Oral History Interview with Margaret Bowman

Betti Frank, née Koppel, was born in Zutphen, Holland. Her parents had a butcher shop. She briefly describes pre-war life. Betti and her brother belonged to Hehalutz, a Zionist youth group. Betti describes life after the German invasion, including registration of Jews, roundups, Razzias, raids, and collaboration by some Dutch people. The Dutch police arrested her father, sent him to a Dutch concentration camp and then to Mauthausen where he was killed. Betti describes how later the Dutch police came back for the rest of the family: Betti and her mother were taken to a building owned by the Jewish community which had been converted into a hospital for older Jews. She describes the round up of elderly and sick Jews in the community. Her brother was deported to Westerbork. She found out after the war that he was killed in Auschwitz.

In April 19431, Betti and her mother were deported to Vught concentration camp with all Dutch Jews who did not live in Amsterdam. She describes in great detail their arrival, the horrible conditions in Vught and a separate children’s camp where her mother worked as a nurse, Appells, extreme cruelty and constant terror. She also describes contact with non-Jewish prisoners and an offer to her by Hehalutz members to escape with false papers which she turned down to stay with her mother. Her mother was eventually deported along with the children and she never saw her again. Betti was then assigned to a slave labor group working for the Philips company together with non-Jews making radios and welding. She talks about how the SS tried to deport this group to Auschwitz several times and how they were saved by working for Philips. Finally in June they were sent to Auschwitz arriving June 6, 1944. She describes in great detail their brutal reception, processing, conditions and cruel treatment from Jewish Kapos. After 10 days, Betti, with the group selected by Philips, was transported out of Auschwitz to a factory in Reichenbach to work with German civilians. From there, the workers were sent to Lanowice concentration camp, and later forced on a death march to Trausenau, Czechoslovakia in February 1945, then forced on rail cars to a small camp near Port of Westfalen close to the Dutch border. Betti describes in detail their deportation to and working conditions in several camps: a salt mine in Braunschweig, Magdeburg; Lüneburger Heide, where they had to dig trenches at the front; and finally a small camp in Hamburg. She describes brutal living and working conditions, cruel behavior by German civilians, and some acts of compassion in great detail. She talks about some of her survival strategies and how she saved her life by following her instinct.

After the end of World War II, the prisoners were transported to Denmark under the auspices of Folke Bernadotte. They were sent to either Malmo or a “holiday” camp near Göteburg in Sweden, depending on their physical condition. Betty again worked for Philips. After a stay in Holland, she emigrated to Israel on March 12, 1950.

Debora Neudorfer, nee Flachs, was born in Bucharest, Romania, December 31, 1914 to a middle class family. Her father was a business man in industrial chemicals. Debora briefly describes pre-war Bucharest, Christian-Jewish relations and her education at a Protestant Girls’ Schoolwhich was comprised of nearly 99% Jewish girls. Her father’s business was diminished due to the war and Debora and her sister sold items they knitted at home. Debora describes that all Jews in Bucharest with a certain amount of education were forced to complete one year of labor. Debora walked to a private house to complete her assignment ofoffice work while she lived at home.

Debora describes their life under the rule of Antonescu and how it did not change very much and gives details about some family members and their experiences with forced labor. She also explains how people thought things would improve under Russian rule, but states that it got worse. She alludes to Russian soldiers’ rape of women when they came in in August of 1944.

In October 1944 Debora fled to Palestine with her future husband whom she had met a few months earlier. He was a Polish Jew who had escaped a labor camp and had false papers. When they met, they were unable to get married so they fled with a group of Polish and Romanian young people. A Jewish organization sent them across the Black Sea by boat on which she and her husband were married.A train took them through Turkey to the Atlit detention camp in Palestine, where British officers interrogated all refugees regarding their wartime experience. They lived in Palestine for about two and a half years until they went back to Poland to search for her husband’s family. Her husband’s brother was the only sibling of six who survived the war. They returned to Israel in 1950 and emigrated to the United States in 1957. Her mother, father, sister, and brother-in-law, and several cousins and extended family membersall survived the war.

Born December 17, 1917 in Warsaw, Poland, Marian Filar was a member of a musical and religious Jewish family who became a child prodigy and a noted concert pianist and teacher. His father was a manufacturer and his grandfather was a rabbi. He studied at the Warsaw and Lemberg conservatories and graduated from Gymnasium in Warsaw. In September, 1939, he fled to Lemberg following the German invasion. After graduation from the Lemberg Conservatory in December, 1941, he rejoined his family in the Warsaw Ghetto. He worked with a labor group taken outside the ghetto to a railroad workplace in Warsaw West. He describes severe beatings by S.S. guards and his rescue by a Polish railway man. He details his solo performance and other symphony concerts in the ghetto by Jewish musicians, often playing music by forbidden composers. He mentions ghetto deportations, 1942-43, when his parents and siblings were taken.

In May, 1943, after the ghetto uprising, he was deported to Majdanek. After beatings and near-starvation, he volunteered for a labor camp in Skarzysko-Kamiena, where he received aid from a fellow worker who was Polish. Moved to Buchenwald in August 1944, he was housed in a tent camp with Leon Blum, Deladier and other prominent politicians and clerics. Mr. Filar was moved next, by train, to Schlieben, near Leipzig, to work in a bazooka factory, where a Polish kitchen maid gave him extra food. His piano playing impressed the German civilian camp supervisor who transferred him to an easy job to protect his hands. As the war front moved near, he was sent with other prisoners by train to Bautzen and then on a death march to Nicksdorf (Mikulasovice) in Czechoslovakia. He and two brothers survived and lived in Zeilsheim Displaced Person’s camp in Germany for two and a half years.

After liberation, he performed in concerts through Western Europe and toured Israel, playing with the Israeli Philharmonic during the war in 1956. He shares a moving vignette about going to Professor Walter Gieseking’s villa and auditioning to become his student. He studied with him for five years.He emigrated to the USA in 1950, where he played with many American orchestras, headed the piano department at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, and joined the faculty at Temple University. After retirement, he taught privately and judged international piano competitions.

This document is a program booklet titled "Moving History Forward: Perspectives on the Holocaust," outlining the schedule of events for the 2013-2014 academic year, organized by Chapman University's Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, Stern Chair, and Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library. The program features a series of lectures, film screenings, and services focusing on various aspects of the Holocaust. Key events include a screening of "Schindler's List," discussions on figures like Oskar Schindler, Raphael Lemkin, and Amon Goeth, the persecution of the Roma, and the significance of interviewing Holocaust survivors. It also highlights events commemorating the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, including an interfaith service and a panel featuring Holocaust survivors and witnesses. The booklet lists prominent academics and survivors as speakers and acknowledges various sponsoring organizations for their support.

Lola Krause, née Miestschanimoff, was born March 1,1916, in Vitebsk, Belarus. Her father, a successful movie photographer, and her mother, an accomplished pianist from Latvia, were non-observant Soviet Jews. Lola studied music with her mother, learned German from her governess and attended public school in Vitebsk. Rejected by the local Soviet college because of her father’s upper-class status, she moved to Leningrad, studied engineering and worked in film and scientific instrument factories. She married in 1938 and a son was born in 1939.

She details the siege of Leningrad; German bombardment; disease; lack of food and all public services. Her husband died of starvation, her weight dropped to 60 pounds and at three years of age, her son weighed only seven-and-a-half pounds. When her factory was relocated to Samarkand in 1941, she traveled with her son in a cattle car for six weeks, stopping in Tashkent. There she met her uncle, a doctor, who insisted that the fragile child remain with him in the hospital. A year-and-a-half later, he joined her in Samarkand, where she worked until 1946. She married again and the family moved illicitly across European borders, living in Jewish Agency camps in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland and at Waseralfinger, near Stuttgart, Germany. Another son was born and they survived with food packages from American relatives.

In 1949, Lola and her familyemigrated to the United States. Lola describes their adjustment in Bradley Beach, N.J. and in Philadelphia, working in factories and establishing their own cleaning business. She sold her valuable bracelet to buy a piano, suffering ridicule from poor neighbors, because she believed children had to learn to play an instrument. She had her sons circumcised, sent them to Hebrew school and began to observe Jewish holidays. A visit to Israel in 1972 further heightened her Jewish consciousness.

David Buchsbaum was born in Gorlice, Poland on April 20, 1921 to a religious family. He was one of 11 children.. He gives a brief description of pre-war Gorliceand the Jewish community which was 25% of the population, about 3,500 Jews. David’s family owned a grocery store.

David describes the mood change among non-Jewish neighbors in 1938 after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and describes how they would stand in front of Jewish stores and businesses announcing, "Do not buy from Jews".

In 1939 once the Nazis occupied Gorlice the family was warned by a non-Jewish neighbor to flee, but the family could not afford the certificate to emigrate to Palestine. David details the anti-Jewish measures 1940: Jews had to wear the Yellow star, Jewish businesses were confiscated, synagogues were closed, Jewish" quarters" were created and David’s father was shot to death by a German soldier right before his eyes. David also witnessed the machine gun shooting of entire Jewish families.

In July, 1942 all males from 12-65 were arrested and marched in the streets; some were shot and David, a brother and others were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. David describes the horrific conditions there: cold, typhus, appells, beatings and the electrified fence. In 1943, as the Russians advanced David and 1,000 other Jews were sent in boxcars to the slave labor camp, Skarzysko. Those who were left behind were either shot in the woods or were gassed in vans and burned. In Skarzysko they made ammunition and David was in in the harshest area, Barrack C. In 1944 David was sent to Buchenwald where all his personal possessions were confiscated, including his tallit and tefillin, which distressed his greatly because he had tried to observe tradition as best he could. As the Russians advanced he was sent to Terezin(Theresienstadt) and was liberated from there on May 8, 1945. David describes that many survivors from Terezin died from overconsumption of food immediately after liberation.

David later returned to Poland to find his relatives but left because of fierce antisemitism and the Kielce pogrom. He traveled to Prague, and was then sent to Salzburg, Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint arranged for him to join an uncle in the United States. On June 2, 1949 David arrived in Boston. He and two brothers survived the war.