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Oral history interview with Harry Kamel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2015.479.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0862

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    Oral history interview with Harry Kamel
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Harry Kamel on December 17, 2015
    in New Rochelle, New York.
    Thank you very, very much, Mr. Kamel,
    that you have agreed to speak with us today.
    Did I pronounce your name wrong?
    Yes, and I want you to mention Chaim Kamelmacher.
    That is going to be my first question.
    Yeah, I see.
    And that is we'll start from very basic questions,
    and the very first one that I ask
    is what was your name at birth?
    Very good.
    What was your name at birth?
    OK, my name at birth was Chaim Kamelmacher.
    And how did you get to be Harry Kamel.
    When I came to the United States in 1951
    through my mom's brother in Kansas City, Missouri, Izzy
    Gladstone, the whole family got together the first Friday night.
    And I was sitting in the center, and they said,
    Kamelmacher, it's a little bit too long.
    So I said, I will not change my name completely,
    so we decided to off the "macher."
    So my name became Kamel instead of Kamelmacher.
    And then Chaim in English was actually Hymie,
    but they said Harry is much nicer.
    So I wound up Harry Kamel.
    Did you get used to it?
    Yes, I got used to it.
    If somebody calls Chaim down the street, do you turn?
    Yes.
    Do you?
    Yes, I do.
    I do.
    OK, so tell me now what was the date of your birth.
    I was born July 1, 1925.
    Where?
    In Eastern Poland.
    That time it was Eastern Poland in Volhynia called Rozyszcze.
    Rozyszcze.
    Yes.
    Spelled R-O-Z-Y-S-Z-C-Z-E.
    Wow.
    It takes some practice to pronounce it properly.
    Yeah.
    Rozyszcze.
    Yes.
    And tell me what was Rozyszcze?
    Was it a village or a town?
    I would say it was a large village.
    OK, and about what does that mean?
    Paint a picture for me.
    I really don't know if it means anything,
    but I was only about four years old
    before my family moved from there to my Maniewicze.
    Maniewicze.
    Maniewicze, yes.
    Spelled M-A-N-I-E-W-I-C-Z-E. And it was Polish until 1939.
    OK, so Maniewicze, was that a larger place?
    A smaller place.
    It was a smaller place.
    A smaller place.
    But my father was a tailor.
    Somehow did not do so well in Rozyszcze,
    so he moved to Maniewicze.
    So if you say that Rozyszcze was a big village,
    then Maniewicze was--
    Well, I would tell you about the population about 8,000 before
    the war.
    And, well, about 4,000 Jews and the rest Ukrainians and Poles.
    Who had the majority in the town?
    The Jewish people.
    So it was more of a Jewish town or a Jewish place.
    Yes.
    OK, were there many synagogues?
    There were about-- let me see, one, two--
    maybe about four synagogues.
    And churches?
    Churches, I know of only of two.
    Two Polish churches or Ukrainian?
    Two Polish churches.
    No Ukrainian church at all.
    The Ukrainians had to go to about four kilometers away,
    which was called Okonsk, and they
    have a church called a tserkva.
    Ukrainian there.
    OK, and what language did you speak at home?
    I spoke Yiddish.
    OK, did you know any other languages?
    Well, I do.
    I went to public school in the morning.
    It used to be called szkola powszechna in Polish.
    And up to the seventh grade, it was a mandatory.
    I don't think they would come looking for Chaim Kamelmacher
    if I wouldn't show up to school, but nevertheless, it
    was mandatory.
    And in the afternoon, I used to go to Yiddish school called
    cheder.
    Cheder.
    Cheder.
    And the teacher was just a religious Jew.
    Perhaps he had a beard or so.
    And we learned some Hebrew, and Yiddish grammar, and all that.
    Oh, I see.
    So you were learning language as well as religion in cheder.
    Yes.
    Did girls go to cheder?
    No, girl did not go to cheder.
    As a matter of fact, in the film Yentl, she had to actually--
    Barbra Streisand, she had to actually change--
    Pretend.
    That's right.
    And all that to be able to go to cheder.
    OK, was your family very religious?
    No, my family was not very religious.
    My father-- I should say should rest in peace, Avram--
    as I mentioned before, he was a tailor.
    In Poland, they--
    I mean, the house--
    the wife, whatever, she did not--
    it wasn't accepted that she should go out
    to help out, so the spouse's job was the cook
    and to raise children.
    So my father used to work long, long hours,
    and we were a family of five.
    And I wouldn't say they were hungry, but on the other hand,
    we didn't live in luxury either.
    So my father was maybe a little bit of a socialist.
    A little bit.
    Because of his circumstance.
    Because of the circumstances.
    But my father never worked on Saturday,
    and when they had to finish something
    he used to close up the window so nobody should see.
    So even though he was not that religious,
    but he didn't want the people, our neighbors, should know.
    So in other words, if he should not know--
    if he were religious, he would not work on Sabbath.
    But he would, but he kept a respect of a certain kind.
    No, no, no, no.
    He never worked on Sabbath.
    Never worked.
    I don't think it had to do with religion,
    but he just decided that way.
    And I think it was very good because if not, he would've
    worked seven days a week.
    OK, so he worked hard.
    He worked hard.
    You said there was a family of five.
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    Yes, I have an older brother.
    He was born in 1912.
    Name was Simche Wolf.
    Then I had a older sister.
    Name is Hannah.
    I think she might have been born in maybe 1918.
    Then I had twin brothers, and then it was me.
    So you were the baby.
    I was the baby.
    I was the baby.
    I was the baby for four eight years,
    and then I had twin brothers.
    Ah, I see.
    I had twin brothers.
    Actually, I said eight.
    For five years, I was--
    I had twin brothers, Motel and Mendel, who were born in 1930.
    So your brother was born in 1912 you say?
    Yeah.
    And so your mother had children over the span of 18 years.
    Yes.
    What was-- OK.
    So as a matter of fact, I still remember my mom
    saying she used to tell neighbors
    she thought she'll never become pregnant after so many years,
    but it happens.
    And, you know.
    There were the boys.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, so you were four boys and one girl.
    Yes.
    OK, and tell me a little bit about your parents.
    Your father's name again was--
    My father's name was Avram Kamelmacher.
    I think he was born in 1889.
    I'm not actually sure, but nobody in Poland
    had a birth certificate.
    And he was born somewhere in the Ukraine.
    He served in the Tsarist Army, and as a matter of fact,
    he told me he ran away.
    He ran away and actually served in Yekaterinoslav,
    which now it's called the Dnipropetrovsk.
    Ah, Dnipropetrovsk.
    Yeah.
    OK, so Eastern Ukraine.
    Eastern Ukraine.
    As a matter of fact, I wrote to them
    not long ago because I heard that they have
    an archive, the Dnipropetrovsk.
    And I wrote to them and asked perhaps they
    know anything about my father, who served in the Tsarist Army.
    And they were nice enough to answer me.
    They do not have any information.
    So then he ran away from the army,
    and then maybe a year later, he came back.
    And when he came back, the Sergeant
    told them you know something?
    All your friends are dead already.
    Oh my gosh.
    But somehow, he was not court martialed.
    He survived the war, but he was also injured in his left leg.
    And my mom--
    Where is her family from?
    Also from Russia.
    My mom's name was Leah.
    And her maiden name was Gladstone.
    Oh, that sounds so English.
    Yeah, Gladstone.
    In English, actually Gladstain.
    Gladstain.
    Gladstain.
    All right, and how large was her family?
    Her family, well about four.
    Yeah.
    I don't actually know that much about her family.
    You know, when I left my parents,
    I wasn't even 17 years old.
    So I'm kind of limited.
    Sure.
    But they didn't live around you.
    Her family, did they live around where you lived?
    No, they lived more Rozyszcze.
    All I know, she had a sister, and I think she had a brother.
    And the sister lived in Rozyszcze.
    All right, how is it that the families of both parents
    came from the east to Poland?
    Well, that time, it wasn't Poland.
    It was part of the Ukraine.
    It became Poland in 1918.
    Oh, I see.
    It was part of the Ukraine.
    It became Poland--
    I mean, a part of Poland in 1918,
    and it was Polish until 1939.
    So in other words, when they moved in the early part
    of the 20th century, then it was still part of the same country.
    Yeah, it was still part of the Ukraine.
    Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire.
    Right.
    OK.
    Right.
    OK.
    Got it.
    Now did your father have brothers and sisters?
    My brother had--
    Your father.
    Yeah, excuse me.
    It's OK.
    My father had two brothers, and both of them
    got killed in World War II-- in World War I. I'm sorry.
    Oh, World War I.
    World War I.
    They were fighting in the Tsarist Army?
    Yes.
    OK, so he remained the only child.
    He remained the only child.
    And he and your mother married then probably between--
    do you know what year they married?
    I really-- well, I would say in 1910.
    OK.
    Tell me a little bit about their education.
    OK, unfortunately, my mom and my father,
    and I'm not ashamed to say, did not know how to read and write.
    Really?
    They came from a very, very poor family,
    and when my father was about 12 years old,
    they gave him up on apprentice to learn tailoring.
    But he actually-- the tailor used him as a nanny
    to take care of the kids, so he learned very, very little.
    And my mom also comes from a very religious family
    but a very poor family.
    And when my mom was about maybe 13 years old,
    they gave her up to a big landowner, and she slept there.
    And she lived there actually.
    She cooked and she baked for them,
    and she was too small to reach--
    almost everybody there had a baker's oven
    because they're almost all Jewish people.
    They bake challah for Saturday, and all kind
    of goodies, and even bread.
    So she actually lived with that big land owner.
    Was this a Polish landowner?
    Yes.
    So she lived and worked for a gentile family?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And so, as I say, I'm not ashamed to say
    that my parents did not know how to read and write.
    They just didn't have a chance.
    Of course not.
    It was a hard time.
    It was a hard time, so therefore they sent me to school.
    And so as I mentioned before, public school was free,
    but the Yiddish school, the cheder, and also
    the Hebrew school called Tarbut, you had to pay.
    So my parents actually, I would say, saved on food
    and send their Sonny boy, which means me, to school.
    What about your older brother?
    Did they send him too?
    My older brother just finished public school,
    and I don't think they send him to--
    for some reason to learn Yiddish and Hebrew.
    And as a matter of fact, he helped my father in tailoring.
    I see.
    So he worked together with him.
    Yes.
    OK, and did your sister help your mother in the household?
    My sister-- you know, it's funny.
    It sounds so funny, but my sister also went
    to Polish public school when--
    but when my mom gave birth to the twins,
    she had to quit school and wanted to help my mother.
    As a matter of fact, I still remember
    she was a very good student, and most of her teachers
    were sorry that she has to leave school.
    So did she finish seventh grade?
    No.
    Oh.
    Did she cry, do you remember?
    No, I don't think so.
    OK.
    I don't think so.
    It was just what people did.
    It was just what people did.
    She was not the only one.
    It was accepted that--
    well, maybe it had to do with Poland.
    A Jew was Jewish.
    They were either a shoemaker, a tailor, a barber,
    or in Yiddish--
    I don't know how to call it in English,
    but a [YIDDISH] was making--
    I mean, the wooden part for wheels for the wagons.
    A Jew could never get a job--
    a city job, or a [? state ?] job, or a government job.
    So I don't think that education was so important for the Jews
    in Poland.
    So the Jewish people who lived in the second place,
    can you tell me again where you moved to?
    It begins with an M, the village.
    I forgot.
    OK, Maniewicze.
    Maniewicze.
    The Jews in Maniewicze, were they also
    almost all in such occupations that you just mentioned?
    Yes, they also have the small grocery stores.
    There was a cap maker because, as I said,
    a Jew could not get any job working, as I said, for--
    In the state.
    Yeah, for the state.
    So tell me the Jews that lived in Maniewicze,
    were the orthodox?
    Were they Hasidim?
    Paint a picture for me of the different groups
    that might be there.
    OK, well, I can say usually the working people, which
    I mentioned before, they usually were not that religious,
    but they always, of course-- some of them
    went only on Saturday.
    And, of course, everybody went to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
    whether somebody was religious or not religious.
    I would say that the so-called small businessmen [INAUDIBLE]
    but made out.
    They felt they were a little bit more religious.
    They were a little bit more religious,
    and also they actually-- but many,
    many people used to get some help of the United States
    whether a brother, or sister, or something like that,
    and especially when somebody had a daughter and she did not--
    well, nobody fell in love with her until she was about 24,
    so she was considered an old maid more or less.
    And they used to be people who actually were able--
    were actually, I can say, specialists
    to write letters to relatives in the United States,
    you know, to help.
    Like Yankele.
    We both come from the same place,
    from our mom, this and that.
    They were matchmakers for her?
    That is they would be matchmakers for the old maids?
    Is this what you're saying?
    Well, there were matchmakers too.
    OK.
    There was matchmakers too.
    No, but when you're describing--
    who would be the people who would write letters,
    and what would they write for?
    Oh, not matchmaker.
    Not matchmakers.
    No, no, no.
    One is actually-- one was a shoemaker.
    He just knew supposedly how to write a letter, so actually--
    so the relative in the United States
    should actually feel sorry or something like that
    and try to help.
    So that is that he would write a letter
    so that this family or this young woman,
    who is now too old to be married,
    would get some financial support.
    Yes.
    I see.
    I see.
    Yeah, it was those times, wasn't it?
    Yeah, it was those times.
    As a matter of fact, I remember once a gentleman--
    well, I call him a gentleman.
    He came from the United States.
    He was an agent for an insurance company,
    and everybody came to Maniewicze.
    Maniewicze was a very nice area.
    There were very nice pine woods, and people
    used to come to fix their health in summer,
    especially the ones who had TB, which, at that time, incurable.
    So everybody ran to this particular agent to see--
    to find out, oh, is my brother maybe insured with your company?
    Unfortunate I don't remember what insurance company it was.
    So it was an event.
    Someone comes from the United States.
    That's right.
    I still remember it was in the summertime,
    and he wore a white suit, and was nicely
    groomed, and all that.
    And everybody, oh, this is the way Jewish--
    he happened to be Jewish.
    This is the way Jewish people live in the United States.
    Yeah.
    So did many people have--
    I want to find out about the level of modernity in town.
    So let me ask some questions about that.
    Were the roads paved?
    No, the road's not paved, but I was there two years ago.
    I was back in Maniewicze two years ago
    and which we'll talk about it, and then the roads were paved.
    OK, but when you were growing up.
    No.
    OK.
    So we had a bazaar every Tuesday.
    It's a big area.
    You could buy anything you felt like.
    The farmers used to bring all kind of stuff to be sold,
    and many times their wagon used to sit after a rain,
    used to sink.
    In the mud.
    In the mud.
    And the horses-- pull horses, they were--
    they used to beat them, hit them, and pull out their wagon.
    And many time they were late to the bazaar
    so because the roads were not paved.
    I see.
    I think maybe I'm wrong about Poland.
    I cannot say.
    Poland did not make a big investment in that area.
    In that part of the country.
    In that part of the country because that's
    part of Eastern Poland.
    And as I say, it was only Polish from 1918 until 1939.
    But then when it became part of the Ukraine, they, of course--
    Did more.
    --did more.
    OK, so let's-- I still want to get more of a picture
    and a sense of what it was like when you were growing up.
    So let me ask this.
    The roads weren't paved.
    Was there electricity?
    No, we did not have electricity.
    The story goes like this.
    Maniewicze was actually divided by the railroad into two parts.
    It was like this part and the other part.
    So they actually build a generating plant about the--
    in Poland, the railroad was nationalized because it used
    to be called Polska kolej [SPEAKING POLISH] which means
    Poland--
    Polish railroads.
    And so the way I understand, the railroad
    wanted so many kilowatt hours in order for them
    to let the wiring, whatever.
    And I don't think they were able.
    They couldn't get along.
    Besides, the generating plant, which was built maybe in 1937,
    and therefore there was no electricity
    when I left Maniewicze in 1939.
    So let me ask another question.
    So when your father was sewing and was a tailor,
    his sewing machine he operated by a foot pedal?
    Foot pedal.
    Foot pedal, and it also--
    I can say I remember when my father had an old sewing
    machine, and he used to break down.
    And most of the time, he used to break down--
    You know, my father was not busy, like, a whole winter,
    but he usually get busy around Purim.
    Now Purim is six weeks before--
    four weeks-- sorry.
    Four weeks for Passover, so everybody
    wanted to have their suit for Passover.
    And the sewing machine you used to break down,
    but there was actually a mechanic.
    His name was Shvartsblat.
    You used to call him.
    You used to hope he's home, and he used to come and fix
    the sewing machine.
    But my father and my mom, they always
    say they saved in order to buy a Singer sewing machine.
    And that agent who worked for a Singer,
    and he was to come and always wanted to.
    So my mom sometimes would say, you know,
    we didn't buy any meat this week so we saved a little bit
    more power Singer.
    So, finally, maybe after--
    I don't know exactly--
    maybe after four years, they had enough money
    to buy a Singer sewing machine.
    And it was like a big holiday.
    It was an event.
    It's an event.
    And actually, it was around Hanukkah.
    And, you know, the Jewish people believe
    in and they-- what happened on Hanukkah
    that they find a small amount of oil
    and it lasted for eight months.
    So this happened around Hanukkah,
    and my father said, I really don't
    know what is a bigger event on [INAUDIBLE] in Yiddish,
    but Hanukkah, oh, this Avram the tailor
    was able to buy a new Singer sewing machine.
    Did he also sew the family clothes?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    I can say I used to get a suits, say, every Passover or something
    like that, and I used to envy--
    like, we had a doctor, Dr. Tarkowski,
    but although I must say, he was very, very good.
    He was very good to the people of Maniewicze.
    If you didn't have--
    you know, he didn't mind to come at that time--
    I mean, to come and help you or whatever.
    If you didn't have money to pay.
    If you didn't have money to pay.
    But I envied their son.
    He used to bring to my father--
    you know, my father used to make for his son six pair of pants
    at once, and I had to wait.
    I had to wait for a holiday to get
    this together a suit, or a pair of pants,
    or something like that.
    You're painting a lovely picture of life as it was.
    It's very nice to hear.
    Tell me a little bit about your family inside,
    that is what kind of personalities
    did your parents have as people?
    Well, I think my father was a very hard worker.
    Used to get up every morning about 6 o'clock
    or so, go out to the shed, and bring in some logs and saw,
    and light the over.
    And then he used to work late at night.
    He used to actually make his own cigarettes.
    And then the matches, the matches were actually in Poland
    were made of wood.
    And in order to save, I used to be
    able to split every match in two, in half--
    Oh my.
    --so we saved a little bit.
    Oh my.
    I never would have thought that.
    But, yes, that's a way of saving.
    I was a specialist in that.
    And of course, my father used to buy the cheapest tobacco
    called makhorka.
    Makhorka.
    Makhorka.
    You know, like this.
    And what else?
    Was he a storyteller?
    My father?
    Mm-hmm.
    No, but he liked--
    he wasn't religious, but he had to remember some--
    before Rosh Hashanah, he remembered some--
    he used to sing some parts of the prayers for the Rosh
    Hashanah.
    So he would sing them to you, to the children?
    To the children.
    OK.
    And like [NON-ENGLISH SINGING] Rosh Hashanah.
    [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
    Yom Kippur.
    [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
    And you remember that from your childhood?
    I remember from my childhood, yes.
    And actually, the man that got actually
    signs on every name of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,
    and then actually about 10 days--
    they're called 10 days to make good, to improve.
    In Hebrew it's called [SPEAKING HEBREW]
    So according to the scriptures, every Jew,
    if you didn't eat any kosher, you didn't observe the Saturday,
    you had a chance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
    to improve so God will give him another year of life.
    Another chance.
    Another chance.
    Another year of life.
    Your mother, was she religious?
    My mother was much more religious.
    Although, she couldn't-- well, what can I say?
    Her parents were very religious.
    Her father, my grandfather, Simche Wolf--
    his name was Simche Wolf--
    lived in Rozyszcze.
    And the Jewish people, part of their prayer, like three times
    a day, they say--
    It's OK.
    OK, they have a prayer.
    It's called [SPEAKING HEBREW] In Hebrew means 18.
    Doing the 18 pages, a religious Jew stands up and, of course,
    is taught all about the almighty.
    And he doesn't talk until-- he shouldn't move.
    He doesn't talk.
    He shouldn't move until he finishes the 18 pages.
    The story my mom told me--
    you know, at that time, they used to use wood.
    So when you use wood, you have to clean the chimney every so
    often.
    If you don't, the chimney catches a fire.
    Well, this exactly what happened to our father.
    While he was doing--
    While he standing these--
    the 18 pages [SPEAKING HEBREW] So supposedly, I
    don't know if it's more the Ukrainian or what.
    He knocked in the winter and said, Simche Wolf,
    your chimney is on fire.
    He didn't move until he finished the prayer.
    Oh my gosh.
    Oh my gosh.
    So anyway, she was very religious,
    but I think she changed somewhat because my father was not
    the religious.
    OK, but you know a lot about it for growing up
    in a family where the father was not too religious.
    No, I know more about it.
    As a matter of fact, I, myself, a little bit
    of a socialist because it was instilled in me
    when I was small.
    How can I say we only had one bedroom.
    We had one bedroom, but I would say maybe--
    and this is about 1930 that-- maybe in 1932, we
    added a shed where my brother and I used
    to sleep during the summer.
    But otherwise, as a matter of fact, I wrote about it.
    The table was very versatile.
    My father used to, of course, used to iron on it
    and used to cut the--
    The cloth.
    --cloth and everything else.
    And, of course, we used to eat on it.
    And at night, it became my bed.
    I slept on it.
    My mom used to bring in a straw mattress, and it became my bed.
    Which of your parents were you closer to?
    I think even.
    I think even.
    I think even.
    Evenly.
    I think evenly.
    I think evenly.
    And even now, the way I think the way I live and the way I
    lived, and if I remember the way they lived, you know,
    it still hurts me a little how-- and they were not the only one.
    There's many, many Jews in Eastern Poland
    in the small shtetl and the small towns lived like that.
    Tough.
    Tough lives.
    A tough life.
    A tough life.
    But you're painting the picture beautifully for me.
    Thank you.
    What kind of relations did you have with the gentiles?
    Well, here-- OK, we had--
    we lived, it was a small street.
    A small street.
    There were-- let me see--
    one Jewish family, two Jewish families,
    and an Ukrainian family.
    So I think what many, many, many time the people ask me,
    why did the Ukrainians and the Poles--
    I mean, why did they decide to sort of help the Germans?
    And my answer would be that a Jew maybe they
    didn't have any meat all week long, maybe
    a potato or a [? bread, ?] whatever, a tiny bit of meat.
    But when it came Friday night and Saturday,
    they had a nice meal.
    That time, they didn't have electricity,
    but the lamps were burning bright.
    I mean, my father became a king of the small apartment
    and the living room, and the table was covered.
    There were two challos.
    My mom, I can say, kindled the candles.
    And so what happened is my Ukrainian neighbor, when
    they walked in on Friday night or Saturday, there would say,
    look at the way the Jews lived not realizing
    that they spend on whiskey much more than the Jews spend to make
    Shabbos, so I think envy.
    So, for example, when the Germans took Maniewicze.
    And they would say, all Jewish people, they organized a ghetto.
    All Jewish people should appear in a particular space.
    The Germans didn't know where the Jews lived,
    but the Ukrainian neighbor, the Ukrainian Pole, they knew.
    And for a pound of sugar or two pound of salt,
    they said Chaim Yankel lives there, and there, and there.
    So I think they envied, I think, the way the Jewish people--
    the Jews lived.
    I'm talking-- but I cannot say.
    This actually was more pronounced
    in the small towns in the shtetl.
    Maybe the bigger cities was a little bit different.
    Well, tell me this.
    What you're describing now, something that takes
    place during war time.
    Yes.
    What about before the war?
    Before the war was fine.
    Before the war was fine.
    As a matter of fact, our Ukrainian neighbor, Kovachuk,
    she used to invite us for Christmas.
    We used to always sing songs together.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah, we were fine.
    Fine.
    But the way I understand that I must give credit
    a neighbor Kovachuk.
    Supposedly, they held my mom in the ghetto.
    I was able actually to speak to their daughter, Lucy,
    after perestroika on the phone.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    OK, interesting.
    And then Poles, we didn't have any Polish neighbor,
    but we used to buy--
    they were Polish grocery stores and Poles
    who used to used to sell all kind of non-kosher food.
    And many, many people used to patronize them because they
    weren't that religious.
    But it was-- we didn't have any problems.
    OK, so before the war, it was peaceful.
    Before the war, it was peaceful.
    And you spoke Polish.
    I spoke Polish, yes.
    Did you speak Ukrainian as well?
    Not then.
    I wouldn't learn Ukrainian until I attend the Ukrainian school.
    OK, that's later.
    That's later.
    But during your childhood growing up there.
    Polish, Yiddish, and some Hebrew.
    OK, OK.
    And the doctor that you mentioned
    before who wouldn't always take money if you didn't have to pay,
    was he Polish or Jewish?
    Polish.
    He was Polish.
    Yes.
    OK, I thought the last name--
    Polish.
    And it's very interesting, he was very good to all people.
    He didn't make any distinction whether somebody's was
    Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian.
    And as a matter of fact, my father
    does his tailoring for him, and my brother
    used to bring it to them.
    So my brother always wanted-- so when he was home,
    he used to give him a tip.
    For bringing the suit.
    Yeah.
    Used to be called in Polish, used to be called
    bronfn gelt, which means bronfn whiskey in English.
    Used to give him in Polish like a dollar.
    There used to be zloty.
    Used to give him a zloty or two, but he
    used to give it to her, to my brother, not him.
    What do you mean?
    Only the doctor used to give it to your brother?
    The doctor.
    OK.
    Not his wife.
    When he brought the suit or whatever,
    you know, and the wife was there, she never.
    So he prayed to God [INAUDIBLE].
    He should be there.
    And it's also interesting and when we became part
    of the Ukraine in 1939 and there was almost a shortage
    of everything, a shortage of clothes or this and that--
    as a matter of fact, some Ukrainian--
    I mean, wives of the party members
    or whatever, they bought anything which was still
    available in the stores.
    And in many occasions, they used to buy a prayer shawl,
    [INAUDIBLE] Yiddish a tallit.
    Buy a tallit and make a dress out of it
    or something like that.
    The reason why I bring it up is Dr. Tarkowski's wife.
    Her name was Harenka.
    And she decided to leave because she said,
    I wouldn't like to wear the same dress that my--
    can I say--
    I mean, that I wouldn't like to wear
    the dress that my Ukrainian and Polish helper wears,
    the same dress.
    So they actually left.
    They left to the German side.
    I don't know what actually happened to them.
    But the only reason why they left
    is because she said she wouldn't like
    to wear the same clothes as the innkeeper or whatever.
    OK, well, it could be other--
    I mean, that was a chaotic time.
    Yes.
    And a very painful time for many people for different reasons.
    So they could have had more serious reasons too for leaving.
    Right.
    What is another question that I had here?
    Did you have a radio at home?
    The war broke out in 1939.
    In 1937, we bought a radio, but then
    they radio needed two batteries.
    Now batteries for the-- at that time, they used tubes.
    So needed two batteries, and, of course, the batteries
    have to be charged.
    But when we became part of the Ukraine, they wanted all radios,
    and I think we had to get rid of it because I don't know why.
    I'm sure it's for political reasons,
    so we only had a radio for two years.
    I see.
    Do you remember listening to any particular programs?
    Yeah, I used to like to listen songs we used to get.
    How can I say?
    A few of the countries are very, very close to each other,
    so we like to listen to all kind of songs,
    like Czech songs, which was similar to the Polish.
    As a Jew, I understood a little bit German.
    We used to listen to some German Jews.
    And of course, the news every day.
    Although, we had many, many newspapers.
    We used to get every day some newspapers.
    Most newspapers used to come from Warsaw,
    and they used to come every morning.
    We used to have--
    it actually was a Jewish guy, and his job
    was to go to the train every morning and pick up the papers.
    And used to have the--
    the most known Polish paper used to be
    what's called Gazeta Polska, which means the Polish paper.
    But we also had maybe four different kind of Jewish papers,
    which were published most mainly in Warsaw
    and which we used to get.
    Well, you say your father and mother didn't read and write.
    Did you get any of those papers?
    Yes.
    Which ones did you get?
    I used to get the Polish paper.
    I used to get the Polish paper.
    I used to get some Yiddish papers.
    And who in the family would read it?
    My older brother.
    My older brother and I.
    And you would tell your parents what's in there?
    Yeah.
    As a matter of fact, I used to read the paper before Germany
    attacked the Soviet Union.
    I mean, before Germany attacked Poland.
    And we used to write--
    and the Polish paper used to say--
    I still remember-- oh, Germany will never attack Poland.
    They don't have enough oil.
    They don't have this and that.
    And the reason why I read the papers is
    when I was in the sixth grade, the teacher taught us Polish.
    He insists we should actually read a paper,
    and I'll never forget.
    He said read two opposite papers, and somewhere in between
    is the truth.
    Really?
    That's what he said.
    Well, you know, that's a very progressive kind
    of way of thinking--
    Yes.
    --for the time and the place.
    Right.
    That one should-- it's a very, I would say--
    many people would say that's a very American way of thinking
    that you need to have many different voices in order
    to be able to know truly what is going on
    and how you should think about it.
    Right.
    OK.
    And Poland, I must say, that education
    was a very high level, a much higher level
    than anything United States, much higher level.
    I remember, for example, in the second grade,
    we knew from geography almost about the five continents.
    We knew about most of the countries, and not like here.
    We have social studies, which is almost nothing.
    So what I'm saying, the education
    was on a very, very high level in Poland.
    So your father's clients, and going back
    to his business, where most of them Jewish, or was it mixed?
    Mostly Jewish.
    OK.
    Most Jewish.
    Most Jewish, but, of course, there were Poles.
    There were Poles.
    Ukraine-- less Ukrainian because they kind of were
    a special wardrobe, which my father did not make,
    did not sew.
    You mean the kind of clothes that they wore.
    The kind of clothes that they wore.
    OK, and your father made suits mostly?
    He made suits, coats, anything.
    And what about for your mother and your sister?
    Did he sew their clothes?
    Some.
    And they used to buy.
    OK, so tell me, in 1933, how old were you?
    Well, in 1933--
    I was in '25, so about eight years old or something.
    Do you remember hearing that in Germany a certain Adolf
    Hitler comes to power?
    Yes.
    Not did I hear.
    I knew about it.
    All right.
    I knew about it.
    As a matter of fact, many German Jews came to Poland then.
    They were able to leave.
    Did any come to your town?
    Yes.
    And did you talk to them?
    Did you meet them?
    Yes, as a matter of fact.
    How can I say?
    As I said, we had one living room, one bedroom, and kitchen.
    So during the summer, my father worked in the kitchen.
    So my mom and my sister, they fixed up the living room.
    My mom would actually be on her knees and her hands and color
    the floor red and all that.
    And my father worked in the kitchen.
    And in the wintertime, my father could not work in the kitchen
    because it was very cold.
    We used to call it a Siberian kitchen,
    and he used to work in the living room.
    So I'm trying to bring up that in 1939 when Poland was divided
    between Germany and the Soviet Union,
    many Jewish people wound up on the Russian side--
    on the Soviet side.
    And one actually-- I want to bring something up.
    And one actually came to my father to iron his suit.
    He only had one suit.
    He wanted it ironed.
    So he had to--
    how can I say?
    He was only in the underwear, so he
    was waiting in the living room.
    He said, you know, I would give a million dollars in order
    to sleep.
    We had a nice couch.
    So we let him.
    He slept there.
    Slept there for two weeks about.
    Really?
    We let him sleep.
    Yeah, we let him sleep.
    And so but what happened many, many Jewish people
    and non-Jewish wound up on the Soviet side
    had relatives on the German side.
    And so many of them signed up that they
    would like to leave to cross over
    to the German part of Poland.
    And the Russians used to say, [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
    What does that mean?
    What that means, anybody who is not with us is against us.
    So for them, it meant that they wanted to go to the German side.
    So they took them all and they sent them to Siberia.
    So they deported them?
    They deported them.
    So in other words, when it comes to the Soviet Union,
    I, for example, had a Soviet passport.
    I don't said that I have it.
    You know, I had a hard time, but I survived the war.
    And to me, it means a lot.
    To the ones who wound up in Siberia,
    they have a different view about the Soviet Union.
    Yes.
    You know what I'm saying?
    Yes.
    So here's a question.
    I want to get back--
    we'll talk about this.
    Yeah.
    But I'm still in 1933 when Adolf Hitler comes to power,
    and you say you knew about it.
    Did you find out through people, through newspapers, through--
    how did people find out that he has come to power,
    and what did it mean in a small shtetl in Eastern Poland?
    Well--
    Did it have anything to do with your lives?
    Not in the beginning.
    Not in the beginning.
    I mean, the only time we actually started
    to think about is when people--
    when Jews left Germany and they couldn't take anything
    with them.
    So that's what you would hear about is
    how Jews had to leave Germany after he comes to power.
    Yeah.
    And that their situation is not a good one.
    Yes.
    OK, and one of those is somebody who
    came to your father to iron his suit
    and he ended up staying on the sofa for a couple of weeks?
    That was a person from Germany?
    No, no, it was a person probably outside of Poland.
    I think he was from Warsaw.
    I see.
    Warsaw or Lodz.
    I don't remember, but he was from Poland.
    Were there any German Jews that you ended up
    meeting in your village?
    No.
    Did any come through that you met?
    No.
    OK, so as the '30s progressed, you're still going to school.
    You're going to Polish school, and then you're
    going to cheder in the afternoon.
    Right.
    And your parents continue working, your mother at home,
    your father in the tailoring.
    And then the summer of 1939 is right before the war.
    Do you remember that last summer?
    It's the last summer of peace.
    What you were doing, where you were?
    Yeah, well, in 1939, Poland was divided between Germany
    the Soviet Union.
    Did you know that?
    Yes, as a matter of fact, I liked it
    because I was able to go to high school.
    In 1939, it our territory became part of the Ukraine.
    And the people who took over the government, who
    came from Kiev mainly, from the capital of the Ukraine,
    they had children, and their children needed a high school.
    And so they're up in the high school,
    and I was glad to be able to continue my education.
    OK, but now we're talking the war has already
    started when that happens.
    Yeah.
    OK, I'm talking right before then, right
    before the war starting.
    Right before it's started, I believe is in 1938 or something.
    Yeah, and up until the summer.
    Well, we be continued--
    my father continued working, and, of course,
    the new Singer sewing machine did not break down.
    And I, due to the fact that I could not--
    how can I say?
    Most of the time, the children do not
    like their father's trade.
    I didn't want to be a tailor.
    So, anyway, I wound up working for a short time for a capmaker.
    A where?
    A capmaker.
    Making caps.
    Oh, you made caps.
    OK.
    Making caps, so this was in 1938, yes.
    Had you finished your seven years of schooling?
    This was already-- I finished already the seven years
    of schooling, but '38.
    I think I finished in '37.
    And as I say, I could not go to high school because--
    could not attend high school because there was no high school
    where we lived in Maniewicze.
    And my father, being a tailor, could not
    send me to a bigger city like Kovel to the west or Sarny
    to the east and pay for her room and board and tuition.
    I see.
    It was too much money.
    Too much money.
    My father just couldn't afford it.
    OK, so that meant that your formal schooling for you
    was over.
    It was done.
    Yes, it be over if our territory would not
    become part of the Ukraine.
    OK, so we'll get there.
    We'll get there.
    And also maybe I should mention something.
    I was also in 1937, I wrote a letter to President Roosevelt.
    Did you?
    Yeah, and I didn't have any-- we only have stamps.
    And Poland, we used to write our relatives in the United States.
    So a letter to the United States was 55 groszy.
    A zloty is a hundred groszy.
    This was 55 groszy.
    I pasted on an envelope 11 stamps, 11 five cent stamps
    to make up 55 cents.
    And I wrote it to President Roosevelt, the White House,
    Washington DC, USA.
    What did I say?
    What did you want to write to him?
    OK, I wrote them that I'm Jewish.
    I have no future in Poland.
    Told him what my parents--
    what my father did, and I would like to immigrate to the United
    States just like that.
    It was maybe three weeks later my older brother
    kept running through the cheder, to the Hebrew school.
    Harry-- I mean, Chaim, you got a letter from the consulate
    in Warsaw.
    What's going on?
    So what happened, they wrote a letter.
    I got a letter from the American Conciliate in Warsaw
    stating there's a recession in the United States.
    And I said, they would still like to--
    I said, of course, I'd like to go.
    Even if there's a recession.
    Even there's a recession, I like to go.
    So maybe another two weeks later,
    I got the whole kind of papers at the Gotham City Hall,
    take some pictures, this and that, and then in Poland,
    it was a trade.
    A special man like a notary public they
    were also writing letters.
    So if you needed a letter, it should sound good, typed.
    So there were people who knew how to write letters
    and got paid for doing that.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    His name was--
    I still remember--
    Mr. Kleiman.
    As a matter of fact, I remember he was [INAUDIBLE].
    He was later a member of the Judenrat.
    Judenrat when the Germans took cover.
    So anyway, I send it back, and they send me a number,
    which I understod it was the quarter number,
    37,000 something.
    So then the war broke out.
    I didn't remember to take that postcard,
    but when I wound up at this displaced person camp
    after the war and I told them that, they
    said, where is the postcard?
    Now who remembers to take the postcard?
    Did that help you?
    No.
    Unfortunate, if it wouldn't.
    If not the war, maybe it would have helped me.
    If not the war, maybe I would have
    been able to go to the United States.
    Well, I'll tell you, I think that's great chutzpah for a 10,
    12, 13-year-old boy to think, you know,
    I want to go to the United.
    I want to go the United States.
    And I'm going to write President Roosevelt about it.
    Yeah, well, my mother had actually
    four brothers in the United States,
    but somehow, we never wound up at the United States.
    As I mentioned before, my father's two brothers were--
    Killed.
    --killed, and everybody knew once you go to the United
    States, that's it.
    You won't see them anymore.
    You won't see her.
    You may come back as an insurance
    agent wearing a white suit.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    So that is really an interesting thing to have.
    I was always-- well, what can I say?
    I was always doing things, what I like to do, doing things,
    what I--
    Were you the mischievous one in the family?
    I wouldn't say the mischievous, but I felt very bad.
    And I feel now--
    I feel terrible to others.
    I complained to my parents why did they bring me into the world
    if they can not give me an education, which I thought
    was so stupid from my side?
    But at that time, I felt.
    And also I knew, by example, one girl, who happened to be Jewish,
    and she was kind of--
    I would call her--
    I don't want to call her stupid, but when it came to geography--
    and we learned about Mexico.
    Mexico has two million square miles--
    square kilometers.
    And she only said about 200,000.
    And she was able to go--
    Poland high school used to call gymnasium.
    She was able to go to gymnasium and come every holiday
    with a uniform and all that.
    And Chaim Kamelmacher was always a good student,
    wasn't able to do it.
    Yeah, painful.
    Painful.
    Painful.
    But now I realize my parents do their best,
    and it was kind of silly from my side too.
    You were a kid, and that's what kids--
    I was a kid.
    You were a kid.
    But one thing when I left my parents,
    I was always, always good with my hands.
    Always good with my hands.
    And my mom-- the war started the 22nd of June.
    You're talking about the second phase.
    OK.
    Yeah, we'll get to that point.
    OK.
    So I want to focus now on the very beginning of World War II.
    You said that there were newspapers who were saying
    the Germans will never attack.
    They don't have enough oil.
    They don't have enough this, enough that.
    So do you remember where you were
    when you found out that the Germans actually attacked?
    I was home.
    I was home, and I heard in Polish.
    On the radio?
    On the radio.
    I had a radio.
    Still the radio at that time, that Germany
    crossed across the border and is bombing Poland.
    As a matter of fact, it's late already.
    It's 1941.
    But what I want to say that I heard all kind of--
    I didn't know what it meant, but in Polish 4045 is came.
    4049 is coming, but I think the military took over.
    You heard numbers like 40?
    Numbers that-- yes.
    And, of course, we were kind of scared.
    We were scared what the Germans will do to us,
    but I want to say--
    Did they reach you?
    No, and then I was still--
    OK, this is in 1941.
    I get mixed up.
    OK, so you heard it over the radio, and you were scared.
    Your family was scared.
    Did people start talking about what's going to happen?
    What's going to happen?
    That's right.
    Not only that.
    On the second-- how can I say?
    Maniewicze's a small town, but there's a very--
    the railroad is very important because at that time, anybody
    for-- excuse me-- anybody, for example,
    who was traveling from Berlin to Moscow or to Kiev
    had to cross Maniewicze.
    That was the only railroad station.
    So the railroad station was important for the Germans
    to bomb, so they bombed the station the first day.
    Really?
    And a bomb fell down near us and create--
    near where we lived, and it created a big crater.
    And our house, one of-- it was made actually
    of horizontal boards.
    One of the boards, from the impact of the bomb, fell down,
    and you could see the outside.
    So we actually, can I say, realized
    what the war is and will be on almost the first day.
    Almost immediately.
    Immediately.
    Oh my goodness.
    Oh my goodness.
    And so were you anticipating that the Germans are
    going to come?
    Yeah, but the only thing is my mom
    still remember the Germans from World War I,
    and she claimed that the Germans were
    very good to this civilian population.
    But on the other hand, we heard what
    Germany is doing to the Jews there, so we were kind of--
    You didn't know what to expect.
    That's right.
    OK.
    But about the 18th actually--
    18th of which month?
    The 18th of the same month.
    18th of June.
    No, September.
    Excuse me.
    Yeah, 18th of September, was [SPEAKING RUSSIAN],
    18th of September, we heard that the Russian army is taking over
    the area.
    So the 18th of September.
    OK, that sounds about right.
    Yeah.
    About two weeks later.
    Right.
    Two weeks later.
    Was that a surprise?
    Yes, it was a surprise.
    OK.
    And I still remember something.
    Maybe it's not important.
    No, tell me.
    What it was?
    In Russian, they said in Russian, maybe you'll--
    OK, [SPEAKING RUSSIAN]
    What it meant that the 18th of September,
    the 18th day of September, the Red Army decided to cross over
    the border and take over part of the Ukraine and part
    of Bielorussia because the Polish government stopped
    to exist, and it also said that from now on it's forever ended
    the exploitation of men to men.
    Man against man.
    Man against man.
    So this-- I still remember that.
    Well, I also heard of a joke.
    They said what is capitalism?
    It's the exploitation of man against man.
    What is socialism?
    The other way around.
    [LAUGHS] Yeah.
    And also USSR in Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh
    Respublik, which means the Soviet Union.
    So the Jewish people came out what SSSR meant.
    So the first S mean [RUSSIAN].
    I mean, there was nothing there.
    The second S means [RUSSIAN].
    There's nothing there now.
    So there wasn't anything.
    There isn't.
    The third S means [RUSSIAN], it wouldn't be.
    And R means [RUSSIAN].
    Don't even think about it.
    [LAUGHS] So that's what SSSR--
    SSSR.
    So the first one is--
    [RUSSIAN]
    There was never anything there.
    Yeah.
    Now the second S means--
    [RUSSIAN]
    --there isn't anything there.
    The third S means--
    There will never be anything there.
    --there will never be anything there.
    And the R means don't even think about it.
    That's right.
    That's funny.
    Never heard that before.
    OK, so when you saw the first Russian soldiers,
    the first Ukraine Soviet soldiers,
    what was your impression?
    Oh, no, no, no.
    So what happened, we said--
    so this had happened 18, so we were told around the 22nd this
    unit of the Red Army will come in and come in from the area
    which I mentioned before, Okonsk,
    where I said that only they were by the Ukrainian church.
    Right.
    So, as a young man and a little bit of a socialist, to me,
    it was a big event.
    I'll see the Red Army coming in.
    And not only me, all the Jewish people, the working people,
    told that the Soviet Union is a heaven.
    I mean, to begin with, nobody knew.
    Everything was like a secret.
    Nobody knew.
    Nobody knew what's doing in the Soviet Union,
    but the people, the Jewish people,
    thought this after the October Revolution in 1917,
    everybody's equal.
    Imagine.
    A Jew should be able to work for the government.
    You know what I'm saying?
    Equal.
    You know what that would mean?
    So anyway, so when we find out from [INAUDIBLE] that there were
    maybe half of Maniewicze, half of the people,
    were waiting for the--
    were waiting to meet--
    To greet.
    --to greet them.
    Yeah, to greet them.
    So anyway, so, finally, we heard music incoming,
    and they wore new uniforms, new shoes, new hats
    with a hammer and sickle.
    And everybody, many people, would run over to kiss them,
    and then they had all kind of speeches.
    Excuse me.
    That's OK.
    All kind of a speeches that, at that time,
    it was the time when the silk stockings came out.
    What's that?
    What do you mean?
    Oh, silk stockings for women?
    The United States women.
    And they knew about it, and they say, the United States,
    they have silk stocking.
    This promote prostitution.
    I still remember how that promote prostitution?
    A young lady, a poor lady, she wants
    to buy a pair of silk stockings and doesn't have any money.
    How can she make money?
    To sell her body.
    And so she can afford the silk stockings.
    [INAUDIBLE] that time.
    And also there was a pansionat, Jewish.
    His name was Horowitz, and used to be like, I think,
    maybe 150 or so rooms.
    People used to-- when the Polish police had a get together,
    they used to, you know, there.
    When the Red Army came in, he said until now it was mine,
    and now it's yours.
    He gave him the key, and it was also
    another Jewish guy, Geller [? Yedavilla. ?]
    He also gave him the key.
    He says until now it was mine.
    Now it's yours.
    And I think this is the reason why they did not
    send him to Siberia.
    You know, capitalists, all capitalists
    were sent to Siberia.
    Well, tell me about that.
    What happened when the army came?
    They're met, and you greet them.
    And they're met, and it's sort of like here they come
    from a society that's equal.
    Then what happens?
    Well, they start telling guys like ourselves-- you would say--
    a soldier would say I'm only 18 and a member of Komsomol.
    Komsomol mean the youth communist party or something
    like that.
    So what happened, just a few Russians came in,
    civilians I'm talking about.
    But they were-- in Poland, many Jews were communists.
    And as a matter of fact, my sister's future husband,
    he was also among them.
    So the Polish government used to arrest them
    and used to send them to the German part
    near the German part.
    So when the war broke out, the Germans opened the prisoners,
    and they become the temporary government.
    Most of them Jews.
    So they came back to the east?
    They came back home, and they became part
    of the new Soviet government until maybe a month later,
    maybe three weeks when actually Ukrainians were sent
    from Kiev and from the Ukraine.
    But there was a big difference.
    Everything was nationalized.
    There was no private initiative in the Soviet Union.
    OK.
    OK, now Poland was a capitalist country.
    And even though the Jews didn't have it so good,
    but there was never a shortage of bread, never
    shortage of butter, the daily necessities.
    When the Russians became part of the Ukraine,
    everything became a shortage.
    So anyway, what happened was the Jews had a small grocery store.
    They hid everything.
    They hid everything.
    So for example, if some--
    I still remember that one wanted my father make a suit for him,
    but my father charged him the same price from before.
    And he paid him with--
    With food.
    --food.
    Yeah.
    OK, let's cut.
    Yeah.
    But I would like that.
    This is some people--
    I mean, everybody lived through, but not everybody
    has the possibility.
    Everybody wants to talk about it.
    So to me, it's very important that all these things
    are recorded for future people.
    Thank you.
    Thank you because you come from a very--
    a territory that had a very tragic fate,
    and what you're describing is on the individual level
    in a small shtetl who have--
    which happens to be geographically
    in a certain place all of the different forces that
    converge on that place and then what happens to everybody.
    So I much appreciate that you are doing this.
    So they would pay in--
    so instead of money, your father would get paid in food.
    Is that right?
    Yeah, but this only lasted for a short time
    because they couldn't replace it.
    OK, I have a question now.
    Yeah.
    Were there Poles and Ukrainians who
    came out to greet the Red Army?
    No Poles.
    No Poles because it was Poland until now-- until then,
    and then they lost it.
    It became part of the Ukraine.
    So they didn't.
    They did not care to greet the Red Army.
    Some Ukrainians did.
    Some Ukrainians did, but it's also important--
    our neighbor Kovachuk, they had a son.
    Son's name was Grisha.
    And what happened in small towns,
    we used to call it in Polish [POLISH],
    that you had to, once a year, to join a policeman
    and just like walk around, walk the time.
    Be a patrolman.
    A patrolman, yeah.
    So what happened?
    What happened is when Grisha, the Kovachuk, their son, when
    he--
    just so happened that he was with a policeman that night,
    and they arrested two Ukrainians because they
    thought they were communists.
    No, no, no.
    So this is when?
    In 1939?
    When the Red Army came in in 1939.
    OK.
    In 1939.
    I'm talking about-- you asked me about-- yeah.
    Yeah, so was he a policeman for the Red Army or for Poland?
    No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
    OK.
    Kovachuk had a son.
    He had two daughters and a son.
    The son's name was Grisha.
    Got it.
    OK, in Maniewicze, and I think in other small town,
    once a year everybody who lived in Maniewicze
    had to join a policeman just to go to walk.
    So this would have been for a Polish system.
    Yeah.
    Still under the Polish system.
    Yes.
    OK, that's what I wanted to know.
    OK, the Polish system.
    So what happened?
    It just happened that the police that time arrested two
    supposedly--
    Communists.
    --two Ukrainian communists.
    When the Soviets came in, they found out about it,
    and due to the fact it was--
    he was innocent.
    He didn't know-- But due to the fact that he was with policemen
    that night, they sent him to Siberia,
    and our neighbor, Kovachuk, was never
    able to find out what happened to him.
    Oh my.
    So this is the Soviet Union.
    Wow.
    You know, he was innocent.
    He just so happened that--
    There was a sort of civilian duty.
    Civilian duty, and they are-- and the Polish, the policeman,
    arrested supposedly two--
    Communists.
    --Ukrainian communists.
    So they sent him to Siberia and, to my knowledge,
    never found out what happened to him.
    So, for example, somebody--
    also Mrs. Kovachuk-- I forgot her name.
    She said to my mother--
    she said, you know, when the Russians--
    well, once we heard the Red Army is coming in
    and if we camp out of the Ukraine,
    she said when the Ukrainians will come in
    and they'll become part of the Ukraine,
    you will be like my mother.
    She liked my mom because she always
    used to go and come in and borrow
    her two eggs, a little bit of salt, a little bit of sugar.
    But once they took away her son, she
    changed her mind about the Red Army and the Ukraine,
    so it depends.
    You know what I'm saying?
    And you say your brother-in-law became
    part of the authorities, the structure,
    until communists came from Kiev and the other place.
    Right.
    So what was he in charge of?
    What was his job?
    OK, there were big-- actually, how can I say?
    They just to call it in Polish parkiet.
    They used to make parquet floors.
    OK, parquet floors.
    Parquet floors, and actually, there was two Belgish families.
    They were Belgish.
    Oh, Belgian.
    Belgian.
    Belgian family.
    Belgian family.
    So as a matter of fact--
    so in other words, he became the--
    how can I say he was [NON-ENGLISH]?
    He would pay the workers.
    There were about maybe 300 workers,
    and he used to get cash and pay them and pay the workers.
    So the Belgian factory had been nationalized.
    Nationalized.
    The two Belgians, they ran.
    They ran for their life, and it was everything was nationalized.
    And so he was then in charge of this factory.
    Yeah, not the factory.
    He was just the cashier.
    OK, so he was giving out the pay for the workers there.
    Yeah.
    Did he stay in that job, or did he last in that job?
    No, he left.
    And as a matter of fact--
    it's a long story.
    I write about it.
    I have written maybe 50 stories.
    Oh, wow.
    And are being actually added, and maybe they'll--
    so everything is written down.
    He left and something happened to him.
    What happened to him?
    Well, in 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union,
    as a former communist, he ran to the Soviet Union.
    And he ran-- as a matter of fact, all communists,
    and especially, I would say, the one in charge,
    was such a coward, they were the first one
    to leave and leave the population
    without any government at all.
    So maybe for four days in--
    we're not there yet.
    Yeah.
    In 1941.
    In 1941, they just had a terrible time, the Ukrainians
    especially.
    And I'm sorry to say that, and to a lesser extent, the Poles.
    They came in, and they robbed.
    They took everything--
    In 1941.
    --in 1941 because the Soviets left,
    and the Germans didn't come in yet so about four days.
    As a matter of fact, I read in the Yiskeh book
    that the Ukrainians and Poles came from 50 miles away.
    They took off the doors.
    The Jewish people there had a horrible time,
    even much more than in the ghetto maybe the first four
    years.
    It was a terrible time.
    We'll talk about that, but, OK, so that's something
    about your sister's husband.
    Let's go back to after the people come from Kiev
    and they replace--
    do they replace, let's say, the local authority?
    Yes, they replace.
    Very few remain.
    They replace the local authorities.
    Everybody had to get a passport.
    And on the passport it said, for example, Chaim Kamelmacher,
    Jewish or my statues, student, or what have you.
    And as a matter of fact--
    so the best passport was if they would
    say I'm a [RUSSIAN], which means the best passport would
    be that would say I'm a son of a worker.
    Ah.
    It's just so happened, my father, who worked so hard
    and saved so long for the Singer,
    is he employed at one time.
    He had an employer at one time, which
    meant already that my passport did not
    say I'm a son of a worker.
    It said that my father was a little bit already
    a little bit of a capitalist because he had a worker.
    And, of course, he paid the worker.
    Otherwise, the worker wouldn't work for him,
    but this is the Soviet Union.
    It's very hard to realize what happened.
    I loved it.
    For example, they took away--
    there was one that used to make parts
    for pencils, which meant he was a capitalist, and he ran away.
    So they took over for the youth, the house.
    And we sang Russian songs and all that.
    I liked it, but there was nothing to buy.
    For everything, you had to get in line.
    But at this point, when--
    remind me again.
    When is your birthday?
    What month?
    July 1st.
    July 1.
    July 1 is your birthday, yeah?
    And you're born in 1925, so when all of this happens,
    you're just turned 14 years old.
    Right.
    You know, how much does a 14-year-old kid really
    understand about all of it?
    You can just see what's going on.
    Well, I don't know.
    I was-- as I say, how many 14 kids
    write to President Roosevelt.
    Well, that's true too.
    That's true too.
    Yeah, I don't want to--
    by saying this, I don't want to say that you
    weren't smart or clever.
    What I'm saying is that at 14, how
    were you to know things that you then learned later?
    When they come in, it's natural that you would like things
    because there are some advantages to the system.
    Yeah.
    You know?
    And you get to go to school.
    Yeah, that meant a lot for me.
    Yeah.
    So tell me about that.
    Tell me how your father reacted, how your mother reacted.
    How did the family react to all of this?
    Well, my father-- as I say, my father liked it very much.
    The only thing it had some drawbacks because everything
    became a shortage of everything.
    You couldn't buy anything because they--
    and also, for example, we had a neighbor.
    We had a neighbor.
    The last name was Schtule.
    As a matter of fact, they had some relatives in Baltimore,
    and they had a small grocery store.
    And what happened, actually, he didn't make a living
    from the grocery store because they had rich relatives,
    supposedly, in Baltimore.
    And one of their young ladies was a teacher.
    And I said to myself a teacher?
    A teach in the United-- only in the United States,
    a Jew can be a teacher.
    So anyways, so when the Russians came in to begin with,
    they couldn't get any more help in the United States.
    Whatever he had maybe-- he had a small little store.
    I think it was just the kid to keep busy.
    Didn't make a living out of it.
    But what had bothered me, there was a line to buy sugar
    or whatever, they pull their family out from the line
    because he was a capitalist.
    Now here is a guy who when somebody didn't have any money
    and you needed some flour, oil, whatever for Saturday,
    he would write it down in the book.
    And many times nobody--
    the book was all yellow and curled because many--
    his name was Isich.
    Isich, would you please write it down?
    But it bothered me that the Soviets took over,
    and he was a capitalist.
    He was so good to poor people, but, of course, they
    didn't know it or whatever.
    So we used to help them with some salt and this and that.
    So you started to see such things.
    I was sorry, yes, to see such things.
    OK, when did you start going to school.
    I started going to school in the fall of 1939.
    And what was that like?
    Describe it to me a little bit.
    Who were some of the kids in the classes?
    OK, well, we were actually five young boys, five young men
    or whatever, who decided to--
    who could not afford to go to high school and taught
    that here's our chance for us to go to school.
    It was actually in the same buildings
    where the Polish school, was in the same buildings.
    And I still remember the one in charge, like the principal.
    His name was Kucharuch, a real Ukrainian.
    And his wife was Olana Nikolai Kucharuch,
    and she taught chemistry.
    Ah-ha.
    She taught chemistry, which wasn't too good.
    So anyway, and this is why I'm here and being interviewed--
    Really?
    --by the Holocaust Museum.
    You'll ask why.
    Yeah.
    Because in 1941 when Germany attacked the Soviet Union,
    and, as I said, they bombed us the first day,
    I was afraid to remain there not because I was a Jew.
    The Holocaust was years away.
    I was afraid that the Germans will say that I'm a communist.
    After all, I attended a communist or socialist school,
    whatever you want to call it.
    So if I wouldn't attended a school,
    I would've never been here because I would have never left
    my parents.
    My mom-- she rest in peace--
    she said, Chaim, you always--
    I was always a schoolboy.
    You with your schooling.
    Now you have to leave us.
    So in other words it was--
    Because of the school.
    Yeah, if another school.
    But the only thing, as I mentioned
    before, she said [INAUDIBLE] if you don't get lazy,
    you'll always be able to survive.
    Your mother said that?
    My mother.
    So we check [INAUDIBLE] again, I--
    I did some tailoring.
    I became a shoemaker.
    We'll get to there.
    We'll get there.
    We'll get to there.
    All right, so right now, though, you're in this new school.
    Well, it's school in the old buildings,
    but now it is a Soviet school--
    Soviet school.
    --run by the Ukrainians.
    Yes.
    OK, what were some of the other subjects that you had?
    Oh, very-- we had Ukrainian as a language.
    OK, did you have Russian?
    Yeah-- no, no.
    No, no.
    I'm sorry.
    Everything was taught in Ukrainian.
    We had Russian as a language.
    I still remember the Ukrainian literature.
    Their biggest writer, the Russian writer
    Taras Grigoryveich Shevchenko.
    They had Mariia Vovchok, Karpenko-Karyi, Lesya Ukrainka.
    And then we had--
    and then, of course, we had Russian as a language.
    Pushkin.
    And then, of course, we had chemistry.
    We had math, geometry.
    Did you have--
    History.
    You had history?
    Absolutely.
    OK.
    History, yeah.
    Did you have any kind of political courses?
    Absolutely.
    We used to have a political [RUSSIAN] which means
    a politician--
    A political officer.
    --a political officer to make sure that we grow--
    schoolchildren, even though it's high
    school but make sure that we grow up good Soviet citizens.
    As a matter of fact, we had like--
    used to play like we would be members of the Red Army
    and train how to use--
    how can I say-- words which they used in the army and all that.
    And we had-- how can I say?
    After the revolution, the Russians wanted to be different.
    So instead of having [INAUDIBLE],
    they used to have their insignia on the collar.
    Ah, OK.
    So anyway, we used to have officers.
    We used to fight, used to fight like members of the Red Army.
    So you got a little practice.
    And there went a time with snowballs and all that.
    And who was the-- who were the other kids when you
    were going to grammar school?
    The other kids, not too many Jewish people, mostly Ukraine.
    Not to many Jewish, but more Ukrainian.
    More Ukrainian.
    Some Polish.
    Yeah.
    So the majority would be Ukrainian
    rather than Polish or Jewish.
    Yes.
    OK, did you happen to hear of any Ukrainian-Polish tension
    during this time?
    A little bit.
    But also I must say about the Poles,
    when the Germans came in--
    The Germans or the Russians?
    No, no, I'm talking about the--
    no, no, I mean, when the Germans came in 1941, they recruited--
    I just want to mention they recruited Ukrainian policemen.
    And as a matter of fact, they claimed
    that Ukrainian policemen were worse
    for the ghetto than the Germans.
    As a matter of fact, one of my friends called Kolya [INAUDIBLE]
    went with me to the same Polish public school.
    He became a policeman, and he was terrible.
    He used to hit.
    He was merciless.
    All he wanted was gold, and, of course,
    a Jew usually has a gold with his wedding band or whatever.
    They took it away the first week,
    and he was bad that after the war, he actually--
    he ran to England.
    He was afraid to remain there.
    What I want to bring up, they didn't trust any Poles.
    But the Poles volunteered to help the Germans
    to find the Jews and all that.
    So they were very, very big anti-Semites.
    And what I would say if not the Ukrainians-- and, of course,
    I mean, when I say Ukrainians, there's
    always good people, bad people.
    But if not, the bad Ukrainians and the Poles,
    I would say maybe 20% of the Jews
    maybe would survive because, as I said,
    the Germans were cowards.
    They knew this was so many Partisans in the wooded area.
    Did they go there?
    No, they didn't.
    But in the cities when they carry the big gun,
    they became the bosses.
    Yeah.
    It's tragic.
    It's tragic.
    It's tragic, and also this is my opinion.
    My opinion, I think Germany did not suffer enough because nobody
    can tell me they didn't know.
    There was always somebody in the family, a son, a husband.
    They always used to send to Germany clothing and many times
    even jewelry if they could, so they knew what was going on.
    You're talking about people in the Wehrmacht, the German Army.
    Yeah, the German people in Germany.
    So what I'm saying-- what I wanted to say--
    yeah, what I wanted to say is after the war when Germany
    was divided between the big four, the United States, Great
    Britain, France, and the Soviet Union,
    the occupation should have lasted much, much longer.
    So what happened was the only one who lasted longer
    was the Soviet sector, the Soviet part.
    And, of course, at that time, many people will [?
    dispute it ?] with me because of the Eastern Republic of Germany
    or something like that.
    Did it-- the German Democratic Republic.
    That's right, the German Democratic Republic.
    So they [INAUDIBLE] us all, but--
    and then I say that the rest of the Germans
    from the French, United States, and in Great Britain, the German
    did not suffer enough.
    For what they did.
    I think they should've suffered a little bit more.
    And now it's one of the most richest, I mean, country--
    the most developed country in Europe.
    It's true.
    I mean, that's my opinion.
    That's my opinion.
    I can understand it.
    I can understand why.
    If you think maybe 12 million Russians
    maybe died in the war, 12 million.
    And this is why, for example, General Eisenhower
    decided to let--
    even though the US Army was near to Berlin, but he decided
    they let the Red Army take Berlin
    because they suffered so much.
    And, of course, the US forces held back,
    and the Red Army took Berlin.
    And not only that.
    They lost maybe a million and a half soldiers, but--
    It was important for them.
    --it was important for them.
    Let's talk a little bit more now about
    that first Soviet occupation in Poland before 1941.
    And then we'll take a break, and then afterwards, we'll
    come back to this.
    I would like to find out more of what your life was like up
    until the time you leave.
    So you say that you attended school.
    You had various courses.
    You even had a [RUSSAIN] come and give instruction,
    and the kids would play in the schoolyard
    as if they were in the Red Army but with snowballs.
    How did the next couple of years-- did you hear of--
    you mentioned also before of deportations of Jews
    who had said we want to join our relatives on the German side.
    You're talking in 1939.
    1939 to 1941.
    Yes.
    And you said they were picked up,
    and then they were sent to Siberia.
    Did you know of other people who were arrested for some reason?
    Did your family or did you sense a certain kind of presence
    that it wasn't safe to talk, or it
    wasn't safe to express things?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yes, we knew it wasn't safe to talk.
    It wasn't safe to talk.
    But how can I say?
    It was good and bad.
    I was good because for the first time,
    a Jew could say-- they advertised, you can be a doctor.
    You can be an engineer.
    You can be this.
    I bet it would never happen during Poland.
    So this was a positive thing.
    And also but the Russians said that the reason why
    we have a shortage of this and that
    is because we are like an island, a socialist island,
    a heaven for the working people, a heaven for the--
    and we are an island among a sea of capitalists
    who want to destroy us, and therefore we
    spend more money for the fence.
    So this is only a temporary thing.
    And many people--
    It has a logic to it.
    Yeah, logic to it.
    OK, so let's go back to deportations.
    Do you know of any people personally who
    were arrested and picked up?
    A few.
    The ones who were picked up, so-called capitalists.
    OK.
    So-called capitalists.
    Yeah.
    And was that man who you said who was such a nice grocer--
    Something similar like Dr. Zhivago.
    Mm-hmm.
    OK, but you didn't have that fear.
    No, I didn't have the fear.
    Although, I was not 100%.
    I was not 100% a son of a worker because my father, at one time,
    had an employee.
    OK, and you say they took away the radio.
    That is you had to give up your radio.
    Right.
    OK, what about the Singer sewing machine?
    Oh, no, no, they didn't touch that.
    So was your father able to continue working?
    Yes, was to continue.
    Yes, continue able to work, yeah.
    OK, all right.
    So let's come up to--
    is there anything else about that Soviet period
    that you think is important to talk about?
    Yes, well, I'll think about it.
    Let's see.
    Well, as I said they did away with
    but also called capitalists.
    And also I was a little bit disillusioned.
    Although, for me to go back to school was really--
    but I thought that life became a little bit
    harder, the daily life, because you had to--
    for everything you had go in line, stay in line.
    And the problem was--
    well, I cannot explain.
    You remember there was a shortage of gasoline.
    Yes.
    If you had a half a tank and there was a short line,
    what did you do?
    Got in line.
    You get in line, yeah, of course.
    You don't do it now.
    Why not?
    Because that's all you know.
    Gasoline will always be there.
    Right.
    Now this was the problem with the Soviet Union.
    They didn't have enough of everything,
    so people would buy things even they didn't need them.
    Say they buy, say, rubber boots.
    They used to say what do they give today?
    They didn't give.
    You had to pay.
    You had to pay with rubles.
    But they used to say what did they give today?
    So even you didn't need the rubber boots, what did you do?
    You bought them because you didn't
    know when you'll need them.
    They'll be available.
    Meanwhile, if I needed the rubber boots,
    I wasn't able to buy it.
    Because they were all sold out.
    They're all sold out.
    So this the main problem.
    Also no competition.
    No competition.
    If you look at the computer from the mainframe computer
    until the personal computer, they're
    now cheaper than when they came out with the personal computer,
    and they do more things.
    There was no-- in the Soviet Union, it wasn't such a thing.
    Everybody used to get salary.
    So why should I work very hard if I get the same salary?
    What about your father?
    How was he paid?
    By--
    Rubles.
    But who paid him?
    I mean, the people usually got some rubles,
    and they used to work and get paid in rubles.
    OK, but he wasn't paid by the state.
    He was still paid by the clients.
    Yeah.
    OK, so for him, it was if he didn't have a client,
    he didn't have any rubles.
    No.
    But for somebody who is, let's say, a waitress in a restaurant,
    it doesn't matter how many customers she has.
    She gets the same wage.
    She gets the same wage.
    OK.
    And also here they're trying--
    every manufacturer.
    Take what comes through a suit.
    This what you need.
    The sleeve should look nice.
    The lapel should look nice.
    It should fit you.
    There, most of the time, you have to buy it ready made,
    and it was done as so-called artel.
    What is an artel?
    Artel, they would say that take maybe 20 or so tailors,
    and they would make clothing for the stores.
    There was no competition, so they didn't actually
    care the stitch is even or something like that.
    No competition.
    You have to buy whatever was available.
    So these sorts of things--
    a disillusion for you starts to set in.
    Yes.
    OK, did the disillusion set in for your father too?
    A little bit.
    A little bit.
    But maybe some, especially Jews, figured, well,
    [INAUDIBLE] better off because there's more or less equality
    when it comes to get a job or something like that.
    Well, that's-- I mean, I can understand that's very important
    to a person.
    Yeah.
    If you haven't felt equal before,
    you want to feel that equality.
    You need to feel it as a human being.
    So let's come up to June 1941.
    Are you still in school May and June 1941?
    Yes, I'm still in school.
    OK.
    I'm still in school, and as a matter of fact,
    they gave us some positions what we should do.
    And they gave me and a friend of mine actually a position
    not far from the railway station that when we see German planes,
    we shoot signal or something like that.
    So there was a sense that Germany--
    well, let me step back a little bit.
    You say in 1939, when the war starts,
    you were expecting Germany.
    Instead, you get the Soviet Union, which is better.
    Did you ever get an explanation as to why?
    What kind of relations Germany had with the Soviet
    Union at that time?
    Well, all we knew that Ribbentrop and Molotov
    got together, and they decided to divide Poland between them.
    I think now what Germany wanted--
    how can I say--
    I think Germany knew that the Soviet Union is not
    ready for war.
    It doesn't want a war.
    And they decided by making a pact with the Soviet Union,
    they'll gain.
    Now what did they gain?
    They gained oil.
    The Soviet Union, there was a shortage of wheat,
    but they gave Germany a lot of wheat and all this thing.
    And I think Stalin was ready to give Hitler
    no matter what he wants.
    And Germany hated the Soviet Union
    and hated the Russian people.
    They told them they are worse than dogs
    and that they're not cultured.
    They don't have any culture, and they're
    this and that, this and that.
    So I think Germany actually wanted
    to buy some time, and therefore--
    and meanwhile, they got everything they
    wanted from the Soviet Union.
    But then Hitler's decided, why should I wait what they give me?
    I'll go and take everything that I want.
    But, again, when it comes to politics,
    it there was a big mistake what Hitler
    did attacking the Soviet Union.
    He underestimated them.
    He underestimated them, and he did
    take a good example of Napoleon in 1812
    with-- had a half a million army, and he attacked the tsar.
    And the tsar decided to burn everything and leave.
    And also both of them underestimated
    the [? horrendous ?] climate of Germany--
    Of Russia.
    --of Russia and then the Soviet Union,
    the vastness of the Soviet Union and the climate.
    The Germans, it's not such a nice,
    but it's a little anecdote.
    But something to reach out--
    I'll take the liberty of saying it.
    I mean, there is a story.
    There's a painting in [INAUDIBLE] in Poland.
    It's Napoleon.
    Napoleon always liked that greyish horse,
    and he had the special--
    Hat.
    --hat.
    And it showed on the painting that he's in Moscow,
    and Moscow is burning.
    And it's very, very sad.
    And one a high officer said, your majesty,
    we are under capital of the tsar, of the tsarist Russia.
    Why are you so sad?
    He said, we lost the war.
    So anyway, so the officer continued,
    why do you think we lost the war?
    We are Moscow.
    He says, I saw something yesterday
    which I'm sure we lost the war.
    So finally, why did he see?
    He said, I saw a Russian take out from his knapsack
    a piece of bread, which was hard.
    He couldn't eat it.
    And he is not such a nice-- he said, he peed on it,
    and he ate it.
    So he said, the Russia, the hard--
    people are used to hardship, not like the French.
    Right.
    And so in that way, he sees that they can
    withstand a lot of hardship.
    That's right.
    And they don't give in.
    And they don't give in.
    And they don't give in.
    And that's what happened.
    Yeah, so Hitler thought he came out of the blitzkrieg,
    it'll be very, very--
    a speedy war.
    And also he miscalculated.
    When they first entered the Ukraine,
    the Ukrainian people, I guess, actually liked him.
    They treated them like friends with--
    They greeted them.
    That's right.
    Why?
    Because he promised them an independent Ukraine.
    He promised them an--
    they never wanted to be part of the Soviet Union.
    But then what happened?
    Hitler, I think, have about a three million army.
    The army has to eat, so where do you get food?
    You got the farmer to take his cattle,
    and then they said, hey, wait awhile.
    They're not so nice.
    And this is when they started the Partisans.
    OK, and what was happening before that happens?
    You are still in school, but you have a job.
    And the job is to signal if you see German planes.
    Right.
    So did that mean that at that--
    in that section of what is now Ukraine,
    that used to be Poland that was divided because of Molotov
    and Ribbentrop, the local authorities were nervous?
    Were they already suspecting something would happen?
    So this was actually the signal when the war broke out in 1941.
    Oh, I see.
    This is afterwards.
    Yes, it's afterwards in 1941.
    OK, so my question is were they nervous about this
    before the German attack?
    Yeah.
    Did they think they would attack?
    Yeah.
    Yeah?
    Yeah, I think.
    Or you don't know?
    Maybe I should say I don't know maybe.
    Maybe I should say I don't--
    but anyways, we've almost got killed because the German planes
    had no opposition.
    They used to fly so lower, used to see
    them laugh by their shooting with a machine gun.
    So you could see the face of the person with the machine gun?
    Yes.
    They almost kill me.
    I ran home that time.
    We ran home.
    See, the Germans, they flew so low,
    and they also told the Ukrainian farmers
    to wear something white when they tilled the earth.
    OK, why would that be?
    So to make sure that they're not shooting at them.
    OK, so here's another question.
    You mentioned earlier that the second day of the war,
    there was a bomb that fell close to your house
    and created a crater.
    Right.
    Was that 1939 or was that 1941?
    I thought it was 1941.
    OK, so you didn't sense any Germans in 1939 at all?
    No, we didn't see any Germans, just maybe a few Germans.
    And this was actually something new.
    We didn't know that the Soviets will take over one of our--
    our path where we lived.
    OK, so in 1941, this bomb falls, and you run away home
    after the--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    The war started 22nd.
    I left the 26th.
    And tell me again.
    What were the circumstances of leaving?
    How did you come to this decision
    that you've got to leave?
    Well, I mean, one of the things they
    used to say that the Soviet Union was not
    ready at a new border, which was a new border at the River Bug.
    That's right.
    But they said the Germans will reach
    the old Polish-Russian border.
    We'll be ready for that.
    Ah-ha.
    So many of us, including myself, thought it's a temporary thing.
    But when the Germans bridge reached
    the old Polish-Russian border, they just kept going.
    And I think after maybe a few weeks,
    they were able to see Moscow through their binoculars,
    so this was part which made this easier for me to leave.
    I thought it was temporary.
    OK, and you left because you had gone to school.
    Absolutely.
    If I wouldn't have gone to school, I would have never left.
    Did anybody from your family leave with you?
    No.
    What about your older brother?
    My older brother-- the way I understand,
    the war broke out the 22, and when I was heading east
    and the Soviet, the Red Army was still heading west,
    they said, where is you from?
    Where is you from?
    Where are you going?
    Where is you from?
    Where is you from?
    The problem was that the Soviet Union was not ready for war,
    and Stalin got rid of all their marshals,
    and in the [INAUDIBLE], and the purchase whatever marshal.
    General Tukhachevsky.
    Tukhachevsky.
    Tukhachevsky and all that.
    Yeah.
    So they were sure.
    As a matter of fact, Rokossovsky,
    which was in prison, which was Marshal Rokossovsky
    was in prison.
    They let him out for prison in order to take over.
    So the problem was they didn't-- the Red Army did not have any
    leaders.
    And Stalin did it because he was afraid of them.
    He was afraid that they had charisma.
    May cross this line or something like that.
    And your brother then stayed where you-- with your family,
    and you left.
    My brother was mobilized into the Red Army the 23rd.
    I see.
    And I actually do not know 100% what happened to him.
    Oh, I see.
    I don't know what happened to him.
    The only thing is if somebody's is alive,
    somebody would see him.
    Although, in the memorial book--
    in Maniewicze memorial book, it said
    that I served in the Red Army and was killed.
    So sometimes the information is not--
    according to this book, I'm not alive.
    I was killed.
    OK, so it's not accurate.
    It's not accurate.
    Well, I'm alive.
    You're alive, yes.
    But, I mean, but for your brother, there's no way--
    My brother, I'm not sure whether--
    the Red Army, they were so disorganized.
    They didn't know what they were doing.
    It's just a pity.
    And your sister and her husband, what did they do?
    OK, my sister's husband, the one who was a so-called communist,
    he escaped to the Soviet Union.
    I don't know why he didn't take my sister because I
    left the fourth day of the war.
    I don't know why he didn't take my sister.
    And my sister gave birth to a baby girl.
    And they were there with your parents.
    Yeah, with my parents.
    And, of course, then a few months later, they
    organized a ghetto, and they took my,
    I think-- not that time.
    The Jews in Maniewicze was actually--
    how can I say?
    The first group was shot in 1941.
    They supposed to take them to work.
    Took them to work about maybe 80 or so Jews
    and then never returned.
    They shot them.
    So my mom was on her own.
    Os, so she was-- your father was taken?
    Other people were taken from that first group?
    They were part of that first group?
    As I said, in 1940, a group of people, maybe 80 or so Jews,
    was taken, supposedly, to work, and they were shot.
    They never return.
    So my mom was by herself.
    She was taken to the ghetto, and--
    OK, I'm sorry that I'm interrupting.
    You say in 1941 after the Germans come, yeah--
    Yeah.
    --a first group is taken to go to work.
    Was your father in that group?
    Yes, supposedly to work.
    I see.
    But they shot him and never came back.
    What about your twin brothers?
    OK, now this is--
    my neighbor's daughter, which I'll
    talk about, Lusaka Volchuk, she said my twin brothers
    were not in the ghetto.
    It could be-- it's a few possibilities.
    The one who became a Ukrainian, the head
    of the police in Maniewicze, was a very, very big anti-Semite.
    So it's just a possibility.
    The parents used to send the children out to neighbors.
    Right.
    Maybe neighbors have a pity.
    Gave them a few potatoes, or a piece of bread,
    something like that.
    So when he-- so I read in the Yiskeh book
    that when he saw some children coming back with some,
    he used to shoot them personally.
    That's a possibility because my mom maybe
    send out my twin brothers--
    To get food.
    --to get food.
    Maybe they were shot.
    There's also a possibility that many, many parents would give up
    their children to a Polish family,
    to a Ukrainian family, and then many, many times they--
    how can I say--
    I mean, they became Poles.
    They became Ukrainians.
    Although, my brothers were born in 1910--
    '30.
    In 1930 rather.
    I'm sorry.
    It's OK.
    1930, so they were 11 years old.
    So 11 years old, maybe they would remember.
    Maybe not.
    I mean, so I really don't know what
    happened to my twin brothers.
    There were 11 years old.
    So they disappeared.
    They disappeared.
    Your sister?
    My sister went to the ghetto with her daughter,
    and they were shot in 1942, about 4,000 Jews.
    So when I was there in 2013, I went with a group,
    and my son joined me.
    And my grandson joined me.
    Perry joined me, and Jonathan, my grandson.
    And I had the privilege to say Kaddish,
    the prayer for the departed, El Malei Rachamim.
    So there were about 4,000 Jews shot in 1942,
    and I also when I was in Maniewicze in 2013, I met--
    they were actually celebrating the independence of the Ukraine,
    and there was there was an elderly lady.
    And she looked at me.
    She says, I know you.
    So I say, how do you know me?
    She says, we went to public school together.
    I said, what's my name?
    She said, I don't remember your name.
    Sorry.
    Said, who were the teachers?
    Who was the principal?
    She said the principal was Jan Postula.
    One of the teachers it was Maria Dembrovska.
    She recognized me but didn't remember my name.
    So the same one, she said, do you know more
    a little bit-- a little bit more what happened to the Jews
    in 1941?
    So she started crying, and she said, I'll tell you.
    They told the population to stay home, not to go out.
    And, of course, they went with 4,000 Jews,
    and the Ukrainian policeman, and Polish policeman,
    and, of course, and German, they were about maybe two miles from
    Maniewicze.
    And she said she was, at that time, my age.
    She was a little bit of a rebel.
    She said she went.
    She wanted to see.
    She wanted to see what's going on
    because the German and the Ukrainian police
    said to stay home.
    So I said can you tell me how many Germans were there about
    and how many Ukrainians?
    She told me there were maybe five Germans and maybe 20
    Ukrainians and Poles.
    So she said she almost ran--
    so they brought the Jews.
    There was already the--
    what do you call it?
    A grave dug.
    And they asked each one to undress,
    and they shot everybody in the back of the head.
    So she said the Ukraine--
    the German police notice them all,
    and they almost ran into trouble because they
    thought that they were Jews.
    So the Ukrainian policemen, they have to vouch for them.
    No, they're Ukrainians.
    So they said they chased them home.
    They chased them away.
    And they didn't even care.
    She told me and some other Ukrainian people that many times
    they actually-- many Jews were still alive
    when they buried them, that the Earth was moving a little,
    was moving for some time before they.
    So it's very, very tragic.
    And your mother and your sister were part of this group?
    Yes, and, of course, her daughter.
    And in many cases, the Germans wouldn't even spare a bullet.
    They would take-- they would hit their head on a brick wall
    or something, an infant or so, in order to save on a bullet.
    But the world forgot about it, and even I,
    you cannot always think about it because then you'll always be
    sad and be--
    just can't do it.
    But it's just unbelievable.
    And where was the world, you know?
    I don't say that refugees from Syria,
    wherever, Afghanistan should not be helped.
    But where was the world when they killed
    six million innocent Jews?
    Where was everybody?
    Where was everybody?
    When you went back to--
    The Ukraine.
    --this town.
    How do you--
    Maniewicze.
    Maniewicze.
    Was that the first time that you had been back?
    Yes.
    After 72 years.
    After 72 years.
    Yeah.
    And was that the time that you learned these details
    of what had happened?
    No, I learned a little from the Yiskeh book,
    from the memorial book--
    I see.
    --because we didn't talk much about that.
    I made a speech in Ukrainian, and I actually
    mentioned the so-called bad people, bad Ukrainians,
    but I had to be careful.
    And as a matter of fact, believe me,
    there were no Jewish people since 1941,
    and they were very, very-- a group maybe of 20--
    very, very nice.
    They were, I must say.
    Didn't know what to do for us.
    Although, I had a guard, a Ukrainian guard with a big gun
    with me all the time.
    Where?
    In--
    In Maniewicze when we went back.
    In 2013?
    Yeah.
    Why?
    Why?
    Because there's still many nationalists, and here
    comes somebody who lived in Maniewicze 72 years ago
    and telling a story of how the Jews of Maniewicze lived.
    And actually-- but you know something?
    If somebody would have wanted to kill me,
    you know, because I made the speech near the library.
    But when I was told, said, Harry, you will need a guard.
    I said, what?
    But I was there already.
    So he had a bag and a big gun.
    He showed me once the gun, and he was with me from the morning
    until at night.
    And this is now still part of Ukraine.
    Yeah.
    OK, to this day?
    To this day.
    OK, I'd say let's break here.
    We'll have some lunch, and we'll come back
    and talk about your experiences after you left,
    after you ran eastwards.
    Yeah.
    OK?
    Yeah.
    All right, thank you very much.
    All right, before the break, we were talking just up
    to the point where there is the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union
    going through Poland, which was under their control
    crossing over into the former Polish territories that were now
    into Soviet control.
    Before we continue that, I wanted to ask you something.
    Sure.
    And it's a bit of a sensitive question,
    but it goes back to what you were saying earlier when
    the Soviets first came in and many,
    not all, but many of the Jews in the town greeted them
    and welcomed them.
    Yes.
    How did the Poles react to this?
    Did they show any kind of feeling?
    Did you see any kind of reaction?
    Well the very, very few Poles over there
    to greet the Red Army, and also I
    mentioned before Pilsudski was very, very
    good for the Jews more or less.
    So tell me who was Pilsudski because people on the camera
    won't know.
    OK, Pilsudski was the first Polish marshal,
    and, supposedly, he actually marched
    from Krakow, which is a medieval city with a Polish division
    or something like that, to Poland.
    And as a matter of fact, there's a little song,
    which I still remember.
    OK.
    And it goes like this.
    [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
    What it means?
    OK.
    That Jozef Pilsudski was that first Marshall, and he marched.
    It's important for our country to become independent to take
    the capital.
    So he marched in with the first--
    I don't think it was a division, something smaller, to Warsaw.
    And he said even it's a long wait from Krakow to Warsaw,
    but we'll get there as long as we keep doing it, keep walking.
    So this is for the fight for Polish independence.
    Yes.
    I see.
    And you remember that song.
    Yeah.
    So, again, that goes back to my question in some ways.
    Independence was very important to them.
    Yeah.
    OK, so after-- what I wanted to say when Smigly-Rydz took over--
    After his death.
    --afterwards and Hitler became to power-- came to power,
    anti-Semitism very, very increased in the middle--
    central Europe.
    So as a matter of fact, even in Maniewicze, sometimes a Jew
    was afraid if he had a beard that some Polish,
    I would call them, hooligans would not
    cut off-- cut off his beard.
    As a matter of fact, we had a neighbor,
    and I don't know why exactly what happened.
    But he was a Jewish neighbor, and they beat him up.
    And so-- but how can I say--
    Maniewicze was a small town.
    If you needed an X-ray, you have to go to Kovel.
    So they took him.
    They beat him up, and they had to take him
    to Kovel to hospital.
    And he lost one of his eyes.
    Oh.
    So but I'm saying the anti-Semitism very, very
    increased a lot.
    In the late 1930s.
    Yes.
    After Pilsudski died and, of course,
    after Hitler came to power.
    Those two things.
    Those two things.
    So actually, some of the Soviets took over.
    It was like a relief for the Jewish people.
    You could walk at night, 8 o'clock, at 9 o'clock,
    at 10 o'clock.
    Nobody bothered you.
    So in a way, it was good for the Jewish population.
    No, I understand that explanation,
    and I understand how it would be that Jews
    would find it more acceptable and would greet the Soviets.
    My question is what kind of reaction
    did the Poles have when they saw this?
    Well, they didn't like it.
    They couldn't show that they don't like it.
    But afterall, they actually lost a part
    of Poland, the eastern part of Poland, which was maybe--
    and Poland's like here.
    They call it state, like state of New York, state of Nevada.
    They used to call it wojewodztwo.
    Wojewodztwo.
    Wojewodztwo.
    So they lost many, many, many, so-called wojewodztwos
    like wojewodztwo wolynskie, where we lived,
    wojewodztwo tarnopolskie, wojewodztwo stanislawowskie.
    Wojewodztwo Lwow, like near Lwow as well.
    Lwow, yes.
    With wojewodztwo lwowskie, yes.
    Also lost Lwow.
    So now it's called Lviv.
    That's right like the Ukrainians do.
    In Polish, it used to be called Lwow.
    OK.
    Do you think, though, that that had
    an effect on how when the Germans came,
    the Jews were treated?
    Maybe.
    I wouldn't say yes.
    I wouldn't say no.
    There's a possibility.
    It's a possibility.
    The Germans were against communists and the Jews.
    Yeah.
    The communists and the Jews.
    OK, so let's go forward.
    You are now-- you have run east.
    You are escaping the fourth day of the German occupation.
    Right.
    Before they came in.
    Before they came into--
    No, they came in the 27th.
    I left the 26th.
    Wow.
    By one day.
    One day.
    And you say your mother was crying and crying.
    Crying the evening of the 26th.
    Yeah, how did you leave?
    By truck?
    By train?
    Walking.
    Walked to the railway station in Maniewicze and took a--
    it was a cattle train and stopped off
    at the old Polish border.
    The reason why we stopped off because we didn't know about
    if we need a passport.
    I mean, we need--
    I had a passport, but if you need something
    in order to cross the border.
    But we make that big mistake.
    There were thousands and thousands of Red Army soldiers,
    and then you always somehow recognize a Jew.
    A Jew feels better with a Jew just
    like a Lithuanian feels better with a Lithuanian or whatever.
    So we went over to him.
    He was an officer, and we told them where we were from.
    And he said, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    All of us had to fight for the Soviet motherland.
    I said, OK, take us to the army, and we'll fight.
    But he didn't-- they didn't know what to do with themselves.
    So while we were still talking, another train
    stopped at the station.
    And this was already shot with many bullet holes.
    We got on that train, and then the train
    stopped near Stalingrad in a suburb.
    So that's really far.
    Yeah.
    The train kept moving, kept moving, kept moving,
    and it stopped near suburb of Stalingrad.
    Two representative form a collective farm came over
    and said, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    He said to us, why don't you go down, leave the train?
    You'll walk.
    You'll rest.
    You'll work in our collective farm because when you travel,
    you don't have an opportunity to shave.
    You know.
    I don't have to tell you.
    Yeah.
    OK, but let's go back a little bit.
    You say that at first you went to a soldier, and he said,
    everybody needs to fight.
    Not a soldier.
    He was an officer in the Red Army.
    An officer in the Red Army.
    And then you said we.
    Who was with you?
    OK, we were five--
    six friends.
    Ah.
    Six friends.
    We were six friends.
    Who were all leaving together.
    Yes.
    The same six friends who had gone to the school.
    No, no, no, not the same.
    Different ones.
    Not the same, no.
    OK.
    Not the same.
    All right.
    But six who decided we have to leave.
    We have to leave.
    All right, and you had you said you had papers and passport.
    Does that mean you had your Soviet passport?
    Yes.
    I had my Soviet passport.
    Were you also-- you were also considered a Polish citizen.
    I was considered a Polish citizen,
    but when I got my passport, there was a Soviet citizen.
    Did you ever get a Polish passport?
    Did you ever have--
    No.
    You never had Polish papers?
    Never had a Polish.
    I only had something, and what we
    had to do-- what we wanted-- you could do is take a picture,
    go to city hall, and testify that's on the picture
    is Chaim Kamelmacher.
    So this was like kind of like a--
    I really call it a passport.
    Identity card.
    It was an ID.
    OK.
    It was an identity card.
    But, as I mentioned, when the Soviets came in,
    everybody had to get a passport.
    In the United States, if you don't travel,
    you don't need a passport.
    That's right.
    But there everybody had to get a passport.
    And so it identitied--
    Had to get a passport and pledge allegiance to the Soviet Union.
    OK.
    About how long did it take to get
    to the suburbs of Stalingrad?
    I would say about a day.
    Not long.
    No.
    Not long.
    And who else was on that train?
    You said a bullet-ridden train.
    People from that particular area or didn't
    care to remain under the German rule.
    All kinds of people.
    OK, was it fill filled, the train?
    Was it full?
    Oh, yes.
    OK, were there places--
    were there no places to sit?
    Were people hanging onto it, or was it fairly empty in the sense
    that you found a seat?
    I think in our car, it was fairly empty in our car,
    but each car was different.
    Different.
    OK.
    All right, so there you are in Stalingrad,
    and someone comes, says, rest here.
    Two people.
    Two people come and say we're from the kolkhoz.
    Come.
    Rest at our kolkhoz.
    You will recover.
    And you'll work.
    And you'll work.
    Yeah.
    And what do you do?
    We looked at each other.
    We looked at each other, and we went.
    We decided to go down.
    So did we do the right thing?
    No.
    Why not?
    Why?
    You won't experience-- during wartime,
    you have to be near a railway station.
    If the enemy gets near or whatever, you hop on the train.
    You're gone.
    This was 70 kilometers from the railway station.
    I mean, they put us in an old rinky-dink car,
    and they took us to the collective farm.
    All six of you.
    All six of us.
    Actually, there were two cars.
    There were two cars.
    And so as I say, we made a big mistake.
    Why?
    Because maybe three weeks later, German planes
    started flying in the area, in the Stalingrad area.
    And we, as Jews, we ran once.
    We felt we shouldn't run twice.
    So but we went to the office and told them
    we would like to leave.
    They became furious.
    Really?
    Why?
    They said, our husbands and sons fight the war since 1941--
    out on the front fighting the war,
    and you don't even care to help us with--
    what do you call it?
    With the farming.
    With the farming and all that.
    Well, in a way if I think about it now, maybe they were right.
    On the other hand, we were afraid because we were Jewish.
    If we were the Poles, Ukrainian, or so,
    we would've been no problem.
    So anyway, there was no public transportation.
    So what did you do?
    So how do you get from the collective farm to Stalingrad?
    The only ones who would actually travel to Stalingrad
    is the one who supplied oil for the tractors, for the combines.
    But you cannot take too many people because of the nature
    of the--
    what would they call it--
    of the container of which it is like a container for oil.
    And also he was afraid.
    The guy was afraid to take us.
    He could get in trouble.
    He could get in trouble because you
    have to understand-- you have to think about the Soviet Union was
    at war, and you couldn't just walk into the railway station
    and say give me a ticket to so and so and so.
    And in order to get a ticket, you needed--
    you had to be sent by some authority.
    For example, they had a centralized industry.
    If I belt-- I'm just saying a belt, which moves two machines
    together or whatever.
    If this broke, you had to write to Moscow.
    Moscow had put in an order, and then
    it may be in the next republic, but you still
    have to go through Moscow.
    It was a centralized system.
    So in order to buy a ticket, somebody has to send you.
    Somebody has to give you that permission.
    Permission.
    That's right.
    Somebody has to give permission to pick up
    something or something.
    So we didn't have it.
    We were actually running away from a collective farm.
    But then I still had a good suit.
    I had a nice shirt and some other things.
    And like I said in the Soviet Union,
    they just didn't have that kind of stuff which they
    had in capitalist countries.
    So anyway, he just couldn't resist.
    He said I'll tell you what.
    Why don't you come 4 o'clock in the morning.
    He said, all he could take--
    can take two of us.
    So we got together with the other four and said,
    look, we'll wait for you at the railway station for three days.
    Well, we waited six days, and they didn't show up.
    But most likely, they couldn't find any transportation
    or what have you.
    But the fact was they didn't show up.
    So luckily, we saw a train again, a cattle train, marked--
    the door was marked Tashkent.
    Now Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan.
    And it's way, way in Central Asia.
    Thought this is for us.
    The Germans won't get there.
    No.
    We got on that train, and it took us maybe over a week
    or so because-- maybe even more because the military transport
    at priority, soldiers, tanks, whatever.
    So when the train stopped at--
    there's two of us already.
    Instead of six, two.
    When it stopped in Tashkent, it didn't let us off,
    but it took us further down to a Soviet farm.
    Actually, two differences.
    There's a difference between a Soviet farm
    and a collective farm.
    So we're talking [INAUDIBLE] and sovkhoz.
    That's right.
    Girl, you got it.
    OK.
    Sovkhoz and kolkhoz.
    You know what the difference?
    Tell me what the difference is.
    The difference is in a kolkhoz, a collective farm,
    it depends how many people of the family
    work, husband and wife, maybe a son, or whatever.
    And Uzbekistan specializes in cotton.
    Cotton needs a special climate.
    No rain.
    That type of plants cannot have any rain,
    and their roots have to be--
    they used to water the roots.
    OK, so--
    The difference between a kolkhoz and a sovkhoz.
    Yeah, OK.
    So after whenever the cotton is collected
    and the government thinks it's worth so much money,
    they got their money, and they divided it.
    It depends, say, if there were 100 people,
    one whole family had 10 people, they divided it evenly,
    the money.
    Oh, OK, so it could be that in a sovkhoz,
    if there are 100 people, it's 100%, and each of them
    gets a percent.
    Something like that.
    And in a kolkhoz.
    No, no.
    So this what I described is a kolkhoz.
    It's a kolkhoz.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    In a sovkhoz, they sell the stuff, and you get money.
    I see.
    So in the kolkhoz, the government buys it.
    Yeah.
    And the money is distributed.
    Yeah.
    In a sovkhoz, who buys it generally?
    No, no, no.
    In both cases, the government.
    The government takes over.
    OK.
    The government takes over, but the--
    in a collective farm, they get the product.
    In a Soviet farm, they get money.
    Ah.
    OK.
    OK, so for the goods that they provide,
    the state in the collective farm, they get goods in return.
    Right.
    In a--
    Soviet.
    --Soviet farm, a sovkhoz, they get cash in return.
    Right.
    OK, which one's better?
    I think a sovkhoz is better.
    Really?
    I think so.
    So anyway, so what happened, they gave me--
    I had a little room.
    You're still with this friend from--
    you're still with this guy that you left with.
    Yeah, this guy.
    But, OK, so what happened, I lost the guy also.
    How did I lose him?
    I lost him because when I worked on the collective farm
    near Stalingrad, one of my jobs, for example,
    is to take grain to the elevator and actually use oxen.
    And the grain elevator was a former church, a [RUSSIAN].
    They still had the--
    what do you call it?
    The paintings.
    The painting and all that.
    The frescoes.
    And I still remember.
    I'll never forget.
    The Russians did not believe in religion because--
    I'm not sure who said it.
    I don't think Lenin.
    They said religion is opium for the people.
    Marx.
    Who said it?
    Karl Marx.
    Karl Marx, OK.
    So anyway, so I still remember there was a lot of wheat,
    and there was a lady-- a few ladies who kept asking me
    can you bringing in the wheat that we used to spread.
    And they kept putting it on top of each other.
    And one of the ladies--
    I'll never forget, an elderly lady,
    she decided to cross herself.
    So she looked up at the painting, whatever.
    You don't call it painting.
    What do you call it?
    Fresco.
    Fresco.
    Icon.
    Fresco.
    Icon.
    And she crossed herself.
    Well, the guard kicked her.
    She could hardly get up.
    It made, for me, such a bad impression.
    OK, so mostly likely when I was--
    I worked with another Russian who helped
    me empty the bags with wheat.
    And I don't know exactly what it's called,
    but I got a disease where everything was itching.
    Everything itching.
    So I went to the hospital, and they asked me
    if I am a member of the Komsomol.
    Komsomol is a youth party, Communist Party remember.
    And I said, no.
    I said, why are you asking me?
    He said, well, if you were to be a member of Komsomol,
    we would find a space for you in the hospital.
    But you are not, and therefore there is no space for you.
    But they said-- they gave me a prescription, which they said
    is not available in Uzbekistan.
    It's available in Kyrgyzstan, which is a neighboring Soviet
    Republic.
    And I think-- what did I--
    I got it by train.
    And they gave me a liquid and said put the liquid
    on all across your body.
    Keep it on for three months and then shower, and it helped me.
    Somehow when I got back, my friend was gone.
    He wasn't there.
    Now I'm by myself.
    From six--
    To one.
    --I'm one.
    OK, so anyway, it was--
    so, well, I can describe the day.
    We would get up about 7:30.
    We had breakfast.
    What for the breakfast?
    Coffee, slice of bread, maybe sometimes a fruit or so.
    And the field was so long, so the cotton--
    it was a beautiful thing when they bloom.
    All kind of colors, magenta, dark blue, light blue,
    white, beautiful.
    It's a beautiful thing to see.
    So when the next--
    so I had an apron.
    And I and the problem was the cotton
    does not mature all of them the same time, so you have to pick.
    You have to pick and put an apron.
    And then when the apron was full, we had a bag.
    Put it in the bag.
    So we made about three of those lines.
    Was time to have lunch, believe it or not.
    It was huge.
    You didn't-- because it's all nationalist land.
    That's right.
    So lunch we had soup, and most of the time we
    could actually tell when a horse died because then it
    was some meat in the soup.
    Otherwise--
    No meat.
    Otherwise, no meat.
    The soup kind of blue.
    Oh, gosh.
    And, again, back to work.
    The water actually-- we had to drink
    the water, which was yellow.
    The water, which was used for irrigation.
    There was no supply of drinking water.
    I don't know how I lived to be 90.
    So anyway, so this the way it was.
    And then about 5 o'clock, the gong rang,
    and it was time again for dinner.
    [INAUDIBLE] some coffee, a piece of bread, sometimes a fruit,
    and all that.
    I got to know in the Soviet Union,
    there was such thing as called a feldsher.
    It's between a nurse and a doctor.
    OK.
    A feldsher could not write any prescription.
    But, for example, if I feel-- if I didn't feel well
    and I couldn't go out to work on the field,
    he was able to give me a note that Chaim Kamelmacher has
    a headache and this and that.
    OK, so he-- I got to know him, and he still
    remembered the tsar.
    He remembered the tsar, and he used to say to me,
    let's go to my study.
    He used to lock the door, and he actually--
    he was so silly.
    I could have put him in jail just like that.
    He remembered the tsar.
    He was telling me he doesn't care for the Soviet system
    and all that.
    And so--
    When you say--
    I understand what you mean by you could have put him
    in jail, but for people who don't know, how was it that you
    could have put him in jail?
    Explain.
    OK, all I had to do was to go to-- that time,
    they had the KGB already instead of [INAUDIBLE],
    and say the feldsher Petrovski is so and so
    is against the Soviet Union.
    He still like the tsar.
    So the KGB and the NKVD, what are they as bodies?
    Like here, the FBI, but a little--
    not as nice as the FBI.
    So if I would say that, that would
    be enough to pick him up and send him somewhere to Siberia.
    Got it.
    They were very afraid, well, can I say,
    that something may happen to the Soviet system, which eventually
    happened.
    It took a few years.
    It took a few years, and it took Gorbachev
    who wanted to better a little bit to make it better.
    Yeah, so--
    So anyways, so when it's time to [? bring ?] out,
    they had a sewing machine.
    And they had two grandsons.
    I was able to make for them a suit, to make a coat,
    and I was like--
    I became like their--
    Relative.
    --relative.
    And also they always sent enough food.
    Why?
    Because if you were a farmer Uzbek, and everybody
    at that small piece of land, and you wanted worker on your land,
    you would go to that feldsher, and he
    would give you a little note.
    And for that note, he expected--
    A little something.
    --a little something, whether it's a chicken,
    whether it's some--
    whatever.
    So they always had enough food.
    So you learned from your own father how to be a tailor.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And also I'm never afraid.
    I think what if I spoil something?
    It's always spoil.
    So I'll learn the next time how to make it better,
    how to make it right.
    OK.
    Was 19-- time flew.
    It was 1943.
    And you've been in Uzbekistan two years.
    Yes.
    The time in Uzbek was flew, but I
    was able to buy something what I wanted to say in Uzbek
    and this and that.
    So in 1943, the Polish General Sikorski, he [INAUDIBLE] part.
    He was actually a part of the Polish government in exile--
    In London.
    --in London.
    He went to Stalin, and he said, look,
    we have so many Polish subjects, and your prisons in Siberia,
    and the Gulags, and all that.
    Why don't you feed them?
    The former Polish division will fight for you.
    Stalin thought, well, not so bad idea.
    He agreed to it.
    So what happened?
    I mean, they were told to, for example--
    I don't exactly remember the--
    I think in Frunze, but everybody should
    meet, all the free prisoners.
    One of them decided not to go, and he wound up in my--
    on the farm where I was.
    A released Pole.
    Yeah, it was a Jewish boy-- a Jewish young man.
    And you know, happened to be from Warsaw.
    And I had pity on him.
    I still had some pence, whatever,
    from Poland that I gave him.
    I gave him also--
    he had a [INAUDIBLE] shirt.
    I gave him one of my shirts.
    But he had-- he was a little bit smarter than me.
    He had an idea.
    He started to tell me.
    I still had some stuff, you know?
    And he decided to get it.
    So what he started to do, to talk to me and said,
    you know something?
    There's nothing here.
    Why don't we got to a bigger city?
    And was this to join the Polish army--
    No, no, no.
    --or was this just to live?
    I didn't want to join.
    I didn't want to join.
    So he decided to take away whatever I had.
    But he also thought about it, how to do it.
    So he talked me into we should leave and go to a bigger
    city called Samarkand.
    So I took everything with me and, again, on a cattle train.
    In order to get to Samarkand, we had to stop off and sleep over
    called a city, Kokand, which is also a big city.
    So as I said, there's a warm climate there.
    All I had was shorts, a short sleeve shirt, and sandals.
    It's a very warm climate there.
    Although at night, you know, it cools off a little.
    We found a place that was a hospital,
    and it was a brick wall so we slept there.
    In the morning, I get up, and said, you stay here
    and I'll go and pick something up for breakfast.
    Well, there I picked up like here yogurt.
    They call it in Uzbek qatiq.
    And they have such thing--
    it's called [RUSSIAN].
    It's something like a pizza with no cheese.
    And then I bought a drink or something I think.
    Another thing it's called kvas, which
    they use bread to make-- old bread to make
    to fermentation a drink.
    When I got ready, I should be able to see him.
    He wasn't there.
    I got there.
    He wasn't there.
    He took everything, and he turned back
    from where we came I found out later.
    So he took all of your things?
    So no, no, no, no.
    He took my things, and I found out later
    he returned back to the Soviet farm.
    Meanwhile, I had some pictures of my family.
    I thought he knew where they were.
    I thought maybe he'll put it in the crevices of the brick.
    Nothing there.
    And he took my passport.
    My passport was there.
    In the Soviet Union during the war without a passport?
    You're in big trouble.
    I went to the police, which wasn't too far,
    and I told them what happened.
    The sergeant, I don't know if he wrote it down,
    didn't write it down.
    OK.
    Meanwhile, I said to myself, Chaim,
    what did you do to yourself?
    You had a place to be.
    You had friends.
    You put yourself in such trouble now without a passport.
    And this letter is a true story.
    So meanwhile, time passed and it was already late
    in the afternoon.
    And as I said, even Uzbekistan where it's warm,
    but late in the afternoon and evening cools off a little.
    I picked up two newspapers, went to the park
    nearby, put one newspaper on the bench.
    Another one covered myself, and, again,
    all I had is shorts, and a short sleeve shirt, and sandals.
    I fell asleep.
    Maybe it was maybe midnight.
    I felt, like, somebody--
    Poking you.
    --poking me.
    I open my eyes, and two soldiers.
    [SPEAKING RUSSIAN], means get up.
    Get up.
    Get up.
    OK, yeah.
    Passport?
    Told them what happened.
    So one says you always with your stories.
    Where's your passport?
    What are you, a spy or something?
    Took me back to the [? police. ?]
    So anyway, I saw there was maybe another 20 guys like me.
    The only difference, the other--
    I was still clean more or less, clean shaven.
    The others were very dirty with a beard, this and that.
    They took us to the same police prison.
    And there was the same sergeant was still on duty.
    And when I spoke to him, he didn't care even to listen.
    So they actually kept us in the police yards.
    So in other words, he didn't corroborate
    that you had been there earlier and had reported that you
    didn't have a passport.
    No.
    And when the soldiers poke you and they take you,
    it's because it's illegal not to have this passport.
    Yeah.
    Who could you be?
    You could be a spy.
    I could be a spy, yes.
    And what am I doing in the park at night, you know?
    So anyway, so we were there the remainder
    of the evening, all next day without food, without drink
    until the day after.
    And then they took us--
    I think it was--
    I don't know-- was a party member.
    I never found out.
    They were a member of the secret police, the KGB,
    and they said, look, all of us, we can put-- all of you
    belong in prison.
    But the only thing you can save yourself--
    well, how can I say?
    What the Soviets used to do is before they left the town--
    by the way, when they left the town,
    it took maybe two days before they announced it
    as they left a particular town.
    So what the Soviets used to do was dismantle a factory,
    move it to a safe area like Central Asia or whatever,
    like Uzbekistan, and, again, re-erect it so they can keep
    producing whatever they used to did--
    the used to do.
    So this was actually a sugar refinery, which
    was brought from the Ukraine.
    But it was a very, very, very hard job.
    I don't remember maybe six or seven bricks,
    and especially it made something like a harness.
    You used to have to walk up to the third floor.
    And for this and also during the war, everybody was entitled.
    Of course, in the Soviet Union, everybody worked.
    I don't know who actually came up with it,
    but some received, if it wasn't such a hard job,
    you used to get 400 grams of bread.
    You have to get a bread card.
    400.
    In our case, we were so-called hard workers.
    We used to get 600 grams.
    But the problem was they didn't bake the bread 100%,
    so it was very heavy on the scale.
    But there you were in the police yard,
    and they say, you all belong in prison but something will--
    could save you.
    Yes.
    And what was it?
    To work on that sugar refinery.
    OK, and so what happens to you?
    OK, so I worked there--
    I don't know-- maybe two months or something like that,
    and I lost my bread card.
    I don't know if I lost it.
    I don't know if somebody took it,
    snatched it from my pocket, but, again, no experience.
    What people do-- people use to do is cut it into three parts,
    the 10s, 20s, 30s, the 31st.
    So if you lose, you lose a part of it.
    But who thought about these things?
    So maybe the second of the months--
    I think it was in February or March--
    I lost my card again.
    I don't know what happened to it.
    And the Soviet Union at that time, when you lost
    a bread card, you out of luck.
    You're, like, dead because to buy bread
    was very, very expensive on the black market.
    And so there were only these two possibilities,
    either with a bread card at state prices
    or on the black market.
    On the black market.
    But nobody could afford to buy bread on the black market.
    So anyway, it was the 20th of the month,
    and we used to sleep--
    well, how can I say other than [INAUDIBLE].
    It was like a low very, like, a bed made.
    Maybe 40 people slept on it along--
    you know, boards and some straw, not even a straw mattress.
    Some straw and old cover, and this was where we slept.
    It was on a Sunday morning, and I was up.
    And my neighbor to the right with whom I worked together,
    he said to me-- he knew that I lost my bread card.
    He said, Chaim, how would you like to eat some bread today?
    Oh, bread?
    I didn't have bread maybe for two weeks.
    But they had a law in the Soviet Union.
    It was legal if you left Kokand, the city,
    you were able to sell your card, to give the card.
    To somebody else.
    And it's legal for me to pick up bread
    even though it was not-- my name wasn't on it.
    It was legal or not?
    Legal if somebody left the city.
    It was legal.
    So I asked him.
    He said, oh, no, I bought it.
    I bought it from somebody who left the city.
    I was kind of skeptical, but I didn't have
    bread for such a long time.
    And the bread, I thought, would taste better than the best cake,
    so I went.
    Meanwhile, my neighbor to the left--
    I don't know if he had to relieve himself of whatever.
    He came back, and he saw that he gave me
    a card, which was very crucial, very important.
    It worked out for me.
    And also you were--
    you couldn't just stop off at any bakery.
    You were assigned a bakery.
    So when I went to the bakery, which was, like,
    almost on the premises and I gave the young lady
    behind the counter the card, most likely somebody
    already notified them that somebody stole their card.
    So there was a guard.
    The guard, I think the rifle was maybe from Napoleon's time.
    Anyway, they tell them, hold this guy, to me.
    I said to myself, oh my god.
    I'm in big trouble.
    So they asked me, where did you get a card?
    They said, you just stole the card from so-and-so.
    There was a name on the card, but I didn't--
    so the guard calls out the police,
    and they said now we know who's stealing cards.
    Listen to this.
    We know now who is stealing cards.
    It's Chaim.
    Chaim.
    I'm the one who steal cards.
    So anyway, they took us.
    So he called the police, and the police said, of course,
    bring him over.
    So he took me-- and, again, the police wasn't too far.
    There was a big, big guy sitting at a desk.
    He didn't even ask me to sit down, and he said to me,
    one bread card is not enough for you, huh?
    You have to-- you steal people's cards, huh?
    And while I was standing, he hit me on my head.
    I thought that I made a hole in the wall.
    So anyway, he said--
    I said, look, I have a witness who
    saw this, that the guy, the neighbor, gave me the card.
    Said the same guard, he said, go and find out.
    Guy comes back.
    He goes back to us, and I pointed out who it was.
    I don't know whether he saw or whatever.
    He may believe is sleeping.
    So the guards wake him up, and he said,
    do you know this guy, me?
    He said, well, we worked together, but I don't know much.
    So the guy thought maybe that I'm
    putting over something of somebody innocent.
    And so the guard looked at me like I would be the liar,
    that I stole the car.
    So I said, why didn't you do me a favor and wake up--
    you know, it was a Sunday and everybody
    was enjoying the nice baths, sleeping a little bit later.
    So he says, look, he said to the guard,
    I don't know exactly what happened.
    All I saw he gave him a bread card.
    All three of us, let's go.
    Took all three of us to the police,
    and there were a stenographer.
    So they let the witness go.
    Of course, he's innocent.
    And both of us, they took to the prison called [INAUDIBLE].
    OK, so they take us to the--
    I'll never forget.
    So there was also an old rinky-dink car, and, of course,
    the driver was the guard too.
    Came to the prison, like a gate.
    So first, they had to identify himself, open the gate.
    Then there's was a metal door.
    So they opened up a small--
    and he gave him most likely a document, this and that,
    and they let us drive in.
    So they took us to our room, and they didn't change.
    Like if you a prisoner, they give you different--
    Clothes.
    --clothes.
    Didn't give us anything.
    They just took away the belt and whatever we had in our pockets.
    So then, of course, a barber came and he--
    Did he shave your head?
    --shaved it.
    So they said it's cleaner.
    No lice.
    So they put us into a room.
    There were maybe 100 people.
    My goodness.
    I looked.
    There's no mattress.
    No nothing.
    Bare cement.
    Bare cement, and this--
    So anyway--
    And were you put in that room with that other guy?
    Yeah, and actually I asked, I said what did you do?
    He said, look, let's not talk about.
    It is done.
    He goes, what are we going to do?
    And what would you do?
    Well, what can you do?
    What can you do?
    So anyway, a few guys came over.
    You know, one thing I realized, they
    didn't care for somebody who was there
    for a stolen card, bread card.
    They were looking for somebody who beat somebody up.
    You killed somebody.
    Well, if they weren't looking for someone who's stolen cards,
    why did they put you in prison, both of you,
    if that was small stuff?
    No, no, no, no, no, what I'm saying
    in prison, the prisoners--
    Ah, they didn't care.
    The prisoners didn't care for somebody like us
    with a bread card because they came over and asked me,
    what are you for?
    What are you in for?
    So when you tell them, they didn't care for.
    They cared like a macho man who did something.
    Oh, I see, so you got prestige if you actually killed somebody.
    That's right, killed somebody, robbed somebody,
    burned somebody's home, or what have you.
    They figured this was, like, sissy stuff.
    Yeah, a bread card.
    All right, so then it came, it was lunchtime, and, of course,
    I didn't have any container or whatever.
    So at lunchtime, there was, again,
    a big door and a small, tiny, little door opened up.
    Everybody formed a line, and, I mean,
    they gave me something, like a metal container.
    And there goes the ladle of soup and a piece of bread.
    So you got a container.
    You got a container.
    Everybody went back.
    Some sat in the middle of the room.
    Some sat-- support himself at the wall.
    And then it came-- and then a few hours later,
    there was dinner, also almost nothing, watery soup or some--
    oh, and a piece of sugar and some coffee.
    And so I actually found a few guys whom I was able to talk.
    They were also educated and this and that
    because you have so much time there.
    How long did you stay in this prison?
    Three months.
    Until the trial.
    Oh my goodness.
    So there was a trial for this.
    Three months.
    So actually, the people, the prisoners, they slept--
    only in the Soviet Union, the prisoners,
    they slept so close to each other,
    just like sardines in a can of sardines.
    So at night-- so when if you have to go-- excuse me--
    to pee, what do you do?
    They had a barrel.
    And the barrel, they used to call it in Russian, [RUSSIAN].
    [RUSSIAN]
    [RUSSIAN]
    OK.
    A barrel and a cover.
    And of course, you had to go at night.
    One night, I was maybe there already--
    I don't know-- maybe a month and a half.
    I got up at night and had to urinate.
    Now what do you do?
    People sleeping all around that barrel.
    You can't do it.
    I mean, I-- and the barrel was overflowing almost.
    So what did Chaim do?
    I went back and took my--
    what I used to get the food in it.
    The utensil.
    The bowl.
    --utensil and peed in it.
    The biggest mistake I made is put it on top of the barrel.
    I should have taken it back.
    And so in the morning about 6 o'clock, the gong rang.
    A guard would come in and then take out
    the barrel with the urine.
    They said, who did that?
    I look.
    I had to say I did it.
    So he put down my name, and I forgot about it.
    Maybe two weeks later, a guy comes in and calls my name.
    Said all the prisoners, oh, you're going free.
    You're going free, but I knew better.
    So he took me out from the room, whatever you call it.
    And he said for not abiding hygiene, three days in solitary.
    I didn't heck know--
    knew what solitary was.
    I didn't know what it was.
    So we went back to the end of the hallway.
    You opened up one door.
    It was already dark.
    Then he opened up another door, a little cubbyhole
    and kind of pushed me in there.
    It was already after I had the coffee, whatever,
    and I had to pee again.
    So I knocked on the door.
    It took me quite some time before they guard got in.
    And he said you are a specialist.
    You pee all over the place.
    Pee on the floor.
    Oh, dear.
    It was small, about this big like a square.
    And, of course, I couldn't see the ceiling.
    And I stood in the urine all night.
    Oh, dear.
    And in the morning, he gave me--
    what do you call it--
    a rag and a pale.
    How demeaning.
    Excuse me.
    How demeaning.
    It was very demeaning.
    Well very, very demeaning also, but I think now--
    so actually, I was figuring--
    so how many of us-- now there's four or five locks, the gate
    that they drive in, and actually and then to the prison,
    and then actually under lock in the big hole, which were dark,
    and then in this small cubbyhole.
    And I didn't think about it at that time, but now I think,
    what would happen if there's a fire?
    You think they would remember to come and let out
    Chaim Kamelmacher?
    Anyway, to make the story short, after three, I came out.
    I couldn't see anything.
    The guard had to take me to the room to the prisoners.
    And everybody had pity with me.
    As a matter of fact, a few guys even
    gave me their bread they felt sorry for me.
    And then another thing I remember,
    the shirt became holy when I was in the prison.
    You were still in the same shirt--
    Yeah.
    --that you had been arrested.
    Still in the same shirt.
    Yeah, the same shirt.
    So one of the guys noticed, one of the prisoners,
    he said to me--
    called me over.
    He said, [INAUDIBLE] because it was illegal.
    He said, Chaim, you see this shirt.
    I have another shirt underneath.
    I can give you this shirt for one lunch-- for two lunches.
    I said, oh, good.
    Good.
    He gave me his shirt.
    I had his shirt.
    I didn't even care for it, but it was--
    it didn't have any holes.
    So all these episodes I remember.
    Finally, the day came.
    They took us to court.
    Came to court.
    It was in my room with pictures of Lenin, of Stalin,
    of Marx, Engels, and then-- and the Soviet Union.
    They had one corner.
    They used to call it [RUSSIAN].
    It means red corner.
    What was there?
    They had the biography of Stalin,
    the get together of the party-- the 19th session Communist
    Party, all that.
    And, of course, we were actually chained
    to each other, my friend and I.
    The one who gave you the stolen card.
    Yeah.
    So they brought us there.
    There were maybe another 10 or so prisoners.
    But a big red table always covered with red.
    Red is the communist color and all that.
    There were a few secretaries and this and that.
    And so I said, where's my witness?
    You know, without the witness, it's my word against his.
    So who would they believe?
    So when I mentioned the name of the witness,
    I was so lucky that one of the stenographers-- oh, I know him.
    He works with me in a particular factory.
    They postponed the trial.
    Two weeks later, again.
    You know, my sandals were worn out.
    The world was, like, cobblestone.
    My feet hurt me and all that.
    So we get back to the trial, and this time--
    of course, I didn't want my friend to go to prison,
    but one of us is guilty.
    And he'll be found guilty because I have a witness.
    So anyway, to make a story short, they gave him six years.
    Three years-- but this wasn't the end.
    They gave him three years for stealing the card,
    and they gave him three years for using an extra card
    because the felt when somebody using an extra card,
    it prevents somebody else to have a piece of bread.
    And they believed you.
    And they believed me.
    I had a witness.
    So it was already getting dark, and I said to the judge, listen,
    I don't have anywhere to sleep.
    Can I sleep in the prison?
    Oh, no, no, no, no, you're a free man.
    So where do you go?
    So, luckily, the witness said, I'll take you in.
    I'll take you in where I work.
    So he took me in.
    Something was missing to one of his co-workers.
    Whom did he thought stole it?
    I. I'm a newcomer there.
    I was a newcomer.
    Anyway, to make the story short, I went back and got my job back.
    In the sugar factory?
    Yeah, in the sugar factory.
    And then the problem with the Soviet Union
    was there wasn't enough food, so I
    was walking and fell on the cobblestone
    and wound up in the hospital, and then I went into a coma.
    Near me, there was another Jewish young man,
    and he had parents.
    So they used to come and bring him-- usually,
    Jewish parents had maybe a wedding band or something
    so they would sell on the black market to maybe buy some flour
    or make a buttery soup or something.
    I didn't have anybody.
    So when I got out of a coma maybe a week later,
    I asked where is my--
    oh, he died.
    So anyway, what I want to bring up,
    one day I saw the guy who got the six years.
    I said, I was so happy to see him.
    I said, what happened?
    He said, before they actually sent me to Siberia,
    they said maybe should put me in the hospital
    because they'll have to bury me on the way.
    And I think all the six years was nullified, which is good.
    Did I want him to be in prison?
    So this time, so I went back.
    I went back to where I used to work.
    Where you used to work way back where the first person who
    stole your--
    Yeah.
    --in the cotton fields.
    In the cotton field.
    OK.
    And somehow I was ashamed to go back to the cotton field.
    I figured I did such a stupid thing.
    So here I am without a passport, couldn't get a job.
    I went to the shoemaker.
    I think I explained before what I tell you.
    And they said they can't get give me a job.
    You don't have a passport.
    I went for a passport.
    They said you're not working.
    We cannot give you a passport.
    So you were stuck.
    Stuck.
    So I slept in old dilapidated Uzbek homes, houses.
    I begged, became a beggar.
    Very dirty, didn't shave, and this and that.
    So then I said to myself--
    and I would actually go--
    I used to smoke.
    Used to find a cigarette butt, and it was too
    small to hold in my fingers.
    I used to use a needle.
    Put a needle in the cigarette butt so I can hold the needle
    and get a few--
    Puffs.
    --puffs.
    So I--
    Was this your lowest point?
    Excuse me?
    Was this your lowest point when you were--
    I think so.
    Maybe, yeah.
    So anyway, I knew I'm dying.
    I couldn't steal.
    I couldn't steal, rob, or whatever.
    But then I remembered that my father was
    a little bit of a socialist.
    I said I'll try to speak to the secretary of the Communist Party
    in [PLACE NAME].
    In the Soviet Union, the secretary of the party,
    he was everything.
    He was the highest, secretary of the Communist Party.
    Each town had a secretary.
    So picture me dirty, not shaven.
    I think I was barefoot at that time because my sandal gave way.
    And there was a guard there.
    I said, what are you doing here, the guard?
    I said, I would like to see the secretary.
    He said, what?
    You like to see the secretary?
    You have an appointment?
    I say, no, I don't have an appointment.
    And I was almost in tears.
    The door was open, and the secretary at the desk
    heard me saying--
    hear this.
    So the guard said to me, hold on a minute.
    Hold on.
    So he described me as a young man,
    not shaven, dirty, no shoes.
    He wants to speak to you.
    And to my--
    I was happy as a--
    he said, show him in.
    OK, now what a difference between the guy in the prison.
    That's right.
    He said, sit down.
    A cigarette, gave me a--
    he poured me a drink of vodka.
    I said I don't know the vodka, but I'll take the cigarette.
    He said to me, tell me what brings you here.
    I told him the story.
    I said, look, this what happen.
    I made a mistake, but what do you think I should do?
    You made a mistake as far as what?
    As far as leaving the collective--
    I mean, the [INAUDIBLE] and going to a bigger city,
    going to Samarkand.
    OK.
    Yeah, during the war.
    I had everything.
    You were comfortable.
    Comfortable.
    So I said to him, do I have to die?
    He said, no, no, absolutely.
    He said, what can you do?
    I said I'm a shoemaker.
    I was never a shoemaker in my life.
    I was a shoemaker.
    He said, did you go to the hotel.
    I said, yes, but I have no passports.
    I told him already the story.
    He said, just a minute.
    He picked up the phone.
    This is the secretary of the party, blah, blah, blah.
    Did somebody come to you--
    and, again, he described me, the way I look.
    He said, yes.
    He said, look, I, the secretary of the party, tell you--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    All right, so--
    All right, so you called him up, and he
    said he should give me a job.
    And he said, give him a bread card.
    So I went there.
    So I made up-- due to the fact that I was not Uzbek,
    from Uzbekistan, I made out with him
    I'll pay you 15 rubles a day, and the rest what I made
    was mine.
    Oh, I see.
    That's to the shoe atelier.
    Yeah, shoe atelier.
    OK.
    So what did I do?
    I find myself a low chair without a back.
    And I sat on it, and I worked near a sidewalk.
    And so anyway, it helped me to survive
    because when you came to fix a pair of shoes,
    I couldn't say I don't want the rubles,
    but I could say I'm hungry.
    Bring me something to eat.
    Well, anyway, I was doing well.
    I was doing well.
    I was able actually to rent a place where to sleep,
    and as I say, my mom was right.
    She said if I'm not lazy, I wouldn't die.
    I used to make the uppers for the shoemakers in [PLACE NAME].
    The landlady where I had the room, she had a sewing machine,
    so I was doing fine.
    And it's funny.
    In the Soviet Union when you were--
    if I would've been continue to be like a street guy, street
    man, I would have never been mobilized with the Red Army.
    But I looked good.
    I was able to buy some clothes and this and that.
    And I used to know--
    there happened to be a Jewish lady, a doctor, who was actually
    a member of the drafting board.
    So she always said this, I have a bad heart somehow.
    Did you ever get another passport?
    Oh, yes.
    OK.
    Yes, got another passport.
    Everything was fine just because I've
    entered the secretary of the--
    Communist Party.
    Yeah.
    So anyway, to make the story, she
    said you have to be careful because I won't
    be there anymore [INAUDIBLE].
    So when I got before the doctor, they said where were you?
    You should've been on the front since 1941.
    Anyway, to make this story short, I was in the Red Army.
    You were mobilized into the--
    I was mobilized into the Red Army.
    And we trained maybe for six weeks,
    and then they took us by train.
    And I didn't know at that time that it's
    a good omen or a bad omen.
    Obviously, it was a good omen.
    I survived the war.
    We disembarked maybe after 2,500 kilometers in Rozyszcze where I
    was born.
    No.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    So that's where you're first--
    after your training, where you're taken.
    And was that-- was this now under Soviet control again?
    Yeah, it was still under--
    1943 it was under control, the Soviet.
    No, no, no.
    Oh, you mean the Ukraine.
    It was part already the Ukraine, which the Ukraine took back
    from the Germans.
    So actually, I helped.
    I helped, as I say, to free Rozyszcze, where I was born.
    I helped to actually to help to fight
    for Maniewicze, and for Kovel, and Sarny, all the towns
    around there.
    And I was injured the 22nd of June in my right leg.
    I was in the hospital for six months.
    OK, until you get to the hospital,
    when you say you were part of the Soviet Army,
    and then you were mobilized, and then
    active duty, what did your active duty
    involve when you helped?
    To fight with the Germans.
    OK, so you were a soldier.
    Yeah, I was a soldier.
    That was your job, and you were infantry.
    Yeah, infantry.
    You were infantry.
    I still remember-- as a matter of fact, I'm keeping in touch.
    They have a museum.
    I was in the 370th infantry division, 1,232nd brigade.
    And they have a museum in Siberia,
    and we correspond with them.
    I correspond with them.
    Oh my gosh.
    I always, always write.
    So anyway, so then after--
    when I say six months, first, I was in the field hospital.
    They took me to field--
    well, how can I say?
    How did the injury take place?
    Were you in the battle, or what happened?
    OK, we were in the trenches, and then the Germans
    forbid us maybe like from here to the restaurant, maybe
    a little bit further.
    And then the lieutenant says for Stalin, for this.
    We got out there, and we ran against
    toward the German trenches to displace them.
    So I was shot in my left femur, and I fell face down.
    It was a hot summer day, and there
    were Germans also were dead.
    And so what happened, I didn't get any--
    so the blood was gushing.
    I didn't get any help, and the flies.
    Now flies, they like--
    what do you call it--
    blood.
    To made the story short, I had to wait almost three hours
    before Russian--
    and also I still hear talking German,
    which meant I couldn't twitch.
    I couldn't do anything because they took me for dead.
    The Germans took me for dead.
    So then maybe after two hours or so the Russian--
    what do you call them--
    the one who helped the--
    Well, the field--
    I guess, the medics.
    The medics.
    The medics.
    The medics say, hey, [NON-ENGLISH] hey, Russian,
    answer if you are.
    So I still wasn't sure it was a fake.
    I kept and I--
    and I said to myself, oh, they are Russian.
    So they took me.
    And I think back now what people can live through.
    And so anyway, there was no road there.
    So what they used to do, used to go into-- it's part
    of the Ukraine at that time.
    Ran into an Ukrainian farmer and recommended a horse and buggy.
    And about three of us were put on the train.
    Meanwhile, all they did is make a tourniquet,
    but the bone was broken.
    And each-- a bumpy road.
    So anyway, they took us to the field hospital,
    and I'm usually not kind of a believer.
    But when I was laying on the floor--
    I don't know--
    I thought I saw my mom.
    I thought I saw my mom, and she walked in and was looking,
    looking.
    She still had black hair at that time, but now she was, like,
    gray and like a white dress and she-- so looking,
    looking and when she saw me, that's what I--
    In your mind, yeah.
    In my mind.
    And she said, Chaim, you know, you'll be OK.
    And I opened my eyes.
    I said, oh.
    And, well, there are some other soldiers laying on the ground.
    They said, shut up.
    Anyway--
    So how did you know-- excuse me for that I
    interrupt at this point.
    You were-- kind of go into action in your birthplace.
    Yes.
    Did you know, by that point, what had happened
    to the Jews of the area?
    Yes.
    How did you find out?
    When I was-- OK, when I was actually assigned the 370th
    division, I asked one of the one in charge, lieutenant.
    I say my mother had a sister in Rozyszcze.
    I mentioned before.
    I would like to go and see what happened.
    He says to me, you're looking for trouble.
    He said, the Germans in some areas are five miles
    or whatever.
    You're looking for trouble.
    But I was young, and I said, who cares?
    So he said, who's your friend?
    I had a friend who actually was a Tatar.
    His name was Mishka.
    He said, take Mishka.
    Ask Mishka if he wants to go.
    Take a loaded rifle, and go to Rozyszcze
    and find out, but make sure you come back during the day
    before [INAUDIBLE].
    OK.
    So the Ukrainians for so many--
    let me see.
    This was 1944.
    For three years, they didn't see a Russian soldier, so to them,
    it looked like--
    and then we saw it was maybe a good two miles or maybe
    three miles, and then in the middle, we saw a lady,
    and she was selling candles.
    She had some cigarettes.
    She sell soap, some other things, happened to be Jewish.
    I said, what are you doing here?
    The front is so near.
    And when I told on her I'm from Maniewicze, she said,
    there's somebody here from Maniewicze.
    But she said he was in the Partisans.
    He should be back within-- what did she say--
    15, 20 minutes.
    And then, sure enough, I saw he was wearing a German uniform.
    I was almost ready to shoot him.
    And it turned out to be his name was Shmerel Zafron.
    Shmerel.
    We went to Polish public school together.
    You recognized him?
    Huh?
    You knew him?
    Yeah, we went to school together.
    And he told me what happened to my parents, the whole family,
    so I knew that my family's not alive.
    And I still remember-- now I shrunk, but at that time,
    I was much taller and healthy looking.
    He was kind of-- to me, it looked like he shrunk.
    Not so easy to be in the Partisans.
    So anyway, we continue to Rozyszcze.
    The street was burned.
    There was nothing there.
    Oh.
    So I did know that nobody is alive from my family.
    So from there-- so, again, when I was discharged--
    and, actually, I had the discharge papers
    sent to the museum, the Holocaust Museum.
    When I was discharged from the hospital,
    they say, where do you want to go?
    Many other cases, they had--
    many had parents, many had sisters, many had brothers.
    I didn't have anybody.
    I said I'll go back the way I came from, [INAUDIBLE].
    So it took him a few houses to find the map.
    So you were going to go back to Uzbekistan.
    Yeah.
    I didn't have-- where else to go?
    So did you?
    Did you go back to Uzbekistan?
    Yeah, I went back to Uzbekistan.
    And I was using crutches.
    There were Jewish refugees from Poland, from Romania,
    and they knew me.
    They knew I was a shoemaker.
    They kind of helped me.
    They kind of help me, maybe, I would say a month with food.
    Gave me a place of sleep and all that until I
    was able to go back to my shoemaking.
    And so there you stayed.
    I stayed until the war came to an end in 1945.
    And then what happened?
    In 1945, a Polish representative had gotten in touch with me,
    and he told me when the train will
    be leaving the city Andijan that the train will
    be leaving to Poland.
    And he said to me, you, meaning me, as a Polish citizen,
    are entitled to go to back to Poland.
    I'll furnish you with a piece of paper.
    I said, you know something?
    I'm not going to Poland.
    I don't want to go to Poland.
    So he said to me--
    he said, you'll be sorry.
    I figured-- I didn't know.
    I mean, I knew that nobody is alive in Poland.
    I didn't know I'd be able to emigrate from Poland.
    And I had so many friends, Russian friends.
    My Russian was perfect.
    And as matter of fact, I knew many boys and girls,
    and I still know about 50 songs.
    He's a witness.
    So anyway, one of my friends, a girlfriend, she
    actually worked for the KGB.
    And I trusted her, and I said, look, what will happen--
    No, no, no, but then I saw that everybody's leaving.
    So I said to myself, am I the smartest one?
    Why is everybody leaving the Soviet Union?
    For one thing, I know you have to keep your mouth shut,
    and so I did.
    So then I saw, for example, what they used to do.
    Say you had a daughter.
    I had a son.
    I was from Poland, so the parents
    arrange a fictitious wedding so you,
    as a Russian family who lived in the Soviet Union,
    could also leave.
    And in many cases, they paid a lot of money for that in order
    to leave--
    That's right.
    --the Soviet Union.
    So you were seeing this go all around you.
    Yeah.
    So then I got in touch with a guy,
    and I said I decided to leave.
    He said, you are not leaving.
    I told you you'll be sorry.
    So but I was young, and I said to myself, I am leaving.
    So when the train--
    when they all got on the train, I was there in the morning.
    And I got in, and he didn't see me and tell me where I was--
    almost halfway.
    We were almost reaching the Ukraine when the--
    so on the train, there were Russian representatives
    and Polish representatives.
    And each Polish citizen had a document.
    I had was in Russian.
    I have in Polish.
    So the Russian part, they would take at the border,
    the Russian representative.
    And the Polish part would serve us a document in Poland.
    He went to the Russian authorities on the train
    and he said that I'm illegal on the train.
    So they called me, and I said, look, I'm a Soviet citizen.
    I served in the Red Army.
    I was injured.
    I'm not going to Poland.
    I'm going back to my home.
    It's now part of the Ukraine.
    So the Polish guy said, he's lying.
    Well, anybody-- you know, the Russians didn't care.
    So one of the Russian officer, what do you do for food?
    And I said, I'll tell you sometimes I eat.
    Sometimes I don't.
    He said, why don't you come to us?
    We'll always give you food.
    OK, everything was fine.
    But then the train came to the border, stopped at the border.
    Now I don't have any documents.
    So what I do?
    The Polish-Russian border.
    Yeah, the new Polish, which is now.
    OK, so you had passed where your home used to be.
    Yes, passed.
    Nobody was there.
    Of course.
    Passed.
    OK, so I don't know, but I decided--
    OK, so they started to control the train
    from the end and the beginning.
    I was in the second train from the end,
    so I say it worked for me because it was already
    getting like a little bit dark.
    They're not from the--
    Train car.
    That's right.
    I went around the corner.
    Supposedly, I had to take care of something.
    Meanwhile, I heard they came into the last car.
    And when they checked, they said [RUSSIAN].
    In Russian, it means see you and [POLISH] in Polish.
    I looked and I got back into the last train to the last car,
    which was already--
    they checked the document there.
    So I made it.
    I crossed the border, so I was in Poland.
    Still no documents.
    Poland, no documents.
    Train stops in Tarnow, which is not too far from Krakow,
    and the [INAUDIBLE] western part of Poland.
    It was a nice day, and I stood at the door.
    And then like two angels, a young girl and a young man
    said to me, Yiddish?
    Jewish?
    Yiddish?
    I say, yes.
    Says, why don't you come down?
    They have a kibbutz here.
    You know what a kibbutz is?
    Yeah, yeah.
    OK.
    So they said-- so I found out that JDC,
    the Jewish Distribution Committee, supplied the money.
    There were about 40 boys and girls,
    and we had nice three rooms.
    We had a kitchen and all that and had a great time.
    As a matter of fact, I taught the geography of Palestine.
    We had a great time.
    I was also a tailor, and they gave me-- it was like heaven--
    new clothes-- not new clothes.
    I mean, clean clothes.
    I was able to shave and all that.
    And after six months--
    after six weeks rather, we decided that we
    have to start traveling.
    Couldn't stay in Poland.
    So, again, they took us in Polish trucks, which means
    the Polish army was paid off.
    They took us across the Czechoslovakia border.
    That time, it was still Czechoslovakia.
    Now they are two countries--
    Czech and Slovakia.
    They took us to a Jewish [INAUDIBLE].
    And there were-- I don't know-- maybe 100 of us
    or something like that, young men who did never have to go.
    And then we were there maybe, as I said--
    I don't know-- maybe two weeks.
    We rested.
    About what year was this?
    This was 1945 when the war was over.
    So just the same year the war is over.
    Yeah, because I left the Soviet Union,
    crossed the border of Poland, so I wound up in the kibbutz there.
    And then we started-- actually, they took us.
    I'm sure it was all--
    I must say, and I'm very thankful,
    it was all paid with American Jewish money.
    Although, there was some others.
    there was Ukrainians.
    There was some others, but mainly Jewish.
    And so they took us to Ebensee.
    Ebensee.
    Ebensee.
    So that's in Western Germany.
    No, Ebensee is actually in Austria.
    In Austria.
    Yeah.
    I'm so sorry.
    Yeah, Ebensee is in Austria.
    And what I couldn't get over, they
    took us to Ebensee, which was a concentration camp.
    That's right.
    There was many hundreds of Poles who were actually guest there,
    and everything was still there, the ovens, a tremendous cross.
    And I don't know why they took us there.
    We were on the--
    US Army was in charge of us, and they gave us all kinds of--
    how can I say?
    In order to prevent disease, they
    gave us all kind of powder, this and that,
    and they used to give us--
    people used to big piece of bread or something.
    They used give-- the US Army, a tiny piece of bread,
    a little this, a little that.
    So anyway, to make this story short,
    we kind of stole some old cars and this and that.
    Anyway, the only thing which was good--
    it was very smart.
    They had telephone books of big cities.
    So I knew that my uncle lives in Kansas City.
    I didn't know the address.
    I knew the name, and I found out.
    So from then on, I was able to write to my uncle.
    Your mother's brother.
    My mother's brother.
    And so I said they had telephone books from all big cities
    in the United States.
    So from there, they took us to Germany, the US zone in Germany.
    They took us, first, a small city, Cham, C-H-A-M,
    where we lived in tents.
    And every morning used to be a truck with bread.
    They used to throw the bread, and we would go out
    and grab a bread or something.
    So people complaining, so, finally, they
    took us to Germany to US zone in Germany to a city
    called Wetzlar.
    Wetzlar.
    Wetzlar is known for the Leica camera.
    There made the Leica camera there.
    So I was in Wetzlar, and then I was in three other camps.
    Wetzlar, Wasseralfingen, and then Lechfeld, and Landsberg.
    Oh, so you were in all of these DP camps.
    All DP camps.
    And all this is documented.
    I sent everything, picture, about 80, 90 pieces, pictures.
    At one I was planning to get into the University of Munich
    in Munich Hochschule.
    Everything, I sent to the museum, so everything is there.
    Also you heard about the ORT, organization for--
    Tell us.
    So I took up, when I was an Wetzlar,
    I took up electronics, which helped me to get
    a job in the United States.
    OK, so the ORT.
    This was through the ORT.
    Yeah.
    And tell me what is the ORT so that people would know.
    ORT is organization for rehabilitation and training.
    Their aim is to teach Jewish people a trade, whether it's
    electrician.
    Is this an international organization, or is it a--
    It's located in the United States,
    but they take care of Jews all over the world.
    Got it.
    As a matter of fact, I keep in touch with them.
    I keep in touch with them.
    And so anyway, I was actually in Germany six years.
    Wow, that's a long time.
    I had chance to go to Israel, also
    a chance to go to Australia, but I was told in Australia,
    there are not enough women.
    And, of course, Israel, I didn't--
    my mother had four brothers there.
    One was still alive.
    Shouldn't I go to family?
    Yeah.
    So finally, in January--
    also we had to go through a vigorous, rigorous doctor's
    exam.
    And who were the doctors?
    You guessed it.
    Germans again.
    Really?
    Maybe Nazi Germans.
    So, again, I used to think--
    I thought to myself, the German, they still
    control where the Jews will be.
    And in many cases, there was a test, which
    you didn't care to have because it was kind of hard,
    they kind of go into the stomach with a tube, if you pay them
    a little, they said you had it done.
    So anyway, so in January, everything was actually fine.
    I was lucky.
    I was healthy, this and that, and they gave me a date.
    And there was maybe--
    I don't know-- maybe 300 of us.
    They took us from Landsberg, the last DP camp,
    to Bramerhaven, which is a port in Germany in the US zone,
    put us on General [INAUDIBLE], and we
    were on the way to New Orleans.
    New Orleans?
    New Orleans.
    Not New York.
    No.
    New Orleans.
    No, I'll explain.
    Kansas City more or less is more south than north.
    And you were going to Kansas City
    because your uncles were there.
    Yes, my uncle was there.
    And so many, many people who had relatives
    went to the southern part of the United States
    got off at New Orleans, and the ship continued to New York.
    Oh, I see.
    And this is what year?
    January of--
    So this is actually January 1951.
    That's one of the later years.
    Many people had already gone to the States.
    1951.
    OK.
    Because it took time to get the visa, and I think at that time
    when Truman was president, I think
    the Congress came up to, especially quarter for people
    who do not have where to go or do not
    care to return to their homeland because of the political system.
    At that time after the war, the Cold War,
    like Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
    all became, like, Soviet satellites.
    That's right.
    And so was it your uncle who sponsored you
    into the United States?
    My uncle was a tailor, but he did very well for himself.
    He was a tailor.
    A Jew tailor, what else?
    And he had his own fabrics, so if you wanted a suit or a coat,
    you selected the fabric, and he would make it for you.
    Again, could not read or write.
    He had a Black man who worked for him,
    and when somebody walked in-- and the Black man was-- he
    also did some cleaning.
    So when somebody walked in and the Black man wasn't there,
    he said, you know, I'm so sorry.
    I misplaced my glasses.
    Can you-- the cleaning is there.
    Can you [INAUDIBLE].
    But he did very well for himself.
    He had five children.
    And he sponsored you in.
    He sponsored me in.
    Actually, I was supposed to go through the HIAS, Hebrew
    immigration society.
    But when they found out that I have an uncle, they called me in
    and say, look, he has to be reasonable.
    Some people who do not have anybody in the United States.
    And we can use the visa for them.
    You have an uncle, so, of course, I agreed.
    And did you stay in Kansas City long?
    Well, so this would happen.
    It just happened that one of his sons, which means my cousin,
    got married.
    So I had his room.
    The room, I still remember was all-- everything,
    the furniture, everything was red.
    So my uncle-- I want it bring something up.
    My uncle had five children, and he had a hard time
    to find an apartment.
    But when he bought a house--
    and I still remember 400 East 63rd Terrace.
    When I used to tell the people where I'm going,
    they say, oh, your uncle must be a millionaire.
    He was able to buy a house in the best area of Kansas City.
    And guess what?
    He only rented to a banker who didn't have any children.
    So anyway, I used to go to school to learn English
    sometimes four nights a week.
    I also used to go with the weekend to the movies.
    It's very--
    Helpful.
    --helpful.
    And then when I was older, I had my keys.
    When I used to go home, used to come home and open the door,
    the were elderly people.
    They were in the 80s.
    They used to twist and turn, and I used to wake them up.
    And also in the morning, used to get up, have a piece of cake
    with some orange juice for me.
    I had to go in the breakfasts.
    Orange juice and a piece of cake in the morning.
    That's right.
    So anyway, so I moved.
    I got a furnished room.
    I still remember 2662 Woodland Avenue.
    So this lady had like rooms for four, four rooms for rent.
    And I got the job working in a--
    I was fired.
    Got another job to work in fixing car radios.
    And I also went that time--
    so no, no.
    So after about a year and a half, the one
    I worked for in Kansas City, he said
    you are entitled for a week's vacation.
    You can take another week's vacation without pay.
    But if you don't come back after two weeks, you lose your job.
    Guess what?
    I never went back.
    I remained in New York.
    So you went to New York on vacation, and you remained here.
    Right.
    And you met your wife here.
    I met my wife here.
    My story's short.
    I had a furnished room with also people that came from Germany,
    and one night--
    it was a Saturday night.
    She came-- they came back, and they were Zena.
    And his name was, I think, Jack.
    And anyway, they came back from--
    I'm not sure-- from a wedding or something.
    And he said, Chaim, do I have a girl for you.
    So this was the girl.
    What was her name?
    Her name was Trudy.
    Trudy.
    Trudy.
    Actually, her name was Giddle, but she never
    liked the word Giddle.
    She liked Trudy.
    She was born on the Lower East Side.
    Her father had unfortunately passed,
    and we knew each other maybe less than two months.
    We got married, and it lasted 43 years until she
    succumbed to breast cancer.
    What year did you get married?
    I got married in 1954.
    So three years after you come to the United States.
    Yeah.
    Tell me, how many children do you have?
    I have four children.
    The names.
    My oldest son is Alan, of course, Alan Kamel.
    He has a son, Matthew.
    He's a teacher.
    He teaches in California near San Francisco.
    He has a daughter.
    The daughter is Elizabeth, and she just graduated college.
    I don't know what she'll do.
    Some people take up space in college.
    No, don't say that.
    But tell me the names of your children.
    OK, so Alan, Perry, Lisa--
    Lisa.
    --and Julie.
    And Julie.
    Two boys.
    Two girls.
    Two boys.
    Two girls.
    And the first time you went back to Europe or to your hometown
    was in 2013.
    Yes.
    Now this would happen.
    I always wanted to go there, but I was afraid.
    I don't if I told you this.
    After perestroika, I was actually
    corresponding with a Ukrainian lady, and she went--
    OK, I'll get to it.
    And so I was--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Let's cut.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Ask about going back.
    You said that you corresponded with a Ukrainian lady.
    You always wanted to go back to--
    To the Ukraine.
    That's right.
    But I was afraid.
    OK.
    I was afraid.
    And you were afraid because--
    Because there were no Jews there,
    and it's actually I wanted--
    my oldest son, Alan, wanted to go with me.
    And then also what happened, Trudy
    became very, very, very ill, you know, dying of cancer.
    So we kind of forgot it.
    But I found on the internet, the name somehow, the name Susil.
    Now Susil is not such a common name,
    and I had one of my best friends who was in the Partisans,
    his name was Susil.
    It turned out that this was his son,
    and he lived in Denver, Colorado.
    So he said he was in Maniewicze, and he is going back
    to Maniewicze in 2013.
    Oh.
    So Perry, my son, said, dad, I'll join you.
    And my grandson, Jonathan, said, grandpa, I'll join you.
    So this is how we wound up.
    So that lady, she found out--
    I actually wrote to her that I may be in Maniewicze.
    So she came, and we met.
    And the Ukrainian regime in Maniewicze, she came to see me.
    And she recognized me, and she told a story
    what I did after perestroika.
    I wrote a letter, and I put down--
    always write.
    I put a letter and put on the Kovel railroad.
    And she-- Maniewicze and Russian,
    the Kovel [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] this and that,
    which means the Kovel railroad.
    So they kind of delivered it to the railroad station.
    And she was working there, and she got the letter.
    Oh my goodness.
    She got the letter, and I wrote this.
    I didn't say exactly who I was.
    I just said I lived in Maniewicze in 1941,
    and I would like to come back, and I
    would like you to send me maybe a map, some newspapers,
    some pictures.
    So she said, well, you can come back.
    You can either take a plane and fly it to Lviv
    and go east by train, or you can fly to Kiev
    and go west by train or bus or something.
    And that's when we started to correspond.
    Also I wrote and I put in $3 in the letter,
    and when I didn't get any answer maybe for three months,
    people said, you made a big mistake by putting in the $3.
    She must've took out the $3 and threw away the--
    no, but after three months, I got a big, like,
    a package with papers.
    And it was, at that time, just 100 years of Maniewicze,
    and we started to correspond with each other.
    Well, she found out that who I was, that my parents,
    everybody--
    Had she known your family?
    No, she didn't, but I gave her the address
    of my neighbor, Kovachuk, and the daughter was still alive.
    And she looked her up, and she told--
    her name was-- the one I'm talking about,
    her name is Valentina Lazarchuk.
    And she said to me, Chaim, we cried all day
    when she told me what happened to your parents and all that.
    So that's--
    And when you saw--
    Maniewicze.
    --Maniewicze for the first time after so many decades--
    After 72 years.
    Yeah, what did it look like to you?
    Much worse than I left it.
    Much worse.
    All Jewish houses were burnt.
    I only recognized three--
    I can say three things--
    the railroad station, a Polish church,
    and what I mentioned where the first action was with Doctor
    Tarkowski at this office.
    I didn't recognize anything else.
    Everything was destroyed.
    Anything Jewish was burned.
    Gone.
    And the houses which replaced it wasn't even near as nice.
    Though the only thing is, I said, it was much bigger,
    and, I mean, the streets was paved.
    I mean, the sidewalks--
    I didn't care too much for the sidewalks,
    but the streets were paved.
    And for first time, it had a hotel.
    I think you've told us a fascinating story today,
    and I thank you for the time you took.
    No problem.
    No problem.
    Anytime.
    No problem.
    And I appreciate the detail that you went into,
    and I would say that we've come to the end, you know?
    OK.
    We started there, and we went full circle--
    That's right.
    --and back to there.
    That's right.
    And I, myself, I'm so glad, and I
    say I'm always willing to spend as much time as somebody
    will want to spend with me because I think, to me, it's
    very important that the future generations, if they want
    to find out that they should be able to find out
    how their ancestors, relatives, or whatever lived.
    OK.
    Well, thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chaim Kamelmacher now known as Harry Kamel.
    That's right.
    Kamel.
    All right, so this concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum interview with Mr. Harry Kamel on December 17, 2015.
    Once more, many, many thanks.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.
    I thank you.
    Thank you so much.
    You're welcome.
    You're welcome.
    It was a pleasure.
    Thank you.
    OK.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Harry Kamel (né Chaim Kamelmacher), born on July 1, 1925 in Rozyszcze, Poland (now Rozhyshche, Ukraine), describes moving with his family to Maniewicze, Poland (now Prylisne, Ukraine) when he was four years old; his four siblings, Simcha Wolf, Hannah, Motel, and Mendel; his father who was a tailor; the lack of electricity in the village; attending public school in the morning and cheder (Hebrew school) in the afternoon; having access to the Polish newspaper and the four Jewish newspapers that arrived at the railroad daily from Warsaw; his family’s celebration of religious holidays; completing school after the 7th grade since there were no high schools in Maniewicze; his job making caps; the beginning of the war and the incorporation of Maniewicze into Ukraine; being able to attend high school; the shortages and rations; the antisemitism in Maniewicze; the robbing of Jewish homes during the four days after the Soviets left and before the Germans arrived in 1941; escaping east the day before the Germans arrived; the Ukrainian policemen recruited by the Germans; the bombings; the mobilization of his brother into Red Army and never seeing him again; the formation of a Jewish ghetto a few months after the German occupation; his father, who was sent to do forced labor while the rest of the family was sent to live in the ghetto; not knowing what happened to his twin brothers (Motel and Mendel); the massacre in 1942 of 4,000 Jews, including his mother, sister, and niece; going by train to Stalingrad and then to a collective farm with six friends; escaping to Tashkent with one of his friends; working on a cotton farm for two years; having his belongings stolen from him; working a labor-intensive job; losing his bread ration card after two months; being imprisoned; being released and given a job as a shoemaker; being mobilized into the Red Army; traveling for six weeks by train and disembarking in Rozyszcze; helping to liberate towns as part of the 370th Infantry Division 1,232 Brigade; injuring his right leg and being hospitalized for six months; finding out about the fates of his family members; joining a kibbutz and going to Ebensee, Austria; living in displaced persons camps in Germany and learning about electronics through ORT classes; being sponsored for a visa by his uncle in Kansas City; meeting his future wife, Trudy, in New York and getting married in 1954; his four children; and his visit to Ukraine in 2013.
    Interviewee
    Kamel, Mr. Harry
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2015 December 17

    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.
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Kamel, Harry, 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 Harry Kamel on December 17, 2015 in New Rochelle, NY.
    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 08:05:14
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn531228

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    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

    Oral History

    Yocheved Arie, born in Vilnius, Lithuania on February 15, 1928, discusses the German occupation of Lithuania; how her father and brother were taken away while she and her mother had to go to the ghetto; poor sanitation in the ghetto; aktions in the ghetto carried out by the Germans; the deportation of her mother to Estonia; reuniting with her mother in Estonia; being transported to Stutthof; going to Gdansk where she was forced to make railroad tracks; being liberated along with her mother and several others on the second day of a death march shortly before the end of the war; her postwar return to Vilnius where she and her mother found no survivors from their family; trying to immigrate to Palestine, but remaining in a displaced persons camp in Germany for three years; immigrating to Jerusalem; living with her mother for 40 years until her mother’s death; and her deep understanding about the heroism of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral History

    Leo Hanin, born in 1913 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes his family; his parents’ decision to escape increasing persecution in Europe and move to Harbin, China, where they had a relative, in 1916; the lively Jewish community but not having many relations with the native Chinese; attending a Russian school in Harbin until 1929; moving with his brother to Shanghai around 1934 to attend a British school; getting married in 1936 and moving to Kōbe-shi, Japan to do work for a textile firm; assisting the Joint Distribution Committee in New York to arrange for funds to be sent to Japan to support refugees coming over from Europe; his participation in a Zionist organization and moving to Israel in 1948; staying in Israel for two years and then moving back to Japan; his experiences with helping people adjust to life in Kōbe-shi and immigrate to the United States; and dealing with the rumors that the Jewish leadership of Kōbe-shi stole money donated to them to help refugees.

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral History

    Walter Schnell, born on April 16, 1904 in Strehlen, Germany (Strzelin, Poland), describes his family and childhood; going to study crystal and porcelain in Berlin, Germany in the early 1920s; having to sell his family’s porcelain and glass business in 1937 because anti-Jewish business laws were becoming too strict; moving to Wrocław after the business sold with his sister and parents; working for a family friend in a wholesale business in Wrocław; his arrest during Kristallnacht and being sent by train through Weimar and on to Buchenwald; being forced to watch the hangings of those prisoners who had escaped from the camp and been caught; being called into the camp’s main office on the second day of Hanukkah and told that his parents had booked him a passage for Panama; finally securing a passage on a ship from Wrocław to Genoa, Italy after jumping through much red tape with Gestapo officials in Wrocław; staying in Genoa for a short time until he traveled on a boat to Shanghai because he did not need official papers to get in; settling in Hongkou, the Jewish suburb of Shanghai; Allied planes accidentally bombing the Jewish quarter of Shanghai; the creation of a Jewish community with its own traditions in Shanghai, including establishing nine hundred yeshivas, keeping kosher, and maintaining a synagogue; discovering that his mother and two cousins had made it to New York; and joining his family in New York after the war.

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral History

    Erna Tebel Stern, born on October 28, 1901 in Krotoszyn, Poland, describes her childhood; her father’s experiences when he served in the German Army against Russia during World War I; moving to Wroclaw, Poland after the war; not experiencing much official discrimination when Hitler first came to power because her father had served in the German Army; her family’s decision to flee from their home in 1938 when they discovered that prison camps existed; her parents’ capture and deportation; managing to escape to Brussels, Belgium, where she, her first husband, and her brother boarded the S.S. St. Louis and fled for Cuba; her brother’s and first husband’s deportation to an internment camp in Gurs, France after the St. Louis had to return to Brussels; going into hiding from 1940 to 1942 in Brussels, where she met her second husband; attempting to flee in 1942 to Switzerland, where they were imprisoned for a short time and then released to the Salvation Army; moving to Bern, Switzerland, where she worked as a housemaid until the end of the War; returning to Belgium in 1945 with her second husband and opening a blouse manufactory; and marrying her second husband in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral History

    Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort, born on April 24, 1923 in Wrocław, Poland, describes her family and childhood; experiencing antisemitism and losing friends after Hitler came to power; her memories of the destruction of Kristallnacht; a cousin in Cuba attaining visas for her and her parents to immigrate to Havana, Cuba; booking a passage on the St. Louis and being forced to return to Europe after Cuba and the United States would not accept the ship; arriving in Antwerp, Belgium and signing papers that said they would not work and would accept their status as a refugee; living off a small budget from the United Jewish Appeal; crossing the Belgium border into France by foot but not finding a much better living situation; discovering a castle in the French countryside in which to stay for a few nights; returning to Belgium and moving back into their old apartment building, where they stayed for a couple of years; becoming a seamstress to make some money for her family; joining an underground group with her mother and crossing into France and then Switzerland; finding an apartment building in which to live; discovering that Hitler had died and that the war was coming to an end; and immigrating to the United States to create a new life for herself and her family.

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral History

    Gidon Arye, born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1928, describes growing up in an upper middle class family; moving into the Vilnius ghetto in 1941 and being separated from his family; living in the Vilnius ghetto throughout the war and sometimes hiding or working illegally; avoiding the early deportations; escaping roundups and going to the Kailis work camp; smuggling his way into the same work camp that his father; reuniting with his father at the Heeres-Kraftfahr-Park work camp, where they worked for an elderly German fixing automobile machinery; surviving in the camp for some time and avoiding Nazi Aktions and a transfer of inmates to Kaunas, Lithuania; Nazi soldiers retreating from the Allies throughout July 1944; going into hiding with a local carpenter who was an acquaintance of his father from before the war; leaving Vilnius through Poland, Germany, and then France in 1945 with his father and fiancée; and immigrating to Israel in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral History

    Carl Knuemann, born on November 15, 1922 in Bydgoszcz, Poland, describes his family and childhood; moving to Germany in 1932 because his father had German citizenship and was a businessman; his father not finding a job and contracting tuberculosis, which allowed him to get a pension from the government since he was a veteran of World War I; his father’s work with Doctor Goerdeler and Albert Einstein in plotting against Hitler; working as a courier in the underground movement; his memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to Hungary after the war broke out and then returning to Berlin once the Nazis invaded Hungary; meeting a Dane in a restaurant and joining the Danish resistance movement by running guns between locations; being drafted and sent to Denmark; his father being too ill to participate in the July 20 plot against Hitler; working in the German armament industry in 1943 and sneaking information out to Allied contacts; and his considerations on his participation in the resistance movement during the war.

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral History

    Michael Vogel, born on November 29, 1923 in Jacovce, Czechoslovakia, describes moving to and growing up in Topol'čany, Czechoslovakia; the takeover of Topol'čany by the Hlinka Guard in 1939; his deportation to the Slovak-run Novaky prison camp in 1942; his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1942; working in forced labor in camps around Auschwitz, first in the Buna works and then in the Birkenau "Kanada" detachment, where he unloaded incoming trains; his transfer by cattle car to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau as the Allies neared in late 1944; his final transfer to the Landsberg sub-camp of Dachau; escaping during a death march from Landsberg by hiding in the woods; his liberation by United States forces two weeks after escaping; following the 74th Tank Battalion on their tour through Germany and Czechoslovakia; swearing himself into the United States Army at a G.I. Camp Home Run in Le Havre, France in November 1945 and receiving American citizenship; taking a position doing laundry at Camp Home Run; and eventually immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral History

    Nina Schuster Merrick, born in Rokitno, Poland in 1929, describes growing up in a religious family; attending Hebrew school as a child; hiding with her family in the woods during the 1939 bombing raids; her family’s forced move into a ghetto in Berezdiv, Ukraine when the Germans invaded Poland; forced labor, including peeling potatoes for German soldiers; the SS raid of her home in August 1942 and jumping out a window to avoid getting caught; hiding in the woods and eventually being taken in by a sympathetic Ukrainian general, who was involved with a partisan group; learning to be a nurse and working in the partisan group; the General sending her to Moscow, Russia on February 18, 1943, so she could attend technical school; working in a Moscow factory, where she remained until after the war; going to a Jewish collective farm in Germany; an aunt from Washington, DC contacting her in February 1947; and immigrating to the United States to live with her aunt in late 1947.

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral History

    Eva Rozencwajig Stock, born on January 15, 1919 in Kozienice, Poland, describes her family; the establishment of the Kozienice ghetto in 1939 and moving into it; bribing officials to have her family taken together to Skarżysko-Kamienna, a forced labor camp in Poland, during the liquidation of the ghetto; managing to move her family to Szydlowiec and then to Pionki, Poland, where they worked in an ammunition factory; the deportation of her father and brother to Mauthausen, where they both died; being deported to Auschwitz with her mother and sisters; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen and then to Elsnig, a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Germany; returning to Poland at the end of the war and then leaving in 1949 for Israel; and immigrating to the United States in 1959.

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral History

    Ivo Herzer, born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Croatia) on February 5, 1925, describes his early childhood; the introduction of anti-Jewish, Serb, and Romani legislation in 1941 by the Croatian Ustaša government; his arrest at sixteen years of age by a Croatian official and going to a transit camp in the outskirts of Zagreb for a short period until an Ustaša officer told him to return home; escaping with his family in July 1941 to the Italian-Croatian border and ending up in Gospić, Yugoslavia (Croatia); being put onto a military train, returning them to Croatia; escaping the train with the help of smugglers; moving to Susak, Croatia, where they hid for one month; Italian authorities sending his family and about sixty other Jewish refugees to Crikvenica, Croatia, where they lived under Italian protection in the Italian zone in Yugoslavia; the Italian authorities placing the Jewish refugees in a camp in 1942 until 1943, when the Italians brought them and two thousand other Jewish refugees into one camp on the island of Arbe, Dalmatia (Croatia); the Italian surrender to the Germans in 1943 and fleeing to southern Italy to the Allied occupied part of Italy; traveling with his family to the Croatian island of Vis and getting picked up by a British military ship and taken to Bari, Italy; the British directing his family to Taranto, Italy, where they were placed in a camp under British control; leaving the British camp and traveling to Bari; working as a translator and typist for the British Army in Bari after he was liberated; moving to Rome, Italy to work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee from 1946 to 1948; and immigrating to the United States in 1955.

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

    Boleslaw Brodecki, born in March 1921 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; the German invasion in September 1939; boarding a train with his sister and escaping to Rostov, Russia while she went to Prużana, Poland; rejoining his sister in Prużana after the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; entering the Prużana ghetto and staying there until he was deported to Birkenau in the winter of 1941 or 1942; being marched to Auschwitz I and then to Swietochlowice, Poland, where he worked in a machine factory making parts for airplanes; being sent on a forced march as the Russian army approached; arriving in Mauthausen and working in a nearby factory; being marched to various camps including Gräditz-Bareza, Flossenbürg, and Theresienstadt; his liberation in Theresienstadt by Soviet forces in 1945; going to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany in 1945 and getting a job as a policeman; meeting and marrying his wife, Sonia Brodecki, in the camp in December 1945; having a son and then immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

    Irene Weber, born in Sosnowiec, Poland, describes her family; attending a Polish school until she was about 10 years old, when the war began; the immediate effects of the war on her family, including the closing of her father’s business and the German raids on her home; her father and brother secretly educating her at home; receiving a work card and having to cut thread at a factory; being taken from the factory and sent to the Gliwice labor camp; discovering that her father had died of a heart attack shortly before her deportation; staying in Gliwice from March 1943 to May 1945, when she and others were evacuated from the camp because the Russians neared; being taken care of by some of the older female prisoners; her liberation by the International Red Cross in May 1945; being taken to a hospital to recuperate; having no desire to return to her hometown and see the destruction there; staying on a farm instead of going into a displaced persons camp; going to school in Munich, Germany with the help of the UNRRA; and meeting her husband and deciding to immigrate to the United States with him.

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

    Josef, born on June 25, 1915 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; moving to Przemyśl, Poland when he was a child; fleeing to Lwów, Poland after the war broke out in 1939; returning to Przemyśl, which came under Russian occupation when Poland was divided between the Russians and the Germans; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; German troops issuing decrees restricting the rights and opportunities of the town’s Jewish population; moving into a designated Jewish ghetto in Przemyśl; meeting his future wife Stefania Podgófrska, who helped his family by smuggling food and other supplies to them in the ghetto; losing both of his parents during a ghetto Aktion; his deportation from the ghetto on November 18, 1942; using pliers he had in his pocket to cut through the wires covering the small window in the train car and jumping out of the train; getting slightly injured but being able to walk to Lipowice, Poland, where a friend provided him with shelter for a night and smuggled him back into Przemyśl the next morning; immediately going to Stefania, who hid him in her apartment for several days until he could smuggle himself back into the ghetto to be with one of his brothers; Stefania obtaining false papers for him and a few of his friends in the ghetto and finding a small cottage where they could hide; leaving the ghetto to meet with Stefania and her younger sister and to construct hiding places; hiding in the cottage with thirteen people for almost two years; his liberation by Russian troops and marrying Stefania; moving to Kraków and then to Wrocław, Poland, where he graduated from dental school; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

    Stanislaw Soszynski, born on February 24, 1931 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his neighborhood in Warsaw on Swietojerska Street; the destruction of Warsaw and the Germans opening the Warsaw Ghetto; living in an apartment where the front part was on the Aryan side, and the back part was on the ghetto side, which helped smuggling operations later in the war; going out of the ghetto area to get milk and sell it to support his family; his memories of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; the massive destruction of the ghetto after the uprising; and the uprising in 1944.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

    Abraham Lewent, born in July 1924 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his family; entering the Warsaw ghetto after the German occupation; hiding in a crawl space during a 1942 German raid and witnessing the capture of his mother and sisters; being deployed for forced labor nearby but escaping to return to his father in the ghetto; remaining in the ghetto until the uprising; his and his father’s deportation in 1943 to Majdanek, where his father died; his transfers to Skarzysko-Kamienna, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and finally to Dachau; and his liberation by American troops.

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

    Miriam Storch Lewent, born on June 26, 1926 in Zamość, Poland, describes her family and childhood; fleeing her home when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939; her family’s internment by Soviet forces and being deported to Siberia; cutting down trees to earn food rations near Tomsk, Russia; the Soviets releasing her and her family when the Soviet Union went to war with Germany in June 1941; her two brothers registering with the Russian Army and the rest of her family settling in Kazakhstan, where they lived for the rest of the war; her father teaching Hebrew to Jewish children in their new home; attempting to return to Poland after the war but encountering too much antisemitism; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

    Liane Reif-Lehrer, born in Vienna, Austria in November 1934, describes growing up in a middle-class family; obtaining a passport in 1938 to immigrate to the United States but not being able to go when her father, a dentist, killed himself because he had to close his practice; traveling with her brother and mother to Hamburg, Germany in 1939 to board the St. Louis, which was bound for Cuba; arriving in Cuba and having to return to Europe, where they ended up in France; getting a visa to immigrate to the United States after staying in France for two-and-a-half years; traveling through Spain and leaving Europe from Lisbon, Portugal on the S.S. Exeter and arriving in the United States on November 10, 1941; living with the sister of Liane's father and her children in New York; earning her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and working for many years as an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School; and now working as a consultant and a writer.

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

    Preben Munch-Nielsen, born in 1926 in Snekkersten, Denmark, describes growing up in a Protestant family; attending school in Copenhagen; the German invasion of Denmark in 1940; becoming a courier in the resistance and being one of the youngest resistance fighters; helping to hide refugees in houses near the shore and to get them on boats to Sweden once the Gestapo began hunting down Jews in Denmark in October 1943; taking refuge in Sweden in November 1943 and joining the Danish Brigade, in which he fought as a soldier for eighteen months; helping to smuggle arms into Denmark for resistance fighters; and settling in Denmark in May 1945 after the war.

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

    Anny Rubinstein Kast, born in Poland in 1926, describes moving to Belgium when she was two months old; her family and her childhood in Belgium; attending school in Antwerp before the war; the German invasion of Belgium on May 10, 1940; someone reporting to the Germans that her family was the only Jewish one left in their neighborhood and then being picked up a few days later; living with the aunt of a friend during her family’s deportation and taking on a false identity; studying German, English, and mathematics lessons during the war; her liberation in 1944 when the English troops entered her town; her uncle finding her and opening up a fur store in Antwerp to support her and other surviving family members; immigrating to Israel after the war; and getting married in 1967.

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

    Helen Waterford, born in Germany in April 14, 1909, discusses her 1933 marriage; her move to Amsterdam in 1934; working for many years to help Jews from Germany relocate to the Netherlands; going into hiding in October 1942 with her husband but without her daughter; the Germans discovering them on August 26, 1944 and interrogating them for two days about the network of people who assisted them in hiding; her deportation to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her husband’s death in Auschwitz; remaining in Birkenau until October 1944, when she was forced to work in the Kratzau factory in Czechoslovakia; going into a prisoner of war camp, where she remained until her liberation; traveling to a displaced persons camp at Plzen, Czechoslovakia; returning to the Netherlands, where she reunited with her daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

    Thomas Ward, born on August 10, 1921 in St. Louis, MO, describes joining the army when he was twenty years old; serving in General Patton's Third Army; working as a part of a three-person reconnaissance team in the Third Cavalry division; liberating 18,000 prisoners from the Ebensee concentration camp on May 5th, 1945; liberating a neighboring camp for women several days later; taking photographs in the camps (which he sent to the Supreme Allied Command); and his views on Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    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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