Oral History Interview with Henry Skorr

Anneliese Nossbaum, née Winterburg, was born in Guben, Germany on January 8, 1929. She and her parents relocated to Bonn, Germany. Anneliese describes societal changes in 1933 as signs excluding Jews from shops and parks began to appear. With other Jewish children, she attended a special school. After Kristallnacht, November 10,1938, the family attempted to emigrate; however, the borders closed before they could escape. Trapped in Germany, in 1941, they surrendered their home and were relocated to a two-room apartment in a former cloister. Anneliese describes the deteriorating conditions for Jews: Jews had to wear yellow stars, were required to walk in the streets, could not attend schools, and had no freedom of movement.

Eventually, the family was deported to Theresienstadt.There, mother and daughter were housed together for a short while before Anneliese was sent to a youth home. Anneliese describes the 1944 visit by the International Red Cross as a total farce and gives details of cover-up. Once the inspection ended, the transports to Auschwitz resumed. Anneliese, her parents and an aunt and uncle traveled for three days to reach Auschwitz.Her father died in Kaufering/Dachau in December 1944.

Although she and her mother remained in Auschwitz for only five days, she believes those days stripped away any semblance of childhood that remained. She gives a detailed description of arrival, selection, showers and the barracks. While at Auschwitz she experienced depravation, humiliation, hunger, beatings and fear she would be killed as she listened to the deaths of others. After five days, she and her mother were sent to an airplane factory in Saxony, near Dresden. She describes the improved living conditions compared with Auschwitz, the 10 hour working day, and the bombing of the factory which lead the inmates to despair since they had time to reflect on the horrible conditions.She describes a horrific three week journey in open air cattle carsand closed cars to Mauthausenin Austria. On May 2, 1945, with the Allies close by the women nearly missed death when they were returned to their barracks rather than gassed because of a lack of Zyklon B gas. Two days later, guards dressed in civilian clothing and fled. On May 5, the camp surrendered to the Americans. Eventually, the Russians took over. Her mother was being treated for tuberculosis, but faked an attack of appendicitis in order to be transferred to a hospital in Linz under the control of the Americans. Her mother died there of TB. Anneliese emigrated to the United States in the summer of 1946.

Collateral Material associated with this interviewee:

Transcript includes poetry in German and English on additional pages.

There are also copies of personal documents, including passports available through the Gratz CollegeTuttleman Library.

Manya Perel, nee Frydman, was born 1924 in Radom, Poland, youngest of 10 children in a traditional Jewish family. Her father had a bakery. She describes her education and Jewish life in Radom, Polish antisemitism, Przytyk pogrom in 1936, and continues with post-September 1939 German invasion. She mentions persecutions, deportation of younger males to Belzec labor camp, 1941, establishment of ghetto in Radom, collaboration of Volksdeutsche and Ukrainians in brutalities, and some help by Jew‌ish police.

She details the August 1942 “resettlement” of Radom Jews to Treblinka gas chambers, with younger, able-bodied persons retained for forced labor in factories near Radom. She describes her efforts to hide her five-year-old niece in the barracks of a Majdanek sub-camp.

She was transferred to Majdanek, then to Plaszow and to Auschwitz. She describes conditions in these camps and the even harsher conditions in Gundelsdorf, Oberfranken, Germany, where slave laborers were taken as Russian Army approached. She experienced near starvation early 1945 during flight with guards to Camps Ravensbrück and Rechlin. She nearly died of typhus after liberation. After she recov‌ered she made her way back to Radom to search for family and found continued antisemitism there. She remembers German promise of safe exit to Radom Jews with foreign passports in exchange for prisoners of war and how they were executed instead.

She went to Stuttgart with the help of UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee. After three years of rehabilitation, she emigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1948 and moved to Philadelphia in 1958.

Frieda Appel, née Gottesman or Feldstein, was born into an Orthodox family August 18, 1929 in Kliachanovo, Czechoslovakia, near Munkács. Her father was a cattle dealer. Although, Frieda and her brother were offered shelter by the sheriff, a close friend of her father’s, her father decided to keep the family together. They were sent to the Munkács Ghetto for four weeks until transported to Auschwitz in May 1944. She refers to several interactions with Mengele, upon entering the camp and at a selection at the showers. After six weeks, she was sent to Gelsenkirchen and Essen labor camps. She was transported to Bergen-Belsen and describes the conditions there. She refers to several kindnesses shown to her by camp personnel in the different camps. She was liberated in Bergen-Belsen April 15, 1945. The Red Cross took her and her sister to Prague through Pilsen, and then to Munkács. In May 1946, she went to a DP camp in Germany where she married at age 16. They emigrated to the United States September 27, 1949, where Jewish Family Service helped them.

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

Alan Spiegel was born August 11, 1903 in Orahovicza, Yugoslavia into a wealthy Zionist family. He details his family history in Hungary including his grandfather being a Second Adjutant during the Hungarian Revolution. Mr. Spiegel studied medicine at Budapest University. He discusses the difficulty for Jewish students to be admitted due tonumerus clausus policy and that he was dismissed in 1920, three months before graduation by a prejudiced faculty. An ardent Zionist, he then worked for the Jewish National Fund while employed in a family business.

In 1932, he married Elizabeth Boschan, in Cluj, Romania, where they lived until 1939. In Budapest, he had to serve as a slave laborer under the Hungarians. Mr. Spiegel gives testimony about working with Rezsö Kastner and Joel Brand to exchangethe release of over 1,000 Jews to Switzerland for money in 1944 and how he found out from one of the more humane German officers that their transport was destined for Auschwitz even though they paid. He details how he arranged to bribe other SS to have the transport sent to Bergen-Belsen instead. Two months later, a smaller group of 350 was sent to Switzerland of which he and his family were a part. He discusses how Kastner was condemned in Palestine for his actions. Mr. Spiegel also shares a vignette about how he secured the release of hundreds of Jewish boys and how small meaningful occurrences helped him have the strength to continue his work. He also relates memories about theVizhnitzerRebbe.

In 1947, Spiegel emigrated from Switzerland to the United States with his wife and daughter.

Elsa Kissel, nee Blatt, was born in Mainz, Germany on December 15, 1919. Her parents were born in Poland, her father was a businessman. She talks about her education in both Yeshivot and public schools. She describes in detail how school, her family’s relationships with non-Jews as well as Jewish life in general changed after Hitler came to power. Their activities became more and more restricted. She graphically describes the destruction and brutality her family experienced during Kristallnacht, when her father was sent to Buchenwald.

Elsa explains how her brother, Herman Blatt escaped to France, her parents and her sister smuggled themselves into Belgium. She got a nursing visa for Great Britain, helped by the Society of Friends. In England, Elsa—along with other Jewish refugees—was brought to Soughton Prison in Edinburgh. Later she was interned on the Isle of Man in a camp run by British Quakers. Minna Specht, a German educator, organized a school for children and events for the adult internees in these camps. The Quakers arranged Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for the women internees. Generally, the few non-Jewish prisoners were treated better than the Jewish ones.

Once Elsa’s release was approved, her request to go to London was granted. She describes in great detail her life in England—working for two British families and later as a nurse in London during the Blitz—once she got her auxiliary war service permit. During this time, as a young refugee girl on her own, Elsa shows great resourcefulness and strength of character.

Elsa explains how various family members managed to get to the United States. While still in Portugal, her father enabled Orthodox Jewish refugees to celebrate a seder.

Elsa traveled to the United States on a Canadian troopship to Halifax, then to New York where she was reunited with her family. Unlike her father, Elsa never spoke to her children about her experiences. Each of her three adult sons reacted differently when Germany invited Elsa to visit with her family.

Joseph Levy was born on August 22, 1911 in Eschweiler, Germany. Despite antisemitic harassment during childhood, he enjoyed his childhood in public and private Jewish schools and in a Jugendbund youth group.

On January 31, 1933, his father and older brother—warned by a friendly local Nazi leader—fled before storm troopers ransacked their butcher shop in Siegburg. Some Christian employees helped shelter the family at that time and later delivered a ransom for the father’s release from Dachau.

In 1937, Joseph obtained an American visa and joined his siblings in New York City. Their parents followed, aided by the Red Cross and a Jewish organization. They sailed in a fishing boat from Barcelona, with a brief stay in Cuba, before arriving in the United States in December 1941.

Most of this interview narrates the stories of his father in hiding and forced labor and his brother in resistance groups in France and Spain (both of whom had already died at the time of this interview).