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Oral history interview with Vincent Koch

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.154.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0914

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    Oral history interview with Vincent Koch
    Transcript
    [QUIET CHATTER]
    OK.
    And speed.
    OK, we're rolling.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Vincent Koch on February 22, 2017,
    in Boca Raton, Florida.
    Thank you very, very much, Mr. Koch,
    for agreeing to meet with us today
    to share your story, to share your experiences.
    As I mentioned off-camera, I'm going
    to begin our interview with the most basic questions.
    And from that we'll build and we'll develop your story.
    So the very first question I have is,
    what was your name at birth?
    My name at birth was Vincent Kucharsky.
    K-U-C-H-A-R-S-K-Y.
    OK.
    And when were you born?
    I was born May 25, 1925.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in New York City.
    Which borough.
    I was born in Manhattan.
    You were born in Manhattan?
    Yes.
    Upper?
    Upper, Lower, East, West?
    I don't know.
    It was Lebanon hospital.
    Oh, I mean more, where did your parents live?
    Where?
    Did they live in Manhattan?
    Yes, that's where they lived.
    All right.
    Yeah.
    And is that where you grew up?
    I grew up primarily in the Bronx.
    They moved up to that area.
    Do you still remember the address?
    Absolutely.
    What was it?
    1957 Bronxdale Avenue.
    821 is the apartment number.
    821.
    And did you have brothers and sisters?
    I have one brother.
    OK.
    Younger or older?
    Younger.
    And what's his name?
    Jesse.
    And when was he born?
    He was born on--
    he was born on-- he just had a birthday.
    He was born on 4th of January 1931.
    So there was about six years difference between you.
    Exactly.
    OK.
    Exactly.
    What was your father's name?
    Abraham.
    Abraham Kucharsky?
    Yes.
    And your mother's?
    Rebecca.
    And her maiden name?
    G-O-L-U-B, Golub.
    Golub.
    Where-- did your parents have brothers and sisters?
    Yes.
    My parents had brothers and sisters.
    My father had about seven brothers and sisters.
    And my mother had about five.
    Were they all New Yorkers?
    Yes.
    Were your parents also born in New York?
    No, they weren't born in New York.
    They came from Russia.
    Oh, did they?
    Yeah.
    So you're a first-generation American.
    Probably, yeah.
    If they came from Russia, they were immigrants.
    And you are the first generation born here.
    Well, my father was born in London on the way over from--
    From Russia.
    Coming from Russia to America.
    Do you know what part of Russia they were from,
    your father was from?
    Not exactly.
    What about your mother?
    Where was my mother from?
    She was from Minsk.
    I've been to Minsk.
    Have you?
    I have, yes.
    OK, that's good.
    Minsk is from today's Belarus.
    It's the capital of Belarus.
    OK.
    And it was heavily, heavily bombed during the war.
    OK.
    It was one of the toughest places to be.
    So do you remember, did your parents ever tell you
    what years they came over?
    I wouldn't know that, exactly what year.
    OK.
    I wouldn't know.
    Did they know each other before, or did they meet in New York?
    They met in New York.
    OK.
    And do you know how they met, how they met and married?
    What was the story there?
    Well, they happened to move into a likable neighborhood,
    and that's how they met.
    So they were neighbors, or neighbor people?
    Neighbors, exactly.
    OK.
    Exactly.
    And was that in the Bronx as well?
    Well, it started in Manhattan.
    That's where they moved when they came to America.
    To America.
    That's where they came.
    They came to Manhattan.
    They had relatives there.
    My grandparents lived in New York, too.
    Oh, so your grandparents had already
    come to the United States.
    Yes, a little before.
    Very similar, but a little before.
    And do you know why the family left Russia?
    No.
    No one ever spoke?
    They just said we left.
    OK.
    I don't know.
    I don't remember hearing why they left Russia.
    I imagine that it had a lot to do with the war at that time.
    That's true.
    I've heard a lot of people say that in the early part
    of the 20th century, in the late part of the 19th,
    people wanted to avoid serving in that Czar's army.
    Mm-hmm.
    You know, it was the draft.
    It was of course the war itself when it happened.
    So about how long do you think they were in the United States
    before you were born?
    I really don't know.
    OK.
    Do you know the year they married?
    No.
    I don't know the year they married.
    That's OK.
    What language did you speak at home?
    English.
    English?
    English.
    So they learned English?
    Yeah.
    That's unusual.
    Yes, I know that.
    That's very unusual.
    Yeah.
    We spoke English.
    OK.
    Did they ever speak Yiddish amongst themselves?
    My grandparents did.
    OK.
    But my parents at home always spoke English.
    And what about Russian?
    Did anybody know Russian?
    Yes.
    I don't know what percentage they were comfortable with,
    but they did speak.
    My mother I know did.
    Not my father.
    OK.
    My mother's spoke some Russian.
    OK.
    Did they have family still left behind?
    Yes.
    Who would that have been?
    Who would that have been?
    I really don't know what percentage of them?
    There was probably some brothers.
    And they all didn't come over at the same time.
    So would have this been on your grandparents'
    generation or your parents' generation,
    who was staying behind?
    Staying behind, it was predominantly on my--
    not my parents.
    My parents came over with some of the relatives.
    I think the grandfather came over first.
    OK.
    And one of the oldest daughter, I remember, came over.
    I mean, this wasn't in my time, so I--
    I know.
    And I know sometimes families tell stories,
    and sometimes they don't talk much.
    Yes.
    What was yours like?
    Your parents?
    What was mine then?
    They didn't talk much at all.
    You'd have to push them to get stories.
    What did their parents do to make a living?
    To make a living?
    My father was a Painter-decorator
    OK.
    And my mother was a housewife.
    OK.
    How did he come to be a painter and a decorator?
    I think one of the older brothers were in that.
    And that's where it started from.
    Did they have their own business?
    No.
    No, they worked for other people.
    Worked for other people, yes.
    OK.
    And your mom took care of the house, then?
    Yes.
    She took care of you and your brother and the household.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And the children.
    And the children.
    Yes.
    A not inconsequential thing, you know?
    Not at all.
    Yeah.
    Which parent was the one who was more involved with you
    when you were younger?
    Which parent?
    Well, I suppose I saw more of my mother than my father.
    OK.
    But--
    Were you closer to one or the other?
    No, both about the same.
    We had a very warm early life with the family.
    We had a very close relationship.
    Was yours a religious family?
    The grandparent end of it was.
    My grandfather was.
    And this would have been your father's father
    or your mother's?
    My mother's father.
    And when you talked about your grandfather before,
    were you referring to your mother's father
    or to both sets?
    I was much closer to my mother's, because we lived--
    in those days, you would live closer to the--
    people didn't roam around that much.
    Yeah.
    And we lived near our grandparents.
    My brother as well.
    And your father's parents, were they
    also in the United States or not?
    Yeah, my father's parents, they originally
    ended up in New York.
    OK.
    And then after that, they all migrated to California.
    Oh, so it's part of the family was then on the West Coast?
    Yes, yes.
    My father's family was predominantly
    on the West Coast, California.
    Was your neighborhood predominantly Jewish,
    or was it mixed?
    Mixed.
    Who else was there?
    Irish, Italian, and Jewish.
    OK.
    And as you were growing up, did that make
    a difference when you went to school, when
    you played with other kids?
    How did that--
    Did that make a difference in what way?
    Well, I left it open ended, to find out if it's in some ways,
    you know, kids would razz each other,
    or you didn't hang around with somebody who wasn't--
    Oh, yeah.
    We were confronted with a lot of anti-Semitism
    in the neighborhoods that we were involved with.
    That was wasn't a very strange situation.
    But in most of these places, we found a very warm niche
    eventually, because we didn't move around a lot.
    Once we moved into a area, we usually
    spent years in that area.
    OK.
    So we got to know everybody.
    And when there was an experience of anti-Semitism,
    was it on the level of children, or did it go beyond that?
    Both.
    Both, then?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Can you give me some examples?
    Can I give you some examples?
    Well, I mean, certainly at the parents level
    and the grandparents level, it dwindled down
    to the younger element.
    But it was mostly in the older--
    grandparents, grandfather, grandmother.
    Maybe even some of the older children.
    I wouldn't be familiar with that.
    OK.
    What was your school life like?
    What memories do you have of going to school in the Bronx?
    What memory?
    Well, good memories.
    Yeah?
    Did you like going to school?
    Yeah, I liked it very much.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I liked it.
    I wasn't prepared to answer questions in that category.
    I know.
    I was prepared to answer questions in my--
    I understand.
    --my category.
    I understand.
    What I'm trying to do with this is
    paint a picture of the world that formed you
    before you enter World War II.
    That's what the purpose of all these questions is.
    Well, when I start to tell you about that,
    that'll cover that pretty thoroughly.
    Pretty thoroughly, yeah.
    Did people in your neighborhood talk much about politics?
    No.
    OK.
    No.
    Did you have a radio at home?
    Sure.
    Mm-hmm.
    And was that the main source of news?
    And newspapers.
    OK, which newspapers?
    Which newspaper?
    The New York Times and The Daily News.
    Those two.
    Any Jewish newspapers?
    No.
    No Forverts?
    My grandparents, yeah.
    OK.
    But we didn't.
    Your family at home, they didn't talk
    much about politics or about what was going on
    in the wider world?
    Not really.
    Not to any great extent, no.
    OK.
    When Hitler came to power in Germany, that was in '33,
    and you would have been eight years old.
    OK.
    Was there any talk about what was going on
    and who was this Hitler over there?
    You ever remember about that?
    Oh, yes.
    Sure.
    I mean, listen, '33, I was active already in '33.
    What do you mean by active?
    Well, I mean, I was very much aware
    of what was happening in Germany and stuff like that.
    OK.
    As an eight-year-old boy?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Sure.
    Did you belong to anything like clubs, or Scouts,
    or youth organizations, or anything like that?
    No.
    No?
    No, I did not.
    How did the Depression affect your family?
    Very much.
    In what way?
    Tell me, please.
    In what way?
    I mean, it was tough to make a living at that time.
    My father had a tough, tough job of working.
    In other words, he wasn't in his own business.
    And I remember as a child that that was always a big--
    I didn't get involved with it.
    I was too young, but I certainly know how it affected my mother
    and father.
    OK.
    So the jobs, they weren't regular.
    Not at all.
    Not at all.
    This is actually in the Depression.
    Yes, '33 was the Depression years.
    And they were tough, and they affected us pretty much then.
    Do you remember times when it was not so
    easy to be able to afford food?
    Not to that extent.
    We always were able--
    my mother, that was very-- her kids
    were very, very important, as far as food.
    And she was a terrific provider, and we saw more of my mother
    than we did my father.
    But my father was the one that we loved very much.
    He never yelled at us.
    So she was the one who was the disciplinarian.
    She was the disciplinarian, yes.
    OK.
    She was.
    But we were very good Kids we didn't need any discipline.
    Yeah, no.
    You know, usually these tasks are somehow or other,
    it's one parent who ends up having one role and another
    having another role.
    Exactly.
    So tell me a little bit about their personalities,
    your mother and your father.
    Well, with that, I don't know where
    to begin with that, though.
    My father was a quiet, quiet guy.
    In fact, to this day, I mean, he passed away
    he was 47 years old.
    He was young.
    Very young, very young.
    But we have terrific memories, both my brother and myself.
    My father was--
    Was he a gentle person?
    Yes.
    But when my mother wanted him to be non-gentle,
    I remember those issues, too.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah.
    But he was a great guy, a great guy.
    What are some of the values you think that you got from him?
    A lot.
    OK.
    Very quiet man.
    Everybody loved him.
    He was the kind of guy that he made his mark
    without being loud.
    You know, he was a terrific, terrific guy.
    In fact, one of the big things that we remember,
    the neighborhood that we grew up in was predominantly Italian.
    OK.
    And it so happens that when we first
    got into that neighborhood, we weren't accepted
    in that neighborhood, because we were
    one of the few Jewish families that
    grew up in that neighborhood.
    But he was very instrumental, my father,
    in making certain that he was well accepted
    and his family was well accepted.
    That's quite an achievement.
    Yes, I remember that they had a club there-- see,
    certain things stick with you forever--
    where the people used to play cards in this particular club.
    And they approached my father one day to join the club.
    They wanted to have him in the club,
    and we thought that was very significant.
    That was the first Jewish guy that they ever
    asked to join the club.
    That's the kind of guy he was.
    He was magnetic as far as people loved him.
    That's wonderful.
    Yeah.
    That's wonderful.
    So we remember that.
    Even at my age, I remember those little incidents
    that go way, way back.
    There are the sorts of things that do shape you.
    They impress you.
    Very much.
    You know?
    My brother, too.
    OK.
    I mean, the two of us talk about those situations
    that stick with you so vividly that we
    remembered every happy thing.
    What are some of the things that were important to him,
    to your father?
    What are some of the things that he
    thought was important to how you lived your life?
    Well, I don't how to put it in words,
    but he had a magnetic personality.
    They liked him very, very much.
    And what we saw affected us, too.
    Of course.
    Very much so.
    Of course.
    And that helped the whole situation.
    We got to like those people.
    We melded with them very well.
    And we lived there for a long time,
    and we became one of them.
    And this was basically an Italian neighbor,
    you're saying.
    Predominantly.
    I could count the Jewish families on one hand.
    Got it, got it.
    But predominantly.
    And some of them were just--
    not all of them were the same.
    Sure.
    But some of them were terrific.
    And that was all due to my father, his personality
    and stuff.
    So let's talk about your mother a little bit.
    Oh!
    [LAUGHTER]
    She was the disciplinarian.
    What are the other--
    I mean, aside from that, how would you
    describe her personality?
    How would I describe her personality?
    Well, she was a housewife, and--
    Was she more outgoing?
    Was she more of an extrovert?
    Did she have certain hobbies and interests and things?
    No, she was predominantly a homebody.
    But she was--
    I don't know how else to describe that?
    What about your grandparents?
    Did you see much of them?
    We lived in the same building.
    Oh my God.
    So you did.
    You did.
    I saw a lot of them.
    OK.
    A lot.
    And I had a very strong relationship
    with my grandfather.
    Tell me about it.
    I remember him very well.
    He was real wonderful man.
    And he used to take me to school every day.
    Did he?
    I remember-- isn't it remarkable how you can remember
    little things like that?
    Yeah.
    He took me to school every day.
    He wanted to make certain that I didn't cross the street
    and had the cars coming.
    He wanted to keep you safe.
    He wanted to keep me safe.
    My grandmother wasn't the same.
    She was different.
    She didn't care if I zigzagged through the traffic.
    Go.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Now, did they ever tell stories?
    I mean, grandparents usually have more time.
    No?
    No, no.
    OK.
    Either they didn't talk stories, or I
    didn't listen to the stories.
    One of the two.
    But my grandfather, he was a special, special guy.
    Really special warmth, from a warmth standpoint.
    So you got that from both your father and your grandfather.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yes.
    And let's go more towards school.
    When did you finish grade school?
    How old were you?
    When I finished grade school?
    Mm-hmm.
    When you say grade, are you talking through high school?
    No, I'm talking through sixth grade, eighth grade, and so on.
    Sixth grade and eighth grade.
    OK, well, eighth grade already was
    graduating from almost high school, wasn't it?
    No, that's 12th grade.
    There was no 12th grade at that time.
    Really?
    was eighth grade.
    Really?
    You had eight grades of school, and then after that did you
    go further?
    Or did--
    I went much further.
    OK.
    I went four years in Germany and France and Belgium.
    That's a different kind of school.
    Yeah.
    That's where I went.
    I mean, from the day that I graduated in 1943--
    Then you would have gone through 12 years of school.
    You have four years of high school.
    And then you have two years of middle school, usually,
    and six years of grade school.
    Well, I mean, as far as the grade school, well, it was--
    I asked this in an awkward way, what I kind of wanted
    to get a sense of is, did you already enter high school
    in the late 1930s?
    Or did you enter high school after the war
    started in Europe?
    That's kind of what I was getting at.
    OK.
    Well, the war started in Europe in 1933.
    No, 1939.
    '39.
    '39.
    Oh, but Hitler came into power in '33.
    In '33.
    Yes, yes.
    OK, 1939.
    OK.
    So--
    Were you in high school then?
    Yes, they were preparing us.
    We knew that we would never be able to go
    to college at that time because we
    went from elementary school, which was--
    I graduated June 30, 1943.
    OK.
    And then were you drafted, or did you volunteer?
    Drafted.
    I was drafted.
    And I entered this service.
    And I graduated, as I said, in June of 1943.
    And I was drafted in August 8th.
    That's not much time.
    Not at all, no.
    Less than not even a month and a half.
    No.
    So I wanted to dwell a little bit on the high school years.
    So that tells me that, yes, when you were going to high school,
    your years in high school were already the time when
    the war was raging in Europe.
    You know, if not freshman, certainly sophomore, junior,
    senior year.
    Yes.
    And maybe even freshmen year.
    Well, 1943, I was finished with high school.
    During those years, was there talk of joining the war?
    Because the United States had stayed out of it
    for such a long time.
    Was there talk?
    Well, everybody thought it was just a matter of time
    that they would have to, you see.
    OK.
    Did you get much news about what was going on?
    Oh, yes.
    A lot of news.
    We were very well aware.
    I personally was very well aware of what was going on.
    Did you get news of what was happening to the Jews
    in Europe?
    Yes.
    Yes, I got--
    I was updated on that.
    I was very well aware of the persecution
    and the whole story.
    I read newspapers, and listen, that
    was the things that were easily available to know
    what was going on, if you wanted to know what was going on.
    OK.
    And you read The New York Times, you said.
    And you read, was it The Daily News that you mentioned?
    Daily News, yeah.
    The Daily News.
    Were there many radio broadcasts?
    Yes.
    From abroad?
    Yeah, there was plenty of them.
    I don't know from abroad or not, but there was.
    Well, there were plenty about abroad.
    About the war, yes,
    About the war.
    Absolutely.
    Well, there were journalists like William Shirer
    who were in Berlin at the time.
    Gabriel Heatter.
    Yeah.
    William Murrow.
    And things like that.
    Those names were familiar to you?
    Yes, they were.
    OK.
    Yes, they were.
    Any others?
    That was the main source of knowing what's going on.
    I mean--
    More than newspapers?
    Yeah, the newspapers.
    And also there was a couple of--
    like this Gabriel Heatter, who you just mentioned.
    Well, you did.
    I don't know of him.
    I know of some others.
    Tell me, who was he, Gabriel Heatter?
    He was actually a correspondent that was
    on every night at 7 o'clock.
    OK.
    And he would bring all the news.
    And most people at that time, that was their main source.
    So did people sit around the radio
    to hear the 7 o'clock broadcast?
    Yes, yes.
    Like they do now around television.
    Yes.
    Or they did for a while.
    Exactly, exactly.
    Oh, must have been pretty influential.
    Who?
    Those newspapers broadcasters.
    Yes, well, there wasn't a lot of them, but they packed a wallop.
    No question about it.
    Your brother was much younger.
    He was still like a kid when you were drafted.
    Is that right?
    Yes, yes.
    He was-- let me see, it was five years
    and seven or eight months difference
    between the two of us.
    Yeah.
    We had a very close relationship always.
    In fact, I remember little things along the way.
    When I was leaving to go into the service,
    I walked into the room where he was sleeping.
    I remember that vividly.
    And he put the covers over his head.
    He didn't want it.
    It was too hard for him.
    Too hard for him.
    What about for your parents?
    How were they reacting?
    Well, of course.
    In fact, the correspondence that I had with my parents
    is that what I would do, once I got into the service,
    and I was in the--
    you notice, I'm leading back to my era.
    Well, no, I want to go there.
    I want to go there.
    But the idea is that actually when I was in the service
    already, I used to try my utmost to write to them.
    OK.
    But I would always write to my father, not my mother.
    And why is that?
    Why was that?
    Because she wouldn't take it.
    In other words, this would aggravate her
    to death, some of the stories.
    I would never get into it.
    I would always try to make sure that the message that I gave
    was as pleasant as I could make it.
    I would try to preserve my parents from that.
    This is actually a tough thing for a young teenager to do.
    Well, we were that way both, my brother and myself both.
    You wanted to spare your parents.
    Absolutely, absolutely.
    And later on, I found out that that was a mistake, too.
    And why was it a mistake?
    Why?
    Because my father didn't take the news from me as well.
    I preserved the feeling of my mother,
    but my father was the one that--
    he was the one that it aggravated him to death.
    Well, he was worried.
    Pardon me?
    He must have been worried.
    Oh, of course.
    Yeah.
    And so I would assume, but you explain to me
    if I'm wrong, that this communication,
    their primary concern is, are you safe.
    Of course.
    OK.
    Of course.
    So you're telling them stuff that any way would challenge
    that--
    Yeah, absolutely.
    And I would try to soften it.
    It was kind of tough for parents.
    For everybody.
    You have no idea how tough it was when
    they had to take a son to--
    in New York, it was Grand Central.
    That's where you left from.
    So now I want to turn to that.
    When you were drafted, it was August 8th,
    you said, that you got your notice.
    Yes.
    How long before you had to leave?
    When did you have to report?
    To the service?
    Yeah.
    That was the day.
    That was the day that you reported.
    OK.
    Yes.
    That was the day.
    And that was the day you left?
    Yes.
    My mother took me down to Grand Central Station.
    That's where they left from.
    They took you from there to Camp Shanks, which was a New York--
    Where's that?
    Where in New York was that?
    That was upstate.
    That must've been about--
    maybe about 50, 60 miles North of Manhattan.
    OK.
    And so this was your introduction
    into the US military?
    Yes.
    Can you tell us about it, explain a little?
    That's what I was prepared to talk about.
    OK, that's what I was prepared--
    We're there.
    We're there.
    That's what I was studying, and then you threw me a curve ball
    and you asked me about my grandparents.
    I didn't pay attention to--
    I'm tricky like that.
    What can I tell you?
    I didn't pay that much attention to them,
    and you started with it.
    I'll tell you why I do this.
    Why?
    It's that when we come to the parts that
    are the central parts of somebody's story--
    Yes.
    --I want to try and provide context to whomever will watch
    our interview, so that they will hear not only what you say--
    Yes.
    --but who you are.
    Exactly.
    I understand that fully.
    Yeah.
    And so then that's why I ask about the people who
    would have been the ones who influenced you the most.
    Yes.
    So.
    OK, I understand that.
    I do understand that.
    So it's not for nothing.
    No, of course.
    Of course not.
    I surely understand that.
    But--
    So now let's come to the heart of the matter, when
    you are in the army.
    Tell me, what were the first days
    like, the first weeks like?
    What did they make you do?
    Well, Camp Shanks was a place that everybody
    from that area of New York would go to Camp Shanks.
    They would get them ready to go on the next step.
    And after that, they would ship you to a more permanent--
    Did you go through any sort of basic training
    to be at Camp Shanks?
    Yeah.
    What did basic training involve?
    From the initial situation where they sent you from New York,
    say, up to Camp Shanks to get you prepared,
    the next step was you would be assigned for basic training
    and to join--
    you would have to join-- they would place you in an--
    And of all places, they sent me to Mississippi.
    Well, that's something different.
    That sure is something different.
    I don't know how they placed me to Mississippi, a guy
    from New York.
    Well, tell me about that.
    And what was-- that's where you had your basic training?
    I had basic training for one year.
    In Mississippi.
    So you were in Camp Shanks for about how long?
    Not long at all.
    Maybe it was a question of maybe a month.
    OK.
    They got you kind of prepared.
    They got you ready to let you know what's in front of you.
    In other words, where you're heading from that point on.
    So I have a number of questions now.
    If we're talking chronologically,
    then you're in Mississippi for about a year.
    Yes.
    I would say that you're probably,
    for a year, that would be from, let's say, September, October
    '43 to September, October '44.
    1944, November of 1944.
    Is when you're finished with Mississippi.
    Exactly.
    And that tells me that you were spared D-day.
    You did not participate in D-day.
    I did not participate in D-day, exactly.
    Which was June 6th.
    Right.
    So let's talk a little bit about the year
    that you were in Mississippi.
    One of the things that some people
    I've talked to who were in US military forces,
    who were young guys like yourself at the time,
    is that this was the last great--
    they told me-- this was the last great event that
    was an equalizer in the United States,
    in that kids from different backgrounds
    got thrown together, who would never have met otherwise.
    Yeah.
    Rich kids with poor kids, kids from the East
    with kids from the Midwest.
    Well, in Mississippi, that's the thing that confused me no end.
    Because most of those that lived in Kentucky and Mississippi
    and Louisiana were sent to that camp.
    And then you.
    And me and three or four other guys
    that were from Manhattan and Brooklyn
    ended up there, which was a surprising thing.
    So was this a part of America you had just
    never known about before?
    Well, I m, I didn't mingle with that,
    but this was a part that I--
    first of all, we were hoping--
    we were hoping-- that from the beginning--
    I'm gonna backtrack a little.
    Sure.
    Go right ahead.
    We were hoping where they sent you, whether it was the Army,
    or whether it was the Navy, or whether it was the Air Corps,
    we were three very, very close friends
    that were the same age that lived in the neighborhood.
    OK.
    And we used to see each other, you know,
    like three guys would.
    And it so happened that we all had the same idea, that we'd
    like to go in the Navy.
    But we had no pref--
    we didn't have any chance.
    You couldn't tell them where you wanted to go.
    So after they put you through when you first
    got going on the 8th of August, all they would do
    is check your physical position, and then they
    would stamp your papers, whether it was Army, or Navy.
    They made the choice.
    They made the choice for you.
    So my mother prayed for a week beforehand
    that I would end up in the Navy.
    And I asked her, Mom, why?
    She says, because I assume that in the Navy
    you'll always have a place to sleep.
    That was her thing.
    Well, you know, it has its logic.
    It has its logic.
    Yeah.
    So the idea is that--
    I was stamped Army.
    OK.
    The other two friends that I had mentioned to you,
    one ended in the Navy, and the third one
    ended up in the Air Corps.
    All separate places.
    Services, yeah.
    And if I want to push it a little further,
    the three of us, we never saw each other after that.
    We didn't--
    You mean, after the war was over?
    No.
    No.
    Oh, no.
    During the war, during your service.
    Yeah, during the war.
    I mean, we were in different parts of the world, actually.
    What were the names of those two other guys?
    That was a tough question.
    I'm sorry.
    One of them was Italian, Anthony Maggio, I remember his name.
    And the guy that ended up in the Air Corps, his name
    was Robert Poster.
    Robert Poster.
    Poster.
    P-O-S-T-E-R.
    Did they both survive the war?
    No.
    What happened?
    The guy that ended up in the Navy,
    he was on a destroyer escort.
    OK.
    And and is obligation was in down in the--
    I forgot the part of the ship that he was on.
    And they had an explosion.
    He got killed on that.
    And Rob Poster, which we would have
    loved to end up in the Air Corps,
    because life there was a lot better,
    he ended up being shot down over Tokyo.
    So he was gone.
    So the guy that survived and feared the other two got home.
    And they didn't.
    I mean, that's how life is, how you
    can predict what takes place.
    And this was one perfect example how what took place there,
    though.
    Wow.
    But we spent a year there.
    It was a tough year.
    In fact, I have to tell you one little incident that may
    be interesting to you, though.
    We were out in a field doing you know rows.
    Training was constant.
    And the Sergeant came out, and he says, you have a visitor.
    A visitor?
    I don't know anybody in Mississippi.
    Yeah.
    Who is gonna-- who's the visitor?
    So he takes me to what they call the orderly room.
    That's where the captain stays and all that.
    I come there.
    Who do I find there?
    My mother.
    Really?
    Would you believe that?
    She traveled all the way from New York?
    I don't think that woman ever traveled out of Manhattan.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I can tell you, I think New Yorkers are like that.
    You know, the world is in Manhattan.
    And she came down to visit her son.
    Wow.
    I think that is amazing.
    I can't tell you how surprised and everything.
    And they treated her so well.
    She came down on a train that left from New York to--
    Mississippi.
    To Mississippi on a train.
    Well, I mean, that says it all.
    And she used to tell me stories that most on the train
    were troops.
    OK.
    You know, American soldiers.
    They treated her so well on the--
    they didn't know what to do for her when they found out
    that she's going to Mississippi to visit her son.
    I mean, this was a--
    Well, this is what every son would want his mother to do,
    you know?
    Well, that was unbelievable.
    And then-- this was so much a part of the whole story,
    though.
    I met a woman there.
    She must have been in the 80s.
    And she had a--
    woman alone that had her own home
    in Centreville, Mississippi, a small little town.
    And she-- I don't know how she met me or whatever.
    But when she found out that my mother came down,
    she offered us to stay at her home.
    And we stayed at her home.
    And every single morning, they allowed me--
    the captain allowed me to have breakfast with her.
    She would make breakfast every morning for us,
    so that I could be with my mother.
    That is so cool.
    Isn't that cool?
    That is way cool.
    Holy mackerel.
    It's sort of like people know what--
    you know, when I was younger, of course,
    I thought that 18 and 19 years old, you're adult.
    Yeah.
    Now when I think of a kid, I think of them as kids.
    They were just kids.
    Absolutely.
    And you're thrown into a war.
    Absolutely.
    And that was the least they could do.
    Absolutely.
    Wow.
    Unbelievable.
    That's a lovely story.
    Yeah, but the idea is, she was so unbelievable.
    That's the kind of--
    to come all the way down.
    It really didn't help me much.
    I was happy to see her.
    But it was an obligation to be with her at night.
    Not to--
    Right.
    I don't want her to be alone.
    You know, that kind of stuff.
    Of course not.
    Of course not.
    But that, I remember that vividly.
    It's surprising.
    Well, you know, when I asked you before what
    was your mother's personality like, this shows it.
    That was her personality.
    Yeah.
    Her personality, she'd give her life for her kids.
    Yeah.
    You see?
    And that explains almost what the story--
    I had pictures that we took there of Mrs. Dawson,
    I remember.
    That was her name?
    The gray haired lady that was so unbelievably--
    she was fabulous.
    And here I remember her.
    Is it remarkable that the short term memory gets stronger?
    Here it is.
    Well, this is the long term memory.
    Yes.
    This is the long term.
    No, but I meant that short term is eluding me,
    but the long term sticks with you.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    When you were with these guys in basic training,
    what was the conversation usually about?
    What did guys talk about when they were going through this?
    Was it where you're gonna be posted,
    what you're gonna be doing?
    What was it?
    I don't want to lead.
    I just want to find out.
    What do you remember?
    What was the conversation?
    Almost everybody was pretty much the same, you know?
    When are they gonna get out of it?
    When are they leaving the service and stuff like that.
    OK.
    But some of them were complainers.
    Constantly complaining.
    And others had a disposition that
    knew that they had no choice and made the best of it.
    So you would mingle with those that fit your category more.
    Did politics enter this at all?
    Never.
    In the sense that there were people who thought
    this was a good war.
    We have to be fighting this.
    Never.
    Never?
    Never heard anything about politics.
    You know, the only thing that I--
    had after a while, I remember vividly
    that a lot of these Southerners hated Roosevelt. Hated him.
    Why?
    Because he caused the war.
    That's according to them.
    He was responsible for them being there.
    Well, you know, that that speaks to that.
    Because there was this huge isolationist
    wing in the United States.
    Yeah.
    A force of people who said, let's keep out of it.
    You know, this is a European thing.
    Yeah, well, the idea is that they always used to--
    I never got involved with those kind
    of conversations with them.
    Even though there was a lot of anti-Jewish--
    Well, I was coming--
    I wanted to get to that as well.
    OK.
    See, when I was asking about being
    thrown in with different kinds of people--
    Yes.
    --did that show itself?
    Did that appear?
    Yeah.
    How?
    Very much so, very much so.
    They were very-- quite a few of them
    were very antisemitic when they found out that we were Jewish.
    Very--
    Were there many Jewish guys in basic training with you
    in Mississippi?
    There wasn't that many.
    I mean, my particular group, there was only six.
    That's all.
    Just six.
    And out of how many?
    Well, out of--
    I would say--
    I'll break it down to, a company was 1,000.
    So six out of 1,000 is not many.
    No, it's not many at all.
    It's not many, though.
    OK.
    But the idea was that--
    I had some in particular.
    I remember vividly a sergeant there from New York,
    from New York, was probably the worst antisemite
    that I've ever come across.
    Was it the stuff he said or how he behaved?
    Or did he treat you differently than the others?
    Well, yes, I would say so.
    Because after a while, they were pulling
    troops out of Mississippi infantry,
    and sending them as replacements to Europe.
    So what they would do is, they would take them,
    and they would present their choices,
    who they wanted to my particular person,
    a lieutenant was in charge of our group.
    And every time that they sent a list, I was always on the list.
    And I didn't want to go in the worst way,
    because I started to make some very good friends there.
    And if I had to go into combat, at least I knew them.
    That's a certain feeling that you
    get to know the guys that you're with, you know?
    I've heard that was real important?
    Yes, very important.
    And my particular lieutenant, who was from North Carolina,
    had the opportunity to switch names.
    And he always took my name off and replaced it
    with somebody else.
    In other words, he--
    He'd undo what the sergeant did.
    What the sergeant did.
    Right.
    Wow.
    And that was a form of antisemitism.
    There's no question about it.
    But the things that he did was unbelievable.
    We had somebody in our particular company area.
    I was a mortar sergeant.
    I don't know if you heard of a mortar.
    No, what is that?
    A mortar is an artillery piece.
    Ah, mortars.
    For the infantry.
    OK.
    You know.
    And I had this particular guy.
    To everybody, he seemed effeminate.
    OK.
    And that's all this sergeant had to know.
    He was in his particular outfit.
    He would aggravate him to death.
    Because he decided that he was gay.
    And we used-- it galled us, because it
    doesn't make any difference whether they were.
    They're still guys that are putting their life on the line,
    and what's the difference?
    He was a quiet guy.
    Finally, he requested that they transfer him.
    This guy?
    This guy.
    Because he was picked on so much.
    Yes.
    He was picked on so much.
    And what did they do?
    He requested to go into the--
    what the heck is the name of the--
    the guy that was--
    that very unbelievable outfit, the--
    they were written up.
    When-- oh, what's his name?
    The guy that they killed?
    What was the name of the--
    I know, it slips your mind--
    No, but this is-- this is--
    what's his name?
    Rangers?
    Not Rangers, but the most difficult position to be in,
    he volunteered for it, this particular guy,
    which was amazing.
    Because he wanted to get away from--
    The sergeant.
    From the Sergeant.
    And we found out, and he was shipped overseas.
    And word came back that he got an unbelievable--
    they gave him an award that was unbelievable for heroism.
    So how wrong they labeled this guy and made--
    life was tough enough without having somebody like this.
    Oh, that's a real education.
    Real education.
    But I want to tell you something.
    And that is that he would--
    we were six of us, and I was always picked
    to get out of his outfit.
    I mean, because I was Jewish.
    And he wasn't the only one.
    The story with this young man, there was another one there,
    too, that I remember vividly.
    Another sergeant or another--
    No, another ordinary private.
    OK.
    And this was during--
    this is while we were in Germany now.
    OK.
    Then let's--
    Let's hold off on that.
    Yeah, let's hold off.
    Unless it has nothing really to do with Germany.
    It's an incident within the service.
    It has nothing to do with Germany.
    Then tell me now, because we may forget later.
    So what was this other guy, this private
    who was picking on someone?
    No, the private wasn't, but the sergeant.
    Picked on the private?
    Picked on the private.
    Constantly.
    The same sergeant from New York?
    Same sergeant.
    And what did he pick on him for?
    They put him on--
    actually, they had a mission there at night,
    where they picked about 12 guys to proceed
    to try to find out just about the lay of the land
    as far as where the Germans were.
    And the sergeant was the one that picked
    the 12 men to go with him.
    He went with them.
    And what took place is that this one particular guy that he was
    abusing and literally made life miserable for,
    he had the opportunity to get even with the sergeant.
    You have no idea, though.
    How did he do it?
    Or what kind of opportunity was this?
    Well, the 12 men spread out.
    You know, in other words, they weren't near each other.
    That was part of the group that he picked.
    And this guy shot him and killed him.
    I mean, what went on there, I mean the stories,
    and their own, no [? doubt. ?]
    And did anything happen to him?
    No, but it was a foolish thing to do,
    because when somebody starts to fire their rifle,
    they send up a flare to kind of light up the area,
    so they know what the story is.
    And when you light up the area, it puts them in jeopardy.
    Because you know that these Germans, they're not far away.
    And--
    They could find you, because they
    know your general location.
    Exactly, exactly.
    So that could have put everybody else in--
    But he was never-- this was a private who shot the sergeant?
    Yes.
    And--
    Was he ever detected?
    No, naturally nobody talked about it as far
    as the other 11 or 12 or whatever it consisted of.
    He must have been pretty bad.
    He was so bad that that's what he built up--
    animosity to that extent.
    You know, to push somebody to be willing to do
    that at a time like that, you can almost imagine what--
    It must have been--
    What the consequences were.
    Tell me a little bit about the basic training itself.
    What kind of training was it?
    What were the paces that you were put through?
    Basic training was very, very difficult.
    We had a general there that was an advocate of tough.
    He felt that he's doing you a favor, because he's
    preparing you properly for when you get into combat.
    You understand?
    You think he was right in retrospect?
    Probably.
    Probably to a certain extent.
    Only to a certain extent.
    And what is a certain extent?
    They built new barracks there.
    In Mississippi?
    In Mississippi.
    And the barracks were supposed to be for, you
    would have your meals there.
    And it so happened that he wouldn't allow it.
    He wouldn't allow any of us to have their meals in there.
    And it never stopped raining.
    And he'd have us outside.
    Eating outside?
    Eating outside.
    Because this was his thought of what
    was gonna make you a tough soldier.
    I didn't agree with that kind of stuff, though.
    He feels that you'd get so mad, it
    would be just perfect for you if you'd
    be able to confront anything when you were put to it.
    So tell me about other aspects of basic training.
    Because they're taken 17, 18, 19-year-old kids
    and turning them into soldiers.
    How did they do that?
    How did they do that?
    I don't know if Bill knows any of these Jewish things.
    Though I know if he is Jewish or not.
    But the idea is that I slept near a guy.
    There was about 12 in the bunk.
    And every morning I put on certain religious articles.
    And he would watch it, and I would get up--
    Reveille was 6 o'clock.
    I would get up at 5 o'clock to put this on.
    And the guy that slept next to me,
    which was from the Deep South, he got up one morning early.
    And he said, Vince, he says, are you OK?
    Because part of this was strapping on your arm.
    What is it, a phylactery or?
    Yes, that's what it was.
    Phylactery.
    Exactly.
    Tell people who will not know what is a phylactery?
    Well, they called it tfiln.
    Tfiln?
    OK.
    But the idea was that he thought that I
    was taking my blood pressure.
    And he wanted to be nice.
    And he says, you want to know something?
    You have all the grounds of being
    discharged because your blood pressure is so high.
    Gosh.
    Well, you said earlier your family was not very religious.
    No.
    But did you nevertheless go to synagogue on a regular basis?
    Not regular, no.
    Did you become more religious when
    you were in such circumstances?
    No, no, no.
    In fact, I wasn't that religious,
    but I got the religion from my grandfather.
    He was religious.
    OK.
    So.
    But it meant something to you to put that on every day.
    Yeah, my mother was very much against me taking it along
    with me.
    She says, I want to tell you, if you're taken prisoner,
    you'll be killed immediately by the Germans,
    because they would know what it is.
    But I didn't listen to her.
    I felt the thought of it was protection.
    I would get through.
    And that's what happened.
    But I was a big kick out of it, the fact
    that he wanted me to bring it to somebody somebody's attention
    that I was taking my--
    Blood pressure.
    My blood pressure every morning at 5 o'clock.
    So did you eventually get sent over with guys that you knew?
    Were you sent over with people who were your buddies or not?
    Yes, I was sent over.
    They sent us over as one group, the whole division.
    And division means how many?
    Division could be anywheres from 13,000 to 15,000.
    Wow.
    And this was in November 1944?
    This was November.
    I left Camp Shanks.
    In other words, they sent us on the way back to stay.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah.
    So from Mississippi to Camp Shanks.
    Back to Camp Shanks.
    And they gave us the necessary clothing and everything
    that we needed and stuff like that.
    And then where were you taken from Camp Shanks?
    From Camp Shanks it took us 28 days to cross the Atlantic.
    Oh, wow.
    From New York?
    From New York.
    OK.
    Why?
    Because that was the era when the Atlantic Ocean
    was infested with German submarines.
    So we spent 28 days zigzagging to try
    to confuse the Germans there.
    And we landed in Marseilles, I think 28 days later.
    That's where we were heading.
    So it was like in early December,
    you landed in Marseilles?
    Yes.
    How did it happen?
    Yes, I think it was the first week or so whatever.
    OK.
    Well, that's not a bad place to land in wintertime,
    in Marseilles.
    Oh, what a town that was, boy.
    Wow.
    What kind of impression did it make on you?
    What kind?
    I don't really remember it all.
    Because the first thing we were looking for was a bar.
    [laughter]
    And we found one.
    And boy, did we take advantage of it, though.
    It was great, though.
    Really?
    But from then on, it was a question
    that they gave you what you needed.
    You know, rations.
    And that's as far as you went.
    I mean--
    So you were in Marseilles for a short time,
    and then you were shipped North?
    Then I was shipped North.
    OK, how did you get North?
    Was it by train, or on foot, or in truck, or how?
    Walk.
    You walked.
    Walked.
    That's what the infantry does-- walk.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I mean, the first skirmish that we ended up with
    was February 16th, 1945.
    And this was where?
    This was in-- this was in Germany.
    That was our first confrontation into combat.
    OK, so I'm assuming you missed the Battle of the Bulge.
    No, I was in the Battle of the Bulge.
    You were in the Battle of the Bulge?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So I thought that had taken place in December.
    I must be wrong, then.
    Yeah.
    I don't know.
    It could have been the following December, maybe.
    No, no, no.
    I've got my dates wrong.
    No, I was in the Battle of the Bulge.
    I was awarded a Bronze Star in the Battle of the Bulge.
    Wow, wow.
    And that was the first one.
    I got two Bronze Stars, and I got a Purple Heart.
    I was injured in the Battle of the Bulge.
    OK, let's start with the first skirmish.
    And then I'd like to hear about those things
    that you just told me in more detail.
    In more de--
    The first skirmish was February 16, 1945.
    Right.
    And what part of Germany was that?
    Bliesbrucken.
    Bliesbrucken.
    That was the name of it, Bliesbrucken.
    OK.
    That was the first that our particular unit
    was confronted with.
    OK.
    And that was a tough situation, because they
    knew we were coming.
    And we lost about half of the outfit there.
    And what did we lose them with?
    The Germans knew that we were coming,
    and they mined the area.
    You know about mining?
    Tell me about it.
    The Germans were very good at that.
    They would place mines in the ground.
    And if you stepped on it, it would take
    this part of your foot off.
    And that's where most of the casualties came from.
    Because we didn't know, I mean, what was gonna take place.
    And they knew.
    They knew everything we were doing, almost, the Germans.
    And we lost quite a few of them.
    This was the first situation where we really hit combat.
    You never get used to it, but after a while you
    get a little more--
    you know, you understand what the heck is going on.
    Well, this was the dead of winter.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And Bliesbrucken, geographically, what part
    of Germany was that in?
    It must have been right on the border with France.
    Right, as soon as you leave France, you go.
    That's one of the--
    First places.
    One of the first places that you would go.
    Did you take play Bliesbrucken?
    Take what?
    Did you repel the Germans?
    Or did they-- were the Germans repelled, or did you succeed?
    Yeah, we got through.
    We got through, because we had reinforcements
    that came through.
    But the thing that I remember the most
    is that the Germans were dug in, knowing that we're coming.
    Was that a surprise?
    Or did you know that they knew?
    We did not know that they knew.
    But they were prepared.
    And when we got close enough and we saw who we were fighting,
    that was a complete surprise.
    They couldn't have been any more than 14 or 15 years old.
    Oh, good God.
    Yeah, that's how young they were.
    Oh, good God.
    And I remember vividly--
    I remember this one situation that they were in foxholes.
    So when I got there, he came out,
    this one guy came out of the foxhole.
    And when I saw how young he was, I couldn't believe it.
    I couldn't believe it.
    And when I got close to him, he got so close
    that he spit in my face.
    That's how arrogant they were.
    Wow.
    If you can picture that.
    They were-- that young element was--
    the older element, believe it or not,
    were looking to get out of the war already.
    They were in the war that long.
    But--
    What would you put that down to?
    Why were the young ones like that?
    Indoctrination.
    Indoctrinated by the German hierarchy.
    They were vicious compared to the--
    I mean, we had stuff with the older ones
    that absolutely would have loved to--
    they were in it already about five, six years.
    They couldn't wait to get out of it already.
    Was this the first time that you came across Germans,
    German soldiers, the enemy?
    Bliesbrucken was the first time.
    And that was when this young kid comes out of the foxhole?
    Yes, yeah.
    OK.
    That was the first skirmish that we ran into, yeah.
    Then what happened?
    With you?
    Then with me, it was a question.
    We approached the Rhine River.
    I mean, I walked.
    I mean, I can't tell you.
    And you know what a mortar is.
    A mortar has three parts that you carry.
    You were carrying a mortar?
    Well, each one would try to help the other one by carrying
    it a certain distance.
    I was an observer, a mortar observer.
    The mortar observer is the one that
    goes up front, so that he can get on his phone
    and give the distance to the one that's back with the mortar
    itself, you know?
    OK.
    They used to call them stovepipes.
    You know, you drop the shell, and you
    would have to figure out about how many yards or whatever it
    is.
    That doesn't sound like a very safe occupation.
    No.
    [LAUGHTER]
    You're very bright!
    Thank you!
    It wasn't a very safe occupation.
    But I ended up as a staff sergeant.
    And what does that mean?
    You no longer have to be out front there with the phone
    phoning back?
    No, I was up front anyway.
    I was up front.
    But that that was after a while.
    You know, after a while.
    I think the biggest thing that we
    were so interested in becoming, from a private
    up the ladder to a staff sergeant,
    was see the pay increase.
    It went from $21 a month to $28 a month.
    25% more!
    That was a big increase.
    Right, right.
    If I got my math right.
    So what I wanted to ask you is, did you
    become a sergeant between Bleikirchen
    and the other units?
    When were you promoted?
    When was I promoted?
    I was promoted a field situation.
    That was coming out of Heidelberg, Germany.
    I led this group.
    And we were just ready to cross the Danube River.
    And that was a session in itself.
    I mean, they knew.
    It was remarkable how they knew so much
    about what we were gonna do.
    Meaning the Germans.
    We had to cross the Danube River to continue to move forward.
    And I didn't know how far.
    I mean, we didn't know how deep the water
    is and stuff like that.
    But Heidelberg was a place where the Germans--
    It was wonderful.
    The town was top-of-the-line far as that.
    And we stopped in Heidelberg.
    And they would had their little boats there,
    the residents that lived there.
    It was mostly professional people, doctors and attorneys.
    There's a university.
    It's a famous university town.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So the idea is that some of the guys
    got into those little boats.
    I wasn't one of them, but I made sure
    that the guys I was with at least got going.
    And they knew we were coming.
    So as soon as we pushed off and we ended up almost close
    to the middle of the Danube, they
    opened up with artillery fire.
    Oh, my.
    Helpless.
    Where are you gonna go from the middle of the Danube River?
    But the only thing that you were able to do is try your best.
    You know, so much has to do with luck, too.
    In fact, when we got into Heidelberg,
    we got into Heidelberg at about 6 o'clock in the morning.
    And this is walking from who knows how far.
    Was Heidelberg after Bleikirchen?
    After what?
    After the first--
    Oh, yes.
    Quite a bit.
    OK.
    Quite a bit.
    All right.
    And as we moved up, we noticed that there
    was a tavern on the corner.
    And that always frightened us, because we didn't
    know who was in the tavern.
    And it had curtains.
    You know, these kind of curtains that you certainly couldn't
    see what was doing there.
    But that's the only way that we can get through
    is to check to see what's happening there.
    And we approached the tavern, and sent a couple along
    to try to peek through the curtain that was there.
    And we saw a big round table in the middle of the room.
    And there must have been about six or eight Germans
    around the table, sitting around the table.
    Oh, just sitting around there.
    Well, they were there.
    We didn't know whether they had--
    what their intentions were or anything.
    Soldiers or civilians?
    Soldiers.
    Soldiers?
    In uniform, the whole works.
    Oh, OK.
    With their rifles alongside of them and all that stuff.
    We didn't know.
    So what we did is, we sent some around the back,
    and we sent some--
    we had to know, because there was no way of proceeding
    without knowing.
    And when we finally got to the point where, by golly,
    you got to make a move, you either go in there,
    or you're not gonna go back, when they saw us,
    they stood up from the table, and they put their hands up.
    They were waiting for us, for the American soldiers to come,
    so that they could--
    Surrender.
    They could surrender.
    They loved to surrender to the Americans.
    Well, of course.
    Because you weren't the Russians.
    That's right.
    They feared the Russians more than anybody else.
    Boy, that was murder.
    Especially after Stalingrad, when they
    went through that situation.
    Listen, I spent four years in that situation.
    So when you went over in '44, you were there until '48?
    '7.
    '47.
    OK.
    But I want to backtrack.
    Was Heidelberg after Battle of the Bulge?
    Heidelberg was before.
    Before Battle of the Bulge?
    Before, yeah.
    OK.
    The Battle of the Bulge already was almost towards the end.
    This was the last thrust that the Germans put to get through,
    to annihilate.
    First of all, that was in the Black Forest.
    I don't know if you ever heard.
    The Black forest--
    Oh, I thought it was in Belgium.
    The Battle of the Bulge was in Belgium.
    Well, no.
    I don't think it was.
    If it was, maybe part of it.
    It was a big--
    OK, so it was in the Black Forest.
    All right.
    It was a big forest, but you never saw daylight.
    They refer to it as the Black Forest
    because the trees were so thick, and it never stopped snowing.
    We couldn't use-- the Americans couldn't use their Air Force.
    And the Germans knew that, and that's
    why they picked that particular time,
    knowing that there's a better chance of their getting
    through.
    They put everything that they had--
    tanks and everything, the Germans--
    to get through.
    And it so happens that the only reason
    that they didn't get through is because they ran out
    of oil, gas.
    If they had enough gas, they would have probably annihilated
    us.
    From something like that.
    Yeah.
    So tell me, what was your experience?
    What happened to you personally?
    This is after Heidelberg.
    What happened?
    Well, what happened to me personally
    was that I was in the Battle of the Bulge,
    I would say probably for about three weeks.
    And this is what month?
    What month?
    That's hard thinking, exactly what month.
    I know that it was so thick that the Germans figured out
    that if they threw artillery fire in there,
    they would get quite a toll, because they would explode,
    and that's where I got hit with artillery fire.
    OK.
    And they wanted me to--
    the medics came, and they wanted me to--
    take me to the hospital.
    I didn't want to go to the hospital,
    because if I went to the hospital,
    I wouldn't be with my people anymore.
    They would send them somewheres else.
    That means I'd have to start in--
    With somebody else.
    New acquaintances, and new this, and new that.
    So I just stay begged off and I camouflaged it.
    Where were you injured?
    I was injured in my right leg, and in my shoulder,
    and in the right--
    shrapnel, all with shrapnel.
    You know what shrapnel is?
    Tell me.
    Tell me.
    Huh?
    Tell me.
    Shrapnel is what the artillery shells, that's
    what they're full of.
    That's what causes all the damage, is the shrapnel.
    Is it metal bits?
    Yes.
    I forgot that I'm talking to somebody
    who wasn't in the service.
    Well, yeah.
    That's right.
    I mean, it's self-evident to other people,
    but we also need definitions.
    I mean, some people won't know.
    I didn't know what a mortar sergeant was.
    No, you didn't know what a mortar--
    I didn't know what a mortar sergeant was.
    Yes.
    And yeah.
    so yes, you're kind of explaining the ABCs.
    Yeah, how would you know?
    How would you know, though?
    So--
    But I missed certain things along the way.
    I mean, you know, across the Rhine was an episode in it
    itself.
    I don't know if you ever heard, but the Maginot Line
    was a very famous line at that time.
    Mm-hmm.
    The Germans spent a fortune in money and time
    to build that particular line.
    It was a defensive line.
    They knew that the Americans, when they landed in Marseilles,
    would be coming up in that area.
    So this was protection for them.
    But you have no idea what this line
    looked like when you got-- we got through it, you see.
    We got into it.
    What did the line look like?
    It was like a hotel.
    That's how they built that particular line.
    It was like a hotel.
    They had all the necessary--
    I don't know what to call it, but they
    were doing it for years to build this particular Maginot line--
    Maginot Line.
    That's what they called it.
    But they made one foolish, very foolish mistake
    that we couldn't believe that the Germans would
    make a mistake like that.
    What was that?
    The Maginot Line was a fortress.
    But they didn't figure you can get around the fortress.
    You don't have to go right through it.
    So it's a physical building?
    Yeah.
    So we never bothered to go through the line.
    We did after they started to run North.
    Then that's when we got a chance to get down and take
    a look at what it looked like.
    We couldn't believe what the hell--
    that was really a fortress in every sense of the word,
    though.
    All this time, from Marseilles onwards--
    again, forgive me.
    this is gonna be naive question--
    Go ahead.
    You guys get any news?
    Did you get any newspapers, like the army paper?
    Yes, but not frequently.
    The army paper, they made it their business
    to distribute that.
    We would get that.
    But as far as the news getting to you,
    it was very, very difficult then.
    I mean, I would--
    all of a sudden, I would get a batch of mail
    that thick that was written maybe about three months ago.
    OK.
    Stuff like that.
    Now, in the news was there anything
    that you learned that you didn't know
    before about what was going on or what had gone on
    with the Jews in Europe?
    Yes, along the way.
    Not a lot, but you know, you're asking a question
    where they questioned a lot of Jewish soldiers
    or not necessarily Jewish, any kind of soldier.
    I mean, I don't want to push in front of you,
    but they didn't know what a-- what do you call it--
    concentration camp was.
    They never saw one.
    They didn't know anything about a concentration camp.
    And they didn't know what's doing inside.
    What about you?
    Did you have some idea?
    Along the way, as we were proceeding,
    I came across Dachau.
    You ever hear of Dachau?
    Oh, yeah.
    OK.
    Dachau had a lot of satellite camps.
    A lot of people never knew that.
    All they knew was Dachau.
    But as we were moving North, I had news
    that I knew already what a concentration camp was.
    How did you know and the others didn't?
    Mail.
    Mail from home.
    So your family would write to you
    and say that they heard about these things?
    Yes, they would question it.
    Have I seen it, and stuff like that?
    My father was always interesting in that.
    So this one day, we're moving up, and I take a look,
    and that's a concentration camp.
    It was off the road.
    It was a dirt road, and this was all off the road.
    Did you go closer?
    I went inside.
    I was the first American soldier that entered the Landsberg
    Concentration Camp in 1945.
    When was this?
    What month was it?
    What month was this?
    I don't remember exactly what month it was, no.
    I don't usually want to lead, but I will say,
    I would think it must have been sometime in April, April '45.
    Maybe--
    Yeah, yeah.
    Probably.
    In fact, I noted that it was in April 1945.
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    So this was Landsberg, and this was a satellite of Dachau?
    Yeah, Landsberg was the town that Hitler was put in prison.
    Really?
    Yeah, he was in prison, you know.
    Yeah.
    But that was in the '20s.
    in the what?
    In the '20s.
    Well, he was put-- that's where the prison was,
    in Landsberg in Germany.
    Uh-huh.
    So when you entered this camp, what did you see?
    That's the hardest part for me to talk about,
    because it never gets out of your mind,
    to be frank with you.
    What I saw, I walked in.
    The door was open.
    And what I saw there I can't describe it.
    That's what got me talking to students
    at this stage of my life, to tell them
    that it's being denied that it ever happened.
    You understand?
    I want to get the message across that people
    shouldn't-- there's a tremendous amount of people that deny that
    the Holocaust ever happened.
    It was a propaganda situation.
    You can't tell me it was a propaganda, because I was--
    Well, take us through it.
    Pardon me?
    Take us through it.
    When you come to the edge--
    Well--
    I need to see through your eyes.
    OK.
    What happened is that I walked in.
    Is this a building or a compound?
    Or what was it?
    No, this is like a Quonset hut.
    OK, so it was one building.
    Well, there was a lot of building.
    OK.
    But this was one.
    This was the first one that I--
    Entered.
    That I entered.
    And when I walked in there, first of all,
    the odor was terrible.
    Unbelievable.
    These people were-- some where alive yet.
    Some were emaciated that were able--
    there was about 15 in this particular building,
    in this hut, really.
    And I walked, walked, started to walk.
    And they were so happy to see an American.
    They didn't have to be told that it was an American.
    They were waiting for the Americans already.
    They knew that the Americans were on their way.
    And what I saw there, it's hard to describe, actually.
    Were there bunk beds?
    Was this a sleeping quarters?
    This was-- a sleeping quarter?
    What this was, was boards.
    That's all.
    They slept on boards.
    OK.
    And it was--
    And about how many people do you think were in there?
    On this one that I was in, I would
    say probably it was about 15.
    OK, 15.
    So it must have been a very small place.
    Very small.
    Yes, this particular one.
    But they had them all over.
    It was a big area.
    The camp itself was a big area.
    Because I had just received a package from home.
    I had a relation that was in the market business.
    And occasionally he would put a big package of food,
    and he would send it to me.
    It might take a month to get to me.
    And you don't want a package that you walking with.
    In any event, I went, and the driver
    allowed me to put this package in his Jeep.
    He was a driver.
    And I took the package, brought it into this place.
    And I lied it on the floor and opened the package there.
    I can't tell you what took place.
    Those that were able to pick their heads up
    started to crawl towards the package.
    And what happened after that, though,
    they started claw each other, really, to get to the food.
    So my captain, who was the head of that whole thing,
    came in and put his hand on my shoulder,
    and he says, Vince, the smartest thing you can do
    is take that package out.
    Because they're gonna just claw each other,
    and you don't want to see that take place.
    Which he was 100% correct, and that's what I did.
    I took it out.
    But from then, then I started--
    Did anyone talk to you?
    Who?
    Of these people who were in there.
    Did any of them talk to you?
    They couldn't talk.
    They were beyond the talking stage.
    They could hardly get out of the--
    Slats where they were.
    Slats, yeah.
    They could hardly.
    It was like a bunk bed.
    You know, except board.
    There was no mattress.
    It was just boards.
    Yeah.
    And I don't know how long they were laying on the boards
    and stuff like that.
    I have a book here I brought.
    I was interviewed for a book.
    In fact, the author of this book,
    took him three years to write the book.
    And why did it take him three years?
    Because he couldn't find the guys
    like me that he could speak to.
    And one day-- one night, in fact, I get a telephone call
    from the author.
    Name is Michael Hirsh.
    And he says, you don't know what I have been going through
    to try to find people like you that I can talk to.
    Do you mind if I ask you a question?
    I remember it was a Saturday night.
    He had me on the phone, without exaggeration,
    for 2 and 1/2 hours.
    Wow.
    That's how many questions he was asking.
    And do you remember any of those questions?
    Yeah, I mean, it was all of what you're asking.
    Same stuff exactly.
    Same stuff.
    But he didn't go into my grandparents.
    [LAUGHTER]
    No, he only went into the--
    What happened in Landsberg.
    Up to the-- yeah, right.
    Yeah.
    So--
    Did you go in any other huts?
    Pardon me?
    Did you go into any of the other huts that were there?
    Oh, I didn't go into all the huts,
    but they came out from various--
    they were all in these green--
    in these like pajamas.
    You must have seen pictures of them.
    Were they striped?
    I have some over there, if you want to take a look at it,
    We'll take later.
    We'll take a look later.
    They were striped, yeah.
    Did anybody speak to the American soldiers
    of the prisoners?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    In Yiddish.
    That's one of my-- that was gonna be one of my questions.
    Did anyone come up to you and start
    talking to you in Yiddish?
    In Yiddish.
    So can you tell me about that?
    They didn't know whether I was German, or French, or anything.
    But they started--
    I understand Yiddish.
    So I knew what they were talking about.
    And I started asking all kinds of questions.
    And they didn't want to talk about a lot of things, though.
    They were only-- what they went through
    was a thing that you couldn't imagine.
    The first place that I--
    after I left this particular thing, maybe about 2,000 yards
    down, they built an area, the Germans did, before they left.
    I entered there exactly two nights
    before they left they left two nights before.
    You went.
    They walked out of that place.
    But before they did that, what they created,
    they burned some of these huts down.
    They burnt them down.
    They poured gasoline all over.
    With the people inside?
    Sure.
    The people were inside.
    And they just burnt to a crisp.
    And this thing that I'm describing was a huge--
    it was a huge ditch that might have been set anywheres
    from seven, eight yards to about 20 yards.
    And what they did is that a lot of those
    that they found in these huts, they brought them to the ditch,
    and shot them, every one of them,
    and pushed them into the ditch.
    There they were piled up like from here to the ceiling
    maybe twice with bodies.
    Oh, my goodness.
    It was horrendous.
    There's not a word that you can explain what they did there.
    And my captain was there, and he says, you know, he says,
    General Eisenhower is in the area now.
    I'm gonna call him.
    Maybe he wants to come down and see what took place there.
    I says, that would be a good idea.
    The following morning, he came down.
    So the captain said, Vince, I want you to take him.
    You take him.
    You went with General Eisenhower?
    Yeah.
    Well, let me tell you something.
    That's something I never forget, either.
    He was standing closer than I am to you now.
    And I could see the teardrops--
    this is a general that's been through everything--
    rolling down his cheek.
    And when I gave this information to the author
    that I told him, that was one of the things,
    that I saw General Eisenhower, I think two weeks later, he
    called me--
    not Eisenhower but the author--
    and he said, look, it's very important,
    Vince, but I insist that everything you say
    has to be authentic.
    I don't want any guesswork or anything.
    And General Eisenhower was never at Landsberg.
    I started to check my memory.
    I mean, I still had good memory at that time.
    I says, well, I started to apologize up and down.
    I says, you want to know something?
    That was General Eisenhower.
    There's no question in my mind.
    Make a long story short, two weeks later, he
    called me and apologized.
    He was able to authenticate it?
    Yes, he says that he certainly was there.
    He says, not only was he there, but General Patton
    was there, too.
    Wow.
    So we went through the whole--
    About how much time did you spend with him?
    Not much, not much.
    I didn't spend much time.
    He was only there for about a day and a half.
    I took him to the gas chambers.
    That was--
    In Landsberg.
    In Landsberg, yeah.
    OK.
    There was about 3,300 occupants of that-- it
    was a big, big place, though.
    That is, you guys found 3,300 left?
    Or that--
    No, no.
    I didn't know how many were there,
    but that's what I read after a while.
    OK.
    That it was-- see, we came from two different directions.
    I came from one end, and the tank outfit,
    our tank outfit came from another end.
    So we both merged in the same area there.
    And when you were entering for the first time,
    you said it's off a dirt road, were you alone,
    or were you with other soldiers?
    I was with our eight, eight in our group.
    So there were the eight of you?
    Yeah.
    And what were you saying as you--
    and here I am in 2017, asking you,
    what were you saying as you were entering this camp?
    Do you remember what you guys were talking about?
    Did you know this is a concentration camp?
    Oh, I knew.
    I knew, of course.
    I knew it was a concentration camp.
    It was very easy to know.
    I mean, anybody would know that had been informed
    of concentration camps.
    They all looked alike, almost.
    How did they look?
    For some of us who've never seen it live.
    OK.
    Tell us, what do you see?
    First of all, they had the barbed wire fences around them.
    And actually, I don't know how else to describe it,
    but when you got inside, first of all, by the time we got
    in there, they had a chance--
    those that were able had a chance
    to get out of their particular Quonset huts,
    and they were all over the--
    The yard or something?
    Yes, all over the area, you know, walking, looking for us.
    OK, so that when you entered the compound area--
    Yes.
    --you already see people.
    It's not like-- you see people, inmate, prisoners,
    former prisoners who were there.
    They're walking around, those that could.
    This is after we penetrate a little further.
    The ones that I found were those that were
    in there that couldn't walk.
    They couldn't walk at all.
    That's the first ones that I came across.
    OK.
    After that, what I saw after that was pretty horrible,
    but I stopped to talk to some of them along the way.
    You can't believe the emaciated people that were there.
    And I met other than Jewish people.
    I met one in particular, I remember
    very well, that was a priest, a Catholic priest.
    What kind of impression?
    Why?
    Why does that stay in your memory?
    Because you expect it all to be Jews.
    Concentration camps, they are synonymous with Jewish people.
    Yes, the majority, overwhelming majority were Jews, yes.
    But when I saw this gentleman, and he
    wasn't abused like the others.
    I don't know why.
    But he was a very nice--
    but he was a prisoner, in no uncertain terms.
    And did you speak with him?
    Yeah.
    And how did you communicate?
    He spoke English, believe it or not.
    I don't know where.
    I couldn't get a lot of information from him,
    but I was very anxious to know how he ended up
    in a concentration camp.
    Did he tell you?
    Well, he didn't get into a lot of it.
    Do you know what country he came from?
    I don't remember exactly.
    It had to be a country that was probably nearby somewheres.
    Mm-hmm.
    How long were you in the camp?
    Not long.
    A little over two days.
    That's a long time.
    It's a long time.
    Considering that some soldiers just would come in,
    look around 15 minutes, and they move on.
    Well, it was a little more to me than it was maybe
    to everybody else.
    Because of the Jewish factor.
    Yeah.
    But the idea is that after that, there was like a big hill
    that you walked down from there into the town itself,
    which was about a mile down there.
    So I walked down the hill.
    And I was very curious to speak to the people
    that I came across down there.
    These are these call them civilians or whatever you want.
    Townspeople.
    Huh?
    Townspeople.
    Townspeople, exactly.
    And what I did is that I took about five of them
    and had them walk back with me up the hill
    to show them some of the things that I saw.
    Well, their reaction, you can imagine, was horrendous.
    They wouldn't believe.
    Did it look--
    I mean, you saw their reaction.
    How did they react?
    How did they react?
    Yeah.
    They reacted like you would react--
    in horror.
    But who knows?
    I mean, they could have been frightened that here they're
    right near the American soldier.
    They don't know what these American soldiers,
    how they're gonna--
    are they gonna annihilate them?
    Are they gonna shoot them or whatever?
    But the idea is that that's the way they reacted.
    But they had to know.
    Do you think they had known?
    They had to know something was going on,
    because the odor in the area was--
    can't describe it.
    Well, people say that.
    And then I come back with the question,
    can you describe it for me?
    But is there any words that you would
    find that would give us a sense of what it could smell like?
    No.
    I couldn't, I couldn't.
    OK.
    That's the answer I get, but I keep searching.
    I keep wanting to know it smells like this,
    or it smells like that.
    Well, you can imagine dead bodies.
    I mean, what are dead bodies?
    Most of them, what was doing up there was--
    Decomposing.
    "Horrendous" is just a very mild description.
    I mean, it's just, you can't get into all of that,
    because there's no way in the world
    that you can describe it that people would understand.
    I mean, look, if I tell you that I saw the beads of tears
    on Eisenhower's face and I wasn't exaggerating,
    that tells something in itself.
    Yes, it does.
    Yeah.
    Yes, it does.
    That tells something in itself.
    Now, your father was asking about concentration camps.
    Did you write to him and tell him what you saw?
    Yes, I did.
    Of course I wrote him, but I don't know.
    By the time he got it, I don't know.
    But I absolutely wrote him, and I explained where I was.
    That's something that you had to be very careful with.
    They couldn't allow you to write things,
    because they would go through your mail.
    They would set--
    They called them emails, you know, a little about that size.
    OK.
    And those emails they would scrutinize,
    and they if there was anything in there that
    led to direction or whatever, any important information,
    they would--
    Censor it.
    Censor it.
    So this was the army censors.
    This was the army censors.
    Right, exactly.
    But that was a very big factor, though.
    To make sure, you never know whose hands they end up in.
    And they were very careful with that, with that kind of stuff,
    though.
    So there was the term "email" during World War II,
    but it meant something else.
    Exactly.
    I never thought of it that way, but that was emails.
    Exactly.
    Mm-hmm.
    Emails.
    And you were there two days.
    Quite-- almost two days.
    Almost two days.
    And did you have to ask permission to stay,
    or could you just stay?
    No, it was a little shorter than two days because the--
    my captain, who was a wonderful man--
    he got killed, too, by the way.
    What was his name, if you remember?
    Joseph Revis from North Carolina.
    R-E-V-E-S, Reves?
    R-E-V-I-S, I think.
    I-S. OK.
    Yeah.
    Joseph Revis.
    He was a kind gentleman.
    And infantry officer usually are tough guys, you know?
    But he was a very caring guy.
    I can just imagine when he'd put his hand on my shoulder
    and telling me to get that package out
    of there, that gives you an idea of the kind of person he was.
    How did he meet his end?
    Pardon me?
    How did he meet his end?
    How did he meet his end?
    A bomb blew up.
    He was in a Jeep next to the driver.
    He was sitting alongside the driver.
    And a bomb exploded or whatever.
    And he got killed.
    [MUMBLING] The amount of--
    that took place that never came back, but wow.
    But they all had names.
    They all had names.
    That's right.
    They all had names.
    So when you left, what was the reason for leaving Landsberg?
    Was it that your unit was moving forward?
    Our destination was Berlin.
    Now, what's the name of the town?
    There was a very--
    there was a city 30 miles North of Landsberg.
    That was our first objective.
    OK.
    I forgot the name of this city.
    I'll have to write you in Falls Church.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Yeah, this--
    Can we cut for a second?
    Sure.
    We are rolling.
    OK.
    So we found out that where Landsberg is.
    And so because Dachau is in the neighborhood of Munich,
    and you said that Landsberg was a sub-camp of Dachau.
    Was that right?
    Yes.
    OK.
    So--
    Dachau had maybe about 25 camps individually named,
    but they were all satellites of Dachau.
    So Landsberg is South of Munich.
    Because you said that afterwards your objective
    was to go 30 miles North.
    After Landsberg.
    OK.
    Right.
    And so was Munich occupied at that point,
    or you were gonna take it over?
    That was the idea?
    The idea is that we didn't know.
    I really can't even answer that, whether they were finished
    with a surrender there or not.
    I don't really recall what the story was.
    But I do know it was the next stop from Landsberg.
    OK.
    Was Munich.
    And did you go through the city?
    Yeah, we went right through the city.
    Did you stay or just go on further?
    Just went through it.
    That's it.
    Did not stay.
    Did you get to Dachau itself, the main camp?
    No.
    No, you passed by that, too?
    Yes, yeah.
    By the way, I didn't ask you earlier, but for the record,
    can you tell me the identification of your unit
    and what part of the army you were from and so on,
    so that we'd know?
    Yeah.
    That's easy.
    63rd Infantry Division.
    63rd Infantry Division?
    OK.
    Yeah.
    You want to mark it down.
    And after, Munich then where did you go?
    After Munich, we continued on towards Berlin.
    Did you get to Berlin?
    Not quite.
    OK, what--
    The reason we didn't get to Berlin is that the--
    it was very funny, because they sent us.
    They sent us home, by the way, if you had so many points.
    This is later on.
    OK, this is after the war?
    This was after the war, right.
    OK.
    But they had certain--
    you have to accumulate certain points.
    How many years you were in the service,
    and whether you were in combat, stuff like that.
    So I'm bouncing around.
    That's the only thing to confuse you, though.
    But the idea is that they sent me to La Havre.
    Oh.
    OK.
    And they were sending me--
    from La Havre, they were sending--
    the war in Japan was not over.
    They were sending me to the Pacific.
    This is after the war in Europe was over?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I want to stay focused on the war in Europe to begin with.
    Good.
    The Battle of the Bulge that you said
    you took part in, that was before you liberated Landsberg?
    That was before you liberated these camps?
    Or was it after?
    The Battle of the Bulge?
    Yeah.
    The Battle of the Bulge was after Landsberg.
    OK.
    Truly?
    Because Landsberg, if you liberated
    that in April and the war ends in May--
    Landsberg was the concentration camp.
    Correct.
    Right?
    Correct.
    And we're trying to figure out what happens
    after we left Landsberg.
    Right.
    And you're asking about where did we go from there?
    Yeah.
    Well, after the next notable place that we went was--
    Munich.
    Munich.
    OK.
    Right.
    And then after that?
    After that we were ahead heading,
    but never got into Berlin.
    Now by this point, it might be in late April, early May.
    Something like that.
    Yes.
    Do you know?
    Do you remember where you were when the war ended?
    Where was when the war ended?
    You mean in Europe?
    Mm-hmm.
    The European war.
    It was May 9th, I believe.
    May 8th or 9th.
    That's just about when Roosevelt died.
    A little before.
    A little before.
    Yeah, he died in May.
    Did he?
    I think the 13th.
    Wow.
    12th or the 13th was when he died.
    Where was I?
    Well, I started to tell you that--
    what did I start to tell you about?
    La Havre.
    That you were gonna go to La Havre,
    but I want to talk about Europe.
    I want to know if--
    you know, when you never made it to Berlin,
    to what place did your unit make it?
    Just a little bit North of--
    just a little bit North of what do you call it?
    Munich.
    Munich.
    Not much further than Munich.
    So that would have to be--
    if the concentration camp was round April--
    Yeah.
    --it would have to be around that, May or whatever.
    OK, OK.
    So you were still in Bavaria?
    Yeah.
    Did you--
    Was I in Bavaria?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Munich and Dachau and so on, it's all Bavaria.
    Yes.
    Did you have any more battles after that?
    Were you involved in any more skirmishes, any more
    confrontations, armed confrontations?
    After-- no.
    OK.
    No.
    In fact, I was starting to tell you,
    after La Havre what happened is that they were sending--
    they put me on a ship to go home, to go to the Pacific.
    And that was Hiroshima.
    They took me off the ship.
    I was happy they took me off, but anybody that
    was on the ship, not my ship but was on the way,
    they would take you home.
    They'd take you right to New-- to America.
    So you were-- in La Havre, you were on your way to Japan,
    or you--
    On the way to Japan.
    OK.
    Did you make it to Japan?
    No, no.
    They took me-- they took us off the ship.
    Why?
    Because the war ended in Japan.
    That was Hiroshima.
    Oh.
    I see.
    So you stayed for another couple of months in Europe
    because Hiroshima was August '45.
    All right, but listen, the idea of what I stayed
    was, after they took us off the ship,
    they sent me back to Germany with the Army of Occupation
    for one year.
    I see.
    So you never made it home at that time.
    No, not at all.
    I didn't get home until, I don't know.
    I don't remember exactly when, but that was--
    I took the up as far as--
    Right, I got it.
    I got it.
    Now, did you ever come across any other such places
    as Landsberg or any other concentration camps?
    No, I did not.
    OK.
    This was the one thing that you saw.
    That was the one thing that I entered.
    And I didn't see any other one.
    It was enough.
    That was enough.
    Exactly.
    That was enough.
    But--
    When you--
    You know, it's very funny.
    When I was in the concentration--
    not concentration.
    When I was in the museum--
    Mm-hmm.
    --I sat down with somebody there.
    I'm talking about that works at a museum.
    Oh, our museum in Washington, DC.
    Your museum in Washington.
    And I asked her a question about Landsberg.
    She said she never heard of it.
    Uh-huh.
    Would you believe that?
    I couldn't believe it when she said that.
    Where is it?
    Where was it?
    I says, do you have a map?
    So she took me to a huge map.
    And sure enough--
    There it was.
    There it was.
    Well, in some ways it's not that surprising,
    because people generally know-- even colleagues--
    know the major camps.
    Yes.
    And sometimes the satellite camps--
    Yes.
    --we're less familiar with.
    Probably.
    Probably.
    Look, they know of Auschwitz and--
    Treblinka.
    Right.
    Places like that.
    But there was a lot of these satellite camps
    that that book has all the history of that stuff, too.
    You know, it's--
    So I want to ask you this.
    When you then get sent back to Germany
    as the Army of Occupation, what was your job then?
    What were you doing then?
    What was I doing?
    We were just there to make certain that everything
    was peaceful there.
    You understand?
    I didn't mind that.
    I mean, naturally I would have rather gone home.
    But--
    Where were you stationed?
    Where was I stationed?
    I was stationed-- the first place that I was stationed was,
    believe it or not, was in Belgium, really.
    After that, they sent me to Antwerp.
    And then from Antwerp they sent me to--
    they sent me to Germany.
    OK, where in Germany?
    Where in Germany?
    I got it written somewheres, but I don't remember the name of it
    here.
    The name of the town.
    It was a small town.
    We liked it very, very much because they gave us
    the opportunity to eat there.
    In other words, when the war was over, I weighed 165 pounds.
    Yeah.
    And when I landed back in New York, you know,
    after I got home, I went from 165 to 180.
    Because of the opportunity to--
    we'd have steak every night for dinner.
    I would eat a dozen eggs every night.
    And this is in New York, back in New York?
    Oh, still in Germany.
    Yeah.
    Still in Germany.
    This is still in Germany.
    What was your job?
    As part of the Army of Occupation, what was your job?
    My job was-- my group was with me, too, you know.
    OK.
    And the whole idea was to make certain that there it's
    peace and quiet.
    So were you performing like police?
    Were you--
    Exactly like police.
    Exactly like police.
    Right.
    This is what they did with the troops
    that they didn't send home.
    They sent them back to-- they referred to it
    as the Army of Occupation.
    So really--
    And you were based in this small town.
    Yes, but I can't remember the small town.
    It wasn't a significant town, so--
    Did you have interaction with Germans there?
    Did I have any interaction?
    The only time I had interaction with Germans,
    to be frank with you, is I told you
    about this particular lieutenant.
    You remember?
    Mm-hmm.
    Now, that lieutenant, he was--
    I understood some Yiddish.
    Right.
    And that gave me some access to speak to the German prisoners.
    Because German and Yiddish, you can make out
    some of this stuff there.
    So every time that a group of prisoners came through,
    he would call me to--
    Talk to them.
    No, he would want to know certain information from them,
    and he didn't have anybody to ask.
    So he would call me.
    And the funny part of it, he didn't understand one word
    that I was saying, the lieutenant.
    But the prisoners certainly knew that I was Jewish.
    Really?
    Oh, boy, did they.
    How did that show itself?
    How did they show it?
    Because Yiddish and German are close.
    OK.
    So they must have put it together somehow.
    Did they treat you in a different way?
    They didn't have any access to treat me.
    None whatsoever.
    But while I was interpreting for the lieutenant,
    I saw the expression on the prisoner's face.
    He knew that I was Jewish.
    You understand?
    And you were in the same town for the rest
    of the time you were in Germany, this small German town?
    We were in the vicinity.
    I mean, it was pretty much the same.
    Mm-hmm.
    A known town, too.
    A known town.
    Maybe it's on Bill's iPhone.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Where was it?
    We don't know.
    He doesn't remember where he was stationed.
    But that's OK.
    That's OK.
    That's not a very significant part of the story.
    No.
    So the letters that you were writing home--
    Yes.
    --were the ones where you were wounded, are those the ones
    that you tried to smooth over somewhat to your parents?
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    Never discussed it.
    Never put it in a letter at all.
    OK.
    I didn't want them to know, they shouldn't
    have to think about that if I can avoid it.
    Mm-hmm.
    Is there anything else you'd like
    to add to what we spoke about right now, about your service
    and experiences in Germany?
    You're talking about after the war?
    After the war.
    Or before?
    Any time.
    Or during the war?
    Either.
    Both, either one?
    Either one.
    Either one.
    Anything that you usually mention that we didn't cover.
    What was significant that I--
    well, anything significant would have to be during the--
    During the war.
    Combat.
    During the--
    Tell me about the two Bronze Stars.
    What are the circumstances?
    Well, the one of them I started to tell you about.
    Mm-hmm.
    The first one we had to go through that particular area.
    In other words, the Germans were dug in,
    in that particular area.
    Was this the first skirmish you were in?
    This was the one in Bliesbrucken, in February 16th.
    Right, that one.
    So that's the one that we lost.
    Had quite a few injured because of the--
    Mines.
    The foot mines.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    What was your role that you won the Bronze Star?
    What was the role there, you mean?
    Yeah.
    Well, the role they is that I had-- we got through.
    It wasn't just me.
    It was the other seven in my group.
    Because we were the ones that got
    through that particular area.
    That was a big deal, because it was the first skirmish
    of any major proportions there.
    In fact, I remember vividly that when
    the officers had to tell us where we were
    going the following night--
    Mm-hmm.
    --some of them were very considerate.
    You know, they felt a little bad.
    They didn't know how many of them
    were going to come back and stuff like that.
    So I remember vividly they sat us in a room,
    and they opened up two bottles of scotch.
    So that we could calm our nerves.
    You know, this is the first time, remember.
    The first time we were in combat.
    It's a big thing.
    OK, so I remember 4 o'clock in the morning is when.
    The kick off spot was-- there was a railroad.
    Tracks that went through that particular area.
    And the starting point for us, is all our guys
    had to line up on the railroad.
    You know, just before, so we can all get going at the same time.
    I see.
    Understand?
    Yeah.
    So I remember we're standing there.
    And all of the sudden, I see certain some of us, though,
    are all of a sudden they're lying on the ground.
    I don't know if that's part of their situation,
    that they're gonna line.
    But I didn't realize the Germans knew we were coming.
    And they were firing.
    I forgot the name of the ammunition that lights up.
    In other words, it lights up.
    I don't know.
    You don't know.
    It's tracers.
    Tracers?
    Were they firing tracers?
    Tracers, exactly.
    Boy, you know a lot about the German army.
    No, somebody whispered it to me in my ear.
    Yeah?
    Yeah.
    Well, the idea is, they were firing tracers.
    And that's what caught the American troops that
    were standing there.
    We were ready to go, to start moving forward.
    And some never even moved.
    And some of them never moved.
    And we thought--
    I mean, I was certain some of us thought,
    you couldn't tell that they were hit by ammunition and stuff
    like that.
    So that was a heck of a beginning,
    as far as that was concerned.
    What about the second Bronze Star?
    What were the circumstances surrounding that?
    The second one was the one in December or something.
    That was the one on the Battle of the Bulge.
    Uh-huh.
    The Battle of the Bulge, that was
    a very, very difficult thing.
    Because the Germans, as I told you,
    they were putting everything forward.
    They knew, by the way, that this is their last particular thrust
    there.
    Mm-hmm.
    And our outfit, our particular outfit was still together.
    I mean, they never broke us up, which
    was a very good reason that I wanted to stay with them.
    And just moving the guys around, I suppose, so they issue--
    they awarded it to the outfit, to the eight of us,
    or the nine of us.
    They issued the award.
    So now let's kind of wrap up.
    You come back to the United States what date?
    Can you remember?
    1947 you said.
    What date was that on?
    What date?
    Where did we end up?
    What date were we at?
    Well, we were talking about the time you were
    part of the occupation army.
    Yes.
    As more or less being the function of police.
    So that was May, really.
    Mm-hmm.
    That was in May.
    May '45?
    Yes.
    No, wait a while.
    Wait a while.
    It was May '45.
    Is when the war ends.
    No.
    Yes.
    But April, April was the issue where they were sent--
    where I was in La Havre.
    OK.
    That had to be around then.
    No, I think that was a little later,
    but that was more closer to August.
    Because that's when the war in Japan ended.
    The war in Japan?
    Is that when they threw the--
    August--
    They wiped out-- it was August.
    Mm-hmm.
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    That was August.
    That's right.
    OK, OK.
    So what was the question?
    The question is, I wanted to get a sense of when you came back
    to the United States.
    OK.
    Was that 1947?
    Yes, that was 1947.
    And--
    But the date I don't remember specifically.
    I shouldn't have asked about the date,
    because that's not an easy thing to remember.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember what time of year
    it was, whether it was the fall, the summer, things like that?
    Were you discharged at that point?
    Yes, I was discharged.
    Because they sent us to that Camp
    Shanks again for discharge purposes.
    Oh, OK.
    You see.
    It keeps figuring in your story, doesn't it?
    Well, that's the base that they decided to use,
    that the army started to use that for that purpose.
    When we left, we left for Europe,
    the idea is that that's where they clothed us,
    they gave us all the--
    they used Camp Shanks.
    That was a very central place for anybody in the East,
    you know, they left from Camp Shanks.
    And when you got home to New York,
    did your parents pepper you with questions about the things that
    couldn't be written in letters?
    Good question.
    Very good question.
    Because that's a story in itself.
    They were expecting me, my parents.
    But what I didn't expect is that she invited
    the whole family of 20 people.
    We were in the living room, and they were all--
    she had all the chairs around.
    And when I walked in there and we sat down,
    not one person asked a question.
    They kept staring at me.
    Really?
    Yeah, they kept staring at me.
    Wow.
    Like I was a--
    I don't know how to describe it.
    Can you picture that?
    There was no conversation.
    It was as quiet as can be.
    And did that last the whole time of the event?
    Well, it wasn't an event.
    It was just a--
    Homecoming.
    Homecoming.
    Yeah, that's all.
    Wow.
    And I was going with my wife at that time.
    And she was invited there, too.
    I wasn't married yet.
    And when it came time to--
    they started to break up and go home,
    they were there a long time already, she went--
    I remember she went--
    she approached her mother, and she
    asked her mother permission, could she stay there with me
    yet.
    That's how she was brought out, you know?
    So I remember that very, very vividly.
    Isn't it remarkable, these little things stick with you?
    You don't remember the name of Munich,
    but you remember a little thing like that.
    You got married?
    Got married in-- yes, I got married.
    That would be-- that would be something, too.
    I got married in January, so how does that fit?
    Well, was it January '47 or '48?
    '47.
    January '47.
    Then maybe you came home a little early.
    Maybe you came home in '46.
    OK.
    Those are mysteries that we will keep for--
    Forever.
    Yeah.
    Forever.
    I'm surprised that I can even put things in place.
    Some of these things, to be frank with you.
    I think you've done fantastic.
    You've Put--
    I mean, I really don't know how.
    Because to be very frank with you,
    if I put my car keys down somewheres in the house,
    I have to think twice, where did I put them.
    So do I.
    You, too?
    So do I.
    I feel better now.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So OK.
    I think that we've concluded the major part of our interview.
    After that, I will ask you to hold up a few photographs,
    and we'll film the photos and your medals.
    And with that, I'll say this concludes the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mr. Vincent
    Koch on February 22, 2017 in Boca Raton, Florida.
    Thank you again.
    You're very welcome.
    OK.
    You were a pleasure.
    OK.
    We're rolling.
    OK.
    Can you tell me what is that that you're holding?
    It's the Bronze Star award that I got on the 16th of February.
    That was the first combat that I had.
    And that was in Bliesbrucken.
    Germany.
    Germany.
    Thank you.
    Thank you very much.
    Come more forward at the top toward me.
    Yeah, hold it straight.
    Thank you.
    Sorry.
    Audio as well.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Did you want [INAUDIBLE]
    Yes, is it rolling?
    Yeah, we're rolling.
    OK.
    Can you tell me, Mr. Koch, what is this a photograph of?
    These are two of my closest associates.
    What are their names?
    One of them was Robach.
    He's from Chicago.
    And his profession was, he was a cook.
    And that was great, to have a cook with you.
    As your buddy, yeah.
    Yes.
    And which one are you?
    Are you the one that's standing in the back?
    I'm the one that's standing in the back.
    OK.
    I'm gonna stop a minute.
    Please.
    OK, I'm gonna repeat this one.
    Tell me, who is in this photograph.
    Again.
    Yeah.
    Sergeant Robach.
    Sergeant Robach.
    From Chicago.
    OK.
    He was part of my outfit.
    And by profession, he owned a restaurant in Chicago.
    And he used to prepare kartoffels
    for us when we were in combat.
    Kartoffels are potatoes.
    We would find the potatoes.
    The Germans would hide it in a coal bin.
    Uh-huh.
    And he would find them.
    And he'd cook them up.
    And he would make all kinds of nice things with them.
    So we loved him very much.
    I can imagine.
    And which one are you?
    The one that's standing, I suppose.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    Sure.
    This is my squad.
    I was a sergeant over these particular soldiers
    in the 3rd Battalion.
    OK.
    Of the Company M.
    OK.
    And do you-- came from?
    I do.
    It's in the back of one of these pictures.
    That's it.
    All right.
    You see on the--
    Yeah, I see.
    It says Michigan, Kentucky, New Jersey, Indiana, and Alabama.
    Right.
    And then kneeling left to right is New York, Chicago, Chicago,
    New Jersey, and California.
    I knew you-- can I say something, Bill?
    Of course you can.
    Yeah, yeah.
    I knew you were gonna ask that question, so I was prepared.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Thank you.
    OK.
    Thank you very much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Vincent Koch (born Vincent Kucharsky) was born on May 25, 1925 in New York, New York to Abraham Kucharsky and Rebecca Golub. He discusses growing up in the Bronx; his younger brother Jerome, born June 4, 1930; his father being born in London to Russian parents and his mother coming from Minsk, Russia; speaking English at home; his father working as a painter and decorator; living a predominantly Italian neighborhood; graduating high school on June 30, 1943; getting drafted on August 8, 1943; basic training in Mississippi; being one of 6 Jews in a company of 1,000 men; training to be a mortar sergeant in the Artillery; going overseas in November 1944 and landing at Marseilles; receiving a Bronze Star for their first skirmish at Zweibrucken, Germany on February 16, 1945; receiving a Bronze Star for participation in the Battle of the Bulge in December, and a Purple Heart for being wounded with shrapnel in his right shoulder and leg; German soldiers surrendering at Heidelberg; getting promoted to staff sergeant; learning about the concentration camps through correspondence with his father; liberating a Dachau subcamp in Landsberg; seeing emaciated prisoners and corpses; speaking Yiddish with the prisoners; taking General Eisenhower on a tour of the camp; remaining in Europe after the war in Belgium and Germany; getting discharged from the Army in 1946; and getting married in January 1947. After the interview, Vincent shows his first Bronze star, a photo of himself and two Army friends in front of him and a photo of the ten men in his squad where he was the Sergeant of the 3rd Battalion of Company M.
    Interviewee
    Vincent Koch
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2017 February 22
    Geography
    creation: Boca Raton (Fla.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Koch, Vincent.
    Corporate Name
    United States. Army

    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 Vincent Koch on February 22, 2017 in Boca Raton, FL.
    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 08:05:32
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn559271

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    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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    Oral History

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    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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