Oral History Interview with Albert Ferleger

Luba Kozusman Margulies, born in Novogrod, Poland in 1915, was raised in Ostrog after her parents were killed in a pogrom. She talks about her family history; her life and education in both Ostrog and Lemberg (L’vov), where she studied to become a midwife, and experienced antisemitism, including a violent encounter with Polish members of the Hitler Jugend.

She describes life in Tarnopol - where she moved after her marriage in 1940 - under both Russian and German occupation, when the killing of Jews started in 1941. She describes mass murders of Jews by both Germans and Ukrainians, roundups of Jews, especially rabbis, and her work in hospitals in Tarnopol and later the ghetto. She gives a detailed description of life in the ghetto, which existed for less than a year and was liquidated in 1942, including surviving, attempts by Jews to construct escape bunkers, activities of the Judenrat, and forced labor. Luba and her husband were in a forced labor group that worked outside of the ghetto.

She relates several episodes of preparing hiding places, hiding in sewers with other survivors, repeated attempts by Germans to flush out and kill Jews by various means. Luba and her husband escaped, were caught and put into a labor camp. She believes that Untersturmführer Rokita, the head of this labor camp, ordered the massacre of these Jews. Luba graphically describes their escape from the labor camp, hiding in a hole in the ground and in the home of a non-Jewish man for weeks, scavenging for food, being hunted by Germans, and instances of help by non-Jews.

After liberation by advancing Russian soldiers March 24, 1944, they fled to escape conscription. They lived briefly in Tarnopol, in Brzezany with other survivors, and in Walbrzech in the home of a German-Christian family. Luba and her family went to a Displaced persons camp in Wetzlar, near Stuttgart, Germany. She came to the United States with her husband and two daughters in October, 1949. The interview concludes with several sad vignettes about the fate of some children in the ghetto who were taken from their parents and also includes a poem written by Luba’s husband, in Yiddish and English.

Interviewee: MARGULIES, Luba Kozusman Date: October 20, 1981

Lillian Taus, nee Mermelstein, was born on October 10, 19232,in Klascanovo3, Czechoslovakia. She was the eldest in a large family of 13. Her father was a butcher. She details her family’s experiences during the German occupation. She describes her father butchering meat in secret because it was forbidden and describes a time when she was jailed by the Germansfor delivering the kosher meat. She describes how the family was ordered to leave their home during theirPesahseder in 1944. All the Jews in the town were forced to a brick factory4 and then taken directly toAuschwitz a few weeks later. Lillian describes the horrible circumstances in the cattle cars, lack of food and water and no toilet facilities.

In a poignant telling of when the family arrived in Auschwitz, Lillian says that her mother went directly to the gas chamber with her youngest child in her arms because she refused to give him up. She also relates that the day they were put on the train was the day of her brother’s bar mitzvah and he put his tefillin on in the train and went to the gas chambers with it in an act of defiance. Several of Lillian’s siblings had died a year or two before during a typhoid outbreak. Of the remaining children, only Lillian and her 12 year old sister and one brother survived.5

Lillian describes the actions she had to take to keep her little sister alive. They remained at Auschwitz for about half the year during which time she would hide her sister in the bathroom during Appells and was assisted by the Stubenältester. From Auschwitz they were deported to Stuthoff, where Lillian was assigned to remove dead bodies from the barracks in the mornings and place them outside on the ground and number them. She used this terrible circumstance to save others. She would give the food-- that was rationed for the dead-- to her friend in another barracks to help others survive. She and her sisterwere then deported to Praust where they had to build an airport and she describes doing her work and her sister’s work so they wouldn’t get beaten. She details an instance when her sister was put onto a transport bound for death and she jumped into the truck and was beaten severely. They both managed to survive due to Lillian’s resourcefulnessand luck. She mentions that rape was common in the camp and relates an instance when she was almost raped.

Lillian describes their evacuation to Lübeck by boat6, via Danzig when inmates were left on a boat-- which the Germans had rigged to explode-- for nine days with no food or water.7 After liberation, Lillian stayed in Schleswig Holstein for about six months and she and her sister got medical care. She met her husband and married July 4, 1945.8

Lillian had recently done an interview with the Spielberg Project and explains that she wanted to do another interview for the Holocaust Oral History Archive to preserve her family’s experiences for the future. See also interviews with her siblings Louie Mermelstein and Shirley Don.

Mrs. Taus seemed to have some memory lapses during this interview as noted by the interviewer on her personal history form. We are therefore using her birthdate (Oct. 10 1923) as given in her first 1981 testimony, even though in this testimony she states that she was born on October 3, 1922.

Possibly the town Kliachanovo, also called Chervenovo, part of the Subcarpathian region. Alternate spellings Klyachanovo [Ukr], Kličanovo [Slov] and Klacsonó [Hung].

It is possible that this brick factory was in the Munkacs Ghetto. She stated her family was taken there in her 1981 interview.

She doesn’t mention her brother surviving in this interview. Please see her earlier 1981 interview. From this earlier interview we know that she and her sister were re-united with their one surviving brother, who went to the United States with their cousin, an American soldier.

From her earlier interview we know that this took place in March 1945 and that she was liberated by British soldiers May 5, 1945.

See her earlier interview for a more detailed and chronological account of this story.

From her earlier interview we know that Lillian came to Philadelphia February 19, 1949 with her husband, her sister and her two-year old daughter.

This is the second interview Mrs. Lillian Taus gave to the Holocaust Oral History Archive. Please also see her first interview given on November 23, 1981, #GC00523a.

Lilly Friedman, née Lax, was born in Zarica, Czechoslovakia on January 20, 125. Her father taught Hebrew. Lilly describes how Jewish life and her relations with non-Jews changed after the Hungarian occupation in 1939. In 1944, after the Germans rounded up all the Jews, Lilly and her family were sent to Auschwitz. She describes arrival in Auschwitz, the selections, and brutal murders of infants. After three days she was taken to Plaszow, Krakow with a group of girls for forced hard labor under brutal conditions. In September 1944 they returned to Auschwitz. As transports arrived, women and children were taken straight to the crematoria. After three weeks she was put in charge of 400 of the healthiest girls who were selected to work as weavers in a factory in Neustadt.

As the front came closer, the camp was evacuated. The girls were transported to Mauthausen and then marched to Bergen-Belsen. She gives a graphic description of the transport to Mauthausen by train under Allied bombardment, the casualties and their attempts to help each other. She describes terrible conditions in Bergen-Belsen and how the girls helped each other to survive. They were liberated by the English Second Army April 15, 1945. She slowly regained her health and met and married another survivor. The family came to the United States in March, 1948.

Her daughter, Miriam adds her insights about growing up as a child of survivors. Lilly mentions the impact living through the Holocaust still has on her and her sisters.

Interviewee: FRIEDMAN, Lilly Date: April 21, 1985

Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.

Andrzej W. Jurkiewicz was born into a Christian family in 1931 in Torun, Poland. His family moved to Warsaw in 1934. His father, a band leader, played for German and Soviet soldiers and was a commander in ArmíaKrajowa, the Polish home army. Andrzej was a messenger, carrying information to underground units.

His father had been helped by Jews when he served in the Polish Army during World War I and during German bombardments in 1940. Later, Andrzej and his family aided Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, throwing food over the walls, giving bread and sheltering children who escaped the ghetto in the top of their apartment building. Andrzej witnessed the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto and machine gun killings in the streets.

In his testimony, Andrzej describes the Polish underground smuggling arms into the Warsaw Ghetto. He describes that some arms were obtained from Hungarian soldiers who were fighting with the Nazis and stationed in Warsaw. He related an incident in which a truckload of machine guns was given to the underground and he and other children helped to empty the truck and hide the guns.

In 1944, Andrzej, his family and other Poles were taken to a labor camp in Vienna, to build air-raid shelters. After the war, he was a music student in Poland, graduating in 1958 and became assistant opera conductor in Wroclaw in 1959. He describes difficulties with the Polish government because his father had stayed in Vienna and it was frowned upon to have family members in the west. In 1972, when he was already the permanent Music Director, he escaped from Poland and emigrated to the United States. He joined his parents, who had arrived in Philadelphia earlier. His sister, an opera singer, remained in Poland.

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.