Oral History Interview with Ilse Stamm

Jean Spitzer was born in Vienna on September 24, 1919 but the family immediately moved to Zagreb, Yugoslavia where her family roots were. Her father was an insurance agent and her mother owned a well-known store. Jean describes attending the Lyzeum, an all girls’ high school along with her sister and describes a pleasant, peaceful life, no overt antisemitism, being members of a synagogue, and vacationing at the Adriatic Sea. She then contrasts the changes under thepro-German Ustaše Fascists who registered the Jews, took their valuables, forced them to move to a certain part of town and sent young people to labor camps who were never heard from again. She describes how the provincial Jews were forcibly moved to the Zagreb fairgrounds and that she and her family took food to their extended family members who were held there.

Jean procured false papers andattempted fleeing with her husband, sister and brother-in-law through Adriatic coastal towns to Fiume, Italy to hide. They were caught and sent to a prison, but very soon were released and sent back across the border to Croatia where they were left unmolested in Bakaratz [Bakar] and then Crikvenica, seaside coastal towns, where they lived for a time. After the Italian occupation of Croatia (1941), they were forcibly moved with a group of 1200 Jews to a detention camps in Kraljevica (Porto Re) and then later to Rab. She briefly discusses that though there was a scarcity of food and they were forced in barracks separated by gender, the Italians treated them humanely and that the camp was cleaned up from the typhoid and dysentery before they were brought there. She relates that in September 1943, the Italians simply released all the prisoners back to Croatia. At that time Jean, her husband, sister and brother-in-lawdecided to flee Croatia because of the presence of Nazi soldiers and smuggled themselves back to Yugoslavia via a fisherman.

Jean and her husband survived in a section of Yugoslav territory that partisans had liberated and managed to escape to Bari, Italy (in 1945) by boat as Austrians. Jean worked in a British officers’ mess, then in Naples and for the British WRENS in Sorrento and Venice. She assisted the foreign-born wives of British personnel with their paper work. One cousin, a Yugoslav Jewish officer, was helped by a German doctor. She describes Bulgarians violently persecuting the Sephardic Jews in Macedonia while claiming to have rescued their own Jews. Jean emigrated to the United States in November 1947.

Tibor Baranski, honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by YadVashem, was born June 11, 1922 in Budapest, Hungary. He was educated in Hungarian Gymnasia and aware of rising antisemitism by 1938. He studied for the priesthood in Vesprem in 1940 and in Kassa (Kosice) in 1943. He learned of Nazi extermination plans through church channels. He returned to Budapest October 20, 1944 as the Russian army drew near.

Mr. Baranski provides a very detailed and extensive description of several rescues of Jews, from October to December, 1944, at the request of Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio, who acted as a representative of the Vatican under orders of Pope Pius XII. He rescued Jews from a transit camp to safe houses in Budapest. He worked with representatives from neutral nations and the Red Cross to stop deportations from Hegyeshalom, using protective letters (Schutzpasse), and safe houses to shelter almost 6000 Jews. He was almost executed several times. He provides details of efforts to hide Jews by Christian groups and individuals. He credits Elizabeth Kemeny, Raoul Wallenberg, Prince Esterhazy, Father Hummel and a number of priests and nuns who helped in the rescue. He talks about his encounter with Wallenberg and why he was arrested by the Russians.

Mr. Baranski was arrested by the Russians December 30, 1944 and sent on a deathmarch from Budapest to Szekszarv. Saved by a Russian soldier, he returned to Budapest. He worked with an underground movement opposed to communist rule and was arrested by the Russians again November 1948. He describes postwar life in Hungary under communist rule.

He discusses Hungarian-German relations, Miklo Horthy’s attitude towards Jews and Nazis, German occupation of Hungary, and the role of the Vatican in great detail based on his contacts. He entered the United States in 1961 and became a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

Note: Audiotaped interviews of Per Anger and Elizabeth Kemeny Fuchs (referred to by Tibor Baranski) are at the Holocaust Oral History Archive and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Harry Zaslow served in the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion during World War II. He describes his unit's activities on various fronts while attached to the French First Army and then the American First Army, including the Battle of the Bulge. He had never heard about any German atrocities even after he joined the U.S. Army.

In April, 1945, his unit was asked to go to a camp he later learned was Dachau. He estimates they arrived about three or four hours after the Germans either fled or were driven out of the camp. No Allied forces had taken command yet. He vividly describes his shock and confusion when, as a 19 year old boy, he saw box cars filled with corpses just outside of Dachau. During his two hour stay he saw crematoria going full blast, still burning bodies. He saw rooms with bodies—some of which appeared to have been killed very recently—stacked to the ceiling. He describes how non-German SS troops were guarded, but not killed, by some remaining inmates.

Mr. Zaslow reflects on how what he saw at Dachau affected him and makes further genocide more probable. He closes with two vignettes about one positive and one negative experience as a Jewish soldier in the United States Army.

David Buchsbaum was born in Gorlice, Poland on April 20, 1921 to a religious family. He was one of 11 children.. He gives a brief description of pre-war Gorliceand the Jewish community which was 25% of the population, about 3,500 Jews. David’s family owned a grocery store.

David describes the mood change among non-Jewish neighbors in 1938 after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and describes how they would stand in front of Jewish stores and businesses announcing, "Do not buy from Jews".

In 1939 once the Nazis occupied Gorlice the family was warned by a non-Jewish neighbor to flee, but the family could not afford the certificate to emigrate to Palestine. David details the anti-Jewish measures 1940: Jews had to wear the Yellow star, Jewish businesses were confiscated, synagogues were closed, Jewish" quarters" were created and David’s father was shot to death by a German soldier right before his eyes. David also witnessed the machine gun shooting of entire Jewish families.

In July, 1942 all males from 12-65 were arrested and marched in the streets; some were shot and David, a brother and others were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. David describes the horrific conditions there: cold, typhus, appells, beatings and the electrified fence. In 1943, as the Russians advanced David and 1,000 other Jews were sent in boxcars to the slave labor camp, Skarzysko. Those who were left behind were either shot in the woods or were gassed in vans and burned. In Skarzysko they made ammunition and David was in in the harshest area, Barrack C. In 1944 David was sent to Buchenwald where all his personal possessions were confiscated, including his tallit and tefillin, which distressed his greatly because he had tried to observe tradition as best he could. As the Russians advanced he was sent to Terezin(Theresienstadt) and was liberated from there on May 8, 1945. David describes that many survivors from Terezin died from overconsumption of food immediately after liberation.

David later returned to Poland to find his relatives but left because of fierce antisemitism and the Kielce pogrom. He traveled to Prague, and was then sent to Salzburg, Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint arranged for him to join an uncle in the United States. On June 2, 1949 David arrived in Boston. He and two brothers survived the war.

Hertha Beese, nee Scholz, was born in Berlin, Germany September 10, 1902 into a non-Jewish German family. Her parents were active in the Social Democratic party (SPD) and trade unions. Hertha attended schools in Berlin, pre World War I with Jews and Catholics. She was forced to participate in Protestant religious instruction of the Landeskirchebecause she was not baptized.

In 1933, she and other SPD members lost their jobs. She describes Nazi persecution of Socialists and Communists as well as Jews. Her resistance group, one of more than 20 in Berlin, hid people until they could cross the mountains into Switzerland. She details sheltering Jews and non-Jews in her home.

She testifies to the beating of her brother by SA storm troopers, prior to 1933, and the terrorization of non-Jewish Berliners. In Berchtesgaden, she observed resentment of local residents toward the SS and the exploitation of German laborers. She describes her refusal to fly the Nazi flag, her children’s refusal to join the Hitler Youth, and the devious means she used to avoid serving in the Luftschutz.

She had to work in the Arbeitsdienstfrom 1943 to 1945 as a teacher in the Spreewald area. She also worked illegally as a bookkeeper for Jewish cattle dealers who were SPD members who joined the Nazi party to avoid deportation. A local farmer hid several Jewish Berliners she brought to him.

She became vice-chair of the Brandenburg SPD in 1945, chaired an anti-fascist commission in Potsdam, and was deputy mayor of Reinickendorf, 1948-1965. She was honored with the Golden Rose of Paris for aid to French Prisoners of War and was declared an “Elder Statesman” of Berlin.

Zenek Maor, was born August 9, 1923, in Wloclawek, Poland, into a religious Jewish family. His father was a factory owner and the family lived comfortably until the German occupation. He details pre-war life including his HashomerHatzairactivities. He describes German restrictions and brutalities in Wloclawek, where his father was arrested and held for ransom, and later in Warsaw, where his family fled in January 1940. As a 16 year-old, he worked in various forced labor brigades, including the Okecie air-field in Warsaw. He gives detailed descriptions of life in the Warsaw ghetto including Jewish police and the HashomerHatzairnetwork of underground schools. Because of severe hunger in the ghetto, he was encouraged by his family to escape in 1942.

Eventually sent to various labor camps, he details difficult work conditions but mentions ongoing belief in his own survival. He discusses reasons that people could not escape from labor camps or from Auschwitz. He details his arrival at Auschwitz in summer 1943 including initial belief in the slogan “Work Makes You Free,” the smell of roasting flesh, and his defiance of Mengele’s decision to send him to annihilation with other children instead of assigning him to work with his older brother. Much information is given on Auschwitz: daily routine, work, treatment by Kapos, latrine communication between prisoners. He describes the death march from Auschwitz from January 17, 1945 to May 10, 1945 and gives an in-depth account of his liberation by the Russian Army. Returning to Poland, he learns that no one from his family survived. He emigrated to Palestine in April, 1947.

This interview was conducted in Haifa, Israel.