Oral History Interview with Leon Friedman

Jeanette Rothschild2, née Fernbacher, born on September 13, 1898 in Grossmannsdorf, Germany, discusses her very happy early childhood and schooling at a convent in Straubing, Germany and how she and the other two Jewish girls were never treated badly for being Jewish by either teachers or students. She also describes two close friendships with non-Jewish girls. Her father was a successful cattle dealer. She discusses her extended family in nearby towns. She relates her experience during World War I and living in Berlin, Germany once she was married. Mrs. Rothschild compares the lack of antisemitism in Berlin in the 1920s with a trip back to Straubing in 1924 when she felt that her so called non-Jewish friends weren’t so friendly to her on that visit. She describes that she did start to feel antisemitism in Berlin by 1933, with the rise of the Nazi party.

Mrs. Rothschild details her experience during Kristallnacht, the destruction of their store, finding out about the synagogue burning, the Nazis taking her husband to Oranienburg for a month. She describes her trip to the Gestapo to secure her husband’s release and how he was deeply changed by his experience. They decided to leave immediately and she describes the huge lines of Jews at the consul trying to leave Germany and describes not being allowed to take money with them. They were able to go to England because a cousin in England secured a permit for them, but upon arrival her husband was placed in an enemy alien camp at Lynnefield. Mrs. Rothschild describes that it was a stadium of some sort and describes how she used her experience to make frequent visits and finally procure his release when she told the guard it was her birthday. They eventually settled in the United States3.

Elias Malek was born May 5, 1941 in Moisei2, Romania, one of six children. His father was a sofer.3 Elias underwent experimentation as a twin in Auschwitz. His earliest memory is being tattooed at Auschwitz when he was three years old. In this interview he describes what has been told to him by his older twin siblings (13 years old at the time) and also his memory fragments of their escape from Auschwitz and post-war experiences. He was told by his siblings that when Auschwitz was evacuated in 1945, someone helped the four of them hide to avoid being killed. Then a German officer helped them escape from a forced march by putting them at the back of the line and telling them to hide in a ditch and escape. Elias shares his memory of searching for food after the camp was deserted. Russian soldiers found them, fed and clothed them and took them to Russia for several months. When they returned to their home town, they found no relatives.

After the war Elias and his siblings stayed in a displaced persons camp in Cluj and then in several orphanages from 1948 to 1954. At Sâncrai, they went to school and worked on a farm. In 1955, a rabbi arranged for Elias to attend a cheder and a yeshiva in Arad. In 1963, he studied at a yeshiva in Belgium until he emigrated to the United States that year. In Brooklyn, a rabbi obtained a job for him with a construction company. He has married and had children, but never told them about his wartime experience.

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

RachelaFrydmanwas born on November 26, 1914 in Zloczew, Poland (near Lodz). She came from a large observant Zionist family. Her father was a wood merchant. Rachela belonged to Shomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. One of her brothers was able to get to Palestine in 1928. Before 1930 Rachela had experienced antisemitism in the form of two pogroms and a robbery.

In the 1930s the family moved to Piotrkow, Poland, a mill town. By 1933 the Polish Jews who lived in Germany had been forced back into Poland. Rachela details how the PiotrkowGhetto was created and describes conditions there, overcrowding, starvation, laborbatallions.She describes treatment by the S.S. and many shootings. Rachela and her sister taught Jewish history and culture from their apartment until 1941. Rachela married while in the ghetto. Her husband was sent out for forced labor and did not return. Rachela recounts being terrorized by Ukrainian guards in the ghetto, witnessing murders and contracting typhus. Her mother and one sister died in the typhus epidemic. She was nursed by nuns in a hospital and one offered to hide her in their convent.

From 1942 - 1944 Rachela was in Skarzysko-Kamienna, a forced labor camp which was an ammunition factory. She describes her beatings by guards. In 1944, Rachela and many inmates were sent to Buchenwald’s sub-camp, Leipzig-Schoenfeld, in cattle cars. There Rachela along with 600 inmates lived in one large room.Rachela recounts their attempts to observe Jewish holidays by lighting candles with wicks made from stolen rope and saving crumbs for symbolizing matza.

In April 1945 they were marched toward Dresden. They were liberated at the River Elbe by the Soviet army. By then Rachela could no longer walk. She was hospitalized and later sent to a displaced person’s camp. There she met and married her second husband and gave birth to a daughter. They came to the United States on April 19, 1951. Rachela states that she’s alive because she willed herself to see the defeat of the Germans.

Victor Cooper2 was born December 26, 1914 in Strzemieszyce, Poland, the youngest of four brothers. He was married and had a six-month old son when he was drafted into the Polish Army in 1939. His wife, son and all of his family perished during the war years.

Victor describes how he was captured by Germans in 1940and was segregated from non-Jewish POWs at Majdanek death camp in Lublin. He escaped with the help of a fellow Jewish prisoner, and fled back home where he was in Strzemieszyce Ghetto for a short time,subjected to forced labor and witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto and German atrocities. He was then deported to 10 labor and concentration camps, including Będzin, Markstadt, Gross Rosen, Flossenbürgand Buchenwald. He vividly describes his experiences, conditions, backbreaking cement work and digging tunnels and how he fought to stay alive. He details a month-long death march from Buchenwald to Dachau in April 1945, during which he escaped and was recaptured several times.

In May, 1945, he was found hiding in Bavarian woods by a Jewish doctor serving with the American 7th Army. He was taken, disoriented and ill, to a Catholic hospital in Straubing. After his recovery, he worked with an American lawyer, helping to regain possession of Jewish property in the area. In June 1949, he emigrated to the United States under the displaced persons quota. He held many jobs with the United Service for Young and New Americans and several trade unions. He remarried and fathered two children. His daughter became a lawyer and his son is a professor at Columbia University.

Former last name was Kupfer.

This was recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, Pa.

Hans Hartenstein was born January 27, 1923 into a Jewish family in Vienna. He describes his father, owner of a printing business, as a decorated Austrian veteran of World War I who knew of the persecution of Jews in Germany but believed that he would not be affected by Nazi oppression. After the Anschluss, his father was arrested on April 13, 1938 and was detained in Dachau and Buchenwald for 13 months. When Hans was forced to leave his Gymnasium, he joined Hashomer Hatzair as an avid Zionist, preparing for emigration to Palestine in a hakhsharah camp near Vienna. He describes illegal shortwave broadcasts and crowded living conditions after his father’s business and the family apartment were confiscated. Unable to obtain a Palestinian emigration certificate, he left for England with help from the British Society of Friends in August 1939. His father had emigrated to England following his release from concentration camp in May 1939, also with help from British Quakers. Hans describes refugee life in England and their concern about his mother’s safety in Vienna. She emigrated to the U.S. in January 1940; Hans and his father joined her within that year. Brief men‌tion is made of a cousin who survived in hiding with aid from a Dutch farmer.