Oral History Interview with Hanna Marx

Jean Spitzer was born in Vienna on September 24, 1919 but the family immediately moved to Zagreb, Yugoslavia where her family roots were. Her father was an insurance agent and her mother owned a well-known store. Jean describes attending the Lyzeum, an all girls’ high school along with her sister and describes a pleasant, peaceful life, no overt antisemitism, being members of a synagogue, and vacationing at the Adriatic Sea. She then contrasts the changes under thepro-German Ustaše Fascists who registered the Jews, took their valuables, forced them to move to a certain part of town and sent young people to labor camps who were never heard from again. She describes how the provincial Jews were forcibly moved to the Zagreb fairgrounds and that she and her family took food to their extended family members who were held there.

Jean procured false papers andattempted fleeing with her husband, sister and brother-in-law through Adriatic coastal towns to Fiume, Italy to hide. They were caught and sent to a prison, but very soon were released and sent back across the border to Croatia where they were left unmolested in Bakaratz [Bakar] and then Crikvenica, seaside coastal towns, where they lived for a time. After the Italian occupation of Croatia (1941), they were forcibly moved with a group of 1200 Jews to a detention camps in Kraljevica (Porto Re) and then later to Rab. She briefly discusses that though there was a scarcity of food and they were forced in barracks separated by gender, the Italians treated them humanely and that the camp was cleaned up from the typhoid and dysentery before they were brought there. She relates that in September 1943, the Italians simply released all the prisoners back to Croatia. At that time Jean, her husband, sister and brother-in-lawdecided to flee Croatia because of the presence of Nazi soldiers and smuggled themselves back to Yugoslavia via a fisherman.

Jean and her husband survived in a section of Yugoslav territory that partisans had liberated and managed to escape to Bari, Italy (in 1945) by boat as Austrians. Jean worked in a British officers’ mess, then in Naples and for the British WRENS in Sorrento and Venice. She assisted the foreign-born wives of British personnel with their paper work. One cousin, a Yugoslav Jewish officer, was helped by a German doctor. She describes Bulgarians violently persecuting the Sephardic Jews in Macedonia while claiming to have rescued their own Jews. Jean emigrated to the United States in November 1947.

Samuel Sherron was born March 27, 1932 in Skuodas, Lithuania but lived in Schweksna. His father was a merchant. Samuel was educated in both public school and cheder. He lived under Russian occupation from 1940 until the German invasion. He describes the roundup and torture of local Jews by SS troops and Lithuanians. He cites eyewitness accounts of the murder of all remaining Jews, mostly women and children.

Samuel and his father were taken to a labor camp in Heydekrug near Memel, Germany in 1941. He experienced beatings, atrocities and frequent selections. Those selected were shot. In 1943, when he was only 11 years old, they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He describes surviving the initial selection and how inmates built tracks so transports could go directly to the crematoria. He details conditions at Auschwitz, the Appels, the constant hunger, and an encounter with Dr. Mengele. He witnessed sadism and torture. Lithuanian and Ukrainian guards killed Jewish prisoners for sport.

With 5000 non-Polish Jewish volunteers they were sent to Pawiak prison to build barracks and crematoria in what had been the Warsaw Ghetto, as transports of Hungarian and Czech Jews arrived. In the summer of 1944, most of the prisoners from “Camp Warsaw “ were evacuated on a death march to Kovno, then by cattle train to Dachau, with a group of Greek Jews. He mentions eyewitness accounts of mass murders of Jews by Einsatzgruppen under Operation Barbarossa. He went to a labor camp in Mühldorf, Germany to do construction work for the Luftwaffe. In April 1945, the prisoners were put on cattle trains guarded by SS. Intervention by the mayor of Pocking, Bavaria (because American troops were near) kept the Luftwaffe from killing them. Samuel and his father were liberated by America troops in Seeshaupt on April 28, 1945. They were transferred to Munich after some medical treatment.

Interviewee: SHERRON, Samuel Date: December 11, 1983