Oral History Interview with Roger Bryan

Willie Nowak was born August 1, 1908 in Berlin, to a family of libera1 Austrian Jews. His father owned a tobacco factory in Berlin. After attending a Realgymnasium in Berlin, Willie sold pharmaceuticals in Brunn, Czechoslovakia, 1935-37. On his return to Berlin, he found he had lost his German citizenship. During Kristallnacht in 1938, he witnessed the burning of the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue where he had celebrated his bar mitzvah. He emigrated to Shanghai in 1938 with his fiancée and the two children of his first marriage. He describes in detail the refugee camp in the Japanese district, the support from the Joint Distribution Committee and the Russian Jewish community for a hospital, kosher soup kitchen and the services of a rabbi. Willie worked as a musician in bars and night clubs and was also in charge of Jewish guards in the refugee camp. He describes interactions between Chinese and Japanese individuals and himself. His wife, Elsa, worked in an underwear factory owned by Austrian Jews who sold to Japanese buyers. The Nowak family emigrated to the United States in January 1948 on a collective affidavit for Shanghai refugees.

Captain Edward Sacks served with the U.S. Army Military Government in Munich Germany from May 1945 to April 1946, at the Bavarian state level. He details his duties, including his work with displaced persons as well as security measures. He was able to defuse a tense confrontation between a German farmer and Polish soldiers, and investigated several other disturbances. He describes his supervision of convoys that transferred Nazi loot, including gold teeth and eyeglasses and gold currency. He set up an office to determine which officers, banks or insurance companies should be classified as Nazi war criminals and recommended dismissal of approximately 3000. He speculates on why the project was disbanded while he was on leave. In Munich headquarters he saw Nazi Party magazines with full-page advertisements for American products. He talks about conditions in Munich under the American Military Government.

He found two lists dated November 1941 and February 1942 in the Bavarian police headquarters, giving the names of almost 2000 Jews deported from Munich. He donated this material to the Gratz College Oral History Archive.

He was able to help an American bring his nephew, who had been in Sachsenhausen concentration camp to the United States, and mentions his input on how to govern post-war Germany. He returned to the United States in 1946.

SACKS, Edward February 13, 1990

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.

Samuel Flor1 was born in Czernowitz, Romania. He talks about experiencing antisemitism, his education, and his career as a composer, musician, and a professor at the university in Czernowitz.

He describes life in Czernowitz first under Russian and then under German occupation. He explains why it was impossible to leave and how he and his wife, Gertrude tried to escape in June, 1941, but failed. He was part of a brutal roundup of Jewish men, and had to bury Jewish men who were machine-gunned to death by Germans near the River Prut. After being tormented by the Germans, the survivors, including Samuel Flor, returned home.

In October, 1941 all Jews had to move into a ghetto until they were deported to the Ukraine under terrible conditions, including periodic whippings by both German and Romanian soldiers. He describes a particularly cruel incident involving Jews from Mogilev, a forced circular death march, and several atrocities committed by Ukrainian peasants. Mr. Flor worked as a slave laborer in a stone quarry in Ladesti on the Bugac and in Tulchin in a hospital.

He relates a chilling vignette in which Sonderführer Fritz von Rohde explains why killing Jews is a service to humanity.

As the Germans retreated Mr. and Mrs. Flor and about 66 other people hid in a hole they had dug previously for more than three days, until March 15, 1944. He describes how the 300 Jewish survivors tried to cope once the Russian army came, and his return to Czernowitz. His apartment had been nationalized so Mr. and Mrs. Flor joined the Czech army. He explains how they got out of Prague, emigrated to Barranquilla, Colombia, (South America) and then to the United States where Mr. Flor continued his musical career.

Jenny Sommer describes her life, education, and Zionist activities in prewar Libau, Latvia in great detail, including some incidents of antisemitism and discrimination. In 1940 conditions for Jews started to get worse. Because her family was upper middle class they lived in fear of the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) and the Russians.

Jenny describes life under the German occupation of Libau in great detail: the execution of all able bodied Jewish men on July 22, 1941; a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives, and how her sister managed to rescue them just before they were to be executed during an Aktion. She witnessed a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives. The Christian superintendent of her uncle’s house hid Jenny and her remaining family in the attic until the round-up of Jews was over. Jenny, her mother and her sister, moved into the ghetto with about 600 other Jews and worked for the Germans as slave laborers. Her sister worked as a nurse in the ghetto. Some Christian Latvians smuggled food to them.

On Yom Kippur night they were taken to Kaiserwald concentration camp, near Riga. Jenny describes their arrival at Kaiserwald, where mothers were forcibly separated from their children. Some women committed suicide. Her sister carried a bottle of cyanide pills. While in Kaiserwald, Jenny did hard labor as part of a Kommando, at a work camp, and later inStutthof. She describes their horrible existence in Stutthof and how she managed to find the will to survive. Her husband worked at Stutthof as an electrician and managed to survive a typhoid epidemic.

As the Russian army approached, the inmates were shipped out of Stutthof on a designated typhoid boat. It was bombed, set on fire and capsized. She was rescued by a German fire boat after ten days without food or water, liberated two days later in Kiel, Germany by English forces. She stayed at a field Lazarett (hospital) in Itzehoe, near Hamburg for six months. She talks about her post-liberation experiences in a German hospital, and finding her husband in Neustadt.

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.