Oral History Interview with Paul G. Eglick

Alan Spiegel was born August 11, 1903 in Orahovicza, Yugoslavia into a wealthy Zionist family. He details his family history in Hungary including his grandfather being a Second Adjutant during the Hungarian Revolution. Mr. Spiegel studied medicine at Budapest University. He discusses the difficulty for Jewish students to be admitted due tonumerus clausus policy and that he was dismissed in 1920, three months before graduation by a prejudiced faculty. An ardent Zionist, he then worked for the Jewish National Fund while employed in a family business.

In 1932, he married Elizabeth Boschan, in Cluj, Romania, where they lived until 1939. In Budapest, he had to serve as a slave laborer under the Hungarians. Mr. Spiegel gives testimony about working with Rezsö Kastner and Joel Brand to exchangethe release of over 1,000 Jews to Switzerland for money in 1944 and how he found out from one of the more humane German officers that their transport was destined for Auschwitz even though they paid. He details how he arranged to bribe other SS to have the transport sent to Bergen-Belsen instead. Two months later, a smaller group of 350 was sent to Switzerland of which he and his family were a part. He discusses how Kastner was condemned in Palestine for his actions. Mr. Spiegel also shares a vignette about how he secured the release of hundreds of Jewish boys and how small meaningful occurrences helped him have the strength to continue his work. He also relates memories about theVizhnitzerRebbe.

In 1947, Spiegel emigrated from Switzerland to the United States with his wife and daughter.

Henry Skorr was born in Kalisz, Poland on October 11, 1921. He describes in detail Jewish life in Kalisz before WWII including the antisemitism that existed, his traditional upbringing and schooling, and the special relationship between parents and children. He discusses the atmosphere before and after German occupation; the arrest, detention and forced labor of Mr. Skorr and his brother; his realization that they must escape Poland.

He describes a mass execution in a Kalisz cemetery during which he and other boys were ordered to help in the burial and then his subsequent escape from the cemetery. He tells of traveling through Poland to Russian occupied territory of the Ukraine until he reached Kovel. He then decided to return to Kalisz to take family and friends through this escape route.

Mr. Skorr, now with his family, was resettled in Cherepovetz in deep Russia. He describes the train trip and his recruitment to work deep in the forest to cut down trees. Conditions, as he describes them, were terrible and he escaped back to Cherepovetz and found work as a sailor on a boat hauling lumber and barges. Throughout the testimony, Mr. Skorr comments on life in Russia and gives insights into Russian people and society and how the system worked.

He was mobilized to work on the fortification near Leningrad and describes the German breakthrough and his joining and organizing a guerrilla movement. He was wounded and evacuated to Wologda. Upon recovery he returned to Cherepovetz, where his family had stayed. There he found work in the Fire Department where he eventually rose to head the department.

Although offered an opportunity for mobilization to the Polish Army he refused because of fear of antisemitism in the ranks. He met his future wife at the end of the war and returned to Warsaw, Poland where they married. His description of life in postwar Poland tells of much antisemitism and attacks on the returning Jews from antisemitic bands. Eventually, he emigrated to Israel in 1950 and to the United States in 1958.

This interview was conducted on multiple dates in 1983: February 8 and 28, April 12, May 2, June 14 and 28, July 5 and 19.

Samuel Yassi1 was born in Ostrow, Poland on April 28, 1924. He was the oldest of five children in a modestly middle class family. Sam and his family fled to the town of Poprusch [phonetic] when the Germans occupied Poland. When that area came under Soviet occupation all refugees, including the Yassi family were loaded into box cars and relocated to Siberia -a journey of six weeks duration. The Yassi’s were deported even though they had passports.The family settled in an apartment in Siberia. Sam (15 years old) and his parents were put to work in the forest felling trees;the younger siblings were not. He describes his attempt to get an education instead of working, but after hisfather’s death at age 43 from pneumonia shortly after their arrival, Sam had to return to work in order to receive food rations for the family. He describes the difficult living conditions, bitter weather and restrictions under the Soviet government.

Eventually the family was allowed to move to the south, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Sam tells of this journey on the chaotic Russian trains. He describes the next several years as the family tries to survive: being placed on a cooperative farm where they picked tobacco, being moved once again to the White Mountainsto make room for Russian refugees, moving back to the Tashkent area where thefound work building a factory. The family stayed in this last area for about two years during which time Sam managed to get his younger siblings into a Polish Jewish home for children run by ORT, where they were schooled, clothed and fed. Sam details this period of time tells of the death of his mother and brother. Sam then went to the city of Fergana to seek work. He tells of being sent on a huge canal building project which was very hard labor. Leaving there, he went back to Tashkent without a job. He was caught "speculating" but through his ingenuity and luck was not sent to the coal mines, but ended up first learning to be a shoemaker and then to make salt and he became a salt maker.

Sam met his wife, Sylvia in 1946, after the war had ended and were married. They went back to Poland and eventually found his brother and sister. He relates that his brother and sister stayed in Poland and how he and his pregnant wife ultimately made their way to the United States, first being smuggled out of Poland to Austria and then over the Alps to Italy. In Italy they lived in a Displaced Person’s camp where they stayed for three years until they could arrange for the papers to get them to the United States arriving November 21, 1947.

Mr. Yassi indicates in his interview that his former name was SholomYashenofsky.

Jadwiga3Zoszak, nee Greifinger, was born in 1906 in Sambor, Poland (Galicia). Before WWII, Giza lived in Katowice, Poland with her non-Jewish husband Adam Zoszak. Although Adam was a lawyer and judge, he was forced to become a day laborer after the Russians took over in 1939. Because she had once officially registered as a Jew, Giza was unable to apply for another identification card.

Giza describes the fate of her family members from the town of Boryslaw. Most perished in various concentration camps or at the hands of the Gestapo. One brother Herman was forced to play in the orchestra in Auschwitz. Giza, who spoke fluent Polish, survived by passing as Polish. Giza describesthe difficult and dangerous living conditions and how she and her young niece lived in constant fear of being discovered. During her time in a small town, StaraSól, she and her niece lived in isolation for fear of discovery of her true identity. She slept with an axe to protect herself from Ukrainians who attacked Poles.In addition to her husband’s help, she was aided by a priest and a Polish teacher from Warsaw.

Adam aided Giza and her family, and moved in and out of the local ghetto, where he secretly fed and sheltered nine Jews in a basement in Boryslawfrom May 1943 until August 1944. These Jews gave testimony after the war, and Adam was recognized by YadVashem as Righteous Among the Nations. After the war, Giza and Adam divorced.

In 1957, Giza and her niece settled in Israel. In 1960, Giza married Dr. Israel Sternberg, who had been a physician in Krakow. During the war he was a medic in Auschwitz concentration camp where he

secretly

administered penicillin to German officers to treat syphilis. While on a death march, one of these officers recognized him and saved

his life

. Giza lived in Tel Aviv and of her large family of eight siblings only three survived the war.

Caroline Gutman, nee Gersten, was born in Semipalatisnk, Siberia on November 9, 1944. Her family fled there when the Germans entered their town of Melitz, Poland in 1940. Her father was a shoemaker and tailor. After the war they smuggled out of Siberia to Germany. She and her family lived in a displaced persons camp in Berlin, Germany and later in another camp, Feldafing, near Munich. She came to the United States when she was 8 years old, on January 11, 1952.

The interview focuses on Caroline’s emotional responses to her childhood experiences. Caroline describes her feelings as a child survivor and daughter of two survivors (having lost much of her extended family) growing up in America.

Mina Lustiger, nee Bochner, was born July 30, 1929 in Bielitz, Poland. Her father was in the scrap metal business. She shares childhood memories including frightening antisemitic attacks. She describes the commotion and uncertainty after the German invasion, first sent with her siblings to her grandfather in Kęty, to avoid the Germans but then having to return home. After finally reunited with her parents in Bielsko she witnessed Jews being harassed and her family experienced the plunder of their silver by Germans. The whole family then fled toKęty because it was a smaller citywhere they hoped to avoid harassment. When her mother was jailed in Kęty for trying to send a package of food and her father was sent to a labor camp, the four girls were left alone. Mina describes the Kęty Ghetto and her subsequent deportation to the Neudorf Ghetto in 1941.They were warned1 not to be in the area during a selection and fled, posing as Aryans, to their uncle in Chrzanów. She describes the harrowing journey, travelling alone as a 12 year old, and then being joined by her sisters. Subsequently, they found out that some of the family had survived the selection and were then in Wadowice and the sisters again made a dangerous journey to join family. Mina describes the gated Wadowice Ghetto and how they had to sneak in with a labor brigade. Soon after, she and her sisters were deported to Sucha labor camp where they did hard labor regulating water near railways. She describes being sent to a distribution center at Sosnowiec and again being deported with her sisters to forced labor, this time in a spinning factory in Freiberg, Germany in 1943. She speaks about slightly better treatment there, but still long working hours and the scarcity of food. They were deported to Röhrsdorflabor camp and describes harsh working conditions, with little food and much suffering from disease. She mentions fasting on Yom Kippur.

In 1945, as Russian forces approached, they were sent on a death march to the Sudeten in Czechoslovakia, walking for several days, without food and sleeping in the snow. At Kratzau concentration camp, they joined inmates from many other countries. They finally were incarcerated at Gross Rosen, where she experienced the most brutal conditions. She describes beatings, many deaths from typhus and exhausting work in freezing weather.

On May 8, 1945, she was liberated by the Russian Army and then re-united with her family in Bielitz. In 1946, she went to England with a group of 100 other children and attended an ORT school. In 1951, she married Samuel Lustiger and they emigrated to the United States in 1952. They have a family of three children.

Mina does not indicate whether these were Jews or Gentiles who warned them.