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Survivors and Liberators
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Survivors and Liberators
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The men and women shown in this exhibit are now in
the final stages of their lives. We must not forget them
or their stories. Each of them offers to teach us how
we must behave. Each life tells the story of the worst
inhumanities; they tell us that prejudices and "anti-
whatever" create only pathology, not health, chaos
rather than order, and apathy instead of empathy.
Their timeless message is especially important now,
as we are again faced with the potential of vast
destruction. We learned from them, the greatest
teachers, that we must be a voice for those who suffer
and we must speak out against injustice.
Wilma Bulkin Siegel, M.D.
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Wilma Bulkin Siegel, MD
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Sam Axelrod – Liberator
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SAM AXELROD
My family, originally from Russia, escaped to Lithuania after World War I and the Russian
Communist Revolution. The family migrated to Palestine in 1925, and, at the onset of World War
II, I volunteered to join the Jewish Brigade of the British army. I was seventeen years old. In 1945,
at the end of the fighting in Europe, our Battalion was stationed on the border between Austria and
Italy. I was asked to join a group on a fact-finding trip to the Mauthausen concentration camp
across the Danube from the city of Linz, Austria. It was a trip that affected all of my life from that
point. As we arrived, I saw a group of men wearing prison stripes and looking like ghosts. One
man, approximately six feet tall and weighing maybe fifty or fifty-five pounds, approached me
slowly. He moved toward the brigade's insignia, a Jewish star, which was imprinted on the wing
of the half-track truck we were driving. "You are Jewish," He said. "I am Jewish, too. From
Hungary." The Jewish survivors were in turmoil. It was a time when the Russians let the allies into
Berlin and Vienna in exchange for advancing up to the Danube River, which would put
Mauthausen in their jurisdiction. American MPs were stationed all along the bridge, not allowing
any freed survivors to cross it.
Their policy was, "The Russians are taking the area, let them have the headache that comes with
it." The Jews feared that Stalin was as bad as Hitler and that they were doomed to stay in
concentration camps. Our group, so far from our base, lacked transportation. We hired a German
truck and trailer, filled it with Jewish survivors, and crossed the blocked bridge with the help of
some Jewish Gals. We returned to Italy and organized transportation for displaced Jewish people
from all over Europe toward the ports in the south. Any kind of available boat was used to smuggle
the refugees to Palestine through the British navy's blockade.
To get through the many roadblocks, we had documents headed by the acronym TIG, which
expressed the resentment we felt when the whole ugly story of the Holocaust unveiled before our
eyes. The letters stood for the Arabic-Yiddish combination of the phrase, "Lick My behind
Business." After the war, I studied for one year at Syracuse University, but was called back to
serve in the Israeli army during the war of independence. I married my fiancé, whom I had met in
Syracuse but who had come to live in Israel. The austerity in the country at that time was too much
for her and I resigned my rank of major, and we came to live in the United States. Sam's second
wife is a Holocaust survivor who hid during the war as a Catholic orphan to survive. Sam wrote
a book entitled The Wolf and the Lamb: The Case for Jewish Secularism. In the book he states:
"The greatest test for the population of this planet is if a thousand years from now there will still
be Christians, Moslems, Jews (Orthodox and secular). Buddhists, and all other religions. It is a test
of the tolerance that is essential for the continued habitation.
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Magda Bader
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MAGDA BADER
I was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia, which later became Hungary. I was
the youngest of ten children. My father was a businessman.
Life was good until was fourteen when my parents, my niece and four of my sisters
and I were taken to Auschwitz. My parents, one of my sisters and her baby, and my
niece were immediately gassed there. Another sister married and living in Prague,
died in Terezienstadt. One of my brothers escaped to Cambridge. The other three
brothers were sent to a labor camp, but they survived.
My three remaining sisters and I were sent to a labor camp in Germany run by the
SS. We escaped the camp thanks to a Dutch cook who told us of an opportunity to
get away. We later wrote a letter for him, hoping that at the end of the war he could
be saved. A few days after escaping we met American and British soldiers who
became the liberators. These men provided us with food and shelter.
Because we were not in the camp when the liberation came, we were not placed in
a displaced person's camp but worked to sustain ourselves.
One sister worked as a medic for the United Nations Refugee Agency, one as a nurse
one as a social worker and I worked as an interpreter for the British Red Cross. One
sister and I went to England where I attended art school in London. I won a foreign
student scholarship to Denver University. There I received my bachelors of fine arts
and got a job in Long Beach, California where I taught fourth grade. From there I
went to Columbia University to get my Master’s degree in fine arts and fine arts
education.
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Rose & Jack Beiglemen
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ROSE AND JACK BEIGLEMEN
“One should not stand in silence when seeing suffering, because one day it might be
you in that place”.
Both Rose and Jack are Jewish Holocaust survivors. They grew up in Poland and
were preteens when the Nazis entered Poland in September 7939. They describe
their youth, until that time, as not so different from life here in America. Then they
were forced, first Jack into the ghetto of Lodz and Rose into the ghetto of Srodula in
Sosnowiec, and then into concentration camps, Jack into Auschwitz and Rose into
Oberalstadt.
Both told of the severe tragedy of losing loved ones. Rose was more fortunate than
Jack. She was incarcerated with her sisters, and they remained alive. All of Jack's
family was murdered at Auschwitz.
After the war they were sent as orphans by the United Nations Relief Agency to the
Bronx, New York, and later Jack was placed in a foster home in Cleveland and Rose
was placed with relatives, also in Cleveland. Each of them married, had children,
and, after their spouses died and because they were longtime friends, Jack and Rose
married.
Most of their close friends also were Holocaust survivors, and both Jack and Rose
were activists in giving out the word that THERE SHOULD BE NO HATE IN THE
WORLD. They have moved to Florida and once again wish to make the statement
that "one should not stand in silence when seeing suffering, because some day it
might be you in that place."
Rose and Jack have been spokespersons for this purpose in schools and in Broward
Community College. They attribute their survival to luck, to staying out of trouble,
and to the attitude that tomorrow will be a better day
When we speak to students about the Holocaust, our last statement is: When my
voice will be silent, I want you to speak up for me. When someone denies the
Holocaust, I want you to tell them that you met a Holocaust survivor and you heard
her/him speak about what happened to her/him.
In this portrait of Rose and Jack, Dr. Siegel included
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Terez Bender
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TEREZ BENDER
“I am proud of my Jewish heritage. I survived as a Jew and believe that Jews should
survive. We all originate from the Bible, and we should live together as good human
beings. I do not know •why I survived, but I have always believed in prayer and
God”.
I was born in Romania to a family of five children. All five children survived the
Holocaust. The rest of our family perished. My father was in the lumber business
and was very religious. When the Nazis took him. He wanted to take his Tallis but
they would not allow it. When my brother returned to our home he found that the
Germans had hung the Tallis as curtains. This still makes me weep to this day. My
brother then took the Tallis with him to Israel.
My two sisters and I were taken first to Auschwitz. Then on to two other work camps
and finally to Bergen-Belsen. My older sister saved me by encouraging me telling
me to keep going that we would make it through to the end. At liberation our brothers
who were in other concentration camps, were finally reunited with us.
I found employment with the American Jewish Joint.
Distribution Committee and came to America. I became a successful real estate
agent and supported my children after my divorce.
When Dr. Siegel met Terez it was Election Day, and she was very proud to be
working at the polls as a Democrat. She was proudly wearing a Kerry Edwards
button.
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Marcelle Bock
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MARCELLE BOCK
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." Marcelle states that
her survival was "dumb luck." My parents left Poland to settle in Paris. France, in
1930-the year before I was born. I was a breach delivery causing a right upper
extremity palsy. My parents found it devastating to have a crippled child and sought
much help. Finally, when I was seven years old, I was helped by a neurosurgeon, Or
Bop. After the surgery, I was sent to recuperate in a sanitarium in Hendaye, a town
bordering Spain. In 1939, my father, fearing he might be called into the army, came
to visit me in Hendaye. I begged him to bring me home to my mother and twin
sisters. Unable to refuse my request, we returned to Paris. And so it was that our
family was together when the Germans invaded Paris in 1940. The immediate family
stayed intact until July 1942, when my mother, sisters, and I were arrested in a huge
raid and were taken to a stadium called the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris. There, we
met a volunteer nurse we knew who arranged for me to be taken to Rothschild
Hospital where I was held prisoner for a time. I eventually escaped from there,
although I have no memory of it.
While my father was in hiding in Paris, I was hidden in two separate locations
outside Paris. I remember an episode when I defied my father's advice to go back
into hiding when I was sick with appendicitis. Instead. I found a surgeon whom I
had known to help me. My father survived to almost the end of the war. On June 1,
1944,I learned that he had been arrested. When I tried to visit him on June 8, 1944,
to celebrate the Allied invasion, I learned that he had not survived. Neither did my
mother and sisters. After the war, I spent a year with my Aunt Jenny and cousin
Bernard. Aunt Jenny's husband also had been killed in Auschwitz. Then I came to
live in America with the help of a great uncle who owned a hotel in the Catskills.
When the summer season was over, we took a small apartment in the Coney Island
section of Brooklyn. In December 1946, I met my Leonard. We were married a year
later, when I was just sixteen and he was twenty, and we have had a good life
together. We have two married daughters and three grandsons. Marcelle now has
severe pulmonary disease, from a history of heavy smoking, and scoliosis, and she
requires portable oxygen. Dr. Siegel painted the oxygen tubing. She was recently
hospitalized and is recovering. She loves to paint using acrylics and signs her
paintings with "Maika.” Her painting of her twin sisters, who perished in Auschwitz,
is in the background of the portrait, as is a poem she has written, which can also be
found on the Internet.
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Dr. Pierre Chanover
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DR. PIERRE CHANOVER
“I often speak to groups about my life; I show them my yellow star, and I bring a ru-
tabaga, the food on which I sustained myself”
During the war. I was in Gurs one of the twenty-three concentration camps in France.
I watched other children escape the camp by climbing under a truck and hanging
onto the axle. When the Nazis entered Paris, my father, a tailor and designer was
taken away immediately. My mother and I escaped to Vichy, France but this was
taken over and I was captured and taken to Gurs. But, like the other children I had
seen, I managed to escape as well. The French underground then cared for me.
Eventually I was taken care of by a family who raised me as their son and sent me
to Catholic Church. One of the priests cared for me and, until he was killed protected
me as well as a number of other children from the Germans.
I returned to Paris upon liberation to discover that, though her apartment had been
entirely devastated, my mother's neighbors had kept her safe. Since she was a
seamstress, she worked for the Nazis as forced labor.
In the background of the portrait I have placed the yellow star we were required to
wear. I often speak to groups about my life; I show them my yellow star and I bring
a rutabaga, the food on which I sustained myself. But the survival skills I learned
through my trials later made me an excellent soldier in the Korean War.
Dr. Pierre Chanover is a professor of French at Florida Atlantic University.
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Howard Cwick – Liberator
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HOWARD CWICK
If I were lucky enough to survive and make it home, I would never allow the horror
to be forgotten.
I was a liberator who unexpectedly, was one of the first American Gls to enter
Buchenwald. I came from an Orthodox Jewish family and was raised in Coney
Island. As a member of the Combat Engineer Battalion. I was trained in demolition
specializing in mines and booby traps. When in Germany, while waiting for a vehicle
to take me to Company Headquarters. I mistakenly got into the wrong jeep, and the
driver and I found ourselves outside the gates of Buchenwald. The source of the
stench we had endured for the past five days was now apparent.
The gates were not locked, and several other Gls and I were confronted by a field
littered with scores and scores of bodies. Walking among them were barely alive
walking skeletons with hollow faces and sunken eyes.
There were huge flatbed wagons, each piled high with eighty to one hundred bodies
awaiting disposal. Several inmates dragged a Kappa (a fellow Jew who collaborated
with the Germans) up to me and the group of Gls standing nearby. A mob of inmates
had gathered around us demanding that the Kappa be given to them. To this day I
still feel the guilt of permitting that killing.
While walking among the dead and still dying, I swore an oath: That if I were lucky
enough to survive and make it home I would never allow that horror to be forgotten.
I have honored that oath.
Having carried a camera all through my army days, I took twenty-two photographs
of the horrors I saw. Those photographs and the original film are now in the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. D.C.
As a many-time volunteer for Israel I have served with both Israel's army and her
navy. I still carry two of my most precious and prized possessions my American Gl
dog tag and my Israeli TSAHAL dog tag.
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Victor Cynamon
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VICTOR CYNAMON
My family and I were living in Poland on September 1, 1939, when the Nazis
marched into our homeland. We were stripped of all of our possessions and first
moved to a ghetto. From there, I was conveyed to a number of labor camps and then
to the Majdanek death camp. More people died at Majdanek than at Auschwitz. Only
a few hundred people survived. I was one of them. From there, I went to labor at a
munitions factory, then to Buchenwald, and on to another munitions factory. I was
severely injured. A Belgian doctor, a righteous Gentile, saved my life, and I will
always be grateful to him. I survived the allied bombing only to be sent to
Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia from which I was liberated by the Russians. After
liberation, I tried to return to my hometown, but found I was not welcome. There, I
met my wife and we moved together to a displaced persons camp in Germany.
We married, moved to the United States, and had a baby. After settling in the Bronx,
I had a very successful building business. I am now retired and living in Florida. I
am the vice president of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center and chairman of the
Holocaust Memorial committee.
My brother and sister survived the Holocaust as well. I have dedicated my retirement
years to the cause of remembrance. This series of portraits will serve as a witness
after the survivors are gone and will teach the world that, if they are not vigilant, it
can happen to anyone, anywhere. All through the camps, until I was separated from
him in November 1942 for the last time, my father commanded me over and over to
survive. He told me that when I survived, I should be willing to tell this story.
According to the Jewish law, there are 613 commandments.
I have a 614th-my father's command "to survive."
In the portrait Dr. Siegel has placed a recent photo. It shows Victor's current family
of which he is proud.
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Julius Eisenstein
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JULIUS EISENSTEIN
Hate and prejudice against each other is the worst thing. People should teach their
children to accept everyone as he or she is. We are all born the same, with no label,
and that is the way we should live our life. The Ten Commandments say, "Do not
envy your neighbor."
I was one of five children born to my family in Tomaszow-Maz, Poland. My father
owned a bakery. I survived the Holocaust in Dachau with my brother.
I chose to place in this portrait a photograph of the liberation of the camp by
American soldiers. This photograph has been seen in many documentaries including
Life magazine. I tried to find the liberator soldier next to me several years later by
using the photograph. My quest was rewarded when I was reunited 48 years later
with soldier Joseph Frolio. Frolio and I have often taught about the Holocaust
together. Frolio is no longer living but I have fond memories of him.
I met my wife, a former Auschwitz survivor, in Munich two years after the liberation.
We came to the U.S. and I opened a successful bakery. It is "beschert" that I am alive
and survived.
I feel that parents teach hate. Education is a way of enlightenment-that one can
understand that there is something other than hate. For the last fifteen years I have
been lecturing in high schools and colleges. I tell them my story of the Holocaust
and through my story, try to teach tolerance.
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Rena Finder
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RENA FINDER
Oskar Schindler is a shining example that one person can make a difference. He has
proven that everyone has the power to make a decision to choose to participate; not
to stand by and do nothing when you see injustice done, but to take action; to say no
to hate, bigotry, and racism.
While in New England this past summer, Dr. Siegel researched the Internet and
found a resource "Facing History and Ourselves.” Lillian Fox answered her call and
referred her to Rena Finder, who graciously agreed to have her portrait painted.
I was ten years old when the Nazis entered Krakow. Poland the city in which I lived.
My father died in Auschwitz but my mother and I survived working as Jewish
employees in the enamel and ammunitions factory owned by Oskar Schindler. Once
he saved my life when a German foreman noticed the machine I was working on
was broken and was berating me for breaking it. I was the youngest of the factory
workers, and Mr. Schindler intervened saying: "You idiots this little girl could not
break that machine!" To all the workers. He was a god. He opened his eyes to see
the sadistic murdering of the people while an indifferent world looked on. As the
movie states, "He who saves one life, saves the world." Oskar Schindler is on record
as saving a great number of Jews. 1,200, during the Holocaust. He dared what no
one else dared. He showed that one man can make a difference. After the war Oskar
Schindler was not successful in business and the survivors tried to help him. He is
buried in Israel.
After the war my mother and I lived in a displaced persons camp, where I met and
married Mark Finder who is also a holocaust survivor. In 1948 we came to America.
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Norman Frajman
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NORMAN FRAJMAN
When I die there will be no one to take my place. I am one of the younger survivors,
and, if I do not educate now as to what the Holocaust was about, then history will.
My survival was beshert. The Almighty had plans for me to survive. I was born in
the city of Warsaw, which was occupied by the Germans in 1939. I was ten years
old. I saw and experienced the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 and was
taken, together with my mother and sister and other members of my extended family,
to the Majdanek death camp. My mother and sister perished there.
I was shipped to the Skarzysko concentration camp where I worked as a slave laborer
in an ammunitions factory. The next stop for me was at the infamous Buchenwald.
As the Russians neared the camp, I was forced on a death march. I was fifteen when
the Russian troops brought Liberation, and I spent a bit of time then working as an
interpreter. I spent some time in a displaced persons camp in Germany before
coming to the United States, where I had an uncle.
My father survived the war as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union. We were
reunited after the war, having been separated for twenty-two years.
Norman retired to Florida seven years ago and today speaks extensively at schools,
colleges, and houses of worship. He is passionate about disseminating the greatest
tragedy known to mankind during the Holocaust. He hopes his message will serve
as a deterrent to prevent future Holocausts from happening.
In the background of the portrait is the jacket he wore at the Buchenwald
concentration camp. He considers the jacket to be a survivor as well.
Norman became a Bar Mitzvah at the synagogue in Auschwitz in 2003 during the
March of the Living for educators. He declares, "It took me sixty years, but it is
better late than never. Now I can consider myself a full-fledged Jew"
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Morris Freibaum
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MORRIS FREIBAUM
If there were no religion we could accomplish a lot. Everybody has a right to exist
and live the way they want to. Everybody has a different case. I only know what
tragedy that was.
I was born in Warsaw, Poland, where my father was in the furniture business. When
the Germans came in. my entire education was stopped, and my family was put into
the ghetto. I ran away from the ghetto in 1940 and six months later could not get
back to see my family. I was on my own and survival became hand to mouth. I even
had typhus and survived.
When the Jews were being rounded up for Auschwitz, I chose to move around among
the Poles. This simple decision meant that instead of Auschwitz, I went to the work
force in Radom, Germany, where I helped to build an underground ammunitions
factory. From Radom, I spent three days in a train moving to Auschwitz. I was
moved from camp to camp throughout Germany. As the allied bombing got closer.
I was wounded by shrapnel that hit my leg. Unable to continue working, I was sent
to Dachau to Block 28, and then on to the hospital where a French doctor saved my
life. The wounded were released from this hospital, given a package by the Red
Cross that contained civilian clothing, and loaded onto a boxcar. We were traveling
through the mountains when the Americans blocked our way. The Germans
unloaded us and we spent the night wandering, but in the morning, May 2, 1945, we
were liberated by the Americans. I was chosen to work for the American Army by a
sergeant who taught me to fix gasoline stoves.
I came to the United States and moved to the Bronx, New York where I became a
man of all trades a mechanic, a taxi driver, a garment worker, and a waiter. I married
and had two daughters. I am now divorced and live in Florida permanently. I spend
much of my time with the Jewish War Veterans of Delray. Dr. Siegel painted me in
my hat.
Morris considers his survival to luck at being in the right place at the right time. He
thought that there was no one left from his family, but by accident found a lost aunt
on his father's side. She had moved to Paris before the Holocaust. From this aunt he
received the photographs of his family, which
Dr. Siegel placed in the background of the portrait.
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Miriam Fridman
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MIRIAM FRIDMAN
As we approach the liberation anniversary, I thank America for liberating us and
giving us an opportunity of freedom for a better tomorrow. We raised our families
here and gave o u r children the best education possible. President Ronald Reagan
said that we were "the best immigrants Ame1ica ever had." I am proud of the
achievements of each of the survivors and now we have the ability to help others.
I was born in Lodz. Poland. My father was in the dairy business, which meant that
we were affluent and I attended private Jewish schools. In those days, I was involved
in Zionist causes. I spent my youth in the ghetto. I can remember my hair freezing
to the wall because it was so cold and we did not have wood to burn for fire.
I spent time in various concentration camps even Auschwitz where my job was to
clean the bricks of the crematorium. On May 8, 1945, I was liberated and found my
way to a displaced persons camp in Italy. A distant cousin gave me sponsorship to
come to the United States.
Miriam married in 1948, and her husband died in 1994. She has been honored many
times for her educational work dealing with the Holocaust. "By teaching about our
past we can prevent history from repeating itself" She has spoken to the Shoah
Foundation. She states that it is important for Israel to survive. She became a
founding member of the Holocaust Survivors of Southeast Florida and is serving her
third term as president.
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Lusia & Eddie Frohlich
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LUSIA AND EDDIE FROHLICH
EDDIE: "Never QUIT! I "Believe in survival! I wanted to survive to tell the story
that it should never happen again-the inhumanity of people to people. “Nature
happens but humiliation by other humans is too gruesome." Lusia and Eddie
Frohlich both were born in Stanislavo. Poland. Lusia's family was wealthy. They
owned a leather factory. Eddie had been a wholesale agent for leather and so she
knew him in her youth. In 1939, the Russians took over and the factory was
confiscated.
EDDIE: "In 1941, on the Jewish holiday Shana Rabi. The Germans came to
Stanislavo and massacred the Jews killing twelve thousand and placing them in three
mass graves. Those of us remaining were moved to the ghetto. In 1942 another
roundup took place, and about three thousands of us were taken to be killed. Most
were to be shot. I was among twenty chosen to be killed by hanging. I was the
twentieth in line for hanging. The rope was around my neck when I kicked the SS
officer closest to me, ran to another SS officer and asked to be shot instead. The Nazi
beat me with a bayonet, but he let me go free. He said to me. 'You are brave. I will
let you go.' My father was killed that day. I went the next day to Warsaw took a
Gentile name and lived outside the ghetto. I worked in the underground and helped
with an uprising in the ghetto. I learned of a French doctor who could erase the
Jewish mark of circumcision. When I was later captured, because of the surgery, I
was saved from the death chamber and kept as a prisoner of war."
LUSIA: "While these things were happening with Eddie. I was in the ghetto in
Stanislavo. My father was among those killed in the massacre. I was chosen by a
German officer to be his housekeeper and nursemaid for his child. He helped me to
get food in the ghetto which I shared. He also helped me to get papers which allowed
me to escape to Warsaw. My mother told me to try to find Eddie in the underground
in Warsaw but he was living under a new name. Fortunately, I went first to an old
family acquaintance and Eddie was there visiting. There our romance and life
involvement started. He got my mother and brought her into hiding in Warsaw."
Eddie was taken as a POW and was liberated by the Americans. Lusia was taken as
forced labor in Krakow and was liberated by the Russians. After the war, she was
reunited with her mother and with Eddie. They had twin daughters whose
photographs. Dr. Siegel has included in the background of the portrait.
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Hershel Fuksman
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HERSHEL FUKSMAN
People should accept each other and live by the biblical motto, "Love thy neighbor
as thyself." I was born in a small beautiful town only fifteen kilometers from
Warsaw. Piaseczno had a population of about five thousand, three thousands of them
Jews. I was the first and only child/grandchild that became the apple of my extended
family's eye. They showered me with affection and attention. A few weeks before
the war, fearing abuse that he had heard about from passing displaced Jews from
Germany, my father escaped to Bialystock, on the border of Poland and Russia.
When the German Army invaded Piaseczno on September 1, 1939, my mother and
I found ourselves trapped in our burning building. We ran into the street only to be
forced by the Germans back into the smoke-filled halls. Fortunately, a Polish soldier
instructed us out of the building when he saw us crouching, afraid to go back out
into the street. Being shot by a German soldier rewarded his action. I was six years
old. We found shelter with family but life took on unexpected demands and abuse.
We were forced to clean the dead people and horses from the bombed streets.
Hardships of life became a daily ordeal. After five months under the Nazi
occupation, my father sent a messenger to bring my mother and me across to
Bialystock. With many difficulties and dangers from bombings, strafing, and being
arrested, we crossed the border and were met by my father who brought with him a
big loaf of bread. My brother was born in Russia where life had its own dangers.
Disease, hunger, and Communist scrutiny of foreigners were common. Bialystock
was overrun with refugees. People were arrested in the middle of the night and never
heard from again. My father was one of these. We lost track of what became of him
and do not know whether he survived or perished. In the meantime, because of the
harsh life in Bialystock, my mother applied to return to Poland. The officials agreed
to send us back home, but instead we were sent off into the deep Taiga Siberian
forests. Out of the one hundred families that were sent to this place, called Komi
SSR, only eight families and two children survived. We endured eighteen months of
slave labor before being given permission to leave in 1942. We went to Bagish,
Russia, where the Enders Polish Army was being formed. There, my mother
remarried, and this new family of six survived the adversity and privation and
uncertainties of life under the Communist order. When the war ended, Polish citizens
were permitted to return to Poland. We traveled in cattle cars for weeks heading
home. We were met there with jeers and shouting for Jews to go to Palestine.
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Judith Evan Goldstein
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JUDITH EVAN GOLDSTEIN
“The Holocaust is a painful subject but I cannot let these memories die with me”. I
wish I was never part of World War II. It was given to me, and I was thrown into a
sea of suffering. I was meant to die, but lived and survived the survival and came
face to face with history. Judith Shapiro (Goldstein) was born in ViIna, Poland,
which is now Vilnius the capital of Lithuania. To the Jews of the world, it was known
as "Jerusalem of Lithuania," the Jewish cultural center of Eastern Europe. Her father.
Chaim, a mechanical engineer her mother. Yetta, a clothes designer her brother Meir
and Judith lived a comfortable and happy life. In June 1941, Nazi Germany occupied
Vilna. Three months later the Jews were placed in a newly formed ghetto and were
faced with murder and tragedy. At the young age of seven, Judith ceased to be a
child• she lost her childhood forever. She grew old so quickly. After two years of
suffering, hunger, disease, and extreme conditions, the ghetto was liquidated.
Families were torn apart, women, men, and children were separated. Most people
were sent to the killing place, "Ponary," a forest outside of Vilna. One hundred
thousand people were murdered there; seventy thousand were Jews. Judith and her
mother were shipped to a series of concentration camps, first to Kaiserwald, Riga,
Latvia, then to Stutthof, and Torun, Poland. In Stutthof, she nearly lost her life
because children under thirteen were taken away and never seen again. In 1945 they
were liberated by the Russian army in a small Polish town called Bydgoszcz. They
continued to travel to Lodz, Poland where they were reunited with her brother who
had survived Camp Buchenwald. Her father did not survive. They followed the tide
of the refugees to the American Zone in Germany and settled in the displaced
persons camp Zeilsheim. Judith's mother enrolled her in school and in the Offenbach
Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt am Main. It was during those years of her
childhood that she developed a strong love for the arts. In 1949, the family
immigrated to New York. Judith married Harry, an Auschwitz survivor and
established a nice family. She studied music and art and furthered her studies by
specializing in music and art therapy. She holds bachelors and masters degrees in
music. Judith is an accomplished artist composer and lyricist. Her art is in the
permanent collection of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, The Florida Holocaust Museum of
Art. St Petersburg, Florida, and in private collections. A number of her paintings
have been exhibited in seventeen museums in the United States.
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Halina Greenwald
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HALINA GREENNWALD
“I want the world to remember what happened. Although I have my doubts, I hope
that some lesson was learned from that horrible period in history. To live in the past
can only have negative influences on our children and grandchildren. We must move
on”.
I was born in Vilna. Poland. At the occupation by the Germans.my family was placed
in the Vilna ghetto. My father died there. My mother was a surgical nurse and
worked in the ghetto hospital. She was able to keep me with her during her surgical
shift. She kept me hidden behind a screen in the operating room. When it became
clear that the time in the ghetto was short my mother with the help of friends got
Aryan papers for me and arranged for a local farmer to keep me hidden on his farm.
Subsequently, my mother escaped as well and hid in the woods. She would walk for
many miles at night just to peek at me. The Russian army liberated us. When Poland
was divided in Potsdam my mother and I were the only survivors. From Poland we
smuggled our way to occupied Germany. We lived in a displaced persons camp in
West Berlin until the blockade in 1948 and at that time moved to Frankfurt. My
mother remarried in 1949. I have an older stepbrother who lives in Australia at
present. I graduated from Lycee in Frankfurt and came to Columbia University for
further studies. There I met my husband. We settled on Long Island. My mother
remained in Germany and died in New York while visiting her children in 1970.
During the years that I lived in Germany, I did not experience any anti-Semitism.
Until this day I have close contact with my non-Jewish school friends.
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Professor Hans Heilbronner
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PROFESSOR HANS HEILBRONNER
Dr. Siegel met Dr. Heilbronner after visiting Temple Israel in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. He agreed to meet with Dr Siegel immediately, even though he was
going on vacation the next day I grew up in Memmingen, Bavaria, Germany. On a
single day, January 30, 1933, life immediately changed. I went from an assimilated
Jewish family life to being prevented from entering my own home by Brown Shirts.
My father, an affluent merchant who was president of our congregation, in
November 1938 was sent to Dachau. My mother, hoping for the release of my father,
went to the Gestapo chief and agreed to give him fifty marks and the keys to our
Mercedes in exchange for my father. In March 1939, my brother and I were sent off
to Zurich, Switzerland, and spent time in the care of a Swiss organization established
to save German Jewish children. At first I was placed in a school for delinquent boys,
but I ran away. A relative then found more appropriate living conditions for my
brother and me, and we ended up living with a widow. That was a happy time. We
knew no anti-Semitism and got to spend some of our mealtimes at a local elite
boarding school for girls. Upon my father's release from Dachau, he and my mother
came to find us, and, in August 1939, we escaped to London. We took the last ferry
that sailed from France to England. War broke out the next day. Through it all, I
didn't feel as if I were suffering. Life just felt like an adventure. My parents, in order
to avoid living in the ghetto, moved the family to Detroit where my mother's uncle
lived. Still our family remained poor. My father was a cookie salesman, and my
mother, who had always had maids in Germany before the war began, cleaned
houses. My brother and I served in the armed forces and then, because of the Gl Bill,
both of us were able to get an education, and I received my PhD. Hans won a
Fulbright scholarship as a Russian History scholar He was accepted by the
University of New Hampshire, but disappointingly found there an atmosphere of
anti-Semitism. He describes lecturing to a local women's organization in a country-
club setting where no Jews were allowed. When he announced that he was Jewish
they were forced to accept him on his merit, and from then on was well respected.
He maintained his Jewish heritage and is a member of the board of the synagogue.
He believes his survival was pure luck. He is a positive person who believes that if
you come to grips with the fact that life is tragic and the essence of existence is
tragedy, everything else comes into place. His story is part of Shoah.
Now retired, an endowed lecture series on the Holocaust has recently been founded
at the University of New Hampshire in his name.
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Leon Heller – Liberator
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LEON HELLER
“Nobody should have to experience what I saw again. The Holocaust was the most
terrible thing that could have possibly happened. I was so young seeing it. I learned
that we must never let something like this happen again, we must be forever
watchful”. Leon Heller is a Jewish liberator who has told his story to the Holocaust
Documentation Center of Southeast Florida. Dr. Siegel viewed his tape with him and
witnessed how very emotional these memories still are for him.
I was born in Chicago to a Conservative Jewish family in an assimilated
neighborhood. Still, I experienced anti-Semitism as a youth. At the synagogue we
attended. I was told of the atrocities going on in Europe, and we were encouraged to
take care of "our own" and to do whatever we could to help the European Jews.
I graduated from high school and then went to Wright Junior College. I was drafted
into the army at age eighteen. My brother was already in the army in France. I wanted
desperately to go to Europe but was sent first to Texas to be part of the Tank
Destroyer Battalion. I was nineteen when I was sent abroad to fight on the front lines
in Germany. As a private assigned to the 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion. I was part
of the unit to liberate Buchenwald on April11. 1945.
When we entered camp, I vividly remember the skeletal men in stripes, joyous that
the American soldiers were there bringing freedom. I spoke in Yiddish to one small
man and asked about family members I knew had been taken from their homes. This
man told me of how he was to carry the bodies to and from the crematorium. The
captives were giving us whatever they had. I wish I had given them my clothes. I
was completely unprepared for what I encountered there. The vivid memory of the
bodies in the crematorium and the stench will never leave me. I was so enraged that
upon entering another German town on a raid the next day, even though it was empty
of Germans, I destroyed anything of theirs that I could find. One week later I went
to Dachau but no victims were left. We visited the barracks and saw the horror of
the spaces including the meat hooks, the showers and the crematorium. I returned to
the United States to Roosevelt College and went into the family shoe business. I
married in 1953.and we had three children. Two of my children have married
second-generation Holocaust survivors and so I have been able to share my
experience with my family. Why did this happen? Education is so important but it is
all difficult to express.
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Rosalie Lamet
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ROSALIE LAMET
“I am one lucky girl. I write in my book that it should never happen again and that
it should be told about so that we will not repeat the horrors and terrors”. Antwerp,
Belgium, the city where I was born, was known as the City of Diamonds. My father
was a citizen of Belgium and a diamond dealer who died when I was eleven.
During the war, my mother, sister, and brother were deported and died. I knew
French very well, and, using what I had of ingenuity, determination, arrogance, and
beauty, I was able to escape to Vichy, France. In France, I again escaped the Gestapo
by denying that I was Jewish. I was smuggled into Switzerland, which became my
"Alpine Oasis." I lived out the rest of the war hidden in Switzerland. I will be forever
indebted to the Swiss for my survival. My brothers in New York arranged my
passage to America in 1946. I married here and raised a daughter and son.
Eventually, I registered for college, taking writing courses at Columbia University.
I published two books, City of Diamonds and Alpine Oasis, about the courage it took
to survive.
After suffering through the many years of the Nazi regime, I understood the need to
provide assistance for those in need. I started Lamet Hall in Israel to do just that. At
Lamet Hall, people who might not be otherwise able to afford such accommodations
are welcome to organize and celebrate bar mitzvahs, weddings, and the important
times in their lives. I continue to practice orthodoxy. I am a proud grandmother and
great-grandmother. I hope to return to Antwerp, my birthplace, where my
granddaughter is a physician.
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Sam Levitt-Liberator
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SAM LEVITT
“I remember meeting with a number of survivors a short time after their liberation
from Dachau and other camps and hearing stories of their horror”. I am an American
Jew, raised in Hicksville, Long Island. I am the eldest of three sons, and my parents
came to the United States from Russia. While I was in the U.S. army, stationed in
Germany, the liberation occurred in Dachau, just outside of Munich. I remember
meeting with a number of survivors a short time after their liberation from Dachau
and other camps and hearing stories of their horror. A few months later, the most
important contact I made was with a survivor I met at a displaced persons camp in a
town called Felderfing, which was also near the city of Munich. A friend of my
parents found out that I was stationed near Felderfing and requested that I bring long-
delayed mail to this survivor, a man by the name of Binyomin Appel.
Mr. Appel was overjoyed, finally, to receive these mailings, which represented the
first contact that his relatives in America had-a contact that was hindered by an
earlier breakdown in mail communication. Later connections that I made with Mr.
Appel took place during mid-1945 and early 1946. When it was time for me to leave
Germany in April 1946, Mr. Appel prevailed upon me to bring diary notes of his
horrible experiences in the camps to his relative in New York. At first Iwas reluctant
to do so for fear of losing these important notes but later decided it was worth the
risk.
After being discharged from the army in the U.S. on April 30, 1946, having spent
seventeen months in Europe, I was able to bring the diary notes to Mr. Appel's
relatives. Eventually, they turned them over to the Morning Freiheit, a well-known
Yiddish newspaper published in New York City. This resulted in a serial publication
of the diary in its entirety. The diary now can be found in the archival files of The
Center for Jewish History, 16 West Street, New York, New York 10011.
Mr. Appel, through the sponsorship by his relatives was able to come to the United
States and became an American citizen for the latter part of his life. Sam Levitt, a
retired secondary school teacher of the Great Neck, New York, Public Schools
presently is a resident of that community.
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Jack Rubin
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JACK RUBIN
“I want the world to know that people who hate, hate themselves. People who love,
love themselves. We are all God’s creation”
I was born in Vari, Czechoslovakia, which became Hungary in 1938. My parents
made a very comfortable living from the department stores that they owned
until1944 when we were taken to Auschwitz. I was fifteen years old. From
Auschwitz. I was taken to Thiel, Alsace in Lorraine, France, to work in a copper
mine for the Germans. In 1944, with the invasion of the Allies, I was brought back
to Germany to work in a salt mine in Kochendorf. In March 1945, I was taken out
of Kochendorf and taken on a death march to Dachau. At the end of April, I was told
that I would be taken from Dachau to Switzerland by train. The train was to cross
the Elbe River, but the bridge was destroyed. We were all taken off the train and
walked down to the bank of the Elbe.During the night the SS were machine gunning
and people were falling into the river. After a few hours, the shooting stopped. I
heard a lot of shouting and the SS soldiers started to run away. The few people who
were left walked down the road, where we met with American soldiers in the town
of Mittenwald. It was May 1, 1945. I was very sick and was taken into a field hospital
that was set up by the Americans. I was very grateful for all the medical treatment I
received. After being in the field hospital for two weeks, transports were being put
together to take the survivors back to their countries of origin. I was taken back to
Prague where I was reunited with my two surviving sisters. We returned to our
hometown which was then under Russian (Ukrainian) control. Everything had been
destroyed, including our home and our parents' business. We had no desire to stay,
and. when we heard of the displaced persons camps that were being established, we
returned to Germany. I heard that some of my friends tried to go to Palestine, but
were taken to Cyprus. I did not want to go to Cyprus. Right at that time, President
Truman opened the quota of age of under twenty-one without an affidavit to go to
the United States. I registered, and, in August 1947, I was in this beautiful country
as a free man.I was drafted into the army in 1950. After being discharged, I was in
the fur business and dry cleaning business. I married in 1954 and have three children
and four grandchildren.
Jack retired in 1995 and relocated to Florida in 1999. Here he became involved with
the Child's Survivor of the Holocaust group. He also was involved with the
settlement of the Hungarian Gold Train which he feels gave him closure.
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Brenda Senders
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BRENDA SENDERS
This is not a Jewish problem today; it is a human problem. If hate arises, then one
must move above the crowd and chop off hate; there is no place in society for
hate. We will live i n peace or we will die as fools.
I was born in a small town on the border of the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. I like
to think of myself as "one gutsy lady." As a member of the underground as a partisan
fighter for the Russians. I f ought with guns and grenades keeping the Germans very
busy. Much of the work was done in the surrounding forests where I hid.I know that
I was lucky to have survived without a scratch.
Since that time even the United States Government National Security Agency has
sought my experience. After the war, I went to a displaced persons camp in Austria
in preparation for going to Israel and married. But instead of going to Israel. I moved
to the United States where I lived outside of Washington. For the past fourteen years
my home has been in Florida.
I fought for my life and for the decency of humanity. This should never again
happen.
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Betty Ventura
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BETTY VENTURA
I was ten years old when German forces entered the small village of Oshmiany where
we lived. They led the Jewish men into the forest and murdered them. My father was
among the dead. Taken to Lithuania by way of cattle car. I was kept there among the
Jews in a temple of worship and subsequently was sent to a work camp where I
remained until its liberation by the Russians. An aunt who was also in this camp,
protected me and kept me safe even through severe illness.
My Jewish name was Basha Prusak. Following the war. I wanted to go to Israel
where an uncle was in a kibbutz but my aunt refused and wanted me to go to America
instead. I eventually went to an orphanage in the Bronx. I married a shipping clerk
and had three children but I felt that my marriage was a failure and we divorced after
twenty years. Three years later. I met the love of my life an Italian man and we
married. In 1986 as I was boarding a subway, I was mugged and remained in a coma
for eight days with three blood clots on my brain. While in the hospital my husband,
in his despair became a "born again Christian." I could not live with him, so once
again. I divorced.
The Jewish Family Service and Jewish Federation have helped Betty maintain her
current living, and she asks nothing from her children. She states she has had the
worst and desires nothing. In the painting. Dr. Siegel has collaged her family
photograph and her cherished Jewish star necklace.
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Ilona & Manek David Werdiger
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ILONA AND MANECK DAVID WERDIGER
Ilona:
I was born in Przemysl, Poland. My father was a highly educated man and also a
Talmudic scholar. In 1939 the war started, and my town was divided between the
Germans and the Russians. The river was the dividing line and I lived in the section
occupied by the Russians. In 1941 the Nazis invaded the town and deportation
started in shifts. My family stayed together in the ghetto until 1943 when someone
gave us up, and on one day, I lost everyone. The Germans began rounding people
up, chaos broke loose, and I was separated from my entire family. I was fifteen years
old and I never saw them again. We were moved in trucks to the railroad where we
were loaded one hundred at a time into cattle cars. Everyone was panicked and
crying. I saw an opening at the top of the car and convinced the others to help me
get out. I made it through the opening but fell to the tracks unconscious. I don't know
how long I remained that way, but, when I awoke, I made my way back to my town,
to friends of my parents, who still remained in their factory as supervisors and they
took me in. The Gestapo then began to liquidate all the illegal workers from this
factory, but left fifteen of us to serve the ones that remained. Eventually the fifteen
of us were sent to Plaszow in Krakow and from there to Auschwitz Birkenau. In
Auschwitz. Dr. Mengele chose me to go "to the right." Those sent "to the left" were
immediately gassed. Those of us who went to the right had our heads shaved, were
tattooed, and were made to labor. Some were then sent to the gas chambers, but I
was not. In 1944 I was sent to work in a munitions factory in Villisca. Germany and
from there to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. In May 1945, the Russian army
liberated us. I went to Prague and there found that all of my family had perished.
Having no one at all, I traveled to Austria, where I found employment applied for a
visa for either Canada, Palestine, or the United States, and met my husband. In 1948
we received visas to the United States United States. We arrived in February 1949.
We owned nothing at all. We had only ten dollars in our pockets. In the background
of our portrait we have chosen to place a photograph of the Statue of Liberty.
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Manek
I was born in Krakow, Poland. My family was in the textile business. In 1939 the
Nazis invaded Poland, and I was f orced to wear the Star of David on my arm. In
1941 I moved to a ghetto, established by the Nazis for the Jews. In 1944 I was
rounded up with six thousand other Jews, placed on a cattle car, and sent to
Mauthausen, a work camp where I was beaten. I was sent to work in a factory making
German Tiger tanks and then forced to march to Gunskirken, Austria. May of 1945
brought liberation by the Americans. I was sent finally to a deportation camp in Linz.
I found out in that place that all of my family had been annihilated. I met my wife in
Hart, Austria, and we married in 1948. I worked as an accountant for the American
Distribution committee and thus received visas. That is how we came to the United
States.
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Wilma Bulkin Siegel, MD
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