Oral History Interview with Diane G. Weinstock

Harvey Shreibman was born March 25, 1925 in Pruzana, Poland. He attended a yeshiva and worked in his father’s leather manufacturing business until Russia occupied Poland. He describes difficult conditions under the Russians, losing the business, harassment of his father for not working because he would not work on Shabbat and less availability of food and commodities. Harvey attended a Russian school where he was indoctrinated with communist beliefs. He describes the German invasion of 1941, when he witnessed airplanes falling from the sky while out with a youth group.

Soon after, his family was forced into the PruzanaGhetto, where Harvey worked as a shoemaker. He describes extremely difficult conditions in the ghetto, relations with the Judenrat and resistance efforts.

On January 28, 1943, the ghetto was evacuated and his family was sent by cattle car to Birkenau. He describes Shabbat observance during the journey. Harvey details vividly their arrival at the camp and his separation from his parents. During the next six weeks, he endured frequent beatings and other forms of torture. He describes his transfer to Auschwitz and describes it as a much better experience than in Birkenau. He worked with the shoemakers, and describes daily beatings from the Kapos. After a year was transferred again to Monowice-Buna, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, where he worked from before sunrise until late at night unloading freight cars. He mentions the camp orchestra that played as prisoners marched to work. He describes some instances of kindnesses from some non-Jewish inmates and was able to get a better job after finding a cousin in Buna.

In 1945, he was liberated by the American Army, lived in Bavaria post-war and later settled in the United States where he was married in 1953.

Albert (Abraham) Ferleger was born in Chmielnik, Poland, June 15, 1919. He was one of six children from a very Orthodox family and had a public school as well as a yeshiva education. He describes the customs of the Jewish Kehillahin histown, relates the Polish antisemitism before the war and describes what occurred after the Germans took over the town. He describes the influx of populations from several different towns being forced into their ghetto and describes atrocities (people being killed on the spot and burying them) and deportations. Albert was sent tozwangsarbeit, forced labor, where he shoveled snow and worked in the ghetto community kitchen.

Albert fled from the Germans and was hidden by a Polish farmer for two years: he was buried in a hole, naked, under the farmers stable, along with another Jewish man. They subsisted on bread and potatoes. He details their horrid conditions.

With the Russian victory and the help of the Briha1 (underground Zionist organization helping Jews get to Palestine) he became the leader of a group of Jews that was smuggled across the Polish and Czechoslovakian borders to Germany pretending to be Greek and later as German Jews.

He met his wife (who was liberated from Theresienstadt) through the Briha, as well. They were sent to Munich and then to a displaced persons camp in Regensdorf, Germany for seven months. With the help of HIAS and President Truman’s aid to refugees they went to relatives in Philadelphia. He relates in great detail how he was able to survive during and after the war, how his experiences challenged his religious beliefs and his bitterness that not more was not done to help the Jews.

LucynaBerkowicz was born in Lwów in 1914, one of five children. Her father was a plumber who served in the Austrian army in WWI. He was also an ardent Zionist. Lucyna became active in leftist movements in her early twenties and became a union organizer and leader in a factory. Lucyna describes the Russian Occupation of Lwów(1939)under the German-Soviet Pact and antisemitism in the Russian and gentile hierarchy. She describes her work experiences, attending university, and her eventual realization that members of Zionist Youth organizations were jailed as political prisoners by the Russians.

Lucyna’shusbandwas killed during the Germanoccupation of Lwów(1941), after he fled(along with many Jewish men) with the Russian army. Lucyna describes many restrictions placed on Jews and how life became perilous. She describes how her sister-in-law was picked up and never heard from again. Lucynawas able to secure false papers with the help of a girlfriend’s gentilehusband.

Lucynaescaped Lwów, with the help of a Jewish man who would be her future husband and more than 20 others who wanted to return to their families in Radom.Lucyna describes the dangerous journey through JudenreinLublin, the aid of a gentile Pole who hid them in his basement until morning and then escorted them to Radom. She eventually came to Wolanów, a small rather primitive town. She and her second husband were married there in March. They worked for the Wehrmacht in the Wolanówlabor camp. She describes witnessing Jews from Radom who were forced to dig their own graves and were shot. At the end of 1943 she and her husband were deported to another labor camp, Starachowice, where she worked in an ammunition factory. It was decided that because she did not look Jewish, she should escape with her false identity papers. She eventually volunteered to work in Germany and because her German was good, worked as an interpreter in a reprocessing business in a small city. As the end of the war approached, she made her way back to Poland, to Radom, and worked for the Polish government as a non-Jew still under her false papers and lived with her husband’s aunt. She saw evidence that Poles killed Jewish partisans in the woods. Around the same time she learned about the pogroms in Kielce. She also reunited with her youngest brother who had returned from Russia and told her the details of how many members of her family had perished. One brother and one sister survived.

Lucyna explains how she got permission to search for her husband in Vienna and used it as excuse to flee Poland with his aunt and two of his nieces. Lucynafound her husband and a brother-in-law in Austria as prisoners in a Polish army camp. They came to Germany to Bergen-Belsen and then eventually made it to a Displaced Persons Camp in Stuttgart. Lucyna suffered a miscarriage during the travels. Lucyna, her husband and her brother emigrated to the United States in 1947.

See also the interview with her husband, Daniel Berkowicz.

Holocaust Jewish 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives

World War, 1939 - 1945 - Personal narratives, Jewish, female

Atrocities

Displaced Persons Camp -- Stuttgart

Germanoccupation -- Lwów

Hiding – false papers

Jews - Polish

Starachowice - labor camp

Survival skills

Wolanów -labor camp

Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

L.I. born November 1923, lived in Bucharest, Romania before, during and after World War II. She relates her family history, her experiences growing up in Bucharest and her education at Catholic, public, and Medical schools. She cites several instances of discrimination against herself and other Jewish students.

She describes increasing antisemitism and restrictions against Jews, even those who converted, and their effect on the Jewish community and her own life. Her father lost his job. L.I. went to Onescu, a Jewish medical school staffed by Jewish teachers, and interned at Jewish hospitals. Both L.I. and her father worked at forced labor.

L.I. talks about conditions in the Jewish community, random killings of Jews, and brutality by the Iron Guard, but that many Jewish institutions continued to function. After the war, her family reclaimed their house which had been confiscated in December, 1941. She completed her medical education. Jewish students were allowed to attend schools but were not fully accepted. L.I. wasnot allowed to leaveRomania once she becameadoctor but she and her husband were able to leave as part of an exchange program in 1978 and came to the United States in 1979.

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.

Elie Wiesel, as a young man, signs a copy of his memoir La Nuit, first published in 1958. It is a shortened French version of his Yiddish memoir, Un di velt hot geshvign (And the Word Remained Silent), published in 1955.