Overview
- Interview Summary
- Leo Silberman, born in Poland in 1925, describes his family; how his father was a salesman; how he was 14 years old when the Nazis invaded; being forced to do physical labor for two years; secretly buying potatoes and bread from local farmers; being sent with his brother in 1941 to Płaszów, where they were forced to use Jewish tombstones to pave the camp streets; being transferred in 1943 to an ammunition factory in Skarzysko, Poland; how the skin of the prisoners had turned green because of exposure to the gun powder; volunteering to be a mechanic; being taken to Buchenwald; being marched to Weimar, Germany, where they cleared rubble; experiencing an air raid and stealing a pot roast when all the guards fled to bomb shelters; being marched with a group of men who were to be shot, falling behind, getting caught by a guard and punched, and being left behind; how he ran back to the barracks and blended in with the non-Jewish prisoners; being transported to Theresienstadt the next day; being liberated on May 10, 1945; deciding not to register with the Russian authorities because he did not want to return to Poland; joining a group being smuggled into Palestine by the Jewish Brigade; being caught by American soldiers and taken to a displaced persons camp in Germany where he met his future wife and attended a trade school; moving to Council Bluffs, IA in 1949; and settling in Cleveland, Ohio in 1951.
- Interviewee
- Leo Silberman
- Date
-
interview:
2007 March 22
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Congregation Shaarey Tikvah, Beachwood, Ohio www.shaareytikvah.org
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 DVD : MPEG-4.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Restrictions may exist. Contact the Museum for further information: reference@ushmm.org
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camp inmates--Poland. Death marches. Forced labor--Poland. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States. Jews--Poland. Refugee camps--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Liberation. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Cleveland (Ohio) Council Bluffs (Iowa) Landsberg am Lech (Germany) Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945. Skarzysko-Kamienna (Poland) United States--Emigration and immigration. Weimar (Thuringia, Germany)
- Personal Name
- Silberman, Leo, 1925-
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2014 from Louise K. Freilich, on behalf of Congregation Shaarey Tikvah, Beachwood, Ohio.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:31:55
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn78769
Additional Resources
Supplementary Materials (2)
Download & Licensing
- Request Copy
- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit
Contact Us
Also in Remember The Children: Hadasah Zehman Video Collection of Face to Face Presentations
Oral history interviews with 24 Holocaust survivors and one retired U.S. Soldier.
Date: 2005-2007
Oral history interview with Betty Gurfein Berliner
Oral History
Betty Gurfein Berliner, born in Pruchnik, Poland in 1924, describes how her education was interrupted by the war; having to wear the yellow Star of David badge and the restrictive laws placed on Jews; how in 1941 German soldiers were building barracks in preparation for the invasion of Russia; her father's imprisonment; how she was ordered on a truck with her mother and sisters on August 29, 1942; how her sister pushed her off the truck and she escaped; walking to another sister’s house; going into hiding and changing hiding places frequently; being liberated by the Russian Army in August 1944; moving to Krakow, Poland six months later and then Wroclaw, Poland; getting married and remaining there until 1946; being helped by representatives from Israel to relocate to Czechoslovakia, then Austria, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.
Oral history interview with Max Edelman
Oral History
Max Edelman, born in Poland on September 26, 1922, describes his devout Jewish family; being beaten by his peers for being Jewish; experiencing antisemitism from a teacher; how the Nazis arrived in his small town in September 1939 and murdered the rabbi; how his family was moved to the ghetto; being sent to a small concentration camp to work in an airplane factory; conditions in the camp; how on April 8, 1944 he was beaten and left for dead; the loss of his left eye and the injury to his right eye; being helped by his brother and a friend; being moved to Flossenbürg; working in another airplane factory and becoming entirely blind; being protected by his barracks supervisor who created a hiding place for him; being evacuated on April 15, 1945 and sent on a death march; wanting to give up but being convinced by his friend to continue; being liberated by the American Army on April 23, 1945; coming to terms with being blind; becoming a physical therapist at a school for the blind in Germany; getting married; and immigrating to the United States in 1951.
Oral history interview with Esther Frank
Oral History
Esther Gelbart Frank, born in Poland in 1927, describes her family; the invasion of the Nazis; attempting to escape with her siblings but going back home; the murder of two uncles; not being allowed to attend school; how Jewish men were ordered to clean up the bombed areas and the beating her father received for refusing to do so; moving to the ghetto; the arrest of her father in 1941 and never seeing him again; going on a dangerous train trip to another ghetto; escaping before the liquidation of the camp; returning home and registering for a work camp; being sent to Blechhammer in June 1943 and then to another camp to work in a factory; living in a barracks with 40 other women; a cruel 19-year-old female guard; being beaten for stealing potatoes; the increase in the number of inmates in 1944; knowing that the Russians were coming to liberate the camp; being freed on May 8, 1945; looting food from the bakery and butcher; moving to the American zone and immigrating to the United States in 1949; and her advice to students.
Oral history interview with Gita Frankel
Oral History
Gita Engel Frankel, born in Kalisz, Poland in 1925, describes her family; attending a strict Catholic school; being forced to Zdunska Wola, Poland, where she lived for three years in a ghetto; being on a force march in September 1942 to a Jewish cemetery for a selection; how her father was shot trying to protect her younger brother; being transported to the Łódź ghetto with her mother and older brother; her brother's death from starvation; her deportation to Auschwitz with her mother; seeing flames from the crematorium and smelling burning flesh; being stripped; not receiving tattooed numbers; being sent to Stutthof with her mother; her relocation to Praust (Pruszcz Gdański, Poland) without her mother; making cement runways; hearing Russian planes overhead as the war was nearing its end; her reunion with her mother before they were forced on a death march; hiding in a barn when Russian soldiers found them; being sick after liberation and spending 18 months in a hospital; returning to Poland with her mother; moving to a displaced persons camp in Germany; getting married; training as a dental technician; having two children; and immigrating to the United States in 1957.
Oral history interview with Roman Frayman
Oral History
Roman Frayman, born in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1938, describes the impact of the German invasion on his family; being rounded up with the other Jews in Sosnowiec and taken to the Srodula ghetto; how his mother had another baby boy while they were in the ghetto; their transfer to a nearby work camp; his parents’ plan to get their children out; the death of his infant brother; how his parents hid him while they worked at the camp; being smuggled out of the ghetto to the home of a catholic woman, Maria Balagova, with whom he lived from 1941 to 1945; being raised catholic; how his mother hid nearby in the basement of the same apartment building; being liberated by Russian soldiers; moving to a displaced persons camp in Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949; being teased by American children; and raising children and grandchildren.
Oral history interview with Arnold Friedman
Oral History
Arnold Friedman, born in 1927 in a small village near Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes his family; moving to Mukachevo; attending public school and the local synagogue; his childhood; the Nazi invasion of Poland; how in 1941 the Germans confiscated Jewish property and limited the rights of Jews, sympathizers, and Roma; how many people were killed in attacks; being cut off from the world and only seeing Nazi propaganda; a Nazi raid in 1944 when he was beaten for trying to defend his father; the burning of Torah scrolls; the creation of a ghetto in Mukachevo, where Jews and Roma were kept; being sent to Auschwitz; conditions in the camp and being saved by his brother during the selection process; being moved to a labor camp in Silesia in 1945, where he worked in a quarry; escaping after the Allies bombed a train; how the Red Cross connected him with Jewish agencies that helped him find his family; immigrating to Cleveland, OH in 1948; his wife and children; and speaking with people about his experiences.
Oral history interview with Betty Gold
Oral History
Betty Potash Gold, born in 1930 in Trochenbrod, Poland (Sofiïvka, Ukraine), describes the large Jewish community in her town; hearing rumors of Nazis killing Jews in western Poland; how her father and uncle built hiding places for the family; the Nazi invasion when she was nine years old; the roundup of the Jewish population by Nazi forces; escaping and finding her family in one of the hiding places; the death of her cousin’s baby; how all the local Jews were shot in the town’s center; how she and her family spent the entire war hiding in the woods; being in charge of stealing and scrounging for food; hearing that Jews were still alive and working in Trochenbrod and how her family investigated only to find that a second massacre was taking place; being helped by a Christian family friend; changing hiding places; going back to the town for food and escaping as Nazis shot at them; living in a swamp; being found by Russian partisans and how her family worked for the partisans for the rest of the war; how her older brother died in the Russian Army; living in a displaced persons camp in Austria; and immigrating to the United States in 1946.
Oral history interview with Erika Gold
Oral History
Erika Taubner Gold, born in 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her German governess; the Hungarian schools and its quota system for Jews; attending a Jewish school; how her parents listened to Radio Free Europe on short wave radio; the German occupation of Hungary; how all Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David; how her father had to close his store and work in a nearby camp; having to move to a smaller apartment; how she and her mother worked for a few weeks making soldiers’ uniforms; how her mother got her father a false visa so he could avoid deportation; how on December 1, 1944 Nazis came to the factory where she and her mother were working and put everyone in trucks; escaping from the trucks with her mother and hiding with a former housekeeper until liberation; being liberated by Russians and reuniting with her father; and immigrating to the United States in 1950.
Oral history interview with Zev Harel
Oral History
Zev Harel (né Sarkas Herskovits), born in 1930 in Kis-Sikarlo, Transylvania, Hungary (possibly present day Cicârlău, Romania), describes how his grandfather was his hero; moving with his family to a nearby city when he was 10 years old; restrictions that were placed on Jews; spending the following four years working at forced manual labor; being sent with his family to a ghetto in 1944 and then to Auschwitz; remembering the stench of burning bodies; surviving the selection process by lying about his age; being sent to Mauthausen after a few days and then Ebensee; working in a quarry and also building an underground factory for military equipment; his daily routine in the camp and getting through each day; the liberation of Ebensee by American soldiers on May 5, 1945; suffering from Typhoid and collapsing in a ditch, but being picked up by an African-American soldier who drove him to a hospital in Linz, Austria; returning home and reuniting with his brother; going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; joining the Palestine Jewish Brigade and moving to Israel; fighting in the Israeli War of Independence; finishing his studies in Israel and the United States; getting married; earning his doctorate; and settling in Cleveland, OH.
Oral history interview with Jacob Hennenberg
Oral History
Jacob Hennenberg, born in 1924 in Oświęcim, Poland, describes his mother's death a month before his Bar Mitzvah; the invasion of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; how all the civilians were ordered to leave the town in 1939; going to Krakow, Poland with his family; walking 500 miles east with his father; having to cut his father’s sidelocks and beard; returning to Krakow; wearing a the yellow Star of David, which his sisters embroidered to be “badges of honor;" being forced to clean the old barracks and stables, which would become the Auschwitz concentration camp; being sent with his family to a ghetto in 1941; taking his father’s place during a deportation; never seeing his father and three of his sisters again; being taken to six forced labor camps and one concentration camp; going through a selection process; the guards in the various camps; being issued striped pants and a jacket as well as a tattooed number in Waldenburg; surviving by concentrating on food and survival; being liberated by the Russians in 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1949 with his wife and child; and waiting many years to share his story.
Oral history interview with Lissa K. Keller
Oral History
Lissa Kane Keller, born in 1931 in Rexingen, Germany, describes the small Jewish community; her family; being kicked out of school when she was seven years old; how her former friends joined the Hitler Youth and bullied her; being forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge; restrictions on Jews; how her father believed the persecution would pass and his grandfather did not agree; how her uncle agreed to sponsor her family to immigrate to the United States and her father resisted; Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938; how her grandfather ran to the burning synagogue to save the Torah scrolls; her father's arrest and transfer to Dachau; the release of her father and how her grandparents gave up their immigration numbers to her parents; the death of her grandparents in a concentration camp; immigrating to the United States on a ship from Holland; and her gratitude to her grandparents.
Oral history interview with Joseph Klein
Oral History
Joseph Klein, born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia, describes his family; how Jewish children were not allowed to attend school after 1938; how in 1944 Jewish families were assembled in a ghetto for a few days then transported by cattle cars to Auschwitz; the selection process after they got off the train; how his mother and sister were sent to the gas chambers; being assigned to a work force; being sent to Buchenwald to work in a petroleum refinery near Leipzig, Germany; conditions in the camp; being transported in the spring; how the train was bombed by the Allies and he escaped; being caught by a soldier and sent on a death march to Theresienstadt; wanting to give up but being encouraged by a friend from his hometown; how 1,250 people of the 3,000 on the march died; being liberated from Theresienstadt by the Russians in May 1945; being sent to London, England as an orphan child; learning to speak English and being trained to do typesetting; being adopted; immigrating to the United States; being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Korean War; traveling to Israel in 1958; getting married; and his children and grandchildren.
Oral history interview with Jack Kleinman
Oral History
Jack Kleinman, born in Cleveland, OH in 1925, describes being raised in a Jewish home; enlisting in the army; being fluent in Yiddish and becoming a German translator; being sent to Garansweiler, Germany after the war to help 12 young Polish survivors who had lost their relatives; providing food, clothing, and shelter for these survivors and bringing them to Regensberg, Switzerland; receiving donations from the United States and ignoring military rules to ensure that the youths were taken care of; how these survivors settled in the United States and Israel; and having a reunion with some of the group in 1999.
Oral history interview with Harold Koppel
Oral History
Harold Koppel, born in Cologne, Germany in 1927, describes his family; being in a school with only two other Jewish students and being bullied; being sent to a Jewish school; how the conditions for Jews got worse after 1935; the effects of the Nazi laws on his father’s medical practice; the arrest of his father on November 10, 1938 and sent to Dachau; how his mother got a temporary visa for England and was able to get his father out of Dachau; seeing Hitler during a parade; going to London, England and attending a nearby Catholic school; how his school was evacuated to a nearby village in the fall; immigrating to the United States with his parents; and how his father opened a medical office in Cleveland, OH.
Oral history interview with George Kronenberg
Oral History
George Kronenberg, born in Warburg, Germany in 1928, describes his family; believing that the Nazi marches in the streets and restrictive laws were normal occurrences; his memories of Kristallnacht; how his father was arrested the next morning and they went to Hannover, Germany when he was released; returning home and finding their home had been vandalized; staying with relatives in Hamburg, Germany; being sent on a Kindertransport to England with his sister in 1938; taking his grandfather’s pocket watch with him; corresponding with his parents for a few years; how his parents planned to go to England, but were trapped in Germany when the war began; how he and his sister were sent to separate foster families and did not see each other for six years; how he was treated kindly and his sister was not; discovering that he was a hemophiliac; reuniting with his sister and living with her in a hostel; and how they immigrated to the United States to live with an aunt and uncle.
Oral history interview with Sylvia Malcmacher
Oral History
Sylvia Distel Malcmacher, bron in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1926, describes her family; how the Nazis occupied Vilna in June 1941; a random roundup of Jews who were then shot in the Ponary Forest (in Paneriai, Lithuania); the creation of the ghetto in October 1941; conditions in the ghetto; how one day the young children, including her sister, were ordered to be medically examined but were actually all shot in the Ponary Forest; the liquidation of the ghetto in September 1943; being taken with her family to Kaiserwald and later to Stutthof; being separated from her father and never seeing him again; how inmates died from Typhus and starvation in Stutthof; going through a selection process and being sent to Muhldorf; digging tunnels for ammunition; conditions in the camp; being liberated by the Americans on May 5, 1945; going to the Feldafing displaced persons camp; learning that her mother and sister died of Typhus in Stutthof; getting married in the displaced persons camp; and immigrating to the United States in 1949.
Oral history interview with Hal Myers
Oral History
Hal Myers (né Hans Siegfried Hanauer), born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1930, describes how his father lost his job in 1935 and they moved to a less expensive neighborhood; observing Hitler’s visits to Karlsruhe and being frightened by the crowds; seeing the synagogue and Torah scrolls burned by Nazis during Kristallnacht and the vandalism of his family’s home; how his sister, Ruth, went on a Kindertransport to England; his father's arrest and transfer to Dachau; being deported in October 1940 to Gurs; the separation of men and women in the camp, but being placed with his mother, aunt, and brother; how his younger brother was removed from the camp by Quaker women from a relief group in January 1941; being on the second and final transport out with 47 other children; being sent to the United States in August 1941; and how he and his brother were adopted and raised by David and Inez Myers.
Oral history interview with Mimi Ormond
Oral History
Mimi Schleissner Ormond, born in 1927 in Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, describes attending German Catholic schools; not experiencing any antisemitism from her friends; attending a Czech school after the Nazis occupied her town; moving to the countryside, then Kolin, Czech Republic; being hidden by a Christian family; going to England on a Kindertransport in May 1939; living on a farm rented by the Jewish Agency; how more children came and they began sleeping in an abandoned castle; going to live with her uncle in London, England; studying to become a nursery school teacher; wanting to marry an American soldier; how her parents had escaped through Italy and gone to Palestine; how her mother would not give her permission to marry until she visited them; and her gratitude to those who saved Jewish children.
Oral history interview with Helen Potash
Oral History
Helen Jachimowicz Potash, born in Łódź, Poland in 1929, describes being ten years old when Germany invaded Poland; moving to a ghetto; how her father died in their apartment and the body had to be kept inside for six days before it was carted away; how two of her sisters escaped to Russia; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944; being taken with her family to Auschwitz; going through the selection process; seeing an infant shot by Nazis; her mother and brother's deaths in the gas chambers; having her head shaved and being given a number but not being tattooed; being sent with her sister to a labor camp in Hamburg, Germany for eight months; being sent to Bergen-Belsen; finding one day that the German guards had fled and that the Italian and Hungarian Nazi guards were opening fire on prisoners; going to Cleveland, OH with her sister in 1947; finding a picture in a book of herself with her family when they were in the ghetto; getting married to a Holocaust survivor; and her children and grandchildren.
Oral history interview with Sarah Radzeli
Oral History
Sarah Schneider Radzeli, born in Czechoslovakia, describes being 10 years old when Germany occupied her hometown; moving with her family to her grandfather’s home, which was in unoccupied Czechoslovakia; how Hungarian forces occupied her grandfather’s town when she was 14 years old; being sent to the ghetto; being deported shortly after to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being selected for work with her sister while her mother was sent to the gas chambers; being stripped naked, shaved, and issued striped uniforms and wooden shoes; living in a children’s block; how her sister was taken to the crematorium because she was too weak to work; seeing inmates commit suicide by touching the electric fence surrounding the camp; joining a transport of Polish prisoners of war going to Czechoslovakia, where she worked at night in an ammunition factory; being liberated by Russian troops on May 15, 1945; deciding to stay in the Czech town to recuperate; going to Prague, Czech Republic a few weeks later; meeting her brother in Budapest, Hungary; traveling to Palestine in 1946 on a ship that was stopped by the British; being taken to a detention camp in Cyprus, where she got married; coming down with Tuberculosis and being sent to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem; and immigrating to the United States in 1960.
Oral history interview with Hannah Rath
Oral History
Hannah Lenschitzki Rath, born in 1922 and raised in Halberstadt, Germany, describes the large Jewish community in her small town; her family and the death of her father when she was three years old; attending Jewish schools; how things began to change in 1933 with the rise of the Nazi Party; her brother’s immigration to the United States in 1938; how her family moved to Hanover, Germany in 1934; being forced to attend a Jewish school; Kristallnacht; being sent with her family to a ghetto in Riga, Latvia in 1941; how the ghetto prisoners were taken to Kaiserwald in 1943; being forced to shower and have her hair shaved; being separated from her mother; working in a cable factory outside the camp; how beatings were a daily occurrence and she and her friend watched out for one another; how occasionally an SS guard gave them extra bread; being moved by boat to Stutthof and improvising a Yom Kippur service; how in 1945 the Nazi guards deserted their posts; recovering in a Polish hospital; returning to her home town and finding that only 30 Jews of the 1,000 in the town had survived; how the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) helped her go to the United States in 1945; and meeting her future husband during the voyage.
Oral history interview with Judith Shamir
Oral History
Judith Weiss Shamir, born in Hungary, describes how before she was born in 1943 her father was forced to fight in the war; how her father was captured and placed in a prisoner of war camp; how her mother went into hiding with various Christian friends and realized she could not hide with a baby; how a resistance group helped her mother place her in the home of a non-Jewish woman; how Margit Polgar raised her as her own daughter in a village southeast of Budapest, Hungary; how Judith’s mother gave Margit a backpack with a secret compartment that held Judith’s papers concerning her true identity; how her mother and father survived the war and reunited in Oroshaza, Hungary; how they moved to Israel in 1948 and lost touch with Margit; moving to the United States in 1968; how her father located Margit in 1992 and she visited her; and how she now speaks to children groups about her experiences.
Oral history interview with Walter Wertheim
Oral History
Walter Wertheim, born in Mönchengladbach, Germany in 1925, describes his family, which had been in the same area for 300 years; being 13 years old at the time of Kristallnacht; being prevented from attending school; going to Cologne, Germany temporarily and returning home; how his father organized tutoring sessions for him; going to a Jewish high school in Cologne; being sent on a Kindertransport to England in May 1939; being in several foster families; not being able to attend school in England; how his father was able to leave Germany for the United States; going to New York, NY in June 1940; graduating at the age of 16; enlisting in the U.S. Army; becoming a lawyer after the war; and the friends and family he lost in the Holocaust.
Oral history interview with Alex Zelczer
Oral History
Alex Zelczer, born in 1927 in Vásárosnamény, Hungary, describes his parents and nine siblings; helping in the family’s bakery business; how life changed in 1939 when the Hungarian government started to copy the Nazi propaganda campaign; how the flour ration affected the bakery; how in 1943 the police forced his father to open the bakery on the Sabbath; how on the last day of Passover in 1944 one of his father’s non-Jewish customers offered to hide the Zelczer family on his farm, but they decided against it; being sent to the ghetto a few weeks later; being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; being separated from his family and never seeing his parents again; being moved to Jaworzno, where he was assigned to build a power plant; going to the infirmary in January 1945 because he was too weak to walk; remaining in the camp when the other prisoners were evacuated and sent on a death march; being liberated by the Russians on January 26, 1945; walking home and being nursed back to health by a cousin; reopening the bakery with his four surviving siblings; not feeling comfortable in Vásárosnamény and going to a displaced persons camp in Germany; living in the camp until 1947; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.
