Oral History Interview with Bertha Rothschild

Max Roisman was born July 25, 1913 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland, he and his wife left Warsaw to go to Russia. Stopped at the border, he remained in Slawatycze and worked with a local tailor for German SS border guards. Warned by an SS officer, who had made a deathbed promise to his Jewish grandfather never to kill a Jew, Max and his wife hid in a nearby town, then went to Wohyn posing as a Gentile. Using a sewing machine smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto, he worked as a tailor with a non-Jewish partner until he was ordered to work for the Germans as a tailor in Suchowola, an open labor camp.

On May 3, 1943, the camp was liquidated and workers were evacuated to Majdanek. Max, with his wife and her brother, signed up to go to Auschwitz unaware of the nature of the camp. He was sent to Buna to work as a slave laborer for I.G. Farben Industry, then on a forced march to Gleiwitz where they borded a train to Oranienburg (a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen) to work in a brick factory. Later he worked as a tailor for the commandant of the camp, Major Heydrich and was put in charge of four other tailors. He obtained food and clothing for other inmates and himself by trading stolen supplies. In April 1945, Max was wounded during an air raid. He received excellent medical care due to the intervention of the camp commandant. He hid when the camp was evacuated and the German military ran away. The remaining survivors organized to get food and water until the Russians liberated the camp. He describes conditions at Oranienburg, help from the Russians, and how he traveled East, across the border and was separated from his wife. He was sheltered by a Polish family who had hidden him once before and was reunited with his wife.

They lived in his wife’s hometown, moved to Reichenbach where he opened a shop, then briefly in Israel. He returned to Austria, worked as a tailor for USEC, and later emigrated to the United States with his wife and children in January 1956.

Interview: ROISMAN, Max Date: April 22, 1985

Born September 27, 1925 in Munich, Germany, HenryKahn was an only child in a wealthy Jewish family. His father was the major wholesaler of coal in Germany. His great-grandfather was a nobleman, with a title from Emperor Franz Joseph.

Henry describes his childhood memories of attendingpublic school until age eight. When ostracized by the gentile students, his parents sent him to a Jewish school, which was closed after Kristallnacht. His father was sent to Dachau but was released on the same day when he showed visa and steamship tickets to leave Germany. Henry describes their hurried exit and possessions that were confiscated by the Gestapo. The family sailed to the United States from London on January 26, 1939. They were sponsored by a prominent cousin in Philadelphia, Herman Obermayer, and were aided by HIAS.

In the 1960s, Henry’s father began to correspond with Albert Speer, the Nazi architect, and visited him at the German prison in Spandau. Henry also visited Speer, who became a successful writer and donated royalties to Israel and to Jewish old-age homes.