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Jewish/552nd Panel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.28 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0028

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    Jewish/552nd Panel
    Transcript
    Go ahead.
    Go ahead.
    All right.
    Today is January 10, 1988.
    And we're here at the Jewish Federation.
    And I'm Judy Weightman.
    And we have with us here today Sarah Rozenberg.
    And we have Mr. Salzberg and Mr. Otto Orenstein
    and Carla and Walter Chotzen.
    And we have Mr. Kuba and Mr. Hirayama
    and Hideo Nakamine with us today.
    And I'm going to start again with Mr. Hirayama, if you could
    tell us a little bit about your feelings as a Japanese-American
    who was at Dachau in 1945 at the liberation of Dachau,
    if you could give us a little bit of your experience
    and feelings to the new panel.
    Being that we have been in Dachau,
    I've always wondered to myself how the survivors are faring
    along now, knowing that they were
    in such a depressed situation, being weak and almost going
    into the hospital.
    And in that condition, I would have thought, gee,
    it's almost a miracle that they can live through the situation.
    So knowing that I'm before a few of the survivors,
    it seems, it looks as though they've done fairly well.
    And listening to Mr Hideo Nakamine, who
    has attended the Philadelphia convention
    of the Jewish survivors convention,
    they look all right.
    And hopefully I can get to talk to them
    and know their true experiences.
    Mr. Kuba, you wanted to say something.
    I feel the same as Fred.
    And to find out how the survivors survived the camps
    and escaped and what were the adverse conditions.
    And I think this is the day that we
    can hear some interesting stories from these people who
    escaped those camps.
    And I-- maybe you wanted to tell a little bit about how you
    become involved with--
    to the Jewish people, with the Jewish War Veterans,
    with some of the other experiences you've had.
    Fred, would you want to speak to that issue?
    Well, personally, I haven't dealt much
    with the person-to-person kind of a dialogue.
    But my contact was mainly through the TV media,
    where I've always liked to see these pictures
    about these German concentration camps
    and places like Treblinka and Dachau and Auschwitz,
    and many others, which have come on TV.
    And thinking how they reflect with the American citizens,
    I've always wondered that people in the States still,
    maybe they know about it, but they still
    have to be told many times over that they
    have had camps like that.
    And not knowing who the survivors, are I
    haven't really have had contact except now.
    So I'm glad that I'm in.
    And why did you think that it was
    important, as Japanese-Americans,
    to take part in this Hawaii Holocaust project?
    I think we can interchange our ideas and give to the public
    how we feel and how the survivors feel
    and what they can do to maybe circumvent all these things.
    And although it's almost impossible
    to wipe these things out, human nature being as it is,
    there's a big question mark whether it will happen again.
    And so this is why I think we should always keep an eye on it
    and keep our minds open for these things.
    And maybe we can have--
    Otto, would you like to respond to something?
    Well, I would like to say one thing.
    Just about a month ago, I saw a brand new book
    about the experience of the boys from Hawaii
    in the army in World War Two.
    And I read all about the 100ths and about the 442nd.
    But I never knew about the 522nd.
    And in that book, there is no mention
    of the word Dachau at all.
    So I'm very happy to meet some people who can tell me
    the real story because, until this very moment,
    I wasn't aware of it.
    And I'm glad that you got everybody together
    because we can all learn from each other.
    Could it be that we have maybe the--
    we are sharing a common interest in that sense.
    Your people had also suffered in camps.
    Am I wrong on that?
    I think we share the same experiences in that.
    Yeah.
    That's what I meant.
    I think--
    What have you heard about that, Mr. Salzberg?
    Being that-- I mean, I lived in New York during the war.
    And I did not--
    we didn't know anything about this.
    Just like the Germans always say,
    we didn't know anything about concentration camps.
    You know?
    But we did not know anything about Japanese camps
    on the East Coast.
    We never heard of it.
    But the West Coast must have known, but I never heard of it.
    And then we never even heard that Japanese had--
    that a submarine had been shooting
    at some kind of electrical work or something in California.
    We never heard that either till after the war.
    What is your feeling about the relocation of the Japanese
    from the--
    many of whom were American citizens,
    the Japanese-Americans into the internment?
    I think it was unjust.
    I think they ought to make it good, which--
    which Congress is-- was trying to do now.
    I think I heard there is something in the making now.
    They want to give everybody a $20,000 or something.
    But most of the people are gone.
    Very few or survivors left now.
    There are few left.
    Same thing with us--
    most people are gone.
    I'm already 72, you know.
    Otto, you were going to--
    Well, I have a singular distinction.
    I've been in concentration camps in three different countries,
    in Germany, in Belgium, and in Hawaii.
    I was interned after the December the 7 on Sand Island.
    They had the internment camps for basically the haole groups,
    which was mostly Germans and Italians.
    And across the fence, there was another group,
    where some of the more prominent Japanese citizens
    were interned.
    As I was telling Judy on the way down,
    I even saw one genuine Japanese prisoner
    of war, one of the fellows who tried to float in
    on the midget submarine.
    And he got overcome by the fumes,
    and he washed the shore in Waimanalo.
    And the interned him in Sand Island.
    As far as the other experience of the Japanese in California
    is concerned, I only know about it
    because I'm a stamp collector.
    And there were a number of concentration camps established
    for them.
    I know there's one at Heart Mountains.
    And I have some envelopes, no letters inside anymore,
    from some of these places where Japanese were
    interned, Tule Lake and so on.
    That really is the extent of my experience.
    Because it was wartime, the news was completely suppressed.
    Not only the East Coast didn't know about it,
    Hawaii didn't know about it either.
    So that is my personal experience of that.
    And why were you interned at Sand Island.
    They might like to know.
    Well, I was an enemy alien.
    This was after Pearl Harbor.
    I saw the attack.
    We were living in Kaimuki, up on Charles Street.
    And I went on the roof of my garage
    and through some looking glasses I could look straight
    into Pearl Harbor.
    And I saw all the smoke and fire.
    And I worked for Sears Roebuck at that time.
    They had opened their store just about two months earlier.
    And I went to work on Monday morning,
    and everybody was shocked of course.
    And when I got home that afternoon,
    I found the FBI was waiting for me,
    and I was taken, together with my parents,
    and first interned at the immigration station
    and then taken to Sand Island, where my father and I were--
    they had separate camps for the men and the women.
    And I spent about four months over there,
    until they finally found out I was harmless and let me go.
    They considered to be--
    Because I was traveling on a German passport,
    they considered me German.
    And I was interned for four months.
    But you didn't come and liberate me.
    [LAUGHTER]
    They liberated you.
    We had the experience last year of getting
    to talk to the Jewish War Veterans who
    attended the convention here in Honolulu.
    And I had occasion to talk to one survivor.
    She almost looks like her, just--
    and she survived five concentration camps.
    And it's unbelievable.
    And many of them are all survivors too, you see.
    And you know, which for such a short time,
    you can't talk too much.
    But you talk from one camp, and then he goes one year
    and he goes out because we're not too young.
    And we had this judge, Daniel Valk.
    He's a judge in New York.
    And he has been a good media to talk to.
    And he's in contact with us constantly, and especially
    with Hideo Nakamine.
    He's constantly in touch, and I'm
    glad that we have that contact.
    And he expressed to me at one time that
    the Japanese-Americans are in the same situation,
    or the Jewish--
    British-Jewish citizens, who were
    confined in Great Britain in their, supposedly,
    relocation camp.
    And they've been mistreated too, but you don't hear about that.
    But he mentioned that specific instance,
    that they're in the same situation
    as the Japanese-Americans.
    And in that light, we're in the same boat.
    Who was the judge, Fred?
    Daniel Valk.
    We call him Dan.
    Was he a Jewish judge?
    Yes.
    And how did you come to know him?
    Well--
    Maybe Hideo would like [LAUGHS].
    Well, it all started when Ben Tamashiro
    wrote an article on the liberation of Dachau
    by the 522nd.
    And that article appeared in the Hawaii Herald.
    And that was circulated all over the country.
    And I even sent a copy to Paris, to the Dachau Survivors
    Association because they sent a letter to Hawaii.
    And they heard about the 522nd role a
    in liberating Dachau prisoners.
    And they didn't know.
    They found it out after over 40 years.
    So they were surprised.
    And then what happened?
    Well, in going back to this article in Hawaii Herald
    that circulated throughout the country
    and through the Jewish community,
    and the Jewish War Veterans of the United States
    were planning to hold a convention here in Hawaii.
    So they decided, oh there's 522nd boys in Hawaii.
    So we want to see this liberators, how they look like
    and who are they.
    That's how we got in touch with them.
    And then where did you meet the judge
    that Fred was talking about?
    Here in Hawaii during the convention.
    And maybe you want to tell everybody about your experience
    in going to Philadelphia as well and how that came about.
    Oh.
    Well, going back, my experience during World War Two, all
    these years I was wondering, how these survivors
    of these concentration camps are making out.
    And I heard that a lot of survivors moved to America.
    And they were holding a 40-year anniversary
    of liberating liberated in a concentration camp.
    And they invited veterans who took part in this liberation.
    So I had one invitation.
    That's how I attended this convention in Philadelphia.
    And I had a very interesting dialogue with survivors.
    And I was very happy they are adjusting themselves
    very well in our country.
    That was in Philadelphia.
    When did you go?
    1985, April of 1985.
    I see.
    And then you've had some other experiences
    that you might want to share with the group
    because they haven't heard about your Yom HaShoah attendance
    at the Temple Emanuel and also your trips to Dachau in 1984.
    So just share a little bit of that.
    Well, every April, I attend this service
    for these Jewish, those who died at the concentration camp.
    In memory of that, I attend the service.
    What makes you do that, Hideo?
    Well, the experience we had during World War
    Two back in Europe, our experience with Holocaust
    and meeting the survivors of the concentration camp.
    So it's something that you cannot forget.
    That got me interested in this.
    And so you go to the services every year.
    And what do you do with-- what is
    your reason for going to those services at Temple Emanuel?
    Well, just pay tribute and for the memorial service.
    Thank you.
    And maybe Fred can tell you about our trip
    to Europe in 1984.
    This was back in October 1984.
    We were-- our itinerary was to get into Bruyeres.
    And through that trip, we passed through various countries
    and through Germany.
    And we've gone to Donau, where this
    is where we stayed for a period of time, more than six months.
    So somehow we like to reminisce in going back
    to where we stayed.
    And we got acquainted with a few German citizens there.
    And it was a heartwarming gathering, but only
    for a short while.
    And then you were invited to Dachau?
    And then from there, we went to Dachau.
    And to our surprise, we had people from Paris,
    from Berlin, from Munich, from various cities.
    And we had this Jewish community gathered there.
    And we had these, even from Japan,
    we had all these press coverages over there.
    And they heard about, I suppose, because of this liberation
    probably.
    Maybe that's one of the factors.
    But we had a ceremony there.
    And I have a few pictures to show
    that the rabbi performed some services at the chapel
    there in Dachau.
    And we toured the whole camp.
    And later on the Jewish community in Munich
    invited us over to their gallery.
    And our schedule was tight, and many of us
    said I think we should forego this because we'll never
    make our tour.
    But this was one of the important points in our tour.
    So we attended the Munich ceremony.
    And we were given a certificate by the community, which is what
    was given at the last moment.
    And I think this certificate was an affidavit
    for Simon Rosenthal I think.
    He was a survivor.
    He attended this ceremony.
    And the ambassador to Germany, I think,
    or relatives, he was there.
    He was a survivor also.
    So we're glad that at least they recognized us.
    And we all had a nice chat and gathering.
    And they hoped that we would come back there again.
    And they open their homes to us.
    So after that, they've always invited
    us to let them know that we are coming--
    going over there, and they will open their homes to us.
    Any response?
    Yes, Otto.
    The ambassador, that was the American ambassador
    to Germany, Arthur Burns?
    Arthur Burns, yeah.
    Yeah.
    A gray-haired fella with a pipe?
    Yes.
    He came from Cali.
    [CROSS TALK]
    He came-- he was born, actually, was then Austria.
    Yeah.
    He was there in the-- even the Paris Jewish association,
    the representative.
    So we had a whole slew of dignitaries
    there at that ceremony.
    So I'm glad that we've had the occasion to get together.
    I heard some of you mentioning after the war--
    I mean, I heard only now about maybe 10 years ago
    that the American Army made the German population help
    cleaning up with the camp.
    Is that true?
    Well--
    In Dachau.
    I mean, the people around, they had to help.
    They had to clean it up.
    Well, they had the German prisoners, the German soldiers
    doing that, I think, because--
    I heard that the population had to do it.
    I mean, the menfolks.
    You see, strangely enough, the population there in Dachau
    there, you can say that they were innocent,
    but the SS or the Wehrmacht-- and the Wehrmacht,
    they're the guilty parties really.
    They moved the camp there, right on the outskirts of Dachau.
    And because of that, the citizens of Dachau
    don't really know much about this camp.
    Of course, you could almost tell,
    the smoke coming up from there and things like that.
    You cannot be innocent of that.
    But they can't do anything about it.
    So the-- if you go to the museum,
    they would say that the citizens of Dachau
    must share the guilt, just as much as anyone else,
    but no less, no more.
    But they do share the guilt. So the government of Bavaria
    supported the creation of this Dachau museum over there.
    And if you go there, they have leaflets to explain all that.
    May I say something?
    About maybe, oh, about two months ago,
    I met a young man from Bavaria.
    He was kind of hippie-like, playing a guitar, really
    a nice fellow.
    I got-- I got to talking to him.
    And I asked him about everything,
    because I'm kind of inquisitive, and I come from over there.
    So I ask him.
    I says, how about the old people in upper Bavaria.
    He says, they are still Nazis, he says.
    They still believe in Hitler.
    The old people.
    Now, he's talking about the old people, not the young people.
    But the old, people he says they are--
    you get into an argument with them, they are still--
    great times they had under Hitler.
    Could you illuminate.
    I heard recently that the American soldiers
    who were stationed near the camps also did not know.
    Would you speak to that?
    I would say so, because many of the American soldiers
    didn't know because you have big forces going
    around those big camps.
    And even if you should drive around or near the place,
    that place, you wouldn't know where it is.
    They have signs alongside the road.
    If there are no signs, you wouldn't know where
    Dachau is for that matter.
    So you can say that it's placed in an inconspicuous place.
    Let's put it that way.
    Because this is what their idea. was.
    It was created in 1933 now.
    It was way before the war.
    [CROSS TALK] one of the first ones.
    So you feel that the American Government definitely
    did not know what was going on in the camps?
    And if the soldiers that were stationed nearby
    didn't, then would it be fair to conclude that nobody knew.
    Well, during the war, they knew they had concentration camps.
    That's for sure, even for that matter, in 1933.
    This is an authority way before the war now.
    You see, the war started in 1941.
    Well, the nature of the camps with the gas chambers,
    was that not known to our government.
    This is a speculation now.
    It's, I would say, it's more conjecture.
    They may have known, but you can't do anything about it.
    That's their country.
    And you can scream and holler, but that's their country.
    See?
    So let me give a little background on
    that because I just read about.
    It started in 1933.
    They started off thinking about 5,000 people
    to be enclosed in there.
    But the population grew so big, up to 200,000 or 300,000,
    so they had to expand.
    They had the prisoners do the expansion and growing
    of the trees and improving the place.
    So it was a free labor situation,
    so they could do as much as they wanted to.
    Fred you had mentioned, or Hideo or Mr. Kuba,
    I'm not quite sure, that the Stars and Stripes had articles,
    though, about the camps, the concentration camps.
    I think that came up yesterday in our--
    Yes.
    I think Don mentioned that.
    But I didn't read anything in Stars and Stripes
    about the camp.
    I may have read, but I don't recall.
    When was your first awareness of the camps?
    When we passed the outskirts of the camp
    and when we saw the prisoners, the liberated prisoners
    roaming in that village.
    So that was-- you didn't know about it before though at all,
    that there were camps?
    I may have known, but I don't recall
    the seriousness of those camps until after the war.
    I read many articles and saw movies or on TVs.
    This is how I learned much about those camps.
    By 1936, when I was living in Cologne--
    you heard of Cologne?
    And a fella took me to a sort of a cabaret
    they called it over there, like a nightclub almost.
    So he took me there.
    And there was comedian, a stand-up comedian.
    He was talking also in 1936.
    He says, do you know why they--
    he tried to be funny.
    Do you know why they build such high walls around Dachau,
    he said?
    He said.
    And the other guy says, no.
    He said, they don't want anybody to get in there.
    You know, he tried to be funny.
    That's true, too.
    Huh?
    I would say that's true too.
    Because, for that matter, they can't get out, see?
    That was the idea.
    Because they can't get out, people like to get in there
    and see what.
    I'm trying to bring out. the world, they knew about it.
    I mean, we knew about it and heard it everywheres.
    But in those days, they only took
    in enemies of the government, what
    they call enemies of the government,
    like communists and so on.
    Blamed-- everybody, communists who
    spent in there years and years, who are now
    the leaders in East Germany.
    They went all to the camps.
    They pulled them in there in 1933.
    The minute they came in, they rounded them all up.
    That was the first place where they put them.
    Or when they burned down the old Reichstag,
    they call it, in Berlin, that parliament.
    They rounded them all up there.
    I mean, so it's known.
    I mean, it's not--
    I mean, anybody tell you they did not know is bunch of liars.
    Right.
    I don't mean you guys.
    I mean in Germany.
    Robert, let me ask you a question.
    Go ahead.
    I don't know much about the Jews.
    Do they have their own language?
    Yes.
    Oh, it's an ancient language, one of the most
    ancient languages in the world.
    It's different from English?
    Oh, definitely.
    Oh, it is.
    It's called Hebrew.
    Hebrew?
    The Bible was written in Hebrew.
    I've always wondered--
    In the land of Israel, you know.
    You've heard of Israel?
    That's where Abraham and all this, Isaac and Jacob
    and Christian religion, the old timers, the patriarchs
    they call them, well they spoke Hebrew.
    And we still have that language.
    But they are modernizing now again into a living language.
    Am I saying it right?
    Thank you.
    You're doing well.
    But you wanted to know whether they
    were speaking German in Germany or that they knew the--
    I've heard of German Jews or Hungarian Jews
    and all kinds of Jews.
    Maybe there are Japanese Jews.
    Yeah, there are.
    [CROSS TALK] Yeah.
    There's a Japanese chazzan, rabbi,
    a Jewish congregation in Tokyo.
    Is that right?
    Yeah.
    I didn't know that.
    That's for Jewish population.
    There's a Jewish, a white Jewish population,
    but there's a Japanese Jewish population too.
    As a matter of fact, the emperor's brother
    was very interested, for some reason, in the ancient Hebrew
    religion.
    But in answer to your question, we are Jews from Germany.
    We spoke German and not Hebrew, unless we
    were religiously engaged, like my grandfather was a rabbi.
    But he might have spoken Hebrew, but I, as a grandchild,
    did not.
    We thought we were German until we were told otherwise.
    And you don't know Hebrew language.
    Just a smattering, from visiting Israel.
    But I mean, it would be--
    I didn't speak it as any more than the Hawaiian children,
    most of them, don't speak Hawaiian.
    Now you know about the modern--
    I mean, the modern generation, but my father
    used to talk to us always in Hebrew, in Hebrew words
    all the time.
    In every sentence there was a half a dozen Hebrew words
    in there, all the time for everything.
    They didn't want some other people to understand it.
    It was Yiddish.
    Wasn't it Yiddish?
    No, no, Hebrew.
    In Germany, they don't speak Yiddish.
    No, but I thought that the Orthodox-- no?
    I thought the Orthodox Jews in Germany spoke Yiddish.
    No?
    No.
    The old-timers used to speak it.
    I mean, the very old.
    I had an old uncle, I remember he never spoke high German,
    like we do now.
    Did you consider yourself a Hebrew or German
    when you lived in Germany?
    I know I was a--
    I was a Jew, and I became a bar mitzvah.
    And we had to go to the synagogue.
    I mean, we were religious.
    Some, but--
    My father, every dinner time, every dinner time, after dinner
    we say the--
    you know.
    Grace.
    Benching, yeah.
    I know.
    I think Carla's question probably is directed to the--
    No, she was more modernistic probably.
    She was probably raised in a very modernistic--
    like in America, lots of kids don't even know anymore what--
    and they're being Jewish.
    But Carla's family and most of the people--
    how long was your family in Austria, Otto?
    Well, I don't go back very far beyond my grandparents.
    But they lived in the various parts.
    One came from Hungary, one came from Poland,
    one came from Czechoslovakia, one came from Austria.
    But they lived there for many generations.
    Same with yours.
    I know on the Hungarian side, I have
    a great-great-great-grandfather, who was the grand rabbi of all
    Hungary.
    So I know they've lived there for hundreds of years.
    And Carla, how long was your family in Germany?
    I don't know how many generations.
    That would be interesting to ask Ilse.
    Your great grandfather was rabbi, you told me.
    Yes, on my mother's side.
    But we considered-- I thought I was
    a German child until I was 10.
    And then I was told otherwise.
    But I knew I had a Jewish religion.
    But since we didn't practice it in an Orthodox way,
    I was just a happy German child, I thought.
    [LAUGHS] I did not speak Hebrew at that time.
    And Otto?
    In answer to your question, Hebrew
    is the language in which the Bible is written in Jewish.
    Like in the Catholic countries, it usually
    was written in Latin, not in German, not in English,
    not in French, but in Latin.
    So every Jew will know enough Hebrew to read the Bible.
    But they couldn't use it in modern conversation.
    It's different in modern Israel.
    They created, out of the old language,
    a modern language that everybody speaks there and understands.
    But it is a more modern form of Hebrew, not the ancient Hebrew
    that most people know.
    The Bible, after all, was written thousands of years ago.
    So that language is an old language.
    The language of the day-to-day conversation
    would be German in Germany, and French in France,
    and Italian in Italy.
    Mr. Kuba, I think if we could put this maybe a little
    bit in perspective.
    Remember yesterday, when we were talking
    about the Japanese-Americans who were feeling
    that they were Americans.
    All of you were saying--
    what did you say when you found out that Japan
    had bombed Pearl Harbor?
    How did you feel as Japanese-Americans?
    Well, what's going to happen to us?
    You know?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Because my mother was worried, very worried.
    And although she said many times that we
    are lucky to be in Hawaii.
    There is no country like Hawaii.
    And told us to be good citizens, work hard, study hard,
    don't be afraid to work.
    This is a beautiful country.
    But when we learned that we were bombed,
    she got worried because--
    more so because later on she learned
    that our language school teacher was picked up by FBI and along
    with the priests or the Buddhist ministers.
    And she wasn't worried about herself,
    but more about the children.
    And as far as I'm concerned, I'm an American.
    I'm a citizen of America.
    This is my land, educated here, raised here.
    And later on, I learned that we couldn't--
    when I approached Mr. Bennett, that I
    wanted to volunteer for the Guard, which were composed
    mostly of the city and county road crew,
    I was turned down because of my oriental features and the fact
    that the soldiers who were here were mainly haoles
    from the mainland.
    So when they see an oriental carrying a gun,
    as Mr. Bennett says, why, they'll shoot you down,
    taking me for possibly an enemy.
    Because among the road crew, they're mostly Hawaiians.
    So to answer your question, Judy, we were worried.
    And fortunately, later on that we
    were accepted in the army as a AGA combat team.
    Despite the things that we went through,
    I think we accomplished what we went out for,
    to prove our loyalty as Americans.
    And so I think we have something in common
    with the Jewish people, what they went through.
    Of course, they went through a hell of a lot,
    I think worse things than what we went through for centuries,
    from what I read and from what I heard from some people.
    So I am interested in listening to Theo, possibly
    from others, the conditions that you folks had to go through
    or went through.
    Sarah, can-- oh, OK.
    Sarah, maybe you would like to talk to him?
    Well, to begin with, I would like
    to comment Judy on the project that she is doing,
    the commemoration and the lives of the survivors
    as well as of the liberators of the concentration camp.
    I'm actually here with you on this panel by accident
    because I am not an American.
    But the American government opened their doors
    to us Canadians to spend the winters here
    on this beautiful island.
    I'm a naturalized Canadian that came to Canada from Amsterdam,
    Holland in 1951.
    But I am born in Warsaw, Poland, where
    I spent my childhood and youth.
    And experienced the start of the war on September 1, 1939,
    when Warsaw was bombarded by the Germans.
    Now let me just go back to this project
    that you are having here, ongoing for, I understand,
    quite a while.
    And it isn't too soon to work on it very diligently
    and find each and every survivor of concentration camps,
    of even those that flew from Poland and Hungary
    and Czechoslovakia, Romania and other Eastern countries that
    are now the Eastern Bloc, that saved--
    were saved by being in Russia during the Second World War.
    Because each and every one of us has a lot to tell,
    what we went through.
    And we are the only people that can--
    are witnesses to the Holocaust.
    Many books were written, and many will be written.
    But we are a generation that will be, in a few years,
    extinguished because we are aging.
    And by making those tapes, video tapes,
    and for me personally that I made tapes, unfortunately,
    there was no video tapes yet in the '60s
    for the Jewish Federation in Canada.
    I also made tapes for the Yad Vashem
    and attended the 1980 first gathering, World Gathering
    of the Jewry in Jerusalem.
    I also attended the gathering of the American Jewry
    in Washington.
    We hope and pray that, by telling
    to the world through the tapes and now video tapes
    that are such a marvelous addition to the media, if you
    please, that we'll be able to tell all
    our unfortunate experiences and that never,
    never any destruction of any people will happen ever again
    and that this will be a documented, a monument
    to the millions of people, millions of Jews, men, women,
    and children, and people of all nations
    that lost their lives during the Second World War.
    Now, it seems like involvement in the temple for us,
    my husband and I, while visiting and vacationing here in Hawaii
    from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, somehow it
    involved me in this panel discussion
    of very distinguished people, people that liberated us.
    And I can't--
    I have no enough words of praise for you men and women
    that went to Europe to liberate the people of Europe,
    because they weren't only Jews that were liberated.
    They were people, European people in other countries--
    Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, and all others that were
    liberated by you people that are sitting here in front of me.
    I know it's hard for you, Judy.
    It was very hard for me many years ago,
    when I first had to document on tape my experiences.
    And still now I get emotional.
    Please, forgive me, Judy.
    I was born in Warsaw, attended school.
    I'm repeating myself.
    I'm sorry.
    And then the Germans entered Warsaw and the first--
    after three weeks of very big opposition from and fighting
    by the Polish Army.
    They entered Warsaw.
    Warsaw was demolished practically.
    And to make this story short, I'd
    like you to know that the Warsaw ghetto was built
    in the fall, October 1940.
    And we were enclosed.
    Times were very hard.
    I his my father in a clothes closet
    behind the clothes in order for him
    not to be taken for a day's work by the Germans
    because I didn't know if I will see him again.
    My mother and I worked in a cosmetic factory
    that were making toothbrushes.
    Pardon me, toothpaste and shaving creams for the army.
    My brother was also working, and this is how we got rations.
    Because our food in the ghetto was rationed.
    In 1942, my parents and my brother
    were taken by the Germans to Treblinka.
    Somehow the Germans weren't interested in me.
    I was working in a factory.
    And obviously, they needed a young person
    to produce because the war was in full swing.
    In 1943, we still celebrated the first night of Passover
    at my uncle's place on my mother's side.
    And there were some cousins on my father's side
    that amalgamated, and they were the bread producers
    for the ghetto.
    And I used to come on a weekly basis to their home,
    from my little place where I lived
    with another friend of mine.
    I used to pay the Jewish policemen in order
    for me to go with a group of working people into that--
    he was taking into the direction where the bakery was.
    And then with another group, I used
    to go home after the weekend.
    I used to go out from the ghetto through the Aryan side
    to the other part of the ghetto on Friday
    and I return on Monday or Tuesday.
    And I used to get supplies from my relatives
    to last me for the week.
    And the second night of the Seder Passover,
    we didn't observe already in 1943.
    We had to go into the bunkers.
    On the 20-- to make the story short,
    on the 23rd of April 1943, on my birthday,
    I was marched into the camp, like you pronounce it,
    Majdanek.
    I pronounce it Majdanek.
    And this camp, the "museum" of it,
    what you, in quotation, what you call,
    is located near Lublin in Poland.
    I was in this concentration camp, separated men and women,
    for three months.
    And then came a group of high SS officers to the camp
    and selected us, in the nude.
    Now there is nothing new to see people on the Waikiki beaches
    in that attire.
    But for us young girls, this was very embarrassing.
    And they selected a number of us.
    We didn't know where we were going.
    And we went to an ammunition factory
    to produce ammunition for the war and bullets for ourselves,
    with which they were killing us, even in the camps.
    When in 1944, the Russian army started to come west,
    they moved us from Skarzysko-Kamienna,
    that ammunition factory, to an ammunition factory
    in the Holy city of Czestochowa that is located almost
    on the German-Polish border.
    Now, we worked in that camp till January 15, 1945.
    How appropriate it is that today,
    on the 10th of January 1988, I am sharing with you,
    the Hawaiian Federation, Jewish Federation,
    my experiences because in six days,
    will be 43 years when the Russian army liberated me.
    We were actually to be deported to Germany
    on the 15th of January 1945.
    All the work ceased in the ammunition factory.
    We were in our--
    [COUGHS] excuse me--
    living quarters, if you please, the barracks.
    And we heard some noises in the far distant,
    but we didn't know what was going on.
    And that night, from the 15th--
    on the 16th of January, the Russian Army
    surrounded the city, and the cattle trains
    that were supposed to take us out deep into Germany,
    didn't have that chance to come in on the train line,
    on the railings to.
    And during the night, the Germans flew,
    and we stayed in the camps until early morning,
    when the Russian army came in.
    Let me just go back for a minute to the 15th.
    We were taken into the--
    see, 43 years in a person's life is a long time.
    It's over four decades.
    And I was a young child, a young lady at the time.
    We were taken by roll call to the warehouses
    that the Germans were storing ammunition in.
    And we stayed there, actually, all day, till almost dark.
    And then they called us out.
    Without food we were there for the whole day,
    without any facilities, freezing because somehow that
    was a very, very cold winter.
    When we friends get together and recall our experiences,
    we wonder often how did we survive almost naked
    in that bitterly cold January day in the warehouses?
    And the Germans were standing there in their white furs,
    with their guns stretched out.
    And we marched through between them,
    back into our living quarters.
    Afterwards, when it got really dark,
    they flew and left us in the camps.
    We didn't see anybody in the watchtowers
    that were surrounded our camps.
    And the following morning, the Russians
    came in and gave us some bread, some chocolates, whatever.
    And this is 43 years ago.
    And how happy I am, really, to be
    able to share my experiences, even just briefly with you.
    I thank you, Judy.
    That was some ordeal.
    You mentioned about the white fur, fur coat that they had.
    Somehow, we had access to that.
    And we were wondering, gee, these German soldiers
    had lots of sophisticated equipment
    to fight the Russians, with the white fur coats.
    Because if you're going to fight in the snow,
    you've got to have the white.
    And another thing, that when we--
    well, soon after the war, we noticed
    that each farm family had one foreign laborer in the family
    household.
    Everyone had a farm hand, so to speak.
    And I was surprised.
    And most of them said they were Polish, you see.
    And because either they go in the concentration camp
    or maybe to a more--
    They gave them a choice to work, either they go--
    Right.
    I think they were hand-picked, I think.
    Probably so.
    They were farmers anyhow.
    You know, most of the Russians were farmers.
    So they were too glad to work on the farm.
    They can eat.
    You know?
    I wanted to ask Ms. Rozenberg, how did the Russians treat
    you, that came in?
    Were you treated nicely and warmly?
    Well, this is something that we are often talking with friends,
    that most of my, what I call the lager schwesters,
    and those are concentration camp sisters,
    that we survived together.
    There were 13 of us.
    I'm the only black sheep that lives in Canada.
    All others live in Israel.
    Unfortunately, I lost two of them
    already during two illnesses.
    And we feel that somehow we were treated well by the Germans,
    in a way, as well as by the Russians.
    Because none of us was raped.
    None of us was killed or beaten.
    We work.
    We made sure that our work is done to perfection and always
    clean and in order.
    We were beaten by the Jewish policemen in the camp
    because we run on the--
    where the factory was, where we were working and making
    ammunition, they were-- there was hot water.
    We didn't have hot water in our barracks.
    So we ran to the showers, and we stole--
    oh, let me see--
    a special soap that the machines had
    to use for making the ammunition.
    It's [NON-ENGLISH]?
    No, [NON-ENGLISH]
    Oh.
    [NON-ENGLISH]
    And we stole that soap and washed, with it, our hair.
    And we used to do it on the midnight shift
    because we worked morning shifts and midnight shifts.
    And we knew, when our German supervisors, the German SS,
    were going for their break at night.
    So we used to quickly work together.
    One of us was looking after two machines for a few minutes
    in order for the other one of us to go have the hair washed,
    so we won't have lice.
    Yeah.
    And won't get sick from it and typhus from it.
    And when the Jewish policeman that was also
    working around the plant saw us with wet hair,
    this is when we got it.
    But one of them was tried in Israel
    and received a well-deserved punishment.
    Did they shave your hair off?
    No.
    They didn't shave my hair and those contemporaries
    with me that came after the uprising in Warsaw.
    We were taken as political prisoners
    because of the uprising.
    They didn't shave our hair in Majdanek, in Majdanek.
    But they shaved the hair of the Greek Jewish women
    that were brought a week or so or two weeks later to camp.
    They were not only Jewish prisoners in Majdanek.
    They were also prostitutes.
    They were also-- sorry, the--
    Gypsies.
    Gypsies, right.
    And they were women and men from different countries, separated.
    But because we were--
    they considered us political prisoners
    because of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
    They didn't shave us.
    See, the political prisoners had a different status.
    [COUGHS] Excuse me.
    The French women who fraternized the German soldiers
    when they occupied, they made sure
    the French cut all those women hair off,
    bald, so they'd be embarrassed.
    In Holland too.
    In Holland too.
    In Holland too.
    I suppose it's because the--
    Those were the women that collaborated with the Germans.
    There were many of those.
    Yeah.
    I would think so.
    I risked-- what I told you a while back,
    that I risked my life by hiding my father in the clothes
    closet behind the clothes.
    Well, I was alone in the house at the time.
    My mother was in the factory.
    Why I was in the house that day, I don't recall.
    But the German came--
    two Germans or three, whoever, high-ranking officers,
    some in the black uniforms, some in the khaki uniforms.
    And they always used to go with the custodian or the manager
    of the building and went through the house
    and asked if there is any man in the house.
    And I said no.
    If they would have found my father,
    they would have killed him and myself.
    We would have been killed on the spot.
    How did you know that, Sarah?
    How did, at your age, to hide your father?
    Well, that's an instinct.
    Because--

    There is no transcript available for this track

    Overview

    Date
    interview:  1988 January 10

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

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    Restrictions on use. See collections release form for details regarding restrictions.

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    Administrative Notes

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    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The video entitled "Jewish/552nd Panel" is part of a project of Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberator interviews currently living in Hawaii. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the video in March 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:17
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    Also in Oral History interviews of the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Contains 34 oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators all currently living in Hawaii

    Date: 1987-1991

    AJA Photos

    AJA Photos

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Akamine

    Oral history interview with Michael Akamine

    Oral History

    Michael Akamine, born August 15, 1922, describes his parents; moving to Oahu, Hawaii when he was six years old; graduating high school in 1942; working for the as a carpenter and construction worker; working on a poultry farm when Pearl Harbor was bombed; how his parents were from Okinawa, Japan; volunteering for the U.S. Army in 1943; going to Camp Shelby; not knowing anyone who went to a relocation camp; being a battery agent in the 522nd; how his father had told him about the Dachau concentration camp; going to Dachau and the conditions in the camp; meeting up with his friends from the army every year; how he has not talked about his experience before this interview; and why he decided to volunteer in the army.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Akita

    Oral history interview with Stanley Akita

    Oral History

    Stanley Akita, born in 1923 in Hawaii, going to Honolulu to vocational school; how he volunteered for the 442nd; going to training at Camp Shelby; being picked to join the 100th and being sent to Southern France; being captured by Germans and asked why a Japanese man was fighting with the Americans; being sent to Koma, Strassburg, Stuttgard, and the prison, Starlite 70; being forced to clean the streets of Munich; bribing guards for food with cigarettes; being liberated by American troops; and being taken to Königsberg, Germany (Kaliningrad, Russia) then France and Boston.

    442nd Banquet

    442nd Banquet

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tana Basa

    Oral history interview with Tana Basa

    Oral History

    Tana Basa (née Hecht), born April 18, 1940 in Berlin, Germany, shows pictures of her family from before the war. She discusses her father’s role as a cantor during WWI; how her first memory was of Theresienstadt; staying in the camp until the end of the war in a single room; having all her hair cut; being hungry a lot; having her leg in traction; her mother’s death; how two of her sisters went to Auschwitz and one sister went to Bergen-Belsen; how her father hid her under the tub when the guards came for her; how her father got a Jewish doctor to take her to a tuberculosis sanatorium, where she stayed until they were liberated; how she reunited with her two sisters, who went to Bergen-Belsen; the death of her aunt and uncle; being in a displaced persons camp; how her father remarried and she and one of her sisters were put in a German Jewish orphanage, where she stayed for five years until her father took her back; and immigrating to the United States with her father when she was 11 years old.

    Oral history interview with Carla Chotzen

    Oral history interview with Carla Chotzen

    Oral History

    Carla Chotzen, born in Weimar, Germany in 1924, describes her family; going to England; moving to Berlin, Germany in 1935; going to school in Berlin and getting kicked out soon after; going to a Jewish school and then Switzerland; how her father had read Mein Kampf and knew that they would have to leave Germany; how her father left them in Switzerland and met her mother in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); immigrating to the United States when she was 11 and stayed with her grandparents in Buffalo, NY while her parents were in England; going to the University of Rochester; and working for the American Jewish Committee in New York; the fate of her extended family.

    Oral history interview with Walter Chotzen

    Oral history interview with Walter Chotzen

    Oral History

    Walter Chotzen, born May 17, 1911 in Ziegenhalt, Germany (Glucholazy, Poland), describes the small town where he was born; attending the University of Berlin and quitting after a few semesters; working for a manufacturing business, where he was fired once Hitler came to power; working for his father; being socially shunned for being Jewish; being called up by the draft board; smuggling money past the border into Czechoslovakia and being questioned by the Gestapo about this activity; how his father sold his factory in 1938; going to Holland; how his parents hid in Berlin for a year then fled to Sweden; how he lived in Seattle during this time; his family history; his education in Germany; the antisemitism before the war; his experiences in Berlin between 1933 and 1935; going to a Nazi Party parade on Unter der Linden; the fate of his extended family; how he became socialist as Hitler became stronger; his thoughts on the internment camps in the U.S. for Japanese Americans; and his thoughts on the liberation of Dachau by Japanese-American troops.

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Oral History

    Five individuals who lived in Germany and Austria before, during, or after Kristallnacht discuss their experiences. The interviewees describe the Nazi Party in Austria; growing up in Berlin, Germany and being persecuted for being Jewish; life in Frankfurt, Germany, where there were boycotts against Jewish stores; a parade of storm troopers (Sturmabteilung); a torchlight parade in 1933 on Under Der Linden in Berlin where 100,000 storm troopers marched singing; how the Nazis took most of their possessions; seeing a synagogue burning in Austria during Kristallnacht; how they all left Europe; and their thoughts on preventing the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

    Oral History

    Anne Flagg (née Flagenheimer), born September 17, 1910 in Germany, describes how Hitler invaded the Rhineland when her children were infants; her father’s factory; how Jews were forbidden from going to concerts or to the opera; how the synagogue was burned during Kristallnacht; how the Nazis destroyed their house and the French governess saved her husband; the first pogrom in 1934; how some of her relatives got out of Germany; how she went to their summer home in February 1938; how she went to Stuttgart to get visas and how they did not have passports; finally getting passports; how the train she was on to Holland, the Netherlands was searched by the Gestapo and they stole her watch; meeting her husband in Holland; taking a ship to the United States; how her parents got out soon after; how the maid saved their silver and the bookkeeper took accounts receivable and buried it and collected for her parents for later; how her friend rescued many Jews by posing as a Nazi; visiting Germany in 1952; life after WWI; how the Nazis stole their possessions; the fates of her aunts and uncles; and how she believes the Holocaust could happen again.

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral History

    Royce Higa, born in 1920 in Honolulu, Hawaii, describes leaving school early to work; working as a dishwasher in Okinawa, Japan; being Japanese and the difference between Akin and Japanese; organizing a labor movement at age 16; graduating from the University of Michigan; becoming the director of a tuberculosis organization; joining the army in 1945; his brother’s death in Italy; training at Camp Shelby; getting the measles and suffering depression; going to Germany where he was a forward observer; crossing the Rhine River and not meeting any resistance; seeing a death march from Dachau and how they did not know at the time that they were Jewish prisoners; going to Augsburg, Germany; meeting a Lithuanian Jew and helping him find his family; getting his master’s degree in public health after the war; his life in politics; seeing the attack on Pearl Harbor, which were close to his home; and the Japanese who were loaded on to ships and taken to the mainland.

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral History

    Fred Hirayama, born in Hawaii, describes living on a plantation; volunteering for the army; the discrimination his brother experienced as a Japanese American; how his parents were proud of him for serving; how no one in his family was sent to a relocation center; going to Camp Shelby and never experiencing any discrimination; serving in the 522nd in France and Germany; his experiences with the concentration camps; going to Dachau where he saw the atrocities, gas chambers, and the inmates; returning to Germany in 1984; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; and some pictures he has of the state of Texas honoring the 442nd regiment.

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral History

    Hazel Ishii, born December 15, 1917, describes her Japanese parents and how she identifies as American; being in Maui, Hawaii during the attack on Pear Harbor; not having experienced any prejudice; how conditions changed for Japanese Americans after the war; a friend’s experience in a Japanese American internment camp; her daughter’s pursuit of archeology and Hebrew studies; and her family’s efforts to remember the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral History

    Susumu Ishii, born on January 2, 1918 in Hawaii, describes being a second generation Japanese American; being 24 years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred; being drafted a few months before the Pearl Harbor attack; how the commander told the Japanese Americans that they could not be trusted; how he identified as an American; attending a Japanese school; training at Camp Shelby and in Wisconsin; visiting a friend at a Japanese American relocation camp and his view on the camps; not experiencing any discrimination when he was in Mississippi but witnessing discrimination against black Americans; attending annual Holocaust memorial services; his daughter’s pursuit of Hebrew studies; and his view that those who were relocated to camps in the U.S. should be compensated.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral History

    Richard Kuba, born in March 1921 in Kailua, Hawaii, describes being a first generation Japanese American; living in Kailua when Pearl Harbor was attacked; volunteering to serve in March 1943; his non-Japanese friends and their views of the Japanese; how he heard nothing against Americans in the Japanese community; being stationed at Fort Shelby (probably Camp Shelby) in the infantry; being a radio operator when he went overseas; being in combat; feeling like his battalion was treated differently because they were Japanese Americans; his views on Hitler; how he did not know anything about the concentration camps other than what he read in the papers; and his first contact with the liberated prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral History

    Borys Kusne, born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania on August 17, 1918, describes growing up in a middle class Jewish family; the antisemitism in Vilnius; being the only Jew at his college in 1938; being inducted into the Polish army in 1939; how both the Russians and Germans were taking Polish prisoners of war; walking back home; the Nazi invasion in 1941; the new rules established for Jews; working at the railroad then moving to the ghetto and working in a hospital; being in the ghetto until 1942, when he was deported to Estonia to a liquidation camp; never seeing his mother again; conditions in the camp; and marching all night and leaving the group for the forest.

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral History

    Hedy Marmorstein, born in Vienna, Austria November 18, 1921, describes her parents; going to school until she was 16; finishing high school in New York; leaving Vienna in December 1938; her Jewish education; how they accepted antisemitism as a part of life; experiencing antisemitism in school and protesting; her non-Jewish friends; being sponsored by her father’s nephew to come to the United States; corresponding with her parents until the attack on Pearl Harbor; learning later that her parents were deported to Riga, Latvia (Kaiserwald concentration camp); how when she arrived in the U.S., Americans did not realize how sinister Hitler was; her experiences during Kristallnacht; antisemitism in the U.S.; how her experiences have affected her life; living in Hawaii versus New York; her views on the internment of Japanese Americans; how when she left Austria some of her possessions were destroyed and strip-searched in France; returning to Austria in 1959; and being in an Austrian club.

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral History

    Katsugo Miho, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his Japanese parents; graduating high school in 1940 and beginning his university studies in 1941; being a member of the ROTC; volunteering for the army on December 7, 1941; being part of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard; how they were gathered in a school one morning and told that all Japanese Americans would be discharged because an American officer did not like the idea of Japanese Americans serving for the U.S. Army; working as a carpenter’s helper at the airfield; volunteering for the army in 1943 with his brother; going to Schofield and Camp Shelby; being in the artillery while his brother was in the medical section; how his father was picked up as an enemy alien in 1941, taken to a prison, then shipped to Sand Island, Honolulu, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Alabama; the death of his brother in a bus accident when he visited their father; training until April 1944; visiting camps (possibly Japanese American internment camps); going to France and losing many men while trying to rescue a lost battalion from Texas; joining with the 7th Army and the 3rd Army; fighting battles in the German cities of Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg; seeing civilians with yellow stars on their clothes in Aachen, Germany; and witnessing a death march from Dachau and not knowing at the time that they were Jewish prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral History

    Yuzuru Morita, born in Hawaii on May 8, 1917, describes his Japanese American parents; being age 24 and in the army when Pearl Harbor was attacked; working on a sugar plantation and factory, where there were Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese men working together; being assigned to the 395th Battalion at Diamond Head; handling all the outgoing military goods for the army; being at home during the attack on Pearl Harbor and having to get back to the base; his response to seeing Japanese flags on the attacking airplanes; staying in the army throughout the war and becoming a sergeant; how both of his brothers entered the army when the 442nd was formed; going to Camp Shelby; not encountering any racial prejudice, but how Japanese-American soldiers had their allegiance continually doubted; his daily duties in the camp; becoming part of the 527th Artillery; how his brothers also fought and survived the war; how his parents were proud of them for fighting; going to Germany and Italy; how German soldiers surrendered to them; seeing Jewish prisoners for the first time at Dachau and how he did not even know it was called Dachau until 1988 because no one ever talked about it; going to Bavaria, Germany after the war, where they remained as occupational troops; how his service in the army was appreciated by people when he returned to the U.S. and how he did not experience any racial prejudice; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral History

    Neil Nagareda, born May 2, 1924 on Hawaii Island, Hawaii, describes living on a plantation with a mixture of Filipino, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish families; how there were no anti-Japanese feelings; hearing that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; how his parents were from Hiroshima , Japan; joining the army in 1943; being trained at Camp Shelby; how he was supposed to go to Camp Jerome but missed going; how his unit went to Europe; having no idea about the concentration camps when they came across Dachau; the conditions of the Jewish inmates; meeting up with the 522nd; how there were no orders as to what they should do at the camp nor with the prisoners; being a communications unit; leaving Germany in December 1945; the racism he experienced in Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, MS, and New York; not talking very much about his war experiences; and his advice to his children.

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral History

    Barton Nagata, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his family; going to Grinnell College in Iowa; being drafted in 1942 and sent to Arkansas for basic training; asking to be transferred to the 442nd Battalion; being sent to Camp Shelby attached to the headquarters battery as a clerk; working in radio and in the foreign observatory team; seeing some action in Italy with the infantry; being Colonel Harrington's radio operator; his education at Grinnell College, where he did not experience any discrimination; being on guard duty when he was not needed as a radio operator on the Riviera in France; being detached from his unit and made a MP, guarding German prisoners and AWOL American prisoners near Nice, France; liberating French prisoners in Germany; seeing a death march near Munich, Germany, not realizing the prisoners were Jews, and giving them some food; going to Dachau; speaking about his experiences when he was a high school history teacher; the importance of education to prevent racism; being an active protestant; going to a British university; and telling his children about his experiences.

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral History

    Armin Nagel, born June 1920 in Breznov (possibly Brașov), Romania, describes his early life; learning Hungarian and attending Hebrew school; moving near the border of Romania; moving to Bucharest, Romania with his siblings; finishing high school in 1938; working as a photographer; working as a dentist’s assistant until 1940; how the Romanian Nazis became active in 1939; how his brother, who was a printer, secretly printed material against the Nazis; being mistaken as his brother and taken to a train to go to a concentration camp; going with 2,000 other Jews and non-Jews to Terazu, a work camp; conditions in the camp and making teeth out of bones to aid eating; how in 1942 all the Jews in the camp were taken to Varnecka (possibly Varnikai, Lithuania); learning later that experiments were being conducted at the camp, where prisoners were given poison in the food; how, as a dental assistant, he was able to smuggle medicines to the prisoners; being able to survive because he ate with the dentist; being in the camp from May 1941 to August 1944; being taken to another camp in Groslovo (Velyka Mykhaĭlivka, Ukraine), where he worked as a dental assistant for one year; walking 80 miles towards Romania and ending up in Tagena; how his brothers survived and went to Israel; joining his mother in Bucharest, where he worked and went to school for engineering; immigrating eventually to the United States and settling in Honolulu, Hawaii; and the number of Jewish Romanians who left for Israel.

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral History

    Hideo Nakamine, born in Paauilo, Hawaii and raised in Honokaa, HI, describes being in Honolulu, HI with his brother when Pearl Harbor was attacked; enlisting and joining the 442nd; going to Camp Shelby for training; being put into the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; fighting in Italy and France and going into Germany at the end of the war; how the first camp he saw was in Bad Tölz, Germany; seeing approximately 5,000 prisoners being marched away from Dachau and how the German soldiers scattered when they saw the U.S. troops; how some of the soldiers gave food to the prisoners and how they had been ordered not to give food to anyone because they needed their rations; going through other German death camp areas in Horgau, Augsburg, and Munich; visiting the museum at Dachau during the 40th reunion; going to a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Philadelphia, PA in 1985; how his parents had been driven off the plantation where they worked for being of Japanese descent; and his views on freedom and prejudice.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral History

    Joseph Obayashi, born on April 18, 1924 in Maui, Hawaii, describes growing up in a community called Whalo; how his father grew pineapples; how he felt that Japanese Americans were not discriminated against even after the attack on Pearl Harbor; enlisting into the 442nd; how he trusted the U.S. government when they relocated Japanese Americans to camps; training at Camp Shelby; being in the 3rd and 5th Divisions during the war; being shot down when he was in the 3rd Division; the captain of the 442nd, Captain Fiberman, and his squadron commander, James Harrison; landing in Italy in 1944; how his job was to carry a radio on his back to help with the intelligence of the 1st Division; how the 442nd and 100th (rifle company) never drew back; going through France then Germany; hearing rumors about the concentration camps; seeing a concentration camp and prisoners eating a dead horse; meeting former inmates in Germany in 1984; encountering inmates in other areas of Germany in 1945; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral History

    Otto Orenstein, born in Vienna, Austria on July 16, 1921, describes his parents and their ancestry; his education in Vienna; not experiencing any antisemitism when he was young; how his family observed some holidays but was not very religious; leaving Vienna on December 28, 1938 for Cologne, Germany; making it across the Belgian border; how some Belgian farmers smuggled them to Brussels, Belgium and gave them money for railroad tickets; arriving in Antwerp, Belgium, where a relative lived; getting a visa to the United States, and arriving in the U.S. in April 1940; how the rest of his immediate family arrived in the following few months; how in July 1927 there had been riots at the Ministry Building in Vienna; his memories of political events and backlashes in 1932, 1934, and 1938; being a member of the Austrian boy scouts and being kicked out for being Jewish; his memories of the Anschluss and seeing Himmler and Goering; conditions during the Nazi occupation; getting kicked out of the apartment where his family had lived for 30 years and going to live with his grandmother; how his uncle committed suicide; getting rounded up with other Jews on November 11, 1938 and taken to an SS barracks; seeing a Portuguese temple burning; how he was let go because he was only 17 years old; his journey to Antwerp and his difficulty crossing the border; going to a detention camp in Belgium September 1939 until his visa came in March 1940; how his parents left from Norway; going to Honolulu with his family in July 1940 and how his parents had brought artifacts from Norway and were featured on the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser on July 16, 1940; how when he first arrived in New York he stayed at Stephen Weiss’s house, which was a temporary shelter for refugees; how his family was interned on Sand Island, HI as enemy aliens; how his mother ended up being the leader of the women’s side of the camp; the things he brought with him (birth certificate, train ticket from Brussels to Antwerp, student card, and passport); how he has talked to his family about his experiences; not experiencing any antisemitism in Honolulu; and some of his memories from 1938. The interviewee also shows a picture of his birth certificate and his student card.

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss their experiences as Japanese Americans when Pearl Harbor was attacked; deciding to join the army; the anti-Japanese sentiment in the press and the reactions of their peers; being evacuated from the west coast and waiting for Japanese American detainment camps to be built; people they knew whom were detained; the experiences of their families before the war; how many of their possessions were taken by the federal government; training at Camp Shelby; the status of family members as enemy aliens; Holocaust denial and Holocaust education; going to the military camp in Arkansas (possibly Camp Jerome); the confiscation of their diaries; their views on reparations for the Americans who were detained during WWII; their activities on the Western Front, including the detachment of the 522nd, how the artillery was often ahead of the infantry, and going through many towns; arriving at Dachau; seeing the prisoners and Reverend Martin Niemöller; not staying long at the camp; being ordered not to feed the camp survivors because they could not eat the food; passing a camp outside of Munich, Germany while they were scouting; seeing two dead horses and later seeing a group of prisoners gathered around eating them; feeding the survivors at their camp and speaking to some of them; seeing the gas chambers, crematoriums, and shooting sites at the camp; going to the displaced person camps and attending a wedding at one of them; going to a survivors' meeting in Philadelphia, PA; the irony of being a persecuted minority in America then helping a minority during the war; and the presence of prejudice organizations in the U.S.

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss the internment of enemy aliens in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack; learning about the concentration camps in Europe; the experience of being a Japanese American after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the experiences of Sarah Rozenberg, who lived in the Warsaw ghetto, was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp on April 23, 1943, worked in the ammunition factory, and was liberated by the Russian Army on January 15, 1945; Rozenberg’s experiences with the Germans and the brutality of the Jewish police as well as the underground activities in the Warsaw ghetto; and Holocaust education.

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral History

    Yom HaShoah

    Yom HaShoah

    Oral History

    The recording includes a service for Yom HaShoah during which Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu, HI; Chuck Freedman, director of communications in the office of the Hawaiian governor; Jacob Liebermann of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; Gerald Clay, president of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; and Judy Weightman honor the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust and thank those who helped save Jews and work to fight present-day Holocaust denial. The recording also includes a musical performance.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral History

    Gerda Samuel, born in Hamburg, Germany in 1921, describes her father, who was a printer; attending a Jewish school for girls in 1931; how her father was taken by the SS in 1934 and she never saw him again; being sent to the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; being sent to England in 1938; being adopted by a Jewish family in Belfast, Northern Ireland; never seeing her mother or aunt again; being raped by the son of her adopted family; joining the British Army in 1941; not hearing about the concentration camps until after the war; going to London, England to work as a waitress after she left the army; moving to Singapore in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1952; her conversion to Catholicism; antisemitism in Hawaii; and her memories of the Depression.

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral History

    John Sato, born in the state of Washington in 1921, describes experiencing some discrimination as Japanese American when he went to a university in 1939; how his family was evacuated from their farm; living in the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho; conditions in the camp; volunteering for the army; going to Camp Shelby; being in the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; joining the air force intelligence; visiting his family in the camp; being transferred to the Hawaii Air Force Base for nine months; being sent to Guam; going on a bomb trip to Japan with scientists; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral History

    Rudolf Schmerl, born in August 1930 outside of Berlin, Germany, describes his family; moving to Berlin in 1935; his family history; experiencing antisemitism as a child from his peers; his view of Germans; wanting to leave Germany and having difficulty; how Germany defined his family as stateless; how his father went to the United States in1938 to work as a doctor; going with his mother and grandmother on a train illegally to Czechoslovakia; being beaten at his new school; going to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) on August 31, 1938; getting measles on the ship heading to the United States; being detained on Ellis Island; living in Harlem, NY; how his grandmother never became a U.S. citizen; leaving New York in 1941 for Louisiana; seeing racism in New Orleans; moving to Toledo, OH, and seeing the segregation; the fates of his relatives in Germany; and the lessons of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral History

    Jedidah Shashai, born in Vienna, Austria on May 19, 1924, describes growing up in poverty in Vienna; having no Jewish school education; experiencing antisemitism; her father’s death when she was 12 years old; how the Nazis took many of their possessions; the uniforms of the women Nazis; how she had no connection with Judaism; wanting to be part of the mainstream and not being accepted; how the Nazis took her family’s business; how she went to Belgium and her sister and mother went to England; antisemitism in newspapers; wanting to go to Hawaii; getting out in a transport of children and feeling guilty because she was not a child; going to Belgium first then England; staying with different families in Belgium; being placed in a small village in England in 1939 by the Rotary and experiencing antisemitism; not experiencing antisemitism in Hawaii; and her approach to life.

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral History

    Don Shimazu, born in Punei, Maui, Hawaii, describes his role as a staff sergeant in charge of the 522nd Battalion survey section, with the responsibility for accurately locating targets; growing up on a plantation on Maui, where there was a subtle discrimination against all minorities; beginning ROTC at the university in September 1941; his memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor; experiencing some animosity for being Japanese immediately after the attack; how he had been schooled in the Japanese samurai tradition, which taught him to have loyalty to his country (the U.S.) first and how this tradition led to the success of the 442nd and 522nd; enlisting and the disbanding of his first unit; becoming a carpenter’s apprentice; learning about the Japanese internment camps; volunteering for the army on March 24, 1943; going to Camp Shelby; being made second in command of his cadre; how his division was known for being the most accurate artillery division; his combat experiences in Italy in the towns of Grosseto, Livorno, Castellano, Pisa, and Florence; going to Marseille, France; joining the 7th Army and traveling through the French Riviera, Dijon, and Lyon; crossing a minefield without realizing it; saving the lost battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion); staying in Southern France until March 1945; serving with various battalions, including the 63rd, 45th, 44th, and the 101st to assist in the Allied crossing of the Rhine; travelling through Mannheim, Germany and the Siegfried Line; entering Dachau; being told not to feed the camp survivors as they would be unable to cope with the soldier’s food; going to Munich, Germany; returning to Dachau in 1984; the similarities and differences between the German and American internment camps; his memories of the concentration camps in Germany; and ways to prevent the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral History

    Ignace (né Yitzhak) Speiser, born January 5, 1908 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his second wife; studying in Paris, France after WWI; learning to play the mandolin and the violin; going to the consortium in Warsaw; being age 21 when he attended the Ecole de Musique in Paris; officially leaving Warsaw in 1931; his siblings and his parents; trying to leave France for the United States in 1939 but being prevented by the beginning of the war; being taken by the Germans from Toulouse, France in 1943; being sent to a concentration camp in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland; being asked to play his violin; how the inmates dug a tunnel, which was discovered; how all the imamates were deported to Auschwitz; being on the train with his friend, a cantor, who sang one symphony the whole ride; how people jumped off the train; how his wife was still in Toulouse; being separated from the others at Auschwitz because he was a musician; playing Ernest Bloch’s Baal Sham; going to Fürstengrube to work in a coal mine, but being separated as a musician with his opera singer friend; being beaten once; being in Birkenau for a few weeks; how a dentist would bring him food and ask him to play Mozart; having a birthday party in 1945; how he had been in Auschwitz for two years and Fürstengrube for one year; giving concerts once or twice a week in Fürstengrube; how after awhile he was not afraid of dying; selection processes; being removed from Auschwitz in January 1945 at which point they were walking and on the train; going to a place near Lübeck, Germany and being taken by the Red Cross to Sweden; the conditions on the train and the deaths during the journey; and his tattoo.

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral History

    Louise Spitzer, born December 6, 1916, in Vienna, Austria, describes her parents and childhood; going to Brussels, Belgium to perfect her French and graduating from hotel management school in 1938; life in Vienna and the intermingling of Jews and the Christians; how she had no antisemitic experiences in her childhood; wearing a three arrows patch to present herself as socialist in protest of Nazism; the death of her father; having boarders in their home beginning in 1938; being picked up by the Nazis to clean the synagogue; how the Nazis took all their linens and silverware, she went to the Nazi headquarters to demand it back, and they gave it back; going to work as a servant and later a nanny for a family in London, England; leaving on November 10, 1938; the deportation of her uncle to Dachau and the death of her mother in 1939; being beaten at the German border; staying with the English family’s children in Wales when the war broke out; returning to London to work in a secret factory until the end of the war; volunteering to help the Americans because she spoke German and being stationed in Germany in the censorship division; visiting her aunt and uncle in Vienna after they were released from Dachau; her interactions with the Russians upon her return to Germany; applying to go to the United States after she received British citizenship; leaving the army in 1948 and immigrating to the U.S.; working for American Express and Sabena; receiving some money from the Austrian government for confiscated belongings; and her views on antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral History

    Richard Strauss, born in Mainz, Germany in 1924, describes growing up in Germany and Italy; working for most of his life in the hotel food industry; attending a German public school; hearing antisemitism on occasion from his classmates; how his father was active in the Social Democratic party and was warned to leave on the night of the 1933 election, which he did; the camps near his town where dissidents were taken; how laws preventing Jews from attending high school began in 1935; his uncle’s wine exporting business, which he was allowed to continue operating despite the limits on Jewish businesses; his parents’ divorce; being socially shunned by non-Jewish friends in 1935; being sent to Besel, Switzerland to his father when their business was being reviewed; being placed in a boarding school in Italy from 1935 to 1938; returning to his mother in August 1938 when Mussolini enacted antisemitic laws; how his father went to Cuba and then Australia in 1940; how his mother’s attitude about remaining in Germany changed after Kristallnacht; how shop keepers would allow them to purchase items even though they had signs up banning Jewish customers; being hidden by a family friend who was a member of the Nazi Party, in a park the night of Kristallnacht; seeing the destruction of the city the next morning; how the thugs who committed the atrocities were brought in from another city; taking in homeless families because their home was intact; being on the English Rotary Club’s transport that got children out of Germany; going to Portsmouth, England and working as a window dresser’s apprentice; how his mother left Germany in November 1941 and went from Portugal to the United States; being interned on the Isle of Mann; being sent to Glasgow, Scotland and then transported to Australia; the conditions on the ship and the maltreatment of the refugees; being placed in an internment camp in Australia; sending a postcard to family friends in Australia, where his father also happened to be; being given the choice to return to England or join the Australian Army, and choosing the latter; joining in 1942 and becoming an interpreter at the rank of sergeant; guarding prisoners of war captured in North Africa that were interned in Australia; getting out of the army in 1947 and immigrating to the U.S. in December 1947; getting an apprenticeship at the Biltmore Hotel; going to California, Utah, Hawaii, and New York; his experiences guarding Italian and German prisoners and not telling them he was Jewish; witnessing some antisemitism in the U.S.; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral History

    Billy Taylor, born October 15, 1912 in Oklahoma, describes growing up on a farm in a suburb of Oklahoma City; attending the University of Oklahoma and studying petroleum engineering; joining the ROTC, working with the horse-drawn artillery; receiving his lieutenant's commission in 1935; working for the conservation corps in Oregon; getting married in 1938 and going to Texas; joining the armed forces in March 1941; going to Fort Sill to be an instructor; going to the 155 Howitzer Battalion; briefly being the captain of an Arkansas unit of the National Guard; being selected for secret duty at Camp Shelby, training Japanese American soldiers; how the men were loyal and they wanted to prove it; going to Italy; forming units at the University of Naples; going to combat north of Rome; his duties as well as the technical and logistical details of their campaign; going to Florence; how the unit was sent to Marseille, France but he got sick and was sent to the hospital; hitching a ride to Marseille a month later; experiencing their worst fighting in the Vosges Mountains; being assigned to rescue a battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion) in October 1944; emptying a brothel of women, who had been collaborating with the Germans; details about the rescue of the lost battalion and sustaining great casualties; the split of the 442nd and the 522nd; crossing the Rhine River at Worms, Germany; taking Mannheim, Germany; coming across a training camp for German youth and a compound of imported food; being northwest of Munich and Dachau and supporting the 101 Airborne; going to the Dachau concentration camp, which had been emptied of many prisoners; going to a meeting of units to discuss what they should do with the corpses; not staying at the camp for very long; the smell of the camp; heading south and finding a group of former Dachau prisoners in a village where they had been abandoned by the SS; seeing the survivors eating dead horses; the physical condition of the prisoners and their orders to not feed them; forming a camp for these people and sending many back to Poland; how the Russians were rough with the refugees; going north of Munich to search for SS troops; remaining in the reserve until 1954; receiving the Croix de Guerre from the French; working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; how he is part Cherokee; how he never questioned the loyalty of his men in WWII but that at the beginning there was censoring of individual mail and some men were taken out of the unit; and his feelings about Dachau.

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral History

    Ted Tsukiyama describes the shock of the Pearl Harbor attacks, especially by Japanese Americans; being in the first ROTC unit to enter the war; being assigned to St. Louis to find paratroopers; becoming part of the territorial guard; never having a problem being Japanese American; being honorably discharged because of his Japanese heritage; going back to school; volunteering in a labor battalion, building defenses and serving for 11 months; how a few months later Japanese Americans were allowed in the armed forces; how his wife grew up in California and was put into a camp; being given intelligence training in Minnesota; being sent to Northern Burma Jungle as an intelligence translator for the Air Force; spending over a year, until end of war, in Northern Burma; going back to Hawaii; how he feels that the war experience countered prejudice towards Japanese Americans; and becoming a lawyer in labor relations.

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral History

    Harold Ueoka, born in Lawai, Hawaii in 1919, describes his Japanese parents; serving with the 526th Artillery Battalion; working in Honolulu before the Pearl Harbor attacks; how there was no real discrimination before war, except for his summer job working for a plantation; volunteering for the army when the war started; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; being head of the baseball team and how four of his teammates decided to join the army; how he felt that if he did not volunteer he would shame the people in Hawaii; how when his unit was in Europe, his destination was Hitler's home; seeing the crematoriums at Dachau and the places where people were shot; and how during the war he heard from other soldiers what was going on in the camps.

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