Oral History Interview with Anna Sultanik

Herbert Broh was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930. He shares his childhood memories of his life in Germany and his family’s journey to Shanghai. Herbert relates several experiences of abusive antisemitism by his friends and his teacher, as well as his impressions of Kristallnacht.

His family left Germany for Shanghai in April of 1939 to join family members already living on Seward Road in the Hongkew section of Shanghai, under Japanese occupation. Herbert was enrolled in the Kadoorie School and later a cheder. He talks about his Jewish education at the cheder and the Yeshiva Katana in great detail, as well as the effect of his growing orthodoxy on his life and his family. He describes his family’s living conditions and life in Shanghai and states he was very happy there. He was only dimly aware that other refugees had a more difficult existence. His father worked for a Chinese factory managed by Japanese; his mother worked as a cook at the Komor Kindergarten.

After Pearl Harbor, his family was evacuated to the Kadoorie School. He mentions interaction between Japanese and refugees. He vividly describes the events during and after the Japanese capitulation and the arrival of Chinese Nationalist and later American troops. He witnessed the departure of the entire Mirrer Yeshiva to Canada in 1946. Herbert and his family went to the United States in 1947. He describes his life in the United States and his feelings about his years in Shanghai. He is now a Cantor in Sun City, California.

Interviewee: BROH, Herbert Date: October 15, 1999

Lisa Tyre was born February 1, 1929 in Vienna, Austria into an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, an attorney, served in the Austrian army in World War I. The family experienced no antisemitism until March 1938. Lisa describes the escalating effects of anti-Jewish measures and activities on her parents and herself and witnessed two instances of brutality against Jews. In the summer of 1938 her father was interrogated and beaten by the GESTAPO. A client, who was a Nazi officer, arranged for his safe return and also helped the family to obtain exit visas. The family left for England in September 1938 – helped by the Sassoon family – and moved to Christ Church, New Zealand six months later. The family went to the United States in November 1946, under the Czech quota and stayed for two weeks in the Congress House a shelter for refugees run by the American Jewish Congress. Lisa describes the difficult emigration process, and her family’s life and adjustment problems in England, New Zealand and the United States. Lisa attributes her rejection of Judaism and her distrust of organized religion to some of her experiences in New Zealand and the Congress House, and her bitterness to the loss of over 50 relatives during the Holocaust.

Interviewee: Tyre, Lisa Glaser Date: February 24, 1981

Lillian Steinig, née Edelstein, was born January 23, 1923 in Stryj, Poland. Her father was a merchant and farmer until the Russian occupation in 1939. Forced to give up his large farm to the Soviet authority, he moved his family to the city and worked in a lumber yard. Lillian and her younger brother had to attend a strict Russian school until 1941, when the Germans occupied Stryj and relocated Jews. She describes Jewish attempts to hide and the 1942 round-up of Jews, including her father and brother, who jumped from a moving cattle car and returned home. She relates in detail aid by non-Jewish Poles who gave her false identification papers and hid her brother and parents. Another Polish family in Przedborz, near Kielce, sheltered her until 1945. She describes her trip through the Russian zone at the war’s end for a reunion with her family, who moved briefly to Krakow. Antisemitic outbreaks in Krakow forced them to flee to a Displaced Persons camp in Austria in 1946. Later, in Linz, Lillian and her brother worked in Simon Wiesenthal’s Jewish Identification Center. The family emigrated to the United States in January, 1949, aboard the SS Marina, joining relatives in Philadelphia.

Anna Berenholz, nee Bohorochaner, one of six children was born on June 28, 1924 in Yasin(a), Czechoslovakia into a very observant Orthodox family. They were farmers. Anna describes pre-war Yasin, a small town of 15,000 of whom about 900 were Jews. Two of Anna’s brothers were in the Czech army but they crossed the border (1938) and joined the Russian army and survived. At 16, Anna was sent to a Hungarian military prison in Uzhgorod. After she was freed her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary to work as a maid for a Jewish doctor, Dr. Rosenau.

In 1944 when Adolf Eichman came to Budapest conditions for Jews worsened. In April 1944 Anna’s parents were taken to a ghetto. Later, they along with her two other brothers died in Auschwitz, and her sister was shot in a protest in Bergen-Belsen. In the summer of 1944, Dr. Rosenau got her a passport to a Swedish house run by Raoul Wallenberg. But in December (1944) she was caught by the Germans and put on a death march. She was pulled out of the march along with other young Jews by orders of Raoul Wallenberg. She never met him but owes him her life. The Soviets freed Budapest on January 20, 1945 and since Anna spoke Russian, German, Czech, Hungarian and Yiddish, she worked for the Russian commandant as translator.

After the war she went back to Brno in Czechoslovakia to finish high school and study nursing. She volunteered for the Haganah (Zionist underground group), working to rescue Jewish orphans who had been hidden with Christian families. The Jewish Agency was offering $1,000 for each child and Anna was able to rescue 18. In May 1949, she took the orphans to Prague, then to Austria and Italy and then onto a freighter ship to Haifa. She stayed in Israel, marrying the boats’ engineer and several years later moved to the United States. Anna tried to contact Raoul Wallenberg to thank him but was unable to do so.

Anne Dore Russell, née Weidemann, a non-Jew, was born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926. She went to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg. Her father told her about experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler. She knew that her uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen and heard about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs. A neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer, had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front.

She speaks briefly about Kristallnacht and life in Branderburg under the Nazis. Her father, a civil servant, lost his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD). He told Anne Dore why he opposed the Nazi regime. He avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company). She learned to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs. The local police took her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

She mentions the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war, after which she went to Humbold University in East Berlin and then the Free University in West Berlin.