Oral History Interview with Charlotte Sonnenberg

Hanna Marx,née Simons, was born September 19, 1928 in Hamm, Germany. Hanna shared her childhood memories of life under Nazi rule. Her father owned a department store and the family lived comfortably until 1937. Hanna attended Hebrew school at the synagogue where her parents were members. Hannah relates that on November 9, 1938 a German policeman advised her father to go into hiding. A few days later her father was found and sent to Buchenwald. When released, he moved his family to Burgsteinfurt, rejecting offers to join relatives in Chile, Shanghai, and the United States. He believed the Nazi regime would soon end.

In 1941, the Marx family was sent to the Riga Ghetto. Hanna describes brutal conditions – extreme cold, little food, and the rape of girls by SS guards. She describes coming home one day from her labor Kommando and finding the ghetto liquidated. Her parents had hidden in a cabinet under a staircase. After the liquidation, Hanna’s father was left behind in Kaiserwald concentration camp and she, her mother and two brothers were taken on a two or three day journey to Lithuania in cattle cars with no food. She compares the more humane German army soldiers in Lithuania to the SS who guarded the Riga Ghetto. Soon after, they were moved to Stutthof, where Hanna cleaned barracks and cooked for army troops. Hanna describes the rampant typhoid and lice. Hannah describes how they forced them on a deathmarch for three to four weeks to Danzig without any food; they ate melted snow and stole kohlrabi fed to the animals to stay alive. She reports cannibalism by starving prisoners. She recounts how they survived one night whenthree young German soldiers decided to disobey their orders to set off hand grenades where the prisoners were sleeping.

Liberated by the Russian Army in February 1945, Hanna was sent to a hospital in Putzig. She reports rape of girls by Russian soldiers. Hannah’s mother dressed her in boy’s clothing to protect her. Due to continued fighting against the Germans, the Russians encouraged the survivors to make their way to Warsaw which Hannah and her mother did. They continued on to Hamm and to Burgsteinfurt, where she met her husband. They emigrated to the United States in 1947.

HasiaAufschauer, nee Chaya Sara Honikman, was born in Lodz, Poland on January 7, 1923. She had 5 siblings and lived in a new area of Lodz called Chojny, which had about 200,250 Jews before the war. Her father was a kosher butcher. Her home served as the orthodox synagogue for the local butchers and was called, The Katsuvish Synagogue. Hasia went to a public, predominately Catholic school, and most of her friends were Catholic. Hasia belonged to Betar, a Zionist youth group.

After the German invasion, her family fled to Czestochowa to her father’s relatives and she went to a small village, Myszkow, and became the family provider, working as a black market smuggler near the German border. She bought chickens from Polish farmers, sold them to Jews and sent food to her family in Czestochowa through the Polish Red Cross.

In 1941 the Germans took one brother to Markstadt, a labor camp of Gross-Rosen run by Krupp. Hasia was caught and deported from Sosnowice to a women’s slave labor camp in, Parshnitz, near Prague, in Sudetengau, a German southern province of Czechoslovakia. The women worked in a flax factory, Hasse, making linen. Hasia was helped by a Czech-German foreman who was later honored by YadVashem. Hasia describes in detail the horrors and worsening conditions after the SS took over in 1942, as well as the sufferings and brutality in the mass evacuation from the camp in the final stages of the war. They survived because they remained at the factory and were liberated by the Russians on May 8, 1945. One of Hasia’s brothers survived, but her parents and younger siblings perished in Auschwitz, and an older brother was killed by Polish partisans. She describes her painful return to her parents’ home in Chojny after the war.

Hasia stayed in Raichanbach1, Germany where she met her future husband. She describes how they lived in Weiden, Germany after the war. A daughter was born in 1946 in Germany. In 1949 they came to the United States where a son was born in 1953.

K. R. was born in Tarnopol, Poland, March 31, 1922. Her father was a businessman and her family was greatly influenced by Viennese culture. She briefly describes the start of overt antisemitism in her schools. She was a member of HanoarHatzioni and active in Zionist youth groups in Tarnopol and L’vov.

In 1940, under Russian Occupation, she and a group of HanoarHatzioni members were caught by some Ukrainian villagers—as they tried to cross the border illegally—and delivered to police. K. R. was sent to prison and later transferred to a labor camp near the North Pole. She describes the harsh conditions in the camp and why some of her fellow prisoners did not survive. She was released because she was Polish but given Soviet citizenship and sent by train to another part of Russia. Many strangers helped her during this time. She worked as a bookkeeper at a collective farm (kolkhoz) near the Russian village Devochki Gorki on the Volga River. When the German Army advanced, she was deported to Kazakhstan by train. She describes the conditions under which she lived. She worked as a bookkeeper in Kustanay. After the NKVD tried to recruit her as a spy, she fled to Alma Ata using documents she forged.

In 1945, after the war, she returned to Tarnopol and found it almost completely destroyed. She joined a kibbutz in Lodz and worked with HashomerHatzair to prepare young Russian refugees for life in Palestine. She also organized and led illegal border crossings to get them there. During this time she met and married her husband. They went to Palestine, from Cyprus, on a ship called The State of Israel in 1948, escorting a group of young Jewish children who had been hidden in monasteries or by Polish families. K. R. then reflects about how her experiences have shaped her outlook on life and her views about human behavior.

David Buchsbaum was born in Gorlice, Poland on April 20, 1921 to a religious family. He was one of 11 children.. He gives a brief description of pre-war Gorliceand the Jewish community which was 25% of the population, about 3,500 Jews. David’s family owned a grocery store.

David describes the mood change among non-Jewish neighbors in 1938 after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and describes how they would stand in front of Jewish stores and businesses announcing, "Do not buy from Jews".

In 1939 once the Nazis occupied Gorlice the family was warned by a non-Jewish neighbor to flee, but the family could not afford the certificate to emigrate to Palestine. David details the anti-Jewish measures 1940: Jews had to wear the Yellow star, Jewish businesses were confiscated, synagogues were closed, Jewish" quarters" were created and David’s father was shot to death by a German soldier right before his eyes. David also witnessed the machine gun shooting of entire Jewish families.

In July, 1942 all males from 12-65 were arrested and marched in the streets; some were shot and David, a brother and others were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. David describes the horrific conditions there: cold, typhus, appells, beatings and the electrified fence. In 1943, as the Russians advanced David and 1,000 other Jews were sent in boxcars to the slave labor camp, Skarzysko. Those who were left behind were either shot in the woods or were gassed in vans and burned. In Skarzysko they made ammunition and David was in in the harshest area, Barrack C. In 1944 David was sent to Buchenwald where all his personal possessions were confiscated, including his tallit and tefillin, which distressed his greatly because he had tried to observe tradition as best he could. As the Russians advanced he was sent to Terezin(Theresienstadt) and was liberated from there on May 8, 1945. David describes that many survivors from Terezin died from overconsumption of food immediately after liberation.

David later returned to Poland to find his relatives but left because of fierce antisemitism and the Kielce pogrom. He traveled to Prague, and was then sent to Salzburg, Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint arranged for him to join an uncle in the United States. On June 2, 1949 David arrived in Boston. He and two brothers survived the war.

Hardy W. Kupferberg, nee Wiersh, was born on September 15, 1922 in Berlin, Germany to a religious family. Her mother died when she was three years old. Her father remarried when she was seven. Her father, a decorated WWI veteran, owned a lamp factory and was active in synagogue and community life.Hardy’s relationships with non-Jews was positive until 1931 when she experienced antisemitism both in school and during several hospitalizations. She describes increasing antisemitism with the Nuremberg laws --the Aryanization of her father’s business, Jews forbidden from public parksand required to bring their pets to be killed.No longer permitted in the public school, she describes the positive atmosphere ofher Jewish school. She was taught by Rabbiner Doctor Regina Jonas, whom she loved and who is known to be the first woman rabbi. She relates that the school included Mischlingerwho very often sided with the anti-Semites.

Hardydetails the horrors and emotional toll of Kristallnacht. She saw a group of Hitler Youth throwing stones through the broken windows of the burnt synagogue. She shares a story that she buried inside for 30 years -- when one of the stones rolled near her in her hiding place, she picked it up and threw it at one of the boys. It hit his head and he fell. In the commotion she left the scene and walked home.

The morning of Kristallnacht, the family apartment was ransacked. In 1939 she and her parents were compelled to do forced labor. For a small salary, she worked outdoors in a tree nursery under horrible conditions and described that the girls’ arms would bleed daily. She was granted a transfer to a plane factory making cables. In 1941 Hardy witnessed the shooting of her little cousins during a deportation. She also saw zoo personnel desecrating the synagogue by bringing elephants from the Berlin zoo into it. Hardy describes the deportation of her grandmother to Riga. They never heard from her again.

In February 1943, Hardy’s parents were taken from their place of work by Viennese Gestapo who arrested 10,000 Berlin Jews. Because they were taken from work, they did not have their knapsacks, in which they had packed some necessities including poison. When Hardy went to Gestapo headquarters with the knapsacks to find her parents,an official pointed

out a window toward a group of vans from which dead bodies were being pulled and told her that was where her parents were. She learned later that they were murdered in Auschwitz.

Hardy went into hiding for a year and a half, helped by several non-Jews. Some asked to be paid and a friend of her father’s provided money. Hardy was caught by a Jewish woman and deported to Ravensbrück in March 1944. She details some experiences, including witnessing an atrocity against a child and her job clearing the dead from the barracks in the morning. At Hardy’s request, the focus of this oral history is mainly the years in Berlin and not on her concentration camp experience as she felt that her camp experience was not unique to her.

She was liberated by the Soviets and repatriated to Berlin, where she met her husband Kurt Kupferberg in March 1946. They arrived in the United States August 20, 1947.1

See also her second 1983 interview and also her husband’s 1981 interview.

RachelaFrydmanwas born on November 26, 1914 in Zloczew, Poland (near Lodz). She came from a large observant Zionist family. Her father was a wood merchant. Rachela belonged to Shomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. One of her brothers was able to get to Palestine in 1928. Before 1930 Rachela had experienced antisemitism in the form of two pogroms and a robbery.

In the 1930s the family moved to Piotrkow, Poland, a mill town. By 1933 the Polish Jews who lived in Germany had been forced back into Poland. Rachela details how the PiotrkowGhetto was created and describes conditions there, overcrowding, starvation, laborbatallions.She describes treatment by the S.S. and many shootings. Rachela and her sister taught Jewish history and culture from their apartment until 1941. Rachela married while in the ghetto. Her husband was sent out for forced labor and did not return. Rachela recounts being terrorized by Ukrainian guards in the ghetto, witnessing murders and contracting typhus. Her mother and one sister died in the typhus epidemic. She was nursed by nuns in a hospital and one offered to hide her in their convent.

From 1942 - 1944 Rachela was in Skarzysko-Kamienna, a forced labor camp which was an ammunition factory. She describes her beatings by guards. In 1944, Rachela and many inmates were sent to Buchenwald’s sub-camp, Leipzig-Schoenfeld, in cattle cars. There Rachela along with 600 inmates lived in one large room.Rachela recounts their attempts to observe Jewish holidays by lighting candles with wicks made from stolen rope and saving crumbs for symbolizing matza.

In April 1945 they were marched toward Dresden. They were liberated at the River Elbe by the Soviet army. By then Rachela could no longer walk. She was hospitalized and later sent to a displaced person’s camp. There she met and married her second husband and gave birth to a daughter. They came to the United States on April 19, 1951. Rachela states that she’s alive because she willed herself to see the defeat of the Germans.