Oral History Interview with Ari Fuhrman

Abram Shnaper was born in Vilna, Poland May 15, 1918. His detailed testimony includes pre-ghetto life under the Russians (including antisemitic attacks by Lithuanian and Polish right wing armed gangs), restrictions placed once the Germans invaded, life within the ghettoes and his deportation to several labor camps.

Mr. Shnaper had a traditional Jewish upbringing. He was educated at a Tarbut school and was a very active member of Hashomer Hatzair youth group. Mr. Shnaper and his family were moved to the Vilna Ghetto in 1941 and he describes the move, conditions and labor assignments. Mr. Shnaper’s testimony regarding life in the ghetto includes explanations of the role of Ponary Forest, a place of execution by the Germans and of underground activities by the FareyngtePartizannesOrganizatsye/United Partisans Organization (FPO). He also describes Jacob Gens, the Judenrat and Salek Desler, chief of police. Mr. Shnaper provides a firsthand account of the confrontation between Gens and Yitzhak Wittenberg and the eventual surrender and execution of Wittenberg. He also recounts episodes from his work with the resistance and Abba Kovner’s efforts to save individuals.

Mr. Shnaper eventually landed in Vaivara, a camp in Estonia and was also deported to several other camps. In April 1944, Mr. Shnaper was forced on a death march to Klooga, also in Estonia. He describes four German soldiers who helped him at various times and to whom he attributes his survival. Anticipating the end of the war, Mr. Shnaper hid and observed the German guards as they destroyed the camp, including chasing inmates into fires where they burnt to death.

Upon liberation, Mr. Shnaper returned to Vilna and reunited with Abba Kovner. Money was being sent from the American Joint Committee to bring survivors to Vilna. During this time, Mr. Shnaper worked as a bookbinder who sewed money into book bindings to be passed onto others, and organized forged passports and other papers needed to assist people in leaving Europe. Moving to Warsaw, Mr. Shnaper spent three years assisting people to emigrate to Palestine. While there he met and married his wife who was from Warsaw. He comments that in 1946, the

Polish government permitted emigration to Palestine. From 1944-48, Mr. Shnaper worked with Brihah1, an underground movement.

Mr. Shnaper and his wife Luba eventually left Poland for the American Zone in Germany and lived in the Displaced Persons camp at Bergen-Belsen. He emigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States to get assistance for his daughter at Shriner's Hospital. In Philadelphia, he began organizing survivors into the Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and assisted in the erection of the first monument in the United States to the memory of the Holocaust, the Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs sculpted by Nathan Rappaport, once a member of HaShomer Hatzair. Mr. Shnaper was also instrumental in establishing the Mordechai Anielewicz contest, open to students to express through the arts their commentary on the Holocaust.

See also his 1981 interview in Yiddish with Nora Levin and his wife, Luba Shnaper’s 1981 interview.

Lillian Taus, nee Mermelstein, was born on October 10, 19232,in Klascanovo3, Czechoslovakia. She was the eldest in a large family of 13. Her father was a butcher. She details her family’s experiences during the German occupation. She describes her father butchering meat in secret because it was forbidden and describes a time when she was jailed by the Germansfor delivering the kosher meat. She describes how the family was ordered to leave their home during theirPesahseder in 1944. All the Jews in the town were forced to a brick factory4 and then taken directly toAuschwitz a few weeks later. Lillian describes the horrible circumstances in the cattle cars, lack of food and water and no toilet facilities.

In a poignant telling of when the family arrived in Auschwitz, Lillian says that her mother went directly to the gas chamber with her youngest child in her arms because she refused to give him up. She also relates that the day they were put on the train was the day of her brother’s bar mitzvah and he put his tefillin on in the train and went to the gas chambers with it in an act of defiance. Several of Lillian’s siblings had died a year or two before during a typhoid outbreak. Of the remaining children, only Lillian and her 12 year old sister and one brother survived.5

Lillian describes the actions she had to take to keep her little sister alive. They remained at Auschwitz for about half the year during which time she would hide her sister in the bathroom during Appells and was assisted by the Stubenältester. From Auschwitz they were deported to Stuthoff, where Lillian was assigned to remove dead bodies from the barracks in the mornings and place them outside on the ground and number them. She used this terrible circumstance to save others. She would give the food-- that was rationed for the dead-- to her friend in another barracks to help others survive. She and her sisterwere then deported to Praust where they had to build an airport and she describes doing her work and her sister’s work so they wouldn’t get beaten. She details an instance when her sister was put onto a transport bound for death and she jumped into the truck and was beaten severely. They both managed to survive due to Lillian’s resourcefulnessand luck. She mentions that rape was common in the camp and relates an instance when she was almost raped.

Lillian describes their evacuation to Lübeck by boat6, via Danzig when inmates were left on a boat-- which the Germans had rigged to explode-- for nine days with no food or water.7 After liberation, Lillian stayed in Schleswig Holstein for about six months and she and her sister got medical care. She met her husband and married July 4, 1945.8

Lillian had recently done an interview with the Spielberg Project and explains that she wanted to do another interview for the Holocaust Oral History Archive to preserve her family’s experiences for the future. See also interviews with her siblings Louie Mermelstein and Shirley Don.

Mrs. Taus seemed to have some memory lapses during this interview as noted by the interviewer on her personal history form. We are therefore using her birthdate (Oct. 10 1923) as given in her first 1981 testimony, even though in this testimony she states that she was born on October 3, 1922.

Possibly the town Kliachanovo, also called Chervenovo, part of the Subcarpathian region. Alternate spellings Klyachanovo [Ukr], Kličanovo [Slov] and Klacsonó [Hung].

It is possible that this brick factory was in the Munkacs Ghetto. She stated her family was taken there in her 1981 interview.

She doesn’t mention her brother surviving in this interview. Please see her earlier 1981 interview. From this earlier interview we know that she and her sister were re-united with their one surviving brother, who went to the United States with their cousin, an American soldier.

From her earlier interview we know that this took place in March 1945 and that she was liberated by British soldiers May 5, 1945.

See her earlier interview for a more detailed and chronological account of this story.

From her earlier interview we know that Lillian came to Philadelphia February 19, 1949 with her husband, her sister and her two-year old daughter.

This is the second interview Mrs. Lillian Taus gave to the Holocaust Oral History Archive. Please also see her first interview given on November 23, 1981, #GC00523a.

Rachel Hochhauser, née Swerdlin, was born July 2, 1928 in Krzywice, Poland. She was the only child of a religious family. Her grandfather was Rabbi and Shochet of the shtetl. Her grandmother and parents operated a general store. She describes religious education and a comfortable life, pre WWII, and friendly relations with Polish and Russian neighbors until September 3, 1939. She details restrictive occupations under Russians and subsequent persecution by Germans and local collaborators in summer of 1941. When her father was killed she went into hiding with her mother and other relatives after warnings from non-Jews, including the police Kommandant for whom she worked.

The family hid on several farms from April, 1942 until 1944. They were protected for 20 months by a Catholic farmer’s wife, Anna Kobinska, with whom Rachel continued to correspond after the war. When forced to move for the final time, they went into a partisan-occupied area. She describes the privations of living in a swamp during the winter of 1943-44. A log bunker built for them in the woods in exchange for 20 rubles of gold sheltered ten people until spring, 1944. The Russian Blitzkrieg and deserting Germans drove the group to return to their homes in Krzywice, where her family was welcomed home by neighbors. They adopted an orphan girl found in their house and moved westward to the DP camp at Foehrenwald. Rachel describes her education there in an ORT school. She immigrated to the United States in April, 1951.

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

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

Rebecca continues to encourage her sister-in-law Maria to visit Philadelphia, updates her on the social scene in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and informs her of the death of Ellen Etting Hays' premature baby. She also discusses the political upheaval in South Carolina.

Mina Lustiger, nee Bochner, was born July 30, 1929 in Bielitz, Poland. Her father was in the scrap metal business. She shares childhood memories including frightening antisemitic attacks. She describes the commotion and uncertainty after the German invasion, first sent with her siblings to her grandfather in Kęty, to avoid the Germans but then having to return home. After finally reunited with her parents in Bielsko she witnessed Jews being harassed and her family experienced the plunder of their silver by Germans. The whole family then fled toKęty because it was a smaller citywhere they hoped to avoid harassment. When her mother was jailed in Kęty for trying to send a package of food and her father was sent to a labor camp, the four girls were left alone. Mina describes the Kęty Ghetto and her subsequent deportation to the Neudorf Ghetto in 1941.They were warned1 not to be in the area during a selection and fled, posing as Aryans, to their uncle in Chrzanów. She describes the harrowing journey, travelling alone as a 12 year old, and then being joined by her sisters. Subsequently, they found out that some of the family had survived the selection and were then in Wadowice and the sisters again made a dangerous journey to join family. Mina describes the gated Wadowice Ghetto and how they had to sneak in with a labor brigade. Soon after, she and her sisters were deported to Sucha labor camp where they did hard labor regulating water near railways. She describes being sent to a distribution center at Sosnowiec and again being deported with her sisters to forced labor, this time in a spinning factory in Freiberg, Germany in 1943. She speaks about slightly better treatment there, but still long working hours and the scarcity of food. They were deported to Röhrsdorflabor camp and describes harsh working conditions, with little food and much suffering from disease. She mentions fasting on Yom Kippur.

In 1945, as Russian forces approached, they were sent on a death march to the Sudeten in Czechoslovakia, walking for several days, without food and sleeping in the snow. At Kratzau concentration camp, they joined inmates from many other countries. They finally were incarcerated at Gross Rosen, where she experienced the most brutal conditions. She describes beatings, many deaths from typhus and exhausting work in freezing weather.

On May 8, 1945, she was liberated by the Russian Army and then re-united with her family in Bielitz. In 1946, she went to England with a group of 100 other children and attended an ORT school. In 1951, she married Samuel Lustiger and they emigrated to the United States in 1952. They have a family of three children.

Mina does not indicate whether these were Jews or Gentiles who warned them.