Oral History Interview with Hertha Beese

Erica Van Adelsberg, nee Herz, was born in Munich in 1928 to an assimilated, liberal Jewish family. She left Germany with her parents and younger brother in 1932 to live in Aerdenhoudt, Holland, near Haarlem. They lived comfortably and Erica recalls the decency of the Dutch people. In 1940, after the German occupation, her family was designated as being stateless; they were forced to move and conditions worsened. They were sent to Westerbork internment camp in 1942. Erica continued her education and was trained as a laboratory technician at age 14. She became part of a Zionist youth group, which heightened her Jewish identity, in contrast to her parents assimilated orientation. She describes life in the camp, including her friend’s wedding as well as the weekly transports to Auschwitz.

On February 15, 1944 her family, including grandparents who had joined them, was sent to Bergen-Belsen. She describes the camp routine, her work in a plastic pipe factory and the cruelty of the Polish Kapos. She was sick with para-typhoid for several weeks, with no medication. In April, 1945 the family was transported by train, with about 600 others, all of whom assumed they were going to Auschwitz. After two harrowing weeks, including bombings by Allied planes, the train was liberated by two Russian soldiers on horseback in Trebitz, near Leipzig, in Saxony. The Russians set up a hospital and cared for the survivors, many of whom succumbed to typhoid fever.

Six weeks later, Americans took her family back to Holland, where her brother became the first to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah after the war. Erica came to the United States in 1946 and was the first European student admitted to a Quaker school after World War II. Collateral material to this interview includes copies of two small books of poetry written by Erica, in German and in Dutch, when she was in Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen.

Interviewee: VAN ADELSBERG, Erica Date: December 8, 1981

Chayale Ash-Fuhrman, nee Averbuch, was born in 1920 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Romania. She describes life in Kishinev, her education in public school and private Jewish school. Her parents led a troupe of Yiddish actors which she joined until she turned professional at age 15. She gives a thorough and highly descriptive account of the Yiddish stage. She details Romanian government restrictions in the inter-war period and the effects of the Russian occupation of Bessarabia in 1940. The Moldavian Yiddish State Theatre, as it was then called, could function only under strict Communist guidelines.

In June 1941, the theatre group and other civilians were evacuated to Ukraine with Russian help. They were forced to stop in a kolkhoz (cooperative village) in Kharkov to help with the harvest. The refugees lived under primitive conditions and encountered antisemitism from the villagers. In November 1941 they followed the government to Kuybishev, then to Tashkent to pick cotton in another cooperative. She describes the difficulties of adapting to the Russian way of getting along; relations with the locals, and the onset of hatred for Jews. Her father died of dysentery in 1942. Using her training from professional school, she joined a sewing cooperative to get more bread. Chayale and the other Jews tried to practice their religion. Chayale later worked as a clerk in a steel mill in Begovat. She married a man who was working as a mechanic at the mill in 1943. In 1945, Chayale and her husband returned to Poland in an exchange program for Polish citizens. They settled in a Displaced Persons camp in Silesia because of the post-war violence against Jews by Poles. She worked as emigration secretary for PoaleiTzionand mentions various strategies Jewish refugees used to leave Russia.

In 1948 Chayale, her husband and her mother, walked to Vienna. Israelis met their group and placed them in a Displaced Persons camp in Linz, in the American zone, where Chayale gave birth to a daughter. UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee helped them go to Jaffa, Israel in August 1948 with false papers, on an Italian ship Campidoglio. She talks about early immigrant life in Israel under wartime conditions. In 1949 she founded the Haifa Yiddishe Operetten Theatre and later went to Tel Aviv. She also performed in London, and toured South Africa with an all-Israeli ensemble. She divorced in 1953. She married an actor from Romania in New York in 1959 and stayed in the United States. She discusses her feelings about the Holocaust and its effect on children of survivors.

Sophie Roth, née Parille, born in Zloczow, Poland, was one of four children in a religious family. She refers to the German bombing and invasion in 1939, and the killing of doctors and teachers by Germans, aided by Poles and Ukranians. She worked in forced labor camps in Lazczow and Kosice until 1942, when she was shot and lost a leg. A Polish teenager, whom she tutored, travelled to Lemberg to obtain a prosthesis for her.

She describes hiding in a fish barrel and then in a Polish peasant’s stable with her family, in exchange for money, jewelry and the deed to their house. She details near-starvation and suffocating subliminal existence under a manure pile with nine other people. Forced to leave by their sadistic “benefactor”, her family found shelter in an unheated basement of a Polish teacher, Elena Sczychovska, and her husband, who was the local police commandant. Fourteen people were sheltered there during the last year of the war. She mentions the hostility of neighbors when her family returned to their home.

In 1947, she married a Hebrew teacher who lost his religious faith and his entire family. She remained a believer, attributing her survival to God’s miracles. A daughter was born in Paris in 1952 and the family emigrated, aided by HIAS and by Jewish Family Service in Philadelphia. She reads several poems, recalling horrendous Holocaust memories, into the interview.

Interviewee: ROTH, Sophie Date: March 9, 1988

Zenek Maor, was born August 9, 1923, in Wloclawek, Poland, into a religious Jewish family. His father was a factory owner and the family lived comfortably until the German occupation. He details pre-war life including his HashomerHatzairactivities. He describes German restrictions and brutalities in Wloclawek, where his father was arrested and held for ransom, and later in Warsaw, where his family fled in January 1940. As a 16 year-old, he worked in various forced labor brigades, including the Okecie air-field in Warsaw. He gives detailed descriptions of life in the Warsaw ghetto including Jewish police and the HashomerHatzairnetwork of underground schools. Because of severe hunger in the ghetto, he was encouraged by his family to escape in 1942.

Eventually sent to various labor camps, he details difficult work conditions but mentions ongoing belief in his own survival. He discusses reasons that people could not escape from labor camps or from Auschwitz. He details his arrival at Auschwitz in summer 1943 including initial belief in the slogan “Work Makes You Free,” the smell of roasting flesh, and his defiance of Mengele’s decision to send him to annihilation with other children instead of assigning him to work with his older brother. Much information is given on Auschwitz: daily routine, work, treatment by Kapos, latrine communication between prisoners. He describes the death march from Auschwitz from January 17, 1945 to May 10, 1945 and gives an in-depth account of his liberation by the Russian Army. Returning to Poland, he learns that no one from his family survived. He emigrated to Palestine in April, 1947.

This interview was conducted in Haifa, Israel.

Ervin Belik, formerly Bleiweiss, was born in Mistek, Czechoslovakia, June 13 1918, the youngest son in a large family. He was educated in both Jewish and Czech schools. After the German occupation March 1939, he was warned that the S.S. was waiting to arrest him and fled to Poland in May 1939.

He joined the Czech army in Krakow and changed his name to Belik. His unit landed with the Russian forces in Poland and was sent to Ukraine. He served as a member of the Czech Army unit under Russian command in Poland and Russia; under British command in Palestine and other countries in the Middle East, and took part in an attack on three French Army units suspected of being Nazi collaborators. He later served with an Australian Army unit in Tobruk. His unit returned to Palestine where he participated in the defense of Haifa and in the rollback of German and Italian forces from El Alamein to Tripoli. Mr. Belik arrived in England in June 1943 on the troopship Mauretania. He met and married his wife, a German Jewish refugee, in England. He participated in the invasion of France and arrived in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia with Patton's Third Army in 1945.

Mr. Belik was discharged in January 1946 and returned to Mistek where he met his brother Ernst. is entire family except for his brother, and aHHis HHis eniree HH

Hkmkjkjkjkjljklkjl His entire family except for his brother, and a sister who lives in Haifa, was murdered. Ervin, his wife and two children lived in Mistek until they emigrated to Israel on July 7, 1949. He describes their new life in Israel.

This interview took place in KiryatMotzkin, Israel.

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.