Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Rosenberg

Oral History | Digitized | RG Number: RG-50.232.0086

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 Elizabeth Rosenberg
    Transcript
    This is an interview between Mrs. Harry Rosenberg
    of Claremont, New Hampshire now residing
    in Florida by Ted Belsky of the Oral History Center at AIC.
    It's being held in Mrs. Rosenberg's home in Claremont
    on this 30th day of June, 1984.
    We are doing it for the Holocaust Project
    of the Springfield Federation.
    Mrs. Rosenberg, I want to thank you
    for making yourself available for this interview,
    and based on our conversation that we've already
    had around the table, I'm definitely
    looking forward to it.
    Mrs. Rosenberg, before we talk about your years
    and how you survived in Holland during 1940 through 1945,
    I'd like to find out a little bit about yourself
    and your family.
    Could you begin by telling me what was life like in Cologne
    when you were growing up?
    Life in Cologne seemed, in comparison to what took place
    later on, totally normal.
    My father was in business.
    My mother was a housewife.
    I grew up in a very orderly household.
    I went to school at the-- first to kindergarten and then
    to a Catholic grade school.
    In Germany, it was customary to go to a grade school
    in walking distance.
    I actually did not realize that I was Jewish at that time.
    My father was born in Germany, I believe
    in the fifth generation, a very proud German indeed.
    In fact, he had a decoration from first World War, the Iron
    Cross 1st Class, of which he was extremely proud
    and also later on kept me in high school
    for reasons of his decoration.
    And I might smile a little bit at this,
    knowing the things that happened afterwards,
    but life was totally normal.
    And we proceeded until 1929, when my parents sought
    a divorce, and then life became a little unsettled for me,
    personally.
    My mother went to work.
    My father kept residing in Cologne.
    I lived with family and assorted friends.
    Unfortunately, one of the people was politically--
    that I lived with was politically very, very active
    in Cologne.
    He was the editor of a social democratic newspaper
    and was persecuted very severely already
    in the early beginnings of Hitler, and that consequently--
    I was removed from that household,
    and then I was sent to Belgium to live with my grandparents
    in 1933.
    My mother then was thinking of remarrying,
    and it was a good time to be away
    with all the unrest in Germany, to be away from Germany,
    and to have a different environment.
    And my grandparents took me in.
    I went to school in Liege and stayed there
    until mid 19-- or the end of 1933,
    when I returned to Cologne to a different type of household,
    my mother finally being settled in a new marriage
    with a stepfather that I really adored, and into this marriage
    came a son of the stepfather, who was married prior
    to this marriage to my mother.
    However, the stepfather remained with us for a very short time,
    and consequently, in 1934, I believe,
    immigrated with his mother to Australia.
    We have lost contact for a long, long time,
    but just about 10 years ago we got in contact with each other.
    He is living in Brisbane.
    He is a lawyer, has four children,
    and for the longest time we've tried
    to get together but unsuccessfully so far.
    Can you remember any of your childhood friends?
    Can you remember some special events at school that
    were important to you, that--
    I certainly can, and returning in 1933,
    as I mentioned before, to Cologne,
    I was entered into high school.
    I spoke fluently French, to the amazement
    of our French teacher, and I met two girls
    that I'm still in contact with.
    And we found-- we went to camp together.
    We spend a lot of time.
    In fact, we were inseparable in those days.
    And coincidentally, I just--
    about four years ago we found each other back
    after having lost track in 1938.
    We did not know that any of us had survived
    and, through a strange coincidence,
    found our way to each other, one of the girls
    living now in Connecticut and the other one
    in Fort Worth, Texas.
    And it seemed like the 40 years vanished.
    We have a wonderful contact.
    We see each other on every possible occasion,
    and this is the childhood friendship
    that remains most vivid in my mind from the days in Germany.
    High school was very traumatic inasmuch that we were just
    a handful of girls whose father had gone through World War I
    and were allowed into a non-Jewish school.
    However, some of the teachers who were members of the party
    were very mean to us, I would almost say,
    and the grades were consequently not always the finest,
    depending on their political outlook.
    And in Easter 1938 it finally had come to the point
    that we had to leave school and had to either seek employment
    somewhere or go to an all-Jewish school, which
    I did for a few months.
    It was very difficult to go to a Jewish school
    because the children at that time
    had many, many years of Jewish training, which--
    I had none, not in a Jewish school.
    And at the end of the first semester,
    it was very obvious that I could not maintain myself
    in the Jewish school, but we already at that time
    had visions and were searching for a way out of Germany.
    For months I had at home heard very, very strong desire
    to go into different parts of the world.
    One was South Africa.
    In fact, we also--
    I was thinking of emigrating with some friends
    to Bombay, India, but my mother didn't want to let me go alone.
    There were thoughts of different countries of America,
    but we didn't have a sponsor.
    We did not know anybody at that time who had come to America
    and give us the proper affidavit of support.
    And the only way that we really could get out of Germany
    was by the mere fact that my mother
    was a Dutch-- born Dutch and married a German in 1921
    but had become a German citizen.
    Now, the question was, how was she
    going to become a Dutch citizen again?
    Before I ask you to continue about that sequence of how you
    were able to, along with your mother, go to Holland,
    flee to Holland and avoid the discrimination
    and the pressures that were going on in Germany,
    could you tell me a little bit about your mother's background,
    about her family, about herself, her own years in Holland,
    perhaps?
    Well, my mother was born in Maastricht, Holland,
    which is a small town not far from the German border.
    And when she was a very young girl her mother died of cancer,
    and consequently, her father got remarried to a Belgian widow,
    also with a daughter of six years my mother's junior.
    The stepmother was not very much older than my mother,
    and it seemed my mother was sort of in the way.
    And it was seen to it that my mother
    was sent to what they call a pensionnat, which is Lausanne,
    Switzerland.
    You could call it now a school where young girls--
    it's like a finishing school where young girls learned
    how to cook.
    And my mother at that time was 17,
    and it was very advantageous for her stepmother
    to get her out of the way and have a household
    with her own daughter.
    And my mother really did not want to return to that
    household, was invited to Cologne
    to an aunt's, and the aunt consequently fixed up
    a marriage with my father, who was 15 years her senior who was
    very handsome and was very anxious to marry an 18-year-old
    girl with a dowry in guilders since Germany at that time--
    the mark was devaluated, and this is how
    this marriage was consummated.
    It wasn't a marriage of love, I would say, and therefore
    resulted in divorce six or seven years later.
    What about your mother's marriage to your stepfather?
    You said that you became quite close with your stepfather.
    How did they meet?
    My mother and my stepfather knew each other socially even
    during the marriage of my parents,
    and I think my stepfather had a very unhappy marriage as well.
    And it was a very unusual situation
    in those days compared to today that a divorce
    in this type of milieu was even thought about.
    But everybody tells me now that my mother was very unhappy,
    and she felt she'd rather go to work than stay with my father.
    And of course it was very upsetting to my grandparents
    on both sides.
    And my parents got married--
    my stepfather married my mother after he got his divorce.
    I was extremely fond of him.
    He was a very cultured man, a very bright man,
    a man who cared greatly about me, and I remained close to him
    until his death.
    And I was very fond of him, and actually, I was very pleased
    because I was very little in contact with my father
    after the divorce.
    It was a occasional Saturday afternoon.
    But being an older man and having a little girl
    come Saturday afternoon to visit,
    he really didn't know how to handle that.
    So he took me to the movies or for ice cream,
    but it was difficult for him to handle a little girl
    at this particular point when he was
    trying to make a life for himself
    and looking also to get remarried.
    And sometimes I was confronted to see him
    with his girlfriend or--
    I always had the feeling, in this case,
    I was a bit in the way because it was awkward for a single man
    to be saddled with a little girl, so to speak.
    What did your stepfather do?
    How did he earn a living?
    What kind of a life did you, your mother, he,
    and your stepbrother share?
    My father was the heir to a haute couture clothing
    store, very large, that was existing in Cologne.
    There were branches in Frankfurt and Berlin.
    The firm is known in Germany.
    It was founded by my stepfather's father and mother,
    and he was active in the business.
    And after the marriage, my mother was very active.
    In fact, during the years of the-- during the divorce,
    she worked in stores in this type of situation
    in order to prepare herself to work in the business
    that she would marry into.
    It was one of the finest clothing stores in Cologne,
    strictly made-to-order, a huge corner complex
    that I have recently visited.
    Unfortunately, the corner is still standing,
    but it's no longer the same store that it once was.
    But people in Cologne even today remember the name [INAUDIBLE]
    with great reverence.
    And as I said, the years with my stepbrother were very short,
    and I remember really only parts of it, going on vacation
    to a seaside resort.
    I remember very vividly during our stay
    in Cologne wonderful vacations in Switzerland.
    We had sort of intended, if all would
    have gone according to plan, to emigrate to Switzerland
    at one point.
    But the Swiss were very hesitant to take in German refugees.
    My father had gotten some money out to Switzerland, but he--
    the permit to reside in Switzerland was never given.
    It would have been very difficult.
    So the Swiss dream was very short-lived.
    That was also on our agenda for possible immigration.
    We knew in 1936 already, since we
    saw on the store very often the signs of "Dirty Jew"
    and "Don't Buy in Jewish Stores" that our days in Cologne
    were numbered.
    Also, the employees started turning
    against [AUDIO OUT] and the customers
    in Cologne, which were high government officials,
    or became so, hesitated to buy from Jewish people.
    When your stepfather and your mother got married,
    Hitler was already in power.
    Yes, yes, just shortly--
    just about six months later.
    The Nuremberg laws were '35.
    Yes.
    To what extent could you watch your lifestyle change
    during that period?
    The Nuremberg laws actually were laws
    that meant that household help could no longer be Christian
    because they were afraid that the Christian or Aryan blood,
    so to speak, was being blemished by working
    in Jewish households.
    And the only thing I really remember
    is that our nice Christian help had to be let go,
    and we got a German girl to help us in the household.
    Your father and mother, stepfather and mother,
    must have had intensive conversations
    about their options.
    You had mentioned you're considering
    the possibility of going to South Africa, to India.
    What about themselves?
    Before 1938, had there been a debate in the family?
    Constantly.
    It was constantly a debate because family members
    had already left.
    I had an aunt who left for Israel, which at that time
    was Palestine, and people left and right.
    Our friends were leaving, and there
    was-- this was a constant conversation and a very
    upsetting conversation, and various options
    were being considered.
    And also, at that particular time,
    it became very obvious that my mother had to regain back
    her Dutch citizenship because, after the options
    of other countries were sort of exhausted,
    we thought the most logical way would
    be to emigrate to Holland since my mother spoke
    Dutch, since she had distant relatives in Holland,
    was familiar, the only problem remaining
    that my father was German and my mother was German.
    And how are we going to go about going to Holland?
    And somehow the thought came of a fake divorce,
    and it was arranged in such a way
    that my mother would have my father followed by a lawyer
    so that a divorce could come about.
    And at that time, if you got a divorce from a German,
    you could regain your citizenship
    of the former years, which meant, since I was a minor
    and my mother had then successfully
    regained her Dutch citizenship, that we
    could leave Germany and go to Holland in a sort
    of legitimate, orderly fashion.
    But that did not solve the problem for my father.
    Your papers at this time--
    would your papers-- would your mother's papers
    have indicated your Jewishness?
    In other words, to what degree were you able to-- your mother
    and yourself able to escape that--
    trapped within the Jewish registration?
    The minute my mother obtained her Dutch passport,
    there was no indication of Jewishness on this passport.
    The Dutch did not issue any papers of a religion.
    However, at that point, my father
    had gotten a German passport, and the letter J
    was affixed to it as well as on mine.
    So we were sort of already set apart.
    As a minor with a German passport
    I could leave with my mother, but my father could not
    leave legitimately any longer.
    So he had classmates of all the years in Germany
    who knew our plight, and it was discussed at home
    very frequently how this would take place,
    that he could leave illegitimately, clandestine,
    over the border and join us.
    There were a couple of other problems and that was,
    how do we get a permit--
    it was a residence permit--
    in Holland?
    The minute my mother got her Dutch papers back and her
    passport, she was able to travel back and forth to Holland
    and made the acquaintance of the mayor of a very small border
    town called [PLACE NAME] How she made the acquaintance and how
    she got a hold of him--
    that must have been by some type of recommendation.
    And we could only go to this place
    where my father could get a permit to reside,
    and this is where my mother and I traveled to by train.
    This was not without problems either.
    We were searched on the border for jewelry,
    and we could only take very little money.
    And my father consequently, two days later,
    left Cologne with a friend who had arranged
    an escape over the border.
    And just before he had reached that border the friend said,
    give me all the things you have on you,
    valuables, money, and as you cross the border
    and come to the other side, you will receive everything back,
    but I don't want you to get caught
    with all these things on you.
    Well, the friend was never seen, and my father
    didn't have enough money to call us.
    We had already reached Cologne, and we never
    heard from him for days.
    He walked to [PLACE NAME] Was penniless.
    And then we settled into [PLACE NAME]
    for quite a few months.
    There were others from Germany who
    were in [PLACE NAME] It was quite
    a settlement of German Jews because this mayor was
    very kind.
    And eventually, since we had a shortage of money,
    we had to look to see how life would be further.
    And my mother traveled to The Hague
    and got a very good position in a very fine ladieswear store
    in The Hague, where she resided.
    But that didn't mean that my father and I could come,
    so we stayed along for quite a while
    until we got a permit to reside in The Hague as well.
    And then we moved into an apartment in The Hague,
    and those were really-- that was 1939,
    and those were-- it was a happiest year of being
    together, seemingly free, and with normalcy
    resumed to some extent.
    For some reason or other family helped,
    and my parents opened a little business,
    also made-to-order clothing in The Hague.
    However, my father could only work behind the scenes.
    My mother officially worked the store.
    My father never got a work permit in Holland.
    But did he have official papers at all for Holland?
    No, no.
    He just had the German passport.
    So the threat was always that even if the Holland
    officials identified him, even they might return him to--
    No, no, because they knew-- the Dutch people at that time
    knew that we came with passports.
    So did I. And eventually, we had hoped,
    if things would have stayed the way we had hoped they would
    stay, that we would become Dutch citizens, which
    was very much thought about.
    It might have taken five years, but that was our aim,
    to remain in Holland and become that citizen, which
    would have been faster for me, being a child of a Dutch mother
    and from my father.
    The work permit was another matter.
    It's a small country, and people came in droves from Germany.
    And it was very difficult to find work for everybody,
    so they were not too generous with work permits,
    and it was some sort of behind-the-scenes.
    And it was a little degrading for my father.
    I found it very sad for him, very sad because his wife had
    to make the living and her daughter
    was not in a position to help out officially.
    One of the questions that raised in my mind--
    weren't there any of his German friends?
    He and his family had such an established reputation
    within Germany.
    Wasn't there any of his circle of German business people
    that offered to help, to intervene, to do something
    during this period when it was so clear
    that his ability to survive in Germany was coming to an end?
    Well, if you are referring to the Christian population,
    I think at that time the scare tactics
    had taken a hold in such a way that the slightest contact was
    becoming difficult for the Christian population as well.
    And by 1936, '37, people really couldn't
    trust their own families.
    If they were the same as in my school days
    when Christian girls were talking during the recess,
    it was frowned upon.
    And even when people befriended us in Germany,
    it was done very hush-hush because everything was geared
    to, you have to belong to the party,
    and you have to hate the Jews, and you shouldn't
    have association with Jews.
    So the association with Christians by and large--
    there were even friends from school who began to stay away.
    People in the store, employees of long standing,
    became frightened of consequences in those days.
    We're almost at the end of this side of the tape.
    Before I let us go on and talk about Holland
    after the German invasion, what was it like for yourself?
    As a adolescent, young lady going
    through this traumatic experience
    of being forced to flee to Holland,
    it must have been extremely unsettling.
    You had left your girlhood friends.
    And I also had left the school long ahead of graduation
    from high school.
    I really was a sophomore, and leaving the school--
    having to leave the school I should really say--
    was traumatic in itself.
    But I felt, as long as I was able to leave with my family--
    and I certainly was old enough to realize why
    I was leaving with my family--
    things seemed fine.
    It was very difficult in a country
    where I had to learn the language
    to establish a contact with any girls my age.
    In those days, you look for girl friends
    and didn't become aware of boys.
    I felt very left-out, very alone,
    and really associated more with adults,
    and my parents had made some friends,
    and some relatives were in Holland as well.
    But I felt very lonely being an only child
    to start with and contact with other people around me
    because in Holland they were not looking for people--
    it was very-- let me put it this way.
    It was difficult for me to meet young people
    because I did not enter school.
    When everybody was in school in Holland
    at age 15 and I was not--
    I helped a little bit in the store
    when the store was opened, but that
    was about the only contact I had with people.
    And that was a very strange period.
    But it became a little bit easier
    after we lived in our home, our apartment in The Hague.
    There was a girl in the neighborhood
    I started talking to.
    It just became eased a bit when--
    All the sudden in May--
    --all of a sudden, May 1940 came about.
    I'm going to turn the tape over, even though it
    isn't quite at the end, and we'll
    start fresh on the other side.
    --the Hague, your mother, your father living in The Hague.
    What else happened during this period
    that might be of interest?
    One of the most pleasurable events
    during the very lonely year of getting
    accustomed to a new language was a visit from an old boyfriend,
    I should say, not old in years but some of long standing,
    from Cologne, who is my husband presently
    and has been for 38 years.
    He had to leave Germany after the Crystal Night
    and had a permit to go to England
    and, on the way, stopped in The Hague to see us
    and stayed with us for several days.
    That was really a wonderful event for me
    and brought us closer together and also
    established later on our contact many years later
    and led to a marriage in 1946.
    And it obviously was a great period for your husband
    as well.
    Exactly, exactly, childhood sweethearts
    who saw each other back, and it was a wonderful highlight
    of the year 1939, where I had so little contact
    with young people.
    September of '39 was the invasion of Poland.
    May of '40 was the invasion of Holland.
    Were you still living in The Hague at the time
    that the German invasion of Holland
    and the overrunning of the Low Countries took place?
    Yes, very much so.
    We lived in our apartment.
    We seemed settled, at last.
    And one morning we woke up at 5:00,
    and German airplanes overran The Hague in innumerable masses
    and flying as low as cars go through streets.
    There was absolutely nothing to stop them.
    And any military installation was laid flat
    in order to scare the Dutch people
    and bring them to their feet.
    History, it is known that Rotterdam
    was bombarded heavily.
    We stood on the roof of our apartment house
    and saw Rotterdam burn.
    Holland capitulated, and the Germans overran, consequently,
    Belgium and France, and history will
    tell the rest of the story.
    It was a very upsetting time for us,
    but we really didn't know where to go.
    And we did not intend to go anywhere
    and were sort of on a holding pattern until September
    of 1940, when there was talk that the British might land
    in France, Belgium, or Holland, which unfortunately didn't
    take place until much later on.
    And the Germans were aware that they had Jews and enemies
    in Holland by all of the German Jews who had emigrated,
    and they felt they had to deal with this problem
    in the coastal area, which meant,
    again, a very unsettling situation for us in as much
    as we had immediately to leave the coastal area, meaning
    my father and myself with the German passports.
    Well, we knew very few people in Holland,
    and due to some contact [INAUDIBLE] was helpful,
    we found a place in [PLACE NAME] Holland, inland,
    away from the coastal areas where people,
    Dutch Jewish people, took me in.
    I served as a girl in the house, a girl Friday.
    I helped out.
    I stayed there for quite a number
    of months, a lovely, lovely family whom I have visited
    many times since the war.
    Unfortunately, they lost their son to the Germans.
    This was a Dutch family?
    A Dutch Jewish family.
    And my father got a room away from The Hague,
    too, in the nearby community, and my mother
    could remain in The Hague and pursue her business
    and came to visit us occasionally
    on a weekend when she could get away.
    So again, I was away from Home, alone,
    in a completely new environment, this time really strange
    because nobody spoke German, totally different backgrounds,
    very difficult situation to fit into a completely different
    type of family milieu.
    And those were very difficult times.
    I've tried to talk to these people
    about what would face them if Hitler really
    would get a foothold in Holland, and they
    thought, we fabricate the horror stories coming from Germany.
    They really did not want to hear what I had to say.
    We were sort of in the ostrich policy type of life.
    And they had lived in Holland for many generations as well
    and couldn't believe what was eventually facing them, too,
    and we had told them about it.
    How long were you living with this family?
    The registration-- the required registration of the Jews,
    I believe, took place in January of '41.
    So I left The Hague in September '40,
    and I believe, at that time, the Germans made us stateless,
    and I had already a stateless passport.
    I don't exactly remember the date that that occurred.
    In 1941, mid '41, we could no longer
    stay in small towns along many part of Holland.
    We had to sort of find a place in the major cities.
    This was already in lieu of having
    us closer together and having us in one position
    that the grip could tighten on us.
    And at that point, I had an aunt in the small town.
    I found I was getting acquainted.
    Again I went a little bit to school.
    I took French lessons.
    And again, this was cut off, and I
    had to seek a family in Amsterdam
    to take me in as well.
    Meanwhile, my father had also-- who also emigrated in 1937,
    already ahead of us, lived in Amsterdam,
    and I was able to visit him occasionally in Amsterdam.
    But this was a very short-lived period
    because the Germans had different things in mind
    for us.
    There was the anecdote about your natural father
    and his attempt to live within the ground rules
    in declaring his valuables, that type of thing.
    Would you mind sharing that?
    My father absolutely was already very cautious,
    I would say, coming from Germany.
    He had taken and taken illegally a very valuable postage stamp
    collection with him because you could only come with 10 marks
    to Holland.
    That was all allotted to us.
    And we felt that taking the stamp collection
    and selling it he would have money enough
    to establish himself a little bit in Holland,
    and that was done consequently.
    And he started a little manufacturing business.
    He was in the [INAUDIBLE] clothes manufacturing business.
    He was very frightened about it all, and when--
    one of the first orders of the German
    was, when we all were in Amsterdam,
    to bring our valuables to a bank,
    so-called Dutch bank called Lippmann, Rosenthal,
    and everybody said, well, we'll only take part of it.
    But my father saw to it that everything
    was bought because he never wanted
    to get-- if he should get caught,
    we never wanted to be in a position
    where they said you did something illegally.
    So he was already very frightened
    and trying to do the right thing, which
    backfired in the end anyway.
    In 1941, the crucial year that the German occupation
    went from tolerating, even though oppressing
    the Jewish population, to beginning the extermination
    and absolutely eliminating the civil liberties, any
    of the liberties of the Jewish population,
    how long were you able to stay in Amsterdam
    in relative freedom?
    Well, there was-- both my father and I
    decided that we don't quite want to go into hiding.
    However, my stepfather did at that point
    because he did not want to go to Amsterdam.
    He wanted to go to The Hague, where my mother was residing.
    You have to understand that it wasn't a real divorce,
    but they were married people.
    And he wanted to be closer to her
    but could not officially go to The Hague
    but choose a hiding place near my mother in The Hague.
    So I said goodbye to him the moment
    we left the small country town of [PLACE NAME]
    And he said, well, I don't think it's very wise for a young girl
    to go in hiding.
    You will never stand it.
    We don't know how long the occupation will last.
    He was very optimistic.
    And I think I'm older already and I can stand it,
    so I will go in hiding now.
    And I remember saying goodbye to him
    at the train station, and of course I never saw him again.
    I went to Amsterdam, again to other people,
    staying there, until, in '41, I got the official notification
    to report for so-called "work" in Germany.
    And having come from Germany, I knew it spelled something else
    than work in Germany.
    And I then got in contact with a doctor
    that we were friendly with and I knew of,
    and I begged him to find some type of means to place me
    in a hospital, a Jewish hospital,
    because I couldn't even think that the Germans would touch
    sick people in a hospital.
    He was very cooperative, and he immediately
    saw to it that I was accepted or, rather, admitted
    to a hospital.
    And I stayed in this hospital for almost six months,
    totally healthy, in bed and slightly out of bed but very
    weakened by this type of thing.
    And he came, actually, very often
    to see me so it would be not obvious that I was not
    really sick.
    There was a very traumatic happening,
    too, at that hospital, aside from being sick in bed.
    I had then thought--
    with the few remaining things we had
    and having a boyfriend whose parents
    had kept a few pieces of jewelry,
    we had thought of a way of escaping.
    And by buying-- there were people
    who were very interested in helping us to escape
    to Switzerland, and that was done by,
    please give us your jewels and money,
    and we will show you the way.
    Well, when I was in the hospital this friend tried to tell me--
    he assured, you'll get out, I'll get you out of here,
    and we will escape together.
    And having turned over all my belongings to him,
    this was the last I saw of him.
    He turned to the belongings over to the proper
    he thought [BOTH TALKING} The people took the belongings
    and betrayed him, and I've never seen him again.
    How long were you-- you said about four months.
    I think four to six months.
    And then it became very evident that the Germans didn't
    stop at anything and took the sick
    and came into nursing homes, came into hospitals,
    and nursing homes not so much because the nursing homes
    weren't official.
    But a Jewish hospital in the center of Amsterdam
    was a target.
    And due to this friend, I was in contact also
    with the Dutch underground, and they were very, very helpful.
    And one night the Germans came, and there
    was a lot of commotion.
    I could hear it since I was well.
    I was well-aware what the occupation was,
    not just to visit the sick but to take them on stretchers
    and take them out of the operating room.
    They took them--
    Yes.
    --out the table.
    I jumped out of the window without anything, and somehow--
    how I cannot recollect-- the underground stood nearby,
    knowing exactly what the method was and when it was going
    to happen.
    They had feelers out everywhere.
    They took a hold of me and placed me immediately
    in a nursing home, which was unknown to the Germans,
    and this is where I remained for quite a few months.
    Are we at the end of 1941, the beginning of 1942?
    Yes, yes, we are.
    The first shipment of Jews out of Holland to Germany,
    as you had suggested, had already begun,
    some sent to their deaths, from the beginning of '41.
    By the beginning of '42, the planned operation
    was starting to be imposed.
    How long were you able to stay in the nursing home?
    Because at some point that German attempt
    to eliminate the Jewish population in Holland--
    '42 is the year that--
    Correct.
    And it was impossible to stay in the nursing home.
    It was impossible to stay in Amsterdam because it
    had gotten to the point--
    first of all, I forgot to mention to you
    that prior to going to the hospital
    we had a curfew in Amsterdam.
    We had to be home at 8:00 so that they knew at all times
    where you were.
    They had complete files on everybody, and they also--
    we were wearing the Jewish star.
    And to maintain yourself with a Jewish star,
    in and out of the hospital-- it didn't matter--
    you were a target at any moment to be arrested,
    shot at, or whatever.
    So this whole period in Amsterdam
    had to come to an end.
    You could not stay in Amsterdam, walk the streets,
    or any of this sort of thing.
    The main object at this point in my life
    was to have false papers that I could
    take the Jewish star off my clothing
    and become somebody else.
    And that was a very difficult way to do--
    and at that point, the underground
    was unable to help me.
    But since my mother was still in The Hague
    and had some contacts there, she found
    somebody I had befriended for a very short time,
    a half Jewish girl who had Christian friends in The Hague,
    and she prevailed upon her to do what
    she could to steal identification papers from,
    which was done in a very odd way.
    This particular girl went to an indoor pool,
    and while the girls were swimming,
    they had cabins where they left their clothes,
    their pocketbooks, and their belongings,
    stole from her best friend an identification card which
    served me for four years.
    I became-- instead of Liesel Kaufmann
    I became Lydia [? Smith. ?] And I can, to this day,
    remember where I was born, when I was born.
    There was just one flaw--
    her picture was on the identification and not mine.
    An underground stepped in there.
    The stamp was peeled off in the back.
    My picture was inserted.
    Another flaw-- his fingerprints were never--
    my fingerprints will never be those of Lydia [? Smith, ?]
    and that was a difficulty inasmuch
    as the Germans were so well-organized already
    in '42 that all our identities were on microfilm
    in a building in The Hague, stored.
    But if they would find me as Lydia [? Smith ?] and have any
    doubt of looks or whatever that I'm not Lydia [? Smith, ?] they
    immediately could find out by looking into these files who I
    really am.
    Now, the Allies were told many, many times by the underground
    where that building was, where those microfilms were stored--
    they tried unsuccessfully many times
    to bombard this particular building in The Hague.
    Half the neighborhood went, but unfortunately the building
    remained until the end of the war.
    It was very strange.
    So this was the beginning of my really going underground.
    Once I had this picture with this identification
    in the hand, I traveled with the help of my mother
    into the nursing home.
    My father had already--
    my stepfather had already been arrested,
    which is another story.
    And she came, and I took off the star.
    And she saw [INAUDIBLE].
    I want to ask immediately about your going into hiding,
    some of the details there.
    But how much mobility did your mother have at this time?
    She still had mobility.
    In fact, she had so much mobility she
    was able to visit my father while he
    was in hiding in The Hague.
    Unfortunately, he was not careful enough,
    and he was seen by neighbors who apparently
    were in need of money.
    And for money to betray a Jew was a thing
    that was very much growing.
    There were people, even in Holland, my dear Dutch people,
    who were very sympathetic to the Germans
    and needed their support and money.
    And for a Jew's life there was a very high price.
    And my father-- the Gestapo came,
    and unfortunately, my mother was present,
    being divorced and having another name.
    She saw the Gestapo coming.
    She saw them taking my father away.
    And they asked her, who are you?
    She was a stranger, and she was not involved.
    And she was left behind.
    And having been witness to this and consequently knowing
    the fate, she was very determined
    to save me from the same fate.
    And mobility as far as hiding was concerned was non-existent.
    The only time that there was the slightest bit of movement
    was when both my stepfather as well as my father were arrested
    and there were dangers of Germans questioning them
    as to other relatives in hiding.
    I am impressed that you were able to contact the underground
    so successfully.
    What was-- how could the underground make themselves
    known to you from your position of hiding
    and still protect their own security from the Germans?
    The underground was everywhere.
    They somehow were in contact with us
    and even were able at the very beginning
    to supply us with ration cards, interestingly enough.
    It was a network that was incredible.
    The underground were not just underground.
    They were Dutch people that knew exactly--
    somehow they had knowledge of what
    the Germans were about to do.
    It was very different than from Germany
    because they had so many enemies in Holland
    that they had their ears and eyes wide open
    and were very interested in helping us every which way they
    could.
    It was incredible, the help we received from Dutch people.
    People who were helpful to me, personally, lost their own son.
    They were Christians, and their son
    answered a call for work in Germany
    when they needed people in Germany.
    And everybody was in the army already,
    and unfortunately their work was [INAUDIBLE],,
    and never came back, and they saved me.
    It was very tragic to see this happening,
    that the Dutch people lost their own people and saved us.
    And you can't call it that everybody
    was part of the underground.
    Most everybody in Holland was underground inasmuch
    that they spied on the Germans and knew
    what the next day would bring or what they had planned
    for us as a Final Solution.
    This family that took you in-- and I take it this association
    with the family went down for some time, went down--
    am I right?
    This is the family that you lived with till liberation?
    Or is there a gap--
    Not all the time.
    There was a time after my father was arrested
    that I had to be placed somewhere else because there
    was a whole situation where the Germans placed
    Jewish people in-- there was a transport
    camp by the name of Westerbork and Vught
    in Holland, where people were held ready for transport
    to Auschwitz or places in the east.
    And prior to even going to Westerbork
    they had so many people in hand that they--
    in these camps.
    These detention camps couldn't handle it all.
    So some of the Jews were held in prisons around Holland.
    And they've shipped people out, and other people they held
    in the prisons that when Jewish people came
    into prisons with other prisoners
    they said to them, for instance, do you have any relatives still
    that are in hiding?
    When we get out, if we get out, can we
    give them messages, for instance,
    from you, how you are feeling, how you're feeling?
    And would you like some clothing sent to the camps?
    What can we tell your children, parents, brothers, or sisters?
    These were people placed by the Germans in prisons,
    and somehow we were aware of this happening.
    And when this particular person said, well,
    I have a daughter who is still in hiding in such and such
    a place, the Germans immediately had a whole other part
    of the family that they could take prisoners.
    The underground was very, very much aware of this,
    so each time a member of my family was seized
    and that was known, these names were known--
    I cannot tell you.
    The network was incredible.
    But when my father was arrested, the next day we knew it.
    The underground knew and took me from one place to the next,
    that there would be no succession of arrests.
    And then I lived for a whole while
    until the underground knew my father was on transport
    from Vught to Auschwitz--
    at that time, we didn't know the name "Auschwitz--" to the east
    until I could return to the original hiding place.
    This occurred two or three times during those years,
    that I was shifted for safety's sake.
    Or there were other incidences where people were tortured
    until they gave names away of large other families.
    My father was arrested in a very strange way in Amsterdam.
    He was actually-- he had all kinds of permits,
    but I had a cousin who was lonely--
    alone also without family in Amsterdam.
    And since everybody had to be at 8:00 at home,
    my father said, well, why don't you stay with me?
    It's so lonely for you.
    Consequently, my nephew-- or rather my cousin--
    stayed with his uncle, and according
    to the German dictates, that was not
    allowed because they wanted to get him a his place.
    So when the Germans came to arrest people downstairs
    in the apartment of my father, my nephew--
    my cousin woke up.
    And they say, well, how come there
    is somebody-- another voice?
    And that in itself prompted the Germans to arrest my father.
    That was enough of a reason to arrest my father,
    to have clandestine-- somebody else after 8:00 in his home.
    And then other things were rolled up,
    like, for instance, that he took--
    immediately found out that he took a valuable stamp
    collection, and he was really punished very badly
    for taking currency out of Germany.
    So he had a very difficult time to even maintain himself
    for any length of time in the Holland detention camp.
    We're coming once again to the end this side of the tape,
    and what I'd like to do is we'll stop now and take
    a small break.
    And then we'll go on to a new tape.
    Mrs. Rosenberg, as we were finishing up the last tape,
    I was starting to ask you about what your life was
    like living in hiding in Haarlem after you had to really go
    into complete hiding.
    Well, I felt at first very secure
    because I had the passport.
    But soon, I realized, it's very superficial.
    And even in The Hague, where I was in hiding,
    there was house-to-house search.
    The same thing continued on for the Jewish people
    even though they were less mobile and seen on the street.
    But the Germans were very much aware
    that people had gone underground.
    And there were sometimes the Germans
    came house to house searching.
    They'd go for double closets and other things like that.
    So I knew that my safety was just very temporary.
    And I was convinced that it was a very short duration.
    And since the war didn't seem to come to an end,
    and the Germans were gaining more and more,
    I was very desperate.
    I wasn't totally aware of what I had perceived.
    But I had a friend of mine's radio.
    And so I couldn't remove planks in the floor.
    And I knew when the BBC was broadcasting news.
    And I remember distinctly in '41,
    when Churchill spoke of the plight of the Jews
    in the slaughterhouses in the East.
    So we knew what would be expected
    and, going in transport, what we would end up
    in the Third Reich's [INAUDIBLE]..
    So there wasn't much [INAUDIBLE] left.
    It became more and more of a wrath.
    And people that were sent on transports were never heard.
    My question remains of the four years that I was in hiding.
    If the British were that well-informed
    of what's going on in those so-called slaughterhouses,
    why wasn't the train, equipped with bombs
    and the track on which these trains traveled night
    after night from Holland, Belgium, and France,
    cattle car that were rolling into the East,
    why weren't those tracks bombarded?
    True, answers might have been they can't spare a plane.
    They needed it to bombard Poland or other very important
    targets.
    But this would have saved maybe not six million Jews,
    but at least three million Jews because the means
    of transportation was strictly by cattle car
    over these tracks.
    Well, in that same vein, the figures
    that I have for the Jewish community in Haarlem
    is that at the beginning of the occupation,
    including those Jews like yourself
    who had fled from Germany into Holland, that there
    was as many as 140,000.
    And it is estimated that 20,000 were able to survive.
    So that's a lot of human lives.
    I think those estimates are correct because the Germans
    kept their own absolutely meticulous records of who
    survived and who was killed--
    rather who was killed and then who'd
    [INAUDIBLE] the consequences.
    But Holland was particularly hard hit,
    even though the Dutch were wonderful in their cooperation
    to help us.
    Would you follow that up by telling me
    a little bit about one of the key families that brought you
    into their house and allowed you to stay there
    over time in hiding?
    In other words, what was that family like?
    They were a family with three boys.
    And the boys were of an age that they could not really
    be told of my presence because they didn't on purpose tell
    in school, we have all of a sudden somebody living
    there who never goes out, never puts on a light,
    never goes to the bathroom, never eats.
    So in other words, it had to be done very quietly,
    without knowledge of the children.
    They wouldn't have understood what the danger would
    have been if my presence would have been
    known to others but the couple who
    were responsible for my safety.
    The various hiding places I had were [INAUDIBLE] small, a bed,,
    no bathroom.
    I remember, to this day, means of washing
    were practically nonexistent.
    But a basin was brought in occasionally.
    I didn't have a mirror.
    I didn't know what I looked like.
    And means of going to a bathroom were in front of a green vase.
    And that was emptied out at night.
    Oh, it varied from place to place.
    Some places that I was in hiding were a little bit more
    luxuriously as this place.
    The fear, however, wherever the hiding place
    was, was incredible because any day, you could be arrested.
    There was a new twist came about.
    Not only did we hear the planes going every night.
    The rural airports going to Cologne right over The Hague
    was their flight pattern.
    But all of a sudden, there were new noises introduced to us.
    And since we couldn't see, or ask, or do anything--
    I'm talking about people in hiding in general.
    Sure.
    We heard this noise like thunder showers every day,
    but so severe that it was just shattering the windows
    and everything, which turned out the V-1 and V-2, which
    cleverly, the Germans shot out from moving vehicles.
    And why moving vehicles?
    Because they did not want the British bombs
    at a certain place.
    Hiding there.
    So every night, it was from a different street in The Hague.
    They were shot off, shot towards England from a different street
    so that the British never knew exactly where they originated.
    Sometimes, these things went up with a horrible noise
    and came right down again because there
    was some misfunction and came down on houses
    where people were hidden.
    And that's how some of the Jews were detected.
    Something was fired and burned broadly
    in the hands of the Germans.
    That was an additional fear that was not
    thought about until V-1 and V-2 came into existence.
    The day-to-day life in hiding consists of moving flags.
    By that I mean, the only thing I remember was a map on the wall.
    And as the Germans advanced into Russia,
    where they were located, we knew, from clandestine radio
    under the ground.
    So we knew exactly where what was.
    And the flags were moved consequently.
    And the more the Germans got in towards Leningrad,
    the more afraid we were we'd never survive.
    That was one part that kept me busy.
    But other parts kept me busy.
    In the beginning, it was very interesting to get
    a lot of books that were supplied to me by other people
    and by various means.
    It was wonderful to read.
    But in the wintertime, it got dark at 4:00 or 5 o'clock,
    and since I couldn't put a light on ever,
    and the windows were pasted with some type of a paper
    that you could not look out of, nor anybody could look in,
    after 5 o'clock, you could not do anything but sit around.
    And blankets weren't always sufficient.
    And you kept dreaming of windows with beautiful, big stuff
    that you never saw again.
    And generally speaking, it was a very, how should I say,
    inhuman existence.
    You saw sometimes animal life.
    I used to think of what was seen,
    and not breathing, and not walking.
    A girl who provided me with my papers
    was the only link to the outside world.
    And once in a while, if she could sneak in at night--
    she knew where I was, also through underground, this was.
    My only link to the outside world
    was her stories, what she was doing, and who she was dating.
    We were young girls.
    And that kept me like a book or novel, her escapades.
    And some of it, I think she made up just to keep me amused.
    It was a very unnatural, unbelievable existence
    for a young girl of those ages--
    oh, 20, 21, when you feel uneasy and you
    didn't know from day to day if you still would be there
    and what would take place.
    Would you mind trying to describe
    the physical surroundings of one of those rooms
    during this [INAUDIBLE]?
    And because I'm going to ask about
    how did they bring the food?
    Let me ask the questions in turn.
    First, can we begin with the room itself?
    The room was very sparsely furnished.
    There was a bed.
    And there were some shelves with books, what I remember.
    And there was another shelf with some type
    of little knickknacks.
    And that was it.
    There was nothing else, I mean, a window that was really
    pasted up with paper.
    And there was one short time I was--
    and my mother I spoke of before had a clothing store.
    Yeah.
    And upstairs was a sewing department,
    where the made-to-order clothes were made.
    And on top of that was an attic.
    I was there for a very short time.
    Of course, my mother could never see me
    because the work people came in and out.
    And they didn't know I was in the house.
    So when I was there, my mother at night would bring me food.
    But the food my mother had at that time was so minimal.
    And when the business ceased to do business,
    and nobody was really interested in buying clothes,
    she took all the cloth and everything in existence
    and exchanged it for rice, and potatoes,
    and cheeses so that she could survive
    and whatever she could spare for me as well.
    But I did in a very short time [INAUDIBLE] for long.
    There were various places.
    But by and large, I don't even remember walking the streets
    from one place to another because fresh air
    was something unheard of.
    And you couldn't open the window all the time
    because it was all too dangerous for the outside world.
    And as far as food was concerned, in the beginning,
    I remember, I had a ration card flagged by underground.
    But after a while, that was impossible too
    because the ration cards ceased to produce food
    for the inhabitants of town.
    And if you recall, after D-Day, that only half of Holland
    was liberated in 1944, there was a counteroffensive in 1944,
    the Battle of the Bulge.
    Yep.
    And the Allied troops were only able to get to Arnhem,
    for whom that famous book, A Bridge so Far.
    Sure.
    The bridge at Ramagan and so forth.
    So the bridge at Arnhem was where
    they were stopped on the northern part, where
    we were located at that time.
    It was the hardest winter, 1944-1945.
    The complete Dutch population was shut off
    from any food, any coal or means of heating possibility
    because there was half of Holland liberated and half not.
    That was the winter where I would
    say more people were killed than in the three years were prior--
    more suicides, more deaths from starvation,
    more deportation because people went mad from hunger
    and exposed themselves.
    Some went out to the streets and got really mentally deranged
    and got caught that way.
    That was, actually, the most scary winter.
    And I must confess, the last few months before liberation,
    I remember very little.
    I believe it was from October.
    I mean, I had lost weight, a tremendous amount.
    And sometimes, a quarter of a piece of bread a day
    was all that people could spare because they
    didn't get it themselves.
    And they lived on tulip bulbs cooked,
    sugar beet syrup that they extracted from sugar beets.
    Well, in details, they were incredible.
    And if you are a lot of the tulip bulbs,
    you got terribly [INAUDIBLE] was a hairy substance.
    But well, between the tulip bulbs and the sugar beet syrup,
    there was very little nourishment.
    Your communication with the family, somebody
    brought you whatever it was for that day there.
    Somebody had to take away that vase with the--
    Yes.
    --in the toilet.
    When they did, was there a chance for you
    to see another human face?
    Yes.
    I saw the family after the children were in bed.
    When I was with my mother, I saw my mother way after hours.
    And when I was placed in another household,
    yes, there was communication--
    very, very limited.
    It was, well, quietly, but hardly [INAUDIBLE] even we
    couldn't well converse.
    The girl who came to visit was really
    the one I conversed with.
    And she was with me whenever the kids were in school
    or when it was possible for her.
    She had contact with the people.
    And they knew exactly when she could come
    and when that wasn't possible.
    How in the world did you keep yourself occupied?
    How did you stop from going mad in all that isolation?
    That's a very good question.
    That's one of those questions that will never
    be answered because there was always
    that hope that the Germans would be stopped somewhere,
    that it had to end.
    It can't go on.
    It just lasted much longer than we
    thought was humanly possible.
    Of course, their whole advance in Russia
    sort of contradicted that hope.
    But then we never gave up the thought
    that the Allies would do raids from Belgium or France,
    somewhere.
    Yes.
    Of course, we were totally aware of the invasion
    in June of 1944.
    Was that because they had the radio?
    Yes.
    And we thought-- at that point, I personally
    was still in fairly good shape physically.
    I can't say in good shape because I was never
    in good shape from 1941 on.
    But at that time, I thought, well,
    another five days they'll overrun and we'll be free.
    The fact that it went for another year, that
    was the worst of all because during that year
    the worst transports for the worst betrayal came.
    People became more hungry and searched more
    for Jews who had money to get rewarded by the Germans.
    They're more desperate the harder it was on them.
    And also, the constant bombardment
    that the British tried to bombard unsuccessfully
    [INAUDIBLE] in The Hague was a [? mattress firm. ?]
    It was never, the target was never reached.
    But everything in the surrounding was bombarded.
    And I said, well, some day, we will even get the bombs out
    from our friends.
    There were so many factors that, actually, you were beyond fear.
    You knew it would end badly.
    And then you have these type of daydreams--
    when will I see my father back?
    Will I ever see him back?
    And what will he say?
    What will he be like?
    And will I see my cousin back?
    And I wonder who's going to be still living?
    It was a very weird type of thing.
    And you played games, Ouija board-like, where is this
    and where is that?
    I played with this girl on Ouija board.
    And the Ouija board answered.
    It became more type of a individual.
    Hallucinations were daily occupation.
    And dreaming of bakeries, dreaming up
    recipes, that was all we could think of-- food.
    And we were so hungry that it was a hallucinatory state.
    It really wasn't natural.
    And that's how it was.
    The hope from day to day, something had to come.
    It came, but very late, and much too late for many people.
    When liberation finally did, where were you?
    How did you know?
    Did you realize how close the Allied forces were?
    Did the Germans withdraw first?
    I really can't answer that.
    I only can answer that with what I have heard, not what I was.
    At that point, I was so weak, the only thing I
    really remember that there was a Canadian occupation force.
    I was on the list.
    I was in hiding.
    I remember doctors saying, well, I don't know.
    She looks awful small and yet very swollen from edema.
    I don't know if we can put this all together.
    It was all very, was vague.
    I knew we were free.
    But I didn't really believe I was alive.
    I had made it into freedom.
    Yeah.
    I knew I had made it to this day.
    But whether there was a future physically or mentally for me,
    I really didn't know.
    And after that, it was, well, am I
    going to see the members of my family?
    Is this really all true?
    Or did this all happen that they were killed?
    Then there are two recollections I have after liberation.
    One was that the Canadian troops were there,
    that there was a notice given of droppings from airplanes
    from the Red Cross with white bread and foodstuffs,
    which came never into our hands because the police who
    were supposed to surround those planes that landed
    were themselves so hungry, by the time that
    was supposed to be distributed, there was nothing left.
    The Canadians brought with them for the survivors vitamin-laden
    ration that we could not have because after being starved
    to such an extent--
    I think I was 65 pounds at that time--
    I would have eaten these things with lard
    on them or vitamin-laden crackers,
    I think that would have killed us right then and there.
    They were very kind.
    They gave us-- for instance, sugar
    was very important for female deprivation
    because as a woman, that turns into fat.
    And that puts together a natural thing for them.
    And they gave us cans with ham instead.
    And all the rich foods which we could not possibly digest--
    I'm sure.
    --that and also cigarettes was a very big thing.
    We needed cigarettes at that time.
    They could not even comprehend what we were looking for,
    for nice things.
    And then beyond that point, was the trains
    were coming back with a handful of survivors--
    people going to the train to see who was coming.
    And after that went on for a couple of weeks,
    we knew who was coming back and who wasn't.
    And when we began really to hear stories of what took place.
    And some of my friends came back who
    had worked as a prostitute to the German Army
    or the officers in Auschwitz.
    And then little by little, we really
    found out what we were taken from.
    Yeah.
    At what point do you remember feeling better?
    Do you remember not being just taken care of,
    but start planning your own future,
    starting to put your life together?
    That was, I would say, started more or less
    in the summer of that year.
    I got well.
    I think because [INAUDIBLE].
    And I got injections left and right, and calcium,
    and all possible things that were available to us
    not everything was available.
    But what was available, medically speaking,
    came our way.
    That was very well taken care of.
    Then came another factor.
    I got in touch with this friend who visited me in Holland.
    That was a very strange thing.
    After Pearl Harbor, our correspondence ceased.
    But I had an address in Claremont, New Hampshire.
    And the post office in Claremont, New Hampshire
    was kind enough to forward my letter,
    who was addressed to Claremont, informing him
    on the paper his mother was reading what I wrote,
    forward this to his sister in New York.
    He had left a forwarding address because he
    was then in the United States Navy and was serving in China.
    Of course, because he spoke German, they sent him to China,
    but that's a whole other story.
    And consequently, I and my now-sister-in-law saw to it
    that I got some clothes, some medicaments sent from New York.
    I also had an uncle whom I contacted
    in New York, who was a physician in New York
    and saw to it that things were sent.
    So slowly but surely, things normalized.
    Then what am I going to do with my life from that point on?
    That must have been August, September.
    I had very little schooling and a very traumatic few years
    behind me.
    And I decided I want to do something with my life.
    And I went to school to learn typing, and shorthand,
    and such.
    And I really was bound and determined to finally, instead
    of being sick which even at that point
    was difficult to get a job, and so forth, and so on.
    I was bound and determined to become a Dutch citizen, which
    incidentally, I never became because the correspondence
    with my husband ensued.
    And I had to have an affidavit of support.
    And I went to Sweden.
    And I recovered.
    And then eventually, that led me to the United States.
    But the year spent in Holland was
    spent really recovering, and working in office
    to get my skills perfected, and starting a seemingly normal
    life, and still having hope that my family would return,
    that there was a mistake made.
    At that time, we were not in possession of all the Red Cross
    documentation.
    That came much, much later.
    In fact, that didn't come till the late '40s into my hands,
    when I was already in the United States.
    So in the year that I was in Holland,
    there were still always we will hear.
    Maybe they escaped.
    And maybe they're in Russia.
    Or maybe these dreams kept reoccurring.
    It can't be.
    They are somewhere still.
    And maybe they are too weak till they get back
    on their feet to come for us.
    And maybe they don't know how to find us.
    And the hope stayed for a very, very long time.
    And really, every time there was news of someone,
    we hoped to hear it.
    The movies that came from then were not public knowledge
    either.
    That came much later.
    And a lot of people at that time worked for UNRRA.
    Yes.
    That's who occupied this all.
    And they were actually searching.
    Like the step-sister of my mother,
    who was in hiding in Belgium and was in a nunnery,
    she went immediately because she was very fluent in languages
    and went to UNRRA for a job to find people--
    well, really, that specific purpose
    to get to the Eastern European countries to search.
    And she enlisted first thing.
    When were you united with your mother?
    When did you see your mother again?
    Right after the war.
    Right after the war.
    She knew at all times.
    Since she was in a much better position, due to her Dutch
    papers--
    Yeah.
    --nobody really knew she was Jewish,
    she was only in semi-seclusion, but could be in contact
    indirectly.
    And she saw to it right after the war
    that I got proper and treated medically.
    And frankly speaking, she at that time
    needed much more medical care than I. Due to starvation,
    she had open sores.
    And she needed a gallbladder operation very urgently.
    There was already trouble with her spleen
    that they couldn't remove because penicillin
    wasn't available and proper medication wasn't available.
    And consequently, which is very tragic, that she survived
    the war, we were reunited.
    And she died of leukemia.
    And I would say, probably most of the [INAUDIBLE] leukemia
    originate.
    But the starvation might have paid a price.
    She died in [INAUDIBLE].
    And I thus did take care of her the last two years of her life
    here left on a visit.
    She knew that she had her last years left here.
    Mrs. Rosenberg, when did you come to the States
    and get together with your husband?
    That is a story one does not tell their children,
    but I will now.
    My now-husband urged me, then, to come to the United States
    and saw to it that I got the affidavit, or passport.
    I traveled from [PLACE NAME] on the [INAUDIBLE],,
    British-American line to the United States.
    He met me in New York.
    And I lived for five days with my uncle in New York.
    And he lived with his sister.
    And since he had just started, after the war,
    to a new job in Claremont, New Hampshire,
    there wasn't much time to be wasted in New York.
    And within five days, we decided,
    we are going to spend our lives together
    and got married in five days that our [INAUDIBLE] was taken.
    And the day after we got married,
    by the justice of the peace, a handful of people present,
    we started on our journey to Claremont, New Hampshire.
    I had some odd job.
    And then everybody is themself.
    And here I am, 48 years later.
    My goodness.
    I want to thank you very much.
    And it's very important to me.
    I think it's important.
    I thank you for listening because I
    think it's very important for warning people
    to know what really took place.
    And I hope to do more of it, since I
    feel that's the only way to prevent it happening ever
    again, for all of us to hope.
    Need their hope.
    Right.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Elizabeth Rosenberg (née Kaufmann), born [on November 27, 1922] in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in Cologne; her experiences during WWII; moving to Holland in 1938 because of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany; the German invasion of Holland in 1940; hiding in an attic for three years; her immigration to the United States in 1946; and her marriage to Harry Rosenberg.
    Interviewer
    Dr. Theodore Belsky
    Date
    interview:  1984 June 30
    Geography
    creation: Claremont (N.H.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 sound cassettes : analog.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Holder of Originals
    University of Michigan-Dearborn
    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Dr. Theodore Belsky of American International College for the Holocaust Project of the Springfield Federation conducted the interview with Mrs. Harry Rosenberg. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes in November 1992
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:23:16
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn513840

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (2)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    Also in University of Michigan, Dearborn oral history collection

    Oral history interview with Luba Elbaum

    Oral History

    Luba Elbaum (née Lox), born on January 10, 1923 in Lublin, Poland, describes her family; her secular and Jewish education; Jewish life in Minkowice, prior to moving back to Lublin to live with an uncle; antisemitism; the beginning of the war and life under the German occupation; doing forced labor; working on a farm for the Germans while her family was taken to the ghettos in Lublin and Belzyce; being deported in 1941 to Budzyn to be a housemaid for the Oberscharführer Felix; being deported a year later to Płaszów for a work detail, then to Auschwitz; being transported in 1944 to Bergen-Belsen, where she was selected along with 300 other girls to be deported to Aschersleben, Germany to work; being forced on a six-week death march to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia; being liberated on May 8, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1951; and settling in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Natalie Zamczyk

    Oral History

    Natalie Zamczyk (née Haber), born in 1911 in Krakow, Poland, describes her early life in Krakow; her sister (Sela) and her brother (Max); attending business school for three years after high school; working as a German-language stenographer; getting married; having a son in December 1933; the German occupation of Poland; putting their business under the name of a non-Jew friend; the formation of the ghetto; moving outside the city to avoid going to the ghetto; being forced to live in the ghetto in 1941; the closing of the ghetto and having to give up their fur coats; the deportation of her parents; getting false papers that said they were Christians; moving to Międzyrzec Podlaski, Poland in 1942; being taken by a work colleague to witness the roundup and deportation of Jews and watching as women and children were shot; moving to a small town outside Warsaw, Poland; the arrest of her husband; getting a job in Warsaw; receiving help from a non-Jewish family (the Kazinski family); keeping her son at home and bringing him books from the library in order to continue his education; the Warsaw Uprising in 1944; sewing diamonds into her under clothes and selling one of the diamonds in Czestochowa; leaving her son with Mr. Kazinski; getting a job in Tomaszow, Poland in December 1944; returning to Warsaw after the Russians liberated Tomaszow; reuniting with her son; immigrating with her son to Canada and then the United States; and setting in Farmington Hills, MI.

    Oral history interview with Zoltan Rubin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Solarz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cyla Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Wimmer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Weiselman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alex Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Emerick Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zwi Steiger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sally Tuchklaper

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Weinberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shaindel Shiffman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Slaim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark J. Solent

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ina Silbergleit

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Silver

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Silver

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Felicia Shloss

    Oral History

    Felicia Shloss (née Taif), born in Piotrkow, Poland, discusses her family’s move to Łódź, Poland when she was a teenager; the beginning of the war; being forced with her family to live in the ghetto; the deaths of her parents and brother in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto; being taken with her remaining two siblings to Auschwitz; being taken with one of her sister to Bergen-Belsen and then Salzwedel, where they worked in an ammunition factory; being liberated in Salzwedel; her life after the war; getting married; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sam Seltzer

    Oral History

    Sam Seltzer, born in Modzurów, Poland, discusses his family; his mother, father, and five siblings; the beginning of the war; his mother and siblings unsuccessfully attempting to flee east to the Russian border; his family staying with Sam's older sister in the small town of Zawiercie, Poland; returning to Modzurów, until he was rounded-up by the Germans; being sent to several forced labor camps, including Sosnowiec, Klettendorf, Geppersdorf, Brande, Gräditz, Faulbrück and Annaberg; being sent in 1944 to Auschwitz; being in Birkenau for several weeks; volunteering to work as a mechanic and being sent to a labor Kommando attached to Buchenwald; being liberated in Buchenwald in April 1945; being hospitalized in Feldafing, Germany, where he was reunited with his brother; and immigrating with his brother to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Perry Shulman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edel Sandel

    Oral History

    Edel Sandel, born in Medzilaborce, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), discusses the beginning of the war; pretending to have tuberculosis in order to avoid being sent to do forced labor; going into hiding in her home; her family being forced to leave Medzilaborce; their move to Dobsina, Slovakia, where they stayed until the Germans approached; her family’s decision to hide in the forests; settling in a bunker outside of Brdarka, Slovakia, where they lived until liberation; starting a family after the war; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Sandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alexander Schleifer

    Oral History

    Alexander Schleifer, born in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), discusses growing up in Sobrance (now in Slovakia), where his father owned a bus concession; his family’s forced move in 1944 to Uzhhorod, Ukraine, where they stayed for a month until they were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being separated with his father from the rest of his family; being transported with his father to a labor camp in Longre, France; being moved to Kochendorf and then to Dachau, where his father died; being sent in early April 1945 to a town near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he was liberated; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Sigmund Rubin

    Oral History

    Sigmund Rubin, born in Łódź, Poland, discusses the German invasion of Poland; fleeing to Warsaw, Poland with his family; being driven out of Warsaw by heavy bombing and returning to Łódź; the separation of himself and his brother from their family during a selection; escaping the transport with his brother; being separated from his brother; never discovering the whereabouts of any of his family members; spending the remainder of the war in hiding in various locations throughout Poland; living with his wife in Germany after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Rubin Greenspan and Lola Greenspan

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aaron Salzburg

    Oral History

    Aaron Salzburg, born on April 2, 1919 in Opatów, Poland, discusses life in Pre-War Poland and his experiences in many different ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps throughout Poland and Germany during the World War II; Opatów becoming a ghetto after the German occupation of Poland; being sent in 1939 to the Sandomierz ghetto, where he eventually escaped and ended up in a camp called Kocina; falling ill with typhus; fully recovering and being selected to go to Skarżysko and then Częstochowa; working for HASAG; being moved to Buchenwald, where he stayed in Dora; being moved to Bergen-Belsen; and the liberation of the camp by the British Army on April 15, 1945.

    Oral history interview with Eric Rosenon

    Oral History

    Eric Rosenow, born in Berlin, Germany, discusses life before the war; being an actor in theater and cinema; the banning of Jewish people from performing for Gentiles; starting an orchestra and performing for other Jews; moving with his brother in 1939 to Shanghai, China, and his parents and other brother followed shortly afterward; moving with his family into the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, where Eric made a living performing in local night clubs; getting married after the war; immigrating with his family to the United States; and settling in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Simon Rosenweig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berek Rothenberg

    Oral History

    Berek Rothenberg, born on January 3, 1921 in Sandomierz, Poland, discusses his childhood; belonging to several Zionist organizations including the Betar, Macabbi, and Akiva; the German invasion of Poland; being taken by the Germans for forced labor on the railroads; being releases and sent by the Judenrat (Jewish council) to work on a road crew; being sent in 1942 to work at the ammunition factory in Skarzysko; being transferred in 1944 to Buchenwald and assigned to work at Schlieben, a subcamp, where the Panzerfaust was being manufactured; being transferred to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated on May 8, 1945; traveling after liberation in Italy and waiting for a chance to move to Palestine; and his immigration in 1949 to the United States to be with his extended family.

    Oral history interview with Rubin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Biema Roemerfeld

    Oral History

    Blema Miller Romerfeld was born in Plonsk, Poland.

    Oral history interview with Alice Rosen

    Oral History

    Alice Lang Rosen, born in 1934 in Lambsheim, Germany, discusses her family’s move to Mannheim, Germany to open a textile store; their experiences during Kristallnacht, including the arrest and imprisonment of her father in Dachau for a short time; her father’s return home; the Gestapo raiding their home in 1940 and taking them on trucks to Gurs, a concentration camp in France; spending a year in Gurs; her family’s relocation to camp Rivesaltes; her father putting her in the care of the a children's aid society to save her; being sent to stay in a convent in the South of France, before being put into two foster homes with French families; the end of the war; staying in a Jewish children's home outside of Paris before her father found her; reuniting with her father in Heidelberg, Germany; her father’s remarriage; and immigrating with her family to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Saul Raimi

    Oral History

    Saul Raimi, born in Mława, Poland, discussing being raised in a family of eight; being age 14 when the Germans occupied the town, which was turned into a ghetto; being deported with his family to the Lubartów ghetto; returning to Mława; his smuggling activities between the Mława ghetto and the Warsaw ghetto; being deported in the winter of 1942 to Auschwitz, where he worked as a bricklayer; the evacuation of Auschwitz as the Red Army advanced west in 1945; being forced to march to Buchenwald; being transferred to Flossenbürg, where he was liberated on April 23, 1945; being sent to a displaced persons camp; immigrating to Israel, then Canada, and finally the United States; and the loss of all his family during the Holocaust except for he and his brother.

    Oral history interview with Brenda Reiss

    Oral History

    Brenda Reiss, born in 1923 in Kalisz, Poland, discusses the German occupation of Poland; being sent with her family to the ghetto in Koźminek; being taken with her sister to the Łódź ghetto and then to Auschwitz, where the sisters were separated; being sent to various forced labor camps before being liberated by the Russian Army; getting married; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Selma Rich

    Oral History

    Selma Rich (née Shulamit Rudnik), on March 15, 1923 in Oshmyany, Poland (now Belarus), discusses the German invasion of Poland; being forced with her family into the ghetto; being separated from her family, who were taken to Vilno (Vilnius, Lithuania), while Selma was moved to Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania); the liquidation of the ghetto; being transported to Stutthof; never seeing her family again; getting married a fellow survivor; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Esther Rose Posner

    Oral History

    Esther Posner, born on May 11, 1937 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses the German invasion; being forced along with her family to live in the Amsterdam ghetto; their contact with the Dutch underground; being hidden by several families in Enschede and Delden for the duration of the war; and the liberation of the Netherlands by the Allies.

    Oral history interview with Esther Praw

    Oral History

    Esther Praw (née Mandelzys), born in Opatów, Poland, discusses the beginning of the war; fleeing Opatów with friends and staying in Starachowice, Poland; working in an ammunition factory in Starachowice before being transported to Auschwitz; being sent to Bergen-Belsen before finally being liberated by British troops; getting married to her first husband in Germany in 1946; moving with her husband to the United States in 1947; living in New York before settling in Detroit, MI; having two daughters before her husband died; and remarrying another survivor.

    Oral history interview with Harry Prow

    Oral History

    Harry Praw, born in 1929 in Łódź, Poland, discusses growing up in a small apartment in the city with his parents, grandfather, five sisters, and three brothers; the German occupation of the city in September 1939; being deported with his family to the Jaslo ghetto; the separation of his family; being sent to work in various labor camps including Skarżysko, Częstochowa, Buchenwald, and Dora; being liberated by the British Army from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945; being the only person from his family to survive; and immigrating to the United States with his wife and son in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Mr. Offman

    Oral History

    Mr. Offman (né Wolf Zarnowiecki), born in 1920 in Radomsko, Poland, discusses his experiences during WWII.

    Oral history interview with Michael Opas

    Oral History

    Michael Opas, born in 1910 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his youth; learning the furrier trade before operating a shoe business; the beginning of WWII; fleeing with his wife and young son to Warsaw, Poland, where they were imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto; being sent to Majdanek concentration camp; being sent to Budzyn, a forced labor camp where prisoners repaired airplanes; being sent to various camps, including Ostrowiec and Auschwitz-Birkenau; being sent to Buchenwald, where he was liberated by the US Army; being grossly underweight at liberation; recuperating for two months in a makeshift hospital in Buchenwald until he regained some weight and his health; living in the Landsberg displaced persons camp; moving to the Stuttgart DP camp, where he re-married and started a family; and immigrating with his wife and one-year-old daughter to Detroit in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Herman Opatowski

    Oral History

    Herman Opatowski, born in Kielce, Poland, discusses the German invasion of Poland in 1939; being placed in a ghetto in Kielce with his mother, father, and eight siblings; doing forced labor in the ghetto; being deported east with his family; being separated from his family before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he remained until the camp was liquidated in early 1945; being sent on a forced march west, and escaping from the column; and going east and eventually encountering Soviet soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Nothman

    Oral History

    Nathan Nothman, born on July 15, 1925 in Krakow, Poland, discusses the German invasion of Poland; being forced along with his parents, three brothers, and sister to move into the Krakow-Plaszow ghetto; working with his father for the Nazis as plumbers and being allowed to leave the ghetto for work; the deportation of his father to Auschwitz, where he was killed; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being sent to the Płaszów concentration camp; being sent to Gross-Rosen in 1944; being assigned to work detail on the Steinburg in both camps; being sent to Flossenburg to work on the railroads in 1945; escaping with his friends during a death march; walking to Laufen, Germany and being rescued by the US Army; staying in the Laufen displaced persons camp; transferring to the Ainring DP camp, where he met and married his wife; reuniting with his sister and mother after the war; and immigrating with his family to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Sonia Nothman

    Oral History

    Sonia Nothman, born in 1922 in Chmielnik, Poland, discusses the beginning of WWII, at which time she was visiting family in Łódź, Poland; returning to Chmielnik, but due to her Polish language skills, was able to move between Chmielnik and Łódź; the creation of a ghetto in 1941 in Chmilenik; being forced with her family to in the ghetto; the deportation in 1942 of her brother and one sister to the Skarzysko-Kamienna forced labor camp; being sent to Czestochowa, Poland in 1944; being sent west into Germany proper, where she and her sister were marched to several labor camps, including Bergen-Belsen, Burgau, Dachau, and Allach; and being liberated by the US Army in 1945.

    Oral history interview with Nathan Offen

    Oral History

    Nathan Offen discusses living in Kraków, Poland; the German invasion in 1939; being recruited along with his brothers Sam and Bernie and their father by the Germans as forced laborers; being sent to a nearby rock quarry to work; his mother and sister who were rounded up and deported; being sent with his brothers and father to camp Płaszów and then to Gusen I, a sub-camp of Mauthausen; being separated from his father and Bernie in Gusen I and never seeing his father again; being liberated with Sam in 1945 by the US Army; learning of a Polish unit in the British Army based in Italy and decided to join; living in a displaced persons camp in Italy; reuniting with his brother Bernie; moving to England with his brothers; and immigrating with his brothers to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with John Morris

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Mondry

    Oral History

    Abraham Mondry, born in Mlawa, Poland, discusses the beginning of the war; the deportation of his family to the Warsaw ghetto; working as a smuggler on the black market before, during, and after the war; spending three years at Auschwitz, where he served as a nurse aid to Dr. Mengele; the evacuation of Auschwitz and being marched to Ebensee, where he was soon liberated by American forces; recovering from health problems; and living in Italy where he continued his black market activities until 1949 when he immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Michael Nosenchuck

    Oral History

    Michael Nosanchuck, born January 21, 1911 in Rubel, Belarus, discusses his experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Mermelstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lucy Merritt

    Oral History

    Lucy Glaser Merritt, born in 1920 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the German annexation (Anschluss) of Austria in 1938, after which Lucy and her family experienced increased persecution by both Austrian and German National Socialists; the arrest of her father on Kristallnacht 1938 and his release; her family’s decision to leave Austria; leaving Austria to work as a nurse in England; securing the passage of her family from Austria to England; and her family’s immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sandra Segal and Yanka Miller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helena Manaster

    Oral History

    Helena Manaster, born in 1917 in Poland, discusses her siblings, all of whom were adults at the beginning of the war; the German invasion in 1939, and the separation of her family; going with several siblings and her father to Lwów (now L’viv, Ukraine), which was under Soviet control at the time; the German invasion in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Lwów; the deportation of her father and brothers to Belzec, where they died in the gas chambers; being moved with her husband to Lesko, Poland and then on to Zamosc, Poland; her husband’s work as a doctor and the Germans sending them to a labor camp in Radymno, Poland; and escaping the camp and going to Kraków, where they remained in hiding until the end of the war.

    Oral history interview with Herman Marczak

    Oral History

    Herman Marczak, born on January 25, 1920 in Złoczew, Poland, his childhood in Zduńska Wola, Poland; the beginning of the war, at which time Herman and his family were forced into the Zduńska Wola ghetto; working and earning money at a shoe factory for a German boss; being sent with his family in 1942 to Chelmno; his transfer to the Łódż ghetto; being sent to various labor camps, including Skarżysko-Kammiena, where he worked manufacturing ammunition for the Germans; being liberated from a military base outside of Bergen-Belsen on April 25, 1945; staying in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; obtaining a letter from a doctor in the DP camp allowing him to move to Sweden, where he met his wife and had a daughter; and his family’s immigration to the United States in 1957.

    Oral history interview with Simon W. Maroko

    Oral History

    Dr. Simon Maroko, born in 1923 in Tarnów, Poland, discusses his family’s move shortly after his birth to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia) and then to Amsterdam, Netherlands; his parents’ deportation in 1943 to Westerbork and then, most likely, to Auschwitz-Birkenau; going into hiding on a farm outside of Amsterdam; being liberated in May 1945; immigrating to Israel, where he served in the Israeli Army; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rene Lichtman

    Oral History

    Rene Lichtman, born in Paris, France, discusses his parent, who moved to Paris from Poland in the 1930s; his parents hiring Ann Lapage to serve as Rene's guardian in 1937; spending weekdays hidden with the Lapages in a small town outside of Paris and returning home on the weekends; his father joining the French army shortly before the outbreak of the war and his father’s death in May 1940; the occupation of France, after which Rene's mother sent him to stay with the Lapages on a permanent basis while she was in hiding for the remainder of the war; returning to Paris after the war and reuniting with his mother; being introduced to his Jewish heritage; and his memories of the French Jewish community in Paris.

    Oral history interview with Edward Linson

    Oral History

    Edward Linson, born in May 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his childhood; being the second youngest of eight children; studying medicine before the war; the beginning of the war, at which time Edward worked in the Skoda Factory for the Germans; being taken to Poniatowa and later Majdanek; being transferred to Auschwitz; working in Chemical Kommando 98 at Buna-Monowitz; being taken to several concentration camps before being liberated by the Russians; getting married in Germany; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Herminia Lusopolus

    Oral History

    Herminia Lusopolus (née Greenberg), born in 1919 in Bucharest, Romania, discusses her mother, who died when Felina was two and a half years old; her father, who worked in the lumber business until he died at the age of 49; attending a boarding school; living with her grandmother in Chernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); finishing high school and attending college; earning a degree in teaching; moving to Oradea to become a teacher; getting engaged to a Jewish lawyer who was sent to the Russian front; the creation of a ghetto in Oradea; being sent to Auschwitz; being transferred to camp Langenbielau-Biewala (a sub-camp of Gross Rosen) near Reichenbach and then camp Parschnitz; being sent to a camp in the Sudetenland, where she worked in a factory making airplane parts; being liberated by the Russians; starting her long journey back home to Oradea, where she found out her fiancé had died on his way home to see her; her job translating Hungarian movies left behind after the war into Romanian; getting married to a Gentile Greek professor and having one daughter; the imprisonment of her husband by the Communists after he told two jokes in his classroom that offended the regime; her husband’s death in 1957, three years after being released for prison; applying for a passport out of Communist Romania after her husband’s death; being granted the passport and moving to Paris, Belgium, and Germany; and immigrating to the United States where she moved in with her aunts in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Freda Magnus

    Oral History

    Freda Magnus, born in March 1917 in Łódź, Poland, discusses the beginning of the war; being sent with her family to Krakow, Poland; being allowed to return to Łódź, where they lived in the ghetto; her mother’s death in the ghetto; being deported with her family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being sent to work in Ravensbrück and Mülhausen; being liberated in Bergen-Belsen; being sent to Sweden to recover from tuberculosis; and living in Sweden for ten years with her family before moving to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Stefa Kuper

    Oral History

    Stefa Kupfer discusses being 10 years old and living in Sanok, Poland when the war started; the murder of her father in the early days of the occupation; going into hiding with her mother and young sister instead of registering with the occupational government; being hidden in the house of a Polish woman, Mrs. Orlewska; and being aided by other Poles, some of whom knew they were Jews.

    Oral history interview with Helen Lang

    Oral History

    Helen Lang, born in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine), discusses the Hungarian annexation of the area; going to work in Budapest, Hungary, and supporting her family; visiting her family during Pesach in 1944, at which time the Germans came into the city and deported Helen and her family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; spending a month in Birkenau; being transferred with her sister to Stutthof, where Helen was made a Blockältester; being sent with her sister to Praust, where she was a maid for the SS guards; securing her sister as a Blockältester; the evacuation of the camp as the Russians neared Praust; being sent on a march and escaping with her sister and a friend; posing as Hungarian Gentiles; meeting a group of SS doctors who took them to Denmark to stay for the duration of the war; living in the Lübeck displaced persons camp in Germany; and moving to Prague, Czech Republic to reunite with her family.

    Oral history interview with Fred Lessing

    Oral History

    Alfred Lessing, born in 1936 in the Hague, Netherlands, discusses his three brothers, one of whom died; his family’s move to Delft, Netherlands; his experiences living with other families as a hidden child in the Netherlands during the war; and the last year of the war when he was reunited with his father and brothers.

    Oral history interview with Pauline Kleinberg

    Oral History

    Pauline Kleinberg, born in Pilica, Poland, discusses her childhood; attending school and helping her parents run their dry goods store; the beginning of the war; being forced with her sister to go to the Żarki ghetto, where she contracted dysentery; recovering and escaping with her sister; being captured and taken to the Sosnowiec ghetto; being sent to several labor camps; her sister’s death during a death march; being rescued by the Red Cross; living in the Fohrenwald displaced persons camp, where she was reunited with a younger sister; and her family’s immigration to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Henry Konstam

    Oral History

    Henry Konstam, born in Łódź, Poland, discusses his five siblings; being sent with his family to the Łódź ghetto in 1940; volunteering to go to a labor camp in Gronow, where he remained for two and a half years; being sent to a labor camp in Posen; being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later to Jaworzno; surviving a march from Jaworzno to Dachau before escaping into the surrounding woods; crawling to a nearby farm for food; being captured and imprisoned in a German jail until the end of the war which occurred a few days later; and being reunited after the war with his only surviving family members, his brother and sister.

    Oral history interview with Maximilian Kowler

    Oral History

    Maximilian Kowler, born in Vienna, Austria, discusses the Anschluss; escaping with his father to Venice, Italy; sneaking over the French border once his mother joined them in Italy; living in Lyon as refugees; being involved with the French Boy Scouts until he joined the French Army; being hospitalized after a bicycle accident; going with his parents went to Switzerland, where they were placed in a refugee camp; moving back to France after the war; getting married; and immigrating with his family to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Emery Klein and Bernard Klein

    Oral History

    The Klein brothers, Bernard and Emery, discuss growing up in Humenné, Slovakia; their immediate family, which included their parents and a younger sister; the German occupation of the area in 1939; the deportation of the Jews in 1941; being saved from deportation until 1944 because their father was an important farming advisor; the deportation of the family to Auschwitz without Bernard, who had become separated; the immediate gassing of Mrs. Klein and her daughter upon their arrival at the camp; Bernard’s reunion with his brother and father at Auschwitz a month later; the transport of the three to Gleiwitz, where Emery and his father worked in a factory while Bernard worked in the camp kitchen; the evacuation of the camp in 1945 as the Russian army advanced into the area; being relocated to camp Blechhammer; the German guards fleeing the camp, abandoning the prisoners; walking with several others a few days later to Humenné; and the family’s move to Israel, Montreal, and eventually to Detroit.

    Oral history interview with Freida Klein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Kandal

    Oral History

    Fred Kandal, born on May 25, 1931 in Berezne, Ukraine, discusses the German invasion of Ukraine; being relocated with his family to a ghetto; being sent to a work camp; escaping the work camp with his family and hiding in the forest; hiding in the forest with his family for the duration of the war; eventually joining a group of Russian partisans; liberation; living in several displaced persons camps in Austria and Italy; and eventually immigrating with his family to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ilya Martha Kessler

    Oral History

    Ilya Martha Kessler, born in 1930 in Dobrony, Czechoslovakia, discusses the beginning of the war; being sent to Kosice, Slovakia, where she lived with her aunt until the Germans occupied Kosice; returning home; living with her family in a ghetto; being sent with her family to Auschwitz; being separated from her family; the murder of her family members in Auschwitz; being sent to the work camp Freudenthal; being liberated by the Russians; returning home and living in an orphanage until she immigrated to Israel; and immigrating in 1957 with her second husband to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Klaiman

    Oral History

    Joseph Klaiman, born May 20, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, discusses the Germans invasion of Poland; escaping with his father to Russia a month after the occupation; returning to Łódź to retrieve his mother and two brothers; being moved into the Łódź ghetto before they could escape; the deaths of both his parents in the ghetto; working in a factory in the ghetto; the deportation of his two brothers in 1941; being transported to Auschwitz; being sent to several camps including Gleiwitz I, Buchenwald, Holzen, and Blechhammer; escaping from a train transport just before the war ended and hiding alone in the forest for eight days; being liberated by British soldiers; staying in the Buchenwald displaced persons camp, where he met his future wife; immigrating to the United States; and settling in Detroit, MI in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Simon J. Kalmas

    Oral History

    Simon Kalmas, born in 1915 in Drobin, Poland, discusses his childhood; learning the trade of tinsmithing as a boy; the German invasion of Poland; being taken along with the other men of his town and held in another city for five days before being returned home and told to move into the Drobin ghetto; moving later to the ghetto in Neustadt Oberschlesien (now Prudnik, Poland); having the chance to escape to Russia but choosing to stay with his family in Poland; his family remaining together until 1942 when they were deported to Auschwitz; being selected for work in the coal mines of IG Farben Industry before being selected for his tinsmithing skills to repair the roofs of bombarded barracks from 1944 until 1945; being forced to march to Gleiwitz in a snowstorm to catch a transport train to Buchenwald; being liberated in Buchenwald; immigrating to the United States in April 1949 and settling in Nashville, TN; and moving permanently to Detroit, MI in January 1950 because of the racism he saw happening against African Americans in the South.

    Oral history interview with Louis Kreps Kay

    Oral History

    Louis Kreps Kay, born in 1925 in Wloszczowa, Poland, discusses the beginning of the war in 1939; being moved with his family into a ghetto; the deportation of his parents and most of his siblings to Treblinka, while Louis and two of his brothers were sent to Skarzysko; working in an ammunitions factory for two years until he was sent to Czestochowa and later Buchenwald; being sent to Dora-Nordhausen, where he was liberated April 11, 1945; immigrating to the United States many years after the war; and building a monument in 1969 in the United States to memorialize his family and his birth city.

    Oral history interview with Alexander Karp

    Oral History

    Alexander Karp, born in Nyírmada, Hungary, discusses his family; his family’s move to Kisvárda; living with his family in Baktalórántháza in 1944; the German occupation, at which time his family was forced into the Kisvárda ghetto; living in the ghetto for two months; being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to a camp in France to do forced labor; being moved to Kochendorf and then Dachau; being liberated in Mittenwald, Germany, while on a death march from Dachau; returning to Hungary; and moving to Canada before immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Salvatore Katan and Livia Katan

    Oral History

    Salvatore Katan (born in Salonika, Greece) and his wife, Lili Katan (born in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia and raised near Budapest, Hungary) discusses their deportations to Auschwitz after the start of the war; meeting each other after liberation at a displaced persons camp; their relocation to Budapest, where they were married before settling in Italy; and their immigration to the United States after the birth of their twin boys.

    Oral history interview with Lanka Ilkow

    Oral History

    Lanka Ilkow, born in 1920 in Novoseliza, Czechoslovakia (possibly Novoselytsia, Ukraine), describes her pre-war life; her family’s farm; the four Jewish families in her town and the relations with the non-Jews; being the oldest of her siblings; attending school; her religious life; getting married and living in Berezhany (Ukraine); the Hungarian annexation of parts of Slovakia and life under Hungarian rule; the deportation of her husband to Poland and never seeing him again; being sent to the ghetto in Uzhhorod (Ukraine) with her family in 1944; the fates of her family members; being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her father was gassed upon arrival; the conditions in the camp; her mother’s death in Auschwitz; being transferred with her sister to the forced labor camp Hundsfeld; the work and conditions in Hundsfeld; being marched out of the camp in January 1945; staying briefly in Gross-Rosen and Mauthausen before being sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British Army; going with her sister to Sweden; getting married; being sick with typhus while she was pregnant; the Jewish community in Sweden; immigrating to the United States in December 1951; speaking about her experiences; and dealing with her memories of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Helen Jutkevicz

    Oral History

    Helen Jutkevicz, born in Łódź, Poland, discusses growing up in a family of eight; the beginning of the war; being forced with her family to move into the Łódź Ghetto; life in the ghetto; the deaths of her father and one of her brothers; working at a straw factory until she and the rest of her family were transported to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz; staying with her sister but being separated from their mother; being sent to Bremen to work; being transported with her sister to Bergen-Belsen, where Helen contracted typhus; being liberated; traveling with her sister from Bergen-Belsen to Gauting, Germany to find their brother, who had survived the war but had tuberculosis; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp, where she met her husband; and eventually moving to Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with David Kahan

    Oral History

    David Kahan, born in 1928 in Gheorgheni, Romania, discusses being part of a large extended family; the German occupation beginning in April 1944; the full-scale persecution of Hungarian Jewry; the detainment of his family by the Hungarian Gendarmerie in a school room for several days; being sent with his family to an ad hoc ghetto in Szaszregen (Reghin), Romania; remaining incarcerated in a brick factory in Szaszregen for approximately four weeks; being deported to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz; being separated from his family, who were gassed; being shaved, deloused, and held for future use on work details; being sent after four weeks to the Mühldorf labor camp in Southern Germany; doing forced labor for Organization Todt, clearing trees for the construction of an underground airplane factory; contracting typhus after he was liberated; being hospitalized in the displaced persons camp at Feldafing; having no desire to return to Romania; immigrating to the United States; arriving in New York in May 1949; moving to Minneapolis; eventually moving to Detroit circa 1950; getting married in 1953; and his three sons.

    Oral history interview with Magda Beer

    Oral History

    Magda Beer (née Szesz), born in Budapest, Hungary in 1915, describes her early life; the death of her father when she was two years old; getting married in 1941 (her married name was Haskovitch); having a son; life under the German occupation; the deportation of her father-in-law and husband; the creation of the ghetto and life there; working in a brick factory; obtaining false identification papers; life under the Russian occupation; her work after the war as an entrepreneur; moving to the United States in 1951; her life in the US; and her thoughts on her survival.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Hirsch

    Oral History

    Bernard Hirsch, born in Petrovce, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1920, describes his parents, two brothers, and five sisters; his family’s religious practices; relations between Jews and non-Jews; being drafted into the Slovakian Army as a laborer in 1941; deserting the army; hiding with his Gentile friend; joining the partisans; life with the partisans; passing as a gentile; the Russians liberating Slovakia in January 1945; learning about his parents’ fates; moving to Košice, Slovakia, where he met his future wife; moving to the United States in 1949; his religious life in the US; and sharing his experiences.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jacob Holzman

    Oral History

    Abraham Jacob Holzman, born in 1925 in Łódź Poland, describes his life before the war; his brothers and sisters; his family’s business; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; his religious and secular educations; his experiences with antisemitism before the war; the Nazi invasion; being moved with his family to the Łódź ghetto; forced labor in the ghetto; stealing a carrot and being put on the list for deportation; being imprisoned for two weeks; his father’s death from starvation; working in a factory until 1944 when the family was deported to Auschwitz; life in Auschwitz; being sent with his mother were sent to Görlitz; his work in an airplane factory; the treatment of the prisoners; being sent on a death march for four weeks before returning to Görlitz; how his brother helped him survive the march; being liberated in 1945; returning to Poland; spending time in a displaced persons camp in Frankfurt, Germany; reuniting with his sister in Sweden; immigrating to the United States in 1953; adjusting to life in the US; talking about his experiences; his children; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Anna Greenberger

    Oral History

    Anna Greenberger, born in Koroml’a, Czechoslovakia in 1924, discusses her childhood; moving with her family to Sobrance, Czechoslovakia in 1932; her three sisters; the German invasion and hiding from the Germans; passing as Gentiles; avoiding the affection of a German officer; her father being taken to a labor camp in Russia; her fiancé’s participation in the army and visiting him in a labor camp in Kosice (Slovakia); the German occupation of Hungary in 1944; being sent with her mother and sisters to the Uzhgorod ghetto; being deported after two months to Auschwitz, where they stayed until August; the conditions in Auschwitz; being sent with her family to Lübberstedt forced labor camp, where they manufactured ammunition; stealing in the camp; the evacuation of the camp via trains; escaping the train while it was bombed by the Allies; being forced by the Germans to march; being liberated by the British; spending time in a typhoid hospital in Neustadt before returning to Sobrance with her family; reuniting with her fiancé and getting married him; starting a family; moving to Israel in 1949; moving with her family to Rome before moving to Argentina then Paraguay; her husband’s work for Germans in Paraguay; experiencing antisemitism; going to the United States in 1955; and her thoughts on Germans.

    Oral history interview with Lola Greenspan

    Oral History

    Lola Greenspan, born in 1919 in Myszków, Poland, describes her early life; her parents and siblings; the German invasion; being taken in 1940 to the transit camp in Sosnowiec for two months before being transported to Gabersdorf, a work camp in Czechoslovakia; life in the camp; going to the doctor in Parschnitz labor camp and seeing her sister; remaining in Gabersdorf as a worker until the Russian Army liberated the camp in 1945; returning to Poland with her remaining sister; meeting her future husband; moving with her husband to Israel and living in Sha'ar Ha-'aliyah (a camp near Haifa); moving to the United States in 1961; and adusting to life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gringlas

    Oral History

    Joseph Gringlas (né Grynglas), born in 1926 in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Poland, describes his family; life in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski before WWII; relations between Jews and non-Jews; his family’s religious practices; the German invasion; the ghetto and Judenrat (Jewish council); being taken away to work on tracks; being separated from his family and transported to a forced-labor camp in Blizyn, Poland; life in Blizyn, including the work, punishments, and living conditions; being transferred after one year to Auschwitz-Birkenau then the sub-camp, Monowitz (Buna), where he was reunited with his brother; the conditions in Monowitz and the Kapos; the liquidation of the camp in 1945 and being sent a forced-march to Gleiwitz and then on to Dora-Nordhausen; the Allied bombing and being liberated along with his brother; returning to Poland and experiencing antisemitism; spending several years in a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany; his brother’s wedding in Landsberg; his work bringing children from the Czech border to Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1951; life in the US; the effects of the Holocaust on his life; and talking about his experiences.

    Oral history interview with Tola Gilbert

    Oral History

    Tola Gilbert, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, discusses her parents and childhood; experiencing antisemitism; the Jewish community in Sosnowiec; her secular and religious educations; life during the German occupation of Poland; being put in the ghetto with her family; resistance in Sosnowiec; the leader of the Judenrat, Moses Merin; being sent with her sisters to Ober Alstadt and Parschnitz to do forced labor; conditions in the camps; the liberation of the camp by Russians; being moved to a displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen; moving to the United States; meeting her future husband; and speaking about her experiences.

    Oral history interview with Fred Goudsmit

    Oral History

    Fred Goudsmit, born on January 2, 1931 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; helping his father run his butcher shop in the ghetto; going into hiding with his parents in the countryside; the killing of his brothers shortly before the war ended; staying in several Dutch homes during the war with help from underground organizations; returning home after the war to his parents and resuming his education; living in Canada and Jamaica; and living in several cities in the United States before settling in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Erna Blitzer Gorman

    Oral History

    Erna Blitzer Gorman, born in 1935 in Metz, France, discusses the war breaking out in 1939 while her family was attending a wedding in Wisznice, Poland; being unable to return to France because her father was a Polish citizen; going with her family (mother, father, and sister) to her maternal grandparents' home in Monastyriska, Ukraine; the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; being moved with her family to a ghetto; escaping to a nearby farm; hiding for two years in a Ukrainian farmer's barn and being aided by the farmer; surviving in hiding until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944; her mother being wounded during an air raid and dying soon after; living in several displaced persons camps with her sister and father; and immigrating to the United States in 1953.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Fisk

    Oral History

    Benjamin Fisk (né Berck Fiszlinski), born September 26, 1922 in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his family’s religious life; the German occupation of Poland; working in a German factory as a carpenter until he was taken to the Srodula ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto; being sent to work as a carpenter in several camps including Sackenhoym, Bismarckshütte, Blechhammer, and Buna-Monowitz; working for IG Farben; conditions in the various camps; being injured and taken to Auschwitz; being liberated by the Russians; returning to Sosnowiec; getting married; settling in Stoffen, Germany (now in Pürgen, Germany); moving with his family to the United States in 1949; and his experienced with antisemitism in the US.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Fisk

    Oral History

    Hannah Fisk (née Hanka Monczyk), born on June 5, 1924 in Częstochowa, Poland, discusses her childhood; her six brothers and four sisters; the death of her mother when Hannah was two years old; her father and stepmother; her family’s religious life; antisemitism; participating in the Yiddish theater; traveling to Oświęcim to attend her sister’s wedding and staying in nearby Chorzów with her other sister for the rest of the summer; the German invasion and being prevented from returning home; being sent with her sister to the Sosnowiec ghetto; being sent to Gabersdorf, a female labor camp, where she stayed for the duration of the war; life in the camp; the liberation of the camp by Russian troops; living in Waldenburg (possibly Wałbrzych, Poland), where she met her future husband; settling in Stoffen, Germany (now in Pürgen, Germany) and having their first son; moving to the United States to be with her two surviving brothers; her experiences with antisemitism in Detroit, MI; and her views on faith.

    Oral history interview with Nancy Fordonski

    Oral History

    Nancy Fordonski, born in Złoczew, Poland, describes her family and childhood; the importance of Shabbos in her house; the Jewish community in Złoczew; her secular and religious educations; relations between Jews and non-Jews; the Nazi invasion of Poland; fleeing with her mother, father, and several siblings to the nearby town of Zdunska Wola, where Nancy's two older sisters lived; staying in Zdunska Wola for a brief time before going with one sister and a brother to stay with their grandmother in Szadek, Poland; returning with her family to Zdunska Wola, where they remained in the ghetto until 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and being sent with two sisters to the Łódź Ghetto while many of her other family members were deported and killed; the liquidation of the Łódź Ghetto and being sent with her sisters to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being sent to Stutthof, where her older sister perished, and then to Dresden, Germany; the bombings of Dresden and being sent with her sister on a forced march to Theresienstadt; escaping from the march and hiding on a farm near Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) where they were liberated by the American Army; returning to Poland; immigrating to the United States; how only a sister and a brother survived the war out of her nine siblings; talking about her experiences; her thoughts on her survival; and the physical and mental reminders of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Manya Feldman

    Oral History

    Manya Auster Feldman, born in 1923 in Dombrovitsa, Poland, discusses her large family (numbering close to 200); being raised orthodox; the outbreak of the war in 1939; the Soviet Union occuping Dombrovitsa; the German occupation beginning in 1941; the anti-Jewish measures put in place; the liquidation of the Dombrovitsa ghetto in August 1942; escaping into the forest with her father, brother, and eldest sister; the deportation of her mother and her two sisters to the nearby town of Sarny, where they were murdered; joining the Kovpak partisan movement along with her family; being separated from her father and siblings; spending the remainder of the war hiding in several small villages in the region and serving in different partisan units; the death of her father and siblings in combat; the end of the war; being placed in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Charlotte Firestone

    Oral History

    Charlotte Firestone (née Chari Schunfeld), born in 1913 in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine), discusses her experiences in Czechoslovakia and Poland before, during, and after the war; her family life before the war; the German occupation of Munkacs in 1944; being rounded up with other Jews and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her mother and son were gassed upon arrival; being transferred with her sister to Stutthof; being relocated with her sister to Praust, a sub-camp of Stutthof; being made a Stubälteste (an aid to the barrack commander), serving as a senior inmate in charge of the barrack; their work building an airport at the camp; spending six months in Praust before being evacuated; escaping from the march and evading capture by posing as Hungarian nurses; going to Denmark; reuniting with her husband; having more children; living in Paris, France; immigrating to the United States; and becoming a US citizen in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Joshua Fishman

    Oral History

    Joshua Fishman, born August 18, 1921 in Dombrowitza, Poland (now Dubrovytsia, Ukraine), describes his family and their religious practices; life before the war; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; the outbreak of war in September 1939; life in the ghetto in Dombrowitza; being placed on a transport to the camps with his family but escaping; hiding in the forest with his family; how most of his family was killed while in hiding but Joshua and his mother survived by following a group of partisans; being drafted into the Russian army towards the end of the war; deserting twice; being arrested for desertion and serving time in a Russian prison; the end of the war; immigrating with his mother to the United States; adjusting to life in the US; meeting his future wife; and how the his experiences still affect his life.

    Oral history interview with Ann Eisenberg

    Oral History

    Ann Eisenberg (née Carla Subble), born in Slatinske Doly, Czechoslovakia (now Solotvyno, Ukraine), describes moving when she was a child with her family to Sighet, Romania; the Hungarian annexation of Sighet; her father and brothers being conscripted by Hungarian authorities and sent away for forced labor; being placed with her sisters and mother in the ghetto in Sighet in 1944; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where only she and one sister survived; being transferred to the forced labor camp Gelsenkirchen and then to Sömmerda; being liberated near Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in 1945; being placed in a displaced persons camp near Linz, Austria; returning to Sighet; immigrating to the United States; and her life in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Isaac Engel

    Oral History

    Issac Engel, born circa 1921 in Zwolén, Poland, describes life before the war; his family’s hardware business; his family; his family’s religious observations; relations between Jews and non-Jews; the Jewish community; antisemitism; the beginning of the war in 1939; hiding with his family from the Germans; the separation of his family; moving between local villages; his family leaving hiding in 1942 and going to the town of Ciepielów; the resistance movement outside Zwolén; the rounded-up of his family by the Germans and being deported to Treblinka; being sent to Skarzysko-Kamienna as a forced laborer for the Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft (HASAG); the conditions and forced labor he endured in Gross-Rosen, Nordhausen, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen; being liberated and living in a displaced persons camp in Celle; the fate of his family; immigrating to the United States; and talking about his Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Feldman

    Oral History

    Eugene Feldman, born in the late 1920s in Glinka, Poland (now Hlinka, Belarus), describes his family; his education; his family’s religious observations; relations between Jews and non-Jews; the Jewish community; antisemitism; living in the Soviet zone of occupation from 1939 to 1941; the German invasion of the Soviet Union; being sent with his family to the nearby ghetto in Stolin, Belarus; hiding with his family during an Aktion; escaping from the ghetto and returning to Glinka; leaving the village and hiding in the countryside; following a band of partisans through White Russia (Belarus); going to Łódź, Poland after the war and then to a displaced persons camp in Freimann (Munich, Germany); immigrating to the United States; life in Detroit, MI and attending high school; and speaking about his Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Lilla Denes

    Oral History

    Lilla Denes (née Seidner), born in Jászárokszállás, Hungary, describes the antisemitism in her hometown; her parents and siblings; her education; moving to Budapest, Hungary in 1940 with her husband; her husband’s deportation to labor camps several times between 1940 and the end of the war; the German occupation of Budapest in 1944; her two small children, Judy and George; using false papers, assuming the identity of an unwed mother, and being treated as such by the people around her; being in Budapest when the Soviet Army liberated the city; her husband’s return after liberation; using false papers again to flee Hungary after the war; and settling in Detroit, MI in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Henry Dorfman

    Oral History

    Henry Dorfman, born in Glowaczow, Poland in 1922, describes being separated from his mother and siblings and placed on a transport to the Treblinka death camp; escaping the train with his father; the death of his mother and siblings en route to, or immediately upon arrival at Treblinka; hiding with his father in a barn and being given assistance by one of the workers employed by the Volksdeutsche aristocrat; serving in a partisan unit until the area was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1944; remaining in Europe for several years following the end of the war; helping his father establish two businesses in Łódź, Poland and establishing his own in Germany; moving to the United States with his wife, Mala, whom he met in Poland after the war; living in Topeka, KS; and talking about his experiences. [Note that the recording begins in the middle of the interview. See http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/dorfman/ for the full interview.]

    Oral history interview with Simon Cymerath

    Oral History

    Simon Cymerath describes growing up in a close-knit family in Starowice, Poland; his siblings; his education; experiencing antisemitism as a child; religious observance in his family; the German occupation of Poland; having to register as Jews and wear armbands; being moved with his family into a ghetto; doing forced labor at an ammunition factory; being taken to a factory (Lipowa 7) near Lublin, Poland in 1940; life in the labor camp; an attempted escape from the labor camp; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where his parents and youngest brother perished; being separated from his two other brothers and sent to Auschwitz; life and inmate attitudes in the camp; working as a painter on a Monowitz (Buna) work detail; trading stolen paint for food; the evacuation of the camp and being sent on a death march with other prisoners; being liberated by American troops; working for several years with the American Army; reuniting with his only surviving brother; immigrating to the United States in 1950; and his thoughts on his survival and sharing his story.

    Oral history interview with Bert Dan

    Oral History

    Bert Dan, born in Cluj, Romania January 9, 1916, describes attending school in Romania; serving as a soldier in the Romanian army at the outbreak of World War II; the Hungarian occupation of Romania; being arrested and imprisoned for a year; being released and drafted into various labor camps and work details throughout Eastern Europe; being sent on a forced march back to Hungary and escaping with a group of other prisoners; being found by Russian troops; being freed and eventually returning to Cluj; working with Jewish committees helping to locate and assist Hungarian and Romanian Jews returning to their homes from Poland; setting up a committee office in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), where he was reunited with his fiancée; getting married after the end of the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Clara Dan

    Oral History

    Clara Dan, born in Tîrgu-Mures, Romania on July 19, 1921, describes being the youngest of three siblings; her education; her family’s religious observations; relations between Jews and non-Jews; how in the spring of 1944, Clara, her sister and her parents were rounded up and placed in a makeshift ghetto in Koloszvar, Hungary (Cluj-Napoca, Romania); being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; surviving the selection with her sister; being sent with her sister to work in a bullet factory in Hundsfeld; the evacuation of inmates when the Russians came close to the area; being marched to Gross-Rosen and then sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British Army; being placed with her sister in a displaced persons camp in Celle, Germany, where they were reunited with their brother; returning to Hungary; living in Munich, Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949; her thoughts on her survival; and her life in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Franka Charlupski

    Oral History

    Franka Charlupski (née Weintraub), born in 1920 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in a middle-class Hasidic family; being the oldest child; attending public school; the German invasion of Poland; being moved with her family to the Łódź Ghetto, where they did forced labor; getting married in 1942; conditions in the ghetto; the deportation of her family to Auschwitz in August 1944; the journey to the camp in cattle cars; being sent with her sister were sent to a camp outside Bremen, Germany; cleaning up houses after bombings; the Kapos; German locals leaving hidden food for the inmates; surviving a bombing; being transferred to Bergen-Belsen; the conditions in Bergen-Belsen; being forced to drag dead bodies into mass graves; stealing and punishments in the camps; being liberated in April 1945; her current religious practices; meeting and marrying her second husband; moving to the United States in 1949; settling in Detroit, MI; and sharing her Holocaust story with her family.

    Oral history interview with Eva Cigler

    Oral History

    Eva Cigler, born in 1926 in Beregszász, Czechoslovakia (Berehove, Ukraine), describes her childhood; the Jewish community in Beregszász; the Hungarian annexation of the area; her family (her mother, father, four sisters, and one brother) experiencing antisemitism from the Hungarians; the curfew for Jews; working at a brick factory; having to wear yellow arm bands; the Jewish council in Beregszász; destruction to the synagogue; life in the ghetto; being deported with her family to Auschwitz in 1944; the murder of her mother, father, brother, and one sister; being beaten; conditions in the barracks; being transferred to Brzezinka in Birkenau; the women Kapos; jealousy amongst the inmates when individuals got better jobs or more food; their work sorting clothes; the smells of Birkenau; attempted escapes from the camp; working in the area next to the gas chambers; never warning the people entering the gas chambers because of the presence of the guards; the children's barrack; her work in the forest; emptying the ashes from the crematorium and finding large human bones; working in a subcamp approximately 30 miles from Birkenau; being taken to Bergen-Belsen; being beaten with her sister for stealing beets; contracting typhus; religious observances in the camps; being liberated and the shooting of a Kapo during liberation; spending some time in a displaced persons camp in Celle, Germany; returning to Beregszász for a brief time; going to Prague, Czech Republic; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Regina Cohen

    Oral History

    Regina Cohen (née Schick), born in Chust, Czechoslovakia (now Khust, Ukraine) May 4, 1929, describes being the fifth child of nine in a middle-class Orthodox family; her family’s religious life; participating in Zionist youth groups; life at the beginning of the war and under the Hungarian occupation; the segregation of Jewish and Gentile children; her father’s service in the Hungarian Army; the deportation of Jews from Chust; the Judenrat (Jewish council); being sent with her family to the ghetto in Chust in May 1944; receiving help from a Hungarian grocer named Borosch; experiencing antisemitism and having to wear a yellow star; being deported to Auschwitz; the selection process in the camp; being sent to Birkenau; being treated with DDT and having her head shaved; seeing her brothers and father in the camp; daily routines in the camp and the roll calls; her work digging ditches and sorting clothes in the Kanada section of the camp; food rations and punishments in the camp; avoiding selections; religious practice in the camp; camp gossip; receiving a vaccination against typhoid fever; volunteering to change camps and going to work in a Siemens factory near Nuremberg, Germany; lying about her age; conditions in the camp; being moved to another camp (probably Mehltheuer); being liberated in April 1945 by American troops; returning home and finding one sister and one brother still alive; moving with her sister out of Russian-occupied Czechoslovakia into a displaced persons (DP) camp in Heidenheim, Germany, where they stayed for three years; continuing her education in the DP camp; learning English in order to move to Montreal to be a mother's helper for a Jewish family; post-war antisemitism; going to Canada; meeting her future husband on the ship to Montreal; going to the United States in 1952; sharing her Holocaust story; the loss of most of her family; and the reasons why she thinks she survived.

    Oral history interview with Larry Brenner

    Oral History

    Larry Brenner, born in Vásárosnamény, Hungary in 1924, describes his childhood; his three brothers and one sister; his family’s background; his experiences with antisemitism; the outbreak of the war; his father being sent to a forced labor camp; going to Budapest, Hungary to help an aunt run her business; being deported in 1944 to a forced labor camp in Jászberény; sneaking away from the camp for a couple hours and visiting his aunts; being sent to several forced labor camps; being marched out of the camp through Sopron, Hungary to Fertorákos, where they dug tank traps and a bunker system; being marched north and then sent by train to Mauthausen; life in the camp; being marched to Gunskirchen; being liberated; spending the next several years trying to find family members and dodging the Hungarian Army draft; immigrating to the United States in 1948; working for the American Jewish Distribution Committee; visiting Hungary and Mauthausen many years after immigrating to the US; and sharing his experiences with his children.

    Oral history interview with David Burdowski

    Oral History

    David Burdowski, born in Kłodawa, Poland on September 27, 1924, describes his childhood; the pogroms in Kłodawa; the invasion of Poland; the deportation of his immediate family members; being the youngest child and only survivor of his family; being taken to a forced labor camp called Buchwerder Forst to work on the Autobahn; being taken to work in a paper factory in Germany for a year and a half; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943; being sent to Jaworzno, where he worked in a coal mine; the conditions in Jaworzno; being marched to Blechhammer in early 1945 and suffering from frostbite; being taken to Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Dachau; being liberated by American forces on a train outside of Dachau in Staltach, Germany; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp, where he met his future wife; moving to the United States in 1949; living in Flint, MI for 16 years; his three daughters; moving to Southfield, MI and opening a barber shop; testifying against an SS Guard; still experiencing nightmares; his feelings about Poles and Germans; his wife’s experiences during the war; and the importance of continuing to discuss the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Morris Tuchendler Chandler

    Oral History

    Maurice Chandler (né Moszek Tuchendler), born in 1926 in Nasielsk, Poland, discusses his life before the war; not having any non-Jewish friends; his parents, who owned a textile store; the German invasion, after which Maurice and his older brother escaped across the Bug River and going to Bialystok, Poland, where they lived with a cousin until his brother became homesick; returning his brother to his parents, who were in the Warsaw ghetto, and becoming trapped in the ghetto as well; escaping the ghetto with his brother and some other young men; their work as farm hands; his brother’s death from typhus; adopting a Polish identity and continuing his work on Polish farms for the remainder of the war; his reflections on what kept him going during the war; and his thoughts on nuclear holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Biegun

    Oral History

    Samuel Biegun, born on December 25, 1932 in Pinsk, Poland, describes his early life in Pinsk; experiencing antisemitism; the Russian occupation of Pinsk and being under house arrest with his family; being deported with his family to Siberia; the journey to Siberia; living in a village called Airtau in Kazakhstan (possibly Ayyrtau in Soltustik Qazaqstan oblysy) for the duration of the war; returning to Poland after the war for a short time before moving to displaced persons camps in Germany; going to Israel; going with his wife to Canada; and settling in Oak Park, MI.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Birnholtz

    Oral History

    Joseph Birnholtz, born in Częstochowa, Poland, describes his childhood; growing up in a Chasidic community; the beginning of the war; doing forced labor in a factory with his twin sister; working for the Luftwaffe near the Jasna Górna (a monastery in Częstochowa); being forced with his family to live in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto and being separated from his family and forced to work at the HASAG factory near Częstochowa; the guards in the camp; being liberated by the Russians in 1945; joining a kibbutz in Poland; moving to the United States; and becoming a cantor.

    Oral history interview with Eva Boros

    Oral History

    Eva Boros, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1932, describes her childhood; growing up in a very religious family; the German annexation of the area; her father sending she and her siblings to Budapest, Hungary; being smuggled to Budapest in 1944 but returning to Bratislava after the German invasion of Hungary; being sent in September 1944 to Nitrianska Streda, Slovakia in order to go into hiding; the trauma of hiding; the end of the war; immigrating to Israel; attending Beit Benot Mizrachi, a girls' school in Jerusalem; the Israel-Arab War in 1948; living on several kibbutzes; and immigrating to the United States in 1969.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Asner

    Oral History

    Abraham Asner, born in Nacha, Belarus in 1916, describes the beginning of the war; fleeing with his brothers to Alovė, Lithuania; going to Varėna, Lithuania; going to Eišiškės, Lithuania, where there was a Judenrat (Jewish council); returning to Nacha; being sent with his brothers to the Radun ghetto as part of a labor force; surviving the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 with his brothers; being in Stayes in 1943; joining a partisan organization based in the nearby forest, Natsher Pustshe; their partisan activities and missions, including sabotaging railroad tracks; meeting his wife during a mission to Mijantsi; going to the Naliboki Forest; going close to a place on the Neman River and hear about the Bielski group; the death of his youngest brother; being liberated in 1945; living in Poland then in Berlin, Germany after the war; and immigrating to Canada with his wife.

    Oral history interview with Peri Berki

    Oral History

    Piroska "Peri" Berki, born July 2, 1900 in Hungary, describes her childhood; her family’s background in Hungary; the low-level of antisemitism when she was growing up; getting married and living on a farm in Kőkútpuszta (part of Sirok, Hungary); the Anschluss and restrictions placed on Jews; the deportation of her husband to a labor camp; having to wear a star; the confiscation of their farmland; living in the ghetto with her son and sister; living at one point with 39 other people in a one-bedroom apartment; how with the help of her husband and a Gentile innkeeper, they obtained false papers, moved to the Hungarian countryside (Kiskunlacháza), and assumed Gentile identities; avoiding detection and receiving help from several strangers throughout the war; reuniting with the rest of her family after the war; obtaining false papers to leave Hungary; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Biegun

    Oral History

    Miriam Biegun (née Rozwaski), born circa 1937 in Zdzieciol, Poland (Dziatlava, Belarus), describes her family’s background; growing up Orthodox; the Russian occupation; the German occupation beginning in 1941; the massacre of 120 well-educated people, including her father and uncle; the burial of the victims in two large graves; the establishment of a ghetto and the conditions there; fleeing with her family from the ghetto and going to the Lipiczanska forest; joining the Lipiczanska Puszcza resistance when she was a young child; living in the forest for three years; returning with her siblings to Zhetl (the Yiddish name for Dziatlava) in 1944 and finding it in ruins; moving after a few months to Łódź, Poland, where her siblings went to a kibbutz; going to Berlin, Germany in 1947; staying with her aunts and uncles in Ziegenhain and Jäger-Kaserne before ultimately travelling to Israel with an aunt, uncle, and cousin; meeting her future husband on the ship; getting married in Israel; living in Kfar Saba; going to Canada and living in Winnipeg and Windsor; and settling down in Oak Park, MI around 1970.

    Oral history interview with Eva Ackerman

    Oral History

    Eva Ackermann, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1926, describes growing up as an only child; being part of a large extended family, most of whom perished in the war; her parents’ divorce when she was young; being raised by her mother; having a reasonably normal childhood, even after the war began; how after the German annexation of Hungary in 1944, Eva was separated from her mother and sent to Zurndorf, Austria; being transported to a labor camp in Landsberg, Germany, where she was later liberated; her father’s death in an air raid shortly before the end of the war; and her mother’s death in Bergen-Belsen.

    Oral history interview with Olga Adler

    Oral History

    Olga Adler, born in Beregszász, Czechoslovakia (now Berehove, Ukraine), describes her family; her education; growing up assimilated and identifying more as Hungarian than Jewish; the Hungarian occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938; the restrictions placed on Jews; her brother and future husband being sent to do forced labor; going to Budapest, Hungary and working as a clothing model; the German occupation and the deportations from Budapest; the mass murder of Jews at the Danube River; the bombings in Budapest; being sent to a camp; almost being shot; life in the camps; being sent back to the Budapest ghetto as a nurse; life in the ghetto; her father, mother, brother, and sister perishing in camps; liberation and her return to her hometown; getting married; and going to the United States when the Russians took over their town.

    Oral history interview with Irving Altus

    Oral History

    Irving Altus, born August 15, 1920, in Czekanów, Poland, describes being the middle child in a family consisting of five children, his mother, and father, all of whom perished in the Holocaust; working as a paver; the Jewish community in Czekanów; the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and life during the occupation; being arrested and sent to various labor camps throughout Europe, including one in Königsberg, Germany; being transferred in 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau and assigned to an external Labor Kommando approximately 50 miles from the main camp; being forced to march westward towards Germany in 1945; arriving in Theresienstadt, where he was liberated by the Soviets after one day; returning briefly to his hometown; relocating to Munich, Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949 with his wife and son; living in Albany, NY; and his family in Detroit, MI.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Arden

    Oral History

    Eugene Arden was a corporal during World War II. Arden's military government unit was attached to the United States 7th Army as it travelled into Germany. The unit was responsible for closing down Nazi labor camps and for establishing displaced persons camps. The unit eventually helped liberate Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau. After the war, Eugene and his unit spent the post-war period in Heidelberg, Germany.

    View All 117 Items in the Collection