Oral History Interview with Nino deProphetis

Herbert Lindemeyer was born in Minden, Germany in 1922. His father owned a pharmacy. He describes antisemitism after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and briefly mentions the boycott of Jew‌ish stores in April 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. He describes his parents’ discussions of whether to emigrate. After Kristallnacht, his father was incarcerated in Buchenwald for a month and his pharmacy confiscated by the Nazis.

Herbert emigrated to England in August 1939 through the help of a British Quaker woman. He describes in detail his internment, with thousands of German and Austrian refugees—in June 1940 on the Isle of Man. In December 1941 he was allowed to leave when he obtained a defense job in Manchester, England. There in January 1944 he married a woman who had traveled to England on the Kindertransport. In October 1945 he joined the American Army for an assignment in Germany as an interpreter and mail censor. One assignment was the tracking of Werner Von Braun. Later he returned to Minden where the new owner of his father’s pharmacy had kept papers which helped Herbert obtain restitution. He emigrated to the United States in 1948.

Arnold Shay, born in Poland on February 16, 1922, was the fourth of five children of atraditional, religious and poor Jewish family.He describes pre-war life, his warm home, his education, his active involvement in Zionist youth movements and antisemitism in Poland.Arnold completed 10 years of secular and religious schooling and received a scholarship to an art school, but became a tailor like his father because they could not afford the trolley fare to the art school.He discusses at length Zionist leaders, politics and his feeling thatHashomer Hatzair and attending Zionist training before the war encouraged resistance by those youth in the ghettos and camps.He remarks that that Jews did not to leave Poland before invasion because of poverty, fear of separation from family, experience with previous escalation of antisemitism and mixed message from Zionist leadership.

After the German invasion in September 1939, the family was forcibly moved to the Bedzin Ghetto in the middle of the night.Arnold describes horrible conditions, overcrowding, scarcity of food and no way to earn a livelihood.Arnold also describes acts of resistance in the ghetto:teaching, establishing aclandestine school, selling on the black market, Zionist meetings, and personally blowing up facilities and trains. He describes these as resistance because the penalty if they were caught was probably death. Arnold was able to pass as a Christian outside the ghetto and would smuggle food into the ghetto. In August 1942, he witnessed his mother being taken from the bunker where she was hiding. He went with her to the Umschlagplatz, but was hit in the head by a Jewish policemen (an act which saved him); when he woke the transport had left to Auschwitz. Later he learned that his mother had been betrayed by a Jewish policeman who sold her identity card to a wealthy Jewess. He speaks at length about the leaders of the Bedzin Ghetto and relates their deportation and subsequent shooting in Auschwitz in June 1943.1

In August 1943, Arnold was captured while returning to the ghetto, not knowing that it was already Judenrein.He was deported to Auschwitz, and was there for one and a half yearsworking in the kitchen, a position which he attributes to his survival and being able to steal food for others.He also worked as a nurse, a tailor and an interpreter for the SS. Arnold both experienced and witnessedmedical experiments under Dr. Mengele’s charge; a Dr. Tiller operated on him. He witnessed Gypsies being taken out to the gas chambers. He reports that members of the Sonderkommando, whom he knew from his town, blew up the crematorium and killed the head of it.He describes and stresses the culture of mentshlekhkeytamong the Jewish prisoners, how they helped one another, doing everything they could to help the young survive. He describes how he was able to supply government clothing which helped members of the underground escape while he worked as a tailor.He also aided a few boys in escaping final selection for death by changing their tattooto save them. He explains how bribes were made and with help from aKapo, they would sneak a prisoner out of the barrack selected for extermination and Arnold would change the number of his tattoo to be the number of someone who had died during the night. He explains how certain numbers could be changed; for example a three or a five could be made into an eight. He found out—years after the war—many of his assignments in Auschwitz were set up by the underground.Arnold also talks about how his philosophy, personality and ability to help others enabled him to survive Auschwitz from August 1943 until January 1945 when he was sent on a death march to Oranienburg, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and then Dachau.

Arnold was liberated by the American Army on May 10, 1945. He states that he was one of the healthier prisonersweighing 59 poundsat 22 years old. He then worked with the American Army CIC (Counter Intelligence) searching out and recognizing the SS who tried to meld back into the German population.Arnold’s siblings all survived, three in the camps and one sister in hiding in Warsaw. His parents perished.In October 1949 he arrived in Dallas, Texas and came to Philadelphia in January 1950.

Arnold does not specify whether these were reports brought back to the ghetto or whether he learned these after his arrival at Auschwitz.

Sylvia Ebner, née Klein, was born September 10, 1929, in Bodrogkisfalud, Hungary. She describes her education, relations with non-Jews, and learning to cope with children who stoned her on her way to school. After the German invasion in March 1944, persecution and anti-Jewish measures increased. Sylvia and her family were taken to the Satoraljaujhely Ghetto with Jews from several other towns. Their house was looted as soon as they walked out. She describes several incidents of extreme brutality by Germans.

She describes the transport to Auschwitz in cattle cars and their dehumanization. Her parents managed to observe Shabbat and her father tried to prepare Sylvia to cope with what she had to face. Sylvia describes their arrival at Auschwitz May 1944, processing and selections by Dr. Mengele. Many, including her mother and other relatives, were loaded on trucks and gassed immediately.

Sylvia was marched to Birkenau. She describes the horrible conditions, the smell from the crematorium and how they tried to survive. She worked as a slave laborer in Brzézinka also known as “Canada”, sorting belongings taken from Jews. She risked her life to smuggle food to her cousin. The starving girls were offered food on fast days such as Tisha B’ Av but refused to eat because the food was not kosher.

Sylvia got Scarlet Fever and was hospitalized in a Revier (sick quarters) for six weeks. She survived seven selections by Dr. Mengele, saw him operate without any anesthesia, and a Christian woman kill her newborn baby to save him from Mengele’s experiments. Germans drained large amounts of blood from girls who survived typhus or scarlet fever to make serums. After Sylvia recovered, she worked as a slave laborer. First at heavy-duty unproductive work while living in the barracks, then in a factory in Oberhohen-Elbe, Sudeten, Germany. The German woman in charge risked her life to find food for the prisoners. She was liberated by Russian troops May 1, 1945, returned to Hungary, received aid from the Joint Distribution Committee (Joint); escaped from Hungary and immigrated to Canada.

Interviewee: EBNER, Sylvia Date: February 14, 2001

Mr. Di Giorgio served in E Company, 232nd Regiment, 42nd Division of the Seventh Army during World War II. He briefly describes some of his combat experiences and the heavy losses his division took. His unit entered Dachau in April, 1945 shortly after it was liberated, under orders to clear all the buildings and tunnels and then to move on.

He saw some survivors and a few guards who tried to blend in with them, a lampshade made out of human skin, and many so-called "Forty and Eights"-- cattle cars stacked with bodies ready for cremation. He explains how what he saw at Dachau profoundly affected him, renewed his will to fight, and increased his religious observance. He was moved to testify because of his perception of widespread disbelief about the Holocaust.

Interviewee: DI GIORGIO, Philip Date: December 6, 1994

Sidney H. Willig was born in New York City on July 2, 1919 into an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended public school and trained as a soccer player and boxer. He refers to antisemitism in America in the 1920s and 1930s: employment, his rejection from the Navy, and incidents in the Air Force.

As a navigator in the Air Force during World War II, he was shot down over the Netherlands. He describes in detail aid provided to him as an American officer by Dutch families and the Dutch underground. He also shares details about a Dutch Jew who was being hidden by a Dutch family whom he met, from November 1944 to April 1945. He reflects on his decision to continue to wear his dog tags, which displayed the Ten Commandments, until his liberation. He ponders the vast network of Nazi influence, because on his return to New York, the Vichy consular officer in Washington, D.C. requested from him the names of those who had helped him in Holland. Upon his return to New York he continued his college studies at St. John’s and then studied law on the advice of his valued teacher John Dandro. He reflects on the reasons Jews have survived over the centuries.

Sarah Elias, nee Perl, was born in 1921 in Czechoslovakia, in what is now VelkýBočkov, Ukraine. Her father, as well as the rest of the family, was very involved in the synagogue. Her father worked in a woodworking factory and her mother and the children tended the farm and animals. There were nine children in the family. Sarah went to a Czech school. She lovingly describes the traditional Jewish observances of the family. Sarah completed high school in 1939, just around the time that their area of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Hungary. She and a group of friends then went to Budapest where she got a job working in a Jewish sanatorium for three years. When the Germans took over the facility, she went to work in a Jewish hospital. Sarah tells how, eventually, she was taken by the Germans for hard labor. In the summer of 1944, Sarah and her sister were on a forced march to Germany from which they escaped. They were helped by two strangers andthen returned to Budapest. Through a friend they were able to obtain Hungarian birth certificates and Sarah relates how they were tutored by friends, including a priest, on how to behave like Christian girls and on what they needed to know to pass as Christians. They went to a farm in the countryside but in a short time they were informed upon and were taken into custody. Sarah describes how they convinced the authorities that they were not Jewish.

When the war ended in 1945, Sarah went back to working in a hospital, where she contracted typhus and was very ill. When she recovered, she and her sister returned to their home to find her father and one brother who had survived1. Although Gentiles had moved into their home, they left when the survivors returned. Sarahmet and married Victor Elias and had a child. Sarah relates that when the Communists took over Czechoslovakia, people would disappear. Although they were doing well financially, they decided to leave for Israel where they had two more children. Sarah describes the difficult conditions in Israel, but was able to get a nice place to live and she says that they were happy there. However her husband then developed kidney disease and they came to the United States, to Philadelphia. She eventually got a job in nursing and her husband, who was not well, opened a bakery.

This interview ends rather abruptly at that point.

See also the interview with herhusbandVictorElias.

Sarah’s brother, Josef Perl survived Plaszow, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, Bolkenhain (a subcamp of Gross-Rosen), Hirschberg and Buchenwald. His testimony can be found at the websitehttp://www.josefperl.com/josefs-story/. There is also an interesting article about him here http://45aid.org/064/.