Oral History Interview with Hans Hartenstein

Mr. Hillman describes his training and service as a military policeman attached to the United States 1st Army, processing German prisoners of war in England and Europe. He relates what he saw when he entered Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany, as well as the condition and care of the remaining survivors, until the entire camp was evacuated by U.S. troops. He visited Dachau twice after the war, and was disturbed that it had been completely transformed and sanitized, but felt that the smell of burning flesh was still present even on his third visit.

Inge Karo, née Heiman, was born in 1926 in Essen, Germany. Her father was part owner of a business. Her parents were active in the Jewish community and belonged to a conservative synagogue. Inge belonged to a non-Zionist youth organization and was educated in a school for Jewish children until the schools were closed by the Nazis. The effects of the Nüremberg laws, passed in 1935, are briefly de‌scribed. The Jewish community of Essen and the Heiman family experienced the destruction of Kristall‌nacht in 1938. Nazis threatened to burn down her family’s house and then confiscated it. Inge was affected by the pervasive Nazi propaganda, the persecution, and her family’s attempts to escape from Germany to the United States. The family emigrated to the United States in December 1939. Inge briefly talks about life in the United States as a refugee, including her experiences in public school.

Liza Kessler, nee Rak, was born in the Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa, located on the Polish border between Kiev and Odessa. A center of Jewish learning, it boasted 15 Jewish schools. Liza graduated from a Jewish high school, married and had two children. Liza describes how in July, 1941, after a German bombing raid, Polish Jews fled into her town. She heard reports from them that the Jews were herded into the synagogue and burned. Liza with her two children, and sisters-in-law and their children fled with the ‘echelons’ (transports which carried machinery). They boarded a barge for Central Asia. In November, 1941 they arrived in Georgia. They stayed on a kolkhoz (collective farm) until the Germans came. They then fled further East to Uzbekistan, finally landing in Bukhara where they stayed until the end of the war. Liza describes harsh conditions: food rationing and bitter cold. Liza’s sisters and parents were murdered in mass killings.

After World War II Liza went back to Poland with her second husband, a Jewish Polish national. Because it was too much like Russia, they left and were smuggled into the American zone in Austria via Czechoslovakia. Liza and her family stayed in Austria for five years. They were aided by the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Finally, in 1950, through an aunt in Philadelphia they received papers and were able to enter the United States as part of the quota.

Interviewee: KESSLER, Liza Date: January 18, 1983

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.

This document is a program for the 16th Annual Holocaust Art & Writing Contest, an event presented by Chapman University and The 1939 Society, with its awards ceremony held on March 6, 2015. The program details the contest's theme, "From Discovery to Action: Making Meaning from Memory," and acknowledges various sponsors, partners, and individuals involved as speakers and judges. It also includes information on a related "Evening of Holocaust Remembrance" held on April 16, 2015, which commemorated the 70th Anniversary of Liberation. A significant portion of the program features student artwork and a detailed biography of Holocaust survivor Jack Pariser, highlighting his remarkable story of survival during the Holocaust. Additionally, the program lists the numerous middle and high schools from across the United States and one from China that participated in the contest. The document serves as a comprehensive record of the event, its participants, and its educational mission.

Irmgard Zacharias, nee Pinkus, was born July 15, 1904 in Friedrichshagen, Germany, a suburb of Berlin. She attended a private lyceum in Berlin. Her parents had a variety store. Her father, a World War I officer and veteran, believed this would save them from persecution. After Kristallnacht, when their store was demolished, he realized they had to leave Germany. By that time most of their money had already been confiscated and they were not able to secure an affidavit or visa. Through connections of a cousin, the family was able to obtain four tickets on a re-conditioned Japanese warship to Shanghai. They arrived in Shanghai in May, 1939.

Irmgard met her husband, a Prussian engineer, upon her arrival and they married five months later. They lived and worked with her family in a grocery store purchased from other refugees. The family lived above the store and she relates that the living conditions were decent in comparison to the majority of Shanghai residents. She details life in the compound of Hong Kew, where food was scarce, sanitation was lacking and infection was rampant. Dysentery, for which they often received immunization shots, was normal. Cholera and typhoid were also common. Dead bodies were left on the streets for pickup twice a week.

For a short time Mrs. Zacharias and her husband got jobs in a department store in Tzingtao [now Qingdao], a city located on the coast of China north of Shanghai, which was reached by boat. Irmgard’s son was born in 1941. Her husband died of typhus in 1942, seven weeks after their child’s birth. When the Japanese arrived, the family was forced to move to a ghetto but were able to take their possessions and opened another grocery store. Her father died in 1945.

Irmgard left Shanghai with her mother and son in 1948. The American Joint Distribution Committee and the Sassoon family provided the means for their emigration to the United States. In 1981, when Irmgard returned to Shanghai to visit the graves of her husband and father, the gravestones were gone and the cemetery was replaced with a children’s park.

Note: Collateral material file available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library includes correspondence containing additional detail on life in Shanghai.