Oral History Interview with Edith Millman

Vera Rosenberger, nee Weis, was born in Zrenjanin (formerly Petrovgrad) in 1929. She discusses the Jewish community, her relations with Serbs and other non-Jews in Zrenjanin, and her education in public schools. After her father died, they moved to Belgrade. Vera describes the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish communities in Belgrade, as well as Zionist Youth groups, such as Hashomer Hatzair. In 1940 Polish and Australian Jews, including a group of boys and girls on their way to Palestine, fled to Yugoslavia. She lived through the bombardment of Belgrade and the German invasion. Her family fled to Ada, a village in the Baška-which was under Hungarian occupation, one day before Jews had to register with the German authorities. Ada had a prosperous Jewish community but Vera describes the immediate uptick in antisemitism at the arrival of the Hungarians. In April 20, 1944, during the German occupation, all the Jews in Ada were deported, including Vera and her extended family. After being housed in a synagogue in Szeged, during which time Vera worked at a labor camp in Baja, the group was deported to Auschwitz at the end of May. After a selection in Gässerndorf, Vera was sent to a transit camp in Strasshof, Austria. After several medical examinations, she was sent to work on agricultural farms from dawn to dusk. She briefly mentions the role of the JudenPolizei. She also explains how her mother managed to get medical care. The American Airforce bombed the station and the railroad tracks the Germans needed to transport all Jews working in Austria to Theresienstadt. So Vera and the other prisoners were brought back to Strasshof. They were liberated by Russian soldiers on April 10, 1945. Vera describes her journey to and her life in Ada after liberation. Vera left Yugoslavia in 1948. She explains her decision to go to Israel. She reflects on the need to document the history of Yugoslavian Jews and learn the lessons of the Holocaust.

Fred Kulick served with the 336th Engineer Combat Battalion (Amphibious), United States 9th Army. Near Gardelegen, Germany, in the Saar Valley, they found between 100 and 200 corpses of slave laborers who had been locked in a barn and burned to death, probably by SS guards. Their commander, Lt. Colonel Paul Bennett ordered German civilians to give the victims a decent burial. This atrocity was recorded in the battalion records. Mr. Kulick sent photographs of the victims’ bodies to Yad Vashem in Israel. He explains why he believes German citizens knew about the atrocities and the camps but were psychologically unable to admit it. He mentions a brief encounter with a group of starving American Prisoners of War in Schleswig Holstein. He relates his battalion’s activities in Europe from the German surrender until he returned to the Unites States.

A letter from President Ronald Reagan to Professor Elie Wiesel, dated January 20, 1987. Reagan congratulates Wiesel on receiving the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee. He praises Wiesel as a "voice of conscience" who has transformed his "sufferings" into understanding and a "zeal to prevent such horrors from occurring again," wishing him continued strength in the pursuit of peace and remembrance.

Ernest Kaufman was born in Drove, Germany, a small town with about 25 Jews. His father served in the German army during World War I and was a butcher and also a shochet. They had no problems with gentile neighbors but Ernest could not complete his education or his apprenticeship because he was Jewish. During Kristallnacht a local police man refused to arrest his father, but Ernest was arrested and transported to Buchenwald. He describes the terrible conditions and brutality in Buchenwald. The prisoners arrested during Kristallnacht did not have to work, but were forced to watch other prisoners being tortured and killed. Ernest explains how he managed to get an affidavit that enabled him to be released from Buchenwald after four weeks. He got a visa for the United States on April 20, 1939 and arrived in New York two weeks later. Ernest describes his unsuccessful attempts to get his parents out of Germany and into Cuba. His parents did not survive. Ernest describes how he lived and supported himself in New York and later in Philadelphia. After Pearl Harbor, Ernest enlisted in the U.S. Army, became a naturalized citizen and eventually an officer. He served in England and Germany in 1943 and relates many of his experiences as an intelligence officer on an interrogation team. He discovered that Christian neighbors in Drove smuggled food into a house where local Jews were assembled before they were deported. In July 1945, he was wounded and sent to England General Hospital in Atlantic City. After he recovered, he was assigned to the European Command Intelligence Center in charge of the document section. He describes his intensive but futile search to discover what happened to his parents. After two more years in the service, he bought a poultry farm in Egypt, N.J. where he and his wife Minna lived for 30 years.

Elizabeth Bleiman, née Zuckerman, was born July 10, 1921 into a modern Orthodox family in Ófehértó, Hungary and completed elementary school there. She attended Jewish high school in Debrecen until 1937 and returned home, where all of her family suffered from antisemitic government restrictions. After German occupation in March 1944, they were deported to the Kisvarda Ghetto. She details their transport to Auschwitz in July 1944, her separation from her parents during selection by Dr. Mengele, and the harsh conditions in thecamp, starvation rations and being advised by an elderly German prisoner to try to escape via transport. She describes how she and a friend got into a transport and were moved to Stutthof, the terribly crowded conditions and prisoners getting burned from standing in the sun all day during Appells. She again escaped via transport with a friend, this time to Praust, where they were forced to install cables for a new airport. She describes that French prisoners would write them uplifting notes indicating that the Russians were advancing and to hold on to life. She details cruel conditions of a forced march to Danzig. Liberated by Russians in February 1945, she was hospitalized for two months with typhus. After recovery, she and a friend foraged for food, shelter and clothing in abandoned houses as they traveled from Danzig to Hungary. In Ófehértóshe found her family home was occupied by non-Jewish refugees but she recovered some gold and other valuablesburied by her father before his deportation. In 1946 she moved to Germany to live in an American displaced persons camp, where she married a Lithuanian Jew in 1947 and they emigrated to the United States in 1949. Elizabeth refers to continuing antisemitism in Hungary despite a new liberal constitution.