Oral History Interview with Max Mandel

Nadia Frey, nee Tomaszek, a Catholic, was born October 8, 1916 and lived in Sambor, at that time in the Polish part of Ukraine. She decided to help Jews when the German Aktions began. She describes in great detail what she did, how she managed to do it, and why she decided to get involved when she was only 22 years old. She was arrested once. Nadia also witnessed atrocities committed by Russians and Germans against Jews and Ukrainians.

Nadia hid her future husband, Dolek, and his extended family in her small house, with no running water or electricity. At first, she housed his family only when it was dangerous in the ghetto, until it was safe to return. She explains how the families she hid managed to get in and out of the ghetto whenever they were in danger. After the ghetto was liquidated, she sheltered them continuously for one and a half years. At great risk and with her father’s help, she managed to get enough food and wood. Water for drinking and personal hygiene were a problem as were suspicious neighbors. Seven people lived in a hole below the house. Many times Nadia was afraid that the Jews she hid would be discovered, but was ready to die with Dolek, her future husband.

After the war, Nadia and Dolek went to Breslau (Wroclaw), Poland and were married in a civil ceremony. They had a Jewish wedding after they came to the United States in 1945 or ’46 from a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. Her children were raised as Jews. She told them her story once they were old enough and explains their reaction. She also mentions how the Ukrainians’ feelings toward those who sheltered Jews changed from hatred to pride after the war.

Isadore Hollander, born 1920 in Paris, returned to Bendin (Będzin), Poland with his Polish parents and older sister in 1923. He describes in detail the pre-war Jewish community. Following his father’s death and mother’s re-marriage, he lived, from ages 11 to 15, in an orphanage operated according to Janusz Korczak guidelines, which he describes in detail. During this period, he joined a Zionist youth group. He mentions growing antisemitism in Poland.

After September 1939, he ran from town to town, to avoid forced labor, until captured and sent to work in a coal mine in Jaworzno near Krakow. He escaped to Russian-occupied Poland, living in Lvov at the beginning of 1940. To avoid imprisonment for “illegal” business, he registered for work in Russian. Assigned to Stalino coal mine in the Donbas region, he escaped to Rovno and describes religious life there, winter, 1940-June 1941. After the Rovno Ghetto was established, he escaped from slave labor with help from former Polish soldiers. He lived with 10 other Jews in nearby forests until 1943, having minimal contact with Polish partisans, due to mutual suspicion. He later served in the Polish Army. His eye-witness account of German-evacuated Majdanek and detailed description of his life as a Polish soldier includes revenge he and other Jewish soldiers took on Volkdeutsche Poles. At the end of the war, he returned to Bendin and met his future wife. He details their escape from Poland and life in Deggendorf DP camp in Bavaria. They emigrated to Philadelphia in 1947.

See also the interview with his wife, Anni Hollander.