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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
- 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
Engelhard, Sarah - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60316
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 04:49:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 04:49:00
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Sarah Engelhard was born on July 10, 1932 in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Her childhood was spent in Toulouse, where she lived with her parents and her younger brother Jack. With an increasing number of Jews in Toulouse being taken by the Nazis, her family escaped to Spain when she around nine years old. To do so they obtained false papers and hired guides to take them over the Pyrenees. They lived in Spain for almost two years, finally immigrating to Canada on the first day of Passover in April 1944. Though she picked up English quickly, she didn’t enjoy her first years in Canada. High school was hard for her, and she dropped out at age 15 to help her father sell his handbags. Though she managed to do her part well, he did not, and the business fell through. She found a job in the music section at Eaton’s department store. When she was 18 she left home and became engaged to a man she had known in high school, Avi Boxer. That engagement fell through and, after obtaining her degree from St. George’s University, she married a man twenty years her senior named Harry. They had three children. She moved with Harry to Philadelphia where he was working as an engineer. There, she began to write French love songs and perform in dinner clubs as a singer as well as audition for plays. She also taught French, eventually getting a television program for teaching French. She and Harry divorced in 1972. A year or two later she returned to Montreal after having visited Europe for the first time since she left. She reunited with Avi, and though the relationship was sour they had a child, Asa. In 1993 she and Asa left for Israel, where she lived for nine years. She returned to Montreal in 2002 and has since written a book about her life.
- Accession No.
- WTH-470
- Name Access
- Engelhard, Sarah
- Places
- Saarbrucken, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Engelhard, Sarah - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60326
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 04:49:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 04:49:00
- Language
- French
- Notes
- Sarah Engelhard was born on July 10, 1932 in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Her childhood was spent in Toulouse, where she lived with her parents and her younger brother Jack. With an increasing number of Jews in Toulouse being taken by the Nazis, her family escaped to Spain when she around nine years old. To do so they obtained false papers and hired guides to take them over the Pyrenees. They lived in Spain for almost two years, finally immigrating to Canada on the first day of Passover in April 1944. Though she picked up English quickly, she didn’t enjoy her first years in Canada. High school was hard for her, and she dropped out at age 15 to help her father sell his handbags. Though she managed to do her part well, he did not, and the business fell through. She found a job in the music section at Eaton’s department store. When she was 18 she left home and became engaged to a man she had known in high school, Avi Boxer. That engagement fell through and, after obtaining her degree from St. George’s University, she married a man twenty years her senior named Harry. They had three children. She moved with Harry to Philadelphia where he was working as an engineer. There, she began to write French love songs and perform in dinner clubs as a singer as well as audition for plays. She also taught French, eventually getting a television program for teaching French. She and Harry divorced in 1972. A year or two later she returned to Montreal after having visited Europe for the first time since she left. She reunited with Avi, and though the relationship was sour they had a child, Asa. In 1993 she and Asa left for Israel, where she lived for nine years. She returned to Montreal in 2002 and has since written a book about her life.
- Accession No.
- WTH-537
- Name Access
- Engelhard, Sarah
- Places
- Saarbrucken, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
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
- 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
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
- 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
Frost, Jacob - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67760
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:40:49
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:40:49
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Jacob Frost was born on November 15, 1909 in Gera, Germany. He worked in a carpet factory after finishing Volksschule (primary education) and graduating from a non-Jewish high school. As soon as the Nuremberg laws were passed, he and his family were well aware of the dangers of the Nazis. By 1934, they had begun the process of trying to emigrate. Jacob witnessed Kristallnacht and was rounded up and taken to Buchenwald. He calls the experience at Buchenwald a “concentration” camp rather than an “internment” camp. He witnessed many brutalities, including a well-respected man of the community “losing his marbles” and a doctor tending this man’s self-inflicted wounds. Jacob spent five weeks at Buchenwald and could return to Gera as long as he had proof of papers to emigrate. With the advice and help of several kind gentiles along the way, Jacob made the voyage to Israel. He traveled by boat via Vienna to Salina, Romania, arriving in Israel in 1940. He immigrated to Canada in 1950.
- Accession No.
- WTH-075
- Name Access
- Frost, Jacob
- Places
- Gera, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Frost, Jacob - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/I_Tyt93j1Kc
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
- 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
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
Guter, Ernest - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67763
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:09:12
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:09:12
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Ernest Guter was born on April 7, 1917 in Toru?, Poland (Thorn, Germany). A year after his birth, his parents moved to Berlin then back to their hometown, Stolp. At a young age, Ernest joined the Maccabees and travelled across Germany preparing for the Jewish Youth Aliyah. In January 1938, he went to Berlin and became a social worker apprentice. One year later, he was transferred to the German Jewish Congress as a social worker. Ernest was in Berlin during Kristallnacht. A man helped him hide with other Jewish men in a store for several days, until it was calmer. Ernest stayed hidden in Berlin until he managed to get a visa to the United Kingdom. On the day that the German army entered Czechoslovakia, Ernest left for Great Britain. While working for the Rothschild’s, Ernest attended night-school at the College of Southampton, attempting to obtain a social science diploma. In 1940, all males with German passports living in England were interned. Ernest was originally interned in London, and then spent eight weeks interned on the Isle of Man. He was offered the choice of either staying on the Isle of Man for the duration of the war or going to either Canada or Australia. He chose Canada by chance and was sent to the Sherbrooke internment camp. Hymie Grover, a knitting-mill operator got Ernest out of the internment camp. He attended McGill University and graduated in 1945. He married a Jewish Canadian woman and has three children.
- Accession No.
- WTH-132
- Name Access
- Guter, Ernest
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Guter, Ernest - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ponlj5fYRdI
Heller, Anita - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67769
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:36:39
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:36:39
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Anita was born on April 26, 1926 in Karlsruhe, Germany. She came from a relatively well-off family. Her father, a German businessman, served as an officer in the German Army during WWI. He attended the 1912 Olympic Games as a member of the German Soccer Team. Her mother came from Warsaw. When she was two, the family moved to Berlin to live in a villa with servants. Anita attended a small private girl school from 1932 to 1937. She wasn't really aware of her Jewish roots before 1933. But her life changed the very day Hitler came to power. As anti-Jewish laws tightened, Anita felt a little bit more excluded every day. In 1935, her brother was sent to Scotland where he attended Kurt Hahn's school. In the summer of 1937, her parents took the decision to move to Engelberg, a small town near Luzern, Switzerland. The family left Berlin, leaving everything behind them. Anita was sent to a convent school in Luzern. Although they were able to get an American visa, the family decided to move to France in 1938. Being of Alsatian descent, they were eligible for French citizenship, which drove them to settle down in Paris where they led an undisturbed life until the war broke out. Her father was interned in a camp because he came to be viewed as an enemy alien. Eventually, in May 1940 the whole family succeeded in obtaining a Canadian visa and left Paris for Montreal. Anita didn't really enjoy her first years in Montreal as she experienced strong antisemitism on one side and on the other side was rejected by fellow Jews because of her German Citizenship. In 1947, she graduated from McGill University. She got married one year later and had two children.
- Accession No.
- WTH-291
- Name Access
- Heller, Anita
- Places
- Karlsruhe, Germany, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Heller, Anita - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/g46CQOiRFjY
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
- Collection
- 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
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
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
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
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
Strauss, Edgar - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn67773
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:49
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:41:49
- Language
- English
- Notes
- Edgar Strauss was born on June 11, 1909 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, to a Conservative Jewish family. He was unable to complete law studies because of antisemitic laws and was dismissed from the Civil Service due to the Weiderherstellung des Berufbeamtentums (Nazi reorganization of the Civil Service to eliminate Jews). In November 1938, Edgar experienced Kristallnacht and was interned at Dachau concentration camp. After his release one month later, he went to Luxembourg but returned for fear of reprisals against his father. Edgar obtained a passport and visa and on August 15, 1939 he left for the United Kingdom where he worked in a machine shop. His father was deported to Gurs; he survived the war in that camp because he was in the hospital when deportations to Auschwitz took place. In June 1940, after Dunkirk, Edgar was interned by the British as an enemy alien. He was sent to the Isle of Man and from there to Trois Rivières, Québec; New Brunswick; and Ile -Aux- Noix, Québec, respectively. In 1942, the Canadian government began to release internees to work. Edgar settled in Montreal.
- Accession No.
- WTH-349
- Name Access
- STRAUSS, Edgar
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
YouTube
Strauss, Edgar - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gPse2kymZs4
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
- 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
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
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