Oral History Interview with Malvina Herzfeld

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.

Ernst Presseisen was born July 13, 1928 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. His father was a businessman. He describes the German invasion of Holland and the bombing of Rotterdam in May1940. He details the gradually tightening restrictions imposed by the Germans to isolate the Dutch-Jewish citizens. After roundups of Jewish men started in July 1942, his father - helped by Christian friends who had contact with the underground - planned the family’s escape. His mother’s arrest by Dutch police aborted this plan. The entire family, including his mother, was deported to Westerbork in August 1942 and stayed there until February 1944. He describes life in Westerbork in detail, including his own development of survival skills and how his family managed to remain there instead of being deported to Poland. He briefly mentions Geneker, the commander of Westerbork.

In February 1944 he was deported to Bergen-Belsen with his family. He describes his experiences there in detail, including slave labor assignments and general deterioration of the inmates’ health. Jewish prisoners organized a theatre group “Cabaret Westerbork” in that camp. In the fall of 1944 Ernst got typhus and his oldest brother died of it. He mentions Greek Kapos. At the approach of the British Army, the Germans decided to evacuate the camp in April, 1945. Prisoners who survived the evacuation were liberated by the Russians and ordered to requisition housing in Trebitsch, Germany. Ernst briefly describes survival in Trebitsch. After his parents died of typhus, he was repatriated to the Netherlands by the Red Cross in June 1945. He talks about life in post-war Holland. He emigratedto the United States in October 1946. He settled in California with relatives and taught German history at the university level after getting his degree.

Interviewee: Ernst Leopold Presseisen Date: April 22, 1983

Myra Davis, nee Miki Heller, was born July 12, 1936 in Kovno, Lithuania, the only child in an affluent Jewish family. Her parents were Franz and Fanny Heller. After the Russian invasion in 1940, her family was forced to move from their large home to much smaller quarters. In 1940, they immigrated to Japan with transit visas and visas for Curacao, which were not used. Instead, they went to Shanghai, in 1941, after a year in Kobe, Japan, where Myra attended a French Catholic school.

In the French quarter of Shanghai, they lived comfortably until the Japanese occupation forced them into the Hongkew Ghetto. Her father, despondent about their impoverishment, committed suicide. When the war ended, her mother worked for the American Army and met a Jewish colonel, David Bare (phonetic), whom she married in 1947. The family lived in Beijing, China, Linz, Austria and South Carolina, United States. Myra became a translator for the American government, married Arnold Davis and they live with their two children in Boca Raton, Florida.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1999 at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Dr. Leon Friedman was born February 17, 1902 in Warsaw, Poland. His parents owned a grocery store. He received his teacher’s diploma and Ph.D. from Warsaw University. He discusses pre-war antisemitism and his education. He joined HashomerHatzairand served in Palestine from 1922 to 1924 instead of serving in the Polish army. He describes life in Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair. He returned to Poland where he taught for 14 years.

In 1939 he walked to Bialystock illegally with a group of Jews. He lived under Russian occupation until June 1940, when he was sent to the village of Mandacz in Komi, Siberia with his wife and daughter for refusing a Russian passport. He describes travel to, conditions in, and escape from Mandacz in detail. Dr. Friedman worked as the chief accountant in Murashi. He went to Sochi (Southern Russia) as part of a transfer of 3000 Jews, which he arranged. He describes life in Sochi whose population was predominantly Greek.

After the war, Dr. Friedman and his family returned to Warsaw and Lodz. They were smuggled into Berlin. He talks about conditions faced by refugees in the Russian zone. He mentions two brothers who experienced antisemitism after joining the Anders Army. In 1946 Dr. Friedman organized the escape of 9000 Jewish refugees from East Berlin to avoid transport to the Soviet Union. He describes an illegal border crossing from the French zone to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in the English zone, where he started a school for orphan’s preparing to go to Palestine on Aliyah Bet. He lived in Stuttgart, Germany for a few months where he founded a “Folk University” with help from the Jewish community.

Dr. Friedman and family arrived in Philadelphia March 3, 1947. He founded the Association of Jewish New Americans of Philadelphia. He talks about his life as a refugee, why he survived, the effects of hunger on human beings, and the treatment of Holocaust survivors.

Alan Spiegel was born August 11, 1903 in Orahovicza, Yugoslavia into a wealthy Zionist family. He details his family history in Hungary including his grandfather being a Second Adjutant during the Hungarian Revolution. Mr. Spiegel studied medicine at Budapest University. He discusses the difficulty for Jewish students to be admitted due tonumerus clausus policy and that he was dismissed in 1920, three months before graduation by a prejudiced faculty. An ardent Zionist, he then worked for the Jewish National Fund while employed in a family business.

In 1932, he married Elizabeth Boschan, in Cluj, Romania, where they lived until 1939. In Budapest, he had to serve as a slave laborer under the Hungarians. Mr. Spiegel gives testimony about working with Rezsö Kastner and Joel Brand to exchangethe release of over 1,000 Jews to Switzerland for money in 1944 and how he found out from one of the more humane German officers that their transport was destined for Auschwitz even though they paid. He details how he arranged to bribe other SS to have the transport sent to Bergen-Belsen instead. Two months later, a smaller group of 350 was sent to Switzerland of which he and his family were a part. He discusses how Kastner was condemned in Palestine for his actions. Mr. Spiegel also shares a vignette about how he secured the release of hundreds of Jewish boys and how small meaningful occurrences helped him have the strength to continue his work. He also relates memories about theVizhnitzerRebbe.

In 1947, Spiegel emigrated from Switzerland to the United States with his wife and daughter.

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.