52 records – page 1 of 3.

Witness to History Collection

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60296
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Fonds
Material Type
multiple media
Physical Description
536 video recordings
Date
1994-Present
Scope and Content
The Witness to History program consists of a growing collection of interviews (as of January 20, 2014). The collection counts 536 testimonies: 511 Holocaust survivors (A Holocaust survivor is anyone who suffered and survived persecution for racial and religious, reasons while under Nazi or Axis con…
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Fonds
Material Type
multiple media
Physical Description
536 video recordings
Scope and Content
The Witness to History program consists of a growing collection of interviews (as of January 20, 2014). The collection counts 536 testimonies: 511 Holocaust survivors (A Holocaust survivor is anyone who suffered and survived persecution for racial and religious, reasons while under Nazi or Axis control between 1933 and May 8, 1945; or who was forced to live in hiding; or to flee Nazi or Axis onslaught before and during World War Two in order to avoid imminent persecution.); 15 World War Two veterans; 6 Holocaust survivors who are also World War Two veterans; 1 Rescuer; 3 Others. Testimony has been taken from survivors of the ghettos, hidden children, labour camp, concentration camp and death camp prisoners, partisans, liberators, and rescuers. The records accurately reflect the personal history of each of the interviewees, and become a priceless resource for further research and teaching related to Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust.
Date
1994-Present
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
History / Biographical
The Witness to History project was developped by the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre. The first interviews were conducted in the spring of 1994. The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre’s objective in inaugurating this programme was to record and document as many of the survivors’ histories and experiences as resources permitted. Videotaped interviews are conducted by trained interviewers with emphasis on the survivors’ Holocaust experiences as well as their pre-war lives and their often remarkable post-war efforts to reconstruct normality into their lives in Canada. The Centre’s objective is to continue the Project and provide the facility for those of the Montreal area survivors still willing to come forth and record their experiences towards the education of future generations.
Language
English
Hebrew
French
Hungarian
Russian
Yiddish
Accession No.
2014X.02.01
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Less detail

Goldberg, Peter - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60297
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
00:59:33
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
00:59:33
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Peter Goldberg was born on May 12, 1919 in Paberze, a village approximately 20 km from Vilnius, Lithuania (Vilna, Poland), where he and his nine siblings were raised in an orthodox Jewish home. The Russian Army occupied Vilnius in 1939 until the Germans took over in 1941. Peter recalls the many restrictions placed on Jews, including the wearing of yellow stars, forced labour, and the establishment of the Jewish ghetto. Peter and his wife had to stay in the ghetto for about seven months. They remained there, often in hiding, until it was liquidated by the German Gestapo. Then, for ten months, they paid to live in a Polish house approximately 10 km from the Ghetto. Peter was taken to do forced labour as a coal digger in Bielawaka ? concentration camp. Once the camp was liquidated, he and his wife had to return to the ghetto in Vilnius for a second time until it closed in 1943. They spent about eight months in the Vilnius HKP-562 concentration camp where Peter was forced to work as a mechanic. The Germans liquidated the camp in July 1944. After liberation by the Russian Army, he and his wife returned home. He knew that most of his family had been killed immediately upon arrival in the ghetto in Vilnius (Vilna). After the war, Peter worked as a baker and a stock keeper of food for the Russian Army. When the borders opened in 1957, Peter, his wife and their daughter immigrated to Poland. They lived there until December 1958 when they decided to immigrate to Canada, as Peter’s sister was living in Montreal. Once here, Peter worked as a butcher and manager of a meat store.
Accession No.
WTH-050
Name Access
Goldberg, Peter
Places
Paberze, Lithuania (Poland), Lithuania (Poland), Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube

Goldberg, Peter - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kd0CWEt_Qrc
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Places
Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Less detail

Hiess, Anna - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60300
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:04:39
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:04:39
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Anna Hiess (née Fliesser) was born in Vienna, Austria on April 12, 1914. Her family moved to Lemberg in 1918, after Anna’s father’s death. They were an assimilated family and did not experience discrimination before 1938, with the exception that they could not study wherever and whatever they wanted. Anna married in 1938. She left Lemberg with her husband in 1941, shortly after the German invasion. They went to Hrubieszow where they stayed a few months under false identity, leaving when people started to suspect they were Jews. They moved to Garwolin by train where they were helped by Stanislaw Piaskowski and the underground that provided them with a place to live and ration cards. Anna’s job was to conceal the forbidden radio while her husband worked in the income tax department. After the war, they moved to Lodz and started a new life with their son. The family immigrated to Israel in 1950 because Anna’s husband was in danger since he got involved in politics. They were disappointed when they arrived in Tel-Aviv and felt hostility coming from Jews who had lived in Israel since before the war. They decided to immigrate to Montreal in 1952, sponsored by a Canadian family they never met.
Accession No.
WTH-086
Name Access
Hiess, Anna
Places
Vienna, Austria , Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Places
Crimmitschau, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Calderon, Leon - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60302
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
02:02:03
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
02:02:03
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Leon Calderon was born in 1926 in Salonika, Greece, to a family of Yugoslavian origins. He had four siblings who, along with his parents, perished in Auschwitz in 1943, except for one brother who died in the Warsaw ghetto. After the war broke out in Greece, he lived in Salonika in the ghetto until April 1943, when he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was there for about six months. In October 1943, he was transferred to the Warsaw ghetto, where he had to clean up and collect bricks after the uprising. In June 1944 the Russians were approaching, and after a five-day death march, he was transferred by train to Dachau, where he remained for a week. Then he was transferred to the Mildorf labor camp in Germany, where he worked on the construction of a tunnel until April 1945. With the American Army approaching, they were put on a train, which was also bombed, and were finally liberated on April 30, 1945 by the Americans. Leon stayed for a week in a DP camp near Munich, then for a month in the Landsberg DP camp. He returned to Salonika until the Greek civil war began in 1949. He moved to Israel, returning to Salonika in 1953 to obtain visas for Canada. In August 1955, he came to Canada by boat. He got married and he had two daughters. He worked as a salesman and manager of a store, and owned his own company until 1975.
Accession No.
WTH-161
Name Access
Calderon, Leon
Places
Salonika, Greece, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Gillatt, Eva - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor and WWII Veteran

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60303
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
03:41:06
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
03:41:06
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Eva Gillatt (née Oppenheim) was born on May 21, 1920 in Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany. Her father died of leukemia when she was a child. Eva recalls having had a privileged childhood. Despite having no religious education, she was conscious of her Jewishness, especially with increasing political upheavals and the passing of the antisemitic Nuremberg laws of 1935. After a year at an orthodox Jewish boarding school, Eva spent a year as an employee at a Deaf and Dumb hall in Weinssensee, Germany. In 1937, she went to Harzburg to work. From there she left for Neuendorf in April 1938, where she trained on a farm run by a Jewish organization. Eva recounts that on Kristallnacht about 12 Nazis came on motorbikes and threatened to burn the farm down. They took everybody over the age of 20 to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Eva’s brother was sent to England on the Kindertransport in May 1939. On July 4, 1939, Eva went by ship to the United Kingdom to live with her uncle in London; she recounts an unhappy and isolated period, working hard under her uncle and being poorly treated. The war was just beginning at this point. For 16 weeks, Eva was stationed in an air raid shelter. When Eva turned 21, she left her uncle to train as a cook, and in May 1941, began working in this capacity for the British Army in Lancaster. It was there that she met and ultimately married the Sergeant of the 4th Allied Volunteer Platoon. They lived in Manchester for over 16 years and had three children. During the last years of the war, Eva found out that her mother had been sent by transport to Auschwitz where, Eva believes, she was killed within a day or two. Between 1954 and 1960, Eva worked in various clerical positions. For over twenty years she was an ad representative for several newspapers in Manchester and then moved on to become a hospital car driver. She currently works as a cook for an agency that helps less fortunate people. While Eva does not talk about her experiences during the war to friends, she was pleased to have had the opportunity to tell her personal story.
Accession No.
WTH-200
Name Access
Gillatt, Eva
Places
Berlin - Charlottenburg, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Feist, Ursula - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60304
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:41:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:41:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Ursula Feist (née Erber) was born on June 2, 1921 in Berlin, Germany. Before Hitler, Ursula, her parents and sister, Brigitta, lived in a comfortable economic status. Ursula had a good educational background. Her father was very observant and Ursula discusses how she might have turned out more observant in her life today, had she not been forced by her father to go to synagogue. With the rise of Nazism, Ursula describes living in perpetual fear from 1933 until 1939. Beginning in 1934, the family experienced financial hardship and Ursula went to a commercial college to learn how to type and take short hand. She found employment at an Italian agency from March until November 1938 -- Kristallnacht. Ursula describes Kristallnacht as the most horrible thing: she remembers coming down in the morning and seeing windows smashed and synagogues burning. By the beginning of 1939, many Jews were leaving Germany. Ursula obtained tickets to Shanghai from the Italian agency for her parents and sister. For herself, she made arrangements to go to England to stay with a longtime pen pal. On May 19, 1939, two weeks before her eighteenth birthday she got onto a children's transport to England. Her parents left for Shanghai in June 1939. She remembers the SS coming on the train and emptying out suitcases to find anything of value. In England, Ursula stayed with the Wicker family near Chester in North England. The family treated Ursula like one of their own. She had to adjust to a life where she did not have to worry. Ursula went to Birmingham and trained as a nurse. In May 1940, she was interned at a woman’s camp on the Isle of Man for one year. The British government had no way of knowing who was a Nazi sympathizer so they interned everybody. While in the camp, she met a woman from Munich who was the aunt of her future husband, David. Ursula worked as a waitress in the Cumberland Hotel and David came and asked her if he could take her to the theatre. Later she got a monitoring service job at the BBC. She listened to Hitler's speeches and had to translate and transcribe them. She and David married in 1943. David wanted to join the Commandos when he learnt that his mother was killed but instead he got into the intelligence corps and then the pioneer corps. Their first son, Anthony, was born in London in 1948. By this time, communication with Ursula’s parents had stopped. They had been living under Japanese control in Shanghai and under terrible circumstances. After the war they immigrated to Minneapolis, United States. Her father had angina and died. Later, her mother and sister moved to New York. Life in post-war England was difficult due to very high taxes. In 1951, Ursula and David came to Canada in search of employment. They did not go to the United States because they were afraid that their son would be drafted. Their second son, Daniel was born in Montreal in 1954. Ursula worked in the Neurological Hospital and then the Royal Victoria Hospital as an administrative assistant to the chief of surgery. Her children are both married and she has two grandchildren from each son. Ursula talks about the fact that she is still homesick for London; they visit very often and have very close friends there. She has also been back to Berlin several times.
Accession No.
WTH-267
Name Access
Feist, Ursula
Places
Berlin, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube

Feist, Ursula - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oAO-Kk5yy_8
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Places
Janow Lubelski, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Places
Kalnik, Ukraine (Czechoslovakia), Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Exiner, Robert - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60307
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:37:33
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:37:33
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Robert Exiner was born on March 2, 1916 in Berlin, Germany. His father was in the clothing business and his mother helped him. They were a middle-class family and lived well. Robert was an only child, though he had an older brother who died before he was born. His family was not strictly religious; however, he had had a bar mitzvah. Robert identified as a German who happened to be Jewish. He attended a private preschool for three years before moving to a French gymnasium that focused on Liberal Arts. He graduated when he was 18, in 1934. After graduating he could not go to university since he was Jewish. A textile college accepted him, not for the regular two-year course but for the six-month course. He did four. He was not ready to leave Germany. During this time his father died. Robert was a member of the Iron Front, a Nationalist organization. They were dissolved, but carried on illegally for a year in Upper Silesia before being caught. He spent a night in an SS cell after which he decided to leave Germany. He had had a visa to Australia, but that had expired. He managed to get another one and left for Australia in July 1938. He spent three months in Sydney before moving on to Melbourne, where he found nightshift work in a ribbon factory. When the war broke out in 1939 he volunteered for and joined the army. Eventually he was made an assistant in the medical hut, trained for the medical core, and then ran a depot specializing in the prevention of venereal diseases. After the war, Robert found work running a factory, handling the business side. He stayed there until he retired at age 70. During this time he married a dancer/dance teacher who ran a dance studio. They had two sons. He regrets not having been able to go to university when he was younger and pursue an academic career, but he did obtain his M.A. at the age of 76. Now he gives lectures in Melbourne, volunteers for a classical music station and plays the recorder twice a week with difference groups.
Accession No.
WTH-321
Name Access
Exiner, Robert
Places
Berlin, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

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
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
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
Places
Jarnice, Wegrow, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Goldwasser, Sam - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60309
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:35:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:35:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Sam Goldwasser was born in 1928 in Parczew, Poland. He and his siblings, a younger brother and sister, were raised in a kosher family. He lived in the ghetto until 1942, when his parents gave him away to another family in order to keep him safe. In August 1942, his mother and sister were shot in Parczew and his father and brother were deported to Treblinka where they died. Sam went into hiding in the woods near Parczew with other Jews, joining the partisans. He was the leader of his group as he knew those woods very well. His nickname was “Machine Gun.” His group received orders and armies from the Russians; they blew up trains and roads and they fought against Germans and Polish. They were liberated by the Russians in August 1944. Sam joined the Polish police secret services until March 1946. During the same period, he lived in a kibbutz in the Parczew area. Later, he went to a DP camp in Eschwene, Germany, where he remained under a false identity. In June 1948, he came to Montreal by ship via Halifax, as he had an uncle and an aunt here. He got married in 1949 and they had two children and two grand-children. He worked in the needle trade, pre-retiring in 1983.
Accession No.
WTH-373
Name Access
Goldwasser, Sam
Places
Parczew, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Wohlgemuth, Anne - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60310
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
05:58:34
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
05:58:34
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Anne Wohlgemuth (née Loeb) was born on May 21, 1921 in Hochheim am Main, Germany. An only child, she lived with her orthodox Jewish parents. In 1935, she moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where she studied in a Jewish Girls’ school for one year. With growing antisemitism in Germany, Anne and her family moved to Belgium in 1936. In 1938, Anne went to study in London (where she met her future husband), but when the war broke out, she returned to Belgium immediately. In May 1940, Anne and her family immigrated to Montreal, Canada. When she was naturalized in 1945, she moved to London for five years, where she got married in 1946 and had three children. They came back to Montreal in 1951 where they have since remained.
Accession No.
WTH-423
Name Access
Wohlgemuth, Anne
Places
Hochheim am Main, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Zoltak, Sidney - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60311
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
03:26:35
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
03:26:35
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Sidney Zoltak was born on July 15, 1931 in Siemiatycze, Poland. He was raised in a traditional Jewish household and his life before the war was a humble but comfortable one. In September 1939, the Germans marched through his town, and again in June 1941, putting an end to almost three years of Soviet Occupation. Sidney’s parents were forced to labour, cleaning out Soviet bunkers. German authorities established a ghetto in the Polish part of town. In November 1942, following an order to liquidate the ghetto, Sidney recalls his family’s escape into hiding. They stayed with different villagers, changing places every few months and ultimately hiding in an open barn. Sidney could barely walk due to the harsh living conditions he endured during that difficult period. Following liberation in July 1944, Sidney returned to his hometown where he resumed schooling. Eventually, he and his parents left with the intention of going to Israel; however, they ultimately settled in Padua, Italy, living illegally in numerous DP camps. Sidney went to live in a children’s home working for the Youth Aliyah. Following the death of his father in 1945, Sidney and his mother spent a year and a half in a DP camp in Cremona, Italy. Responding to pressure from his mother’s family in Canada, he and his mother left Italy in 1948. In Montreal, Sidney met his wife, who is also a Holocaust survivor. They married in 1954 and had two sons; his eldest tragically passed away in 1973. Sidney kept in contact with one of the Polish families that offered his family a hiding place, and revisited Poland on two occasions. In his closing statement, Sidney mentions that he is active in Holocaust related issues - the immense feeling of responsibility and duty that he bears as a survivor has never left him.
Accession No.
WTH-428
Name Access
Zoltak, Sidney
Places
Siemiatycze, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Cohen, Matla - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60312
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:28:09
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:28:09
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Matla Cohen was born November 15th, 1934 in Mezrich, Poland. She comes from a family of six that include two sisters and one twin brother. The pre-war period is somewhat unfamiliar to her due to her very young age, but her first real awareness of the war was when she and her family had to hide out in the garden after areas around her home were bombarded. In 1939-40, she and her family had been relocated to Vitebsk, Belarus. Her parents worked in a factory and she was in a nursery with her brother. Once more, they were forcefully relocated to a labour camp in Siberia. Her parents worked early and returned at night, while Matla was placed in a barrack and became caretaker of her siblings. She recalls her time there as being: “very difficult”. Ultimately, her family escaped the barrack as her father bribed a commandant with the prospect of a tailored suit. They finally got to an area in the Caucasus Mountains where they lived until the war ended. After the war, they returned back to Poland. They lived there for a month where the Madrichim approached their parents in hopes of sending Anne to Israel. She was separated from her family and sent to a DP camp in Berlin, awaiting the transport to Israel. In the end, that never took place as she jumped from camp to camp until a French Canadian woman in one of them suggested that she move to Montreal; a suggestion she followed in 1948. In Canada, she was adopted by a local family in Ste. Agathe and lived there until she attended college at the age of 18 in Montreal. She would visit her family in Ste. Agathe most weekends, and that is where she met her first husband; a marriage which lasted ten years. A few years later she met her second husband, Benjamin, to whom she is still married. She has five children.
Accession No.
WTH-448
Name Access
Cohen, Matla
Places
Mezrich, Poland, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Eliasewitz, Fruma - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60313
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:56:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:56:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Fruma Eliasewitz was born on January 1, 1922 in Skaudvile, Lithuania, to a religious family. She had five sisters and one brother. At the age of 15, she moved to Klaipeda (Memel) to work in a cigarette factory for two years. She got married in 1939. When the German army invaded Lithuania in 1939, Fruma moved to Tuarage and then to Kuanas where she remained until June 1941, working again in a cigarette factory. She spent a year and a half in the Slobodka ghetto. In 1942, she was transferred to Riga, Latvia, where she worked in the airport to supply building material. With the Russians approaching, she was deported to Dachau where she worked in the kitchen until April 1945. She was forced on a death march for almost a week until she was liberated by the American army in April 1945 near Wolfratshausen, Germany. She spent a short period in the Feldafing DP camp in Germany. Between 1945 and 1949 she lived with her husband in Munich, working in the kitchen for the Jewish committee and raising their first son. In 1949, the family moved to Israel where she had her second son. The following year, she had a daughter. In March 1953 she immigrated to Canada via Paris and Halifax. She worked various jobs - washing floors, in a stocking factory, and Cantor’s bakery in Côte St Luc. Two of her sisters live in Israel and four in Montreal.
Accession No.
WTH-453
Name Access
Eliasewitz, Fruma
Places
Skaudvile, Lithuania, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Dlusy, Jon - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60314
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:50:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:50:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English
Notes
Jon Dlusy was born Yonah Dlusniewski on October 29, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, to Polish parents. They had moved to Germany in 1919, living in the Charlottenburg area of Berlin. There, his father had established a clothing manufacturing business. Jon had an older brother who later worked for the Canadian Air Force and got killed in Scotland in 1944 returning from an operation. In May 1938, Jon’s father decided to leave Germany because of the increasing antisemitism. They obtained visas for Belgium and fled Germany, leaving everything behind. They stayed in Antwerp for about four months, waiting for the Canadian visas. Once they received them, they immigrated to Montreal via Liverpool and Halifax. They already had family in Canada. They lived in Outremont. Jon is now retired. His mother lived until 101 years old.
Accession No.
WTH-455
Name Access
Dlusy, Jon
Places
Berlin, Germany, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

Brinberg, Georgette - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor

https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60315
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:32:00
Collection
WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
Description Level
Item
Material Type
moving images
Physical Description
01:32:00
Creator
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre
Language
English; French
Notes
Georgette Brinberg (née Tepicht) was born on June 10, 1938 in the mining town of Villerupt in northern France. In the 1940s, when the town was attacked by Germany, her mother, father and older sister fled to Paris. Although she was young, she remembers that her father in 1940 was rounded-up and sent to a working camp, and eventually to Auschwitz. In July 1942, she, her sister and mother were rounded up and sent off to the Vélodrome d’Hiver where she stayed for a week until she was split up from her mother and destined to be sent to Auschwitz. Fortunately, Georgette and her sister were able to flee the Vel d’Hiv and were sent to Morée. She does not remember how she ended up there, but she does know that she was in hiding with her sister, and that there was a constant fear of being captured. She had to learn all the Catholic rites in order to pass off as a Catholic girl. In 1944, about the time of the liberation of France, she once more fled Morée and returned to Paris after jumping onto an American truck. Once she arrived in Paris with her sister, they sought out their grandmother who was still in hiding. All three stayed in hiding until the end of the war, and eventually moved to Israel in 1948. In Israel, she joined the Kibbutz – a collective community traditionally based on agriculture. She stayed there, learning Yiddish, until the 1950s. She eventually decided to move to Canada where her sister lived with her husband. In 1955, she finally arrived in Montreal where she went to business school and worked in the Quebec Order of Chartered Accountants. She married in 1957 and had three kids. In subsequent years, she researched the whereabouts of her family and tried to find a trace of those that helped her. She even returned to Paris to learn more about her past and her family legacy. She feels that her story should be told for future generations to remember, in her words: “if I can tell my grandchildren, then why not everyone [else]?”
Accession No.
WTH-462
Name Access
Brinberg, Georgette
Places
Villerupt, France, Europe
Archival / Genealogical
Archival Descriptions
Repository
Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Less detail

52 records – page 1 of 3.