Oral History Interview with Nina Frisch

Elsa Kissel, nee Blatt, was born in Mainz, Germany on December 15, 1919. Her parents were born in Poland, her father was a businessman. She talks about her education in both Yeshivot and public schools. She describes in detail how school, her family’s relationships with non-Jews as well as Jewish life in general changed after Hitler came to power. Their activities became more and more restricted. She graphically describes the destruction and brutality her family experienced during Kristallnacht, when her father was sent to Buchenwald.

Elsa explains how her brother, Herman Blatt escaped to France, her parents and her sister smuggled themselves into Belgium. She got a nursing visa for Great Britain, helped by the Society of Friends. In England, Elsa—along with other Jewish refugees—was brought to Soughton Prison in Edinburgh. Later she was interned on the Isle of Man in a camp run by British Quakers. Minna Specht, a German educator, organized a school for children and events for the adult internees in these camps. The Quakers arranged Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for the women internees. Generally, the few non-Jewish prisoners were treated better than the Jewish ones.

Once Elsa’s release was approved, her request to go to London was granted. She describes in great detail her life in England—working for two British families and later as a nurse in London during the Blitz—once she got her auxiliary war service permit. During this time, as a young refugee girl on her own, Elsa shows great resourcefulness and strength of character.

Elsa explains how various family members managed to get to the United States. While still in Portugal, her father enabled Orthodox Jewish refugees to celebrate a seder.

Elsa traveled to the United States on a Canadian troopship to Halifax, then to New York where she was reunited with her family. Unlike her father, Elsa never spoke to her children about her experiences. Each of her three adult sons reacted differently when Germany invited Elsa to visit with her family.

Anneliese Nossbaum, née Winterburg, was born in Guben, Germany on January 8, 1929. She and her parents relocated to Bonn, Germany. Anneliese describes societal changes in 1933 as signs excluding Jews from shops and parks began to appear. With other Jewish children, she attended a special school. After Kristallnacht, November 10,1938, the family attempted to emigrate; however, the borders closed before they could escape. Trapped in Germany, in 1941, they surrendered their home and were relocated to a two-room apartment in a former cloister. Anneliese describes the deteriorating conditions for Jews: Jews had to wear yellow stars, were required to walk in the streets, could not attend schools, and had no freedom of movement.

Eventually, the family was deported to Theresienstadt.There, mother and daughter were housed together for a short while before Anneliese was sent to a youth home. Anneliese describes the 1944 visit by the International Red Cross as a total farce and gives details of cover-up. Once the inspection ended, the transports to Auschwitz resumed. Anneliese, her parents and an aunt and uncle traveled for three days to reach Auschwitz.Her father died in Kaufering/Dachau in December 1944.

Although she and her mother remained in Auschwitz for only five days, she believes those days stripped away any semblance of childhood that remained. She gives a detailed description of arrival, selection, showers and the barracks. While at Auschwitz she experienced depravation, humiliation, hunger, beatings and fear she would be killed as she listened to the deaths of others. After five days, she and her mother were sent to an airplane factory in Saxony, near Dresden. She describes the improved living conditions compared with Auschwitz, the 10 hour working day, and the bombing of the factory which lead the inmates to despair since they had time to reflect on the horrible conditions.She describes a horrific three week journey in open air cattle carsand closed cars to Mauthausenin Austria. On May 2, 1945, with the Allies close by the women nearly missed death when they were returned to their barracks rather than gassed because of a lack of Zyklon B gas. Two days later, guards dressed in civilian clothing and fled. On May 5, the camp surrendered to the Americans. Eventually, the Russians took over. Her mother was being treated for tuberculosis, but faked an attack of appendicitis in order to be transferred to a hospital in Linz under the control of the Americans. Her mother died there of TB. Anneliese emigrated to the United States in the summer of 1946.

Collateral Material associated with this interviewee:

Transcript includes poetry in German and English on additional pages.

There are also copies of personal documents, including passports available through the Gratz CollegeTuttleman Library.

Ursula M. Heisman was born in Mewe, Germany (now Gniew, Poland). Ursula grew up in Berlin and was a teenager when Hitler came to power in 1933. Her father, Isidor Hirschfeld, was a physician who served as such in the German army in World War I. He received the Iron Cross. Ursula had two older brothers. Her parents were “free thinkers” and her upbringing was an assimilated upper middle class one, with little Jewish content.

While still in high school Ursula was employed as an actress and dancer in a theater company. Ursula describes the rise of Hitler and the consequences it had for her and her family. For example, she was fired from her job as a dancer and her father could no longer practice medicine. She tells how they were made to wear the yellow star and of how her father resisted wearing it. When Ursula witnessed Kristallnacht she decided that she must leave Germany. One of her brothers, a physician, had already gone to the United States. Ursula recounts the difficulties she encountered in leaving Germany. It was only to Cuba that she was able to emigrate, and she tells of arriving in Havana, with her other brother, in 1938. Ursula recounts how she got a job as a dance teacher and that she was invited to move in with her employers, who were not Jewish, who subsequently paid $1000 to the Cuban government to obtain visas for her parents. They arrived in Cuba on the ship after the St. Louis. Ursula describes life in Havana which she enjoyed very much.

In 1945 Ursula and her parents moved to the United States, joining one brother and leaving one in Cuba, who did join them at the end of the war. She tells of resuming her career as a dancer and eventually marrying and moving to Philadelphia where she decided to open a dance school. Eventually she had three schools and a ballet company called Ballet des Jeunes which engaged the top 25 students at her schools. The company danced throughout the United States and in Europe. Ursula closes her testimony recounting a trip to Berlin she and her husband took in 1969 or 1970.

Harold Stern, formerly Helmutt, was born August 31, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the only child of middle class Jewish parents. His father came from an Orthodox background and his mother was raised in a non-observant home; as a family, they belonged to a large Liberal Congregation, the West end Synagogue in Frankfurt. Harold describes the educational system and antisemitism pre- and post- 1933. He discusses the Kultusgemeinde, his Jewish education, upbringing, and his studies at the Philanthropin (a Jewish secondary school), which he attended in 1935 due to increased Nazism and antisemitism experience at the public Gymnasium. His mother continued the family business after his father’s death in 1930, but had to give it up (1937) as a result of the Nuremberg Laws. He describes the “aryanization” of a shoe manufacturing company and other businesses where he was apprenticed/employed. Despite having an early quota number, Harold’s attempts to emigrate with his mother to USA were thwarted because their affidavits were not accepted by the American Consulate in Stuttgart. In March 1939, Harold left for England through the aid of family friends in England and Bloomsbury House, while his mother remained in Frankfurt. He describes life in London, working as a factory trainee, residing among British (non-Jewish) working class, until June 1940 when he was picked up and interned in Huyten, a camp near Liverpool, with other German Jewish refugees. In July 1940, he volunteered for transport on the Dunera, a ship supposedly bound for Canada but re-routed to Australia. He discusses in detail the desperate conditions at sea, harsh treatment by British soldiers, and refugee behavior during the ten week voyage. From Sidney, he was transferred to a barbed-wire enclosed compound in the Outback, in Hay, New South Wales. He refers to the internal camp leadership which emerged, the development of cultural and educational activities. He details help given by the Australian Christian Student Movement (under Margaret Holmes), Jewish Welfare Board, and Jewish people of Melbourne. Later he moved to a camp in Tatura, Victoria that had better conditions. After 20 months of internment, he joined the Australian army, the 8th Employment Company, where he did transport of munitions. He was discharged in 1946 or 1947, after serving 4 1/2 years in the army.

Harold kept contact with his mother and knew that she reached USA in late 1941. Through the help of a non-Jewish woman, she obtained a visa in September 1941, left Germany on a sealed train (to Berlin), journeyed through occupied and Vichy France and Spain to Lisbon, boarding one of the last steamers from Portugal to America. Her brother, however, was arrested by the Gestapo and never seen again. Her sister, a musician, later hospitalized in a sanitarium was “euthanized”.

Harold immigrated to the USA in 1947 under the German quota. In 1959, he moved to Philadelphia.

Harry Bass was born on October 10, 1920 in Bialystok, Poland. He talks about his life, Jewish life in general, educational facilities for Jewish children in Bialystok, and his Zionist activities prior to 1939. He briefly mentions the arrival of Polish Jews who were expelled from Germany.

After the German invasion in 1939, his family hid for a while, then were forced into the Bialystok Ghetto along with the entire Jewish population of Bialystok, as well as Jews from surrounding villages and towns. He describes conditions in the ghetto, how he traded goods for food and activities of the Judenrat.

In December 1942, Harry, his three brothers, a sister and an uncle, were deported to Auschwitz in closed cattle cars. He could have escaped and explains why he chose not to.

In Birkenau, his two little brothers were sent to the crematoriums. Harry and his other siblings were taken to the slave labor camp. He describes the daily routine in the camps, living conditions, how prisoners were branded, and briefly mentions attempts at religious observance. Prisoners who tried to escape were killed. Harry worked in the kitchen, later in a Straf Kommando (punishment detail) where a German soldier saved his life.

To evacuate Auschwitz, prisoners were forced on a Death March to Gleiwitz in deep snow, then to Mauthausen on an open train on January 18, 1945. Thousands died and survivors were treated brutally. In April 1945, surviving prisoners were brought to Magdeburg and put on ships in the Elbe. Most ships were sunk by the Germans, Harry’s boat was torpedoed by the British but he managed to survive.

After liberation by the British, Harry recuperated in a hospital in Neustadt Holstein, searched for family members, and was reunited with some of them. He immigrated to the United States on March 29, 1949, where he became very involved in every aspect of the Jewish community.

The transcript includes historical endnotes by Dr. Michael Steinlauf as well as several vignettes about helping fellow prisoners, help from German soldiers and slave labor.

Interviewee: BASS, Harry Date: August 22, 1983

Moshe Moskowitz was born in 1922 in Lespitz-Baya, Romania to a merchant family that was traditional but not deeply religious. He studied in a Jewish school, then in a vocational school. He planned to go to Palestine, joined a Zionist youth group and worked in an agricultural community. After the German occupation, Jews were transferred from the villages to the large cities, and many were sent to forced labor camps. His Zionist youth group became active in the resistance. Moshe took on Aryan identity, as did others who had contact with Zionist emissaries in Constantinople and Switzerland. Emissaries from England and the U.S. often attended the resistance meetings. The diplomatic courier who carried letters from the resistance betrayed them, and those who were arrested were sent to camps in Transnistria.

Moshe and his group smuggled children out of camps, gave them false identities, and set up cultural activities until they could be processed to go to Palestine on illegal immigration on ships. In 1944, British-trained parachutists from Palestine landed in Romania and Moshe’s Zionist group was among those who gave them identity papers, living quarters and maps to help them reach Bucharest. They also helped German, American and English prisoners-of- war in Brasov with money, clothing and medicine. After liberation, they rushed to the American and British zones to take Jewish prisoners out of the range of German bombings. Moshe was in charge of the funds through the Landsmanshuteyfor such operations. Groups who were involved in saving children maintained connections in Israel. Moshe emigrated to Israel post-war.