Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Carl Ofisher

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1989.228.40 | RG Number: RG-50.060.0040

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Carl Ofisher
    Transcript
    Tell us your name, your birthplace, when you were born.
    My name is Carl Ofisher.
    I was born in January 5, 1926.
    My father's name was Gershon Leib Ofisher.
    My mother's name was Chaya Roza Ofisher.
    I had two sisters and a brother.
    My sister, the youngest sister, was Sura Gitel.
    Esther was the second sister.
    And Usze was my oldest brother.
    It was--
    So what city were you--
    I was born in Lódz, Poland.
    It's a large Polish city, and a Jewish population
    from 200 and some thousand Jewish people.
    It was a big city.
    Was mostly tailors, produced material.
    Clothing.
    It was very large.
    And in 1939, it's now--
    it will be September of 1989, it will be 50 years
    since the Holocaust started.
    It was in September 1939.
    I was 13 years old, happy youngster.
    There is a nice family, middle class.
    My father was a tailor.
    We had our own tailor shop.
    People are working for us.
    We lived a comfortable living.
    What kind of schooling did you have?
    I went there just grammar school with the war.
    I was 13 when the war started.
    So I couldn't finish.
    Anyway, by '39, we were playing.
    The children are just playing, all boys and girls together,
    when there was a rumor that the war started.
    We were kind of happy because we didn't
    understood what the war is.
    We were playing games, like a war games,
    pretending we were fighting.
    But our parents, in the parents' eyes, in the parents' face,
    you could see the sorrow they felt. And they
    were talking about German will [INAUDIBLE],, invade Poland.
    Anyway, in September, the war started.
    Yeah, before the war started, the Polish government
    start to organize people to dig ditches all around the city.
    That's supposed to be the Polish air shelter against the bombs.
    The ditches were digged 6 feet deep,
    and they were going like this.
    They're topping boards on it.
    It's supposed to be the hiding.
    People go into hiding.
    And they were all over, working, men, women, children digging,
    digging, digging, day out.
    The Polish army was prepared for the war.
    Then the war started.
    The German [? waide ?] invaded Poland.
    I remember listening to the radio.
    We had a-- we were fortunate to have a radio.
    Not everybody could afford in Poland to have a radio.
    We listened to the radio, that Polish leader, Marshal
    [PERSONAL NAME],, he had a speech.
    He said Poles, German army invaded Poland.
    He said in Polish, [SPEAKING POLISH]..
    That mean, we won't give up a button from our uniform.
    The Jewish people were laughing.
    And they made a comment on it, like [SPEAKING POLISH]..
    That mean we won't give up the button on the uniform,
    but all the whole uniform with all the buttons.
    Anyway, it took two weeks.
    The Germany marched into Poland.
    Before they marched in, we were-- heard
    the bombs falling over Lódz.
    We were scared.
    We had entered the ditches to hiding.
    So after two weeks they came into Poland.
    And I was standing on the middle street, the main street,
    watching the Polish army going towards Warsaw.
    The Polish army was defeated, so they went towards Warsaw.
    We were watching the army marching,
    the horse, buggies, OK, pulling the horses are pulling the--
    the canons.
    The soldiers, they exhausted because they were marching--
    Germans?
    Polish soldiers.
    Polish.
    They were marching by foot, mostly with their [INAUDIBLE]..
    Foot soldiers.
    And motorized, they didn't have a motorized army.
    They had horse and buggy army.
    When these soldiers left Lódz, the German moved in.
    We were surprised.
    As young as we were, we were surprised.
    How did Poland wanted to win a war against a motorized army?
    The German came in tanks, big trucks
    with soldiers, the ammunition.
    Everything was motorized.
    And we were looking, and said, well, it's
    like a fly fighting a elephant.
    It looks to me.
    And I was young, and I was thinking about it.
    The thought before about war disappeared from my mind
    already.
    I realized what really war is.
    So as soon the German came in, the first thing, when
    they occupied Lódz, they made all the Jewish people wear
    Jew star with the name "Jude."
    Jude mean Jewish--
    Jew.
    Some of them wear the star.
    Some of them was hiding.
    We're afraid to wear the star because we
    know if they see a "Jude" they will grab us to work.
    What they did, at the beginning, they
    grab all the-- mostly they grabbed the Jewish people
    with the long beards.
    And it was-- 90% in Lódz was strictly
    Orthodox Jewish people, very Orthodox.
    And they grabbed those rabbis, the Jewish men with beards.
    The Germans start to pull their beards, with the skin,
    off, bleeding.
    They had those men who we dig those ditches before the war
    cover those ditches.
    They did, young people, old people.
    Anybody they can get, as long they're Jewish.
    Those shelters?
    Yeah, they call it shelters.
    But to me it was like a burying ground, because the German used
    it for burying grounds.
    Because people covered those holes, those shelters.
    When they were half-covered, they start to shoot anyone.
    They fell into the graves.
    Then they grab other Jewish men to cover
    the rest of the people, the people in the grave.
    And it was a horrible sight to see.
    My father, they caught my father.
    He has to cover the holes.
    But he was lucky.
    He came home.
    He was beaten up.
    Swollen the face, blue eyes--
    black eyes from beating him up.
    He was afraid to go out from the house [INAUDIBLE]..
    Then the German sort of started to grab those Jewish girls.
    They took them away.
    And they raped them, and they send them back.
    Some of the girls, they were strictly Orthodox.
    They couldn't bear it.
    They commit suicide.
    They went up on the highest wall they could,
    jumped down this through the windows to commit suicide.
    They couldn't bear to be raped by German soldiers.
    After a while, we couldn't walk on the main street.
    On the sidewalk was not allowed to walk, the Jewish people.
    Only gentiles or German.
    The German had any right they wanted
    to do whatever they wanted, grab you, hit you.
    Well, we were hiding most of the time.
    The food was scarce already.
    We had to stay in lines for bread.
    We used to get up in the night, 4:00.
    It's almost in the morning, 4:00 in the morning,
    to stay in your line to get a loaf of bread.
    Why we stay in the line?
    The Germany soldiers came in and picked people.
    They looked at the faces, picked them up, took them away,
    and never to return.
    We were afraid to go next day for the bread.
    We try to hide, not to go to the bakery.
    But it came to the point you were hungry.
    You had to do--
    go to the bakery.
    You stay in your line.
    You watch.
    As soon as you saw the German Jeeps coming with the soldiers,
    we ran away, hide in corners, hide
    in the streets in the houses.
    Then, when they went away, we went back to the line
    to get the bread.
    That's going on for a while.
    And my father start to work again as his trade.
    Make coats which for women.
    That was his trade, a tailor.
    And he tried to start to make a-- a little living so he
    can have enough food.
    After about mid-- that was September.
    In May, in 1940, the German established the ghetto.
    What they did is took all the whole Jewish population
    from Lódz, and they bring them to one place, around--
    put wires around.
    That's supposed to be the ghetto.
    When they established the ghetto,
    there was about 180,000 Jewish living, crumpled in apartments.
    Used to be one family apartment.
    Three or four families in each apartment.
    They had to let them in.
    You want it or you don't want it.
    They established factories, tailor factories, shoe
    factories, saddler factories.
    My father took these, his machines, sewing machine,
    went to the factory to work on German uniforms.
    The reason you went there, just to get a little bit more food.
    If you work, you get a extra bowl of soup.
    If you don't work you get nothing.
    They called-- the ghetto really was a starvation.
    They wanted to starve us to death.
    They accomplished what they wanted.
    Every day you could find bodies laying in the streets
    from hunger, starving.
    So my mother was very sick person.
    She couldn't go to work.
    But in the ghetto, if you don't work,
    they don't need you there.
    They liquidate you.
    So everybody signed up to work, even my mother.
    She signed up for the factory.
    And I was young then, 14.
    I signed up to work in a saddler resort.
    They call it resort.
    I was making those rucksacks, ruckpack, for the German army.
    No, before I went to this, I worked for the straw shoes.
    We used to make straw shoes for the German.
    They put it on on top on the boots
    when they were going closer to the Russian war
    so they weren't freeze.
    So we used to make those straw shoes.
    After about two weeks of this work,
    they took me to another job, to the saddler resort.
    And we used to make those packs.
    We used to have-- had a minimum to give out
    so many-- so many packs a day.
    And everything was hand work.
    I was very good at it.
    The place we worked was about 500,
    600 people working in the whole place.
    We learned a trade, working together.
    Used to get up every 12 o'clock, go get the extra bowl of soup.
    That was a potatoes and water.
    But for us, it was a lot of food.
    Because when they established the ghetto,
    they give you food marks.
    You get a 1 kilogram of bread for a week per person.
    A couple pounds of potatoes, we would get.
    Some kohls-- kohlrabi.
    And it came to the point, that wasn't enough.
    So people start to steal.
    Hungry people go around.
    Mothers used to hide the food from their children.
    The children used to hide it from the mothers.
    Mothers used to watch their children dying from hunger.
    They couldn't help it.
    They give-- some mothers give away their portion of bread.
    She died from starvation.
    It was a very horrible things to see.
    In the ghetto, those--
    we used to get up in the morning before you go to work,
    to stay in your lane to get a portion bread.
    So if it's a large family, one stayed for the bread in a line,
    one stayed for the potatoes, one stayed for the kohlrabi.
    Everybody had a job to do, because by 8 o'clock
    you had to go to work.
    And we stayed there, since 5 o'clock, we stay in the line.
    One day, I was saying in the line,
    and a German soldier came over and took me out.
    Well, he asked me why I'm staying here.
    I said, I have to go to work in the morning,
    so I'm staying here to get my portion of bread.
    And he took me away.
    They had a Jewish jail over there.
    He put me in the jail there.
    And there was a line for hundreds of people.
    But he took me out.
    Put me in the jail to about 12 o'clock in the morning.
    We didn't go to war.
    And then he took me out.
    He said, now you go get your food.
    By the time we got there, the line was gone.
    There was no food left.
    I went to work.
    I missed that soup over there too,
    because I came late to work.
    I was punished for not being on time, nothing.
    So I didn't got the soup.
    The life was very hard for me.
    But we tried to survive.
    We were together, a family.
    How many were you in the room that you lived in?
    We had a apartment.
    It was a three-room apartment.
    There were about four families, divided with linen.
    And everybody slept on the floor or on a bed.
    We had our own bed.
    But the people who moved in our apartment,
    they had to sleep on the floor.
    There was no room for furniture.
    So you rented an apartment, and it was inside the ghetto?
    We were living, before the war, on the place
    where they made the ghetto.
    So that was our apartment.
    The Jewish people who came from the other part of the city,
    they had to move into our apartment, whoever's
    apartment it was.
    So it was very crowded.
    But during the day, nobody was home.
    Everybody had to go to work.
    Oh, at the beginning, we thought we will survive.
    Hunger or not, we will survive.
    Then they start to come in for selections, the German.
    I remember the day when they came in with trucks.
    Big trucks.
    And the apartment where it was, very giant [INAUDIBLE]..
    And on that apartment building, all around a circle,
    they came in with dogs and went room to room, apartment
    to apartment, to look for small children.
    I was standing in that room.
    My brother, my mother and sisters, my father.
    And my brother had a little girl.
    She was about six month old.
    The German soldier came in.
    He ripped the girl out from mine sister-in-law's arm.
    He used to live on the second floor.
    He threw her down through the window, right to the dump.
    And he went out.
    We all ran to the window looking.
    When we looked down, we saw hundreds
    of children laying there, They lay on the ground
    below the wall there.
    They ripped out arms, feet.
    The women are crying, screaming.
    Couldn't take it.
    Every time I see the picture, I feel to cry.
    [SOB]
    Then we had the largest synagogue
    in Lódz, one of the largest.
    It was only a block away from our house.
    The German went in, then drums of gasoline,
    and burned it to the ground, and made everybody come out,
    watching our synagogue burn.
    And the people were crying.
    Where is God?
    If there is God, why does he do that to us?
    So were in the ghetto until 1944.
    But my father, he died from starvation 1942.
    He died in my arms.
    In the ghetto?
    In the ghetto.
    He was a strong man before the war, in the ghetto.
    He never was sick.
    He never went to a doctor.
    He never had a toothache in his life.
    Was a very strong man.
    But he couldn't pull it out because just the way the food--
    not enough food.
    So he died in '42.
    Me and my brother went to bury him.
    There used to be those hearses.
    Before the war, a hearse used to carry one person.
    In the ghetto, that hearse was so busy.
    The hearses are like a horse in a dark--
    the horses, they used to pull these hearses.
    When they picked up the bodies, they used to put them about 10,
    20 bodies in one hearse to take them to the cemetery.
    We used to come there.
    By the time we get to the cemetery,
    we have to dig our own grave.
    There was no casket or anything.
    You put down.
    And my mother put my father down in the grave with a couple
    boards to cover him, make-believe casket.
    And we buried him.
    [SOB] Went home from the funeral.
    There was his portion of bread left.
    It was like a holiday for us.
    We had another piece of bread to eat.
    So we had to go back to work everyday.
    One day, my father-- and my father was dead.
    My brother and his sisters.
    Then there came another selection,
    and they took my mother away.
    They took away overnight.
    They had a big camp.
    And I used to go there in the night with my sister,
    struck to the window to her.
    We didn't know where they're going to take her.
    But we had a--
    one cousin.
    He was a lawyer.
    And he wrote a petition to the German
    that my mother is very sick, and family.
    It helped.
    They let her go.
    We were surprised.
    She came back home.
    We were a family together--
    until 1944.
    In 1944-- and I think it was in September--
    the German came to the, again, and appealed to the people.
    They said, we have to eliminate the ghetto.
    We could send you to Germany, where you could be together,
    and have a lot of food.
    All you have to do, pack everything, take it down,
    and we will pick you up.
    We'll take you to the train station.
    You will go live in a different camp.
    The Russian are coming.
    You'll be worse off.
    But we didn't believe the German.
    We know who the Germans are.
    We couldn't believe it, German people,
    the most educated in Europe, intelligent people,
    can do horrible things to a human being.
    We couldn't believe it.
    Well, we didn't believe it, what they said.
    We were hiding.
    In that apartment where we used to have three families,
    they all died out in starvation.
    Only we are left.
    We had one room, divided out the room,
    we had a big fireplace, a stove, go
    like this, pushed into the wall, so
    keep warm both side of the [INAUDIBLE] of the rooms,
    and with this room and another one.
    And that storehouse on little legs, we stayed.
    What we did, we covered the door to go into the other part,
    the other room, to clothing.
    We cover it that we don't see a door.
    We crawl underneath to the other room.
    So every day, the German used to come to yell to everybody,
    go down.
    Take you to the different camp.
    We were hiding there.
    It was good for several weeks, till one day we
    were hiding there, and they came up, the German.
    Usually when they came up, they saw one room, it's empty,
    they just left.
    This time they were looking around in this room.
    And it so happened my sister was sneezing.
    When then heard a sneeze.
    When they start to look, they find her.
    They ripped down the clothes.
    They find out the door.
    They found the door.
    They opened the door.
    But we were prepared.
    We had our-- everything packed to go.
    We know sooner or later they will get us.
    We took our clothes, bedding, whatever we could,
    and everybody was carrying down.
    On that street there was staying a lot of-- hundreds of people
    were there waiting.
    The German trucks were waiting.
    The SS pointed their machine guns at us.
    Push us in the throat.
    Throw us in the train station.
    At the train station, there were waiting boxcars,
    like cattle boxcars.
    They put them on, 50 to 100 people in a car.
    There was hardly any room to lay down.
    Just one sit next to the other.
    Like sardines we were sitting there, men, women, children.
    What I mean children is not young children.
    They illuminate all the young children.
    Were children about 18, 17, 14 years, 19 years, together.
    In the middle of the boxcar there was a big drum.
    That was so called a toilet, to wash, nothing
    to cover it around or anything.
    You had to go to the washroom, you just stay and do your duty,
    and everybody looking.
    Men, women, the same thing, but what could you do?
    You couldn't 't do it.
    They slammed the doors.
    They seal it.
    There was a small window.
    We looked out.
    And we were traveling two or three nights, two days.
    We didn't know where.
    We'd stop mostly in the night.
    The train could stop in the [INAUDIBLE]..
    A few hours waiting.
    We didn't know why.
    We had only-- they get only you were-- we took it, the bread
    or whatever we have, to eat.
    A little bit water.
    After the third day we ran out of water
    and we didn't have any.
    Then, on the third day, the train stopped.
    It was a beautiful day.
    The sun shine outside.
    The doors open.
    All we saw is wires with barracks.
    They keep yelling, everybody, heraus.
    We went down the train.
    We carry everything with.
    We carry the belonging.
    The Germans told us to drop everything, to stay in line.
    I stay in line with my mother, two sisters.
    My brother was-- they didn't took my brother.
    He was away that day in another place.
    So I don't know.
    He came to the-- just my mother and two sisters.
    We stayed in line.
    And there was Dr. Mengele.
    Was sending with the stick.
    He pointed that the people-- there were thousands of them,
    because the trains, were so many trains,
    he didn't realize how many people
    they took until we got out.
    And I turn around, and I look back in front of me.
    And in back of me I saw thousands of Jewish people.
    Well, we were hugging all together, to meet here.
    We don't believe in what they say,
    because we know who the German are.
    And then Dr. Mengele pointed the stick.
    He started on the first left and right, left and left.
    He came to me, and he pointed me to go to the right side.
    And he point my sister to the left--
    to the right side, the other sister to the right side.
    Then he point my mother to the left
    After the people on the right, they separated right away,
    women separated and the men separated.
    I was watching my mother.
    She was crying, screaming.
    Take care on yourself, he said.
    My sisters were crying.
    I saw them far away, because they were
    marching them, the women away.
    They marched the men away.
    They marched the people on the left side away.
    They took us in Birkenau, Auschwitz.
    Then we know then.
    We realize that's the camp Auschwitz.
    But we didn't know what Auschwitz is.
    We didn't know about it.
    They took us in a big barrack, all the men.
    They make us strip, everything.
    After they stripped us, they shaved the hair.
    For every place you have hair, they shaved.
    You walk around naked.
    Even when you walk around naked, when
    you selected to go on the right side,
    it's still there were German soldiers inside looking over
    you again.
    They still took from there out.
    Some of them didn't look too good.
    They took them back out, naked.
    Where they took them, I didn't know.
    But later I realized, later I find out where they took them.
    Anyway, I was walking around, naked there.
    That the soldiers walk around, women soldiers, SS.
    We were embarrassed, what after a couple of minutes, five
    minute, it didn't bother us.
    All we ever think about, what happened to the family.
    They give us some clothes with stripes, and some shoes,
    like sandals, whatever shoes it is.
    Some people may have two left shoes.
    Some may have a size 6.
    Some may have one shoe 6 or one shoe size 11.
    They give you.
    You wear.
    They marched us-- yeah, and they took us in for a shower.
    Gives a shower, a shave.
    They march us out to a barrack.
    When we came to the barrack, it said 101 barrack.
    They tell you find a place to sit down or lay down.
    That's your place.
    You will be here.
    The kapos took over there.
    Who are the kapos?
    Criminals-- Polish criminal, German criminal.
    They were calling the kapos supervisor, foremen, whatever
    you want, you can call them.
    They were screaming, yelling, hitting you
    over the head, whatever they want.
    I was in that barrack for a while.
    Then I walked out outside.
    It's already dark.
    it was 7 o'clock or 8 o'clock in the evening.
    And I smell an odor.
    I ask some people who were in the camp
    before me, I say, what's that odor?
    Oh, they say, you don't know?
    Look across.
    You see the wire.
    See the smoke over there.
    That is the people who went on the left side.
    They went to the gas chamber.
    I didn't understood what they mean, the gas chamber.
    They said, well, you got experience.
    Some of them I talk, they were working at the crematorium
    by the gas chamber.
    They say, all the people there, they
    made them take off their clothes,
    they gave them a towel and soap.
    They say, you're going to take a shower.
    You're going to take the shower.
    And instead of water, there come out gas.
    People fighting each other, and tried to run to the door.
    They killed them.
    Some of them were gassed right away.
    Some of them were still breathing
    when they opened the doors.
    When they open the doors, they had some prisoners
    from Auschwitz who had to take out the bodies,
    put them in giant carts, and wheel them to the crematorium.
    And the door opens.
    Put them in.
    You're alive or dead, they put you in.
    Because the-- they have to do it,
    the Germans, the SS stays and watch.
    You don't do your job, you're going to be in it.
    After I heard this, I start to cry.
    I was wondering, was my mother dead?
    Was she alive when she went in the door?
    And no matter, for two days, how hungry
    I was, when I suffer from hunger, starvation,
    I couldn't eat for two days.
    They give you a bowl of soup, I didn't
    go to this line to get it.
    I just lay down on the ground outside, cold.
    They want to go to barrack.
    All I do is cry.
    I was crying.
    I had a family yesterday.
    They're gone today.
    Then I had a--
    When where you tattooed, Carl?
    I will come to it.
    Then I had a friend mine age.
    We were together in the ghetto.
    We were together, the same age with me, together
    in the Birkenau, when we came.
    While I was laying on the ground, he came over to me
    and woke me up.
    He said, Carl, they're selecting people now,
    young guys, to work.
    I said, I don't want it.
    I don't want it.
    He said, Carl, you have a chance.
    Now's your chance.
    You've got two sisters and a brother.
    They may still be alive.
    You have a chance to see them again.
    So I got up, and I was the last to stay in the line
    to be selected to work.
    The man who selected work, he was a German,
    but he was in civilian clothes.
    He looked at me, and he said, lauf.
    That mean run.
    And I was very young.
    I was very fast.
    I ran fast.
    So he took me.
    He selected me and my friend.
    So we were selected, about 600, 700 young guys to go to work.
    But before we went to work, before anything,
    we had to go down in the same barrack
    where we took the shower three days before,
    took the shower, shaved us again, make sure we clean.
    We stay in the line, five with the line, were several hundred.
    They [INAUDIBLE].
    The German soldier who attacked me took me out.
    He said, out.
    And [INAUDIBLE].
    He didn't want me.
    I was walking towards the door.
    Follow me to the door.
    Then I turn in the back, and I went in the middle and stay
    in the line again, in the back.
    Meanwhile, they started to count.
    The one line only--
    every line is supposed to be five.
    There's six.
    So they took the one in front, they took away.
    And they were lucky they selected me.
    I didn't know I was like a [? nag ?] at that time.
    I didn't know what going to happen.
    They give us different clothes, with stripes, clean clothes,
    and they marched us to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
    It was a camp, like a transition camp.
    They marched, I think it's about 2 or 3 miles away, because I
    can't remember exactly.
    I didn't count how many it is.
    I know we were walking, marching.
    We came there.
    There were buildings, red buildings, bricks
    three stories high.
    They-- we went in by several hundred in this building.
    They call it the Maurerschule.
    That mean a school for bricklayers.
    All young boys.
    Over there we had bunks.
    Everybody got their bunk, to stay on it.
    We started to get food in the morning, three times a day.
    In the morning, you got a slice of bread,
    a bowl of soup in the evening, during lunch,
    and another bowl of soup in the evening.
    Yeah, before I went to the camp, they put a tattoo.
    My name-- my number was B8047.
    The reason the B8047 is when they
    started to give the tattoo, they started from 1 to 100,000.
    Then they started A to 100,000.
    And in '44, when I came to Auschwitz,
    they started B from 1 to 100,000.
    Maybe later on C. I don't know.
    So we was called only by the numbers.
    They took us out in a block, in the row, in that place,
    and they show us where we're going to stay.
    We went up on the third floor to show us.
    There was an empty room, a lot of bricks,
    cement, and some instructors to teach us how to build.
    It was a bricklaying.
    So it was good.
    We were fine.
    Then, in the morning we have to get out for Appell
    every morning.
    That mean they have to count every morning.
    We stayed five people.
    They stay in a whole line, several hundred.
    Get up in sun up, you stay there.
    Sometimes you stay for an hour, sometimes 15 minutes.
    Sometime you may stay all day.
    Why?
    They count.
    Let's see if our block's supposed
    to be 500 people in it.
    There's one missing.
    They're looking for you.
    And you stay until they find him, dead or alive.
    If they find him dead, you go back in the barrack.
    You get you portion of food, and you go to the school.
    But if they find him hiding, what
    they did in our barrack, one boy, he denied.
    He was sick.
    He couldn't get up.
    He was, like, unconscious already.
    They found him.
    After about several hours, we were standing here
    to stay in attention.
    They took all our boys in to the block inside a big room.
    We had to drop our pants.
    And they took, a big hose, a black hose,
    inside a steel spring.
    And we-- I have 50 lashes on our behind, every one of them.
    That is a punishment for everyone.
    If this is going to ever happen again, we won't give you 50.
    You'll be dead, they said.
    So don't hide.
    If you're sick, you can come down.
    Make sure you tell somebody that you came down.
    So we know you don't have to stay and wait for you
    dirty Jews all day long.
    That [? I was told. ?]
    After the beating, I couldn't sit down for 10 days.
    Not only me-- the rest of us.
    But we have to work.
    And the whole work, they at least
    they'll teach us to build, bricklayer.
    We find out, that school they have all the time in Auschwitz.
    They always select young people to build.
    Those young people, they're building the crematoriums.
    By the time we did it, they had all the crematoriums built.
    We didn't have anything to do.
    But after two weeks teaching us how to be a bricklayer,
    they start to take us out to work every day.
    What kind of work?
    Marching out to camp.
    They opened the door.
    The orchestra was playing in music, like happy.
    We're marching about I think about 5 or 6 miles
    every morning, in a place.
    They were weighing tons of tons of cement,
    bags of cement, 80-pounds bags.
    We have to pick up a bag of cement,
    carry it on there to 200 feet away,
    piling up there, in another place.
    We were piling it all day long.
    During the night, we go back.
    The next day, we go back to the pile of cement,
    pick it up, carried it from where you took it,
    just to torture us.
    They didn't do anything else to do for us.
    But every day, you'd see 500 go out,
    some young guys couldn't take it.
    Maybe only, by everyday, about 50 or 60 died.
    We have to carry them back for the Appell, to stay.
    Like you say in the morning, the Appell, when you come back,
    they come again.
    I remember one night, one evening, we came back.
    We stayed in line.
    One man was about a couple inches out in the line.
    He wasn't even staying even with the line.
    The SS took him out and he made him lay down on his back.
    And he took a big 2 by 4 board over his throat.
    He made a few of our people stay till he died.
    So that's the lesson, what you go there.
    When you there, you obey, if you like it or you don't like it.
    One day they told us to show the hands so we have clean hands.
    I picked up my hands.
    He looked.
    For no reason, the German soldier took my finger.
    He just broke it.
    It was a circle.
    I couldn't scream.
    I was afraid.
    He walked away.
    I put my hand down and straighten the finger out.
    But I still got a bump on it.
    And he said, leave it.
    It's a reminder.
    It was going on in Auschwitz to work, carrying.
    One day, they took us in a different place to work.
    And it's a funny thing to talk about it.
    They took us a place where we had
    to carry bricks, carry five, six bricks from one place
    to the other, and put them there.
    They put them down.
    What we realize is that we can't take it to work anymore.
    So we organize a few guys who work on it [INAUDIBLE]..
    Let's do it different.
    Let's pile them up, and make a hole in the middle,
    so once in a while, somebody could sneak behind
    and he's taking a rest at 15, 20 minutes.
    And we did it.
    And it worked.
    It worked for a while.
    Three, four days, it was working good.
    Everybody had a rest.
    Until we had one guy.
    He was a Jewish boy too, from Germany.
    He was born in Germany.
    He didn't know he was Jewish.
    His grandparents were Jewish.
    And we told him to go rest.
    He said, no, I work for my Fatherland.
    He work for his county.
    And he went to tell the German what happened.
    We didn't know.
    And it so happened, I was walking with the bricks,
    while the German told him to find a few guys sitting
    there resting.
    They shot them, all of them.
    See, then we learned our lesson.
    We didn't talk to this guy again.
    We were afraid.
    After all, he said he's not Jewish.
    He's German.
    But he died there in Auschwitz from starvation.
    The German didn't care who he are, who he is.
    He was tortured for something we don't know.
    He died.
    Maybe he was complaining of what he is doing here because he's
    a German, not Jewish.
    I know he was tortured.
    When they bringed him out back to the camp,
    he was swoll in the face, black, blue.
    Every color you could see on his body.
    I don't know how long it took, but they would torture you.
    Is it possible that his ancestors were Jewish?
    Yeah, his grandparents were Jewish, he said.
    But he said, I don't know.
    I know I'm German.
    What my grandparents did, I don't care.
    And I'm not Jewish.
    He was complaining about it all the time.
    But the German, they--
    anybody who has a--
    anybody who was Jewish, the grandparents or parents,
    they consider you Jewish too.
    We had in that block, why the reason we survived,
    our young people survived that building, across from us
    was another building.
    There were Jewish women, beautiful women.
    Every time where a transport came in,
    the SS select the most beautiful girls, the youngest girls.
    And they put them in this building.
    The reason they put them is for their needs,
    for their pleasure, for the pleasure of the kapos.
    And those women, they had a lot of food.
    They had the best food.
    They did what they have to do because they
    didn't have a choice.
    Either be dead.
    They'd have a chance to survive.
    And they saw us every day, day to day, and so much food
    that they couldn't eat it.
    And so they threw it through the windows,
    to us, throwing this down, a lot of food.
    And we had plenty of food to eat.
    Because I was six months in Auschwitz.
    According from the ghetto, from Auschwitz,
    I gained weight in Auschwitz because of the women.
    And we had a block leader.
    And I'm not ashamed to say it.
    He was Polish.
    He was one of the best men--
    from the-- all the Polish people I knew who were bad.
    Polish Christian.
    Yeah, a Polish Christian.
    He was a diamond of a person.
    Because the next block was the same Polish, luckily a leader.
    And he was like a murderer.
    He killed people.
    There was another-- a few more blocks what young people.
    But this man, he had--
    I don't know.
    It looked like God send down an angel.
    He made sure we get enough food, double or triple food for us.
    He used to play guitar for us overnight, sing songs.
    To me, it was something like I said, like a angel's
    [INAUDIBLE],, because I remember in Poland, when
    I used to go to school, how the Polish people used to throw
    stones around the children.
    We were afraid to go.
    We had to go in the woods.
    How the Polish people used to tell the German,
    who has money from the Jewish people who don't.
    And there was that man a different person.
    I used to hate to see, every time they
    told me the leader's Polish, I was afraid,
    because from childhood I know I suffer a lot
    from the Polish population.
    There, the Angel from Death.
    Anyway, in '44 they took us.
    They said we're going to a different camp.
    They took us into the shower place, took away the clothes,
    given us different clothes.
    And they give everybody a loaf of bread,
    and some jug of water.
    They said, you will go to a different camp.
    They marched us out.
    There were several hundred of us.
    We marched and we marched slowly.
    And we saw the gas chamber.
    They stopped us there.
    They say, everybody sit down.
    Sit down on the ground.
    It was in the morning.
    We know our fate there, right there.
    We know what going to happen to us.
    Nobody in the world can imagine the feeling in your heart
    when you know that's the last day of your life, that
    now is the time you're going to the gas chamber.
    You don't know if you will come out dead,
    you will come out alive, when they put you
    in the crematorium.
    We were sitting there all day long.
    About 5 o'clock we realized what the hell.
    We going to die today.
    What we holding the bread?
    We ate the whole bread up.
    Everybody.
    Let's die happy.
    We hug each other, and we kiss each other, when
    we were together [INAUDIBLE],, that the last day we
    ate the bread, drink the water.
    And we waited.
    And now later a train came.
    It was cattles box cars.
    And they told us, go on the boxcars.
    There we were sitting for 12 hours on the ground,
    worrying what happened.
    Then we go on the boxcars--
    no food, no water.
    Pile us in.
    The train started to roll.
    For two nights and three days I don't
    know where we went around.
    But we didn't have food.
    We didn't have any water.
    Well, 10% of the people on this train died in the train.
    Hot.
    Too many people in the train.
    No food, no water.
    How do we know they died?
    When they opened it, on the third day, the train,
    they went to carry out the dead people.
    Every box car had some dead people.
    We came to camp Sachsenhausen in Germany.
    They took us out.
    We went in that camp.
    We stay in the line all day long,
    no food, just to give us-- they were nice.
    They give us some water to drink.
    And it was cold.
    In the night, they took us in, give us a cold shower.
    After the shower, they said, everyone out-- naked.
    It was freezing temperature.
    It was everyone out, because when the train picked us up,
    I don't know.
    Even on the way, he must have picked up some
    from someplace else.
    There was so many people we never saw in my life.
    We stay in the line.
    They start to hit us over the head with sticks, the German.
    And we were freezing.
    Why they hit us over the head, we ran one direction.
    We came to the other end, the German,
    they hit you over that day.
    You run back, forth and back.
    I was lucky.
    They never shot.
    So I didn't got hit.
    Now before I go farther, I want to mention something
    from Auschwitz, what happened.
    In Auschwitz, I got sick one day,
    and I had 105 temperature--
    104, 105.
    There was a doctor, French doctor.
    He try everything, to give me whatever.
    He used to sell his bread for a medicine,
    for aspirin to help the people.
    So after three days, I couldn't go to work.
    Was he an inmate?
    He was an inmate, French Jew.
    After three days, he couldn't help it.
    He said, you have to go to work.
    Either they going to take you away.
    They took me-- he said go to the hospital.
    I went to that hospital.
    They took the temperature.
    I didn't have any temperature.
    They send me back.
    I came back, the doctor said, what happened?
    I said, I don't have any temperature.
    He checked the temperature.
    There is no temperature.
    What I mean, why I mentioned this, the same night,
    when they came in, they liquidated the whole hospital.
    All those people they took to the gas chamber.
    They had selections that night.
    And another night, they had selections-- also
    in Auschwitz you always had selections during the night.
    One day, we went down and do selection.
    We had to jump over.
    They had two [INAUDIBLE] with a board on top.
    You had jump over it.
    Whoever jumped made it.
    Go back to the barrack, to the block.
    I jumped, but the guy in front of me, she jumped too.
    But by the time he came back to that barrack, to the block,
    he was all gray.
    His hair turned white like a sheep.
    We used to call him [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Well, that, I forgot to mention before that I come back
    to Auschwitz.
    So now I'm in Sachsenhausen.
    We were-- like, they were hitting us
    over the head back and forth [INAUDIBLE]..
    It was for an hour.
    After an hour a day, we go back to the shower.
    Meanwhile, there is some prisoners already there picking
    up the dead bodies laying there, frozen or beaten up.
    They're taking them away.
    We're going in the shower again, cold showers.
    Out again.
    That was going on all night.
    The reason they did it, they didn't have room for us.
    The barracks were full.
    But during the night a couple of thousand died,
    freezing, beaten up, exhaustion.
    Several hundred died in the barracks, and so on.
    Whoever was left had the room to go in the barracks.
    Then they give us clothes.
    It was winter.
    We get summer clothes and summer shoes.
    And they put us on bunks.
    The bunks was from one end to the other, boards.
    Three tiers.
    And we lay there like sardines squeezed together.
    No blanket, col. We shivering, everybody pushing together,
    flesh to flesh, to keep you warm.
    But our bodies were cold anyway.
    We didn't have any hot body in us.
    In the morning, we got up.
    They give us brand new army shoes to wear.
    Brand new--
    In the morning, we got up, they gave us brand new army shoes
    to wear, brand new, just made from the shoemakers.
    We didn't understood why.
    But we found out.
    A half hour later, we found out why.
    And we put on the shoes.
    They took us out in another camp, and marched in a circle,
    in a giant, large circle.
    The reason they did it, to break in the shoes for the soldiers.
    So when they put them on, they will be comfortable.
    They won't be hard to wear.
    But our feet got swollen a bit.
    We had to wear them every day, those shoes.
    They had, in one barrack, the Russian prisoners.
    They were soldiers, but they took them in there.
    And they lay in bunks.
    Like we would lay in bunks, but their bunks was so close,
    that they have to lay.
    They can't even sit up.
    They had to lay there for eight hours a day.
    During the evening, when all the workers, the prisoners
    were going to bed, they took them out to march [INAUDIBLE]..
    Then they back.
    This was their torture for the Russian soldiers.
    They had another barrack.
    That was a empty barrack.
    We were wondering why it's always empty.
    Then one day, we were watching.
    They bring in a transport with gypsies--
    men, women, and children.
    They put them in there.
    It was a giant barrack.
    They put them in.
    Then the SS came with 50, 60 German shepherds.
    They let the German shepherds in, in their barracks.
    And we could hear the scream--
    we could hear those screams blocks and blocks away.
    After about two hours, they let the dogs out.
    When they came out, they grabbed some prisoners
    to pull out the dead gypsies, to bury them.
    They had some colored people.
    That's the first time in my life I saw colored people.
    I never know there ever exist colored people.
    I looked.
    I asked, who are the colored people?
    They said they're prisoners of war from America.
    They had the worsted job in the camp.
    They were tortured, beaten.
    Everything they could do, they did to them.
    They're supposed to be prisoners of war.
    That was the camp Sachsenhausen.
    Some people don't realize that the camp-
    a crematorium and a gas chamber.
    They didn't need any one there.
    They didn't have any crematoriums at Sachsenhausen?
    To tell you the truth, I don't know.
    We were so busy, scared, walking around in one circle
    to see what's going on.
    And around in this area, we were afraid to look or to ask.
    We were watched every minute what we do.
    So that was--
    I don't even remember how long I was there.
    But then they took us out of this camp.
    They said you're going to a different camp.
    That's what they call the march of death.
    I think if history [? said ?] didn't know about it.
    They took thousands or thousands of prisoners
    from Sachsenhausen, and marching for six days, or seven days
    and six nights.
    I remember it was winter.
    I can't remember a day, because we didn't have a calendar.
    I don't remember times or month.
    It was cold.
    But we were thirsty.
    We were marching.
    There was no snow.
    We were thirsty.
    If we had snow, we would eat it.
    We were hungry.
    There was no food or water.
    Every time you bent down-- maybe you saw a piece of coal,
    or a snake, or anything--
    snails, I mean-- we picked up and we ate to keep us going.
    Whatever time you looked back, you
    could see dead bodies laying behind you.
    Or when you walked in the march, you can see bodies.
    You passed by bodies laying already.
    There was in the back of our trucks,
    who picked up those bodies.
    What they did with them, I don't know.
    We keep marching.
    One night we stopped in a big farm.
    We had to stay outside.
    Usually, if we stopped at any place,
    we had open place to sleep.
    We stopped by a big farm.
    And I end up close to a barn.
    I laid there.
    It got dark.
    I sneak toward the barn.
    I opened the door.
    And there I saw pigs.
    And there the pigs eat food.
    They had pig food.
    Who know what kind of garbage it was.
    I laid down.
    I ate together with the pigs.
    That food was delicious because I didn't
    have any food for three days.
    I went out and I told somebody that.
    I said, go in, there's food.
    Well, actually, we keep sneaking in and out, in and out.
    SS, Germans, they saw that.
    They had a commotion.
    Because in the beginning, it was one by one.
    But then-- then when they find out, everybody go in.
    And it was a big commotion.
    And everybody start to try to go in.
    When the German find that out, they went in.
    Whoever was close or inside, they
    shot them to death right away, all of them.
    And in a way, I start to feel guilty.
    If I wouldn't say it, maybe that wouldn't have happened.
    Then I realize, if I wouldn't say it,
    maybe some people would die anyway
    because they didn't have food.
    So either way, you don't know if you did the right thing
    or the wrong thing.
    Well, we were marching there for about six days, or seven
    nights--
    six-- seven nights and six days.
    We came-- we passed Berlin through the street--
    beautiful.
    There was a lot of buildings that were in ruin because it
    was '44, or '45, in the beginning of '45--
    January or February.
    I can't remember exactly.
    It was like the Americans start to bombard or the Russians.
    The city was-- there were a lot of officers walking around.
    We were marching through the streets.
    There were some German children walking with their mothers,
    looking at us.
    Then suddenly-- why, we don't know--
    the children-- the mothers let the children go,
    and they come over and start to spit on us.
    And their mothers were applauding and laughing.
    We didn't feel like we are human.
    What can you do?
    You're in their hands.
    You do what they tell you to do.
    And we marched.
    We marched.
    The longer we marched, the less people left.
    We came to camp Lieberose in [GERMAN],, 2,000 or 3,000 left.
    In that camp, we were again in barracks.
    They assigned us to work.
    I was assigned to work-- to work every morning,
    to go to march 10 kilometers.
    When we got there, we have to cut trees, and dig holes,
    like ditches--
    dig ground.
    Because they have an overflow of potatoes, the Germans.
    And we had to bury them--
    put the potatoes in.
    Put straw on top and buried it.
    But we didn't have any food, and we were burying those things.
    But every chance we had, we put a potato in our pocket.
    If we had the chance, we'd go in the washroom.
    It was like [INAUDIBLE] outside.
    We ate the raw potato to keep us alive.
    Because the food was very scarce--
    one slice of bread a day.
    When you come back, you had a bowl of soup.
    So whatever we found, food--
    what kind of food-- any-- even dirt we used to eat--
    whatever you could.
    But buried those potatoes, and they were watching us.
    Every night, going back to camp, bring your dead bodies home,
    who couldn't survive.
    And one night, I have a toothache.
    I came back from work, I had a terrible toothache.
    I went to the--
    they call it the Revier, what it is
    like a hospital, a medical clinic.
    And I said, I have a toothache.
    And they said, you have to go on the other side.
    On other side, there's a dentist,
    a German doctor-- a dentist.
    When I came to the other door, there's
    two soldiers waiting outside.
    They asked me what I wanted.
    I said I have a toothache.
    They told me to go in.
    I went in.
    There were six men in front of me.
    The door was open from the office for the dentist,
    in a SS uniform.
    He's a doctor.
    He's the commander from the camp.
    He's everything.
    He told-- asked that man what's wrong.
    He told him, I have a toothache.
    He said, OK.
    He pulled the tooth out.
    The man was screaming.
    He said now, because you screamed,
    I have to pull another one.
    So he took-- the more he pulled, the more he screamed.
    By the time he was finished, that man
    came out without teeth.
    How can anybody in the world imagine
    how we felt to see this horrible thing.
    The man came up, blood all over his face, all over his clothes.
    And there, the dentist comes to the next guy.
    And to make it short, all of them came out without teeth.
    I was the last to get in.
    I come in.
    I sit on the chair.
    I was shaking.
    He looked at me, and said, which tooth hurt?
    I showed him.
    He gave me Novocaine, and he pulled my tooth out.
    He said, I want you--
    to see you in the morning back here.
    Don't go to work.
    Tell the kapo that I said so.
    That's it.
    I thanked him.
    And I said, danke schoen.
    And I went out.
    I went back.
    I never saw those men again, because everybody
    had different barracks.
    There were a lot of barracks, thousands of people there.
    I was bleeding all night.
    In the morning, I got up, I told the kapo, I can't go to work.
    The dentist wants to see me.
    He said, no, you go to work.
    So I went to work.
    I was bleeding all day.
    I came back from work.
    That dentist was waiting by the gate for me.
    He looked at everybody.
    He pointed his finger, come out.
    He said, I told you to see me in the morning,
    and not to go to work.
    Why did you disobey my order?
    I said I didn't disobey your order.
    I told the kapo what you told me.
    He told me as long as I'm with him, under his--
    how you call it?
    Supervision.
    Yeah, under his supervision--
    you do what I tell you to do.
    And he said, I know you want to get away from work,
    but it won't help you.
    He said, which one was it?
    And I pointed the finger to that kapo.
    And that kapo, it happened to be a German,
    but he was not in the army.
    He was a German criminal.
    I don't know why he was in camp.
    Because usually, the criminals is the prisoners,
    and into the concentration camps too.
    He took him out.
    He said, did that man told you--
    I was a man by then--
    that I want to see him?
    He said, yes, but you know, they're-- all the Jews,
    they are liars.
    They want to get away from work.
    You don't know who to believe, who not believe.
    He took out his gun and shot him.
    And he told all the kapos, that's a lesson.
    If anybody tell you, I want to see somebody,
    I'm the boss here, not you.
    You do what I tell you, or you'll end up like him.
    Everyone who went in, and he took me.
    He said, you come with me.
    I was scared, but I went.
    He took me in the clinic.
    There were laying wall to wall people, sick and starving.
    He called out a male nurse.
    We didn't have any other.
    Whoever said he's a doctor-- they're a doctor or nurse.
    Said to give me what kind-- some injection.
    He gave me an injection in my thigh.
    After he pull out the needle, I couldn't walk.
    My foot was stiff.
    And the doctor came in, and he said, well, now what?
    I said, I can't walk.
    He said, that son of a gun, he give you
    in the wrong place, the injection.
    And he called him over, and he shot him.
    And he took me out from there.
    He said, I won't leave you here.
    They had-- in the next addition, they
    had another clinic that was for the German wounded
    on the front, for soldiers.
    And he put me in a room--
    white linen, nurses.
    I couldn't figure.
    Am I in a concentration camp?
    Am I alive?
    Do I dream about it?
    It couldn't be.
    Why?
    It's because-- because I pray to God?
    If that's it-- if I pray to God, why didn't it help my parents?
    Other ones?
    Everybody's praying.
    So I was there for about three days.
    I have good food.
    They did their best.
    After three days, he said there's too many wounded
    soldiers coming in.
    You have to go in the other barrack, not a clinic.
    But I made arrangement that you will be
    separate from the other people.
    I come in there, but what I saw there,
    I wish I wouldn't see it.
    That doctor used to come in every morning,
    to see the sick people.
    What about their treatment?
    Oh, everybody had a large cyst, grot, puss.
    All he did is--
    they were all naked.
    Stay in line-- he took a knife, cut, then fell down.
    The next one-- where's yours?
    On the arm-- cut it, the blood come out,
    the man fell down-- like a slaughter house.
    Then he treat me like a human being.
    He treat those other people like animals in a slaughter house.
    How could you figure out a man like this?
    How could you treat one human with decency,
    but the others like animals?
    But who am I--
    who am I to say it?
    I was there for about two weeks, in that clinic.
    He didn't let me go out.
    In those two weeks, thousand and thousand died.
    And I couldn't tell nobody not to go to that clinic.
    I couldn't go out.
    One night he came into me.
    He said, Carl, they're going to liquidate that camp.
    You go back to your barrack.
    In the night, some soldiers will come in.
    They will give a little speech.
    They will say, we will liquidate.
    If you are unable to walk, we give you free transportation.
    You can volunteer.
    He said, but don't you volunteer.
    I couldn't figure why.
    I went back.
    In the night, they came in.
    They had that speech.
    They tell everybody what happened, what going to happen.
    If you can't walk, volunteer.
    I told-- in my barracks, I told everybody, whoever I could--
    [INAUDIBLE] don't volunteer.
    Because something is fishy going on here.
    And they told me not to volunteer.
    Nobody in our barracks volunteered,
    but in other barracks, there were a lot of volunteers.
    They went to that clinic.
    In the morning, we marched out.
    We weren't far away, maybe one block out the gate.
    There, we heard machine guns going.
    So many machine guns we had to close our ears for the sound.
    Then we realized what happened.
    They shot them all.
    And we marched to the famous camp, Mauthausen, in Austria.
    We came there.
    Our job-- they put us in barracks, in bunk beds.
    Our job was to carry stones, big stones, up the hill.
    It was a big mountain company.
    We carried stones up, all the way.
    And when you're on the top, they threw the stones back down.
    You kept going down, picking up the stone, and you go up.
    If you can't do it, he'd just gives you a push.
    The SS give you a push.
    You go with the stone, down.
    This was going on day by day.
    I couldn't do it anymore.
    In the morning, I got up, I couldn't do it.
    I couldn't go any more.
    I was very weak.
    And I figured, well, there's no more life.
    All the time in camp, the reason I survived
    is I was thinking about to meet somebody from my family,
    maybe still somebody alive.
    But then, when he came to Mauthausen,
    I figured, that's it.
    I can't take it.
    What happened?
    What happened, I went to--
    to the hospital.
    Now I know from Auschwitz, from experience,
    what happened to that, when you go in the hospital.
    I know from Lieberose what happened
    when you go in the hospital.
    But to me, it didn't make any difference anymore.
    A person can take so much, and that's it.
    I went there.
    All we do is lay on the bunks.
    They didn't give you bread there, just a bowl of soup.
    To get the bowl of soup, you had to sit up in the bunk.
    They count, and they hold a bowl,
    and they give you a bowl of soup.
    The first day, I got the bowl of soup.
    I was lying next to one guy, and then there was another guy.
    He was from the same city what I was,
    and we were talking together.
    In the morning, we get up, the man next to us was dead.
    Usually, when you have a dead person,
    you threw him down on a pile, then you take him out.
    They buried him.
    So they man to me said--
    he said, don't throw him down.
    I said, why?
    He said, well, maybe we got still a chance to survive.
    So every time for lunchtime, you pick up that man.
    I was holding with the shoulder, and the other guy
    with his shoulder.
    And with the ball, we got extra bowls.
    Well, that was going on for three days,
    till we start to smell.
    We threw him down.
    We pick up a fresh body, put them.
    But we survived.
    That must go on for about a couple of weeks.
    Suddenly they said, we eliminate that camp.
    Let's go again.
    We marched.
    We march to another camp.
    That was camp Gunskirchen, in Austria.
    It was a forest preserve.
    There was barracks.
    They pushed us in in the barracks.
    That was in May of 1945.
    I think it was in May, the 1st or the 2nd, we came there.
    No bunk beds, just on the ground, laying.
    No place to go.
    Once you get up, you have to go out to the bathroom.
    You come in, you don't have where to sit.
    I went out.
    That was the 3rd--
    May the 4th.
    When I came back, I had no place to go back.
    I saw big beams in the barracks.
    I climbed up on that beam and lay on it.
    That's all I remember.
    The next thing I remember, I was in the hospital--
    with white sheets and nurses.
    And I thought to myself, oh, my god, heaven is good.
    I'm liberated.
    I'm in heaven.
    I didn't know-- am I alive or am I dead?
    If I'm dead, it's nice in heaven.
    So what happened?
    They told me.
    When I was laying on that beam, I fell down--
    unconscious.
    They took me out.
    They put me on the pile on top of the dead bodies.
    On May the 5th, the American army came in.
    And they start to bury those bodies.
    One of the soldiers saw me bleeding, being alive.
    They transferred me to a hospital.
    I used to get--
    when they transferred me, I weighed 56 pounds.
    You could see every bone through my skin.
    I used to get-- an American doctor, a Jewish doctor,
    came in.
    And he talked to me every day.
    He encouraged me-- keep fighting.
    He encouraged me to be alive.
    He said, don't eat much.
    They used to give me blood transfusion
    once a week to put me on my feet.
    He said, don't eat too much.
    He said there's a lot of people, prisoners
    from the concentration camp, who died after the war.
    They saw food.
    They ate and ate.
    They became sick with diarrhea.
    We couldn't help them.
    You got a chance.
    You're young.
    I'm going to help you as much as I can.
    But do whatever we tell you.
    So after six weeks being in the hospital,
    they took me down from bed to teach me how to walk.
    I couldn't walk anymore.
    Everything was frozen.
    I was glad when I walked out, I saw so many people still alive.
    And then I start to--
    then I had another task--
    find my sisters, my brother.
    Are they alive or not?
    I was traveling-- first they put us in a DP camp.
    They gave us clothes when we were in DP camp.
    And I was traveling from camp to camp, looking for my relatives.
    While other people went back to Poland,
    I didn't want to go back.
    I know what we've been through.
    But from camp to camp.
    In one camp, I found a girl.
    She know my sister.
    And when I asked her what happened,
    she didn't want to say.
    She said, well, I can't tell you, and she walked away.
    I realized then something terrible happened,
    but I didn't give up.
    I kept looking for them.
    I didn't find them.
    Then by 1949, I married in Austria.
    I was in DP--
    I was liberated in Austria.
    And I was in DP camp in Austria.
    I married my wife.
    Before I marry her, I was by myself.
    Nobody to tell me from right to wrong.
    I start to drink.
    I didn't care.
    But in 1949, I married my wife.
    She came from Russia.
    She was [NON-ENGLISH].
    The German delivered them to Russia.
    She survived with the family and came to Austria after the war.
    And I met her there in camp.
    And I married her in '49.
    I was-- in '49, I was sick [INAUDIBLE]..
    My wife was pregnant.
    She was six months pregnant.
    I went to the hospital, and the doctor
    said that's from drinking.
    You need to stop drinking or you die.
    Well, I went through so much in the camp during the war,
    and then so much hell too,
    I said, well, why not?
    It's easy to stop drinking.
    I have now a new family, I will have.
    I stopped drinking.
    I never drink since.
    I survived.
    My son was born in 1950.
    And we start to make arrangement to come to United States.
    And in 1951, I came, in January, to the United States
    of America, to a free country, freedom of speech,
    freedom of religion.
    You can talk to people.
    You can ask him.
    You can agree with him.
    You can disagree with him.
    Nobody can put you in jail for it.
    In the beginning, I was afraid of a policeman.
    But America helped me.
    I overcame this.
    Because I see freedom.
    I remember the first election they had.
    I was wondering-- I never saw elections.
    And they said it's free.
    If you don't like the politician,
    you don't have to vote for it.
    It's a choice.
    They may fight each other to get the job,
    but it's up to the people to vote for them,
    for the best person.
    And I appreciate--
    Tell us when you met your wife, Carl.
    I met my wife in 1949.
    She came from-- she was in Russia during the war.
    Afterward, I went to Poland.
    From Poland, I went to Austria.
    When all the Jews who ran away from Poland,
    she came with her father and two brothers to Austria.
    As a matter of fact, we used to live there, in Austria,
    and prepare the camps for the Jewish people who
    come from Russia.
    But that was in 1949.
    And we had some in our camp--
    that was in Austria--
    Linz, Ebelsberg.
    We had some dance going on there every Saturday.
    Are these DP camps?
    Yeah, DP camp.
    So there I met her at the dance party.
    Yeah, at the dance party, she came
    with a few friends of mine, what they live in the same camp.
    And we get to know each other.
    And I started to date her.
    And by 1949, I married her.
    I want to clarify that those are displaced persons camp.
    Displaced persons camp, yeah.
    How long were you in the camp?
    I was from '45 till '51.
    First I was in a different camp, in Bad Ischl, in Austria.
    Then they transfer us.
    People start to emigrate to America, to Australia,
    to Israel.
    So they liquidate that camp and push everybody together
    in one camp, from all over.
    And I was there till '51.
    I applied for papers to United States.
    Well, I didn't have any problem to get it here, but my wife,
    because she was from Russia--
    she came from Russia.
    So the American government had to investigate
    all the things to make sure they're not communists.
    So that's why it took us longer.
    But we came here in-- in January 26th, 1951,
    I came the United State with a boat, the General Langfitt.
    I still remember that.
    And in the United States, I--
    first, when we came, we used to move
    in a apartment with a family, through the Jewish Federation.
    They gave us a bedroom.
    I had a son already.
    He was born in Austria, in 1950, July the 7th, 1950.
    When we came-- when we came here, he was six months old.
    And we lived in their bedroom for a while
    till we found an apartment.
    After I found an apartment, a small apartment,
    I started to-- the Jews from the service send me--
    I asked for--
    I didn't want any charity.
    I asked for work.
    So they gave me a few jobs to go, a few places.
    And I went to the first job, the Continental Can Company.
    And I liked it.
    And I start to work.
    And I work for two or three years there.
    And this was in what city?
    In Chicago.
    In 1954, we had another child, a daughter born.
    Her name is Helen.
    My son's name is Gary.
    And we-- while I was working, my wife raised the kids.
    It wasn't an easy job, but she did a very good job on it.
    My son is in Chicago still.
    He lives in Elk Grove Village now.
    But he's a business-- yeah, he went to college.
    And he had very good grades.
    He became-- graduated with a bachelor's degree in education.
    His first job was in Batavia, Illinois.
    He started to teach there, in the fifth grade.
    I don't remember exactly.
    But he keep going back to college,
    get more degree, more degrees.
    And he got a master's degree in education.
    He started to go back in night school again--
    DeKalb, Northern University of Illinois.
    He kept going back there.
    He went back to get a degree in business management,
    in administration.
    He got a master's degree in this.
    Then he-- they asked him if he would
    like to be a business manager in Chicago,
    in a private high school.
    They call it Gordon Tech.
    He had an interview there, and they accepted him.
    And he worked there like 10 years, in that high school,
    as business manager.
    Then about-- after 10 years, he went back.
    They call him.
    There was opening at Park Ridge, Illinois, District 64.
    They needed a business manager.
    That's a public school.
    And he's now the business manager there,
    at Park Ridge, District 64, in Illinois.
    And your daughter.
    My daughter is married.
    My son is married too.
    He had two sons.
    One, his name is Adam and Andrew.
    And my daughter, she was born in 1954, in the United States.
    She went to school.
    She graduated.
    She got married.
    And her husband is a salesman, a shoe salesman.
    They make very nice living.
    They got their own homes, both of them.
    And she had a son.
    His name is Ryan.
    He's now nine years old.
    My wife, most of the time raised this kid.
    When we were in Chicago, he was living more in our house
    than in their house.
    He still calls us every week to see how we're doing.
    And he comes to visit us every week.
    He has a summer vacation and winter vacation.
    So do the other grandchildren too.
    Every time they have a chance, my son come over with his wife.
    We see them.
    We go to Chicago to see them So we still keep close together.
    I enjoy them.
    And you came to Phoenix in what year?
    In 1984, I came to Phoenix.
    Because they closed-- the company
    closed the plant in Chicago.
    They moved to Omaha.
    So it was hard for me to get a job.
    It was a recession.
    So I took the pension from the company, and I sold my house.
    We came to Phoenix because of health reason, osteoarthritis.
    I couldn't take the cold over there anymore,
    the snow shoveling mostly.
    So I came in '84 to Phoenix.
    And it's very nice here.
    I enjoy the life here.
    I got involved with the Holocaust Survivors
    Association.
    Me and Magda do the interviews.
    She's the interviewer.
    I'm the cameraman.
    And we try our best to keep that association together.
    And to keep-- to disseminate the information that the Holocaust
    survivors went through.
    That's right.
    I keep going to schools.
    I speak about the Holocaust survivors.
    Every time they call me.
    They send me letters.
    The send me your letters, say thank you.
    They said otherwise they wouldn't know really
    what had been done.
    They read books, but it's not like in person,
    if a person stay and talk to them.
    So I'm happy to do it.
    Really, after I come home from school speaking engagements,
    I'm sick.
    Just because everything comes back to you.
    But somebody has to do it.
    We have a lot of survivors here.
    Not every one-- they would do it,
    but not everyone got the heart or the guts.
    Because it's painful to talk about it.
    By the way, I forgot to mention, her name is Ruth.
    And she was born Ruth Jalowiec.
    And she came here with her father and two brothers.
    Her father passed away, I think in '71.
    Thank you very much, Carl.
    You're welcome.
    And your story will serve very well for information.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Carl Ofisher
    Date
    interview:  1988 January 12

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Ofisher, Carl.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Carl Ofisher was conducted on January 12, 1988 by the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association in affiliation with the Cline Library of Northern Arizona University as part of a project to document the testimonies of Holocaust survivors in the Phoenix, AZ area. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in 1989.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:09:46
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn512526

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (2)
    Summary (English)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    Also in Phoenix Holocaust Survivors Association oral history collection

    Oral histories conducted by the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors Association

    Date: 1987-1992

    Oral history interview with Ella Adler

    Oral history interview with Ella Adler

    Oral History

    Ella Adler, born in 1924 in Krakow, Poland, discusses her childhood; the beginning of the war; life in the ghetto; life in various concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau; life in labor camps; liberation; returning home; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Harry Adler

    Oral history interview with Harry Adler

    Oral History

    Harry Adler, born in 1924 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood; moving with his family in 1932 to Paris, France; attending school in France; moving with his family to Poland in 1938; his return to Paris, where he lived with a friend’s family; his parents’ return to Paris after the Germans invaded France; immigrating to the United States; settling in the Bronx, NY; graduating in 1942; joining the army in 1942; military training; being assigned to the V Corps Headquarters in the 1st Army; going to England; arriving in Normandy, France one day after D-Day; going to Germany; being in Weimar when he heard about Buchenwald concentration camp; visiting Buchenwald the day after it was liberated; going to Berchtesgaden, Germany; returning to New York in November 1945; going into the fur business with his father and attending New York University at night; getting married in 1951; his work in the US and abroad; moving to Phoenix, AZ; and his children.

    Oral history interview with Esther Bash

    Oral history interview with Esther Bash

    Oral History

    Esther Bash born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia, discusses her childhood experiences; the Hungarian occupation; being sent to live in a ghetto; life in Auschwitz and other work camps; liberation; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bash

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bash

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Been

    Oral history interview with Anna Been

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aaron Bendetson

    Oral history interview with Aaron Bendetson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erna Bindelglas

    Oral history interview with Erna Bindelglas

    Oral History

    Erna Bindelglas (née Stopper), born on November 13, 1930 in Amsterdam, Holland, discusses her childhood experiences; life in German occupied Holland; life in the underground system; the experiences of her mother and sisters in Bergen-Belsen; liberation; moving to Israel; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Fred Blau

    Oral history interview with Fred Blau

    Oral History

    Fred Blau, born in Vienna, Austria, discusses his family’s background in Vienna; his childhood experiences; life in Vienna following Hitler's invasion; the deportations of Jews from Austria; leaving Vienna and relocating to Switzerland; and his immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Marsha Botwinik

    Oral history interview with Marsha Botwinik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Cukier

    Oral history interview with Solomon Cukier

    Oral History

    Solomon Cukier, born in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his parents and siblings; his childhood experiences; the beginning of the war; being forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto; getting married in 1941 (his wife lived in the non-Jewish part of Warsaw); the deportation of his parents to Treblinka; being sent to work in Sedziszow, Poland; his experiences in work camps; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp; liberation; living in displaced persons camps in Germany from 1946 to 1949; his children; immigrating to the United States; and his life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Dattner

    Oral history interview with Joseph Dattner

    Oral History

    Joseph Dattner, born in Austrian-controlled Żywiec, Poland in 1907, discusses the fate of his seven brothers and one sister; his father, who was a tailor; moving to Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) when World War II began; working with his hands and sleeping in parks at night in Lvov; being put to work by the German Army to collect papers and bottles for no pay; leaving Lvov when the Ukrainian police came after him; fleeing to Warsaw, Poland, where he and his future wife Gerda purchased false Aryan identity papers; bribing police in Warsaw with a piece of fabric after they discovered that they were Jewish; being picked up by Gestapo officers but talking his designated murderer out of killing him; trying to enter the Lvov ghetto through a small hole but being caught and bribing the Gestapo officer with his rucksack; supporting Gerda and their child Barbara through various tailoring jobs; having a close call with his landlady once when one of his brothers arrived at their apartment; having his daughter baptized and inviting Jews pretending to be Aryans; and Gerda’s early death because she smoked so much out of stress during the war.

    Oral history interview with Meyer Dragon

    Oral history interview with Meyer Dragon

    Oral History

    Meyer Dragon discusses his family; his childhood experiences; moving with his family to Warsaw, Poland; working for the Jewish Committee in Warsaw; the German occupation; life in the Warsaw ghetto; escaping from the ghetto; his life in other ghettos before being sent to Auschwitz; being sent to other camps including Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, and Theresienstadt; liberation; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sally Dragon

    Oral history interview with Sally Dragon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rae Freisinger

    Oral history interview with Rae Freisinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Geslewitz

    Oral History

    Anna Geslewitz (née Charoltte Gersten), born on September 17, 1923 in Lwow, Poland (now L’viv, Ukraine), discusses her childhood experiences; the Russian occupation of her town; the German occupation in 1941; life in a ghetto; working in tailoring shop for the army in the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto with her sister; registering to go to Germany for work; passing as Christians; never seeing her father again; traveling through Krakow, Poland and going to an employment agency in Regnitz, Poland; working in homes while her sister worked on a farm; being taken to dig ditches in a forced labor camp; working in an office because she could speak German; being liberated by the Russians; going east to Jarosław, Poland; finding her sister and moving to a town on the Baltic Sea; opening a store; continuing to pass as Christian; going to West Germany; getting married in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1950; living in Brooklyn (NY), Pennsylvania, and Newark (NJ); her feelings on antisemitism; and her current views on American Judaism.

    Oral history interview with Daniel Geslewitz

    Oral History

    Daniel Geslewitz (né Gedoliah Geslewitz), born on August 14, 1924, in Lódz, Poland, discusses his siblings and parents; his childhood; the beginning of the war when he was 15 years old; the restrictions placed on Jews; life in the Lódz ghetto; starvation in the ghetto; his father’s death from starvation; the deportations; being deported with his family to Auschwitz in August 1944; the murder of his family except for himself and his three brothers because they were chosen for work; conditions in the camp, including the meager food and beatings; being sent after a week to Germany to do forced labor as a metalworker in camp Braunschweig; working in a village in a small factory that was making parts for trucks; being marched to the main camp; his brother Myer’s death from being forced to drink overly salted soup; being transported to Ravensbrück concentration camp; being sent to camp Wöbbelin, where they were liberated by American troops; recuperating in a German house with his brothers for many weeks; staying in a German town in the British zone for five years; immigrating to the United States in 1950; his life in the US; living in New York, NY and Phoenix, AZ; and his thoughts on Germans and Poles.

    Oral history interview with Adele Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Adele Goldberg

    Oral History

    Adele Goldberg, born in July 1921, discusses her childhood experiences; life in Lódz, Poland; her father’s diabetes; her father going into a diabetic coma and dying on December 31, 1939; life in the Lódz ghetto; being forced to work in German factory in Lódz; being deported with her mother to Auschwitz in 1944; the train journey with her mother; being separated from her mother when they arrived at the camp; working in a munitions factory; being sent to work in numerous camps; liberation; finding her brother in Italy; getting married; visiting Israel; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Hyman Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Hyman Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Goldstein

    Oral history interview with Irving Goldstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Handler

    Oral history interview with Helen Handler

    Oral History

    Helen Handler discusses her childhood experiences in Hungary; life in the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz; the train journey and arriving at the camp; being sent to Stutthof concentration camp; seeing numerous dead bodies in the camp; being sent on a forced march; being liberated by Russian soldiers; recuperating in a Polish hospital and then a hospital in Budapest, Hungary; going to Prague, Czech Republic and then France; having tuberculosis; going to tuberculosis hospitals in France and Switzerland; her four-year recovery from bone tuberculosis; receiving assistance from various Jewish organizations; immigrating to Canada; getting married; her son; getting divorced from her husband; immigrating to the United States; and giving talks about her experiences during the war.

    Oral history interview with Sam Hilton

    Oral history interview with Sam Hilton

    Oral History

    Sam Hilton, born on September 23, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his childhood experiences; his mother’s death when he was 5 years old; his father’s remarriage; the bombardment of Warsaw and the German occupation; being forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; the birth of his sister in 1942; deportations from the ghetto; the song in the ghetto about Treblinka; hiding in a basement bunker during one round up; the loss of his stepmother and sister; the ghetto uprising in 1943; being deported to Majdanek with his father; the selection process and lying about his age (he claimed to be 16 when he was only 12); being in Majdanek for three weeks; being sent to Buchenwald in June 1944; being sent to a work camp in November 1944; the liquidation of the camp in March 1945; being sent on a march; going to Theresienstadt; liberation; going to Prague, Czech Republic; going to Rotterdam, Netherlands and then Windermere, England to recuperate; going to Los Angeles, CA; and studying accounting at UCLA.

    Oral history interview with Rose Jaloviec

    Oral history interview with Rose Jaloviec

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Pauline Killough

    Oral history interview with Pauline Killough

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Klinger

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Klinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Koenig

    Oral history interview with Anna Koenig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Koenig

    Oral history interview with William Koenig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Koenig

    Oral history interview with William Koenig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec

    Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec

    Oral history interview with Michael Kopiec

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berga Lechowitz

    Oral history interview with Berga Lechowitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Judith Lederman

    Oral history interview with Judith Lederman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Lederman

    Oral history interview with Leon Lederman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Stephen Lerman

    Oral history interview with Stephen Lerman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lena Levine

    Oral history interview with Lena Levine

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sarah Marwick

    Oral history interview with Sarah Marwick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marion Migdal

    Oral history interview with Marion Migdal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abe Morgenstern

    Oral history interview with Abe Morgenstern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Nelson

    Oral history interview with Leon Nelson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mollie Nelson

    Oral history interview with Mollie Nelson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacques Rajchgod

    Oral history interview with Jacques Rajchgod

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hy Roitman

    Oral history interview with Hy Roitman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Robert Ronay

    Oral history interview with Robert Ronay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Rosen

    Oral history interview with Esther Rosen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Rosen

    Oral history interview with Samuel Rosen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Schiffman

    Oral history interview with George Schiffman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Wella Schiffman

    Oral history interview with Wella Schiffman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fanny Schlomowitz

    Oral history interview with Fanny Schlomowitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Soldinger

    Oral history interview with Samuel Soldinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Sontag

    Oral history interview with Henry Sontag

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Spitz

    Oral history interview with Anna Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arthur Spitz

    Oral history interview with Arthur Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Spitz

    Oral history interview with Harry Spitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Heddy Spitz

    Oral history interview with Heddy Spitz

    Oral History

    Heddy Spitz, born in 1920 in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her family’s business running a grocery, a dance hall, and a restaurant; being driven out of their homes with 30,000 other Jews to a ghetto area for three weeks in May 1943; being sent to Auschwitz, where her mother and two of her sisters were immediately gassed; marching with her sisters to the East where they were able to separate themselves from Nazi marchers by hiding in a barn; being saved by Russian workers who allowed them to stay in their homes and because they had no numbers on their arms and could speak Russian; working in the fields until the Russians liberated them; registering in Germany to go to the United States after the war; opening a business in Phoenix, AZ; and having four children.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Tennenbaum

    Oral history interview with Agnes Tennenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Larry Weidenbaum

    Oral history interview with Larry Weidenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Willinger

    Oral history interview with Magda Willinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Al Wulc

    Oral history interview with Al Wulc

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bertha Wulc

    Oral history interview with Bertha Wulc

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Blanch Robin

    Oral history interview with Blanch Robin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gertie Blau

    Oral history interview with Gertie Blau

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lillian Feigen

    Oral history interview with Lillian Feigen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nancy Fordonski

    Oral history interview with Nancy Fordonski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gisella Fry

    Oral history interview with Gisella Fry

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shirley Lebovitz

    Oral history interview with Shirley Lebovitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marion Katzman

    Oral history interview with Marion Katzman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Radasky

    Oral history interview with Frieda Radasky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Radasky

    Oral history interview with Solomon Radasky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Maria Segal

    Oral history interview with Maria Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Silver

    Oral history interview with David Silver

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Smilovic

    Oral history interview with Leo Smilovic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Risa Stillman

    Oral history interview with Risa Stillman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Adele Weisman

    Oral history interview with Adele Weisman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Weisman

    Oral history interview with Paul Weisman

    Oral History

    View All 74 Items in the Collection