Oral History Interview with Herman Krauser

Ute Sarah Seiler (Sora Seiler Vigorito) was born in October 1942 in Berlin, Germany. She underwent experimentation as a twin in Auschwitz. Her earliest memory is hiding with her twin sister, Anna, and their grandmother in a dark cellar. When found, they were sent to Auschwitz, where the girls were separated from their grandmother, a most vivid and terrible memory for Ute Sarah. Ute Sarah recalls clinging to her sister and screaming when they were put in a crib in the Children’s Block. A doctor gave them injections in their arms and spinal columns. Anna became very sick, had convulsions throughout one night and never awoke. The next day, she was taken from the crib and Ute Sarah never saw her again. The injections continued for Ute Sarah, who fell ill with tuberculosis and suffered with convulsions for many years afterward.

In 1944, she was liberated by Russian soldiers and in 1945, she was reunited with her grandmother. They lived in Dessau, East Germany until 1948, when she was sent to Wanne-Eickel, West Germany to live with her father. She recalls a long, unsettling and emotionally difficult trip, being separated again from her grandmother. In 1952, she and her father emigrated to Canada. Ute Sarah learned that her mother and older sister, Heidi, had been taken away shortly after her birth. Ute Sarah married and her husband took her to the Cleveland Clinic, where she was finally cured of the convulsions and she has been able to have a normal life. She has recognized Dr. Mengele in photographs as the man who gave her the injections at Auschwitz.

Alex Krasheninnikow was born in Kiev, USSR in 1934. He knew that his father, a scientist, and his mother, an artist, were Jews but he had no religious education. He recalls a happy childhood with his parents in a large collective apartment shared with four Soviet families.

After the German invasion in 1941, his family was hidden in the attic of Vassily and Ina Baranovski in Darnitsa, near Kiev. Gold jewelry was exchanged for food and shelter until November 1943 when their hideout was discovered and their protectors were shot. Alex and his parents were sent by freight car to Brätz concentration camp near Schwiebus. Watchtbandguards beat them with clubs and separated men from women. Food shortages, cold barracks and arduous road building are mentioned, and the daily gymnastic regime of forced running for hours is detailed.

The Russian Army liberated the camp in January 1945 and the reunited Krasheninnikow family returned to Kiev. In July 1950, they moved to Munich illegally. In December 1950, they emigrated to Philadelphia, where Alex became a court interpreter. He refers to accounts in Russian publications that number the Babi Yar killings during 1941 – 1943 with various figures, from 30,000 to 100,000.

Baroness Elizabeth Kemény-Fuchs, the Austrian-born young wife of the Hungarian Foreign Minister Gábor Kemény, was shocked by the October 1944 persecutions of Jews under the Arrow Cross government. She thus, when approached by Wallenberg, was ready to help him, mainly by persuading her husband to help issue protective passports for Jews and also prevailing upon the German Ambassador Veesenmayer to issue needed visas, all at considerable risk to herself. She outlines how the stress of this, of the official duties, and of a difficult pregnancy caused her to go for a brief visit to her mother in South Tyrol, and how because of the baby’s birth and the Soviet siege of Budapest she never could return there.

She critiques a film made about Wallenberg and her role, describing his actual activities, his special qualities, and his one misjudgment, being that of the Soviets’ motivations. She mentions aid to Jews by Weiss diplomats and by Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio. She asserts that her own involvement was solely humanitarian and that she neither is of Jewish descent nor ever was Wallenberg’s mistress. She insists that her husband was not a Nazi, that indeed he helped save many Jews, and that the unjust idea of collective guilt led to his arrest, condemnation, and execution. She describes her own post-war struggles.

She feels more could have been done, especially by Swedes, to free Wallenberg, doubted that he was still alive, asserts that he should remain “a very bright example” in an ever more selfish world.

Bernard Freilich was born April 17, 1924, in Drohobycz, Poland. He attended public school, Tarbut School and heder. His family had a shoe store. Pre-war, he experienced antisemitism from his very early childhood. He describes worsening conditions for Jews under both German and Russian occupations: pogroms (some started by Ukrainians), Aktions, liquidation of the Jewish quarter, establishment of the Drohobycz Ghetto, and the role of the Judenrat. Bernard narrowly escaped death in the ghetto when over 200 Jews were killed. He gives vivid accounts of atrocities, slave labor, and incidents of retribution. His entire family, except one brother, perished and he explains how and where they were killed. He describes Jewish slave labor in Boryslaw, deportations from the ghetto to Belzec, and executions of Jews in the Bronica forest.

Several vignettes describe his father’s interactions with the Gestapo and other Germans while working as their official boot maker. Later, after enduring forced labor under horrible conditions, Bernard worked with his father making boots.

When about 800 Jews managed to escape into the Bronica forest, Bernard joined a group of boys who hid in a bunker. He explains how he managed to survive for three and a half months and then to escape once the Germans discovered the bunker in May 1944.

Bernard describes the transport to, arrival at and processing at the Plaszow concentration camp on June 22, 1944. He witnessed brutal treatment and killing of the prisoners before and during this transport. He and his father worked as shoemakers for the Wehrmacht. Inmates were executed 24 hours a day. Bernard talks about the reaction of Jewish prisoners when 12,000 non-Jewish Poles arrived at the camp.

Bernard’s testimony includes graphic descriptions of the horrible conditions at Mauthausen, gruesome atrocities and torture, including a father’s futile attempt to save his son’s life. He worked as a slave laborer at Gusen II building tunnels for Messerschmitt and Steyrwerke under conditions that guaranteed a life span of four to six weeks. He explains the complicated series of events that enabled him and his brother to work as shoemakers. Because he was hospitalized for a groin infection, he saw various terrible ways in which prisoners and patients were killed in January 1945. He describes worsening conditions at Gusen as the Allied forces approached on April 22, 1945. He survived a death march to Mauthausen and then Gunskirchen, where the prisoners received Red Cross packages for the first time. He relates the chaotic conditions after the guards fled, and how he saved a friend’s life.

Bernard describes his post-liberation experiences vividly and in great detail. These include encounters with American soldiers, sick and dying survivors in hospitals, Germans who had used slave laborers, and living in an apartment they confiscated from an SS member, with 10 other survivors. The American Military Police moved Bernard and his brother to a Displaced Person Camp.

In June 1945, Bernard and his brother tried to return to Drohobycz. They were conscripted into the Russian army as mine sweepers with 22 other Jews, but managed to work as shoemakers for the Russian General Staff in Vienna, Austria instead. Before Bernard could execute a plan he had devised to escape, his unit was marched back to Poland. He got himself transferred into the Polish army, searched for his father in Lodz, where he met and married his wife. After living in Schlachtensee and then later Feldafing Displaced Persons Camps, they emigrated to the United States in March 1949.

Bernice Fishman (birth name Bronia Graudens) was born in Vronki, Poland in 1934. Her father owned a clothing store. Bernice and her mother fled to her mother's parents in Staszow in 1939. The Staszow Ghetto was established in 1940. Jewish children were educated clandestinely. Bernice and her brother were sent to live with a Polish farmer before the ghetto was evacuated. Her grandmother joined them later. Her grandfather and her father were sent to the Skarzysko concentration camp and her mother was hidden by a neighbor. Bernice, her brother, and her grandmother left the Polish family to go to a town that was supposed to be a sanctuary for Jews but were caught by the Polish police, imprisoned for a week, and told daily they would be shot. Her parents bribed somebody to get them out of prison.

Bernice describes how she, her brother, and her aunt and uncle were hidden by a succession of Poles in Ogrodzenie, posing as Catholics. She was always hungry, in fear of being discovered, and pretty much on her own. Her four year old brother died because they were afraid to take him to a doctor. Bernice got sick and walked to a Catholic hospital where she received care.

In 1945 Bernice was reunited with her parents who rented an apartment in Kielce that they shared with four other Jewish families. Her mother gave birth to a girl. Bernice describes how her family managed to survive despite constant fear of Polish antisemitism. She relates how Poles threw ten Jews from a moving train her father was supposed to be on. While she was hiding with the Kuchatays, Bernice had to pose as a Catholic, go to Confession and receive Communion, but never forgot she was Jewish. After the war, Mrs. Kuchatay found the family and threatened to sue unless Bernice converted legally. To avoid going to court, the family fled to Bytom with the help of Bernice's uncle who was in the Russian army. A few days later all the Jews in their former apartment were killed during the Kielce pogrom.

After several months in Bytom, they were smuggled into Czechoslovakia. From there they went to a Displaced Persons camp near Stuttgart, Germany. Bernice attended a school for Jewish children where classes were conducted in Hebrew. Her father obtained an apartment in a house owned by a former member of the Nazi party. Bernice briefly reflects on the different behavior of Poles, Russians, Czechs, and Germans toward Jews. The family emigrated to the United States in 1950, sponsored by Bernice's cousin who was an American citizen.

Interviewee: FISHMAN, Bernice Graudens Date: May 29, 1991