Oral History Interview with Daniel Levey

Jacques Lipetz was born in Antwerp, Belgium, 1932. He was educated at Takhemoni, a Jewish school. He relates many childhood memories. He vividly describes his family’s flight through France to Marseille in May 1940. Jacques, his mother and two brothers went to Lisbon via Spain, his father via Morocco. An interesting vignette explains how he managed to join his family.

Jacques and his family sailed to New York City in 1941 but could not stay because their quota number had not come up yet. They booked passage to the Philippines and landed in Manila in May or June 1941. He describes their life as Belgian subjects under Japanese occupation. Jacques attended a private school run by the Christian Brothers, and describes his religious education as a Sephardic Jew in a congregation dominated by Ashkenazic German Jews, as well as antisemitic persecution by Filipino students. He gives an interesting account of Japanese cultural attitudes and their treatment of foreigners and natives. The Japanese brought civilian Jewish internees to High Holiday services. He tells a charming story of how a Japanese officer helped his brother get his scooter back from a German Nazi family. Jacques describes conditions in Manila towards the end of the war and liberation by Americans. Jewish chaplains held a Passover Seder for the Jewish community at the Manila racetrack. The Lipetz family left Manila for America in late 1945 and received a permanent visa five years later.

Historical endnotes by Dr. Michael Steinlauf are in the transcript.

Interviewee: LIPETZ, Jacques Date: July 21, 1988

Myra Davis, nee Miki Heller, was born July 12, 1936 in Kovno, Lithuania, the only child in an affluent Jewish family. Her parents were Franz and Fanny Heller. After the Russian invasion in 1940, her family was forced to move from their large home to much smaller quarters. In 1940, they immigrated to Japan with transit visas and visas for Curacao, which were not used. Instead, they went to Shanghai, in 1941, after a year in Kobe, Japan, where Myra attended a French Catholic school.

In the French quarter of Shanghai, they lived comfortably until the Japanese occupation forced them into the Hongkew Ghetto. Her father, despondent about their impoverishment, committed suicide. When the war ended, her mother worked for the American Army and met a Jewish colonel, David Bare (phonetic), whom she married in 1947. The family lived in Beijing, China, Linz, Austria and South Carolina, United States. Myra became a translator for the American government, married Arnold Davis and they live with their two children in Boca Raton, Florida.

Recorded at the Rickshaw Reunion - a meeting in October 1999 at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia of refugees who found refuge in Shanghai during World War II.

Joseph Levy was born on August 22, 1911 in Eschweiler, Germany. Despite antisemitic harassment during childhood, he enjoyed his childhood in public and private Jewish schools and in a Jugendbund youth group.

On January 31, 1933, his father and older brother—warned by a friendly local Nazi leader—fled before storm troopers ransacked their butcher shop in Siegburg. Some Christian employees helped shelter the family at that time and later delivered a ransom for the father’s release from Dachau.

In 1937, Joseph obtained an American visa and joined his siblings in New York City. Their parents followed, aided by the Red Cross and a Jewish organization. They sailed in a fishing boat from Barcelona, with a brief stay in Cuba, before arriving in the United States in December 1941.

Most of this interview narrates the stories of his father in hiding and forced labor and his brother in resistance groups in France and Spain (both of whom had already died at the time of this interview).

Sylvia Ebner, née Klein, was born September 10, 1929, in Bodrogkisfalud, Hungary. She describes her education, relations with non-Jews, and learning to cope with children who stoned her on her way to school. After the German invasion in March 1944, persecution and anti-Jewish measures increased. Sylvia and her family were taken to the Satoraljaujhely Ghetto with Jews from several other towns. Their house was looted as soon as they walked out. She describes several incidents of extreme brutality by Germans.

She describes the transport to Auschwitz in cattle cars and their dehumanization. Her parents managed to observe Shabbat and her father tried to prepare Sylvia to cope with what she had to face. Sylvia describes their arrival at Auschwitz May 1944, processing and selections by Dr. Mengele. Many, including her mother and other relatives, were loaded on trucks and gassed immediately.

Sylvia was marched to Birkenau. She describes the horrible conditions, the smell from the crematorium and how they tried to survive. She worked as a slave laborer in Brzézinka also known as “Canada”, sorting belongings taken from Jews. She risked her life to smuggle food to her cousin. The starving girls were offered food on fast days such as Tisha B’ Av but refused to eat because the food was not kosher.

Sylvia got Scarlet Fever and was hospitalized in a Revier (sick quarters) for six weeks. She survived seven selections by Dr. Mengele, saw him operate without any anesthesia, and a Christian woman kill her newborn baby to save him from Mengele’s experiments. Germans drained large amounts of blood from girls who survived typhus or scarlet fever to make serums. After Sylvia recovered, she worked as a slave laborer. First at heavy-duty unproductive work while living in the barracks, then in a factory in Oberhohen-Elbe, Sudeten, Germany. The German woman in charge risked her life to find food for the prisoners. She was liberated by Russian troops May 1, 1945, returned to Hungary, received aid from the Joint Distribution Committee (Joint); escaped from Hungary and immigrated to Canada.

Interviewee: EBNER, Sylvia Date: February 14, 2001

Mr. Goldfine served in the Infantry, 3464th Medium Maintenance Company, 9th Army, during World War II. He describes a factory that manufactured synthetic rubber and obviously used and abused slave laborers. He encountered slave laborers of many nationalities in Letzlingen, including some women but only one Jew.

On April 15, 1945, the commanding general ordered every American soldier, including Mr. Goldfine's company, to visit Gardelegen, where over 3500 victims had been burned to death in a barn the day before. Mr. Goldfine briefly describes the reactions of the few survivors once they realized they were liberated, as well as how the survivors and the German population were treated by the Americans. German civilians in Letzlingen were hostile and set booby traps for the American soldiers.

Mr. Goldfine explains why he doesn't consider himself a liberator and why he thinks not enough was done to save more people. He relates how witnessing the above atrocities deeply affected him and other men in his unit and resulted in a hostile attitude towards German civilians they encountered.

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.