Oral History Interview with Liza Kessler

Rudy Klein was born in Bonn, Germany in 1904. His father died when he was 5 and he was raised

by his mother who died in Theresienstadt in 1942. Rudy had a standard German education but very minimal Jewish education. His family were members of a Reform synagogue but observed very little.

Mr. Klein talks about his reaction to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the effect it had on his job at a department store. He was fired in 1935, after the enactment of the Nuremberg laws.

Mr. Klein left for America in 1936 and he describes his beginnings in New York. He discusses the decimation of his family who had remained in Germany and tells the story of a cousin who was a brain surgeon. This cousin and his family fled to Russia but when Germany invaded Russia they were murdered by the Russians. Mr. Klein speaks briefly about his life in the United States.

Mr. Klein’s Arbeitsbuch[work permit book] was donated to the Holocaust Oral History Archive by his niece-in-marriage, Marcia Webber. A program book of a German government sponsored visit to Germany in 1987 was also donated.

Dr. Leon Friedman was born February 17, 1902 in Warsaw, Poland. His parents owned a grocery store. He received his teacher’s diploma and Ph.D. from Warsaw University. He discusses pre-war antisemitism and his education. He joined HashomerHatzairand served in Palestine from 1922 to 1924 instead of serving in the Polish army. He describes life in Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair. He returned to Poland where he taught for 14 years.

In 1939 he walked to Bialystock illegally with a group of Jews. He lived under Russian occupation until June 1940, when he was sent to the village of Mandacz in Komi, Siberia with his wife and daughter for refusing a Russian passport. He describes travel to, conditions in, and escape from Mandacz in detail. Dr. Friedman worked as the chief accountant in Murashi. He went to Sochi (Southern Russia) as part of a transfer of 3000 Jews, which he arranged. He describes life in Sochi whose population was predominantly Greek.

After the war, Dr. Friedman and his family returned to Warsaw and Lodz. They were smuggled into Berlin. He talks about conditions faced by refugees in the Russian zone. He mentions two brothers who experienced antisemitism after joining the Anders Army. In 1946 Dr. Friedman organized the escape of 9000 Jewish refugees from East Berlin to avoid transport to the Soviet Union. He describes an illegal border crossing from the French zone to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in the English zone, where he started a school for orphan’s preparing to go to Palestine on Aliyah Bet. He lived in Stuttgart, Germany for a few months where he founded a “Folk University” with help from the Jewish community.

Dr. Friedman and family arrived in Philadelphia March 3, 1947. He founded the Association of Jewish New Americans of Philadelphia. He talks about his life as a refugee, why he survived, the effects of hunger on human beings, and the treatment of Holocaust survivors.

This document is a promotional flyer announcing a television program titled "Dialogue with Doti." The program features Chapman University President Jim Doti in conversation with Elie Wiesel, a prolific author, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and renowned Holocaust scholar. The flyer indicates that the program will air "TONIGHT AT 8:30 PM" and directs viewers to "WWW.KCET.ORG/DIALOGUEWITHDOTI" for more information. The bottom of the flyer prominently displays the logos for Chapman University and KCET, the latter celebrating "50 YEARS INSPIRING A BETTER STATE."

LucynaBerkowicz was born in Lwów in 1914, one of five children. Her father was a plumber who served in the Austrian army in WWI. He was also an ardent Zionist. Lucyna became active in leftist movements in her early twenties and became a union organizer and leader in a factory. Lucyna describes the Russian Occupation of Lwów(1939)under the German-Soviet Pact and antisemitism in the Russian and gentile hierarchy. She describes her work experiences, attending university, and her eventual realization that members of Zionist Youth organizations were jailed as political prisoners by the Russians.

Lucyna’shusbandwas killed during the Germanoccupation of Lwów(1941), after he fled(along with many Jewish men) with the Russian army. Lucyna describes many restrictions placed on Jews and how life became perilous. She describes how her sister-in-law was picked up and never heard from again. Lucynawas able to secure false papers with the help of a girlfriend’s gentilehusband.

Lucynaescaped Lwów, with the help of a Jewish man who would be her future husband and more than 20 others who wanted to return to their families in Radom.Lucyna describes the dangerous journey through JudenreinLublin, the aid of a gentile Pole who hid them in his basement until morning and then escorted them to Radom. She eventually came to Wolanów, a small rather primitive town. She and her second husband were married there in March. They worked for the Wehrmacht in the Wolanówlabor camp. She describes witnessing Jews from Radom who were forced to dig their own graves and were shot. At the end of 1943 she and her husband were deported to another labor camp, Starachowice, where she worked in an ammunition factory. It was decided that because she did not look Jewish, she should escape with her false identity papers. She eventually volunteered to work in Germany and because her German was good, worked as an interpreter in a reprocessing business in a small city. As the end of the war approached, she made her way back to Poland, to Radom, and worked for the Polish government as a non-Jew still under her false papers and lived with her husband’s aunt. She saw evidence that Poles killed Jewish partisans in the woods. Around the same time she learned about the pogroms in Kielce. She also reunited with her youngest brother who had returned from Russia and told her the details of how many members of her family had perished. One brother and one sister survived.

Lucyna explains how she got permission to search for her husband in Vienna and used it as excuse to flee Poland with his aunt and two of his nieces. Lucynafound her husband and a brother-in-law in Austria as prisoners in a Polish army camp. They came to Germany to Bergen-Belsen and then eventually made it to a Displaced Persons Camp in Stuttgart. Lucyna suffered a miscarriage during the travels. Lucyna, her husband and her brother emigrated to the United States in 1947.

See also the interview with her husband, Daniel Berkowicz.

Holocaust Jewish 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives

World War, 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives, Jewish, female

Atrocities

Displaced Persons Camp -- Stuttgart

Germanoccupation -- Lwów

Hiding – false papers

Jews - Polish

Starachowice - labor camp

Survival skills

Wolanów -labor camp

Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

Diane Weinstock, nee Gottlieb, was born in Radom Poland in 1923 into a modern religious family. Her mother was a member of WIZO and Diane attended Zionist youth activities. She describes pre-war antisemitism, the German Occupation, the establishment of the Radom Ghetto in 1941 and her family’s living conditions there until 1942. She also details clandestine education and religious observances that happened in the ghetto.

She and her mother were able to obtain false papers and hide posing as non-Jews in Warsaw from November 1943 until October 1944. Diane describes how after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising she, her mother and several others hid out in a bunker in the demolished Warsaw Ghetto until January 1945. She gives a detailed description of how they managed to survive including being warned by a Jewish father and son that the Germans were scouting the area. They were liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. She returned to her hometown of Radom but encountered severe antisemitism. She then fled to Regensburg, Germany to reunite with a brother and an uncle who survived. Her father perished in the same camp three weeks before liberation. Diane worked as an interpreter for UNRRA, then married and emigrated to United States after the war.

Ida Rudley, née Rothman, was born April 22, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, into a middle class family. She encountered antisemitism even before Hitler annexed Austria. Her life changed after the Anschluss in 1938, as anti-Jewish measures took effect. She explains why it was almost impossible for Jews to leave Austria. She mentions several instances of help from non-Jews, including an encounter with a German officer who took an interest in her while she and her mother were trying to escape from Austria. They were smuggled across the border to Yugoslavia in 1941 and lived in Zagreb illegally, always on the run, sheltered by both Jews and non-Jews until they were warned that the Gestapo was looking for them. Ida and her mother turned themselves in to the Gestapo - armed with enough pills to commit suicide - and managed to talk their way out of detention. Using forged papers, they accompanied a group of German-Jewish orphans bound for Palestine to the Italian part of Yugoslavia.

After living briefly in Ljubljana, they were sent to a concentration camp in Ferramonti, Italy. Prisoners included Greek, Italian and Yugoslavian Partisans as well as Jews. The Italians ran the camp in a very humane fashion and even told Jews where to hide from the retreating German troops. Ida and her husband were married by a rabbi in the concentration camp and had a civil ceremony later, after liberation by the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in 1943. After a brief stay in a transit camp in Cinecitta, run by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) Ida, her husband and her mother went to the United States on a military ship in 1947.

Interviewee: RUDLEY, Ida Date: April 5, 1984