Oral History Interview with Herbert Lindemeyer

Nathan Snyder was born on May 21, 1926 in Unter Stanestie, Rumania (now Russia). He describes Jewish community life, religious observance, Zionist movements, and his education in cheder and public school including the Gymnasium in Czernowitz. He experienced antisemitism in school, from the Iron Cross movement and during the Coza ritual. He describes the effects of the Russian occupation and the deportation of Jews. He vividly describes how local Ukrainians rounded up Jews, brutally hacked the men and boys to death, and stripped Jewish homes bare as the German army approached. Survivors were forced to march to Czernowitz and herded into a ghetto with Jews from other towns. Nathan describes living conditions, frequent transports to Transnistria, forced labor and some attempts at underground resistance. There are richly detailed vignettes of adolescent experiences including excursions outside the ghetto, passing as a Volksdeutsche, and hazardous encounters with SS. He describes turmoil as the Russians advanced. Rumanian authorities fled and the Germans started killing Jews. His family used material he obtained at great risk before Germans blew up a supply warehouse. After liberation by the Russians Nathan joined a civilian militia formed by Jewish youths to patrol Czernowitz until Russian militia took over. He gives a detailed description of life after the Russian occupation and uses many vignettes to describe his experiences.

Nathan served in the Russian army in a demolition squad clearing minefields. His commanding officer was a Jew posing as a Cossack. He vividly describes chaotic conditions near the end of the war, going absent without leave, and hiding for four months. Nathan crossed the border with false papers. In Bucharest he joined Betar served as a Madrich under Yehuda Avriel using a false name. His group helped others to make Aliyah to Palestine illegally. He relates how he avoided capture as a deserter as the Communists gained control.

Interviewee: SNYDER, Nathan Date: October 11 and 15, 1984

This is a second interview with Ilse Awin, nee Mechlowitz,eight years after the original - both at a ‘Rickshaw Reunion” of Shanghai survivors in Philadelphia. Ilse Awin was born December 31, 1925 in Munich, Germany to a family who held Polish passports. She describes her early education, the effect of the Nuremberg laws on her family and also details her family’s experiences during roundups after Kristallnacht.Ilse describes her childhood memories of the journey to Shanghai and details their living conditionsin the Hongkew Ghetto as well as her education and need to work. Ilse married Leo Awin, an Austrian refugee, in Shanghai in 1947 and together they emigrated to Canada in 1949.1

The two interviews share the same essential details, with the following additional information:

Ilse describes an incident after Kristallnacht when she was jailed overnight at 12 years old during a roundup of Jews with Polish passports. A Jewish organization intervened to secure her release, but other Polish families were deported, including some of her aunts and uncles.

She describes their Polish passports enabling them to disembark and visit ports during their voyage to Shanghai.

While attending the Kadoorieschool for refugees in the Hongkew Ghetto, Ilse joined a Zionist youth group, preparing for aliyah.

Both of her parents died of dysentery in the ghetto and she was also ill and hospitalized.

See also her 1991 interview #GC00032a and her husband, Leo Awin’s testimony #GC00033.

Klara Leizerowski, nee Felker, was born on October28, 1924 in Chovorow, Poland(in Galicia, near Lemberg). Her father was a merchant. Klara describes pre-war Jewish life: her schooling, Jewish observance, keeping kashrut and the various languages spoken by the Jewish intelligentsia. She describes initially disbelieving stories of German refugees regarding anti-Jewish restrictions. She describes the Soviet occupation and how her “capitalist” family was designated as an enemy of the state and were denied citizenship. Many families were deported to Siberia for this “crime” and she explains how they lived in fear during this period of 1939 -41 and slept away from their home many nights. They were permitted to practice their religion and Klara was able to attend pharmaceutical school during this time by traveling an hour to Lemberg.

Klara describes the German invasionin spring of 1941 and the increasing restrictions on Jews. She also describes severalAktions. During one of these, she was hidden with her sisters by a priest and his family for one night. Klara’s parents hid in their basement behind a wall with 10 others. Klara was hidden by a Christian family for two and a half years in Lemberg and other small towns. The rest of her family was shot. During her hiding she was hidden in a wardrobe in a room right next to German soldiers. She describes the stress, lack of food and physical ailments from staying in this wardrobe so many hours at a time.

After liberation by the Soviets, she was reunited with one sister who survived and together they went to Katowice to escape both the Germans and the Russians. She was helped by HIAS and the Joint. She was able to go to Switzerland with her uncle's help (Chief Rabbi in Zurich) and lived there for two and a half years. She later moved to Munich in 1946 to marry Rabbi Baruch Leizerowski. They emigrated to the United States in 1952 with their two sons.

See also the interview with her husband, Rabbi Baruch Leizerowski.

Jeanette Rothschild2, née Fernbacher, born on September 13, 1898 in Grossmannsdorf, Germany, discusses her very happy early childhood and schooling at a convent in Straubing, Germany and how she and the other two Jewish girls were never treated badly for being Jewish by either teachers or students. She also describes two close friendships with non-Jewish girls. Her father was a successful cattle dealer. She discusses her extended family in nearby towns. She relates her experience during World War I and living in Berlin, Germany once she was married. Mrs. Rothschild compares the lack of antisemitism in Berlin in the 1920s with a trip back to Straubing in 1924 when she felt that her so called non-Jewish friends weren’t so friendly to her on that visit. She describes that she did start to feel antisemitism in Berlin by 1933, with the rise of the Nazi party.

Mrs. Rothschild details her experience during Kristallnacht, the destruction of their store, finding out about the synagogue burning, the Nazis taking her husband to Oranienburg for a month. She describes her trip to the Gestapo to secure her husband’s release and how he was deeply changed by his experience. They decided to leave immediately and she describes the huge lines of Jews at the consul trying to leave Germany and describes not being allowed to take money with them. They were able to go to England because a cousin in England secured a permit for them, but upon arrival her husband was placed in an enemy alien camp at Lynnefield. Mrs. Rothschild describes that it was a stadium of some sort and describes how she used her experience to make frequent visits and finally procure his release when she told the guard it was her birthday. They eventually settled in the United States3.

Norbert Zeelander was born in Antwerp, Belgium on February 24, 1938. He was the first-born in a middle class family. His family had lived in Holland for hundreds of years but subsequently moved to Belgium for business. As he was two years old in May of 1940 when the family left Belgium, Norbert’s recollections are from what he was told and from photos.

Norbert was told that when the bombing of Belgium began his family,together with his father’s parents, drove south towards France. It took them nine months, moving from farm to farm to stay ahead of the Germans. Norbert learned that his father’s brother killed his family and committed suicide.

Norbert’s familystayed at one farm for one and a half years where his sister was born November 1941. When the Nazis drew near in late 1942 or early 1943, they escaped through Spain to Portugal. Norbert describes the train ride with German soldiers on the train and that his parents, who had false papers, were helped by a network of people including the stationmaster. He also believes that the Dutch Red Cross was involved in their escape from France, through Spain and Portugal, where they boarded a ship to the West Indies.The family stayed in a large refugee camp with other Dutch people. Eventually they went to Curacao, a Dutch island.

After the war, the family came to the U.S. but because they had entered illegally they had to return to Belgium for two years to await their quota, where Norbert recalls much antisemitism. In 1948 the family returned to the U.S.

Norbert expresses theimpact of psychological characteristics that he feels are related to his family’s experiences with which he still struggles: developing into a loner (since he was without any playmates while in hiding), nightmares in which he is always running, being angry and quick tempered as an adolescent, especially when faced with antisemitism. He describes how he coped with these emotions by keeping very busy and working long hours to which he attributes his later success in business. Norbert explains that because he was never in a camp or a ghetto he never considered himself a "survivor" until the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia. See also the interview with his father, Theodore Zeelander from 1985.

Lory Cahn1, nee Grünberger, was born May 17, 1925 in Breslau, Germany into a religious home. Her father was a lawyer. Her younger brother was sent to England in the 1930's, joined the British army and remained in England permanently.2 Lory's schooling stopped after Kristallnacht, 1938. The family's attempts to emigrate to Argentina failed. Because her father was a captain in the German army during World War I, he was able to buy his way into Theresienstadt and Lory was allowed to stay with her parents when the family was deported in the spring of 1941. Lory reports in detail the roundup of Jews, the transport by cattle car, and every aspect of life in Theresienstadt. She was treated for meningitis with medicine provided by the Red Cross.

In 1943 Lory was sent to Auschwitz after a two week trip in a cattle car. She survived a selection by Dr. Mengele. She describes living and working conditions of female prisoners and mentions the Auschwitz orchestra. Auschwitz was so overcrowded prisoners were exterminated before being processed. Lory witnessed many brutal acts.

In 1944 she was sent to Mauthausen after ten days in Buchenwald. Outside Buchenwald Jews in the transport were bombed during an air raid. She describes a brutal trip, guarded by SS, to Kurzbach, a labor camp in Silesia. Pointless labor and a starvation diet were designed to kill the prisoners.

After a death march to Gross-Rosen, in the fall of 1944 (which only 30 of the 150 in her group survived) they were taken to Bergen-Belsen. She describes conditions in Bergen-Belsen. Prisoners who reported sick disappeared. Due to extreme starvation, some prisoners resorted to cannibalism. Just before the war ended the SS guards gradually disappeared and the number of prisoners who died increased greatly. Lory survived bitter cold, typhus, and starvation and was liberated by British troops April 15, 1945.

She describes chaotic conditions in Bergen-Belsen and attempts to rehabilitate the survivors after liberation. Many prisoners died from eating regular food. At a Jewish information office in Hannover Lory learned that her mother was gassed in Auschwitz and her father was still alive in Theresienstadt. She went to Bavaria, in the American zone, with friends. American Jewish soldiers looked after them. One managed to find her father in Berlin. Her father joined her in Bavaria, April 1946. After some time in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany she came to the United States on April 17, 1947 and married one of the soldiers she had met in Bavaria. Her father stayed in Germany.