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Oral history interview with Gertrude Chapman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2016.299.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0901

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    Oral history interview with Gertrude Chapman
    Transcript
    Oh, I'm sure it would not.
    Yeah.
    It's the Jewish section.
    It was a lot of Jewish, but it was very much intermixed.
    OK.
    Ina, we're rolling.
    OK.
    So this is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mrs. Gertrude Chapman on September 28, 2016
    in Chicago, Illinois.
    Thank you very, very much, Mrs. Chapman,
    for agreeing to meet with us today,
    to share your story, to share your family's experiences,
    and in that way to give us some insight into how
    all of the events of the Nazi takeover and the ensuing
    policies affected individual people.
    I'll start our interview with the simplest questions,
    and we'll go from there.
    Can you tell me what your name was at birth?
    Ksenia.
    Ksenia?
    Ksenia Gertrude Weber.
    Weber.
    Yes, with one B.
    All right.
    And how would you pronounce it in German?
    Ksenia.
    I was called Manya most of the time.
    OK.
    And your last name, how was it pronounced?
    Weber.
    Weber.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And what was the date of your birth?
    4/9/32.
    That means April 9--
    Right, 1932.
    --1932.
    Yeah.
    And where were you born?
    In Berlin.
    In the capital.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    Yes, I did, three older.
    I had a-- my oldest one is my brother Alphonse Weber,
    my sister Senter Weber, and my sister Ruth Weber.
    OK.
    So you had three older siblings.
    Right.
    But I also had younger ones.
    Tell me about that.
    I had my sister Renee Weber, and my sister Judy Weber,
    and the last one is Bela Weber.
    Bela Weber.
    Weber, yes.
    OK.
    What were the names of your mother and your father?
    My father's name was Alexander Weber.
    And my mother's name is Ilona Weber.
    OK.
    Ilona Weber.
    Well, you have names that are very common in Russian,
    in Polish, Poland--
    Ksenia, Ilona, and so on.
    They're not very Germanic.
    I know.
    Like Senter.
    Senter is from The Flying Dutchman, De Vliegende
    Hollander.
    Yeah.
    Is there a reason why your parents--
    I can't say.
    You don't know?
    I have no idea, no.
    You have no idea, OK.
    And so you're older siblings, were they born, then,
    in the 1920s?
    If you were born--
    My brother was.
    My sisters Senter--
    I think Alphonse was born in '27.
    I'm not quite sure.
    And Senter might have been--
    but they're only 11 months apart.
    So my brother, which, if he was alive,
    he was going to be 89 this October,
    and he just passed away.
    I see.
    So my sister's 88--
    not quite.
    In January she would be 88, because they're 11 months apart.
    OK.
    Are all your other siblings still living?
    Yes.
    OK.
    But your oldest brother has passed away?
    Just passed away, yes.
    OK.
    Tell me a little bit about your parents,
    who they were, as much as you know about their families, maybe
    your grandparents, or aunts and uncles.
    And let's start with your mother's side of the family.
    My mother's side, I only--
    I know very little about her side.
    My mother was very frum.
    She was orthodox.
    She had family in Hungary.
    And I think she always wanted to go back.
    She missed her family terribly.
    And I just remember one time an uncle
    coming to visit us, Jack or Josh, something like that.
    But otherwise, I mean, the family--
    her father, I believe, was a cantor.
    At a synagogue?
    Yeah, he was a cantor.
    But they were very orthodox.
    OK.
    And what was your mother's first name?
    Lena.
    Lena.
    Lena.
    Lena Bander.
    Bander is her maiden name.
    Lida-- Lena Bander.
    And when you said "frum," does that-- what did you mean--
    Frum, very religious, orthodox.
    Yes.
    Very orthodox.
    OK.
    And--
    But she ended up marrying a man that was not Jewish,
    who converted to Judaism.
    Really?
    Mm-hmm.
    So that would be your father.
    Right.
    That's very unusual.
    Yes.
    Do you know how they met?
    How they--
    My father was a traveling salesman.
    He was selling umbrellas, I believe, because they had--
    they owned a factory place in Paderborn.
    And he was traveling, and he saw her outside--
    I don't know--
    In Hungary?
    In Hungary, yeah.
    Yes.
    And that's where they got Married
    In Hungary?
    Yes.
    Well, I can't imagine how her parents would have reacted.
    Well, that's involved with that.
    So that's why he converted from Catholic to Judaism.
    OK.
    And what do you know of your paternal side of the family?
    Very little, actually.
    My father I know also had-- either--
    at least three or four sisters.
    There were six children in his family, and brothers.
    His mother one time came to visit us.
    And I remember getting a spanking from her because I
    called my mother a bad name.
    So she took me over her knee and she gave it to me.
    She passed away in 1937.
    Your grandmother?
    My grandmother.
    So you were very little.
    Yes, yes.
    Yeah, maybe four, I think, when she was there.
    Otherwise, I knew--
    I know my mother, alav ha-shalom,
    used to send her cakes that she would--
    my mother liked to bake, and she would send them cakes
    around their holiday time.
    But otherwise, I really don't--
    I know very little about them.
    I know that I was named for one--
    was it her mother?
    I think, I believe I was named Gertrude for her mother.
    That was one of her names.
    But I--
    Oh, so that is your maternal grandmother?
    Right.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Yeah, but I know very little about my mother's side
    of the family.
    Yeah.
    So aside from the one uncle, nobody else really--
    No.
    I never met anyone.
    And just my maternal grandmother on my father's side.
    Do you know whether or not they were
    ostracized from both sides of the family because--
    That's-- I think that's one of the reasons.
    Actually, my two-- my sister Senter and my brother
    were born in Paderborn in Westphalia,
    which is close to where my father comes from.
    And I believe--
    So he's not a native Berliner?
    Pardon me?
    He's not a native Berliner.
    No, he's not. no.
    And your mother wasn't.
    And I think-- no, she's not either.
    No, because she's from Hungary.
    I think that was probably one of the reasons
    why they move away from there.
    I don't think it was acceptable to the family on his side.
    But I mean, there was never much talk about it,
    so I really don't know anything about my--
    Yeah.
    Yes, that's right.
    Paderborn is in the western part of Germany,
    pretty far from Berlin.
    Yeah.
    And in Berlin, you lived in the Scheunenviertel.
    Is that what it is?
    Mm-hmm.
    Was that the center of town?
    Was that outside the center?
    Do you know?
    Oh, I have no idea.
    I don't know.
    Do you have memories of what kind of home you had?
    Was it an apartment or--
    We lived in an apartment.
    We attended Jewish day school.
    We went to an all girls' school, and the boys
    went to a boys' school.
    OK.
    So was your family still very religious?
    Yes, yes.
    OK.
    Yes.
    And what did that mean?
    Did that mean--
    Oh, we observed all of the holidays, you know.
    Like sukkahs, for instance, we always
    had sukkahs in the backyard that was put up,
    and we used to decorate that.
    I remember that.
    Tell us, for those people who don't know, what is that?
    Sukkahs is-- it's supposed to resemble a hut.
    And we used to decorate it for Purim-- not Purim.
    Oh, my God.
    I can't recall the name right now.
    Things, when I try to remember, they disappear.
    That's OK.
    Not for Hanukkah, not for Purim.
    I can't recall.
    OK.
    Maybe it'll come to me later.
    Now, did your father also participate in this?
    Yes, he did.
    Yes, my father, alav ha-shalom, he would-- you know,
    my mother would [NON-ENGLISH] on Friday night.
    And my father, alav ha-shalom always used to sing Ma'oz Tzur.
    Yes, he did participate in that ritual, yes.
    I don't remember him going to shul, though my mother also
    didn't go, except maybe for the High Holidays,
    that she would go to shul, so.
    But we lived-- the street we lived on,
    we had cheders on the same street,
    we had Jewish bookstores right next door.
    It was very inter-- much intermingled.
    And the Jewish people that lived in our street
    were primarily chasids.
    They all wore the long kittel, and they wore--
    they had beards and the top hats.
    So it was-- and there were a lot of immigrants, probably
    Polish or Russian for all I know, that were living there.
    Yes, unusual--
    But there were a lot of Gentiles also on the streets.
    So we mingled-- it was pretty mixed.
    Can-- you remember the street name?
    Oh, Grenadierstrasse.
    Grenadierstrasse.
    Yeah.
    We lived in Grenadierstrasse [GERMAN].
    31.
    That's 31, yeah.
    The apartment was rather small for the number of people.
    Because not all--
    I don't know if all seven lived there.
    Ginger was born there or in the next street, I'm not sure.
    Ginger being Bela?
    Oh, Bela, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And how did Bela become Ginger?
    Well, when she was adapt when we came to the United States.
    OK.
    We'll come to that.
    OK.
    We'll come to that.
    So you lived in a section that that
    could be said as a place where a lot of foreigners
    were-- foreign immigrants.
    Right.
    Poor people.
    Poor people.
    Lots of poor people.
    I don't think there were people there that were particularly
    well off.
    OK.
    And how is it that your parents ended up
    in that particular part of Berlin?
    Probably because they didn't have any money.
    So were they rather poor as well?
    Oh, yes, they were.
    I think they were on welfare most of the time, yes.
    OK.
    So did your father have any kind of steady employment?
    Not until 1938, he did not.
    Really?
    But before that, he actually was incarcerated, like in 1934,
    for about eight months or nine months.
    He became-- he was incarcerated.
    Why?
    Why?
    Probably he said the wrong thing.
    Who knows?
    I don't know.
    So it wasn't-- you don't know if it was because he was Jewish,
    it was--
    Not because he was Jewish.
    Not because-- well, they had their finger on him.
    But the name, I think, at times probably confused them.
    Weber is a very--
    Common German name, yeah.
    But I don't know if--
    it's not Jewish name, to my knowledge.
    Well, it's like Smith.
    You know, it's the name
    Like Smith, right.
    Right, yeah.
    Yeah.
    So-- yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, like I said, I think he didn't have steady employment
    till about 1938.
    So after-- so in Paderborn, was it that his family owned--
    They owned, I guess, a place where they made umbrellas.
    Yeah.
    They seemed to be fairly well off from what I recall.
    And as a salesman, he would have--
    Traveled.
    He was a-- traveled, and family-owned business.
    Then he probably was better off at that time.
    Time.
    Right, right.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But by the time he was married--
    And I think he was educated.
    Yeah.
    Tell me a little bit about both of your parents
    as far as personalities are concerned.
    Well, my mother was the softy.
    She always used to threaten you with the end of a belt,
    that she was going to do something, but she never did.
    My father, on the other hand, could be short-tempered
    at times, and--
    yeah, he was not so easygoing as my mother.
    Were you more frightened of him?
    Was I-- no.
    No.
    Although, we lived in tight quarters, I can tell you that.
    We had a small apartment for that many people.
    Tell me about the apartment.
    What did it--
    It was like-- it was two rooms and a kitchen.
    No, wait.
    The first apartment might have even been smaller
    than the second apartment.
    On Grenadierstrasse, the apartment was rather small,
    I remember that.
    And we always lived never facing the street.
    We were in back in the [GERMAN].
    In front was a cheder, in front.
    And the front part of the building,
    there was a cheder, and--
    which was well-attended by lots of Jewish boys going to cheder.
    Of course there were Jewish stores on our street.
    And what I remember about that primarily is Kristallnacht.
    We'll come to that.
    Yeah, OK.
    We'll come to that.
    What I'd like to ask now, about your own living quarters
    that you remember on Grenadierstrasse,
    a number of questions that may sound a little strange--
    That's OK.
    --but it will give us a picture.
    OK.
    So the first question-- did it have
    indoor plumbing, the apartment?
    I'm not sure if it was right in the apartment or it was--
    off the staircase.
    I can't-- that one I cannot recall.
    Whether there was a toilet inside the apartment?
    Right.
    I don't-- I don't think so, but I'm not sure.
    OK.
    Did you have electricity in the apartment?
    Oh, yeah.
    We had electricity, yes.
    Did you have--
    We had a radio.
    That was another question.
    Yeah.
    Did you have-- what kind of heating?
    Was it coal heating?
    Coal heating, yes.
    Coal heating.
    Yes.
    And you had plumbing in-- like, running water?
    Yes.
    But I don't know if it was--
    I can't-- it must have been in the apartment,
    but I don't recall.
    I remember the stove, but I don't remember a sink per se.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    Well, you know, these are--
    in different places in Europe, there
    was different levels of, let's say, economic well-being.
    Right.
    And even Berlin, which normally you would think all apartments
    would have these things--
    No, they didn't.
    In a place like Scheunenviertel--
    No, it was the old section, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Not necessarily.
    Right, right.
    And so you were nine people in two to three rooms.
    Right.
    OK.
    How did that work out?
    I mean, did everybody sleep in the same bedroom?
    Oh, just about-- you could--
    [LAUGHS]
    Yeah?
    I think the only ones that slept separate
    was my mother and father, and you-- probably the baby.
    And I don't know if the baby was Bela,
    or whether it was my sister Judy.
    Yeah, I don't know.
    OK.
    Was your father-- if he wasn't employed,
    was he involved at all with the children at home?
    There were seven of you.
    Was he involved with the children?
    That's hard to say.
    I mean, he must've been.
    You know, my father, alav ha-shalom, used to always--
    he was interested in electronic-- electronics
    in those times, they didn't have electronics.
    But he used to like to work with radios.
    I remember that.
    He worked on that, anything electrical.
    Was he involved with us?
    I'm sure he must have been involved.
    I mean, it's almost impossible to have
    kids running around the room and not see them,
    since he was there.
    Well, I mean, I'm trying to get a sense
    of what kind of relationship he had with the children.
    Oh, with children?
    Yeah.
    Were you all close, or were you--
    was there some distance, that sort of thing.
    Oh, that kind of--
    no, I would say we were close.
    Super close?
    No, I don't think so.
    I don't have any unhappy memories of him, you know.
    He was stricter than my mother, that much I do know.
    But otherwise--
    And your mother, was she somebody--
    you say she was a softy.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, she was a softy all right, you know.
    She cared about everybody and anything and everyone.
    I mean, inside the apartment or--
    whether people on the outside, whether they couldn't--
    I mean, my mother-- unfortunately,
    she, too, at times worked.
    She did work.
    She was a, what do you call, a janitress
    of the building, because my father wasn't earning very much.
    So she had to take care of the building itself.
    Like washing the staircases and--
    Yeah, the staircase, and, oh, everything had to be cleaned.
    They were crazy clean, the Germans, as you well know.
    And one year, I understand from reading some of the things,
    that she couldn't do the work, so my father
    had to help her out.
    But in order to help her out, he had to get permission,
    otherwise their welfare check would have been stopped.
    He wasn't allowed to do--
    he had to get permission for him to fill in for her
    while he was pregnant, I think, with my second youngest sister
    Judy.
    I see.
    So he helped.
    He did the work for her instead.
    But yeah, everything always revolved around what
    you earned and didn't earn.
    Did you go hungry?
    Not when we were younger.
    There seemed to be food.
    The hunger came much later, I would say.
    After '42 it was more problematic,
    because Jews weren't allowed--
    you could go to the food store between the hours,
    I think it was between 4:00 and 5:00.
    That's the only time you were allowed to go to the food store
    shopping.
    And usually, things were pretty well picked over at that time.
    Yeah.
    That's pretty late in the game.
    Yeah.
    That's pretty--
    Yeah.
    But you weren't hung--
    I guess I asked that more out of the economic side
    of the question.
    Yeah, I don't recall.
    No.
    I mean, food was always very important.
    There's no question about it.
    To this day, I can't throw away leftovers,
    because it was a sin to throw--
    if you dropped a piece of bread, you
    had to pick it up and kiss it, because it was a sin
    to drop any food on the floor.
    Yeah, that was a big thing with my mother, oh, my gosh.
    Did all the children have chores at home?
    Not that I recall particularly, no.
    No.
    I think we had-- oh, we went to nursery school, and school,
    of course, as we got older.
    But nursery school was a big part.
    Oh, I remember when--
    well, I was rather--
    I don't know how old I was.
    Three, maybe?
    Two and a half?
    We had a neighbor down the street,
    and I think my mother must have been kind of overwhelmed
    with having kids, so many kids.
    That's why the neighbor took me in.
    And her husband used to take me on the front of the bicycle
    and ride around.
    So I think I might have stayed with them for a while
    to give her some relief.
    Did she have any help at all?
    No.
    Anybody else coming in?
    No.
    No, not that I'm aware of that we have any help, no.
    OK.
    Did you ever remember seeing your father
    helping her around the house?
    The house?
    At times, but not really.
    I mean you know, how much--
    the only time I remember is Passover.
    That was a big to-do with taking down the Passover dishes
    and putting away the other dishes,
    and getting rid of all the chametz.
    You know, then it was-- then he had to help with that.
    We didn't have enough chairs to sit down, I can remember that.
    So he used to put a board across two chairs
    so we could all sit down at the same table.
    And I remember-- oh, at Hanukkah, we would light--
    he would light the Hanukkah menorah.
    But we used an oil menorah.
    We didn't use candles, we used oil.
    And some of the other holidays-- our neighbors
    would invite us when they would light a Christmas tree.
    They would invite us to their apartment
    so we could see what was going on.
    Because they were close with their neighbors.
    They always were very friendly with other people
    besides just our family, because they didn't have family,
    you know.
    Can we break just for a second?
    Yeah, it's getting really noisy outside.
    I'm not--
    I didn't notice until now, but I don't like that.
    OK.
    You had asked me about my father,
    but I remember, when he would work
    at the table with his electrical stuff,
    it was not uncommon for him to have a youngest child on his lap
    while he was doing that.
    So he was involved in that manner.
    Did your parents-- did you see a good relationship between them?
    Yes, from what I recall, yeah.
    Yeah, they did.
    Well, I mean, both of them sacrificed a lot to be together.
    Yes, they did.
    Yes, they did.
    Yes.
    Well, like I told you before, my mother always wanted to go back
    home, but of course she couldn't.
    They couldn't.
    And my father's biggest wish always was to emigrate.
    Was it?
    Oh, always, to want to emigrate-- anywhere, everywhere.
    And he tried.
    They tried different ways, but we didn't have money.
    Money stands in your way.
    If you don't have money, like in the United States,
    if you don't have money, you know,
    you either die well or you don't.
    I mean, I'm experiencing that now.
    Money means a lot.
    So why would he want to have left?
    Because I think he felt oppressed, you know,
    because she was incarcerated, you
    know, for about 10 months of his life.
    And he was--
    I think it affected him greatly of how he [INAUDIBLE] the kind
    of person was after the incarceration.
    I think there was damage done to him at that time.
    Well, when he was arrested, you were just two years old.
    I know.
    But I heard about it always that he--
    I knew about it, that he was arrested.
    I knew about that, yes.
    Do you have memories of him after being-- he was released
    and how he looked?
    No.
    No, no, I don't.
    So the things that you know of his experience
    are things that were told to you.
    Right, right.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    In what way did it--
    was he affected?
    How did--
    I think his teeth were affected.
    I don't know if they hit him or just what they did to him.
    I think his teeth were never right after that.
    He didn't talk about it much to us.
    He wouldn't.
    I know that they have friends that knew about his condition.
    And who knows?
    I don't know.
    In the neighborhood, you mean?
    Friends--
    In the neighborhood, or friends from outside the neighborhood
    that he conversed with.
    But personal stories in regards to that, I don't really recall.
    I was too young to be involved in that conversation, that's
    for sure, you know.
    I mean, some things I remember, they're
    from the second apartment that I remembered it.
    Not Grenadierstrasse?
    Not in Grenadierstrasse, no.
    I think in '38 or '39 is when we moved
    to a little bit larger apartment,
    just one street over, to Dragonerstrasse.
    Dragonerstrasse?
    Dragoner.
    Yeah.
    We lived-- that was a little, somewhat bigger apartment
    that we got.
    And we lived there, I think, on the third floor.
    We had two large rooms and a kitchen.
    It was actually a big apartment that was cut up,
    because there were other people living on the front end.
    And when you first came into the apartment, there was--
    I remember a toilet being there.
    There was also a bathroom with a tub in it,
    I remember that, and a separate kitchen.
    And we slept-- like I said, we slept in the front room, which
    was bigger, all of us.
    And we slept together except for my brother.
    He had his own bed.
    And the youngest child, which would have been Bela,
    she slept with my parents.
    And they had a crib in their bedroom for her.
    So I remember that.
    And I remember seeing their wedding picture
    hanging above her bed.
    And of course, the stove was there in the corner.
    Was it a coal oven with the tiles and things like that?
    Right.
    right, Yeah.
    Yeah, yeah.
    OK.
    I know my father was like, fresh air,
    open a window in the morning, oh, it's good for you.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That's very European.
    Yeah, right.
    That's very European.
    Yeah, I remember that.
    And it had a big door going from one room into the other room.
    And I know my youngest--
    Bela once got her hand caught in the door.
    My mother was sitting by the table,
    and she didn't know Bela was there by the door,
    and she got her hand caught.
    Yeah.
    And her fingers, she still has a mark.
    Her finger's marked up for the rest of her life.
    Well, that's one way to remember your mother.
    Yeah.
    She was very young.
    I don't know how old she was at that point.
    But I really forgot what I said.
    Oh, well, that's the new apartment, yeah,
    in Dragonerstrasse.
    And was that still in Scheunenviertel?
    Yes.
    It was only like--
    around the corner to the next street.
    Yes.
    Yes-- oh, another thing about that area that was not too nice,
    we had a lot of women, loose women, living off the street.
    And did you know as children what their job was?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, really?
    Somehow we knew.
    Yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    By the way they dressed, the way they stood around
    outside trying to attract the attention of guys.
    Yeah, we knew that, yeah.
    The schools that you went to, were they
    public schools or private schools?
    They were private, because Jewish school.
    We went to school on Augerstrasse, which
    was within walking distance.
    That was a girls' school.
    And Alphonse, my brother, alav ha-shalom,
    went to Kaiser-Wilhelm-strasse.
    That was a boys' school.
    And then when our school was closed--
    I don't know if that was '42 or--
    '42, '43-- then we had to switch over and share the school
    with the boys.
    Our school was pretty-- a very modern school.
    They also had a nursery school there.
    And I believe that my sister Bela attended that.
    And I think my mother used to bring us there
    for nursery school.
    If these were private schools, that
    meant there was tuition involved.
    Well, we certainly didn't pay any tuition, that's for sure.
    Well, just like cheder, you had to pay for that, too.
    But somehow, my mother managed to get
    them to give him, you know, instructions,
    and I'm sure they didn't pay for it.
    They didn't really have any money, you know.
    Like I said, I don't think my father started work until 1938.
    So if she paid, I'm not aware of it.
    Money was always tight.
    That was the-- there was never much available.
    Did you ever see your mother relax?
    Did you ever see her--
    Relax?
    [LAUGHS]
    I mean--
    What was that?
    But you know what, I shouldn't say that.
    She-- I don't know about Dragonerstrasse.
    I think on Grenadierstrasse, but I never saw.
    But I always heard about it, that she
    used to like to play cards.
    So she participated in that.
    And they had a lot of friends, I know they had.
    But they used to like to play a card game called 66.
    I don't know to this day what the heck it is,
    but it's a card game.
    Not my father.
    My father never played cards.
    He didn't drink, and he didn't play cards.
    But my mother played cards.
    Yeah, she did.
    So that was one of a few--
    Things, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    --sort of leisure activities.
    Right.
    Right, yeah.
    I mean, they didn't go to the movies.
    Although, I remember going to the movie and seeing
    Shirley Temple.
    Did you?
    Yeah.
    I got to see that.
    Yeah.
    I don't know what year that was.
    I don't know.
    I was six, seven, eight?
    I don't know.
    Did the older two--
    what was your relationship with your siblings?
    Were you close?
    Oh, I always used to sing with my older sister Senter.
    We used to like to sing and harmonize together.
    Yeah, she liked to do that.
    I remember that.
    And I told you, my brother went to cheder,
    but I think my mother had to bribe him to go.
    He wasn't always willing.
    I can remember when he had a bar mitzvah.
    He had coffee and cake afterwards.
    I don't remember him going to shul when he went--
    was became a bar mitzvah.
    But I know that they had coffee and cake afterwards.
    Coffee seemed to play a big role in their life.
    Yeah.
    So.
    Would you-- would you describe your home
    as a warm one, or just a matter-of-fact kind
    of neutral place?
    I would say-- well, warm.
    My mother was very warm.
    Oh, yeah.
    She used to say like, [NON-ENGLISH] over every kid.
    Oh, my God.
    [GERMAN]
    [GERMAN] she used to call it, her swallows.
    We were her swallows.
    And she worried about all the kids.
    [GERMAN], yeah.
    Yeah, [GERMAN].
    Yeah, yeah.
    She always called us that, yeah.
    Well, this is-- one thing is interesting for me here.
    If she's from Hungary, what was her first language?
    Hungarian.
    I don't know what else--
    but, you know, she always spoke Yiddish.
    So she spoke many--
    more than just Hungarian.
    She spoke other languages, too.
    I don't know--
    I think probably some Polish and Romanian mixed in.
    Well, that would be typical for that part of the world.
    Right.
    Yeah, my father-- I mean, he spoke some Yiddish,
    but he didn't.
    He spoke German.
    And they spoke German with one another?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And at home, did you all speak Yiddish,
    or did you speak German?
    No, we spoke primarily German.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Did she have an accent in German?
    Did I have a what?
    Did your mother have an accent?
    Have an accent?
    If she had an accent, I wasn't aware of it.
    I was used to whatever she spoke.
    I mean, that was her mother tongue to me.
    I didn't know the difference.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Yeah, I couldn't tell the difference between them.
    Well, when you said she called you her-- you know,
    your swallows--
    [NON-ENGLISH], yeah.
    Then that's somebody who was very--
    somebody who knows the language, who feels
    comfortable in the language.
    Oh, that's true.
    Oh, yeah.
    Well, yes, I mean, she could-- she certainly
    could communicate in German, because she
    had all these friends.
    So she-- and whatever friends had
    who spoke a different language, she
    could speak to them in a different language.
    In that language?
    Yeah.
    Wow.
    So she was a sociable kind of person.
    Yes, she was.
    Yes, she was.
    Mm-hmm.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    She cared too much about other people.
    Why do you say "too much"?
    Because I think it got her into trouble.
    Ah.
    Is that part of your story later on?
    I don't know.
    Well, how would you explain--
    can we cut for a second?
    Of course.
    We're rolling again.
    OK.
    In what way do you think it specifically
    got her into trouble?
    Because she tried to help other Jews.
    And she did actively.
    I remember one time, she went to Cologne, which is--
    Cologne, yeah.
    Cologne that's-- she went there.
    She actually got a permanent.
    She never had a permanent, she got a permanent.
    She made off like she was one of the [GERMAN] leader, like--
    A group leader of something?
    Yeah, like she was in charge.
    She was going to--
    she made off like she was one of them.
    And she managed to bring out a couple of people that way
    and brought them back to Berlin.
    I don't know how she did what she did.
    I remember her telling us going into the women's washroom,
    and then she went into, you know a stall,
    and then she called for the woman
    to help her, come if she needed something, supposedly.
    So I don't know what was going on between the two of them,
    if she had got the information from this woman or not.
    I have no idea.
    But somehow she managed to bring these people out of Cologne.
    Where she brought them to, I don't know .
    I have no idea.
    But then she always tried to help other people,
    whether they came to her for some help financially,
    or just what--
    I don't know.
    But she--
    Well, she sounds like she was a very good-hearted person.
    She was-- oh, she was.
    Oh, absolutely, yeah.
    Yeah, she was always--
    and I'm sure-- one time, I remember, she came home.
    She had been to somebody's house.
    And they had a lot of kids, like nine or more, I don't know.
    And they were all-- had been picked up already.
    And so she said-- so what did she do?
    She open up a box of candles, and she lit all the candles.
    And there was black market going on.
    You know, we try to wheel and deal.
    I remember we used to--
    on Grenadierstrasse, woman that lived above us,
    she was a seamstress.
    And sometimes my mother would send me with a fur coat to her,
    and she would give an estimate on the fur coat.
    I don't know if I brought it back to my mother or not.
    I don't recall.
    OK.
    Up until now I've been asking about things
    that are really like in the private sphere, sort of like,
    what is family life, who are your parents, how did you live,
    things like that, not asking that
    much about what's going on in the wider community or city.
    And that's what I'd like to turn to at this point.
    If you're born in 1932, then I can't-- you know,
    all of your conscious life would have been, as a child,
    after Hitler comes to power.
    Right.
    He comes to power one year later,
    and life changes for people.
    That radio that your father would tinker with,
    did they listen to any broadcasts?
    Oh, yes.
    Much later, yes.
    We always knew when we were going
    to be bombed, because he knew where the planes were,
    how far away they were.
    So he could track them, and we would
    know when to run down to the basement
    before the alarm actually went off.
    So that means towards the end of the war?
    No, not towards the end of the war.
    It didn't end till '45.
    That's right.
    That was already in 40--
    I don't know when--
    I don't know when the heavy bombing started.
    In '41?
    After '43.
    No, no, no, after '43.
    '43?
    Oh.
    Well, that could be.
    Yeah, but in '43, you know, when they
    had-- when the really heavy bombing started, we were there,
    and we were being bombed, and the place was burning.
    I remember my brother was up on a roof.
    But I also remember being on the farm.
    When we left Berlin--
    We'll come to that.
    We'll come to that.
    Yeah, I know.
    I'm getting mixed up.
    That's OK.
    So you thing '42 is when is started, the heavy bomb-- '43?
    Germany was-- yeah.
    I don't know that it started in '43,
    but I would think it would be only after 1943.
    Because up until that point, the war is going for the Germans.
    And only after the Battle of Stalingrad,
    when they start retreating and they
    lose the battle, that the Allies gain some more advantage--
    and I would think that most bombing would have taken place
    in '44.
    It might--
    That late?
    Well, '44 we were already by that time on the farm.
    We were outside of Berlin.
    I don't know--
    But I remember, we were in Berlin when we got bombed, too.
    Bombed.
    Oh, absolutely, because we used to go down to the shelter.
    So I'm not 100% clear, but I do know
    that in the early years of the war,
    it wouldn't have happened that much.
    And I might be completely wrong, but simply
    because Germany was winning.
    And so how could their airspace be invaded?
    Well, but we got hell-bombed I remember that.
    OK.
    Yeah, I do remember that.
    So we will talk about that.
    Yeah.
    But the radio.
    Did your parents ever listen to--
    England.
    Oh, they listened to the BBC.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And what about-- well, you would-- before the war starts,
    before 1939, did they listen to--
    No.
    That time, I don't know what they--
    he just worked on it, but I don't know what he listened to.
    I have no idea.
    Did he read any newspapers?
    Yeah, I'm sure they did.
    OK.
    But you don't remember seeing him.
    No, no.
    Was he in any way political, your father?
    If he was, I'm sure he would have
    been scared stiff after having been incarcerated.
    I don't think he would have-- not openly
    that I'm aware of, let's put it that way.
    I don't know the kind of people he hung out with.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    And his incarceration is because he said something indiscreet?
    Would be probably, most likely.
    I don't know what-- for but other reason.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    So no one ever told you.
    As to exactly why?
    No.
    No.
    I don't know if I would have understood it.
    I have no idea.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    Did you ever see in your neighborhood any brownshirts?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    I remember them marching down the street and singing--
    I can still hear what they were singing.
    Oh, yeah.
    You know, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    What does that mean?
    Oh, throw out all the Jews, and cut off their legs,
    otherwise they'll come back.
    Yeah.
    That's [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    and cut off their legs, otherwise they'll
    come back again.
    I remember that.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah, they used to march down the street.
    The Hitlerjugend-- I don't know if they were just
    the Hitlerjugend or the actual soldiers, I don't recall.
    But I do-- I remember Kristallnacht.
    Tell me about that.
    Did we talk about that?
    Not yet.
    Let's do it now.
    Well, what I remember-- well, there
    was a lot of noise, of course, in Kristallnacht,
    a lot of going on.
    I didn't know what it was.
    A lot of breaking glass.
    And I remember the next day going outside,
    and the store next door to us, which
    was a bookstore, Jewish bookstore,
    all the books were thrown out.
    And from the cheder, the Torahs were thrown on the street.
    And my mother, alav ha-shalom, picked up a picture,
    and she held it to her side, because it
    had the Lions of Judah on it.
    So she held it up against her body
    so they shouldn't see what she had picked up.
    And I remember on the corner by us, on Grenadierstrasse--
    yeah, that was on Grenadierstrasse--
    there was a Jewish shoe store, and it was totally damaged.
    And a person showed up.
    It must have been the owner, because when he came,
    you could see he was extremely angry, because everything
    had been destroyed.
    So it was quite a mess.
    The street was a mess, because there were quite
    a few other Jewish stores that they had damaged.
    They probably would have burnt more, but sometimes
    they knew they were other--
    they couldn't burn just what they wanted to burn.
    Other people would be involved and the fire department
    might have gotten involved, I'm not sure, to stop it.
    But that sticks out in my mind a lot, Kristallnacht.
    Did you hear things during the night?
    Or is it--
    Oh, yeah.
    You had people-- well, there was some screaming going on.
    But that was-- yeah, not too much there.
    But I remember when we had moved to Grenadier--
    to Dragonerstrasse, I remember we
    used to have a blacksmith in the yard by us
    in the back of the-- you know, we lived in the back.
    And across from us, there was an apartment on the third floor.
    There was a lot of iron laying on the main floor and by the--
    where they used to hoof their horses.
    Right.
    And I know somebody jumped out of the window
    and killed himself from the third floor.
    He fell down and killed himself, committed suicide.
    That night?
    That was not Crystal Night.
    That was later.
    That was later.
    And also, in our building on Dragonerstrasse,
    we had a family live below us.
    And one night my sister Ruth happened
    to be coming up the stairs, and the couple that lived below us
    had a daughter.
    And he threw her out of the apartment,
    and my sister brought upstairs by us and--
    he threw her out of the apartment.
    And she came upstairs.
    She was carrying on and crying.
    She didn't know what was going on.
    What happened there was they had been notified that they
    would be picked up in an hour.
    So what they proceeded to do was to try to commit suicide.
    He succeeded.
    I guess he drank something and he gave it to her, too.
    But then he also took--
    we to have a contraption on the wall
    that if you put a dime in there, you would get gas to cook with.
    And he took that hose into his mouth.
    But she didn't have it.
    So she survived.
    And she survived with that girl.
    Her name is Inge.
    I used to play with her.
    And she we hid her amongst our-- you know, in bed.
    And they came upstairs looking for her,
    but they didn't know what to look for because there
    were so few of us, you know.
    And she was sitting amongst us.
    This must have been '40--
    again, '42, '43, I don't know exactly.
    Oh, that could easily be-- so this was--
    they knew that they were going to be picked up,
    and the husband and wife decided to commit suicide?
    Right.
    Well, I don't think she knew about it.
    I think he probably was in charge.
    And he threw her out.
    I think she-- it might have been his stepdaughter.
    Ah.
    And he didn't want her to see that.
    Well, apparently he didn't care.
    He just want to get rid of her or try to save her.
    I don't know.
    You know, he threw her out of the apartment--
    You don't know, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And like I said, she survived, and with a child.
    She did survive.
    And I remember going to see her where she was in the hospital.
    And then we lost track.
    And then we had heard that the little girl--
    she was in hiding, but the little girl
    came down with diphtheria.
    And then she had to turn herself in.
    So they didn't survive.
    And I remember on Dragonerstrasse also
    was a Jewish couple, a family living
    across the street from us.
    And oh, they were so excited.
    They were going to go back home to Poland.
    Oh, they were busy fixing their clothes and packing.
    And they were so excited to go back to Poland.
    Little did they know where they were going.
    Maybe they went-- I don't know.
    But that was the aim, was to get out of there.
    After Kristallnacht, did things change in your own home?
    No, not that-- not that I'm aware of.
    Except that we moved.
    And I don't know--
    I don't know how soon we moved after Kristallnacht.
    I don't know.
    OK.
    And was your father's search to leave intense at that point?
    Was it what, sorry?
    Was-- his search to leave.
    Oh, I think that was going on prob--
    at all times.
    I don't think it was just at that particular time.
    I think he always wanted to leave.
    I think after-- once he was incarcerated,
    I think after that, probably, that he wanted out.
    Yeah, he tried.
    I'm sure he went around to the different Jewish agencies
    to see if he could find a place.
    But, you know, we didn't have the money.
    It would take money to get out.
    You needed a number, you needed visas.
    We didn't have that.
    And was there any connection to his family
    in Paderborn in these years?
    At that time?
    Yeah.
    No, not that I'm aware of, no.
    Because his mother already had died.
    And I'm not sure when his father died-- well,
    maybe his father even preceded her death.
    And she died in '37, I know that.
    So if there were siblings, there was
    no connection to your aunts and uncles or anything like that.
    No, not-- no.
    No.
    And they for sure would not have helped,
    because I'm sure they weren't happy as it was, with their--
    I think he might have been the oldest in their family.
    Yeah.
    Did you-- do you remember--
    ah, I'm sorry.
    I know what I wanted to ask.
    In 1938, when Kristallnacht happens in November,
    you said that's the year your father finally
    found some employment.
    Right.
    What was he doing?
    Well, you know what, we had moved on Dragonerstrasse.
    And on that street, at the end of the block, there used to be--
    I guess you would call it an electrical outlet firm.
    OK.
    And somehow, my father, alav ha-shalom,
    was very handy with many things.
    He could sew.
    I mean, there was nothing that he couldn't do with his hand.
    And somehow, because he monkeyed around with those radios,
    he got himself hired by this man.
    He needed help, and he was able to do the kind of work
    that he needed.
    Somehow he learned--
    I mean, he learned about it.
    It's all I know.
    The electrical trade.
    Yeah, he did.
    Yeah, he became a regular electrician.
    Yeah.
    And he was very good at it, because when
    he came to the United States, he again became--
    he was an electrician when he lived here.
    And the man who hired him, was he a Jewish person?
    No.
    So this was a Gentile.
    Bensemann.
    Yeah, he was a Gentile.
    Yeah.
    What was his name?
    Bensemann.
    Bensemann.
    Bensemann.
    Did you meet him?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    What kind of impression did he make?
    I don't know why I went.
    I have no idea.
    All I know, they were down in the basement--
    I remember, one time I was in another room,
    and I thought there was like candy laying,
    it was actually soap.
    I tasted it.
    It was terrible.
    [LAUGHTER] It was terrible.
    The taste-- bleugh.
    Didn't-- that's ugly candy, you know.
    Distasteful candy.
    Yeah.
    I don't know what I was doing there, but I was there.
    Yeah, what was next to us?
    On Grenadierstrasse-- that was Dragonerstrasse.
    No, on Grenadierstrasse, or was it Dragonerstrasse?
    Oh, I get mixed up.
    Oh, yeah.
    Next door to us, there was a woman in the basement.
    She used to do wreaths, out of palms out of the--
    Well, that would be a Catholic kind of thing.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, yeah.
    But she made wreaths, I remember that.
    Because we used to get material from her for the sukkah.
    Yeah, to cover the sukkah with.
    We used to use, you know, palms--
    Got it.
    --from her for that, yeah.
    I remember, I used to make birds out of eggs.
    You'd make a hole in the egg, and you blow them out,
    and then you put wings on them and hang them up.
    And sukkahs, they're decorated, sukkahs.
    And of course, chains.
    You know, kids always made things out of paper,
    chains, used to hang them up.
    So we'd have our meal there in the sukkahs.
    Except for Simchat Torah.
    I remember Simchat Torah in the temple.
    We used to dance around with the flag,
    with the flag with an apple on tap and a candle on the side,
    and danced around with that in shul.
    But that was on Grenadierstrasse.
    That was not-- man, I'm getting mixed up
    between these two apartments.
    But that was all on Grenadierstrasse.
    That was little of that going on once we
    moved to Dragonerstrasse.
    Yeah?
    Yeah, as far as--
    except we were observed the holidays.
    But I think by that time, my brother was through with cheder.
    Did he continue?
    I don't recall.
    I don't know.
    Did you have any contact to non-Jewish children?
    Do--
    Well, in school.
    I mean, they were all Jewish kids.
    That's the school we went to, was all Jewish.
    Jewish kids.
    So in the neighborhood, where-- you said--
    And the neighbor next door, if there were kids,
    we'd play with them, yeah.
    But-- and like I said, Inge, that girl that lived below us,
    I played with her.
    Oh, and she was not Jewish?
    Yes, she was.
    Oh, she was.
    She was.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And their last name was Bloch.
    Bloch.
    Bloch, yeah.
    Inge Bloch.
    Yeah.
    Inge, that was her name, yeah.
    But she lived below us on Dragonerstrasse.
    So when your father got a job--
    I mean, one of the thoughts that comes to me
    is that if he was hired in 1938, then
    I'm making an assumption that the man who hired him
    knew it consciously who he's hiring.
    Oh, I think so.
    And did so anyway, and so probably was not
    happy with the current political order.
    That could be.
    Or at least felt sorry for what was happening to the Jews.
    Most likely, yeah.
    Yeah.
    That's one of the reasons I asked what kind of impression
    did he make.
    But maybe he never showed himself, really, to--
    To a [NON-ENGLISH] like me?
    [LAUGHTER] What's he going to tell me?
    To a child, to a child.
    Do you remember hearing Hitler at all?
    Did you ever see--
    Oh, my God.
    Oh, do I-- well, what sticks out in my mind when we were
    in hiding on the farm--
    I shouldn't call it a farm.
    It's an orchard.
    I remember the radio.
    We had a radio, it was on.
    And I think when they were trying to assassinate him--
    1944.
    Yeah, I remember that.
    And that was '44, '45, because already
    at that time we also had some German soldiers staying
    near where we were in hiding, on the orchard.
    And one of them came into the room
    that we were in, that we were--
    in our living quarter--
    and turned the radio off.
    Didn't say anything.
    I mean, a bunch of kids, in the-- you know.
    So he just turned it off, and then they left.
    Interesting.
    Yeah.
    The assassination attempt was July 20, 1944.
    '44, July.
    So it was in the middle of the year.
    Oh, so we had another whole year to go.
    Yeah, you did.
    Almost another whole year.
    Another year to go.
    My God.
    It didn't seem like they were there that long.
    Unless it was not the soldiers, and maybe they came later.
    I don't know.
    That's OK.
    That happens, you know, that--
    Yeah.
    But nevertheless, even of the things that you don't know,
    you're still painting a very accurate picture for us
    of impressions, of things that you
    knew that happened to neighbors, of what your neighborhood was
    like.
    Oh, the neighborhood, yeah.
    Yeah, that'd be-- I remember them picking-- coming around
    with a big truck.
    Really?
    And soldiers would be on the back
    of the truck with their bayonets and picking up Jewish people.
    I remember that.
    Do you remember the war starting?
    The what?
    The war starting?
    It started September 1, 1939.
    You know, you would have been--
    As per se, not that I recall.
    Yeah.
    You would have been seven years old, seven and a half.
    No, I don't recall that.
    No.
    I'm sure my parents knew about it, you know.
    But for myself, no, I was not--
    Was there at any point a particularly intensive action
    taken to empty out the neighborhood,
    to arrest people in it?
    Or was this just something, a constant drib and drab?
    Well, yeah.
    I mean, yeah, it was not a constant thing that they did.
    You know, they would--
    some building they would go in and they'd knock on the door
    and give them an hour to get ready.
    But I remember in '38 or '39, what I remember is that
    everybody had a turn in their animals, their instruments,
    their ski equipment, their radios--
    So did you lose your radio then?
    No, we didn't.
    You know, like I said, that name Weber probably
    protected us somehow.
    They didn't come by us to get the radio.
    Yeah, you weren't allowed to have
    any ski equipment or animals.
    Well, you also weren't allowed to sit
    on a bench someplace on a park.
    Yeah.
    Jews weren't allowed to do that.
    Did you experience that?
    Walking around?
    Well, I didn't go in a park that I--
    but I remember hearing about it, that you couldn't--
    you were rather cautious.
    And I forget what year you had to start
    wearing the Jewish star.
    Because we made sure we put the Jewish star
    around when we went to Jewish school.
    But we also would take it off so that the other kids wouldn't
    bother us.
    We didn't-- you know, we took it off and hid it,
    because if you had it on, then they would taunt you.
    I remember one time a kid got beaten up
    by a bunch of Hitlerjugend kids.
    Did you venture outside of Scheunenviertel much?
    No, just to go to school.
    No.
    No, where would I have gone?
    No.
    So did you ever have--
    go to the center of town?
    Did you go to cinemas there?
    Did you go--
    No.
    Did you see the wider Berlin?
    Not really, no.
    No, we lived near Alexanderplatz,
    which had a big Hermann Tietz department store.
    I remember walking through that in order to get to school.
    You could walk through there.
    And one time I got picked up doing that, because all I did
    was look at stuff.
    We used to walk through it.
    It was warm inside than walking outside.
    So they questioned me, but then they let me go.
    And this was the police?
    No, I think it was probably internal--
    Store personnel?
    Store-- yeah, I think that's what that was, yeah.
    That was a classier area, a little bit classier
    than where we lived, where this big department store,
    Hermann Tietz.
    I believe it was Jewish owned.
    Pardon me?
    At one point, it was Jewish owned.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah, I'm sure.
    Yeah.
    And then--
    I remember that.
    Then they probably took it over.
    Yeah.
    So your world really was a rather--
    in the middle of this capital city, it was a smaller world.
    Oh, yeah.
    Into itself, onto itself, at least for me.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I mean, other people talk about the Tiergarten.
    I don't remember ever going to the Tiergarten.
    Which is the zoo.
    Yeah, I don't--
    I'm sure at one point my sisters must have gone to the beach.
    On Wannsee?
    Huh?
    On Wannsee?
    I'm not sure.
    Maybe.
    I mean, I know of Wannsee, but I've never--
    was I there?
    I don't know.
    I don't recall.
    Have you ever gone back to Berlin?
    Never.
    I would never go back.
    I know my brother did, because he was professionally
    involved with his teaching.
    But I would never go.
    One of my sisters once went, and she
    didn't have such a good experience
    because then the Russians were involved when she went.
    Yeah, that would have been the eastern part of Berlin.
    Right, right.
    They almost arrested her, but--
    the woman on the bus tour was telling them one thing
    and she says, no, no it wasn't that way.
    She tried to correct the woman that was giving the lecture.
    But I would never go back.
    It didn't want me.
    Why would I want to go back?
    Everybody tells me how beautiful--
    OK.
    Go.
    But no, I never went back.
    Uh-uh.
    No.
    So you don't really feel any much difference
    because the war starts.
    But, you know--
    No, because things were never really good.
    I mean--
    Right, yeah.
    That's what I meant to say.
    Yeah.
    Except my-- the involvement with my mother and with what
    was going on, her trying to help people.
    Can you tell me a little more about that?
    Well, what can I tell you?
    I mean, how can I--
    I know once in a while, we'd have one person come
    and sleep over for one reason or another, I don't know.
    Then that person would sleep with my parents,
    because there was no other place to sleep.
    Do you think that the fact that he was converted to Judaism
    but had been born Christian and was Gentile,
    do you think that was a shield for the--
    Well, you know, he had-- he stepped--
    he had belonged to the Judische Gemeinde.
    I don't know if you know what that is.
    Tell us what that is.
    It must have been for--
    I don't know.
    Die Gemeinde.
    I think die Gemeinde
    Community.
    --is where they help you, you know.
    Yeah, he belonged to that.
    And I think in' 39 he stepped out of it to protect us.
    He stepped away from that.
    OK.
    So.
    OK.
    But do you think that that made a difference in that--
    Well, it seemed to have helped for a while, you know.
    But it didn't completely protect us.
    I'm not sure.
    OK.
    Well, we did get picked up, though.
    We got picked up.
    My mother must've gotten picked up first,
    and then we got picked up, all of us.
    And we were taken to this Krankenhaus.
    A hospital?
    Yeah.
    And we were incarcerated there for about a month.
    In this hospital?
    Yeah.
    And what was the hospital called?
    I think it was a Judische--
    I'm not sure.
    Krankenhaus Berlin?
    I'm not--
    Was it the Judisches Krankenhaus?
    Or the Krankenhaus die Judische Gemeinde?
    Gemeinde, I think so.
    Yeah.
    They took us there, and we were incarcerated there.
    And then my brother--
    I didn't see that, but he told me
    that he got out there one night, because he wanted
    to go back home to the apartment and hide some things that he
    thought were detrimental to us, which he did do.
    But then when they came-- when he came back to this place,
    he was arrested and they kept him separate.
    And they locked them up separately.
    And then I was told--
    I never saw my mother again, but my two sisters saw my mother.
    She came there, and I'm sure with a couple of guys
    that were watching over.
    I don't know why they brought her there.
    So when you picked-- you were all picked up,
    was she picked up with you?
    No.
    She was picked up before.
    And I'm not sure where she was picked up.
    She'd been picked up once before in the apartment
    and incarcerated, and then they let her go.
    She was in Polizeirevier, which was not near the Alexanderplatz.
    So "Polizeirevier" means like a police station?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    They had incarcerated her there one time, and she came back.
    But when we were picked up, she was already--
    had been picked up.
    And then they came for us.
    And was your father with you when you were--
    No.
    No, he was not.
    But he got picked up, too, later.
    But we didn't see that.
    But I know my sisters told me that my mother came,
    and they saw her.
    And they said her mouth, she was all--
    that she had all kinds of blisters on her mouth.
    And that's the last time they saw her.
    Why they brought her there, I don't know.
    I don't know whether they were trying to get information
    by showing her that the kids were alive, I don't know.
    I'm only guessing.
    But you never saw her.
    I never saw her again, no.
    And you weren't there when she was picked up.
    No.
    No.
    Or, one time-- one time I remember somebody
    had come to the house, and she was very fearful.
    And she said to me, what should I do?
    And I remember--
    I remember saying to her, we should pray to God.
    And she probably did.
    Who knows.
    What did I know?
    You saw her-- you saw fear in your mother?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    She was very much afraid.
    And I remember, though, also going to the--
    afterwards to the Polizei with a package
    to bring her supposedly some underwear.
    And I know there was some cigarettes in there.
    I tried to pick it up so they wouldn't
    see the cigarettes, because she's a big smoker,
    and put it back.
    Did she actually receive the package?
    I don't know.
    But they released her.
    So it's like, they took her in, and they released her.
    Not right away.
    I don't know.
    I think there was a lot of black market going on.
    So you think that maybe she was picked
    up sometimes because of that rather than being Jewish?
    I can't-- I don't know.
    You wouldn't know.
    But they knew--
    I'm sure they knew that she was Jewish.
    I mean, she was registered.
    We were registered-- we were all registered.
    You had to register.
    You couldn't live any place without being registered,
    you know.
    When you moved a block over, you had to be registered.
    Yeah, there is that policy in some European countries,
    including Germany, that when people move,
    they register their new address with the police.
    Right.
    And it can be very innocuous until it's not.
    Right, exactly.
    Exactly, yeah.
    And so there is this procedure, which
    then means the police know where to find you.
    I mean, this is a strange thing to come in my head right now.
    I remember my father used to have tefillin.
    And my brother did, too.
    But did they lay tefillin?
    I don't know.
    All I know is, you know, the [NON-ENGLISH],
    do you know what that is?
    That's the oven for--
    I remember then taking it and throwing it
    on top so they couldn't find it in our apartment.
    Tell people, what is it that they had?
    Oh, my God.
    Well, they had [NON-ENGLISH], and they had the phylacteries,
    you know, you wound around your arm and on your head.
    And I remember them taking it, throwing it on top of the--
    so if somebody came to--
    The house, they couldn't--
    [INAUDIBLE] search the house so they couldn't find it.
    So that was on top of the--
    And this would have been the sort of thing
    that very religious Jews would wear, Jewish men would wear.
    Right, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Now, I can't honestly say what I ever
    saw my father using it or not.
    My brother might have, but I don't remember, you know.
    All I know is my father could sing Ma'oz Tzur.
    He could-- Yeah, he'd do a lot of--
    When he converted, he really converted.
    Yeah.
    Oh, yeah, he did.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, he did.
    Yeah.
    So your father was being held some place while you
    were at this hospital.
    Right.
    But you didn't know where.
    No.
    And your mother comes by.
    And your sisters see her, but you do not.
    Yeah, but I never saw her, no.
    You know, on Grenadierstrasse--
    I don't know, I meant to mention-- across
    the street from us there was a vinegar factory.
    But they also had a place for--
    when you go to bathe, you know.
    Oh, sort of like a bath house?
    A mikveh.
    A mikveh.
    Across the street.
    So can you tell-- that tells you sort of what kind of area
    we were in.
    Yeah.
    It was-- that was very religious area, even though it
    was mixed in with Gentiles.
    Wow, I'm really jumping around like a chicken
    with my head cut off.
    That's OK.
    We're still getting the clearer picture.
    Oh, God.
    I know.
    I mean, the first thing that happens
    when you're talking about memories
    is that the chronology is not something that's strong.
    Oh, in order?
    Yeah.
    No.
    And that's OK.
    We're still getting a picture of what
    did Grenadierstrasse look like, who were the people who
    were in it, what was happening in this neighborhood, you know.
    I can't remember yesterday.
    [LAUGHTER] I really can't.
    Every time, oh, my God.
    It gets worse.
    So were all of you-- when you were
    incarcerated in this hospital, were you
    all held in the same room?
    Were you held--
    No, I don't think so.
    I think they had separate rooms.
    I don't-- no, I don't think.
    We weren't-- I mean, that must have been an awful big room
    for all these kids.
    No, I don't think so.
    I mean, there were other kids there, too, besides us.
    And what did-- what did incarceration mean?
    Did it mean the doors were locked?
    We couldn't go out.
    We couldn't go out.
    Yeah, you were locked in.
    You couldn't go outside--
    No.
    --even in the hospital grounds.
    No.
    No.
    They probably just let my sisters out so
    that my mother could see, the two older ones.
    But we didn't get to see her.
    Oh, I see.
    Maybe it was just as well, I don't know.
    The way she looked, the way my sister described her,
    having all these sores--
    Did they come back crying or something?
    Did they--
    Not that I recall.
    No, that was later that they told us about her.
    No.
    OK.
    No.
    So when they let you go, what did you do?
    That's when we ended-- well, we actually went back
    to the apartment and that, I don't know how soon we left
    for the farm--
    for the orchard, for the orchard. we left shortly right--
    shortly after that.
    Did your father come back?
    Yes.
    My father came back.
    Yeah.
    Did he look different?
    Then he made arrangements.
    And he-- you know, what happened,
    well, we had this building on the first floor that
    used to have stores.
    And the stores were empty.
    And this fellow that saved us, this Herr Schmidt, he had--
    he used those stores to--
    as a storage place for his fruit,
    because he had a fruit farm.
    And I'm sure my father was friendly with him.
    And he must have offered my father
    to take us to the orchard, which he did.
    And the orchard was--
    In his truck.
    Outside of Berlin, about 60 kilometers outside of Berlin.
    And so he took us there.
    And we stayed there.
    I thought it was for two years.
    Maybe it's less time, I don't know.
    But we stayed there.
    And food was always short.
    We used to go begging sometimes.
    So you'd knock on the farmer's door--
    So when he took you to this orchard,
    was this like a single farm, or was it part of a village?
    It was outside of the village.
    It was by itself.
    It was like if you're driving along a highway
    and suddenly you see a tavern or something like that.
    Yeah.
    What was the name of the village, do you remember?
    I probably have it in the book.
    Was it-- I think, was it [NON-ENGLISH],
    but that's not quite right.
    No, it'll come to me.
    It might be in the story, I'm not sure.
    In which book?
    What I gave you--
    Oh, I see, the pages.
    Maybe it's in there.
    We'll take a look.
    We'll take a look.
    Yeah, maybe.
    But do you know the direction that this orchard?
    No.
    Was it south of Berlin, west of Berlin?
    I have no idea.
    You have no-- whether it was in the east--
    No.
    No, no.
    He took us on his truck or whatever.
    And where did-- when you got there with your siblings--
    and all seven children?
    He took all seven children?
    Yeah, uh-huh.
    That's a lot.
    And where did you sleep?
    Where did you live when you were there.
    Well, first we were--
    how can I--
    I mean, it was a building that he had.
    But we ended up actually living in a [NON-ENGLISH].
    A washroom?
    A place where you do the laundry.
    It was strictly a laundry room.
    And that's where we ended up in.
    All seven of you?
    We had a double bunk bed.
    I remember that.
    And I had a big tub full of boiling clothes.
    They always used to boil white clothes.
    And that's where we lived.
    And was this part of his home?
    That is his--
    His home was further--
    it was part of the--
    Complex?
    The farm area?
    Yeah.
    It's like a, you know--
    and he wasn't there most of the time.
    Did he have a family?
    He only had a wife.
    I found out lately, lately, that he even had children on--
    I mean, that just came out recently.
    We didn't even know that there were children ever.
    But there was a woman and her daughter living
    on this property.
    And I think they were from Poland,
    and they were working for him.
    OK.
    But that's-- yeah, that's where we stayed.
    And how did you eat?
    [SIGHS] Well, sometimes we would go knocking on farmers' doors
    and ask them if they had eggs for sale.
    Not that we ever paid for them.
    And they maybe gave you one or two eggs.
    Supposedly, I was told later on that somebody did drop
    off some food to us, or somebody else
    knew about us, actually-- supposedly,
    which I never knew about.
    That came up much later, that the mayor of the town,
    actually, had known about us.
    Well, what they didn't know about-- or they did know--
    or maybe they didn't know.
    What I forgot to tell you is that my father
    had made a deal with the police to have us converted.
    Into Catholicism?
    And I remember the day we went to do that.
    I kept hoping something would happen so it wouldn't happen.
    Because I knew how strongly my mother felt about it.
    But it did happen.
    It did?
    Yeah, it did happen.
    But even with all of that, we still--
    you know, our [NON-ENGLISH] you know, the--
    Yeah, the ration cards.
    The rations cards was still stamped with a J on it.
    I remember, you could only go to the store between 4:00 and 5:00.
    So this conversion--
    When you could go to the store--
    huh?
    The conversion happened when you were still in Berlin?
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah, it did.
    And I don't know--
    I'm sure that maybe Herr Schmidt knew about it, or didn't know.
    I don't know.
    You know.
    Did your father ever visit you out in this orchard?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, he did.
    He did.
    Not too often, but he did.
    Because he was working for this Bensemann.
    And sometimes, I think my brother went with him, too.
    Alphonse?
    Yeah, uh-huh.
    Yeah.
    So what was I talking about just now?
    I already forgot.
    We were talking-- we were talking about food.
    Oh, food.
    And about being converted.
    Yeah.
    And then you said about how did you--
    I asked about how did you get food.
    And then you saw a lot of people knew--
    well, not a lot, but some people knew about--
    Somebody.
    Somebody.
    I think maybe the town's mayor, or whatever he was, knew about--
    oh, we used to cut down trees for firewood.
    I remember that.
    It was small trees that we cut down in the forest.
    Were you left pretty much to your own devices,
    the seven of you?
    Yes.
    Because I get that impression, that you
    didn't have a very constant or strong interaction with anybody
    where you were in this orchard.
    You're right.
    Oh, no, you're right.
    The only people that were there was this--
    Polish--
    --woman with her daughter.
    They could have been--
    Primarily.
    Yeah.
    Polish forced laborers?
    Could be.
    Could very well be, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And Schmidt and his wife were-- they were there sometimes,
    but not on a steady basis were they there, that I recall.
    OK.
    And I know it had outdoor plumbing, I remember that.
    You had to go outdoors, yeah.
    But that was OK.
    And you did say that there were some soldiers around.
    Yeah.
    I don't-- now you're telling me, though,
    it was some '44 when they were attempting--
    yeah.
    There were.
    And I know sometimes we would ask when they had bread.
    And once in a while, they would give us a loaf of bread.
    But I don't know.
    I mean, to me it seems like that was
    towards the very end of the war, really, when they were there.
    Because one time, I know that they had a couple of prisoners.
    I don't know what they did with them, I have no idea.
    You saw that, though?
    Yeah, yeah.
    But that had to be towards the end of the war,
    before we went back to Germany, to Berlin.
    Because when things really got close, we decided--
    I don't know who decided--
    that we should go back, because we knew the Russians were near.
    And we were afraid of the Russians.
    We didn't know what the hell to be afraid of.
    The Germans, the Russians.
    But the Russians are the ones that took us over in Berlin.
    I remember that.
    That sticks out in my mind a lot.
    Tell me about that.
    Well, you know, there were a lot of air raids going on.
    And because of the air raids, a building
    around the corner from us got bombed.
    In Scheunenviertel?
    Yeah.
    They got bombed.
    And I remember standing and watching with a bunch of people
    outside trying to-- they were trying to dig out people
    from that building that was bombed.
    And while I was standing there, I
    got hit by a post office truck.
    I guess I was out in the ways, or they--
    I got hit by the post office-- and then
    I wound up in the same ambulance with those people they dug up
    out of the basement.
    And I wound up in the hospital.
    And that was towards the very end of the war.
    Because I wound up being-- staying in the hospital
    in the basement with all these people that were--
    you know, they were not upstairs.
    They were in the--
    they brought them into the basement for shelter--
    being there.
    And I had an open leg.
    The back of my leg.
    The car stood on my leg.
    And I had an openness, yeah.
    And of course, they didn't--
    they just bandaged it.
    They didn't sew it up.
    So that leaked for about five years.
    And I had five times surgery in the United States on it.
    And it finally got tired and closed up by itself.
    So yeah.
    So it was always pussy.
    And then while I was in--
    while I was-- I was going to say incarcerated--
    while I was in the hospital, my father did not come to see me.
    Why?
    Because already the Russians, he was
    afraid to come out, because they would pick up men and ship them
    back the other way.
    But then one day, he finally got up the guts to come.
    And he-- I think he came with Ginger.
    With your youngest sister?
    Yeah.
    I think he took her for protection
    to come to the hospital and see me.
    And then I was released.
    I talk too much.
    No, no, no.
    I know it may be not easy, but--
    but this is all--
    it's all part of history.
    Yeah, I know, but--
    And it's very important for us.
    I didn't want to do it.
    This has been a bad week.
    I've had two weeks-- two, three weeks.
    My brother died just recently.
    I know.
    I heard.
    And that's a story unto itself.
    So when you were released from the hospital,
    could you walk at all?
    Or was--
    Yeah, we walked.
    It must have been in the neighborhood.
    Yeah.
    I don't remember getting into a car.
    I don't remember--
    Having crutches?
    No, I didn't-- you mean from the hospital?
    No, they had to pull me in a wagon.
    Yeah.
    No, they had to pull me in a wagon.
    Yeah.
    And do you remember what you saw on the streets then?
    Did it look very different?
    No.
    Well, the damaged houses were damaged when I went in.
    I mean, there was a lot of damage everywhere you went.
    I mean, the buildings were down.
    What about your own apartment on Dragonerstrasse?
    That got hit at the very end.
    Did it really?
    It got hit when the Russians marched in.
    Yeah, at the very end when I wasn't there.
    OK.
    It got bombed.
    And so where did you go after--
    Now, I think they--
    I think my family was in the basement when it got bombed,
    but it didn't go all the way down.
    It didn't all the way--
    Yeah.
    Yeah, because my-- I know my brother somehow
    saved-- his baby picture was still hanging.
    He was able to save that but not my parents' wedding picture.
    It's in the book, his baby picture.
    You'll see it in there.
    But they had to pull me around, yeah, in a wagon.
    I couldn't-- I don't know why I didn't walk, but--
    it was all bandaged up, yeah.
    Now, where did they take you?
    To a place you'd never been before?
    Oh, we went-- the building was bombed,
    but next door they were moved into the apartment that
    was empty, I think, on the third or fourth floor.
    And we lived there.
    Did you have-- did you see any Russian soldiers in the streets?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, my God.
    [RUSSIAN]
    [RUSSIAN]
    If you-- you know you had to be off by 7 or 8 o'clock at night.
    There was curfew.
    They would yell.
    It was curfew.
    And they would yell [RUSSIAN].
    In other words, they were going to shoot if you didn't stop.
    Yeah, [RUSSIAN] is "stop."
    Yeah.
    Yeah, that I remember.
    I remember a bunch of Russian women standing
    on a corner and singing.
    And then if they saw a pair of shoes that they liked,
    they would tell you to stop and take them off.
    They would take them.
    I'm sure there was a lot--
    when I was in the hospital-- screaming
    going on, screaming going on.
    I'm sure they were busy raping people.
    Because I remember one time a doctor came in with a bunch--
    a couple of Russians, and they would point to a girl,
    or they would-- yeah, the Russian with point,
    and the doctor would say, no, no, no,
    would point to their stomachs.
    In other words, they had been hit.
    And leave them alone, because they were already hit.
    But there was, yeah, screaming.
    Did you feel fear?
    Huh?
    Did you feel fear?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Oh, sure.
    Oh, yeah.
    I mean, with all that screaming going on,
    you didn't know what to make of it.
    And God, how old was I?
    I was 10 then, no?
    Oh, you're more.
    You're 13.
    You're 13.
    I was 13 already.
    Oh, God.
    And now I feel like 110.
    And after that, after that--
    I'm sorry to interrupt--
    did you-- how long did you stay in Berlin?
    How long--
    Well, you know what?
    Well, we got out of there by--
    we got here May 20.
    Of?
    In 1946.
    We came on the very first ship that left Europe.
    We came on the very-- we made all the newspapers in New York.
    But we were in a children-- we were in a camp, a refugee camp
    before.
    Well, let's-- take me through that story.
    How did that happen?
    Well, we went-- you know what, my sister Ruth was
    the one that was instrumental.
    I don't know where she went.
    She talked to somebody.
    It must have been from UNRRA wherever she went.
    And they told us they would come and pick us up and take us
    to a refugee camp.
    I mean, they knew that we wanted to emigrate, OK?
    So somehow she made the arrangements.
    And they were supposed to come and pick us up,
    but I guess we must have gotten the date wrong.
    Because we went a day earlier, and we went by train.
    The trains were still running.
    The Russians hadn't-- we're in the Russian zone.
    We were taken over by the Russians.
    That's right.
    So we got out.
    I mean, we're a bunch of kids, and we
    went wherever we had to go.
    What about your father?
    No, he didn't go with us.
    No, we were-- oh, it was-- the arrangement
    was made somehow that we would get out
    faster if we went as orphans.
    And that's what we did.
    So we went as orphans.
    And my father was supposed to follow 10 days later.
    It never happened.
    It didn't happen until 10 years later.
    [GASPS] OK.
    We'll come to that.
    But so your sister Ruth in this post-war Berlin, bombed out,
    in the Russian zone, finds her way to somebody--
    Yeah, I don't know how.
    Yeah.
    --who puts her in touch with, clearly the occupying forces.
    Right.
    And few Germans would ever be allowed to be in refugee camps.
    They were for actual refugees.
    Oh, they tried.
    They tried.
    Because I remember, there were a couple
    of women that didn't belong there,
    and they picked them up finally and kicked them out.
    They made off like they were refugees,
    and they wanted to be on the transport.
    So we were in actually two or three different camps.
    But at the very end, they decided
    that we shouldn't be with all those other people.
    And they took us to a separate place where they were just kids.
    So tell me about the first camp you were taken to.
    Well, there was, you know, a lot of people.
    In the Berlin area, or--
    No, I think--
    I think already, because we took a train,
    so it must have been outside of Berlin.
    In the western part of Germany?
    Yeah, could have been, yeah.
    So they took us there.
    And then they decided that we shouldn't-- the kids should not
    be with all the rest of the refugees that were there.
    And they took us further out.
    And it was a Catholic place that they took us to,
    that they had commandeered, I guess.
    And British actually were in charge.
    The British--
    So it was the British zone?
    Could be, I don't know.
    I can't tell.
    You don't know.
    But they took us there.
    And there were lots of other--
    there must have been about 50 or 60 kids there.
    And Jewish kids.
    Well, the one time-- while we were there,
    there was another transport of kids
    that came that some man brought all these kids there,
    about 10 or 12 of them.
    And they were all crying when he left, so I don't know who he was
    or what he was.
    I have no idea.
    But we stayed at that--
    oh, and the kids, a lot of them were real Zionists.
    And if they knew that you wanted to go to America,
    they practically spat on you.
    They felt you should go to America-- no,
    you should go to Israel.
    To Israel.
    Yeah, you should go to Palestine.
    So they didn't have any use for you if you didn't want to--
    and we had a choice to where we could go.
    They'd ask us.
    And what did you all say?
    We said America, yeah.
    And do remember saying goodbye to your father?
    No, I really don't.
    I don't-- no.
    We left from the apartment.
    But was he--
    I don't know.
    No, I don't remember that.
    But I know-- I mean, that's what I heard later.
    Within 10 days-- and actually, a telegram was sent.
    We sent a telegram that we got there and blah, blah, blah,
    blah.
    And he replied.
    But I don't remember saying goodbye.
    No.
    But he was supposed to follow us.
    But he didn't.
    He got stuck for 10 years.
    And then he got married again and had another child, so.
    After the war ends, did you start looking for your mother
    and what might have happened to her?
    No.
    Look?
    Where would we have looked?
    Where?
    No.
    So you just assumed she's gone.
    Oh, yeah.
    She's not coming back.
    I believe we were notified that she was gone.
    Yeah, I'm sure we were notified.
    OK.
    I think at least my father was notified.
    Yeah.
    Did you feel angry towards him when he arranged
    for you to be converted into--
    Not towards him, no.
    I just didn't want it to happen.
    But I wasn't angry towards him.
    No, because I didn't know him as a Catholic.
    No, I didn't know him that way at all.
    No, because he was observant.
    No.
    No.
    OK.
    The reason I ask is, sometimes when a person's a child,
    you know--
    They have mixed feelings, I'm sure.
    They have-- yeah.
    Yeah.
    But it didn't affect me that way.
    No.
    No.
    So you're in this camp which has some sort of British authority,
    with other children.
    And this was within a year of Germany capitulating.
    And then what happens?
    From this camp, what happens?
    Well, we get-- we were the first transport to leave.
    Yeah.
    And we left.
    We arrived here as the very first--
    you'll see in the book pictures.
    When we arrived in New York.
    And then we were stayed in the Bronx,
    I think, someplace in an old house.
    All six of you together-- all seven of you together?
    All of us, and besides all a lot of other kids
    that were with us on the transport.
    Were you under anybody's care?
    If we were, I wasn't aware of it.
    I'm sure there must have been, you know.
    OK.
    Do you remember anything of the trip over?
    Oh, yeah.
    I remember-- well, I remember in Germany itself,
    I only once saw a black person, once-- a long--
    I don't know what he was there for, but he was there.
    But on the ship, there were black sailors.
    We used to say, can I have an orange?
    Of course, we couldn't say it so well.
    [LAUGHS]
    We got seasick.
    One of my sisters never got out of bed, my sister Renee,
    because she was so seasick all the time.
    My sister Senter helped out serving.
    And at the end of the trip, they actually
    gave her a letter with $50.
    Yeah.
    That's huge.
    What did she do with it?
    She bought candy.
    [LAUGHS] And they wrote her a letter
    thanking her for all her help.
    Yeah, because she helped them.
    I don't know.
    And some people, they entertained themselves
    on the ship.
    I don't know if it was 10 days, 8 days, 12 days on the ship.
    Was it a military ship?
    Yes.
    And it supposedly went back to Russia,
    was going to be going to Russia.
    Whether it actually did--
    we came on the Marina SS Flasher.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, we came on that ship.
    And we were-- because there was--
    we were upstairs, upstairs.
    There's upstairs then downstairs in the ship.
    So my brother was down in the hole.
    But I said, no, no, no, he can't be down there.
    So we had him sleep with us.
    So we had a porthole we could look out and all.
    And so once you're in the United States and you're in the Bronx,
    you stay in this house.
    Yeah.
    What happens after that?
    Well, we were there--
    well then, they decided since we were from Berlin, a big city,
    that we should go to a big city.
    So they chose Chicago.
    And apparently, they felt they had enough foster homes, which
    was in Hyde Park.
    And there were a lot of Germans living in Hyde Park.
    So they brought us to Chicago.
    And that's when the separation came.
    We had never been separated until then.
    So that day when we arrived in Chicago to the Jewish Family
    Service downtown, then they put us-- we came all in a cab.
    And my brother would come out.
    Each child was dropped off at a different foster home.
    He would come to the door with us,
    and then we were left with a new family.
    And did you know this was going to happen?
    No.
    I wasn't aware of it.
    I don't know.
    Maybe I knew it and didn't take it in.
    I don't know.
    I have no idea, so.
    It sounds like it would have been shocking.
    Well, it-- [LAUGHS] well, it was not.
    Yeah, it was not.
    I'm sure they tried to be nice, but yeah.
    It was strange.
    There's no question about it.
    It was-- yeah.
    Then-- then-- yeah, then lots of different things
    happened that were not always good, you know.
    Because then Ginger, Ginger was the youngest
    so she became adopted.
    So that broke the family up even more.
    So then we didn't see her for many years.
    Except that we knew where she was.
    We always knew where she was.
    Why?
    Because her father was a big shot doctor
    who was a neurosurgeon.
    He was well known in Chicago.
    And so we always knew where she was.
    So you were-- by the time you were left at this family,
    you're about 14 years old.
    Yeah.
    And I started--
    I started in sixth grade in grammar school, summer school.
    Yeah.
    But I didn't like it.
    I was not happy with them.
    And I complained to the social worker so they moved me.
    And why was I not happy?
    Big shot.
    I didn't like the fact that they locked up the pantry at night.
    You were hungry.
    I didn't like that.
    So I complained about that.
    And they moved me to a different foster home.
    I moved, I don't know, about three, four times.
    When I wasn't happy, I would complain to the social worker,
    and they would move me.
    And did you ever find a permanent place
    with a foster family?
    Yeah, the last family.
    The last family I lived with, the woman had never
    been a foster mother, but the husband, the man that she was
    her second marriage-- that she was married to,
    he had-- his wife had a foster child.
    So they decided-- her daughter was grown, and she had room,
    and they decided to take me in.
    And that was--
    I ended up living-- unfortunately,
    she passed away, I think, maybe after a year or two.
    I'm not sure which.
    And then I ended up living with my foster sister.
    And I lived with my foster sister,
    then I ended up getting married from her apart--
    from her place, so.
    So you were of an age where it would
    be unusual to adopt an older child.
    Oh, that-- no, but the only other one
    they wanted to adopt out was my sister Judy.
    And the family that she lived with asked me,
    oh, how would I like it if she was adopted?
    And I said no.
    And she had said no.
    Well, then they became nasty.
    They wouldn't eat with her.
    They let her eat by herself.
    They took away all her toys.
    And she was, what, maybe eight years old at that time.
    So then they moved her, you know.
    Because they were so unhappy, they
    had decided they wanted to adopt her, and my sister said no, so.
    Did she get adopted?
    No.
    No, she didn't want to be adopted.
    No.
    She lived with her--
    the second family she stayed with,
    she stayed with the whole time.
    And my sister Renee also stayed with the same foster family
    the whole time.
    And your other older siblings, what happened to them?
    Well, they didn't stay--
    they were older.
    And because they were older, they stayed for short--
    one of my oldest sisters soon was moved out
    from the foster family.
    And I don't know what year she got married.
    But she did-- maybe she lived with them a year.
    I'm not sure.
    And my sister Ruth, too, didn't stay too long.
    She did-- she had some very unhappy experiences,
    my sister Ruth.
    Not my sister Senter, but my sister Ruth
    had some unhappy experiences.
    And she moved out.
    But my brother ended up staying with the same family throughout.
    So he was better off.
    Did you meet one another?
    Pardon me?
    Did you ever--
    Occasionally.
    Yeah, not too often.
    Once in a while we saw each other.
    For a while there, for instance, from the second foster family,
    I ended up living--
    I think maybe not the second, maybe after the first,
    I ended up living with my sister Renee for a short time.
    They didn't have much room, because Renee
    slept on an inner bed.
    So I slept there with her.
    But it was temporary I was there.
    So I stayed with her for a while.
    But no, my two older sisters moved out,
    and my brother stayed with the same foster family.
    And like I said, the last--
    I had 1, 2--
    1, 2-- I think two.
    I either had three or four foster families.
    But the last one I stayed, yeah.
    Yeah, that was the best one.
    And so you would keep in touch but sporadically.
    Sporadically, yeah.
    And of course, with Ginger we couldn't.
    They cut that off pretty soon.
    Really?
    Because supposedly she always got very unhappy if she saw us.
    Now, she would have been how old?
    By the time she was adopted, she was seven.
    So she was the youngest.
    So.
    But like I said, we always knew where she was.
    When I was in the hospital, I know one time,
    her father came in to see a patient.
    And I knew that she-- but I didn't say anything to him.
    I should have.
    I didn't.
    He was there taking care of a patient, you know.
    But we all-- she didn't-- she lived in the neighborhood.
    It wasn't like she was outside of the neighborhood.
    So we knew where she was.
    And then of course, when she got older,
    she actually had her own car.
    She used to drive around the area.
    We knew it, yeah, where she was.
    When did contact re-establish with her?
    Pardon me?
    When did you re-establish contact with her?
    Oh, I wish I knew the year.
    You know, one day I was home.
    I used to send her occasionally a birthday card.
    And then one year, I came home at lunchtime from work,
    and there was a phone call.
    I almost dropped dead.
    It was Ginger.
    She called.
    And that was after her accident, about two years after,
    I think, her accident that she had.
    And so that's when we started to re-establish contact.
    And that would have been about what year?
    She's 75.
    She probably was 45 at that time.
    Oh, my gosh.
    So you kind of lost your sister when she was little,
    and you just--
    About 45.
    Well, she got married, she had children.
    And I'm sure her husband probably
    wouldn't want to be in--
    she was torn, let's put it that way,
    between this family and that family.
    And you know, she's very close.
    She was very close with that family.
    They were very good to her.
    They adopted other children besides her, so.
    But it was-- I always thought about her.
    I was-- I used to think of baking her a cake
    and burying it for her birthday.
    So many losses.
    Because she always used to cry.
    She says, hey, Manya--
    that was my middle name--
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    And I don't know why she said, but she did.
    Did you write to your father?
    Did I what?
    Did you write--
    Yeah.
    I wish I would have kept the letters.
    I didn't.
    I don't know.
    I wish I would have done so many things I didn't.
    Yeah, we did write.
    Oh, yeah.
    So what was his situation?
    His situation was he went back-- well, he married.
    So he stay-- but he stayed in the east
    in that Scheunenviertel area?
    Yeah, he did.
    He did.
    But then he got out.
    But I don't know what year, either.
    Actually, they must've stayed there--
    he married a woman who had a child
    same age as Ginger, a girl.
    And then they had another child.
    And then they moved away from there.
    He went back home.
    To Paderborn?
    Yeah.
    I don't know exactly there, but near there.
    Well that's another-- to me, the significance
    is it's in the west.
    Yeah, yeah.
    So that he went--
    by the time he leaves, he's--
    and the wall doesn't come up until '61.
    So between '45 and '61, people still could leave.
    Right.
    You know, it wasn't--
    Well, they left surreptitiously, because I remember her telling
    us, she crossed the water--
    she meant in places where she wouldn't be seen--
    carrying my half brother Harry on her back,
    so she could cross over this river to get there with her--
    you know, she took her daughter first and then Harry.
    And then afterwards, I think he must
    have gone to visit his mother's and father's grave,
    and probably left something there.
    And I think the family found him.
    Or I don't know if he found them or they found him, because there
    was property involved.
    And they couldn't touch it because he was not there.
    That is, he or they couldn't touch it, because--
    Right.
    Yeah, it was in the will.
    Because he was the oldest one?
    Right.
    I think so, yeah.
    And then I guess he ended up settling with them, at least
    to my knowledge, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And I don't know how many were still alive when that happened.
    I don't know.
    I know the parents were gone, but I don't know
    how many siblings survived.
    I don't know.
    And did they all, all of them come here to the United States?
    No.
    His family?
    Yeah.
    No, none of them.
    I mean, his mother--
    his wife, his new wife and his child?
    Oh, yeah, she came.
    Yeah, yeah.
    She came with her daughter.
    Oh, yeah.
    We're in touch with her.
    OK.
    So when he arrived here, he arrived with his new wife--
    Family, yeah.
    Yeah, OK.
    They lived near the area where I lived in South Shore.
    And so he moved to Chicago to be near you?
    Yeah.
    Oh, absolutely.
    Yeah.
    And I remember taking him to--
    around to find a place for work, took him to an electrical place.
    Oh, and he would look at it and said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
    He knew everything.
    I mean, he knew all this stuff.
    And they hired him.
    But then they couldn't-- then he couldn't--
    you know, because they would travel--
    he didn't have a car.
    He didn't know how to get around.
    And my sister Judy used to work at the University
    Hospital in Chicago.
    And I guess she found out that there was an opening.
    And she got him an interview, and they hired him,
    because they had gotten a big piece of equipment from Germany,
    and they needed somebody to put it together.
    So he knew German, so he was-- he worked on that.
    And he worked for them.
    And then he knew where he was going every day.
    He knew how to get by train.
    I see.
    Did he ever get a car?
    No, they never drove a car, to my knowledge, no.
    What year did he arrive?
    I don't know.
    Was it-- well, if it's 10 years--
    Let's see.
    Wait a minute, I'm trying to think.
    I had my first child.
    OK, so it was somewhere in 1956, because my daughter
    was born in '56.
    So it was '56 or '57.
    OK.
    And was there-- what was the immediate reason, if you ever
    found out, if he was supposed to come 10 days later, why 10 days
    later not?
    I don't know.
    Maybe the person that made the arrangements was moved.
    I don't know.
    We don't-- I don't know.
    Did you as siblings ever feel like he abandoned you?
    No.
    No, no.
    OK.
    No, that he didn't.
    If he did, why would he come?
    Well, of course, but--
    No.
    We never felt that, no.
    No.
    And when he did come, did that create the opportunity
    for more interaction?
    Yes and no.
    Because we were already adults by that time.
    We had established our own life.
    I mean, we saw him, but it wasn't, you know,
    what you would call a close-knit family.
    You know, a stepmother.
    You know, that was already beyond us
    to accept a stepmother.
    But to-- I mean, I'm still very much in touch
    with my stepsister.
    And my half brother Harry.
    And did your father ever return to Germany?
    Oh, God, no.
    No.
    Why would he?
    The only one who returned, like I said,
    it was all connected with his work, my brother.
    He was the one that was very much involved.
    He went back more than once, several times,
    because he lectured.
    And when did your father pass?
    What, dear?
    When did your father pass?
    Oh, time to figure out.
    I mean, I'd say maybe he had about 10 years here, I think.
    My daughter was born on '56, so maybe 8 or 10 years
    that he might have had here.
    Was he a storyteller, your father?
    If he did, I don't recall.
    I don't recall that, no.
    He loved music, I know that.
    Have you told your story much to your own children?
    Did I?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, to my daughter, I did, the kids.
    Yeah, she wrote all that--
    she, my daughter, she put all that book together.
    Yeah.
    And she lit into me last week.
    I have to tell you a story.
    I don't want to.
    I'm sick of it.
    I'm tired-- I keep saying, pretty soon it'll be over.
    I'll be gone, it'll be over and done with.
    I'm so tired of it.
    I'm tired.
    This is a bad time.
    Bad time for this.
    Well, I appreciated--
    Yeah, my brother just died.
    I mean, my brother, I was very close to him.
    Yeah.
    And that's an unhappy story by itself.
    It's too painful.
    Too painful.
    Well, I appreciate that you have done this even in this bad time
    now.
    We really appreciate it.
    You have given us--
    I know, but-- well, if you can make something out
    of the mess, good luck to you.
    It was not a mess.
    It was a very important piece of the puzzle.
    And I particularly appreciate the view,
    the insight you gave us, into what
    this life in Scheunenviertel was.
    Oh, yes, Scheunenviertel.
    We have very few people--
    Oh, that's true, yeah.
    --very few people who lived there
    who could tell us about it.
    That's true, yeah. because most of them
    were classier, that's for sure.
    Well, many of them perished.
    They're not around.
    Oh, a lot of them.
    Yeah, unfortunately.
    Yeah a lot of them did.
    Yeah.
    So I will at this point--
    I know my brother went back, never found anybody
    on my mother's side.
    Never, huh?
    No, he went to Hungary to see--
    never found anybody out of her family.
    They were all gone.
    Oh, God.
    Did they come from Budapest or one of the other places?
    You know what, I don't think it was Budapest.
    It tells you in the book what-- you know.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    Because the marriage certificate is in there.
    Right.
    Yeah.
    Is there anything else you'd like
    to add to what we've spoke about today?
    Add?
    What could I possibly add?
    I'm very lucky.
    I married 61 years.
    I was very fortunate.
    We have three children.
    And OK [INAUDIBLE].
    OK.
    Well, thank you again.
    You're welcome.
    Thank you again, Gertrude.
    I appreciate it.
    Thank you.
    And on behalf of the museum, we appreciate it.
    And I will say that in conclusion, this
    concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mrs. Gertrude Chapman on September 28, 2016
    in Chicago, Illinois.
    Thanks again.
    Thank you.
    OK.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Gertrude Chapman (née Senia Gertrude Weber), born on April 9, 1932 in the Schönefeld part of Berlin, Germany, describes growing up one of seven children from a mixed marriage between her ethnic German father and German-Jewish mother; her mother perishing during the war, while all her siblings and father survived; hiding with her siblings in the German countryside just outside Berlin; and how after the war, her father gave up all rights to his children so that she and her siblings could qualify as orphan refugees to leave Germany and immigrate to the United States.
    Interviewee
    Gertrude Chapman
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2016 September 28
    Geography
    creation: Chicago (Ill.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Chapman, Gertrude.

    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 Gertrude Chapman on September 28, 2016 in Chicago, IL.
    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 08:05:28
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn550882

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    Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

    Oral History

    Eddie Willner, born on August 15, 1926 in Germany, describes how his father had felt that his family would be safe because he had fought in the German Army in World War I; being separated from his parents and sent on a train to Brussels, Belgium, where a Jewish refugee organization placed him with a Dutch family; his parents’ move to Belgium in 1939 and seeing them on weekends until the war broke out in May 1940; the arrest of his father and his deportation to an internment camp in France; remaining with his mother and tracking down his father in the Pyrenees Mountains; living in the house of a French priest; getting caught with false identification cards with his family and being sent to Drancy; his deportation out of France and toward the east on September 12, 1942; arriving in Auschwitz, where his mother was immediately gassed while he stayed with his father; his transfer to a work camp in Lazy, Poland, where he worked on reconstructing bombed-out railroads; enduring harsh conditions, especially in the winter months; losing his religious faith after the war; returning from his work detail one day to discover that his father had been selected for the gas chamber during the day; the bombing of the train on which he was being transported to Buchenwald, escaping, and being liberated by American troops; staying in the Frankfurt displaced persons camp and then searching for his family in Brussels after the war; and immigrating to the United States in December 1947.

    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

    Oral History

    Lisa Dawidowicz Murik, born on November 5, 1925 in Ostroh, Poland (Ukraine), describes her family; attending public school until the outbreak of war in 1939; the German occupation of Poland and having to endure forced labor; working on a labor detail to construct a railroad station; by 1942 having built a shelter in her family’s basement to hide from the Nazis who were rounding up Jews in the ghetto; later fleeing into the Polish countryside, where a poor Polish farm woman gave them refuge hiding in the potato bin of her barn for sixteen months; surviving on a daily ration of a quart of water and one potato each; finding out that they were liberated in 1944; returning to Ostroh and then going to Łódź, where she met her future husband, a refugee from the Soviet Union, during her stay; leaving for Germany, where she and her future husband spent time in German displaced persons camps in Berlin and Eschwege; and immigrating in 1949 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

    Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

    Oral History

    Ernst Weihs, born in 1908 in Vienna, Austria and describes his family; his father’s participation in World War I and returning to ask for a divorce from his mother; moving out to the country with his mother and having a difficult life; getting baptized and attending church at the age of 11; finding a job as a gardener to support himself; returning to Vienna in 1928 and living near his father and stepmother; being declared Jewish, having to wear the star, and quitting his gardening job; working for a summer with a Jewish Agency to train for living in Palestine; living in a Swedish mission house associated with the Lutheran church and managing its gardens; working with a Guildemester organization that brought food to people until 1942 when the Germans closed it; being deported to a ghetto in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia and then to Auschwitz; his transfer to the Kaufering labor camp, where he worked farming nearby fields; remaining in Kaufering until the spring of 1945, when he had to evacuate toward Dachau; being liberated during the march to Dachau by American troops; getting married and having a baby after the war; and immigrating to the United States and raising his daughter as a Lutheran.

    Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

    Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

    Oral History

    Agnes Vogel, born on January 1, 1924 in Debrecen, Hungary, describes her childhood; attending a special school in a Catholic Convent in 1939; being rounded up in June 1944 and put on a transport to Auschwitz; ending up in Strasshof, a transit camp in Austria; starting on a transport toward Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany, but turning back to Strasshof because of an air raid that destroyed part of the railroad; her liberation by Soviet troops in 1945; and immigrating to the United States after the war.

    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral History

    Dora Goldstein Roth, born on February 1, 1932 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her family and early childhood; her father’s participation in the Zionist movement; being forced to live inside the Vilnius ghetto; her deportation to the Kaiserwald-Riga, Dinenwerke, and Stutthof camps with her sister and mother; seeing her mother die from hunger; her sister's death in the camp; difficult memories including mass rape of camp inmates, forced labor, and struggling to survive from day to day; deciding while she was still in the camps that she wanted to immigrate to Palestine after the war because she wanted to be surrounded by Jewish people; her liberation by Russian forces; staying in a Jewish hospital for three years to recover from injuries and disease; immigrating to Israel in 1952; getting married and having children; her identity as a mother and Holocaust survivor; and working for the United Jewish Appeal.

    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

    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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