Overview
- Interview Summary
- Lily Tokarski, born in September 1941 in Krakow, Poland, describes how as a baby she was hidden in Płaszów; her parents being able to get her to safety with a friend, a woman named Julia Pamula; her parents surviving Auschwitz-Birkenau; reuniting with her parents after the war; living in a displaced persons camp in Germany from 1945 to 1947; moving to Montreal; the Canadian government welcoming tailors like her father; staying in Canada until 1955; and her family moving in September 1955 to California.
- Interviewee
- Lilly Tokarski
- Interviewer
- Esther Finder
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Esther Toporek Finder
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MOV.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Restrictions may exist. Contact the Museum for further information: reference@ushmm.org
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Hidden children (Holocaust)--Poland. Hiding places--Poland--Plaszów. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives. Jewish children in the Holocaust. Jews--Persecutions--Poland. Jews--Poland--Kraków. Refugee camps--Germany. Tailors. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Poland. Women--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- California. Canada--Emigration and immigration. Kraków (Poland) Montréal (Québec) Płaszów (Poland) Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945.
- Personal Name
- Tokarski, Lily, 1941-
- Corporate Name
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp) Birkenau (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Esther Toporek Finder, President of Generations of the Shoah - Nevada, produced the oral history interview with Lily Tokarski in partnership with Raymode Fiol, President of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada, Brett Levner, film professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), and Sun City Anthem TV in Henderson, NV.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:34:51
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn608176
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Also in Oral history interviews of the Esther Toporek Finder collection
Oral history interviews with survivors from the Las Vegas, NV area about their post-Holocaust experiences.
Date: 2013-2014
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Alexander Kuechel, born in 1924 in Berlin, Germany, describes witnessing Hitler’s rise to power including the boycott of Jewish businesses, the Berlin Olympics, and Kristallnacht; his father being arrested in 1938 and kicked out of Germany into Poland; being a member of a Zionist youth group and having a certificate to go to Palestine before the war began; giving up his certificate to someone who had been arrested during Kristallnacht and sent to a concentration camp with the promise for either another certificate in the future or a spot on a children’s transport to England; being kicked out of Germany in 1939 with his mother and reuniting with his father; being stuck in Poland when his papers for the Kindertransport came through; being sent to a forced labor camp in 1941 and then sent to the concentration camp Blechammer in 1942; surviving seven camps; and being liberated in May 1945 by Soviet troops, who ignored the prisoners as they were on their way to Berlin.
Oral history interview with Ann Jenner
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Ann Jenner, born on August 16, 1935 in The Hague in Holland, describes growing up in Voorburg, Netherlands; her father, who was a butcher and bought livestock for the Queen; her two brothers and her sister, who was born during the war; the Nazi invasion in 1940 and conditions changing for her family; Jewish children not being allowed in the public school and being briefly tutored at home until the Christian tutor was prohibited from teaching Jewish students; a Jewish school opening in a big city but Jews could not ride on streetcars and it was an hour walk; attending the school briefly with her brothers until the Nazis started rounding up children from the school; the Nazis decreeing that the Star of David with the word “Jew” on it had to be sewn onto clothing; her family being thrown out of their home in 1942; how her family was ordered to report to a camp but her mother was pregnant so they got a temporary reprieve; receiving help from the Dutch resistance and being hidden by members of the underground; how her baby sister was hidden by their former housekeeper, her oldest brother went into hiding with the housekeeper’s grandmother, and her other brother went to another couple; hiding with a butcher who was friends with her father; her parents hiding too; how later both her parents and one of her brothers were also forced to hide with the butcher after her parents’ hiding place had been discovered and her brother was physically abused by his rescuers; the family surviving the war; and the births of more children into her family.
Oral history interview with Ben Lesser
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Benjamin Lesser, born in 1928 in Krakow, Poland, describes his childhood and spending summers in Munkacs (Mukacheve, Ukraine) with his mother’s family; his father’s successful chocolate factory and wine and fruit syrup factory; the Nazi invasion of Poland and life changing drastically for the Jews; most Jews being put into the Krakow ghetto, while his family decided to leave the city; how this was the first of several escapes that saved his life; being temporarily safe in Hungary in 1943; the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps; surviving a death march; ending up in Buchenwald; and being in Dachau when he was liberated by the Americans in April 1945.
Oral history interview with Evelyn Goldstein
Oral History
Evelyn Goldstein, born in Berlin, Germany in 1936, describes her father, who was a doctor; how her father knew someone who worked on a cruise ship and through this connection he was able to get his family out of Germany in 1939 when Evelyn was three years old; her family going to Shanghai, China; her family being put into a camp when they first arrived but later found a one-room living space that also had to serve as an office for her father’s medical practice; how, after Japan entered the war, her family was moved to a ghetto and they stayed there until 1946; the crowded and primitive conditions in the ghetto; witnessing a US bombing off in the distance; spending 10 years in China, from 1939 to 1949; and still staying in touch with some of the Jewish refugees she met there.
Oral history interview with Henry Kronberg
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Henry Kronberg, born in April 1920 in Breslau, Germany, describes growing up in Katowice, Poland; apprenticing as a young man in a material goods store; being 19 when the Nazis invaded Poland; leaving Katowice and going to Kraków, Poland; being in Kraków when the ghetto was formed; the Jews being forced into the ghetto; his sister and mother escaping the ghetto and fleeing to the east; how he and his father were supposed to join them but did not make it out; enduring forced labor while in the ghetto; getting himself assigned to work in the Gestapo headquarters doing odd jobs; becoming the foreman of the painters; people being interrogated and tortured in this building; how his job included scraping blood off the walls and repainting; how, when the ghetto was liquidated, he and the other Jews who worked in Gestapo headquarters were housed in a prison and then in a convent that was converted to a prison; working in Gestapo headquarters for about two and a half years; the Soviet Army approaching in January 1945 and the subsequent liquidation of the prison; being sent to three different concentration camps; and being liberated by American troops near the Bergen-Belsen camp.
Oral history interview with Henry Schuster
Oral History
Henry Schuster, born in a small town in Germany in 1926, describes the small Jewish population in his town; his father’s death after the Nazis took power; how Christian doctors were not allowed to treat Jewish patients and his father was denied medical care; being nine years old when he was imprisoned by the Nazis; his uncle getting him out of town and into an orphanage in Frankfurt; his mother being able to get him onto a children’s transport to France in March 1939; being in Paris when the Nazis invaded; later being moved to unoccupied southern France by the OSE (a children’s aid society); being in Limoges, France for over a year where the children apprenticed to learn trades; the American Quakers of Philadelphia, PA helping to get Henry and some of the other children out of Europe and into the US with the help of retail giant Marshall Field and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; the children going from France to Spain and Portugal and then to New York; arriving in the US when he was 15 in 1941; being one of the 1,000 children who were brought to the US for safe haven; beginning his service in the US Army in 1944; the Army wanting to send him to the Pacific but he wanted to go to Europe to find his sister, who had survived the war; and how his service brought him to the Nuremberg Trials.
Oral history interview with Janos Strauss
Oral History
Janos Strauss, born in Hungary in December 1928, describes how before the Nazi invasion his family had only heard rumors about the way Jews were treated elsewhere in Europe and the Hungarians found these rumors unbelievable; the Nazi invasion in March 1944; being an apprentice with a small motor bike manufacturer; the Nazis arriving and Jews getting picked up off the street; being picked up once and forced to do physical labor; being ordered by the Hungarian government to work in the fields on a farm; the formation of a ghetto while he was on the farm and moving there; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944; being 15 years old and lying about his age to survive; being advised to volunteer to get sent out of the camp; volunteering once and being sent to clean out rows of barracks that had housed Czech families who had just been killed; volunteering for a transport to Muldorf, a camp in Germany; being there from August 1944; and being shipped on a transport that was liberated by the Americans on May 1, 1945.
Oral history interview with Lydia Lebovic and Willie Lebovic
Oral History
Lydia Lebovic, born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia, describes growing up in Hungary; being one of four children; her family hearing stories of Nazi atrocities from refugees even before the German invasion of her region; the Nazis reaching her area in March 1944 and being forced into a ghetto the next month; staying in the ghetto for five weeks; being deported in a cattle car to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection in Birkenau upon arriving and being separated from her family; the deaths of her mother and younger sister; being in Birkenau for six weeks; being transferred to a work camp in Hamburg, Germany; the better conditions in the Hamburg camp; having food, clothing, and shelter; working hard but not being abused; being in the camp until February 1945; being transported to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen; how the conditions were horrific but she found her older sister there; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; and finding her brother. Willie Lebovic, born in Czechoslovakia in June 1922, describes being drafted into the Hungarian Army in 1942; being trained in engineering for three months; the Hungarians deciding Jews would not be allowed to wear Hungarian uniforms and being sent to do forced labor on the Russian front near the Polish border; building bunkers and anti-tank traps and planting land mines; doing this work until November 1943; escaping with 15 other men, 12 of whom were shot; reaching Russian partisans after many months; hiding his Jewish identity from the partisans for fear of antisemitism; living in underground bunkers; making his way to the Russian front; not being trusted by the Russians and being put in a prison camp; a Jewish officer in the Russian Army getting him out of the camp; working as a photographer; not being an official Russian soldier, but traveling with the troops; his job taking pictures of dead soldiers to send back to families; his unit going to Czechoslovakia in January 1945; and being discharged in May 1945.
Oral history interview with Judd Nissanov and Magda Nissanov
Oral History
Yudah (Judd) Nissanov, born in Poland in 1924, describes being the youngest of five children; seeing very quickly what the Nazis were capable of when they shot hundreds of Jews in the first two weeks they occupied his area of Poland in 1939; the Soviet Union taking over his region and staying until 1941; the Nazis returning and deciding to leave and walk east; catching a ride on a Soviet truck and joining a Soviet unit; changing his name and passing as Catholic; joining the Polish Army; being sent through Persia (Iran) en route to Africa; being part of the honor guard that stood at the gate for the Shah’s 22nd birthday; going to Jordan and Palestine en route to Egypt; crossing into Palestine and seeing signs in Hebrew; his decision to desert the army; hopping on a bus and going to kibbutz Negba, where he stayed to avoid British MPs who were looking for Polish deserters in the cities; and learning from another Polish refugee in 1943 about what was happening to the Jews in Poland under the Nazis. Magda (Hebrew name Malka) Nissanov, born in Hungary in 1924, describes how her small town of 60,000 people contained only 5,000 Jews; Polish and Czech refugees arriving in Hungary in 1940 and hearing stories about the Nazis’ actions and about the Theresienstadt/Terezin ghetto; the Nazis arriving in her area in 1944; the formation of a ghetto in her neighborhood; her family having to have other families move into their small home; being injured when a pillar fell on her and sustaining a concussion; having limited memory of that time as a result of her injury; the deportation of Jews from her area to concentration camps; arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944 and having to go through a selection process; she and her sister being separated from the rest of the family; being deported with her sister to a work camp in Bavaria, Germany; being in several camps, where she did jobs ranging from moving earth to nursing; being liberated from Dachau by the Americans in April 1945; and her health at the end of war after contracting typhus and enduring the camps.
Oral history interview with Martin Kohn
Oral History
Martin Kohn, born in a small Hungarian farm village in 1929, describes his family having to give up farming during the Depression; his father moving to Satmar, Rumania (Satu Mare, Romania) and establishing a factory that produced sportswear; growing up in a family of seven children; his family having some idea that the Jews in Poland were being abused after the Nazi invasion; Jewish refugees passing through the area; the Hungarian fascists rounding up the Jews for deportation to concentration camps in Poland; Jews being temporarily put into a ghetto before they were shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944; being in Birkenau for a week before being shipped to the Płaszów concentration camp; staying in Płaszów until around September when he was shipped to Gross-Rosen and Bolkenhain, where he did hard physical labor; being forced on a death march as the Soviet troops approached; going to Hirshberg (in Jelenia Góra, Poland) and then to Dörnhau (Kolce, Poland); and the Nazi guards fleeing days before the Soviet Army came through on May 8, 1945.
Oral history interview with Meta Doran
Oral History
Meta Doran (née Kempinski), born in Hamburg, Germany on February 1, 1926, describe her father, who ran a successful import/export business; being an only child; her family being deported to Poland in 1938 because her father had Polish citizenship; living in the Pabianice ghetto and then the Łódź ghetto, where her father died of starvation; spending four years in in the Łódź ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the summer of 1944; her mother’s death; being in the camp for 5 or 6 months; being deported to Bergen-Belsen, where she slept on the ground; being forced to collect information from incoming prisoners for the Nazis because she spoke German and Polish well; being sent to Salzwedel, where there were munitions factories; being lucky enough to be assigned to work in the kitchen; and being liberated by the Americans on April 14, 1945.
Oral history interviews with Raymonde Fiol
Oral History
Raymonde (Ray) Fiol (née Nathansohn), born in Paris, France in 1936, describes her mother, who was a dressmaker, and her father, who was in the handbag business; being foreign-born Jews in France and how this made their lives especially dangerous under the Nazis; being three years old when the Germans invaded; having one memory from that time: her mother wearing a yellow Star of David on her clothing and a Nazi stopping her in the street and asking why Ray was not wearing a star (children her age were not required to wear the star); learning as an adult about her parents’ fates; her parents being forced into a labor camp and being made to work the land; her parents being in the Drancy transit camp in 1942 and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed in January 1944; her parents arranging to have her smuggled out of the labor camp by a member of the French Resistance; staying with a couple her for the rest of the war, posing as their niece who left Paris for safety; how the whole village knew the truth and kept her secret; registering with the German authorities when she first arrived in the village; the German in charge of the village and her suspicion that he knew she was Jewish; speaking Yiddish fluently and translating German for her adopted parents; and the liberation of her area by the Americans in August 1944.
Oral history interview with Sabina Callwood
Oral History
Sabina Callwood (née Wagschal), born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1936, describes her father, who was taken away in 1942 by the Gestapo; her mother staying with the children but becoming ill and having to be hospitalized; being registered with the Gestapo and going to an orphanage with her siblings; the director of the orphanage, Madam Rosi Rothschild; being fed and guarded; how Madam Rothschild could not save all her charges, but was able to save Sabina and her brothers; how Madam Rothschild wanted to help the Callwood children because she knew their mother was still alive; the need for the children to leave Antwerp to escape the Gestapo; being separated from her two brothers, who were taken to different shelters outside the city while she stayed in the orphanage; being very ill and almost dying of dysentery; how when the Nazis decided to make Antwerp Judenrein (free of Jews) in 1943, Madam Rothschild got permission to take her charges to Lasne, Belgium; being sheltered with the other children in a hospital for the handicapped; being sent to another orphanage in a hamlet at the end of 1944 and staying there until the end of the war; her mother surviving Auschwitz and looking like a skeleton when she came to collect Sabina; reuniting with her brothers; and ultimately reuniting with her father, who had survived by escaping a French labor camp pretending to be a Christian Deaf mute.
Oral history interview with Sasha Semenoff
Oral History
Sasha Semenoff, born in 1924 in Riga, Latvia, describes his sister, who also survived the Holocaust; the Nazis arriving in Riga in 1941; the formation of a ghetto for the Jews; fleeing the ghetto and going to work in a factory in an apartment building, where he stayed until he was sent to concentration camp; surviving four camps, including Stutthoff and Gutendorf; doing a variety of work, from the kitchen to clean up on U-boat construction; being liberated by the Soviets in March of 1945; being put in jail by the Soviet troops; a Soviet doctor putting him into a hospital, which saved his life; and ending up in three hospitals after his liberation.
Oral history interview with Stan Rubens
Oral History
Stan Rubens, born in Holland in 1932, describes his parents, who ran a retail store; his older sister; the Nazis invading on May 5, 1940; his father taking the family into hiding in Amsterdam in 1941; being aided and then betrayed by a woman named Mrs. Eusman; the Nazis coming to arrest them in 1942 and his father convincing one of the Germans to help them escape from deportation; being in a holding area with his sister and other children; his sister finding an opening and escaping by just walking away; trying to break away from a captor but being caught and returned to the holding area; being nine years old when he was separated from his family; his father helping him to escape; his parents bribing someone to help them escape from a transport truck; memorizing the address of a member of the underground who would shelter them and reuniting with his family; being in this shelter for about a week after which they stayed in a variety of hiding places and the members of his family were sometimes dispersed; hiding on a farm in the countryside by the end of the war; and his family’s survival.
Oral history interview with Stephen Nasser
Oral History
Stephen Nasser, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1931, describes his family’s jewelry store; his pleasant childhood and their friendly neighbors; experiencing some antisemitism before the Nazis came in March 1943; conditions changing dramatically when the Nazis arrived; the laws changing and the Jews losing their citizenship so they were no longer protected by the Hungarian government; he and his brother getting into fights with boys who tried to bully and intimidate them; being forced with his family into a ghetto towards the end of 1943 or early 1944; only being in the ghetto a few days with his brother before a Christian friend took them to work in his factory, where they separated from the family; being deported in the spring of 1944 to an internment camp in a brick factory; being transported with his mother and some other relatives being transported from the brick factory in a cattle car to Auschwitz-Birkenau; witnessing the murder of some of his relatives in Birkenau; staying with his brother in Birkenau for less than a week until they were sent to Muhldorf, a subcamp of Dachau in Bavaria, Germany; building a bomb-proof munitions factory; remaining there until liberation on April 30, 1945; and being liberated from a death train by General Patton’s 3rd Army.
Oral history interview with Tamas Foldes
Oral History
Tamas Foldes, born on March 20, 1938 in Budapest, Hungary, describes the invasion of the Nazis when he was celebrating his 6th birthday in 1944; his family having Shutzpasses (protective passports) issued from Spain; how these passes were not as secure as Swedish passes and sometimes Jews with such passes were still taken out, shot, and their bodies were dumped in the Danube River; his family being kicked out of their home and having to find shelter in dangerous circumstances; living in the international ghetto, also known as the little ghetto; the Hungarian fascists rounding them up one night and the people in his building bribing someone to help them get to the big ghetto, where they might be slightly safer than where they were living; his mother, who was an actress and was saved from deportation by a guard who was one of her fans; and the takeover of Budapest by the Soviet troops in January 18, 1945.
Oral history interview with Tom Figueras
Oral History
Tom Figueras (né Nadelstecher), born in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia (Ukraine) in October 1927, describes changing his last name after the war; his father, who was a dentist; his one brother, who was a musical prodigy and played the violin in the orchestra in the Buchenwald concentration camp until he was sent to Bergen-Belsen; his other brother, who was a heavy smoker and traded his bread for cigarettes in the concentration camp; no one in his immediate family surviving the war; the Nazis arriving in his town in March 1944 and being sent within two months to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he stayed three days; being transported to the Gross-Rosen cluster of camps in Germany; his leather shoes wearing out and being forced to wear ill-fitting wooden clogs, which damaged his feet; staying in a hospital for three months; being force-marched to Bergen-Belsen and how most of the other prisoners with him did not survive; getting himself on a transport to Hildesheim, Germany; the housing of the Jewish laborers in a synagogue in Hildesheim; his job pulling dead bodies out of bomb shelters; often finding food in those shelters; American bombers destroying the town; marching back to Bergen-Belsen; how conditions there had deteriorated in the weeks he had been away; and being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945.
Oral history interview with Joseph Frank
Oral History
Joseph Frank, born in Bavaria, Germany in March 1937, discusses his father's prewar cattle business; dramatic changes for Jews in Germany following Kristallnacht; his father's arrest and deportation to Dachau concentration camp for three months; his father's release under the condition that he and his family would leave quickly from Germany; finding temporary refuge in England; the suspicion of German spies in Britain; his family being separated; being placed in an orphanage at two years old; and his family's immigration to the United States in March 1940.
Oral history interview with Gary Rosenthal
Oral History
Gary Rosenthal, born in Vienna, Austria in 1933, describes his father, who was a publisher of a pharmaceutical magazine; the Anschluss in 1938; life changing dramatically for the Jews after the Nazis took over; his parents having different opinions about what to do before the Anschluss: his father wanting to stay and his mother wanting to leave; how after the Anschluss all the Jews wanted to leave, but nobody at that time had any idea what was about to happen to the Jews in Europe; his parents writing to strangers and relatives with the name Rosenthal and Blaustein (his mother’s maiden name) in order to find someone to help them leave Austria; getting help to go to the United States; his family leaving in September 1938 and boarding the SS Washington; crossing the Atlantic; and arriving in the US on October 8, 1938.
