Oral History Interview with Jack Zaifman

Simon Aufschauer was born on February 15, 1915 in Żółkiew, near Lvov (Lemberg) Galicia, Poland. His father died when he was 4 and at age 13 he was apprenticed to a furrier. He described the antisemitism of the Polish and Ukrainian schoolchildren of Lvov when he was growing up. Simon belonged to Betar, a Jewish youth movement, and he and his brother worked to help their widowed mother.

Simon was drafted into the Polish army in 1937 and he fought briefly against the German Army when they invaded Poland in 1939. He was captured and then escaped from a detention camp by putting on civilian clothes. In Lvov, now under the Soviets, Simon, worked as a furrier until being drafted into the Soviet Army with his brother, on June 21, 1941. When his brother was killed by the German Army Simon fled and returned to his mother in Lvov. After the German invasion of Lvov she was sent to Belzec, where she perished. Simon describes the murder of 2,000 Jews from the ghetto in Lemberg in April 1942. Since Simon was a strong worker, he was sent to several slave labor camps: in December 1941 to Janowska, Lemberg; in 1943 to Plaszow, Krakow; in 1944 to Gross Rosen; and finally on May8, 1945, he was liberated by the Soviets from Reichenbach. He described the horrific conditions in these slave labor camps: 12 to 18 hour days of slave labor, sickness, brutalities, crematoria (in Gross Rosen), and digging out dead bodies and burning them in order to erase evidence of the murders (in Plaszow, Krakow,1943). He also described attempts of the Jews to pray and fast for Yom Kippur at these places.

Simon met his wife in a Displaced Persons camp (May 1945) and they were marriedAugust 12, 1945. They were able to come to the United States soon after. He attributed his ability to survive to his experience as a furrier and to his youthful strength. Throughout his testimony is the pervasive recounting of Polish and Ukrainian antisemitism, even after the war.

See also the oral history of Hasia Aufschauer, Mr. Aufschauer’s wife, who was also interviewed for the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive.

Bertram Kornfeld, born in Vienna, Austria in 1925, immigrated to the United States in

1938. In February 1944, he joined the U.S. Army and served in the 423rd Battalion of the 106th Infantry Division. During the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew were captured by German soldiers in Belgium, near Malmedy. They were forced to march with many other prisoners for several days to a railroad, where they were crowded into cattle cars. When the train reached Koblenz, the locked cars were left overnight in a railroad yard where RAF bombers narrowly missed them. They arrived at Stalag 4-B, located between Leipzig and Dresden, in December 1944.

Mr. Kornfeld describes the bitter cold, the callous disregard of sick and dying prisoners during the transport, lack of food and water for two weeks and a limited prison diet thereafter. At his liberation in April 1945, he had lost 50 pounds. Despite his deprivation, he claims that the Germans observed the Geneva Convention in regard to American and British prisoners, but brutally mistreated the Russians. He depicts the Russian liberators of his camp as drunken Cossacks who slaughtered the remaining Germans, but befriended the prisoners by baking bread for them.

When Mr. Kornfeld and some friends fled and met American soldiers in Leipzig, they were given rich food, which sickened them and required a brief hospitalization. He returned to the

United States and was discharged in December 1945.

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

Rebecca writes to her sister-in-law Maria, discussing the newly published letters of John Randolph, a Virginian politican, and tells of the long romance between two of her acquaintances.

Zina Farber, nee Bass, one of six children, was born December 6, 1933 in Bialystok, Poland. Her father was a businessman. She shares her very early childhood memories of antisemitism (having been taught to always step off pavements when encountering Gentiles, at the risk of being beaten). She also recounts that the most vivid detail of her early life in Poland is her very warm family.

Having been separated from both parents very early in the war, her eldest brother took care of the family. In 1943, after confinement in Bialystok and PruzhanyGhettos, she and four brothers were sent to Auschwitz. She describes the round up of Jews in Pruzhany, the deportation in open cattle trucks, arrival, selection, and shaving. She describes the absolute miracle that she was not immediately gassed, being dragged out of her assigned truck and put instead with the group of women assigned to hard labor. She was 10 years old. She attributes this miracle to the fact that she was wearing her mother’s coat which made her look older than she was. She explains several times that it is too painful to recount the innumerable stories she could tell about her one and half year experience in Auschwitz. She is able to share descriptions of her constant hunger and fear. She describes fear of punishment – i. e. having her head pushed into a barrel of excrement– and relates the necessity of always wearing her soup bowl on a rope around her neck, even when sleeping. She also describes how the girls took care of each other, reddening cheeks before selections for example. She endured a two-week death march in mid-April 1945 to Ravensbrück and Neustadt-Gleiwitz (possibly Neustadt-Glewe).

Liberated by American soldiers, she travelled to Bialystok, where she was reunited with her father who had survived five years in Siberia. Mrs. Farber was separated several years earlier from her mother, who had been transported to Treblinka. After a failed attempt to emigrate to Palestine from the Landsberg displaced persons camp, Mrs. Farber left for the United States in 1949. Sponsored by an uncle in Philadelphia, she remained there, married and had two sons.

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

Albert Miller was a sergeant in the 303rd Bomb Group, 358th Squadron of the U.S. First Air Force, stationed in England in 1944. On November 21st, serving his 35th mission as radio operator gunman, his B17 bomber was shot down near Frankfurt. Landing at Oberursel, he faced rock-throwing civilians until German soldiers took him to a Luftwaffe prison for interrogation. He refused to divulge military information, despite threatened transfer to the GESTAPO. After 11 days of solitary confinement, he was taken with other prisoners of war in crowded passenger train compartments, to STALAG #4 at Grossye-Tychow [phonetic spelling]. There, as a non-commissioned officer, he did not have to work and could join classes, play ball and write songs for theatricals. A meager camp diet was supplemented by Red Cross packages. About January 10, 1945, the prisoners were transported by freight train to Barth, and he details the indignities of standing with over 50 men in a cattle car for four days and five nights. At STALAG #1, some guards were friendly, others were vicious. Increased hunger led some Prisoners of War to salvage potato peelings from German officers’ garbage. Encouragement came from BBC news received on hidden radios and from a Red Cross visit. After the Russian liberation of the camp on May 1, 1945, Mr. Miller observed the deteriorated condition of survivors emerging from a concentration camp nearby in Barth. He left STALAG #1 on May 13, and returned to the United States on June 20 on the SS General Butner.

Interviewee: MILLER, Albert Date: October 14, 1994