Oral History Interview with Daniel Levey

Max Metzger was born in 1903 in Gross-Reken, Westfalen, Germany. His family moved to Dorsten, Germany in 1911, where he attended school. In 1937, Max married HeldaNorger[phonetic] and they had a daughter. He went into business with his father.

His first experience with antisemitism was when his father’s cattle business was taken away in 1938. In 1939, Max was taken to forced labor in Burgsteinfurtdigging ditches until January 1942 when his family and others were given two hours to gather their belongings and were told they were being sent to the East. Max describes their journey with their four year old daughter, first being sent to Gelsenkirchen, Germany(a collection camp) where they were held for three days, followed by an ordeal on a frozen train for five or six days, without food, and finally arriving at the Riga Ghetto. Max describes the SS hitting them as they exited the trains and being forced to walk an hour to the ghetto. People who were weak or unable to walk were put on trucks and never seen again. Max describes the conditions in the ghetto and his forced labor in a slaughter house and on the docks. He recalls having to walk past victims who had been hung for smuggling items into the ghetto and witnessed the killing of three Latvian Jews by the Kommandant of the ghetto.

In 1944, Max reports, the ghetto was slowly evacuated. First the old people, then children, then those unfit for work. Max was sent to forced labor inLiebau(Latvia) where he worked for the Wermacht. It was at this time he was separated from his wife who was sent to Stutthof. In February 1945, he and other prisoners were evacuated by boat back to Hamburg, Germany where they were taken to prison. He witnessed the bombing of Hamburg and during the day worked clearing debris.

In April 1945,Max was in a group that was marched 100 km over four days from Hamburg to Kiel because there were not enough trucks to take the prisoners to Bergen-Belsen. Max’s group was sent to a small concentration camp called Hassel that had previously only had gentile prisoners. Max was among 31,000 concentration camp prisoners, Jews and non-Jews, who were freed due to negotiations between Heinrich Himmler and the Swedish diplomat, CountFolke Bernadotte. The Red Cross evacuated them on trucks and took them to Denmark, and from there by boat to Sweden. In Stockholm, through the Red Cross and HIAS, Max learned that his wife had perished during a forced march. One brother and two niecessurvived Auschwitz and one brother survived with Max(having also been sent to Kiel and rescued to Sweden). His parents and other family members perished in Auschwitz.

Max relates that while in Sweden, the king sent buses to the Displaced Persons camp and took the refugees to the opera and dinner.

Holocaust Jewish, 1933-1945, Personal narratives Jewish, Male

Count Folke Bernadotte

Death march from Hamburg

Dorsten, Westfalen, Germany.

Forced labor -- Burgsteinfurt (Germany)

Forced labor -- Liebau (Latvia)

GrossReken, Westfalen, Germany.

Jewish Ghettos -- Latvia - Riga Ghetto

Prison in Hamburg

Red Cross

World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Germany to Latvia.

World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Latvia-- Liebau.

World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Germany-- Hassel.

Inge Karo, née Heiman, was born in 1926 in Essen, Germany. Her father was part owner of a business. Her parents were active in the Jewish community and belonged to a conservative synagogue. Inge belonged to a non-Zionist youth organization and was educated in a school for Jewish children until the schools were closed by the Nazis. The effects of the Nüremberg laws, passed in 1935, are briefly de‌scribed. The Jewish community of Essen and the Heiman family experienced the destruction of Kristall‌nacht in 1938. Nazis threatened to burn down her family’s house and then confiscated it. Inge was affected by the pervasive Nazi propaganda, the persecution, and her family’s attempts to escape from Germany to the United States. The family emigrated to the United States in December 1939. Inge briefly talks about life in the United States as a refugee, including her experiences in public school.

This document is a program booklet titled "Moving History Forward: Perspectives on the Holocaust," outlining the schedule of events for the 2013-2014 academic year, organized by Chapman University's Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, Stern Chair, and Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library. The program features a series of lectures, film screenings, and services focusing on various aspects of the Holocaust. Key events include a screening of "Schindler's List," discussions on figures like Oskar Schindler, Raphael Lemkin, and Amon Goeth, the persecution of the Roma, and the significance of interviewing Holocaust survivors. It also highlights events commemorating the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, including an interfaith service and a panel featuring Holocaust survivors and witnesses. The booklet lists prominent academics and survivors as speakers and acknowledges various sponsoring organizations for their support.

Andrzej W. Jurkiewicz was born into a Christian family in 1931 in Torun, Poland. His family moved to Warsaw in 1934. His father, a band leader, played for German and Soviet soldiers and was a commander in ArmíaKrajowa, the Polish home army. Andrzej was a messenger, carrying information to underground units.

His father had been helped by Jews when he served in the Polish Army during World War I and during German bombardments in 1940. Later, Andrzej and his family aided Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, throwing food over the walls, giving bread and sheltering children who escaped the ghetto in the top of their apartment building. Andrzej witnessed the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto and machine gun killings in the streets.

In his testimony, Andrzej describes the Polish underground smuggling arms into the Warsaw Ghetto. He describes that some arms were obtained from Hungarian soldiers who were fighting with the Nazis and stationed in Warsaw. He related an incident in which a truckload of machine guns was given to the underground and he and other children helped to empty the truck and hide the guns.

In 1944, Andrzej, his family and other Poles were taken to a labor camp in Vienna, to build air-raid shelters. After the war, he was a music student in Poland, graduating in 1958 and became assistant opera conductor in Wroclaw in 1959. He describes difficulties with the Polish government because his father had stayed in Vienna and it was frowned upon to have family members in the west. In 1972, when he was already the permanent Music Director, he escaped from Poland and emigrated to the United States. He joined his parents, who had arrived in Philadelphia earlier. His sister, an opera singer, remained in Poland.

Fred Hammel was born on Friday, May 13, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father was a successful leather goods manufacturer in Offenback. Fred had a very comfortable childhood living in a villa with maids in Sachsenhausen, southern Frankfurt am Main. He attended public school and though the family was a non- observant Jewish one, they belonged to a synagogue.

After 1929 and later in 1932 his situation changed drastically. The depression hit and Nazi storm troopers wearing brown coats arrived. Fred described the mass unemployment, and how the rise of the Nazi party and Nazi youth infiltrated German society. He described the growing isolation of the Jews, and the 1933 boycott of Jewish stores as Nazification grew. He also claimed that Henry Ford financed many of Hitler’s early programs. By 1935 Jews started to leave Germany and Fred was apprenticed to a tanner.

Fred lived through Kristallnacht and provided vivid details. His father was incarcerated by the local police and many of his relatives who were sent to Buchenwald suffered a great deal before being released. By 1938 his mother decided to get him out of Germany to the relatives in the United States via England. Fred was almost 18, the cutoff age. But just in time, his mother arranged for him to join the Kindertransport to England on April 19, 1939. He gives details about the Kindertransport journey. He traveled by train to Zevenaar and Cologne in Germany and to Hoek van in Holland, and by boat to Harwich, England and then by train to Victoria station in London.

Fred worked one year in a tannery in Northampton, England, and then in May 1940 he received his visa to the United States. He met the woman who would become his wife in Massachusetts shortly afterwards. In 1943 Fred was drafted; he served in the US army in the Pacific in Okinawa. After the war Fred and his wife were able to start a family; they have two children and currently three grandchildren.