Oral History Interview with Charles Willner

Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.

Lillian Wishnefsky, née Kupferberg, was born in Sosnowiec, Poland in December 1929. Her father was a merchant and her mother a professional pianist. Her family observed the Jewish holidays. She attended public school until fourth grade when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. She describes the formation of the Sosnowiec Ghetto in 1941, the confiscation of her father’s factory, her clandestine education, life in the ghetto, her family’s move to the Srodula Ghetto; her mother obtained false papers and was hidden by Christians. She describes the Nazis taking her father in the middle of the night, murdering her grandparents and deporting her to a camp and later Auschwitz.

Even though she was only 12 ½ years old, she was not sent to the children’s camp in Auschwitz but was instead assigned to forced labor. Her barracks were across the street from the gas chambers. One and a half years later she was sent on the death march to Ravensbrück. She was part of a prisoner exchange arranged by President Roosevelt and traveled to Sweden via Denmark. She describes her experience on a Swedish farm and her move to Stockholm which was precipitated by a Swedish publishing company’s interest in her diary. She moved to the United States in November 1545.

Ina Rothschild talks about her life, education and work in Germany after World War I. Both women lived through Hitler’s rise to power, starting in the 1920s, experienced changes in Jewish life after 1933, and explain the effects of these events on the Jewish community and their interaction with Gentiles. Elsa Jaeckel’s husband, a Gentile, refused to divorce her and suffered the consequences. She mentions a group of Jews in Frankfurt who committed suicide to avoid deportation in 1941. Throughout the interview, Mrs. Rothschild cites many instances of aid and acts of kindness by Gentiles.

Mrs. Rothschild and her husband ran a Jewish orphanage in Esslingen am Neckar, near Stuttgart from 1933 to 1942 when they were deported. The orphanage was ransacked on November 9, 1938. Her husband was beaten, arrested, but later released to care for the displaced orphans. She describes what happened to the children in their care.

Elsa Jaeckel had to work for the Gestapo with 600 other Jewish women who had gentile husbands. She talks about conditions for couples in mixed marriages and living through air raids in Frankfurt. She avoided the transport to Theresienstadt because her husband bribed a former SA man to let her hide in his house. She hid in the attic until the Americans came in 1945.

When the orphanage was closed, the Rothschilds returned to Stuttgart. She describes their lives, her work in an old age home, and her attempts to care for Jewish children. Many of the children, especially the retarded ones, were deported and killed at Ravensburg. The Rothschilds were deported to an Old Age Home in Theresienstadt on August 22, 1942. She describes the process, the actual transport, arrival at Theresienstadt, and brutal treatment and living conditions which improved once the International Red Cross supervised this institution. She saw Reinhard Heydrich shoot Jewish prisoners. Ina Rothschild worked as a nurse, her husband died in July 1944. Many inmates killed themselves. Ina mentions attempts to care for newborn babies. She also volunteered to care for 50 young children from Holland with typhoid fever together with a Jewish doctor. The children survived and were adopted after the war. She was transported to Switzerland with 600 people in February 1945. Elsa came to the United States in 1957, Ina in 1947.

Note: Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library:

Scanned copy of a German letter and the translation.

Ervin Belik, formerly Bleiweiss, was born in Mistek, Czechoslovakia, June 13 1918, the youngest son in a large family. He was educated in both Jewish and Czech schools. After the German occupation March 1939, he was warned that the S.S. was waiting to arrest him and fled to Poland in May 1939.

He joined the Czech army in Krakow and changed his name to Belik. His unit landed with the Russian forces in Poland and was sent to Ukraine. He served as a member of the Czech Army unit under Russian command in Poland and Russia; under British command in Palestine and other countries in the Middle East, and took part in an attack on three French Army units suspected of being Nazi collaborators. He later served with an Australian Army unit in Tobruk. His unit returned to Palestine where he participated in the defense of Haifa and in the rollback of German and Italian forces from El Alamein to Tripoli. Mr. Belik arrived in England in June 1943 on the troopship Mauretania. He met and married his wife, a German Jewish refugee, in England. He participated in the invasion of France and arrived in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia with Patton's Third Army in 1945.

Mr. Belik was discharged in January 1946 and returned to Mistek where he met his brother Ernst. is entire family except for his brother, and aHHis HHis eniree HH

Hkmkjkjkjkjljklkjl His entire family except for his brother, and a sister who lives in Haifa, was murdered. Ervin, his wife and two children lived in Mistek until they emigrated to Israel on July 7, 1949. He describes their new life in Israel.

This interview took place in KiryatMotzkin, Israel.

Suzanne Leibowitz, née Langer, was born May 27, 1928 in Prague and later lived in Novy Jičin, Moldavia. She and her parents were totally assimilated, patriotic Czechs. After the German occupation in 1938, the family fled to the Protectorate of Bohemia where Suzanne first experienced antisemitism. She mentions how the Nuremberg laws affected her. She was forced to quit school and had to work on a farm until 1942.

Suzanne and her parents were sent to Theresienstadt in 1942. She describes conditions in Theresienstadt in great detail. She mentions friction between Jews from different countries and that many Jews when they first arrived believed they were going to a rest home. Warnings about death camps scratched on many of the cattle cars were not believed. She managed to work outside the ghetto on a farm, to help people on the transports, and to trade for food. A Czech policeman - who also saved Suzanne and her parents from being sent to Birkenau - helped her do this.

Suzanne witnessed the charade Germans put on for the Red Cross in 1944. She explains how the concentration camp was transformed. She recalls how a baby born in the camp was hidden and kept alive for one year. She briefly refers to a Catholic prayer group, attempts to educate Jewish children, and plays and concerts performed by the prisoners. In October 1944, the Germans tricked all the men and later the women – including her parents – into going on a transport to Auschwitz, so that only young girls and children remained, to prevent an uprising. Suzanne never saw her parents again. Suzanne describes survivors from these transports, who returned in January 1945, as walking skeletons who had become cannibals.

Suzanne relates her post-liberation experiences. She was involved in a campaign to rid the town of Teplitz Schönau of Germans. She got married in 1947 and came to the United States in October 1948.

Note: Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library:

Photocopy of first person memoir from Terezin survivor,"Making Moving Pictures" Jewish Exponent, Nov 21, 1988.

Interviewee: LEIBOWITZ, Suzanne Langer Date: April 18, 1981

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.