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Oral history interview with Sidney Simon

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2015.395.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0843

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    Oral history interview with Sidney Simon
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Sidney Simon on October 9, 2015
    in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
    Thank you very, very much Mr. Simon
    for agreeing to speak with us today,
    to share your story, to share your thoughts and your life
    experience with us and particularly of what
    happened during the war.
    I'm going to start by asking the most
    basic questions in the beginning,
    and then we'll build from there.
    So my very first question is, can you
    tell me the date of your birth?
    May, 22, 1925.
    OK.
    And what was your name at birth?
    Moishe Schmeel a Jewish name.
    Moishe Schmeel.
    Moishe Schmeel.
    And your last name?
    Shimonovicz
    Shimonovicz, Moishe Schmeel Shimonovicz.
    Right.
    And today, you are Sidney Simon.
    Right.
    OK.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in a small village, Transylvania,
    where Dracula came from, a very small village called Sapinka.
    Sapinka.
    Szaplonca in Hungarian.
    Szaplonca.
    But Sapinka, Szaplonca Hungarian and Romanian.
    And it was Romania in my time.
    OK.
    Before my time, it was Austria-Hungary.
    And the Hungarians managed to hook up on the wrong side,
    and they lost the war.
    They're very good at it, losing everywhere they hook up with,
    the Hungarian.
    They lost the last war, the first war.
    Anyways, so we were, in my time, it was Romania.
    The war was '49.
    The Hungarians joined up with the Nazis, with Hitler.
    They became allies of Hitler.
    So from Romania, we became Hungarians again.
    During the war?
    During the war.
    OK.
    So we were Hungarians for about 2 years
    before they deported us to Auschwitz.
    OK.
    We'll come to all that.
    Let me tell you what happened there.
    The Hungarians deported all the Jewish people to Auschwitz, OK?
    Yeah.
    We lost 6 million of our people.
    Now, Romania also was an ally of Hitler.
    Hitler wanted Romania to do the same thing.
    And Romania said, no, no, no.
    These are my citizens.
    These are our citizens.
    If you don't trust them, we're going
    to form a camp, like the Americans did to the Japanese.
    We'll keep them under guard, but we don't let them out
    of our country, the Jews.
    No Jew lost their life Romania.
    And the Hungarians said to Hitler, take the Jews.
    We don't want them.
    They took some.
    I have two, three friends who were hiding out
    with Christian papers in Budapest, you know.
    Yes.
    And they were hiding out.
    And they survived, very few.
    And then, of course, the rest of the war was over.
    And everything went back where it was.
    Romania got back their share.
    Czechoslovakia went to the Russians.
    It's now Czechoslovakia, used to be.
    It's now the Russians occupied that area.
    So Sapinka--
    So we, my whole family, wind up in Auschwitz.
    We'll talk about that a little later.
    OK.
    All right.
    OK?
    Right now, I want to talk about your village Sapinka.
    Was it Sapinka?
    Yes.
    And that you start by telling me that it is Romania--
    before that, it was Austro-Hungarian Empire.
    That's correct.
    During the war, it was once more part of Hungary.
    And after the war, did Sapinka go back to Romania?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And today?
    Sapinka went back to Romania, and it's still Romania.
    It's still Romania.
    But the Jewish people, nobody survived.
    Nobody is living there anymore.
    We got a cemetery.
    My mother was lucky.
    She died 2 years before.
    And at least my kids, my children, my grandchildren
    went to visit my mother where she's
    buried at the Jewish cemetery.
    That's all that is left of my town is the cemetery.
    And they take good care of it.
    Well, that is--
    All right?
    Yeah.
    Now, go ahead with your questions.
    OK.
    So you were born and grew up in a part of the world
    where you could stay in the same village in the same city
    and live in four different countries
    throughout one's lifetime or five different countries.
    I'm making that kind of interpretation.
    You could grow up in one country,
    go to school in another, and you never move from your town.
    We had one school.
    OK.
    We didn't have different schools.
    From the first grade till after the fifth grade--
    one school, because a small village.
    About how--
    The rich kids, the parents send them
    to a big city to a good school.
    Some even went to college, who had-- very few people were rich.
    Maybe a half a dozen in my community had a little money.
    We didn't.
    Yeah.
    Tell me about your family.
    How many brothers and sisters did you have?
    I had two brothers and four sisters.
    Let's see, we were seven.
    I was number four.
    I was the first boy.
    We had Alta, Raizi, Malchi, and Sophie.
    Four girls and three boys--
    Can you give me their names?
    --two and me.
    So can you give me their names?
    Their name?
    The names of your siblings from the oldest to the youngest?
    Pero he was 15 years old, my brother.
    My brother Auschler two.
    Me, that's it, the three boys.
    The rest were girls.
    The girls' name was Alta, Raizi, Molly, and Sophie.
    The four girls, the older one didn't make it,
    because she was 24.
    She was expecting.
    She was married.
    The other girls made it.
    They survived.
    So they came home.
    Three of them came home.
    My younger one, Sophie--
    Hang on a second.
    OK.
    So your childhood--
    I was number four, the first boy born.
    I was the favorite child by my mother.
    Really?
    Yeah, she loved me to death, because I
    was born after three girls.
    Yeah.
    All right?
    Yeah.
    As I grew older, I went to school.
    What kind of school?
    The public school and then I went to Hebrew school
    to learn the Jewish religion and all that.
    So I went half a day here and a half a day at public school.
    So I was busy with school every day except
    Friday, let us go half a day.
    We had time to go play, Friday afternoon.
    And Saturday, of course, we didn't.
    Sunday-- back to school from 6 o'clock in the morning
    till 9 o'clock in the evening, school, school, school.
    That's a lot.
    Public school and the religious school, OK, that was my youth.
    Now--
    Tell me-- OK, OK.
    My mother was a very smart woman.
    She was very smart.
    What was her name?
    Sophie.
    And her maiden name?
    Maiden name?
    She was Shimonovicz.
    No, no, no, that's her married name.
    I got my mother's name.
    No, no, no.
    I took my mother's name, Shimonovicz.
    Shimonovicz was her maiden name?
    Yeah, yes.
    What about your father then?
    Nathan.
    Nathan, Nathan.
    Nathan, Nathan?
    Yeah, that's my father's name.
    And his last name was?
    Who?
    What was your father's last name?
    Nathan.
    [Nathan?
    Nathan, Nathan.
    Nathan.
    That was his name.
    Oh, I see.
    OK.
    Nathan, first name-- Nathan, second name.
    OK.
    Nathan, Nathan.
    He comes out of a big family, a lot of brothers.
    Anyways--
    OK, so you were saying about you mother--
    --that's it, OK?
    So my mother decided to move us out from that village
    where we lived to a bigger town, like where
    Elie Wiesel comes from.
    It was only 18 kilometer from us.
    But we went.
    She moved us to a town called Satu Mare, Romania.
    She said all these kids were in the village,
    they can't get jobs.
    But in the big city, they will get jobs.
    That was my mom's moved.
    Father approved.
    Then the Hungarians took over the country,
    took all the work permits that Jewish had, stores--
    Excuse me.
    OK.
    So I want to hear a little bit about Sapinka.
    Tell me, do you remember, do you have
    memories of being in Sapinka, of growing in Sapinka?
    I remember everything since I was three years old.
    Wow.
    That's a lot.
    Yes.
    That's a lot.
    So describe for me what the village looked like.
    OK.
    There was a big long street, the main street,
    that went from one big city to another city.
    And they had to go through our village to get there.
    So we were in the middle.
    The Jewish families lived on the main street.
    What was the name of the main street?
    You don't remember.
    They had no names.
    OK.
    The Christians who were the farmers of the town.
    They lived in the side street, but they work the fields.
    Jewish people are not farmers.
    They don't know how to farm.
    They were more business oriented.
    They were not.
    So the Christian families moved on the side street.
    And they had farms.
    We, the Jews, we had three synagogues.
    Can you imagine?
    That's a lot for a small village.
    Three synagogue in a small village-- three synagogues.
    So I learned a lot about the Jewish religion.
    And I learned in school about math and a little bit
    of this, a little bit of that.
    Yeah.
    It's a lot of education for a village boy.
    Yes, I did.
    Yeah.
    I did.
    OK.
    So Sapinka?
    We were-- Sapinka.
    How many people do you think Sapinka had?
    I would say we had three synagogues, maybe 100 families.
    100 Jewish families.
    Yes.
    And had your mother been born in Sapinka?
    Was your mother from Sapinka?
    Yes.
    And your father, too?
    My father, too.
    They went through the war, World War.
    World War I.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And had their families always been from Sapinka?
    Yes.
    Like your grandparents?
    Yes, great-great-grandparents.
    And great-grandparents-- so your family
    was from there from many generations from Sapinka?
    That's correct.
    OK.
    Did you know your grandparents?
    I knew one of my grandpas on my mother's side.
    And my father's side, he had passed away before I was born.
    And my mother's side, my grandmother moved in with us
    after grandpa passed away.
    So we were kind of one family.
    She had three sons living in America.
    They sent her living expenses.
    So she moved in with us, our grandma.
    Oh, I see.
    So your mother had three brothers
    who lived in the United States.
    That's correct.
    Did she have any other siblings?
    Did she have any more brothers or sisters?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Let's see, two brothers, they stayed in Romania.
    They got deport, two brothers.
    Cham, David-- three brothers.
    She had three more brothers in Romania.
    Three more brothers who lived in different towns--
    not in Sapinka, but not far, like 25, 30
    kilometer, different villages.
    Did she have--
    They got married, and they went with their wife wherever.
    Did she have any sisters?
    If I had sisters?
    No, your mother.
    Did your mother have sisters?
    I think of-- one, yes, two sisters.
    She was from a large family.
    Large family, they all are.
    We were seven kids, remember.
    Yeah.
    They didn't know anything except make kids.
    So she came from a family, it sounds like, of eight children.
    Three are in the United States.
    Three brothers are in Romania.
    And she has two sisters.
    So that's nine children plus her.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    They had a lot of kids.
    A lot, yeah.
    What about your father's side of the family?
    We were not close with my father's family for some reason.
    See, there were two--
    there were about three families, what you call substantial,
    better--
    Better off?
    My father broke into the better family.
    My mother came from a better family.
    So my father had a--
    but you asked me about my mother.
    I asked you about your mother.
    At some time, my mother had brothers.
    I told you.
    Yes.
    She's had [PERSONAL NAME], Anselm.
    She had about three brothers, three or four.
    Two of them lived out of town.
    They got married outside of Sapinka.
    Matter of fact, their children are in Cleveland.
    Some of them survived.
    Yeah.
    So your mother's family was one of the better, more
    substantial families.
    Correct.
    Was that in a financial way that they were better off?
    Only in financial way.
    OK.
    What kind of business or what kind of livelihood
    did they have in her family?
    My grandfather, my grandmother, had children in America.
    And they send money to their parents.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That's what they had.
    That's what they had, OK?
    That makes it, yeah.
    [LAUGHTER]
    And your father, how did he support your family?
    Well, he was wheeling at dealing and providing for the farmers
    horses, cows, and a lot of--
    he bought the markets and brought them home,
    sold some to the farmers.
    And some they sold to a guy who was buying and smuggling
    across the border to Czechoslovakia.
    There was a big river divided the two countries, Tisza.
    Tisza.
    Tisza.
    So Sapinka was close to the Tisza River?
    Right.
    OK.
    And so he was a tradesman?
    I was kid.
    Yeah.
    He was a tradesman.
    He was a trader.
    Right, that's exactly right.
    He was a tradesmen.
    OK.
    He was only 52 when he passed away, when they killed him.
    When they killed him, he was a young man.
    Young man.
    A young man-- so tell me, at home,
    was your family very religious?
    Yeah.
    I mean, you call it very religious.
    Everybody there was religious.
    Some was more religious than others,
    but everybody basically was very religious.
    You can imagine a small town.
    We had three synagogues.
    So that tell you.
    Yes.
    For 100 families, that's a lot of synagogues.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And you were the oldest boy.
    Is that the reason why you were sent to Hebrew school as well,
    so that you would get--
    No, they sent all the boys to the Hebrew school.
    All of them?
    OK.
    Yes, me.
    My other brothers also went to Hebrew school.
    And everybody who was born Jewish there
    had to learn how to read the Bible
    and had to learn about the history of the Jewish people
    and all that.
    I learned all that.
    What language?
    What language did you--
    In Hebrew.
    In Hebrew.
    Yeah.
    So in Sapinka, you were learning Hebrew.
    I learned Hebrew, to read and write in Hebrew.
    Like I could do--
    now, I forgot most of them.
    But I could do our services in the morning services.
    I could do it all by heart.
    I remembered it as a kid.
    And I was pretty good in the school that I went.
    Did you enjoy it?
    Yeah, the Jewish--
    I was-- let me say this.
    I was too smart for my teachers as a kid.
    Because when I was learning, it didn't make sense,
    two and two made five.
    And I was an eight-year-old boy.
    And I raised my finger.
    And I asked the teacher--
    we called them rabbi, teacher-- questions.
    He said to me, you're going to grow up to be a [NON-ENGLISH],
    I told you that.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Because I asked the right question.
    He didn't have an answer.
    Yeah.
    Let me tell you that one little thing that--
    Tell me.
    --I try put through my throat.
    OK.
    After you get older, they give you an now,
    teach a history of the Jewish people.
    It's called the Gomorrah.
    OK.
    OK?
    So the first page talks about where once set of rabbis
    have an argument with another set of rabbi.
    And the argument was, if a goose, a chicken,
    lays an egg on a holiday, should you be allowed to eat it or not?
    Here, I'm 80 years old, and that's a stupid question.
    And this is the first page of teaching history of Jewish.
    So I ask a question.
    I said, one set of rabbis say yes.
    Other rabbi says no.
    So they lost me, OK?
    I start not believing much in what I was learning, OK?
    But this is the type of thing that I was involved
    in the Jewish teaching.
    And I learned more than I wanted to know.
    Because I'll continue.
    You'll find out why I am the way that I am.
    OK.
    What about public school?
    I'm talking public schools.
    Oh, you're talking about public--
    One was Hebrew.
    And one was-- you asked me, and I said one was public schools.
    Yeah.
    We went to public schools from noon till 5 o'clock.
    From in the morning, 6 o'clock--
    Hebrew school and then lunch.
    And then I went to public school for half a day.
    Oh, really?
    A whole day they kept the kid in school from early morning
    to late at night, half of it Hebrew, half of it public.
    But the question that you were asked--
    the question that was posed to you when you were 8 years old,
    that was in Hebrew school?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And then after that--
    and the language was Hebrew that you were being taught in
    and that you were learning?
    OK Now, afternoons you went to public school.
    Yes.
    And what language did you--
    Romanian.
    Romanian.
    Yes.
    And at home, what did you speak?
    We talked Yiddish, Jewish.
    So you have three languages--
    Yes.
    --from this one village that you're growing up in.
    Well, I spoke Hungarian, too because we were Hungarians
    for a year, under Hungarian.
    The woman that here, she's Hungarian.
    I spoke Hungarian perfect a little.
    Four languages.
    We were one year, a year and a half
    Hungarians took over our area.
    OK.
    Oh, we'll come to that.
    So you started having questions that couldn't
    be answered in Hebrew school.
    The answers didn't satisfy you.
    That's right.
    OK.
    And how did that get you thinking?
    I mean, what kind of conclusions did you come to?
    Say that again?
    I said, what kind of conclusions did you come to?
    Oh, can I tell you?
    Of course.
    Really?
    Yes.
    It's not going to be nice to hear.
    I'm an atheist.
    Oh.
    Oh.
    I don't believe there is a God, because of what happened to us
    and what's happening now to millions of people.
    A God is where?
    How can he look down and let that innocent millions of people
    getting killed?
    I got to tell you.
    I am very, very upset, what I lived through my life, believed
    in God.
    We had a rabbi in our town who's supposed to have a [NON-ENGLISH]
    line to God.
    A woman couldn't get pregnant, they went to see this rabbi.
    Business went bad, they went to see this rabbi.
    I get to Auschwitz the second day of Shvues,
    it's a Jewish holiday.
    The rabbi arrived the same time we did.
    And he couldn't walk anymore.
    And I saw two Nazis dragging him on the ground like a dog.
    Now, this rabbi supposed to talk to God.
    Every problem he could solve they said.
    And I saw this rabbi, OK?
    I saw with my own eyes where they dragged him on the ground.
    And he was dead an hour later, half hour later.
    It was this rabbi.
    So coming where I come from, living
    through what I lived through, I don't think there is a god.
    I really don't.
    I stopped going to temple.
    I belong to three temples.
    I support all of them, but I don't go.
    Rosh ha-Shanah, Yom Kippur-- it was the High Holy Days.
    I just don't, because my experience in life.
    I'm Jewish, very much Jewish.
    But I like all people.
    I don't hold against anything whatever religion they believe.
    That's up to them.
    Christians, non-Christians, I had a lot of Christian friends
    I was raised with, did a lot of business with, you know.
    But in my opinion, there is something wrong.
    That you go to temple on Rosh ha-Shanah,
    that you read every page.
    God forgive me for this.
    Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
    You didn't do anything.
    Why do you have to ask God?
    I didn't do anything that need forgiveness.
    I'm a good person.
    I'm a good, good-hearted person.
    I helped a lot of people who needed help.
    I employed a lot of people, most of a lot of Black people.
    I helped them buy houses.
    I came in from the South.
    I was just a good human being.
    And that's what a person is supposed to be.
    That makes me religious, in my opinion,
    if you're a good person.
    The religion was set up to make people good people--
    Yes.
    --not animals, good people.
    Yes.
    If you're a good person, you're a religious person,
    in my opinion.
    That's my opinion.
    I like all people.
    When I hear you say this--
    Look here--
    Yeah.
    Look here, this woman's a Hungarian that works for me.
    You mean--
    She was with me 10 years.
    --a lady who--
    She's the nicest person was.
    And the Hungarians were worse than the Germans
    with the Jewish people.
    They said, take the Jews.
    We don't want them.
    Romania didn't do that.
    Romania said, no, they're my people.
    I'll put them in camp.
    They survived.
    But the Hungarians, we don't want the Jews thing.
    That's why they're suffering today.
    They cannot amount to anything.
    You hardly recognize this is a country.
    Because without Jewish people, they're nothing, you know?
    They lost all the brains.
    Look what's going on.
    She lost her father in the war.
    Her father, you know there was an uprise in Romania,
    they tried to drive out the Russians.
    The Hungarians, they-- I don't know if you remember.
    In 1956.
    Yeah, in 1956, there was a Hungarian uprising.
    Yeah, her father went to work with an army [INAUDIBLE]
    to World War I, you know, never came back.
    They killed him.
    I mean, what kind of brain is that
    to go fight the Russians with what?
    They came in with the tanks, and they wiped them all out.
    And she lost her dad.
    I mean, you know, there are people [? of ?] people.
    When you just told me that you're an atheist,
    I got the sense that it's very painful.
    Is it painful for you not to believe in God?
    No.
    No.
    No?
    I'm right.
    I tell you, I am the right.
    Tell me.
    I tell you.
    I used to belong to a club, men's club.
    We used to meet every four weeks.
    It's just general meeting, club.
    So we would meet in different places, Cleveland, New Yorkers.
    So one day, we met in Palm Beach [INAUDIBLE], OK?
    And we always had a guest speaker to speak to us.
    That time was a rabbi, the guest speaker.
    Sitting on the porch with me, we're
    having a drink, the rabbi, me.
    And we're talking.
    And I go on.
    I say, rabbi, do you think there is a God?
    I do this the rabbi.
    He looks at me.
    I said, tell me what you think, rabbi.
    You're going to have to speak tonight.
    He says, well, I think that God created the world
    and turned it over to mankind.
    And mankind they're doing themselves in.
    Now, that makes sense.
    But why do I go to the holiday and God
    every page, God, God, God?
    And what you're telling me, he's not around.
    Men are doing themselves in.
    That's what you said.
    You're a rabbi.
    You're teaching, right?
    Well, he got quiet.
    He did not want to take me on any further.
    It's logical.
    He did make a speech, but he knew who he was dealing with.
    He almost told me I'm right.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Yeah.
    But how can you do that?
    He almost told me that I'm right.
    I think I'm right.
    I think I'm right.
    God, you know-- the people are doing themselves in.
    Look, people kill people.
    Yes.
    Look what's going on now.
    You open the television, you get sick to your stomach
    when you see these people running.
    To one hand, they have baby.
    In the other hand, what they can carry, millions of people.
    Right now, while we're talking [INAUDIBLE].
    That's true.
    That's true.
    They're refugees.
    Right now, while you're here--
    and we're going to have a nice lunch
    and people are dying, because some bastards decided
    to do that.
    If God is around, he should free them.
    Do something, God.
    That's me.
    I can't help it.
    I saw what I lived through.
    So you started having questions even as an 8-year-old boy?
    That's right.
    You started having questions then.
    That's right.
    And then, when things happened, those questions
    just became bigger and bigger?
    Absolutely.
    OK.
    Absolutely.
    So let's go now a little bit further.
    I have a picture now of what Sapinka was like.
    I'm going to repeat.
    Sapinka is a village of both Jews and Gentiles.
    Correct.
    The Jews live around the main road.
    There are about 100 families.
    You have three synagogues.
    Yes.
    And you study a lot.
    You go to--
    Maybe it wasn't 100.
    Maybe it was 75.
    But you know, call it between there.
    Something like that.
    Yeah.
    Something like that.
    Something like that.
    Did everybody know everybody?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yes.
    Everybody knew everybody.
    And the town that your mother wanted everybody to move to,
    what was it called again, Satu Mare?
    Satu Mare.
    And how far was it from Sapinka?
    It's 80 kilometer from the village that I was born.
    OK.
    The reason, I did it many times, 80 kilometers.
    80 kilometers.
    And what kind of a place did you move into?
    We sold our house in Sapinka.
    And we bought a house there.
    And how large a town was Satu Mare?
    It was a pretty good size town.
    It was a pretty nice town.
    And they had a lot of smart educated people,
    had good schooling.
    You hear that Elie Wiesel--
    Yes.
    Of course, everybody did.
    Yes.
    He comes from a town not as big as that one,
    but he was only 18 kilometer from my hometown.
    18 from Sapinka.
    From Sapinka is where he comes from.
    It was bigger than Sapinka.
    Sathmar was kind of a good sized city.
    That's why my mother moved us there, figuring, you know,
    she's got all these kids.
    There they can get jobs.
    But that didn't happen, because the Hungarian took it over.
    And the Jewish people couldn't get permits.
    They took away their permits and everything.
    OK.
    What year--
    So we moved back to the village, because it's cheaper
    living there than living in a big city.
    Oh, I see.
    So fill me in.
    About how old were you when you moved to Satu Mare?
    15.
    Oh, so you moved in 1940?
    15.
    I see.
    I made the living.
    What were you doing?
    I was making the living.
    What were you doing?
    In Sathmar, let me tell you what I was doing.
    You know, they didn't have taxis like we have.
    Transportation was a horse and a buggy,
    like to see in New York in Central Park.
    You drive a horse and a buggy.
    That was the transportation if people had to go from one place
    to another.
    My father, may he rest in peace, bought
    one of those when we moved to the big city.
    A horse and buggy taxi?
    I'm 15 years old, OK?
    He's got a day driver and a night driver.
    There is no meter.
    Whatever they made, they decided how much to give my mother.
    The rest they put in their pocket.
    They were stealing.
    And I'm 15 years old.
    And I tell, I want to be the night driver.
    I want to be the driver at 15.
    You think if I'm tall now, imagine how tall I was
    when I was 15 years old, OK?
    Finally, I talked them in.
    They're going to let me do it.
    I had to learn the streets.
    I had to learn to speak Hungarian,
    because a Hungarian talking town.
    I got up early in the morning.
    I walked every street.
    And I remembered the name and where every street.
    It took me about 2 weeks.
    I'm ready for the questions.
    Before they give your permit, they
    test you, what you know about.
    So I go to get my permit to do this.
    I pass it.
    OK?
    I become the night driver.
    And this you're going to get a kick out of.
    I'm driving.
    I know what I'm doing.
    And the money goes in my pocket.
    I come home in the money.
    I give it to my mother.
    And then I do my services, my Jewish service.
    I went to bed slept till I started again.
    I'm doing this now for about 2 weeks
    making good money for my mother.
    One day, it was still Romania.
    Two Romanian officers want me to give them a ride.
    And they said, they get in in my thing--
    and take me to the [NON-ENGLISH].
    What's a [NON-ENGLISH]?
    See, I had no idea what a [NON-ENGLISH] was.
    OK.
    But there were guys there doing the same thing.
    They were 18 year old.
    They knew what a [NON-ENGLISH] is.
    [NON-ENGLISH] is hookers.
    Now, a 15-year-old doesn't know what a hookers,
    anything about hookers.
    They get out for my thing and get on the other.
    The guy said, we know, we Know We take you.
    So the next day, they told me where they
    are two of them in the street.
    Listen to this, they tell me there are two of them
    on this and this street.
    So on a Friday, I go knock on their door.
    Listen to this.
    And I said, if I bring you some customers,
    can I get a little cut?
    And I'm 15 years old.
    Wait, wait, I'm not finished.
    Hold on.
    Hold on, I'm not finished.
    OK.
    In a Friday night, we're having dinner at my house here.
    My grandson is 15 years old.
    And I tell this story.
    My grandson, he said, grandpa, you were--
    what do they call this--
    A pimp?
    You're a pimp.
    You were a pimp.
    I said, what the hell is a pimp.
    [LAUGHTER]
    He said, grandpa, you were a pimp.
    I learned what that was.
    Now, did your mother ever find out that you--
    She wasn't-- didn't know.
    Oh, she knew.
    I told her the whole story.
    OK.
    But now, I'm going to tell you the real thing.
    OK.
    I'm in America.
    I'm doing great.
    I come home.
    And I tell my wife, honey, this country has been so good to us.
    We're not doing anything for the country.
    I was going to go to the Korean War.
    And they came out with a law that, if you
    have more than two children, they wouldn't take you.
    My wife got pregnant with my younger daughter.
    They wouldn't take me.
    So I said, I've got an idea.
    We're 50 years in America.
    Let's make a party.
    We'll call it coming to America, black tie party.
    And we're going to invite everybody who touched
    our lives in the 50 years.
    Oh, what a lovely idea.
    Everybody who touched our lives in the 50 years.
    So we made this lavish party in the courthouse,
    three-story courthouse, where I got sworn in as a citizen.
    And we built the Statue of Liberty
    in the middle 28 feet tall.
    It was a black tie.
    The guy who signed my first paycheck,
    his name is Sam Miller.
    He's still alive.
    And I tell this story.
    I tell this story.
    The man who signed my first paycheck, Sam Miller, will
    you stand up?
    He got a big [? standing ?] ovation.
    Then I tell the story.
    My kids, my grandkids who are next to me,
    standing while I'm speaking.
    And now, I'm going to tell you what my grandson taught me.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Tell me.
    I told that story.
    About the [NON-ENGLISH]?
    About hooker, that he told me that I was-- everybody
    was dying laughing.
    It was written up for the newspaper, the greatest party
    ever in the--
    Really?
    --written up in this story front page.
    Well, lovely.
    I mean, I invited lawyers, doctors.
    Everybody would touch that lives was at that party,
    over 250 people.
    The guy asked me who did the party,
    said, how much you want to spread?
    I says, I want a nice party.
    I can't tell you.
    Whatever it cost me, it costs for a nice--
    boy, it was fantastic.
    What a lovely idea.
    That's what I did.
    What a lovely idea.
    I had to do something.
    I felt inside this country has been great for me.
    I pay my taxes, but there is plenty left after that.
    And I raised kids [? with all I got. ?] I got three daughters.
    Tell me.
    One became a great lawyer.
    And the other two have master's degrees.
    And we got those--
    I don't know if you guys heard of Shaker Heights.
    Yes.
    The best schools and the best neighborhood,
    that's where they were raised, send them to that school.
    I was very [INAUDIBLE].
    I was very lucky that I was born with a little bit up here
    from my mom.
    Yeah, your mom.
    And so you even told her when you came back
    from that evening's ride?
    Oh, sure.
    Yeah?
    I told everything my mother.
    She's laughing.
    Was she laughing?
    Yeah.
    So she was able then to see the difference between what
    you were bringing in and what the other taxi
    drivers were doing?
    Oh, of course.
    Yeah.
    It was like day and night.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Then we finally had to move back to the village.
    The Hungarians took over.
    When did the Hungarians take over Satu Mare?
    Was it 1941 or '40?
    Or when was it?
    Yeah, something like that, the height of the war.
    So you didn't live there long.
    If you moved when you were 15--
    No, no.
    We lived there maybe 2 years.
    We moved back to the village, because it
    was cheaper to live in the village than to live in town.
    My mom, here is what my mom did.
    She was a very smart woman.
    She had four girls.
    My older sister got married.
    OK.
    So now, she's got three girls.
    One, she worked for my grandma.
    She took care of her.
    One worked in a store for another aunt who
    had a store by the boarder of Czechoslovakia and--
    that two.
    Now, only one left, they're all jobbed out.
    So the girls worked their jobs, worked for family.
    She was smart.
    My mother was smart woman.
    When you move back to Sapinka, was that already part of Hungary
    or still part of Romania?
    You say you left--
    That was Hungary.
    When I moved back, it was already
    Hungary, back to Hungarian and was there till after the war.
    Then it changed hands after the war.
    It's Romania now.
    OK.
    Can you explain to me how that came about?
    Why was it that this territory that had been Romania
    got to Hungary?
    Well, before World War I, it used to be everything Austria
    Hungary--
    Right.
    --before World War I.
    I remember you said.
    Now, when the Hungarians lost the war, you know--
    Yes.
    --whatever that war was with the Germans they took Hungary.
    And they cut in to shred, everything
    back to Romania the way it was.
    they took part of that land and made Czechoslovakia was born.
    That's true.
    And it became back Romania on one side the Tisza, the river.
    And the other side was Czechoslovakia.
    OK.
    And that's way it was till World War II.
    OK.
    And so why was it that during World War II--
    what made it so that Hungary reclaimed these places?
    Hungary joined up with the Nazis, Hungarian.
    Well, Hitler gave them an order.
    Either you join, if not, we're going to occupy you.
    That's what they did.
    They did that with Poland.
    Poland didn't want join, so they occupied Poland.
    Romania, they didn't care, because they
    weren't much to occupy.
    You know, they didn't have a good history.
    So that's what he did.
    Hitler gave him an ultimatum.
    But Hungary takes back these lands
    that were now part of Romania.
    And where you lived either was Satu Mare or Sapinka,
    but it was now all Hungary.
    So when you got back to Sapinka, did you
    have difficulty in getting those permits
    to be able to do anything?
    Or how did you support yourselves?
    Oh, we couldn't.
    We couldn't get it.
    Well, I went to work.
    OK, what did you do?
    I went to work.
    I worked in the woods.
    We have big forests, the big woods.
    Myself and one other boy my age, we worked there.
    My father didn't know what work was.
    Can you imagine sending me to do his job, you know?
    He was a nice guy, but he didn't have it.
    He made seven kids.
    He could support one.
    My mother was the mover.
    She was.
    She was a smart woman.
    What happened with your mother?
    You said she died before the war.
    My mother died 2 years before they took us
    to the concentration camp.
    OK, so [CROSS TALK]
    She was lucky.
    How did that happen?
    I'm going to tell you how she died.
    Tell me.
    She had a pain.
    We lived in a little house.
    And my sister-- the doctor would come to our village
    every other week.
    So he examined her.
    And he told my sister, who took care of her,
    to put hot plates instead ice.
    A hot compress, OK.
    Hot plates.
    Hot plates-- the pain didn't go away.
    They took her to the hospital.
    And she had appendicitis infection,
    appendicitis infection.
    It burst on the driveway of the hospital.
    Oh my goodness.
    She was dead a week later.
    Her doctor prescribed the wrong thing,
    telling her hot plates instead of ice.
    Well, she would have died in concentration camp 2 years.
    At least I could say that she was lucky.
    I know where she is.
    She's buried in Sapinka.
    And I took my children, my grandchildren to visit her.
    And I have their generations full of my family,
    my grandpa, my great-grandpa.
    You know, all grandmothers and all, they're all buried there.
    Why they settled there, I don't know.
    How old was she?
    I don't know.
    How old was she when she died?
    How old was she when she died?
    I would say she was 50.
    My father was 52.
    She was 50, maybe 49, something like that.
    Still a young woman.
    She was a good looking woman.
    Was she the main influence in your early years?
    What?
    Was she the main influence on you in your early years?
    She loved me.
    I was her favorite, because I was number four.
    And I finally got a boy.
    She had three girls before me.
    Yeah.
    So anyways, I was very helpful.
    She saw a star is born.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Really, I tell you the truth.
    I took care of the whole family since I was 15 years old.
    I still take care of my sisters after they came home
    from the concentration camp.
    I made their weddings, took care of them.
    One of my sisters, still in Cleveland, I bought her a house.
    Wow.
    You did take care of your family.
    I took care of all of them.
    I took care of all of them when they came home.
    I married them off.
    Two of the had boyfriends, married them off,
    made nice weddings.
    The younger one didn't come home, went to Switzerland.
    She was a teenager.
    And the United Nations sent them a resort place to Switzerland
    after they liberate.
    So she was there.
    And she met this guy, a German Jewish family, got out.
    And she meets this guy.
    And the [INAUDIBLE] they--
    she comes to New York.
    She remembered my uncle's address.
    And my younger sister, she wrote him a letter that my name
    is so and so.
    I am Cecil's daughter.
    Cecil was my mother's name.
    He didn't have any kids.
    And she wrote him a letter.
    And he sent her an affidavit to come to America.
    She went to America, married in New York.
    She has those genes, too.
    You know, the--
    Yeah.
    So she came to America with this guy.
    And they got married.
    And the guy was ultra, ultra religious, no work,
    couldn't hold a job, no work.
    So when I came to Cleveland, one of my sisters was there already.
    I said, what's happening with [PERSONAL NAME]?
    I sent some money to hold for me when I come to America.
    I sent her $300, so I have a few dollars when I come.
    So my aunt says, don't even bother calling.
    She's starving there in New York.
    Instead working, he goes to temple.
    I said, no, no.
    This can't happen.
    We've got to move her here.
    So my other sister was here already, and her husband.
    So we got together, and we moved her to Cleveland.
    With her husband?
    I figured, if we're going to eat, she's going to eat.
    I'm not going to let her starve.
    So I was already in business.
    I gave him a job.
    He didn't do nothing anyways.
    They wind up-- anyways, I bought her a house, two family house.
    I bought her an eight-suiter need so she has a little income.
    She was to get rid of him.
    She wants to get a divorce.
    Hang on.
    He doesn't want to divorce her.
    He doesn't want to divorce her?
    He doesn't want divorce her.
    He wants half what she has, which I gave her.
    She owns an eight-suiter, and she owns a two-family house.
    A Jewish divorce is called a get.
    You can't get divorced unless a rabbi signs off the get
    in court.
    So I get involved to help her out.
    She wants to get a divorce.
    So the neighborhood rabbi in Cleveland, he's big name.
    He calls a meeting with three other rabbis and him.
    They were trying to make a deal.
    And he figured out half of the assets is worth $15,000.
    You know, there was [INAUDIBLE].
    He says, you give me $15,000, I sign off on the get.
    They had nothing.
    I bought everything for them.
    And the other rabbis tried to help me.
    The rabbi tried to help me.
    So finally by around quarter to 12:00, around midnight,
    nothing works.
    So the main rabbi calls me in his bedroom.
    It was at this house.
    He calls in.
    Mr. Simon, we want to see you.
    So I go in there.
    He says, you want to get rid of that [NON-ENGLISH]?
    I said, yes.
    Make out a check for $15,000, and we'll get rid of him
    tonight.
    I said, rabbi, you got a deal.
    I made out a check for $15,000.
    He signed off.
    The next day, I went to court with it.
    And she got a divorce.
    That's my younger sister that I loved.
    She loves me.
    So you did take--
    She's not married now.
    She got remarried, but her husband passed away.
    She was maybe 13 years old when she got liberated, 15.
    She was very young.
    No, she's 2 years younger.
    I was 18.
    She was 16.
    So you did take care of them all?
    I took care of all them.
    Tell me this.
    You mentioned your father and that you
    have your mother's maiden name you
    took as your own name, Shimonovicz.
    Oh, no.
    I took my mother's.
    Pardon?
    I took my mother's name.
    I carried my mother's name, Shimonovicz, Simon.
    My father was Nathan.
    So tell me.
    When did you do that?
    When did you--
    When I came to America--
    I figured, I got uncles here.
    I'll find rich uncles.
    They've been here for years.
    They'll be bankers.
    And they'll be big business.
    They were nothing.
    I find zero.
    Their kids start working for me.
    They were born in America.
    Matter of fact, you know, I have four uncles here.
    They've been here from World War I, you know.
    And they have children here.
    I'll take up my mother's name.
    I'll be somebody, Simon.
    You know what I found?
    Chicken flickers at chicken stores
    in the Black neighborhood.
    That's what they had.
    And the sons were nothing.
    So two of the sons start working for me when I'm in business.
    So you're the one who became something.
    You're the one who became something.
    Yeah, I made it myself.
    Let's go back to Sapinka.
    You're moved back there.
    Your mother passes away.
    It's already during the war when Hungary
    is controlling this area.
    Right.
    And you say she was lucky, because she avoided everything
    that everybody else went through.
    Tell me.
    What happened then?
    What happened when your lives changed,
    when you couldn't work anymore?
    Did you have to wear a yellow star, for example?
    No.
    No.
    No.
    The ones who served as laborers, they had to wear a star.
    I didn't.
    I don't remember wearing one, a Hebrew star.
    Did you move back to your old home,
    or did you buy a new home in Sapinka?
    No, no, we rented.
    You rented.
    You rented.
    We rented.
    All right.
    We rented a house.
    And how many kids were then at home?
    There was your father.
    There was yourself.
    There was your younger brothers.
    Two young brothers.
    Any of your sisters living at home?
    One sister, after my mother died, she took care of us.
    She's 2 years older than me.
    She became the mother.
    She did the cooking, the cleaning, and all that.
    My mother was gone.
    What was her name, the sister?
    She passed away.
    I know.
    I just told you.
    No, no, no, your sister's name, the one who took care of you
    afterwards.
    The one who took care of us?
    Yes, after your mother was passed away.
    She lives in Cleveland.
    What's her name?
    Molly.
    Molly.
    Molly Roth.
    Molly took care of you.
    Molly took take care of us.
    How long did you stay in these rented quarters?
    We stayed till they deported us, till they took us away.
    It was only maybe a year and a half or two
    from the time we moved back, a couple of years maybe--
    moved back from bathroom Satu Mare to Sapinka, 2 years.
    And then--
    And during that time, you were working in the forest?
    You said you were working in the woods.
    I was working in the woods cutting trees.
    There was myself and another young boy like me.
    We worked.
    He had the same problem I had, trying to make a living.
    And were there restrictions?
    That is, even in Sapinka, were there
    restrictions for what kind of jobs you could do?
    No.
    There wasn't much jobs.
    The jobs that we took nobody wanted.
    I see.
    You know?
    I see.
    I see.
    You know, nobody wanted to go sleep with the horses,
    with the cows, way out.
    So when you were taken away from your home,
    was this a big surprise?
    Were you feeling like it was coming,
    or did it come as a complete surprise?
    Yes and no, because we thought that they're not
    going to take us.
    We already saw people in trains leaving.
    We didn't know where they're taking them.
    We had no idea.
    We couldn't get a newspaper.
    We couldn't have a radio.
    They took away everything.
    Jewish people could not have a newspaper
    or a radio or listening to what's going on in the world.
    The war was on, OK?
    So we didn't know.
    The only thing the real religious people
    said, God is not going to let us--
    nothing's going to happen to us.
    God is with us.
    They believed that God is going to step in and make--
    save us.
    That didn't happen, because the rabbi, the other rabbi,
    I saw where the Nazis beat him up.
    He had a beard.
    They pulled his hair.
    In Sapinka?
    In Sapinka.
    In Sapinka-- so there was a--
    At first, what they did, they set up a ghetto.
    They took us from our home to carry
    what you could carry and leave.
    So we take suitcases and carry.
    We walked about 10 kilometer.
    They evacuated two streets where people were living.
    They put us up there till they got a train.
    We were waiting for a train to take us to Auschwitz.
    And you don't know it was--
    We didn't have idea where we're going.
    Were these Hungarian--
    I tell you, though.
    I tell you.
    OK.
    I didn't want to go.
    I didn't want to go where they take us.
    I came home.
    I told my dad--
    my mother was already gone.
    I said, I had a good friend, a Gentile boy, at the school.
    We became buddies.
    He says, take my birth certificate.
    I had long hair.
    I could get away as a Christian boy.
    And that's it.
    Some people did.
    Not me, my father wouldn't let me do it.
    I asked him.
    He says, no, you got to come with me
    to help me with the kids.
    So I went.
    I could have taken a Christian-- there is no pictures
    or anything--
    Right, right, right.
    --and get lost to some village and work on a farm
    till this is over as a Christian boy.
    Because I had long hair--
    That's right.
    --you know, I was--
    but my father said, you've got to come with me,
    help me with the kids.
    You go where the father said.
    Yeah.
    You know?
    I could have--
    You could have escaped.
    I know some people who did--
    even in Budapest, were hiding out.
    I got two or three friends in Cleveland that I know.
    They survive on Christian papers.
    So tell me about the neighbors in Sapinka,
    the Romanian neighbors, the Gentile neighbors.
    They were all nice.
    I saw them crying when they left, when we left.
    I saw a woman crying as we walk in the street.
    And they stood.
    And I saw some Christian women crying
    when they saw us carrying--
    some people babies, some big suitcase,
    like you see in television.
    That's what happened to us.
    They took us in a--
    we walked about 10 kilometers.
    And they put us up in houses.
    The women, the young girls, had to sleep in the attic.
    And it was hot as well, because these Hungarian young soldiers
    would come and take at night the young girls, rape them--
    rape them.
    So my sisters were sleeping in the attic, hot as hell.
    It was summertime, you know?
    So they took you in the summer of '44?
    Was this it or 1943?
    Which summer was it?
    No, no, '44.
    We were the last ones.
    You were the--
    OK.
    We were the last one.
    When I wound up in the concentration camp,
    they were Jewish people there from Poland for 3 years already.
    OK.
    But you--
    And they were so jealous that they were--
    Poland was the first one that Hitler wiped out the Jews.
    So a lot of them survived in the camps.
    So I was in a camp called Bunzlau.
    I was there 9 months.
    We'll come to that.
    We'll come to that.
    So when you were taken from your home,
    was it soldiers marched in there?
    Or did you get a letter?
    How was it--
    No, no, no, no, no.
    No.
    There were Hungarian police, call them.
    They were gendarmes.
    Gendarmes.
    Gendarmes.
    So they took us into two towns away.
    First was [PLACE NAME], then Telc.
    And they emptied out two streets.
    They told the local people to leave.
    They got it.
    And they put us in there.
    They were waiting for a train.
    You know, it was during the war.
    And we were there, like, a month--
    That's a long time.
    --about a month.
    And then they put us in the train,
    boxcars, like if you're animals, boxcars.
    Were you and your sisters and father all in one boxcar?
    Boxcar.
    Or were you split up?
    No, the families were together in a-- maybe
    were three, four families in a boxcar, five, from my hometown.
    We had no idea.
    We had no idea about Auschwitz.
    The trains arrived.
    I'm sure you heard that story from others.
    We got there.
    And all of us are-- raus!
    Out!
    And Dr. Mengele was in there.
    And he decided who shall live or who should die.
    We got off.
    And the younger people, the working people who could--
    they kept, like, me.
    I was 18 years old, the others.
    My father went left, because he was too old.
    He wasn't too old, because we didn't know right or left.
    We don't know, if you go right, you could survive.
    And if you go left, you die an hour later.
    We didn't know.
    My two brothers could have come with me, you know?
    One was 15.
    I know some 15-year-olds survived.
    I know some 13-year--
    matter of fact, I've got a cousin whose 13 years old.
    He went to the right.
    He survived.
    So we didn't know.
    We saw ambulances go to throw us off.
    This is-- bastards.
    I saw ambulances going back and forth.
    They lined it up.
    It's four.
    And the doctor said, right, left.
    I'm sure you heard that before.
    But how was it with you then?
    So it was you get off the train.
    You're lined up.
    And he decides that you go to the left--
    They lined us up, you know, four.
    Right.
    It was a lot of people.
    And the doctor, the Dr. Mengele--
    that we looked for him, we never got him--
    stood there.
    And he decided right, left.
    If you look strong enough to work, you went to the right.
    If you look too old, in his mind, went to the left.
    And so your brothers who were younger--
    My brother went with my father.
    But he could have gone to the other side?
    He could have gone with me.
    We didn't know.
    But a matter of fact, my brother was 15 years old.
    He was a tall kid.
    I was the only shorty in the family.
    He was wearing my jacket.
    I said, Bill, take off the jacket, so you look younger.
    So you won't have to go to work.
    We thought they're taking us to a work camp.
    So he took off my jacket.
    He went to the left with my father.
    I don't know if my idea would have worked.
    But I told him take off the jacket, because I
    thought we were going to work.
    So he wouldn't have to go to work.
    Had he gone with me, he'd have been alive.
    And what about the girls?
    The other one-- no, no.
    The girls all went to the right, because they
    were all of age where they could work, all of them.
    Except my older sister was pregnant.
    She was 24.
    She was expecting.
    And you could see it?
    She went to the left, yeah.
    I see.
    She went to the left.
    And what about her husband?
    Her husband went with me.
    He survive.
    Oh.
    I went with him.
    He went to the right.
    He actually saved my life at Auschwitz.
    How did he do that?
    He actually saved my life.
    And I'll tell you what happened.
    We knew the war is coming to an end,
    because we were close to the Polish border, a place called
    Bunzlau
    It was Poland.
    But when the Germans occupied, they annexed in that area.
    So we were at the border of Poland and Hungary.
    And one of the guys--
    and we had these bunk beds where we would sleep.
    And I got up early in the morning, then we went to work.
    Like, I worked in a factory making
    false airplanes for a while out of plywood, airplanes.
    Because--
    To throw off?
    --the bombing would think they're real.
    They'll bomb the wrong place anyway.
    In a Friday, he tells us, go to sleep.
    But don't take off your clothes.
    Your brother-in-law?
    No, no, the chief--
    The chief, OK.
    --who was running the camp, the Nazi.
    Yeah.
    My brother wasn't with me.
    He was dead already, just me.
    Got it.
    This was my sister's--
    when I told you, my sister's husband.
    Your brother-in-law.
    My brother-in-law, right.
    My brother-in-law.
    So 1 o'clock, they wake us up with the clothes on and lines us
    up.
    And now, we're going to leave the camp, because the Russians
    attacked very close.
    We even hear the canons, noise of the military, the Russians.
    They were so close.
    So he took half of us.
    We were 1,100.
    They lined us up.
    You stay.
    You go.
    You stay.
    You go.
    There's father and son, for example.
    The father wasn't too old, but they decide have him stay.
    OK.
    Half of us out of 1,100 picked to leave with the Germans,
    to leave.
    They took us away.
    The other half stayed.
    The half who stayed, it could be father and son,
    or they separated.
    But out of the 1,100, half of them stayed.
    They got liberated the next morning
    by the Russians, the half.
    I was picked to go.
    I was a young boy.
    I looked like I could work.
    And half of us picked to go.
    We were pushing the wagons for the Nazis.
    They have horses, so they're pushing.
    And we walked and walked.
    And whenever it got dark at night,
    they put us up in horse stalls and farms sleeping.
    Lice would eat us up.
    So some people died on the road--
    It sounds like a death march.
    They couldn't handle it anymore.
    It was too much, no food.
    They gave us a piece of bread in the morning with black coffee.
    That was the meal of the day.
    So we were, let's say, about 500.
    We were going through a village that was a big forest.
    So this big Nazi, who was marching,
    who was like the gendarme, two of them,
    ask, who wants to stay in this village?
    Come out.
    Who wants to go?
    Stay there.
    I picked to stay.
    So my brother-in-law came and grabbed my hand and said
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    We have to go.
    He takes me out of the line to stay.
    So I kept.
    We're down maybe 100 yards.
    And we had the machine guns, killed all of those people.
    The Nazis took them in the woods, killed all of them
    that decided to stay.
    My luck is my brother-in-law pulled me out of the line to go.
    But I'd have been dead.
    We were 100 yards away and burr, burr, burr.
    They killed them all, left them in the woods, dead.
    And a lot of people in my home town--
    the father and son left.
    And then the one was just the father stayed.
    The son decided to go.
    Oh.
    The father died.
    So half for the 500, a lot of them just didn't make it.
    Some of them died on the road.
    And some were killed?
    You know, on the road, they ran out of [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah, of course.
    They ran out of-- walking, walking.
    I was kind of cold.
    And I was lucky.
    I was young.
    Older people, when you were 45, 50, you were old.
    You couldn't take the punishment.
    So they died.
    One, a friend of mine's father, died in my hands.
    You know me and my brother-in-law
    were carrying for a while.
    And then he gave up.
    He died.
    We left him there.
    And his son was in the front walking with this guy.
    And I ran to tell him, your father is dead.
    See, he went like this.
    That's why I couldn't stand him.
    He came to Cleveland.
    I couldn't stand-- I never talked to him.
    Can you imagine?
    No matter how far, he's going to say goodbye to his dad.
    His dad is dead in a ditch.
    We left him in the ditch, dead.
    I thought I'd go to him.
    Leibel was his name.
    He just died, too, couple of years.
    Anyways--
    Your brother-in-law's name?
    So we walked and walked and walked.
    Finally, they decided they have to do something.
    They have-- know what to do with us.
    So we got in a boxcar train.
    And they took us to a big camp.
    You must have heard of it, Bergen-Belsen--
    Of course.
    --a very big, big camp.
    Excuse me, but--
    All the small camps--
    I'm sorry.
    I'm interrupting, but we will get there.
    I want to go back to Auschwitz, because the reason
    we started on this train of thought
    was because your brother-in-law went to the side of the right.
    And you went with him.
    And you then said, he saved my life.
    And now, you told me how he saved your life.
    And now, I'd like--
    With Auschwitz, I went to the right.
    You went to the right.
    I went to the right.
    So I was there 2 weeks in Birkenau.
    Yeah.
    And then they picked out.
    They start asking-- now, this is Auschwitz I'm talking about now.
    I have a couple of questions after you tell me, OK?
    OK.
    Let me tell you what happened.
    Auschwitz, I was on a--
    after Dr. Mengele said, right, left, right, left, I
    went to the right.
    My father went to the left with the two boys.
    My sisters went to the right.
    So they came out.
    And first they ask for plumbers.
    You know, they raise their hand.
    They were looking for tradesman, looking
    for people they can send to Germany to work.
    And they kept asking for this one and that one.
    So they came down for farmer.
    Since we were not farmers from my hometown,
    but we saw what farmers do.
    So we raised the hands for farmers.
    About 11 of us from my hometown decided to go farmers.
    So they took us.
    We were riding the train for 24 hours into Germany
    and wind up in a camp, not in Auschwitz, Bunzlau.
    Bunzlau.
    They had camps all over.
    They need working people.
    Yes.
    Because the little people were at war, the young people.
    So they took people who could work,
    could help them survive, because they didn't have anybody.
    So I wind up in this camp Bunzlau.
    OK, what did it look like, this Bunzlau?
    What?
    What did this Bunzlau look like as a camp?
    Not too bad compared to other camps that people were.
    We have a Nazi who was in charge of the camp.
    We showered every Saturday.
    He gave us a clean shirt every Saturday.
    He comes in.
    We had bunk beds, like, you know, three people, one here,
    one in the middle, and then-- in a bunk bed.
    He would come in after we fall asleep once
    in a while, turn on the light.
    And he said, whoever finds a lice, I gave him a bread.
    We were cleaning.
    We were not allowed to have lice in our camp.
    We were 1,100.
    And when we got liberated, I find that we had the best camp.
    The problem started after we left camp
    and we start walking, half of us.
    But the ones who stayed got liberated the next morning
    by the Russians.
    And our problems started.
    We walked and walked and walked till, finally, they saw
    the war is coming to an end.
    And they took us to--
    Bergen-Belsen.
    Bergen-Belsen.
    I want to stop there.
    Yeah.
    Bergen-Belsen.
    Bergen-Belsen.
    I want to stop there and go back,
    because there are many questions I didn't ask you yet
    about Auschwitz and about the road to Auschwitz.
    I just hadn't had the chance--
    The road to Auschwitz?
    Well, about Auschwitz and before.
    OK.
    I still have some questions.
    You could start from before we got to Auschwitz.
    That's what you want to know.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    All right, here's a--
    They took us from our homes.
    Yes.
    And they set up a ghetto.
    You told me about that.
    OK.
    OK.
    And from there, we went to Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    I have still some questions.
    OK, go ahead.
    So one of the questions, it has to do with news.
    With what?
    With news, how news traveled.
    News?
    Yes.
    OK.
    You said before that, as Jews, you
    weren't allowed to have radios.
    The Hungarians didn't let you have radios.
    You couldn't have newspapers.
    You're still in Sapinka.
    Did you have any idea?
    Is that true, first of all?
    No news, no newspapers, no radio?
    That's true.
    OK.
    Did you have any idea of what was happening to the Jews
    in other countries?
    No.
    OK.
    No.
    The only thing that I remember seeing two
    young Jewish guys who ran away from Poland.
    Polish got killed first.
    Yes.
    They wiped them out.
    Yes.
    And they wind up in our little town somewhere.
    And they said, but we didn't believe them.
    How could that happen?
    We did not-- they said, we ran away, because the military was
    killing the Jews in Poland.
    That's the only thing we knew.
    But our people were so digged into the religion, so
    [INAUDIBLE].
    So God is not--
    nothing's going to happen to us.
    What happens to other people, [INAUDIBLE].
    We saw the train, boxcars with Jewish people.
    But we still didn't believe.
    You didn't make the connection between what
    they were saying and--
    Did not make the connection at all.
    And so even when you were-- yeah.
    Because if I would have known, I would have never gone
    regardless what my father said.
    I thought we're going to work someplace, not to get killed.
    I would save my two brothers, the younger ones.
    I don't know if I could have saved my father.
    But my two brothers-- could have saved.
    I could have taken them with me.
    We would hideout.
    Some people did, not many.
    I know somebody in Cleveland that did, was hiding out.
    I know a family, a Christian family was hiding them out.
    The American Greeting Company, you've heard of that?
    Yes, yes.
    He got survived, the guy who owns,
    runs the American Greeting Company.
    He goes through--
    He survived.
    His father was smart.
    He was friends with a Christian family.
    And they was hiding them out all through the war.
    Now, they was in the Czech side, the Slovakian side.
    So when you do get to Auschwitz, do you
    have any idea where you are?
    I had no idea.
    We saw this big chimney, smoke coming out.
    You ever been to Auschwitz?
    I'm sure you were.
    No.
    I've been to others, not to Auschwitz.
    You never been?
    Not to Auschwitz.
    OK.
    So when we arrived, there was this great big chimney
    maybe five stories high, big.
    And smoke is coming out.
    We didn't know what it was.
    We had no idea.
    And we see ambulances going back and forth.
    What they did, they were afraid that we
    find what killing is going on, they
    would jump on some of the Germans.
    People would jump and kill a few of them.
    You get killed anyways.
    So they figured we arrived.
    They're going to see ambulance.
    They're going to throw us off, these sick people, whatever.
    What it was-- bodies burning and the smoke come.
    They throw people.
    They went in.
    They told them to get undressed to take a shower.
    Let's take a shower.
    They turned on the poison.
    They poisoned them.
    That was it.
    That was that for them.
    That was in Auschwitz.
    How long did it last before you knew
    what had happened to your father, and your sister,
    and your brothers?
    Actually, didn't know till I got liberated.
    Really?
    We didn't know.
    We had no knowledge at all.
    Did you have any--
    We didn't know.
    OK.
    Did you have any contact with some of the prisoners
    who had been there for a long time?
    There was no prisoners.
    There were no prisoners.
    They were just Jewish people, maybe a few were non-Jews.
    But we didn't know.
    They didn't know more than we did.
    There's no newspaper, no information.
    No, you said earlier that there had
    been some Poles, Polish Jews, who were
    in Auschwitz for several years.
    Not several, 3 years--
    3 years.
    --before us.
    Before you.
    Yeah.
    Did you have contact with them when you got into the camp?
    We talked to them.
    They told us.
    And they didn't tell you?
    Well, we were there.
    We were already in camp.
    I know.
    They didn't tell you about the chimney and what it meant?
    They were not in Auschwitz.
    They came from Poland direct to a camp.
    It was not Auschwitz--
    Oh, I see.
    I see.
    I see.
    --just a camp, concentration camp.
    Got it.
    Got it.
    Got it.
    It's different between Auschwitz and concentration camp.
    And the concentration camp.
    They were in concentration camp.
    We wind up in a concentration camp.
    In Bunzlau?
    In Bunzlau.
    OK.
    After we were there awaiting to take us--
    Got it.
    --they took us.
    And we were on the train, I think, two days, three nights
    and took us to this camp called Bunzlau.
    OK.
    So here's my other question.
    I wanted to make sure that I got your brother-in-law's name.
    Could you tell me what your brother-in-law's name
    was, the one who saved you?
    Alter Chaim Deutsch.
    Alter Chaim--
    Alter Chaim Deutsch.
    Deutsch.
    And he survived.
    He saved my life.
    He got remarried.
    He married also a surviving woman.
    And he moved to Israel.
    I saw him in Israel when I was there.
    I went to see him.
    He's not alive anymore.
    He passed away.
    He was older than me.
    He took me by the hand, took me away.
    I would have been dead.
    Yeah.
    During the two weeks you were in Auschwitz,
    what did they have you do?
    Where were you in Auschwitz?
    We were sleeping on the floor, almost on top of each other,
    you know.
    And in the morning, they gave us a bowl of soup.
    Maybe six people or eight people lined up.
    I took a sip.
    I gave him a sip and went around with the bowl of soup.
    That was in Auschwitz.
    For about maybe 10, 12 days, that's what it was.
    A big bowl of soup--
    and went around through six or seven people.
    That was the food for the time we were there.
    Did you have to work while you were there?
    No.
    No, no.
    We were just waiting.
    They weren't quite ready to do what they had in mind to do,
    whatever.
    Because we were there, I would say, 2 weeks, maybe 10 days.
    And then they start picking.
    They come out-- plumbers, electricians, carpenters,
    you know.
    Right.
    And my guys from my hometown, they were no tradesmen.
    When they said farmers, because we come from a farm town--
    we were not farmers.
    Seven or eight of us raised our hand.
    And we went, and we wind up in Bunzlau.
    So when you were in Auschwitz, that
    must have been the summer of 1944.
    Is that correct?
    Yeah.
    Summer of '44.
    And did you get a number on your arm?
    No.
    They gave us numbers on our neck like they do for a soldier.
    OK, like dog tags of some kind?
    Dog-- that's it.
    My sister has it here.
    She has a number?
    Yes, she did.
    She cut it out.
    She had surgery, cut it out.
    No, we didn't get.
    We got it on our neck.
    Do you remember your number?
    No?
    I don't remember, and I wouldn't want
    to remember what the number was.
    OK, OK.
    And tell me, do you remember what the barracks looked
    like where you were?
    The barracks?
    Yeah, in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz, I was not in barrack.
    I told you.
    I slept on the floor.
    We were in a building.
    We slept on the floor.
    We laid down on the floor.
    In the morning, they woke us up.
    And they gave us the soup.
    We were waiting for a train to take us to Germany to work.
    OK.
    OK.
    So we didn't even get--
    Had no barracks.
    There was no barracks there.
    No barracks, OK.
    The barracks was in the camp that I wind up Bunzlau--
    In Bunzlau.
    --clean barracks.
    Do you remember the name of this director of that camp,
    of Bunzlau?
    Director?
    Yeah, the Nazi.
    The Nazi who said, I'll give you a piece of bread
    if you give me some lice?
    Even if I would remember, I would want not to-- no.
    No.
    We didn't know their names.
    We saw him in the uniform.
    And I got to tell you this about the camp I was in.
    When I caught on to what went on with all these different camps
    after I got liberated, I talked to guys
    who were different camps.
    We were in a very good camp compared to others.
    I was trying-- you know, match up.
    What was it like by you?
    What was it, you know?
    I don't know if-- you know Sam Frankel?
    The Frankels are very active with--
    I've heard.
    Rina Frankel, Sam, like they were 40 kilometers--
    He, Sam, a good friend of mine.
    He lives across the street from me here.
    He's go a home here, they have.
    His camp was 40 kilometers from my camp.
    By mistake, the Russians bombed this camp,
    because they thought its German soldiers there.
    His brother got killed in that camp by the Russians
    from the bomb they threw.
    But we, our camp where I was, I think 11 months only, 11 months.
    11 months?
    11 months.
    We got up in the morning.
    And a lot of people who--
    we had a nice yard, you know.
    They got up, and they were conducting
    services, a lot of guys.
    Remember, the Jewish davening in the morning,
    the service in the morning, they remember it by heart.
    Can you imagine?
    Every morning.
    Excuse me.
    Excuse me, I'm so--
    OK.
    We were in Bunzlau.
    And you were saying that there were even services sometimes
    in the mornings.
    In the morning, yeah.
    The guys who were religious guys, they got together.
    They were davening.
    I didn't, but some did, older guys.
    I was a young boy.
    What kind of work did you do in that camp?
    For a while, I was doing some work
    on faking airplanes they made out of plywood.
    And then say a German family called in.
    They had a garden.
    And they didn't have anybody to fix it.
    They called.
    And they took a few of us to go help out different people.
    Did you always have somebody guard you
    while you went outside of the camp?
    Outside?
    Yeah, did you have somebody?
    Were you guarded when I went outside of the camp?
    Yes, it's outside the camp for people that lived there.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Did a guard go with you?
    Yeah, they did.
    It wasn't just me.
    They took 10, 12 people.
    Oh, I see.
    OK.
    You know, it was--
    they had a guard, one guard.
    Matter of fact, the guard I had was a very nice guy.
    Was he?
    It was Yom Kippur, when Jewish people fast.
    So I told him, this is a big holiday.
    And the Jewish people are fasting.
    And we're fasting anyways.
    And we worked at a place.
    There was a garden with potatoes, you know.
    He told me go get some.
    So we have what to eat after fasting.
    He helped me steal potatoes.
    He made a little fire.
    Really?
    Took seven of us, each one got one.
    I took it in the-- he helped me smuggle it in the camp.
    Not an SS, he was a Wehrmacht guy, nice guy.
    I took the Yom Kippur.
    That was our fasting day.
    Such things happen, too, such sort of small gestures
    of humanity, I guess.
    Well, OK, let me start when we separated from the camp, what
    happened, OK?
    OK.
    But I would love to talk--
    excuse me.
    Before we do that, I'd like to talk more
    about what the work was that you did in the camp.
    I just told you.
    Just the planes and then working in the gardens?
    That's it.
    That's it.
    That's it.
    OK.
    And then I left the camp.
    All right, so then tell me about that.
    Well, I left the camp.
    And then the people who stayed got liberated the next morning.
    And us, half of them died on the road.
    And was it SS guards that were with you when
    you were on the march, or was it Wehrmacht?
    I didn't look it was SS or it was--
    there was the uniform.
    OK.
    It had to be--
    OK.
    They were not all bad, because the guy who was running the camp
    was an SS guy, an officer.
    He kept it clean.
    Matter of fact, Christmas, there was an old horse there.
    They had an old horse.
    He said, that's what you guys are going to have for Christmas.
    And he asked if they have any butchers.
    Of course, there were butchers between 1,100 Jews.
    There got to be butchers.
    So next hometown to us, there was two butchers.
    They had butcher shop.
    They killed the horse.
    And we had a tremendous, tremendous dinner for Christmas.
    He did it, the Nazi SS.
    He gave us the horse.
    They kill him, and they cut the meat, make a good, good dinner.
    No.
    You know, when I got liberated after a while
    and I'm talking to people who survived like me,
    I was, compared to others, not as bad as others had it.
    Like Sam Roth, for example, his brother,
    he buried him in a Jewish cemetery right there, you know?
    It took him 10 years to bring his remains to Cleveland
    and buried it in a cemetery.
    Took him 10 years to get it.
    Bunzlau, where is this Bunzlau in Germany?
    Can you give me a sense of--
    Bunzlau was Poland.
    OK.
    And during the war, they annexed it into Germany.
    The Germans occupied it and took it over,
    took over a big chunk of Poland into Germany.
    After the war was over, they had to give it back, you know.
    But during the war--
    It was part of the German Reich.
    --it was Germany.
    It was Germany.
    And that's what happened.
    So when I got liberated, I talked to some people,
    different camps.
    And we didn't have it as bad compared to some others.
    So I am now out of the camp.
    And they didn't know what to do with us.
    So they put us in a train and took us to Bergen-Belsen.
    Bergen-Belsen was a huge, huge camp.
    They took people from other camps
    and brought them into Bergen-Belsen.
    And they were going to kill us all over night, Saturday night.
    They poisoned bread Saturday.
    Really?
    And Sunday, they were going to give it to us and kill.
    About 60,000 we were in that camp, 60,000.
    So we got up Sunday morning--
    no Germans.
    The camp was surrounded with Hungarian soldiers.
    Hungarians were working with the Germans.
    We couldn't figure out what's going on.
    1 o'clock Sunday, British tanks marched in our camp, 1
    o'clock Sunday.
    The Germans knew they're coming.
    They ran away overnight.
    And left us without--
    they put Hungarians there to watch us.
    Because when you take a person and you lock them up
    for so many years--
    we were lucky.
    We were there one year.
    They become like animals.
    They're no longer human beings.
    So they're afraid.
    A lot of people want that a long, long time.
    And they smuggled their way into the sewers, you know,
    to [? eat. ?]
    First of all, we couldn't move.
    The Hungarians watched us.
    But there were some people who were not Jewish, a few.
    They went through the sewers into the town to eat.
    They never came back.
    They died.
    See, when your stomach is not ready to take on--
    what the British did after they liberated us,
    they kept us under guard for a month.
    Wow.
    We could not move.
    They gave us a little food at a time.
    We were so hungry.
    And we were waiting to eat.
    They knew what they were doing.
    They couldn't give us a lot of food, because our stomachs
    couldn't handle it.
    So for about a month, we were going through a little bit,
    a little bit at a time.
    Then we found out why they did that,
    because they set up hospitals.
    By the way, the minute they occupied, Sunday afternoon,
    there were walls going up building hospitals.
    They tried to save as many people as they could.
    A lot of them they couldn't save already.
    They were dying as they were walking.
    So after about a month, we gained a little strength.
    And they took us, put us in houses, 10 here, 10 there,
    Germans, German families.
    Then we found out there is a place where people
    are coming to pick up people from Belgian, French,
    from all over.
    They come to pick up their people who survived
    and take them home.
    We registered as the Romanian.
    Nobody came to get us.
    Why?
    Romanian didn't kill the Jews.
    We didn't know.
    But we were all told we were Romanian citizens.
    And we're waiting and waiting.
    Nobody's coming.
    I'm the youngest of a group.
    We were nine of us from my hometown.
    And I tell these older guys, I says, who has to be Romanian?
    Let's register as Czechs.
    We're Czech citizens.
    Czechs' picking up their people, boom, boom, boom.
    No, we can't do that.
    Why not?
    They don't ask for affidavit.
    They don't ask for anything.
    Just tell them.
    They wouldn't go.
    I went, a cousin of mine, and another boy.
    We went to register Czechs.
    The next morning, they call us.
    They put us in a big truck.
    And they take us to the border of Hungary and Czechoslovakia
    border and put us by the train.
    From Bergen-Belsen?
    The British did that.
    The British did this.
    It was occupied by the British.
    OK.
    And we're waiting for a train.
    We were sleeping on the floor.
    And they have a little office.
    And a face looks out there.
    A girls looks out in that little room.
    There was a little office.
    I see this pretty face.
    I say, I'm going to go talk to her.
    I get up.
    And I told the girl.
    She says, my sister has one leg.
    She lost her leg, cut.
    And she needs help to get her on the train.
    I tell her, forget it.
    My cousin and I, we're going to take her.
    We finally, three days later, got a train.
    We took her all the way to Budapest with us, the train.
    At Budapest, the Jewish Federation had an office.
    And anybody who returned registered, put the name.
    That was that thing.
    So I go with this girl to register.
    They told us, there, there, there.
    So I go to register.
    I put my name in.
    I go back.
    We stayed in a school that was empty [INAUDIBLE].
    A half hour later, the door opens.
    Who walks in?
    My Uncle Al, an uncle of mine who survived.
    And he was going to Budapest every day.
    You know, he was going to that office to see.
    He saw my name.
    Your mother's brother?
    He saw my name, because I had just registered.
    He was there a half hour later.
    Wow.
    And he came and found me in this school on the floor.
    First thing out of his mouth, says,
    your three sisters are alive, and his sister is alive.
    Because he already found out they got liberated.
    Wow.
    He lost his wife and a child.
    So he says, come on.
    Come on with me.
    He takes me in Budapest, where he stayed.
    And we waited there for my sisters to arrive.
    And they came a week later, my three sisters.
    One didn't.
    She went to Switzerland, I told you.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    So yeah, Malchi and Raizi, only the two of them.
    So two of them came.
    Only two of them came.
    The other one went to Switzerland.
    Anyway, so we got together.
    I went home.
    I became the father and the mother,
    had to take care of my sisters.
    Did you ever go back to Sapinka?
    What?
    Did you ever go back to Sapinka?
    I went back for one day.
    And I settled in Satu Mare, in Sathmar.
    I see.
    I had nothing.
    I didn't want to go back.
    Nobody did.
    Nobody wanted to go back to Sapinka,
    because these are empty houses we left.
    I mean, we didn't want to go back.
    Nobody returned.
    People who did, didn't want to go back.
    So my uncle lost his wife and a child.
    And he got married.
    He married somebody he knew related to his first wife,
    first cousins.
    And his wife, she had her daughter's daughter
    who survived.
    She came to the wedding.
    She came with my uncle's--
    she stayed with them [INAUDIBLE] this way.
    That's where I met my wife.
    She stayed with my uncle and aunt.
    That's how we got involved.
    In Satu Mare?
    And we got married.
    In Satu Mare?
    In Satu Mare.
    OK.
    So your wife--
    Friday night wedding-- go ahead.
    Your wife was also from Romania?
    No, she was from Czechoslovakia.
    I see.
    She was in the Czech side.
    I see.
    Her parents didn't make it.
    She had a younger sister who didn't make it.
    She's the only one left in her family.
    So her aunt took care of it, took care of her.
    Her aunt was her mother's sister.
    She didn't have anybody.
    Father was a young guy.
    He died the last few days before the war ended.
    Somebody told her.
    So when did you realize--
    What?
    When was it that you lost your brothers and your father?
    You said it took a long time until you
    realized what that chimney meant and that your father
    and brothers--
    Well, I knew after I got liberated what happened.
    I didn't know while I was in camp
    who was living, who was dead.
    I didn't know.
    No.
    You know, the news was out.
    We already knew then.
    Matter of fact, myself and one other guy,
    we stole two bicyclists from the Germans.
    And we went to look camps to find them.
    That's when I hurt my knee.
    I fell.
    I'm not much [? a runner. ?] I couldn't stop it.
    I ran into a pole.
    Anyways, so I found out.
    Al told me.
    My Uncle Al, he knew already.
    Somebody was with them who was alive in our family.
    So my three sisters survived.
    In all this time--
    Rose, my older sister, I told my older one died.
    Yes.
    Because she was going left.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    And my next oldest came home.
    Her name was?
    Rose.
    Rose.
    Yeah, she had a boyfriend from during the war.
    She got married in Satu Mare.
    And my other sister, Malchi, Molly Roth, she got married.
    She had a boyfriend, also.
    And I married them both off.
    The wedding was in Sapinka, married them off.
    Well, the youngest went to Switzerland.
    I told you.
    Like you told me, yes.
    That's it.
    I had her buying clothes.
    She's buying things for the wedding and all that.
    How long did you stay in Satu Mare?
    How long did you live there after the war?
    I lived there couple years.
    I was--
    And it was now Romania again.
    It was Romanian.
    After the war, it was Romania.
    I stayed a couple years.
    Then I got married.
    In Romania.
    I got married.
    Then we saw all the Jews are leaving
    and became a communist country.
    Gottwald-- no.
    Gottwald was Czechoslovakia.
    It was Prague.
    This Sathmar was Romanian.
    And Czechoslovakia became also communist, Gottland.
    So you went from--
    We went from Sathmar, we went to Budapest.
    My aunt and uncle were already in Prague.
    They were on their way to come to America, all right?
    So he has brothers send them affidavits.
    And they-- So my wife and I, we married.
    We went to Prague to be with them.
    They were not there very long, because they got affidavits
    to go to the United States sent by his brother.
    We stayed in Prague.
    My daughter Marjorie was born there.
    And then we see everybody's leaving.
    I was a young boy.
    I didn't know right to left, you know.
    I was a capable young boy, but I see everybody's leaving.
    And everybody is quiet.
    They didn't want us to get caught under communist regime.
    So we left.
    I had fixed up a beautiful apartment, furnished, married.
    I thought we going to live there for a while.
    In Prague, yeah.
    In Sathmar.
    Oh, excuse me.
    Yes, in Sathmar.
    In Sathmar, where I got married.
    When I saw everybody's leaving, we're going to leave, too.
    So I had maid, $5 a month.
    I paid her.
    And we left for Prague.
    And they registered to come out as students.
    The list was on mile long, no way.
    So we didn't stay long in Prague.
    We went to Paris.
    Everybody else left out of Czechoslovakia,
    because it became communist.
    So there I hooked up with all my buddies
    that I knew from Prague or from Sathmar.
    They were all in Paris.
    So we go.
    We make it to Paris.
    And I register again to come to America-- had to wait
    10, 15 years.
    Oh my.
    But then I found out, in Germany, the UNRRA, United
    Nations, has an office for Displaced
    People, DPs, people without a country.
    So I tell my wife, let's go there.
    We're a displaced person.
    We have no country.
    So we went to Germany, took Marjorie, went to Germany.
    And we registered there that we'd like to go.
    What part of Germany was this?
    Pucking.
    Pucking?
    Pucking.
    Pucking?
    Where's that, do you know?
    We--
    Was this the American zone?
    Or--
    It's American zone.
    American zone.
    America had the office.
    America ran the office, the United Nations office.
    American--
    OK.
    --ran it.
    All right.
    So we registered.
    And where do you want to go?
    I tell them America, because that's
    where I have three uncles and an aunt.
    And that's where we'd like to go.
    So we waited about 2 or 3 months.
    Our number came up, and we took off to the United States.
    And this was in 1940--
    '49.
    In 1949.
    December '49, I arrived to America.
    Where?
    Where did you arrive?
    Where did you come to?
    Well, I had family there.
    My mother had three brothers and a sister.
    One on my uncles picked me up.
    Well, we came by boat.
    And we were sick for 11 days.
    It was terrible.
    December, don't go by boat anywhere.
    Yeah.
    It was--
    The seas were choppy.
    Marjorie was this big.
    She was hungry.
    Poor baby.
    We finally got somebody who wasn't sick,
    took her to feed her.
    Anyways, we get to Boston we arrived, not New York.
    Oh.
    We get into Boston.
    So when we got there, I had to take a train to go to Cleveland.
    So I called my uncle.
    He said, OK.
    I'll pick you up.
    You come in, and when, and da, da, da, da, da.
    So I did arrive to Boston.
    My Uncle Al and his wife, they were already in America
    for a year and a half.
    You know, he was working in a chicken store
    with one of his brothers.
    That's what they had, chicken store.
    That's what you told me, yes.
    Yeah.
    So he picked up.
    On the way from the train to his house,
    he gave me the name Sidney.
    Did he really?
    Is that where you became Sidney?
    So help me God.
    I said to him, why do you call me Sidney?
    I mean Sidney?
    Because my son's name is Sidney.
    And you two are named after the same grandpa.
    That's how I got the name Sidney.
    Sidney.
    And you--
    I like it.
    Yeah.
    There's nothing wrong.
    So his son is Sidney, and I was Sidney.
    So I had to register Sidney Simon.
    And you had then chosen to have your mother's maiden name be
    your name.
    Yeah.
    And up to then, you were Nathan?
    You were Natan?
    Up until you chose your mother's maiden name, you were Natan?
    Right, right.
    OK.
    Right.
    So [INAUDIBLE] I wound up renting a house.
    It was a two-family house.
    I rented upstairs $150 a month.
    My whole fortune was $300.
    So I went to work.
    I told you.
    I made $1.05 an hour.
    And after that, you know, America was mine.
    That's wonderful.
    That's wonderful.
    America was mine all the way.
    It still is.
    You know, my kids from [INAUDIBLE]
    there are all educated.
    One is a lawyer, and masters degree and--
    great I had a great life.
    I worked very hard.
    I wasn't afraid of anything.
    I'm a risk taker.
    I did a lot of building in my days.
    I helped a lot of people.
    And I love to be around.
    Mr. Simon, at what point--
    You know?
    At what point--
    What?
    We were talking earlier about God and about
    how you stopped believing.
    During this journey that took you from Sapinka to the ghetto
    to Auschwitz to Bunzlau to Bergen-Belsen--
    How we got there?
    No, not how you got there.
    My question is this.
    Was it at any point along the way there?
    When did you stop believing in God?
    At what point?
    I could tell you.
    When I saw two Nazis--
    when we had got to Auschwitz, when I saw these two Nazis take
    this rabbi who supposed-- the people believed in him like
    he's a second God, a [NON-ENGLISH] to God.
    A woman couldn't get pregnant, they went to see doctor.
    They came from all over the villages to see this guy.
    He was so important.
    When I saw him dragged down from the boxcar,
    two Nazis are dragging him on the ground like a dog.
    And this is this rabbi.
    And I said to myself, something's wrong.
    Something's wrong.
    And I got to tell this, something that I forgot.
    I was laying in the bunk beds in camp.
    And we had an iron fence.
    And through the fence, I see dogs walking on the street.
    I can't walk.
    A dog can, but I cannot, because I was born Jewish.
    What did I do wrong?
    What did the Jewish people do wrong they deserved what we got?
    Slaughtered 6 million people--
    I said there's something not right.
    Something is not right.
    And I was a church-goer, like synagogue-goer.
    I was raised religious.
    And I learned a lot about it.
    And I said, two and two is making five.
    My kids were born.
    They could choose.
    They all went to Hebrew school.
    They learned a lot, and I left.
    And I said, wait a minute, I mean, how could God
    look and allow this to happen?
    And it's happening now, killing people like that.
    And we supposed to rule the world, who shall live
    and who shall die, who by fire, who by water.
    You know, the religion, I go to the temple
    on Rosh ha-Shanah, Yom Kippur.
    And it tells a sheet after sheet, God forgive me for this.
    Forgive me for this.
    And forgive.
    All the asking God and the whole prayer
    to forgive me for all the sins.
    I didn't make any sins.
    I don't need to know that.
    They ask God every page.
    And I belonged to two temples.
    I didn't go to either one, because the whole thing
    is silly.
    I asked God to forgive me something I didn't do.
    And two days spending in temple, one day you got to fast.
    I gave that up a long time ago.
    So I have a problem.
    And then somebody has the answer for me.
    And anybody I talk to who's smarter than me,
    more intelligent than me, they don't have the answer.
    They go, like this.
    That's the answer.
    I told you, I had the rabbi.
    I says, God, you believe there is a God?
    And he got hit like this, you know?
    So he thinks.
    And that's what he tells me.
    God created the world, but it's not--
    turned it over to mankind.
    Hey, come on.
    Come on, you got to do better than that.
    Well, that's what I am.
    My family, my kids are the same.
    They agree with me.
    But they're good kids, very good kids.
    They really belong to--
    like the one--
    I got my little daughter, who's a lawyer,
    a very bright young lady.
    She belongs to a temple in Sedona, Arizona.
    She lives there.
    She's work in a temple [INAUDIBLE].
    She goes to temple Friday night.
    I said, I'm proud of you.
    You're better than your dad.
    [LAUGHTER]
    You know, so I got a problem with it.
    And you know, I did help build especially one synagogue
    in Cleveland.
    If not me, they wouldn't have it.
    Because I know the people who belong there, and they need it.
    They need it.
    Some people need it.
    I don't.
    And I helped them raise money.
    And I gave them some money.
    And some people who go there, they need it.
    Some people need it.
    It's like--
    Some people do.
    --some people need the church.
    You know, a lot of people need to go and get rid of their sins.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I don't do anything like that.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I used to when I was a kid.
    I was young.
    The devil just got into me a few years ago.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Mr. Simon, thank you very much.
    Is there anything else you would like--
    Well, you asked me.
    I thought you were going to ask me a lot of things
    that I can answer.
    I'm walking away with nothing.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Is there anything else?
    I think maybe I talk--
    without you ask talk too much.
    I mean, you could tell who I am--
    Yes.
    --what I am.
    I give you my life from A to Z. You know,
    I already did, I think.
    I think you did.
    Yeah.
    I think you did.
    Is there anything you'd want to add
    to what we talked about today that you think
    is important for us to know?
    Let me tell you what I think.
    I think the organization is great.
    It does work, and it needed done,
    the federation [INAUDIBLE].
    And let me tell you.
    Let me tell you what's in here.
    Please.
    I think I started to tell you, but I'll tell you why I did it.
    I opened an endowment fund over a million dollars
    with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.
    They're going to be around.
    There is a million dollars that I put up.
    I want that money to be used to teach, hire teachers
    to teach the Holocaust.
    There is an organization formed and started in Boston.
    It's called Facing History.
    I don't know if you've heard of it or not.
    I do.
    I've heard of it.
    OK.
    My money goes to them to hire teachers to teach the Holocaust,
    but I want them to expand, to learn, the kids in high school,
    to get along with each other, not to hate each other,
    to become like units, not because you're Black
    or white or Jewish or whatever.
    The kids should learn together, so they
    don't have to kill each other.
    You understand?
    So the money they use is for hire teachers to go to schools
    and teach kids to get along, to live together, and especially
    teachers to teach the Holocaust.
    Because it's going to be forgotten.
    There is not too many left who survived.
    You understand?
    Like you're here hearing my story.
    There is not too many people you can find who
    could tell you what I told you.
    That's right.
    Most of them are dead.
    I am lucky.
    That's right.
    You know?
    So I think that there was mistakes made by Jews
    and Christians that grew up in areas.
    They should learn together, live together.
    You're no better, because you're Jewish.
    And you're no better, because you're Christian.
    We're all people.
    When you get born, you get born with a brain.
    Some have a good brain.
    Some have the father's brain.
    Some have the mother's brain.
    But you get born with something.
    And you must contribute something to society,
    not take it all to yourself.
    And I did.
    I had a lot of people working for me.
    I had people, Black people, working for me, the laborers.
    I had one particular guy I have to talk about.
    I saw him walking, and it was very, very cold
    on the street in South Euclid, Cleveland.
    And I stopped him.
    I said, what are you doing here?
    He said, looking for a job.
    I said, what would you like to do?
    He said, anything.
    And my family is still in the South.
    I couldn't get a job there.
    I said, you just got a job.
    You come with me.
    I hired him.
    He worked as a laborer for me, a laborer.
    I had mason crews.
    He was laborers.
    He was the best laborer I had, OK?
    And he grew with me, you know?
    Now, he comes.
    I like to bring my family over.
    I don't have money.
    So I said, what do you need?
    He said, I can buy a little house.
    I need $600 for a down payment.
    I said, if I give it to you, will you not leave me, quit?
    Mr. Simon, I'll stay with you the rest of my life
    if you do that.
    I gave him the money.
    He brought his family over.
    Guess what?
    My aunt is in the hospital there.
    And her name is Simon.
    This nurse says, you know, my dad
    used to work for a Sidney Simon here when I was a kid.
    She said, that's my nephew.
    She grabbed her and says, I'm here, because of him, you know?
    I brought them over from the South to move to Cleveland.
    He couldn't get a job there.
    So what I'm trying to tell you-- in the wintertime,
    we didn't work.
    I had to lend them a little money.
    I did.
    Some paid me back.
    Some went back to the South, but I didn't quit.
    There is good one and bad ones.
    You know what I mean?
    But I helped them all the time.
    Because you know what?
    Somebody helped me.
    I was lucky.
    I was lucky that I was born with a little brains here
    and willing to work.
    Nothing stopped me from working.
    I used to come home with bloody fingers.
    You know, the cement blocks cut up your fingers.
    My mother-- my mother.
    My wife had to do this to my fingers.
    To wrap them, to wrap them [INAUDIBLE].
    You know?
    What a legacy.
    What a legacy.
    I worked.
    I used to love it.
    Thank you.
    I raised a good family.
    Unfortunately, my wife left me 10, 12 years ago.
    She passed away.
    Yeah, she got sick.
    She had cancer in her throat.
    They couldn't fix it.
    But I'm happy.
    I got three nice daughters, beautiful grandchildren.
    I'm a great-grandpa four times.
    Oh my goodness.
    Yeah, four times great-grandpa.
    Four times.
    They live in LA.
    And I'm getting a little boy now.
    One of my is getting-- first one, little boy.
    The other has three girls.
    Three girls.
    Anyways--
    So thank you.
    Anyway, so I'm kind of retired.
    I'm not creating anything.
    I'm watching what I have from my kids, my grandchildren.
    They all have homes that I bought.
    They're all in good shape.
    And I play golf every day.
    Wonderful.
    Yeah.
    This girl, Moriko?
    Yeah?
    She never had a club in her hand.
    She's been with me 10 years.
    And I gave her 10 lessons for the long ball,
    5 lessons for this short ball.
    She out-drives me by 50 yards.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I'm not kidding you.
    She hits some balls so good.
    I learned it the wrong way.
    I just went out and played.
    I never took lessons.
    Everyone loves to play with her.
    But she can't go play.
    She's got to play with me.
    Of course.
    So she's a very nice woman.
    She takes good care of me.
    My kids like her.
    She likes my kids.
    I told her we going to speak about the Hungarians,
    not to be here.
    But we didn't, you know.
    The Hungarians, in my opinion, were worse than the Nazis
    for us.
    Yes.
    They were terrible.
    They occupied 1940.
    They were-- anyways, they should done what Romania did.
    Romania said, no, they're my citizen.
    You can't have them.
    Romania wouldn't allow the Jews to get killed.
    OK.
    That's lunch.
    It's lunch.
    Well, I think that we're pretty--
    I think it's lunch time, no?
    Yeah.
    Hang on just a second.
    Moriko?
    Is that her?
    Yeah.
    Finish.
    So I'm going to say, thank you again, Mr. Simon.
    And thank you for doing the work.
    Well, it's been a pleasure.
    It's not easy.
    It's been a pleasure.
    To speak with you has been an honor.
    And likewise.
    I'm glad you're here.
    Thank you.
    I'm glad you're in America.
    Me too.
    And with this, I'm going to conclude the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mr.
    Sidney Simon on October 9th, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
    Thank you again.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Sidney Simon (né Moishe Schmeel Shimonovicz), born May 22, 1925 in Sapinka (Săpînța), Romania, describes his father (Natan Natan), who traded cows and horses for a living; his two brothers and four sisters; attending public school for half the day and Hebrew school for the other half of the day; the Hungarian occupation of their village, at which time his family moved briefly to Satu Mare, Romania before returning to Sapinka; his thoughts on the Hungarian occupation; seeing the deportation of people in boxcars but not understanding what it meant; his mother’s death two years before the deportations; being sent with his family 10 kilometers away to a ghetto where they remained one month; being deported with his family in the summer of 1944 to Auschwitz, where he along with his three younger sisters were selected to survive and his father, brother, and older sister were killed immediately in the gas chamber; being in Birkenau for two weeks before being selected for a work camp in Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland); spending nine months at the work camp before being marched with 500 other prisoners to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British; registering as Romanian and not being picked up until he registered as Czech; being taken to the Hungary/Czech border where he boarded a train for Budapest, Hungary; being registered at the Jewish Federation office and placed in an empty school where he reunited with his uncle and sisters; getting married to a fellow survivor from Czechoslovakia; going to Prague to be with his aunt and uncle; the communist take-over and leaving with his wife and young daughter, Marjorie, to Paris, France; immigrating to the United States in December 1949; his three daughters, grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren; how he began questioning whether there is a God when he was eight and completely lost his belief when he arrived at Auschwitz; and his continued efforts to help Jewish synagogues and charities.
    Interviewee
    Sidney Simon
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2015 October 09

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Simon, Sidney, 1925-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Ina Navazelskis, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Sidney Simon on October 9, 2015.
    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 08:05:08
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn530886

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    Contains interviews with Holocaust survivors, concentration camp liberators, rescuers, relief workers, former POWs, and people of different social and ethnic backgrounds who were targeted by the Nazis and their collaborators or witnessed the events of the Holocaust

    Date: 1989-2023

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    Oral History

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    Oral History

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    Oral History

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    Oral History

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    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

    Fred R. Wohl, born in 1914 in Baden-Baden, Germany, describes growing up in Germany after World War I; leaving to work on a farm in Switzerland in 1932 for four months; working in Athens, Greece in 1935 and trying to get a Greek passport for fear of what the Germans were planning; moving to Nicosia, Cyprus in March 1939 with the help of the British Ambassador to Athens; the German invasion of Greece and being interned with refugees in a camp next to the Nicosia prison; being sent to a hotel-camp in the mountains with his father but soon being released; the Nazi invasion of Crete in 1941 and preparing for evacuation; traveling to Tel Aviv, Israel and then to Mwanza, Tanzania; working in a gold mine and contracting black water fever in Tanganyika, Tanzania; and immigrating to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

    Norbert Yasharoff, born in 1930 in Sofia, Bulgaria, describes the anti-Jewish measures enforced by the Nazis when World War II began; Bulgaria joining the Axis Alliance in March 1941, allowing German troops to pass through Sofia; the expulsion of some Jewish families to Poland in March 1943 and a bloody protest soon after; leaving with his family to Pleven, Bulgaria in May 1943 and staying with family members; attending a Gentile school while in Pleven, where his teacher did not force him to perform the Nazi salute; his liberation on September 9, 1944 and returning to Sofia with his family; immigrating to Israel in December 1948; joining the volunteer air force, where he trained as a radar technician; graduating with a degree from Tel Aviv University in Political Science and residing in Israel for twenty years; and working in an American Embassy for nine years until he immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

    Frank Meissner, born in Třešt̕, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) in 1923, describes his family; joining a Zionist youth group and traveling to Prague, Czech Republic to live with other members of the group in 1937; the group’s fear of anti-Jewish Nazi policies and subsequently leaving Czechoslovakia to settle in Denmark; attending agricultural school at the University of Copenhagen; receiving a call in 1943 from his landlady, who warned him to not return home because the Gestapo had been looking for him; being smuggled onto a fishing boat to Sweden, where he finished his education; traveling to England in September 1944 and starting to contact his family but learning that they had all been taken to Theresienstadt (Terezin) and eventually to Auschwitz, where they perished; returning briefly to Prague and then going to Denmark in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

    Mina Perlberger, born on December 25, 1918 in Tyczyn, Poland, describes growing up in a strict Hasidic Jewish family; the German invasion of Poland while her family was in the process of moving to Kraków in 1939; her family’s assignment to do forced labor outside of Tyczyn; working as a black market trader until 1942, when her family's home was seized by the Gestapo; being forced into the ghetto in Rzeszów, Poland; the deportation of her parents to Auschwitz in late 1942; escaping the ghetto with her younger sister and hiding with a Polish farmer in exchange for a payment; hiding with the farmer for 21 months until the Soviet Army liberated them in 1944; meeting her future husband, a Soviet Jew, in Blażowa, Poland; marrying her husband and moving to Austria after the war with the help of a Jewish organization; and immigrating to the United States soon after arriving in Austria.

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

    David Klebanow, born in 1907 in Barysaŭ, Russia (now Belarus), describes his family and childhood; fleeing to Kiev, Ukraine in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and then to Białystok, Poland; becoming a doctor in 1937 and then being drafted into the Polish Army in 1939; returning to Białystok when he was released from the army and then marrying his wife; being taken to Kaunas, Lithuania and then to Riga, Latvia with his wife; performing abortions to save the lives of pregnant women and staying in Riga for two years; his deportation to Stutthof and then to Danzig, from where they were liberated on March 10, 1945; his wife dying of tuberculosis; working at the Munich University Hospital as an obstetrician after the war; noticing genital abnormalities, sterility problems, and a higher rate of miscarriages among women who had survived concentration camps; and immigrating in 1951 to the United States, where he joined the obstetrics department at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

    Franz Wohlfahrt, born in 1920 in Velden am Wörthersee, Austria, describes growing up in a family of Jehovah's Witnesses; the arrest of his father in 1936 for peddling in the street as part of his activities as a Jehovah’s Witness; the German annexation of Austria in 1938; refusing to go to a Hitler Youth meetings and say the “Heil Hitler” greeting, which resulted in German troops monitoring his activities; the execution of his father on December 7, 1939 and his brother soon after because they refused to participate in the war and fight for the German state; the general persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses during World War II since they would not worship Hitler; agreeing to do work for the German state but not participate in military exercises, which resulted in his imprisonment in a dungeon for thirty-three days in 1940; being transferred to the Gestapo office in Graz for further questioning; his deportation to a work camp at Allweiter Rodgau, in the Hessen-Nassau province, because he would not fight for the German state; being saved by a camp commandant’s wife because he painted wall paper for her; his liberation by Allied troops while he was still in the camp; and returning home to find that few people he knew had survived.

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

    Tove Schöbaum Bamberger, born on October 8, 1934 in Copenhagen, Denmark, describes growing up in a wealthy family; her father’s ownership of a men’s clothing business; attending first and second grade at a Jewish school before her family fled from Denmark on October 2, 1940; taking a train to the seaport in Snekkersten, Denmark and then traveling on a fishing boat until a Swedish ship intercepted them at sea and took them to Sweden, where they settled in Malmö; her father working in a chocolate factory and selling artificial teeth; her mother selling lingerie; attending school with her sister; returning to Copenhagen on May 28, 1945 to find her family home and store undisturbed; and immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

    Morris Gordon, born in Latvia, describes immigrating with his father to the United States; growing up in New York, NY; attending City College and Columbia University; being ordained as a rabbi in 1940; volunteering for the military in 1942; his participation in The Flying Tigers; going to India briefly then Burma; traveling through the jungles of Burma to get to different camps and getting lost three times; taking his Torah with him everywhere he went; arriving in Shanghai as a Jewish chaplain and being greeted by a large Jewish community; conducting a Bar Mitzvah with a boy; his memories of the Shanghai Jewish ghetto and its schools; and receiving a chalice from a Catholic chaplain during the war to help him perform his services.

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

    Raya Markon, born in 1911 in Vilnius, Lithuania, discusses her childhood; going to college for one year in Toulouse, France; getting married in Paris, France in 1936; her husband's mobilization into the French Army in 1938; her escape from Paris two days before the German invasion in 1940; returning to Toulouse to take refuge with friends and the birth of her son; getting a visa to the United States and difficulties in obtaining an exit visa from France; and her and her family's immigration to the United States in November 1942.

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

    Ernest G. Heppner, born in 1921 in Germany, describes his experiences with antisemitism in his youth; participating in a Jewish youth organization; his father’s positive experiences running a factory in the mid-1930s; being kicked out of school and learning how to weld; losing any sense of hope for German Jews after his experiences on Kristallnacht; his family being forced to sell their house and considering immigration; he and his mother getting a place on a steamship to Shanghai, China by giving the captain of the ship some of their Impressionist paintings; arriving in Shanghai in March 1939; his mother finding a job with a youth committee; communicating through letters with his father and sister back home a few times before never hearing from them again; participating in the British Boy Scout Association in Shanghai; seeing the Imperial Japanese Naval Landing Party come into Shanghai after Pearl Harbor and acting as a British spy; the Jews of Shanghai being forced into a ghetto-like area of the city in February 1943; finding a job in a bakery and meeting his future wife in the ghetto; getting married shortly before the end of the war and going to work for the American occupying forces; his memories of life in the ghetto; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

    Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his family; his father’s work as a cantor that led him to travel around and work in several synagogues in Europe; not understanding that he could not have or do certain things because he was Jewish; the German invasion of Budapest in early 1944; his deportation by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen with his mother; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; developing a sense of comic relief, like by calling a German troop “Popeye,” to survive; participating in a Red Cross inspection of Bergen-Belsen; in January 1945 being taken by German soldiers on a train towards the German-Swiss border and being released in Switzerland, where they were cleaned and fed; traveling to Saint Gallen and then to Caux, Switzerland to stay in a displaced persons center; reuniting with his father after the war; his mother’s decision to go to Heiden after the war to run a one-room school house for six- to fourteen-years olds to learn Hungarian; immigrating to Palestine by a British troop carrier in September 1945 and living in a kibbutz, where his mother took charge of the day shift cooking; and immigrating to the United States in March 1949.

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

    Leo Bretholz, born on March 6, 1921 in Vienna, Austria, describes his childhood; his father passing away in 1930 and becoming a father figure for his two younger sisters; long-standing antisemitic attitudes transforming into excessive violence after the Anschluss in 1938; the arrest of his friends and his mother encouraging him to flee to Luxembourg, where he had an aunt; being arrested three days after he arrived in Luxembourg, questioned for several hours, and released to a train station; returning to Luxembourg and staying with relatives until he had the opportunity to cross the border into Belgium on November 9, 1938 and go to Antwerp, where he found distant relatives and stayed until May of 1940; receiving an affidavit and visa from an aunt in Baltimore, MD to immigrate to the United States but being unable to leave because Pearl Harbor was bombed the day he was scheduled to go; obtaining the necessary documents to cross into Switzerland in October 1942, but getting arrested and taken to Rivesaltes; his deportation to Drancy, another French detention camp, where he stayed for a short time before he and other prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars for transport; escaping deportation by bending the bars covering one of the train’s windows and squeezing through and jumping out of the train; making his way to Paris, where he obtained a false identification card; his arrest in December and then being sent to prison for nine months until he went to a forced labor camp in Septfonds, France; escaping from the camp and contacting a friend who got him in touch with an underground resistance group in Saint-Vallier, France, which he joined in November 1943; helping children cross the border into Switzerland, making false ID cards, and relaying messages between various resistance organizations; working with the resistance after D-Day and helping the Allied forces; and receiving an affidavit from his aunt in Baltimore that allowed him to immigrate to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

    Paul Matasovski, born in Bacău, Moldavia (now Romania) in December 1933, describes his family and early childhood; his family getting a radio in 1933 to find out what Hitler was doing in Europe; the political situation with the Iron Guard and General Antonescu; the Jews having their radios taken from their homes but receiving news by passing around sheets of paper; attending a Jewish high school until the end of 1942, when he was sent to work in a textile factory; participating in sabotage activities until he was arrested in the spring of 1944; remaining in a prison near the Carpathian Mountains until Russian forces liberated him; his knowledge of transports and concentration camps during the war; the composition of the people in his underground group and their activities; and returning to his hometown to help clean up the mess after the war.

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

    Zelda Piekarska Brodecki (Americanized name, Sonia Brodecki), born on July 27, 1928 in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes her family; the German occupation of her town and her family having to close their business; entering the Sosnowiec ghetto and being forced to work in a factory; her deportation from the ghetto to a forced labor camp near Wrocław, Poland; her transfer in 1943 to another labor camp in Klettendorf, Germany (Klecina, Wrocław, Poland); Russian troops liberating her at an ammunition factory in Ludwigsdorf, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany; returning to Sosnowiec after the war and meeting her cousin there; moving to the Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp, where she met her husband, Boleslaw Brodecki; and living in Germany until 1949 when she and her husband immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

    Stefania Podgórska Burzminski, born in Lipa, Poland, describes her family and childhood; helping her parents run a farm until she decided to move with her sister to Przemyśl and work in a bakery; the Russian invasion and not noticing much of a change in life until the Germans ousted the Russians; living in an apartment near the ghetto and witnessing people being deported from it; developing a relationship with a young man named Josef, who was Jewish and lived in the ghetto; having to explain what a Jew was to her little sister; helping to smuggle food into the ghetto for Josef and his family; moving into a large apartment and taking Josef and twelve other Jews in with her; having an SS man insist upon taking a room in her apartment and always living in fear that he would kill the Jews living there; and her liberation by Russian forces.

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

    Rose Galek Brunswic, born in Sochocin, Poland in 1920, describes her family; learning Hebrew and participating in a Zionist organization in her youth; moving to Warsaw in the mid-1930s; being forced into the Warsaw ghetto and living with twelve other people; her parents being shot during a roundup; going into hiding with the underground in March 1941; leaving her hiding place and finding another one in the city with an old work friend of her father; being caught by the Germans during a raid and sent by cattle car to Berlin; using her false papers to get a job on a farm; pretending to be a Seventh Day Adventist and playing the organ for the church; getting in trouble for not having the proper identification and having to do translations for a judge as penance; her liberation by American soldiers in 1945 when she was still working on the farm; meeting a Jewish soldier and marrying him; staying in a displaced persons camp after the war until she immigrated to the United States to live with her uncle; and settling in Buffalo, New York, where she attended school.

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

    Renée Schwalb Fritz, born in 1937 in Vienna, Austria, describes her family; her father leaving for the United States in 1939 and fleeing with her mother to Belgium; the German occupation of Belgium in 1940 and going into hiding in a convent, where she remained for two years until the Germans became suspicious; the underground taking Renee to a Protestant family's farm and then to an orphanage; reuniting with her mother after the war and discovering that she had survived Auschwitz; joining her father in the United States five years later; going through high school in the US with much difficulty; attending Boston University; and marrying an American man soon after she graduated from college.

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

    Martin Spett, born on December 2, 1928 in Tarnów, Poland, describes his childhood; the German occupation of Tarnów in 1939; his family losing their apartment in 1940; hiding in an attic when the first massacre of Jews occurred; having to finally register as a Jew in May 1943 and go to Bergen-Belsen, where he was allegedly to be part of an exchange for German prisoners of war; being liberated on April 13, 1945 by Allied troops during his transport to Theresienstadt; spending some time in Belgium after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

    Niels Bamberger, born on October 21, 1928 in Würzburg, Germany, describes growing up in a religious family; fleeing from Germany to his mother's hometown of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1932; his family being warned of imminent danger on Rosh Hashanah of 1943; their local grocer helping them to escape to the port town of Snekkersten, Denmark (the closest point between Denmark and Sweden); receiving help from the local resistance forces and hiding in houses until their group of over two hundred could be transported in row boats; a Swedish military boat intercepting his family at sea and taking them to Sweden; attending school in Lund, Sweden while his parents opened a small restaurant; his family’s return to Denmark on May 28, 1945 to find their old home undisturbed; and getting back on his feet after the war.

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

    Ray Buch, born on September 18, 1920 in New York City, NY, describes his parents and their emigration from Ukraine; joining the US Army in November 1942 and going into training in Louisiana and Texas for a year; being shipped to England in September 1944; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and encountering fighting and violence; finding out about the concentration camps and death camps; his unit’s attempts to bury people who had died alongside the roads; arriving in Mauthausen on May 10, 1945 and the scenes of people and depravation he witnessed; forcing the German citizens to bury the dead; spending about thirty days in Mauthausen and then moving around to other camps, like Dachau and Ebensee; and the sacrifices his unit made for the sake of the freedom of Europe and the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

    Nina Kaleska, born on April 11, 1929 in Grodno, Poland (now Hrodna, Belarus), describes having a pleasant childhood; her family not being perceived of as Jewish because of their Aryan looks; experiencing antisemitism among her childhood friends in 1938; joining the Young Pioneers after the Russians invaded in 1939; her father’s imprisonment for three to four months for political reasons; the German invasion in 1941 and the formation of two ghettos in Grodno; the Germans selecting one of her cousins, who was considered an electronics genius, for forced labor but then killing him; peasant families offering to hide her and her sister but rejecting because she did not want to be separated from her family; being deported with her sister to Auschwitz in 1941; the death of her sister three months after they arrived; becoming sick in the camp several times and only being saved because of the help she received from a woman named Martha who worked there; being asked by Dr. Mengele if she was Jewish because she did not look Jewish; having to stand guard while the head of her lager had sex with some of the most beautiful women in the lager; going on a death march and being liberated by Allied forces on May 5, 1945; and her immigration to England and then to the United States with the help of the American Joint Distribution Committee.

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

    Judith Meisel, born on February 7, 1929 in Josvainiai, Lithuania, discusses her childhood; moving to Kaunas, Lithuania shortly after her father’s death; being forced into the Kaunas ghetto in 1941; her family’s deportation in 1944 to Stutthof, where her mother was killed; escaping with her sister from a death march out of Stutthof by hiding in a coal bin; receiving shelter in a Catholic nunnery; developing typhus and posing as a Christian in a hospital in Danzig, Poland to receive treatment; finding work on a farm with her sister; moving to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she was sent to school; her liberation on May 5, 1945; living with a Jewish family in Denmark for some time after the war; immigrating to Canada in 1948; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

    Thomas Buergenthal, born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia, describes his family; moving with his family to Žilina, Czechoslovakia in 1938 and facing persecution from the Hlinka Guard; moving to Katowice, Poland and registering with the British Consul; leaving for England on September 1, 1939 but being stopped near the Russian border when their train was bombed by Germans; having to march with a group of refugees to Kielce, Poland and go into its ghetto; the deportation of his grandparents and twenty thousand other ghetto inhabitants in August 1942 to Treblinka while he and his parents were sent to a forced labor camp in Kielce; surviving a massacre of Jewish children and then being transported with his parents to a factory where they made wooden carts for the Eastern Front; his deportation in August 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked in the laundry as an errand boy; getting separated from his father and never seeing him again; being forced on a death march to Gliwice, Poland and then to Heinkel concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany in January 1945; his transfer to a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; his liberation on April 27, 1945 by Russian soldiers; marching with the First Polish Division into Berlin, Germany and Siedlce, Poland and then being placed in a Jewish orphanage in Otwock, Poland; his mother finding him in 1946 and smuggling him into the British zone of Germany; living in Göttingen, Germany and attending high school there; immigrating by himself to the United States in 1951 to live with his uncle; his mother remarrying and staying in Europe; attending Harvard Law School and becoming a professor of International Law at the George Washington University Law School; and serving on the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s Committee on Conscience.

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

    Leif Donde, born in 1937 in Copenhagen, Denmark, describes his upbringing in a religious but not Orthodox Jewish family; the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940; seeing the German police begin to arrest Jews in early October 1943 and fleeing with his family by train to the Danish city of Nykøbing Falster, south of Sjælland island; being smuggled by a fishing boat to safety in Sweden; arriving in Trelleborg, Sweden after an eleven-hour nighttime boat ride in October 1943, during which they passed through a German mine field; attending school in Sweden while his parents worked in a garment factory in Uddevalla, Sweden; his family returning to Denmark after the end of the war; and settling in Denmark, where he serves as the Consul General.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig, born in Vienna, Austria on March 7, 1924, describes her family and childhood; enjoying the rich cultural life Vienna had to offer before the war; her father’s placement on the Nazi blacklist for being a liberal writer and journalist; attempting to leave Austria and go to France but getting arrested and sent to prison; escaping to Cologne, where her mother managed to attain three visas by giving up some of her jewelry; moving to Paris, where her father found a job as a reporter; attending art school in Paris and meeting her future husband; the deportation of her father and brother to concentration camps when Germany declared war on France; her father’s return home for a short period until he had to join the French Army; running away from Paris and going through several cities until she arrived in Blois, France and began to search for her father; getting separated from her family and asking about their whereabouts wherever she went; reuniting with her mother in Barcus, France; finding a teaching job in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France through a family friend who lived there; her family receiving special visas to move to the United States on December 7, 1941 because her father was an intellectual; attending college in the United States; and marrying Ernest, the man she had earlier met in Paris.

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

    Max Amichai Heppner, born on October 15, 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes growing up as an only child; his parents’ escape from Berlin, Germany in 1933; the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands and missing a boat to escape to Sweden; losing several of his family’s possessions to the Nazis; his mother getting captured during a street raid but then being released by a Nazi commander in August 1942; escaping into the countryside with his parents and finding various hiding places with another family; going into hiding with underground forces and then with a farming family; dealing with frequent Nazi raids; meeting several downed Allied pilots while in hiding; his liberation by Scottish soldiers on September 24, 1944; his mother’s attempts to shield him from much of the devastation of the war; and immigrating to the United States to live with his mother’s family.

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

    Charles Bruml, born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his family and the Prague Jewish community; being about 28 years old and working in an import-export firm in 1938 when German troops marched into Prague; his family’s deportation to Theresienstadt and finding a job in the camp’s Technical Department; making paintings during his internment that are displayed at the camps today; his deportation to Auschwitz on January 11, 1942 and getting tattooed; being transferred to Buna (Monowitz), where he worked as a painter for the SS men until January 18, 1945; being forced to walk to Gleiwitz, because the Russians neared, and then to Bergen-Belsen, where the Red Cross liberated him; and meeting his wife in Prague as they both tried to sort out the fates of their families.

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

    David Pollack, born in Prince Albert, Saskatechewan, Canada in 1922, describes growing up in a mildly Jewish family; enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 but not being accepted as a pilot because of his poor eyesight; being trained as a radar technician and stationed first in the Queen Charlotte Islands and then in England in 1943; joining a mobile radar unit outside of Weimar, Germany in 1945 and visiting Buchenwald, where he was shocked by the horrors of the camp; speaking, with the aid of a translator, to many prisoners, taking the names and the addresses of their relatives who were in other countries, and contacting these relatives to inform them that the prisoners would soon be arriving in displaced persons camps and contacting them for help; returning to Canada after the war; and keeping up correspondence with some of the survivors he had helped to reunite with their families.

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

    Rabbi Eugene Lipman, born in Pittsburgh, PA on October 13, 1919, describes his family; graduating from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio; being sent overseas as an army chaplain in April 1945; after the war helping Jewish survivors at Buchenwald and Dachau before being sent to Plzen, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); joining the Haganah, a group that cared for Jewish survivors and refugees as well as secretly transporting Jews to Palestine; continuing his work with the Haganah in Regensburg, Germany; going home to the United States for a short time in April 1946 but returning in late 1946 with his wife to continue to aid Jews by providing many with false identity papers for them to leave Europe; and returning to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

    Hetty d’Ancona de Leeuwe, born on May 1, 1930 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her family and early childhood; her father losing his business after the German invasion; the deportation of several of her friends and family in 1942; her father’s participation in the Dutch underground newspaper; leaving Amsterdam in October 1943 and separating from her parents to live with a Dutch Gentile family for two years; her liberation by American and British forces and staying with her foster family for a few months until she reunited with her father; and marrying a Jewish man and immigrating to the United States with him after the war.

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

    Marty Glickman, born in 1917 in the Bronx, NY, describes growing up with parents who were immigrants from Romania; attending Syracuse University, where he was a track athlete chosen to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Germany; being one of two Jews on the United States Olympic track team; arriving in the Olympic Village and being told that he and Sam Stoller, the other Jewish runner, were to be replaced in the 400 meter relay by Ralph Metcalf and Jessie Owens; hearing from the head coach of the Olympic track team that the substitutions were made because the Germans were said to be hiding their best sprinters but believing that he was really replaced because Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, did not want to further embarrass the Nazis by having Jews run and win a race; serving in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II; going to the Marshall Islands; and his friendship with Jesse Owens.

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

    Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz, born in 1931 in Schlüchtern, Germany, describes her family; moving to Dinxperlo, a village located close to the German border in the Netherlands in 1933; the German invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940; Jews no longer being allowed to own businesses or to attend schools; going into hiding when they heard that the Jews would be rounded up for deportation in 1943; living with her mother in a barn attic that was barely big enough for them to both lie flat; beginning to write a cookbook-diary in 1944 to pass her time; becoming extremely ill because of a lack of ventilation in her living quarters; recovering from her illness but remaining weak; having to leave her hiding place toward the end of the war because of increased Nazi raids; her liberation on April 1, 1945 by Canadian troops; returning to their former village with food and money supplied to them by the farmers who had hidden them; returning to school as her family tried to re-build their lives; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

    Hessy Levinsons Taft, born on May 17, 1934 in Berlin, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her parents having her photo taken in 1934 and the photo ending up in a Nazi magazine labeled as a beautiful Berliner baby; her family’s decision to run away to Paris, France, where they were when it fell to the Germans; moving to the French coast near Bordeaux with her mother and sister while her father remained in Paris trying to find a way for the family to leave; her father securing visas for the family to travel to Cuba, where she and her sister began to attend a British school; immigrating to the United States in 1948 and settling in New York, NY; and eventually getting married and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

    Bella Jakubowicz Tovey, born on September 18, 1926, in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes growing up in a Jewish family; the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and losing her father’s factory and their family furniture; being forced to move into the Sosnowiec ghetto and to work in a factory there in 1941; her family’s deportation to the Bedzin ghetto in 1942; her deportation to the Graeben sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany in 1943 and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; her liberation in April 1945; and immigrating to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

    Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz, born June 23, 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, describes her childhood; facing intensifying antisemitic measures that resulted in the loss of her father's business and the closing of her school in the late 1930s; her family’s deportation in 1943 to Auschwitz, where her father was killed; her selection for forced labor and being assigned to work on road repairs; working in the "Kanada" unit sorting possessions brought into the camp; her transfer to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany in November 1944; being sent to Malchow, where she worked in a munitions factory making bullets; her liberation by American soldiers in May 1945 during a death march from the Malchow camp in Germany; traveling to Frankfurt with her mother in August 1945 with hopes of finding the rest of their family; and immigrating with her mother to the United States in early 1947.

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

    Peretz Milbauer, born in Brooklyn, New York in October 1915, discusses his life up to World War II; teaching history before he was drafted into the United States Army; being sent overseas in July 1944 and arriving to his station in Remse, Germany on December 5, 1944; liberating prisoners from a death march in Wałbrzych, Poland in December 1944; gathering a list of names of survivors from the death march and sending the list to American newspapers and magazines in an effort to help survivors contact their relatives; and also liberating prisoners at Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen in Austria, in May 1945.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Judah Nadich, born in 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland, describes his life until World War II and training to be a rabbi; enlisting in the army as a chaplain after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; serving as the senior Jewish chaplain with the United States Army in the United Kingdom and then in France during the war; having his first contact with survivors of Nazi oppression in France; helping Parisian Jews re-build their community; being ordered to Frankfurt, Germany as the Jewish affairs adviser to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and reporting on conditions in displaced persons camps; and returning to the United States in late 1945.

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

    Hana Bruml, born on May 30, 1922 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her family and childhood; attending a Zionist elementary school; meeting Rudolph Schiff and marrying him on November 14, 1939; the German invasion of Prague and her father losing his business, receiving ration tickets marked with a “J,” and only being allowed to do certain things at specific times; the deportation of her parents in July 1942 to Theresienstadt followed three weeks later by her and her husband’s deportation to the camp; working in the camp hospital as a nurse; the death of her husband and the development of a romance with Bruno, who worked as an internist in the camp; the special treatment of Danish Jews and a few prominent Austrian and German Jews in Theresienstadt; seeing doctors perform several abortions in the camp to save women; her transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944 and seeing Dr. Mengele; and remaining in Auschwitz until May 5, 1945, when she was liberated.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

    Benjamin Meed, born on February 19, 1922 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; traveling with a friend in 1939 to Russian territory to escape Nazi persecution; returning to Warsaw because they could not support themselves; joining an underground movement that provided a library and schooling for children; smuggling people to the Aryan side of Warsaw when the ghetto was established; helping his family escape to Praga Południe, Poland, where they hid in a cemetery; beginning to work with a woman named Vladka who was also involved in underground activities; posing as a Christian with Vladka during the war in order to facilitate their work in the underground; moving his hiding place to a bunker which he had built after the Warsaw uprising; jumping onto a Red Cross truck after his liberation to escape persecution by Germans and Poles after the war; reuniting with his parents after the war; and marrying Vladka in Warsaw ten days after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

    Johanna Neumann, born on December 12, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, describes her early childhood; her memories of Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938; her family’s decision to leave Germany as anti-Jewish measures intensified; obtaining visas for Albania and leaving Germany without many of her possessions; crossing into Italy and setting sail for Albania on March 1, 1939; remaining in Albania during the Italian and German occupations for a total of six and a half years; finally being liberated after a battle between the Germans and the Albanian partisans in December 1944; spending some time in an Italian displaced persons camp at the port of Tricase in the Lecce province of Apulia in southern Italy; immigrating to the United States in September 1946; and living briefly in Israel for three years from 1969 until 1971.

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

    Alice Lang Rosen, born in 1934 in Lambsheim, Germany, describes her early childhood; the deportation of her family to the Gurs camp in France and then to Rivesaltes when she was six years old; the French Red Cross taking her out of the camp and hiding her from the Germans by placing her in a children's home, then in a convent, and then with various Catholic families; being sent to a children's home near Paris after her liberation; having her name put on a list of Jewish children from all over France, which was being compiled by a Polish rabbi; her father tracing her from this list and reuniting with her in Germany in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

    Jay Ipson, born June 5, 1935, in Slobodka (Vilijampolė), Lithuania, describes growing up in religious, well-off family; his father's attempts to move his family to Russia but being turned back at the border; losing their home in the move and moving in with his grandmother, whose house was in the Kaunas ghetto; witnessing the deportations from the ghetto; escaping the ghetto with his mother and father in November 1943; hiding in a farmer's hay wagon and then in one room under the care of a poor, religious Polish Catholic family; his father's construction of a hiding place under the Polish family's potato patch; hiding with all of his extended family in the underground bunker; being liberated by the Russian army; moving back to Kaunas with his parents; attending Jewish school; being forced to run away from Kaunas after his father was declared an enemy of the Soviet Republic; changing his last name to Butremovitch and getting false papers; hiding with a Jewish family in White Russia; leaving Warsaw, Poland and traveling to Germany; receiving help from a German man to cross the border to the American occupied-zone of Germany; living with a German family in Prinz Regenten Strasse in Munich for nine months; immigrating to the United States to live with his aunt in Richmond, VA in June 1947; and joining the US military during the Korean War and becoming a colonel in command of an aviation unit.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

    Margaret Jastrow Klug, born on June 8, 1923 in Rogoźno, Poland, describes her family and childhood; her brother’s immigration to Scotland before the war; the beginning of the war and being arrested because someone had given them her name; jumping from a window of the jail to avoid deportation to Auschwitz but instead being injured and staying in a hospital for two months; being deported to Auschwitz, where she worked in a factory; getting married and having a daughter after the war; immigrating to Israel in 1949; returning to Germany soon after because the climate in Israel was too uncomfortable for her; and immigrating to the United States in the mid-1950s and settling in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

    Solomon Klug, born on July 9, 1923 in Krzepice, Poland, describes growing up in a religious family with one sister and three brothers; seeing his mother and brother shot in his backyard; his deportation in 1940 to Annaberg, Germany, where he worked building the Autobahn; being transferred in 1943 to Markstadt, Germany, where he built bridges, and then to Fuenfteichen, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, in March 23, 1944 to work in an ammunitions factory; his transport to Wolfsberg, another sub-camp of Gross-Rosen; being sent to Politz, Czechoslovakia, Bergen-Belsen, and finally to Barth-an-der-Ostee, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück; going on a three-day death march after his evacuation from Barth-an-der-Ostee; his liberation on April 30, 1945; going to Berlin, Germany after liberation and meeting his wife Margaret; immigrating to Israel, where they lived for four years, and then returning to Nuremberg to spend a year in a displaced persons camp; and immigrating to the United States in 1955 and settling in Atlanta, Georgia.

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

    Helene Baraf, born July 24, 1927 in Antwerp, Belgium, discusses her family and her childhood in Antwerp before World War II; her family's move to the United States in 1937; her return to Belgium with her mother and brother in 1940; traveling to France with her family by train and on foot after the Germans entered Belgium; her family's life in Lille, France; her brother's arrest by the Gestapo and eventual deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau for failing to properly display his Star of David on his coat; her and her mother's arrest by the Gestapo and their escape during a round up; their rescue from a small hiding place by the members of the underground resistance; her time spent hiding in a convent with other Jewish children in Lille; her attempts to conceal her identity with an assumed name and falsified identification documents; her move from the convent to a "Protestant community" in Roubaix, France, where she attended high school and remained with her mother until after World War II; her friendship with a girl from Roubaix whose family sheltered her and her mother for period of time during the war; the divorce of her parents shortly after the war; and her life in the United States after 1969.

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

    Morris Kornberg, born in Przedbórz, Poland on January 6, 1918, describes growing up as the youngest of seven children in a strict Orthodox family; the 1939 German invasion and being forced to work in a factory in the ghetto; his imprisonment in Końskie, a prison in Poland, and then in Radom, Poland and Jawischowitz, a sub-camp of Auschwitz; working in a coal mine and receiving special treatment by SS men because of his memory for numbers; his transfer to Troeglitz, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, in January 1945; the evacuation of Troeglitz on April 9, 1945 and escaping on a train with two others; getting caught and forced on a death march to Leitmeritz, a sub-camp of Flossenbürg, and then to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated; staying in a sanitarium outside of Stuttgart, where he met his wife; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

    Michael Diamond, born on July 10, 1919 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes his family; his draft into the Czech Army in 1939 but being forced to work in army camps clearing snow off roads and highways when the Slovak State was created; his transfer to Liptovský Mikuláš, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), where he repaired weapons and became a Slovak-German language interpreter; being moved to Vrútky, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), where he had to clean old uniforms; working as an electrician in eastern Slovakia; escaping into hiding in the forest but soon getting captured by the Gestapo; his transport to Sered, a "Sommerlager" in Slovakia; attempting to escape from a transport train and then being sent to Sachsenhausen, Heinkelwerke, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Neuengamme, and Mauthausen; working as an engineer and repairing railroad engines; ending up in Wurttemberg, Germany, where he was marched deeper into Germany as the Allied forces approached; and hiding in a peasant's empty house in Germany until he was liberated by Soviet soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

    Abraham Malach, born on May 12, 1935 in Zwoleń, Poland, describes his family; entering the ghetto in Radom, Poland in 1940 and remaining there until 1942; spending 1942 through 1943 at work camps in Poland, where he worked as a messenger boy; his deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; being removed from the group headed to the gas chambers at his first selection by a female Kapo, who molested him and bribed him to keep silent by giving him food for his family; running away to a monastery when Auschwitz was liberated; eventually being taken by nuns to a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency camp; reuniting with his parents in 1946 in Krakow, Poland; his parents sending him to Israel to finish his high school education; and immigrating to New York, NY after high school when he was admitted to Columbia University.

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

    Michael Bernath, born on February 14, 1923 in Szikszó, Hungary, describes growing up in a family with eleven older siblings; working in Budapest, Hungary as a furrier in 1943 and always getting harassed; joining the underground movement in Budapest and working for American and British intelligence services; the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 and Hungarian gendarmes rounding up five thousand Jewish people from his town and transporting them to Kassa, Czechoslovakia; being forced into a slave labor camp with about 35,000 other men; his deportation to the Schachendorf concentration camp in Austria in the winter of 1944 and being forced to dig trenches and train tracks in the Austrian Alps; Russian forces liberating him and returning to Budapest to live with his aunt and uncle; and his immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

    Kate Bernath, born in August 27, 1927 in Szikszó, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; living a decent life until March 1944 when the Germans occupied Hungary; dating a man to keep herself amused before the occupation; being rounded up and sent to a ghetto in Kassa (Košice, Slovakia); her deportation to Auschwitz in May 1944; her transfer to a factory in Augsburg, Germany to work in a Messerschmitt factory; hearing Allied bombings every night toward the end of the war; her transfer to Mühldorf, where she had to clean up debris from bombings; the guards disappearing one day and escaping to a farmhouse, where they were caught by an SS soldier; her liberation on May 1, 1946 and going to the Feldafing displaced persons camp; returning to Amsterdam and reuniting with her pre-war boyfriend; and getting married in Leipheim, Germany and then immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

    Paul Kovak, born on December 6, 1938 in Trenčín, Slovakia, describes being born a Jew but converting to Roman Catholicism with his parents; his father’s work as a professor at a small agricultural college; not having to wear the yellow star because of his father’s indispensable position at the school; going into hiding in the second home of a farming family in the mountains in late August 1944 at the time of the Slovak National Uprising; staying in hiding until April 1945, when they were liberated by Russian and Romanian troops; living in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia until 1981; and immigrating to the United States in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

    Abraham Kolski, born in 1917 in Izbica Lubelska, Poland, describes his family; the German occupation of Poland and going into the Czestochowa ghetto, where he did forced labor at a metal factory; his deportation on October 2, 1942 to Treblinka, Poland, where he performed forced labor searching for valuables in the clothing of gas chamber victims; participating in the Treblinka uprising on August 2, 1943 and escaping the concentration camp with nine other friends; hiding in a cellar of a home near Treblinka for the remainder of the war; eventually being liberated by the Russian Army; remaining in Poland until 1948, when he married and left for France; immigrating to the United States in 1954; and testifying as a witness to the events at Treblinka in the war crimes trials at Düsseldorf.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

    Sylvia Kolski, born on September 15, 1925 in Tarczyn, Poland, describes her family and childhood; moving with her aunt, uncle, cousins, and parents into the Warsaw ghetto; working for a tailor in the ghetto; hearing rumors that the Jews would be killed on July 22, 1942; hiding money in her clothing, so she could bribe people to save herself; seeing several major deportations from the ghetto; escaping from the ghetto and staying with a family in the countryside; her liberation on January 16, 1945 and returning to Tarczyn; moving to Łódź, Poland, where she met her husband, and then to Paris, France in 1947; and immigrating to the United States when the Vietnam War began.

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

    Steven Springfield, born in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, describes his experiences as a child; the German occupation of Riga in 1941 and having to go into the ghetto; the massacre of about 28,000 Jews from the ghetto in late 1941 at the Rumbula forest; being transferred with his brother to a small ghetto for able-bodied men; his deportation to a labor camp near Kaiserwald in 1943; being moved to Stutthof in 1944 and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm; surviving a death march in 1945 with his brother and being liberated by Soviet forces; accepting a position as an interpreter for the Russian Army; his incarceration by the Russians for allegedly supporting the Nazis but being released when the charges were disproven; locating his pre-war girlfriend and marrying her; moving to Berlin, Germany with his wife and brother; and applying for a visa and immigrating to the United States on March 10, 1947.

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

    Liny Pajgin Yollick, born in 1924 in Hague, Netherlands, describes growing up in a wealthy family; the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940; her mother’s plans to escape after her father died; spending six months with her mother and sister trying to escape through southern France by pretending to be Protestant, obtaining visas to travel through Spain and Portugal, and going on one of the last trains to cross into Spain after the Germans took over southern France; boarding a Portuguese ship bound for Dutch Guiana and being placed into a refugee camp; the exiled Dutch government’s arrangement for her to finish her education; and immigrating to the United States, where she worked for some time in the Dutch embassy in Washington, DC before settling in Texas.

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

    Fred Bachner was born on September 28, 1925 in Berlin, Germany and describes his family; his brother’s and father’s deportation to the Polish border after Kristallnacht; moving to Poland in 1939 to join the rest of his family; his brother being taken to a work camp in Poland in 1940; his deportation to Markstädt, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, and then to Groeditz and Faulbrueck before he was sent to Auschwitz; loading and unloading coal and cement for I.G. Farben, a German industrial company; going on a death march out of Auschwitz to a camp near Dachau, where he found his brother; being placed on another train that was ambushed by British fighter planes; jumping off the train with his brother and hiding in the surrounding area until they located the American soldiers; staying at the Feldafing displaced persons camp after the war; reuniting with his father and immigrating to the United States with his father and brother on January 3, 1947; and being drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War.

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

    Murray Pantirer was born on June 15, 1925 in Kraków, Poland and discusses his childhood; the German occupation of Kraków in 1939; separating from his family on several occasions in an attempt to find food and other necessities; finally being confined to the Kraków ghetto; his and his brother’s deportation to Płaszów, Poland to do forced labor; his transport to Auschwitz in May 1944, then to Gross-Rosen, and finally to Brünnlitz, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, to work for German industrialist Oskar Schindler; his liberation on May 10, 1945 and discovering that he was only one of nine family members to survive; returning to Poland after liberation but deciding to leave because of the lingering presence of antisemitism; moving to a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, where he met and married his wife; arranging to immigrate to America through the American consul in Salzburg, Austria; and immigrating to the United States on the S.S. Marine Fletcher in January 1949.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

    Barbara Marton Farkas, born on May 4, 1920 in Beliu, Romania, describes her family and childhood; living in Beliu until 1937, when her family sold their house and store and moved to Oradea, Romania; being refused entrance into the university in 1940 because of the anti-Jewish laws implemented by the Hungarian government, which then controlled the northern Transylvania area; training in a hospital laboratory and working there until the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944; leaving the hospital, which was occupied by the SS, and starting work at a photo company; first wearing the Star of David on April 1, 1944 and going into the Oradea ghetto in May 1944; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where she lost her parents; her transfer to Weisswasser, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in Germany, where she worked in a chemistry lab and then in the Cathode Workshop; staying there from October 1944 through February 1945; her transport through several camps after March 1945 to avoid the approaching Soviet army; ending up on the German-Danish border at Padberg, Germany; the Red Cross assisting the survivors with food and shelter; being taken to Malmö, Sweden the next day and then spending some time in a hospital in Landskrona, Sweden; returning to Romania to study in Cluj from 1946 to 1951; graduating as an industrial pharmacist; immigrating to Israel in 1961; and immigrating to the United States in 1968.

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

    William Farkas, born in 1916 in Arad, Romania, describes growing up as an only child in a middle class family; attending the Arad Jewish school and studying business administration after high school; joining the Romanian Army after school; not experiencing antisemitism until 1940 when he was expelled from the army because he was Jewish; the Iron Guard coming to power in September 1940; being ordered to report for deportation to labor camps in July 1941 and going to a work camp in Sighişoara, Romania, where he worked as a miner demolishing mountains for a new railway line; being sent home until 1942, when he was transported to Valea Homorod, Romania and then to Kinapist, Romania to do railway work; claiming he was an electrician in 1943 and going to a camp with three friends in Timişoara, Romania, where they worked as auto mechanics in a military garage for one year; his transport in 1944 to Doaga, a labor camp in Romania, where inmates built cement fortresses; hearing that Soviet soldiers were approaching Doaga and being liberated on August 25, 1944; returning home via Bucharest and reuniting with his parents in Arad; finding a wife and immigrating to Israel with her in 1954; and immigrating to the United States in 1961.

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

    Sheila Etons Bernard (née Sala Perec), born on February 18, 1936 in Chełm, Poland, describes her family and early childhood; her father’s deportation to a labor camp after the war began and never seeing him again; hiding in the shack of a Polish policeman for almost two years with her mother; her mother dying because of a blood clot in her leg; going to a children’s home in Germany for two years; immigrating to Palestine to live with one of her uncles; joining the military, where she met her husband; immigrating to the United States in 1963 because her husband had family in the US; and her thoughts on how the war has affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

    Frima, born in 1936 in Volochys'k, Russia (now Ukraine), describes her family; trying to escape to White Russia with her family after the Nazi invasion but being forced back to live with some distant cousins; her father’s capture by the Germans to serve as an interpreter for them; her sister and mother being forced to work at labor camps during the days; entering the Volochys'k ghetto; getting caught by Germans and claiming that they were not Jewish, which resulted in them going to jail; escaping with her mother and sister to hide in the attic of a barn, where they were almost discovered but managed to escape; the intensifying pogroms against the Jews by Russian and Ukrainian collaborators; pretending to be Christian and going into hiding with an old family friend; eventually reuniting with her mother with the help of several generous Gentiles and staying with her until the end of the war; going into displaced persons camps in Bavaria; going to school in Germany for two and a half years and then moving to France; immigrating to the United States in the 1950s and meeting her husband there; and her considerations on how the war has affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

    Esther Terner Raab, born on June 11, 1922 in Chelm, Poland, describes growing up as one of two children; the Soviet occupation of her town in 1939; the German invasion of Chelm in 1941 and her family being forced into a ghetto; moving to Siedliszcze, Poland and eventually moving into the ghetto in Siedliszcze; her transport to the labor camp at Staw Noakowski, Poland for a short time before she and her brother were sent to Sobibór in December 1942; arriving at Sobibór three days before Christmas in 1942 and being forced to work in a knitting factory in the camp, knitting woolen socks; witnessing the gassing of Jews at Camp III of the Sobibór compound; participating in the camp uprising of October 14, 1943 but getting wounded during the escape; fleeing to the countryside and getting sheltered by a former customer of her father; reuniting with her brother, who had escaped during a previous transfer; remaining hidden until 1944, when the region in which she hid was freed by the Soviet Red Army; following the Red Army to Berlin, Germany and settling there for a short time after the war; marrying a man in Berlin and then immigrating to the United States shortly after the end of the war; and serving as a witness at the trials of Nazi criminals in the 1965-66 trials in Hagen, Germany.

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

    Guy Stern, born on January 14, 1922 in Hildesheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Jewish family; attending a German school, where he had many non-Jewish friends; losing several of his friends after 1933 when they joined the Hitler Youth; his family’s decision to move to the United States after they began to experience increased levels of antisemitism; leaving Germany with a group of children in November 1937 and arriving in New York, NY; moving to St. Louis, Missouri to live with distant relatives; graduating high school in June 1939 and trying to help his family immigrate to the United States; discovering that his parents had perished in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland; attempting to enlist in the US Army in 1941 but being turned away because of his German heritage; receiving a draft notice in 1942 and being trained in military intelligence because of his familiarity with the German language; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; working as an interrogator and uncovering the deeds of several war criminals; going to Buchenwald the day after it was liberated and seeing the horrible conditions there; returning to the United States after the war, attending Hofstra College, and then earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University in German Literature and Culture; and helping other survivors write about their Holocaust experiences.

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

    Toby Stern, born on July 15, 1920 in Vișeu de Mijloc, Romania, describes growing up as the youngest of six children; marrying when she was seventeen or eighteen; going into hiding with her family shortly after the war began; having one child and miscarrying another while in hiding; her deportation to Auschwitz with her mother and her three-year-old son; giving her child to her mother to carry, since both were guaranteed to be killed, which allowed her to survive; having to do forced labor making uniforms in the camp's tailor shop; going on a death march in early 1945 from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and then to Malchow, where Russian forces liberated her; going to the New Bromberg displaced persons camp and then returning to Vișeu de Mijloc in search of her husband and family; finding all of her brothers but not her husband, who was rumored to have died in Russia; immigrating to Germany after the war and remarrying while there; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

    Ion Butnaru, born in 1918 in Huși, Moldavia (Romania), describes his family; working for a small newspaper before the war until he was drafted into the Romanian Army in November, 1939; being transferred to the military zone in northern Moldavia in the spring of 1940; his expulsion from the army in August 1940 because he was Jewish; being ordered to return to his regiment to work with the battalions in the Carpathian Mountains on September 1, 1940; being sent back to Huși to clean streets in the summer of 1941; his deportation to a concentration camp in Tîrgu Jiu, Romania, where he remained for four months; returning to Huși, where he was placed in a local camp in the courtyard of the Jewish community and had to wear yellow badges; witnessing the Iron Guard Rebellion in January 1941, during which many Jews were killed; his father being falsely accused of being a communist and getting badly beaten; being forced to clear the streets of snow until the summer of 1942, when he was sent to Bolgrad, Ukraine and then to several other villages in Bessarabia in a forced labor battalion; getting moved to another camp near Bîrlad, Romania in 1943; the Romanian Army surrendering to Soviet forces in August 1944; and immigrating to the United States in 1976.

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

    Jeanine Gutman Butnaru, born on June 25, 1925 in Bacău, Romania, describes her childhood and family; moving to Bucharest, Romania in 1938; her involvement in the underground resistance movement in Bucharest; working as a volunteer in Jewish hospitals; witnessing the Iron Guard Rebellion of January 21-23, 1941, when Legionaries killed Jews and burned downed their houses and stores; the 1944 American bombing of the railroads that cut the Germans off from Ploiești, Romania, which was rich with oil; hiding in her family’s cellar during the heavy bombardments because Ploiești was near Bucharest; Soviet troops entering Romania at the end of the war; meeting her husband in the Writer's Union; and immigrating to the United States in 1976.

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

    Cecilie Klein-Pollack, born on April 13, 1925 in Yasinya, Ukraine, describes growing up as the youngest of six children in a Jewish family; the death of her father when she was nine years old; her expulsion from high school after the Hungarians annexed Ruthenia; being threatened with deportation and subsequently going into hiding in Budapest, Hungary after her mother and sister were briefly imprisoned there; fleeing to Horinc, Ukraine, where they stayed for a year until her brother was taken for forced labor; moving with her mother to Nyíregyháza, Hungary, where arrangements had been made for her to apprentice in a dental laboratory; traveling to Budapest when she heard that her oldest sister had been arrested and finding out that she had been sent to a labor camp in Bačka Topola, Yugoslavia; traveling to Bačka Topola to arrange for her sister’s release and then returning to Budapest, where she became engaged to her future husband Joe Klein; the German invasion of Budapest in March 1944 and joining up with her and Joe’s families in Chust, Ukraine; being forced into a ghetto and then transported to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being sent to Birkenau with her sister; being sheltered by the Blockältester who liked her because she was a talented poet; her and her sister’s transport to Nuremberg and Holleischen; their liberation from Holleischen by Russian troops and returning to Czechoslovakia, where she reunited with her fiancé and married him in Budapest on August 21, 1945; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

    Fred Schwartz, born on October 30, 1928 in Kotaj, Hungary, describes his childhood; his father’s deportation to a labor camp in 1940; taking over his father’s job delivering seltzer water with his brother; knowing very little of what was happening in Europe from 1940 to 1944; the German invasion of Hungary; the organization of Jews into their town synagogues as the Germans prepared them for deportation; his deportation to Birkenau with his father, mother, and brother; discovering later after the war that his mother had died in Bergen-Belsen; his transfer to a work camp in Wolfsberg where he had to dig tunnels through mountains; being forced on a death march as the Russian forces neared; arriving in Mauthausen where he was liberated by American forces; staying a displaced persons camp for two years until he relocated to Paris, France; waiting to receive an American visa; going to the United States without legal papers and almost being sent back; and reconciling with his past.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Abraham Malnik, born on January 31, 1927 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes his childhood and family; the Russian invasion of Lithuania in 1940 and losing most of his family’s belongings; the brutal treatment of Jews by Lithuanians; the establishment of a ghetto in Kaunas that held about thirty thousand people; the Lithuanians beheading the local rabbis; being saved during a selection because his father knew the chief of police; his father’s work in the ghetto fire department; being forced to do several jobs like make toys for German children and clean dirty clothes from the front; the Germans and Lithuanians intensifying their battle against the Jews after the loss of the battle at Stalingrad; being on the last transport from the ghetto to Dachau, where he had to help build a factory for Messerschmitt and pick up dead bodies; his transfers with his father to Flossenbürg and then another camp; getting a German officer in trouble because he attempted to sexually abuse him; his transfer to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated by Russian troops on May 8, 1945; immigrating to the United States without knowing anyone or speaking English; and settling in Washington, DC with his wife, who was a Belgian Holocaust survivor.

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

    Lilly Appelbaum Malnik, born in Belgium in 1928, describes her family and childhood; her father's move to the United States; waking up one morning in 1940 and discovering that the Germans had invaded; her sister who was taken into hiding by a farmer who later turned her in to the Germans because she would not have sexual relations with him; living with her aunt in the countryside after having her tonsils out; returning to find that her mother and brother had been deported; hiding her Jewish identity and doing odd jobs for the Germans; going into hiding with a Belgian girl with whom she had worked; being caught and deported on the second-to-last transport before the liberation of Belgium; arriving in Birkenau and receiving her identification number and work assignment to the kitchens in Auschwitz; a death march to Bergen-Belsen; the arrival of Allied soldiers at Bergen-Belsen; being taken away by the Red Cross to recover from typhus and physical injuries; returning to Belgium and reuniting with her aunt; and immigrating to United States to be with her father.

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

    Masha Loen, born in July 1930 in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes growing up in a religious family with three sisters; her father hiding her family and other Kaunas Jews under the wooden floor planks in his home; being separated from her family in 1941 and taken to the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland; performing forced labor in Stutthof until 1945, when she was taken on a death march as Russian troops approached the camp; making it to a Russian hospital after the German soldiers abandoned the death march; traveling to Łódź, where she found her father who had been liberated from Dachau; taking a transport to Austria; and immigrating to New Orleans, LA in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

    Madeline Deutsch, born on April 29, 1930 in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), describes her childhood; Hungary taking over her town on November 9, 1938; living under the Hungarians until March 1944 when the Germans invaded; living in a ghetto for two weeks until her transport to Auschwitz, where she and her mother stayed in for one week; being moved near Wrocław, Poland to work at an ammunition factory; her and her mother’s liberation by Russian soldiers on May 8, 1945; discovering that both her father and brother had died; staying with her mother in a displaced persons camp for four years until March 9, 1949 when the two immigrated to the United States; and marrying and having two sons in America.

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

    Amalie Petranker Salsitz, born in 1922 in Munich, Germany, describes growing up in a Zionist family; moving to Stanislav, Poland (now Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine) when she was a young child; the Russian occupation of Poland in 1939 and the loss of her father’s business; seeing her sister move to Palestine with her new husband; her family’s arrest by the Gestapo in October 1941; moving into the ghetto until her father was deported in 1942; escaping to Kraków, Poland, where she passed as Aryan; working as a chambermaid and finally obtaining employment at a construction firm in Kraków, where she remained until January 1945; traveling to Munich and Palestine after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

    Norman Salsitz, born in 1920 in Kolbuszowa, Poland, describes growing up in a Zionist Hasidic family; making a failed attempt to immigrate to Palestine in 1938; unsuccessfully trying to join the Polish Army in September 1939; the occupation and destruction of his town; escaping to Russian-occupied Poland for a short period until he returned to Kolbuszowa; going into the Lipie labor camp in 1940; running away from the camp; working for the Germans, building garages for the Wehrmacht; his deportation to the Pustków concentration camp in late 1940; being beaten; escaping from Pustków and moving to the Czechowice ghetto; escaping from the ghetto in November 1942 and helping to establish a partisan unit in the forest near Kolbuszowa; obtaining false documentation with which he joined the Armia Krajowa; fleeing to Germany after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

    Frederic Bernard, born on August 7, 1912 in Chernivtsi, Romania (Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes his family; studying medicine at Karls University in Prague, Czechoslovakia; attempting to enter Hungary in 1941 but being turned away by the Hungarian gendarmerie and placed in a ghetto in Oleyëvo-Korolëvka, Ukraine with over 1,500 Jewish people; hiding during an Aktion in 1942 that exterminated most of the ghetto and then later escaping with his wife Gusti; finding a hiding place with a Polish man in a barn in the woods; the Polish man encouraging him to join a Polish resistance group; finding a new hiding place with Gusti in 1943 and joining a Russian resistance group; becoming a courier for the resistance because of his Romanian language ability; joining the Polish Army, where he practiced as a doctor; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

    Isaac Bitton, born on March 31, 1926 in Lisbon, Portugal, describes his family and childhood; the small Lisbon Jewish community in which he grew up that hosted thousands of Jewish refugees before and during the war; his family’s work running a soup kitchen to help the Jewish refugees; immigrating to Palestine with his brother aboard the ship Nisassa; being forced into an internment camp when he arrived in Haifa; joining the Palestine Police Railroad Division and then the Jewish Brigade; spending some time in Antwerp, Belgium for the Jewish Brigade but soon returning to Palestine to work for the British military; participating in a movement to encourage the illegal entry of European refugees into Palestine; working with the underground forces of the Haganah, a movement dedicated to preparing for Israeli independence; and his immigration to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

    Max Haber, born on December 31, 1904 in Essen, Germany, describes his family; attending an Orthodox Jewish school in Germany; moving to Hamburg, Germany and working as a businessman there until 1933, when he moved to Kolomyia, Poland to live with his brother and sister; moving to Katowice, Poland, where he was able to find work; joining the Revisionist party in 1939 and trying to immigrate to Palestine on an illegal transport through Romania; the British Ambassador to Romania telling the Romanians to withdraw his visa since the British were restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine; returning to Kolomyia and staying there until the Soviets invaded in 1939; trying to escape to Romania with his brother-in-law but getting caught and imprisoned; being moved to Kiev, Ukraine in March 1940; receiving a five-year prison sentence and getting transported to Yartsevo, Russia; his transfer to the Mostowits labor camp in Russia, where he was forced to cut trees; his liberation in March 1944 and taking a train to Kotel’nich, Russia with other prisoners; staying with several Russian Jewish families until he found a Ukrainian family who housed him for a short time in exchange for German lessons; traveling to the English zone in Germany; and reuniting with his brother in 1951 in Israel.

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

    Major General William P. Levine, born in Duluth, Minnesota on July 1, 1915, describes growing up as the oldest of four brothers; his draft into the United States Army in 1942 and completing Officer Training School in 1943; entering the Intelligence Unit as an Artillery Officer in 1944; being sent to England and later traveling with a unit that began in the Netherlands and worked its way south towards Dachau; moving into Dachau on April 29, 1945 and helping to give out food and medical care to the former prisoners at Dachau; and returning to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

    Leo Schneiderman, born on August 18, 1921 in Łódź, Poland, describes his family and childhood; the large Jewish population that had comfortably developed within Łódź before Hitler came to power; Poland preparing for war by drafting young men into the army and by digging trenches; the German invasion and fall of the Polish Army in September 1939; being tricked by the German government to head towards Warsaw with his younger brother and father; returning to Łódź and being forced into the ghetto with his whole family; the closing of the Łódź ghetto in 1940 and the realization that the community needed to organize its own services and methods of self-support; each of his family members taking a job in the ghetto, including his work as a tailor; illegally teaching Yiddish in the ghetto; not understanding why there had to be deportations from the ghetto without realizing the severity of the camps; his deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his transport to Kaltwasser, a labor camp in Silesia, to do construction work for a short period until he was transferred to Lärche and then to Wolfsberg, where he worked in a hospital; being forced onto an open cattle car for a deportation and being thrown food while passing through Stará Paka, Czechoslovakia; his liberation by Allied Forces; and speaking for the prosecution against Herr Krison in a 1978 trial in Bochum, West Germany.

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

    Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf, both born in 1914 in Warsaw, Poland, describe their childhoods and families; Pela’s decision to study at a Warsaw law school before the war; getting married in 1936 and having a daughter in 1941; entering the Warsaw ghetto in 1940; escaping from the ghetto in 1942 by drugging their daughter, so she seemed to be dead; pretending to go to the Jewish cemetery outside of the ghetto to bury their daughter but never returning; their daughter getting tuberculosis and her six week treatment in a hospital; being helped by non-Jews; hiding on the Aryan side as Catholics; their daughter’s discovery that she was Jewish after the war; immigrating to the United States in 1947 on a United States Navy transport; Adam taking various jobs until he opened sporting goods factory; and getting involved in the Penny Project, which began in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

    Carla Heijmans Lessing, born in 1929 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, describes her family and childhood; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 and experiencing harsh antisemitic measures; going into hiding with her mother and brother in August 1942 with the assistance of a Catholic priest who helped Jews find hiding places; leaving their first hiding place after three months but, with the priest’s help, finding a new shelter in Delft, in which they hid for thirty months; and her liberation in May 1945.

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

    Edward Lessing, born in the Hague, Netherlands on May 8, 1926, describes moving to the United States in 1929; returning to Delft, Netherlands in 1932 because of the economic depression in the US; entering trade school in 1942 to become a tool maker but having to leave because Jews could no longer attend public school after the German invasion; splitting up from his family after the invasion in October 1942 and finding a place to hide with a farmer, who employed him as a farm hand; relocating to hide in a convent in the Hague with his mother; the German raid of the convent in December 1943, during which he escaped, but his mother was taken to Bergen-Belsen; reuniting with his father and brothers in their hiding place in an abandoned cottage; remaining in this cottage through May 1945 when they returned to Delft; his mother’s liberation from Bergen-Belsen in late 1945; and immigrating with his family to the United States in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

    Werner Goldsmith, born in Erfurt, Germany on November 13, 1928, describes his family; the expulsion of Jewish children from German schools in 1938; the death of his father in 1938 and moving with his mother to Berlin, Germany; his mother placing him in the Auerbach Orphanage while she lived with another Jewish woman in West Berlin; his mother arranging for him to be placed in a transport to France while she traveled to England; living in the home of a French count until the invasion of France in 1940; the count being taken prisoner in Germany in 1940 and going into the care of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; unsuccessfully attempting to flee to southern France and getting separated from the other children when he was placed in the Rothschild orphanage, where he remained for nine months; moving to Marseilles, France in the spring of 1941; receiving an emergency visa in September 1941 to immigrate to the United States because he had relatives there; getting on a transport from Marseilles to Portugal and then embarking on a Portuguese freighter and sailing to the United States; and living in Jewish foster homes until he reunited with his mother in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

    Beatrice Pappenheimer, born in October 1932 in Lauterbach, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her parents having to register with the local police; moving to Karlsruhe, Germany after her father had to give up his business in 1936; starting school in Karlsruhe but experiencing much antisemitism; being forced to leave school in November 1938 because of a law forbidding Jews from public schools; the Gestapo forcing her and her family from their house and onto a train in 1939; arriving in the Gurs camp and contracting dysentery; her transfer to the Rivesaltes camp; her mother placing her on a truck run by the Oeuvre de Secours des Enfants and moving into homes in France; reuniting with her sister, who had gone through terrible times in the camps; the bombing of France that picked up in 1943; receiving letters from her grandmother in Palestine, her aunts in New York City, NY, and her uncle and aunt in London, England; arriving in London to be with her uncle and aunt; immigrating to New York City in October 1947 to live with her aunts and attend high school; and her thoughts on her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John Komski, born in 1915 in Galicia, Poland, describes growing up in a Gentile family; having some Jewish friends at the Academy of Arts in Kraków, where he graduated from in 1939; leaving Kraków when the Germans invaded but returning to join the resistance; escaping to Czechoslovakia, where he was caught by Slovaks who turned him in to the Gestapo; being rounded up in 1940 with 756 other Poles and deported to Auschwitz, where he worked in the architect's office; helping to create the museum in Auschwitz in 1941, collecting items of interest from the incoming inmates; escaping from Auschwitz to a small village, where he received false documents from the underground and boarded a train to Kraków; getting captured in Kraków and sent to prison; his transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to Buchenwald, where he worked as a kitchen chef; his deportation to Gross-Rosen, where he worked in the labor relations office; being transported to Hersbruck towards the end of the war and then forced on a death march to Dachau, where he was liberated; and his immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

    Curtis Whiteway, born in Newburyport, MA on November 3, 1925, discusses his draft into the United States Army in December 1943; his basic training in Fort Knox, KY and intensive training with Rangers; transferring to Camp Maxie, TX, where he joined the 99th Division and immediately went to England; crossing into France with his division and participating in several skirmishes with the Germans; fighting the Third Panzer Division, which helped to push American forces further into Germany through the Siegfried Line; fighting near Cologne, Germany and encountering several concentration camps; helping to liberate the few surviving prisoners at Ohrdruf; going south into combat after the arrival of the Red Cross; reaching Dachau 3-B and then liberating the Moosburg prison camp (Stalag VII A) in Germany, which had about 30,000 prisoners, including some American prisoners of war; going to the Landshut sub-camp of Dachau to meet up with English and Canadian troops; and his assignment after the war to work temporarily in Cherbourg, France.

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

    Lore Baer, born August 26, 1938 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; how her family moved from Germany to the Netherlands in 1933; developing a close relationship with her maternal grandfather, who was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Bergen-Belsen, where he perished; her family's relationship with Elsa and Sam Izaaks, members of the underground resistance; her time in hiding with the Schouten family and becoming friends with Cornelia Schouten; her memories of living as a Catholic in order to conceal her identity as a Jew; hiding in various places on the Schouten family farm in order to avoid the Germans; her difficult separation from the Schouten family at the end of the war and her readjustment to life in Amsterdam; immigrating to the United States with her parents and settling in the Bronx, New York; and returning to the Netherlands to visit with members of the Schouten family several years after moving to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

    Erich Kulka (né Erich Schön), born on February 18, 1911 in Vsetín, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his childhood and family; being raised as a conservative Jew; attending a trade school, where he studied forestry and then worked in the family lumber business; smuggling people through the woods after the German annexation of Austria; being caught, arrested, and tortured by the Gestapo in June 1939; being released from prison in August 1939 and resuming work with the underground; his second arrest in 1940, when he was taken to Dachau as a political prisoner and then transferred to Auschwitz, where he was assigned to a work detail with a group of five in the Birkenau camp; assisting in resistance activities in Auschwitz; going on a death march as the Soviets approached and then put on a train from which he escaped; fleeing from Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring in 1968; living in Vienna, Austria for three months; and how all his family now lives in Israel.

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

    Cornelia Schouten, born on January 21, 1920 in Huizen, Netherlands, describes growing up as one of five children of a Christian farming family in Oosterblokker, Netherlands; one of her brothers serve in the Dutch Army and fight against the Nazis in 1940; the arrest of her father and uncle during the German occupation of the Netherlands because they were striking in protest of the occupation; her family’s decision to harbor those who resisted the Nazis, including members of the resistance and men who were drafted for forced labor; sheltering the young Jewish girl, Lore Baer, for over two years; Lore’s parents emerging from hiding after the war and reclaiming their daughter; reuniting with Lore several times after the war; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

    Drexel Sprecher, born on March 25, 1913 in Independence, WI, describes his family; his education at the University of Wisconsin, the London School of Economics, and at the Harvard School of Law; receiving a position on the Labor Board in 1938; his enlistment in the United States Army after the US declared war on Germany; being sent to London, England, where he was assigned to the Inspector General's office; later serving as a prosecutor of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials; and prosecuting Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth.

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

    Bela Blau, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1910, describes his family; getting married in 1930 and moving to Zilina, Slovakia; serving in the army for eighteen months and then working as a salesman representing a photo company; having a son in 1937; being dismissed from his job in 1938 because of his Jewish background; being arrested by two Hlinka Guards one day after Yom Kippur in 1942; his and his family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where he was placed in Block 10 and worked on building a bridge above the River Sota; doing writing jobs for an illiterate German Kapo because he spoke German; being assigned to the Kommando Kanada until May 1943 when he became a scribe and met his future second wife Magda; going on a death march in January 1945 from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Mauthausen, where he spent one month until he was transferred to Gusen, where he worked as an engineer fixing petrol tanks, gas tanks, and the wings of Messerschmitt planes; his transfer to Gunskirchen on May 1; and United States forces liberating him on May 7, 1945 in Gunskirchen.

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

    Magda Blau, born on August 19, 1916 in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), describes growing up in a Jewish family; becoming a kindergarten teacher; the German invasion and her deportation to Auschwitz, where she worked scrubbing floors for three months until she became an assistant to the block supervisor; being put in charge of the barrack for medical experiments in the autumn of 1942 and becoming the protégé of Dr. Eduard Wirths, the garrison physician; later working in an office and becoming the concentration camp commander of the camp for Hungarian Jews; getting a job counting potatoes in a kitchen and then a job as a concentration camp supervisor in a fabric production facility; going on a death march on January 18, 1945 to Malchow, where they were liberated by the Soviet Army; settling in Prague, Czech Republic for a short time and then immigrating to Israel; and finally immigrating to Australia in 1965.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

    Barbara Lederman Rodbell, born in 1925 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933 with her family; becoming friends with Anne Frank and her family; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940; her boyfriend getting her false papers through his underground contacts; the deportation of her mother, sister, and father to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz; working for the resistance and surviving using her false papers; helping other Jews find hiding places; joining a ballet company for two years after the war; and immigrating to the United States in November 1947.

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

    Jerry Slivka, born on July 11, 1915 in Western Ukraine, describes his memories of the Soviet takeover of Russia; moving to the neighboring town of Povorsk, Ukraine with his family; participating with the Zionist movement and joining a kibbutz; moving to Łódź, where he worked as a manager of a village store from 1939 to 1941; entering the Polish Army in 1939 but settling in Soviet-held territory after the takeover of Poland; joining the reserves of the Soviet Army; escaping a German attack and seeking refuge at Soviet military headquarters; being sent to a labor camp in Stalingrad (Volgograd), Russia and then to the railroads east of the Volga because the Soviets were suspicious of him; working in a coal mine near Moscow, Russia for one-and-a-half years before he was freed; his interment in Italy until he could return to Łódź in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

    Rochelle Blackman Slivka, born in 1922 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes growing up in a Jewish family; the German occupation of Vilnius in June 1941 and moving into the ghetto with her family in October; her mother’s death in the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943 and being transported to the Kaiserwald concentration camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof; her father’s murder in an Estonian prison camp because he had served as a Jewish council member; her experiences in the camps until she had to go on a death march, during which the Soviet Army liberated her; beginning to make her way back to Vilnius with her sister but instead going to West Germany; separating from her sister while they both awaited permission to go to the United States; learning nursing during her stay at a German displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States and arriving in Massachusetts on May 18, 1949; working as a nurse’s aide in an American hospital; and meeting and marrying a Holocaust survivor in the United States in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

    Francis Akos, born on March 30, 1922 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his childhood; attending a music academy, from which he graduated in 1941; becoming the concertmaster for the Budapest Jewish Community Cultural Center orchestra; being drafted for forced labor into the Hungarian Army in 1943; getting captured with other Jews in Budapest while on leave from the army to get fresh clothes; being sent by train to Neuengamme on November 4, 1944; playing violin in the camp; his evacuation from Neuengamme on May 3, 1945 and being transported by the ship Cap Arcona, a passenger liner that was evacuating refugees from West Prussia; the British mistakenly attacking the Cap Arcona and three other prisoner ships, which resulted in eight thousand deaths; returning to Budapest after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1954.

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

    Beno Helmer, born in 1923 in Teplice, Czechoslovakia, describes his childhood and family; using his foreign language skills to land small movie roles before the war; attempting to settle in Hungary with his family before the war; his family’s deportation to Łódź in 1939 because they did not have immigration papers; arriving in the Łódź ghetto and staying there until he had to begin doing forced labor outside the ghetto in 1942; securing a job posing as a non-Jewish German and collecting information for the underground and becoming an expert at derailing trains; returning to the ghetto when his father became sick and remaining with his family until they were deported to Auschwitz after the liquidation of the Łódź ghetto; his deportations to Gross-Rosen, Krupp Bertha-Werk at Laskowitz-Meleschwitz, Buchenwald, and Ludwigslust; his liberation by American soldiers while in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp; attempting to get back to Poland and on the way joining a Polish forced labor group that was later incorporated into the Russian Army; spending time hunting for Nazi war criminals after the war; and living in Europe for several years until he immigrated to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

    Jerry von Halle, born on December 2, 1922 in Hamburg, Germany, describes his family and childhood; learning the Hitler salute in school and having to fly the Nazi flag over his house on holidays; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands with his family in 1933 to get away from the Nazi party in Germany; the German invasion of the Netherlands; the Gestapo arresting and sending him to prison; being sent to Mauthausen with his brother and other boys but returning because he claimed to have tuberculosis; learning to be a shoemaker to avoid deportation; hiding in a house in the countryside with his family but returning to Amsterdam with his mother; going into hiding with his mother in the small apartment that belonged to one of his former teachers; his hider being caught and arrested four weeks before the end of the war and having to find a new place to hide; his liberation by Canadian troops; being arrested after the war with his mother because of their German passports but shortly being released when the authorities realized through what they had been; and immigrating to the United States in 1945.

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

    Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall, born in 1929 in Klyucharki, Czechoslovakia (Kliucharky, Ukraine), discusses her childhood; her father immigrating to the United States but being unable to arrange for her entire family to come over before the war began; no longer being able to attend school and experiencing increased tensions with her neighbors after the German annexation of Czechoslovakia; being forced to move into the ghetto with her family; being loaded onto a train after spending several weeks in the ghetto and arriving in Auschwitz two and a half days later; pretending that she was 15, so she would be old enough to work; her assignment to carry rocks between two places; being sent to the gas chambers during a selection but getting rescued just before she entered the gas chamber itself; working in an airplane factory with six hundred women; running into a forest with a friend and walking to a town that had been liberated by the Russian military; being given an apartment, food, clothing, and medical attention by the Russians; returning home to find her house destroyed; living in her grandmother’s house with other survivors and living off of the money her father sent her; learning that she had an uncle who had survived and sneaking across the border into non-communist Czechoslovakia to reunite with him; and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with her father.

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

    Ralph Codikow, born in 1930, in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes his family; the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941 and his brother shortly thereafter being shot at the Seventh Fort; his and his mother’s confinement to the Kaunas ghetto, where his mother saved them by pretending to be married to a male friend; his mother using her husband’s Lithuanian military service papers to forgo deportation to the Ninth Fort; being saved by his work in a ceramics factory when the children’s Aktions were decreasing the number of children in the ghetto; his and his mother’s deportation to Stutthof, where they were separated; his transfer to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau in Germany, and then to Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau; contracting measles but being considered healthy enough to go on a forced march to Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany, in the winter; his liberation at Buchenwald in April 1945; moving to France after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

    Ruth Borsos, born in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, describes her family; moving to the Netherlands after Kristallnacht in 1938; her and her father obtaining permits to sail to the United States but not being able to do so when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940; her deportation to Westerbork in 1943 and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; being interned with her father in a camp near the Swiss border when an exchange agreement with the Allies broke down; being chosen to be traded for German prisoners because of their foreign passports; their liberation from the internment camp by French forces on April 23, 1945; spending some time in a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp after the war; returning to the Netherlands in 1947 and receiving a visa to immigrate to the United States; and marrying another Holocaust survivor, whom she met in Washington, DC.

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

    Simone Marguerite Lipman (née Weil), born on April 4, 1920 in Ringendorf, France, describes her family; participating in a Jewish scouting organization, Les Eclaireurs Israélites de France, with her brother; moving to Strasbourg, France, a city with a vibrant Jewish community; graduating from high school in 1938 and moving to southern France to care for her elderly grandmother; relocating to Blâmont, France because of fears of Nazi invasion; training in early childhood education and working at a private school in Paris, France for a few months until she returned to take care of her mother who was extremely ill; the German invasion of France in May 1940; packing up her family’s belongings and driving towards southern France; arriving in Périgeaux, France, where her family had to register as Jews; going to the Rivesaltes camp in France to work for the Organization for Children’s Rescue, for which she distributed food, cared for the children, and tried to find ways to get them out of the camp; helping to rescue hundreds of children with the Catholic Church after the Nazis began to round up children in late 1942; working to reopen many children’s homes after the war ended; receiving a scholarship from America’s National Council of Jewish Women for her work during the war; moving to the United States in 1946 to attend Tulane University, where she received a master’s degree in social work; returning to Europe, where she trained employees of children’s homes to deal with the special needs of young Holocaust survivors; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

    Shony Alex Braun, born on July 14, 1930 in Transylvania, Romania (possibly Cristuru Secuiesc, Romania), describes his family and early childhood; learning to play the violin at age five; the occupation of his town by Hungarian forces in 1940 and by the Germans in 1944; being deported to Auschwitz in May 1944; his transfer into the Natzweiler (Struthof) camp system in France and then to Dachau, where American forces liberated him in April 1945; his immigration to the United States in 1950; and becoming a professional composer and violinist.

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

    Doriane Kurz, born in Vienna, Austria in March 1936, describes her family and early childhood; moving to Maastricht, Netherlands and then Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1939 for her father’s business; experiencing several Nazi air raids over Amsterdam; Dutch Jews losing their businesses in 1942; her parents being imprisoned for trying to escape from the country and then getting deported to Westerbork; her father’s transfer to Auschwitz on November 10, 1942 and never being heard from again; her mother’s return to Amsterdam to take care of her and her brother; going into hiding with two farmers in the countryside; her capture and deportation to Westerbork with her mother and brother at the end of 1943; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen; contracting typhus in March 1944; being liberated by English troops while on a train ride; going to a displaced persons camp in Maastricht in June 1945; her mother’s death in March 1945 due to cancer; and immigrating to the United States in July 1945 with her brother to live with her uncle.

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

    David Lieberman, born in Częstochowa, Poland on December 31, 1925, describes his family; living through pogroms as a young child; having to move into the town’s ghetto and perform forced labor after the German occupation; seeing many of his family members deported to camps; his deportation to Treblinka, where he escaped after eleven days by cutting a hole in the fence with wire cutters that he had stolen; running with two friends to the house of a nearby farmer who put the three onto a train headed back to Częstochowa; reuniting with one brother, his sister, and his mother upon his return; being taken to another concentration camp, where he worked in a munitions factory as a bullet maker; the camp’s liberation and traveling by train to Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where he entered a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency camp; traveling to Italy with the intention of taking a boat to Palestine but being returned to Karlovy Vary by the Italian government; and soon immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

    Laura Margolis, born in Constantinople, Turkey in 1903, describes her family; immigrating to the United States in 1908 and settling in Ohio; becoming a social worker for the Jewish Welfare Society of Cleveland after graduating from college; joining the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and going to Havana, Cuba, where she was in charge of sheltering and feeding Jewish refugees; her transfer to Shanghai, China in May 1941, where she aided over 8,000 Jewish refugees; her capture by Japanese forces after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and going into an internment camp; faking an illness to be transported to an American hospital, where she knew a doctor; the doctor lying about her health and refusing to release her from the hospital; returning to the United States as part of a prisoner of war exchange in 1944; being sent to Barcelona, Spain in 1945 by the JDC to aid Jewish refugees; helping to organize a parcel-sending program to former prisoners of concentration camps after their liberation; moving to Israel in 1953; and returning to the United States in 1983 to retire.

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

    Paul Strassman, born on January 24, 1929 in Trenčín, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), discusses his father’s work as an army officer for Austria-Hungary in World War I; the antisemitism his family experienced in the 1930s, which led them to consider escaping the country; his father divesting his share of his business; getting baptized, so they could avoid deportation; going into hiding in late August 1944; his father’s brief emergence from hiding and getting caught by the Gestapo, who sent him to Sachsenhausen; joining the Jegorov Brigade, a partisan group, in September 1944 and remaining in it until April 1945; joining the Czech Army in April 1945 as a noncommissioned officer and going to his station in Bratislava, Slovakia until the end of the war; remaining in Czechoslovakia but leaving just before the Communists took power in 1948; living briefly in Paris, France and London, England before immigrating to the United States in October 1948; and discovering that he was the sole survivor of his family.

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

    Ernest James, born in 1920 in Ord, NE, describes his family; joining the California National Guard in 1940; holding the position of sergeant and being called into active service in 1941; being stationed along the coast of San Francisco, CA and then going on to serve as platoon leader and company commander of the 238th Engineer Combat Battalion in the later years of the war; his unit’s attachment to the 1st Army and the 7th Corps; landing in Europe, where they swept through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany; reaching Nordhausen in April 1945 and finding workers from a V-2 missile and arms plant; ordering the German civilians to begin burying the large number of people who had already died; and assisting in the guarding of a nearby camp containing approximately 80,000-100,000 military prisoners of war.

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

    Chaim Engel, born in January 1916, describes growing up in Łódź, Poland; his experiences with feeling different as a Jew growing up; fighting in the Polish Army during the war and getting captured as a prisoner of war; being released and traveling to Lublin to work as a farmhand; his father’s and step-mother’s transport to Sobibór in June 1942; going to Izbica Lubelska with a friend to join a partisan unit; being caught and sent on a transport in September 1942 with about eight hundred people to Sobibór, where he worked sorting the clothes of people who had come into the camp; getting beaten for stealing pants on a couple of occasions; meeting his future wife Selma when they were both assigned to sort clothes; participating in the Sobibór uprising and escaping with Selma to a farm where they stayed until June 1944; his liberation by Russian troops and going to Parczew, Poland, where he and Selma had a child and started to re-organize their lives; moving to Holland, where they stayed until 1951 when they immigrated to Israel; and his and Selma’s immigration to the United States in 1957.

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

    Selma Engel (née Wynberg), born in Groningen, Netherlands in 1922, describes her family and childhood; moving to Zwolle, Netherlands when she was seven years old; her family’s ownership of a kosher hotel; her father dying of a heart attack in 1941; the German invasion of the Netherlands and the confiscation of her family’s hotel; moving with her mother into the home of another Jewish family; receiving help from a Catholic priest in 1942 to hide in a non-Jewish family’s home; never seeing her mother and brothers again; hiding in a nurse’s home in Utrecht, Netherlands for a few months until she moved into another family’s house, where the police soon discovered her; being sent to an Amsterdam prison for three months; her deportation in 1943 to the transit camp in Vught, Netherlands, from which she went to Westerbork, where she worked in the laundry room; her transfer to Sobibór, where she had to sort clothes and clean the woods and railroads; contracting typhus; meeting Chaim, her future husband, when they had to dance in front of the Germans; escaping with Chaim from Sobibór during the uprising and hiding in the woods for several weeks; staying with a farmer in exchange for money for nine months; the farmer taking her and Chaim to Chełm, Poland in 1944; their liberation in July 1944; immigrating to Israel in 1951; and immigrating to the United States in 1957.

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

    Morris Engelson, born in 1935 in Paberze, Lithuania, describes his family; his father’s work in the grain business; the Soviet invasion in 1939; the German invasion in 1941 and forcing the Jews of Paberze into a ghetto; dressing up as a peasant woman with his mother to escape the ghetto that was soon liquidated by the Einsatzgruppen in September 1941; moving around and hiding in different farms with his mother; being smuggled to the Lithuanian-Polish border and ending up in another ghetto; reuniting with his father in April 1943 and hiding in a barn and then a farmer’s attic; moving westward towards the end of the war and arriving in the American zone in Germany; going to a Berlin displaced persons camp and later to the Gobrasa displaced persons camp in Bavaria after the war; and immigrating to the United States after four years.

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

    Lonia Mosak, born on July 20, 1922 in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, Poland, describes her family; moving to Ciechanów, Poland when she was young; attending a separate Jewish school in Poland and serving in a Zionist youth group; completing her school education in 1936; becoming seriously ill with typhus after the German invasion of Poland in 1939 but recovering even though Jewish physicians could not use medicine to contain the epidemic; her internment in Neustadt, a labor camp in Germany; being split up from her family in 1942 and transported to Auschwitz, where she remained until January 18, 1945 doing forced labor; being forced on a death march to Gross-Rosen and then to Ravensbrück, where she was liberated by the Soviet Army on April 30, 1945; returning to Ciechanów after her liberation; residing for short periods in Łódź and Bialystok to await the return of her last brother from Russia; marrying in Austria after the war; immigrating to a Polish-Jewish neighborhood of Chicago, IL in 1946; and having two children and eventually bringing her brother to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

    Agnes Grossman Aranyi, born on May 2, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; her father being drafted into forced labor camps from 1939 until 1942 when he was finally deported; attending Jewish school until 1942 when the war began in Hungary; the restrictions on Jewish life in Budapest; being warned by a friend to disappear because he knew that the round-ups were to begin soon; meeting a woman who worked for the underground and who took them to live as Christians in a Swedish house set up by Raoul Wallenberg; the Germans invading their home and forcing them into a ghetto; the Russians arriving to liberate the Budapest ghetto; living under Russian oppression until 1956, when she escaped to Austria with her fiancé during the Hungarian Revolution; and immigrating to North Carolina shortly thereafter.

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

    David Bergman, born on May 3, 1931 in Beckov, Czechoslovakia (present day Velykyĭ Bychkiv, Ukraine), describes his family and childhood; the German occupation of his town, previously annexed by Hungary, in 1944; his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1944; being transferred with his father to Płaszow, Gross-Rosen, and then Reichenbach an der Fils; being among three of 150 people in a cattle car who survived a transport to Dachau; being placed on a train to Innsbruck, Austria three days before the Americans arrived in Dachau; his liberation while on a death march from Innsbruck toward the front line of combat between United States and German troops; going into in an American hospital and rehabilitating; traveling to his old family home and finding it occupied by a Russian family; discovering that everyone in his family except him had perished; immigrating to the United States, where he settled in Cleveland, Ohio; and joining the American military to fight in the Korean War.

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

    Lila Lam Nawakowska, born on November 24, 1924 in Stanislawów, Poland (Stanislav, Ukraine), describes growing up in a large family; the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet occupation of Stanislav until June 1941, when the Soviets withdrew, and the Germans entered and constructed a ghetto; her father becoming the chairperson of the ghetto’s Judenrat because he was such an influential businessman in their community; remaining in the ghetto with her family until December 1942, when they were able to obtain falsified Aryan papers and escape on the eve of the ghetto's liquidation in January 1943; renting an apartment in Warsaw, Poland and remaining there until the Warsaw uprising, when she was transported to Mauthausen; briefly spending time doing forced labor in Steyr, a sub-camp of Mauthausen and in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); her liberation by Soviet soldiers in May 1945; and reuniting with her mother and future husband shortly after the end of the war.

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Yaffa Rosenthal, born in Solotvyno, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) on October 7, 1926, describes her family and childhood; her experiences with antisemitism as a child; the Ukrainians taking over her town in 1938 and learning in a different language in school; her father losing his job and having to work in mines and on a cattle farm to support his family; receiving a notice that her family would be taken away in the early summer of 1941; her deportation to Yasinya (IAsinia), Ukraine and then being marched toward Galicia, Poland; escaping from the Germans and going to live with her uncle in Oradea, Romania and then with her sister in Budapest, Hungary; having a somewhat normal life until the German occupation of Hungary in 1944; hiding in the Budapest ghetto until January 1945 when she was liberated by Russian troops; trying to survive after the war and receiving help from the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with her sister in Debrecen, Hungary and then returning with her to Budapest; participating in the Budapest Zionist organization and immigrating to Israel in 1948; getting married to an American man in 1959; and immigrating to the United States to settle in New York, NY.

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

    Eve Wagszul Rich, born in Kovel', Ukraine, describes her family and childhood; the German invasion and having to move into the ghetto; the Germans bursting into her home one night and killing her father in front of her; immediately running away into the forest and going to nearby villages, where she met peasants who gave her some food; going into hiding with a group of Carmelite Nuns; the Germans discovering her and sending her to Majdanek; escaping with a friend during a transport and going to Bavaria to work on a farm; her liberation by American forces; and immigrating to New York to live with her grandmother’s sister.

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

    Magda Mezei Lapidus, born on July 18, 1923 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her family and childhood; attending the Commercial Academy of Budapest for two years; first realizing the danger posed by the Nazis when they invaded Austria in 1938; seeing several young Hungarian men shipped out to labor camps starting in 1941; her brother being taken away to a labor camp in 1943; the German invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944; being forced into the Budapest ghetto and living in the Star of David House; her father returning to live with them in June 1944; being forced on a march with her father to the outskirts of Budapest, at which point she was separated from her father and never saw him again; hiding in a bush on her march and ripping her identifying star off and returning to Budapest to reunite with her mother and brother; going to the Spanish Legation near the ghetto and receiving a safety pass to move into a house protected from German invasion; remaining in the house until January 18, 1945, when the Russians liberated Budapest; and discovering the fate of her father.

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

    Avraham Ronai, born on September 14, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes growing up in a religious family; attending a secular public school and a Jewish school at night in Budapest; not experiencing many difficulties under the pro-Nazi Hungarian regime; the German invasion of Budapest in March 1944 but not really suffering until the Nazis took full control over Hungary in October 1944; the Nazis rounding up Jews into ghettos and deporting them; seeking help at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest and receiving a space in a Spanish safe-house due to the efforts of Giorgio Perlasca; remaining in the safe-house until the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945; and immigrating to Israel in 1949 because of the oppressive Hungarian Communist regime.

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

    Eva Konigsberg Lang, born on April 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her childhood and family; the Jewish community losing several of its rights when the war began; her relatives arriving from Czechoslovakia to live with her; being forbidden to attend school after March 1944; receiving a protective pass to get food; hearing that the wife of any man in forced labor would not be deported and getting married in 1944; hiding in a Spanish protective house on St. Paul Street and getting food supplies provided by the Jewish Council; the German occupation of Budapest; forging a telegram to prove that they were under Spanish protection and to save themselves from the Arrow Cross; and reflecting on how certain Spanish diplomats saved her life during the war.

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

    Cornelius Loen, born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) on May 2, 1922, describes growing up with a Jewish father and Gentile mother; the German invasion of his town on January 23, 1942 and German troops killing two of his uncles; escaping with his family to Budapest, Hungary, where they lived for ten months; his deportation to a forced labor camp in Hungary, where he remained until 1944; escaping to a nearby barn, where he hid for three days, during the liquidation of the camp; Russian troops liberating him while he hid in this barn; walking to a nearby displaced persons camp, where he met his future wife Masha; taking a Russian transport to Budapest and reuniting with his parents; discovering that his father had survived a concentration camp and his mother had helped to hide and save many Jewish people after her family was taken away; and immigrating to Los Angeles, CA in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

    Thomas Blatt, born in 1927 in Izbica Lubelska, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox family; the establishment of a ghetto run by the Germans after the war began in September 1939; working in a garage, which protected him from early ghetto roundups; trying to escape to Hungary with false papers in 1942 but getting caught; his and his family’s deportation to Sobibór, where his family was gassed immediately; the Germans choosing him as a laborer because of his mechanical skills; participating in and escaping during the Sobibór uprising on October 14, 1943 by escaping through the wire fences and avoiding the land mines; going into hiding with a friend on several farms; hiding in a stable and then in an abandoned brick factory; working as a courier for the Polish underground; and immigrating to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

    Anita Magnus Frank, born on January 29, 1936 in Emmen, Netherlands, describes her family; her move to Breda, Netherlands, where her family was living when the war broke out; the German invasion of 1940 and being told to leave because the Germans were going to bomb the town; walking thirty kilometers to a farm, where they stayed for five days; returning to Breda and experiencing increased persecution; obtaining false passports and assuming Dutch names to shield their Jewish identities in 1942 (Verified from other sources, the name of the individual who assisted Anita and her family was Govardus Pinxteren, who was later honored as Righteous Among the Nations); going into hiding first in a non-Jewish neighbor's home and then in a Quaker family’s home in Bilthoven, Netherlands; living as “normal” Dutch schoolchildren except having to hide their Jewish identities and constantly being in fear; leaving their hiding place in August 1944 because the Quaker family was too scared to keep them; returning to Limburg with her parents; the liberation of Limburg in September 1944; returning to Breda in April 1945 and living in an uninhabitable, bombed house for six months until they could move into a bigger and better house in the same town; and immigrating to the United States on December 7, 1952 because antisemitism was still a problem after the war.

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

    Guta Blass Weintraub, born on January 22, 1924 in Łódź, Poland, describes her childhood and family; her experiences with antisemitism in her youth; attending a private, Jewish, all-girls high school until the German invasion in September 1939; moving from Łódź to Wierzbnik-Starachowice in December 1939 because of fears about what the Germans had planned; the formation of a ghetto and having to share a home with at least one other family; meeting her future husband when he came to her home in the ghetto asking for her father to make him a suit with special pockets; being rounded up in the ghetto’s marketplace and sent to labor camps; managing to smuggle out some pictures with her as she, her mother, and her father were taken to a woodworking camp; surviving several shootings and experiencing starvation; her deportation to Auschwitz in 1942 and staying there until 1944, when she was transferred to Ravensbrück; her liberation by the Swedish Red Cross; and traveling to Sweden to recover.

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

    Henry Schmelzer, born in March 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes growing up as the youngest of four children in a middle-class family; graduating from a Jewish high school in 1938 shortly before it closed; his brothers fleeing, while he and the rest of his family endured Nazi raids on their home until they were evicted; his father losing his business and having severe depression; escaping to England on December 18, 1938 and finding refuge at a children's camp; remaining in England throughout the war and living with a group of young Zionists; enlisting in the British Army in 1943; being sent to a mountain unit, the 52nd Division; receiving his degree at the London School of Economics; spending 18 years in Israel; and immigrating to the United States in 1969.

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Liebowitz Goldkind, born in Volosyanka, Czechoslovakia (Ukraine) on July 9, 1928, describes her childhood and family; the Hungarian occupation of Czechoslovakia and going into a ghetto in Uzhgorod, Ukraine; maintaining religious traditions in the ghetto; the Germans taking over the ghetto and deporting her and her family to Auschwitz; her transport to another camp and hearing bombs going off during the train ride; arriving in a German camp and working in a munitions factory; going on a truck with two hundred other girls to Bergen-Belsen, where English troops eventually liberated her; the Swedish Red Cross offering to take care of her and others in Sweden; discovering that only one of her sisters survived the war and had immigrated to the United States; and following her sister to the United States, where she settled in New York, NY and got married.

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

    Johanne Eva Liebmann (née Hirsch), born in 1924 in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her family’s deportation to the Gurs camp in southern France in October 1940; being rescued by the Children's Aid Society in September 1941 and hiding in a children’s home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France until 1943, when she obtained false papers and crossed into Switzerland; discovering that her mother had died in Auschwitz; getting married in Geneva, Switzerland in 1945 and having a daughter in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

    Max Liebmann, born on September 3, 1921 in Mannheim, Germany, describes his family and childhood; attending school until December 1937, when he had to quit because of the antisemitism he was experiencing; his memories of Kristallnacht; his father travelling to Greece and Italy to do business since he could no longer do it in Germany; he and his mother being called into a Wehrmacht office shortly after the war began in September 1939; being made to do forced labor harvesting fields in East Germany; being deported with his mother to the Gurs concentration camp in France; playing the cello as part of several concerts given at Gurs; meeting his future wife in the camp through a connection his mother made; managing inventories for French camp officials; his transfer to the Talluyers camp in July 1942; escaping to Le Chambon, France to reunite with his girlfriend for a short period until they both had to find hiding places; finding a guide to take him through France and into Switzerland; arriving in Ouchy, Switzerland and receiving work papers on December 22, 1942; reuniting with his girlfriend in Switzerland on February 28, 1943 and marrying her in Geneva on April, 14, 1945; having a daughter in 1946; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

    Giorgio Perlasca, born on January 31, 1910 in Como, Italy, describes growing up with a father who worked for the Italian government in Padua; fighting in the Spanish Civil War and later taking a position in an Italian trade firm; working around Eastern Europe after Italy entered World War II in 1940; maintaining an official position with the Italian Trade Commission and living in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1941 and 1942; continuing to work for the Italian government until the fall of Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1944; his internment by the Hungarian government from April to October 1944 after the Germans took control of Hungary; escaping his internment with falsified papers provided by a member of the Swiss Diplomatic Corps; adopting a Spanish nationality because of his veteran status from the Spanish Civil War; posing as the Spanish Charge d'Affaires after the flight of the appointed Charge d'Affaires for Spain in December 1944; helping to establish of several safe-houses in Budapest to shelter Jews under Spanish protection; coordinating his efforts with representatives of other neutral nations, including Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, and the representatives of the Vatican, Portugal, and Switzerland, to shelter and save Jews from deportation; and returning to Italy to start a family in February 1945.

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

    David J. Selznick, born in Anykščiai, Lithuania in 1912, describes growing up as the youngest child in a large family; going to Ukmergė, Lithuania to study at a yeshiva in order to become a rabbi; his father’s death shortly before his twelfth birthday and becoming the legal master of his father's estate; deciding to sell off his family's farm and livestock and move to Kaunas, Lithuania; attending a Yiddish night school in Kaunas and working during the day as a retailer of office supplies; his experiences with antisemitism, which hurt his business; selling his business to two Christians but remaining as a silent partner; receiving a visa to serve as a diplomatic envoy to New York because of his business connections but instead deciding to leave for Portugal; returning to Kaunas in 1936 because he was worried about his mother and sisters; his deportation to the Kaunas ghetto in 1941; performing forced labor until late 1944 because he had worked for the ghetto Kommandant; smuggling food to the Jewish prisoners in the ghetto; escaping during the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto in July 1944 and fleeing into the countryside, where he hid with some other Jews; his liberation by the Soviet Army; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

    Elisabeth Model (née Dittmann), born in Bayreuth, Germany in 1897, describes her family; getting married in 1922 and moving to Amsterdam, where she worked as a sculptor; returning to Germany after Kristallnacht to help her mother emigrate; helping her mother sneak into the Netherlands with the help of a Dutch underground organization; her husband being imprisoned for one month by the Nazis after being falsely accused of smuggling money into the Netherlands; bribing a woman at the Spanish Consulate to give her and her husband exit visas in 1941; traveling to Madrid, Spain; and eventually arriving in to New York, NY in 1942.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

    Joseph Levine, born in Molodezhnyi, Russia on July 20, 1907, describes the difficulties his family faced in World War I; his family’s immigration to San Francisco, CA on February 12, 1917 and then settling in New Haven, CT; attending Franklin and Marshall College and then the graduate school for Jewish social work; working with the Jewish Board of Guardians for six years until 1941; starting to work as a parole officer in 1941; joining the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1945 as a social worker; going to Schwandorf, Germany, where he worked with many Polish Jews; his transfer to Dachau in October of 1945, where he also worked closely with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; bearing witness to the war crime trials at Nuremberg; and returning to the United States, where he worked as the executive secretary of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society.

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

    Eugenia Blau Szamosi, born in Transylvania in 1914, describes her family, childhood, and growing up in Budapest, Hungary; her experiences with antisemitism in Hungary; marrying in November 1941 and having a son the following year and a girl the next; her husband avoiding forced labor by spending time in a mental hospital; having to move into the Jewish section of the town and wear the yellow star after the German invasion of Hungary; escaping from the Budapest ghetto and looking for a flat in town; pretending to be a Transylvanian refugee because she had Aryan looks; returning to the ghetto to work with her husband in a children’s home and await deportation; getting the supplies to make shutzpasses for people; getting Spanish passports for her and her husband, which helped to save them from deportation; her family’s liberation and her husband’s work for the International Red Cross after the war; and immigrating to Israel in June 1949.

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

    Irene Dynkiewicz Silver, born in January 1933 in Łódź, Poland, describes her family and the Jewish community in her town before the war; her family’s move to Warsaw just as the German bombardment of Warsaw began; the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto wall; learning how to read and write from one of her cousins; wearing a kerchief and putting on lipstick to look older and avoid deportation during ghetto-round ups; going into hiding in January 1943 with a woman who had managed to attain a Christian identity for her; not being able to leave the home in which she hid and reading to pass her time; attending school for the first time after the war; traveling to London with several other children to attend a boarding school established by a rabbi; and immigrating to Brooklyn, NY in January 1950 to live with her aunt and uncle.

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

    Alice Lok Cahana, born on February 7, 1929 in Sárvár, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her relationships with her parents, grandfather, and siblings; her experiences in the ghetto in Sárvár, which was situated in a brick factory; her work with children in the ghetto; her deportation by train to Auschwitz; her experiences in "C Lager" of Auschwitz; her memories of selections by Dr. Josef Mengele; her successful rescue of her sister Edith from the infirmary in Auschwitz; her survival of the Auschwitz gas chamber because of a malfunction in the chamber; her memories of camp guard Irma Grese; her transfer from Auschwitz to the Guben concentration camp where she worked in an ammunition factory; her participation in a death march with a group from Guben; her escape and subsequent return to the death march group; her separation from her sister in Bergen-Belsen; her evacuation from Bergen-Belsen and transport to a hospital in Sweden; her reunion with her father in Hungary; her illegal immigration to Israel by boat; her return to Sweden with her husband Moshe Cahana; the Cahana family's move to the United States; and her thoughts on the rescue efforts of Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary.

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

    Eva Brust Cooper, born in 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; living on the Pest side of the Danube River; her memories of the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944; the various types of persecution experienced by the Jews in Budapest including the wearing of yellow Stars of David; her father receiving papers from Raoul Wallenberg to avoid deportation; the family's time in hiding in various locations around Budapest; her and her mother's attempts to appear Catholic by going to church, learning the Catechism, and acquiring false identification papers; her family's return to Budapest at the end of World War II; her father's participation in negotiations with Adolf Eichmann in hopes of reducing the number of Hungarian Jews to be deported; her family's immigration to the United States and their new life in New York City; and her activities with various Holocaust survivor groups.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

    Frieda Belinfante, born in 1904 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her family; being raised without a religion because her father was Jewish and her mother was Gentile; the death of her sister in 1915 after an appendectomy and the divorce of her parents soon after; the death of her father in 1923 from natural causes; not being surprised by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands; getting married in 1931 and divorcing in 1936; becoming the first female conductor of a professional orchestra in Amsterdam; participating in the cultural commission of Amsterdam and receiving instructions from the Nazis about what artists should or should not do; making false identification cards to help save people; discovering her homosexuality but trying to keep it a secret during the war; living disguised as a man for three months; taking on a new female identity and fleeing to Switzerland; participating in several activities of sabotage with other gay and lesbian refugees; returning to Amsterdam after the war and discovering the fates of the members of the resistance group in which she participated; immigrating to the United States in 1947 for a change of scenery in her work; participating in a string of concerts in the US; and her life in America.

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

    Philip Vock, born in 1929 in Paris, France, discusses his family background and childhood; the German invasion of France in 1940; the confiscation of the family business by the Germans; antisemitism that he encountered in the media and in personal contacts; leaving the occupied zone of France in 1941 and finding refuge in a town on the Spanish border; the German occupation of their town in November 1942; fleeing to Nice, France, which was occupied by the Italians; being denounced to and arrested by the Gestapo as they were preparing to move to another town; being transported to Drancy concentration camp in 1943; life in Drancy and the possibility of escape from the camp; his deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944; the intake process at Auschwitz and then his outside work detail; the black market within Auschwitz; a death march in January 1945 as the Allies were approaching the camp; life in Buchenwald and liberation; returning to Paris in April 1945; the return of his mother and uncle; and nightmares that he had after liberation.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

    Joseph Gatenio, born in 1929 in Thessalonike, Greece, discusses his childhood; the German occupation of Thessalonike in 1940; his deportation from Greece with his family in 1943; the week-long journey to Birkenau; selections at Birkenau; the deaths of family members; his participation in the camp orchestra; how orchestra members helped him survive; being forced to leave the orchestra; the brutality of the SS and Kapos; being transferred from Birkenau to Henkel, then Sachsenhausen, Ohrdruf, Sachsenhausen again, Neubrandenburg, Ravensbrück, and finally Ludwigslust; the appalling conditions in the camps; staying in Ludwigslust until May 1 when they were transported to another camp; his liberation by American soldiers the next day; joining the Russian liberators and wandering throughout Europe for a few months; returning to Thessalonike in December 1945; and the long-term effects of his experiences during the Holocaust on his well-being.

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

    Mariette Moscovici, born on January 24, 1916 in Iasi, Romania, discusses her family; her father, Hani Garfiender, who was a merchant and owned a store for travel items; her mother, Cecile Garfiender, who was a housewife; attending Alexandru Labrian elementary school; attending Institute Notre Dame for high school; living in Iasi on Cuza Voda street and later on Ice Bratianu street; Rumania entering the war on June 22, 1941; German soldiers entering on the night of June 29, 1941 and taking away all the Jewish men from the shelter; going to the Jewish community the next morning to ask about the fate of the Jewish men and not receiving an answer; stopping at a friend’s house on the way home to warn the men in the family about the arrest of the Jewish men; being stopped on the way home and directed into a convoy; finding her mother and sister in the convoy; being taken to the police headquarters; more Jews arriving at the headquarters wearing pajamas and night gowns because they were taken without anytime to get dressed; the women and girls being released while the men and boys over the age 13 were detained; the chaos of the scene; her father arriving at the shelter in the afternoon; the numerous false alarms to concentrate the population in shelters; the German soldiers enter the shelter around 5pm and demanding their jewelry and money; giving one of the soldiers her money and being instructed by the soldier to go home and not enter the shelters; leaving her aunt’s house with her family the next morning (June 30, 1941) and going home; seeing posters on wall that state the “Communist Jews” of Iasi have been arrested and killed and the rest of the population can continue their lives; staying home and not knowing what happened to other people; going to a market with her cousin dressed like peasants and seeing dead bodies on the street; Jews not being allowed to travel; and the propaganda in the news.

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

    Henry van den Boogard, born in Holland in 1915, discusses his childhood in Tilburg, Netherlands; his early education and seminary days; his ordination to the priesthood and first mass in 1942; his memories of Jews being helped by non-Jews in the Netherlands; his personal activities with the resistance movement in southern Netherlands such as making false identification papers for various persons, smuggling children into the Netherlands for hiding, and finding hiding places in homes for Jews and other persons; his dealings with the black market in the Netherlands in order to clothe and feed people in hiding; his reflections on antisemitism in the Netherlands; the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940; the feelings of native Hollanders toward the "Dutch Nazis"; and his life after World War II in the United States where he worked to integrate Catholic churches in Virginia.

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

    Jack Moss (né Jakuv Mozelsio), born in 1924 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family background; his encounters with Polish antisemitism; his family's feelings about the possibility of a German occupation; the restrictions imposed on Jews by the Germans; the lucrative business that the Germans brought to his father's tannery; odd jobs that he did at the request of the Germans, including helping to tear down a statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko in Plac Wolności; a German friend who agreed to be a stand-in owner of the tannery, so it would not be confiscated; his uncle, aunt, and other family members fleeing to Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland for safety while he and his parents stayed in Łódź; the return of his sister and cousin from Tomaszów Mazowiecki; and how the rest of his family in Tomaszów Mazowiecki perished while he and the others who remained in Łódź were saved.

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

    Boleslaw Dytlow, born in 1932 in Pruszków, Poland, describes growing up in a Romani family; the German occupation in September 1939; moving to Warsaw, Poland with his family and earning money there as a musician; being captured on the streets in Warsaw in late 1942 and delivered into the Warsaw ghetto; meeting other Romanies in the ghetto and forming a plan to escape; escaping to the Aryan side in the spring of 1943; leaving Warsaw and only traveling by night; being ambushed by German soldiers on the outskirts of Kielce, Poland; successfully overpowering the Germans and escaping back to Warsaw; and remaining hidden outside of Warsaw until the end of the war.

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

    Mel London, born in 1923, discusses growing up in the Bronx, NY with immigrant parents; his awareness of the political situation in Europe before World War II; his concern for family in Europe; his identification with being Jewish; enlisting in the United States Army signal corps in May 1943; going to Officer Candidate School; antisemitism he encountered in the army and prejudice because of his friendships with black soldiers; seeing the aftermath of World War II in Europe; his knowledge of the Nuremberg war crime trials; becoming a documentary filmmaker; the request to interview Albert Speer after his book "Inside the Third Reich" was published in 1970; preparing for the interview; different attitudes towards Speer among Germans of different generations; and his perceptions of Speer.

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

    Henry Cohen, born in 1922 in New York City, NY, describes growing up in a family of Jewish immigrants; receiving a master’s degree in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; enlisting in the United States Army in 1944 and fighting with the infantry during the German campaign; his appointment as the director of the Föhrenwald displaced persons camp in Germany in January of 1946; leading the camp until July 1946; and returning to the United States to teach at the City College of New York.

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

    Gisela Feldman, born in 1923, discusses her first encounters with antisemitism in Berlin, Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933 and her political awareness at that time; her father's deportation to Poland in 1938 because he was a Polish citizen; the confiscation of her family's apartment; being barred from going to school; her mother obtaining visas to Cuba and booking passage on the SS St. Louis; her father not being able to leave Poland in time to join them on the SS St. Louis; departing with her mother and sister from Germany in 1939; the atmosphere on board the ship; their arrival in Cuba and the announcement that their visas were no longer valid; the desperation of some passengers on board; sailing near the coast of the United States during the return journey to Europe; her family being selected to disembark in England; her job as a domestic in a convalescent home for Jewish refugees in Broadstairs and then as a nanny for a family with two children in London; her involvement in war work, making uniforms and gunpowder bags; meeting and marrying her husband in London in 1943; her mother's attempts to get permission for her father to emigrate from Poland; and her life in England after the war.

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

    Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming describe how Bert grew up in Warsaw and Łódź; Bert’s family’s deportation to Hannover, Germany before Kristallnacht; Bert’s deportation from Hannover in 1938, receiving aid from the Joint Distribution Committee, and going through the camps; Irene witnessing people being smuggled from her ghetto and fleeing to Siberia; Irene holding on to her violin through her time in the camps; their experiences with Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski and his relationship with the Nazis in the Łódź ghetto; Bert having to shave his head and watch people steal food while in the camps; Bert’s work in several different factories and the transport of all of the goods he produced to Germany; and their immigration to New York and life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

    Norman Belfer, born on September 27, 1922 in Wodzislaw, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; the German invasion of Wodzislaw in 1939 and hiding in his family’s factory warehouse until they were discovered; the confiscation of his father’s feather and down business; being forced to clean roads around the town with other youth; going to work for a nearby German company while the rest of his family went into hiding in an underground shelter outside of Wodzislaw; his family’s capture and transfer into the Kraków ghetto; returning home, where he retrieved some of the money his family had buried before they had left; hiding for several weeks in his father’s former factory; joining his family in the Kraków ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto on March 13, 1943; his family’s transfer to Płaszów, where an SS guard shot his father, and his mother and sisters were sent elsewhere; being transferred with his brother to Mauthausen, where they volunteered as carpenters until they were sent to Melk; digging tunnels and moving machinery for several months at Melk with his brother; going on a barge to Linz and then going on a death march to Ebensee; his liberation by American forces on May 5, 1945; walking to Salzburg with his brother but deciding to go to Palestine through Italy; and remaining and working in Italy until he immigrated to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

    Carola Stern Steinhardt, born on March 8, 1925 in Nieder Ohmen, Germany, describes losing her non-Jewish friends after 1933; her experiences during Kristallnacht; attending a boarding school in Bad Nauheim until the Gestapo stormed it and harassed students; her father’s deportation to Buchenwald; her mother’s and sister’s arrival in Bad Nauheim; going to Berlin to do hard labor at an airplane factory until her deportation to Auschwitz in March 1943; her selection to be a camp “beautician,” which involved cutting the hair off of incoming prisoners; reuniting with her sister in August 1944 and learning that her parents had died; going on a march to Ravensbrück in January 1945; staying in Ravensbrück for four weeks until having to march to Malchow, where she worked in the camp kitchen; her liberation by American forces in May 1945; her internment in the Kammer displaced persons camp in Austria; and immigrating to the United States in July 1946 on an army transport.

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

    Haim Shmueli (né Heinz Ruman Shmoll), born in 1935 in was born in 1935 in Usti nad Labem, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his family and childhood; his mother’s conversion to Judaism, which she renounced when Hitler came to power; moving to Germany in 1938; his father’s involvement in the underground movement; his deportation to Theresienstadt and his memories of the children’s part of the camp; participating in the propaganda movie filmed in Theresienstadt; his liberation from Theresienstadt in 1945; reuniting with his father after the war; and immigrating to Israel with his father in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

    Itka Zygmuntowicz, born April 15, 1926 in Poland (possibly Ciechanów), discusses her family and childhood in Poland before World War II; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; relations between her family and Gentiles in her hometown; her knowledge of politics as a child and involvement in the Zionist movement; the German occupation of her hometown and the restrictions that the Germans imposed on the Jewish population; the confiscation of her family's valuables; a beating that she and her mother suffered at the hands of the Gestapo for not revealing information; her family's deportation to the ghetto in Nové Město in 1941; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and the mass deportation to Auschwitz; her arrival at Auschwitz and her separation from her parents and younger siblings who perished in the camp; finding a friend named Binna in the camp; her forms of spiritual, mental, and physical resistance as a prisoner; her contact with the guards in the camp; her experience sorting the belongings of dead prisoners in the "Kanada" warehouse; a death march in January 1945 to Ravensbrück concentration camp and then a transport to Malchow concentration camp; her liberation during Passover in 1945; recuperating at a hospital in Sweden after the war through the help of the Swedish Red Cross; living in a displaced persons camp in Sweden; leaving the camp with two friends and getting a job; meeting and marrying her husband and the birth of her son in 1948; and her immigration to the United States in 1953.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

    Gertrude Granirer Flor, born in 1921 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, discusses her childhood; the lack of antisemitism she encountered growing up; the Soviet occupation in 1940 and the confiscation of Jewish property; Soviet propaganda and the pressure to inform on others; the arrest and execution of her step-father; involuntary deportations by the Soviets to Siberia, including the deportation of her mother; escaping from a deportation and finding refuge at the conservatory of the Universitatea din Cernauți; meeting and marrying her husband, Sam; the German occupation of Chernivtsi; German restrictions and the establishment of the ghetto in Chernivtsi; the help that the mayor of Chernivtsi extended to the Jewish population; deportation by train to a stone quarry where she and her husband stayed for several weeks; her husband telling the Romanian authorities that he was a dentist, so that they would be transferred to a work detail in a hospital; being liberated by Russian partisans after being in hiding for several days; returning to Chernivtsi and joining the Czech Army; being part of the liberation of Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); immigrating to South America with a stopover in the United States on the way; living in Columbia with an uncle on his coffee plantation for six months and then immigrating to the United States; her feelings about her new country and the difficulties she experienced as an immigrant; and how her experiences during the Holocaust have affected her life.

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

    Renee Scheuer, born in 1909 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; antisemitism in Vienna before World War II; her and her husband’s arrest in November 1938 and the order to leave Austria in three days; traveling to Cologne, Germany and then to Belgium on foot; living in a refugee camp in Antwerp, Belgium; the occupation of Belgium by Germany in 1939 and their attempt to escape to France; returning to Belgium and living in Brussels where they had to wear Star of David badges; receiving a notice to report to a concentration camp; she and her husband going into hiding in Brussels in 1942 and staying in different hiding places until liberation in 1945; the feelings that she had during the events of the Holocaust; the resistance of the Belgian population against the Germans; the fates of her mother and sister; returning to visit Vienna in the 1970s; her immigration to the United States in 1950; and settling in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

    Bent Melchoir, born in Denmark, describes growing up with a father who was a rabbi; the ease of relations between Jews and Christians in Denmark; the help that the Danish Christian community gave to the Jewish community to help them escape to Sweden; raising money with his brother to get Jews out of Denmark; the Danish resistance movement; leaving Copenhagen and arriving in Sweden by small boat; returning to Denmark three weeks after liberation; his surprise at the jubilant welcome given by the Danes when the Jews returned; the re-opening of the local synagogue for the fall holidays in 1945; and working on behalf of Soviet Jewry after the war.

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

    Renata Laqueur, born on November 3, 1919 in Brzeg, Poland, describes growing up in Amsterdam; never considering herself Jewish and attending a Christian school as a child; the German invasion in 1940 and registering as a Jew; her father’s decision to volunteer for the German Army as a medical research officer; her marriage to Paul Goldschmidt on December 24, 1941; becoming involved in the underground movement with Paul; her arrest on February 18, 1943, when the Gestapo took her to a prison for ten days until her transfer to the Vught transit camp in the Netherlands; her transport to the Westerbork transit camp, from where she was soon released because of her father’s connections; being arrested again in November 1943; her and Paul’s transport to Bergen-Belsen on March 15, 1944; writing a daily diary about her experiences in the camp; her liberation by the Soviet Army on April 23, 1945; recovering from illness in a field hospital outside of Dresden; spending a week in a displaced persons camp near Kassel; returning to Amsterdam on July 26, 1945; and immigrating to the United States through Canada in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

    Carl Hirsch, born in 1912, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria and Chernivtsi, Ukraine; his schooling in mathematics and engineering in his university studies; his work as a civil engineer and service in the Romanian Army before World War II; his first experiences with antisemitism when Romania occupied Chernivtsi and when he lived in Bucharest; Soviet occupation of Chernivtsi from 1940 to 1941; the deportation of business owners in Chernivtsi to Siberia; the Soviet withdrawal in June 1941 and Jews fleeing with them; the takeover of the town by Germans and Romanians and the persecution of Jews; finding a job with the railway, so he would not be taken for forced labor; the establishment of the ghetto in Chernivtsi; his marriage to Lotte; witnessing deportations from Chernivtsi; the influx of Romanians into Chernivtsi; the return of many Jews who had fled with the Russians; the integration of Chernivtsi into the Soviet Union in 1945; leaving Chernivtsi and living in Romania from 1945 until 1961; and immigrating to the United States in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

    Lotte Hirsch, born in 1918 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, describes her childhood; her encounters with antisemitism while she attended university; the Soviet occupation of Chernivtsi from 1940 to 1941 and having to stop her university studies and work in a factory; witnessing deportations to Siberia carried out by the Russians; Romanian and German troops taking over Chernivtsi and establishing a ghetto and several restrictions on the Jewish population; hearing about executions carried out by the German and Romanian soldiers; how her fiancé Carl was able to obtain an exemption from deportation because of his profession as an engineer; her marriage to Carl in a civil ceremony in the mayor's office; life under the occupation; witnessing more deportations in 1942; receiving better treatment after a new governor of Bukovina was instated; the return of Carl's cousin from deportation to Transnistria; her liberation by the Russians in 1944; and her immigration to the United States in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

    Walter Meyer, born on May 31, 1926 in Kassel, Germany, describes growing up as a Catholic in a diverse religious community in Düsseldorf; his experiences during Kristallnacht; joining the Hitler Youth in 1940 but then deciding to organize another group to oppose the Hitler Youth; his recruitment into a military academy, to which his father did not allow him to go; assisting French prisoners of war in 1943 until the Gestapo caught him and placed him in a Düsseldorf prison; his transfer to a prison near Frankfurt, where he remained until the spring of 1944 when the prison director recommended him for the army; his deportation to Sachsenhausen and then Ravensbrück; escaping from Ravensbrück and hiding with a farmer who lived nearby; returning to Berlin and then Düsseldorf; recovering from tuberculosis after returning home; and immigrating to the United States in 1958.

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

    Dora Kramen Dimitro, born on January 22, 1922 in Eišiškės, Poland (now Lithuania), describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home with her parents and three siblings; attending Hebrew and Polish schools and experiencing antisemitism; the Russian arrival in Eišiškės in 1939; losing their rights as Jewish citizens when the Germans invaded in 1941; the Germans ordering them to assemble at the synagogue, where they were kept for two days and nights before many were taken away and shot; escaping with her boyfriend with the help of a Lithuanian police officer; the murder of most of her family on September 25 and 26, 1941; going to the Radun ghetto, where she met up with her father, sister, and boyfriend and stayed for ten months until they decided to escape because of ghetto liquidation warnings; running into the woods and trading valuables for food and clothing; living in the woods until late 1942 or early 1943 when they moved into the Hrodna ghetto in Belarus because they had heard of its better conditions; the transports from the ghetto two to three months after her arrival; fleeing to the Nacha Forest in Belarus; joining Jewish and Soviet partisans and staying in their underground bunker through the winter; hiding in homes or in the forest until the Russians liberated her in July 1944; returning to Eišiškės but fleeing when a group of Poles attacked the few remaining Jews there; marrying her boyfriend and living in Vilnius and Warsaw before moving to Israel in 1957; immigrating to the United States in March 1959 with her sister's help; and giving birth to a son soon after her arrival in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

    Herma Barber, born in 1921 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood; experiencing antisemitism after the Anschluss in 1938; her and her parents' unsuccessful attempts to immigrate to the United States and their decision to go to Yugoslavia instead; their journey into Yugoslavia by foot; their arrest in Zagreb, Croatia and spending a week in jail; being confined to the town of Samobor after their release from jail; deportation by the Ustaša in 1941 to Mostar, which the Italian military occupied; being moved to Čapljina by the Italians; traveling to Split, Croatia without permission and being arrested and put in jail by the Italians for a week; being moved to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where she worked in a restaurant and also did knitting for a store; not having enough to eat; going to an Italian-run concentration camp in 1943; their escape from the camp to a partisan-controlled area of Yugoslavia; being in the same town as Randolph Churchill during a British diplomatic mission to the partisans in Drvar in 1944; moving constantly with help from partisans; she and her parents escaping separately to Bari, Italy in 1944 and 1945; her life in the refugee camp at Bari and her marriage in 1946; and her parents' immigration to the United States in 1946 and her immigration to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

    William Zeck (born on March 3, 1915 in New York City, NY) and Belle Mayer Zeck (born on February 22, 1919 in Port Henry, NY) describe their families and childhoods; Belle's work as a New York lawyer and getting a job working for the General Counsel of the Treasury and working on the Foreign Funds Control Bureau; helping the bureau to enforce the Trading With the Enemy Act, which forbade communication with and transmissions to German occupied countries; working on a book analyzing Yugoslavia’s financial laws and investigating Germany’s external assets in the United States; Belle becoming an unofficial expert on German financial affairs at the Department of the Treasury and attending the commission for the Allied nations to outline the principles of law for prosecution and trial of Europe’s major war criminals; Belle meeting William when they were both preparing for the Nuremberg Trials; the deterioration of Belle's health as she prepared for the trials and having to go home; Belle returning to Nuremberg in 1947 for the start of the trial; going back to work for the Department of the Treasury to organize the reconstruction loans for the United Kingdom, France, and Germany; their friendship with Telford Taylor; and William’s return to the United States after six years.

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

    Michel Reynders, born on June 29, 1930, in Uccle, Belgium, describes his experiences as the nephew of Father Bruno Reynders, who ran a rescue network that saved about 350 Jews; growing up in a tight-knit Catholic family; helping Father Bruno in his efforts to hide Jewish children by coercing local families to take them into their homes; being unaware of antisemitism until the war; helping a young girl who had fled from Fascist Italy; the German occupation and the following food shortages, imposed curfews, censored textbooks, and Jewish transports out of Belgium; beginning to observe the restrictions placed on Jewish neighbors in 1942 and realizing that it was primarily Jews who were being taken for forced labor in Germany; his introduction to the resistance movement around the end of 1942 and serving as an escort and messenger for his uncle's rescue service; initially having no idea that the children his uncle asked him to escort were Jewish or that Father Bruno was secretly hiding them throughout Belgium; eventually understanding what his family was doing and that his uncle's actions were secret and extremely risky; his family's decision to hide several Jews; graduating from medical school in 1959 and immigrating to the United States in 1961; and being named as the Honorary Vice-Consul of Belgium.

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

    Marthe Hoffnung Cohn, born on April 13, 1920 in Metz, France, describes her childhood; being forced by the French government to move out of Metz along with all of its other rich families; moving to Poitiers, France, where, in June 1940, Jewish refugees started coming; attending a Red Cross nursing school in Poitiers; escaping with her family to the unoccupied side of France in the summer of 1942; the arrest of her sister Stephanie, who later died in Auschwitz; becoming involved in resistance and rescue operations, which enabled her to get her parents, grandmother, two sisters, and a cousin to the unoccupied zone of France; finishing nursing school in Marseilles; leaving Marseilles for Paris, where she lived with one of her sisters and found a job with a family that did not know she was Jewish; joining the French Army after the liberation of Paris; doing intelligence work for the Army because she could speak German; going undercover as a German nurse and receiving two Croix de Guerre medals, signed by Generals De Lattre and De Gaulle, for her work; going to Vietnam with the French Army after the war; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

    Miriam Kabacznik Shulman, born on June 26, 1918, in Eišiškės, Poland (Lithuania), describes her childhood; her father’s death of typhus during World War I and living with her mother and two brothers; the Russian arrival in Eišiškės in September 1939 and the nationalization of her family’s tannery business; the Lithuanian takeover in 1940 followed by the German invasion on June 23, 1941; the German implementation of edicts that restricted and isolated Jews; the murder of most of the town’s Jews by an einsatzgruppen squad between September 25 and 26, 1941; the help their family’s friends and co-workers gave them throughout the war by hiding money and providing information and hiding places; hiding from the Germans from 1941 through 1944, when they were liberated by Russian soldiers; returning to their home in June 1944 to find an elderly couple living there; deciding to allow the couple to stay and inviting about twenty other Jews to live in their home; living through a Polish pogrom in 1944; fleeing to Vilnius the day after the pogrom and never returning to her home; spending the next years of her life in several displaced persons camps; meeting her future husband Norman in an Italian prison; and immigrating with Norman to the United States, where they had two children.

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

    Anna Szyller Palarczyk, born on July 21, 1918 in Kraków, Poland, describes her family; studying law in Kraków before World War II; working for the underground organization Armed Struggle Alliance; the arrest of everyone in her underground group in June 1942 and their deportation to Montelupich, where they faced harsh interrogations; her transport on August 17, 1942 to Auschwitz, where she was selected as a cleaning woman for Lauder Kommandant Otto Schmidt; walking to the Birkenau camp and being admitted to the sick-room in Birkenau for flu-like symptoms; her experiences in camp with having little food and seeing dead bodies lying around her; the women guards, including Margot Drexler (Dreschel); Katya Singer, who was from Mariková, Slovakia and was appointed as a Raportschreiberin (assistant to the guards) and her activities in the camp; making friends in the camp, which helped her to survive emotionally; the roll calls and selections she went through; the black market in Auschwitz; the Red Cross sending packages to Jewish women in the camps; concerts that were played sometimes in the camps; discovering the fates of her family and friends after the war; and seeing the Russian Army unite with the American Army during liberation.

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

    Steven Galezewski, born on May 11, 1923 in Inowroclaw, Poland, describes his childhood; joining the Polish underground in Mińsk Mazowiecki, Poland; recalling that, in 1940, the Nazis ordered all the Jews to wear an armband with the Star of David; the relocation of his community into the Mińsk ghetto at the end of 1940; the liquidation of the ghetto on August 21, 1942 and the survival of only 282 tradesmen who were still useful to the Nazi war effort; participating in underground activities, which included blowing up buildings or means of transportation; his resistance unit being sent under Soviet command; being stationed in Lublin, Poland; providing security for the public hanging of five SS officers in Majdanek in 1944; remaining in Soviet hands from March to July 1945; being perceived by the Soviet Union as a potentially subversive element supporting the Polish government-in-exile and then receiving a prison sentence from the Soviets; his transport to Siberia, where Polish guerrillas freed him; escaping into the American zone; joining the Polish Army in Italy but returning from Italy in 1947 and joining the British Army; immigrating to the United States in February 1951; and joining the US Army in 1956.

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

    George Havas, born in 1929 in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), describes the Hungarian takeover of his town after the Germans took the Sudetenland; his father no longer being allowed to practice medicine; the German takeover of Mukacheve in March 1944; his transport to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944; learning after the war that his father had died in the Sonderkommando uprising in Auschwitz; being transferred to Mauthausen and then to Ebensee, where he stayed for one year until liberation; working in the tunnels at Ebensee, where he was able to make contacts and bring back news; the death of his brother and several of his friends in Ebensee; his liberation on May 6, 1945 and leaving for Prague on June 7; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

    Maria Rosenbloom, born on December 26, 1918 in Kolomyia, Poland (Ukraine), describes her Orthodox Jewish family; learning the violin and playing it every weekend in the Hatikva before the war; feeling increased antisemitic sentiments and fleeing with her family into the Carpathian Mountains; attending a special gymnasium for girls in Poland; starting university in 1936 in Lvov, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine) and never being allowed to sit down because she was Jewish; vacationing with a boyfriend in the Carpathian Mountains until the Soviet invasion on September 1, 1939; getting married in 1940; the Soviets taking away her father’s store because of nationalization policies; opening a pharmacy with her husband in 1940 in a small town called Glen-na-novaria [phonetic] and being pestered by the Russians for condoms; the Nazi invasion on June 21, 1941 and registering with the troops; contracting pneumonia and being treated with leeches; moving into the ghetto after Passover in 1942; working in the ghetto soup kitchen; escaping from the ghetto on Christmas in 1942 and going to live with her friend Blancka; discovering the fates of her family during the war and finding a job in a German hospital; taking a train to Warsaw, Poland in April 1943 and hearing rumors about what was happening to the Jews; living in fear that she would be caught because of her prominent Jewish features; joining the resistance movement; the chaos of the Warsaw uprising in 1944; having to join a Hitler parade in 1944 in an attempt to fit in; taking a train to Heidelberg, Germany hoping to reunite with Blancka; the German surrender of Heidelberg to the Americans and deciding to learn English; working for the US Army and then the Joint Distribution Committee; immigrating to the United States in September 1947; and becoming a social worker.

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