Oral History Interview with Helmut Frank

Fanny Ross, nee Birnberg, was born in Gwozdziec, Poland on November 11, 1922. Her parents were farmers. She gives a brief description of her pre-war schooling and good relations with non-Jews before the war. Fanny describes the Jews being forced into ghettos and groups of children being taken to work on farms.1 During a deportation to a larger ghetto in Kolomyja, Fanny jumped from the cattle car. She explains in great detail how she managed to survive on her own, living on the streets, hiding in different places with Jews and non-Jews, including a group of nuns, never staying in one place for long. Her Jewish aunt who was also hiding as a Gentile hid her for several weeks and bought a fake birth certificate for her. She worked for an SS doctor’s family but had to leave because she didn’t have backup documentation proving her identity. Fanny survived several close calls while posing as a Gentile.

Fanny was able to find a number of jobs over a period of time because a German woman - Ellen Marie Niederman - took her in and got her more documents proving she was German. Fanny even passed an examination and a blood test by German doctors. Fanny went on a long vacation in Germany with Miss Niederman and again worked at a series of jobs.

Several months after the war was over, Fanny took steps to return to being Jewish. She met her future husband at a Jewish community Center in Konstanz am Bodensee. She emigrated to the United States in 1950.

Paul Kurschner was born May 16, 1916 in Vienna, Austria into a wealthy, Reform Jewish family. As a boy, he experienced antisemitism and engaged in bloody fights at school. His family belonged to the OesterreichnerJudenCentralverein, an anti-Zionist group of Austrian Jews, but Paul broke away from that affiliation at age 13. He joined HaShomerHaTzair, KidutTsurim, Betar and GedutHaKhoyal. In 1936 he became the youngest member elected to the New Zionist Congress.

In 1937, Paul joined the Austrian Army and in 1938, he became a German soldier. He then deserted and was hidden by gentile friends until he fled to Italy. There, he met hundreds of other young Zionists who traveled together to Greece. Aided by the mayor and priest in a fishing village, they soon sailed on the Artemisia to Palestine.

Paul had been an atheist until the Israeli War of Independence. He then came to believe in a higher power and became a Conservative Jew. He left Israel in 1950 and settled in the United States, living in Philadelphia, where he joined B’nai Tikvah B’nai Jeshurun congregation. He married and had two children in Israel in 1942 and remarried in the United States in 1982.

Ruth (Renee) K. Hartz.

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.

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.

Ida Rudley, née Rothman, was born April 22, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, into a middle class family. She encountered antisemitism even before Hitler annexed Austria. Her life changed after the Anschluss in 1938, as anti-Jewish measures took effect. She explains why it was almost impossible for Jews to leave Austria. She mentions several instances of help from non-Jews, including an encounter with a German officer who took an interest in her while she and her mother were trying to escape from Austria. They were smuggled across the border to Yugoslavia in 1941 and lived in Zagreb illegally, always on the run, sheltered by both Jews and non-Jews until they were warned that the Gestapo was looking for them. Ida and her mother turned themselves in to the Gestapo - armed with enough pills to commit suicide - and managed to talk their way out of detention. Using forged papers, they accompanied a group of German-Jewish orphans bound for Palestine to the Italian part of Yugoslavia.

After living briefly in Ljubljana, they were sent to a concentration camp in Ferramonti, Italy. Prisoners included Greek, Italian and Yugoslavian Partisans as well as Jews. The Italians ran the camp in a very humane fashion and even told Jews where to hide from the retreating German troops. Ida and her husband were married by a rabbi in the concentration camp and had a civil ceremony later, after liberation by the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in 1943. After a brief stay in a transit camp in Cinecitta, run by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) Ida, her husband and her mother went to the United States on a military ship in 1947.

Interviewee: RUDLEY, Ida Date: April 5, 1984

Roger Bryan, formerly Rudolf Britzmann, was born in Germany, June 14, 1921. His father, a physician and a decorated German army veteran, was arrested on trumped up charges in the mid 1930s. He died in Moabit prison under suspicious circumstances. Roger briefly mentions his school years, a few antisemitic experiences, and how his family coped after his father’s death. He discusses his struggle to get out of Germany, and how he managed to emigrate to London, England with help from both Jews and non-Jews in 1939 just before World War II started.

He worked in London until he was classified as an enemy alien, incarcerated, and deported to Adelaide, Australia on the HMT Dunera. He describes terrible conditions on board, mistreatment by British during the trip, the journey to a detention camp in Hay, New South Wales, and how Australians treated the detainees. He talks about his jobs in the camp, and the many activities and programs started by the prisoners.

He joined and served in the Pioneer Corps (a non-combatant unit of the British army) to get out of the internment camp. He later served in the GHQ Second Echelon Prisoner of war section of the British army in London and in camps for German prisoners of war in Louvain, Belgium, and the former Neuengamme concentration camp. He was transferred to Nuremberg to work as an interpreter/translator during the War crime trials.

After he left the service, he lived in Glasgow, Scotland with his wife, whom he married in 1943. He started a family and a photography business. He came to the United States in 1953.