Oral history interview with Andy Laska

Ina R. Friedman research materials

Document

Consists of research files, transcripts, and notes produced by Ina R. Friedman in her research for her numerous books on the Holocaust. Also includes a large collection of oral histories conducted by Ina Friedman for use in her research. Also includes original documents and identity cards for Dr. Richard Kahn and Ida Stern Kahn, originally of Berlin, Germany, as well as information about Cato Bontjes Van Beek, a member of the resistance.

Oral history interview with Eyton Baron

Oral History

Oral history interview with Kurt Baron

Oral History

Oral history interview with Wolfgang Behl

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gene Bergman and Brian Bergman

Oral History

Gene Bergman discusses his experience as a Deaf Holocaust survivor.

Signed testimony of David Bloch

Oral History

David Bloch discusses his experience as a Deaf Holocaust survivor.

Oral history interview with Lorna Bork

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hans Braun

Oral History

Oral history interview with Phillip Bruner

Oral History

Oral history interviews with Erna Buckholtz and Elisabet Krensky

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josef Burzminski

Oral History

Josef Burzminski discusses his experience in Poland being hidden by non-Jews during the war.

"Burn the Letters"

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hans Czempin

Oral History

Signed testimony of Wolfgang Czempin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Dopazo

Oral History

Elizabeth Dopazo describes her experience as a Jehova's Witness in Germany during World War II.

Oral history interview with Max Edelman

Oral History

Oral history interview with Annegret Ehmann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Shari Farkas

Oral History

Oral history interview with Klara Ferenczi

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anton Fojn

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mr. and Mrs. Frankenberg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Andre Girard

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irya Gittelson

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bill Goldsmith

Oral History

Oral history interview with Mrs. Gotshalk and Mrs. Abt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Von Hoesch

Oral History

Oral history interview with Bessie Jones

Oral History

Bessie Jones discusses her role in The Window Shop, a group of Jewish and Christian women, mostly the wives of professors, in Cambridge, MA that brought European refugees to the United States and helped them with employment.

Oral history interview with H.J. Kaltenburn

Oral History

H.J. Kaltenburn, an ecumenical leader in East Berlin, discusses Judaism and Christianity.

Oral history interview with Abba Kovner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Kraus

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Kraus

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aree Lagerstree

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anya Lergernsteine and Arie Lergensteine

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerry Levi

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aron Levin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rudi Leviticus

Oral History

Oral testimony of Joseph Lis, read by Peter Sawitz

Oral History

Translated and read by Peter Sawitz

Oral history interview with Ety Lumdani

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rabbi M

Oral History

Signed testimony of Franciska Mikus

Oral History

Franciska Mikus (née Schwarz; also known as Franziska and Fran), born in Munich, Germany, describes her experience as a Deaf Holocaust survivor; growing up Christian; having two siblings and being the only one born Deaf; her Deaf father (born in Bogenhausen), who could hear noises but could not distinguish sounds; her family’s belief that her grandfather’s over-drinking caused deafness in two of his 17 children; not being able to speak in her earliest years and expressing herself only through her own sign language; Fran communicating with her hearing mother through lip reading; her mother teaching her to sew; attending a hard of hearing class; asking her parents to transfer her to a school for the Deaf; having difficulty in learning to read lips; struggling with her penmanship because of her malnourished hands; feeling her intelligence was not fully realized; desiring to become women’s tailor; attending a Catholic club for Deaf girls at a nun’s order for training in dressmaking; the rise of antisemitism; her brother who was excited by Hitler; beginning to date her boyfriend Christian Mikus in 1934; how Christian lost his hearing because of Scarlett fever; learning of ominous reports from Christian about things going on in Dachau; being required to join the League of German Girls and the leaders’ interactions with the girls; the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses); receiving a government order to be sterilized along with her mother; her family petitioning the order, but only her mother being excused from the order; undergoing forced sterilization; her mother being upset at Christian and Fran’s unexpected (out of marriage) pregnancy; the family doctor reporting the pregnancy to the government; receiving a government letter for a forced abortion; seeking a marriage license in 1941 and the registrar’s requirement for a second sterilization; having complications from the procedures; their post-war struggles finding work as a Deaf couple; and their accomplishments in assisting the Deaf community. [Note: more information on Fran’s experiences can be found in the book “The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis”.]

Oral history interview with Susanna Miller

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lois Morin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Iso Papa

Oral History

Oral history interview with Paul Paukulis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lucy Perle

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fred Perlstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert Sade

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jack Skoronski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Otto Steiber

Oral History

Oral history interview with Toos de Swan

Oral History

Toos de Swan discusses her work to save Jewish children in the Netherlands during the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Walter Tauber

Oral History

Signed testimony of Hartmut Teuber

Oral History

Harmut Teuber describes the experiences of the Deaf community in Germany during WWII; the experiences of Dr. Eugene Bergmann, a professor at Gallaudet who was in the Warsaw Ghetto; the close connection of people in the Deaf world; Horst Biesold, a teacher for the Deaf; the sterilization of Deaf people in Nazi Germany; how some Deaf people cooperated with Nazi racial hygiene policies while others escaped them; how Deaf people were not institutionalized in contrast to the mentally disabled; stories about the last days of the war about Deaf men who were fighting on the home front; the death of 300 Deaf men who were killed upon the arrival of the Russians; how the home guard fighters including the Deaf were inexperienced and undertrained; how many Deaf men felt discriminated against because they were not allowed in army; his philosophy that Deafness is normal and world needs Deaf culture to be complete; how many Deaf people were used in industries and only had problems when they wished or marry or have children; the town of Broumov, Czechoslovakia where he was born in 1940; how his father and others living in the Sudetenland dodged service in the army by being farmers; his school for the Deaf run by Catholic nuns; how the school was able to maintain independence because it was run by Catholic Church; how Hitler’s photo was not displayed in the classroom but instead in some dimly lit hallway, which was a small form of resistance; how when a Deaf couple would go to a Nazi party representative/Justice of the peace to get married, the Party representative would try to get the couple’s relatives to convince them to be sterilized, but officials had a hard time communicating with Deaf community; how officials would go to the Nuns for communication, but the Nuns would intervene with the sterilization through interference; how Hitler disbanded all independent organizations, but Deaf clubs and organizations were allowed to exist more or less independently; and his culture shock at coming to United States to study at Gallaudet and seeing a type of “hurrah” nationalism while post war Europe was more about unity and World perspective.

Oral history interview with Pieter Timmerman

Oral History

Oral history interview with AJ Toussimis

Oral History

Signed testimony of Fridolin Wasserkamp

Oral History

Fridolin Wasserkamp, born circa 1928 in Braunschweig, Germany, discusses living with his grandparents; being Deaf; being raised Christian; doing numerous activities, including table tennis, swimming, and hunting; attending a Hitler Youth school for the Deaf; wearing Nazi armband on his uniform; his frequent visits to his parents and brother, who were living in a rural town; enduring bombings, rations, and seeking food on the black market; the plight of the German Deaf; the disappearance of Deaf Jews in his class and hearing he had been sent to a concentration camp but not knowing what that meant; becoming aware at age 13 of the Nazi law concerning the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses); the arrival of a government letter in 1941 that demanded his sterilization and his grandfather responding to it; his Deaf father and brother also being forced to be sterilized; how his family was willing to go to the hospital out of a sense of community and their desires to help the Nazis; the objections from the local bishops; the sterilization procedure, which required him to be in the hospital for two weeks; how many in the Deaf school endured similar experiences but no one talked about it; getting married to a Deaf woman; receiving reparations from the German government; his life at the Hitler Youth school; his pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi teachers; being stopped on the street once by Gestapo and showing a pass verifying his enrollment in a Deaf school; his illegal association with his Polish girlfriend and providing her with black market cigarettes and alcohol while she was in forced labor; their communication through sign language; being prevented from promotion within the Hitler Youth because of his association with his Polish girlfriend; hearing forced laborers share stories of the horrors of camps and how he didn’t believe it; his deep regrets in having believed the Nazi message; his hope that it never happens again; and witnessing the lights of the Russian liberation bombings.

Oral history interview with Reska Weiss and Tibor Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sonia Weitz

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dr. Zawadski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Romana Zic

Oral History

Oral history interview with Shoshana Kalish

Oral History

Oral history interview with Guenter Friedlander

Oral History