Oral History Interview with Pearl Herling

Ernst Presseisen was born July 13, 1928 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. His father was a businessman. He describes the German invasion of Holland and the bombing of Rotterdam in May1940. He details the gradually tightening restrictions imposed by the Germans to isolate the Dutch-Jewish citizens. After roundups of Jewish men started in July 1942, his father - helped by Christian friends who had contact with the underground - planned the family’s escape. His mother’s arrest by Dutch police aborted this plan. The entire family, including his mother, was deported to Westerbork in August 1942 and stayed there until February 1944. He describes life in Westerbork in detail, including his own development of survival skills and how his family managed to remain there instead of being deported to Poland. He briefly mentions Geneker, the commander of Westerbork.

In February 1944 he was deported to Bergen-Belsen with his family. He describes his experiences there in detail, including slave labor assignments and general deterioration of the inmates’ health. Jewish prisoners organized a theatre group “Cabaret Westerbork” in that camp. In the fall of 1944 Ernst got typhus and his oldest brother died of it. He mentions Greek Kapos. At the approach of the British Army, the Germans decided to evacuate the camp in April, 1945. Prisoners who survived the evacuation were liberated by the Russians and ordered to requisition housing in Trebitsch, Germany. Ernst briefly describes survival in Trebitsch. After his parents died of typhus, he was repatriated to the Netherlands by the Red Cross in June 1945. He talks about life in post-war Holland. He emigratedto the United States in October 1946. He settled in California with relatives and taught German history at the university level after getting his degree.

Interviewee: Ernst Leopold Presseisen Date: April 22, 1983

Hans Braun was born in Hanover, Germany on June 3, 1923. His family were German Sintis (a gypsy tribe). They had a small carnival and traveled around Germany during the summer and lived in Bernau in the winter. Nazi persecution started in 1939 and they had to wear a patch with the letter "Z". In 1941 Hans and his father were forced to work for the German army in the armament industry. Hans was suspected of sabotage after accidentally breaking a machine. To escape arrest by the Gestapo, he fled to his grandfather's home in Berlin. Pursued by the Gestapo, he went into hiding, first with friends in Berlin then with an uncle in Eger, and finally with Sintis in Luxemburg who gave him false papers. He was arrested and jailed when he returned home but escaped. Hans describes subsequent arrests and escapes-using disguises and false papers-in great detail.

After his final capture he was put on a transport to Auschwitz with other Sinti families. He was put into the Birkenau Gypsy camp where he was reunited with his family. He describes conditions in the Gypsy camp, his work loading and unloading the dead at the crematorium, and his beatings by guards. One by one his entire family died of typhus and starvation. After he got typhus, he was experimented on in the hospital barracks. He describes how Dr. Mengele tortured children and used them for his medical experiments.

Hans was sent to Flossenbürg Labor Camp where he was again beaten. He was on a death march with surviving inmates for four days and nights just before liberation. Hans and two other men escaped and hid in a village which was defended by the SS. They were liberated by the Americans. Hans lived in Germany after the war and emigrated to Canada in 1980.

Anna Czerwinski, nee Estera Pomrok, was born in 1906 in Radom, Poland into a wealthy, kosher family. She attended public school and worked briefly in a Hashomer Hatzair farm in Lublin. In 19301 she married Lucien Finkielsztein, an assimilated Jew who changed his name to Czerwinski and served in the Polish Army. They lived in Warsaw for a time, but then prompted by her husband, she relocated to a small town, Opole Lubelskie, where it would be safer. Anna and their two children passed as Catholics, hiding in Opole Lubelskie with Polish friends whom she paid. Her daughter was sheltered in a convent until the nuns discovered her Jewish identity and abandoned the child. Many close encounters are related.

In 1944, the family fled to Falenica, where Russian soldiers helped them. Postwar, Anna regained her mother’s store in Lublin and her husband prospered in business in Reichenbach Niederschlesien. In 1950, continuing antisemitism prompted their departure from Europe. After two years in Israel and travel to France and Brazil, the Polish quota permitted their emigration to the United States in 1958.

Also see her 1979 interview in Polish, 1 tape.

This document is an invitation from Krzysztof W. Kasprzyk, Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York, for a special event co-hosted with the Georgetown University Alumni Association on April 16, 2009. The event aims to commemorate Jan Karski, a Polish World War II hero and Georgetown professor, known for being the first to inform Allied leaders about the Holocaust. The commemoration includes the official designation of the Madison Avenue and 37 E Street intersection as 'Jan Karski Corner' and a panel discussion titled 'Georgetown Professor Jan Karski: Giving Voice to the Holocaust.' The invitation highlights Karski's role as an underground courier who witnessed the genocide of Jews and informed W. Churchill and F.D. Roosevelt in 1942. It anticipates the presence of Polish government dignitaries, Georgetown alumni, and 'Righteous Among the Nations' from Poland.

Hanna Seckel1, nee Dubová, born July 22, 1925 in Kolin Czechoslovakia, grew up in Prague in a middle-class, secular family. Her father was a doctor. Hanna describes her early childhood education, getting involved in a Zionist Youth Movement, and the German occupation of Sudetenland including school closings and restrictions imposed on Jews.

In October 1939, when she was 14 years old, she was sent to Denmark as part of a transport of children from HashomerHatzair sponsored by the Danish League of Peace and Freedom. Hanna describes her life and work in Denmark in great detail. She worked at two farms under harsh conditions. One was near Gørløse,the other near Næstved where she had contact with other children from the transport.Through letters from her family she learned about worsening conditions of Jews in Prague. In 1942 her parents wrote that they would be deported to Auschwitz and she attempted suicide. She briefly mentions the Danish underground.

Hanna recalls working as a chambermaid at a Danish boarding school in exchange for her tuition there and also for a family in Næstved after she quit school in 1943. She details her feelings of being an outsider and her financial difficulties. She discusses the fates of some of the other refugee children—some reached Palestine, some were caught, some were sent back to their original countries by Denmark and sent to concentration camps. She also describes her rescue by the Danish underground and the harrowing journey to Sweden hidden in a fishingboat. The Chief Rabbi of Copenhagen, Rabbi Melchior, was part of the group. She details the warm reception by the Swedes and aid from the Red Cross.

Hanna describes her life in Sweden working as a maid for room and board at two different nursing schools inNorrköpingand Södertälje, losing touch with her former friends, receiving ng her nursing certificate and working in an insane asylum.

Hanna returned to Denmark in 1945 because she heard that she was entitled to Danish citizenship which was not true. In Copenhagen she worked in a restitution office for Danish Jews. She returned to Prague in 1946 and lived with relatives whileearning a degree from Charles University, then returned to Denmark on a Nansen Pass in 1947. After a lengthy illness, she went to Sweden and worked in a factory owned by the Nobel family, as a translator. In 1950, she emigrated to the United States under the Czech quota.

Marian Turzanski, born January 18, 1934 in Zupanie, Poland, was one of four sons in a Catholic family who owned large forest land. Before 1939, he recalls good relations with the few Jews in his village, one of whom once hid in the Turzanski home. After the German invasion, hostile Ukrainians threatened to kill Marian’s father; a friendly Ukrainian intervened and urged the family to flee. In Hungary, they moved frequently, settling in Keszthely, where Marian attended a school for Polish children.

His parents had left their baptismal papers in Poland, to be used by Samuel Goldreich, the Jew they once sheltered.

Life in Hungary after German occupation is detailed: terrorization by the Arrow Cross and German soldiers, ghettoization of Jews and Poles, deportation of Jews and Gypsies. Marian’s father was active in the underground, together with Hungarian Jews and other Christians; Marian and his brothers became messengers.

He describes in detail the family’s deportation December 31, 1944, to Germany, via Prague and Vienna in sealed cattle cars and the luxury of bedsheets and decent food at the Wilhelmshaven work camp near Berlin. This contrasts with the starkness of the other camps he mentions briefly: Strashof, Bayreuth, Neumarkt. He describes brutal treatment by Ukrainians at Neumarkt.

After liberation by Americans in 1945, he lived in Displaced Persons camps at Neumarkt, Hochenfels, Annsbach, Wildflecken, Heilbronn, Ludvigsburg and Bremenhafen. He came to the United States on August 27, 1949 after losing all of his relatives outside of his immediate family.