Oral History Interview with Harry Bass

Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.

Vera Rosenberger, nee Weis, was born in Zrenjanin (formerly Petrovgrad) in 1929. She discusses the Jewish community, her relations with Serbs and other non-Jews in Zrenjanin, and her education in public schools. After her father died, they moved to Belgrade. Vera describes the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish communities in Belgrade, as well as Zionist Youth groups, such as Hashomer Hatzair. In 1940 Polish and Australian Jews, including a group of boys and girls on their way to Palestine, fled to Yugoslavia. She lived through the bombardment of Belgrade and the German invasion. Her family fled to Ada, a village in the Baška-which was under Hungarian occupation, one day before Jews had to register with the German authorities. Ada had a prosperous Jewish community but Vera describes the immediate uptick in antisemitism at the arrival of the Hungarians.

In April 20, 1944, during the German occupation, all the Jews in Ada were deported, including Vera and her extended family. After being housed in a synagogue in Szeged, during which time Vera worked at a labor camp in Baja, the group was deported to Auschwitz at the end of May. After a selection in Gässerndorf, Vera was sent to a transit camp in Strasshof, Austria. After several medical examinations, she was sent to work on agricultural farms from dawn to dusk. She briefly mentions the role of the JudenPolizei. She also explains how her mother managed to get medical care.

The American Airforce bombed the station and the railroad tracks the Germans needed to transport all Jews working in Austria to Theresienstadt. So Vera and the other prisoners were brought back to Strasshof. They were liberated by Russian soldiers on April 10, 1945. Vera describes her journey to and her life in Ada after liberation.

Vera left Yugoslavia in 1948. She explains her decision to go to Israel. She reflects on the need to document the history of Yugoslavian Jews and learn the lessons of the Holocaust.

Samuel Sherron was born March 27, 1932 in Skuodas, Lithuania but lived in Schweksna. His father was a merchant. Samuel was educated in both public school and cheder. He lived under Russian occupation from 1940 until the German invasion. He describes the roundup and torture of local Jews by SS troops and Lithuanians. He cites eyewitness accounts of the murder of all remaining Jews, mostly women and children.

Samuel and his father were taken to a labor camp in Heydekrug near Memel, Germany in 1941. He experienced beatings, atrocities and frequent selections. Those selected were shot. In 1943, when he was only 11 years old, they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He describes surviving the initial selection and how inmates built tracks so transports could go directly to the crematoria. He details conditions at Auschwitz, the Appels, the constant hunger, and an encounter with Dr. Mengele. He witnessed sadism and torture. Lithuanian and Ukrainian guards killed Jewish prisoners for sport.

With 5000 non-Polish Jewish volunteers they were sent to Pawiak prison to build barracks and crematoria in what had been the Warsaw Ghetto, as transports of Hungarian and Czech Jews arrived. In the summer of 1944, most of the prisoners from “Camp Warsaw “ were evacuated on a death march to Kovno, then by cattle train to Dachau, with a group of Greek Jews. He mentions eyewitness accounts of mass murders of Jews by Einsatzgruppen under Operation Barbarossa. He went to a labor camp in Mühldorf, Germany to do construction work for the Luftwaffe. In April 1945, the prisoners were put on cattle trains guarded by SS. Intervention by the mayor of Pocking, Bavaria (because American troops were near) kept the Luftwaffe from killing them. Samuel and his father were liberated by America troops in Seeshaupt on April 28, 1945. They were transferred to Munich after some medical treatment.

Interviewee: SHERRON, Samuel Date: December 11, 1983

Anatole Gorko was born in Lodz, Poland on June 28, 1907 of well-to-do Zionists. He worked in his father’s spinning factory until 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. He fought in the Polish Army for three weeks. After being in the Reserves, he was taken to a prisoner of war camp for a few weeks. He found himself with his family in the center of the Lodz Ghetto in January 1940 and describes the life there. He worked as head cashier for the ghetto stores until August 1944.

He and his family including his wife and child were finally deported to Auschwitz, in cattle cars, where, in the presence of Mengele, only he and his brother-in-law were selected for work and the rest of the family perished. He describes the train ride, arrival, selection, and shaving. He remained there for one month, then pretended to be a mechanic and was selected for a camp in Sudeten where after two weeks of training he worked on V2 rockets. Here he managed to sabotage, and persuade other workers, including German mechanics, to sabotage the work. He worked there from September 1944 until May 1945 when the Russians liberated the area. He made his way back to Lodz where he remarried, became head of the textile production for Communist Poland, but decided to leave. He smuggled himself and his wife to Munich, and waited from 1946 to 1948 to obtain necessary papers to resettle in the United States. He describes in some detail his adjustment to the United States.

Malvina Gerlich Eisner2 was born in Svidnika, Czechoslovakia, August 24, 1924. Her father was a grocer. She was the second of nine children. All of her siblings and her parents perished. She lived with her grandparents and went to school in Bardéjov.

In 1942 Malvina and three cousins hid to escape the first roundup and transport. Later she hid in the woods and then in her grandparents’ apartment after their deportation. In June 1942 Malvina and her friends were reported to the police, arrested, and taken to Auschwitz and then Birkenau where she stayed until October 1944. She describes conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, brutal rollcalls, and selections. She worked as part of Kommandos (work groups) removing corpses, delivering food to the sick blocks, and picking up trash. She avoided a selection purely by chance. Malvina got very sick and survived because the other girls fed her and covered for her. She briefly describes Passover observance and a Seder at Auschwitz. She mentions transports arriving from Hungary constantly.

Her group was taken to a camp in Hindenburg, run by the S.S. in the fall of 1944. As the Russian army approached, the inmates were evacuated on foot and in box cars to Bergen-Belsen. She was liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945. She is proud that she and the other girls preserved their humanity. She recites the names of her siblings and close family members who were murdered.

Interviewee: EISNER, Malvina Gerlich Date: April 22, 1985

Elizabeth Bleiman, née Zuckerman, was born July 10, 1921 into a modern Orthodox family in Ófehértó, Hungary and completed elementary school there. She attended Jewish high school in Debrecen until 1937 and returned home, where all of her family suffered from antisemitic government restrictions. After German occupation in March 1944, they were deported to the Kisvarda Ghetto. She details their transport to Auschwitz in July 1944, her separation from her parents during selection by Dr. Mengele, and the harsh conditions in thecamp, starvation rations and being advised by an elderly German prisoner to try to escape via transport. She describes how she and a friend got into a transport and were moved to Stutthof, the terribly crowded conditions and prisoners getting burned from standing in the sun all day during Appells. She again escaped via transport with a friend, this time to Praust, where they were forced to install cables for a new airport. She describes that French prisoners would write them uplifting notes indicating that the Russians were advancing and to hold on to life. She details cruel conditions of a forced march to Danzig.

Liberated by Russians in February 1945, she was hospitalized for two months with typhus. After recovery, she and a friend foraged for food, shelter and clothing in abandoned houses as they traveled from Danzig to Hungary. In Ófehértóshe found her family home was occupied by non-Jewish refugees but she recovered some gold and other valuablesburied by her father before his deportation. In 1946 she moved to Germany to live in an American displaced persons camp, where she married a Lithuanian Jew in 1947 and they emigrated to the United States in 1949. Elizabeth refers to continuing antisemitism in Hungary despite a new liberal constitution.