Oral History Interview with Genia Klapholz

Leo Awin was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1919 into a traditional Jewish home. His parents were born in parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that later became Romania and Poland. He grew up in the jewelry trade. After Kristallnacht, he helped at the Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, processing emigration papers for Jews. The family emigrated to Shanghai, going to Genoa, Italy by train then to Shanghai via the Suez Canal on the SS Victoria in May 1939.

The American Joint Distribution Com‌mittee helped the Awins and other Jewish refugees to settle in the Hongkew District of Shanghai. He describes Shanghai under Japanese occupation, including cultural life and relations among Jewish refugees of different nationalities in the International Settlement. He found work as a jeweler, first with Jewish immigrants and later worked clandestinely for a German jeweler. Polish refugees arrived by Trans-Siberian Railroad via Japan in 1942 or 1943. He married in 1947. At the end of the war Canada passed a special bill to admit Jewish refugees with Austrian passports as craftsmen. The Awins left Shanghai when 400 families, about 600-700 people, left in 1949 in four transport planes sent especially for them from Tokyo by the U.S. Air Force due to a special request by the Joint Distribution Committee. They left on short notice as the Communist forces closed in on the Shanghai airport. The remaining refugees left Shanghai during the next six months. He describes the cruelty of the Japanese towards the Chinese population and the comparatively easy treatment of Westerners by their soldiers. His transport arrived in Canada via Tokyo, and the Awin family settled permanently in Canada.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1991 at the Hilton Hotel in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Judith Leifer, nee Loeb, was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1932. Her father was a textiles salesmen. She shares her childhood memories of life in pre-war Bratislava. She describes a large Jewish community, Zionist organizations, relations between Jews and Gentiles, her Orthodox upbringing and attending a Hebrew Zionist Kindergarten. When the Nazis came to power, her family, together with all Jews, moved into the Jewish ghetto. Her extended family found shelter in her great-uncle’s house. She describes life under Nazi occupation: no connection with the outside world, schools closings, children were unsupervised, and they lived in constant fear of being deported to concentration camps.

Judith’s father’s international business connections and her uncle’s position as head of the Jewish Community in Slovakia was the reason this family was able to survive. Judith gives a detailed account of the extremely perilous and complicated escape she and her family managed separately fromBratislava—with the help of Jewish friends—and the subsequent journey to Palestine.While waiting in Budapest for her parents and sibling to arrive, Judith was placed in a Budapest refugee camp. She describes her family’s flight from Budapest on the last transport to Turkeypermitted by Germans, arranged and financed by the Joint Distribution Committee. She details their arrival in Istanbul and assistance from the Jewish Agency. They entered Palestine on March 17, 1944with immigration certificates for Palestine secured by her uncle and moved in with cousins in Haifa.

Judith eventually moved to the U.S. and had two children1. Most of her extended family perished during the Holocaust. She tells a touching story about her grandmother, Emma Beck, who survived Theresienstadt and made a new life for herself.Judith talks at length about how refugees and displaced persons were helped by the Jewish and American Joint and H.I.A.S after the war.

Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library include:

Judith’s grandmother’s memoir: journal written in German byEmma Benedict Beck (1876-1973), after her release from Theresienstadt during her later years in the U.S. Donated by granddaughter Judith Leifer.

Photocopy of handwritten memoir of Emma Beckfrom 1938-1945. First pages translated by Lotte Marcus into English. Donated by granddaughter Judith Leifer.

“Vordalung” original for Emma Beck from Theresienstadt, Original bank receipt from Theresienstadt, 17 June 1943. Donated by Judith Leifer, Annenberg Research Institute.

Writing to her aunt Rebecca, Miriam inquires about family and friends and comments on Charles Dickens's tour in the US. She also recommends a new book and describes Purim celebrations in Savannah.

Sonja Samson was born in Aurich, Germany in 1931, into an assimilated but observant Jewish family. In 1936 she lived with her grandparents in Luxembourg until she joined her parents who had moved to France earlier. She talks about her family history and her childhood, and speculates about her parents’ reasons for staying in France instead of emigrating to the United States. Her father volunteered for the French army but was interned in 1939.

Sonja and her parents were in Gurs briefly, then lived in Garlin, a village near Gurs until August 26, 1942 when they were rounded up by French police, sent to Gurs and then transported to Rivesaltes in September, 1942. Her parents were deported and her mother managed to keep Sonja from going on this transport with the help of Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE). She never saw her parents again and still profoundly resents this separation. She briefly describes conditions in the two camps and her life and schooling in the villages of Garlin and Gurs, including pressure on a teacher to rescind an honor Sonja had earned.

Sonja stayed in a convent and then an orphanage at Palavas-les-Flots with other Jewish children, under the auspices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) and OSE, then with distant relatives who were in hiding, later in a boarding school in Chambéry, constantly on guard. She mentions a failed attempt to cross the border into Switzerland.

Later Sonja worked as a maid at an inn that was a substation of the ArmeéSecréte (the French underground). She invented a new identity for herself as a non-Jewish war orphan, and participated in Catholic rites to avoid discovery. After she earned their trust, Sonja became a messenger. She relates how her presence of mind foiled a plot by the so-called “Butcher of Grenoble” to blow up the Underground headquarters just after liberation in August 1944. Sonja describes post-war life at the Chambéry boarding school, with her cousins, as well as her search for her parents, and was an active member of Hashomer Hatzair in Paris. She describes how she learned what she needed to do to survive, how the loss of her parents affects her to this day, and how her outlook about religion, Jewishness, and Zionism changed as she matured.

Sonja went to the United States from Sweden on the Gripsholm as a war-orphan in 1947, instead of making aliyah with her friends. She talks about the difficult adjustment to life in the United States, how she managed to get the higher education she wanted, and post-war trips to Israel in great detail.

Interviewee: SAMSON, Sonja Date: June 3, 1985

Tibor Baranski, honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by YadVashem, was born June 11, 1922 in Budapest, Hungary. He was educated in Hungarian Gymnasia and aware of rising antisemitism by 1938. He studied for the priesthood in Vesprem in 1940 and in Kassa (Kosice) in 1943. He learned of Nazi extermination plans through church channels. He returned to Budapest October 20, 1944 as the Russian army drew near.

Mr. Baranski provides a very detailed and extensive description of several rescues of Jews, from October to December, 1944, at the request of Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio, who acted as a representative of the Vatican under orders of Pope Pius XII. He rescued Jews from a transit camp to safe houses in Budapest. He worked with representatives from neutral nations and the Red Cross to stop deportations from Hegyeshalom, using protective letters (Schutzpasse), and safe houses to shelter almost 6000 Jews. He was almost executed several times. He provides details of efforts to hide Jews by Christian groups and individuals. He credits Elizabeth Kemeny, Raoul Wallenberg, Prince Esterhazy, Father Hummel and a number of priests and nuns who helped in the rescue. He talks about his encounter with Wallenberg and why he was arrested by the Russians.

Mr. Baranski was arrested by the Russians December 30, 1944 and sent on a deathmarch from Budapest to Szekszarv. Saved by a Russian soldier, he returned to Budapest. He worked with an underground movement opposed to communist rule and was arrested by the Russians again November 1948. He describes postwar life in Hungary under communist rule.

He discusses Hungarian-German relations, Miklo Horthy’s attitude towards Jews and Nazis, German occupation of Hungary, and the role of the Vatican in great detail based on his contacts. He entered the United States in 1961 and became a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Note: Audiotaped interviews of Per Anger and Elizabeth Kemeny Fuchs (referred to by Tibor Baranski) are at the Holocaust Oral History Archive and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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.