Oral History Interview with Zina Farber

Hans Braun was born in Hanover, Germany on June 3, 1923. His family were German Sintis (a gypsy tribe). They had a small carnival and traveled around Germany during the summer and lived in Bernau in the winter. Nazi persecution started in 1939 and they had to wear a patch with the letter "Z". In 1941 Hans and his father were forced to work for the German army in the armament industry. Hans was suspected of sabotage after accidentally breaking a machine. To escape arrest by the Gestapo, he fled to his grandfather's home in Berlin. Pursued by the Gestapo, he went into hiding, first with friends in Berlin then with an uncle in Eger, and finally with Sintis in Luxemburg who gave him false papers. He was arrested and jailed when he returned home but escaped. Hans describes subsequent arrests and escapes-using disguises and false papers-in great detail.

After his final capture he was put on a transport to Auschwitz with other Sinti families. He was put into the Birkenau Gypsy camp where he was reunited with his family. He describes conditions in the Gypsy camp, his work loading and unloading the dead at the crematorium, and his beatings by guards. One by one his entire family died of typhus and starvation. After he got typhus, he was experimented on in the hospital barracks. He describes how Dr. Mengele tortured children and used them for his medical experiments.

Hans was sent to Flossenbürg Labor Camp where he was again beaten. He was on a death march with surviving inmates for four days and nights just before liberation. Hans and two other men escaped and hid in a village which was defended by the SS. They were liberated by the Americans. Hans lived in Germany after the war and emigrated to Canada in 1980.

Hanna Silver, née Bornowski, was born in Berlin Germany February 14, 1910. She lived and worked in Berlin, with her mother, during the Nazi period, World War II, and the allied occupation. This interview was done in conjunction with a series of photographs from Mrs. Silver's personal collection, which she explains. These pictures show how areas of Berlin, including her apartment house, were devastated during an air raid on February 3, 1945, and also include pictures of both dead and surviving members of her family. Her mother died during an air raid and was buried in a mass grave, location unknown.

She vividly describes life in Berlin during and after World War II, deprived of the bare necessities of life. She explains in detail how she was able to live and work in Berlin during World War II without posing as an Aryan, due to her determination, some luck, and help and protection from her neighbors and other non-Jews. She relates how a German policeman helped her to get an Identification Card not stamped with a "J". She describes the effect of air raids on the general population, the total devastation in Berlin and how she and other survivors tried to cope during days and nights spent in air raid shelters, completely cut off from the outside world. She cites heinous acts committed by Germans against their own people near the end of the war. Mrs. Silver describes how she felt after the final air raid, and still managed to go on, after her mother was gone, her home was gone, and everything she owned was gone.

She relates in great detail what life was like in Berlin under joint occupation by allied forces, the behaviour of Russian troops, including an interesting vignette of why the people in her building were not molested by the Russians. Hanna was in the American sector, spoke English, worked for the Red Cross as a photographer and also had her own shop. She married an American officer she met during this time.

Mrs. Silver closes by reciting the names and fates of relatives who were killed or survived. She discusses why she was able to cope and how her experiences in Berlin affected her outlook on life and how she tried to pay back America through her volunteer work.

Note: Copies of the above mentioned photographs are included with the transcript. Verification of how her mother died can be found on pages 122 and 123, in The Berliners: Their Saga and Their City by Walter Henry Nelson. David McKay Co., Inc. N.Y. 1969. A photocopy of these pages is in the collection of Holocaust Oral History Archives, together with the following items:

An audiotape of Hanna Silver speaking to students in their classroom-1978.

An audio taped interview of Hanna Silver, done in 1983 by Ellen Rofman, for a research

paper pertaining to Righteous Christians helping Jews.

Personal photographs of postwar Berlin after the Allied bombing, taken by Hanna Silver

An audiotape of a broadcast by KYW radio station pertaining to an exhibit of

needlework created

by Hanna Silver.

Post war memoir written by Hanna Silver at an unspecified time.

Interviewee: SILVER, Hanna B. Date: April 25, 1995

Adele Wertheimer, nee Rozenel, the eldest of eight children, was born February 5, l922 in Bendzin(also Będzin),Poland to a religious family. Her parents were merchants. She gives a detailed description of pre-war Bendzin, Zionist organizations, her attendance at a Bet Yaakov school2 and her family. She describes the effect of the German invasion on their town, the rounding up of men, the curfew, the violence against women and having to wear a star. She mentions the rape of her aunt by German soldiers. She gives a detailed explanation about how the Jews were forced into the ghetto gradually and describes how they would hide from the Germans in different bunkers during round ups. She recalls when her mother and other siblings were taken away in a roundup, and she and her father and some other relatives hid in a bunker where they stayed for six weeks. They were caught and were forced to clean up the town.

Adele describes her deportation to Auschwitz in 1943, the separation from her father, her work in an ammunition factory and that she met an aunt and uncle in Auschwitz. She recalls the shared pair of shoes given to her by her aunt that she and a friend used on the death march to Ravensbrück which helped them stay alive. She describes her short stay in Ravensbrück and subsequent deportation on cattle trains to Malchoff in Germany. She shares the vignette of bribing someone with bread to get vegetables to feed a friend who had typhus and thus saved her life. She details their deportation to Taucha, a subcamp of Buchenwald/Dora-Mittelbau near Leipzig and how the Germans left all the prisoners in the open cattle cars during the Allied bombing raid to kill them. Her car miraculously survived and they were then marched on to Nossen near Freiberg. She describes walking out to a German home to get food and receiving a beating when she got back. Shortly after, she and her friend decided to escape the death march. She details their escape to a town where the Soviets were approaching and how they obtained food and clothes there and ended up going back toward Katowice with the Soviets. After the war Adele emigrated to Israel and later to the United States in 19583. She was the only survivor of her family.

Ari Fuhrman was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, Romania. His father was a tailor. After living briefly in Vienna, the family returned to Czernowitz instead of going to Palestine. He talks about his family’s life, religious observance, his education, Communist and Zionist movements, and the cultural life of Jews in Czernowitz. He was apprenticed as a dental mechanic in 1938.

Germany invaded Czernowitz together with the Romanian army after a brief Russian occupation. Massacres of Jews began and a ghetto was established until most Jews had been deported. Ari, and 80 family members were deported to Transnistria in October 1941 by sealed train. He graphically describes the transport, how Romanians brutalized and robbed the deportees. Some Jews, including his family, managed to escape during a stop in Mogilev.

Ari and his family could live and work in the Mogilev ghetto because he was classified as a “useful Jew”. He describes cultural activities, religious observance, illness, starvation, and strategies his family used to survive. In 1943 the Jewish Federation of Bucharest tried to rescue Jewish orphans and the American Joint Distribution Committee sent aid. Kapos (Jewish Police) had to provide a certain number of Jews each day for transports. He describes conditions just before and after liberation by the Russians, when partisans briefly controlled the area. He was reunited with his parents in Czernowitz until, as part of an exchange between Russia and Romania, Ari went to Timisoara, Romania, in 1946. He stayed for 11 years, worked as a dentist, and joined Mishmar, a Zionist organization. He registered to go to Palestine but did not receive permission to leave until 1959. He joined the State Theater of Bucharest and later the TeatronHaolim (Theatre of the Newcomers) in Israel. He was reunited with his parents after emigrating to the United States in 1960.

Testimony of his wife, Chayale Ash-Fuhrman, a prominent Yiddish actress, is also in the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive collection.

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.

This document is a promotional flyer announcing a television program titled "Dialogue with Doti." The program features Chapman University President Jim Doti in conversation with Elie Wiesel, a prolific author, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and renowned Holocaust scholar. The flyer indicates that the program will air "TONIGHT AT 8:30 PM" and directs viewers to "WWW.KCET.ORG/DIALOGUEWITHDOTI" for more information. The bottom of the flyer prominently displays the logos for Chapman University and KCET, the latter celebrating "50 YEARS INSPIRING A BETTER STATE."