Oral History Interview with Sam Yassi
Title
Date
Contributor
Summary
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.
none
More Sources Like This
of
Norman Rosen
Norman Rosen, one of seven children, was born in a religious family in Nowe Miasto, Poland in 1922. He describes life before and after 1938, when he first experienced antisemitism. Norman fled to Warsaw after the German invasion in September 1939, but returned home after Warsaw fell. He describes life under the German occupation before the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, including hiding during the day, forced labor, abuse of Jews, and confiscation of Jewish owned businesses.
Norman describes in great detail his experiences in both the Warsaw and the Nowe Miasto Ghettos, smuggling food aided by non-Jews, and a brief detention by the GESTAPO. Norman escaped from the Nowe Miasto Ghetto with a small group of young men aided by non-Jews. They hid in a cellar for 27 months. Later Norman and his brothers hid in a hole under a haystack and then in an attic, again helped by non-Jewish farmers.
In January 1945, as the Russians advanced and the Germans fled, Norman returned to Nowe Miasto. He describes the hostile reaction by Poles. His parents were killed in Auschwitz, but he was reunited with his surviving brothers. They travelled together to Germany, stayed in Zeilsheim Displaced Persons camp near Frankfurt from 1945 to 1946, and subsequently in Backnang Displaced Persons camp near Stuttgart until 1949 when he came to the United States.
of
Laura Oberlender
Laura Oberlender, nee Emmett, was born in Tuszyn, Poland in 1934, where her father had a successful wholesaleflower business. She shares her childhood memories of both Russian occupation in early 1939 and the subsequent German invasion, detailing the brutal beating of her mother by soldiers within days of the German takeover. Laura, too, was injured and was thought to be dead, because she was unable to speakand was temporarily paralyzed. She was five years old.
She recalls that during the first weeks of the occupation, all of the Jewish intellectuals were assembled in the center of the town and shot, one of whom was her uncle. She describes fleeing from the wealthy side of town to avoid being attacked againand also describes the subsequent formation of the Tuszyn Ghetto.
Laura details how she and her parents escaped the ghetto with the aid of Ukrainian gentile friends and were hidden by them in a hole in his barn for 18 months, until the end of the war. Later, in 1944, Laura’s father wanted to give his friend the family’s house, but Pavlo was afraid to have neighbors learn that he had hidden Jews. She also details antisemitic acts of some Ukrainians, especially the Banderovsti,a band of Ukrainian partisans which is known to have committed antisemitic acts and murder Jews.
Laura describes the difficulty of their life after liberation when they returned home and found out that her sister --who had been hidden by a Czech couple-- was eventually murdered by police after being turned in by a friend. She describes life without her father when he was conscripted into the Russian army and was away for more than half a year. When he came home on leave, they immediately fled to Lodz, where they stayed for several months, then to Czechoslovakia, Germany and finallyto Austria with fake Greek passports provided by the Jewish Brigade. In 1945, Laura’s brother was born in Bindermichen Displaced Persons camps in Linz. Laura’s immediate family was able to go to the United States in 1946 in order to join other family members already settled there.
of
Elsa Turteltaub
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
of
Bernard S. Mednicki
Bernard S. Mednicki was born in 1910 in Brussels, Belgium, the youngest of four children in an orthodox Russian Jewish family from Kishinev. His father served in the Russian army until the 1903 pogrom, when he deserted and moved his family to the West. Bernard attended a cheder and public school in Brussels, where he experienced some antisemitism. He was apprenticed to an orthopedic technician, became a Belgian citizen in 1928 and was married in 1931. In 1933, he became active in the anti-fascist Socialist Party and anti-fascist resistance. He describes the German invasion on May 12, 1940.
Assuming Christian identities, his wife and children fled to Paris and he travelled through southern France until they were reunited in Riom. He details extensively the travails of fellow refugees, his work with the French resistance during 1941-1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, and sabotage activity with the Maquis in the mountains near Volvic. He relates smuggling goods and other survival techniques to obtain food for resistance families. He travelled with his wife and children to Paris, aided by American soldiers, remaining until 1946, when he returned to Brussels. He found his sister’s three children, who were hidden during the war in a convent and a monastery. He arrived in the United States with his wife and children in 1947. His Memoirs: Never be afraid: A Jew in the Maquis, were published posthumously in 1997.
See also interviews with his son, Armand Mednick and with his nephew Charles L. Rojer.
Interviewee: MEDNICKI, Bernard S. Dates: April 27 & 30, 1982
of
Sybil A. Niemöeller
Sybil Niemöller (maiden name von Sell) was born in 1923 in Potsdam into an aristocratic Prussian family. Both her grandfathers were Prussian generals. After World War I her father was appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm to be his financial advisor and administrator. She grew up in Berlin-Dahlem where she had several Jewish friends. Her parents were strongly anti-Nazi. The family attended the Confessing Church which was led by their friend Pastor Niemöller. This church was founded as counterpart against the Christian German Church which had embraced Nazi ideology. Because she did not belong to the Hitler Youth she was prevented from graduating from high school and became an actress. During the war her parents sheltered several Jews, disguised as seamstresses and gardeners. Two of her cousins, Werner von Haeften (who was adjutant to Count von Stauffenberg) and Hans Bernd von Haeften were involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944 and were executed. Both Sybil and her father were also arrested and interrogated at that time, but released. She arrived in the United States in 1952, became a U.S. citizen in 1957, and married Pastor Martin Niemöller. She accompanied him on his lecture tours but made their home in Wiesbaden, Germany. She describes his suffering as “Hitler’s special prisoner” when he was incarcerated in Sachsenhausen and later in Dachau.
Interviewee: NIEMÖLLER, Sybil (von Sell) Date: November 21, 1986
of
Elizabeth J. Levy
Elizabeth J. Levy, nee Dreifuss, was born in 1927 in Ludwigshafen am Rheim, Germany. She attended a local school as the only Jewish child in classes for Catholics, whom her parents believed were friendlier than the Protestants. She also studied Hebrew in Mannheim.
After the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, her family was ostracized and her father was dismissed as a language professor. She moved with her parents to Leipzig, where her father taught in a Jewish school until Kristallnacht, when he was arrested. He was held at Buchenwald until family visas and tickets to Peru were obtained.
In February, 1939, they left Germany with visitor visas for England where her father taught German language classes for British police and worked at Bloomsbury House, helping German Jews to emigrate. Personal connections enabled his family to avoid internment as German nationals. In February, 1940, they sailed to the United States. Mrs. Levy married in 1949, had three children and became a language teacher.
She believes her religious faith sustained her during her youth and maintains that Jewish people must remember the Holocaust by avoiding intermarriage and abortion, to compensate for those Jews who were killed.
Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Rebecca, age 12 at the time, did an interview with her great-grandmother Lina Dreifuss (Elizabeth Levy’s mother) about her experiences in Nazi Germany. Mrs. Dreifuss is age 102 at the time of this interview.: https://vimeo.com/201457472/5b06ce1456