Oral History Interview with Frederick A. Walters

Mr. Donsky served in the 101st Airborne in Germany during World War II. His unit entered a concentration camp in Germany (he does not remember which one) near the end of April 1945. He thought the prisoners might have been Hindus and also Jews. He describes the pitiful conditions of the survivors, some of whom tried to turn on the remaining guards. The survivors were transferred out of the camp shortly after liberation. He relates how he and the other soldiers in his unit were affected by what they saw at this camp.

Jerry Jacobs born April 25, 1929 in Lodz, Poland was the youngest son in a wealthy Jewish family. Their father was an accountant, a prosperous property owner and Associate Conductor of the Lodz Symphony Orchestra. One brother was an accomplished violinist, another studied piano and Jerry hoped to join the family "Kinder Orchestra."

He discusses the drastic changes that took place in 1939 with the German occupation: closing of schools, having to stay inside for safety and dangers for Jews on the streets. He describes his family’s deportation from the suburbs to Baluty (the poor section) in the Lodz Ghetto.

He details inhumane conditions experienced in cattle cars to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Rehmsdorf, after a death march in the snow in 1944. In January 1945 he escaped, and with his knowledge of German poses as an Ostdeutscher (Volksdeutsche) and briefly as a scout for the U.S. Army. After reuniting with his brothers in Lodz, they immigrated to the United States in 1947.

He became a successful realtor in New York City, where he devoted himself to organizing the Interfaith Committee of Remembrance to produce annual Holocaust Memorial concerts, attended by thousands at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine.

Anna Berenholz, nee Bohorochaner, one of six children was born on June 28, 1924 in Yasin(a), Czechoslovakia into a very observant Orthodox family. They were farmers. Anna describes pre-war Yasin, a small town of 15,000 of whom about 900 were Jews. Two of Anna’s brothers were in the Czech army but they crossed the border (1938) and joined the Russian army and survived. At 16, Anna was sent to a Hungarian military prison in Uzhgorod. After she was freed her parents sent her to Budapest, Hungary to work as a maid for a Jewish doctor, Dr. Rosenau.

In 1944 when Adolf Eichman came to Budapest conditions for Jews worsened. In April 1944 Anna’s parents were taken to a ghetto. Later, they along with her two other brothers died in Auschwitz, and her sister was shot in a protest in Bergen-Belsen. In the summer of 1944, Dr. Rosenau got her a passport to a Swedish house run by Raoul Wallenberg. But in December (1944) she was caught by the Germans and put on a death march. She was pulled out of the march along with other young Jews by orders of Raoul Wallenberg. She never met him but owes him her life. The Soviets freed Budapest on January 20, 1945 and since Anna spoke Russian, German, Czech, Hungarian and Yiddish, she worked for the Russian commandant as translator.

After the war she went back to Brno in Czechoslovakia to finish high school and study nursing. She volunteered for the Haganah (Zionist underground group), working to rescue Jewish orphans who had been hidden with Christian families. The Jewish Agency was offering $1,000 for each child and Anna was able to rescue 18. In May 1949, she took the orphans to Prague, then to Austria and Italy and then onto a freighter ship to Haifa. She stayed in Israel, marrying the boats’ engineer and several years later moved to the United States. Anna tried to contact Raoul Wallenberg to thank him but was unable to do so.

Karessa Foldvary served as a nurse in the U.S. Army during World War II, in field and evacuation hospitals in France and Germany, from November, 1944 until spring, 1945. On May 2, 1945, she moved with the American 7th Army to Dachau Concentration camp, several days after liberation. She describes the emaciation of the thousands of living male prisoners and the dead bodies of women and children piled outside the crematorium. She mentions a typhus epidemic and the use of DDT powder on prisoners. Details of conditions in the boxcars that transported prisoners from Auschwitz to Dachau are related. She mentions loss of American property resulting from thievery by demented prisoners, and describes viewing and photographing 16 wagonloads of dead bodies. Neighboring German farmers were forced by the American military to load and drive the wagons into München (Munich) to show the local population what occurred at Dachau. She mentions hostility from some Germans in Limburg and relations with others in that city, with whom American nurses bartered soap and cigarettes for laundry service.

Ellen Tarlow, née Meinberg, was born in 1927 in Gütersloh, Westphalia, Germany, where her family had lived since the 17th century. Her father, Paul Meinberg, an importer of cattle, was dec‌orated with the Iron Cross in WWI. She describes her early childhood in public school and then a Lyceum for girls. She first felt antisemitism at age of eight and was expelled from school in 1938. She studied Hebrew and Bible once a week. She details Nazi atrocities during and after Crystal Night (Kristallnacht): social ostra‌cism, burning of their home and synagogue, her father’s deportation to and flight from Buchenwald. Remaining family found shelter in a local cloister then fled to Bielefeld. She describes subsequent life in a Judenhaus in Gütersloh, including attempts to educate the children there. HIAS helped the family many times; there was also aid from several Germans in Gütersloh. She briefly mentions a failed attempt to emigrate to Haiti. After many disappointments and a difficult experience at the American Consulate in Stuttgart, the family left Germany for the United States, via Lisbon, Portugal, on the SS Mouzinho, in August 1941. She describes the journey from Berlin to Lisbon in a sealed train, and her stay in Lisbon in a group home run by HIAS. She describes how refugees organized to cope with primitive conditions on the ship, her arrival and processing in Staten Island, NY, and her life in New York in a group home for refugees sponsored by HIAS. She reflects at length on the family’s adjustment in the United States and the survivor’s guilt she feels. She talks about her return to Germany, by invitation, in 1985, accompanied by her husband and daughter.

D.S. son of a Jewish banker and a Protestant mother, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. He stayed in Berlin until 1948. He discusses his family’s history, his education and how their life as Jews changed and became increasingly restricted after 1935. Non-Jewish relatives broke off contact until after the war ended.

He briefly describes Kristallnacht. His father’s business and property were confiscated. D.S. and his father were arrested and detained at Rosenstrasse for one week and saw the Rosenstrasse Action by non-Jewish spouses of the prisoners. His family was forced to move into rooms shared with two other families. After the Jewish schools were closed, D.S. worked for the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland for several months until the entire staff was deported in vans. He was spared because of his non-Jewish mother and believes that this is why his father survived. He became Bar Mitzvah in 1941. D.S. and his father were assigned to a labor camp in Berlin in 1942. D.S. resisted the Germans through sabotage while in the labor unit and as a member of a small resistance group composed of young men from mixed marriages. He describes life during the Battle of Berlin and postwar under Russian occupation.

D.S. completed his education in a German high school. He could no longer endure life in Germany and came to the United States in 1948, helped by HIAS. His parents remained in Germany, but his mother joined him after his father’s death.

D.S. cites personal encounters to prove Germans knew what happened to Jews in the camps as well as a few incidents of help from non-Jews. He talks about his feelings about Germans and his determination to fight antisemitism.