Oral History Interview with Theodore Wertheimer

Daniel Goldsmith was born in Antwerp, Belgium on December 11, 1931 to Polish parents. His family was orthodox and he was educated at a Yeshiva. They lived in Antwerp under German occupation and suffered under the ever-increasing anti-Jewish measures. His father was transported to a labor camp in France, August 1942 and never heard from again.

His mother, Ruchel Goldschmidt – who was in contact with the Belgian underground – managed to get some money, safeguard their possessions, and find a hiding place just before and while the Germans raided their neighborhood and ransacked Jewish-owned houses, helped by Belgians who pointed out Jewish residents. Daniel cites several instances when Belgians cooperated with the Germans. He also gives many examples of aid by non-Jewish Belgians, especially Father André (who was recognized as a “Righteous Gentile”) and other Catholic clergy and nuns. He also mentions his mother’s work with the underground.

Daniel and his sister were placed in a convent in December 1942, then with Christian families after their mother found out the Germans were going to enter the convent to look for Jewish children. He was in a succession of orphanages in Weelde and Mechelen, run by Father Cornelissen, from 1943 to 1944, while his sister lived with another Christian family. Daniel got false baptismal papers, changed his name, lived as a Catholic, but refused to convert.

In May 1944 the Germans imprisoned all circumcised boys in the orphanage, then transported them on cattle cars with other Jewish children. Daniel and several other boys escaped from the moving train and managed to contact a priest who placed each of them with a different Christian family who hid them. Monsieur and Madame Botier, hid Daniel, were kind to him, and worked to reunite him with his mother after liberation in September 1944.

Daniel describes various placements post liberation, especially in AischeEnRefail; mentions a French committee that collected hidden Jewish children, and Aliyah Bet. His mother was injured during an air raid and could not take care of her children at that time. He relates how difficult and painful it was for all parties, especially his sister, when his mother wanted to reclaim her daughter from the Christian family that sheltered her for three years.

In April 1948, Daniel, his mother and his sister went to the United States from Belgium, sponsored by his father’s family. He talks about his family’s life shortly after they arrived, and his own life from that time to the present.

Ida Rudley, née Rothman, was born April 22, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, into a middle class family. She encountered antisemitism even before Hitler annexed Austria. Her life changed after the Anschluss in 1938, as anti-Jewish measures took effect. She explains why it was almost impossible for Jews to leave Austria. She mentions several instances of help from non-Jews, including an encounter with a German officer who took an interest in her while she and her mother were trying to escape from Austria. They were smuggled across the border to Yugoslavia in 1941 and lived in Zagreb illegally, always on the run, sheltered by both Jews and non-Jews until they were warned that the Gestapo was looking for them. Ida and her mother turned themselves in to the Gestapo - armed with enough pills to commit suicide - and managed to talk their way out of detention. Using forged papers, they accompanied a group of German-Jewish orphans bound for Palestine to the Italian part of Yugoslavia.

After living briefly in Ljubljana, they were sent to a concentration camp in Ferramonti, Italy. Prisoners included Greek, Italian and Yugoslavian Partisans as well as Jews. The Italians ran the camp in a very humane fashion and even told Jews where to hide from the retreating German troops. Ida and her husband were married by a rabbi in the concentration camp and had a civil ceremony later, after liberation by the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in 1943. After a brief stay in a transit camp in Cinecitta, run by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) Ida, her husband and her mother went to the United States on a military ship in 1947.

Interviewee: RUDLEY, Ida Date: April 5, 1984