Oral History Interview with Roy Allen

Michael Finkelstein, born in Radom, Poland in 1928, was educated in both cheder and public schools. He describes anti-Jewish measures and restrictions after the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He cites several instances of German-Polish cooperation in persecuting Jews. He and his family moved into the ghetto in 1940. They supported themselves by smuggling. He witnessed selections and mass deportations while in the ghetto and worked as a slave laborer in various factories. He worked as a slave laborer in Pionki in 1942-43.

He and his family were deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He describes the struggle to survive, how he managed to obtain food by working as a cook, and how people could become block foremen. He saw Dr. Mengele making selections. He saw the flames from the ovens and smelled the burning flesh of victims. In 1943 Michael and his father managed to get on a transport to work in a coal mine in Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien), Poland. He explains what gave him the strength to survive. He describes being forced on a death march from the coal mine to Mauthausen in the winter of 1944. He explains why he thinks the treatment of prisoners during the death march and at Mauthausen was designed to have as many as possible perish before liberation.

Michael and his father were transported to Ebensee, a death camp in Austria. He mentions several attempts at resistance and why resistance was difficult. He and his father got sick. His father did not survive. He briefly describes the “hospital”.

He relates events before, during and after the liberation by American tank units in May 1945: German desertions, revenge by some of the non-Jewish prisoners; the condition of the survivors that the Americans were not prepared to deal with. After treatment in an American Field hospital, Michael joined a group of child survivors that the Jewish Brigade of the British Army was smuggling to Palestine via Italy. Michael got to Italy but no further. After four years in a Displaced Persons camp in Italy, supported by UNRRA he came to the United States in 1949. He talks about life in America and his reunion with his sister who also survived.

FINKELSTEIN. Michael Date: April 21, 1985

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.

Gertrude Jacobs, nee Bergman, was born into an observant Jewish family in Voelkersler, Southern Bavaria, Germany in January 1924. Her father and grandfather were decorated war veterans. There were 12 Jewish families living in her village and Gertrude describes this area of Germany as particularly antisemitic both before and after 1933, when Hitler came to power. She describes how Jewish life in general and her family’s life were affected by anti-Jewish decrees, and relates two attacks on her while in school. Most of the village people shunned them, a few helped them secretly.

Gertrude gives second hand accounts of Kristallnacht, of her grandmother’s liberation from Theresienstadt concentration camp, and her grandmother’s return to and post-war life in Germany. Gertrude came to the United States in 1938, where she also experienced antisemitism.

Gertrude expresses her feelings about Germans, restitution, German Jews, and how growing up in Nazi Germany affects her to this day. She explains her philosophy of living as a Jew and a survivor and the special obligations this entails.

Gabriela Truly, née Braun, was born January 7, 1916 in Levoča, Czechoslovakia, where her family had lived since the first half of the 18th century. She and her five siblings were active in Zionist groups. In 1939, as Slovak nationalists allied with the Axis, restrictions were placed on Jews. Her father’s tinsmithing shop was taken over by the State in 1940. In 1942, Mrs. Truly was rounded up with 1000 single girls aged 14-40, from surrounding areas and sent in the first transport to Auschwitz. She describes the dehumanizing intake process and the difficult life in the camps. Later, when mothers were brought with small children to a separate block, her sister and her 4 ½ year old son were among the first to be gassed in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly describes the drive of self-preservation, of caring only for yourself, although she narrates many incidents in which she aided others and others aided her. Later in 1942, she was moved to Birkenau, and became very ill with typhus, diarrhea and a badly infected foot. In February 1943 she was hospitalized back in Auschwitz. Mrs. Truly categorizes which jobs were easier to survive and which more difficult. Again, aided by a hairdresser named Monsi, she gets a job first knitting for commandant Hoess, then filing in the personnel building. She was told permits to go to Israel had mysteriously come to Auschwitz, but nothing happened. On January 18, 1944, she was taken on a three day death march, and then near Ravensbrück, where she saw her mother for the last time. Next, they were taken to Malchow where she later met up with the younger sister of her sister-in-law. Eventually, she came to Crivitz and witnessed rape by Russian soldiers. Three brothers and one sister with two children had also survived. At last she went to Prague, where in 1948 she left for New York to live with a brother. She married an American-born Jew and remained in New York.

Luba Kozusman Margulies, born in Novogrod, Poland in 1915, was raised in Ostrog after her parents were killed in a pogrom. She talks about her family history; her life and education in both Ostrog and Lemberg (L’vov), where she studied to become a midwife, and experienced antisemitism, including a violent encounter with Polish members of the Hitler Jugend.

She describes life in Tarnopol - where she moved after her marriage in 1940 - under both Russian and German occupation, when the killing of Jews started in 1941. She describes mass murders of Jews by both Germans and Ukrainians, roundups of Jews, especially rabbis, and her work in hospitals in Tarnopol and later the ghetto. She gives a detailed description of life in the ghetto, which existed for less than a year and was liquidated in 1942, including surviving, attempts by Jews to construct escape bunkers, activities of the Judenrat, and forced labor. Luba and her husband were in a forced labor group that worked outside of the ghetto.

She relates several episodes of preparing hiding places, hiding in sewers with other survivors, repeated attempts by Germans to flush out and kill Jews by various means. Luba and her husband escaped, were caught and put into a labor camp. She believes that Untersturmführer Rokita, the head of this labor camp, ordered the massacre of these Jews. Luba graphically describes their escape from the labor camp, hiding in a hole in the ground and in the home of a non-Jewish man for weeks, scavenging for food, being hunted by Germans, and instances of help by non-Jews.

After liberation by advancing Russian soldiers March 24, 1944, they fled to escape conscription. They lived briefly in Tarnopol, in Brzezany with other survivors, and in Walbrzech in the home of a German-Christian family. Luba and her family went to a Displaced persons camp in Wetzlar, near Stuttgart, Germany. She came to the United States with her husband and two daughters in October, 1949. The interview concludes with several sad vignettes about the fate of some children in the ghetto who were taken from their parents and also includes a poem written by Luba’s husband, in Yiddish and English.

Interviewee: MARGULIES, Luba Kozusman Date: October 20, 1981

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