Oral History Interview with Sidney H. Willig

Ida Rudley, née Rothman, was born April 22, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, into a middle class family. She encountered antisemitism even before Hitler annexed Austria. Her life changed after the Anschluss in 1938, as anti-Jewish measures took effect. She explains why it was almost impossible for Jews to leave Austria. She mentions several instances of help from non-Jews, including an encounter with a German officer who took an interest in her while she and her mother were trying to escape from Austria. They were smuggled across the border to Yugoslavia in 1941 and lived in Zagreb illegally, always on the run, sheltered by both Jews and non-Jews until they were warned that the Gestapo was looking for them. Ida and her mother turned themselves in to the Gestapo - armed with enough pills to commit suicide - and managed to talk their way out of detention. Using forged papers, they accompanied a group of German-Jewish orphans bound for Palestine to the Italian part of Yugoslavia.

After living briefly in Ljubljana, they were sent to a concentration camp in Ferramonti, Italy. Prisoners included Greek, Italian and Yugoslavian Partisans as well as Jews. The Italians ran the camp in a very humane fashion and even told Jews where to hide from the retreating German troops. Ida and her husband were married by a rabbi in the concentration camp and had a civil ceremony later, after liberation by the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in 1943. After a brief stay in a transit camp in Cinecitta, run by UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) Ida, her husband and her mother went to the United States on a military ship in 1947.

Interviewee: RUDLEY, Ida Date: April 5, 1984

Sam Don (formerly Zalman Domb) was born on January 15, 1927 in Ostrykół, a Polish village. He describes pre-war life: schooling, farming and family history, antisemitism exhibited from non-Jewish children, religious life. His family and the six other Jewish families in the town were farmers. Sam describes the German occupation in 1939, restrictions put on Jews, and forced labor in forests. He describes their deportation to the Makow Ghetto and describes Polish townspeople looting Jewish homes.

Sam was caught smuggling food for the Polish underground and imprisoned in Plotsk for nearly a year. In December, 1942 he was sent to Birkenau /Auschwitz and was there until early autumn 1943. Sam details his many experiences in Auschwitz including the hierarchy and relationship of Kapos, Stubenältesters and Blockführers, the Sonderkommando and daily routines. Sam was saved when a Jewish guard exchanged him for a dead body, when he was designated as a Muselmann. He worked in an excavation kommando distributing tools, but through his connections with the Jewish guard—who had saved him—smuggled lots of goods back and forth from “Canada” (the group sorting clothes from the bodies of dead Jews) to bribe Kapos and Blockführers. He describes his brother’s electrocution on a fence in Auschwitz in 1943 during one of these smuggling operations and also shares a gruesome story about Christmas Day in Auschwitz and how the Germans shot and tortured inmates for fun. He explains why the Polish townspeople had to have known what was happening because of their proximity to the camp; the chimneys, flames, smoke and the smell. He describes an attempted escape of three Jews from Auschwitz and the Polish civilians returning them to the Germans. He also describes one instance of kindness from a German guard who threw him a piece of bread.

Sam was later sent as a political prisoner to the coal mine, Jaworzno. In January 1944 he witnessed the massacre of hundreds of Jews there. He describes a forced march to Jawiszowice in spring of 1944 and describes the elderly or infirm being shot before the march started. He describes three months of hard labor and another forced marched to Ohrdruf where he describes improved conditions. Sam was later sent to several slave labor camps in East Germany, then to Buchenwald and later to Terezin (Theresienstadt), Czechoslovakia, where he was liberated by the Russians on May 8, 1945.

Sam met his wife in 1946 in the German displaced persons camp, Heidenheim. They came to the United States in June, 1949 and were married in a synagogue in Philadelphia on October 23, 1949. The rest of Sam’s family perished in Majdanek, Chekonoff (slave labor camp) and Auschwitz.

In 1988, Sam added to his testimony with another interview, describing a return trip to Poland with his son and daughter.

See also Sam Don’s 1988 interivew in which he discusses his experiences on his trip back to Poland, and his wife, Shirley Don’s interview.

Charles Willner was born in 1926, in Dombrowa, Poland into a large, religiously observant family. His father was in the cattle business and a decorated Polish Army veteran.

Charles describes anti-Jewish regulations after September 1939. In early 1940, when only 13 years old, he was sent to Pustkow labor camp and describes conditions there. In November 1940, he was held in Montelupich prison on a trumped-up charge. He was tortured and released after six weeks. While at Pustkow he was given passes by a German officer and was able to smuggle food to relatives in Dombrowa and Tarnow. He was caught and sentenced to die by German S.S., but another man was killed instead of him.

Charles stayed in Pustkow until 1942 when he was transferred to Mielec, a Heinkel-Messerschmitt airplane factory. He describes the heavy labor and surviving typhoid. He also explains why most prisoners did not try to escape from Mielec.

In 1944, prisoners were transferred to an underground salt mine then to Plaszow, near Krakow. He describes in detail his 11 weeks at Poliowa Gorka, a site of mass murders. Mounds of corpses they had to uncover and burn after their gold teeth had been extracted. He witnessed the execution of people caught crossing the border, random killings, and retaliation killings if anyone managed to escape. He describes how he survived by chance.

In late 1944, after a stop in Gross Rosen, he arrived at Oscar Schindler’s ammunition factory in Brinnlitz where he remained until May 8, 1945 when the Russians liberated the camp. He testifies to Schindler’s protection of his workers and refers to acts of sabotage. He also speaks of his own attitudes toward Germans today and his pride in the State of Israel.

After liberation in 1945 he searched for his family, encountered Polish antisemitism, including the murder of a fellow concentration camp survivor. He left Poland for Prague, then Munich. There he was united with his older brother, the only other survivor of his immediate family. With the help of Jewish agencies, the two remained in Germany. In May 1948, Charles Willner emigrated to the United States. He met his future wife, a survivor of Auschwitz, on the boat.

Charlotte Sonnenberg, nee Lichtendorf, was born in Bad Neuenahr, Germany January 22, 1910 into a middle class family. The Nazi boycott in 1932 and the Nurenberg Laws affected her life and her family adversely. Charlotte met and married her husband Doctor Herbert Alexander in Leipzig. On November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht) Charlotte and her husband were driven out of their apartment and her husband was sent to Buchenwald. He was released because Charlotte obtained tickets to go to Shanghai. They sailed to Shanghai on the SS Conte Biancamano in March 1939.

On arrival in Shanghai they were taken to a camp in Hongkew. They found work at the American Presbyterian Mission in Tenghsien in a hospital run by the mission. Charlotte describes in great detail their pleasant life in the mission, their relationship with other Jews and the patients. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese took over the hospital. All the missionaries were either deported or sent to concentration camps. Her husband was put in charge of the hospital. Civilians were trapped once the war ended, the Japanese left, and fighting erupted between the Chinese National Army and the Communists.

Charlotte relates many riveting details about their escape to Hsuchowfu and the death of her husband. She continued alone to Tsingtao and worked as a teacher at an American Catholic Middle School. She left China in 1947 – on a troop transport – to Philadelphia. Later she met and married her husband Henry Sonnenberg there. She talks about her impression of and life in the United States as well as her love of China.

Victor Cooper2 was born December 26, 1914 in Strzemieszyce, Poland, the youngest of four brothers. He was married and had a six-month old son when he was drafted into the Polish Army in 1939. His wife, son and all of his family perished during the war years.

Victor describes how he was captured by Germans in 1940and was segregated from non-Jewish POWs at Majdanek death camp in Lublin. He escaped with the help of a fellow Jewish prisoner, and fled back home where he was in Strzemieszyce Ghetto for a short time,subjected to forced labor and witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto and German atrocities. He was then deported to 10 labor and concentration camps, including Będzin, Markstadt, Gross Rosen, Flossenbürgand Buchenwald. He vividly describes his experiences, conditions, backbreaking cement work and digging tunnels and how he fought to stay alive. He details a month-long death march from Buchenwald to Dachau in April 1945, during which he escaped and was recaptured several times.

In May, 1945, he was found hiding in Bavarian woods by a Jewish doctor serving with the American 7th Army. He was taken, disoriented and ill, to a Catholic hospital in Straubing. After his recovery, he worked with an American lawyer, helping to regain possession of Jewish property in the area. In June 1949, he emigrated to the United States under the displaced persons quota. He held many jobs with the United Service for Young and New Americans and several trade unions. He remarried and fathered two children. His daughter became a lawyer and his son is a professor at Columbia University.

Former last name was Kupfer.

This was recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, Pa.

Rabbi Helmut Frank, born April 15, 1912 in Wiesbaden,Germany, talks about his early interest in Judaism, details pre-war Jewish life including religious education, relations with Gentiles and sporadic antisemitism. He describes education at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin from 1931 to 1937. He also studied at Berlin University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn in 1935. He gives his impression of Leo Baeck and his role in the Reichsvertretung. He explains why many Jews still felt they could survive in Germany.

He was ordained in 1937 and was appointed as a Rabbi in Worms. He provides a history of the synagogue. His vivid, detailed eye-witness account of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938 includes several vignettes, the burning of his synagogue, damage to his apartment, and lack of reaction by the fire department. He was arrested, along with other Jews. They were compelled to clean the debris in the streets, then transported to Buchenwald. He describes brutality, organization of camp life, lack of medical treatment, effect of incarceration on prisoners’ physical and mental health and religious observance. He mentions Aktion Jews and Jehova’s Witnesses and that Nazis warned released prisoners never to talk about Buchenwald. He worked in a labor squad but was released after his parents got him a visa for China.

Rabbi Frank returned to Worms where he opened a House of Prayer and a school with permission from the German authorities. He describes the extent of the damage in Worms and the continued persecution of the Jewish community. He left for the United States in August, 1939. He discusses the immigration process, postwar conditions in Worms, and restoration of the Worms synagogue in 1961.