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Oral history interview with Helen Fagin

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1269.4 | RG Number: RG-50.470.0004

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    Oral history interview with Helen Fagin
    Transcript
    Why don't you a little about your experience
    before liberation took place?
    Immediately before liberation?
    Is that what you're asking for?
    Go back a little bit.
    Well, I'll just touch the highlights.
    The Holocaust began for me exactly the day
    that World War II started, which is Friday morning, September 1,
    1939.
    Our house was bombed Saturday morning, September 2, 1939,
    and we were on the run since then.
    We finally returned to our hometown of Radomsko
    in Poland, where we stayed with friends.
    And soon after that, the ghetto was formed.
    We stayed in the Radomsko Ghetto through 1942.
    In 1940, September of 1942, my parents were taken away from us
    and sent to Treblinka, where they perished.
    My two sisters and I then remained in the ghetto,
    but we stayed there until the liquidation of the ghetto.
    I was able to escape the march to the railroad station,
    having sent away my other two sisters before.
    And I was hiding.
    I was hiding for a long time, and then I
    couldn't hide any longer.
    I was able to find my way to a large ghetto in Warsaw.
    I stayed in the Warsaw ghetto until the uprising,
    and then just before the uprising
    I was able to get out of the ghetto.
    And I was on so-called Aryan papers, which was false papers.
    In the meantime, I was caught and worked in a labor camp
    but then was released and was taken back
    to the Warsaw ghetto.
    I was liberated in Poland February 17 of 1945
    and tried to find my two sisters.
    We were able to reunite after a long, long search,
    and then the decision was made that we could not
    stay in Poland because we lost everyone.
    We lost everything, and there was no reason
    to stay in Poland, mostly because the atmosphere was not
    very inviting.
    People resented those Jews who have been liberated
    and resented the fact that some Jews survived.
    And we had some personal experiences
    which persuaded us not to stay in Poland.
    Tell me about those.
    Well, for example, prior to us leaving for the ghetto,
    we had some personal possessions that we took when we fled,
    and we entrusted these possessions
    to a so-called friend.
    And after we returned after the end of the World War II
    to claim these positions, they wouldn't recognize us.
    They wouldn't give them back to us,
    and they just totally dismissed us.
    So we decided that this was not a very favorable atmosphere
    to stay at, and then it was much too painful to stay in Poland.
    Poland was not very hospitable, and it was very, very painful.
    The memories and the experiences connected with living in Poland
    were just too devastating.
    We were contacted by some people who told us
    that there is a group of Israeli young boys
    who formed an organization called Bricha
    and that they are helping survivors of the Holocaust
    to rehabilitate themselves and, possibly,
    to find a way of taking them to Palestine.
    Now, Palestine was a place we knew about
    because our father was a great Zionist,
    and he had purchased land in Palestine in the 1930s.
    And he had traveled to Palestine several times.
    So we knew that, eventually, we would like to reach Palestine.
    Parenthetically, as a matter of fact,
    my father had signed me on the list of a higher education
    institution which later became the Rehovot Weizmann Institute
    in Rehovot in Palestine.
    So we decided to put our lives in their hands
    because there was no real alternative.
    We were contacted by them, and we were told just
    to follow their instructions.
    And they took us on a long journey
    over the Carpathian Mountains.
    And we found ourselves on the Czechoslovakia side
    of the mountains.
    In Czechoslovakia, we were met by another group of young boys
    who took us through the countryside,
    and we finally arrived in Bratislava.
    In Bratislava there was a kind of a camp which was actually
    in a square surrounded by buildings,
    like a large apartment building complex, and we arrive there.
    And there were many, many, many people meandering back and fro,
    and everyone was in the same situation as we were.
    Well, we were staying there for a certain time,
    and I really don't recall how long it was.
    But I remember that we were walking
    through the streets of Bratislava,
    trying to find people who looked familiar.
    As a matter of fact, we did find some friends who
    came from our hometown just by sheer chance,
    and we were very delighted to have
    found somebody we have known.
    And then we were told that we were going to go on a journey
    and that journey is going to take us into Austria.
    The object of our journey was to go out
    of the Russian occupation zone, leave the Russian occupation
    zone, and go to the American occupation zone
    because the conditions were much better,
    and there were some displaced persons camps formed already
    in Austrian territory of the American occupational zone.
    We were met by two or three young boys who told us
    that, from now on, we have to shed our identity,
    that we are no longer Polish Jews, that we are
    Jews who are trying to return to Greece simply because it was
    felt that no one, really, in Austria
    would know the Greek language, but people knew German,
    or Czech, or Polish, or Russian.
    And they could always find somebody who
    could be the translator for us.
    So we played the role of Greek Jews knowing full well that we
    cannot communicate in the language.
    So one of the young boys told us that,
    since we cannot be numb all together,
    that we have to make an appearance of being able
    to communicate to one another, that perhaps we ought to use
    the Hebrew prayers because very few of us really could
    communicate in Hebrew.
    So we actually did communicate by gesticulating and using
    the prayers that everybody knew in a very conversational tone
    so that we would give some kind of an indication
    that we are communicating with each other.
    When we were traveling, the International Red Cross
    would meet us at different points of the journey
    and try to help us, and they actually
    tried to find somebody who knew the Greek language to be
    able to speak to us.
    OK.
    We have to put another roll of film [INAUDIBLE]..
    Now?
    So we had to communicate in some kind of a language,
    and because we didn't know the Greek language,
    we used Hebrew prayers by simply using them
    in a conversational tone and gesticulating
    as if we understood each other.
    Well, we were taken by different modes of transportation,
    either by train if we were not worried
    about going through stations and being met there
    by some officials or by trucks.
    Eventually, we reached the shores of the Danube River
    at night, and there were little boats waiting for us.
    And we got onto the boats, and we crossed the Danube.
    And then we found ourselves on the other shore, which was
    already in the American sector.
    From there, we were taken by foot and then later
    by some other conveyance, I remember--
    it must have been trucks--
    to a camp past Mauthausen concentration camp,
    which was Wels in Austria.
    And there, the experience of a displaced persons camp began.
    This was our first displaced persons camp,
    and it was a very depressing experience.
    First of all, the camp had a fence around it.
    Secondly, it was guarded by American military police,
    by the MPs, dressed in the white helmets that say MP.
    They were wearing the MP uniform,
    and they were always carrying guns.
    We had to register, and this is the first time
    that we registered.
    We got food rations, and I remember
    that the entire experience for us
    was very depressing and very devastating.
    This was supposed to have been the liberating
    aspect of our situation, but it was not.
    I remember the anguish, and I remembered
    the thought processes that went through my mind.
    And I remember asking myself, what am I doing here?
    Where am I going?
    Who is going to be waiting for me?
    How am I going to begin my so-called new life?
    What is in store for me?
    I remember one night we were awakened about 2:00 or 3:00
    in the morning, and the MPs stormed in and told
    us to get off our bunks.
    And our banks were just that, bunks,
    with burlap sacks filled with straw.
    This is what we slept on.
    And they said that they were there
    because somebody stole a can of peaches,
    and they searched all those straw sacks
    for the hidden can of peaches.
    I remember that the following day we gathered together,
    and we tried to think, my God, what is this all about?
    Fortunately, we didn't stay very long in Wels.
    I really don't recall how long.
    I believe that perhaps six weeks or so, maybe two months.
    Were you locked in?
    We were not locked in, but we were surrounded by fences.
    And we really couldn't get out because, number one,
    we didn't know where to go.
    It was a very isolated place.
    And secondly, we were really guarded for whatever reason.
    I don't know.
    They took us from Wels to Linz in Germany.
    Linz was another displaced persons camp,
    but when we arrived there, it was full to capacity,
    and they couldn't receive us.
    So we were waiting there on a temporary basis.
    They couldn't accommodate us there.
    And finally, they told us that we
    have to go back on those trucks, and they took us
    to the south of Austria and to a beautiful place called
    Bad Gastein, which was a resort in the Alps.
    And the accommodations were absolutely phenomenal.
    They put us up in hotels, and we had nice beddings.
    And we didn't have to use outhouses any longer.
    We had bathrooms, and we had indoor showers.
    In Wels, we had outdoor showers.
    And that was a tremendous improvement.
    This camp was under the auspices of UNRRA, the United Nations
    Refugee Rehabilitation Administration,
    and the conditions were much improved.
    There was a certain aspect of that camp which
    was different from any other.
    First of all, we were freer to think about our future.
    There was a free movement of people in and out,
    and we were aware of what was going on in the world.
    So we knew that there was such a thing as exodus.
    We could leave.
    We could go by way of Switzerland to Italy,
    and we could sign up to go on those boats towards Palestine.
    And we could dream, at least, of a certain kind
    of an objective, certain kind of a goal, certain kind
    of a future that was in sight.
    It was concrete.
    It was achievable.
    It was doable.
    So those of us who had dreams of going to Palestine did so.
    We signed up.
    I believe that we arrived in Bad Gastein
    towards the end of September, probably
    beginning of October 1945.
    The International Red Cross sent us packages,
    and we were able to find some decent clothes to wear.
    With the approaching fall and winter,
    however, we didn't have much winter clothes.
    But we were satisfied that we could at least have
    some decent attire, not too much of it,
    but we were wearing decent clothes.
    When winter approached, I remember
    a very fine young Lieutenant from Dayton, Ohio--
    I remember his name, Lieutenant Kyle--
    approached me once and asked me if I had a winter coat.
    And I said, no, I didn't, so he brought me a GI blanket.
    And I remember I cut a hole in the middle of the blanket,
    and I wore it as a Cape.
    And that was my [? winter coat, ?] and
    I was very grateful for that.
    In the camp, I was able to work in the office
    because I spoke fluent German, and it
    helped us to know the German language
    to communicate with the rest of the population.
    The population was not very happy with our presence there,
    but we did the best we could not to aggravate them
    and to stay out of their way.
    The life inside displaced persons camp
    was very interesting.
    First of all, we tried to gain awareness of what
    the potential-- what our future opportunities may be.
    And we got together quite often, young men and women,
    to discuss our situation.
    The first thing that we did and that
    was a very determined act--
    we were told that if we are of a certain nationality
    we will be given the opportunity to return
    to the country of our origin.
    and if we made that choice, we had to sign up,
    and we would go to our respective countries.
    The other choice was, the other alternative
    was to declare ourselves stateless
    and then leave it to whatever fate
    there is going to be available to us.
    We have to re-load.
    Start.
    Just back up and restate that you had
    a choice between repatriation.
    While in a displaced persons camp of Bad Gastein,
    we were given two choices.
    One, to return to the country of our origin
    and become repatriated or to remain in the camp.
    In that case, we have to pronounce ourselves and declare
    ourselves stateless, without any right of belonging
    to any country any longer.
    And that was a choice that many of us
    decided in favor of becoming stateless.
    At that moment of our decision, I
    think we suffered a very tremendous anguish.
    Because the decision has to be made on the basis of what
    is there for us in the future.
    We knew we can not go back to Poland because there
    was nothing to go back to.
    We knew we have lost all the ties to Poland.
    And we knew that the situation in Poland
    was really not favorable to establishing any kind
    of a life for ourselves.
    So the decision to become stateless
    was the better decision and perhaps
    the more promising decision for our future.
    And it was at that moment, I remember,
    that my thoughts and my feelings ran the gamut.
    It was a period of feeling tremendous anguish, even
    despair.
    Liberation was a very bittersweet concept for us
    at that moment.
    And as much as we longed for being liberated
    all these years of the Holocaust,
    the situation of having been liberated
    did not hold very much promise for a better life for us.
    Our thoughts went back, obviously, to the past,
    to our childhood, to our youth, to our families,
    to our parents.
    And there was a tremendous emptiness
    in our souls and our hearts.
    There was no jubilation, there was no happiness,
    there was almost depression.
    When we talked, when we met, we were always somber.
    And we couldn't really understand whether or not
    we made the right decision.
    We just felt in our guts that this
    was the decision, the decision that we had to reach,
    knowing full well that we are not
    the masters of our own fate.
    We just had to leave everything to those who
    would direct us from then on.
    So many of us decided to be as positive as we could.
    We would gather together and we would
    attend some kind of lectures.
    I remembered many of us decided to learn English.
    We decided to find some books or some resources that
    would allow us to get acquainted, at least,
    with the language so we could communicate
    with the people of UNRRA, most of whom
    were either American or British.
    And I remember getting some kind of a book
    with verses, with little ditties, little poems.
    And we were learning them and trying to understand them,
    and I still remember a couple of them.
    But we tried to be as useful to ourselves as possible.
    Another aspect of our activities, I remember,
    were political activities.
    We have found out that the British did not
    allow the boats to land in Haifa and they did not allow--
    they did not receive the refugees into Palestine.
    I don't recall whether we learned
    about the camp of Cyprus at that time or not.
    But we heard that some of the boats were returned.
    And we organized protests.
    And we were marching and protesting.
    And we were very vociferous, very vocal
    against the British actions.
    And we were trying to influence the International Red
    Cross to express our protest.
    I know that we had a number of visitors who brought us all
    this news of what was going on.
    And we tried to inform ourselves the best we could.
    And we tried to help people who were in need.
    There was a hospital nearby in Hofgastein.
    My sister, who had some nurse's training,
    was working in that hospital.
    We tried to obtain as much medication
    as we could to save the health of a number of people who
    were placed in that hospital.
    We tried to be as helpful to each other as we could.
    We tried to be as social with one another as we could.
    There were very many kids who didn't have any parents left
    and who didn't have any siblings.
    So we tried to sort of form extended families
    for those who didn't have any families left.
    We tried to boost each other's hopes.
    And we tried to help each other.
    The International Red Cross came there to try
    to find some of our families.
    We had families-- we thought we had families in England.
    And we gave them the names.
    And they tried to research it for us.
    They did research some of the names for us.
    We tried to communicate with people
    we knew who lived in Israel.
    I had family in Israel, and we contacted them.
    And we established communications with Israel.
    What we were very surprised is that we were not
    very much helped by any Jewish organizations in the United
    States.
    I don't recall that any of these organizations
    came forward with any help for us.
    As a matter of fact, I do recall that the US
    helped with my ticket from Bremerhaven to New York City.
    But I also recall that I got a bill for them from them
    and eventually I had to repay them
    the fare of the transport from Bremerhaven to New York.
    I was very surprised.
    And in retrospect, I really cannot understand the fact that
    when I arrived in New York, nobody gave a hoot what has
    happened, what would happen with me.
    I was not given the opportunity for education.
    Nobody cared about my psychological well-being.
    Nobody ever asked, how in the world
    is it possible for a young person who
    has gone through 5 and 1/2 years of persecution
    and the kind of personal tragedies
    that we had to go through and not
    worry about their psychological well-being?
    This is something that has always dumbfounded me.
    That when the Holocaust survivor came to the United States,
    he or she embarked immediately onto the process
    of acculturation, of trying to adapt oneself
    to the way of life of America.
    To try not to stand out like a sore thumb.
    To try to meld into the culture and the life.
    To try not to show that we were different.
    To try not to act the victim.
    And to try to develop a certain modus vivendi, certain kind
    of a life, which would establish us
    as a normal human being and part of the society.
    Learning the language, for example.
    I came here and I didn't know English.
    And I remember my first act was to buy a dictionary.
    I couldn't find a Polish-English dictionary.
    I bought a Polish--
    a German-English dictionary.
    And I would buy the New York Times
    and I would read it with a dictionary.
    We have to reload.
    Now, would you--
    Go to camera roll number four, slate four is up.
    So for example, the language-- if you could just
    back up to there and coming to this country.
    Well, oh, I didn't really know English at all.
    And what I did was I would buy the New York Times.
    And with the help of a German-English dictionary,
    I would read it.
    And I would try to understand it.
    And then everyone that I would meet,
    I would ask them to please correct
    my pronunciation, to correct my language as much as they could.
    Because I was very, very intent on learning
    how to speak English.
    I never learned a word unless I knew its spelling so that I
    knew how to spell it, and then I would
    learn how to pronounce it.
    And the pronunciation, of course, was very difficult.
    Once you are more or less an adult,
    it's very, very difficult to forget the idioms of a language
    that you were trained in and translate them
    into a different language.
    But you really don't want me to talk about my time in America.
    Tell me, going back to Wels, a little more
    about the day-to-day life there.
    Was there a lot of standing in line?
    Was it organized?
    Was disorganized?
    I thought it was pretty well-organized.
    But of course, there was always standing in line for the food.
    There was always standing in line for the showers.
    There was always-- well, standing in line, of course,
    for registration.
    But this was a very, very well-organized system
    because they wanted to have everything under a very, very
    strict control.
    This was actually the first time that we registered,
    the first time that we declared ourselves
    as any kind of a living person to be dealt with.
    But it was very depersonalized, very cold, and very,
    very officious, I would say.
    We didn't get the impression that anybody really
    cared for us as people, as a person, as a human being.
    But they had a job to do and they did the job.
    And it was all on a very temporary basis.
    We knew that that was the place, that it
    was sort of a transit place.
    And we were hoping we were not going to remain there
    for a long time.
    At the time that you were there, were there many nationalities?
    And also, were there any non-Jews?
    I don't remember whether there were any non-Jews,
    but I do remember many nationalities,
    many Czechoslovakia, and many Hungarians, many Romanian Jews.
    I don't remember that there were very many North European Jews.
    But I do remember Central and Eastern European Jews.
    Do you think there was a lack of understanding
    on the part of the administrators or the employees
    because many of you were from countries that they
    didn't understand why you couldn't go back?
    Well, I really cannot remember the exact conduct
    of the people.
    But I have the impression that is so lasting.
    As a matter of fact, I spoke with my younger sister about it
    the other day.
    And I asked her what kind of impressions
    she took out of there.
    And she confirmed with me that she felt the same way.
    So it's not a personal aversion.
    It is something that was a general atmosphere,
    a general feeling that we weren't
    cared for as human beings.
    We were just cared for as an entity to process,
    more or less.
    It was a processing feeling rather than caring feeling.
    And now, going back to liberation itself,
    can you tell me?
    Yes, the process of liberation was a very interesting one
    in my case because I was sort of liberated twice.
    I was at that time living on false papers, on Aryan papers.
    And that was after we were wandering from place to place,
    trying to hide, and trying to establish ourselves.
    Let's--
    Five.
    My liberation was really a very curious one
    because I was twice liberated.
    I was then under false papers, and trying to hide,
    and trying to emerge.
    And at one point, we heard rumors
    that the Russians are very near.
    That was very close to the Russian-German front
    in Western Poland.
    And when we heard that the Russians were very close,
    we decided that maybe we can emerge, and finally
    act as ourselves, and say, well, here we are,
    and we can be liberated.
    Well, the Russians did come, and we emerged, and we were elated.
    And they at first could not believe that we were Jewish
    because they had encountered, prior to that,
    Jews coming out of hiding or coming out of camps.
    And sure enough, we were euphoric, absolutely euphoric.
    The Russians are very friendly, although they were a little bit
    rough.
    But they were very friendly.
    And they offered to share some food with us,
    which was very much welcomed.
    And then they went ahead and we were just
    left there in a very sort of atmosphere of nobody's land.
    And we didn't know how to act and how to relate
    to the people we have met.
    Whether to blow our cover or not because we really
    didn't trust the Polish people.
    So we decided not to show our elation
    and to take it with a low profile.
    And that was a very lucky choice for us because sure enough,
    somehow or other, the Russians had to retreat,
    and the Germans came back.
    When the Germans came back, we really were very frightened.
    We thought that we are going to be denounced
    by the population, who may have sensed
    our elation with the Germans.
    And we decided to go east, to move east,
    as far east as we could.
    But we really couldn't get very far because the front moved,
    kept moving, from one kilometer one way
    to the one kilometer the other way.
    So we went underground.
    And then we heard fighting.
    And we just didn't know what to do.
    So we hid in basements as much as we could.
    Until about a few days later, when we heard total silence,
    when we didn't hear any shooting.
    When we sent somebody out to find out
    whether it was safe to come out.
    And when we came out, indeed, the Russians were there.
    And they assured us that they were there for good,
    and that the Germans retreated for good.
    And then we really blew our cover.
    And we felt that we were free to be ourselves.
    And then of course, the bittersweet feeling
    came upon us.
    We made the decision to return to our hometown,
    to see whether we can find anyone alive.
    And then we confronted the rubbles, the physical rubbles,
    and the psychological rubbles of the aftermath of the war.
    And so order emerged out of the chaos very slowly.
    I wouldn't call it order.
    Chaos was continuing, people were wandering about.
    People were trying to establish stations
    where we could notify others about the fact
    that we are alive and try to find people's names.
    There were on any--
    well, we had kiosks in Europe, where all kinds
    of proclamations were pasted.
    On any such kiosk in every town, you
    could see rows and rows of names that people inquired about.
    And those who were alive would put
    their names and their whereabouts
    so they could be contacted.
    It was no order.
    It was chaos.
    In Poland, especially, there was chaos
    because the government was in exile.
    And they had to form a new government, which
    was, of course, now being dominated by the Russians.
    And people could not understand where to go, and what to do,
    and how to establish their new existence.
    And there were people just wandering
    about looking for others, trying to make sense out of the chaos.
    Order was far, far away.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Helen Fagin discusses being in her house in Radomsko, Poland when it was bombed on September 1, 1939; living in the Radomsko ghetto until the liquidation in 1942; her parents had already been sent to Treblinka; being with her two sisters until she escaped during a march to the railroad station; staying in the Warsaw ghetto and getting out with Aryan papers; being caught and released back into the ghetto; wandering in western Poland for a period of time; the arrival of the Russians; moving further east; being liberated on February 14, 1945; reuniting with her sisters after a long search and returning to their home town; feeling like they could no longer stay in Poland; not getting their possessions back from friends they had left them with; a group of young Israeli boys who had organized to help survivors and take them to Palestine; travelling through the Carpathian mountains to Czechoslovakia, then to a camp complex in Bratislava (Slovakia), and then to Austria; going to the American zone from the Russian zone; pretending to be Jewish refugees from Greece to pass over to the American zone; taking a boat on the Danube to American sector; living in the Wels displaced persons (DP) camp for a few months; going to Linz, Austria, where the DP camp was full; going to Bad Gastein, Austria administered by UNRRA in the fall of 1945; meeting a kind US soldier in Bad Gastein, Lt Kyle from Dayton Ohio, who brought her a blanket; working in the office because she spoke fluent German; being declared stateless; experiencing a period of feeling empty and depressed; learning English and becoming politicized after she heard the British would not let them into Palestine; her sister’s work at the Bad Gastein hospital; and getting a ticket to travel from Bremerhaven to New York.
    Interviewee
    Dr. Helen Fagin
    Interviewer
    Sandra Bradley
    Date
    interview:  1995 February 21

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (D2) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Fagin, Helen.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Helen Fagin on February 21, 1995 in preparation for the exhibition "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a copy of the interview on August 25, 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:41:31
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    Also in Liberation 1945 oral history collection

    Contains oral history interviews with 25 Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The collection includes interviews with: Boleslaw Brodecki, Sonia Brodecki, Jim Cacioppo, Helen Fagin, Suzanne Foldes, Nesse Godin, Henny Gurko, Irving Heymont, John Holmes, Joseph Kahoe, Henry Kanner, Abraham Klausner, John Komski, Pat Lynch, William McWorkman, James Moncrief, Judah Nadich, George Salton, Richard Seibel, Milton Shurr, Alfred Sundquist, Fella Warshau, Nick White, and Alan Zimm

    Date: 1995

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

    Boleslaw "Bud" Brodecki describes being an inmate in Theresienstadt at the time of liberation; being wakened in the middle of the night to people screaming; how people did not know the war had ended; hollering to the prisoners that they were free; how the prisoners were numb and did not react; how the people still did not have food and many continued to die from dysentery and other illnesses; being taken care of by the Red Cross; being liberated by the Russians; being treated for louses; getting soup and clothing; registering to go to Russia because he did not want to return to Poland; going to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany; becoming a police officer in the camp; meeting his future wife in the camp; courting his wife while they were in the displaced persons camp; getting married in the camp and how 300 people attended, bringing food and instruments; how they got legally married in Landswood, Germany before the religious ceremony; having a son two years later; immigrating to the United States and having to get married a third time because of a legal technicality; additional details about the wedding in Landsberg; welcoming David Ben-Gurion to the camp; and trying to go to Palestine illegally.

    Oral history interview with Sonia Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Sonia Brodecki

    Oral History

    Sonia Brodecki describes how she was in three concentration camps during the Holocaust, including camps in Kindabricka, Kletendorf, and Ludwigsdorf; how in Ludwigsdorf she made ammunition and her whole body was blue-green from the powder; how she was warned on May 7, 1945 that they were going to blow up the camp, but the Russians liberated them the next day; how she had kept up her hope in the camps by envisioning her return home; how she and three friends went to Waldenburg, Germany; going home and learning her immediate family was dead; details on how she felt when she first arrived in her home city; going to the displaced persons (DP) camp in Landsberg, Germany; knitting items in the DP camp to be sent to Israel; meeting her future husband in the DP camp and their courtship; how he wrote her poems; how they married after knowing each other three months; her wedding in the camp on December 21, 1945 and how people brought baked goods and played music; their initial legal marriage in Landshut, Germany; and how the wedding was like starting over again.

    Oral history interview with Jim Cacioppo

    Oral history interview with Jim Cacioppo

    Oral History

    Jim Cacioppo describes being in Linz, Austria when there was a false report of the war’s end and how there was a celebration; driving Major Tuthill to Mauthausen; arriving at the Mauthausen concentration camp; the physical condition of the prisoners; how many of the prisoners died from eating food that was too rich; seeing bodies in the quarry; how the surviving inmates were happy to see them; being shown around the gas chambers and crematoriums by the survivors; seeing piles of weapons; guarding three of the survivors who had killed a German guard; how the engineers dug graves and civilians brought wagon loads of bodies to bury; seeing the German guards imprisoned and how he wanted nothing to do with him; and the number of surviving prisoners in the camp.

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

    Suzanne Foldes (née Zsuzsi Morvai), born in 1921 in Miskolc, Hungary, discusses being separated from her mother when they arrived at Auschwitz in 1944; her mother’s death in the gas chambers; doing forced labor at the end of the war at a Buchenwald kommando run by I.G. Farben; hiding in the woods with eight others when the guards began fleeing the camp; going into the nearby village (Mishgots?) and hiding in a barn; being fed and hidden by the owner of the barn; the arrival of American troops; the mayor of the town giving them places to sleep; her memories of hearing that FDR had died; being moved into a hotel; GIs visiting them in the evenings; one Jewish GI who brought candles and Challah on a Friday night; some of the group returning to Budapest, Hungary; travelling to an area of south Hungary; going to Prague, Czech Republic and getting back her citizenship; returning to Budapest; finding her aunt and reuniting with her father; traveling on a train when Russian soldiers sexually assaulted some younger women; and getting some of their belongings back from a man who had been in the military security forces and had been kind to her family.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin) discusses living from age 13 to 17 in various ghettos and concentration camps; being on a death march with about 600 women when the group was pushed into a barn, where they stayed for three weeks; being liberated by Russians on March 10, 1945; her physical condition upon liberation; being sent to a hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland for six weeks; suffering from typhoid, dysentery, and frostbite; going with another Lithuanian woman to Łódź, Poland in May 1945; receiving help from various organizations; meeting a woman from her town who said she had been with Nesse’s mother in a camp near the Polish/German border; going to look for her mother; reuniting with her mother in Łódź; reuniting with her brother Yaheskiel Galperin in Feldafing displaced persons camp; meeting her husband Jack in the DP camp; spending five years in Feldafing, during which time she had two children; conditions in the DP camp; her memories of the formation of Zionist organizations in the DP camp; David Ben Gurion’s visit to the DP camp; the response after the creation of Israel; immigrating to the US; and settling in Washington, DC, where her mother’s sister had a small grocery store.

    Oral history interview with Henny Gurko

    Oral history interview with Henny Gurko

    Oral History

    Henia (Henny) Gurko (née Durmashkin), born in 1926 in Vilnius, Lithuania, discusses being deported from the Vilnius ghetto to Kaiserwald concentration camp for two days and then to Dünawerke for nearly a year; being sent to Stutthof, Ponewesch, and Landsberg; being forced to sing at Landsberg with six other musicians in front of the SS and others; singing the Schubert Serenade in German; walking with the orchestra for miles on Sundays to other camps and giving concerts; performing forced labor in Moll, where she was made to walk up and down a man-made mountain carrying rocks and stones; being with her sister during this time; being sent on a forced march; hearing encouragement from anti-Nazi people on some of the farms they passed; arriving at a Ukrainian camp, where the men were very rough; being liberated by the Americans; the hanging of the camp’s leader; the orchestra continuing on for years after the war; being taken to St. Ottilien, a church in Eresing, Germany; going to Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany and staying there for two years; participating in the orchestra; hearing David Ben Gurion speak; Leonard Bernstein conducting the orchestra in 1948; conditions in the displaced persons (DP) camp; learning that her brother Shimshonzaev (Vladimir Durmashkin) had been killed in a camp; finding it difficult to be happy after so many losses; the orchestra performing during the Nuremberg trials in striped jackets; and singing songs from the ghettos about children, because so many of the children were killed.

    Oral history interview with Irving Heymont

    Oral history interview with Irving Heymont

    Oral History

    Irving Heymont describes coming upon a sub-camp of Mauthausen, Gunskierken, in Austria with the United States Army 5th Infantry Regiment, K Company; visiting the camp and the conditions of the surviving inmates; not knowing about the concentration camps before seeing one; testifying to a board proceeding in Paris, France in September 1945; going to Landsberg, Germany where his unit was stationed; going to a German displaced persons camp, which was created for the survivors of Dachau’s sub-camps; the poor conditions in the camp; receiving orders from General Anslau Ralph to clean up the camp; his efforts to improve it; making the camp an all-Jewish DP camp; tensions between Jews and non-Jews; the survivors creating a camp committee, which established a hospital and schools; the nationalities of the camp’s Jews; the role of Dr. Jake Wallaisky who was part of the committee and worked for the Jewish Organization for Rehabilitation; the black market in and around the camp; preparing the camp for the winter; the crowding of the camp and the resistance of the residents to spread to another camp; his relations with the camp residents and the local Germans; holding elections in the camp; sanitation in the camp; the treatment of children in the camp; visitors to the camp, including Rabbi Abraham Klausner; the trouble caused by the camp’s truck drivers; and helping a man find his son.

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral History

    John Holmes, of Chicago, IL, describes coming upon a labor camp with his unit after fighting in the Hartz mountain sector; conditions of the surviving inmates; the German’s abandonment of the camp; his role as a tank commander; exchanging fire with German soldiers while saving the 14th Reconnaissance Platoon; hearing that German troops were scared of black American soldiers; delivering a letter for a woman he met in the camp to her sister in Illinois; being ordered not to feed the inmates; the impact of the experience on his life; and his combat experience.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral History

    Joseph Kahoe describes being with the United States 761st Tank Battalion in Austria when he and his unit saw individuals coming out of a prison camp; being the liaison officer between his company and the regimental headquarters; the conditions of the inmates and being warned not to feed them by his superiors; only seeing male inmates; and being the commandant of the Polish displaced persons camp near Nuremberg, Germany.

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral History

    Henry Kanner discusses being in Auschwitz working in the laundry when he was 15 or 16 years old; the death of his family members in the Belzec gas chambers; being taken in January 1945 on a death march; conditions during the march, including the extreme cold and the deaths of many of the prisoners; killing a pig on the second day and eating it raw with other prisoners; being put in an open-air train car; arriving at Mauthausen; encountering a prisoner who had once worked for Henry’s father; the man saving Henry’s life by changing his information in the registry and telling him to pose as a Polish Catholic; noticing the SS officers either disappearing or changing into regular Wehrmacht uniforms in May 1945; three American soldiers who were shot down, beaten, and thrown into the gas chambers; the day of liberation; the capture of many of the German guards; leaving the camp on foot with another boy; walking to Linz, Austria; going to Passau, Germany, where they were captured by German farmers and escaping before being shot by the farmers; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Passau (possibly Pocking DP camp); going to a DP camp in Nurnberg, Germany; working in the office with a US Army captain, who was a representative of UNRRA; conditions in the DP camp; details on the emigration of people from the camp; immigrating to the US, where he had relative; getting married and having three sons; and feeling lucky as well as guilty to have survived.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral History

    Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner discusses being attached to the 116 Evacuation Hospital during WWII; entering Dachau concentration camp in May 1945; arriving at night, and seeing the devastation in the morning; the efforts they all made to bring the survivors back to life; helping to organize lists to name survivors as well as their places and dates of birth; how people were helped to get to Italy where they could get on ships to Palestine; finding Hungarian women survivors in a displaced persons (DP) camp in the Alps; learning how former inmates hid prayer books while living in the camps; finding a Polish Hebrew library in Munich, Germany that had been confiscated by the Nazis and taking a few books at a time and distributing them to people; finding the Klausenburg rebbe in Dachau, nursing him back to health, and bringing him to Feldafing DP camp; seeing Jewish and non-Jewish survivors in the DP camps; the administration of the camps; the DP camps Feldafing and Landsberg am Lech; the issues with the mixed nationalities in the camps; segregation in the camps; the lack of freedom in the camps; the compulsion people felt to find their family members; a center that was set up in Munich where people could search for family on lists; the efforts to reconnect children with their parents; finding a printer in Landsberg and getting books published and distributed; helping to establish a newspaper in Feldafing along with journalist Shalatin Levy from Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania); meeting with David Ben Gurion in Munich, and taking him to St. Ottilien hospital, Landsberg, and Feldafing; and working near Dachau for several years with the US Army.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John Komski discusses being taken to Dachau concentration camp from camp Hersbruck and staying there for 20 days; being made to shower, but not being given anything to wear except a blanket; being in an area separated from the rest of the camp; finding on April 29, 1945 that the camp gates were open to the rest of the camp; finding clothes and standing for 2-3 hours for roll call, but no SS came; how the fighting began in the afternoon and then there was silence; some prisoners running to the gates, and some getting guns; a US soldier who came into the area and commanded that the guards surrender or be shot; how thousands of prisoners gathered and many had flags of different countries; seeing a glorious sunset with dark clouds in the east; some people lighting fires and cooking food; many of the former inmates dying from eating too much; being moved to a displaced persons (DP) camp; not being allowed to leave the DP camp; being very sick and moved to an American hospital; going to a DP camp outside of Munich in June 1945; UNRRA officials forcing people to be repatriated to their native countries; going to Garmisch, Germany; meeting an artist who was a former prisoner of Auschwitz, and receiving help from him; meeting his future wife; drawing and painting scenes from the concentration camps; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral History

    Pat Lynch discusses being an American nurse attached to the 123rd Field Evacuation Unit during WWII; being near a subcamp of Dachau; how the nurses did not go into Buchenwald because the conditions there were too terrible; going into the camp and being shocked by how horribly sick the survivors were, with typhus and TB; Germans from the area who were conscripted to work in the kitchens and laundries of the various DP camps; the young Hitler youth who marched in cemeteries; moving from tents to real buildings in the summer of 1945; praying often to St. Jude about the conditions; seeing a big difference in some of the survivors between March and August as they regained some strength and bodyweight; seeing a lot of Russian children in the summer; treating some pregnant women; being told that the women officers in the camps were often more cruel than the men; and her long working days during that time, which prevented her from speaking more with the patients.

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral History

    William McWorkman discusses being with the 12th Armored Division during WWII; going through Weilheim, Oberau, Innsbruck and south to Bringer Pass; entering into Landsberg concentration camp; seeing hundreds of dead prisoners; interacting with the former prisoners; the arrival of the 493rd Field Artillery Battalion; being told not to get too close to the prisoners because of typhus; giving the former prisoners clothing and food, but not too much food; the battalion surgeon who said not to overfeed them or they would die; the attempt to triage the survivors; General Allen, commander of the 12th division, entering the camp and later ordering all males in nearby village to walk through the camp; and his regret that they did not spend more time comforting the living.

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral History

    James Moncrief discusses being a Lt. Colonel during WWII; working as a staff officer in general headquarters when the 11th Army overran Buchenwald; leaving supplies and a medical company at the camp; being sent to the camp by Captain Bennett; conditions in the camp; the crematoria; and the US soldiers’ awareness of the camps.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Rabbi Judah Nadich discusses being a chaplain in the US Army during WWII; being stationed in Paris, France, where among other activities, he helped 600 Jewish survivors go from Germany to illegal ships in Marseilles to get to Palestine; being asked to be the liaison officer to General Eisenhower to coordinate efforts to help the Jewish survivors in August 1945; being stationed in Frankfurt; the Jewish survivors in the American zone and the displaced persons camps (DP camps); differences between the DP camps; the unforeseen problems in the DP camps; inspecting the DP camps in August-September 1945; food and medicine in the DP camps; the running of the camps by UNRRA ,the Joint, and the military; immigration of the refugees; and visiting camps with David Ben Gurion.

    Oral history interview with George Salton

    Oral history interview with George Salton

    Oral History

    George Salton discusses being a prisoner of the Nazis; being liberated from camp Wöbbelin in the spring of 1945 and his memories of that day; the prisoners’ fears that the Germans would return; a soldier who shared his rations with George; his attempts to contact his relatives, including his brother; going to the British zone in Lübeck; staying in the Neustadt displaced persons camp (DP camp); the different refugees in the camp; being sponsored by his relatives for immigration to the United States; living in Deggendorf, Germany until his paper to the US came through in 1947; and seeing German teenagers in Deggendorf before he emigrated and his feelings envy, pain, and loneliness, knowing he would never have normal teenage years.

    Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

    Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

    Oral History

    Colonel Richard R. Seibel, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being on a patrol when he came across the concentration camp Mauthausen; his lack of knowledge about concentration camps before seeing Mauthausen; reporting back to General Daiger who asked him to take supreme command of camp; the two Americans in the camp, one of whom was Lt Jack Taylor of the OSS; his memories of the camp; seeing corpses piled up; the unrest in the camp and division between the inmates; a former prisoner, Premislav Dobius, who was the interpreter for army; how the Jewish survivors wanted to be separated by their religion, not by nationality as the others were; members of a Swiss Zionist organization who arrived demanding the Jewish survivors be given their own space; the prevalence of typhus and TB; the deaths of hundreds of people after liberation; 400 Wehrmacht soldiers who were brought in to repair the sewage and water system; the conditions of women prisoners; the camp’s former SS commander Franz Ziereis who was absent from the camp before liberation; and the capture of Ziereis.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being part of a displaced persons team (DP2 unit) attached to the 1st Army beginning in the fall of 1944; being in Verviers, Belgium; his previous work as the head of a Jewish community counsel in Oklahoma City; the approximately 500 displaced persons; contracting hepatitis; rejoining the regiment in April 1945 in Wetzlar, Germany; going to Buchenwald; seeing barracks with two-story bunks and 6 people in each slot, buildings full of clothes and shoes, and piles of bodies; disinfecting survivors with DDT; the high rate of death for survivors; one of his colleagues who spoke German and acted as an interpreter, and how this affected the officer’s mental health; his work with administrative tasks; Allied prisoners being sent home; the desire for many survivors from eastern countries to not return home; the work of the Red Cross to reunite families; being told by the Joint to take care of about 2000 children; being in Buchenwald until the area of Thuringia was turned over to the Russians; and paying the Poles in the DP camp with cigarettes to run trucks.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral History

    Dr. Alfred B. Sundquist, a major and physician with the XVIII Airborne during WWII, discusses being stationed a few miles from Ludwigslust, Germany; being instructed to go to a small concentration camp (Wöbbelin) and report back; arriving in a jeep, and seeing that the Germans had already left; conditions at the camp, which took up a few acres and had no crematoria and a couple of barracks; seeing corpses piled up and prisoners with striped uniforms who were too weak to get up; seeing the physical results of starvation in the former prisoners, including the loss of teeth and swollen legs; seeing evidence of cannibalism; writing a report recommending survivors be sent to apartments in Ludwigslust; many survivors dying from complications from starvation; the 82nd Airborne connecting to the 18th Airborne; the civilian Germans from the town being made to dig graves and attend funerals for the camp’s victims; taking pictures of the camp (he donated these pictures to USHMM); his thoughts on the local Germans of Ludwigslust; and his thoughts on Hitler’s mental health.

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral History

    Fela Warschau discusses being in a labor camp outside Hamburg at end of March 1945; being forced to clean streets after the city was bombed; being taken by train to Bergen-Belsen; the conditions in the camp; staying together with two friends and her sister; sharing a single potato amongst themselves for several days; liberation; survivors being disinfected and given different clothes; staying in Bergen-Belsen for two months; German doctors and nurses who were brought to the camp to work; her feelings of satisfaction seeing Germans being forced to help bury the dead; finding two of their cousins; hearing that her father had died at Auschwitz; going to Feldafing displaced persons camp; life in the DP camp; signing up for ORT courses; the tendency for survivors to marry each other; getting married in 1946; the differences between the American and British leaders of the DP camps; the children in the DP camp; and her thoughts on emigration.

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

    Irene Weber discusses being liberated from a prison in Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII; the Russians who liberated the prison; being deloused and sent to a hospital; being given a change of clothes and a little money; her decision to not return to Poland; staying in an apartment with a friend; registering as a Czech citizen; going to Prague in an attempt to leave the country after the communists took over; going to the American Zone of Germany; staying in Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp; the crowded conditions in the DP camp; living in Rosenheim, Germany; working on a farm to pay rent; attending an ORT school for nursing in Föhrenwald; graduating and then working in a hospital in the DP camp in Pokcing where she cared for survivors; continuing to live in Rosenheim and taking the train to get to her job; and receiving assistance from UNRRA and the Joint even while she was working as a nurse.

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral History

    Nick White discusses being with the VI Corps, part of 7th Army, when he saw Dachau for the first time on April 29, 1945; going to the camp with his colleague Englehardt, who was a photographer and took pictures of the camp; seeing a trench in the camp filled with dead SS soldiers killed by American infantry which had been in the camp before them; being overrun by the survivors who were joyous to see them; giving out caramels and k-rations to the survivors; conditions in the barracks; a large room that led from the gas chambers where several thousand bodies were stacked up; the high rate of mortality for the survivors after liberation; finding 39 boxcars with corpses inside; and his incomprehension of the inhumanity they found.

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral History

    Alan Zinn discusses being sent from Buchenwald in January 1945 to Dora concentration camp; conditions in the camp; seeing American planes at end of March going to bomb Nordhausen; being taken by train for six days to Bergen-Belsen; the Russian POWs who set up a tribunal in the camp after liberation and executed about 50 SS guards; being liberated on March 29, 1945; the delousing of the inmates; the deaths of many survivors from typhus and other diseases; returning to Łódź, Poland in June 1945; meeting his future wife in Łódź; going with his wife and her two sisters to the displaced persons camp in Landsburg, Germany; reuniting with his brother; and immigrating to the United States.

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