Oral History Interview with Jadwiga Zoszak

Saul Horn was born in Lódz, Poland in 1913. Saul briefly describes the thriving pre-war Lodz Jewish community. Saul recounts the effects of the German occupation on his family, losing the family business and fleeing to the Glowno Ghetto in December 1939, which was outside the German Reich at the time. He describes the difficult conditions in the ghetto, working outside the ghetto and trying to buy extra food. He describes their deportation to the Warsaw Ghetto when Germany took over that area in 1941. Saul describes working as a slave laborer in the Warsaw Ghetto, at Okecie airfield, and the gruesome effect of starvation, especially on children, as well as on people in general. He explains how he escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto to Opatów and later rescued 10 women, using bribery. After six months in Opatów they were captured by the SS and sent to Skarzysko labor camp. He details the horrible living conditions and brutal treatment by Ukrainian guards. His wife died of typhoid in 1942.

Saul details his deportation to Buchenwald by cattle train in 1944. Of the 2000 Jews on this transport only 200 survived. He describes the brutal conditions, especially the hunger, and how he became the head of the small hospital - staffed by Jewish doctors - that had no supplies. Saul witnessed several atrocities committed by Germans.

Buchenwald was liberated by the Russians in May, 1945. He mentions what occurred after liberation and his search for relatives in Lódz. He was reunited with three of his wife’s sisters and later married one of them. In 1945 he established a manufacturing business in Poland.

He explains how they were smuggled out of Poland to the Schlupfing Displaced Persons camp in Germany, helped by the Haganah, in 1946. He went to Landsberg Displaced Persons camp in 1948. Saul, his wife and two year old daughter, arrived in the United States in June 1949. He lived in Patterson N.J. and briefly talks about his life there and how he taught himself to speak English.

Fred Kulick served with the 336th Engineer Combat Battalion (Amphibious), United States 9th Army. Near Gardelegen, Germany, in the Saar Valley, they found between 100 and 200 corpses of slave laborers who had been locked in a barn and burned to death, probably by SS guards. Their commander, Lt. Colonel Paul Bennett ordered German civilians to give the victims a decent burial. This atrocity was recorded in the battalion records. Mr. Kulick sent photographs of the victims’ bodies to Yad Vashem in Israel.

He explains why he believes German citizens knew about the atrocities and the camps but were psychologically unable to admit it. He mentions a brief encounter with a group of starving American Prisoners of War in Schleswig Holstein. He relates his battalion’s activities in Europe from the German surrender until he returned to the Unites States.

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

Gabriela Truly, née Braun, was born January 7, 1916 in Levoča, Czechoslovakia, where her family had lived since the first half of the 18th century. She and her five siblings were active in Zionist groups. In 1939, as Slovak nationalists allied with the Axis, restrictions were placed on Jews. Her father’s tinsmithing shop was taken over by the State in 1940. In 1942, Mrs. Truly was rounded up with 1000 single girls aged 14-40, from surrounding areas and sent in the first transport to Auschwitz. She describes the dehumanizing intake process and the difficult life in the camps. Later, when mothers were brought with small children to a separate block, her sister and her 4 ½ year old son were among the first to be gassed in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly describes the drive of self-preservation, of caring only for yourself, although she narrates many incidents in which she aided others and others aided her. Later in 1942, she was moved to Birkenau, and became very ill with typhus, diarrhea and a badly infected foot. In February 1943 she was hospitalized back in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly categorizes which jobs were easier to survive and which more difficult. Again, aided by a hairdresser named Monsi, she gets a job first knitting for commandant Hoess, then filing in the personnel building. She was told permits to go to Israel had mysteriously come to Auschwitz, but nothing happened. On January 18, 1944, she was taken on a three day death march, and then near Ravensbrück, where she saw her mother for the last time. Next, they were taken to Malchow where she later met up with the younger sister of her sister-in-law. Eventually, she came to Crivitz and witnessed rape by Russian soldiers. Three brothers and one sister with two children had also survived. At last she went to Prague, where in 1948 she left for New York to live with a brother. She married an American-born Jew and remained in New York.

Caroline Gutman, nee Gersten, was born in Semipalatisnk, Siberia on November 9, 1944. Her family fled there when the Germans entered their town of Melitz, Poland in 1940. Her father was a shoemaker and tailor. After the war they smuggled out of Siberia to Germany. She and her family lived in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany and later in another camp, Feldafing, near Munich. She came to the United States when she was 8 years old, on January 11, 1952.

The interview focuses on Caroline’s emotional responses to her childhood experiences. Caroline describes her feelings as a child survivor and daughter of two survivors (having lost much of her extended family) growing up in America.

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.