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Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

Oral History | Digitized | RG Number: RG-50.999.0753

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    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger
    Transcript
    Welcome.
    Thank you for joining us for First Person--
    Conversations with Holocaust Survivors.
    My name is Bill Benson.
    I have hosted the museum's First Person program
    since it began in 2000.
    Through these monthly conversations,
    we bring you firsthand accounts of survival of the Holocaust.
    Each of our First Person guests serves
    as a volunteer at the museum.
    Holocaust survivors are Jews who experienced the persecution
    and survived the mass murder that
    was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators.
    This included those who were in concentration camps,
    killing centers, ghettos, and prisons, as well as refugees,
    or those in hiding.
    Holocaust survivors also include people
    who did not self-identify as Jewish,
    but were categorized as such by the perpetrators.
    Over the last three weeks, we have seen the loss of life
    in humanitarian crises in Ukraine
    following Russia's unprovoked attack and the exploitation
    of Holocaust history used to justify the invasion.
    We have also seen the resilience and determination
    of the Ukrainian people, as well as their country's commitment
    to historical truth.
    We stand with the Ukrainian people,
    including the thousands of Holocaust survivors
    still living there during this crucial time.
    During our program, please, send us your questions
    and let us know where you are joining us from in the chat.
    We are honored to have with us today
    Holocaust survivor Susan Warsinger,
    who will share with her--
    share with us her personal firsthand account
    of the Holocaust.
    Susan, thank you so much for joining us and being
    willing to be our first person today.
    Thank you, Bill for having me come on your program.
    Susan, you have so much to share with us.
    So we're going to go ahead and get started.
    You were born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany
    just a few years before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor
    of Germany.
    Please, tell us about your hometown and your family
    before the Nazis came to power.
    Yeah.
    I was born in Bad Kreuznach.
    It's a little town near Frankfurt and near Cologne.
    And it was a very small town, but it was beautiful.
    It was surrounded by mountains and had many grape growing
    all over and many vineyards.
    And it had a beautiful river called
    the Nahe, which was a tributary of the Rhine River.
    And it had a beautiful bridge that
    was built in the 1300s in medieval times.
    And then it had a spa, which was very popular
    because the German people from all over Germany
    used to come, and get bathed there,
    and breathe in the sulfur air, and the fine
    air so that their illnesses would be better.
    Anyway, this picture that you're looking at is my father.
    And we're walking in the garden where the spa was.
    And that's my father and me, was a long, long time ago.
    And I think we have another picture for you
    to share with us as well.
    Yes, that's my father, and my mother,
    and my brother Joe, and me.
    This is before Hitler came into power.
    Well, what was your father's occupation, Susan?
    Yeah, he had a linen store.
    And he was probably doing very well because we
    lived in a nice house.
    But these things changed when Hitler came into power.
    And that, of course, Susan-- that happened in January 1933,
    when Hitler was appointed chancellor and moved quickly
    to turn Germany into a one-party dictatorship.
    The new Nazi regime persecuted Jews
    and passed antisemitic laws.
    So tell us how life changed once the Nazis were in control
    and how that changed your family's life.
    Yeah.
    Well, the Nazis boycotted my father's store.
    And he lost all of his customers.
    And eventually, he had to give up the store.
    And some German people took it over.
    So we-- he didn't have any income.
    So we had to move from one place to another,
    to many different houses and different apartments.
    And my father, in order to make a living for his family,
    he went and picked strawberries.
    And he sold them in baskets to the people,
    to the Jewish people of our town to help him make a living.
    And you remember him going out doing that, don't you?
    Yes, I do.
    I really do.
    And we have another photograph I'd love you to tell us about.
    I want to introduce you to my whole family--
    my brother Joe.
    I'm going to be talking about him a lot.
    He has his arm around my mother.
    And then he-- she's holding my baby brother, Ernest.
    And that's me with my arm around my father.
    Now, I'm going to tell you all of my stories
    from a child's point of view because that's
    the way I remember it.
    Your baby brother, because of the circumstances, he--
    tell us about his birth.
    Yeah.
    We were living in one of the smaller houses.
    And my brother and I had to sit outside
    of the house on some steps.
    And the reason we had to do that is because my mother was having
    the baby inside the house and because there was a law in Bad
    Kreuznach that Jewish people weren't
    allowed to go to the hospital.
    That was one of the many, many restrictions
    on Jewish people at that time.
    Before we go on, Susan, I'd love to tell you
    how many people-- or let you know where people
    are watching you from today.
    They're watching and listening to you
    from around the country--
    from Minnesota, Alaska, Georgia, Arizona, and Colorado.
    We also have seventh and eighth grade students
    watching from Massachusetts.
    And we have international viewers
    watching from India, Portugal, Iceland, and Canada.
    And here's an audience comment from Betty.
    Thank god you were saved.
    What terror you must have gone through.
    We cannot let this happen ever again.
    And that's a comment from one of our viewers.
    Thank you.
    Susan, tell us about starting school.
    Well, I was very anxious to go to school,
    and learn, and be part of a German girl's education.
    And I was very happy to go to school.
    And here, that's me.
    Here I am.
    This is my first day of school.
    And I'm holding a cone in my hands.
    And it was the custom of all German children
    on their first day to go to school to have
    a cone like that.
    And in fact, it's still a custom in Germany now.
    But the cone-- and I guess, probably,
    the audience probably is probably thinking,
    what on earth is inside of that cone?
    Well, I'll tell you, Bill, inside the cone,
    it was filled with candy and sweet things
    so that our education would be sweet, and lovely,
    and delightful, and delicious.
    And that lasted for a very, very short time
    because after I went to school for a little while,
    the teacher started to read picture storybooks
    to the children.
    And many of them were very antisemitic.
    And here's an example of one of the antisemitic books
    that the children were reading in Germany.
    This one is called Der Giftpilz.
    And it means poisoned mushroom.
    And if you take a look at the cover of this book,
    you can see the mushroom.
    And then there's this ugly face with the ugly nose
    and a Star of David.
    And the mushroom is wearing a clown.
    And so the children, when listening to this story,
    were learning that Jews were poisoned mushrooms
    and so that they were poisonous.
    And so they tried to keep away from me.
    And they made fun of me.
    And they laughed at me.
    And I was very uncomfortable going to school.
    And every day, I ran home to my mother.
    And I said to her, I don't want to go to public school anymore.
    I want to stay home.
    And she said, well, just stick it out.
    Stick it out.
    But after a while, I was extremely happy.
    And the reason I was extremely happy,
    Bill, is because there was a law in Germany
    that Jewish children weren't allowed
    to go to school anymore.
    So the parents in our--
    in Bad Kreuznach, the Jewish parents,
    all wanted their children to go to school.
    So they hired one Jewish teacher.
    And that Jewish teacher had a one-room schoolhouse.
    And we all went to that school.
    Maybe they want to-- there it is.
    There you go.
    Yeah.
    The teacher is the one that's holding the--
    he's writing something on the paper.
    And I'm the one with the pigtails.
    Well, what happened is he was responsible of teaching
    all the Jewish children in Bad Kreuznach in that one room.
    He taught from first grade.
    First row was the first grade, second row
    was the second grade, all the way to the ninth grade.
    And this one, I think, he probably
    was teaching language arts to all the kids
    in what we had done.
    We had written plays about fairy tales in Germany.
    And what I'm doing is I'm listening to my mother, who
    was my best friend at the time.
    And I'm holding a basket.
    And I am Little Red Riding Hood going into the woods.
    And she's telling me to be very careful
    when walking through the woods.
    And so all these children here were really very happy
    because there was nobody to call us
    names and nobody to be antisemitic because we
    were all Jews together.
    For a time, that must have felt like a place of safety
    after all you were subjected to in that public school.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Did you-- you had an incident that you
    recall when your mother sent you to the store to get bread.
    But you had to go to-- through a park to get there.
    Tell us about that.
    Yes.
    I was very proud of my-- must have been maybe six years old.
    And I was very proud because I was able to do something
    for my family.
    And she used to put the pfennig in my hand.
    And she said, go buy some bread.
    And in order to get to the store,
    I had to cross the street, and walk through a park,
    and get to the other end where all of the stores were,
    Kreuznacher Strasse.
    Anyway, so I was crossing the street.
    And then I was starting to walk down
    the steps to get into the park.
    And all of a sudden, the gatekeeper of the park
    started to yell at me.
    And he said to me, hey, you can't go through this park
    anymore because you're a dirty Jew.
    And then he called me all kinds of names.
    And he told me never to walk through the park again.
    So I ran up the steps.
    And I ran to my mother.
    And I told her what had happened.
    And she really didn't want to worry me.
    And so she said, well, next time you go,
    just walk around the park.
    So the next time, she put the pfennig in my hand.
    And I crossed the street.
    And there was an entrance to the park.
    And I was standing at the top of the steps.
    And I said to myself, ugh, I am very tired.
    Because if I had to walk all the way around the park,
    I would have to walk all the way one block,
    and then another two blocks the other way, and then go back.
    And I said to myself, I'm very tired.
    I think-- and I think you probably
    already know what I was doing.
    I did go down those steps.
    And so of course, the gatekeeper came.
    And he started to scream at me the same horrible words.
    But he also threw rocks at me, the rocks
    that were in the park.
    But the bad part of it was that he had his daughter.
    And she was watching him.
    And he was her role model.
    And so she said to-- must have said to herself,
    well, if that's what I'm supposed-- what my father does,
    I'm supposed to do that too.
    And so she picked up some rocks, and threw them at me,
    and called me the same names that her father was calling me.
    And here was this little girl who was learning
    about hatred and antisemitism.
    And I never walked through that park again.
    What a-- just a horrible thing for a little child
    to have to experience that, along with the other things
    you've described.
    Susan, this brings us to early November 1938.
    On the night of November 9 through 10,
    1938, the Nazi regime coordinated
    a wave of violent attacks targeting Jewish people
    in Nazi Germany.
    These events became known as Kristallnacht
    or the Night of Broken Glass because of the shattered glass
    on the streets after the vandalism and destruction
    of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes.
    You were just nine years old.
    What do you remember of Kristallnacht?
    Yeah.
    I remember that night very clearly
    because my mother's birthday was going to be the next day.
    Her birthday was on November the 10th.
    And my brother Joe and I, we were sleeping in our bedroom
    or ready to go to sleep.
    It must have been maybe 11 o'clock, something like that.
    And all of a sudden, some bricks and rocks
    were being thrown through our window.
    And my brother Joe is much braver than I am.
    I know, I covered myself up because I was scared.
    But he went to the window.
    And he lifted himself up.
    And he said to me, Susie, it is our neighbors
    that are throwing the rocks through the window.
    And the civil policeman who was standing
    at the edge of the crowd like this,
    and he didn't do anything to stop
    the crowd from throwing the bricks
    and rocks through the window.
    So my brother and I were very frightened.
    We ran across the hall to our parents' bedroom.
    And the bricks and rocks were being thrown
    through their window also.
    And my baby brother, they called him
    Ernst, which was the German name for Ernest.
    And he was laying in a bassinet right near the window.
    And my brother remembers that--
    my brother Joe remembers that a rock fell on his hand,
    on the baby's hand.
    But the baby was OK.
    He was all right.
    And so-- and all five of us, my mother, and my father,
    and my brothers, and I, we were huddling
    in the back of the bedroom to decide what to do.
    And just then, the people had uprooted a lamppost
    from outside, which was called Adolf-Hitler-Platz.
    And they smashed the lampposts through out--
    Like a battering ram right through your door.
    Yes, exactly.
    They smashed it through our front door.
    And the glass was beautiful, colored with purple and gray--
    no, not gray, orange, and green, and red.
    And it was strewn all over the floor.
    And so we were really very frightened then.
    And so my father decided that we should
    go and hide up in the attic.
    I'm just telling you, we lived on the first floor
    of the house.
    And the rabbis of the town--
    the one rabbi we had in the town was living on the second floor,
    and on the third floor, a non-Jewish family,
    and on the fourth floor was an attic.
    And so my father thought that it would
    be best for us to go and hide up in the attic.
    And so when we got up to the attic,
    the rabbi's family was already in the attic.
    But the rabbi wasn't there.
    So I looked out.
    There was a little window.
    And I looked out the window.
    I saw the rabbi standing on his veranda.
    And the two SS officers-- maybe, I don't know, or soldiers.
    I don't remember exactly what they were.
    But they were holding him by the arm.
    And another one came along and cut off his beard.
    And then later on, I found out that they sent him to jail
    and that they-- because he was Jewish.
    And then I found out that all the men in Bad Kreuznach,
    in our town, had to go to jail because they were Jewish.
    And then I found out that when the people were with people--
    our neighbors had gone into our apartment.
    They had ransacked some of the things that we owned.
    But they really damaged the rabbi's apartment.
    And they took some of his artifacts
    and looted some of his things.
    And then I found out--
    yeah, I found out that they did that everybody
    in Bad Kreuznach, anybody who was a Jew-- there
    was a Jewish family.
    And on that single night, across Germany, some 300 synagogues
    were burned in that night.
    Susan, what do you--
    Exactly.
    Our synagogue-- that's what I found out.
    Our synagogue was also burned.
    We had one.
    I'm glad you brought that up, yes.
    And what do you remember about hiding in the attic?
    Well, we were children.
    And the rabbi had children.
    He had three boys and a girl.
    And I don't know what my baby brother did.
    But I think they told me later on that the people who
    lived on the third floor that were not Jewish,
    they gave my mother some milk to give to the baby.
    But otherwise, they pretended whatever was going on,
    they didn't have anything to do with it.
    So we were playing.
    This is November.
    And they were apples that were stored.
    We had stored apples in the attic.
    And so we ate them.
    And we played with them.
    We made-- we played ball with them.
    And we made-- we used it for an abaci We counted with them
    and did math problems.
    And we were children.
    So I don't remember it being such a horrible experience
    being up there.
    But I'm sure the adults knew that that
    was going to be the end of our wanting to stay in Germany.
    Yeah.
    The parents had to have been just completely terrified
    by that.
    Exactly.
    Susan, we have another comment from a viewer
    I'd like to share with you named Brian.
    And Brian says, dear Susan, thank you
    for sharing your experience--
    and this is from a teacher in East Bridgewater,
    Massachusetts--
    I've always wanted to meet a survivor.
    And I appreciate this chance to hear from you.
    It's nice to hear from you.
    And I'd like to remind our audience,
    please, if you have any questions of Susan,
    to go ahead and ask them in our chat feature.
    Susan, of course, what you've just described,
    the events leading up to Kristallnacht,
    all of those events forced your parents
    to rethink your family's safety in Germany.
    What did they decide they needed to do?
    Yeah, well, at the beginning, before Kristallnacht, my mother
    always wanted to come to the United States.
    And my father, I guess, he wasn't
    that anxious to go for the simple reason
    he probably thought that Hitler's going to blow over.
    And he's going to get his store back.
    But after Kristallnacht, the Night
    of the Broken Glass, everybody-- every Jewish person in Germany
    wanted to get out because they knew
    that more horrible things were going to come
    and that Hitler was not going to blow over.
    So everybody tried to find a way to get out.
    But all of the countries had a quota, a very large quota.
    And it was very--
    the quota was-- well, it was very
    impossible to get on the list.
    Because the quotas were so small, it was so difficult.
    Yeah, that's what I'm doing.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, were just so small.
    So my father had heard of a woman
    that was smuggling children across the border into France.
    And Bad Kreuznach isn't too far from the border of France.
    And so she-- when my father found out about her,
    I don't know how he found out about her.
    And so she was saying, she would smuggle my brother
    and me across the border and bring us to France.
    And she would pretend that we were
    going to be her children, that we were French children.
    However, she did it for--
    not out of the goodness of her heart,
    she did it because she wanted to make money.
    And my father gave her all the money
    that he had saved so that my brother and I could
    be safe in France.
    Susan, we have a question for you,
    a video question from a student, Lucia, from the museum's
    Bringing the Lessons Home program.
    Lucia asks, did you have any hesitation about leaving
    Germany at such a young age?
    Hi, Mrs. Warsinger.
    My name is Lucia.
    I am a member of the Bringing the Lessons Home programs
    class of 2020.
    And I was wondering if you had any hesitation at the time
    about leaving Germany and your home, especially
    at such a young age.
    Well, that's a very good question.
    I knew that my parents wanted to save us.
    I knew they wanted to send us away.
    And I knew that I had to do what my parents wanted me to do.
    But it was very difficult to leave them,
    to get separated from them.
    And the thing is, the most horrible thing
    that now that I'm an adult must have been for my mother
    and father to send their children away and not
    know if they were ever going to see them again.
    I can't imagine how terrifying that
    was and tragic for your parents to do exactly that.
    So there you are with Joseph.
    You're heading to France.
    Your mom, and dad, and your baby brother, Ernest,
    are behind still in Germany.
    Tell us about the incident when you
    were crossing the border into France
    when German soldiers boarded the train.
    Well, my brother--
    I remember it differently.
    But memories are different.
    And my brother said that he went before I did,
    a week or two before I did.
    But I remember the two of us going together.
    So I mean, it's been over 80 years
    since all of that happened.
    But what had happened was is they
    told me to absolutely be absolutely quiet because I
    was German.
    And I didn't know how to speak any French.
    And we were supposed to be her children.
    I think she had put our picture into her children's passport.
    And so she-- we were supposed to be very quiet
    because if the French people came and asked
    us some questions, we wouldn't understand,
    and we wouldn't be able to answer.
    And so we had to be very quiet.
    My brother said that he thinks that maybe they
    gave him some drugs so he would be sleeping.
    But I don't remember having any drugs.
    But I was very, very quiet.
    And I pretended I was sleeping.
    And I heard them come.
    And she must have said to them that her child was sleeping.
    And everything was OK.
    We got to Paris all right.
    So once you're in Paris, the lady takes you there.
    Now, you're in Paris.
    What happened when you got to Paris?
    Yeah, we had a fourth cousin.
    And he lived in a nice apartment in Paris.
    And we stayed in his apartment.
    But he had to go to work.
    And he had told us to stay in the apartment
    until he got home from work.
    But my brother is always braver than I am.
    And he was curious.
    And he snuck out of the apartment.
    And he ran all over Paris, and looked at all of the sights,
    and then he came back to the apartment
    before the fourth cousin came back.
    And so he never-- the cousin never found out.
    But the cousin couldn't take care of two kids.
    What was he going to do?
    So I don't know.
    Maybe we stayed for maybe two weeks.
    Maybe my brother remembers better than I do,
    but maybe two weeks.
    And so what he did is he found a foster home for us
    to stay at near the environs of Paris.
    So in May 1940, you're living with your brother
    and other children in this children's home,
    this foster home.
    And then in May 1940, when Germany invaded France, you,
    your brother, and the other children in the home,
    and hundreds of thousands of others had to flee Paris.
    Tell us about leaving Paris and where you ended up.
    Yeah.
    My brother remembers distinctly that we were walking someplace
    in Paris on the Champs-Élysées and that we saw
    the German Army marching in.
    And we could hear the boots, and the trucks, and the cars,
    and coming down the Champs-Élysées.
    And not only my brother and I were frightened,
    but everybody in Paris-- not only Jews were frightened,
    but everybody in Paris was frightened.
    And so many, many people wanted to leave.
    Some people collaborated with the German Army.
    But many people wanted to get out.
    And many people wanted to flee into the south of France.
    But some people went west, went west.
    And the closest town that was west of Paris was Versailles.
    And so that's where my brother and I went.
    And we-- both of us do not remember how we got there.
    But I think that some nuns probably took us.
    And we ended up in Versailles.
    And we ended up at the biggest building in Versailles,
    which of course, is the palace.
    And so here, this mayor of Versailles
    had to take care of all of these refugees
    that came out of Paris.
    And they had to house us in Paris.
    And so what they did-- they have these beautiful gardens
    outside the palace.
    And at the other end of the gardens,
    they had a big pile of hay.
    And all of-- somebody gave us, all of us, a burlap sack.
    And we filled this burlap sack with hay.
    And then they gave us a little string to tie around the sack.
    And it was perfect for a mattress.
    And we put it on our shoulders.
    And we walked into the palace.
    And of course, we walked into the biggest room
    that they have in the Palace of Versailles.
    And maybe you already-- here it is.
    It is-- you probably almost don't recognize it
    because all the mirrors are gone and all the chandeliers
    are gone.
    But it is the Hall of Mirrors.
    And if you go now, I mean, it's a very elegant place
    with beautiful chandeliers on the floor
    and hanging from the ceiling.
    But at that time, they must have-- the people
    who were taking care of the palace
    must have hidden all of the chandeliers in the basement.
    So maybe, they were worried that the Germans might--
    when the army came, that the Germans
    might destroy them or steal them.
    So anyway, this room was tremendous.
    And so what we did, we put our mattresses
    that were made out of straw along each side.
    And then some of us were also in the middle.
    And we had a place to sleep in that Hall of Mirrors.
    It's easy to imagine-- at least, I can imagine this room,
    this picture covered by refugees--
    you, your brother, and many, many others,
    lying on your burlap hay-filled bags in that beautiful,
    big room--
    powerful.
    You had an encounter there with a Nazi officer
    while you were in Versailles.
    Tell us about that.
    Yeah.
    Well, and you know, the German Army didn't just stay in Paris.
    They decided to come to Versailles.
    That was one of their next places they invaded.
    And so we heard them coming in and marching, again,
    in this big cavalcade of cars and trucks.
    And some soldiers were walking.
    But in front of that whole caravan was a car.
    And out of this car came an officer, a German officer.
    And I don't know whether he was a general
    or whether he was a captain, but he seemed to be very important.
    And he got out of the car.
    And he said, he wanted to talk to the mayor.
    Now, they called the mayor.
    And the mayor did not know how to speak any German.
    And the German officer didn't know how to speak any French.
    And so they needed to have somebody to translate for them.
    And they said-- somebody said, oh, there's
    a girl in the palace.
    And she knows how to speak German.
    So it was me.
    It was me.
    And so I tell you, they called me.
    And I was really very, very frightened
    because I thought, maybe, if he found out that I was Jewish,
    they would do the same thing that they
    had planned for all the other Jews in Germany.
    But I came out.
    And he was so tall, he was as tall as the ceiling
    in your place where you are sitting.
    And I could just see above his boots.
    And so anyway, they started to talk to each other, the mayor
    and the officer.
    And I don't remember what they talked about.
    And at the end of the conversation,
    the German officer said to me, hey, little girl,
    how come you know how to speak German so well?
    And I was really frightened then.
    And so I said to him, oh, the French schools are very good.
    And I learned how to speak German in the French schools.
    You know, Susan, a couple of times,
    you've talked about how brave Joseph was.
    I think you've matched him in bravery for doing that
    and for quick thinking.
    That's an extraordinary thing that you did there.
    So Susan, at this time that you're describing,
    southeastern France remained unoccupied.
    It was governed by a French collaborationist government
    known as Vichy France.
    You and your brother fled from Versailles and fled south.
    How were you able to make this journey?
    And where did you find shelter after leaving Versailles?
    Now, both of us really can't quite
    remember how we got from Versailles to Vichy.
    But we did end up in Vichy.
    I remember walking around and drinking
    some of that water they had in the fountains.
    And then we got to a place called
    Brout-Vernet, which is a little village near Vichy.
    And there was a castle, an old castle
    that the Ouvres de Secours aux Enfants, an agency which
    was wonderful to lost Jewish children at that time.
    And here's that castle.
    You can see it.
    My brother and I are not on this picture.
    Those are the younger kids, some of them.
    But that's the only picture that I have.
    And there was called--
    it was the Chateau des Morelles.
    And there we were and with all these
    lost children that were all over France.
    And this time, we were only with Jewish children.
    And everything was fine there because we
    were in the unoccupied zone.
    And one of the things that we had to do every day
    was to write to our parents.
    And this is something that I was looking forward
    to is to write to them and because we
    were worrying about what had happened to them.
    Because we had heard stories.
    Now in 19-- this is in the beginning of 1941.
    And we hadn't heard about all the atrocities
    that happened after 1941.
    But we weren't quite sure where my parents were
    and what had happened to them.
    And so we were there.
    And we were with the kids.
    And we didn't have that much food,
    but we had enough things to eat.
    And you were writing letters to your parents.
    But were they able to write back at all?
    No, we didn't hear from them.
    No.
    Nothing.
    We didn't know.
    Do you remember what that was like for you?
    And that must have been just so sad and scary.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, I wanted to hear from them.
    That was my main thing is what had happened to them.
    And I wanted to be with my mother, and father,
    and of course, my baby brother, Ernest.
    And while you were at this home, the Chateau,
    tell us about the education that you were getting there.
    Oh, yes.
    By that time, we knew how to speak French already
    because when we were in the foster home, we went to school.
    And we had to learn.
    And nobody spoke any German.
    So we were little kids.
    And we learned it very quickly.
    And so the village had a public--
    a school for the village kids.
    But they didn't want the children from the Chateau
    to be mixed with their children.
    And so they gave us a special teacher, again,
    in a one-room house.
    And all the kids from the Chateau des Morelles
    went to that one room.
    And we learned.
    I have a [FRENCH] where we learned
    how to do math problems.
    And I had to write them in.
    And we learned geography.
    And he was a wonderful teacher.
    And the thing that I remember the most
    is that in France, the kids go to school on Saturday,
    but not on Thursday.
    Thursday and Sunday is their day off.
    And so we have to go to school on Saturday.
    But he was so very understanding because we were Orthodox.
    And the Orthodox Jewish people, they don't write.
    And they don't work on Saturday.
    But we did walk to school.
    But he always gave us lessons so that we
    didn't have to write anything.
    And he was a very good teacher.
    Susan, we have a audience comment and a question
    from Masha.
    Masha asks or says, thank you for sharing your family's
    story.
    How did you handle being separated from your parents?
    What helped you to deal with such a difficult situation?
    Yeah, well, writing the letters to them was good.
    And also, I had the support of all the other children.
    They were on the same boat with me.
    All the other children in the Chateau des Morelles
    didn't know what had happened to their parents.
    And everybody was waiting to hear from them.
    And Susan, speaking of those other children,
    please, share with our audience some how you celebrated
    each other's birthdays.
    Well, I'm glad you asked me that.
    When it was time for a child--
    for somebody's birthday, that was
    your friend or your relative, and so we used to get dessert.
    We didn't have that much food.
    But we used to get dessert maybe once a week or something.
    And so what we did is we didn't eat the dessert.
    We took the dessert and hid it up in a locker up in the attic.
    We all had-- everybody had their own locker.
    And so we saved our desserts for a couple of weeks--
    maybe it was three weeks.
    I don't remember.
    And then when it was time for the birthday child,
    we all, all the friends got all of their saved desserts
    and brought-- and another person went out into the cafeteria.
    And they got a tray.
    And we all put our goodies that we had
    saved for those three weeks.
    We put it on the tray.
    And somebody went out to get dandelions and other
    whatever was blooming outside.
    And we put it on the tray.
    And then we carried the tray in the morning
    before the person woke up and brought the tray to the person
    whose birthday it was.
    And then the person woke up and was very happy.
    I know our audience, as I do, loves
    hearing about how you were looking out
    for each other in that way.
    Yes, we did.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    So Susan, here you are in this children's home
    in southern France, not knowing anything
    about the fate of the rest of your family.
    You hadn't heard back.
    But after about a year in the home, one day,
    the headmistress calls you in to see her.
    What did she want to say to you?
    Yeah.
    I didn't know why she wanted to talk to me because usually, you
    had to go and see her because you've been bad or something.
    And I was always a very good child.
    And I never did anything wrong.
    So I walked up this staircase out of marble
    and held onto the wooden banister,
    this ancient wooden banister.
    And I was shivering.
    And I was frightened.
    And so I got inside her office.
    And she said to me, Susi, you are going
    to go to the United States.
    And I tell you, I was filled with joy.
    But I was flabbergasted.
    And I just didn't understand.
    And so she said, your parents are in the United States.
    And your baby brother is in the United States.
    And they have found you.
    They have gotten the Quakers--
    the Quakers, by the way, they did such wonderful things
    for children during the Second World War.
    And also, the HIAS and the OSE, all of them got together.
    And they found us.
    And they helped my father make--
    well, my father bought the tickets.
    But they helped my father arrange for a trip for us
    to come to the United States on a ship called
    the Serpa Pinto in Portugal.
    And before we turn to hearing about your trip on the Serpa
    Pinto, we have an audience question from a viewer, Kelly.
    And Kelly asks, how did your parents survive?
    It's a very good question.
    They must have been horribly upset because they
    didn't know where we were.
    But so how did my parents get over here to the United States?
    I'll answer this question.
    And what happened is my father had a cousin
    who lived in the Bronx.
    And she had a pickle factory.
    And in the United States, you could get affidavits
    if you had somebody that promised that you would not
    be a burden to the United States and that they would
    cover the immigrant's expenses.
    And so this cousin, her name was Ann [? Gersten. ?]
    And she wrote the affidavits.
    And she said that she would be responsible.
    But I guess, at the time, the amount of affidavits
    that she had was just good enough for one person to come.
    So they had to--
    my parents must have had to decide
    which one was going to come.
    And so they decided that my father
    should come because if he came, he could start to work.
    And then somehow, it'd be easier for him to get my mother over
    here.
    And so that's exactly what happened.
    He came to the United States in 19--
    I think at the end of 1940 or '41.
    And then he worked.
    And then he got my mother and my baby brother's affidavits
    to come to the United States.
    And so then that's when they started to try to find us.
    We can only imagine what it was like for your mother.
    Her one daughter and one son are gone.
    And her husband is gone to the United States.
    And so it's just your mother and your little baby brother
    still in Germany.
    That must have been just an extremely difficult time
    for her.
    So once you've found out that you were going to join them
    in the United States, tell us about your journey out
    of France to the United States.
    What was that like?
    And how did it happen?
    Yeah, well, the first thing was we
    had to get out of Brout-Vernet.
    And we took a train to Marseille, which
    in the southern part of France.
    And there, we stayed for a few days.
    And I'm not sure what happened there,
    but there were a lot of places that
    were taking refugees were all over in Marseille.
    But somehow or other, we got together with many children.
    And we got on a train.
    And the train took us over the Pyrenees, through Spain.
    And I remember, we were in Madrid.
    We were in a bus in Madrid.
    And then somehow, we went-- we got to Portugal.
    And then we got on the boat that was in Lisbon.
    And in Lisbon, and the boat was called the Serpa Pinto.
    And I found this out later.
    We went with 50 children.
    They were all in the hull.
    We all were in the hull of the ship.
    It was a cruise ship, but much smaller,
    not like anything they have now.
    And the thing is these 50 kids--
    later-- now, I found this out since I worked at the United
    States Holocaust Memorial Museum that Eleanor Roosevelt was
    responsible for getting all of these children
    to come-- to save these children.
    And somehow, evidently, maybe four children
    were not able to get on to the group.
    And so they put my brother, and me, and two other children
    onto the transport.
    And so what we did is we all slept in bunks
    in that one room, all 50 of us.
    And it took 14 days to get here.
    We have an image for you to tell us about.
    Ah, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    Oh This was a tag.
    Everybody had to wear this tag.
    And it said who we were.
    It said-- I wasn't-- and my name is Susi Hilsenrath.
    And then it said, I'm going on the SS Serpa Pinto
    and then leaving from Lisbon.
    And then I'm going to New York.
    And everybody, all the 50 kids, had to wear this tag.
    And it looks like it's pretty worn out
    because we had to wear it every day.
    But it's at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    And it was in one of the exhibits
    when it first opened up.
    Yeah.
    So the trip took 14 days.
    And then, of course, after those 14 days,
    you're about to go into New York City.
    You have to share that with us.
    Yeah.
    I do have to share that with you.
    I really would like to talk about this.
    Well, one evening, they told us that we should get up
    early the next morning because at 6 o'clock,
    we were going to pass the Statue of Liberty.
    I'm going to get emotional, I can feel it already.
    I'm sorry.
    Well, and you're getting me emotional.
    So I think that's completely appropriate.
    Well, anyway, my brother always gets emotional about this too.
    Anyway at 6 o'clock-- well, the kids all were up much earlier.
    And I think my brother probably was up at 5 o'clock up there.
    And so when we got up there, there was this horrible fog.
    And you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
    And so we were all really disappointed.
    But I'm telling you, at exactly 6 o'clock,
    that fog lifted like a curtain in the theater.
    And it just went up very, very slowly.
    And the very first thing we saw, the bottom
    of the statue, because it was 6 o'clock, and that curtain
    was rising very slowly and slowly.
    And we saw her body.
    And then we saw the head.
    And then we saw the entire Statue of Liberty.
    And all the children were excited.
    And of course, my brother and I were extremely excited
    because, first of all, we were going to see our parents.
    And then we knew that we were going to go to a society
    where there was a democracy and where we were going to not
    have anybody call us a dirty Jew or where
    there was no discrimination against Jewish people.
    And yet your ordeal was not quite over at that point.
    Tell us-- you got delayed.
    Tell us about that.
    Yeah, we did.
    We did get delayed.
    When we got to the port in New York,
    all the passengers of the ship got off the ship.
    But somehow or other, they had some medical people
    coming on board to check out to see
    if the children had some kind of a communicable disease.
    Oh, this is a picture of us coming into the port.
    Can you show where I am?
    Yes, the circle is me and the other one is my brother.
    This was in a newspaper in New York, when we first came here.
    This was on September the 24th.
    That is a tremendous photograph, that really is.
    Yeah, I think so.
    It was on September the 24th, 1941.
    Anyway, these medical people came on board.
    And they checked out all the children.
    And my brother had a fever.
    And he had a rash on his body from eating too much pineapple.
    And they thought that he had a communicable disease.
    And they said, he couldn't come into the United States.
    Of course, I would stayed with him.
    And they said, well, you can't come into the United States.
    So where did they take us?
    I bet you you probably thought about it already.
    Do you know where they took us?
    We came.
    I think I know, but our audience might not know.
    Well, I'll tell them.
    I'll tell them.
    It was Ellis Island.
    And so we took us to Ellis Island.
    And my brother was--
    they gave him aspirins or medicine.
    And they gave him cream for his rash.
    And he was better very soon.
    However, when we were there, the few days that we were there,
    we learned everything we needed to know for children here
    in the United States.
    So let me tell you the three things
    that we knew made us become a knowledgeable.
    We sat at long tables, like cafeteria tables
    in the school system.
    And there was a sailor sitting next to my brother.
    And he was drinking a brown drink.
    And it had bubbles in it.
    And the sailor nudged him and asked him
    if he would like to have a taste.
    And my brother looked at me.
    And he said, should I drink it?
    And I said, well, OK.
    So he tasted it.
    And he said, oh, it tastes very good.
    So this sailor told him that it was Coca-Cola.
    So in those days, the Coca-Cola was just
    the drink that was very popular here in the United States.
    And so another day that we found out
    that there was this bread on the table.
    And it was white.
    And we had never seen any white bread.
    And so it was soft.
    And we could take it in our hand.
    And we could make a ball out of it.
    And then we could eat it.
    And it tasted so wonderful.
    And somebody told us that it was called Wonder Bread.
    And then the last thing we learned,
    which is really, very important, is
    that the kids here in the United States
    were having candy that you could keep in your mouth all day
    long.
    And it didn't melt. And then they told us
    that it was chewing gum.
    And in those days, chewing gum was a big thing
    in the United States.
    So my brother and I were ready to come.
    And so they-- we put us back on the boat.
    And they took us back to the pier.
    And there was my father.
    And he took us to Washington, DC.
    So your father had been waiting all that time
    while you were having to go through that quarantine
    and time at Ellis Island.
    Yes.
    Before we go on, I want to just say to our audience
    that, of course, the United States was not yet in the war.
    We wouldn't enter the war until December 1941.
    Had this been a few months later,
    Susan's parents would not have gotten out of Germany.
    So the timing for you was just absolutely wonderful.
    What was it like, Susan, to reunite with your parents
    after all that time?
    Well, it was wonderful to see them.
    We were very happy to be with them.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Susan, your immediate family, obviously,
    was able to get out of Germany.
    And that was wonderful.
    Tell us what happened to other family members.
    Well, most everybody was murdered.
    My father had been born in Poland.
    And I had never met my grandparents or his relatives,
    except for one sister.
    And she emigrated to Israel way before Hitler,
    or around that time.
    And so I never knew any of his relatives.
    And they lived in Poland.
    And I tried to find out what had happened to them.
    The Germans keep very good records.
    But I could not find anything as to what happened about them.
    And I didn't find out until later
    that in all the small villages, the Germans marched in.
    And what they did is they made the Jewish people dig
    their own graves.
    And they shot them.
    And they didn't keep any record of what had happened.
    So my grandparents and my father's relatives
    lived in a town called Kolomea.
    And most of those people died that way.
    And on my mother's side, many of-- my mother
    also was born in Poland.
    I never met her parents, either.
    And I didn't find out anything, either, about them.
    But she did have a relative called Tante Anna.
    There she is.
    She was my mother's mother's sister.
    So she was my mother's aunt.
    And Tante means aunt in German.
    And my mother called her Tante Anna.
    So and to me, she was always Tante Anna.
    And she lived in a town called Viersen.
    And she was wonderful to us.
    And she was like a good, good, good relative.
    She was a wonderful lady.
    She had a husband.
    And she had children.
    And what happened to her is--
    I did find out what happened to her because she
    was sent to Riga because the Germans kept records
    about the German Jews.
    And she was-- and she had a mother,
    which was my mother's grandmother,
    my great-grandmother.
    And so-- and her husband, Uncle Heinrich, they sent him.
    And they were such wonderful people.
    And they were so good to us.
    And they sent them to Riga.
    And that they were murdered there.
    At the Riga concentration camp.
    Susan--
    I don't know how they were murdered, but they died there.
    It's said in the book.
    And still, I don't know.
    I tried to find out what happened, how they died,
    and why they died.
    But they just said, they died.
    Thank you for sharing that.
    I know that's very painful to talk about.
    We have some comments from the audience
    to share with you, though.
    Tammy writes, Susan's descriptions and storytelling
    ability puts you there and brings all of these experiences
    to life.
    For history, Susan's account is so important.
    Thank you again, Susan.
    I will listen to you at every chance I get.
    And your granddaughter is watching.
    Rebecca writes, hi, Grandma.
    I'm watching with my dad and David.
    We love you.
    Well, hello.
    It's going to be David's birthday.
    And I think, tonight, we're going to celebrate David's.
    And he has a twin brother.
    And we're going to celebrate them.
    And I just want to brag about my children and grandchildren.
    They are all so wonderful.
    And they are contributing to society, all of them,
    all my nine grandchildren.
    And David and Rebecca, especially--
    they're all-- they're doing--
    David is doing-- helping the world
    in desalinating the oceans.
    And he's going to save the world from a water shortage.
    And all my other grandchildren have so much to contribute.
    And so what I'm saying to you all, see,
    what I brought with myself and all
    these six million people that were killed,
    they could have had grandchildren.
    They could have contributed to the world and--
    like my grandchildren are contributing to the world.
    Susan, I have just one more question for you.
    In the face of rising global antisemitism,
    please, tell us why you continue to share
    your firsthand account of what you experienced
    during the Holocaust.
    We have to remember what happened.
    We cannot undo the atrocities of the past.
    We have to take action to confront hate.
    We cannot be onlookers when we see injustice taking place.
    We need to understand what prejudice and hatred can
    do to people.
    We have to be sensitive to each other
    and take care of one another.
    And we have to enjoy--
    let us enjoy and celebrate what we have in common.
    Susan, we have such gratitude to you for your willingness
    to continue to do this, to take the time
    to share your firsthand account of what you experienced.
    It's so important.
    You are so eloquent.
    And as Tammy noted, you are a storyteller.
    It's no surprise that you spent a career teaching and building
    a new generation, several generations of people
    to contribute to the betterment of our world.
    So thank you, Susan, for all you've done and all you
    continue to do.
    Well, we look forward to your next time with us
    on the First Person program.
    Thank you for having me, Bill.
    I'd like to take a moment to thank our donors.
    First Person is made possible through the generous support
    of the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation.
    I'd like to also ask you to join us again
    next month on April 27, 2022 at 1:00 PM Eastern
    Time for a conversation with Holocaust survivor and museum
    volunteer, Peter Gorog.
    Peter and his mother faced antisemitism
    and Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in their hometown of Budapest.
    When the German Army occupied Hungary in March 1944,
    they were ordered to leave their home.
    Join us to hear how they were-- how they survived and were
    liberated from the Budapest ghetto in January 1945,
    when Peter was almost four years old.
    Thank you for watching First Person today.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Ms. Susan Warsinger
    Interviewer
    Bill Benson
    Date
    creation:  2022 March 16
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

    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
    To the best of the Museum's knowledge, there are no known copyright restrictions on the material(s) in this collection, or the material is in the public domain. You do not require further permission from the Museum to use this material.

    Copyright Holder
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Warsinger, Susan, 1929-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    This is an interview conducted for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's First Person Program, a seasonal program that enables USHMM visitors to hear Holocaust survivors tell their life stories in their own words.
    Primary Number
    IA2000-022, 20220316
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 09:45:04
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn734653

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    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Greifer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel and Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Taube

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isak M. Danon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sheila Perec Etons Bernard

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel and Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Manya Friedman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral History

    Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

    Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis de Groot

    Oral history interview with Louis de Groot

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Allan Firestone

    Oral history interview with Allan Firestone

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Al Munzer

    Oral history interview with Al Munzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Henry Weil

    Oral history interview with Henry Weil

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Louis de Groot

    Oral history interview with Louis de Groot

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath

    Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Darvas

    Oral history interview with Susan Darvas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rae Goldfarb

    Oral history interview with Rae Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ralph Berets

    Oral history interview with Ralph Berets

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ester Starobin

    Oral history interview with Ester Starobin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose-Helene Spreiregen

    Oral history interview with Rose-Helene Spreiregen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral History

    Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joel Nommick

    Oral history interview with Joel Nommick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Steven Fenves

    Oral history interview with Steven Fenves

    Oral History

    Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Feigl

    Oral history interview with Peter Feigl

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral history interview with Josie Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Rae Goldfarb

    Oral history interview with Rae Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alex Schiffman-Shilo

    Oral history interview with Alex Schiffman-Shilo

    Oral History

    Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Joel Nommick

    Oral history interview with Joel Nommick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral History

    Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Al Munzer

    Oral history interview with Al Munzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral History

    Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Freddie Traum

    Oral history interview with Freddie Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacqueline Mendels Birn

    Oral history interview with Jacqueline Mendels Birn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Darvas

    Oral history interview with Susan Darvas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral History

    Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral History

    Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath

    Oral history interview with Arye Ephrath

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ralph Berets

    Oral history interview with Ralph Berets

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Flatow

    Oral history interview with Fred Flatow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Louise Lawerence-Israels

    Oral history interview with Louise Lawerence-Israels

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ester Starobin

    Oral history interview with Ester Starobin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Kohn

    Oral history interview with Ruth Kohn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

    Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

    Oral history interview with Alfred Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

    Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral history interview with Manny Mandel

    Oral History

    Emanuel Mandel, born in 1936 in Riga, Latvia, describes his family moving to Budapest, Hungary when he was three months old; his father’s work as a cantor; the anti-Jewish laws implemented in the 1930s; the German occupation of Budapest in early 1944; being deported with his mother by cattle car in June 1944 to Bergen-Belsen; developing pneumonia and not having access to much food while in the camp; being taken to Switzerland in late 1944; staying in a Red Cross hotel near Montreux; going to a children’s home in Heiden; immigrating with his mother to Palestine in 1945; and immigrating to the United States in March 1949. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Fred Flatow

    Oral history interview with Fred Flatow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

    Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born on August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his Polish parents; his older siblings; a family friend who was a policeman and warned the Markowicz family of an imminent outbreak of violence against Jews throughout Germany in 1938; fleeing to Antwerp, Belgium shortly before Kristallnacht; the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940; his family’s attempt to cross the border into France and being denied access; renting a beach house in La Panne, Belgium; his family’s move to Brussels, Belgium in 1941; going into hiding with his family in 1942; being hidden separately from his siblings; being hidden with several different families, in children’s homes in Brussels, and in the Ardennes; being taken in by the Vanderlinden family and living with them until the liberation of Brussels in September 1944; the survival of his immediate family and the fate of his extended family; living in Brussels after the war; and his family immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral History

    Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

    Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

    Oral History

    Esther Starobin (née Rosenfeld), born on April 3, 1937 in Adelsheim, Germany, discusses her family; her father’s work in the cattle industry; the Nazi assumption of power in January 1933; the policies of discrimination against Jews in Germany; her three sisters going to England as part of a Kindertransport in March 1939; going on a Kindertransport to England in the summer of 1939; staying in Thorpe, Norwich, England with Dorothy and Harry Harrison and their son Alan; attending school and being very much part of the family; staying with the Harrison family until November 1947; visiting with her sisters who lived elsewhere in England; the fates of her parents and brother (her parents died in Auschwitz and her brother was rescued in 1941 and immigrated to the United States); her sister Bertl arranging for all four of the sisters to immigrate to the US in 1947; and living initially with an aunt and uncle in Washington, DC before finding an apartment of their own. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral History

    Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral history interview with Margit Meissner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral history interview with Kurt Pauly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julius Menn

    Oral history interview with Julius Menn

    Oral History

    Julius Menn, born on February 20, 1929, in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland), discusses his family; immigrating with his family in 1935 to Palestine; settling in Tel Aviv; his family’s return to Poland in 1938; enrolling in a Polish school in Warsaw; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; fleeing with his mother and sister to Bialystok, Poland and further east with other refugees; encountering the Soviet Army and being aided by a Jewish Soviet soldier who helped his family boarded a train for Vilnius, Lithuania, where they lived for a year; his father obtaining transit visas from Soviet authorities in the fall of 1940; his family’s travel by train through Kiev and Moscow to Odessa; traveling by ship from Odessa to Turkey and from there, traveling by train through Syria and Lebanon; arriving in Palestine in October 1940; serving in the Haganah (Jewish Military force in Palestine) as a teenager and later as a junior officer; going in 1947 to the United States to study at the University of California, Berkeley; returning to Palestine to serve in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948; and returning to the United States in 1950 to complete his education, and ultimately earning a PhD in toxicology. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral history interview with Sylvia Rozines

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

    Oral history interview with Jacqueline Birn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral History

    Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

    Oral history interview with Nesse G. Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin), born on March 28, 1928 in Siauliai, Lithuania, discusses growing up in an observant Jewish family; the German invasions of Poland in September 1939; Siauliai coming under the control of the Soviet Union; the German occupation beginning in June 1941; the Nazis’ policies of discrimination toward Jews during the occupation; being forced with her family to move into the Siauliai ghetto; the mass deportation of Jews, including her father, on November 5, 1943; being deported to Stutthof in 1944; being separated from her mother and brothers; being sent to several other labor camps; being sent on a death march in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on March 10, 1945; recuperating in a makeshift hospital in Chinow (Chynowie), Poland; being taken care of by a foster mother; going to Łódź, Poland, where Nesse met a woman from Siauliai who told her that her mother Sara was alive and was somewhere on the border between Germany and Poland; reunting with her mother; getting married to Yankel (Jack) Godin; relocating to Feldafing displaced persons camp; reuniting with her brother Jechezkel; and immigrating to the United States in 1950. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

    Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Rachel Goldfarb (née Mutterperl), born on December 2, 1930 in Dokszyce, Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her family; her younger brother, Shlomo; her father’s death in 1937; the Soviet Union occupation of Dokszyce in September 1939; the nationalization of her family’s businesses; the banning of religious schools; the German occupation after June 22, 1941; the requirement for Jews to wear yellow badges; the formation of a Jewish ghetto; the mass killing of Jews in Dokszyce in 1942; escaping with her family from the ghetto and going into hiding; the murder of her brother; staying with friends in the Glebokie (Hlybokaye) ghetto; joining the partisans in the forest outside Glebokie, where her mother worked as a cook and Rachel assisted; marching with the partisans to the Soviet front lines in late summer 1944; going to Lublin, Poland after liberation; leaving Poland for Italy, where they stayed in the Santa Cesarea and Bari displaced persons camps; and immigrating to the United States with her mother in 1947. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

    Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

    Oral History

    Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

    Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    David Bayer, born on September 27, 1922 in Kozienice, Poland, describes his father, who owned a shoe factory before the war; his mother, who managed the household and helped in the factory; having a comfortable childhood; his sister and brother; the German occupation of his town and the anti-Jewish restrictions; being relocated to a ghetto; working on an irrigation project; the deportation of his family to Treblinka, where they perished; being transported to Pionki and put to work in a factory that manufactured gunpowder; being taken in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for slave labor and tattooed with a prisoner number; working in the coal mines at Jaworzno; being evacuated in the winter of 1944-1945 and sent on a death march; escaping into the forest and being found by Russian soldiers; returning to Kozienice; traveling to Panama and then to Israel, where he immediately joined the army; fighting in Israel’s War for Independence; returning to Panama; and immigrating to the United States in 1955. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

    Oral history interview with Marcel Hodak

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

    Oral history interview with Jacques Fein

    Oral History

    Jacques Fein (né Karpik), born in October 1938 in Paris, France, discusses his parents Rojza Taszynowicz and Szmul Karpik, who were Polish Jews and had immigrated to Paris in the 1930s; his younger sister Annette (born in August 1940); his father’s work as a tailor; the German occupation of France in 1940; the Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) helping to protect and hide Jacques and Annette; being placed with his sister in the home of Marcel and Suzanne Bocahut, a Catholic family in the Paris suburb Vert-Galant (now a district of Villepinte); the deportation of his father to Pithiviers and then Auschwitz, where he was murdered in 1942; the deportation of his mother to Drancy and then Auschwitz, where she was murdered; living with the Bocahut family for the remainder of the war; being baptized Catholic to avoid suspicion that he might be Jewish; the end of the war; being placed with his sister in OSE homes for displaced children, first in Les Roches in Normandy and then in Taverny outside of Paris; being adopted along with his sister by a Jewish American couple, Harry and Rose Fein; and going with their adopted family to the United States in October 1948.

    Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

    Oral history interview with Fanny Aizenberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Susan Taube

    Oral history interview with Susan Taube

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

    Oral history interview with Alexander Shilo

    Oral History

    Alex Shilo, born December 15, 1933 in Strasbourg, France, discusses his Jewish parents who had emigrated from Galicia, Poland; his father Feibisch, who was a traveling salesman who sold leather goods; his mother Henia Tauba, who was a Hebrew teacher and worked as a seamstress for Feibisch’s business; his older sister Madeleine; his family’s move to Paris in 1938; the German invasion of France in May 1940; fleeing with his family to Issoudun; his family’s move a few months later to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to stay with relatives; his mother becoming ill and her death in May 1941 from cancer; his Aunt Cylli living with the family in order to look after Alex and his sister; the several other Jewish families living in the small village; the good relations between the Jewish and the non-Jewish residents; how on several occasions, local French police officials warned the Jews of impending roundups and advised them to go into hiding; hiding for several nights in the home of his science teacher during one of these roundups; the increased frequency of the roundups and deportations of Jews, forcing Alex and his family to leave home on several occasions and go into hiding until the immediate danger had past; his immediate family surviving the war while many of his other relatives were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators; returning to Paris after liberation; having to endure a legal battle to return to their apartment; attending a Jewish boarding high school, then the Institut National Agronomique, where he received a master of science degree in agriculture; immigrating to Israel in 1959; and moving to the United States in 1989. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral history interview with Agi Geva

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

    Oral history interview with Josiane Traum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral history interview with Estelle Laughlin

    Oral History

    Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral history interview with Theodora Basch Vrančić Klayman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born on September 2, 1928 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his Russian parents; his memories of the beginning of the war; the German invasion of Belgium in 1940; fleeing with his family to Southern France; being placed in an internment camp for refugees; his parents’ decision to escape the camp; going by train to a friend’s farm elsewhere in France, where the family hid for a year; fleeing with his family to Marseille, France; escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain; being separated from his family and sent to an orphanage; reuniting with his mother and sister after two weeks; being sent to the United States in 1943 on the Serpa Pinto; and reuniting with his family in the US after a few years. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born on January 28, 1929 in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia), discusses his family; his father who was a subsistence farmer and meat distributor; his mother who managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised nine children; the Hungarian control over his hometown beginning in 1939; the anti-Jewish policies; the conscription of Jewish men, including his two brothers, into slave labor battalions and sent to the Russian front; his father managing to keep his business; the deportation of his family in April 1944 to the Munkacs ghetto (in present day Mukacheve, Ukraine); being forced to perform labor in a brick factory; the deportation of his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the selection process; being transported with his father to Melk, a subcamp of the labor camp Mauthausen; his father’s death; being sent on a forced march to Gunskirchen; being liberated by the United States Army on May 5, 1945; life after the war; living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

    Oral history interview with Rachel M. Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Rachel Goldfarb (née Mutterperl), born on December 2, 1930 in Dokszyce, Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her family; her younger brother, Shlomo; her father’s death in 1937; the Soviet Union occupation of Dokszyce in September 1939; the nationalization of her family’s businesses; the banning of religious schools; the German occupation after June 22, 1941; the requirement for Jews to wear yellow badges; the formation of a Jewish ghetto; the mass killing of Jews in Dokszyce in 1942; escaping with her family from the ghetto and going into hiding; the murder of her brother; staying with friends in the Glebokie (Hlybokaye) ghetto; joining the partisans in the forest outside Glebokie, where her mother worked as a cook and Rachel assisted; marching with the partisans to the Soviet front lines in late summer 1944; going to Lublin, Poland after liberation; leaving Poland for Italy, where they stayed in the Santa Cesarea and Bari displaced persons camps; and immigrating to the United States with her mother in 1947. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral history interview with Peter Gorog

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral history interview with Jill B. Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly (née Gisela Renate Berg), born on May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, discusses growing up in a small town called Lechenich, where her family had lived since the 17th century; her father Joseph, who was a respected cattle dealer; her mother Klara, who tended to the home and took care of Jill and her older sister Inge; having a close-knit, observant Jewish family; fleeing to Cologne with her family in 1938 after they were warned of impending pogroms; the ransacking of their home during Kristallnacht; the internment of her father, uncle, and cousin after they fled illegally to Holland; her family securing visas for her father, uncle, and cousin for Kenya; leaving for Kenya via Genoa, Italy in May 1939 along with her mother, sister, and several other family members; settling in rented house in Nairobi; the beginning of the war in September 1939, and the British government arresting all adult male foreign nationals, including her father and uncles; how they were imprisoned for one week then released on the condition that they work on the farms of British citizens who were called away for war service; her family later purchasing a 375-acre farm where they could see Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; her family purchasing a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, NJ; completing her high school education and graduating from a business college; and getting married in 1957 to Kurt Pauly (a fellow survivor from Nazi Germany). [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger, born on May 27, 1929 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, discusses her childhood in Bad Kreuznach; being the eldest of three children; her father’s linen store; the rise of the Nazis; being forced with other Jewish children to leave the public school; her father having to close his business; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938 and the destruction of the windows and furnishings in their home; being smuggled to France along with her brother Joseph; the German occupation of France beginning in May 1940; being evacuated from a children’s home in Paris to Versailles, where they were temporarily housed in Louis XIV’s palace; fleeing with their guardians to the unoccupied part of the country controlled by the Vichy government; crossing the Pyrenees into Spain; receiving permission to immigrate to the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS); sailing with her brother from Lisbon, Portugal to New York, NY in September 1941; reuniting with their parents and younger brother; and settling in Washington, DC. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Văscăuti, Romania (now Vashkivtsi, Ukraine), discusses her parents Abraham and Tabel Lifschitz; the dry goods store and small factory her father and uncle operated; their home which was shared with other relatives; the Soviet occupation of Văscăuti in 1940; the drafting of young men, including her father, into the army; the German invasion of Soviet territories in June 1941; Romanian soldiers entering Văscăuti and ordering all Jews to prepare to leave; being detained with her family and other Jews in a large building before being taken by Romanian authorities to Mogilev-Podolsky in Transnistria and then to the Shargorot ghetto; living in the ghetto for three years; attending a small class in the ghetto; the hardships in the ghetto; the liberation of Shargorot in early 1944; returning to Văscăuti; attending a Ukrainian school in Văscăuti; finding out that her father had been killed fighting in the Soviet army; the fates of her maternal grandparents and her mother’s siblings; escaping Communist Romania after her mother and her aunt obtained false papers stating that they were born in Poland; traveling from Romania to the displaced persons camp in Feldafing; contracting tuberculosis and being sent to a sanitarium for nine months; her mother remarrying; and immigrating with her mother and stepfather in 1949 to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

    Oral history interview with Henry Kahn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral history interview with Albert Garih

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral history interview with Julie Keefer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral history interview with Fritz P. Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral history interview with Irene Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral history interview with Nathan Shaffir

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

    Oral history interview with Esther R. Starobin

    Oral History

    Esther Starobin (née Rosenfeld), born on April 3, 1937 in Adelsheim, Germany, discusses her family; her father’s work in the cattle industry; the Nazi assumption of power in January 1933; the policies of discrimination against Jews in Germany; her three sisters going to England as part of a Kindertransport in March 1939; going on a Kindertransport to England in the summer of 1939; staying in Thorpe, Norwich, England with Dorothy and Harry Harrison and their son Alan; attending school and being very much part of the family; staying with the Harrison family until November 1947; visiting with her sisters who lived elsewhere in England; the fates of her parents and brother (her parents died in Auschwitz and her brother was rescued in 1941 and immigrated to the United States); her sister Bertl arranging for all four of the sisters to immigrate to the US in 1947; and living initially with an aunt and uncle in Washington, DC before finding an apartment of their own. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral history interview with Robert Behr

    Oral History

    Robert “Bob” Behr, born in 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his family; his father Alfred, who was a real estate agent; his mother Lilly, who managed their household; his parents’ divorce when he was young; living with his mother and stepfather, Dr. Alfred Hamburger; the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933; the discrimination of Jews in Germany; attending a German-Jewish boarding school in Sweden until the school was forced to close; returning to Berlin; Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938; the deportation of his father to Buchenwald; being evicted from their apartment; living in two rooms in an elderly Jewish woman’s apartment until 1942; the arrest of his mother and stepfather for helping their friend escape to Switzerland; his arrest a few day later; being sent with his family to Theresienstadt; his work in Theresienstadt, transporting bodies for burial and laying railroad tracks; working in the camp’s kitchen; protecting his parents from deportation to Auschwitz in early 1944 by volunteering to work on the new SS headquarters in Wulkow, Germany; returning to Theresienstadt in January 1945; being liberated by the Soviet Army on May 5, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; enlisting in the US Army; being sent to Berlin, where he interrogated former Nazi personnel; leaving the army in 1952; and his work in Dayton, Ohio. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral history interview with Gideon Frieder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral history interview with Sam Ponczak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral history interview with Anna Grosz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral history interview with Steven J. Fenves

    Oral History

    Steven Fenves, born in 1931 in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), discusses his childhood and family; the day when Germany attacked Yugoslavia; the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia and the confiscation of his family's property; being forced to quarter Hungarian troops in his family's apartment; antisemitic laws and discrimination against Croats and Serbs during the Hungarian occupation; the changes that occurred when Germany occupied Hungary; the deportation of his father; being forced into the Subotica ghetto; being sent to the nearby transit camp of Bácsalmás; being deported to Auschwitz and separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; life in the children's barracks at Auschwitz; being picked to be a translator because of his knowledge of German; his involvement in the resistance and black market at Auschwitz; his deportation to Niederorschel, a subcamp of Buchenwald; a death march from Niederorschel to Buchenwald; the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces; returning to Subotica and reuniting with his sister and father; his father's death three months after his return; returning to school in Subotica and life in Yugoslavia under communism; going to school in Paris, France; and immigrating to the United States. [Note: this summary may not reflect the entirety of the interview; it may also contain additional biographical information that is not discussed in the interview.]

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