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Oral history interview with Edward Darell

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.304.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0940

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    Oral history interview with Edward Darell
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview conducted with Dr. Edward Darell on June 20, 2017,
    by audio between Washington, DC, and New York City.
    Thank you so much, Dr. Darell, for agreeing
    to speak with us today.
    I am very eager to be able to learn more about your story
    and the story of your parents.
    What we are going to do is start from the very basic questions
    and develop everything from there.
    So my very first question to you is, can you
    tell me the date of your birth?
    Yes.
    January 5, 1946.
    OK.
    And what was your name at birth?
    At birth my name was Edward Wolf, as in the animal,
    Emmanuel E-M-M-A-N-U-E-L.
    OK.
    It's pronounced Dombrowski, but it's written Dabrowski.
    D-A-B-R-O-W-S-K-I.
    OK.
    You were Edward Wolf Emmanuel Dabrowski.
    Is that correct?
    Yes, correct.
    And where were you born?
    Munich, Germany.
    OK.
    And when you say, excuse me, can you repeat, was this 1946 or--
    Yes, 1946.
    January 5, 1946.
    Were you born in a DP camp?
    No.
    OK.
    Just wanted to know.
    What is your father's name?
    My father's name at birth was Moishe,
    M-O-I-S-H-E Lejb L-E-J-B Katz K-A-T-Z.
    Wow.
    How did you get Dabrowski from Katz?
    Well, that's a major point in my family story, which
    is that my father made the decision
    to stay in Warsaw with my mother and hide in plain sight,
    essentially, because he was not likely to be taken
    for Jew unless he had to drop his pants
    and be seen that he was circumcised.
    So he, through my mother, he managed
    to obtain the forged birth certificate of a Gentile pole.
    And that person's name, last name, was Dobrowski?
    Yes.
    Got it.
    OK.
    We can talk about the details of this
    later, at the point where your father did this.
    But for right now, to establish everybody's identity,
    that explains it.
    Right.
    Can you tell me your mother's name, please?
    Including maiden name.
    And what?
    I'm sorry.
    Including her maiden name.
    Her maiden, OK.
    Her name-- well, if you want her birth name,
    or do you want her birth name, or--
    Yes, birth name.
    It was Hedwig, that's H-E-D-W-I-G.
    OK, Hedwig.
    Günther.
    G-Ü-N-T-H-E-R.
    Günther was her last name?
    Günther was the last name, that's correct.
    And when she married your father, did it become Katz?
    They were married very shortly before the Germans invaded
    Poland, and I don't have the exact chronology.
    But to my knowledge, they were married--
    she was married as Jadwiga Katz.
    J-A-D-W-I-G-A.
    Well, Jadwiga sounds like the Polish version of Hedwig.
    She used the Polish version, because they were living
    in Łodź or Lodz.
    We'll start from each parent, but tell me a little bit
    about their backgrounds.
    And let's start with your mother.
    What nationality was your mother?
    My mother was a Polish citizen.
    Always?
    No.
    OK, where was she born?
    Well, I guess I'll try to just say it very simply.
    While living in Poland, she--
    OK, to backtrack, Lodz, her birthplace and my father's,
    after the Germans invaded, was made part of the Reich.
    I'm going well before that.
    Something I didn't explain at the very beginning
    is, one are the things that I try
    to establish before we talk about the war years is what was
    a person's pre-war life like.
    In this case, since you were born after the war,
    that's not as relevant.
    But what still is relevant is the background of your parents.
    So long before the war starts, when
    we think of her childhood and her family of origin,
    that's what I'm interested in finding out.
    OK.
    Was she born in Lodz or was she from someplace else?
    Yes, she was born in Lodz.
    OK.
    As a German?
    As an ethnic German.
    That's correct.
    She was of French Huguenot descent, going back 300 years.
    Wow.
    OK.
    She had a sister and a brother, both older than her.
    Her mother was basically a housewife.
    OK.
    Her father was in some form of business.
    So I don't know exactly what.
    He-- I don't know if this is the right time to say,
    but he passed away in about 1945 before I was born.
    OK, that's fine.
    No, this is OK.
    What I'm interested is to find out what kind of a childhood
    your mother had and what kind of a home she grew up in.
    What language did they speak?
    What were their identities?
    I really very rarely talked to somebody whose family
    was ethnic German from Poland, which
    there are many people who were.
    And after the war, there was a great repatriation
    and sometimes revenge taken on Germans in Poland.
    So do you know how her family got
    to Poland, how many generations they had been there?
    I would say, probably, I can't count it in generations,
    but I would say about 300 years.
    That's a long time.
    Mhm.
    OK.
    So in other words, they maintained
    a German identity within let's say a Polish geography.
    Would that be correct?
    That's correct.
    OK.
    That's correct.
    My mother went to a German school in Lodz
    from grade school through high school.
    At the time that she was in that same high school,
    which had a very significant percentage of ethnic Germans,
    can't tell you exactly at that time.
    But over the preceding century is as high as 60%.
    That's a lot.
    Yeah.
    It sure is.
    So she, to my knowledge, had a very happy childhood.
    She loved her father and continued to mourn him up
    until her own death.
    She would cry whenever she thought about him.
    What was his name, by the way?
    I'm sorry?
    What was his name?
    His name was Adolf Günther.
    OK.
    And do you know the names of your aunt and uncle?
    The sister and brother?
    Yes.
    The sister Anne, A-N-N-E, like Anne, and the brother was Hans.
    Did you know?
    H-A-N-S.
    OK.
    And what about your grandmother?
    What was her name?
    Her name was-- prior to marriage was Cervcka.
    C-E-R-V-C-K-A.
    That doesn't sound very German.
    That sounds more Polish.
    No, it was a modification, apparently,
    of the Huguenot name which is sort of
    in dispute in the family.
    But she says it was Cersy, C-E-R-C-Y.
    Which is a very common Huguenot name.
    Highly interest.
    And that became Ceretsky.
    Because you may know that in Polish, women,
    an A is at the end when it's -ky, so she was -ka.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    What was her first name?
    Wanda.
    Wanda.
    W-A-N-D-A.
    So did you know her as well as your aunt and uncle?
    Yes, very well.
    So it was only your grandfather who passed away
    before you were born.
    Yes.
    And do you know if he died of natural causes?
    Apparently, he had some kind of chronic illness and died,
    I believe, of a heart attack.
    OK.
    OK, so it's not as a result of the war.
    Well, a heart attack could happen, but--
    I mean, the problem is that I really
    don't know much about his life during the war.
    Got it.
    Up until about 1945 when he died.
    Did your mother ever talk about it?
    No.
    She never talked about it.
    As I mentioned, the only thing I knew
    was that she was very devoted to him.
    And I never asked those questions
    because my mother didn't bring it up
    and it just didn't happen.
    So that's kind of a lacuna in my knowledge of the family.
    It's about that, my maternal grandfather.
    And what about the other members of her family, her aunt,
    your aunt, your uncle, your grandmother?
    Were they storytellers?
    Did they ever talk about their own lives,
    or the lives of the family, or any stories of the family?
    You know, I would say that they seemed--
    and bear in mind that my contacts with them
    ceased when I was about maybe 13.
    OK.
    Because I used to go to Germany to visit them
    on my summer vacation.
    So they were not storytellers and they did not
    share anything with me.
    about the history.
    What kind of feelings did you have about them
    until you were 13?
    I liked them very, very much.
    I have extremely happy memories of my trips to Germany.
    Sometimes I would stay for several months.
    And my aunt was a very kindly woman, a little rigid,
    and a little especially rigid about table
    manners, which mine weren't always that great.
    But in general, she was a wonderful woman.
    Most children aren't.
    I mean, up until I was in my 30s, which
    is kind of around the time, you know, she died,
    she made some comment about my table manners.
    So what I remember is having a wonderful time,
    her being very kind.
    She would buy me, on alternate days, a sausage--
    those German sausages, or whipped cream in a cone.
    Oh my.
    Sort of alternated.
    Talk about an indulgence.
    Whipped cream and a cone.
    Wow.
    And I still love whipped cream, and my family laughs about it.
    And did you have contact with your uncle?
    My uncle is deceased.
    And he died somewhere around 1970.
    OK.
    So oh, and one last, a factual question on this.
    Where in Germany would you visit them when you were growing up?
    They lived in a small town called Bad B-A-D like that
    Soden, S-O-D-E-N.
    Could you repeat the second one?
    Bad Soden you said?
    Yes.
    So it's pronounced Oden, but it's like Soden.
    S-O-D-E-N.
    OK, was that in Bavaria?
    I'm sorry?
    What part of Germany was that in?
    Oh, very close to Frankfurt.
    OK, all right.
    Frankfurt am Maim, because there are two Frankfurts.
    Yes.
    And when you would visit, again, up until the time you were 13,
    did they ever talk, if not about their own selves
    and about the family, did they talk about the war?
    Did they talk about their own--
    about what they thought of the war, or issues
    that resulted as the war?
    Absolutely not.
    Interesting.
    Yeah.
    So it was sort of like stunden null.
    It's all, it's everything that happens beforehand is just
    not mentioned.
    Right, that's how it was.
    Do you ever remember them saying anything about Jews?
    Let's see.
    I was-- no, I don't, I do not.
    OK.
    OK.
    And let me catch my thought for a minute.
    Oh, and can you tell me then, when you say contact
    ceased, that sounds like a decision
    was made at some point, and a conscious decision.
    Is that the case?
    Now, could you refresh my memory on the context
    in which I said that?
    You said that your contact to them ceased when you were 13.
    Oh, that was only because we had emigrated to the US
    when I was 12 and 1/2.
    I see.
    So it was a geographical thing.
    I couldn't really afford to visit anymore.
    OK, but it wasn't--
    it was not like a rupture in the family.
    Oh, not at all.
    OK.
    So there were letters still back and forth.
    And did you ever see them after you were 13,
    after you came to the US?
    After I came to the US, I saw my aunt Anna,
    who came to my medical school graduation.
    Ah, OK.
    But I didn't see my uncle Hans after that.
    OK.
    But for them, if we fill in a little bit of that blank,
    is that after having lived as a family for 300 years
    in Lodz, in Poland, they move to a place
    called Bad Soden near Frankfurt, which is a new place for them
    after the war.
    Do you know why they moved there?
    Yes.
    I have a letter that my cousin Hans, who was their son--
    Whose-- which one son?
    Oh, Anna and Hans senior, let's say.
    OK.
    In other words, yeah.
    She married someone named Hans?
    She married someone named Hans.
    Then the son was named Hans.
    And I saw a lot of them during my visits to Germany.
    He is about five years older than me.
    OK.
    OK.
    And anyway, perhaps it's--
    I don't know if it's relevant, but I
    did want to mention that my aunt and uncle that we're talking
    about were first cousins.
    Really?
    You mean so you're saying that there was--
    your mother had a brother Hans and a sister Anna,
    and her sister Anna marries--
    No no, I'm sorry, my mother's brother was named Oskar
    O-S-K-A-R Eugen like Eugene without the g,
    E-U-G-E-N Günther.
    Oh, I see, Hans was your--
    The husband of-- my mother's sister's husband.
    OK.
    So there was only two Hanses in the family, that is,
    Anna's husband and Anna's son.
    That's correct.
    OK.
    OK.
    And Oskar Eugen, did you ever see him?
    Yes.
    OK.
    I saw him probably twice during my visits to Germany.
    OK, so not such a close contact.
    No.
    OK.
    And I saw him considerably later.
    I saw him at a time when, at age 21,
    I kind of did a grand tour of Europe
    and visited the family, a number of members of the family.
    So actually, it's not exactly accurate
    that I lost complete contact with my aunt
    and uncle and the family.
    There was that one contact at age 21 that was brief.
    OK.
    So you were saying that your cousin, who
    was about five years older than you, Hans junior, I take it.
    Wasn't designated that way, but I just
    said it for clarification.
    OK.
    OK.
    So he would have been born in 1941?
    Yes.
    All right.
    And he's the one who explained to you
    how they got to Bad Soden?
    That's correct.
    Yes.
    And what was the reason?
    How did they get there?
    Or why did they go there rather than somewhere else?
    OK.
    I'll summarize it for you.
    In January of 1945, the Soviet army started bombing Lodz.
    The windows of their apartment were destroyed,
    and so they moved to a village.
    They had a country house in the Polish village
    about 15 kilometers from Lodz.
    And what was the name of the village?
    I'm sorry I interrupt with such questions.
    Oh no, I, absolutely.
    There's no-- I want to give you as much information
    as you wish.
    Yeah, the village was called--
    I got to spell it.
    It's called Babiczai.
    Babiczai.
    OK.
    Yes B-A-B-I-C-Z-A-I. And again, 15 kilometers or so from
    the center of Lodz.
    OK.
    All right?
    So they had to go on foot to that place because there were
    Russian troops present who were very hostile to ethnic Germans.
    ,
    Yes
    And anybody who seemed to be fleeing or whatever.
    And, in fact, my uncle, my aunt, and Hans
    were shot at by a Russian tank, which missed them.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    So they sought sh--
    As they were on the road?
    As they were on the foot-- on the road, yes.
    But the tank missed, and they sought shelter in a farmhouse.
    Then they left the farmhouse, and a tank
    shot off the farmhouse's roof.
    Oh, wow.
    [CHUCKLES] So they had a close call.
    So they lived in [? Babice ?] uncertain about their fate,
    as Hans put it.
    And they were somehow driven out of their house in--
    let's see, in the second half of February of--
    '45?
    --'45.
    Uh-huh.
    Now, my cousin refers to his uncle--
    oh, I'm sorry, to his father.
    Hans, in his instance, was short for Johann.
    So perhaps it would be better to designate him as Johann Günther
    though he was called Hans a lot.
    So you're talking about the father or the son here?
    Hans's father.
    OK, so Johann would have been the husband of Anna.
    Yes.
    OK, got it.
    Right.
    So my cousin says that, even though Polish neighbors had
    attested that he had always had a positive attitude
    towards the Polish people in general,
    the family was, as I mentioned, driven out.
    And Johann was taken to a Soviet military internment
    camp in a town called Sikawa--
    which was Sikawa, S-I-K-A-W-A, near Lodz.
    OK.
    And the rest of the family was sent to another camp.
    And they had to work on Polish farms and such.
    Well, I don't know if it was forced labor,
    but I don't think they had much choice.
    Hans-- excuse me, Johann knew Russian,
    so he was a secretary and interpreter at the internment
    camp where he was alone, as far as family's concerned.
    And, apparently, he had a good relationship
    with the commanding officer of that internment camp.
    And that officer allowed him to leave from time to time
    because he needed to see a doctor.
    He was released from the camp on May 15, 1945.
    Wow.
    And that-- yes.
    And that saved his life because all the other internees
    were sent into deepest Russia--
    Yeah.
    --and never heard from again, sadly.
    Yeah.
    OK, so--
    Do you know-- I mean, did your cousin ever tell you
    who the other internees might have been?
    Were they other ethnic Germans from Poland,
    or were they military type of people?
    Or you just don't know?
    He didn't say?
    I don't know.
    He never specified.
    OK.
    Though I don't think they were militar--
    they were prisoners of war.
    I believe they were--
    Civilians?
    Ethnic German civilians that got caught up in the net of--
    I don't know the-- that was there after the war.
    OK.
    But your uncle and your aunt and--
    so they never told you this.
    It was only their son who told you this.
    That's correct.
    OK.
    And he only told me recently--
    relatively recently as I was composing this material.
    And I sent him an email asking him.
    He was kind enough to give me a summary of the Günther family
    and what happened in 1945--
    So--
    --but only of part of the family.
    --when you're talking about recently,
    would you say this year, 2017?
    Last year, two years a--
    2000-- I would say late 2016 is when
    I got this information that I'm giving you at this time.
    OK, so until then it was a blank, huh?
    Yes.
    It was.
    It was never talked about, and I couldn't ask.
    I didn't feel comfortable asking.
    And I, frankly, at that time didn't have as much interest
    in knowing this stuff.
    But, anyway, as I mentioned, the entire family
    was very closed-mouthed except for my cousin Hans,
    who did tell me certain things about the family.
    Did he have his own--
    I mean, he would have been a four-year-old, five-year-old
    boy.
    And some children remember, and some don't.
    Did he have any direct memories himself of--
    I don't believe so.
    OK.
    I believe that this material about 1945,
    right after the war, was collected later in life.
    He doesn't-- I don't believe he remembers anything about that,
    or very little.
    Yeah.
    Can you hold just for a second?
    Sure.
    Just for a second.
    Are we-- we're running?
    OK.
    Sorry for that interruption.
    Oh, no problem.
    I mean, some of the reasons I ask
    for dates is that it's part of the story as to when
    you find things out.
    Yes.
    And what you find out.
    And what does it--
    Um--
    --what does it do, or what kind of effect that might have.
    Is Hans, your cousin, a person who's more talkative,
    a person who's more--
    Yes, because-- yes, he is because he's come to the US
    several times.
    We were-- even though we had an age difference,
    we were good friends.
    When I was 12 or so and he was 16, we did a lot of stuff
    together.
    And he visited London, where we were living up until I was 12.
    And I visited Germany and saw him.
    And we never discussed the war at that time.
    We're talking about the late '50s.
    But since then he's come to the US at least twice.
    Visited, stayed with us, and he has
    told me certain things about the family that I didn't know.
    So, once Johann was released from the camp,
    what happened to the family then?
    Did he go back to join everybody?
    Yes.
    OK.
    He found his family.
    And, on November 7, 1945, some authorities in Lodz
    allowed the family, including Johann's mother, who I knew
    nothing about, to leave Poland.
    It says that Johann bribed Soviet soldiers
    to take the family on a military truck hidden
    among gasoline drums--
    Wow.
    --to [? Stetten ?],, which is [? Chechen ?] in Polish,
    as you probably know.
    And then they continued in a wagon designed for cattle.
    And this is a trivial thing, but Hans's grandmother
    got lost when she lost the train because she
    had to relieve herself.
    But they found her eventually.
    Well--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    --you know, moments like that are actually very frightening--
    Yes.
    --because lots of people lost family members
    if they're on a train and one of them gets off to get food,
    to get milk--
    Sure.
    --to take care of these human needs.
    And sometimes it can be months or years
    or even never that they meet up again.
    Yes, definitely.
    Such things-- yeah.
    And so they were on the train after having
    been on a truck filled with gas cans.
    And that train--
    On a cattle truck.
    On a cattle truck.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And that takes them into West Germany,
    or into Germany proper?
    Yeah.
    Well, I can tell you exactly that, on November 29, 1945,
    they got to Berlin--
    OK.
    --where they were thoroughly checked medically and deloused.
    Oh, god.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And then, in the beginning of December in 1945,
    they crossed the border of the American zone of Berlin
    and went to Frankfurt am Main.
    OK.
    The reason they went to Frankfurt
    is that Johann's brother was living there,
    but his apartment was you know bombed out.
    And so they couldn't stay with him.
    And somehow they ended up in Bad Soden.
    And I don't know why, but that was close,
    as I mentioned, to Frankfurt.
    And it's a spa town, nice place.
    And the-- says, on the day before Christmas there, that's
    when they arrived in Bad Soden.
    And the family lived there from that time on.
    Wow.
    OK, I didn't think that I would really hear so much detail,
    but this is wonderful, just from asking how did they
    end up in Bad Soden?
    Right.
    It's just-- if it had been a big city,
    it wouldn't have struck me as unusual.
    But why there?
    And this really does--
    it does illustrate what happened to a lot of people
    moving westwards.
    I mean, a lot of people who were trying
    to leave the Soviet zones into the Western zones, how
    they got there, how--
    what kind of treatment ethnic Germans
    had in Poland when the war turns,
    when the Soviets liberate Poland,
    and then how they behave to them and so on.
    Yes.
    Did Hans ever mention any fear that the women might have had?
    No.
    OK.
    That was not part of this story?
    He didn't go into that much detail.
    And, no, he's--
    I'm 71, and he's about 76.
    And his hearing and his faculties
    are not as good as they were.
    And it's not that easy for him to communicate.
    But we communicate by email occasionally,
    and then he's able to get things like this write-up together.
    He was fluent in English for a long time, so--
    What about your mother?
    Was she a storyteller, or not?
    In a way, she was.
    But she didn't--
    I can give you little examples.
    She liked to talk about the family.
    It was only when prompted by me that she
    would talk about the war in a specific way.
    And I can give you an example, which is
    that, quite a few years ago--
    she died in 1995--
    I had read a book with the German
    title, [SPEAKING GERMAN],, which means "red flares,"
    but I wasn't sure what [SPEAKING GERMAN] meant.
    I thought it might be something else.
    So I asked my mother, and she briefly said, oh, yes,
    it's-- they're flares.
    And I remember, in Warsaw, during the uprising in 1944
    by the Polish home army, that she saw red flares
    and could hear the rumble of artillery and such.
    And she said that these flares were used for the fighting men
    to communicate.
    Wow.
    So--
    So-- but tidbits like that.
    Yeah.
    Other than that, if I can mention,
    she never expressed any antisemitic feelings.
    And I remember her saying to me that--
    and I'm quoting-- boys on both sides with whom I had danced
    were killed--
    Oh.
    --so-- as soldiers.
    Yeah.
    So she was somewhat torn between her Polish identity
    and her German identity.
    Well, that's interesting.
    Did she see herself as a Pole?
    To a significant degree, yes.
    I would say more as a Pole than as a German.
    That is interesting.
    Do you know what language she spoke at home?
    I'm talking about family of origin.
    German.
    OK, but was she equally fluent in Polish?
    Absolutely.
    She was fluent in Polish.
    So they were living in the Polish city
    even though they were in kind of a sub-part of it
    that was Germanized.
    And my mother had extremely good linguistic abilities.
    And she spoke not only Polish and German,
    but she spoke English fluently and Italian fluently.
    Those latter two languages, did she
    have them when she was in Poland or acquired them after she
    left and went westwards?
    Well, all languages were acquired in Poland
    because she--
    not because, but in connection with it,
    she worked as a journalist.
    Wow.
    And had a lot of contact with people in other countries.
    So this is before--
    And was always interested in other cultures and nations
    and such.
    So this was before the war.
    Yes, that was her job.
    Was she a radio journalist, a print journalist?
    Print.
    Do you know the name of the newspaper or magazine?
    Unfortunately not, but I do know that it
    was a German paper in Lodz.
    Oh.
    Oh, so, I mean, it was a German paper,
    so it would have been before the invasion.
    So it wouldn't have necessarily had
    any kind of political overtones, though it might have.
    No, I never got the sense that it did.
    I possess some of her writings.
    Mm-hmm.
    And there's never any reference to anything dodgy or anything
    strange.
    They're mostly stories written for children that she
    was hoping to have published.
    Mm-hmm.
    I have other things that she wrote that I referred to
    in my write-up where she wrote about incidents
    that happened during the war.
    But, anyway, so yeah.
    You-- in the--
    I don't know if I have that.
    What I have is your email that you wrote to Sara Bloomfield.
    Yeah.
    And, in there, I wanted to ask you,
    still focusing on your mother's side that you had--
    your mother's side, you have a first cousin
    who was a Hitler Youth--
    Yes.
    --a second cousin who was in the Waffen-SS--
    Yes.
    --and an uncle who worked as an historian for the commission
    appointed by Himmler to decide what
    should be done with the civilian Russian population in advance
    of the German invasion of Russia.
    Yes.
    So can you tell me about these people and who they--
    what their names were and how you found out about this?
    OK, certainly.
    I'll start-- OK, so, just to clarify, we're talking--
    right now, I'm focusing on Oskar Eugen Günther.
    OK, so your uncle.
    Yes, my mother's brother.
    OK.
    He, not surprisingly, based on who he worked for
    and the purpose of the job, was a right-wing person.
    So--
    Not the Nazi--
    Oskar Eugen was the one who worked for the commission.
    Yes.
    For-- by Heimler Himmler.
    That's quite-- I wouldn't say high position,
    but it requires someone who's educated.
    Well, he was a PhD in history.
    And he was a expert on Russia.
    No kidding.
    Uh-huh.
    So your mother's family, even though you
    don't know what your grandfather did, it sound--
    I mean, if she's a journalist and he's a PhD in history,
    we're not talking about a family that was uneducated.
    Not at all.
    Yeah, we're talking about--
    the word well-to-do, but that doesn't mean well-to-do.
    It just means people who have sent their kids to school
    in Poland were not of--
    they were upper class, even if they may not
    have had the money.
    Mm-hmm.
    Yeah, I would describe them as, in the current terminology--
    well, I don't--
    Use your terminology.
    Pardon?
    I'm sorry?
    Use your own terminology.
    I don't want to--
    Upper middle class is what I would call them.
    OK.
    And my mother's family, especially my grandmother
    and my mother's mother, were convinced
    that they were actually some kind
    of minor Protestant nobility.
    Mm-hmm.
    And I have a copy of a coat of arms that I do not--
    I have never had authenticated.
    I made a few little-- anyway, but yeah, that's
    the essence of it.
    So he had a PhD in New Russia.
    Right.
    OK.
    So I want to tell you a quick anecdote that says something
    about Oskar Eugen's attitudes.
    Yes, please.
    Not towards the Jews, but when I-- as I
    mentioned, when I was 21 and I took that trip around Europe,
    and I visited Oskar Eugen, his wife, and my cousin Hans
    happened to be there also.
    OK.
    So we sat in the living room.
    I had just arrived.
    And I have to say this in a German accent--
    [CHUCKLES]
    Please go right ahead.
    [CHUCKLES]
    --because Oskar Eugen asked me in English, so
    what do you think should be done about this problem
    with the Blacks?
    Oh, good god.
    [LAUGHS] OK.
    That was my introduction.
    [LAUGHS]
    OK.
    Ah, well, this is the mid-'60s, and we have race riots
    in the United States and--
    Exactly.
    --and so on.
    That's the context.
    All right.
    Right.
    OK.
    And I do need to mention that Hans, my first cousin, who
    was present, as I mentioned--
    I don't think he batted an eyelash.
    But he became an academic and also an expert
    on Russia and a PhD in Russia.
    But, at that time, he was probably
    still a graduate student.
    And he had his nose in a book almost 90% of the time,
    even when he was with company.
    So I don't know if he even heard what Oskar Eugen had said.
    But their history has been stormy throughout the time
    that I knew them, because, as I mentioned,
    Oskar Eugen was very right-wing and Hans was a socialist.
    But-- yeah--
    Ah.
    --he was a socialist.
    So they clashed a lot.
    Yeah.
    And Hans-- I tried to get some information
    about Oskar Eugen from Hans, but he just ignored my request.
    Well, I mean, as I say, it is a not inconsequential position
    to have on such a commission.
    And so I'm assuming, but you can tell me,
    did you ever learn any details of what
    he did on that commission and what kind of questions
    he had to deal with and what was his job there?
    Yes.
    This is secondhand from my father, who told me
    that Oskar Eugen work involved assisting in making decisions
    about exactly how the Russian population should be treated.
    He, according to Hans also, by the way, who knows about this.
    And Hans actually done quite a bit about--
    Hans told me, essentially, plus what my dad said,
    what Oskar Eugen was up to.
    But my dad said that his job was kind of,
    as I mentioned, to decide on--
    could you-- would we stop for a minute?
    Yes, we can stop.
    Sure.
    Yeah, I have to say something to the [INAUDIBLE] gotten from
    my cousin, Hans--
    Yes.
    --and my father which was consistent.
    Yes, OK.
    So it was your uncle's role in this commission.
    And you were starting to explain it in some detail.
    Yes.
    Himmler's view, not surprisingly, was that they--
    the population should just be exterminated and the land
    taken over by German, Germans--
    Lebensraum.
    --immigrants.
    Yes, exactly.
    According to Hans, my cousin, Oskar Eugen
    took a more moderate view.
    I don't remember if he said whether it was that they should
    be turned into forced labor or what,
    but he did not feel that they should be killed.
    OK.
    But he was-- his opinion, I mean, he wasn't--
    I'm not trying to portray him as a major decider,
    but he had some kind of vote.
    But his opinion, in other words, noone, not death,
    was overruled by Himmler.
    I see.
    And was he a party member, a Nazi party member?
    No, he wasn't.
    He sounds like the kind of person
    who might have gravitated to that,
    but I'm certain, really, that he was not a member.
    Well, just bec-- virtue of the position,
    that sometimes people weren't even looked
    at if they weren't party members or considered
    for such positions.
    Yeah, I can't really address that.
    The only theory I have is that, if you were an academic among
    many academics working on this project,
    that as long as you sort of toed the party line, that doesn't--
    I never heard anything about him being
    pressured to be a party member.
    And--
    Let's--
    --I don't know the percentages of--
    Yeah.
    --of people who were sympathetic to the regime who
    actually became members.
    Well, that's, of course--
    one of the larger aspects of this story
    is that you didn't necessarily have to be.
    Let's turn now to some of the other relatives.
    You said there was a first cousin who
    was in the Hitler-Jugend and a second cousin who
    was in the Waffen-SS.
    Yes.
    Who would these have been?
    Who they were?
    Yeah, what were their names?
    Oh, OK.
    There's some construction work going-- if you-- do
    you hear a chainsaw-like sound?
    I do hear a little sound, but not--
    Somebody's--
    --but not much.
    OK.
    Yeah, it's--
    Is it something that's very troublesome
    that you're hearing?
    It's bothering-- I can just go a little bit further away,
    like into a bathroom or something, and avoid, you know?
    Yeah.
    The noise.
    Yeah, is--
    So can we stop for a minute?
    Of course, we can stop.
    And I'll move.
    We can stop.
    Yeah.
    He has some construction noise in his--
    OK, so we were talking about the cousin who
    was in the Hitler Youth and the second cousin who
    was Waffen-SS.
    Yes.
    The cousin who was in the Hitler Youth was named Alfart--
    that's A-L, as in Lance, F-A-R-T.
    Alfart.
    I never heard that name before.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    OK.
    There might-- wait a minute.
    Sorry, I believe it was A-L-F-H-A-R-T.
    OK.
    Like Alf Hart.
    Yeah.
    All right.
    Alfhart Günther.
    Günther.
    All right.
    Right, and he was Oskar Eugen son.
    Ah, OK.
    By the way, what is the married name
    of your aunt Anna, which would also be
    Johann's and Hans's last name?
    Well, it so happens that, because they were first
    cousins, they were both Günthers.
    Ah, OK.
    OK, fine.
    So everybody's Günther.
    So Oskar Eugen's son.
    Right, Alfhart Günther.
    Alfhart was in the Hitler-Jugend,
    or was in the Waffen-S--
    Yes, he was in the Hitler-Jugend.
    All right.
    Did you know him?
    Yes.
    I knew him well.
    He came to my wedding, and I saw him several times
    during my childhood and also when I visited at age 21.
    But were-- if I were to ask about your relation to
    him versus your relation to Hans,
    would you have been closer to Hans than to himself?
    Or--
    Much.
    --does that no bearing here on the story?
    Very little bearing.
    I was much closer to Hans.
    Alfhart was extremely pedantic to the point
    that it was a family joke between me
    and my parents when he came to visit,
    because he'd flown over from Germany
    and he'd give a five-minute discourse
    about the altitude at which the plane flew, and I'm not joking.
    [LAUGHS] Good god.
    He was a stereotypic German in that way and kind of stiff,
    but extremely intelligent.
    He was an electrical engineer for Siemens
    and actually patented a few things.
    Very smart, but very science--
    Scientific.
    --scientific, and not a guy you might want to have a beer with.
    But Hans was.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    So they're very different.
    And I never really developed any sort
    of friendship-like relationship with Alfhart
    as I did with Hans.
    Did he talk at all about his experience
    being in the Hitler Youth?
    Absolutely not.
    The only way I found out was through--
    I believe through Hans.
    OK.
    Or my father, one or the other.
    OK, and then let's turn to the second cousin in the Waffen-SS.
    OK.
    I knew a woman who was German.
    She was a member--
    she was like a second cousin or something or third.
    I never figured out the relationship
    because, frankly, I didn't I didn't like her very much.
    And she was part of the Günther side of the family,
    married to a German lawyer.
    And they lived-- they came to the US at some point,
    but I never had any kind of friendly relationship with her.
    She-- my mother tended to kowtow to people,
    even when she didn't like them or she--
    I don't know whether she saw the bright side of things,
    the glass half full or whatever metaphor expression.
    But there were things about this cousin, whose name was, or is,
    Krista, K-R-I-S-T-A, and the last name is Stahlmann,
    steel man, S-T-A-H-L-M-A-N-N.
    I will state that one of the reasons that I couldn't stand
    being around her was that we would often
    be forced by my father to go to the house of an elderly lady
    who was also a Volksdeutsche, but a friend, not a relative.
    And all of us would be crammed into this tiny living room,
    boring the hell out of each other while the TV blared.
    Oh, gosh.
    And Krista just had an unpleasant aura about her.
    And sometime after I got married--
    my wife's name is Joan.
    Krista sent some kind of card or something
    to us for some occasion that was addressed to Edward and Nancy,
    with Nancy, question mark--
    Oh, good god.
    --which became a big family joke.
    [LAUGHS] Yeah.
    That, I think, says a lot as, as-- says
    how I thought about her.
    So the bottom line is, to get to the question at hand,
    is that I only know through my mother about this SS business.
    And I don't even know--
    She was the one.
    Yeah, Krista's father.
    Ah, so Krista's father was the one who was in the Waffen-SS.
    Right, exactly.
    OK.
    And do we know what kind of role he had, what he was doing,
    what he was--
    Absolutely nothing.
    I don't know anything.
    It was never discussed.
    OK.
    It was just mentioned in passing somehow.
    And did-- were there any other relatives who
    were in some way part of the regime in small ways, cogs
    or involved in some sort of organizations or activities
    that you know of?
    No, I only know of the two we've been talking about.
    And do you recall anybody on your mother's side
    of the family ever talking about the Jews at all?
    Never.
    It so happens that my grandmother
    on my mother's side, [PERSONAL NAME],, really
    liked my dad.
    And there are other people in the family
    who also liked my dad.
    And no Günther that I have ever spoken with ever gave me a hint
    of anything disparaging towards the Jews.
    OK.
    OK.
    These are the sorts of stories when you go down into,
    in a detail, into an example with a person who
    has this individual person with this name
    and so on, it sometimes disproves
    all the arcs and all the stereotypes
    that people would have.
    Uh-huh.
    And that brings me to your mother, who I haven't asked you
    as much about.
    But she sounds like she was quite extraordinary in--
    when you say that she was someone who would say my--
    ones that I danced with and others
    that I danced with, they didn't survive, it
    sounds that, from that, I get the sense of somebody who
    doesn't look at a person's ethnic background
    or religious background.
    There I have to interject something
    that does not apply to the Jews but does apply to Black people.
    OK.
    My mother expressed on several occasions--
    and I'll going into them in a minute--
    a very strong prejudice towards Black people.
    I'll give you some examples.
    And one--
    What about your father?
    My father was uncomfortable with Black people because he grew
    up-- well, this is true of my mother too,
    but my father grew up in, as did my mother,
    an environment where there were--
    if a Black person walked down the street in Lodz,
    every head would turn.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    That's Eastern Europe.
    That's Europe at that time, aside from France, perhaps.
    Right.
    But I think that--
    I have to tell you something about my dad
    which relates to that, which is in words that I frequently
    hear myself saying, he was an equal opportunity bigot
    or hater.
    [CHUCKLES] Oh gosh.
    He had something negative to say about every nationality.
    And I'll give you examples in a little bit.
    The French didn't wash their feet,
    the British wore dirty raincoats,
    the Yugoslavs were conceited asses, et cetera.
    Et cetera.
    So his attitude towards Blacks was
    that when we lived in Germany and England, which is--
    totaled 12 years of my life, he didn't have that much contact
    with Black people.
    But once we got to New York, well, I don't--
    let me put it this way.
    Compared to my mother, whom I'll describe in detail
    why I'm saying this--
    compared to my mother, and even not in a comparative way
    but a general way, I would say that my father,
    even though he had these stereotypes
    about various European countries,
    he didn't have that about Black people.
    OK.
    He didn't like Puerto Ricans because, when
    we came to New York, there had been a very large immigration,
    and the neighborhood we lived in when we first got to New York
    was pretty lousy.
    We would hear bottles smashing in the courtyard all night
    and loud Spanish music.
    And so that kind of made all of us
    not too happy with that particular group.
    But, anyway, my dad--
    it wasn't at all extreme, but with my mom
    it was more extreme.
    When I was 12 and, as I mentioned, we came to the US
    and settled in New York, I started to make friends
    and I made friends, among others, with a Black boy.
    And I asked my mother if he could come up to our apartment,
    and she absolutely said no.
    She would not allow him in there.
    Oh.
    Yeah.
    And then, there's worse to come.
    When I was about 23, I was in a relationship with a Cajun woman
    from Louisiana, who was what they call a mulatto down there.
    Yes.
    And she had basically Caucasian features,
    but there was enough Black genes to make
    her somewhat distinctive.
    But, anyway, to make it brief, my mother
    could not accept that I was dating this woman,
    and she called me a nigger lover.
    Oh, dear.
    Yeah.
    Oh, dear.
    That was my reaction.
    Yeah.
    So I would have to say--
    well, I would have to say, as I mentioned, that in many ways,
    and this is an example, because my mother professed
    in general not to be a prejudiced person
    and always said, oh, you know, let them--
    For example, I'll give you an example of gays.
    She always said, oh, you know, I have nothing against gay people
    except they get so much flak and right now
    and people don't accept them and this--
    but I think that, in reality, she was--
    I have to use the expression-- kind of two-faced.
    And--
    There's nothing like a child to be able to see sometimes the--
    hypocrisy might be a bit of a strong term,
    but parents have their own self-image.
    And it's the children who often can see through that
    and see what holes there are in those self-images.
    Yeah.
    When I was talking, I was thinking
    more of that European environment before.
    You are speaking of your experience of them
    in another place, in another country and other populations,
    other people.
    And, circumstantially, the impression I got
    is that it's unusual for an ethnic German girl who
    feels herself more Polish to marry somebody
    who was Jewish in the 1930s--
    [? Correct. ?]
    --or early 1940s at that time and stick with them.
    Yes, definitely.
    So that makes an impression.
    And I wonder what is her story?
    What is she like?
    Was she a bit of a rebel in her family?
    That's what I'd like to flesh out with you.
    Right.
    I am thinking that there was not a--
    let me put it this way.
    She wasn't, to my knowledge, highly rebellious,
    but I believe that, compared to her sister, who
    was extremely conventional, you know, the one with the table
    manners--
    Oh, that's right.
    Mm-hmm.
    --that my mother, and this will emerge--
    if we end up touching on other areas of their biography
    and the war, this will emerge later--
    but I think that she was very courageous,
    and part of her courage had something in common with some
    degree of rebelliousness, yes--
    OK.
    --because she took on things that most people wouldn't.
    And do you know of how your parents met?
    Yes.
    They both worked in a bank.
    And they basically fell head over heels in love.
    Oh, my.
    Oh, my.
    Do you know the name of the bank?
    No, all I know is it was in Lodz.
    Have you ever been there?
    Yes, and my father and I took a trip together to Poland
    so he could kind of show me some of the highlights, which
    included a couple of his war experiences.
    And so I visited Lodz and visited
    Warsaw and other major cities of interest in Poland with my dad.
    Did you visit any of the concentration camps?
    Yes, when I was in Warsaw I visited Auschwitz.
    OK.
    With him or alone?
    With him.
    With him.
    I've consciously wanted to talk about your parents each
    separately.
    Is there anything else that you think is important for us
    to know about your mother's side of the family and your mother
    as a person before we turn now to your dad?
    Yes, I mean, I think that I would
    want to say that she was quite the intellectual.
    She was a housewife, and my dad didn't do very much.
    I mean, he was working, so she was somehow
    able to take care of the home and also read
    a lot of French literature and poetry.
    And she would write it down, and she was very erudite
    in those areas.
    So I would say that she was a significantly intellectual
    person.
    That's impressive.
    Yeah.
    And did she ever talk about the war years
    and about her feelings about Poles
    and about what happened to the Jews of Europe?
    Did you hear that from her?
    If there was a wall of silence from the others,
    was that different with her or not?
    I would say not.
    I would say that almost 100% of what I learned and now
    know about my parents' experiences during the war
    came from my father in unguarded moments,
    because he generally didn't like to talk about it.
    I see.
    But he would sometimes, as I mentioned in my write-up,
    he would just think of something and start crying
    and have to tell us what it was.
    Oh, dear.
    Oh, dear.
    Yeah.
    And-- oh, I had a question, but it escaped me.
    If it comes back, I will ask you.
    All right.
    Let's turn now to your father.
    And tell me a little bit about his personality.
    Well, do you have about a day?
    [LAUGHS] I know, it's not easy.
    It's not easy.
    No, and also, my dad was and still remains an enigma.
    And it's even hard for me to say where to start.
    But I'll tell you one thing.
    Is it OK if I talk about his childhood first [INAUDIBLE]??
    That's exactly what I wanted.
    This is exactly what I wanted.
    It is-- when I talked about personality,
    I'm reverting back to--
    excuse me, when I'm interviewing somebody direct--
    who has direct witness.
    And so it's part of that "what is your family background?"
    question.
    And so, yes, please do talk about his childhood
    and about his family of origin and anything
    that you know about that.
    Right.
    Sure.
    And I know quite a bit.
    And--
    OK.
    --he-- his father was a grain merchant, which he,
    my grandfather, my dad's dad, apparently committed suicide
    in the early '20s, and that fact was only revealed to me about
    two or three years ago by a cousin--
    On the other side, on your father's side.
    On my father's side.
    I was extremely shocked, because my father,
    among many other untruths, told me
    that his father had died of influenza at the time.
    He--
    Let me interject here--
    --said that--
    --for a moment.
    Yeah, sure.
    Do you think he might not have even known?
    Sometimes suicides at that time were masked for children,
    depending on how old they were at the time that it happens.
    My gut reaction, first reaction, is
    that my dad told me so many lies over the years about his past
    that I think he knew and just elected not to tell me.
    I see.
    And it's not clear to me, because there
    are things that my parents did-- there are quite a few things
    that my parents didn't tell me that I discovered later
    through other people.
    I'm not sure whether it was to protect me from hearing
    this kind of sad family news.
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    But what I think-- what I suspect is that he did know
    because when he described the consequences of his
    father's death through the glasses of someone who died
    of the flu, even, that my father was extremely traumatized
    by his father's death because it occurred at a time when he was
    a teenager--
    Oh, OK.
    And a very bad time and he gave me the strong impression--
    and I'll be glad to talk about this at any time you like--
    he gave me the strong impression that his mother, even when
    he was young, was a very difficult woman to deal with
    and that their relationship was stormy.
    So had he actually attended a yeshiva.
    Mm-hmm.
    Did he have brothers and sisters?
    He was an only child.
    Oh.
    And was his family very religious?
    I have to modify that.
    His mother remarried not too long before the war--
    World War II?
    --World War II-- and had a daughter.
    So he had a half-sister, but he had no relationship with her
    to speak of.
    But the half-sister only came around years later,
    10 years after my father's death or 15.
    Wow.
    So she survived, in other words.
    I'm not-- No.
    No, she died in a concentration camp
    like the majority of my family.
    But, anyway, what I was saying is that, so, speaking
    chronologically, I get the impression that my dad was--
    always seemed to me to be very intelligent.
    And I got the impression that he was a very good student,
    because he always spoke contemptuously
    of other students that were slow learners.
    My dad was athletic, and he was a starter on the basketball
    team.
    And he had some well-off and influential friends.
    And, as I mentioned in my write-up,
    he was friends with a man who was
    a boy at the time whose family owned
    a theater that Yiddish plays were put on,
    and my dad would see them.
    But at some point--
    and this is a big blank in terms of what I know-- at some point,
    even though he came from an Orthodox family,
    as I mentioned, and went to yeshiva and everything,
    at some point in his 20s onward, I
    think that he kind of renounced his religion.
    But I don't know for sure.
    But I got the impression over the years
    that there was no devotion to the Jewish religion,
    but there remained a strong cultural attachment.
    Tell me whether my impression is right or wrong.
    But, when you say that his mother remarried shortly
    before World War II--
    Yes.
    --does that mean that he stayed in touch with her
    or was kind of estranged from her,
    because you mentioned also that he didn't have
    relations with his half-sister?
    Right.
    Did he kind of fall out from--
    Well, I think that--
    because this wasn't-- this was not too long before the war,
    once my father got married, not too long after that,
    they had to leave Lodz and go to Warsaw.
    That's talking about your mother and your father.
    Yes.
    I'm talking about your grandmother.
    Oh, yeah.
    No, oh, yeah.
    I understand.
    But in terms of-- you're talking about his mother
    and the second marriage.
    I know next to nothing.
    I know that the second husband's last name was Sjejman, S-J---
    Uh-huh.
    S-J-E-J-M-A-N.
    OK.
    But I know very little.
    But what I believe happened is that there
    may have been a mixture of circumstances,
    but a rift, maybe.
    But I don't know anything about it,
    because my father really never talked about his half-sister.
    OK.
    And he never talked about Mr. Sjejman,
    and I think that always kind of happened around the time
    that my parents and my grandmother ended up in Warsaw.
    What I believe is that my father--
    I have a document that was tracing my father's movements.
    The Germans were documenting his movements.
    And it's noted in that document, which dates from 1940
    and a little before, it says that, around 1940, there
    was no further record of his living in Lodz.
    And that was probably around the time
    that my parents went to Warsaw because my dad could be
    sort of more anonymous there--
    Yeah.
    --while in Lodz--
    I want to step back for a minute and ask two factual questions.
    Oh, sure.
    One of them-- they're all dates.
    Your father's date of birth, your mother's date of birth,
    and it can be just the year, but I
    want to get an orientation about how old they were at that time.
    Well, since I prepared a piece of paper with those dates,
    I mean--
    You can just read it off.
    [INAUDIBLE] exactly.
    Yeah, hang on.
    We can stop for a second.
    What I actually have is my parents' dates of death.
    But since you're asking about dates of birth,
    as far as my father goes, he had about three or four dates
    of birth because--
    No kidding.
    [CHUCKLES]
    Yeah, they have to do with the fact
    that he wanted to try to avoid being drafted.
    And I don't know if there was a lottery system similar to ours
    in the Vietnam era.
    But, somehow, you know his official birthday
    was May 29, 1912.
    OK, that's his official birthday,
    but then there are others.
    Right.
    There are about three others, which have to do, probably,
    with him assuming a false identity of [? Konstanty ?]
    [? Dombrowski ?] and having to have that as his official
    birthdate and such other ways to kind of game the system so he
    could survive.
    As for my mother, I basically don't know her birthdate,
    but the year was 1912, as I mentioned.
    As well-- That's for your father, as your mother as well?
    Well, both of them were born in 1912.
    Got it.
    All right.
    My mother was slightly younger, just maybe
    a couple months younger.
    OK, and the date that they married--
    do you know that?
    I can only give you the year.
    They were married in 1939.
    Oh, so they were married-- do you think they
    were married before September?
    Yes.
    Because that's when the Germans invaded.
    Yes, they were.
    OK, so they really marry at the very beginning of everything.
    Yes.
    And so let's take the story then further,
    unless there are other things from your father's background
    that we should talk about now, let's
    go to the war years when they're in Warsaw.
    Is there something else we should know before we go there?
    Let's see.
    I don't think so.
    As I mentioned, the 10 or 20 years
    before the war kind of a blank in terms of what I knew.
    OK.
    Was your father--
    One thing--
    Mm-hmm.
    Go ahead.
    One thing that I did want to mention
    is that my father told me that he got out of military service
    because he was the sole financial support of my mother,
    but-- oh, my grandmother, sorry.
    His mother.
    OK.
    But, when my father passed away, we, of course,
    got a lot of his belongings, which
    included a box that had a lot of his mother's memorabilia.
    Oh, wow.
    Yeah, and that box has been very helpful to reconstruct
    some of this.
    And, in that box, there's a photograph
    of my father in what is without doubt
    a Polish military uniform.
    Hmm, that's interesting, given that you're
    saying he made efforts to be able to avoid a draft.
    Right, and it's possible that he was in uniform
    and then got a discharge.
    So I can't say that's--
    I was surprised to see that.
    Well, there could have been also a draft of two years.
    I mean, if he's born in 1912, most young men
    are drafted age 18, 19.
    So that would have made it early '30s, Polish army, two years,
    and, yes, you're discharged, and then
    you're not a member of the military when
    actually the war starts.
    Right, but my father, among many untruths
    that he told me, when I was about 12, I asked him,
    you know, Dad, did you fight in the war?
    And he said, yes.
    And I asked him, did you kill anybody?
    And he said, no, I don't know, they were too far away.
    But, subsequent to that, it appeared that he actually
    was never in the army, because he got this deferment
    or discharge, whatever it was.
    OK, so these are holes, in other words, where you really
    don't know what that photograph means.
    Right, exactly.
    OK, That's all part of the story, though.
    Yeah.
    And as many people say when you talk about market research
    surveys, when you get an answer back and it says don't know,
    don't know also says something.
    Sure.
    OK, when they went to Warsaw, was
    it your maternal or paternal grandmother
    that went with them?
    My paternal grandmother went, not with them,
    but I believe followed after my parents went.
    OK, and she was in the Warsaw ghetto.
    That's right, yeah.
    Along with the half-sister.
    Yes.
    And her husband.
    Yes, everybody at that time that lived in Warsaw
    went to Treblinka.
    So that's where they were deported?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Let's talk about your own father and how did he--
    tell me about how he survives.
    Sure.
    What are those four years like?
    OK.
    What happened was that, at some point after they got to Warsaw,
    my dad with my mother's help, as I mentioned earlier,
    took somebody's identity.
    Mm-hmm.
    [? Dombrowski. ?]
    [? Konstanty ?] [? Dombrowski. ?] And my mother
    was out in the open and also, but she professed to be
    a Volksdeutsche ethnic German.
    And she actually worked as like an assistant
    to the director of the German Chamber of Commerce in Warsaw.
    So--
    I'm not surprised, because they needed
    trusted Volksdeutsche to be able to man certain positions--
    Right.
    --at the time.
    So that was-- you anticipated a question that I had.
    Oh.
    So she went as Mrs. [? Dombrowska. ?]
    Yes.
    OK.
    [? Jadviga ?] [? Dombrowska, ?] and she worked--
    Well, let me put it this way.
    That's a lacuna in the story.
    And, actually, your asking this made me realize that given how
    many omissions and untruths are part of the way my parents
    related their war experience, I now suspect that my mother did
    not acknowledge being married to my father but probably remained
    a Günther, as far as the German authorities were concerned.
    Oh.
    But I don't have any I don't have any documentation at all
    during the war years in Warsaw of my mother's name
    or anything.
    But I have documentation that my father remained [? Konstanty ?]
    [? Dombrowski ?] throughout the war.
    Got it.
    Did they live together?
    So-- from what I understand, they lived together.
    They-- I mean, I'll give you a sketch of what I understand
    were some of the factors that led to their survival.
    First of all, in terms of my father's personality, one very
    significant aspect was that he was not only very bright
    in an intellectual way, although I
    don't think he went that far beyond high school,
    but he always came across as someone
    who had gone to college.
    And he knew an awful lot about certain areas.
    But the point is that--
    now I've lost my train [LAUGHING]----
    It happens.
    Don't worry.
    It happens.
    Yes.
    What is something about how your father survived it.
    Oh, how he survived, yeah.
    So, from what I understand, they--
    as I documented in my write-up-- they had enough money
    because my dad sold dental equipment, drill bits
    and things like that, on the black market,
    and god knows what else.
    And they had enough money to rent these extremely cheap
    apartments that had been occupied by Jews that
    were thrown out and also many Poles were thrown out
    of their apartments, too--
    That's right.
    --and occupied by the Germans, as you probably know.
    So they seemed to--
    I don't get the impression that they were starving.
    I don't think their--
    their life was very hard, because my dad was constantly
    on his guard, afraid he's going to reveal
    his Jewishness some way.
    Did he look Jewish?
    They had-- huh?
    Sorry?
    Let me-- I mean, it's a blunt question,
    but did he look Jewish?
    Did he look like he could pass--
    Oh, no.
    Not in-- no.
    That, I think was a very major factor in his survival,
    is that he looked not in the least Jewish, not even--
    nobody would look at this photograph and say,
    this guy looks Jewish.
    Ah, I see.
    He was extremely good-looking, but in a--
    he could have been French, German, Polish, but not--
    nothing suggested any Jewish genetic traits
    and reflected in his looks.
    So that was a big thing.
    Another factor was that my father--
    and I believe this has to do with what I mentioned
    about some kind of alienation from Judaism that happened must
    have happened for some time--
    because I don't know if you're aware, but most
    Polish Jews had a very distinct strong accent
    when they spoke Polish, even if they were fluent.
    That happens, yeah.
    Yeah.
    That is across Eastern Europe.
    Mm-hmm.
    Right.
    My father had absolutely no accent for some reason.
    Do you speak Polish?
    Because I think he had--
    I'm sorry?
    Do you speak Polish?
    I speak poorly, very poorly.
    I can probably make myself understood-- understandable
    if I need to go to the bathroom in Poland,
    but-- stuff like that.
    I can read it, though.
    But I don't understand most of what I'm reading.
    But you're describing two key things, really,
    that help towards survival is the ability
    to blend in and hide in plain sight.
    Neither your speech gives you away
    nor your looks give you away.
    Right, and there were other things--
    and this reflects my dad's common sense
    and resourcefulness and inventiveness--
    is that he developed a certain tact-- certain persona, not
    a persona in terms of personality
    but in terms of his physical presentation.
    He was not a tall man.
    He was 5' 8".
    But he would walk very str--
    with a very erect, almost military,
    posture, even into old age and always walked fast.
    He was always ahead of us when we went somewhere.
    And he decided that it was to his benefit
    to make eye contact with no one.
    So he disciplined himself to make eye contact
    with no one to minimize the chances of being recognized
    or something coming to somebody's mind that passed him
    on the street.
    And there are probably other things,
    but those are the salient things.
    Those are-- were things he told me
    about that he used sort of as a survival tactic.
    How is it that your grandmother ends up in the ghetto
    and your father does not end up in the ghetto?
    I know we've just talked about what
    helps him hide in plain sight, but when
    she follows your parents to Warsaw,
    does she live with them at any time and then is rounded up?
    Do you know how that happens?
    No, I don't know how it happened.
    In fact, as I mentioned a little earlier,
    I'm not sure how my parents presented their relationship
    to the world at that time, i.e. did they deny being married
    or keep different names?
    But I believe that one reason is, for certain,
    that my mother was willing to take the risk,
    meaning if it were found out that she were married to a Jew,
    she would be shot on the spot and my father too, basically.
    Not even-- they wouldn't even bother with a camp.
    Yeah.
    Under those circumstances, it was just cut and dried.
    So what I believe is that my mother played
    a very significant role, as having taken
    on a German identity, in my father's survival
    some way or other.
    I see.
    But my grandmother looked very Jewish
    and spoke with a very strong Jewish accent,
    so it's not surprising to me that she ended up
    in the ghetto--
    I see.
    --whether somebody gave the game away because there were
    blackmailers everywhere looking for Jews that they could turn
    in for money, et cetera, et cetera,
    because, as you're probably aware,
    there was a lot of hostility towards the Jews in Poland even
    before the war--
    Yes.
    --just over hundreds of years.
    So, anyway, let's see.
    Do you want me to continue-- so--
    Yes.
    OK, so basically, as I mentioned,
    they were able to afford several apartments,
    and, from what my father told me, the German tactic was--
    let's say Joe Blow is listening to Churchill on the radio
    and somebody turns him in.
    The Germans would come, and they wouldn't bother with just
    taking Joe Blow to a camp.
    They'd take the whole-- every inhabitant of the building--
    Right.
    --you know, guilt by association.
    But my parents were fortunate that whenever
    the buildings they were living in were raided,
    they weren't home.
    They were in one of their other apartments.
    OK, so they had multiple at the same time, or more than one
    at the same time.
    Yes, they did.
    And they just shuttled from one to the other
    to avoid being discovered.
    Now, did your mother ever talk about this,
    or was it through your father that you learned these things
    about the Warsaw years?
    This is all through my father.
    And let's see, my--
    I have a second cousin, the one that
    told me about my grandfather's suicide, who had told
    me a few things I didn't know.
    He was another source.
    And also, I have a second cousin who lives in Israel with whom
    I have been in touch because the three of us,
    meaning the male second whatever cousin, the woman in Israel,
    we all are in the process of finalizing becoming inheritors
    of land that was purchased before the war
    by my great-uncle on my father's side, who
    was murdered at Treblinka.
    And we're the heirs to some land in Israel.
    Oh, wow.
    So he had immigrated to Israel and purchased land--
    No, he was planning to.
    See, this purchase of the land happened in the '30s,
    before the war.
    He was planning to retire to Israel.
    Oh, and then the war took, over and he would go into--
    Everything went to hell, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Now, in your letter, you mention that over 50 members
    of your family on your father's side
    were murdered by the Nazis.
    Yes.
    And yet, in our description here today, it really
    has a sense of a small family, if talking
    about nuclear family, your father, his father who
    is dead by that point, a grandmother, and no siblings,
    except for the half-sister.
    Right.
    Who would the other people have been?
    OK, yeah, I can certainly address that.
    The cousin that I referred to, male cousin, I think maybe
    you might want his name so you can keep track of all these--
    his name currently is Jacques--
    as written in French, J-A-C-Q-U-E-S--
    Luben.
    L as in Larry, U as in under, B as in boy, E as in Edward,
    N as in Nancy.
    Got it.
    Jacques Luben.
    Jacques Luben, cousin in Israel.
    No, no, no.
    Oh.
    Jacques Luben lives in Delaware.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Oh, OK.
    He used to live in New York.
    OK.
    I babysat him when he was--
    he's about five years or six years younger than me.
    I babysat him when we first came to the US.
    There's a whole-- I want, for your sake,
    to give you a coherent narrative.
    But there's a huge side story to the relationship
    between Jacques's father and my father
    and how it impacted on my father's mother and things
    like that.
    But that seems to me something that is really
    kind of encapsulated and maybe doesn't
    fit with what you want to know right now.
    I don't know.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Well, it's hard to s-- yeah, it's
    hard to say without knowing the story.
    OK.
    But--
    Could I just-- I'm sorry.
    Sure, go ahead.
    I'm sorry to interrupt, but--
    Go ahead.
    I was leading-- I was leading up to answering your question
    about how come 50 people, but--
    Yeah, who are the 50 people?
    [INAUDIBLE] family.
    Yeah.
    Mm-hmm.
    OK, I think that my father extended
    the scope of the people who had died
    to cousins and second cousins--
    That's fine.
    It's--
    --to make 50.
    And Jacques Luben's father, and I
    think perhaps it would be helpful to you
    to record the name that--
    he became Michael Luben--
    OK.
    --when he came to the US, which was--
    That is the father.
    This is Jacques's father.
    Yeah.
    And Jacques and his wife and Jacques's mother
    all immigrated to the US and settled in New York.
    And all this happened about five or six
    or more years before we got to New York.
    So--
    Post-war, in any words-- in other words,
    they survived World War II.
    Yes, Jacques's mother was, significantly, I guess--
    Jacques's father and mother didn't
    meet until after the war.
    So it wasn't like they survived together, like my parents.
    They didn't even know each other.
    Michael Luben, whose other names I'll
    tell you because this is parallel
    with my dad and his names--
    Michael Luben was fortunate enough
    to be sent to live in Switzerland just
    before the war broke out.
    OK.
    But he eventually returned to Poland
    and also lived in plain sight under circumstances
    that I know very little about because there
    was a rift between that part of the family and mine.
    OK.
    What was the relation between--
    cousin relation between your father and Michael Luben?
    Were they second cousins?
    Were they--
    They were first cousins.
    They were first cousins.
    Yes.
    OK.
    So--
    And--
    Mm-hmm.
    I don't know how Michael felt about my dad,
    but my dad, for a number of reasons,
    strongly disliked Michael.
    OK.
    And the dislike grew over the years
    due to certain circumstances that I think probably--
    I think they're a little delicate, but--
    You know what we--
    I'm looking right now.
    Let's-- in order to streamline this a little bit, let's talk--
    we have until 3 o'clock.
    And then--
    Oh, I didn't realize that.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, that's right.
    Because we have a space that we reserve so that we can actually
    record audio.
    Right.
    Sure.
    And I would suggest what we do--
    I mean, by saying this and interrupting,
    I'm not saying these other things are irrelevant,
    but I'm saying let's get the major part of the story down.
    OK.
    And, in some ways, this is my fault
    because I ask certain details, and then we
    go off on that tangent.
    Right.
    So I asked about the 50 people and how would they have been--
    but the real issue that-- or the real experiences
    that we need to get down are what
    are the-- as many details of that your parents told you
    or your father told you about his hiding in plain sight
    experiences during the war?
    Oh, absolutely.
    And how he gets-- what is his relationship to his mother?
    Does he know what happens to her?
    Does he find-- does he ever go into the ghetto himself?
    Things like that.
    Sure.
    I can address all that in great detail.
    OK, let's talk about that.
    OK, so if I talk too much, just shut me up.
    No, no, no, you're fine.
    You're fine.
    I tend to be very precise.
    Maybe it's the German part--
    [LAUGHS] No--
    --if you don't mind me speaking in stereotypes.
    No, no, no, no, no.
    And the issue is that we can-- the next time
    we have a reservation for a space like this is in a month.
    So we can always come back and expand
    on things at another point.
    Right.
    But for the next 40--
    to use up the other time, let's get most of the skel--
    the spine of the story down.
    I wanted to say skeleton--
    Absolutely.
    But the spine is really what I mean.
    And then--
    OK.
    OK, so your father--
    and he sells dental equipment-- who knows what else he sells.
    Right.
    They move between apartment and apartment.
    It's not clear whether or not officially they're married.
    Your mother protects him, but her own official sort of face
    is one that she goes by her name Günther,
    as far as you understand.
    Right.
    OK.
    One thing that I did want to mention that I believe
    is important is that my cousin in Israel
    says that she and her family, when my parents visited Israel,
    were told that my mother converted
    to Judaism after the war, which I believe
    is a complete untruth.
    Really.
    That was one thing.
    I think that this was part of my parents' way
    that I mentioned of wanting to, on the surface, gratify
    other people's needs and please them.
    I see.
    And I believe they told this lie to the Israeli part
    of the family because of many factors,
    including my father's guilt about being Jewish and hiding
    that fact.
    And that was one place where he could tell the truth.
    OK.
    But that I don't believe was the truth.
    I see.
    So, anyway, let me get to what you're asking for,
    because I have a very definite experience that my father
    and mother related, my father, verbally, and my mother
    documented it in writing.
    OK.
    There was-- my father made periodic trips into the ghetto.
    As long as you wore the proper armband--
    if you-- or not Jewish, obviously,
    because you'd already be in the ghetto--
    if you were a Gentile Pole, like my father was passing himself--
    if you wore a certain band around your arm,
    you could enter the ghetto.
    You were screened by a policeman, a Polish policeman,
    a German policeman, then you could go in.
    So what happened was that my dad went in one time, and he--
    wearing his armband.
    And he wanted to visit his mother.
    So he visited.
    And, at that time, his mother and the second husband were--
    the second husband was still alive.
    He visited the both of them and his stepfather, I guess,
    was insisting that he give my father a fur
    coat that he owned.
    And my father fought-- you know, I don't want it,
    blah blah blah.
    It'll make me look weird when I leave with two coats,
    and blah blah.
    But he ended up being convinced to put it on.
    So what happened is that he started
    to walk out of the ghetto.
    He got about, I'd say, 20 feet past the gates where the Polish
    policeman came running after him and said, the German gendarme--
    you know, it's a combination policemen and a military
    person--
    wants to talk to you.
    So my father had to go back.
    Right.
    And, at that point, the fur was discovered.
    And my father was arrested and taken
    to a police station with a whole bunch of other people.
    But, from what he told me, there was a long line
    of people who were being processed
    who were under arrest.
    And he just kept going to the back
    of the line until, finally, the German officers that
    were screening these people, I think they got tired
    and some of them left.
    And, anyway, to make a long story short,
    my father was able to persuade somebody
    to act as an interpreter for him with the Germans.
    And my father concocted a story that
    was a complete lie that made it look
    as if the German policeman-- gendarme-- had been
    negligent in not checking his identity papers
    or his having an armband.
    Ah.
    OK.
    And as a side story, there were blackmailers at the ghetto
    gates who would look for people who looked Jewish,
    which my dad of course didn't, and didn't have their armband
    and then would say, we're going to turn you in if you don't--
    Hmm.
    Yeah, pay up.
    --give us money.
    Yeah.
    So, again, so my father went to the back of the line.
    He told a cockamamie story to the German authorities
    through the interpreter.
    So, basically, the interpreter told the authorities,
    of course, what my dad concocted, and they bought it.
    And they let him go.
    And they let him go, yeah.
    That was a close call.
    It was a very close call, and he had one--
    he had maybe, yeah, a couple of close calls.
    The only one I know in detail is very simple.
    And he showed me the spot where it happened.
    Towards the end of the war, a sniper shot at him
    and missed his head by a couple inches or something,
    and the bullet ended up in a pile of coal next to him.
    And he showed me exactly that spot.
    But there was that and then also he
    was arrested for something else and ended up
    with being interrogated by a German officer who
    referred to him as a dog and ended up
    being killed by the Russians shortly after,
    and my father actually saw his dead body
    in the street lying dead.
    Wow.
    Same guy?
    Yeah, the same guy.
    And my dad also--
    this is one instance where--
    he told this story more than once,
    whether to us, and sometimes to people we were having--
    company, basically.
    And that was a story where he burst out crying.
    And we'd ask him what was wrong.
    And he would say that he heard a Pole being beaten to death.
    Not clear if it was by Germans or other Poles,
    but he was being beaten to death, apparently,
    because my father--
    my mother saw the body later and was yelling for help.
    And my father felt helpless, because he couldn't do anything
    to assist.
    So he's hearing these screams, then.
    Yeah.
    And feeling this tremendous guilt--
    Yeah.
    --which was probably part of his general survivor guilt,
    to lump into a phrase, for being with my mother,
    for being with the Germans, for being all these things.
    You think that was a big thing for him?
    I mean, was this something that you saw as a young child
    growing up with him?
    The survivor guilt aspect, right?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
    Well, I can't say that it was the kind of why did I survive
    and, you know, the stereotype, and everybody else died?
    It wasn't anything like that.
    It was more what I saw particularly
    in my dad's behavior and personality
    as it was reflected through that was
    that he was always very, very ambivalent about his identity.
    In fact, he said to me once, I don't
    have a good sense of identity.
    And what he meant, by tying it together with other things,
    is that my father, in his heart of hearts,
    wanted, to a significant degree, to be a Gentile Pole.
    Hmm.
    I don't know where that came from.
    He would have been assimilated had there been no war.
    Are you saying he would have been an assimilated Pole?
    I think that he became an assimilated Pole
    in terms of language and those things I
    mentioned quite a bit earlier.
    It must have taken many years.
    I don't know if--
    I don't know when it started.
    But I imagine that, since my grandmother spoke
    a lot of Yiddish, that my father probably,
    up until some age, past his teens, probably
    had a Jewish accent, everything, and had a yarmulke
    and went to yeshiva.
    And that's what I was talking about, the fact
    that I don't have--
    I only have an inkling but no details
    about the feeling that somehow his identification with Poles--
    and, interestingly enough, as a bundle with Catholicism--
    that he had, I don't know where that comes from.
    I could think about it for hours.
    But, he, I believe, as I mentioned,
    not only did he have some kind of yearning
    to be accepted as a Pole, but also maybe
    as part of renouncing his Jewish religious affiliation.
    He didn't, to my knowledge, convert to Catholicism.
    But when he told me the lie, the big
    lie, one of the big lies, which he only--
    he told me that he was Catholic up
    until he was forced to give up the truth
    because my grandmother came--
    Jewish grandmother, his grandmother-- his mother
    came to live with us.
    And she started going to synagogue,
    and I was old enough to come with her.
    So your grandmother from the ghetto survives.
    Yeah.
    And what--
    She--
    OK.
    Oh, go ahead.
    She's not one of the 50.
    No.
    But her daughter doesn't.
    Her daughter doesn't, and her second husband doesn't.
    I see.
    And all the cousins--
    her sisters.
    She had several sisters that are also included in all that,
    and their children.
    OK.
    OK.
    So it starts to mount up, as I mentioned,
    once you get to that and cousins.
    So-- well, it's easy to get to such a number
    given what the policies were.
    Right.
    That's not the issue.
    Yeah.
    How did your grandmother survive?
    That is a big question mark because, as you probably know,
    the ghetto was liquidated.
    Yes.
    And everybody was sent to Treblinka, pretty much.
    That's right.
    I don't know how she survived.
    But I do know that what my father told me--
    and this is something that my cousin Jacques, Mr.
    Michael Luben's son, [INAUDIBLE] to help you keep up track--
    Sure.
    He didn't know anything about any of this.
    But my father told me that Jacques's father, Michael,
    was the person who somehow facilitated
    my grandmother escaping from the ghetto, getting out.
    Maybe-- I mean, he was a smart guy.
    Maybe he figured out a scheme like my dad did to get out.
    And my dad got-- he ended up getting arrested,
    but he got out of it.
    Yeah.
    Who knows?
    My uncle was--
    Michael was a very, very shrewd man.
    So--
    I never--
    Yeah.
    Nobody ever told me how my grandmother got out,
    and nobody whom I asked, who's left alive, knows.
    Tell me.
    So-- one of the thi--
    OK, that explains one of the questions
    that I have from what I was reading
    that you had written before--
    Yeah.
    --is that, it sounded to m-- on the one
    hand, that everybody who was in the ghetto from your family
    ended up in Treblinka, including grandmother,
    and then, later, you write that she visits you when you're
    living in London and you're 12.
    Oh, did I-- if--
    yeah, I mean-- yeah, if I wrote something to the effect--
    you wouldn't happen to have my thing, my write-up,
    in front of you, would you?
    I do.
    You do.
    It says-- but here--
    [CHUCKLING] OK, let me go back to it later.
    OK, yeah.
    But one of the things that really jumped out to me
    was that your father didn't tell you he was Jewish
    until you're 12 years old.
    Yes.
    And was that the--
    so your assumption until then is that he's [? Konstantin ?]
    [? Dombrowska? ?] [? Dombrowski. ?]
    [? Konstanty, ?] a T-Y.
    A T-Y. [? Konstanty ?] [? Dombrowski? ?]
    Yes, absolutely.
    And that he's a Polish Catholic.
    Yes.
    And that, consequently, you are half Gentile Polish
    and half Gentile German.
    Right.
    Well, that does a number on somebody's own identity.
    Yes, for sure.
    So you had no idea that you have any Jewish ties or Jewish roots
    until your grandmother from Israel, your father's mother,
    who is able to survive the Warsaw ghetto,
    arrives in London.
    Right.
    From Israel, yeah.
    From Israel.
    Yeah, she spent about a year--
    I think it was just a year-- in Israel.
    And then, she came to England only a few months
    before we left for the US.
    What kind of-- is this the only time
    that you ever saw her or knew her
    or had interactions with her?
    Oh, she lived with us from about 1956 to her death in 1962.
    Oh, so a long time.
    Yeah.
    A long time.
    So did she-- was she a storyteller?
    What kind of a personality did she have?
    Well, I guess the most salient aspect of her personality
    was that, like my father, she had an extremely
    explosive temper.
    And they would have horrendous fights very frequently.
    She was very loving towards me, and she made Jewish specialties
    like kugela and chicken soup that I liked.
    Very loving, as I said.
    But the atmosphere in the home was horrible.
    And if my mother-- if my father wasn't fighting
    with my grandmother, my mother was
    fighting with my grandmother.
    She was extremely nasty, argumentative,
    did not really talk about the war at all.
    She never mentioned anything.
    But it was always there.
    How could it not be?
    Yeah, I'm sure it was.
    Yeah.
    But she-- I don't know.
    She was a very kind of closed-in person in the sense
    of really not discussing.
    And I guess it's not uncommon for her generation and culture
    and everything to not have her emotions on her sleeve.
    But no, she just totally--
    I knew nothing from her about her experiences, not even
    a hint.
    OK, but, nevertheless, was there an explanation that
    was offered to you when she starts visiting a synagogue
    and you realize that you're Jewish, you're part Jewish?
    Right.
    And does he then say, oh, gee, I forgot.
    Or does he say, you know--
    Sorry.
    [LAUGHS]
    Yeah.
    Yeah, right.
    I don't remember his giving an explanation, see.
    The only thing I believe happened
    was that my mother may--
    I think my mother said something to the effect
    that they just wanted me to be A, protected
    from hearing a lot of unpleasantness, and also,
    since I was--
    they were raising me, actually, as a Protestant,
    as a Lutheran, as my mother was.
    And, again, to answer your question, there was--
    I seldom would get a straight answer to anything
    from either--
    from my parents or my grandmother.
    I didn't ask a lot of questions, but when I did ask questions,
    I frequently got evasive answers.
    So I can't answer you know precisely how they explained
    this huge lie, the biggest lie that I think in my life
    that I've ever been told.
    That's huge.
    That really is huge.
    Had a lot of consequences for me.
    Such as?
    Well, this is where--
    things can get a little dicey.
    But I remember that, first of all,
    [INAUDIBLE] several things happened when I was maybe
    around 13 or 14--
    no-- yeah, younger than that.
    OK.
    Still 12 and almost 13, maybe.
    I developed an ambivalent attitude
    towards Germans and towards Jews.
    It was almost as if they were conflicting aspects
    of my personality, of my perception.
    To give you concrete examples of that, while I was still
    in England, I progressively began
    to be very, very interested in war, and particularly
    World War II and particularly the war
    in the geographical areas that my parents were
    involved with and--
    primarily.
    Concurrent with that was a tremendous conf--
    I had more than one identity conflict.
    Another one was that, coming from London,
    arriving in New York that I expected
    to be like it was portrayed in the movies
    was an extremely rude shock.
    I mean, I remember the customs official
    that checked us out saw that I had a violin.
    He says, basically, why are you such a wimp?
    Why are you playing the violin?
    You should be playing football.
    Oh, good god.
    Yeah.
    Anyway-- and then, so for a year or more,
    I was conflicted as to wanting to have a British identity.
    I felt that I was ripped away from England just when
    had begun to truly develop a desire to be English.
    Yeah.
    Strong desire.
    So that was concurrent with what I
    was talking about before was I started reading
    and I remember the very first book I read about the war
    that--
    one of the first--
    was the book that had the title that referred to red flares
    that I mentioned earlier.
    Yeah, red flares.
    And it was a very touching account
    by a German soldier, who went through the war with Russia,
    ended up in Stalingrad, got one of those what they call
    million-dollar wounds and got shipped out by plane just
    before the 6th Army collapsed and was basically destroyed.
    Yes.
    So the book affected me, but what's interesting
    is it affected me in a way that made
    me feel sympathetic towards the poor schlub German soldier who
    had to fight without being ideologically motivated,
    at least how that soldier portrayed himself.
    And I had a certain sympathy.
    And that sympathy was amplified by the fact
    that my experiences in Germany were very positive.
    I liked the people in general.
    Everybody was very polite.
    I took violin lessons from a German man
    who was definitely in the service
    and showed me a picture of him in uniform.
    He might have even been in the SS, but--
    You don't know.
    --his uniform was black.
    Yeah.
    That's not so important.
    So here I am in England--
    I mean, in New York.
    On top of it, my dad had insisted long before,
    when we were still in London, that I
    go to a French school, A, because
    of his dislike for the British because he
    felt they were snobby and mistreated him
    and didn't give him the same job an Englishman would get,
    all these resentments.
    So I went to a French school.
    I did very well.
    I went to France for a vacation.
    I became fluent in French.
    So I have to say that that's somewhat ancillary, because I
    didn't have a French identity, but I
    did have a very strong French cultural orientation
    that was not a split in my persona,
    but somewhat significant.
    But now this is the delicate part.
    I believe that the neighborhood we lived in--
    In New York.
    --had-- in New York--
    was, as I mentioned, a mixed neighborhood, a lot of Jews,
    Puerto Ricans, and Blacks all kind of coexisting.
    The guy who ran the local candy store
    had a prominent concentration camp tattoo.
    As you may know, all tattoos were done at Auschwitz.
    Yes.
    Other concentration camps didn't do the tattooing.
    This guy had that.
    And I developed some vague--
    some vague dislike to some of the Jewish people that I met.
    I don't know where it came from exactly.
    But some of them were concentration camp survivors,
    for example, our upstairs neighbors,
    who my parents, I think, knew even before the war had
    been in camps.
    And the mother-- it was a couple, childless couple--
    and the mother was somewhat eccentric.
    She was obsessed with Jewishness.
    I mean, I don't know if you know of a singer,
    Italian-American singer years ago named Perry Como.
    Oh, of course.
    Yeah, he-- we were watching a show with them.
    And all she could say is, he's a Jew.
    He's a Jew.
    He's a Jew.
    And all of us knew he was Italian, but she insisted.
    But that's not all of it.
    The worst thing is that I vaguely
    remember having a conversation with her
    in an elevator in our building.
    I don't remember the tenor of the conversation.
    And I certainly don't remember what she said I had said.
    But she said to my parents that I had said to her, verbatim
    now--
    I'm not a Jew, my father's not a Jew, and I hate the Jews--
    Oh, dear.
    --which I believe she concocted out of her craziness.
    Yeah.
    Or she picked up on something.
    Well--
    It's enough to give you some guilt.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, I mean I--
    in some ways, I'm like my dad.
    I mean, my dad, as I mentioned, maintained
    a very strong cultural Jewish identity even
    at the time when he was denying being Jewish, not only to me,
    but he didn't want anybody to know
    that he was Jewish when we came to the US, nobody
    who didn't know him.
    He just didn't mention it.
    And he became curious a couple of times
    when somebody assumed he was Jewish who didn't know him.
    And that was in the grocery store
    where he was asking for a certain vegetable,
    and the grocery clerk said in Yiddish, over there.
    And my dad looked exploded from being assumed to be a Jew.
    And another incident happened-- and this is my bad judgment--
    is that in about 1984, I was studying stand-up comedy just
    for fun and to be a better public speaker.
    And I did a routine where with-- again, bad judgment--
    I referred to my father and his Jewishness in a certain way.
    And he exploded at me--
    Yeah.
    --I think with some justification.
    I think that was an instance of poor social intelligence
    on my part, that I guess--
    I wasn't as aware of how he would react.
    Well, these are big things.
    These are very big--
    I mean, there's a certain kind of thread
    that, I don't know if I'll articulate it properly,
    but as we've been speaking, a certain thread through what you
    describe as your parents' story and their ability
    to survive really depends on being
    able to tell a lot of lies and really
    be able to bend the truth so that they are not victimized,
    so that they can still live to another day.
    And yet, those things don't stop when the danger stops.
    And that continues.
    So-- and a child--
    I'm not a psychiatrist.
    I'm not somebody's-- but I know that a child needs something
    that is both stable and clear.
    Yes.
    And there's not a lot of clarity when
    you are creating obfuscations, and only
    through obfuscation can you find a way to try and avoid
    a malignant force.
    But a child needs clarity.
    A child needs to know who they are.
    A child needs to know what is it that happened.
    And when there's a vacuum of information,
    you fill it in with your own fears
    or your own interpretation.
    And so, if somebody is being evasive,
    is it because they have--
    they're scared and they don't want
    to be pinned down, or is it that they did something
    that they're ashamed of?
    And you don't know.
    You don't know the answer to that question.
    Right.
    If I can just mention--
    Sure.
    --a couple of things--
    the wife that--
    Joan that I am current--
    this is my current wife.
    I was married for three years to another woman
    in the early '80s.
    And I don't want to use up a lot of time.
    But just, basically, my father just hated the fact that
    I'd married her because somehow he didn't feel that she was
    doing enough daughter-in-law-ish things, basically.
    And there were other aspects, but the bottom line
    is that I still remember that my first wife, at one point,
    said to me, I suspect that your parents were spies.
    And even though there's a part of it that I thought was silly,
    there's a part of it that kind of
    resonated with the idea of how little
    I knew about what they really were doing.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And-- yeah.
    It is the lack of knowledge, the lack of real--
    something firm.
    Even if people have-- all families have narratives,
    all families have stories, and we call them narratives
    and we call them, sometimes, tales,
    that doesn't mean they're not factual.
    It just means that you select from an event that
    happened something that has significance for you.
    And that's what you will tell somebody,
    and they'll tell somebody else, and so on.
    And I believe that, as human beings, we need those things.
    We need those stories.
    Well, and what you're mentioning about lack of consistency
    was very, very prominent in my upbringing.
    And on the one hand--
    and my first wife picked up on this
    even when I was 27 years old.
    She said one time, you know, your parents don't respect you.
    And that was true, because--
    to a certain degree.
    My mother would lie to me about certain things.
    She'd say I was good-looking at a time when
    I was really awkward-looking.
    Sometimes she would just say, you know, Edward,
    you're a little bit stupid.
    And my father was always denigrating me--
    you're stupid, you're this, you're that.
    It was extremely difficult being around him.
    He was so self-centered that everything he did always
    had to be something that was to his advantage.
    Yeah.
    And both my parents were that way.
    And this, I know, is food for another conversation
    if we had one or whatever, but my parents
    were phony in two di-- in different ways.
    My dad would lie outright, sometimes
    just to defend himself when we made remarks
    that he had behaved in a way, like not
    asserted himself or something.
    He might fly into a rage.
    My mother didn't lie.
    She just skirted the truth often and seemed
    in an insincere manner that my grandmother, my father's
    mother, picked up on when she was living with us,
    and she had an argument with my mother.
    And she remarked that my mother had a phony smile.
    And I think she was intuitive enough
    to get that too, you know?
    Well, the question when we talk about a Holocaust story
    is how much is this--
    how much is this as a result of all those things
    that happened when you take a mix of people who
    come from a certain background and born
    at a certain time in a certain place
    and they're with each other, and then
    these other forces, these malignant forces, are there
    and play havoc with their lives?
    And so is what you are describing
    as being born after the war and growing up with this,
    are you experiencing the result of that sort of bad concoction,
    or is this part of people's personalities?
    And how m-- I don't know if these are the questions
    that you have faced.
    I don't know what--
    we've only touched on a couple of those
    that have affected you.
    But what I'm impressed by is that you've
    managed to glean from all the things
    that you don't know some things that you do know that are just
    mind-blowing aspects of what they had to deal with, given
    who they are and the time and place in which they found
    themselves.
    Yes, definitely.
    I mean, some of the things you just mentioned resonate with
    the fact that my self-perception is--
    don't know exactly how to say it--
    that I'm not always as tolerant of other people's quirks
    as my sort of--
    I won't go and use Freudian terminology, because I hate it,
    but whatever aspect is saying, this is wrong,
    you shouldn't be that way comes in.
    My parents were always extremely critical of everything
    and everybody.
    And my mother would criticize everybody's looks,
    She'd criticize my girlfriend's looks.
    And they put on this attitude of superiority
    that I took on as a child where kids at school would say to me,
    you think you're better than everybody else.
    Yeah, and you didn't even know that that's
    what you were doing.
    Yeah.
    I didn't, no.
    I was a very--
    I was a very angry kid for reasons, a number of reasons.
    I think my home environment was part of that.
    And I did want to mention that to give you
    a very vivid illustration that you
    may have read in my write-up.
    I think I put it in there that, why
    the arguments that my father and grandmother and mother
    had resulted in my threatening them with the powerful air
    rifle I owned to shoot them if they didn't stop arguing.
    Oh, how hard.
    How hard, yeah.
    So I sometimes-- I have to say, I've
    suffered from ever since my early 20s
    from recurrent severe depressions.
    I think my father, although he hated the idea of getting
    treatment, was probably depressed, especially
    after my mother died, but I think he had depressive traits.
    But I think that my--
    the greatest pride that I have now,
    as I look back on 71 years of my life,
    is that I was able to, in spite of depressions that
    were paralyzing completely, that I almost
    wanted to jump out of the window or be hospitalized.
    But I feel proud that I could still func--
    I couldn't function during these things,
    but I feel a certain pride that I had overcome something,
    in certain ways, that was a tremendous obstacle.
    That's huge.
    That's huge.
    And I-- yeah.
    I mean, and I also feel that I have overcome
    certain aspects or certain aspects of my upbringing
    that formed my personality in ways that, looking back,
    I realize I don't like.
    I had-- In other words, there are many selves that I--
    in the sense of the self in a philosophical way in the past I
    assumed or--
    that was me that I don't like a lot of what I was.
    Well, there's a--
    I have a couple of thoughts.
    We're coming close to the end now.
    Yes.
    And let me share all of these different thoughts which--
    number one, sort of like a logistical one.
    I would suggest that when I conclude the interview today,
    let's think if there is anything that you'd
    want to add to what we've talked about, whether it's a detail
    or whether it's a certain tangent.
    You-- keep in mind that we could have an accretion to it.
    As I say, the next time that we are able to secure a room where
    we are able to do this audio interview,
    we could use that time to do such a thing.
    Number one.
    And number two, in order to help that,
    I'll find out whether or not we can send you
    the copy of this interview so that you could listen to it.
    Right.
    And we don't-- as I say, we don't do editing.
    And I'll send the release form.
    I would very much like to have your story
    to be illustrative of what happens in a family dynamic
    when you have these forces.
    But it's a real balance between what is helpful
    and what is legitimate historically--
    Right.
    --to what is really personal and is not our business,
    nor should it be anybody else's business.
    And you are the person to decide that, how much to share.
    And we're in that kind of territory
    when we're talking about these things.
    They're huge issues.
    And yet they have these aspects to it.
    And I want you to keep in mind that this is a public archive.
    Yes.
    And I think there's something that you really
    have to contribute to our knowledge of what a genocidal
    policy, instigated by a right wing
    political party that took power in Germany,
    what kind of havoc that could wreak on people's lives,
    and at the same time have a door that says,
    well, this really isn't anybody's business beyond here.
    Do you understand what I'm saying?
    I believe that I fully understand
    what you're saying right now, because throughout my composing
    my statement, the thought kept coming up that basically said,
    I have got to draw the line in certain ways
    between using this as a personal catharsis, which it's not
    supposed to be, but yet I'm so emotionally tied up with it.
    And, just to put it very frankly,
    it made a significant part of my life really miserable.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    So I'm constantly saying, I'm going to edit this out,
    edit that out.
    So I will make an effort when I'm doing what you suggested,
    your first suggestion, to see if there's other things that
    are relevant historically as opposed
    to an emotional catharsis or expression--
    Well--
    --or account of staff stuff that's nobody's business.
    Well, what I want to say is it can be emotional,
    but it is your decision as to whether it
    should be anybody's business.
    That's the thing is that people respond-- the people that I've
    interviewed, everybody has an emotional response
    to what happened to them.
    And sometimes it has nothing to do with an historical event,
    other than the largest historical event, that they
    were in a city that was under occupation or something
    like that, or they were in the ghetto, or they were in a camp.
    But it is emotional.
    But it is a question of at what point do--
    yeah, at what point is that door?
    And who opens it, and when do you close it?
    Right.
    And I think that that's the thought I need to end with.
    It's an unanswered question.
    Yeah.
    Let me just say this.
    I do-- there are things that I have
    considered including in this account that I'm very leery of.
    And that brings me to the idea that the statement
    I made about emotional things comes from that,
    but it's more than that.
    It's that there are certain things that
    happened that I still haven't come to terms with
    and that have affected me tremendously
    which we haven't discussed.
    And I know it's incumbent upon me
    to decide whether I should bring them up.
    Yeah.
    And I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking.
    OK.
    OK, well, I appreciate that you have
    that you have shared what you have shared today.
    I think-- I know it takes a lot.
    And I know these are painful things.
    You-- I think that, reciprocally,
    I think that you asked very good questions in a very sympathetic
    manner that made it easy for me to respond--
    Thank you.
    --in the way I think I did.
    I think I was very--
    able to be very frank with you, I haven't gotten upset.
    [LAUGHS] I'm glad.
    I didn't-- in thinking about the interview, I thought, oh, gee,
    I'm going to start crying or something.
    There was a point where I almost did that, but thank
    you so much.
    I mean, this has been a very--
    I don't want to get all cliché-ish--
    That's OK.
    --but this was a positive experience for me.
    Well, thank you.
    And so I for this point, I'll say
    that this will conclude the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum interview with yourself,
    Dr. Edward Darell on June 20, 2017.
    But it is possible that there will
    be an accretion to this interview at a later date.
    OK?
    Is that--
    OK.
    OK, wonderful.
    Here we go.
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Dr. Edward Darell on November 7, 2017.
    And it is a follow-up interview of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum interview that was conducted on June 22,
    2017, via telephone between Washington, DC, and New York
    City.
    In the intervening months since our first interview, Dr. Darell,
    you've had a chance to review what we first talked
    about and find some additional information,
    and wanted to augment, add, sometimes correct
    what we were speaking of before.
    So let's start in that frame.
    What would be the first thing you would like to say?
    The first thing is that in our original interview,
    I stated with considerable conviction
    that I had a photograph of my father
    in what I believed to be a Polish military uniform, which
    raised some questions given his account of how he got
    a deferment from military service
    to taking care of his mother.
    Yes.
    As it turns out, I did a thorough internet check
    of uniforms of that period.
    And even though it has some basic characteristics that
    are in Poland, there are no insignia and nothing that really
    designates it as a uniform.
    So I would like to change that and basically assert that I have
    no evidence that that was--
    that's truly a military uniform.
    OK.
    So this is in saying that you do have a photograph
    and your father did say that he had been in the Polish army,
    but got a deferment.
    Is that correct?
    Yeah.
    The part of his--
    see, there was a mixed bag there.
    The part that he said was that he--
    and he gave me two different stories several years apart.
    The first was that he got a deferment
    as we were talking about with respect to his being
    basically the sole surviving son of his widowed mother.
    But he also sometime later, I believe,
    told me an untruth that he had actually
    fought during the war, which he later admitted that he did not.
    OK.
    And yet, you had this photograph.
    Right.
    And you didn't know how to interpret it.
    Yes.
    And frankly, I think that it struck
    me so hard that I over-interpreted it,
    and that's why I went to look at uniforms of the period.
    And it just did not resemble the uniforms sufficiently for me
    to even say that I'm sure it was one.
    Ah, I see.
    I see.
    OK, well, I mean, what goes through the thread
    that you have articulated through your story is
    that because there were so many lies and obfuscations
    and then also some truths, it's been very hard for you
    to figure out which is which.
    And this is yet one more of those instances.
    Is that correct?
    Absolutely.
    OK.
    So let's go on to the next point.
    OK.
    The next point is that in our initial conversation,
    I had stated that my grandmother, Helena,
    my father's mother--
    this part is true, that she was, as far
    as I know, she was married to a gentleman whose last name was
    Shainman
    That's right.
    Mm-hmm.
    And that they had a daughter.
    In other words, my father's half sister.
    As it turns out, I do not have convincing evidence
    that either Mr. Shainman or their daughter
    were specifically in a concentration camp.
    I only know that they both became deceased
    during the course of the war.
    OK.
    And when you say became deceased, they could have died--
    They could have died from a number of different causes
    besides being exterminated--
    I hate the word that I'm-- sorry-- in Treblinka.
    I see.
    OK.
    And I may have--
    I believe I said in our initial interview
    that one or both of them may have been in Treblinka
    or were in Treblinka.
    But as it turns out, the only person
    that I have firsthand documentation
    of being physically present there is Helena, my grandmother.
    Isn't that interesting?
    And she's the one who survived.
    Yes.
    The one who survived.
    And the other thing is-- oh, I forgot that.
    My grandmother's brother, Joseph [? Halpurn, ?]
    whom I mentioned at some point, definitely was there.
    And that's the person from whom my father got the fur
    coat that got him in trouble.
    Ah.
    Because I believe that I said something to the effect
    that it was Mr. Shainman who gave it to him,
    but that's not the case.
    It's definitely Mr. [? Halpurn. ?]
    OK.
    So your grandmother's brother, your father's uncle,
    when he visited your grandmother in the ghetto
    is the one who gave him the fur coat?
    Yes.
    At his insistence.
    Not that my father's.
    At Joseph's insistence, even though my father was afraid
    he would look too bulky.
    And as a matter of fact, he got caught, as you may recall.
    I remember that.
    And arrested.
    Yeah.
    I remember that.
    That was a very traumatic incident for your father.
    Definitely.
    Definitely.
    OK.
    So we've got that point down.
    OK.
    The next thing is that--
    no, actually, that's already subsumed
    under what I have already mentioned, so I'll move on.
    I had mentioned that my mother grieved her whole life
    for her father, who had died in 1945.
    They were apparently very close, and she
    would cry even years later when she was 80
    whenever she talked about him.
    Oh, wow.
    One thing that I omitted at the time addresses her mother.
    And I would like to change or add
    the fact that my mother was also very devoted to her mother,
    my grandmother, Wanda, Wanda.
    And that my mother was in touch by letter with her
    all the time up until her death--
    not my mother's death, but my grandmother's death in her 90s.
    And that my mother flew to Germany several times up until
    the early '70s in order to visit her from the US.
    Mm-hmm.
    OK.
    So she was devoted to both parents.
    Yes.
    But she's-- I mean, yeah.
    But she seemed to more vocally, let's say, mourn her father.
    Mm.
    Mm.
    And what was it that he died from again?
    Do you know?
    I don't know.
    As I mentioned in our first interview,
    he had some kind of chronic illness.
    And I guess I would rather not speculate, but whatever it was,
    he died of it.
    But I don't have any identification of what it was.
    OK.
    OK.
    So you wanted to then say, if I understand correctly,
    that your mother was also devoted
    to your grandmother, her mother.
    Yes.
    And would travel from the US to Germany
    to visit her until your grandmother's death as well,
    to take care of her, to be with her, and so on?
    And in fact, the extent to which that happened
    was that my mother received a call on a given day
    that she should come immediately and that my grandmother's
    situation was dire, and that she was expected to pass away.
    And my mother flew over there, and they met.
    And somehow, whatever the cause, my grandmother
    recovered, but then relapsed within a few weeks,
    and my mother went a second time.
    Oh, wow.
    Yeah.
    At which point she really did pass away
    in the presence of my mother.
    But your mother was able to be there
    to say goodbye, which is often at this point
    the most crucial thing, is that you don't come too late.
    Definitely.
    Definitely, yes.
    She even described it in detail, saying
    that when my grandmother stopped breathing,
    she could see the pallor of death start with her nose.
    Oh, wow.
    And then move downward.
    Yeah.
    Very specific, I know.
    [COUGHS] Excuse me.
    OK.
    OK.
    So that is another point.
    And now, we had discussed the issue of assimilation
    in general.
    And I believe that I had tied it in
    or you had to my father's ability
    to pass himself off completely, authentically as a non-Jew.
    That's right.
    That's right.
    And you had mentioned that, that his features,
    his outward appearance--
    His accent, and that's the key.
    I in our initial interview erroneously made a mistake,
    and I'll tell you how it happened,
    that my grandmother, his mother, did have a strong Jewish accent
    when speaking Polish.
    I think you said that, yes.
    I think I remember that.
    I listened to it in the recording,
    and it's definitely there.
    And when I heard that, I thought about the whole situation again.
    And what I realized was that somehow, I kind of conflated her
    with Wanda, my mother's mother, who spoke German with a very
    strong Polish accent.
    Oh.
    Ah, I see.
    Your maternal grandmother, not your paternal one.
    Right.
    Right.
    Or I just have some kind of temporary brain glitch,
    but anyway, that's what happened.
    Well, it happens to all of us.
    [LAUGHS]
    Right.
    So do you-- how would you explain
    your paternal, your Jewish grandmother's manner of speaking
    when she spoke Polish?
    Well, it goes back to the history
    of my family and my father and grandmother more specifically.
    What I understand is that up until some time
    prior to his suicide, my paternal grandfather,
    my dad's father, was quite successful in business.
    They lived well.
    I have photographs of my dad as a baby
    being held by their permanent nanny, who
    happened to be a Gentile, not that that means much.
    But more importantly, there were several occasions when even
    though I would say that in general my father was not that
    "class" quote, unquote, "conscious,"
    but he several times let it drop that his grandmother's maiden
    name was Silberstrom, which means you may know silver
    stream.
    That's right.
    And he associated it not only with its beauty,
    that there was a subtext that it sounded somewhat aristocratic.
    So what I'm leading up to is that my
    thought about neither one of them having a strong Polish--
    I mean, Jewish accent in Polish was that after my grandfather,
    my father's father died, I think that they were essentially
    a unit of two, isolated from most other family, other people.
    And one element may be that somehow there
    was a synergy that one of them spoke without an accent
    and the other picked it up.
    Or it's possible that my grandmother deliberately
    did not acquire it.
    And there's another element also, which is that--
    and I'll start with saying that based on my reading, 10% to 12%
    of Jews in--
    only 10% to 12% of Jews surveyed during the interwar period
    in Poland identified themselves as Polish speakers.
    In other words, 90% or so were Yiddish speakers.
    And it was primarily some of the city dwellers
    that spoke Polish as their first language.
    So extrapolating from that, I thought to myself that there may
    have been-- and here, I do have to speculate,
    but I think I have some grounds for this--
    that my father and his mother had a certain discriminatory
    posture towards the Jews who came from the shtetls and were
    much poorer--
    Well, it's a process.
    --and spoke only Yiddish.
    Yeah.
    I mean, the education levels, class distinctions, the ability
    to earn money.
    All of that, because there was a wide disparity between how
    the Jews had lived in--
    first of all, the Jews that lived in the shtetls
    were predominantly poor.
    They were often tradesmen.
    But over 50% of doctors and lawyers
    were Polish speaking at the time.
    And I think that what I was going to actually add earlier
    is that I can't speak for Helena, my grandmother,
    but I can speak for my father that he placed an enormous value
    on education.
    And what's interesting is that I have no idea.
    I wish I'd asked these questions when my parents were alive.
    But they visited Poland frequently up
    until just a year or two before my mother's death in '95.
    And their social circle consisted of prominent people
    in Poland.
    So in other words, they took an interest
    in what was going on in Poland and Polish culture
    and Polish theater, Polish cultural events,
    that sort of thing.
    Can we make that assumption?
    Yes.
    Very much so.
    It's in contrast--
    I'll elaborate on what you just observed.
    It's in contrast to the fact--
    and I believe I mentioned this, that my father's best friend
    when he was either in his late teens or early 20s,
    that person's family owned a Yiddish theater.
    And my dad once in a while would sing a song in Yiddish
    that he remembered from a performance.
    But also, whenever he attended--
    when he went to--
    my parents in the US and in England went to a movie
    about once every four years, and it invariably
    was a Polish movie, but nothing to do with Jewish culture
    or anything like that.
    It was always a pure, quote, unquote, "pure Polish film."
    And they attended lectures that were given by Gentile
    Poles of a cultural nature.
    Well, I'll say that that is, in the experience
    that I've had interviewing people, it is a minority,
    but it is not completely unheard of.
    There are people I've interviewed who identified also
    with the larger Polish environment and the society
    and culture and interests, and saw themselves as both,
    as Jews and Poles.
    Yes.
    It was not the majority, but it certainly
    was something that was there and was pronounced.
    And there are still people today who
    are quite prominent in Polish society,
    and also who are very proud of being Jews
    and see themselves that way.
    Right.
    I do want to add, though, that my father quite frequently,
    whether here or when visiting relatives in Israel,
    he liked to--
    I believe I mentioned this--
    he like to kind of quiz people or lecture people
    as opposed to engage in more casual discourse.
    And one of the things he said repeatedly or asked
    as a quiz is, how many Jewish Nobel Prize winners were there?
    With pride.
    But never once in my life, at least as I remember it,
    did he ever use the phrase we Jews.
    He always distanced himself from any inclusive--
    any inclusion of himself in that group.
    Well, those are sort of interesting distinctions
    for him, for him as an individual.
    Mm-hmm.
    Now, one thing that I did want to make a comment on
    whether or not it's true--
    you can tell me-- is that although now you've
    corrected the record to save that your paternal grandmother,
    your Jewish grandmother, did not have a strong Jewish accent when
    she spoke Polish, she nevertheless
    looked more Jewish than your father did,
    and she nevertheless ended up in the Warsaw ghetto
    and he did not.
    Do you know any of how she did?
    My question is, is that true that she nevertheless-- you
    know, while her speech was not indicative,
    do you know how it is that she ended up in the ghetto?
    No.
    I can only speculate.
    There's-- OK.
    There's one reason that I believe is not speculative,
    but reality-based and practical, which is that my father was
    married to--
    in the eyes of the Germans, a German woman, which
    took some of the heat off him and the attention, which
    apparently was paid by many German soldiers, people of all
    ranks who were specifically looking people
    in the eye to see if they detected any Jewish feature
    or habit or quirk.
    Mm-hmm.
    So that was part of it.
    And unfortunately, the rest is completely a blank.
    Nobody ever talked about how my grandmother ended up
    in the ghetto.
    OK.
    OK.
    OK.
    Do you think we've covered this point?
    This point, yes.
    OK.
    Let's go to the next one.
    OK.
    I'm trying to leave the Oscar Gunter one till the last.
    Let's see.
    Let me just look--
    I've annotated the comments.
    Sure.
    And I just want to make sure--
    so I covered that.
    OK, yes.
    We've covered everything except that rather long write-up
    I made, which as I believe I mentioned,
    was based on material gleaned from the web, from the internet,
    and which contrasted with the information
    that I gave in the first interview, which was largely
    based on my cousin Hans's account.
    OK.
    And this is in regards to which of your mother's relatives?
    And your relatives?
    This is my mother's brother, Oscar [PERSONAL NAME] Gunter.
    OK.
    And remind us of the role that he
    had with the occupying German forces?
    OK.
    My cousin, who I-- and I know I mentioned is about five or six
    years older--
    but appeared at the time he told me this to be already losing
    some of his mental faculties.
    Yes.
    Told me that my uncle [PERSONAL NAME]
    worked for something that he called the Rosenberg Commission.
    As you probably know, it was led by Alfred Rosenberg,
    one of the major theorists of Nazi ideology and practice.
    And also quite prominent in the Eastern part, in Eastern Europe,
    in the Baltics and Eastern Poland.
    And also, there was mention--
    my cousin also mentioned parenthetically some association
    with Heinrich Himmler.
    Yes.
    But from my voluminous reading--
    I'm now going to shorten what I wrote to the essentials, which
    is that my uncle's involvement with history,
    specifically as it relates to Russia,
    did not begin with the war.
    It actually dates back to as early as 1932.
    Wow.
    But-- yes.
    But I want to clarify that when--
    OK.
    The institution that he started working with
    was called the Institute of Eastern European Studies.
    And how do you say that in German?
    The-- Jesus.
    I knew you were going to ask that.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Well, I could kind of translate, but it
    must have had an official title, official way
    of being identified.
    It's interesting.
    I did that for Rosenberg's ministarium but let me just see.
    It'll either-- I'm not going to delay
    this for more than a minute, but I may have
    a reference to it fairly handy.
    OK.
    Do you have a pause on--
    Yeah.
    We can pause, I believe.
    Could you pause it for a minute?
    Sure.
    We'll pause it for a minute.
    Because I know I can get--
    OK, great.
    We had a moment here.
    All right.
    So it's called--
    [Name of institution -German]
    --[INAUDIBLE]
    --Institute
    --Institute
    --Breslau.
    --Breslau.
    So it was within Poland, or was it now Breslau--
    It was-- in the literature that I perused,
    it was called Breslau.
    But most likely, it was called [INAUDIBLE] at that time.
    Yeah.
    Mm-hmm.
    So I believe this--
    I don't know my history that precisely,
    but I believe that this was one of those contested territories
    that Germany wanted from Poland that
    had large German populations living in it.
    Right.
    But that comes a little later in my narratives.
    Because this institute actually dated from 1918--
    Wow.
    --my father-- my grandfather joined it in about 1932.
    But at the time, prior to Hitler's ascendancy
    to chancellor, it did not focus in any way
    on political or territorial issues or claims by the Germans.
    That was later.
    So you're saying your grandfather--
    --certain agenda--
    Excuse me.
    You said your grandfather, or do you mean Oscar [PERSONAL NAME]
    I'm sorry.
    I mean-- I guess he's my--
    Uncle.
    Yeah.
    Uncle.
    Yeah, sorry.
    [LAUGHS]
    Yeah.
    My uncle, Oscar [PERSONAL NAME]
    Yeah.
    Yeah, as I mentioned, joins '32.
    At that time, although there may have been some,
    you know, let's say indication that the thought and the topics
    addressed were kind of previews of what was to come,
    but I don't have extensive evidence of that.
    But I do have very extensive evidence from the web
    and from some books that I looked at
    that the institute from the ascendancy of Hitler in 1933
    forward became--
    I'll use the word increasingly Nazified,
    which is hardly surprising.
    So I'll just try to condense the evolution of it
    into just the basic steps.
    So the-- OK.
    So I mentioned what I'll the geopolitical and economic
    research was conducted there under increasing Nazi influence.
    And then there was, as I mentioned, a consequent--
    a shift of focus, and then the issue of examining
    Germany's territorial rights to land ceded after World War I,
    which among others included what was called--
    I'm sure-- I assume you're aware--
    the Polish corridor.
    That's right.
    [INAUDIBLE], which was Danzig.
    Yes, exactly.
    Exactly.
    So--
    Would it be easier for you to read this rather than summarize
    it?
    We usually don't have people read it,
    but if you wrote this up yourself based on your research,
    maybe it's just easier to do.
    OK.
    No, I was mostly concerned about the time constraint,
    which may not--
    I don't know how much we've--
    If we're on our last point, I believe we have about--
    over 15 minutes left.
    OK.
    So I will do that.
    And one question before you read.
    Is this research you've conducted about the institute
    or about your uncle that you found online?
    It's a combination of both.
    OK.
    I informed myself about the exact--
    well, not exact, but the details,
    and in some detail about the existence,
    the creation, and the evolution of the institute.
    Also, its specific affiliations with the Nazis,
    and references that I'll be reading when I read this
    to various materials that were published
    and are listed as references on sites that involve people who
    were higher in rank, let's say, than my uncle in the institute,
    including one director.
    OK.
    So there are a whole bunch of references to his work.
    OK.
    OK.
    Anyway--
    So let's go.
    All right.
    So we've covered the fact that it started out
    in what was called [PLACE NAME] Then
    I just want to continue with where we were.
    Right.
    So-- OK.
    This point I found particularly interesting,
    which is that once Germany invaded Poland and the war
    started, right away almost all the junior staff
    of the institute was drafted into the Wehrmacht.
    I thought that was interesting, because you and I had discussed
    what kind of position my uncle held there.
    That's right.
    And Hans, my cousin, had made it sound perhaps more important,
    but he was certainly not a junior member.
    He was probably, I would guess, somewhere
    as a fourth or fifth rank below the director,
    given his substantial publications.
    OK.
    So during the war, this institute
    was under the auspices and the supervision of the--
    are you familiar with the [INAUDIBLE]?
    Yeah.
    That's the SS, isn't it?
    It's described in the literature as the security
    arm of the SS and the Gestapo.
    And-- we have 10 minutes.
    OK.
    Not much longer.
    Now, at one point, one of the directors of the institute was--
    at least one was a former member--
    a member of the Nazi party.
    But more importantly, as the war progressed, the supervision--
    there was strong supervision from higher ups,
    particularly until he was assassinated.
    Reinhard Heydrich.
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    He was brutal in Prague.
    Oh, yeah.
    Even his own fellow Nazis describe him basically
    as having no heart or a heart of stone or something.
    Anyway, he made it his policy to keep tabs
    on anybody even remotely connected
    with Germany, the conquered territories,
    those about to be conquered.
    And I would say that it appears that he was peripherally--
    he was only peripherally involved.
    He was not involved, obviously.
    He was too busy to be involved in the exact workings
    of the institute.
    But his underlings were clearly infiltrating it and finding out
    what was being written.
    So just as a point of historical interest,
    the archives of the institute were
    burned during the fighting for [PLACE NAME] between the Allies
    and the Germans.
    But I also omitted to say that this institute became
    a part of a ministry called the--
    I referred to it earlier.
    let's see --
    It was-- it was Rosenberg's bailiwick,
    and it was called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    OK.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] No N. [INAUDIBLE].
    My German keeps getting--
    All right.
    We're continuing.
    OK, fine.
    Yes.
    All right.
    Sorry.
    Sorry.
    Technical thing.
    All right.
    Right.
    OK.
    So [GERMAN].
    So now, I was unable to obtain any information
    from my cousin, Hans, about what happened or what-- yeah.
    What happened to [INAUDIBLE] when the war was ending
    or ended.
    What I do know is that in the mid '40s,
    the office moved, and I believe that it moved to Switzerland.
    How-- well then, in the mid '40s,
    Switzerland being neutral, that's really weird.
    Because who knew that Germany would have had the possibility
    to move such a [GERMAN].
    That's weird, don't you think?
    It is.
    And if you don't mind, I just want
    to take a look at my notes to be sure.
    OK.
    I'm sorry to pressure you, but we have five minutes left.
    Oh, Ina?
    Yeah?
    Yeah, I misspoke.
    When the institute became part of the Reichsministerium
    under Rosenberg, it remained in what was then Breslau.
    OK.
    And that would explain the fact why it was destroyed largely
    from fighting.
    So yeah, what I said refers to the post-war period.
    So I wanted to add quickly and parenthetically
    that during the pre-war period, my uncle wrote on many topics,
    including the history of the Lutheran Church in Poland,
    which as you probably know is largely German.
    And as a matter of fact, my great great grandfather
    was a pastor of a Lutheran church within Poland.
    And he also wrote about the history
    of the first German gymnasium, which you probably
    know as high school.
    Mm-mm.
    That's right.
    In Lodz.
    And he and my mother attended that school
    as a matter of fact, but that's parenthetical.
    OK.
    So the last documented work I can
    find by my uncle, the last two books and monographs
    that he wrote had to do with--
    and the word in German is ambiguous.
    And I found so many dictionary translations that didn't jibe.
    But if you don't mind, I'll just give it
    the English name as best I can, which
    was the expulsion and/or--
    depending on the semantics, repatriation,
    voluntary or not voluntary in other words, of ethnic Germans
    to German territory.
    In other words, as you know, they were kicked out.
    Yes, but he--
    --or left voluntarily.
    So did he write about that after the war or during?
    He wrote about it in 1940--
    in 1946.
    OK.
    But no longer-- the institute, I take it, no longer existed,
    and he was in West Germany.
    The institute was destroyed in '45,
    I believe, towards the very end of the war.
    Mm-hmm.
    Was the German word [GERMAN]?
    I believe so, yeah.
    Yeah.
    [GERMAN] has many meanings.
    Deportation, expulsion, and so on.
    But usually not voluntary.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yeah, usually it means that it was-- yeah.
    I'll mention this only as a subjective reaction
    to having read with my limited German bits of those two
    last books I mentioned, because my father actually
    retained copies of them.
    Did he?
    And there's a sense of--
    not surprisingly, I guess-- resentment
    on the part of my uncle as to what has happened.
    Mm-hmm.
    Being expelled from Poland.
    Yes, of course.
    Right.
    And also having the defeat of the Germans, because there's
    a thread which I wanted to emphasize.
    And again, there's a certain subjective element on my part.
    But there's a thread that given how
    he persisted with the institute, even
    when it became completely dominated by the Nazis,
    that he stuck with it.
    But that doesn't mean that much, because maybe he just
    couldn't quit.
    Well, it's an ambiguous position.
    He could have been one of those who was shaking in his shoes
    because the [GERMAN] is not something
    to be fooled around with, and they can be watching you.
    He could have been--
    and apparently, according to Heydrich, probably was.
    And he-- yeah.
    I mean, he could have been accused
    of treason for all we know.
    Yeah.
    Or he could have been one of those who really steps up
    to the plate.
    Right.
    He didn't either, actually.
    But given the fact that his extreme right politics
    persisted well into the '80s when I last talked with him,
    my guess is that he did not become
    converted to the other pole.
    No pun intended.
    Yeah.
    So let's see.
    I would say that--
    that was all I had to add about him.
    But you know, it's very I mean, it
    is very interesting and so challenging.
    I can't imagine how challenging it
    is when both of these histories are part of what make you up.
    You know?
    And are coursing in you.
    And they had their tragedies.
    I mean, I believe, if I remember the statistics,
    that two million Germans died during those expulsions.
    That's what I gather too.
    Yeah.
    And so not innocent as well as guilty
    were targeted and suffered as a result. And at the other end,
    I mean, this was still very much that institute,
    so much part of the Nazi structure in its very heart.
    And you have a grandmother and relatives
    who perish in Treblinka.
    Your grandmother does not, but nevertheless,
    that other history, which is the history for which this museum
    is set up to capture.
    What does it say to you?
    What does it say to you not historically,
    but you personally?
    Well, that's a complex question.
    And I would say without being at least consciously dramatic
    about it, I think it has had a very profound influence on me.
    And I hope we have a couple minutes for me
    to give you some details.
    Sure.
    We do.
    We do.
    Number one, there was a concurrent event to my,
    let's say, awakening or burgeoning awakening to wanting
    to learn about the war.
    It started with an interest in battles
    and how the war was conducted, and eventually
    moved to the political arena when I was maybe 12, 13.
    But at the same time, I was completely split
    between a self-perception as a British kid,
    since we had just emigrated to the US, and my attempts
    to become an American.
    And that was very, very difficult,
    and I vacillated between the two.
    That's just the preface.
    The main thing is that although it
    hasn't happened that recently, I have
    been split in a very simple--
    well, a simple kind of division between my admiration
    for the capabilities of the German army, a great love
    for the German language, contrasted with,
    not surprisingly, horror and continued
    horror at the destruction and loss of human life
    wreaked by the Nazis.
    But I also, to add to my ambivalence,
    have read materials.
    Much of-- these were not even books.
    These were papers written by various historians or even
    private individuals that my dad had collected,
    addressing how many Poles--
    again, I don't have percentages, and it probably wasn't-- they
    say it wasn't high.
    But as you probably know, quite a few Jews and Poles
    were ready to turn Jews into--
    other Jews by the Jews and Jews by the Poles
    to save their own skins.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Sometimes they would get rewards financially,
    and life was difficult. You know, I'm not--
    I feel it would be unfair and I wouldn't like myself
    if I took a patronizing kind of, oh, I wouldn't have done that,
    because I don't know what I would have done.
    But the bottom line is that--
    and I have to say this--
    I believe that in our first interview,
    I mentioned the incident in the elevator
    where a Jewish neighbor accused me of saying, I am not a Jew.
    My father is not a Jew, and I hate the Jews.
    Yes.
    You remember that?
    Yes, I remember that.
    I did not say that, and I know--
    I remember mentioning to you that she may have picked up
    on something.
    But around that same age when we came from England,
    I had some vague anti-Semitic feelings
    that I couldn't quite put my finger on,
    and so far in the distance that it's hard.
    But I think some of it came from the neighborhood I lived in--
    In Britain.
    In New York.
    When we moved to New York, it was a largely Jewish
    neighborhood.
    A lot of Black people and Puerto Ricans,
    but a lot of Jewish people.
    And a couple of the incidents involving Jews
    like the one where my father ended up
    yelling at a shopkeeper who addressed him in Yiddish.
    That's right.
    I remember that.
    And my also being caught shoplifting
    a book from a-- what was called a candy store, you know.
    Shoplifting a book that had to do with sex and getting caught.
    [LAUGHS]
    And my father coming to talk to the proprietor who
    happened to be an Auschwitz survivor with a tattoo,
    and talking him out of calling the police.
    Mm.
    What neighborhood was this?
    This was the Upper West Side.
    We lived on 99th Street between West End and Riverside Drive.
    So you weren't up in what was the German-Jewish
    neighborhood--
    Oh, that's where I am now, and it's no longer that.
    That's Yorkville in the east '80s.
    No, no, no, no.
    I know, that was one.
    But it's the one where a lot of post-war refugees went.
    And it's not-- it's Heights.
    Something Heights.
    Washington Heights.
    Washington Heights, yeah.
    Yes.
    You're lower down than Washington Heights.
    I lived in Washington Heights also,
    but it was already at a time where the population was mixed.
    But it was mixed black and white with only a few
    very elderly Jews left.
    OK.
    And this was years later than when we lived on the Upper West
    Side where I believe that--
    this is very hard to say and admit--
    but I believe that I encountered so many damaged, crippled,
    mentally and physically Jews on the Upper West Side that they
    started to engender-- and I know this is not uncommon--
    a little bit of contempt on my part for their misery.
    I mean, Freud or somebody beyond Freud
    would probably have something to say.
    But I'll give you a couple examples.
    One is a woman I may have mentioned who was Jewish,
    and I helped her walk across a street.
    And she kept asking me to pray for her death.
    And there were several psychotic Jewish people walking
    around who were obviously--
    completely had been destroyed I assume by their experiences.
    And I also found the candy store owner to be very crude.
    It brought up elements of snobbery--
    or not snobbery or class consciousness on my part.
    All these kinds of things.
    I resented the fact that a supermarket a block away,
    the same one where my father yelled at the grocery store
    clerk, was called The Brod--
    B-R-O-D-- dash vay--
    V-A-Y-- Grocery.
    [LAUGHS]
    I'm sorry, but it's funny.
    Believe me, you know, it intuitively--
    it made me-- it gave me negative feelings, you know?
    What nerve to co-opt a supermarket and turn it
    into a quasi-Yiddish-sounding--
    [LAUGHS]
    I mean.
    but anyway.
    So the bottom line is at some time during that period,
    my father asked me, to my best recollection--
    and this surprises me, but I'm pretty
    sure it actually happened.
    My father asked me in terms of my religious direction
    that I was thinking about, would I--
    do I have any interest or inclinations to be Jewish.
    This is after you discovered that you are.
    Because you know, you told--
    I had already-- I had already discovered it.
    And all the phenomena that I mentioned
    to you regarding my reactions to people
    in the neighborhood, the conversion of misery
    into contempt, some form of contempt, all that
    happened when I already knew that my father was Jewish.
    It all happened at the same time, more or less.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    So my father asked me, do you want to be Jewish or not?
    And I said something like--
    and rather rudely I said, I don't
    want to be Maurice Goldberg.
    That's exactly what I said.
    And is that the name of one of these people that you--
    No.
    I just came up with the first Jewish name
    I could come up with.
    I see.
    Well, actually, no.
    They may have been a friend of mine.
    It's a common name.
    There may be some Goldbergs, but I'm not even 100%
    sure it was Goldberg, but it was a very common Jewish last name.
    The interesting thing is that your response is not
    at all religious.
    It is-- a religious one was, I don't want synagogue
    or I don't want something to do with the Torah.
    It has something to do with far more secular and identity.
    I would say that was true.
    It's true.
    But part of the reason for that is
    that I was, due to my upbringing,
    convinced I was Protestant.
    Went through all the way almost up
    to confirmation as a Protestant through Protestant religious
    training, and I knew next to nothing about a Jewish--
    the Jewish religion and its trappings.
    But I'll say one thing that's been
    a thread through my entire life is that I have an intuitive
    dislike of any elaborate ceremony that's
    tied to religion, whether Catholic, Episcopalian,
    you name it.
    I get turned off, to put it in the vernacular.
    Mm-hmm.
    I'm not sure why, but I do.
    I think it's because, number one, I'm an atheist
    and I feel or I felt and feel that it isn't worth
    all this fuss.
    Because at age 15, I went to a service.
    I can even pinpoint the church, the name of the pastor where
    he gave a sermon that particularly annoyed me
    because I said to myself, this guy
    is talking as if he personally had lunch with God,
    with such certainty.
    And it's that kind of thing that became an element of my desire
    not to be affiliated with any church,
    particularly one with a lot of ceremony and pomp
    and circumstance.
    And then any religion altogether.
    Mm-hmm.
    Mm-hmm.
    And the last church that I attended
    was a French Calvinist Protestant church
    in New York that had no--
    you know, as typical of many Protestant subsects
    or sects, no ceremonial aspect.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So I don't know what all this means, but--
    Well, it's-- I thank you for--
    I thank you for your honesty.
    I mean, some of it is not politically correct.
    Absolutely-- absolutely not.
    But it is something that you experienced,
    and I appreciate your forthrightness with it.
    Well, I thought-- you know--
    well, rather than say what I was going to say,
    I thought about how much to reveal, how honest to be.
    But I felt that I would be betraying myself and others who
    read this.
    And the people who might ever read it or have access to it
    amount to about two people in the whole world now.
    [LAUGHS]
    Everybody else is dead.
    But I felt that even though initially I
    thought that you would prefer me not
    to get into the psychological realm too much--
    and I know that you emphasized my experience
    in a circumscribed way--
    I decided that at least I would be frank about this,
    because Jack, my second cousin, the son of Michael
    who my father had the hatred of--
    Yes, you mentioned him.
    --he made a heavy-handed effort to get
    me involved in Jewish affairs just a couple years ago
    by inviting me to various gatherings.
    And I politely declined, because he is an ultra Zionist.
    You realize that this is-- that what
    we're talking about now, though, is
    part of what we would not edit.
    It would go out on the web like your first interview has.
    Yes, that's fine.
    OK.
    OK.
    Could I say one last thing?
    Sure.
    Because it's symbolic as well as a statement.
    Well, I'll just say it.
    I have always admired the World War II German military steel
    helmet, because--
    not so much because of what it symbolized or symbolizes,
    but because from an aesthetic viewpoint,
    I think it almost would belong in a museum of modern art
    in terms of good design and attractiveness.
    And I actually purchased a reconditioned one,
    which I keep in my closet.
    Wow.
    Wow.
    [LAUGHS] Wow.
    But it has no significance.
    I don't put it on and say, I'm going
    to march into some other country.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    I just love the way it looks.
    Yeah.
    But I think there's something to it,
    but I don't know what it is.
    It's mostly an aesthetic admiration
    for the neatness of German troops,
    the Hugo Boss designed uniforms, and all that.
    And yet, you see, you called us because you
    wanted to give your testimony to us, to the Holocaust
    museum whose purpose is to remember all of this,
    to make sure that it's not forgotten,
    to make sure that people in future generations
    have the possibility to gain some understanding, hopefully,
    though all of us grapple with it.
    Right.
    And--
    What--
    I'm sorry.
    Go ahead.
    No, I mean, my question is, what motivated you there?
    What motivated me was a reaction--
    it's not in a particular order of importance,
    but what comes to mind is a reaction to the fact that so
    much of my heritage--
    not culturally, because my father
    often lets-- or didn't let slip, but told Jewish jokes,
    Jewish stories even before I knew he was Jewish,
    because I associated it with Polish humor
    at the expense of Jews, or things like that.
    But I felt that I had been cheated
    of a significant part of my heritage.
    Yeah.
    I also have--
    I know I've emphasized certain politically incorrect things.
    I stated them.
    I would not dare to say them to anybody that I encountered
    on the street or to a friend, or particularly my Zionist cousin.
    But I have to underscore the fact
    that another motivator for my wanting this to be if possible
    recorded in some way, literally and figuratively,
    is that my personality is very multifaceted.
    I'm not saying that to brag.
    No, no.
    It has not helped me.
    My first wife said, you are so many people rolled into one.
    I still feel that way.
    I still feel that I have the mentality
    of an expatriate who--
    [CRYING] Excuse me.
    It's OK.
    I don't know if you can record this.
    If you don't want to, we will try to--
    I don't want it.
    OK.
    We will edit it out.
    But--
    I don't know.
    I'm not even sure right now.
    We're just going to make note of the minutes.
    We'll re-- part three.
    OK.
    I mean, I don't mind your making notes, but I--
    Yeah.
    Can we stop?
    Can you give me--
    Or the use of the word I'm going to use.
    I feel that--
    I hope that--
    I'm sorry.
    That's OK.
    That's OK.
    Tortured.
    Yeah.
    By the sense of not being a complete person.
    Oh, my.
    But one composed of contradictory facets--
    Yeah.
    --to an extreme.
    Yeah.
    I think we can end on that.
    Well, Thank you.
    Thank you.
    Thank you for sharing all of this.
    Thank you for opening up.
    And--
    Thank you so much too.
    You're welcome.
    You're welcome.
    I appreciate it.
    I see the cost--
    just a little bit of what the cost has been.
    And I appreciated that you are making
    this available for other people to see that cost,
    to hear that cost, actually.
    Right.
    And to know what are some of the elements that went into it.
    And, in some ways, wars don't end, you know?
    And there still are people who suffer from them
    even if they never were under terror of losing their lives.
    Right.
    I mean, yes.
    I agree and I feel that I have lived
    parts of the war and the Holocaust by proxy.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I will say with that that this concludes the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Dr. Edward
    Darell on November 7th 2017.
    OK.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Edward Darell (born Edward Wolf Emmanuel Dabrowski), born on January 5, 1946 in Munich, Germany, discusses his parents Hedwig Guther and Moishe Lejb Kotz; his father, who was Jewish and used the name “Dabrowski” during the war when he was passing as a Gentile in Warsaw, Poland, using a forged Polish birth certificate; his parents’ marriage just before the Germans invaded; his parents’ origins in Łódź, Poland; his mother, who was an ethnic Lutheran German and spoke German though felt herself to be more Polish and was a Polish citizen; his father’s surviving in Warsaw by selling dental equipment and staying in different apartments that he rented; his cousin who was in the Hitler Youth and another cousin who was in the Waffen SS; visiting his mother’s relatives in near Frankfurt, Germany while living in England until he was 12 years old; immigrating to the United States; his Jewish grandmother, who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and lived in Israel before living with his family in England and the US for six years until she died; being raised Lutheran; realizing he was half Jewish when his grandmother attended synagogue; traveling to Poland with his father to see Warsaw, Łódź, and Auschwitz; making a brief trip to Germany to see his cousins when he was 21 years old and on a grand tour of Europe; and his parents never speaking of their experiences during the war.
    Interviewee
    Dr. Edward Darell
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2017 June 20

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    4 digital file : WAV.

    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
    Darell, Edward.

    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 Edward Darell by telephone on June 20, 2017. Ina Navazelskis conducted a follow up interview with Dr. Darell on November 7, 2017, also by telephone.
    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 08:05:41
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn562262

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (4)
    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (3)

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    Also in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history collection

    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

    Date: 1989-2023

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    Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

    Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

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    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

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    Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

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    Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

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    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral History

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    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

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    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

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    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

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    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

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

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