Oral History Interview with Malvina Gerlich Eisner

Albert Miller was a sergeant in the 303rd Bomb Group, 358th Squadron of the U.S. First Air Force, stationed in England in 1944. On November 21st, serving his 35th mission as radio operator gunman, his B17 bomber was shot down near Frankfurt. Landing at Oberursel, he faced rock-throwing civilians until German soldiers took him to a Luftwaffe prison for interrogation. He refused to divulge military information, despite threatened transfer to the GESTAPO. After 11 days of solitary confinement, he was taken with other prisoners of war in crowded passenger train compartments, to STALAG #4 at Grossye-Tychow [phonetic spelling]. There, as a non-commissioned officer, he did not have to work and could join classes, play ball and write songs for theatricals. A meager camp diet was supplemented by Red Cross packages. About January 10, 1945, the prisoners were transported by freight train to Barth, and he details the indignities of standing with over 50 men in a cattle car for four days and five nights. At STALAG #1, some guards were friendly, others were vicious. Increased hunger led some Prisoners of War to salvage potato peelings from German officers’ garbage. Encouragement came from BBC news received on hidden radios and from a Red Cross visit. After the Russian liberation of the camp on May 1, 1945, Mr. Miller observed the deteriorated condition of survivors emerging from a concentration camp nearby in Barth. He left STALAG #1 on May 13, and returned to the United States on June 20 on the SS General Butner.

Interviewee: MILLER, Albert Date: October 14, 1994

Gabriel Drimer was born May 2, 1922 in Dubova, Czechoslovakia. His family owned a bakery. He studied at the yeshiva in Bratislava and later apprenticed to learn tailoring and design. He belonged to B’nai Akiva, an Orthodox Zionist organization. He describes how anti-Jewish measures, confiscations, and deportations were instituted after the Hungarian army invaded in 1940 and relations between Jews and non-Jews changed. He relates an eyewitness account of mass murder of Jews, including his relatives, in Kamenets-Podolski in 1941. He stopped the deportation of his family due to good relations with the local police. Gabriel visited his family in the Taitch [phonetic] Ghetto in October 1943 while he was in a labor camp. His family was killed in Auschwitz except for a brother who died on the Russian front and a brother who died in the Resistance. The captain in charge of his labor camp saved all the prisoners until the Russians could liberate them.

Gabriel relates that a Ukrainian officer tried to kill Gabriel as a Jew, but a Russian officer intervened. Other Russian officers befriended the survivors. Gabriel worked with the Russian military secret police rounding up Nazis and describes their reactions. He returned to Bratislava and describes how he opened his old store, greatly expanded his business, fed survivors passing through, and met and married his wife.

In 1948, after two months of training he left for Israel with other Jews to join the Haganah. He served in the army, later was a sergeant in the police force, established a business and organized an association of 40 farms. He talks about his life and changing conditions in Israel. He emigrated to the United States in 1955 and went into business in New York.

Interviewee: DRIMER, Gabriel Date: April 21, 1985

Ernest Kaufman was born in Drove, Germany, a small town with about 25 Jews. His father served in the German army during World War I and was a butcher and also a shochet. They had no problems with gentile neighbors but Ernest could not complete his education or his apprenticeship because he was Jewish. During Kristallnacht a local police man refused to arrest his father, but Ernest was arrested and transported to Buchenwald. He describes the terrible conditions and brutality in Buchenwald. The prisoners arrested during Kristallnacht did not have to work, but were forced to watch other prisoners being tortured and killed. Ernest explains how he managed to get an affidavit that enabled him to be released from Buchenwald after four weeks. He got a visa for the United States on April 20, 1939 and arrived in New York two weeks later. Ernest describes his unsuccessful attempts to get his parents out of Germany and into Cuba. His parents did not survive. Ernest describes how he lived and supported himself in New York and later in Philadelphia.

After Pearl Harbor, Ernest enlisted in the U.S. Army, became a naturalized citizen and eventually an officer. He served in England and Germany in 1943 and relates many of his experiences as an intelligence officer on an interrogation team. He discovered that Christian neighbors in Drove smuggled food into a house where local Jews were assembled before they were deported. In July 1945, he was wounded and sent to England General Hospital in Atlantic City. After he recovered, he was assigned to the European Command Intelligence Center in charge of the document section. He describes his intensive but futile search to discover what happened to his parents. After two more years in the service, he bought a poultry farm in Egypt, N.J. where he and his wife Minna lived for 30 years.

Dora Langsam was born in Brzeziny, Poland January 1, 1925. Her family kept kosher, her father, a business man, fought with Trumpeldor, her brother served in the Polish army.

She describes conditions for Jews after the German invasion in September 1939. One brother died trying to protect his father from the Germans, one sister with her newborn baby was taken during a selection. The rest of the family stayed in the Brzeziny Ghetto from 1940 to the spring of 1942 when the ghetto was closed and the Jewish population was transported to the Lodz Ghetto. Her mother was taken away in a selection immediately, a brother later. Dora and her father worked in a factory as slave laborers. She describes what she refers to as “hellish conditions” in the Lodz Ghetto.

In July or August 1944, the liquidation of the ghetto started. Dora, her father, and a sister were transported to Auschwitz. Her father was taken away as soon as he got off the train. Dora and her sister lived in barracks, supervised by a brutal Czech KAPO and endured daily Appells, selections, hunger and cold. Dora tried to rescue her sister during a selection and both were saved from certain death at the last second by an air raid. Both were transported to a labor camp in Neukölln to work in an ammunition factory owned by Krupp. In 1945, near the end of the war, they were transported to Ravensbrück where they received food packages from the American Red Cross. Dora and her sister did not get sick like most of the girls because they didn’t eat the non-kosher food.

On April 24, 1945 Dora and her sister went to Padborg, Denmark on a convoy organized by Folke Bernadotte, then on to Copenhagen and Malmö, Sweden. She describes how deeply being treated like human beings affected them and the quarantines in Lund then Visingsö. Dora worked in a sanatorium during the day and went to school at night, stayed in Sweden for eight years, married her husband, a survivor from Poland, and had a son and a daughter during that time. On July 6, 1953 they went to the United States, helped by HIAS, because her husband wanted to raise his children in a free country. Her sister still lives in Sweden with her husband, also a survivor.

Gabriela Truly, née Braun, was born January 7, 1916 in Levoča, Czechoslovakia, where her family had lived since the first half of the 18th century. She and her five siblings were active in Zionist groups. In 1939, as Slovak nationalists allied with the Axis, restrictions were placed on Jews. Her father’s tinsmithing shop was taken over by the State in 1940. In 1942, Mrs. Truly was rounded up with 1000 single girls aged 14-40, from surrounding areas and sent in the first transport to Auschwitz. She describes the dehumanizing intake process and the difficult life in the camps. Later, when mothers were brought with small children to a separate block, her sister and her 4 ½ year old son were among the first to be gassed in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly describes the drive of self-preservation, of caring only for yourself, although she narrates many incidents in which she aided others and others aided her. Later in 1942, she was moved to Birkenau, and became very ill with typhus, diarrhea and a badly infected foot. In February 1943 she was hospitalized back in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly categorizes which jobs were easier to survive and which more difficult. Again, aided by a hairdresser named Monsi, she gets a job first knitting for commandant Hoess, then filing in the personnel building. She was told permits to go to Israel had mysteriously come to Auschwitz, but nothing happened. On January 18, 1944, she was taken on a three day death march, and then near Ravensbrück, where she saw her mother for the last time. Next, they were taken to Malchow where she later met up with the younger sister of her sister-in-law. Eventually, she came to Crivitz and witnessed rape by Russian soldiers. Three brothers and one sister with two children had also survived. At last she went to Prague, where in 1948 she left for New York to live with a brother. She married an American-born Jew and remained in New York.

Hyman Blady was born February 11, 1920 in Warsaw to a middle class Zionist family; he belonged to HaShomer HaTzair. His father owned a shoe store. He discusses pre-war Poland, his education, and antisemitism in Poland.Hyman’s family was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939. A Christian friend helped him get some supplies out of his family’s shoe store to make shoes in the ghetto. Hyman also gives numerous of examples of Poles smuggling into the ghetto to buy Jewish wares at unreasonably low prices and describes how Jews managed to survive.

He escaped from the ghetto for a time passing as an Aryan, but returned to care for his younger brother when his mother died. Hegives a detailed description of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. After hiding in the ghetto, he and his brother are eventually found and sent to Bobruisk concentration camp for more than a year. Hyman worked as a shoemaker. His very young brother survived because a German soldier took pity on him when he was selected to die and made him his shoe polisher. Hyman worked as a shoemaker in several camps which he describes in detail. He and his brother were deported to Blizyn (for eight months), then Hyman was separated from his brother when he was deported to Plaszow (for six months) where he did saddlework. He describes the relatively improved conditions there.

In 1944, Hymanwas deported to Mauthausen and then theGusen subcamp where he worked underground building a factory for Messerschmidt airplanes for the Germans. He describes the deplorable conditions, selections, and scarcity of food. He details the horrible conditions during a deportation to get deloused in Linz, Austria. Many perished in a sealed cattle car and train cars were bombed by the Allies while there. Hyman describes being sent back to Gusen and then again to Mauthausen from which they were taken on a death march to Gunskirchen where they were scheduled to be killed. Hyman was liberated by Americans May 4 or 5, 1945. He and a group of boys went to a farm not far from Wels. He got ill eating too much food too quickly and was taken to a hospital in Lambach (Austria) for 2 weeks, but insisted on returning to his eight friends. After a time all refugees were forced to a DP camp near Wels. Subsequently, they travelled to Föhrenwald DP camp and he was eventually reunited with his brother who had survived Auschwitz. Hyman married in 1946. After their planned emigration was delayed because of the Exodus, they stayed in Germany, had a son, eventually emigrating to the United States sometime before 1950. Hyman attributes his survival to his sheer will to live and luck.