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Oral history interview with George Sarlo

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.729 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0729

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    Oral history interview with George Sarlo
    Transcript
    7th of September, retired or sick.
    Everybody got sick by the end, a whole delegation
    with coughing, sneezing, running to the bathroom--
    bit sad.
    Sounds like a tour from hell.
    It was.
    Actually, it was very cold--
    very cold.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Well, that's one thing, you know.
    OK, any time.
    All right.
    Today is October 23, 1990.
    I'm Anne Feibelman with the Holocaust Oral History Project
    of San Francisco, California.
    Today, we're talking with George Sarlo.
    Assisting are Beatrice Netter and Marian Barnett.
    OK, George, we'll start from the beginning.
    And as we go along, if at any point you want to stop tape,
    we can stop tape.
    If you want to rephrase anything or you've thought of something
    you forgot and want to go back, consider this rough footage.
    It will be edited together later.
    So there's no pressure to have everything come out
    chronologically or beautifully the first time.
    What we're looking for is more natural
    and spontaneous, your memories.
    OK.
    OK.
    So we'll start at the beginning with the hard part,
    where you were born and what your name is now
    and what it was then.
    I was born in Hungary, Budapest.
    And my name is George Sarlo now.
    My name then was Briar Gyorg.
    And what was the date of your birth?
    January 31, 1938.
    Can you tell me a little bit about your family, siblings,
    the name of your parents, where they were from?
    Well, I should go back one step further because my grandfather
    was American.
    He came to this country around the turn of the century,
    and then he went back to marry his sweetheart.
    And he got stuck, and then he had seven children.
    My father was about the middle of the range.
    My father married my mother about 1930,
    and my sister was born in 1931.
    So she is seven years older than I am, and it was just
    the two of us.
    What were your parents' names, and what is your sister's name?
    My father's name was Nicholas Briar.
    My mother's name is Cecilia Briar, now Cecilia Sarlo.
    And my sister's name is Agi, Agnes Lenhart.
    That's her married name.
    And she was born Agnes Briar?
    Briar.
    Tell me a little bit about family life and Jewish life.
    What did your father do?
    What kind of community did you live in?
    Did you go to a shul?
    What kind?
    What was daily life, the quality of life?
    Of course, I'm too young to know very much about it
    because the war came when I was five years old.
    But what I remember is that we were religious.
    We had a kosher house.
    We went to the temple regularly, although I don't
    think necessarily every Friday.
    When I stayed with my grandparents, which was often,
    who lived in a small village in Hungary,
    I remember going to a temple just about every night.
    I remember mostly the religious holidays, celebrations,
    the meals, some of the decorations, some
    of the singing.
    That's about all I can remember before the war.
    Did you have relatives that came for holidays?
    Or did you have an extended [NON-ENGLISH],,
    or was it pretty contained?
    No, it was a large family.
    My father had six brothers and sisters
    who regularly visited us.
    On my mother's side, there was--
    my mother had two or three brothers and sisters
    from her mother's side.
    And then her father remarried, so there
    was about three or four additional step-brothers
    and sisters.
    They lived very close to us.
    And they were often visitors in our house,
    and we were often visitors in their houses.
    And tell me what happened or what
    your memories are when things began
    to change because of the war.
    Well, the earliest memory I have,
    which referred to the war, was that my father
    was at home a lot.
    He was a clerk in a factory.
    And when the second wave of discriminatory laws
    were passed, he lost his job because he was a Jew.
    So all of a sudden, instead of going to work in the morning,
    he was at home.
    And that must have been about 1942, so I was quite young.
    I was four years old.
    And then the next thing I remember, which I think
    was 1943, and I remember quite clearly him reading a telegram
    in the living room and everybody being
    very surprised and scared.
    And what the telegram was is notification
    that he had to go into the forced labor unit.
    In Hungary, Jews were not allowed
    to serve in the Army proper.
    But there were units made up of Jews who were forced laborers
    to help the Army.
    So they would dig the ditches, and they would build the roads.
    But they were not allowed to carry guns.
    And I remember him getting the notice he had to leave,
    and everybody was crying.
    And then what happened?
    I guess he left.
    This is a story, which I heard from my mother,
    that he was a very clever fellow.
    And he thought he'll be back next day or in a week.
    He thought for sure he could get out of it.
    So when he left, he had to leave very early in the morning.
    And he didn't want to wake me up to say goodbye,
    because he thought he would be back right away.
    And then my mother tells me that, in his letters,
    he often said from Russia, I wish I had woken Yuri up--
    Yuri was my name--
    and that he really regretted that he never said goodbye.
    And that's the last time I saw him.
    What happened to him?
    We don't know.
    He was taken to Russia.
    And we have no documentation as to what happened.
    He disappeared.
    We got a letter from some officials that he disappeared.
    It was cold.
    It was winter in Russia.
    He wrote us a number of letters.
    My mother sent him lots of packages.
    There was a package from him, which had a birthday
    present from me in it.
    But I don't think it came from him.
    I think my mother made it up to appear like it came from him.
    And the last thing we heard, one of his colleagues
    from the labor unit came back.
    And he said that my father was very sad.
    He had a wonderful leather coat, and somebody
    stole his leather coat.
    And it was very cold.
    And he was sad not because the coat
    was stolen, because in the pocket were
    pictures of me and my sister.
    And that's the last we heard, so I assume he froze to death.
    When?
    The last we heard from him was in 1943.
    Can you tell me what the present was that--
    I don't remember.
    My mother probably would.
    I'll ask her, but I don't remember.
    What happened to your family after your father left?
    Well, things were rough.
    The restrictions on Jews were more and more harsh.
    It's an interesting sort of ironic story
    that, because my father lost his job,
    my mother had to start the business.
    And she became very successful.
    So for a while, we were pretty well-off.
    But the bombing started mostly from our American Air Force.
    And it wasn't safe to be in Budapest,
    which was a big city suffering most of the bombings.
    So my mother sent me down to live with my grandparents,
    who lived in a small village, which was supposed to be safe.
    So I lived there from, I would guess, early 1944 to mid-1944.
    What was the name of the village?
    And what was the business that your mother started?
    The name of the village is Újfehértó.
    And my mother was making ladies lingerie.
    And what happened while you were living with your grandparents?
    What was life like?
    I felt safe there.
    Life was very much like I remembered
    from previous vacations--
    small village, very modest home, lots of animals.
    It was fun until the Germans came into Hungary,
    which was in March of 1944.
    And shortly thereafter, the deportation started.
    And there were very serious restrictions on Jews.
    I remember when my grandmother made up the first stars
    that we had to wear on our clothes,
    and I thought it was great fun.
    I felt very special.
    I guess I was.
    I remember looking at some yellow tablecloth she had.
    And I was thinking, oh my, we could make
    lots of stars out of this one.
    But then it became scary.
    I could see that my grandparents were quite concerned.
    And it was very close.
    I was rescued from the village the day
    before all the Jews were taken to Auschwitz.
    And very few came back, maybe one or two.
    When was this?
    About the middle of 1944.
    And tell me about the rescue.
    Well, it's a good story because it has
    a recent continuation to it.
    My mother had an employee whose name I don't remember.
    It was a lady who worked for her whose sister was married
    to a very nice gentleman, a Christian man
    called Laszlo Bornamissa.
    And my mother asked Mr. Bornamissa
    to try to get me back because she
    heard about the rumors of deportations.
    So he came down to Újfehértó, the village, on the train.
    And he pretended that I was his son,
    and he smuggled me out of the village into the train.
    And he hid me under some coats.
    It was a long train ride.
    And I remember the soldiers coming through the train
    looking for Jews.
    One of them poked the bayonet right through the coat
    and I remember seeing the knife going right front of my eyes.
    So it was exciting.
    And he got me back to Budapest.
    And the reason it's interesting because I lost touch with him.
    I know that he died many years ago.
    But recently, through some of the Jewish agencies,
    I was able to locate his widow and his daughter.
    And we started corresponding again.
    And I'm hoping to help them because they
    are in pretty bad shape.
    And also, I have written recently
    to Yad Vashem suggesting his name as one
    of the righteous Gentiles.
    What is his widow's name and the daughter?
    The widow's name is Mario Bornamissa.
    And she had two daughters, one of whom lives in England,
    I think.
    The other one recently wrote to me.
    Her name is [PERSONAL NAME].
    And I know her from her nickname Dodie.
    She's about my age, and we were friends.
    So it's going to be interesting to perhaps meet with her again.
    Fantastic.
    Yeah.
    Now, when you got back to Budapest, what happened?
    I don't remember very much of the next few months.
    However, I know that most of the Jews
    were taken from their homes and put into the ghetto.
    Where we lived, the apartment building
    was right at the edge of the ghetto.
    It was just outside.
    And I remember that they were very afraid
    that they would take us also.
    The custodian of the building was a member
    of the Arrow Cross, which was the Hungarian fascist
    organization.
    And my mother kept paying her off with jewelry and things
    not to report us, that we were not in a ghetto
    where we were supposed to be.
    But I know that things were getting more and more scary.
    There were certain exempted people in Hungary
    who are protected by a friendly government,
    or a neutral government, such as the Wallenberg passport
    that you know about.
    Those were Swedish protected people
    who are put into certain apartment buildings, which
    were designated as Swedish protected houses.
    There were also Swiss protected houses,
    and there were Spanish protected houses.
    Since we had relatives in Spain, which
    was a very friendly country to the Axis,
    we requested emigration to Spain.
    And we received passports, which enabled us to get
    into a Spanish protected house.
    Now, these protected houses were protected up to a point.
    As things got rougher and rougher, as more and more
    Jews were killed, they were entering the protected houses
    also, the fascists.
    And there was sort of a hierarchy to them.
    First, they took the Swiss, and then they took the Swedes.
    And then they started to take the Spanish also.
    But we moved into a Spanish protected house, where we lived
    with a bunch of other people.
    I mean, there were 20 people to a room
    under very poor conditions.
    We had very little to eat and no heat and no privacy.
    But we were relatively safe.
    We, of course, knew that the Jews were regularly
    taken and executed.
    A lot of my family were killed during that time.
    What happened to your family, the people who were killed?
    Most of them were taken to concentration camps.
    Most of them were taken to Auschwitz, some to Dachau,
    a few to Theresienstadt, a few to Bergen-Belsen.
    I'd say maybe 30 members of my family were taken,
    and maybe three returned.
    As a child, did you know what was going on?
    I knew some of the things that were going on.
    I mean, I knew that I was in grave danger.
    I knew that I was in grave danger because I was a Jew.
    I knew that people were getting killed all around me.
    I mean, I saw bodies piled up.
    That's about all I knew.
    When you say you saw bodies piled up,
    was that inside the ghetto?
    Or--
    Inside, outside, both.
    I remember the main synagogue building
    in Budapest in the courtyard.
    They had the bodies piled up like railroad ties--
    five this way, and then five this way, and then up again.
    And I remember the smell more than anything else.
    Were these people who had been starved to death,
    who have been executed?
    I don't know.
    Now, what happened, to go back a little bit,
    to your grandparents?
    You left their house in the village,
    and what happened to them?
    Well, they were taken to Auschwitz I think next day.
    And was your sister with you, or was she with your mother?
    No, she was with my mother.
    She was sort of the hero of the family
    because she was at the time, what, maybe 10 years old.
    But she was the one who got us the Spanish papers.
    And she was the one who would go outside the house
    when it was very dangerous to go and would get us food and--
    and things.
    She was a tough little girl.
    She still is.
    How did she get the papers?
    Well, there was some correspondence between us
    and our relatives in Spain and I know
    there were official papers going back and forth.
    But I don't know what was involved in getting the papers.
    Now, tell me a little bit about the Spanish house
    because I don't know anything about it, what specifically you
    remember, what a day was like there, what happened,
    and what a raid was like, who would come, Germans,
    the Hungarians--
    Mostly Hungarians, Hungarian fascists, the Arrow Cross,
    who were the real scum of the Earth, the lowest classes who
    were in it basically because they hated Jews
    and because they robbed their victims.
    It was very scary.
    I remember, for example, one day,
    I was playing in the backyard of the protected house
    with some of my friends.
    And in the next building, which was a Swiss-protected house,
    where some of our friends, who we
    would play together normally.
    And that particular day, they came and took them.
    And I remember waving to my friends who
    were being pushed by these Arrow Cross with their guns.
    And one of them threw me a note, and I
    remember the paper was wrapped around the battery for weight.
    I remember picking it up and reading it,
    and I don't remember what it said on the note.
    Another thing I remember that across the street from us
    lived a friend of ours also, I think, in a protected house.
    And one day, I wanted to go and visit her.
    But it was illegal for me to go out on the street,
    but I sneaked out anyway.
    I figured, just run across.
    And as I got to her house and I tried to open it,
    it was locked.
    And I was terribly frightened somebody might see me.
    And I was beating on it and trying to open it,
    and along came a little boy my age, maybe six.
    And he was looking at me and saw how frightened I was.
    And he started pointing at me and hollering, here,
    here's a Jew, here is a Jew.
    And I never forget how frightening
    that was, another little boy trying to get me killed.
    What happened?
    I guess I got away.
    I don't remember.
    I just remember the fright.
    What I remember most is that there wasn't much food,
    that we were always surrounded by lots of people,
    and there was bombs falling all the time.
    We spent a lot of time underground
    in the basement, which was protection from the bombs.
    That's about all I can remember.
    What was it like?
    Did they ever raid your house?
    Not in the protected house.
    There were raids in the original apartment buildings,
    and I remember them taking people away.
    And I don't know why they didn't take us.
    What else do you remember from the period,
    either in the Spanish house or before the Spanish house,
    about restrictions or incidences that left a memory?
    I remember the day of liberation.
    When was that?
    It must have been about January of 1945.
    The Russians had been firing at the city for a long time.
    They surrounded Budapest for several months,
    and that was a period when most of the killings took place.
    They would take the Jews down to the Danube,
    and they would shoot them so they
    would fall into the Danube.
    The bodies would be carried by the river.
    Anyway, I remember--
    Excuse me.
    How did you know that?
    I think my mother told me.
    I think my mother's stepsister was taken, my aunt.
    And I think she was shot into the river, and she survived.
    She swam with a bullet in her and became a professor
    of nuclear engineering.
    [CHUCKLES]
    Anyway, the day of liberation-- what I remember
    is that my mother was giving me a bath.
    And of course, we had not enough water for a proper bath.
    What she had is a little pot of hot water, a little pail.
    And I would stand in the pail, and she would wash me
    with the soap, with a cloth.
    And I remember standing in that cold room,
    and my body was giving off the steam
    because she was washing me.
    And all of a sudden, my sister, who was at the window,
    screamed, they are here, they are here.
    And I remember running to the window, steaming all the way,
    and seeing the first Russian soldier with a big fur hat.
    And that was--
    How did you feel?
    Wonderful.
    Yeah.
    That's when we thought all of our troubles were over.
    And then what happened?
    Well, we were liberated, and we were allowed to go back
    to our original apartment.
    I remember pulling a little cart with all of our belongings,
    going back and seeing lots of dead bodies on the street.
    I remember the insides of people.
    And that's when the real hunger started.
    There was very little food at that point.
    And I remember begging the Russian soldiers, khleba,
    khleba, bread, and being wonderfully
    rewarded when I got a piece.
    And I could take it home to my mother
    and show I was finally the breadwinner, truly
    the breadwinner of the family, [INAUDIBLE] six.
    I remember one gory part when I found a horse that was killed,
    and there were people carving up the horse.
    And I got a piece, and I took it home.
    And my mother cooked it, and it didn't taste very good.
    And I remember waiting for my father to come home.
    He never did.
    And then a few months later, one of my mother's cousins
    came back from a concentration camp.
    And he lost his wife and his two children.
    And then they got together and got married.
    That's my stepfather.
    What's his name?
    Frank.
    He's a nice old guy.
    He's going to be 90.
    What's his last name, his--
    Sarlo.
    Oh, Sarlo.
    This is your--
    Originally was Szwarc.
    But that was too Jewish-sounding.
    So after the war, it was fashionable to change your name
    to be more Hungarian sounding.
    Sarlo properly pronounced is sarlo.
    It means sickle, which seems like the right name
    in a communist regime.
    [COUGHS]
    Can I give you some water?
    I'm OK.
    Yeah?
    Now, what happened after you returned home
    and you were hungry?
    What was life like for the Jews, for you, for your family?
    Well, I felt still very intimidated.
    I felt-- and that feeling lasted most of my life--
    different.
    When people tried to kill you and you're a little boy,
    you probably feel there's something wrong with you.
    I remember my mother taking me to my first school class right
    after the war.
    I missed a year because of the war,
    so I was seven years old when I entered
    in a class of six-year-olds.
    And this particular school, like most schools in Hungary,
    was run by a church, just happened
    to be a Lutheran Church.
    And I felt very strange there.
    How can I be among those people who, up till now, have
    been trying to kill me?
    Was this really safe?
    And I felt, as I still feel sometimes,
    that I had to do extra, extra well because I
    was a Jew in order to justify my existence.
    So I suppose, in a way, it was a driving force in my life,
    maybe responsible to some of my achievements.
    It's a hell of a way to get ambition, but it worked.
    I suspect you would have had ambition anyway, right?
    Possibly.
    Now, what about other children in the class?
    Were there other Jews?
    Did you have friends?
    I mean--
    Not many.
    There were one or two Jews in the class.
    You must understand that 90% of Hungarian Jews
    were killed during the war.
    They were very efficient.
    They were probably as efficient as any country.
    Hungarian are, by tradition, are very anti-Semitic.
    So they not only cooperated, but they led the charge.
    I think maybe I would like--
    Have some water.
    [COUGHS]
    [INAUDIBLE]
    If, by chance, anybody has an aspirin, that would be great.
    Let me see--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Oh, how nice.
    Are you feeling OK?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I have two Excedrin.
    How's that sound?
    One will do.
    Thank you.
    --Leading the charge.
    We're ready whenever-- give me a sign when you speed.
    OK.
    Are you picking up the traffic on the audio?
    Somewhat.
    Yes.
    It hasn't overshadowed it yet.
    OK.
    I can close it if you like?
    I think maybe, yeah.
    And there are a lot of buses now.
    And is there anything that I'm not
    asking you that you think of?
    The more specific or detailed, I think, the more interesting.
    As you say, there weren't many survivors from Hungary.
    And it's an unusual story from that perspective.
    Tell me when you're ready.
    [INAUDIBLE] you are.
    When I have my sister or my mother visit,
    then you might get more out of it.
    They will remember a lot more.
    Where are they now?
    In Southern California, but they both
    visit here from time to time.
    That would be good, particularly your mother.
    It's incredible, really, that she's here to tell the tale.
    Yeah.
    My mother remembers a lot, probably too much.
    It's interesting that my stepfather completely
    blocked it out.
    When I ask him questions about the war or the concentration
    camp, he says he doesn't know what I'm talking about.
    So it works either way.
    Yeah.
    It's like my father, who had no life before 1940.
    Now, where were we?
    We were talking about life at school and friends.
    What was life like at school?
    You started a year later, and there weren't many Jews.
    I remember only being very shy, very
    intimidated, never participated in games or sports,
    being quite withdrawn.
    Some of it's maybe my personality, a lot of it
    probably due to the events of the war.
    All of my friends were Jewish.
    There weren't that many, but I had no Christian friends.
    I felt very distant and very alienated
    from Hungarian society, and that persisted today.
    Hungary was never my home.
    And that's probably the reason that,
    as soon as I had a chance in 1956, I left.
    Were there any incidences where people were calling you Jew
    or being anti-Semitic to you?
    Yes, lots of them.
    Like what?
    It was a fairly common epitaph to use--
    dirty Jew, equivalent of the Kike
    if somebody didn't like you.
    I guess with the advent of the Communist rule,
    it had diminished a great deal.
    Most of the Communist leaders in Hungary were Jewish.
    So the innate anti-Semitism of the Hungarian population
    was suppressed during those years.
    But I thought it was always there.
    During the revolution, it came out.
    There were quite a few ex-Nazi types
    who participated in the revolution in 1956.
    A lot of Austrian and Germans came across the border.
    And when I escaped Hungary and was
    in a refugee camp in Austria among Hungarians,
    there were very strong anti-Semitic tempers.
    In fact, at one point, I was threatened by a Hungarian
    with a knife for the only reason that I was a Jew.
    So I ran.
    I got out of the camp, and I went on my own.
    Let's backtrack a little bit.
    When you were still in school and growing up still
    in Hungary, was there a Jewish life?
    And what was home life like?
    It was very different.
    My mother, who was religious before the war,
    became anti-religious after the war.
    Her attitude was, now, how could there
    be a god when these things were allowed?
    She would no longer keep the Sabbath.
    She would no longer cook kosher.
    Plus, because the Communist system was so much
    against religion, it became very fashionable to be
    anti-religious.
    My sister became part of the Communist youth
    because that was the way to survive.
    She would go to the point of calling my mother an exploiter
    of the masses and capitalist pig because she
    had a few employees.
    Interestingly, my stepfather's reaction to the Holocaust
    was exactly the opposite of my mother.
    He became very religious, that he continued
    to go to the synagogue, although not terribly
    often and in a hidden way.
    I tried to deny all aspects of Jewishness.
    To me, it was shameful.
    It was dangerous.
    My parents, my mother and my stepfather,
    wanted me to have a bar mitzvah.
    And I did it but did it very, very reluctantly.
    I thought it was something very dangerous.
    So no, there wasn't much Jewish life after the war.
    Now, tell me about communism.
    And how did that change life in Hungary?
    What happened?
    Well, the communists, that is the Russians,
    were our liberators.
    They saved our lives.
    To survive after 1948, you had to be
    part of the communist system.
    That is, if you wanted a good job,
    or if you wanted to go to school,
    or if you wanted any privileges, you better conform.
    And we conformed.
    My father, who, before the war, had a store,
    became a machinist.
    My mother had this little lingerie business, which
    was successful after the war.
    But it was taken away by the state,
    so she became a seamstress.
    I was a very good student.
    But for me, in order to go on to university,
    I had to be a member and a distinguished
    member of the Communist Youth, which I became.
    But I have to say, I believed in it too, completely.
    What did you believe in?
    And how do you become a distinguished member?
    What I believed is that that was the way to live,
    that communism was the answer to all the troubles
    of the past for humanity, that it was a new humanity.
    The way you became a distinguished leader was that,
    first of all, you became a member of the Communist Youth.
    And you worked to become functionary in the movement.
    And you spoke the right words, and you read the right books.
    And you went to the right meetings,
    and you had good grades.
    And eventually you became the leader,
    and then you got the goodies.
    What were they?
    The goodies?
    Oh, I became-- one of the great rewards
    was for me to become a member of the railroad, which
    was built for the Pioneers.
    Pioneers where the equivalent of the Scouts, but they
    were the Communist Boy Scouts.
    And there was a railroad built for the Scouts, where
    distinguished functionaries, such as myself,
    could play railroad people.
    And we were running the railroad.
    And it was fun, and it was uniform.
    And you got to take off a day from school every other week.
    And you had your papers, and that was very honorable thing.
    Did it make you feel any more comfortable in Hungary?
    Being a communist?
    Yes, it certainly did because communists rescued the Jews
    from the Nazis, and the communists
    suppressed the innate anti-Semitism
    of the Hungarians.
    And then what happened?
    Why I turned against communism?
    Oh, I think it's just the process
    of growing and learning and reading and having
    some ideas of your own.
    I mean, it's an old saying that anyone under 20
    who is not a communist should have his heart examined.
    Anyone over 30 who is still a communist
    should have his head examined.
    I read.
    I read a lot.
    And when you read, you begin to understand
    that there are other ways and that
    the so-called inconsistencies and contradictions
    of capitalism perhaps were not so contradictory after all.
    And you begin to feel that you live a lie.
    Those demonstrations every May Day and the placards
    and the flags and--
    you can only repeat those slogans so many times.
    Now, when we were in the Soviet Union last month,
    our guide, who was a pretty outspoken young man,
    tells us funny story about the communist school, little kids,
    in the Soviet Union.
    And the teacher comes, and the teacher
    trains them to say the right things.
    And the teacher asks the group, what's
    the best country in the world?
    The Soviet Union, everybody.
    Where is the kids have the best food in the world?
    Soviet Union.
    Where do they have the most wonderful toys in the world?
    The Soviet Union.
    Little Tonya in the corner starts crying.
    What's the matter, Tonya?
    I want to go to the Soviet Union.
    [LAUGHTER]
    You can only live a lie up to a point.
    And then either you completely lose your personal integrity
    or you start thinking, well, maybe I was wrong.
    Maybe there's another way.
    What were some of the lies?
    And what were some of the things that you read?
    What was the process?
    Well, the basic concept of communist theory,
    whereby everybody works according to his abilities
    and everybody gets rewarded according to his needs,
    is a wonderful myth.
    We know it.
    I didn't.
    I thought it was possible.
    I truly believed that it was possible to create
    a new human being, a new human being who is essentially
    fearless and selfless and who will do all the right things.
    When I looked around me, I couldn't see any.
    People were essentially greedy and fearful
    and acted out of their own impulses,
    just like any other place in the world.
    So how long can you say that this is the worker's paradise
    when you find out, by reading, that there are other countries
    with higher standard of living?
    And how long can you say that this is a wonderful freedom
    when you cannot say what you think and when you see people
    disappearing and when you see that the functionaries get
    the rewards and the workers don't?
    I mean, if you're willing to look in the mirror,
    the contradictions come out pretty quickly.
    It's only when you're not willing to look in the mirror
    that you can fool yourself.
    So you looked in the mirror.
    And then what happened?
    Well, I can't say there was this great transformation.
    It was a gradual process.
    But by the time I entered the university at age 18,
    I knew pretty well that this was an act,
    that we were living a lie.
    And when the revolution came, I participated.
    And there was an opportunity at that point to get out,
    and I did.
    Tell me about the revolution.
    What exactly happened, and how did you participate?
    Well, the revolution started in 1956 as a result of a speech
    that Khrushchev made at the party
    Congress, which revealed all the awful things that Stalin did,
    or at least some part of it, which
    was the first crack in the mirror,
    the first time that you could look in the mirror
    and know that this god was really a criminal.
    And once you start looking in the mirror,
    all the other shades fall away.
    So beginning with the Khrushchev speech,
    there was an increasingly agitated intellectual layer
    of the population who wanted more truth.
    Newspapers, unauthorized newspapers
    appeared out of nowhere.
    Bills were posted on the walls with demands for more freedom.
    And I was at the University of Budapest, freshman.
    And at the university, we started
    to have meetings and demonstrations,
    asking for the right to organize ourselves
    outside of the traditional Communist Youth movement.
    I entered the University about mid-September.
    And on October 23, we planned a demonstration.
    And the demonstration started out.
    We were very good-natured, laughing, singing songs.
    And it grew in size.
    We marched to the parliament building,
    towards the center of Hungary.
    By that time, a lot of the workers from the factories
    came also.
    And we demanded freedoms, and we demanded that a new government
    be put in.
    But everything was peaceful.
    The last thing anybody expected is fighting, or shootings,
    or revolution.
    And then all of a sudden, there were some--
    later, we found out there were secret police shooting
    from the rooftops on the demonstrators.
    A few people got killed.
    And then a lot of the demonstrators
    went to the Army barracks, and the Hungarian Army essentially
    joined the demonstrators and opened up the weapons.
    And people started shooting at each other.
    And after a day or two, we won.
    We took over all of Budapest.
    I had a nice little Tommy gun, and I
    was guarding the Minister of Interior,
    including some of the secret police that we locked up.
    And it was very romantic and very exciting.
    And we won for three days.
    And after the third day, the Russians came in with tanks.
    And Tommy guns don't work against tanks.
    So I felt like I'd better take off.
    And I ran.
    And then, a few days later, it became obvious
    that those of us who were in the Revolution
    could end up in Siberia.
    And we heard that things were very chaotic at the border.
    So my sister and myself and her husband and her little son
    took off together.
    And we first got on a streetcar, and then we got on the train.
    And then we got on the bus, and then we
    got on a horse-drawn carriage.
    And then we walked, and then we crawled.
    And we got across.
    To--
    To Austria.
    We crossed at the bridge at and out
    that was written up and destroyed a few hours
    after we got across.
    And then what?
    And then I ended up in this camp that I told you
    about with a bunch of other refugees,
    where there were some threats made
    by some of the other Hungarians for whatever reason,
    because we were Jewish.
    And then we escaped from there into Vienna,
    where I used my only treasure.
    I had a $5 bill, which my mother saved during the war
    when it was illegal to have currency.
    And she sewed it into my sleeve as I was leaving.
    That's all I had, just $5.
    And I had a German dictionary in this pocket
    and a English dictionary in this pocket.
    And I used that $5 to call my uncle in the United States, who
    wasn't really my uncle.
    But he was my stepfather's brother, who didn't really
    know who I was.
    But he was a nice guy.
    And next day, he was in Vienna.
    And he wasn't a rich man.
    But he and his wife came over and found us and bought me
    an overcoat and got me a hotel room and a good meal
    and my first Coca-Cola.
    And then we decided that, unless we get my parents out,
    I will never see them again.
    So we hired a person who made a living
    out of bringing people out.
    And the way it worked-- you pay him so much down, and then
    the rest is COD.
    So he went into Hungary, and it was very dangerous by then.
    And we waited and waited, and he didn't show up.
    And we thought maybe he got killed,
    or maybe they all got killed, or maybe
    just took off with the money.
    But no, three or four days after the date he
    was supposed to be back, he finally showed up.
    And everybody was kissing and hugging and crying,
    and my parents were there.
    And then he was to collect his remaining fee.
    He had, I think, $700 due on delivery.
    But then he saw in my uncle's hotel room
    that he had a little transistor radio, on the bed
    and he'd never seen a transistor radio.
    So it's like the old story about getting
    Manhattan for $200 in beads.
    He took the transistor radio from my parents.
    That's the story.
    Yeah.
    How did you find him?
    I don't know.
    My uncle did.
    And when was this?
    1956.
    When?
    I would guess this was in December.
    When this happened, I was already in the States.
    My uncle stayed there, and he got them out.
    Now, you went to the States when?
    I came to the States on December 10, 1956.
    How did you get there?
    I came via HIAS, a Jewish organization.
    HIAS got us some sort of a charter flight.
    It was a plane that had to stop every five hours to refuel.
    It was a long--
    I think it took 30 hours from Vienna
    to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey.
    And that was a little scary.
    But I had a bottle of rum, so it kept me company.
    And my sister and her family had already left a week before,
    so they were waiting for me in New York.
    And who was in New York or when in New York, where did
    you live?
    HIAS took us there.
    And then, next day, we came to California
    because that's where my uncle was.
    And he joined you later with your mother?
    Yes.
    And I wanted to go back a little bit to the revolution
    because I know that was--
    I mean, for you, you were, what, 18--
    Yes.
    --at the time?
    Can you tell me a little bit more what
    it was like to be 18 and in the middle of the revolution
    with a Tommy gun?
    It was exciting.
    It was very much an adventure.
    It was scary.
    It brought back a lot of the memories of the war.
    But this time, I had a gun.
    And I wasn't a little boy anymore.
    It felt very confusing.
    There were people shooting at each other,
    and nobody could really figure out who was who and why.
    I had very ambivalent feelings about it
    because, after all, the Russians were our liberators.
    And some of these revolutionary characters
    reminded me very much of the Germans.
    So it was very confusing.
    It was a good time to get the hell out of there.
    I never looked back.
    I mean, that was a very easy decision.
    And then, when you get to America--
    I'm crossing continents now, so if there's anything
    that you would like to add about the first 18 years
    that I'm not asking you that you feel
    is important to have down--
    I think it's important to understand that America to us
    was always the land of dreams, the land of freedom,
    a land of wealth.
    It was almost a family myth.
    After all, my grandfather came here and supposedly got rich.
    Well, he should have gotten rich,
    except he went back there, damn romantic fool that he was.
    So to come here was the fulfillment of a mission,
    of a providence.
    It was almost a natural thing to do.
    Even though I was alone and I was 18,
    and I didn't know anyone, I didn't have any money,
    it made sense to do.
    So it wasn't a terribly scary experience compared
    to all the prior scary years.
    It was more of an exhilarating coming-of-age type
    of an experience.
    It was very different than what I expected.
    I expected the America of the Sinclair Lewis years
    or the Chicago days of stockyards and the gangsters
    and the bullets flying around.
    I found the country very much to my liking immediately.
    I didn't have any of the regrets that a lot of emigrants have,
    and the doubts.
    I hit the place running.
    I thought this was a candy store from day one.
    It was very easy for me to become an American.
    I think I was an American when I was born,
    just I was born in the wrong place.
    What were the early days like?
    What did you do?
    In America?
    Well, HIAS, the Jewish agency, got us a little apartment
    in Hollywood.
    And we went shopping at the supermarket first night,
    and we bought some intriguing things.
    And we took it home, and we ate them.
    And next morning, the lady from the HIAS came to visit us.
    And he looked at the can that we used,
    and he said, oh, you already have a cat, huh?
    [LAUGHTER]
    Tasted all right.
    I mean, there was a fish on the can.
    The usual stories.
    I had a Murphy bed, and I actually ended up in the wall,
    you know, with--
    I thought, what a strange country.
    [LAUGHTER]
    HIAS arranged the job interviews for us second day.
    I was working on the third day.
    I worked for an engineering firm in Los Angeles
    that specialized in hiring immigrants who
    didn't know any better, paid me $1 an hour,
    which was a federal minimum wage.
    And I thought it was wonderful.
    I got my first paycheck at the end of the week.
    It was $36, and I'd never seen so much money in my life.
    So I went to the movies, and I saw Elvis and Love Me Tender.
    And I thought that was very strange.
    It was great.
    It was great.
    And I never forget.
    We arrived into Hollywood and--
    well, we arrived in Los Angeles, and we took a taxi
    into Hollywood.
    And it was December, and it was the sun shining.
    And the Christmas decorations were on.
    And the driver, when he heard we were from Hungary, would stop.
    And he bought ice cream for everybody
    and wouldn't take money from us.
    I mean, everything that I heard was true.
    It was neat.
    It was neat.
    What else?
    It's been neat ever since.
    It's been a great life.
    What happened after the ice cream and Elvis?
    I was brought up in the tradition
    that the way to escape poverty was education.
    So there was absolutely no question
    as to what I should be doing.
    I should be going to school.
    After all, I was 18.
    So I enrolled the first week Los Angeles City College.
    I ended up living in Venice, which is
    a long ways from Los Angeles.
    Didn't have a car.
    I would get up at 5:00 in the morning,
    take the bus to LA City College, go to school for four hours,
    take the bus downtown, where I worked for eight hours,
    take the bus back to college for night classes,
    and take the bus back home, arrive around 11, 12.
    So I didn't sleep very much.
    Whenever I slept was on the bus, but it was OK.
    I was going to school, and I was in America.
    I remember my first exam, where I spent at least 80%
    of the time translating the question
    with my first dictionary and then 20% of the time
    answering it.
    And I applied for scholarships, and I got one after six months.
    And I was off to Arizona, University of Arizona.
    They wanted a real life Hungarian, and I was it.
    And I arrived in Tucson, again, without any money,
    without knowing a soul.
    And had scholarships, worked part time.
    And in two years, I graduated from college.
    What did you study?
    Electrical engineering.
    That was the thing to do.
    Sputnik, you remember?
    If you want to make money, George,
    you've got to become an engineer.
    Wrong.
    [LAUGHS] But I worked in engineering
    for a couple of years.
    Where?
    Doing what?
    Semiconductor business in a huge aircraft in Newport Beach.
    And then, strictly by chance, I came across my boss's paycheck
    stub.
    It was lying on the desk.
    I wasn't looking for it.
    But I discovered that he was only making $2,000 a year
    more than I was, and he'd been there for 26 years.
    And I'll be damned if I'm going to do it.
    So that day, I quit.
    And then I asked, OK, now, what do
    you have to do in this country make some money?
    And everybody said, well, you got to go to Harvard Business
    School.
    So off I went.
    And I did that for a couple of years.
    That was tough.
    Why?
    Well, at Harvard Business School,
    they sort of tear you apart and put
    you back together the way they think you should be.
    And that's very hard.
    I got through college in two and a half years without studying.
    I never studied, and I had very good grades.
    And at Harvard Business School, I worked very hard
    on my first term paper.
    And it came back with great big letters on the front saying,
    imbecile.
    [CHUCKLING]
    That gets your attention.
    60-some percentage of the class is Phi Beta Kappa,
    so I had to work.
    But it's OK.
    When was this?
    '61 through '63.
    And then I've been in the investment business ever since.
    What happened after Harvard Business School?
    I joined an investment management company in New York.
    And then I moved with them to Los Angeles.
    I worked there for four years, then back to New York.
    I started my own firm.
    And then I moved out here 20 years ago.
    And it's been wonderful.
    What's been wonderful?
    Well, nobody's trying to kill me.
    I can generally say what's on my mind.
    I generally get to keep most of the rewards of my work.
    I made and brought up a couple of lovely girls, who
    seem to like me.
    I like them.
    I have essentially all the comforts that I want.
    I'm doing work, which I think is important.
    And I'm beginning to pay back some
    of the things I owe to a society that took me in and allowed
    me to become free.
    And I think that's wonderful.
    I mean, both the adoption and the ability to pay it back.
    You mentioned that you're doing work
    that you think is important.
    What are you doing?
    What is satisfying for you?
    Well, my business is venture capital.
    I back talented people who have a vision.
    I give them money.
    I give them my experience and advice.
    If we're successful, we create lots
    of jobs and value, products and services
    that people seem to want.
    I think that's very satisfying.
    I'm quite active in community affairs.
    And I'm chairman of KQED, which I
    think is a wonderful organization that I
    think needs my kind of help at this point in it's history.
    I give away a lot of money I make a lot of money.
    That's very satisfying.
    What are your daughters names, and how old are they?
    Where are they?
    Gabrielle Stephanie is 23, and she's here looking for a job.
    She graduated last year and spent a year
    with a large advertising company and quit one year
    to that date saying, I want my freedom now.
    I put in my time.
    And the younger one is Suzanna Georgette,
    who just graduated from college and in the process of applying
    to law school.
    Where is she?
    She's living here with her mother, my ex-wife.
    George, when you look back, what was
    your motivation for your life?
    No question about the search for freedom.
    If anyone ever asked to define myself,
    I think I am, above all, a free man, as free as I can be.
    And I think, without any question,
    the motivation for everything has
    been search for additional freedom,
    first for physical freedom, and then freedom
    from poverty and restrictions.
    And lately it's freedom from myself,
    from physical limits, emotional limits,
    trying to change myself.
    But that's the one thing.
    Do you think the war had any influence on you?
    The war, or specifically the Holocaust,
    is, without any question, the single most important event
    of my life.
    And that's not just my opinion, but it's almost
    universally agreed by those people who know me well,
    know my friends, my family, my people who've been close to me.
    Can I ask a question?
    Yeah.
    You said that the key motivation for your life
    was search for freedom, and then you
    said that included freedom from myself.
    And one, would you describe that as physical limits?
    Could you elaborate?
    If you're not healthy, you're restricted.
    One of the great dreams that I had was,
    many years ago, childhood dream, is to climb Mount Everest.
    Well, I tried it, and I got up halfway.
    But I couldn't make it all the way up,
    because I wasn't in good enough physical shape.
    Today, I spend a lot of time trying
    to become in better physical shape,
    or at least retain my physical abilities to do things.
    It's the fight for retaining freedom.
    That's one aspect of freedom.
    And similarly, we all have lots of inhibitions,
    mental, emotional restrictions that we place on ourselves.
    And I spend a great deal of time trying
    to free myself from that--
    psychoanalysis, reading, meditation, music,
    some of the tools for that.
    What are some of the issues [INAUDIBLE]??
    Currently, or in the past?
    Right now.
    Well, in the past, being Jewish was certainly a big issue.
    Very ambivalent about it.
    On one hand, very, very proud of the achievements
    of the Jewish culture.
    On the other hand, very much ashamed
    because it was beaten into me that it was bad to be a Jew.
    Jews are, by definition, under mange.
    There were lots of sexual issues.
    There were lots of marital problems, issues between me
    and my daughters.
    Most of that have been resolved, or partially resolved,
    to my satisfaction.
    Can you elaborate on this?
    Which one?
    Where you mentioned three, sexual, marriage,
    and issues [INAUDIBLE].
    I don't know if I want to go into that.
    Is there one area that you would be willing to talk about?
    No, these are pretty personal stuff.
    OK.
    I don't feel the necessity for that.
    I am willing to say that they were probably
    related to Holocaust experiences and that it
    took many years of struggling and psychotherapy
    to get to the point where I'm comfortable with them,
    and were the cause of tremendous conflict between myself
    and my ex-wife, who was not a Jew.
    Incidentally, I have never dated a Jewish woman.
    And I can tell you this much, that it was a great revelation
    to me when I discovered a few years ago that I never dated
    a Jewish woman.
    And I think that I understand the reason for it now.
    I'm willing to tell you the reason for that.
    I think it was an unconscious desire
    on my part to protect my children, children to be.
    I did not want my children to be Jews because
    of the danger of being a Jew.
    And the best way to assure that is not to have anything
    to do with Jewish women, right?
    Looking back at it now, I think it was a mistake.
    I wish not so much that I married a Jewish woman.
    Although, I have thought about that.
    But I do wish that I had brought up my children in the Jewish
    faith and the Jewish tradition, and I regret that I didn't.
    And I think I understand why.
    But nevertheless, it's one of the few regrets in my life.
    And you didn't because of your wanting to protect them?
    That was one of the motivations.
    There were some others also.
    I mean, obviously when you're married to a Catholic girl who
    wants to bring them up Catholic, there is an issue there.
    I also had some ideas about--
    some ideas, which, looking back, were probably
    mistaken ideas, that I wanted them
    to have the freedom to choose.
    Looking back at it, I don't think
    you can have the freedom to choose unless you
    know something about it.
    So next time.
    OK.
    Going back to the Holocaust, how did it influence you?
    What it changes to the man?
    Well, we'll never know because we
    don't have a George who was brought up
    without the Holocaust for comparison purposes.
    But those people who knew me, who know me well,
    think that it was a very significant influence
    on my personality.
    We've already talked about some of the motivations
    of doing well because you had to prove you were good enough.
    I was painfully shy for a long, long time.
    I was full of inferiority complexes,
    which often manifest themselves in rather unfriendly demeanors.
    There was a lot of guilt. You've heard of survivor's guilt.
    Boy, is that ever real.
    In what way?
    It overshadows all your life.
    It's very difficult to have fun when you're
    feeling guilty for living.
    My daughters, for years, told me, Dad, you
    don't know how to have fun.
    And they were right.
    [CHUCKLES] How can you have fun when you remember the smell?
    I think I was pretty tough on my daughters.
    I think that I somehow expected them to continue the warfare.
    And of course, I didn't give them the reasons
    or the tools for it.
    There were a lot of things going on then.
    Yeah.
    But I've had some exposure to other survivors and children
    of survivors, and I happen to be both.
    And I know how difficult it is to have a close, loving family
    life when you're either.
    Now I imagine if you're both.
    It took me a long time to learn how to love
    or even accept the possibility of love.
    And I don't think that's innate.
    I think that was something that I
    learned between the ages of four and six.
    Those are impressionable years, you know?
    I wanted to ask you--
    you had, several times, very near death,
    the bayonet and the Tommy gun, and then
    in the camp in Austria.
    And two more times.
    What were they?
    They were both in Budapest.
    One was an airplane that flew over me,
    and it was shooting its machine gun.
    And I remember seeing the impact in a row right above my head,
    passing.
    I was walking with my mother on the street.
    And the other one was a bomb, which fell next
    to me, about as far as you are.
    Made a hole in the cement, obviously didn't go off.
    I remember standing there, and I remember reading USA on it.
    No wonder you wanted to come.
    To what-- I'm sure you thought about it.
    What do you think the big plan is?
    I don't know.
    I don't spend a lot of time wondering about that.
    I won't be the first one to come up with the answer to that one,
    and I don't think it's an important issue.
    What is important, however, is to do the best I
    can with what I have because that's the reason I survived.
    I'm not a very religious person, although much more so today
    than I ever thought I would be.
    But the purpose of life is very clear.
    It's very obvious to me.
    The purpose is to do the best you can with what you got.
    So don't worry about why you're alive.
    It works.
    Believe me.
    Just do the best you can with what you got, and it all
    makes sense.
    Yeah--
    At least, so far it makes sense.
    I think that's about it.
    I just wanted to ask briefly about--
    and you really touched on it--
    God or a higher power.
    Or do you think there is such a thing?
    Or--
    I am tempted to answer with a quote from Jung.
    I don't think I know.
    What do you know?
    That there is such a thing.
    I know there is.
    And I don't know what he was doing in 1943 or 1944.
    Maybe he was too busy with other things.
    And I cannot answer the question,
    how could he allow it?
    And I've asked the question many times.
    And the wisest person I ask generally
    answers, that's the wrong question.
    So I have given up on that.
    But when I hug my daughters, or when I am sailing a boat,
    or when I'm at the top of a mountain, I know.
    If somebody were to say to you, like me for instance,
    who is George Sarlo?
    I already answered the question.
    He's a free man.
    I think that's all I have to ask.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.
    Unless there's anything else you'd
    like, that you were thinking?
    No, it's been a thorough examination.
    A++.
    [CHUCKLING]
    Thank you.
    It was good for me.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It sort of summarized things.
    Yeah.
    Wish my daughters were here.
    You know, you get a copy to give--
    I mean, to show them if you want.
    Maybe they'll be ready for it soon.
    I'm not sure they are yet, but it's getting closer.
    Having come from your genes, I assume
    that they will, one day, ask you to go through this examination
    with them.
    I hope so.
    At this point, they very scared.
    It's something that I try to understand,
    but I have difficulty understanding
    how little interest they have, there is in the past.
    But I think it's basically, they are scared.
    Could you elaborate, what do you mean by that?
    When I try to talk to them about subjects
    like we discussed today, they don't really want to hear,
    which is very disappointing, obviously.
    Just from my experience, a lot of times children of survivors
    say that to me.
    The survivors will say, the kids don't want to hear.
    And the kids will say, my parents never talk.
    And I think a lot of it is one protecting the other,
    that the kids, when they were very small,
    got the sense that they shouldn't ask.
    And now that they're 23 and 24, they're afraid to hurt you.
    I think there's a lot of fear just out of ignorance.
    Well, maybe the tape will do it.
    I think it might.
    It would definitely open it for discussion,
    and it takes the fear out of asking because you
    hear some concrete things.
    Unfortunately, there's so much that went on.
    The divorce was difficult on them.
    They feel a certain loyalty to the other side.
    But the last word has not been written on it.
    And time heals.
    I think one of the things that you're
    really gifted with probably is patience and a long view.
    And you're so young.
    You are so young.
    Those kids will have you for another 40 years.
    I'll take that.
    That's a nice long life.
    I'm 52.
    Yeah, so at least 40.
    52 is beyond the average life expectancy of Hungarians
    at the time I was born.
    I think it's, like, 48.
    But I guess that doesn't count, right?
    No, obviously not.
    I'm American.
    [LAUGHTER]
    You're American.
    If the USA bomb didn't get you, and [INAUDIBLE],,
    the 48 age bracket won't do it.
    That's a good one.
    I just feel you have a lot to look forward to with them
    a lot to look forward to.
    The healing's just beginning for you.
    I think you're right.
    I think it will be OK.
    I just spent a couple of days last week with Suzy.
    We went to Yosemite, and we hiked.
    And we rode horses, and we told some tall tales.
    I haven't spent much time with her for three or four years.
    And I think we'll be OK.
    We talked about this problem of me
    wanting them to have more of a sense of their history
    and tradition.
    And she said, well, you always made
    me feel guilty that I don't have it,
    but you didn't bring me up to have it.
    And I think that was point well taken,
    and I explained to them about why I didn't do it.
    The first time, I told them this revelations about never dating
    a Jewish woman and why it was.
    And she was really surprised.
    And I told her, well, I regret I didn't bring you up that way.
    Don't feel guilty about it.
    I just wish I had.
    And she was very understanding at that point.
    She said, well, you didn't.
    Maybe it's not too late.
    Yeah.
    I think the more you trust her with your fears about why
    you did certain things or why you didn't do certain things--
    those are gems to children because, as a kid,
    I never knew why my parents were so crazy.
    [CHUCKLES]
    It scared me to death.
    And now it's taken that long, 34 years,
    really, to approach them a little bit.
    And when they tell me why they were so crazy,
    I'm very grateful, actually.
    They're still crazy, but it's nice to know that.
    But It's OK to be crazy now?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Well, maybe someday they'll spend a little time with you,
    and you can tell them.
    Oh, I'd love to meet them.
    I would.
    They're great girls.
    Yes, I'm sure they are.
    I'm sure they are.
    I'm sure they have a lot of your genes in them.
    So emotionally, they may be a little late to blossom also.
    Good point.
    Hope it doesn't take them till 50.
    [LAUGHS]
    I doubt it.
    Now you have less in your way.
    Yeah.
    OK, I'm pretty tired.
    Yeah.
    Thank you.
    George, thanks.
    You've been kind.
    Thank you very much.
    Thank you so much.
    It's really an honor.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    The interview describes Mr. Sarlo's young childhood in Budapest, Hungary; living with his grandparents in the country; and returning to Budapest in late 1944. Mr. Sarlo describes his family's success in obtaining papers to immigrate to Spain which enabled them to live in a Spanish-protected house in Budapest until their liberation by the Russians in 1945. Mr. Sarlo discusses his life in Hungary after the war, his participation in the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and his flight to the United States after the Soviet Union invaded Hungary.
    Interviewee
    George Sarlo
    Date
    interview:  1990
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with George Sarlo in 1990. The interview was received by the Archives Branch in July 2003.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:46:34
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn515420

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    Time Coded Notes (English)

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    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral History

    Kate Kaiser describes her childhood in Mistek, Austria (now Czech Republic); her marriage and move to Hamburg, Germany; the rise of antisemitism after the Nazi's rise to power; how she and her husband were affected by the Nuremberg Laws; their decision to leave Germany after their daughter was born; the wait to obtain papers; her husband's move to the United States in advance of them; waiting with her daughter in Mistek until August 1938 when their visas arrived; her adjustment to life as an immigrant in the United States; her attempts to find her family after the war; learning of the death of her family, all of whom perished except for one brother and a cousin; and her trip to Prague, Czech Republic in 1998 to discover the details of her mother's fate.

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral History

    Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner describes her childhood in Odessa, Ukraine; her family life and her marriage at age 19; the outbreak of World War II being ejected from her home by her neighbors and being imprisoned with her family in Odessa; the ensuing chaotic events; being separated from two of her brothers; being placed on trains to a small village, where she endured terrible conditions with her younger brother, daughter, and mother; the threat of mass murder; escaping with her mother and daughter; being transported to a series of villages; attempted sexual assault at the hands of a Rumanian officer; being separated from her mother; successfully passing as a non-Jew and working as a cook at a police station until the end of the war; reuniting with her mother and husband; and immigrating to the United States with her family in 1978.

    Oral history interview with Vera J. Lieban-Kalmar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral History

    Bernard Offen discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; his early experiences with antisemitism; the events he witnessed during the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his experiences in the Krakow Ghetto starting in 1941, including the deportations of many family members and hiding from raids; being deported to Płaszów in 1943; his narrow escape from Płaszów; hiding in a nearby camp with a family member; his deportation to Mauthausen; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his experiences in Auschwitz; his transfer in October 1944 to a subcamp of Dachau near Landsberg; his experiences in the subcamp; being on a death march in May 1945; being liberated by the United States Army; his search for other surviving family members; the fates of the rest of his family; immigrating to the United Kingdom after the war; his subsequent immigration to the United States; enlisting in the United States Army to serve in the Korean War; his life after the war; returning to Poland to conduct tours of Holocaust-related sites; the time he spends speaking about his personal experiences.

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral History

    William Pels, born on May 11, 1924 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his prewar experiences in Amsterdam; his memories of the German invasion of Holland in 1940; the changes that he witnessed during the occupation; witnessing the arrest and deportation of Jews; the German raids on homes to find hidden Jews; his own close call with deportation; moving to Vienna, Austria in 1942 to work in a hotel; his experiences with wartime Vienna; the bombing campaign by the Soviets in March 1945; travelling into Hungary, where he remained until May 1945; his postwar activities; working for the United States Army; working in a former concentration camp; returning to Holland; marrying his wife in Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1957; and his life in America.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral History

    Ruth Plainfield (née Oppenheimer), born on January 27, 1925 in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, discusses her childhood in Mainz, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party to power; her father's arrest in 1935 and the effect that had on her; her childhood encounters with antisemitism; her family's immigration to the United States; living first in New York and then San Francisco, CA; her family's experiences in California; her education; and learning of the fate of family members, including a grandfather who died in Theresienstadt.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral History

    Thomas Schneider discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; being raised as a Catholic child of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism; being forced to leave school and study at a Jewish school in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany; his family's immigration in March 1939 to the United States; settling in New York, NY; his experiences in school, college, and law school; his legal career; and the conflicts he has felt throughout his life about his Jewish identity.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    Benjamin Sieradzki, born on February 4, 1927 in Zgierz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Zgierz; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1939; hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet section of Poland; his family's move to the Łódź ghetto; the harsh conditions in the ghetto; the first deportations in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly, and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching the selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers; his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory; being forced to work in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentery, and indifferent to his fate; the abandonment of the camp by German troops; being liberated; the state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden; experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden; being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle; his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war; the difficulties of his living situation; his immigration to the United States in 1953; and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral History

    Erika Weingarten (née Mosler), born on October 9, 1918 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; her assimilated family life; her education; the few instances of antisemitism she experienced; her family's decision to send her out of Germany to attend school in Switzerland and her experiences there; her journey in August 1939 to Great Britain, where she reunited with her parents; their immigration to the United States in March 1940; the work she performed; her continued education; passing as Swiss when she tried to get work; her trips to Europe in later years and the closure she experienced; and her thoughts about the German people.

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral History

    Max Weingarten, born in April 1913 in Lechnau, Poland, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; his education and religious upbringing; studying the law; his work in the film industry with his uncle in London beginning in 1936; his immigration to the United States in 1938 and the work he performed in the film industry; his experiences in the United States Army and his work in intelligence and international law; his life after the war; his marriage and children; his work as a lawyer; his feelings about the United States; and the fates of his other family members.

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral History

    Liza Avrutin, born in 1930 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes her big family, which consisted of nine brothers and sisters; how even though her family was not very religious, Liza remembers various religious traditions such as all of the kids saying a Shabbat wish in front of the candles; her mother’s reluctance to leave before the Nazi occupation; her uncle’s evacuation to Tashkent where he and his family survived the Holocaust; the Nazi occupation in October 1941 and the summoning of Jewish residents on December 22; being taken with other Jewish residents to Slobodka (a section of Odessa) where they spent three months; a pogrom in Odessa on October 23-24, 1941 in which much of the remaining Jewish population was murdered; being sent with her family on cattle trains to Vaselinivska; the train journey, during which many passengers died including her father and her four-year-old brother, Boris; her mother’s psychological reaction to their deaths and her eventual death; being taken to Vasnisenska (Voznesensk, Ukraine), where they were sorted and sent to different places; being sent to Babini Balki in Krivoruchka, Ukraine; the lack of food and the death of many of the imprisoned people from starvation; the arrival of the Russians, who murdered all the civilians; being one of two survivors (Rosa Lifchitza also survived) who were rescued by the nearby villagers; waking up in Nadia Zhigalovna’s house with a bullet wound on the top of her head; hiding her Jewish identity by saying her name was “Lida” not “Liza”; changing her name to Valentina Ivanovna Panchivka; her life in the village and the sacrifices her new mother made for her; living with Nadia and her family until 1947; staying in close contact with the family that rescued her; getting married and immigrated to the United States; and changing her name back to Liza when she became a US citizen.

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral History

    Aleksandr Belfor, born September 18, 1923, describes his childhood in Kishinev, Ukraine (now Chisinău Moldova); the onset of the war and his family's escape from the approaching Nazi forces to Alma-Ata, Khazakstan, where Mr.Belfor lived and studied medicine until he was inducted into the Soviet Army; the stories he heard about the tragic fate of many family members during the Holocaust, including the sexual assault of one aunt; being arrested and imprisoned after the end of the war; his life in the Soviet Union and the antisemitism he encountered there; and his immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral History

    Semyon Berenshteyn discusses his childhood in Moldova; the family's move from Balta to Odesa after the beginning of the war in 1941; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto in Balta; working for a Christian friend; passing as a non-Jew by wearing a crucifix; learning of war news from Christian neighbors; the forced labor imposed on Jews; the murders of Jewish men, women and children by German soldiers, including the death of his father; liberation by Soviet troops in March 1944; his service in the Soviet armed forces; his marriage and the birth of his son; and his immigration with his family to the United States in 1988.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral History

    Lev Dumer, born in 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes the Jewish community in Odessa before the war; experiencing antisemitism before the war; the deaths of his maternal grandparents in pogroms; receiving a degree in radio engineering; working in Kirovograd (Kropyvnyts'kyi, Ukraine) when the war began; the German occupation of Kiev; the Jewish response to the invasion; his family’s evacuation to Chelyabinsk in August 1941; his grandmother, Pena Gershova Dumer, dying while evacuating later in 1943; the Romanians entering Odessa; Jews having to register; the denouncement of Jewish families by antisemitic neighbors living in the same building as his family; the hanging of his college mathematics and physics professor, Foodim, for failing to register; the roundups and mass murders in Odessa; Alexander Sepino, who was able to escape imprisonment; observing a minute of silence every day for five years as a prayer for those who perished; the deportation of the remaining Jews to a ghetto in Slobodka; various righteous people who risked their lives to save Jews, including Oleg Krist and Jora Temoshenko; the experience of his aunt, uncle, and two cousins in Pervopol; the difficulty of living during the Stalin regime; the growing antisemitic trend in Russia during the years following WWII; the Russian government hiding the evidence of the Holocaust from the people; and spending many years gathering information from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust in Ukraine in order to preserve the memory for future generations.

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral History

    Anisim Dworkin, born in 1923 in Smirenskiy, Soviet Union (possibly one of the many Russian places named Smirnovskiy), describes how at the time Jews were required to live in a few designated towns in the Soviet Union; his great-grandfather, who served in the Tsar’s army as a cannon operator for 12 years and was thus given the right to live in a Russian town even though he was Jewish; the regret he feels for having spent his childhood in a Russian town because it stripped him of the rich Jewish culture he saw in his parents, including celebration of Jewish holidays and speaking Yiddish; not experiencing antisemitism as a child but being teased as a child for being part of the lower middle-class; moving with his family to a kolkhoz in Smolensk in 1928; having a good life on the farm until the famine in 1933; several of his aunts and uncles who moved to Brest, Belarus with their families; the arrest of his older brother for writing a letter expressing anti-Hitler sympathies in 1939; the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; being sent to the east since he was not able to serve in the army because of an injury to the eye; being accepted to serve in the Allied army for four months; studying after the war at a university in Ural (possibly Ural Federal University); working in the oil industry in Ural after the war and being discriminated against because of his religion; being fired from a job as head of the research department at a university because of rumors that he was involved in the Zionist movement; his life now in Perim, North Ural (probably Perm’, Russia); his daughter who is married to a non-Jew; and reuniting with his older brother in 1987.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral History

    Ernest Feld discusses his childhood in Lucenec, Slovakia, close to the Hungarian border; the occupation of his town by Hungary in 1938; the onset of anti-Jewish restrictions and curfews; his removal to a ghetto; being conscripted for forced labor in 1944; being able to continue his apprenticeship in a bakery; the advance of the Soviet Army and the ensuing confusion; his return to Lucenec in November 1945; his reunion with his mother; their move to Prague, and then Karlsbad; their decision to immigrate to Israel; the boat trip to Israel; the detention of the group in Cyprus by the British; his life in Cyprus until 1949; emigrating from Cyprus to Israel with his wife, whom he met in Cyprus; his successful bakeries in Israel; his later move to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania; her family's flight after the German invasion; the gang rape of women by Romanian soldiers; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, in the Ukraine, from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage and life in Riga; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral History

    Inna Kagan, born in 1937 in Kharkov (Kharkiv), Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Kharkov; being a descendant from Khazars; the evacuation of her family in September 1941 to Khazakstan; her father's later evacuation to Perm, Russia; her family's move to Bukhoro, Uzbekistan; and the family's reunion in Kharkov in December 1944. She dicsusses the destruction of the city and learning of the death of her paternal grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. Ms. Kagan describes the increase in antisemitism that she experienced after the war, and emigrating with her family to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral History

    Vilem Kriz discusses his experiences in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in the late 1930s and under Nazi occupation; his observations, as a journalist, of the unfolding events of Nazi aggression; an encounter with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936; the mobilization of a small national army in 1937; the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its allies in 1938; the grief of the Czech people after Nazi troops occupied Prague in March 1939; demonstrations against the Nazis by university students and reprisals that came after; his experiences as part of the Czech underground; and conditions in Czechoslovakia during its occupation and after the war ended.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral History

    Mikhail Lapan, born on March 9, 1920 in Bobruisk, Belarus, discusses his childhood in Bobruisk; his enlistment in 1941 at the age of 16 in the Soviet Army; the German attack on Bobruisk; his hospitalization in 1942 in Stalingrad (Volgograd); the invasion of Stalingrad by the Germans; an incident in which the German troops removed the hospital patients and selected Jews and Communists for execution, and that by using the name of a fellow patient who had died earlier that day, he was able to escape that fate; being forced to work in a salt mine in Peine, Germany; having his Jewish identity betrayed; his escape, recapture, and removal to Braunschweig concentration camp; being liberated by US troops; being returned to the Soviet Union; his work in a coal mine in Harlov; his marriage; his return to Bobruisk, where he discovered that he parents had died during the war; and his eventual immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral History

    Shaya Neys, born on June 28, 1927 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood in Liepaja; the arrest of his family in June 1941 by the Russian security agency NKVD, and the family's transport to a military port, where the men were separated from the women and children; traveling by train with his mother to Krasnoyarsk, Russia; their experiences of forced labor and misery in various locations in Siberia until the end of the war; difficulties in returning to Latvia after the war ended and his return in 1956; his reunion with his son and their lives in Riga, Latvia; learning that his father died in a labor camp, and that many of his relatives from Liepaja perished; and his reflections that their deportation to Siberia probably saved his and his mother's lives.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    The interview describes Mr. Sieradzki's childhood in Zgierz, Poland; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1938. Mr. Sieradzki describes hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet sector of Poland; and his family's move to the Łódź ghetto. Mr. Sieradzki recalls the harsh conditions there; the first transports in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; and the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans. He describes the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching Dr. Mengele make selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers. Mr. Sieradzki describes his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory, and then in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentary, and indifferent to his fate. He recalls the abandonment of the camp by German troops, his liberation, the dreadful state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden. Mr. Sieradzki describes anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden, being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle, and his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war. He discusses the difficulties of his living situation, and describes his immigration to the United States in 1953, and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral History

    Rahilia Sirota (née Aizenman), born in 1913, discusses her childhood in Chemirovits (now Chemerivtsi), Ukraine; the Nazi occupation of her town in the summer of 1941; her move to a nearby village; learning that the Jewish community of Chemirovits had been taken to the Kamentsk Podolsky ghetto, where 80 of her relatives were killed days after their arrival (this included her parents and younger brother); living in fear in the village she had moved to, and being rescued by two brothers, Nikolay and Pavlo Kuchman [PH], who hid her and then her boyfriend throughout the remaining years of the war; living in holes in the corn fields and caves; moving from village to village; living in barns and hiding from the Ukrainian SS; the assistance she received from the Kuchman brothers and other Ukrainians; learning of the liberation of the Chemirovits in March 1945; her reunion with her boyfriend; finding that everything they had was gone; getting married; the birth of her son; her life in post-war Ukraine until her immigration to the United States; and her enduring gratitude to those who hid and save her during the war years.

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral History

    Tom Szelenyi discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his assimilated family life; his education; his religious upbringing; the antisemitism he experienced while growing up and the increase of antisemitism after the war began in 1939; his family's deportation to the ghetto in Budapest; the anti-Jewish laws; being deported to a Hungarian military labor camp in 1944 and the changes he experienced after the Germans occupied Hungary; his experiences on a forced march in October 1944 from Budapest to Wiener Neustadt, Austria; his journey to Buchenwald by train; the conditions there; the cruelty of the guards; his transfer to Colditz a month later; the work he performed; his experiences on a death march in April 1945 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); his liberation there by the Soviet Army and the conditions after; his return to Budapest; his reunion with his mother; his work with the American Joint Distribution Committee; his experiences in the DP (displaced persons) camp in Ulm, Germany; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his life in the US; his family; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral History

    Tamara Iosifovna Albukh, born on December 21, 1918 in Minsk, Belarus, describes her childhood; having to leave school after six years to work and contribute to her family financially; getting married and having two daughters (Sara born on May 5, 1940 and Gena born on August 31, 1942); not being able to evacuate once the war started; the German occupation of Minsk; her husband being taken into the army; moving into one of the Jewish ghettos in Minsk; pogroms in the ghettos; doing forced labor in the ghetto and the murder of her daughters one day while she was working; being moved to Trostinetskiy (Maly Trostinec) concentration camp and having to work for the Germans; the murder of inmates every day in the camp and ghetto; escaping the camp on July 29, 1944; the intensification of antisemitism during the war; hearing Russians scream the slogan “Kill Jews, save Russia” which continued even after the war; and having two daughters after the war in 1946 and 1949.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral History

    Audrey Doughty, born in San Diego, California in 1921, describes her mother, who died when Audrey was three years old; her father, who was a naval officer and a member of the diplomatic core; going with her father to Berlin when he was stationed there in 1938; transferring from Stanford University to the University of Berlin; being in Berlin during Kristallnacht and taking photos afterward; writing a journal entry describing that night; having little notion of what was really happening in Germany apart from Kristallnacht as well as the antisemitic and anti-American sentiment from the Germans; how soon after arriving in Berlin, she and her father were invited to review the troops with Nazi officials; sitting in the stands three feet from Adolf Hitler, watching endless waves of troops pass underneath; going with her grandmother on a tour of Germany and neighboring countries in 1939; working at the American consulate after she turned 18; her duties, which consisted of convincing refugees applying for visas to leave the country; being evacuated to Copenhagen in 1940; returning to the US after the war ended; graduating from Stanford University; working as a war correspondent in Honolulu and then went to work for the San Francisco Chronicle; working in the Office of War Information and then working as an Associated Press correspondent in China; leaving journalism and pursuing a career as a social worker; becoming the director of the International Institute in San Francisco from 1975 to 1983; spending two and a half years as the director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; founding and directing the AIDS Benefits Counselors; directing AIDS Indigent Direct Services; her plans to write a book about her family's history; writing many editorials on possible fascist trends in American society; and her thoughts on Germans [note that artifacts relating to her experiences are shown at the close of the interview].

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender (née Buzyn), born circa 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her childhood in Warsaw; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's escape to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; getting married in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, France, where they lived until 1951; their immigration first to Canada, and then to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral History

    Sofia Ginzbursky (born on December 27, 1915 in Asipavichy, Belarus) describes her mother, who died at the age of 27, soon after she gave birth; going with her siblings to live with their grandfather, who observed Jewish traditions; studying at a technical school in Gomel (Homel), Belarus; living in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), working as a nanny and secretary; getting married and moving to Gomel; moving later to Belostock (Białystok), Poland; being left alone with their two children when her husband was called up for military duty at the beginning of WWII; evacuating from Belostock by train to Zlobin (ZHlobin, Belarus) and then to Baranovichi, Ukraine; destroying all her documents to hide her Jewish identity; witnessing the persecution of Jews in Ukraine when locals helped the Nazis find Jews; how speaking German helped her find a job at a food exchange center where she received food to feed her children; obtaining false papers with a new last name that showed she was Russian and not Jewish; returning to Gomel to look for remaining family members and being captured by the Nazis and was humiliated by Politsai for several days; being released and living with a woman named Nadia Lisitskaya; passing as a gentile refugee from Poland; washing clothes for the German army in exchange for soap and kerosene; seeing the deportation of hundreds of Jews from the Gomel ghetto; traveling with her friend, Sonia, as well as all their children to Oryol (Orel), Russia; finding a new place of stay every night so no one would suspect them of being Jewish; living with Sonia and the children at the house of a Latvian lady for two years; choosing to not wear the Star of David as was requried for the Jews by the Nazis; passing as Russian Orthodox; having a Russian lady teach her son how to pray to an icon when bombings occured; working small jobs while in Oryol; being liberated and moving to Leningrad; getting a new passport and stating her nationality as “Jewish” again; reuniting with her husband in Chkalov (possibly Orenburg, Russia) with the help of her sister; experiencing even more antisemitism after the war; and becoming more observant after the war.

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral History

    Annemarie Roeper (née Bondy), born August 27, 1918 in Vienna, Austria, describes her childhood in Vienna; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi ascension to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with Annemarie’s siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father selling their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral History

    Clara Tsukerman discusses her childhood in Chisneau, Romania (now Chișinău, Moldova) and her experiences after the war began in her region in 1941; her experiences during her family's journey on foot to Vasylivka, Ukraine; their efforts to evade the advancing German front; and their life in hiding in an unnamed village after the Germans caught up with them; the help and protection they received from the villagers, as well as her experiences during and after the war.

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral History

    Sam Weiss, born in 1928 in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of the town by Hungarian soldiers; the conscription of Jewish men for forced labor; his father being sent to Germany for forced labor; the institution of anti-Jewish restrictions such as yellow stars and in March 1944, the deportation of the Jews of Ricka; his arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from his family and sent first a children's barracks; being sent to Camp Four in Munich, Germany; being sent to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau, where he was liberated by American troops in 1945; his return to Ricka, where he was reunited with his sister; his attempts to escape Czechoslovakia; his imprisonment by Russian soldiers; his escape to Munich; his immigration to the United States; his service in the United States military; and his family life and career in California.

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral History

    Isaac Silber, born in 1913 in Złoczów Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Złoczów; the occupation of Złoczów by German troops; the violent and terrifying conditions of the Nazi occupation; his escape from murder by German troops; being conscripted for forced labor in a brick factory; returning to Złoczów to learn of the murder of family members; his experiences in the Złoczów ghetto and in work camps; giving up his baby daughter to be cared for by a non-Jewish family; escaping with his wife and finding refuge in the farmhouse of a Polish man who hid them; and the gratitude he feels to his rescuer.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Roeper

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Roeper describes her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi acsencion to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with her siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father's selling of their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Janina Swift

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl, born August 9, 1921, discusses his childhood in Long Island, New York; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS operational group; working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral History

    Janice Auerbach, born August 7, 1934 in South London, England, describes her childhood in London; the bombings and fear she felt during World War II; her evacuation to a farm in Cornwall; the discomfort she experienced while there; her reunion with her family after the war; her various employments around the world; and her marriage to a Jewish man in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral History

    Helmut Kobler, born on January 18, 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Pohorelice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); his experiences growing up with his Jewish father and Catholic mother; his experiences after the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938; his mother's decision to move herself and her son to Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the conditions they lived under; the Nazis' search for his father; being deported to a camp near Ivancice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1939; the camp’s transformation from a concentration camp to a forced labor camp; working as a coal miner at the camp; the camp’s liquidation in June 1942; being transferred to another labor camp near Oslavany, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the work he continued as a coal miner; the conditions at the camp; the brutality of the Czech and German guards; being transferred in the summer of 1944 to a labor camp near Postoloprty, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); working to construct an underground fuel pipeline; an accusation against him of sabotage; his subsequent imprisonment in Saaz, Czechoslovakia and Karlsbad, Germany (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic); the brutality of the guards; the poor conditions there; his escape from Karlsbad while out on a labor detail; being recaptured in Brno; the executions he witnessed while imprisoned there; being transferred by cattle car to a prison in Mirosov; escaping from Mirosov in May 1945, a few days before liberation by the United States Army; the aid he received from refugee organizations after the war; reuniting with his mother; being educated as a mining engineer; defecting to the west with a sample of uranium ore; moving to Canada; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Yellin (née Feller), born on December 6, 1928 in Chemnitz, Germany, discusses her childhood in Chemnitz; her family life; the changes she experienced after Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's arrest and release; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her journey with her parents to Belgium in September 1939; her experiences after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 and her father's decision to hide her in a convent; her experiences in the convent; moving between institutions to avoid capture by the Nazis; her conversion to Catholicism; her reunion with her parents after liberation in September 1944; their immigration to the United States at a later point; her life in the US; and the emotional aftermath of her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral History

    Adele Silber discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her education in a Catholic school; her family's religious practices; her experiences during the German invasion in 1939; hiding her young daughter with a Catholic family; living in hiding on a farm with a group of partisans; her experiences while in hiding, including the lack of food and the necessity of living in the woods near the end of the war; her reunion with her daughter; her decision to immigrate to the United States with her husband and daughter in 1946; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral History

    Sylvie Marshall (née Bedel), born on July 1, 1923 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood; her older brother Michel Bedel (born 1918) and her younger brother Alain Bedel (born 1926); her father, who was the president of the largest moving and storage company in France before the war; her adolescence in Paris; being raised Catholic; the participation of her father and brother Michel in the French Resistance; her life with her mother in south central France; the liberation of Paris; the story of her father and brother's arrests by the Gestapo and her father's subsequent death in Buchenwald.

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral History

    Elena H. Javor (née Gross), born December 15, 1914 in Martin, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes her childhood in Martin; her siblings; her medical education and practice; the birth of her three children; the threat of deportation in 1942; her escape from deportation due to her husband's exemption; Allied bombing in spring 1944; the Slovak national uprising in August 1944; her husband's enlistment to fight; fleeing with her children to a monastery, where they were sheltered; joining her husband in Banska Bystrica; her arrest in October 1944; her husband's disappearance; her liberation in April 1945; her reunion with her three children; learning of her husband's, sister's, and parents' deaths in Auschwitz; her return to Martin with her children; her life after the war; how she studied dermatology; her remarriage; and her family's immigration to the United States in 1968.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral History

    Joseph Welgreen, born in 1918 in Sosnowiec, Poland, discusses his childhood in Sosnowiec; his family life and education; the work he performed; the antisemitism he experienced; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Poland in 1939; being deported to Annaburg in late 1940, and his subsequent transfers to several other labor camps, including Breslau and Klettendorf (both subcamps of Gross-Rosen); the conditions in these camps, his experiences there, the work he performed in highway construction, and his experiences with the guards and Kapos; being transferred to Bunzlau in 1943; the work he performed as a machinist and the conditions there; his experiences on a death march to Dora in February 1945; the work he performed there and the conditions; his liberation at Bergen-Belsen; his journey to Hannover, Germany; the business he established there; and his immigration to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Frank Weinman, born on July 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia); the introduction of restrictive anti-Jewish laws in Vienna after the Anschluss in March 1938; the family's definitive move to Bratislava soon after; his marriage; his and his wife's forced move to a ghetto camp after Nazis took control of Czechoslovakia; their experiences there doing manual labor; their fortunate escape through a German baggage firm, HAPAG, to Budapest, Cuba, and finally the United States; his parents' escape to Cuba where his father died; his reunion with his mother in October 1942; the assistance he received from his brother who had immigrated to Chicago, IL in 1938; and the success and prosperity he experienced in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral History

    Morris Rosnow (né Moishe Raznov), born on January 7, 1927 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dzyatlava, Belarus) discusses his experiences during World War II while hiding in the woods as a member of a Jewish partisan group operating under the organization of the Russian partisans; liberation in 1944 by the Soviet Army; his return to his hometown in Poland, where he remained with his sister until the death of their father; moving to Munich, Germany; earning a degree in engineering; immigrating with his sister to join their other sister in the United States; and earning a degree in pharmacy and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Eden

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva K. Breyer

    Oral History

    Eva Breyer, born on August 18, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her parents, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism after the death of her grandfather; being christened Catholic; her brother, who was born Jewish and converted when he was about a year old; attending Catholic religious classes; antisemitism in Hungary before the Germans invaded; the laws passed against Jews in the 1930s; the bombings after the war started; the drafting of non-Jewish men for the military and Jewish men for labor service; her father being called up for labor service near Budapest; how her mother was able to keep her father from being sent to the front in 1943; the German occupation, at which time the Jewish laws grew worse; having to move to Jewish houses with other families; the round ups led by the Arrow Cross and police in the summer of 1944; her aunt saving her mother from deportation; moving into an apartment building that was under the protection of the Vatican; her brother, who was sent to a monastery for extra protection; being sent to the hospital where a doctor diagnosed her as sick so she could hide with terminally sick children; going to a convent outside Buda; seeing people being shot into the Danube; going to a Swedish house and finding it empty; the arrival of the Russians; her family, who went to the ghetto while she was in hiding; her father’s death from pneumonia in March after the liberation; the mistreatment of the Hungarians by the Russian soldiers; life under the communists; escaping to Austria and then the United States in 1956; and how she identifies as Catholic.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Levi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl discusses his childhood in Long Island, NY; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS “operational group” working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral History

    Ellen Van Creveld, born in 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; her assimilated family life; her lack of awareness of her Jewish heritage; the changes she experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940, including the new restrictions and her transfer to a Jewish school; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends during this period; the fear of arrest and deportation; her family's decision to go into hiding in November 1943; her experiences while living in hiding; her family's move to Brussels, Belgium with the help of the underground; the false identities they acquired; her experiences in Brussels under false papers, her education; the betrayal of the family and their arrest; her reprieve from deportation due to illness; her experiences in the Jewish hospital and orphanage; her subsequent time spent living in hiding on a farm and in an abandoned castle during the winter of 1944-1945; her reunion with one of her brothers after the end of the war and the fates of her other family members; her postwar life in the United States and Holland; the challenges she faced; her marriage and family; her permanent immigration to the United States in 1956; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshtein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's flight to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; marrying in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to the Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, where they lived until 1951; their emigration first to Canada, and finally to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral History

    Leonid Bobrovsky, born on May 4, 1937 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes being only three years old when the war began; his father who fought with the partisans during the war; the Nazi invasion of Odessa, at which time he and his family were in an underground hiding place (“Kotokloomba”) reserved for partisans and their families; hiding with his mother while his older brother and father helped the partisans; getting sick because the hiding place was very wet; the Nazis discovering various entrances to the hiding place and using poisonous gas to force the people out; escaping from the hiding place along with his mother and older brother; getting caught by the Nazis and taken away to the city jail where there were many other Jewish residents; being separated from his mother, who was later murdered by the Nazis; being moved with his brother to a different jail; his brother’s attempted escape and then suicide; being taken to camp Ombarova where he remained until liberation; working even though he was so young; attributing his survival in the ghetto to the women who protected and took care of him; liberation; being taken to an orphanage where he stayed until his father’s return; his father, who remarried after the war; attending school and studying construction at a college; being married twice and having two daughters; and naming his younger daughter, Polina Bobrovskaya, after his mother.

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    Joseph Schein discusses his childhood is Sosnowiec, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany; being sent to his mother’s hometown Brzostowica-Wielka, Poland (now Vialikaia Berastavitsa, Belarus); avoiding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec; being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940; his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiesau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, and Buchenwald; the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform; being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld; enduring a death march from Buchenwald; being liberated by American troops; being hospitalized; his marriage to his childhood sweetheart and their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; being the only member of his family that survived the Holocaust; immigrating with an accordion, which was his only possession at the time; and his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagi-Talavera

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral History

    Edith Eger (née Elefant), born on September 29, 1927 in Kosice, Hungary (now Slovakia), describes her father (Lajos), who was a tailor, and her mother (Helen Klein), who worked for the Hungarian ministry; her two sisters, Magda and Klara; her favorite memories are of her mother's cooking; her childhood, during which she trained in ballet and gymnastics; preparing to compete for the Olympics for Hungary but being disqualified because she was Jewish; her sisters, who were gifted musicians; the story of how her sister Klara was smuggled out of Hungary when the war began by one of her professors from the music academy in Budapest; the German occupation of Hungary; being taken to a brick factory; being deported with her sister, parents, aunts, and uncles to Auschwitz in May 1944; being separated from her parents, and thus spared the gas chambers; being selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele; using her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz; conditions in the barracks; how she helped Magda survive in the camp; being liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, at which time she had five types of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and no hair left; going to a displaced persons camp, where she met her husband and became pregnant; immigrating to the United States in 1949, going first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory; moving to Texas, where she had two more children and attended the University of Texas at Austin; earning her doctorate; moving to San Diego, CA and working as a family therapist; and how her grandchildren are her world and how she lives every day for them. Ms. Eger, her parents, aunts and uncles, and her eldest sister Magda, were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. Ms. Eger was separated from her parents; she and her sister Magda were spared the gas chambers. Because of her talent for ballet, Ms. Eger was selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele. She was able to use her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz. Ms. Eger was liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945. While in a displaced persons camp, she met her husband and became pregnant. She emigrated to the United States in 1949; first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory. She, her husband and her daughter Marianne moved to Texas, where Ms. Eger had two more children, and attended the University of Texas at Austin where she ultimately received her doctorate. She settled in San Diego and works as a family therapist and with battered wives and abused teenagers.

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral History

    Otto Springer discusses his German upbringing in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic); his education; his family life; the antisemitism he witnessed in Prague in the early 1930s; his marriage to his Jewish wife and the discrimination he experienced as a result; his arrest in 1941; his sentence of forced labor; the help he received from a Gestapo officer; his activities in the Czech underground including the rescue of Jews, aided by two members of the Gestapo; his experiences in another labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) beginning in October 1944; the work he performed; a forced march he underwent in January 1945; acts of vengeance by Czechs that he witnessed after the war ended; the suspicion he fell under because of his German heritage; the assistance he received from a Czech military commander; and his immigration with his wife and children in September 1948.

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral History

    Magda Silberman, born on August 17, 1928, discusses her childhood in Pavlovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of her town by the Hungarians; antisemitism that she and her family experienced; the occupation of her town by Nazi troops; the gathering of the Jewish citizens and their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944; her arrival, the selections, and her experiences while at Auschwitz; the death march she endured in January 1945 to Ravensbrück and Leipzig; her liberation in May 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral History

    Eric Willgott, born on February 12, 1925 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna; his family life; his Orthodox religious upbringing; his involvement with a Zionist youth organization; his education; the increased antisemitism he experienced after the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in March 1938; his experiences during Kristallnacht in November; his family's decision to send him to Great Britain with the Kindertransport in December 1938; his experiences in London during the Blitz; his work with the United States government in Germany after the war; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his marriage; his life in the US; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral History

    Cecilia Kornbluth (née Cilli Mehlman), born on October 11, 1920, discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her early experiences with antisemitism in elementary school and gymnasium; her memories of the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, by Austrian Nazis in 1934; the Anschluss in March 1938; the changes that occurred for Jewish Austrians afterward; her two older brothers fleeing to France and to Switzerland; the arrests of her younger brother, father, and mother; her father's eventual deportation to Auschwitz; her brother's incarceration in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps for 11 months, and his release and move to England; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; being sent for by her brother in Switzerland; her illegal crossing into Switzerland; hiding because she lacked legal papers; being questioned and released; living and working in a refugee camp for single Jewish girls in Basel; living there throughout the war; marrying another refugee who was living in a single man's camp in 1942; having a son; being supported by the Jewish community during this period; her immigration to the United States in 1947; and her family and work life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral History

    Ruth Steiner discusses her childhood in Dresden, Germany; her well-integrated family life; her education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power in 1933; the necessity of attending a university outside of Germany due to her Jewish heritage; her studies in Geneva; her family's decision to leave Europe in 1939; their immigration to Brazil; their move to the United States in 1940; her life in the US; the work she performed as a librarian; and her husband and family.

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral History

    Trudy Lyons discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; the family's assimilated life; the changes that occurred after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938; having to leave school, and witnessing abuses against Jews. Ms. Lyons describes the family's flight to Czechoslovakia, and their successful immigration to the United States in November 1938; the family's adjustment to life in the US, eventually settling in Indiana; and her education, marriage, and family life in Detroit, MI and San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral History

    Margrit Schurman, born on April 1, 1925 in Essen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Essen; her memories of antisemitism; the flight of her sister to Switzerland and her brother to England; the events of Kristallnacht; being sent with her sisters to a Catholic school in England; their conversion to Catholicism; her life and experiences in England during the war, including her brother's deportation as an enemy alien to Canada; her separation from her mother, who had married an Italian and spent the war years in Italy; her immigration to the United States; her marriage and life in Berkeley, California; being reunited with her family in California; and her return trip to Germany.

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral History

    Edith Deutsch, born on January 21, 1925 in Arnswalde, Germany (now Choszczno, Poland), discusses her childhood in Arnswalde; her father, Fritz Abrahamowsky, and her mother, Lotte Gradnauer; living in a large home and being raised as a young child by servants, rarely seeing her mother or father; her family's move to Berlin, Germany in 1933; the difficulties experienced by her family when Hitler rose to power; going to the Olympic Stadium with her class and seeing the No Jews Allowed signs; having to leave public school after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing Germany with her family in April 1939 for Thailand; traveling by ship to Singapore; abandoning their plans to travel to Bangkok and instead opting to go to Shanghai, China; staying in a camp in Shanghai for a week; her experiences in Shanghai; working as a sales girl and as a beautician; her marriage in 1946 and the birth of her son in 1948; immigrating to Australia in 1949; living in a boarding house; moving to the United States in 1951; living in Oregon and then San Francisco, CA; and her efforts to socialize with other refugees over the years.

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral History

    Francis Cappel (né Franz Erwin Cappel), born on June 2, 1916 in Cologne, Germany, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany;his parents, Dr. Paul H. and Meta Cappel (née Braunschweig); growing up in an apartment flat near a synagogue in a mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) neighborhood; antisemitism in Germany; the beating of his lawyer father by Nazi storm troopers (Sturmabteilung) in April 1933; the boycott of Jewish business; moving in October 1933 to France, where he worked in the textile business; concealing his Jewish origins as best he could, always carrying French or English newspapers with him; befriending a man who brought him to the German Reich secret headquarters where he got to see rare German stamps (Mr. Cappel was an avid stamp collector); moving to Hamburg, Germany in 1935; immigrating to England in 1937; serving as a corporal in the British Army; his success in obtaining transit visas for his father and mother, thus rescuing his father from Dachau concentration camp; getting married to his wife Margo in 1944; leaving the Army in April 1946 and returning to London; immigrating with his wife, children, and parents to the United States; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral History

    Thomas Trier, born December 27, 1930 in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses his childhood in Frankfurt; his family's roots in the city; his integrated family life; his education in a Jewish school; his experiences in Nazi-era Germany; the economic difficulties his family faced; their decision to immigrate to the United States; the journey to New York, NY and then Chicago, IL; his experiences as a young immigrant in America; his feeling of isolation among his peers as a boy; his education through graduate school; his life after school; the work he performed; his feelings about his German and Jewish identity; and his marriage and family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral History

    Rita Grunbaum (née Rita van Leeuwen), born on April 9, 1910 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Holland; her career as a social worker in the Hague; her marriage in 1936;the onset of World War II in September 1939; the bombing of Holland; the German occupation beginning in 1940; the birth of her daughter in 1942; the family's arrest in September 1943; their transport to Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences in Westerbork; receiving papers for Palestine from her in-laws who had fled to Mexico; being selected as part of an exchange program with German prisoners-of-war held in Palestine; being sent with her family to Bergen-Belsen in February 1944; being transported from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 on the Lost Train (also called Lost Transport); her liberation in Troebtiz, Germany; the deaths of her family members during the Holocaust; and her post-war experiences.

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral History

    Lily Robinson (née Lily Solomon Leibovitch), born on June 29, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, discusses her childhood with her mother and sister who had been deported to Haskovo, Bulgaria from Sofia in 1940; her experiences there as a young child; her family's return to Sofia in 1945; immigrating to the United States in December 1946; her life in California; and the emotional aftermath of the Holocaust that she witnessed in her brother.

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral History

    Herman Apteker, born on October 9, 1915 in Dresden, Germany, discusses his childhood in Dresden; his Ukrainian parents; his father (Elieser), who was in business and died when Herman was only four years old; his mother, who started a wholesale business selling clothing out of the family's six or seven room flat; his four older siblings (three brothers and one sister); his male "guardian" (this was a German requirement for children whose fathers had died) Dr. Avraham Borg, who took Herman to synagogue and was the primary source of Herman's religious education; his experiences with antisemitism at public school; his strong desire to leave Germany once Hitler rose to power; his trip to Czechoslovakia in 1933 as part of the Young Macabees, in preparation for immigration to Palestine; spending 10 or 11 months in Slovakia, taking part in agricultural training; his arrival in Palestine in April 1933; becoming very ill with dysentery and malaria; his experiences in Palestine; the immigration of his mother and brothers to Palestine; his work in Haifa; riots that occurred in 1936; becoming a temporary policeman before a British officer offered him a job in the immigration office; his marriage in 1938; the beginning of WWII and his work for the British army (in an office) until he was conscripted into the Israeli Army; working as a commission officer at the Lebanese border; his unique relationship with an Arab officer on the Lebanese side; his divorce and remarriage; his immigration with his second wife to the United States in 1953; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral History

    Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, born on February 14, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his childhood in Budapest; his time in a Transylvanian ghetto in 1944; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz; the work he performed in Josef Mengele's medical complex; the experiments he witnessed; his impressions of Mengele; and his subsequent experiences at Mauthausen, Gusen II, and Ebensee.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral History

    Semyon Veyber, born on December 20, 1927 in Tomashpil, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Tomashpil; his religious upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German Army invaded in June 1941; his family's attempt to evacuate, their capture by the Germans, and the help given to the Germans by the local Ukrainian people; his escape from an Einsatzgruppen action; being deported with his family to a ghetto in July 1941, and his experiences there; the work he performed and the conditions; the fear he felt as the German Army retreated that he and his family would be killed before they were liberated; the arrival of the Soviet Army in March 1944; the charges of collaboration that he faced; his life after the end of the war; and his immigration to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral History

    Chaya Ash-Furhman (née Averbuch), born March 19,1920 in Kishinev (now Chisinau), Moldova, describes her childhood; her parents’ involvement in Yiddish theater; her own involvement in theater at a young age; the outbreak of war in June 1941; hiding with her family in the basement of a theater in the Russian section of Tiraspol, Moldova; being transported to cooperative farms in Ukraine and Uzbekistan; being underfed; her father, who suffered from mental distress and dysentery and was taken to a courtyard and shot; how the people who were murdered were then covered in lime, so as not to spread disease; the hardships she and her family endured working on these farms; becoming sick with malaria; working as a seamstress in a nearby town where conditions were better; meeting her first husband; antisemitism that was rampant after the end of the war; her leaving for Poland with her mother and husband, who was Polish by birth; their decision to leave Poland in 1947 while she was pregnant; the family's experiences in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria; and their immigration to Israel, where she continued her involvement in Yiddish Theater.

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral History

    Peter Mueller, born on December 30, 1926 in Hannover, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hannover; his family's decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938; his life with his father in England; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1943; his service in the US Army with the medical corps as an instructor in Texas; and his life after military service.

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral History

    Eva Cohn (née Eva Maria Rhee), born in 1923 in Dortmund, Germany, describes her parents, Max Rhee and Else Heinemann; experiencing a warm family life and peace in her early childhood; not experiencing antisemitism until 1934 when her friend shunned her, teachers began to treat her unfairly, and Aryan students were being separated and taught antisemitism; being prohibited from attending public schools around 1935; moving to Cologne, Germany, where she attended a Jewish school while staying with a Jewish family; her family’s experience during an anti-Jewish “Aktion” in 1938, during which German soldiers threw rocks at their windows and burned their synagogue; returning to live with the family in Cologne, while her parents moved to Baudin and stayed with a friend; leaving Germany with her family circa 1938 and going to England just before the ill treatment of the Jews became worse; a law in England that prohibited immigrants from working, which meant her family could not make any money; spending one year in England, before being allowed to immigrate to the United States; settling in Los Angeles, CA; attending Whittier College and majoring in English; working at a school as an instructional supervisor; her father’s death in 1941 from a heart condition; meeting and marrying Hans in Salinas, CA in 1949; having three children and moving quite frequently; and her life in Palo Alto, teaching German, participating in the German association, and leading the Bridge to Understanding, which takes a group to Germany each summer.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Fred Baum (né Efriam Dovid Boymelgreen), born in Slupaianowa, Poland (possibly Nowa Słupia, Poland), on October 1, 1921, describes his childhood; his one younger brother; his parents, Majlech and Miriam Nhuna, whom he lived with until 1930 when their mother died; being raised religious, and studying before the war at a yeshiva in Otwock, Poland; returning home from school after the war started, and seeing Jews being rounded up for forced labor; working in various government factories, and how the situation got worse and worse; his memories of shootings, confiscations, and deportations; how Jews were not allowed to go to school or to religious services and there was no electricity; his memories of several events including a memory of the rabbi of his town being tied to a horse and forced to run after it until he died; being put into Starachowice with his father and brother in August 1942; suffering from typhus and his father’s efforts to keep him out of the "hospital" so he wouldn't be shot; their transfer in July 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his father’s death in Birkenau around January of 1945; being sent with his brother to Buna (Monowitz), where they were given striped uniforms; being transferred with his brother to Lara Hut; being moved in early 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Gusen in Austria; spending a week there and then four days without food in an open train to Hannora, where they worked on an unfinished concentration camp; being separated from his brother on April 5, 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; spending six months in a hospital unit recuperating, and then staying in Bergen-Belsen for five years; meeting his wife, Helen Wiesel, there; getting married in 1946; never returning to Poland; reuniting with his brother, who was his only surviving family member; immigrating in 1950 with his wife and young daughter to the United States; having two more children; and his brother, who also immigrated to the United States and started a family.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral History

    Cantor Hans Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany on May 31, 1926, discusses his childhood in Berlin; being forced to leave his public school after the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935; antisemitic propaganda; his feelings of exclusion from social and athletic activities; the 1936 Olympic games; the events of Kristallnacht; the long wait for a visa to the United States; the family's decision to leave Germany for Shanghai, China; his impressions upon arrival in Shanghai; the life of his family and the Jewish community in Shanghai; his mother's death; the difficulties and illnesses he endured; moving into the Hongkew ghetto when the Japanese took control of Shanghai in 1942; his experiences there; the Allied bombings of Shanghai that took place in the spring of 1945; his life in post-war Shanghai; stowing aboard a ship to Australia in 1946; living as an illegal immigrant in Australia; his immigration to the United States in 1948; being drafted into the military; volunteering as a cantor in a San Francisco synagogue; returning to school and obtaining a cantorial diploma; working as a singing waiter in the Borscht Belt in New York while he was attending Hebrew Union College in New York; being reunited with his father in 1952; and his later experiences.

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral History

    Gilbert L. van Mourik, born June 27, 1930 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses his childhood in Rotterdam; his family life; his Protestant upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; his experiences during the bombing of Rotterdam; his father's efforts to gather and store food; his parents' decision to become part of the resistance; his family's activities, which included hiding a Jewish child in their home for the duration of the war; and the dangers his family experienced and their efforts at self-preservation as well as the moral challenges they faced.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral History

    Sam Zelver, born in 1935 in Kalisz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Kalisz; fleeing with his family to the Soviet Union after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the attempts of his father, who was in the Polish Army, to join them; the family's journey across Russia to Siberia; his mother doing hard labor in return for housing and food; the hardships they endured for a year and a half; the journeys the family took, which ended in Kazakhstan, where they lived with other Jewish refugees; discovering a relative nearby with whom they stayed from 1942 until the end of the war; the family's post-war journey to Germany, where they lived in a DP (displaced persons) camp; his immigration with his sister in 1947 to San Francisco, CA, sponsored by an uncle who died before they arrived; their stay in the Jewish children's home, Homewood Terrace; his reunion with his mother and stepfather, who emigrated in 1952; his education and service in the United States Army; his work as a salesman; his marriage; family; and religious life.

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral History

    Asya Grunkina, born on March 2, 1936 in Odesa, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Odesa; her memories of the occupation of Odessa by Nazi troops on October 16, 1941; the orders for Jewish families to identify themselves in preparation for deportation; hiding with her family in their home to escape deportation; the family fleeing with the assistance of a local Russian man in January 1942; hiding in the catacombs and caves nearby; the assistance of their rescuer and his family who brought them food at great risk; the terrible conditions and privations they endured; and leaving their hiding place in April 1944.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral History

    Kurt Mostny, born on March 3, 1919 in Linz, Austria, discusses his childhood in Linz; the antisemitism he experienced growing up; enlisting in the Austrian army and being posted in Vienna; the Anschluss in March 1938; serving as part of the honor guard surrounding Adolf Hitler when he arrived in Vienna to oversee the transfer of power; evading the roundup of Jews in Linz; escaping from Austria; going to Egypt to join his sister, who was pursuing a doctorate in Egyptology; their subsequent move to Belgium; his mother's friendship with a woman from Chile; her success in obtaining visas for Mr. Mostny, his sister, and herself; the entire family's immigration to Chile in 1939; his experiences in Chile; his work and family; his immigration to the United States with his wife and five children in 1964.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Hanna Cassel, born on December 6, 1914, in Berlin, Germany, describes her father Arthur, who owned a shoe store and her mother Rebecca, who helped run the store; her one brother, Werner, who was six years younger than her; her mother's parents, who were very religious, and spending during many holidays going to the temple with them; her parents, who were not religious; attending a private elementary school and then a girls' high school, which she was not able to finish because about a year and a half before she would have graduated, she lost her scholarship (because she was Jewish); her father's business ending because he was Jewish; not experiencing much antisemitism when she was younger, and how at first most people thought Hitler was crazy and he would never amount to anything; her very good non-Jewish friends, especially at school; her family home and her childhood and her love for reading; not having many options after she dropped out of school; her desire to go to Palestine with some of her friends, which her parents did not want her to do; moving to Rome, Italy and working as a nanny for several different families; how by 1939, Hitler had influenced Mussolini's policies and foreign Jews were required to leave Italy; the popular sentiment in Italy about Germany; the government-sponsored persecution growing worse; being arrested in December 1940 and put into a women’s concentration camp (she had avoided the first roundups); living with about 65 other Jews, Roma, and Yugoslavian partisans; conditions in the camp, the people there, and the flourishing black market; the German occupation of Italy and how the villagers in the town around the concentration camp helped free the prisoners because they knew the women of the camp would be killed or deported immediately by the Germans; hiding in the fields and then walking back to Rome, which took her about ten days; eating vegetables she took from nearby fields during her journey; being given fake papers by the police in the concentration camp’s town (the papers identified her as Anna Castelli; she told anyone who asked that she was an Italian fleeing the Allies); hiding with various friends in Rome; how most people at this time were surviving on the black market; the destruction of the synagogue in Rome right after she returned and the liquidation of the ghetto; the deportation of thousands of people; how several years earlier her parents and brother had gone to Shanghai, China, where her brother and father both died; having very little correspondence with her family while she was in Rome; getting some information from listening to the radio, which was illegal; living in hiding on the outskirts of the city when Rome was liberated on June 5, 1944; the euphoria at that moment and the difficulty of life after the liberation; how food was hard to come by; getting a job at the American Joint Distribution Committee; getting a visa to the United States and arriving in the US in December of 1948; her mother’s death and Hanna’s depression; working nights while taking classes at San Francisco State College; earning a BA and wanting to become a librarian; becoming a teacher after earning her Master’s degree; returning to Italy almost every summer once she was a teacher and visiting friends; returning to Germany for the first time in 1972 to visit a cousin; her hesitation to return to Germany; having a Bat-Mitzvah in 1983; experiencing antisemitism in the US, especially at the high school where she worked; and never marrying or having children.

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral History

    Vera Korkus, born in 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood in Vienna; the onset of World War II, and the opportunity that she and her sister had to go a Kindertransport, which they both refused; the forced move she and her family made in 1940 to Jewish ghetto in Vienna; their transport in October 1942 to an unnamed camp, where her father died of lung cancer; being sent with her mother to Auschwitz two years later; being separated from her mother; her reunion with her sister; the terrible conditions at Auschwitz; her encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele; being transported to Kurzbach, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where she endured forced labor and a 3-day march to Bergen Belsen; her escape from the march; finding protection from the Germans with Russian soldiers; the sexual assaults that occurred; her life after the war; moving to Bohemia (Czech Republic) then Vienna; and her immigration in 1949 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral History

    Steffi Black, born on October 17, 1920 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; her Polish parents Charlotte Pink and Felix Israel; her father’s factory in Berlin and his work with his brother, Leo, installing electricity in the city; her complex family dynamic; her lack of a Jewish identity; her parents' divorce; her mother's remarriage to Otto Goetz in Switzerland; her separation from her father; her father's involvement in the Spanish Civil War; spending the summers of 1932 and 1933 in Poland with her grandparents; attending a Jewish school for about nine months, but feeling left out since she was not Jewish; her reunion with her father and their immigration first to Cuba and then to the United States; her father's death in 1946 in Nevada; her marriage and life in the US; visiting Germany in 1980; and her three children.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral History

    Ann Burger (née Anni Rosalie Rautenberg), born in 1920 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), discusses her childhood; her father Arthur Rautenberg, who was the manager of department stores; being raised religious but not Orthodox; attending private school and then public schools; her experiences with antisemitism in school after Hitler's rise to power in 1933; her Jewish friends at school; the loss of her father's business; the family's move to Berlin, while she remained in school; her move to Berlin after her graduation in 1936; her cousin's immigration to Palestine; the family's decision to flee Germany; the efforts of their American family members to obtain visas for them; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; training as a nurse; a job opportunity for work in Sweden, where she remained during the war years; her parents’ journey to Spain, Cuba, and then to the United States; her reunion with them in the US in 1946; and settling in San Francisco, CA, where she married and had a family.

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral History

    Klara Garmel (née Pleshivaya), born on February 17, 1926, discusses her childhood in Yarun’, Ukraine; her parents' work on a collective farm; her memories of Jewish school as well as participating in a pioneer Ukrainian youth organization; the onset of war with Nazi Germany in 1941; the confusion that ensued; the enforcement of anti-Jewish laws; hiding from a roundup; witnessing brutal acts perpetrated against her grandfather; escaping, with the assistance of non-Jewish friends, to Poland; encountering her mother and sister, who returned to Ukraine; her experiences moving, hiding, and passing for a non-Jew; her conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith; marrying a widower far older than she; the advance of Soviet liberating forces; reclaiming her Jewish identity; leaving her marriage; working until she had sufficient funds to return to her home; learning that all but a sister and brother had perished; remarrying and having a daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1992 due to the antisemitism she experienced in Ukraine.

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral History

    Polina Sorkin (née Britavskaya), born on November 25, 1931 in Krutye, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Ukraine; her brother and father's service in Soviet Army; the German invasion and seeing troops in her town; her family's unsuccessful attempt to flee; an incident in which all the Jews were rounded up and marched to a barracks where they were imprisoned; escaping the barracks; traveling from village to village; being sheltered by relatives and strangers; her reunion with family members in a ghetto; traveling to an orphanage in Balta, Ukraine, where she remained until the end of the war; reuniting with her family; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral History

    Mikhail Blank, born on April 22, 1930 in Bershad, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Bershad; the family's experiences on a collective farm; his memories of antisemitism; the family's move from Bershad to a nearby camp after the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; an incident in which his father and brother with other men were locked in a stable from which they escaped and returned to Bershad; the occupation of the area by Romanian troops and the establishment of a ghetto in September 1941 in Bershad, where he and his family lived until the end of the war; his escape attempts; illnesses he endured; the forced labor his father and brother performed; his father's death; the liberation of Bershad in March 1944 by Soviet troops; his brother joining the fight against the Nazis and his death in battle in July 1944; his life in Bershad after the war; his military service; and his immigration to the United States in 1991.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral History

    Kurt Gronowski, born on July 16, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Berlin; the antisemitism he experienced; the destruction of his family's business during Kristallnacht, November 1938; the family's escape to Shanghai, China; his experiences while on board the ship from Italy; the family's arrival in Shanghai and the assistance they received from the Jewish community; life in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai; conditions during the Japanese occupation; the improvement of conditions after the war ended; immigrating to the United States; the difficulties he encountered while living in Indiana; and settling in San Francisco, where he became a successful businessman.

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral History

    Rosa Wigmore (née Adler), born September 8, 1923 in Ulic, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her childhood in Ulic; her family life; the changes she experienced in 1939 following the Hungarian annexation of the region; her experiences during her deportation with her family in 1944 to a ghetto in Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine); their deportation to Auschwitz; the selection she survived with her sister; her illness; her experiences in the infirmary and the help she received from a doctor who arranged to transfer her to another camp; the work she performed; the assistance she received; her lingering health issues; being liberated in May 1945 by Czechoslovakian partisans; her postwar experiences in Prague; her reunion with her sister; their immigration to the United States; and the fates of her other family members.

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral History

    Evelyn Lowen Apte (née Eveline Loewenberg), born in 1929 in Goerlitz, Germany, describes her brother Gerald; her father Herman Alexander Lowen, who was a cavalry officer during the First World War; her mother Else (Gradnauer) Lowen, who had a great interest in art and attended an art school in Berlin; how her family did not consider themselves religious but when the war began the Jewish holidays became more culturally significant to the family; having a happy childhood; her father’s desire to emigrate as soon as Hitler came to power; getting around the quota system by becoming property owners in the United States; traveling through Paris, France in 1937 and taking a ship to New York, NY, arriving on February 22, 1937; the fate of her extended family; settling in Portland, Oregon; learning English; the difficult transition to American life, especially for her mother; feeling like an outsider in high school, but beginning to feel American in college; visiting Germany in 1966; how she does not enjoy speaking German with people her age, but is willing to speak German with the younger generation; attending Reed College in Oregon for two years, and then transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where she did her undergraduate and some graduate work, finishing her education in London; becoming a social worker; considering herself an atheist, but still feeling close to the Jewish culture and traditions; the large community of Jewish refugees in Portland; and her reflections on her experiences as a refugee.

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral History

    Annette Herskovits discusses her experiences as a young child during the Holocaust, including her infancy in Paris, France; the occupation of Paris by Nazi troops; her father's decision that the family should go into hiding; hiding with her older siblings with occasional visits from their parents; the arrest and deportation of her parents in June 1943; her brother's efforts to find a safe place for her outside of Paris; being fostered with a couple in an unidentified location; being visited by her siblings during this period; and understanding that she would never see her parents again.

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral History

    Alfred Cotton (né Baumwollspinner), born on December 29, 1925 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hamburg; his Polish parents; his father’s wholesale wine distribution business; his memories of the antisemitism after the Nazis rose to power; his parents' selling their business because of the anti-Jewish boycotts; the expulsion of his father to Poland in 1938; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; the arrests of the teachers at the Jewish school he attended; his parents' decision to place him on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for a boy's camp in Suffolk, England; the arrest and internment of all boys over age 16; being moved to Sheffield, England and living in a camp run by refugee women; attending a public school; learning that his parents and grandparents were deported in 1942 from Poland where they were living; his immigration to the United States in the early 1950s; and his involvement in Kindertransport reunions.

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral History

    Marion Mostny, born on May 22, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; the changes she experienced during the 1930s; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her family's immigration to Santiago, Chile in April 1939; the community of Jewish refugees there; the fates of family members left behind in Germany; her life in Chile; her and her husband's decision to immigrate to the United States in 1963; their life in San Francisco, CA; her decision to write her memoirs; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance. [See her memoir titles, Conversations with my grandchildren : a journey through three continents.]

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral History

    Roy Calder describes his early life in an assimilated family in Berlin and Dresden; his invovlement in Jewish youth groups; his awareness of increased antisemitism after the Nazi rise to power; his parents' decision to send him to school in Switzerland in 1935; his attempts to convince his family to leave Germany; his regret that they did not; his decision to immigrate to Great Britain; the jobs he held in Birmingham, England; the beginning of World War II in 1939; his internment as an enemy alien in Sherbrooke, Canada; his return to England in late 1940; why he volunteered for the British army; his six year service in Scotland, Nigeria, India, and Burma; his marriage to another Holocaust survivor; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1953; his Jewish identity; and the effects the events of the Holocaust had on him and his wife.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Batzdorff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Felberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral History

    Abraham Jaeger, born on March 13, 1916 in Vel'ký Bočkov, Czechoslovakia (now Velykyi Bychkiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his career as a salesman; his escape in October 1939 to Palestine, where he was imprisoned for six months; his experiences serving in the British Army in Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus; joining the Israeli Army in 1948; his career and life in Israel, where he lived until 1958; his immigration to the United States; and the death of his parents and three of sisters in the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Kuhn

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Ms. Kuhn's childhood in Berlin, Germany, her life as the daughter of a Jewish father and non-Jewish German mother as the Nazi regime rose to power, and her growing awareness of antisemitism and change. Ms. Kuhn describes the dismay she felt after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the privations her family suffered as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws and her father's unemployment, living with meager ration allotments, detainments, and forced labor. She discusses life trapped in Berlin during the war years, bombings, and forced labor in a small factory. Ms. Kuhn remembers the round-up of Jews in Berlin in February 1943 and her release, because her mother was German. Of particular note, Ms. Kuhn discusses the Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943, when a group of Aryan women protested the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children, in which her mother participated. Ms. Kuhn describes the occupation of Berlin by Russian troops, and her family being asked to identify Nazis to them. She recalls her first exposure to information about the concentration camps and the Holocaust, the time she spent in a displaced persons camp, her desire to leave Germany and her immigration to the United States in 1948. Ms. Kuhn describes her return to Berlin for the 50th year memorial of Kristallnacht, when she participated in a silent march from the a synagogue to Rosenstrasse in commemoration of the protest there.

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral History

    Greta Reisman, born on January 6, 1927 in Mattersdorf (Mattersburg), Austria, discusses her childhood in Nuremberg, Germany; her religious upbringing and assimilated education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power; the increasing antisemitism as well as her family's decision to relocate to Yugoslavia and Hungary; her experiences in Yugoslavia; the actions her grandmother took to allow them to remain there; her decision to join the rest of the family in Hungary; and immigrating to the United States in 1940.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Mr. Schein's childhood is Sosnowiec, his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Mr. Schein describes being sent to his mother’s hometown, Brzostowica-Wielka, near Volkovisk, in Russian Poland, and eluding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec. He discusses being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940, and his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiessau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, Buchenwald, and possibly others. Mr. Schein describes the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform, being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld, and enduring a death march from Buchenwald. He discusses his liberation by American troops, his hospitalization, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany, and their immigration to the United States in June 1946. Mr. Schein relates that he was the member of his family that survived the Holocaust and his only possession when he emigrated was an accordion. He also describes his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral History

    Dan Dougherty, born May 30, 1925 in Austin, Minnesota, describes being drafted into the United States Army 17 days after his high school graduation; transferring from the 44th Division to the 45th Division; seeing combat on the Sigfried Line and experiencing a slight injury; returning after his recovery and fighting at Aschaffenburg, Germany; the surrender of Germany seven days later; taking part in the liberation of Bavarian US prisoner of war camps and concentration camps; going towards Nuremberg, which had already fallen to the Allies; arriving in Dachau, where they found thousands of emaciated corpselike inmates; coming upon Allach concentration camp; and going to Munich, which they occupied on May 1, 1945.

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral History

    Max Erlichman, born in November 1931 in Caracas, Venezuela, describes his parents Tobias Erlichman and Bella Galinskaja; spending his childhood years in Amsterdam, Holland until he was taken to Westerbork with his brother and father in mid-November 1942; the deportation of his mother to Auschwitz in September of 1942; the deportation of his older brother Zacharias to Auschwitz in October of 1942; never seeing either Zacharias nor his mother again, and finding out after the war that they were both killed in the camps; being sent with his brother and father to Bergen-Belsen, where they stayed for nine weeks; being sent to a camp in Wülzburg, Germany and remaining there until they were liberated in March or April of 1945 by the American Army; recuperating along with his father and brother in a house provided to them by civilians in the town of Weissenburg in Bayern, Germany; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Würzburg for a week before being sent back to Holland; his father’s travels between Holland and the United States for a few years after the war; and immigrating to the US with his brother.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Gerhart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugene Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral History

    Tillie Molho, born on December 25, 1926 in Salonika, Greece, discusses her childhood in Salonika and Athens, Greece; her experience of the Italian and German invasions of Athens; living in hiding for two years with a Christian family; the scarcity of food and the fear of discovery; her reunion with her family after the liberation of Athens; her family's attempt to reclaim their home from German collaborators; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral History

    Agnes Allison (née Agnes Suzannah Halàsz), born on October 28, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her younger sister, Judy; her mother, Ilona Gero and her father, Robert Halász; attending a private German school established for the children of diplomats; the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and the arrival of Polish refugees; the Hitler Youth movement at her school; her family’s conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and her awareness of the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944 and the increased restrictions imposed on the Jewish community; her family being forced out of their home; working for the Germans for a short time in exchange for protection; becoming friendly with a German officer's chauffeur, Fritz, who told her that the German soldiers kept watch at night to protect everyone in the apartment from the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross; going into hiding in December 1944 with the help of a priest, Father Reile; remaining in hiding until the liberation of Budapest in April 1945; learning the fates of family members; and her belief that the Arrow Cross was responsible for the deaths of Budapest Jews.

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral History

    Ann Gabor Arancio, born on September 2, 1926 in Gyula, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Gyula; her childhood experiences with antisemitism; her experiences passing as a Christian with false identity papers; being captured in November 1944 by Nazi troops; doing forced labor in a brick factory; her escape with her mother and sister; going into hiding in several locations; the liberation of Hungary; studying in Holland; immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1950; and her divorce, remarriage, and family life in the United States. [Ms. Arancio was featured in the book, A Time to Flee: Unseen Women of Courage.]

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Yanina Cywinska, born on October 28, 1929, describes growing up with her Ukrainian family, including her parents, Wladyslaw and Ludwika, and her older brother, Theodor; traveling a lot as a child; living mostly in and around Warsaw, Poland; attending ballet classes; being raised Catholic; her father’s Jewish friends; being taught by her parents to not look down on Jews or ever make an antisemitic comment; her father, who was a doctor and was asked by the Nazis, once they had invaded Poland, to perform some medical experiments on Jewish twins; his refusal to conduct the experiments and his subsequent imprisonment in jail for a short period; the Warsaw Ghetto, which was constructed in 1939; her father’s realization that he had a moral obligation to help the Jews and his failed attempts to get the local priest to help; her family’s participation in the underground movement; making several trips a day through tunnels and sewer lines into and out of the ghetto; carrying ammunition, jewelry, furs, medicine, and poison for the black market; witnessing executions and other violence; the various tunnels that they used to get in and out of the ghetto; being arrested and sent to a detention center; being taken out in the middle of the night with other people into the forest, where they dug ditches and then were lined up and shot; surviving the massacre because she was behind another woman, and she fell into the pit and pretended to be dead; climbing out of the pit and hiding in a haystack, where a farmer found her; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; her aunt, Stasha, paying the Gestapo to get Yanina and her brother out of the detention center; returning to her aunt’s house; being beaten and abused by her aunt for being a “Jew-lover”; her brother, who ran away; working as a servant for her aunt; ending up homeless and wandering around the streets of Warsaw for a while; staying for a few weeks with a couple she met at the detention center; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; being sent with the other prisoners to Auschwitz in cattle cars; the journey; arriving at Auschwitz; surviving a gas chamber after being revived by another inmate; being given a uniform; the shaving of her hair; being tattooed with a number; working in various places, including a factory, a kitchen, in the labs, and at the crematorium (note that it is generally thought that only men worked in the Sonderkommando doing the jobs that Yanina said she did); her methods for survival; being forced on a death march to Dachau; being liberated by American soldiers; staying in a displaced persons camp for a while, where she was sexually assaulted and impregnated by a soldier; her two abusive marriages after the war; meeting her third husband; the effects of the war on her emotionally; giving up on God; and her long recovery from her traumatic experiences.

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral History

    Ilse Lewy, born on February 26, 1920 in Wuppertal, Germany, discusses her childhood in Wuppertal (now part of Elberfeld); her memories of the increase in antisemitism after Hitler rose to power 1933; being forced to leave school and move with her family; working at a factory until 1936; her move to a children's school in Sweden that prepared students for immigration to Palestine; her travels there by train and her experiences in the school for the next two years; being summoned back to Germany to immigrate with her parents and sister to the United States; the voyage on a ship through the Panama Canal; arriving in San Francisco, CA; returning to school; her attempts at and final success in being admitted to nurse training; her experiences with antisemitism in the United States; volunteering for the United States Army; being stationed in the Philippines where she met her future husband; and their marriage and family life.

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral History

    Esther Kemeny, born on August 19, 1912 in Michalovce, Slovakia, discusses her childhood in Michalovce; attending law school and graduating 1936; incidents of antisemitism; her disbarment in 1939 because she was Jewish; meeting her husband and their marriage; the escape of her brothers and father to the United States in 1940; being deported with her husband to Auschwitz in 1944; the deplorable conditions at Auschwitz; the birth and tragic loss of her son in Auschwitz; her work in the hospital at Auschwitz; the death march she endured; her experiences at Ravensbrück concentration camp; being liberated by Russian soldiers; the assistance she received from the Red Cross; her return to Slovakia and her reunion with her husband who was in the hospital in Bratislava; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their move to New York and then Ohio; her husband's medical practices; and the birth of her daughter in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Ray Redel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral History

    Roma Barnes (née Rosenmann), born on March 15, 1930 in Demblin (Deblin), Poland, describes being subjected to a lot of antisemitism in school when she was growing up; the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the roundup of Jews; fleeing the roundups several times; her parents, who were caught in the first roundup and sent to Sobibor, where they were killed immediately upon arrival; returning to her town, where she met up with her uncle and stayed with him; her uncle’s preparation of fake passports for all of them to go to Switzerland; watching as her uncle was captured by the Nazis and shot; being caught and sent to a work camp, where she witnessed such atrocities as watching the hanging of her friend; being sent to Chesokova, where she was liberated; and staying in Egland after the war before going to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral History

    Margot Braun (née Feibush), born January 28, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, describes growing up in a suburb of Berlin, where there were very few Jews; being forced to go to a Jewish school in Berlin when Hitler came to power in 1933; her family’s experience of a "pre-Kristallnacht" in June of 1938, at which time she and her family were awakened and forced to leave their businesses and move in with their relatives; her father’s many siblings, including his brother who was an extremely wealthy businessman in San Francisco, CA; leaving with her family for England in March 1939; the arrest of her parents at the beginning of the war; living with her cousin in a foster home in England; her parents’ eventual release; and her family’s immigration in October 1948 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral History

    Theodore “Ted” Ellington, born in February 1928 in Vienna, Austria, describes being an only child; growing up around antisemitism and being defensive of his Jewish identity; the religious nature of Vienna schools and having to attend Christian educational activities; being also required to go to Jewish education sessions; how there were about eight Jewish students in his elementary school class of 35 children; his father, who made a living selling foodstuffs for livestock; the economic inequality in Vienna and his family’s practice to provide lunch for an unemployed family once a week; the violence that erupted in Vienna in 1934; the Anschluss in 1938; seeing tanks in the streets and army planes flying overhead daily; the Nazi flags and swastikas all over Vienna and the pro-Nazi sentiment of many Austrians; the Nuremberg laws; being forced to attend an all-Jewish school, where Nazi children would gather outside and taunt the Jewish students; the burning of synagogues and the destruction of his grandfather's store; his memories of Nazis entering their family home and beating his father after he asked the officers for paperwork stating that they were allowed to conduct the search; how the officers took virtually everything the family owned, including his cherished stamp collection; his parents’ desire to relocate to the United States; his parents’ decision to enroll Ted in a program that was run by the Quakers that took children from Austria and placed them temporarily with a family in England; going to Belgium in April 1939 to live with his uncle; going to England in May 1939 and staying with a family there until 1946; being treated well by the English family; attending school in London; his parents’ migration to San Francisco, CA in 1940; traveling to New York, NY in 1946 and a train to San Francisco, where he reunited with his parents in May 1946; attending San Francisco City College for one year and then UC Berkeley; earning his degree in accounting in 1950; joining the US Army for two years and then becoming a CPA; getting married in 1965; and his two daughters.

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral History

    Elisabeth Katz (née Rosenthal), born on April 23, 1920 in Fürth, Germany, discusses her childhood in an assimilated Jewish family; her mother's conversion to Judaism and reversion to Lutheranism; the ambivalent position that she felt placed in because of this difference; having to change schools once Hitler rose to power in 1933; attending a Jewish boarding school; entering nursing school in Frankfurt in 1938; her memories of the events surrounding Kristallnacht in November 1938, including the arrest of her father; immigrating to London in late 1938 to work in a hospital; being interned as an enemy alien; returning to London and working as a nurse during the Blitz; visiting her parents in 1947 in Germany, where they had remained throughout the war; her father being one of the three Jews in Furth who survived the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States in 1949; moving to San Francisco, CA; and marrying a fellow refugee.

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral History

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