Oral History Interview with Sara Melmed

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.

Bernard Harman enlisted in the United States Air Force in November 1941, trained as a radio operator and gunner, and flew to Scotland with a B-17 "Flying Fortress" crew. They joined 388th Bomb Group in England for missions over France and Germany, until October 14, 1943 when their plane was shot down. He describes his fear of dying as the plane crashed at Weilburg. Because he discarded his "H" dog tags before he was captured, he was never identified as a Jew.

After six weeks at a German military base, he was sent to Frankfurt with other prisoners of war, where guards had to shield them from hostile civilians. He was transported by train to Krems, Austria, where he spent the balance of the war in Stalag 17 B, for enlisted men only. He details the extreme cold, limited food and water, lack of medical treatment, and lengthy roll calls. A visit from the Red Cross is mentioned, and their food parcels are said to have saved POW’S from starvation, even though he claims that the Germans took many of the Red Cross parcels for themselves. The prisoners were able to listen to BBC broadcasts. Descriptions of camp life, and of various events, as well as several poems recorded in a journal Mr. Harman kept while in prison are quoted during the interview.

In April 1945, the camp was evacuated, and he was led on a 20 day march toward the American lines with several thousand other POW’s. He describes the ordeal, ending in Nancy, France on V-E day. On the road he witnessed Germans shooting Jews in forced labor groups when they could no longer keep up. While recuperating at Camp Lucky Strike near Le Havre, France, Mr. Harman met a friend who had been in a German camp for Jewish POW’s, whom he describes as a "skeleton case", brought in on a stretcher. After a month, Harman was shipped to Ft. Dix, N. J. for army discharge.