Oral History Interview with Mina Lustiger

Louie Mermelstein, the second oldest of 13 children, was born May 12, 1927 in Klascanovo1, Czechoslovakia, near Munkács. His father was a kosher butcher. He describes good relations between Jews and non-Jews before the war. Louie details changes during the Hungarian occupation in 1940: his father’s deportation to a slave labor camp, restrictions against the Jews, having to wear yellow star, and clandestine slaughtering and delivering of kosher meat to make a living.

Louie describes fleeing from a round-up in 1944. He hid in the forest about four weeks with two uncles. During this time he found out that the Jews were forced to a brick factory in the Munkács Ghetto and deported to concentration camps and Auschwitz among them most of his family. Louie mentions help by Gentiles who brought him food while in hiding. A gentile friend also gave him his nephew’s identity papers. Louie traveled to Uzhgorod with these false papers, went to the step-sister who helped him settle there with a job, and lived in their house. After some time, he returned to the forest to find his uncles and was denounced by a Gentile who knew him. He describes being beaten by police, thrown in jail and that his employer was also brought to jail for hiring a Jew.2

Louie was held in the jail for days and gives a detailed description of how the police rounded up more of the few Jews who were still hiding. Eventually his group of 30 people is deported to a transit camp called Sarvar where they join a group of about 2,000 to be deported to Auschwitz. Louie details his escape from the train in an area that happened to be under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg and how a decent Slovakian farmer and SS officer direct him to the Jewish Committee in Žilina about 13 miles away. He connects with an uncle and his family in Bratislava and secures a job as a plumber’s helper. In the fall of 1944, Louie’s uncle gathers the 10 family members in an attic hideout above the factory where he works. A middle-aged gentile friend takes over his position as superintendent of the factory and brings them food after dark. They hide there six months, surviving the Allied bombing, and are liberated by the Soviet army May 8, 1945.

After the war, Louie works for the Soviet army. Because he didn’t like how they treated the farmers, he went to the American liberated zone (Germany) and started looking for surviving relatives. He describes returning to Munkács, reuniting with his sisters in Neustadt-Holstein, Germany, finding a cousin in the U.S. Army and discovering that his father was killed the week before liberation in Flossenbürg, Germany. His G.I. cousin’s family in Long Island secures them affidavits to emigrate. Louie emigrates to the United States in June 1946.

See interviews with his siblings Lillian Taus and Shirley Don and brother-in-law, Sam Don.

Konrad Bieber was born in 1916 in Berlin, (Charlottenburg) Germany. His family lived in Gruenwald and Konrad went to the gymnasium there. His father was a German scholar and writer and his mother ran a gymnastics school. In 1933 the family left for Paris after warnings that the situation for Jews was worsening.

In 1939 Konrad married and joined the French army. He was captured and sent to various P.O.W. and labor camps in southern France. While his parents were in non-occupied southern France they received visas to the United States (via Marseilles and Lisbon) with the help of Varian Fry. In 1943 Konrad and his wife went into hiding with French farmers for 18 months. He describes his being helped by many French non-Jews. His wife lived in Montauban were she worked for the Joint Distribution Committee. In 1944 she witnessed a massacre by the retreating German army in Tulle, France. At that time Konrad was a sergeant in the French underground.

They were liberated on August 19, 1944 and were able to come out of hiding and live as Jews again in the town. Konrad was sent to Paris to be an interpreter. His son was born in 1945. He stayed in Marsac (near Montauban) and was a teacher there from 1945-47. In 1947 the family received visas to come to the United States, where Konrad taught scientific German at Lehman College, in New York.

John (formerly György/George) Sauber, was born August 14, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary. His family lived in Rakoskeresztur until 1936 when they moved back to Budapest. After 1942 or 1943 food shortages, persecution of Jews, wearing the yellow star, and deportations started. Non-Jewish Hungarians brought his family some food. His mother’s store was taken over by two Christian “partners”. He attended school with non-Jewish students, had religious instruction and attended the Dohany Temple. He experienced a few instances of discrimination while a student.

In 1944, when he was 17 years old, Mr. Sauber was drafted into a forced labor unit that went to the Russian front. He was wounded and put on a Red Cross train. Because he was Jewish, he received no medical treatment and was transferred to a deportation train for Hungarian Jews. He describes conditions on the train and his arrival and processing at Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp. He talks about conditions at Bergen-Belsen pre and post liberation and his activities in great detail, including removing hair and gold teeth from corpses and how he managed to survive. He witnessed brutal treatment of inmates. The Germans fled just before the camp was liberated by Allied troops. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) cared for the survivors.

Mr. Sauber returned to Budapest and was reunited with his father. His mother and sister had been deported and killed. He had gone to medical school in Hungary, resumed his education, then went to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, run by UNRRA, and to a camp in Bamberg with a group planning to go to Palestine. He emigrated to Saskatoon, Canada with a group of Jewish orphans sponsored by the Canadian Jewish Congress, in January 1946, and was helped by Jewish community. He brought his father and stepmother to Canada. He is still haunted by his experiences and trying to cope with the loss of most of his family. He relates a touching episode when saying Kaddish for his stepmother brought him some peace.

Interviewee: SAUBER, John Date: October 21, 1999

David Buchsbaum was born in Gorlice, Poland on April 20, 1921 to a religious family. He was one of 11 children.. He gives a brief description of pre-war Gorliceand the Jewish community which was 25% of the population, about 3,500 Jews. David’s family owned a grocery store.

David describes the mood change among non-Jewish neighbors in 1938 after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and describes how they would stand in front of Jewish stores and businesses announcing, "Do not buy from Jews".

In 1939 once the Nazis occupied Gorlice the family was warned by a non-Jewish neighbor to flee, but the family could not afford the certificate to emigrate to Palestine. David details the anti-Jewish measures 1940: Jews had to wear the Yellow star, Jewish businesses were confiscated, synagogues were closed, Jewish" quarters" were created and David’s father was shot to death by a German soldier right before his eyes. David also witnessed the machine gun shooting of entire Jewish families.

In July, 1942 all males from 12-65 were arrested and marched in the streets; some were shot and David, a brother and others were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. David describes the horrific conditions there: cold, typhus, appells, beatings and the electrified fence. In 1943, as the Russians advanced David and 1,000 other Jews were sent in boxcars to the slave labor camp, Skarzysko. Those who were left behind were either shot in the woods or were gassed in vans and burned. In Skarzysko they made ammunition and David was in in the harshest area, Barrack C. In 1944 David was sent to Buchenwald where all his personal possessions were confiscated, including his tallit and tefillin, which distressed his greatly because he had tried to observe tradition as best he could. As the Russians advanced he was sent to Terezin(Theresienstadt) and was liberated from there on May 8, 1945. David describes that many survivors from Terezin died from overconsumption of food immediately after liberation.

David later returned to Poland to find his relatives but left because of fierce antisemitism and the Kielce pogrom. He traveled to Prague, and was then sent to Salzburg, Austria by the Joint Distribution Committee. The Joint arranged for him to join an uncle in the United States. On June 2, 1949 David arrived in Boston. He and two brothers survived the war.

Margaret Bowman, nee Harnik, was born in Dresden, Germany in 1914. Her family had a dry goods store in Dresden and later moved to Hanover where they bought a shoe store. She very briefly talks about her life in Germany and her relationship with German and East European Jews. Margaret experienced no antisemitism until 1937.

She immigrated to Peru in 1938, later moved to Bolivia where she met and married her husband. In 1939, with help from HIAS, she got her family out of Germany into Bolivia, but many of her relatives were deported and perished. She describes how Jewish refugees lived and established a sense of community in Bolivia aided by the Hilfsverein, a welfare agency. Margaret and her husband moved to America in 1946 and later managed to get some of her relatives into the United States.

Stephen Lerman, the youngest of seven children, was born on September 15, 1927, to an orthodoxfamily in a small, predominately Jewish town, Zambrow, Poland. He also states that his mother was quite traditional, but that his father less so later in life. He describes pre-war Zambrowincluding his schooling, Zionist youth groups, and antisemitism. He shares his very vivid childhood memory of his first experience with a Nazi soldier in 1939 before the Russian occupation. He describes a relatively normal life under Soviet rule until 1941.

Stephen describes the marked difference when the Germans came in in 1941 and details an actionwhen Jews were told to gather at the marketplace. Stephen describes telling his parents he was going to defy the order and run away. His older brother and parents went and were killed outside of town and buried in a mass grave with hundreds of other Jews. The Germans then made a ghetto of the remaining Jews in the town. Stephen describes the conditions in the ghetto and also describes sneaking out to work for a Pole who was his father’s business associate who fed him a little bit.

Toward the end of 1942 the ghetto was liquidated and Stephen describes the deportation in cattle cars to Auschwitz, journey, arrival, and his selection to a non-work group. Due to his quick thinking, he jumped off the truck and snuck into the group slated for work. He became a prisoner of Birkenau from December 1942 until mid-year 1943.Though he was 14, he had a very young appearance and describes several instances when people protected him and helped him to survive. He describes an SS officer in charge of the dynamite commando who snuck him extra food and brought him medicine when he was sick. This officer even helped Stephen not get selected for the crematorium by talking to his friend who was in charge of selections.

Stephen describes a very brief stay in Oranienburg in 1943, a forced march to Sachsenhausen and deportation to the labor camp, Landsberg, a subcamp of Dachau. He describes the treacherous work at Landsbergand how he volunteered for a carpenter position and again was given extra food by his foreman. He was able to stay on this assignment for six months. Stephen describes then end of the war when they were again forced on a march. Eventually as German soldiers started fleeing, the prisoners found themselves hiding for cover in a forest as the American army approached. They were liberated in May 1945. Stephen briefly stayed at Buchberg [phonetic] and then made his way to Munich where he was helped by UNRRA. He eventually made contact with an uncle from Philadelphia who helped him emigrate to the United States August 27, 1949.