Oral History Interview with Anna Czerwinski

Jack Zaifman was born in Radom, Poland on March 2, l925 into an Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a merchant. He attended public school and chederuntil age l4. He describes the savagery of the German bombing and invasion of Radom in September l939. Escaping from a round-up of Jews, he bicycled to Wolanow and lived for a year with a Jewish family until that small town was liquidated. He was taken for slave labor at a nearby camp manned by Gestapo, Ukrainian and Lithuanian guards. He worked as a tailor for the German Army, witnessed a massacre of 350 Jews and had to dig trenches to bury the dead. When he was ill with typhoid fever, a righteous German soldier took him to the Rodomer Ghetto hospital.

In autumn of 1941, Jack was sent to Blizyn labor camp, near the German border, where he was betrayed by a Jewish Kapo and severely beaten by guards when he tried to help another prisoner. Among the 3,000 survivors (out of l0,000) of Blizyn, he was shipped to Auschwitz where he sorted clothing of the dead. He describes the train ride, selections and his bunk make being selected for an experiment by Mengele. Jack describes walking over to another Kommando one day which was deported to Dachau where he endured brutal labor, carrying cement and laying pipes. During a death march from Dachau, April l945, he was liberated by Americans and taken to a hospital at Wolfratshausen, weighing 70 pounds. At the Feldafing DP camp he met and married his wife; they came to the United States in April l949. He began speaking in high schools and colleges about his experience in l977.

b. Schonenberg, Ger.| school yrs in a very Jewish part of Berlin, child of middle class, assimilated family| father sent to Sachsenhausen '38, released & told leave country| to Shanghai Sept '38 through Italy on "Conte Verde" (ship)| Hongkew, detailed descrip life in Shanghai| life under Japanese occupation (mother beaten once)| emigrated to USA Jan. '49 assisted by Joint to relocate

Milton Harrison was a 19 year old First Sergeant in the Medical Detachment of the Ninth Armored Infantry Battalion of the Sixth Armored Division. In 1945 he heard about German atrocities from home but not in the army. On April 11, 1945 on the way from Mühhausen towards the Saale River, his unit encountered Russian Prisoners of War who had escaped from Buchenwald. From them they learned about this camp and that most of the SS had already left. A tank under the command of Captain Kiefer, with a total of four Americans was dispatched to investigate. Shortly thereafter, a small group of 28 men, including Mr. Harrison, followed. On the way they stumbled on the now unguarded "Little Buchenwald," a camp for mostly Jewish children between 10 and 14 years old who had worked at hard labor.

They were the first American soldiers to enter Buchenwald, and Captain Kiefer and First Sergeant Harrison reported the situation at Buchenwald to their superior officers that evening. When his group reached the main camp, the ovens were still hot. He inspected the camp, was shown a lampshade made from human skin and rows of bottles containing human parts which were part of Ilse Koch's collection. He describes the survivors’ physical condition and their reaction to the liberators.

On April 12, the Waffen SS attacked Buchenwald with small arms and mortar. Two American captains and Rabbi Herschel Schacter were in the camp at this time, and called for assistance. With help from the 44th Infantry Battalions, the SS was overwhelmed on April 14th, and Buchenwald was declared a "non-combat zone" on that day and medical assistance began arriving. Generals Groh and Patton toured the camp and were horrified. Inhabitants of Weimar were ordered to bury the dead.

Mr. Harrison, who is one of the historical officers of the Buchenwald Information Committee of the Sixth Armored Division Association, stresses that only soldiers of Command A of the 6th Armored Division can be called liberators of Buchenwald. He cites several references to verify this claim. He describes the lasting effect seeing Buchenwald had and still has on these soldiers.

Ilsa R. Katz was born December 10, 1921 in Venningen, Pfalz, Germany. Her father was a kosher butcher and a World War I veteran. She briefly describes her life and education (both secular and religious) before and after Hitler came to power including the escalating anti-Jewish restrictions and increasing antisemitism.

During Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, their synagogue was burned and all Jewish men were arrested. A non-Jewish villager saved the Torah scroll. The next morning all Jews were rounded up and deported by bus to a meadow near Karlsruhe, Baden.

Because her father had obtained Visas, Ilsa and her family were able to leave for the United States from Hamburg, Germany to Philadelphia in December 1938. Most of her relatives were deported and killed. Ilsa talks about their life in Philadelphia, how they made a living and adjusted to life in America.

Interviewee: KATZ, Ilsa R. Date: Sept. 11, 1989

Alex Krasheninnikow was born in Kiev, USSR in 1934. He knew that his father, a scientist, and his mother, an artist, were Jews but he had no religious education. He recalls a happy childhood with his parents in a large collective apartment shared with four Soviet families.

After the German invasion in 1941, his family was hidden in the attic of Vassily and Ina Baranovski in Darnitsa, near Kiev. Gold jewelry was exchanged for food and shelter until November 1943 when their hideout was discovered and their protectors were shot. Alex and his parents were sent by freight car to Brätz concentration camp near Schwiebus. Watchtbandguards beat them with clubs and separated men from women. Food shortages, cold barracks and arduous road building are mentioned, and the daily gymnastic regime of forced running for hours is detailed.

The Russian Army liberated the camp in January 1945 and the reunited Krasheninnikow family returned to Kiev. In July 1950, they moved to Munich illegally. In December 1950, they emigrated to Philadelphia, where Alex became a court interpreter. He refers to accounts in Russian publications that number the Babi Yar killings during 1941 – 1943 with various figures, from 30,000 to 100,000.

Jenny Sommer describes her life, education, and Zionist activities in prewar Libau, Latvia in great detail, including some incidents of antisemitism and discrimination. In 1940 conditions for Jews started to get worse. Because her family was upper middle class they lived in fear of the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) and the Russians.

Jenny describes life under the German occupation of Libau in great detail: the execution of all able bodied Jewish men on July 22, 1941; a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives, and how her sister managed to rescue them just before they were to be executed during an Aktion. She witnessed a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives. The Christian superintendent of her uncle’s house hid Jenny and her remaining family in the attic until the round-up of Jews was over. Jenny, her mother and her sister, moved into the ghetto with about 600 other Jews and worked for the Germans as slave laborers. Her sister worked as a nurse in the ghetto. Some Christian Latvians smuggled food to them.

On Yom Kippur night they were taken to Kaiserwald concentration camp, near Riga. Jenny describes their arrival at Kaiserwald, where mothers were forcibly separated from their children. Some women committed suicide. Her sister carried a bottle of cyanide pills. While in Kaiserwald, Jenny did hard labor as part of a Kommando, at a work camp, and later inStutthof. She describes their horrible existence in Stutthof and how she managed to find the will to survive. Her husband worked at Stutthof as an electrician and managed to survive a typhoid epidemic.

As the Russian army approached, the inmates were shipped out of Stutthof on a designated typhoid boat. It was bombed, set on fire and capsized. She was rescued by a German fire boat after ten days without food or water, liberated two days later in Kiel, Germany by English forces. She stayed at a field Lazarett (hospital) in Itzehoe, near Hamburg for six months. She talks about her post-liberation experiences in a German hospital, and finding her husband in Neustadt.