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  • John Komski describes Krakow after the outbreak of World War II

    Oral History

    John, who was born to a non-Jewish Polish family, graduated from an art academy. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, John was in Krakow. Food became scarce in Krakow, with long lines of people waiting for whatever food was available. John decided to join the resistance against the Germans. By early 1940, he and two of his friends felt that they were in danger and decided to try to escape to France. John was caught and arrested during this escape attempt. He survived imprisonment…

    John Komski describes Krakow after the outbreak of World War II
  • Leah Hammerstein Silverstein describes working under a false non-Jewish identity in a German hospital in Krakow

    Oral History

    Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier…

    Tags: Kraków hiding
    Leah Hammerstein Silverstein describes working under a false non-Jewish identity in a German hospital in Krakow
  • Leopold Page describes the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto and escaping from the ghetto

    Oral History

    Leopold was a teacher in Krakow, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. While serving in the Polish army, he was captured by Germans. Leopold escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport. Soon after, he met the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The two became friends. Leopold was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto. He later worked in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz. He and the other Jews who worked there were treated relatively well and protected from the Nazis. After the war, Leopold moved to the…

    Leopold Page describes the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto and escaping from the ghetto
  • Leo Melamed describes going to school in prewar Bialystok

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Leo Melamed describes going to school in prewar Bialystok
  • Leo Melamed describes speaking several languages as a child in prewar Bialystok

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Leo Melamed describes speaking several languages as a child in prewar Bialystok
  • Leo Melamed describes saying goodbye to father as he fled Bialystok

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Tags: Bialystok
    Leo Melamed describes saying goodbye to father as he fled Bialystok
  • Leo Melamed describes the German occupation of Bialystok

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Leo Melamed describes the German occupation of Bialystok
  • Leo Melamed describes fear after German occupation of Bialystok

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Leo Melamed describes fear after German occupation of Bialystok
  • Leo Melamed describes fleeing by train from Bialystok to Vilna

    Oral History

    Leo was seven years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Before the war, Leo's father was a mathematics teacher and member of the Bialystok City Council. Fearing arrest, Leo's father fled Bialystok for Vilna just before the German occupation. Leo and his mother eventually joined his father in Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna, Leo's father obtained transit visas to Japan. The family left Vilna in December 1940, traveled across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived…

    Leo Melamed describes fleeing by train from Bialystok to Vilna
  • Felix Horn describes antisemitism in Lvov and conditions in the Janowska camp

    Oral History

    Felix was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Lublin, Poland. His father was a locksmith and his mother was a singer. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Felix fled east to Rovno and then to Soviet-occupied Lvov, where he was accepted at a medical school. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Felix was taken to a labor camp. He escaped and returned to Lublin, and found that his family had been forced into the ghetto established there. After the…

    Tags: Janowska Lvov
    Felix Horn describes antisemitism in Lvov and conditions in the Janowska camp
  • Wilek (William) Loew describes the hiding place in which his mother survived an Aktion in Lvov

    Oral History

    Wilek was the son of Jewish parents living in the southeastern Polish town of Lvov. His family owned and operated a winery that had been in family hands since 1870. Wilek's father died of a heart attack in 1929. Wilek entered secondary school in 1939. Soon after he began school, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Lvov was in the part of eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets took over Wilek's home and the family business, Wilek was able to continue his…

    Tags: hiding Lvov
    Wilek (William) Loew describes the hiding place in which his mother survived an Aktion in Lvov
  • Wilek (William) Loew describes the roundup of Jews during August 1942 deportation from Lvov to Belzec

    Oral History

    Wilek was the son of Jewish parents living in the southeastern Polish town of Lvov. His family owned and operated a winery that had been in family hands since 1870. Wilek's father died of a heart attack in 1929. Wilek entered secondary school in 1939. Soon after he began school, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Lvov was in the part of eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets took over Wilek's home and the family business, Wilek was able to continue his…

    Tags: deportations
    Wilek (William) Loew describes the roundup of Jews during August 1942 deportation from Lvov to Belzec
  • Lucine Horn describes conditions in the Lublin ghetto

    Oral History

    Lucine was born to a Jewish family in Lublin. Her father was a court interpreter and her mother was a dentist. War began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Lucine's home was raided by German forces shortly thereafter. Soon after the German occupation of Lublin, Jews there were forced to wear a compulsory badge identifying them as Jews. A ghetto in Lublin was closed off in January 1942. Lucine survived a series of killing campaigns and deportations from the ghetto during March and…

    Tags: Lublin ghettos
    Lucine Horn describes conditions in the Lublin ghetto
  • Rochelle Blackman Slivka describes the formation of the Vilna ghetto

    Oral History

    The Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941. In October, Rochelle and her family were confined to the Vilna ghetto, where her mother died. Her father, a Jewish council member, was killed in a camp in Estonia. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, Rochelle and her sister were deported--first to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof, near Danzig. In 1945, on the sixth week of a death march that forced the sisters to protect their bare feet with rags, the Soviet army liberated them.

    Rochelle Blackman Slivka describes the formation of the Vilna ghetto
  • Judith Meisel describes smuggling food as a child into the Kovno ghetto

    Oral History

    Upon her father's death, Judith and her family moved to Kovno. Soon, they were confined to the ghetto, which the Germans formed in 1941. Judith, her mother and sister were deported to Stutthof, where her mother died. Judith and her sister escaped from a death march out of Stutthof. They posed as non-Jews, found farm work and eventual refuge in Denmark. Their brother survived Dachau.

    Judith Meisel describes smuggling food as a child into the Kovno ghetto
  • Israel Ipson describes forced labor to construct an airplane runway

    Oral History

    Israel was raised in Kovno, Lithuania, and graduated from law school there in 1933. Because of anti-Jewish discrimination, he was unable to practice law. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, occupying Lithuania. The Kovno ghetto was established that August. By claiming to be a mechanic, Israel escaped several massacres. He was forced to work on a wooden airport runway outside the ghetto. After he escaped, Israel, his wife, and son hid in a potato pit for 9 months until liberation by Soviet…

    Israel Ipson describes forced labor to construct an airplane runway
  • Henny Fletcher Aronsen describes a roundup in the Kovno ghetto

    Oral History

    Henny was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania. She and her brother attended private schools. In June 1940 the Soviets occupied Lithuania, but little seemed to change until the German invasion in June 1941. The Germans sealed off a ghetto in Kovno in August 1941. Henny and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Henny married in the ghetto in November 1943; her dowry was a pound of sugar. She survived several roundups during which some of her friends and family were…

    Tags: Kovno
    Henny Fletcher Aronsen describes a roundup in the Kovno ghetto
  • Abraham Malnik describes massacre in Kovno's Ninth Fort, near the Kovno ghetto

    Oral History

    Abraham came from a wealthy family that was ordered into the Kovno ghetto after the Germans occupied Lithuania in 1941. Abraham's mother urged his father to flee, but he returned for them. Begging for mercy, he was able to save them from a massacre in the Ninth Fort, one of several forts around Kovno. Abraham and his father survived internment in five camps before they were finally liberated in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Abe's mother perished at the Stutthof camp.

    Abraham Malnik describes massacre in Kovno's Ninth Fort, near the Kovno ghetto
  • David Levine describes hiding his two-year-old nephew during a roundup of children in the Kovno ghetto

    Oral History

    David was born to a middle class Jewish family and attended a Jewish school. In August 1941, after the Germans occupied Kovno, he was forced into the Kovno ghetto, where he shared two rooms with his immediate and extended family. Many members of his extended family were killed during the Great Aktion in Kovno in October 1941. David worked in a forced-labor brigade in the ghetto. In March 1944, he witnessed the Kinder Aktion and was able to save his nephew. During the destruction of the Kovno ghetto, David…

    David Levine describes hiding his two-year-old nephew during a roundup of children in the Kovno ghetto
  • Hanne Hirsch Liebmann describes harassment and anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany

    Oral History

    Hanne's family owned a photographic studio. In October 1940, she and other family members were deported to the Gurs camp in southern France. In September 1941, the Children's Aid Society (OSE) rescued Hanne and she hid in a children's home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Her mother perished in Auschwitz. In 1943, Hanne obtained false papers and crossed into Switzerland. She married in Geneva in 1945 and had a daughter in 1946. In 1948, she arrived in the United States.

    Hanne Hirsch Liebmann describes harassment and anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany
  • Samuel Gruber describes a German girl's reaction to learning that he was Jewish

    Oral History

    A Polish soldier, Samuel was wounded in action and taken by Germany as a prisoner of war. As the war continued, he and other Jewish prisoners received increasingly harsh treatment. Among the camps in which he was interned was Lublin-Lipowa, where he was among those forced to build the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1942, he escaped from the Germans, spending the rest of the war as the leader of an armed partisan group.

    Samuel Gruber describes a German girl's reaction to learning that he was Jewish
  • Benjamin (Ben) Meed describes Warsaw after the German occupation in 1939 and first experiencing antisemitism

    Oral History

    Ben was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. After the Germans occupied Warsaw, Ben decided to escape to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. However, he soon decided to return to his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto, and helped smuggle people out of the ghetto—including Vladka (Fagele) Peltel, a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), who later became his wife. Later, he went into…

    Benjamin (Ben) Meed describes Warsaw after the German occupation in 1939 and first experiencing antisemitism
  • Abraham Lewent describes performing forced labor in Warsaw and increased Polish antisemitism

    Oral History

    Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

    Tags: antisemitism
    Abraham Lewent describes performing forced labor in Warsaw and increased Polish antisemitism
  • Bella Jakubowicz Tovey describes antisemitic remarks made as she was forced to march into the Graeben camp

    Oral History

    Bella was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in Sosnowiec. Her father owned a knitting factory. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, they took over the factory. The family's furniture was given to a German woman. Bella was forced to work in a factory in the Sosnowiec ghetto in 1941. At the end of 1942 the family was deported to the Bedzin ghetto. Bella was deported to the Graeben subcamp of Gross-Rosen in 1943 and to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. She was liberated in April 1945.

    Bella Jakubowicz Tovey describes antisemitic remarks made as she was forced to march into the Graeben camp
  • Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall describes the selection process in Auschwitz

    Oral History

    Fritzie's father immigrated to the United States, but by the time he could bring his family over, war had begun and Fritzie's mother feared attacks on transatlantic shipping. Fritzie, her mother, and two brothers were eventually sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and brothers died. Fritzie survived by pretending to be older than her age and thus a stronger worker. On a death march from Auschwitz, Fritzie ran into a forest, where she was later liberated.

    Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall describes the selection process in Auschwitz

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