Oral History Interview with Mayer Relles

Simone Zuckermann Horowitz was born on June 10, 1926 to Polish-born parents who became French citizens. She describes how her family’s life changed after the Nazi occupation; and how she and her younger sister managed after her father fled to Southern France and her mother was arrested. She learned after the war ended that her father was shot in Montluc prison, July 8, 1944 because he worked for the Resistance. Simone and her sister lived in separate homes for Jewish children. Simone joined the Jewish Scouts and delivered false papers for the underground. During a roundup of children in these Jewish homes, Simone was arrested, imprisoned at Drancy, July 21, 1944, and transported to Birkenau in cattle cars.

She survived a selection by Dr. Mengele. She describes processing of the new arrivals, conditions at Birkenau, frequent Appells, meager diet, constant talk of food, and more selections by Dr. Mengele. Her determination to find her father after the war gave her strength to survive. The camp was emptied in stages. In January 1945, Simone and a group of girls were marched out of Birkenau and abandoned. She explains how they survived. Later Simone walked to Auschwitz and connected with a group of French survivors. She talks briefly about conditions in Auschwitz post-liberation. She was repatriated by the French Red Cross and arrived at Marseilles, France, May 1, 1945 after stopovers in Krakow and Odessa.

She returned to Paris September 1945, after living briefly in an orphanage and with relatives, and resumed her education. She entered the United States on a student visa in the fall of 1948, to join her American relatives. She completed her education and met her husband. She explains how her reluctance to talk about the Holocaust to her children affected their relationship.

Note: the Collateral Material files available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library include:

An audiotape of Mrs. Horowitz’s report about The Reunion of Jewish French Children, in Franc

e on May, 1999 is available at

Gratz College H

olocaust Oral History Archive.

Included with the transcript are:

Photocopies of her father’s Death Certificate

a d

ocument about Expropriation of

Funds from the Zuckerman bank account

copy of

a photograph of a monument erected by the town of Porte-les-Valence for the 31 men shot as hostages by the Germans on July 8, 1944 (among whom is the name of Simone Horowitz's father,

Nevah

Zuckermann

).

Kurt Simon was born in Ludenscheid, Germany on April 19, 1922. His father was a cavalry officer in the German army during World War I. Mr. Simon talks about his early childhood. He mentions subtle and not so subtle changes in Germany after Hitler came to power and the impact of the Nuremberg Laws which he discusses briefly. After the earliest attack on Jewish stores on April 1, 1933, his father resigned from his executive position at the Tietzdeparment store and moved his family to Cologne. Kurt was thrown out of his school in 1936 because he was Jewish.

His Jewish grandmother made it possible for the family to leave Germany in June or July 1939. He explains the paperwork and documents needed. The Simons arrived in the United States on October 3, 1940 after a stopover in London, where they had to prove they were not enemy aliens. They settled in Philadelphia with help from the Jewish Family Service.

Henry Skorr was born in Kalisz, Poland on October 11, 1921. He describes in detail Jewish life in Kalisz before WWII including the antisemitism that existed, his traditional upbringing and schooling, and the special relationship between parents and children. He discusses the atmosphere before and after German occupation; the arrest, detention and forced labor of Mr. Skorr and his brother; his realization that they must escape Poland.

He describes a mass execution in a Kalisz cemetery during which he and other boys were ordered to help in the burial and then his subsequent escape from the cemetery. He tells of traveling through Poland to Russian occupied territory of the Ukraine until he reached Kovel. He then decided to return to Kalisz to take family and friends through this escape route.

Mr. Skorr, now with his family, was resettled in Cherepovetz in deep Russia. He describes the train trip and his recruitment to work deep in the forest to cut down trees. Conditions, as he describes them, were terrible and he escaped back to Cherepovetz and found work as a sailor on a boat hauling lumber and barges. Throughout the testimony, Mr. Skorr comments on life in Russia and gives insights into Russian people and society and how the system worked.

He was mobilized to work on the fortification near Leningrad and describes the German breakthrough and his joining and organizing a guerrilla movement. He was wounded and evacuated to Wologda. Upon recovery he returned to Cherepovetz, where his family had stayed. There he found work in the Fire Department where he eventually rose to head the department.

Although offered an opportunity for mobilization to the Polish Army he refused because of fear of antisemitism in the ranks. He met his future wife at the end of the war and returned to Warsaw, Poland where they married. His description of life in postwar Poland tells of much antisemitism and attacks on the returning Jews from antisemitic bands. Eventually, he emigrated to Israel in 1950 and to the United States in 1958.

This interview was conducted on multiple dates in 1983: February 8 and 28, April 12, May 2, June 14 and 28, July 5 and 19.

Elie Wiesel, as a young man, signs a copy of his memoir La Nuit, first published in 1958. It is a shortened French version of his Yiddish memoir, Un di velt hot geshvign (And the Word Remained Silent), published in 1955.

Ellen Tarlow, née Meinberg, was born in 1927 in Gütersloh, Westphalia, Germany, where her family had lived since the 17th century. Her father, Paul Meinberg, an importer of cattle, was dec‌orated with the Iron Cross in WWI. She describes her early childhood in public school and then a Lyceum for girls. She first felt antisemitism at age of eight and was expelled from school in 1938. She studied Hebrew and Bible once a week. She details Nazi atrocities during and after Crystal Night (Kristallnacht): social ostra‌cism, burning of their home and synagogue, her father’s deportation to and flight from Buchenwald. Remaining family found shelter in a local cloister then fled to Bielefeld. She describes subsequent life in a Judenhaus in Gütersloh, including attempts to educate the children there. HIAS helped the family many times; there was also aid from several Germans in Gütersloh. She briefly mentions a failed attempt to emigrate to Haiti. After many disappointments and a difficult experience at the American Consulate in Stuttgart, the family left Germany for the United States, via Lisbon, Portugal, on the SS Mouzinho, in August 1941. She describes the journey from Berlin to Lisbon in a sealed train, and her stay in Lisbon in a group home run by HIAS. She describes how refugees organized to cope with primitive conditions on the ship, her arrival and processing in Staten Island, NY, and her life in New York in a group home for refugees sponsored by HIAS. She reflects at length on the family’s adjustment in the United States and the survivor’s guilt she feels. She talks about her return to Germany, by invitation, in 1985, accompanied by her husband and daughter.

Norbert Zeelander was born in Antwerp, Belgium on February 24, 1938. He was the first-born in a middle class family. His family had lived in Holland for hundreds of years but subsequently moved to Belgium for business. As he was two years old in May of 1940 when the family left Belgium, Norbert’s recollections are from what he was told and from photos.

Norbert was told that when the bombing of Belgium began his family,together with his father’s parents, drove south towards France. It took them nine months, moving from farm to farm to stay ahead of the Germans. Norbert learned that his father’s brother killed his family and committed suicide.

Norbert’s familystayed at one farm for one and a half years where his sister was born November 1941. When the Nazis drew near in late 1942 or early 1943, they escaped through Spain to Portugal. Norbert describes the train ride with German soldiers on the train and that his parents, who had false papers, were helped by a network of people including the stationmaster. He also believes that the Dutch Red Cross was involved in their escape from France, through Spain and Portugal, where they boarded a ship to the West Indies.The family stayed in a large refugee camp with other Dutch people. Eventually they went to Curacao, a Dutch island.

After the war, the family came to the U.S. but because they had entered illegally they had to return to Belgium for two years to await their quota, where Norbert recalls much antisemitism. In 1948 the family returned to the U.S.

Norbert expresses theimpact of psychological characteristics that he feels are related to his family’s experiences with which he still struggles: developing into a loner (since he was without any playmates while in hiding), nightmares in which he is always running, being angry and quick tempered as an adolescent, especially when faced with antisemitism. He describes how he coped with these emotions by keeping very busy and working long hours to which he attributes his later success in business. Norbert explains that because he was never in a camp or a ghetto he never considered himself a "survivor" until the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia. See also the interview with his father, Theodore Zeelander from 1985.