Oral History Interview with Harry Snyder

RachelaFrydmanwas born on November 26, 1914 in Zloczew, Poland (near Lodz). She came from a large observant Zionist family. Her father was a wood merchant. Rachela belonged to Shomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. One of her brothers was able to get to Palestine in 1928. Before 1930 Rachela had experienced antisemitism in the form of two pogroms and a robbery.

In the 1930s the family moved to Piotrkow, Poland, a mill town. By 1933 the Polish Jews who lived in Germany had been forced back into Poland. Rachela details how the PiotrkowGhetto was created and describes conditions there, overcrowding, starvation, laborbatallions.She describes treatment by the S.S. and many shootings. Rachela and her sister taught Jewish history and culture from their apartment until 1941. Rachela married while in the ghetto. Her husband was sent out for forced labor and did not return. Rachela recounts being terrorized by Ukrainian guards in the ghetto, witnessing murders and contracting typhus. Her mother and one sister died in the typhus epidemic. She was nursed by nuns in a hospital and one offered to hide her in their convent.

From 1942 - 1944 Rachela was in Skarzysko-Kamienna, a forced labor camp which was an ammunition factory. She describes her beatings by guards. In 1944, Rachela and many inmates were sent to Buchenwald’s sub-camp, Leipzig-Schoenfeld, in cattle cars. There Rachela along with 600 inmates lived in one large room.Rachela recounts their attempts to observe Jewish holidays by lighting candles with wicks made from stolen rope and saving crumbs for symbolizing matza.

In April 1945 they were marched toward Dresden. They were liberated at the River Elbe by the Soviet army. By then Rachela could no longer walk. She was hospitalized and later sent to a displaced person’s camp. There she met and married her second husband and gave birth to a daughter. They came to the United States on April 19, 1951. Rachela states that she’s alive because she willed herself to see the defeat of the Germans.

Charlotte Bing was born in 1918 in Bielsko (Bielitz), Poland, a textile town near the German border. Charlotte describes her town and explains that most of the 8,000 Jews were financially well off. She details her schooling at a Jewish school for four years and then at a German high school. She discusses pre-war antisemitism and also the good relations between the rabbi and the Catholic priest, but that the priest would not step in to say anything about his parishioners hurting Jews unless the rabbi requested it of him.

Charlotte recounts that in 1938 Polish Jews living in Germany—who were deported back to Poland—were helped by the Jews of Bielsko. She vividly recalls the blatant antisemitism exhibited by Polish citizens when Germans took over the city and the anti-Jewish measures that began. The SS rounded up all of the Jewish men. Jews were ordered to give up their money and gold. Jewish children could not go to school and Jewish stores were not permitted to operate. Her family fled to Wadowice thinking that the Germans would not come further into Poland, but were again forced to flee after six weeks. Charlotte describes the escape of her family and her fiancée to Krakow. After a year in Krakow, the entire Jewish community was deported to the Plaszow Ghetto. Charlotte describes in detail the creation of the ghetto, conditions, forced labor, scarcity of food, and the clandestine education of children. She describes how work at menial jobs was organized by Germans, assisted by selected members of the Jewish community.

At the end of 1942 Charlotte and her husband were transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp Charlotte describes their arrival (in sealed cars, no food/water, toilet). She witnessed atrocities (including the killing of a baby) upon their arrival. She details her work as translator and laying rail lines and an injury that never healed, as well as conditions in the camp. She also details frequent visits by Adolph Eichmann.

The Soviet army liberated the camp in July – August 1944 and the first Jewish community in Europe was formed nearby. Food and clothing came from the Russians and from Jews living in Palestine. Charlotte describes the immense difficulty faced by people who came to reclaim children taken in by Polish families and children searching for their parents. She details post-war threats by Poles (liberated Polish political prisoners known as ACOFTA), who targeted her husband. She describes their flight through Krakow and Czechoslovakia to Germany and recounts their very difficult time getting visas to emigrate to the United States. In October of 1945 they secured menial work on a U.S. Military transport plane as a means of coming to the United States, where they joined family in New York.