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Oral history interview with Charles Ticho

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2019.410.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.1053

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    Oral history interview with Charles Ticho
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Charles Ticho on September 21, 2019
    in Hackensack, New Jersey.
    Thank you, Mr. Ticho, for agreeing to meet with us today
    and to share something of your family's
    story and your own experiences during the beginning of what
    came to be the genocide of the Jews.
    I'm going to start our interview with the most basic questions
    and we'll develop things from there.
    OK.
    OK?
    Can you tell me the date of your birth.
    April 21, 1927.
    OK.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Brno, or Brünn in German,
    in what at one time was Czechoslovakia,
    which is now the Czech Republic.
    OK.
    And what was your name at birth?
    Well, I was given both a German name and a Czech name.
    The German birth certificate is Karl Huntz Ticho.
    My Czech birth certificate is Karel Hanuš Ticho.
    Karel Hanuš Ticho.
    Hanuš Ticho.
    Now, it's Ticho.
    Now Ticho.
    How do we spell it?
    T-I-C-H-O.
    So today, what you basically have is the English translation
    of your name from Czech--
    your name from German.
    Would that be correct?
    Yes.
    I despise the name Hanuš and Huntz.
    OK.
    And the one thing I did declare when
    I arrived in the United States that I will hence forward be
    called Charles, and that stuck.
    OK.
    OK.
    And why is it?
    That's kind of interesting.
    Very few people talk about having a name
    in German and in Czech.
    Sometimes they mentioned Yiddish and Polish, for example.
    But how is it that you came to have two birth certificates?
    My mother was born in Chicago, but she was raised in Berlin,
    and she married a Czech Jew, my father,
    and the only common language they had was German.
    So at home, we spoke German.
    In school, we spoke Czech.
    And that's how come I had two names in two
    different languages.
    OK.
    That makes sense.
    And Czechoslovakia had a very large German-speaking
    population before the war.
    Unfortunately.
    Well, that was part of what allowed
    Hitler to annex the country.
    Yes.
    So you were born in Brno.
    And give us a sense geographically, where
    in relation to Prague is Brno?
    The Czech Republic today is made up of two provinces, Bohemia
    and Moravia.
    Moravia is further-- further west, I think,
    and Brno is located virtually in the middle of Moravia.
    At the time when I was born, it was
    a town of about 220,000 people.
    It hasn't grown a great deal since.
    It's a very high industrial town with a lot of manufacturing
    and a lot of production.
    Is it known for any particular kind of products?
    Well, it has a munition factory.
    That's what I was wondering.
    It had a famous munitions factory for small arms.
    Skoda made the big tanks.
    And there was Zbrojovka in Brno that made a lot of guns.
    And also, motorcycles were made Brno.
    So military and automotive?
    And textiles.
    Big in textiles.
    But also with building materials.
    Construction.
    It was basically an industrial town.
    But textile was a big, big product of the area.
    With all this industrial kind of activity,
    was it a pretty place?
    Was it a--
    No.
    OK.
    Brno, even today, is not a very handsome town.
    OK.
    Sorry to say so, but that's true.
    That's OK.
    Well, you know, when you think of industrial heartlands,
    you generally don't think of architectural beauty.
    Well, as it is so often the case,
    some people moved further away from the center of town,
    and the suburbs are quite nice and pleasant.
    When you were born, had your father's family
    been established in Brno for generations
    or was he a newcomer?
    No, he was essentially a newcomer.
    The family-- where my father was born
    and where the family existed for some 300 or 400 years
    before that was in a town called Boskovice.
    Boskovice?
    Yeah.
    Boskovice is about 20 miles, 22 miles north of Brno
    and was a major Jewish community and an important community.
    And so you could trace your family roots
    for how many generations, do you think?
    I managed to trace them back to the late 1600s
    with the help of a genealogist.
    All my grandparents, my great grandparents,
    and so forth down the line.
    What we ran into a problem is that when
    it came to early 1700s, the Jews used names that were--
    they were called Abraham, son of David,
    Abraham ben David, and so forth.
    Well, it's very hard to trace because if you said Abraham ben
    David, Abraham, the son of David, and the next generation,
    you have four or five Davids registered--
    You've got an issue.
    Yeah.
    Finally, the Austro-Hungarian government got tired of that.
    They wanted to know how they can keep track,
    and they forced the Jews to adopt names.
    We found a document where an Abraham, son of David,
    adopted the name Abraham Ticho.
    And is Ticho a common kind of name?
    It's very unusual.
    Yeah.
    First of all, it means, as you probably know,
    silence, which was very uncomfortable when
    I was at school because if the teacher yelled, silence,
    it scared--
    scared me.
    Yeah.
    There are many T-I-C-H-Y, which is an attributive.
    It is a silent man or a silent woman.
    This would be in the Czech language?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But there's hardly any T-I-C-H-O.
    It was a member of our family.
    That's totally unusual.
    OK.
    Well, it shouldn't make it easier, then,
    to identify who was a family member.
    Yes.
    Except being many of them were orthodox and had
    large families, and within two or three generations,
    there were huge numbers of Tichos that said,
    I'm not related to the Tichos.
    Well, that can always be in every family.
    I'm afraid so.
    Now, was there a particular profession or business or trade
    that your father's family had been involved in?
    My grandfather owned a textile store in Boskovice
    on the main square, and that was his source of income.
    And what was his name?
    His name was Yitzhak Zvi.
    Yitzhak Zvi Ticho.
    Ticho.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And did your father have many siblings?
    He was one of 13.
    That's what I meant, that these are orthodox families,
    had large families.
    The oldest one was a girl, was a [? womans. ?] Then
    there were 11 brothers, and the last one was also a sister.
    Well, you know what I do at this point?
    You may not know, but it's going to have--
    can you name them all for me?
    I probably can name them all.
    I may not do it in exactly--
    The order.
    The order.
    But Sarah was the oldest, and Jacob Moses
    or Max, James, Jacob, Max, David, Abraham, my father,
    Nathan, Chaim.
    Chaim?
    The only one that died early.
    Alfred, or Aaron, actually.
    The youngest one was Erma--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    We're up to nine.
    Yeah, well, I'm almost there.
    There was-- you're asking an old man to remember.
    I know it's not fair.
    I know.
    Solomon.
    Solomon.
    What are we, 10?
    We're at-- we were at nine, and now, I'm
    looking for the 10th one.
    Solomon was 10.
    Was it-- well, my finger was on my ninth one, so I'm figuring.
    Oh, OK.
    And then I might ask you to repeat it.
    You never know.
    If I'm really mean.
    There was a doctor in Vienna who used
    to boast that he could recite the names of the Tichos forward
    and backward.
    That was a great achievement.
    It takes some effort, doesn't it?
    It does.
    So Sarah was the oldest girl, and the youngest girl's name
    was Erma, did you say?
    Yes.
    Rifka, actually, in Hebrew.
    So they had also Hebrew names as well as German names,
    would you say?
    They had Heb-- officially, they had Hebrew names.
    Max actually was Moses.
    Albert was Abraham.
    Alfred was Aaron, and so forth.
    It was a common--
    I don't know.
    It was just, in public, using a sometimes complicated Hebrew
    name made things difficult, so they used also
    a non-Hebrew name.
    OK.
    And your grandfather's name was Itzhak, you said?
    Yitzhak Zvi
    Yitzhak Zvi.
    And your grandmother on your father's side, what was--
    My grandmother on my father's side--
    I'll probably think of it later.
    That's OK.
    I can think of it right now.
    Did you know both of them?
    No, they were long dead before I was born.
    OK.
    My grandmother died comparatively lot younger
    in the 1910s.
    Well, 13 children.
    That's probably a good reason.
    And my grandfather died around 1920, 1921.
    I wasn't born at that time.
    And was his-- did his store continue
    to exist in Boskovice, did you say?
    Actually, he gave-- three sons took over their business
    and moved it to Brno, and they established
    a substantially larger textile, quite a substantial, large
    textile store.
    So it was retail.
    It was retail?
    It was mostly retail.
    OK.
    These were ages where people still made their own clothing.
    I mean, my grandfather mostly sold textiles
    to peasants and their wives who made their own clothing.
    There was no off-the-rack or there was little off-the-rack.
    Very little.
    Now, in Brno, my uncles were already
    selling some people that were manufacturing something.
    So it was both retail and wholesale.
    OK.
    Was your father involved in this business?
    My father and his brother.
    His brother, Paul.
    Ah, you hadn't mentioned him.
    Number 10.
    Yes, I hadn't mentioned.
    You see, I'll remember them.
    OK.
    They were partners in the business called Brothers Ticho,
    and they had a factory in Boskovice
    that made men's clothing and they had their offices
    in Brno, the sales office and accounting and so forth
    in Brno, and sales office.
    OK.
    What year was your father born?
    My father was born in 1886.
    So when you were born, he was not a--
    he was not a young father.
    He didn't get married until 1921.
    And do you know why?
    Maybe he was bashful.
    I don't know.
    Did he serve in the First World War?
    He started serving in the First World War.
    He was rejected and then spent most of his First World War
    trying to manufacture military clothing.
    And this would have been for the Austro-Hungarian Empire
    Military?
    Yes.
    Unfortunately, when they lost the war,
    they forgot to pay the bills.
    Isn't that funny how that happens?
    It was much worse than that, because my father invested
    in Austrian war bonds and they didn't pay on those either.
    So there was--
    He basically lost everything due to the war.
    That was the second time that he lost everything,
    and then the third time was the Holocaust.
    So what was the first time he lost everything?
    First time, there was a panic.
    There was a-- there was a--
    1909 or something or 1908, there was a economic panic
    and a lot of the investments that were made were worthless.
    And then, 10 years later, the war is over
    and there he's lost again.
    They start all over again.
    And then another 20 years, and again.
    Yes.
    Man.
    I mean, I can't imagine what it's like for people
    to start over again and again.
    To start over once is hard enough.
    I have-- when I was 53 years old, I really sat down
    and I said to myself, if I suddenly
    were to lose everything, I have a wife and three children,
    a house and a car, and I would suddenly
    have to give all of that up, move to a country
    where I don't speak the language, where I'm not
    familiar with how to do business, like, say, Brazil,
    what would I do?
    That's what my father had to face.
    And I said, I don't know that I could ever do what he did.
    It was amazing.
    Well, people had no choice, but that doesn't
    mean it is any less daunting.
    No, that's correct.
    When we think of that, and really think of that,
    not just say it, but like you said, you sat down,
    you're this age, you have these kinds
    of assets, whatever they are, and suddenly, poof.
    Yes.
    Well, you mentioned earlier that maybe he
    didn't marry until 1921 because he was bashful.
    Now, was he a bashful person or was he a different kind
    of personality?
    No, I don't think he was.
    No, I said bashful as--
    As a joke.
    As a joke.
    I don't know.
    I can't--
    Well, was he was a reserved person?
    Was he a stern person?
    No, he was a--
    he was not stern.
    He was very businesslike.
    All of the brothers were businesslike.
    Three of them became attorneys, one of them became a doctor.
    So they had higher education?
    Yes.
    And what about your dad?
    My father, no.
    He went to industrial school and studied textiles,
    and that's how he ended up in that area.
    No, he was-- he was a very precise person,
    and he knew how to do things.
    And my mother was just the opposite.
    She liked the theater, she liked coffeehouses,
    she liked to get dressed up, she liked to have jewelry.
    I didn't know how good the marriage was.
    They had four children.
    That indicates that something was working.
    But unfortunately, my mother started
    suffering from early problem in memories that became worse.
    You mean dementia?
    Are you meaning dementia?
    Dementia, yes.
    That's very hard.
    That's very hard on everyone in the family.
    And so he put up with that for a while
    until he could no longer handle it,
    then she was institutionalized until she passed away.
    Oh, how hard.
    Then he lived alone for the next 10,
    12 years before he passed away.
    All of this is post-war?
    Pardon?
    All of this is post-war.
    Yes.
    All of this is post-war.
    But a very sad and a very hard-- a very hard way to take
    care of somebody.
    It's incredibly difficult.
    How did they meet, your parents?
    Because it's unusual.
    My wife-- I'm sorry, my mother had a good friend whose husband
    got the job of cantor at the synagogue in Boskovice,
    and she was under--
    and her family was from Hungary, and she was living in Berlin
    and she was going to visit our family in Hungary,
    and she just decided to stop in Boskovice to see her friend
    and meet her new husband, the cantor.
    And of course, because she was seeing the cantor,
    she ended up at the synagogue, and she
    was introduced to my grandfather who my father said
    had a lot of bachelors at home, so he immediately-- he
    immediately invited her to a Friday night
    dinner, the Shabbat dinner where she met
    the various sundry unmarried brothers
    and apparently settled on my father.
    They communicated for a while and then--
    and in this respect, it was almost like a shidduch
    because--
    Explain that to me, please.
    She returned to Berlin after the visit in Hungary
    and they communicated, and then he
    came to Berlin to pick her up and bring her to Brno to marry.
    So there was not a great deal of courting.
    So maybe it was in correspondence.
    I can't tell you.
    But there were not that much going out and--
    Getting to know each other.
    Getting to know each other, yeah.
    Was a little bit formal, as I understand.
    Well, also, as it was at that time
    much more usual than what we would say today.
    Yes.
    And your mother's first name was what?
    That's an interesting question.
    Her Hebrew name was Feige, and she was known as Francis
    to her friends.
    And what was her maiden name?
    Klein.
    Klein.
    K-L-E-I-N.
    How is it that she-- did you mention that she
    was born in the United States?
    Yes.
    That's another story.
    Well, tell us it.
    Tell us that story.
    On my mother's side, there were several members
    of the family who was in the fur business.
    From Hungary?
    From Hungary.
    The family comes from Chust in Hungary.
    As I was told, one of the sons of my grandfather,
    they were farmers, basically.
    One of the older, the oldest son was sent one day to--
    was entrusted with the harvest and was sent to the big city
    to sell the harvest and come back with the proceeds.
    He got involved with some lesser honest people
    and was stripped of his money, either gambling or something,
    and he advised his father that he
    had-- what had happened to him, and he sent him money and said,
    go to America.
    I don't want to see you again, basically.
    This is how I was told.
    This is one person, a cousin, older cousin told me this.
    This grand uncle of mine went to Chicago
    and he was in business selling eggs from a horse cart.
    And he was doing very well, and he was riding back
    to Chust how wonderful he was doing
    in this country with money, with gold on the streets,
    and slowly, the various siblings came to Chicago
    because life in Chust was not that great.
    Can you spell Chust for me?
    Well, it's several spelling.
    It's C-H-U-S-T.
    That's what I thought.
    It's H-U-S-T, and there's a Hungarian name that I'm not
    familiar with.
    OK.
    So anyway, the family ended up in Chicago.
    My grandfather ended up in Chicago
    and actually had a very fine fur salon on Michigan Avenue
    in Chicago, was very--
    was very well-to-do.
    That's something.
    That's something.
    His wife took his first children and decided
    to visit Hungary to visit the family.
    On the way back, there was cholera on the ship.
    She contracted it and she was buried at sea.
    Oh, my.
    So his first wife?
    That's his first wife.
    OK.
    As it was customary at the time, there
    was a younger unmarried sister in the family,
    and as it was customary at the time,
    my grandfather felt obligated to marry the younger sister.
    So he went and he paid off the guy that she was engaged to
    and married the younger sister and brought her to Chicago.
    This, from what I understand, was a very unhappy marriage.
    I heard that my grandmother was, quote, "difficult" unquote.
    And mostly, she complained that there was no way
    to maintain a kosher home in Chicago
    and she wanted to go back to Hungary.
    And what they did, they didn't go back to Hungary,
    but they ended up in Vienna and then ended up--
    actually ended up in Berlin.
    So your mother was the child of the second wife?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And I always suspected that what my cousin meant by the fact
    that the second wife was difficult
    was that possibly, my grandmother suffered
    from early problem, mental problems.
    Because with his second wife, my grandfather had six children,
    and four of them developed early mental problems.
    Yeah.
    There was a-- there was some problem.
    When you see something like that happen,
    you have to come to a conclusion that some of this is genetic.
    Yes, it would seem.
    I would think so.
    Yeah.
    And again, in those days, even today, but in those days
    especially, such things were very hard
    because people didn't always understand that.
    They would think that people are possessed
    or that there's something else going on.
    Well, it was in my--
    the biggest damage was, as far as I was concerned,
    that it took a long time to recognize what was happening.
    For example, whatever girl I brought home
    to introduce to my mother she didn't like.
    And you get to wonder whether this was because she really
    didn't like it or because this was part of her dementia.
    And I finally actually married a woman that she never met.
    She did meet, but after I was married.
    Can we cut the camera for a second?
    So your parents meet in this way.
    She had come-- your mother was born in Chicago,
    but because of her own mother's unhappiness,
    they moved back to Europe and end up in Berlin.
    And this would have been--
    also, they meet her parent-- your parents
    meet and marry in 1921.
    So all of this is taking place sort
    of in that world that has just been
    thrown upside down by World War I. And when you were born--
    and one thing I didn't ask you, how many siblings do you have?
    You mentioned at one time she had four children.
    She had four boys.
    OK.
    Can you-- these names should be easy.
    Yeah, my oldest brother is Harold,
    who will be celebrating his 98th birthday in December.
    Congratulations to him.
    Then there was a brother called Leo.
    Leo died at the age of 9 of middle ear infection, which
    few years later could be cured with a shot of penicillin.
    Then I had a younger brother who I spent a lot of time with
    and we actually traveled together
    during the Holocaust, he and I, and who died--
    who was murdered in Chicago.
    Oh, my God.
    Oh, my God, so this is post-war?
    I can't hear you.
    This is post-war?
    Yes, definitely, 1978.
    Oh, my gosh.
    What was his name?
    His name was Stephen Felix.
    Stephen Felix.
    So your older brother, Harold, will
    be 98, which means was he born in 1921?
    Exactly.
    And then comes Leo.
    When was he born?
    Actually, my parents married in 1920.
    I don't want to suggest that they're magicians.
    OK, 19-- right.
    When was the Leo--
    I'm sorry, what was it again?
    Leo, when was he born?
    He was 2 and 1/2 years younger than Harold, my older brother.
    So it would have been '23,
    '24, I think.
    Something like that.
    I can look it up if it's important.
    No, no, no, just approximate.
    I understand.
    OK.
    And Stephen, when was he born?
    He was born in 1931, April 20, one day before my birthday.
    1931.
    So in the span of a decade, there
    are four boys in the family.
    Yes.
    And until 1932 or '33, you are intact when your older--
    when your older brother, the second oldest,
    passes away because of the ear infection.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Describe for me a little bit your home in Brno.
    Well, there were two homes that I'm familiar with.
    One was an apartment above my father's business.
    It was in the older part of the city in central Brno.
    It was a fairly large apartment.
    My room, my brother's room, younger brother's room,
    faced the street.
    So you shared a room with your brother.
    And a governess.
    OK.
    And it was fairly well-designed.
    You know, it was in an older building.
    It was built in 1904.
    And the reason I know it because he had a sign on the roof--
    in the core.
    But when you lived in it, then, it was a fairly new building.
    It was comparatively new.
    I mean, it was 20, 30 years old.
    Did it have modern conveniences?
    Oh, yes.
    It had indoor plumbing?
    It had indoor plumbing.
    I mean, this is an apartment house,
    a multi-storey apartment house.
    And it had electricity?
    It had electricity, water.
    It didn't have an elevator.
    It had stairs.
    But we lived on the first floor.
    How was it heated?
    Beg your pardon?
    How was it heated?
    It had central heating with a furnace in the downstairs
    and with the radiators in their rooms.
    OK.
    I'm sorry.
    Let me correct that now.
    There were chimneys in each room.
    There were large chimneys in the room where you had to--
    we had to feed coal at the bottom.
    And--
    So was it-- in German it's called kachelofen?
    Kachelofen, exactly.
    OK.
    So it was these tile types of ovens.
    Yes.
    OK.
    There-- I hit my head on one of them and I--
    so I should have remembered that this--
    from there, my--
    1932, my parents decided to build a house, an apartment
    house, in a suburb--
    not really in the suburb, but in an area outside
    of the middle of the city.
    And the first floor consisting of 13 rooms
    were where we live-- where we lived, which we occupied.
    Now, when I say--
    That's a lot.
    Well, when I say 13 rooms, I'm including the bathrooms
    and the toilets and--
    That's still a lot.
    Yeah, it was a lot of rooms, yes.
    OK.
    Did you-- you mentioned a governess.
    Was there other help in the home?
    We had a cook and a maid.
    OK.
    So that suggests to me that you were pretty comfortable
    as a family.
    Yes.
    My father was considered a successful business man
    and with substantial income, which is why he was so--
    arrested so early.
    Such things matter, unfortunately.
    Yeah.
    Were your parents religious?
    Yes, they were to the extent that we
    went to the synagogue on Saturday
    morning that Harold had a substantial bar
    mitzvah in 1934.
    And that we were all circumcised and we
    celebrated all the holidays.
    And after my brother died, my mother
    was convinced that this was punishment from God,
    because she didn't keep a kosher household.
    And the household was switched to kashrut--
    I see.
    --to strict kashrut, which was a challenge considering that
    the cook and the maid were girls from the--
    Countryside.
    --countryside who couldn't care less whether this knife was--
    Used for meat.
    Fleishig or milchig.
    Yeah.
    Which led to a lot of yelling and a lot
    of cutlery stuck in earth.
    Oh, my goodness.
    But that's how you turned it back to kosher.
    Oh, really.
    So you will take the fork, you'll take the knife--
    You have to wash it then steam it.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I'm not [? quite ?] [? perfect. ?] But we used
    to kid our mother, we used to tell her she's trying to grow
    cutlery.
    Did she have a sense of humor?
    We were-- what'd I say--
    we were-- I was pleased that I was--
    I was accused of being a wise guy, or being impolite and--
    Disrespectful.
    --disrespect for is a good word.
    That's a very good word, yes.
    OK.
    Did you feel like you had a happy home?
    It was-- yes, it was essentially a happy home.
    From my point of view, particularly when I was young,
    it was happy from the--
    for the reason that my mother's younger sister moved in--
    into our house, even in the old apartment,
    and then in the new apartment.
    And she was our way to get out of there, whatever
    we were supposed to do.
    She was a--
    So she was easy on you.
    She was our escape artist, yes, she was.
    She told us a lot of stories and she--
    she was a very gentle, kind person.
    What was her name?
    Well, her name-- official name was Francesca.
    OK.
    I had done this with your father's brothers and sisters,
    your mother's brothers and sisters, who are they?
    The oldest one was two sisters from the first mother.
    The oldest one was Gisella, and the other one was Paula.
    Gisella and Paula.
    Then there was Max, Ernest, Julius, my mother.
    She-- she was earlier than Julius.
    William and Francesca.
    I don't think I left anybody out.
    OK.
    Now, aside from Francesca, did you
    know any of your aunts and uncles
    from your mother's side very well?
    No.
    Well, I know Uncle Bill.
    I didn't mention Uncle Bill in my recounting,
    because Uncle Bill ran a radio program in Chicago.
    And part of his--
    of the program-- it was a German language program--
    and part of that was that he would take a group of listeners
    on a tour to Europe.
    Oh, wow.
    And when he did that, he would stop and usually stopped
    with the fancy American car.
    And so we had a chance to sit in a large LaSalle,
    or a large Buick, and ride around town.
    Oh, how cool.
    Oh, it was [INAUDIBLE].
    And what about your own father, did he have a car?
    Beg your pardon?
    Did your dad have a car?
    He had two cars.
    But he didn't drive.
    Did he have a chauffeur?
    We had two chauffeurs.
    Well, I think that trumps the LaSalle.
    Yeah, I suppose it does.
    But the cars were mostly used for business,
    although sometimes they did go on trips.
    But one of the cars, a smaller cars, was used for deliveries
    and hardly ever got into that car.
    So it's a company car, it's a--
    They were both companies cars, essentially.
    OK.
    And did your-- did you have a radio at home?
    Yes, we had a large black Telefunken radio.
    And did the family listen to the radio, was it some--
    did you get your news from it?
    Well, basically, the Czech stations
    played two things, new and classical music.
    And that's really where-- how I got
    introduced to classical music by listening to the radio.
    Later on, I started hearing in the news
    some guy yelling and ranting.
    And I knew he was talking in German,
    but I couldn't understand him.
    And my mother heard me listening to him.
    She ordered me to turn it off.
    Later on, I found out that that was either Hitler
    that I was listening to.
    Well, that's one of the reasons why
    I ask if you have a radio is that at what point in your life
    do you get exposed to the first time
    to anything that has to do with Nazi ideology,
    or the political situation of what's
    going on in Germany and so on.
    And so you just answered my question without me asking it,
    is that you heard Hitler.
    Well, we actually learn very early because some of my uncles
    in Vienna, I mean, when they're-- after the Anschluss
    had problems, and my aunt--
    Aunt Gisella lived in Berlin.
    And so she ran into difficulties.
    And she and her husband and her three children came to Brno.
    And my aunt-- my uncle that is my Aunt Gisella's husband
    went to work for my father.
    And one of the children opened up a fur store.
    They were still in the fur business.
    She opened up a fur store.
    And the other two daughters also came.
    So we knew something was not kosher--
    Not right.
    Yeah.
    --back in 1934, 19--
    it's quite early.
    We were already exposed to some of the problems.
    Well, of course, when you have such large families
    and they're spread all over.
    Were most of the aunts and uncles aside from,
    let's say, an Uncle Bill who has this radio program in Chicago,
    were most of them now Europe based?
    No, they-- oh, my mother's side, everybody was in Chicago except
    the older sister, the--
    Aunt Gisella.
    Who was from wife number one.
    Yes, it was a phenomenal person.
    She lived to be 99 and 3/4.
    And her head was absolutely clear right up to the very end.
    Oh, wow.
    Remarkable woman.
    And so she survived the war.
    Yes, she escaped.
    And where did she end up spending her final years?
    In Chicago.
    In Chicago.
    They all moved to Chicago.
    On my mother's side, those that were--
    they all moved to Chicago.
    I can't think of any one of them that--
    I mean, the uncles and their wives, and in many cases--
    the one cousin from my mother's side went to Hollywood.
    He was a writer and was involved in politics,
    and was in the film business.
    He lived in Los Angeles.
    But that was the only one that I can think
    of that was not in Chicago.
    OK.
    Did your mother have US citizenship?
    No.
    When she married, she--
    when the married-- when the family moved from Chicago back
    to Berlin, they all had American citizenship.
    When my mother married my father,
    she lost her American citizenship.
    Wow.
    Is this because of the Americans having
    such a rule at that time?
    I don't know.
    I can't tell you what their rules are--
    or what the laws were.
    All I knew that she didn't have.
    And when things got dicey in the 1930s,
    my father decided to send her to the United States
    where she had to spend six months in order
    to regain her American citizenship.
    And when she returned and got to Switzerland
    is when the Nazis marched into the Czechoslovakia
    and it was decided she should remain there.
    OK.
    We'll come to that.
    We'll come to that.
    But that-- it's interesting--
    it must have been an American rather than
    a Czechoslovakian rule that you lose your citizenship if you
    marry a foreign national.
    But--
    It could be.
    Yeah.
    It could be the one.
    But how weird.
    But the fact that she had to--
    no, I don't see how the Czechs could remove her--
    American citizenship, yeah.
    They're married.
    This must have been some law that the Americans insisted on.
    Yeah.
    That's all I know.
    I don't [INAUDIBLE].
    Did she-- well, she spoke English at some point.
    Did she speak English when you were growing up?
    No, she-- her English was not very good.
    I don't remember her speaking English.
    She spoke German.
    I see.
    OK.
    And a little Hungarian.
    And so your language at home was German.
    At home-- well, even at home with my parents, it was German.
    I mean, at home with the servants
    and so forth, they spoke Czech.
    So it was kind of a bilingual affair.
    And were there in Brno, were there also non-Jewish Germans?
    You say that Brno--
    well, Boskovice had a large Jewish community.
    What about Brno, was it--
    did it have a substantial one?
    It has-- it had a thriving Jewish community.
    But there were-- yes, there were Germans
    because it was close to Vienna.
    So there were a lot of German speaking.
    For me, speaking German was a-- as a child was not
    very pleasant because I wanted to be a good Czech.
    And when my mother would pick me up from school,
    I would run to her so that my friends wouldn't
    hear me talk in German because I was embarrassed
    that I had to do that.
    Explain that to us a little bit.
    Not everybody knows about the inner demographics
    of what was Czechoslovakia.
    What was the Czech situation in the-- into war years.
    And that's one of the reasons I'm
    asking about ethnic composition of Brno.
    Was there-- would you have an idea of how many Czechs
    there were, how many Germans there were,
    and how many Jews there were?
    And not-- and somebody else, too, it could be somebody else.
    Well, if you look at the map of Europe before World War II,
    Czechoslovakia was formed in 1920--
    1919, 1920, after World War I. And it's like a sausage,
    or like a worm with the head on one end
    and the tail at the other, and it stretches
    across Central Europe.
    It is touched by at least six different countries.
    They are?
    Well, Germany, Poland--
    Hungary.
    --Hungary, Austria.
    So maybe it was only four.
    Well it's [INAUDIBLE] had Romania at the other end.
    And each one of those countries had minorities within--
    over the borders in the Czech Republic--
    in Czechoslovakia.
    There were some 3 million Germans mostly at the west end.
    There were Hungarians on the south in the western part.
    Romania was at the far--
    far west.
    Poland was up in north.
    Austria was down in the south.
    Brno is in the west, as well, isn't it?
    No, it's--
    More in the north?
    Brno in relationship to the--
    in Czechoslovakia it is somewhat off
    center to the left, which means they're
    off center to the west, yes.
    OK.
    And in Brno, what would have that composition have been?
    In Brno, they were--
    I'm just guessing about--
    of course, there are-- statistics are available.
    I would say-- and this is just a guess--
    that about 70% was Czech nationals, maybe 20% German,
    and a balance, maybe there were 10%--
    7%-- 8% Jewish nationals.
    And in the Czech Republic, and in many other countries
    in Europe, Jews were considered a nationality, other religion,
    it was a nationality.
    So that way you could pass laws that
    apply just to them without--
    without [INAUDIBLE].
    It's a sideline.
    But it's-- but it's one that's still--
    that there's still discussions today of what is--
    who is a Jew, is it a religion or whatever.
    It's just that it's a relevant question.
    It's not one that has been answered and put to bed.
    That's correct.
    What did I want to ask here?
    Did you as you were growing up have
    anything to do with non-Jewish Germans living in the area?
    Yeah, I did, when they chased me.
    OK.
    And that would have been when you were how old?
    Well, when I was a child.
    So 6, 7?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Hitler's then come to power around 1933 when you're 6 or 7.
    Or do you think it has anything to do with--
    He came to power, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
    Do you think that there was a connection between Hitler
    coming to power in Germany and you being chased in Brno?
    There's no question that the German majority--
    German minority was empowered by the fact
    that Hitler was now in charge.
    And they-- and he had a member or-- no,
    I would say he had a headline was a--
    was a-- the head of the German whatever organizations.
    And as the Nazi power grew in Germany,
    the head-- the German groups, the German clubs,
    became more and more militant.
    Now, the problem that we had was that there
    was a Jewish educational system that was
    run by the Jewish community.
    It was in Czech and the professor spoke Czech,
    and we spoke Czech, and all the material was Czech.
    But we had school on Sunday and we
    didn't have school on Saturday.
    So was this a public school funded by the state,
    or was this a private school?
    Well, I don't know that is supported by the state,
    but it was essentially under the administration
    of the Jewish community of Brno.
    OK.
    So when you're talking about your mother
    picking you up from school, it's from this school.
    Well, in the grammar school, it was maybe 500 feet from where
    we lived in the old house.
    OK.
    So it was very--
    What was the name of that school, the grammar school,
    do you know?
    It was just the Jewish-- it was just called the Jewish grammar
    school [INAUDIBLE] in Czech.
    And do you remember the address of your old house?
    No, but I remember the building.
    OK.
    Do you-- the street name, do you know the street name?
    Well, our apartment, that is, the first--
    the old apartment was on the--
    hard pronunciation-- Starobrněnská Ulice.
    Starobrnens--
    Starobrněnská, the old Brno Street.
    Ah, Starobrněnská Ulice.
    Ulice 911, devět jedenáct.
    Oh, wow.
    And what about your new home?
    What street was--
    The new home was Dolní five.
    OK.
    It's now called Erbenova five.
    OK.
    And to get from that home to the gymnázium I had to take two
    street cars and just to get there.
    OK.
    And so your pub-- your grammar school was also
    run by the Jewish community?
    Yes.
    OK.
    As well as your gymnázium, your high school.
    Yes.
    OK.
    And-- and so it was--
    it was these kids who--
    at these schools who were speaking
    Czech and you didn't want them to hear you speaking--
    Yes.
    --German with your mother.
    OK.
    Did you feel an affinity then to-- not--
    I mean, not just your friends, but to Czechoslovakia
    as this is my home?
    One of my best friends was a Czech.
    OK.
    Czech, young [? man, ?] he was a year older than I was.
    He was one of my best friends.
    We had a very strong pro Czechoslovakia feeling.
    We listened to the soccer games, and then the National Guard,
    we'd listen to the hockey games when they played [INAUDIBLE]..
    Even today, if I hear the Czech national anthem,
    my eyes fill with tears, because I still
    have a affinity [INAUDIBLE].
    So, no, that's-- we were firm strong Czech.
    And so was not just the-- so was the whole Jewish community.
    OK.
    There was no disloyalty or anything like that.
    And then from-- one could express that on the other side,
    there was no reason to not feel it.
    In other words, did you feel welcome
    in the Czech community in Czechoslovakia?
    It was comparatively comfortable.
    As I said, I think I'd started--
    I met antisemitism at my fairly young age
    when I started going to school.
    Because as I said, we had school on Saturday
    and we had-- didn't have school on Saturday,
    and we had school on Sunday.
    So all-- some of the anti-Semites had to do is hang
    around the school on Sunday and when they saw some kid going
    with schoolbooks, they knew--
    Who it was.
    --who it was, yes.
    And would these-- and it was irrespective of whether these
    were Czechs or Germans.
    They were-- you know, you have to understand,
    the Czechs were under Austrian oppression for five--
    300 years.
    So they appreciated the freedom.
    And so they were less inclined to be anti-Semitic.
    OK.
    What we ran into was just good Germans
    that felt that they needed to let their dislike be known.
    Did your father feel that in his business?
    I can't tell you that.
    OK.
    I can't tell you that.
    OK.
    And did your brothers, your older brother in particular,
    because he was so much older than you were,
    was he still going to school in the mid-'30s, in the late '30s?
    He went to the schools until 1937.
    OK.
    When my parents decided--
    and this was done by several well-to-do Jewish families,
    used to send the oldest son out of the country
    because of what was happening in Germany.
    So my brother went to Switzerland to study there.
    Aha.
    And by 1939, he packed up and went to the United States
    and to Chicago.
    So he was gone.
    And out of-- and out of harm's way.
    Out of harm's way, yes.
    OK.
    And your own parents, then there's four of you
    left, as far as the nuclear family is concerned.
    Yes.
    You, your younger brother, and your parents.
    Now let's come to that point, when
    you were talking about your father
    sending your mom to the United States
    so she could renew her American citizenship.
    Was that successful?
    Was she able to do so?
    Yeah, she was able to do it, and she got her citizenship back.
    And she came back and ended up in Switzerland.
    And what year was this?
    I think she arrived back in--
    well, she arrived back in Switzerland in 1939,
    after the Nazis had marched into Czechoslovakia.
    Because that's when she stopped and didn't--
    she decided not to continue.
    I have to confess now, my dates are a little mixed up.
    I think that it was March 1939 that the Nazis
    marched into Vienna.
    No.
    And there was the Anschluss there, no?
    No.
    That was earlier?
    That was a year before.
    '38.
    Then March '38.
    March 15, 1939 is when the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia.
    OK.
    See, I had that sense.
    Now, when did Chamberlain come to the Munich Agreement?
    It was--
    Probably in 1938.
    OK.
    Do you remember-- if not the date, do you remember?
    I remember the discussion.
    And--
    What was being said?
    Well, after the settlement, you know,
    there was a great deal of resentment,
    because our defenders, so-called defenders,
    abandoned Czechoslovakia.
    And Chamberlain and Daladier, the prime minister of France,
    gave in to Hitler and ordered Czechoslovakia to give up
    the border lands to the Germans, which unfortunately included
    all the fortifications that they had built at the border.
    And then of course Poland had to get their share,
    and Hungary had to get their share.
    So--
    So it's like crows circling.
    Yeah, yeah.
    The new map of Czechoslovakia looked
    like the old Czechoslovakia with somebody that's
    bitten all the edges off.
    Brno wasn't part of this?
    No.
    OK.
    And were there radio broadcasts or newspaper articles
    about that?
    Yes.
    Do you remember reading and hearing these things?
    At what time?
    I guess before, during, and after.
    The whole point of my question is
    this-- to get a sense from you, how
    did your family experience these grander political events,
    and in this case, ominous ones?
    Well, part of it was by getting stories.
    Dr. Oppenheimer, the head of the hospital in Vienna.
    He was the main [INAUDIBLE.] He was forced to clean
    the sidewalk with his toothbrush.
    That, we would hear of this.
    So and so-- my uncle, who had a jewelry store,
    one of my uncle--
    Uncle Victor, which I obviously haven't forgot--
    had a jewelry store.
    And his jewelry store was seized.
    He was still running it, but somebody, one of his employees
    was now in charge.
    OK.
    These are the kinds of stories we heard,
    or we actually heard third hand, or heard directly
    from the people that were affected.
    So that was one way we learned.
    We did listen to the radio, of course, particularly
    Czech news broadcasts.
    And I didn't read newspapers, so I can't tell that.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Do you remember how your father was reacting to all of this?
    Well, he was making preparations.
    One of the things he did, he started
    shipping merchandise to Sweden and to Switzerland,
    and telling--
    he had representatives in both places,
    and said when the customers pay, don't send the money
    to Czechoslovakia, deposit it into account there,
    because he wanted to have money outside of the country.
    So that's some of the things that he was doing.
    He told me he went to Switzerland.
    He didn't speak the language, but he went there to sell.
    And when he arrived at the train station, he looked around,
    he didn't know what to do until he saw somebody with a kippah
    on the head.
    So he knew he had a fellow Jew, so he approached him,
    and he guided him, and he was successful in making
    some sales in Sweden.
    In Sweden, you were saying?
    Not in Swiss-- because if he spoke German,
    he would have been able to get by in Switzerland.
    Switzerland he could get by, yes.
    OK.
    So in Sweden, that's where-- is that how he established
    the sales office there?
    It's wasn't a sales office.
    He just-- yeah, he had a representative there.
    Yes.
    OK.
    So he was making plans.
    And--
    As I say, my mother went to get her citizenship.
    My father-- my brother went to get--
    went to school.
    And he leaves for the United States eventually, your older
    brother.
    And so your mother returns to Europe,
    and it's in 1939, when Germany has actually taken
    over the rest of the country.
    Is that correct?
    Well, our friendly cousins in Slovakia decided to leave,
    and separated from the Czechs, and established
    a Nazi-sympathizing government run
    by a Catholic priest, Father Tiso.
    Yeah.
    The Romanians took over Subcarpathia,
    the end of the Czech Republic.
    So that's how that was dismembered.
    And the year--
    Bohemia and Moravia, which is now the Czech Republic,
    became a protectorate of the German government.
    You have to remember, in 1939, the Nazi methods
    of conquering other countries had not been really developed,
    detailed.
    So they were kind of learning as they were going along.
    So things got quite--
    were not as difficult as it became, like when they invaded
    Poland, or when they invaded--
    Well, that was war.
    That was actual war.
    Yeah, there was a period when--
    Can we cut the camera, please?
    OK.
    There was a period when things were sort of--
    when Jews could still get out of Czecho--
    the protectorate.
    Even under Nazi occupation, under Nazi control.
    Under Nazi Occupation.
    OK.
    Providing that they gave up almost everything
    that they owned, and providing that there was a country that
    was willing to accept them.
    Because all of these immigration activities
    started with whoever gave your visa, so you can stay there.
    Then you had to get the visa to the country
    that you pass through just before you get to them.
    Then you had to work your way back and get visas--
    For everything.
    For every country that you pass through.
    So for example, for us to get out,
    we had to get an American visa first, then a Portuguese
    visa, then a French visa, then an Aus--
    then a Swiss visa, then an Austrian visa.
    And then finally we could go to the Germans and say, so here.
    Oh my goodness.
    You know, it's true, and nobody has ever
    put it quite like that before.
    When we look and we hear these things now,
    we may not be even thinking.
    But because current reality is that most of the time
    you don't need a visa, if you're a Westerner, shall we say.
    Or maybe one visa, to the European Union.
    You get into the Union, and all the borders within the Union
    are open.
    Yes.
    And it's not so long ago where it was country, by country,
    by country, by country.
    Well, it wasn't-- for example, we traveled to Austria quite
    often, and all you had to do is show a passport.
    OK.
    You didn't have to have a visa.
    But when the majority of the immigrants became Jews,
    then all of a sudden visas were necessary.
    Oh.
    Because Switzerland didn't want a bunch of Jews
    in their country.
    And so they required that before you could get a Swiss visa,
    you had to show them that you can leave,
    you can go through unoccupied France.
    That you're really transit.
    Yes, yes.
    And your father was doing this.
    What about his brothers, who were
    managing the store that they had reestablished
    in Brno and so on?
    Well, of the siblings, five died in the Holocaust, of the 11.
    Five were killed in the Holocaust?
    They died one way or the other.
    Some by starvation and some by gassing.
    Some by other-- whatever other problems existed.
    OK.
    And were these brothers amongst those?
    Beg your pardon?
    The brothers who ran the store.
    Uncle David and Uncle Jacob who ran the store died.
    Uncle David died in the--
    The last time we heard from him was in the Warsaw Ghetto.
    Uncle David, according to my cousin who survived,
    he died of starvation.
    Because in Theresienstadt, which was
    the place that the Czechs Jews were sent first,
    there was very--
    the old people were most neglected,
    because there was just so much food to go around.
    So they were mostly interested in feeding the children
    and the younger people.
    OK.
    So half of your father's siblings--
    Not quite.
    A third.
    A third.
    OK.
    Well, five of 11.
    Yeah.
    Plus about 10 first cousins.
    Your father-- remind me again, did he
    have his business with a partner or with another brother?
    With another brother, with Paul.
    And Paul.
    What happened with Paul?
    Paul was arrested along with my father.
    OK.
    And spent time in a prison in Brno.
    And then the two of them were shipped to Dachau.
    Let's walk back a little bit and take me through that event.
    It's after the Germans already march into Czechoslovakia.
    Does your life change until this event?
    Or does it pretty much proceed but nervously,
    like it had before?
    Well, our life changed very quickly
    because my father was arrested in April.
    They marched in on 15th of March.
    He was arrested about a month later.
    At your home or at the office?
    At the office.
    So you didn't see this.
    No, I did not.
    OK.
    We only heard from an employee that the Gestapo
    came and arrested our father.
    And at the same day, the Gestapo came to Boskovice
    and arrested my uncle.
    And they were both put in prison.
    Were you able to see him while he was still in the prison?
    I was able to see him once, when he came to the apartment
    to transfer the ownership of the apartment to a German general.
    Oh, my.
    What was that like?
    I mean, I--
    It was a little strange, because we were in the apartment,
    and we had a governess who turned out to be a Nazi.
    And she told my brother and me to get dressed.
    We're going to have a visitor.
    So we got dressed, and then she told us to sit.
    We sat for a while, for quite a while.
    And then she came in and she said, OK, you can go.
    You can go see your father.
    We went into the salon, which was the salon.
    There was a table set up.
    There was a high officer sitting there
    with a lot of gold on him.
    And opposite him was my father in a blue jacket
    and blue pants.
    Like a prisoner's uniform?
    A prisoner's uniform.
    And it was a very short visit.
    He asked us how we were and are we OK.
    And we asked him how he is.
    He said he's fine.
    And maybe it lasted five minutes.
    And then we were told to leave.
    Shortly thereafter, we were given 24 hours
    to leave the apartment and go somewhere else.
    And it was just the two of you children at that point.
    At that point, there were just the two of us,
    and what had happened is that my uncle Isidore and my Aunt
    Sarah, the oldest of the 11 siblings
    who were kicked out of Austria, were
    living in this large apartment.
    That your father had just signed over.
    That he just signed over.
    So this is the old apartment in the center of town.
    No, this is a new apartment in the suburbs.
    No self-respecting general, German general would have--
    Taken the other one.
    Taken that other one.
    OK.
    Also my aunt and Gisella, the older sister of my mother,
    and her husband came from Berlin.
    And they moved into another room in our apartment.
    So they were there with you.
    So they were sort of guardians.
    And then there was the usual maids and the cook
    and the governess, the Nazi government.
    Do you remember her name?
    I remember the governess' name.
    Her name was Augusta Miksch.
    Augusta Miksch?
    Miksch, yes.
    OK.
    From the Sudetenland.
    As my mother used to say, "und Schlag soll sie treffen."
    "Und Schlag soll sie treffen."
    Sie treffen.
    Yeah.
    Some people would say maybe even more than that.
    Let me just make a point here.
    Summer 1939-- no, summer 1938, we, to our surprise,
    went for the summer holidays to Switzerland.
    Why surprise?
    Because the two previous years, we
    went to a very nice, small town in Czechoslovakia,
    and we lived on a farmstead, and had a wonderful time
    with a great St. Bernard dog.
    And there was a castle, a fortress
    nearby that we got to know very well, because we visited it
    regularly.
    It was just marvelous, two summers.
    And we were sure we were going to go back to that place.
    And then we said, no, we're going to Switzerland.
    And then, when September came along,
    and we were supposed to go back to Czechoslovakia,
    go to school, another miracle happened.
    We went to Italy instead.
    In September '38.
    Yes.
    And we were in Italy for a month.
    And then we went back to Switzerland.
    Now, for us it was fun, because we weren't going to school.
    But it was somewhat puzzling.
    Of course, now we recognize what my parents were doing--
    my father must have been struggling, whether to go back
    to the Czech Republic--
    Or not.
    Czechoslovakia, I should say, or whether to close up
    shop and leave.
    And a cousin of mine, a nephew of my father,
    met us in Switzerland.
    He had just been released from Buchenwald concentration camp.
    And he told my father, don't ever go back.
    Unfortunately, my father decided,
    I'd better go back to settle things
    and then we're going to leave.
    And that was it.
    That never happened.
    OK.
    Can we cut for a second?
    OK, so it was on decisions like this
    that so many destinies developed the way they did.
    So you go back.
    This is the summer of 1938, and then your mother goes
    and she gets her visa, or her citizenship back.
    She comes back.
    She's in Switzerland.
    Your father is arrested in April.
    Do you know when he was taken to Dachau,
    whether he stayed in that prison for weeks or months?
    He stayed there for maybe four months.
    Oh, in Dachau or in?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    No.
    In Brno?
    In the-- yeah, in Brno.
    And then he is transported to Dachau.
    Then he and his brother were sent to Dachau.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Did you know any of this at the time?
    Yes.
    I mean, we were just told by somebody, usually by employees
    or by relatives.
    OK.
    So when you're given 24 hours to leave,
    and your Aunt Gisella is there, and aunt--
    Uncle Isidore and his wife.
    And your mother's sister is there, the youngest one.
    Yeah, that's Gisella, yes.
    Oh, I thought she was the oldest one.
    Gisella is the oldest one.
    And Francesca was it, the youngest?
    No, no.
    She had left for the United States long before that.
    OK.
    So it's Gisella is there, and Uncle Isidore is there.
    That's her husband?
    Isidore is married to Sarah, my father's older sister.
    And--
    OK, got it, got it.
    And was Gisell--
    Gisella is married to Moritz--
    Moses, [? Rus ?],, on my mother's side.
    So you've got at least four adults who
    were kind of looking after--
    Kind of, yes.
    So where do all of you go after you're turned out of there?
    Uncle Isidore went to live with Uncle David.
    OK.
    And I can't tell you were Aunt Gisella went to.
    I do know that she and her two daughters and son
    ended up going to the United States.
    They were still, as I said, during the first four or five
    months, there were still opportunities for Jews
    to emigrate and leave, as long as they could get visas.
    So you have this strange situation,
    where some people are arrested right away,
    like your father and your uncle, and other people have a means
    to get out.
    You know, you have the possibility to get out.
    That's so unusual.
    Usually it's sort of like step by step
    it gets worse and worse and worse.
    As I said, the Germans were still
    learning how to conquer countries.
    Yeah, OK.
    Makes sense.
    And so--
    Whatever the situation was, the Jews that emigrated
    had to give up everything that they owned.
    I mean, whatever it was.
    What happened with you and your brother?
    Beg your pardon?
    What happens with you and your brother?
    Well, we went for a while to live with Uncle David.
    It was very nice.
    His wife was a lovely lady.
    She was really very nice.
    And then, maybe-- they were both older people.
    Particularly Uncle David had diabetes,
    which is, like a comedian once said,
    the Jews invented diabetes.
    But because there were my--
    there were several of the brothers were diabetic.
    So apparently it was getting a little difficult. At one point,
    I was told that if I wanted to, I and four of my schoolmates
    can go to work on a farm.
    I would work-- we would work six days a week.
    We would not work on Sunday, but we couldn't go back
    into the village.
    And we would get three meals a day, and a place to sleep,
    and sanitary facilities.
    And I took it.
    You're 12 years old.
    I'm 12 years old, yes.
    OK.
    Steven, initially I didn't know what happened to him,
    but then I learned that he went to live
    with a former maid of ours on a farm someplace in a village.
    Now, I have to assume that somewhere along the line,
    my uncles, one way or the other, paid this maid
    to keep my brother.
    Because he was what, eight years old.
    And that was the situation for about six months.
    In general, aside from the nanny,
    who turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer
    or Nazi herself, what about the other employees,
    whether they were household help or whether they
    were with the factory or the business?
    Was there any involvement with you after things got bad?
    Yes, as a matter of fact, the word
    was that one of my father's chauffeurs reported my father.
    He claimed that he was--
    the claim was that he was unfair to employees, that he took
    advantage of his employees.
    And that was the official reason why my father and his brother
    was arrested.
    That was Hubert.
    Hubert.
    Hugo.
    Hugo.
    Hugo, yes.
    Nice man.
    Well, had he been a nice man until then?
    Or had he been someone--
    No, he was-- he used to work for Uncle David.
    And Uncle David fired him because he used to drink.
    Ah.
    I assume he didn't stop drinking when he worked for my father,
    but he maybe kept it better hidden.
    What happened in those circumstances,
    that when the Jews were arrested and there
    was a business, that the Gestapo stop
    or whoever was in charge of this operation
    would select some German nationals,
    and make them the boss or the bookkeeper and so forth,
    and to transfer the operation to a German operation.
    So did Hugo get the business?
    No, he did not.
    It was a bookkeeper that got it.
    A bookkeeper got it.
    Yes.
    Who had-- aha.
    And this is jumping ahead a little bit,
    but did you ever get it back?
    No.
    So whatever your father had built up,
    whatever the family had built up, it remained lost.
    Including the factory we never got back,
    because the Czechs then wouldn't give it back to us.
    We claimed it, but they said, no, it's national property.
    The communists said it's national property.
    You can't have it back.
    Yeah.
    Now, I managed to get a few--
    the second apartment house that we built, where we lived,
    I managed to get that back from the Czechs by claiming it.
    Is this after 1990?
    This is well after 1990.
    This was like about 20 years ago.
    Late '90s.
    Yeah.
    Late '90s.
    So at any rate, it was no longer under a communist system.
    That's when you were able to get it back.
    Yeah, under the communist system,
    they absolutely ignored any claims that you made.
    OK.
    So you then go and work on this farm.
    Yes.
    Was it under the conditions that you described?
    Six days a week you work?
    That's exactly how it worked.
    Yes.
    And how many other boys were with you?
    There were four boys.
    All about the same age?
    Yeah, we were all schoolmates, from the same class.
    And where did you sleep?
    There was a room with enough beds.
    And that's where we slept.
    There was one room, and there was an outhouse.
    And--
    Were you well treated?
    What?
    Were you well treated?
    We did get our three meals a day, and we were--
    yes, we did normal usual farmwork.
    Such as?
    Weeding, pruning.
    You know, hauling stuff around.
    Was it ha-- was it far from Brno?
    It was maybe 30 miles away.
    It was near Prostejov, which was another large city.
    And was it a place where you felt safe?
    Yeah, we felt comparatively safe.
    Yeah, because-- yes, it was--
    we had very little exposure to anything or anybody,
    except the farmer and his family,
    and occasionally somebody that came
    to buy from the farm, or somebody that came to us
    bring something to the farm.
    But otherwise we didn't get--
    Mm-hmm.
    We were outside of normal communications
    with other people.
    And did you have communications from your uncles
    and your aunts during this time?
    No.
    Did you get letters?
    No.
    Except when I got a postcard from my uncle saying
    "come back to Brno."
    And that was in preparation for leaving.
    All right.
    So this is after half a year?
    After about six months.
    OK.
    So I would take this, we're talking now the war has
    started, it's September 1939.
    And you then get this postcard.
    Which uncle sent it to you?
    Uncle David.
    Uncle David.
    Yes.
    And so, do you go back?
    Yes.
    OK.
    And what do you find there when you get back to his home?
    I get back.
    I went to Uncle David.
    After two or three days, my brother arrived.
    And we were told to go to Prague and get our American visas,
    because the American visas have come through.
    And had you been to Prague before?
    No.
    Yes, we were.
    We were in Prague one time, on the day
    that the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia.
    No kidding.
    My father took a-- we took a night train to Prague.
    And we ended up in Prague, trying to get out.
    How can we get out of the country?
    And We.
    Were told there's a train to Vienna
    and that there isn't a train to Vienna.
    You can take a plane of the country.
    And then we were in a taxi to go somewhere--
    I don't know exactly where--
    when we ran into the Nazi army coming up the other way.
    Oh my goodness.
    And--
    So you literally see the German army coming in.
    Yes.
    And in Germany, they drove on the right side of the street.
    And in the Czechoslovakia, still drove on the left side.
    Like the British.
    Like the British.
    And so of course, when the Nazis came in, they drove on the side
    like they do in Germany, which gave our taxi driver just about
    enough time to get on the sidewalk
    and get out of the way of the trucks.
    And then we sat there as truck after truck after truck,
    and each one had soldiers sitting at attention
    on top of the truck and towing a piece of artillery,
    passing by, passing--
    Must've gone on for half hour, 45 minutes.
    And this was totally by coincidence.
    You had no idea that it was going to happen.
    No.
    Well, this is how you take over a country.
    You send the army in.
    And of course, they were going into Prague.
    After we survived that, we got on the train
    and went back to Brno.
    So that was the one time I was in Prague.
    And now it's the second time.
    And now is the second time.
    My brother and I took a morning train
    and found our way to the embassy or consulate.
    I think it was the same place.
    Embassy and consulate were in the same building.
    And we were told to wait.
    And we waited and waited.
    And sometime after lunch--
    not our lunch-- we were ushered into a room.
    And there was a very large man sitting
    behind a very large desk.
    And he spoke German to us.
    And he did a lot of paper shuffling, and stamping,
    and signing, and asking questions.
    And the one thing I was fascinated by
    was the fact that he would light up a cigarette,
    take one or two puffs, and then put it out.
    And the ashtray was full of these long--
    Cigarette butts.
    Cigarette butts.
    And I was calculating how much money
    I could make if I could just get this ashtray.
    Because not only were they cigarettes,
    which were impossible to get, but American cigarettes.
    God.
    I never got the cigarettes.
    [LAUGHTER]
    But I did get a bunch of papers.
    And we took the train back--
    To Brno.
    To Brno.
    Yes, the two of us.
    And what did those papers allow you to do?
    It allowed us to go to the Portuguese--
    I didn't do it.
    Somebody did it for us.
    To the Portuguese consulate and say, "you see?
    These folks can go to the United States.
    Would you allow them to travel through your country?"
    And they said OK.
    And then that somebody took that papers to Spain,
    to the Spanish consulate, and got--
    The Spanish visa.
    A visa to the Spanish, and then to the occupied France--
    unoccupied France.
    Which was still a pseudo country.
    And then finally Switzerland.
    And then we got our exit visa.
    Yeah, exit.
    Now, during that time--
    excuse me.
    Would you like a drink of water?
    Yes, could you stop a second?
    Yeah, sure.
    Let's have a drink.
    We were talking about the various countries
    and other people who were getting you those transit
    places.
    OK.
    OK.
    So--
    At that time, while this procedure was going on,
    my father arrived, having been released from Dachau.
    And he comes back to Brno.
    He comes back to Brno, and we see him.
    What about Uncle Paul?
    Uncle Paul died in Dachau.
    He was killed in Dachau.
    But he stayed and then later was killed.
    My father looked very strange.
    Tell me how.
    First of all, he looked young.
    He looked younger.
    That's weird.
    Because he had lost weight, quite a bit of weight.
    He didn't have a mustache any longer.
    And the hair, where he had combed over
    to cover his bald spot was gone.
    He looked a lot like my Uncle Victor,
    who was much younger, the younger brother.
    It was very, very surprising.
    How long had he been in Dachau now?
    He was more than a year in Dachau.
    So in other words, we're now into 1940.
    We're now into July 1940.
    Yes.
    So he was in from early 1939 to 1940, mid-1940.
    OK.
    And all my papers and my brother's papers came through.
    We had our had all our visas, everything.
    And we got our exit permit from the Germans.
    And the deadline was, I think, the 31st of July
    we had to get out.
    What about your father?
    Why was he released?
    We didn't know.
    All we knew is he was released.
    As a matter of fact, he told us later
    that when the gate told him that he can go, he hesitated to go,
    because they thought-- he was afraid
    that they're going to shoot him in the back
    because he tried to escape.
    Yeah.
    It's normal to think that.
    You know?
    But he just-- they just let him go.
    And ended up in Munich.
    And from Munich, he managed to get to Brno.
    How that happened is that there was something
    that was going on in the United States,
    which we didn't learn until many year-- many maybe a year later.
    OK.
    So we had to leave before the deadline,
    and my father's papers were not ready yet.
    So Steven and I had to leave.
    And so one day we went to the train station in Vienna--
    in Brno.
    And we got on a train to go to Vienna.
    So you were 13 years old.
    I was--
    And you're the older of the two.
    --just 13, and Steven was 9.
    And all our papers were stamped with a big J
    by the Germans, a big red J. So that when
    we got to the Austrian border and the inspectors got
    on the train and looked at our visa,
    the moment they opened the front page and then
    the guy that took--
    got the papers first handed it to the next guy,
    who handed it to the next guy, until everybody
    in that group of police officers had to examine--
    I imagine they must have wondered
    what these two little Jews are doing traveling to Vienna.
    But papers were in order.
    And after scaring us, we ended up getting to Vienna.
    Was there anybody to meet you there?
    Yes.
    And I have no idea who it was.
    Really?
    I know what the relationship was.
    All I know--
    I was told--
    I was given a slip of paper with a name and a telephone number.
    Excuse me.
    OK.
    Let's cut the camera.
    All I knew, they said she's supposed to meet you there.
    If she doesn't meet you then, call,
    exchange some of the money to shillings
    and make a phone call.
    And if-- I don't remember that they said,
    and if she doesn't answer what do you do next.
    I don't remember that.
    But she was there.
    They took us to her home.
    We slept there.
    And in the morning--
    I mean, in the evening, we made a decision
    not to open our suitcases.
    We were given permission to take 20 kilos of stuff.
    And before-- and the recommendation
    was that we should have it sealed.
    So after we collected what we wanted to take,
    which in my case was mostly books
    and a little bit of a photo album, but that's about all
    I took.
    And a few clothes, but very little.
    We took it to the Gestapo, and the Gestapo
    examined everything carefully, and then closed it, locked it,
    and then put a seal around it.
    And we decided that when we arrived in Vienna
    not to open it.
    We slept in our underwear, wore the same clothes
    the next morning.
    And it was an altogether wise move.
    She took us to the railroad station,
    where we waited for the train to Switzerland.
    And then we got on that train.
    And we traveled to Switzerland.
    Except the fact that when we got to the Swiss border,
    the train stopped.
    And it would not continue any further.
    And we were told, everybody, to get off the train.
    By that time, there were only about maybe 20 people
    on the train.
    Because there are not too many people
    that could travel back and forth around Europe.
    It's wartime.
    Yeah.
    And we were told to--
    there was a wooden shack on the side of the train tracks.
    And on another rail, facing towards Switzerland
    was a train consisting of a locomotive and one car.
    It was just sitting there, huffing and puffing.
    And we were told to just sit down, turn in our exit
    visa and our passports.
    And then, from time to time, an officer
    would come out of the shack, yell out a name,
    and would inspect the suitcases of the person that was leaving,
    and then give him his papers, and tell
    him to get on the train.
    And that process continued, one at a time.
    So it's nerve racking.
    And then we were the last ones.
    Now, just before we left, my father gave me an overcoat,
    and said "bring this to America.
    That's for your brother."
    And I objected to this, because I said,
    we're only allowed to take clothes for ourselves.
    That's what it says, and I don't want to do it.
    You know, and I said, this is a big coat
    It obviously it doesn't fit me.
    Nobody would believe that this is my coat.
    And we had quite a battle.
    And he finally insisted.
    He showed me a certain way that you can fold it
    and that nobody can tell how big it is.
    Well, when we were sitting there,
    and we were all the last ones waiting for our passports,
    I decided it's this blasted coat that's the problem.
    It's this stupid coat.
    I knew I shouldn't have taken it.
    And I went to the outhouse, which I had previously visited,
    and I stuffed the coat into the toilet-- into the outhouse.
    And it worked.
    Because after I came back, an officer
    came out, handed us the papers, and told
    us to get on the train.
    And that little train chugged across the border
    to Margrethenberg, if I remember.
    It was a small village.
    And there we met our mother, who we hadn't seen for two years.
    And that was the way it ended.
    That's how we got out.
    After that, there was still the challenge of getting to Lisbon.
    And that was another problem.
    Did your father get his papers?
    My father got his papers, and he came and joined us
    some month and a half after we arrived in Zurich.
    Did you tell him what you did with the coat?
    You know, he never asked.
    He never asked.
    From my-- you know something, I was convinced
    there was money in that coat.
    I don't believe it.
    OK.
    I cannot believe that my father would jeopardize--
    True, true.
    --our exit to put some diamonds or money into that coat.
    And if there was, I don't believe it.
    I just--
    OK, you're right.
    Never thought it was.
    You're right, you're right, you're right.
    I wouldn't either.
    As a parent, I wouldn't.
    And I want my kids to get out.
    I cannot imagine that he would have done such a thing.
    You're right, you're right.
    But as you were telling me, I kept thinking, "oh my God.
    There's something in that coat."
    No, no.
    OK.
    I don't-- I mean, I didn't think of it at the time,
    but afterwards I did.
    And I never believed, even for a moment,
    that he would have done something like that.
    And he never asked for it later?
    He never asked what happened to the coat.
    I don't know.
    I don't even know whether he remembered
    that he gave it to us.
    He was not in very good shape at the time, you know?
    Had his manner changed when he had come back from Dachau?
    His personality?
    Not really.
    I can't tell.
    He was quieter.
    He and mother had a lot to talk about all the time,
    that we were not privy to.
    I know he had some--
    he went to the representative that
    had collected all the money from the friend, who had received
    a letter from the New owners of his business,
    demanding that any money that he may have,
    that he collected from customers,
    must be delivered to Brno.
    And he refused to release the money to my father.
    And there was a huge scene in the office
    with a lot of yelling, but he refused
    to sign the papers to release the money.
    Oh my goodness.
    So that went back to Brno.
    Oh, how bitter.
    Yeah.
    How bitter.
    I don't know what happened to the Swedish money.
    I do know that when we arrived in the United States,
    we had about $8,000.
    And that may have been the Swedish money, for all I know.
    And that was about it.
    That's all we had.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember any of your trip from Switzerland to Portugal?
    I remember every moment.
    Tell me.
    Tell me.
    Well, the trip, we first traveled by train to Geneva.
    Mm-hmm.
    In Geneva, we boarded a bus, which must
    have been 20, 30 years old.
    It was an old bus.
    And there were maybe 15, 18 people on the bus.
    It was fairly crowded.
    And the bus started to travel.
    And it was an old bus.
    And you felt every rock, every stone that we went over.
    And then it went up into the Pyrenees,
    to go over into Barcelona.
    And the trip over the Pyrenees Mountains
    was just hair-raising.
    Because first of all, sometimes you were literally--
    I had the window seat.
    You were literally looking down--
    Oh, God.
    --into a precipice when it was up at the mountains.
    And this-- this bus ground, you know, it was in third gear
    and in second gear, working its way up the mountain.
    And then of course, when it came to the top of the mountain,
    they started going down.
    And he had it in low gears.
    The engine screamed.
    It's like a bus with asthma.
    Well, I mean, the downhill was more exciting--
    more frightening than the uphill,
    because apparently the brakes didn't hold the bus.
    God.
    The engine was off, which is a common way on a vehicle, a car,
    or truck, or bus that has gear shift.
    You put it into low gear, which just has the engine
    working high speed, and keeping the vehicle from running away.
    And then of course, no sooner you were down at the bottom,
    you started back up again.
    This went on for what seemed to be an eternity.
    But we finally got out of the mountains.
    And then we arrived in Barcelona.
    And we had a reservation at some hotel.
    And the next morning, we were supposed
    to catch a train to Vienna.
    no, to Lisbon.
    No, to Madrid.
    From Barcelona to Madrid.
    And we went for a walk.
    And this was shortly after the Spanish Civil War.
    Yeah, several years--
    And Barcelona was the headquarters
    of the Republicans.
    And the city looked disastrous.
    I mean, every building had marks on it, or had shattered walls.
    And people were walking around without legs and without arms.
    And it was really a horrible sight,
    that we went for that walk.
    We got on the train to Madrid.
    And the Ebro River had flooded.
    And so for the next hour, we were going through water.
    We didn't see any rails.
    We didn't see any ground.
    Just the red river water, and the train was slowly
    going through this flood.
    What was the name of the river?
    Ebro.
    Ebro?
    How do we spell it?
    Yeah, E-B-R-O.
    E-B-- Ebro.
    OK.
    OK.
    When we got to Madrid, I guess we shouldn't
    have been surprised that we missed our train from Madrid
    to Barcelona--
    Or to Lisbon.
    To Lisbon.
    To Lisbon.
    The train had left, and that was it.
    Now, we had to catch a ship that was leaving the following day.
    And we were told, if you miss that ship, that's it.
    You were stuck.
    There were a lot of rumors.
    I mean, things were said and told
    that didn't turn out to be true.
    Some of them were beliefs, and some of them were rumors,
    and some of them were deliberate lies.
    And sometimes fear.
    The thing you fear the most.
    They'll leave without me.
    You know?
    So my father, I remember, was desperate trying to--
    can we take a slow train instead of taking an express?
    Can we do this?
    Can we do that?
    And then, no, he was convinced that the guy
    that he was talking to--
    from American Express, by the way,
    which was an express company, [? arrange ?] trips--
    that he was just trying to make some money from a hotel
    that he'd put us up in.
    But we ended up staying overnight, and taking the train
    the following day.
    We got to Lisbon on a Sunday.
    And we went immediately to the shipping company,
    whose offices were closed.
    That was the American export line.
    It was the only passenger ships that
    were going from Europe to the United States.
    Remember, the United States were not at war in 1940 as yet.
    So first thing Monday morning, we were there.
    And they said, "no, your ship left already."
    Oh, jeez.
    "But don't worry.
    We can get you a place on the next ship."
    I mean, it was just like a stone fell off our shoulders,
    that we could stay.
    So now we had four or five days to spend in--
    Lisbon.
    In Lisbon.
    We walked around.
    It was a nice city.
    We went to the seashore.
    And interesting, I took--
    my wife and I went to Lisbon.
    And I remembered everything, where it was.
    There was a-- there was an elevator, a municipal elevator
    that was designed and built by Eiffel.
    There was a place where there were two levels of the city.
    And Eiffel had designed a municipal elevator.
    Like one of these open things that is a funicular?
    No, no, no.
    Not that?
    Actually an elevator.
    An actual elevator.
    And it was two elevators.
    One went up, and then the other one went down.
    OK.
    And I remembered seeing it.
    And then when we were there, we took the elevator.
    I had to take my wife to the elevator.
    I knew where the seashore was.
    I knew everything, where everything--
    I didn't remember the hotel where we were.
    But I knew where the castle was.
    I knew all of that.
    And that's decades later, when you go back.
    This was like 50 years later.
    Yeah.
    And we got on board ship, the USS Excambian.
    Excambian.
    The USS Excambian became a military transport
    during the war.
    It was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Pacific,
    and is now a great place for scuba divers to visit fish.
    That's what is said about the Excambian.
    Do you remember the date you got onboard?
    I remember the date when we arrived in the United States.
    What date?
    It was November 6, 1940.
    November 6, 1940.
    Wow.
    Why do I remember that?
    Why do you remember it?
    Tell me.
    Because when we arrived in New York, we arrived at a pier.
    That was still when were piers, where passenger ships arrived.
    And my mother said that somebody is going
    to be there to welcome us.
    So we were looking through the crowd that was lined up on.
    And finally she said, "oh, there they are, there they are,
    There they are."
    And there were two uncles.
    One of them was Uncle Bill, which we recognized
    because we knew them.
    And he says, "This is Ernest."
    And they were waving a newspaper at us.
    And the front page of the paper had a big picture
    of President Roosevelt, which we knew what he looked like.
    Because we--
    And my brother said, "why are they--" I said, "I don't know.
    Maybe he died."
    He must have died.
    Now, why they-- well, it turned out
    that was the year when Roosevelt was elected
    to his third term in November.
    And this was the day after the election.
    Of course.
    And the newspaper was announcing that he had won the election
    to his third term.
    Wow.
    The one and only time we've had a third term president.
    And a fourth term later.
    Four years later.
    Yeah.
    So that's why I remember.
    I could look it up.
    Of course.
    When was the election in 1940 and what was the day
    after that.
    Oh my goodness.
    So that's how we remembered that.
    So tell me now.
    You mentioned earlier, kind of hinted, that all of this
    came to pass because somebody was behind the scenes,
    making sure that you could get these exit visas,
    making sure that your father could be released.
    What happened?
    What was going on?
    This was something that was going on in the United States.
    It was completely unknown to us.
    Who was doing what?
    What?
    Well, my mother's two brothers, Uncle Julius and Uncle Ernest,
    who were in the public relations business,
    they both were also journalists at some point.
    Uncle Julius--
    From Chicago, bother of them--
    Both of them in Chicago.
    I mean, my mother's family was all in Chicago.
    Julius had joined the Illinois National Guard
    and rose to the level of first Lieutenant.
    In 1933, Chicago staged a grandiose world exposition
    called A Century of Progress, marking 100 years since Chicago
    was declared a city.
    And it was a very big event.
    Sometime during that-- this exposition, Mussolini,
    the dictator of Italy, decided to send five or six
    military planes to Chicago, to show off
    the might and the expertise of Italian aircraft,
    military aircraft.
    And the man who was in charge of this flight was a Colonel Italo
    Balbo, B-A-L-B-O, Italo Balbo.
    And my Uncle Julius, who was a great dealer in influence,
    managed to get himself to be the military host to this colonel.
    And he saw to it that he and his pilots,
    and navigators, et cetera, enjoyed their stay in Chicago
    while they were there.
    Now, seven years later, he and his brother Ernest
    are desperate to try to get myself and Steven and my father
    out of Germany.
    And they, again, because they were great dealers
    in influence, convinced a Congressman, a famous,
    well-known Congressman of Italian lineage--
    What was his name?
    I have a copy of the letter that he wrote.
    I don't remember.
    OK.
    --to write a letter to what is now Generalissimo Italo
    Balbo, the commander of the Italian Air Force
    and governor of all the governed--
    of all the territories conquered by Italy in Africa.
    Wrote to him and said, "you know,
    as a friend and a colleague and whatever,
    I wonder whether you will be so--
    have the heart to reunite a family that is suffering from
    separation, people that have been friends of mine
    for da-da-da-da-da-da."
    And sent it to the Generalissimo.
    And received-- this particular Congressman received an answer,
    saying, "I sympathize with the family and the problems
    that current conditions in Europe have put on them,
    and I would be very happy to do whatever
    I can to reunite them and have them
    reunite with their mother."
    Remember, this was so they could reunite with the mother,
    the children can reunite with their mother.
    "However, my relationship with the authorities in Berlin
    are not in very good standing.
    However, I'm going to send this case to my adjutant in Berlin,
    a Colonel Teucci, and I will ask him to see what he can do."
    Shortly thereafter, within a month and a half or so,
    Generalissimo Balbo's plane crashed,
    and the Generalissimo was killed.
    Among knowing people, it was accepted
    that the plane crashed because the Germans sabotaged
    the plane, because they wanted to get rid of Balbo, because he
    was against Italy joining Germany in any war
    in the future.
    Oh, wow.
    Upon which my uncles got a letter from Colonel Teucci
    from Berlin, saying "with the regretful demise of my boss,
    the great and late lamented Generalissimo Balbo,
    my influence here in Berlin has greatly diminished,
    and I'm afraid there's nothing I can do."
    Upon which, my uncles induced a correspondent, a reporter--
    now, to this day, I don't know whether it
    was a male or female reporter, because the name is kind of--
    I don't remember the name.
    The name is kind of either way.
    They convinced this reporter to write a letter to Benito
    Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, which apparently--
    which initially did a lot of complimenting,
    pointing out that this reporter was part of the black shirts,
    when Italy--
    when Mussolini was first organizing the fascists,
    and that he was with him when he marched on to Rome,
    and then he reported favorably his exploits,
    and that he was always a loyal supporter of his da-da-da-da
    and so forth.
    And by the way, he's late lamented--
    one of the last wishes of the late, lamented,
    and great Generalissimo Balbo was
    to reunite this family of the two children
    that haven't seen their mother da-da-da, and husband.
    And would you see it, that you would cause this to grant
    the wish of Generalissimo?"
    And apparently somebody in the Italian government
    went to the Germans and convinced them to do this.
    And that's how my brother and I got the exit permits
    and my father got released from the Dachau concentration camp
    and my uncle didn't get released,
    and was allowed to leave-- and be allowed to leave.
    Wow.
    That's how it happened.
    Now--
    Wow.
    --I have been lecturing mostly high school
    kids about the Holocaust.
    Yeah.
    And sooner or later, they always ask me, well,
    how did you get out?
    And I hesitate greatly to tell this story,
    lest they believe that this is like, well, you know--
    Just write a letter and it can happen.
    I make a point when I do these lectures.
    Before I tell them this story, I made a point
    to tell them any Jew.
    that was living under the Nazis in Europe,
    and that included half of Russia,
    and all the countries except for Switzerland and Sweden
    and Spain, any Jew that lived under those and survived
    had a miracle.
    Because unless you had a miracle, you could not survive.
    And then I cite some examples, like my good friend,
    my lifelong friend Paul, who was a 16-year-old,
    was in the line-up at Auschwitz, going over to the Gestapo
    to be selected, whether to go left or right, when
    a friend of his father came up behind him and said,
    "when they ask you how old you are, tell them you're 16."
    I'm sorry.
    He was 14.
    So when he came up and the guy asked him "how old are you?"
    he said, "I'm 16."
    And he and his father went to the right.
    His mother and his younger sister went to the left.
    And that was the miracle, how he survived.
    Had he said he was 14, he would have gone with his mother,
    and he would have been dead two or three hours later.
    I cite another example of a friend, who had a sleepover.
    She was at a different apartment with a friend on that night
    when the Gestapo came to arrest the family.
    And as a result of that, her old family,
    whole family was arrested, but she survived.
    That was her miracle, that on that particular night
    she was not at home.
    And I cite several other examples
    like that, that I learned.
    Those uncles of yours were talented and persistent.
    That's why I have a file of these papers.
    They approached anybody-- as I said,
    they were basically influence peddlers.
    And they-- I have letters, an answer from former President
    Hoover.
    I have letters from--
    copies of letters from the minister.
    Minister-- say from the secretary of state,
    saying "I'm sorry.
    I can't help you."
    I mean, most of them were "I'm sorry.
    I can't help you."
    I have copies of letters from the American Red Cross,
    and from the International Red Cross saying,
    "we can't be of assistance."
    They tried.
    I have telegrams from senators, copies of telegrams
    of senators, of several senators that were involved
    in trying to do something.
    And letters from the--
    copies of letters from the American consulate in Zurich,
    advising them that my mother is OK.
    She's living.
    She has money to live from, and she's
    surviving, although she's very just distraught.
    I mean, they really went after anybody
    that they could possibly reach.
    And this was desperation time.
    When did they tell your father and your mother this?
    When we arrived in Chicago.
    Yeah?
    And--
    We didn't know how we got there.
    And my mother didn't know how we got there.
    Although she knew that--
    she was saying that your that Julius and Ernest
    were working hard on this.
    But we didn't know at the time.
    And even when we heard it, we didn't necessarily believe it.
    Because it was so far fetched.
    Yeah.
    Really.
    When you think about it, all the usual sources say,
    "sorry, I can't help you."
    Yeah.
    It was just--
    What were they like as people, Uncle Julius and Uncle Ernest?
    Because they're really the saviors of the day.
    Yes, they are.
    I regret that I never quite thanked them.
    You know?
    You're doing it now.
    I never-- No, I never did.
    That's OK.
    That's all right.
    Yeah.
    This too I will survive.
    We're coming close to the end.
    Is there something--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Whoops.
    Let's cut the camera.
    Perfect timing.
    Is there something that I haven't asked you, something
    that for you is an essential part of your story,
    that you'd want us to know, that you'd
    want to share with everybody?
    You have done a very thorough job.
    Thank you.
    And you've made it easy for me.
    You're welcome.
    By guiding me along, and by keeping
    track of the facts, which sometimes I
    have problems keeping track of.
    I did write a book, which unfortunately
    was too ambitious, and it's 400 pages long,
    of a large book, 400 pages long.
    So nobody reads it.
    Oh!
    One cousin said to me that it makes a good doorstop.
    Oh, good God!
    [LAUGHTER]
    Only a cousin can get away with that.
    And another cousin-- another cousin
    told me that she reads in bed, but I can't read this book
    in bed because I can't hold it.
    It's too heavy.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So it was a mistake.
    And as a matter of fact, I'm in the process
    of taking bits of pieces out of the book
    and making up little short stories out of--
    and as a matter of fact, just today
    I received a copy of the Jewish Standard, which is a magazine.
    And they had published one of my articles
    that is out of that particular book.
    But--
    In one interview I know we can never capture it all.
    You can never do it.
    What I hope with an interview is that we get down what you think
    is the most important, that there are-- yeah.
    I approached the museum about this,
    because I visited the museum.
    Our museum in Washington.
    Your museum in Washington.
    We had made a sizable donation, and they
    wanted to show us around.
    Actually, they wanted to show us where our name is
    hammered into the wall.
    Which is not the purpose of the--
    anyway, and they took me to the library,
    where I thought I was going to find books,
    but I found a man with a computer.
    The archives.
    And he explained to me what the archives are
    and what they're doing.
    This was quite a while ago, maybe 15, 20 years ago.
    I still have his business card and his name.
    And what was interesting, there was a group
    of high school girls that had just arrived there also
    when I arrived.
    And I said to this gentleman, "you mean you have these?"
    He says, "yes, I can pull up anybody you want.
    Do you want to listen to somebody?"
    I said, "all right.
    One person who survived the Holocaust
    is a cousin, a female cousin who survived.
    And I'm sure she had made a testimony.
    Could you play her?
    Her name is so-and-so and so-and-so."
    And within two minutes, I heard her voice.
    She had passed away since.
    And she started talking about--
    and the kids heard what she was saying.
    And these are not kids.
    They were high school girls.
    And I was just fascinated by hearing her voice
    and hearing her talk in English.
    She learned English.
    And it was a heavy accented but good English.
    From father's or mother's side?
    On my father's side.
    She was the daughter of the one brother who died,
    quote, young, unquote.
    He died at 48 of leukemia.
    Ah.
    She and her older sister survived.
    Her older sister left the Czech Republic somehow.
    The younger one didn't leave.
    Couldn't leave or didn't leave, and ended up
    going to Theresienstadt, and from Theresienstadt
    to Auschwitz.
    And from Auschwitz to a work camp.
    When she was notified that she has to report,
    she and a man that she knew got married.
    Because they wanted to.
    And he said he wanted to go with her.
    So the two of them went to Theresienstadt together.
    Somewhere along the line with the going to Auschwitz
    and so forth, they separated.
    Her survival, again what her miracle
    was, because they were working these women to death,
    and not only that, but it was winter, and all they had
    was one dress, no underwear, and one pair of something
    that passed for shoes.
    A man came in and said, "does anybody know anything
    about electricity?"
    And she volunteered.
    She didn't know anything about it,
    but she knew how to turn on a light and turn it off.
    It turned out that this was the electrician that
    went around the camp to fix things electrical.
    And what her job was to carry his tool chest.
    And that's what you did.
    And you know how to carry that.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And one time, he asked her, this is her--
    she told this to me.
    Because we did talk about it a little bit.
    But she didn't tell me all the details.
    One day, he asked her to climb up a ladder.
    And she said, "I'm sorry.
    I can't do that."
    And he was shocked.
    "What do you mean, you can't do that?
    I'll send you back to the barracks.
    Why can't you do that?"
    She says, "I don't have any underwear."
    The next day, he brought a pair of long johns, long underwear.
    And she said the relationship changed a little bit.
    Because then when the barracks had
    to stand at attention, because something had happened
    in the barracks, or something-- somebody had escaped
    or something, he always made sure
    that she had something essential to do,
    so that she wouldn't have to stand out
    in the winter with nothing on and freeze.
    And that's how she survived.
    Wow.
    That's how she-- that was her miracle.
    And so it is you at the museum listening to this?
    That was some of that, yes.
    And the kids-- we didn't get to that part.
    That was something she told me.
    Now, she was a midwife in Theresienstadt.
    Believe it or not, there were women having babies.
    And she worked with a certain doctor.
    And after she was released and after the war,
    she came back to Brno, and so did the doctor.
    And you know, they knew each other.
    And he was alone, and she was alone.
    And about five years later--
    and she searched for her husband and couldn't find him.
    About five years later, she's walking on the street of Brno,
    and she runs into her husband that she had married
    before she went to the camp.
    By that time, she had a baby, a boy by the doctor.
    Now, there was a crisis that I know nothing about.
    I just know by hearsay.
    And I think the reason she joined her real husband was
    because my uncle Alfred in Israel
    would not extend the visa to her if she came to Israel with--
    With the doctor.
    With the doctor.
    And so she and her real husband and the boy
    went to the United States.
    Went to Israel, Palestine, essentially.
    The fact that this boy was not the son of her husband
    became his family secret that everybody knew.
    Everybody knew.
    When I was writing the book, the real husband
    was driving me to the railroad station.
    And I asked him, "can I ask you a question?
    Does your son know that you are not his father?"
    And he said, "no, he doesn't."
    So it's not in the book.
    I didn't write it in the book.
    About two years ago, this boy, who
    is now an adult with a wife, and children, and grandchildren,
    visits me, us in Israel, and says,
    "do you know a Dr. Ryshavy?"
    I said, yes.
    "Do you know what he has to do with me?"
    I says, "how do you know he's got anything to do with you?"
    "Well, I just got a notice from somebody in the Czech Republic
    that I inherited a house, but I no longer can get it.
    I mean, but I did inherit a house,
    but I can't claim it any longer."
    And the house belonged to a Dr. Ryshavy.
    Why should Dr. Ryshavy give me a house?"
    I said, "because he was your father."
    Oh, God.
    Anyway, I couldn't have said no.
    Yeah.
    And then did you tell him the story?
    Yeah.
    You can't ima-- you can't imagine how much pain
    the Holocaust caused people.
    Not those that died.
    Sometimes the ones that died were best [? results. ?]
    Because those that survived had to live with it.
    We have a neighbor next door to us
    that spent five years in different camps, which
    she suffered from.
    And after that, the people that she lost
    and the family that-- it's just awful.
    Thank you for sharing that.
    Happy to do it.
    There are no words to describe such a situation.
    Everybody lost in that situation.
    All four people-- the first husband, the second one,
    the mother, and the child.
    Yeah.
    All of them.
    And it's interesting about my Uncle Alfred.
    I recorded-- I have 10 cassettes that I recorded
    much of the information about the family that's
    in the book I wrote, with things that he told me.
    And he said that Lilly came one day to him,
    and said she wants to get 100 British pounds.
    Excuse me.
    Is Lilly your cousin?
    That was a cousin.
    Mm-hmm.
    And he said, "no, I won't give it to you, because I
    know why you want the money.
    Because you want to divorce your husband,
    and I'm not going to help you."
    Ah.
    So she stayed with him and remained with him
    throughout the years.
    Wow, wow.
    That was a--
    I should mention Uncle Alfred.
    There were--
    Your father's brother, Uncle Alfred.
    My father.
    There were two brothers.
    One got into Palestine in 1912.
    That was the doctor.
    He was an ophthalmologist, Dr. Abraham Albert Ticho.
    He had a fight with--
    not a fight.
    He was annoyed and disgusted by the antisemitism in Vienna,
    when he as a doctor and a diplom--
    with a diploma--
    Diploma.
    --and everything had difficulty finding a position, a job.
    And he was offered a job to head an eye clinic in Jerusalem.
    And he accepted the position and went in 1912 to Jerusalem
    to accept this position.
    And did probably more than anyone else
    to eliminate trachoma in the country.
    And he did it by teaching the children what to do
    to keep flies out of the house.
    Because the flies carried trachoma.
    You couldn't reach the adults, but he went to schools
    and explained that you shouldn't have a houseful of fly.
    In the Middle East, flies were like--
    Flies.
    --breathing.
    Yeah.
    And he is credited with eliminating this disease which
    blinded people.
    There were a lot of blind people because of trachoma.
    Then in 1914, when the war started,
    the First World War, he was assigned to Beirut,
    to the Austrian military hospital as an eye doctor,
    and spent the war there.
    When he came back, the clinic that he was heading was gone,
    and he started his own clinic.
    And he became the leading ophthalmologist
    in the Middle East for many years,
    and was highly recognized.
    His wife was an artist, and is today
    considered one of the best known artists, Anna Ticho, that
    came out of Israel.
    His youngest brother, Alfred, the youngest of the boys,
    was a member of Maccabi and so forth.
    And he decided that he was going to become a chalutz.
    What's a chalutz?
    Chalutz is one that goes to work on the fields,
    in the agriculture, and build the country.
    They were going to build a the country.
    And he went to Palestine after the war in 1918.
    Before that he took courses in agriculture,
    and he was teaching at the one big agricultural school
    in Israel, in Palestine or Israel.
    And after he finished with that, he
    became one of the first 13 residents
    of the city, the city of--
    there are times when my mind just doesn't--
    anyway, he was one of the first 13 houses built in that city,
    which is now a considerable city.
    He occupied and lived there until he became well-to-do
    and moved into an apartment in Tel Aviv, when he had
    a lot of lands to administer.
    But what he did as a business, particularly after the Nazis
    came to power in Germany, was to visit the Jews in Europe
    and convince them to buy property
    in Israel, in Palestine, and that it's a good investment.
    And besides that, it gets money, some of their money out
    of the country.
    Now, all of that was not exactly legal,
    so this operation was always under the table.
    But that's how he convinced my uncles,
    all the Vienna uncles, with the exception of Dr. Reiniger,
    Sarah's husband, were able to--
    and I'm sorry, saying all of the brothers.
    Many of the brothers, or several of the brothers,
    were able to go to Palestine, because they had purchased
    these properties and could show to the British
    that they are landowners.
    And because they were landowners,
    they were not included in the quota.
    Because the British decided that there was a quarter of how many
    Jews can come into Palestine.
    Because the Arabs were giving them a hard time.
    So with each person that you're telling me about,
    there's a whole world, you know?
    Yeah, yeah.
    It is.
    It is.
    And in those details is when we get to see what are--
    The three attorneys-- the three attorneys
    and the owner of the jewelry store
    came to Palestine because they had bought property
    at the inducement of my uncle, and were
    allowed to enter Palestine.
    It ended up being a lifesaver.
    Not just an investment, but a life saver.
    No, no, no.
    It wasn't an investment.
    It was a life saver.
    As it turned out, my father and three of his brothers
    bought a large orange grove in Hadera, which was essentially
    in the middle of town.
    The main street ended up at the front door of the--
    it was 150 dunams.
    I don't know what that is in--
    Acres?
    In the British-- but it was a very large piece of property.
    And that remained in the family.
    My father bought 1/3 over half, so 1/6.
    And the other 2/6 were bought by other Viennese uncles.
    And the other, the big half was bought
    by Dr. Ticho, the eye doctor.
    And the agreement was done when he passed away,
    and his wife was still alive, that his wife can
    live in the building where the clinic was, where his hospital
    was until she passes away.
    But that after that, his half would go to the family.
    And ultimately, that piece of property was sold,
    and the moneys were distributed to the members of the Ticho
    family, all the relatives.
    I received a portion of it, and I in turn sent--
    my younger brother by that time was dead.
    I remember I sent checks for $50,000
    to each one of the three children.
    Wow.
    And I think I had gotta about $150,000.
    And my older brother got that kind of--
    from that property.
    So it put a lot of people into a much better financial situation
    than they were before.
    So these are some of the--
    The legacies.
    My cousin-- and this is a story I should tell.
    You know, I've mentioned that Uncle Isidore and his wife
    and are Gisella and her husband were staying with us
    in the apartment.
    One day, the brother who was in Dachau,
    who was in Dachau with my Father--
    Paul.
    Paul.
    Paul.
    Yeah.
    His mother-- his wife came over on a Friday evening.
    We were having Shabbat dinner.
    And essentially-- and this was told to me by Gisella
    later, much later.
    I wasn't there when this happened.
    We were not allowed to sit at the Shabbat table,
    not with my Uncle Isidore.
    That she said, I don't know what to do.
    My husband is in Dachau.
    I can't consult with him.
    But I was told by some Jewish organization
    that if I put my son on a train tomorrow morning,
    the train were taking to Geneva--
    to Genoa.
    And from Genoa, there's going to be a ship that's
    going to take him to Palestine.
    How old was the son?
    13.
    Your age.
    He was a year and a half older than I was.
    OK.
    And my Uncle Isidore, who was very religious, said, "come on.
    You can't do that.
    Tomorrow is Shabbos.
    Tomorrow is Sabbath.
    And you're not allowed to travel on Sabbath."
    Upon which, my uncle Moritz, Moses, turned to him and said,
    "but Dr. Reiniger, this is a matter of life or death,
    and Jews are allowed to violate the Sabbath if it's
    a matter of life and death."
    And Uncle Isidore got up and said, "OK, then
    do what you want," and walked out of the room.
    And Uncle Moritz turned to my aunt
    and said, "tomorrow morning put your son on the train."
    Now imagine the next morning, this woman,
    with her younger son and her younger daughter and her older
    son, went to the train station in Brno,
    said goodbye to her son, put him on the train,
    and never saw him again.
    He arrived in Haifa, and walked from Haifa to Binyamina.
    I finally found out--
    The name of the city.
    --where my uncle was, and suddenly showed up
    in the house where my uncle lived, and said, "here I am."
    And the only--
    And he was the only--
    only one of that family that survived.
    Because--
    Uncle Moritz.
    Uncle Moritz saved him, yes.
    Uncle Moritz.
    That's another one of the miracles
    that I tell when I tell about the miracles.
    You shared a lot of them with us today.
    Yeah, that's how you survived in those days.
    I wish you would say that the cassette has run out.
    I mean, I'll have to stop.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Well--
    Because I could go on.
    OK.
    Well, here's the thing.
    We're here for as long as you want us to be here.
    Yeah.
    As long as you have something to share, you know?
    Right.
    You have a lot to share.
    I can tell.
    I can tell.
    Like this article that's in the magazine.
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, it's about Rosh Hashanah in 1939.
    I was in a choir in the temple.
    And I wrote that I was in the choir,
    and that I was getting dressed with my tallis
    and robe and my kippah.
    And I was wondering whether any of the family members
    are going to be there.
    This was after the Germans had marched in, 1939.
    Mm-hmm.
    But then I said, "oh, well, you know what?
    I got to do my job."
    I was a soprano, naturally.
    And I was the lead soprano, because I had a good ear,
    and I could sing, and I had a loud voice.
    Not Ticho.
    No, I certainly was not Ticho.
    And I said there was more to this Rosh Hashanah
    than in this article.
    I wrote that there was more to this Rosh Hashanah
    than just a new year.
    It was the beginning of the year 5,700 in the Jewish calendar.
    So it wasn't the beginning of a new year.
    It was the beginning of a new century.
    And this made a big impression on me.
    You know?
    5,700, and I'm alive for that.
    And as a matter of fact, at that time,
    I made myself a promise that I'm going to live to the year 2000,
    so I will have two centuries that I would survive.
    That was my private, private wish.
    And I always just thought, "look, all the pogroms,
    and all the problems that Jews have had through the ages--
    because we learned that in school--
    we were the year 5,700, and we were still here.
    And the Christians were in the year 1939.
    We got them beat!
    [LAUGHTER]
    That was my thinking.
    It's no comparison.
    You have 1939 and 5,700.
    Hey.
    We're not even close.
    It's not even close.
    That's right.
    And so I said that I almost--
    the other thing was that I never had a bar mitzvah.
    This is what the article was about, basically.
    It was not a long article, but a nice story.
    Since the Rosh Hashanah holiday's coming up,
    they felt that they should put it into the magazine.
    It's that I never had a bar mitzvah.
    I was 13.
    And I was supposed to have a bar mitzvah.
    And the cantor, who I knew very well because I sang
    in his choir, was teaching me.
    And Uncle Isidore had written a speech for me to make.
    And then my uncles decided, this is not
    a time for the Ticho family to attract attention.
    So they canceled it.
    Now, somewhere I had heard that God
    had promised all Jews 70 years.
    And that after 70 years, you start like a second childhood,
    which in many cases is true.
    And there were Jews that had a bar mitzvah at the age of 83.
    Because it was like the second--
    Childhood.
    Second life.
    So I decided I was going to have a bar
    mitzvah, if I live to be 83.
    I decided that back in 1940.
    Well--
    And I had a legitimate, full blown bar
    mitzvah with the reading of the Torah
    and the recitation of the Haftorah,
    and all my family being there, and whoever
    was willing to come.
    Even a friend of ours came from Israel to be there.
    And it was a legitimate, full blown bar mitzvah.
    Well, congratulations.
    Thank you.
    I couldn't think of a better way to say this,
    to end our interview.
    Thank you for coming.
    Thank you for being patient.
    It's fascinating.
    And thank you for being so helpful.
    Well, it was fascinating.
    And thank you for sharing it all.
    You're welcome.
    I will say then that this concludes the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Mr. Charles
    Ticho on September 21, 2019 in Hackensack, New Jersey.
    You mean it's still 21st?
    It's still 21st.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Yeah?
    So tell me, what is this sketch of?
    Well, this pencil sketch is of my father Nathan Ticho.
    It's dated April 20, 1940, and was
    created in the Spielberg Fortress in Brno,
    the Czech Republic, by an unidentified fellow prisoner
    at a time when the Nazis were using
    this fortress as a prison for Jews and political opponents.
    So this is when your father is in jail.
    Yes.
    The sketch was smuggled out by a fellow prisoner,
    and was brought to the Ticho home,
    to show that Nathan Ticho was alive and well.
    Ah, so this is right after he's arrested.
    I remember it was right--
    they marched into-- less than three weeks--
    less than three weeks after the sketch was drawn,
    Nathan Ticho, along with his brother and business partner,
    Paul Baruch Ticho, was sent to the Dachau concentration camp.
    There Paul was murdered.
    Nathan was released in early August as a result of an appeal
    of the Italian government in Berlin,
    engineered by Nathan's wife's--
    my mother's-- family in the United States.
    So this is part of what you have written
    as a description that's on the back of this particular sketch.
    Yes.
    Do you remember getting that sketch when it was done?
    No, I remember seeing it when it was brought out.
    Mm-hmm.
    It was in my parents' home.
    We framed it.
    It was in my parents' home.
    Then it was given to my older brother,
    who only recently, maybe like six months or eight months ago,
    sent it to me.
    OK.
    Well, thank you very much.
    OK.
    So now we'll go to the computer.
    OK, tell me, what is this photograph of?
    This is a photograph of two of my uncles,
    the American uncles, my mother's brothers--
    Bill Klein and Julius Klein.
    Julius Klein was the principal brother
    who was instrumental in securing my father's, and my brother's,
    and my release from Nazi occupation.
    OK.
    So that means that they were able--
    they are the ones who contacted everybody and anybody here,
    and who eventually got the Italians to ask your father
    to be released from Dachau, and for you to be given
    exit visas from Czechoslovakia.
    You and your brother.
    And my father.
    And your father, all of you.
    Yes.
    OK.
    Terrific.
    And this photograph looks like it's
    taken in the 1950s or 1960s.
    That's right.
    It's later, after the war, yes.
    OK.
    All right, thank you.
    So tell me who is this portrait of?
    This painting is of my grandfather, Yitzhak Zvi Ticho.
    Your father's father.
    My father's father.
    It's a portrait.
    It's a painting because my grandfather would not
    allow photographs.
    It just not something that religion permitted.
    And he was actually photographed sitting on a bench,
    on a public bench asleep.
    And the artist used that photograph
    to create this portrait.
    [? He ?] might be interested to make an interesting comment
    that he selected Uncle Victor for the eyes.
    That is, he painted it, and then he had Uncle Victor.
    This was a Viennese artist.
    He looked at some of the Sons of grandfather Yitzhak,
    and he decided that Victor's eyes were best
    suited to add to the portrait.
    Well, isn't that--
    And that was the result.
    That's pretty cool.
    Yes, it is.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    So tell me, who is this portrait of?
    This is the wife of my grandfather,
    Esther, born [? Baer. ?] Esther [? Baer. ?]
    Ticho.
    Ticho.
    Because they made a portrait of my grandfather,
    they had to make a portrait of my grandmother.
    So we would have a pair.
    She was not quite so religious.
    I think she posed for the picture.
    So that's how that was created.
    Now, she died young, you told me.
    Yes.
    They had 11 children that lived, plus 1 that didn't live,
    and one that died young at the age of eight or something.
    So it looks like she may have had 15 pregnancies.
    So it wasn't surprising that she died at the age of 53.
    And actually she was diagnosed with breast cancer
    by her son, Dr. Albert Abraham Ticho.
    Although he was an optometrist-- ophthalmologist,
    he was visiting Boskovice, and she took him aside
    during a Passover Seder service, and said, "I'd
    like you to look at something.
    I'd like to show you something."
    And the moment he touched the area,
    he knew that this was a serious situation,
    and told her to go and see a doctor immediately.
    But it was way too late.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    At least we have this image of your grandmother.
    And a very impressive gravestone in the Boskovice cemetery.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    Yeah.
    So this looks a little familiar.
    What is this now?
    Well, this is the original-- or at least
    it's a copy of the original photograph
    that the street photographer took of my grandfather asleep.
    I don't know how come he was still holding
    the paper that he was reading.
    Mm-hmm.
    But I think his eyes are closed.
    Yes, they're closed.
    That's when they took his picture.
    And that was the source from which the portrait was painted.
    And did your grandfather ever know about this photograph?
    I think he would have been very upset if he had learned
    that that's what happened.
    I see.
    It would have been a violation.
    And do you know about what year this would have been taken?
    Well, he died in the 1920s, 1922, '23.
    And he looks like a young man here.
    Young-ish.
    No, he was quite advanced in age.
    OK.
    But he could be young here.
    Yeah.
    So I can't tell you.
    OK.
    OK, tell me, what is this photograph of?
    Well, it's a photograph of our apartment,
    in our apartment in Chicago, shortly after we arrived.
    In 1940.
    In 1940.
    It's in a furnished apartment that we rented, even
    though we couldn't afford it.
    And who are the three gentlemen sitting?
    The three people there is my brother
    in the middle, older brother Harold, with a pipe.
    OK.
    Myself.
    You're now--
    In this image on the--
    You'd be on the right.
    And then the youngest one is my brother Steven.
    OK.
    So Steve is from the left, the youngest one, the little boy,
    or little-ish.
    Then your oldest brother Harold with the pipe,
    and he's already a young man.
    And you, then, with the tie next to him, and you're
    looking at a book.
    I think it's an album.
    OK.
    And then the portrait of your grandfather.
    And he's looking down on us, and making sure we're behaving.
    OK.
    All right, great.
    Thank you.
    Go.
    OK, so tell me, what is this photograph of?
    All these children?
    Well, all these children are students
    at the Jewish gymnasium of Brno, and the first class, meaning
    some of them were 11, and some of them
    were 12, depending of how many years they
    spent in grammar school.
    And you?
    I was an advanced student, so I went into the Gymnasium
    at the age of 10.
    So this must have been taken when I was 11.
    And tell me, where are you in this photograph?
    Well, I got it--
    I managed to negotiate the center seat in the front row.
    Ah, I see you there.
    So you're sitting in front of the only adult.
    That was our home teacher.
    Interesting, I should tell you, that is Professor Otto Ungar.
    Otto Ungar.
    And Professor Otto Ungar was made famous
    because he was an artist.
    And during his incarceration, he drew
    pictures of what was going on, and hid those drawings.
    And many of those drawings were uncovered after the war,
    and were published.
    You can see Otto Ungar pictures published in different books
    and publications.
    Where was he incarcerated?
    I don't really know.
    Did he survive?
    Well, the paintings were discovered.
    At least some paintings were discovered.
    And the Germans broke his fingers,
    so he could supposedly no longer draw.
    He survived the Holocaust, but he
    had a bad case of typhoid fever and died from typhoid fever.
    So I never had to--
    The one memorable thing that I remember him
    for was when he was teaching us how
    to do three dimensions by adding shades and shading,
    that he liked to stick his tongue into his cheek
    and say, "don't forget, [SPEAKING CZECH] "every hole
    is black."
    Of course, all the boys knew what he meant.
    Oh my goodness.
    OK.
    What is it?
    OK.
    Yeah.
    When we moved into the new apartment,
    in the new building that we built,
    he was engaged by my family, by my parents,
    to draw a mural in the winter garden.
    Which he did.
    And he used to come early in the morning
    before he had to go to school like I did.
    And he used to tease me in class, in front of the class
    by saying, "Oh, yes, Ticho.
    He comes every morning after he had breakfast,
    and he has to say 'good morning, Professor Ungar.'" And he had
    to bow.
    And of course, this made me feel awful.
    Because he says this in front of the whole class.
    Of all the class.
    And of course, everybody goes "hahaha!"
    But he was a lovely guy, and he was very funny.
    We were very fond of him.
    And we were very lucky that we had him as the class professor.
    Homeroom teacher, yeah.
    As a homeroom teacher.
    Thank you.
    OK.
    Tell me, who is this a photograph of?
    This is the photograph of my father, Nathan Ticho.
    But when?
    It was taken about maybe 1935, '36.
    Because he still had his mustache.
    After the war, he never wore another mustache.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    OK, and tell me, who is this a photograph of?
    This is a photograph of my mother, Francesca Ticho,
    born Klein.
    K-L-E-I-N, Klein.
    And she was a very lovely woman.
    So I think she was very pretty.
    Yeah.
    About when was this taken?
    This picture was taken when she was in the United States,
    waiting to get her citizenship back.
    So this was taken around 1940.
    OK.
    OK.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Charles Ticho, born in 1927 in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), discusses being 11 years old when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia; his mother who was in Switzerland at the time of the occupation; his father who was arrested and interned in Dachau; being separated from his brother and staying with a farmer in the countryside; and traveling with his brother in 1940 to Switzerland where family was reunited.
    Interviewee
    Charles Ticho
    Interviewer
    Navazelskis, Ina
    Date
    interview:  2019 September 21
    Geography
    creation: Hackensack (N.J.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MP4.

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Copyright Holder
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Ticho, Charles.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Ina Navazelskis, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Charles Ticho on September 21, 2019 in Hackensack, NJ.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:06:20
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn709457

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral history interview with Gidon Arye

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral history interview with Carl Knuemann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral history interview with Michael Vogel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral history interview with Nina Schuster Merrick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral history interview with Eva Rozencwajig Stock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral history interview with Ivo Herzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral history interview with Josef

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral history interview with Stanislaw Soszynski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral history interview with Abraham Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral history interview with Miriam Storch Lewent

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral history interview with Liane Reif-Lehrer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral history interview with Preben Munch-Nielsen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral history interview with Anny Rubinstein Kast

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral history interview with Helen Waterford

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral history interview with Thomas Ward

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral history interview with Fred R. Wohl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral history interview with Norbert Yasharoff

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral history interview with Frank Meissner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral history interview with Mina Perlberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral history interview with David Klebanow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral history interview with Franz Wohlfahrt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Tove Schöbaum Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral history interview with Morris Gordon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Raya Markon

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest G. Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral history interview with Leo Bretholz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral history interview with Paul Matasovski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral history interview with Zelda Piekarska Brodecki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral history interview with Stefania Podgórska Burzminski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral history interview with Rose Galek Brunswic

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral history interview with Renée Schwalb Fritz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral history interview with Martin Spett

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral history interview with Ion Cioaba

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral history interview with Niels Bamberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral history interview with Ray Buch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral history interview with Nina Kaleska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral history interview with Judith Meisel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral history interview with Leif Donde

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral history interview with Max Amichai Heppner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral history interview with Charles Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral history interview with David Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral history interview with Eugene Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral history interview with Hetty d'Ancona de Leeuwe

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral history interview with Susie Gruenbaum Schwarz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral history interview with Hessy Levinsons Taft

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral history interview with Bella Jakubowicz Tovey

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral history interview with Ruth Krautwirth Meyerowitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral history interview with Peretz Milbauer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral history interview with Hana Bruml

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Meed

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral history interview with Johanna Neumann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral history interview with Alice Lang Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral history interview with Jay Ipson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral history interview with Margaret Jastrow Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral history interview with Solomon Klug

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral history interview with Helene Baraf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Morris Kornberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral history interview with Michael Diamond

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral history interview with Michael Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral history interview with Kate Bernath

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral history interview with Paul Kovak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral history interview with Abraham Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Kolski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral history interview with Steven Springfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral history interview with Liny Pajgin Yollick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral history interview with Fred Bachner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral history interview with Murray Pantirer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Marton Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral history interview with William Farkas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral history interview with Frima L.

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral history interview with Esther Terner Raab

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral history interview with Guy Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral history interview with Toby Stern

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Ion Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral history interview with Jeanine Gutman Butnaru

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral history interview with Cecilie Klein-Pollack

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Fred Schwartz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral history interview with Masha Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Madeline Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Amalie Petranker Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral history interview with Norman Salsitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral history interview with Frederic Bernard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral history interview with Isaac Bitton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral history interview with Max Haber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral history interview with William P. Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral history interview with Leo Schneiderman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral history interview with Adam Starkopf and Pela Starkopf

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral history interview with Carla Heijmans Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral history interview with Edward Lessing

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral history interview with Werner Goldsmith

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Pappenheimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral history interview with Curtis Whiteway

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral history interview with Lore Baer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral history interview with Erich Kulka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral history interview with Cornelia Schouten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral history interview with Drexel Sprecher

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral history interview with Bela Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral history interview with Magda Blau

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral history interview with Barbara Ledermann Rodbell

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral history interview with Jerry Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral history interview with Rochelle Blackman Slivka

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral history interview with Francis Akos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral history interview with Beno Helmer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral history interview with Jerry von Halle

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral history interview with Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral history interview with Ralph Codikow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral history interview with Ruth Borsos

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral history interview with Simone Marguerite Lipman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral history interview with Shony Alex Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral history interview with Doriane Kurz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral history interview with David Lieberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral history interview with Laura Margolis

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral history interview with Paul Strassmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral history interview with Ernest James

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral history interview with Chaim Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral history interview with Selma Engel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral history interview with Morris Engelson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral history interview with Lonia Mosak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral history interview with Agnes Grossman Aranyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral history interview with David Bergman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral history interview with Lila Lam Nowakowska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral history interview with Yaffa Rosenthal

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral history interview with Eve Wagszul Rich

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral history interview with Magda Mezei Lapedus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral history interview with Avraham Ronai

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral history interview with Eva Konigsberg Lang

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral history interview with Cornelius Loen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral history interview with Thomas Blatt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral history interview with Anita Magnus Frank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral history interview with Guta Blass Weintraub

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral history interview with Henry Schmelzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral history interview with Helen Liebowitz Goldkind

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Johanne Eva Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral history interview with Max Liebmann

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral history interview with Giorgio Perlasca

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral history interview with David J. Selznick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Model

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral history interview with Joseph Levine

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Blau Szamosi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral history interview with Irene Dynkiewicz Silver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral history interview with Alice Lok Cahana

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral history interview with Eva Brust Cooper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacob Vogel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Philip Vock

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Gatenio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mariette Moscovici

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral history interview with Henry van den Boogard

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jack Moss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral history interview with Boleslaw Dytlow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mel London

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral history interview with Henry Cohen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Feldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bert Fleming and Irene Fleming

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral history interview with Norman Belfer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral history interview with Carol Stern Steinhardt

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Haim Shmueli

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Granirer Flor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee Scheuer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral history interview with Bent Melchior

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral history interview with Reuven Paikowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral history interview with Renata Laqueur

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Carl Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Hirsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral history interview with Walter Meyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral history interview with Dora Kramen Dimitro

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herma Barber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral history interview with William Zeck and Belle Mayer Zeck

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral history interview with Michel Reynders

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral history interview with Marthe Hoffnung Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral history interview with Miriam Kabacznik Shulman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral history interview with Anna Szyller Palarczyk

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral history interview with Steven Galezewski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral history interview with George Havas

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral history interview with Maria Rosenbloom

    Oral History

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

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