Oral History Interview with Genia Golombek

Laura Oberlender, nee Emmett, was born in Tuszyn, Poland in 1934, where her father had a successful wholesaleflower business. She shares her childhood memories of both Russian occupation in early 1939 and the subsequent German invasion, detailing the brutal beating of her mother by soldiers within days of the German takeover. Laura, too, was injured and was thought to be dead, because she was unable to speakand was temporarily paralyzed. She was five years old.

She recalls that during the first weeks of the occupation, all of the Jewish intellectuals were assembled in the center of the town and shot, one of whom was her uncle. She describes fleeing from the wealthy side of town to avoid being attacked againand also describes the subsequent formation of the Tuszyn Ghetto.

Laura details how she and her parents escaped the ghetto with the aid of Ukrainian gentile friends and were hidden by them in a hole in his barn for 18 months, until the end of the war. Later, in 1944, Laura’s father wanted to give his friend the family’s house, but Pavlo was afraid to have neighbors learn that he had hidden Jews. She also details antisemitic acts of some Ukrainians, especially the Banderovsti,a band of Ukrainian partisans which is known to have committed antisemitic acts and murder Jews.

Laura describes the difficulty of their life after liberation when they returned home and found out that her sister --who had been hidden by a Czech couple-- was eventually murdered by police after being turned in by a friend. She describes life without her father when he was conscripted into the Russian army and was away for more than half a year. When he came home on leave, they immediately fled to Lodz, where they stayed for several months, then to Czechoslovakia, Germany and finallyto Austria with fake Greek passports provided by the Jewish Brigade. In 1945, Laura’s brother was born in Bindermichen Displaced Persons camps in Linz. Laura’s immediate family was able to go to the United States in 1946 in order to join other family members already settled there.

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.

K. R. was born in Tarnopol, Poland, March 31, 1922. Her father was a businessman and her family was greatly influenced by Viennese culture. She briefly describes the start of overt antisemitism in her schools. She was a member of HanoarHatzioni and active in Zionist youth groups in Tarnopol and L’vov.

In 1940, under Russian Occupation, she and a group of HanoarHatzioni members were caught by some Ukrainian villagers—as they tried to cross the border illegally—and delivered to police. K. R. was sent to prison and later transferred to a labor camp near the North Pole. She describes the harsh conditions in the camp and why some of her fellow prisoners did not survive. She was released because she was Polish but given Soviet citizenship and sent by train to another part of Russia. Many strangers helped her during this time. She worked as a bookkeeper at a collective farm (kolkhoz) near the Russian village Devochki Gorki on the Volga River. When the German Army advanced, she was deported to Kazakhstan by train. She describes the conditions under which she lived. She worked as a bookkeeper in Kustanay. After the NKVD tried to recruit her as a spy, she fled to Alma Ata using documents she forged.

In 1945, after the war, she returned to Tarnopol and found it almost completely destroyed. She joined a kibbutz in Lodz and worked with HashomerHatzair to prepare young Russian refugees for life in Palestine. She also organized and led illegal border crossings to get them there. During this time she met and married her husband. They went to Palestine, from Cyprus, on a ship called The State of Israel in 1948, escorting a group of young Jewish children who had been hidden in monasteries or by Polish families. K. R. then reflects about how her experiences have shaped her outlook on life and her views about human behavior.

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.

Eva Burns, nee Gerstl, was born in 1924 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where her father was a pediatrician and her mother a concert pianist. They lived a mostly secular life with some inter‌ marriages in her mother's family. The German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939 drastically affected their lives with her brother being sent to Kladno and the rest of the family to Theresienstadt. She refers to help from non-Jews. She was deported to Theresienstadt November 17, 1942. She describes Theresienstadt as a "show" camp with books, a coffee house and concerts. Eva was part of a chorus preparing Verdi's Requiem and observed religious activities and humor.

She was deported to Auschwitz in May 1944 and six weeks later to Christianstadt, a women's labor camp. There she helped sabotage grenades in the ammu‌nition factory. She refers to the cruelty of the women S.S. guards. In February 1945 she es‌caped from a death march. Assuming a German identification, she worked in the Sudetenland until the spring of 1945 when she went to Prague where she worked for the family of an S.S. officer serving at the front. In May 1945, with the Czechoslovakian liberation near, she revealed her Czech identity. She married in November 1947 in Prague and immigrated to the USA in June 1948.

Ida Firestone, née Hoffman, born February 19, 1929, in Pont-a-Moussou, France, attended public schools and studied music privately, aspiring to be a concert pianist. In 1942, her father was falsely accused of being a Communist and was sent to Drancy concentration camp. He was later released.

In March, 1944, Ida and her family went into hiding. They were sheltered by a teacher, a grocer, a baker, a prostitute and several farmers. Separated from her family, she posed as an orphan, working for a farmer’s wife who treated her cruelly.

Ida hid in forests and in a barn, sleeping with animals and stealing food to survive. Before liberation by the Americans in December, 1944, she found protection on the Gouy family farm. She had lost 25 pounds and suffered with stomach problems which persisted throughout her life.

Reunited with her family in 1945, Ida resumed her music studies and graduated from a conservatory. In 1948, she and her family emigrated to the United States, settling in Philadelphia, where she married Herman Firestone in 1949. She became a piano teacher and a Holocaust speaker in schools and synagogues.

YadVashem has recognized as Righteous Among the Nations Victor and CecilleHergott, Germaine Bour, Lucien Louyot, Emile and GenvièveThouvenin and Victor and Marie (Friboug) Guoy, who protected Ida and her family members.

Poetry and a letter to her mother written by Ida during her wartime wandering is included in this interview.