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Oral history interview with Ernest Kessler

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.155.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0915

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    Oral history interview with Ernest Kessler
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Ernest "Ernie" Kessler on February 23,
    2017 in Coral Springs, Florida.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Kessler,
    for agreeing to speak with us today
    and to share your experiences.
    It's a pleasure.
    I hope it'll be useful to some people.
    I think it will be very useful.
    I'm going to start with the most basic questions,
    and from there, we'll build our story.
    OK.
    So the very first question I've got
    is can you tell me the date of your birth when you were born?
    Yeah, July 14, 1920.
    July 14, 1920.
    And where were you born?
    Vienna, Austria.
    And what was your name at birth?
    The only change was Ernst.
    It was like Ernest in German so Ernst.
    Yeah, Ernst.
    And then I added one letter when I became American.
    What's that letter?
    E.
    Ernest E. Kessler?
    No.
    From Ernst to Ernest.
    Absolutely.
    One letter.
    Ernest Kessler.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    What was your father's name?
    Leopold.
    Leopold.
    And your mother's?
    Irma Epler.
    Was Epler her maiden name?
    Yes.
    OK, was it-- how do you spell it?
    E-P-L-E-R. Epler.
    OK.
    And were both of them born in Vienna?
    No, my mother was born in Vienna.
    My father was born in was then Czechoslovakia.
    That was an area that was between Hungary and Austria,
    Hungary, and the big Austrian empire.
    So as a matter of fact, his birth certificate
    is in three languages.
    Which languages would those be?
    German, Hungarian, and Czech I think it was.
    So does this mean he was born in the Slovak
    part of Czechoslovakia because that's the one that
    borders Hungary, doesn't it?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But at the time, there was one empire, the Austrian.
    So a lot of people who say they come from Austria
    don't come from Austria itself.
    Meaning the Austria we know today.
    Yeah, the larger--
    I didn't know-- most of the Jewish people in the United
    States have some knowledge of Yiddish,
    which is sort of a mixture.
    Well, I didn't realize there was such a thing
    until I came to the United States
    because the only people who spoke Yiddish were immigrants
    who never, as far as I was concerned,
    never learned how to speak proper German,
    so they spoke some language that I understand.
    Well, that shows the real demarcation
    between German Jews and East European Jews
    because East European Jews mostly
    would speak Yiddish at home, whereas most German Jews did
    not.
    Did not.
    Yeah, so I assume that at home in your family you spoke German.
    Yes.
    Any other languages?
    No.
    We just spoke German.
    OK.
    What was the town or city your father was born in?
    Do you know?
    I used to.
    Ah.
    Maybe it will come.
    As a matter of fact, the reason I wrote the little booklet
    we were talking about before is that I
    have very little knowledge about my parents,
    about their youth, their background.
    That's one of the questions I have.
    Yeah, so that was one of the reason I sat down and wrote it
    because maybe someday a great grandchild or someone--
    Will want to know.
    --will want to know and have some idea what
    was going on in my youth.
    I think that--
    I mean, because I conduct these interviews,
    but not only because of that, I think that's so important.
    Children want to know.
    Grandchildren want to know.
    Some do.
    Some.
    Or sometimes they don't, and then later they do.
    And by the time they want to know--
    It's too late.
    Exactly.
    My case, yeah.
    Yeah, well, it's good that you--
    we were referring earlier off camera
    to a sort of biography that you wrote, an autobiography.
    So you don't-- your parents didn't tell you much about
    their own childhoods.
    No, nothing.
    Very little.
    Another reason was also I was the baby in the family.
    I have a brother and sister who were pre-World War
    I. I was after World War II.
    Or after World War I.
    After World War I, yes.
    And we were an eight-year difference.
    And when you're, let's say, 12 and he's 20, it's a big gap.
    And most my cousins were my brother's age,
    so I had a problem with that too.
    So in some ways, it's almost like being an only child.
    Yeah, I had only really one cousin my only age.
    We used to get together more frequent.
    OK, your brother and sister, what were their names?
    Excuse me.
    It's going to get warm.
    Yeah.
    All right, we broke to be able to turn off the air conditioner.
    So I was asking about your brother and your sister.
    What were their names?
    My brother was Walter, and my sister, Frida.
    And they were born before World War I.
    Yes.
    Do you remember the dates?
    Not the dates, but the years.
    No.
    OK.
    But I know it's--
    A gap.
    I would have to take out my calculator.
    I can figure it out.
    That's OK.
    You explained it in the most important way
    is that there was a real age difference, and so in some ways
    almost, not quite, a generation difference.
    Yeah, and in some cases, my brother became my father.
    He took some of the load off his mind.
    Did your brother and sister live at home
    still when you were growing up?
    Yeah.
    OK, tell me how did-- do you know how your parents met?
    No.
    OK.
    Tell me how did your father and mother support the family?
    How did they put food--
    My father had a factory, a mattress factory.
    It was not the type of mattress that you
    have in the United States.
    Excuse me.
    I'm sorry to interrupt.
    Let's cut until that noise finishes.
    We're rolling now.
    OK.
    If you need quiet, this is not really the best apartment.
    That's OK.
    We'll deal with it.
    So your father made mattresses.
    He had a mattress factory.
    But he imported some kind of material from Africa.
    It was compressed, and he would fluff it up and just stuff that.
    That was core of the mattress.
    So did it have coils like we're familiar with here?
    No.
    OK.
    It was just--
    I'm sorry.
    OK.
    Rolling now.
    OK.
    I guess I'm used to it.
    So the mattress material would come from Africa.
    Get the material, and he would--
    it compressed, and he would fluff it up and then stuff it.
    Was it a large factory?
    We had about maybe four or five employees.
    And one of the things is that we lived in a very old building.
    Everybody, all the friends said, how
    can you live in an old building like this?
    But my mother went to work.
    She does bookkeeping for my father and the office work,
    so she spent most of the time next door.
    So was the factory next door to your home?
    Next door to the factory.
    Right.
    So it was convenient.
    It was very convenient, yeah.
    We had a maid who did the cooking, the cleaning,
    the babysitting, and whatever has to be done.
    As I grew up a little older, we had--
    I got a nanna and later on a university
    student who would after school come and be partly tutor,
    partly companion, partly keep me out of trouble.
    Would you say your parents were well-to-do?
    I would say, yes.
    I mean, we went on vacations.
    Did your father have an automobile?
    He always wished he had one, but because he was more or less
    working for my father, and at that generation,
    parents still had more control than they have now
    about their children in the United States.
    And when my father said no, it was no.
    Oh, so this is your older brother, Walter, yes,
    who wanted an automobile?
    Yes.
    OK, and what about--
    Excuse me.
    OK.
    The only thing is my father finally bought
    a truck to deliver goods but not a car to drive.
    And did this truck--
    he bought it when he was still in Austria when he was still
    manufacturing the mattresses because that was going
    to be one of my questions is how did he sell them,
    and who did he sell them to?
    He sold them, let's say, department stores.
    That type of thing.
    He didn't sell directly to the public.
    He sold it to stores who would resell it.
    And did your-- your mother helped him in the business.
    Right.
    What about your older brother and sister?
    Did they help him in the business too?
    My brother, yes.
    My sister, no, she didn't.
    One of the stories about my sister
    because we have some relatives who had diabetes,
    she was always afraid of getting diabetes, but she loved to bake.
    Well, there's a problem.
    And one of the things she used to love,
    bake something new, fancy.
    I remember one especially.
    It looked like a log with flowers on it.
    She would stand next to me.
    How is it?
    Did you enjoy it?
    Was it good?
    So she would bake it, but she wouldn't
    be able-- she didn't let herself eat it.
    Right.
    Oh.
    She would watch other people enjoy it.
    That's very bittersweet.
    Yeah.
    What was her name?
    I forgot.
    Did you tell me?
    Frida.
    Frida.
    That's right.
    Frida.
    Walter and Frida.
    One thing I think that has to do with politics--
    you know, Austria was a Christian Democratic country.
    It was a democracy but leaning towards Christian religion.
    Like in the classrooms, we had a crucifix.
    I can't pronounce it now.
    A crucifix in every classroom in the corner,
    and religious training was compulsory.
    It was more like mathematics.
    One was religion.
    The Catholic went in the one room and the Jews
    in another room.
    For that class.
    For the class, yeah.
    And I have a class picture.
    Beside the teacher and the principal
    is a priest in the picture.
    Well, who came to teach the Jewish kids religion?
    Rabbi.
    A rabbi.
    Yeah.
    A rabbi.
    Were there many Jewish kids in your school?
    No, not too many.
    OK, was it predominantly then Gentile?
    Catholic.
    Catholic.
    Oh, yeah.
    I would say 90%.
    And was it a neighborhood school?
    Yeah.
    Do you still remember the name of it?
    No.
    OK, what about the name of your father's factory
    or his business?
    It was Kessler.
    Kessler Matratze?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And there was a neighborhood boy,
    and we used to play behind those bales within army.
    It was our favorite sport.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Like all kids.
    Describe for me the house that you lived in.
    Oh, you want to say something else.
    Add one more thing to it--
    OK.
    --as far as politics.
    Both the communist and the Nazi, before Hitler became
    as prominent as he later became, tried
    to take over a government by force, but both of them
    were defeated by the government.
    The government was able to control, and the Army, I guess,
    stayed with the government so--
    And this would have been around what time, in the '20s or '30s?
    In the '30s because I saw the police riding around with
    the rifles and barbed wire in some areas.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah.
    Were there parts of town, there parts
    of Vienna, that were known as being more communist leaning
    and other parts that were more fascist leaning?
    Not more fascist.
    But the communists, there was worker's housing developments.
    OK.
    And so you, as a young boy, saw some of that control.
    Yeah.
    Were your parents political in any way or your--
    No.
    --brother or sister?
    No.
    At least not officially that I know of.
    What kind of conversations did you
    have around the dinner table?
    What were the topics usually?
    Good question.
    In some ways, a crazy question, you know, because it's in 2017
    I ask it.
    What did you talk about in the 1930s?
    Newspaper articles to some degree.
    Yeah, you know, in Vienna-- have you been to Vienna?
    Well, you know, the coffee shops that have newspapers on a rack.
    Oh, Vienna's famous for that.
    People come have one cup of coffee
    and maybe sit there two hours reading the paper.
    Yeah, and also come on weekends, very often my father
    would have a card game, and my mother
    would talk with the ladies.
    And the nanna would take the children to the movie.
    That sounds nice.
    Yeah, and see a Tom Mix movie.
    What kind of movie?
    Tom Mix.
    Tom Mix.
    Oh, comics.
    No.
    No, no.
    Tom Mix.
    He was a cowboy.
    I didn't know of him.
    Before your time.
    [LAUGHS]
    Famous cowboy.
    Excuse me.
    Yeah.
    Famous cowboy.
    Tom Mix.
    Yeah.
    Really?
    Tom Mix, yeah.
    A very famous movie.
    And recently came out now that they think
    he might have been a Black man.
    I don't know about any of that going to be proved or not, but--
    Well, that sounds like a really fun way to spend the time.
    Your parents have their enjoyment,
    and you get to go to the movies.
    Right.
    OK.
    Was is far from your house, the cinema?
    No, it was within walking distance.
    OK.
    Did you did you have a radio at home?
    A radio?
    Mm-hmm.
    Yes, we started out with a crystal detector
    and the earphones, and later, we got a big radio
    with big speakers.
    And when my mother wants to listen to it,
    she called me to turn it on.
    It's like now with computers where
    the children know all about it.
    My daughter, the same.
    She has to teach me.
    Yeah.
    So describe for me a little bit of your building.
    You said it was an old building.
    Yeah.
    So describe.
    A very old building, and we had what you
    call it now railroad apartment.
    OK, describe that for me.
    What does that mean?
    Where you have to go from one room to the other, and let's
    say you couldn't go to the dining room from the hall.
    You had to go through another one.
    The only thing that was separate was the room for the maid,
    so she could get from the kitchen from the side.
    How many rooms did you have?
    How many rooms?
    OK.
    Around six rooms.
    That sounds quite substantial.
    Yeah.
    How many bedrooms would that have been?
    Three bedrooms plus the maid's room.
    And why was it considered an old building?
    Do you know about when it might have been built?
    No, just the shape of the building, and I
    guess it was not popular anymore to have this railroad flat.
    Were you on the first floor, the ground floor?
    One flight up.
    So what, in Europe, would be the first floor.
    That's all there was, yeah.
    Just the one flight up.
    Oh, it was only a two-story building, and the--
    Yeah.
    And we also had access to the attic,
    so we stored things up on top.
    Was it a stone building?
    Yeah.
    OK, and did you have electricity?
    Yes.
    Did you have a plumbing?
    We didn't have air conditioning.
    We had a single heater that was--
    not cold.
    It'll come to me what they called it.
    Coke.
    Isn't that a byproduct of coal?
    Yeah, it is.
    Coke.
    And it would last.
    One filling would last 24 hours.
    Yeah, and which didn't warm too well the last room in the thing.
    So it was for the whole house, the whole flat.
    Yeah.
    Not one in each room.
    No.
    Yeah, just one.
    And what room was it in?
    I would call a family room, the room that we spent most time.
    OK.
    Unless we had a formal dinner, we would eat dinner there.
    We would spend the afternoon there.
    Do you remember the address that you were--
    that your flat was on?
    The apartment was in [GERMAN] einundfunfzig.
    [GERMAN] einundfunfzig, so that's [GERMAN] 51.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And 49 was my--
    the factory.
    [GERMAN] neunundvierzig.
    Yeah.
    49.
    It's right next door.
    OK.
    And what part of town?
    Did the neighborhood have a name?
    Well, it's the--
    Was there a [GERMAN] or something like that?
    You know, Vienna is divided into the [GERMAN].
    That was in the sixth.
    [GERMAN] bezirk.
    Sixth.
    It was called Mariahilf.
    Mariahilf.
    Yeah.
    That's a good Jewish name.
    [LAUGHS]
    Was it a mixed neighborhood?
    Yeah.
    OK, was there also a Jewish neighborhood
    in Vienna, a predominantly one?
    I think was in zweiter bezirk.
    The second district, yeah.
    OK.
    That's all I can think of.
    Were your parents very religious?
    My mother said that before World War I, she had a kosher home,
    and because it was so difficult to be
    kosher by the end of the war, she dropped being kosher.
    She drew her limit.
    She wouldn't bake any ham or any of those things.
    You could eat it if you bring in a slice,
    but she wouldn't put it on the stove.
    That was her compromise.
    Her limit, yeah.
    Did they attend religious services?
    Yes, on holidays.
    OK.
    Yeah, not Friday or Saturday.
    We didn't.
    But in the holiday, we spent the whole--
    they spent the whole day in the--
    most of the day's service in the temple.
    And it was the type that had a balcony for the woman,
    and the men where in the lower.
    And I mean, even the religious service,
    half the time the men would talk--
    Throughout it.
    --instead of paying attention to the rabbi.
    But then we had some religious people
    who spend the whole day or even the whole night
    there but not many.
    And were you sent--
    And usually, the parents gave the maid
    a few shilling, like dollars, so we went and bought
    some flowers where she, the maid,
    paid for it because we didn't have no money on that day.
    So she bought the flowers, and we brought it to my mother
    in the balcony.
    Oh.
    Yeah.
    So was that a common tradition?
    Yeah.
    It's a very nice one.
    And was the synagogue, the temple, close to you?
    Well--
    Walking distance?
    Maybe two city blocks, long city blocks, yeah.
    And do you remember its name?
    No.
    OK.
    Is it supposed to have a name?
    [LAUGHS] Usually, they do.
    Usually.
    Preparing for this, I looked and I can't find any--
    I know I have the tallis from my bar mitzvah,
    but I can't find any other paper.
    I know.
    Never got them.
    Got lost.
    I don't know what happened.
    You know, if they're not lost, then you'll
    find them at some point when it's not as relevant,
    you know, but they will show up.
    Papers have a way of doing that, but oftentimes documents
    are lost.
    Do you still have a passport from Austria?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I have a passport.
    Another thing I found we were part in--
    from 15, 16 years because I left when I was 18 so
    a year or two before that.
    We joined air raid warden.
    We became air raid warden.
    And the big thing we did, which when
    you think of all the bombing during the war,
    have a bucket of sand in the attic and a shovel.
    When an incendiary bomb comes through the roof,
    we were supposed to shovel it in the sand.
    And when you're thinking about the mass bombing and everything
    through the war, that wouldn't have helped very much.
    Well, there wouldn't have been enough sand.
    In the late '30s, anti-Semitic became more obvious.
    We'll get to that.
    We'll get to that.
    At this point, I want to still get
    a picture in my mind of what your early life was
    like, what your relationships were like to your family.
    You said that your older brother kind of
    acted as a second father.
    Yeah.
    What were his duties in regards to you?
    What would he do?
    Yell at me.
    [LAUGHS]
    That's no fun.
    No.
    Did he have to take care--
    He even went to--
    I remember once or twice he went to school
    because I didn't do too well.
    Were you generally a good student or not so much?
    No.
    Yeah, because I got better when I switched,
    when I got to a technical school.
    For a while, I was in called academic.
    We had Latin and not much, but a little Greek.
    All the old languages.
    Yeah, that was not my thing.
    Then I switched to a technical school
    where we drew plans and things like that.
    I did much better, and I enjoyed it more.
    I was not good at languages.
    So was this already in high school?
    Would've this been gymnasium or something?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    All right.
    Tell me a little bit about your parents' personalities.
    You know, your father, your mother, your older siblings,
    kind of paint a picture to me of what kind of people they were.
    Difficult. Difficult. That's a difficult question.
    I know they were very kind.
    We had everything that we needed.
    There was never any question of he
    can't except for the call from my brother.
    Most of the things we did get.
    And my sister, my brother, we used to go skiing in the winter.
    Usually, we had snow enough that you
    could take the trolley car just for the day to go there skiing.
    And I know my sister used to--
    when I was very young, my sister used to carry my skis.
    My parents-- I was brought up by strangers, really,
    between the maid taking care of me, and the nanny,
    and the student at--
    university student.
    So how would you then describe your family life?
    Was it a close family, or was it more distant people
    between each other?
    I would say we were more distant.
    We were one of the--
    it get me here too.
    I always said we not a kissing family or touching cheeks.
    My brother and sister were the same age practically,
    so my sister's girlfriends would chase after my brother
    to give him a kiss because he was not--
    like I said, we were not a kissing family.
    Family.
    [LAUGHS] So that was a way of teasing him, huh?
    Yeah.
    You wanted to talk about how life started to change
    in the late 1930s, the second half of the 1930s.
    Before then, did you ever have the feeling
    that you're different from the rest?
    No.
    OK, would you say you were integrated-- as a family,
    you were integrated into Austria?
    Yeah.
    Well, I mean, we were just--
    they still had horses and things like that,
    but politically we were all [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah.
    So what started to change?
    I'm sorry.
    Go ahead.
    Within that one.
    I have a thought. because in the late
    '30s, in '35 or '36, the anti-Semitism started to grow,
    and they had some vandalism in synagogue.
    So the men in their 20s and so, including my brother,
    they joined a organization to be--
    they had some kind of uniform and be near synagogues
    and try to protect the area from vandalism.
    So that's when they started to come more obvious,
    the anti-Semitism.
    So this is well before the Anschluss,
    well before Hitler marching in, two or three years before.
    No.
    No.
    No, that was in '30--
    let's see.
    The Anschluss was in '38.
    It was maybe '36.
    OK, something like that.
    So that would have been local agitators, local Nazi agitators.
    Yeah, and when they were outlawed,
    they started having white socks, and instead
    of the formal uniform, there wore some identifying outfit.
    Did your father's business suffer?
    No.
    No.
    No, because it was pretty limited.
    We had no problem in school, so the only thing
    was some vandalism on--
    which you have now in the United States.
    It's similar.
    As a matter of fact, after Hitler marched in, I went--
    I wanted to finish school.
    I had three months left to finish.
    I figured I'd try.
    And I went back to school and the Nazi in charge--
    all he said, you know, things have changed.
    Nazis have taken over.
    Why don't the Jews sit in the last row?
    And that's the extent of my problem in school.
    How did you look at that at the time when you heard that?
    Glad that I'm not affected by it because you hear stories
    about other students in other schools
    that were either beaten or refused entrance.
    And when I walked down the street
    and I would see a group of men on the next block,
    I would turn around and find a different way
    because I wouldn't take a chance who
    and why is there a group of people congregating.
    You know, one reason why I ask you
    because I had two interpretations in my mind.
    And one of them is, OK, so life changes,
    and there is a Nazi appointed as an official,
    and discrimination policies are instituted.
    On the other, the fact that he says
    sit in the last row in that time might
    be that he is giving his due to his higher-ups
    and trying to protect his students so that they at least
    don't experience the worst.
    Right.
    And you think it was more that?
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    That's all it was.
    OK.
    And supposedly Hitler was, at one time,
    complaining that too many Nazis have what they call a Hausjuden,
    a Jew that they are protecting.
    He says if everybody protects one Jew,
    we have nobody to persecute.
    It was a problem, isn't it?
    It was.
    So I take it then that you would have finished
    gymnasium in June 1938.
    The Anschluss--
    It was in '38, in the fall of '38.
    In the fall of '38.
    When did the Anschluss happened?
    Happened in the--
    I would have to look it up in my notebook,
    but it was in the beginning of '38.
    I don't know specifically.
    I don't remember, but I had a thought maybe
    it's March, or April, or something around then.
    Yeah.
    But that's why I asked.
    I can look it up when be break.
    OK.
    Did you remember-- I mean, did you
    see much of what was going on in the streets
    right before and right after the Anschluss?
    No, I just heard stories.
    I was lucky.
    I was not directly involved in it,
    except I guess I wouldn't go wherever I saw [INAUDIBLE].
    Did your parents stopped going out to cafes or not?
    Well, limited.
    They limited going out, and my father sold his business
    to somebody under pressure.
    This is after the Anschluss or before?
    Yeah, after.
    After.
    Yeah.
    That was common.
    Same thing.
    We own the house, apartment building.
    The one you lived in or another one?
    No, that was too shabby to own.
    [LAUGHS]
    We owned another, and he sold it under pressure.
    Do you know the address of the one that your father owned?
    No.
    No.
    And after the war, through reparations and paper,
    he got the house back.
    And then he sold it again very quickly because find out it
    was costing more to run it long distance.
    Than to sell it.
    Yeah.
    Hopefully, he got a much better price for it.
    He didn't.
    Didn't make money.
    Yeah.
    Did you have more aunts and uncles in Vienna,
    or were you pretty nuclear family?
    While I lived in Vienna, we had a lot of--
    yeah--
    Relatives.
    --because one family, they had, I think, about five children,
    all much older than I was.
    And the one that I remember talking about,
    they had a coffee shop that didn't do well,
    so my father used to help out the big family.
    Yeah, and my mother had a sister and a brother.
    Her sister had a daughter that was my age,
    but her brother was no good.
    A no good Nick.
    No good Nick.
    Yeah, so they get into trouble.
    Yeah.
    Well to me, it sounds like a very dramatic shift when--
    after the Anschluss for your family.
    Your father is forced to sell his assets.
    First, his means of making a living, and then some property.
    Was that something that changed the dynamic of how you
    looked at your future at home?
    Well, it so happens when Hitler marched in,
    I had a friend of mine in school decided that we
    were going to see the world.
    We were going to go to--
    had plans to go to Australia.
    Wow.
    So that was our big plan.
    And my parents got along to the extent
    that I had actually an Austrian passport.
    [INAUDIBLE] I was little.
    Even though it was so shortly after Hitler marched in,
    they still was furnishing Austrian passports.
    And I had the feeling when it was
    come to the actual immigration-- emigration,
    parents probably would never let me go.
    But they amused me, and I had--
    At least the passport.
    --at least the passport, which was helpful
    when things got worse shortly.
    I got my second cousin send an affidavit,
    and I was one of the early ones to get out
    because I didn't have to go through the German passport
    problem.
    Now in the Austrian passport, was your--
    was the fact that you were Jewish,
    was that noted on that passport?
    No.
    That was done later in German passports.
    They had a J stamped in the book, big one.
    But you didn't have that.
    No.
    Did your parents have passports prior to the Anschluss as well?
    No.
    So they had to get--
    Get German passports, yeah.
    I see.
    So this second cousin, where did this second cousin live?
    New York.
    So you had some family in the United States.
    Right.
    Mother's or father's side?
    Either one.
    [LAUGHS] OK.
    I took-- I wasn't fussy.
    [LAUGHS]
    I took whoever--
    Whoever was there.
    --was willing to take me.
    So they had-- in other words, both sides of your family
    had relatives in the US.
    Yeah.
    OK, and this particular cousin, what was their name?
    OK, sorry.
    Sorry.
    I'm bad at the names and dates.
    It's OK.
    I'll tell you, it's the hardest thing to remember, so forgive me
    that I keep asking.
    No, there's no problem asking.
    The problem is answering.
    [LAUGHS] The reason why I ask is usually just
    to anchor the chronology so that when
    we're talking about a specific incident,
    we can provide context.
    But sometimes, you can do it in other ways too.
    Yeah.
    So you get-- when did your parents decide
    that it's time to go basically.
    What happened to make them decide that?
    I would have to--
    a year later.
    I would have to look it up too, but it was--
    in the meantime, the war with Japan started.
    In other words, Hitler, he was [INAUDIBLE]
    but just to give you an idea, Hitler had marched into France.
    So you were still in Europe when the war started.
    No.
    No, I came in '38.
    So you left first.
    I was first.
    I was the only one of the family.
    OK, let's talk about those circumstances then.
    I left in--
    Hang on a minute.
    A couple of questions--
    you do finish your gymnasium in the fall of 1938.
    Right.
    OK, and then--
    I think it was August.
    It was August that you finished.
    OK, and then how long before you actually left?
    How many weeks or months?
    Weeks.
    Weeks.
    Yeah.
    So you were ready to go.
    You were in your mind, and you were sitting on packed bags.
    Yeah.
    OK, and was the--
    [?
    I was in DDR.
    ?] I just needed that final push to get the visa,
    and as soon as I had it, I was the first one of my family
    to get out.
    Now at that point, did your parents
    think it's more like your youth trip
    to New York rather than Australia,
    or did they see this as, OK, this is
    a good thing that he's leaving?
    Yeah.
    The second?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And I never thought about it until at least not too long ago.
    The strange part is my sister took me to the train.
    I have a feeling that I wasn't coming back.
    Can we cut for a little bit?
    Yeah.
    It's sort of what you are saying is
    that it occurred to you not so long ago that your sister came
    to see you off because it would have
    been too hard for your mother and your father.
    You know, as children, we don't imagine
    how hard it must be because the drama of the moment
    is what takes over the trip itself.
    Being that I was always the--
    they still considered me the baby,
    and I said that I was the first one of the family.
    My sister went to England for a little by [INAUDIBLE] domestic.
    After you left.
    After I left, yeah.
    And then my brother got somehow through Italy.
    My parents thought they can stay like a lot of older
    people, my wife's parents too.
    The [INAUDIBLE] were the ones.
    So there were soldiers, and all them thought, ah,
    things won't get that bad.
    Yeah.
    They all hoped that things will level off.
    Got a little bad, but then won't be that bad.
    And so your parents stayed until--
    The war.
    Hitler had marched into France.
    So after he had been in Poland, he then marched into France.
    There was a short time when Hitler and Russia
    were on a friendly basis shall we say.
    Yeah, they were on the same side.
    They were allies.
    Right.
    They were allies with we should say,
    but Hitler was using all his forces
    on the west front occupying Holland, and [INAUDIBLE],
    and France.
    So by that time, my parents decided that they want to leave,
    that things are going to get worse.
    They probably bought a visa to one of the islands.
    You mean the Channel Islands?
    Yeah.
    The British ones.
    No.
    No, Central America.
    Ah.
    One of the islands.
    And [INAUDIBLE] yeah, but they couldn't get out
    through the west anymore because the war was there,
    so they had to go east.
    So they took the Russian railroad,
    and they ended up in Japan in Shanghai.
    Oh my goodness.
    By then, the war with the United States
    broke, so they got stuck in Shanghai for the duration.
    So they spent the whole war, World War--
    In Shanghai.
    --in Japan.
    Yeah.
    They had enough time to pick a bride for me.
    [LAUGHS]
    Didn't know that in the meantime I got married.
    You had found-- yeah.
    Did you have any ability-- did you
    know what was happening with them at the time,
    or was there any correspondence or anything?
    Very, very little.
    We just heard that they going there,
    but then once the war broke out, all communication was finished.
    OK, you mean the Pacific War.
    Yeah.
    OK, so you knew that they had reached Shanghai.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Then it stopped until after the war was over.
    So four or five years.
    Yeah.
    That's huge.
    That's a huge amount of time.
    The interesting part is we understand
    that the story is that Hitler asked Japan to return all
    the Jewish immigrants to Germany for extermination,
    and the Japanese refused.
    I guess it was the Japanese saying
    that it's not my business.
    That's your business, and if they're here,
    they are here and will stay.
    Well, a number of people went that route,
    but it's a huge route.
    It's through--
    It's fairly large, yeah.
    But again, I have no real details about it.
    Did they talk about it after the war?
    No, except they managed.
    And things were not easy, but they managed.
    And they bought a couple of gowns
    they bought to bring for the ladies [INAUDIBLE].
    A few gowns.
    Yeah.
    From Shanghai?
    Japanese.
    Whatever they call it.
    The kimonos?
    Kimonos, yes.
    They brought.
    So the way that they managed to have enough money
    and enough things to think about that they were not
    under that great of pressure as unfortunately so many others
    were.
    Yeah, when they-- we'll go back to your story,
    but I'd like to kind of finish the thread on theirs.
    You say that you first had contact with them again
    after the war finished.
    Yeah.
    Yes, when did they arrive in the United States?
    Can I interrupt for one second?
    Sure.
    I'm sorry.
    It's rolling.
    Give me a second here.
    Sure.
    OK.
    I'll sit up.
    OK.
    There we are.
    Should sit up.
    We're good.
    Yeah, I just readjusted.
    We're good to go.
    Everything is rolling.
    OK.
    Do you want to shut the fan off?
    Yes, I do.
    Yeah, thank you.
    So we were talking, I think, about your parents--
    Yeah.
    --in Shanghai, and I was, I think, asking,
    when did they finally come to the United States?
    I would say the war ended in '45.
    Around '47.
    About two years after.
    So the truth is you didn't see your parents
    for almost 10 years--
    Yeah.
    --when you left in 1938.
    All right, let's talk about your journey.
    After your sister brings you to the train station
    and she sees you off, how did--
    you know, by transport, how did you reach
    the places you needed to go to?
    You took a train from where to where?
    I had an uneventful rail ride to Amsterdam.
    I had no problem at the border or anything.
    The ship was a new ship.
    It was the second trip.
    It was very nice.
    Was it a passenger ship like a cruise ship or something?
    No, it was-- yeah, passenger ship.
    And I have the picture in the ballroom where we--
    so obviously we're at a party.
    We have party hats on, and they had games and movies.
    It was not first class, but it was not--
    I don't know-- tourists.
    Not the lowest.
    It was somewhere in between.
    And I don't remember much about it
    except that I have the picture, for instance, having
    dinner with four ladies.
    You know, people describe to me sometimes their journey
    across the ocean but later than yours,
    and the atmosphere is much different.
    If they tried to get out later, it
    was much more tension, much more nerves.
    No, this was very pleasant trip, both to the railroad
    and then on the ship.
    What was the ship's name?
    New Amsterdam.
    The New Amsterdam.
    Was it a Dutch ship?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And it was brand new.
    That was the second trip we were on,
    and they had all the facilities, and sports, and things
    like this on it, games.
    And when you left-- clarify for me this--
    was it more because you were young and wanted to travel,
    or was it because you wanted to get out
    of Austria because of the menace that was approaching
    and that was already there in many ways?
    No, the first part.
    You were young.
    You wanted to travel.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Yeah, it was not political.
    Well, when [INAUDIBLE] finally started getting--
    after Hitler marched in, then it turned into necessity
    rather than the [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah, so do you remember arriving in--
    Well, that was one of the big disappointments arriving
    in the United States.
    Where was the Statue of Liberty?
    Where was she?
    I don't know.
    Hidden.
    After Brooklyn, then Staten Island.
    You couldn't see it?
    I always envisioned that the very first thing
    when you come to the United States is the Statue of Liberty.
    And so for many people it is.
    Yeah.
    So where was she when you arrived?
    After you go through Staten Island, and Brooklyn, and Long
    Island, I finally get--
    you get to see it.
    OK, so in other words, she wasn't hidden
    by fog or something like that.
    No, but you had to wait a while.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    No, it's [INAUDIBLE] the statue [INAUDIBLE] is on that island
    in the middle of--
    Ellis Island, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Where did you disembark?
    In Brooklyn.
    Not Brooklyn.
    I'm sorry.
    Bokan.
    Bohok.
    Hoboken.
    Hoboken.
    Hoboken, New Jersey.
    In New Jersey, right.
    OK.
    And one of the relatives that send the affidavit,
    he had a car.
    He picked me up, and then I saw Manhattan
    with all the fire escapes.
    I thought that was so ugly to see
    these things on every building.
    I was very disappointed, but the more modern cars too.
    We had more modern looking cars, streamlined cars,
    already in Austria than in the United States.
    They were all the boxy cars with the running boards.
    Yeah.
    Those were your first impressions.
    Yeah, first impression was not what you'd expect of Manhattan.
    From when he had the car, where did he take you?
    Where did he live or--
    Oh, he lived in the Bronx.
    So is that where you went?
    Yeah, I stayed with them for a little while, a short time
    until I got a job and then had a little money.
    A refugee rented a seven-room apartment.
    By yourself?
    No.
    No.
    A distant friend--
    OK.
    --rented a seven-room apartment.
    Then he rented a couple.
    They rented each room to one or two people.
    And you got a room there.
    So I got a room there.
    Was that also in the Bronx?
    Yeah.
    OK, what kind of jobs were the first ones that you got?
    Well, the very first job I helped an electrician,
    which was nice.
    Unfortunately, his cousin came, and that put me out of a job.
    Then I got a job in the garment industry.
    Down in Manhattan?
    Yeah.
    Wow.
    Now did you need to speak English for those jobs?
    No.
    How much English did you know at that point?
    Very little.
    Very, very little.
    And I tried to verify when some of my young co-worker's gave me
    new phrases.
    [INAUDIBLE] Given the wrong things to say.
    So in other words, that no one's playing a joke on you.
    Right.
    OK, did anybody try do you think?
    No.
    The minimum wage at that time was $0.25--
    An hour.
    --an hour.
    But a relationship, you could get a Chinese dinner
    for $0.35 full course.
    So the $0.25 lasted you awhile.
    Also a relative once, a big treat,
    give me $0.50 to go to the Roxy.
    To go to the Roxy.
    Yeah, that's like the Radio City Music Hall, the movie.
    How cool.
    And I didn't want to take.
    I thought $0.50 was too extravagant to spend on a movie.
    Oh, so what did you do?
    You didn't go.
    They finally convinced me I should go.
    Now that $0.50, the movie was, I think, $0.25.
    The round trip on the subway was $0.10.
    $0.35.
    Still let me $0.15 for lunch, a hamburger, or Frankfurter,
    or something.
    So it went.
    Did it make an impression?
    Certainly.
    Well, to see the building itself is impressive,
    and the big stage shows besides the movie, yeah.
    Were you hearing things about what was going on in Europe?
    Not to the full extent.
    Do you remember getting letters from your family
    while you were in the Bronx there?
    Well, it was only a relative.
    Yes, I did, but they didn't mention anything
    of the [? worst ?] thing.
    I mean, there was little things like,
    for instance, that neighbors would leave food packages
    on a park bench for them.
    Oh, dear.
    So that's-- yeah, as it was, not too much.
    You know, I was still a kid, even though 18 is--
    you should be more adult. It's still not--
    how should I say--
    political [INAUDIBLE].
    Well, you know, on the other hand,
    you were the baby of the family, and this was your first time
    out from under the wings of the family.
    And it's not to be expected-- or it is to be expected that it
    takes a while to adjust to that, you know, and--
    To be on my own.
    Yeah, did you get letters from your sister?
    Was she, by now, in England?
    Yes.
    OK, and what happened with your brother?
    Now you said you went through Italy.
    Is that it?
    Yeah, I don't know either.
    But somehow he got crossed the border,
    and eventually they all came to United States, my whole family.
    Well, what about-- let's talk about your sister
    and your brother.
    When did your sister arrive in the United States?
    You got me.
    During the war?
    No, before the war.
    Oh, so she got there fairly early.
    She got before the war because both her husband,
    my brother were all in uniform eventually.
    OK, when we talk about before the war,
    we're talking before the United States entered the War so
    before '41.
    Yeah.
    OK, so she arrived.
    Was she already married when she came?
    Yeah.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Wrong.
    She met her-- she knew her future husband,
    but they were married in the United States.
    And also I think she would have preferred someone else,
    but at the time, my father--
    at that time, still you needed permission, you know?
    And he didn't say yes for someone else.
    Right.
    So she took second choice.
    It was not the best.
    But [INAUDIBLE] you mentioned about the jobs.
    My second job was in the garment industry,
    and one thing I was very proud of, they would make things,
    let's say, for Sears Roebuck for 100 stores.
    And they give you enough material, enough dresses,
    let's say, that every store would
    get three green, two blue, and one red
    and size six, eight, and 10.
    In all of those colors.
    And you couldn't end up with all size 10 blue,
    so you had to be able to figure out how much to put in each box.
    So that was your job?
    That was my job, and I was proud of doing it,
    that I could handle it, you know?
    You know, you were new in the United States.
    It was-- you know, who wouldn't be coming straight from Vienna?
    Another example of my father, he heard that in the United States
    men wear leather jackets, so he says, I'll get--
    I'll have a leather jacket made for you because they
    didn't do it in Europe.
    He says, but why a jacket?
    Might as well get--
    A coat.
    --make you a coat.
    So I got a beautiful leather coat,
    except nobody in the United States wore a leather coat.
    And I was embarrassed to walk in my leather coat
    because it was pointed out you're not belong here.
    It makes you stand out, yeah.
    Yeah, so I wore it at work until it wore out.
    But still, you obeyed.
    You obeyed.
    What I was used to is short under the pants.
    We call lederhosen.
    Lederhosen, yeah.
    Yeah.
    So did you-- when your sister came over, did you meet her?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And did she then live with you, or how did that work?
    She managed to get--
    well, he was-- in Europe, he was a dentist.
    In the United States, he didn't have enough formal training,
    so he opened a dental lab.
    So he worked for dentists, and that apparently
    paid well enough that they managed very quickly
    to establish.
    But you then lived separately.
    Yeah, most of the time.
    I lived for a while with my brother too, and--
    When did he come over?
    Before the war?
    After me.
    [LAUGHS] That's accurate.
    That's very accurate.
    Also before the war, and then he was drafted.
    We were all three in uniform eventually,
    only I had a little side trip to Minnesota.
    And that was why?
    The HIAS, which is a Jewish organization,
    decided that there are too many Jewish refugees collecting
    in New York City and that they would
    like to spread them out a little bit across the country.
    And at first, my brother was against it.
    He wanted me to stay in New York,
    but then he accepted my decision.
    So you decided to go?
    Yeah.
    Because one of my questions would be
    could HIAS compel you to go?
    No.
    No, I was volunteering.
    It was an extension of my--
    being on my own and see what happens.
    So it was National Youth Administration and Roosevelt
    Make Work Program.
    And HIAS arranged for me to join the program,
    and I understand that HIAS paid for the cost involved.
    So I went there.
    And I took auto mechanic, but that was too dirty.
    So I went into electronics because I
    had some knowledge of electrical work, and I preferred that.
    So there were some courses involved with this.
    Yes, it was a training--
    a live-in training program.
    OK.
    But we live in barracks.
    In Minnesota?
    In Minnesota.
    I even remember the town.
    Minne-- no.
    I was going to say Minneapolis, Minnesota,
    but that's a big city, Minneapolis.
    Ah, anyway, I visited.
    I was invited by a Jewish family for dinner once or twice.
    Did you see much of Minnesota outside of the family
    in the barracks?
    No, they had a lake and a rowboat.
    I would go pulling the rowboat, go swimming pulling the rowboat
    with my emergency [INAUDIBLE] in case I need to--
    yeah.
    And I was the only Jew in that group.
    They were mostly local people, people live in are my own age.
    And what was the idea after you finish the course?
    Do you stay in Minnesota?
    Was that the thought?
    Yeah, going to stay there, yeah.
    But what I was saying, there were the other fellows
    in the program, when they found out that I'm Jewish,
    they were shocked.
    When I called, told them that I used a push
    cart in New York delivering cloth,
    we couldn't believe it because the only Jew they know
    is doctors and businessman.
    They didn't know that Jews in some areas do manual labor,
    and I think that's part of the--
    causes anti-Semitism.
    Is not having knowledge.
    Is that what you mean?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you feel anti-Semitism from them--
    No.
    --or just most wonder?
    No.
    They accepted me.
    Just trying to convince them.
    You know, there's a joke that a mother
    doesn't think her son is grown until he got a doctorate.
    [LAUGHS] So what they had in mind were stereotypes.
    Yeah.
    How long did it take you to learn English?
    Well, it's so gradual.
    There's no real--
    Did you go to courses at all?
    I had very little.
    Mostly, I learn from my co-workers.
    But then the war broke out.
    Were you in Minnesota when the war broke out?
    Yeah.
    And I registered in the draft board, and I took a bus
    and went back to New York.
    And why did you decide to do that?
    Right away.
    And why?
    Why?
    Was Minnesota just not for you?
    No, the war broke out.
    I wanted to be in it.
    And then instead of waiting for the things
    to get done in Minnesota, I went back to New York.
    So you figured it would be quicker in New York?
    Yeah.
    And say goodbye to everybody and see where things are.
    Yeah.
    Who did you live with when you got to New York?
    My brother.
    Was he also living in that same kind of place of renting a room,
    or did he have his own apartment?
    No, he had his own apartment.
    But he had a one-bedroom apartment, and it kept changing.
    But while I was there one time, he
    had two, four, five, at least five people
    sleeping in a one-room apartment and one bathroom.
    Was he taking people in?
    No.
    No, they were all family.
    My cousin had come in the meantime,
    and his wife's sister came.
    And I came.
    OK, was your brother married?
    Yeah, he was married.
    Was he married still in Australia?
    But he had no--
    yeah, he got married after Hitler.
    In other words, he and his future bride
    were, I think, pushing already but didn't get the formal OK.
    But once Hitler came, I guess my father decided
    might as well get married.
    But one thing I remember for that wedding,
    we didn't go all together, all of us at the same time
    because after Hitler, we each walked individually
    to meet at the temple because we wouldn't
    want to make something obvious that there's something going on.
    Then as soon as I came to New York, I went to the draft board
    to volunteer, and the Sergeant said, you can't volunteer.
    You're not a citizen.
    He said, but you call your draft board,
    and you say you'd like to be drafted immediately.
    They should put you head of the list, and that's what I did.
    Oh my.
    Called the draft board, and instead
    of waiting for your number to be called up,
    they put my number ahead and drafted me immediately.
    And this is what you wanted.
    Yeah.
    So you couldn't join the Army as a volunteer, the regular Army.
    Interesting.
    I didn't know that.
    I didn't know that.
    But you could volunteer for the draft,
    and that'll take you to the Army.
    [LAUGHS] The rules and regulations, you know,
    they're kind of funny.
    Well, one was the regular Army, and the other one
    was the draftee Army that was, like,
    sort of two separate sections.
    So what happened then?
    So you were drafted in--
    when?
    1941?
    '42?
    '41.
    No.
    Pearl Harbor was '41.
    '42 and '43, '45.
    '42, I was drafted.
    OK, tell me about that experience.
    Where did you first go?
    When you were drafted, what was the first step?
    They put me into the Medical Corps, and I could tell you.
    I can't look at blood.
    The first time I see a wound, I'm
    going to lie down next to them.
    He says, well, don't worry.
    The first time, it might happen.
    We'll pick you up.
    The next time, you'll be OK.
    So I had--
    Was this day after basic training?
    --some basic training, marching up and down.
    Where?
    No idea.
    OK.
    And, yeah, they had these things which is important--
    uniform of the day, which means the post at every morning, what
    everybody should wear so that the whole barracks stand
    with the same outfit because you have the brown outfit when warm
    and when not so warm.
    So we were issued several groups of uniforms.
    So you didn't just get one.
    You got several types of uniforms.
    Yes, and they posted which one to wear everyday.
    And we had a little bit of what they call close order drill
    marching up and down, and then going right,
    left, but no guns or nothing.
    And one thing I remember how to pick up somebody lying there.
    You put your feet against his feet feet,
    and you pull it up, and throw over the shoulder.
    That's how you do it?
    Yeah, to carry somebody if you don't have a [INAUDIBLE].
    Did you have to practice on other people to do it?
    Yeah, sure.
    Were you able to pick them up easily?
    Yeah.
    The only problem, some of the, let's say,
    heavier width men had a problem because everybody would
    pass by when we'd pickup one--
    The skinny guys.
    [LAUGHS]
    --one that's not so heavy.
    Then they had to get the sergeant
    next to them and the next man to [INAUDIBLE] you pick him up now.
    [LAUGHS] Because you get heavy guys being wounded as well.
    I didn't know how it is in the field when the actual--
    I think they are--
    but by the time you go in the field,
    you're already better trained.
    Yeah, and you're also not skinny anymore by that time.
    I mean, you're not heavy anymore.
    Fortunately, I was only a few weeks in training,
    and then a Lieutenant came.
    And he assembled all the foreign speaking people
    and said who, wants to volunteer?
    For what?
    Did they explain to you?
    Military intelligence outfit.
    That sounds interesting.
    So everybody raised their hand, and that outfit
    was Camp Ritchie, that camp.
    See, that name I remember.
    Yeah, and so that was--
    were there people who spoke many different languages,
    or was it mostly German?
    Mostly German.
    OK.
    And a lot of refugees like me, but we had all languages--
    Italian, French, Polish, Russian, all kinds of--
    yeah.
    We got there with a bus.
    Oh, before I must [? say-- ?] no.
    No.
    Back.
    Camp Ritchie, right.
    We got to Camp Ritchie.
    The first thing they said, there's
    no uniform of the day at Camp Ritchie.
    You wear what you're comfortable with.
    That doesn't sound like the Army.
    And no saluting of officers.
    No saluting of officers?
    No.
    There were too many there because it was a mix.
    We went to class and lectures with officers on the same level.
    There was no distinction.
    So what kind of training did you get there?
    Well, one of the things I remember,
    which was very unusual, they had maps of the local aerial
    with German names on it.
    And it was all the American street names and routes
    all were changed to German names.
    So like Maryland, a map of Maryland with German names?
    Right.
    And then they took us and dropped us
    off every two, three miles.
    Every two-man team, they gave us one of these maps
    and said that we'll meet you at midnight at this coordinates
    and at this point.
    Find your way, so the idea was that you had to rely on a map
    to find your way.
    You couldn't read the road signs because they were not
    in English on the map.
    No, they're in German.
    But are they the translation of the names from English?
    There's no translation.
    They just picked out names.
    So if you're on a street that's called Main Street in English,
    they may call it [GERMAN].
    Yeah.
    That's right.
    What you have to go by--
    let's say the compass says north is over there,
    and you find a street and a wider
    street that's going in that direction, that's probably it.
    And if you come to a crossroad, if the crossroads is similar,
    then you know you're in another area.
    Did you get lost?
    No.
    So the maps worked.
    The maps worked, yeah.
    Just that the names were not right.
    And then they gave us a map.
    I don't if you are familiar with contour lines.
    No?
    No.
    On a map, when there is a hill, a steep hill,
    the lines are close together because the line is, let's say,
    at 90 feet, 100 feet, 1,000 feet.
    When it's flat, those lines are further apart.
    So you can tell on a map whether this
    should be a flat area, or a steep area,
    or whether there is a gully, the line goes--
    because a river is there.
    So they gave us a map and took out a section of the map,
    cut it out, and said, you go and fill it in.
    So we had to go out and look.
    You know, there's a hill over there and a stream going there.
    One thing they dropped, they told us
    they used to have pigeon flying, carrier pigeon.
    But too many pigeons got hurt, so they dropped that.
    But we did have--
    and that was where they crowded around me because I
    was the most experienced--
    Morse code.
    That is the dots and dashes.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, and when I had the electrical classes in Minnesota,
    we had some training, so I had some experience with Morse code.
    So I was the only one who know.
    Who knew about it already.
    One thing we didn't have--
    very little of the Corps, close order drill.
    Didn't have a firing range, you know,
    to practice shooting the gun.
    Did you have that in basic training?
    That was my basic training.
    No, I thought in Camp Ritchie you didn't have this,
    but in basic training were you shooting guns?
    Camp Ritchie was my basic training.
    I didn't have a basic training--
    Elsewhere.
    --at all.
    OK.
    Like the marching and things like
    this, very, very, very little.
    And in that movie, they mention that this
    is the movie with the most unlikely soldiers in the US
    Army.
    And what was the reasoning why you
    wouldn't get this other kind of usual training?
    Time.
    I guess they tried to get us as quick as possible to Europe.
    And sometimes even after we got to England,
    we were guarding prisoners with rifles but no ammunition.
    And I was wondering sometimes whether they
    didn't trust us as German.
    Were you alone in that kind of suspicion?
    I didn't think of it at the time.
    Now much later, I was thinking, you know, it's stupid.
    How come we were guarding prisoners with no ammunition
    because we were never in the firing range.
    That's the kind of soldier Camp Ritchie produced.
    Well, but they produced something else too.
    So those other kinds of training,
    those sorts of trainings with the maps,
    they actually sound fascinating.
    But what was their purpose supposed
    to be in reality on the ground?
    What was it supposed to train you for?
    We had found [? some stuff, ?] the list of all ranks,
    German Army ranks.
    You can recognize what kind of prisoner you have
    whether it's high ranking or low ranking.
    We also had besides German, Russian insignias,
    and we had insignias that tells you what type of outfit
    the German was with, whether it was
    a tank outfit or an infantry.
    Once we were told that they're expecting a schnell battalion.
    Schnell is fast, a fast unit.
    So we expected a motorized unit.
    That was in Germany actually in the field.
    Turns out it was a bicycle outfit.
    Yeah, but part of the training we had all the ranking insignias
    and the type of outfit their on.
    I have a book of all the tanks and guns, what
    they look like to identify.
    Now when you were being trained with maps where you can't read
    the street names, what was the purpose
    of that when you were going to be in the field?
    The purpose-- let's say we're in France
    and we don't have a Frenchman with us.
    So we can find our way, or you're a German speaking
    prisoner and you manage to escape.
    And you're an American German.
    Now you're in France.
    You can't read the street signs.
    He has to go by maps, so, yeah.
    Was there training on interrogation techniques?
    Very little.
    Very little.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And we had nothing like you read in the paper now.
    That waterboarding and the pictures
    you see with nude prisoners and guard dogs,
    we had nothing like that.
    Nothing like that.
    The worst thing that happened to us to a prisoner,
    we had a dark room.
    We'd lock them up in a dark room, and we forgot.
    So the poor guys spent almost a day--
    In the dark room.
    --in the dark room, which is no fun.
    Was this on purpose forgetting or really forgetting?
    We forgot.
    You just forgot.
    We forgot, yeah, because one of the techniques that we developed
    in Germany, we told German prisoners--
    well, the simple was we're having
    an exchange with American prisoners with German prisoners.
    So we're looking for volunteers who
    would like to go back to Germany so we can get the American,
    or the next level, the worst level,
    we have an exchange with the Russians.
    We're going to trade prisoners with Russia,
    and we're looking for people.
    Oh, no, we did always say we--
    OK, so let's say--
    Nobody wanted to.
    Nobody volunteered for Russia.
    No, or we had another very simple thing.
    And we had a large group of prisoners,
    and one was not cooperating.
    Let them stand in front of the [? hut, ?]
    and he would see prisoners going in, going out, going in, going
    out.
    And he's standing there.
    Call him in, and they still, wait outside.
    So after a while, he got tired of standing
    outside waiting when he saw all the others coming and going
    and being [INAUDIBLE].
    So now these were not the type of prisoners
    that we are now talking about, the bomb people,
    and it's a different war now.
    And waterboarding is torture.
    It's not what you're supposed to be doing.
    Well, here's a question to you as somebody who
    was trained to be an expert.
    There are people who say that torture does not
    produce good intelligence.
    It produces questionable intelligence because it--
    people will talk just not to being tortured
    and say anything that they think you might want to hear,
    whether it's true or not.
    They will try to please you to not to be tortured.
    Doesn't necessarily mean-- unless you
    can prove that it's wrong and go back again.
    That's a very, very difficult subject.
    So let me step back a little bit.
    Was this the first time when you went to Camp Ritchie
    that you were with other young guys who were, in many ways,
    just like you?
    Yeah.
    They had come over from Germany, from Austria.
    They were refugees and so on.
    Did you guys talk with one another?
    Did you tell one another your stories, who was back
    home, who was here or not?
    No, not really.
    And I would say maybe half of us were refugees.
    They were [INAUDIBLE].
    There were Americans who were brought up
    on a different language, German or French, because they lived--
    the parents were immigrants a generation before.
    And they spoke it at home, so they spoke fluent.
    Was it usually as good as your language because you--
    Just about, yeah, because that's what they spoke at home when
    they were young.
    What about amongst the refugees?
    Were there German Gentiles?
    In other words, were some of the refugees not Jewish?
    Not that I know.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    The American German speaking people, there were many--
    Non-Jews.
    --non-Jews, yes.
    But German, I don't know.
    And what kind of news were you getting?
    Between '38 and '41, you get some kind of news
    about what's going on in Europe.
    Once you're drafted, what kind of news
    do you get about what's going on with the war?
    The wrong news.
    The what kind?
    The wrong news.
    The wrong news.
    In other words, you would hear about a town being
    attacked that we took a week ago, or we would--
    the newspaper would say we are this far, the front line,
    and we haven't been there yet because the newspaper doesn't
    want to give the enemy information.
    So all the news and--
    So the newspaper guys knew the truth, but they would not--
    They may or may not.
    The [INAUDIBLE] they furnished them
    with information which is not true.
    Correct.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And I have a lot of picture postcards from England,
    mostly England, that I got while we were there.
    And if we were--
    if I would send a picture postcard from a town
    that I was visiting, I could send them
    the picture postcard with the name on it of the town.
    But I send them a picture postcard from the town
    that we were stationed, we had to cut out the name
    and send it without the name of the town.
    So geography was incredibly important in other words.
    Geographic information--
    Sure.
    --was-- OK.
    Let's go-- OK.
    I have a funny story, but I really hate to put it on tape.
    Well, we can cut for right now.
    That's do that.
    This has nothing to do.
    Once we-- a group of us together leave--
    You were in Europe already.
    Yeah, we were stationed near Washington
    for a while waiting to be shipped.
    OK, this is in Camp Ritchie.
    Yeah, well, it's outside of Camp Ritchie
    near where we were stationed waiting to go
    to the airport for a few weeks.
    OK, hang on just a second.
    You realize we're on tape now.
    OK, yeah.
    That's not-- it's stupid of--
    not stupid.
    Different level.
    Oh, well.
    That's-- the refugees, we decided,
    let's go to Washington to see the Washington Monument.
    But we asked directions to the Washington--
    not monument.
    What's the other one?
    Statue.
    We asked.
    We were three guys asking for the Washington Statue,
    and some people directed us.
    We end up in a little park at the little statue.
    We said, where is the thing with the thing?
    Where's that big, tall thing?
    Oh, you meant the Washington Statue.
    This is the-- or Washington Monument.
    We didn't know the difference.
    Did you eventually get to the monument?
    Somebody directed us in the right place.
    How long did your training in Camp Ritchie last?
    About how long was it?
    A few months.
    I have all of these, I can look it up after.
    I have a lot of those [INAUDIBLE] with dates with it.
    But it was not-- now it was not, like, half a year or something
    like that.
    No.
    No, a few months.
    OK, and then you were--
    and then this is still 1942.
    You're shipped out.
    Yeah, we flew to Scotland because they
    were getting the Afrika Korps that
    defeated the Germans that we defeated in Africa,
    and they were being shipped to the United States.
    So these are prisoners of war from--
    Prisoners of war, right.
    And they went through that camp in Scotland
    before being shipped.
    Do you know the name of the camp?
    Yeah.
    What was it?
    One thing, for instance, besides an interview,
    they get a shower and a change of clothes
    so that they could not smuggle anything in their clothes
    to the United States.
    So the only thing that they kept was a few pictures
    of family and a letter.
    That's all.
    Otherwise, they got a prison uniform.
    They got a shower.
    They had to take off all their clothes, take a shower,
    and then got the prison uniform so that they'll
    look completely isolated.
    Like to the opposite thing, I have
    a button, an American uniform button,
    that has a compass in it.
    You can open it up.
    There's a compass.
    Now if the German did what we did,
    wouldn't do you any good because they took all the clothing off
    and nothing went to the other side of the shower.
    Everything went out.
    So were those-- the clothes that were left--
    that they would leave--
    Garbage.
    Garbage.
    Everything was--
    Burned or thrown away.
    They threw it.
    OK, you got rid of it.
    Do you remember where in Scotland this was?
    No.
    And did you have already a job assigned to you,
    what you were going to be doing?
    Yes, after Camp Ritchie, they formed teams.
    And a team was two officers and three enlisted men.
    Three enlisted men?
    I think so.
    Five, yeah.
    Anyway, and most of--
    two officer and two of us--
    four of us spent practically the whole rest of the war together.
    Oh, really?
    The four of you.
    Yeah, when we came to England, we
    got two Jeeps and a little trailer,
    and that stayed with us because we were not
    assigned to different outfits.
    We were attached to them, so we kept our equipment
    because we were semi-independent.
    And what was your job supposed to be?
    Interrogation and interpretation.
    Sometimes we were at cemeteries.
    [DOORBELL]
    OK, let's cut.
    OK.
    Camera's rolling.
    So before the break, we were talking
    about you being with two officers and two soldiers,
    a group of you, where, from Scotland
    on till the end of the war, you were part of the same group.
    You never changed, and sometimes you'd
    get attached to different units.
    And it's at that point that we cut to have our break.
    Now during the break, you told me
    that your wife was also from Germany, was it, or Austria?
    Austria.
    Austria.
    Vienna.
    And that of her whole family, she's the only one who survived,
    and that one of her younger brothers
    was a Ritchie boy like you.
    I would like to find out.
    What was his name?
    Walter Mandelbaum.
    Walter Mandelbaum.
    Yes.
    And did you ever meet him in Camp Ritchie?
    No, he was always behind me.
    He got to Camp Ritchie after I left.
    He got to England after I left.
    OK.
    You never met.
    Never met him.
    What was his job when he was in--
    He ended up in the same tactical unit
    I was with two officers, two Jeeps, and a trailer.
    And what happened to him?
    First of all, all [? rolls ?] got notification
    that he's missing and never get any details.
    My captain knew somebody, and I was able to get the story.
    What happened was that the team was moved from one location
    to another, and the road that the captain was in charge made
    up, the men objected to it.
    Said that it's not safe and didn't like the thing.
    But he insisted of going.
    Said that a convoy went before.
    And he checked it out, and they're OK.
    So he went to the road, and, which is, again, surprising,
    they saw some potholes.
    And the captain says, let's avoid those potholes.
    They're [? land ?] mines, and there was a mine.
    Blew the Jeep, and Walter was caught under it.
    And then they said they couldn't help him
    because they got under machine gunfire,
    so the Jeep turned around and left.
    And he was left there.
    Yeah.
    Oh my.
    So we never really found out was he mortally wounded?
    Was he a prisoner?
    After the war, we got--
    she got notified that he's buried in France,
    and we arranged for a buried in the National Cemetery
    in Queens or Brooklyn.
    It's somewhere on the border there.
    Yeah.
    And so you were able to take his remains to Queens and Brooklyn
    after the war?
    After the war, we brought him to--
    yeah.
    At that time, we still lived in Long Island
    so we used to be able to take a ride to visit the grave.
    What a bitter story.
    It means then that, nevertheless,
    even though you were not having combat functions,
    you were nevertheless in danger.
    We were always possibly with mines and--
    I can't get the word out--
    artillery range.
    Yeah, we had a few close calls from that.
    So let's go back now to your story.
    From Scotland, you go to England.
    And where in England were you based?
    All over, but mostly on the south west corner.
    It's sort of sticking out, and we call it Land's End.
    Yeah, most of the time, we were in that area,
    but we moved around because we sometimes moved from a regiment
    to another regiment.
    But then we-- first, we were working with prisoners,
    then we were assigned to the 29th Division.
    It's an infantry division.
    We were with them, attached to.
    And, yeah, we did stupid things.
    Such as?
    Such as, thinking back, when you tell a story,
    it's hard to believe, but I tell you, it's a true story.
    OK.
    The division general decided they should have some more
    experience with report observation and the reporting,
    so he wanted somebody in an area.
    We called it the moors, which is completely desolated.
    In Britain.
    In England.
    In Britain because the soil is so soft,
    they can't grow anything.
    And he wanted somebody, an enemy, for his troops.
    And who better maybe than our team?
    No.
    And there we put on German uniforms
    and played the enemy for him for a couple of days.
    We set off smoke bombs, and firecrackers, and things.
    And were the troops hunting you with real ammunition?
    I don't know.
    [LAUGHS] I hope not.
    [LAUGHS]
    They were just supposed to observe and report.
    Yeah, and then I told you the soil there is very soft,
    and we got into our Jeep.
    The rear wheel dug into the soil.
    We didn't get anywhere, even though it's a four--
    drive--
    Four wheel drive.
    Yeah.
    So the only thing that he [INAUDIBLE] back and pushed
    didn't help, so finally, we were the three of us with one Jeep.
    The three of us got out.
    We were able to lift up the Jeep enough to get traction and start
    rolling, but it was in gear.
    I don't know what you know.
    Means the wheels were spinning, so we
    had to run after the moving vehicle
    to jump in, catch up with it and jump in in German uniforms--
    Oh, good god.
    --in wartime England.
    Yeah, when you think about it, there's a bit of irony in that.
    Yeah.
    How long were you based in Britain when you were there?
    How long did that take?
    A number of months?
    I don't know.
    Dates, I have to look.
    I have to go through my book and give you all the dates.
    That's OK.
    Yeah, because then we were--
    finally, we moved to an isolation camp
    prior to the Normandy Invasion.
    You were in an isolation camp.
    What's that?
    Tell me what is an isolation camp.
    The isolation camp-- well, we were not
    affected to it because we had our little trailer.
    We could put stuff in there, and--
    But who was in the isolation camp?
    Who was it for?
    Well, the infantry, for instance, what they would do
    is--
    soldiers accumulate things here and there
    that they shouldn't have.
    Let's say if you should have one pair of socks,
    eventually you end up with five for some reason.
    Well, in an isolation camp, we were watching infantry.
    They would bring out a group of infantry
    and say dump your pack that you carry.
    Well, you were told to put everything in their duffel bag,
    dump it out.
    Said now take out, let's say, one pair of socks, hold it up.
    You hold it up.
    Now put it in the bag.
    Now take one of this.
    Put it in.
    That's it.
    Right face, march.
    Everything left behind.
    All the excess stuff was left behind.
    And so that was sort of like a location, a facility,
    for that to happen.
    Also in that camp, we stopped all communication
    with the outside.
    Couldn't write letters or anything,
    and couldn't leave the camp for any reason.
    And that was in preparation.
    Was that also in the southwest of England, or was that--
    Yeah.
    OK.
    It was also.
    Before we go to going to Europe itself across,
    I want to ask a little bit about the interrogations.
    You took part and you conducted such interrogations
    of prisoners.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember the first one that you conducted?
    No.
    Do you remember any memorable ones?
    One.
    OK.
    He was the only one who admitted that he's
    a Nazi, that he believes in Hitler
    and I probably scared him a little bit because I had--
    I was already in France right after the invasion.
    I had a Thompson machine gun, and it has
    a pretty large bullets in it.
    And I said to him, well, I'm also a Jew,
    and I raised my weapon.
    So I guess I scared him.
    How did he react?
    I don't know.
    I guess he was ready to faint.
    Most of the people--
    most of the German were saying, first of all, none of them
    is a Nazi.
    They're all against Hitler, and most of them
    claimed that they didn't do much fighting.
    They said we never fight.
    They shot at the Americans.
    We surrender.
    Said who killed them?
    We didn't.
    So once, we're talking to an infantryman [INAUDIBLE],
    and we told him that.
    He said, well, it's partly true because where there
    was heavy resistance and a lot of people hurt,
    we didn't take prisoners.
    Most of the prisoners come from area
    where we had little resistance, so [INAUDIBLE].
    It gives you an idea, but then that's war.
    You can't keep shooting and then raise your hand
    and say, I surrender because they won't take a surrender.
    But most of them were routine.
    What were the questions that you would be asking?
    What were the standard questions?
    The standard-- what outfit are you in?
    What outfit is behind?
    What is the big [? group? ?] Is there an armored division nearby
    or you know about one?
    Things like that mostly.
    And were you able to get useful intelligence?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Well, now I'm telling--
    You never know [INAUDIBLE].
    The typical example is the Battle of the Bulge.
    How come that came as a surprise to everybody?
    To the Allies, yes.
    Yeah, somebody didn't do the job.
    The German were able to hide all those people in the attack
    to breakthrough.
    You would think that somebody fell down on the job.
    On the Allied side.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Because a little more and they would have reached the channel.
    It was basically one town that was in the way.
    One major crossroad, a town that all the roads came together
    and the Americans held on to it.
    That's where the famous "Nuts!" came in.
    You heard one, no?
    No.
    No, tell me.
    A German asked the town to surrender,
    and the commanding officer sent him back, "Nuts!".
    And he was able to hold on long enough for [INAUDIBLE].
    It was a question of weather.
    When the Germans broke through, the weather was bad.
    They couldn't get any airplane support or observation,
    so they didn't know exactly what was going on.
    And then the weather cleared, and [INAUDIBLE] came and turned
    around the whole thing.
    And one of our regiments was diverted
    to the edge of the bulge because they were close enough.
    And there they-- we got orders that--
    from the Battle of the Bulge that we should not
    leave the camp without American guard as a companions or--
    Escort.
    --escort, right, because in certain case,
    some American soldier of another outfit, and he is--
    our English might shoot and they ask question--
    Ah.
    --because, at that time, what they did instead of asking
    for a password, they asked question about baseball,
    about something the American would know but a German spy who
    we speak English well but doesn't know these little--
    Detail type things.
    --details of American life.
    And neither would refugee Ritchie boys.
    Right.
    Most likely.
    We haven't had enough experience.
    But is it--
    OK.
    That company.
    Let's go back to England and the isolation camp.
    Did you take part in D-day, or did you
    come in right after D-day?
    You said you were in preparation.
    Oh, Normandy?
    Yeah.
    I landed D plus one the next morning.
    Oh my goodness.
    Yeah.
    Describe for me what you saw.
    The most interesting part is the Normandy invasion fleet.
    There were troop ship three abreast as far as you could see,
    and every ship had a barrage balloon
    to keep German from low flying planes.
    So every ship had a balloon hanging on a cable.
    And [INAUDIBLE] three troops ships, and on the outside
    were some Navy patrol boats and the different ships
    protecting the flank.
    Did you land on a beach?
    Yeah.
    Which beach?
    Omaha.
    You landed on Omaha.
    Well, actually, the landing was just like you
    see in the movie and things.
    From the troop ship, you have to climb down the cargo net
    and then jump into the assault boat.
    And then to the beach, and then dropped the front, and run out.
    And then during the assault in the first day,
    they would load up these assault crafts.
    And they would right around form, like, a circle.
    And if there are five, or six, or seven boats completed
    the circle, they would spread out into the line
    and then come in all at the same time
    as one line of assault crafts.
    When you got to Omaha Beach, I take it
    that the beach had been won.
    Yeah, it was all clear.
    It was all clear.
    Yeah, but in England, we had a little introduction to it.
    They had the dummy, the offensive,
    and they showed us how they come.
    They call it torpedo--
    Duncan.
    Anyway, it's a long pipe with an explosive.
    You pushed on the barbed wire to blow up the barbed wire
    to get a little path towards the pillbox.
    And then when you're close enough, you had flamethrower
    and you could burn out the defensive.
    Yeah, but to get to that pillbox.
    That--
    That was the thing.
    Yeah, were there--
    Well, the only thing when we landed [INAUDIBLE]
    beach, there were no more Germans
    except a couple of corpses.
    But we were walking up the beach and somebody yells gas.
    So we have to do as a good soldier.
    We have gas masks, put it on.
    One thing, the gas mask has a plug in to keep the water out,
    but it keeps out the air too.
    So we had to put the mask on and take a breath.
    There's no air, but you quickly remember to pull the plug out.
    But, yeah, we we're walking up the beach, everybody
    with their gas masks on.
    The strange part was they were working.
    People were working on the beach,
    but they didn't wear gas masks.
    So it turned out, there was no gas.
    It was just-- there's an odor between the explosive
    and the dead animal, and wounded, and all of that.
    There's an odor, which green troops--
    Don't recognize.
    --don't recognize.
    So after a while, we took the gas masks off.
    But by the time you got to the beach,
    it had been cleared of bodies and it had been cleared of--
    90%.
    99%, yeah.
    OK, because that first day was horrible.
    Yeah, we were supposed to land--
    our schedule was to land in the afternoon,
    and then they would throw the order
    and told us to spend the night on the ship.
    And [INAUDIBLE] said they need more infantry and Ritchie boy.
    So as a Ritchie boy, what was your first job
    after you landed in Normandy?
    What was the first thing you had to do?
    Well, the first couple days was just getting settled,
    finding a place to sleep, and then prisoners
    started coming in.
    The first day, we didn't have any prisoners.
    I guess they didn't take any.
    They all-- another way of saying that Germans didn't surrender.
    At that time, you had to kill them to go [? over. ?]
    Were the prisoners that eventually were taken, were they
    usually military age?
    That is were the young guys?
    Were they seasoned?
    Were they children because a lot of soldiers
    eventually when they get to Germany see really small kids?
    Oh, not an unusual thing.
    Once we ran into a group.
    It was a battalion.
    [GERMAN] Eye and stomach battalion.
    [SNEEZES] Excuse me.
    That was me sneezing.
    It was what kind of battalion?
    Eyes and stomach.
    Eyes and stomach.
    They collected a group of people who had medical problems.
    Oh, god.
    You called it the eyes and stomach.
    It was [GERMAN] battalion.
    [GERMAN] battalion.
    Yeah.
    Do you speak German?
    Uh-huh.
    Uh-huh.
    A little bit.
    [GERMAN] so that means all the invalids.
    Yeah.
    So they would try to get groups together
    with the certain problems, you know, to be useful,
    not necessarily front line.
    So they dug ditches and helped [INAUDIBLE].
    And when you say they, that is once the prisoners are captured,
    they were split into different groups
    according to certain criteria?
    You see, you're talking to an absolute newbie who knows
    nothing about what went on.
    Well, things are flexible depending on how many come in.
    So how much you spent with them depends.
    If there's one prisoner, you can spend more time
    than if you have suddenly 100 lined up.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    And did your job then change much,
    or was it almost always this interrogation?
    That's the only-- that and interpretation of letters
    and things that came from home.
    We would read to see whether there's information
    about the homefront--
    how do people feel, how the bombing was,
    so we would go to cemeteries or from prisoners
    to find out what the homefront says.
    Did you remember reading anything particularly memorable?
    No.
    It was routine.
    Some of them more interesting than others.
    Did you have an idea at this point
    that there were concentration camps, that there were
    Jews in concentration camps?
    I personally-- no.
    No.
    I was not fully aware of how bad it was.
    We knew that there was something going on,
    but I did not envision.
    And we were--
    I mean, I call it lucky.
    We didn't hit any concentration camps
    physically to see what the--
    like some units did, so I never did.
    Tell me then after Normandy after landing there,
    what was the route that you took?
    Where did you go from there?
    From where?
    From Normandy.
    To a French port of I don't know--
    Marseille I think.
    [INAUDIBLE] German had taken over,
    but originally, it was a French port, Marseille.
    And we stayed there for a few weeks
    until the Germans surrendered.
    And by then, we had so many prisoners already
    and would asked them, but at the end,
    we knew where everything was.
    Some of the Germans thought by then
    that we were actually in the [? breast ?]
    to see where they are.
    That you were what?
    I didn't understand.
    No, we know so much about the port
    like the people who lived there because we
    had so many prisoners from different section and each one
    telling his story.
    Put it all together.
    And then did you move on from Marseille to someplace else?
    No.
    You stayed there.
    That's not bad.
    You said that at some point, though,
    you are attached to a unit that was
    at the edges of the Battle of the Bulge.
    Yeah.
    The American-- well, most armies, there
    are structures in three, like a three company make a battalion,
    three battalion make this.
    So three division-- three regiments make one division,
    so we had three regiments in Battle of the Bulge.
    That left two on our front and one
    that diverted to the front that was defending
    the edge of the Bulge.
    So it felt strange because, all of a sudden,
    there were less people around ours
    because our regiment now had to cover along the front.
    And where basically was this front?
    Was this in France, or was this in Belgium, or where?
    It was down at a new German border already,
    the Belgian-German border.
    Uh-huh.
    So up north there, like Liege and places near there.
    Right.
    OK.
    And you said earlier that the surprise
    that the Allies experienced by the Battle of the Bulge
    meant that someone fell down.
    Describe to me-- someone fell down
    in their military intelligence.
    Describe to me how this unfolded in your regiment
    where you were that you realized something was
    going on that is not expected.
    Well, when we got the reports the Germans are in an area
    that we didn't think they should be.
    And that's when they--
    we were told about not to leave the camp,
    and a plane was shot down in the area, and things like that.
    You realize the full extent.
    The big worry at the time was that because things
    were diverted to the Bulge, that this
    shouldn't be affect the Bulge.
    And if they come through our line,
    there's nothing there to defend.
    That was our concern at the time.
    And it turned out that--
    This was the main thrust, and that was all they had.
    They didn't have more than that.
    Can you tell me about geographically
    where the Battle of the Bulge took place?
    We were not involved in it.
    I know.
    I know, but where was it basically?
    It was a two hour ride, and from my [? ride ?] in a wooded area.
    It was very bad weather at the time,
    a lot of snow, cold weather.
    Some of the troops were not fully equipped
    for the cold weather.
    Until the Patton finally made it, they were in big trouble.
    Just that they defended--
    they were able to defend the city and hold it long enough.
    What city was this?
    [INAUDIBLE] No.
    I would have to look at the map.
    OK.
    All of these names.
    That's OK.
    Well, and crossroads are important,
    where people can travel, move equipment,
    and the cities are usually built on the crossroads
    because the civilian population--
    Lives there.
    --likes to be in that area.
    Did you take any prisoners in your--
    where you were interrogating people,
    or there were no prisoners to be taken at that time?
    No, they were all brought in by other infantry.
    When did you finally move from the location that you were at?
    What happened after that?
    You mean in the Battle of the Bulge?
    Mm-hmm.
    We moved into Germany from there.
    Yeah, that's all.
    We just moved on slowly until we got to the Elbe.
    I think it was the Elbe River.
    It was a river that Roosevelt and Stalin declared as the--
    that carved out Germany.
    Right.
    And we had orders not to cross it,
    so we could have gone across.
    Besides, at that time, the Germans
    realized that things are bad.
    They only get worse and more willing to surrender
    to Americans and to the Russians.
    Oh, we had people we used to--
    who came across the river on boats and things
    just to surrender.
    To you.
    Yeah.
    There was one couple that came across at night,
    and the first camp that they found was an artillery camp.
    And everybody was sleeping, and they didn't want to wake anybody
    because the shock of seeing a German, somebody
    might take a gun.
    So they went on the road looking for more until they finally
    found a--
    there were no guards.
    They were supposed to be watching.
    --until they find a military police to surrender.
    Did they end up being people that you question?
    Prisoners, yeah.
    Now were these soldiers or were these--
    Soldiers.
    Soldiers.
    Yeah, in uniform.
    And that time, they were willing to put their own rifle down.
    Please, please arrest me.
    Please capture me.
    That is a better fate than being sent eastwards.
    Yeah.
    And where were-- when prisoners were taken at this stage,
    were they sent to prisoner of war camps in the United States?
    Eventually, yeah.
    They went through several stages until then,
    but a large percentage went.
    But with my personal--
    one of my major stories--
    Please, do tell me.
    --we got the call a Polish civilian
    sneaked through the German line and surrendered
    to an American group.
    And he wants to go back and fight with the Americans.
    Well, we can have somebody interrogate him,
    and we had a Polish speaking.
    So my captain in the Jeep and the Polish guy and another one,
    we went to the forward headquarter for that.
    And they had little signs nailed to trees, direction.
    We followed the sign until we came to a road
    intersection, and no sign.
    We didn't know.
    Should we go right or left?
    We see a rifle sticking out of the building, so we figured
    must be American.
    Walked over.
    No, was a Frenchman, French underground,
    and we had a French speaking man with us.
    So they were talking.
    I said, well, Americans haven't come here.
    We're waiting.
    He says, the Americans are back there about half a mile.
    And then about a few hundred feet going this way
    are German troops.
    That was the only time I was in no man's land.
    Oh my goodness.
    Oh my goodness.
    We turned around very quickly to find that headquarter,
    and the guy, our Polish speaking guy, talked to them.
    And he was convinced that he's a German.
    This is a German?
    No.
    That this is genuine?
    Polish.
    Yeah.
    So they had accepted him to give him an American uniform
    and was fighting with the Americans for a couple months.
    Wow.
    What a story.
    What a story.
    That was one of our lucky breaks.
    Another time, one of the lucky thing we
    were in a basement, half a dozen guys.
    An artillery shell hit the building,
    and a beam went through the ceiling into the--
    it went right through and didn't hit anybody.
    They're sleeping all over the basement,
    and the guard upstairs was sitting in a corner
    where there was a stove.
    And the beam went next to it.
    Also he wasn't hurt.
    Things that you get, you know.
    Question of luck.
    Wow.
    Yeah.
    And I don't know how much time you have--
    We're coming close to the end.
    --because my main story is after the war when I
    was amended from being killed.
    I would like to hear that.
    I wanted to ask about where you were at the end of the war.
    I mean, where were you physically,
    and then about Vienna, and then let's
    talk about that main story.
    A couple weeks before peace was declared,
    we were taken out of the division, 29th Division,
    and attached to Bremen Counter Intelligence Corps.
    It was like sort of like an FBI, Bremen.
    And we were independent from--
    the United States established civilian government in Germany,
    so the Bremen had our mail.
    And even though they may not elected,
    they go by American ideas.
    These were civilian Germans.
    German, yeah.
    And [INAUDIBLE] you needed a lawyer, and you needed--
    I forgot-- the papers in order to arrest somebody.
    And you had to have reason for arrest people.
    Well, we were independent, and we're not
    covered by any of the things.
    We established a small prison camp
    in Bremen and a school right in the middle
    of the town almost for all.
    In a way, I guess it was sort of showing
    the German who's the boss.
    There was a prison camp, a small prison camp, with watch towers,
    and lights, and things like this.
    And if they wanted to know, we would
    arrest businessmen or something, who used to travel a lot,
    to see what deals they made.
    Were you arresting people--
    first of all, then there's non-military people
    at this point.
    Both.
    Both.
    OK.
    And was it--
    But mostly they were more interested in non-military.
    And was this for denazification, or was
    this for black market issues?
    Both.
    OK.
    And which was more important?
    Hard to say.
    When I worked at CIC, we were only acting as interpreters.
    We were not actually making policies there.
    OK.
    Yeah, it's the CIC who had--
    the funny part was the man--
    the government, the American-German government
    would come to our office complaining.
    How come you arrested these people?
    Why?
    Do you have reason or it by American standards?
    Right.
    And all the CIC agents said, well,
    we don't have to give you any information.
    We found it necessary, and that's it.
    So there was a double standard between two groups of American,
    yeah, and to the station and then that in a courthouse.
    How long was your--
    how long did you stay there?
    How long were you involved in it?
    Well, I stayed there until I was discharged.
    A few months.
    And is this where you met the end of the war
    when you were in Bremen?
    Yeah.
    In Bremen was when--
    And where did--
    --the official war ended.
    And you said there was a time when someone--
    you were in danger of losing your life.
    Yeah, in Bremen.
    OK, tell me about that.
    Bremen, the courthouse was not destroyed by bombs.
    It was still standing, and there was an old fashioned
    solid building.
    It's like in the square.
    In the center was a large courtyard.
    We had offices there amongst other things.
    And one day, a small explosion popped, and one of us
    was killed--
    wasn't killed, was hit by flying glass.
    He was cut a little bit, so I said, well, I'll get the Jeep.
    I'll take you to the first aid station.
    We were on the second floor I think, and I walked down.
    And as I went to step out of the door frame,
    there was a slight explosion.
    So I figured he's not seriously hurt.
    He can wait a minute, and I stepped back into the doorway.
    Then there was a big explosion.
    The door that I was going out was on about six foot of debris.
    The staircase that I had just come down had collapsed,
    and all was completely dark and dust.
    That's all.
    And I was looking.
    I could see a pin light where the stairs were,
    so I dug myself out of the rubble for some fresh air.
    And the Jeep--
    I have a picture of that--
    ended up also under six feet of debris.
    Completely covered, and I was almost sitting in too.
    Now this was before the war ended or after the war ended?
    After.
    It was shortly after.
    Sounds like sabotage.
    Yeah.
    They really never know what happened.
    As a matter of fact, I found by accident,
    a story in the Smithsonian where they
    talk about American bombings and things.
    They mentioned the explosion in Bremen.
    Really?
    Only a couple years ago, one of the--
    two Americans were killed.
    One of the Americans was a Marine--
    I think Marine Corps officer who went through the Pacific
    fighting and got a desk job in Bremen and got killed.
    So you never know.
    No, you never know.
    He went through fighting and danger.
    Then he gets a desk job, and that killed him.
    Did you want to go to Vienna after the war ended just
    to see what it was like, or you had no--
    Yeah.
    What?
    Well, just, yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
    Did you?
    Yeah, I was twice in Vienna.
    Once, I rented a car in Amsterdam, and Rose and I,
    we drove from there to Vienna through France, Belgium,
    all the way.
    Yeah.
    And at that time, Rose's house was already down.
    My house was still standing there.
    The one that wasn't-- that was very shabby.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And a few years later, I would have to look up the date,
    I got an invitation by the president of Austria,
    and I went.
    And you went.
    Yeah.
    But after the war, you didn't go.
    This was later, many years later.
    But right after the war ends--
    Oh, right after the war, no.
    That was a few years later, yeah.
    Yeah, and so after this-- were you injured in this incident?
    No.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    I came out without a scratch.
    What are some of the--
    who were some of the civilians that you were arresting
    or that you were interpreting for who was arrested?
    Don't know anybody.
    Don't know any.
    So types of people.
    Were they black marketeers?
    Were they--
    We got that, yeah.
    Some were just businessmen.
    I mean, they were also doing Hitler's thing
    whether by choice or volunteer.
    You end up with the same thing.
    At what point did you really learn
    about what was going on with the concentration camps?
    I think only after I came back at the end of that publicity
    and the photographs.
    I didn't see any of it that I remember during the war.
    It all came out afterward, the details.
    You didn't meet anybody who had been
    an inmate at the camps or anything like that
    while you were in Germany?
    No.
    No.
    I mean, we have a couple of people here
    who have the number on it.
    No, I'm talking more about your experience then
    as a Ritchie boy, whether or not--
    No.
    The only thing that I always tell
    people that struck me strange, when I first started helping,
    we just helped out guarding prisoners in England,
    and we were marching with the rifles and no bullets.
    That's a strange part of guarding people.
    Yes, it is.
    Yes, it is.
    So now I'm thinking back.
    Well, one thing we were never on a rifle range,
    but we had practiced shooting or things like that,
    or that the government did not trust Ritchie boys with--
    It's a curious question, why, particularly as you
    still were in some danger.
    When you're in Europe, you-- you know, that one Jeep
    with your brother-in-law, who wasn't your brother-in-law yet.
    I'm sure by then they had weapons.
    We got our weapons when we were ready for Normandy.
    OK.
    So when to [INAUDIBLE], they call it a staging camp where we
    lost contact with--
    Right.
    That's when they gave us a Thompson submachine gun,
    and nobody knew that has--
    takes 30 bullets you can fire at one time.
    By the end of the war, I had the Thompson submachine gun
    when I had prisoners or anything like that.
    And then I had a .45 pistol that I
    used to wear at office work when we were [INAUDIBLE].
    And then I had a small Belgian pistol for a shoulder holster.
    That was my dress weapon.
    I brought it home, and Rose wouldn't let me keep it.
    Oh.
    [LAUGHS] So when you were discharged,
    did you come back to New York?
    Yeah.
    And did you have your fiance by that point?
    Yeah.
    Well, it was understood that we--
    we met shortly before I was sent overseas, and we corresponded.
    We sent love letters, V-mail.
    You heard about V-mail.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    And did you get married soon afterwards?
    Yeah.
    And when did your parents come again from Shanghai?
    A couple years later.
    And did they settle in New York as well?
    Yeah.
    My brother got an apartment for them in the Bronx.
    Bronx, yeah.
    I'd say Bronx.
    Was your brother a Ritchie boy as well, or was he--
    No.
    Did he serve in another part of the military?
    Yeah.
    He never went overseas.
    Neither did my brother-in-law.
    They stayed in the United States,
    but I think my brother was involved in prisoners that were
    brought into the United States.
    Did you ever talk much about your experiences
    to your own children, to others?
    That's how I came about writing.
    My son had a friend who was in the service, and he came back.
    And we were talking.
    My son says, you know, you never told me this story.
    I said, I didn't?
    He said, no, you never told that story.
    So that's when I said, I might as well write it down.
    I know what I told.
    Yeah.
    And this was not meant for publication.
    It was just meant for--
    Family.
    --the children, or grandchildren,
    or any of the family.
    Have you spoken in front of groups or publicly?
    No, this is the first time--
    Thank you.
    --speaking to you.
    Thank you.
    Yeah.
    It's a gift.
    Thank you.
    Yeah, well, my daughter made the arrangements.
    Is there anything that I haven't asked
    about that you think is important that we've
    missed in our talk today?
    I'll tell you tomorrow.
    OK.
    [LAUGHS] That's a good answer.
    I always remember it.
    You know, and what--
    I should have done this.
    In one interview, you can never capture it all, you know?
    That's something I would suffer about before when I said,
    oh, I missed this point.
    I missed this point.
    I didn't ask-- and then someone told me, you know, you never--
    as long as you capture most of it.
    That's the-- but I wanted to know
    if you think there's something.
    Well, coincidentally, I met a man here.
    He's in the Navy.
    He was telling me that he was at Normandy on one of these assault
    boats ferrying troops from the troop ship of the 29th Division
    to the beach.
    Wow.
    I was on the troop ship for the 29th Division waiting
    for somebody to pick me up.
    He was busy ferrying someone else.
    [LAUGHS]
    We could've have shaken hands then.
    You could have.
    You could have.
    OK, then for the formal part of our interview,
    I will say that this concludes the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum interview with Mr. Ernest "Ernie"
    Kessler in Coral Springs, Florida on February 23, 2017.
    Thank you again.
    You're welcome.
    It was nice talking to you, and do I get a medal?
    Yes, you do, a big one.
    [LAUGHS]
    Yes, you do.
    And what we'll do now is we'll cut the tape and then--
    The camera is rolling.
    A little shaky.
    That's OK.
    So tell me what is this that you're holding there?
    I can't see.
    It's backwards.
    [LAUGHS] Take a wild guess.
    This looks like my passport coming to United States.
    From Austria.
    From Austria.
    And so this is the passport you got before the Anschluss.
    Right.
    And why don't we--
    I'll help you open up a page so that we'll
    be able to see what the first page looks like,
    and it doesn't have any Nazi type of stamp on it.
    Because it was issued before 1938.
    OK, and now we'll flip to a page,
    and we'll film that too, where once--
    and this is your photo.
    Let's get a picture of that.
    We'll get that.
    OK, have we got it?
    Yes.
    OK, and to the page where there actually
    is a stamp from the Nazi authorities.
    But let's hold it like this because that's
    where the stamp is.
    OK, a little up.
    And like that.
    Raise it up a little.
    Raise it up a little.
    Like that?
    Right there.
    That's perfect.
    OK, can you hone in?
    OK, you want to hone in on the stamp?
    On the stamp, yeah.
    OK.
    There it is.
    OK, thank you.
    And we can keep it.
    We can keep it because now what we'll show you--
    can you tell me what this is?
    OK, what is that?
    This is my father's, Leopold Kessler's,
    passport when leaving Vienna.
    And this is after the Anschluss.
    Right.
    And so we already see the swastika on there,
    and I'm going to open it up.
    And on the first page, the most striking thing that we see
    is a huge, red J, and tell us what that stands for.
    Jewish.
    So that means-- in German, how would you say it?
    Yiddish.
    Yiddish.
    OK.
    Or they would say Judin.
    Judin.
    OK, and one of the things I want to show
    on this passport, in addition to your father's photo page--
    I'll pull out a little.
    Give me a second.
    Yiddish, actually, that was the wrong thing to say.
    It's Judin.
    The J--
    The J.
    --was Judin.
    Judin, yeah.
    All right, and now I'm going to flip the page again.
    And since you said--
    this is a page that looks to be in Russian.
    Can you explain that page to us?
    When my parents were ready to leave Vienna,
    they couldn't go out west through France.
    They had to go east through Russia to Japan.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.
    And now we'll take a look at just the front page of this.
    And can you tell me, what is that?
    This is basically a training manual,
    the American Army to show German weapons.
    So this is what you would get at Camp Ritchie
    to learn about the different types of tanks.
    Of German weapon, yeah.
    OK, thank you.
    And this right here.
    That's the officer's-- what do they call them?
    Handbook.
    Army officers notebook.
    OK, and what was inside this notebook?
    Well, some information about the US Army, and the German Army
    insignias, and the type of weapons
    that the [INAUDIBLE] had, or insignias and things,
    and different things.
    And these last two things that we filmed,
    were they in wide circulation, or were they only--
    Limited.
    They were limited.
    Yeah.
    Like the notebook, it's called officer's notebook.
    It's not for enlisted men.
    I see.
    OK, thank you.
    Thank you very much.
    You're welcome.
    What's this photo?
    This photo was taken when we had a short visit to France
    while the division was officially moved from France
    to the German border.
    OK, so this was like an R&R, a bit of rest.
    Unofficial.
    We were not supposed to be there.
    Only because we had our own Jeeps, we could sneak in.
    And so you had a photo taken.
    Yeah, because, actually, the division
    had trucks, which move directly.
    Anybody who stopped in Paris was AWOL.
    So in theory, you could say we were AWOL
    when this picture was taken.
    We won't tell anybody.
    Yeah.
    OK, thank you very much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Ernest Kessler was born July 14, 1920 in Vienna, Austria to Irma Epler and Leopold Kessler. He had two older siblings, Walter and Frieda. Ernest discusses speaking German at home; his father owning the Kessler Mattress Factory, where his mother worked as the bookkeeper, and they had four or five employees; having a maid; seeing Nazis with rifles and communists in his neighborhood; living in a mixed neighborhood, attending public school and a technical gymnasium; antisemitism increasing in the mid-1930s; After the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, getting moved to the back of the school room before graduating; his father selling the business and the family planning to immigrate to Australia; receiving an affidavit from a cousin in New York and immigrating there in August 1938; his sister going to England to work, and his brother going to Italy; his parents fleeing to Shanghai, and immigrating to the United States after the war in 1947; renting a room in the Bronx and working as an electrician, and later in the garment industry in Manhattan; his siblings arriving in the United States; receiving advice from HIAS to move to Minnesota and enter an electronics training program; leaning English from his coworkers; returning to New York in 1942 to enlist; getting chosen for the Medical Corps and volunteering for military intelligence training at Camp Albert C. Ritchie in Maryland; going overseas to Scotland where he guarded prisoners from Africa; serving as an interrogator and interpreter; arriving in Normandy after the invasion; participating at the Battle of the Bulge; getting attached to the Bremen Counter-Intelligence Corps where he worked in denazification and black markets; learning about the concentration camps after returning home from the war; his parents and brother settling in the Bronx; marrying Rose after the war. After the interview, Ernest shows his Austrian passport; his father’s passport with Nazi insignia and the letter, “J” for Jewish; a page in Russian; an Army weapons brochure; an Army Officer’s notebook of insignia and buttons; and a photo of an unofficial visit to France when his unit was stationed in Germany.
    Interviewee
    Ernest Kessler
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2017 February 23
    Geography
    creation: Coral Springs (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
    Kessler, Ernest.
    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 Ernest Kessler on February 23, 2017 in Coral Springs, 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 08:05:33
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn559272

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

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    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

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

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