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Jegergarn, Chaim - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60305
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:59:14
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:59:14
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Chaim Jegergarn was born in Janow Lubelski, Poland in 1912. He and his seven siblings were raised in a poor family. He did not go to school. At only ten years old, he learned to be a tailor. In 1935, he served in the Polish Army for 18 months. He got married in 1937. After Kristallnacht, he escaped with his family to Russia. From there they went to Lvov, Ukraine (Lwow, Poland), where Chaim registered to go to work in Selovalika ?, Russia, where he worked as a tailor. There, they were bombed so they moved by train to a small place in the woods near Yaroslavl. In 1941, he moved to Kozyatyn, Uzbekistan, to work in a factory. Chaim obtained a Russian pass and moved near Tashkent, where he stayed for nearly three years working in the coal mines. He contracted typhus and later worked as tailor in a factory. In 1945, he left Tashkent to return by train to Szczecin, Poland. Except for two brothers, the rest of his family in Poland perished during the Holocaust. From 1946 to 1948, Chaim stayed in a DP camp in Eschwege, Germany. In July 1948, Chaim came to Montreal with his wife, son, daughter, and brother in an effort to begin a new life.
- Accession No.
- WTH-290
- Name Access
- Jegergarn, Chaim
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Kent, Agnes - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60318
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:58:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:58:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Agnes Kent (née Lörinczi) was born on January 16, 1928 in Budapest, Hungary. She describes her childhood up until the age of 15 as idyllic, spending summers with her grandparents. Her family was not religious and Agnes only went to synagogue with her grandparents. Though was aware of a war going on during the early years of the war, she, like everyone she knew, did not think it would come to Hungary or that they would be affected. She was unaware of the rise in anti-Semitism occurring throughout Europe or about any laws being put into place in Germany. Once the Nazi Party occupied Budapest things “sped up in a bad way.” She remembers the Hungarian Nazis as being much worse than the Germans. Yellow-star houses were assigned throughout Budapest, including the building she lived in, which became home to hundreds of Jews. They were in a lucky position because they still had a telephone, so people were constantly in and out of their home. In October or November of 1944 Agnes had her first real awakening to the horrors of the war. A boy the Nazi party believed to be Jewish was caught in the streets, taken into the courtyard behind her house, his pants were pulled down and he was shot dead. She witnessed it. By the end of 1944, all the Jewish men between ages A and B were rounded up and marched to Austria. Her father and uncle got dysentery on the way and were shot dead in a gutter. This she learned later from a survivor of the death march. Other family members, including her aunt, had been taken to Auschwitz. Agnes and her mother were able to get a Wallenberg paper and they moved to a safe-house near the Danube. All of a sudden they were no longer safe there, but another of her uncles, who was in a work camp, had given her mother the name of a gentile family with whom they could hide. They went and lived there for a couple of weeks using a false identity. This was December 1944. Not too long after, at the end of January, they were liberated by the Russians. After the war they moved back to their apartment. Agnes married in 1949 and moved to Canada not long after.
- Accession No.
- WTH-477
- Name Access
- Kent, Agnes
- Places
- Budapest, Hungary, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Kipman, Stella - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60299
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:29
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:29
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Stella Kipman (née Ginsburg) was born on January 14, 1918 in Slomniki, Poland. Her family moved to Krakow where she completed her education. After marrying, Stella and her husband moved to Sosnowiec. In 1939, about a year and a half after marrying and moving to Sosnowiec, the war broke out and Stella returned to her father in Krakow. She went back to Sosnowiec where she got a job in social service. Stella and her husband were forced to live in the Sosnowiec ghetto; she speaks of how difficult life was during this time, including the many restrictions and being forced to wear a band and yellow star. Between 1943 and 1944, Stella was sent to Katowice labour camp. In January 1944, Stella and her older sister obtained false papers and went to Berlin where she stayed with a housekeeper. However, she was soon discovered and put into prison by German Gestapo to work for several months. Afterwards, they sent her to Birkenau-Auschwitz to clean rooms and cook. In January 1945, Stella and many other camp inmates were sent by transport to a Polish barrack in Ravensbrück. Six weeks before liberation by the French Army, Stella lost consciousness due to a terrible fever – the Polish women in her barracks took care of her because she was the wife of a Polish officer. After liberation, she was taken to a hospital to recover and later returned to Sosnowiec by train. In December 1945, she was flown by a military plane to Paris and from there went to Freiburg for 18 months. Stella and her husband immigrated to Canada in 1951, followed by her only surviving sister.
- Accession No.
- WTH-074
- Name Access
- Kipman, Stella
- Places
- S?omniki, Poland, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Klag, Leo - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67777
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 02:19:42
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- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 02:19:42
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Leo Klag was born on August 16, 1920 in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in an assimilated family. As a teenager in Berlin, he witnessed the rise of antisemitism in Germany since 1933. He saw the boycott of Jewish stores on April 1, 1933, book burnings and demonstrations on the streets of Berlin. He attended the Olympic Games in 1936. During Kristallnacht, his father and brother were taken away and disappeared forever. Leo fled to Hamburg believing the situation was better there. As it was not the case, he went back to Berlin and hid in a Jewish sports complex until February 1939. At this point, he was so sick that he went to hospital where he met a man who helped him organize his immigration to England. Upon his arrival in England, he was interned in the Kitchener camp where he worked for the War Office in a wireless station, listening to communications between German submarines and their bases. After the capitulation of France, Leo was sent to the Isle of Man with other German refugees. He was then shipped to Canada in July 1940. He was interned in Fort Lennox, on the Ile-aux-Noix. After two years he was free to move to Montreal where he worked in the press business. After the war he moved to the USA for two years then went to Israel for one year. He has been back to Germany several times since the end of the war.
- Accession No.
- WTH-516
- Name Access
- Klag, Leo
- Places
- Berlin, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Klag, Leo - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/kqSb-K6Yj4M
Kleingrib, Annette - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60322
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:00:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:00:00
- Language
- French
- Notes
- Annette Kleingrib (née Naparstek) was born in Warsaw, Poland on May 3, 1926. In 1937, the family moved to Paris in search of a better life, free from the pervading antisemitism and economic instability of Poland in the 1930s. Annette’s father had died before the war began, leaving her mother to raise Annette and her six siblings. Her mother remarried to a non-Jewish man in 1937. They went to school in Paris until the war broke out in May 1940. Annette stopped attending school once the wearing of the yellow star was imposed. Curfews and other antisemitic restrictions were enforced. In 1941, the Germans began deporting Jews; Annette’s brother’s, Salomon and Charles, attempted to escape but were caught and sent to Auschwitz. Annette went to Pontelle to go in hiding while her mother remained in Paris, relatively safe under the protection of her husband. In the summer of 1941, Annette was sent to a village in the Massif Central on a bus destined towards Algeria. She remained in Clermont Ferland, a non-occupied town close to Vichy. She returned to Paris that winter, reuniting with her mother and her remaining siblings. After the war, Annette contracted tuberculosis and spent a year and a half recovering at a sanatorium. She married in Paris in 1949; her first daughter was born the following year. They immigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1960 where they established a fur business.
- Accession No.
- WTH-519
- Name Access
- Kleingrib, Annette
- Places
- Warsaw, Poland, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Kotkowsky, Charles - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67759
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:09:37
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- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:09:37
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Charles Kotkowsky was born in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland on August 8, 1920. He says that he encountered significant antisemitism growing up. After the German invasion in September 1939, he was made to wear an armband identifying him as Jewish and became afraid to go outside. A ghetto was constructed almost immediately in Piotrkow Trybunalski. Charles worked in a glass factory and was in communication with a Jewish Resistance group. In 1942, he and his brother Shlomo were taken to a nearby labour camp. In November 1944, they were again transferred, first to the HASAG Pelzery, near Cz?stochowa, Poland, and then to Buchenwald in January 1945, where Charles was tormented and humiliated by being forced to strip naked in the freezing cold. Charles was taken on a death march to Floeszberg - a subdivision of Buchenwald - in Febuary 1945. The camp was incomplete, and Charles had to help in its construction. In April the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were placed on a train headed for Czechoslovakia. Along with seven other people, including his brother, Charles jumped off the train and successfully escaped. The group was hidden by sympathetic Czechoslovaks in Plzen, Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia). They were there hiding in a barn when they were liberated by the American Army on May 8, 1945. After the war, Charles mentioned that he was invited to what he described as a “séance,” where he witnessed captured S.S. men being beaten - one of whom was killed. His brother contracted tuberculosis and needed to be moved to a hospital in another town. Unfortunately, Charles could not stay with him in Czechoslovakia for long. He soon moved to a series of DP camps in Italy, working in a doctor’s office. In 1951, he was refused entry into the United States, but was accepted into Canada, arriving there that same year.
- Accession No.
- WTH-068
- Name Access
- Kotkowsky, Charles
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Kotkowsky, Charles - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8hmNmz1HpGo
Kutscher, Jean - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67764
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:31:06
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- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:31:06
- Language
- French
- Notes
- Jean Kutscher was born on January 24th, 1926 in Paris to Romanian parents. His parents had fled Romania because of antisemitism. Jean and his siblings attended a laic school and grew up in a secular home. In France, Jean and his relatives didn’t experience antisemitism before 1939. However, they knew what was going on in Germany, thanks to the news shown before movies in theatres. As a French citizen (not as a Jew), Jean was shocked by Germany invading France. At that point, several anti-Jewish laws were enacted. Jean and his siblings started to understand what it was to be Jewish. Although it was compulsory, Jean and his older brother decided not to wear the yellow star. Later on, Jews were frequently rounded up from the street. First, Jean’s father was sent to Drancy in 1941, and then his brother was arrested on the street and sent to Drancy. They were both taken to Germany to a destination unknown to their relatives. Jean’s girlfriend, who was a Gentile, helped the family and provided them with food. On September 23rd, 1942, French policemen arrested Jean, one of his brothers, his sister and his mother. At the police station, adults and children were separated. Jean lied about his age, enabling him to stay with his younger brother and sister. It was the last time they saw their mother. Jean’s sister was housed by the family of a friend while Jean and his brother left Paris. They planned to go to Lyon where one of their aunts lived. They managed to cross the line of demarcation by themselves, without a guide. Unfortunately, they couldn’t stay in their aunt’s apartment, and therefore joined the “Compagnons de France.” Jean couldn’t stand it so he returned to Paris without his brother. Jean worked as a salesman in a Parisian department store. One day, policemen came to the store and told the young men working there that they had to come back the next day with some personal belongings. They were to be sent to Germany to work in exchange for the liberation of French POW’s. This mandatory service was called “Le Service du Travail Obligatoire” (STO). The police specified that if the men did not obey, the store directors and their families would be sent to Germany. Jean was taken to Germany and worked on a barge for one year. He was treated well and people trusted him. When Jean first saw the Allies in March 1945, he was hiding in a bunker near Duisburg. He was liberated by Canadians and served as an interpreter between Canadians and Germans for one month. Upon his arrival in Paris in 1945, Jean discovered the existence of concentration and death camps. As a result, Jean enrolled in the army to go to Germany but his superiors refused to send him there. Instead, Jean was sent to Morocco in April of 1945, and later to Indochina. He returned to Paris in 1947. He married his girlfriend in 1949. Jean and his wife immigrated to Montreal where they discovered a Jewish life like they had never seen before. Since his mother’s arrest, Jean has never stopped feeling traumatized and guilty.
- Accession No.
- WTH-149
- Name Access
- Kutscher, Jean
- Places
- Paris, France, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Kutscher, Jean - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/DBPicl1NsVA
Lev, Jacob - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60320
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:47:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:47:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Jacob Lev was born in 1925 in Warsaw, Poland. He had ten siblings. He attended a Polish school. When the war broke out, he and his family were forced to live within the confines of the Warsaw Ghetto. On many occasions, Jacob would sneak out of the ghetto to look for food; this was known as a “smuggling child”. On one “smuggling” incident in 1942, Jacob was unable to re-enter the ghetto. He decided to run away to Krasnik as he had a cousin there, leaving his family behind. After liberation in 1944 by the Russians, Jacob returned to Warsaw but none of his family survived. He went to Lodz where he met his future wife, Zena.They went to Prague, Pilsen and Salzburg in Austria, and in 1946 they move to Bari, Italy, where they got married and had their first child. They were helped by the UNRRA. In 1948, they moved to Israel where Jacob served in the army and they had their second child. In 1953, they moved to Montreal where they had a third child. Together they ran a fruit store; however, adjusting to a new environment wasn’t easy. Jacob and Zena have one grandson.
- Accession No.
- WTH-481
- Name Access
- Lev, Jacob
- Places
- Warsaw, Poland, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Lev, Zena - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60319
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:27:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:27:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Zena Lev (née Lipa) was born in Lodz, Poland on April 18, 1925. She had three siblings. When the war broke out in 1939, she and her family were immediately transferred to Krasnik’s ghetto where they were accommodated by the Jewish committee. Zena stayed there until 1942, working in the fields. Her family was deported to Treblinka (?) in 1941. Zena was transferred to Lublin where she worked in a munitions factory until liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. After the war, she returned to Lodz only to discover that her entire family had perished. There she met her future husband, Jacob. They went to Prague, Pilsen and Salzburg in Austria, and in 1946 they move to Bari, Italy, where they got married and had their first child. They were helped by the UNRRA. In 1948, they moved to Israel where Jacob served in the army and they had their second child. In 1953, they moved to Montreal where they had a third child. Together they ran a fruit store; however, adjusting to a new environment wasn’t easy. Zena found that one of her uncle’s survived the Holocaust and was living in Montevideo. Zena and Jacob have one grandson.
- Accession No.
- WTH-480
- Name Access
- Lev, Zena
- Places
- Lodz, Poland, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Lintzel, Charlotte - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60323
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:10:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:10:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Charlotte Lintzel was born in Berlin, Germany on January 21, 1932. Although of Jewish background, religion never played a big role in her family. Her father, for instance, was a self-proclaimed Atheist and physicist. Despite veing very young when the war broke out, Charlotte she does remember being shunned by her neighbours’ children, and she remembers Kristallnacht as well. She vaguely remembers her years in school, but remembers her family having to wear the yellow star. As a way to keep her safe during the war, her father sent her to a family in Silesia under the guise of a refugee. Charlotte remembers those years as being very hard on her due to separation anxiety. In 1945, she returned to Berlin and went back to school. She completed her high school and finished a few years of university in Germany. In 1953, she decided to move to Canada and integrated into the Montreal Jewish community. In Montreal, she met her husband who was also a fellow survivor from Danzig. She had two children, a daughter that lives in Jerusalem, and a son in Montreal. Charlotte became involved with the MHMC after attending a conference on child survivors. She saw the event as a bonding experience that allowed her and many others to speak about their experiences during the war. Despite being from a long line of Berliners, she has a problem reconciling with the fact that she is German. The war and the treatment of Jews by Germans at the time changed her, and currently she finds it hard to fathom the change between the Germany she knew, and the one of our era. Ultimately, she believes that young Germans carry a heavy burden due to the actions of their ancestors.
- Accession No.
- WTH-521
- Name Access
- Lintzel, Charlotte
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Meisels, Ron - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67766
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:53:20
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:53:20
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Ron was born on June 7, 1935 in Budapest, Hungary, an only child. While his father's religious background was very orthodox, his mother's family was less religious. This led to tensions in the marriage, and they divorced in 1938. Ron's mother began a relationship with another man, Mor Makover, who later became Ron's stepfather. Ron still went to synagogue and had Sabbath dinners with his father's family every Friday night. He attended a neighbourhood Jewish elementary school, where he learnt to speak Hungarian and Hebrew. Ron remembers the day when German troops invaded Hungary and the fear that entered into his family's life from then on. Soon they were forced to wear the yellow Star of David. As Ron's father was a Polish citizen, his mother had become Polish too, and was now forced apply for residence documents. On May 1, 1944, she was arrested while waiting at the Polish embassy. She was taken into an old rabbinical college, where many Jews were held before being deported to Auschwitz and Dachau. After about two months, Raoul Wallenberg arrived at the college and, setting up a chair and table, proceeded to hand out Swedish passports to the captives. Ron's mother asked for additional passports for Ron and his father. Having been made Swedish citizens, they were now permitted to leave, and Ron's mother came home again. Soon after, in August 1944, Ron and his mother were moved into a designated "Swedish house," which was only for Swedish citizens. By this time Ron's stepfather, Mor, had been taken to a forced labour camp. Ron's mother took great risks to bring him food several times a week, passing as a Hungarian gentile by not wearing the yellow star. One time, when she went to bring him food as usual, she found out that he had been put on a train for deportation. Rushing to the train station, she found Wallenberg standing on the platform in front of the train. At her request, Wallenberg told the officials that there was a Swedish citizen on the train, and Ron's father's name was called out. Mor recognized it, and was able to pass as his mother's ex-husband. He was taken off the train and reunited with Ron and his mother. Only four inmates were to survive that particular deportation. By December 1944, all Jewish residents, irrespective of their Swedish nationalities, were ordered to line up in front of their houses and were sent to the ghetto. Ron thinks that by this time Wallenberg had lost some of his influence and was not able to stop the ghettoization of the Swedish citizens. By sneaking away from the line, Mor managed to save Ron's mother's wedding ring, which he was later able to trade in for a sack off flour. During their stay in the ghetto, there was heavy bombing of the houses and their own building was hit, completely destroying their living quarters on the top floor. A falling cross beam injured Ron and his mother. After having been treated at the hospital they were forced to move into the basement, which was extremely filthy and unhygienic. In January 1945, the Russian troops arrived and the ghetto was liberated. Mor found a cart, and took Ron and his mother back to their old apartment. A Christian woman had moved in, and Mor had to threaten that he would denounce her as a Nazi sympathizer before she finally moved out voluntarily. Mor and Ron's mother finally married in August 1945. After some years in Hungary under Communism, the family decided to leave in 1954. In order to save a man who had been selling arms to Israel from Hungary, as a cover-up, the Israeli government issued passports to Polish Jews in Hungary. Ron's family was among the lucky ones and was able to leave to Vienna and then Lim, Austria. There they waited for papers to enter the United States or Canada. Ron remembers being extensively questioned by the CIA on their lives in Communist Hungary. Finally their papers for Canada arrived and the family emigrated in November 1954.
- Accession No.
- WTH-183
- Name Access
- Meisels, Ron
- Places
- Budapest, Hungary, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Meisels, Ron - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/EudnIwlrhoI
Miller, Harry - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60308
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:34:43
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:34:43
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Harry Miller was born on the 1st of September, 1919 in a village near the town of Wegrow, Poland. He comes from a tight knit family of 11 which include nine siblings, six boys and four girls. Before the war broke out, he went to a public school that he finished by the age of 14-15, and eventually undertook an extra three years of education to become a tailor. While in school, he was part of a Jewish organization that discussed Israel, Jewish life, cultural discovery and the sentiments of antisemitism. He finished his tailor apprenticeship at the age of 19 and opened up his business a few years before the war. Although there was discussion of leaving the country for Russia, he never went along with it as he was so involved with his family and the responsibilities associated to it. Nor did he ever believe that the Germans would start killing off Jews. His first real awareness of the war was in 1941 when Jews in the countryside were forced into the ghettos. While in the Wegrow ghetto, he worked in the hospital helping those with typhoid. In September 1941, the ghetto was liquidated. He was able to hide and eventually escape the liquidation by fleeing to a nearby farm where he worked as a tailor during the day, and jumped from farm to farm at night with a few of his siblings. At that point, he knew that his parents had already been killed at Treblinka extermination camp. By 1944, the Soviets had liberated Poland, and he was taken to a hospital to recuperate. He eventually moved to Lodz with a Schindler survivor and his sister. He stayed there until he heard about the Kielce Pogrom, fled to Berlin, and finally to an American DP camp in which he stayed for a year. In 1947, he immigrated to Canada via ship, arriving in Halifax and eventually settling in Montreal. A week after arriving in Montreal, he found a job as a tailor and made suits on the side for extra income. He opened his own business once more, and got into textile selling/import-export. There he met his wife, got engaged in 1948 and had two sons, Jerry and Norman.
- Accession No.
- WTH-355
- Name Access
- Miller, Harry
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Penney, Lea - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67761
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:29:10
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:29:10
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Lea Penney (née Prilutzky) was born on February 17, 1922 in Berlin, Germany. Her parents were of Ukrainian origin and had immigrated to Germany during the pogroms in Russia. Her father worked for a large insurance company. Lea describes her father as "ultra-orthodox," and accordingly family life was very observant. They did not live in a particularly Jewish part of Berlin and Lea began by going to a German public school. It was only later that she joined a Jewish school. The day Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Lea remembers the tremendous fear and excitement that entered into the lives of her family and the Jewish community. In her own family, the situation was never discussed because her father wanted to shelter his children as much as possible. About every six months, new antisemitic restrictions were enforced. Because of these laws, her father eventually lost his job as an insurance salesman laws and began to deliver coal instead. The family had to move to a smaller and cheaper apartment. It was then that Lea felt the poverty and hunger which began to dominate family life. Rumours about concentration camps began to circulate within the community. Lea was part of a Jewish group that was training youths to go to Palestine and work on a Kibbutz. On November 9, 1938, the day of Kristallnacht, she was taking part in a preparatory camp near Hamburg, when everyone was told by the monitors to be quiet and turn off the lights. The next day the youths found out what had happened in the rest of Germany. As she discovered later, the Jewish Association had paid the Nazis to protect the children. In February 1939, at 17 years old, Lea was brought to Palestine by the organization. There she lived on Kibbutz for two years until 1941. Even though work was very hard, she felt a great sense of relief at the freedom she had there. In the beginning, she was still able to write and receive letters to her family in Germany. Later on all communication ceased. She describes that there was a great amount of pressure for young people in Palestine to join the British army. After having worked cleaning and ironing for some time, she decided to do so, and eventually became an English, German, and typing teacher in the army. She was stationed in Egypt and during the last years of the war was contacted by the Red Cross to send financial assistance to her mother, who had been found in Paris. As she later found out, her father had made it to Paris too, after hiding for some time in Germany. From a Paris labour camp, however, he was eventually deported to Auschwitz, where he perished. All her siblings had been able to leave Germany, some to England, others to Palestine. Lea met her husband in the army and they married in Cairo in 1946. The couple moved to England where they stayed until 1953. Her husband was a civil servant, and received a job offer in Geneva, where they lived from 1953 to 1965. After staying a year in Germany, they eventually moved to Montreal in 1969, where they have lived ever since. Lea and her husband have two sons and one daughter.
- Accession No.
- WTH-081
- Name Access
- Penney, Lea
- Places
- Berlin, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Penney, Lea - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/f7PVB7qCr50
Perkal, Stephen - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67774
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 11:13:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 11:13:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Stephen Perkal was born on December 14, 1914 in Zelechow, Poland (Russia). As a young man, he became a member of the Bund. In the spring of 1939, he was asked to conduct a campaign for the party in Mi?dzyrzec, Poland. When the war broke out, Stephen fled the city and went to Vilnius, a Polish town at the time. Upon the Lithuanian take over in fall 1939, Stephen had to move again. He stayed near Kaunas, Lithuania, until the end of 1940. He eventually got a visa from Chiune Sugihara to enter Japan. He took the train from Moscow to Vladivostok then embarked on a ship to Kobe. After Germany attacked Russia, Stephen was forced to leave Japan. He went to Shanghai and stayed there from 1941 to 1947. He went to University and worked in a textile factory. At the beginning of 1947, he received permission to immigrate to Canada. He became a student at McGill University. Later, he worked for international unions and became an active member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Stephen married a Christian Montrealer, has two daughters and several grandchildren.
- Accession No.
- WTH-393
- Name Access
- Perkal, Stephen
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Perkal, Stephen - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/qY9oWk7uKkw
Pitluk, Zulema (Zlatka) - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67772
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:36:33
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 00:36:33
- Language
- Yiddish
- Notes
- Pitluk, Zulema (Zlatka) was born on September 23, 1924 in Pruzana , Belarus (Poland).
- Accession No.
- WTH-327
- Name Access
- Pitluk, Zulema (Zlatka)
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Pitluk, Zulema (Zlatka) - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/AjhenOmDhpA
Reinitz, George - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67758
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:07:04
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:07:04
- Language
- English
- Notes
- George Reinitz was born April 16, 1932 in Szikszo, Hungary. He and his younger sister Marie were raised in a working class religious home. George had a Jewish education until grade five when he attended a secular school. With the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, all the borders had been closed off and antisemitic restrictions were in place. By April 1944, rumours of deportations were spreading. George’s family was taken to the police station with whatever belongings they could gather. The following day, April 20, 1944, they were taken by train to a deportation centre in Kosice, Slovakia (Kassa, Hungary). Within two months, they were taken to Auschwitz on a three-day train ride in cattle cars holding approximately 70-75 people per box car. During selections upon arrival at Auschwitz, George said goodbye to his mother and sister, whom he never saw again. In another selection, George wanted to remain with his father, so at age 12, he stayed in the adult line by saying that he was 18. He and his father received a number tattooed on their arm; they were told they were lucky to have this number as opposed to burning in fire. Determined to survive, George made three friends that helped each other out whenever possible. In the camps, George worked in the stockrooms, washing and fixing pitchforks and shovels. After contracting pneumonia, George was taken by his father to the emergency hospital in Auschwitz. That was the last time George saw his father who had been shot on a death march. A day or two later, George met a Jewish doctor named Greunwald from Kusheta; he helped his patients to get on their feet, giving them extra food. The doctor gave George injections raising his fever so that he could stay in the hospital longer. In January 1945, they were liberated by the Russians. George was taken to a DP camp in Katonitz where he stayed for a month. He was then taken to another camp in Chernivtsi, Ukraine (Chernowitz, USSR). This delay was to make sure that they were not political prisoners. The war ended on May 8, 1945. George was taken by train to Slutzk, Belarus (USSR) where he remained until December. Papers were soon cleared and George was put on a train to Budapest, Hungary. At age 13, he found an uncle who took him in. George enrolled into school. His uncle left and George was again on his own; he found his cousin who was ten years older and who took care of George as if he were his own son. George was later transferred to an orphanage where he had better chances of survival. The orphans tried to get into Palestine but it was difficult to get in. In 1948, Israel was reclaimed and George found a way to get out of Budapest through a Canadian Jewish agency that helped him get to Montreal. They found him a foster home with 35 other kids and a social worker. At the age of 16, George had various trades and lived on his own. He got a job with a furniture company and after seven years of work, he left into his own business and became the employer of over 200 employees. He never left to live in Israel. He married a Canadian Jewish woman. They have children and grandchildren.
- Accession No.
- WTH-032
- Name Access
- Reinitz, George
- Places
- Szikszó , Hungary, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Reinitz, George - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rccgrOFLAJ4
Roessler, Karl-Georg - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60301
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:05
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:05
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Karl-Georg Roessler was born in Crimmitschau, Germany on September 1, 1923. He and his sister grew up in a secular home; only his mother was Jewish. After the Nazis passed the restrictive Anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws in 1935, his father divorced his mother. Karl and his older sister stayed with their mother and were considered as Jews. In September 1940, Karl's maternal grandmother was deported to Plauen where she had to live in the Jewish ghetto. Karl and his mother joined her there. His grandmother and mother were later sent to Theresienstadt. On April 4, 1944, Karl was deported to a labour camp in Valognes, France, to do heavy manual labour at a construction site. In June 1944, Karl escaped the camp and stayed in hiding in the outskirts of Paris. He returned to Germany where he continued living in hiding with a family whose daughter would later become his wife. Karl returned to his home town but was arrested by the German police and placed in solitary confinement in the district prison for eight weeks. Shortly after, the American Army arrived. After liberation, Karl traveled to Theresienstadt by motor bike to reunite with his mother and together they returned to Plauen. After the war, Karl became politically active against Communism; as a result, he was blacklisted and had to escape from East Germany to West Germany where he was employed by the American Military Government. Karl and his family came to Canada in 1960 as he was offered a position in Montreal as the president of a company. He was later transferred to California for ten years.
- Accession No.
- WTH-090
- Name Access
- Roessler, Karl-Georg
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Rosen, Chaim - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor and WWII Veteran
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60298
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:44:56
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:44:56
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Chiam Rosen was born on December 7, 1918 in the small Polish town of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, to a father who was a ritual slaughterer/cantor/Hebrew teacher and a mother who was a housewife. When he was two, he moved to Magdeberg, Germany. His two brothers were born there, one in 1920 and the other in 1924. He began school in Madgeberg and finished, after another move, in Braunschweig, where he lived until the war broke out. In 1933 he and his brother were kicked out of school. His father took him to a cabinet-maker, where he became an apprentice. He worked there for 3.5 years. When he turned 18 he realized Germany was not the place for him and he obtained a Pioneer Certificate. He was given a certificate to go to Palestine. When he left in July 1937 he was seeing his parents for the last time. He made his way to Palestine via Italy. When he arrived he joined a kibbutz, building defense walls before working as a mounted police defending the towns. Eventually he joined the Palestinian army, was trained under the British army, and served in artillery groups. He was sent to Italy and there he received news of his brothers, both of whom had also joined the army, and his parents, who had been transported to the Warsaw (or Lodz) ghetto. Once the war was over Chiam went from Italy to Austria to Germany and Belgium, helping prisoners from DP camps, bringing food, transporting supplies and trying to help orphaned children. He visited Bergen-Belsen, not as part of the army but with a group of people who wanted to help. Eventually he was discharged and returned to Palestine. On the way he was reunited with one of his brothers. In Palestine he helped in preparation for the Israeli War of Independence, but did not fight in it. He and his brothers contacted their uncle who was living in Montreal, Canada. They were granted visas and emigrated to Montreal. Eventually they moved to Quebec City to work in the scrap metal business. Chiam married in 1954 in Canada. They separated after 40 years with no children.
- Accession No.
- WTH-060
- Name Access
- Rosen, Chaim
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Rozmovits, Dora - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60306
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 03:18:29
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 03:18:29
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Dora Rozmovits was born on August 14, 1928 in Kalnik, Ukraine (Czechoslovakia). The family moved to Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, where she remembers a peaceful upbringing with her seven siblings in an orthodox Jewish home. By 1938, Dora recalls an uneasiness in the air as changes began; Dora escaped to Prague and returned back home to Kalnik. In April 1944, Dora and her family were rounded up along with other members of the community and forced to stay about two weeks in a ghetto outside Munkacs. From there, they were taken on a two-day train ride with no food or water, and no knowledge as to their destination. They arrived in Auschwitz; this was the last time Dora would see her mother. They were hauled into barracks and stripped of their clothes and everything they owned. From Auschwitz, Dora was transferred to Stutthof concentration camp for two weeks where she endured brutal treatment, terrible living conditions and daily appels. She was then sent to work in the forests, digging trenches for soldiers. After a couple of weeks of extreme physical labour, she was forced on a two week march to a camp near Pruszcz Gdansk, Poland. After another final transfer to the area of Gdansk, a typhoid fever epidemic broke out during which her eldest sister became very ill. Dora hid her sister during this time; after about a month, Dora herself contracted the disease, but fortunately recovered by the time of liberation. The Russians arrived on March 26th, 1945. Dora had been working in a sick camp despite only being 15 years old. From here, Dora returned to Gdansk with her sister and then to Kalnik where they were reunited with their father, two brothers, and two sisters. They found out that their mother and two brothers died. The family moved back to Karlovy Vary and Dora moved to Marseille, France, to volunteer for Hagana, an Israeli underground. After meeting her husband, Dora moved to Israel where she got a job working in a kitchen. She was reunited with her husband who at the time was in the army. Dora found a job at a Mental Hospital in Carmel. She gave birth to her first son in Israel. Dora and her family decided to go to Canada as her stepmother’s brother lived in Montreal. In Dora’s closing statement, she thanks God for her children and husband, and wishes that no one should ever have to experience what she went through.
- Accession No.
- WTH-295
- Name Access
- Rozmovits, Dora
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Samuel, Ellen - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67775
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:32:06
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:32:06
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Ellen Samuel (née Stern) was born on the November 15, 1926 in Paderborn, Germany. Ellen recalls her first awareness of antisemitism in April 1933 when she was in grade two. Children would punch in her bicycle tires; she was never invited to birthday parties; some friends stopped walking home with her; and there were places she could not enter. On November 9, 1938, the Stern family experienced Kristallnacht. They realized it was time to leave. They spent two weeks in Vohermar trying to get visas to go to the Central American republics, as Ellen’s father had previously done business with the Americas as a grain merchant. A very distant relative in California guaranteed five hundred dollars for each family member to ensure they would not be a burden on the government. When it was their turn to emigrate, it was wartime and there were no more ships for civilians. Ellen was sent to England via the Kindertransport program. Along with 600 other student, Ellen landed in Dover where Jewish volunteer women gave the children oranges. She was taught English by the local synagogue and was integrated to a London school. When the war broke out, she was evacuated to the countryside and lived with a family who was paid to take in city children. As there was no bombing, she returned to London just as the bombing started on February 3, 1939. Her parents arrived in London on July 7, 1939. The following year, her parents were interned at Isle of Man. Ellen was shipped to Isle of Man, then Liverpool, and then returned to the Isle of Man to be with her mother. After internment ended in May 1941, the family returned to London; Ellen went to school during the weekends and worked with her mother doing peace work during the week. Her father became an office manager. On V-E Day, the family was in on vacation in a small village called Mousehole in Cornwall. On V-J Day, she was downtown. Once the war was over, they started sending packages to British soldiers who were liberating the camps. Ellen found out about her other relatives who survived the war: one of her uncles in Germany survived; another relative lived in a cave under a barn near the German border; and two aunts from Holland came to London. After the war, Ellen worked for export/import companies due to her multi-lingual abilities. In April 1951, Ellen decided to come to Canada when her uncle died and her aunt in Canada could not cope with the lawyers or paperwork; it took five years to settle everything. She ended up working in estates from this learning experience. Her future husband, whom she married in 1955, did not follow until later. When Ellen’s father passed away in London in 1955, her mother came to Canada; she passed away in 1958. Ellen states that this project is very important because the only way to prevent a horror like the Holocaust is to neither keep it from being forgotten or trivialized nor be a chapter in history but, rather, be a lesson.
- Accession No.
- WTH-414
- Name Access
- Samuel, Ellen
- Places
- Paderborn, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Samuel, Ellen - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/-xy1oV1JBFY
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