Oral History Interview with Arthur Goldstein

Rosa Zygmund Burk,nee Tennenbaum was born on April 20, 1927 in Szydlowiec, Poland, a town of about (90%) 7,200 Jews. She was the daughter of David and Ethel Tennenbaum. Her father was a shoe factory worker and a member of the Bund. Rosa describes their life before the German invasion, her schooling and the Jewish community life. At school they spoke Polish, studied Jewish subjects separately, and at home they spoke Yiddish. She had a large extended family of which only she and two cousins survived.

Rosa describes the Germaninvasion in September1939: raiding Jewish homes, cutting offmen’s beards, the beatings and murders. She explains that the Germans and the Polish police completely burned down the towns’ synagogues. She discusses theJudenratand how they supplied money and riches to the Germans in hopes of saving the people. She details the creation of the Slovia Ghetto and explains how Jews from Krakow and Warsaw flocked to this ghetto because it was an open ghetto and how the crowded conditions created disease.

Rosa was deported on foot at the end of 1942 to the labor camp, Skarzyskoand worked in the HASAGammunition plant. She goes into great detail about the cruelty of the Germans and the work and living conditions. She also mentions some kindnesses from a Jewish Kapo. In 1944, Rosa was transferred by truck to another ammunition work camp, Czestochowa, where there were constant “selections.” Rosa describes in detail the hardships of working in these factories and how she escaped the death march to Buchenwald by hiding in a latrine. On January 16, 1945 she and five other girls walked out of camp and into the town of Czestochowaand were liberated by the Soviets a few days later when they converted the house they were living in to a hospital. They worked as nurses for the Russian wounded.

Rosa did not return to her home town because of antisemitism. She fled to the American zone in Erfurt, Germany and then to Frankfurt am Main. She was in the ZeilsheimDisplaced Persons camp run by the Joint Distribution Committee, and there she met her husband (who had been liberated from Buchenwald). After the war they moved to Frankfurt and then to the U. S. on February 2, 1950 with the support of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Gertrude Jacobs, nee Bergman, was born into an observant Jewish family in Voelkersler, Southern Bavaria, Germany in January 1924. Her father and grandfather were decorated war veterans. There were 12 Jewish families living in her village and Gertrude describes this area of Germany as particularly antisemitic both before and after 1933, when Hitler came to power. She describes how Jewish life in general and her family’s life were affected by anti-Jewish decrees, and relates two attacks on her while in school. Most of the village people shunned them, a few helped them secretly.

Gertrude gives second hand accounts of Kristallnacht, of her grandmother’s liberation from Theresienstadt concentration camp, and her grandmother’s return to and post-war life in Germany. Gertrude came to the United States in 1938, where she also experienced antisemitism.

Gertrude expresses her feelings about Germans, restitution, German Jews, and how growing up in Nazi Germany affects her to this day. She explains her philosophy of living as a Jew and a survivor and the special obligations this entails.