Oral History Interview with Fredy K. Seidel

Miro Auferber was interviewed in Haifa, Israel in Serbical Yiddish which his interviewer translated into English. He was born in Osijek, Croatia, November 22, 1913. His father was a manufacturer and his family was active in the Jewish community and belonged to Zionist organizations. Miro was taken to forced labor, his parents perished in Auschwitz, and his pregnant wife was killed by the Ustashi. He also served as a reserve officer in the Yugoslav army in April 1941, became a prisoner of war but managed to escape. Miro talks about his experiences, often in great detail, as a slave laborer and a prisoner, in Gospic harvesting crops, and in Jasenovac working at a steam power plant in 1941. He gives a detailed account of the detention camp were his group and Jews from Pag were imprisoned; both Jews and Serbs were brutalized and starved, as well as cruel treatment by Ustashi guards. No written records of prisoners were kept until 1942. He explains how a leather factory established by Sylvio Alkali, a Sarajevan, and Avraham Dimayo, a Jew from Belgrade, enabled the prisoners to survive. In 1942 the Ustashi liquidated thousands of Jews they brought to Jasenovac. In April 1945, the population of Jasenovac was liquidated and the buildings destroyed. Two hundred and fifty of the leather workers, including Miro, resisted, but all but eight were killed.. Miro joined the partisans, the Yugoslav People’s Army. He mentions his return to Osijek, subsequent arrest and release. Miro talks about his feelings of shame and guilt. He again details the atrocities the Ustashi committed against Serbs and Jews. Mr. Auferber emigrated to Israel in 1948.

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.

Dora Freilich, nee Golubowitz, was born December 25, 1926 in Pruzany, Poland, near Bialystok. She describes pre-war life: schooling, relations with non-Jewish Poles, Jewish community life and youth groups. She talks in great detail about the Russian occupation 1939-41, including expropriation of her family’s business. After the German invasion, her family had to move into the Pruzany Ghetto in June 1941. She describes living conditions, cultural activities, labor units, Judenrat, and contact with Jewish partisans in the ghetto. A non-Jewish ex-employee of her father hid her baby sister but later the family asked him to return the child. Dora describes the evacuation of the ghetto in January 1943, and her family’s transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She witnessed Mengele’s sadistic games with prisoners and was aware of medical experiments, which she describes in great detail. She details sadistic behavior by guards, including shooting her sister for sport. Conditions at Birkernau: slave labor, types of prisoners, orchestra, death process, and relations among inmates are described. She explains how older girls tried to help the younger ones and the coping strategies they used to survive. She describes the sabotage of a crematorium in October 1944 and the public hanging of four girls held responsible. She describes the escape, capture and execution of Mala Zimetbaum. In January 1945 she experienced the final days of the camp and described the death march to and conditions in Ravensbrück. After three months she went to Malchow. Dora and 11 girls escaped into the forest. They were liberated by Russian soldiers May 1945. She describes treatment by Russians, which ranged from kindness to brutality. The girls returned to Pruzany after a three month journey where Dora experienced both antisemitism and help from non-Jews. They went on to Lodz. Their attempt to go to Palestine with Aliyah Bet failed. Dora and her friend, Bess, married two brothers. In 1946 they went to Feldafing, a Displaced Persons camp. She emigrated to the United States in March, 1949. Dora talks about survivor’s guilt and how the Holocaust and the loss of her family still affects both her and her daughter. Her husband, Bernard, and her friend Bess were also interviewed by the Holocaust Oral History Archive staff.

Individual was a Captain in the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the United States Army during World War II. He entered Dachau Concentration Camp in April 1945, a few days after liberation, to interrogate Nazis who stayed behind because they wanted to be questioned by Americans not Russians. He was taken on a tour of Dachau and describes what he saw and heard, including accounts of atrocities inflicted on the prisoners, and what he learned during the interrogation, in gruesome detail. He mentions how the experience of seeing Dachau affected him and the other men in his unit. He reported to his commanding officer in Munich. He was assigned to a Displaced Persons camp at Coburg, Germany. He describes poor conditions at the camp, nightly searches, the treatment of survivors, and briefly mentions a riot at the camp in 1946. He explains why he feels that the displaced persons could have been treated more humanely and how these experiences affect him still.

This letter, dated March 3, 1989, is from Elie Wiesel, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, to Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson of Sweden. Wiesel expresses his gratitude for a past luncheon with the Carlssons in 1986. The primary purpose of the letter is to raise deep concern about "Radio Islam" broadcasting "vicious and violent anti-semitic propaganda" from Stockholm. Wiesel states that he and others are outraged and asks what can be done to stop this "hate offensive." The letter includes a reference to enclosures, specifically "Excerpts from 'Radio Islam'."