Oral History Interview with Lory Cahn

Herbert Lindemeyer was born in Minden, Germany in 1922. His father owned a pharmacy. He describes antisemitism after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and briefly mentions the boycott of Jew‌ish stores in April 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. He describes his parents’ discussions of whether to emigrate. After Kristallnacht, his father was incarcerated in Buchenwald for a month and his pharmacy confiscated by the Nazis.

Herbert emigrated to England in August 1939 through the help of a British Quaker woman. He describes in detail his internment, with thousands of German and Austrian refugees—in June 1940 on the Isle of Man. In December 1941 he was allowed to leave when he obtained a defense job in Manchester, England. There in January 1944 he married a woman who had traveled to England on the Kindertransport. In October 1945 he joined the American Army for an assignment in Germany as an interpreter and mail censor. One assignment was the tracking of Werner Von Braun. Later he returned to Minden where the new owner of his father’s pharmacy had kept papers which helped Herbert obtain restitution. He emigrated to the United States in 1948.

Individual was a Captain in the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the United States Army during World War II. He entered Dachau Concentration Camp in April 1945, a few days after liberation, to interrogate Nazis who stayed behind because they wanted to be questioned by Americans not Russians. He was taken on a tour of Dachau and describes what he saw and heard, including accounts of atrocities inflicted on the prisoners, and what he learned during the interrogation, in gruesome detail. He mentions how the experience of seeing Dachau affected him and the other men in his unit.

He reported to his commanding officer in Munich. He was assigned to a Displaced Persons camp at Coburg, Germany. He describes poor conditions at the camp, nightly searches, the treatment of survivors, and briefly mentions a riot at the camp in 1946. He explains why he feels that the displaced persons could have been treated more humanely and how these experiences affect him still.

Malvina1 Herzfeld, born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1914 describes living in Tsobut, Danzig from 1924 to 1936; moving to Holland where she married Martin Sternfeld, a German lawyer, in December, 1937; the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; the establishment of Westerbork as a transit camp for German Jewish refugees who were supported by the Dutch Jewish community and the Jewish Council. Malvina explains that her husband was arrested by the SS during a roundup of Jewish men in 1941, sent to a camp in Holland and then to Mauthausen concentration camp. She received his death certificate September 1941.

Malvina worked for the Jewish Council. She was arrested and released. Malvina and other Jews were helped or hidden by a non-Jewish Dutch neighbor. Malvina agreed to work with the Dutch underground led by Walter Suskind. She describes how her group saved Jewish children, who had been taken from their parents, from the transports. While working as a courier to the Hague and Westerbork, she tried to rescue Jewish boys. She was arrested by the SS, put into solitary confinement, and tortured. She did not talk and was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where she encountered Hans Totman, a Jewish war criminal who worked for the Germans. She describes arrival, selection process, living and working conditions in Birkenau.

Because she spoke German, she was taken to work as a secretary for the Oberscharführer at Budy, together with another Jewish girl. They narrowly escaped being sent to the crematorium for stealing food.

In January 1945, Malvina was forced on a death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she stayed until April 1945 during a typhoid epidemic. She describes liberation by British troops, punishment of the guards, the hanging of the camp commanders, and post-liberation conditions. The British took survivors to a military camp until displaced persons camps were established. She worked for the British army as a translator and had a brief reunion with her brother who served in the British army.

Malvina could not get permission to join her brother in England. She was sent to Holland and quarantined. She stayed in Holland until 1947 and relates attempts to find out what happened to her family and her husband, and located friends from the underground. An interesting vignette details how she located the Jewish girl from Budy after the war. She emigrated to the United States in 1947.

Rabbi Helmut Frank, born April 15, 1912 in Wiesbaden,Germany, talks about his early interest in Judaism, details pre-war Jewish life including religious education, relations with Gentiles and sporadic antisemitism. He describes education at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin from 1931 to 1937. He also studied at Berlin University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn in 1935. He gives his impression of Leo Baeck and his role in the Reichsvertretung. He explains why many Jews still felt they could survive in Germany.

He was ordained in 1937 and was appointed as a Rabbi in Worms. He provides a history of the synagogue. His vivid, detailed eye-witness account of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938 includes several vignettes, the burning of his synagogue, damage to his apartment, and lack of reaction by the fire department. He was arrested, along with other Jews. They were compelled to clean the debris in the streets, then transported to Buchenwald. He describes brutality, organization of camp life, lack of medical treatment, effect of incarceration on prisoners’ physical and mental health and religious observance. He mentions Aktion Jews and Jehova’s Witnesses and that Nazis warned released prisoners never to talk about Buchenwald. He worked in a labor squad but was released after his parents got him a visa for China.

Rabbi Frank returned to Worms where he opened a House of Prayer and a school with permission from the German authorities. He describes the extent of the damage in Worms and the continued persecution of the Jewish community. He left for the United States in August, 1939. He discusses the immigration process, postwar conditions in Worms, and restoration of the Worms synagogue in 1961.

Maurice J. Wasser served as a 2nd Lieutenant, U.S. Air Force 325th fighter group, 317th fighter squadron, from 1942 to 1945. While stationed in Italy, he flew a P-51 Mustang, protecting B-17s bombing Germany. He was shot down in February 1945 near Munich, sent to a camp in Frankfurt am Main for interrogation, then to a Prisoner of War camp near Nuremberg. The prisoners later were moved to a prison in Moosburg on a 60-mile forced march. Mr. Wasser describes conditions, and mistreatment by S.S. guards who shot men who dropped out. However, some of the older German guards helped the POW’s because they knew the war was almost over. In both camps, no Red Cross packages were received and food deprivation caused weight loss. No mail was received, no letters permitted to be sent.

In mid-May, 1945, Mooseburg was liberated by General George Patton and the American 3rd Army. Mr. Wasser mentions briefly that he and other prisoners of war were invited to stay in German homes because the Germans were afraid of the approaching Russian soldiers.

He was shipped to a repatriation camp in Reims, France, then to Newport News, Virginia in June 1945.

Henrich Hofman was born July 20, 1922 in Lipecka Polyana, Czechoslovakia. He describes pre-war life,his education, being a member of Shomer Hatzair, and the good relationship his family had with the non-Jews in the area. His father was a carpenter.He describes the Hungarian Occupation, harassment of Jews starting in 1940, including confiscation of stores. He details the horrors in Passover 1941,when his whole town was deported in cattle cars to Rachof (Rachov). He describes the trip, selection, and an intervention by the Budapest Jewish community to prevent the evacuation of Jewish citizens of that area which saved his group. Henrich describes looking out the cattle car through slits at the condemned group and seeing the Germans throwing Jews into trucks as if they were pieces of wood. His part of the transport was then taken to a concentration camp in Rachof. His friend who survived from the other part of the transport told him months later that the Germans murdered the rest of the group in the Dnieper Riverin Kamenets-Podolski.

In October 1943 he details his deportation to and forced labor in Görgenyoroszfalù (Romania, occupied by Hungary) where he helped to build an airfield. In January1944 he volunteered to work elsewhere, was taken to Rákoshegy near Budapest where he worked building German barracks from March through July 1944. He describes the much improved conditions,lots of food, ability to leave on Shabbat to go to Jews in the community before they liquidated the area. Henrich ended up working for a German officer as personal tailor, and describes some kindnesses from some Germans. A German co-worker hid him and a friend in an attic to avoid deportation. He describes how the work of his hands helped him to survive on many occasions.

He was liberated on November 15, 1944 by the Soviet frontline and worked as an interpreter for the Soviet army for 11 months. He was reunited with his sisters in Chust (Khust) in1945, went to Budapest, met and married his wife in October and moved to the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia from 1945–49. They emigrated to Israel in July 1949 and eventually to the United States in 1959.