Oral History Interview with Gabriela Truly

Aaron Stolzman was born in Dobrzyn, Poland December 28, 1925. His father was a grocer. He was also an officer in the Polish army. He was killed fighting the Germans. Aaron briefly talks about his life before 1939. The local Jewish community and his family took in Polish Jews who were expelled from Germany in 1938. He describes effects of German occupation. In 1939, evicted by their German neighbors whose life they saved before the war, they fled to the Mlawa Ghetto where they stayed for about six months. After witnessing German atrocities, Aaron joined an underground organization in the ghetto. With false papers and a new identity he left the ghetto to work for a Polish farmer and then for the German army, posing as a Pole. He connected with a resistance group that lived in underground bunkers in the forest. In September 1942, Germans destroyed their bunkers. Aaron was taken to Auschwitz where he stayed until 1945.

He describes how he and 200 young boys actually built Auschwitz. He also worked on several other Kommandos building ammunition factories and underground transformers. He describes living and working conditions in Auschwitz where most prisoners only survived a week or two. They knew about the gas chambers and crematoria. He vividly describes his escape attempt with the help of a Polish civilian and the terrible punishment the Germans inflicted on him, as well as why escape was impossible. He was put into Block 11 - which few prisoners survived -where he was tortured and interrogated.

In 1945 he went on a death march from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen with prisoners from Buna and Birkenau. He was sent to Dachau by freight train under horrible conditions. The 50% of men who survived the trip were put into a barracks with prisoners who had typhoid. He worked on a Kommando at Mildorf building underground hangars for the German airforce. Aaron explains how he learned to survive. The camp was evacuated by train and after the war ended the Germans tried to murder the prisoners. A Wehrmacht soldier, under direct orders from Heinrich Himmler to shoot them all, stalled the train until the American army arrived. Greek Jews took revenge on the German guards. Aaron describes liberation by the American 3rd Army, its effect on Jewish soldiers, the establishment of Feldafing Displaced Persons camp under orders by General Eisenhower, and post liberation conditions. He mentions attempts by the Polish government to persuade Polish Jews to return. Aaron came to the United States on December 20, 1947 to join his uncle because he had no other family left.

Interviewee: STOLZMAN, Aaron Date: April 21, 1985

Peter Cziffra was born in Berlin, Germany on October 6, 1930. Peter shares his childhood memories of the war years and living in Shanghai. His Hungarian Christian father and Jewish mother divorced when he was very young. When he was six years old he was sent to live with his grandmother in Buxton, England. His mother and the Jewish owner of a large German shoe factory were married in the United States in 1937. After the couple returned to Germany his step-father was held in jail until he agreed to sell the factory. In 1940 Peter’s mother and step-father left Germany. In order to join them, Peter, at the age of nine, flew to Paris alone, then accompanied by a Cooks Travel agent, crossed Switzerland by rail on the Sultan Express and joined them in Milan, Italy. Together they sailed from Trieste on the Conte Rosso. It was the next to last steamer to leave Trieste for Shanghai until the war ended.

The family lived first in the French Connection district. They were forced to move to the Hongkew Ghetto after Pearl Harbor. After the Americans entered the city, they were able to relocate. Peter was able to attend school throughout the family’s stay in Shanghai. Although he witnessed first hand the bombing and destruction of the city, Peter stated that he remained physically and emotionally unharmed.

In 1946 Peter came alone to San Francisco. His parents were unable to leave Shanghai until 1949, due to his step-father’s illness.

Jeanette Rothschild2, née Fernbacher, born on September 13, 1898 in Grossmannsdorf, Germany, discusses her very happy early childhood and schooling at a convent in Straubing, Germany and how she and the other two Jewish girls were never treated badly for being Jewish by either teachers or students. She also describes two close friendships with non-Jewish girls. Her father was a successful cattle dealer. She discusses her extended family in nearby towns. She relates her experience during World War I and living in Berlin, Germany once she was married. Mrs. Rothschild compares the lack of antisemitism in Berlin in the 1920s with a trip back to Straubing in 1924 when she felt that her so called non-Jewish friends weren’t so friendly to her on that visit. She describes that she did start to feel antisemitism in Berlin by 1933, with the rise of the Nazi party.

Mrs. Rothschild details her experience during Kristallnacht, the destruction of their store, finding out about the synagogue burning, the Nazis taking her husband to Oranienburg for a month. She describes her trip to the Gestapo to secure her husband’s release and how he was deeply changed by his experience. They decided to leave immediately and she describes the huge lines of Jews at the consul trying to leave Germany and describes not being allowed to take money with them. They were able to go to England because a cousin in England secured a permit for them, but upon arrival her husband was placed in an enemy alien camp at Lynnefield. Mrs. Rothschild describes that it was a stadium of some sort and describes how she used her experience to make frequent visits and finally procure his release when she told the guard it was her birthday. They eventually settled in the United States3.

David Buchsbaum was born in Gorlice, Poland on April 20, 1921 to a religious family. He was one of 11 children.. He gives a brief description of pre-war Gorliceand the Jewish community which was 25% of the population, about 3,500 Jews. David’s family owned a grocery store.

David describes the mood change among non-Jewish neighbors in 1938 after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and describes how they would stand in front of Jewish stores and businesses announcing, "Do not buy from Jews".

In 1939 once the Nazis occupied Gorlice the family was warned by a non-Jewish neighbor to flee, but the family could not afford the certificate to emigrate to Palestine. David details the anti-Jewish measures 1940: Jews had to wear the Yellow star, Jewish businesses were confiscated, synagogues were closed, Jewish" quarters" were created and David’s father was shot to death by a German soldier right before his eyes. David also witnessed the machine gun shooting of entire Jewish families.

In July, 1942 all males from 12-65 were arrested and marched in the streets; some were shot and David, a brother and others were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. David describes the horrific conditions there: cold, typhus, appells, beatings and the electrified fence. In 1943, as the Russians advanced David and 1,000 other Jews were sent in boxcars to the slave labor camp, Skarzysko. Those who were left behind were either shot in the woods or were gassed in vans and burned. In Skarzysko they made ammunition and David was in in the harshest area, Barrack C. In 1944 David was sent to Buchenwald where all his personal possessions were confiscated, including his tallit and tefillin, which distressed his greatly because he had tried to observe tradition as best he could. As the Russians advanced he was sent to Terezin(Theresienstadt) and was liberated from there on May 8, 1945. David describes that many survivors from Terezin died from overconsumption of food immediately after liberation.

David later returned to Poland to find his relatives but left because of fierce antisemitism and the Kielce pogrom. He traveled to Prague, and was then sent to Salzburg, Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint arranged for him to join an uncle in the United States. On June 2, 1949 David arrived in Boston. He and two brothers survived the war.

Elsa Turteltaub, nee Waldner, was born October 24, 1916 in Teschen (Cieszyn), Poland. She and her brother and sister attended private Catholic schools, although her parents kept a kosher home and attended a conservative synagogue on holidays. Elsa completed a commercial high school course and was active in HanoarHatzioni. After the German invasion in September 1939, her parents lost their restaurant and Elsa and her sister were forced to clean German army barracks. In December 1939, she escaped to Slovakia, where she joined a hakhshara in Zilina. She was sent to Auschwitz in March, 1942 in one of the first Slovakian transports and was forced into hard labor in the sand pits, despite being ill with typhus. When transferred to the registry office, she issued death certificates requested by relatives of Auschwitz inmates, both Jewish and Gentile. By 1943, only Gentiles’ requests were answered as Jews were no longer registered. The causes of death given were fiction, created by the office staff. If ashes of the deceased were requested, staff filled sacks with any ashes found in the crematorium. Living conditions for those girls, living in a building with SS women, were much better than elsewhere.

In January, 1942, Elsa was evacuated to Ravensbrück, then to Malchow, and finally to Trewitz in East Germany. She was liberated by Russians on May 3, 1945, was married in 1946, and gave birth to a son in 1948 in Katowitz, Poland. She and her family lived in Israel from 1950 to 1955 and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Her story is included in Secretaries of Death, ed. and translated by Lore Shelley, New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1986.

Interviewee: TURTELTAUB, Elsa Waldner Date: July 14, 1987

Philip G. Solomon served in the United States Army, in the 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized, which liberated the Landsberg concentration camp on April 28, 1945. He describes his unit’s arrival in Germany in February/March 1945, emphasizing their military mission and their lack of knowledge of concentration camps or the scale of mass murder. His first indication of Nazi horrors occurred after crossing the Rhine, heading east, when his unit captured small towns, liberating displaced persons from forced labor camps (mostly Eastern Europeans). His second indication came when liberating several prisoner of war camps. He details the ominous experience of finding sealed railroad cars on a siding filled with dead concentration camp victims. On April 28, 1945, his unit stopped near the city Landsberg, waiting for a bridge to be repaired and unaware of the camp 1000 yards away. A shift in the wind eventually alerted them to the smell, and sight of smoke from the camp where retreating S.S. had just massacred the inmates. The unit found about 20 starving and ill survivors. He details the conditions of the camp and his feelings upon seeing the massive piles of bodies, hangings and other atrocities. The unit had no food or medical supplies and could only radio for help. They were commanded to leave Landsberg after 20 minutes in order to seize and hold a causeway near Munich.

He describes in detail the reactions of prisoners to liberation, the response of the young soldiers to the dual experience of witnessing the atrocities in the midst of war, and his own complex and gradually evolving psychological reaction to this experience. He stresses his concern about ongoing genocides since World War II. And he affirms his faith and pride in his Jewish heritage.