Ghettos & Camps

4.0 Overview: Ghettos & Camps

4.1 Deep Dive: Ghettos

4.2 Deep Dive: Camps

Ada van Esso - Netherlands

"I worked where we had to do the washing...We had a washing board and you washed. After that, you put it somewhere else and then it was going in the room where they’d be dried. And from there then to a room where it would be fixed. And when we were washing, we tore it...because then there would be work for the people who had to fix it." - Ada van Esso

Ada van Esso was born on January 3, 1928 in Meppel, Holland to a Jewish family. When she was a young girl, the family moved to Amsterdam because they wanted to be in an area with a larger Jewish population and to be farther from the German border.

After World War II began, Ada’s father planned for the family to escape Holland. He bribed officials to help them escape, but the family was betrayed. They were sent to a prison in Berlin and then deported to Auschwitz in 1943. While in Auschwitz, Ada was assigned to work in the Nazis laundry room. In 1945 the Nazis forced Ada and the other remaining prisoners to evacuate Auschwitz in order to keep the prisoners from falling into the hands of the Allies. These evacuations became known as "death marches" because of the brutal conditions. She was liberated at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and taken to Sweden to recover.

After the war, Ada returned to Holland and married Hans van Dam. Their daughter, Ine-Marie van Dam was born in Holland several years after and grew up on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. Ine-Marie van Dam shares her mother's story as part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau.

1928-2021

More About This Survivor:

Organizing the Sheets   

Dutch vs Polish  

 

Ann Birulin - Poland

“We knew something was going to happen. My mother said, ‘if something happens to me, you and Hyman [Ann’s brother], must go on…If I’m shot, and I fall – don’t look back. You save your life. If you will live, through you I will live." -Ann Birulin

Ann (Neiss) Birulin was born in Hruczewice, Poland on October 4, 1928. In June 1942, the Nazis forced the 20 Jewish families in their small village of 300 people into a ghetto. The Nazis and their collaborators compelled Ann, her mother, and younger brother to forced labor in the fields all day long. Treatment was harsh, and beatings occurred. At night, they returned to cramped quarters of 10 people to a room and two to a bed.

With her mother's blessing and encouragement, Ann escaped the ghetto.  She later discovered that her mother died of starvation, and her 13-year-old brother was shot by German soldiers and buried in a mass grave along with other Jewish victims.

Five months after her escape, the Nazis recaptured and deported Ann (who was successfully hiding her Jewish identity) to a slave labor camp in Selb, Germany, thinking her to be a Pole. There she worked in a factory that manufactured porcelain. Living and working conditions were grueling for the 14-year-old Ann. She slept in a crowded room with 20 other girls, food was scarce, the walk to and from the factory was many miles, and she was forced to work six days a week. Much to her surprise, she eventually discovered that several other Polish girls with whom she was enslaved were also hiding their Jewish identities.

Ann was liberated by American troops in 1945 and transported back to Poland to search for surviving relatives. None of her family was alive, and Ann encountered brutal antisemitism as Polish citizens attacked, and even killed, returning Jews.

To escape the violence, Ann sought refuge in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. From there, Ann emigrated to the U.S. in 1947, joining her cousins in Seattle. She married Sol Birulin in 1949, and they had two children. Ann graduated from the University of Washington in 1954, and she and Sol volunteered for many Jewish organizations in Seattle. Ann passed away on February 28, 2018.

1928-2018

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips - Ann Birulin

Full Testimony -Ann Birulin (2:05:06)

Ann Birulin Obituary (published in the Seattle Times, March 2018)

Finkenschlag DP camp in Fuerth, Germany

 Traduccion al Espanol

Ann Kaye - Poland

“I was very weak and couldn’t go to work, so she put me in a commando that was called “Canada.” Because this particular commando was sorting out the clothing of the people that were gassed [rather than hard physical labor], in that commando I started doing better and I survived.” - Ann Kaye

Ann Kaye (Hanne Pomeraniecz) was born to a Jewish family in Bereza Kartuska, Poland, on May 22, 1925.  Ann had four brothers and two sisters. She belonged to a middle-class family and attended Hebrew school Ann remembers her childhood as a happy one with a close family.

When Ann's father didn't show up for work one day in 1941, two policeman came and arrested him. For several days they tortured him. He begged to be killed, but they sent him back home so that others would know what would happen if they disobeyed their laws. 

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis made two ghettos in the city: Ghetto A, for "useful" people – members of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) and the Jewish police, and for workers whose occupations were in demand and their families. The rest of the residents, including Ann and her family, were interned in Ghetto B. The inmates of Ghetto B were murdered by the Nazis in mid-July 1942, but Ann was able to escape with others.  It took them 10 days to reach the Przany ghetto where conditions were slightly better. At the end of September 1942, she met her husband Ed Kaye in Przany.

In 1943 the Nazis set out to empty the Przany ghetto. They took the Jewish people, including Ann, by horses and sleds to the railroad and then packed them in cattle trains to Auschwitz. Ann was imprisoned in Auschwitz from January 1943 until January 1945, when she was forced out of the camp on what has become known as a "death march." She and the other prisoners were forced to walk miles in the midst of winter, with barely any food or water, and no shelter. Five months later, on May 5, 1945, she was liberated. She doesn't remember much about her liberation, other than that she woke up in a hay barn and was in the American zone. 

Ann was the only survivor of her family. When she came back to Przany she discovered that Ed Kaye had survived. The two were married in February 1946. 

In December of 1949, Ann and Ed came to the United States, settling in Seattle in 1950, where they raised their children and spent the rest of their lives. 

b. 1925 - d. 2010

More About This Survivor:

Tattoo  - Ann Kaye (1:20)

Full Testimony - Ann Kaye (1990, 1:33:47)

Bronka Sundstrom - Poland

“I saw my father marching to the gas chamber, and as he was walking he was saying 'Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad.' That was the last time I saw him.” - Bronka Sundstrom

Bronka (Czyzyk) Sundstrom was born on August 15, 1925 in the historic town of Sandomierz, Poland. She was the youngest of 9 children. When she was in third grade her family moved to Lodz, Poland. Although she was Jewish, she attended a Catholic school. Bronka was in seventh grade when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The Nazis rapidly began to implement laws restricting the rights of Jewish people, eventually forcing them to leave their homes and move into designated areas. Lodz, where Bronka and her family lived, was designated a Jewish ghetto. The Nazis forced Jews from all of the surrounding areas into this small town, which quickly became overcrowded, and disease and starvation were rampant.

The Nazis forced Bronka and her family, along with thousands of Jews from the Lodz ghetto, into cattle cars and sent them to Auschwitz, a slave labor camp and death camp. When they arrived, Bronka was stripped of her clothes and her identity, forced to work and given almost no food. Bronka watched as her father was sent to the gas chamber. After 5 days, the Nazis sent Bronka by train to the city of Bremen in Germany, where she was forced to work doing construction. From Bremen she was transferred on foot to another camp, Bergen Belsen. 

British troops arrived at Bergen Belsen in April of 1945. There were 60,000 starving and ill prisoners there - one of them was Bronka. The British picked her up and took her to a hospital. When she woke up, she could swear she was in heaven because she had a clean bed and a clean shirt. Bronka and a sister who fled to Russia were the only survivors of the family. 

After the war the Red Cross took her to Sweden to recover and regain her health. While there, she met her husband Ake Sundstrom. She described him as her rock.  He taught her almost everything: to cook, ride a bike, drive a car and ski. He made her first pair of downhill skis by hand.

They emigrated to the United States in 1948. They lived with their son Allen in a cabin in Tacoma, WA, and became the oldest climbers of Mount Rainier.  Ake and Bronka enjoyed a wonderful life and retirement together.

Ake, Bronka's husband of 64 years, passed away on May 31, 2010. Bronka and Ake's only child, Allen, died of cancer shortly after Ake died. 

Bronka hiked over fifty times to Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier in one season with her beloved husband. At age 91 in 2016 she hiked unassisted from Paradise to Camp Muir and back. (Camp Muir is an 8-10 hour climb at an elevation of over 10,000 feet.)

 “If it weren’t for the mountains, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. The mountains teach us of independence, strength, confidence and beauty.”

Bronka passed away Wednesday November 29, 2023 and is survived by her two grandchildren and her daughter in law

1925-2023

More About This Survivor:

Full Testimony - Bronka Sundstrom (2020, 3:52:31)

Mount Rainier Icon

Washington Trails Association

Polish Films

Camp Muir

Lady of the Mountain (6:49) "Outdoor Research" 2015

Recollections of the 88 old Holocaust survivor (2013, 13:55)

The Journal of Olympia 

Bronka Sundstrom Obituary

Bronka dies at 98  "The Today Show" November 2023

Ed Kaye - Poland

"The reason we went out was not just to hide, but to fight. We were young, maybe idealistic too, but every one of us said, 'Before I go, I'll take a couple of them [Nazis] with me.'" - Ed Kaye

In August 1939, at the age of 18, Ed Kaye was preparing to travel from his home in Pruzhany, Poland, to Palestine for University. He abandoned his plans when Hitler’s army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. In September of 1941, Ed and his family were among approximately 10,000 Jews from Pruzhany and nearby communities forced by the Nazis into a ghetto that was less than one square mile. In this ghetto, Ed joined a Jewish resistance group that stole weapons and ammunition left by the retreating Soviet Army and stockpiled them for future use.

Ed escaped the ghetto with a group of 18 men and women. They crawled into a drainage ditch and slid under the barbed wire of the ghetto fence. After waiting for the guard above the ditch to leave, they carefully made their way across a frozen lake and through town to the forest beyond. On January 28, 1943, shortly after his escape, deportations from the Pruzhany ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau began. Ed then joined a Soviet partisan group, which sabotaged Nazis, destroying telephone lines and railroad tracks with sticks of dynamite lit with cigarettes.

By the end of the war, Ed had completed about 25 missions. The Soviet government honored Ed with two military decorations for his valiant fight against the Nazis. Ed returned to Pruzhany to find a hostile, antisemitic civilian population. Ed reunited with Ann Pomeraniec, who had survived Auschwitz, and they married in 1946. Jewish agencies in Seattle sponsored Ed and Ann to come to the United States in 1949. Ed and Ann raised their two daughters in Seattle. Ed passed away in 2011.

1939-2011

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — Ed Kaye

Full Testimony - Ed Kaye (1990, 2:10:23)

More about Jewish Partisans

Biography Booklet - Ed Kaye (student handout)

Fanny Wald - Poland

I wasn’t human there. I was called by a number. I didn’t have a name. You had to know your number. - Fanny Wald

Fanny Wald was born Frania Tabaczkiewcz on September 8, 1924 to a Jewish family. She and her family lived in Bedzin, Poland. Fanny's mother died when she was three, and she was raised by her father and step-mother, as well as a German nanny, Maria Pach, who cared for her and her sister Simcha, and brother Joseph.

Fanny was almost 15 years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown on September 1, 1939. On the second day of the Nazi occupation, just six days before her 15th birthday, the Nazis burned the local synagogue. Then the Nazis rounded up all of the male Jews over the age of 13 and shot them. Fanny tried to claim the bodies of her father and uncle, but local Polish people turned her away from the cemetery.

For five months, Fanny stayed at home as much as possible to avoid being assaulted by the Nazis.  Then, in 1940, she discovered that the Nazis had taken her younger sister to a local school which had been converted into a Jewish deportation center.  She rushed to the school and managed to change places with her younger sister in an effort to protect her.

In her sister’s place, Fanny was deported from Bedzin to Czechoslovakia to work as a slave laborer at Oberstadt, a factory that manufactured flax. “I wasn’t human there. I was called by a number. I didn’t have a name.” Fanny often stuck up for and defended the sick and weak in the camp. As a result, the guards often beat her. A female SS guard once beat her so severely she would have died without another guard’s help.

For more than five years, Fanny kept herself alive on the meager food rations given at the Czech factory. She became so emaciated she could fit both feet into one shoe. Fanny was hopeful she would reunite with her family, but at the end of the war, in 1945, she learned the heartbreaking news that ther brother, little sister, and her stepmother all had been murdered in Auschwitz.

Upon returning to Bedzin, Fanny discovered it was still dangerous to be known as a Jew there and in many other areas of Poland. She located a cousin who smuggled her into the American zone in Germany.  She made her way to Bergen Belsen, a former concentration camp in Germany which the Americans were using as a Displaced Persons camp for refugees and survivors.

In the Displaced Persons camp she met Ziegmund (Sidney) Wald from Kielce, Poland. They married on February 26, 1946 and immigrated to the United States in 1950. Fanny and Sid Wald raised three sons in Seattle, WA. The Walds were part of a group of Holocaust survivors that founded the Holocaust Center for Humanity.  Fanny was an active member of the Speakers Bureau for many years. She died in 2015.

“Hatred has no room in our hearts or in our homes.” - Fanny Wald

1924-2015

More About This Survivor:

Full Testimony - Fanny Wald (1991, 1:45:03)

Beaten (1:36)

Message to Next Generations (2:04)

Fanny Wald Obituary

Fred Kahn - Germany

“Stutthof was a camp with over 100,000 people. People of all races, all nationalities, anybody who did anything against the Nazi regime was in there. There were murderers in there, there were homosexuals in there…Jews as well as non-Jews. The crematorium in this camp was burning day and night, day and night. Oh, we knew what was going on.” - Fred Kahn

Fred was born on May 25, 1924, in Laubenheim, Germany, a small village in the Rhine Valley. In November 1938, on Kristallnacht, Fred and his father were arrested for the first time. When they were released, the family moved to Cologne to live amongst strangers, hoping no one would recognize them as Jews. However, in December 1941, the Gestapo forced them onto the first non-Latvian transport to the ghetto of Riga, Latvia. Over the next 3 ½ years, Fred was imprisoned at the Salaspils and Stutthof concentration camps, where he performed hard labor for up to 18 hours per day and survived many near-death experiences.

After being liberated on March 10, 1945, he returned to Germany to find that most of his family had been killed. However, his brother Eric had fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and lived in Chicago, and his aunt and uncle Meta and Ludwig Stern lived in Seattle. They sponsored Fred’s immigration to the United States in August 1950. When he arrived in Seattle, he thought, “I never saw a city so beautiful…I really fell in love. This town’s for me.” He became a small business owner as a grocer and, later, a meat wholesaler. He married Esther Chiprut on January 12, 1952, with whom he had three daughters: Erna, Vivan, and Susan; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Fred passed away on January 22, 2018.

1924-2018

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — Fred Kahn

Full Testimony - Fred Kahn (1990, 2:03:52)

Fred's Friend Kurt (1:15)

Deportation (1:15)

Timeline of Fred Kahn's experiences (1938-1950) 

Oral History Audio and Transcript - Washington State Jewish Historical Society/University of Washington Libraries Special Collections

Frieda Soury - Czechoslovakia

"I grew up celebrating Passover and Christmas. I knew I was Jewish, but religion wasn't a central part of my life. When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, my religion came to define me." - Frieda Soury

Frieda Soury was born in 1929 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. She was designated a "mischling” (half-Jewish) by the Nazis and deported to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in 1943. She shared a room with 20 other girls. All the Jewish girls were eventually deported to Auschwitz or other camps, while the mischling stayed in Theresienstadt, performing back-breaking labor.

When the Russians liberated the camp in May 1945, Frieda’s father found transportation back to Ostrava. Frieda moved to Israel when she was 18 and later immigrated to the United States with her husband and three children. Frieda lives in Seattle and shared her story as part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau for many years. 

1929-2022

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — Frieda Soury

Full Testimony - Frieda Soury (1995, 2:39:05)

More About Theresienstadt

Biography Booklet - Frieda Soury (student handout)

Frieda's Journey to Seattle

 

Gail Elad - Poland

Gail Elad (nee Lederman) was born in Warsaw, Poland on October 10, 1940, six days before the Nazis forced her and her family into the Warsaw Ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto was a section of Warsaw that the Nazis surrounded with walls and guard stations and where they forced Jews to live in crowded conditions. In addition to the Jews of Warsaw, the Nazis forced tens of thousands of Jews from surrounding communities into the ghetto. At one point, over 400,000 Jews were crammed into an area that was 1.3 square miles. 

Gail spent the first two years of her life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Around the time that the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Warsaw Ghetto Jews to Treblinka, Gail’s father, Isidor, managed to smuggle her out of the Ghetto. He gave her a sleeping pill and hid her in a duffel bag. Gail’s father placed her with a non-Jewish Polish family until the end of World War II. Gail never again saw her mother, who died in a Nazi concentration camp.

After the conclusion of World War II, Gail was reunited with her father. Immediately after the war Gail's father was very involved in saving Jewish children who were left as orphans by the Nazis, and Gail temporarily lived in an orphanage along with these other children. Gail later moved to Germany with her father (who had by then remarried) and her stepmother where they spent a year in a displaced persons camp.

Finally, in approximately 1947, Gail made it to the United States, via Ellis Island. Gail often talked about the excitement she felt when seeing the Statue of Liberty for the very first time from the deck of her ship. In the United States, Gail started a new life. She remembers the excitement of chewing her first piece of bubble gum and also the work she put into practicing her handwriting. Her Polish name was Gabrisha, but in the spirit of her excitement she wanted a name that sounded "American" and chose Gail. Gail grew up in California and earned her teaching degree there. In 1975, Gail, her husband and her kids moved to Israel, settling in Nahariya, before moving to Seattle in 1979.

Gail taught English as a Second Language in the Renton School District to students of all backgrounds and from all parts of the world. "I made a full circle," said Gail who remembered her own challenges in learning English decades earlier. In her 50's, Gail earned a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Washington and also discovered her hidden talent for watercolor painting. Gail passed away in May 2008 at the age of 67 after a long and courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. She left behind a beautiful legacy of tolerance, kindness, strength and courage.

1940-2008

George Elbaum - Poland

“I recognize that we who survived the Holocaust have a responsibility to tell our stories to give hope to the slogan ‘Never Again.’” - George Elbaum 

George Elbaum was born in Warsaw, Poland on August 20, 1938, one year before Hitler invaded Poland and spurred the outbreak of World War II. Within weeks, George's father was called to serve in the army and never returned. Acutely aware of the danger she and her son were in, George's mom dyed her hair blonde and purchased the identification documents of a Catholic woman who had died. In 1942, she smuggled George out of the Warsaw ghetto before paying various Polish Catholic families to hide and raise him. In 1945, George was reunited with his mother, the only other surviving member of his family. They immigrated to America in 1949.

For 60 years, George was reluctant to share his story with anyone. He worked towards an engineering career, earning an undergraduate degree, two Master's Degrees, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009, upon viewing "Paper Clips," a documentary chronicling a Tennessee middle school's unique attempt to honor Holocaust victims, George was moved to share his story with the world. He and his wife Mimi Jensen live in San Francisco, but George makes frequent trips to Seattle to visit his children and grandchildren. George is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

1938-

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — George Elbaum

Full Testimony - George Elbaum (2018, 3:20:46)

Sharing a Story  - From the Forum for Dialogue, Poland (3:46)

Neither Yesterdays Nor Tomorrows - Memoir by George Elbaum

Traducción al Español

Irene Epstein - Poland

"I stayed with a couple [outside the ghetto], and one day I looked through the window and I saw this smoke...I said, 'What is it?'..It was the uprising of the ghetto and the ghetto was burning." - Irene Epstein

Irene Epstein (née Ginzburg) was born on January 2, 1924 to Polish-Jewish parents Karola and Leon Ginzburg in Warsaw, Poland. The Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and forced Irene’s family, along with thousands of other Jewish people into the Warsaw ghetto. In 1943, Karola made contact with a priest, bought fake birth certificates for her family, and found them hiding places outside the ghetto walls. Irene’s fifteen-year-old brother Jurek was betrayed by those hiding him and sent to Trawniki, a forced labor camp. Both her brother and father died at this labor camp. 

Irene escaped the ghetto in March of 1943 with the new identity of Anna Boroska - a Polish, Roman-Catholic seamstress - and began work on a Warsaw streetcar. Even with her false non-Jewish papers and identity cards, life became too dangerous in Poland for Irene. In August 1943, with her false identity, Irene volunteered for a factory job in Germany, working alongside women whose families had turned over Jews to the Nazis. After the war ended she worked for the United States Military as a translator at the Weinsberg Displaced Persons Camp in Heilbronn, Germany.

In 1946 Irene came to Seattle and soon met her future husband, Irv Epstein. The couple married in 1947 and had three sons. Irene worked as a teacher for nearly twenty years before retiring to Mercer Island. 

1924-2022

More About This Survivor:

Full Testimony - Irene Epstein (2019, 2:22:12)

Irene's Obituary  

Irene's book "To Laugh is To Thrive" 

Poem to the President (1:16)

That was my mother (1:38)

The Ghetto is burning (:21) 

Izzy Darakhovskiy - Ukraine

"For most of my life I have lived under the terrible conditions of Nazi Gernany and Communist (USSR). Life was severe: no freedom, extremely limited private rights, and feeling of being constantly gripped by fear." - Izzy Darakhovskiy

 

Izzy Darahovskiy was born into a Jewish family in 1936 and grew up in Yampol, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. He was five years old when the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941.

 

In September 1942, the Nazis and their collaborators rounded up Jews from Yampol, including Izzy, his stepmother, and his tiny month-old sister, Lisa, and depdorted them to a slave labor camp.

 

Eventhough he was only a boy of five years old he remembers many details of this period. Izzy and other prisoners lived in primitive barracks made out of thin wood, with 35 people in one room. People were hungry and cold all the time, and the work never ceased. One of his most tragic memories was seeing Nazis shoot and kill his grandfather because he was unable to work.

 

When the camp was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1944, Izzy, his mother and sister were lucky to have survived and returned to Yampol. The war was not over - it continued for several months, and then a severe famine made life very difficult. 

 

Izzy went to school in Yampol after the war, but the conditions were challenging; the school lacked textbooks and even paper. Izzy loved to read and dreamed of being a teacher or a doctor. Despite his high achievement and test scores, Izzy was not accepted at several choice universities. After being drafted into the Soviet Army for three years, Izzy was finally able to attend the State University in Moldova.

 

Izzy completed two doctorate degrees and began a 28-year career as an economist with the prestigious Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Izzy and his family immigrated to the United States the following year. They lived first in Rochester, New York, and since 2011 in the Seattle area.

 

Izzy has been asked to lecture at the United Nations, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and other institutions. He has also written nine books, including a memoir and a book for children inspired by his granddaughters. Izzy is a current member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

 

1936-

More About This Survivor:

A short bio - Izzy Darahovskiy

Brighton-Pittsford Post

Grandfather's Letter: Life Is Not Always Fun (Book)

Klaus Stern - Germany

"I was taken with my wife the 19th of April 1943 with a group of about 1000 people. As soon as I arrived in Auschwitz, I received a tattoo on my left front arm, with the number 117033." - Klaus Stern

With the rise of the Nazi party, Klaus began to feel increasingly ostracized, even among his childhood friends. In 1942, at the age of 20, Klaus married Paula Schaul. They agreed that if they were separated, they would meet in Paula's hometown, Arnstadt, Germany after the war.  On the 19th of April 1943, both Klaus and Paula were deported to Auschwitz. Upon their arrival, they were separated and would remain so for the next 25 months – unable to send word to one another or confirm that the other was still alive. Klaus survived Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Flossenburg, Leonberg and Mühldorf. He was liberated in May 1945 by American troops.

After regaining some of his strength in an Allied hospital after liberation, Klaus began the process of searching for his wife. He wrote her a note and sent it with several soldiers going in the direction of Paula’s hometown. Klaus traveled for 3 and a half weeks through war-ravaged Europe to finally reunite with his wife. They immigrated to the United States the next year and became the first Holocaust survivors to settle in Seattle, where they raised their two children. Klaus passed away in 2013.

1921-2013

More About This Survivor:

Transcript for Video Clips — Klaus Stern

Full Testimony - Klaus Stern (1992, 3:57:45)

Tattoo (0:28)

Biography Booklet - Klaus Stern (student handout)

Oral History Audio and Transcript - Washington State Jewish Historical Society/University of Washington Libraries Special Collections

Magda Schaloum - Hungary

"I hugged my mother and I kissed her, and I said, 'Mom, I'll see you later.' But of course I have never seen my mother again." - Magda Schaloum

Magda Schaloum was born in 1922 in Gyor, Hungary. The Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, and then deported Magda, her brother, and their mother to Auschwitz and separated the family. Magda was sent to the slave labor camp of Plaszow, and then to a factory in Augsburg, Germany. In April 1945 at the Mühldorf slave labor camp, Magda met her future husband, Izak, a Sephardic native of Salonika, Greece. The Nazis loaded the prisoners of Mühldorf onto a cattle car to be transported to a site where they would be murdered, but the Allies liberated the prisoners before the train reached its destination.

Magda and Izak met again in a displaced persons camp in Germany. She spoke five languages, and he spoke seven, but none in common. They fell in love, married, and came to Seattle in 1951 with their two young children to start a new life together. They had a third child and settled on Mercer Island. Magda was a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau for many years, and her son Jack continues to share her story today. Magda passed away in 2015.

1922-2015

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — Magda Schaloum

Full Testimony - Magda Schaloum (1991, 2:07:41)

Magda's Journey to Seattle

Opportunity to Hide (0:41)

"BMW" Bowl — Featured Artifact

Biography Booklet - Magda Schaloum (student handout)

Obituary - Magda Schaloum

Maria "Marika" Frank Abrams - Hungary

“We were forced into the third transport. There were about 86 people in one cattle car. After three days and nights, we arrived at Auschwitz. People talk about the noise, but I remember the silence.” - Maria “Marika” Frank Abrams

Maria Frank Abrams was born into a large and prosperous Jewish family in Debrecen, Hungary on July 21, 1925. Maria spent her childhood summers at a country villa and enjoyed social activities with Jewish and non-Jewish friends. But in the 1930s, as Hungary became increasingly antisemitic, her experiences as a teenager would be sharply different.

“When I was 14, our lives began to change. In 1938, the government passed the first of many laws severely restricting the liberties of Jews. We were reluctant to accept the true meaning of these laws, which meant that we were not considered Hungarians. I guess we lived in a dream.” 

When the Nazis invaded in 1944, Maria, already an artist, was just 20 years old. The Nazis and their collaborators forced Maria and her family, along with the Jewish population into a ghetto. They were then forcibly moved in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp in Poland.

 

Maria continued to sketch while imprisoned inside the concentration camps whenever she was able to get her hands on paper and stubs of pencils.

She contracted scarlet fever in August 1944 and in a twist of fate was put into hospital barracks, rather than killed. She recovered after six weeks. “Much later I met a woman, and she said a week after I left, all the patients were gassed.”

Maria was deported with hundreds of other women to Bergen-Belsen, a work camp in northern Germany, and later, Madgeburg in central Germany. In the first two months of 1945, 752 tons of bombs fell on Magdeburg.  In April of 1954, she was liberated by American troops at Madgeburg, weighing only 68 pounds.

All of her friends and family were murdered in the Holocaust except for her cousin Vera. Together, they applied for scholarships in the United States and received visas to attend the University of Washington in 1947 where Maria entered the School of Art and received her BA and MA. In her long career as an artist in Seattle, she has designed sets and costumes for operas and has had shows in Kobe, Japan; Budapest, Hungary; and throughout the United States. 

Maria met and married Sydney Abrams in 1948. Their son, Edward, is a civil rights lawyer in Israel. 

1925-2013

More About This Survivor:

Full Testimony - Maria Frank Abrams (1985, 34:57)

Maria’s Art Collections

Opening at Art Center Gallery, Seattle Pacific University, December 1996 (video) 

Maria Frank's Obituary

Mel Wolf - Poland

"My first impression in Auschwitz? Scared. Very much scared, even though I already had some experience behind my back. Several years, for that matter. Also my impression was, I could smell something...I smell it every minute of my life." - Mel Wolf

Mel was born in Jedlicze, Poland on July 3, 1924. Mel’s family had lived in Jedlicze for generations as part of a strong Jewish community. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Mel’s life “changed totally and completely.” Before the end of 1939, Mel was deported to a forced labor camp. Until his liberation on May 3, 1945, Mel spent 5 years in concentration camps, enduring horrific conditions and situations, first in Krosno, and Szebnie, and finally in Auschwitz.

From Mel’s large family, only he and one of his cousins survived. After liberation, he was taken to a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany, where he met Ilse Huppert, also a survivor of Auschwitz. They married in the DP camp in 1949 and immigrated to Seattle in 1951, where they had three children. Mel worked at Sears for 34 years and was dedicated to congregation Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath, serving as board president from 1985-1988. Mel passed away on January 3, 2000.

1924-2000

More About This Survivor:

Selections All The Time  (1:09)

Mel Wolf Full Testimony  (1991) (3:22:20)

Mel Wolf Transcription of full testimony

 

Noémi Ban - Hungary

"Being alive, it is a gift.  I use it, I love it, I am a happy person with a memory I can never forget." - Noémi Ban

 

Noémi Ban was born in Szeged, Hungary, in 1922.  She and her family were living in the town of Debrecen when the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944.  Gradually and systematically, the Nazis deprived Jews of their rights.  They deported Noémi's father to a labor camp. Three months later, the Nazis forced Noémi, her mother, grandmother, sister, and baby brother into a cramped cattle car and deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Upon arriving at Auschwitz on July 1, 1944, Noémi was separated from her family.  Noémi and the other women in her assigned barrack endured starvation, filth, and standing in three-hour roll calls. After suffering for months, Noémi and 1000 other women were shipped to a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Germany called Allendorf. There, they worked as slave laborers at a munitions factory.

As the Allies approached in spring 1945, the Nazis forced the women on a death march. Noémi was one of 12 women who escaped into a nearby forest, where an American soldier serving under General Patton liberated them. After regaining her health, Noémi returned to Debrecen and reunited with her father, the only survivor of her family.

Noémi married in 1945 and became a teacher.  She, her husband, and two sons came to the United States in 1957. Noémi lived in Bellingham and was an active member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau and a frequent guest speaker at Western Washington University. She co-authored the book Sharing is Healing, which documents her first of several return trips to Auschwitz. Noemi passed away at the age of 96 on June 7, 2019. 

1922-2019

More About This Survivor:

Transcripts for Video Clips — Noémi Ban

Full Testimony (1996, 2:54:57)

Traduccion al Espanol Noemi Ban

Goodbye to her Father (0:57)

At the Brick Factory (1:31)

Evening Magazine (5:32) (Jan 10, 2019)

Oral History Audio and Transcript - Washington State Jewish Historical Society/University of Washington Libraries Special Collections

Sharing is Healing: A Holocaust Survivor's Story - Memoir by Noemi Ban

Remarkable Resilience: The Life and Legacy of Noemi Ban Beyond the Holocaust - Biography by Diane M. Sue, Ph.D.