Oral History Interview with Gertrude Jacobs

Herbert Finder was born in Vienna on April 22, 1929 of a Polish father who was an Austrian citizen and a German mother. He mentions antisemitic acts experienced in school. He describes the Anschluss and his family’s flight to Breda, Belgium and Antwerp, where Herbert attended a Jewish school. They received American visas in April, 1940 but lack of funds and the German invasion trapped them. His father was sent to a camp near Toulouse, France. Herbert, his mother and his uncle fled to Southern France. Herbert lived with a Jewish farmer, who took in many refugees, for two years. His father joined them after his release, and they lived on a farm in Duvernay. His mother returned to Antwerp to salvage their visas, but was deported in September 1942. After the war, they learned she had been killed.

Herbert and his father remained on the farm until arrested as foreigners in August 1942 by French police. They were sent to a camp in Viviers, then to Drancy. On September 4, 1942 they were shipped east on the 28th convoy to work at Oberschlesienosten, near Katowice. Though underage, Herbert remained with his father at the labor camp of Tarnoviche (TarnoskyGura), which he describes. Internal affairs of the camp were run by Polish Jews who reported to the Germans.

In the spring of 1943, Herbert and other inmates were sent to Sosnowiec to work in Katowicz. In November 1943 they were shipped to Birkenau where they were tattooed, suffered brutal conditions and saw crematoria. They moved to Auschwitz for one night and then to the Warsaw Ghetto to clear rubble, until July 1944. He describes the ghetto, where non-Jewish German prisoners were in charge. Prisoners traded for food with Poles and a typhus epidemic killed many. He worked in a burial detail that burned corpses of victims shot in Paviak. In July 1944, as Russians approached, prisoners began a three-day forced march to Lodz, then went to Dachau in sealed cattle cars without food or water. While his father was recuperating from an injury, Herbert was sent to Allach, a camp where Jews and non-Jews built an underground factory. His father joined him after three weeks. In April 1945 prisoners were put on flat cars. After two days, German guards disappeared and prisoners were liberated by Americans on April 30th. In May 1945, Herbert and his father went to Antwerp via Stuttgart and France. He describes their survival strategies and faith in God. They came to the United States in December 1946, lived in New York City until 1950, and then settled in Vineland, NJ.

Rachel Hochhauser, née Swerdlin, was born July 2, 1928 in Krzywice, Poland. She was the only child of a religious family. Her grandfather was Rabbi and Shochet of the shtetl. Her grandmother and parents operated a general store. She describes religious education and a comfortable life, pre WWII, and friendly relations with Polish and Russian neighbors until September 3, 1939. She details restrictive occupations under Russians and subsequent persecution by Germans and local collaborators in summer of 1941. When her father was killed she went into hiding with her mother and other relatives after warnings from non-Jews, including the police Kommandant for whom she worked.

The family hid on several farms from April, 1942 until 1944. They were protected for 20 months by a Catholic farmer’s wife, Anna Kobinska, with whom Rachel continued to correspond after the war. When forced to move for the final time, they went into a partisan-occupied area. She describes the privations of living in a swamp during the winter of 1943-44. A log bunker built for them in the woods in exchange for 20 rubles of gold sheltered ten people until spring, 1944. The Russian Blitzkrieg and deserting Germans drove the group to return to their homes in Krzywice, where her family was welcomed home by neighbors. They adopted an orphan girl found in their house and moved westward to the DP camp at Foehrenwald. Rachel describes her education there in an ORT school. She immigrated to the United States in April, 1951.

Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

Malvina1 Herzfeld, born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1914 describes living in Tsobut, Danzig from 1924 to 1936; moving to Holland where she married Martin Sternfeld, a German lawyer, in December, 1937; the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; the establishment of Westerbork as a transit camp for German Jewish refugees who were supported by the Dutch Jewish community and the Jewish Council. Malvina explains that her husband was arrested by the SS during a roundup of Jewish men in 1941, sent to a camp in Holland and then to Mauthausen concentration camp. She received his death certificate September 1941.

Malvina worked for the Jewish Council. She was arrested and released. Malvina and other Jews were helped or hidden by a non-Jewish Dutch neighbor. Malvina agreed to work with the Dutch underground led by Walter Suskind. She describes how her group saved Jewish children, who had been taken from their parents, from the transports. While working as a courier to the Hague and Westerbork, she tried to rescue Jewish boys. She was arrested by the SS, put into solitary confinement, and tortured. She did not talk and was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where she encountered Hans Totman, a Jewish war criminal who worked for the Germans. She describes arrival, selection process, living and working conditions in Birkenau.

Because she spoke German, she was taken to work as a secretary for the Oberscharführer at Budy, together with another Jewish girl. They narrowly escaped being sent to the crematorium for stealing food.

In January 1945, Malvina was forced on a death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she stayed until April 1945 during a typhoid epidemic. She describes liberation by British troops, punishment of the guards, the hanging of the camp commanders, and post-liberation conditions. The British took survivors to a military camp until displaced persons camps were established. She worked for the British army as a translator and had a brief reunion with her brother who served in the British army.

Malvina could not get permission to join her brother in England. She was sent to Holland and quarantined. She stayed in Holland until 1947 and relates attempts to find out what happened to her family and her husband, and located friends from the underground. An interesting vignette details how she located the Jewish girl from Budy after the war. She emigrated to the United States in 1947.

Sylvia Ebner, née Klein, was born September 10, 1929, in Bodrogkisfalud, Hungary. She describes her education, relations with non-Jews, and learning to cope with children who stoned her on her way to school. After the German invasion in March 1944, persecution and anti-Jewish measures increased. Sylvia and her family were taken to the Satoraljaujhely Ghetto with Jews from several other towns. Their house was looted as soon as they walked out. She describes several incidents of extreme brutality by Germans.

She describes the transport to Auschwitz in cattle cars and their dehumanization. Her parents managed to observe Shabbat and her father tried to prepare Sylvia to cope with what she had to face. Sylvia describes their arrival at Auschwitz May 1944, processing and selections by Dr. Mengele. Many, including her mother and other relatives, were loaded on trucks and gassed immediately.

Sylvia was marched to Birkenau. She describes the horrible conditions, the smell from the crematorium and how they tried to survive. She worked as a slave laborer in Brzézinka also known as “Canada”, sorting belongings taken from Jews. She risked her life to smuggle food to her cousin. The starving girls were offered food on fast days such as Tisha B’ Av but refused to eat because the food was not kosher.

Sylvia got Scarlet Fever and was hospitalized in a Revier (sick quarters) for six weeks. She survived seven selections by Dr. Mengele, saw him operate without any anesthesia, and a Christian woman kill her newborn baby to save him from Mengele’s experiments. Germans drained large amounts of blood from girls who survived typhus or scarlet fever to make serums. After Sylvia recovered, she worked as a slave laborer. First at heavy-duty unproductive work while living in the barracks, then in a factory in Oberhohen-Elbe, Sudeten, Germany. The German woman in charge risked her life to find food for the prisoners. She was liberated by Russian troops May 1, 1945, returned to Hungary, received aid from the Joint Distribution Committee (Joint); escaped from Hungary and immigrated to Canada.

Interviewee: EBNER, Sylvia Date: February 14, 2001

Sidney H. Willig was born in New York City on July 2, 1919 into an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended public school and trained as a soccer player and boxer. He refers to antisemitism in America in the 1920s and 1930s: employment, his rejection from the Navy, and incidents in the Air Force.

As a navigator in the Air Force during World War II, he was shot down over the Netherlands. He describes in detail aid provided to him as an American officer by Dutch families and the Dutch underground. He also shares details about a Dutch Jew who was being hidden by a Dutch family whom he met, from November 1944 to April 1945. He reflects on his decision to continue to wear his dog tags, which displayed the Ten Commandments, until his liberation. He ponders the vast network of Nazi influence, because on his return to New York, the Vichy consular officer in Washington, D.C. requested from him the names of those who had helped him in Holland. Upon his return to New York he continued his college studies at St. John’s and then studied law on the advice of his valued teacher John Dandro. He reflects on the reasons Jews have survived over the centuries.

Ida Firestone, née Hoffman, born February 19, 1929, in Pont-a-Moussou, France, attended public schools and studied music privately, aspiring to be a concert pianist. In 1942, her father was falsely accused of being a Communist and was sent to Drancy concentration camp. He was later released.

In March, 1944, Ida and her family went into hiding. They were sheltered by a teacher, a grocer, a baker, a prostitute and several farmers. Separated from her family, she posed as an orphan, working for a farmer’s wife who treated her cruelly.

Ida hid in forests and in a barn, sleeping with animals and stealing food to survive. Before liberation by the Americans in December, 1944, she found protection on the Gouy family farm. She had lost 25 pounds and suffered with stomach problems which persisted throughout her life.

Reunited with her family in 1945, Ida resumed her music studies and graduated from a conservatory. In 1948, she and her family emigrated to the United States, settling in Philadelphia, where she married Herman Firestone in 1949. She became a piano teacher and a Holocaust speaker in schools and synagogues.

YadVashem has recognized as Righteous Among the Nations Victor and CecilleHergott, Germaine Bour, Lucien Louyot, Emile and GenvièveThouvenin and Victor and Marie (Friboug) Guoy, who protected Ida and her family members.

Poetry and a letter to her mother written by Ida during her wartime wandering is included in this interview.