Oral History Interview with Ursula M. Heisman

Piera Solender, née DelloStrologo, was born in Livorno, Italy, a town with a large Jewish population. As a child she experienced little if any antisemitism. During the war, she relocated to Milan, where with the help of a Mother Superior from Livorno, she worked as a tutor to a gentile family. In 1942, along with her mother and sister, she moved to Rimini and then Senigallia, where she spent over a year in hiding. Her father and other siblings fled to Switzerland.

By 1943, the German army were throughout Italy. In Senigallia, the women were befriended by Luigi Corleoni. They attempted to pass as Christians, only to later learn the townspeople knew the truth. Piera and her sister ran a local school. In October or November 1943, along with approximately 200 others, Christians and Jews, Piera hid in a tunnel for a month, hiding from Polish troops. Villagers brought water to those in hiding.

After the war, she returned to Milan where she learned her family members who had fled to Switzerland survived. She met her husband, a Polish Jew who survived five different concentration camps. They emigrated to the United States (year unknown).

Saul Horn was born in Lódz, Poland in 1913. Saul briefly describes the thriving pre-war Lodz Jewish community. Saul recounts the effects of the German occupation on his family, losing the family business and fleeing to the Glowno Ghetto in December 1939, which was outside the German Reich at the time. He describes the difficult conditions in the ghetto, working outside the ghetto and trying to buy extra food. He describes their deportation to the Warsaw Ghetto when Germany took over that area in 1941. Saul describes working as a slave laborer in the Warsaw Ghetto, at Okecie airfield, and the gruesome effect of starvation, especially on children, as well as on people in general. He explains how he escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto to Opatów and later rescued 10 women, using bribery. After six months in Opatów they were captured by the SS and sent to Skarzysko labor camp. He details the horrible living conditions and brutal treatment by Ukrainian guards. His wife died of typhoid in 1942.

Saul details his deportation to Buchenwald by cattle train in 1944. Of the 2000 Jews on this transport only 200 survived. He describes the brutal conditions, especially the hunger, and how he became the head of the small hospital - staffed by Jewish doctors - that had no supplies. Saul witnessed several atrocities committed by Germans.

Buchenwald was liberated by the Russians in May, 1945. He mentions what occurred after liberation and his search for relatives in Lódz. He was reunited with three of his wife’s sisters and later married one of them. In 1945 he established a manufacturing business in Poland.

He explains how they were smuggled out of Poland to the Schlupfing Displaced Persons camp in Germany, helped by the Haganah, in 1946. He went to Landsberg Displaced Persons camp in 1948. Saul, his wife and two year old daughter, arrived in the United States in June 1949. He lived in Patterson N.J. and briefly talks about his life there and how he taught himself to speak English.

Emmi Loewenstern was born on February 19, 1925 in Emmerich, Germany. She briefly describes pre-war life: schooling and relations with non-Jewish Poles. The family was well known in the town. Emmi describes the change in attitude toward Jews after the Nazis came to power. She gives a detailed description of Kristallnacht, the damage done to their home by soldiers they knew, the imprisonment of her father.

In December 1941, Emmi and her family were deported to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia. She describes the journey and arrival in detail including hearing about the mass murder of the Latvian Jews by Jewish survivors still working in the ghetto. She details the lack of food, crowded conditions, forced labor, brutality and atrocities: people being taken out on work shifts and shot if they were caught stealing food. She discusses some holiday observances in the ghetto. She also describes an incident in October 1942 when some young Latvian Jews tried to bring ammunition into the ghetto, were caught and 39 were shot to death.

In November 1943 Emmi, her sister and her mother were sent to various places for forced labor: working for the German army at the Armeebiekleidungsamt [army quartermaster] sorting clothes of deceased German soldiers and in another (unnamed) camp. She describes how the young children were separated from their parents and never heard from again. In the fall of 1944, they were deported to Stutthof and then to Libau (Latvia) where they had to work at a shoe factory. She describes how they took the handkerchiefs off their heads during the trip to and from work so the townspeople would see how they were being treated. In February 1945, they were deported to Hamburg, Germany to Fuhlsbüttel (a subcamp of Neuengamme) where they had to label bags of spices. She describes the deplorable conditions of the deathmarch from Hamburg to Kiel where they had to sort bricks.

In 1945, they were taken to Malmö, Sweden via Denmark by the Red Cross due to the Bernadotte Agreement. Emmi contacted relatives in the United States and Sweden. Emmi emigrated with her mother and sister to the United States where Emmi married in 1947 and had two daughters.

Ernest Kaufman was born in Drove, Germany, a small town with about 25 Jews. His father served in the German army during World War I and was a butcher and also a shochet. They had no problems with gentile neighbors but Ernest could not complete his education or his apprenticeship because he was Jewish. During Kristallnacht a local police man refused to arrest his father, but Ernest was arrested and transported to Buchenwald. He describes the terrible conditions and brutality in Buchenwald. The prisoners arrested during Kristallnacht did not have to work, but were forced to watch other prisoners being tortured and killed. Ernest explains how he managed to get an affidavit that enabled him to be released from Buchenwald after four weeks. He got a visa for the United States on April 20, 1939 and arrived in New York two weeks later. Ernest describes his unsuccessful attempts to get his parents out of Germany and into Cuba. His parents did not survive. Ernest describes how he lived and supported himself in New York and later in Philadelphia.

After Pearl Harbor, Ernest enlisted in the U.S. Army, became a naturalized citizen and eventually an officer. He served in England and Germany in 1943 and relates many of his experiences as an intelligence officer on an interrogation team. He discovered that Christian neighbors in Drove smuggled food into a house where local Jews were assembled before they were deported. In July 1945, he was wounded and sent to England General Hospital in Atlantic City. After he recovered, he was assigned to the European Command Intelligence Center in charge of the document section. He describes his intensive but futile search to discover what happened to his parents. After two more years in the service, he bought a poultry farm in Egypt, N.J. where he and his wife Minna lived for 30 years.

Judy Freeman, nee Beitscher, was born in Uzhgorod (also known as Ungwar) in the Hungarian part of Czechoslovakia, March 2, 1929. Her father was a baker and she was educated in public school. She describes changes in Jewish life after the German occupation in August 1944. Jews were herded into two temporary ghettos and then transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars. During a selection by Dr. Mengele, she was separated from her family, processed, and taken to Jewish Lager C in Birkenau with 1000 young Jewish girls. She vividly describes the daily routine, roll calls, selections and terrible conditions at Birkenau. She devised several survival skills to keep her sanity and promised herself she would live to tell about her experiences. She was sent to a gas chamber once, survived, and later selected to go to Guben, a small labor camp near Berlin, to work in an electronics component factory, in November 1944. She mentions attempts at sabotage by the slave laborers.

She describes a Death march from Guben to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945, horrible conditions, treatment of prisoners and brutality by a Blockälteste at Bergen-Belsen extensively. She lost her will to live for the first time even though some hoarded jewelry saved her life at Bergen-Belsen during a typhus epidemic.

She was liberated by the British Army April 15, 1945. She recalls actions taken by Brigadier General Grimm Hughes and British liberators vis -a- vis the survivors and the Germans. After liberation, she was hospitalized, returned to her home town, and was smuggled into Munich with her new husband, also a survivor, from Czechoslovakia. They lived and worked in two Displaced Persons camps: Gabersee and Wasserburg for almost two years. They came to the United States September 21, 1947. She explains how they built a life and started a family, after a difficult beginning in New York, assisted by HIAS.

Caroline Gutman, nee Gersten, was born in Semipalatisnk, Siberia on November 9, 1944. Her family fled there when the Germans entered their town of Melitz, Poland in 1940. Her father was a shoemaker and tailor. After the war they smuggled out of Siberia to Germany. She and her family lived in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany and later in another camp, Feldafing, near Munich. She came to the United States when she was 8 years old, on January 11, 1952.

The interview focuses on Caroline’s emotional responses to her childhood experiences. Caroline describes her feelings as a child survivor and daughter of two survivors (having lost much of her extended family) growing up in America.