Oral History Interview with Marian Filar

Suzanne Leibowitz, née Langer, was born May 27, 1928 in Prague and later lived in Novy Jičin, Moldavia. She and her parents were totally assimilated, patriotic Czechs. After the German occupation in 1938, the family fled to the Protectorate of Bohemia where Suzanne first experienced antisemitism. She mentions how the Nuremberg laws affected her. She was forced to quit school and had to work on a farm until 1942. Suzanne and her parents were sent to Theresienstadt in 1942. She describes conditions in Theresienstadt in great detail. She mentions friction between Jews from different countries and that many Jews when they first arrived believed they were going to a rest home. Warnings about death camps scratched on many of the cattle cars were not believed. She managed to work outside the ghetto on a farm, to help people on the transports, and to trade for food. A Czech policeman - who also saved Suzanne and her parents from being sent to Birkenau - helped her do this. Suzanne witnessed the charade Germans put on for the Red Cross in 1944. She explains how the concentration camp was transformed. She recalls how a baby born in the camp was hidden and kept alive for one year. She briefly refers to a Catholic prayer group, attempts to educate Jewish children, and plays and concerts performed by the prisoners. In October 1944, the Germans tricked all the men and later the women – including her parents – into going on a transport to Auschwitz, so that only young girls and children remained, to prevent an uprising. Suzanne never saw her parents again. Suzanne describes survivors from these transports, who returned in January 1945, as walking skeletons who had become cannibals. Suzanne relates her post-liberation experiences. She was involved in a campaign to rid the town of Teplitz Schönau of Germans. She got married in 1947 and came to the United States in October 1948. Note: Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library: Photocopy of first person memoir from Terezin survivor,"Making Moving Pictures" Jewish Exponent, Nov 21, 1988. Interviewee: LEIBOWITZ, Suzanne Langer Date: April 18, 1981

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.

Henrich Hofman was born July 20, 1922 in Lipecka Polyana, Czechoslovakia. He describes pre-war life,his education, being a member of Shomer Hatzair, and the good relationship his family had with the non-Jews in the area. His father was a carpenter.He describes the Hungarian Occupation, harassment of Jews starting in 1940, including confiscation of stores. He details the horrors in Passover 1941,when his whole town was deported in cattle cars to Rachof (Rachov). He describes the trip, selection, and an intervention by the Budapest Jewish community to prevent the evacuation of Jewish citizens of that area which saved his group. Henrich describes looking out the cattle car through slits at the condemned group and seeing the Germans throwing Jews into trucks as if they were pieces of wood. His part of the transport was then taken to a concentration camp in Rachof. His friend who survived from the other part of the transport told him months later that the Germans murdered the rest of the group in the Dnieper Riverin Kamenets-Podolski. In October 1943 he details his deportation to and forced labor in Görgenyoroszfalù (Romania, occupied by Hungary) where he helped to build an airfield. In January1944 he volunteered to work elsewhere, was taken to Rákoshegy near Budapest where he worked building German barracks from March through July 1944. He describes the much improved conditions,lots of food, ability to leave on Shabbat to go to Jews in the community before they liquidated the area. Henrich ended up working for a German officer as personal tailor, and describes some kindnesses from some Germans. A German co-worker hid him and a friend in an attic to avoid deportation. He describes how the work of his hands helped him to survive on many occasions. He was liberated on November 15, 1944 by the Soviet frontline and worked as an interpreter for the Soviet army for 11 months. He was reunited with his sisters in Chust (Khust) in1945, went to Budapest, met and married his wife in October and moved to the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia from 1945–49. They emigrated to Israel in July 1949 and eventually to the United States in 1959.

Erica Van Adelsberg, nee Herz, was born in Munich in 1928 to an assimilated, liberal Jewish family. She left Germany with her parents and younger brother in 1932 to live in Aerdenhoudt, Holland, near Haarlem. They lived comfortably and Erica recalls the decency of the Dutch people. In 1940, after the German occupation, her family was designated as being stateless; they were forced to move and conditions worsened. They were sent to Westerbork internment camp in 1942. Erica continued her education and was trained as a laboratory technician at age 14. She became part of a Zionist youth group, which heightened her Jewish identity, in contrast to her parents assimilated orientation. She describes life in the camp, including her friend’s wedding as well as the weekly transports to Auschwitz. On February 15, 1944 her family, including grandparents who had joined them, was sent to Bergen-Belsen. She describes the camp routine, her work in a plastic pipe factory and the cruelty of the Polish Kapos. She was sick with para-typhoid for several weeks, with no medication. In April, 1945 the family was transported by train, with about 600 others, all of whom assumed they were going to Auschwitz. After two harrowing weeks, including bombings by Allied planes, the train was liberated by two Russian soldiers on horseback in Trebitz, near Leipzig, in Saxony. The Russians set up a hospital and cared for the survivors, many of whom succumbed to typhoid fever. Six weeks later, Americans took her family back to Holland, where her brother became the first to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah after the war. Erica came to the United States in 1946 and was the first European student admitted to a Quaker school after World War II. Collateral material to this interview includes copies of two small books of poetry written by Erica, in German and in Dutch, when she was in Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen. Interviewee: VAN ADELSBERG, Erica Date: December 8, 1981

Walter Silberstein, was born November 9, 1902 in Stargard, Germany, son of the only rabbi serving that area. He studied engineering and economics in Berlin and Leipzig and nearly completed his doctorate when his University of Leipzig professors were fired for their political views in 1933. After a brief business venture in Prague, he returned to Berlin in 1934, where he lived with his parents until July, 1939, when he left for Shanghai without a visa. He describes in detail his voyage on a German luxury liner and the shock of arrival in the Hongkew district of Shanghai during a cholera epidemic. He notes the character of the native and newcomer Jewish communities and the political subdivisions of Shanghai. In 1940, his parents arrived, with Japanese visas, and his father served as rabbi to the refugee community. He gives an eyewitness account of their life after the December 1941 occupation by the Japanese, who did not persecute Jews, despite pressure from the Germans. He describes serving with other Jews, Russians and Chinese in the Pao Chia, as air-raid wardens and ghetto guards in summer, 1945. He notes a contented life between the American liberation on September 6, 1945 and the Communist takeover in 1949. In 1950, he left with his mother on a year’s odyssey until returning to Germany. They lived in Displaced Persons camps at Rhön and Föhrenwald; on October 29, 1951, they arrived in the United States.