Oral History Interview with Konrad Bieber

Lola Krause, née Miestschanimoff, was born March 1,1916, in Vitebsk, Belarus. Her father, a successful movie photographer, and her mother, an accomplished pianist from Latvia, were non-observant Soviet Jews. Lola studied music with her mother, learned German from her governess and attended public school in Vitebsk. Rejected by the local Soviet college because of her father’s upper-class status, she moved to Leningrad, studied engineering and worked in film and scientific instrument factories. She married in 1938 and a son was born in 1939.

She details the siege of Leningrad; German bombardment; disease; lack of food and all public services. Her husband died of starvation, her weight dropped to 60 pounds and at three years of age, her son weighed only seven-and-a-half pounds. When her factory was relocated to Samarkand in 1941, she traveled with her son in a cattle car for six weeks, stopping in Tashkent. There she met her uncle, a doctor, who insisted that the fragile child remain with him in the hospital. A year-and-a-half later, he joined her in Samarkand, where she worked until 1946. She married again and the family moved illicitly across European borders, living in Jewish Agency camps in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland and at Waseralfinger, near Stuttgart, Germany. Another son was born and they survived with food packages from American relatives.

In 1949, Lola and her familyemigrated to the United States. Lola describes their adjustment in Bradley Beach, N.J. and in Philadelphia, working in factories and establishing their own cleaning business. She sold her valuable bracelet to buy a piano, suffering ridicule from poor neighbors, because she believed children had to learn to play an instrument. She had her sons circumcised, sent them to Hebrew school and began to observe Jewish holidays. A visit to Israel in 1972 further heightened her Jewish consciousness.

Samuel Flor1 was born in Czernowitz, Romania. He talks about experiencing antisemitism, his education, and his career as a composer, musician, and a professor at the university in Czernowitz.

He describes life in Czernowitz first under Russian and then under German occupation. He explains why it was impossible to leave and how he and his wife, Gertrude tried to escape in June, 1941, but failed. He was part of a brutal roundup of Jewish men, and had to bury Jewish men who were machine-gunned to death by Germans near the River Prut. After being tormented by the Germans, the survivors, including Samuel Flor, returned home.

In October, 1941 all Jews had to move into a ghetto until they were deported to the Ukraine under terrible conditions, including periodic whippings by both German and Romanian soldiers. He describes a particularly cruel incident involving Jews from Mogilev, a forced circular death march, and several atrocities committed by Ukrainian peasants. Mr. Flor worked as a slave laborer in a stone quarry in Ladesti on the Bugac and in Tulchin in a hospital.

He relates a chilling vignette in which Sonderführer Fritz von Rohde explains why killing Jews is a service to humanity.

As the Germans retreated Mr. and Mrs. Flor and about 66 other people hid in a hole they had dug previously for more than three days, until March 15, 1944. He describes how the 300 Jewish survivors tried to cope once the Russian army came, and his return to Czernowitz. His apartment had been nationalized so Mr. and Mrs. Flor joined the Czech army. He explains how they got out of Prague, emigrated to Barranquilla, Colombia, (South America) and then to the United States where Mr. Flor continued his musical career.

Herbert Lindemeyer was born in Minden, Germany in 1922. His father owned a pharmacy. He describes antisemitism after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and briefly mentions the boycott of Jew‌ish stores in April 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. He describes his parents’ discussions of whether to emigrate. After Kristallnacht, his father was incarcerated in Buchenwald for a month and his pharmacy confiscated by the Nazis.

Herbert emigrated to England in August 1939 through the help of a British Quaker woman. He describes in detail his internment, with thousands of German and Austrian refugees—in June 1940 on the Isle of Man. In December 1941 he was allowed to leave when he obtained a defense job in Manchester, England. There in January 1944 he married a woman who had traveled to England on the Kindertransport. In October 1945 he joined the American Army for an assignment in Germany as an interpreter and mail censor. One assignment was the tracking of Werner Von Braun. Later he returned to Minden where the new owner of his father’s pharmacy had kept papers which helped Herbert obtain restitution. He emigrated to the United States in 1948.

Herbert Broh was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930. He shares his childhood memories of his life in Germany and his family’s journey to Shanghai. Herbert relates several experiences of abusive antisemitism by his friends and his teacher, as well as his impressions of Kristallnacht.

His family left Germany for Shanghai in April of 1939 to join family members already living on Seward Road in the Hongkew section of Shanghai, under Japanese occupation. Herbert was enrolled in the Kadoorie School and later a cheder. He talks about his Jewish education at the cheder and the Yeshiva Katana in great detail, as well as the effect of his growing orthodoxy on his life and his family. He describes his family’s living conditions and life in Shanghai and states he was very happy there. He was only dimly aware that other refugees had a more difficult existence. His father worked for a Chinese factory managed by Japanese; his mother worked as a cook at the Komor Kindergarten.

After Pearl Harbor, his family was evacuated to the Kadoorie School. He mentions interaction between Japanese and refugees. He vividly describes the events during and after the Japanese capitulation and the arrival of Chinese Nationalist and later American troops. He witnessed the departure of the entire Mirrer Yeshiva to Canada in 1946. Herbert and his family went to the United States in 1947. He describes his life in the United States and his feelings about his years in Shanghai. He is now a Cantor in Sun City, California.

Interviewee: BROH, Herbert Date: October 15, 1999

Ilsa R. Katz was born December 10, 1921 in Venningen, Pfalz, Germany. Her father was a kosher butcher and a World War I veteran. She briefly describes her life and education (both secular and religious) before and after Hitler came to power including the escalating anti-Jewish restrictions and increasing antisemitism.

During Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, their synagogue was burned and all Jewish men were arrested. A non-Jewish villager saved the Torah scroll. The next morning all Jews were rounded up and deported by bus to a meadow near Karlsruhe, Baden.

Because her father had obtained Visas, Ilsa and her family were able to leave for the United States from Hamburg, Germany to Philadelphia in December 1938. Most of her relatives were deported and killed. Ilsa talks about their life in Philadelphia, how they made a living and adjusted to life in America.

Interviewee: KATZ, Ilsa R. Date: Sept. 11, 1989

Adele Wertheimer, nee Rozenel, the eldest of eight children, was born February 5, l922 in Bendzin(also Będzin),Poland to a religious family. Her parents were merchants. She gives a detailed description of pre-war Bendzin, Zionist organizations, her attendance at a Bet Yaakov school2 and her family. She describes the effect of the German invasion on their town, the rounding up of men, the curfew, the violence against women and having to wear a star. She mentions the rape of her aunt by German soldiers. She gives a detailed explanation about how the Jews were forced into the ghetto gradually and describes how they would hide from the Germans in different bunkers during round ups. She recalls when her mother and other siblings were taken away in a roundup, and she and her father and some other relatives hid in a bunker where they stayed for six weeks. They were caught and were forced to clean up the town.

Adele describes her deportation to Auschwitz in 1943, the separation from her father, her work in an ammunition factory and that she met an aunt and uncle in Auschwitz. She recalls the shared pair of shoes given to her by her aunt that she and a friend used on the death march to Ravensbrück which helped them stay alive. She describes her short stay in Ravensbrück and subsequent deportation on cattle trains to Malchoff in Germany. She shares the vignette of bribing someone with bread to get vegetables to feed a friend who had typhus and thus saved her life. She details their deportation to Taucha, a subcamp of Buchenwald/Dora-Mittelbau near Leipzig and how the Germans left all the prisoners in the open cattle cars during the Allied bombing raid to kill them. Her car miraculously survived and they were then marched on to Nossen near Freiberg. She describes walking out to a German home to get food and receiving a beating when she got back. Shortly after, she and her friend decided to escape the death march. She details their escape to a town where the Soviets were approaching and how they obtained food and clothes there and ended up going back toward Katowice with the Soviets. After the war Adele emigrated to Israel and later to the United States in 19583. She was the only survivor of her family.