Oral History Interview with Fred Bachner
Title
Date
Contributor
Summary
Fred Bachner, born September 28, 1925 in Berlin, was one of two sons of an orthodox family of Polish nationality. He attended Jewish public school. His father was a men’s clothing manufacturer and his mother worked in the shop. Fred describes his pre-war life, belonging to several Zionist organizations (Maccabi, Hashomer Hatzair,and Bar Kochba). He describes his father’s business decline and his loss of gentile playmates after 1933. An attempt to flee Germany to the United States failed because they could not get their visas before the war started.
In 1939 Polish Jews were deported to Poland. Fred’s family was separated for a time because they only deported his father and brother. In June 1939, Fred and his mother left Berlin for their native town, Chrzanow (near Krakow), and rejoined the family. After the German invasion, theyfled on foot but eventually had to return. Fred’s father was sent to work in a factory manufacturing German army coats. Fred worked for a German soda and beer distributor, which saved his life when he was able to evade an action by running off to the woods before the German army sealed off the town. His father was sent to a work camp, his mother to Auschwitz where she perished.
Fred describes some kindnesses by certain German guards. While delivering beer to Germans in a labor camp, he saw his brother. The labor camp commandant allowed Fred to help his brother and others and allowed him to bring medicine into the camp. Fred established a burial detail from the camp and helped organize the remaining Jewsin town who were able to feed and help the inmates when they came for burial detail. Fred later escaped the camp liquidation, ran into woods and joined the partisans but was caught and sent to Faulbrück labor camp (a subcamp of Gross-Rosen). Fred describes terrible conditions.He contracted typhoid. From 1940 until 1943 he worked for Krupp in forced labor.
Fred was deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He describes knowing where they were headed, being processed for work, receiving a tattoo. He describes the scarcity of food and the forced labor building a railroad, rooting out woods to build a highway, and carrying cement bags. He describes many brushes with death. Fred briefly describes a death march in January 1945, through deep snow to Gross-Rosen. After two days they were loaded into open cattle cars and for 10 days were without food or water, until they arrived at Dachau. Most prisoners died enroute. In Dachau, Fred found his brother (already established at Dachau) and describes how his brother was able to help him gain his strength back through acquiring extra pieces of bread. In April, the prisonerswere loaded into railroad cars. When attacked by Allied planes, Fred and his brother jumped off and ran into the woods. They met French prisoners of war who helped them and, avoiding the retreating German army, they finally were liberated by the American Army. Fred attributes his survival to his endurance and faith in God and faith that they would eventually be freed.
More Sources Like This
of
Anna Roth
Anna Roth, née Weber, was born in Stopnica, Poland on July 14, 1929 into a Hasidic family. She had five sisters and lived with her parents and extended family. Her father was a roofer. She describes her childhood before the German invasion in detail including relations with non-Jewish Poles and antisemitism.
She talks in great detail about the frightening German invasion and Occupation including men being taken from the streets, indiscriminate killings and restrictions on Jewish learning and how her mother procured Hebrew lessons for her. Anna—despite her very young age—her father and her two eldest sisters were taken to work in a munitions factory in Skarzysko for two years (1940-1942). She gives detailed descriptions of the conditions: the work, the food and the fear under which they lived. She and her sisters were able to keep contact with their father and even got themselves on the same transport when he was deported to several other labor camps: Czestochowa, another munition factory; Przedborz, where they were made to dig ditches, and Czestochowianka. Eventually they were separated when their father was sent to Buchenwald in 1944 and her two older sisters were sent to Ravensbrück.
Anna was deported to Bergen-Belsen which she described as far worse than any of the other camps and gives detailed descriptions of the conditions. She explains how the circumstances probably helped her to survive—when they ran out of striped uniforms, she was able to keep the heavy coat she was wearing during the cold winter months. She also shares a vignette about her extraordinary reunification with her sisters in Bergen-Belsen. Anna details her and her sisters’ deathmarch from Turkheim to Dachau and their liberation on the morning after their arrival on
May 6, 1945.
After the war they were sent to Feldafing Displaced Persons camp, and found their father in Lübeck, Germany, where they lived until 1947. Her mother and three younger sisters perished. In 1948 they went to Stuttgart, in the American zone, in order to emigrate to the United States. One sister went to Israel. Helped by HIAS, Anna, her father and a sister arrived in the United States in 1949.
of
Norman Rosen
Norman Rosen, one of seven children, was born in a religious family in Nowe Miasto, Poland in 1922. He describes life before and after 1938, when he first experienced antisemitism. Norman fled to Warsaw after the German invasion in September 1939, but returned home after Warsaw fell. He describes life under the German occupation before the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, including hiding during the day, forced labor, abuse of Jews, and confiscation of Jewish owned businesses.
Norman describes in great detail his experiences in both the Warsaw and the Nowe Miasto Ghettos, smuggling food aided by non-Jews, and a brief detention by the GESTAPO. Norman escaped from the Nowe Miasto Ghetto with a small group of young men aided by non-Jews. They hid in a cellar for 27 months. Later Norman and his brothers hid in a hole under a haystack and then in an attic, again helped by non-Jewish farmers.
In January 1945, as the Russians advanced and the Germans fled, Norman returned to Nowe Miasto. He describes the hostile reaction by Poles. His parents were killed in Auschwitz, but he was reunited with his surviving brothers. They travelled together to Germany, stayed in Zeilsheim Displaced Persons camp near Frankfurt from 1945 to 1946, and subsequently in Backnang Displaced Persons camp near Stuttgart until 1949 when he came to the United States.
of
Margaret Beer
Margaret Beer, nee Weiss, was born January 9, 1911 in Sighet, Hungary. She details the swift transfer of all the Jews of Sighet in the first month of the German invasion, describing howS.S. troops moved into many Jewish homes, including hers during the German occupation, and how Hungarian authorities identified prominent Jews whomthe S.S. forced to form a Jewish Council. The Germans then confiscated Jewish businesses and personal property. Once ghettoized, the Jews were helped by non-Jewish Hungarians who smuggled food into the ghetto. She describes the evacuation of all Jewish patients from the local hospital, the formation of a Jewish police force, the evacuation of the Jews from the ghetto and the transports to Auschwitz.
She describes in great detail life in Auschwitz including the initial selection, showers, barracks, Appells, work conditions, food allotment, wash barracks, and her selection by Mengele. In July 1944 she was transported to Gelsenkirchen, Germany to work in the Krupp armament industry. She describes the working conditions and Allied bombings. In September 1944 she was transferred to Sömmerda in Thuringia, Germany to work in another ammunition factory. As the Allies drew close in April 1945, the camp was evacuated; Margaret escaped during the death march and eventually found housing in a German village until liberation at the end of April 1945. She describes help from Russian POW’s and later American liberators. Her skills as a dressmaker helped sustain her until May 1946 when she could join her brother who had been living in Philadelphia.
of
Hasia Aufschauer
HasiaAufschauer, nee Chaya Sara Honikman, was born in Lodz, Poland on January 7, 1923. She had 5 siblings and lived in a new area of Lodz called Chojny, which had about 200,250 Jews before the war. Her father was a kosher butcher. Her home served as the orthodox synagogue for the local butchers and was called, The Katsuvish Synagogue. Hasia went to a public, predominately Catholic school, and most of her friends were Catholic. Hasia belonged to Betar, a Zionist youth group.
After the German invasion, her family fled to Czestochowa to her father’s relatives and she went to a small village, Myszkow, and became the family provider, working as a black market smuggler near the German border. She bought chickens from Polish farmers, sold them to Jews and sent food to her family in Czestochowa through the Polish Red Cross.
In 1941 the Germans took one brother to Markstadt, a labor camp of Gross-Rosen run by Krupp. Hasia was caught and deported from Sosnowice to a women’s slave labor camp in, Parshnitz, near Prague, in Sudetengau, a German southern province of Czechoslovakia. The women worked in a flax factory, Hasse, making linen. Hasia was helped by a Czech-German foreman who was later honored by YadVashem. Hasia describes in detail the horrors and worsening conditions after the SS took over in 1942, as well as the sufferings and brutality in the mass evacuation from the camp in the final stages of the war. They survived because they remained at the factory and were liberated by the Russians on May 8, 1945. One of Hasia’s brothers survived, but her parents and younger siblings perished in Auschwitz, and an older brother was killed by Polish partisans. She describes her painful return to her parents’ home in Chojny after the war.
Hasia stayed in Raichanbach1, Germany where she met her future husband. She describes how they lived in Weiden, Germany after the war. A daughter was born in 1946 in Germany. In 1949 they came to the United States where a son was born in 1953.
of
Lilly Friedman
Lilly Friedman, née Lax, was born in Zarica, Czechoslovakia on January 20, 125. Her father taught Hebrew. Lilly describes how Jewish life and her relations with non-Jews changed after the Hungarian occupation in 1939. In 1944, after the Germans rounded up all the Jews, Lilly and her family were sent to Auschwitz. She describes arrival in Auschwitz, the selections, and brutal murders of infants. After three days she was taken to Plaszow, Krakow with a group of girls for forced hard labor under brutal conditions. In September 1944 they returned to Auschwitz. As transports arrived, women and children were taken straight to the crematoria. After three weeks she was put in charge of 400 of the healthiest girls who were selected to work as weavers in a factory in Neustadt.
As the front came closer, the camp was evacuated. The girls were transported to Mauthausen and then marched to Bergen-Belsen. She gives a graphic description of the transport to Mauthausen by train under Allied bombardment, the casualties and their attempts to help each other. She describes terrible conditions in Bergen-Belsen and how the girls helped each other to survive. They were liberated by the English Second Army April 15, 1945. She slowly regained her health and met and married another survivor. The family came to the United States in March, 1948.
Her daughter, Miriam adds her insights about growing up as a child of survivors. Lilly mentions the impact living through the Holocaust still has on her and her sisters.
Interviewee: FRIEDMAN, Lilly Date: April 21, 1985
of
Samuel Sherron
Samuel Sherron was born March 27, 1932 in Skuodas, Lithuania but lived in Schweksna. His father was a merchant. Samuel was educated in both public school and cheder. He lived under Russian occupation from 1940 until the German invasion. He describes the roundup and torture of local Jews by SS troops and Lithuanians. He cites eyewitness accounts of the murder of all remaining Jews, mostly women and children.
Samuel and his father were taken to a labor camp in Heydekrug near Memel, Germany in 1941. He experienced beatings, atrocities and frequent selections. Those selected were shot. In 1943, when he was only 11 years old, they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He describes surviving the initial selection and how inmates built tracks so transports could go directly to the crematoria. He details conditions at Auschwitz, the Appels, the constant hunger, and an encounter with Dr. Mengele. He witnessed sadism and torture. Lithuanian and Ukrainian guards killed Jewish prisoners for sport.
With 5000 non-Polish Jewish volunteers they were sent to Pawiak prison to build barracks and crematoria in what had been the Warsaw Ghetto, as transports of Hungarian and Czech Jews arrived. In the summer of 1944, most of the prisoners from “Camp Warsaw “ were evacuated on a death march to Kovno, then by cattle train to Dachau, with a group of Greek Jews. He mentions eyewitness accounts of mass murders of Jews by Einsatzgruppen under Operation Barbarossa. He went to a labor camp in Mühldorf, Germany to do construction work for the Luftwaffe. In April 1945, the prisoners were put on cattle trains guarded by SS. Intervention by the mayor of Pocking, Bavaria (because American troops were near) kept the Luftwaffe from killing them. Samuel and his father were liberated by America troops in Seeshaupt on April 28, 1945. They were transferred to Munich after some medical treatment.
Interviewee: SHERRON, Samuel Date: December 11, 1983