Oral History Interview with Liesl Loeb

Meyer Levin served in Europe, as a cannoneer with the 25th Tank Battalion, 14th Armored Division during World War II. About two weeks after the war ended, his tank crew was ordered to proceed to a labor camp near Munich, Germany. He never found out the name of this camp.

He relates how he disobeyed orders of an American officer during an encounter with survivors who found a warehouse full of food and clothing. He describes the pitiful condition of the surviving inmates and the reaction to and interaction with the prisoners and the American soldiers. His unit tried to help as much as they could. In Meyer's opinion, the inmates were Slavs not Jews. His unit stayed in the labor camp for less than a day but the experience lingers with him to this day and made him glad he was fighting Germans.

He was stationed in Berlin as part of the Army of Occupation and had a lot of contact with German civilians. The Germans he talked to denied the existence of the camps, even the German civilians from surrounding villages who were forced to march through the camp he liberated. He explains why he did not believe their protestations of ignorance and innocence and why he is convinced Germans and Austrians he encountered all lied about their actions during the war.

He was also involved in the repatriation of displaced persons under American control who were afraid to go home. Jewish survivors he met during High Holiday services in Austria told him that Poles were worse than the Germans.

Interviewee: LEVIN, Meyer Date: December 9, 1998

Gerald Adler, born June 27, 1925 in Elmshorn, Germany, grew up in a middle-class Orthodox Jewish family. They moved to Berlin where he attended school until 1938. His father lost his job after Hitler came to power. Gerald talks about the effects of the Nuremberg laws on German Jews. During Kristallnacht his father was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen. He was released after two months when his wife secured passage to Trinidad.

Gerald worked on Hakhsharah farms near Hamburg from 1939 to 1941, when he rejoined his family in Berlin. He briefly mentions an aktionin Berlin in 1942 in which all the Jews were arrested at their work places. He explains how he was allowed to go home that night for some unknown reason.

In 1943, after immigration to Trinidad was stopped, the family was deported to Theresienstadt. He credits his father’s record as a decorated World War I veteran for saving them from deportation to Poland. In August of 1943, Gerald was sent back to Wulkow, Germany in a labor detachment building barracks. He describes the increased brutality shown by the SS as the war was coming to a close and describes one incident of humanity shown to him by a lower-ranking officer when he injured his foot.

He discusses his belief in the power of prayer and tells the story of how he and several other workers tried to figure out when Rosh Hashanah would be in order to observe Yom Kippur. On the day they observed Yom Kippur, they received an astonishing and unusually large lunch, which he kept until the evening. When he returned to the barracks prisoners were checked for food, but incredibly he was skipped and enjoyed his large portion of lunch as well as a dinner they received. He returned to Theresienstadt in January 1945 where he was liberated on May 11, 1945. He emigrated to the United States May 21, 1946.

Rebecca writes to her brother Ben, describing in detail the consecration service of the newly built Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia and gives him updates on family and friends.

Tess Etkowicz, nee Erman, was born in Lublin, Poland on September 19, 1924, the youngest of 6 childrenfrom a well-to-do family. The family lived in Lodz, Poland from in 1927-28. Before the war her father was a sales representative in textiles. She describes pre-war Poland including her education, synagogue life, and antisemitism and her fright (at 15) at the German invasion (1939) when she worried about family members in Warsaw. She witnessed cruelty by German soldiers and describes how Polish teens came to their apartment and took artwork and her piano.

Her family then fled to Warsaw (where they rented an apartment) until the area became part of the ghetto. Both she and one sister passed as Polish (since they were blond and spoke fluent Polish) and were thus able to smuggle extra food into the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, Tess and her sister fled the ghetto, and hid in the county. Tess soon decided to go back and smuggle her parents out.

She describes conditions in the Lublin Ghetto: deportation of men, illness, and describes the horrible conditions in the hospital which she witnessed when she contracted typhus. She describes in detail how she smuggled her parents out of the ghetto passing as Poles (wearing shawls, scarfs and caps) and on a train to the small village where she had stayed before. She shares two encounters of aid from non-Jewish Poles.

Tess describes their brazen travels, hiding in the woods, and hiding with sympathetic farmers. Finally, her parents tired of their travels fled to Radomsko with a group of other elderly people, and were later deported to Treblinka. One sister and her four year old daughter were also deported from the Lublin Ghetto to Treblinka. Tess had gone to Warsaw and was passing as a Aryan. She volunteered in a hospital during the Polish uprising against the Nazis in Warsaw. She was sent to a farm because of her injuries and was liberated by the Russians.

After the war she reunited with a sister and a brother in Lodz by chance encounters. They went by train to Paris to meet up with another brother. Tess, two sisters and two brothers survived the war. Tess met her husband, Phil, in Paris. He had been a soldier in the French Fighting Army (FFA) with DeGaulle. They were married in Paris and emigrated to the United States on January 13, 1950.

Rebecca expresses relief at her sister-in-law Maria's recovery from serious illness and shares updates on the health and education of family and friends.