Oral history interview with Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

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Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

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Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

Oral History

Oral history interview with Agi Geva

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Agi Geva

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

Oral History

Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Agi Geva

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Inge E. Katzenstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Charles Stein

Oral History

Charles Stein (né Karl Robert Stein), born on November 28, 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; his father, who was a printer; being admitted to medical school at the University of Vienna in 1937 and being prevented from his studies when the Germans arrived in Vienna on March 13, 1938; searching for a way to get out of Austria; leaving for Luxembourg in August 1938; immigrating to the United States; being drafed into the army in October 1941; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; going to Normandy, France with the 9th Infantry Division as the commander of a prisoner-of-war interrogation team; helping to liberate Nordhausen concentration camp; learning that his parents had been deported to the Łódź ghetto in 1941 and were killed in Chełmno on February 28, 1942; participating in the Korean War; and his work after the war with the Department of Defense and the Foreign Service. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab

Oral History

Gerald Schwab, born on February 19, 1925 in Freiburg, Germany to a conservative Jewish family, discusses his father, who was a businessman with a company based in Germany and a warehouse located in Switzerland, and his mother, who helped his father with the business; the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 and his family’s decision to leave Germany; going to Switzerland and then Saint-Louis, France; his family’s move to Lörrach, Germany circa 1935; his family’s desire to leave Germany again in 1938; attending a German school until two days after Kristallnacht; the restrictions placed on Jews; living with a farmer near Zurich, Switzerland from March to December 1939; staying with another family until May 1940 when his parents received the family’s visas; sailing to the United States with his family on the SS Washington; arriving in New York, NY when he was 15 years old; his family’s acquisition of a poultry farm in central New Jersey; attending school; being drafted in 1944 into the US Army; returning to Germany as an American soldier; and achieving the rank of corporal by the time he was discharged. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Erika N. Eckstut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Behr

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Garih

Oral History

Albert Garih, born June 24, 1938 in Paris, France, discusses being a twin (his twin brother died in infancy); his parents Benjamin and Claire (née Alfandari) Garih, who were both natives of Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey and moved to Paris in 1923; his father’s work in a garment factory; his mother caring for Albert and his two sisters Jacqueline and Gilberte; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing south and returning soon after to Paris; the new anti-Jewish measures; the deportation of his father to a forced labor camp in the Channel Islands in September 1943; hiding with a family (Madame Aimée Galop and her husband) for six months between 1943 and 1944; returning home and fleeing again when the French police, who were meant to arrest them, agreed to report that they were not home if the family left immediately; being sent with his sisters to live in Catholic boarding schools in a Paris suburb; the liberation of Paris and his mother retrieving her children as soon as the train service was restored; and his father returning from Dixmude (Diksmuide), Belgium on the morning of Rosh Hashanah. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

Oral History

Irene Weiss (née Fogel), born in November 21, 1930 in Bótrágy, Czechoslovakia (now Batrad’, Ukraine), discusses her family; her father Meyer, who owned a lumberyard; her mother Leah (née Mermelstein), who managed the home and cared for Irene and her five siblings (Moshe, Edit, Reuven, Gershon, and Serena); Bótrágy falling under Hungarian rule in 1939; the Hungarian authorities anti-Jewish actions, including banning Jews from attending school, confiscating Jewish businesses, and forcing thousands of Jewish men to join labor brigades; her father’s forced conscripted in 1942 for six months; being forced into a ghetto in a brick factory in Munkács (now Mukacheve, Ukraine) with other Jews in April 1944; remaining in the ghetto for two months; being deported with her family to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and the murder of her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother; being selected with her sister Serena for forced labor, while her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them (her father was later killed by the SS when he was no longer able to work); working with Serena and her two aunts (Rose and Piri Mermelstein) in the Kanada section of Birkenau for eight months until January 1945, when the SS evacuated them on foot to two other camps; her Aunt Piri’s death in the second camp; how as the Soviet troops approached, the SS personnel fled, leaving the camp unguarded, and the prisoners gradually left; finding temporary shelter (along with Rose and Serena) in an empty house in a nearby town; going soon after to Prague to look for relatives and other survivors; living with their surviving relatives in Teplice-Šanov (Teplice, Czech Republic); attending a Czech school while Serena worked in a factory and Rose remained at home (she was ill with tuberculosis); and immigrating to the United States in 1947 with the sponsorship of relatives and financial aid from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Haim Solomon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Herman Taube

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab

Oral History

Gerald Schwab, born on February 19, 1925 in Freiburg, Germany to a conservative Jewish family, discusses his father, who was a businessman with a company based in Germany and a warehouse located in Switzerland, and his mother, who helped his father with the business; the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 and his family’s decision to leave Germany; going to Switzerland and then Saint-Louis, France; his family’s move to Lörrach, Germany circa 1935; his family’s desire to leave Germany again in 1938; attending a German school until two days after Kristallnacht; the restrictions placed on Jews; living with a farmer near Zurich, Switzerland from March to December 1939; staying with another family until May 1940 when his parents received the family’s visas; sailing to the United States with his family on the SS Washington; arriving in New York, NY when he was 15 years old; his family’s acquisition of a poultry farm in central New Jersey; attending school; being drafted in 1944 into the US Army; returning to Germany as an American soldier; and achieving the rank of corporal by the time he was discharged. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Agi Geva

Oral History

Oral history interview with Inge E. Katzenstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erika N. Eckstut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charles Stein

Oral History

Charles Stein (né Karl Robert Stein), born on November 28, 1919 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; his father, who was a printer; being admitted to medical school at the University of Vienna in 1937 and being prevented from his studies when the Germans arrived in Vienna on March 13, 1938; searching for a way to get out of Austria; leaving for Luxembourg in August 1938; immigrating to the United States; being drafed into the army in October 1941; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; going to Normandy, France with the 9th Infantry Division as the commander of a prisoner-of-war interrogation team; helping to liberate Nordhausen concentration camp; learning that his parents had been deported to the Łódź ghetto in 1941 and were killed in Chełmno on February 28, 1942; participating in the Korean War; and his work after the war with the Department of Defense and the Foreign Service. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Inge E. Katzenstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

Oral History

Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen L. Goldkind

Oral History

Oral history interview with Haim Solomon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab

Oral History

Gerald Schwab, born on February 19, 1925 in Freiburg, Germany to a conservative Jewish family, discusses his father, who was a businessman with a company based in Germany and a warehouse located in Switzerland, and his mother, who helped his father with the business; the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 and his family’s decision to leave Germany; going to Switzerland and then Saint-Louis, France; his family’s move to Lörrach, Germany circa 1935; his family’s desire to leave Germany again in 1938; attending a German school until two days after Kristallnacht; the restrictions placed on Jews; living with a farmer near Zurich, Switzerland from March to December 1939; staying with another family until May 1940 when his parents received the family’s visas; sailing to the United States with his family on the SS Washington; arriving in New York, NY when he was 15 years old; his family’s acquisition of a poultry farm in central New Jersey; attending school; being drafted in 1944 into the US Army; returning to Germany as an American soldier; and achieving the rank of corporal by the time he was discharged. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Herman Taube

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Charlene Perlmutter Schiff

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Erika N. Eckstut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Erika N. Eckstut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

Oral History

Oral history interview with Inge E. Katzenstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

Oral History

Marcel Hodak, born August 25, 1937, in Paris, France, discusses his mother Feiga, and father Jules, who were Romanian Jews who had emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris to escape pogroms in their native country; being the youngest of four children; his father’s work as a presser in the women’s garment industry, and his mother’s work as a seamstress; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; the two regimes in France (northern France was under direct German control and southern France remained unoccupied, but was ruled by a French collaborationist government headquartered in the city of Vichy); the strict laws against the Jews; being at risk for deportation in 1942 after an edict revoking the citizenship of Jewish émigrés and their children was issued; moving to southern France to Brides-les-Bains; his oldest brother Jean, who joined a French resistance group called Le Maquis; the liberation of France; returning to Paris in 1944; seeing General Eisenhower, General Charles De Gaulle, and General Philippe Leclerc lead a victory parade down the Champs Elysees accompanied by thousands of freedom fighters; immigrating to the United States with his family; and settling in Brooklyn, NY. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Helen L. Goldkind

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Moritz

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Theodora Klayman

Oral History

Theodora Klayman (née Teodora Rahela Basch), born on January 31, 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now in Croatia), discusses her family (her father Salamon owned and operated a small brush manufacturing plant); the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 while Teodora and her infant brother (Zdravko) were visiting their extended family in Ludbreg, Croatia; Croatia coming under the control of the Ustaša (a fascist group collaborating with the Nazis); the deportation of her father and mother to the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska concentration camps, respectively; being sheltered along with Zdravko by their grandparents; staying with their aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva, after most of the Jews were deported; avoiding arrest by taking a train to a nearby town or spending a few days at a time with different neighbors; how in 1943 Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz; Ludva’s attempts to have Giza released (Giza died from an intestinal illness soon after her arrival in Auschwitz); hiding while Ludva was away with their neighbors and pretending to be their children; how most people in Ludbreg knew the children were Jewish, but they were never denounced; being raised by Ludva after the war; and the death of Zdravko from scarlet fever. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Catherine Liner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

Oral History

Marcel Drimer, born on May 1, 1934 in Drohobycz, Poland (now Drohobych, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his father Jacob, who worked as an accountant in a lumber factory; his mother Laura, who raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the fall of Drohobycz under Soviet control in accordance with the German-Soviet Pact; attending a Russian kindergarten; the German occupation of Drohobycz in 1941; being forced into a ghetto along with his family in August 1942; the deportation of much of his family to camps; hiding in secret bunkers during the roundups and deportations; escaping with his family before the liquidation of the ghetto; going to the small village Mlynki Szkolnikowe; hiding with a Ukrainian family in August 1943; being liberated in August 1944 by the Soviet army; the effects of hunger and physical deprivation; moving with his family to Walbrzych; graduating from an engineering college in Wroclaw; and immigrating to the United States in 1961. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Livia Shacter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab

Oral History

Gerald Schwab, born on February 19, 1925 in Freiburg, Germany to a conservative Jewish family, discusses his father, who was a businessman with a company based in Germany and a warehouse located in Switzerland, and his mother, who helped his father with the business; the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 and his family’s decision to leave Germany; going to Switzerland and then Saint-Louis, France; his family’s move to Lörrach, Germany circa 1935; his family’s desire to leave Germany again in 1938; attending a German school until two days after Kristallnacht; the restrictions placed on Jews; living with a farmer near Zurich, Switzerland from March to December 1939; staying with another family until May 1940 when his parents received the family’s visas; sailing to the United States with his family on the SS Washington; arriving in New York, NY when he was 15 years old; his family’s acquisition of a poultry farm in central New Jersey; attending school; being drafted in 1944 into the US Army; returning to Germany as an American soldier; and achieving the rank of corporal by the time he was discharged. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Haim Solomon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

Oral History

Jacqueline Mendels Birn, born April 23, 1935 in Paris, France, discusses her father Frits, who ran a food import-export business; her mother Ellen, who took care of Jacqueline and her older sister Manuela; the German invasion of France in May 1940; the Aryanization program; her father being forced to sell his share of the business; restrictions on Jews; deportations to Drancy and Auschwitz in June 1942; leaving Paris with her family on July 30, 1942 and going to the Vichy-controlled southern region of France; staying in the upstairs rooms of a house with no electricity or water for 29 months; her father bartering for food; her mother giving birth to a son in August 1943; the liberation of Paris and returning to their family apartment in November 1944; meeting her American husband, Richard, while he was studying in Paris; going to the United States in 1958; getting married; and having two children. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

Oral History

Oral History

Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Herman Taube

Oral History

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab

Oral History

Gerald Schwab, born on February 19, 1925 in Freiburg, Germany to a conservative Jewish family, discusses his father, who was a businessman with a company based in Germany and a warehouse located in Switzerland, and his mother, who helped his father with the business; the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 and his family’s decision to leave Germany; going to Switzerland and then Saint-Louis, France; his family’s move to Lörrach, Germany circa 1935; his family’s desire to leave Germany again in 1938; attending a German school until two days after Kristallnacht; the restrictions placed on Jews; living with a farmer near Zurich, Switzerland from March to December 1939; staying with another family until May 1940 when his parents received the family’s visas; sailing to the United States with his family on the SS Washington; arriving in New York, NY when he was 15 years old; his family’s acquisition of a poultry farm in central New Jersey; attending school; being drafted in 1944 into the US Army; returning to Germany as an American soldier; and achieving the rank of corporal by the time he was discharged. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

Oral History

Alfred Munzer, born on November 23, 1941 in The Hague, the Netherlands, discusses his father Simcha, who owned a men’s tailoring business and his mother Gisele, who remained at home to look after Alfred and his two older sisters Eva and Leah; going into hiding in September 1942; his sisters’ placement with the friend of a neighbor (they were ultimately denounced and sent to Westerbork, after which Eva and Leah were deported to Auschwitz, where they were killed); being put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna, who placed him with her sister; how Annie’s sister became too nervous to keep him and placed Alfred with her ex-husband, Tolé; living in Tolé’s home for three years, and being looked after by his housekeeper Mima Saïna, who became his surrogate mother; the deportation of his parents to Vught then Auschwitz in 1943; the transfer of his father to several camps, including Mauthausen and Ebensee, and his death two months after liberation while he was receiving medical treatment; the transfer of his mother from Auschwitz to work at a factory and several other camps before she was sent to Ravensbruck and evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross; reuniting with his mother when he was four years old and having no idea who she was; living in Holland until they moved to Belgium in 1952; and immigrating to the United States in 1958. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Charlene Perlmutter Schiff

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerald L. Liebenau

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

Oral History

Morris (Moniek) Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Czestochowa, Poland, discusses his family; his nine siblings; growing up in Dąbrowa Górnicza; his father Jacob, who owned a general store; attending both public and Jewish schools; the forced closing of his father’s store by the antisemitic community; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing eastward and being caught near the Vistula River by advancing German troops; returning to Dąbrowa Górnicza; the severe restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working for the German construction office as a carpenter and bricklayer; the deportation of many Jews, including his parents, in August 1942 to Auschwitz; being deported later on to several camps; being evacuated in February 1945 to the Kittlitztreben camp; being sent on a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp; walking more than eight hours a day in the bitter cold; going to Theresienstadt and being liberated by Soviet troops; reuniting with members of his extended family; his parents and five of his siblings perishing in the Holocaust; spending several years in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Susan Taube

Oral History

Susan Taube, born on January 9, 1926 in Vacha, Germany, discusses her family background; her father Hermann, who owned a general store, and her mother Bertha, who managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister Brunhilde; being one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war; the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and the increasing anti-Jewish measures and discrimination her family experienced; being forced to leave the public school in 1938 and attend a Jewish school in Frankfurt; the vandalization of her family’s store on Kristallnacht in November 1938; the imprisonment of her father in Buchenwald concentration camp for four weeks; her father’s immigration to the United States in February 1940; how her father was unable to get his family out of Germany at that time; being conscripted into forced labor along with her mother and sister; her work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats; being deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia in January 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943 and being deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp; being separated from her mother and sister; being transported to Stutthof in August 1944 and then to Sophienwalde; the evacuation of the camp in January 1945 and the prisoners being forced to march 150 kilometers over ten days; being liberated by Soviet troops in March 1945; her mother and sister, who did not survive; being transported to the east and eventually being sent to work in the town of Koszalin, where she met a Polish Jew named Herman Taube; getting married in July 1945 to Herman and living briefly in Poland until the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce made it apparent that they were still not safe there; living in Germany for several years before immigrating to the United States in 1947; reuniting with her father; and settling in Baltimore, MD. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with David Bayer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen C. Luksenburg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Menn

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Luksenburg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helen L. Goldkind

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

Oral History

Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel and Sam Spiegel

Oral History

Oral history interview with George Pick

Oral History

George (György) Pick, born March 28, 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his parents (his father Istvan was an engineer and his mother Margit worked as a legal secretary); the Pick family history in the Austro-Hungarian Empire going back 230 years; the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary passed between 1938 and 1941; his parents losing their jobs because of the anti-Jewish laws; his father being conscripted into a labor battalion; attending school until March 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary; the Hungarian authorities working with the German Security Police to begin deporting the Jews; being forced to move into buildings marked with yellow stars; the confiscation of all their belongings; the Hungarian fascists, known as the Arrow Cross Party, taking power; the deportations of the remaining Jews in Hungary to concentration camps; his father’s efforts to save the family by hiding them along with several hundred others in a vacant building; being discovered eventually; being placed in a Red Cross orphanage; being forced along with his parents into the ghetto in Budapest, where they remained during the Soviet Army’s final siege; the liberation of Budapest in January 1945. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Livia Shacter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

Oral History

Henry Greenbaum (né Chuna Grynbaum), born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his parents; his father Nuchem, who ran a tailor shop out of their home while his mother Gittel, raised the family’s nine children; his father arranging for Henry and three of his sisters to work in the local munitions factory in 1939; the unexpected death of his father; the German invasion of Poland; escaping with his family to a farm; being forced to move to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940 with his family; his deportation to a nearby labor camp in October 1942 while his mother and two of his sisters, along with their children, were deported to Treblinka and killed; the deaths of two of his sisters (Chaja and Yita) in the labor camp; trying to escape from the camp with his sister Faige in 1943; being shot in the head during the escape and being tended to by one of his cousins; learned Faige had been killed in the escape attempt; being deported to Auschwitz and placed in the forced labor camp Monowitz in 1944; being evacuated to Flossenbürg concentration camp; being forced on a death march toward Dachau concentration camp; being liberated by the Us Army 11th Armored Division in April 1945; searching for his family after the war; reuniting with his brother Zachary; and immigrating to the US where he reunited with his sister Dina and brother David. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Catherine Liner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Haim Solomon

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

Oral History

Gideon Frieder, born on September 30, 1937 in Zvolen, Slovakia, discusses his family; moving from Zvolen to Nové Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father (Rabbi Abba Frieder) was offered a position there; the German occupation of Slovakia; the deportation of his grandparents early in the war; his father’s work in Slovakia’s underground “Working Group” (a secret Jewish rescue organization) and his responsibility for communications with the Slovak authorities; the Slovak uprising against the Nazis in 1944 and fleeing with his mother and sister from Nové Mesto to Banská Bystrica, while his father fled separately; going with his mother and sister to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Staré Hory (Czech Republic); the murder of his mother and sister during this massacre; surviving the massacre but being injured; being helped by a Jewish partisan who eventually took him to the village of Bully (now part of Donovaly, Slovakia), where he was placed with a sympathetic non-Jewish family; remaining in Bully until 1945, when the area was liberated by Romanian troops that fought as part of the Soviet army; reuniting later with his father, who had also survived the war; his father’s remarriage and death in 1946; and moving with his stepmother to Israel, where he remained until 1975 when he immigrated to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Erika N. Eckstut

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

Oral History

Fanny Aizenberg (née Orenbuch), born in 1916 in Łódź, Poland, describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family; moving with her family to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child; being one of three daughters; earning a degree in art and design; getting a job creating clothing for the Royal House of Belgium; getting married in May 1938 to Jacques Aizenberg, a tailor and violinist; giving birth to their daughter Josiane in March 1939; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; becoming involved in the Belgian resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic; arranging a hiding place for Josiane; spending time in multiple hiding places with her mother until they were discovered and arrested; being taken to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp; being deported after 10 days to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz and being separated from her mother, whom she never saw again; being selected for medical experiments; receiving support from a group of six women who helped her endure beatings, forced labor in a grenade factory, and much more; being forced on a death march when Auschwitz was evacuated in January 1945; being liberated near the Elbe River by the Russian Army in April of 1945; returning to Belgium; and reuniting with Josiane and Jacques. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

Oral History

Halina Yasharoff Peabody (née Litman), born on December 12, 1932 in Krakow, Poland, describes growing up in Krakow in a liberal Jewish family; her father Izak, who was a dentist, and her mother Olga, who was a champion swimmer; her younger sister Ewa; the Soviet invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, at which time Halina was living in Zaleszczyki (now Zalishchyky, Ukraine), which came under Russian occupation; her father crossing into Romania as he feared being conscripted into the Russian army; the deportation of her father to Siberia when he attempted to return to his family; the German invasion in 1941, at which time harsh anti-Jewish laws were put in place; the roundups of Jews for relocation to ghettos; being forced along with her mother and sister to move to Tluste, which was turned into a ghetto; her mother purchasing documents from a Catholic priest that allowed her and her daughters to assume non-Jewish identities; moving to Jaroslaw, Poland; passing as Catholics with a woman who took in boarders; her mother’s work in a German military camp kitchen, which allowed her to obtain a German identification card; a bomb falling on the house where they had been staying; her hand being permanently injured; the liberation of Jaroslaw by Soviet forces in July 1944; reuniting with her father and settling in London, England; and immigrating to the United States in 1968. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]