Oral History Interview with Anna Berenholz

Piera Solender, née DelloStrologo, was born in Livorno, Italy, a town with a large Jewish population. As a child she experienced little if any antisemitism. During the war, she relocated to Milan, where with the help of a Mother Superior from Livorno, she worked as a tutor to a gentile family. In 1942, along with her mother and sister, she moved to Rimini and then Senigallia, where she spent over a year in hiding. Her father and other siblings fled to Switzerland.

By 1943, the German army were throughout Italy. In Senigallia, the women were befriended by Luigi Corleoni. They attempted to pass as Christians, only to later learn the townspeople knew the truth. Piera and her sister ran a local school. In October or November 1943, along with approximately 200 others, Christians and Jews, Piera hid in a tunnel for a month, hiding from Polish troops. Villagers brought water to those in hiding.

After the war, she returned to Milan where she learned her family members who had fled to Switzerland survived. She met her husband, a Polish Jew who survived five different concentration camps. They emigrated to the United States (year unknown).

Jack Weiss was born September 10, 1915 in a small town near Ungvár (Uzhgorod), Czechoslovakia. His parents had a grocery store. Jack gives a description of pre-war Czechoslovakia and discusses serving in the Czech army prior to 1939. He never experienced antisemitism until his village was occupied by the Hungarians who collaborated with the Germans. He mentions some kindnesses of certain Hungarian police and army, including giving tips about hiding his sister whom he rescued from Slovakia when her husband was taken away. He recalls the later deportation of his parents, sister and her children and his forced labor building streets in work camps in Czechoslovakia and in Lemberg, Poland in 1940/1941. In 1942, a Hungarian officer befriended him and 24 other Jewish boys, helping them escape to join Russian partisans where he survived for 18 months. He describes in detail their fighting in the area near Pinsk. Jack witnessed the slaughter of 200 Jews shot by Ukrainians. Jack recounts that the area where they were fighting was liberated by the Soviets in 1945 and that he and five other young, Jewish men were sent to Moscow to become factory managers. He discusses the poor treatment they received there, housed with Soviet army deserters and repeated interrogations by Soviets about their families and whether they were anti-Communist or Communists. Jack justwanted to go back to his hometown to see if anyone had survived. He worked for months in freezing temperatures on rail lines, until the end of 1945, when he was told he could go home.

Jack discusses his difficult journey home to Czechoslovakia weighing 90 pounds, due to dysentery and starvation and barely able to walk. He states that none of the 150 Jewish families remained from his home town. He was eventually reunited with some family members who survived, and he and his sister helped other young Jewish girls returning back to the area with food and housing until they found family members. He describes that about 20 Jewish young men survived of the nearly 20,000 that lived in the area of Uzhgorod having hidden in the area (he was distinguishing these numbers from survivors from the camps). He and his sisters fled to Karlsbad and eventually Prague because Jack didn’t want to live under the Soviets. In 1958, he was married in Israel and then subsequently emigrated to the United States. He shares that he never lost faith in God and instilled the belief and practice of Judaism in his two children.

Holocaust Jewish (1933-45) Personal narratives, Jewish, Male

World War (1939-1945) Personal Narratives, Jewish, Male

Aid from Hungarian soldier

Emigration to Israel

Emigration to United States

Escape from slave labor with aid from Hungarian soldier

Resistance Groups – Partisans – Russian

Partisans

Slave labor – Czechoslovakia

Slave labor – Poland, Lemberg (Lvov)

Witness to atrocities by Ukrainian soldiers

Morris Steiman was born August 5, 1918 in Bodzanow, a small town near Warsaw. Morris attended cheder and yeshiva and was a member ofAgudah, a religious Zionist youth group. He experienced pre-war antisemitism because of his appearance as a religious Jewish boy, in his hometown and in Warsaw, where he worked as a tailor’s apprentice.

In November, 1939, he fled the German occupation and went east to the Russian-occupied area of Poland. In March 1940, homesick and concerned about his parents, he returned to Poland—first Warsaw and then made his way back to his hometown— where he worked as a tailor for the Germans until March 1941. He discusses being very aware as an older teenager about what exactly was going on and actively looking for ways to escape and emigrate. He gives a detailed description of the evacuation of Jews from Bodzanow, during which he and his father was severely beaten on the head. He describes the Germans indiscriminately beating everyone they could as they chased them into the trucks. They were taken to a camp in Dzialdowo for a few days, near the German border, with little food and no toilets or water. They were thendeported to the Czestochowa Ghetto, where he was cared for by Rose Tannenbaum. Morris’ parents fled to Warsaw to be with his sister and died of natural causes soon after.

Morris and Rose married and survived the war years together, doing forced labor at HasagPelzery, in metal and ammunition factories in nearby Rakow. Morris describes one Wehrmacht commander who treated them humanely and also assisted several Jews in escaping the ghetto and retrieving money left behind in the ghetto. They were liberated by the Russians in January 1945 and stayed in Czestochowa for almost a year. He secured work as a tailor. He describes returning to his hometown after the war and digging up a kiddish cup and candlesticks that his brother had buried. He and his wife moved to Lampertheim, a displaced persons camp in the American zone of Germany, until emigrating to the United States in March 1947 where he had a sister.

Eva Bentley, nee Wahrmann, was born in Budapest to a Jewish family with a 500-year history in Hungary. She mentions some of their significant contributions to religious and political life. Details of antisemitic incidents with a teacher and her fellow students at public school are given, as well as a description of the stressful experience of attending an elite, experimental Jewish Gymnasium. She describes the hardships of living under the Horthy regime, the Szalasi and Arrow Cross persecutions and the abuses of the Russian occupation.

After the German occupation in 1944, Eva and her family had to move into a “yellow star” house; her stepfather was deported to a labor camp. She gives a graphic account of an SS massacre, when she was shot and her mother bayoneted. They survived in a primitive Jewish hospital facility. She describes a number of instances of aid by non-Jews, including clergy and Hungarian police, who saved her and her family. A Christian uncle saved her aunt and 29 other Jews in hiding. After liberation by the Russians, Eva was married and she immigrated with her husband to the U.S. in 1956.

Maurice J. Wasser served as a 2nd Lieutenant, U.S. Air Force 325th fighter group, 317th fighter squadron, from 1942 to 1945. While stationed in Italy, he flew a P-51 Mustang, protecting B-17s bombing Germany. He was shot down in February 1945 near Munich, sent to a camp in Frankfurt am Main for interrogation, then to a Prisoner of War camp near Nuremberg. The prisoners later were moved to a prison in Moosburg on a 60-mile forced march. Mr. Wasser describes conditions, and mistreatment by S.S. guards who shot men who dropped out. However, some of the older German guards helped the POW’s because they knew the war was almost over. In both camps, no Red Cross packages were received and food deprivation caused weight loss. No mail was received, no letters permitted to be sent.

In mid-May, 1945, Mooseburg was liberated by General George Patton and the American 3rd Army. Mr. Wasser mentions briefly that he and other prisoners of war were invited to stay in German homes because the Germans were afraid of the approaching Russian soldiers.

He was shipped to a repatriation camp in Reims, France, then to Newport News, Virginia in June 1945.

Elizabeth Geggel1, nee Gutmann, was born on August 2, 1921 in Nuremberg, Germany. She was the older of two daughters born to Heinrich and Marie Guttman. She recalls a happy childhood. Thefamily belonged to a liberal synagogue and observed Jewish holidays. Elizabeth’s father a successful merchant, uneasy about the rise of antisemitism expanded the Swiss branch of his business. In 1931 the family left Germany and moved to St. Gallen, Switzerland. Elizabeth details her extended families’ experiences when Hitler came to power in 1933 (some of her uncles and their families moved to Italy and another unclewas sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht,but her father was able to secure his release.)

Elizabeth’s family became Swiss citizens. She relates that there were few Jews in St. Gallen,but she was active in Swiss and Jewish youth groups: scouts and Habonim. In 1939, when her parents decided to immigrate to the United States, they sent her to Englandto learn English and nursing. Her father took ill and she returned to Switzerland where she worked in a Jewish children’s home. He died in December 1939 but she, her mother and sister did come to the United States.

Mrs. Geggel discusses Mr. Sally Mayer, a Swiss businessman who lived in St. Gallen. Somewhat controversial, he was the head of the Jewish community in Switzerland and represented the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee from 1940 to 1945. Mayer was involved in a number of schemes to free Jews from concentration camps. Elizabeth looked on him very favorably and thought him very brave to negotiate face to face with Nazis as he did. She relates her mother’s request to Mayer to get an aunt out of Germany (which was successful) and reads a letter from her father-in-law, David Geggel, sent to the Swiss government thanking them for the hospitality extended to him in 1938 when he stayed in Switzerland for a short time until he could go to the United States. Shedescribes the Swiss refugee campswhich housed Austrian refugees until they could get visas to go elsewhere. Elizabeth remembers that the Swiss Jewish community, herself included, helped them with meals and other services. She believes that the Swiss government was also involved in the effort.

Even though they were in Switzerland, Mrs. Geggel recalls that they still felt at risk, especially with the early successes Germany achieved at the start of the war. Her family left Switzerland in 1941, went to Cuba for a short time and finally emigrated to the United States in January 1942.

Nickname: Lisa.