Oral History Interview with Frieda Appel

Lili Altschuler was born September 30, 1928 in Lodz, Poland to a well-to-do, non-observant Jewish family. Before the war she was educated in a private Jewish school. Lili describes the change in atmosphere in 1937-38, the prohibition against kosher slaughter and the Polish Jewish citizens being expelled from Germany and forced to return to Poland (‘38).

In 1939, just before the Lodz Ghetto was formed, Lili and her parents fled to relatives in a suburb of Kielce, called Opatow. She describes the hardships and restrictions that ensued and describes and encounter with Volksdeutsche in which she was injured. Her father, fearing the reality of the deathcamps, bought their way into the slave labor camp Skarazysko Kamienna, run by HASAG. They worked in a munitions factory. She describes the scant daily rations, the lack of medical treatment, and the cruelty of Ukrainian guards and also Jewish Kapos’ cruel behavior. She also describes some resistance in the camps: the formation of small singing and reading groups.

In the summer of 1944, she and her parents were deported to a munitions factory in Czestochowa. She describes slightly better conditions there. On January 16, 1945 the Germans attempted to deport everyone to a location farther away from the Soviets. After the men were sent off in trains, the Germans fled, leaving the women on the train platform. They were liberated by the Soviets that night. She and her mother stayed for a time in Czestochowa, then returned to Opatow, then Lodz to look for surviving family members.

Her grandparents perished in the Lodz Ghetto. Her father was sent to Buchenwald and later liberated by the Americans in May 1945. They were reunited in Lodz and later went to Stuttgart, Germany through Czechoslovakia with the help of the Zionist group, Brihah1 and UNRRA. They came to the United States via a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart in 1948.

Morris Steiman was born August 5, 1918 in Bodzanow, a small town near Warsaw. Morris attended cheder and yeshiva and was a member ofAgudah, a religious Zionist youth group. He experienced pre-war antisemitism because of his appearance as a religious Jewish boy, in his hometown and in Warsaw, where he worked as a tailor’s apprentice.

In November, 1939, he fled the German occupation and went east to the Russian-occupied area of Poland. In March 1940, homesick and concerned about his parents, he returned to Poland—first Warsaw and then made his way back to his hometown— where he worked as a tailor for the Germans until March 1941. He discusses being very aware as an older teenager about what exactly was going on and actively looking for ways to escape and emigrate. He gives a detailed description of the evacuation of Jews from Bodzanow, during which he and his father was severely beaten on the head. He describes the Germans indiscriminately beating everyone they could as they chased them into the trucks. They were taken to a camp in Dzialdowo for a few days, near the German border, with little food and no toilets or water. They were thendeported to the Czestochowa Ghetto, where he was cared for by Rose Tannenbaum. Morris’ parents fled to Warsaw to be with his sister and died of natural causes soon after.

Morris and Rose married and survived the war years together, doing forced labor at HasagPelzery, in metal and ammunition factories in nearby Rakow. Morris describes one Wehrmacht commander who treated them humanely and also assisted several Jews in escaping the ghetto and retrieving money left behind in the ghetto. They were liberated by the Russians in January 1945 and stayed in Czestochowa for almost a year. He secured work as a tailor. He describes returning to his hometown after the war and digging up a kiddish cup and candlesticks that his brother had buried. He and his wife moved to Lampertheim, a displaced persons camp in the American zone of Germany, until emigrating to the United States in March 1947 where he had a sister.

Jadwiga3Zoszak, nee Greifinger, was born in 1906 in Sambor, Poland (Galicia). Before WWII, Giza lived in Katowice, Poland with her non-Jewish husband Adam Zoszak. Although Adam was a lawyer and judge, he was forced to become a day laborer after the Russians took over in 1939. Because she had once officially registered as a Jew, Giza was unable to apply for another identification card.

Giza describes the fate of her family members from the town of Boryslaw. Most perished in various concentration camps or at the hands of the Gestapo. One brother Herman was forced to play in the orchestra in Auschwitz. Giza, who spoke fluent Polish, survived by passing as Polish. Giza describesthe difficult and dangerous living conditions and how she and her young niece lived in constant fear of being discovered. During her time in a small town, StaraSól, she and her niece lived in isolation for fear of discovery of her true identity. She slept with an axe to protect herself from Ukrainians who attacked Poles.In addition to her husband’s help, she was aided by a priest and a Polish teacher from Warsaw.

Adam aided Giza and her family, and moved in and out of the local ghetto, where he secretly fed and sheltered nine Jews in a basement in Boryslawfrom May 1943 until August 1944. These Jews gave testimony after the war, and Adam was recognized by YadVashem as Righteous Among the Nations. After the war, Giza and Adam divorced.

In 1957, Giza and her niece settled in Israel. In 1960, Giza married Dr. Israel Sternberg, who had been a physician in Krakow. During the war he was a medic in Auschwitz concentration camp where he

secretly

administered penicillin to German officers to treat syphilis. While on a death march, one of these officers recognized him and saved

his life

. Giza lived in Tel Aviv and of her large family of eight siblings only three survived the war.

Lisa Tyre was born February 1, 1929 in Vienna, Austria into an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, an attorney, served in the Austrian army in World War I. The family experienced no antisemitism until March 1938. Lisa describes the escalating effects of anti-Jewish measures and activities on her parents and herself and witnessed two instances of brutality against Jews. In the summer of 1938 her father was interrogated and beaten by the GESTAPO. A client, who was a Nazi officer, arranged for his safe return and also helped the family to obtain exit visas. The family left for England in September 1938 – helped by the Sassoon family – and moved to Christ Church, New Zealand six months later. The family went to the United States in November 1946, under the Czech quota and stayed for two weeks in the Congress House a shelter for refugees run by the American Jewish Congress. Lisa describes the difficult emigration process, and her family’s life and adjustment problems in England, New Zealand and the United States. Lisa attributes her rejection of Judaism and her distrust of organized religion to some of her experiences in New Zealand and the Congress House, and her bitterness to the loss of over 50 relatives during the Holocaust.

Interviewee: Tyre, Lisa Glaser Date: February 24, 1981

Hardy W. Kupferberg, nee Wiersh, was born on September 15, 1922 in Berlin, Germany to a religious family. Her mother died when she was three years old. Her father remarried when she was seven. Her father, a decorated WWI veteran, owned a lamp factory and was active in synagogue and community life.Hardy’s relationships with non-Jews was positive until 1931 when she experienced antisemitism both in school and during several hospitalizations. She describes increasing antisemitism with the Nuremberg laws --the Aryanization of her father’s business, Jews forbidden from public parksand required to bring their pets to be killed.No longer permitted in the public school, she describes the positive atmosphere ofher Jewish school. She was taught by Rabbiner Doctor Regina Jonas, whom she loved and who is known to be the first woman rabbi. She relates that the school included Mischlingerwho very often sided with the anti-Semites.

Hardydetails the horrors and emotional toll of Kristallnacht. She saw a group of Hitler Youth throwing stones through the broken windows of the burnt synagogue. She shares a story that she buried inside for 30 years -- when one of the stones rolled near her in her hiding place, she picked it up and threw it at one of the boys. It hit his head and he fell. In the commotion she left the scene and walked home.

The morning of Kristallnacht, the family apartment was ransacked. In 1939 she and her parents were compelled to do forced labor. For a small salary, she worked outdoors in a tree nursery under horrible conditions and described that the girls’ arms would bleed daily. She was granted a transfer to a plane factory making cables. In 1941 Hardy witnessed the shooting of her little cousins during a deportation. She also saw zoo personnel desecrating the synagogue by bringing elephants from the Berlin zoo into it. Hardy describes the deportation of her grandmother to Riga. They never heard from her again.

In February 1943, Hardy’s parents were taken from their place of work by Viennese Gestapo who arrested 10,000 Berlin Jews. Because they were taken from work, they did not have their knapsacks, in which they had packed some necessities including poison. When Hardy went to Gestapo headquarters with the knapsacks to find her parents,an official pointed

out a window toward a group of vans from which dead bodies were being pulled and told her that was where her parents were. She learned later that they were murdered in Auschwitz.

Hardy went into hiding for a year and a half, helped by several non-Jews. Some asked to be paid and a friend of her father’s provided money. Hardy was caught by a Jewish woman and deported to Ravensbrück in March 1944. She details some experiences, including witnessing an atrocity against a child and her job clearing the dead from the barracks in the morning. At Hardy’s request, the focus of this oral history is mainly the years in Berlin and not on her concentration camp experience as she felt that her camp experience was not unique to her.

She was liberated by the Soviets and repatriated to Berlin, where she met her husband Kurt Kupferberg in March 1946. They arrived in the United States August 20, 1947.1

See also her second 1983 interview and also her husband’s 1981 interview.

Henry (formerly Hans Arnold) Froehlich was born in August 7, 1922 in Rottweil, Germany. In 1935, the Nazi boycott forced his father to close his shoe store, Henry had to leave school, and the family moved to Stuttgart. Henry describes how the family’s life changed. He talks about Kristallnacht, his efforts to warn Jews to flee and how he avoided arrest. His father was arrested, sent to Dachau, and was killed there one month later. The family had to pay 500 Marks to claim his body.

Henry worked for the Oberrat (the Jewish community office in Stuttgart that processed immigration) for two years. He describes his activities and contacts with the American Consulate, Gestapo and S.D. (Sicherheitsdienst German Security Service).

In 1940, Henry, his younger brother and their mother emigrated separately to the United States. An older brother, crippled since birth, had been placed in a Catholic Home for crippled children and there is some evidence he was killed in a Nazi euthanasia program. In the United States, Henry worked in a CCC program in Berlin, New Hampshire until he was suspected of being a German spy. He was reunited with his family in Philadelphia, where he married, had two children, and became a successful businessman.