Oral History Interview with Alexandra Gorko

Arnold Vanderhorst, born in Arnhem, Holland, July 24, 1935, shares his childhood memories of surviving World War II by living in hiding. After his family bakery was sealed by the Nazis, his mother took him to a "strange" family, the Holthuis, with whom he remained throughout the war and liberation. Both his sister and grandmother were also placed with families; however, his parents perished in Auschwitz. The Holthius family had four children, the oldest a member of the Resistance. The father was politically active, having run for mayor of Arnhem. Arnold describes his life with them, being safe, having food and an education throughout the war, and explains that he was secure enough to play with neighborhood children despite the presence of German soldiers nearby. He was tutored by Hilda Presser, wife of photographer Sem Presser. She maintained contact with him when he later entered an orphanage. At one birthday party, photographs of children were taken professionally and turned into a book, which is in a museum in Holland. Arnold describes a brief encounter with his grandmother in the forest, when he and the Holthuis family evacuated the city.

After liberation, Arnold began an odyssey of experiences. In 1945, for reasons of health, he travelled to England, where he lived for six months. He returned to Holland, reuniting with his grandmother and sister. In 1947, the three emigrated to New York via Sweden to live with an uncle who had fled earlier. Arnold explains that after several incidents of Arnold’s misbehavior, his uncle and wife insisted Arnold and his grandmother return to Holland. He describes living in several different locations including two Jewish orphanages (Koningslaan and the AemmalannZeven for boys) and with two different families. He details his schooling experiences.In 1954, at 19, he left the orphanage and took up residence with the Perelkamp family. He describes life with them and attending a technical school until 1956 during which time he describes having difficulty concentrating on his studies because of his loneliness. He describes a close relationship with his social worker who encouraged him to seek the help of HIAS to return to the United States. He describes psychological reactions to his wartime experiences as a young child.

He found work at a brokerage house and eventually completed his education. He married and adopted two boys. In 2004, he returned to Holland for a reunion with friends.

Alfred Brosan was born on July 20, 1923 in a small town near Vienna, Austria called Rodaun. He had one sister. Alfred’s family lived in the suburbs of Vienna and laterin Vienna proper. His father had a prosperous leather goods factory and traveled all over Austria and Europe to sell his goods. In March 1938, when the Nazis occupied Austria, the Aryan foreman was put in charge of the business. Alfred’s parents decided to leave Vienna that year and fled to the International Settlement in Shanghai, China--where you could enter without visas. About 15 members of Alfred’s family made the trip, including his father’s siblings and their families. Alfred and his parents traveled via the trans-Siberian railroad, first landing in Harbin, Manchuria where they were welcomed by a group of Russian Jews who had settled there. His aunts, uncles and his sister went by boat through the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean. All arrived in Shanghai several weeks after Kristallnacht.

Alfred’s father was able to requesthis international clients toforward money due him to Shanghai, enabling them to have a good start, eventually establish a successful business and live comfortably. Alfred describes living in Hongkew before it was a ghetto and in 1943 being forced to a less desirable area-- close to the waterfront and Japanese warships. This created financial difficulties arising from having to move the factory. Alfred reports that nevertheless, the Jewish community had a satisfactory relationship with the Japanese. Alfred also mentions disease and scarcity in the Hongkew Ghetto, lack of food, poor people dying from exposure during winter cold spells.He also details surviving bombingsduring the end of the war.Despite the negative aspects of Shanghai, Alfred recalls his time in Shanghai favorably.

Alfred describes his family’s decisions and timeline leaving Shanghai, including the delay due to hisfather’s heart attack. In 1946 his sister married an American GI and came to the United States which enabled his parents to emigrate to the United States on the Czechoslovakian quota per his father’s birth country. Alfred was not able to leave with them and remained in Shanghai. After many bureaucratic transactions, he was able to obtain a visa for the United States and left Shanghai on the last ship to leave before the Communists arrived. He joined his parents in Philadelphia, married, raised a family, and started a successful business there.

GeniaKlapholz, nee Flachs2, was born in 1912 in Wisnicz, near Krakow, Poland to a religious family. After the town was ghettoized, she witnessed her baby niece kicked to death by a German soldier. Genia and a younger sister escaped and paid a woman in a neighboring village who hid them for eight days. They had to return to Wisnicz and were then transported to the Bochnia Ghetto, where they worked in a uniform factory for one year, enduring terrible conditions. They moved next to the Szebnie transit camp, where they saw Jews from Tarnow burned alive. Genia reads aloud her Yiddish poem, “In Memory of My Sister, Serl, of Camp Szebnie.” (Included with the transcript are Yiddish transliteration and English translation of this poem. Also included are the Yiddish transliteration and English translation of another poem, “The Death March from Auschwitz.”)

Genia worked for three months as a cleaning woman in a factory at Szebnie before deportation to Auschwitz in 1942, which she describes in detail. She discusses the brutal treatment during her two years in Birkenau. She worked in the ammunition factory from which four youngwomen smuggled gunpowder for the attempted explosion of the crematoria and she witnessed their hanging. She describes in detail a delousing procedure, when she had to stand in the snow, naked, for hours. She also tells of her foot operation, performed without anesthesia. Forced to leave Auschwitz on a death march in January, 1945, she managed to escape with two other women and they found shelter with a Polish woman and her family in Silesia. This family was recognized as one of the “Righteous among the Nations” by YadVashem in 1991. Documentation from YadVashem accompanies the transcript.

Genia was liberated by the Russians, March 28, 1945, and returned to Krakow in search of her family. She was in Displaced Persons camps in Einring, Regensburg and Landsburg, where she met and married her cousin, Henry Klapholz. With their baby son, they immigrated in 1948 to the United States, where they bought a farm in Vineland, New Jersey. In 1955, they moved to Philadelphia.

Born September 27, 1925 in Munich, Germany, HenryKahn was an only child in a wealthy Jewish family. His father was the major wholesaler of coal in Germany. His great-grandfather was a nobleman, with a title from Emperor Franz Joseph.

Henry describes his childhood memories of attendingpublic school until age eight. When ostracized by the gentile students, his parents sent him to a Jewish school, which was closed after Kristallnacht. His father was sent to Dachau but was released on the same day when he showed visa and steamship tickets to leave Germany. Henry describes their hurried exit and possessions that were confiscated by the Gestapo. The family sailed to the United States from London on January 26, 1939. They were sponsored by a prominent cousin in Philadelphia, Herman Obermayer, and were aided by HIAS.

In the 1960s, Henry’s father began to correspond with Albert Speer, the Nazi architect, and visited him at the German prison in Spandau. Henry also visited Speer, who became a successful writer and donated royalties to Israel and to Jewish old-age homes.

Jenny Sommer describes her life, education, and Zionist activities in prewar Libau, Latvia in great detail, including some incidents of antisemitism and discrimination. In 1940 conditions for Jews started to get worse. Because her family was upper middle class they lived in fear of the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) and the Russians.

Jenny describes life under the German occupation of Libau in great detail: the execution of all able bodied Jewish men on July 22, 1941; a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives, and how her sister managed to rescue them just before they were to be executed during an Aktion. She witnessed a mass execution of Jews, including her relatives. The Christian superintendent of her uncle’s house hid Jenny and her remaining family in the attic until the round-up of Jews was over. Jenny, her mother and her sister, moved into the ghetto with about 600 other Jews and worked for the Germans as slave laborers. Her sister worked as a nurse in the ghetto. Some Christian Latvians smuggled food to them.

On Yom Kippur night they were taken to Kaiserwald concentration camp, near Riga. Jenny describes their arrival at Kaiserwald, where mothers were forcibly separated from their children. Some women committed suicide. Her sister carried a bottle of cyanide pills. While in Kaiserwald, Jenny did hard labor as part of a Kommando, at a work camp, and later inStutthof. She describes their horrible existence in Stutthof and how she managed to find the will to survive. Her husband worked at Stutthof as an electrician and managed to survive a typhoid epidemic.

As the Russian army approached, the inmates were shipped out of Stutthof on a designated typhoid boat. It was bombed, set on fire and capsized. She was rescued by a German fire boat after ten days without food or water, liberated two days later in Kiel, Germany by English forces. She stayed at a field Lazarett (hospital) in Itzehoe, near Hamburg for six months. She talks about her post-liberation experiences in a German hospital, and finding her husband in Neustadt.

Nathan Snyder was born on May 21, 1926 in Unter Stanestie, Rumania (now Russia). He describes Jewish community life, religious observance, Zionist movements, and his education in cheder and public school including the Gymnasium in Czernowitz. He experienced antisemitism in school, from the Iron Cross movement and during the Coza ritual. He describes the effects of the Russian occupation and the deportation of Jews. He vividly describes how local Ukrainians rounded up Jews, brutally hacked the men and boys to death, and stripped Jewish homes bare as the German army approached. Survivors were forced to march to Czernowitz and herded into a ghetto with Jews from other towns. Nathan describes living conditions, frequent transports to Transnistria, forced labor and some attempts at underground resistance. There are richly detailed vignettes of adolescent experiences including excursions outside the ghetto, passing as a Volksdeutsche, and hazardous encounters with SS. He describes turmoil as the Russians advanced. Rumanian authorities fled and the Germans started killing Jews. His family used material he obtained at great risk before Germans blew up a supply warehouse. After liberation by the Russians Nathan joined a civilian militia formed by Jewish youths to patrol Czernowitz until Russian militia took over. He gives a detailed description of life after the Russian occupation and uses many vignettes to describe his experiences.

Nathan served in the Russian army in a demolition squad clearing minefields. His commanding officer was a Jew posing as a Cossack. He vividly describes chaotic conditions near the end of the war, going absent without leave, and hiding for four months. Nathan crossed the border with false papers. In Bucharest he joined Betar served as a Madrich under Yehuda Avriel using a false name. His group helped others to make Aliyah to Palestine illegally. He relates how he avoided capture as a deserter as the Communists gained control.

Interviewee: SNYDER, Nathan Date: October 11 and 15, 1984