Oral History Interview with Jenny Isakson Sommer

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.

IlseLoeb, née Morgenstern,was born June 17,1925 in Vienna, Austria. Her mother’s maiden name was Froelich. Her father Max was a lithographer who made counterfeit money for the Wehrmacht. She never experienced antisemitism until March 1938, when Germany occupied Austria. Christian friends no longer associated with her and she was forced to transfer to a school for Jewish students. In the summer of 1938 her father’s printing business was confiscated. Ilse was sent to Amsterdam, where the Children’s Committee placed her with foster families, who protected her until 1942.

On November 10, 1938, her parents were seized by Austrian Nazis and were killed in adeath camp in Poland. Ilse escaped from a transfer to a concentration camp and went into hiding with the Dutch underground, with whom she lived for three years. She describes the selflessness of Dutch Gentiles who risked their lives to help Jews survive.

After the war, Ilse contracted tuberculosis and spent 10 months in a sanatorium. Her brother in the United States and HIAS helped her come to Chicago in June 1947, where she met her husband. They have four children and live in northern New York.

Jack Zaifman was born in Radom, Poland on March 2, l925 into an Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a merchant. He attended public school and chederuntil age l4. He describes the savagery of the German bombing and invasion of Radom in September l939. Escaping from a round-up of Jews, he bicycled to Wolanow and lived for a year with a Jewish family until that small town was liquidated. He was taken for slave labor at a nearby camp manned by Gestapo, Ukrainian and Lithuanian guards. He worked as a tailor for the German Army, witnessed a massacre of 350 Jews and had to dig trenches to bury the dead. When he was ill with typhoid fever, a righteous German soldier took him to the Rodomer Ghetto hospital.

In autumn of 1941, Jack was sent to Blizyn labor camp, near the German border, where he was betrayed by a Jewish Kapo and severely beaten by guards when he tried to help another prisoner. Among the 3,000 survivors (out of l0,000) of Blizyn, he was shipped to Auschwitz where he sorted clothing of the dead. He describes the train ride, selections and his bunk make being selected for an experiment by Mengele. Jack describes walking over to another Kommando one day which was deported to Dachau where he endured brutal labor, carrying cement and laying pipes. During a death march from Dachau, April l945, he was liberated by Americans and taken to a hospital at Wolfratshausen, weighing 70 pounds. At the Feldafing DP camp he met and married his wife; they came to the United States in April l949. He began speaking in high schools and colleges about his experience in l977.

Mr. Di Giorgio served in E Company, 232nd Regiment, 42nd Division of the Seventh Army during World War II. He briefly describes some of his combat experiences and the heavy losses his division took. His unit entered Dachau in April, 1945 shortly after it was liberated, under orders to clear all the buildings and tunnels and then to move on.

He saw some survivors and a few guards who tried to blend in with them, a lampshade made out of human skin, and many so-called "Forty and Eights"-- cattle cars stacked with bodies ready for cremation. He explains how what he saw at Dachau profoundly affected him, renewed his will to fight, and increased his religious observance. He was moved to testify because of his perception of widespread disbelief about the Holocaust.

Interviewee: DI GIORGIO, Philip Date: December 6, 1994

William Mc Cormick was a sergeant in the 15th Reconnaissance Group, attached to Seventh Army Headquarters. He entered Dachau one day after the initial liberation and stayed for two days. He gives a very powerful description of the physical and mental condition of the survivors; bodies in boxcars and in piles on the ground, and human ashes in boxes near the crematorium. He reports that the Nazis killed 30,000 prisoners the week before liberation. He describes his reaction as well as that of others in his unit, and the lasting effect that what he saw in Dachau had on him.

Interviewee: MC CORMICK, William Date: January 11, 1988

Joseph Levy was born on August 22, 1911 in Eschweiler, Germany. Despite antisemitic harassment during childhood, he enjoyed his childhood in public and private Jewish schools and in a Jugendbund youth group.

On January 31, 1933, his father and older brother—warned by a friendly local Nazi leader—fled before storm troopers ransacked their butcher shop in Siegburg. Some Christian employees helped shelter the family at that time and later delivered a ransom for the father’s release from Dachau.

In 1937, Joseph obtained an American visa and joined his siblings in New York City. Their parents followed, aided by the Red Cross and a Jewish organization. They sailed in a fishing boat from Barcelona, with a brief stay in Cuba, before arriving in the United States in December 1941.

Most of this interview narrates the stories of his father in hiding and forced labor and his brother in resistance groups in France and Spain (both of whom had already died at the time of this interview).