Oral History Interview with Caroline Gutman

Jack Arnel (previously YashaAronovitz) was born on May 23, 1929 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilna, Lithuania) to a well-to-do Jewish family. His father owned a furrier factory and his mother was a custom tailor. He shares his childhood memories of his war-time experiences. He describes their pre-war life, having a maid, and a governess and spending summers in the country. Jack was a member of Betar. Jack briefly describes how their lives changed under the Soviet Occupation in 1939.

Jack describes that in 1941, when the Germans occupied the area,his family was moved into the Vilna Ghetto and from there to a sub-camp for furriers (who were privileged prisoners called Keilis). There they made fur vests for German soldiers. Jack describes the family’s deportation in 1944 and the fear that they were being sent to their death since they were headed toward Ponary2, but eventually passed it. The women were forced off the trains in Stutthof and the men were sent to LagerKreisLandsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau. Jack was forced to work building underground facilities to manufacture weaponry for the German armies and describes Dachau in detail: beatings, starvation, killings and brutal labor. Later he and his father fled from a transport during an American air-raid and found an advancing American Army unit. They were cared for at St. Ottilien Hospital, an American camp set up in a church in Germany. His mother and sister, Sonia, survived as well and were liberated by the Russians. Jack describes how they were all reunited in Munich. They remained in a Displaced Persons Camp for four years and arrived in the United States in July 1949.

Hertha Beese, nee Scholz, was born in Berlin, Germany September 10, 1902 into a non-Jewish German family. Her parents were active in the Social Democratic party (SPD) and trade unions. Hertha attended schools in Berlin, pre World War I with Jews and Catholics. She was forced to participate in Protestant religious instruction of the Landeskirchebecause she was not baptized.

In 1933, she and other SPD members lost their jobs. She describes Nazi persecution of Socialists and Communists as well as Jews. Her resistance group, one of more than 20 in Berlin, hid people until they could cross the mountains into Switzerland. She details sheltering Jews and non-Jews in her home.

She testifies to the beating of her brother by SA storm troopers, prior to 1933, and the terrorization of non-Jewish Berliners. In Berchtesgaden, she observed resentment of local residents toward the SS and the exploitation of German laborers. She describes her refusal to fly the Nazi flag, her children’s refusal to join the Hitler Youth, and the devious means she used to avoid serving in the Luftschutz.

She had to work in the Arbeitsdienstfrom 1943 to 1945 as a teacher in the Spreewald area. She also worked illegally as a bookkeeper for Jewish cattle dealers who were SPD members who joined the Nazi party to avoid deportation. A local farmer hid several Jewish Berliners she brought to him.

She became vice-chair of the Brandenburg SPD in 1945, chaired an anti-fascist commission in Potsdam, and was deputy mayor of Reinickendorf, 1948-1965. She was honored with the Golden Rose of Paris for aid to French Prisoners of War and was declared an “Elder Statesman” of Berlin.

Raoul Harmelin, the only son of a doctor, born September 11, 1924 in Boryslaw, Poland, received both a secular and a Jewish education. He talks about pre-war life in Boryslaw-- whose main industry was oil refineries-- and life under German and Russian occupations. Raoul describes life under the Germans after June, 1941, including pogroms, anti-Jewish measures, attitude of the local population, and formation of forced labor battallions organized by the Judenrat. He describes a series of Aktions (roundups and mass murders of Jews) from November 1941 to 1943, and the murder of 600 Jews in Doly in great detail. Some were conducted by a German VernichtungKommando under General Katzman. Polish and Ukrainian locals, Austrians in the Schutz Polizei and Reiterzugpolizei, the Polish Kriminalpolizei , and Jews in the Ordnungsdienst all helped to round up Jews. Jews were sent to a camp at Ulica Janowska in Lwow or to forced labor in local industry, most were transported to and murdered in Belzec. Raoul escaped from a roundup where he witnessed the murder of an infant and a young girl.

His father continued to work because Jewish doctors were needed to treat the citizens of Boryslaw. One of his patients hid Raoul and his mother. A ghetto was established but was liquidated after a forced labor camp for Jews was opened in 1943. Jews who could not hide were eliminated or worked as slave laborers in the Zwangsarbeitslager in Boryslaw. Raoul and other Jews who worked in connection with the war effort had some degree of protection. He got news from London via radio and from an underground paper published by ArmiaKrajowa (Home Army). A Ukrainian acquaintance hid 13 Jews, including Raoul and his parents from March 13, 1944 to August 8, 1944, when the Russians came back.

He describes postwar life under Russian occupation, including two arrests and escape to Breslaw. He and his parents decided to leave Poland after a pogrom in Kielce. After a stay in Paris, aided by HIAS, they arrived in Sidney, Australia in November 1947. He was able to bring his new wife and her parents to Australia later. He talks about his life in and adjustment to Australia after a very difficult beginning. He closes by naming relatives on both sides of his family who were killed or survived, and reflects on the actions of non-Jews during the Holocaust. See also 2 interviews with his wife, Rita Harmelin.

Note: Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library are photocopies of these German documents:

Certificate for Raoul

Harmelin

that he can walk in the street unaccompanied by an Aryan.

The same document for his father, Dr. Elkan

Harmelin

.

Work I.D. Card for Raoul

Harmelin

.

I.D. Card for Regina

Harmelin

, his mother.

Tags with letter "R" which indicated that Raoul

Harmelin

and his parents were assigned to a work detail.

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.

Alexandra Gorko, nee Paley, was born in Kiev, Russia in 1916. In this follow-up interview she briefly describes conditions in Bergen-Belsen: clothing, food, and her work in an ammunition factory. She reflects on the issue of resistance and her decision to disobey Mengele’s order to inject pregnant women with a gasoline-type substance. She also acknowledges that she refused to cooperate in the act of throwing babies from the windows of the Lodz Ghetto hospital where she was a supervisor and nurse. She refers to her brother’s involvement with a group of 12 men who built a secret radio and dissem‌in‌ated BBC news March 1940 until January 1942 when they were exposed and sent to Chelmno for gassing. In referring to her knowledge of what was transpiring under the Nazis, she discusses the de‌cep‌tion perpetrated by the Nazis as well as the inability of people to believe the reports that circulated even when clothes resembling those of friends and relatives were delivered to the ghetto.

For additional information on Mrs. Gorko's experiences, see the original interview by Eileen Steinberg on August 19, 1985. See also the interview with her husband Anatole Gorko.

Frieda Appel, née Gottesman or Feldstein, was born into an Orthodox family August 18, 1929 in Kliachanovo, Czechoslovakia, near Munkács. Her father was a cattle dealer. Although, Frieda and her brother were offered shelter by the sheriff, a close friend of her father’s, her father decided to keep the family together. They were sent to the Munkács Ghetto for four weeks until transported to Auschwitz in May 1944. She refers to several interactions with Mengele, upon entering the camp and at a selection at the showers. After six weeks, she was sent to Gelsenkirchen and Essen labor camps. She was transported to Bergen-Belsen and describes the conditions there. She refers to several kindnesses shown to her by camp personnel in the different camps. She was liberated in Bergen-Belsen April 15, 1945. The Red Cross took her and her sister to Prague through Pilsen, and then to Munkács. In May 1946, she went to a DP camp in Germany where she married at age 16. They emigrated to the United States September 27, 1949, where Jewish Family Service helped them.

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