Oral History Interview with Elizabeth Geggel

Harold Stern, formerly Helmutt, was born August 31, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the only child of middle class Jewish parents. His father came from an Orthodox background and his mother was raised in a non-observant home; as a family, they belonged to a large Liberal Congregation, the West end Synagogue in Frankfurt. Harold describes the educational system and antisemitism pre- and post- 1933. He discusses the Kultusgemeinde, his Jewish education, upbringing, and his studies at the Philanthropin (a Jewish secondary school), which he attended in 1935 due to increased Nazism and antisemitism experience at the public Gymnasium. His mother continued the family business after his father’s death in 1930, but had to give it up (1937) as a result of the Nuremberg Laws. He describes the “aryanization” of a shoe manufacturing company and other businesses where he was apprenticed/employed. Despite having an early quota number, Harold’s attempts to emigrate with his mother to USA were thwarted because their affidavits were not accepted by the American Consulate in Stuttgart. In March 1939, Harold left for England through the aid of family friends in England and Bloomsbury House, while his mother remained in Frankfurt. He describes life in London, working as a factory trainee, residing among British (non-Jewish) working class, until June 1940 when he was picked up and interned in Huyten, a camp near Liverpool, with other German Jewish refugees. In July 1940, he volunteered for transport on the Dunera, a ship supposedly bound for Canada but re-routed to Australia. He discusses in detail the desperate conditions at sea, harsh treatment by British soldiers, and refugee behavior during the ten week voyage. From Sidney, he was transferred to a barbed-wire enclosed compound in the Outback, in Hay, New South Wales. He refers to the internal camp leadership which emerged, the development of cultural and educational activities. He details help given by the Australian Christian Student Movement (under Margaret Holmes), Jewish Welfare Board, and Jewish people of Melbourne. Later he moved to a camp in Tatura, Victoria that had better conditions. After 20 months of internment, he joined the Australian army, the 8th Employment Company, where he did transport of munitions. He was discharged in 1946 or 1947, after serving 4 1/2 years in the army.

Harold kept contact with his mother and knew that she reached USA in late 1941. Through the help of a non-Jewish woman, she obtained a visa in September 1941, left Germany on a sealed train (to Berlin), journeyed through occupied and Vichy France and Spain to Lisbon, boarding one of the last steamers from Portugal to America. Her brother, however, was arrested by the Gestapo and never seen again. Her sister, a musician, later hospitalized in a sanitarium was “euthanized”.

Harold immigrated to the USA in 1947 under the German quota. In 1959, he moved to Philadelphia.

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.

Herbert Lindemeyer was born in Minden, Germany in 1922. His father owned a pharmacy. He describes antisemitism after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and briefly mentions the boycott of Jew‌ish stores in April 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. He describes his parents’ discussions of whether to emigrate. After Kristallnacht, his father was incarcerated in Buchenwald for a month and his pharmacy confiscated by the Nazis.

Herbert emigrated to England in August 1939 through the help of a British Quaker woman. He describes in detail his internment, with thousands of German and Austrian refugees—in June 1940 on the Isle of Man. In December 1941 he was allowed to leave when he obtained a defense job in Manchester, England. There in January 1944 he married a woman who had traveled to England on the Kindertransport. In October 1945 he joined the American Army for an assignment in Germany as an interpreter and mail censor. One assignment was the tracking of Werner Von Braun. Later he returned to Minden where the new owner of his father’s pharmacy had kept papers which helped Herbert obtain restitution. He emigrated to the United States in 1948.

This document is a program for an event titled 'A Conversation with Elie Wiesel' held at Chapman University on April 9, 2014. The program welcomes Orange High School and includes a detailed biography of Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, highlighting his experiences during the Holocaust, his literary work (especially 'Night'), and his extensive activism for peace and human rights globally. It mentions his numerous awards and his involvement with The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and Boston University. The program lists participants in the event, including Professor Jan Osborn, Principal Ernie Gonzalez, and President James L. Doti, and features several quotes attributed to Elie Wiesel. The document serves as an informational booklet for attendees of the event.

Agnes Adachi, nee Mandl, was born in l9l8 in Budapest. She was the only child in a minimally observant Jewish family. She attended a Reformed Church school, where she received some Hebrew instruction. In l943, prior to the German invasion, she was baptized by a Reformed Church pastor to save her from deportation. Her father was taken away by the Hungarian Arrow Cross and his Christian partner in a textile stored appropriated the business.

Agnes was given asylum in the Swedish Embassy together with many other refugees and helped in the distribution of Schutzpasseswith Raoul Wallenberg. She describes Wallenberg’s wit and daring in dealing with Arrow Cross and German officers. She credits the Swiss Red Cross as well as the Swedish Red Cross for their aid. In l945, after the war ended, she was in Sweden, where she worked with Count Bernadotte as a teacher of refugees.

Her memoir is Child of the Winds: My Mission with Raoul Wallenberg, Chicago: Adams Press, l989.

Ilse Stamm was born in Eichstetten am Kaiserstuhl, Baden, Germany. Her family was one of the 30 Jewish families in a village of 1,000 people. Her father owned a paper factory from 1876 to 1938. She describes antisemitic incidents in her school and on a train. She attended a secular school in Freiburg, an hour and a half railroad trip from home, from 1933 to November 11, 1938. Dismissed early that day, she walked past the burnt foundations of synagogues in Freiburg and in Kaiserstuhl. She witnessed Jewish men, including her father, loaded into trucks for incarceration and mentions the kindness of a non-Jewish friend. This man walked from his home a mile away to bring food for her family every night during the three weeks her father was away.

Her family was able to leave Germany through sponsorship from relatives in Philadelphia which secured her father’s release from Dachau in 1938. Ilse and her mother followed shortly thereafter (1939), with visas secured through bribery at the American Consulate in Stuttgart. When grandparents, who had been interned since 1940 in the Gurs camp in France, arrived in Philadelphia in 1946, they were described as skeletons.