Oral History Interview with Frederick A. Walters

Aaron Kuptsow talks about his experiences as a radar navigation bombardier, 15th Air Force during World War II, especially his instructions in the event of capture, both as a Jew and as a radar operator.

He describes his capture, together with other crew members, after their plane was shot down near Hanover, Germany, on November 26, 1944, as well as a forced march to a Luftwaffe station at Detmold, then to an interrogation station at Wetzlar, near Frankfurt, Germany. There he experienced intensive questioning about Radar; solitary confinement, and an act of kindness by a German guard. He was transferred to STALAG I, a prison camp for air force officers, at Barth on the Baltic. He talks about conditions in the camp, the other prisoners, and different treatment by the Germansof officers and enlisted men who were prisoners of war. One day all the Jewish prisoners were put into a separate barracks in a secluded section of the camp. He explains how the prisoners organized their barracks and relied on Red Cross parcels for food. In fact, food was their main topic of conversation. News from the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) was distributed throughout the camp clandestinely every day. Although they were allowed to send and receive mail, none of the prisoners’ mail was ever sent out.

The American prisoners took over the camp on April 30, 1945. He vividly describes the arrival of Russian troops on horseback accompanied by accordion music, and their behavior while in the STALAG. The Americans were flown to camps for liberated prisoners of war near Lyon, France. He describes some delays during his discharge from the service and how he entered medical school. Dr. Kuptsow again reflects on conditions at the camp and how being a prisoner of war affected him.

Per Anger, a Swedish diplomat and honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by YadVashem, was assigned to the Swedish Legation in Budapest as Secretary for Trade in late 1942. He briefly refers to growing antisemitism in Hungary. He describes in detail the Legation’s response to Jewish pleas for help when Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944 as well as Raoul Wallenberg’s additional efforts upon his arrival in July 1944, a position resulting from negotiations between the American War Refugee Board, World Jewish Congress and American Embassy in Stockholm. He refers to the many ways in which Sweden was involved in helping Jews in Hungary, and explains why they did this. He discusses his last meeting with Wallenberg just before his disappearance on January 17, 1945 and the terrors of Russian occupation until his and the other diplomats’ return home in April 1945. He describes in detail his attempts to enlist Sweden’s help in finding Wallenberg and accounts of eye-witnesses who had had contact with Wallenberg in Soviet prisons. He suspects the Soviets suspected Wallenberg of being a spy because of his contacts with Iver Olsen of the War Refugee Board. Anger is the author of With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, NY: 1981.

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.

Ari Fuhrman was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, Romania. His father was a tailor. After living briefly in Vienna, the family returned to Czernowitz instead of going to Palestine. He talks about his family’s life, religious observance, his education, Communist and Zionist movements, and the cultural life of Jews in Czernowitz. He was apprenticed as a dental mechanic in 1938.

Germany invaded Czernowitz together with the Romanian army after a brief Russian occupation. Massacres of Jews began and a ghetto was established until most Jews had been deported. Ari, and 80 family members were deported to Transnistria in October 1941 by sealed train. He graphically describes the transport, how Romanians brutalized and robbed the deportees. Some Jews, including his family, managed to escape during a stop in Mogilev.

Ari and his family could live and work in the Mogilev ghetto because he was classified as a “useful Jew”. He describes cultural activities, religious observance, illness, starvation, and strategies his family used to survive. In 1943 the Jewish Federation of Bucharest tried to rescue Jewish orphans and the American Joint Distribution Committee sent aid. Kapos (Jewish Police) had to provide a certain number of Jews each day for transports. He describes conditions just before and after liberation by the Russians, when partisans briefly controlled the area. He was reunited with his parents in Czernowitz until, as part of an exchange between Russia and Romania, Ari went to Timisoara, Romania, in 1946. He stayed for 11 years, worked as a dentist, and joined Mishmar, a Zionist organization. He registered to go to Palestine but did not receive permission to leave until 1959. He joined the State Theater of Bucharest and later the TeatronHaolim (Theatre of the Newcomers) in Israel. He was reunited with his parents after emigrating to the United States in 1960.

Testimony of his wife, Chayale Ash-Fuhrman, a prominent Yiddish actress, is also in the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive collection.

Myra Davis, nee Miki Heller, was born July 12, 1936 in Kovno, Lithuania, the only child in an affluent Jewish family. Her parents were Franz and Fanny Heller. After the Russian invasion in 1940, her family was forced to move from their large home to much smaller quarters. In 1940, they immigrated to Japan with transit visas and visas for Curacao, which were not used. Instead, they went to Shanghai, in 1941, after a year in Kobe, Japan, where Myra attended a French Catholic school.

In the French quarter of Shanghai, they lived comfortably until the Japanese occupation forced them into the Hongkew Ghetto. Her father, despondent about their impoverishment, committed suicide. When the war ended, her mother worked for the American Army and met a Jewish colonel, David Bare (phonetic), whom she married in 1947. The family lived in Beijing, China, Linz, Austria and South Carolina, United States. Myra became a translator for the American government, married Arnold Davis and they live with their two children in Boca Raton, Florida.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1999 at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Born September 27, 1925 in Munich, Germany, HenryKahn was an only child in a wealthy Jewish family. His father was the major wholesaler of coal in Germany. His great-grandfather was a nobleman, with a title from Emperor Franz Joseph.

Henry describes his childhood memories of attendingpublic school until age eight. When ostracized by the gentile students, his parents sent him to a Jewish school, which was closed after Kristallnacht. His father was sent to Dachau but was released on the same day when he showed visa and steamship tickets to leave Germany. Henry describes their hurried exit and possessions that were confiscated by the Gestapo. The family sailed to the United States from London on January 26, 1939. They were sponsored by a prominent cousin in Philadelphia, Herman Obermayer, and were aided by HIAS.

In the 1960s, Henry’s father began to correspond with Albert Speer, the Nazi architect, and visited him at the German prison in Spandau. Henry also visited Speer, who became a successful writer and donated royalties to Israel and to Jewish old-age homes.