Oral History Interview with Ilse Loeb

Vera Otelsberg, nee Neuman, a Warsaw Ghetto survivor, was born to a wealthy family in l924 in Bielitz (Bielsko-Biala), Poland. Her father was an industrialist who owned several factories and a mill. Her mother died when she was a young child and she was brought up by a nanny. The family was not religious, attended synagogue only on High Holidays. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she escaped to Warsaw with her older sister, her husband and child and nanny. Her sister with family were able to buy visas to South America and left in l940 while Vera stayed in the Warsaw with her nanny and brother-in-law’s parents.

Vera explains how they were forced into the ghetto and gives a detailed description about how she was able to get money through a relative on the Aryan side of Warsaw and describes the scarcity of food, illness, forced labor and dangers of living in the Warsaw Ghetto including a time when they had to hide from German soldiers in an attic. She describes the long hours working at the Toebbens Factory, sometimes days at a time, without being allowed home. She describes several instances of help from Poles and Germans.Mr. Wagenfeld brought money into the ghetto to Vera when her relative could not get in and also arranged to help her escape from the ghetto in the summer of 1942. A non-Jewish acquaintance of hers got her an Arbeitskarte, a work card, testifying that she worked in his office.She describes in detail living on the outside on false papers, working as a maid in a German household and later, in a village, listening to the radio illegally and translating the reports into Polish for an underground paper. She also describes how her friend Steffi was assisted by a German soldier to escape the ghetto and how family friends secured false papers for her, as well as other evidence regarding the workings of procuring false papers and how one lived as a non-Jew on the outside of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Vera describes life in Sochaczew before and during the retreat of the Germans and the killing of German soldiers by the advancing Russians. When Bielitz was liberated, she returned home with help from Russian Jewish officers. Her father had perished in Lemberg, her nanny in a death camp.Eventually Vera married, had a daughter and in l957 moved to Monte Video, Uruguay.

LucynaBerkowicz was born in Lwów in 1914, one of five children. Her father was a plumber who served in the Austrian army in WWI. He was also an ardent Zionist. Lucyna became active in leftist movements in her early twenties and became a union organizer and leader in a factory. Lucyna describes the Russian Occupation of Lwów(1939)under the German-Soviet Pact and antisemitism in the Russian and gentile hierarchy. She describes her work experiences, attending university, and her eventual realization that members of Zionist Youth organizations were jailed as political prisoners by the Russians.

Lucyna’shusbandwas killed during the Germanoccupation of Lwów(1941), after he fled(along with many Jewish men) with the Russian army. Lucyna describes many restrictions placed on Jews and how life became perilous. She describes how her sister-in-law was picked up and never heard from again. Lucynawas able to secure false papers with the help of a girlfriend’s gentilehusband.

Lucynaescaped Lwów, with the help of a Jewish man who would be her future husband and more than 20 others who wanted to return to their families in Radom.Lucyna describes the dangerous journey through JudenreinLublin, the aid of a gentile Pole who hid them in his basement until morning and then escorted them to Radom. She eventually came to Wolanów, a small rather primitive town. She and her second husband were married there in March. They worked for the Wehrmacht in the Wolanówlabor camp. She describes witnessing Jews from Radom who were forced to dig their own graves and were shot. At the end of 1943 she and her husband were deported to another labor camp, Starachowice, where she worked in an ammunition factory. It was decided that because she did not look Jewish, she should escape with her false identity papers. She eventually volunteered to work in Germany and because her German was good, worked as an interpreter in a reprocessing business in a small city. As the end of the war approached, she made her way back to Poland, to Radom, and worked for the Polish government as a non-Jew still under her false papers and lived with her husband’s aunt. She saw evidence that Poles killed Jewish partisans in the woods. Around the same time she learned about the pogroms in Kielce. She also reunited with her youngest brother who had returned from Russia and told her the details of how many members of her family had perished. One brother and one sister survived.

Lucyna explains how she got permission to search for her husband in Vienna and used it as excuse to flee Poland with his aunt and two of his nieces. Lucynafound her husband and a brother-in-law in Austria as prisoners in a Polish army camp. They came to Germany to Bergen-Belsen and then eventually made it to a Displaced Persons Camp in Stuttgart. Lucyna suffered a miscarriage during the travels. Lucyna, her husband and her brother emigrated to the United States in 1947.

See also the interview with her husband, Daniel Berkowicz.

Holocaust Jewish 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives

World War, 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives, Jewish, female

Atrocities

Displaced Persons Camp -- Stuttgart

Germanoccupation -- Lwów

Hiding – false papers

Jews - Polish

Starachowice - labor camp

Survival skills

Wolanów -labor camp

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