Oral History Interview with Myer Adler

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.

Charles Willner was born in 1926, in Dombrowa, Poland into a large, religiously observant family. His father was in the cattle business and a decorated Polish Army veteran.

Charles describes anti-Jewish regulations after September 1939. In early 1940, when only 13 years old, he was sent to Pustkow labor camp and describes conditions there. In November 1940, he was held in Montelupich prison on a trumped-up charge. He was tortured and released after six weeks. While at Pustkow he was given passes by a German officer and was able to smuggle food to relatives in Dombrowa and Tarnow. He was caught and sentenced to die by German S.S., but another man was killed instead of him.

Charles stayed in Pustkow until 1942 when he was transferred to Mielec, a Heinkel-Messerschmitt airplane factory. He describes the heavy labor and surviving typhoid. He also explains why most prisoners did not try to escape from Mielec.

In 1944, prisoners were transferred to an underground salt mine then to Plaszow, near Krakow. He describes in detail his 11 weeks at Poliowa Gorka, a site of mass murders. Mounds of corpses they had to uncover and burn after their gold teeth had been extracted. He witnessed the execution of people caught crossing the border, random killings, and retaliation killings if anyone managed to escape. He describes how he survived by chance.

In late 1944, after a stop in Gross Rosen, he arrived at Oscar Schindler’s ammunition factory in Brinnlitz where he remained until May 8, 1945 when the Russians liberated the camp. He testifies to Schindler’s protection of his workers and refers to acts of sabotage. He also speaks of his own attitudes toward Germans today and his pride in the State of Israel.

After liberation in 1945 he searched for his family, encountered Polish antisemitism, including the murder of a fellow concentration camp survivor. He left Poland for Prague, then Munich. There he was united with his older brother, the only other survivor of his immediate family. With the help of Jewish agencies, the two remained in Germany. In May 1948, Charles Willner emigrated to the United States. He met his future wife, a survivor of Auschwitz, on the boat.

Konrad Bieber was born in 1916 in Berlin, (Charlottenburg) Germany. His family lived in Gruenwald and Konrad went to the gymnasium there. His father was a German scholar and writer and his mother ran a gymnastics school. In 1933 the family left for Paris after warnings that the situation for Jews was worsening.

In 1939 Konrad married and joined the French army. He was captured and sent to various P.O.W. and labor camps in southern France. While his parents were in non-occupied southern France they received visas to the United States (via Marseilles and Lisbon) with the help of Varian Fry. In 1943 Konrad and his wife went into hiding with French farmers for 18 months. He describes his being helped by many French non-Jews. His wife lived in Montauban were she worked for the Joint Distribution Committee. In 1944 she witnessed a massacre by the retreating German army in Tulle, France. At that time Konrad was a sergeant in the French underground.

They were liberated on August 19, 1944 and were able to come out of hiding and live as Jews again in the town. Konrad was sent to Paris to be an interpreter. His son was born in 1945. He stayed in Marsac (near Montauban) and was a teacher there from 1945-47. In 1947 the family received visas to come to the United States, where Konrad taught scientific German at Lehman College, in New York.

Samuel Makower, born January 6, 1922 in Przasnysz, Poland, where he attended a chederand public school. Following the German invasion of September 1, 1939, he fled with his family to Warsaw and then to Bialystok. Under the Russian occupation, they were offered contracts to work in the Ural Mountains. He describes the harsh climatic conditions and the deprivations of wartime, with mention of aid from Russian people, among whom they lived. In 1941, the family moved to Minsk and were trapped one month later when the Germans invaded and established a ghetto. He describes the killings by Germans and Ukrainians. His family survived by creating hiding places under the floor and within a false wall. A 2-year-old niece was sheltered in a Russian orphanage, with the aid of a German soldier. Dr. Makower escaped with his sister and brother-in-law to join Russian partisans who accepted Jews. He details partisan life, obtaining food and ammunition from civilians. They blew up trains and railroads and took some German soldiers as prisoners. He mentions “Uncle Vanya”, the Jewish partisan who sheltered many Jews in the forest. After liberation by the Russian Army, he helped his family who had survived move to Szczecin (Stettin). At the request of a Zionist group, he secured a train to remove 200 Jewish children to Cracow. He entered the University of Berlin and obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry and followed part of his family to Israel. Unable to find employment there, he emigrated to the United States in 1956.

Interviewee: MAKOWER, Samuel Date: August 3, 1988

Samuel Greenberg was born on June 6, 1910 in Szumk, Poland a small town near Vishnivits to a poor, orthodox family. Samdescribes pre-war antisemitism and lack of love between the Ukrainians and the Poles. His family belonged to Mizrachi, a Zionist organization.Sam describes difficulties they faced in 1939 under Russian occupation: scarcity of food,nationalization of businesses and fear of being sent to Siberia for “stealing” from the government.

Sam describes the maltreatment of Jews at the hands Ukrainians and Poles after the German invasion in September 1941. He mentions that women were violated. He describes the creation of the Vishnivits Ghetto in February 1941, crowded conditions, rampant illness and frequent deaths. He was forced there with his wife, young daughter and mother and father- in-law. He details men in labor brigades being beaten anddescribes 500 girls between 12 and 21 having their heads shaved.

Sam describes the horror of his town’s liquidation. He hid under a bed thinking that the women and children would be safe and he could be reunited with them later. After he escaped, a Polish acquaintance hid him and told him how the entire town was shot in mass graves and covered in lye. He describes his harrowing survival during the bitter winter and spring moving from farm to farm hiding in stables, the woods and wheat fields. He received some help from Poles in the form of bread and also shelter in a haystack in exchange for a fur coat. He also meta group of Ukrainian nationalists who followed Stepan Bandera and fought for Ukrainian freedomand were accused of antisemitic acts. He begged for his life on several occasions and was shocked when they let him go.

In the summer of 1944, the Russians arrived, but when Sam was the only Jew to survive in his whole area, the Russians accused him of being a German collaborator and shipped him to Siberia. He was housed with other German collaborators who had slaughtered the Jews. The Russians asked him to spy on them, which he did, but only earned himself a ticket to the front, walking all the way from Siberia to Berlin with the Soviet army. After getting shot in the head, he was sent to a hospital near Magdeburg and begged one Jewish doctor to keep him there so he could live. Sam was discharged there by the Soviet Army in 1945. After liberation, Sam returned to Poland but heard stories of Jews’ being killed by Poles after the war so fled to the American zone in Germany. He arrived in Philadelphia in April 1948 having been sent a visa through an uncle. Sam attributes his survival to his faith in God. Sam found out after the war, that his brother had survived the war in Siberia.

Dr. Nino deProphetis served with the U.S. Army in Europe from November, 1944 to December, 1945. He became the commanding officer of the 81st Armored Medical Battalion, part of the 11th Armored Division of General Patton’s Third Army. In April1945, he led a contingent of 30 men to Mauthausen concentration camp after the Nazis had left. He describes in detail his entry and the sight of a pyramid of approximately 6000 naked bodies in the main yard. He viewed an additional number of thousands of bodies in smaller piles in other parts of the camp and also saw two gas chambers. His unit, equipped to treat only battle casualties, was quickly reinforced with troops that brought an abundance of food. He believes that many of the subsequent deaths of surviving prisoners were caused by overfeeding. He describes in detail the terrible malnutrition and gastrointestinal disease of most prisoners, as well as the immediate disposal of dead bodies into a trench. Soon afterwards, General Patton ordered that local citizens were made to exhume the bodies and rebury them in individual graves.

Dr. deProphetis also supervised the evacuation of patients for the next two weeks until he was transferred to the Gmunden area, near Salzburg. There, he was placed in charge, as Burgermeister of Attensee. He remained with the Army of Occupation for six months, in charge of all battalion vehicles until his return to the United States.

This file includes photos taken at the time of liberation.