Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Rina Frankel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.392.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0951

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Rina Frankel
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mrs. Rina Frankel on October 23, 2017
    in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
    Thank you very, very much, Mrs. Frankel,
    for agreeing to speak with us today.
    As I have said off camera, we're going
    to start your story from the very beginning
    and talk a lot about your pre-war life
    and that of your family.
    And from there, we'll build on to your experiences.
    So my very first question is, can you
    tell me the date of your birth?
    Yes.
    I was born June 26, 1934.
    Where were you born?
    I was born in a little town, a shtetl, called Zarszyn.
    Zarszyn.
    Zarszyn.
    And it is in Galicia, the eastern part of Poland.
    Can you spell Zarszyn for us?
    Yes.
    Z-A-R-S-Z-Y-N.
    OK.
    What was your name at birth?
    My name at birth was Ryzia--
    Ryzia?
    R-Y-Z-I-A. But when I came to Israel many years later,
    I was rechristened.
    The Israelis could not pronounce Ryzia.
    OK.
    And even when we were Russia, I became Rosya and Roshi
    and all kinds of names.
    They could not quite grasp it.
    So when I came to Israel, I felt I wanted a change of name.
    And a cousin of ours, a distant cousin, who's a poet
    and came over one night and he started
    telling me different names, and I liked the name Rina.
    And from then on, I became Rina--
    Rina.
    Is Ryzia a diminutive of something?
    No.
    I guess I was named after an aunt, a great aunt.
    Polish--
    Is it a Polish name?
    Yes.
    And it's also a Yiddish name?
    Yes.
    OK, OK.
    And your last name at birth?
    My last name, my maiden name--
    Yes.
    Is Barth-- B-A-R-T-H--
    which isn't really a typical Polish name.
    No.
    I understand ancestors came through France.
    And that's how the name continued.
    OK.
    Yes, it could easily be a German name, a German surname.
    All right, so Zarszyn was your shtetl that you were born in.
    Can you tell me about how many people Zarszyn had?
    Yes, of course, I learned this--
    Later--
    Later from my family.
    Zarszyn had 1,100 inhabitants--
    Small.
    And 400 of those were Jews.
    We had one synagogue that my father was
    instrumental in helping build.
    And one of my grandfathers, my mother's father,
    was the rabbi in that little town.
    He was also the shochet, and he was the mohel.
    He was everything because it was a small town.
    Tell us for those people who don't know, what is a shochet?
    And what is the mohel?
    A shochet is the person who has the authority to kill kosher,
    because there is a special way when animals are killed--
    chickens or any other animals--
    not to make them suffer.
    It's a very sharp knife is used.
    And they slit the throat quickly so the animal doesn't suffer.
    And there is special training for that.
    And my grandfather was trained.
    A mohel is the one who circumcises Jewish boys
    at the age of eight days.
    OK.
    Let's talk a little bit about your family.
    Did you have brothers and sisters?
    I had two sisters.
    Our families were related.
    The Barth family and the Leibowitcz family,
    which was my mother's family, were cousins.
    So my mother married a second cousin.
    And it was a love story, which wasn't
    usual for that time among Jewish people.
    Usually they were paired up through their parents,
    and so forth--
    Arranged--
    But since they used to know each other and see each other,
    they fell in love very, very young.
    And my mother was actually three years older than my father.
    And my grandfather also used to teach young boys.
    We did not have a yeshiva, a higher Jewish learning place.
    So he used to teach students in his home.
    And, of course, once my mother became of age,
    they started suggesting different young men for her
    to marry.
    But she refused everybody.
    And nobody knew why.
    And then when they finally discovered that the two of them
    were in love, my other grandparents
    wanted to send away my father, because they
    felt he was too young to marry.
    But in any case, they married.
    My mother was 23, and he was 20 years old.
    Well, that's a lovely story.
    Yeah.
    It's very nice to know that this could happen
    and that eventually tradition allowed it.
    Right.
    Tell me what was your mother's full name then.
    My mother's name was Miriam.
    And as far as I know she only had the one name.
    And her last name was Leibowitcz.
    And then became Barth.
    And then became Barth.
    And your father's name?
    My father's name was Hersh.
    Hersh.
    Mm-hmm.
    And he had a middle name, a Hebrew name, Hersh Dov.
    Dov.
    Barth.
    Yes.
    Do you know what years both of them were born?
    Yes.
    My mother was born at the turn of the century.
    And my father was born in 1903.
    OK.
    And both of them from Zarszyn?
    Yes.
    And were the families all from Zarszyn
    for several generations?
    Well, my mother's grandfather lived in another small town.
    It was called Nowotaniec.
    Nowotaniec?
    Yes.
    OK.
    But I think that already my grandfather's father
    moved to Zarszyn.
    OK, so for all intents and purposes, within living memory,
    if we talk about that being a few generations,
    you know, one, two, three generations,
    it was Zarszyn based.
    It was Zarszyn, yes.
    OK.
    What were the names of your sisters.
    It was Hannah
    Hannah.
    And Bluma.
    And were they older or younger?
    Older.
    I was the baby of the family.
    And Hannah and Bluma, when were they born?
    Hannah was born in 1925, January 21.
    And Bluma was actually born on my birthday, June 26,
    eight years older than myself.
    So that--
    Hannah was nine 9 and 1/2 years older
    when I was eight years older.
    So that would have been--
    she would have been 1926 or '27?
    Seven.
    She would have been '27, born in 1927, June--
    26th.
    26th.
    Got It.
    OK.
    So you really were the baby of the family.
    I was.
    OK.
    And was your family very religious?
    Yes, they were quite observant.
    My father was, today you would probably
    term him, a modern Orthodox, because he was well
    traveled for that time.
    He used to travel to Germany, to Czechoslovakia.
    We had a little store, and he would go on shopping trips
    to order different materials.
    He spoke German.
    He spoke very well Polish, which wasn't
    the case for all the Jews.
    He was actually the only Jew in our town
    that was a representative on the town council.
    Oh, really?
    Yes.
    And his dress was modern, except for holidays when
    he would dress like his father.
    But he had a little beard.
    It was trimmed.
    It was not-- because the very Orthodox Jews will not
    trim down beards.
    His beard was trimmed.
    And he was in business.
    We had a little store.
    OK, tell me about it.
    Tell me about the store.
    The store carried mostly food items.
    Of course, no refrigeration.
    They used to keep everything in the cellar.
    And this I actually remember.
    We had an opening in the store where a door would come up,
    or part of the floor would come up.
    And there were stairs.
    And they would go down, like butter was kept downstairs
    because it was cooler.
    And--
    Did you have ice down there to keep it cool?
    They had ice.
    They had ice.
    But obviously no refrigeration.
    And the store became like a gathering place.
    People would come and discuss politics,
    read the papers because we would get newspapers into the store.
    And this I even recall, being people,
    there were always people around my father discussing things.
    And what was the name of the store?
    Oh, it had no name.
    Oh, it had no name.
    I don't think so.
    So it wasn't like Barth's Supermarket?
    I don't think so.
    I never heard of a name.
    Do you remember the street it was on?
    No, because in this little town there were no--
    I don't think there were names.
    There was a main street.
    And that's where--
    And it was on the main street?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Was it in the center of town?
    Yes.
    We lived in the same building.
    And actually, the building was a two-family house.
    And the second half was occupied by a Gentile family,
    by a Christian family.
    Tell me a little bit--
    I have questions on all of that.
    Let's start with the easy ones that are factual
    and if you can remember them, such as the construction.
    Was it wooden?
    Was it a stone?
    Wooden.
    I actually have a picture--
    Oh, you do--
    Of my grandfather's house, which was very similar.
    OK.
    So it was a wooden house.
    Was built in the 19th century or do you think
    was it a modern house?
    I'm quite sure it was built in the 19th century,
    though I don't know that for a fact.
    OK, now as far as conveniences, did it have indoor plumbing?
    Yes.
    Did it have indoor, let's say, toilet and bath facilities?
    I don't recall bath facilities per se, like a bathtub.
    I remember the kitchen better.
    Tell me about it.
    The kitchen has a very large oven, a freestanding, really
    big oven, I remember, with a big--
    Pipe--
    Pipe going up the ceiling.
    And I remember a dining room and a bedroom.
    But I do not recall a bathtub.
    As a matter of fact, I think I remember a portable tub.
    But your mother didn't have to go out to a well to get water?
    She could turn on a spigot.
    We had water, yes.
    What about electricity?
    There was electricity.
    OK.
    There was electricity.
    How did you heat the house?
    I think by coal.
    Do you remember these coal ovens that many people
    would have that had decorative tiles sometimes in the corner?
    I don't think we had that.
    I do not recall.
    You have to remember that I was five years old when
    I left that home.
    So--
    I know, these questions are impossible.
    But the purpose of them is to try and paint a picture
    with words of what this life was like, what
    the world was like beforehand.
    I know my mother used to tell me when I was a baby
    and she was busy, she used to put me out
    in front of the store in the buggy.
    And relatives or friends would come by,
    and they would take me for a walk or whatever.
    You know, these were times when people were not afraid
    that somebody will steal their baby.
    And I guess I was a pretty cute baby in its time.
    So people used to like to stop and play with me and so forth.
    And it gave her extra time, because she
    worked in the store.
    My mother was always the business woman,
    though the business was a very small business.
    But she was more than the working mother.
    Well, that's a lot to have, both the household and working
    in the store.
    Yes.
    Did your sisters help out or were they too young to do so?
    My older sister helped out.
    But I remember mostly afterwards what she did.
    OK, we'll come to that.
    Tell me a little bit about--
    OK, first question, your parents' education,
    you said that your father spoke several languages.
    Yes.
    He spoke Polish.
    He spoke Yiddish, yes?
    Yes, and he spoke German.
    Did he speak any Russian?
    I don't think so.
    Was Zarszyn part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
    Probably.
    Yes.
    OK, so it would be the part of Poland
    that Austro-Hungary had taken.
    All right, what about your mother?
    What kind of education had she received?
    My mother had a very short education,
    because her mother, my grandmother,
    was not a well person.
    I learned years later that she was diabetic.
    And in those years, you know, there wasn't much to treat her.
    She was very often ill.
    And, of course, she had children, many children.
    And my mother was taken out of the school after sixth grade--
    Oh, dear--
    To help out.
    But my mother was self-taught.
    And years later, she was proficient in Hebrew, English,
    also German.
    She was a voracious reader.
    She read enormous amount of books and could repeat them.
    She had a phenomenal memory.
    If you ask her about something, she
    would tell you the entire book by heart, she remembered.
    And she was really self-taught--
    That's very impressive--
    But as a teenager, she, from what I understand,
    was needed at home.
    Did she have brothers and sisters?
    She had brothers and sisters.
    She lost one brother in the Holocaust.
    One brother made his way through Romania to Palestine by 1940.
    And one brother ended up also in Russia, in Kazakhstan.
    So do you know these names of these uncles?
    Yes.
    Just tell me the names.
    The one who made it to Palestine was Yakov.
    Yakov Leibowitcz?
    Yakov Leibowitcz.
    The older brother that went to Russia, his name
    was Zvi Leibowitcz.
    Zvi Leibowitcz.
    And she had three sisters that survived.
    I understand that she had small sisters that died in childhood.
    They had measles or something.
    There was a set of twins that passed away early in life.
    The other two sisters also ended up in Russia and my mother.
    So let's first go to the uncle who perished in the Holocaust.
    What was his name?
    His name was Israel Moshe.
    Israel Moshe.
    And the two sisters who survived?
    One was Hannah as well, and one was Zilla.
    Zilla.
    OK.
    So it was a large family of siblings.
    Yes.
    And was your mother the oldest or close to the oldest?
    She was the second oldest after the brother that perished.
    So no wonder she was taken out of school
    to care for everybody.
    Yes.
    Did you know your maternal grandparents?
    Very briefly, very briefly.
    When we get to the point where we are further along
    I'll tell you the story about it.
    OK.
    Did they live close by to you?
    Yes.
    Next door?
    Around the corner?
    On another street.
    My grandparents Barth lived just a few houses removed from us.
    And that grandfather had the only little jewelry store
    in town.
    Oh, wow.
    And he was also a watch repairman.
    He was also a very devout person.
    And they owned some land.
    They owned their home.
    We did not.
    I understand that the other family were the owners--
    The Gentile family?
    Right.
    And we used to pay rent.
    But my grandfather Barth owned his property.
    He also had land behind the house
    that he used to lease out.
    And farmers would work it, and he would get their share--
    Of what they got.
    Yes.
    What they harvested.
    They also had a horse and buggy.
    And they were better off than most, because he
    had this kind of business.
    Yeah, well, jewelry store would do it.
    But in a small shtetl, I wouldn't
    imagine that many people would have jewelry.
    No, but there were watches that he repaired, that he sold.
    He would sell wedding rings.
    I don't know all the things that he had in the store, but--
    Do you remember the store?
    Not really.
    Not really, but I have a picture of the house.
    And you can see a big window.
    So I guess it was like a display window.
    And how many siblings did your father have?
    My father was one of nine.
    Wow.
    And he was the oldest.
    There were five brothers and four sisters.
    Wow.
    And unfortunately, not one of the sons
    survived the Holocaust.
    And what about the sisters?
    The sisters all survived.
    And the reason is that two emigrated to Palestine in 1935.
    Ah.
    And two were young teenagers.
    And they escaped with us.
    Do you remember the names of your uncles?
    Yes.
    Could you tell me?
    So my father was Hersh Barth.
    Then there was--
    I am not quite sure--
    Of the sequence--
    Sequence.
    But there was Avram, Efraim, Yakov--
    oh, Yakov was after my father, that I know--
    and Israel Moshe also.
    And what about the sister's name.
    The sisters, the oldest was Esther.
    And then there was Sylvia.
    Those were the two that went to Palestine.
    And the youngest two where Riva and Lonya.
    OK.
    Did you know these aunts and uncles
    as you were a little girl?
    I did, but I don't remember very well.
    I remember a couple of them, because my uncle
    Efraim and Avram, there were Zionists, very strong Zionists.
    And I remember like a dream them taking me in their garden
    and showing me how they laid out a Magen David out of bottles.
    And--
    Tell us, what is a Magen David?
    It's the Star of David.
    And that impressed me, I guess.
    I remembered that.
    And you hinted at one of my questions is,
    was your own family political in any way?
    I don't know that they had any particular leaning,
    but I know they always discussed politics.
    OK.
    That's interesting--
    And were aware of the world situation.
    And that was the reason that my father
    from the minute he heard that there
    was going to be a war that he started making plans to escape.
    OK.
    We'll come to that.
    We'll come to that.
    That's very interesting.
    At home, what language did you speak?
    Yiddish.
    Where did you learn Polish?
    I learned Polish just from the surroundings.
    This wasn't before my school years.
    And later on when we were in Bukhara,
    I went to a Polish refugee school.
    Do you remember the last name of your Gentile neighbors?
    [? Kulan. ?]
    [? Kulan. ?]
    Mm-hmm.
    And what kind of relationship did you have with them?
    We had a good relationship with them.
    And I actually am in this present life went back
    to Poland and I met his daughter.
    Oh, really.
    And she was extremely happy to see somebody from the family.
    And she really received us beautifully.
    And what she did, she told us that the house
    was bombed during the war.
    And she built the home afterwards, a modern house
    on the entire lot.
    Did you see that house?
    Yes, we were in her home.
    And what was the fate of her own family?
    Her parents died naturally.
    And she was married.
    We met her husband.
    I don't know much else about their history.
    Was she born when you were already born?
    She was my oldest sister--
    my Aunt Lonya, who was four months older than my sister,
    they were in the same grade.
    So she remembered you?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She was very friendly with my sister and my aunt.
    OK.
    Now, in this house, did you also have a garden?
    Did you also have-- or was this in the center of town
    where there was no such thing?
    I do not recall.
    I do not recall a garden.
    You mentioned that your grandfather Barth
    had a horse and buggy.
    Yes.
    Did anyone in town have an automobile?
    I don't know.
    I don't recall.
    What about a telephone?
    No.
    Radio?
    A doctor had a phone.
    And one of my uncles worked--
    my Uncle Efraim was a director of a brewery
    that they had in town.
    And I know they had a telephone there.
    OK.
    What about a radio?
    Anybody have a radio?
    They had radios.
    Did your family?
    I think they had a radio.
    But it sounds that newspapers were the way that people found
    out about the world at large.
    Yes.
    And the customers in your parents' store,
    were they both Gentile and Jewish?
    Yes.
    OK.
    But more Jewish than Gentile, or not?
    I don't know how to judge that.
    You were four, I know.
    I know.
    Yeah.
    It's hard to say.
    But I'm trying to get a sense of how
    integrated the community was--
    They was very integrated because it was a small town.
    And so people knew each other?
    Yes.
    Did you know where the local Catholic church was?
    I know there was one.
    I don't recall it.
    But I know that relationships were pretty good.
    And actually, this uncle that was the director of the brewery
    was hidden out at a certain time with a Christian family.
    But somebody else told on them, and he was taken out
    and shot in the town square.
    This is your mother's brother?
    No.
    Your father's brother.
    My father's brother.
    Yeah.
    And do you have any memories of--
    you said that people liked to talk about politics--
    do you have any memories of the discussions
    your parents might have had?
    I think the discussion was very much about the impending war.
    And my father was very suspicious
    of Hitler, of Germany, because he used to travel there
    and he knew what was happening there.
    And once, you know, they took over Czechoslovakia
    and so forth, he knew that Poland would be next.
    And he was aware of it.
    Tell me a little bit about your father's personality.
    We talked a bit about your mother.
    Tell me about him.
    My father was a very gentle person.
    He was very loving.
    It wasn't always customary in Orthodox families for fathers
    to hug and so forth.
    But I was very lucky.
    Both my father and my grandfather,
    whom I remember better, and my grandfather Barth,
    was just a very loving person and a very gentle person.
    And my father, he was very simple
    in his thinking of himself.
    He never was a show-off or saying
    something that would make him look, you know, important.
    He never puffed up himself up.
    No.
    Never.
    Never.
    He was he was almost to a fault.
    But yet, you know, for someone who is so modest,
    he was a central person in the village.
    Yes.
    If he has a store where people congregate, where they meet,
    where they talk politics, and you say
    he was involved in the synagogue.
    Yes.
    That must be he knew how to draw people to him.
    He did.
    He was also the gabbai.
    And that means-- oh, gosh, how do you say it in English?
    The person who would call other people up to the Torah.
    It's next to the rabbi.
    And if you have a cantor--
    we did not, to my knowledge, have a cantor--
    the gabbai is the next important person in the synagogue.
    Do you remember going to synagogue?
    No.
    It was not very customary for children or even women,
    except for the high holidays and so forth,
    to be attending synagogue.
    This is more customary in modern times.
    What about observing the various rituals?
    Were your parents very observant?
    Yes, they were.
    Did they keep a kosher home?
    Yes.
    Did your mother have any help at all in her home?
    I am not aware that she hired help besides I
    think with laundry.
    She did not have a maid.
    I don't think we could afford it.
    I just remember my mother working very hard.
    Was there a train station in Zarszyn?
    Yes.
    And, I'm thinking, were there buses at those days?
    I don't recall buses.
    I think that a mean of transport was by horse and buggy.
    So when your father would travel to Germany to probably buy
    goods, how would he do it?
    [PHONE RINGING] We'll cut.
    We'll stop.
    OK, so--
    You asked me how he would get the material.
    That's right.
    How would he travel?
    Well, he would arrive by train and use a horse and buggy.
    OK, so his mode of transportation
    was train mostly and then locally horse and buggy.
    Yes.
    Do you know the cities he would travel to in Germany?
    No.
    OK.
    I know he would travel to the next big town
    next to us, which was Sanok.
    Sanok.
    And it was on the River San.
    OK.
    It actually became-- when both Russia and Germany occupied
    Poland, the San became a border.
    And it divided the city.
    And half of Sanok was Russian and half
    was German for a while.
    And how far was Zarszyn from Sanok?
    14 kilometers.
    Oh, so it was close.
    Very close.
    So did you ever go to Sanok?
    Yes.
    I have a wonderful memory--
    you see, my memories of my father from home
    are like clips from a movie.
    I remember segments.
    So this is very clear in my mind that my father decided
    to take me along to Sanok.
    And we also had relatives there.
    I'll tell you about them later, because they became
    very important in our lives.
    And we visited there relatives.
    And then he took me to a store and bought me
    what I thought the most beautiful little dress ever.
    It was on a blue background with little tiny colored
    polka dots, yellow, red, and I think white.
    And it was gathered here.
    Oh, my yes--
    And loose from here and with a puffed sleeve.
    And I wore this dress till literally it was shameful.
    It got so short on me.
    But I could not part with it.
    And not only did he buy me that dress,
    but he asked in that store for a piece of fabric.
    And those relatives of ours, who were cousins of my mother,
    had a little workshop where they used to make umbrellas.
    And he had a little umbrella made for me to match my dress.
    And that was such a wonderful day.
    He also took me to a park.
    And what now became so popular where kids go
    with one leg on a board, like--
    Oh, yes, a scooter--
    A scooter.
    And he took me to this park.
    And he rented the scooter.
    And he held my hand.
    He said I should try riding the scooter.
    And this I remember very clearly.
    And I was probably less than five.
    Oh, how lovely.
    Yes.
    Just lovely.
    You know, these simple things that are gifts to a child--
    Yeah.
    Absolute precious gifts.
    He sounds like a wonderful father.
    Yeah, he was.
    And do you have any other memories that really stick out
    from your childhood that are part
    of how you remember your life?
    That is things that may not have any relevance
    to politics or to history.
    I remember I guess the last Passover,
    because we were so observant.
    I don't know if you're familiar with that custom.
    Very orthodox people will not wet the matzah with water,
    because then it causes it to leaven--
    To rise.
    And I, I guess, liked matzah with milk, which I still
    do, during Passover only.
    So I remember I had a special mug, a tall mug, that they kept
    only for me where I could, because I was so young,
    have my matzah with milk in it.
    And that I remember.
    Did your sisters playing with you?
    I don't remember a lot of playing, I have to admit.
    I really do not remember a lot of playing.
    Were your sisters close to one another
    because they were so close in age.
    Yes.
    And were they attending school?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And tell me a little--
    Until the war broke out.
    Tell me a little bit about their personalities.
    Well, they were very different.
    My older sister stepped in, and especially later in years
    where she had to work in Siberia--
    and I'll tell you about that--
    she was stronger.
    My middle sister was very gentle and took things way to hard.
    And she really had trouble surviving in Russia.
    She had many ailments.
    She was unhappy.
    And unfortunately, we lost her.
    She was quite young.
    How old was she?
    She was 55.
    Was it natural causes?
    Yeah.
    Is there anything else--
    I've tried to cover as many things
    as I could think of about pre-war life
    before things change.
    Is there anything else that is important for you,
    for your story, for people to know about, for your children
    to know about your life as a little girl
    before it all goes away?
    I know that I had some toys, because I
    have pictures with a doll.
    Do you remember the doll?
    I do not remember specifically the doll, but I know I had.
    And probably, I would say, I played by myself a lot,
    because my mother was so busy always.
    I don't recall other small children besides a cousin.
    My Uncle Yakov got married, I guess,
    a year or two after my parents.
    And his wife's name was Tola.
    Tola.
    Yeah.
    I don't know her maiden name.
    And they had a little boy named Yossi.
    And he was one year younger than myself.
    And I do remember being with him.
    He was a cute little boy.
    And unfortunately, he perished in the Holocaust.
    You had a large family, when you consider
    both sides of the family with your aunts
    and your uncles and your--
    They were very close.
    Both grandfathers, both families,
    not only because they were related,
    but they were very close friends.
    And I know that on Saturday nights once a Shabbat was over,
    they would gather together in one of the other's house,
    and they would play chess.
    And this was their entertainment.
    They were great chess players.
    And I guess one would not forgive the other one.
    They battled it out to the end.
    And the kids would line up behind whomever
    they wanted to win--
    Oh, gosh--
    And kind of rooted for them.
    But this was their entertainment for a Saturday night
    when they didn't work you know after the Shabbat,
    and they would play chess.
    And the family would participate.
    The brothers played sometimes.
    But specifically, the two grandfathers
    used to play against each other.
    And you remember this?
    I remember that, yes.
    What a lovely image, what a lovely image.
    And what a great way to learn chess.
    You know, the kids learn it too.
    Yes.
    Because the kids would follow.
    Wherever the parents or grandparents would go.
    They would have a gathering together after the Shabbat.
    You said earlier that it was an integrated town
    and that the relations between Gentiles and Jews
    were pretty good.
    They were pretty good.
    There was always some hidden antisemitism.
    My sister used to tell me that the teacher in school
    would call on her and say, well, you
    should know that, you are smarter.
    So the stereotype of a Jewish child having to be smarter?
    Yes.
    Or is always without question smarter.
    But he would call it out.
    Yeah.
    And this would make her uncomfortable.
    And she told me about that.
    OK.
    But is that the extent of how you felt it in your own life,
    in your own family?
    Or was there more of that you--
    I, as a child, did not experience it.
    So I know it existed.
    I know there were defaults, that my mother told me
    that people would borrow.
    You see, most people would borrow,
    and they would write down in the book
    if they came for a bread or half a pound of butter.
    They would write down, let's say, at the end of the week,
    because people shopped almost every day.
    They were supposed to pay up.
    Well, there were many instances where they
    couldn't or wouldn't.
    And didn't pay up.
    And were the fault lines ethnic?
    In most cases.
    I won't say it was exclusive, but in most cases.
    I see.
    Were there any competitive stores that Gentiles had?
    I am not aware.
    I'm sure there was something else.
    I know that another Jewish family
    had what they would call a bar.
    It was also a gathering place of people.
    And they were also friends, very close friends, to our family.
    Their name was Schachner.
    Schachner.
    How do you say bar in Polish?
    Karczma, I don't know.
    OK, because I thought-- was it karczma or something like that.
    Karczma, yeah.
    That was just a personal curiosity.
    Let's go now to where things change.
    Do you remember when the war started?
    Do you remember what you were doing?
    What the family was doing?
    I remember that there was a feverish feeling in the house.
    And my mother tried to think of what if we escape,
    what do we need to take with us?
    And I remember feeling this anxiety
    in the house, that things were beginning to be put aside,
    like to prepare for packing.
    And eventually, my father and, I think,
    my grandfather went with them to the station master,
    whom he knew because he traveled so often,
    and paid him a handsome sum of money
    to secure an entire train car.
    That's a lot.
    A lot.
    For our family and some friends.
    And so this would have been like a passenger train
    car with cabins and seats and--
    I don't know if they had cabins, but definitely had seats.
    OK.
    So the war broke out on the 1st of September on a Friday.
    1939.
    1939.
    And the following Thursday, we left Zarszyn.
    And that's seven days later.
    Seven days later.
    Germany at that point was in Poland and moving further east.
    They had not reached Zarszyn yet.
    They had not reached Zarszyn at that point.
    But once we were on the train, we
    felt their presence very much.
    Excuse me, describe leaving.
    Were their family members who said, I'm not going,
    I'm staying?
    Were there people who were debating to go, to stay?
    Yes.
    So my grandfather Leibowitcz, he and the two daughters,
    that a single, left with him and my grandmother.
    My grandfather Barth left with his two youngest daughters
    that were still at home and my parents
    and the three of us girls.
    And there were also some friends who joined.
    My father's brother that was next to him, Yakov,
    who was married with a child, he stayed and his wife stayed.
    He also had a store.
    He had building supply.
    But my grandparents took Yossi, their child,
    with us, because he used to spend
    a lot of their time at my grandparents
    anyway, because both of them worked in their store.
    So Yossi was spending a lot of time with my grandparents.
    So they took him with us.
    You see, the idea was that the war will be over soon.
    How long can it last?
    And how far will it go?
    So at the time they thought if we
    go to the Ukraine, which is further east,
    we'll be safe there.
    And my grandfather Leibowitcz had a cousin in a small town
    also near Kolomyia.
    And that is where?
    In the Ukraine?
    In the Ukraine.
    And the name of the little town was Gwozdziec.
    Gwozdziec.
    OK.
    So we left on the train on Thursday.
    And shortly thereafter, the train was being bombarded.
    By the Germans?
    By the Germans.
    This was still a Polish train--
    Yes.
    Under the Polish national rail system--
    Yes.
    Going East.
    Going East.
    And the minute we heard the planes
    that the train would stop.
    And in the beginning, a few times
    they bombed the rails, not the actual train.
    And we would run to the field, to the forest, whatever
    was next to the train.
    And I remember running.
    And I remember the trip very clearly,
    because it gave me nightmares for years to come.
    Well, you were four years old.
    I was five.
    You were five.
    I was five.
    And eventually-- this trip was supposed to take a few hours.
    We ended up on the train for three days,
    because it took time to repair.
    Every time the Germans flew over and started bombing,
    eventually they did hit one car, but it was a car where
    they kept the luggage, not--
    People--
    People.
    So we were stuck on the train on Shabbat.
    And there was another bombing coming.
    And we all ran out.
    And there was a forest there.
    But my grandfather Barth decided that he wasn't going.
    He said on Shabbat, if you go down,
    you shouldn't come back on the train and travel further.
    Though my other grandfather did it, who was the rabbi.
    Interesting.
    He said, I'm going to stay on the train.
    And everybody begged him, please,
    please, you have to come down.
    You have to say--
    no, I'm going to stay.
    My other grandfather-- I'm sorry what I said
    because that was incorrect.
    My other grandfather Leibowitcz decided
    he will go down and stay wherever the train stopped.
    And he wasn't coming back on the train.
    And my grandfather Barth stayed on the train, and we ran off.
    Oh, so it was Leibowitcz--
    So this is how we were separated.
    From your grandfather Leibowitcz.
    Yes.
    Who was the rabbi.
    Yes.
    We were separated.
    So I guess this bombing, this particular bombing,
    happened not far from the city of Przemysl.
    So they must've taken a buggy or whomever
    they found transport and ended up in Przemysl.
    Were there other passengers on the train in other cars?
    There must have been.
    I don't remember them.
    OK.
    I don't remember them.
    OK.
    So we traveled for three days--
    To Przemysl.
    No, we traveled to Gwozdziec, to near Kolomyia.
    Did you get there?
    We got there.
    OK.
    And then you got the horse and buggy to go to Przemysl?
    No, we never went to Przemysl.
    Only my grandfather Leibowitcz with his family.
    He went off the train before the set of Shabbat,
    and he didn't come back.
    So we got separated.
    When we got to Gwozdziec, there were already
    other Polish people who escaped.
    And apartments, because it was a small town,
    were very difficult to get.
    Who is in control of the town?
    It was Poland at that time.
    So it was Ukraine, but Polish occupied Ukraine.
    Or Polish territory--
    Polish territory until-- in 1939,
    actually a week before the war broke out in Poland,
    on August 23, and I learned this later,
    because I'm a history major, Molotov,
    who was the foreign minister of the USSR, Russia,
    and Ribbentrop, who was the German foreign minister--
    Hitler's foreign minister--
    Hitler's foreign minister-- made a non-aggression pact.
    And what this meant was that once they defeat Poland,
    they will divide Poland.
    And each one will take a part, which
    was actually in Poland's history from before.
    Poland was divided a number of times before.
    But this was their agreement that the Russians will
    take the eastern part and the Germans
    will take the north and the west.
    So when you get to this town--
    It's still Poland.
    It's still Poland.
    And tell me the name of the town again.
    Gwozdziec.
    Gwozdziec.
    It's a small town.
    Gwozdziec.
    So it's still Poland, but it is one that will become Russian.
    Well, it shortly becomes Russia, because at some point really
    they were almost face to face the Germans and the Russian.
    Particularly, I am aware of the city of Lwow,
    which is now Lvov--
    Lviv--
    Lviv--
    In Ukraine.
    It was called Lwow in Polish.
    And the German were from one side trying
    to break through to the city, and the Russians
    were on the other side.
    Eventually, obviously, the Germans took over the town.
    But--
    Did they take it over while they were still
    allied to the Soviet Union--
    Yes--
    Or after?
    They were still allied.
    But they were each trying, I guess, to grab more.
    And I know that from reading afterwards.
    But as far as we're concerned--
    You're in Gwozdziec.
    We are in Gwozdziec.
    And again, there was no means of making a living.
    And my father was a smoker unfortunately.
    So he started looking for tobacco.
    Where did you live when you in Gwozdziec?
    Oh, OK, so we did get one room.
    And we all lived in this room.
    At night, we would bed out on the floor.
    We had one bed.
    And the rest of us would sleep on the floor.
    And daytime, everything was piled up on this one bed.
    And I remember one day, I was not feeling well.
    And my father took me and put me on top of all those pillows
    and blankets.
    And he gave me a piece of paper and a pen.
    And I should amuse myself, because as I started saying,
    he started looking for tobacco--
    I'm going between one story and the other--
    That's OK.
    And he found the source somehow--
    I don't know how--
    to buy the leaves, the tobacco leaves.
    And I remember these huge green leaves that he would
    buy and string them up to dry.
    And then he would chop it real fine.
    And he got like thin paper to roll cigarettes.
    And then he would sell them.
    And eventually the paper ran out.
    He couldn't get any more.
    And I remember he would roll the cigarettes in newspaper.
    But anyway to go back to the day when I wasn't feeling well,
    so I had this little pen.
    And, you know, we didn't have the pens that we have today.
    There was a pen with a pen that came off the actual pen.
    Well, lo and behold, as I was scratching
    whatever I was writing, the pen disappeared,
    so I started choking.
    And I said, I swallowed the pen.
    I swallowed the pen.
    I know I swallowed the pen.
    And I started [CHOKING],, you know, choking.
    And my father knew as long as I'm speaking
    I didn't swallow the pen.
    But I wouldn't quiet down.
    And I started crying, I swallowed that pen.
    So my father bent down.
    He took out the pen I didn't see, pulled it off.
    He showed me, see, I found the pen.
    And I got all better.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Amazing medicine.
    Yeah.
    I got all better.
    So he works with the cigarettes.
    And my mother, because from experience
    living in a little town and having
    the experience of the store, she made contact with farmers.
    And she started buying milk and butter
    and taking it to this bigger city, when you could still
    travel.
    And she made a few pennies on it.
    And my sister would also do that.
    Together with your mother?
    Together with my mother or alone.
    They went to different places.
    And this is how we lived in the Ukraine.
    But very shortly--
    Before you go there, what had you
    taken with you from your home when you got into the rail car?
    We took bedding.
    We took clothing.
    And we took some food, not enough for three days,
    because we didn't anticipate being on the train so long.
    But--
    Did you think you're coming back to your home?
    Oh, of course.
    So nobody took real valuables or real--
    You know, everything was left.
    There was no question.
    Everybody-- and this is what got us in trouble,
    so to say, though later turned out
    to be a life saver, particularly for myself as a small child,
    because under the Germans, I'm sure I would not survive.
    So a few months after we were in the Ukraine,
    the Russians took over.
    So again, I'm going to just make sure that I'm clear about it,
    you're in--
    Gwozdziec.
    Gwozdziec.
    You know, there are always some town names or some spelling
    or some things that I hear I think I'll remember,
    and then it goes.
    Yeah.
    So forgive me for that.
    That's all right.
    But you're in Gwozdziec.
    You're there for a number of months.
    Yeah, a few months.
    I don't remember.
    And today, it's in the Ukraine.
    Yes.
    But then it was Poland.
    It was Poland.
    And the Russians came in, and we were suddenly
    under the Russians.
    How did that change your life?
    It changed it very much.
    Conditions got harder.
    There was a shortage of food.
    Travel was restricted.
    And the main thing was you had to be a registered.
    So everybody received, all the Polish emigres
    all received registration papers.
    So people who had just recently arrived
    in town, like your family?
    Mm-hmm.
    So I guess you had to fill out where you're living
    and where you came from, and so forth.
    And one little thing asked, when the war is over,
    do you want to stay in Russia?
    Well, nobody, as far as we knew, wanted to stay in Russia.
    We all wanted to go back home.
    So whoever marked that they want to go home,
    shortly there after, at night, late at night on a Friday
    night, soldiers appeared at our door and many other doors,
    to most of the Polish refugees in that town and then
    many cities, and they came and they said, we are waiting,
    you need to pack what you can throw
    in a pillow cover for each person,
    and you are coming with us.
    And my father tried to tell them, well, you
    know it's Friday night for us.
    We observe Friday night.
    There was no way out.
    There was no way out.
    So we had to pack--
    And did you know--
    I'm sorry that I'm interrupting--
    did you know that this was because of having answered
    on the--
    No, we didn't know anything, why we are being taken
    or where we are being taken.
    Not for an entire month did we know where we are taken.
    Do you remember that night?
    Yes.
    What are the things that you remember from the night?
    Well, I remember, you know, being very upset.
    With no notice whatsoever, soldiers appear with shoulder--
    Guns--
    Guns and tell you, you have to leave now while we are waiting.
    So whatever my mother, my sister thought we would need,
    they packed real quickly.
    And we were taken by truck.
    I'm sorry I interrupt again.
    I want to make sure that I know who
    is taken then of your family.
    Who was with you in that room when they came?
    Just my immediate family--
    my father, my mother, and my sisters.
    And what had happened to the rest of them?
    We didn't know anything what happened to them.
    We found out later.
    OK.
    So they weren't with you.
    You're the relatives who had gone with you to the town--
    They lived separately.
    So we didn't know if anybody else was effected
    or it was just us.
    By the time we got to the train, we
    realized that all the Polish refugees
    were gathered by different soldiers, by different trucks.
    Actually, the truck would stop at other homes
    and gather more people.
    So there were more people in a truck with you?
    Yes.
    And do you remember what kind of people they were?
    Polish refugees.
    I don't recall exactly who.
    OK.
    But I know we were taken to the train.
    And those were different kinds of trains.
    Those were cattle cars.
    There were no seats.
    There was a birch--
    you know, a divider on top from both sides.
    And there was a little tiny window
    at the top that had steel little beam--
    Bars--
    Bars, you know, so that nobody could escape from them.
    There was no bathroom.
    There was a hole in the floor, and there was a bucket.
    And they eventually managed to squeeze in 40 people
    into this one car, train car.
    And when everybody was loaded, which took most of the night,
    we were locked in from the outside,
    and you couldn't open the doors.
    But what happened was as another train came parallel
    to our train, you know, people were
    yelling from that little window to find out, is this family
    here?
    Is this family?
    Have you seen this family?
    Well, we connected through that window with my grandfather
    Leibowitcz, who were taken from another town.
    And also, my grandfather Barth and his family
    were in the same train car with us.
    They were not taken together with us from the house,
    but they ended up in the same train car with us.
    So this was June 28, 1940.
    So you really were in this place for well over half a year--
    10 months.
    OK.
    10 months.
    And the journey started.
    And as I said, we had no idea where we are being taken
    or why we are being taken.
    And we were locked in.
    And as long as we were still close to a war zone,
    they didn't unlock the doors.
    And I remember one day, somebody became very ill.
    And people were pounding on the door, whoever could.
    And nobody responded.
    Nobody responded.
    Eventually, they would stop.
    The trains actually stopped very often later on because
    if there was a military train that had to pass.
    They would move that train to a side track,
    so the military train could pass.
    So we were often shifted--
    But were the doors opened when you were on the side track?
    Once they stopped and we were out of like Ukraine,
    they would open the doors.
    And actually, my mother-- there were always
    farmers that would come to that train.
    They had potatoes.
    They had-- it was summer.
    They must have had some vegetables.
    So my mother would always go down and try to find something.
    And we had a little like a primus.
    You know what a primus is?
    It's a little-- it works on kerosene.
    There is a little container of kerosene.
    And later there is a wick.
    And you can cook on it.
    It has a little room around it where you
    can put that little pot on it.
    So--
    Well, that's pretty valuable when
    you're in such a situation.
    Yes, yes.
    And the problem was that we kept kosher.
    How can you keep kosher on such a train?
    We kept kosher.
    We would eat the bread that they would bring.
    And if my mother could buy something from a farmer,
    it would last a couple of days till they stopped again.
    And that's how we survived.
    What happened to that person who got very sick
    and nobody responded?
    He eventually passed on.
    Was this the only death in the train?
    As far as I recall.
    But you remember-- this was as an older person?
    No, I think mid-40s or something.
    We don't know what--
    I mean I don't know what happened.
    The grownups, you know, tried to shield children.
    I shouldn't look.
    I shouldn't go there.
    You know, we sat in our little corner.
    And there wasn't much room to move around.
    I mean you couldn't just get up and parade.
    There were 40 people together.
    Were there arguments that broke out because of the closeness?
    Well, I remember one little argument
    that my grandfather caused.
    Orthodox Jews wash their hands first thing
    in the morning when you wake up.
    You're supposed to pour water three times on this hand
    and you say a prayer, thank God that I woke up.
    And it's a very lovely prayer.
    It's called Modeh Ani.
    I thank God.
    And inevitably, he kept a little container there next to him.
    When the train would lurch real quickly,
    that water would spill on somebody on the bottom.
    And they were not to happy with it.
    So I remember this person sitting
    underneath my grandfather saying, please
    don't spill that water.
    This I remember.
    He was very observant, like I said.
    He tried to follow every regulation, even
    under these circumstances.
    Were there conversations that you remember
    people having on the train?
    You mean confrontations--
    No.
    No, just, do you know where we're going?
    Do you think--
    Oh, yeah, everybody spoke.
    I mean you're stuck together.
    You speak.
    You wonder.
    We passed so much land going all the way to Siberia.
    Did people say, I think we're going to Siberia--
    No.
    No.
    We never heard the word till we landed there.
    Were there soldiers on the trains with you?
    There were soldiers always outside,
    not inside the train car.
    OK.
    Did you learn a little bit about some of the other people
    who were on the train and who they were?
    Not only that they were refugees,
    but where they had come from, what their professions were.
    I'm sure the older people did.
    I don't recall specifics.
    I remember also there was a fight between two guys.
    But they settled it.
    They had no place to go.
    I don't know what it was about.
    I mean it was so tight.
    Was it hot?
    It was hot.
    It was the middle of summer.
    And there were others in the train.
    You know, there were many reasons to get upset,
    many reasons.
    You know, with the bucket there and the hole in the ground,
    people were just not themselves, which is very understandable.
    And after an entire month--
    I am not sure, my sister said July 28.
    And I heard from somebody July 29.
    But in any case, it was a full month
    before we arrived, what we were told was a Siberian settlement.
    Who told you?
    Well, people who were there.
    There were some people, Polish people, there
    that were exiled before for whatever reason.
    They were in Russia, if they said something or did
    something, you know, the Russians
    didn't need many reasons for you to be shipped to Siberia.
    So there were people living there.
    But once we arrived, they didn't have housing for us.
    We were put into barracks with many people
    until they constructed some homes in another development.
    By homes, do you mean barracks or do you mean--
    Eventually, we ended up in little homes, in little houses.
    But this was an open barrack.
    I remember that.
    And next to our family, a doctor with his wife and one son
    settled.
    And then there were many other people.
    I remember this doctor because he was sitting
    and being across from us.
    Tell me, were there any officials who
    came within your sight line to say,
    here you are, this is why you're here,
    this is what you'll be doing?
    No.
    The reason why I think we found out--
    much, much later-- that they took
    everybody who said that they were
    going to go home after the war.
    But there were officials.
    They came and they told that's where we are
    and that everybody will have to go to work, six days a week.
    And the work was in the forest.
    And they were cutting down trees and cutting them
    into board-like pieces.
    And this had to be shipped in the summer through a river.
    And in the winter, they were piling it up till summer.
    A question here-- which location in Siberia did you--
    It was north of Sverdlovsk.
    And I don't remember the name of the first settlement
    where the barracks were.
    But where we eventually ended up was called Tavda.
    Tavda.
    And did they say what was--
    It was Upper Ural, Siberia.
    Did they say you are now prisoners
    or you are now forced labor or you are enemies of the state
    or you were just people who need to help us?
    No.
    We were not prisoners, because families
    were allowed to stay together.
    But they told us, you have to work.
    They didn't use the term slave labor.
    But that's what it was.
    They said everybody above the age of 14 has to go to work.
    So my older sister qualified.
    Hannah.
    Hannah.
    And--
    Did they feed you?
    Did they give you food?
    They gave us rations.
    And if you didn't work, if somebody in the family
    didn't work, you didn't get anything.
    So my father had to go to work in the beginning and my older
    sister.
    Somehow my mother did not.
    I don't know if she was excused because
    of me or my other sister.
    She did not.
    But my aunt had to go to work.
    So we were in the settlement just a couple months.
    As you know, winter sets in August.
    Wow.
    It gets very cold.
    And I have to tell you a story about this grandfather,
    another story.
    We arrived in Siberia in July.
    And, of course, it's the polar sun,
    where it doesn't get dark, very, very like twilight
    in the middle of the night, and the day is long forever.
    So at the end of Shabbat, there is a prayer.
    It's called Havdalah, which means
    dividing the holy day of Sabbath from the every day.
    And we light the candle, and we sit.
    And the head of the family says that prayer.
    Well, you have to say it when you see three stars in the sky.
    Poor man.
    [LAUGHS]
    So my grandfather waited till about 2:00 in the morning
    when they finally realized we didn't know about polar sun,
    that there isn't going to be night.
    And eventually, the kids convinced
    him to say the prayers and to go to sleep--
    at 2:00 in the morning.
    Oh, the poor man.
    [LAUGHS]
    That's another incident of my grandfather.
    So anyway, my sister started--
    OK, I'm sorry I'm interrupting.
    You want to ask me something else.
    Yes, I want to find out--
    you said first you're in a barracks.
    And then they move you to a smaller sort
    of like single fa--
    describe to me both places.
    OK, well, this place was only barracks.
    That's all I remember.
    They would bring in water and some food.
    And the people who were of age went to work.
    That's all I remember.
    And we lived on our packages, because there was no room
    where to unpack or to do.
    But it was summer, and it was pretty warm.
    It gets very warm there.
    So eventually, before winter actually set in,
    we were moved to a house that we actually
    shared with another, Christian, young couple.
    She was pregnant at that time.
    Why they were sent to Siberia or wherever they came from,
    I personally do not know.
    I know that my mother used to talk to them all the time.
    So once we were in this place, we were settled, so to say.
    I remember we had a bedroom.
    We had the kitchen, probably a little sitting area.
    It wasn't very large.
    Was it a wooden house?
    I think so.
    And it had a wooden roof or a tin roof
    or a thatched roof or--
    I'm not sure.
    I really don't remember that.
    I remember the inside.
    I don't remember--
    Did it have furniture?
    It must have because we had beds.
    And kitchen utensils, my mother brought with us
    a couple pots and whatever.
    The problem was there was no water.
    And in the winter, this became a real problem,
    because the only water you could get was going to the river
    and chopping through the ice, which took enormous effort.
    And because this was the route that people took,
    many waters spilled.
    You know, people would fill the bucket,
    and then some would spill and freeze.
    And when the people who carried the water,
    like my sister and other people, they
    would come close to the house and then slip and spill
    the water, which was tragic.
    They would have to go back and start pulling the water out
    of the river.
    Why wouldn't one use snow that is there and just
    melt it over a fire?
    I don't know why.
    We used snow, I think, for washing to melt,
    but not for drinking.
    OK.
    For drinking water, you had to get water from the river.
    So this became a problem.
    Especially in the heart of winter,
    you had to cover yourself everything.
    Just the eyes would show, because it would go down to 40,
    50 below zero.
    And by the time they would come back,
    the lashes from your breathing would be frozen.
    And people, many people, lost limbs.
    They lost fingers.
    They lost toes if they didn't have adequate, you know,
    gloves and shoes.
    How were you able to dress when you had been
    taken in the middle of summer?
    That was a big problem.
    That was a big problem.
    So my mother started bartering.
    She bartered her wedding ring away.
    She had nice nightgowns, which I don't remember from home.
    But there were Russian people in Siberia
    who had been there for a long time,
    and they haven't seen a nice dress in years.
    And they thought the nightgowns were dresses.
    So she bartered it for potatoes.
    She bartered it for a warm coat.
    In the winter-- in the fall, actually, but there is no fall.
    It's summer and then winter starts in full force.
    Cabbage-- cabbage became a very important thing.
    And my mother would sour it in a barrel,
    because she knew we weren't getting vitamins.
    Cabbage gives you--
    Cabbage gives you vitamins.
    So we would live on this cabbage for most of the winter.
    And many times in the winter, she
    would venture out beyond our settlement, which
    was extremely dangerous, because there
    were wild animals all around.
    This was Siberia.
    And many times people would get lost and never
    find their way back.
    And many, many people died there.
    Many people died.
    They didn't come prepared for this climate.
    They had no chance to be prepared.
    They had no chance.
    And even if you're prepared, it was so harsh.
    Walking to the place of work, to the forest where
    they were cutting down the trees, was 8 kilometers--
    In that cold--
    From our little settlement and 8 kilometers back.
    And in winter, they worked too?
    They worked throughout.
    And actually, in the winter, she worked
    with another young girl--
    Your mother?
    My sister worked in the forest with another young girl,
    as did my aunts.
    They paired them up.
    And they carried the logs that were cut down.
    [PHONE RINGING] And--
    We'll come to it.
    And they carried the--
    The girls would carry the logs into a machine that
    would cut it into boards like--
    Even in wintertime?
    Yes.
    And the other girl, her name was, I think,
    Lisa or something like that.
    She was up front.
    And my sister was in the back carrying.
    Now, you can imagine 14-year-old, two girls
    carrying a huge Siberian log.
    It wasn't easy.
    She must've slipped or something.
    And the log did not go in properly to the machine.
    And it hit back on my sister.
    This was Hannah?
    Hannah.
    She immediately became extremely ill
    with terrible pain, terrible pain.
    They sent their home.
    And she was just convulsing in pain.
    Eventually, they found the doctor
    who tried to examine her, but he didn't know why.
    He didn't know why.
    When it subsided, she had to go back to work.
    So at this point, my father became very frail,
    because he didn't eat much.
    He tried to give the children more.
    And he really neglected himself.
    He became very thin.
    So luckily, if you can call it that, the Russians did not
    keep records exactly the way the Germans did.
    What do you mean by that?
    Well, you know, the Germans would write down
    every name and everything.
    Even in Auschwitz they have all the lists and everything.
    Here, you could fudge a little.
    You could tell them--
    I'll give you a for instance.
    My Aunt Riva was called once, like, 2:00 at night.
    They loved doing all their action at night, the Russians.
    They came knocking at the door, the commandant,
    the head of the settlement, wants to see Riva.
    And we had the feeling why, because she developed sores
    on her foot and she didn't go to work.
    So my mother, quick thinking, since my name was Ryzia--
    Riva-- very close, she woke me up.
    She said get dressed quickly, the commandant wants to see us.
    She took me by the hand and we walked in the frozen night
    to the commandant's office.
    We appeared and he started yelling,
    why did you bring this child here?
    My mother said, you asked for her, you asked for her.
    He said, you're, ridiculous, take the child home.
    That was the end of it--
    for a while.
    So we spared Riva from going and maybe
    being punished or whatever.
    The same thing, there was another incident.
    I knew that the commandant--
    you have to watch out for him.
    If he is coming, then there is trouble on the way.
    So there was a yard like--
    I remember the yard--
    and somehow there were a few steps to go up to our house.
    I saw the commandant from afar.
    I figured I better run and tell my parents
    the commandant is in the area.
    So she must have caught sight of me.
    I started running.
    But I had, you know, short steps.
    He came running after me.
    I had braids at the time.
    He grabbed me by the braids and like threw me down
    from those few stairs.
    And he said, you're running home to tell
    your mother, your parents, that the commandant is coming.
    Threw me down the stairs.
    But my mother heard the commotion.
    So my father went behind the door.
    The door opened this way.
    He stood behind the door.
    So he never saw my father at home that he's not working.
    So again, this was something that
    was, why didn't he go to work?
    He's following up why somebody is staying home.
    Exactly.
    Either he came for that, or they would just
    appear for no reason.
    Another incident that is very clear in my mind is Passover.
    My mother, as other Jews, saved some flour.
    And somehow they managed together, a group together,
    build some matzah.
    So we sat down with potatoes and some greens
    that we had to a Seder, you know,
    the ceremony that we celebrate on Passover.
    In the middle of our reading the story of Passover,
    the Haggadah, there's a knock on the door.
    Commandant comes in.
    First, he didn't say anything.
    He put his hand--
    I remember this like it was yesterday--
    put his hand behind his back and started marching around
    our table, around our table, back and forth, back and forth.
    Eventually, he took-- there was a jar on the table,
    and he snuffed out the candles.
    And then he said, you Jews believe
    that you went out of Egypt.
    Eto nepravda.
    This is not true.
    He knows the story better.
    And he started telling a story that this never happened
    and you believe in religion.
    Religion is stupid and so forth.
    And when he finished his speech, he left.
    I was wondering that atheistic component of the ideology--
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So another trick they pulled was on the Rosh Hashanah, which
    is one of our holiest days.
    They appeared early in the morning
    at the house, knocked at the doors.
    And they pulled out from a few homes Jews with beards
    to go clean the public latrine.
    And it was frozen.
    And they had to use shovels.
    And they get on Rosh Hashanah.
    So they didn't outright kill us like the Germans.
    But they killed your spirit.
    They killed your dignity.
    And many people just couldn't cope with it.
    Tell me, was this an equal opportunity kind of contempt?
    Did you see that happening at Christmas and Easter
    for the Gentiles?
    That is, did they keep almost like a list
    of what religious holidays there would be and target everybody
    on their religious holidays?
    I really don't know that from my experience.
    I know from reading that they did.
    And other settlements where they had Russians
    that they shipped to Siberia and they did not
    allow them to have worship, because under the communist,
    you know, all the churches were closed.
    Everything was closed.
    They did not allow to practice any religion.
    Was your settlement mainly Jewish?
    No, it was very mixed, very mixed.
    And I want to tell you about this young couple next to us,
    because this is another memory that's etched in my mind
    very clearly.
    So the woman gave birth.
    We heard her-- there was only a wooden wall dividing us.
    And there was actually in a little hallway,
    there was a window that you could--
    See in--
    Look through from one to the other.
    We heard her give birth.
    And about a week later, we heard this ear piercing cries.
    That baby passed away.
    She cried inconsolably.
    I remember my mother going over there, and other people came.
    But they found somebody that painted the child's liking.
    And I remember she showed us that picture
    through that window.
    And I can see that little baby's face.
    Oh, dear.
    It was so sad.
    It was so sad.
    That woman was really inconsolable.
    And we were next to each other.
    Now, I had no friends.
    I don't remember playing with any children
    throughout that time at all.
    My father started teaching me a little,
    to write the alphabet, both the Polish and the Hebrew alphabet.
    We didn't get very far, between work and worries.
    But I remember he used to spend time with me
    trying to teach me to write.
    Another thing that happened, because we were all
    undernourished and I was six at that time already
    and very skinny, tall, but skinny, school
    starts there at six, the age of six.
    And school is six days a week.
    So again, my mother didn't want me to go on Shabbat to school.
    So she decided the easiest way to get out
    of it right now is to make me a year younger.
    So she did.
    And from that day on, all my papers
    say that I am a year younger.
    And some years ago, we went back to Poland.
    I don't know if you want me to jump--
    Yes, go ahead.
    If it has a tie to the story, tell me.
    It has a tie, because for many years
    I wanted the birth certificate.
    And we were back in Poland.
    But there was no place to look.
    We never went back to our place of birth.
    So I think it was 2005--
    2005--
    Not that many years ago we went back with friends to Poland.
    And we were in Krakow.
    So we hired a car.
    And we went to Zarszyn.
    And I told you my aunt was in touch with this woman who
    was her contemporary.
    So I called her, and I told her I was going to come.
    And as I mentioned already, they received us very nicely.
    And she asked me, what do you want to do here?
    What do you want to accomplish?
    I said, well, I have really three things that I want to do.
    I want to see where my grandparents' houses were.
    And I want to go to the little city hall
    and get a birth certificate, so my age
    is straightened out once and for all.
    Why it bothered me I don't know, because I always
    tell everybody my true age anyway,
    even though I am a year younger on my papers.
    She said no problem.
    I'll take you.
    So we go up this little building.
    They have an office upstairs.
    We go up.
    My husband was with me.
    She introduces me to the lady in Polish, of course.
    And I speak Polish.
    So she says this lady was born here,
    and she would like to have a birth certificate.
    She said, no problem, what year were you born?
    I tell her 1934.
    She goes to a cabinet.
    It was made out of tin, you know, a cabinet.
    And there are different ledgers.
    She pulled out a ledger from 1934.
    She sat down.
    And she says, what was your maiden name?
    And I tell them I know his name was Barth.
    She says, Barth, Barth, Barth.
    Repeated it maybe six times.
    She said, you're Jewish.
    I said, yes.
    She lifted that book, slammed it on the table.
    I have nothing for Jews.
    All the papers were burned.
    When my husband heard that, he said, we're out of here.
    We're out of here this minute.
    Fortunately, we stopped at my one grandparent's house,
    where it used to be, just an empty lot
    now where my grandparent Barth lived.
    And I asked her if she knew where
    the rabbi, my other grandfather lived.
    She said, I know approximately the street--
    This is your aunt's friend?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Was she there with you at the municipal building?
    Yes.
    And she immediately said, what do you mean you have nothing?
    What if she wants to claim property?
    Her grandfather had property.
    And I said, well, first of all, I don't want to claim anything.
    But the woman said, I have nothing for Jews.
    So my husband dragged me out there.
    He would not continue the conversation.
    But before that we went to the street
    where she thought my other-- it was a little alley,
    not paved, still not paved, just a dirt road.
    And as we were walking, I said stop.
    I think this is the house.
    And we saw a lady working in the garden.
    So we called the over.
    And I said, would you by any chance
    remember a family Leibowitcz.
    And she says, of course, what do you mean?
    I live in their house.
    She said, my husband used to come on Shabbat
    and light the fire for them.
    So I somehow, in my mind's eye, I
    had the vision to recognize that house.
    So anyway we left very shortly thereafter,
    after this experience in the city hall,
    and returned to Krakow.
    And you never got a birth certificate then?
    No.
    I understand that now, already for a number of years,
    in Warsaw there is a depository, a big repository,
    of different documents of Jewish people.
    And possibly if I was registered,
    they may have something.
    But I really haven't pursued it any further.
    I'm so sorry to hear that.
    I'm so sorry.
    It's an unfortunate-- the lady that was with me felt terrible.
    She just didn't want to leave.
    She kept telling her, she was born here, she had family here.
    And the woman was just--
    wouldn't handle it.
    So to go on--
    So we're back in Siberia.
    We're back in Siberia.
    I have a few questions.
    Yes.
    The settlement, do you know about how
    many different little house there were in it?
    You mean to count?
    To give you a figure, I wouldn't be accurate.
    I remember streets with houses.
    Was there anybody who wasn't a deportee who was there?
    I don't think so, except like maybe the military.
    My idea is, like we did with Zarszyn,
    to just get an approximate sense of how large, how small it was.
    I would say maybe 500 people.
    OK.
    I'm estimating.
    I know.
    I know.
    And it was then controlled or administered
    by a military authority.
    Yes.
    But you were not considered prisoners.
    We were considered refugees.
    Who worked because they loved to work for--
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I have heard in other deportee's stories
    of people earning sort of like a nominal amount, a ruble or two.
    They did pay a nominal amount.
    And this is what we had to buy bread
    and the absolute necessities.
    But if you didn't have any other assets to barter or to sell,
    you really couldn't exist.
    My mother never had sons.
    So she always had a weak spot for young boys,
    for single boys, who needed help.
    There was this one boy in particular
    that she befriended in Siberia, who was--
    we call this in Yiddish, a real Schlimazel, somebody
    who would always lose something and somebody who couldn't quite
    take care of himself.
    Was he there without his parents?
    No, he was alone.
    He was away from home in a yeshiva.
    And he was caught together with everybody else
    and shipped to Siberia.
    But in the beginning, there was still a time
    that you could send packages from Poland--
    at the very beginning.
    And they would reach you, or they
    would send through the Red Cross different things.
    So when you said, we lived on packages,
    is that what you were referring to rather than not being able
    to unpack?
    No, no, no, when I said we lived on our packages,
    I just meant our things.
    But this boy received a couple packages from his parents--
    in Siberia-- in Siberia.
    I don't know how.
    So he comes to my mother with the package.
    And he says, Mrs. Barth, I want you to give me
    every day a piece of what my mother sent me,
    either a piece of candy or a cookie, because if I keep it
    I'm going to eat it all at once.
    Oh, my.
    Oh, my.
    So she knew that my mother wasn't going to touch it.
    As a matter of fact, I remember after she gave him his piece,
    every day he would come by.
    She would put it high up on a shelf.
    And none of us--
    none of us-- would dare touch it.
    But he would also come to my mother and say--
    I remember, he was ashamed to say-- he would say, Mrs. Barth,
    I lost a glove today.
    And we didn't have spare.
    My mother would take a rag that she had from something
    or cut up something.
    And she sewed him some kind of a glove,
    because without it, he would lose his fingers.
    What was his name?
    His name was also Yakov.
    And he eventually ended up in Belgium,
    became a diamond dealer, and came
    to visit my mother in Israel--
    Oh, no kidding--
    [LAUGHTER]
    Many years later.
    I hope he didn't lose diamonds.
    I know.
    But as a boy, he was like that.
    One day, he came, he lost a scarf.
    My mother somehow found a scarf for him.
    I mean, he was just totally unreliable
    as far as his things.
    But he was a sweet--
    He needed a mother.
    Needed a mother.
    And my mother mothered him.
    He would come and sit after work at our table.
    And we would share what we had with him.
    So Siberia was terribly hard.
    Tell me a little bit about the relation
    between the military authority in the settlement.
    Do you have a name for the settlement,
    by the way that you were in?
    Tavda.
    Tavda.
    I'm sorry.
    You did tell me.
    Tavda.
    And do you remember the name of that commandant?
    No.
    No, I do not.
    They all wore military garb.
    That's all I can tell you.
    If they were part of those who were sent to Siberia
    and then put in charge--
    there were many cases that this was true.
    And there were many cases that they
    were just sent for the purpose to administer
    the different settlements.
    Were they NKVD?
    Were they?
    NKVD.
    Were they secret police, for example.
    No.
    I know what NKVD is.
    I'm not aware of it.
    No.
    We dealt with NKVD later on in Russia.
    OK.
    But not in Siberia.
    I don't recall anybody being called that.
    And was it just about--
    if you have approximately 500 people,
    about how many administrators would be there?
    All I know is the commandant, somebody
    was sitting and writing things for him, which
    must have been a secretary, and the soldiers
    who acted like policemen.
    OK.
    Was there a fence around the settlement?
    Was there a?
    Fence or a gate?
    No.
    But there was no place to run.
    Well, see, for Western kind of understanding,
    why wouldn't there be a place to run?
    Why wouldn't you be able to just run away?
    Because the settlements were far apart.
    Summer was very short.
    And winters were forever.
    And it was a very dangerous.
    And anybody who attempted, never came back and never made it.
    And even as I said before, going through the forest
    to another settlement was extremely dangerous.
    Were there people in this settlement
    who had already been exiled there before you arrived?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    So they kind of told you of what it was about.
    Yes.
    Well, those were the people that my mother would barter with
    and buy things from.
    And another thing, which was very interesting,
    the summers are basically two months, real summer, June
    and July.
    And during that month, my mother would
    seed different vegetables.
    And everything managed to grow in those two
    months, particularly potatoes and some onion.
    And that's what I remember most of all.
    I think maybe some beets.
    All very important.
    Yeah.
    During the summer.
    Yeah.
    And as I said, she would buy cabbage.
    I don't think she'd grew cabbage.
    I don't recall.
    And she would hide those potatoes in a cold spot.
    I think covered.
    And through the winter until it ran out, we lived on this.
    That's amazing.
    She sounds like if it hadn't been for your mother,
    you all would have been lost.
    Yes.
    No question about it.
    No question about it.
    Did you arrive there with any kind of documents?
    No.
    I'm talking about old Polish passport--
    No.
    Nothing.
    I don't think so, no, because particularly
    having lived in a small town, there was no need.
    I don't think my parents had any papers.
    I don't think so--
    Your father may be if he traveled to Germany.
    Maybe my father.
    I don't remember seeing any.
    OK.
    Well, again, so it's when one starts creating a paper trail,
    where is that paper trail.
    I'm thinking back about your birth certificate.
    And sometimes some people who were
    in gulags, when they were released from those gulags
    got a certain kind of certificate that they had been
    and now they were allowed out.
    Oh, yeah, I'll tell you about that.
    So we ended up being in Siberia 19 months.
    All in Tavda?
    All there.
    OK.
    Now when Russia joined the Allies.
    And that would have been because?
    Why would she leave Germany to join the Allies?
    Well, because Germany attacked Russia.
    And by that time, there weren't many places
    that you could travel in Russia, because the Germans had
    progressed so far along into the heart of Russia.
    You're talking June 1941.
    Right.
    [POLISH]
    [POLISH]
    [POLISH] The reason I remembered that, because we
    were singing a song, [POLISH]
    Tell us what that means.
    OK, on the 22nd of June, we were notified that war broke out.
    And that was 22nd of June, 1941, when Russia joined the Allies.
    And did that come from the commandant?
    No, that I learned later in Bukhara,
    because I didn't go to school in Siberia at all.
    Were there loudspeakers in the settlement?
    I don't recall loudspeakers.
    I think they used to just go individually
    to the different houses when they wanted somebody.
    And were there ever any gatherings
    where everyone from the settlement had to come together
    to hear something, to witness something?
    I don't recall.
    Did you ever go with your sister when she worked
    or when your father when she worked?
    No.
    I mean it was 8 kilometers away.
    It wasn't just next door.
    No, I never did.
    I never did.
    But we always tried to hide somebody,
    give them a day of respite.
    And if you couldn't get--
    there wasn't really a doctor.
    There was what they called a felczer.
    And that was like a medical assistant, the best
    term I can think of, that would come and observe you.
    And he would say, yes, you're fit for work,
    no, you can have a day off.
    And so that felczer could be a very powerful person.
    Yeah.
    Well, I remember him because he came to look at my aunt's heels
    where she rubbed it so terribly.
    And he decreed three days she could stay home.
    So the commandant shouldn't have been looking for her.
    That was another time, you know.
    OK.
    That was another time.
    I mean we were there for 19 months.
    There were--
    Many times--
    Many incidences where the commandant
    would appear for no reason.
    Or they would come to check cleanliness.
    So they would lift up the bed, the sheets and this.
    And out of the blue, they would just come and check
    different things--
    unannounced, of course.
    Yeah.
    Were there bathing facilities?
    Just in tubs, you know, in portable tubs.
    OK.
    And I take it they were outhouses.
    There was no indoor toilet.
    There was.
    Oh, good.
    There was in those new houses.
    Where we were taken in Tavda, there were toilet facilities.
    OK.
    I remember I had a tooth infected.
    And my father went through the whole settlement
    looking for a dentist.
    There wasn't any.
    And this felczer came.
    And he looked, and he said, well,
    I don't have any tools to pull teeth.
    He said, it will take care of itself.
    In the meantime, I remember being in a lot of pain.
    And some months before my mother found a kitten.
    It was a red, kind of reddish fur tabby.
    And when I had pain, the cat would lay across my neck.
    And it kept me warm.
    And I loved that cat so much.
    And when it was time for us to leave,
    I remember my mother went from neighbor to neighbor
    asking them if they would have the cat.
    And at least she told me that she'd found somebody.
    What was the cat's name?
    I didn't name it.
    It was just cat.
    You know, we were not used to this like now,
    kids name everything, you know.
    It was just cat.
    It was just cat, but I loved it.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    And so eventually the day came--
    We'll come-- excuse me that I'm interrupting.
    I want to stop right now.
    Can we--
    So before the break, we were talking about the Siberian
    experience in Tavda, the commandant, the 19 months,
    the cold, the hunger.
    One last question before we move on--
    did many people die in this settlement?
    Many, many.
    Many, many people died in Siberia.
    Many of them froze to death, literally.
    If they didn't have the right clothing and walking
    8 kilometers to work, they never made it back.
    They just froze.
    People were malnourished.
    They died of all kinds of diseases--
    hunger, just many reasons many people died.
    Many, many.
    And those of us who were there and were
    able to stay within the family framework
    was easier to survive, because parents always cared
    for their children and saw the children should
    have a better bite of whatever they could get.
    And I know this was true in our family.
    And this is how one supported the other.
    And within the family framework was easier
    to survive than people whose families were torn apart,
    who were taken from different places,
    ended up in different places.
    So conditions were horrendous.
    For people who came out from a different climate,
    not used to such labor, the labor
    was tremendous for people who were conscripted, you can say,
    to work.
    There was no other way.
    Here and there, we got somebody out for a day or two.
    But everybody had to work, because if you didn't work,
    you didn't get your ration of bread,
    you didn't get your food.
    So you had to work.
    There was no other way out.
    What about Bluma?
    We haven't talked about.
    Bluma did not work.
    She was under age while we were in Siberia.
    And like I told you before, she was not a strong--
    things upset her.
    She was afraid of many things.
    And later on when we get to Bukhara,
    I'll tell you more about her, of all the problems that she had,
    health problems, which turned into emotional problems.
    And she was very close to me because she
    was like in the middle.
    But she was of a different nature than my older sister.
    Well, you know, not everybody has the stamina
    to withstand these kinds of assaults.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    One other point before we move on,
    you mentioned earlier that this experience
    robbed people of their dignity.
    Can you go into that a little bit,
    so that someone here who doesn't know how that happened
    would have a better idea?
    Well, you know, just like under other circumstances
    with the Germans, though they didn't set out
    to kill us outright, but by disregarding all the principles
    that are important to you--
    when you cannot worship freely, when you cannot observe
    your holy day of the week, when you can't live in dignity
    as a human being--
    work, of course, but not to work like a slave,
    not take 14-year-old children and have
    them work in the forest with logging trees, that's
    robbing you of your dignity.
    That's robbing you of your principles, of your beliefs,
    of they believe in human beings.
    So you hear at some point that it's the 22nd of June
    and that Germany has invaded the Soviet Union.
    How do your lives change after that?
    Well, I think it changed to the fact
    that we saw hope of leaving Siberia,
    because it was known right away that now we're not the enemy.
    Even though we were Polish, we were no longer
    considered the enemy.
    They were fighting on the side of the Poles
    and on the side of the Allies.
    So we knew that the day will come
    and we'll be able to leave.
    It took a while.
    We didn't leave there till the very end of November,
    because many circumstances.
    Number one in the Russia at that time,
    and I know during the communist was true throughout,
    that you could not go where you wanted to go.
    If you wanted to change your place of living,
    you had to apply.
    You had to get permission to travel to that place.
    And the same thing happened here.
    Yes, they joined in June.
    But until the wheels turned and we got permission to leave
    was almost the end of November.
    And finally, we weren't allowed to leave.
    So there were--
    How did you find out-- excuse me,
    how did you find out that you could go?
    Well, again, going back to my age,
    I don't know that I found out.
    My parents were talking about it.
    People were speaking about it.
    So I learned of the fact that we will be leaving some day,
    because there were people in Siberia
    who were there 20 and 30 years.
    And a lot of them had no hope of ever leaving.
    Well, we knew we would get out at some point.
    So I guess you had to apply for permission where
    you wanted to go.
    And I want to interject here, simply so
    that if somebody hears this in the future,
    there'd be a connection as to how it happens.
    My understanding was that the Poles came to an agreement.
    The government in exile in London
    came to agreement with Stalin to let the Polish citizens go.
    That's true.
    That's true.
    So that they could help form fighting forces
    against the Germans.
    That's true.
    So that if you were in a settlement
    and you were not a Polish citizen, but had been deported,
    you didn't get to go.
    Yeah.
    You had to be Polish.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Yes, this applied only to the Polish refugees,
    not to the Russians who happened to be there exiled from Moscow
    or Leningrad or anywhere else.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Let's--
    So I mean the first deportations from the Baltic states
    was in June 1941, a week before the Germans attacked.
    So those people would have been sent,
    and they would never have been released,
    because they were not citizens.
    Right, they were not Polish.
    Yeah, I knew that.
    I'm sorry I forgot to mention it.
    But I know from my family, my youngest uncle,
    my father's youngest brother, Moschel,
    he was caught in the war in Lwow.
    Ah, he was there.
    Because he was there at a yeshiva studying.
    He was the youngest.
    And he was studying there.
    So he was not with us.
    But we knew that he had maybe a chance of survival
    because he wasn't in our area.
    So toward the end of the war, my grandparents
    wrote a letter to the Red Cross.
    And they wanted to find out the whereabouts of this youngest
    son.
    And we actually received a letter from the Red Cross,
    and then shortly thereafter a letter
    from him, that he survived in a bunker.
    And he learned what happened to his brothers
    and to everybody else in Poland.
    And therefore, he's enlisting in the Polish army
    to go revenge his brothers.
    Was this the Anders' Army that he was going to enlist in?
    No, the Anders' Army was in Russia.
    I know about that.
    No, this was-- the Anders' Army was going in the Middle East,
    to the Middle East.
    This was the Polish army.
    And this was the last we heard from him.
    This was the one and only letter.
    And presumably, because we searched all over for him
    after the war, he must've gotten killed in some battle.
    OK.
    So this was the fifth son of my grandparents.
    I can't imagine what they must have felt.
    Well, after learning, my grandmother particularly,
    after learning that she lost the five sons,
    she just couldn't go on living.
    And she died within a year afterwards.
    She died in 1947.
    Yeah.
    She was only 61 years old.
    Oh, my goodness.
    So you're here in Tavda.
    And you finally learn that you can leave.
    But then the question is, where to go to?
    OK, so my father had the answer, because his aim was not
    to go back to Poland, but to go to Palestine.
    So he applied to the furthest point south, where his hope was
    that through Iran or through Afghanistan,
    which Iran borders the Black Sea,
    that he will be able somehow make his way to Palestine.
    So he applied to go to Bukhara.
    Bukhara.
    And Bukhara is in what Soviet Republic?
    Uzbekistan.
    Is in Uzbekistan.
    So we got permission to go to Bukhara.
    And as I said, it wasn't till November.
    There were no trains.
    The service was very poor.
    The war was going down.
    Half of Russia was under German rule.
    So travel was very difficult. And some point in November,
    we made our way to Sverdlovsk, which was a main hub of trains.
    And was this in Kazakhstan?
    No.
    Or is this in Russia?
    Sverdlovsk is in Ural.
    OK.
    And there were hundreds and hundreds
    of people in the waiting hall of the train station.
    Some were there for weeks waiting for a train
    to connect to go wherever they asked permission to go.
    And so Tavda was about how far from Sverdlovsk?
    I don't remember exactly the distance,
    but it was not terribly far.
    I think we got there in one day.
    And by horse and buggy?
    By sleigh?
    No, no.
    By train.
    By another train.
    OK.
    How we got to the train, I don't exactly remember.
    But we came by train, but we had to go off in Sverdlovsk
    and wait till there was a train that would take us
    in that direction.
    Because different people were assigned
    from different settlements, some were assigned where to go,
    not just where they request requested.
    So I know that my grandparents Leibowitcz ended up
    in Kazakhstan near the city of Alma-Ata.
    They've since changed the name of Alma.
    I'm not quite sure what it's called today.
    And they ended up in a kolkhoz.
    A kolkhoz is a settlement where everything is a collective.
    It's a collective farm.
    A collective farm.
    So they ended up there.
    But the very interesting incident I want to tell you,
    when we were in Sverdlovsk, and like I said,
    there were so many people there.
    And there was barely room to find a corner and sit down.
    My father was walking around and talking, you know,
    and recognizing another Jew.
    Where are you from?
    Where are you going?
    Et cetera.
    And he got to speaking to this one man.
    And during that conversation, the man said to him,
    I met a most amazing man here.
    He's knowledgeable.
    He's wise.
    And he's just a special human being.
    And I would very much like you to come and meet them.
    If you have to be here some time,
    I want you to go and meet him.
    And he literally took him by the hand.
    And they walked through other crowds and whatever.
    And guess who that was?
    It was my grandfather Leibowitcz.
    And this was the last time that we saw my grandparents,
    unfortunately, only for one day, because their train arrived
    and they had to leave.
    So that's where we got to see them the very last time.
    We saw my aunts.
    We saw my grandmother.
    And unfortunately, both my grandmother and my grandfather
    died in Kazakhstan.
    Of what causes?
    They became-- she was not a well person as I told you.
    That's right.
    She was diabetic, right?
    She was diabetic.
    She had other--
    I remember her having tremors.
    I don't know what this translated to, what the illness
    she had.
    But she was not a well person for many years.
    And obviously, under harsh conditions,
    they both died there.
    And my aunts eventually came out and made their way to Israel.
    So I've got to know those aunts very well
    and loved them very much.
    But at that point, this was paths crossing--
    Just random, just random.
    And the thought that this other man that my grandfather was
    an exceptional human being and he wanted my father to meet him
    was a miracle, because we would have never found him.
    We would have never looked for him.
    We would have never found them.
    So we got a chance to see him, to see them, all of them,
    one more time.
    How long did you stay in Sverdlovsk?
    We were more fortunate.
    Somehow it was only a few days.
    OK.
    But there were people that were there for weeks.
    And it was a few days.
    And again, I remember my sister, my mother went to buy food.
    My father-- everything was very scarce, very scarce.
    We're talking late November, early December 1941?
    Correct.
    Not early December.
    End of November.
    End of November.
    Or maybe we started early Novem--
    we ended up leaving on the train like mid-November.
    Got it.
    So we finally made it to a train.
    That journey took also weeks.
    Weeks.
    To Bukhara?
    To Bukhara.
    We actually had to get off in Uzbekistan, but in Tashkent.
    We went off, and for a while they thought--
    the parents thought-- that we would stay there.
    From this station, we were together with the Barth family.
    From this station, I remember also there
    was no buggy or anything.
    Everybody carried something.
    And my aunt told me, years later,
    that a man came over, a Jewish man.
    And he said, I'll help you carry your packages.
    And he took like a pillow and quilt, and he disappeared.
    And we never saw him again.
    So those things happened because people were in need.
    People were in need.
    So we were in Tashkent a few weeks.
    And I remember the first night, they had no doors.
    They had low window--
    Bukhara was the same thing.
    They had very low windows.
    And people would walk through the windows.
    And I knew from stories that only thief
    went through windows, who walk through windows.
    So I was very scared when I saw somebody
    walking through a window.
    Also, the room that we got, the wall adjoined a bakery--
    That's not a bad place to be.
    No, not a bad place.
    But it shook.
    He was running machines.
    And the wall would shake.
    I remember that.
    And it was hard to go to sleep, because he would work primarily
    at night to have the baked goods during the day.
    So I remember Tashkent even though we were very short time
    there.
    How did it look otherwise?
    When I think of Tashkent, I think of a very exotic place.
    Exotic place.
    Well, I don't think that I was taken
    along a nice tour of the city, you know, so I don't remem--
    No sightseeing--
    So I don't remember very much of the city.
    I do remember Bukhara, of course.
    I don't remember Tashkent very much,
    except that building where we had the one room
    and that the walls were shaking all the time, mostly at night.
    So then we, again, after a few weeks,
    were able to get a train, room on the train,
    which was very difficult. And we made our way to Bukhara.
    When we got to Bukhara was a other story,
    because there were many refugees who came to Bukhara.
    We were not the only ones.
    And you couldn't find any lodging.
    You couldn't find in their rooms.
    And eventually, we found, I remember, a very large room.
    And I'll tell you about the buildings
    there that we shared together with my grandparents, my aunts,
    and our family.
    And there was a little kitchen.
    And the buildings primarily there
    are constructed within a courtyard.
    And they're built on two sides, one side for winter,
    literally, where the sun hits, because the winters are
    very harsh.
    It's like subtropical climate.
    The summers are very hot, and the winters are very cold.
    And they had obviously no heating.
    So I remember for the Bukhara people,
    they used to have a dog out in the floor.
    The floors were either dirt or some kind of stone.
    There was a dugout where they would put coals and heat
    the coals and have like a little table over it with a quilt.
    And you would stick your feet under--
    The quilt--
    Under the quilt, close to the coals, and that's
    how you would warm yourself.
    Oh, my gosh.
    Yeah.
    Oh, my gosh.
    So what happened to your back?
    Your feet are warm, but your back is cold.
    You cover yourself the best you can.
    But this was not the biggest problem in Bukhara.
    What happened in Bukhara was really great hunger
    and terrible diseases, because Bukhara did not
    have clear water at that time, clean water.
    And people would drink polluted water and get typhoid.
    All of us had typhoid.
    I had typhoid.
    We didn't have beds.
    They laid out planks on the floor.
    And like all five of us laid on the same,
    you know, one next to the other.
    And on the other side were my grandparents.
    And my sister and I were the first, I think, to get typhoid.
    But this was later.
    This was after we lost my father.
    What happened?
    Well, we were in Bukhara only five weeks
    when my father became very ill.
    He got very strong abdominal pains on a Saturday afternoon.
    And by evening, he was in excruciating pain.
    And all three of us and my aunts, we all
    ran in the neighborhood.
    And when I told you it's built in a courtyard style,
    they all have doors that they lock at night.
    So we started knocking at those doors of neighbors in the area
    and asking for a doctor.
    And, you know, the Bukhara people, including Jews--
    there were many Jews from Bukhara, natives--
    that were very suspicious of us, the Ashkenazi Jews.
    They weren't familiar with us.
    We didn't speak the same language.
    They spoke Bukharan, which is Uzbek's language, which
    is a separate language.
    A lot of them didn't even know a Russian.
    They spoke their own language.
    We, of course, came from Eastern Europe.
    We spoke different languages.
    By that time, we knew some Russian.
    They were very suspicious, and they
    were afraid to open the doors.
    And it wasn't till late, late at night
    that we found somebody who said he was a doctor.
    He came and examined my father.
    And he really didn't know what was wrong with me.
    He had no X-ray.
    But he did arrange Sunday morning
    to take my father to a hospital.
    So I remember that morning very well.
    This is one place where I always have trouble talking about it.
    Before they came to take my father, he wanted to pray.
    So he put the tallit on, the prayer shawl,
    and his tefillin, which orthodox Jews put on their heads
    and on their arms.
    And I was standing like on this side
    and watching, just looking at him.
    And he called me over.
    And he took me in his prayer shawl, wrapped me with it
    and hugged me.
    And he kissed me on the forehead.
    And he said, don't worry, I'll be OK.
    And this is the last time I saw my father was that morning.
    They took him to the hospital.
    And they decided that he had an obstruction in his bowels.
    You see, even in Bukhara he denied himself.
    He fasted days.
    And it totally ran down his system.
    And when he ate, I guess, he didn't digest it, or whatever.
    I'm not a doctor.
    I can't explain what caused it.
    But that was the result. And they decided to operate.
    So the doctor was going to operate.
    He told my mother that she needs to pay him x amount of rubles.
    So my mother took her purse, and she spilled it out all
    on his desk.
    And she said, this is what I have,
    this is what I can give you.
    She said, but I have three children.
    And tomorrow I won't be able to feed them.
    So he took enough money.
    He gave her back enough to buy one bread.
    And this is what we were left with.
    Monday, they operated on my father.
    And a half hour, they came out to tell us
    that he didn't survive.
    And we don't know if they actually did the operation
    or didn't do the operation or what caused his death.
    He was 38 years old.
    And when I saw my mother coming back
    from the hospital with my sister, I knew,
    I knew that we had lost him.
    And-- my mother had to take care of us.
    Your father, was he able to be buried?
    To?
    Was your father buried?
    Oh, yes.
    My father was buried.
    Bukhara had a Jewish cemetery.
    And after some months, you know, after a year,
    we put a stone up.
    And I have pictures of that.
    Unfortunately, I never went back to visit there.
    During the communists, we were afraid to go back,
    because we were there.
    And I was actually in the young--
    Communist Youth.
    They made everybody in school--
    You were a Pioneer?
    To be in the Komsomol, which is the Communist Youth.
    They made us wear the red kerchiefs with the insignia
    and everything.
    And people always advised, me don't go back,
    don't go back, you may be in trouble because you lived there
    for so many years.
    So I didn't.
    And once communism broke, my sister
    wasn't well enough to go.
    And it's one of those things I just never made it back.
    Do you know the date of your father's death?
    Oh, sure-- what was it?
    He died-- I know the Jewish date.
    I think it was the 21st of December.
    And Tet Tevet is what I observe every year,
    the anniversary of his death--
    the ninth day of the month of Tevet,
    because we observe the Jewish date.
    So--
    I can't imagine what it was like for your family then.
    Yeah.
    So we were left with nothing, literally.
    We started looking in my father's jacket pockets
    to see if he had something.
    And my mother found a treasure.
    I told you he was a smoker.
    And he used to use a lighter that used little stones,
    you know little--
    A flint.
    A flint.
    And he had a few hundred of them in his pockets,
    between different pockets.
    So, you know, nothing was available at that time.
    So we started selling that.
    And that was the first money that we
    had after we lost my father.
    Of course, we had a minyan, a group of men, Jewish men.
    And we held services twice a day in our apartment.
    And I remember very clearly there
    were people who would come in the morning
    and would be dead at night.
    They were so weak or so ill that they would come in the morning,
    and then we heard he dropped, literally dropped,
    in the street.
    And there were many cases like that.
    But slowly my mother started to think
    of things she could do to exist, to survive.
    So kosher slaughtering was forbidden,
    particularly of cows.
    But people try and do it anyway.
    So they would slaughter a cow.
    There was a shochet, as I explained
    before, somebody who was qualified
    would do it late at night, someplace hidden.
    And my mother would go and buy the cheapest parts available.
    I remember she would buy--
    The snout?
    The face of the cow.
    And we would sit for hours and try
    to clean the hair out of it.
    She would pour boiling water on it.
    And you literally had to pinch it--
    Pinch the hair of it--
    With tweezers to take the hair out.
    And then she would chop it up.
    And she would make a stew or cook a soup.
    Or she would buy bones.
    And slowly some single people who wanted to keep kosher
    found out, and they would come at night.
    And my mother would have some food.
    And they would leave whatever kopeks, whatever
    pennies they had for that meal.
    And then what was left, we ate.
    And bread was still a problem.
    They used to sell bread.
    And the lines were enormous.
    Sometimes you stood 24 hours in line or longer.
    So I remember one incident.
    They were actually selling little white rolls.
    And my sister was in line, and my aunt was in line.
    And when it came close to the window, they ran home
    and they grabbed me as well.
    I should stand in line, because whoever stood in line
    got a portion.
    So it came my turn.
    And the window was up there.
    I was down here.
    I was standing up and trying to look.
    And the guy looked down at me, and he
    said, what are you doing here?
    I'm not selling to children.
    So I started crying.
    And he said, well, don't cry.
    I'll tell you what, if you know how to count,
    I'll sell it to you.
    And right there with the line of, I don't know,
    50, 100 people behind me, he gave me a math test.
    Do you know how much is 5 and 5, or 4 and 4?
    I don't remember the exact numbers,
    but I answered them all, whatever he asked me.
    And he sold it to me.
    So you incidents like that you remember.
    Yes.
    And another way that we got bread to really live on
    was as the people died--
    we had ration cards--
    their cards were available.
    Their families would sell the cards.
    And you had extra ration papers.
    So with that, my mother would buy different-- of course,
    everything was illegal.
    If they would catch you, you would go
    to jail, no question about it.
    Pretty soon she met a man that used
    to carry flour to an institution,
    to a Russian institution.
    Well, he couldn't make a living either
    from what he was getting.
    So he would steal.
    He would take a sack of flour, throw it down someplace.
    He would tell my mother where to wait.
    And she'd pay them and drag that--
    Flour--
    That flour home.
    And then she would bake or resell the flour
    or do different things, where one time she was caught.
    She was caught and she was taken by a policeman
    to the police station.
    And she was sitting there for many hours,
    because there were other people ahead of her.
    And she said at one point there were so
    many people in front of that sergeant that was interrogating
    everybody that she got up and she started slowly
    to inch her way toward the door, and she ran off.
    She ran off, but she was afraid to come home.
    So she went actually to a Russian woman that she had met.
    And she stayed there for two weeks.
    She was afraid to come home, that they'll
    come looking for her.
    Did they?
    But-- no, because they obviously didn't take her name,
    or if the Sergeant, he didn't really--
    whatever, they never came looking for her.
    Eventually, she came home.
    But one time, they caught her.
    She couldn't run off.
    So they held her overnight.
    And my grandfather still had a watch of some kind.
    So my sister went--
    she had the guts to do it, my oldest sister Hannah.
    She and my aunt together went to--
    I don't know what his rank was, a captain or something,
    but somebody above the policeman--
    she came to him, and she started pleading for her mother.
    And he just had no sympathy.
    So she took out the watch, kind of quietly.
    And he got so mad, he chased her out.
    But she wouldn't leave.
    And eventually, he took the watch.
    And my mother came home after a couple days.
    But she did things that I don't know if every woman could
    have done that.
    My mother really did not think of herself
    so much that she can end up in jail, that she can be,
    who knows what, sent back to Siberia.
    But she did whatever she could to have
    a piece of bread in our house.
    And I remember I developed this, during those years,
    that I would never finish whatever I was given.
    I would save a piece.
    I would save something, a piece of bread.
    And my mother used to tease me, and she would say, better hurry
    up and finish that because the Messiah is going to come
    and then you won't have one to eat it.
    She said, better finish it now.
    And--
    Did it work as an argument?
    I remember-- of course, again, we had no cooling of any kind.
    So there was a well in that courtyard.
    So they used to lower food into the well,
    because the well was cold.
    And I remembered that one time, she
    was able to buy on the bazaar, you
    know, where people, farmers, would come and sell stuff,
    some cheese.
    And I guess it got bad a odor, and my sisters
    wouldn't need it.
    They gave it to me.
    They wanted to see if I would eat it,
    because you couldn't just throw it out.
    Well, for some reason, I loved it.
    And I still like blue cheese.
    [LAUGHTER] So I remember them staring at me
    as I was eating it.
    And there were many times that we
    were not starving, but hungry, many times during those years.
    How many years did you stay in Bukhara?
    We stayed in Bukhara till April '46.
    That's a long time.
    A year after the war almost, because, again,
    the Polish government started repatriating
    the Polish refugees.
    But they didn't get to everybody right away.
    Well, one thing that I wanted to ask you about the early years,
    was there a Polish presence, let's say a Polish government
    presence, or organizations in Bukhara?
    There were some organizations.
    And they started a Polish school,
    as I mentioned, for children of refugees.
    So I was registered in the first grade.
    And I remember going to school.
    I had no coat.
    It was a winter, the first winter we got there.
    I had a coat from home that reached
    me halfway through my arm and very short.
    And it was winter.
    It was very cold.
    And besides, it looks kind of silly on me.
    And I remember one day toward the end of the year,
    they wanted class pictures.
    Well, I refused to go to the picture, take a picture,
    in that coat.
    So the teacher grabbed an older girl,
    took off her coat-- she couldn't take anybody from my class
    because they need their own coats.
    While the older girl was waiting for her class turn,
    she took off her coat and put it on me.
    And I have that picture.
    It's not in very good shape, but I have it.
    And I look at the saddest little girl you ever want to see,
    because I didn't feel comfortable
    in that other girl's coat.
    And it didn't fit me.
    This one was way too big for me.
    And I was like wrapped in it, and I sat on the floor.
    And if I could have made myself disappear, I would have.
    So I managed to go through fourth grade--
    So four years.
    And Russian was taught as a language in our school.
    But you learned your subjects in Polish?
    In Polish, yes, that's how I really acquired more Polish.
    Were there Gentile Poles there too?
    Yes.
    And what was the relationship like?
    What was--
    In school?
    Between one another.
    We had good relationships.
    I don't remember any incidents, bad incidents
    among the children.
    I really don't recall any.
    Do you-- OK, did you want to say something right no,
    because I have another--
    I just wanted to say that we were still
    forced in a way, not physically, but forced,
    that everybody in class had to be in the Young Komsomol.
    And Stalin's picture was on the walls.
    And here we say the Pledge of Allegiance,
    and then there, we had to sing to Stalin.
    Yeah.
    So there were concessions that needed to be made.
    Yes.
    Even though it was a Polish school--
    Yes--
    Of don't forget where you are.
    Yes.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    Was there also at any point in Bukhara
    a Polish military presence?
    That is did General Anders' Army--
    part of the reason for the release
    of Polish citizens from the camps
    was to get military men to help to fight.
    Yes.
    So Anders' Army passed through Bukhara.
    And for some reason, Anders' Army did not want Jews.
    I don't know if you know that.
    But they took Jewish children with them.
    And actually, at one point, my mother
    acquired another widow with children
    to help her in this cooking venture
    that she did at that time.
    And she had three children, and she sent--
    they were slightly older than we were--
    and she sent those children--
    I don't know how or who in the army took care of them or how,
    but they followed with Anders' Army.
    And when they reached the Middle East,
    somehow those kids ended up in Palestine
    in Youth Aliyah, which meant the Young Immigrants.
    This woman wanted very much my mother
    to send us, if not myself--
    I was too young maybe-- the others,
    but my mother didn't want to do it.
    She did not want to part.
    Were those, the children, the other children,
    were they boys or girls?
    I think one boy and one girl.
    So the boy could look after the girl, if necessary?
    Yeah.
    It's kind of hard to send just young girls.
    Yeah.
    I would have--
    My mother refused.
    And I know there were other people who send--
    and how, what the circumstances were
    I really couldn't tell you.
    But I know they said they send them with Anders' Army.
    Well, you see, it's still a very murky kind of--
    there's no definitive word that I have heard yet
    about this, Anders' Army and the relationship with Jews,
    because some Jews that I've interviewed
    said I was accepted.
    And some said, they didn't want me.
    Yeah.
    And some were there--
    I don't know if it was dependent on the local,
    let's say, if somebody came to recruit
    and this particular person didn't want to accept Jews
    and another one did, I don't know.
    And then I even read--
    I did interviews, but I read in a scholarly article
    that there also was a Soviet person there with the Anders'
    Army, and sometimes it was the Soviet who would not allow.
    Possibly.
    I don't know.
    We don't know.
    I don't know that.
    We don't know.
    But nevertheless, this is what you know of that.
    That's what you experienced of it.
    And that is something that--
    Yes--
    Is part of the story.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So they passed through, and they didn't stay except for the fact
    that there still were some Polish institutions--
    Yeah--
    That were in Bukhara.
    Right.
    OK.
    And there were the usual help, not
    may be as well organized, but usual help
    groups among the Jews as well.
    The aid groups--
    Like when my father passed away, the Chevra
    Kadish, which is an organization that helps with burial.
    They helped us with burying my father.
    Did you go to the funeral?
    Yes.
    We all did, though the women were kind of pushed back.
    We were not exactly immediately by the grave.
    We walked quite a ways to the cemetery.
    And again, my father's body was carried.
    And, of course, in Jewish tradition, they're only--
    not in a casket, but on a plank of wood.
    And they're just buried, the body, without a casket.
    As I said, there were many times that a piece of bread
    was something to treasure.
    And many people would come to the door and beg.
    And my mother would always manage to slice a piece
    and give the man.
    And when we lived together, one of my aunts, the youngest one,
    used to get literally into hysterics,
    because of you, we are going to die.
    To your mother?
    Yes.
    Because you're giving away our bread.
    And you can't give away anything.
    But my mother could never refuse.
    Either it was a piece of bread or if she
    had something cooked leftover or whatever, she would share.
    And it's so interesting to me because, this aunt survived.
    And in later years--
    she was not a rich person.
    She just lived-- she worked actually in a hospital.
    She helped translate from Russian to English.
    And she was like half volunteer and half salary.
    She would give away her shirt if you asked her.
    She always sent exaggerated gifts.
    If she knew a child had a bar mitzvah or something,
    for her means it was always exaggerated.
    And I used to beg her, please, we don't need it,
    don't send so much.
    There was no way of talking her out.
    She like totally her nature, I don't know if it changed,
    or the war made her so frightened
    that she was going to die that too was
    an unkind person during the war, but completely changed
    afterwards.
    Do you think maybe she felt guilty?
    I'm just supposing.
    I wouldn't know.
    She just was very much afraid that she was going to die.
    Well, but what you highlight on I
    think is something we very often,
    us, who have never experienced war,
    is how people change, how their natures change,
    how their personalities change, what effect
    this constant stress and constant fighting for survival
    is.
    My mother would buy the bread and come home and slice it.
    And she would argue with my mother
    that if she sliced it the other way, there would be more.
    [LAUGHTER] Foolish things like that, I remember that.
    And my mother used to tell her, please, it's the same bread,
    don't worry about it.
    But she would insist every time.
    If my mother just sliced it the other way, there will be more.
    And she really suffered.
    She suffered.
    And in the later years, she was the total opposite.
    And you said Bluma--
    was it Bluma now who also had some sort
    of experiences in Bukhara?
    So Bluma became very ill with a tape worm.
    And it kept repeating on her.
    And in order to get rid of it, she
    had to during horrible medication that they gave her.
    And then-- it's not pleasant to talk about it,
    but the sensation of getting rid of that was frightening.
    It was horrible.
    And somehow she got this disease,
    and they kept repeating on her.
    And she suffered terribly from it.
    And she couldn't eat and just wasn't strong,
    just wasn't strong.
    And the very first year, as I said, when we still
    lived together after my father was gone,
    those were the most difficult years.
    Later we moved on our, our little family,
    to another apartment.
    We separated.
    Apartments became a little more available.
    We got to know more Russian people.
    So we got also a little apartment in another street.
    And my mother, I told you, she used
    to collect young men that needed help.
    So in the courtyard adjoining ours,
    there was a young man that suffered from malaria.
    Somehow she found out about him.
    And at that point, we had more food already.
    And she started bringing him food.
    When he got better, he came to our house.
    He met my sister.
    And he fell in love with my sister Hannah.
    And they were married in September 9, 1943.
    Oh, wow.
    And he came into our family.
    And he was also a very, very loving, caring person.
    I loved my brother-in-law.
    What's his name?
    His name was Moshe, Moshe Kaufmann.
    And he knew how badly I needed and wanted a decent coat.
    So like within the month of marrying my sister--
    of course, there was no honeymoons are anything,
    you know.
    Somehow, and to this day I never knew where,
    but he found out a family that had a coat that would fit me.
    And he came home one day, and I remember that so clearly, it
    was wrapped in brown paper.
    And he said, I have a gift for you.
    And I unwrapped it, and it was a beautiful little coat.
    It was navy.
    And it had two rows of gold buttons.
    It was double breasted.
    I loved that little coat.
    And I felt like a princess in it,
    because the rest of my clothing was shabby.
    And this little coat was almost brand new.
    It looked new to me, but I know it wasn't.
    But it was something I felt wonderful.
    And I never forgot the fact that he brought me
    that very important gift to me.
    And I just loved wearing it, till I outgrew it again.
    But I had it for a while.
    So it's one of those bright spots in a very bleak picture.
    Yeah, yeah.
    So my sister got pregnant.
    And in December '44, she had a little girl.
    Her name was Yona.
    And my sister almost died at childbirth
    because of what turned out to be a wandering kidney.
    That accident in Siberia knocked out her kidney from the socket.
    And the kidney was literally wandering--
    Around--
    Out of her socket.
    And she again had a terrible attack of pain.
    And she was in grave condition because of that kidney.
    And it wasn't till 1949 in Israel
    that she was operated in Jerusalem, in the Hadassah
    Hospital, and the kidney was removed.
    But she managed to live till this year.
    I lost her in July.
    She was 92 and 1/2.
    What a loss.
    And she lived with one kidney.
    My condolences.
    This is after a lifetime together.
    Yeah.
    Well, not quite together, because I've been in the States
    now for almost 63 years, even though I still
    speak with an accent.
    But, yeah, her loss is a very big loss to me.
    And unfortunately, we lost Yona as well about six years ago.
    She had breast cancer that metastasized.
    And she eventually succumbed after a few years.
    She left her husband and two adopted children.
    And one is a boy, and one is a girl.
    They were not brother and sister.
    It's a very interesting story in itself.
    She got those children from two different sources,
    but they were only three weeks apart.
    So she raised them as twins.
    And it's a boy and a girl.
    The boy became an attorney now.
    And he's going to be married May 22 in Israel.
    And I would very much like to make that wedding.
    I hope I can, because I was very close to this niece,
    because she was born in Bukhara.
    I knew her from the day she was born,
    and I used to play with her as a child.
    And we were together when we came back to Poland.
    Did your sister have any other children?
    Yes, she has two other girls.
    She also had three daughters.
    No sons.
    But she now-- well, now she has sons-in-law and grandchildren
    and many great grandchildren.
    So when you split, it was yourself, your mother,
    and your two sisters--
    Right--
    Who moved into your own apartment.
    And your paternal grandparents and their daughter-- or two
    daughters?
    Two daughters.
    Two daughters moved into another--
    Another apartment.
    Was it close by to yours?
    Yes, it was not far, not far.
    And I actually have a very sweet memory of my grandmother.
    I remember I used to--
    I have two memories, one not so sweet, but funny.
    I used to go walk over there like Saturday afternoon.
    In the winter, it was cold, as I mentioned.
    There was no heating.
    And she would stay in bed Saturday afternoon,
    like for the rest and to take a nap.
    And later in the afternoon I used
    to go over there and crawl in bed with her.
    And at the end of the Sabbath, there's
    also a prayer that women say, specifically for women.
    And she would recite that prayer with me,
    while I was cuddling with her.
    And that's a very sweet memory I have of her.
    Now, the other incident that is funny today, but wasn't funny
    at the time, after some time, my mother switched
    to making butter and cheese because she
    was familiar with that.
    But, again, this was all illegal.
    You have to remember that private enterprise totally
    illegal in Russia.
    So she would procure some milk, and we would wait
    till late at night.
    Of course, the milk had to sour for about two or three days.
    Then, at night, we had two churns
    that we would sit and churn butter.
    And I used to help a little, but mostly my sisters
    would do that.
    And then I remember she would take like a cheese cloth
    and pour what--
    the butter was scooped out.
    And then she would pour the sour milk in this cheese cloth.
    And somehow cheese would form.
    And she would sell the butter and cheese
    to other Russians, who didn't get it.
    And this was fresh butter.
    So one day, I guess she couldn't leave
    the house for whatever reason.
    I was already eight at that point.
    She wrapped a little package of butter.
    And she said, I want you to take it to this and this address
    to this woman--
    I don't remember the name anymore--
    and give her this butter.
    But if you meet anybody on the road that asks you
    where you are going, you are not to tell.
    You are not to tell.
    Just say you are out, because she was afraid
    that the authorities would find out.
    Well, lo and behold, I'm walking.
    Whom do I come across?
    My grandmother.
    Where are you going?
    You're not to tell.
    My mother told me I cannot tell anybody where I'm going.
    Well, she got so offended.
    She thought my mother told me don't tell grandmother.
    Of course, she didn't do that.
    But my grandmother interpreted that that her daughter-in-law
    told her child don't tell your mother-in-law where I'm going.
    So this was a whole to do afterwards.
    And my mother tried to explain.
    I just told her don't tell anybody.
    I didn't mention whom she can tell.
    So this was this was an incident.
    It took a while.
    It took a while, yes, between mother-in-law
    and daughter-in-law to straighten it out.
    Do you remember when the war ended?
    Yes.
    Tell me what was that like.
    How did you hear?
    Well, there were celebrations in the street.
    And at first there were celebrations,
    because we did not have much information of what happened
    at home, and that everybody is gone from the family,
    you know, the brothers and my mother's brother
    and extended family.
    We had no information.
    So at first there was jubilation,
    till slowly information started coming through and finding out
    what happened in Poland.
    So in Bukhara, at some point you do learn.
    We do learn, but we still don't know.
    We still don't know.
    Isn't that interesting that when one hears,
    one knows, but you don't know?
    You don't know, because we didn't know particulars.
    I don't think we really knew about the extermination places
    in Bukhara.
    We knew a lot of people died.
    But we didn't know particulars.
    And it wasn't till later, and mostly by the time
    we got back to Poland, that we found out
    that nobody was left, you know, from the brothers.
    We always had a hope, at least the one
    that survived the initial war before the war ended
    that he may be alive.
    The one in the bunker?
    Right.
    We did not know that the one was shot in our town.
    We did not know that the others were taken to concentration
    camps and killed there.
    The best to our knowledge, the older brother
    was taken to Belzec, which was an extermination camp.
    And I didn't complete the story with Yossi, my young--
    That's right, the little boy.
    My little boy, my cousin.
    So he was with us for a while in the Ukraine.
    And there was a time in the beginning,
    you still could kind of sneak through the border
    and come to the Ukraine.
    So his father came.
    And he said, we just miss him terribly.
    We'll take him home for a while.
    And he took him home.
    And, of course, the borders, everything
    was locked up once Germany got really a hold of Poland,
    and we never saw him again.
    And he was lost together with his parents in Belzec.
    You decide-- you say you stay until 1946.
    Yes.
    And the war ended in early May 1945.
    Yes, May 9, 1945.
    And you go back to Poland--
    May 8.
    Yes.
    So the Polish government arranged passage.
    But they were not interested in sending us
    to our place of birth, to Galicia.
    They were very much interested in settling the areas
    that they took from Germany.
    You know a part of Silesia was taken from Germany
    and annexed to Poland.
    And a part of Eastern Poland then--
    Went into Russia, yes.
    Actually, where I was born is very close now
    to the Ukrainian border.
    And Lwow now became Ukraine.
    And we were actually--
    it was called Zarszyn Wojewodztwowskie, which was--
    I don't know if county is the right word.
    But did belonged to that--
    Region--
    Region, right.
    So this is now Ukraine.
    And it was USSR.
    It was Russia during all the years
    till the collapse of the Communist regime.
    So we were taken to a town that used to be German.
    It was actually a beautiful little town.
    It was a resort.
    Oh, what was the name?
    Reichenbach.
    Reichenbach.
    Reichenbach in German.
    And in Polish, they named it Rychbach.
    Rychbach.
    Rychbach.
    Rychbach.
    Rychbach-- R-Y-C-H-B-A-C-H--
    Rychbach.
    They had mineral waters there.
    And it was a small little town, but beautiful town.
    So my married sister Hannah was with us and their daughter
    and her husband.
    And very shortly after we got there, they wanted to leave.
    And my mother didn't want to go with them, because she felt we
    would be a hindrance to them.
    What happened was my brother-in-law
    made contact somehow through other relatives
    with his parents.
    He was initially from the city of Lodz--
    Lodz.
    And his parents had a textile factory.
    They were quite well off.
    So somehow after the war broke out,
    they managed to get to Romania.
    And from Romania, they were able to buy tickets,
    because Romania was neutral at the time, to Palestine.
    So they came to Palestine at the beginning of '40.
    And how did he end up in Bukhara.
    The son was taken separately.
    He was caught someplace and taken separately.
    The details exactly I don't know.
    But anyway, so the father wrote to him
    that if he can get with my sister and child to Germany,
    they will be able to send them official papers
    and take them out to Palestine.
    So my sister, brother-in-law, and their daughter Yona
    smuggled out through Poland.
    They went through Szczecin.
    Szczecin.
    Went boat through the border there
    in a truck that covered them up, camouflaged them
    with different things.
    And they were smuggled into Germany.
    In Germany, they ended up in DP camp.
    Where?
    I'm not quite sure if I remember now.
    And--
    Do you know whether it was the British zone or the American--
    British.
    British zone.
    British zone, they were very much interested
    in British zone, because the father was going
    to send them British visas.
    Palestine was under the British.
    And he was able to get visas for them.
    So they were in Germany, I think, a year or so.
    And in 1947, late in the year--
    I think by September, October--
    they came to Palestine.
    I know for a fact that they were there
    during the UN partition of Palestine,
    because my sister told me about that evening.
    They were there already.
    So this was the reason my mother didn't
    want to go along with them, because she was afraid we
    would be a hindrance to them.
    We weren't sure where they were going to end up.
    And we knew that the father could only
    bring his son and wife out.
    So we stayed in Poland.
    We stayed for a number of months in Rychbach.
    And slowly, a Jewish little community was formed.
    And I remember we were there Rosh Hashanah.
    And they organized a service in somebody's house.
    There were no synagogues.
    And walking home from the service--
    I was with my mother, my sisters,
    and also my mother's brother, the one
    who was also in Kazakhstan somehow joined us there.
    How I don't know.
    But he was in the same town.
    And he had four children.
    My cousins, they're still all alive in Israel today.
    So anyway, on Rosh Hashanah night,
    when we walked home from the service, we heard shots.
    And it was dark.
    The streets were not lit up very well.
    We didn't know where the shots came from or who fired them.
    The next morning we found out that three Jews were just
    shot at random in the street walking back from the service.
    So shortly thereafter, my mother again, she needed a livelihood.
    And she found out that there was a children's home in Bytom,
    which was also part of Silesia, not far from the city
    of Wrocław This children's home was for children primarily that
    were hidden out with Christian families during the war.
    And if a relative survived or a friend or a neighbor,
    if anybody knew that a child was given to a family,
    they tried to get those children back.
    But those children had a difficulty.
    I just think to Jews, again, most of them
    had to play the role as a Christian.
    They took them to church.
    They were baptized.
    They were communion-- you know, everything that goes
    with the Christian religion.
    They were not used to Judaism.
    And many of them were young and couldn't remember anything
    being Jewish.
    Some were, but a lot of them were young.
    I was the only child with a parent,
    because my mother was like the house mother.
    She also cooked in this children's home.
    So this children's home was, again,
    under the observation and support
    of an orthodox Jewish organization.
    And we did not go to school.
    We were home-schooled.
    And our schooling was very poor looking back at it.
    They taught us a lot of Jewish prayers, stories
    from the Bible, a little math, maybe a smattering of Polish.
    But it was very poor education.
    Well, they're very extenuating circumstances.
    It's post-war.
    Yes.
    The purpose is to find living relatives.
    And what do you do in the interim?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    So when my mother took the job, they promised her then
    when they will send children to Palestine,
    she will go along with them.
    I don't know if you are familiar with the aliyah bet.
    Well, explain to people.
    What is aliyah bet?
    Aliyah bet, aliyah means going up to Israel.
    That is the number two.
    It was called SO because this was the second wave of Jews
    going to Palestine.
    And that too was a legal from the British standpoint
    because they had the white paper which
    forbid bed Jews just en masse coming to Palestine and only
    with visas, like my sister and so forth,
    anybody who had a special permit to go.
    Other than that they used to smuggle Jews in.
    They used to hire boats, ships, sometimes, mostly from France
    or from Italy, and make it through the Mediterranean
    and figure out in such a way that you arrived at night.
    And they would let off the people illegally.
    And if they were caught, they were sent to detention places.
    There was one in the city of Atlit.
    My Uncle Yakov actually ended up in Atlit,
    because his group was caught when they landed in Jaffa.
    They also used to send people to Cyprus.
    And many were stuck there for a year or better.
    So they had promised my mother that they
    will send her with a group of children on this Aliyah Bet.
    When the time came, they sent a group of children,
    and they did not keep their promise.
    And my mother was very disappointed.
    And then she found out--
    I'm not sure how, through the organization, or so--
    that there was another children's home
    forming in the Lodz.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    OK.
    So my mother found out about the children's home in Lodz.
    It was also sponsored by a Jewish Orthodox organization.
    And she got the same job there--
    house mother, cook, whatever.
    And at that place, I remember a number of people very well.
    They brought to us children, as I said,
    that were hidden out during the war
    or lived openly as Christians.
    So comes to mind particularly one boy
    who was raised by a very good Christian family.
    They loved him.
    They dressed him well.
    They send him to a good school.
    He actually lived I think in Warsaw,
    but for some reason came to Lodz.
    And he was 12 for this time, which
    probably means he was five, like myself, when the war broke out.
    So he had totally blocked out his former identity.
    But as he was walking in the street,
    he heard Yiddish spoken and something clicked.
    And I don't know how he separated
    from his Christian parents, but he ended up
    walking into a synagogue.
    And he asked to see a rabbi.
    And he started telling the rabbi that he remembers something
    about being Jewish.
    And they started looking into his background.
    And sure enough, the parents, the Christian parents,
    admitted that he was given to them to hide him, to raise him.
    But they didn't want to give him up,
    which is very easy to understand.
    It's hard when you raise a child for seven years
    or better just to give him up.
    But eventually, they did and he ended up
    in our children's home.
    My friend to this day-- she lives in Canton, Ohio--
    was brought to us with a sister.
    And they had a very interesting history too.
    They were from Vilna.
    And when the Germans were coming in, the mother to come to
    Ukraine--
    Vilna Christian family.
    And these people kept them for a number of months.
    Then one night my friend heard the woman of the house say,
    we're running out of food, I think
    I'm going to turn them over to the Germans, the two girls.
    So she heard that.
    So at night, she woke up her sister, and they ran away.
    She didn't know where she was running.
    She was walking on the street--
    I mean on the road.
    And they got tired, and they fell asleep.
    And a priest found them, and he immediately
    realized who they are.
    And they took them to a convent.
    And they survived in the convent.
    And, of course, they were totally Christianized--
    if that's a proper term.
    And the mother survived.
    And she searched for those girls and found them.
    The problem was the girls didn't want to stay with her.
    They didn't know her anymore.
    They didn't want to stay with her.
    And I think they also got a little, you know,
    prejudiced history against Jews.
    And they called that poor mother any name in the book.
    They Didn't want to be with her.
    They kept running away from her.
    So she brought them to us.
    And became a habit that the every new child that would come
    was put in the room with me, because I was the one
    child that was raised Jewish.
    So they put-- her name was Basha--
    they put Basha in my room.
    And at night once we turned off the lights,
    I remember watching her.
    She would crawl down from bed, kneel, cross herself,
    and say a prayer.
    And I didn't say anything to anybody.
    I felt she needed it.
    But then, they assigned me to walk with her to school.
    We were registered in a Yiddische shule,
    a Jewish school, that taught all subjects in Yiddish.
    And Polish was again a taught language--
    Like Russian had been before.
    Exactly.
    So I walked with her.
    And every day, she would tell me, please,
    let's just go into this church for a minute, for two minutes,
    please.
    And I was told to say, no, not to go into a church.
    So I always said no to her.
    In my later life, I regretted it, because she possibly
    needed that.
    But we became good friends.
    And then when we eventually immigrated to Israel,
    I lost contact with her.
    And through a third girl in our children's home,
    when I was in America already, she connected me with her.
    And she told me that she lives in Canton.
    So I picked up the phone.
    I found her phone number.
    Information, those days, you dialed information.
    And I got her number.
    And we both started screaming in the phone.
    And we are friends to this day.
    And she speaks very often about her experiences.
    And tell me, was she able to become Jewish again?
    Very much so.
    They went to Israel.
    She lived in Israel like I did.
    Her sister still lives in Israel.
    And her sister was the one that was the most rebellious
    against Judaism, because she was younger
    and that's all she remembers.
    There were other incidents.
    That they brought to us as a six-year-old little girl.
    And she must have been a baby, literally,
    when her parents gave her away to a farm.
    But those people were not as kind to her.
    And they made her work in the fields at the age of five.
    And she used to tell us stories that
    were unbelievable for a five-year-old.
    And she eventually made it to Canada and became a doctor.
    So these children--
    You saw a world there.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    I have many, many stories from this children's home,
    many stories, mostly children sad, sad children.
    They had no families.
    They were brought to a new place,
    to most of them a new religion, no rules.
    Particularly, we were under the supervision
    of strictly Orthodox people, which the men that thinks
    that it was not psychologically good for those children.
    We weren't allowed to go to movies.
    So children would sneak out sometime.
    The older girls in particular would go to a movie.
    Well, if that rabbi who used to come to us found out,
    he would slam the table and yell at all of us.
    And we had to be dressed modestly and different things
    that I developed animosity to this person
    and really didn't like him, because, like I say,
    I had a different vision, because I
    had my mother, first of all.
    And--
    And you had a different spirit.
    All through your story, you have been
    telling me of the rituals and the prayers,
    but also the kindness that was associated with all the people
    who introduced those to you.
    Yes.
    But not this man that was in charge of this children's home.
    I never forgave him for that.
    I never forgave him, because after his visits--
    and when we used to slam the table,
    children would get stomachaches.
    They would get so upset, they would cry.
    And that upset me terribly.
    I was already 12 years old, 13 years old.
    And I could understand how bad this was.
    So that upset me greatly.
    But to move on, we were stuck under the communists
    and we couldn't go anywhere.
    But it was thanks to a Jewish Orthodox rescue
    organization, the Vaad Hatzalah, which
    literally means the Committee of Rescue, Organization of rescue.
    They somehow send us legal passports to leave Poland.
    So in November of '48, we left Poland,
    and we came to France because France was one of those
    gateways--
    That's right--
    To Israel.
    So you didn't have to smuggle like your sister had?
    No.
    We all know that on May 14, 1948,
    Israel declared independence.
    So there was a state already.
    So we came to Paris toward the end of November.
    We ended up being there for three months,
    with my mother going almost every day
    to the Jewish organization, see when will be our turn to leave
    and so forth.
    But it took three months.
    In the meantime, in Poland, before we left,
    my sister Bluma married.
    And she went with her husband.
    We separated in France.
    They had their chance to go sooner.
    And we followed later.
    So it was you and your mother who were left.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And my mother and I lived in those children's home,
    the second children's home.
    So we were in France a town not far from Paris called by Baye.
    It was a half hour train ride, 40 minutes train ride.
    That's where my Grandfather Barth was.
    But unfortunately, I did not see my grandmother anymore.
    She had passed away, and she was buried in France, in Paris.
    So one set in Kazakhstan and the other--
    In Paris.
    Her body was actually-- after my grandfather died in Jerusalem,
    her body was exhumed and brought to Jerusalem.
    And she's buried side by side with my grandfather.
    So we eventually made our way through Marseilles
    in southern France to Israel.
    And this would have been the winter of '49?
    No, it was by that time spring--
    Of '49?
    Yes.
    Well, in Israel it was spring.
    It was actually February.
    We arrived in Israel in February of 1949.
    And we landed in Haifa.
    And I remember looking out and seeing the sunrise
    on that beautiful city on the mountain.
    And I thought to myself, this is it,
    I am never, ever leaving here.
    Well, here I am in Cleveland, Ohio.
    [LAUGHTER]
    But it had been it had been almost 10 years since--
    when I count-- since your father said
    we have to get out of here, the Germans have attacked.
    You know, that's 9 and 1/2 years later.
    Yes, many wanderings.
    And an Odyssey.
    Yes.
    So we were in Israel.
    And, of course, in 1949, '50, '51,
    they used to take everybody to an absorption center.
    So we ended up in that absorption center.
    They took us by train from Haifa.
    But it was an ancient train.
    And people used to walk along the train.
    That's how slow--
    It was--
    It moved.
    And we ended up mid-afternoon in Pardes Hanna
    in the absorption center.
    And people were placed in tents.
    You know, so many immigrants came at once,
    that they had no buildings.
    So everybody ended up in a tent.
    And after spending the first night there,
    my mother went to the office and she requested bus tickets
    for the two of us.
    And we left the absorption center after one night.
    And we made our way to Tel Aviv, where my sister was living.
    And my younger sister--
    my middle sister was also there already
    in a different apartment, but she had like a one room.
    And my older sister had a bedroom
    and like another half a room, a little kitchen,
    a little bigger.
    So we went to her, and we moved in.
    But, you know, being what they call in America greenhorns,
    we had trouble getting to her as well,
    because we arrived by bus to Tel Aviv and we had suitcases.
    From Paris, from Poland, we had the warm coats,
    which we never put on again in Israel, and things like that.
    So from the bus station, we took a cab.
    And we gave the cabbie my sister's address.
    And the guy said, oh, I know, I know exactly where it is.
    I'll take you there.
    So she lived on the little street,
    almost like this street, a little street
    called Lakhish, which was on the corner of a big street that
    cuts through all of Tel Aviv, called Frishman.
    When the guy saw Frishman number 4,
    he said I know exactly where it is.
    But this wasn't Frishman 4.
    It was Lakhish 4.
    He took us to the ocean, the second building from the ocean.
    My sister lived across town, almost at the other end.
    He left.
    We started looking in the building.
    We didn't find her name.
    We had no more money for a cab.
    So we dragged across town our luggage
    and eventually arrived at my sister's place.
    So I was at that point 14 and a half.
    My mother wanted to send me to school.
    So, obviously, I was too tall and too
    big to go to fifth grade or sixth grade.
    Well, your schooling was completely, completely--
    Totally interrupted, totally disorganized.
    I had school in different languages.
    I did not speak Hebrew.
    I knew a smattering of words.
    She put me into the eighth grade.
    She might have as well put me on the moon.
    I had no idea what they were talking about.
    A, I didn't understand.
    B, I didn't know the material.
    And after a couple of weeks, I was just so unhappy.
    And God helped, and I became sick.
    I had tonsillitis.
    And I had to have my tonsils out.
    And this was the end of my going to a regular school.
    So I needed a job, because, again, we have nothing.
    So my brother-in-law found me like a mother's helper.
    So I knew already enough words.
    They had the little girl.
    And the woman was very much pregnant.
    And I used to go every day and try and help her
    out with the household chores and so forth.
    Then the little girl had-- she was about five--
    had a playmate.
    And the Playmate asked her who's that, pointing at me.
    And she said, this is our maid, [? ezer ?],, which means helper,
    but it translates into maid.
    When I heard that, I told the woman
    that I can't work for her anymore.
    I just decided--
    I don't know, just--
    I'm not a maid.
    [? Tachme, ?] I'm not going to be a maid.
    So we had the relative, the one who christened me
    Rina, he and his brother owned a factory of beds, iron beds.
    And he knew how bad off we were.
    So he said, you know what, come to my factory.
    I need somebody, he said, to answer the phone.
    Come at least three days for a few hours and answer the phone.
    So I did.
    And whatever I earned, I hired a private tutor
    to teach me the language.
    And once I felt proficient enough to get another job,
    I got a job in a knit store-- oh, no, in a candy store.
    Excuse me, first in a candy store.
    The candy store was probably as big as from the wall to here--
    tiny, tiny.
    And everything they had was on shelves.
    And you had to reach everything on the ladder.
    And the owners were German Jews, an older couple that
    came to Israel some years ago.
    And they no longer felt comfortable going
    on the ladder.
    When I say older, who knows, they
    could have been in their 50s or 60s.
    To a 14-year-old--
    That's all old--
    They were old.
    So I worked there for a few months
    till I learned some more Hebrew.
    I still had a tutor.
    And then I got a job in a knitting store.
    I knew enough, they taught me how to give instructions.
    So I learned how to knit and how to give instructions.
    And I worked there for a number of months.
    And I'm jumping ahead because then shortly after our arrival
    in Israel, this first cousin of my husband--
    of my mother, sorry--
    first cousin of my mother's came to Israel.
    He was from Sanok.
    He was their relative that we had visited.
    And he lost his wife and two daughters under the Germans.
    He and a daughter and two sons ended up further
    in Siberia than we.
    We actually, once things got a little better in Bukhara,
    we used to send them packages of fruit,
    primarily of dried fruit, because we
    knew that they don't get any vitamins, any fruit in Siberia.
    And they stayed there longer than we.
    Somehow-- he was also a rabbi, a scholar, a very learned man.
    And actually, after the war, he worked like in the Jewish court
    that established in Berlin.
    And he dealt with divorces and with other things.
    There were unfortunately many couples that after the war
    chose not to live together anymore,
    like this relative of my husband who lost a three-year-old boy
    in front of their eyes.
    He was bayonetted by a German.
    And they just couldn't live together afterwards.
    And they were, somebody like that, that
    divorced right after the war.
    When they found each other, they got divorced.
    So this cousin of my mother's, they decided--
    my mother had been a widow at this point for 8 years.
    And so they got married.
    In Jewish law, it's permissible.
    And obviously, they were beyond childbearing years.
    So they didn't have children.
    But his youngest son, who's only eight months older than I am--
    his name is Schmuel.
    He and I eventually moved in with our parents in one room.
    It was a building that used to be
    in the Arabic area between Tel Aviv and Yafo,
    because housing was terrible shortage in Israel
    at that time with all these immigrants coming in.
    So this was our first apartment with an outhouse
    and a little dark, mutual kitchen.
    But after some months, my mother got a job.
    And my stepfather got the job.
    What was his name?
    His name was Rabbi Itzhak Granik--
    G-R-A-N-I-K. And so we were able to move to a two-bedroom
    apartment.
    There were no living rooms.
    The bedrooms became living area during the day.
    And my stepbrother and I shared the room.
    And the parents had a room.
    And there was a little kitchen.
    And we lived there for some time.
    I remember this was upstairs.
    And downstairs was a Yemenite Jew.
    And it snowed in Tel Aviv that year.
    And that man had never seen snow.
    And he came running to our apartment
    and knocked at the door, and he said,
    something white is coming down from the sky.
    He didn't have the name for snow.
    He said something is coming--
    in Hebrew, of course-- is coming down from the sky.
    What's happening?
    He was unaware of it.
    But anyway, we moved again.
    I don't know why, but we moved again
    to another apartment in Tel Aviv, which
    now became a very hip area.
    It's like Soho in New York.
    It came back to life.
    They rebuilt. I went back a few years
    to see if I can still find it, house.
    And it's gone.
    There's a beautiful building standing there.
    So I slowly progressed--
    What was it like for you living now with a new half-family?
    You know, you were in a reconstituted family.
    It was hard.
    When they first married, I didn't join them.
    I didn't join my parents.
    I stayed with my sister for a couple months.
    And then the older brother, whose name was Aryeh.
    He used to come from time to time take me out
    to a movie or something and visit my sister.
    He and my sister were close in age.
    And they knew each other from before the war.
    So he would come over and visit.
    Then one day he said, let's go for a walk, to me.
    And he said, is there something special that upset you or so?
    Why don't you go and live with our parents?
    They are very upset that you aren't coming home.
    And I didn't think of it that way.
    I just knew they live in one apartment, my stepbrother,
    you know, it was all new.
    I didn't know him.
    And so I stayed with my sister.
    But he said that my parents are really
    upset that I'm not coming home.
    So the next day I packed my few things and I'm moved in.
    I see.
    So, yeah, we lived together.
    And even the second--
    third place already, we have two bedrooms.
    And my mother had a little separate kitchen,
    but it was like a hole in the wall, you know, not much.
    It was a very old building.
    And I had a bedroom by myself.
    But I had to work.
    So from the knit shop, I found a job in that bank,
    but not as a teller.
    I found a job--
    they had a division of insurance.
    So I was accepted there with very minimal knowledge of what
    one needs to do in an office.
    I immediately signed up for typing lessons.
    And actually, my brother-in-law paid for it.
    Aryeh?
    No, my brother-in-law Moshe Kaufmann paid for it
    because I didn't have the money and my parents
    didn't have the money.
    So I asked him, and he paid for it.
    And I learned enough to be able to get along in that office,
    to be able to write letters.
    And we dealt a lot with the different kibbutzim.
    And there were many forms I had to fill out and many things.
    And I learned enough of the language to do that.
    I also simultaneously signed up for a year business school.
    So I learnt different things that you need in business--
    math and typing, putting a letter together and so forth.
    So I did that.
    I was 16 at the time.
    You're still young.
    You're still a young girl.
    Yeah, but I have to work.
    And I actually remained on this job till after I was married.
    When I finished with the business school,
    I signed up for high school.
    By that point, I was working full-time,
    and they had evening, night school.
    So I would work from 8:30 in the morning
    till 5:30, with a break for lunch.
    And school would start at 6:00.
    So I would go to school till 10 o'clock at night.
    Oh, my goodness, that's a grueling day--
    Four days a week--
    five days a week--
    no, four days.
    Not Friday, not Saturday, five days a week.
    And I'm I made friends there.
    And I used to go out with boys afterwards.
    And I went out with one boy for an extended time.
    And during that time, I met another distant relative,
    not a blood relation, but an adopted boy
    who was in the army.
    And I thought he was just the most gorgeous creature
    I had ever seen.
    He was tall and broad shouldered and handsome.
    And I really fell in love with him.
    And he became my boyfriend for a while.
    And eventually, obviously, I didn't marry him.
    I broke up with him.
    My mother was very much against it because he was in the army
    and he had signed up for extended stay.
    And my mother said, I don't want you marrying an army man.
    Who knows where he's going to end up
    and where you're going to live and where what.
    And there was a rumor that he will get--
    they used to give soldiers priority
    of where to build an apartment or get an apartment.
    And he told me once he may get an apartment
    in Bnei Brak, which is a city outside of Tel Aviv.
    It takes all of 20, 25 minutes to get there.
    And my mother said, what are you going to do all the way out
    in Bnei Brak?
    And here I am oceans apart.
    But that was at the time, you know--
    and somehow one thing led to another,
    and I broke up with him.
    But to go back to my interest, I worked
    and I went to night school.
    And it wasn't easy.
    It wasn't it easy at all.
    And I used to study for many hours into the night.
    And then one day, I received a phone call from a friend
    that I knew from a group that was actually
    outside the children's home in Lodz,
    but a group that used to get together,
    girls, Saturday afternoon.
    And we used to study a little.
    I didn't know how to read yet, Hebrew, at that time.
    But I used to study, and I have a good memory.
    And one day they called on me, and I remember the passage
    by heart.
    And I came home, and I told my mother,
    today, you teach me how to read--
    this was still in Lodz--
    because I was embarrassed inside that they may call on me,
    and I didn't know how to read.
    So she sat down with me that afternoon.
    I was reading, I was beginning to read.
    So--
    Was that Hebrew that you were beginning to read?
    Yes, because Yiddish I knew, and Polish I knew.
    And I knew how to write Russian.
    So to go back to Tel Aviv--
    I'm jumping back and forth--
    I got a call from a girl that I knew from that group.
    And she said, I'm having some people over,
    and actually there's going to be an American.
    Why don't you come?
    So I said, well, I will, but this will be after 10 o'clock,
    because I have classes.
    She said, that's all right, we'll be here.
    So I went.
    And who was the American but my future husband.
    So we started speaking.
    And he asked to take me home.
    Then he asked me for the following day for a date.
    And I did not want to seem too easy, so I said I was busy.
    And then he said, well, I think I'm going to be easy
    be busy the following day.
    I said, that's OK.
    And he said, well, maybe I'll cancel the other plans.
    And we got together the following day
    and from then on every day.
    I met him in December of 1953.
    We were married in February 1954, two months later.
    Wow.
    You didn't wait long--
    With a formal engagement of three weeks.
    After the first week, he asked me for my ring size.
    It went very fast.
    And there were a lot of reasons why we found mutual language.
    You were asking me something before and this came to mind.
    When we came to Israel, Holocaust survivors
    were not honored in any way.
    The native Israelis, particularly
    the youth, which was already trained to fight, to be strong,
    they could not understand.
    How could you allow yourself to be shipped,
    to be taken to the slaughter?
    They could not identify with that.
    They could not comprehend it.
    And I belonged in Tel Aviv to a youth group.
    And all of us, without exception,
    were children that survived the Holocaust.
    We did not have one native Israeli in our group.
    As a matter of fact, I had another distant cousin,
    born in Israel, very, very handsome boy.
    He was actually written up as one of the most
    handsome young men in Israel.
    I met him, and he asked me to go out with him I was 17.
    I went out with them once or twice, which was fine.
    Then one day he invited me to come to his house, which
    I had been before.
    They were relatives.
    But he invited a group of other friends.
    And we were speaking, which was OK.
    Then they decided to play charades.
    And they were somewhat of an intellectual group.
    And I was nowhere near them.
    And the charades were do mind and different books
    and different stories that were totally unfamiliar to me.
    And I remember one of the books was "The Naked and the Dead."
    Yes.
    And I felt so inadequate at that point
    that I never wanted to see him again.
    I just felt not equal, not equal.
    And I always had a thirst for learning.
    It was very important to me.
    But I could only go so far in the years,
    like in Israel where I had a little bit of an opportunity,
    I still didn't go to a regular school.
    I had to go to night school.
    I didn't get art.
    And I didn't get labs or any of those kind of things.
    But after we were married, I continued.
    I was in my senior year.
    And I managed to--
    in Israel you have to matriculate
    through the government.
    You don't have tests just in school.
    You have to take an official government test.
    So I managed to test out from--
    there were certain subjects, certain times.
    So I tested out from a number of subjects, but not everything.
    But I got the certificate that I tested out from these subjects.
    Then I received-- after we were married, so another story--
    after three weeks, my husband left.
    He had to go back to the States to start working.
    He had been in Israel this time for six months.
    But I didn't know him the six months.
    He stayed with relatives who were there prior to the war.
    And they decided that he should not leave
    till he finds a wife in Israel.
    He was 30 years old, and they wanted to see him married.
    And he himself wanted to marry, because he also
    tried to date here American girls
    and couldn't find mutual language with them.
    So he dated many girls.
    Sometimes he would go for lunch and for dinner two
    different girls and so on until he met me.
    And then as I said, we weren't going out till we were married.
    And three weeks after we were married, he left me.
    I went back to work.
    I don't know how long you want to stretch this.
    No, just tell me--
    I'll come in with my questions.
    Don't worry.
    You went back to work.
    And I used to pass the same place.
    Tel Aviv, I don't know how you're familiar--
    has magnificent hotels now, many, many of them.
    There wasn't a single big hotel when you
    were married in February 1954.
    They were just putting in the footers of the first big Dan
    Hotel.
    So we stayed in a little--
    it's not even bed and breakfast, because they
    didn't serve you anything.
    But they had rooms--
    Like a pensione--
    A pensione, right.
    They had the gall to call it The Astoria.
    [LAUGHTER] So we got a room there with a bathroom
    down the hall.
    This was our wedding night.
    And downstairs were stores.
    And there were always two guys--
    you know, there was no air conditioning.
    There's not much business.
    They would stand outside and kibbutz, talk to each other.
    And they would see us going up to the pensione and back
    out and so forth.
    My husband left, I was still walking that way to work.
    I got the dirtiest looks from them.
    Not only did I not have my husband with me,
    I also didn't have my ring.
    What happened was when he came to Israel,
    he had a man's ring with a little diamond.
    And in those years, they were very strict.
    And if you brought in anything of what they consider value,
    they put it in your passport.
    When he decided that we were going to be married,
    he took that ring to a jeweler.
    And he said, please change it to a woman's ring.
    And because it was a thick gold ring,
    he didn't have to pay anything for it.
    He just did it.
    He leaves at the airport.
    They check, where's the ring?
    He said, well, I got married in the meantime.
    I gave it to my wife.
    And they said, oh, no, you'll have to pay $400.
    Well, at that time it was a fortune,
    and they didn't have it.
    We lived those three weeks on the gifts
    that we got for our wedding.
    He was out of his money already.
    Or you take the ring back.
    Well, wouldn't you know, they send them out.
    And he had to take literally off my finger
    and take the ring back to the United States.
    So I had no ring and no husband.
    And a lot of looks.
    And a lot of looks.
    And I went back to work.
    So I was in Israel for eight months
    by myself because I was in a Polish quota.
    And at that time, the law that a spouse or a parent
    can come along with you did not exist.
    It came into effect, I think, in 1956 or '57.
    So I had to wait on the Polish quota.
    And it was very difficult, very difficult.
    Then I decided when the day came and I was approved--
    I had to go for a medical checkup and all of that
    through the American consulate.
    I had to get everything ready to leave--
    I decided that since I'm leaving Israel
    that I would like to stop in Paris.
    When I was in Paris, I was 14 years old.
    And I really spent my time, at that time,
    going from one museum to the other.
    I always had an interest in art.
    And I wanted to go back and see it with a more grown-up eye.
    So I arranged to be a week in Paris.
    And I was supposed to stay with a couple, cousins
    of my brother-in-law Moshe Kaufmann.
    And the week before I left, I already
    had my passports, everything, and voyage
    on the original Queen Mary to come to the United States.
    So I couldn't change anything.
    And unfortunately, this couple was in a terrible car accident.
    He was killed, and she was still in the hospital.
    Oh, my goodness.
    So I couldn't stay with them.
    So I ended up in Paris the end of November.
    I arrived in the States on the 3rd of December by myself.
    Short days.
    At night, I didn't want to go out by myself.
    I didn't have that much money.
    So I stayed in a very, very rundown old hotel,
    a cheap hotel.
    But I remembered where the Jewish area was.
    And I used to go back there.
    And I remember this one restaurant owner, because they
    used to live in Lodz.
    so.
    I knew them.
    And I made a connection with them.
    So I spent a couple evening with them.
    In any case, this was an extremely unhappy time for me,
    being there alone in Paris under those circumstances.
    What passport did you have?
    Was it an Israeli passport?
    No, I got an American visa.
    I really never had an Israeli passport per se.
    Did you have a Polish--
    I had a work permit.
    You know, they're called a [NON-ENGLISH],, not a passport.
    When you work, you needed to have a picture and your age
    and all of that.
    So I had that.
    And on the basis of that, I got the American visa and passport.
    So you say you were under the Polish quota.
    Did you have Polish citizenship papers?
    No, but I was registered as born in Poland.
    And so that's enough?
    That's enough.
    So it took eight months.
    We were married in February.
    And I didn't get here till December.
    That's right.
    So--
    At this point--
    I'm sorry?
    At this point--
    Yeah--
    I'd like to kind of ask some general questions.
    OK.
    And the crux of them all is the Soviet and the Nazi experience.
    Do people who are Jewish who were deported by the Soviets
    have differing interpretations of what happened to them?
    Much more so than, let's say, Gentiles.
    I'm making this assumption.
    But for Gentiles who are deported,
    it was an unremitting tragedy all around, no holds about it.
    Is that the same thing that's true for you?
    Well, at the time when we were deported,
    we thought the tragedy happened to us,
    because we went to a wilderness, to a cold, frozen wilderness.
    It wasn't till later, much later,
    when we started finding out what was happening in Poland that we
    knew we were the lucky ones, you know, that we survived,
    because personally I know at the age of five
    I would not have survived.
    They probably would have, if they would take us
    to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen or Treblinka,
    or any one of those camps, the children
    were gassed right away with their mothers
    if they had small children.
    So it was thanks to my father's foresight
    that we made it to Russia.
    And at least most of us survive.
    He didn't, but most of us survived.
    Do you feel because of that, because it was not
    the same thing like certain death,
    that the experiences that you did have,
    the hardships that you did go through
    weren't always fully appreciated?
    That's true.
    And even by those who survived the camps.
    And I know that personally, when I first
    met my husband, after what he went through,
    he went through Auschwitz, he went through labor camp,
    he went through of horrible things,
    he didn't in the beginning quite comprehend
    that we also suffered.
    And most people were like that.
    They heard you were in Russia, they said, oh,
    you now, you're in Russia, like this was something wonderful.
    It turned out that more of us survived.
    That's true.
    But it wasn't so wonderful.
    Well, this seems to be in some ways human nature.
    And the reason I'm asking these questions
    is I'm always looking, not only for how did you personally
    experience it, because it's part of your story,
    but also for guidance for the rest of us.
    And the human nature that I have heard at various points of--
    amongst deportees, for example, those
    who were deported to the Arctic said
    we had it much worse than you who
    were deported to Kazakhstan.
    Right.
    Those who were deported by the Soviets and those
    who were under the Nazis, depending on who you were--
    To every single individual, their experiences
    are their experiences, what they lived through,
    what they suffered.
    To this person, our own experiences
    are the important ones.
    Yes, we can empathize with others.
    Yes, I have now, as an adult and for many years
    now, a greater appreciation of those
    who went through the concentration camps.
    It took such fortitude.
    It took such desire to live.
    And thank God, because of this desired
    to live and to be strong, I still have my husband at age 94
    after going through hell.
    And going through different illnesses and going through--
    I didn't even mention that, because we
    can be here till tomorrow.
    The first time we went back to Poland,
    we were in a terrible accident, and we were almost
    killed a second time.
    Oh, my goodness.
    We arrived in Krakow.
    We went to Israel first.
    And from Israel, we flew to Vienna.
    In Vienna, we spend there a couple of days,
    and we rented a van.
    All our five children were with us.
    This was what year?
    This was in '78.
    And it was shortly after my mother passed away.
    And we went to my mother's grave.
    And my husband said, I need to go back to Auschwitz.
    That's where my parents grave is.
    No grave, but that's where they were.
    I said OK.
    So as I said, we rented this van.
    We drove through Czechoslovakia.
    And the trips were horrible.
    They stopped us at every border and questioned us for hours.
    And eventually, we made our way to Krakow at night.
    In the hotel, we had to register--
    it was under communism--
    who is going to sleep with whom in which room.
    They didn't allow more than two people in a room.
    So we had to divide the children who sleep with whom.
    And they kept our passports.
    The next morning we got up and my husband
    wanted to go straight to Auschwitz.
    So we started driving.
    And I remembered we didn't have the passports.
    So he turned back.
    I ran in.
    And I've ran those steps 100 times since over in my mind,
    because many times I felt had I not gone back,
    had we not been at this particular point
    at this particular time, maybe it wouldn't have happened.
    So I got the passports, and we started out again.
    And then there was a sign in the road, 2 and 1/2 kilometers
    to Auschwitz.
    and.
    I think that my husband was already transported there,
    that he already saw himself back there.
    And he wasn't paying as good attention
    he could have on the road.
    I don't know there was a stop sign or not,
    but the truck made a left turn right in front of us
    and hit right at the driver side where my husband was sitting
    and I was sitting.
    And I saw the accident about to happen,
    like within a split second.
    And being a driver already, I--
    you know, it's automatic, you brake.
    And because I braked, my leg was totally shattered.
    And he was critically injured.
    And we ended up in various hospitals
    recuperating for months.
    And I went through three surgeries
    to put me back together.
    And eventually, I had to have a knee replacement, which
    I had in 2001.
    And my husband healed, thank God, but he had an infection.
    He had to be taken out of Poland.
    It's a whole other story.
    I don't know if you want to go into it.
    And we didn't see anything of Poland
    obviously, because it happened the first morning.
    And your children, were they affected?
    Our children were slightly injured.
    They had contusions.
    They had-- what do you call it?
    Concussion.
    Concussions.
    And-- when I tell about Polish stories,
    I have the Polish words in my mouth.
    We were very, very lucky with everything that we came upon.
    The director of the hospital, he was a surgeon.
    And this man saved my husband's life.
    In Poland?
    In Poland.
    Because he had lost so much blood that he would have died.
    So he sent people out and called policemen, called firemen,
    called anybody he could find, and without testing the blood,
    he would just pump the blood into my husband.
    And he survived, but he developed a terrible infection.
    And he would have died there, but we
    were lucky from another area as well
    that the American ambassador to Vienna was a friend of ours,
    somebody from our synagogue that we knew.
    And the way of going there, we had to communicate that him.
    So through him, they sent a medical plane.
    And they took my husband now to Vienna,
    and our oldest daughter went with him after she took me.
    I was in that hospital for four days, and the doctor said,
    I am not qualified to operate on you.
    Your leg is in pieces, and I'm not an orthopedic doctor,
    I cannot do it.
    So he said the best thing would be to transfer you
    to an orthopedic hospital.
    And there was one some 50 kilometers away
    because it was near a coal mine and they had many accidents
    there.
    So they brought me there.
    And the conditions there were just awful.
    And I was separated from my husband.
    I didn't know if he is dead or alive.
    My daughter came with me initially.
    Then she went back to him.
    Then she came back to visit me again.
    And I used to write them notes in Polish where to take her.
    I was petrified sending her with strangers 50 kilometers away.
    But eventually, she took me, she traveled with me to Warsaw,
    went back and went with her father to Vienna,
    where they did skin graft and surgery on him.
    And eventually, we ended all out here in Cleveland.
    Children were shipped home first, the four younger ones.
    And my daughter came with my husband.
    And he and I ended up here in the hospital for a number
    of weeks in separate rooms.
    And we used to wheel our wheelchairs
    to go meet each other.
    It was a very hard recuperation, very hard.
    It took a long time.
    We lost almost everything we had,
    because the airlines were not very kind to us.
    We had to take multiple, multiple seats in order
    for them to accept us.
    And my leg, they put me into a cast
    from here all the way down.
    And they said they will not accept me
    except with a nurse accompanying me.
    And the American consulate were wonderful.
    My older son managed somehow when the accident happens
    to make his way to a cottage.
    He doesn't speak a word of Polish.
    But he made himself understood that there was an accident.
    And he called the American consulate.
    They connected him with the American consulate.
    And they showed up the next morning.
    And then following my husband's surgery, his wife came.
    She actually brought him chicken soup and stuff,
    because the food in the hospital was terrible.
    But this doctor was very caring.
    And once my children recuperated from their initial shock
    and bruises, he said, he couldn't keep them
    in the hospital.
    But they had no place to go.
    So he said he will set up his office.
    He'll bed out for them.
    They can stay in his office so that we're not separate.
    And as a thank you we brought them--
    they weren't both doctors, he and his wife.
    She was a pediatrician.
    Once we recuperated, we brought them to Cleveland for a month.
    And I had arranged different visits
    to different hospitals for them to see and observe here.
    Well, in those days, that was something very special.
    Very special.
    He used to make notes.
    And he told us that he couldn't even
    share those with anybody, because they'll
    say that he's an American spy.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And we took him to Washington.
    And we took him to New York.
    And friends of ours took him to the Niagara Falls.
    And they had a wonderful time here.
    I think, Mrs. Frankel, we've come close to the end.
    Yeah.
    In one interview, one can never cover everything.
    There is a lot in your story that I
    would like to follow up on where there's
    this thread or that thread.
    And I know that we can't.
    We don't have the time.
    But at this point, I'd like to give you
    the opportunity, if there's anything
    that I haven't asked about that you haven't mentioned
    that you think is important for us to know about.
    Yeah.
    I spoke about my schooling.
    I just want to say that thanks really to my husband's nature,
    he knew how much I longed.
    So when I came, first, I took English lessons.
    And I enrolled at Case, and I took English 101.
    I took a number of other classes.
    I was very fortunate.
    I have mentors along the way that literally pushed me along.
    I had a teacher, an American lady,
    who invited me to her home and said, you must go on,
    you have the ability, go on.
    So I continued.
    Then, as I was having children, it became harder--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Are we on?
    It became harder to go to Case Western Reserve.
    So I enrolled at Ursuline College,
    which is not far from here.
    Ursuline?
    Ursuline--
    That's the nuns--
    Catholic college.
    And the nuns were extremely kind.
    And I got my bachelor's degree from there.
    I graduated.
    And actually, the Bishop of Cleveland
    handed me my diploma, which was a big honor.
    Then I continued at the College of Jewish Studies.
    I got the second bachelor's degree
    in Jewish arts and history.
    And I continued and got my master's degree.
    And at some point, both my husband and I
    received an honorary doctorate degrees for our contribution
    to the college.
    And the reason I'm saying all that and doing this interview
    is for my grandchildren, for my great grandchildren.
    We have, thank God, 10 grandchildren.
    We had 11.
    And unfortunately, we lost one to a terrible accident.
    She was beautiful.
    She was brilliant.
    She was 16 years old.
    It was in the mountains in Utah.
    She got injured and passed away.
    But we have 10 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.
    And when I'm gone and not able to tell them the stories
    anymore, I want them to have this record
    and know what fortitude their grandparents had
    and a little bit of what they accomplished in life.
    My husband built a business.
    He employed, at some point, almost 200 people in Cleveland.
    He was in the electrical business.
    I did a great deal of volunteering
    in various organizations.
    I was president of a number of organizations.
    And I think we can leave a proud record for generations to come.
    And this is primarily why I am doing that.
    And also, I want people, generations
    from now, who will no longer meet a survivor,
    have a record of what some of us lived through.
    I couldn't think of a better way to finish our interview.
    Thank you so much.
    Thank you for doing this today, for opening up, for sharing.
    We know that it costs.
    And we appreciate that you do it despite the cost.
    Thank you.
    I'll say with that this concludes the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mrs. Rina
    Frankel on October 23, 2017 in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
    Did you want to say something else?
    I wanted-- we forgot about the pictures,
    or we didn't do anything--
    We'll do that after that.
    I mean, after we formally finished the interview,
    we sometimes hold up a picture and then say, who is this?
    So we'll do that.
    OK.
    OK, we'll cut now.
    This is a picture of myself when I was nine months old.
    I don't know exactly the date when this was taken,
    but I was told that I was nine months old.
    OK, thank you.
    In this picture I'm three years old.
    And in the background, the one with the braids
    is my Aunt Lonya.
    And to the left of her is Avram, my Uncle Avram,
    my brother's brother.
    And do you know where you are-- where--
    I think at the sight of my grandparents' house.
    OK, all right.
    This is a picture of my mother, Miriam, as a young woman,
    though I don't know how exactly it represents her,
    because it was taken from a little photograph,
    little passport photograph.
    So it's been enlarged many times.
    Do you know about how old she would have been in this photo?
    I would say in her 20s.
    This is again a picture taken from a little passport picture.
    I think he was about 30--
    in 1939, he was maybe 35.
    And what I like to see is always how immaculately actually
    dressed he was, always with a tie.
    I have some other pictures always
    dressed and trimmed properly.
    And this is your father Hersh.
    Yes, my father Hersh Barth.
    OK, thank you.
    There's a damage in the picture.
    This is my Uncle Yakov's wedding to Tola.
    And on one side to the right are my grandparents.
    Where the white damage is is my Grandfather Barth,
    my Grandmother--
    Breindle was her name--
    and to the left is my father and mother.
    And the girls on the bottom from the left as Hannah, Lema,
    and Lonya, my Aunt Lonya.
    OK.
    So I just want to clarify, the far left,
    the lady on the far left looking towards the bride
    is your mother?
    Yes.
    Sitting.
    And then next to her, the man who is sitting,
    is your father Hersh.
    Yes.
    And the rest of the people in there
    are various family members?
    Family members.
    Actually, two of my aunts Leibowitcz I see there.
    And some Barths I see here.
    And some that I cannot identify.
    And do you know about what year they were married,
    this wedding was?
    They were married shortly before the war.
    I would say '38.
    OK.
    But are you in this photo?
    No, I was not.
    I must have been too young to taken to the wedding.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    OK, who's here?
    To the left sitting down is my Uncle Yakov Barth.
    The one in the light suit, the light jacket.
    No, to the right.
    Did I say left?
    Yes.
    To the right is Uncle Yakov Barth,
    the same one that got married the picture that we just saw.
    Next to him to the right is his brother Avram.
    Who's standing.
    Who is standing.
    And he is wearing the Polish Army uniform.
    OK.
    I don't know exactly when this was taken.
    And the man to the extreme left is my Uncle Yakov Leibowitcz,
    my mother's brother.
    OK.
    And the man standing--
    I do not know who he is.
    OK.
    OK.
    And you don't know about when this was taken?
    No.
    It's all pre-war, but I am not sure what year.
    OK.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    And what is this?
    This is my grandparents' Barth home.
    As you see the writing on the side,
    my Aunt Riva left this picture.
    And her daughter actually made a copy and sent it to me.
    And my aunt had written, this is our home,
    which is to the left written down in Yiddish.
    And the writing on the top states that this
    is their neighbor's house.
    Their name was Tuchfeld.
    Tuchfeld.
    And this, if we recall, is where your Grandfather Barth
    had his jewelry business.
    Right.
    I presume that this window had something
    to do with his little store, because his store was
    right in front at the entrance.
    Can you zoom in now, Catherine, to see whether or not
    we can see more clearly the front of the house?
    I don't know if there is something in there or not.
    Maybe, maybe not.
    We'll see.
    No, I see a curtain.
    Oh, you see by the door there is a little window with some stuff
    there.
    You see that?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes, on one side.
    OK, so that would have been the entrance to his shop?
    Yeah, and to the house.
    And to the house.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I know there was a back entrance as well.
    Thank you.
    That's really pretty.
    This is a picture from our wedding night my husband
    and myself, I guess toasting each other.
    And this was the date of your wedding?
    The date is February 25, 1954.
    So it's Rina Barth and Sam Frankel.
    Schmuel Sam Frankel.
    His Hebrew name is Schmuel.
    And this was in Tel Aviv?
    This was in Tel Aviv, yes.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    These are our five children.
    The tall one at the left is Steve.
    Next to him is our oldest daughter Ann.
    She's in blue?
    In blue.
    The one then white is our youngest, Sharon.
    Next to her is Marilyn.
    And Dan brings up the right corner.
    OK, so you have two boys and three girls.
    Yes.
    And about when was this photograph taken?
    This was just taken when we were all together in Florida
    when we had the naming of our first two great grandchildren.
    So this would have been what year?
    Two years ago.
    So it would be 2015.
    Yeah.
    That looks great.
    OK, this is the clan that my husband and I built.
    You can see the two mothers with the two babies.
    They are two weeks apart.
    The taller one is my granddaughter.
    The other one is married to my grandson, the one in white.
    And this is almost all of the family.
    We were missing a couple of people.
    And this was taken also--
    This was taken in Florida, because they live in Florida.
    So that's where this was photographed.
    OK.
    And this was in 2015 as well?
    Yes, it was at the same time as the other photograph.
    All right.
    Thank you.
    Thank you very much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Rina Barth Frankel was born in 1934 in the small town of Zarszyn, Poland. She was five years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. Rina was the youngest of 3 sisters, her parents, Hersh and Miriam owned a grocery store. Her grandfather Leibowitcz was the town's Rabbi, and her grandfather Barth owned a little jewelry and watch repair store. After the invasion by the Nazis, the entire family escaped to Ukraine, where within a few months the Russians marched in. The entire family, among other Polish refugees, were shipped to Siberia. Toward the end of 1941 most Polish refugees were allowed to leave Siberia, the Barth family got permission to go to Buchara, Uzbekistan with the hope of reaching Palestine. Within weeks, Rina's father died and that dream was cut short. In 1946 they were repatriated to Poland, where they were again caught by the communists. Separated from other members of the family that managed to survive, they were able to leave Poland in November 1948 for France, and finally, in 1949 they arrived in the newly created State of Israel.
    Interviewee
    Rina Frankel
    Interviewer
    Ina Navazelskis
    Date
    interview:  2017 October 23
    Geography
    creation: Shaker Heights (Ohio)
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    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 Rina Frankel on October 23, 2017 in Shaker Heights, OH.
    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 08:05:45
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn565720

    Additional Resources

    Transcript (English) Time Coded Notes (English)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    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

    Oral history interview with Chil Rajchman

    Oral history interview with Chil Rajchman

    Oral History

    Chil Rajchman, born in June 1914 in Łódź, Poland, describes his childhood; leaving with his sister to go to Pruszków, a town near Warsaw, where they were interned in the ghetto there; working at a railroad labor camp while in Pruszków; being sent with his sister to Warsaw, where they obtained travel documents allowing them to go to Lubelski, Poland; being forced to travel by foot to Lubartów, Poland in October 1942; his deportation to Treblinka, where he worked as a barber shaving victims’ hair before they entered the gas chambers; escaping Treblinka and hiding with various people as he headed for Warsaw; moving on to Piastów, Poland, where he obtained false papers; remaining in Piastów, where he took part in the Polish uprising of August 1944; and remaining in hiding in Warsaw until he was liberated on January 17, 1945.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Galperin Godin

    Oral history interview with Nesse Galperin Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Galperin Godin, born in 1928 in Siauliai, Lithuania, describes her family’s work in the dairy business; the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941 and the establishment of a ghetto in Siauliai; starting to do forced labor in 1943 when she was old enough to work; being deported with her mother and her brother to Stutthof in Danzig, Poland in 1944; working in various sub-camps of Stutthof until she was put on a death march in January 1945; her liberation by Russian soldiers in March 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1950.

    Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

    Oral history interview with Eddie Willner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

    Oral history interview with Lisa Dawidowicz Murik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

    Oral history interview with Ernst Weihs

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

    Oral history interview with Agnes Vogel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral history interview with Dora Goldstein Roth

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

    Oral history interview with Yocheved Arie

    Oral History

    Yocheved Arie, born in Vilnius, Lithuania on February 15, 1928, discusses the German occupation of Lithuania; how her father and brother were taken away while she and her mother had to go to the ghetto; poor sanitation in the ghetto; aktions in the ghetto carried out by the Germans; the deportation of her mother to Estonia; reuniting with her mother in Estonia; being transported to Stutthof; going to Gdansk where she was forced to make railroad tracks; being liberated along with her mother and several others on the second day of a death march shortly before the end of the war; her postwar return to Vilnius where she and her mother found no survivors from their family; trying to immigrate to Palestine, but remaining in a displaced persons camp in Germany for three years; immigrating to Jerusalem; living with her mother for 40 years until her mother’s death; and her deep understanding about the heroism of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral History

    Leo Hanin, born in 1913 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes his family; his parents’ decision to escape increasing persecution in Europe and move to Harbin, China, where they had a relative, in 1916; the lively Jewish community but not having many relations with the native Chinese; attending a Russian school in Harbin until 1929; moving with his brother to Shanghai around 1934 to attend a British school; getting married in 1936 and moving to Kōbe-shi, Japan to do work for a textile firm; assisting the Joint Distribution Committee in New York to arrange for funds to be sent to Japan to support refugees coming over from Europe; his participation in a Zionist organization and moving to Israel in 1948; staying in Israel for two years and then moving back to Japan; his experiences with helping people adjust to life in Kōbe-shi and immigrate to the United States; and dealing with the rumors that the Jewish leadership of Kōbe-shi stole money donated to them to help refugees.

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral history interview with Walter Schnell

    Oral History

    Walter Schnell, born on April 16, 1904 in Strehlen, Germany (Strzelin, Poland), describes his family and childhood; going to study crystal and porcelain in Berlin, Germany in the early 1920s; having to sell his family’s porcelain and glass business in 1937 because anti-Jewish business laws were becoming too strict; moving to Wrocław after the business sold with his sister and parents; working for a family friend in a wholesale business in Wrocław; his arrest during Kristallnacht and being sent by train through Weimar and on to Buchenwald; being forced to watch the hangings of those prisoners who had escaped from the camp and been caught; being called into the camp’s main office on the second day of Hanukkah and told that his parents had booked him a passage for Panama; finally securing a passage on a ship from Wrocław to Genoa, Italy after jumping through much red tape with Gestapo officials in Wrocław; staying in Genoa for a short time until he traveled on a boat to Shanghai because he did not need official papers to get in; settling in Hongkou, the Jewish suburb of Shanghai; Allied planes accidentally bombing the Jewish quarter of Shanghai; the creation of a Jewish community with its own traditions in Shanghai, including establishing nine hundred yeshivas, keeping kosher, and maintaining a synagogue; discovering that his mother and two cousins had made it to New York; and joining his family in New York after the war.

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral history interview with Erna Tebel Stern

    Oral History

    Erna Tebel Stern, born on October 28, 1901 in Krotoszyn, Poland, describes her childhood; her father’s experiences when he served in the German Army against Russia during World War I; moving to Wroclaw, Poland after the war; not experiencing much official discrimination when Hitler first came to power because her father had served in the German Army; her family’s decision to flee from their home in 1938 when they discovered that prison camps existed; her parents’ capture and deportation; managing to escape to Brussels, Belgium, where she, her first husband, and her brother boarded the S.S. St. Louis and fled for Cuba; her brother’s and first husband’s deportation to an internment camp in Gurs, France after the St. Louis had to return to Brussels; going into hiding from 1940 to 1942 in Brussels, where she met her second husband; attempting to flee in 1942 to Switzerland, where they were imprisoned for a short time and then released to the Salvation Army; moving to Bern, Switzerland, where she worked as a housemaid until the end of the War; returning to Belgium in 1945 with her second husband and opening a blouse manufactory; and marrying her second husband in 1949.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

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

    View All 1,153 Items in the Collection