Oral History Interview with Rosa Zygmund Burk

Freda Cwanger, nee Stern, was born September 27, 1912 in a small town in Romania. Her family moved to Tarnopol, Poland when she was very young, after her father returned from his service in the Polish Army. She briefly talks about beating of Jews after 1935, and how the Russian occupation and then the German invasion affected her family. Freda's family, along with other Jews, were driven from their homes into the Tarnapol Ghetto. Freda took care of her siblings after both her parents died, her mother from starvation.

When Freda realized that all the Jews in the ghetto would be killed, she and her brother and sisters escaped into the forest. Her siblings were captured and killed by the Gestapo in 1942. Freda was alone in the forest for three years. A Ukrainian man captured her so he could bring her to the Gestapo, but she got away. Even though Freda says that she doesn't know how she survived, her testimony shows how courageous she was. She briefly talks about the physical and emotional damage she suffered.

Freda left the forest and was hidden by three different women, each time for about five weeks, until the war was over. She went to Trembowla, where Jews that had survived were gathered. She met and married her husband there. Helped by HIAS, Fred, her husband and their son came to the United States in 1946.

Lory Cahn1, nee Grünberger, was born May 17, 1925 in Breslau, Germany into a religious home. Her father was a lawyer. Her younger brother was sent to England in the 1930's, joined the British army and remained in England permanently.2 Lory's schooling stopped after Kristallnacht, 1938. The family's attempts to emigrate to Argentina failed. Because her father was a captain in the German army during World War I, he was able to buy his way into Theresienstadt and Lory was allowed to stay with her parents when the family was deported in the spring of 1941. Lory reports in detail the roundup of Jews, the transport by cattle car, and every aspect of life in Theresienstadt. She was treated for meningitis with medicine provided by the Red Cross.

In 1943 Lory was sent to Auschwitz after a two week trip in a cattle car. She survived a selection by Dr. Mengele. She describes living and working conditions of female prisoners and mentions the Auschwitz orchestra. Auschwitz was so overcrowded prisoners were exterminated before being processed. Lory witnessed many brutal acts.

In 1944 she was sent to Mauthausen after ten days in Buchenwald. Outside Buchenwald Jews in the transport were bombed during an air raid. She describes a brutal trip, guarded by SS, to Kurzbach, a labor camp in Silesia. Pointless labor and a starvation diet were designed to kill the prisoners.

After a death march to Gross-Rosen, in the fall of 1944 (which only 30 of the 150 in her group survived) they were taken to Bergen-Belsen. She describes conditions in Bergen-Belsen. Prisoners who reported sick disappeared. Due to extreme starvation, some prisoners resorted to cannibalism. Just before the war ended the SS guards gradually disappeared and the number of prisoners who died increased greatly. Lory survived bitter cold, typhus, and starvation and was liberated by British troops April 15, 1945.

She describes chaotic conditions in Bergen-Belsen and attempts to rehabilitate the survivors after liberation. Many prisoners died from eating regular food. At a Jewish information office in Hannover Lory learned that her mother was gassed in Auschwitz and her father was still alive in Theresienstadt. She went to Bavaria, in the American zone, with friends. American Jewish soldiers looked after them. One managed to find her father in Berlin. Her father joined her in Bavaria, April 1946. After some time in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany she came to the United States on April 17, 1947 and married one of the soldiers she had met in Bavaria. Her father stayed in Germany.

Genya Yetz Kinegal, nee Goldfisher was born December 24, 1925 in Skolne, Poland (Galicia), a small village with 3,000 Jews. The town was occupied by Germans in 1939, then by Russians until 1941. Genya briefly describes the Russian Occupation. When the Germans took over, Genya took on a Polish identity and rented an apartment for a time but eventually was captured by the Germans in the fall of 1942, deported to the Przysucha Ghetto, and then to Plaszow where she did forced labor for a year sewing uniforms. In 1943 she was sent to Skarzysko-Kamienna, in Poland where she worked in a munitions factory making launchers for grenades. In August 1944, she was sent in cattle cars to a women’s camp connected to Buchenwald to work in another munitions factory. All the prisoners in these camps were Jews.

Genya describes the daily routine in the camps, hunger, living and working conditions, as well as clandestine attempts to celebrate Jewish holidays. An attempt to save a newborn baby led to dire consequences for all the women in the camp. She explains the “selections” that determined who would live and who would die. The prisoners formed small groups of four or five to support and protect each other.

Genya along with the other prisoners were driven out of the Buchenwald satellite camp in March 1945. They wandered about on foot until they encountered American soldiers on May 5, 1945. The Americans provided food, clothing and shelter. Jewish soldiers obtained certificates that enabled survivors to go to Palestine legally. Genya found out that her entire family perished. She explains how what she went through still affects her psychologically and physically, and how much was taken away from her during the Holocaust.

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.

Harry Zaslow served in the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion during World War II. He describes his unit's activities on various fronts while attached to the French First Army and then the American First Army, including the Battle of the Bulge. He had never heard about any German atrocities even after he joined the U.S. Army.

In April, 1945, his unit was asked to go to a camp he later learned was Dachau. He estimates they arrived about three or four hours after the Germans either fled or were driven out of the camp. No Allied forces had taken command yet. He vividly describes his shock and confusion when, as a 19 year old boy, he saw box cars filled with corpses just outside of Dachau. During his two hour stay he saw crematoria going full blast, still burning bodies. He saw rooms with bodies—some of which appeared to have been killed very recently—stacked to the ceiling. He describes how non-German SS troops were guarded, but not killed, by some remaining inmates.

Mr. Zaslow reflects on how what he saw at Dachau affected him and makes further genocide more probable. He closes with two vignettes about one positive and one negative experience as a Jewish soldier in the United States Army.

Bernard Freilich was born April 17, 1924, in Drohobycz, Poland. He attended public school, Tarbut School and heder. His family had a shoe store. Pre-war, he experienced antisemitism from his very early childhood. He describes worsening conditions for Jews under both German and Russian occupations: pogroms (some started by Ukrainians), Aktions, liquidation of the Jewish quarter, establishment of the Drohobycz Ghetto, and the role of the Judenrat. Bernard narrowly escaped death in the ghetto when over 200 Jews were killed. He gives vivid accounts of atrocities, slave labor, and incidents of retribution. His entire family, except one brother, perished and he explains how and where they were killed. He describes Jewish slave labor in Boryslaw, deportations from the ghetto to Belzec, and executions of Jews in the Bronica forest.

Several vignettes describe his father’s interactions with the Gestapo and other Germans while working as their official boot maker. Later, after enduring forced labor under horrible conditions, Bernard worked with his father making boots.

When about 800 Jews managed to escape into the Bronica forest, Bernard joined a group of boys who hid in a bunker. He explains how he managed to survive for three and a half months and then to escape once the Germans discovered the bunker in May 1944.

Bernard describes the transport to, arrival at and processing at the Plaszow concentration camp on June 22, 1944. He witnessed brutal treatment and killing of the prisoners before and during this transport. He and his father worked as shoemakers for the Wehrmacht. Inmates were executed 24 hours a day. Bernard talks about the reaction of Jewish prisoners when 12,000 non-Jewish Poles arrived at the camp.

Bernard’s testimony includes graphic descriptions of the horrible conditions at Mauthausen, gruesome atrocities and torture, including a father’s futile attempt to save his son’s life. He worked as a slave laborer at Gusen II building tunnels for Messerschmitt and Steyrwerke under conditions that guaranteed a life span of four to six weeks. He explains the complicated series of events that enabled him and his brother to work as shoemakers. Because he was hospitalized for a groin infection, he saw various terrible ways in which prisoners and patients were killed in January 1945. He describes worsening conditions at Gusen as the Allied forces approached on April 22, 1945. He survived a death march to Mauthausen and then Gunskirchen, where the prisoners received Red Cross packages for the first time. He relates the chaotic conditions after the guards fled, and how he saved a friend’s life.

Bernard describes his post-liberation experiences vividly and in great detail. These include encounters with American soldiers, sick and dying survivors in hospitals, Germans who had used slave laborers, and living in an apartment they confiscated from an SS member, with 10 other survivors. The American Military Police moved Bernard and his brother to a Displaced Person Camp.

In June 1945, Bernard and his brother tried to return to Drohobycz. They were conscripted into the Russian army as mine sweepers with 22 other Jews, but managed to work as shoemakers for the Russian General Staff in Vienna, Austria instead. Before Bernard could execute a plan he had devised to escape, his unit was marched back to Poland. He got himself transferred into the Polish army, searched for his father in Lodz, where he met and married his wife. After living in Schlachtensee and then later Feldafing Displaced Persons Camps, they emigrated to the United States in March 1949.