Oral history interview with Margaret Guiness

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2000.91.20 | RG Number: RG-50.493.0020

Overview

Interview Summary: Margaret Guiness (née Wohl), born in Košice, Czechoslovakia, discusses her childhood; being the youngest of 10 children; her father Theador Wohl who was a very religious man and worked in the lumber business; her mother Anna Ritter; the Hungarian control in 1939 of their part of Czechoslovakia; by law not being allowed to speak their language and having to attend a Hungarian school; having to follow the Nuremberg laws; the German occupation in March 1944; being forced to wear the Jewish star and having to go to local police for to be identified and counted; the Germans taking the most important Jewish community members as hostages, including Margaret’s sister Manya and her husband who owned a car garage; the hostages never being released; his sister Elizabeth (Bozhena) who procured papers for herself and Margaret (age 14) and fleeing for Budapest, Hungary; the deportation of Jews from Košice to Auschwitz, including two of her sisters, her brother-in-law, and their two children; one of her brothers being hanged at Theresienstadt; being arrested along with her sister and held in the Gestapo prison for four months; hiding their Jewish identities; being sent with her sister in 1944 to Ravensbrück concentration camp; the conditions in the camp which were horrifying, cold, and brutal; being determined to survive to ensure that she would be able to tell the world what she saw and what they had all experienced; the horrifying medical experiments conducted at Ravensbrück; volunteering for all types of work, allowing her to smuggle food to her sister and her barrack; volunteering with her sister to work at a factory in Dortmund, Germany to help build rocket bombs; staying there until spring of 1945; being sent to Bergen-Belsen with her sister in February 1945; conditions at Bergen-Belsen being worse than those at Ravensbrück; the typhoid epidemic and people dying quickly and easily; finding one of her other sisters at Bergen-Belsen; sharing a bunk with Anne Frank for a short time; becoming very ill with typhoid and being plagued with many feverish dreams; seeing the camp Commandant and the other guards being stripped of their weapons and their ranks in April 1945 and thinking it was a dream while in fact the British had arrived and they were being liberated; being sent with her sisters to a hospital where they met with Swedish delegates and decided to move to Sweden, where she lived for three years; the death of her sister Elizabeth six months after their liberation; being contacted by an uncle in America who was able to send her papers; and arriving in the United States in 1949.
Interviewee: Margaret Guiness
Interviewer: Susan Lerer
Date: interview: 1992 October 23

Physical Details

Language: English
Extent: 2 videocassettes (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

Keywords & Subjects

Topical Term: Concentration camp inmates--Psychological aspects. False certification. Forced labor. Holocaust survivors--United States. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Identification cards--Forgeries. Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Slovakia. Jews--Slovakia--Kosice. Passing (Identity)--Hungary. Sisters. Star of David badges. Typhoid fever. Women--Personal narratives. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations.
Geographic Name: Budapest (Hungary) Czechoslovakia--History--1938-1945. Dortmund (Germany) Kosice (Slovakia) Lower Saxony (Germany) Sweden. United States--Emigration and immigration.
Personal Name: Guiness, Margaret.
Corporate Name: Bergen-Belsen (Concentration camp) Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)

Administrative Notes

Holder of Originals: Orange County California Anti-Defamation League
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: Susan Lerer on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League, Orange County, California, conducted the interview with Margaret Guiness on October 23, 1992. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the copy of the interview from the Anti-Defamation League, Orange County, California on May 3, 2000.
Special Collection: The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive

Record last modified:: 2023-11-16 08:56:05
This page:: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511999

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Also in The Holocaust Oral History Project of the Anti-Defamation League, Orange County, California collection

Consists of 152 interviews of Holocaust survivors in the Orange County, California area

Date: 1992-1995

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