Oral History Interview with Alfred Brosan

Zina Farber, nee Bass, one of six children, was born December 6, 1933 in Bialystok, Poland. Her father was a businessman. She shares her very early childhood memories of antisemitism (having been taught to always step off pavements when encountering Gentiles, at the risk of being beaten). She also recounts that the most vivid detail of her early life in Poland is her very warm family.

Having been separated from both parents very early in the war, her eldest brother took care of the family. In 1943, after confinement in Bialystok and PruzhanyGhettos, she and four brothers were sent to Auschwitz. She describes the round up of Jews in Pruzhany, the deportation in open cattle trucks, arrival, selection, and shaving. She describes the absolute miracle that she was not immediately gassed, being dragged out of her assigned truck and put instead with the group of women assigned to hard labor. She was 10 years old. She attributes this miracle to the fact that she was wearing her mother’s coat which made her look older than she was. She explains several times that it is too painful to recount the innumerable stories she could tell about her one and half year experience in Auschwitz. She is able to share descriptions of her constant hunger and fear. She describes fear of punishment – i. e. having her head pushed into a barrel of excrement– and relates the necessity of always wearing her soup bowl on a rope around her neck, even when sleeping. She also describes how the girls took care of each other, reddening cheeks before selections for example. She endured a two-week death march in mid-April 1945 to Ravensbrück and Neustadt-Gleiwitz (possibly Neustadt-Glewe).

Liberated by American soldiers, she travelled to Bialystok, where she was reunited with her father who had survived five years in Siberia. Mrs. Farber was separated several years earlier from her mother, who had been transported to Treblinka. After a failed attempt to emigrate to Palestine from the Landsberg displaced persons camp, Mrs. Farber left for the United States in 1949. Sponsored by an uncle in Philadelphia, she remained there, married and had two sons.

Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

Joseph P. O'Donnell served with the 15th Airforce, 483rd Bomb Group, 15th Bomb Squadron, based near Foggia, Italy. He was a ball turret gunner on a B 17 and was shot down over Wienerneustadt, Austria on May 10, 1944, captured by Germans the next day, and taken to a Lager near Frankfurt/Main where he was processed. From there he was shipped by boxcar to Stalag Luft 4, a camp for about 10,000 air force enlisted men, mostly Americans, in Pomerania.

He describes conditions in the camp, which the American prisoners of war ran like a democracy. Medical care was provided mostly by fellow prisoners who were medical officers. The prisoners were able to get news from the British Broadcasting System. He never received any food packages. He witnessed no cruelty at this camp, but was told in great detail - by a soldier who survived - about atrocities committed against enlisted POW's at Stalag Luft 6.

In April 1944, the camp was evacuated. Other prisoners were dispersed throughout Germany, some by box cars, others including Mr. O'Donnell, on a 600 mile forced march, with a stopover at Stalag 11, near Fallingbostel, Germany. He was liberated by the British Second Army on May 10, 1944 in Gudow, Germany. He describes how the British processed the liberated prisoners of war and explains that he makes a distinction between the Nazis and the German people in general.

Interviewee: O'DONNELL, Joseph P. Date: March 20, 1989