Oral History Interview with Judy Freeman

Murray Granger, a Jewish American soldier later captured as a prisoner of war, served with the Third Ranger Batallion of the United States Army. He was captured by the Germans in the south of France, September 1, 1944. During a brutal interrogation, he gave his name as Aloysius O’Brien instead of Goldstein to avoid Jewish identification and was reported as Missing in Action for 14 months, which he believes was an attempt to protect him and other POW's from greater cruelties.

He was interned at Stalag 2-B Hammerstein, working a 17-hour day in heavy road work, on a diet of six potatoes and water once a day. Caught stealing coal during a freezing winter, he endured public lashing as punishment. After six months of brutal degradation, he was sent to a prison farm near Strausberg and worked under a sadistic female German guard and six SS men. He describes the staging of a fatal dehumanizing conflict for food consumption by starving POWs and a farcical show of benign treatment staged for the International Red Cross visit.

In a secret camp for Jewish prisoners, he discovered 200 survivors out of a group of 1200 who were kept chained and beaten. When the Russian forces liberated the farm camp and killed the German guards, he remained with the other POWs until they were mentally and physically prepared to return home. On July 1, 1945, he was repatriated to the USA.

Harry Abrams was a combat correspondent attached to the U.S. 1st Army. He entered Buchenwald by special permission one day after its liberation. He accompanied members of the Signal Corps who took photographs. He briefly describes what he saw, the condition of the survivors, and his strong reaction to the horror. He was and is puzzled that the Germans could systematically plan and execute such atrocities.

Edith Millman, nee Greifinger, was born in 1924 in Bielsko (Bielitz), Poland. Father was an executive for Standard Oil Co. In 1937 the family moved to Warsaw. She was injured during the bombardment of the city in September 1939 when bombs hit the building in which they lived. She describes persecution of Jews which started immediately after the occupation and the horrendous conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto into which they were forced to move in November 1940. While there, she was able to study in small clandestine groups organized by teachers. She briefly discusses the Judenrat.

She worked at the Schultz factory until the end of 1942 when she escaped from the ghetto. With forged papers received from Gentiles, she passed as an Aryan and worked as a translator for the German railroad. She stole railroad identification cards, food stamps and coal with which she helped others. She describes fear of being discovered and close escapes. Speaking German and pretending to be an ethnic German helped her to throw off blackmailers. She lost many relatives, describes the deaths of several. After liberation by the Russians in August 1944 she studied medicine in Lublin, Poland, and after the war’s end in Marburg/Lahn, Germany, she came to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY in December 1947 on a B’nai B’rith Hillel scholarship. Her parents arrived in the USA in 1949.

Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.

Rebecca writes to her brother Ben about having daguerreotypes made as mementos and their niece Sara's upcoming wedding.

Elsa Turteltaub, nee Waldner, was born October 24, 1916 in Teschen (Cieszyn), Poland. She and her brother and sister attended private Catholic schools, although her parents kept a kosher home and attended a conservative synagogue on holidays. Elsa completed a commercial high school course and was active in HanoarHatzioni. After the German invasion in September 1939, her parents lost their restaurant and Elsa and her sister were forced to clean German army barracks. In December 1939, she escaped to Slovakia, where she joined a hakhshara in Zilina. She was sent to Auschwitz in March, 1942 in one of the first Slovakian transports and was forced into hard labor in the sand pits, despite being ill with typhus. When transferred to the registry office, she issued death certificates requested by relatives of Auschwitz inmates, both Jewish and Gentile. By 1943, only Gentiles’ requests were answered as Jews were no longer registered. The causes of death given were fiction, created by the office staff. If ashes of the deceased were requested, staff filled sacks with any ashes found in the crematorium. Living conditions for those girls, living in a building with SS women, were much better than elsewhere.

In January, 1942, Elsa was evacuated to Ravensbrück, then to Malchow, and finally to Trewitz in East Germany. She was liberated by Russians on May 3, 1945, was married in 1946, and gave birth to a son in 1948 in Katowitz, Poland. She and her family lived in Israel from 1950 to 1955 and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Her story is included in Secretaries of Death, ed. and translated by Lore Shelley, New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1986.

Interviewee: TURTELTAUB, Elsa Waldner Date: July 14, 1987