Oral History Interview with Rudy Klein

Frieda Appel, née Gottesman or Feldstein, was born into an Orthodox family August 18, 1929 in Kliachanovo, Czechoslovakia, near Munkács. Her father was a cattle dealer. Although, Frieda and her brother were offered shelter by the sheriff, a close friend of her father’s, her father decided to keep the family together. They were sent to the Munkács Ghetto for four weeks until transported to Auschwitz in May 1944. She refers to several interactions with Mengele, upon entering the camp and at a selection at the showers. After six weeks, she was sent to Gelsenkirchen and Essen labor camps. She was transported to Bergen-Belsen and describes the conditions there. She refers to several kindnesses shown to her by camp personnel in the different camps. She was liberated in Bergen-Belsen April 15, 1945. The Red Cross took her and her sister to Prague through Pilsen, and then to Munkács. In May 1946, she went to a DP camp in Germany where she married at age 16. They emigrated to the United States September 27, 1949, where Jewish Family Service helped them. Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

K. R. was born in Tarnopol, Poland, March 31, 1922. Her father was a businessman and her family was greatly influenced by Viennese culture. She briefly describes the start of overt antisemitism in her schools. She was a member of HanoarHatzioni and active in Zionist youth groups in Tarnopol and L’vov. In 1940, under Russian Occupation, she and a group of HanoarHatzioni members were caught by some Ukrainian villagers—as they tried to cross the border illegally—and delivered to police. K. R. was sent to prison and later transferred to a labor camp near the North Pole. She describes the harsh conditions in the camp and why some of her fellow prisoners did not survive. She was released because she was Polish but given Soviet citizenship and sent by train to another part of Russia. Many strangers helped her during this time. She worked as a bookkeeper at a collective farm (kolkhoz) near the Russian village Devochki Gorki on the Volga River. When the German Army advanced, she was deported to Kazakhstan by train. She describes the conditions under which she lived. She worked as a bookkeeper in Kustanay. After the NKVD tried to recruit her as a spy, she fled to Alma Ata using documents she forged. In 1945, after the war, she returned to Tarnopol and found it almost completely destroyed. She joined a kibbutz in Lodz and worked with HashomerHatzair to prepare young Russian refugees for life in Palestine. She also organized and led illegal border crossings to get them there. During this time she met and married her husband. They went to Palestine, from Cyprus, on a ship called The State of Israel in 1948, escorting a group of young Jewish children who had been hidden in monasteries or by Polish families. K. R. then reflects about how her experiences have shaped her outlook on life and her views about human behavior.

Samuel Greenberg was born on June 6, 1910 in Szumk, Poland a small town near Vishnivits to a poor, orthodox family. Samdescribes pre-war antisemitism and lack of love between the Ukrainians and the Poles. His family belonged to Mizrachi, a Zionist organization.Sam describes difficulties they faced in 1939 under Russian occupation: scarcity of food,nationalization of businesses and fear of being sent to Siberia for “stealing” from the government. Sam describes the maltreatment of Jews at the hands Ukrainians and Poles after the German invasion in September 1941. He mentions that women were violated. He describes the creation of the Vishnivits Ghetto in February 1941, crowded conditions, rampant illness and frequent deaths. He was forced there with his wife, young daughter and mother and father- in-law. He details men in labor brigades being beaten anddescribes 500 girls between 12 and 21 having their heads shaved. Sam describes the horror of his town’s liquidation. He hid under a bed thinking that the women and children would be safe and he could be reunited with them later. After he escaped, a Polish acquaintance hid him and told him how the entire town was shot in mass graves and covered in lye. He describes his harrowing survival during the bitter winter and spring moving from farm to farm hiding in stables, the woods and wheat fields. He received some help from Poles in the form of bread and also shelter in a haystack in exchange for a fur coat. He also meta group of Ukrainian nationalists who followed Stepan Bandera and fought for Ukrainian freedomand were accused of antisemitic acts. He begged for his life on several occasions and was shocked when they let him go. In the summer of 1944, the Russians arrived, but when Sam was the only Jew to survive in his whole area, the Russians accused him of being a German collaborator and shipped him to Siberia. He was housed with other German collaborators who had slaughtered the Jews. The Russians asked him to spy on them, which he did, but only earned himself a ticket to the front, walking all the way from Siberia to Berlin with the Soviet army. After getting shot in the head, he was sent to a hospital near Magdeburg and begged one Jewish doctor to keep him there so he could live. Sam was discharged there by the Soviet Army in 1945. After liberation, Sam returned to Poland but heard stories of Jews’ being killed by Poles after the war so fled to the American zone in Germany. He arrived in Philadelphia in April 1948 having been sent a visa through an uncle. Sam attributes his survival to his faith in God. Sam found out after the war, that his brother had survived the war in Siberia.

Samuel Yassi1 was born in Ostrow, Poland on April 28, 1924. He was the oldest of five children in a modestly middle class family. Sam and his family fled to the town of Poprusch [phonetic] when the Germans occupied Poland. When that area came under Soviet occupation all refugees, including the Yassi family were loaded into box cars and relocated to Siberia -a journey of six weeks duration. The Yassi’s were deported even though they had passports.The family settled in an apartment in Siberia. Sam (15 years old) and his parents were put to work in the forest felling trees;the younger siblings were not. He describes his attempt to get an education instead of working, but after hisfather’s death at age 43 from pneumonia shortly after their arrival, Sam had to return to work in order to receive food rations for the family. He describes the difficult living conditions, bitter weather and restrictions under the Soviet government. Eventually the family was allowed to move to the south, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Sam tells of this journey on the chaotic Russian trains. He describes the next several years as the family tries to survive: being placed on a cooperative farm where they picked tobacco, being moved once again to the White Mountainsto make room for Russian refugees, moving back to the Tashkent area where thefound work building a factory. The family stayed in this last area for about two years during which time Sam managed to get his younger siblings into a Polish Jewish home for children run by ORT, where they were schooled, clothed and fed. Sam details this period of time tells of the death of his mother and brother. Sam then went to the city of Fergana to seek work. He tells of being sent on a huge canal building project which was very hard labor. Leaving there, he went back to Tashkent without a job. He was caught "speculating" but through his ingenuity and luck was not sent to the coal mines, but ended up first learning to be a shoemaker and then to make salt and he became a salt maker. Sam met his wife, Sylvia in 1946, after the war had ended and were married. They went back to Poland and eventually found his brother and sister. He relates that his brother and sister stayed in Poland and how he and his pregnant wife ultimately made their way to the United States, first being smuggled out of Poland to Austria and then over the Alps to Italy. In Italy they lived in a Displaced Person’s camp where they stayed for three years until they could arrange for the papers to get them to the United States arriving November 21, 1947. Mr. Yassi indicates in his interview that his former name was SholomYashenofsky.

Dora Langsam was born in Brzeziny, Poland January 1, 1925. Her family kept kosher, her father, a business man, fought with Trumpeldor, her brother served in the Polish army. She describes conditions for Jews after the German invasion in September 1939. One brother died trying to protect his father from the Germans, one sister with her newborn baby was taken during a selection. The rest of the family stayed in the Brzeziny Ghetto from 1940 to the spring of 1942 when the ghetto was closed and the Jewish population was transported to the Lodz Ghetto. Her mother was taken away in a selection immediately, a brother later. Dora and her father worked in a factory as slave laborers. She describes what she refers to as “hellish conditions” in the Lodz Ghetto. In July or August 1944, the liquidation of the ghetto started. Dora, her father, and a sister were transported to Auschwitz. Her father was taken away as soon as he got off the train. Dora and her sister lived in barracks, supervised by a brutal Czech KAPO and endured daily Appells, selections, hunger and cold. Dora tried to rescue her sister during a selection and both were saved from certain death at the last second by an air raid. Both were transported to a labor camp in Neukölln to work in an ammunition factory owned by Krupp. In 1945, near the end of the war, they were transported to Ravensbrück where they received food packages from the American Red Cross. Dora and her sister did not get sick like most of the girls because they didn’t eat the non-kosher food. On April 24, 1945 Dora and her sister went to Padborg, Denmark on a convoy organized by Folke Bernadotte, then on to Copenhagen and Malmö, Sweden. She describes how deeply being treated like human beings affected them and the quarantines in Lund then Visingsö. Dora worked in a sanatorium during the day and went to school at night, stayed in Sweden for eight years, married her husband, a survivor from Poland, and had a son and a daughter during that time. On July 6, 1953 they went to the United States, helped by HIAS, because her husband wanted to raise his children in a free country. Her sister still lives in Sweden with her husband, also a survivor.