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Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.30 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0030

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    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg
    Transcript
    I'm Judy Weightman and I'm here with Sarah Rozenberg.
    And it's January 10, 1988.
    And we're at the Jewish Federation
    office in Honolulu, Hawaii.
    I'm going to ask you just a few questions
    to start off for statistical purposes.
    And then we'll get into the rest of the interview.
    You're a part-time resident in Hawaii.
    So would you give both your addresses, and your name,
    and date of birth, et cetera?
    My name is Sarah Rozenberg, maiden name Warm--
    W-A-R-M. And for the last few years,
    we come to Hawaii on part-time basis for the winter.
    And we reside here most of the time at the Ilikai.
    And we enjoy beautiful weather.
    I'm a Canadian from Edmonton, Alberta.
    And my address is 8512 Buena Vista Road.
    And I was born in Warsaw, Poland, April 23, 1928.
    And I reside with my husband in Edmonton since 1951.
    That's why you did very well with that,
    without a single question in between.
    OK.
    You were born in 1928 in Poland.
    Could you tell us a little bit about your early life,
    and your Jewish life, and your grandparents, and parents,
    whatever?
    Well, I'm born to a parents that had only two children,
    not like me now-- four, bless them.
    And I had a young brother, one and a half years younger,
    that perished in the Holocaust, as well as my parents,
    and an extended family of uncles,
    and aunts, and cousins that the--
    were some during the ghetto years in Warsaw, Poland.
    And before the war, I attended public school as well as
    the gymnasium, or high school, or higher than high school
    school in Warsaw, Poland.
    It was Przylucki's.
    I come from a--
    actually, a rabbinical background on my mother's
    side of the family.
    I never knew my grandmothers.
    They died before I was born.
    I had two grandfathers that I loved very dearly.
    And they were Orthodox men.
    And we had a Orthodox home, with all the traditional observances
    of holidays and Shabbat at home before the war.
    Did you live in a primarily Jewish community in Warsaw?
    It was.
    In a way, it was primarily Jewish.
    But in the same courtyard that we lived,
    they were many non-Jewish people also.
    We lived on Zlota 20.
    And that wasn't primarily Jewish--
    excuse me-- district like Gesia, or Nalewki, or Zamenhof
    that you perhaps heard.
    During the war, those streets--
    Zamenhof and Gesia-- came up very often
    during the ghetto years.
    And there is also a erect monument
    on the corner of Gesia and Zamenhof
    to the memory of the Warsaw ghetto fighters.
    And so in your community, you were among non-Jews as well.
    Could you tell us a little bit about your early school years
    and whether you had Jewish people and non-Jewish?
    Oh, the elementary school, as well as the high school,
    were primarily Jewish children-attended.
    And because there was an extended family,
    we didn't mix too much with youngsters of non-Jewish faith.
    We did have non-Jewish friends and my family--
    my parents' businesspeople.
    And we didn't experience as much the antisemitism that
    was in Poland and Warsaw because my parents were
    involved in business on the government business.
    Excuse me.
    So if there was antisemitism among them, it was hidden.
    So as far as this part of the life in Warsaw,
    we didn't experience as much, except in some of the business
    circles.
    My mother wasn't called Warmowa, as should
    have been, but with a -ski, Warminska, for example.
    Because some places were not really allowed Jews to enter
    and because they liked very much to do
    the business with my mother, primarily, they kind of
    changed her name in a way just for the business' sake.
    Who changed the name?
    They didn't.
    They just called her.
    The non-Jewish--
    They added-- the non-Jewish people add the -ski,
    the tradition, the real Slovakian--
    or name that ends with a -ski, and -ska, and so on.
    What kind of business did your parents have?
    That was a government business.
    It was lottery tickets and that were--
    had to have a special permit.
    And because of my mother's background,
    she was allowed to get that special license
    for that kind of business.
    What was her background?
    Well, education, primarily.
    And one non-Jewish friend that had a influence in the right
    places.
    And they were friends to the last days
    of our being in Warsaw.
    Even during the ghetto, they tried to help us out.
    What were their names, do you remember?
    The name is-- oh, it's hard to remember I was just a young
    kid--
    Zaleski Korczak.
    We want to remember those who were good in those days.
    Yes.
    And what was your first remembrance,
    or what is your first remembrance of antisemitism
    or the Nazis in Poland and how it affected you?
    Well, the Nazis in Poland, that's
    when the war broke out in 1939, September the 1st, Friday
    morning.
    That's when we heard the airplanes
    bombarding, coming from the west and bombarding Warsaw.
    And this is when we realized that those are not
    the Polish maneuvers of the Polish Air Force
    that was very limited, but the Germans' airplanes.
    Were you afraid?
    Yes, we were very much afraid because bombs
    were falling on our heads for three weeks
    until the Germans finally walked into the city.
    But the residents of Warsaw put up a fight
    and tried not to let them into the city.
    But eventually, they took over, just like they took over
    almost the whole Poland.
    Did you know, when they were coming into the city,
    that there would be special problems for the Jews?
    Our parents didn't and adults in the community
    didn't want to believe that there would be problems.
    And those that survived the First World War
    felt that, as the Germans when they
    came into Poland during the First World War and occupied,
    that they will take away from the Jewish people primarily
    electrical appliances, irons, or silver, or art, and so.
    But they won't affect us physically
    like they did when they formed the ghetto in October 1940.
    And then they took us to work in their factories
    that they set up in Warsaw, factories of cosmetics,
    toothpaste, shaving creams, tailoring shops
    that the Jews were working in, where they were
    making uniforms for the army.
    They were making also hats for the army, brushes
    of different kinds--
    from toothbrushes to brushes to sweep
    the floors that were needed for the army.
    And you were living at that time outside of the ghetto?
    In the ghetto.
    And that's where the shops, the working shops were set up.
    And when you worked in the ghetto,
    you received your rations.
    You had to present your certificates,
    if you please, to receive your rations
    in certain set-up grocery stores.
    And if you didn't work, you didn't receive the rations.
    There was a little bit on the black market
    because they were Poles that worked in the ghetto.
    And they used to smuggle in sometimes goods and the food.
    And they were children that were going through the ghetto holes
    that they dug up or through the sewers
    and used to bring in from the surrounding farms
    vegetables and potatoes.
    And this is how we survive.
    But those people that received the rations--
    bread, marmalade, brown sugar--
    those people were working and could survive.
    But it was getting very, very hard to live in the ghetto
    because they surrounded people from surrounding towns
    and other cities to the ghetto in Warsaw.
    So there were many people living in one home,
    and six, seven people living in one room.
    And they took away in the ghetto your living quarters,
    even from those people that lived in the ghetto, that
    happened-- their homes happened to be in the ghetto
    when it was formed.
    Their living quarters were restricted to one room in order
    to give those people that came in from surrounding towns,
    to give them living quarters.
    How did you first get into the ghetto, Sarah?
    Well, they were-- we had--
    it so happened that relatives of ours
    lived in a home that was in the ghetto.
    And we had to move from Zlota to that place in the ghetto.
    How did you find out that you had move?
    Well they, the Germans, made us move.
    Could you tell me about that day when-- it's hard, I know.
    Well, it's very hard.
    I know.
    It's very hard when you had to leave practically
    all your belongings, and take your hand
    luggage and absolute necessities,
    and wear three-four sets of changing clothes on you.
    And this is how you walk away from everything in your home
    and live in that very small cubicle that
    is given up by others.
    Then many people just flew the country wherever they could.
    They didn't want to go into the ghetto.
    And they were shot on the roads.
    And a lot of people flew from--
    when the war started--
    to Russia, when-- before the ghetto started yet.
    Russia opened the east borders, Poland's east borders.
    And a lot of people flew to Russia.
    Did you know about that?
    Yes, we heard about it.
    We heard about it, people going back and forth,
    and trying to take their families over further west
    from away from the Germans.
    And some came back and never left again--
    and were killed, were gassed in the camps.
    Did you attempt to leave at all?
    No, we didn't.
    And when you left that day from your home,
    were you with your family?
    Yes.
    Could you tell?
    I was with my family, with my brother, and mother, and father
    until August 1942, when they took my mother away, and then
    later on, my father and brother.
    And we knew that they will never come back.
    So we tried to bribe the Jewish policemen to take them out
    of the group that was walking towards the train station that
    was there with--
    on the railings where the cattle trains that they transported
    the Jews to Treblinka.
    But it wasn't always successful to bribe the policemen
    to bring them out.
    Your parents and your brother went into the ghetto with you?
    Oh, yes, we were all in the ghetto.
    Yeah.
    But somehow, where I was working, they needed me.
    And they-- because the Germans used to come to the factories
    or to the shops, if you please, and pick people out.
    And somehow, I was spared until I was taken from the ghetto
    after the Warsaw uprising in April '43 to Majdanek.
    How long were your parents in the ghetto
    with you and your brother?
    Until 1942, August '42.
    I see.
    About how long after you went into the ghetto would you say?
    Oh, we were since 1940 in the ghetto.
    So two years.
    What-- could you tell us a little bit
    about what life was like for your parents in the ghetto?
    Well, my father didn't have rations.
    We tried to save him.
    And he never worked in the ghetto.
    Because we felt for the men was much more secure to be hidden.
    And we lived with a small rations and with the supplies
    that my mother purchased before the war started.
    And we tried to survive on that.
    But my mother and I worked in a cosmetic factory.
    And my brother worked for a while
    in a bakery that supplied bread for the ghetto.
    And then one day, the Germans came.
    And they realized that there are too many people
    working in that bakery.
    So they eliminated a number of them.
    And they just left a skeleton staff.
    And my brother, unfortunately, was one of those
    that they eliminated.
    And what happened?
    And he was taken to Treblinka and gassed there.
    Did you know that he was being taken that day?
    No.
    No.
    We found-- I found out afterwards
    that he was taken away.
    And he worked near you?
    No, not too close where I worked.
    No, that was a different part of the ghetto.
    The ghetto was divided into different sections.
    And to some parts of the ghetto, you had to work--
    walk through the Irish side--
    Aryan side, pardon me, the Aryan side, where the Poles lived.
    And there were groups of people that
    lived in one part of the ghetto and worked in a different part
    of the ghetto.
    And they were taken by groups under this-- in groups by--
    after the-- sorry--
    in groups under the supervision of the Jewish policemen
    that was also in the ghetto as a security.
    They were walked to the other parts of the ghetto to work.
    And sometimes, I used to go out with them for money, used
    to pay the policeman, and walk out
    with a group of working men and women
    to another part of the ghetto.
    And this is where I used to see my brother in that bakery.
    Because that bakery was taken over by a few of our relatives,
    it so happened.
    And when I went over to their place there,
    they used to supply me with enough food for the week or two
    weeks.
    And this is how I survived.
    And one day, when I came there again
    with a group of working people that
    went into a different direction, but I just
    walked away in the other part of the ghetto,
    and went to those relatives, I found out
    that my brother was taken away during the week.
    And I was left alone in the ghetto.
    My parents were taken already away separately.
    And I was left in the ghetto, where I lived until April 1943.
    During the ghetto uprising, they found us in the bunker,
    in the hiding place.
    And they took us to Majdanek because we were taken--
    they considered us political prisoners
    because of the uprising.
    And the-- we somehow survived in Majdanek, a group of us,
    for almost three months.
    And during that, towards the end of the three months,
    they came a group of high-ranking officers
    to Majdanek.
    And they needed young, fresh, healthy people
    to work in the ammunition factories
    because the war was in full swing.
    And they needed people to work, make ammunition for the army.
    And they came and selected a number of us
    to the ammunition factory.
    As a matter of fact, we had to register.
    And it so happened that they were
    three tables for registration.
    And one table was people that registered at one table,
    we found out afterwards, went immediately to the gas
    chambers, right there in Majdanek.
    And it so happened that I was chosen.
    I was at one table that went to the ammunition factory.
    And we traveled for three days from Majdanek
    to the ammunition factory HASAG by Krupp.
    It was run, still, the Krupp factory in Germany now.
    And this is where I worked in the ammunition factory
    till October 1944.
    When the Russians started coming west,
    they moved us closer to the Polish-German border.
    And we worked in that ammunition factory till January 16, 1945,
    when we were liberated by the Russian Army in January.
    And next week, on the 16th, in six days,
    I will be celebrating 43rd anniversary of liberation.
    I wanted to go back a little bit to--
    how did the Polish people treat you
    when you were living within the ghetto, those
    that you would come in contact with?
    I personally didn't come in contact
    with too many Polish people in the ghetto.
    But they were some that did work, did
    come in to the ghetto.
    But personally, I didn't have any contacts with the Poles
    in the ghetto.
    You also mentioned that there was a Jewish policeman there
    that was taking bribes.
    What was the relationship there with the?
    It wasn't a good-- he took-- the policeman that
    took bribes is to allow me and others
    like me to walk from one part of the ghetto to the other.
    Otherwise, I would hardly be able to survive on the ration
    that I was given in the ghetto.
    But because-- well, some people, just like today,
    people do for money.
    So whatever I paid, and I was allowed
    to go to the other part of the ghetto.
    There were some people that paid also
    and they just walked away on the Aryan side, for example.
    They took off their white armbands from their clothes
    with a blue Star of David that we wore.
    And they-- sometimes there was they were arrangements
    made for people to be met by Polish people that were working
    for the underground.
    And as they were arranged places where people would meet,
    and they just took them away into hiding.
    Some survived.
    But they weren't many Poles that helped the Jews.
    And this is the unfortunate situation
    that, as you go back into history,
    you will find that all the destruction camps and gas
    chambers, they were all built on the Polish soil,
    not in other countries, like Holland, or Belgium, or France,
    although in those countries, some people
    collaborated with the Germans.
    But it wasn't to the extent that it was in Poland.
    So you will find that Majdanek, and Treblinka, and Auschwitz,
    and Birkenau-- that's part of Auschwitz--
    they were all built on the Polish soil.
    Why do you think it is?
    I'm sure you've had these discussions with others--
    is that some people were there and helped
    their Jewish neighbors, and then there were others that did not.
    What would you say leads to that?
    This is I suppose in the blood of some people.
    And it's because of the history as it's changed now,
    even by the Vatican, that the Jews didn't kill Christ.
    And Poland is a primarily Catholic population.
    And the Jews were merchants and professionals, those that
    could stand sitting on this--
    in the law school or medical school,
    separated from the others, and were excelling in their work,
    in their studies.
    They were envied by many a Poles.
    And this goes back to history hundreds of years ago.
    The Slovakian people are very antisemitic,
    more than people from Western Europe.
    And besides that, Western European Jewry
    was more assimilated then the Jews in Poland.
    And in Poland, they were many a poor Jews and illiterate Jews,
    tailors, and shoemakers, and hat makers.
    And they were-- but they weren't seen
    as much as those that excelled in education and in business.
    And this was the envy of the people, I suppose.
    And you had some non-Jewish friends?
    Yes, we did.
    What was the relationship with them after the Germans came?
    Well, we didn't see too much of them
    because that was an elderly family that they helped
    us a bit, but not too much.
    They couldn't do too much.
    And their son was in the Polish Army.
    And it wasn't easy for them.
    And then we lived in a different part of town.
    And when the ghetto closed, they just--
    we just lost contact with them.
    But you didn't have any non-Jewish girlfriends
    or playmates at any time?
    No, not really.
    No.
    And was there a great deal of change in--
    between 1940 and 1942 when you went into the ghetto?
    Was there a great deal of change that
    allowed you to know that something worse
    was going to be happening?
    Well, perhaps I am very naive.
    Even today, I didn't realize as much.
    But I think that people did used to bring
    the news to the ghetto.
    Those that ran away, for example,
    from the trains that were taking people to Treblinka, somebody
    came back to the ghetto in a truck that
    brought back clothes.
    And he hid in between the clothes.
    He came back from Treblinka, he just-- when
    he saw what was going on there.
    And he was one of the men that were packing clothes
    into the truck.
    At one point, he just hid among the clothes,
    and came back to the ghetto, and told us about it.
    So eventually--
    Help me, just sit back.
    --the reaction was--
    The reaction in the community.
    --in the community that the young people
    decided that this has to stop.
    And that's when the uprising was planned.
    But Polish people weren't very sympathetic.
    And they didn't supply the Jewish young people
    with weapons in order for them to be
    able to organize a resistance.
    And that's why it took so many years to finally make in a way
    a stop to it and let the world know
    that we didn't go to the slaughter
    as sheep, that we did, under the circumstances,
    eventually did resist.
    And it was partially successful because many Germans
    were killed.
    Excuse me.
    And that's when the young Jewish ghetto fighters picked up
    the ammunition, and continued, and fell themselves
    in the ghetto.
    But they saved the face of the Jewish people,
    to let the world know that we tried to save ourselves.
    But there was no chance.
    Because we didn't have too much help from the outside.
    Do you think that you would have been
    able to overcome in the ghettos if you would have
    had more ammunition, more help?
    With the small amount of young people
    that was left in the ghetto and the workshops
    and the great thousands and thousands of Germans
    surrounding us, we had very little chance.
    But we-- I think the young people tried.
    And this is all we could do because we had
    no means of saving ourselves.
    In the weeks right before you were taken to the ghetto
    or forced to go to the ghetto, can you
    remember a little bit about what was happening at that time?
    Well, there are people tried to live as normal as possible.
    And we used to go out, primarily the women--
    my mother and I went to certain stores and gathered some--
    bought some flour or rice.
    And whatever was available, we used
    to buy it and bring it into the house to be able to survive.
    And also, as I mentioned to you before,
    my mother shopped before the war because the tension was there.
    And it was just in the air.
    Everybody felt that the war is just a matter of time
    to break out.
    They felt that it's safe to have a little bit of groceries--
    flour, rice, sugar--
    staples like that to have in the home.
    And then after the bombs stopped falling, and after three weeks
    on the ghetto--
    on Warsaw, they were stores that did have some basic things
    that we could purchase.
    And this is what it was.
    And we did have some supplies.
    And that helped us.
    And so when the bombing was over,
    did your father still go to his business and your mother?
    No, that was-- because there was no Polish government.
    So we lost-- my parents lost a great amount of their business.
    And whatever they could salvage, they did.
    And they sold it around.
    And this is how we got some money.
    Who bought it?
    Polish people.
    And then we-- my parents exchanged certain things
    for food and--
    to have a supply at home for days to come.
    And then you stayed in your house at that time?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Did you sell your furniture or did you--
    No, you didn't sell anything like that.
    There was nobody to buy it.
    So whatever was left behind, the Poles
    took, and so did the Germans.
    Were you aware at that time about the Nazis, those Nazis--
    that antisemitic type of Nazi?
    Well, it wasn't so much antisemite Nazi,
    it was the destruction of the Jew.
    This is what it was by the-- antisemitism
    was from the Poles and the Ukrainians.
    But the Germans, their plan was to destroy, to kill the Jews.
    So the-- because they were Semites.
    Whoever wasn't an Aryan wasn't a person.
    In the camps in Majdanek, I encountered also Gypsies,
    and prostitutes, and others that were undesired elements,
    let's put it that way.
    And the Jew was one of the undesired elements.
    And this was the plan of Hitler, to destroy
    the Semitic, the Jewish people.
    And if you're probably aware that they
    went as far as the third generation
    in the German community in Germany,
    that they also found the Jews that
    were very much assimilated.
    They didn't even know that they are Jews.
    And they deported them.
    And some flew.
    And you went to--
    you were in the ghetto.
    And then after the uprising--
    and they took you to the camps, how
    did-- can you remember that day that you
    were leaving the ghetto?
    Yes.
    They took a group of us and marched us through the streets
    to the train station, among--
    between burning homes, high rises, if you please,
    for that age.
    That was four or five story was a high rise.
    And that's how they took us under guard to the station,
    and put us in the cattle trains, and took us.
    We didn't know where we were going.
    They just locked up the cattle trains,
    and we were squashed in like sardines in a box, in a tin.
    And we realized, after three days,
    that we are on the outskirts of Lublin.
    That's what we were told.
    And we were rushed out of the trains
    and marched to the death camp, to Majdanek.
    When they put you into the trains in Warsaw,
    did they say anything to you?
    Or was nothing said?
    Just rush, rush, rush, into the train.
    Did you have anything with you at that time?
    Well, a little suitcase and two, three
    change of clothes that was taken away in Majdanek.
    And I was put into a gray and navy blue striped dress.
    And this is what I wore in Majdanek and then
    after the selection into the--
    when we were taken into the--
    on the way to the ammunition factory,
    we were given clothes just out of the shelf, whatever
    was coming through.
    Now, so happened that I was given a green silk
    dress to wear--
    a evening gown, if you please.
    And this is how I came to the ammunition factory--
    and two different shoes of some kind.
    And this is how I came.
    I'm sorry.
    It's very hard to talk about it, even 40-some years afterwards.
    But it's hard to talk about it.
    It's unbelievable that that happened to me and my friends
    and that we survived.
    You survived.
    We survived.
    And we are enjoying the beautiful weather
    in Hawaii, now that our children are grown up, and married,
    and professional people.
    And this is what we stressed when we had a family--
    education is our most important asset in life.
    And this is what we gave our children-- a home,
    an education.
    And now, they are parents.
    And they're trying their best.
    And we have, thank god, lots of pleasure out of it.
    And we are thankful and grateful to the good Lord that we,
    after what we went through, Al and I, that we brought
    normal children into the world.
    And my children are bringing up normal, healthy children.
    And this is our bonus.
    And you tell others so that it won't happen again.
    We hope so, not--
    the reason I'm making this tape, and I made a tape for the Yad
    Vashem, and I made the tape for the Jewish Federation in Canada
    in Montreal is the tape, the archives.
    Unfortunately, we didn't have videos
    when I was making the tapes.
    It's only audio tapes--
    that those tapes will be used, audio and video, in schools,
    and universities, and special lectures
    that we survivors in Canada gave to schoolchildren
    and university children at certain times of the year.
    And during-- through observing the Shoah,
    the day of remembrance of the Warsaw ghetto uprising,
    and the tribute that we are paying
    to the six million Jews, and millions
    of others Americans, and Japanese, and Russians,
    and Italians, and Dutch that were so very
    beautiful to the Jews during the war,
    we want the world to know that we are telling our own lives
    that we went through.
    This is our legacy that we are leaving behind in our declining
    years now, that we finally could come through and tell
    the world about it.
    Because it took 40 years for us to be able to come forward.
    And still, after 43 years, it's very hard to talk about it.
    And we hope that no nation in the world
    will experience ever what the Jewish people experienced
    during the Second World War.
    I was just going to ask, well, how were you
    able to start talking about it?
    We started when our child came home from school at age five
    before Passover and ask a question,
    how come we are not going nowhere to our grandparents
    for Passover?
    When his friends in the class are
    going to Calgary, or Winnipeg, or Vancouver,
    as you please, to spend the Seders
    with the Bubbe and Zaides.
    And he doesn't have any.
    So on the level of--
    on his age level, we had to tell him.
    And then when the other children came along,
    they also had to learn about it, that we don't have any,
    that they were gassed in Poland, in the concentration--
    in the destruction camps.
    Do you have any family left at all?
    We have some.
    I had an uncle that's passed on now that
    survived in Russia, in Siberia.
    And his son is now, for a number of years,
    a dean of the political faculty of political science
    at the University of Jerusalem.
    He's Manitoba's Rhodes scholar.
    And I have other relatives that live in Israel.
    But most of them went to Israel before the war.
    And I found them by accident.
    How did you find them, like we found you?
    Well, I knew that we had some relatives in Israel
    because my father's sister passed away.
    And my mother-- my family--
    my father and mother outfitted the men
    with the two little girls to go to Israel
    because they couldn't survive after their mother passed away.
    And they had-- my uncle had a son in Israel.
    And they sent him a visa or certificate,
    whatever you want to call it.
    And they were admitted to Palestine at the time.
    So I knew their name.
    And just after the war, I tried to find them.
    And I wrote to Tel Aviv.
    And I found them.
    And this is how we are in contact since.
    You were in a displaced persons camp?
    Yes, I was.
    Yes, I was.
    Did you know anyone there at all when you were in the DP camp?
    Did you have any contact with any relatives
    that were in the camps?
    No, there was nobody in the camps
    that I knew of, no relatives.
    My uncle's with his wife and the famous young man that's
    the head of the political science faculty in Jerusalem
    survived in Russia.
    And then through France, they went to Israel
    because my auntie-- to--
    pardon me, to Canada, because my auntie
    had a sister in Winnipeg.
    And they sent them visas to come to Canada.
    And so there was nobody in the camps,
    except my husband, and I, and our friends that we survived.
    You met your husband in the DP camp?
    No, we met after the war in 19--
    we will be celebrating now our 42nd anniversary in April.
    We met after the war.
    He was also-- he was hidden by Polish people.
    And then he had to flee and be partly with partisans
    and hide in the forests.
    And this is how he survived.
    And where did you meet him?
    We met when I was working in--
    for the Jewish-- well, you will call it Federation now.
    They set up the offices for the Jewish people when they started
    to come out from hiding, and from the camps,
    and so to help them to find relatives,
    to find accommodation, to find work.
    And we met.
    He came with another friend to visit
    some friends of our-- mine that we lived together in a home
    and in southwestern Poland.
    And that's where we met.
    And we traveled since then together.
    Wonderful.
    I wanted to ask you a little bit more, getting back to--
    I know this is hard for you.
    And I'm sorry to [COUGHS].
    When you left the ghetto and then you
    went into the railroad station to the cars,
    did you have any friends with you at that time?
    Or did you know the people you were with in the cattle cars?
    Just one woman that was with me.
    And she was actually from the area somewhere in Bialystok.
    And she came to live with us in 19--
    in mid '30s because her parents had a son in America.
    And he sent them a visa to come.
    And she-- by the time the permit, the visa
    came for them to emigrate from Poland to United States,
    she was not eligible no more because she was older.
    And so she was placed in our home as a domestic.
    And the two of us kind of hold on together for a while.
    And then I lost her in Majdanek when
    I was taken to the ammunition factory.
    So I lost her.
    And you were in Majdanek for three months.
    What was it like during those three months?
    It was nothing really much to do there
    except to work a little bit on the flowerbeds,
    and clean the living quarters, and that
    was about all that was.
    There was nothing really planned well.
    Or we went out to work in the fields at times.
    So they were different, depends where we were needed.
    That's where they took us.
    The kapo, the German kapo took us to different working places
    every day after the roll call.
    And this was-- and food, actually, in Majdanek
    was better than in the ammunition factory.
    So there, it's a very remarkable thing
    that before they tell you, the Germans took you to the gas
    chambers, they fed you well.
    But when they needed you as a working force in the ammunition
    factories, the rations that we were given were unbearable.
    And that's why so many fell, just perished from hunger
    and couldn't work no more because there
    was a 12-day work or 12-night work on rotating basis.
    And we, especially men, couldn't survive.
    And they just-- that's why they came to Majdanek
    to look for new workforce to replace the others that
    had to go to the gas chambers or be shot in the forest
    outside of the camp.
    So this is what-- but I believe that perhaps I
    was saved by the upper power, by the good Lord,
    to be able to tell the story to the world
    so it will never happen again, and to educate
    our young people, and educate our neighbors,
    make sure that there is no more wars.
    Because if there should happen to be in our nuclear war,
    we will all disappear.
    And we were talking about--
    the liberation must have been a really special time,
    I'm sure, for you in 1945.
    What were your feelings on that day when the Russians came in
    or when you knew they were coming?
    Well, we really-- that day, on the 15th,
    we were taken from the living quarters, if you please,
    the barracks, we were taking into the warehouses,
    just feet away from the factory and from the living quarters
    before to be deported deep into Germany.
    And we were waiting there for the whole day, that bitterly
    cold, January day.
    And at sundown, the Germans came, and called us out,
    and marched us back to the barracks.
    And they were standing on both sides
    of the little road in their fur coats,
    with their rifles pointed at us.
    And we realized afterwards that when it got really dark,
    they just flew.
    And the-- Bartenschlager was the name of the camp director.
    His home that was on-- just outside of the camp
    was lit up-- set on fire.
    And the watchtowers didn't have any German officers
    watching us.
    And we were 13 of us together from Warsaw.
    And we just lie on there on those wooden three-story--
    wooden the beds and cried because we
    knew that Warsaw is destroyed.
    And we have no way to go.
    There was no place for us to go, but stay
    where we were in Czestochowa.
    That's a city on the border of Germany and--
    East Germany and west Poland.
    And in the morning, the Russians came in.
    But this is-- so it was-- we didn't
    know that the Russians are on the outskirts.
    We weren't told that the Russians are on the outskirts.
    Did you have any food or anything at that time?
    Well, not very much, no.
    But we used to save always a little piece
    of bread for emergencies.
    But when the Russians came in, they
    supplied-- they gave us some chocolates, and bread, and so.
    But it was a--
    for us, this was a very, very emotional morning.
    And on the other side, we just were lost,
    not knowing where we are and what we will--
    we knew where we are, but what are we going to do then?
    And I had three--
    among the 13 girls that we were, I had three friends
    that one of the sisters was sick in the hospital with typhus.
    And we just-- the two of us ran into the hospital
    and carried her, practically, out of the camp.
    And we were very fortunate to have her
    because if the Germans would have
    stayed perhaps overnight or--
    they probably would have had to just destroy her
    with all the others that were in the hospital.
    Very primitive hospital, but it still was there.
    Because it had to be for the show for the Red Cross
    and others that came in to check they had to have a hospital.
    Did you ever see any of the Red Cross workers that came in?
    No.
    No.
    When you were in the ammunition factory,
    what was the-- what kind of living conditions
    did you have there?
    Well, we had a small huts set up and--
    for the living quarters.
    And across the highway was the ammunition factory.
    It was separate from the living quarters.
    And when we worked during the working hours,
    we used to get a meal there--
    well, a soup-- excuse me.
    And the same when we worked days--
    we were given a soup with a short break from work
    that ceased for a short break.
    And we were fed.
    And then when we got back to our living quarters,
    we were giving a--
    twice a week, I believe, or three times a week
    some bread, and marmalade, and some brown sugar.
    And this is what we survived on.
    Except in that ammunition factory,
    always were-- there were always also
    Poles that had to come in compulsory
    to work the machines.
    And they were primarily the engineers
    that set up the machines and made
    sure that the machines worked properly, that there
    is no waste in the ammunition.
    And they used to smuggle in some extra lunches
    with them or some extra bread.
    And they were Jewish men that worked in a lumber yard.
    And they also worked with Polish men.
    So they used to bring in some bread.
    And this is how-- and barley, or oats, or whatever,
    so the person could perhaps cook little bit, and a little.
    So that that's how we survived.
    So there were some nice people there
    who provided a little bit of something more?
    Few and far between, but they were
    some that helped out a bit.
    We're getting the wrap signal now.
    So I just wanted to ask, have you
    had any incidents of antisemitism at all in Alberta?
    Or how is it in Canada?
    Yes.
    We did have, with the Aryan group now,
    we did have that incident.
    We had an incident just a few short years ago,
    a teacher in high school in the country
    taught about the Jews and their bad side of it.
    And by chance, a mother found the writing,
    the essay that the child did in grade 11 or 12.
    And there was a trial.
    And the teacher is dismissed.
    And his name was Keegstra.
    And it was well heard all over Canada, not only in Alberta.
    So we did have that case.
    And then we had, as you have, the--
    The Ku Klux Klan.
    Well, the Ku Klux Klan, that's the Aryans
    that are there, the Aryans.
    And in the legislature--
    this is in your provincial government,
    if you please, you have your state government, right?
    Correct.
    We have the provinces.
    You have states, we have provinces.
    And in the legislature, the provincial--
    one of the ministers expressed himself.
    And there was reaction from the Jewish community.
    But Alberta is known for antisemitism.
    It's there.
    It's no doubt about it.
    It's hidden.
    There are a lot of Ukrainians in Alberta that live.
    And many of them, perhaps--
    and a lot of Germans--
    many, perhaps, are those that participated and collaborated
    in the Nazis and participated in the destruction of Jews.
    But now, little by little, people
    are trying to find certain undesired elements that
    were with us in--
    and were murdering us together with the Germans.
    And they tried to find them.
    For some, it's too late.
    But in a way, perhaps, this is our own fault because--

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Sarah Rozenberg
    Interviewer
    Judy Weightman
    Date
    interview:  1988 January 10
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, acquired from the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. See collections release form for details regarding restrictions.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Rozenberg, Sarah.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Judy Weightman, of the Hawaii Holocaust Project, conducted the interview with Sarah Rozenberg on January 10, 1988 as part of a project to interview Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators currently living in Hawaii. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in March 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:18
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511102

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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

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    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

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    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

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    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.

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Oral History

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Punchbowl Memorial

    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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