Betty Bloom Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 926: Dressing Up As A Gestapo Officer Betty Bloom The Gestapo were coming to arrest a Jewish baby in an orphanage. So my sister dressed up as a German officer and demanded this child... Read Full Memory 987: Father's Deportation Betty Bloom Unfortunately, at 6am, there was a knock on the door & two Gestapo officers marched in & arrested my father... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Rose Lebor Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 950: Liberation of Majdanek Rose Lebor At liberation I was four. All the executions, the beatings that they had to watch. My mother could never bring herself to tell me... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

996: How To Hide In Berlin Hans Danziger Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Hans Danziger's Jewish parents survived the war in hiding in Berlin: My father had nerves of steel. Before the war, Jews were obliged to put ‘Israel’ in front of their names. My father refused. He said his name wasn't Israel & nobody was going to tell him what to do. So he was hauled up before the magistrates, who sentenced him to 3 weeks in Spandau. He went to prison. My mother was absolutely terrified of what they were doing to him inside, came to meet him at the prison gates with bags of sandwiches in case he’d been starved. He said, “Put those away. I couldn’t eat a thing more.” In the evenings, he said, the warders used to come round to his cell, & say, “Come on Danziger, tell us. What are these idiots doing to the Jews?" He told them what was going on & they were amazed. Another time, when they were hiding during the war, he'd been somewhere & was coming through the railway barriers. My mother was waiting for him & somebody jostled my father. My father turned around & offered to punch him in the face. My mother nearly died. They had no papers, nothing. My father said to her afterwards “If I'd cowered, they might have been saying, ‘Are you a Jew or something?’” He said, “As it was, nobody dared question it.” Another day, he was on the tram, having been to the country to fetch eggs & butter & so forth from a farmer. Black market. He was on the tram & some Nazi with a big swastika in his buttonhole said to him, “What have you got in your case?” My father said, “I've got butter, eggs, sugar, a bit of this, leg of chicken.” The chap says, “Yeah, yeah. In your dreams.” My father said, “Just shows you my son, always tell the truth.” This is how they first hid: my father was working in Daimler-Benz. One day, the Jews were told to stay behind. My father thought, well, this does not bode well. So he put his hat & coat on, & went. The gatekeeper said to him. “A bit early, isn't it?” My father said “I've got a dental appointment.” “OK, see you tomorrow.” He obviously hadn't been told to keep the Jews in. So my father went. God knows what happened to the rest. My father went straight to the underground, took off his yellow star, rode around, I don't know for how long. He then phoned some friends who said, “Yes, Lotti’s with us.” So he knew my mother was safe. Then he went to the house. Fischer, the porter, had made an arrangement with him. If there was trouble or the Nazis were upstairs, he would turn a cup upside down in his porters’ lodge. So my father went past & he saw the cup upside down. So he didn't go up. Then a couple of nights later, he went back again. There was nothing there. So he went upstairs. He broke the seal on the door, because the Gestapo had sealed the door. He started getting the boxes ready & the porter came rushing up & said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? Some people are saying there's a light on in the Danziger flat.” So they turned the lights off. My father said “Take what you want, just get the boxes to Goerner.” So they did up the boxes & manhandled them downstairs to the porter’s lodge. From there, they went to his friend Goerner’s place. These were all non-Jews. There were many people, all non-Jews who helped them, hid them, gave him false papers, took them out. I can't say enough about them. My father tried with Yad Vashem to get honours for certain people. One of them employed my father as a night watchman. So during the day, my father went out of the district where he was known & went to different places. At night, he had a safe place to go as a night watchman. By this time, my mother had been questioned by the Gestapo about where my father was. She could answer honestly saying she hadn't a clue. They left her alone. Then her friend Helli was working at an electrical plant, Siemens. The foreman there quite fancied her. When it was time, all the Jews stayed behind, he said to her “Look, I know you're not that keen, but do you want to go with them? Or do you want to come home?” She said, “I'll come home with you if my friend Lotti can come.” So he said, “Alright, bring your friend Lotti, but you’d better hurry.” So he got them to his house & put them up. There was an old railway carriage at the end of his garden with the chickens in. He threw out the chickens & installed Helli & my mother. He used to bring them little bits of felt to make hats, which he then sold in the factory. Nobody asked where he got the hats from. He was a bit of a drunk, & when he was drunk, he used to sing anti-Nazi songs. Not a good thing to do in those days. So, my mother got very frightened & said to Helli, “I don't think we ought to hang around here.” So my mother stayed with some other friends, one of whom was not Jewish. Had been married to a Jew, who had divorced him. He found my mother a job with some woman who had dementia & was some raving old Nazi. My mother didn't look very Jewish so that was OK. We have a photo of a Nazi officer in the photograph book. And we said, “What on earth’s he doing in there?!” You know. She said, “you don't judge a book by its cover”. She said she was somewhere at a party & this officer was there & he said to her, “I'm sure,” you know, “ask your husband's permission, but honoured Lady—gnädige Frau—if you would care to have my arm should you want to go out. I would always be—here's my phone number.” So she phoned him & he took her out. If she wanted to go shopping to some shop, where she wouldn't be allowed normally, he would take it to the shops. He knew she was Jewish. He didn't ask any questions; he didn't want to know. He never asked. He never said anything. But obviously, why should he bother, you know? Sadly, sadly, he was killed by the Russians at the end of the war & both his sons died on the Russian front—they were both doctors. Very sad. The ones who do good get killed. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Hans Danziger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2021 • Learn More → Hans Danziger Arrested Encounter With Nazi Officials False Identity Helped By Non-Jews Hiding In Plain Sight In Hiding Near Escape Nerves of Steel Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Hungary Budapest Memories 929: Fending For Myself Aged 9 Stephen Nagy I contracted scarlet fever. You had to go to an isolation hospital for six weeks. The fascist Hungarians took over. So, I was stuck in hospital... 942: Father's New Woman John Hajdu MBE In each flat it was about 20 of us squeezed in. The area was guarded by the Arrow Cross Party: fascist & brutal. Hardly any food... 943: The Legless Side Of The Bed Laszlo Roman I was always told I mustn’t pee by the side of the road because someone might see that I am circumcised... 958: Discovering I Was Jewish John Dobai My parents thought that by changing their religion, it might produce some sort of saving, at least for me. But they were wrong... 959: The Invasion Of Hungary George Donath It was a Sunday. We went to my grandparents for lunch as usual. All of a sudden we see these black Mercedes drawing up in front... Previous Location Next Location

929: Fending For Myself Aged 9 Stephen Nagy Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Budapest: Stephen Nagy was nine and a half in September 1944: I contracted scarlet fever, at that time a very serious illness. You had to go to an isolation hospital for six weeks. On October 14th I got a phone call from my father saying to get my clothes together: the next day I'd go home. But the next day was October 15, when the right-wing fascist Hungarians under Ferenc Szálasi took over. So, I was stuck in hospital. At first, I felt reasonably safe. I had a friend there who called me, in Hungarian, büdös zsidó, which means “smelly Jew” which the Jews were called. I wasn't pleased. But he wasn't very nasty about it. I didn't understand why I was still in the hospital. I later learned that first of all no one could come for me because the Germans blew up the bridge. Also, my family arranged through connections with the hospital director that they keep me there until further notice. I heard guns. The Russians were getting nearer. Then on December 21, suddenly this gentleman called Mr. Bujdosi, I remember the name, a lovely gentleman, came with a car. And I was taken to an International Red Cross house. There were a lot of Jewish children there. Conditions were reasonably normal. There was food. I was quite ignorant of what was going on except I knew there was a war. I knew the Russians were coming nearer. I knew that there were daily air raids, the siren sounded. We had to go down to the shelter. The house escaped because there was obviously a Red Cross marked on the roof. I was pretty frightened. I wasn't a happy bunny. But I was 9½ & reasonably streetwise. I was already on my own for nearly two months. I was fending for myself. I found it a relatively normal thing. There were 2 or 3 adults in charge. One woman was a rather old battle axe, not very pleasant to us. Then, soon after Christmas, suddenly, the adults disappeared. I was curious what was happening & went down in the shelter. I found lots of old Jewish people, including my father's second cousin. When she saw me, she just said, 'My God. What are you doing here? Don't go back upstairs. Stay downstairs with me. We've still got some food.' So I stayed. "Then on January 18, after weeks of awful bombing suddenly there was eerie silence. I woke up on a straw mattress next to the lady. She said 'Don't go outside!' but I did & found we were 'free'. The same day, my relative’s daughter came for her & found me there & took me back to their flat. I had my first decent meal there. A potato dish. What happened after that—I never forgave her—was that the daughter took me to a Yellow Star house, saying she didn't know anything about my parents but that my uncle & aunt were there, which they weren't. So I was stuck there alone for another 4 weeks. The remaining Germans tried to dig a tunnel & escape but were all annihilated. So there was lots of bombs. Sadly, my older relative, who was at the International Red Cross house, was in the street & was killed by a shrapnel. Eventually my uncle & aunt arrived. It was ice cold. The Danube was frozen over. My job was to go down with a saucepan & bring up water from the ground floor because there was no pressure. I carried this water up, stopping after each floor because by this stage I was quite weak. One day, February 1, I was carrying water, I heard a strange voice, which I thought may have been my brother's but it's gone a bit deeper than what I remembered. I went up there & found my mother & brother in the flat. They'd escaped from Old Buda. They were in a house where Germans moved into the lower ground floor. But on the 31st of January, suddenly these Germans disappeared. So next day, my mother & brother went down to the Danube, where it narrows & was thick ice. They had taken the dog, who was very close to my 7-year-old cousin. Several times, my brother gave it a kick to go back but it wouldn't. They managed to cross the Danube & decided to write a little note, “We crossed the Danube at Ujpest. Come after us.” And my brother gave the dog a huge big kick & it found a way all the way back to the house. And as my cousin put her arms around the dog & kissed the dog she found this note. So the next day, my aunt, with my father & my cousin, came the same way & arrived at my uncle & aunt's yellow star house, where we all were. So that was the family reunion. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Stephen Nagy's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2019 • Learn More → Stephen Nagy Arrow Cross In Hiding Jewish House Liberation Nerves of Steel Reunited Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Hungary Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

See Locations Italy Memories 932: A Cigarette For An Iron Cross Harry Weinberger A very young lieutenant in charge of us told me that the British Army will fight to the last alien, to the last foreign soldier... Read Full Memory Cassino Naples Locations Previous Country Next Country

997: My Mother & Father Trude Silman MBE Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Trude Silman MBE, Bratislava, wartime: My mother is a question mark. I know she survived ‘til 1944 because we used to get the odd occasional 25-word Red Cross letter, but then it stopped. I really don’t know exactly what happened to her. Initially she was in Bratislava. I’m given to understand she worked as a nurse in the Jewish hospital. Eventually she must have moved out of there & gone further East when there was the Slovak uprising. As far as we can gather, but we have no proof, she went out one day & never came back. They assumed she was one of the people who was picked up & shot. But we have no clear evidence as to what actually happened to her, we believe she was sheltered by a Roman Catholic priest, & we actually had some proof of this, because, after the war, the priest’s housekeeper somehow or other sent us a letter telling us about some possessions of my mothers, which they were placing with another aunt. But we’ve lost the letter so we’ve no idea what, where & how. I’ve never been able to trace it. If you don’t know the place, if you don’t know the name, if you haven’t the time, if you don’t speak the language, it is not easy to do. So we hope that possibly still some literature will come up from somewhere. The Red Cross haven’t been able to trace her & there’s no record. She seemed to lead the sort of life that most of her sisters lived. They did their basic cooking, they did their shopping, they met in the coffee house to talk, they went to each others’ houses & that was basically it. But my mother was a very early riser. She used to go & do the market shopping very early in the morning, about five in the morning when the market started, I remember that. She was a fabulous cook, & unfortunately I never picked it up, because I was too young at that age to learn about those sorts of things. It's a tragedy, a real tragedy, what happened to my parents. I only found out relatively recently that my aunt & uncle managed to get them a post as housekeepers, domestics. My father was already well in his 50s, & he decided he was too old to make that sort of a commitment & he didn’t think that the Holocaust would arrive, he didn’t think it was going to be what it was going to be. So my parents didn’t come out. I only discovered this when I found a document from one of the refugee committees. There was a little ‘D’ against my parents' name that indicated that they were granted a domestic permit. They never took it up. So that was that, I only discovered that relatively recently. In 1939 Trude came to the UK with her aunt. Her brother & sister were already there. Up to about 1941 were letters written on what I would call toilet paper & my father did most of the writing, used to be a little sheet of paper & if it came to me I would pass it to my sister, & she would pass it onto my brother, so we used to circulate our letters. That’s why some of them have gone astray, because my brother destroyed all of his stuff, he couldn’t bear it. So we lost a lot. Then the letters stopped. My father was transported to Auschwitz on the 19th of April, 1942. The death certificate said the 8th of May. So he survived 3 weeks in Auschwitz, which doesn’t surprise me, because when he was transported he had actually injured his leg, & my cousin who saw him off said he was limping when he went on the transport. You know, you were expecting to see your parents very soon. There wasn’t a day, every single night I used to pray they’re all right, & that they’ll be safe, & I’ll see them soon, this went on for years & years & years. But again the emotion has gone out of this as the years have come on, that goes, you only remember the nice things. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Trude Silman MBE's interview with Dr Rosalyn Livshin for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, November 2003 • Learn More → Trude Silman MBE Close Family Murdered Finding Out Never Finding Out Red Cross Letters Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Czechoslovakia Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Fred Barschak Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 937: Eichmann Asking For Chopped Liver Fred Barschak On Saturday: elderly Jews scrubbing the pavements & marvellous shouts of ‘At last, Hitler’s found work for the Jews!' Read Full Memory 939: How To Bake A Stuffed Pike Fred Barschak The building still exists. Right next to the Prater, the great playground. But when I went back 25 years later I was disappointed... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

See Locations Soviet Union Memories 930: Reunion After 22 Years In Siberia Dorothy Bohm My sister was one when I left. 22 years later I saw her again. We had no language in common. No memories in common, no childhood. Nothing... Read Full Memory 975: Life In A Siberian Labour Camp Izak Wiesenfeld We were taken by lorries into the forest, to a huge barrack. The first speech: “You will never get out of here, here you will die..." Read Full Memory Novosibirsk Siberia Locations Previous Country Next Country

963: Experiencing Antisemitism Stella Shinder Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Stella Shinder, Chemnitz, 1934: It was when I started school at the age of six, that I had my first encounter. I had a little umbrella with red stripes. A little schoolmate of mine said, 'Is that the blood of German babies that the Jews are killing?' I came home to my mother & said, 'Could this be true?' That was my first experience of what was happening. My mother said: 'Absolutely not. This is not true. You must never believe that'. My father had an encounter with a janitor who called him a ‘dirty Jew’. This man had a stick. So my father took the stick & beat him up. There was never any talk about going. Never. It wasn’t until we actually left in July 1938—Friday the 13th—that my mother—we went on our usual holiday to Czechoslovakia. We lived quite near the border & holiday in Karlovy Vary. A beautiful spa in the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia. When we crossed the border, my mother said to my brother & myself, 'We are never going back'. So that was it. My brother & I were elated. Because we'd already experienced antisemitism. We were thrown out of our schools. We were spat at in the street. We'd experienced antisemitism quite strongly. We weren't allowed to sit on park benches or use swimming pools. So we were very, very happy to leave all that behind. When we were getting ready, I said 'Mummy why are you packing winter stockings on our summer holiday?' She gave me a smack & said, 'Be quiet'. Because we had a cleaning lady working in the flat & she didn’t want her to know that we would never come back again. My father was still in Germany & didn’t want to leave, because we had a beautiful home. He had a business. He didn’t want to leave. My mother wrote to him & said 'If you don’t follow us, you'll never see us again'. So he packed his bag & he had some money in a briefcase. And on the platform at the station he was so nervous he left this bag with the money behind. My poor, poor father. We never saw it again. So he came & joined us. Then we went to live in Prague, where we stayed for six months prior to coming to England. So. Then we had a small flat which we rented in Prague. My brother & I attended a German-speaking school. And of course we were spat at by the Czech children not for being Jewish but because they thought we were Germans. There was a lot of anti-German feeling in Czechoslovakia at that time. We had a letter from my father’s parents who lived in Warsaw at the time to say there was an aunt, my grandfather’s sister, living in England, in London. 'Write to her, get her to, get her to get you a visitor’s visa. Get out of Czechoslovakia because Hitler’s going to come into Czechoslovakia'. So, we were so lucky, we managed to get this visa. My mother arranged for us to fly to England. Crossing Germany would have been dangerous for us, if we'd gone by train. So we took a flight which landed at Brussels & then another flight from Brussels to London. We landed in London on the 6th of December 1938. Croydon Airport. When we left, my mother used to write to—in those days we didn’t all have telephones. She would write to our friends, 'Leave, leave'. And nobody paid any attention. Nobody paid any attention. There was great antisemitism, but nobody could have imagined what finally happened. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Stella Shinder's interview with Clare Csonka for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2021 • Learn More → Stella Shinder Emigration to Czechoslovakia Not Allowed To Use Swimming Pools Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Willy Field Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 961: Having My Revenge Willy Field I was a refugee from Nazi oppression. I wanted to have my revenge & I had my revenge. That was a wonderful feeling... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

See Locations Czechoslovakia Memories 927: The Wonderful Thing Ruth Rogoff My father was a courier for getting people out of Germany & over the border into Czechoslovakia, illegally. One day he was betrayed... Read Full Memory 960: The Awful Heydrich Reprisals Frank Bright Two Gestapo men came to our flat & asked where was I at the time. My mother had been indoors. I had just arrived from school... Read Full Memory 963: Experiencing Antisemitism Stella Shinder I had a little umbrella with red stripes. A little schoolmate of mine said, 'Is that the blood of German babies that the Jews are killing?' Read Full Memory 969: No One In My Situation Lia Lesser In 1939, my father married again in Prague. His wife was called Ola & she was a seamstress. When she came out of Auschwitz she got in touch... Read Full Memory 971: Equalising What Happened Dr Charlotte Feldman They used to demonstrate in the street below us. They used to shout, ‘Jews to Palestine!’ I had a very happy childhood... Read Full Memory 979: Sitting Through That Bronia Snow My parents always discussed everything. But not a word was spoken about my going to England. So I found myself one fine day... Read Full Memory 985: Black Heart Outside The Flat Miriam Freedman It's difficult. Children feel very protected. Everything goes well. Then all of a sudden you see terrible things, like people disappearing... Read Full Memory 997: My Mother & Father Trude Silman MBE My mother is a question mark. I know she survived ‘til 1944 because we used to get the odd occasional 25-word Red Cross letter, but then it stopped... Read Full Memory 999: The Caretaker & His Daughter Miriam Freedman At night time, the caretaker used to bring us food. We sat there, never able to talk, no toys or books or anything. Things becoming all the time worse... Read Full Memory Bratislava Karlovy Vary Nitra Prague Locations Previous Country Next Country