Oral History Interview with Rachela Frydman

Roland D. Turk1 was born on April 15, 1940 in the village of Clairevivre, near Perigueux, France. His parents and maternal family moved south from Strasbourg to evade the German invasion. His father, a Czech national, joined the Czech Army, was exiled in England until 1945 and then fought with the British Army in Normandy.

Roland wandered with his mother and her family through the Massif Central in the French highlands from 1941 to 1944. Traveling without papers and posing as Christians, they moved frequently. Roland articulates poignantly the instability of his early years, with his father absent and the constant need to hide Jewish identity.

In 1945, his family returned to Clairevivre. There, his father, on furlough, was seeking their whereabouts. By mere chance, he passed their house just as his wife opened the window shutters and discovered her husband outside. The reunited family moved to Clermont-Ferrand where they faced antisemitism and still hid their Jewish identity. They emigrated to the United States in 1951, where they were aided by HIAS and settled in Philadelphia.

Former first name was David. Last name was Turg while in France.

Charlotte Sonnenberg, nee Lichtendorf, was born in Bad Neuenahr, Germany January 22, 1910 into a middle class family. The Nazi boycott in 1932 and the Nurenberg Laws affected her life and her family adversely. Charlotte met and married her husband Doctor Herbert Alexander in Leipzig. On November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) Charlotte and her husband were driven out of their apartment and her husband was sent to Buchenwald. He was released because Charlotte obtained tickets to go to Shanghai. They sailed to Shanghai on the SS Conte Biancamano in March 1939.

On arrival in Shanghai they were taken to a camp in Hongkew. They found work at the American Presbyterian Mission in Tenghsien in a hospital run by the mission. Charlotte describes in great detail their pleasant life in the mission, their relationship with other Jews and the patients. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese took over the hospital. All the missionaries were either deported or sent to concentration camps. Her husband was put in charge of the hospital. Civilians were trapped once the war ended, the Japanese left, and fighting erupted between the Chinese National Army and the Communists.

Charlotte relates many riveting details about their escape to Hsuchowfu and the death of her husband. She continued alone to Tsingtao and worked as a teacher at an American Catholic Middle School. She left China in 1947 – on a troop transport – to Philadelphia. Later she met and married her husband Henry Sonnenberg there. She talks about her impression of and life in the United States as well as her love of China.

Sonja Samson was born in Aurich, Germany in 1931, into an assimilated but observant Jewish family. In 1936 she lived with her grandparents in Luxembourg until she joined her parents who had moved to France earlier. She talks about her family history and her childhood, and speculates about her parents’ reasons for staying in France instead of emigrating to the United States. Her father volunteered for the French army but was interned in 1939.

Sonja and her parents were in Gurs briefly, then lived in Garlin, a village near Gurs until August 26, 1942 when they were rounded up by French police, sent to Gurs and then transported to Rivesaltes in September, 1942. Her parents were deported and her mother managed to keep Sonja from going on this transport with the help of Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE). She never saw her parents again and still profoundly resents this separation. She briefly describes conditions in the two camps and her life and schooling in the villages of Garlin and Gurs, including pressure on a teacher to rescind an honor Sonja had earned.

Sonja stayed in a convent and then an orphanage at Palavas-les-Flots with other Jewish children, under the auspices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) and OSE, then with distant relatives who were in hiding, later in a boarding school in Chambéry, constantly on guard. She mentions a failed attempt to cross the border into Switzerland.

Later Sonja worked as a maid at an inn that was a substation of the ArmeéSecréte (the French underground). She invented a new identity for herself as a non-Jewish war orphan, and participated in Catholic rites to avoid discovery. After she earned their trust, Sonja became a messenger. She relates how her presence of mind foiled a plot by the so-called “Butcher of Grenoble” to blow up the Underground headquarters just after liberation in August 1944. Sonja describes post-war life at the Chambéry boarding school, with her cousins, as well as her search for her parents, and was an active member of Hashomer Hatzair in Paris. She describes how she learned what she needed to do to survive, how the loss of her parents affects her to this day, and how her outlook about religion, Jewishness, and Zionism changed as she matured.

Sonja went to the United States from Sweden on the Gripsholm as a war-orphan in 1947, instead of making aliyah with her friends. She talks about the difficult adjustment to life in the United States, how she managed to get the higher education she wanted, and post-war trips to Israel in great detail.

Interviewee: SAMSON, Sonja Date: June 3, 1985

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.

L.I. born November 1923, lived in Bucharest, Romania before, during and after World War II. She relates her family history, her experiences growing up in Bucharest and her education at Catholic, public, and Medical schools. She cites several instances of discrimination against herself and other Jewish students.

She describes increasing antisemitism and restrictions against Jews, even those who converted, and their effect on the Jewish community and her own life. Her father lost his job. L.I. went to Onescu, a Jewish medical school staffed by Jewish teachers, and interned at Jewish hospitals. Both L.I. and her father worked at forced labor.

L.I. talks about conditions in the Jewish community, random killings of Jews, and brutality by the Iron Guard, but that many Jewish institutions continued to function. After the war, her family reclaimed their house which had been confiscated in December, 1941. She completed her medical education. Jewish students were allowed to attend schools but were not fully accepted. L.I. wasnot allowed to leaveRomania once she becameadoctor but she and her husband were able to leave as part of an exchange program in 1978 and came to the United States in 1979.

Daniel Levey, born April 24, 1925 in Sarajevo, was one of eight children in an impoverished Sephardic family who spoke Ladino at home. His father was a tailor and served in WWI under the Ottoman Empire. Daniel shares his childhood memories of their poverty and pre-war life. They lived in a Muslimneighborhood, where Daniel was assaulted by street gangs. His family attended the Sarajevo Synagogue, in a community of 15,000 Jews, who were forced into a ghetto after the German invasion in 1941. They had to wear an armband with the letter “Z” for Židov, the Croatian word for Jew. He did forced labor briefly in a military work crew, having been assigned to a skilled labor brigade because of his electrician experience. He evaded Nazi registration and stopped wearing his star.

After he escaped from a roundup, he passed as a Muslim with an assumed name of Gerald Levvage [phonetic] and a false ID. He joined partisans fighting Germans and Russian Cossacks near Mostar, which was occupied by Italians. In 1942, he was captured and imprisoned at BokaKotorska. He describes humane treatment by the Italians. He got himself a job on kitchen duty and helped other prisoners by bringing them food. After Italy surrendered in 1943, the prison became a hospital where Daniel worked as a cook until he emigrated to Canada and then to the United States in 1948. He credits the Italians for saving him and other Jews from the brutal Croatian prison guards at Rab concentration camp. All of the Levey family, except for Daniel and one brother, who settled in Israel, perished in German camps.