Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo
Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [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.]
Some video files begin with 10-60 seconds of color bars.
- Interviewee
- Mr. Alexander Shilo
- Date
-
interview:
2016 August 03
- Geography
-
creation:
Washington (D.C.)
- Language
-
English
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MOV.
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection
-
Record last modified: 2023-11-16 09:44:12
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn598693
Also in Oral history interviews of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's First Person Program
Oral history interviews of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's First Person Program. The collection is arranged chronologically.
Date: 2000-2018
Oral history interview with Manny Mandel
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Oral history interview with Agi Geva
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Oral history interview Joel Nommick
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Oral History interview with Alfred Munzer
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Oral History interview with Rose-Helene Spreiregen
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Oral history interview with Peter Gorog
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Oral history interview with Allan Firestone
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Oral history interview with Rose-Helene Spreiregen
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Oral History interview with Frank Cohn
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Oral history interview with Steven Fenves
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Oral history interview with Halina Peabody
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Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger
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Oral history interview with Esther Rosenfeld Starobin
Oral History
Esther Starobin (née Rosenfeld), born in April 1937 in the village of Adelsheim, Germany, describes her father’s family having lived in the village for more than 200 years; being the youngest of five children, with three sisters; her sisters walking to school in Aachen after the violent anti-Jewish demonstrations of Kristallnacht in 1938 and seeing a burning Synagogue and being told to go home; her parents sending her and her sisters to England by Kindertransport in 1939; a family in Scotland that took in one of her sisters, Bertl, later turning out to be spying for the Germans; staying in Thorpe, Norwich, England with the Harrison family until 1947; her parents and her brother, Herman, being taken to the Gurs camp in southwestern France, then an organization sending Herman to the United States; her parents being sent by train to Auschwitz in August 1942 and being murdered when they arrived; her parents knowing all of their children were safe in other countries.
Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir
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Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann
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Oral history interview with Irene Fogel Weiss
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Oral history interview with Rachel Goldfarb
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Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin
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Oral history interview with Peter Feigl
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Oral history interview with Albert Garih
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Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon
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Oral history interview with Robert Behr
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Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [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
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Oral history interview with Manya Friedman
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Oral history interview with Michel Margosis
Oral History
Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [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
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Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer
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Oral history interview with Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener
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Oral history interview with Susan Taube
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Oral history interview with Martin Weiss
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Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [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
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Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon
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Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger
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Oral history interview with Martin Weiss
Oral History
Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [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
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Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum
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Oral history interview with Michel Margosis
Oral History
Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [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
Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [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
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.
Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly
Oral History
Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [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 Kurt Pauly
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Oral history interview with Alfred Traum
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Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines
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Oral history interview with Peter Gorog
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Oral history interview with Louis de Groot
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Oral history interview with Allan Firestone
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josie Traum
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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 Al 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 Ravensbrück 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 Rita Rubinstein
Oral History
Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 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 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 Henry Weil
Oral History
Oral history interview with Agi Geva
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 Louis de Groot
Oral History
Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Darvas
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rae Goldfarb
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ralph Berets
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ester Starobin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz
Oral History
Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating 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 Julie Keefer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose-Helene Spreiregen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Manny Mandel
Oral History
Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 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 Anna Grosz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joel Nommick
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Steven Fenves
Oral History
Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating 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 Margit Meissner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger
Oral History
Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [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
David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [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 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 Peter Feigl
Oral History
Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann
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 Josie Traum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fred Kahn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josie Traum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger
Oral History
Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [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
Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating 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 Rae Goldfarb
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 Alex Schiffman-Shilo
Oral History
Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [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 Joel Nommick
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein
Oral History
Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 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 Martin Weiss
Oral History
Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [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
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.
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 Frank Liebermann
Oral History
Oral history interview with Al 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 Ravensbrück 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
Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating 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 Freddie 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 Jacqueline Mendels 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 Susan Darvas
Oral History
Oral history interview with Michel Margosis
Oral History
Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [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
Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [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
Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 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 David Bayer
Oral History
David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [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 Sam Ponczak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ralph Berets
Oral History
Oral history interview with Julie Keefer
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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 Fred Flatow
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 Agi Geva
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly
Oral History
Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [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 Kurt Pauly
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 Louise Lawerence-Israels
Oral History
Oral history interview with Margit Meissner
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ester Starobin
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Oral history interview with Anna Grosz
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Oral history interview with Ruth Kohn
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Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein
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Oral history interview with Alfred Traum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein
Oral History
Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 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 Peter Gorog
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josiane Traum
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Oral history interview with Fred Kahn
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Oral history interview with Manny Mandel
Oral History
Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 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 Fred Flatow
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 Anna Grosz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz
Oral History
Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating 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 Estelle Laughlin
Oral History
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.
Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin
Oral History
Esther Starobin (née Rosenfeld), born on April 3, 1937 in Adelsheim, Germany, discusses her family; her father’s work in the cattle industry; the Nazi assumption of power in January 1933; the policies of discrimination against Jews in Germany; her three sisters going to England as part of a Kindertransport in March 1939; going on a Kindertransport to England in the summer of 1939; staying in Thorpe, Norwich, England with Dorothy and Harry Harrison and their son Alan; attending school and being very much part of the family; staying with the Harrison family until November 1947; visiting with her sisters who lived elsewhere in England; the fates of her parents and brother (her parents died in Auschwitz and her brother was rescued in 1941 and immigrated to the United States); her sister Bertl arranging for all four of the sisters to immigrate to the US in 1947; and living initially with an aunt and uncle in Washington, DC before finding an apartment of their own. [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 Ravensbrück 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
Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating 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 Michel Margosis
Oral History
Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [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 Julie Keefer
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
Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [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 Kurt Pauly
Oral History
Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir
Oral History
Oral history interview with Julius Menn
Oral History
Julius Menn, born on February 20, 1929, in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland), discusses his family; immigrating with his family in 1935 to Palestine; settling in Tel Aviv; his family’s return to Poland in 1938; enrolling in a Polish school in Warsaw; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing with his mother and sister to Bialystok, Poland and further east with other refugees; encountering the Soviet Army and being aided by a Jewish Soviet soldier who helped his family boarded a train for Vilnius, Lithuania, where they lived for a year; his father obtaining transit visas from Soviet authorities in the fall of 1940; his family’s travel by train through Kiev and Moscow to Odessa; traveling by ship from Odessa to Turkey and from there, traveling by train through Syria and Lebanon; arriving in Palestine in October 1940; serving in the Haganah (Jewish Military force in Palestine) as a teenager and later as a junior officer; going in 1947 to the United States to study at the University of California, Berkeley; returning to Palestine to serve in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948; and returning to the United States in 1950 to complete his education, and ultimately earning a PhD in toxicology. [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 Sylvia Rozines
Oral History
Oral history interview with Martin Weiss
Oral History
Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [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 Peter Gorog
Oral History
Oral history interview with Robert Behr
Oral History
Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [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 Nesse G. Godin
Oral History
Nesse Godin (née Galperin), born on March 28, 1928 in Siauliai, Lithuania, discusses growing up in an observant Jewish family; the German invasions of Poland in September 1939; Siauliai coming under the control of the Soviet Union; the German occupation beginning in June 1941; the Nazis’ policies of discrimination toward Jews during the occupation; being forced with her family to move into the Siauliai ghetto; the mass deportation of Jews, including her father, on November 5, 1943; being deported to Stutthof in 1944; being separated from her mother and brothers; being sent to several other labor camps; being sent on a death march in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on March 10, 1945; recuperating in a makeshift hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland; being taken care of by a foster mother; going to Łódź, Poland, where Nesse met a woman from Siauliai who told her that her mother Sara was alive and was somewhere on the border between Germany and Poland; reunting with her mother; getting married to Yankel (Jack) Godin; relocating to Feldafing displaced persons camp; reuniting with her brother Jechezkel; and immigrating to the United States in 1950. [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
Rachel Goldfarb (née Mutterperl), born on December 2, 1930 in Dokszyce, Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her family; her younger brother, Shlomo; her father’s death in 1937; the Soviet Union occupation of Dokszyce in September 1939; the nationalization of her family’s businesses; the banning of religious schools; the German occupation after June 22, 1941; the requirement for Jews to wear yellow badges; the formation of a Jewish ghetto; the mass killing of Jews in Dokszyce in 1942; escaping with her family from the ghetto and going into hiding; the murder of her brother; staying with friends in the Glebokie (Hlybokaye) ghetto; joining the partisans in the forest outside Glebokie, where her mother worked as a cook and Rachel assisted; marching with the partisans to the Soviet front lines in late summer 1944; going to Lublin, Poland after liberation; leaving Poland for Italy, where they stayed in the Santa Cesarea and Bari displaced persons camps; and immigrating to the United States with her mother in 1947. [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
Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [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 Kahn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić 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 Susan Warsinger
Oral History
Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [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 Ravensbrück 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
David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [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 Jacques Fein
Oral History
Jacques Fein (né Karpik), born in October 1938 in Paris, France, discusses his parents Rojza Taszynowicz and Szmul Karpik, who were Polish Jews and had immigrated to Paris in the 1930s; his younger sister Annette (born in August 1940); his father’s work as a tailor; the German occupation of France in 1940; the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) helping to protect and hide Jacques and Annette; being placed with his sister in the home of Marcel and Suzanne Bocahut, a Catholic family in the Paris suburb Vert-Galant (now a district of Villepinte); the deportation of his father to Pithiviers and then Auschwitz, where he was murdered in 1942; the deportation of his mother to Drancy and then Auschwitz, where she was murdered; living with the Bocahut family for the remainder of the war; being baptized Catholic to avoid suspicion that he might be Jewish; the end of the war; being placed with his sister in OSE homes for displaced children, first in Les Roches in Normandy and then in Taverny outside of Paris; being adopted along with his sister by a Jewish American couple, Harry and Rose Fein; and going with their adopted family to the United States in October 1948.
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 Agi Geva
Oral History
Oral history interview with Josiane Traum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin
Oral History
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.
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 Theodora Basch Vrančić 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
Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [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
Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [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
Rachel Goldfarb (née Mutterperl), born on December 2, 1930 in Dokszyce, Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her family; her younger brother, Shlomo; her father’s death in 1937; the Soviet Union occupation of Dokszyce in September 1939; the nationalization of her family’s businesses; the banning of religious schools; the German occupation after June 22, 1941; the requirement for Jews to wear yellow badges; the formation of a Jewish ghetto; the mass killing of Jews in Dokszyce in 1942; escaping with her family from the ghetto and going into hiding; the murder of her brother; staying with friends in the Glebokie (Hlybokaye) ghetto; joining the partisans in the forest outside Glebokie, where her mother worked as a cook and Rachel assisted; marching with the partisans to the Soviet front lines in late summer 1944; going to Lublin, Poland after liberation; leaving Poland for Italy, where they stayed in the Santa Cesarea and Bari displaced persons camps; and immigrating to the United States with her mother in 1947. [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 Jill B. Pauly
Oral History
Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [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
Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [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 Rita Rubinstein
Oral History
Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 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 Henry Kahn
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 Julie Keefer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein
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 Nathan Shaffir
Oral History
Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin
Oral History
Esther Starobin (née Rosenfeld), born on April 3, 1937 in Adelsheim, Germany, discusses her family; her father’s work in the cattle industry; the Nazi assumption of power in January 1933; the policies of discrimination against Jews in Germany; her three sisters going to England as part of a Kindertransport in March 1939; going on a Kindertransport to England in the summer of 1939; staying in Thorpe, Norwich, England with Dorothy and Harry Harrison and their son Alan; attending school and being very much part of the family; staying with the Harrison family until November 1947; visiting with her sisters who lived elsewhere in England; the fates of her parents and brother (her parents died in Auschwitz and her brother was rescued in 1941 and immigrated to the United States); her sister Bertl arranging for all four of the sisters to immigrate to the US in 1947; and living initially with an aunt and uncle in Washington, DC before finding an apartment of their own. [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 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
Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [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 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 Sam Ponczak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anna Grosz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves
Oral History
Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating 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.]
