Oral History Interview with Leonard Goldfine

Simon Aufschauer was born on February 15, 1915 in Żółkiew, near Lvov (Lemberg) Galicia, Poland. His father died when he was 4 and at age 13 he was apprenticed to a furrier. He described the antisemitism of the Polish and Ukrainian schoolchildren of Lvov when he was growing up. Simon belonged to Betar, a Jewish youth movement, and he and his brother worked to help their widowed mother. Simon was drafted into the Polish army in 1937 and he fought briefly against the German Army when they invaded Poland in 1939. He was captured and then escaped from a detention camp by putting on civilian clothes. In Lvov, now under the Soviets, Simon, worked as a furrier until being drafted into the Soviet Army with his brother, on June 21, 1941. When his brother was killed by the German Army Simon fled and returned to his mother in Lvov. After the German invasion of Lvov she was sent to Belzec, where she perished. Simon describes the murder of 2,000 Jews from the ghetto in Lemberg in April 1942. Since Simon was a strong worker, he was sent to several slave labor camps: in December 1941 to Janowska, Lemberg; in 1943 to Plaszow, Krakow; in 1944 to Gross Rosen; and finally on May8, 1945, he was liberated by the Soviets from Reichenbach. He described the horrific conditions in these slave labor camps: 12 to 18 hour days of slave labor, sickness, brutalities, crematoria (in Gross Rosen), and digging out dead bodies and burning them in order to erase evidence of the murders (in Plaszow, Krakow,1943). He also described attempts of the Jews to pray and fast for Yom Kippur at these places. Simon met his wife in a Displaced Persons camp (May 1945) and they were marriedAugust 12, 1945. They were able to come to the United States soon after. He attributed his ability to survive to his experience as a furrier and to his youthful strength. Throughout his testimony is the pervasive recounting of Polish and Ukrainian antisemitism, even after the war. See also the oral history of Hasia Aufschauer, Mr. Aufschauer’s wife, who was also interviewed for the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive.

Sam Don (formerly Zalman Domb) was born on January 15, 1927 in Ostrykół, a Polish village. He describes pre-war life: schooling, farming and family history, antisemitism exhibited from non-Jewish children, religious life. His family and the six other Jewish families in the town were farmers. Sam describes the German occupation in 1939, restrictions put on Jews, and forced labor in forests. He describes their deportation to the Makow Ghetto and describes Polish townspeople looting Jewish homes. Sam was caught smuggling food for the Polish underground and imprisoned in Plotsk for nearly a year. In December, 1942 he was sent to Birkenau /Auschwitz and was there until early autumn 1943. Sam details his many experiences in Auschwitz including the hierarchy and relationship of Kapos, Stubenältesters and Blockführers, the Sonderkommando and daily routines. Sam was saved when a Jewish guard exchanged him for a dead body, when he was designated as a Muselmann. He worked in an excavation kommando distributing tools, but through his connections with the Jewish guard—who had saved him—smuggled lots of goods back and forth from “Canada” (the group sorting clothes from the bodies of dead Jews) to bribe Kapos and Blockführers. He describes his brother’s electrocution on a fence in Auschwitz in 1943 during one of these smuggling operations and also shares a gruesome story about Christmas Day in Auschwitz and how the Germans shot and tortured inmates for fun. He explains why the Polish townspeople had to have known what was happening because of their proximity to the camp; the chimneys, flames, smoke and the smell. He describes an attempted escape of three Jews from Auschwitz and the Polish civilians returning them to the Germans. He also describes one instance of kindness from a German guard who threw him a piece of bread. Sam was later sent as a political prisoner to the coal mine, Jaworzno. In January 1944 he witnessed the massacre of hundreds of Jews there. He describes a forced march to Jawiszowice in spring of 1944 and describes the elderly or infirm being shot before the march started. He describes three months of hard labor and another forced marched to Ohrdruf where he describes improved conditions. Sam was later sent to several slave labor camps in East Germany, then to Buchenwald and later to Terezin (Theresienstadt), Czechoslovakia, where he was liberated by the Russians on May 8, 1945. Sam met his wife in 1946 in the German displaced persons camp, Heidenheim. They came to the United States in June, 1949 and were married in a synagogue in Philadelphia on October 23, 1949. The rest of Sam’s family perished in Majdanek, Chekonoff (slave labor camp) and Auschwitz. In 1988, Sam added to his testimony with another interview, describing a return trip to Poland with his son and daughter. See also Sam Don’s 1988 interivew in which he discusses his experiences on his trip back to Poland, and his wife, Shirley Don’s interview.

Lisa Tyre was born February 1, 1929 in Vienna, Austria into an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, an attorney, served in the Austrian army in World War I. The family experienced no antisemitism until March 1938. Lisa describes the escalating effects of anti-Jewish measures and activities on her parents and herself and witnessed two instances of brutality against Jews. In the summer of 1938 her father was interrogated and beaten by the GESTAPO. A client, who was a Nazi officer, arranged for his safe return and also helped the family to obtain exit visas. The family left for England in September 1938 – helped by the Sassoon family – and moved to Christ Church, New Zealand six months later. The family went to the United States in November 1946, under the Czech quota and stayed for two weeks in the Congress House a shelter for refugees run by the American Jewish Congress. Lisa describes the difficult emigration process, and her family’s life and adjustment problems in England, New Zealand and the United States. Lisa attributes her rejection of Judaism and her distrust of organized religion to some of her experiences in New Zealand and the Congress House, and her bitterness to the loss of over 50 relatives during the Holocaust. Interviewee: Tyre, Lisa Glaser Date: February 24, 1981

Lillian Wishnefsky, née Kupferberg, was born in Sosnowiec, Poland in December 1929. Her father was a merchant and her mother a professional pianist. Her family observed the Jewish holidays. She attended public school until fourth grade when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. She describes the formation of the Sosnowiec Ghetto in 1941, the confiscation of her father’s factory, her clandestine education, life in the ghetto, her family’s move to the Srodula Ghetto; her mother obtained false papers and was hidden by Christians. She describes the Nazis taking her father in the middle of the night, murdering her grandparents and deporting her to a camp and later Auschwitz. Even though she was only 12 ½ years old, she was not sent to the children’s camp in Auschwitz but was instead assigned to forced labor. Her barracks were across the street from the gas chambers. One and a half years later she was sent on the death march to Ravensbrück. She was part of a prisoner exchange arranged by President Roosevelt and traveled to Sweden via Denmark. She describes her experience on a Swedish farm and her move to Stockholm which was precipitated by a Swedish publishing company’s interest in her diary. She moved to the United States in November 1545.

Marian Turzanski, born January 18, 1934 in Zupanie, Poland, was one of four sons in a Catholic family who owned large forest land. Before 1939, he recalls good relations with the few Jews in his village, one of whom once hid in the Turzanski home. After the German invasion, hostile Ukrainians threatened to kill Marian’s father; a friendly Ukrainian intervened and urged the family to flee. In Hungary, they moved frequently, settling in Keszthely, where Marian attended a school for Polish children. His parents had left their baptismal papers in Poland, to be used by Samuel Goldreich, the Jew they once sheltered. Life in Hungary after German occupation is detailed: terrorization by the Arrow Cross and German soldiers, ghettoization of Jews and Poles, deportation of Jews and Gypsies. Marian’s father was active in the underground, together with Hungarian Jews and other Christians; Marian and his brothers became messengers. He describes in detail the family’s deportation December 31, 1944, to Germany, via Prague and Vienna in sealed cattle cars and the luxury of bedsheets and decent food at the Wilhelmshaven work camp near Berlin. This contrasts with the starkness of the other camps he mentions briefly: Strashof, Bayreuth, Neumarkt. He describes brutal treatment by Ukrainians at Neumarkt. After liberation by Americans in 1945, he lived in Displaced Persons camps at Neumarkt, Hochenfels, Annsbach, Wildflecken, Heilbronn, Ludvigsburg and Bremenhafen. He came to the United States on August 27, 1949 after losing all of his relatives outside of his immediate family.