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Frank Ephraim
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We note with sadness the death of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Survivor Volunteer Frank Ephraim, who passed away Sunday, August 27, 2006. Frank had served as a Museum volunteer since the Museum�s opening in 1993 in Education, Visitor Services, and the Volunteer Advisory Board (including serving as VAB president). Frank contributed to the four volumes of the Museum�s Echoes of Memory survivor writing project, and authored Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
"The way the trip went was we left one evening, went to the local railroad station in Berlin, that at that time was called Anhalterbahnhof. It no longer exists as such. Hopped on a train. It was a sleeper. We went overnight, changed in Munich, next morning, and from there we began to head toward Italy, the border. We went through Austria, and the train was stopped in Brenner, Brenner pass, which is the border between Austria and Italy. There everybody had to get out. The German side, we were searched, body search, all the luggage was searched. That delayed everything. The train left without us. We had to wait another six hours for the next train." (postwar testimony)
Other Survivor Volunteers |
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OUR
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"I hope for the day when people can practice their religion of choice; when race and discrimination is no longer an issue.
"May the 21st Century, which we have now embarked, never experience the horrors of the Century we have just left behind.
"May we be given the strength to build together with others a world of security, mutual respect, and peace.
"Most of all, I am thankful to the United States of America for giving us, the Survivors, the opportunity to experience the freedom and family life that this country of ours has to offer. I am grateful to the Survivors of the Holocaust and to this magnificent United States Holocaust Museum that it will leave the legacy to the World, after we are gone, that bigoty and hatred must never be a part of our lives."
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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A Precious Link
Holocaust survivors are the precious link that keeps the history of this era alive for us and our children. Without them, their testimony, and their artifacts, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would have lost a much needed dimension. Below are the stories of survivor volunteers. We plan on adding more stories in the future.
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What Survivor Volunteers Do
There are more than 60 Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the Museum on a regular basis. The kind of work they do includes behind-the-scenes (research, translation, transcription); Visitor Services (welcoming visitors to the Museum, membership, talking to visitors, and answering questions); and special events (after-hours Public Programs, lectures, and survivor and second generation events). Their presence is an invaluable asset to the Museum, and their contributions are vital to its success.
Questions?
Call the Volunteer and Intern Services Branch at (202) 479-9737 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Becoming a Volunteer
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Click on a Survivor's photo or name listed below, and learn a little about their life during and after the Holocaust.
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Fanny Aizenberg (Fajga Orenbuch)
Born 1916, Lodz, Poland Fanny Aizenberg was born into an Orthodox family in Lodz, Poland. Fanny and her family moved to Brussels, Belgium when she was a young child. One of three daughters, Fanny’s family was very active within their community.
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Katie Altenberg (Kate Engel)
Born 1936, Vienna, Austria Katie was born into a Jewish family in Vienna and resided on an estate called Edmunshof in the state of Burgenland bordering Hungary.
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David Bayer
Born September 27, 1922, Kozienice, Poland David was born to religious Jewish parents in Kozienice, a town in southeastern Poland. His father owned a shoe factory that supplied stores throughout the country. His mother took care of the home and children, and helped in the factory.
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Bob Behr
Born March 1, 1922, Berlin, Germany Bob lived in Berlin, Germany, with his parents until they divorced. He then lived solely with his mother. Bob attended a boarding school in Germany until 1935 when the Nazis forced the school’s closure.
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Eve Kristine Vetulani (Belfoure)
Born October 1, 1924, Cracow, Poland Died March 25, 2004, Baltimore, Maryland Eve Kristine Vetulani was born to a Catholic family in Cracow, Poland. Her father was a professor at Jagiellonian University. Her mother took care of Kristine.
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Susan Berlin
Born June 22, 1926, Roznava, Slovakia Died September 5, 2008 Susan was born an only child to a conservative Jewish family in Roznava, Slovakia. Her mother and father owned a dry-goods store. Susan was thirteen years old when the war began. News of the evils of the concentration camps reached Roznava and Susan’s father decided to take his family out of Slovakia as fast as possible. Her father had a brother in the United States that would assist her family in receiving Visas. They sailed into New York City on the S.S. Washington on August 3, 1939.
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Sheila Bernard (Sala/Sara Perec/Peretz)
Born 1936, Chelm, Poland Died October 6, 2007 Sheila was the only child born to Bela and Isaac Peretz in Chelm, Poland. Chelm was a vibrant Jewish community. Before the war, her family owned a large building on Lubelska Street, and Sheila’s father managed a Singer Sewing Machine business. Sheila’s parents both had large, close-knit families, and her childhood was filled with love and joy.
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Jacqueline Mendels Birn
Born April 23, 1935, Paris, France Jacqueline and her sister attended the local public school. Their lives were quite normal until Germany invaded Poland and the war broke out.
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Izak Danon
Born 1929, Split, Yugoslavia Izak was born in Split, a small town on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia with a prewar population of about 50,000 and a rather active Jewish life. Izak’s father owned a small dry goods store, and Izak helped run the family business along with his mother and three sisters.
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Isaac Dickmann
Born November 11, 1919, Stryj, Poland Isaac was raised by his widowed mother who received support from a nearby uncle and an aunt in New York.
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Yona Dickmann (Wygocka)
Born March 15, 1928, Pabianice, Poland Yona was the eldest of four children in a working-class Jewish family. Yona’s father sold merchandise to Polish stores. It was a difficult life in Pabianice, but Yona’s family was very close, and many relatives lived nearby.
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Marcel Drimer
Born May 1, 1934, Drohobycz, Poland Marcel Drimer was born in Drohobycz, Poland a small town now part of Ukraine. His father Jacob worked as an accountant in a lumber factory while his mother Laura raised Marcel and his younger sister Irena.
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Erika Eckstut (Neuman)
Born June 12, 1928, Znojmo, Czechoslovakia Erika was born in Znojmo, a town in the Czech region of Moravia with a Jewish community dating back to the 13th century. Her father was a respected attorney and an ardent Zionist who hoped to immigrate with his family to Palestine.
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Frank Ephraim
Born February 19, 1931, Berlin, Germany Died August 27, 2006 Frank's father was an inventor, holding several patents in the radio field until the crash of 1929. Frank's mother worked as a secretary for a Berlin business firm. In February 1939, soon after Kristallnacht, the family emigrated to the Philippines.
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Gideon Frieder
Born September 30, 1937, Zvolen, Slovakia Gideon's family moved to Nove Mesto, Slovakia, at the beginning of the war because his father, a rabbi, was offered a position there. Gideon's grandparents were deported early in the war. His father was part of the underground "Working Group" of the Slovak Jewry.
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Manya Friedman (Moszkowicz)
Born December 30, 1925, Chmielnik, Poland Manya was born in Chmielnik, a small Polish town that had a Jewish community dating back to the 16th century. Her father owned a furniture shop and her mother took care of the home. Manya had two younger brothers, David and Mordechai, and was surrounded by many close relatives.
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Goldie Gendelman
Born March 17, 1933, Lachowicze, Poland Goldie was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Lachowicze, Poland. Her family ran a successful two-room shoe factory from the home. In September 1937, she and her family sailed to Cuba, where they remained safe during the war.
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Agi Geva
Born June 2, 1930, Hungary When the German occupation of Hungary occurred on March 19, 1944, Agi, her younger sister Zsuzsanna and her parents, Rozsa and Zoltan Laszlo had been living in Miskolcz.
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Fritz Gluckstein
Born January 24, 1927, Berlin, Germany Fritz's father, a conservative Jewish judge in Berlin, was extremely patriotic and a decorated veteran of World War I. He lost his job when Hitler came to power in 1933. Fritz's mother was not Jewish and Fritz was considered a “Geltungsjude,” a counted Jew.
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Nesse Godin (Galperin)
Born March 28, 1928, Siauliai, Lithuania Nesse was born to an observant Jewish family in Siauliai, known in Yiddish as Shavl. Her parents owned a store that sold dairy products. The city was home to a vibrant Jewish community of almost 10,000 people.
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Helen Lebowitz Goldkind
Born July 9, 1928, Volosyanka, Czechoslovakia Helen was one of seven children born to a Jewish family in Volosyanka, a town in Trans-Carpathian Ruthenia. Nestled in the Carpathian mountains, Volosyanka was a small town with a sizable Jewish Community. Helen grew up in a close-knit family; many relatives lived nearby.
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Henry Greenbaum (Chuna Grynbaum)
Born April 1, 1928, Starachowice, Poland Chuna was born in a small one-story house that served as both his family's residence and their tailor shop. He was the youngest of nine children born to religious Jewish parents.
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Ruth Elisabeth Greifer (Dahl)
Born May 30, 1922, Geilenkirchen, Germany Ruth was born into an orthodox Jewish family in Geilenkirchen, a rural German town near the Dutch border. Her father, Isidor, was a respected cattle dealer in the area and her mother, Sophia, took care of the home.
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William Hess
Born August 8, 1921, Stuttgart, Germany William was born to a large liberal Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany. His father, a World War I veteran, worked as a textile wholesale businessman and owned his own small store where he sold cotton and linen goods. Stuttgart was a seemingly safe city and became the home for many Jews.
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Irving Horn (Isachar Herszenhorn)
Born February 25, 1927, Radom, Poland Died October 6, 2002, Potomac, MD Isachar was born to a Jewish family in the Polish city of Radom, approximately 75 miles south of Warsaw. The city was the center of Poland's leather-tanning industry.
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Louise Lawrence-Israels
Born 1942, Haarlem, The Netherlands When Louise was only six months old, she went into hiding with her parents and older brother. The family hid on the 4th floor of a rowhouse in Amsterdam for the duration of the war.
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Inge Katzenstein (Berg)
Born March 27, 1929, Cologne, Germany Inge lived with her parents, grandparents, uncle, and younger sister, Gisella, in Lechenich, a small village outside of Cologne. The Bergs were an observant Jewish family. Her father, Josef was a respected cattle dealer, who had many business and personal contacts with their Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors.
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Werner Katzenstein
Born April 29, 1922, Wallensen, Germany Werner was raised in the rural German town of Herleshausen, where his family owned a farming supply business. His father sold seeds to local farmers and purchased their grain, while his mother ran the office. The Katzensteins were one of about two dozen Jewish families living in the area.
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Theodora Klayman (Teodora Basch-Vrančić)
Born January 31, 1938, Zagreb, Yugoslavia Yugoslav-born Teodora Basch and her younger brother were hidden by their aunt and her non-Jewish husband, with the help of neighbors, for almost four years.
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Estelle Laughlin
Born July 9, 1929, Warsaw, Poland Estelle Laughlin was born in Warsaw, Poland on July 9, 1929. She was the younger of two sisters. In addition to her parents, the family included many aunts, uncles, and cousins.
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Herbert Launer
Born March 28, 1925, Vienna, Austria Died October 2006 Herbert Launer was born the only child in a middle class Jewish family. Herbert's father was a fur dealer and a highly decorated soldier of the Austrian army during World War I.
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Gerald Liebenau
Born November 30, 1925, Berlin, Germany Gerald was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. His father worked in the textile business. Gerald was the eldest of two children; he had a younger sister. He attended public school until 1936, when he and other Jewish children were forced to leave public schools.
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Frank Liebermann (Franz Liebermann)
Born January 19, 1929, Gleiwitz, Germany now Poland Frank was the only child of Hans and Lotte Liebermann. The family lived a comfortable middle class existence. Both of Frank’s parent's families had lived in the area for several generations.
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Catherine Liner (Kato Fried)
Born March 3, 1925, Smolnik, Czechoslovakia While still a child, Catherine moved with her parents and brother to Sighet, Romania. In 1944, Catherine’s father was arrested and taken to a concentration camp.
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Helen Luksenburg (Hinda Chilewicz)
Born April 4, 1926, Sosnowiec, Poland Hinda was the eldest of three children in a comfortable middle class Jewish family. Her father owned a textile business in Sosnowiec and her mother attended to the home.
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Welek Luksenburg
Born February 1, 1923, Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland Welek grew up in Dabrowa Gornicza, an industrial town in western Poland. His father, Simcha, was a wholesale meat merchant and his mother, Rozalia, served as president of the local chapter of the Women’s International Zionist Organization. The Luksenburgs were among the several thousand Jews who lived in Dabrowa Gornicza.
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Emanuel (Manny) Mandel
Born May 8, 1936, Riga, Latvia After the war, Manny went to Switzerland with his mother for several months, before emigrating to Palestine in 1945. He moved to the United States in 1949.
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Michel Margosis
Born September 2, 1928, Brussels, Belgium When Belgium was attacked by Germany in May 1940, and Brussels was bombed, the Margosis family fled. Michel's father had already known pogroms and persecution during the Russian Revolution when he was ‘interned’ in Siberia in the 1920s.
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Margit Meissner (Morawetz)
Born February 26, 1922, Innsbruck, Austria When Margit was a baby, her family moved from Austria to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her father was a banker from a religious Jewish family in Bohemia and her mother came from a Viennese family of Jewish origin.
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Leon Merrick (Lajb Kusmirek)
Born January 8, 1926, Zgierz, Poland Leon was the oldest of two boys born to a Jewish family in Zgierz, Poland. In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Leon’s family left Zgierz for Lodz. They were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940.
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Nina Merrick (Szuster)
Born Rokiteno, Poland Nina was born to a Jewish family in the Polish town of Rokiteno. She was the youngest of three siblings. Her father was a builder, and Nina attended the Beth Sefer Tarbut.
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Bella (Berger) Mischkinsky
Born September 9, 1922, Lodz, Poland Bella was born in Lodz, Poland. At the age of sixteen, she was separated from her family and ended up in the Oszmiany ghetto, from which she later escaped. Bella made her way to the ghetto in Vilna and eventually was interned in the Kaiserwald concentration camp, where she met and married her husband. She was liberated in April 1945, after surviving a number of other concentration and slave labor camps. In 1946, Bella immigrated to the United States.
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Isaac Nehama
Born April 29, 1927, Athens, Greece Isaac and his two younger brothers were born and raised in Athens, Greece. The Nehamas were traditional, Sephardic Jews who observed all Jewish holidays. Isaac’s father was an accountant at a Jewish-owned textile firm. Both of Isaac’s parents belong to local Jewish organizations.
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Johanna Gerechter Neumann
Born 1930, Hamburg, Germany Johanna was born into a family of merchants in Hamburg, Germany. Her family tried to get visas to enter the United States, but because Johanna’s father was, officially, a Polish citizen, he was given a higher lottery number than his wife and child. Therefore, they decided to stay in Germany as a family. In 1939, they escaped to Albania along with a few other Jewish-German families. They remained in Albania, fleeing from one town to another throughout the war until they were freed by the Allies in 1945.
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Jill Pauly (Gisella Renate Berg)
Born May 1, 1933, Cologne, Germany Gisella lived with her parents, grandparents, uncle, and older sister, Inge, in Lechenich, a small village outside Cologne. The Bergs were an observant Jewish family. Gisella’s grandfather was the president of the local synagogue association and her uncle was the cantor.
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Kurt Pauly
Born March 26, 1930, Aachen, Germany Kurt was born to Jewish parents in the city of Aachen, where his mother’s family had resided since the 18th century. His father, though trained as a chef, worked as a butcher and also managed several stores for his father-in-law. Kurt enjoyed large family gatherings, where he would play with his cousins, Anne and Margot Frank.
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Halina Peabody (Litman)
Born December 12, 1932, Krakow, Poland Halina was born to a liberal Jewish family in Krakow, Poland. Her father was a dentist. She was the eldest of two daughters. In 1939, Halina was living in Zaleszczyki. After the outbreak of World War II, her father fled to Romania. He later tried to return to his family but he was caught and accused of being a spy.
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Pete Philipps
Born December 5, 1931, Essen, Germany Pete grew up in Essen, a major industrial city on Germany’s Ruhr River. His father worked as a cattle hide dealer for an international trading company in nearby Mühlheim. His mother was a designer for a fashionable women’s dress shop.
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George (György) Pick
Born March 28, 1934, Budapest, Hungary György was the only child of middle class Jewish parents living in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. His father, Istvan, was an engineer responsible for producing hydraulic grape presses for wineries. His mother, Margit, worked as a legal secretary.
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Morris Rosen (Moniek Rozen)
Born November 10, 1922, Czestochowa, Poland One of 10 children, Moniek grew up in Dabrowa Gornicza, an industrial town in western Poland. His father, Jacob, owned a general store, which he was forced to close in 1938 as the result of a boycott by local antisemites.
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Tania Rozmaryn (Marcus)
Born June 16, 1928, Vilna, Poland Tania grew up in Smorgonie, a Polish town where Jews constituted more than half of the population. Her father was a successful businessman. Her grandfather, an affluent merchant, traveled frequently and brought the first truck to Smorgonie.
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Hans (John) Sachs
Born May 8, 1920, Decin, Czechoslovakia Hans was born to a Jewish family in the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia that had a large German population. In 1922 the Sachs family moved to Vienna, Austria, where they purchased a dry goods store. Hans attended public school and had many non-Jewish friends.
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Sam Schalkowsky (Shmuel Shalkovsky)
Born May 23, 1925, Kovno, Lithuania Sam Schalkowsky is the son of Yitzhak and Chaya Kupershmidt Shalkovsky. He was born on May 23, 1925 in Kovno (Kaunas) Lithuania where his parents owned a shoe store. Shmuel was the youngest of six siblings, two of whom died at a young age. Three of his older siblings moved to Palestine in the early 1930's.
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Charlene Schiff (Shulamit Perlmutter)
Born December 16, 1929, Horochow, Poland Shulamit, known as Musia, was the youngest of two daughters born to a Jewish family in the town of Horochow, 50 miles northeast of Lvov. Her father was a philosophy professor who taught at the university in Lvov, and both of her parents were civic leaders in Horochow.
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Lore Schneider (Heti Lore Koppel)
Born October 10, 1924, Bochum, Germany When Lore’s father and his law partner were brutally beaten in an alleyway. It was then that her father decided that the family must leave Germany before conditions got even worse.
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Gerald Schwab
Born February 19, 1925, Freiburg, Germany Gerald was born to a conservative Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany. His father was a businessman. His company was based in Germany and the warehouse was located in Switzerland. His mother helped his father with the business.
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Livia Shacter
Born April 2, 1917, Tacovo, Czechoslovakia In August of 1944, Livia and her family were taken to Auschwitz. After four months in Auschwitz, she was deported and forced into slave labor at Fallersleben. In April of 1945, Livia was liberated and eventually came to the United States in 1947.
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Flora Singer (Mendelowicz)
Born August 16, 1930, Berchem, Belgium Flora’s Romanian-born parents immigrated to Antwerp, Belgium, in the late 1920s to escape antisemitism. Flora’s father owned a furniture workshop. Antwerp had an active Jewish community. Flora was the oldest of three girls, and the family spoke Yiddish at home.
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Haim Solomon
Born November 5, 1924, Bivolari, Romania Haim was the youngest of 5 children. His family lived in a small Jewish community in the village of Bivolari, where there were about 200 Jewish families. Germany and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact in 1939; the Soviets ordered Haim and his family to leave Bivolari. They moved to the town of Iasi, some 50 km southwest of Bivolari.
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Regina Spiegel (Gutman)
Born May 12, 1926, Radom, Poland Regina was born in Radom, a city with 120,000 inhabitants. Her father worked as a leather cutter for a large shoe manufacturer and her mother took care of their six children. The Gutmans were very religious and Regina attended Hebrew school in the afternoons.
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Sam Spiegel
Born August 23, 1922, Kozienice, Poland Sam was the eldest of five children born to Jewish parents in Kozienice, a town in east central Poland. His father owned a shoe factory and his mother cared for the children and the home. Kozienice had a thriving Jewish community that made up about half of the town’s population.
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Esther Starobin (Rosenfeld)
Born April 3, 1937, Adelsheim, Germany Esther’s father sold feed and other products for cattle, and occasionally arranged for the sale of cattle in the area. Her mother often helped him. Esther was sent to England on a Kindertransport in June 1939. In Thorpe, England, Esther lived with Dorothy and Harry Harrison and their son Alan from 1939 until November 1947.
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Charles Stein
Born November 28, 1919, Vienna, Austria Charles was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. His father was a printer. When the Germans marched onto Austria and arrived in Vienna on March 13, 1938, Charles fled to Luxembourg. Soon he received the required Affidavit of Support which he immediately presented to the nearest American Consulate in Antwerp, Belgium. Charles got his visa on October 7, 1939 and arrived in New York on December 18, 1939.
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Rene Stolbach
Born June 15, 1934, Geneva, Switzerland When Hitler rose to power, Rene's father, Henri, tried to arrange visas so that members of their family living in Poland could come to Switzerland. However, the Swiss government did not grant visas to Jewish families. Henri's mother and sister were among the Jews rounded up and murdered in Yaslow, Poland by the Nazis in 1942.
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Elzbieta Strassburger (Lusthaus)
Born May 15, 1938, Cracow, Poland Elzbieta grew up in Iwonicz, a resort town in southwestern Poland noted for its mineral water. Her father, Edmund, was a respected physician and Helena, her mother, had studied pharmacology. At home, they spoke Polish and were among the few Jewish families who lived in Iwonicz.
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Herman Taube
Born February 2, 1918, Lodz, Poland Herman Taube was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland in 1918. Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by his religious grandfather. In prewar Lodz, Herman became a yeshiva student. During the war, Herman lived as an exile in Uzbekestan. He also served as a medic in the Second Polish Army and was stationed with them in Majdanek.
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Susan Taube (Strauss)
Born January 9, 1926, Vacha, Germany Susan grew up in Vacha, a small Thuringian town where her family had lived for more than 400 years. Her father, Herman, owned a general store and her mother, Bertha, took care of the home and children. The Strausses were one of about 25–30 Jewish families living in Vacha.
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Alfred Traum
Born March 22, 1929, Vienna, Austria Freddie and his father spent many afternoons together where Freddie learned from his positive outlook on life and determination to overcome life's hardships.
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Josiane Traum (Aizenberg)
Born March 21, 1939, Brussels, Belgium Josy’s father left for England with his brother after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940. Josy’s mother took part in the Belgian Resistance movement by hiding refugees in her attic.
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Susan Warsinger (Hilsenrath)
Born May 27, 1929, Bad Kreuznach, Germany The Hilsenraths lived in Bad Kreuznach, a city in western Germany with a Jewish community that dated back to the 13th century. Susan was the eldest of three children. Her father owned a thriving linen store, and her mother took care of Susan and her two brothers.
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Martin Weiss
Born January 28, 1929, Polana, Czechoslovakia Martin was one of nine children born to orthodox Jewish parents in Polana, a rural village in the Carpathian Mountains. His father owned a farm and a meat business, and his mother attended to the children and the home.
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Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener (Gerd Zwienicki)
Born March 25, 1917, Bremen, Germany Rabbi Wiener was the eldest of four children. His father, Josef, had left Ukraine in 1913 and opened a bicycle sales and repair shop in Bremen. His mother, Selma, was descended from a distinguished Jewish family and had been a kindergarten teacher and a bookkeeper for a large firm.
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Norbert Yasharoff
Born February 18, 1930, Sofia, Bulgaria Norbert was born to a Jewish family in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. His father, a prominent lawyer, was also active in the Jewish community. Sofia was home to approximately half of Bulgaria's estimated 50,000 Jews during the mid-1930s.
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