Oral History Interview with Rachela Frydman

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/.

Harold Stern, formerly Helmutt, was born August 31, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the only child of middle class Jewish parents. His father came from an Orthodox background and his mother was raised in a non-observant home; as a family, they belonged to a large Liberal Congregation, the West end Synagogue in Frankfurt. Harold describes the educational system and antisemitism pre- and post- 1933. He discusses the Kultusgemeinde, his Jewish education, upbringing, and his studies at the Philanthropin (a Jewish secondary school), which he attended in 1935 due to increased Nazism and antisemitism experience at the public Gymnasium. His mother continued the family business after his father’s death in 1930, but had to give it up (1937) as a result of the Nuremberg Laws. He describes the “aryanization” of a shoe manufacturing company and other businesses where he was apprenticed/employed. Despite having an early quota number, Harold’s attempts to emigrate with his mother to USA were thwarted because their affidavits were not accepted by the American Consulate in Stuttgart. In March 1939, Harold left for England through the aid of family friends in England and Bloomsbury House, while his mother remained in Frankfurt. He describes life in London, working as a factory trainee, residing among British (non-Jewish) working class, until June 1940 when he was picked up and interned in Huyten, a camp near Liverpool, with other German Jewish refugees. In July 1940, he volunteered for transport on the Dunera, a ship supposedly bound for Canada but re-routed to Australia. He discusses in detail the desperate conditions at sea, harsh treatment by British soldiers, and refugee behavior during the ten week voyage. From Sidney, he was transferred to a barbed-wire enclosed compound in the Outback, in Hay, New South Wales. He refers to the internal camp leadership which emerged, the development of cultural and educational activities. He details help given by the Australian Christian Student Movement (under Margaret Holmes), Jewish Welfare Board, and Jewish people of Melbourne. Later he moved to a camp in Tatura, Victoria that had better conditions. After 20 months of internment, he joined the Australian army, the 8th Employment Company, where he did transport of munitions. He was discharged in 1946 or 1947, after serving 4 1/2 years in the army. Harold kept contact with his mother and knew that she reached USA in late 1941. Through the help of a non-Jewish woman, she obtained a visa in September 1941, left Germany on a sealed train (to Berlin), journeyed through occupied and Vichy France and Spain to Lisbon, boarding one of the last steamers from Portugal to America. Her brother, however, was arrested by the Gestapo and never seen again. Her sister, a musician, later hospitalized in a sanitarium was “euthanized”. Harold immigrated to the USA in 1947 under the German quota. In 1959, he moved to Philadelphia.

Elsa Turteltaub, nee Waldner, was born October 24, 1916 in Teschen (Cieszyn), Poland. She and her brother and sister attended private Catholic schools, although her parents kept a kosher home and attended a conservative synagogue on holidays. Elsa completed a commercial high school course and was active in HanoarHatzioni. After the German invasion in September 1939, her parents lost their restaurant and Elsa and her sister were forced to clean German army barracks. In December 1939, she escaped to Slovakia, where she joined a hakhshara in Zilina. She was sent to Auschwitz in March, 1942 in one of the first Slovakian transports and was forced into hard labor in the sand pits, despite being ill with typhus. When transferred to the registry office, she issued death certificates requested by relatives of Auschwitz inmates, both Jewish and Gentile. By 1943, only Gentiles’ requests were answered as Jews were no longer registered. The causes of death given were fiction, created by the office staff. If ashes of the deceased were requested, staff filled sacks with any ashes found in the crematorium. Living conditions for those girls, living in a building with SS women, were much better than elsewhere. In January, 1942, Elsa was evacuated to Ravensbrück, then to Malchow, and finally to Trewitz in East Germany. She was liberated by Russians on May 3, 1945, was married in 1946, and gave birth to a son in 1948 in Katowitz, Poland. She and her family lived in Israel from 1950 to 1955 and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Her story is included in Secretaries of Death, ed. and translated by Lore Shelley, New York: Shengold Publishers, Inc., 1986. Interviewee: TURTELTAUB, Elsa Waldner Date: July 14, 1987

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.