations between his group and the Polish partisans; dissensions amongst the partisans; orders not to disband partisans on liberation; disbanding of his partisan family group in June 1944; the fate of Romanies in the area; the German use of air power; partisan discipline, ranks, and direction; partisan morale; the partisan revenge group; the formation of farmer's family groups; his partisan pension; and inmate morale in the labor camps.
Oral history interview with Martin Hoffman
Oral History
Martin Josef Hoffman, born in 1929 in Prague, Czech Republic, describes his family; his neighborhood; his education and health problems; reasons for his move to live with relatives in the Carpathian Mountains; the Jewish and Russian Christian communities; the Hungarian occupation of the Carpathian region in Czechoslovakia from 1939 to 1940; the effects of the Hungarian occupation; his parents' fate in Prague; the food situation; the confiscation of Jewish businesses; his opinion of Hitler's attitude to Jews; the restrictions on education; his religious life; living in Budapest, Hungary from 1940 to 1944; his failure to emigrate in 1940; support from Jewish community; daily life in the city; hearing stories of German antisemitic atrocities; the German occupation of Hungary in 1944 and the reaction of Jewish community; the contrasts between Hungarian and German attitudes towards Jews; his deportation from Budapest to Auschwitz in early 1944; the journey there and not knowing his fate; the reception in Birkenau and Auschwitz and the selection process; his initial impressions of the camp; being shaved and receiving an uniform; the role of Kapos; avoiding classification as a child; conditions in the camp; being an inmate in Buna Monowitz in 1944; his daily routine and conditions in the camp; the attempted rape by a Kapo and consequences; his efforts to avoid work; being selected for engineering training; the health situation; the medical facilities and the fate of the chronically sick; the lack of hygiene; the mental state of inmates; the guards’ willingness to shoot inmates; the role and nature of Kapos; recreation; rumors of German defeats; the political and criminal inmates; relations with other inmates; the abandonment of religious dietary laws; the loss of faith; mental attitudes; his selection for gate duties and his consequent transfer to Glewitz; his daily routine at the gate; the barrack accommodations; the cruelty of Kapos; the hanging of inmate escapees; varying degrees of brutality of different SS camp commandants; work duties; the story of being given a meal by a German Army officer; the evacuation of camp in February 1945 and the journey from Glewitz to Buchenwald; the death march and the execution of inmates falling out; the varying behavior of German guards; their interval at Gross-Rosen; being loaded into cattle trucks; the effects of hunger; the casualties amongst the prisoners; life in Buchenwald, including the conditions and death rate; being transferred to the main camp for kitchen duties; the German Communist Kapos; his efforts to aid friends; the avoidance of a second death march; staying in camp as after the evacuation; being liberated by United States troops in April 1945; the German resistance in the nearby woods; moving to SS quarters and bartering with US troops; being a displaced person in Czechoslovakia and Germany in 1945; returning to Prague to search for his family; his role as a mascot with a US Army unit in Germany; his second return to Prague; immigrating to Great Britain; the free travel for former inmates; the long term effects of his experience and his attitude towards Germans; his refusal to take reprisals against Germans; and the capture of SS guards during liberation and the treatment of former Kapos.
Oral history interview with Jørgen von Führen Kieler
Oral History
Jørgen von Führen Kieler describes growing up in Horsens, Jutland, Denmark; his family; his education; traveling around Europe frequently with his family; being a student in Germany, Paris, France, and Cambridge, England from 1937 to 1938; attending a Hitler-Mussolini meeting in Munich, Germany in 1937; the antisemitic exhibition; the metro strike in Paris in 1937; the friends he made at Cambridge University; his attitude towards the Nazi regime; learning of the existence of Dachau in 1937; his attitude towards German Danish relations; the neglect of Danish defenses; the Munich crisis in 1938; being a medical student in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1939 to 1940; volunteering for service in the Finnish Winter War at the end of 1939; the German occupation of Denmark in 1940; the appearance of the German Air Force over Copenhagen September 4, 1940; his reaction to the lack of resistance against Germans; joining the Danish Resistance in 1942; his membership in the Free Denmark Resistance group from 1942 to 1944; his resistance contacts; propaganda activities; the controversy over the collection of food aid for inland in 1943; the origins of the Aalborg Resistance in the spring of 1942; the start of the Communist KOPA resistance group (Borgerlige partisaner) in the autumn of 1942; reasons for the change in Hitler's policy towards Denmark in September 1943; the Special Operations Executives' contact with the Danish Resistance (1940- 1943); the arrival of Flemming Muus in 1943; the contrasts in attitude towards sabotage by Danish Communists; the collaboration between Finland volunteers and Danish Communists for sabotage; his decision to start his own sabotage group in Jutland, Denmark in the spring of 1943; the initial sabotage attempt at Horsens; the German attitude towards Danish sabotage; the Danish Government's aid to Germans; the German take over of Denmark in August 1943; the beginning of the persecution of Danish Jews in 1943; the lack of German Army co-operation in antisemitic policy; the role of his group in the campaign to save Danish Jews by removing them to Sweden in 1943; the orders to deny the Danish Navy to the Germans; Germans not pursuing boats taking Jews to Sweden; Danish motives for protecting Jewish civilians; their methods of securing explosives in late 1943; the capture of a resistance leader; the treatment of captured resister by Germans; the orders to stop sabotage in December 1943; moving to Jutland and the sabotage carried out; returning to Copenhagen to sabotage a shipyard; the capture and interrogations by the Gestapo in early 1944; his capture in Copenhagen harbor during the sabotage operation; being interrogated; his sentence for attempting to escape to Sweden; his release and move to south Jutland; being captured by Germans in 1944; meeting with a former group leader in a Gestapo cell in Copenhagen; the execution of the group leader in April 1944; the requirement for him to sign a confession; how a general strike led to his deportation to Porta Westfalica concentration camp; being an inmate in Porta Westfalica and Neuengamme from 1944 to 1945; mining work; stoning because of failure to work fast enough; how being transferred to a job in the camp hospital saved his life; the arrival of Red Cross parcels; his memories of Nikolai, a Danish inmate from south Jutland, and how Nikolai stopped Russians attacking Danes over Red Cross parcels; the death of Nikolai from starvation in the infirmary; the effects of starvation on inmates; how he was the last Danish prisoner to leave Neuengamme on April 20, 1945; reuniting with his mother and a colleague from Cambridge in May 1945; more details on Porta Westfalica, including the organization of camp and the beatings; and the effects of his experiences and his attitude towards Germans.
Oral history interview with Judith Konrad
Oral History
Judith Konrad describes life in Budapest, Hungary during the 1930s; her Jewish education; encountering antisemitism; her awareness of events in Germany and Austria; the political beliefs of her parents; life in Budapest after 1939; the impact of anti-Jewish legislation on her father's business; restrictions against Jews; wearing the yellow star; the deportation of a number of Jews, including her father's family and their fates; their knowledge of concentration camps; the confiscation of her family home; food rations; their accommodations in a yellow star house; obtaining extra food by working in kitchens for Germans; her mother's success in obtaining Christian ID papers; working as a maid for a Hungarian Christian; returning to Budapest to protect her mother; meeting with her father before her deportation in October 1944; the fate of her mother; her work digging tank tracks on the outskirts of Buda; a five day march to Austria in October 1944; the poor treatment of teenage boys; the reaction of civilians to marching prisoners; trading valuables for food; her comparison of Germans and the Hungarian Arrow Cross; coping with freezing conditions; medical problems; her internment at Lichtenworth concentration camp beginning in November 1944; the camp commandant and conditions in the camp, including the food rations, sanitation, the disposal of camp dead, the camp’s medical facilities, and roll calls; Christmas day in 1944; activities to relieve boredom; attempts to keep clean; the typhus epidemic; caring for fellow inmates; her attitude towards having a shaved head; the treatment of inmates by guards; self preservation; the escape of some inmates to a village to get food; the attitude towards Allied bombing; babies born in the camp; trying not to think of parents; the role of Jewish police in the camp; hearing approaching Allied gunfire and the disappearance of German guards; liberation and the reaction of Russians to the sight of the camp and prisoners; the disorganization of the liberation operation; staying in a disused farmhouse; food distributed by Russians; the arrival of vans to disinfect inmates; the attitude of villagers towards inmates; her first sight of herself in a mirror; being cared for by the Hungarian Red Cross; the reaction to the news of liberation of other concentration camps; returning to Budapest, Hungary in May 1945; searching for and reuniting with her mother; her first meal at home; her gradual recovery; learning that her father had not survived; immigrating to Britain in 1946; her reasons for emigration; her attitude towards the Cold War; and her attitude towards war today.
Oral history interview with Pinkus Kurnedz
Oral History
Pinkus Kurnedz, born March 15, 1928, describes life in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland during the 1930s; his family background and education; the relations between Poles and Jews; antisemitism; his father's involvement with the Zionist movement; the German entry into Piotrkow Trybunalski in September 1939; life in Piotrkow Trybunalski under the German occupation; the increase in Polish antisemitism; restrictions against Jews; the creation of the ghetto and life there; the confiscation of Jewish businesses and property; the deportation of Jews in 1942; working in the Hortensia glass factory from 1942 to 1944; conditions in the factory; being interned at Czestochowa from 1944 to 1945; working in an ammunition factory; food rations; obtaining extra food; the evacuation of the camp; the journey to Buchenwald; his internment at Buchenwald and conditions there; deaths in the camp; the procedure on arrival; clothing; forced labor at an ammunitions factory near Colditz, Germany; stealing food; marching to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia in 1945; his uncle's illness; the liberation of Theresienstadt; the problems of inmates overeating; the initial chaos upon liberation; revenge on a Kapo; the reaction of inmates to the arrival of Russians; the kindness of a Russian soldier; his immigrating to Great Britain in 1945; adapting to normal life; his reflections on his Holocaust experience; the long term effects of his experience; and his attitude towards Germans and Poles.
Oral history interview with Richard Leatherbarrow
Oral History
Richard Leatherbarrow describes applying to join the Army Film and Photographic Unit in 1943; his previous photographic experience; being with the Army Film and Photographic Unit from 1943 to 1944; his training course at Pinewood Studios; his preference for cinematography over still photography; his memories of other recruits; battle training; test films; becoming a sergeant; photographing flail tanks and filming training exercises with the American Rangers; preparations for the Normandy landings and volunteering to land with commandos on the first day; the voyage from Southampton aboard LSI (landing ship, infantry) and experiencing seasickness; his memory of tinned soup; disembarking onto the beach; the problem of keeping the camera dry; not having camera guns but seeing the results of them; filming on the beach during the landing; the atrocities he witnessed; his view on his purpose as a cameraman and believing it was important to record the events for posterity; moving off the beach at Saint Omer; sleeping in a slit trench; the problem of returning film; his opinion of Vinton and DeVry cameras; billets; transport; meeting General Gale; the problem of filming and checking for danger; intelligence briefings; French civilians; the story of the death of Norman Clegg; filming French female collaborators having their heads shaved; his opinion of the French and Belgian Resistance; coverage of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944; the problem of snow and bad weather; the co-operation with Americans; using a jeep and driver; the coverage of operations at Arnhem, Holland in 1944; casualties in the Army Film and Photographic Unit; his first impressions of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945; the condition of the inmates; story of a visit by Ellen Wilkinson; the coverage of the German surrender in Luneburg Heath, Germany; relations between cameramen and Montgomery; and being in Berlin, Germany at the end of the war.
Oral history interview with Moshe Nurtman
Oral History
Moshe Nurtman, born January 1, 1929, describes life in Warkr (Warka), Poland in the 1930s; his family circumstances and education; the Polish-fascist boycott of Jewish shops; religious character of his family; the German invasion of Poland in September 1939; the German bombings and searches; the German occupation; restrictions against Jews; the treatment of Jewish civilians by Germans; his family selling some possessions; the German and Polish abuse of Jews; being in the Warka ghetto and the living conditions including food and heating; contracting typhus in the ghetto; moving to Miszew in 1940; having accommodations with Polish women; expeditions to beg for food; evading German and Polish patrols; being in the Kozenice ghetto in 1941; the layout of the ghetto; being beaten from a Jewish policeman; escaping from the ghetto in the summer of 1941; hearing the news of the fate of the Jews in Kozenice ghetto; working on the drainage canal; returning to the ghetto; being an inmate at Skarszisko from 1942 to 1944; working in an ammunition factory; acquiring a transport job; an incident involving Ukrainian guards; escaping the blame for an accident to a drunken guard; being used by the guards to pass information into the camp to discourage escapes; being transported to Czestochowa during the Russian advance; conditions during train journey from Czestochowa to Buchenwald; conditions in Buchenwald and the punishment of Jewish policeman by inmates; political prisoners; the duties of the blockmaster in the children’s block; volunteering to clear bomb debris in Weimar, Germany; being in Theresienstadt in May 1945; the death of prisoners on the journey to the camp; conditions in the camp; the difficulty of comprehending the end of the war; the behavior of inmates towards each other; beatings received; the selection of Kapos; competition for position as Kapo; food and water supplies in Buchenwald; reaction to Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Oral history interview with Janina Pawlica
Oral History
Janina Pawlica, June 1, 1922, describes her early life in Czestochowa, Poland; her family and education; the bombing of Czestochowa by the Germans in September 1939; the behavior of Germans during the early part of the occupation; the problems with food rations; treatment of Jewish civilians by Germans; the fate of Poles who aided Jews; reasons for her arrest by Germans in December 1942; being an inmate in Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1943 to 1945; conditions during the train journey to the camp; processing on arrival at the camp; the behavior of the female Blockmeister; help given to her by a Polish inmate; working in kitchens; rations; punishment for attempts to smuggle food; the special block for mothers with babies; a Red Cross inspection visit; accommodations; the execution of inmates; the German use of a punishment bunker for Allied agents; the reasons for the execution of a Czechoslovakian female inmate; a friendly German warder; the harsh treatment of prostitutes and thieves; the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses; the selection of inmates for the crematorium; receiving food parcels from her father; escaping from the camp by assuming a false identity in April 1945; her physical condition upon arriving in Sweden; the fate of her family in Poland; immigrating to Great Britain in 1948; and her attitude towards Germans.
Oral history interview with Hana Maria Pravda
Oral History
Hana Maria Pravda, born in January 29, 1918 in Prague, Czech Republic, describes her family; her childhood in Prague; the history of Jews in Czechoslovakia; her education; the reaction to the Munich Agreement in 1938; Czech patriotism; the attitude towards the German speaking population of Czechoslovakia; the reaction of the Czech population to the German invasion in 1939; the confiscation of her family home; moving to a village with her new husband; being betrayed to the Gestapo by a neighbor; her arrest by the Gestapo; the attitude of Czechs to the German occupation; Czech collaboration with Germans; being an inmate of Theresienstadt concentration camp from 1942 to 1944; the journey to the camp; her attitude towards the prospect of imprisonment; conditions in the camp; her sense of optimism; the medical care; entertainment in the camp; punishment for those who tried to document their time in camp; a visit by the Red Cross; relations between German and Czech inmates; medical problems; volunteering to leave the camp; being an inmate in Auschwitz concentration camp from October 1944 to 1945; the cattle truck journey to the camp; advice given to new arrivals by inmates; the selection procedure; the attitude towards Germans; showering and head shaving; not receiving a tattoo; receiving clothes; her knowledge of the gas chambers; the reaction to the Allied bombing; survival techniques; her selection for work in the Krupps factory; the nature of her work; treatment by German guards; the German use of dogs; the execution of an escapee; health problems and lice; relations between inmates; the death march away from the camp in 1945; conditions during the march; the killing of her friend by SS guards; escaping from the march on January 29, 1945; betrayal by Hitler Youth after escaping from march; how she was allowed to escape from the march for second time by an SS guard; receiving aid from Russian forced laborers; being advised to go to Poland; taking refuge in a school; delousing organized by Russians; returning to Czechoslovakia; the impact of her experience on her religious beliefs; and why she and not others survived.
Oral history interview with Ian Proctor
Oral History
Dr. Ian Reginald Proctor describes being a civilian medical student starting his final year in 1945; volunteering to treat liberated inmates in Bergen-Belsen in 1945; the journey to Bergen-Belsen; their accommodations in former SS barracks; the appearance of the camp; the nourishment they supplied; medical problems they encountered; the daily routine; the threat of contracting diseases and illnesses contracted by medical students; the use of Hungarian POWs; his reaction to the end of the war; changes during his time working in the camp; the ceremony at the burning down of the camp; the disposal of dead bodies; his work in the hospital treating inmates; the attitude of the German nurses; the conflicts between Polish and Russian inmates; seeing the devastation in Hamburg, Germany; the effects of working in Bergen-Belsen and his attitude towards Germans; and returning to England.
Oral history interview with Frederick Riches
Oral History
Frederick Alexander Riches describes being an ambulance driver serving with the Royal Army Service Corps; evacuating inmates from Bergen-Belsen in 1945; the smell of the camp; members of his unit; details about his job; the German Air Force strafing attack on his unit; the initial sighting of the camp; the conditions of the inmates; the treatment of the guards; disposal of bodies; a Royal Engineer bulldozer driver digging mass graves; the demeanor of German guards; the transfer of the wounded Germans by ambulance; his work evacuating inmates from the camp; choosing inmates for evacuation; the interior of huts; the condition and age of inmates; unloading inmates at the hospital; the hospital facilities; the medical treatment of inmates; the quarantine period in Norway in 1945; the reception from the Norwegians; the reprisals of the population against collaborators; more details about Bergen-Belsen, including the sight of bones in incinerators; Josef Kramer and Irma Grese; the lack of medical problems amongst British personnel; how his experiences changed his attitude towards Germans; the rate of inmate evacuations; and the rate of the disposal of bodies.
Oral history interview with Agnes Sassoon
Oral History
Agnes Sasoon describes her early life in Czechoslovakia, circa 1933 to 1939; her father's work as a teacher; Hitler's visit to her Kindergarten in 1938; attending Jewish school; living in Budapest, Hungary from 1939 to 1944; her father's attempts to help refugees; living in a yellow star house; antisemitism; the difficulties of everyday life; the arrest and transportation of children from her Jewish school in late 1944; being in a camp on the outskirts of Budapest; the suggestion by an Arrow Cross guard that she escape; the efforts of her father to save the family; being sent on a march; deciding not to attempt an escape; food rations; a blessing from a Roman Catholic Bishop; the train journey to Dachau and conditions in the trucks; the cleaning out of the trucks; the bombing of the train; her prior knowledge of concentration camps; arriving in the camp; receiving assistance from an experienced inmate; conditions in the camp; food rations; the relationships between inmates; sanitation; working in a kitchen and a farm; punishments for stealing grain from the farm; the Jewish Kapos; the shooting of a friend, Alex; the punishment for keeping a diary; being in a sample camp shown to Red Cross and the better conditions there; dental treatment; her psychological state; marching to Bergen-Belsen in 1945; being shot by a guard and rescued by Germans and French POWs; being taken to Bergen-Belsen for treatment; her internment at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; the corpses littering the camp; the dehumanization of Jews in the camp; being liberated by the British in April 1945; being rescued from a pile of corpses; being treated in a hospital; her diet; refusing to testify against a SS guard; her attitude towards revenge; being cared for by Major Chutter; her post war life; the emotional impact of her Holocaust experience; resistance in the camps; reuniting with family; and her immigration to Israel.
Oral history interview with Laurence Wand
Oral History
Laurence Geoffrey Rowland Wand describes being a medical student treating inmates at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945; the selection procedure for physician volunteers and their preparations; his awareness of concentration camps; the journey from Britain to the camp; their accommodations in former SS barracks; conditions in the camp; the anti-lice measures; the personnel coordinating project; the camp huts; his reaction to the stench in the camp; the condition of the inmates; the work of Hungarian POWs; the disposal of dead bodies; the clearing out of huts; the layout of the camp; rumors that the Communist inmates worked in kitchens; the operation of human laundry; the conditions of inmates; the difficulty in obtaining medical supplies and equipment; the effect of British troops giving inmates their rations; the failure of Bengal famine mixture; prevalent diseases; the psychological condition of inmates; the death rate; the reaction of inmates to the end of the war; the lack of concern for personal safety; evacuating inmates; the burning of huts; his memories of two specific deaths; communicating with inmates; receiving information about the camp from inmates; the question of cannibalism among inmates; the creation of a children’s hut before the liberation of the camp; the nationalities of the inmates; the disposal of the dead bodies; the origins of the camp; seeing piles of shoes; and a description of the crematorium.
Oral history interview with Konrad Bogacki
Oral History
Konrad Bogacki, born July 28, 1908 near Poznan, Poland, describes his family and educational background; civilian life during World War I; the death of his father during WWI; attending the cadet school, Rawicz, beginning in 1924; his reasons for joining the army; the class background of the pupils; his training and the disciplining; his course at officer school in Warsaw, Poland; being in the 14th Infantry Division; the importance of horses in the Polish Army and the use of foreign equipment; the arrival of Polish signals equipment; the system of conscription and the foreign officers in Polish Army; seeing that war with Germany was inevitable; his attitude towards the Nazi regime; the attitude of officers towards the possibility of an alliance with Russia; the French and British response after the German invasion of Poland; his memories of the German invasion and preparing for it in August 1939; the encirclement of Infantry Division 14 at Lublin, Poland; evading capture; his opinion of the German Army; the condition of Warsaw and it's population in October 1939; German activities in Poland; deciding to remain in Poland and search for resistance groups; organizing signals equipment; his attempts to forge a radio link with the Polish Consulate in Budapest, Hungary in March 1940; security precautions when sending radio messages; other radio links; establishing contact with London in September 1940; his reaction to the fall of France in 1940; German surveillance of Polish men of military age; overcoming technical problems of reception and transmission; the reaction of the Polish underground to the German invasion of Russia in 1941; security measures within his resistance unit and the size of the unit up to 1943; transferring signals between different parts of Poland via London; being aware of the existence of the Warsaw Ghetto; evading capture at a German checkpoint; his first arrest and release in October 1943; his second arrest December 8, 1943; his feelings of relief after being captured; being interrogated by the Gestapo; his lucky escape from execution; being sent to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in April 1944; working for electronic section in camp; the treatment of inmates by the camp staff; conditions in camp; the execution of inmates who tried to escape; the evacuation of the camp in February 1945; the train journey and the conditions on board; the psychological effects of life in concentration camps; working with a mining unit at Hersbruck and repairing railway tracks through Nuremberg, Germany; marching to Dachau concentration camp and the execution of inmates there; being liberated by Americans; the comparison between Dachau and Gross-Rosen; the treatment of Poles by French authorities; more details on being with the Polish resistance from 1940 to 1943, including the use of hand and bicycle generators, securing equipment from a Warsaw electrical factory, the near discovery of radio equipment by Germans, the difficulties for resistance workers dropped by the RAF, forging a radio link with Russia circa 1942, and providing assistance to the People's Party; and the German policy towards Polish elite.
Oral history interview with Estera Brunstein
Oral History
Estera Brunstein, born in Łódź, Poland in May 6, 1928, describes her family; education; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; the German invasion of Poland in September 1939; the initial restrictions against Jews; wearing a yellow Star of David; the fate of her brother and father; moving to the Łódź Ghetto in 1940; cultural activities in the ghetto; working in a carpet factory and the disappearance of other workers; witnessing patients being taken from the ghetto hospital by Germans in September 1942; hiding from the Germans in an attic; her brother’s escape from Germans; conditions in the ghetto, the shortage of food, and the social life; the speculation on the fate of Romanies kept near the ghetto; the deportation of her brother to a labor camp; the suffering of Czech Jews brought into the ghetto; the start of the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; hearing war news from resistance groups; growing vegetables; being deported to Auschwitz and the train journey there; her initial impressions of the camp; the selection procedure; being separated from her mother; showering; spending the first night in a field; meeting a school friend; the fate of her mother; being transferred to a camp near Hanover, Germany and her work clearing bombed ruins in Hanover; the cruelty of the German commandant; their clothing and food; the cruelty of the female guards and the kindness of male guards; marching to Bergen-Belsen in 1945; working in the kitchens; the collective punishment of kitchen staff; contracting typhoid; being liberated by British forces in April 1945; rations; the policy of forcing Germans to clear corpses; being sent to a makeshift hospital; coping with lice; the kindness of British padre John Davies; deaths of inmates after liberation; her belief that family members would survive; her attitude towards Germans; her reflections on her Holocaust experiences; babies in the Łódź Ghetto; her post-war employment; and her attitude towards Jewish faith.
Oral history interview with Peter Fussell
Oral History
Peter Fussell describes joining the army in 1939 when he was 16 years old; joining the Commandos in 1940; his operations as a private with the 4 Commando during the Dieppe Raid in France on August 19, 1942; preparations for the raid, the briefing, and crossing the English Channel; the nature of the target site; the results of the attacks on the German artillery positions; contact with French civilians; landing and his section's task; breaches of security before the raid; the reorganization of commando units after the Dieppe Raid; Exercise Harlequin in September 1943; training for D-Day in Great Britain 1942-1944; training on the Sussex coast; moving to a transit camp in the Southampton area; D-Day briefing; stand down because of weather; his operations as a private with Headquarters, 1st Commando Brigade (Special Service Brigade, 1st) during the landings on Sword Beach, Normandy during D-Day on June 6, 1944; the assembling of an armada in Solent; experiencing seasickness crossing English Channel; the impressions made by ships firing; rumors before landing; landing on Sword Beach; the German opposition; the importance of getting off the beaches quickly; reasons why he did not have a dry landing; the armored support; the first German POWs; linking up with airborne troops on Pegasus bridge; taking up positions at Le Plaine; using code words; German infiltration attempts; the use of German nationals as interpreters and translators; the wounding of Lord Lovat; changes in command of the brigade; the use of captured weapons to deceive Germans; the German use of eastern Europeans; his opinion of German troops; the superiority of Allied air forces; his attitude towards Hitler Youth troops; the character of the static warfare from June 1944 to August 1944; penetration behind German lines; crossing River Seine; the period re-grouping in England September 1944; crossing the River Maas, Netherlands in January 1945; crossing the River Rhine in March 1945 and the nearness of the Allied bombing; the devastation of Wesel, Germany; the killing of a German field marshal; the capture of a V weapon site; the capture of a bridge over the River Aller; a bayonet attack by 6 Commando near Belsen, Germany; the behavior of liberated Russian POWs in the Neustadt area; the story of the breaking of Field Marshal von Milch's baton; the restraining of commandos by Royal Artillery from killing SS troops; and various aspects of withdrawal of the 1st Commando Brigade from Germany in May 1945.
Oral history interview with Jerzy Orwovski
Oral History
Jerzy S 'Jurek' Orwovski, born in Łódź, Poland, describes his family history in Poland; his parents; his early life in Poland; being a Polish member of the Polish Home Army and active in resistance in Poland from 1943 to 1944; being captured; being a POW in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in November 1944; escaping and going to Holland and being recaptured in January 1945; immigrating to Great Britain in April 1945; and serving as a technical officer with the Polish Air Force based in Cupar, Fife.
Oral history interview with Isaac Finkelstein
Oral History
Isaac Finkelstein, born circa 1914 in Poland, describes his childhood in Poland; his family and education; antisemitism in pre-war Poland; the relations between Jews and Poles including the question of inter-marriage; the degree of migration; languages spoken; his involvement in the Zionist youth movement; his political attitudes; serving in the Polish Army from 1935 to 1936; antisemitism in the Polish Army; the nature of basic training; suicides of new recruits; the pre-war attitude of Poles towards Germans; being mobilized with the 25th Infantry Regiment as a private in August 1939; the attitude of Poles towards fighting Russians; the lack of modern equipment; being wounded in the leg by German machine gun fire; being captured and hospitalized; the Germans using machine guns against Polish troops and civilians; his time in a convent hospital from 1939 to 1940; being transferred to a POW camp; being an inmate in the Piotrkow Trybunalski Ghetto from 1940 to 1942; his status as an ex-POW; conditions in the ghetto; the speculation on future fate of Jewish inmates; the role and behavior of Jewish police; plans to escape from the ghetto; the rounding up of Jewish inmates in 1942; being an inmate in Bugaj Labor Camp from 1942 to 1944; his work duties; smuggling food into the camp; conditions, beatings, and executions in the camp; being transferred to Czestochowa concentration camp in 1944; working in a steel foundry; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944; the removal of his finger nails; being sent to Colditz concentration camp (Oflag IVC) and his work duties; marching to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1945; conditions in the camp; his physical condition; the liberation of the camp; escorting a group of Jewish children bound for Windermere, England; his reflections on his Holocaust experience; relations between camp inmates; the psychological state of camp inmates; the death of his father in Buchenwald; the attitude of child inmates to camps; and his attitude towards Germans.
Oral history interview with Hugo Gryn
Oral History
Hugo Gabriel Gryn, born June 25, 1930, describes life in Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia from 1930 to 1938; his family; his education; the relations between Jews and non-Jews before 1938; being a school child in Ruthenian during the Hungarian occupation from 1938 to 1940; the reaction to the Hungarian take-over in November 1938; the previous Hungarian terrorism; the impact of occupation on daily life; the influx of Polish refugees in September 1939; restrictions on his father’s business; anti-Jewish attacks; attending boarding school in Debrecen, Hungary from 1940 to 1943; viewing propaganda films; the work of the Jewish Schoolboy Labor Brigade; self-defense training received from a school teacher; the standard of living in Debrecen; his apprehensiveness about future; his attitude towards Allies and Axis powers; returning to Ruthenia in 1944; his father’s plans to escape to Turkey; the arrest of thirty Jewish civilians and their ransom in March 1944; the confiscation of the family home; moving into the Berehovo Ghetto in April 1944; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 1944; the transport to Auschwitz; lying about his age during the selection process; witnessing new arrivals entering gas chambers; being an inmate in Lieberose concentration camp in 1944; working as a carpenter; his opportunity to write a postcard; rations; working in a hospital; the evacuation of the camp; marching to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1945; being an inmate in Mauthausen concentration camp from Feburary 1945 to April 1945; going to Gunskirchen concentration camp in April 1945 and being liberated by American troops; the physical condition of inmates upon liberation; going to Hersching air base and the death of his father; his religious beliefs; his attitude towards Germans; the behavior of inmates towards each other; executions at Sachsenhausen; marching through Berlin, Germany in December 1944; acts of sabotage in the camps; and the killing of an Ukrainian guard by inmates.
Oral history interview with Fred Knoller
Oral History
Freddie Knoller, born in April 17, 1921, describes his early life in Vienna, Austria; his family; education; experiencing antisemitism; the rise of right wing political parties in Austria; being in the Socialist Highschool Boys' movement; the German take over and the treatment of Jews; being forced to clean streets; Kristallnacht; growing restrictions of Jewish civilians; deciding to leave Austria; attending a tailoring college in 1938; entering Belgium illegally in December 1938; living in a hostel in Antwerp, Belgium; moving to a children’s camp in Brussels, Belgium; playing cello in adult camp orchestra; leaving the camp in May 1940 in anticipation of the German invasion of Belgium; going to France; being arrested by French police and imprisoned in an Orleans jail; his internment as an enemy alien in camp near Spanish border; the cholera outbreak and escaping; living with relatives in Limoges, France; moving to Paris, France in late 1940; acting as a guide to German soldiers in Paris; his accommodations in a hotel frequented by prostitutes; acquiring false papers; his arrest, interrogation, and release by Gestapo in late 1941; German round ups of Jewish civilians; joining the resistance; interviewing with resistance leaders; his liaison role between different resistance groups; the plans to attack SS barracks; the level of support from civilians for the resistance; the German treatment of captured resistance members; courier work; air drops; his arrest and interrogation by Gestapo in October 1942; being sent to a jail in Paris and confessing his Jewish identity; being sent to Drancy; conditions in the camp; the lack of a work regime; attempts to construct an escape tunnel; rations; the attitude towards the Jewish administration; being transported to Auschwitz in November 1943; the conditions during the transport in wagons and being with Dr. Weiss; arriving in the camp; undressing, experiencing selections, shaving, receiving clothing, and tattooing; inmates’ triangles; being sent to Buna Monowitz; a speech by an SS officer regarding inmates' status; Dr. Weiss being sent to the hospital and the rations he gave Knoller; the importance of maintaining personal morale; the organization of the barracks; monthly selection procedures; the daily routine; working with the cement Kommando; attempting to get into the camp orchestra; the relationship between the SS and German civilian workers; inmate boxing matches and other entertainments; witnessing execution of escapees; inmate suicides on electrified fence; the effects of the Allied bombing on the factory; being marched to Dora in November 1944; the change in Kapos’ attitudes during the march; arriving at Katowice railhead; traveling by train the disposal of dead bodies; doing construction work in Dora; hearing of sabotage activities; witnessing execution of saboteurs; being sent to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945; their accommodations in SS barracks; the treatment by Hungarian guards; the lack of food and searching for food; seeing the starving inmates; the disappearance of SS guards and attitude of Hungarian guards; breakdown of discipline in camp; being liberated by British troops; the reaction of British troops to the sight of inmates; advice from Red Cross not to overeat; acquiring food from German farmhouses; the attitude of British troops to German civilians; revenge taken by inmates on Kapos; a talk given by a British Army Rabbi; the medical aid given by the Red Cross; his desire to return to France; recuperating in France; going to Belgium and being interrogated by the French Resistance and the police; VE Day celebrations; meeting with his brother who was serving with the US Army; and the effects of his experience.
Oral history interview with Marsha Segall
Oral History
Marsha Segall, born January 16, 1922, describes her early life in Scholai, Lithuania; her family and education; antisemitism; the Jewish boycott of German goods in 1933; life during the Russian Occupation in 1940; the German attack on Lithuania in June 1941; anti-Jewish legislation; the arrest and execution of her father; their relationship with their servant; the billeting of German troops in their home; the creation of the ghetto in September 1941; living in the Troki ghetto; the Judenrat and public hangings; the transport of children from the ghetto on November 5, 1943; contact with partisans outside the ghetto; working as secretary for the Judenrat and her attitude towards the Judenrat; escaping from the ghetto with her husband in November 1943; hiding with a Lithuanian in the countryside; being found and arrested in early 1944; her imprisonment; going to the Scholai prison; interrogations and her work repairing German army uniforms; briefly returning to the Troki ghetto in May 1944; being sent to Stutthof concentration camp in July 1944; her first impressions of the camp; the suspension of menstruation; food rations; roll calls; categories of prisoners; being part of a work group outside the camp; living in tents and digging trenches; the journey to Rendaels near Wistula; medical problems; her work chopping wood; the evacuation of camp as Russians approached in January 1945; conditions during the march; frostbite; the fate of her mother and sister; successfully escaping; receiving assistance from local Poles and a Russian women's work camp; receiving medical assistance for frostbite from a German unit; evacuation as a German civilian from the area to Gdeieia; receiving medical treatment at Gdeieia hospital; amputation; being evacuated aboard the Deutschland and two other ships to Rigan Island; being in a Nazi party hospital at Bergen February-June 1945; continuing to pass as non-Jewish; liberation by Russians in May 1945; revealing her Jewish identity; working as an interpreter to a Russian unit; making clothes from parachute silk; acting as an interpreter in the interrogation of German SS suspects; deciding not to return to Lithuania; travelling with a friend to Hannover via Berlin in December 1945; the chaotic state of Europe; finding friends in a Jewish refugee camp; going to Munich; American antisemitism; her husband's survival and reuniting with him in January 1946; mental and physical condition of camp inmates; the difficulties of immigrating to Palestine; going through Austria to Italy; obtaining Hungarian passports; obtaining a Rhodesian residence permit in 1947; the impact of the war had on her; and her belief that a successful Jewish revolt against Nazis was impossible.
Oral history interview with Aron Zylberszac
Oral History
Aron Zylberszac, born in 1927 in Łódź, Poland, describes his family; his education; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; the German occupation of Łódź in 1939; the role of the Volksdeutsch; the collaboration of Poles with Germans; the survival of his family after the confiscation of their business; the public execution of Jews; German behavior towards Jews; the creation of the ghetto in 1940; the overcrowding and starvation in the ghetto; suffering from cold; the ghetto administration; the fate of deportees; cases of madness; the lack of contact with the outside; attempts at sabotage; religious life; the destruction of the synagogue; being sent to Birkenau in 1944; being separated from this parents; Kapos; the treatment of Romanies; the atrocities committed against Jewish children in the Łódź Ghetto; the contrast in food between the ghetto and Birkenau; being sent to Auschwitz; the food and selections; working in a factory; being sent to Buchenwald in January 1945 and the journey there; conditions in the camp; the killing of Kapos from other camps by inmates; being sent to Rehmsdorf (Troglitz) in 1945; working in sand pits; the necessity of conserving energy in the camps; the pollution of the water supply; being sent to Theresienstadt in April 1945; the Allied bombing of the train during the journey to the camp; being liberated; the German use of camp for propaganda; the generosity of Czechs towards inmates; the attitude of Russian liberators; the psychological impact of being released; the long term effects of incarceration; the impact on his religious beliefs; the behavior of German guards; crime in the Łódź Ghetto; cannibalism amongst Russian POWs; and details of his family.
Oral history interview with Anonymous
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henry Lauth
Oral History
Henri Francois Claude Lauth describes growing up in the Toulouse area of France; his family and education; being wounded while he was in the French Army in 1940; being part of the French Resistance around Toulouse from 1940 to 1943; joining a resistance unit; his intelligence gathering role; being imprisoned by the Gestapo in France from July to October 1943; reasons for his arrest; treatment by Gestapo; being sent to Buchenwald in 1943; the train journey; arriving at the camp; German Communist control; selection of inmates to go to Dora and being sent there in October 1943; living conditions during the building of the camp; the shooting of an inmate attempting to obtain a drink of water; camp rations; reasons for not being selected for extermination in the spring of 1944; the discovery of a German agent in the camp; sabotaging V1s at Dora; being arrested by the SS and interrogated; reciting poetry with the mistress of the Gestapo head whilst under interrogation; being sentenced to death and the delay of his execution; the confinement in a bunker and the execution of German Communist inmates; traveling by train to Bergen-Belsen in April 1944; liberation by British troops of Bergen-Belsen; and the interrogation of Josef Kramer, commandant of Bergen-Belsen.
Oral history interview with Samuel Pivnick
Oral History
Samuel Pivnik, born 1926 in Bendzin, Poland, describes his family; his limited education because of the war; the German invasion; antisemitism pre-1939; the fate of Jews in the Polish Army captured by Germans; the degree of Polish collaboration with Germans; antisemitic effect of religious services on Poles; restrictions on Jewish civilians; the creation of a German administration of the area; the separation of Polish and Jewish communities; the establishment of a ghetto in July 1940; the selection of Jews for deportation; his German foreman; the arrival of German settlers; the Jewish administration; German round ups; restrictions on religious practice; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943; selections in the camp; the nature of his work; the execution of Polish partisans; various transports into the camp; contracting typhoid; being sent to Furstengrube in December 1943; resistance in Auschwitz-Birkenau; the treatment of inmates by Germans; the evacuation of camp and march to Gleiwitz then going to Nordhausen in late 1944; acts of cannibalism; obtaining bread and collecting snow to drink; conditions in Nordhausen; rations; travelling aboard a barge towards Lubeck in April 1945; the bombing and sinking of Cap Ancona in the Baltic in May 1945; escaping the sinking ship; their treatment in the barracks at Neustadt; the variation of treatment of Jews of different nationalities by Germans; his attitude towards survival; his attitude towards notion of revenge; and his belief that perpetrators should be punished.
Oral history interview with Zdenka Erlich
Oral History
Erlich Zdenka (née Fantl), born in 1922 in Czechoslovakia, describes her family moving when she was two years old to Rokycany Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); her family and educations; being expelled from school for being Jewish; the degree to which Jews were assimilated into society; mobilization during the Munich crisis in 1938; being in contact with refugees; the German invasion in March 1939; the registration of Jewish population; the increasing restrictions; attending the English Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); the arrest of her father by the Gestapo in the fall of 1940 and his imprisonment in Buchenwald and Bayreuth; her aunt going to England; the degree of collaboration and resistance within the Czech population; being transported to Theresienstadt in 1942; their treatment during the journey to the camp; conditions in the camp; the contrast between Czech and German inmates; the organization of the camp; working in the kitchens; Jewish inmates being hanged for smuggling cigarettes; cultural life in camp and participation in plays; the importance of satire; her memories of Karel Svenk; selections in the camp; a visit by Adolf Eichmann and the Red Cross in 1943; being transported to Auschwitz in October 1944; arriving in the camp, experiencing the selections, hiding a ring, and having her head shaved; adjusting to camp rules and its effect on survival; the barracks; being told her mother’s fate; daily routine including roll calls and food; camp rumors; treatment by Kapos; having to give blood for German soldiers; building fortifications in East Prussia from November 1944 to January 1945; coping with working conditions; carrying tree trunks to a sawmill; the state of prisoners’ health; marching westwards in January 21, 1945; supporting each other when sleeping and walking; the shooting of prisoners who fell by wayside; crossing River Oder; staying in Gross-Rosen in February 1945; the sight of male prisoners; the journey to Mauthausen in early 1945; working in the quarry; a composer’s wife committing suicide in the camp; the train ride to Bergen-Belsen and writing a message as the train passed her hometown; receiving aid from Czech workers in Pilsen; daily life in Bergen-Belsen; rations; finding a knife that was then discovered by the warden, Irma Grese; the outbreak of typhus; the removal of corpses; the lack of water and having to drink from puddles; the state of health in the camp; liberation by British troops; collapsing in front of the Red Cross hut; her hospitalization in Sweden; the contrast in men and women inmates’ survival rates; mental states in the camp; cooperation between inmates; stealing in camps; hearing how her brother had been shot trying to escape; the lack of religion in camps except Theresienstadt; the role of fantasy in the survival process and importance of human relationships; and what she gained from her experience as a survivor.
Oral history interview with Leon Greenman
Oral History
Leon Greenman, born in 1910 in England, describes his grandfather, who grew up in Amsterdam, Netherlands and did trading in London, England; growing up in Rotterdam, Netherlands; his father’s work in trade; attending Hebrew school; hearing Oswald Mosley speak in London in the 1930s; the rise of Hitler; his marriage to Esther van Dam and their decision to settle in Rotterdam in 1935; anticipating the war; the German bombing of Rotterdam May 14, 1940 and the damage to his family home; the German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; registering with German authorities as Jewish; reasons for not being called up to British or Dutch armies; wearing the Star of David; his attempt to gain internment as a British citizen from 1941 to 1942; relations with Dutch neighbors; his employment selling door to door; the effects of food restrictions; continuing religious services in Jewish homes; his degree of knowledge of concentration camps; his lack of contact with resistance; listening to the BBC; the story of his postwar meeting with a Dutch policeman who did not help Greenman to escape deportation; witnessing the shooting down of a RAF reconnaissance aircraft in the summer of 1942; Allied bombings and the lack of air raid shelters; the deportation of Jews; being sent to Westerbork transit camp in October 1942; conditions in the camp; German Jewish refugees; work details in the camp; food rations; giving English lessons; his son's illness; the character of deportation administrator Kurt Schlesinger; his father’s arrival; being sent to Birkenau in January 1943; the fate of his wife and child; the selection of able bodied men; the treatment by Kapos; undressing, shaving, and receiving clothing; the shooting of an inmate; being tattooed with a camp number; the various colored triangles worn by inmates; Romani inmates; sexual relations in the camp; relations between inmates; rations; the lie infestation; his job shaving inmates; facilities in the camp; sharing soup with other inmates; the counting of dead bodies during Appells; finding money whilst tidying barracks; the importance of luck to survival; singing for Kapos; punishment of barracks for not saying good night loudly enough; attempt to treat his dysentery; problems with shoelaces; problems of night time ablutions; beating by SS man during selection; being marched to Auschwitz in March 1943; conditions in the hospital; stealing a potato from a fellow inmate; being subjected to medical experimentation; the issue of an olive ration; making knives; his work with a cable laying Kommando; his work unloading trains; working conditions in summer; sabotage attempts; his contact with British POWs; the problems of unloading coal; prostitution in the camp; seeing SS men with pet rabbits; strongman performances by a Kapo; being sent to Monowitz in September 1943; living conditions in barracks and life in the camp; having to unload railway wagon by himself as punishment; his contact with a Dutch friend, Jacques De Wolf; songs in the barracks; Christmas Eve 1943; the camp orchestra; being beaten; contracting pneumonia; the mortality rate amongst Dutch Jewish inmates; his memories of Jon Perez; birds in the camp; being sent to Buchenwald in January 1945 then being marched to Gleiwitz; the mental state of SS guards; receiving medical treatment for frostbitten feet; his memories of Albert Kongs and Oskar Rotschild; events in the camp leading up to liberation; being liberated by American troops in April 1945; receiving clothing and food; visiting Erfurt, Germany; meeting with journalist Anne Mattheson; going to Paris, France and being hospitalized; the amputation of his big toe; staying with a French family; going to the Netherlands; reuniting with his father; moving to Great Britain; his reflections on his Holocaust experiences; and his attitude towards Germans.
Oral history interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Oral History
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, born in 1925 in Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland), describes her parents and her two older siblings; her educational background; antisemitism; the first restrictions against Jews; moving to Berlin, Germany to study cello; Kristallnacht; her family’s attempts to emigrate; life in Germany after the outbreak of war; working in a toilet paper factory; living standards; the deportation of her parents in 1942; forging papers for French workers; attempting to escape to France with forged papers; being arrested and imprisoned in 1943; a suicide attempt; her interrogation by the Gestapo; her trial at Sondergericht June 5, 1943; returning to Gestapo custody; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; selections for the women’s camp orchestra; the role and organization of the orchestra; being interned in Bergen-Belsen; the comparison between Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz; the disorganization of camp; remaining with her women's orchestra friends in Bergen-Belsen; liberation; Hungarian guards; the conditions for women's orchestra at Auschwitz; and the 'Canada' warehouse where inmate's belongings were kept.
Oral history interview with Henry Wermuth
Oral History
Henry Wermuth, born April 4, 1923, describes his family background; life in Frankfurt, Germany during 1930s; his education; religious practice in his family; antisemitism before 1933; reaction to Hitler coming to power in 1933; increasing antisemitism; working for his uncle; attempting to emigrate; going to Krakow, Poland in October 1938; queuing in a tunnel at border; living with relatives; the German occupation; the black market; the arrest of his father; life in Bohemia, where he lived with his grandparents, from 1941 to 1942; living in a Bohemia ghetto; the role of the Judenrat; feigning tuberculosis to avoid being registered for work; working at the Klaj ammunition camp; the deportation of his mother and sister; life and conditions in the Klaj camp; beginning to a write book in the camp; escaping from the camp; attempting to derail a train; being in the Montelupe prison then sent back to Klaj; being sent to Płaszów concentration camp in February 1943; his work duties; Commandant Goeth shooting at inmates; conditions in the camp; the role of Jewish police; hiding with a Jewish policeman’s relative to avoid execution; witnessing a public hanging; the regularity of shootings; being shot at by Goeth; his work unloading bricks from trains; transfers from the camp; getting into Kielcz (Kielce) concentration camp with his father in November 1943; civilian management of the camp; unloading metal from trains; food rations; the escape of inmates; being sent by cattle truck to Auschwitz in July 1944; arriving in the camp; hearing the camp orchestra; his work building roads; the relationship between block leader and inmates; difficulties for orthodox Jews; his attitude towards religion; selections; working as painter at IG Farben works and working with civilian employees; the relationship between inmates and Kapos; the daily routine; being sent to Nordhausen by cattle truck in January 1945; being briefly interned at camp in the Harz mountains; being interned at Helmstedt camp (Beendorf concentration camp); his work duties; the execution of inmates who were too weak to work; a march following the evacuation from the camp in April 1945; helping his father to walk; his father’s death on April 27, 1945; being interned at Mauthausen; problems with dysentery; being liberated by American troops on May 5, 1945; recovering in a hospital tent; registering for emigration to Palestine; living in a refugee camp in Italy; deciding not to emigrate to Palestine; his attitude towards other people's survival stories; his involvement in the black market; traveling to Austria in December 1945; moving to refugee camps in Munich, Germany and Frankfurt, Germany; writing his autobiography; his attitude towards Germans; his determination to be successful; and his attitude towards the death of his sister.
Oral history interview with Abraham Zwirek
Oral History
Abraham Zwirek, born in 1926 in Plock, Poland, describes his family; his education; experiencing antisemitism; his family’s business; his family’s Zionist sympathies and religious practices; the German invasion of Poland in September 1939; seeing the destruction in Gąbin, Poland; expecting help from Britain and France; the confiscation of Jewish property, including his father’s business and the family home; restrictions on Jews; beatings of Jews in the streets; living in the Plock ghetto; smuggling food into the ghetto; Jewish ghetto police; food rations; the obligation to work for Germans and treatment of workers; maintaining morale; liquidation of the ghetto in early 1941; living in the Suchedniow ghetto; escaping from the ghetto; his mother being sent to Treblinka; being in Skarzysko concentration camp from 1941 to 1944; his work duties; being beaten by a Ukrainian guard for stealing potatoes; the execution of people unfit for work; his tooth being extracted; suicides; being in Buchenwald concentration camp form July 1944 to September 1944; his work serving food; being in Schlieben concentration camp from September 1944 to March 1945; his work duties; the kindness of the German construction supervisor in the quarry after an accident; Allied bombing raids on the camp; the suicide of a fellow inmate; the behavior of a female SS guard; the operation on his hand without anesthetic; suspected sabotage of the factory; evacuation of the camp in March 1945; being sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp in March 1945; contracting typhoid; being liberated by the Russians; the death of former inmates from over eating; contracting mumps; the Russian attitude towards revenge against Germans; the fate of his family during the Holocaust; further details on Buchenwald; his Holocaust experience; his attitude towards Poles and Germans; being smuggled by a Russian soldier to Czechoslovakia; and his first impressions of England.
Oral history interview with Hedy Epstein
Oral History
Hedy Epstein, born August 15, 1924, describes her life in Kippenheim, Germany during the 1920s and 1930s; her family and Jewish identity; being aware of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis; the boycott of Jewish businesses; the impact of Nazi rule on education; Kristallnacht and the destruction of Jewish property and the synagogue; the persecution of Jewish children at school; her father’s arrest and his imprisonment at Dachau; anti-Jewish legislation; her father’s return; leaving Germany on a Kindertransport in May 1939; her attitude towards leaving Germany and family; arriving in England; meeting Mrs. Meyer; living with the Rose family; living with the Simmons family; the beginning of the war in September 1939; communication with her parents; selling her stamp collection and sending the money to her parents; the fate of her parents; having to leave school to get job in 1940; her various jobs; working in a war factory in 1943; losing part of a finger in defective machine; working in an ammunition factory in 1944; losing her job due to her enemy alien status; working on lathe in a factory; attending night classes at Morely College; joining the Free German Youth; her first boyfriend; working with the censorship division of US War Department in Germany in July 1945; receiving training for two weeks in France; her attitude towards German people; her work duties; working at subsequent proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials; being assigned to department dealing with medical experiments carried out on camp inmates; searching through documents for evidence; the suspensions that a US colonel in charge of the documents department held sympathy for Nazis; witnessing the trial of Goering; returning to England in March 1948; immigrating to the United States; her life in the US; working for the New York Association for New Americans with Jewish displaced persons from 1948 to 1950; working for a Jewish agency in Minnesota; visiting her grandfather's grave in Gurs, France; her attitude towards German people; returning to Kippenheim and family home in 1990; participating in anti Gulf war demonstrations in Bonn, Germany in 1991; her fears for the future; living in New York, NY when she first moved to the US; her work for the United Restitution Organization filing claims for property lost under the Nazis; attending a university in the 1950s; speaking at her son's school about her Holocaust experience; speaking at schools and universities in the US and Europe; her research regarding role of women in the Holocaust; her refusal to speak to children under 12 about the Holocaust; her involvement with the Kindertransport Association; discovering photographs of Grandmother in concentration camp at Washington Holocaust Museum; and planning to attend the Nuremberg Trials reunion in 1996.
Oral history interview with Kurt Klappholz
Oral History
Kurt Klappholz, born in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, describes growing up in the 1930s; his family; antisemitism; the 1937 pogrom; Zionists organizations; deciding not to leave Poland; the beginning of the war; the German occupation and the burning of the synagogue; his father’s arrest; wearing the Star of David; being forced to move from west to east Bielsko-Biala in 1941; conditions during 1941; deciding to work for the Germans to avoid deportation; working near Teschen (Cieszyn, WojewÛdztwo Slaskie, Poland), producing equipment for Afrika Korps; being deported in June 1942 and separated from his parents; staying briefly in the Sosnowiec camp; being interned at the Sakrau camp and his work building the autobahn; being sent to the Laurahütte camp form August to September 1942; being sent to Gross-Paniow and Brande concentration camps in the fall of 1942; the camp guards and work songs; being transported to Gross-Sarne concentration camp then Gross-Masselwitz; his work and the organization of the camp; being interned in Ludwigsdorf in January 1943 and working in an ammunitions factory; his friendship with another inmate; being sent to Gröditz and finding a distant relative; spending time in the camp hospital; being sent back to Brande; his work gardening in the camp; murders in the camp; being sent to Blechhammer; British prisoners of war in the camp; the relations between various groups of inmates and German civilian workers; dysentery in the camp; religion in the camp; the incorporation of Blechhammer into Auschwitz; the tattooing of inmates; SS guards; non-Jewish Kapos; the women's camp; working for Jewish doctors in the hospital; the sexual advances of the doctor; helping to cremate bodies in the crematorium; the execution of inmates for suspected sabotage; the treatment of patients with gangrene and boils; the bombings in the summer of 1944; marching out of Blechhammer in January 1945; being interned at Gross-Rosen for three nights; being sent to Buchenwald by train; dreaming of food and revenge; being deloused; the death of one of his friends; political prisoners being Kapos; his internment at Kaiseroda and working in a salt mine; the resistance of Russian prisoners; antisemitism; marching back to Buchenwald; the journey to Flossenbürg; being evacuated; avoiding close relationships with other inmates; escape attempts; being liberated by American troops on April 23, 1945; refusing to take revenge towards a captured SS man; the reaction of civilians to released inmates; convalescing in a Red Cross hospital; the typhus epidemic; being employed by the US Army; the attitude of the German population towards defeat; not wanting to return to Poland; staying at an UNRRA children's camp; his relationship with a German girl; his immigrating to Britain and staying in Wintersill Hall in October 1945; giving an interview to radio a journalist; the lack of psychiatric help for refugees; his friendship with an American photographer; life in London and staying at a hostel on Finchley Road; his feelings on religion; his education; communicating with an aunt and uncle in France; finding out the fate of his immediate family; attending the London School of Economics; how his Holocaust experiences have affected his life; his reaction to the Nuremberg Trials; his attitude towards Germans; returning to Bielsko-Biala; and the legacy of Hitler and WWII.
