Oral History Interview with Eli Rock

Elsa Turteltaub, nee Waldner, was born October 24, 1916 in Teschen (Cieszyn), Poland. She and her brother and sister attended private Catholic schools, although her parents kept a kosher home and attended a conservative synagogue on holidays. Elsa completed a commercial high school course and was active in HanoarHatzioni. After the German invasion in September 1939, her parents lost their restaurant and Elsa and her sister were forced to clean German army barracks. In December 1939, she escaped to Slovakia, where she joined a hakhshara in Zilina. She was sent to Auschwitz in March, 1942 in one of the first Slovakian transports and was forced into hard labor in the sand pits, despite being ill with typhus. When transferred to the registry office, she issued death certificates requested by relatives of Auschwitz inmates, both Jewish and Gentile. By 1943, only Gentiles’ requests were answered as Jews were no longer registered. The causes of death given were fiction, created by the office staff. If ashes of the deceased were requested, staff filled sacks with any ashes found in the crematorium. Living conditions for those girls, living in a building with SS women, were much better than elsewhere.

In January, 1942, Elsa was evacuated to Ravensbrück, then to Malchow, and finally to Trewitz in East Germany. She was liberated by Russians on May 3, 1945, was married in 1946, and gave birth to a son in 1948 in Katowitz, Poland. She and her family lived in Israel from 1950 to 1955 and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Her story is included in Secretaries of Death, ed. and translated by Lore Shelley, New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1986.

Interviewee: TURTELTAUB, Elsa Waldner Date: July 14, 1987

Gabriel Drimer was born May 2, 1922 in Dubova, Czechoslovakia. His family owned a bakery. He studied at the yeshiva in Bratislava and later apprenticed to learn tailoring and design. He belonged to B’nai Akiva, an Orthodox Zionist organization. He describes how anti-Jewish measures, confiscations, and deportations were instituted after the Hungarian army invaded in 1940 and relations between Jews and non-Jews changed. He relates an eyewitness account of mass murder of Jews, including his relatives, in Kamenets-Podolski in 1941. He stopped the deportation of his family due to good relations with the local police. Gabriel visited his family in the Taitch [phonetic] Ghetto in October 1943 while he was in a labor camp. His family was killed in Auschwitz except for a brother who died on the Russian front and a brother who died in the Resistance. The captain in charge of his labor camp saved all the prisoners until the Russians could liberate them.

Gabriel relates that a Ukrainian officer tried to kill Gabriel as a Jew, but a Russian officer intervened. Other Russian officers befriended the survivors. Gabriel worked with the Russian military secret police rounding up Nazis and describes their reactions. He returned to Bratislava and describes how he opened his old store, greatly expanded his business, fed survivors passing through, and met and married his wife.

In 1948, after two months of training he left for Israel with other Jews to join the Haganah. He served in the army, later was a sergeant in the police force, established a business and organized an association of 40 farms. He talks about his life and changing conditions in Israel. He emigrated to the United States in 1955 and went into business in New York.

Interviewee: DRIMER, Gabriel Date: April 21, 1985