Oral history interview with Gertrude Mendels

Oral history interview with Charles Adler

Oral History

Charles K. Adler, born in Lorraine, France, discusses growing up in an observant German-Prussian family; his four brothers; his father, who was part of the underground and committed suicide in 1929; the presence of antisemitism; attending a Jewish school and then a public school; apprenticing in a store in Frankfurt, Germany; transferring to the Munich store in 1933; the closing of the store because of the Nuremberg laws; living in Stuttgart, Germany during Kristallnacht in November 1938; the burning of the synagogue; being arrested with two of his co-workers; being sent to Dachau concentration camp for four months; conditions in the camp and his experiences there; experiencing kindness from an SS guard who treated his facial abscess; a rabbi in the camp who boosted morale and died after refusing to eat non-kosher; being released; fleeing to Amsterdam, Netherlands on June 15, 1940; going to Chicago, IL; one of his brothers fleeing to Africa, while another fled to Portugal; his youngest brother being taken by the Nazis; his oldest brother joining Charles in the United States; his struggle to find work in the US; working in a photography store for 40 years; and visiting Lorraine in 1963.

Oral history interview with Herschel Auerbach

Oral History

Hershel Auerbach, born June 3, 1918 in New York, NY, describes being a captain in the US Army during World War II; the composition of his unit, which investigated war crimes, captured criminals, and participated in the interrogation of people who had committed crimes; their work at Hadamar, doing autopsies on corpses; finding that many inmates had died of injections and locating some of the responsible medical personnel; going to Nordhausen and capturing the camp with the 69th Division; the inmates in Nordhausen and speaking to them in Yiddish; speaking with German civilians, who claimed they didn't know what went on in the camps; going to Zeitz, Germany, where a train of inmates had been burned; going to a labor camp south of Leipzig, Germany, where prisoners of war had been forced to dig an underground munitions factory; working with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF); his unit being desensitized to the sight of death but feeling different because of his Jewish identity; and the importance of sharing Holocaust memories.

Oral history interview with Tema Bauer

Oral History

Tema Bauer, born May 5, 1916 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her large, very religious family; the Nazi occupation of Łódź and the deportation of her parents; her relocation into the Łódź ghetto in 1940; working in the ghetto kitchen for children until 1942, when the children were deported to concentration camps; hunger and diseases in the ghetto; treatment by the Judenrat and non-Jewish Poles; her transfer to Leipzig where she worked in an ammunition factory making bullets; losing an arm when the factory was bombed; leaving on a forced march from Leipzig to Chernivtsi, Ukraine as Russian forces approached; marching twice to Elbe and back; the death of thousands of people during the march; her sudden liberation; being treated at a Red Cross center; returning to Łódź but not finding any family members; her time in a displaced persons camp in Pocking, Germany, where she married and had a child; emigrating from Germany to the United States, settling in Chicago in 1948; and her feeling that during the war she and others kept their humanity.

Oral history interview with Lily Blayer

Oral History

Lily Blayer, born March 8, 1916 in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), describes her father’s delicatessen and bakery; living in a mixed neighborhood and having Jewish and non-Jewish friends; her family and being raised Orthodox; the beginning of the war and the Hungarian occupation of their part of Czechoslovakia; the bad conditions under the Hungarian occupation and not receiving help from their non-Jewish neighbors; his father losing his shop in 1942; the ghetto; the German occupation in the spring of 1944; how her brother had been sent to labor camps in 1941; being deported in May 1944 by cattle car to Auschwitz; the selections and being separated from her family; her work in the camp; being left in the hospital during the camp evacuation; being liberated by the Russian Army; and how her experiences influenced her life and outlook.

Oral history interview with Paula Birnbaum

Oral History

Paula Birnbaum, born in 1915 in Vienna, Austria, describes her father, who was a furrier; her father taking in German Jewish refugees; the Anschluss; the arrangements for her and her brother to go to Palestine; being forced to clean by German soldiers; the reactions of Viennese to the German occupation; her family hiring smugglers to take them to Belgium; going to France in early 1941 to Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseilles and her husband going to Marseilles after being freed from an internment camp in the south of France; getting affidavits from the United States and getting visas; traveling from Spain to the US in September 1941; her mother surviving by being hidden by the French underground; learning her parents were alive from a US soldier; her brothers in Israel and her sister’s escape to England; and how Vienna changed for her after Kristallnacht and the war.

Oral history interview with Felicia Brenner

Oral History

Felicia Brenner, born on June 18, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, describes her comfortable and happy early life; her six siblings and parents; her education; being 14 years old when the war began; experiencing antisemitism; moving to the ghetto and life there; the dispersal of her family; Passover dinner in the ghetto; work in the ghetto; contracting typhus; the deportation of her younger brother; being deported to Auschwitz; being separated from her mother; being moved to Bergen-Belsen after two weeks; living in tents in the woods; people eating corpses to survive; being sent to a work camp Salzwedel; the female SS guards and being abused by one of them; being liberated by American troops; being in a hospital for displaced persons; finding about the fate of her family through the Red Cross; and the influence her Holocaust experience has had on her outlook.

Oral history interview with Felicia Brenner

Oral History

Felicia Brenner, born on June 18, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, describes being one of seven children from a well-to-do family; her father, who was a businessman and her mother, who stayed home to take care of the children; attending a private Hebrew school, although her education was cut short when the war broke out; being 14 years old when the war began; not experiencing any instances of antisemitism before the Nazis came but seeing the unrest in the Jewish community; her family’s non-Jewish domestic helper leaving their household; being forced to move into the Łódź ghetto with her mother, father, and younger brother; one of her sisters fleeing to Kraków, Poland and two of her brothers going to Białystok, Poland; her job in the ghetto making boots; the scarcity of food; feeling responsible for her parents and trying to bring home extra soup to give to them; the Nazis closing down sections of the ghetto for deportations; her family going to live at her uncle’s house on another street; how one day while waiting in line for vegetables, she saw a sign calling for the liquidation of the ghetto; her younger brother being deported to Buchenwald; the Germans posting signs that they were only taking the young people to work camps, not the old; hiding under a wardrobe because she feared that if she were deported, her parents would starve; coming out of hiding and finding out that her parents had been deported; running to the courtyard and getting on the last cattle car; finding her mother with the help of a German officer and eventually arriving at Auschwitz; her mother being sent to the gas chamber; hearing her father call her and her mother’s names, but never answering him; being in Auschwitz for a short time and then transferred to Bergen-Belsen; the difficult conditions and lack of food; being transferred to Salzwedel, which was liberated around Passover by the Americans; being the only survivor in her family; never returning to Poland because she heard about the murder of Jewish people who were coming back to find family and claim their property; going to Salzheim (Zeilsheim) displaced persons camp; and feeling bitter and losing her faith in humanity and God.

Oral history interview with David Danzyger

Oral History

David Danzyger, born on December 5, 1923 in Bedzin, Poland, discusses his religious family; being the eldest of six children; attending a public school until the age of 13; experiencing antisemitic taunts and occasional violence; joining a Jewish youth movement; fleeing threats of bombings; the German invasion; hiding in a forest for two weeks; witnessing shootings on streets and seeing the seizure of Jewish stores; the disbursement of goods to Gentiles; Jews being forced out of their homes in 1941; his father being taken to a labor camp, where he died; the deportation of his mother and four siblings to Auschwitz in 1941; being taken with his brother to Markstädt labor camp; conditions in the camp and his work digging holes and inserting concrete; the Jewish Kapos; witnessing SS whip inmates; being transferred to another camp (possibly Freiberg); being separated from his brother; being transferred to camp Klettendorf; learning his uncle was killed; his thoughts on laboring with no hope; the religious life in the camp; the hanging and shooting of those who attempted escape; being transferred to Gross-Rosen; being transferred by train for three days to Flossenbürg, where he stayed for a year; his loss of hope in Flossenbürg; being sent to the infirmary; his decision to live; being marched to Dachau; being liberated; the high death rate of survivors immediately after liberation; the permission given to survivors to enact revenge on the SS guards; spending several years in a displaced persons camp; moving to Munich, Germany; becoming a carpenter; his marriage, children, and grandchildren; and his thoughts on the lessons of the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Philip Drell

Oral History

Philip Drell, born in Chicago, IL in 1919, describes being a student at the Chicago Teacher's College in September 1942 when he enlisted in the US Army; being assigned to the Special Motion Pictures Coverage Unit, which covered World War II news in Europe; covering the events in Normandy, France as well as the liberation of Paris; the unit’s leader, George Stevens, and the involvement of Irwin Shaw, Leicester Hemingway, and Ernest Hemingway; his unit convincing a German to go up in front of the French Chamber of Deputies waving a tablecloth, to convince the Nazi's to surrender; taking pictures in Dachau concentration camp; the things he witnessed in Dachau; speaking with the S.S. guards and survivors; continuously taking pictures and shooting film because he was afraid he would miss something; the prisoners having a huge thanksgiving ceremony after the liberation; going back through Belgium to a displaced persons camp (he shares many of the photographs he took during his time in Europe); the camera he used; and returning to Paris then the US after a few months.

Oral history interview with Bernhard Ebstein

Oral History

Bernhard Ebstein, born in 1929 in Stuttgart, Germany, describes his family; antisemitism in Stuttgart in the 1930s; his family’s response to the antisemitism; attending school; his older sister, who was sent to a boarding school in England in 1937; restrictions placed on Jews; his family’s discussion of emigration and the influence of his uncle; being aware of the Anschluss and the Munich Conference because of the headlines in newspapers; seeing the wreckage after Kristallnacht with his younger sister; his father’s move to the United States because the visa only covered one person; the help his father received from the Joint Distribution Committee; the Jewish Committee of Southern Illinois suppling the affidavit for the rest of the family to go to the US; leaving Germany with his mother and his sister in October 1939; and sailing from the Netherlands.

Oral history interview with Werner Ellman

Oral History

Werner Ellman, born in 1924 in Bundenwer, Germany, describes the book “The Gates of Hell”; Holocaust denial and deniers; his early life; his father moving to the United States in 1928, followed by Werner, his mother, and one brother in 1929; leaving because of the poor economic conditions in Germany at that time; receiving all his education in the US; his family joining German fraternal groups; his parents’ pro-Hitler stance; his parents’ antisemitic mentality; the active Nazi organization in Chicago, IL; attending youth groups and summer camps that were semi-militaristic; the use of antisemitic songs and stories to indoctrinate youths; growing up in a Serbian neighborhood and attending Catholic schools; religious antisemitism; visiting Germany with his family in 1938; being envious of the Hitler youth; seeing acts of antisemitism in Nuremberg; being warned by his mother to not describe the US positively; the attitudes of the German people; his fear that had he remained in Germany he would not have broken free from the prejudices he was raised with; making friends with minorities and questioning his own Catholicism; his experiences during the liberation of Mauthausen and interpreting at the Dachau trial; and still having prejudices but his belief that he understands them better.

Oral history interview with Robert Eppley and William Norman

Oral History

Robert Eppley, born on January 26, 1921 in Youngstown, Ohio, describe being inducted into the US Army in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 21, 1942, with the rank of private; serving in the 95th Infantry while he was in the US; serving in the 89th Infantry Division when he was overseas during World War II; landing in Southampton, England in early January 1945; being assigned to Patton's Third Army, following the Battle of the Bulge; coming under fire on the Rhineland campaign in March and later the Central European Campaign in April; how his division was ordered by their commanding general to visit the Ohrdruf concentration camp on the same day the camp was liberated by American forces; remaining at the camp for only two hours; the conditions of the camp survivors and victims; the mayor of Ohrdruf denying knowledge of the camp; how what he saw there made a permanent impression on his life; how there was not much discussion about the camps with his fellow GIs; his division accepting the surrender of thousands of German prisoners; seeing displaced people along the road; his division running the "cigarette camps," which funneled all unneeded US troops back to the US in order the ship them to Japan to finish the war; returning to the US in October 1945; having difficulty getting a job after he was discharged; getting a job with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as a common laborer; becoming the city manager of his hometown; his wife, whom he married five months after entering the army; discussing some of his experiences with his children; and the importance of memorialize the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Nathan Fox

Oral History

Nathan Fox (ne Fäks), born in 1916 in Łowicz, Poland, discusses growing up in a religious family; being one of four children; his first experience with antisemitism; his brother’s death from tuberculosis; the fleeing of his other brother and sister to Russia in the fall of 1939; staying because of his future wife; being sent to the Łódź Ghetto; their struggles to find food; conditions in the ghetto; the death of their infant daughter; going into hiding; being sent to Kielce; working on the ghetto’s bread distribution truck; working long hours; never losing his hope; being sent to Buchenwald in a cattle train car; unloading another train car in which all the passengers had frozen to death; the daily marches to Weimar; his strategies for survival; being sent out of Buchenwald on a march and then taken by train; the release of the prisoners from the train and the disappearance of the German guards; being rescued by the Red Cross; returning to Łódź; going to a displace persons camp; reuniting with his wife; having a son; immigrating to the United States; being quarantined in Boston because his son had measles; arriving in Chicago, IL; his wife’s depression and subsequent suicide; processing his Holocaust experiences and spending two years in a mental recovery facility; his second marriage in 1953; his son who became a psychiatrist; his grandchildren; his nightmares; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Jack Frank

Oral History

Rabbi Jack Frank, born in 1926 in Frankfurt, Germany, describes his family history; his family’s involvement with the Orthodox Jewish community in the suburb Bergen-Enkheim; his education; being ostracized as a child because he was Jewish; experiencing antisemitism; his family’s plans to immigrate to the United States; hiding in their home Kristallnacht and going on the following day to Anspach, where his grandparents lived; his father’s arrest during Kristallnacht and his deportation to Buchenwald, from which he was released four weeks later; hearing about his father’s experiences in Buchenwald from others; the destruction of the synagogue in Bergen-Enkheim; living in an orphanage with his sister until they went to England in September 1939; the beginning of the war; celebrating his bar mitzvah in the orphanage in Frankfurt; going to England with his mother, father, sister, and aunt; remaining in England six months before going to Chicago, IL; the fates of his extended family members; the impact Kristallnacht had on him; and visiting Germany years after the war.

Oral history interview with William Frankel

Oral History

Rabbi William Frankel, born in Vienna, Austria in 1922, describes his parents, who were refugees from East Austria-Hungary and settled in Vienna in 1914; his father, who was a rabbi; antisemitism in the mid-1930s; his education; the restrictions placed on Jews; the arrests of Jews in 1938; events during Kristallnacht, including the destruction of the synagogue; being forced to share their home with another family; how his father was offered the position of rabbi at a small congregation in the eastern part of New York; receiving help from Senator Robert Wagner to enter the US; and the journey out of Austria and to the US.

Oral history interview with Ilse Kaye, Robert Kaye, and Helga Franks

Oral History

Ilse Kaye (née Hoffman), born in 1921 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), describes her family history; being raised in a liberal Jewish family; Hitler raising to power in the 1930s and the effects on her family; experiencing Nazi rhetoric at her school; working with a dentist friend of the family after she left a Jewish school in 1937; attending school to learn dental mechanics; her father being pressured to give up his business; her family’s attempts to leave the country; being shocked by Kristallnacht; her father’s arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; going with her family to Shanghai, China; and her speculations on the reasons behind the violence of Kristallnacht. Robert Kaye, born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family history; experiencing some antisemitism; the Anschluss; and the impact Kristallnacht and being sent to Buchenwald had on him. Helga Franks, born in 1926 in Berlin, Germany, describes her family history; her vivid memories of April 1, 1933, including the boycotts and the German troopers chasing potential customers away from Jewish stores; attending school; the popular rabbi, Manfred Swarsensky; her family’s religious observations during the High Holidays; enrolling in a private Jewish school in 1937 when she was no longer allowed at the public school; her family’s attempts to immigrate to Sweden; her father deciding they would stay in Germany; the events on Kristallnacht, including the burning of synagogues; getting visas for France soon after Kristallnacht; learning how to handle crises; surviving in Paris with her mother and her father’s death from a heart attack; and her emotional reactions to visiting Germany in 1966.

Oral history interview with Helga Franks

Oral History

Helga Frank, born on September 2, 1926 in Berlin, Germany, discusses growing up as an only child; her mother, who was a businesswoman; her father who had an apparel business and was a veteran of WWI; her earliest memories antisemitism; the 1933 boycotts; attending a public school; the emigration of her school mates; the arrest of their neighbors in 1938; the rise of antisemitism before Kristallnacht; hearing antisemitic chants and songs; her experiences during Kristallnacht; seeing two synagogues burning; fleeing to Paris, France; attending a French school; the German occupation of France; the arrest of her father as an “enemy alien”; her eerie experience in an emptied Champs-Élysées; the release of her father and his work on the black market; having to wear a star; her father’s death from a heart attack in January 1942; taking over her father’s black market business; being arrested along with her mother and taken to the Vélodrome d'hiver; the release of her mother and then her; her social work with Jewish refugees, POWs, and many in hiding; hiding in a Paris suburb with her mother during a large round up in March 1943; being sheltered by bohemian singer/actress who told neighbors Helga and Helga’s mother were “English Americans”; liberation; seeing the public punishment of women who had befriended Nazis; meeting her husband in December 1945; going to the US in April 1946 as a war bride; and how her experiences shaped her.

Oral history interview with Rodi Glass

Oral History

Rodi Waters Glass, born in 1936 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses growing up as an only child; her family’s leather business; her extended family; her recollections of Hitler invading the Netherlands in 1940; the takeover of her family’s stores in 1941; her mother’s retention of the store through 1943 until the Dutch Nazis learned of their business; being deported with her mother and father to Westerbork; her early memories of antisemitism; being forced to wear a star; the hardships at Westerbork; her grandfather successfully bribing the authorities for their release; being taken again with her family in 1944 to Westerbork; being sent to the internment camp in Vittel, France because they had papers from England; the fates of her extended family members; liberation; life in Amsterdam after the war; immigrating to the United States with her family; not sharing her Holocaust experiences with her children; her choice of profession; experiencing post-traumatic stress; the experiences of her various family members who survived; her father’s loss of faith; her Jewish identity; her thoughts on interfaith marriage; and her general reflections on life.

Oral history interview with Stephen Gonczy

Oral History

Stephen Gonczy, born in Hungary, describes going to the United States in 1939; having a law degree from the University of Paige in Hungary; attending law school in Chicago, IL and receiving his degree in 1943; entering the US Army in 1943; participating in the invasion of Normandy; being selected for military intelligence around the time of the Battle of the Bulge (winter 1944-1945); being sent to Intelligence headquarters near Paris, France; being reassigned to 483G and moved to the front; interrogating prisoners of war, looking for technical and strategic information; how his division (63rd Infantry Division) found itself with more prisoners and had to weed out the highest ranking and most knowledgeable officers; being involved in a special project in France; the uncertainty at the beginning of 1945 concerning when the war would end; the 63rd Infantry Division’s assignment to go to Dachau concentration camp; American forces disposing of the corpses around the camp; his interactions with Commanding General William W. Quinn; returning to Ludwigsburg, where they set up a camp for German internees; how he returned to Dachau several times later as a war crimes investigator; not wearing uniforms when they interrogated prisoners; his interactions with camp survivors and details about their experiences, including the Kapos and brutality; making German civilians witness and bury the dead in the camps; his view of Germans; marrying a German woman; becoming a war crimes investigator; returning to the US at the end of 1947; and writing and talking to various groups about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Walter Gray

Oral History

Dr. Walter Dennis Gray, born on July 20, 1925 in Yakataw, Washington, describes being a private in the Regimental Headquarters Company of the 354th Regiment unit part of the 89th Division, which was part of Patton's 3rd Army; his division's route through Germany; maintaining a log while in Germany, even though many soldiers were not allowed to; one of his jobs running observation posts, one of which was outside Ohrdruf; entering Ohrdruf concentration camp with his unit; being toured around the camp; the condition of the inmates; spending several hours at the camp; meeting Jewish and non-Jewish Belgians, French, Russians, and Poles in the camp; the importance of giving testimony on what happened during the Holocaust; his experiences with displaced persons (DP) camps; being transferred from the 89th Division to the 83rd, which ran a series of DP camps; his duties from December 1945 until April 1946 to keep a tally of the number of persons every day in the camp in the city of Linz, Austria; returning to the US in April 1946; the upheaval in Europe at the time; trying to teach his students about the origins of racism and genocide and the terrible consequences they can have; being influenced strongly by Hannah Aaron's book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”; and his view of Holocaust denial.

Oral history interview with Grant Grimm

Oral History

Grant Grimm, born January 29, 1921, discusses his experiences in the US military during WWII; being drafted into the army in October 1942; ending up in the Air Force by the time of liberation at the rank of Sergeant in the 430th Squadron, 474th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force Tactical Unit; arriving in Weimar, Germany in April 1943; going to the Buchenwald concentration camp after it was liberated; his experiences seeing the camp and the former inmates; seeing the crematory; the imprisoned former camp guards; sharing his experiences with his children and their lack of belief; feeling different after he returned to the US; getting divorced soon after the war; and his thoughts on the denials about concentration camps.

Oral history interview with Hans Gross

Oral History

Hans Gross, born in 1928 in Stockerau, Austria, describes being forbidden to be involved in the newly-formed Austrian State Youth meetings; not being allowed to enter secondary school; his parents being told to leave Vienna in the summer of 1938; his father losing his job from a bank in Vienna; how all Jews living in the provinces were ordered to move to Vienna; his family’s hope to immigrate to Argentina; moving with his family into a bedroom of a house belonging to a widow; the events on Kristallnacht including his father being taken away; his father being released and sent to Shanghai, China; going to England with his mother, where they were separated for two years; his family never reuniting; his father’s move to Chicago, IL in 1949 and his mother’s death in England; and how the Holocaust affected him.

Oral history interview with Henry Hartmann

Oral History

Henry Hartmann, born in 1926 in Chemnitz, Germany, describes his family history; his father, who was an attorney and served in WWI; his memories of 1933 when Hitler came to power; attending public school and religious school at the synagogue; how his family never seriously considered emigration; how the sudden emigration of Jews to Poland mortified people; the events on Kristallnacht including his father being taken away; not being allowed to attend public school; the strength his mother displayed during that time; his father’s release from Buchenwald concentration camp in December; studying for his bar mitzvah; going with his brother to England; his parents’ deaths during the war; going to the United States in 1946; and his son’s work on a kibbutz in Israel and travels to Europe.

Oral history interview with Jack Heiman

Oral History

Jack Heiman, born in 1920 in Demmelsdorf, Germany, describes his family history; the increase in antisemitism in Demmelsdorf in 1929; relations between the Jews and non-Jews; his father’s death in 1934; going to Hamburg, Germany for school; attending a private Jewish school in a suburb of Nuremburg from 1930 to 1935; experiencing abusive antisemitism; visiting relatives in Chicago, IL and make arrangements to get his family affidavits; learning the shoe trade in 1935 twenty minutes from downtown Hanover; the Nuremburg laws; the events on Kristallnacht, including the destruction of the Jewish stores and synagogue; the confiscation of Jewish possessions and homes; his mother having to leave her home; going to England in March 1939; his sisters in Chicago; pleading with his mother to leave Germany, which she did in late August 1939; going to the United States; and his hope that history will not repeat itself.

Oral history interview with Hans Herzberg

Oral History

Hans Herzberg, born in 1919, describes growing up in Hannover, Germany; his father, who was a general physician; his younger brother; being the only Jew in the class throughout most of my school years; his non-Jewish friends, who began disassociating with his family after 1933; Jewish life in Hanover; having his bar mitzvah in the conservative synagogue in 1932; how life for Jews changed dramatically around 1935-1936; not being allowed to attend school; his father losing his medical practice; the strength his mother displayed at this time; attending school in Berlin, Germany in 1938; taking a job in Dortmund, Germany in a bell factory welding steel bells; being arrested by the Gestapo in November 1938 and transported by train to Sachsenhausen; life in the camp, including the forced labor, maltreatment, forced singing, and rations; being released after five weeks; going to Berlin and then Hanover; his father’s imprisonment; his brother being sent on a children’s transport to the Netherlands; and having to get rid of all their property. [Note that the recording ends prematurely.]

"Holocaust Masters"

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ursula Joachim

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacob Kalkstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Kirsche

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margaret Kolb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Allen Kupfer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Renny Kurshenbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Al Lachman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Lassers

Oral History

Elizabeth Lassers was born in 1920 in Offenbach am Main, Germany, describes her mother; her father, who was a gynecologist; her younger sister; being in a Zionist youth organization and attending a public school until age 16; attending a school in Switzerland before returning to Frankfurt to become a nursing student; feeling that nursing was an occupation she could practice in other countries; living in Germany during the boycott of Jewish businesses, many prohibitions against the Jews, and Kristallnacht; her father being taken to Buchenwald concentration camp during Kristallnacht and released after six weeks; her parents deciding to leave Germany; learning about the concentration camps by treating patients who had been released; her family’s cousin in Chicago, IL, who was willing to give them affidavits to immigrate and to get her father an internship so he could support the family; receiving help from Quakers to get to England and then to Chicago; and her visit to Germany in 1976 to see the places where she had lived and finding that many of them had been torn down.

Oral history interview with William Levine

Oral History

William Levine, born in 1915 in Duluth, MN, describes enlisting as a private in 1942 at Fort Snelling, MN; being commissioned in the artillery in 1943 after going to officer candidate school; going to England; going through France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany; being part of the third, the ninth and later the seventh army; moving through Stuttgart, Dachau, and Munich; being aware of the existence of the concentration camps; entering Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945; conditions in the camp; how seeing death in the camp was different from seeing death in combat; finding camp guards and taking them into custody; how he was an intelligence officer at that time and interrogated the prisoners and also the citizens of the town of Dachau; the sorting of the prisoners, especially those who needed medical attention; malnutrition and typhus in the camp; speaking with camp survivors; learning about the camps from the survivors; moving to a zone of occupation by Stuttgart to take over a supply function; returning to the US in July 1946; not discussing his experiences for many years; speaking with high school students about his World War II experiences; and meeting with survivors at a world assembly in Israel in October 1990.

"Liberators Excerpts: Opening the Gates of Hell"

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Lippurt

Oral History

Robert Lippurt, born May 19, 1914 in Chicago, IL, describes working as a part-time general practitioner; holding a reserve commission for many years; working in VA hospitals for a few years before applying for active duty in May 1944; being assigned to 130th Evacuation Hospital; going to South Wales in December 1944; how the evacuation hospital was a mobile unit, following the combat troops, and served the wounded; moving rapidly across France in March 1945; his unit’s whole function changing with the closing of the war when they were in the middle of Germany; serving the prisoners who had been liberated from the concentration camp Stalag 7A near Moosburg, Germany; conditions in the camp, including the sanitation and the illnesses present; speaking with prisoners with the help of Polish chemist Lichtenstein, who spoke several languages; how some camp survivors were out of touch with reality and viewed the Americans with suspicion and disbelief; the 20 percent mortality rate of survivors; seeing very few female patients; the stories he heard from camp survivors; staying in the camp for a month and moving to Mauthausen by truck; conditions in Mauthausen concentration camp; the 11th Army Division liberating the camp before they arrived; his unit’s mission to prevent inmates from setting fire to the barracks; the gas chambers and crematorium; trying to interrogate two uniformed women who worked for the Nazis; not working as a general practitioner or psychiatrist at any time in Mauthausen, but instead doing whatever needed to be done; his methods for determining medical problems; how pulmonary tuberculosis was a problem; the nearby stone quarry; the prisoners in Mauthausen; the people in his unit, including a Japanese-American orthopedic surgeon who was a surgeon in their unit after being with the Japanese-American combat troops in Italy; having 30 army nurses in their unit but how it was still too few and they got some nurses from the regular German Army who were eager to help; and the local civilians’ views of Mauthausen.

Oral history interview with Ernest Lorge

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen Meisels

Oral History

Oral history interview with Donald Miller

Oral History

Donald Miller, born in Maywood, IL on December 9, 1909, describes being a medical doctor and entering the US Army in January 1943; enlisting with the 108th General Hospital and in his last year of service being in charge of the 2nd Auxiliary Surgical Group; his unit advancing towards the fighting area and stumbling on Dachau concentration camp a few hours after it was liberated; taking photos of what he saw (he shows some of these photographs to the camera); the conditions in the camp, including the victims, survivors, crematoria, and hospital; seeing boxcars full of dead people; the food boxes from the Red Cross, which the camp survivors were hesitant to open; speaking with children who were emotionally detached; the reaction of the liberating American troops; the artwork of the surviving children; remaining at Dachau for two weeks; the medical work he did in the camp; interrogating SS doctors and nurses; the townspeople, who all said they were oblivious to what had been happening in the camp; deaths from typhus; returning to the US in January 1947; and wanting to tell of his experiences in Dachau when he got home and speaking at high schools.

Oral history interview with Douglas Monsson

Oral History

Douglas Monsson, born in Chicago, IL, describes being a cadet at Tilden High School and at the University of Illinois; being in the reserve then commissioned in 1940; being stationed at various camps in the US; landing in France after the 3rd Army; how his division was ordered to view a camp outside of Ohrdruf a few days after it was liberated; how the German civilians filled the graves on order of an American general; the reaction of the American troops; seeing the ovens; speaking with one camp survivor; staying in the camp three hours; speaking with the mayor of Ohrdruf; going towards Linz, Austria; being near Mauthausen concentration camp; handling the recreation activities; how he feels about his experience witnessing the camp; and his hope that the Holocaust never happens again.

Oral history interview with Ruth Rontal

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Mulholland

Oral History

John Mulholland, born on July 21, 1919 in Chicago, IL, describes enlisting in the US Army in July 1942 after he graduated from Marquette University; his unit, which was attached to the fifth and third armored divisions in Europe; being stationed and trained in England for three months; landing in Le Havre, France in December 1944; their mission to go on patrol and call in artillery fire once they had located enemy positions; being sent south across the Rhine, towards Mannheim, Germany; his job reconnoitering enemy communications; being called by the 7th Army to go see how Ulm was; going to Czechoslovakia in early April 1945; coming across Dachau concentration camp; seeing hanged Polish prisoners-of-war; communication between his unit and the camp survivors; the local German civilians; going to Mossbach, Germany and becoming the information and education officer for the battalion stationed there; speaking with the people in Mossbach about Nazi camps; his interpreter Egon Tien, who was a German prisoner of war; and his reasons for not speaking about his experiences in Dachau.

Oral history interview with Monroe Nachman, Douglas Monsson, and Walter Gray

Oral History

Col. Douglas C. Monsson describes the liberation of camp Ohrdruf; seeing naked bodies and hearing rumors about the camp before seeing it; seeing only one camp survivor. Monroe Nachman describes being involved in the liberation of the Landsberg camp and conditions in the camp when they found it. Monsson and Nachman describe the reactions of the American soldiers to the sights in the camps; taking some SS prisoners, who were later killed by American troops; Holocaust deniers; and their conversations with survivors.

Oral history interview with Narsay Serges

Oral History

Narsay Serges describes landing in Normandy, France six days after D-Day; fighting at the Battle of the Bulge; approaching the Buchenwald camp around April 12, 1945; being appalled and nonplussed by the camp; taking photographs of the survivors; the restricted diet placed given to the survivors; conditions in the camp; the surviving inmates, who were Jews, Poles, Russians, and clergymen; the papier-mâché memorial erected in honor of the camp victims; his job to keep the Americans away from the camp; and how his experiences at Buchenwald have affected his whole life.

Oral history interview with Joseph Neumann

Oral History

Joseph Neumann, born May 29, 1916 in Eastern Slovakia, describes his family’s bakery, where he worked until October 1938; his father, mother, and twelve siblings; how antisemitism was very common in his town; volunteering for the Czech Army in 1938; withdrawing from the army in 1939; going to a labor camp; returning home after two years and finding Jews were being rounded up; going into hiding in the forest; working as a lumberjack; how the SS stormed his hiding place as they were preparing for Passover and arrested everyone; being taken in cattle cars to Auschwitz in April 1942; being beaten as he left the train; being tattooed and quarantined in the barracks overnight; being marched to Birkenau; having a nice Kapo; going to the camp hospital and getting out before he was killed; Himmler's visit to Birkenau; how the nurse gave him new job of watching over supplies in the hospital; thievery in the camp; his job counting dead bodies; working near Dr. Mengele and seeing a change in him after the doctor’s trip to Berlin; helping to save Meyer Kronenberg who was beaten and sentenced to hang for writing letters to his wife; attempted escapes from the camp; the transports to the camp; his sister who was in a Czech camp; being interrogated by the SS guards after his friend tried to escape with his girlfriend; leaving with a transport of Poles in October 1944; hiding in a shed with two men near Dachau, Germany until the end of the war; being liberated by American troops; his reflections on the reasons for the Holocaust; witnessing some of Mengele's twin experiments; how the Holocaust changed his outlook; being wary of speaking about his experiences because he fears discrimination; and the importance of fighting antisemitism.

Oral history interview with Edith Adlam

Oral History

Oral history interview with Herbert Oppenheimer

Oral History

Herbert Oppenheimer, born on January 4, 1926 in Berlin, Germany, describes living with foster parents, who were Seventh-Day Adventists, from the time he was four months old until he was 11; learning his was Jewish at the age of nine for his school; staying in a Jewish orphanage from age 11 until 1940; learning a trade in the orphanage; how he had to join Hitler youth when he lived with his foster parents; how the orphanage was run by the Jewish community center; living with a Jewish family while learning a trade at the age of 14 and the family’s arrest in 1941; receiving help from his foster parents; working for a company making typewriters; how Jews were not allowed to work in the daytime; not having to wear a star badge; being a foreman until August 1942; being arrested and held in a detention center; being sent after four weeks to Camp Ruellhide; working on a railroad for four weeks; being sent to Auschwitz; being mentally prepared for the camp and his survival techniques; being sick in the hospital and advised by the doctor to get out as soon as he could; volunteering to go to another camp; lying about his age and skills as a mechanic; working in a small camp, working on anti-aircraft guns; being sent to Mauthausen in January 1945; being liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops; the Russian troops taking over and the sexual assault of women camp survivors; being marched by the Russians and escaping with a friend; going to Frankfurt, Germany; meeting his future wife; and immigrating to the United States.

Oral history interview with Margie Oppenheimer

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Politzer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ernest Pollak and Ilse Pollak

Oral History

Ilsa Pollak, born 1923 in Pomerania, Poland, describes growing up in Cologne, Germany; experiencing more antisemitism after 1933; listening secretly to the radio and hearing about persecution; attending an all-girls, private school; the anti-Jewish boycotts; her family’s attempts to emigrate after Kristallnacht; losing many of her non-Jewish friends; her brother’s imprisonment in a camp near Cologne and his early release; the destruction of the synagogue in Cologne; how her father was not Jewish; being deported to Theresienstadt in 1942; writing to her parents in Latin; shoveling coal in the camp; returning to Cologne after liberation and deciding to leave Germany; her father’s death from malnutrition; and her feelings when she visited Cologne in 1971. Ernest Pollak, born in 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes the increase in antisemitism during the 1930s; his non-Jewish friends; losing his job in June 1938; deciding to leave Austria after the Anschluss in 1938; reading about Kristallnacht in the newspapers; going to England before he could immigrate to the United States; arriving in the US in September 1940; being drafted into the US Army in 1943; going to Europe in 1944; going through France, Holland, and Germany; and going to Vienna after the war was over and finding out about his parents' deaths.

Oral history interview with Magda Rebitzer

Oral History

Magda Rebitser, born March 7, 1928 in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), describes her older brother and sister; living a middle class life; her father’s hardware store; how her father was an atheist and her Jewish mother was very religious; the antisemitism in her town; her Catholic friends at school; being deported with her family to Auschwitz and her father’s death on the journey there; arriving at Auschwitz in April 1944 and seeing the crematorium; the brutality of the guards; conditions in the camp, including the roll calls and sanitation; being selected for work in a factory; and being liberated in April 1945.

Oral history interview with Ralph Rehbock

Oral History

Ralph Rehbock, born July 11, 1934, in Gotha, Germany, describes not having many memories of Germany since his family left in 1938 when he was four years old; going to England on the way to the United States; settling in Chicago, IL; the other immigrant children in Chicago; feeling accepted by the other children; attending Hebrew school and participating in Boy Scouts; his non-Jewish friends; feeling detached from European experiences as a child; realizing he and his family were survivors; his feelings when he visited Gotha years after the war; hearing stories about his mother’s life in Germany; and the importance of not forgetting the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Ruth Rehbock and Ralph Rehbock

Oral History

Ruth Rehbock (née Nussbaum), born on November 24, 1906 in Schmalkalden, Germany, describes her sisters and brothers; living with her uncle and aunt while her father worked as a cattle dealer and her mother raised all the children; attending school; her family’s move in 1917; working as a dental hygienist; getting married in Gotha, Germany; her son (Ralph Rehbock, RG-50.031*0060); how life changed after the Nazi rise to power in 1933; her oldest brother’s suicide in 1928; experiencing persecution; moving to Strassburg (Strasbourg, France); preparing to immigrate to the United States; hiding her husband for a week after Kristallnacht; going to England with her husband and son in December 1938; the fates of her family members; and her feelings about Germans.

Oral history interview with Samuel Rosenberg

Oral History

Samuel Rosenberg (born on September 2, 1922 in a Polish town 100 miles east of Warsaw) describes his younger brother and sister; his father, who was a shoe merchant; growing up in a religious family; her family’s long history in the town; attending a public school then a religious school at age 14; antisemitism in the school; Zionism in his family and joining a Zionist movement when he was 11; how life changed around 1938; the German invasion; his Zionist group’s plans to form a resistance; the restrictions placed on Jews; having religious services in family circles at home; the creation of a ghetto in 1942; the organization of a Judenrat (Jewish council) and forced labor; hearing about the massacre of Jews in nearby towns; working in a nearby camp, working on the Autobahn; being transferred with his brother in 1943 to an airplane parts factory; punishments and food in the camp; the deportation of his parents; his sister, who was in a camp near them called Fischer; being taken to Auschwitz, where they stayed on the train; being taken to Płaszów for a few days and witnessing a massacre; being taken briefly to several camps before going to Floss, Germany then Flossenbürg camp; being in a separate barrack from his brother; food in the camp; working for Messerschmitt; being marched to Floss in April 1945; his brother’s death during a bombardment; being fed by local Germans; being taken to a hospital run by the US Army; and watching as the German townspeople were forced to witness the burial of camp victims.

Oral history interview with Dora Rosenthal

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ruth Saffro

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hannelore Silverman, Sol Schindel, and several unnamed people

Oral History

Hannelore Silverman, born June 22, 1926 in Germany, describes her memories of 1938 when she was 12 years old; being sent on a Kindertransport via the French-German, Spain, and Portugal; being put on buses to Lisbon, Portugal; being housed for approximately one week before being transported to the United States; and having to wear an identification tag on the boat. Sol Schindel describes arriving at Birkenau; being beaten before entering the barrack; being in the camp with his father for three weeks; being in Melk during a bombing raid in July 1944; liberation; and how he survived Melk psychologically. An unnamed woman describes being 15 or 16 years old when the Germans occupied her hometown in 1941; the anxiety of the time; the deportations; the murder of Jews by Poles; and being liberated in the spring of 1944. A second unnamed woman describes conditions in the ghetto, including the cruelty inflicted on Jews; the Judenrat’s (Jewish council) role in the ghetto; the loss of most of her family; hiding in the ghetto; her father’s deportation; sneaking out of the ghetto to join the Jewish underground in Krakow, Poland; living in a room with 500 women; getting in contact with a Zionist group; speaking with an American prisoner of war who was afraid that the camp would be liquidated before liberation; and being liberated by the US Army and working as a translator for them. An unnamed man describes being a stamp collector and going to visit a German officer to exchange stamps, not being recognized as Jewish; and briefly he describes how he passed as a soldier in the German army. A third unnamed woman describes trying to get out of a ghetto in occupied Poland; receiving some help from Poles; and living in a small town in 1944 and anticipating the Russians arrival. A fourth unnamed woman describes her mother finding her after the war ended; learning about the Holocaust in school; and immigrating to the United States. A second unnamed man describes hearing about the shooting of people in a mass grave; the ghetto; being sick in a concentration camp and beaten when he didn’t feel strong enough to work; staying in the camp for around five weeks; and getting caught while smuggling cigarettes and some supplies into the camp.

Oral history interview with Eugenia Sharon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Liza Silbert

Oral History

Liza Silbert (née Gittleman), born August 10, 1922 in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes growing up in a middle class home; her father’s death just before the war; her three brothers and one sister; being the only survivor of her immediate family; attending school; being raised Orthodox; the Russian occupation then the German occupation in 1941; her mother’s reluctance to leave; the prevalent antisemitism; her brother’s death; how Jews had to wear yellow stars; being kicked out of their home and forced into the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; being forced to build a bridge; her mother’s loss of hope; her younger brother’s death from pneumonia; the frequent deportations; moving to the smaller ghetto; working in a brick factory; becoming ill and going to a small hospital in the ghetto; hiding with her mother in an apartment that was then occupied by the Gestapo for two days; going to another hiding place, where they stayed for three months; being discovered and taken to city hall; escaping while her mother was called inside; returning to the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto; being sent to Kaiserwald; staying with her cousin; witnessing the murder of an infant; the journey to the camp in cattle cars, where there was sexual assault and no food nor water; being in Kaiserwald for two weeks then transferred to Dünawerke, where she worked building a hospital; being sent to Riga, Latvia after six months; working for Krupp, making ammunition; being moved around as the Russians approached; and being liberated in January 1945.

Oral history interview with Martin Spitzer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manfred Steinfeld

Oral History

Manfred Steinfeld, born on April 29, 1924 in a small agricultural town in Hesse, Germany, describes arriving in the US in 1938 and joining the army in 1943; being with the Military Intelligence Specialist Unit attached to the 82nd Airborne through the entire Normandy Invasion, Holland, and central European campaigns; landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944; being part of the invasion at Nijmegen, Netherlands; his group occupying Berlin, Germany in 1945; making contact made with the Russians at Torgau, Germany then at Grabow, Germany; being part of the 15th Army Group holding the West Bank of the Rhine near Cologne, Germany; being attached on April 25 or 23 to the Second British Army; proceeding to Bleckede, Germany; arriving in Schwerin, Germany (near the Baltic Coast); translating the unconditional surrender document which was being executed by General Gavin; coming across Wöbbelin concentration camp and his reaction to the scene; being in charge of talking to the Burgemeister (mayor) of Ludwigslust, Germany; getting laborers to remove the dead bodies and arranging for a funeral; the civilian population being forced to attend the funeral; the buildings in the camp; incidents when former inmates took revenge on camp guards; Captain Wood of the 82 Airborne Division giving a eulogy; arresting a former concentration camp administrator after receiving a tip from Margarete Buber; returning to France; being sent on leave to Berlin in July 1945; being discharged on October 29, 1945; being part of the counter-intelligence unit while he was in Berlin; arresting and interrogating numerous potential war criminals; visiting his home town in June 1945; the deaths of his mother and sister (possibly in Camp Stutthof); one of his brothers escaping to Palestine in 1938; speaking with his non-Jewish acquaintances in his hometown; going to the cemetery in Frankfurt, Germany, where his great grandfather, grandfather, and father were buried; the importance of giving testimony; and the lessons he has taken from his and his family’s experiences during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Renee Stern

Oral History

Renee Stern (née Renate Israel), born on July 1, 1926 in Mannheim, Germany, describes being raised Orthodox Jewish; being an only child; her father’s wholesale shoe business, which he got rid of in the early 1930s; living a comfortable life; her maternal grandmother, who lived with them; visiting her grandparents, who lived near Heidelberg, Germany; not being able to attend the public school because she was Jewish and attending a Jewish school; becoming aware of antisemitism; their family friends who moved to Chicago, IL in 1938; being active in the Jewish community and attending a Zionist youth group; her father’s deportation to Dachau concentration camp for four weeks in 1938 before Kristallnacht; her father’s injuries from the camp; trying to emigrate; how she was visiting her grandparents when Kristallnacht occurred; her father’s attempts to rescue items from the synagogue; going to England with her family on a tourist visa in March 1939; living in England from March 1939 to April 1940; arriving in Chicago in April 1940; continuing to be aware of what was happening in Europe; their correspondence with her paternal grandfather, who was in a camp in France; and her impressions of Mannheim when she visited years after the war.

Oral history interview with Martin Tatar

Oral History

Oral history interview with Walter Thalheimer

Oral History

Walter Thalheimer, born in 1925 in a small German town in the state of Württemberg, describes his father, who served during WWI; his sister; living a comfortable life; how life changed after 1933; the roundups of Jewish men; how the children in the Hitler Youth would gang up on Jewish children; his father and uncles deciding to move the family to Stuttgart, Germany in 1936; attending an all Jewish school; the events on Kristallnacht, including the burning of the synagogue and deportation of Jewish men to concentration camps; his father and uncle receiving help from a childhood friend who held some power in the Nazi Party; breaking his arm and how there was only one doctor to see all the Jews; receiving affidavits from a cousin in the United States; getting a visa to the US in April 1940; waiting in Cologne, Germany until May 9, 1940 when they were allowed to enter Holland; being kept in a refugee camp in Rotterdam; the German invasion of the Netherlands; receiving help from a rabbi; being forced to leave Rotterdam; having to wear the Jewish star; being sent to Westerbork transit camp; saving his family from deportation because of his job; being deported to Theresienstadt soon after his parents; work in the camp; the propaganda film made of the camp; being transferred with his father in October 1944 to Auschwitz; being separated from his father, who was immediately killed in the gas chamber; how Kapos took their belongings; daily life in Birkenau; being selected for a transfer to Meuselwitz, Germany in November 1944; working in an ammunition camp with a German Gentile who was a communist and smuggled him shoes and food; how some people sabotaged their work; getting shingles; an air raid and the destruction of several buildings; having to disarm unexploded bombs; being transferred in open cattle cars in early 1945 to Czechoslovakia; escaping with a friend into the forest and caught by an SS man after five days; being marched 30 miles to the SS Headquarters and escaping again; being helped by two women; finding an American soldier and being sent to live with other escapees; receiving clothing and food; returning to the Netherlands; and his mother’s survival.

Oral history interview with Joe Weichselbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

Oral History

Mark Weinberg, born on February 17, 1912 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his six brothers and two sisters; growing up in a very religious, middle class family; attending a private grammar school, a mechanic school, and business school; being in the Polish Army; antisemitism; his work selling motorcycles and bikes; going to Germany for work in the later 1930s and the Nazi propaganda; fighting the Germans as part of the second battalion and the quick Polish loss; not registering as a Jew; being sent to the Warsaw citadel, where he prepared rifles; living in the Christian Polish section of Warsaw; passing as non-Jewish; his work smuggling materials for an underground political rights group; leaving Warsaw in July 1942, posing as a Christian Pole, and being taken to Vienna, Austria; being taken to work in the factory in Auschwitz; leaving the factory and returning to Warsaw; working in Vienna at a post office; the sabotage of trains; providing Polish spies with information; being arrested in March 1943 and beaten up by the Gestapo; attempting suicide; being taken to three jails and to several different camps before he was taken to Auschwitz in September 1943; arriving after the Jewish New Year and singing Jewish songs from Yom Kippur; being classified as a political prisoner; being sent to Birkenau; managing to get out of the line for the gas chamber; living in Block 29; being put to work in the kitchen by the underground and sneaking food to others; being near the uprising in the crematorium; being sent to Oranienburg to work as a mechanic in a bomber factory; being sent to Sachsenhausen for two weeks; being sent to Dachau; being liberated by the US Army; and the importance of fighting antisemitism.

Oral history interview with Mark Weinberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Berta Weiner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alice E. Wintergreen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

Oral History

Irving Wolf, born in October 1915 in Chust, Czechoslovakia (now Khust, Ukraine), describes being the youngest of his six brothers and one sister; attending cheder and public school; antisemitism in the public school; his mother’s store; being drafted into the Czech Army in 1938-1939; the German occupation in 1939 and being an interpreter for the Germans for a few weeks; being called to the Hungarian Army for six weeks; going to Budapest, Hungary; being in jail for 18 months from 1941-1942; escaping from a Hungarian concentration camp; being arrested and escaping again; the survival of his brother’s children, who were hidden and passed as Catholics; the ghetto and Judenrat (Jewish council) in Budapest; being deported with his parents to Auschwitz-Birkenau; getting sick after fasting on Yom Kippur; being liberated in Mauthausen; being taken to the hospital; working odd jobs after his release; and the importance of educating children about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Irving Wolf

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanna Zwang

Oral History

Hanna Zwang, born in 1927 in Mosbach, Germany, describes her family’s history in Mosbach; her father’s store; her sister’s move to the United States in 1934; her brother being beaten up by Nazis in another town; the good relations between Jews and non-Jews in Mosbach; her father’s arrest in May 1938 and imprisonment in Dachau and Buchenwald; her experiences with antisemitism; hiding at the Bürgermeister’s home during the events on Kristallnacht, which included destruction and deportations; going to England with her parents and brother; going to the US in December 1944; her shock at the abundance in the US and feeling guilty for buying things when she first arrived; and her reflections on the significance of Kristallnacht.

Oral history interview with David Rozencwajg

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Fink

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Moses

Oral History

Martin Moses, born on February 5, 1928 in Deutsch Krone, Germany (now Walcz, Poland), describes his family history in Deutsch Krone; his first memory of the Nazi presence in Germany; his family’s interactions with non-Jews; his Orthodox Jewish education; his family’s move when he was six years old to Schönlanke, Germany (now Trzcianka, Pila, Poland); Kristallnacht and his father’s deportation to Sachsenhausen; his father’s release in February 1939 and going with his parents to Shanghai, China; arriving in Shanghai and being placed in a reception camp by the Jewish Committee; moving into a one-room flat in Hongkew; being ordered with the other Jews to move into a camp in March 1943; life in the camp; listening to the Russian radio stations about the victories in Europe; the Americans’ arrival in 1945; continuing to live in China for three more years; going to Chicago, IL in 1948; his parents moving to Chicago in 1951; visiting Germany several times a year for work; not feeling German; and the Jewish community in China.

Oral history interview with Francis Akos

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edith Babich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lisl Bogart

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sonia Bornstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Buchsbaum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Trudy Chester

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Cooper, Emilia Dragunsky, and Lynn Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interviews with Rose Davidovics

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sam Dicker

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marion Domanski-Erdmann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen Eisenstadt

Oral History

Oral history interviews with Aaron Elster

Oral History

Oral history interview with John Engel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Betty Federman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Earl Fein

Oral History

Oral history interviews with David Figman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvia Fishman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Renee Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Juliana Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lillian Gerstner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gabriel Gilead

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rodi Glass

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ben Goldwater

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Greenspoon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Otto Grenton

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Haber

Oral History

Oral history interviews with Samuel R. Harris

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lilly Heidelberger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Larry Heimlich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Heller

Oral History

Oral history interview with Miriam Isaacs

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Jelen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ahlyce Kaplan

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lea Katz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ida Kersz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Koek

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ernest Kohlmann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fira Krimis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

Oral History

Erich Kulka, born in Czechoslovakia, discusses his experiences in Auschwitz; the crematoria; the pits in the camps and hearing the cries but not seeing because the pits were obscured by planks; his observations at end of 1944 when the gassing stopped; the S.S. beatings waning; prisoners in last transfer from Slovakia who were not placed in selection; their commandant believes that Hitler would carry on annihilating Czechs & Poles; officers fleeing the camp; being forced with other prisoners to march from the camp to a train station; being loaded like sardines in coal trucks; escaping and reuniting with his mother and two sisters; his father having been shot at Sachsenhausen; losing 60 relatives in the Holocaust; his marriage; his pride in his sons who achieved successful careers; his life’s mission sharing his story; his concern that the Holocaust could happen in other nations; his pursuit to believe in God's existence; his contact with people Dr. Mengele had experimented on; the artist Dina Gottliebová Babbitt; the corruption among the S.S., and their abuse of women prisoners; S.S. women being fond of using dogs to attack women prisoners; at night, prisoners committing suicide on electric fence, and the special commando in charge of picking up suicide victims.

Oral history interview with Matt Lasson

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Leavitt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lisa Lehner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gisela Lenneburg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Lipman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Avi Livney

Oral History

Oral history interview with Liesl Joseph Loeb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erica Mansfield

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steen Metz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sol Messinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lothar Molton

Oral History

Oral history interview with Arno Motulsky

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Naft

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rose Nortman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Janine Oberrotman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dennis Pogany

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irene Poll

Oral History

Oral history interview with Herbert Prauer

Oral History

Herbert Prauer, born in 1908 in Landeshut in Schlesien, Germany (Kamienna Góra, Poland), describes his family history in Landeshut in Schlesien; his family’s shoe factory; starting elementary school in 1915 and being transferred to different schools during WWI; his non-Jewish friends; the Nazis rising to power in 1933; working in his family’s factory; his father’s death in 1933; the Nuremberg Laws; getting married in 1936 to a German Jewish girl; deciding to leave Germany in 1938 and trying to go to the United States; his sister, who went to China in 1938; visiting the US in the spring of 1938 to secure affidavits; the events leading to Kristallnacht; the events of Kristallnacht, including the destruction of the synagogue; being taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; his mother getting a visa to London about two weeks before the start of World War II; conditions in Sachsenhausen; being released from the camp and going to Palestine for several weeks; going to the US; settling in Chicago, IL; and joining the congregation of Ezra-Habonim, which he became president of in 1963. [Note: File three is a lower-quality duplicate of file two, but it is about six minutes longer]

Learn About The Holocaust

My Saved Research

Also in Oral history interviews of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois