Oral History Interview with Malvina Lebovic

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.

Evelyn Rubin was an only child born in Breslau, Germany, July 1, 1930. Her family was Modern Orthodox and had a wholesale business. She shares her childhood memories of the many things she could no longer do because she was Jewish, once the Nazis came to power. She describes in detail how difficult it was for her family to leave Germany. She describes how Kristallnachtaffected her family. Her father left her with a neighbor and went into hiding in the attic of a Christian landlord. Her father was caught and sent to Buchenwald but released because he earned a medal during World War I.

Evelyn and her parents left for Shanghai on February 13, 1939 on the HakozakiMaro and arrived March 14, 1939. She describes in great detail their life in Shanghai and how her parents established a business. Her family continued to live as Orthodox Jews. Evelyn went to the Shanghai Jewish School. After Pearl Harbor, American and British citizens were interned. Evelyn’s father died in March 1941 and it became very difficult for her mother to make a living. In 1943 all refugees had to move to the Hong Kew Ghetto and food became scarce. Her mother and other refugees managed to cook and improve their surroundings with very little money. The refugees were inoculated against various diseases with vaccines provided by the Japanese. Evelyn mentions that she has a higher opinion of Mr. Ghoya than most people. She explains how her mother found very inventive ways to earn some money and stretch the food they had.

After the war ended, the JOINT and UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) provided food and a community for the refugees. Evelyn came to the United States with her mother in March 1947, on a German Displaced Persons quota, on the SS General Gordon. Evelyn and her mother found a place to live and jobs with aid from the JOINT. Evelyn explains how her life in Shanghai impacted her personal life. She feels she survived for a reason, including passing on her Jewish tradition to her children.

Hanna Seckel1, nee Dubová, born July 22, 1925 in Kolin Czechoslovakia, grew up in Prague in a middle-class, secular family. Her father was a doctor. Hanna describes her early childhood education, getting involved in a Zionist Youth Movement, and the German occupation of Sudetenland including school closings and restrictions imposed on Jews.

In October 1939, when she was 14 years old, she was sent to Denmark as part of a transport of children from HashomerHatzair sponsored by the Danish League of Peace and Freedom. Hanna describes her life and work in Denmark in great detail. She worked at two farms under harsh conditions. One was near Gørløse,the other near Næstved where she had contact with other children from the transport.Through letters from her family she learned about worsening conditions of Jews in Prague. In 1942 her parents wrote that they would be deported to Auschwitz and she attempted suicide. She briefly mentions the Danish underground.

Hanna recalls working as a chambermaid at a Danish boarding school in exchange for her tuition there and also for a family in Næstved after she quit school in 1943. She details her feelings of being an outsider and her financial difficulties. She discusses the fates of some of the other refugee children—some reached Palestine, some were caught, some were sent back to their original countries by Denmark and sent to concentration camps. She also describes her rescue by the Danish underground and the harrowing journey to Sweden hidden in a fishingboat. The Chief Rabbi of Copenhagen, Rabbi Melchior, was part of the group. She details the warm reception by the Swedes and aid from the Red Cross.

Hanna describes her life in Sweden working as a maid for room and board at two different nursing schools inNorrköpingand Södertälje, losing touch with her former friends, receiving ng her nursing certificate and working in an insane asylum.

Hanna returned to Denmark in 1945 because she heard that she was entitled to Danish citizenship which was not true. In Copenhagen she worked in a restitution office for Danish Jews. She returned to Prague in 1946 and lived with relatives whileearning a degree from Charles University, then returned to Denmark on a Nansen Pass in 1947. After a lengthy illness, she went to Sweden and worked in a factory owned by the Nobel family, as a translator. In 1950, she emigrated to the United States under the Czech quota.

Daniel Levey, born April 24, 1925 in Sarajevo, was one of eight children in an impoverished Sephardic family who spoke Ladino at home. His father was a tailor and served in WWI under the Ottoman Empire. Daniel shares his childhood memories of their poverty and pre-war life. They lived in a Muslimneighborhood, where Daniel was assaulted by street gangs. His family attended the Sarajevo Synagogue, in a community of 15,000 Jews, who were forced into a ghetto after the German invasion in 1941. They had to wear an armband with the letter “Z” for Židov, the Croatian word for Jew. He did forced labor briefly in a military work crew, having been assigned to a skilled labor brigade because of his electrician experience. He evaded Nazi registration and stopped wearing his star.

After he escaped from a roundup, he passed as a Muslim with an assumed name of Gerald Levvage [phonetic] and a false ID. He joined partisans fighting Germans and Russian Cossacks near Mostar, which was occupied by Italians. In 1942, he was captured and imprisoned at BokaKotorska. He describes humane treatment by the Italians. He got himself a job on kitchen duty and helped other prisoners by bringing them food. After Italy surrendered in 1943, the prison became a hospital where Daniel worked as a cook until he emigrated to Canada and then to the United States in 1948. He credits the Italians for saving him and other Jews from the brutal Croatian prison guards at Rab concentration camp. All of the Levey family, except for Daniel and one brother, who settled in Israel, perished in German camps.

Judith Leifer, nee Loeb, was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1932. Her father was a textiles salesmen. She shares her childhood memories of life in pre-war Bratislava. She describes a large Jewish community, Zionist organizations, relations between Jews and Gentiles, her Orthodox upbringing and attending a Hebrew Zionist Kindergarten. When the Nazis came to power, her family, together with all Jews, moved into the Jewish ghetto. Her extended family found shelter in her great-uncle’s house. She describes life under Nazi occupation: no connection with the outside world, schools closings, children were unsupervised, and they lived in constant fear of being deported to concentration camps.

Judith’s father’s international business connections and her uncle’s position as head of the Jewish Community in Slovakia was the reason this family was able to survive. Judith gives a detailed account of the extremely perilous and complicated escape she and her family managed separately fromBratislava—with the help of Jewish friends—and the subsequent journey to Palestine.While waiting in Budapest for her parents and sibling to arrive, Judith was placed in a Budapest refugee camp. She describes her family’s flight from Budapest on the last transport to Turkeypermitted by Germans, arranged and financed by the Joint Distribution Committee. She details their arrival in Istanbul and assistance from the Jewish Agency. They entered Palestine on March 17, 1944with immigration certificates for Palestine secured by her uncle and moved in with cousins in Haifa.

Judith eventually moved to the U.S. and had two children1. Most of her extended family perished during the Holocaust. She tells a touching story about her grandmother, Emma Beck, who survived Theresienstadt and made a new life for herself.Judith talks at length about how refugees and displaced persons were helped by the Jewish and American Joint and H.I.A.S after the war.

Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library include:

Judith’s grandmother’s memoir: journal written in German byEmma Benedict Beck (1876-1973), after her release from Theresienstadt during her later years in the U.S. Donated by granddaughter Judith Leifer.

Photocopy of handwritten memoir of Emma Beckfrom 1938-1945. First pages translated by Lotte Marcus into English. Donated by granddaughter Judith Leifer.

“Vordalung” original for Emma Beck from Theresienstadt, Original bank receipt from Theresienstadt, 17 June 1943. Donated by Judith Leifer, Annenberg Research Institute.

Philip G. Solomon served in the United States Army, in the 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized, which liberated the Landsberg concentration camp on April 28, 1945. He describes his unit’s arrival in Germany in February/March 1945, emphasizing their military mission and their lack of knowledge of concentration camps or the scale of mass murder. His first indication of Nazi horrors occurred after crossing the Rhine, heading east, when his unit captured small towns, liberating displaced persons from forced labor camps (mostly Eastern Europeans). His second indication came when liberating several prisoner of war camps. He details the ominous experience of finding sealed railroad cars on a siding filled with dead concentration camp victims. On April 28, 1945, his unit stopped near the city Landsberg, waiting for a bridge to be repaired and unaware of the camp 1000 yards away. A shift in the wind eventually alerted them to the smell, and sight of smoke from the camp where retreating S.S. had just massacred the inmates. The unit found about 20 starving and ill survivors. He details the conditions of the camp and his feelings upon seeing the massive piles of bodies, hangings and other atrocities. The unit had no food or medical supplies and could only radio for help. They were commanded to leave Landsberg after 20 minutes in order to seize and hold a causeway near Munich.

He describes in detail the reactions of prisoners to liberation, the response of the young soldiers to the dual experience of witnessing the atrocities in the midst of war, and his own complex and gradually evolving psychological reaction to this experience. He stresses his concern about ongoing genocides since World War II. And he affirms his faith and pride in his Jewish heritage.