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Oral history interview with Isaac Kurtz

Oral History

Isaac Kurtz, born November 12, 1925 in Košice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses his loving Polish/Hungarian Orthodox home; his mother and father, a homemaker and a merchant; his four siblings; his first experience with antisemitism in the first grade; how his bar mitzvah was thwarted by a synagogue raid; hearing survivor reports of Jews digging their own graves; the ceding of Košice to Hungary in 1938; the forced liquidation of his family’s store; arrests of Jewish citizenry; sharing a cell with doctors and lawyers; the family’s deportation and transport by cattle car to a brick factory; his attempted escape and beating upon capture; injuries he received from the beating; his family’s arrival in Auschwitz; seeing “big chimney-flames flying to heaven”; the clubbing of the elderly and ill upon their exit from the train; encountering Dr. Josef Mengele; his realization of the gravity of their situation; his mother’s final hope that they would not be tortured; the murder of his mother and disabled uncle; life as a prisoner along with his father and brother in the concentration camp; forced labor on the railroad; miserable conditions in the barracks; the murder of his oldest brother; a prisoner doctor who diagnosed him with a severe leg infection as a result of his beating; his four week recovery in the hospital; the murder of sickly patients; an accident on a work detail from Gross-Rosen camp; his assignment to peeling potatoes in the kitchen; being rewarded by a kapo for singing Shabbat songs; sneaking whole potatoes to others; being caught; keeping track of and observing High Holy Days; enduring other beatings; prisoner hangings; his attempted suicide; being assigned to latrines; visiting his father in the convalescent block; the cries and prayers of fellow prisoners; liberation by the Russians; conditions in the camp after liberation; having to clear roads in frigid conditions to reach a village; enduring torture in a village and nearly freezing to death; his joy in finding his father and brother; their month long journey, reaching their ransacked home; the few Jewish survivors in Košice; learning that his mother and older sister had perished; other survivor stories; reclaiming his mother’s jewelry; regaining his health (describing skeletal photographs); rebuilding his life in Austria, the United States, and Canada; becoming a cantor; and his feeling that the fact he survived is all together miraculous.

Oral history interview with Lilly Goldner

Oral History

Lilly Goldner (née Josefovitz), born in 1926 in Újfehértó, Hungary, discusses her Hasidic town and school; growing up in a happy family; being the eighth child of 16 children; the religious inspiration behind her father purchasing the family store; Passover; her family making kosher wine; being 16 years old and hearing that Czechoslovakian Jews were expelled and the disbelief of the town to this news; the order for all the Jews of Újfehértó to stay home; their expulsion and her family's anguish as they were herded into horse-driven buggies; her memories of her best friend, who was a non-Jew, crying as they left; the separation of the women and the men; never seeing her father again; doing forced labor in a tobacco drying barn in Simapuszta, Hungary (a small area in Békés County); doing forced labor in Nyírbátor, Hungary for six weeks; protecting her mother; surviving on bread and potatoes; being transported for two-days by cattle car to Auschwitz; the hostility she endured while assisting her grandmother off the train; seeing men in striped suits; her intitial experiences in the camp, including having her hair cut, being given soap, showering, and dressing in a simple dress; the miserable barracks conditions; how when the women slept they all had to turn at same time; finding Dr. Josef Mengele handsome but seeing him take all of the twins; witnessing pregnant women giving birth and seeing their babies taken away; seeing her 29 year old sister and two year old nephew being taken away and never seeing them again; being taken with 300 other girls to the crematory naked, and then returning to the barracks; being transported to the Weisswasser factory; the conditions in the barracks, including the cold showers; the limited conversation with other inmates, but having a Hanukkah observance; the dangerous forced labor conditions, making glass radio bulbs; having two meals a day, including breakfast (piece of bread and coffee) and soup for lunch; the punishment for stealing potatoes; experiencing a five day "death walk" and stealing bread from pig feed to survive; witnessing assaults by Irma Grese; the infrequent kindness from another woman guard who allowed the singing of Jewish melodies; being transport to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Celle, Germany); the deaths of half the prisoners; finding two of her cousins alive; stealing potato peels for oldest cousin, who was too weak to walk; feeling optimistic when she heard bombings; witnessing gratuitous shootings after liberation; the British troops' well-intended delivery of beans to the emaciated, which caused the deaths of some of the inmates; her husband's experience seeing General Eisenhower in a camp and hearing him say, "You are free"; reuniting with two of her brothers; rebuilding her life; getting married and immigrating to the United States; her visit back to Hungary; and her closing message to her grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Irene Greenfeld

Oral History

Irene Greenfeld, born May 2, 1934 in Hungary, discusses growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home; preparing kosher food and celebrating Shabbat; attending a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; enduring stone-throwing and being forced to stay at home; learning of the gas chambers in Poland; the deportation of her father in 1942 to do forced labor; her mother's home garden sustaining the family and neighbors; conditions changing when the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944; the closing of the Jewish school and the deportation of the teachers; being sent to the ghetto with her parents; being sent to the brick factory in Debrecen, Hungary in June 1944; being sent to Strasshof concentration camp and the conditions during the journey there; the Ukrainian guards; her mother’s efforts to protect her children in the camp; being marched with her family from Strasshof to a Vienna school building; conditions in the camps, including the food and lice; educating her siblings; being afraid of the guards; hearing antisemitic military songs; her mother’s forced labor at a bread factory; her grandmother's paralysis; her family surviving a direct bomb to the school; being sent to Theresienstadt and finding her aunt briefly; being forced to send false letters to friends and family; witnessing death; a visit by the Red Cross to the camp; liberation by Russian troops; returning to their home and finding out that only six of the 120 Jewish families in their town had survived; reclaiming dispersed furniture; her father’s experiences in Auschwitz; immigrating to the United States in 1948; living in New York, NY and maintaining an Orthodox home; getting married to a Holocaust survival; her thoughts on history repeating itself; rebuilding her life in the US; and her family in the US.

Oral history interview with Nelly Grussgott

Oral History

Nelly Grussgott, born May 9, 1930 in Berlin, Germany, describes her Czech entrepreneur mother; her parents’ marriage through a matchmaker; growing up in a religious home; visiting her grandparents who were Czech and Hungarian; attending Jewish school; her mother’s once kind non-Jew customers turning to Nazism; seeing “Jews Forbidden” signs in parks and cinemas; enduring stone-throwing at her school; her hair dresser cutting her bald after learning Nelly was Jewish; the police stealing her bike; her mother and herself rooming with other families; rationing food; Kristallnacht; having to stop attending school; her father’s departure to the United States; Nazis entering apartments; seeing Jewish men marched out in their underwear; her father’s thwarted efforts to bring his wife and daughter to the US and his return to Belgium; going on a Kindertransport in 1940 with her mother to the US; the journey on the ship; feeling empathy for people left behind, knowing they would die; entering Ellis Island and being picked up by family she had not met previously; her surprise in learning she could have two bowls of soup instead of one; being known as “the refuge” in NYC school; learning English; being poverty-stricken but feeling free; her mother peddling goods to survive; crying every night, missing her father; the German invasion into Belgium and receiving her father’s letter of suffering awaiting a visa; her father being rounded up and sent to Marseille, where he was accused of being a spy; the Red Cross confirming in 1995 that her father was sent to Drancy internment camp then to a death camp (Lublin-Majdanek); extended family that perished in the Holocaust; Nelly’s confusion in her mother’s remarriage (mother lived to age 91); various documents including US government’s indifferent responses to Nelly’s and her mother’s pleas on behalf of her father; photographs including Nelly’s return to Germany as an adult; Nelly's regret that her father left the US because he missed his family; and her humility knowing others suffered more than her.

Oral history interview with Deborah Freund

Oral History

Deborah Freund, born on August 16, 1926 in Satu Mare, Romania, describes growing up Orthodox; being the youngest of four sisters and two brothers; the deportation of both her brothers to labor camps (one went to Ukraine); her childhood before the war; attending public school and being allowed to be observant; the Hungarian takeover in 1942; her family's disbelief when Polish refugees reported death camps circa 1944; experiencing the rise of antisemitism (Jewish store closings, fear of entering street, enduring name callings); her mother's severe weight loss following the deportation of her son; obtaining false Christian papers, which were ignored; being arrested with her family and sent to a ghetto; spending two to three weeks in Auschwitz; enduring several labor camps (including Danzig and Stuffhof); being treated like animals; enduring belt whippings by "Max and Barbara" (who were later hanged together); receiving only daily cabbage soup; doing forced labor in an airplane factory in Leipzig, Germany (probably the HASAG Leipzig camp); the bombing of the camp; being sent on a forced march for one week; liberation and going to Bucharest, Romania; reunification with her surviving family in Satu Mare (one brother did not return and her other brother was shot following an attempted escape); the few children in town; getting married in 1946; resuming her religious life; going to Cyprus in 1947 and the birth of her daughter when war was breaking out; moving to Israel in 1949; her surprise when she find out her in brother-in-law survived following his imprisonment for stealing potatoes in Kazakhstan; immigrating to Canada; the birth of her son in 1957; moving to New York, NY; her nine grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren; an artifact she has from her childhood home that survived the Nazi invasion; and visiting Romania.

Oral history interview with Ib Nathan Bamberger

Oral History

Dr. Ib Nathan Bamberger, born on March 21, 1925 in Würzburg, Germany, discusses growing up in a Jewish family; his Danish mother and German father; his family moving to Denmark (probably Copenhagen) before 1933; being the oldest of four children; the family's Shabbat traditions; his maternal grandfather (Rabbi Pearlstein from Denmark); his father, who worked as an antiquarian; attending a boys' school; his home studies with a rabbi; having a stable childhood under the Danish government; life under the German "protectorate"; hearing that King Christian X rejected Nazi pressure for Jews to wear the yellow star; the Telegram Crisis in 1942; the Nazis' attempted synagogue bombing, which was followed by the King's apology to Jewish congregants; the beginning of German martial law in 1943 and the Danish government stepping down; the Danish Jews' ongoing disbelief and belief that "nothing would happen"; how relationships played a part in the protection of Jews (e.g. King Christian and his Jewish doctor, Dr. Kaufman); seeing American planes over Copenhagen; the story of a rabbi who received a tip-off and was able to thwart a Nazi round-up of Danish Jews (Dr. Bamberger refers to the events of the evening as "Rosh Hashanah Night"); the 478 Danish Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp; a non-Jewish family hiding the Bamberger family; being transferred to a farm, joining 200 Jews hiding in a hayloft; former Nazi Georg Duckwitz facilitating 7000 Jews in a fishing boat to transfer to Swedish torpedo boats and ultimately be received as "Guests of Swedish state"; receiving a pension from Sweden for teaching children during his time as refugee; how, thanks to King Christian intervention, the majority of Theresienstadt Danes survived the war; his reintegration into Denmark; reclaiming their home, which was untouched, as well as their antique shop; and his family archival photographs.

Oral history interview with Jutka Strauss

Oral History

Jutka Strauss, born on October 19, 1924, discusses growing up in pre-war Satu Mare, Hungary (present day Romania); attending public school; enjoying a quiet life in her Hasidic family; her father's disapproval of his wife and daughters reading books; her father's hat store; the deportation of two of her brothers into forced labor in Ukraine; one of her brothers being shot during an attempted escape; being imprisoned with her sister for 10 months after their failed escape to Romania; life in imprisonment; being transferred by cattle car to a ghetto, where they lived for four weeks; arriving in Auschwitz and being stunned by the number of S.S. officers (she had the impression that one of the officers felt sorry for the women); being selected by Dr. Mengele for the crematorium and avoiding it by slipping back into line with her sister; being processed in a holding room; being transported to Riga, Latvia to Dondangen concentration camp; the horrible conditions in the camp and experiencing starvation; being forced to march; going to Germany and doing forced labor in a plane factory; the approach of the Russians and seeing that the German guards were scared; being liberated by American troops; her memories of malnourished survivors getting sick from overeating; going to Budapest, Hungary, and then to her hometown of Satu Mare; discovering that her parents and other brother had not survived; reuniting with her sister; moving with her sister to Romania to join another sister; living in cramped conditions with five other survivors; meeting her husband; immigrating to the United States from Italy; arriving in New York, NY by ship; working in a factory, jewelry business; settling in Brooklyn; meeting a survivor who had jump from a cattle car and was sheltered by a peasant family until the war was over; and some of her family photographs (which she shares during the recording).

Oral history interview with Yitzchok Wargon

Oral History

Yitzchok Wargon (born August 28, 1922), describes his family, including his two sisters and brother (born 1930 and died 1932); his extended family; life in Radomsko, Poland; being raised and educated in a Hasidic house and community; his cherished memories of the rabbi and seder, including the music; his family receiving a healing miracle from a rabbi in Kamińsk, Poland; the rise of antisemitism; hearing Hitler on the radio; reading of Buchenwald concentration camp in a Jewish paper; the bombing in 1939 and the Nazis entering Radomsko; townspeople fleeing in fear of more bombings; his family re-entering Radomsko's destroyed town center (had been 95 percent Yiddish); how the Wargon house was still standing but became part of the Radomsko ghetto; the marking of Jewish able-bodied men with colored patches and the forced labor they were made to do, including carpentry; overcrowding in the ghetto; the severe beating of his father; how everyone was holding onto the Jewish belief, "Never lose faith"; the breakup of his family when they were deported into jam-packed cattle cars and many others in town were shot; his father's farewell to him (he told Yitzchok that he had served as a son, "not a 100 percent but a 1000 percent"); the deportation of his family to Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps; doing nine months of forced labor at Skarzysko-Kamienna ammunition factory; life there, including beatings, lice, and starvation; being marched with the other near-dead inmates to a shooting site and escaping over a barbed wire fence into the woods; being captured, but being given a pass; being provided daily soup until the liquidation of the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp; the shootings of many inmates; arriving in Buchenwald and being counted; the Gestapo tricking men by providing bread if they would tell on Skarzysko-Kamienna soldiers; going to Schlieben concentration camp and doing forced labor; his finger being blown off in a bombing and another prisoner (a former surgeon from Warsaw) saving his life; being sent on a death march to Berlin, Germany; how those who fell were shot and only one third of the prisoners survived; liberation; the concerns about emaciated survivors eating too much; the people who helped him recover; bartering with vodka and packs of American cigarettes; staking a claim on housing and being afraid of being shot; being assaulted by an American soldier involved in black market currency trading; how six weeks after liberation, his Jewish Russian soldier friend (Max, who had been guarding Hitler's bunker) sneaked Ytizchok through a small hole into Hitler's bunker; seeing the dining room and crystal ware and getting inebriated drinking Hitler's 90 proof spirit; recovering on Hitler's couch (realizing the irony) and confiscating the silver set with Führer engraving; entering the American zone; working the black market in the DP (displaced persons) camps, (Weiden and Neu Freiman); moving to Hamburg, Germany; receiving HIAS assistance to move to New York, NY in 1949; meeting his wife who also survived the Holocaust; learning trade; being the only one of his extended family to survive the Holocaust; and his closing statement ("We Jewish people cannot give up!"). [Note he shows photographs at the end of the interview.]

Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

Oral History

Ruth Finkelstein, born on October 15, 1927 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Polish-Jewish family; her four siblings; her father, who was a store keeper; being frowned upon as Polish Jews by German Jews; experiencing antisemitism from a public-school teacher; enduring stone-throwing from non-Jewish children; exiting Hebrew school; having to blend into the crowd; being prevented from going to parks and theaters; only being allowed to shop during the German siesta (early afternoon); her father being temporarily sent to a camp and returning home physically altered; the deportation of her father to Buchenwald concentration camp (her family received a box of his ashes); Jews being blocked from shelters during air raids; being transported for three days by truck to France in 1940 and the fear and uncertainty she experienced; receiving some assistance by the Red Cross during a stop during the journey; arriving in Camp de Gurs, where they stayed for nearly four months; experiencing overcrowding, straw mattresses, malnutrition, and no medical treatment; her mother’s death from pneumonia; being assigned with her siblings to the children’s barrack and receiving a bit more food; how her older brothers gathered a crowd and provided prayers; being allowed to leave the camp along with her siblings and go to the village; going on a Kindertransport to Château de Chabannes, run by the OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux Enfants); director of the orphanage, Felix Chevrier; having play dates and schooling in the forest while the Gestapo came to the children's home; being 13 years old and providing mothering and education to her younger siblings; Chevrier allowing Shabbat and her younger brothers conducting seder; immigrating to the United States in 1941 under an Eleanor Roosevelt visa; and being taken in by her aunt and uncle.

Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

Oral History

Pearl Benisch, born in 1917, discusses her parents, Reb Leib and Chaya Fraida Mandelker; a teacher who gave her son to non-Jewish family so he could survive and a toddler's awareness of antisemitism, even at three years old; being a protégé of Sarah Schenirer (Shnirer), who began the Bais Ya’akov movement (Orthodox Jewish girls schools, also called Beth Jacob Schools); observing Schenirer’s burial in 1935; writing a biography on Schenirer called “Carry Me In Your Heart”; her family and classmates being deported to the Krakow ghetto; accounts of the Bais Ya’akov girls' support of each other; stories of prisoners singing to cope with starvation and torturous factory labor; a prisoner risking life for a small piece of bread and tossing it to 30-40 people scrambling to receive it; the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in 1941; the split up of her family; her brother being deported to Theresienstadt (he survived the war); saying good-bye to her parents, who did not survive; being sent with the Bais Ya’akov girls to Płaszów camp; doing forced labor, sewing soldier uniforms; being transported to Auschwitz (Birkenau); witnessing the camp guards ripping a child from a mother, then shooting both to teach others a lesson; witnessing Jews having to jump into pits to be shot (a few singing as they jumped in); enduring beatings; a prisoner sneaking shofar into Auschwitz and blowing it; Rebbetzin Tzila Sorotzkin, the “White Angel of Auschwitz” (formerly “Orlean", also known as “Tillie Rinder”); a notable Bais Yaakov teacher, who after being imprisoned, served as an Auschwitz infirmary nurse/secretary and thwarted killings of countless Jews (and also dared to light candles in the barracks); her Bais Ya’akov classmate, Rivkah Horowitz-Pinkusewitz, who stood up to Gestapo, risking her life for Pearl and others; being transported to Bergen-Belsen; how almost all the prisoners were very sick (many dying); being forced to sew six tops a day for half a piece of bread; trying to observe Shabbos by sewing extra sets on all the other days of the week and turning in those sets on Shabbos; liberation; the soldiers dusting barracks to kill lice; the assistance from Zionist organizations and various rabbis, including British Chaplain Rabbi Baumgarten; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp; establishing a kosher kitchen; her message to young people “Love thyself; once you love yourself, you can love others”; and her memoir “To Vanquish the Dragon.”

Oral history interview with Malka Schick

Oral History

Malka Schick (née Korn), born in 1944 in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy, discusses her family’s flight from Belgium to France; her grandmother’s only son and youngest daughter dying in an air raid; her family constantly moving and hiding from Gestapo; finding safety in Italian-protected France; her family’s anticipation of the Nazi storming of Saint-Martin-Vésubie in 1943; her family fleeing with 1000 Jews, following Italian soldiers over the Alps into Italy, mistakenly believing they were seeking safety; her family being met by Enzo Cavaglion and the Cuneo Jewish community and Cuneo priests; the Fascist forces; how 350 Jews were tricked into coming out of hiding to live openly and the majority of them were killed; her father and uncle hiding with partisans in the mountains, sleeping in the elements, and experiencing starvation; hearing survivor accounts (including Walter Marx and others); the deportations of people in cattle cars; Catholics (one named Anna) sheltering Malka’s mother who was pregnant with Malka; her father being shot and killed while coming down the mountain to meet his new-born baby (Malka); her family’s move to Demonte, Italy; the Christians/Protestants who achieved “righteous Gentile status” (including Priest Raimond), who at great risk to themselves hid and fed many Jewish people; her paternal grandmother’s death in Treblinka; her great uncle’s murder in Auschwitz; life after the war; how her mother and uncle were never able to speak of the Holocaust; returning to Belgium with her grandmother; how even in post-war a Polish Jew returning to hometown to claim his home was shot; having her father’s remains transferred from Italy and reburied in Israel; her survivor documents and photographs of her family; returning to Italy to visit the tree near where her father was shot; documents associated with Enzo Cavaglion, head of Cuneo's tiny remaining Jewish community and the city's yearly memorial efforts; becoming a teacher; and her work teaching the Holocaust to children.

Oral history interview with Mendel Leben

Oral History

Mendel Leben, born on July 15 (circa 1925-1930) in Konin, Poland, discusses his parents who owned a hardware store; Konin's Jewish community; the Germans marching into his hometown on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, interrupting services (September 13, 1939); the German police entering his home in November 1939 and telling his family they would be “returned in three days”; his family’s three-day cattle wagon deportation to Ostrowiec; being placed in the “Jewish section”; enduring deprivation; struggling to keep his three year old sister quiet; going into hiding with his family; being captured after 18 days; the killing of his mother and brother; spending three months in the ghetto; spending 15 months in Treblinka; his sister and her three year old being shot (his older sister survived); being deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau; being transferred to Auschwitz III-Monowitz-Buna; his brother and father being murdered (possibly in a gas chamber); being in Buchenwald for two weeks and encountering his cousin; being wounded in a shooting; being transported to a hospital; volunteering for Nordhausen; surviving Allied bombings followed by the American liberation; learning of his brother’s plight (first Dachau, murdered at Sachsenhausen); his post-war experiences in Dora and Bergen-Belsen; the liberated dying from well-meaning but poor re-introduction of food; Buchenwald displaced persons camp, which was guided by American chaplain Herschel Schacter; resuming his studies in Lundsberg, Sweden, where he stayed for four years; immigration with his brother to the United States; and becoming an electrical engineer. (He shows personal photographs at the end of the interview.

Oral history interview with Ava Schneck

Oral History

Ava Schneck, born on November 26, 1923 in Békéscsaba, Hungary, discusses growing up in an affluent family; having six brothers and one sister; living in an Orthodox Jewish community; the German invasion of Hungary in 1944; the closing of businesses; her father transferring his textile business to non-Jewish woman with the understanding that some proceeds would be sent to his family while they were in hiding; her father being taken to a forced labor camp (he survived the war but died from complications incurred from his experiences); surviving in 1944 Budapest by posing as a Christian (she had acquired false papers); her brother offering a Gestapo member a cigarette, which she believes saved his life (she says not having a cigarette could have revealed his Jewishness since there were no cigarettes in the ghetto); living in fear; witnessing deportations; the shootings; using a code word to identify fellow Jews (she has forgotten the code word); sneaking a little money from their textile business to her mother and siblings, who were hiding; her anger that no country was coming to their rescue; taking a two-week journey from Budapest to Békéscsaba (sleeping in barns) after liberation; the Christians’ fear of Russian soldiers retaliation if they did not assist the Jewish community; her family’s first Shabbat following war; seeking fresh flowers (a rarity) for a bridal bouquet; spending two years in a displaced persons camp in the American zone; receiving HIAS assistance; the food shortages; having a baby; saying goodbye to her mother before taking a two-week voyage to the United States; arriving with $10 in her pocket and weighing only 90 pounds; living in Cleveland, OH before moving to New York; starting an office furniture business; and additional memories of her war-time life, including attending public school, removing her yellow star arm band to fit in and learn, and her non-Jewish teacher walking his student home to make sure they were safe from antisemitic acts. (She shares photographs from her post-war life.)

Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

Oral History

Oral history interview with Chanie Singer

Oral History

Chanie Singer, born June 2, 1935 in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, discusses growing up in a poor, Orthodox Jewish family; having one brother; her father, who was forced into the army; her mother subletting their tiny Budapest space to others in hiding and the landlord threatening to send them to Auschwitz; paying a non-Jewish farmer to hide them in his hayloft and having limited food; how after two months the farmer--fearing he would be caught hiding them--put her family on train and promised they would be safe in the ghetto until the end of the war; the deplorable conditions in the Budapest ghetto; her mother being separated from her children and paced in front of the children’s barracks until a guard let her in; her memories of crying for food at age nine; the lack of drinkable liquids and having to consume urine at one point; the emotions of the people in the ghetto and the feeling that they were waiting for death; her mother sneaking out of the ghetto to find food; how people had been shooting horses for food; experiencing a surprising act of kindness from a non-Jew in the ghetto; being liberated by the Russians; Russian soldiers drinking vodka and singing drinking songs; finding happiness in a survivors orphanage; wanting to be taken in by Israel; rejecting her mother’s invitation to go to the United States, but acquiescing after her mother promised never-ending chocolate in the US; seeing her father for the last time when he came to see the family off; her mother paying gold coins to a truck driver to take them over the border; entering an Austrian hospital and then crossing into Germany at night; being housed at the Rothschild Hospital; spending three years in Kassel, Germany displaced persons camp in the American zone; living in small room and studying Hebrew; her aunt in the US sending care packages and an affidavit to bring them over; a cherished boyfriend who would leave for Palestine; immigrating to the US and arriving in Boston, MA; her aunt, who taught Chanie (then 13 years old) how to smoke; getting married and having four children; moving to New York; and dealing with manic depression but having gratitude for her religious family as well as the US.

Oral history interview with Avrum Bichler

Oral History

Dr. Avrum (Abraham) Bichler, born February 23, 1933, discusses growing up in well-to-do Jewish family in Krylow, Poland; family’s charitable endeavors; Jewish community’s superstitions; Hebrew school; antisemitism from Poles in the late 1930s; shock of German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939); seeing airplanes flying over and the family packing up everything; crossing the Bug River and hiding in barns that belonged to his father’s customers (from the peasantry); German tanks rolling in, then rolling out; Russians moving in (Jewish communists feeling more comfortable since Russians were feeding peasants); his family leaving once the Russians moved out; going to Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine, where Russian soldiers arrested his family as "illegal refugees" (this included 11 persons: his father, mother, sister, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandfather); how the remainder of his extended family were never seen again; being shoved into cattle cars and waiting on the tracks for three days; encircling a blanket around a floor cutout for bathroom privacy; the atrocious stench; a peasant owing his father money and bringing two sugar sacks so his father would have something to barter; receiving only soup (mostly water) at night; the screams from those getting caught under the train when it started to move again; doing six weeks of forced labor in a camp near the Arctic Circle; his four-year-old sister dying from malaria; Jews not being allowed to bury their dead (in the evening a wagon would pick up corpses in streets); his father sneaking into the forest and digging a shallow grave for his daughter (his family always worried an animal had gotten to her body); suffering from illness (malaria and pneumonia) and being treated with superstition (giving away children’s clothes to cure him), suction cupping on body, and the family picking bed bugs off of him until he healed; the family being transported to a Siberian brick factory; working 12 hours a day, six days a week; the temperature getting to 50 degrees below zero and wrapping wet rags around bare feet to insulate inside the frozen ice; eating potatoes three times a day; doing forced work on Jewish holidays (his father was able to obtain matzo); his whole family living in one room; enduring communist propaganda; wealthy individuals being imprisoned, including anyone caught with a gold watch (his father had buried his); being transported by cattle car to Central Asia; being taken to Kyrgyzstan by truck; their realization that they had been dropped off to die (the family ran after the truck to be let back on); doing forced labor for a brickmaking operation in Turkistan, Kazakhstan; the blinding of his cousin’s daughter, who died at age two; his uncle’s wife dying at age 27; hundreds starving; eating leaves off trees; a child in town biting off his own fingertips for food; deaths in the streets; the importance of stealing to survive; his father becoming a master builder and being able to improve their living conditions; moving into a mud house; Communists interrogating school children on their parents’ black market activities and religious practices; the KGB circumcising boys; kidnappings by Russians (the victims were sent to the front and no one came back); the Turkestan market; the beatings of people caught stealing; vendors carrying sticks to defend against desperate starving people; going to the market area after it closed to search for crumbs; his grandfather’s death in 1944; the birth of his sister in 1945; his parents’ desire to return home after the war ended; Russian soldiers sneaking his family on a military transport train; traveling for 6-7 weeks on a dangerous journey West; witnessing the decapitation of a policeman; arriving in Kona, where everything was bombed out; being told that Jews were being killed by Poles; his family learning about the ghettos and concentration camps; going through Lviv, Ukraine and then Lublin, Poland; being threatened by Poles when he spoke Yiddish; receiving assistance from Jewish organizations; seeing the Majdanek concentration camp; witnessing his father’s realization of what had happened in Poland during the war (his father gave up hope that he would find their extended family alive); seeing a Polish girl from their hometown and her warning to never return because their families’ homes were now being lived in by others and they would be killed if they returned; seeing the Łódź ghetto; still feeling vulnerable; living in a kibbutz, which was heavily guarded; details about life in the kibbutz and later in Leipheim displaced persons camp; leaving Poland and staying for three days in a forest in the Russian zone; his excitement seeing Berlin for first time; openly singing Hebrew songs; marching constantly in the kibbutz but finding happiness there; going to Augsburg, Germany and being physically assessed for entry to the United States; the language barrier when they arrived in the US; experiencing hunger; seeing a movie for first time (his shock at Americans eating popcorn while watching shootings on the screen); seeing girls play soccer; his enrollment at Yeshiva University and receiving assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; his appreciation of the US; and his message to others to never give up hope and draw strength from ones past. (He shows artifacts from his boyhood illness, the cupping set, as well as family photographs.)

Oral history interview with Jeshaye Rosenberg

Oral History

Jeshaye Rosenberg, born May 21, 1928 in Debrecen, Hungary, discusses being raised in an Orthodox Ashkenazi family, which included his grandfather, grandfather’s sister, parents, two brothers, aunt, uncle, and cousins; the family being able to stay together throughout deportations; the numerous rabbis in his family, including his grandfather who was the first Orthodox rabbi of Debrecen; enduring antisemitic assaults as a child; the anti-Jewish decrees; ghettoization in March 1944 and being placed with his family in the Orthodox section in a crowded apartment; enduring forced labor at age 15, cleaning-up after railroad bombings; being deported with his family in sweltering temperatures, crammed into train wagons; how many Jews from Debrecen were taken to Auschwitz, but his family was taken to Strasshof; disembarking and collapsing from dehydration after an 11-day journey without water; his coping tools to bolster his mother’s spirit; he’s thoughts that the intelligentsia seemed to die faster because many were secular and did not believe they would survive; how it was hope that kept Jeshaye going; his brothers’ forced labor in foresting (weekly allowance of one slice of bread); his mother making soup from edible mushrooms Jeshaye had found in the forest; his grandfather witnessing his sister die in a train transfer to Theresienstadt; seeing skeletal refugees arriving in Theresienstadt from other camps; many people dying and the bodies being thrown on top of trucks; the general belief that they would all be killed; surviving on grass; towards end of war, his grandfather holding a rare celebration of Seder in Theresienstadt (some matzo was obtained); talking his way into becoming a shoe repairman even though he did not have the skills needed; the 30 min walk to the town's shoe shop; the gentile ladies taking pity on him and giving him a little food, which he brought back to his family; being recruited later as a barber; his envy in seeing Red Cross rescuing Danish Jewish people two weeks before war ended; liberation; an organization distributing Sefer Torahs to rabbis; the rarity of his entire family having been able to stay intact, in spite of deportations, enslavement, and depravity (some of his extended family did die in other concentration camps); many people dying after liberation from typhus and injuries; returning to Debrecen; immigrating to the United States in 1946; his education, employment, and marriage; rebuilding Jewish communities in Somerville and Montecristo, NJ; his pride in having 25 great-grandchildren; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust. (The oral testimony closes with family photographs, including his aunt, who was killed at Auschwitz. He also shares photographs from his wife’s family, some of which, did not survive.)

Oral history interview with Mimi Weingarten

Oral History

Mimi Weingarten, born on February 14, 1929 in Sighet, Romania, discusses her four siblings and parents (only two family members survived); growing up in pre-war Sighet; attending public and Jewish schooling); experiencing antisemitism; the forced closure of her family’s cheese shop; the invasion of their home; Jewish schools being forced to close; the arrest of her father and later her sister; a few Gentile friends sneaking food to her family; hearing rumors about labor camps; the Sighet ghetto; being deported with her family to Auschwitz on the last transport in 1944; the three-day journey in a cattle car to the camp; arriving in Auschwitz; being lined up for selection along with her sisters; being placed in Block 13; being moved to another block and her sister sneaking her into the children’s block; being in Barracks 34; being placed in the so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz (Zigeunerlager); her heartbreak at seeing her little sister taken away; enduring whipping after getting caught retrieving ditch water; being sent to Birkenau and doing forced labor; an SS officer showing her a moment of kindness; spending four months working on airplanes; going on a two-day march from a factory to northeast Germany; being liberated by Russian soldiers; sleeping in a forest; receiving warnings from American soldiers about the Russian soldiers; returning to Sighet to find her father (she never found him); a Jewish family that had moved into their home and would not take them in; her sister’s marriage; being homeless; immigrating to the United States; her thoughts on Holocaust denial; and her pride at the accomplishments of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Adele Rubinstein

Oral History

Adele Rubinstein, born in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary in 1931, discusses being the fifth of seven children; experiencing antisemitic harassment in school; ghettoization in 1944; the draft of her father and two older brothers into a slave labor battalion; being transferred with her family to a brick factory in Debrecen, then to Strasshof; doing slave labor shoveling snow and coal; her mother bringing them extra food; fasting on Yom Kippur; a forced march to Mauthausen; seeing piles of corpses and starvation; being transferred to Gunskirchen; being liberated by United States troops; her hospitalization; escaping with others to find their families; entering a Red Cross camp; her reunion with her mother and siblings; living in Wels displaced persons camp; returning to Hajdúböszörmény; reuniting with her father and older brothers; traveling to Vienna, Austria; living in Salzburg displaced persons camp; moving to Paris, France; immigration to join her father's father in the United States in 1949; receiving assistance from the Joint; her marriage to a Hungarian survivor; the births of four daughters; her orthodoxy and her continuing faith in God; her reluctance to share her story with her children (her husband did); and participating in a survivors' club. [She shows photographs and documents.]

Oral history interview with Helen Rubin

Oral History

Helen Rubin, born in 1930 in Rozwadów, Poland, discusses being the youngest of three children; living with her loving extended family; attending Polish and Jewish schools; the German invasion; the expulsion of all the Jews across the San River to Soviet territory; living with relatives in ZHovkva, Ukraine for nine months; being deported with her immediate and extended family to Siberia; briefly living in a barrack, then with a family; her father organizing her brother's clandestine bar mitzvah; being transferred to another barrack; the death of one of her aunts; doing forced labor; receiving meager rations; receiving Passover supplies from a Soviet officer; receiving a package from an uncle in the United States; their release after 14 months; traveling to Zhizzakh, Uzbekistan; the deaths of her grandparents and some cousins; moving to Samarqand, Uzbekistan; establishing a weaving business; attending a Polish school; repatriation to Łódź after the war; learning of the death camps; witnessing the destruction in Kraków; her father selling their house; living in Paris, France, while waiting to immigrate to the United States; staying in a Jewish orphanage; immigrating to the United States in 1947; learning English from the radio; becoming a speech pathologist; and attributing her family's survival to their Soviet exile. (She shows objects and photographs at the end of the interview.)

Oral history interview with Sara Seidman

Oral History

Sara Seidman, born on August 29, 1922 Turda, Romania, discusses her extensive family; her mother who was a nurse; her sister surviving scarlet fever; her earliest education at a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; the public school forcing Jewish children to attend church; finishing high school in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine); teaching in a Bucharest orphanage, where all the workers and children were Jewish but pretending to be Polish refugees; Russian police entering the orphanage and interrogating the children to see if they came from the Russian part of Poland; seeing hundreds of children deported from Bucharest; her family fleeing the German/Hungarian invasion of Turda; bunkering during bombings; her father and grandfather navigating red tape to assist refugees; her brother’s death at sea; her father being assaulted by Russian soldiers; being harassed by the soldiers; going to Prague, Czech Republic a few months after the war; going to Nuremberg, Germany; being chased off a train in France for being Jewish; ending up in Augsburg, sheltered by a rabbi; working as a teacher while her mother worked as a nurse at Föhrenwald displaced persons (DP) camp; the traumatized girls and women survivors; struggling to cheer up the children who were mourning their lost mothers; conditions in the DP camp, including the clothing and lice treatments; salaries in the camp and her mother bartering to assist survivors; her memories of Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam in the DP camp; her thoughts on agunah; Chaplain Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg; teaching in Paris (Fublaines); obtaining papers for entry into the United States. (She shows family and school photographs, including photos from 1947 where children are smiling.)

Oral history interview with Seymour Kaplan

Oral History

Seymour Kaplan, born September 6, 1926, discusses his idyllic childhood in Brooklyn, NY; his family being financially strapped; experiencing some antisemitism; his memories of having visitors to their home who relayed that Jews abroad were being killed; hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio; being eager along with the other neighborhood kids to get into the military service (his brother served in Guadalcanal); the army induction process; leaving the US by ship in 1945; landing on Normandy beach; his combat duty in Nuremberg and Munich; his code name “Chico Blue”; hearing of Roosevelt’s death; speaking Yiddish to communicate with Germans; arriving in German towns; seeing Dachau concentration camp; his shock at seeing a pile of skeletal bodies (there was a Nazi officer on top); how the soldiers seeing Dachau for first time began crying and many threw up; speaking to the former inmates; speaking to a former Nazi guard; finding 36 box cars packed with murdered Jews; catching a SS trying to put on a striped prisoner uniform; hearing that an improper reintroduction of food could kill the emaciated survivors; returning to the US; his family’s disbelief over what he had witnessed; deciding not to speak about what he had experienced; and the 692 Tank Destroyer Battalion chart.

Oral history interview with Mayer Glickman

Oral History

Mayer Glickman, born in 1926, describes growing up Jewish in pre-war Sosnovitz, Poland; the rise of antisemitism in 1939; the German invasion and fleeing with his family; returning home in 1940; the men of the twon being forced to go to the police station to have their beards cut off (his father was given a pass since he was respected); the deportations beginning in 1941; the rumors of atrocities in Auschwitz; the gathering of all the Jews in a field in 1942; the selection process; his mother’s despair; his family not being selected because of the local esteem for his father; the deportation of his family in the middle of the night sometime in 1943; being sent to do forced labor loading sacks of cement; being sent to Katowice, where he worked in a steel mill; being transferred to Markstadt labor camp; surviving on bread made of chestnuts; enduring beatings and injuries while laying train tracks; the arrival of the Hungarian workers; going on a three-day march; sleeping in a barn; arriving at Gross-Rosen camp; being transported to Weimar, Germany, and going to Buchenwald camp; the lack of space in the barracks and staying in the shower for two days; his methods for surviving Buchenwald; liberation of the camp; being stricken with typhoid; the US Army chaplain Rabbi Herschel Schacter; going to Switzerland and being placed in Engelberg children’s home; discovering his brother had survived Auschwitz; reuniting with his brother in Belgium; immigrating to the United States in 1948 on the “SS Washington”; his experiences on Ellis Island; becoming a pattern maker; entering the diamond cutting business; living in Israel (1970-1982); returning to the US for his son’s education; photographs he received from soldiers at Buchenwald (he shows them during the interview); and his 90 year old grandfather (a rabbi) who was killed at Auschwitz.

Oral history interview with Shmuel Wolfe

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gittel Wolfe

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lea Greenstein Chopp

Oral History

Lea Greenstein Chopp, born on October 15, 1929 in Stachy, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), discusses growing up an only child; her family owning a large department store; her mother encouraged Lea to share their wealth with others; her loving memories of her father; Jewish life in their small town; the Hungarian takeover in 1939; attending a Hungarian school; having the measles during the roundup of Jews; being transported with her family in open trucks; spending three weeks in a brick factory in Uzhgorod, Ukraine; her father paying someone off for their release and Lea’s mother refusing to leave her parents; arriving in Auschwitz and her memories of the sounds and smells; the separate lines for women and men; women’s heads being shaved; being separated from her mother; having diamonds sewn on her garments and shoes; staying in Auschwitz for four months; being transferred to another camp in Poland; doing forced labor digging trenches in frigid conditions; being transported to another part of Poland; almost giving up and being encouraged by the other female inmates; being liberated by Russians; catching a train with three other girls; returning to Czechoslovakia and finding shelter with Jews who survived in hiding; still experiencing nightmares; returning to Stachy; the destruction of her home which had been bombed; staying with a Gentile neighbor; going to Prague, where she found her uncle alive; being in a Red Cross hospital; writing to an uncle in the United States; immigrating to the US; meeting her husband; having three children and four miscarriages; and her great-grandchildren.

Oral history interview with Hadassah Carlebach

Oral History

Hadassah Carlebach (née Hadassa Schneerson), born in 1927 in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Russia, discusses her father, Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn (also spelled Schneerson and Chneerson), who was active in Jewish rescue activities before and during the war; the number of children that Rabbi Schneerson saved; the challenges of being born an unregistered Hasidic Jew in antisemitic pre-war Russia; her mother, Sara, and brother; her father moving the family to Moscow; her father’s job in channeling US philanthropic funds to Jews in need; her father’s clandestine activities, sheltering people in the family’s small apartment; hiding from the Russian police (her father was arrested 16 times); how those in hiding sometimes danced and sang to transcend their difficulties; the 1935 interrogations of Jews; her family’s immigration to Palestine, assisted by Joseph A. Rosen (Russia would not allow transfer of Jews to US or Europe, only Palestine); going on a 12-day voyage; settling in Jaffa; her father being unhappy with Tel Aviv’s socialism; moving with her family in 1936 to Paris, France, where her father created the Association des Israélites Pratiquants (AIP, also called Kehillat Haharedim); her father starting a kosher soup kitchen as well as a synagogue and Hebrew school; the beginning of the war in 1939; her father being assigned by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) to a kosher children’s home, the Chateau des Morelles in Brout-Vernet; her father keeping the children on a strict schedule as they carried out farm life; the German invasion and the deportation of Jews; her father moving the children's home to Marseilles, France to la Maison de Beaupin; her father forming a radio technology school for young men and a pattern-making school for young women; fleeing in 1942 to Dému, France; her father moving the children to Chateau du Manoir within Saint-Étienne-de-Crossey, France; the Italians telling her father to follow them to Nice; how the Germans were waiting in Nice and members of the party were captured; Leon Poliakov (member of resistance), who smuggled the children back to Voiron; her work as a cook for the children and also as a teacher; the capture and torture of her mother; her mother’s release; how most of the children in the home were smuggled into Switzerland; her family’s return to Paris; adjust to life after the war; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; getting married in 1949; and her thoughts on the lauding of non-Jewish rescuers.

Oral history interview with Helen Weiss

Oral History

Oral history interview with Helene Rubin

Oral History

Helene Rubin, born May 16, 1926 in Vișeu de Sus, Romania, discusses being in a family of eight children; her parents; one of her brothers dying as an infant from scarlet fever; growing up in a town that was part of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period; her father’s shop; her family’s thwarted plans to evacuate to Timisoara, Romania; being taken with her family to a ghetto; being deported on a train to Auschwitz when she was 18 years old; the selection process and being separated from her sister and father; the shaving of her head; being placed in Block 31; staying with her sister and aunt the entire time; the frequent selections; the birth of a baby in the camp that was then killed; being transported to Sosnowitz labor camp, where she had to dig ditches; developing a toothache and being taken to a dentist; the songs of faith they used to cope during their imprisonment; speaking about cooking with other prisoners; being marched for five weeks and going to Bergen-Belsen; the fights over food between the prisoners; being assaulted at Bergen-Belsen and the perpetrator apologizing; having lice and getting typhoid; the numerous deaths of inmates; liberation; the deaths of many of the survivors when they were reintroduced to food; being sprayed with DDT for the lice; going with her sister to Sweden; staying in a hospital for four weeks; living in a nursing home; reuniting with their aunt (her aunt discovered that her husband had survived); living in a DP camp and receiving assistance from Rabbi Jacobson; working in Sweden; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. (At the end of the interview Helene sings the melody to a song.)

Oral history interview with Esther Peterseil

Oral History

Esther (Himmelfarb) Peterseil, born December 23, 1924 in Będzin, Poland, discusses her Orthodox family; being one of nine children; her grandfather who built the first brewery in Poland; pre-war Będzin, including the coal mines, Christian Poles, Jewish life, public school, and vacations; the Nazi invasion in 1939; the synagogue burning with people in it on September 8, 1939; Jews being shot on the street; the curfew for Jews; Jews having to give up their businesses; the capture of her brother and sister, whom she never saw again; her parents being taken and her father escaping capture; wearing a yellow star armband; negotiating to bring her mother home; hiding with her family for two years in a tunnel that extended to the next door building; being discovered and sent to the town’s ghetto; doing forced sweatshop labor, making Nazi soldier uniforms; the liquidation of the ghetto and being sent with her family to Auschwitz in 1943; the journey in the cattle car; being separated from her 49-year-old mother; staying with her sister; the shaving of their heads; being quarantined in a large room for several days; conditions in the barracks; the early morning selections; meeting her brother at the barbed wire and sharing bread with him; being assaulted for begging for the guards to spare her sister and Auschwitz Commandant Höss allowing her sister to be removed from the list after a display of willpower and bravery from Esther; marching to Birkenau; living in Barrack 27 for two years; being sent on a death march to Ravensbrück; experiencing frostbite; being forced to dig ditches used to hide the dead; life after the war; finding her brother in Będzin; and her sister’s death in a displaced persons camp.

Oral history interview with Moshe Apter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Julius Tauber

Oral History

Julius Tauber, born in 1928 in Șimleu Silvaniei, Romania, describes being orphaned and raised by his grandfather; the family’s textile store; the rise of antisemitism; the forced cutting of beards; hardships in the ghetto; his brother drinking from the river and being punished for doing so; his grandfather and brother receiving 25 lashings each and surviving; his sister and step-sister and their struggles to feed their babies; being 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz on a cattle car; being placed in a children’s barrack; being forced to stand in the cold; forced labor; his Auschwitz number; meeting Elie Wiesel; marching to a smaller camp; working in the kitchen with his brother; obtaining matzo; sneaking out food from the kitchen; going on a death march out of Auschwitz; being liberated by Russian troops; going to an American-run displaced persons camp; his faith after enduring the Holocaust; returning with his brother to their hometown; immigrating to the United States; living with their aunt and uncle; Jewish life in the US; his work life; getting married; and his final message: “Doing good for others is the most important thing in the world.”