Oral History Interview with Jack Arnel

Per Anger, a Swedish diplomat and honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by YadVashem, was assigned to the Swedish Legation in Budapest as Secretary for Trade in late 1942. He briefly refers to growing antisemitism in Hungary. He describes in detail the Legation’s response to Jewish pleas for help when Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944 as well as Raoul Wallenberg’s additional efforts upon his arrival in July 1944, a position resulting from negotiations between the American War Refugee Board, World Jewish Congress and American Embassy in Stockholm. He refers to the many ways in which Sweden was involved in helping Jews in Hungary, and explains why they did this. He discusses his last meeting with Wallenberg just before his disappearance on January 17, 1945 and the terrors of Russian occupation until his and the other diplomats’ return home in April 1945. He describes in detail his attempts to enlist Sweden’s help in finding Wallenberg and accounts of eye-witnesses who had had contact with Wallenberg in Soviet prisons. He suspects the Soviets suspected Wallenberg of being a spy because of his contacts with Iver Olsen of the War Refugee Board. Anger is the author of With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, NY: 1981.

Harry Methner was born in Germany on July 21, 1922 into an observant Jewish family who had moved from the Polish Corridor to Berlin in 1901 or 1902. His father was a cook and later a kosher butcher and sausage manufacturer. Harry shares his childhood memories of his schooling, andchanges that took place in Germany during the Nazi rise to power. He shares sequence of events that led his family to seek options for emigration, including being warned by a non-Jewish acquaintance. Harry describes the damage done to the family store duringKristallnacht.

Harry and his family left Germany with their property and assets frozen on December 26, 1938 on a German luxury liner. He explains how his family got to Shanghai in April 1939 after an attempt to go to Cuba and a 90 day stopover in Singapore where his father worked as a kosher butcher for an Australian farmer. He briefly mentions that Jews on board ship received help from Dutch, English, American and local Jews.

Harry describes living conditions in Shanghai, tropical diseases, as well as life during the war in great detail. His family had almost no contact with the Russian, French, English or Sephardic Jewish communities. He worked with his father selling strictly kosher food and as a photographer’s assistant documenting Hongkew Ghetto inhabitants for the Japanese. He also worked with a so-called “Sanitary Group” that helped Jews who were wounded when the ghetto was bombed by American planes on July 23, 1945. He belonged to a Zionist youth group, BritNoarTzion (HanoarHatzioni), led by Rabbi Teichner. Once he was in the United States, Harry and his friends started a youth group with the same name as they had in Shanghai for Jewish immigrants from middle Europe, which was very successful. He relates how his life changed once the American forces arrived, especially after the Japanese surrender. After the war ended, Harry worked for the American Army.

Harry left for the United States on October 17, 1947 and moved to Rochester, N.Y. He got a job at Eastman Kodak on October 31, 1947 with the help of the Jewish Family Service. He married a Holocaust survivor. Harry managed to get his parents to attend his wedding in New York while they were in Ellis Island on a transport ship bringing Jews from Shanghai to Italy. He was able to bring them to America two years later. The entire family, including his children, moved to Denver, Colorado. Once Harry found out about the concentration camps and the relatives he lost, he realized that there was a place much worse than the Shanghai he once hated.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1999 at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Samuel Makower, born January 6, 1922 in Przasnysz, Poland, where he attended a chederand public school. Following the German invasion of September 1, 1939, he fled with his family to Warsaw and then to Bialystok. Under the Russian occupation, they were offered contracts to work in the Ural Mountains. He describes the harsh climatic conditions and the deprivations of wartime, with mention of aid from Russian people, among whom they lived. In 1941, the family moved to Minsk and were trapped one month later when the Germans invaded and established a ghetto. He describes the killings by Germans and Ukrainians. His family survived by creating hiding places under the floor and within a false wall. A 2-year-old niece was sheltered in a Russian orphanage, with the aid of a German soldier. Dr. Makower escaped with his sister and brother-in-law to join Russian partisans who accepted Jews. He details partisan life, obtaining food and ammunition from civilians. They blew up trains and railroads and took some German soldiers as prisoners. He mentions “Uncle Vanya”, the Jewish partisan who sheltered many Jews in the forest. After liberation by the Russian Army, he helped his family who had survived move to Szczecin (Stettin). At the request of a Zionist group, he secured a train to remove 200 Jewish children to Cracow. He entered the University of Berlin and obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry and followed part of his family to Israel. Unable to find employment there, he emigrated to the United States in 1956.

Interviewee: MAKOWER, Samuel Date: August 3, 1988

Rose Fine, nee Hollendar, was born in Ozorkow, Poland in 1917 to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father was a shochet. She briefly describes living conditions during the German occupation before and after the establishment of the Ozorkow Ghetto in 1941: health conditions, deportations, and her work in the ghetto hospital where children were put to starve to death. She refers to the behavior of the Volksdeutsche in Ozorkow and her mother’s deportation to Chelmno where she was gassed to death. She witnessed the old and infirm deported in chloroform-filled Panzer trucks in March 1941 as well as the public hanging of 10 Jews. She was transferred to the Lodz Ghetto in 1942 where she worked for Mrs. Rumkowski until she was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. After one week, following a selection by Dr. Mengele, she was transferred to the Freiberg, Germany air‌ plane factory and later to Mauthausen in Austria, where she was liberated by the Americans in Spring 1945. She describes the birth of a baby girl (both mother and baby survived) just prior to liberation and help by a German farmer.

After liberation Rose stayed briefly in Lodz and Gdansk. She describes life in Gdansk where she got married. She and her husband lived in Munich, Germany for four years where they belonged to Rabbi Leizerowski’s1 synagogue and she attended the ORT school. She and her husband emigrated to the USA in 1949 with the help of the Joint Distribution Committee. She recounts the story of the hiding of a Torah by a non-Jew of Ozorkow and his giving it to a survivor from Ozorkow to take to Atlanta, Georgia.

See the May 4, 1981interview with Rabbi Baruch Leizerowski.

Helene Goodman, formerly Henia Flint, was born in Lodz, Poland in 1913 into an orthodox family. She studied piano at the Warsaw Conservatory posing as a non-Jew, and got her diploma in 1935. She briefly describes how the German invasion affected Polish Jews. In 1939 Helene and her family had to move to the Lodz Ghetto. Her father was brutally beaten by the KRIPO (Kriminalpolizei), lost his mind, and later died. She witnessed Polish-German cooperation, and the murder of Jewish orphans in the ghetto.

Helene and her mother were transported to Auschwitz in August 1944, when the ghetto was liquidated. She describes the dehumanizing arrival process. During a “selection” by Dr. Mengele, she was separated from her mother and never saw her again. She is the lone survivor of her family. Helene was forced to play the piano for the camp commander’s birthday party and was stabbed repeatedly when she was too stunned to perform. Her wounds were not treated. A Jewish KAPO put her on a transport to Hainichen (a subcamp of Flossenbürg), near Chemnitz, Germany to save her life.

Helene worked as a slave laborer at Framowerke, an ammunition factory. She describes living and working conditions. The supervisor was Gertrude Becker, an SS woman who was extremely cruel. She describes the effects of near starvation, how she tried to cope, and her acts of sabotage.

Helene describes a Deathmarch at the end of April 1945, guarded by SS officers who took off their uniforms and fled once they arrived at Theresienstadt. She was liberated by the Soviet army May 9, 1945. Soviet women doctors treated the survivors. American soldiers took her to a quarantine camp at Landsberg am Lech where she tried to recover from the physical and emotional after effects of her experiences. She describes her post-war life in Regensburg, Germany after she met and married her husband, Jacob Gottlieb, including a frightening act of antisemitism and Zionist activities.. They lived in Regensburg, Germany until they immigrated to the United States. She concludes with her personal reflections on the Holocaust.

Rachel Hochhauser, née Swerdlin, was born July 2, 1928 in Krzywice, Poland. She was the only child of a religious family. Her grandfather was Rabbi and Shochet of the shtetl. Her grandmother and parents operated a general store. She describes religious education and a comfortable life, pre WWII, and friendly relations with Polish and Russian neighbors until September 3, 1939. She details restrictive occupations under Russians and subsequent persecution by Germans and local collaborators in summer of 1941. When her father was killed she went into hiding with her mother and other relatives after warnings from non-Jews, including the police Kommandant for whom she worked.

The family hid on several farms from April, 1942 until 1944. They were protected for 20 months by a Catholic farmer’s wife, Anna Kobinska, with whom Rachel continued to correspond after the war. When forced to move for the final time, they went into a partisan-occupied area. She describes the privations of living in a swamp during the winter of 1943-44. A log bunker built for them in the woods in exchange for 20 rubles of gold sheltered ten people until spring, 1944. The Russian Blitzkrieg and deserting Germans drove the group to return to their homes in Krzywice, where her family was welcomed home by neighbors. They adopted an orphan girl found in their house and moved westward to the DP camp at Foehrenwald. Rachel describes her education there in an ORT school. She immigrated to the United States in April, 1951.

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