Oral History Interview with Murray Granger

D.S. son of a Jewish banker and a Protestant mother, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. He stayed in Berlin until 1948. He discusses his family’s history, his education and how their life as Jews changed and became increasingly restricted after 1935. Non-Jewish relatives broke off contact until after the war ended.

He briefly describes Kristallnacht. His father’s business and property were confiscated. D.S. and his father were arrested and detained at Rosenstrasse for one week and saw the Rosenstrasse Action by non-Jewish spouses of the prisoners. His family was forced to move into rooms shared with two other families. After the Jewish schools were closed, D.S. worked for the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland for several months until the entire staff was deported in vans. He was spared because of his non-Jewish mother and believes that this is why his father survived. He became Bar Mitzvah in 1941. D.S. and his father were assigned to a labor camp in Berlin in 1942. D.S. resisted the Germans through sabotage while in the labor unit and as a member of a small resistance group composed of young men from mixed marriages. He describes life during the Battle of Berlin and postwar under Russian occupation.

D.S. completed his education in a German high school. He could no longer endure life in Germany and came to the United States in 1948, helped by HIAS. His parents remained in Germany, but his mother joined him after his father’s death.

D.S. cites personal encounters to prove Germans knew what happened to Jews in the camps as well as a few incidents of help from non-Jews. He talks about his feelings about Germans and his determination to fight antisemitism.

Sara Melmedwas born March 12, 1921 in Krasnik, Poland. Her middle-classHasidic family was active in the local kehillah. Despite some antisemitic harassment from Volksdeutscheneighbors, she had a happy childhood and completedgymnasium.

In September, 1939, German occupation of Krasnik led to a terrifying ransacking of her home. She was smuggled to Kovelfor safety before her parents were taken to Belzec. She believes they were killed at Treblinka. Sara moved eastward to a Russian labor camp near Arkhangelsk. In 1940, she reached Kharkov, where she received a Russian passport and a medical school scholarship.

German bombing in 1941 forced evacuation to Omsk, where she was hospitalized with epilepsy. Unable to finish medical school, she entered nursing school and worked as a nurse during succeeding years. She married a Polish Jew in 1943, gave birth to a son in 1945 and spent four years in Displaced Persons camps Lager Lechte and Ainring where her daughter was born.

She describes a five-week repatriation transport back to Poland in 1946, with hundreds of Jews and mentions pogroms by the Polish National Army. Her family continued westward with a Zionist group and emigrated to the United States in 1950, with help from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.