Oral History Interview with Henry Kahn

Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.

Morris Steiman was born August 5, 1918 in Bodzanow, a small town near Warsaw. Morris attended cheder and yeshiva and was a member ofAgudah, a religious Zionist youth group. He experienced pre-war antisemitism because of his appearance as a religious Jewish boy, in his hometown and in Warsaw, where he worked as a tailor’s apprentice.

In November, 1939, he fled the German occupation and went east to the Russian-occupied area of Poland. In March 1940, homesick and concerned about his parents, he returned to Poland—first Warsaw and then made his way back to his hometown— where he worked as a tailor for the Germans until March 1941. He discusses being very aware as an older teenager about what exactly was going on and actively looking for ways to escape and emigrate. He gives a detailed description of the evacuation of Jews from Bodzanow, during which he and his father was severely beaten on the head. He describes the Germans indiscriminately beating everyone they could as they chased them into the trucks. They were taken to a camp in Dzialdowo for a few days, near the German border, with little food and no toilets or water. They were thendeported to the Czestochowa Ghetto, where he was cared for by Rose Tannenbaum. Morris’ parents fled to Warsaw to be with his sister and died of natural causes soon after.

Morris and Rose married and survived the war years together, doing forced labor at HasagPelzery, in metal and ammunition factories in nearby Rakow. Morris describes one Wehrmacht commander who treated them humanely and also assisted several Jews in escaping the ghetto and retrieving money left behind in the ghetto. They were liberated by the Russians in January 1945 and stayed in Czestochowa for almost a year. He secured work as a tailor. He describes returning to his hometown after the war and digging up a kiddish cup and candlesticks that his brother had buried. He and his wife moved to Lampertheim, a displaced persons camp in the American zone of Germany, until emigrating to the United States in March 1947 where he had a sister.

Anne Dore Russell, née Weidemann, a non-Jew, was born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926. She went to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg. Her father told her about experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler. She knew that her uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen and heard about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs. A neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer, had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front.

She speaks briefly about Kristallnacht and life in Branderburg under the Nazis. Her father, a civil servant, lost his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD). He told Anne Dore why he opposed the Nazi regime. He avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company). She learned to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs. The local police took her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

She mentions the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war, after which she went to Humbold University in East Berlin and then the Free University in West Berlin.

Edith Millman, nee Greifinger, was born in 1924 in Bielsko (Bielitz), Poland. Father was an executive for Standard Oil Co. In 1937 the family moved to Warsaw. She was injured during the bombardment of the city in September 1939 when bombs hit the building in which they lived. She describes persecution of Jews which started immediately after the occupation and the horrendous conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto into which they were forced to move in November 1940. While there, she was able to study in small clandestine groups organized by teachers. She briefly discusses the Judenrat.

She worked at the Schultz factory until the end of 1942 when she escaped from the ghetto. With forged papers received from Gentiles, she passed as an Aryan and worked as a translator for the German railroad. She stole railroad identification cards, food stamps and coal with which she helped others. She describes fear of being discovered and close escapes. Speaking German and pretending to be an ethnic German helped her to throw off blackmailers. She lost many relatives, describes the deaths of several. After liberation by the Russians in August 1944 she studied medicine in Lublin, Poland, and after the war’s end in Marburg/Lahn, Germany, she came to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY in December 1947 on a B’nai B’rith Hillel scholarship. Her parents arrived in the USA in 1949.

Harry Bass was born on October 10, 1920 in Bialystok, Poland. He talks about his life, Jewish life in general, educational facilities for Jewish children in Bialystok, and his Zionist activities prior to 1939. He briefly mentions the arrival of Polish Jews who were expelled from Germany.

After the German invasion in 1939, his family hid for a while, then were forced into the Bialystok Ghetto along with the entire Jewish population of Bialystok, as well as Jews from surrounding villages and towns. He describes conditions in the ghetto, how he traded goods for food and activities of the Judenrat.

In December 1942, Harry, his three brothers, a sister and an uncle, were deported to Auschwitz in closed cattle cars. He could have escaped and explains why he chose not to.

In Birkenau, his two little brothers were sent to the crematoriums. Harry and his other siblings were taken to the slave labor camp. He describes the daily routine in the camps, living conditions, how prisoners were branded, and briefly mentions attempts at religious observance. Prisoners who tried to escape were killed. Harry worked in the kitchen, later in a Straf Kommando (punishment detail) where a German soldier saved his life.

To evacuate Auschwitz, prisoners were forced on a Death March to Gleiwitz in deep snow, then to Mauthausen on an open train on January 18, 1945. Thousands died and survivors were treated brutally. In April 1945, surviving prisoners were brought to Magdeburg and put on ships in the Elbe. Most ships were sunk by the Germans, Harry’s boat was torpedoed by the British but he managed to survive.

After liberation by the British, Harry recuperated in a hospital in Neustadt Holstein, searched for family members, and was reunited with some of them. He immigrated to the United States on March 29, 1949, where he became very involved in every aspect of the Jewish community.

The transcript includes historical endnotes by Dr. Michael Steinlauf as well as several vignettes about helping fellow prisoners, help from German soldiers and slave labor.

Interviewee: BASS, Harry Date: August 22, 1983

Daniel Goldsmith was born in Antwerp, Belgium on December 11, 1931 to Polish parents. His family was orthodox and he was educated at a Yeshiva. They lived in Antwerp under German occupation and suffered under the ever-increasing anti-Jewish measures. His father was transported to a labor camp in France, August 1942 and never heard from again.

His mother, Ruchel Goldschmidt – who was in contact with the Belgian underground – managed to get some money, safeguard their possessions, and find a hiding place just before and while the Germans raided their neighborhood and ransacked Jewish-owned houses, helped by Belgians who pointed out Jewish residents. Daniel cites several instances when Belgians cooperated with the Germans. He also gives many examples of aid by non-Jewish Belgians, especially Father André (who was recognized as a “Righteous Gentile”) and other Catholic clergy and nuns. He also mentions his mother’s work with the underground.

Daniel and his sister were placed in a convent in December 1942, then with Christian families after their mother found out the Germans were going to enter the convent to look for Jewish children. He was in a succession of orphanages in Weelde and Mechelen, run by Father Cornelissen, from 1943 to 1944, while his sister lived with another Christian family. Daniel got false baptismal papers, changed his name, lived as a Catholic, but refused to convert.

In May 1944 the Germans imprisoned all circumcised boys in the orphanage, then transported them on cattle cars with other Jewish children. Daniel and several other boys escaped from the moving train and managed to contact a priest who placed each of them with a different Christian family who hid them. Monsieur and Madame Botier, hid Daniel, were kind to him, and worked to reunite him with his mother after liberation in September 1944.

Daniel describes various placements post liberation, especially in AischeEnRefail; mentions a French committee that collected hidden Jewish children, and Aliyah Bet. His mother was injured during an air raid and could not take care of her children at that time. He relates how difficult and painful it was for all parties, especially his sister, when his mother wanted to reclaim her daughter from the Christian family that sheltered her for three years.

In April 1948, Daniel, his mother and his sister went to the United States from Belgium, sponsored by his father’s family. He talks about his family’s life shortly after they arrived, and his own life from that time to the present.