Series: Interviews

Alpert, Pela 1974 January 30, 1975 June 5, and 1980 March 5

Existence and Location of Copies

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note

Pela Rosen Alpert was born in Dobrzyn, Poland, on October 26, 1920. She was the youngest of seven children in a well-to-do mercantile family. In the mid 1930s, her sister and brother-in-law, Rose and Jacob Fogel, left Poland to settle in Green Bay, Wisconsin. With the outbreak of World War II, Pela fled with her family to Warsaw when she was 19. She contracted typhus while in the Warsaw Ghetto and nearly died. After her recuperation, her father convinced her to escape from the Ghetto by crawling through a hole in a wall. She never saw her family again. Pela was eventually rounded up for forced labor at the munitions factory at Skarzysko-Kamienna. After more than two years of grueling work, she was transferred first to a labor camp at Czestochowa and then to the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, Germany. She remained at Ravensbruck until late April 1945, when the camp's inmates were rescued by the Swedish Red Cross and transported to Sweden, where she remained for four years. In February 1949, Pela arrived in Green Bay to live with her sister and brother-in-law. Within months, she was engaged to Richard Alpert, whom she met on a blind date. They were married on February 19, 1950, exactly one year after her arrival in Green Bay. After raising two daughters, Pela worked part-time at a pharmacy. Her husband, a former grocery store owner, was a salesman for a paper company. Pela died in 2005.

Interview on Audio 530A/2 was conducted 1.5 years after the originals (Audio 530A) to re-capture the content of Tape 1, Side 2. It is placed here to maintain the narrative of Alpert's interview.

Applegate, William 1980 March 11

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Colonel William H. Applegate was an American witness to the Holocaust. He was a 25-year-old soldier who arrived at Dachau only hours after its liberation. William was born on February 25, 1920, in Camden, New Jersey. He joined the United States Army in 1940. During World War II he was a captain in the 44th Infantry Division. It landed in Cherbourg, France, in September 1944, and headed southeast toward Bavaria and the Austro-Italian border. At the war's end, his unit was only 140 kilometers from Dachau and he decided to go there. Like most Americans, William did not realize the extent of Nazi brutality - until he saw it for himself. As witnesses to Dachau only 72 hours after it had been liberated, William and two other officers soon found that the truth exceeded even the worst rumors. He took 40 photographs of the concentration camp, but somehow they disappeared. He believed they were stolen by the Nazi-sympathizing mother of his live-in maid in Germany. From December 1946 to November 1949, William served as a sub-post commander at Butzbach displaced persons camp. After a distinguished military career and attaining the rank of Colonel, William retired from active duty in 1968. He became the Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society in January 1969 and continued in that role until 1983. He died in 1985.
Note: Applegate was the only liberator interviewed for the Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust project.

Transcription

Bader, Flora 1980 November 17-18

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Flora van Brink Hony Bader (nee Melkman) was born in Amsterdam, Holland, on June 20, 1919. She was the oldest daughter in a well-to-do Dutch family. When the Germans occupied Holland in May 1940, the Melkmans witnessed increasingly anti-Jewish legislation. In January 1943, the family realized it was only a matter of time before they would become victims of the Nazis. The 24-year-old Flora and her husband of two years, Israel van Brink, went into hiding with Flora's sister. Both Israel and Flora's sister were betrayed by Dutch Nazis, arrested, and eventually killed. Flora took refuge in the home of a Dutch Underground member. After the member was betrayed and deported, Flora moved through the homes of several Dutch Underground members until the Allied liberation in May 1945. After the war, Flora was the only survivor in her family. She joined her mother-in-law in Amsterdam and they took many survivors into their home. One of those was Josef Hony, who had survived Auschwitz. The two married in 1946. In 1954 they immigrated to the United States with their only child and settled in Milwaukee. Both Flora and Josef worked at Gimbels department store. After Josef's death in 1967, Flora married Aron Bader in 1968. He died in 1979. Flora died in September 1997.

Transcription

Baras, Lucy 1980 November 12-13
Scope and Content Note: Lucy Rothstein Baras was born in Skalat, Poland (Ukraine), on August 15, 1913. She was the oldest child in the family of an Orthodox Jewish leather merchant. After graduating from high school, she attended law school in Lwow. A 1933 law prohibiting Jews from practicing law forced her to abandon her schooling. Instead, Lucy learned the tailoring trade and returned to Skalat to open her own shop. The Jews of Skalat lived in relative safety until July 4, 1941, when Nazi forces overran the city. They killed about 400 men, including her father. The Rothstein family continued to survive by working for the Germans in the family leather shop making shoes for concentration camp workers. A short time later a Jewish ghetto was established in the family's neighborhood in Skalat. Its borders continued to shrink following numerous "actions" in which thousands were murdered. In early 1943 the family was forced to leave their home and work at the labor camp established in Skalat. Lucy was appointed the personal tailor to the Nazi overseer of the county. Lucy's husband-to-be, Edward Baras, was the overseer's farm administrator. In the summer of 1943, Lucy, her mother, and her brother escaped to the forest, where they hid for three weeks. During that time, her mother failed to return while searching for food. She was never seen again. Lucy and her brother joined a group of Jews hiding deeper in the woods. They remained there until their liberation by the Russian army at the end of 1943. After liberation, they traveled through Zbaraz, eventually to return to Skalat in early 1944 where she immediately reunited with Edward. The two were wed and a son was born in 1945. Fearing similar persecution under the communist regime, Lucy and her family fled the Ukraine soon after their son was born. They were captured in Czechoslovakia, but escaped to a displaced persons camp at Bamberg, Germany, where they were interred until 1950. After leaving Germany, the Baras' spent nine months in New York before arriving in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. They joined Edward Baras' brother and sister, who were relocated to Sheboygan directly from Germany. Edward worked as a machinist at the Kohler Company until his retirement in 1974. Lucy worked as a part-time tailor for many years. She died in February 2002.

Audio

Interview and transcript also available online.

Life as a child in Poland, Jewish traditions at home, her education in Poland, community life, and anti-Semitism

Loyalty to Jewish traditions, beginnings of war, Russian occupation, problems of living under Russian occupation, life under Germans, and establishment of the ghetto

Beginnings of the ghetto, preparations for disaster, hiding from Germans as they took Jews from the ghetto, working as a seamstress for a German family, and hiding her mother from Germans

Hiding in the forest, losing mother, survival in the forest, feelings about God in relation to the Holocaust, night of liberation, return to Skalat, and getting married

Departure from Skalat, going west, life in a refugee camp, coming to America, and life in New York

Unidentified

Living in America, children, fellow Jews, and writing

Current political situations, rise of the KKK and Nazi organizations, economic conditions, anti-Semitism in the United States, and the political situation in Germany today

Transcription

Blasberg, Sylvia 1980 November 3, 1981 January 22, February 2

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Sylvia Schwerd Blasberg was born in Lwow (Sylvia calls it by its former name, Lemberg), Poland on December 5, 1925. She was the oldest of four siblings. The Russian army occupied her hometown in 1939. When the German army invaded the Soviet territory on June 22, 1941, 15-year-old Sylvia was placed on a truck heading east into the depths of Russia. For nearly three years she worked at a number of collective settlements, which were continually evacuated as the Germans advanced. In early 1943, after the Germans suffered crucial defeats, she and two friends began to wend their way homeward. In the spring of 1944, the girls reached their hometowns in the now Russian-occupied Poland. They had heard of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, but were unprepared for the devastation that greeted them. Sylvia discovered that there were no survivors from her family and seriously contemplated suicide. While searching for relatives, Sylvia met Harry Blasberg, another survivor. After three weeks the two were married. Throughout 1945, they lived in a variety of Polish cities, including Warsaw, until they were able to reach Berlin and several displaced persons camps. Contact with relatives in the United States prompted the Blasbergs' immigration to Milwaukee in September 1949. In Wisconsin, the Blasbergs struggled to establish themselves. They moved often and each held a variety of jobs. At the time of this interview, Sylvia was employed by the Jewish Family and Children's Service as an interpreter for new Russian immigrants.

Transcription

Chulew, Manny 1980 October 8-9

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Mendel (Manny) Chulew was born on January 5, 1924, in Rymanow, Poland. Its pre-war population was more than 90 percent Jewish. Manny was the son of a small business owner. As war approached in September 1939, Manny's family fled east into Russian-occupied Poland to escape persecution. Late in 1940, Soviet authorities shipped the Chulews' to work camps in Siberia along with over 50,000 other Polish Jewish refugees. When the Germans attacked on Russia in June 1941, the Siberian refugees were released. The Chulew family made their way to Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, where they lived until 1946. On their return trip to Poland, Manny's mother died in Lublin. They continued their journey only to find that every Jew in their city had been killed. The family reached a displaced persons camp at Steyr, Austria, and spent nearly five years in various camps before immigrating to New York in December 1951. Manny's uncle convinced the family to join him in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1952. Within a month of their arrival, the family opened Chulew Furniture. In 1960 they acquired Barr Furniture, which they operated for the next several decades. Manny became a well-known member of the Kenosha business community and married Lenore Shain of Chicago in 1956. The couple had two daughters.

Comins, Chana 1980 January 28

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Chana Bebczuk Comins was born in Stepan, Poland, on June 5, 1918. Although she attended Polish schools, Chana also received a Jewish education, learning Hebrew in the afternoons. In 1940, she married Melvin Cominetsky (name changed to "Comins" upon their arrival in Madison). Their first daughter was born on the same day the Nazis entered their town in 1941. The 22-year-old new mother and her baby, only a few hours old, were immediately separated from Melvin and taken to a forced labor camp. There she witnessed the execution of her family and friends. In 1943, Chana made a daring escape from a transport of inmates on their way to a mass execution. She hid in the forest with her baby until the end of the war. After liberation, Chana worked in Munich until she was miraculously reunited with her husband. They lived at a displaced persons camp in Ulm, Germany, where two more daughters were born. In December 1949, resettlement officials sent them to Madison, Wisconsin, where they were given housing, food, and employment. They also had a son. Chana worked for more than 25 years as a cook in several Madison restaurants. Melvin was employed at Oscar Mayer and Co. for 23 years until his death in 1971. Chana died in December 2003.

Transcription

DeLevie, Herb 1980 March 11, 13, 20

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Herb DeLevie was born in Rheine, Germany, on May 7, 1934. His mother was German and his father was Dutch. His father's family had practiced the traditions of Sephardic Judaism for centuries. After witnessing rising anti-Semitism in Germany, the DeLevie family moved to Stadtskanaal, Holland, in 1936 to escape the growing sanctions against Jews. In late 1940, Herb's father, a prominent business owner, went into hiding. Six months later, 7-year-old Herb, his mother, and 11-year-old sister joined him. Over the next four years, they hid in one room of a small farmhouse on the outskirts of Stadtskanaal with a large group of relatives and friends. To keep occupied, young Herb read more than 3,000 books brought by the Dutch Underground. After liberation by a Canadian army unit in 1945, the DeLevies returned to their home. The senior DeLevie resumed his business and the family made plans to immigrate to the U.S. They left Holland in December 1949. The family resided with relatives in New York City until late spring 1950, when they arrived in Madison, Wisconsin. Herb graduated from West High School in 1951 and enrolled in the University of Wisconsin. A chance encounter with Frank Lloyd Wright resulted in Herb's acceptance at Taliesin in May 1953, where he remained for two years. He joined the Army shortly thereafter and was sent to Korea. After his discharge, Herb settled in Los Angeles, where he worked as an architect, teacher, clothing designer, and cook, and married. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1964. In June 1964, he married Monica Freund-Fasslicht in Los Angeles. He soon returned to Wisconsin because his father was ill. He set up shop as an architect in Madison, where his sons were born in 1968 and 1971. His second wife died in 1975 and two years later he married again. In 1976, Herb formed the Madison architectural firm of DeLevie and Associates, which he ran until his death from a brain tumor in 1989.

Transcription

Deutschkron, Eva 1980 September 3, 5

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Eva Lauffer Deutschkron was born in Posen, Germany (now Poznan, Poland), on November 12, 1918. Her widowed mother moved the family to Berlin. Young Eva was generally shielded from the growing Nazi terror until Kristallnacht. She witnessed the November 9-10, 1938, rioting that launched widespread violence against the Jewish community. Eva's family attempted to immigrate to the U.S. Delays in the U.S. Consulate in Berlin prevented the family from leaving. In October 1942, Nazi officials captured Eva's sister and the parents of her husband, Martin. Eva's parents were also eventually abducted and murdered. At 24, Eva and her husband were assigned to forced labor at the Siemens Munitions Factory. They eluded Nazi attention until January 1943. That is when Eva and her husband went into hiding. Helped by a number of Gentiles, the Deutschkrons survived the war by hiding underground in Berlin, the seat of the Third Reich. They experienced many harrowing events - not only close calls with the Gestapo but also bombing from Allied warplanes. After the war, with the help of American soldiers, they re-established contact with relatives in the U.S. In May 1946, they emigrated from Germany, shortly after the birth of their son. Settling for a time in New York City, the Deutschkrons moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in November 1948. A daughter was born in 1951. From humble beginnings in a rented store, they established Martin's, Inc., a tailoring and retail clothing business with several locations around the city. Eva died in 2011.

Transcription

Epstein, Karola 1980 October 6, 9

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Karola Frankenthal Epstein (nee Rosenfeld) was born on September 20, 1925, in Schopfloch, Germany. Her family enjoyed excellent business and social relations in this small Bavarian village. In 1936, anti-Semitic legislation by the Nazi Party forced Karola to attend a school for Jewish children in a different town. After experiencing anti-Semitism in that town, she felt unsafe. Karola convinced her parents to allow her to accompany her sister, Sofie, to the United States to live with relatives. The two teenaged girls arrived in Chicago in August 1937. Karola's expectations about life in America were shattered when she was forced to keep house and babysit for her relatives. In September 1938, Karola's parents immigrated to Chicago. The family worked hard to make a living. Before the war's end, Karola had finished high school and worked as a bookkeeper. She also met her first husband, Siegfried Frankenthal, a German-Jewish refugee. They met through her sister and brother-in-law, Herbert Zimmern, who were living in Green Bay. The couple married in September 1946 in Green Bay, where they established a cattle business. From humble beginnings, Karola and her husband built a large commercial empire, which included farm real estate and four meatpacking plants. At the time of Siegfried's death in 1976, they were the fifth or sixth largest employer in Green Bay. They also raised four children, all born in Green Bay. After Siegfried's death, she married Aaron Epstein of Madison in 1979.

Transcription

Golde, Henry 1980 October 1-2

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Henry Golde was born in Plock, Poland, on May 5, 1929, the younger son of a Polish father and a Lithuanian mother. When the Germans occupied Plock in September 1939, Henry's family was ordered into a ten-block area of the city designated as the Jewish ghetto. The ghetto was liquidated in early 1940. The Golde family was transported to the city of Chmielnik and again forced to live in a ghetto. After six months, 11-year-old Henry was selected for forced labor at the munitions factory at Skarzysko-Kamienna, Poland. His parents and brother were gassed at Treblinka. In the fall of 1943, the Germans shipped Henry to a slave labor camp at Czestochowa, Poland. After three months, he was deported to Buchenwald. He was there for a brief period before being transferred to a munitions factory at Colditz, Germany. Shortly before the end of the war, the slave laborers at Colditz were force-marched to Theresienstadt in CzechoŹslovakia. The Russian army liberated the city on May 1, 1945. Henry remained at Theresienstadt with 300 other children until June 1945 when the British government airlifted them to Windermere, England. With the help of Jewish organizations in Britain, the children were housed in hostels and taught technical trades. Henry became a tailor. His wife, whom he married in 1948, was also a tailor. The Goldes immigrated to the United States in 1952. Henry worked as a tailor, cab driver, and salesman in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio before arriving in Milwaukee in 1954. He held a variety of jobs during the 1960s. In 1972 he bought a tavern in Merrill, Wisconsin and ran it for five years. Henry remained involved with the Merrill community, lectured on the Holocaust, and served on the boards of many local organizations. He moved to Neenah in the 1980s. As of January 2009, Henry was living in Appleton.

Transcription

Goldfarb, Susanne 1980 February 7, October 8

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Susanne Hafner Goldfarb was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 17, 1933. She was the only child of a middle-class Jewish family. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Rising anti-Semitism and the threat of war prompted her family to flee their homeland in early 1939. Six-year-old Susanne and her family left Europe on a luxury liner bound for Shanghai, China. They found refuge with more than 20,000 other European Jewish exiles in the Japanese-occupied sector of that city. The refugees were able to create a mulitfaceted Jewish community in Shanghai.It included commercial, religious, cultural, and educational institutions. Susanne attended synagogue, studied in Jewish schools, and belonged to a Zionist social club. The Hafners eked out a living by delivering bread in their neighborhood, the Hongkew district. In May 1943, Japanese authorities introduced anti-Semitic measures. The Hongkew district turned into a Jewish ghetto and all Shanghai Jews were restricted to this area. As World War II unfolded, Shanghai came under increased assault from U.S. warplanes. Susanne's family worked as air raid wardens and suffered the terror of heavy bombing attacks. In August 1945, the U.S. liberated the Hongkew Ghetto. Soon after, China descended into civil war. In 1949 the Chinese Communists came to power. The Hafners, fearing persecution under the communist regime, immigrated to Israel in January 1949. In 1953, the Hafners immigrated to New York City. They lived in an insulated community of Jewish refugees until 1969. In New York Susanne met Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, whom she married in 1963. The Goldfarbs moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1969. Susanne worked with the University of Wisconsin's Office of Foreign Students and Faculty until her death in June 1987.

Transcription

Gordon, Harry 1980 August 24, October 27, November 19

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Harry Gordon was born in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, on July 15, 1925. He was the only child of an Orthodox Jewish family with deep roots in Lithuania. In the summer of 1940, after Harry's second year of high school, the Russian army occupied Kovno. A year later, Lithuania fell to the Germans. Shortly after the Germans arrived, Harry's ailing mother was poisoned along with all other patients at the Jewish hospital in Kovno. His remaining family members were herded into a ghetto with 35,000 other Jews. Harry's father was deported. Harry was shuffled between the ghetto and forced labor camps for the next three years. In 1944, he was deported to Dachau, where he dug ditches for the disposal of corpses. In 1945 Harry escaped from a trainload of prisoners and walked to Landsberg-am-Lech, Germany, where he was met by Allied troops. By then he weighed only 50 pounds. Harry was hospitalized for eight months and recuperated at a rehabilitation camp for displaced persons. While there, he met and married Genia Lelonek, a Polish survivor. The Gordons immigrated to the U.S. in March 1949. They lived in Pennsylvania and New York City before arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1951. Harry moved from job to job before becoming self-employed as a scrap metal dealer. The Gordons had three children before divorcing in 1969. Harry wrote a book about his Holocaust experiences, The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1992). Harry died in 2010.

Transcription

Herzberger, Magda 1980 July 21-22, August 27
Scope and Content Note: Magda Mozes Herzberger was born on February 20, 1926, in Cluj, Romania. On August 30, 1940, Romania was annexed by Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany. Life for Cluj's nearly 17,000 Jews grew steadily worse over the next four years. In March 1944, the Germans occupied Romania and took large-scale anti-Semitic measures. The Mozes family, along with thousands of other Jews, was forced into the Cluj Ghetto. It was liquidated only a month later. Magda and her family were sent to Auschwitz, where most of them perished. After six weeks in Auschwitz, 18-year-old Magda was shipped to Bremen, Germany. She did forced labor as the city was bombed by Allied forces. In March 1945, Magda was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her job there was to dispose of thousands of bodies that had accumulated in and around the barracks. On April 15, 1945, she collapsed from exhaustion. Magda was near death when she was found among the corpses by a liberating British soldier. Magda returned to Cluj late in 1945. In April 1946, she began medical school, where she met and married Eugene Herzberger. Fearing persecution under communism, the Herzbergers fled Romania for Israel in 1947. The British, who severely restricted immigration to Israel, captured her ship in the Aegean Sea and brought it to Cyprus. The Herzbergers were held in a makeshift prison camp until permitted to leave for Israel in January 1949. In 1957, after nine years in Israel, the Herzbergers immigrated to the U.S. They and their two children settled in Monroe, Wisconsin, where Magda's husband practiced medicine for 20 years. The Herzbergers moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1976 and to Arizona in 1994. Magda has spoken extensively about her experiences. She has published two memoirs (Eyewitness to Holocaust and Survival), and several volumes of poetry and fiction. They are available from her website. Magda is also a former mountain climber, skier and runner. She competed in a marathon the summer this interview was conducted.

Copyright belongs to the heirs of Magda Herzberger, see Archives Reference staff.

Audio

Interview and transcript also available online.

Note: Magda's mother is present during the interview and sometimes comments.

Childhood in Transylvania, her family before the war and the shattering effects of war on her family, childhood activities and family traditions, invasion of Poland, Romanian rule of Transylvania, and poverty of the war years

Religious practices in Transylvania, childhood experiences, pre-war knowledge of Nazi activities

German invasion of Rumania, her arrest and internment in a ghetto, transport in a cattle car, entrance into the concentration camp, life in the camp

In-depth details about the concentration camp, daily routines, closeness with the other female prisoners
Note: She reads the eulogy written to her father, a passage to her daughter, and other poetic pieces she wrote about the camp.

Continues to discuss life in the concentration camp, tactics for survival, fight against insanity, attempts to escape, departure from Auschwitz to Brehman, bombings at Brehman
Note: She recites a piece of her writing at Brehman.

Continues to discuss life in Brehman: Typhus epidemic and her escape to avoid contracting it, arrival of the British, Liberation Day, and the survivors; she reads two of her poems – "Anguish, Liberation;" return to her home and finds her mother, goes to medical school, marries, exodus to Israel

Courtship of her husband, attempt and success at entering medical school, early years of marriage and medical school, political situation in Rumania during the 1940s, first pregnancy
Note: She reads several of her poems and begins describing their move to Israel.

Life in Israel, motherhood, her husband's medical career (she ends her career to be a mother), Palestinian bombing of Tel Aviv and the family's subsequent departure to the U.S., move to Georgia for about a year, move to Monroe, Wisconsin in 1960, life in Monroe

Magda's life presently and the effect of her past on it, response from her book, response from American Jews about her Holocaust experience, her public speaking career, occupation as wife and mother

Her impressions of Wisconsin, life in Monroe as the only Jew, contrast with life in Dubuque, Iowa, her contribution to the Monroe community, political ideas including positions on Israel, anti-Semitism in the U.S.

Transcription

Katz, Rosa 1980 October 28-29

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Rachel (Rosa) Goldberg Katz was born in Lodz, Poland, on May 6, 1924, to a well-to-do family with liberal Jewish beliefs. In 1935, her sister and brother-in-law immigrated to Palestine while the rest of the family remained in Poland. When the Germans occupied Lodz in 1939, 15-year-old Rosa was among the thousands of Jews crowded into the city's ghetto. Three years later, in July 1942, her mother was deported from the ghetto and never heard from again. In August 1944, the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. Its starving residents, including Rosa, her father, brother, and sister-in-law, Hela, were all shipped to Auschwitz. There she was separated from her father and brother. She never saw them again. German officials mistakenly sent Rosa and hundreds of other Jewish women (instead of French prisoners) to work at the Krupp munitions factory in Berlin. For eight months, Rosa assembled delicate timepieces for German bombs. In March 1945, she was transferred to the death camp in Ravensbruck, Germany. The Swedish Red Cross liberated the camp within a month of her arrival. Its inhabitants were transported to Sweden where Rosa recuperated for several years. She married Bernard Katz there (also a survivor). In April 1948, they came to the United States Initially settling in North Carolina, the Katz family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1953. They raised four children while Rosa earned a degree in nursing. She worked as a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh until her retirement in 1994.

Tradition and culture of family in Poland, in-depth description of family members, life in Poland before the war

Going into the ghetto, going to Warsaw to escape going to the ghetto, description of the ghetto, being shipped to Auschwitz

Living in the ghetto, speaking about the underground, life in prison camps and how bad everything was

Leaving Auschwitz to Berlin, in quarantine, working in ammunition factory, life in barracks, being liberated, going to Denmark

Events after liberation, contact with relatives, meeting her husband, husband's life during the war, coming to America, life in America

Her children; dealing with Holocaust experience in relationship with children; daily life; thoughts about Wisconsin; answers to general questions; feelings about Germany, Poland, and Israel; feelings about participating in the oral history project

Koplin, Louis 1980 February 13, 19

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Louis Koplin (born Ludwig Kopolowitz) was born in Nelipeno, Czechoslovakia (now in the Ukraine), on July 30, 1920. He came from a family of Orthodox Jews who had lived in an area known as Subcarpathian Ruthenia for hundreds of years. Louis graduated from the Munkacs Gymnasium in 1941, two years after the German-sympathizing Hungarian government occupied Subcarpathia. Although the Hungarian government did not persecute the Jews until the spring of 1944, Jewish men were sent to the Russian front beginning in June 1941 to mine and dig trenches. Louis was sent to a labor camp in Komarom, Hungary. He was chosen from among 2,000 men to remain there as a shoemaker. The others were never heard from again. Louis remained in Komarom until March 1944, when the Hungarians abandoned the camp after the Nazis invaded Hungary. Louis was rounded up and sent to the Austrian border, where he worked in a forced labor camp until February 1945. He was then force-marched with thousands of others for more than 300 miles to the concentration camp of Mauthausen. More than 95 percent of the prisoners died en route. Soon afterward the Nazi guards fled the camp, leaving the inmates on their own until they were liberated by the advancing United States Army several days later. Upon his arrival at a displaced persons camp in Germany, Louis was hired by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to help resettle refugees throughout Europe. Through the JDC, he was accepted at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he arrived in September 1947. Louis studied pharmacy and moved to Milwaukee after graduating. Louis married in 1954, opened a pharmacy in 1957, and raised three children. Louis retired in 1992.

Transcription

Moshe, Salvator 1980 November 18, 1981 January 22, February 2

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Salvator Moshe was born in Salonika, Greece, on September 10, 1915. His family traced its roots back to the Spanish Inquisition, when Greece opened its borders to Jewish exiles. Salvator graduated from high school in 1932. He worked in France for four years and returned home in 1936. The German army occupied Salonika in 1940. Jewish residents lived in relative safety until deportations began early in 1943. Salvator's entire family was transported to Auschwitz, where all but he and his brother-in-law perished. In August 1943, Salvator and his brother-in-law joined a transport of Greek Jews sent to clear debris from the destroyed Warsaw Ghetto. After laboring for nearly a year, they were force-marched to Dachau, and then to a forced labor camp in a neighboring forest. As the war reached its last days, Nazis transported the prisoners by train for eventual massacre in the Austrian Tirol, but they were liberated en route by the U.S. Army near Seeshaupt, Germany. Salvator and his brother-in-law ended up in a displaced persons camp at Feldafing, Germany, and soon settled in Weilheim. In 1948, Salvator's brother-in-law immigrated to Israel. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) arranged for Salvator to come to the United States in April 1949. After a short stay in New York, he was sent to Milwaukee where, through efforts of the Jewish Vocational Service, he was hired by the Greenbaum Tannery. For the next 30 years, he was a tannery worker and retired in 1980. Salvator married Milwaukee native Thelma Seiden in March 1950. They raised three children. Salvator died in 1993.

Peltz, Walter 1980 February 26-27, March 10

Interview and transcript also available online.

Scope and Content Note: Walter Wolf Peltz was born into a working-class family in Warsaw, Poland, on May 12, 1919. His area of the city later became the Warsaw Ghetto. Walter quit school at the age of 10 to help support his family. When war broke out in 1939, his home was destroyed and his family left starving. To avoid arrest by the Gestapo, Walter fled to central Poland, near Lublin, where he was hidden by a Christian family for more than a year. Taken into custody in 1941, Walter survived four years in the concentration camps of Majdanek, Auschwitz, Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau before being liberated by U.S. troops in May 1945. Shortly after liberation, Walter married Rose Abraham, a Hungarian survivor of Dachau. They settled in Memmingen, Germany, opened a clothing store and, in 1946, had a son. The family left Germany in April 1949, arriving in Milwaukee a month later where Walter quickly found work as a tailor. A daughter was born in 1952. Walter's wife died in 1968 and he remarried in 1972. Walter lectured frequently about the Holocaust until his death in 2003.

Transcription

Platner, Fred 1980 October 1-2, 22

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Scope and Content Note: Fred Platner was born in Amsterdam, Holland, on August 4, 1917. His family moved during his childhood to Chemnitz, Germany, and later to Bielsko-Biala, Poland. The latter city was one of the first to be invaded by the German army in September 1939. Fred was assigned to forced labor but escaped and found his way to the Russian lines. In late 1940, he and other ex-Poles were arrested by Soviet authorities and shipped to Siberia. Fred spent nearly a year in a Siberian labor camp until the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. After traveling for a year in Russia, Fred arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in Central Asia. He worked as a truck driver for a Russian army camp until the end of hostilities in Europe in 1945. After the war, he worked in displaced persons camps between 1947 and 1950 in Austria and Germany. Before leaving for the United States, Fred returned to Poland as well as to his hometown in Germany. He found only a handful of surviving relatives and a cold reception by former friends. In late 1951, Fred and his wife, Ruth von Lange, settled in Madison, Wisconsin. The next year they relocated to Wausau, where he rose to become vice president of the Wausau Steel Corporation. The Platners had three daughters and divorced in 1974. Fred died in 1988.

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Relles, Meyer, Rabbi 1980 October 12-13, 25

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Scope and Content Note: Mayer Relles was born in Skalat, Poland, on June 2, 1908, to a family that was beginning to shed some of the constraints of Orthodox Judaism. As a promising young Talmudic scholar, Mayer traveled to other countries when quotas were imposed upon Jews in Polish schools and was ordained in 1932. Mayer enrolled for advanced studies at the rabbinical seminary in Rome in 1933 and moved to Venice to accept a rabbinical appointment in 1936. After the Fascist Italian government entered the war, he was arrested in June 1940, briefly interned in a concentration camp, and released a few months later. For the next three years, he worked in the Jewish community of Venice and pursued his studies in the neighboring city of Padua. In addition to his rabbinical studies, he received a Ph.D. in Italian Literature and Philosophy in 1941. After the Germans occupied Italy in September 1943, Mayer went into hiding. He tried escaping into neutral Switzerland, but was arrested near the border. He remained incarcerated in the city of Como, Italy, until the Italian Underground helped him escape to Milan. Mayer spent several months there before successfully escaping into Switzerland in April 1944. Rabbi Relles lived in Switzerland until September 1945, when he returned to Venice. From 1946 to 1951, he served Jewish communities in the Italian cities of Ancona and Trieste and completed his advanced rabbinical studies in Padua. The rabbi and his wife moved to the U.S. in 1951. Rabbi Relles held teaching positions and rabbinical posts in the Chicago area and in Superior, Wisconsin. From 1971 to 1976, he returned to Italy to serve as chief rabbi of Trieste. He later served as the spiritual leader at Anshe Poale Zedek synagogue in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Rabbi Relles wrote a long manuscript account of his experiences in Italy during World War II and his escape to Switzerland in April 1944. It is available in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Rabbi Mayer Relles died in 1995.

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Sorrin, Saul 1980 February 13, 19, March 3

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Scope and Content Note: Saul Sorrin was an American witness to the Holocaust. He aided survivors at displaced persons camps in Germany as an administrator from 1945 to 1950. Saul was born on July 6, 1919, in New York City, where he attended the City College of New York. In 1940, he applied for a position with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). At the end of 1945, Saul was sent to Neu Freimann Siedlung, a displaced persons camp near Munich, Germany, to help Holocaust survivors. In 1946, he hosted General Dwight D. Eisenhower on an inspection tour of Neu Freimann. At Eisenhower's recommendation, Saul was appointed permanent area director at the Wolf-Ratshausen camp in Bad Kissingen. He served there until March 1950. Saul became deeply committed to the survivors he was helping. He ignored many illegal actions, violated countless rules and regulations, and helped refugees alter their documents to sidestep a variety of restrictions. Saul also aided those who wanted to immigrate illegally to countries with quotas. He even permitted refugees to hold secret military training for the newly formed state of Israel. Saul helped set up cultural institutions in the displaced persons camps he supervised. He began schools and synagogues and organized sporting events and entertainment. He was also able to bring in famous performers. After the war, Saul returned to the U.S. He married, settled in Milwaukee, and became executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council. Saul died in 1995.

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Stundel, Cyla 1980 February 20, March 9

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Scope and Content Note: Cyla Tine Stundel (also found as Sztundel) was born in Czartorysk, Poland, on March 5, 1921, to a family of Orthodox Jews. They later moved to Maniewicze, which the Soviet army occupied in September 1939. The Jews lived there in relative safety until the German invasion on June 22, 1941. In September 1942, the Germans segregated the Jewish residents into a ghetto and, within days, murdered them all. Cyla and a younger brother escaped death by fleeing into the forest the night before the executions. The rest of her family perished. Cyla and her brother lived from day-to-day, stealing food and sleeping in the underbrush for more than two years. They emerged from hiding in 1944 after the Russians recaptured the Ukraine. In the Ukrainian city of Rovno, they were befriended by Abraham Stundel, whom Cyla subsequently married. The three traveled westward by train in search of safety. In early 1945 her brother died of tuberculosis. Finally, in December 1945, Cyla and her husband reached the Fernwald displaced persons camp near Munich, Germany. Their son, Ksiel, was born there in 1946. In 1949, while Cyla was in her eighth month of pregnancy with their daughter, the family immigrated to the U.S. They arrived in Milwaukee on June 13, 1949. Her husband found work as a carpenter and Cyla devoted herself to raising the children. Cyla also became an active member in her neighborhood Jewish community. She continued to lead the life of an Orthodox Jew in a Polish shtetl in Milwaukee, speaking the Yiddish language and surrounding herself with friends of a similar background. Cyla eventually moved San Francisco where she died in 2009.

Swarsensky, Manfred, Rabbi 1980 Spring, Summer

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Scope and Content Note: Manfred Erich Swarsensky was born to a rural family in Marienfliess, Germany (Prussia), on October 22, 1906, where his family had lived for many generations. He was educated in Lutheran theology during his primary school years. Between 1925-1932, Manfred did rabbinical study at Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy for Jewish Studies) in Berlin while simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D. in Semitics at the University of Wurzburg. Upon ordination, Manfred was appointed to serve as a rabbi in Berlin's large Jewish community. He used his sermons to speak out against the Nazi regime from the time of its rise to power in 1933. Following the anti-Jewish rioting of Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, Rabbi Swarsensky was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. In spite of hard labor, humiliation, and torture, he was able to offer comfort to his fellow inmates. Three months later, the rabbi was unexpectedly offered freedom on the condition that he leave the country. Rabbi Swarsensky arrived in the United States in July 1939, after spending several months in Holland and England. In 1940, after a brief stay in Chicago, he accepted a post at a newly organized Reform congregation, Beth El Temple, in Madison, Wisconsin. He remained there until 1976. Rabbi Swarsensky was instrumental in helping many other Holocaust survivors reach Wisconsin and re-establish their lives. In 1952, he married Ida Weiner of Chicago, with whom he raised two children. The rabbi died in Madison on November 10, 1981, the 43rd anniversary of Kristallnacht.

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Wolnerman, Israel 1980 March 9, 16, August 11, November 18

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Scope and Content Note: Israel Wolnerman was born in Zawiercie, Poland, on March 16, 1922, and orphaned at 13. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, 17-year-old Israel was in Zawiercie actively participating in Zionist activities. In an attempt to spare his older brother, the head of the family, Israel volunteered to work for the Germans. What he expected to be a three-month period of labor became a five-and-a-half year odyssey through ten German labor and concentration camps. The last camp in which he was incarcerated was Staltach, a Dachau satellite camp. He was among thousands of prisoners from Staltach on their way to annihilation in the Austrian Tirol when the train was bombed by the Allies and the prisoners liberated by the United States Army. Israel spent two years at the Feldafing displaced persons camp and married in 1949. The Wolnermans moved to Dorfenmarkt, near Munich, where Israel worked in a tailor shop. Then they immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1949. In 1953 they moved to Milwaukee, where they purchased Edgewood Tailors and Furriers and raised three children. Israel was deeply involved with the New American Club (NAC). It was established in 1950 as an organization for Holocaust survivors. The majority of NAC members are from Poland.