Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

Oral history interview with Isaac Kurtz

Oral History

Isaac Kurtz, born November 12, 1925 in Košice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses his loving Polish/Hungarian Orthodox home; his mother and father, a homemaker and a merchant; his four siblings; his first experience with antisemitism in the first grade; how his bar mitzvah was thwarted by a synagogue raid; hearing survivor reports of Jews digging their own graves; the ceding of Košice to Hungary in 1938; the forced liquidation of his family’s store; arrests of Jewish citizenry; sharing a cell with doctors and lawyers; the family’s deportation and transport by cattle car to a brick factory; his attempted escape and beating upon capture; injuries he received from the beating; his family’s arrival in Auschwitz; seeing “big chimney-flames flying to heaven”; the clubbing of the elderly and ill upon their exit from the train; encountering Dr. Josef Mengele; his realization of the gravity of their situation; his mother’s final hope that they would not be tortured; the murder of his mother and disabled uncle; life as a prisoner along with his father and brother in the concentration camp; forced labor on the railroad; miserable conditions in the barracks; the murder of his oldest brother; a prisoner doctor who diagnosed him with a severe leg infection as a result of his beating; his four week recovery in the hospital; the murder of sickly patients; an accident on a work detail from Gross-Rosen camp; his assignment to peeling potatoes in the kitchen; being rewarded by a kapo for singing Shabbat songs; sneaking whole potatoes to others; being caught; keeping track of and observing High Holy Days; enduring other beatings; prisoner hangings; his attempted suicide; being assigned to latrines; visiting his father in the convalescent block; the cries and prayers of fellow prisoners; liberation by the Russians; conditions in the camp after liberation; having to clear roads in frigid conditions to reach a village; enduring torture in a village and nearly freezing to death; his joy in finding his father and brother; their month long journey, reaching their ransacked home; the few Jewish survivors in Košice; learning that his mother and older sister had perished; other survivor stories; reclaiming his mother’s jewelry; regaining his health (describing skeletal photographs); rebuilding his life in Austria, the United States, and Canada; becoming a cantor; and his feeling that the fact he survived is all together miraculous.

Oral history interview with Lilly Goldner

Oral History

Lilly Goldner (née Josefovitz), born in 1926 in Újfehértó, Hungary, discusses her Hasidic town and school; growing up in a happy family; being the eighth child of 16 children; the religious inspiration behind her father purchasing the family store; Passover; her family making kosher wine; being 16 years old and hearing that Czechoslovakian Jews were expelled and the disbelief of the town to this news; the order for all the Jews of Újfehértó to stay home; their expulsion and her family's anguish as they were herded into horse-driven buggies; her memories of her best friend, who was a non-Jew, crying as they left; the separation of the women and the men; never seeing her father again; doing forced labor in a tobacco drying barn in Simapuszta, Hungary (a small area in Békés County); doing forced labor in Nyírbátor, Hungary for six weeks; protecting her mother; surviving on bread and potatoes; being transported for two-days by cattle car to Auschwitz; the hostility she endured while assisting her grandmother off the train; seeing men in striped suits; her intitial experiences in the camp, including having her hair cut, being given soap, showering, and dressing in a simple dress; the miserable barracks conditions; how when the women slept they all had to turn at same time; finding Dr. Josef Mengele handsome but seeing him take all of the twins; witnessing pregnant women giving birth and seeing their babies taken away; seeing her 29 year old sister and two year old nephew being taken away and never seeing them again; being taken with 300 other girls to the crematory naked, and then returning to the barracks; being transported to the Weisswasser factory; the conditions in the barracks, including the cold showers; the limited conversation with other inmates, but having a Hanukkah observance; the dangerous forced labor conditions, making glass radio bulbs; having two meals a day, including breakfast (piece of bread and coffee) and soup for lunch; the punishment for stealing potatoes; experiencing a five day "death walk" and stealing bread from pig feed to survive; witnessing assaults by Irma Grese; the infrequent kindness from another woman guard who allowed the singing of Jewish melodies; being transport to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Celle, Germany); the deaths of half the prisoners; finding two of her cousins alive; stealing potato peels for oldest cousin, who was too weak to walk; feeling optimistic when she heard bombings; witnessing gratuitous shootings after liberation; the British troops' well-intended delivery of beans to the emaciated, which caused the deaths of some of the inmates; her husband's experience seeing General Eisenhower in a camp and hearing him say, "You are free"; reuniting with two of her brothers; rebuilding her life; getting married and immigrating to the United States; her visit back to Hungary; and her closing message to her grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Irene Greenfeld

Oral History

Irene Greenfeld, born May 2, 1934 in Hungary, discusses growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home; preparing kosher food and celebrating Shabbat; attending a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; enduring stone-throwing and being forced to stay at home; learning of the gas chambers in Poland; the deportation of her father in 1942 to do forced labor; her mother's home garden sustaining the family and neighbors; conditions changing when the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944; the closing of the Jewish school and the deportation of the teachers; being sent to the ghetto with her parents; being sent to the brick factory in Debrecen, Hungary in June 1944; being sent to Strasshof concentration camp and the conditions during the journey there; the Ukrainian guards; her mother’s efforts to protect her children in the camp; being marched with her family from Strasshof to a Vienna school building; conditions in the camps, including the food and lice; educating her siblings; being afraid of the guards; hearing antisemitic military songs; her mother’s forced labor at a bread factory; her grandmother's paralysis; her family surviving a direct bomb to the school; being sent to Theresienstadt and finding her aunt briefly; being forced to send false letters to friends and family; witnessing death; a visit by the Red Cross to the camp; liberation by Russian troops; returning to their home and finding out that only six of the 120 Jewish families in their town had survived; reclaiming dispersed furniture; her father’s experiences in Auschwitz; immigrating to the United States in 1948; living in New York, NY and maintaining an Orthodox home; getting married to a Holocaust survival; her thoughts on history repeating itself; rebuilding her life in the US; and her family in the US.

Oral history interview with Nelly Grussgott

Oral History

Nelly Grussgott, born May 9, 1930 in Berlin, Germany, describes her Czech entrepreneur mother; her parents’ marriage through a matchmaker; growing up in a religious home; visiting her grandparents who were Czech and Hungarian; attending Jewish school; her mother’s once kind non-Jew customers turning to Nazism; seeing “Jews Forbidden” signs in parks and cinemas; enduring stone-throwing at her school; her hair dresser cutting her bald after learning Nelly was Jewish; the police stealing her bike; her mother and herself rooming with other families; rationing food; Kristallnacht; having to stop attending school; her father’s departure to the United States; Nazis entering apartments; seeing Jewish men marched out in their underwear; her father’s thwarted efforts to bring his wife and daughter to the US and his return to Belgium; going on a Kindertransport in 1940 with her mother to the US; the journey on the ship; feeling empathy for people left behind, knowing they would die; entering Ellis Island and being picked up by family she had not met previously; her surprise in learning she could have two bowls of soup instead of one; being known as “the refuge” in NYC school; learning English; being poverty-stricken but feeling free; her mother peddling goods to survive; crying every night, missing her father; the German invasion into Belgium and receiving her father’s letter of suffering awaiting a visa; her father being rounded up and sent to Marseille, where he was accused of being a spy; the Red Cross confirming in 1995 that her father was sent to Drancy internment camp then to a death camp (Lublin-Majdanek); extended family that perished in the Holocaust; Nelly’s confusion in her mother’s remarriage (mother lived to age 91); various documents including US government’s indifferent responses to Nelly’s and her mother’s pleas on behalf of her father; photographs including Nelly’s return to Germany as an adult; Nelly's regret that her father left the US because he missed his family; and her humility knowing others suffered more than her.

Oral history interview with Deborah Freund

Oral History

Deborah Freund, born on August 16, 1926 in Satu Mare, Romania, describes growing up Orthodox; being the youngest of four sisters and two brothers; the deportation of both her brothers to labor camps (one went to Ukraine); her childhood before the war; attending public school and being allowed to be observant; the Hungarian takeover in 1942; her family's disbelief when Polish refugees reported death camps circa 1944; experiencing the rise of antisemitism (Jewish store closings, fear of entering street, enduring name callings); her mother's severe weight loss following the deportation of her son; obtaining false Christian papers, which were ignored; being arrested with her family and sent to a ghetto; spending two to three weeks in Auschwitz; enduring several labor camps (including Danzig and Stuffhof); being treated like animals; enduring belt whippings by "Max and Barbara" (who were later hanged together); receiving only daily cabbage soup; doing forced labor in an airplane factory in Leipzig, Germany (probably the HASAG Leipzig camp); the bombing of the camp; being sent on a forced march for one week; liberation and going to Bucharest, Romania; reunification with her surviving family in Satu Mare (one brother did not return and her other brother was shot following an attempted escape); the few children in town; getting married in 1946; resuming her religious life; going to Cypress in 1947 and the birth of her daughter when war was breaking out; moving to Israel in 1949; her surprise when she find out her in brother-in-law survived following his imprisonment for stealing potatoes in Kazakhstan; immigrating to Canada; the birth of her son in 1957; moving to New York, NY; her nine grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren; an artifact she has from her childhood home that survived the Nazi invasion; and visiting Romania.

Oral history interview with Ib Nathan Bamberger

Oral History

Dr. Ib Nathan Bamberger, born on March 21, 1925 in Würzburg, Germany, discusses growing up in a Jewish family; his Danish mother and German father; his family moving to Denmark (probably Copenhagen) before 1933; being the oldest of four children; the family's Shabbat traditions; his maternal grandfather (Rabbi Pearlstein from Denmark); his father, who worked as an antiquarian; attending a boys' school; his home studies with a rabbi; having a stable childhood under the Danish government; life under the German "protectorate"; hearing that King Christian X rejected Nazi pressure for Jews to wear the yellow star; the Telegram Crisis in 1942; the Nazis' attempted synagogue bombing, which was followed by the King's apology to Jewish congregants; the beginning of German martial law in 1943 and the Danish government stepping down; the Danish Jews' ongoing disbelief and belief that "nothing would happen"; how relationships played a part in the protection of Jews (e.g. King Christian and his Jewish doctor, Dr. Kaufman); seeing American planes over Copenhagen; the story of a rabbi who received a tip-off and was able to thwart a Nazi round-up of Danish Jews (Dr. Bamberger refers to the events of the evening as "Rosh Hashanah Night"); the 478 Danish Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp; a non-Jewish family hiding the Bamberger family; being transferred to a farm, joining 200 Jews hiding in a hayloft; former Nazi Georg Duckwitz facilitating 7000 Jews in a fishing boat to transfer to Swedish torpedo boats and ultimately be received as "Guests of Swedish state"; receiving a pension from Sweden for teaching children during his time as refugee; how, thanks to King Christian intervention, the majority of Theresienstadt Danes survived the war; his reintegration into Denmark; reclaiming their home, which was untouched, as well as their antique shop; and his family archival photographs.

Oral history interview with Jutka Strauss

Oral History

Jutka Strauss, born on October 19, 1924, discusses growing up in pre-war Satu Mare, Hungary (present day Romania); attending public school; enjoying a quiet life in her Hasidic family; her father's disapproval of his wife and daughters reading books; her father's hat store; the deportation of two of her brothers into forced labor in Ukraine; one of her brothers being shot during an attempted escape; being imprisoned with her sister for 10 months after their failed escape to Romania; life in imprisonment; being transferred by cattle car to a ghetto, where they lived for four weeks; arriving in Auschwitz and being stunned by the number of S.S. officers (she had the impression that one of the officers felt sorry for the women); being selected by Dr. Mengele for the crematorium and avoiding it by slipping back into line with her sister; being processed in a holding room; being transported to Riga, Latvia to Dondangen concentration camp; the horrible conditions in the camp and experiencing starvation; being forced to march; going to Germany and doing forced labor in a plane factory; the approach of the Russians and seeing that the German guards were scared; being liberated by American troops; her memories of malnourished survivors getting sick from overeating; going to Budapest, Hungary, and then to her hometown of Satu Mare; discovering that her parents and other brother had not survived; reuniting with her sister; moving with her sister to Romania to join another sister; living in cramped conditions with five other survivors; meeting her husband; immigrating to the United States from Italy; arriving in New York, NY by ship; working in a factory, jewelry business; settling in Brooklyn; meeting a survivor who had jump from a cattle car and was sheltered by a peasant family until the war was over; and some of her family photographs (which she shares during the recording).

Oral history interview with Yitzchok Wargon

Oral History

Yitzchok Wargon (born August 28, 1922), describes his family, including his two sisters and brother (born 1930 and died 1932); his extended family; life in Radomsko, Poland; being raised and educated in a Hasidic house and community; his cherished memories of the rabbi and seder, including the music; his family receiving a healing miracle from a rabbi in Kamińsk, Poland; the rise of antisemitism; hearing Hitler on the radio; reading of Buchenwald concentration camp in a Jewish paper; the bombing in 1939 and the Nazis entering Radomsko; townspeople fleeing in fear of more bombings; his family re-entering Radomsko's destroyed town center (had been 95 percent Yiddish); how the Wargon house was still standing but became part of the Radomsko ghetto; the marking of Jewish able-bodied men with colored patches and the forced labor they were made to do, including carpentry; overcrowding in the ghetto; the severe beating of his father; how everyone was holding onto the Jewish belief, "Never lose faith"; the breakup of his family when they were deported into jam-packed cattle cars and many others in town were shot; his father's farewell to him (he told Yitzchok that he had served as a son, "not a 100 percent but a 1000 percent"); the deportation of his family to Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps; doing nine months of forced labor at Skarzysko-Kamienna ammunition factory; life there, including beatings, lice, and starvation; being marched with the other near-dead inmates to a shooting site and escaping over a barbed wire fence into the woods; being captured, but being given a pass; being provided daily soup until the liquidation of the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp; the shootings of many inmates; arriving in Buchenwald and being counted; the Gestapo tricking men by providing bread if they would tell on Skarzysko-Kamienna soldiers; going to Schlieben concentration camp and doing forced labor; his finger being blown off in a bombing and another prisoner (a former surgeon from Warsaw) saving his life; being sent on a death march to Berlin, Germany; how those who fell were shot and only one third of the prisoners survived; liberation; the concerns about emaciated survivors eating too much; the people who helped him recover; bartering with vodka and packs of American cigarettes; staking a claim on housing and being afraid of being shot; being assaulted by an American soldier involved in black market currency trading; how six weeks after liberation, his Jewish Russian soldier friend (Max, who had been guarding Hitler's bunker) sneaked Ytizchok through a small hole into Hitler's bunker; seeing the dining room and crystal ware and getting inebriated drinking Hitler's 90 proof spirit; recovering on Hitler's couch (realizing the irony) and confiscating the silver set with Führer engraving; entering the American zone; working the black market in the DP (displaced persons) camps, (Weiden and Neu Freiman); moving to Hamburg, Germany; receiving HIAS assistance to move to New York, NY in 1949; meeting his wife who also survived the Holocaust; learning trade; being the only one of his extended family to survive the Holocaust; and his closing statement ("We Jewish people cannot give up!"). [Note he shows photographs at the end of the interview.]

Oral history interview with Miriam Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

Oral History

Ruth Finkelstein, born on October 15, 1927 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Polish-Jewish family; her four siblings; her father, who was a store keeper; being frowned upon as Polish Jews by German Jews; experiencing antisemitism from a public-school teacher; enduring stone-throwing from non-Jewish children; exiting Hebrew school; having to blend into the crowd; being prevented from going to parks and theaters; only being allowed to shop during the German siesta (early afternoon); her father being temporarily sent to a camp and returning home physically altered; the deportation of her father to Buchenwald concentration camp (her family received a box of his ashes); Jews being blocked from shelters during air raids; being transported for three days by truck to France in 1940 and the fear and uncertainty she experienced; receiving some assistance by the Red Cross during a stop during the journey; arriving in Camp de Gurs, where they stayed for nearly four months; experiencing overcrowding, straw mattresses, malnutrition, and no medical treatment; her mother’s death from pneumonia; being assigned with her siblings to the children’s barrack and receiving a bit more food; how her older brothers gathered a crowd and provided prayers; being allowed to leave the camp along with her siblings and go to the village; going on a Kindertransport to Château de Chabannes, run by the OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux Enfants); director of the orphanage, Felix Chevrier; having play dates and schooling in the forest while the Gestapo came to the children's home; being 13 years old and providing mothering and education to her younger siblings; Chevrier allowing Shabbat and her younger brothers conducting seder; immigrating to the United States in 1941 under an Eleanor Roosevelt visa; and being taken in by her aunt and uncle.

Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

Oral History

Pearl Benisch, born in 1917, discusses her parents, Reb Leib and Chaya Fraida Mandelker; a teacher who gave her son to non-Jewish family so he could survive and a toddler's awareness of antisemitism, even at three years old; being a protégé of Sarah Schenirer (Shnirer), who began the Bais Ya’akov movement (Orthodox Jewish girls schools, also called Beth Jacob Schools); observing Schenirer’s burial in 1935; writing a biography on Schenirer called “Carry Me In Your Heart”; her family and classmates being deported to the Krakow ghetto; accounts of the Bais Ya’akov girls' support of each other; stories of prisoners singing to cope with starvation and torturous factory labor; a prisoner risking life for a small piece of bread and tossing it to 30-40 people scrambling to receive it; the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in 1941; the split up of her family; her brother being deported to Theresienstadt (he survived the war); saying good-bye to her parents, who did not survive; being sent with the Bais Ya’akov girls to Płaszów camp; doing forced labor, sewing soldier uniforms; being transported to Auschwitz (Birkenau); witnessing the camp guards ripping a child from a mother, then shooting both to teach others a lesson; witnessing Jews having to jump into pits to be shot (a few singing as they jumped in); enduring beatings; a prisoner sneaking shofar into Auschwitz and blowing it; Rebbetzin Tzila Sorotzkin, the “White Angel of Auschwitz” (formerly “Orlean", also known as “Tillie Rinder”); a notable Bais Yaakov teacher, who after being imprisoned, served as an Auschwitz infirmary nurse/secretary and thwarted killings of countless Jews (and also dared to light candles in the barracks); her Bais Ya’akov classmate, Rivkah Horowitz-Pinkusewitz, who stood up to Gestapo, risking her life for Pearl and others; being transported to Bergen-Belsen; how almost all the prisoners were very sick (many dying); being forced to sew six tops a day for half a piece of bread; trying to observe Shabbos by sewing extra sets on all the other days of the week and turning in those sets on Shabbos; liberation; the soldiers dusting barracks to kill lice; the assistance from Zionist organizations and various rabbis, including British Chaplain Rabbi Baumgarten; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp; establishing a kosher kitchen; her message to young people “Love thyself; once you love yourself, you can love others”; and her memoir “To Vanquish the Dragon.”

Oral history interview with Malka Schick

Oral History

Malka Schick (née Korn), born in 1944 in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy, discusses her family’s flight from Belgium to France; her grandmother’s only son and youngest daughter dying in an air raid; her family constantly moving and hiding from Gestapo; finding safety in Italian-protected France; her family’s anticipation of the Nazi storming of Saint-Martin-Vésubie in 1943; her family fleeing with 1000 Jews, following Italian soldiers over the Alps into Italy, mistakenly believing they were seeking safety; her family being met by Enzo Cavaglion and the Cuneo Jewish community and Cuneo priests; the Fascist forces; how 350 Jews were tricked into coming out of hiding to live openly and the majority of them were killed; her father and uncle hiding with partisans in the mountains, sleeping in the elements, and experiencing starvation; hearing survivor accounts (including Walter Marx and others); the deportations of people in cattle cars; Catholics (one named Anna) sheltering Malka’s mother who was pregnant with Malka; her father being shot and killed while coming down the mountain to meet his new-born baby (Malka); her family’s move to Demonte, Italy; the Christians/Protestants who achieved “righteous Gentile status” (including Priest Raimond), who at great risk to themselves hid and fed many Jewish people; her paternal grandmother’s death in Treblinka; her great uncle’s murder in Auschwitz; life after the war; how her mother and uncle were never able to speak of the Holocaust; returning to Belgium with her grandmother; how even in post-war a Polish Jew returning to hometown to claim his home was shot; having her father’s remains transferred from Italy and reburied in Israel; her survivor documents and photographs of her family; returning to Italy to visit the tree near where her father was shot; documents associated with Enzo Cavaglion, head of Cuneo's tiny remaining Jewish community and the city's yearly memorial efforts; becoming a teacher; and her work teaching the Holocaust to children.