Oral History Interview with Anna Czerwinski

Bernard S. Mednicki was born in 1910 in Brussels, Belgium, the youngest of four children in an orthodox Russian Jewish family from Kishinev. His father served in the Russian army until the 1903 pogrom, when he deserted and moved his family to the West. Bernard attended a cheder and public school in Brussels, where he experienced some antisemitism. He was apprenticed to an orthopedic technician, became a Belgian citizen in 1928 and was married in 1931. In 1933, he became active in the anti-fascist Socialist Party and anti-fascist resistance. He describes the German invasion on May 12, 1940.

Assuming Christian identities, his wife and children fled to Paris and he travelled through southern France until they were reunited in Riom. He details extensively the travails of fellow refugees, his work with the French resistance during 1941-1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, and sabotage activity with the Maquis in the mountains near Volvic. He relates smuggling goods and other survival techniques to obtain food for resistance families. He travelled with his wife and children to Paris, aided by American soldiers, remaining until 1946, when he returned to Brussels. He found his sister’s three children, who were hidden during the war in a convent and a monastery. He arrived in the United States with his wife and children in 1947. His Memoirs: Never be afraid: A Jew in the Maquis, were published posthumously in 1997.

See also interviews with his son, Armand Mednick and with his nephew Charles L. Rojer.

Interviewee: MEDNICKI, Bernard S. Dates: April 27 & 30, 1982

Elsa Turteltaub, nee Waldner, was born October 24, 1916 in Teschen (Cieszyn), Poland. She and her brother and sister attended private Catholic schools, although her parents kept a kosher home and attended a conservative synagogue on holidays. Elsa completed a commercial high school course and was active in HanoarHatzioni. After the German invasion in September 1939, her parents lost their restaurant and Elsa and her sister were forced to clean German army barracks. In December 1939, she escaped to Slovakia, where she joined a hakhshara in Zilina. She was sent to Auschwitz in March, 1942 in one of the first Slovakian transports and was forced into hard labor in the sand pits, despite being ill with typhus. When transferred to the registry office, she issued death certificates requested by relatives of Auschwitz inmates, both Jewish and Gentile. By 1943, only Gentiles’ requests were answered as Jews were no longer registered. The causes of death given were fiction, created by the office staff. If ashes of the deceased were requested, staff filled sacks with any ashes found in the crematorium. Living conditions for those girls, living in a building with SS women, were much better than elsewhere.

In January, 1942, Elsa was evacuated to Ravensbrück, then to Malchow, and finally to Trewitz in East Germany. She was liberated by Russians on May 3, 1945, was married in 1946, and gave birth to a son in 1948 in Katowitz, Poland. She and her family lived in Israel from 1950 to 1955 and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Her story is included in Secretaries of Death, ed. and translated by Lore Shelley, New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1986.

Interviewee: TURTELTAUB, Elsa Waldner Date: July 14, 1987

Philip G. Solomon served in the United States Army, in the 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized, which liberated the Landsberg concentration camp on April 28, 1945. He describes his unit’s arrival in Germany in February/March 1945, emphasizing their military mission and their lack of knowledge of concentration camps or the scale of mass murder. His first indication of Nazi horrors occurred after crossing the Rhine, heading east, when his unit captured small towns, liberating displaced persons from forced labor camps (mostly Eastern Europeans). His second indication came when liberating several prisoner of war camps. He details the ominous experience of finding sealed railroad cars on a siding filled with dead concentration camp victims. On April 28, 1945, his unit stopped near the city Landsberg, waiting for a bridge to be repaired and unaware of the camp 1000 yards away. A shift in the wind eventually alerted them to the smell, and sight of smoke from the camp where retreating S.S. had just massacred the inmates. The unit found about 20 starving and ill survivors. He details the conditions of the camp and his feelings upon seeing the massive piles of bodies, hangings and other atrocities. The unit had no food or medical supplies and could only radio for help. They were commanded to leave Landsberg after 20 minutes in order to seize and hold a causeway near Munich.

He describes in detail the reactions of prisoners to liberation, the response of the young soldiers to the dual experience of witnessing the atrocities in the midst of war, and his own complex and gradually evolving psychological reaction to this experience. He stresses his concern about ongoing genocides since World War II. And he affirms his faith and pride in his Jewish heritage.

Roger Bryan, formerly Rudolf Britzmann, was born in Germany, June 14, 1921. His father, a physician and a decorated German army veteran, was arrested on trumped up charges in the mid 1930s. He died in Moabit prison under suspicious circumstances. Roger briefly mentions his school years, a few antisemitic experiences, and how his family coped after his father’s death. He discusses his struggle to get out of Germany, and how he managed to emigrate to London, England with help from both Jews and non-Jews in 1939 just before World War II started.

He worked in London until he was classified as an enemy alien, incarcerated, and deported to Adelaide, Australia on the HMT Dunera. He describes terrible conditions on board, mistreatment by British during the trip, the journey to a detention camp in Hay, New South Wales, and how Australians treated the detainees. He talks about his jobs in the camp, and the many activities and programs started by the prisoners.

He joined and served in the Pioneer Corps (a non-combatant unit of the British army) to get out of the internment camp. He later served in the GHQ Second Echelon Prisoner of war section of the British army in London and in camps for German prisoners of war in Louvain, Belgium, and the former Neuengamme concentration camp. He was transferred to Nuremberg to work as an interpreter/translator during the War crime trials.

After he left the service, he lived in Glasgow, Scotland with his wife, whom he married in 1943. He started a family and a photography business. He came to the United States in 1953.

Yehuda Mandel was born in Csepe, Hungary, March 3, 1904, into an orthodox family, describes Jewish life in Csepe, before and after World War I, relations with non-Jews, his education, and occupation by various countries, until Csepe became part of Czechoslovakia.

He served in the Czech army from 1924 to 1926. He was a cantor in Vienna, Austria in 1928; Novisad, Yugoslavia, 1928-1934; in Riga 1934-1936, and in Budapest in 1935 at the Rombach Temple while also serving as a chaplain in the Hungarian army. He was offered a position in London but chose to remain in Hungary. He describes Jewish and congregational life in each location. He cites anti-Jewish feelings in Austria and talks about the implementation of anti-Jewish laws in 1939, and mentions a mass grave where Jews were killed and buried in Kamenetz-Podolsk.

Cantor Mandel was in various labor battalions, escaped, and returned to Budapest in November 1944. He stayed in a house protected by the Swiss consulate, served as a messenger “Eilbotenausweis”, participated in rescuing 300 Jews from a prison; and made illegal trips to Czechoslovakia. He describes his experiences with Russian occupiers, and the desecration and reconsecration of Rombach Temple. His wife and children, who were in Bergen Belsen as part of a Sondergruppe organized by Dr. Kasztner, went to Palestine after the war. He gives a very detailed account of his illegal passage to Palestine in May 1946, aided by the Haganah. He was reunited with his family in Kibbutz Shar Hamakkim, served as a cantor in Haifa until he moved to the United States in 1948 and became a cantor at Beth Judah in Philadelphia in 1950.

Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library:

Original typed testimony from Emanuel Mandel, son of Cantor Mandel, obtained on June 6, 1980, describes the 1944 transfer of the Jews from Hungary.1

Photocopies of documents:

Travel documents from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, 1945

Czech Passports

German Certification Employment

Document from the Central Council of Hungarian Jews “ Spezia"

Copy of Original Music about the town of Spezia, Italy from which

he made Aliya,1946

Work Papers From Israel, 1946

Leo Awin was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1919 into a traditional Jewish home. His parents were born in parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that later became Romania and Poland. He grew up in the jewelry trade. After Kristallnacht, he helped at the Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, processing emigration papers for Jews. The family emigrated to Shanghai, going to Genoa, Italy by train then to Shanghai via the Suez Canal on the SS Victoria in May 1939.

The American Joint Distribution Com‌mittee helped the Awins and other Jewish refugees to settle in the Hongkew District of Shanghai. He describes Shanghai under Japanese occupation, including cultural life and relations among Jewish refugees of different nationalities in the International Settlement. He found work as a jeweler, first with Jewish immigrants and later worked clandestinely for a German jeweler. Polish refugees arrived by Trans-Siberian Railroad via Japan in 1942 or 1943. He married in 1947. At the end of the war Canada passed a special bill to admit Jewish refugees with Austrian passports as craftsmen. The Awins left Shanghai when 400 families, about 600-700 people, left in 1949 in four transport planes sent especially for them from Tokyo by the U.S. Air Force due to a special request by the Joint Distribution Committee. They left on short notice as the Communist forces closed in on the Shanghai airport. The remaining refugees left Shanghai during the next six months. He describes the cruelty of the Japanese towards the Chinese population and the comparatively easy treatment of Westerners by their soldiers. His transport arrived in Canada via Tokyo, and the Awin family settled permanently in Canada.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1991 at the Hilton Hotel in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.