Oral History Interview with Eva Bentley

Susan Faulkner, nee Neulaender, was born April 27, 1921 in Berlin. Her father was a banker and she grew up in an assimilated Jewish family. During the first year of the Nazi regime, she enjoyed Jewish religious instruction in her public school and was very favorably influenced by the ordained female rabbi, Regina Jonas. After 1933, she experienced antisemitism and traumatic discrimination at school. She describes the brief relaxation of anti-Jewish measures in Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games. After attending a private Jewish school for a year, she had a brief, unhappy experience in a Zionist agricultural school in Silesia in 1936 and then worked for relatives in Gleiwitz in Silesia, where she felt more protected in a traditional Jewish community than she had felt in Berlin. Upon her return to Berlin, she worked in Alltrue emigration processing agency. During Kristallnacht, on November 9, 1938, she witnessed destruction of Jewish property, burning of the Fasanenstrasse synagogue as onlookers cheered and the beating of an elderly Jewish man. Her father fled to Belgium, was later caught in Marseilles and died in Auschwitz. Susan managed to travel with her mother and sister to Guatemala in 1938 on a German ship. She describes in detail their 4th class passage and how they were treated with disdain by the crew. Two years later, she reached the United States. In 1942, she married an Austrian refugee who converted to Protestantism and was divorced, following the adoption of two children. In 1958, she began college studies leading to a Ph.D. in English, with restitution money from Germany. She became a teacher and expresses her need to bear witness to the Holocaust. She discusses her psychological problems of survivor guilt and painful attempts to identify as a Jew, including compulsive writing of pro-Jewish and pro-Israel letters to editors.

Bernard S. Mednicki was born in 1910 in Brussels, Belgium, the youngest of four children in an orthodox Russian Jewish family from Kishinev. His father served in the Russian army until the 1903 pogrom, when he deserted and moved his family to the West. Bernard attended a cheder and public school in Brussels, where he experienced some antisemitism. He was apprenticed to an orthopedic technician, became a Belgian citizen in 1928 and was married in 1931. In 1933, he became active in the anti-fascist Socialist Party and anti-fascist resistance. He describes the German invasion on May 12, 1940. Assuming Christian identities, his wife and children fled to Paris and he travelled through southern France until they were reunited in Riom. He details extensively the travails of fellow refugees, his work with the French resistance during 1941-1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, and sabotage activity with the Maquis in the mountains near Volvic. He relates smuggling goods and other survival techniques to obtain food for resistance families. He travelled with his wife and children to Paris, aided by American soldiers, remaining until 1946, when he returned to Brussels. He found his sister’s three children, who were hidden during the war in a convent and a monastery. He arrived in the United States with his wife and children in 1947. His Memoirs: Never be afraid: A Jew in the Maquis, were published posthumously in 1997. See also interviews with his son, Armand Mednick and with his nephew Charles L. Rojer. Interviewee: MEDNICKI, Bernard S. Dates: April 27 & 30, 1982

Mina Kalter, née Basseches, was born in 1921 in Przeworsk, Poland, into a religious family. Her father was a traveling merchant and her mother in retail fabrics. Both parents were active in Zionist organizations and charitable endeavors and on good terms with Christian neighbors, until 1939. She describes the extensive work of the Kehillah in helping those in need. She provides extensive detail of life after the German invasion of Poland in 1939: bombing and desecration of the synagogue, forced labor, confiscation of Jewish property, ghettoization of all Jews, the lack of any help by former Christian friends, ghetto conditions. She describes smuggling her small brother to the home of a loyal former family housekeeper and later her escape from a work detail in March 1941. She then crossed the River San to Soviet-controlled Poland where she was helped by a Russian Jewish family prior to being resettled in a small town near L’vov. She describes in detail life under Soviet rule in Poland. She was exiled to Siberia because she refused to accept Soviet citizenship. She describes her transport to and life in a labor camp for four years, until May 1945. She also relates her clandestine trip outside the Siberian camp to obtain potatoes for planting. In March 1945, as a Polish citizen, she received by mail permission to return to Poland. Recently married, she describes working her way across Siberia toward Poland with her husband in June 1945, where she experienced antisemitism. Through the Joint Distribution Committee in Szczecin, she learned of the survival of her two brothers and joined them in a displaced persons camp in Berlin in August 1945. She describes in detail the living conditions with her new born baby. There is a brief mention of her stay at another camp near Landsberg in 1948. She and her family immigrated to the United States in 1950. She describes her adjustment in the U.S., her children’s awareness of their parents’ background, and their commitment to Judaism. She concludes with the hope that her testimony will remind future generations of the horrors of the Hitler years.

Roger Bryan, formerly Rudolf Britzmann, was born in Germany, June 14, 1921. His father, a physician and a decorated German army veteran, was arrested on trumped up charges in the mid 1930s. He died in Moabit prison under suspicious circumstances. Roger briefly mentions his school years, a few antisemitic experiences, and how his family coped after his father’s death. He discusses his struggle to get out of Germany, and how he managed to emigrate to London, England with help from both Jews and non-Jews in 1939 just before World War II started. He worked in London until he was classified as an enemy alien, incarcerated, and deported to Adelaide, Australia on the HMT Dunera. He describes terrible conditions on board, mistreatment by British during the trip, the journey to a detention camp in Hay, New South Wales, and how Australians treated the detainees. He talks about his jobs in the camp, and the many activities and programs started by the prisoners. He joined and served in the Pioneer Corps (a non-combatant unit of the British army) to get out of the internment camp. He later served in the GHQ Second Echelon Prisoner of war section of the British army in London and in camps for German prisoners of war in Louvain, Belgium, and the former Neuengamme concentration camp. He was transferred to Nuremberg to work as an interpreter/translator during the War crime trials. After he left the service, he lived in Glasgow, Scotland with his wife, whom he married in 1943. He started a family and a photography business. He came to the United States in 1953.

Rebecca gives updates to her sister-in-law Maria on family and friends and asks for clarification on a possible antisemitic comment made by politician Henry Clay.